The White Father

by Julian Mitchell

  “A son has to annoy his father. It wouldn’t be natural not to. It’s a sort of essential ritual.”

  “Well, I think it’s time you stopped,” said Jane. “It’s such a bore for everyone else. Why don’t you get yourself a nice girl, then you wouldn’t feel the need to quarrel.”

  Edward shrugged. “Too busy.”

  “Oh, pooh. You’re always complaining that there isn’t anything to do. You just tinkle away at the piano all day long.”

  “I don’t tinkle.”

  “Well—— You just sit there having fantasies.”

  “I do not. I concentrate when I’m playing.”

  “Concentrate on what?”

  “On the music.”

  “Oh, really,” she said. “Don’t you ever think about anyone when you’re playing things?”

  “Never.”

  “Don’t you care about anyone?”

  “No.”

  “About any thing, then?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think there must be something wrong with you?”

  “Probably. No one’s perfect.”

  “You’re absolutely infuriating,” said Jane. “Honestly, you make me want to hit you.”

  “Sorry, dear.”

  “What on earth made you decide to offer your services to that boring Mr Shrieve?”

  “He’s not boring, he’s extremely interesting.”

  “I thought he was boring. But why did you decide to get mixed up with him?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been drifting about, I’m tired of drifting. It’ll be amusing, perhaps. Anyway, nothing’s arranged, you know, it’s all very indefinite.”

  “Are you happy, Teddy?”

  He looked up at her sharply. “Happy? I never think about it. I should say, on the whole, no. But why do you ask?”

  “I knew you weren’t. You ought to have a girl friend.”

  He played a brief jazzy version of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, ending it with a rude noise. Then he said, “I like the idea of helping those primitive types in Africa. They’re so helpless. I think people only really enjoy helping the totally helpless, because the totally helpless can’t help back at all. It’s a one-way arrangement. Giving is so much easier than receiving.”

  “You do talk such utter rubbish, Teddy. You’re too dreamy to be true. Why don’t you want to receive?”

  “I don’t particularly want to give, either.”

  “You’re lazy, that’s all.”

  “No. Idleness doesn’t suit me.”

  “You’ve certainly given it a chance to.”

  “Oh, you say that. But I really worked quite hard at Oxford, you know, and then there was the band—I didn’t have much time over.”

  “But that’s not working,” said Jane. “That’s like being at school—it’s just a way of filling up time while you’re waiting to grow up and get away.”

  “And what sort of work do you do?”

  “I’m a girl.”

  “So I’ve noticed. But surely you believe in sexual equality. Or are you waiting to start work with marriage?”

  He began to play the Wedding March from Lohengrin.

  “I’d like to be married,” she said. “I want to have a white wedding, and for Mummy to cry, and for everyone to throw confetti. And I want there to be lots of those awful speeches.”

  “Do you?” he said. “Hmm. I’ll write you a pop song for your wedding.”

  “Teddy, do you honestly like pop songs?”

  “Certainly. Musically, I’m apolitical.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t use words like that,” said Jane. “You know I don’t understand them.”

  “Ethmoid,” said Edward.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Jane.

  5

  JAMES WEATHERBY’S tiny bachelor flat was just off the Brompton Road. Weatherby lived in Sussex, but as often as twice a month he would telephone his wife and say that he was terribly busy and couldn’t face the extra fatigue of the double journey. The flat was furnished from the days when he had been, indeed, a bachelor. There were two arm-chairs, a double divan on which guests were supposed to lounge, a desk, a ratty-looking carpet and some cheap bright prints. The curtains were a chintzy green, and the windows gave a splendid view over central London. Weatherby claimed that on a clear day one could see from Clapham to Hampstead.

  “It’s just a converted attic,” he had said to Shrieve, “nothing more than a maid’s room, really. Are you sure it’ll do for you?”

  “It’ll be very useful,” Shrieve had said. “I only want a pied-à-terre.”

