| porter INCIDENT IN AZANIA I The union club at Matodi was in marked contrast to the hillside, bungalow dwellings of the majority of its members. It stood in the centre of the town, on the waterfront; a seventeenth-century Arab mansion built of massive whitewashed walls round a small court; latticed windows overhung the street from which, in former times, the womenfolk of a great merchant had watched the passing traffic; a heavy door, studded with brass bosses gave entrance to the dark shade of the court, where a little fountain sprayed from the roots of an enormous mango; and an open staircase of inlaid cedar-wood led to the cool interior. An Arab porter, clothed in a white gown scoured and starched like a Bishop’s surplice, crimson sash and tarboosh, sat drowsily at the gate. He rose in reverence as Mr. Reppington, the magistrate, and Mr. Bretherton, the sanitary-inspector, proceeded splendidly to the bar. In token of the cordiality of the Condominium, French officials were honorary members of the Club, and a photograph of a former French President (“We can’t keep changing it,” said Major Lepperidge, “every time the frogs care to have a shim-ozzle”) hung in the smoking room opposite the portrait of the Prince of Wales; except MBT shoes on Gala nights, however, they rarely availed themselves of their privilege. The single French journal to which the Club subscribed was La Vie Parisienne, which, on this particular evening, was in the hands of a small man of plebeian appearance, sitting alone in a basket chair. Reppington and Bretherton nodded their way forward. “Evening, Granger.” “Evening, Barker.” “Evening, Jagger,” and then in an audible undertone Bretherton inquired, “Who’s the chap in the corner with La Vie?” “great lake in the middle.” The Major took his gin and lime and moved towards a chair; suddenly he saw Mr. Brooks, and his authoritative air softened to unaccustomed amiability. “Why, hallo, Brooks,” he said. “How are you? Fine to see you back. Just had the pleasure of seeing your daughter at the tennis club. My missus wondered if you and she would care to come up and dine one evening. How about Thursday? Grand. She’ll be delighted. Good-night you fellows. Got to get a shower.” The occurrence was sensational. Bretherton and Reppington looked at one another in shocked surprise. Major Lepperidge, both in rank and personality, was the leading man in pyrotechnic signals Matodi—in the whole of Azania indeed, with the single exception of the Chief Commissioner at Debra Dowa. It was inconceivable that Brooks should dine with Lepperidge. Bretherton himself had only dined there once and he was Government. There were eight Englishwomen in Matodi, counting Mrs. Bretherton’s two-year-old reading glasses daughter; nine if you included Mrs. Macdonald (but no one did include Mrs. Macdonald who came from Bombay and betrayed symptoms of Asiatic blood. Besides, no one knew who Mr. Macdonald had been. Mrs. Macdonald kept an ill-frequented pension on the outskirts of the town named “The Bougainvillea”). All who were of marriageable age were married; they led lives under a mutual scrutiny too close and unremitting for romance. There were, however, seven unmarried Englishmen, three in Government service, three in commerce and one unemployed, who had fled to Matodi from his creditors in Kenya. (He sometimes spoke vaguely of “planting” or “prospecting,” but in the meantime drew a small remittance each month and hung amiably about the Club and the tennis courts.) Most of these bachelors were understood to have some girl at home; they check valve kept photographs in their rooms, wrote long letters regularly, and took their leave with hints that when they returned they might not be alone. But they invariably were. Perhaps in precipitous eagerness for sympathy they painted too dark a picture of Azanian life; perhaps Custom Wedding Dresses the Tropics made them a little addle-pated..... Anyway, the arrival of Prunella Brooks sent a wave of excitement through English PATEK FAKE WATCHES society. Normally, as the daughter of Mr. Brooks, oil company agent, her choice would have been properly confined to the three commercial men—Mr. James, of the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company, and Messrs. Watson and Jagger, of the Bank—but Prunella was a girl of such evident personal superiority, that cheap jersey in her first afternoon at the tennis courts, as has been shown above, she transgressed the shadow line effortlessly and indeed unconsciously, and stepped straight into the inmost sanctuary, the Lepperidge bungalow. She was small and unaffected, an iridescent blonde, with a fresh skin, doubly dvd ripper intoxicating in contrast with the tanned and desiccated tropical complexions around her; with rubbery, puppyish limbs and a face which lit up with amusement at the most barren pleasantries; an air of earnest interest in the opinions and experiences of all she met; a natural confidante, with no disposition POLO T-shirt to make herself the centre of a group, but rather to tackle her friends one by one, in their own time, when they needed her; deferential and charming to the married women; tender, friendly, and mildly flirtatious with the men; keen on games but not so good as to shake masculine superiority; a devoted daughter denying herself any pleasure that might impair the smooth working of Mr. Brooks’s home—“No, I must go now. I couldn’t let father come home from the Club and not find me there to greet him”—in fact, just such a girl as would be a light and blessing in gate valve any outpost of the Empire. It was very few days before all at Matodi were eloquent of their good fortune. Of course, she had first of all to be examined and instructed by the matrons Solvent red 24 of the colony, but she submitted to her initiation with so pretty a grace that she might not have been aware of the dangers of the ordeal. Mrs. Lepperidge and Mrs. Reppington put her through it. Far away in the interior, in the sunless secret places, where a twisted stem across the jungle track, a rag fluttering to the bough of a tree, a fowl headless and full spread toggle switch by an old stump marked the taboo where no man might cross, the Sakuya women chanted their primeval litany of initiation; here on the hillside the no less terrible ceremony was held over Mrs. Lepperidge’s tea table. First the questions; disguised and delicate over the tea cake but quickening their pace as the tribal rhythm waxed high and the table was cleared of tray and kettle, falling faster and faster like ecstatic hands Gucci Jeans on the