Olura (3 page)

Olura and he were sipping tomato juice—a drink which to me suggests recovery from a hang-over or a rarefied atmosphere of conscious virtue. On that first evening, a little unsure of his
surroundings, he had probably left the choice to her. My own refreshment during the protracted Spanish evening is invariably brandy and soda. By the time I had finished my second I found enough
impudence to tell Mgwana what I had heard of him from the last Governor-General of the colony.

He had been sitting next to me at a college gaudy, rejoicing in his retirement from the cares of office but missing his Africa and eager to talk about it. He told me that when he had been forced
to put Mgwana inside—the law being what it was—he had been afraid of going down to history as a minor second cousin of the obstinate Pharaoh. Not, he said, that there was anything
whatever holy about Mgwana. Far, far from it. But the man was a power-house for all Africa, and his name would endure.

‘I couldn’t hate him,’ Mgwana said with a deep chuckle. ‘I knew that soon I should be responsible for law and order myself. And I too had my secret fears. I
wouldn’t have liked to go down to history as the leader whose followers had cut Sir Horace into pieces and sent little baskets of him round the villages.’

Olura protested that he was exaggerating, this his followers would never have thought of it, that his own example was enough to prevent it.

‘But you must sometimes have felt hatred,’ I remarked to lead him on.

‘Yes. I did. The stupidity of policemen. The resentments. I still hate the—the polite condescension.’

‘There can’t be much of that left.’

He smiled, but didn’t answer me. After all, he was fresh from a round of conferences and probably suspicious that, as soon as he left the room, European ministers would recover a sense of
ease and get on with the job on an old-boy basis.

I ventured to touch on the question of the Portuguese colonies—my fondness for the Peninsula often makes me an untimely propagandist—suggesting that Portugal alone, with the example
of Latin-America close to its heart, was genuinely trying to create a multi-racial society.

That instantly revealed Olura for me. Just as the loyal secretary loathes the rival firm more than the managing director does, so she would not even try to see the argument. But Mgwana by no
means rejected it out of hand.

‘They should have tried to make their Brazil faster and earlier,’ he said. ‘I grant that the idea is sincere, but I am bound to fight it. Do you find any dishonesty in
that?’

I did not. Yet later in the evening of that stimulating day, when Olura and Mgwana had dined and gone out, I did feel that he had missed a subtle difference between European nations which I
could never tactfully explain.

The Portuguese family who were my neighbours at table were fascinated by Mr Mgwana, and wanted to know who he was. I sensed that the colour of his skin was to them as unimportant as the colour
of his shirt. In their gay, bird-like discussion of the lovely English lady and her obviously distinguished friend there was absolutely no undercurrent of Beauty and the Beast. The British,
however, who belonged to the same class of bourgeoisie in prosperity and education, were uneasy. Their women verged upon prurient curiosity. I would have liked to add to my field ethnology some
further examples of weary French cynicism, but Vigny and des Aunes had paid their bill and left the hotel.

The next day was glorious from dawn to dusk, and the sun truly Spanish rather than Atlantic. After idling over breakfast on the terrace and still seeing no sign of Olura or Mr Mgwana I strolled
westwards along the beach aiming for the delicious complex of miniature islands and peninsulas on the way to the Maya Estuary, where one could choose sun or shade and take one’s sea calm or
rough according to mood.

When I turned round to look at the attractive front of the hotel with its three tiers of stone balconies, Olura was leaning on the balustrade outside her room. I had put all of a quarter of a
mile between myself and the hotel, and only a third of her was visible; but I knew very well who it was. I had discovered—let us call it sentimental curiosity—that her room was
separated by two balconies from my own.

I waved to her, without much expectation that she would notice. She waved back at once. I went on my way with a faint hope that Mr Mgwana was recovering from his political exertions by staying
in bed till lunch and that Olura might accidentally choose my patch of beach. High-minded though she was, she was not at all averse to admiration—and I was the only person, unattached and of
the right age, to give it.

Half an hour later I was ashamed of that cheap ‘accidentally.’ Another woman might have come a roundabout way or settled in some half-hidden crescent of rocks where she could be sure
I would find her. Not so, Olura. She was always true to her self-imposed frankness. She walked straight up to me and merely remarked that she knew I would be there.

