by Brian Aldiss
A jangle of incoherent concern shook the royal party. They were brought back somewhat to themselves by the realisation that Deal Jimpo was watching them from the bed. The matron, who had hovered anxiously in the background during the foregoing scene, hurried over and smoothed his brow, afterwards collecting up the little guttering rush lights and carrying them from the room. By the time she returned, the royal family had clustered round Jimpo’s bed; M’Grassi was pulling a grey pellet from his son’s nostril.
‘Nobody is to blame for this,’ the matron said humbly. ‘The man Dumayami forced his way in here declaring that the Prince Deal Jimpo had need of him. We did not like to oppose him.’
‘You may forget the matter, matron,’ the President said, with more sharpness than graciousness.
‘Thank you, sir, Your Majesty. Might I also suggest that you all left the Prince now? His condition is still critical, and the scene in here will not have improved it.’
‘We will be as brief as possible,’ replied M’Grassi, ‘but I have questions which must be asked. Kindly leave us, matron.’
When the woman had gone, he leant over the bed, examining Jimpo’s eyes. Truth to tell, little but Jimpo’s eyes were available for examination. The rest of him was swathed under lint bandage; both his legs were in suspended splints and a rib cage protected his trunk. He hardly had a bone not fractured or a stretch of skin not burnt.
His cracked lips moved in their white frame as he greeted his father.
‘To see you like this brings us very great distress, son,’ M’Grassi said, speaking in Goyese, as Mrs President Tunna pressed forward to clasp her son’s hand and shed a tear on his sheet. ‘We wish to know what happened, that the malefactors may be punished at once. Can you tell us briefly what occurred?’
‘Soames is in the jug, Jimpo,’ Timpleton said urgently. ‘You’ve got to help us get him out. They’re saying the whole shindig was his doing.’
The dark eyes in the mask switched to Timpleton’s face, as if the sound of English was suddenly very refreshing.
‘None of this was Soames’ fault,’ he said in English. ‘Soames was a hero. Soames saved me …’ He paused, fighting for breath; his eyes closed. When he resumed, he spoke again in Goyese, evidently finding this easier. Princess Cherry translated into English for Timpleton’s benefit as they went along, much to Timpleton’s discomfort; as he began to gather that Jimpo and Soames had been involved in stealing back the computer parts he had illegally sold, a strong desire to sink below the floorboards assailed him.
M’Grassi Landor heard his son out in silence. Then he paced beside the bed, arms akimbo.
‘You must by now, Jimpo, be too thoroughly aware of your foolishness in joining Soames’ escapade for me to need to dwell on that aspect of the matter,’ he said. ‘What disturbs me more – I mean, quite apart from seeing you so injured – is that you should have sympathised with Soames’ wish to recover the computer parts when you knew I did not; for this means we think very differently, and I had hoped you would grow up to be of my mind in affairs. The futile and contradictory wish of fathers is always that sons may share their thoughts and avoid their sorrows. However … Soames’ psychology eludes me, but at least it is clear that he was trying to make amends for what others had done. I see I have underestimated him.’
Timpleton, at this point, braced himself to meet M’Grassi’s eyes, but the President continued to pace with downcast glance, closely watched by his family.
‘Soames must be released from his incarceration,’ he went on. ‘That much is obvious and does not bother me. What I do find bothersome is the fresh problem which now arises. Who launched the “M’Grassi Thunderbird” on its last run? What were their intentions? Could it possibly be that –’
‘They were trying to assassinate my poor Jimpo,’ Tunna said, stroking his bandages with her plump black hand. ‘They were trying to kill him, that was their intention.’
‘That was not what I was about to say,’ M’Grassi said, turning to stare through the mosquito screens, ‘but nevertheless you may be right. A simple mind often tracks down truth where a more devious one cannot follow.’
Walking in an excruciating mockery of prostration, the matron re-entered the ward and ushered them back into the corridor. Jimpo’s eyes had already closed.
‘You will make him better again, won’t you?’ Shappy asked tearfully.