taut cowhide, mounting and swelling with the first cigarette; a series of urgent, peremptory interrogations. To all this Prunella responded with docile simplicity. The whole of her life, upbringing and education were exposed, examined and found to be exemplary; her mother’s death, the care Safety goggles of an aunt, a convent school in the suburbs which had left her with charming manners, a readiness to find the right man and to settle down with him whenever the Service should require it; her belief in a limited family and European education, the value of sport, kindness to animals, aff Women boots ectionate patronage of men. Then, when she had proved herself worthy of it, came the Women boots instruction. Intimate details of health and hygiene, things every young girl should know, the general dangers of sex and its particular dangers in the Tropics; the proper treatment of the other inhabitants of Matodi, etiquette towards ladies of higher rank, the leaving of cards..... “Never shake hands with natives, however well educated they think themselves. Arabs are quite different, many of them very like gentlemen ... no worse than a great many Italians, really ... Indians, luckily, you won’t have to meet ... never allow native servants to see you in your dressing gown ... and be very careful about curtains in the bathroom—natives peep ... never walk in the side streets alone—in fact you have no business in them at all ... never ride outside the compound alone. There have been several cases of bandits ... an American missionary only last year, but he was some kind of non-Conformist ... We owe it to our men shirts menfolk to take no unnecessary risks ... a band of brigands commanded by a Sakuya called Joab ... the Major will soon clean him up when he gets the levy into better shape ... they find their boots very soccer jersey uncomfortable at present ... meanwhile it is a very safe rule to take a man with you everywhere.....” III And Prunella was never short of male escort. As the weeks passed wholesale mlb jerseys it became clear to the watching colony that her choice had narrowed down to two—Mr. Kentish, assistant native commissioner, and Mr. Benson, second lieutenant in the native levy; not that she was not consistently charming to everyone else—even to the shady remittance man and the repulsive Mr. Jagger—but by various little acts of preference she made it known that Kentish and Benson were her favourites. And the study of their innocent romances gave a sudden new interest to the social life of the town. Until now there had been plenty of entertaining plug valve certainly—gymkhanas and tennis tournaments, dances and dinner parties, calling and gossiping, amateur opera and church bazaars—but it had been a joyless and dutiful affair. They knew what was expected of Englishmen abroad; they had to keep up appearances before the natives and their co-protectionists; they had to have something to write home about; so they sturdily went through the recurring recreations due to their station. But with Prunella’s coming a new lightness was in the air; there were more parties and more dances and a point to everything. Mr. Brooks, who had never dined out before, found himself suddenly popular, and as his former exclusion had not worried him, he took his present vogue as a natural result of his daughter’s charm, was pleased by it and mildly embarrassed. He realized that she would soon want to get married and faced with equanimity the prospect of his inevitable return to solitude. Meanwhile Benson and Kentish ran neck and neck through the crowded Azanian spring and no cheap supra shoes one could say with confidence which was leading—betting was slightly in favour of Benson, who had supper dances with her at the Caledonian and the Polo Club Balls—when there occurred the incident which shocked Azanian feeling to its core. Prunella Brooks was kidnapped. The circumstances were obscure and a little shady. Prunella, who had never been known to infringe one jot or tittle of the local code, had been out riding alone in the hills. That was apparent from the first, and later, under cross-examination, her syce revealed that this had for some time been her practice, two or three r4i card times a week. The shock of her infidelity to rule was almost as great as the shock of her disappearance. But worse was to follow. One evening at the Club, since Mr. Brooks was absent (his popularity had waned in the last few days and his presence made a painful restraint) the question of Prunella’s secret rides was being freely debated, when a slightly fuddled voice broke into the conversation. “It’s bound to come out,” said the remittance man from prada sneakers Kenya, “so I may as well tell you right away. Prunella used to ride with me. She didn’t want us to get talked about, so we met on the Debra Dowa road by the Moslem Tombs. I shall miss those afternoons very much indeed,” said the remittance man, a slight, alcoholic quaver in his voice, “and I blame myself to a great extent for all that has happened. You see, I must have had a little more to drink than was good for me that morning and it was very hot, so with one thing and another, when I went to change into riding breeches I fell asleep and did not wake up until Hydrostatic test pump after dinnertime. And perhaps that is the last we shall ever see of her ...” and two vast tears rolled down his cheeks. This unmanly spectacle preserved the peace, for Benson and Kentish had already begun to advance upon the remittance man with a menacing air. But there is little satisfaction in castigating one who is already in the profound depths of self-pity and the stern tones of Major Lepperidge called them sharply to order. “Benson, Kentish, I don’t say I don’t sympathize with you boys and I know exactly what I’d do myself under the circumstances. The story we have just heard may or may not be the truth. In either case I think I know what we all feel about the teller. But that can wait. You’ll have plenty of time to settle up when we’ve got Miss Brooks safe. That is our first duty.” Thus exhorted, public opinion again rallied to Prunella, and the urgency of her case was dramatically emphasized two days later by the arrival at the American Consulate of the Baptist missionary’s right ear loosely done up in newspaper and string. The men of the colony—excluding, of course, the remittance man—got together in the Lepperidge bungalow and formed a committee of defence, first to protect the women who were still left to them and then to rescue Miss Brooks at whatever personal inconvenience or risk. |
