She was coming to him at last! Paul Jordan, sitting in his Palace office with the doors firmly shut, read and reread the magic cable from New York. It was easy, and delicious, to conjure up Frances Hoy’s blessed voice as he read:
‘All fixed. Arriving via Windhoek 9 p.m. Saturday 28th. Book me in at the Jordan-Hilton. All love. Frances.’
She was coming to him at last, and there were only three short days to go.
Paul put the telegram down on his desk, and began to consider a traditional problem, the how and the where. There was no Jordan-Hilton available, in his own confined world; he lived in a small set of rooms at the Palace, and he could no more have introduced Frances Hoy there than he could have reserved her a room at the club. It must be the hotel or nothing – ‘the hotel’ being an old-fashioned, crumbling, delightful relic of nineteenth-century colonial living, the Prince Albert.
He began to think about the Prince Albert, in a little more detail. If he booked her into a single room, it would hardly be possible for him to go up to it. If he booked single rooms for both of them, it would alert the management, who knew who he was, and what he was, and were quite capable of ringing up the Palace and asking why the President’s ADC wanted a hotel bedroom in Port Victoria when he had some very superior accommodation of his own.
The only answer was a suite. There, he could join Frances in her sitting room, with a reasonable degree of propriety. After that, who was to know what was going on? Who would dare to try to find out? Who would bother them, when they emigrated, as swiftly as possible, from the sitting room to the bedroom?
Encouraged by such marvellous daydreams, he presently rang up the Prince Albert and booked a suite for Miss Hoy. Then he settled down to wait. It was wonderful to have daydreams of any kind, to counteract the poisonous atmosphere up at the Palace, to counteract Lucy Help.
Lucy Help had never given up. She had found no substitute for what she called ‘being laid by the aide’, and when Paul grew tired of it, and then disgusted, and had finally contracted out, she never came to terms with the astonishing withdrawal. There had been some terrible scenes, during which she seemed entirely careless of the fact that, in a listening, alert Palace, avid for scandal, full of servants, full of privileged and envious spies, every word could have been overheard.
Lucy was in a strong position, and she knew it, and she pressed it for all it was worth. There was one final, awful confrontation, on the very day that Frances Hoy was due to arrive. Though it started with reasonable good humour on both sides, the steep nosedive into conflict which followed was the crudest she had ever made him endure.
She came into his office towards noon, in a pair of flower-patterned shorts which clung to all significant areas like a loving leech, and a halter designed more for urgent containment than for coverage. She took up her usual perch, on one corner of his desk, and exclaimed: ‘Christ, it’s so bloody hot in this dump! How do you manage to stay cool?’
‘Will power,’ he answered, reacting to the friendly approach. ‘I just pretend it isn’t so awful after all.’
‘That’s all right for you. Will power is what you’ve got. I never had any.’ She leant forward, bringing all her equipment within striking distance. ‘How about a call for Help, one of these days?’
Quickly he was on guard again. He should have had more sense … ‘You know how it is, Lucy. There are too many people watching.’
‘They were watching, as you call it, when you first brought that nice big subject up. But we still managed to make out, didn’t we?’
‘God knows how. Honestly, I don’t think it’s possible now.’
‘Why not? What’s changed?’
‘Just that every time it happened, we were taking more and more chances.’
Her eyes, her mouth, her whole face grew sullen and discontented. ‘Well, it hasn’t happened for a hell of a long time, has it? Christ, I’m growing cobwebs, just where it matters most! What am I meant to do? – sit around like a dummy, eating chocolate creams, getting fat like that poor old cow of a wife of his?’
‘You’re not getting fat.’
‘How would you know? You haven’t had a test run for months.’ She made another forward movement, so that her taut bosom came within a few inches of his mouth. ‘How about finding out what sort of shape I’m in?’
‘Really, we’d better not, Lucy.’
‘Don’t give me that!’ She was suddenly furious. ‘Give me something else instead! Give me something to work on! I want a white one, damn you! A big white one, not a little bit of burnt wick! I’m telling you straight – you follow me upstairs, and get plugged in, pronto! Or it’ll be the worse for you.’
He stood up, and backed away from her. He had never known such lustful fury in any human being. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s much too dangerous.’
‘It’ll be too dangerous if you don’t!’
‘What do you mean?’
She was staring at him with glowering eyes. ‘Work it out, you dope! What’s happened to all your pals? Crump – kicked out! Stillwell – kicked out! Bracken – due for the skids, any moment. I told you, I warned you it was going to happen, didn’t I? Well, now it could be my turn to pull some strings. Do you want to be kicked out?’
Paul had had enough. ‘As a matter of fact, there’s nothing that would please me more. I’m sick of this place, and sick of this job, and I want to get back to doing something worth while. They can kick me out, as soon as they like.’
