We called on the local administrator, who lives in a corrugated iron box on stilts, with an outside staircase and shutters hinged at the top. This was also the residence of the ghost of Sir Roger Casement who, after exposing the horrors of the Belgian rubber plantations in the Congo Free State, was posted to Calabar as consul. His ghost is a sad and gloomy spectre.
- Africa: Angry Young Giant, Smith Hempstone, Praeger, New York, 1961
I found the above quote in a book in my dad’s library. The rest I cobbled together from our conversations together. This is my father’s “personal experience” of an incident that happened in Nigeria in the 1950s, when he was around eight years old. I can’t confirm anything beyond what he told me, although I discovered that The Old Residency is very much still standing. It’s now an anti-colonial museum and a major tourist attraction in Calibar.
One humid Saturday morning, the local Chief Superintendent of police arrived at the Old Residency in his Austin D90 convertible, sweating and frantic. Michael and his parents were on the veranda eating breakfast, watching a rabble of prisoners trim the lawns with scythettes; they had been brought up to prepare the gardens for the visit of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
Robert Vale wiped his mouth with a napkin, pushed aside a plate of mangos, and leaned over the railing.
“Harry, up here.”
Robert wore a loose-fitting linen suit and tie. With his fedora on he looked like Frank Sinatra but today he looked younger, his hair combed into a neat parting. He was thirty-three years old.
The Chief Superintendent shielded his eyes from the sun and peered up at the veranda. He waved, noting the presence of Rachel and young Michael, and mumbled and gestured at the lower level of the house. He wanted to speak to Robert privately.
Rachel stole Robert’s newspaper and slipped on a pair of cat-eye sunglasses. “Go on then.”
“He’s probably lost my bum puncher.” Robert straightened his chair and wandered into the dark inner rooms.
“He’ll never find your bum puncher.” Rachel turned to the society pages of the paper. A picture of the Queen waving in Lagos covered a whole page.
“What’s a bum puncher?” young Michael asked, pushing away his own plate of mangos.
“It’s Ju-Ju priests giving people inoculations with old needles. They cause infections and it’s dangerous.”
Michael wanted to know what his father was discussing with the Chief Superintendent. His father often left the house at odd times to work, and Michael had become curious about the administration of the Empire and his father’s role in it. He slipped off his chair but Rachel pointed at his plate.
“Sit and finish.”
Michael obliged. He ate his mangos and stared at the policeman’s car—its shiny bonnet and chrome fixtures—and as soon as he swallowed the final lump his father appeared on the lawn carrying a pistol. He climbed into the Superintendent’s car and the two men rattled down the lane through the gates and towards town.
Rachel stood up and removed her sunglasses. She gripped the railing and stared at the space between the palms where the car had glimmered.
Sensing his mother’s concern, Michael opened the jar of madeleine cakes and offered her one. She nibbled one, but stayed at the rail, watching the road.
They spent the whole day on the veranda, playing Dover Patrol and reading magazines. The prisoners finished their work and shuffled off, following the long route down to Calabar. John, the key house servant, dumped Mungo (the pet mongoose) on Michael’s lap and brought up tea. He sat by Rachel and watched the road, his face pearling with sweat. He wore a mandarin shirt with large chest pockets. His hair was parted in the centre and a small moustache nestled beneath his nose.
“You keep dat mongoose away for me, Master Michael. Alright?”
Despite his joviality, John seemed concerned. Michael tried to teach him Dover Patrol but John lost interest and whispered with Rachel. The sun collapsed and mango smeared the sky. Grasshoppers chattered. The palms waved eerily, like the hair of drowning women. Headlights appeared in the dusk. John stood, and several of the backroom staff ambled onto the lawns, tracing a wedge of light from the front doors.
“Is he back?” Rachel gripped the rail.
A car drew into the forecourt, but it wasn’t the Austin D90 or any other that Robert usually drove. It was the armoured car with the viewing deck that they had used during parades and state visits. A police officer in a helmet climbed out and shouted, “Mrs Vale?”
Rachel darted into the house, leaving a book open on the table where it slowly turned its pages, creaking.
Michael didn’t understand. He stepped after her, but John snatched his shoulder. “Wait.”
They stood by the rail and watched her jog past the crowd on the lawn and towards the vehicle’s headlights. The officer opened the passenger door, and she climbed in.
“Where’s she going?” Michael asked.
John shifted his hand from Michael’s shoulder to his back and watched the vehicle perform a wide arc and rumble off towards Calabar.
“I don’t know, Michael.”
The people on the lawn crossed their arms and mumbled. They glanced at Michael and John, and the men loosened their ties and the women followed them back indoors. They left the doors open. Michael looked around for Mungo but couldn’t see him. The colour wicked from the sky and even the palms disappeared into an inky, twittering blackness. John brought a lamp and some chocolate and they ignored the midges and played cards until the moon rose. Rachel didn’t return and the staff left one by one, either walking down the hill or driving out in twos or threes. Michael tried not to think about his father.
Later, John brought up water and helped Michael brush his teeth. He walked him to the giant bedroom at the southeast corner where the windows stared into the jungle. Moonlight glistened on the floor. Michael’s cot was wooden with a steel base. A comfy upholstered chair idled in the far corner and a lacquered chest of drawers and mirror shimmered near the doorway. Like the rest of the house, the walls were a dark redwood and the floors were polished boards. Michael rolled over in the sheets, and before long John slipped out, leaving the door open. The light from the central living space shone in, making the room mostly grey and discernible. The one corner that darkened was closest to the window, near Michael’s cot.
The man came from there, late in the night. He appeared gracefully, turned his back to the bed, and sat.
