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‘Damn the Headquarters.’
‘The Captain would approve of that sentiment.’
‘Actually, you know, the Captain is not a bad fellow at all. I think that deep down he is quite a decent fellow. One must make allowances for the rough time he’s had.’
‘In the matter of promotions, you mean?’
‘He’s been badly treated there too, I’m told,’ said Wright. ‘Actually I wasn’t thinking of that at all. I was thinking of his domestic life. Oh yes. You see during the war while the poor man was fighting the Germans in the Cameroons some smart fellow walked away with his wife at home.’
‘Really? I hadn’t heard about that.’
‘Yes. I’m told he was very badly shaken by it. I sometimes think it was this personal loss during the war that’s made him cling to this ridiculous Captain business.’
‘Quite possibly. He’s the kind of person, isn’t he, who would take the desertion of his wife very badly,’ said Clarke.
‘Exactly. A man as inflexible as him can’t take a thing like that.’
In the course of the evening Clarke was given every detail of Winterbottom’s marital crisis and he felt really sorry for the man. Wright also seemed to have been touched with sympathy by the very act of telling the story. Without any conscious design the two men dropped their contemptuous reference to the Captain and called Winterbottom by his name.
‘The real trouble with Winterbottom,’ said Wright after deep thought, ‘is that he is too serious to sleep with native women.’ Clarke was startled out of his own thoughts, and for a brief moment he completely forgot about Winterbottom. On more than one occasion during his present tour he had come up in his mind against the question: How widespread was the practice of white men sleeping with native women?
‘He doesn’t seem to realize that even Governors have been known to keep dusky mistresses.’ He licked his lips.
‘I don’t think it’s a question of knowing or not knowing,’ said Clarke. ‘He is a man of very high principles, something of a missionary. I believe his father was a Church of England clergyman, which is a far cry from my father, for instance, who is a Bank of England clerical.’ They both laughed heartily at this. When Clarke recalled this piece of wit in the morning he realized how much alcohol he must have drunk to find such an inferior joke so amusing.
‘I think you are right about the missionary business. He should have come out with the C.M.S. or some such people. By the way, he has been going around lately with the woman missionary doctor at Nkisa. Of course we all have our different tastes, but I would not have thought a woman missionary doctor could provide much fun for a man in this God-forsaken place.’
Clarke wanted to ask about native women – whether they were better than whites, and many other details – but not even the effect of the gin could bring out the questions. Rather he found himself changing the subject and losing this great opportunity. The thoughts he had had since first seeing fully grown girls going about naked were again forced to sleep. Later he would bite his lips in regret.
‘From what I heard of Winterbottom at headquarters,’ he said, ‘I expected to see some sort of buffoon.’
‘I know. He is a stock joke at Enugu, isn’t he?’
‘Whenever I said I was going to Okperi they said: What! With Old Tom? and looked pityingly at me. I wondered what was wrong with Old Tom, but no one would say any more. Then one day a very senior officer said to another to my hearing: Old Tom is always reminding you that he came out to Nigeria in 1910 but he never mentions that in all that time he has not put in a day’s work. It’s simply amazing how much back-biting goes on at Enugu.’
‘Well,’ said Wright, yawning, ‘I cannot say myself that Old Tom is the most hard-working man I’ve ever met; but then who is? Certainly not that lot at Enugu.’
All this was working on Clarke’s mind as he awaited Winterbottom’s coming. He felt guilty like one who had been caught back-biting one of his own group with an outsider. But then, he told himself in defence, they had said nothing that could be called uncharitable about Winterbottom. All that had happened was that he got to know a few details about the man’s life, and felt sorry for him. And that feeling justified the knowledge.
He went into the kitchen for the tenth time that evening to see how Cook was roasting the chicken over a wood fire. It would be terrible if it turned out as tough as the last one Clarke had eaten. Of course all native chicken was tough and very small. But perhaps one shouldn’t complain. A fully grown cock cost no more than twopence. Even so one wouldn’t mind paying a little more now and again for a good, juicy, English chicken. The look on Cook’s face seemed to say that Clarke was coming into the kitchen too frequently.
‘How is it coming?’
‘Ide try small small,’ said Cook, rubbing his smoke-inflamed eyes with his forearm. Clarke looked around vaguely and returned to the veranda of his bungalow. He sat down and looked at his watch again; it was quarter to seven – a full half-hour to go. He began to think up a number of subjects for conversation. His recent tour would have provided enough topics for the evening, but he had just written and submitted a full report on it.
‘But this is funny,’ he told himself. Why should he feel so nervous because Winterbottom was coming to dinner? Was he afraid of the man? Certainly not! Why all the excitement then? Why should he get so worked up about meeting Winterbottom simply because Wright had told him a few background stories which were in any case common knowledge? From this point Clarke spe
culated briefly on the nature of knowledge. Did knowledge of one’s friends and colleagues impose a handicap on one? Perhaps it did. If so it showed how false was the common assumption that the more facts you could get about others the greater your power over them. Perhaps facts put you at a great disadvantage; perhaps they made you feel sorry and even responsible. Clarke rose to his feet and walked up and down, rather self-consciously. Perhaps this was the real difference between British and French colonial administrations. The French made up their minds about what they wanted to do and did it. The British, on the other hand, never did anything without first sending out a Commission of Inquiry to discover all the facts, which then ham-strung them. He sat down again, glowing with satisfaction.
The dinner was almost entirely satisfactory. There were only two or three uneasy moments throughout the evening; for example when Captain Winterbottom said at the beginning: ‘I have just been reading your report on your tour. One could see that you are settling down nicely to your duties.’
‘It was all so exciting,’ said Clarke, attempting to minimize his part in the success story. ‘It’s such a wonderful division. I can imagine how you must feel seeing such a happy district growing up under your direction.’ He had stopped himself just in time from saying your wise direction. Even so he wondered whether this rather obvious attempt to return compliment for compliment was altogether happy.
‘One thing worries me, though,’ said Winterbottom without any indication that he even heard Clarke’s last piece. ‘You say in the report that after careful inquiry you were satisfied that there was no truth in all the stories of Wright whipping natives.’ Clarke’s heart fell. This was the one falsehood in the entire report. In fact he completely forgot to make any inquiries, even if he had known how to set about it. It was only on his return to Okperi that he found a brief, late entry Wright & natives scribbled in pencil on the second page of his touring notebook. At first he had worried over it; then he had come to the conclusion that if Wright had in fact been employing unorthodox methods he would have heard of it without making inquiries as such. But since he had heard nothing it was safe to say that the stories were untrue. In any case how did one investigate such a thing? Did one go up to the first native one saw and ask if he had been birched by Wright? Or did one ask Wright? From what Clarke had seen of the man he would not have thought he was that sort.
‘My steward is a native of Umuaro,’ continued Winterbottom, ‘and has just come back after spending two days at home; and he tells me that the whole village was in confusion because a rather important man had been whipped by Wright. But perhaps there’s nothing in it.’
Clarke hoped he did not betray his confusion. Anyhow he rallied quickly and said: ‘I heard nothing of it on the spot.’ The words on the spot stung Winterbottom like three wasps. The fellow’s cheek! He had been there barely a week and already he was talking as though he owned the district and Winterbottom was the new boy, or some desk-ridden idiot at Headquarters. On the spot indeed! But he chose not to press the matter. He was immersed in his plans for appointing two new Paramount Chiefs in the division and throughout dinner he spoke of nothing else. Clarke was surprised that he no longer spoke with strong feeling. As he watched him across the table he seemed too tired and old. But even that soon passed and a hint of enthusiasm returned to his voice.
