The White Father (38 page)

“Manage him all right, can you?” said Jumbo to Trevelyan. Perkins was leaning against the wall.

“Oh yes. Is there a cab rank anywhere?”

“Two on the way, Skipper,” said Jumbo proudly. “I got the fellow at the door to ring for them.”

The taxis were approaching.

“You can drop me off on the way,” said Shrieve to Trevelyan. “Goodbye, Jumbo.”

“Goodbye, dear fellow. And keep in touch, won’t you?”

“Never fear,” said Shrieve. He didn’t imagine he’d ever shake Jumbo off. “Goodbye.”

Doors slammed. Jumbo put his head in through Shrieve’s window and said, “I say, can either of you chaps lend me ten bob? I mean, having my wallet swiped, it’s going to be deuced awkward in the morning without a brass farthing in my pocket. I’m terribly sorry.”

Shrieve handed him a pound note, which Jumbo took quickly and stuffed into his trouser pocket. “Thanks a lot, Hughie, old fellow. I’ll pay you back at the next reunion, eh? That’ll make you come home again soon. Best of luck. And don’t let the niggers eat you. Goodbye.” He waved as the taxi drew away.

“He got you in the end, then,” said Trevelyan.

“Oh, Jumbo always gets us in the end. It’s what he’s for. He brings us together once every so often to remind us that we’re all suckers.”

“It wasn’t a bad evening,” said Trevelyan, “all things
considered
. I’m not sure if I’ll go again, though. Six is a pretty poor showing, isn’t it? There were twenty-four of us to begin with. Four killed in action. Two have died since the war ended. Six of us tonight. That leaves half of us unaccounted for.”

“The last of the few,” said Shrieve.

“It’ll never be like that again,” said Perkins drowsily from his corner. “Not in our lifetimes it won’t.”

Mr Brachs sat at his desk, poring over the report from one of the London branches of his chain of restaurants. It was blindingly clear that the enemy was attacking on all fronts. Every single bottle was accounted for, even those broken. The discrepancy between tins coming in full and those going out empty was nil. The report was a transparent lie. It was a deliberate attempt to induce a feeling of false security. A true report would have indicated discrepancies. The enemy had infiltrated even the ranks of the counter-espionage.

Mr Brachs wrote alongside the names responsible for the report: All to be discharged. He did not notice the name of Lieutenant Ian Maxwell, R.N.V.R., retired, among the rest. No risks could be taken. The empire must be saved. If there was one traitor in a Legion, the whole Legion must die. There was no time for detailed investigation. Ruthlessness alone would succeed against a cunning and well-equipped enemy. Treason must be eliminated without mercy. The innocent must suffer with the guilty. That was the way in wars. The rain falleth on the just and the unjust equally. Atomic weapons scatter their deadly dust and the unconceived are born defective. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children, even unto the third and fourth generation. Even, if necessary, unto the fortieth and fiftieth. This was the age of total war.

Mr Brachs marked the report heavily in red pencil. He made a note on a pad to remind himself to call in a private detective agency to check on the security and reliability of the two agencies already working for him. Spies and counter-spies and counter-counter-spies, only thus could the enemy be outwitted. He turned to another folder, then pressed a button. The voice of Sammy Sweet,
né
Albert Swetman, filled the long office.

Mr Brachs turned up the volume and pressed another button that opened the shutters along his glass wall. London lay below him. The moon shone down on the city, the street-lamps like reflected stars in the foreground. A soft red glow arched above the distant invisible hills. Mr Brachs contemplated his empire.

*

The Swaymen took up the theme and jangled it from wall to wall. The Sway bounced off the enormous threatening Rothko to the long glass window, from door to desk.

Mr Brachs listened. He was pleased with Sammy Sweet. London would worship at his feet. London would lead the provinces. The Sway would be a huge success. Albert Swetman would be the idol of millions. Tied hand and foot with
piano-wire
, beaten on with drumsticks, watched by an indifferent naked girl, Sammy Sweet would nevertheless be a symbol of all that was decent in Young England, all that was best in the tradition of English singers. It was a tradition which Mr Brachs considered himself to have founded. He was proud of it.

