The Governor's Lady (29 page)

‘It's about the trial that I wanted to have a word with you,' Harold told him.

Mr. Frith did not lift his eyes from the glass with the silly bubbles bursting aimlessly on top.

‘What about it?' he asked.

‘It's Lady Anne.'

‘Well, what about
her?

Mr. Frith's maimer was noticeably stiffening. He wanted to forget the trial, not talk about it. Also he detested junior members of the Service getting themselves mixed up in matters outside their own department.

‘It's the state she's in,' Harold explained. ‘She's been really frightfully ill, remember. If she had to go into the witness-box, the strain would be just too much for her. I don't like to think what would happen.'

Mr. Frith tried hard to be bland and non-committal.

‘Oh, I think we can leave the C.J.'s office to look after all that, don't you?' he asked.

The gin-and-tonic that Mr. Frith had given him had made Harold feel better. But it had also made him inclined to be argumentative. He was now in a mood when he couldn't bear to see other people allowing things to go wrong.

‘As a matter of fact, sir, that's just what I don't think,' he said. ‘It's merely so much legal routine for them. Naturally, they want her in Court so that they can get the whole case over. They don't know what she's been through already. I do.'

Mr. Frith was scrutinising Harold closely. He seemed to be unusually emphatic, even emotional, this evening. It occurred to Mr. Frith that perhaps the young man had been drinking, and he decided that he had better keep his eye on him.

‘She's got her doctor,' he replied. ‘It's entirely up to him. If she isn't well enough, they'll have to postpone. That's what's worrying ‘em.'

‘Then they've got plenty to worry about,' Harold replied. ‘I've just been up to the Residency. I've seen her.'

Mr. Frith was very careful to keep his temper under control. It was not easy. All the rubbishy ginger ale inside him had left him feeling irritable and snappy. And the mention of the Residency had been the last straw. He had always resented the fact that, in Sir Gardnor's day, he had remained a visitor; an outsider who was brought in only when the A.D.C. wanted to make up the numbers.

But he remembered his manners. He hadn't brought Harold out to the Club to have a row with him.

He looked very deliberately at the big, library clock with the name ‘Benson's' written in bold lettering across the dial, and got up from his chair.

‘Shall we go through and dine?' he asked.

It was as they sat down that Mr. Frith realised that he couldn't eat anything. The ginger ale had destroyed his appetite, washed it away completely. And, because he couldn't simply sit there at the table doing nothing, he ordered himself a whisky.

It was his first whisky that week, and he savoured it. Also, he could feel it doing him good. The sick headache that had been hanging over him all day abruptly left him, and his nervous tic disappeared. By the
time the boy had been over to his table for the third time, Mr. Frith began to blossom. He remembered that he was the man who had just been promoted Chief Secretary, and he temporarily forgot the intrigues both in Amimbo and in Whitehall that had prevented him from going even higher. He felt benign and began congratulating Harold anew, for taking charge of things on safari; predicting a great future for him.

That was why it was such a pity that Harold should have had to mention the name of Mr. Ngono. Ever since the tragedy, Mr. Ngono had taken to waiting disconsolately for hours on end, perched on the wooden bench in the front hall hoping to catch Mr. Frith as he passed by; and, in the end, Mr. Frith had been compelled to give orders to have him removed.

‘What the hell difference does it make that he was there when you got back?' he demanded. ‘You could have sent him away again, couldn't you?'

‘If I had,' Harold replied, ‘I shouldn't have picked up one or two rather interesting pieces of information.'

Mr. Frith drew down the corners of his mouth.

‘From him?' he asked. ‘He was just bamboozling you. Ngono's never spoken a word of truth so long as I've known him.'

‘I know, sir, but…'

‘Come on. Out with it,' Mr. Frith told him. ‘What was it? He wouldn't have been there if he didn't want something.'

Harold steadied himself.

‘As a matter of fact, he wants to serve on the jury,' he replied. ‘He thinks the others may have been got at.'

Mr. Frith drained off his whisky.

‘There you are,' he said. ‘So that's his game. Might have guessed it.'

