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“OK, let’s have the yes first.”
“You don’t want to be seen too often with me in public.” It sounded premeditated but wasn’t. Beatrice didn’t reply at once; she seemed to be weighing the point as if to say: there may be something there. Then she shook her head gently a few times and said simply: “It was a year today that you first asked me to dinner here.”
I was completely overwhelmed with feelings I had been skirting for months. I drew her to me on the sofa and kissed her—a little too roughly perhaps. I thought of making apologies for my own forgetfulness. With any other girl I would have proceeded to do so at once. But with her I couldn’t pretend. I am not the anniversary kind and it would be utterly deceitful to say it just escaped my mind. I kissed her again and said instead: “You are a great girl.” We were silent for quite a while.
“How long has Ikem known that Joy girl?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you. I had only seen her a couple of times before this afternoon.”
“She seems so young. And so illiterate. What can he possibly be saying to her?” I asked.
“Ikem doesn’t say much to any girl. He doesn’t think they have enough brains.”
“Good for him, the great revolutionary.”
“Well, you know, I am exaggerating a little. But really women don’t feature too much in his schemes except as, well, comforters. I think that’s about the only chink in his revolutionary armour… Do you notice how much he resents you now?” she asked in a sudden change of tack. “I don’t think you are even aware of it. It bothers me because it wasn’t there before. I can see plenty of trouble ahead for the two of you.”
“Oh, you exaggerate. But you are right about the resentment. And I think it is quite natural. Especially since the coup and Sam’s elevation and to a lesser degree mine. Literally Sam is now my boss and I am Ikem’s boss.”
“Do you mean Ikem is jealous of you two?”
“Yes, why not? But I resent him just as much. Perhaps more, for his freedom.”
“I don’t understand you people.”
“Very simple really. It goes back, you see, to our first days at Lord Lugard College. Ikem was the brightest in the class—first position every term for six years. Can you beat that? Sam was the social paragon… He was the all-rounder—good student, captain of the Cricket Team, Victor Ludorum in athletics and, in our last year, School Captain. And girls worshipped at his feet from every Girls’ School in the province. But strangely enough there was a kind of spiritual purity about Sam in those days despite his great weakness for girls. Maybe not purity but he seemed so perfect and so unreal, in a way.”
“Too much success.”
“Perhaps. Too much success. He never failed once in anything. Had the magic touch. And that’s always deadly in the long run. He is paying the bills now, I think. And if we are not lucky we shall all pay dearly. How I wish he had gone to Medical School which had been his first ambition. But he fell instead under the spell of our English headmaster who fought the Italians in Abyssinia in 1941 and had a sword from an Ethiopian prince to prove it. So
Sam enrolled in the first school cadet corps in the country and was on his way to Sandhurst.”
“I asked you about Ikem not His Excellency,” says BB, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and snuggling closer to me.
“It’s your fault. You are such a good listener.”
“And you haven’t said anything about yourself,” she adds, ignoring my backhanded compliment.
“We are all connected. You cannot tell the story of any of us without implicating the others. Ikem may resent me but he probably resents Sam even more and Sam resents both of us most vehemently. We are too close together, I think. Lord Lugard College trained her boys to be lonely leaders in separate remote places, not cooped up together in one crummy family business.”
“OK, Ikem was the intellectual, Sam the socialite, what about you?”
“I have always been in the middle. Neither as bright as Ikem and not such a social success as Sam. I have always been the lucky one, in a way. There was a song we sang as children, do you know it? The one in front spots evil spirits, the one at the rear has twisted hands, the one in the middle is the child of luck. Did you sing it? I was the child of luck.”
“Can I tell you something? You promise not to be angry? Promise? Well, you fellows, all three of you, are incredibly conceited. The story of this country, as far as you are concerned, is the story of the three of you… But please go on.”
“Actually you are quite right. That’s what I’ve just said myself. We tend sometimes to forget that our story is only one of twenty million stories—one tiny synoptic account. But that’s the only one I know and you are such a sweet listener as I said.”
“A sweetener? A sweetener has its reasons… By the way do you keep a detailed diary of what is happening day to day? I think you should. But please go on.”
“I do keep a journal. But, no let’s change the subject. Tell me something for a change.”
“Today is your day… Why should His Excellency resent the two of you? He has all the success.” I sense she merely wants me to keep talking. About anything. She finds my voice soothing, perhaps. At the same time she has such a quick mind and such a knack for asking inconvenient questions, like a precocious child.
“Why should he resent us? Why indeed? He has all the success. From school to Sandhurst; the first African Second Lieutenant in the Army; ADC to the Governor-General; Royal Equerry during the Queen’s visit; Officer Commanding at Independence; Colonel at the time of the coup; General and His Excellency, the Head of State, after. Why indeed should he resent any mortal? Now that you ask I confess I don’t know. He wasn’t like that right away. In fact he kept very close to us in the first six months or so. And then… But let’s talk about better things on the golden anniversary of our first date.”
She shot up from my chest where she was lying and gave my face a quick scrutiny. “I hope you are not being sarcastic,” she said. I affect great solemnity, pull her back and kiss her mildly. She offered up her lips again; we were both trembling.