  “It’s more of a pied-en-air, actually.” Weatherby had given his dry laugh. “But it serves its purpose. When the children are older, they’ll want somewhere they can spend an odd night, and it’s really quite cheap.”

  Shrieve hadn’t been in the flat twenty-four hours before he had begun to wonder what Weatherby meant by it serving its purpose. The telephone had rung twice and a woman’s voice had said, “Is that you, James?” When Weatherby came in to see whether his friend had settled in all right, Shrieve said, “There’s been a woman trying to get you. I said you were at your office, but she didn’t seem to believe me.”

  “A woman? Now who can that have been?”

  Weatherby was a lanky man with very long fingers that gave him the air of being more precise than he actually was: to watch him picking up crumbs was to imagine him an old maid. In fact he was an industrious and able civil servant, near the peak of his career, and he had a toughness of mind that could alarm Shrieve. He had a neat ginger moustache, and his thick hair was fading gracefully to silver. He wore rimless glasses and occasionally sported a bow-tie. His umbrella was always immaculately furled, and his shoes, as Shrieve remembered from their undergraduate days, always shone with great lustre: Shrieve could not imagine him without burnished feet.

  “A woman, you say,” he said. “It can hardly have been my secretary. I wonder who it was. I hardly ever use this number, of course. Perhaps it was one of those wretched people who phone one up to advertise something.”

  “She asked if I was James.”

  “Did she now?” A glint of resolution showed in Weatherby’s eye. “Hmm.”

  Shrieve didn’t wish to hear about his friend’s peccadilloes, supposing them to be nothing worse. “Did you manage to arrange a meeting with Filmer for me?” he said. Filmer was one of the senior civil servants concerned with the colony.

  “Yes. He said he’d be glad to see you, but confidentially I was to let you know there was little he could do. The Minister takes a personal interest in these conferences, you know, and he doesn’t leave much to us. But Filmer will be only too pleased to pass on what you’ve got to say.”

  “That’s very kind. Have the delegates made up their minds when they’re going to arrive yet?”

  “Next week. The conference starts on Thursday week. That gives you a chance to work on them, if you want to. I would, too, if I were you.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Shrieve looked tired. “I’m beginning to feel rather hopeless, I’m afraid, James. Everyone has been very kind and sympathetic and attentive, and then said there’s nothing much he can do, he’s sorry to say. London’s so far from the Ngulu, the whole problem sounds unreal here. I’m beginning to feel pretty detached myself.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Hugh. Your interest is fairly obviously attached, I’d say. But you’re right about the distance—your place is scarcely on the maps of Whitehall at all. We’re all so involved with the political structure and so forth. And so will the black boys be, too, when they arrive.”

  “Exactly. Everyone’s so interested in the big stuff about freedom and who’s going to be Prime Minister and whether or not they’re going to stay in the Commonwealth that my wretched little people will simply be overlooked.”

  “I don’t think you need be quite so gloomy,” said Weather-by, picking up his bowler hat. “Look, I must go. Have you got everything you need?”

 
“Yes thanks. It’s really very kind of you.”

  “Not at all, not at all. I must catch the 6.30 or I’ll be late for dinner and there’ll be hell to pay. But there’s no need to be desperate, Hugh. I’d say things have been pretty encouraging for you so far. People are getting to know about the Ngulu, and that’s what counts. You may have nothing to show on paper yet, but it’s what’s going on in people’s heads that matters.”

  Shrieve saw him to the door. As Weatherby started down the stairs he stopped and said, without turning back, “Oh, and Hugh. If that woman rings again, tell her I’ll ring her tomorrow, would you?”

  “All right,” said Shrieve. He watched Weatherby whistle his way out of sight.

