Oil, petrol, water, battery, tyres: Bobby anxiously superintended and encouraged the big African. He used his simple friendly voice· and he laughed a lot. The African was too preoccupied to respond. When Linda came back, Bobby went silent. Self-possessed, hard to read behind her dark glasses, she stood at the edge of the asphalted yard, looking across the road to the hills and the mountains.
At last Bobby paid, and he and Linda got back in the car.
While they waited for change they were aware of the small African, the cleaner, darkening one window, then another. Linda's forehead began to twitch; she sighed. The big African came with the change. If she sighs again like that, Bobby thought, I'll give her a piece of my mind. The African counted out the change coin by coin into Bobby's hand. It was too much; it was more than Bobby had given.
'It's pathetic,' Linda whispered.
The small African moved from Linda's window to Linda's side of the windscreen. He pulled back the wiper in an alarming way and began to clean, his face level with Linda's and just a few inches away. He frowned, doing his work, making a point of not looking at her.
She looked down at her lap and whispered, 'It's pathetic.'
If she uses that word again, Bobby thought, I'll hit her. He was counting back the excess change into the patient cupped palm of the big African, and he was deliberately counting in his friendly simple voice. He paid out the last coin, which included a tip, and smiled at the African. The big African went away, and the small African came round with his bucket to Bobby's side of the windscreen.
Linda said, 'Look what this one's been doing.'
Bobby looked at Linda's side of the windscreen. Then he looked at the small African. The African was using a doubleedged cleaner, one edge made of rubber, one edge made of sponge; but both sponge and rubber had perished, and he was rubbing the central bar of metal on the windscreen. He had left a complicated trail of deep scratches on the windows all around the car. Scratching away now, not looking at Bobby, he frowned, to show his intentness.
Bobby saw the fineness of the African's features, the special, dead blackness of the skin, and recognized him as a man of the king's tribe. Bobby was at once deeply angry. The African aware of Bobby's scrutiny, frowned harder.
'What on earth do you think you're doing?'
Bobby pushed the door open so violently that the African was hit and thrown off balance.
The African recovered and scrambled away from the car. He said, 'What?' and opened his mouth to say more. But then he just looked at Bobby with shocked, liquid eyes, the disintegrating large sponge in his left hand, the metal-handled cleaner still in his right.
'Look at what you've done,' Bobby shouted. 'You've ruined my windscreen. You've ruined all my windows. You've knocked several hundred shillings off the resale value. Who's going to give me that? You?'
'Insurance,' the African said. And again he seemed about to say something else; but the words didn't come.
'Oh yes, you are very clever. Like all your people. You always know. Insurance? I want it back from you.'
Bobby took a step towards the African. The African stepped back, awkward in his dungarees.
The three other Africans stood still, in their dingy blue dungarees, one next to the door of the office, against the white wall, one in front of the yellow board, one beside the petrol pump. 'I'm going to have you sacked,' Bobby said. 'Sent back to your people. Who's the manager here?'
The African standing against the white office wall raised his hand. He was the man with whom Bobby had dealt, the man who had given the change. He hesitated, then he came towards Bobby. He stood a few feet away, held his hands behind his back and said, 'Manager.'
Company policy, clearly; but Bobby doubted whether this manager had it in his power to recruit and sack.
'I'll be dropping a note to your head office,' Bobby said. He took out an envelope and ballpoint pen from the pocket of his native shirt. 'Who's your superior? Who your boss-man?'
'Dis' sup'indant. Ind-ian.'
'The old Asian trick of remote control. He come here today, your district superintendent?'
'Today no. Home. He live there.' The manager waved towards that part of the town Bobby had just driven through.
'Oh yes, they're all hiding today. Give me his address. Bossman, where he live?' And while he scribbled on the envelope, with such impatience that he almost immediately stopped writing words and then, deliberately, was just making marks, he said, 'These people shouldn't be employed. They and their king have had it all their own way for too long. But their little games are over now. Look at my windscreen.'
The manager looked, leaning to one side to show that he looked.
The small African had begun to relax within his dungarees. He was looking down penitentially at the oily yard, still holding his sponge and cleaner, his little mouth set.
Bobby resented this inattention. He said, 'This is something for the police.'
The African looked up, his eyes wide with terror. Again he opened his mouth to talk but said nothing. Then, making a gesture as if he was ready to throw aside the tools of his trade, the sponge and the metal-handled cleaner, he turned and began to walk, kicking out in his dungarees, to the edge of the yard.
'I'm a government officer!' Bobby shouted. The African halted and turned, 'Sir.'
'How dare you turn your back on me while I'm addressing you?' Native shirt swinging, crooking his right arm, pulling back his open palm, Bobby advanced on the small African.
The African was making no effort to dodge the blow. There was only expectation in his glittering eyes.
The other three Africans stood where they were, one in front of the yellow board, one next to the pump, the manager near the car. 'Bobby,' Linda said, through the half-open car door. Her voice was neutral, without reproof; she spoke his name as though she had known him a long time.
'How dare you turn your back on me?'
'Bobby.' She had opened the car door and was preparing to get out.
All four Africans stood just where they were as, yellow native shirt dancing, Bobby bustled back to the car. And they remained where they were while Bobby started the car and drove down to the edge of the yard. There he stopped.
'That damned address,' Bobby said. 'Where did I put it?' He acted out an angry search for the envelope on which he had written nothing.
'I think we can forget that,' Linda said.
'Oh no.'
'Drop a note to head office, as you said. I don't think we should go chasing any address that man has given.'
He still searched.
Very quickly, then, with a revving of the engine, a burst of blue smoke and a squeal of tyres, he turned left, heading out of the town, giving up the district superintendent.
The four Africans stood where they were.
'The humiliation,' he said, restless in his seat.
Linda said nothing.
The town was quickly past: three or four big concrete sheds and a foundry among the empty overgrown lots of an 'industrial estate', a stretch of bumpy dual-carriageway, washed-out hoardings with their close-to-Caucasian pictures of laughing Africans, the highway again, and then on a hillside rows and rows of unpainted wooden huts, relics of a failed colonial plantation.
'The humiliation.'
Rainclouds darkened the far hills to the right, and the mountains in the distance were hidden. But to the left, where the land was open, the sky was still high, and when the sun struck through the clouds the wet road glistened and the fenced pasture-land was the freshest green.
Suddenly Bobby braked, but with care, without skidding, and pulled in at the side of the road. The road was empty; the manoeuvre was safe. The left wheels sank in soft grass and mud; but he had kept the right wheels on the tar. He bent over the steering-wheel and knocked his forehead lightly against it. Raising his head, resting his right elbow on the wheel, he jammed his palm against his mouth, held his forehead and looked down, and jammed his palm against his mouth again.