“And you,” I said, “spend more time in the bloody confessional than mending the atrocious roads and bridges that we have got round here.”
At that moment Robin Girton arrived. He was a small, dark man with a hawk-like nose, large brown eyes that always had a dreamy expression in them and gave you the impression that he wasn’t really with you. But he was, in fact, like all the United Africa Company people I had come across, exceedingly astute. He never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary and generally sat there looking as though he was in a trance. Then, suddenly, in a soft voice that had a faint tinge of North Country in it, he would come out with a remark that was so pertinent and intelligent that it summed up so succinctly what everybody else had been arguing about for an hour and a half.
He arranged himself elegantly in a chair, accepted a glass of beer and then glanced round at our faces.
“Isn’t it exciting?” said Mary with great enthusiasm.
Robin sipped his beer and nodded his head gravely.
“I gather,” he said, “that we have been summoned here to do Martin’s work for him as usual.”
“Now, hold on,” said Mary indignantly.
“If you’ve come here in that sort of a mood, I’d rather you left,” said Martin.
“We’ll leave when your beer runs out,” said McGrade.
“What do you mean,” said Martin, “doing my work for me?”
“Well,” said Robin, “I do far more good for the community by selling them baked beans and yard upon yard of Manchester manufactured cloth carefully embossed with aeroplanes than you do running around hanging them right, left and centre for murdering their grandmothers who probably deserved to die in the first place.”
“I haven’t hanged a single person since I’ve been here,” said Martin.
“I’m surprised to learn it,” said Robin. “You administer the place so badly that I would have thought there’d be a hanging every week.”
To hear them you would think that they loathed each other but in actual fact they were the closest of friends. In such a tight little European community you had to learn to live with those people of your own colour and build up a rapport with them. This was not a colour bar. It was simply that at that time the numerous highly intelligent Africans who visited or lived in Mamfe would not have wished to mix with the white community because they would have felt, with their extraordinary sensitivity, that there would be embarrassment on both sides.
I felt it was high time to call the meeting to order so, seizing a beer bottle, I banged it on the table. A chorus of “Yes, sah,” “Coming, sah” came from the kitchen.
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve done since I arrived,” said Robin.
Pious appeared carrying a tray of liquid sustenance and when all our glasses had been replenished I said, “I now call this meeting to order.”
“Dear me,” said Robin mildly, “how dictatorial.”
“The point is,” I said, “that although we all know. Martin is a splendid sort of chap in his way, he is an extremely bad D.O. and, even worse, has no social graces whatsoever.”
“I say,” said Martin plaintively.
“I think that’s a very fair assessment,” said Robin.
“I think you’re being very cruel to Martin,” said Mary. “I think he’s a very good D.O.”
“Anyway,” I said hastily, “we won’t go into that. The reason for this council of war is so that while Martin is making sure that his district is in order we can take over the entertainment side of the thing so that there’s no hitch and the whole thing runs smoothly. Now, I have inspected the house and I’ve got Pious in control of Martin’s staff for a start.”
“There are times,” said McGrade, “when you have strange flourishes of genius which I can only attribute to the tiny drop of Irish blood you’ve got in your veins. I’ve long envied you that steward.”
“Well, envy away,” I said, “you’re not pinching him from me. He’s too valuable. It now comes to a question of food. And this is where I thought that Mary could help.”
Mary glowed like a rosebud.
“Oh, but of course,” she said, “I’ll do anything. What have you got in mind?”
“Martin,” I said, “I assume that he’s only here for one day so we only have three meals to consider. What time will he be arriving?”
“I should think probably about seven or eight o’clock,” said Martin.
“Right,” I said, “what do you suggest, Mary?”
“Well, the avocados are absolutely perfect at the moment,” said Mary. “And if you stuffed them with shrimps and did a sort of mayonnaise sauce which I’ve got the recipe for...”
“Mary, dear,” interrupted Robin, “I have no tinned shrimps in the store and if you think I’m going to spend the next two days wading round in the river with a shrimp net, being attacked by hippos, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Well, let’s just settle on avocados,” I said. “Does he like tea or coffee?”
“I don’t really know,” said Martin, “You see, the last time we didn’t get on very intimate terms and so I couldn’t find out his preferences.”
“Well then; provide both tea and coffee,” I said.
“And then, said Mary excitedly, something simple — scrambled eggs.”
Martin solemnly wrote this down on his pad.
“That should keep him going for a bit,” I said. “I suppose you have to show him round the place and so on?”
“Yes,” said Martin, “that’s all organised.”
We all leaned forward and peered into his face earnestly.
“Are you sure?” I enquired.
“Oh yes, yes,” said Martin, “honestly, I’ve got everything organised from that point of view. It’s just this bloody entertaining business.”
“Well, presumably he’ll want to go and look at some of the outlying areas?” I enquired.
“Oh yes,” said Martin, “he always likes to poke his nose in everywhere.”
“Well then, I suggest a picnic lunch. After all, if you have a picnic lunch you don’t expect the Ritz standards, do you?”
“As in this remote place,” said Robin, “we spend our lives living on picnic lunches and dinners and breakfasts, I don’t think it would come as a great surprise to him.”
“I’ll do the picnic lunch,” said Mary. “I’ll get a haunch of goat and you can have that cold. And I think there are two lettuces that I can give you. That poor dear boy forgot to water them for four days and so I’ve lost almost all of them but I think these two will be alright. They’re a little withered but at least they’re lettuce.”
Martin wrote this solemnly down on his pad. “And for afters?” he said, looking up anxiously.
“Why not sour-sour?” I suggested. This was an extraordinary fruit that looked like a large, deformed melon with knobs on, the contents of which were white and pulpy but, whipped up and served, had a delicious lemony sort of flavour which was very refreshing.
“Wonderful,” said Mary, “what a good idea.”
“Well, that’s taken care of breakfast and lunch,” I said. “Now we come to dinner and I think this is the most important thing. I’ve discovered that Martin has got a very elegant dining-room.”
“Martin’s got a dining-room?” said McGrade.
“Yes,” I said, “an extremely elegant one.”
“Well, why is it then,” said McGrade, “on the rare occasions when this parsimonious bastard asks us up here to chop, we’re forced to eat on the veranda like a set of gipsy Protestants?”
“Never mind the why’s and wherefore’s,” I said, “come and look at it.”
We all trooped in solemnly and examined the dining-room.
I was glad to see that in the interim — though how he had found time for it I didn’t know — Pious had had the table and chairs polished so that they glowed. Peering at the table top you could see your face reflected in it as though you were looking into a brown pool of water.
“Oh, but it’s delicious,” said Mary. “Martin, you never told us you had a room like this.”
“It’s certainly a marvellous table,” said McGrade, bashing his enormous fist down on it so that I feared that it would split in two.