She was quite dazzling. No Red Riding Hood that morning. Not much, in fact, of anything at all. What there was seemed to be constructed of petals of pale green, with a wholly frivolous
thigh-length wrap of some material utterly unknown to me, white, pleated, and very possibly unique.

She swam, I observed, violently, using far too much energy. When we had settled down to sun ourselves, I congratulated her on choosing an original spot for Mr Mgwana.

‘What did you think of him?’

I replied that he was a remarkable man, and that I saw what his last Governor-General had meant.

‘It was wicked to treat him as a criminal,’ she said.

‘The poor Governor was only doing what Whitehall told him he must. And even with a leader like Mgwana his people weren’t really ready for independence.’

‘Who is?’ she asked. ‘But it’s a right. Look at ourselves! No country which is prepared to use the Bomb deserves independence.’

I laid off that one, for I always find myself in complete agreement with both sides of the argument, and can’t help showing it. In the heated nuclear atmosphere that does not increase
one’s popularity.

‘Independence is, I suppose, a right,’ I agreed, ‘but it would have been hardly fair to hand over the government to Mgwana without first making sure that he had something
governable.’

She rolled her delicious body over to face me, drawing up one smooth and intoxicating thigh to support it, and accused me of talking like a civil servant in the Athenaeum. I reminded myself
carefully that there might be a whole week ahead of us and that it would be unwise to point out too academically that she had no more idea than I of civil servants’ small talk in the
Athenaeum.

‘I don’t know enough about you, Miss Manoli,’ I said. ‘Is your interest in politics active?’

‘Yes. But it’s an interest in humanity. And Olura, please, not Miss Manoli.’

The musical name came very easily to my tongue. I had been repeating it rather too often in private.

‘There is so much I can do, you see,’ she went on. ‘It isn’t sensible that these fine men who are deciding the fate of a continent should have to put up at cheap joints
in Bloomsbury. It isn’t right that they should experience nothing between’—her words came tumbling out, and she had the grace to smile at herself—‘between chops and
chips and Lord Mayor’s Banquets. So I entertain them. I try to get for them everyone they want to meet—editors and tycoons and those horrible Public Relations Officers.’

‘I thought yesterday that you would be a marvellous P.R.O. yourself,’ I said.

‘Yes. Perhaps it does describe how I try to help the helpless.’

‘Which helpless?’

‘The emerging nations.’

Oh dear and damn! That sounded like a prefect of seventeen at an English girls’ school or an American do-goodess of forty. Leopold Mgwana might find her wealth and enthusiasm useful, but
he wouldn’t like being described as helpless. He might even agree—if he ever drank more than tomato juice—that an African politician in London was a deal less helpless than the
unfortunate Minister of State who had to negotiate with him.

‘They must all think you are an angel,’ I said, getting safely on to more personal ground.

‘Yes?’ she answered coolly. ‘Do you?’

That put me on the spot much too early. Her remark was ironical rather than inviting. At the same time I did not rule it out that she might be probing—with some enjoyment—to see how
much of a fool I was.

‘I might be doubtful about your technique of flying, but the wings are very lovely.’

‘A fairy in a Christmas pantomime?’

‘No. Lovely meaning lovable.’

That kept it on a high plane, even if somewhat emphatic. What I was really thinking about—if it could be called drinking—was the fascinating effect of sun-flecked golden down on
untanned surfaces.

‘You don’t know me at all.’

‘But I want to. And if I sound patronising, it’s just my professional manner which I can’t help. It only means that I feel protective.’

She was a bit doubtful about that one. I suppose a good many men had presented themselves as likely to protect her and her money.

‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘A barrister?’

‘A comparative philologist, with an interest in ethnology.’

‘Cannibals and canoes?’

‘No. My special subject is the peopling of Europe. Migrations and so forth. I have a theory—generally considered to be unsound—that evidence imbedded in vocabulary and grammar
is as significant as that of skulls, pottery and midden heaps. I know nothing about Africa south of the Atlas, but our interests touch in Algeria where the inhabitants had a lot more fun than they
do now.’

‘What sort of fun?’

‘Hunting over the great plains of the Sahara.’

‘You call that fun?’

