Olura (14 page)

The damned fellow must have been well educated by logical Jesuits. Given enough time and a decanter of port I could have tied him into knots; but one is not at one’s best as a suspect,
however unruly, under interrogation.

‘If I follow you,’ he said, enjoying himself at my expense and, I think, deliberately shocking his stolid companion in the front seat, ‘neither Miss Manoli nor her chief,
Prebendary Flanders, would attempt to assassinate our Generalissimo?’

‘You can’t call him her chief, and they most decidedly would not!’

‘But if we caught, tried and shot an unsuccessful assassin, they would organise a march of protest and have questions asked in your parliament.’

‘They might. But it would be a protest against what they considered injustice, not a condonation of the attempt.’

‘It is injustice which excites them?’

‘Yes! And why the devil not?’

‘But now we have arrived, my dear Don Felipe! If Spanish justice offends them, what must they think of African? I do not, I fear, think it at all impossible that Miss Manoli used the
Alliance des Blancs.’

‘And I tell you, much appreciated teniente, that it’s nonsense! After all, the one thing we know is that Vigny and this Duyker followed her.’

‘Yes, because the plot had failed.’

‘You might as well accuse Leopold Mgwana!’

‘A Prime Minister? Of a friendly state? We are not Albanians, Don Felipe! But he has of course been asked unofficially through diplomatic channels to make any statement he
pleases.’

‘Good God! And did he?’

‘Naturally I have not seen the text of his reply. But my superiors have given me to understand that he says he killed Livetti in self-defence on the night of July 21st, that he claims
diplomatic immunity and that he has requested our Minister of Justice to close the case discreetly. He has also stated that neither you nor Miss Manoli had any part in it.’

I stared at him, not daring to open my mouth. So Mgwana’s talk of chivalry had not been merely allusive. His word of honour that he would not involve me had also been nobly kept. But this
superbly mediaeval attempt to squash all publicity was deadly. Since Olura had some mysterious connection with Livetti, she was in trouble whatever Mgwana said.

No doubt the Spanish Foreign Office had replied to Mgwana thanking him very much, regretting that he should have been molested on Spanish soil and assuring him that the case was closed. But no
government could let it go at that. Attempts at assassination are too serious. The question of who employed Livetti became more serious than who killed him. Mgwana quite unintentionally had removed
himself from the case, leaving us two hopelessly stuck in it.

‘Why don’t you accept his statement?’ I asked.

The cop in the front seat looked round like a dog asking to be let off the leash. My question had, I suppose, implied that I did not accept Mgwana’s statement either.

‘Although Mr Mgwana and I did not speak a common language,’ Gonzalez went on, ‘I had great respect for him. He was very much a gentleman. I observed that he treated and loved
Miss Manoli as a sister. It could be that he is protecting her.’

‘Where did he kill Livetti?’

‘On the beach, where he was taking a stroll after nightfall. Then he waded out to sea with the body.’

‘It sounds like the truth.’

‘Truth? When the hotel porters and that fellow Arizmendi swear that he never left the hotel? But say they are mistaken! We must then assume that Livetti was provided with sail or
propellor, for only so could he have travelled round Cape Machichaco and Cape Ormenza against the set of wind and tide. And then into Pobeña! Perhaps to take on a cargo of iron ore, of which
some pieces were found in his pockets? You dropped Livetti into the bay of Pobeña on the 22nd. When and where you killed him I do not know, but I advise you to tell me. If I had been there
at the time, it might have been my duty to do the same.’

I was strongly tempted to accept the invitation. Given the faintest notion how, when and where Livetti had in fact been killed, I might have confessed to dealing with him in defence of Mgwana.
But, as it was, I had no facts on which to base invention. Medical and scientific evidence would soon show that I was lying. And whatever I said must increase their prejudice towards assassination
and strengthen the absurd suspicion of Olura.