  Back in the flat, sunk in one of the chairs, he gazed at the sky and wondered whether his friend was right. In the weeks since his arrival, Shrieve had tactfully urged his case on as many people as he could. Filmer was the most important in a series of reasonably highly placed people whose influence could prove valuable. It was true that it would be more effective to go straight to the Minister, but that, unfortunately, was out of the question. The long memorandum he had written would no doubt have made its way to the Minister’s desk by now, in any case. What was needed was an assurance that the Minister would not only read it, but act on it. The Minister enjoyed a reputation for ruthlessness as well as for hard work, and the memorandum might have been tossed to a subordinate after a hurried glance or even chucked into the waste-paper basket. You could never tell what a politician was going to consider important.

  The flat was ugly and Shrieve felt depressed. The walls badly needed distempering, the chairs needed recovering. He felt very lonely, and wished very much that Amy was there.

  *

  “I don’t see why we should get married,” said Judy Jones. “Do you, Edward?”

  “No. Not if you don’t want to.”

  “We’re perfectly all right as we are. We’d break up at once if we got married—we wouldn’t know how to cope with anything official, we’d just collapse. The way things are we both have perfect freedom and never feel the need to exercise it. Why spoil it?”

  “It sounds ideal,” said Edward.

  “It is ideal,” said Judy.

  Pete Harrisson shrugged. He was the trumpeter with whom Edward had started a cool band at Oxford, and he had a fringe of red beard. He always wore open-necked shirts with thick dark stripes. He and Judy had lived together since their second spring term, when he had taken a houseboat on the Cherwell as digs.

  “You don’t know my parents,” he said. “Any day now they’re going to ask me what my intentions are.”

  “Surely the girl’s family asks that?”

  “Like I said, you don’t know my parents.”

  They were sitting in the bedroom of Pete’s flat, two rooms, a kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor of a large old house near Ladbroke Grove. So far only the bedroom and kitchen had been furnished, and Edward was to sleep on a mattress in the sitting-room, surrounded by unopened crates and piles of old newspapers. Pete and Judy were do-it-yourself people, but only one wall of the bedroom had been painted as yet, and there was thick dust on half a dozen tins of distemper. The gramophone, however, was fully installed, with extension speakers in the kitchen and sitting-room. At the moment it was on the last track of a long-playing record of Charlie Mingus.

  Judy had just started work on a newspaper. Pete was unemployed except for odd nights of trumpet-playing with small bands. He was trying to raise the capital for a club, with food served upstairs and a band led by himself downstairs. It was to be called The Incha’ Allah—the God-willing. The Arabic name would give the club a certain cachet: several admired American jazzmen had adopted Mohammedanism and Moslem names in the last few years. It was to be the first and only centre of cool jazz in London, and the plans were sufficiently advanced to include the lighting and the arrangement of tables. The idea was to have unfussy music in an unfussy atmosphere. Edward, it had been made clear, was expected to be the unfussy pianist in the band.

  “What are your plans, Edward?” said Judy.

  “I’m not sure. What have you fixed up for me, Pete?”

  “A few gigs here and there. Maybe something for tonight, it’s not definite yet.”

  “Good,” said Edward. “Then I’ll be playing a few gigs for Pete, Judy, and I’ll be working for this test recording, and perhaps I’ll be helping this man Shrieve during the days. I must ring him up and find out.”

  “Listen,” said Pete, “I want you to take these gigs seriously. We’ve got to get a band together, and you’ve got to keep your ears open. There aren’t that many people around who play our kind of style. They’re going to be sort of auditions, these gigs.”

  “Oh, sure. And you’ve got to take my recording session seriously, too. When I’m top of the pops there’ll be money for all of us.”

  “O.K., O.K.,” said Pete. “Look, we’ve got to go to this party. Will you be all right here? There’s probably some food somewhere, isn’t there, Judy?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Edward. “I’ll contribute to the household budget.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Judy. “We must go now, Pete, or your mother’ll think we’ve been wallowing in unsanctified sex.”

  “Haven’t you been?”

  “Not this evening, no. I’ve only been back from work an hour. Pete, do take that record off. He never takes records off,” she added to Edward. “It makes me furious, that hissing noise.”