‘Yes, if it means dinner for the family. No—with reservations—if it means killing for kicks,’ I answered boldly. ‘And I’ll bet you Mgwana agrees with
me.’

‘I do not always accept Leopold Mgwana’s tastes,’ she said rather haughtily, and rolled over on her back.

So there I was in the dock alongside criminals like Masters of Stag Hounds! On the other hand, hadn’t there been a faint appeal to me to take Olura for what she was and lay off the
supposed public image of Miss Manoli? When again she rested herself on one elbow conversation was easier and more intimate—perhaps because it did not concern ourselves. She proposed to show
Mgwana as much of the Basque Provinces as could be seen in a long afternoon’s drive and wanted my advice on the route.

I have put down all this because you asked me for the utmost frankness in explaining my relations with Olura and Mr Mgwana. And you are right. Considering that I had only known Olura for
thirty-six hours, my recklessness, sympathy, devotion—whatever you like to call it—is inexplicable without its full background.

It would be absurd to claim that I had fallen in love with her. She was in another world, and her character far too complex and difficult for a don with half his mind on relics of prehistory in
the Basque language. About the other half of it I have been crudely honest. I was very much aware that she was in holiday mood, unattached except for her duty to Mr Mgwana, and that if she were
feminine enough—she certainly was—to look for relaxation in captivating some casual male companion, I was available, sexually excited—a revolting phrase to express my
enchantment—and reasonably presentable.

On that disastrous evening of July 21st I remember with astonishment that I was bored, and missed Vigny and des Aunes. Olura and Leopold Mgwana dined in Bilbao and did not return till after
eleven. On arrival she went up to have a bath. He was more interested in a long and tinkling drink, for the night was like a steam-room.

He appeared most grateful for the afternoon’s tour. Having seen only towns, England, his own tropics and the desiccated coasts of Egypt and North Africa, the abrupt savagery of those green
mountains plunging to the Atlantic was strange to him. Half modest, half uneasy, he said that there must still be so many currents of European life which he did not understand.

He told me with one of his deep chuckles that Olura considered me a member of the Establishment, but still with a soul to be saved. He was too practical a man not to be amused by her
over-enthusiasm. Yet, like Vigny, he thought her a person of importance, a mover of public opinion. I couldn’t believe he was right. In these days there is no salon influence corresponding to
that of the great Victorian and Edwardian hostesses. Olura’s entertainment of the citizens, prominent or promising, of new countries was well conceived and undoubtedly useful. But it was not
an exercise of power. It remained a generous and ambitious eccentricity.

Mgwana left the lounge a little before midnight, saying that he had a couple of hours’ work before him. I read the local paper and then went up myself. Looking along the line of balconies,
I noticed that Olura’s light was still on. I remember thinking that she was not the type to draw curtains automatically and that, since there was nothing but the Biscay swell between Brittany
and her bedroom for three hundred miles, she would certainly prefer casements opening on the foam.

I was in a first half-sleep, obsessed with pots of cactus and miniature orange trees—association with the sort of balcony Olura would have in London and the difficult choice of a seat
which would face Keats’ nightingale—when I heard my name being whispered. I sat up, and there was Olura standing just inside my own magic casement.

‘Don’t turn the light on!’ she said.

The situation looked very hopeful. This approach fitted her self-imposed sincerity, and she was very scantily dressed so far as I could judge in the liquid, dark-blue shine from the sea behind
her. I slid out of bed and asked her to come in.

‘No. Philip, I need you in my room immediately. Along the balconies. I’ve just done it. The bedroom windows are all shut.’

Her voice was steady, but there was something wrong with her breathing.

‘Are you ill, Olura?’ I asked.

‘No, no! come at once and don’t let anyone see you!’

Obviously this was not an occasion for dressing-gown and pyjamas. What was up I couldn’t begin to guess; but whether it was a large moth or burglars or a violently overflowing lavatory
cisten, action had to be taken. So I grabbed beach shirt, trousers and sandals. After reconnoitring all visible balconies in case some romantic was leaning out to have a look at nothing, I slipped
across to her room. One of the wrought-iron barriers on the way was impassable except by way of some nasty spikes on the outer edge. She certainly had not climbed that just from alarm at insects or
plumbing.