Authors: Julian Mitchell
“Have a drink,” said Shrieve. “Do you like ice?”
“If you have any gin and tonic, yes please.”
Shrieve went into his little kitchen and took an ice-tray from the refrigerator. It was a damnable thing, from which it was almost impossible to extract the cubes. He put it under the hot tap for a moment, then banged it hard against the side of the sink. Pieces of ice shot all over the kitchen, and he found he had grazed his thumb.
“Bugger,” he said.
Edward was looking round the living-room. It had no sense of personality, he decided, like all furnished rooms. It was as though the person who had gathered all the furniture had looked at the result, decided against it, and gone to live
somewhere
else. On the desk were a typewriter, now covered, a bundle of letters in an elastic band, and mimeographed copies of Shrieve’s memorandum. It was all rather like an office. The view was excellent, though: one of the great chimneys of Battersea power station was smoking furiously beneath the purple clouds, and to its left a skyscraper was rising, with the elegant minaret of Westminster Cathedral beyond it, aloof above the tiles and slates of Pimlico.
“What a marvellous view,” said Edward, when Shrieve came back into the room with ice and glasses.
“Yes, isn’t it? I’m afraid there aren’t any limes, do you mind lemon?”
“Limes? What for?”
“For the gin and tonic,” said Shrieve. “They’re so much nicer than lemons, you know. More tart. You can’t seem to get them in England, I don’t know why.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone having them,” said Edward, accepting his drink with a slice of lemon.
“And I’m sorry, I can’t find any coasters in the flat.”
“I think coasters are like limes,” said Edward. “People in England don’t use them.”
“Really?” said Shrieve. “They certainly do in the capital of my colony. One is judged there, indeed, by the quality of one’s coasters.”
Edward laughed. “The English will be snobs wherever they go, I suppose.”
“Perhaps,” said Shrieve.
“Well,” said Edward, after a pause. “What sort of thing is it that you’d like me to do?”
Shrieve wondered why he had asked the boy to come. There really wasn’t much he could do. He began to explain what he’d done so far, and what he intended to do. To back up his private conversations, there was to be a letter to
The
Times.
It would be drafted by some friendly journalists, and then there would be a big drive to collect the signatures of archbishops, generals, ex-Lord Chancellors, College presidents and other eminent figures of the establishment.
“I’m afraid I don’t know any archbishops,” said Edward. “I know the odd retired brigadier, I suppose, but no one who’s exactly influential.”
“No need to worry about that. Patrick Mallory is organising it all—he was at Oxford with me and knows absolutely
everyone
. He used to be private secretary to one of the royal family, and he’s been a don and a journalist too. His wife’s some duke’s daughter—he’s very well connected in every sense. He’s always organising letters to
The
Times
.”
Edward had heard of Mallory, without knowing who he was. “But what do you want me to do?”
“Nothing very much, honestly. But James Weatherby—he’s a friend of mine in the Colonial Office—says that Mallory likes
to have a lot of fuss going on, secretaries taking notes, that sort of thing. He always was rather pompous. You can pretend to be my secretary, if you like. You needn’t actually take any notes, of course.”
“It doesn’t sound very demanding.”
“To be frank with you, I don’t know why I said I needed an assistant. I think the idea was your father’s, actually. I’ve managed perfectly well by myself so far. Of course, the pressure will step up once the delegates arrive.” He paused, then said, “I dare say I’m just being selfish and want someone to keep me company and cheer me up when I get dejected.”
“You must have many friends here, surely?”
“Not really. A few, of course. But I’ve been away so long, I’ve lost touch with all but my regular correspondents.
Someone
came up to me in the street yesterday, shook my hand and called me Hugh, and I still can’t remember him from Adam. It was most embarrassing. I suppose we must have been at school together.”
“Oh, that’s always happening,” said Edward. “I usually get the face after a while, but the name—never.”
“My trouble is I’ve seen and thought about nothing but the Ngulu for so long that I’ve never bothered about the past. And not having anyone to talk to about the past, it’s ceased to be very important to me. I like to think that people I’ve forgotten sometimes meet and talk about me—as part of their still significant past, if you see what I mean.”
