It was good, thought Andrew Macmillan, to be back home in Gamate. The shabby old Residency had never felt more comfortable, more private, more welcoming.
If London – sixty hours away – had seemed strange and lonely, Macmillan had found Government House at Port Victoria stranger still, as he always did. There was something about the GH gang that had seemed twenty times removed from reality … He had whipped through it with the minimum of delay, side-stepping a scheduled dinner party, forgoing a night at the ‘Bristol’, even though he had felt, on landing, desperately tired and strained. A long session with the Governor, an exchange of greetings with that odd character Aidan Purves-Brownrigg, a word with that hearteningly pretty girl Nicole Steuart – and he had climbed aboard the evening train and straightway fallen asleep. Now, after fourteen hot, harassed, and dusty hours in the wooden coach, he was home at last.
He sat at ease on the Residency’s wide, cool stoep, his feet on a second chair, his old clothes – khaki slacks, khaki shirt, frayed canvas shoes – feeling like the only uniform he would ever care to wear. The Residency, set on a hillside overlooking Gamate, commanded a superb view: the town itself sprawled untidily over its two valleys, with a slow cloud of smoke and dust drifting across it; but beyond were fifty miles of pleasant green plain, and beyond that the encroaching bush, and the purple foothills of the U-Maula country.
Here, two hundred miles north of Port Victoria, at the end of the rickety, single-line railway, here was absolute peace, absolute simplicity; here was Macmillan’s own kingdom, benignly ruled, benignly enjoyed: here all problems were safely within his own hands, all doubts resolved by his own will and strength.
He sighed, stretched, crossed his feet, sipped his coffee. The sun slipped a little lower in the sky, lengthening the shadows in the Residency garden, turning to dusty gold all the grass-thatched roofs of all the hundreds of huts within his view. Beyond the fly-screen, insects crawled and buzzed. Presently, gratefully, Andrew Macmillan slept.
He was awakened by the shuffling of feet on the worn boards of the stoep. Halfway between sleep and not-sleep, he was reminded of his wife, years ago, shuffling into their bedroom with the breakfast tray, on countless dawns of the past when dawn had meant duty, work, a journey to be taken. And yet it could not be his wife. Then he was reminded of Johannes, his servant of more than a quarter of a century, Johannes who was as much a part of his life as anything else in Pharamaul – and he opened his eyes, and it was Johannes.
‘Jah, barena,’ said Johannes.
Macmillan looked at him. Johannes was his own age, fifty-seven, but he seemed much older, as all negroes did: on his spare flesh the white housecoat hung limply, and the grey hair above the wrinkled face was now sparse and thin. His life is my life, thought Macmillan, still struggling for clarity: we are both old – two old men of Gamate, bound to each other till the grave takes one, or both, and brings that binding to an end. In the old days, Johannes had been a fledgling houseboy, young, eager, disobedient; then a trusted servant, looking after the flat in Port Victoria; and now the wheel had come full circle, and they were just two old men, back home in Gamate, near the tomb, near their long rest … He stirred, and sat up, throwing off these foolish thoughts. He was the Resident Commissioner, Johannes was his senior houseboy: that was all.
‘Johannes,’ he said, firmly.
‘Yes, barena,’ repeated Johannes. ‘Six o’clock, barena. I wake you.’
‘Dinner,’ said Macmillan, collecting himself. ‘Three barenas – Mr Forsdick, Mr Llewellyn, Captain Crump.’
‘Yes, barena.’
‘What’s in the larder?’
‘Chicken, barena. Wife kill this morning.’
‘My chicken?’
‘Wife’s chicken, barena.’
‘What happened to my chickens? Six of them.’
‘All barena’s chickens die, two three weeks.’
The squeeze was so obvious that Macmillan felt impelled to do battle. But then he relaxed again. He had been away for twelve weeks, after all. Various malpractices were bound to have crept in … A little time ago, he would have tracked those six chickens to their several resting-places, and dealt out justice over their dishonoured bones. Now he did not mind so much. Men must live, black men and white. Johannes, in thirty years, had earned many chickens, much forgiveness.
‘What besides chicken?’ he asked.
‘Peaches, barena. Yellow peaches. Yellow tin peaches.’
‘All right … And soup.’
‘No soup, barena. Tins no good. I throw away, two three weeks.’
‘Soup, damn you. Find one tin. Mushroom soup.’