‘We are doing all in our power,’ said the matron.
‘Let us control our weeping until we get home, Prince Shappy,’ Queen Louise said regally. ‘Seize his hand, Cherry, and see to it that he does not cry.’
‘If the rest of you will sit in the lorry, I will phone the prison Governor at once from here,’ M’Grassi said. Catching Timpleton’s eye for the first time, he added curtly in English, ‘Goodnight, Mister Timpleton.’
‘Tell him I’m sorry about all this trouble, will you?’ the engineer asked Princess Cherry.
She did so. When her father had spoken in answer, she translated with a slight smile on her ample features.
‘The King and President regrets that this has been such an unprofitable transaction for you, because you gave the money you took from Soares to Obendsi, and no change will come from him.’
His lips tight, Timpleton nodded to her and passed out of the building. He walked slowly back to the palace, reflecting how simple and happy was life in London.
M’Grassi sought out the matron’s room, picked up the telephone, and was eventually put through to the Governor of the prison, to whom he spoke earnestly for some while on the subject of Soames.
‘The railway company will drop their charge against Noyes directly I inform them that new information has come to light,’ he said, ‘which leaves only the charges brought by the two Portuguese, de Duidos and José Soares. Perhaps when I have rung off you would get your secretary to contact them both, inform them of what has transpired and warn them that Noyes will very probably sue them for defamation of character unless these charges against him are squashed at once.’
‘Very good, President Your Majesty,’ said the voice at the other end of the line. ‘And Noyes shall be freed as soon as these charges are dropped.’
‘I think we can do better than that, Governor. I confess to a certain liking for Noyes; or perhaps I am merely sorry for him because I feel that in his heart he still has not decided what his life is. Therefore I am prepared personally to stand bail for him to the extent of twenty thousand doimores. Will you kindly release him at dawn?’
‘At the very first crack of it,’ cried the Governor smartly. ‘You may rely on me to be thorough, but first’ – he added, replacing the bedside phone – ‘I shall be thorough with you, my little popsy python-chicken,’ and he planted a resounding kiss on the lips of his latest and in all senses greatest mistress.
The circumstances under which Soames passed the night beneath the Governor’s roof differed considerably from those enjoyed by the Governor; nevertheless, they, too, had their happier moments. A villainous blanket and a vaguely inedible bowl of food were handed to him early in the evening. Shortly afterwards, three negroes were herded into his cell.
The cell was already small; now it seemed smaller. These boys were obviously here for the night. Trying not to make his actions too obvious, Soames hurriedly staked himself a sleeping position on the floor; he was too exhausted by the heat to fancy passing the night standing up. The three negroes beat dust from their clothes and also settled down on the floor, their backs to the wall, their knees drawn up. Unlike Soames’, their ankles were shackled together. They were members of a working party which spent its days repairing roads or quarrying stone.
Time passed with the unsure gait of a sad reveller returning home. The full moon hung like an undescended testicle in the belly of the sky. A pack of jackals laughed with the shrill abandon of schoolgirls reading de Sade.
Soames’ mind drifted on an uneasy tide of heat and worry, staying in the cell but leaving his body behind. As through the dark g
lassily, he recalled the splendidly defiant words of an artistic acquaintance, who had once said, ‘I never change my socks until I can throw them against the wall and they stick there.’ It seemed to Soames, in his dreamy state, that the humidity and temperature of the cell had knitted themselves together to lie pressed over all his apertures with the exact consistency of tacky sock; so that he had but to take a handful of air and throw it, and it would adhere luxuriously to the walls of his prison. This idea insidiously wove itself into a rhyme, ‘Stone walls do not a prison make nor sweaty socks a pair; from foot to mouth my sweat doth fake a suit for me to wear’; but the rhyme was a dark streamer of which Soames grasped only portions at a time, and those portions began to weave deliriously with foot and mouth disease, and then with a Scots town called Lossiemouth. Lossiemouth, as a word and as a picture – an ultra-hirsute Lassie sheepdog, wearing lipstick and gleaming false teeth, supporting droves of little kilted figures – assumed in Soames’ brain such gigantic proportions of hilarity that it was only when three pairs of hands shook him urgently that he realised his sense of humour had carried him into shrieks of inane laughter.
