Tefuga (20 page)

Mr de Lancey walked to the edge of one of the black circles and poked the ashes with his toe. He found a stick and poked around. Just ashes. No pots, no ornaments, nothing. The Kitawa don't have much, but the spearmen must have taken everything. In a few months, after the rains, you wouldn't be able to tell anyone had ever lived here. They'd even taken the mats from round the gardens and thrown them onto the bonfire. They didn't want to leave any trace.

I started to feel awful again—the shock, and the medicine wearing off. Then I had one of those terrible warning spasms and had to rush off behind some trees and cope with things. Too beastly. I really felt I couldn't face any more. I longed to get hold of Tan-Tan and slip on his back and sneak off home, only I knew I wouldn't be able to ride him now. I was so weak. And sore—not just the sickness, it was the ride out. I must have had to fight him much more than I'd realized. All the time I felt I was just floating, my poor silly body had been wrestling away!

Anyway, after a bit I managed to drag myself back to the burnt huts. Mr de Lancey had gone off to look at the nearest garden. You could see where the lads had been working at the poor, thin soil, getting rid of a frightful crop of weeds. After a bit he came back and stared at Elongo.

“Come here you,” he said in Hausa. “Get down.”

Elongo knelt and grovelled, the way natives are supposed to in front of chiefs. Ted says it's just the custom, no different from me curtseying if I met the King, but I think it's disgusting. Mr de Lancey kept him grovelling there while he barked at him in Hausa. Who had lived here? What were their names? Who had burnt the huts? Why? Were there other villages like this? Did they pay taxes to the Hausa? And so on.

Actually Elongo didn't tell him anything. He just kept mumbling that he didn't know. I knew it wasn't true for some of the questions, but I was so much on his side I didn't care. Then Mr de Lancey started real bullying, calling him a thief and a liar and saying he was going to prison for twenty years and suddenly I couldn't stand it any longer. Tho' I was feeling awful inside and scared out of my wits at what had happened, something snapped. I saw Mr de Lancey swing round and stare before I realized I'd been yelling at him to stop. I burst out before he could say anything.

“You're doing this all wrong,” I said. “All quite wrong. You won't get anywhere with the Kitawa by shouting and bullying. They won't tell you anything. It's useless. They've kept quiet for years and years because they're afraid, so it's no good trying to make them more afraid than ever. It's not just that they think Kama Boi's going to send his spearmen to burn their villages—it's much more than that. They're afraid because they think he's a kind of god. They really believe that. When I told Atafa Guni we weren't going to kill him at once, she suddenly stopped trusting me any longer. She was terrified. Absolutely terrified. Of him. Much worse than anything you can ever do.”

“What course of action would you propose, Mrs Jackland?”

He said it in his usual sneery way but I hardly noticed. I was so dizzy I almost fell over. Elongo was muttering with his face in the dust, Kiti, something about Kama Boi. He was terrified too. All of a sudden, for a moment, I understood what it's like to be a Bakiti. Here we were in this utterly lonely place, miles from anywhere, but we weren't hidden. If Kama Boi looked this way he would see us, he would smell us, he would send his spearmen, we would never escape. He was here too, all round us, above us. You couldn't see him, you could feel him tho', everywhere, like the dull weighing-down heat of the sun, pressing everything into the dust. You carried him on your shoulders wherever you went. He was your never-ending sickness, fever, buzzing, aches, a huge pressure on you making you feeble and helpless.

I waved my arm at the jigging black circles.

“Isn't this enough?” I said. “Isn't this evidence?”

“Mrs Jackland, this is not the work of Kama Boi. This village is a fraud, and the people you saw here left it as soon as you were out of sight, taking their possessions and setting fire to the huts. I have not the papers with me, of course, but I seem to remember earlier censuses reported a village in roughly this area, which was abandoned because of the failure of its water-hole. You can see for yourself. No crops have been grown in that garden for at least three rains. Where are the food husks and the animal bones? Where is the excrement?”

I didn't understand. I still don't, properly.

“There weren't any flies,” I said.

That's the last thing I remember.

Now I'm lying in bed, feeling weak and stupid. I
think
everything's going to be all right, when it could have been dreadful. Yesterday
was
dreadful, lying here, feeling ghastly, worrying about what Ted would say and do, not knowing what Mr de Lancey had told him, not daring to ask. In fact I just pretended to be worse than I was so's not to have to answer questions, only I didn't want to get him so worried he'd send for the doctor, so this morning I thought I'd better perk up a bit, only be drowsy—I
was
feeling better inside, too—and when Ted came to see me he was very loving and gentle and not even hurt or angry, and he said Elongo had done very well and I must say thank you when I saw him. So it does look as tho' Ted doesn't know yet what really happened, and that means Mr de Lancey is going to do his best for me.

