A Good Man in Africa (26 page)

Fanshawe looked at him. “Yes,” he agreed. “But it wouldn’t do at all for him to go swanning off to these other countries. Especially if we give him what he asks for—I mean, that has to be a condition we lay down. Wouldn’t do at all,” he repeated. “He hasn’t even been elected yet.”

“I don’t think he could even if he wanted to. If he’s going to be in the UK for two weeks it doesn’t leave him much time for electioneering. He’s got to be on the scene here; polling day’s getting closer all the time and he’s a big man in the party.”

Fanshawe brightened at this. “That’s true,” he said. “You’re right.” Morgan felt pleased with himself—he liked talking about the French and Americans in this way, enjoyed his confident analyses of the political situation. Fanshawe was putting a lot of faith in him, it was obvious.

“I’ll see what I can do about his various requests,” Fanshawe said, frowning with concentration. “They’re getting awfully important, these elections,” he said. “There are more oil finds in the river delta. Lots of British money in there now. New refinery being built.” He spread his palms on the blotter and smiled weakly at Morgan. “Your reports have confirmed Adekunle as our man. The High Commissioner’s most impressed with your work, but there’s a lot riding on it, you know. More than a couple of weeks in Claridge’s. Oh yes, much more now.” He paused, his frown still buckling his forehead. Morgan began to
sense worry in the atmosphere; it seeped in through his pores. He wondered for a moment if Fanshawe was trying to put the wind up him—but then he realised he wasn’t that good an actor.

“I’m sure we’ve made the right choice, Arthur,” he said.

“Oh yes,” Fanshawe said, waving his hand as if to disperse a cloud of cigarette smoke. “I’m sure you have.”

Morgan walked out of the men’s changing room into the glare of the morning sun, suddenly conscious of the coruscating dazzle of his surfing shorts. Around his neck he had casually slung a towel, the ends of which hung down over his broad chest. He wasn’t too enamoured of public swimming; it made him hyperaware of the inadequacy of his tan, the considerable size of his body and the countless millions of freckles that were sprinkled over it. Standing in front of the waist-high mirror in the changing room, inspecting himself before venturing outside, he had been alarmed, on presenting a profile of his torso, to see how far his breasts projected and vowed again to resume dieting and exercise.

He strode with false confidence out onto the terrace, acutely aware of his breasts juddering beneath the slung towel. At the tables and loungers around the poolside sat the usual quota of bored wives, some with children too young for nursery school. There were no men apart from an old white-haired fellow who was relaxing in the water at the deep end, his elbows hooked over the guttering, his feet idly kicking beneath the surface. Morgan looked closely at him; he always and immediately suspected such immobile contentment to be a sign of a covert subaquatic piss, but on reflection decided that the old chap just seemed to be enjoying the sun. Morgan found two unoccupied loungers and removed his towel and watch. Celia Adekunle had said she would be at the pool by half past ten. She was usually prompt.

He walked over to the shallow end and dived into the cool blue water. He glided beneath the surface, enjoying the sensation of the water flowing over his skin, then broke through into the sunlight and set off down the length of the pool in a powerful and splashy crawl, driving the old man away from his comfortable perch. One of Morgan’s flailing arms thwacked him across a retreating leg.

“So sorry,” Morgan called, enjoying himself, “can’t seem to change course once I’ve started.”

“Aaagh! Christ!” Morgan shouted as a spatter of cold water landed on his hot back. He turned round and squinted into the sun and saw Celia Adekunle leaning above him wringing out her wet hair over his body.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, flopping onto the lounger and flinging her arms wide as she faced the sun. “Whew,” she gasped, “water’s lovely.”

“Bloody hell,” Morgan said, drying his back. “You could give someone a heart attack like that.” He smiled. This was their third meeting by the pool in as many days. One morning he had been driving across Nkongsamba en route for the Commission and had spontaneously decided to call into the club. As she had told him he would, he found Celia there. They met again the following day, Morgan equipped with his swimming trunks this time, and they had swum, sunbathed and talked. She had left just after midday, but not before setting up this third meeting. Morgan found he enjoyed being with her. As he had noticed at their first encounter there was an implied intimacy in their exchanges, an unspoken familiarity, as if they possessed some private knowledge about each other, sensed instinctively the shared motives beneath the banter, but enjoyed the subterfuge nonetheless. He couldn’t define it any more coherently than that, or even explain why it should have arisen in the first place.

