The Book of the Heathen (23 page)

‘Work with the Belgians, perhaps,' I said. ‘They've closed their fist on everything else.'

‘Perhaps. Can we return to Frere? It is my intention to speak to all the Company officers before I interview the man himself. He may have said something to one or other of you that is of some significance in the case.'

Something he may not now repeat to you, you mean, I thought.

‘He holds himself wholly responsible for whatever happened,' I said, raising my voice.

‘Please. There is no doubt as to the guilt he pleads. I was talking to Abbot, who—'

‘Who presumably told you to visit me.'

‘I would have come anyway. But, yes, he did tell me you and Frere were close, and that there were other, shall we say, family attachments to be considered.'

‘He had no—'

‘I visited your quarry yesterday. What a great pity. The place should have ceased operating months ago, years perhaps. I told Abbot as much. It is a waste of his talents, a complete waste.'

‘Talents?'

‘Abbot is a highly regarded employee. Surely you understand that?'

‘He tells us often enough. Or highly regarded because he sends secret reports on everything and everyone here?'

‘Secret? They are merely confidential reports. And they are a part of his contractual obligations to us, to the Company. Why do you insist on seeing intrigue and subterfuge where none exists, Mr Frasier?' My title was clearly marked on the Company file he had no doubt already committed to memory.

‘And so
will
the quarry finally close?' I asked him.

‘Oh, undoubtedly. In fact, I imagine there will be a great many changes in the coming months.'

‘And Abbot?'

‘Mr Abbot might better serve us were his talents to be deployed elsewhere. Even you must realize that this whole enterprise is not what it once was.' He paused. ‘Or even what the Company expected it might become as a concessionary concern.' He spoke as though these disappointments were his own.

‘And the rest of us?'

‘Why do you ask? You presumably read your contract before you signed it. You seem concerned. Please, there is no need. You are just as valued as Mr Abbot. I promise you, your capabilities and loyalty – ' he glanced again at the map ‘ – will not be wasted. Perhaps a job on the coast might better suit your own capabilities.'

I understood only too clearly what I was being told, why Frere's name had been mentioned once and never since.

‘Is the Company withdrawing completely, has the concession finally been lost?'

‘You surely cannot expect me to speculate on matters of such commercial sensitivity, Mr Frasier.' His gaze remained on the map as he spoke, and he smiled broadly before turning back to me.

‘And Cornelius and Fletcher?' I said.

‘Mr Fletcher has always been something of a renegade. He would be the first to admit it. His contract expires in seven months. Did you know that?'

I shook my head.

‘Then rest assured, he surely did.'

‘And Cornelius?'

‘Another loyal and long-serving servant. Perhaps he has had enough of this place. Perhaps he would not wish to stay were his present circumstances to change. He is a man somewhat set in his ways.'

‘And the best quartermaster the Station has ever known.'

‘Perhaps, perhaps not, but is he a man prepared to move with the times? This is the modern age, Mr Frasier; can you honestly say that he lives within it? I imagine he is owed a not inconsiderable pension.'

There was nothing I could say. Everything I had hoped not to be told, I had been told in the space of a few minutes and at my own insistence. He had come to talk about Frere, perhaps to ingratiate himself with me, and instead he had shone that blinding light into the future and showed me everything that lived and did not live there.

I finished dressing.

‘Have you seen Nicholas Frere since my arrival?' he said. He had told us on the day of his arrival that we were not to visit the prisoner until he himself had been to see him.

‘No, of course not,' I said. It was a half-lie. Following my approach to the garrison four days previously, I had returned to see Frere and to forewarn him of the man he was about to encounter. But upon asking Bone to let me into Frere's cell, Frere called out for me to leave and for Bone to keep the door locked. There was nothing I could call in to him in the presence of Bone, who made a point of standing close to me, better there to savour my discomfort at being treated like this by Frere. I insisted to Frere that I needed to talk to him, but he refused even to answer me.