Now I'm tired after writing all that. It was terribly strange. I've never felt so odd. I think there must have been something in the medicine, 'cos when I asked if Mr de Lancey had left some for me (he's gone now) Ted just laughed and said “You're not having any more of that!”

Thurs May 1

It is all right! So extraordinary. Ted's been in and made everything easy by calling me a silly girl and asking how much I remembered and all I had to say was I didn't remember anything and he just told me. Mr de Lancey came up the river 'cos he wasn't far and he wanted to talk to me about the picture I'd asked him about and he found me with my gippy turn gave me some of his special medicine and then went off to fish till Ted came back 'cos there were things he wanted to talk to him about. But he'd left the bottle behind, and I must have had another swig at it when you're only supposed to take it in tea-spoons, four hours apart. The point is it's full of opium! (That does rather explain things!) So I'd got up and gone and found Mafote and told him to saddle Tan-Tan and just ridden off, but Elongo had seen me going and so he'd run and fetched Mr de Lancey and they'd tracked me right out into the bush and found me wandering about, drugged silly, looking for Ted. Tan-Tan had got his reins tangled into a tree so they caught him and strapped me into the saddle and led me home.

So that's three of us lying like troopers! Elongo's only a native, and you expect them to lie, and what I say to my husband's my look-out, but de L.! Mind you, I don't suppose he told Ted all that, straight out—he'd just have said enough to let Ted work it out. And I bet he'll say, if it ever comes out what really happened, he had to tell Ted something different in order to protect me! (As if he gave a hoot!)

Ted called Mr de Lancey all sorts of names for leaving such dangerous medicine where I could get it but secretly he's rather pleased 'cos de Lancey was very apologetic and anxious, when normally, Ted says, he's not famous for his civility to anyone below the rank of Lieutenant Governor. He left me a note.

Dear Mrs Jackland,

I must apologize profusely for not having realized that you were in no state to understand my instructions about my “brew”. I do hope that you now make a speedy recovery.

I believe I can discover the painter of the Deposition about which you wrote to me, but shall have to do further research. If I were you I should not trouble my mind with this particular problem for the moment. You will only confuse the design of the picture. Leave it in my hands, and I will do my best.

Yours very sincerely, B.V.X. de Lancey

Isn't he sly? I showed Ted the letter. He didn't spot a thing. Then, very shy, as tho' he was ashamed about it, he pulled another scrap of paper out of his pocket. It was the note I'd left for him before I rode off. I thought I'd just been telling him I was all right and I'd be coming back, or something, but all it said was “I love you. I love you. I love you.” We had a laugh at me being so silly with the opium, and then a bit of a snuggle, but actually it did make me feel rather dreadful.

Eleven

“W
ould you prefer me to move out?” said Jackland.

Miss Tressider was lying on the bed in black Bermuda shorts and a white, wide-collared blouse. On the side of her calf, where the tick had sucked, was a white circular patch with a dark spot at the centre. Jackland had just straightened from examining this. He had his reading spectacles on and a small square book in his hand. Miss Tressider did not remove her stare from the ceiling of the cabin.

“Not specially,” she said. “Your not being here won't stop me from feeling perfectly ghastly. Being an actor I feel the need of an audience to be ghastly at. Do you want to go?”

“It isn't …”

“You give that impression.”

“I don't want to leave you. I want to go and ring Ilorin and make arrangements for you to go into hospital for treatment. I also want to get Sally to set up an immediate flight home, with medical attendance.”

“No.”

“My darling, I'm ninety per cent certain you have tick-fever.”

“It can wait another day.”

Jackland consulted the book in his hand.

“No longer a serious matter,” he read, “provided modem antibiotic treatment is supplied without delay.”

“One more day.”

“One more day and it'll be Sunday. New Year's Day. Monday's a holiday too, like as not. I know the W.H.O. project has closed down already. I tried them.”

“So'll your hospital be, too.”

“They'll have emergency staff. If I ring them now, tell them who it is …”

“I am going to finish the film.”

“You have, darling. All that matters. We can do the landing-stage close-ups in the studio, and Janine can stand in …”

“It is going to be me in every fucking frame. Me. That's final.”

“I wish I could say I found your courage …”

“For god's sake, Nigel! I don't even know if I'm ill. I'm so shit-scared I can't tell. I knew something like this was going to hit me one day. I've spent the last ten years conning my body into reactions it had no reason to produce—weeping, feeling randy about men who were complete turn-offs, hysterics, breakdowns—how'm I to tell if it's not doing that to me now? It knows I'm shit-scared, so it does the trick I've trained it to and gives me something to be scared of.”

“You have the classic symptoms of tick-fever.”

“It could run those at the drop of a hat.”

“You might at least …”

“I am going to do the departure scene, Nigel.”