He watched her settle on the lounger. Her eyes were closed against the sun, so he could observe her openly. She was wearing a yellow bikini; her body was thin and very brown. Her breasts were small and her legs thin with prominent boney knees. One puckered inch of appendectomy scar showed above the top of her bikini pants. The skin on her stomach was loose, leathery, almost, from the sun and creased as the result of her two children, he suspected. Looking at her this dispassionately he had to admit that there was nothing that physically really attracted him to her, and this perplexed him somewhat.

He lay back on his towel, shielding his eyes with a forearm. This being the case, he wondered, why was he spending so much time with her? Well, he told himself, she was potentially
a prime source for information on Adekunle and the KNP—which was the explanation he would offer if Fanshawe ever saw fit to question him about his mornings at the pool. He had, certainly, learned that a considerable portion of Adekunle’s private fortune had gone to buy certain influential figures very expensive gifts, and had ascertained that Ussman Danda Ltd. was becoming dangerously overdrawn at the bank. But otherwise he had discovered little that he didn’t know already. Adekunle, it appeared, didn’t talk much about his political business; in fact, so Celia said, he hardly spoke to her at all. It was, she stressed, virtually a token marriage now. This information had been supplied the day before. Morgan had accompanied her to her car after their swim. After she told him this there had been a pause. Morgan had said, “Oh, I see.”

“You know,” she had said abruptly, looking at him with disturbing directness, “we needn’t meet
here.
We could go somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else?” he had said artlessly. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”

She had made a small grimace, as though it was a response she had expected. She hunched her shoulders. “One afternoon,” she said frankly, “we could go for a drive.”

He had felt touched and flattered by the candour of her approach, sensing vaguely the emotional effort required to make it. He was flattered because it was the first time this had happened to him—at least in daylight and under conditions of sobriety. He thought of his quarantine period, still with several days to run, and said with as much respect and gentlemanly understanding as he could marshal, laying his hand on her arm, “No, Celia, I don’t really think we should go for a drive, not now anyway.”

She had laughed with a hollow gaiety, and shook her hair. “No, you’re right,” she said. “Silly of me. I must be getting all confused.” She paused. “Thanks though,” she said earnestly and climbed into the car. She wound down the window. “We can still meet tomorrow, can’t we? Same time?”

As he lay back now he asked himself if he would have been so thoughtful and reticent if he hadn’t been working the dreaded gonococci out of his system. He didn’t press himself too strongly on that point, didn’t insist on an answer; it was sufficient, surely,
that he’d behaved commendably, taken care that there was no reason for Celia to think she’d done anything cheap. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her turn over and unclip her bikini top to present a bare back to the sun. As she awkwardly attempted to slip her arms out of the straps one breast suddenly hung free like a bell before it was resnugged in its bra cup. He knew, then, that he was kidding himself; his mornings with Celia Adekunle had nothing to do with information-gathering.

A while later, after a swim and some conversation, he ordered drinks and a sandwich. The steward brought the clinking tray over. Celia looked across her vodka and tonic at him sipping his Coke and said, “I don’t know how you do it, Morgan. You must be the only man in Nkongsamba who doesn’t drink.”

Morgan tapped his stomach. “I promised myself I’d lose some beef.”

Celia laughed. “Well, drinking Coke won’t help.” She had a point there, he thought. He was about to say that he reckoned he’d be packing it in soon anyway when he saw a sight that made his chest thump with apprehension.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” he swore. Emerging from the ladies’ half of the changing block at the far end of the pool were Priscilla and her mother. Priscilla was wearing her reinforced Olokomeji costume while her mother favoured a short white towelling robe which blew apart as she walked to reveal an immense two-piece maroon swimsuit of the sort favoured by pregnant women or demure American matrons; the kind that has two loose theatre-curtain flaps hanging from the upper half that effectively retain the necessary modesty while allowing the wearer the freedom of a two piece—if she’s pregnant—or the impression she’s still young enough for one—if she’s conceited. Through the gap in the curtain Morgan caught a glimpse of very, very white skin, and above the top half noted the razor-thin crease of compressed cleavage surrounded by a juddering jelly-sea of tightly packed and constrained bosom. Two sturdy blue-veined thighs completed this vision of an ageing Juno, a thickened, middle-aged and middle-class Botticelli Venus returning to the waves, clutching in her right hand a rubber flower-bedecked bathing cap.

