Two

 

His head buzzing as much from the implied warnings about Gotto as from Twigg’s last-minute instructions, Jimmy felt vaguely let down.

For two days, from the scraps of conversation he had heard, the odd impressions and opinions he had gleaned from other people, he had been building up a mental picture of him quite out of proportion to the real thing. This weedy yellow young man with his pale hair and eyes and his bony nose, and the ill-fitting bush jacket that hung on his skinny body, was far removed from the swart-browed, ugly-tempered individual he had expected.

In point of fact, Gotto seemed tediously dull and boringly ordinary. He was long-windedly talkative about trivialities and awkwardly laconic about everything else.

He drove Jimmy up the dusty road to the bungalow they were to share close to the Amama mine, his eyes fixed on the red ribbon cut out of the mangroves, his attitude one of nervous affability.

“You any good at cricket?” he asked, as they reached the top of the hill where the bush started abruptly with the firm soil, and Jimmy cast him a trapped look over his shoulder.

Oh, God, he thought. Another one!

He decided to be honest this time, even if it ruined his career. Honesty, even in disfavour, seemed better than the nightly bouts of cricket Twigg was reputed to inflict on the juniors at Ma-Imi.

“Not very,” he admitted with an apologetic smile.

“Well, that’s all right,” Gotto said with obvious relief. “I got sick of hearing cricket down at Ma-Imi.” He leaned back in his seat, apparently satisfied to have settled a long-standing worry, and stared ahead again where the dying sun drew long straight shadows across the ground from the base of the palms and the eucalyptus trees. Without waiting for him to continue, Jimmy took it upon himself to ask the obvious first questions that would break the ice.

“Been out here long?” he began.

“Nearly finished my time. I was mostly at Ma-Imi.” Gotto gave him a sidelong smile and, remembering Twigg’s obvious pleasure at getting rid of him, Jimmy found himself wondering what was wrong with him. He seemed depressingly unexciting and so excruciatingly ordinary that Jimmy was quite certain he’d seen him somewhere before. He wore provincial England on him like a stiff Sunday suit.

“I’ve fixed it with the houseboy for you to have the room on the river side of the bungalow,” he was saying. “That’s the best side. It gets less sun and it’s cooler – or rather, it’s not so hot. He’ll have moved my stuff out by the time we get back.”

“Don’t let me take your room,” Jimmy protested.

“That’s all right,” Gotto said quickly. “I don’t mind. Trying to make you comfortable, that’s all. You can keep my drawers. They stick a bit but they’re bigger than the others. It’s a nice room,” he went on eagerly, obviously more than anxious to be friendly. “As nice as you can get in this hole, anyway. The bush doesn’t come so close on that side so you don’t hear the frogs and crickets and you don’t get so much wild life – bugs and things.”

“It’s jolly decent of you to move out,” Jimmy said, as willing as Gotto to be co-operative – especially in view of the assorted warnings he’d received during the past two days.

“I’ve got bags of khaki you can borrow if you’re short,” Gotto went on. “And I’ve got a camera you can have if you’ve not got one. I’ve taken a lot of pictures myself – to show the people back home. Girls, you know. They’ll never believe how little they wear and the village girls will always pose for you – without clothes if you give ’em a couple of bob. I’ve got quite a collection. I’ll show ’em to you some time if you like.”

Jimmy smiled feebly and decided to change the subject.

“Do this job back home?” he asked.

“Yes. Lincolnshire. At least, that’s where I worked before I came to this dump.”

“My old man’s in this line in Lincolnshire. He helped me get this job. Experience, you know, before I go into the family outfit. I suppose you decided to have a look round the world, too?”

“Not really. Got fed up hanging about.”

“Hanging about?”

Gotto gave him a sad sidelong smile, and stroked his large nose in an involuntary effort to hide it that drew Jimmy’s attention to it immediately. “Got the push,” he said. “The manager had his knife into me. Like the chap where I worked opencast coal. Staff alterations, they called it, but it was the sack all the same.”

“Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “Didn’t you fancy coming out here, then?”

“Nowhere else.”

“What about Northamptonshire?”

“I went from Northamptonshire to Lincolnshire.”

Jimmy was on the point of asking why when it occurred to him that Gotto had probably got the push from there, too, and that Africa was the last chapter in a long history of sudden changes, and the conversation halted once more as he sought a change of subject. “You married?” he asked at last.

Gotto’s bony face brightened for the first time and his expression softened almost to wistfulness. It was a sudden warm shyness that fleetingly transformed his features, and he seemed to get his teeth into the conversation at last, as though the trivialities of home towns were desperately important to him. He seemed to be grasping for something familiar in a strange land.

