“You want to shell?” she asked. And without waiting for an answer said, “Go ahead but don’t pour in troops!”
He didn’t want to pour in troops either and so it was all right. But she wanted visual assurance and so he showed her.
One of the ingenious economics taught by the war was that a rubber condom could be used over and over again. All you had to do was wash it out, dry it and shake a lot of talcum powder over it to prevent its sticking; and it was as good as new. It had to be the real British thing, though, not some of the cheap stuff they brought in from Lisbon which was about as strong as a dry cocoyam leaf in the harmattan.
He had his pleasure but wrote the girl off. He might just as well have slept with a prostitute, he thought. It was clear as daylight to him now that she was kept by some army officer. What a terrible transformation in the short period of less than two years! Wasn’t it a miracle that she still had memories of the other life, that she even remembered her name? If the affair of the drunken Red Cross man should happen again now, he said to himself, he would stand up beside the fellow and tell the party that here was a man of truth. What a terrible fate to befall a whole generation! The mothers of tomorrow!
By morning he was feeling a little better and more generous in his judgments. Gladys, he thought, was just a mirror reflecting a society that had gone completely rotten and maggoty at the centre. The mirror itself was intact; a lot of smudge but no more. All that was needed was a clean duster. “I have a duty to her,” he told himself, “the little girl that once revealed to me our situation. Now she is in danger, under some terrible influence.”
He wanted to get to the bottom of this deadly influence. It was clearly not just her good-time girlfriend, Augusta, or whatever her name was. There must be some man at the centre of it, perhaps one of these heartless attack-traders who traffic in foreign currencies and make their hundreds of thousands by sending young men to hazard their lives bartering looted goods for cigarettes behind enemy lines, or one of those contractors who receive piles of money daily for food they never deliver to the army. Or perhaps some vulgar and cowardly army officer full of filthy barrack talk and fictitious stories of heroism. He decided he had to find out. Last night he had thought of sending his driver alone to take her home. But no, he must go and see for himself where she lived. Something was bound to reveal itself there. Something on which he could anchor his saving operation. As he prepared for the trip his feeling towards her softened with every passing minute. He assembled for her half of the food he had received at the relief centre the day before. Difficult as things were, he thought a girl who had something to eat would be spared, not all, but some of the temptation. He would arrange with his friend at the WCC to deliver something to her every fortnight.
Tears came to Gladys’s eyes when she saw the gifts. Nwankwo didn’t have too much cash on him but he got together twenty pounds and handed it over to her.
“I don’t have foreign exchange, and I know this won’t go far at all, but …”
She just came and threw herself at him, sobbing. He kissed her lips and eyes and mumbled something about victims of circumstance, which went over her head. In deference to him, he thought with exultation, she had put away her high-tinted wig in her bag.
“I want you to promise me something,” he said.
“What?”
“Never use that expression about shelling again.”
She smiled with tears in her eyes. “You don’t like it? That’s what all the girls call it.”
“Well, you are different from all the girls. Will you promise?”
“O.K.”
Naturally their departure had become a little delayed. And when they got into the car it refused to start. After poking around the engine the driver decided that the battery was flat. Nwankwo was aghast. He had that very week paid thirty-four pounds to change two of the cells and the mechanic who performed it had promised him six months’ service. A new battery, which was then running at two hundred and fifty pounds was simply out of the question. The driver must have been careless with someth
ing, he thought.
“It must be because of last night,” said the driver.
“What happened last night?” asked Nwankwo sharply, wondering what insolence was on the way. But none was intended.
“Because we use the headlight.”
“Am I supposed not to use my light then? Go and get some people and try pushing it.” He got out again with Gladys and returned to the house while the driver went over to neighbouring houses to seek the help of other servants.
After at least half an hour of pushing it up and down the street, and a lot of noisy advice from the pushers, the car finally spluttered to life shooting out enormous clouds of black smoke from the exhaust.
It was eight-thirty by his watch when they set out. A few miles away a disabled soldier waved for a lift.
“Stop!” screamed Nwankwo. The driver jammed his foot on the brakes and then turned his head towards his master in bewilderment.
“Don’t you see the soldier waving? Reverse and pick him up!”
“Sorry, sir,” said the driver. “I don’t know Master wan to pick him.”
“If you don’t know you should ask. Reverse back.”
The soldier, a mere boy, in filthy khaki drenched in sweat lacked his right leg from the knee down. He seemed not only grateful that a car should stop for him but greatly surprised. He first handed in his crude wooden crutches which the driver arranged between the two front seats, then painfully he levered himself in.
“Thank sir,” he said turning his neck to look at the back and completely out of breath.
“I am very grateful. Madame, thank you.”