  Pete switched off the machine. “See you at the Brachs Restaurant in Coventry Street at half past ten, right? And don’t be late, there may be work.”

  “Right. Enjoy yourselves.”

  “Some hope,” said Judy. “I just hope it’s not true that children grow to be like their parents. If Pete starts acting like his father, I’m leaving.”

  “What’s so awful about your father, Pete?”

  “Nothing. It’s that that’s so awful, really.”

  After they’d gone, Edward washed as best he could (the hot water system wasn’t yet working), then glanced at an evening paper. A news items on an inside page informed him that a Mr James Pocock, of Brisbane, claimed to have over five thousand Free bottle-tops. Asked why he was collecting them, he said, “In the war there was a great demand for scrap of all kinds. I think my collection may prove valuable next time.” There were collectors all over the world, he said. “It’s our hobby. We exchange letters and so on, you know.”

  Could it be true, Edward wondered: or was it just a silly season story? He read the item again. It came from a reliable agency, it must be true. He threw the paper down and decided to call Shrieve.

  The phone was answered almost immediately.

  “Hello, this is Edward Gilchrist. I’m in London.”

  “Oh, hello,” said Shrieve.

  “Have you got anything for me to do? I’m ready and eager.”

  “Not really,” said Shrieve. He had forgotten that Edward was going to ring.

  “Oh.” The boy, as Shrieve thought of him, sounded disappointed.

  “Look, what are you doing this evening? I mean now?”

  “Nothing till quite late.”

  “Would you like to come and have a drink? I live very close to South Kensington tube station. We can talk things over a bit, if you like.”

  “That would be very nice,” said Edward. “As long as I’m not disturbing you at all.”

  “Not in the least. Come whenever you like. Are you far away?”

  “Notting Hill. It won’t take me long.”

  “You have the address?”

  “Oh yes.” He was clutching the piece of paper on which Shrieve had written it in his hand. “I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes.”

  “Excellent,” said Shrieve. “Goodbye.” He smiled at Edward’s eagerness as he replaced the receiver.

  It was a warm rather sultry evening, and London seemed dirty and sweaty. Large purple clouds floated low, threatening but not givin
g rain. The trees looked tired, though it was still only July; the fumes of traffic seemed to have wilted them. The streets were busy with late shoppers, and hard to cross for the stream of homeward-bound cars. The tube was suffocating.

  Yet Edward felt excited. The start of something new was always exhilarating, and if Shrieve had anything to offer him at all, it would be completely new, a strange and impressive world where men thought seriously about power. And besides, it was a lark, it would surprise his friends, it had already surprised Pete and Judy. Edward like surprising his friends, and he liked, too, to take on more than one thing at a time, to juggle with his days. At Oxford he had worked quite hard and played in the band, and at the same time had gone to lectures completely outside his subject—on Greek vases, for instance. He liked not having quite enough time, it spurred him on. It had been like going on a cruise, attending the lectures in the Ashmolean, with strange people and a new landscape, and at the back of his enjoyment the knowledge that he ought to have been doing something else. So, now, to be involved with jazz and the fringes of politics pleased him immensely. He dreaded becoming limited, narrow-minded, a specialist. Between the Ngulu and the world of Pete and Judy, of jazz and pop songs, there stretched light years, and he hugged to himself the idea of straddling infinite space.

  He soon found Shrieve’s block of flats and took the flights of stairs at a run. Shrieve answered the door in a sweater.

  “You still feel cold?”

  “A little. It takes time to adapt, you know. England is so inconsistent, too. Where I come from you know it’s going to rain at certain seasons and that it’ll be terribly hot at others. You know where you are. Here you look out of the window and the sun’s shining, and by the time you’re at the bottom of the stairs it’s beginning to rain.”

  “I suppose so,” said Edward. “I don’t honestly notice much. I like it when the sun shines, of course.”

  “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.