Outside the New Moon Cabaret Café, at two o’clock in the morning, the winking neon cast regular patterns of light and shade on the ranks of parked bicycles, and on the relatively few cars that stood between the night-club and the waterfront. Across the lagoon gleamed the still brighter lights of the Marina. For the most part the well-to-do preferred the places that had sprung up there, on the island, or the clubs well outside the city on the Ibadan road. In this quarter things were noisier, more vigorous, more frequently violent, the prostitution more blatant, the criminals more petty and more conspicuous. The opposition newspapers campaigned, on and off, for a clean-up, but this was generally recognized as a formal exercise in piety.
Andrew, who was half drunk, parked the car with exaggerated care, and waited for Abonitu to come round and let him out. The car was the Nigra Master, the smaller of the two models of the Nigerian-produced saloon, and of extremely flimsy construction. He had wrenched off the inside door handle on the driver’s side some days previously and had not yet got round to replacing it. He could have wound down the window but it seemed simpler to leave things to Abonitu.
Inside the Fervid Four were beating out their usual brand of Dixieland. The combination was drums, two trumpets, and electrically amplified piano, and even without microphones the effect would have been savage in a room as small as this. The microphones, in fact, were working very efficiently. Andrew and Abonitu made for a table in the corner furthest from the music. The waiter, a scar-faced Dutchman, reached it as soon as they did.
‘Brandies,’ Andrew said. ‘Two, and large.’
A couple of girls moved towards the table as the waiter left it; the blonde headed for Abonitu, the Negress for Andrew. He knew her slightly. Her name was Suzie for the purposes of her present life, and she was from the North – a Hausa and a Moslem. She came of quite a good family, and had been cast off for immorality. She was shrewd and intelligent, and although she had no great physical appeal for him he usually enjoyed her company. At present he was not in the mood for it.
‘You treating tonight, Andy boss?’ she asked him.
He pushed a note across the table. ‘Go and buy yourself one, Suzie. We’re two tired men.’
‘That’s when you need the woman’s touch.’
He shook his head. ‘Tomorrow night, maybe.’
She grinned and left them, taking the blonde with her. The waiter brought their drinks over – service was prompt here – and Andrew rattled the ice in his glass.
‘The Albert Hall, Abo,’ he said, ‘coupled with the Albert Memorial.’
Abonitu raised his glass solemnly. They had already toasted that night the Houses of Parliament, the Lyon’s Corner House at Tottenham Court Road, Nelson’s Column, the Chelsea Flower Show, the British Museum Reading Room, the King’s Road, Admiralty Arch, the Samuel Whitbread, Peter Pan’s statue, the Imperial War Museum, and Selfridges. The joke seemed less and less funny, but Andrew continued with it compulsively.
‘Handel’s Water Music turned to ice,’ Andrew said. ‘The Prince Consort’s fingers frozen to his copy of the Exhibition Catalogue.’
Abonitu said: ‘I remember going to a Promenade Concert.’
‘They were déclassé in my circle.’
‘I walked across Hyde Park in a daze afterwards. The music, the excitement …’
‘The fellowship of the arts,’ Andrew said. ‘And no colour bar.’
Abonitu smiled. ‘I worked that out, too. I do not deceive myself much, Andrew.’
‘Then you should acquire the habit. Man, you’ll never be happy without it.’
‘Physician, heal thyself.’
‘I’m winning,’ Andrew said. ‘One has one’s setbacks, but I’m winning.’
‘By drinking too much. You make it hard on your friends. Must I get cirrhosis to solve your emotional problems?’
‘Do you know a better solution?’
Abonitu stared at him solemnly for a moment. ‘I have found one,’ he said. ‘In vino solvandum est. Is that good Latin?’
‘It would fool me. Come up with your solution, and let us expose it to the night air.’
The noise of the jazz had been forcing them to speak quite loudly. Now as the number reached its crescendo and cut off there was comparative quiet. Abonitu’s voice sounded very loud:
‘Have you heard about …’
He stopped speaking and looked foolish. Andrew said:
‘About what?’
In a much quieter voice, Abonitu went on: ‘About the expedition?’
‘No,’ Andrew said. He drank more brandy. ‘Not that I recall.’
‘Tessili told me.’ Tessili was Abonitu’s uncle, Minister of Finance in the present Government. ‘It’s a hush-hush business, Andrew.’
‘They always are.’
‘No, this one really is. There could be trouble if it got out.’ He smiled wryly. ‘My entire family kicked out of their jobs at least. Their friends also.’
‘A good point. Perhaps you’d better keep it to yourself.’
‘No. I must explain to you the solution. We run the same risks, anyway, and for you the penalty would be heavier. You know that no governing authority exists in Europe north of the Mediterranean?’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘But the Council of African States has garrisons in two ports.’
‘Genoa and St Nazaire. I see the point in Genoa.’
‘St Nazaire is the most northerly port that is likely to remain relatively free of ice in winter. It offers the only year-round point of entry for northern Europe.’
His head was fuzzy with drink, and beginning to ache from that and the empested atmosphere. The piano had begun to play again, quite softly, without the amplification. There was a little clapping, and some shouts of encouragement. The Cheltenham Trio were coming on. They were the speciality of the house, three red-headed European girls who stripped each other in a long-drawn routine involving both fighting and fondling. Despite the name, only one of them was English. Only one was a genuine red-head; the other two were dyed.
‘Why northern Europe,’ Andrew said, ‘why in God’s name northern Europe? Who wants a point of entry to a cemetery?’