‘I am so sorry,’ Soames announced into the darkness. ‘I hope I did not disturb you. Perhaps I have a temperature.’
The Englishness of these remarks comforted him greatly.
After a little while, just when his mind was beginning to wander again, a tin cup was thrust into his hand. Surreptitiously polishing its lip with his sleeve, Soames raised it to his mouth and drank.
This time, the three pairs of hands shook him to break him from a terrible spasm of coughing and giggling. He could see or feel nothing but the fiery sword, garlanded with nettles, which stretched from his throat to the pit of his stomach. When its heat at last faded, Soames faded with it into a deep sleep. He was roused by the singing of his cell mates. The night was wearing thin, for the moon rode high, throwing a pebble of light between their bars. Outside, a foolish bird called tirelessly, ‘Crippen! Crippen! Crippen!’ Doubtless, Soames reflected muzzily, it was a jailbird.
The singing grew round him, nourished by voices from other cells. It seemed to become a creature in its own right, independent of the singers. Soames was much affected by this sound, which seemed to contain so much beauty and sadness. He could not help comparing it with sing-songs he guessed they might have at Brixton and Dartmoor prisons, where staple offerings were no doubt ‘If You Were The Only Girl In The World’ or ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières’. This singing here reminded him of his walk through the kraal with Eekee; the same, dark African appetite was nuzzling him.
When finally it died away, he began without premeditation to sing himself.
Now I am a bachelor, I live with my son,
And we follow the weaver’s trade.
And every, every time I look into his eyes
It reminds me of that fair young maid.
It reminds me of the summertime,
And of the winter too,
And the many, many times I held her in my arms
To save her from the foggy, foggy dew.
Soames knew no more of the song than this. When, rather surprised at his own temerity, he paused and found the silence plainly straining for more, he sang this verse over again. When he had sung it four times, another voice, one of his cell-mates, joined him. Soon other voices, deep and true, entered; soon the whole jail was singing the ballad.
The night turned grey and dusty round the edges like an old sandwich, dawn broke, colour was violently reborn. With a crash, Soames’ door was flung open, and a guard entered to march him before the Governor. When he was set free twenty minutes later, the prison still reverberated to the strains of ‘The Foggy Dew’.
PART THREE
Darkest Africa
Chapter Twelve
‘As the light wind lives or dies …’
M’Grassi Landor was not a man to trifle with time. On a wall in his private study hung a portrait of the negro Henri Christophe of Haiti, who had also been president and king during his few years of power – though not concurrently, as M’Grassi was. From ‘L’Homme’, M’Grassi drew not a little strength and much of his dislike of wasting a day.
Accordingly, he was now, after breakfast, dictating to one of his secretaries instructions on the official opening of the Apostle, which he had decided should take place that very afternoon. A list of the guests to be invited to the ceremony had already been compiled; M’Grassi hesitated over it and then added Dumayami’s name. He could not afford to antagonise the witch doctor further. The old man was powerful and dangerous. M’Grassi might rule over the upper half of his people’s heads, but Dumayami held sway over the lower part of their hearts.
At the same time, Soames was upstairs being bathed by two of Princess Cherry’s most muscular hand-maidens. Indeed, Soames had been hard put to it to dissuade the Princess from adding her exertions too; her sympathy for his prison ordeal was deep and muscular. When Soames finally returned, bruised but refreshed, to his bedroom, it was to find her and Queen Louise sitting on the bed, awaiting him. Their greeting when he had first arrived back from prison had been hearty, and was as clamorous again now. As always, Soames felt slightly apprehensive under their friendliness.
The twin cannon of the Queen’s nose swivelled round drawing a genial bead on Soames.
‘You know we are regretful for your staying for one day in our jail, Mr Soames,’ she said. ‘It is a major mistake.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he replied lightly and evasively. ‘At least I’ve been getting a bit of local colour.’