‘You mean, in disgrace? What about the good little sailor boy? What about the record?’ Suddenly Lucy changed her tune. She got up from the desk, and came towards him. ‘Paul, just do what I want, lay me good a couple of times, and I swear to God I’ll see you’re sent home. With everything OK. With a medal if you want one, for Christ’s sake! For distinguished service. But I’ve got to have the service first. Know what I mean?’
‘Not from me.’ His disgust made him speak very roughly indeed. ‘The answer, once and for all, is no.’
Lucy turned away, as if defeated. Then she whipped round again, still fighting. ‘And I know why the answer is no! You lousy liar! It’s not because it’s dangerous at all. It’s that girl! Isn’t it?’
He was struck by a dreadful guilt and fear. Could she have found out about Frances Hoy? Did she know that the plane was due that very evening? Did she know about the suite at the Prince Albert? There was a sudden, terrible possibility that the Palace, that colossal whispering gallery of rumour and gossip, had somehow got hold of the details, and that Lucy Help was in on his secret. After a pause, he asked, very warily: ‘What girl?’
‘You know bloody well what girl! That Chinese cracker you touched off in New York. You’ve still got a yen for her, haven’t you?’ And as Paul did not answer: Well, it’s too late for hot pants now! You should have got rid of it while you were there. You’ll just have to settle for me. How about it?’
She did not know. Thank God, she did not know … While Lucy, still fuming, was waiting for an answer, Paul walked out of his office, and, before long, out of the Palace altogether. He need not come back that night – and he thanked God, with special fervour, for that as well.
Frances was thinner than he remembered, and paler also; the faint, delicate shadows under her eyes made her look like a tired child. When they moved into each other’s arms behind the closed door of the suite, he could almost feel the weariness in her slim body. But her shining eyes and clinging mouth were the very same. She was not less lovely, not less adored, not less wanted, from their very first touching.
‘Yes, I’m thinner,’ she murmured, when she felt his hands moving over her shoulders. ‘I’ve been pining away, that’s all. But now I’m going to put it all back again. Very quickly. Starting now.’
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, and kissed her again. ‘Was it a bad journey?’
‘Not really. Accra was like an oven. And we had rather a long wait at Windhoek. I don’t recommend the Non-European lounge there.’
‘Oh God! What an awful idea!’
‘Never mind. It’s all over now.’ Her arms tightened round him. ‘Oh love, I love you so much! It’s wonderful to be with you again!’
‘Have you had dinner?’
‘Sort of. Enough, anyway.’ Her soft body was moving against his, in a well-remembered, most precious way. ‘Shall I unpack first? Or not?’
‘Not.’
‘Instant Pinkerton.’
‘Yes, please.’
But they had scarcely lain down on the wide bed, with his hands touching her beautiful breasts, and hers stroking him towards an assured ecstasy, and she had only just whispered: ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s quick, like the first time,’ when there was a loud knocking on the outer door of the suite.
Its crude violence made them draw apart, and they lay motionless in the darkness, shocked to silence, as the knocking was repeated, seeming even more insistent.
‘It must be a mistake,’ Paul said softly, after a moment of confusion. ‘Or some stupid mix-up with the room numbers. Don’t worry, darling. They’ll go away.’
‘Oh love,’ she said. ‘It would be now!’
She reached out her gentle hands to him again, and as she did so they heard a key snapped into the distant lock, and the lock turned, and the suite door open. There were voices, and then footsteps crossing the sitting room. Then the knocking fell heavily on the bedroom door itself.
Paul switched on the bedside light and spoke in a whisper. ‘I’ll have to get dressed, and see what it is. They must have used a pass key. But it can’t be anything.’
‘All right,’ she answered, in the same confederate tone which, sadly, seemed to debase the moment altogether. ‘I think I’ll dress too.’
A voice on the other side of the door called out: ‘This is the manager. Open the door, please.’
Paul was drawing his clothes on swiftly, while Frances, at a sign from him, went through into the bathroom. The voice came again, louder: ‘Open your door, please.’ He saw the handle turning to and fro, and it seemed an appalling intrusion, even though the door was secured with an old-fashioned drawbolt, and could not be opened from the other side.
He tried to decide whether to answer, how to act in such a wretched situation. But while he drew on his coat, and still hesitated, his mind was made up for him by a second voice, a different voice, a voice he recognized. It said, loudly and harshly: ‘Lieutenant Jordan! Open this door. Or it will be broken down.’
An unreasoning, guilty panic took hold of him. This was impossible, this was awful! … He stood irresolute before the door, and saw its handle twisting again; and then Frances came out of the bathroom, dressed as she had been when she arrived, her face painfully tense, and he made a signal with his hands, meaning Lock the door after me, and when she nodded, he drew back the bolt and stepped into the sitting room.