Johannes sighed, shaking his head. ‘I look hard, barena. Perhaps one tin left in cupboard.’
Macmillan nodded. Soup was on the table. ‘Soup,’ he said. ‘Fried chicken. Potatoes. Peaches. Cream.’
‘No cream, barena.’
‘Cream.’
‘No cream in all Gamate. Cows sick. Hot weather.’
It had the rustic ring of truth. ‘All right,’ said Macmillan again. ‘Coffee afterwards. In two hours.’ He held up two fingers. ‘Two.’
‘Yes, barena.’
‘When the barenas come, bring ice and whisky and beer.’
‘Yes, barena.’ Johannes stood waiting, shifting from one foot to another, his old face creased and uncertain. He had a thing to say, and he must say it before he left.
‘What is it, Johannes?’
‘Barena have good holiday?’
‘Fine, Johannes. But it’s nice to be back.’
The old black face broke suddenly into a smile. Johannes nodded, accepting a welcome cue. He said, with all the honesty in the world: ‘It’s good to have you here again, barena.’
Presently Macmillan saw them approaching across the patchy, burnt-down lawn which was the playground of ticks and white ants: two men, dressed alike in khaki slacks, but wearing ties as a sign of evening formality. They were Forsdick, his District Commissioner in Gamate, and Llewellyn, the agricultural officer who covered the whole Maula territory. They drew near, and it was as if the cares of office, the burden of administration, were closing in on him after a brief respite. They had both been busy elsewhere when his train arrived that morning: the message he had left for them – ‘Dinner Tonight, no wives, eight o’clock’ – had been the limit of the protocol attending his return. Now they were here, establishing the fact of his formal presence. From now on, the load was his again.
He watched them as they neared him. Forsdick, who (if he could keep away from the whisky bottle) might one day succeed him, was fortyish, plump, red-faced, sweating; he walked heavily, as if his large ungainly body must be carefully steered from point to point. Macmillan, trying to remember him from twelve weeks ago, wondered if Forsdick’s face had really been as florid, as moonlike, as it appeared now. Surely he must have stepped up his consumption, in the interval … Llewellyn was the same as he had always been: a small swarthy Welshman, morose, overworked, single-minded in his pursuit of a thriving Pharamaul. What he knew about crops, cattle, water, and disease was phenomenal; what he knew about anything else was sometimes, for Macmillan, a matter for ribald speculation. But perhaps that was the kind of agricultural officer one needed.
He stood up as they reached the stoep, and opened the fly-screened door.
Forsdick said: ‘Hallo, Andrew.’
Llewellyn said: ‘Good evening, sir.’
Macmillan observed that here, also, things were unchanged. Forsdick’s voice was slightly slurring, as was usual any time after five o’clock in the evening; Llewellyn was in low spirits, and showed it. He had been in low spirits when Macmillan had left Gamate, twelve weeks earlier. Then, it had been something to do with an outbreak of contagious abortion. Macmillan wondered what it was this time. He was certainly going to know before very long.
He motioned them past him on to the stoep. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you. Where’s Crump?’
‘Glued to the radio,’ said Forsdick. His voice was fruity, blurred, thickened by twenty years of one-more-for-luck, one-for-the-road, one-for-the-swing-of-the-door. He worked extremely hard at his job, he had a nagging wife whom he loathed: he drank to balance the one and to escape from the other. ‘There’s something coming through for us,’ he continued. ‘On the eight o’clock police schedule – prefaced urgent and confidential.’
‘Government House in a flap again,’ said Llewellyn caustically. ‘Nothing else to do all day. They’ve probably lost the file on the New Year’s Honours List … Did you spend any time down there, sir?’
‘The minimum,’ answered Macmillan briefly. By and large, he felt the same way about Government House, but he could not join his staff in their frequent bouts of condemnation. Discipline was involved – the chain of command – there had to be a Government House, anyway … Johannes shuffled in with the whisky, the beer, the ice, and the glasses, and Macmillan poured in silence – a stiff peg for Forsdick, beer for Llewellyn. ‘They’ve got a new man to replace Morrison – chap named Bracken.’
‘What like?’ asked Forsdick, sniffing his drink.
‘OK … Brand new, of course … Cheers …’
‘Down the hatch.’
They all drank.
‘How was London?’ asked Forsdick, after a pause.