Mr Brachs closed the shutters and switched off the
tape-recorder
. Then he went to a panel of the wall, pressed it in one corner and stood aside. The panel slid back, revealing a
staircase
. Mr Brachs went through, closing the panel behind him. He mounted the carpetless stairs, lit by a low-watt unshaded bulb. At the top of the stairs, he paused, then entered the drawing-room. Again there was no carpet, and the only furnishings were a plain deal table and a rush-bottomed kitchen chair. He glanced at a pile of papers on the table, pursed his lips, then went through to his bedroom. He switched on the light, another low-watt fly-blown bulb without a shade on a
lamp which stood on an upturned crate beside the bed. There were no sheets or pillow-cases, and the blankets looked grimy. Mr Brachs undressed, revealing long woollen underwear which he kept on. He went in his socks to the bathroom next to the bedroom and cleaned his teeth. Then he came hack to the bedroom, went to the window and opened it wide. He spent several minutes doing deep-breathing exercises, then got into bed and picked up a Gideon Bible which he had once
appropriated
from a hotel in Chicago. He read for several minutes, then got out of bed again, knelt on the bare floor and prayed briefly. As he was taking off his socks, a terrible thought struck him. All flesh was grass. Was Sammy Sweet to be trusted? He would be a person of enormous power. He would earn millions for Mr Brachs. He would be coveted by rivals. He would be an immensely valuable piece of property. Could he be trusted?

Mr Brachs sat on his bed, doubts and misgivings crowding upon him. He had forgotten to turn off the sign which burned above the Building. He got up and went to the window and turned the switch. Sammy Sweet mixed with a low and untrustworthy class of musicians. Was his manager to be trusted?

Mr Brachs switched the sign on again. Who could an honest man of business trust in the modern world? The sign went off. Mr Brachs took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He switched the sign on. Fred Martin, was he loyal? Off went the sign. Albert Swetman? On. Burgess? Off. Bray? On.

Mr Brachs’s mind raced with innumerable suspicions.

*

A policeman in Trafalgar Square stood watching the sign go on and off.
FREE
, it said, then
BRACHS
. Then there was darkness. Then
BRACHS
and
FREE
again, briefly. It went on and off with bewildering rapidity.

“Can’t be right, that, can it?” said a man in a dark hat to the policeman. “Must be on the blink.”

“I think I’d better report it,” said the policeman. “They can be dangerous, them signs. Got a fire on your hands before you know where you are.”

“That’s right,” said the man in the dark hat.

They stood for a moment watching the sign frantically blinking on and off beneath the bright stars, like some mythical beast in its death agony. Then the policeman marched off to make his report.

T
HE
“sickness” was over. No one had died for more than a fortnight, and those who had since sunk in their huts with the dreaded symptoms of apathy, silence and dejection were now out and about again as though nothing had happened. Twice before Shrieve’s hopes had been raised, only to be betrayed by relapses, all the more dispiriting for the few days of
finger-crossing
and hoping against hope which had preceded them. At last, however, it seemed that the Ngulu had really thrown off their possession by despair. The children, who had scarcely been affected, shouted and laughed, played their games, ran about, teased dogs, threw stones, just as in the old days. The old people sat in the sun and drowsed. To anyone who did not know it, the village gave the appearance of ancient peace and normal quietness.

But for the Ngulu there could never again be any normality like that of the past. The population figures revealed the true extent of the devastation. Where there had been eight hundred and seven Ngulu there were now five hundred and thirty-eight. Of these, one hundred and twenty-six were under fourteen and three hundred and sixty-three over fifty. Of adult women there remained forty; of adult males, nine. The sickness had attacked most strongly the most active members of the tribe. Of the chiefs to whom Shrieve had said goodbye there survived none; of their women, none. Of the hunters and warriors on whom the tribe depended for all its motive energy, there remained only the shaken and bewildered nine, overwhelmed by the size of their responsibilities. In a few years most of the old people would be dead. Of the surviving adult women, at least half were past child-bearing: the menopause came early to the Ngulu. There would probably be no more than one hundred and eighty or ninety Ngulu in the world in ten years’
time. They would be the curious playthings of anthropologists. They might continue to survive for a hundred years, perhaps for several centuries, as a source of wonder to advanced peoples. They might equally disappear before the year 2060. None of the forty women was pregnant: the nine males showed for the moment little sexual enthusiasm. All would depend on the children, on whether or not they could find the will to
procreate
. The next ten years, bringing adolescence and potency would show whether or not that will existed.

Shrieve stood on the veranda of his bungalow and watched the sunlight striking the tops of the trees and beginning to reach down into the village. This was the best time of the day, when there was still a trace of coolness in the air and the rays of the sun were not blisteringly hot. A few dogs scratched
themselves
in pools of light along the mud track which was the main street. Children began to appear, picking the sleep from their eyes, yawning and rubbing their heads. It was a scene which tourists would have found “picturesque”: the naked children, like inhabitants of Eden, the stillness of early morning, the distant mountains still hazy on the horizon, the sun something to be enjoyed, not endured. But Shrieve had never been a tourist among the Ngulu. He had never even owned a camera, much to the disgust of professional anthropologists.

There was much work to be done—a detailed report to be written, with an appendix by the doctor and a foreword by Mackenzie; a memorandum for the university; letters to many people in many authorities. During the sickness the Ngulu had been visited by experts of many kinds—academic experts, medical experts, sociological experts, political experts,
confident
experts, worried experts and expert experts. None of them had been in the least useful, but all were anxious for particular details about the Ngulu’s illness and recovery.