‘Nash told me not to let any of you get even this close,' Bone said. ‘None of you.' I knew then – this was his purpose in telling me – that I would have to pay him not to report my visit to Nash.

I looked at Nash now as he considered my answer and wondered if I had given Bone enough.

He said, ‘Your sergeant…' But speculatively, and left me uncertain of what Bone had or hadn't said, what new pattern all these more recent allegiances were forming.

‘Proud and noble warrior,' I said.

‘Doubtless employed at a time when these things did not matter. Is he to be trusted?'

‘No, but he can be bribed.'

He looked up at the remark. ‘I sincerely hope not.'

‘It's what you've already heard from Abbot,' I said.

He lowered his head.

‘But he will guard Frere well for you,' I said. ‘And that's all that matters.'

‘I sense some antagonism between the two men.'

‘Enough for Bone to take some pride in his role as gaoler.'

‘I see. Then perhaps even there I might insist upon some changes.'

I was growing tired of being used as his sounding-board.

‘When will you start questioning Frere?' I said.

‘As opposed to questioning you, you mean? I intend visiting him later today.'

‘Am I permitted to accompany you?'

‘Certainly not. My investigation is above all else a confidential one.'

‘Then will I be permitted to visit him at other times?'

‘I daresay there is little I can do to stop you if your Sergeant Bone is all you say he is.' He paused and smiled. ‘And if it will save you money, then, yes, you have my permission to visit the prisoner at times other than when he and I are together.'

I saw, too, how this might later serve his own purpose, but I was powerless to suggest it to him. If a trap had been set for me, then I had helped him to place it, and once in it I could not be seen to struggle to release myself.

‘That boy,' he said.

‘Boy?'

‘The humpback I encountered at your door.'

‘He brought my water.'

‘He slept there all night. I have encountered him before. Downriver. He was in a boat with an old man. He warned my porters away from the path they were intent on following. Said there had been some fighting and that an ambush might be laid for us. I suspected him of setting one of his own, wretched creature that he is. I made them quiz him on the path he intended us to follow.'

‘And did you follow it?'

‘I had already decided on it before he appeared. I thought at first, seeing him come towards us, that he was an ape.' He laughed. ‘I was within a minute of shooting him, I swear I—'

‘But he gave you good advice, it seems.'

‘I do not need advice from the likes of him.' He was aware by then, in this further clumsy attempt to ingratiate himself, of having stepped over the divide between us.

‘No, of course not.'

He rose at this and carefully set down his cup and saucer. ‘There is nothing you cannot ask me,' he said. ‘You, any of you. Anything you wish to know. It is as much a part of my duty here to appraise you of the wider circumstances within which we all find ourselves as it is to determine the facts of the matter relating to Frere.'

I went to the door with him and saw him out, trying to understand what he had hoped to achieve by this encounter, whether the balance of understanding and revelation had swung in his favour or our own.

I watched him as he walked away from me, as though even by this something might be revealed to me. He was a fastidious and a conscientious man; this much had become clear to us. But his methods and intentions were not yet fully revealed, and nor did we fully understand our own lesser roles in the drama he was there to conduct.

He paused at a kuka tree and snapped off several of its lilies, arranging them in his hand as he continued walking.

The boy sat at the centre of the compound, leaning back on his hands so that he might lift his head high enough on his curved spine to look directly at us.

Nash walked to within a few feet of him, looked down at him and then altered his course away from him. The boy watched him go, after which he rose awkwardly from where he sat and half-walked, half-ran towards the river. To me, too, he looked like an ape, running in fright, clumsy and vulnerable, out of the safety of the trees.

*   *   *

The onset of the rain brought everyone inside. I was standing with Cornelius and Abbot in one of our empty warehouses. The last ball of a consignment of old and degraded rubber had just been removed from the building, and the rain doused the fire upon which the rest of the stock had already been burned. The market was over-supplied, and only rubber of the highest quality now fetched a worthwhile price.