“Not yet,” he said with a smile. “But I’m engaged – or nearly.” His eyes still on the road, he fished one-handed in the breast pocket of his bush jacket and produced a photograph case containing the conventional snapshot of a girl against a garden wall.

“That’s my girl. Doris is her name.”

Jimmy affected to be interested and Gotto went on enthusiastically.

“You married?” he asked, tucking the case back again.

“No.” Jimmy grinned. “But all my old girlfriends promised to write. They all swore they’d try and miss me.”

“All? How many have you got?”

“There must be at least six of ’em jockeying for position.”

“Six!” The expression on Gotto’s face was suddenly one of resentment. “You ought to have been born with a nose like mine. They don’t jockey round me much.”

Jimmy smiled. “What’s this Swannack girl like?” he asked.

“I’ve got an invite round there tomorrow. I expect it includes you too.” Gotto spoke as if it were a triumph of diplomacy on his part, though having met Mrs Swannack, Jimmy was quite certain it wasn’t.

Gotto looked over his shoulder, beginning to show something like warmth again. “Stella’s her name. She’s nineteen.”

“Bit young.”

“They’re best young. When they get older, they start talking to you as though you don’t know the score. Nineteen’s a nice age. I’m looking forward to meeting her. Doris is nineteen.” Gotto mopped his moist face with the handkerchief that lay on his lap as he drove. “Pity there’s nowhere to take a girl round here,” he concluded, the resentful tone returning to his voice.

“There’s shooting, I’m told–”

“Catch me carrying a rifle round all day in this heat!”

“Well, fishing then–”

“From a wog canoe?”

“Well, there’s a beach not far away, isn’t there?”

“Get jigger worms in your toes if you run round without shoes on out here. You’ll soon find out. I’ve had a bit.”

“Well–” Jimmy was still wondering what it was about Gotto that so upset everyone and had privately arrived at the conclusion that the only effect he could possibly have on anyone would be a slow death from boredom. “Well–” he said again – ‘Earnshaw’s offered to take me in one of his boats up the creeks after crocodiles.”

“Earnshaw!’ Gotto laughed sarcastically. The sky was beginning to turn jade green now as the sun began to sink but his eyes were as blank as marbles and his face showed no sign of interest.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jimmy asked the question cautiously. In spite of Earnshaw’s obvious immorality and the fact that he was none too clean and probably not very honest, he had taken rather a liking to his spicy conversation and his sly, croaking voice.

“Well–” Gotto made his reply slowly. “That gramophone of his for a start. And ‘Old lad’ this and ‘Old lad’ that. And he obviously doesn’t wash very often. He’s got a woman in tow – that Zaidee–”

“One of coffee, two of milk.”

“That’s her. And he’s friendly with the Syrians. He gambles with his crews. He – well, he sets a pretty low sort of example, that’s all, and you can’t get on out here when you’re familiar with the Africans.”

“Oh, can’t you?” It had seemed to Jimmy that Earnshaw’s relations with his crews were very good, despite his insults and familiarity.

“Funny thing–” Gotto looked puzzled – “he seems to get on with the Swannacks. He often goes up there. They asked me once when I was up with Jarvis. They didn’t rush to ask me again. Not till now and they couldn’t very well avoid it this time. Everybody’ll be there.”

 

Gotto stopped the car at the little bungalow and when Earnshaw arrived in a lorry shortly afterwards, he began to direct the off-loading of supplies, shouting orders in a harsh high voice that seemed like a whiplash to the black boys who were scurrying in and out of the bungalow with boxes and cases.

Earnshaw watched him for a while, his hands in the pockets of his dirty shorts, his eyes heavy and disinterested. Then he glanced at Jimmy and saw the startled expression on his face.

“’Ot, ain’t it?” he asked.

“Gets hotter,” Jimmy replied and Earnshaw grinned.

“Makes you wonder if you hadn’t best stayed at home,” he observed. “Me, I coulda taken over the old man’s business but I couldn’t see meself behind a counter. He was a herbalist. Sarsaparilla and hot drinks. ’Ead and neuralgia ’erbs. Backache and kidney stuff. All the nonsense. The war finished him.”

“A bomb?” Jimmy asked, squinting into the glare of the sun.

“No, old lad.” Earnshaw gave his slow tired smile. “Tobacco shortage. He find they was coming for his herbs to fill their pipes with.”

As he finished speaking, he halted one of the Africans hurrying from the bungalow towards the lorry for the last of Jimmy’s baggage.

