Three

 

Gotto would never have been an easy person for Jimmy to live with – there was too vast a difference between their temperaments – but after the visit to Indian Joe, the relations between them went from bad to worse.

It would have required a genius to have extracted much enjoyment out of Gotto’s company, but Jimmy had managed to put up with him, neither liking nor disliking him particularly, until now, when he found himself dodging him at meal times, hanging about in the shower to avoid eating with him, or remaining at the office until he was certain he was out of the way.

He even began to take a delight in indulging in pinpricks, taking a perverse pleasure in making a great show of setting off for his evenings with Stella; going out of his way to be as friendly as possible to Alf Momo and the black foremen when Gotto was around; organising his football team of small boys outside the bungalow at lunch time when he liked to doze and encouraging them to make as much noise as possible when the orange ball burst; deliberately describing Earnshaw as an African pioneer; trailing his coat all the time with every possible device, enjoying all the little things guaranteed to provoke Gotto to anger, knowing he was not mentally equipped to argue for long, so that he eventually retired hurt and unhappy into his shell. In his dislike, Jimmy began to enjoy even that.

It wasn’t hard to cause Gotto misery. He was desperate for company and conversation but he seemed to have quarrelled with everyone who might help him. Even Amadu was by now conducting a feud of his own so that Gotto could never get his washing done properly or on time. Every other day he was involved in some noisy argument with the house-boy that brought him almost to tears with rage and frustration.

“My washing” – the contest took place with monotonous regularity – “why haven’t I got any clean khaki?”

“Boss” – Amadu’s black face was all innocence – “you no’ lay ’um out.”

“It was on my bed when I left the bungalow this morning.”

“Boss, no.” Amadu was placidly insistent, his light voice flat and unworried, his face smooth in its contempt. “No see ’um, Boss.”

“Well, do it now then.”

“Boss” – Amadu was still infuriatingly untroubled about it all – “no can do. Amadu no got charcoal for hiron. All charcoal used this afternoon to hiron Boss Jimmy’s clothes. I no see yours. I catch charcoal tonight when I go to village.”

Gotto glared, certain he was listening to lies, then he waved Amadu away. As he disappeared, his bare feet slapping on the concrete floor, Gotto sank into a chair, mopping his face.

“Why don’t these black devils like me, Agnew?” he said wearily, his eyes anguished with defeat. “God, I try hard. They like that bastard Earnshaw, and look at the way he treats ’em. I can’t even get my washing done properly. Yet Earnshaw kicks them and swears at them and calls them niggers and they’d do anything for him. Why?”

His scowl grew deeper as he looked at Jimmy. “How is it,” he demanded angrily. “you can always get your washing done?”

“Try giving him a cigarette or two from time to time,” Jimmy suggested. “Cigarettes seem to be good for the eyesight. He never misses mine. It’s a sort of blackmail, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“It’s not just the cigarettes,” Gotto snapped. “It wouldn’t make any difference if I gave him hundreds.”

Jimmy paused before he replied. “OK,” he said slowly. “How about trying a little sweetness and light? That might help a bit.”

As Gotto stalked to his room, still clutching a towel round his loins, to put on the crumpled khaki of the night before, Jimmy stared after him, aware that the argument would have its repercussions in the working of the mine.

Like Earnshaw, he had now learned enough about Gotto to realise that no argument finished when the last word was spoken.

He was quite right. Immediately, there was a rash of incidents provoked by nothing more than Gotto’s spitefulness as he worked off his feelings against Amadu on the boys at the mine.

The only fisherman who dared to show his nose at the jetty was immediately seized by Sergeant Asimani on Gotto’s orders and hustled down to the calaboose in Amama Town, and a dispute in the workings led to a deputation of union officials, which ended in a blazing row. Within two days, Alf Momo had appeared at Jimmy’s side at the jetty with a complaint.

