The Governor's Lady (33 page)

He got straight into the Governor's car and was driven off to the Residency.

Only Mr. Talefwa remained behind to welcome Mr. Das. The two of them looked sadly isolated standing there in the lamplight at the end of the already empty platform. Mr. Talefwa presented the naturally dishevelled appearance of any man who has been taking his night's rest in twenty-minute snatches on a single plank bench with the initials of the railway company carved into it.

Nor was Mr. Das looking at his best. Only on arrival at Nucca had he discovered that his reservation was third-class, and he had travelled through two nights with eight other people and a live chicken in the same compartment. Mr. Das's own luggage was simple. It consisted
merely of a wicker hold-all, tied round with string, and a pair of shiny, new-looking shoes that he was carrying under his left arm.

By then it was three o'clock in the morning. The city was entirely still. With dawn just upon them, even the owls had ceased their hooting, and the police had all gone to bed.

Suddenly there was a loud report, a bang that brought faces to windows and set the local babies screaming. It was Mr. Ngono who was responsible. He had been quietly on his way home with a friend, when his companion, slightly drunk, had chosen to speak disparagingly of the night's arrangements. He had even suggested that Mr. Ngono's chosen position over by the exit was so far back that, even if he had still been there at the time to give the word of command, no one in front could possibly have heard him.

Mr. Ngono, slightly drunk himself, was in no mood to take that kind of talk. Then and there, to show how it would have sounded if the Coronation Flyer had been even reasonably on time, he had raised his right arm and fired off his starting pistol.

There was now less than a week to go before the trial, and every bit of accommodation in Amimbo was booked solid. The special correspondents, reporters, radio men and observers were all there; and the Supervisor at the G.P.O.'s telegram counter had accepted tips, bribes and prepayments from everyone who came to him promising them all exclusive day-and-night priority facilities on Amimbo's solitary outgoing line. The other line had been commandeered outright by the Government.

As for Mr. Drawbridge—though still in Mr. Frith's eyes, distinctly on probation—he had been accepted.

An ordinary, easy-going sort of human being in many ways, he had on his second day announced that he preferred working on ground level, and had told his A.D.C. to get the large desk, Sir Gardnor's desk, carried down into the east wing.

It was an unheard of departure from practice: the desk had been up in the Library ever since the Residency had been opened. But it was immediately recognised that there was the stamp of greatness about such a decision. At all levels, people were relieved to think that at last Amimbo really had a Governor again.

Also, he had done all the right things. He had been nice to the discarded A.D.C. whom he had found hanging, ghostlike, around the Residency, and told him that he looked forward to seeing him at mealtimes. He had called on Lady Anne and Sybil Prosser at Crown Cottage, staying on for tea in the neglected garden, overlooked by the windows of the Portuguese Consulate. He had visited Old Moses in the prison hospital, and arranged for a daily delivery of fresh Jersey milk from the Residency farm.

And now, with the trial right on top of them, he had just closed his final session with the law officers. The four men had moved through into the anteroom where the drinks were standing, and Mr. Drawbridge had re-lit his pipe.

‘It's not for me to say,' he told them. ‘It's your side of the house. Just make everything so much easier if the fellow would agree.'

The Attorney-General did not reply immediately. He was the one that Mr. Drawbridge had been looking at; and he was the one who, earlier, had shown himself most frankly dubious about the whole proposal. Gentlemen's agreements were delicate plants by nature; and, in his experience, the atmosphere of Central Africa was usually too humid for them.

‘Great mistake to let them suspect any weaknesses on our side,' he said.

‘Exactly,' Mr. Drawbridge told him. ‘That's why you are the only person who could handle it. We agreed on that in there.'

His pipe was not drawing properly, and he broke off to see what another match would do. When he spoke again, he kept interrupting himself as he sucked at the mouthpiece.

‘It's entirely … up to you,' he said. ‘Let's leave it shall we … if you should run into him … and the time seems ripe … you can touch on it… otherwise we go ahead as we are … let's see what happens.'