“This here is Amadu Komorra, your boy,” he said over his shoulder. “Biggest liar, biggest thief in Amama. Aintcha, Amadu, old cock?”

The black man’s face split in a wide grin as he stared back at Earnshaw’s bored blank face.

“No, sah. Not Amadu, sah.”

“Go on, you bloody old rogue. Who pinches the sugar and tea to give to the mammies? Who bribes the girls with flour?”

“Not Amadu, sah.”

“I’ve seed you with me own eyes. Keep ’alf the blackies in Amama with what you swipe, dontcha? Who used to tell Boss Jarvis his clothes was all wore out and then took ’em up town and flogged ’em to his pals?”

“Not me, sah. Not Amadu.”

The black man was wriggling with delighted embarrassment.

“You want to watch him, old lad,” Earnshaw said to Jimmy, cocking a thumb in the direction of the African. “He pinch the smell of a goat if he could.”

“No boss.” Amadu crowed with mirth. “Not me, boss.”

“Why, you’re the biggest rogue, mammy-chaser and wangler in the whole of Amama. You know you are. What are you?”

“Boss” – Amadu almost collapsed with merriment – “I de biggest rogue, mammy-chaser and wangler in de whole Amama.”

“That’s right,” Earnshaw agreed. “Glad you know it. Watch him, old lad, or you’ve had it. He’s pretty smart for a darkey.”

Amadu’s grin faded as Gotto reappeared.

“OK,” he was told brusquely. “Get moving! What about a meal?”

“Yessah, boss! I get!” Amadu hurried nervously away and Gotto stared after him, his eyes narrow and suspicious.

“Brassy-faced little swine, that,” he commented. “Too much cheek for an African.”

As he disappeared inside the bungalow again, Earnshaw turned towards Jimmy and shook hands solemnly.

“Goodbye, old lad,” he said heavily. “Enjoy yourself. I’ll see you get a decent burial.”

“I heard the mortality was high out here.” Jimmy was peering into the bungalow, his eyes puzzled.

“It got ’igher since His Lordship arrived,” Earnshaw commented.

 

Jimmy closed the last of his suitcases and, kicking it out of his way, turned towards a damp-warped chest of drawers in the corner of his bedroom.

 

Gotto was lounging on the bed and as Jimmy turned, a pile of clothes in his hand, he sat up. The conversation had found its way round to work and Gotto was suddenly animated in an aggressive, eager way.

“Listen,” he was saying as he explained his plans. “I don’t know about you, but this job here means a lot to me. A damned lot. I’ve sent a message to Amama Town where the shift boss lives. I’ve told him to meet us at the office first thing on Monday morning. We’ll talk this lot over with him, tell him we expect him to pull with us, let him know straight away just where he stands. What say?’

“Good!” Jimmy slapped the clothes into a drawer and pushed it to with a squeak of tortured woodwork.

“After all, he’s only an African. He’s got to be told. They’re loyal enough if you let ’em see you’re not standing any damn’ nonsense.” Gotto paused to let his opinion sink in before continuing. “I’ve got to make a good show of this place,” he said. “I’ve a mother to keep. She can’t do much for herself and she’s dependent on me absolutely. Got a bad heart. Makes her a bit difficult at times. You see,” he went on with a trace of spite in his voice. “My old man didn’t own some firm I could take over when I left school.”

Jimmy hurried past the complaint before it developed further. “I’ll back you up,” he said, thankful that at least Gotto wasn’t going to demand that he play cricket and prepared to overlook the threadbareness of his personality because of it.

‘Well, it’s nice to know you’re not just the Ma-Imi type,” Gotto went on. “They called me Snotty Gotty down there. Did you know?”

Jimmy gave him an embarrassed smile and said he didn’t.

“Oh, yes. They thought I didn’t know but I did. They never got on with me. Never even tried. They sent me up here to get me out of the way.” Gotto seemed to take a queer delight in his isolation.

“Anyway, I’m with you, whatever you do. Listen–” Jimmy closed the last twisted drawer on his clothes with an effort that brought beads of sweat to his face – “let’s go and sit on the veranda and talk, shall we? It’ll be cooler there than in here.”

Gotto sat bolt upright against the bare concrete wall. “Outside?” he said. “It’ll soon be dark.”

“I know. I like sunsets, don’t you?”

Gotto’s look seemed to suggest he was mad and then it changed abruptly to a smile.

“Yes,” he said quickly. “I do. That is, I suppose I do. Never particularly noticed them, to tell you the truth. Always too busy trying to find something to do.”