A still easier way out was to admit that I had got rid of the body for Mgwana, and that I did not know why he had been compelled to kill. Well, but was it likely? Was it even conceivable that
after meeting him only twenty-four hours earlier I would take such a risk? Together Mgwana and I might have cooked up some fairly credible story, but I had no means of getting in touch with
him.

The third alternative before me was to tell the truth. That I could not bear, for it would leave Olura all alone in Maya, carrying the can for everybody and defenceless against the accusation
that Livetti was a friend of hers. The scandal I no longer gave a damn about; nor, I expect, did she. The Law had become far more dangerous than the Press. She had no proof whatever that Livetti
was dead when he appeared in her bathroom window—indeed, no proof that he had ever been there at all.

So I persisted in my denials and was pressed with question after question until I found myself denying what I had already admitted, and Gonzalez’s face became grimmer and grimmer, though
always with a shade of contemptuous pity.

‘Listen,’ he said at last, ‘you are not any sort of agent! You are just a poor devil of a professor in love with Miss Manoli.’

Then with the gesture of an inquisitor handing over a relapsed heretic to the secular arm he permitted his companion to arrest me on a charge of murder.

^*
The body of a young girl had been found a week earlier. I learned the details afterwards when the arrest of her assailant—who, I am glad to say, was not
a Basque—was reported in the local press. Sexual crime of this sort is much rarer than in northern countries.

Olura makes sufficient mention of my arrival in the village to which her movements were confined. As a prison without bars, it was at least picturesque; as a setting for Olura,
it appeared to me inadequate and at first inexplicable.

The mannerisms of my dear ward were pitiably unfamiliar. She ignored her primitive living conditions—though I should not apply that adjective either to the kindness or the culinary skill
of her hosts—and was inclined to spend her time staring out of her bedroom window at a dull waste of sand upon which it was generally raining.

I did not recognise her in the part of poor, little rich girl, nor in her mood of bewildered resignation. Perhaps I had always ascribed to her a self-confidence more aggressive than it really
was. Yet I had long since observed that the true motive of her Prebendary and his friends in persuading her that she had political influence was to obtain the maximum publicity for their
anti-social activities by ensuring that it was always Olura who should appear before the Bench.

Of her social function, so far as it could be disentangled from the political, I have always been secretly proud. Some fellow writing in a gossip column for his bread—a low and abject
condition as John Cleland called it—described her as the uncrowned queen of Africa. If we reduce that statement to something nearer Truth than News, the correct title would be unpaid
tea-provider for African students.

There, however, reacting against exaggeration, I may err by underestimating her value. When some poor devil has spent a humiliating day searching for lodgings in a district where it is extremely
unlikely that he will find any, it is something to be treated like a prince in a Belgravia drawing-room and to meet—an improbable encounter under the palm leaves of his parents’
hut—the Prime Minister of his country.

After listening to Olura’s incoherencies I naturally visualised Dr Ardower as belonging to the academic fringe of her ungroomed and arrogantly emotional Group, but sufficiently in touch
with reality to be after her money. Against this picture, however, was the fact that Leopold Mgwana had obviously liked and trusted him. Mgwana, whom I had several times met—not
unprofitably—at Olura’s house, impressed me as an admirable judge of men, appreciating energy whether in a missionary or one of his own unprincipled and dynamic young
administrators.

I wondered if Ardower himself might not possess these qualities, and with them the morality of an able gangster. That he was Fellow and Tutor of a reputable Oxford College meant nothing. The
virtue which these worthy and doubtless indispensable citizens value most highly is meticulous scholarship. Who has more of it than the planner of an ingenious, successful and bloodless raid upon a
bank?

When I had spent a couple of days assuring Olura that she had little to fear—an occupation which I myself found more pleasant than plausible—I left for Madrid, recommending that
during my short absence she should put down on paper a concise account of what had happened. I obtained little satisfaction from the Ministry of Justice in spite of my influence and my
introductions. I was not surprised, for I did not know myself what or how much to believe. The Minister put off my enquiries by begging me to consider whether I might not be inconveniencing myself
for the sake of a vulgar crime of passion. The only concession I could extract from him was permission to remain with Olura.

