A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  By 1:35 three famous television programs had announced that the M’Bulu had accepted their invitations to appear, and in New York both the Overseas Press Club and the United Nations Correspondents Association were able to announce the same.

  By 2:36 Life magazine disclosed that it had signed an exclusive contract with the M’Bulu for a first-person account of his experiences in South Carolina.

  At 3 p.m. the British Embassy in Washington announced that the M’Bulu would arrive shortly at National Airport and would be entertained at a reception tomorrow night prior to the White House dinner.

  At 3:31 p.m. the plane carrying the M’Bulu touched down at National Airport, and to the waiting reporters he gave only a graceful greeting and the news that instead of spending the night at the Embassy, as the Ambassador had invited him to do, he would instead stay with his old and dear friend the Congressman from California, here at his side. To the insistent demands of the reporters the old and dear friend refused comment. He did manage to keep a calm outward aspect and a pleasant if firm attitude, but as they finally gave up and started to turn away he seemed to let down and for a moment looked terribly unhappy, as though he were being harried and haunted by many things. Fortunately none of the press perceived this. Only Terry perceived it, with an ironic smile. “Cheer up, old Cullee,” he said. “Everything’s going our way.”

  In newspapers all over the world the news of the M’Bulu’s courageous gesture and its worldwide repercussions rated banner headlines. The news about the British White Paper on Gorotoland merited only passing mention in many papers and none at all in some. It was freely predicted everywhere that the Panamanian resolution on immediate freedom for Gorotoland would now be passed at once by the United Nations.

  11

  And so it always was, the M’Bulu told himself, at each stage of his forward progress when he acted truly and forcefully as his instincts and his destiny told him he should: his brothers died, the way to the throne opened for him, the citadels of white society fell, the U.K. retreated before the claims of Gorotoland, the UN rallied to his cause, and the proud Americans were humbled in their own front yard. The gods had answered on that wild night in the storm when his mother had cried out, and they were with him still. Who else could have been so noble? Who else could have been so brave?

  “No one,” he said fiercely aloud. “No one.” Beside him in the British Embassy limousine bringing them from the house off Sixteenth Street to the reception in the stately Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue his hostess stirred and turned to look at him in some surprise.

  “No one what, Terry?” Sue-Dan said.

  “No one can do what I can,” the M’Bulu replied, with so crystalline a certainty that her initial impulse to be sarcastic died halfway. “They all go down before me, don’t they, Cullee, friend?”

  The Congressman, staring out the window, deep in his own thoughts, at first did not reply. Then he gave his guest a sidelong glance in which tiredness, distaste, disapproval, and a lingering trace of reluctant envy fought with one another.

  “You’re a great man, all right, Terry,” he said finally. “There’s no doubt about it now. You’re the greatest thing that ever hit these United States.”

  The M’Bulu gave his merry laugh and his graceful palms-out shrug.

  “Anyone could have done what I did. Anyone who loved his own people. And was brave enough.”

  “Cullee’s smart,” his wife said with a sudden sharp sarcasm. “He thinks that’s better than being brave.”

  “I invited him to go with me,” Terry said with a wistful regret. “I gave him every chance. He preferred to be—objective.”

  “I don’t know what I married,” Sue-Dan said viciously, and was pleased to see her husband’s hands knot furiously in his lap. “I swear I don’t.”

  “You’re not the only one who wonders that,” he said, and deliberately turned his back to stare again out the window. He felt her fingers claw into his arm with ferocious strength.

  “Don’t you turn your back on me, Cullee Hamilton!” she said shrilly, and up front the British chauffeur, completely expressionless, pressed a button. A glass wall slid neatly up into place to close him off from their discussion. “Don’t you treat me like dirt. You’re the dirt! Where were you when your own people needed you? You let Terry do it! You let a foreigner do it! Someone had to come from Africa and do the job you should have done! And you call yourself a Negro!”

  “I thought you called it nigger, Sue-Dan,” he said evenly. “Now, I’m not going to argue with you—”

  “How can you?” she demanded, still in the same shrill way. “How can you, when I’ve got a jellyfish for a husband? Terry’s the only man in this car!”

  “Well, now,” the M’Bulu said soothingly, “I’m sure I didn’t mean to start a family argument—”

  “You stay out of this!” she snapped, so sharply that he gave a startled laugh and sank back against the seat.

  “You can have her, Cullee! She’s too much for me. I’ve got half a dozen at home, but this little girl’s got more spirit than all of them together. Mercy!” he said with a delicate precision incongruous with his bulk. “Has this little girl got spirit!”

  “It’s a good thing I have,” Sue-Dan said scornfully, “because Cullee hasn’t. Won’t help his own people. Won’t run for Senator. Won’t anything.”

  “I swear to God,” the Congressman said, “someday I’m going to—”

  “Going to, nothing! You couldn’t. It might upset the white folks, and then you wouldn’t be elected any more. You’d have to go back to being a ditch-digger or whatever job the white folks’d let you have. Or maybe,” she added with a shrewish instinct for hurtfulness, “’Gage would let you sweep up his office.”

  “That LeGage,” the M’Bulu said dreamily. “There’s a great leader of his people who knows how to lead. I like LeGage.”

