by Brian Aldiss
Then the houses on one side fell suddenly away. The track swerved to run along one of the low cliffs hemming in the Uiui, hugging it so closely that some of the sleepers overhung the river. This perilous proximity continued only for some two hundred yards before the track swung inland again. Now the houses which had so closely parodied the suburban hutches conspicuous round Los Angeles or Birmingham were replaced by native affairs, Indian bashas, or mud, stone, straw and petrol can huts and shanties. The train stopped as violently as it had started. Soames buried his face in the loin cloth of the Goyese sitting facing him.
Jumping out, Soames saw why the abrupt halt had been necessary. Five yards ahead of the engine, the rails stopped. There were no buffers. Ahead, the tributary of the Uiui which had evaded bridging meandered amid marsh. Deep pits and gouges in the marsh seemed to indicate that the driver had not always been so successful in stopping his charge in time.
Only half the passengers alighted here, the other half sitting tight to enjoy the return journey. Soames found himself in what Jimpo had rightly designated slum. Fearing to lose face by climbing back into the train, from whose windows he was being watched with lively interest, he trudged off among the assortment of huts. Making his way through light mud and poultry, he came on to a low line of stalls, most of which, at first glance, looked to be selling nothing but flies. Several stall-keepers called to Soames as he went by.
Alas, thought Soames, his mind running in a familiar groove, I’m in this unpleasant little strait because of my parents; can a man ever have had such an ill-mixed bundle of characteristics wished on to him? The unseemly thrustingness of my mother made me jump off the train without due consideration, and the idiot timidity of my father made me too weak to get back on again when I saw what a filthy hole I was in. As if it were not enough for the sins of the father to be visited on the son, I have to put up with my mother’s, too. If only I could shake myself free … At least it’s not very far to walk back to the palace if I can only strike a road. A pity the only word of Goyese I know is the verb Coitala taught me last night: I’d probably get a thick ear if I used it here.
Continuing thus pleasantly to himself, Soames was able to ignore the vendors about him until he heard an unmistakably English cry of ‘I say!’
Looking ahead, he saw a dusty convertible parked in the shade. A white man wearing a topi leant out of the window and beckoned to him. This was the first white man Soames had seen in a topi, although he had observed one or two Indians in battered specimens; he studied the face beneath this one with interest. It was the long, airedale-square countenance one generally finds in isolated places, lighthouses, Scottish moors or boxes at the Royal Festival Hall, definitely a British face; it bore the sad, tolerant look one sees in the faces of men of sixty and wonders whether it is of the world or of themselves that they have had to grow tolerant.
As Soames approached the vehicle, the wearer of the topi climbed stiffly out, observing Soames almost with anxiety all the while. He wore black shoes and a crinkled, cream, linen suit with a black tie.
He put out his hand and bared twin lines of false teeth in a welcoming smile.
‘I can see you are English, sir,’ he said.
Soames, of course, gave no hint of his inner reaction to this statement, but he was profoundly struck by several facets of it; to wit, its idiocy, its sheer beauty, in that it left no doubt that a type of Englishman was recognisable anywhere and that Soames was that type, its ambiguous note of welcome and warning, its brashness, and its subtlety in stirring instantly a corpus of British Empire myth: the Dr Livingstone complex, the Union Jack flying over lonely atolls, the sundowners, the chota pegs, Poona, the done things, the Khyber Pass, Victoria Peak, Noël Coward, Kipling, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, Gilbert and Sullivan, Cable and Wireless, and practically anything and anyone else you cared or no longer cared to mention. It brought, unexpectedly, a lump to Soames’ throat; but of this also he gave no hint.
‘How do you do, sir?’ he said, clasping the skinny hand, all his Englishness oozing to the surface. ‘May I introduce myself? I am Soames Noyes, liaison manager for a London computer firm. My mother was inordinately fond of the Forsyte Saga, hence the unfortunate Christian name.’