The details, anyway, were now clear enough. Shrieve had learned much from Amy and a little from the survivors. Amy’s contact with him seemed to have saved her: she had never given in, she had found somewhere the moral courage to go on, to refuse to have any contact with the sickness. As Mackenzie had
reported, she had locked herself in the bungalow and not allowed the children to go out at all. She had cut herself and her family off from the tribe completely. Only on Shrieve’s return had it seemed that she might collapse, as though the effort of disengagement had been too much for her. She had lain on their bed for two days, sweating and moaning, her eyes rolling and sightless. Only when Shrieve touched her did she become still, but he couldn’t spend all his time at her side. After the two days she had got up as though nothing had happened and continued her ordinary life, except for frequent and urgent demands for sexual satisfaction which Shrieve, in his agony of anxiety, had found hard to meet.

He had been able to piece together a fairly full account of the disaster. A few days after his departure two calves had drowned in the river. Such accidents did sometimes occur—there were dangerously soft spots of sand in which cattle would sink, mournfully bellowing. This time all attempts at rescue had failed. One of the calves vanished into the sand, the other was retrieved already dead. It was the skin of this calf that Mackenzie had found stinking at his first visit. Shrieve’s absence at the time of this fairly ordinary accident had had an unfortunate and unforeseeable effect. One of the chiefs had claimed that the calves had died because the gods were angry—whether god or gods wasn’t certain, but the uncertainty was itself a bad sign. The chief said he had been visited by dreams in which voices had told him to beware of danger. The prophecy had caused deep gloom among the other chiefs, and among the women, too. When gloomy the Ngulu gave up sex, and the women moped when deprived of regular love-making. The chief who had heard the voices then became ill. Since illness for the Ngulu meant possession by a god, the ravings of his malaria (for that was what it almost certainly had been) were taken to be messages from the god currently inhabiting him. Since the ravings made no sense, the Ngulu became even more disconcerted and gloomy than before.

Yet all might still have been well: though it was a bad case of tribal neurosis, Shrieve had known worse from which no
serious harm had come. Now, however, came the blow which threw the chiefs into complete panic. Two young bulls had a fierce battle in which one was killed outright and the other very badly wounded. Cattle were always hobbled by the Ngulu, but one of the bulls had managed to free himself enough to attack the other. Although at an obvious advantage, he had been severely mauled before goring his victim to death, and had died himself after two days. The death of two bulls was an awesome and terrible matter: it indicated grave anger among the gods at the very least. The gloom became deeper, the women sulked more and more. They began to huddle in covens. One of them, after one of their huddlings had lasted several hours, apparently became possessed, leading the others in a frenzied dance towards the tree-stump at the edge of the village. There Amy’s account refused to go into details. She had been present at the huddle, but she had become afraid during the dance and dropped out of it unnoticed at the tree-stump.

The men were incensed by this unprecedented female activity. Convinced that there was bewitchment going on, appalled by the omens of the dead bulls and the two drowned calves, they shut the women in their huts. When Mackenzie next came, the skins of the bulls were being dried: no doubt the fact that the Ngulu had cut what they could from the badly gored skins made Mackenzie think they belonged to calves. Pleased themselves for having shut up their women, the chiefs had been agreeable and said they had no problems. They had smiled at Shrieve’s name, glad to hear he was well. But they hadn’t, Amy said, ever trusted Mackenzie, and one of the surviving men had added that Mackenzie couldn’t be a good man because he came smelling of the Luagabu. They had made their gesture of hopelessness after him with their palms in—not palms out as they made it to Shrieve—which was the worst insulting gesture they knew, reserved for Luagabu only. Mackenzie, of course, wasn’t to know this.

Things had gone better for a day or two, the women had been let out again, the skins had dried. But then doubt had
arisen whether the skins should be used at all. If the gods had decided to kill the calves and the bulls, they probably wanted the skins for themselves. The chief who had heard voices and then raved argued that a terrible disaster was about to take place. He so convinced the others that he induced them to join him in a solemn propitiatory fast for two days. Clearly weakened by the malaria, and perhaps mentally unbalanced, he had continued to fast after the two days were over. On the fourth day he went into a trance from which he did not emerge. He died on the sixth day. The fatalism of the Ngulu did the rest. Within three days four were dead: by the time Shrieve returned they were dying of sheer resignation at the rate of five or six a day.

