A Good Man in Africa (34 page)

“
Allons-y,
” he hissed at Friday, and they scurried closer, hunched like two commandos behind enemy lines. They slid into the moon-shadow cast by the gable end of the block nearest the Commission, pressing their backs against the wall. Innocence’s body lay a few yards away from them across the gap between
the block’s verandah and the raised concrete floor of the wash-place. The moonlight coming through the leaves of the towering cotton tree dappled the ground with shade. Not far off the smudge fire gave out lingering wreaths of smoke from the pile of greenery that had been placed on top of the charcoal. But the smell of the smoke wasn’t sufficient.

“
Oh la la,
” Friday whispered. “
Ça pue.
”

Morgan smelt the rotting sweetness flow through his nose and down into his lungs like water. He felt his stomach heave and saliva pump into his mouth. He leant his head against the rough wall behind him. Suddenly he wished he wasn’t there. What had possessed him to do such a thing? How could he …

“
Ça va
, masta?” Friday asked in concern.

“
Oui
, I mean yes.” He swallowed. Now or never. “Come on,” he said. They crept out to the body. The laterite square was deserted and everything was quiet, bathed in the grey-blue of moonglow. Quickly Morgan flicked back the cloth from the now familiar body. The smell seemed to billow out like an explosion. Friday gave a little whimper when he saw Innocence. Dappled moonlight lay across her face; a patch of light on her mouth made her teeth gleam. Morgan dry-retched and gagged.

“
Vite,
” he whispered huskily. “
Prends la main et
 …” he couldn’t remember the French for pull, “… pull ’im!” Without thinking he gripped Innocence’s bloated forearm with both hands and he saw a recoiling Friday hesitatingly do the same. The skin was like no skin he had ever touched before—like thick rubber. He thought it bitterly ironic and singularly peculiar of him that this very afternoon he had been unable to bring himself to hold a turkey’s legs. He tugged and Innocence shifted. Despite the illusion of balloon-lightness she was alarmingly heavy. And stiff. He saw that the arm which he was pulling remained unnaturally bent. He gave a little sob.

“Pull, Friday,” he whispered, “
pull!
”

They pulled and with a scrape of dust and gravel dragged her back into the secure shadow cast by the gable end of the block. Morgan found he was panting loudly. Friday looked as if he were facing a firing squad. Morgan didn’t dare let go of Innocence’s wrist in case he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to grip it again. Over the rasping sound of his breathing he heard the horrible buzzing of disturbed flies. With a shudder
he locked away his imagination for the night. He looked back at the spot where Innocence had been. The cloth lay like a dark puddle of water, surrounded by the small piles of votive juju-tokens. He wondered what the Commission servants would think when they woke up in the morning. Was this what it had been like when they found the stone had been rolled away? he asked himself in a bizarre impulse of heuristic theology. But his speculations were interrupted by a thin chant of fear coming from Friday’s lips.

“Shut up!” Morgan hissed. “Come on!”

With difficulty they dragged Innocence up the path a few yards into the allotment grove. Morgan was amazed at the rigidity of her joints and wondered how long they could withstand the strain. He didn’t like to think what might happen if they gave. They paused for a few seconds to get their breath back, their chests heaving, without talking. Was this what it was like with Burke and Hare? he wondered: silence, guilt and horror? Why, he asked himself, was his mind insisting on working in this exegetical and pedantic way? Friday looked straight ahead of him, his hands on his knees, his eyes half-focussed on the Commission garden.

Suddenly his mouth dropped open and his eyes widened in terror.

“Masta,” he stuttered, a shaking arm pointing towards the Commission, “
mais non … !
”

Morgan snapped his head round, his heart jumping somewhere at the back of his throat. Beyond the nim trees the wide expanse of the Commission garden lay illuminated in the calm moonlight. And there Morgan clearly saw a tall white shape moving slowly to and fro. He heard a faint noise carry across the garden, “… oooh … owe …”

“Mmnngrllggrrk,” was the only sound that issued from his petrified vocal chords.

Friday had leapt to his feet, stark terror written across his incredulous features. “
Shango!
” he gasped. “Shango ’e done come,” he bleated helplessly, stepping back from the body as if controlled by an alien force. “
Je m’en vais.
”

Ghastly calamities spontaneously reared up in Morgan’s mind. He jumped up and fiercely grabbed hold of Friday’s shirt-front, hauling the little man up on his tiptoes. “You bloody stay here,”
he whispered brutally, “or I’ll kill you.” Friday’s eyes rolled at the savagery of this threat. Morgan pushed him back down onto his knees by Innocence’s body.