Mr. Frith had swung round in his chair to see where the table-boy had got to. When he had located him, he pointed down towards his empty glass.

‘Anyhow, he's wasting his time. It was decided last week. There's going to be an all-white jury. Too much at stake to take any risks.'

‘But that's not all,' Harold said. ‘Mr. Talefwa's organising a campaign. He's bribing the witnesses.'

Mr. Frith pushed his chair back from the table.

‘When you've been out here as long as I have,' he replied, ‘you'll
expect the witnesses to be bribed. I've never known a big trial where they haven't been. That's why it's an all-white jury.'

He ran his handkerchief across his forehead as he was speaking.

‘Let's have our drinks out on the terrace,' he added. ‘Cooler there.'

The new surroundings seemed to agree with him. He undid his jacket, and put his feet up on the chair opposite.

‘Funny, isn't it?' he remarked. ‘You outlasting the Governor like this. Never thought you would. Wanted me to find a replacement for you when he got back. Told me it was urgent.'

So far, Harold had been proved right.

War Drum
, in its biggest type, opened up the attack the very next morning, ‘AN AFRICAN CHILLON' was how the headline ran, and Mr. Talefwa spared nobody. ‘The eyes of blind Justice,' he wrote, ‘are running tears of blood. Her cheeks bright crimson from her weeping. Her screams stifled by Authority.'

Old Moses, he pointed out, had now been held in custody for the better part of a month ‘on charges fabricated by certain persons in high places anxious to conceal the true identity of the murderers,' and he asked the simple question: ‘Did, or did not, the writ of
Habeas Corpus
run south of the equator?'

Then came the big climax, the battle-call to ‘all men of goodwill, regardless of race, colour, religion, nationality, sex, calling, occupation, address or other barrier.'

In short,
War Drum
was opening a fighting-fund for the defence of Old Moses. To be known as ‘Save a Brother', it invited subscriptions as much from ‘the affluent European business community with their American cars' as from ‘the toiling Africans who may have to snatch bread from open hungry mouths of children to spare even a copper coin with which to fight the police and their false informers.'

‘Leading international lawyers, High Court judges, learned counsel and humble magistrates throughout the entire civilised world will,' he finished up, ‘be keeping their eyes, skinned like hawks, on the attempted crucifixion in Amimbo.'

Mr. Frith was asking for Harold as soon as he arrived at the office. But it was not about
War Drum:
Mr. Frith was far too much preoccupied to think about that.

‘You're the man I want,' he said, without even glancing up. ‘Got something for you.'

He had a telegram in his hands, and he was still reading. When he had finished, he went back to the beginning and started all over again.

Then he looked across at Harold.

‘Well, that's it,' he told him. ‘We've got a new Governor coming out.'

‘Who's it to be, sir?'

Mr. Frith passed the telegram over to him.

‘Read it yourself,' he said. ‘It's Top Secret, mind.'

Not that there could really be much point about secrecy by now. The Whitehall release date for the Gazette was tomorrow. A news-leak, via Amimbo, for the evening papers seemed the sort of risk that even the most cautious public servant might occasionally have to take.

Harold read the telegram carefully. It was simple, formal and straightforward. Also, final; not by any means the sort of telegram that you could argue about. He tried, therefore, to make the best of it.

‘It's not quite so bad as it might be, sir,' he said. ‘It gives us nearly three weeks to get ready.'

Mr. Frith was gazing out of the window at the spire of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

‘And do you imagine Lady Anne'll be well enough to be moved by then?' he asked.

Harold remembered the look of that sick-room, with the nurse over by the window and Sybil Prosser with her eyes fastened on the bed.

‘Not a hope, sir,' he said. ‘Just not a hope.'

‘Then where the hell are we going to put him?'

The question was addressed to the open window.

‘What about my bungalow, sir?' Harold suggested. ‘After all, it's just alongside.'

Mr. Frith gave a sudden little start, and became Chief Secretary again.

‘Dammit man,' he said, swivelling round, ‘he
is
the Governor, you know. If he had got to go anywhere, he'll have to have my place. That is, if there isn't room for both of them.'

