Tufnell looked at Jackie’s C.N.D. badge and sneered briefly before saying, “I realise, Mr Shrieve, that you believe the Ngulu aren’t going to be affected very seriously even if there should be serious Communist infiltration. But surely it matters to you if a government takes over which is inspired by concentration camps?”
“You forget,” said Shrieve, “that if Bloaku and his friends ever think about concentration camps, they think about Dr Verwoerd’s in South Africa.”
“Of course, the South African situation is simply a gift to the reds. It’s tragic, absolutely tragic.”
“Tragic for the Africans or for the whites?” said Jackie, unable to restrain herself. Then she blushed furiously.
“For both, of course,” said Tufnell as loftily as his general air of gloom permitted. “For the whole world.”
Adams said, as though about nothing in particular, “Mr Tufnell is an administrator of the Foundation that sponsors the Congress which is sponsoring our whole conference. It’s much concerned about the way things are going.”
“What foundation is that?” said Edward.
“It’s called the Free Foundation,” said Adams. “Not, which would have been more appropriate in some ways, the Foundation for the Free. The money comes from that awful drink.”
Edward laughed. Free was inescapable.
“We are indeed much concerned,” said Tufnell. “At the last meeting of the executive of the Free Foundation, the meeting at which this Congress was planned, it was agreed that the west must be woken up to what is going on in Africa as soon as possible. Which reminds me, Professor, you still haven’t signed the round robin.”
“Haven’t I?” said Adams. “Oh dear.”
“What does it say, your round robin?” said Edward.
“It draws attention to the urgent need for more effort by the Western Powers if there is not to be a wholesale collapse of the new African countries into the hands of the Communists.”
“And who are you sending it to?”
“Oh, the heads of the appropriate branches of government in all the important countries. Encounter has promised to publish it, and various other magazines in different languages. The point is to alert the western world to the danger.”
“What do you propose should be done?” said Shrieve.
“That’s not for us to say, of course,” said Tufnell. His hands made their familiar gesture of apathy. “Intellectuals can’t hope to do more than influence. The Free Foundation is frequently consulted about Aid Programmes and so on, of course. We have a sort of list of recommended people.”
“And who do you recommend in my country?”
“Ukurua. He’s the only really safe man, we think.”
“But Ukurua’s a laughing stock,” said Shrieve, genuinely shocked. “You must know that, surely? He’s about as serious a political figure as—oh, the ambassador of Haiti, say. He’s a playboy. He’s just a rich chief who rides around in big cars and plays polo with the governor. He doesn’t even take himself seriously. He’s a figurehead, and he knows it.”
“Ukurua is our man,” said Tufnell, with a certain amount of satisfaction. “He’s absolutely reliable.”
“For God’s sake,” said Shrieve, “if you mean by reliable that he’s not likely to turn Communist, then I suppose you’re right. But I wouldn’t put even that past him. He’d join if they offered him a big enough bribe. He’s only interested in fast cars and fast women.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Tufnell. His hands moved jerkily. “He does like women, it’s true.” He suddenly gave a high giggle. “I like women myself.”
Jackie laughed, a clear peal of laughter that rang across the Common Room. Edward was grimacing, Shrieve was appalled. Adams saved the situation by saying, “More tea, Mr Tufnell?”
Tufnell said he must be going. He said goodbye and joined a group of men over by the fireplace. Edward heard the phrase “policy of containment” as the ranks broke to let him in.
“You got off lightly, Mr Shrieve,” said Adams. “The thought police, as we call them—they don’t altogether care for the name—seem to have required his services. So tedious, those people. And they will try and dominate all the larger meetings. They’re almost as bad as the Communists, I say. They manœuvre a subject round to suit them in just the same way. I remember an international conference in Basle, when a Hungarian called Pilarczyk and a Frenchman called Morrelet managed to bring the whole proceedings to a halt by the middle of the second day. One said everything had to be discussed in terms of the dialectic. The other denied, within the terms of the dialectic, that anthropology could be so discussed. I forget which was Communist and which was anti-Communist, but I do know that the only useful conversations I had during the whole conference were those held in my bedroom over a bottle of whisky.”
“It’s not a world I know about,” said Shrieve. “Politics in the bush are really so very simple.”
“Lucky man,” said Adams, “lucky man.”
“I wonder,” said Shrieve diffidently, seeing Adams begin to shift restlessly, as though it was time for him to go, “if you might have any suggestions about what I could do to get this constitutional conference to come up with something really firm about the Ngulu’s protection.”
Adams looked at him sideways and said, “Hmm. What are you asking? You think I have influence in Whitehall? I can assure you I haven’t. And you’ve already got my signature on your letter, for what it’s worth.”
“I just wondered if you had any ideas,” said Shrieve.