Friday covered his face with his hands. “Masta,” he whimpered. “I go beg you don’t leaf me wit dis dead woman.…” He pointed suddenly again. “Ah-ah! Shango is comin’.”

Morgan’s scrambled brain registered the presence of the pale spectre roaming about the garden once more. Without thinking he dashed towards the line of nim trees. Pressing himself to a thick trunk he peered out across the moonlit lawn.

It seemed to be a person, tall and dressed in white, holding something in one hand. He strained his ears to try and make out the noises it was uttering.

“Hello-oo,” he heard. “Anyone at ho-ome?”

In a sudden blind boiling rage, incoherent with terror, relief and fuming anger, he charged off in a wild arm-flailing sprint across the lawn towards the figure. The man—as Morgan swiftly approached he recognised the person as such—looked round when he heard the sound of Morgan’s thundering footsteps, paused for an instant, and then, patently transfigured by shocked alarm himself, began to run away—a difficult operation this, for he was encumbered by a suitcase. Morgan’s hell-for-leather momentum soon brought him within range of the lumbering lanky Shango-impersonator, and like a plucky full-back bringing down a try-scoring three-quarter, he launched himself at the man’s knees.

The man in white came crashing to the ground with a shrill cry of pain and surprise. Morgan bit his lip to prevent his own pain—two badly bruised knees from the concrete-hard lawn—expressing itself in a whoop of anguish. He leapt to his feet still spitting with anger. The man remained groggily on all fours, searching the ground for something.

“Who … the fuck … are you?” Morgan demanded breathlessly in a stage scream-whisper. “What the hell … do you think you’re doing … prowling around at this time of night disturbing … making a bloody nuisance of yourself?”

The man found and put on a pair of round gold-rimmed spectacles and rose unsteadily to his feet. He was very tall and thin. In the moonlight Morgan could make out longish fair hair, a middle parting, prominent nose and shadow-hollowed
cheeks. Morgan flashed a glance back over his shoulder at the servants’ quarters. No lights were showing; he only prayed Friday was still with Innocence. He looked back. The man was muttering something about a dildo.

“Dildo?” Morgan repeated in furious incomprehension, anger still coursing through his body. “What have bloody dildos got to do with this?” He saw the man’s suitcase on the ground and for a crazed unreal moment thought he’d felled a travelling salesman for a sexual-aids firm who was trying to whip up some West African business.

“No,” the man said in a whimper. “Bilbow. My name. My name’s Greg Bilbow.” He had a weedy Yorkshire accent.

“I don’t give a damn what your name is. What are you doing prowling around here in the dead of night? That’s what I want to know.”

The man seemed on the point of breaking down but Morgan was unrelenting. He had more important things to worry about than the sentiments of some nomadic Yorkshireman.

“I’ve had a nightmare trip,” his victim continued dolefully. “A nightmare. I’ve just paid out forty-five pounds on a taxi fare. Forty-five pounds! I think I’ve been to Timbuctoo and back.” He sniffed. “I got off the train at Nkongsamba at seven-thirty this evening. I found a taxi and asked to be taken to the British Deputy High Commission.” He peered at his watch. “We’ve been driving around for over eight hours.” There was a barely suppressed sob in his voice.

“Well, you’ve arrived,” Morgan said harshly, thinking that they really shouldn’t let such innocents out in the world. “You’ve been conned. The station’s about twenty minutes away.”

“Thank God,” the man said, seemingly happy only to have made it. “Oh, thank God!”

“But you’ll have to come back tomorrow,” Morgan said unsparingly, agonisingly conscious of the time he was wasting. “Everything’s closed up until the morning. There’s a hotel half a mile down the road. They’ll put you up.”

“But I’ve got no money,” the man whined. “I spent it all on the taxi.”

“That’s your problem, old son,” Morgan laughed cruelly, drained of human kindness. “Now push off.”

The man was flapping a piece of paper about. “But I’ve got a letter here from someone called Morgan Leafy who says I can stay at the Commission.” His shoulders slumped in desperation. “Please,” he added feebly.

Cogs began to click and spin in Morgan’s brain. “What did you say your name was?”