‘Fine,’ answered Macmillan. He felt he had to add something. ‘Lots of traffic … I saw some shows.’
‘You can keep London,’ said Llewellyn, his sing-song voice still on a sombre key. ‘Like a circus, that place is.’
That was enough about London. The long leave was over. London was past, swallowed up in the mist. Only Gamate was real.
‘How are things here?’ asked Macmillan.
Now they talked as they had talked on hundreds, even thousands of other evenings in the past: it was straight-cut shop, the kind of thing they talked best, the thing they really understood. Gamate was much the same. The harvest was coming to an end, the taxes were starting to dribble in. There had been an epidemic of blue-tongue disease up near the U-Maula border. (So that was it, thought Macmillan – and wondered, not for the first time, why the crosses that Llewellyn had to bear always had such odd names.) One of the Native Treasury staff had been caught stealing postal orders, and had been sacked. There had been a row up at the logging camp, fifty miles to the west, and a man had been ‘chopped’. The culprit was now awaiting trial in Port Victoria jail. There was a new translator in the office, who showed signs of being useful. Father Schwemmer, who ran the Gamate Mission, had been complaining about immorality.
‘Why, especially?’ asked Macmillan, interested.
‘One of his altar boys took a girl into the vestry.’
‘Well, well.’
‘And a lot of other altar boys were invited to look on.’
Macmillan laughed. ‘It sounds as though he needed some new altar boys.’
‘He’s sacked the lot, and started from scratch again. But he wants us to do something about it.’
‘You can’t make that illegal,’ said Macmillan. ‘Especially not in Gamate. Social life would come to a complete standstill.’
Finally, there had been a deputation that morning from the Council of Regents – the two uncles, and one cousin, of Dinamaula, who had ruled the Maula tribe for the past year, ever since Dinamaula’s father had died.
‘How are those wicked uncles?’ asked Macmillan, interested afresh.
‘It was rather curious,’ said Forsdick slowly. His glass was empty again, and Macmillan motioned to him to fill it. With his back turned, Forsdick went on: ‘Of course, they know quite well they’re on their way out – they were only carrying on till Dinamaula finished at Oxford, and they’re not going to quarrel about handing over … At least, I don’t think so …’ He turned. ‘But they said–’ he wrinkled his brow, searching for the exact words, ‘they said they wanted to be sure there would be no great changes.’
‘Why should there be?’ asked Macmillan.
‘They wouldn’t tell me. When I pressed the point, they got a bit vague, and then old Seralo started talking about the importance of carrying on the tribal customs. You know his usual line; he fires it off every time we put a bit of gravel on the roads. But at the end, he said, “We have heard–”’ Forsdick stressed the word, ‘“–heard talk of new things.”’
Macmillan shrugged. ‘I should say he was making that up. New chief, new things – it’s a natural line of thought. They’re probably worrying about some little racket they’re running, which Dinamaula will now take over.’
Llewellyn said, ‘Stands to reason they don’t want to give up.’
Forsdick shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It sounded as though they were on to something. You know the way they hear things.’
In spite of himself, Macmillan was inclined to agree. The Maulas did hear things, by some scarcely credible grapevine which could, for example, infiltrate from Port Victoria to Gamate and beyond, in a matter of hours; a grapevine which could out-distance any traveller, any horseman, any voice on the radio. Macmillan had encountered it many times in the past. When the previous Governor, old Lord Mountstephen, had died while on leave in London, Johannes had told him about it at breakfast – a full hour before he himself got the ‘Priority’ cable from Port Victoria … It was something that one came to accept, where Pharamaul was concerned.
He shook his head, aware of uneasiness. It was as if he had suddenly sniffed the wind of the future, and found that there was borne upon it the faint scent of far-off trouble. ‘New things’, in Gamate, almost always meant complication and disturbance.
He said, ‘When does Dinamaula arrive?’
‘Tomorrow night,’ said Forsdick. ‘He’s coming by truck from Port Victoria.’
Llewellyn, who was long-sighted, suddenly raised his head and pointed to a small dust cloud, stirring far down the hill towards Gamate.
‘Here’s Crump,’ he said. ‘That’s the police jeep.’