“Let me advance another argument. It is a condition of your insurance that we take all reasonable care of your well-being. Not getting you immediately to a modem hospital …”

“I'll sign something.”

“I don't know that that would be adequate. You are not, so to speak, entirely your own property.”

“I am. I am. I am.”

“You are under contracts …”

“I refuse to talk about it any more. Anyway, you can't do anything tonight. They're still working on the trucks, aren't they? And the ferry won't be running.”

“Annie's car is parked on the bridge. I thought I'd borrow that.”

Miss Tressider sighed, shivered, flicked a blanket over herself. She seemed to reduce her physical volume as the fever-chill took her. Jackland straightened the blanket and spread another over her but she didn't thank him. He stood looking down, presumably choosing words for a fresh appeal. She spoke before he did.

“Did you screw her while you were in the harem?”

“No. Too hot, for one thing.”

“Not even tempted?”

“She was moderately attentive.”

“I could see that. A fresh experience missed, Nigel.”

“More in the savour than the act, probably. At my age …”

“You're not going to get many more chances like that.”

“You'd have advised me to take it?”

“It would have given me an excuse to be bloody to you, which is what I feel like.”

“I want to take you to Ilorin. Tonight.”

“There won't be anyone there.”

“Leave around four and we'll be there by eight a.m. But if we wait till after the shooting we won't be there till six in the evening. Sunday and Monday, both holidays, to come. Same applies about getting to London, only more so. Leave now, or as soon as we've got some flights booked, and you'll be there Sunday. Leave tomorrow afternoon and it'll be Tuesday, if not Wednesday.”

“Betty would have stuck it out.”

“You're not her.”

“Yes I am.”

“Balls. It's over, darling. It's in the can, bar one last sequence we can do in the studio and with a stand-in. You've given absolutely everything possible, and much more than anyone else conceivably could have given. I thought I was an unimpressionable old sod, but watching you playing my mother I've been deeply moved. I feel extraordinarily lucky that you should have taken it on.”

“It happens. I get offered juicy parts with stupid great wads of money attached and I do them if I'm interested, and usually I get as much as I give, and that's worth it. Then, suddenly—I don't suppose it's happened more than four or five times so far—I find myself playing someone who really matters. You can never give as much as you get. All you can give is all you've got. Betty. I owe it to her. No one knows about her, or if they did they've forgotten. I didn't know it was going to be like this when I took her on. Alphonse was becoming a bore and I was mildly interested in you and there was a gap in my schedule, so I thought why not. Then you gave me the diary to read … There's a ghost to be laid, Nigel. No one else can do it.”

“Unfortunately that is an argument I am not intellectually equipped to grasp, let alone to rebut.”

“Thank God for small mercies.”

The effort of her previous speech, though it was only a slurred mutter, seemed to have heated her up again. She twitched the blankets aside, drew a sighing yawn, reached for the diary, put on her spectacles and, opening as usual at random, started to read. The air conditioner chewed at its indraught. Insects blipped against the skin of the cabin, enhancing its sense of being a sealed environment, a space capsule protecting its occupants from the void outside but continually bombarded by flecks of star-stuff. The impression was wrong. Just as the moths and beetles were not batting into the cabin by chance but had chosen their path towards some chink of light, so outside lay not emptiness but the excess of Africa.

Jackland, naturally, was fidgety. It was clear that Miss Tressider did not want to talk, but it was impossible for him to settle to work of his own. He spent a few minutes organizing his bed on the floor—years of experience ensured that he would sleep tolerably well under such conditions—then sat down with an air-line timetable (also a sign of those years) and began to make a list of flight-connections. There was evidently some gap in the chain. He leafed to and fro, looking for alternatives.

Suddenly he took off his spectacles, thought a few moments, and rose.

“Where are you going?” said Miss Tressider.

“Had an idea. I want to see if we can't get you to London by mid-day Sunday, leaving here after the shooting. The flights don't fit. I'm going to see if I can lay on a helicopter.”

“No.”

“Be sensible.”

“You're going to drive me to Ilorin, Nigel.”

“All right. I am prepared to regard that as a probable course of action. I am not prepared to have other courses of action closed to you. Then Sally can get on with booking the seats. You don't have to use them.”

“But you're going to drive me to Ilorin. You and no one else.”

“I will also arrange either to borrow Annie's car or to have a hired one waiting and ready.”

“A hired one means a driver. I just want you.”

“I will ring Annie at the palace.”

“Promise.”

“A conditional promise.”

“Don't be long, Nigel. I'm frightened.”

She looked at him over the top of the diary, brilliant-eyed, flushed. Her obsession with his driving her to Ilorin might well be the beginnings of delirium. As he opened and closed the door the torrid, odour-thick air seemed to jostle in the slot of dark like an invisible crowd. Miss Tressider continued to make a pretence of reading the diary, flipping to and fro, reading little more than a line at a time, as if searching for the one talismanic sentence that would relieve her fever. She tugged her blankets over her when another fit of shivers shook her, but had tossed them off again by the time Jackland returned.