He saw instantly that he had somehow said something to offend them.
‘You know what “local colour” is,’ he explained. ‘It means the typical and exotic wherever you happen to be.’
At this their brows cleared, and the Queen said, ‘It is a sign of favour that His Majesty does personal bailing for you. He admires you for an individual. I feel you should live in Goya now and …’ She paused for a long while before finding the word she needed: ‘Ratify.’
It seemed to Soames that if she required this word, he did not. He stared rather blankly at them until the Princess said seductively, ‘There are suitable positions for such men as you, Mr Soames.’
Soames, still slightly light-headed, laughed coarsely.
‘We forgive you for going to see the Pickets, Mr Soames,’ Queen Louise said. ‘We hope you now realise that all requirements are available in the palace.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Soames said. ‘You are very kind. You almost make me wish I was not going home in a few days.’
They left shortly after that; Soames was free to go down and test out the computer with Timpleton, while Gumboi and L’Panto looked admiringly on. When the two Englishmen realised that neither intended to say much about the recent past, they relaxed considerably, becoming almost genial with one another. The standard trials of the computer went smoothly; without hesitation, the Apostle Mk II put out a tongue of paper with neatly typed answers to all the key tests they ran through.
‘Is a number one class job, crikey,’ L’Panto said warmly. Each in his peculiar way, they echoed those sentiments.
The tests lasted for two hours, after which the computer was roped off for the afternoon’s ceremony. Shortly after four-thirty, when the greatest heat of the sun had slightly abated, the first few of the President’s guests arrived, and began to mill with open mouths along the Apostle’s imposing façade, over which was draped a banner bearing the one word ‘Bakkuds’, which is Goyese for ‘Progress’.
Soames experienced a certain reluctance to meet people. This, he realised, might be partly due to the drugs he had taken to subdue his slight fever; it was also connected with his visit to jail. He had to take himself firmly in hand and realise that a prison sentence in Umbalathorp did not bear the same social stigma it did in England. Even the scum of the Western world become little lords when they get East of Suez or South of Casablanca; and although this situation is not as extr
eme as it was even ten years ago, it is still extreme, representing, sociologically and historically, one of the most curiously interesting problems of the world’s myriad curiously interesting problems. If only one could go back in a time machine to that distant point in prehistory when an ancestor decided he should split his offspring into different colours – if only one could return to that point and talk him out of the crazy idea, the human race would be much less interesting today. Nonetheless, as matters have turned out to date, the idea of incarceration in black minds frequently goes hand in hand with the idea of white authority; to have incurred one is often to have defied the other; what then is a prison sentence but a token of the free-thinker?
Indeed, everyone was so extremely nice to Soames that he hastened to climb on to the specially constructed platform of honour to avoid them. In the large Portuguese party, both de Duidos and Soares were present, the latter with his daughter Maria; from the grotesque succession of winks, nods and smiles they shot at Soames, it was obvious the winds of their cordiality had changed again. Had not Maria, before Soames scrambled to safety, touched his arm with a white lace glove and said, ‘Now we achieved dislodging Mr Timpleton from following us, we hope we have the honour and pleasure of encouraging you to see us in our agreeable house?’
This was something Soames meditated on now, for as a man of judgement who knew a good thing when he saw it – and could still, moreover, feel the touch of its lace glove on his arm – he could not but see that, prised away from her parents, Maria Soares would be welcome to be as encouraging as she pleased.
Also in the crowd was Ping Hwa, slender and self-contained, holding over her sleek head the sort of parasol Soames had thought existed only in picture books. He was looking idly from her to Maria, as a man may hesitate between a whisky and a gin and lime, when his coat was tugged from the rear; glancing back, he saw Ping Ah standing behind the platform.
‘Perhaps you look see my Number One daughter, Ping Hwa, Mr Noyes,’ he said, with an expression far from inscrutable. ‘She much regret no chance to talk with you privately. I too have expected you would wish to condescend to talk with me.’