‘Oh, not much of a reader myself. I am Alastair Picket, late of His Majesty’s Church of England. I was wondering when we’d see something of you. Do let me give you a lift, old man.’
Chapter Seven
‘… thou hast thy music too.’
‘Put those baskets of mine in the back. I always shop down this end of town; it’s cheaper than in the flashier parts. Just come down once a week, do as much as I can in one fell swoop. The truth is, we share this horrible vehicle with three Portuguese families and only get the use of it on Tuesdays. Economy measure, you know. Not that I wish to imply that things are too tight in any way …’
The voice of Alastair Picket died away as, with Soames beside him, he started the engine and coaxed from the gearbox a racket like the grinding of infernal dentures. They cantered unnervingly close to a stall full of brass utensils and headed towards Stranger’s Hill. When Soames mentioned that this was not the quickest way to the palace, Picket placed a hand reassuringly on his knee.
‘You must come and have tea with us, now I’ve caught you, Noyes. Mrs Picket would never forgive me, and of course I want you to meet my daughter, Grace. Nice girl. Very sensitive girl. Besides, we may not be down in town again till next week.’
Soames was silent. Although he recalled how often he had heard ill spoken of Picket, he was not one to protest sooner than necessary; indeed, the due time for remonstration was already past, for they were now zig-zagging up a dust track, as Picket flogged an unexpected turn of speed out of the communal vehicle.
‘This is Stranger’s Hill, up the top here, where the white colony of Umbalathorp is,’ Picket said. ‘It’s supposed to be healthier than lower down, but what you lose in mosquitoes you gain in baboons. The damned brutes are always in the garden, can’t keep them out. Traps don’t seem to catch ’em.’
A panorama of the Goyese capital was now visible. Below them lay the slum end of the town; beyond the tributary which had defied the railway bridge, to the south of it, lay another congestion of huts. Wooden piers projected into the fierce flow of the Uiui, while on the opposite bank, the severe cliffs fell back enough to allow a line of huts along the margin of the river, their thatched roofs dwarfed by the enormous trees and boulders a hundred feet above them. To the north lay Umbalathorp proper, one corner of the palace just visible behind trees. It all looked very picturesque – that is to say, the discomforts of the environment endured by the inhabitants momentarily titillated the eye of the visitor.
‘Terrible place, but it holds you,’ Picket said, catching Soames’ glance. ‘God, how it holds you!’
The track up Stranger’s Hill twisted through belts of thick, rhododendron-like bushes with zygomorphous flowers, past Nissen huts outside which black babies toddled and crawled, and deposited them before the Picket residence in an aura of dust.
The disorientation of déjà vu overcame Soames as he regarded the concave roof-tree, the deep eaves, the verandah whose rail had partly fallen away, the flimsy table and chairs on the verandah, the glimpse of mosquito netting through one window. He had seen this place often before. After a moment he recalled where he had seen it. This was the tropical residence par excellence depicted a thousand times in the Wide World and similar travel-minded magazines. Here, the grim-jawed men holding .375 magnum expresses faced the rogue rhino, the Zulu attack, the pride of pythons, the soldier ants, the horror from the mauve lagoon or whatever the anti-social threat might be, whilst in the dim threshold behind them, the blonde in jodhpurs clutched her baby, her breasts or her glass with terror on her countenance.
The blonde’s place was usurped in actuality by Mrs Picket, who came forward slowly to greet Soames. She was podgy and pasty, with an ill look that her smile only accentuated. Her mouth drooped, the hem of her dres
s was uneven.
‘Hot again,’ was all she said to Soames as they were introduced, the two words forsaking her like a sigh. They all sat on the verandah chairs. (‘Mind that bit of floorboard, Noyes; we suspect dry rot,’ Picket said.) Silence fell.
‘Well, go and get Mr Noyes some tea, Dora,’ Picket said testily, drumming his fingers on the table.
‘I’ll call Pawli,’ said Dora, adding conversationally, without raising her voice, ‘Pawli.’