“Boss Jimmy,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “I work for Boss Twigg since I was a piccaninny. The war come, I work for the Air Force building runways. I work with good man, bad man, clever man, fool man, but I never see Africans treated like this. That Boss Gotto, he is no good.”

Jimmy wearily wiped the perspiration off his face with his hands. “You’re probably right at that, Alf,” he said.

“Boss, he is no good for Amama. He cause trouble. Boys no like him. He tell me ‘You lazy.’ He say ‘You spoil the mine!’ Boss, I am not lazy. I work hard for all the white bosses. Even Boss Gotto. I do not like him but I work hard. I wait for a long time before I complain. Now the time comes.”

“I know, I know, Alf.” Jimmy leaned heavily on the door of the station wagon, and offered a cigarette.

“Boss, I am not a clever man. I have not been to college and could not get big job in big mine like Ma-Imi or Marampa. But I have taught myself to read and other things. What I know here I have learned over many years. I am not always wrong.”

“Alf, I know that. You know I know it, don’t you?”

“Yes, Boss Jimmy. I do.”

“What do the union people think about it all?”

Momo frowned unhappily. “Boss Jimmy, union officials think they go to Freetown. They very displeased.”

“I see. Alf, can you call ’em off for a while?”

“Boss, I am not union official.”

“No, I know. But you’re Alfred Momo.”

Momo grinned, pleased at the implied compliment.

“Just for a bit, Alf.”

“OK, Boss Jimmy. I tell ’em.” Momo grinned again. “Boss Jimmy, other black boys blame you. They think you like him” – he used the word as an insult. “But I know. I do not blame you, Boss Jimmy.”

“Thanks, Alf. That’s nice to know.”

Jimmy felt a little overwhelmed. He had arrived in Sierra Leone to be a mining engineer and he was coping as psychiatrist, diplomatist and squire of Twigg’s responsibilities. “Listen, Alf,” he said. “I’ll talk to Boss Twigg. As soon as I get the chance. Just hold on a bit. He’s taking a long time to settle down. That’s all.”

“Plenty bad man, Boss,” Momo insisted.

“Not really, Alf. He’s sick, Alf. I’ll get rid of him somehow, though. I’ll tell Twigg. Honest I will.”

But as Momo disappeared, Jimmy remembered the plea for mercy he saw in Gotto’s eyes every time he was hurt or offended and he knew he never would.

 

Inevitably it was Earnshaw who first heard the rumours that the fishermen from King Tim were planning retaliation.

Earnshaw had sources of information that were denied even to Romney. In his hole-in-the-corner, catch-as-catch-can methods of business, it paid him to have his spies up and down the river at the various points where his boats put in with supplies, and it was through Suri, his coxswain, that he first heard the stories of revenge. There was a lot about Earnshaw that probably wouldn’t have stood up to investigation.

Everyone knew of the affair between him and Zaidee Soloman and why Suri waited late into the night on the veranda of her house. Everyone knew why the black Cadillac she drove for Indian Joe was parked under the cotton trees near Earnshaw’s bungalow after the sun had disappeared and that it was not Indian Joe who kept her in the expensive clothes she fancied.

Doubtless Earnshaw cheated at cards and was a congenital liar. Doubtless in his years of circling the earth he had forged cheques and seduced other men’s wives, but there was something about him which daily confirmed Jimmy’s first impression of him – that he knew where he was going and what he was talking about. No white man who lived and dressed as he did could have made a success of his life in Sierra Leone unless he did.

As he said to Jimmy: “I’ve poached pheasants in my time. I’ve poached salmon. I’ve poached blokes – agents outa Dakar and Casablanca up the coast during the war – and when I say the fishermen is after you, me old china, you can take it from me as the solid bar gold that they are. There’s no flies on me.”

“What’ll they do?”

“Rifle the bungalow and mizzle with your dough. That’s what Suri says, so keep your things locked up so the connivering bastards get the bare nixey.”

Jimmy duly locked up his treasures in one of the warped drawers and, in his growing dislike of Gotto, kept the information to himself until his conscience got the better of him and he passed it on. Gotto’s response to the news was immediate and typical.