“You make yourself sound like a hermit.”
“Perhaps,” said Shrieve. “Not exactly, though. But talking about all this, you’ve reminded me I must make a phone call. Will you excuse me a moment?”
“Of course,” said Edward.
“He’s an ass, actually,” said Shrieve as he dialled. “An old comrade of the war.”
“Army?”
“No, Navy.” Shrieve never talked about the war, except to Jumbo Maxwell and others with whom he had experienced it. “No one seems to be in, damn it.”
He was about to replace the receiver when the phone was answered by a heavily accented female voice.
“’Allo?” it said.
“May I speak to Mr Maxwell, please?”
“’Allo?”
“Mr Maxwell. May I speak to Mr Maxwell please?”
“Not take message Mr Maxwell.”
“I’m not asking you to take a message,” said Shrieve. “I want to speak to him, please.”
“Not,” said the voice. “Not take message.” There was a click.
“Well I’m damned,” said Shrieve. “She just said ‘Not’. A foreigner—perhaps Jumbo’s got a foreign maid.”
“Try again,” said Edward. “You may have got the wrong number.”
“I don’t think so. Swiss Cottage 5230.” He dialled again, again waited a long time before the phone was answered, again got the foreign voice saying “’Allo?”
“Je veux parler avec Monsieur Maxwell,” said Shrieve hopefully. “Herr Maxwell.”
“’Allo?”
“Oh, God. Maxwell. Maxwell.”
There was a pause, during which he could hear the woman breathing heavily at the other end of the line.
“He out,” she said at last. Then, “I go look. Wait.”
He could hear the flip-flap of slippers as she went away. “Sorry about this,” he said to Edward, “it’s worse than Africa. I thought maids in England always had
some
English, if only because their employers refused to speak any foreign languages.”
“She’s an au pair girl, perhaps, from Spain, or Finland or somewhere. They never learn to speak English.”
“She seems to have gone away for good,” said Shrieve. “I’d better try later.”
“Give her time. She may not know the word for telephone yet and is having difficulty with her mime.”
Shrieve hung on. As he was about to give up, he heard the slippers come slopping back.
“Not,” said the voice, and rang off.
“Not? Not? Not what?” said Shrieve in exasperation. “Really, what an idiotic woman.”
“Anyone would have to be stupid to be a maid, don’t you think?”
“It’s odd, I wouldn’t have thought Jumbo could afford a maid.”
“Who’s Jumbo?” said Edward. He had finished his drink and was hoping Shrieve would offer him another.
“He was in the Navy with me. He’s a great believer in
reunions
and toasts to the old days, that sort of thing.”
“Hmm,” said Edward. He never read the generals’ memoirs which filled the Sunday papers: it was morbid, he thought, to relive that particular bit of the past.
“He means very well, actually,” said Shrieve, apologetically. “He’s just not very clever.”
“Ah,” said Edward.
“Have another drink,” said Shrieve, seeing the glass rather obviously placed on the arm of Edward’s chair. He swallowed the remains of his own drink too quickly, making his eyes water.
“Will there be nothing else but this letter?”
“No. There are various people to be seen still. And I’m giving a lecture at Oxford to an anthropological conference. Then there are articles to be written. And I’m going to try and get the Mallory Foundation to undertake some work about the Ngulu. They might be persuaded into taking the Ngulu under their wing, as a matter of fact, even though they are supposed to be basically an academic institution.”
“Is that anything to do with Patrick Mallory?”
“I expect so. It’s enormously rich.”
“Where did all the money come from?”
“Oil, I believe. It’s an Anglo-American affair. I think the original Mallory was tied up with the American robber barons of the eighties and nineties.”
“How do you hope it’ll take the Ngulu under its wing?”
“I’m not sure. It’s rather a long shot. But if it could be
persuaded to take over the running of the Ngulu territory, as a sort of anthropological reserve—with the approval of the new government, of course——” He stopped. “It’s an awful thought. They’ll become a tourist attraction, like the American Indians. But I suppose it’s better than being wiped out.”
Edward thought Shrieve looked very sad. He felt warm suddenly towards this middle-aged man with hollow cheeks, who was so single-minded. Absurdly, as he felt, he wanted to do something to protect Shrieve, though he couldn’t have said what he wanted to protect him from.
