‘A brilliant idea,’ Adekunle contributed.
‘Well it’ll certainly be more realistic,’ Morgan admitted. ‘But are you sure…?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ She said goodbye to her family: Fanshawe like some woebegone derelict in an outsize Salvation Army suit; Dalmire and Priscilla proud and young (Priscilla sniffling a bit but probably glad she wouldn’t miss her ski holiday, Morgan thought). Adekunle and Muller stood behind them — Adekunle fierce and outraged, Muller looking quite unconcerned. Beyond them Morgan saw Celia hunched miserably on the stairs.
Jones slapped him on the back. ‘Good man, Morgan,’ he said. ‘You give ‘em ‘ell.’
With a nod to each other Morgan and Mrs Fanshawe paused briefly at the door then flung it open and dashed down the steps to the car. There was a great shout from the multitudes behind the fence as the objects of their venom appeared and a fresh salvo of stones was launched. Morgan leapt into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, Mrs Fanshawe doing the same beside him almost simultaneously. Peter, thankfully, had left the key in the ignition and Morgan started the engine. Stones pinged off the bodywork of the car. The crowd surged forward against the fence screaming and shouting.
‘Get down,’ Morgan yelled. ‘Here we go!’ He put the car in gear and accelerated up the drive, hunched over the wheel, his hand jammed down on the horn. Taken aback at this sudden blaring charge the crowd at the gate recoiled in terror, unwilling to be mown down. The guards dragged wide the gates and in seconds the large black car thundered through, people flinging themselves madly out of the way. Morgan swung the car fiercely onto the road, all the windows simultaneously shattering as a barrage of sticks, bottles and stones was hurled at this new target. He glimpsed Femi Robinson extricating himself from a bush, brandishing his megaphone in frustrated rage. Elbowing a hole in the fragmented windscreen, Morgan gunned the motor and sped down the road away from Adekunle’s house. On both sides the massed demonstrators pelted the car as it flashed by. A small stone came in through the right window and glanced off Morgan’s head. Reflexively, he swerved the car and it ploughed off the road lurching into the shadowy ditch. Morgan snatched a look back out of the window and saw the mob streaming after him in hot bellowing pursuit, the leaders a mere twenty or thirty yards away. Frantically he changed down, rammed the accelerator to the floor and the car leapt out of the ditch, its rear wheels spinning furiously, sending up great gouts of dust and gravel. Without thinking of where he was going Morgan took the first turning that presented itself, drove until another road branched off, turned down it, took a left, a right, another right. Very soon all sounds of pursuit died away. He motored steadily along the narrow tree-lined campus roads, the panic seeping from his body, bungalows lying sedately on either side, the wind whistling through the shattered windows, cool on his face.
‘I think we made it,’ he said huskily to Mrs Fanshawe.
‘Yes,’ she said in a quiet voice, sitting upright again. ‘Do you…do you think the others will have got away?’
‘I should think so, we caused enough of a distraction. And anyway I think it was clear that their argument was with us…that is, with Arthur.’
‘Poor Arthur,’ Mrs Fanshawe said, putting her hand up to her mouth. ‘He’ll be so terribly upset about all this.’
Morgan made no reply to that. He peered ahead of him.
He had no idea where he was. The residential areas of the campus were a maze of these quiet dark roads. He looked quickly at Mrs Fanshawe. She had hardly spoken, hadn’t screamed or made any kind of a fuss, just sat clinging to her seat. He was impressed. They came to a crossroads and he stopped the car.
‘Any clue which way?’ he asked, turning to face her.
‘Oh Lord, you’ve got blood on your face,’ she said. Morgan touched his forehead above his right eye. His fingertips came away dark and wet.
‘I was hit by a stone,’ he said. ‘Probably looks worse than it is. Just a scratch,’ he added bravely.
‘I think if you turn left here it should take us to the main gate.’
Morgan did as she advised. He noticed the roads were strangely empty. They had seen no other cars and many of the staff houses showed no lights. Everyone battening down the hatches with a campus revolution on their hands, he thought. He heard a heavy rumble of thunder. The promised rain was approaching.
‘Thunder,’ he commented, just wanting to say something. ‘That should damp their spirits a bit.’
They drove round a sharp bend. As they did so the headlights picked out the lone figure of a man standing at the corner of a road junction. Morgan drove past and then slammed his foot on the brakes.
‘Why have you stopped?’ Mrs Fanshawe asked, surprised.
‘That was Murray.’
‘Who?’
‘Murray. Dr Murray. That man standing by the road there.’
‘So what?’
‘I…I’ve got something to tell him. Won’t be a sec.’ Morgan got out of the car and jogged back up the road.
‘Dr Murray,’ he called. ‘Alex. It’s me, Morgan Leafy.’ Murray was standing at the roadside in his usual outfit of grey flannels, white short-sleeved shirt and tie. He looked closely at Morgan in the dark.
‘What the hell happened to you?’ he asked in tones of real astonishment. Morgan realized suddenly what kind of outlandish figure he must cut in his shrunken formal clothes, his scrawled moustache, elastoplast eyebrow and bloodied forehead. He told Murray about the riot outside Adekunle’s house.
‘Mrs Fanshawe and I made our escape,’ he concluded. ‘Drew the mob away, I think.’
‘Quite the hero,’ Murray said drily. ‘I wouldn’t carry on much further up this road though if I were you,’ he went on. ‘There’s a pitched battle going on between the riot police and the students occupying the administrative offices. You’ll run right into the middle of it. Listen.’ Morgan heard above the shrill of the crickets in the grass and hedges a distant shouting and a kind of firework-popping effect.
‘I’m told the riot police are blazing away at anything that moves and there’s tear gas everywhere.’
‘Oh Christ,’ Morgan said. ‘What do we do now?’
‘There’s only one other road out of the campus but it’s miles back in the other direction. I doubt you’ll be able to find it.’
‘What are you doing out anyway?’ Morgan inquired. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Murray said. ‘I’m waiting for my ambulance to come and pick me up. Apparently my clinic’s full of injured students. Broken heads and broken bones. And some gunshot wounds.’
‘Oh.’
‘If you want to stay at my house you’re very welcome. It’s just up the road there.’
‘Thanks,’ Morgan said. ‘But we’ve got to try and reunite Mrs Fanshawe with her family and get them down, to the High Commission. I think we’ll try and skirt round the riot, sneak out of the main gate.’
‘Well, be carefal,’ Murray warned. ‘Those riot squad boys are not the most amenable characters.’
‘We will,’ Morgan said. There was a pause. ‘Look,’ he said a little awkwardly, ‘the reason I stopped was that I wanted to tell you that I’ve decided to resign my job tomorrow. I’ll be leaving soon — so you don’t need to worry about me when you make your report. Just as well,’ he shrugged. ‘You were right. It’s better to face up to it.’ He tried to grin in the darkness but it didn’t really come off. ‘I feel it’s the right thing, you know. This place and me…well, never really got on. I think in a way I’ll actually be quite glad to be shot of it all. So,’ he spread his arms, ‘give Adekunle the works. There’s nothing he can do…you know, that’s going to foul things up for me. I’ve, ah, beaten him to it. Ha ha.’ The hollow laugh died away.