The Last King of Scotland (1998) (22 page)

Then we realized. “So there never was a needle?” I said, when my colleague explained.

“Of course there wasn’t – Scotland 1, North Korea nil.” Paterson shouted this down the ward, making the auxiliaries look up in surprise.

He held her hand. “You just wanted some attention from your nasty old dad, didn’t you, sweetie?”

I felt uncomfortable about him saying this. What if she reported it back to Amin? She started to sob once we’d rumbled her, and didn’t stop until we put her in the ambulance to take her back to school.

I spent the next few days fretting about what Amin’s reaction to it all might be. One morning, a week later, the call came, as I think both Paterson and I knew it would.

“You go,” said Paterson. “I’ll be bound to say the wrong thing.”

I walked down the ward to take it. Wherever there was a window, the sun was sending sharp-edged, mote-filled beams of light into the dark spaces under the beds. I felt odd as I walked straight through them, as if I were a hurdler ignoring his fences. I picked up the phone.

“Hello, hello, it is Doctor Idi Amin here,” said the disembodied voice. “I am very pleased with my fellow doctors at Mulago. I would like you and Doctor Paterson to join me here at Cape Town for lunch tomorrow. One o’clock sharp.”

The line went dead before I had the chance to reply.

Everyone knew about ‘Cape Town’. It was the name given to a new residence directly on the lakeshore that Amin had just acquired – bringing the total to four in Kampala-Entebbe alone:

State House, Prince Charles Drive, Nakasero Lodge, and now Cape Town. There was an island nearby which he used for bombing displays. The target was supposed to represent the South African city (thus the name) at the moment of its capitulation to the liberating forces of African nationalism, in the guise of Amin’s bombers.

“I saw them do it once,” Paterson said on the way. “They always miss. Look, I know what this’U be like. He’ll try to get us to do down the English because we’re both Scots. He did it at the Uganda Caledonian Society dinner last year. That chap from the Embassy, Weir, he was there, gladhanding Amin to everyone. Very strange. Anyway, it’s important to get Amin on to something non-controversial.”

“Like what?” I said, as the emerald expanse of Lake Victoria swept by on our right-hand side.

“Seat-belts is a good one,” he said, “the importance of seat-belts on Africa’s roads.”

So that was how Paterson and I came to be discussing car safety policy with Idi Amin one afternoon, in the garden at Cape Town. It was hot and still, with only the smell of the blossom from the bushes and trees stirring the air around us, as we sat beside a wrought-iron table laden with a large jug of iced tea and a plate of cucumber sandwiches. As the other two talked – Paterson explaining the needle episode, Amin the concerned, if occasionally guffawing father – I looked about.

It was an impressive place; at least, it made an impression, with its pink-flowered oleanders and creamy, sickly scented frangipa-nis, its shaved lawns where peacocks flashed their spotted trains and white-coated servants hovered. The house was only single-storey, but expansive in the Moorish style, with serial white arches and terracotta tiles. I spotted the amazed face of a child up at one of the windows, looking out at us. One of his, I supposed, though I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.

I also caught glimpses of three young women in diaphanous gowns, strolling airily down the many paths that weaved through the shrubbery. I didn’t know who they were. Amin himself was wearing white trousers and a jade-coloured shirt which, hanging over his belly like a tent, suited exactly the green seraglio he had created for himself there at Cape Town. Well, in fact he had appropriated the place from an expatriate businessman. I wondered idly who had lived here originally, before all this lakeshore area had been developed for villas…

A peacock howled – a horrible noise – and then Amin’s booming voice brought me sharply round. He was now fulfilling Pater-son’s predictions to a tee.

“You see, it is very true. Scotland and Uganda, we have both suffered hundreds of years of English imperialism. That is why I am going to extend the Economic War to British interests in Uganda. What do you think?”

Paterson stuck to his plan. “Your Excellency, as a doctor I’d like to talk to you about motor accidents in Uganda. You could save many lives.”

At that point, Amin put down the half-eaten cucumber sandwich he had in his hand, and drew himself up for the full public address. It was a mode with which I was becoming familiar.