The next morning, the Attorney-General was still feeling apprehensive, but Mr. Drawbridge had got the better of him. That was why, against his better judgment, he was now on his way down from his own quiet chambers where the fans were always turning, to the hot airless common room where counsel read over their briefs, and sent their clerks out for little cardboard cups of iced water. It was Mr. Das he was looking for.

And, as the Attorney-General feared, there he was. Sitting at the wretched little table, that was all that the Courts provided, he was bent over his document like a watchmaker. He was so deeply absorbed in what he was reading that, at first, he did not hear the Attorney-General when he addressed him.

The Attorney-General addressed him a second time.

‘May I introduce myself?' he asked, a trifle louder. ‘My name is Ramsden, David Ramsden. I'm the Attorney-General.'

Mr. Das looked up without speaking: it was a Summons for nonpayment of something back in Lagos that he had been reading, and he was endeavouring to conceal it by spreading his outstretched hands flat over it.

‘I shall be appearing against you tomorrow,' the Attorney-General went on pleasantly, ‘so I thought it would be as well if we met first.'

This time the pause was so long that the Attorney-General became puzzled.

‘You are Mr. Das, are you not?' he asked.

Mr. Das inclined his head ever so slightly: it was in the manner of a rather formal bow.

‘Then, if you have time, perhaps we could have a few words together.'

While he had been sitting there, Mr. Das had not been idle. He had been scooping round with his foot under the table trying to locate his brief-case. With a sudden swift movement like a conjurer he grabbed at it, slammed it down on the table top and thrust his other papers away safely and out of sight inside. They had reached him only that morning, redirected from Freetown, and they made rather depressing reading: they were all bills, demands, dunning-letters, urgent requests for loans from close friends, bad tidings from his family in Madras, mourning notices.

He jumped up and shook hands.

‘You are more than kind,' he said. ‘It is a great honour.'

Because there was a managing clerk, his arms full of ledgers and box-files, waiting to use the same table, the Attorney-General suggested that they should go outside. He had considered proposing his own office, and then had thought better of it because it savoured too much of intrigue. Together he and Mr. Das walked as far as the front steps. The heat there was roasting.

‘Shall we talk here?' he asked. ‘It's more pleasant. Because of the breeze, you know.'

‘Wherever you say,' Mr. Das replied, shading his eyes against the glare.

‘And how is your client?'

Mr. Das gave his usual polite bow.

‘Well, thank you,' he replied.

‘But off his food, I hear.'

‘That is so.'

The Attorney-General had, for a moment, caught Mr. Das's glance. The dark, heavily lidded eyes had been turned full on him. Not that he had been able to make out anything of what was going on behind them: they seemed, indeed, to be singularly uncommunicative sort of eyes.

‘And there's some trouble with his speech, isn't there?'

‘It is affected,' Mr. Das told him.

‘Not permanently, I trust.'

Mr. Das gave the same little bow.

‘I cannot say. I am not a doctor.'

The Attorney-General took out his case and offered Mr. Das a cigarette. Mr. Das declined.

‘I do not smoke,' he said.

It was not true: Mr. Das was a heavy smoker. He would have liked one very much. But the Attorney-General had caught him at a bad moment. His best shirt was being saved up for tomorrow. The last thing that he wanted was to thrust out a badly frayed shirt-cuff. If he had known that he would be seeing the Attorney-General, he would have worn his other white jacket.

The Attorney-General kept tapping away at his cigarette instead of lighting it.

‘I've just been looking over the affidavits,' he said, as though he had found himself with time on his hands and had simply been filling in the odd moments. ‘I see that you're pleading “Not Guilty”.'

‘That is correct.'

‘May be quite a long case then.'

Again, there was that little bow.

‘I have made myself entirely free,' he replied.

‘Great strain on your client, of course.'

‘It is inevitable.'

‘And at his age.'

Mr. Das caught the Attorney-General's eye again.

‘I cannot make him any younger,' he said.

‘But you think he will be well enough to appear?'

Mr. Das paused.

‘I must decide that tomorrow,' he replied.