‘And where will you go?'

‘Crown Cottage, I suppose,' Mr. Frith replied. ‘There's nowhere else.'

It was the grace-and-favour house of Amimbo, Crown Cottage. Originally built for Government hospitality of important visitors, it had, over the years, been allowed to deteriorate because so few important
visitors ever came. The lattice of white woodwork in front sagged in places as though it had been cut out of cardboard, and the green roof of corrugated iron had not been re-painted since last year's rains.

‘I'm afraid you won't find that very comfortable,' Harold told him. But Mr. Frith was past consolation.

‘Don't worry about me,' he said bitterly. ‘I don't count for anything. I'm only the Chief Secretary.'

There was a knock at the door, and the native clerk announced that the Prison Commissioner was waiting. Mr. Frith jerked himself back into efficiency again.

‘Well, get something drafted, and let me see it,' he said. ‘Remember it's high level. Don't refer to accommodation.'

It was about Old Moses that the Commissioner had come.

‘Not a word from him, so far,' he said. ‘Evidently made his mind up. Isn't going to speak.'

‘Any good trying to get him to sign something?' Mr. Frith suggested.

The Commissioner shook his head.

‘Can't read,' he said simply.

‘Well what do you want me to do?' Mr. Frith demanded. ‘I can't make him talk.'

‘Only make sure there isn't any postponement,' the Commissioner told him. ‘That's all. He should just about be able to make it on the third. After that, I wouldn't like to say.'

‘How's he eating?'

The Commissioner shook his head again. He was a heavy, loosely-built man, and every time he denied anything his cheeks wobbled.

‘Nothing at all,' he said. ‘Hasn't eaten a proper meal since we had him.'

‘Still drinking his milk?'

‘Two or three cups a day. Doesn't seem to mind that.'

Mr. Frith half-turned away, and fixed his eyes on the top of the spire again. Just when the Commissioner thought that it was the end of the conversation, Mr. Frith's good idea came to him.

‘Don't forget,' he said, ‘he's been up at the Residency for years. Probably doesn't eat native food any longer. Give him what he's got used to.'

The cheeks wobbled again.

‘Tried it,' the Commissioner replied. ‘Simply pushes it away from him.'

‘What's the doctor say?'

‘Wants us to keep on with the pills. Vitamins, you know. Six a day. They're crushed up and put into the milk before he gets it.'

This time it really was the end of the conversation. Mr. Frith got up out of his chair.

‘Well, if there's any change let me know,' he said. Remembering Mr. Talefwa, he paused. ‘I don't want anything to happen to him.'

The rest of Mr. Frith's appointments were as much routine, and all as much frustrating. The Chief of Police wanted to raid the offices of
War Drum
because a secret informer, who turned out to be Mr. Ngono, had secured an advance proof of tomorrow's leader which openly accused the Police Department of corruption. The Government granary at Omtala had accidentally been burnt to the ground. Somewhere down to the south, raiders had driven off three hundred head of cattle, and there were rumours of blazing villages and murdered herdsmen. Cholera cases were increasing around Aktu Junction. And, overnight, one of the ornamental lamp-posts had been impudently stolen from Victoria Square.

When twelve o'clock came round, Mr. Frith remembered that he had not seen the draft reply to the telegram. He merely nodded when Harold gave it to him, and instinctively picked up his pen to make the necessary alterations. After crossing out the last sentence, he brooded over it for a moment and then wrote it in again, inking over the letters to make them stand out properly.

‘Well, better get it off,' he said. ‘Nothing we can do about it.'

He had finished his morning's work, and had gone over and unlocked the drink cabinet.

‘Care to join me?' he asked.

Harold saw his opportunity.

‘What's he like, the new Governor?' he asked.

Glass in hand, Mr. Frith felt better. He was now quite prepared to talk about it: earlier he wouldn't have been ready to face up to the subject at all.

‘He's forty-eight, that's what he's like,' he said. ‘Just the right age for top promotion. Twelve full years of being H.E. before the pension.'