“No blasted black man can get anything out of my bedroom when I’m sleeping there,” he said. “And they know it. They won’t come.”

But long after Jimmy had ceased worrying about them, they came silently in their canoes after dark and broke open the mine stores. Shadowy black figures, greased with palm oil, removed shovels, electric cable and spare parts for the lorries, most of them useless as loot, and carried them down to the canoes drawn up on the mud near the jetty.

Then they crept to the bungalow through the bush, their bodies glinting under the oil in the faint light of the stars that peeped past the palm fronds, and removed food from the kitchen and all of Amadu’s chickens from their hut at the back of the bungalow without a squawk. And finally they entered the bedrooms and made away with all the spare cash from the pockets of the trousers they found alongside the beds.

Gotto’s reaction was one of fury at the theft and despair that the hated black men could get into his room and disappear again without being seen. Immediately, thoughts of being murdered in his bed rushed through his mind as he dragged Jimmy along to Earnshaw to demand the loan of a gun.

Not unnaturally, Earnshaw refused.

“Think I am?” he demanded. “Who you going to shoot, anyway?”

“Those damned wogs the next time they get into the bungalow.”

“Don’t talk wet, old lad,” Earnshaw said calmly. “You’ll never see ’em long enough to get a shot at ’em – even if you see ’em at all.”

“You’re on their side!” Gotto’s anger burst out in a shout. “You have been all the time. You’re another blasted nigger-lover like Romney. I’m going straight down to Sergeant Asimani. I’ll get a guard.”

“Whyn’t you challenge ’em to a duel instead? Pistols for two and corffee for one. Or find the ringleader and beat each other to death with old banana skins?”

“That’s stopped his little gallop,” Earnshaw said to Jimmy as they watched Gotto drive away. “Catch me lending him a gun. He go and plug some bloke and then he be in real trouble. He might even knock you off one night, old lad, after you come back in the dark from your sprazzing at the Swannacks.”

Jimmy was glaring along the straight sunlit road after the car. “What the hell am I going to do with the clot?” he asked angrily. “The next thing we know the District Commissioner’ll hear about it and complain to Twigg. Then out goes Gotto. Even Twigg couldn’t turn a deaf ear to him. It’s all so stupid. They were doing no harm with their boats and Asimani’s bound to be on their side. He won’t stir himself much.”

“No, he won’t and when Master-mind cottons on to it, he’s going to waltz hisself down to the District Commissioner and then the fat’ll be in the fire anyway. He’s a bright ’erb, that DC, and he’d want to know what caused it all in the first place and then – napoo, out goes Gotto, and his ma’s in the workhouse or something and me and you is calling usselves names for doing it across her.”

 

When Jimmy and Earnshaw returned from the jetty at lunch time, they found all the labourers, digger-handlers and drivers outside the office in a ragged line that ballooned here and there and broke into groups of gesticulating men. There was quite a lot of noise and as they drew near they could hear an angry shouting that made Jimmy’s heart sink.

“Archie,” he said, as they made their way past the older men who squatted like frogs, under the trees, waiting with untroubled patience, accepting the uproar with the African’s bland indifference to time. “Something tells me he’s cracking that whip again.”

“He’s a right boy, ain’t he?” Earnshaw said wearily. “Every day he comes down here, brisk as a kipper, itching to spit in some bloke’s eye for his morning exercise.”

The crowd round the door opened to let them through and flooded after them, shouting indignantly. The noise inside the office was worse than it was outside. Protesting men were passing through in a line, Clerk Smith, his face contorted into a look of importance, searching them by patting their ragged shorts, in most cases the only garment they wore, while Gotto sat on the desk with a pad of paper, surrounded by cigarette butts.

“What the hell’s all this?” Jimmy asked.

“One of these black bastards pinched my money,” Gotto said, “so I’m giving ’em the once-over. That’s all. Simple enough.”

