‘Thank Christ we got out of that,’ Morgan said. A quarter of a mile down the road he saw the lights of the university’s main gate. Several lorries and what looked like an armoured car were parked outside.
‘They were shooting at us, weren’t they?’ Mrs Fanshawe confirmed in an awed voice, massaging her feet.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Morgan admitted, sensing delayed shock about to pounce on him like a wild beast. He got to his feet. He had to keep moving.
‘Let’s get you to the Commission,’ he said, helping Mrs Fanshawe up. They limped across the warm tarmacadam to the roadside kiosk. Behind it stood a youth in a baseball cap, his face bizarrely tinted from the fizzing blue fluorescent strip above his head. On the front of the kiosk was written SISSY’S GO-WELL DRINKOTHEQUE. The boy in the cap looked up in astonishment as Morgan and Mrs Fanshawe appeared out of the darkness.
‘Ow!’ he exclaimed, rubbing his face. ‘Wetin go wrong here? Jesos Chrise!’ He shook his head. Morgan looked at Mrs Fanshawe. The rip in her hem had split up to her thigh, her pink dress was tattered and filthy, and her negotiation of the barbed wire fence had somehow torn a triangular flap from her bodice exposing several square inches of her reinforced nylon long-line bra. Even her normally immovable hair hung in damp tangles over her forehead. She carried a heelless shoe in each hand. Morgan knew all too well what he looked like in his soiled circus-clown outfit. Self-consciously he tried to rub away the pencilled moustache on his upper lip. From the mud huts beyond the roadside bar a few curious faces peered. A small boy ran round the corner of a house and said ‘Oyibo’ but the sound died on his lips as he looked at these strange white people.
‘Good evening,’ Morgan said to the youth. ‘You get car for this village?’
‘You want car?’
‘Yes. I go pay you ten pound if you take us to UK Commission.’
‘Ten poun’?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make you give me money now.’
‘No,’ Morgan said firmly. ‘First you drive us, before I pay.’
The youth left his kiosk and went back to one of the mud huts where a shouted argument ensued. After a few minutes an older man appeared in ragged shorts and a singlet.
‘Good evening, sah,’ he said. ‘My name is Pious. I have a car. I can take you.’ He led them down a muddy stinking lane to where an old black Vauxhall Velox was parked. Morgan got into the back with Mrs Fanshawe. The interior smelt vaguely of animals, as if it had been used for transporting sheep or goats, but he didn’t care any longer.
After several attempts the bronchitic engine finally started and they set out on the journey to the Commission. Again Morgan noted the untypical quietness of the roads.
‘Why are there no cars tonight?’ he asked their driver.
‘Ammy comin’,’ Pious said simply.
‘Army? What do you mean? For the riot at the university?’
Pious shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Plenty Ammy lorries passing tonight. Plenty.’ Morgan sat back. He remembered Robinson’s hints and Friday’s warning about a coup. He gave up. It was conceivable that the population knew something that the politicians didn’t. Anything could happen here, he now realized.
The Commission was dark and unbesieged. The Fanshawes’ house was locked up and empty. There was a note from Fanshawe saying they had seen Morgan and Mrs Fanshawe evade the mob, safely escaped themselves from Adekunle’s house, had left the campus by the back gate and after waiting for an hour had gone on down to the capital. The Joneses, it appeared, were going to put up Mrs Fanshawe in her family’s temporary absence.
‘Well,’ Morgan said, on hearing this, ‘we’d better get you to the Joneses. It seems as though everything went OK.’ He paused. ‘You could stay here if you want. I can go and get the servants…’
‘No,’ Mrs Fanshawe said, re-reading the note. ‘I don’t feel like staying here on my own. But do you think I could clean up a bit at your place first? Perhaps Denzil could come over and collect me.’
‘Sure,’ Morgan said. ‘Fine.’
Pious dropped them at Morgan’s house. Morgan ran in to get the money to pay him off. It was worth every penny. He looked at his watch. Half past eleven. He felt like he’d been on the run for weeks. But, he reasoned with a wry smile, in a way that was true enough. Pious drove off noisily and for a moment or two Morgan stood alone in his driveway, the light rain falling on his head. Small rain, Isaac had called it. For a second he thought he could hear the pop-gun effect of distant shooting. He wondered what was going on: everybody shooting at everybody else tonight. He shivered at the memory. Thunder mumbled and lightning flashed away to the southwest. He smelt the musty attic odour of damp earth and listened to the bats and toads, the creek-creek of the crickets starting up again.
He went back into his house. Mrs Fanshawe stood in the middle of the carpet examining the rents in her dress. She gave a tired laugh when he came in.
‘My God, Morgan,’ she said. ‘What on earth must we look like?’ Morgan smiled. She looked very strange with her small bare feet, her thigh gaping from the slit in the dress, her hair tousled, half her underwear on show; like a survivor from a plane crash. Only the three strings of pearls belonged to the Mrs Fanshawe of earlier in the evening.
‘I feel I should thank you, Morgan,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘For everything you did tonight. You were splendid.’
Morgan bowed his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said, adding awkwardly, ‘you did all right yourself.’
This mutual congratulation made them feel embarrassed and they both scrutinized the weave of the carpet. Morgan moved to the drinks table.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked. ‘Or would you rather have a bath first?’
‘Oh a bath I think,’ she said. ‘Lovely.’ Morgan led her up the corridor and into his bedroom. He showed her the bathroom.
‘There are plenty of towels,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we can’t rise to a new dress.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ she reassured him.
He went back into the sitting room and poured himself a whisky. He sat down in an armchair and took a sip. Outside in the dark the rain pattered gently on the leaves of the trees and dripped into the gutters. He felt tired. He knew the recriminations and problems ahead of him: the resignation, Adekunle’s wrath, the exposure of Celia. Her name made his features tighten as he remembered the scene at the house. What the hell, he thought with sudden generosity. She could have her visa: it didn’t matter to him really. She was just desperate, in a jam: he’d have done the same in her circumstances — or worse. He’d see she got one tomorrow.
He got up and poured himself another whisky. He felt let down and demoralized. Everything he’d done had been in vain, he considered. He hadn’t even held on to his job. He heard the creak of the swing door and Mrs Fanshawe came in. She was wearing his blue towelling dressing-gown and was carrying her dress.
‘Have you got a needle and thread?’ she asked innocently. ‘I’ll try and patch up these tears before I call Denzil.’
Morgan rummaged around in a few drawers and found what she wanted. Mrs Fanshawe sat down and began to sew up the dress. Morgan found the domestic scene strangely unsettling. It reminded him uncomfortably of that hot afternoon in her house, fitting the Father Christmas costume, the day he’d…He excused himself saying he was going to have a shower.