They moved out on to the veranda, through the stifling little bungalow with its characterless company-issue furniture and its native cloth curtains, its carved canoe-paddle wall decoration, its African leather pouf and the drum that was used as an occasional table.

The palms in the distance were blue and velvety by this time and the sun, just disappearing behind the hills, was a bright golden orange in a sky of pale green and salmon pink. They could hear the honk of a hornbill in the distance and, pulling up a chair, Jimmy caught the first cricket’s cheep.

As they sat down, a figure in white rose from the side of the veranda and appeared in front of them, suddenly and unexpectedly, and Jimmy noticed that Gotto jumped nervously.

“What do you want, you fool, coming up like that?” he demanded sharply.

“Sah!” The African grinned, his face slit across with a water-melon slice of white teeth, and Jimmy caught a glint of spectacles. “Jus’ me. Clerical Officer Smith.”

“Clerical Officer, my Aunt Fanny,” Gotto said in a high thin voice that sounded like jangled nerves. “You’re just a bloody pen pusher.”

“Thass right, boss, sah.” The African beamed at Jimmy. “Chief bloody pen pusher. Clerical Officer Joseph Windsor Buckingham Smith, sah. I read. I write. I type better dan de Queen England. I come greet de new boss, sah. Fo’ de African people I greet you, boss. Fo’ dese po’ black folk, dese uneducated black trash with no reading, no writing, no civilisation.”

“Thank you very much, Mr Smith.”

“I work hard fo’ you, boss,” Smith continued, the slash of his white teeth dividing his black face into two halves. “I de best clerical officer in all de worl’. Any black boy give you cheek I kick him backside one-time, all-same de police.”

Gotto interrupted the flow of self-esteem with an irritated wave of his hand. “OK. You’ve said your piece. Now shove off. And don’t come here again at night, savvy?”

“I savvy, boss.” Smith gave him a nervous flickering glance and turned again to Jimmy. “I come greet fo’ de African people. Dass all. Boss, you like dis Africa country?”

“Tell you better in a week or two.”

Gotto gestured again, more angrily. “Go on, hop it,” he said.

“OK, sah, I go now.” Smith looked once more at Jimmy. “I see you in de mornings, sah. I yo’ clerk. I polish yo’ desk. I spit on yo’ chair and polish wit’ de handkerchief. Make smoot’ for yo’ backside. I read, sah. I write. I type better dan de Queen England. Goo’ night, boss.”

As he disappeared, merging abruptly into the swiftly growing dusk, Gotto stared after him. “Too smooth, that Smith,” he said. “Clerical officer my eye. Just reads enough and writes enough to he useful. Recruited round here. Twigg picked him. The educated Africans won’t have this joint. Too quiet. And I can’t say I blame ’em.”

It was now almost dark and there was a chorus round them of sounds. To the bark of the frogs and the cheep of the crickets, an all-enveloping chorus that seemed to have surrounded them suddenly, without any beginning, was added the sharp whine of a mosquito, and Gotto flapped angrily.

“Blasted things. Malarial. Pick it up from the natives.” He slapped at his wrist and stared at the smeared insect with an expression that was a mixture of disgust and indignation.

“Look,” Jimmy said hastily. “How about a shower and a trip in the car up to the town?”

Gotto turned abruptly, his eyes startled. “A trip up to the town? That’s not a town. It’s a collection of scruffy huts. There are no bright lights,” he said pityingly. “This is Africa. Not the West End.”

He was obviously reluctant and Jimmy put it down to a desire to remain at home and work at nights.

“I’m not proposing to make a habit of it,” he pointed out quickly. “It’s just that I’d like to see it before I start work. That’s all.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. It’s just that it’s dark. Nothing to see.”

“If you’ve got something else to do, I’ll go on my own. But I’d like to know what it’s like and where I am.”

Gotto stared at him, then again his face broke into a hesitant smile.

“Oh, well,” he said. “I suppose you might. All right,” he added. ‘I’ll drive you up. Let’s go and visit the illuminations. I’m not staying here on my own again.”

 

Dark masses of giant cotton trees hung over the highway that ran through Amama Town, shutting out the tremendous African moon and making the road a chequerboard of blacks and silver-whites. Beyond the cotton trees, the great dry leaves of the palms rustled in the hot wind and beyond them the sky, slashed by the curving boles of trees, was pricked by starlight.