Instantly he pulled the door shut after him, and heard the bolt pushed home with a solid click. Then he turned to face the intruders. He recognized the manager, a fussy be-spectacled Maula who had hitherto been a friend. He was already prepared, though incredulously, for the second figure. It was the towering form of Colonel Mboku.
Something slotted swiftly into place, like the door bolt behind him. This could only be Lucy’s doing. She must have found out somehow, or been told; and so she, and the Palace grapevine, and now this big brute of a policeman, had combined to ruin everything.
The crude trick made him very angry, and thus defiant. He stood in front of the door, and looked from one to another of his visitors. For some reason he wished that he were in uniform, like Colonel Mboku. The situation, unpleasant and degrading, needed all the backing he could muster. But there was only one line to take, anyway.
‘Good evening, Colonel,’ he said coldly. He had always loathed the policeman – just a big bastard of a sergeant, a born drill-pig, and now a man of crushing authority. He turned his fire instantly on the manager. What is the meaning of this? Why have you come in?’
The manager, perhaps unused to counter-attack in such delicate circumstances, blinked his eyes several times. But then he rallied quickly. ‘It was reported that the hotel rules were being broken,’ he said. ‘This is not your suite. It is the lady’s suite. We cannot have this sort of behaviour at the Prince Albert.’
What sort of behaviour?’ Paul was more aware of Colonel Mboku’s sardonic attention than of anything else, and resolutely he ignored it. We were not causing a disturbance. We were not giving any trouble. What’s this all about?’
‘It is forbidden to have men in the bedroom,’ the manager insisted. ‘The lady must come out. She must leave the hotel immediately.’
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Already a cold despair was beginning to take hold of him. This was really serious: the trap had sprung, and it gripped them both cruelly. ‘You know you had no business to open the door of this suite without permission.’
Colonel Mboku spoke at last, with insolent authority. ‘It was done under my orders.’
Paul faced his enemy, and did not bother about politeness. ‘What’s it got to do with you? How does it concern the police?’
Mboku nodded towards the bedroom door, his expression contemptuous. ‘That sort of thing? It does not concern me at all. It is not a police matter. It is a matter of morals. If we had to take action every time a girl lay on her back, we would not get much sleep. Less than the girl! But there is something else which does concern me. I was told that you were in the hotel, and I am delivering a message from the President. You are to return to the Palace at once.’
‘But I’m not on duty tonight.’
‘It is an order.’
The manager chimed in. ‘And the lady must come out! It is disgraceful!’ He was beginning to shout, wanting to reclaim the centre of the stage, the only important part of this invasion. ‘It is a scandal! She must leave at once! Both of you must leave! We cannot allow–’
Behind him, Paul heard the bolt being withdrawn. As he turned, the door opened, and Frances Hoy came out of the bedroom.
He could only love and admire her composure, which was brave and absolute. He could only rage inwardly at the horrible, shameful moment, as the two men stared at her – the manager with shocked distaste, Mboku with lascivious and insulting eyes. Paul could almost hear the coarse, disgusting speculation – had they done it yet, had they been interrupted in the middle, had they finished already when the door was unlocked. Frances, who must inevitably have been aware of this, remained calm and expressionless, and this seemed to provoke the manager, who said in a voice grotesquely excited: ‘This is disgraceful behaviour! The Prince Albert is not like this. It is forbidden to have men in the bedroom. This is not in China! You must leave at once.’
She said, quietly: ‘Very well,’ and walked back into the other room.
Colonel Mboku, robbed of his pleasurable moment, turned to Paul again. ‘And you are to report to the President.’
‘I will do nothing of the sort!’ Paul answered furiously. ‘I will look after Miss Hoy! I will not have her bullied and harassed like this!’
Mboku shrugged his gross shoulders. ‘Please yourself. The President did not place you under arrest. Not at this time. But I have given you his order. You must take the consequences of disobeying it.’
‘Out!’ said the manager. ‘I give you ten minutes!’
When they had gone, Paul helped her to collect her things, unable to speak for shame and sorrow, and then they went down to his car, pursued by stares and whispers as they passed through the lobby. It was after eleven o’clock, and there was no other hotel he could take her to. He drove her to their only known refuge, the Brackens.
They were followed all the way by a police car, clinging stealthily, using its sidelights only. But as they drew up at the house the trailing car peeled off and moved away, with the driver talking busily into a hand microphone.
The Brackens were marvellous, as Paul had known they would be. There was a warm welcome from Nicole, and the minimum of questions, just enough to establish the gruesome facts; and after that it was the spare room for Frances, and a camp bed in the sitting room for himself, and, very soon, brief and understanding goodnights for them both.
Paul allowed her time to get into bed, and then he went up to make sure she was all right. Frances was sitting up against her pillow, in a nightdress which she had once ‘bought for him’ in New York; under its pale transparency her brown body glowed with soft, sensual appeal. But she looked so unutterably weary that he knew they would only say goodnight, and that he would leave her to sleep alone.