“There will be no accidents in the new Uganda. It has all been planned before. In the new stage of the Economic War, as I dreamed it from the beginning, BAT, Brooke Bond, Securicor, British Metal Corporation and the Chillington Tool Company will all become the property of the Uganda Government. Every one hundred years God appoints one person to be very powerful in the world to follow what the Prophet directed. When I dream, these things are put into practice. I am determined to wage the Economic War to ultimate victory. Before, Ugandan companies were controlled by imperialists. Africa has tremendous natural resources which could be harnessed for the benefit of the people of Africa, making it a modern and industrialized continent. African countries must co-operate to achieve their common objectives.”

He took a deep breath and smiled at us. “You see, we must provide African solutions to African problems. Africa has its own laws.”

“But Mr President,” urged Paterson, “the most important law you can pass will be to make seat-belts compulsory in Uganda. You will save many lives that way.”

A furrow went across Amin’s brow. “Why do you keep on seat-belts? Every time I am meeting you, Doctor Paterson, you are talking about seat-belts. There are more pressing problems for Uganda than seat-belts.”

He got up from the table, knocking it with his knees as he stood up, so that the iced tea shuddered in our glasses. “Now you must go. You have made me angry with this talk of seat-belts.”

He turned on his heel, for all the world like the sergeant-major he really was, stomped through his stolen paradise and climbed some steps. He gave us a scornful look from his vantage-point, and then went through one of the white arches along the side of the house.

“Maybe,” said Paterson, on the way back, “seat-belts wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

Getting up the next morning, I heard Alec Douglas-Home on the World Service, condemning Amin’s proposed nationalizations as ‘outrageous by any standard’. I retied my dressing-gown – it had fallen open, and I always feel exposed when that happens, even when there is no one else in the house – and poured boiling water over the coffee I was making. The grounds expanded, fattening in the wet sac of the filter. I watched as the water subsided, leaving a crumbling brown crater. Breathing in the vapours, I suddenly realized that my bare feet were cold on the kitchen floor: the sun was already out but the wood had retained the night’s coolness. I had no slippers in Africa, only a pair of hand-made leather sandals I’d bought in Mbarara and seldom wore. Now Sara, she had worn them once, when she stayed with me. A feeling of sadness came over me as I tipped in the milk. I stared down at the swirling cup. She hadn’t written. She hadn’t called.

S
omeone else did, though. One day the following week, Stone summoned me to a meeting at the British Embassy. He wouldn’t say what it was about over the phone. I wondered whether they knew about my invitation to Marina. What did it matter, anyway? As I drove down Parliament Avenue, I remembered that I hadn’t yet told her that Paterson couldn’t make the weekend she’d specified.

Stone opened the door. He was wearing brown slacks and brown shoes, which merged into one another uncomfortably at the ankle, and a dark blue blazer. “Nicholas, we’re very glad to see you. Now, you know Major Weir, and our Ambassador, Robert Perkins.”

“Yes,” I said, looking at them in turn as I walked into the centre of the room, with Stone behind me. I’d forgotten how fat Perkins was, noticing as I greeted him how uncomfortably his suit jacket sat upon him, and how thick the lenses of his spectacles were.

Weir, his turkey neck flapping over the olive-green collar of his army uniform, was standing in a corner, next to the intersection of two windows. He was smoking a cigarette, cupping a cut-glass ashtray in his hand. He put it down and came over to shake my hand, gripping it harder than was necessary – and then returned to his station. Behind him, the windows were curtained with white cotton, receding on a brass bar into the corner. Light came in dimly through the fabric, turning his smoke into mysterious ribbons of gun-metal blue.

“Right,” Stone said, going over to close the heavy teak door. It clicked shut with an expensive, slightly sinister sound.

I looked around as he walked back over. A small Union Jack was hanging from a pole. Next to it, on a little table, stood a lamp with a pink shade and also a small photograph of Amin shaking hands with the Queen.

“Please, sit down,” Perkins said, taking a seat himself on the other side of the table.

I did so, and then looked at Amin in the photograph in front of me, his face as full of joy as I had ever seen it. His expression, as he looked at the Queen, was not unlike that of a child gazing into the eyes of its mother.

