As usually happened after a drink-induced vomit he felt both better and worse. He borrowed a toothbrush and cleaned his teeth. The crowd outside had scarcely grown at all and was still quiet and docile. Hardly a sweeping popular victory, he thought, wondering when Adekunle would be giving his speech. He opened the window and strained his ears: he thought he could make out a distant chanting that seemed to be getting louder — the grass roots support arriving, he assumed.
He left the bathroom and shakily advanced towards the stairhead. He had to go and drink some more, try to blot out the dismal future that lay inevitably ahead of him. Priscilla, Adekunle, Fanshawe, Kingpin, Innocence and Murray: it had all been too much. He had tried, he had fought, but he couldn’t stand the pace any longer. The odds had always been too great: it was time to surrender.
‘Psst, Morgan.’
He looked round in surprise. Celia appeared for an instant in a doorway. She beckoned him into the room. Celia! She closed the door behind him and they kissed. He was glad he’d cleaned his teeth. They stood in a guest bedroom as far as he could make out. Celia had left the light off.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked a little slurringly. ‘I didn’t see you downstairs.’
‘That was what I was going to ask you. You told me to phone you, remember?’ she said in wounded accusation. ‘I kept getting this Yorkshireman who said he didn’t know where you were.’
‘I…I was out of town,’ Morgan said. He stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks. ‘I had something to clear up.’ He pulled her to him. ‘I’ve missed you, Celia,’ he began, but she pushed him away.
‘It’s Sam,’ she said despairingly. ‘I’ve decided. I’m leaving him. You’ve got to help me.’
‘Celia, Celia,’ he complained gently. ‘Don’t start that again. I know he’s a bastard but how can you leave him? What about the boys?’ She had raised this topic of conversation on a couple of occasions before, but he had always managed to stop it before it had gone any further.
‘No, I mean it!’ she said in a shrill whisper. ‘I’ve got a plan.’
He peered nervously at her, a little alarmed at her vehemence: she seemed to be on the verge of cracking up.
‘But I can’t help you, Celia,’ he said patiently. ‘Not any more. I’m not in a position to. I won’t be…’
‘What are you talking about?’ she said irritably. ‘You’re the only person who can. You’re the only one with the authority.’
He felt vaguely flattered at this reference to his masculine resourcefulness. He tried to put his arm round her again but she shrugged it off. ‘Celia, darling,’ he said. ‘You have all my support and my…affection.’ He had almost said love’, but not while she was in this mood. ‘And you’re a very special person to me.’ He gave a bitter chuckle. ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me in this bloody country. No,’ he held up his hand with drunken insistence as she tried to interrupt. ‘No. I mean it. I’ve felt closer to you than to anybody. Honestly,’ he said sincerely. ‘That’s what’s so hellish. That’s the only thing that upsets me about leaving, my darling. I don’t want to leave you.’
‘Leaving?’ she gasped. ‘What do you mean, ‘leaving’?’
He tried to smooth down his candy-floss forelock. ‘I’ve got myself into serious trouble,’ he said, still thinking it wise to keep Adekunle out of it. ‘My fault. My stupidity, but it’s very serious. I’d lose my job. So I’m resigning. Tomorrow. I’m going back home.’
Celia gave a stifled cry. ‘But you can’t.’
‘Can’t what my darling?’
‘You can’t resign your job.’
He smiled at her tenderly. ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I’m in a terrible fix. If you knew, you’d see it was the only way. There’s no alternative.’ In the dark of the room he saw her cheeks streaming with tears. He felt his heart swell. She was loyaclass="underline" she cared for him.
‘No!’ she said in a mad tearful croak. ‘No. You can’t resign. You can’t,’ she repeated. ‘You can’t, not yet. I need you. I need you for the visa. You’re the only one who can get me the visa.’
‘Visa? What visa?’
She beat at his chest with her small fists. ‘You’ve got to get me a visa for Britain,’ she sobbed, her face contorted with grief and dismay. ‘I’m a Kinjanjan. I have a Kinjanjan passport. I can’t fly home without a visa. You’ve got to get me one. I need a visa to get home and only you can get me one.’ Slowly she fell to her knees on the floor.
Morgan stood there. It was as if everything in his body had stopped moving for a second. Brief suspended animation. His mind flashed back to his early meetings with her. He recalled now, how almost from the first there had been innocent inquiries about his job and responsibilities: the momentary alarm when Dalmire arrived, relief when she found out he was still in control. He let out a long quivering breath as the truth hit him with agonizing force: he had just been a part of her escape plan — an important one, but a part nonetheless. She couldn’t get free access to Britain with her Kinjanjan passport: she needed a visa. So she found somebody who could supply one without her husband knowing.
Morgan looked down at her crying on the floor. Used again Leafy, he said to himself. You bloody fool. He felt angry at his conceit, bitterly furious for convincing himself that there was something special here, something different. It was just like everything else, he said to himself with sad cynicism, exactly the same. But what did it matter to him, really? He was an aristocrat of pain and frustration, a prince of anguish and embarrassment. He moved to the door.
‘I’m sorry, Celia,’ he said. ‘But it’s too late now.’
Out on the landing he wiped his eyes, took a few deep breaths and flung wild knockout punches at some invisible opponent. Funnily enough, he found he didn’t hate or resent Celia. He just felt angry with himself for failing to see the facts. Murray was right: it was the old seeming⁄being trap again, and he fell into it every time. Where was that penetrating insight he prided himself on? he asked. Where’s the gimlet eye that strips away duplicity and pretension, that uncompromising assessor of human motives? He heard a dull roaring in his ears. He leant against the wall and shut his eyes but it didn’t go away. He opened his eyes and it dawned on him that it was coming from outside. He ran to a window and looked out. The crowd seemed suddenly enormous. A dark mass beyond the floodlit garden pressing up against the barbed wire fence and filling the road. They were chanting something rhythmically. He saw a small figure in black leading the shouts with a loudhailer. He listened. He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘FAN-SHAWE,’ the crowd roared. ‘FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE.’
Morgan dashed down the stairs. The guests had spontaneously backed up against the wall furthest away from the demonstration. There was a hum of uneasy discussion, but people were more occupied casting wary glances about them searching for emergency exits, as if in a basement night-club with a notoriously fallible sprinkler-system. The Commission staff stood to one side looking increasingly uncomfortable. Morgan joined them.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘We were just about to go,’ Fanshawe spoke up nervously. ‘Dickie and Pris had to drive down to the capital for their plane.’ He gulped. ‘Peter had brought round the car to the front door. We saw this huge crowd had turned up. We thought they were KNP supporters, but as soon as I stepped out they went mad. Shouting and jeering.’
‘Yer,’Jones chipped in. ‘Like some kind of signal. FAN-SHAWE,FAN-SHAWE.’