On my return to Maya the following narrative awaited me. I saw at once that there was no action I could usefully take—a position which, I have observed, exasperates most of my fellows into
excitable follies. To accept impotence with equanimity one must be confident of the speed and unexpectedness of one’s attack whenever the opposing force is at last free of obfuscation.

Meanwhile I hired a villa for the pair of us—at ridiculous expense since there was none readily available—and rewarded Olura’s kind hosts by eating in their establishment at
least once a day. I noticed that Dr Ardower, whatever his faults, had aroused in my dear goddaughter a latent sensuality—I refer of course only to the pleasures of the table—which had
hitherto been sadly lacking.

For the rest, police surveillance was tactful. I had no more reason to object to it than to the temporary prohibition of all correspondence, for I had already warned my young partners in the
firm that I did not desire for the time being to be bothered either with my own affairs or what they considered to be theirs.

It cannot be as bad as you say. Philip’s story and Leopold’s and mine must all agree. These horrible police who will not let us see each other or write to each
other know that we couldn’t all have invented it. But they will not tell me what either of them said. I do not even know what I am accused of. They never tell me anything outright. They treat
me as if I was something very precious and very guilty.

I can hear you say: my dear Olura, I have not the least interest in your personal affairs, which is what you always say when you really are interested but disapprove. You have the caution of a
wise, old eunuch in a harem. You would have liked to marry me off at nineteen to some grave young man sure to succeed his father as Lord Lieutenant of the County or confine me in an ivory cage on a
fairy-story glass mountain. But you haven’t had so much to throw stones at as you think.

Philip says I am like what he calls the three bloody monkeys. When you meet him … Oh, that
when
! Where shall we be? What will have happened? How old shall we be? … But when you
meet him, you will love his dry voice with the ripple of laughter always underneath it. It’s not true that I don’t hear or see or speak any evil. I feel more than anyone the cowardice
of humanity, which won’t act until somebody is sacrificed to show the way. I wish I had more than money with which to serve my generation.

I think Philip meant that I have stood too apart from life in spite of all I have done. It may be true. I knew what everyone would say when I took that genius, Hilaire Bomumba, to Rome. But I
was right not to care. Let them say! I am to be judged by what I am seen to give. Why must they all assume that I give my body too?

It is not as if I had been without normal desires, but when one hears one’s friends continually talking about the unimportance of the sexual act, is it surprising that one believes them?
And if the act is so unimportant, why allow it to complicate one’s life and work? They can’t have it both ways.

I have a feeling that this will not seem to your old-fashioned morality as crazy as it did to Philip. I tried to explain it to him, but he would not let me talk. He said that it was a crime
against nature, and I could taste the salt of his tears. I suppose, traditionally, they ought to have been mine.

But I am always and only in love with
him
. He loves both me and something else that I represent for him. The beauty and fecundity of the earth. The tragedy and ecstasy of being alive.
I, too, know that our love extends in space, but I want only to feel it, not to exclaim poetry about it.

I have to tell you about my emotional life, though I know that isn’t what you want me to write. Where was Olura on the night of July 22nd isn’t so important a question as why was she
and what was she thinking, because those may explain things that we do not even know need explaining. The old me and the new me matter. The first was in the sort of muddle which only a psychiatrist
could have straightened out. The second is very humble and very unhappy, but she doesn’t want to be changed at all.

If this holiday had not started as it did, I could have resisted Philip’s attraction. I might have denied it, or never realised it at all. It was a mixture of fascination and repulsion
anyway. I do not think it would have been difficult to emphasise for myself his self-indulgence and conceit.

Philip, darling, that is what I am calling your vitality and your blessed self-confidence! How cruel that it is not to you I am writing in front of our window, instead of trying to explain why
it is our window!