“And are the fools letting you?”

Gotto grinned, a hard, humourless grin. “They’ve got to. I’m giving them a note when they’ve finished. Without it they won’t draw their wages.”

Jimmy’s mouth dropped open. He spluttered for a while as his anger choked him, then he managed to burst out again. “Do you honestly think they’d be potty enough to bring your blasted money to work if they had pinched it? And, anyway, how will you identify it as yours?”

“There were some notes in my pocket,” Gotto said cheerfully. “If we find any notes on these bastards, I’ll want to know where he got ’em. I’ll whip him straight down to Asimani. They don’t get paid enough to carry notes around.”

“Have you found any yet?”

“No.”

“Nor will you. God, man, where would they hide it? Most of ’em only wear a pair of shorts.”

“I’ve read stories of black men in the diamond mines hiding diamonds up their backsides.”

Earnshaw, who was leaning on the window frame, bored, contemptuous and indifferent, gave a sudden dry laugh.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said loudly. “You got a smashing job there. You looking at every one?”

“No, Boss” – Clerk Smith looked up with an important frown – “black boys no like.”

Earnshaw nodded understandingly. “Perhaps they reckon their behinds is private,” he said.

Gotto was walking up and down now, softly beating one fist against the palm of the other. “They might think they’ve got the upper hand,” he said. “But they’ve not. An Englishman always wins the last battle.”

Earnshaw looked up once more. “We at war again?” he asked.

Gotto spared him an angry contemptuous glance and looked round at Jimmy. “You’ve got to lick ’em in a thing like this,” he announced. “Or you’ll never get ’em to do as they’re told.”

Jimmy sighed. “Is it all that important?” he asked. “God, man, there are always stoppages over some damn’ thing or other these days. It might interest you to know that Twigg’s noticed the output’s falling. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Who told you he’s noticed?”

“He asked me about it when he came up.”

“Why didn’t he ask me? Nobody asks me anything. And how did he find out?”

“He’s got eyes, mate,” Earnshaw said. “One each side of his nose.”

Gotto pointedly ignored him. “I wish you’d stop worrying about the output,” he said peevishly to Jimmy. “I’ve got everything under control. Nobody’s getting agitated but you lot.”

“Nobody but us lot and the nigs,” Earnshaw growled.

Gotto sneered. “I’ll soon sort them out. Never fear.”

“You ain’t been very successful up to press, old lad.”

“Don’t call me old lad,” Gotto snapped, the sweat standing out on his face at his anger.

“OK, old lad.”

Gotto glared. “Perhaps you can do better. How about having a go?”

“No, thanks, old lad. I’ll leave it to you. Besides, tomorrer, I’m off for a day or two to Freetown for me annual constitutional before the rains come. My advice is play ball with the nigs and your troubles are over. These chaps in Sierra Leone are a matey lot if you don’t muck ’em about. Why not try and be pally with ’em?”

“Pally? With a lot of Africans? You can be if you like.”

Earnshaw looked up at Gotto under a dusty grey eyebrow. “I am, mate. And I don’t get no trouble. And them fishermen are a decent lot, if you treat ’em right.”

“You think it was the fishermen?”

“Course it was.”

“Right,” Gotto turned to Clerk Smith. “You can let the rest go. I’ll get Asimani in on this. I’ll go through that bloody village at King Tim again – with a tooth comb.”

Jimmy watched him walk away from the office and start his car. Earnshaw had sat down at the desk.

“Lemme out, lemme out,” he was croaking in a dry dusty voice that sounded as though it had been dug out of a coffin. “It gets more like a mad-house every day. I wish somebody back home in London would decide he needs him in England.” He lifted his head. “It can’t be long, old lad, can it, before he goes?”

Jimmy was still staring through the door. “Archie,” he said. “He’s heading for Amama Town. He’s gone for Sargy Asimani.”

Earnshaw clasped his hands to his dusty hair in mock horror. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “And I sent him. What I gone and done now?”