His return had done nothing to halt the sickness. The Ngulu looked at him with lack-lustre eyes as though they did not recognise him. Those that were not already ill refused to discuss the matter. For two months he watched healthy men gradually sink into an apathy and silence from which nothing could raise them. The doctor and specialists from the capital could find nothing physically wrong. Autopsy after autopsy was performed with negative results. The creeping
hopelessness
affected everyone, old and young: the old sat outside their huts, softly moaning, the children did not play. Yet it wasn’t the old and the children who died: day after day news came of more able-bodied men and women who had retired to their huts, who were sinking, who were dead. Frantic, Shrieve tried everything he could imagine. The doctors had injected and sedated and drugged, the relief workers (from the
Kwahi-Nuaphi
, who were not objectionable to the Ngulu) had tried beating and slapping; nothing had any effect. In a desperate gamble, two hundred Ngulu were moved to a military camp near the capital. Fifty died on the way, forty died there: the survivors were again the old and the young.

The nature of the surrender did nothing to make Shrieve’s task easier to bear. If his absence had been in part responsible for the moral collapse of the tribe, his presence apparently did nothing to restore confidence. He dreaded each day, powerless,
uncomprehending, aghast. For the first time in his life he was relieved to get away to the capital for consultations with the Governor’s Council and Robbins. He drank a lot with Varner, whose aeroplane was much in demand.

The Ngulu’s dramatic dwindling became world news. Professors Adams and Rich wrote from Oxford and Chicago expressing their condolences, Patrick Mallory sent an expensive telegram asking if there was anything he could do to help, James Weatherby wrote a long and sympathetic letter. Shrieve had replied to no one. Sick at heart, he hadn’t been able to find the strength to sit down and write out the record of what he could not help considering his neglect and failure. Now the sickness was over, he must begin. He was, it seemed, a famous person. A television crew was coming to make a short film about him and his work for the B.B.C. He had been asked to write articles and give lectures. Colin Hoggart, on behalf of the Mallory Foundation, wanted to commission him for a large sum of money to write a detailed account of Ngulu life and customs. There was a mound of paperwork to be got through. Even Jumbo Maxwell had written, briefly saying how good it had been to see Shrieve and how sorry he was to hear there was trouble with the niggers: the rest of his letter had been an indignant account of the monstrous injustice of his treatment by the Brachs chain of restaurants. Although he had read everything that had been sent him, even a bank statement, Shrieve had not been touched by any of the messages of sympathy or expressions of interest. All the people who wrote seemed to belong to another world in a different arrangement of space and time, and their words were no more than scratches of pen on paper, as meaningless as Chinese characters to an illiterate Bolivian peasant.

Now he had to face that world again, to decipher the hieroglyphics, make sense and feeling come back to the words, and most difficult of all, find other words to answer them. He was exhausted. The last time he had been in the capital Robbins had told him that he would order him to take a few weeks off if he wouldn’t take them of his own accord.

“No,” Shrieve had said. “Just leave me alone, will you? I agree I’m whacked, but I’d rather recuperate where I am. I daren’t leave these people again.”

“Balls. Leave now while there are still some of the relief people there.”

“I said no,” Shrieve had said. “I want to recuperate with the Ngulu. I want to be with them. I want to watch them gradually get a grip on themselves again. I shall get a grip on myself at the same time.”

“All right, have it your own way. But it’s not going to look very clever when we have to add your nervous breakdown to the list of the Ngulu dead.”

“I’m not going to break down. I’m going to be perfectly all right. Just let me stay there till the university takes over at the end of next year.”

And so he was still there. The relief workers had gone. An appearance of normality had been established.

Amy brought him a cup of coffee. She didn’t make very good coffee, but he was used to that. He patted her bottom affectionately and she swished back into the bungalow.

They had a little more than fourteen months, then.
Independence
was at the end of the year: the university would take over a year later. Already the paramilitary police force had been sent out to the nearby town where they would stay for as long as was necessary, their presence being all that was required. The Luagabu were clamorously looking forward to
independence
, but Mackenzie reported that the arrival of the troops had had a most satisfyingly calming effect.

There was, for the future, the question of what would happen to himself and Amy. He had decided not to stay on with the Ngulu, even if the university requested it. He had done his best, and it hadn’t been good enough. He no longer wished to remain: he was, after all, British, he belonged to the old order of things, it wasn’t, in his view, even right to want to remain. But what of Amy? Clearly it would be wrong to take Dayu and Kwuri from the tribe: the Ngulu needed every young person they had. Tom, of course, must go with him. Was Amy to
accompany them? Was he to marry her, like the dreary
suburbanite
he would no doubt become? Was she to spend the rest of her life in an impossibly bewildering England, leading the existence, at best, of a loved nanny? Because Amy, and there was no question about it, was not going to fit into English society, ever. Yet he did not wish to stay in the colony. He was convinced it would be wrong to do so: a new nation did not want, rightly, the administrators of its old régime hanging around. And yet—— The problem nagged at him continually.