  “I suppose he put you up to this,” Cullee said.

  “We discussed it,” Terry admitted, “but it really was my idea. DEFY is going to help, now I’ve done it but I thought of it. After all, it was so obvious. It ties in so well with so many things. I’m just surprised no one ever thought of it before. Kwame could have done it. Sekou had the chance. It would have been a natural for poor Patrice. But no one thought of it but me. No one!” An expression of fierce pride came to his face. “No one but Terry!”

  “It was a great and noble action,” the Congressman said, spitting out the words with a genuine distaste. The M’Bulu shrugged and, in one of his abrupt transitions, gave his sunny smile.

  “So your press is telling the world. And so the world believes. Who am I to deny it?”

  “At least it showed the white man,” Sue-Dan said with a satisfaction that sounded quite ferocious. “At least, my poor Cullee, it showed the white man.”

  “That isn’t all, either,” Terrible Terry said happily. “Let me tell you,” he said as the limousine neared the Embassy and they saw ahead a crush of traffic, cops, and arriving vehicles, “what else is going to happen.”

  And as they approached the stately iron-scrolled gates and the police, alerted by the standards of Gorotoland and the United Kingdom flapping together from the fenders, moved to clear the way for their arrival, he proceeded to do so with an arrogant pleasure that seemed to delight the Congressman’s wife but made the Congressman’s blood run cold. And again, of course, he struggled with the agonizing feeling that there was nothing—or, at any rate, very little—that he could do. He determined to do that little, however, such as it was, though he was careful to keep his face impassive and his intention secret.

  “Now zip me,” Lady Maudulayne said, “and tell me how I look.”

  “I am always delighted when you take these intimate little chores away from Southgate and let me do them,” Claude Maudulayne said. “It makes for a fragrant memory of youthful domesticity, even if she does resent it. There, you’re zipped. Carry on.”

  “And tell me how I look, I said.”

/>   “Ravishing,” the British Ambassador replied. “How else?”

  “I want to,” Kitty said. “For all our relatives of palm and pine, black, white, yellow, green, blue, red—”

  “Wrong color,” Lord Maudulayne said cheerfully. “Anything else, but not red. Is Tashikov coming?”

  “Oh, yes. Madame called, personally, and we exchanged heavy pleasantries. I try not to let my mind work too fast for those people, but sometimes I can’t help it.”

  “Well,” her husband said, “you let it work as fast as you like on your level, because I can assure you theirs are going like lightning on their level. I rather thought he’d come, since he didn’t get asked to the White House.”

  “I must say I do admire the President,” Kitty said, adjusting two enormous jade earrings and giving her face a final pat with an enormous powder puff. “He does have spunk, you know?”

  “The old boy puts his foot in it sometimes, but most of the time he does very well, in my estimation. He’s still feeling his way, in many respects.”

  “Do you suppose it was just because he insulted Terry that Terry went to South Carolina and did what he did?”

  Claude Maudulayne shrugged.

  “Who knows why Terry does anything? Except that his motives are never as noble as one would gather if one believed all one heard and read about him at this particular moment.”

  “But it was rather brave, you know. You must admit that. He might have been killed.”

  “Cowards don’t often kill, and most of these mobs seem to be composed of cowards. Still, he was taking a chance, I’ll grant you. It’s certainly got the wind up all the Africans and Asians at the UN.”

  “Which takes some of the pressure off us,” his wife said with some satisfaction; and then added with a characteristic fairness, “How heartless politics is, really, particularly international politics. Somebody’s misfortune is always somebody’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I must admit that I look forward with some interest to Orrin’s expression when they get here. I told him in New York that this clever young man meant trouble for both of us, and I think he was inclined to think it was just typical British worry about the colonials, don’t you know. I’m afraid they take a somewhat patronizing attitude toward our little problems at times. Which,” he added with a wry honesty, “we reciprocate in full.”

  “I don’t really see how this can affect them directly, though, do you? After all, the resolution is still directed against us, and this hasn’t helped it any.”

  “No,” Lord Maudulayne said ruefully, “from our standpoint, it has not. But they may get hurt by the backlash. Anything like this does them fearful damage all over the world. And this is such a particularly vicious way to turn the screw. I’m surprised none of our black friends thought of it before.”

  “You have to hand it to our honored guest,” Lady Maudulayne said as she gave him a silver pump and extended her right foot, balancing herself with a finger on his shoulder. “He has a certain ingenuity about him.”

  “Oh, in his own twisted way, he’s a genius,” Lord Maudulayne said, putting on the shoe and reaching for the other. “His school record indicates that. But I wonder a little, on this. It’s such a pat weapon that can be used so many ways. I wonder if he had help.”

  “Tashikov?”

  “Felix.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t want to say that about a distinguished colleague. Anyway, I’m not sure.”

  “Who’s ever sure, until they turn up in Moscow being interviewed for television?”

  “That’s the last place Patsy Jason’s husband will ever turn up, of that you can be sure.… No, I think we’re off base, and we mustn’t ever say it. It’s only a hunch.”