Michael stopped breathing. He had been unable to sleep and had been daydreaming about his father and the armoured car. Now he was conscious and wide-eyed.
The man wore a white suit and neat dark hair. He looked well over six feet tall. He turned and the moonlight swept his cheek. But Michael still couldn’t see him clearly.
Micheal wasn’t afraid. He was used to visitors in the house, but he didn’t recognize the man and he found himself sucking his thumbnails as he watched him.
The man pulled a pipe from his pocket but, seeming sad, he lowered it to his lap and waited.
Michael didn’t make a noise. He noticed the bow tie and the short, neat beard. Inch-long fingernails made the man’s hands seem like flippers and his thumbnail tapped his pipe as he waited.
The man slipped the pipe back into his pocket and stroked the bed as if searching for Michael. He then glided towards the doorway, bent over like a doll, his shoes scraping the floorboards.
Michael waited in bed, shivering too hard to think. The man had gone but his shadow still retreated, creaking around the doorframe as if made of rubber. Michael listened closely but only heard the crickets now and the hum of a generator. Coming to think of it, he’d barely heard the man at all.
The doorway looked normal and his room seemed undisturbed. He pulled the bedsheet to his nose and whispered “hi”. But no one replied.
Rachel returned in the morning and changed clothes. She packed a bag and instructed the staff to take time off. She seemed busy and out of sorts. She marched her son onto the lawns and sat him on her suitcase. She told him about his father:
A man in a nearby village had chopped up a woman with a machete and fled into the jungle. Robert had marched volunteers out of Calabar and they’d swept through the jungle looking for him. Robert had kept to one end of the line with his pistol and, after an hour, he found the killer hiding in a bush. He told him to lift his hands, but the killer hacked apart his collarbone. Robert shot the man through the stomach and staggered back to Calabar. He was at the hospital recovering.
“You need to stay here and be a good boy and do what John says.”
“Was it a white man he shot?”
“No. Just a man from the village.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
“Your father needs to rest. You can come soon.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I’ll come when your father’s fit enough. So, you need to be a good boy and do what John says.”
Michael cried, but it was no use. Rachel left shortly after and the house grew silent and Michael felt cold. All he could think about was his father and the man he’d seen. The man he’d heard. He searched for John and found him sitting in the kitchens smoking a cigarette.
“John?”
“What do you want, Master Michael?”
Michael didn’t know what to say
“Out wid it, young man.”
Michael shivered and rubbed his shoulders.
“Come on, boy.”
“There was a man.”
“There was no man.” John blew a long dart of smoke. “When?”
“Last night. A tall man in a linen suit.”
“Ah.” he said. “A white man?”
Michael nodded.
“Then it’s nothing.” John stubbed out his cigarette and climbed to his feet. “Just go back to sleep if he come again.”
John fetched a sack of mangos and gave them to Michael to peel. He handed Michael a small knife and watched him skin one after another. This continued for some time and John lit another cigarette. “Don’t worry,” he said kindly. “Your father will live.”
That afternoon, John drove the gardening team back to Calabar in the spare van, and Michael, not wanting to be alone in the house, filled the plunge tub in the garden so he could cool off and wait in the sunlight, away from the darkened inner rooms. The tub was attached to the house’s back wall and was large enough for four people. It was ideal for hot afternoons, and his father often dove in after work.
Michael pulled on his shorts and exited the house via the kitchens. He clambered into the water and practised bobbing like a hippo, with just his nose above the surface. He watched the popcorn clouds and the sweeping palms. He imagined that the cement rim was a sand dune and the palms an oasis. He ran his toes over the rim and imagined them as Bedouin. He slid his feet back and forth, wiggling them, and then a shadow swept down and blocked out the sun. The figure’s hands hung limply, but long fingernails tapped the cement.
“Hello?” Michael whispered.
The figure leaned close and its pale smile stretched and cracked. The water warmed and Michael started crying.
The man circled the tub and tapped its edges like a jailer. He wore a suit jacket, black bowtie, and high collar. His smile was stretching and curling. Michael sank lower into the water and covered his face, peering between his fingers. The man made a noise like a leaking balloon and slipped down into the earth. A waft of stale tobacco caught the air. He disappeared from view, and for several minutes Michael watched the empty air where he’d stood.
He eventually rallied his courage and crept through the water and peered over the edge. There was nothing but dry grass and paving. Too timid to move, Michael sucked his thumb and waited in the water. A black object reached from the soil where the man had vanished. A stick or finger, but glistening as if wet. Michael nudged it with his fingertips. It was hard and smooth.
“Hmm, ” Michael murmured.
He tugged the object with his fingers and it slipped from the earth, only loosely buried: the rotten stem of a tobacco pipe. It smelled sweet and its bit looked rusted. Michael dropped it.
Two days later his father and mother arrived home, and soon the man in the white suit seemed like a distant dream. He tried to forget it but he couldn’t shake the smell of tobacco. It followed him when he played alone and whenever his father went away.
After two whole years and several trips to a psychiatrist in Lagos, Robert announced that they were moving back to England. Both his son’s condition and Nigeria’s condition were deteriorating. The governance of Calabar was being handed over to the Nigerians, and Michael would be sent away early to Prep School in Sussex before joining Gordonstoun in Scotland.
Before leaving the Old Residency, Michael took his father to the patch of earth where he thought he’d seen the tobacco pipe but they found nothing but insect shells. Robert selected one and held it up over the sun like a crystal.
“Africa’s like one of these empty shells, you see Michael?” he said. “It’s so terrifying yet so completely benign.” He tossed the shell away and brushed off his hands. He rubbed them clean on his jacket.