“How are you feeling?” he said.

“No bloodier than before.”

“Something's up.”

She did not respond.

“Your friend Major Kadu is up to something.”

“That's news?”

“At least it helps explain his general bloody-mindedness. He wanted an excuse to hang around Kiti. Pretending to be mainly interested in us, holding us up so we didn't clear out too soon …”

“You had a lovely chat with him, Nigel? You asked him to come and lay a healing hand on me?”

“I asked him for a helicopter—pretty slim chance, I thought, but as far as I can make out there's not one civilian helicopter to be had anywhere in Northern Nigeria. All grounded. Flight control decided to take the holiday off, or something. So I thought I'd try Kadu as a last chance. The first odd thing was that the switchboard was manned by someone who put me straight through to him. He was extremely brusque, just about to cut me off when I managed to slip in that it would be good publicity for the Nigerian Army. Silence. I thought I'd lost him. Then ‘A helicopter will be at your camp at twelve noon tomorrow, Mr Jackland. The Army will see to it. Good night.' Click. Very rum.”

“What about Annie's car? I don't want a helicopter.”

“No answer from the palace. Sally's still trying. But listen, I want you to understand that if we go to Ilorin by car there's absolutely no way I can get you to London before Tuesday. I'll come with you in the helicopter if there's room.”

“You can't talk in one of those things. Tomorrow I'm going to finish being Betty, and then you're going to drive me to Ilorin and on the way you're going to tell me what happened to her after. That's her life, not mine, you see. It's a way of letting her go. It's important, Nigel. You remember how I called up Femora Feng by mistake and had to find a way of sending her back? It's the same thing.”

“All right. I take your word for it.”

“Promise? Unconditional?”

Jackland hesitated, unusually disturbed. She pushed up her spectacles and stared at him, forcing her will through the shimmer and haze of fever.

“Yes,” he said.

Miss Tressider sighed and relaxed. Her eyes closed. The blotched patches on her cheeks lost their sharp edges. Small changes of posture signalled a slackening in the tension of the muscles, a tension no doubt stimulated by the earnestness of her argument, though that in turn might have been mainly the product of a fever-ridden brain. Jackland watched her for a while, then moved round the bed to slip the spectacles off her forehead and pull a blanket over her. He watched her again, and was just reaching for another blanket when there was a gentle double-tap at the door, barely louder than might have been produced by two of the battering insects, but somehow different. He finished spreading the blanket and then turned and opened the door. Annie Boyaba stood on the step of the cabin. She put a finger to her lips and moved immediately down into the shadow of the cabin wall.

Jackland glanced back. Miss Tressider lay still, not apparently noticing the warm draught of unfiltrated night. He moved out on to the step and closed the door.

“I've been trying to ring you,” he muttered.

“Where can we talk?”

Jackland stepped down beside her. The night was moonless, with only a few stars, faint and fuzzy, overhead, and over on the horizon the hazy aura from the few lights of Kiti Town. The embers of a fire glimmered at the end of the horseshoe of tents and cabins, whose windows provided a few bright squares of electric light. The loudest noise was the pulse of the generator that powered these and the air-conditioners. From one of the cabins came the sound of a radio playing Afro-Rock.

“I can't go far,” said Jackland. “Mary's not at all well. I have to keep an eye on her.”

“Oh.”

“That's what I was trying to ring you about. I may have to drive her to Ilorin tomorrow, for tests and treatment. I don't trust the local hire-cars to make the distance, nor our trucks, for that matter. I would be extremely grateful if you would lend me yours. More than grateful.”

No doubt Jackland had chosen to sail straight in in order to avoid misunderstandings about his motives and to emphasize the nature of his duty towards Miss Tressider. After more than twenty-four hours with the film unit Miss Boyaba could not be unaware of the relationship. Both faces were invisible to each other, apart from slight glints where an eyeball reflected one of the faint lights. She felt for his forearm and gripped it.

“My uncle sent me,” she whispered.

“The Sarkin?”

Not, from his tone, what Jackland had expected.

“He needs your help. There's going to be a coup. The Army are arresting all the chiefs. That's what Major Kadu's here for. They cut off our telephone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Aunt Isai—that's his daughter—she's married to a colonel. She rang him up to tell him, in Kiti, of course. The telephone went dead. His waziri was turned back when he tried to leave the Old Town gate.”

“But they let you out?”

“No. There's a door at the back of the Old Palace, half way up the wall, where they used to throw the rubbish out. Some of his people let us down from there.”

“He's here?”

“Just out in the trees. We thought there might be soldiers …”