Ribbon of Sand , livre ebook

The Ribbon of Sand
Morgan Hatch
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-06-30
The Ribbon of Sand Abouth The Author Copyright Information © Prologue Synopsis Chapter (1) The Ribbon of Sand Chapter (2) Chapter (3) Chapter (4) Chapter (5) Chapter (6) Chapter (7) Chapter (8) Chapter (9) Chapter (10) Chapter (11) Chapter (12) Chapter (13) Chapter (14) Chapter (15) Chapter (16) Chapter (17) Chapter (18) Chapter (19) Chapter (20) Chapter (21) Chapter (22) Chapter (23)
Abouth The Author
The author was born in 1938. After surviving a traumatic Second World War, various schools and National Service in Air Traffic Control, he began banking in West Africa, returning to banking in this country several years later when Nigeria descended into civil war. It was never knowingly his intention to become an author but writing fiction in its various forms seemed to come naturally when his career in banking was abruptly terminated by a complete mental breakdown. The result of this was being prematurely retired on a modest pension in 1984.
As a bachelor in his late forties, he spent several months in hospital before going to live with his widowed mother where he continued the writing he had begun in the hospital.
Copyright Information ©
Morgan Hatch (2020)
The right of Morgan Hatch to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528928694 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528928700 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528965590 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Prologue
Not long after the Second World War the secretariats of many British Colonies contained a number of single girls, who had been recruited in the United Kingdom, to take the strain of the extra workload incurred in the run up to Independence. They were experienced typists who would normally stay for a few years before leaving to marry and settle down in places as geographically diverse as Ontario or Johannesburg.
Gradually, these girls were replaced by indigenous staff, much to the disappointment of their male counterparts, who greatly outnumbered them in numeracy and continually competed for their favours. This is the story of one of these girls, who, tiring of the ceaseless and repetitive social round, goes off on her own and inadvertently starts a chain of events which in due course offers her the opportunity of a completely new lifestyle.
Although in essence very simple, this lifestyle contains elements which are so attractive that she accepts the challenge, in preference to more comfortable and sophisticated alternatives. Whilst the events and characters are fictitious, the settings and ingredients existed for what is outlined to have happened, if the right mix had occurred.
Set in Lagos, Nigeria, for no other reason than her unrivalled beaches and unique sandbars, the period is early fifties to late sixties but the scenario holds good for any of at least a dozen British Colonies, liberated during this period.
Synopsis
Kate Williams is a 22-year-old Sussex girl who is working as a typist in the Nigerian Finance Ministry a few years prior to Independence. After a particularly tiresome all-night party, she passes up on the following day’s engagements and seeks solitude on a remote beach across the harbour. Despite the warnings against swimming in the waters along this dangerous stretch of coast, the heat dispels all caution and she ventures into the ocean. She is soon in trouble but is saved from drowning by the steward of a retired expatriate produce buyer and entrepreneur, who lives in a house amongst the trees at the head of the beach.
She is made welcome and falls in love with this beautiful place, becoming a regular weekend visitor. In so doing she drops out more and more from the conventional social round, much to the disapproval of her contemporaries. She is strongly attached to Richard, her rescuer, who with his sister Sentu, came down to the coast with Philip, the entrepreneur. Their father being Philip’s steward for most of his years in the North, until he died.
Philip is ill and unmarried. Just before the end of her tour of duty, he dies. In his will, which adequately provides for Richard and his sister, he leaves everything else he has to her. It is considerable, and she finds she is the principal shareholder and chairman of a diverse group of companies, engaged in every sphere of commercial activity. As she soon finds out this bequest is not arbitrary, she being the only acceptable alternative to Philip as head of the group, she soon realises why, when she meets her board, and finds there is a representative from just about every tribe and religion in the country. It is in no one’s interest to break up the group, which would happen if they couldn’t agree on a replacement for Philip and eventually she turns out to be the only person qualified who is not unacceptable to any of the others.
She soon finds that whether she likes it or not, she is tied to the country. She is also tied to Richard, who fathers her children.
Living at the house on the beach during the dry season and her town residence during the rains, she presides over a period of great and profitable economic expansion, which although benefiting her financially, troubles her with the realisation that she is partially responsible for the social ills it leaves in its wake, but is powerless to do anything about it.
These social inequalities lead to increasing social unrest, culminating in a short lived but initially successful and bloody military takeover. The story concludes at a point sometime between the middle of 1966 and 1967, when an uneasy truce existed between the principal protagonists of this now fragmented country.
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Chapter (1)

The Ribbon of Sand
It was approaching midday and in a cloudless sky the sun was climbing majestically to its zenith. Not surprisingly there were few people on the narrow, palm fringed beach, bordering the Gulf of Guinea, where even the hardy ghost crabs had been forced to seek relief from the intense heat, deep in the cool damp sand. In either direction the scene was the same except it was just possible to make out the ends of the stone piers, forming the entrance to the harbour, wavering in the haze.
It was from these man-made breakwaters that the girl, lying alone on the beach, had walked. The sand had been red hot and the soles of her open toed sandals were far too thin to provide much protection but she had borne the discomfort until she reached the cool edge of the waves. She had been on the Coast for several months and was slowly becoming accustomed to the heat, but this was exceptional. She began to wish she had stayed on the popular beach, which was enclosed by the stone piers and where it was much safer to bathe. There were also covered bars where you could get a cold drink, protected from the fierce tropical sun. ‘No!’ there had been a party going on in one and being a single white girl, a rare commodity in these parts, she had been invited to join. She had politely declined as it was from this never-ending round of parties that she was today having a break.
She had ducked a luncheon party to have a day to herself which was the first since she arrived. Being twenty-two, single and very attractive, in a city where the expatriate population was mainly under thirty, single and male, she was very much in demand. Back home in Sussex, her boyfriend of many years, had been horrified when she told him of the opportunity she had been offered. “West Africa! Two years! You can’t be serious; what about me?”
“I thought we were going to get married! I thought you loved me!” He had forgotten that their relationship was not what it had been. She had loved him, maybe she still did but she wasn’t sure.
The parting had been painful and she had been plagued with doubts. He had come with her mother to the airport and there had been a lot of tears.
She would have backed down if he had asked her then but he didn’t and although she had written a couple of times he had not replied. She was quite brown now but this heat was becoming intolerable. Her bikini was cutting into her leg and seeing no one, she took it off. The sea looked very inviting with its emerald green swell beckoning the unwary to cool in the wake of the giant breakers endlessly rolling up the beach. She had been told it was very dangerous to bathe along this stretch; the bottom shelved steeply with very strong undercurrents. But it should be safe if she went in no further than knee height. She kicked off her sandals and stood up; the sand was on fire! She yelped and rushed into the sea up to her knees then lay down to let the dying waves run over her. The bottom fell away sharply as she had been warned but she held her position by digging into the sand with her feet and elbows.
The water was in sharp contrast to the furnace of the beach, each wave seeming cooler than the last. She turned and faced the land, lying on her stomach but this still left the top of her out of the water after each wave had run back. She inched further into the sea until the next wave cove