“It’s him we’d like to talk to you about,” Stone said, following my eyes.

“Oh,” I said, my mind racing to comprehend it all as Stone sat down next to Perkins. Weir remained standing behind them.

There was a tense pause. Weir’s smoke made me think of djinn, genies from the bottle. Or something more Scottish, but equally exotic. Pale Kenneth, maybe, the soothsayer they called the Brahan Seer.

“The thing is,” Perkins began, “the President has got out of hand.”

Weir caught my eye. I noticed that he had a large number of tiny scars about his doleful mouth and chin, and, remembering what Stone had told me, wondered whether they were from when he had been shot down.

“We’re looking to you to help us on this one,” said Stone. “You’ll remember I asked you keep an eye on things for us in Mbarara.”

In fact, I’d almost forgotten about our conversation that first time in Kampala, so much had happened since.

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t do anything,” I said. “But I couldn’t really see what help I could be. I’m just a doctor.”

Perkins and Stone exchanged glances.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter now,” said the latter. “But there is something where your particular skills might be the right ingredient.”

Stone’s custard-coloured hair had got longer since I’d last seen him, falling over his ears at the side and making him look slightly girlish. He was still balding on top, though, and retained that shininess of forehead. I’d thought it was sweat last time, but it was obviously just the way he was.

“We need your help, Doctor Garrigan,” he murmured.

Perkins nodded his agreement so forcefully that the plump flesh on his face trembled. I thought about the swimming pool. His wife’s sideways-falling cup of joy.

“The point is,” Stone continued, “the killing has got to stop. You’ve seen the trucks, same as all of us.”

And I had – I’d seen the canvas-covered lorries heading off into the bush, three or four soldiers sitting in the back, and the half-glimpsed, white-eyed faces of the prisoners in the darkness behind. All the expats had seen them, I believe, and up till now we’d swept it under the carpet, carried on as normal, refusing to speculate on things we thought beyond our ken. To be honest, it was the only way to live. You had to cultivate a certain detachment – and now they appeared to want me to break that.

Stone was waiting for a response. I didn’t know what to say, what they expected me to say.

“You see,” said Perkins, finally, leaning back in his chair, “with the arrival of those Asians in London, I’m getting a lot of pressure. Top-level pressure.”

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and, removing his glasses, blew his nose.

“What has this got to do with me?” I asked firmly, once Perkins had stopped trumpeting.

“Well,” said Stone, “you are in, you find yourself in, a very sensitive position. A position, I may say, we were partly instrumental in achieving for you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, surprised.

“We’d been pushing your appointment with Amin and Wasswa for a few months now. And when the accident happened with the cow, it was, well, it was fortunate.”

“In one way…” Perkins said, cryptically.

I looked above him at the white curtains, and then at Weir, and suddenly realized that the latter hadn’t said anything during the whole encounter. His grey eyes stared back at me intensely, as if right through me.

Stone pushed the hair back from his buttery forehead. “I’ll come to the point. We’d like you to…treat him in a more forthright way.”

I was shocked by the implications of what he had said. I lifted my gaze over their heads and stared at the brass bar above the window. And then at the flag.

Perkins said, “He’s going to nationalize British firms and tea-estates here, as you’ve probably heard. We were hoping you might be able to reason with him.”

“And if not that,” added Stone, “give him something that will
make
him reasonable. Calm him down. That he has to take every day.”

Weir was frowning at me, I noticed, as if I had done something wrong. I felt like a pupil standing before a headmaster. Mr Laid-law, the one at Fossiemuir. He used to hit us on the palm of the hand with a heavy wooden ruler. I remembered the red stripe it left, like a piece of bacon across my palm.

“I’m not sure I can do that,” I said, shaking my head. “Well, I suppose I could…but it’s not exactly correct practice, is it?” I was momentarily flattered that they thought me capable of such intrigue.

“Practice isn’t the point,” Stone said, tapping his finger on the desk. “Your job as a doctor is to return him to normality.”

“What,” I said, coming to my senses, “do you mean by that? What does that mean here?”

As the smoke trickled down over his cravat of flesh, Weir smiled at me, his eyes glittering with some inner amusement.