In the silence that followed, the darkest that Africa could do, a hirsute spider dropped from the rafters and alighted on Soames’ neck, making off rapidly down his vertebrae. He was still fishing for it when a well-built young negress with a sulky expression, dressed only in headcloth and skirt, emerged from indoors and surveyed them. So intense was her scrutiny, so scornful the set of her thick lips, that Soames dropped his hand in embarrassment, letting the spider go its own way.
‘Tea, please, Pawli,’ said Mrs Picket despairingly.
‘Get it yourself,’ the black girl said, turning and disappearing slowly into the gloom from which she had come. Soames could hear her bare feet slapping on the boards.
‘Terrible servant problem here. Bad as Britain, I believe,’ Picket said with false cheerfulness, clearing his throat and looking fiercely at his wife. ‘Will you go and get the tea, Dora, without further argument, and find Grace and fetch her here.’
‘Please don’t bother, Mrs Picket, really,’ Soames said, alarmed by the ghastly look of her as she rose to obey. He reflected at the same time that she was the first person he had met in Umbalathorp who showed no disposition to talk continuously. She gave him no answer now, vanishing into the bungalow with soggy, uncertain step.
‘It’s no bother, old chap,’ Picket said comfortably, patting Soames’ hand. ‘We’re only too glad to have you.’ Soames withdrew his hand sharply, employing it in a renewed hunt for the spider.
‘I expect you’re wondering very much how I come to be living in a place like Umbalathorp,’ Picket said. ‘Or have they been gossiping about me down at the palace? Hey? I shouldn’t be surprised. Hey?’
‘They hardly mention your name,’ Soames said shortly, still offended by the man’s treatment of his wife. He wondered if Jimpo was looking for him.
‘Dora and I came here twenty-seven years ago. Twenty-seven years … It’s a longish time, you know. That would be before you were born, I expect, Noyes?’
He waited so patiently for an answer that Soames was forced to say ‘No.’
‘Ah, then you’ll be older than my daughter Grace. She was born in England – in Kent, as a matter of fact – before we came out here. She was just a babe in arms when Mrs Picket and I arrived here; the napkins were a trouble on the boat, I recall. We were missionaries. Missionaries! … Missionaries to Umbalathorp. Yes, His Majesty’s Church of England, as I like to call it for fun, sent us out here with a blessing and a crate full of Bibles. And do you know what happened, Noyes? Do you know what happened? I took one look at Africa with all its savages and everything – and I lost my faith. Just like that!’
The airedale face screwed up in wonderment. After all these tropical years, it could still feel an immense surprise at the cardinal fact of its life, that faith had withdrawn as suddenly as a rat down its hole.
‘I was in an awful fix,’ Picket continued, drumming his fingers on the table again. ‘I just couldn’t square the Old Testament and the Hebrews and England’s green and pleasant land and life Eternal and all the rest with – all this.’ He waved his hand inclusively over the balcony rail. His eyes misted as the truth of his plight, overlaid by later accretions, pierced through to the surface once more; he retraced his mental steps and began to tell the story again.
‘This was the trouble, Noyes, you see. Take a nice little English church in a nice little English town. You’re friendly with all the people who matter in the town. The workmen salute you – or they did thirty years ago. You hob-nob with the squire and the squire’s lady. You’ve got some nice, fresh-faced little choirboys all rigged out in surplices.’ He sighed deeply. ‘And what’s in your heart, Noyes? You picture Christ as a white chap, don’t you? Like yourself, in a sort of surplice himself, and with a trim beard, talking in English. Like that picture by that man Hunt, “The Light of the World”. Then you get to Umbalathorp, swarming with natives. Have you seen their carvings of their gods, Noyes? You can buy them in the bazaar for a few coppers. They’ve got little squat, ugly gods, with big lips and bare bums and bones through their noses. Terrifying!
