It was the beginning of March, and the Harmattan winds from the Sahara were blowing cool, dusty particles up into the air. The dust colored the sky a pink-orange at sunset, and added an extra, irritating mood to everybody’s usual daily difficulties. When Dexter Wilson left the City Hotel later that night, he caught the last rays of the sunset over Bond Street and stepped gingerly down the hotel stairs, he’d had a few more drinks than usual tonight. He tried to drown out the frustration he was feeling towards the bureaucrats in London, who insisting on making petty comments about his monthly reports on the activities of the Government and the diamond dealers of Sierra Leone; but he’d not succeeded. ‘You must make your reports on the appropriate forms, Wilson” came the most recent rebuttal. There was never a word of appreciation for the difficult circumstances he was working under. He was not a covet spy, for goodness sake. He had been recruited to just keep his ears and eyes open, and make reports from his observations as a Professor at Fourah Bay College. His pay was no higher than a British Council administrator. His reports were always accurate, timely and efficient. He gave details when necessary, and always provided a historic context in his reports.
Wilson’s pedantic commitment to accurate historical references was one of the reasons his wife, Chrissie, had moved out of their bedroom and taken to sleeping in what used to be the servants quarters. Dexter had had to build on an extension to their rented house for the servants, at his own expense, just to keep some kind of handle on the scandal that everyone knew about but few of his colleagues would openly discuss—the other reason Chrissie left him was that he was a homosexual.
“You’re a bore and a Poofter,” said Chrissie as she collapsed onto the sofa. She was drunk, a gin and tonic still grasped tightly in her hand.
“I wish you wouldn’t drink so much, my dear. You know how it gives you such violent migraines.”
“I’m taking a lover,” she said.
“I see,” he replied.
“Is that all you can say? ‘I see!’”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say you’ll stop fucking that college kid you have over here nearly every night. That’s what I want you to say!”
“Chrissie, I’m not fucking that boy. He’s in need of special tutoring.”
“Special, my arse! Ha ha ha, I made a pun. Did you like that, dear?
“You’re getting ridiculous now.”
Chrissie had wanted to get away; Tunbridge Wells, in Kent. The comfortable, verdant garden of England where stock brokerage mansions dotting the undulating northern downs. A safe distance from London and the crush of city life, yet close enough to get ‘up to town’ within the hour.
Chrissie and her sister Anna use to stay outdoors all day walking the downs, finding hiding places and generally avoiding their parents, whose emotional coldness only heated up when they both went on drinking binges and spent the evening screaming at each other, followed by two days of hibernation and remorse. It was not that Chrissie’s parents’ generation were incapable of expressing love, it was just that they had never been taught.
Chrissie met Dexter at Canterbury College. She was studying Art, he, History. They managed not to annoy each other for the three years it took them to graduate and when it came to sex the less the better as far as Chrissie was concerned. For Dexter even then, the decision to have sex was greater than the act itself. They drifted apart. He went off to teach in Yorkshire, and she went up to London to be a part of the post-swinging sixties. She came back with a child. He was on the run from an ‘indiscretion.’
The Church council had an assignment for him—teaching African students at the pre-eminent West African college of Fourah Bay, in Sierra Leone. MI5, the British Secret Service, interviewed him as a matter of course before he went out to West Africa, and realized that Dexter was susceptible to manipulation. He needed to get out of England to avoid any investigations into his activities in Yorkshire. He needed money as was determined by his not so elegant suit that he wore to the interview. Their investigations of him had also revealed that his wife could use the opportunity to get out of the country to save herself and her prominent family any further embarrassments; and he had a convenient cover as an instructor of students. All in all he would be an ideal man to have in Freetown, and he would be cheap too.
Wilson’s unofficial position was as the Commonwealth Diversity Programs Coordinating Representative (CDPCR). It was the British Government’s modern attempt to soften MI5’s image without compromising the extraordinary reach that the British government and its secret service had over its former colonies. Dexter’s responsibilities included documenting the activities of the government on the ground. He complemented his Professor’s role as an import- export consultant, for those who were doing business with British companies. This brought him into contact with Government officials and many businessmen who were always a good source of unofficial, but well founded, information. Dexter also took it upon himself to keep an eye out for any new travelers in town. Cameron Morris had surprised him with his bold manner and bizarre behavior and dress. But Cameron had reminded Dexter of his own youthful dreams of travel. He thought how excited he was when he first left England to start again in West Africa and he recalled his own sense of adventure and the desire to put all that claustrophobic world of England behind him when he was Cameron’s age. Alas, it had not worked out like he dreamed it would. He had no children; Chrissie’s child was being raised in England. But somehow, he reasoned, he might be able to help this young man. ‘Perhaps’, thought Dexter, ‘I could help him avoid the pitfalls that my life has succumbed too? But maybe,’ acknowledged Dexter, honesty, ‘I just want a new lover!’
Dexter monitored Cameron’s activities, from a far and sometimes up close, over the course of the next several months. When Cameron finally moved on from Freetown, Sierra Leone, six months later, Wilson came across a collection of his diaries. In the hands of one of the girls Cameron knew in Congo Town, the diaries followed the story of Cameron’s journey across Africa, his confused beginnings in England and his evolution as a follower of Islam. This is his story.
No comments:
Post a Comment