‘There are enough reasons. The base is worth keeping. Eventually, when we have more resources, we may be able to do something there.’
‘The War comes first. Don’t forget the War.’
‘One must take a longer view,’ Abonitu said seriously. ‘But, to come back to these ports: they are controlled by the Council, and they control Europe. It will be difficult for any individual country to make a claim outside the Council. The operation and the responsibility are joint, and will remain so.’
‘Until you fall out.’
‘Not you, we.’ He smiled. ‘Remember you are an African now, Andrew. I do not think we will fall out over Europe, even when the South African problem has been settled. It would not be worth it. Europe will stay under joint administration. But the British Isles – are they part of Europe?’
‘We never did settle that question. I beg your pardon: they never did. It’s a bit late now.’
‘It is important,’ Abonitu insisted. ‘The ports represent a claim on continental Europe, but there is no foothold in Britain. There has been no sovereignty there since the Government left the country.’
‘Pack-ice all round the coast – five miles of it in places.’
‘Exactly. But, as I have said, one requires to take the long view. And it is being taken, in more than one quarter.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Ghana is preparing an expedition to England next year. They hope to find a southern port ice-free in late April or May. It is believed that there will be a competitive expedition from Egypt. There are even rumours of an expedition from South Africa, though that seems unlikely.’
‘But you can’t hold a base there.’
‘That remains to be seen. We know very little of the conditions. There are ways in which the difficulties may have lessened.’
‘The natives, you mean, will have killed each other off? I suppose you’re right. I take it what you are driving at is that Nigeria plans to join in the race to plant the flag. Let’s hope the various expeditions don’t get too tangled up.’
‘The difference,’ Abonitu said, ‘is that the others are planning for the late spring. We are going now, in winter.’
‘Across that pack-ice? Or by air? You couldn’t risk those landing fields with ordinary planes. Helicopters?’
‘There is an impermanence about air expeditions. There would be many difficulties. We have another possibility.’
The smallest of the red-heads, while one of the others gripped her hands behind her back, was using her teeth to pull articles of clothing off the third. The Africans near the front were making cries of excitement and encouragement that drowned the piano. Andrew’s head was throbbing heavily now.
‘Britain,’ Abonitu said, ‘had the world’s only Hovercraft squadron.’
Andrew remembered the headlines; the squadron had been stationed in the south, outside the Pale, and their Commander had taken them out of the country in advance of the break-up. They had headed for Ghana, but there had been some trouble there and they had come on to Nigeria. The story of the trek had been blazoned for a short time, and then dropped.
‘They would never make it,’ Andrew said. ‘God knows how they got here in the first place. You can’t launch a five-thousand-mile expedition with twelve Hovercraft.’
‘Eleven,’ Abonitu said. ‘One of them cannot be salvaged. But not five thousand miles. A few hundred only. They will be shipped to St Nazaire. After that there is only Brittany and the Channel.’
‘St Nazaire is under joint control. Aren’t the representatives of the other states going to object?’
‘If they had warning, there might be objections. But by the time they can think of objections the expedition will be well out of the joint control area. They can wrangle then, but it will be too late to do anything.’
‘Fuel? Food? I doubt if they could carry both.’
‘Not so much fuel. Enough to reach Southampton. We have information of a fuel dump there which was never used: things collapsed too quickly in that part. They can carry enough food for two months. After that the idea will be to pick supplies up from a ship which will get as far north as there is open water.’
‘It sounds risky.’
‘Yes. Will you go, Andrew?’
‘In what capacity?’
‘An expedition needs documentation. I am quite a good camera-man. You will pass as one, with my help. And my uncle is the Minister of Finance. I think it can be arranged.’
Andrew was silent. He felt suddenly sober, and torn between excitement and despair: it was possible, it was fantastic, and it could lead to nothing. His eyes smarted. In the centre circle two of the girls were in mock-battle with the third, one sprawled on the floor clutching her feet, the other locking her arms and tearing at what was left of her clothes.
‘We will make a documentary,’ Abonitu said. ‘Think of it. Black and white for the streets festooned with ice, weighted down with snow. And colour for the sunsets, the dying crimson glow over the frozen Thames. And a story, perhaps. You will find your lost love in the land of eternal winter.’
Andrew stared at him, blinking his eyes. ‘Can you do it?’
Abonitu nodded his head. ‘I can do it.’
‘We’ll drink to it, then.’ He picked up his glass. ‘Except that we seem to be out of drink.’
‘We can fix that, too,’ Abonitu said.
He flicked a finger, and the waiter came towards them at the trot.
The hangover with which Andrew woke the following morning was not the worst he could remember, but it was bad enough. He took four codeine tablets and made himself black coffee. He was drinking this when the telephone rang. It was Abonitu.
‘The idea I suggested last night,’ he said. ‘What do you think of it now?’
‘In the first place,’ Andrew said, ‘nothing planned by Nigerians is likely even to get off the ground. If it does, I can think of a dozen or more ways in which it’s likely to crack up. The whole thing will be a fiasco. We would be risking our necks to no purpose at all. The city of your dreams is dead, Abo, and probably Madeleine is, too. If she isn’t, I could never hope to find her in that wilderness.’
‘Yes,’ Abonitu said. ‘I thought of all this, too.’ He paused. ‘Afterwards I saw my uncle, and fixed things. We leave for St Nazaire in two weeks. Is that O.K.?’
‘Yes,’ Andrew said wearily. ‘That’s O.K.’