The Attorney-General had lit his cigarette by now. He blew the smoke out slowly before speaking.

‘Great strain on the jury, too,' he said. ‘Juries don't like finding against old people. They can't bear hearing the sentence, you know. Particularly in murder cases.'

Mr. Das remained silent.

‘It's keeping the defendant there in court for days on end that they find so painful,' the Attorney-General went on. ‘But they still have to
do their duty: that's something no jury can avoid. It always comes as a great relief to them if the plea is one of insanity. But only when the defendant is elderly, of course. Otherwise, they tend to be suspicious.'

Mr. Das appeared to be pondering the point.

‘Quite so,' he replied.

The Attorney-General glanced down at his watch.

‘Well, I mustn't detain you,' he said. ‘I'm sure you want to get back to your papers. Until tomorrow morning then. I just wanted to make your acquaintance.'

‘The pleasure has been all mine,' Mr. Das replied.

The queue for the public gallery began forming overnight. Mr. Das had, in fact, seen the beginnings of it—the cushions, baskets of food, beer bottles and things all spread out on the sidewalk—as he had walked back home from the courthouse.

By eight a.m. there was already a brisk market in reservations. Places near the front were changing hands around the fifteen-shilling mark; and even for seats right at the back, under the ventilator cowling, there were still buyers at half-a-crown and two shillings. The queue by now numbered over eighty: the capacity of the public gallery was twenty-four.

At nine-forty-five, when the door was unlocked, the rush began. The two policemen stationed inside had to keep hitting out with their fly-whisks so that they could count properly.

One spare place was to be left, the Chief Usher had said. But the crowd could count, too. And when the doors were closed again after only twenty-three had gone through, the barracking began. There were shouts, catcalls, hammerings on the door, kickings.

It was not until close upon the hour that the mystery of the missing seat was finally cleared up. Then—beautifully dressed and smiling, but somewhat tense and self-conscious looking—Mr. Ngono arrived, and walking very fast, went straight through the door marked ‘Court officials'.

It had all been arranged beforehand. The Head Usher, for a consideration, had agreed to keep vacant the last seat beside the gangway in the front row.

Because he had been called away by the Chief, his father, Mr. Ngono had not seen Mr. Das before. It was only by reputation that he knew him.

And, once inside, Mr. Ngono began looking round the Court. There, right in front of him, was an Indian with a wig on. He knew at
once that it must be Mr. Das. The sight thrilled him. He began tliinking how impressed Mr. Das would be when—tonight, possibly—the two of them met, and Mr. Das came to learn at first hand of Mr. Ngono's star-witness revelations.

It was the first time that Mr. Ngono had seen a court assemble, and he was fascinated. He had not, in fact, been so much moved by anything since Sir Gardnor's memorial service. And, when the Judge, deep-wigged and in full scarlet, appeared before them, Mr. Ngono could have applauded. It was unbelievable because, in everyday life, the Chief Justice was really rather short and quite ordinary: Mr. Ngono had seen him frequently on Saturdays in open-necked shirt and khaki shorts; even going round Amimbo on a bicycle.

The swearing in of the jury was another thing that Mr. Ngono found most impressive. Indeed, he had never before watched so many important Europeans being treated so casually. There was the District Superintendent of the Railway, a retired Inspector of Native Schools, the chief cashier of one of the overseas banks, and a big cocoa man, all crammed into the jury box like steerage. And all behaving with such meekness and humility, too. When his friend, who had reserved him his seat, handed them the Bible, one by one, they seemed nervous and afraid of him.

The sense of absolute authority, enshrined somewhere inside the pageant, came as a revelation to Mr. Ngono: he found himself wishing that instead of a life of commerce he had taken up the law as his profession.

There were evidently going to be some pretty dramatic surprises, too. In answer to the simple question as to whether there was an objection to any of the jurors, Mr. Das was on his feet immediately, jack-in-the-box fashion: it was evident that it was exactly the lead for which he had been waiting.

‘I object to all the jurors, m'lud,' he replied.