Most men ran in the direction of the garrison or compound. There was nothing in the warehouse to keep them busy or entertained until the rain stopped. Others ran beyond the open space into the huts and sheds beyond, where their women waited and where drink was sold. Those working on the boats when the rain came crowded beneath their awnings and looked out at us.

The rain was early. It had been Cornelius's hope to finish burning the rubber before it came, and before Nash arrived to enquire what was happening. The man had so far spent the day with Frere, his second visit.

We were discussing this, and Abbot's fears over the closure of the quarry, when we were joined by Klein, running in from the rain with his jacket over his head, followed a moment later by Perpetua and Felicity. The women walked rather than ran and kept their hands clasped together at their waists, the flame of their conviction protected from the downpour at all costs.

Only then, watching the women, did it occur to me that they had been christened by Klein after the two saints mauled to death by wild beasts. I could only guess at the priest's sour purpose in doing this.

Klein stood in the doorway and cursed. A puddle quickly formed at his feet. It was clear by his unguarded language that he was unaware of our presence in the gloom of the building.

Cornelius had gone to the warehouse to supervise the removal of the rubber, Abbot to estimate the loss to us.

Perpetua and Felicity were the first to see us. Neither woman spoke or otherwise acknowledged us in the presence of Klein, but both stood facing us until he eventually noticed this and he too turned.

There was no avoiding the man in the Station. The crowds of worshippers at his sermons grew ever larger. He taunted and threatened them with notions beyond their understanding, and most evenings were now filled with his execrable hymns, the words of which were surely sung with little understanding of what they meant.

It was common knowledge that Nash had already attended several of these services, and that he and Klein had been seen talking in the brightly lit doorway of the tin chapel.

Klein spent a great deal of time across the river. He was negotiating with the Belgians to build a permanent mission to replace the one he had abandoned at Kirasi. It alarmed Cornelius to hear that this was now in prospect, and he had talked to me of the impossibility of locating and exhuming his daughter's body and reburying it somewhere closer. It was beyond me to ask him what he had done so far other than make his infrequent visits to the place.

Whenever possible, he still avoided Klein, and on the few occasions he had encountered Perpetua and Felicity without the priest, he had not spoken to them about the man. They knew little of what was happening across the river. Klein told them nothing. They too were distressed by the possibility that Kirasi might now be abandoned, but neither had taken their worries to Klein for fear of being punished by him for interfering in his work.

‘Ah, gentlemen,' Klein said, coming towards us. He squeezed the water from his sleeves. Piles of rotted rubber lay strewn across the warehouse floor, and he considered these as he came, careful not to touch any of them, as though they were dung and he was crossing a meadow.

‘Cornelius, Mr van Klees,' he said. ‘Such a waste.'

‘The Company will survive,' Cornelius said.

‘I daresay. But all these small losses must surely add up, and someone, no doubt, will be held accountable for them.'

‘We are all accountable, Klein.'

‘You'll get no argument from me on that score, my friend.'

I saw Cornelius flinch at the word.

Then Klein turned and called for the two women to join him.

They came to us, their faces slick with water. Klein motioned to them and they unclasped their hands and held them out. Rain dripped from each of their splayed fingers.

‘I swear they would not have the sense to run inside and protect themselves were I not to instruct them,' Klein said.

The two women stood close to each other, and it was again clear to us that they would not address us directly, that they would not even speak to each other, unless instructed by Klein.

‘I'm surprised you're still with us,' Abbot said to Klein. He objected to the supplies we were obliged to give the man under the terms of his lease on the chapel.

‘Oh, the Lord's word is wherever I choose to find it, Mr Abbot. Just as yours is. Seek and ye shall find.' He laughed at the remark. He had gained weight during his time at the Station. Word among his congregation was that he was being wined and dined by our competitors so that he might erect his new mission on their side of the river and thereby make it a more attractive place of employment for their own, ever-growing, God-fearing workforce. It was doubtless a tale started by Klein himself, who seemed no closer to securing permission or funding for the place no matter how many times he visited.