‘Well, I saw these things when I first got here – twenty-seven years ago next month, it was – and I thought, “My God, they’re right too, the Goyese are right, the gods are like that here. You can’t preach Christ here.” And I sat tight a bit and I thought, and the more I thought the less connection I could see between what goes on here and what goes on anywhere else in christendom.’
‘But thousands of other missionaries –’ Soames began.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Picket exclaimed impatiently, ‘same as John Gunther said when he was here. You’re going to say if the others kept their faith, why couldn’t I keep mine? Well, I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that at first I thought, “If I let this lot of niggers into the church, it means I’m letting them into Heaven, and nobody in England’s going to like that, not even the bishops.” I’m just telling you what I thought. Perhaps it sounds silly to you. Then I thought more deeply, and I began to see things from the native point of view, and the whole idea of Heaven seemed funny. It seemed so funny, I laughed all one day. I did! Mrs Picket was very upset. And after that, I just didn’t believe any more, I couldn’t. I had a bit of a temperature – it was like getting over the measles – but after that I was right as rain.’
The spider had eluded Soames; the conversation seemed to him to contain just the ideal mixture of foolishness and bad taste; yet it vaguely bothered him. Any sympathy he might have felt for Picket was still dampened by his treatment of his wife.
‘So do you know what I did?’ Picket said, switching abruptly from misery into laughter. ‘I ceased to call myself the Reverend Alastair Picket from that day on. I flung my dog collar in the Uiui, I flogged the Bibles cheap to a French Jew, and I bartered all my cassocks and surplices to the local witch doctor in exchange for poultry, ducks and a cow. But the funny thing was – here, I’ll show you!’
Laughing, he fished a wallet from a sweaty inner pocket and showed Soames an ancient cutting from The Times.
‘You see, Noyes, a native five hundred miles down river fished my dog collar out of the water and took it to a Belgian missionary. The collar had my name on it, communications were bad – they decided I’d been speared by a hostile native. Hence this obituary notice! But that wasn’t the end of it. The funny thing was, years later –’
His voice ceased, his laughter faded, he seemed to recollect where he was. His wife had returned to the verandah with a dark-haired, slender girl whose face, in its square, sad outline, (‘good-looking in a doggy way,’ commented Soames favourably to himself) bore a family resemblance to Picket’s.
‘Here’s Grace,’ said Mrs Picket, and sat down.
Picket jumped up and took Soames’ arm. Soames released himself almost at once.
‘Oh, Noyes, look here, this is my dear daughter Grace, the prop of my declining years, a very smart girl who ought to be in England. Grace, this is Mr Noyes, who isn’t in Umbalathorp for very long. You two ought to see more of each other, really.’
‘I’m happy to meet you,’ Grace said. She gripped Soames’ hand and looked into his eyes. He sensed instantly a tension about her; it was not a nervous tension, for she was perfectly in command of herself, nor did it seem primarily a sexual tension, although she must have been as aware as he that they formed the only young English couple in Umbalathorp. Grace wore a crisp blue and white dress which very possibly had just been changed into; it looked as if she was wearing very little underneath it.
The frankness obviously infuriated Picket as much as it disarmed Soames, through whom a little warm trickle of interest began to flow.
‘It’s a lovely dress,’ he said.
Grace smiled with genuine pleasure at this stagey remark – or was it relief more than pleasure? In the way she looked askance at Soames for a moment, he had the odd idea she might be frightened: not just shy of him, but frightened. Suddenly he could think of nothing to say; Grace was silent too.
‘Where’s the tea?’ Picket snapped, breaking the awkward pause.
‘Mother will get it,’ Grace replied, whereupon Mrs Picket rose like a phantom and disappeared. Some of the tension went with her; Grace and Soames were soon chattering vivaciously enough about Umbalathorp.
Mrs Picket returned ten minutes later with a loaded tray, which Grace took. While her mother sat by, apparently preparing to faint, Grace arranged the cups and poured out tea. Her fingers touched Soames’ as she passed him his cup; the frightened look slipped momentarily back into her eyes.