“Bilbow. Greg Bilbow.”

“What is it you do exactly?”

“Me? I’m a poet.”

It was surprisingly easy for Morgan and Friday to drag Innocence the remaining few yards and then, with the strength of desperate men, heave her into the boot. Morgan closed the lid and locked it. He felt like the driver of a runaway car hurtling down a mountain road: nominally in control, but only just. Ruthlessly suppressing the urge to fall to the ground, scream and beat the earth with his fists, he quietly explained the true nature of the ghostly apparition to Friday in demotic pidgin French. Friday stood there taking it in, nodding his head and muttering to himself, “
Jamais … jamais de ma vie … non, non … jamais.
” Normally Morgan would have commiserated with him—his solitary vigil in the dark over Innocence’s body, the stink, the flies, Shango, a disappearing accomplice who threatened him with violent death—all must have tested his mettle considerably.

They pushed the car back down the track to the road and then drove down to the Commission entrance where Bilbow stood waiting as he had been instructed to. Morgan had offered to put him up for the night. He climbed into the front seat.

“I’m tremendously grateful,” he began. “Amazing coincidence that you should be out and about at this time.”

“Yes, isn’t it,” Morgan said, thinking quickly. “I’m just driving my houseboy back from taking his wife to hospital,” he jerked his thumb at Friday in the back. “I was going past the Commission when I thought I saw somebody wandering around in the garden.”

“You gave me a right turn,” Bilbow said cheerfully. He seemed to have settled down. “The way you charged out of those trees, your arms all waving, the look on your face—I almost died.…” the Yorkshire accent drew the vowels out interminably.
Morgan felt an extreme tiredness descend on him; then they drove over a pot-hole and Innocence’s body thumped in the boot. Friday gave a squeak of alarm.

“He’s very upset,” Morgan explained in response to Bilbow s surprised face. “Just married.” Bilbow nodded understandingly and turned to an uncomprehending Friday.

“Sorry to hear about your wife,” he said. “Hope she gets better soon.”

Morgan drove on. There was no point in taking the body to Ademola morgue tonight, he thought. It would just have to wait until tomorrow.

“Hey,” Bilbow said jovially. “I’ve joost realised. It’s Christmas Day. Merry Christmas everyone!”

Bilbow wore an old green towelling shirt with short sleeves and his white cotton jeans which still displayed the dirt scuffs from his encounter with Morgan the night before. At first glance he looked ridiculously young with his tall lean body, blue eyes behind the round spectacle frames and the overall blandness of his near albino colouring—longish straight platinum hair, invisible eyebrows and lashes, pink starlet lips. But a closer inspection revealed the graininess of his skin, the thin lines stretching down from the corners of his nostrils, and others forming brackets round his mouth. His voice, which his panic and distress had made whiny last night, had settled into its normal deeper timbre, and for all its comic book Yorkshire tones it had a genuinely friendly and quietly relaxed quality.

“Merry Christmas,” he said as Morgan shambled through the screen door onto the verandah. He was sitting at the verandah table with the remains of his breakfast in front of him. He gestured at the sunlit garden. “Quite bizarre,” he said. “Here I am in a short-sleeved shirt eating—what’s it called?—paw-paw in a temperature of eighty degrees while everyone at home’s wrapped up warm watching the telly.”

“Yeah, well,” Morgan said surlily through his hangover, thinking of last night’s events, “that’s what it’s like in Africa: out of the ordinary.”

“I’ve got a present for you,” Bilbow said. “Well, not so much a present, more of a thank you for last night. Saved me life.” He held out a slim book. Morgan took it.
The Small Carafe and Other Poems
by Greg Bilbow.

“Thanks,” Morgan said gruffly. “I’ll, ah, have a look at it later.” He sat down in front of his bowl of cornflakes. He rubbed his eyes. Merry bloody Christmas. He felt hellish, like the survivor of some week-long battle. Surely things would calm down now? He looked across the table at Bilbow—the fine, centrally parted blond hair, the pinched bespectacled face. He didn’t seem to suspect anything about last night, seemed quite happy to accept Morgan’s version of events. That, at least, was something.

Morgan pushed his uneaten cornflakes to one side and thought about his Christmas Day ahead. First he had to get rid of the decomposing body in his car boot, then dress up as Santa Claus and hand out presents to kids: the contrast seemed ghoulishly obscene.