“There aren’t many tourists in that part of the world, are there?” he said cheerfully.
“Not yet, of course. But there are more every year. And the way things are going, Africa will soon become as commonplace a tourist area as Brighton or Blackpool.”
“Good God,” said Edward. He had always imagined Africa as an unspoilable piece of endlessly wild country.
“It’ll take time, of course. But all the new countries have terrible balance of payments problems, you know. They need tourists like water.”
“But surely, they must hate being treated as a sort of zoo for the white man.”
“They do hate it, yes,” said Shrieve. “But it all depends on who owns the zoo, you know. There aren’t many tourists in my area yet, thank God. But if there were, they’d come in white men’s cars, wearing white men’s clothes, carrying white men’s guns which are strictly forbidden to Africans and taking
photographs
with white men’s cameras. They’d be led by a white hunter, too. And in the evening they’d probably get stinking on forbidden white men’s liquor. The whole business is
humiliating
for the African, if he stops to think about it, and sometimes he does—if he’s a Luagabu, for instance. The Luagabu are highly developed and have a strong sense of honour: they feel pretty bitter about being shown off like white rhino or something. But if it was their own people who asked them to dance for the white man, if the white man could only take photographs where an African said he could, then they
might feel better about it. It wouldn’t be so humiliating.”
“I see,” said Edward. “Do they do marvellous dances and things, the Ngulu?”
“Only at their two festivals. It’s not much to see, honestly. They imitate animals, which is quite fun, and they sway about for hours, clapping their hands and shuffling their feet. But they don’t dress up, the music is very monotonous, and it never lasts more than two nights. I think tourists might ask for their money back.”
“They could put on their dances all the year round, I
suppose
, like the American Indians.”
“I’d be against that,” said Shrieve. “The Ngulu have only the most tenuous hold on life. They lose heart very easily, they have no moral stamina. I think they’d be very bewildered and unhappy if anyone tried to muck about with their festivals. They don’t have many traditions left, but those there are help to keep them alive.”
“Have they lost a lot of traditions, then?”
“It’s impossible to say. The process has been going on for thousands of years, perhaps. They’ve left very few traces of themselves, and they’ve wandered about all over the place—their history is extremely sketchy. But there are some oral survivals, of course, pretty mangled and often nonsensical but interesting in their way. And then the women tattoo their breasts at puberty with certain formal signs which must have meant something at one time, though now they’re regarded as simply decorative. Presumably there was once some elaborate ritual of which nothing now remains. And then they talk about a god called Khamva, who’s supposed to have tremendously bushy eyebrows. They don’t draw or paint, so there’s no way of finding out exactly how they imagine him. All we know is that he’s rather like the Cheshire Cat, just eyebrows. Oh, and he watches all the time—he doesn’t interfere, just watches.”
“Big Brother,” said Edward, fascinated. “Why does he have these big eyebrows?”
“God knows. The Ngulu certainly don’t have them, and nor do any of their neighbours. One just has to assume that
there was once some reason for them to be frightened of a tribe, or perhaps a chief, who had bushy brows. Or it may be purely accidental, one really can’t tell.”
“Of course what you’re doing,” said Edward, “is
interfering
with the course of nature, aren’t you? I mean, by rights they ought to have vanished by now, along with the reasons for the tattoos and the eyebrows.”
“Ought?” said Shrieve.
“You know what I mean. If it hadn’t been for the artificial protection they enjoy, natural selection would have given them thumbs down by now.”
“Oh yes. But civilisation is all interference with nature—vaccination, for instance, or dikes to stop rivers flooding. We’re so advanced that we can control our own evolution to a certain extent. And that we can afford to give a hand to those who would otherwise be overwhelmed—spastics, for instance. Some people think it’s a waste of time. It is rather negative, perhaps. I think you probably have to love your spastics or your Ngulu or else your work would seem pointless and even rather terrible. Immoral, even. One should be doing something for the living, one might feel, rather than for the dying. After all, Christianity says that the dead should be left to bury the dead.”
“And you’ve never had any doubts?” said Edward.