“I’m sorry,” said Adams. “Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, when I was a young and ignorant worker in the field, I became disgusted with the living conditions of the people I was working among. I made representations, I made personal calls, I wrote letters and memoranda, and nothing whatever was done. Ten years later I returned to see what had happened to my tribe, to check on my youthful researches, to discover, with what I had learned since, how much I had missed. To my horror, I found that in my absence all my recommendations of ten years earlier had been put into effect. My tribe had water taps, had a tractor, even had a kind of sewage system. They were unrecognisable. They had become exactly like their neighbours. Their unique traditions were disappearing before sanitation and drugs, their institutions were dwindling before the efficiency of the local District Officer. After two months I packed up and came home. And the moral of the story, my dear Shrieve, is this: if an anthropologist becomes a social worker, he does himself out of a job. It was a hard decision, and some people would think it an inhuman one: but I decided then that I was a scholar, that my duty was to report as faithfully as possible on the life of people as I found them. It was for others to change that life, as they thought fit. Simply by being present an anthropologist alters, no matter how slightly, the way of life of the people he is studying. He is obliged to make this alteration as small as possible. If he lets his civilised conscience interfere with the way the people live, he is ceasing to be a good anthropologist. The detachment of scholarship is often a very hard discipline indeed. It is a discipline I have accepted. I can’t offer you the very smallest suggestion as to how your people are to be saved. The fact that you act as their safeguard, with whatever motives, is something my scholarly discipline teaches me to regret. I study natural man. Nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw’. But as a scholar I can’t approve of any interference with tooth, claw, arrow or sword. I watch. I observe. I record.”
There was a silence.
“But I’m not an anthropologist,” said Shrieve, at last.
“I know,” said the professor. He gave his studied twinkle. “You have my very deepest sympathy.”
“Outside your work, then, it’s all right to feel like an ordinary man?” said Shrieve, unable to control the bitterness in his voice.
“Oh yes,” said Adams brightly. “I’m as mean and kind, violent and gentle, as my neighbour.” He twinkled again. “And now I must go. I can’t thank you enough, Mr
Shrieve, for coming and addressing us dull academics when you have so much to do in the real world where all is said to be so much less solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Your lecture was most illuminating. And I sincerely hope, for your sake, that some means will be devised for safeguarding your Ngulu.”
They said goodbye, and Shrieve left with Edward and Jackie. They stood for a moment on the pavement outside the College, below the ugly tower, and Edward said, “Wow, that was quite a spiel that old professor put out, wasn’t it?”
“I thought it was simply immoral,” said Jackie. “Really immoral. Worse, it was wicked.”
Shrieve looked at them, wondering. Whose was the evasion, his or Adams’s? It was true that without the British there might be no Ngulu left by now. But was it really right to keep them alive, defenceless, for eighty odd years, to interfere with nature, to control evolution?
He shook himself. Of course it was right. The girl had seen it at once. Adams was as bad in his way as Tufnell. One in the name of an abstract ideal called scholarship, the other in the name of an abstract ideal called freedom, they both ignored the real and palpable, the men and women, the flesh that breathed, that felt pleasure and pain, the minds that thought and dreamed and planned, however primitively. He had a vivid and blinding memory of Amy’s body against his, his mouth against her ear, her crooning, a meaningless sound that was neither song nor moan, speech nor music, but love itself on her breath.
Edward watched him, a small man with anguish in his eyes, a briefcase in his hand, and a badge in his buttonhole saying SHRIEVE. He wanted to put his arm round him and comfort him. But the arm was round Jackie, and Shrieve would be alarmed, perhaps, certainly puzzled, by such a gesture. Embarrassed, Edward looked away.
Sensing that something was wrong, Jackie looked from one to the other, Shrieve caught her glance and smiled distraughtly.
“I’m not good enough,” he muttered. “I can’t cope with all these people. They’re too far away from me, from what I’d imagined. I’ve lost touch.”
Jackie said, “It’s they who’ve lost touch, Mr Shrieve.”
Edward looked at her gratefully. Shrieve raised his eyes to the tower of the College. Anthropology was one of the humanities, it must be. It was one of the things the great universities of Europe had developed out of their love for man. Surely this new College didn’t herald a new kind of learning?
“When shall I see you?” said Edward.
“Oh.” Shrieve collected himself. “I’m going to my father’s for the week-end. I’m seeing Dennis Moreland on Monday. What about Tuesday?”
“I’ve got my audition on Tuesday morning. But unless they decide to throw me straight into the wonderful world of pop, I should be free by lunchtime.”
“Good. There’s that letter to be got off, isn’t there? Come and have lunch. Come to the flat about twelve-thirty.”
“All right,” said Edward. “We’d better rush now. There’s a train in ten minutes.”
“Goodbye,” said Shrieve.
“Oh,” said Edward, “do take that nameplate off. People will think you’re a delegate to a conference or something.”
“I’d forgotten,” said Shrieve. He fumbled with the pin.
“Let me do it,” said Edward. He fought with the badge for a moment, then unfastened it. Jackie watched him, thinking that perhaps she did really like him quite a lot.
“Thanks,” said Shrieve. He put the badge in his pocket.
They said goodbye, and he watched them as they walked down towards the station, envious of Edward’s casual arm about Jackie’s waist, their easy young manners, their youth. He hadn’t, he realised, ever felt jealous of youth before.