  “I have learned over the years, my dear,” Lady Maudulayne said, “that when you and I arrive independently at the same hunch, it is more often than not the right one.” Lord Maudulayne smiled.

  “How true. But we must just bury this thought, I think, and not even bring it to the surface of our minds, where it might show to some perceptive eye.”

  “But we mustn’t throw it away altogether,” Kitty said. “Please, let’s not throw it away altogether.”

  Her husband grinned.

  “How could we? … When do we fade gracefully away to the White House like Arabs in the night and leave our guests to drink themselves into a stupor on Her Majesty’s liquor?”

  “I think we’ll stick it to seven. I really think most of them will be gone by then. I’m closing the bar at six-thirty.”

  “Very forethoughted.”

  “Thank you. Now, once more,” she said, pausing at the door to turn gracefully and face him. “How do I look?”

  “No lovelier than when I saw you that first day at Crale,” her husband said gravely. She blushed with pleasure.

  “What would I have ever done without you?” she asked softly.

  “Fortunately,” the British Ambassador said, “that is a question whose answer the Lord did not require either of us to find out.”

  In the public rooms, beneath the portraits of Sovereign current, Sovereigns past, assorted Hanovers, Windsors, Tudors, and Stuarts, they greeted their guest with suitable ceremony as he entered with his host and hostess of the night. The M’Bulu, gorgeous in fresh robes, bowed graciously to Kitty, shook hands with a pleased smile with the Ambassador, and took his position in the receiving line with a graceful dignity. The Hamiltons, seeming a little tense to the Maudulaynes, chatted briefly and then went on in to refreshments. The crush followed fast upon them and steadily increased for an hour as the Ambassador and his lady and the heir to Gorotoland fell automatically into the accustomed routine of “So nice to see you, Miss Mumble—Mrs. Mumble, sorry—Lady Maudulayne, Mrs. Mumble—So nice to see you, Mr. Mumble—Sorry, Mr. Murmur—Mr. Murmur, Your Royal Highness.” In time this slacked off, the last dazzling smile had been exchanged, the last bone-crushing handshake endured, the last vigorously vague politeness expressed with suitable cordiality. The line was over and “The guests, thank God, are on their own,” as the Ambassador remarked.

  “You can’t help being friends after going through an experience like that together,” Lady Maudulayne said. “Why don’t you come into the study for a moment and have a private drink, Your Highness? Then we can Circulate. I trust you hear my capital C.”

  “I do,” Terrible Terry said with a friendly laugh. “Indeed I do. But you must call me Terry. Everyone does.”

  “I’m flattered,” Kitty said, slipping her arm through his. “Heavens! How far up there are you?”

  “Far enough,” the M’Bulu said. “Possibly,” he added with a teasing little smile as they entered the study and closed the door behind them, “His Lordship thinks I am too far up, right now.”

  “Not at all, old chap,” the Ambassador said briskly. “You got there by your own efforts. Who am I to cavil? After all, one doesn’t criticize Mount Everest for being where it is. Why criticize the M’Bulu for being where he is? I assume you’re taking Scotch.”

  “As a good Britisher,” Terry said with a smile, “how could I take anything else? I do like ice, though. Americanized to that extent.”

  “Quite Americanized, I’d say,” Kitty told him. “Goodness, how exciting it all is! I think you were fearfully brave.”

  “I felt it was the least I could do,” the M’Bulu said modestly.

  “It was so clever of you to think of it. I don’t see how ever you did.”

  “Oh, it was my idea,” Terry said quickly. “It was my idea, right enough.”

  “Did you think I was implying it wasn’t?” Kitty asked with a merry laugh. “Goodness, I’m not that stupid. I hope I know shrewdness when I see it, by this time.”

  “If so,” Terry said with a little bow, “it must be because like recognizes like.”

  “Now I know why you were such a smash in London,” she said. “Not only clever, but flattering as well. The only reason
I mentioned it,” she added, looking him straight in the eye with a candid smile, “is because there has been some talk going ’round that Felix Labaiya put you up to it.”

  “Now, why,” the M’Bulu demanded slowly, a trifle too slowly she felt, “would Felix Labaiya want to do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. But you know how rumors start in this town.”

  “Felix had nothing to do with it,” he said firmly. “It was quite my own idea.” A dark scowl banished his customary smile for a second. “I think these are the great hypocrites, here. I think it is time someone showed them up.”

  “And how neatly it all fits in with your resolution at the UN,” Lord Maudulayne said politely. “It couldn’t have been better if someone had planned it that way.”

  “I planned it that way,” Terry said, again with the dark scowl. Then his expression changed to one of growing amusement. “That Felix, though, I will tell you. He is an imaginative fellow, that one. I think it will be some time before the world discovers all the surprises of which he is capable.” And, as though overcome by some vast secret joke, he threw back his head and gave his shout of delighted laughter.

  “He came up with one surprise sufficient for us in your Gorotoland resolution,” Lord Maudulayne remarked. The M’Bulu shrugged.

  “It was inevitable.”

  “And now you are sure it will pass,” Kitty said. He shrugged again.

  “With the vote in First Committee, and now this? Inevitable.”

  “You are very sure of yourself, too. Another reason for popularity, I suppose.”