As they drew near it became obvious to Morgan that they had seen him but were, independently or by mutual pact, going to pretend they hadn’t. From sheer obstinacy he decided he wasn’t going to let this happen.

“Chloe! Priscilla!” he hailed as they came closer, the joviality of his tones belieing the nervousness he felt. He hadn’t seen Priscilla since the day he’d bumped into her and Dalmire at the club: Dalmire genial and talkative, Priscilla proudly independent. Recognition made inevitable by his shout, he saw her adopt this no-hard-feelings pose again.

“Hello,” she said gaily. “Thought I’d seen those trunks before.”

He looked down, suddenly conscious of how prominently his groin bulged. “Yes,” he said, sensing the nervousness about to overwhelm him. “They are rather crying out for attention, aren’t they?” He hurriedly introduced Celia. “You know Celia Adekunle, I think. Chloe Fanshawe, Priscilla Fanshawe.” They agreed they did. Morgan sensed the eyes of Mrs. Fanshawe burning behind the opaque discs of the sunglasses she wore, sizing up, evaluating, condemning.

“Day off?” she asked through smiling teeth.

He was furious at the implication. He turned to face her. “All work and no play,” he said in a steely voice. “Don’t want Jack turning into a dull boy, do we.”

There was an uncomfortable silence as the hostility seemed to crackle between them. “Well, we mustn’t keep you,” Mrs. Fanshawe said. “Goodbye, Mrs. Adekunle … Morgan.” They marched off; Morgan stared hatefully at her broad beam.

“Goodness me,” Celia said. “What on earth did you do to offend her?”

“God knows,” Morgan said uncomfortably. “Something to do with being alive, I think.” He sat there in silence, seething and cursing at being witnessed like this.

“Morgan,” Celia said. “What’s going on …?”—for a horrible moment he thought she was going to ask about Priscilla, but the pause only came about because she was lighting a cigarette—“… between you and Sam? What’s this great interest all about?”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Nothing really,” he said cautiously, though he felt instinctively he could trust her, “just some footling idea of Fanshawe’s. He thinks Sam’s party’s going to win the election so we’re being very friendly.” His mind was still on Priscilla so he added without thinking, “That’s why we’re giving him the flight.”

“Flight? Where?”

“To London. For two weeks.” He looked round. “Oh Christ,” he said. “Didn’t you know? Shit, I’m sorry.”

Celia smiled grimly and took a long trembling drag on her cigarette. As she exhaled she shook her head. “No,” she replied. “I didn’t know. To London?”

“Yes,” he said, wondering if he’d given something vital away. “He asked specifically for two seats—I had the tickets delivered today—I just assumed he’d be taking you.… Perhaps it’s a surprise,” he added gamely.

She laughed harshly. “Fat chance,” she said. “You see, Sam’s got this possessive thing about me. He doesn’t allow me to leave the country. I haven’t been home for three years. He thinks that if I ever get back to Britain he’ll never see me again.”

Morgan swallowed. “Is he right? I mean, would you run away?”

She seemed quite composed again. “Oh yes,” she said. “Like a shot.”

It was 3:45 in the afternoon. Morgan’s Peugeot was parked down a laterite track in the shade of a towering mango tree which stood somewhere in the middle of a half-grown teak forest. Slim twenty-foot teak trees stretched away on both sides of the track, their oversized soup-plate leaves hanging motionless in the afternoon’s torpid dust-heat. Celia Adekunle’s Mini was parked just in front of Morgan’s car which had all its doors open, as if the driver and passengers had suddenly abandoned it in the face of an ambush or air attack and run into the forest.

Celia and Morgan knelt naked facing each other on the towel-draped back seat. This seemed to be the point to which all their conversations and meetings had inevitably been heading. There was a sense of something final in the air, of something ended, reached. They had talked calmly, kissed and removed their clothes with no trace of self-consciousness. Beyond the pool of shadow cast by the mango tree the sun seemed to beat down on the growing forest with a metallic solid strength, like bars round a prison cell. Morgan felt a sweat-drop trickle down the side of his face. Celia’s hair looked damp and tousled. She dragged it back and held it off her neck with both hands, causing her small flat breasts with their disproportionately large nipples to rise.