In silence they watched the jeep climbing steadily towards them: it was now a dark spot at the foot of a yellow cloud of dust, gradually taking shape as it drew near. Presently it disappeared behind a fold of the hill, while the yellow cloud still hung in space, unexplained, mysterious. Then, borne towards them on the quiet evening air, its engine suddenly sounded very loud, and the jeep bumped over the last few yards, and appeared between the white gateposts. As it stopped, its dust cloud drifted gently away and was lost in the dusk. A khaki-clad figure sprang out, and walked briskly towards them.
Captain Crump of the Royal Pharamaul Police was a burly, cheerful Irishman who seemed to be laughing nearly all the time. He laughed in his office, he laughed on the telephone, he laughed when he submitted a report, however grave it might be; Macmillan had once watched him laughing happily as he led a riot squad into action, clubs swinging against spears and knives, five years ago at the time of the big tax troubles. Later he had smiled broadly throughout the court proceedings. It was not an assumed cheerfulness. Crump was young, strong, fond of his job, possessed of a total belief in the excellent native police force which he himself had built up. He had a young and pretty wife, a Military Cross from the last war, an assured future. What else should one do but laugh … Crump knew Gamate and the surrounding country, and the tribal feuds, and the good and the bad men, nearly as well as did Macmillan himself, and the latter found him invaluable.
Now he saluted, a broad grin on his face, and said, ‘Sir!’
‘Hallo, Keith,’ said Macmillan. ‘Nice to see you again … Have a drink?’
Crump laughed, and said, ‘I will that!’ and strode through the door of the stoep as if he were going to arrest the lot of them. Though he was in khaki like the three others, his khaki was different: immaculate tunic-shirt, creased shorts, a belt and holster, puttees, polished bush-boots … One of Crump’s more printable Maula nicknames meant ‘The Shining Soldier’.
While Macmillan poured him a drink, the others greeted the police captain, without a great deal of cordiality. Llewellyn did not like him, because Crump was a tall Irishman instead of a small Welshman: Crump did not like Forsdick, because Forsdick drank too much, was always out of condition, and made sheep’s eyes at his (Crump’s) wife. But they all acknowledged two things in each other: their efficiency, which was never in question, and their basic interdependence, which was obvious. The administration, the discipline, and the health of man and beast, all needed an interlocking team, with a man of Macmillan’s calibre to see fair play and step in if need be. They had such a team in Gamate, and they knew that they were lucky in having it.
Crump realized that there were a lot of things worse than a perpetual hangover and a roving eye, if one worked as hard as Forsdick – and each of them in turn found the same sort of dispensation for the others.
Macmillan turned with the drink. ‘Here you are … What was in the telegram?’
Crump reached inside his tunic pocket, and brought out a folded pink flimsy. ‘It’s about Dinamaula. He’s been taking to the newspapers.’
‘Has he indeed?’ said Forsdick. ‘What about?’
‘Progress in Pharamaul,’ answered Crump. He was laughing again. ‘He wants to improve everything.’ Then he drank, and fell silent as Andrew Macmillan, looking down at the pink telegram, started to speak.
‘It’s from GH,’ he said, ‘passing on a telegram from London … “Urgent and Confidential”,’ he read. ‘“Following telegram has been received from Secretary of State. Begins:
‘“This morning’s Daily Thresh carries lengthy and tendentious interview with Dinamaula by Tulbach Browne, DT special correspondent to Southern Africa who is now in Port Victoria. In reported interview, Dinamaula expressed dissatisfaction with slow progress in territory, government handling of Maula affairs, and said he was determined to introduce reforms whatever the opposition. There was also reference to reactionary tribal elements who would be taken care of. Following is quotation.
‘“Quote Dinamaula’s plans are far-reaching, statesmanlike, eminently wise. His chance of forcing them through, in the face of British officials worried about nothing worse than their next pay increment, their next shipment of cheap gin from London, are slim dash slim as this young and gallant chief himself Unquote.
‘“Resident Commissioner, Gamate, should be instructed to interview Dinamaula and impress on him the necessity of working for a smooth, orderly change-over in tribal administration. In particular, criticism of government officials by chief-designate, and further publicity of this sort, should be avoided. Telegram Ends.
‘“Following for Macmillan. Please take action indicated in last paragraph, and report urgently to me.”’
There was only a very brief silence after Macmillan had finished reading. Then Crump laughed, slapping his bare thigh, and said, ‘I had a lot of fun decyphering that telegram.’