She was too exhausted, and they were both too shocked, for lovemaking. The scene in the hotel had been so ugly, so brutal, that it must still cast a shadow between them, forbidding all love until time itself had done some cleansing.
She held out her arms, and he went into them as if into a safe harbour, and kissed her, and held her close. But he said, immediately: ‘Shall we just sleep tonight?’
‘I think so, love. If you don’t mind.’
‘You know I don’t.’
He could feel her body still tense, still outraged. ‘Darling, who was that awful man?’
Within his arms, she had shivered as she asked the question, and he tried for lightness when he answered: ‘Some call him Merci Beaucoup. Others call him Field-Marshal McLuhan. I call him the biggest bastard on God’s earth. Actually he’s Colonel Mboku, the head of the police.’
‘What a horrible brute! He was enjoying it!’
‘Try to forget about him, darling.’
‘That’ll take some doing.’
‘I know … Bedtime now?’
‘Yes.’ She held up her face, like a dutiful, tired child. But she was still brave, and loving, and thinking of him. ‘I’m glad I came, Paul, all the same. I’ll show you soon, I promise.’
In the morning, the ordained end came swiftly. Just after 7a.m., a dispatch rider on a monstrous khaki motorcycle came roaring up to the Brackens’ front gate, and delivered two letters from a brass-bound pouch. One was on embossed Palace note-paper, the other stamped ‘Immigration Control’. They both had to be signed for.
The first told Lieutenant Paul Jordan, RN, that he was dismissed from his post as aide-de-camp to His Excellency the President, and that the disgraceful circumstances of his removal would be reported to the appropriate authorities in the United Kingdom.
The second informed Miss Frances Hoy that since the new regulations regarding entry visas for people of Asian origin had not been complied with, she was thereby declared a prohibited person and was to leave Pharamaul forthwith.
‘Asian origin!’ Frances exclaimed, when she had read the letter which Paul had brought up to her. ‘What the hell? I’m an American citizen, aren’t I?’
She had bounced so swiftly from sleep into indignant wakefulness that Paul could not help laughing.
‘Oh, darling! Does this mean war?’
‘I wish it did. And what’s all this about new regulations?’
‘That means, new since last night.’
‘What a racket!’ But she was now reading, with a frown, the letter which Paul himself had received. ‘Darling, this isn’t very good, is it? I mean, sending in a report about you?’
‘It’s not going to help much.’ Yet he was already weighing his freedom, shared with Frances, against a career which seemed to have come to a dreary halt anyway, and he could not feel too downcast. ‘Don’t forget, I’ll have my own story to tell. And we both want to leave, don’t we?’
‘I want to go anywhere with you.’
‘Then we ought to be drinking champagne.’
Downstairs, he found David and Nicole already up, and waiting for him in the sitting room. Champagne was not on the breakfast menu, but an early cup of coffee enlivened them all. Paul gave them both the letters to read, and Nicole was the first to react.
‘But Paul, how awful for her! To be pushed out like that.’
‘I don’t think she minds very much. Though as an American citizen she takes a pretty dim view of being called an Asian.’ He thought for a moment. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s not really true. She’s very proud of her Chinese ancestry. You ought to hear her some time. She’s Chinese-American, and that means the best of both worlds!’
‘She really is a gorgeous girl,’ said Nicole. ‘And sweet, too. Is this serious, though?’
‘Very serious.’
‘But Paul, that’s marvellous!’ Nicole, still an ardent member of the trade union, could be enthusiastic about other people’s marriages even at half-past seven in the morning. ‘I thought we’d never get you off!’
Well, thanks.’
‘You know what I mean.’
David, like Frances Hoy earlier, had been frowning over the letter from the Palace. ‘This could be pretty rough on you, Paul,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the sound of it at all.’
‘It’s wonderful, actually. It means we can both leave together.’
‘But that stuff about being dismissed in disgraceful circumstances.’
‘I’ll just have to sweat it out.’
There was a sound of skimming feet in the corridor, and Martha, her pigtail flying, her dressing gown streaming out behind her, rushed into the room.
‘Mummy, Mummy!’ she exclaimed. ‘A Chinese lady just came out of the bathroom!’
‘I know, dear.’
‘But Mummy!’
‘It’s just someone staying here. Now run along and get dressed.’
When Martha, still thunderstruck, had gone, David said: ‘I suppose you’ll have to leave today. She will, anyway. And if you want to go with her–’
‘There’s the noon plane to Johannesburg,’ said Paul. ‘I’m going to catch that if it kills me. After that, we can take the South African Airways flight to London. There’s one every night.’
‘You know, I think I’ll come with you,’ David said – and his own astonishment almost matched Nicole’s. ‘I’d like to tell your admiral what a good job you’ve done here, and try to spike all this nonsense. And I must talk to London myself.’