The mud and wattle huts huddled among the banana plants were thrown out here and there in silhouette by the yellow light of an oil lamp or the glare of a fire, and what few stone buildings there were picked up the moonlight on their whitewashed fronts and tossed it back nakedly. The aromatic air was heavy with the smell of wood smoke and vegetation, that exciting smell of Africa that Jimmy had noticed as soon as they had turned into Amama Creek.

In front of a hut near the roadway, a couple of women sat, still prepared to sell mangoes or bananas to all comers from the calabashes on the ground before them and, in the open doorway of a wood and tin dwelling, a tailor crouched over an ancient treadle sewing machine by the light of a kerosene lamp held by his wife.

From among the shadows at the rear came the murmur of African voices and the monotonous plink-plonk of a single-octave tune on an instrument made from a tin box – in splinters of broken sound as though the melody had been dropped and shattered to fragments. And like a bass accompaniment, across the still hot air the thump of a Bundu drum beat through the crowded trees that flattened the sound to the steady throb of a pulse.

“Those blasted tomtoms,” Gotto said as he drove. “Always at it. They get to be a part of the landscape.”

He halted the car as they entered Amama Town – given the title out of courtesy because of the half-dozen two-storeyed buildings in its centre and the few stone dwellings along the roadside.

“Well, here you are,” he said with a snigger. “Gay, isn’t it? Full of night life. What say?”

Beyond the small group of stone buildings, Jimmy could see more clusters of native huts in the darkness but it was really the flickering lights inside them and the number of people about the road that indicated a community, for even here the cotton trees clustered thickly along the edge of the bush and the place was jetty with shadow.

Gotto indicated a couple of naphtha flares that set the foliage glowing greenly outside a brick and wood building just ahead of them, next door to the home of an artisan that showed its Edwardian bric-a-brac and black-skinned portraits in a glow of pride under the light of an oil lamp.

“Amama’s Café Continental,” he said. “Indian Joe’s Bar.”

The whitewashed store alongside had its shutters in place and looked more like a lock-up garage than a shop.

The three or four Africans who sat on the steps at the front with bottles in their hands were delightedly watching an argument that was going on over the counter inside the drab little den, a mere hole in the wall peopled by drinkers with black faces which somehow with the arrival of darkness looked vaguely sinister.

“How about a drink?” Jimmy asked, greedy for the lights.

“They’re all Africans,” Gotto said.

“Well, does it matter? There’s no colour bar.”

“Ought not to drink with Africans. Damned important. Colour bar or no colour bar. Besides, I don’t want foot and mouth disease. They drink out of the same glasses.”

Gotto seemed to fidget with uneasiness. “Look, we ought not to be up here at night at all. I never trust these devils after dark.”

He tossed a hand in front of him nervously. “Momo lives down there somewhere. The shift boss.”

“Yes, I heard about Momo. They said he was pretty hot stuff.”

Gotto turned in his seat and in the weak glow of the dashboard light, Jimmy could see he was smiling. “So they got you, did they?” he said. “They tried to give me that yarn. ‘Nothing you know that he doesn’t know,’ they said. ‘Get him to help you.’ Help me! My God! I went to mining school back in England, which is something Mr Momo didn’t do. What did they tell you about the rest of ’em up here? – the native labour, I mean.”

“Much the same,” Jimmy said doubtfully.

“They smell,” Gotto’s comment was vehement. “Like all Africans. I suppose they did their song and dance act about Amama, too?”

“Song and dance act?”

“You know – how marvellous it is and all that. They’re always preaching it, Twigg and that crew. They told me it was a clean, pretty place. It’s pretty scruffy if you ask me.” Gotto sniggered again in a curiously high-pitched way and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. “Like all the rest. Empty tin cans. Dirt. Half-starved dogs and pigs that look like greyhounds. Scrawny chickens. And always a kid asking you if you want jig-jig with his sister.”

The list of dislikes was in danger of becoming a jeremiad.

“Look,” Gotto said in conclusion. “I can’t say I like this damn’ place very much at night. Never did. Let’s shove off. What say?”

“Shove off?” Jimmy felt flattened, his excitement at all the new sights and sounds and scents withered. It was hard for enthusiasm to flower in the face of such bitter opposition.

Gotto was already fiddling with the starter. “Let’s get back to the bungalow,” he said, his manner growing suddenly warmer, as though he had suddenly become aware of his boorishness and was trying to make amends for it.

“We can have a drink there. More cosy than in that bar. What say? We can talk about the mine better, too. Look,” he went on in a flooding affability that screamed out loud of loneliness, “when I heard you were coming up, I got a bottle of scotch in. Let’s go and make a hole in it. We ought to celebrate. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to get on well together.”