Llewellyn, snorting, muttered: ‘Damn’ sauce … What does he know about it? He was naught but a kid when he left here.’
Said Forsdick, musingly: ‘By God, I wish gin was cheap.’
Macmillan was frowning to himself. This was the trouble he had smelt from far away, the disturbing element moving towards Gamate. He was not angry, because he knew Gamate, and the sort of place it was, and what it must sound like to an outsider – even an outsider who was a Maula himself. One could think a lot of things about Gamate, without stepping too far beyond the facts. But that was not to say that everything could be cured overnight … He looked down at the telegram again, and then at Forsdick.
‘This was what Seralo meant,’ he said.
‘Eh?’ said Forsdick, who was sinking into a pleasant daydream of his own. ‘Seralo?’
‘When he came to see you this morning, with the other Regents. He told you they had heard talk of new things. This was it.’
‘But how could it have reached here so quickly?’ asked Llewellyn incredulously.
‘You know how they hear things,’ said Macmillan. ‘It just got here, that’s all.’
‘Of course,’ said Crump, cheerfully, ‘you can’t believe all you read in the newspapers. Dinamaula probably never said the half of it.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Forsdick. ‘But half is quite enough.’
‘Naught but a kid,’ repeated Llewellyn. ‘Those bloody Oxford and Cambridge students! They’re enough to ruin any man.’
‘Dinamaula’s twenty-two now,’ said Macmillan. He was marshalling his thoughts. ‘He’s been away for seven years. He’s probably picked up one or two ideas, and he got talking about them to this reporter chap. It’ll be different when he sees Gamate.’ He frowned again. ‘It had better be!’
Crump had taken the telegram from Macmillan, and was rereading it. ‘“Reactionary tribal elements”,’ he quoted. ‘He’s got something there … By God, he ought to have my job, and try to knock some sense into these old jokers.’
‘You know, the Regents aren’t going to like this at all,’ said Forsdick slowly. The whisky was taking hold, and he was now nicely balanced between the serious and the careless. ‘They’ll think it’s aimed at them.’
‘I don’t like it,’ answered Macmillan crisply. ‘I think it’s aimed at me … “Determined to introduce reforms whatever the opposition” … I’ve been in this territory thirty-five years. I know what reforms it needs, and how fast we can go, and what they’ll stand for, without everything coming apart at the seams. I don’t want a young chap who’s never really lived here, except as a kid, coming in and stirring up a lot of trouble.’
‘It may be all newspaper talk,’ said Crump again.
‘Any talk is likely to set things off. You know what happens when they start to grumble, and imagine a new set of grievances, and take sides … The harvest is pretty well finished, too, which means that they’ve got nothing to do but sit around and argue the toss.’ He looked at Crump. ‘You’ll have to get your boys to work, Keith. Find out what’s cooking.’
By ‘boys’ he meant not the uniformed police, but the unofficial arm of Crump’s small force – the tale-bearers, listeners, spies, informers who clung furtively to the edge of officialdom: who slipped into the office when the coast was clear at dusk, who sidled up to the window to speak to the cook, or leant over a thorn fence to talk to the gardener. Much news, much necessary warning, came to Crump in this fashion. It was often the only way to keep a grip on things, in a territory where a policeman’s uniform was the signal for silence, and an official ‘detective’ could gather only innocuous gossip – and lies.
‘I’ll do that,’ said Crump.
‘And I want to see Dinamaula as soon as he arrives. Send a messenger down.’
‘Better make it a formal invitation, Andrew,’ said Forsdick gently. ‘Cup of tea at the Residency.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s the chief-designate, after all. Just arrived to take over. It’s–’ he gestured, ‘–it’s an important moment for Gamate. There’s been a lot of talk, a lot of excitement, the kids are all practising songs of welcome … You can’t just send the waggon for him, with a police corporal hanging on to the tailboard.’
‘All right.’ Macmillan grinned suddenly. He never minded this sort of correction from his staff. It was the total of knowledge and experience which was important … He winked at Crump. ‘Put on your medals, and give him my compliments. But see that he gets here.’
There was a shuffling sound behind them, and the dining-room door opened slowly, creaking on its hinges. Johannes, in a clean white housecoat, came forward, looking important and anxious.
‘Soup on table, barena,’ he said.
‘Dinner is served,’ corrected Macmillan automatically.
‘Dinner served,’ said Johannes. ‘Soup on table.’