*
The evening’s party was being held in what by day was a gymnasium in Fulham. The wooden horse had been pushed to the side, the ropes had been hauled to the ceiling from which they dangled like lianas, and the wall-bars had been decorated with bunting and paper-chains. People had been invited to come as they were, which had meant much heart-searching. The girls, it seemed, had spent the day, or at least the earlier part of the evening, slopping about in red, blue, green, yellow or black tights, sweaters, flared skirts and multiple bracelets. The men, equally, seemed to have had no very definite jobs from which to come, for few employers could be imagined approving of their skin-tight trousers, striped cotton sweat-shirts and peacock-hued sweaters. One or two striped shirts could be seen anticipating fashion. Those who wrote to the earnest papers about the spending of working-class teenagers would have been amazed to find that almost all of the hundred and fifty young guests who had gathered in the gymnasium to dance or drink had had public or grammar school, and in many cases university, educations. They could have been from Stepney or South Kensington, Paddington or Pont Street, for sartorially at least there was no class-consciousness among those who had grown up since the end of the second world war.
On a stand which was usually a boxing-ring, Pete Harrisson was calling the numbers to a band which included Edward and Greg Smith. A small knot of admirers preferred to stand in front and listen rather than dance. The noise was deafening. The host was offering red wine and soft drinks in paper cups.
“Take ten, boys,” Pete said to the band, in imitation of a famously awful band-leader of whom he and Edward claimed to be fans. Instruments were laid down and a record-player took over. Those who had been listening to the band trooped over to the speaker and listened to that instead.
“Great music!” shouted the host to Pete, waving a bottle in the air. “Grab a drink, you’ll need it. We’re going on all night.”
“I’m not,” said Edward to Greg. “I’ve had a hell of a day. I was up at some unthinkable hour this morning.”
“It’s great,” said Greg, looking round. Pete had had difficulty persuading him to come. Greg worked on Saturday mornings.
“I’m exhausted,” said Edward. He saw Judy and Jackie talking together by the wall-bars. He climbed up and sat above them, his drink precarious in his hand.
“What have you got there?” said Judy.
“Free. You can’t escape it. Even Shrieve’s anthropological conference was being paid for by Free.”
“There’s whisky for the band, if you want it.”
“Not yet, thanks. Tell me, Judy, do you believe in Mr Brachs?”
“I think so, yes. I think he sits at an enormous desk at the end of an even more enormous office, inscrutable as a Buddha. Oh, and he makes his visitors sit in terribly low chairs, so that he seems to loom over them menacingly.”
“D’you think I’ll be allowed to meet him?”
“Not till you’re top of the pops, dear. Then you’ll be invited into his office. You’ll have to walk across miles and miles of carpet, so deep that it’ll be like walking through a swamp. When you finally get to his desk, you’ll sink trembling into one of the low chairs and he’ll not even look up. After about two minutes he’ll raise his head and say ‘Well done’, and then you’ll have to walk across the miles and miles of carpet again, and you’ll probably be so frightened that you’ll trip over and sink without trace in the pile.”
“I think he’s probably rather sweet, really,” said Jackie. “He’s probably terribly lonely, and goes miserably to bed every night thinking how awful it is that no one loves him.”
“He’s right about that, anyway,” said Edward.
“Do you suppose it’s true that his bath-taps are gold?” said Judy.
“Oh yes,” said Edward. “I mean, what’s the point of being that rich if you don’t have gold bath-taps?”
“Would you have gold bath-taps if you were that rich?” said Jackie. “And gold lavatory chains and everything?”
“Of course. And gold thread in the sheets. And golden Byzantine ikons on the walls.”
“Do you suppose he likes pictures?”
They all thought about it a bit. Then Judy said, “No. Or if he does, they’re huge abstract ones in ominously deep colours. You know, like Mark Rothko. Vast, the
size of the wall, and deep red, burgundy, that sort of thing. Pictures that make you flinch as you walk past.”
“Yes,” said Edward. “You shy away from them and fall into the carpet.”
They all laughed.
“Poor Mr Brachs,” said Jackie. “Nobody loves him.”
“Like me,” said Edward.
“Oh really, Edward.” Judy patted his ankle. “We all love you, honey.”
“Wait till you hear the world premiere of my song. It’s so sad, when I sing it I almost cry myself.”
“I shan’t cry,” said Judy. “If I hear that bloody song once more I’ll do my nut. They’ve been practising it non-stop for days, Jackie. It stinks, it really stinks.”
“It’ll probably be a big hit then,” said Jackie, smiling up at Edward.
He looked down at her, considering her features. Small nose, blue eyes, wide mouth, surprised little eyebrows. She was really quite pretty.
“Did you know your nose was small?” he said. “People look quite different from above.”
“Do they, now?” said Judy, eyeing him critically.
Pete called the band together again. He distributed some sheets of music and said, “You’d better be able to play this one, because it’s going to be top of the hit parade in six weeks.”
Then he adjusted the microphone for Edward, picked up his trumpet, gave a downbeat and they were off, without any announcement. The jazz fans looked baffled by the introduction, soupy and sweet, and flabbergasted as Edward began to sing:
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