The Sunbird

by Wilbur Smith

  While I poured I asked unnecessarily, ‘Your problems were of a temporary nature then, Hil?’

  ‘I have forgotten I ever had any, Ben. He’s better than he ever was.’

  When Louren arrived I saw what she meant. He was in high humour, laughing and restless with energy, sleek and hard and tanned. He disposed of the last two BYM while I poured him a Glen Grant, then he threw his coat and tie over a chair, rolled his sleeves up over brown bulging muscle and settled with the drink.

  ‘Okay, Ben. Show it to me.’ And we plunged into an examination and discussion of the scrolls and their translation.

  Louren picked on the first line of the first page.

  ‘Go thou unto my store and take from thence five hundred fingers of the finest gold—’ He repeated the line, then looked up at me. ‘That’s right from the old boy’s mouth, Ben. My store. That’s his treasury. That clot Hamilton mistranslated it. It should read “treasury”.’

  ‘Suddenly your Punic is pretty hot,’ I commended him.

  ‘Well, tor cat’s sake, Ben, when did you ever send down to a store for your gold?’ He tasted the Glen Grant. ‘If your theories are correct—’

  ‘Don’t give me that if bit, Lo. Your name is not Wilfred Snell.’

  ‘All right, let’s accept that there was a violent and sudden death to our city. Fire and dead men, the archives which they obviously held so dear are untouched, then there is a better than ever chance the treasury was untouched also. We’ve just got to find it.’

  ‘Great!’ I nodded, and grinned sarcastically. This is a major breakthrough. I’ve been breaking my heart searching for it these last six months.‘

  ‘It’s there, Ben.’ He did not answer my grin.

  ‘Where, Lo? Where?’

  ‘Close. Somewhere within the main walls, probably within the cavern area.’

  ‘Hell, Lo. I’ve been over every inch of it fifty times.’ I spoke with mild but rising irritation.

  ‘And when you’ve been over it for the hundredth time, you’ll realize how blind you’ve been.’

  ‘Damn it, Lo!’ I started. ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Get yourself a drink, partner, before you blow up.’

  I did as he advised, and Louren went on. ‘I’m not knocking what you’ve done, Ben. But let me just remind you that in 1909 Theodore Davis ended his book by saying, “I fear that the valley of the kings is now exhausted.”’

  ‘Yes, I know, Lo, but—’

  Ignoring me Louren went on, ‘And it was thirteen years later that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, the greatest treasure that the valley had ever yielded.’

  ‘Nobody is talking about giving up the search, Lo. I’ll go on just as long as you keep paying.’

  ‘And I’ll bet that my cheque book is more tenacious than your resolve.’

  ‘That’s a bad bet,’ I warned him, and we were laughing again.

  We parted in the middle of the afternoon. Louren being borne away in a flood of BYM, across the lobby to where a black Rolls waited in front of the hotel, and I slipping out the side entrance to hail my own taxi in Park Lane.

  Eldridge Hamilton was waiting for me on the pavement outside the Royal Geographical Society, having motored up from Oxford in his bright red mini. He was dressed as always in his tweed with the elbow patches, but was feverish with anticipation of the morrow.

  ‘I can hardly wait for it, Ben,’ he chortled with malicious glee. ‘Have they arrived at the hotel yet?’

  ‘No, but Snell is due in this evening.’

  Eldridge did a little hop and skip of excitement and said. ‘Like a hippopotamus lumbering into the dead fall.’ Cruel but apt, I thought, and we went up through the double oaken doors into the panelled hall which is a high temple of our profession. There is a hushed dignity about the building which I find reassuring and permanent in this insane and transitory modern world

  Side by side we climbed the sweeping staircase, past the portraits of great men and the lists of former medallists honoured by the Society.

  ‘You’ll have to give some thought as to who should paint you, Ben.’ Eldridge indicated the portraits. ‘They do say this foreign Johnny - what’s his name, Annigoni? - is not too bad.’

  ‘Don’t talk tripe,’ I snapped, and he let out one of those startling neighs of laughter that rang like a bugle call through the hallowed precincts. I was irritated by Eldridge’s assault on one of my most private and treasured fantasies. I am a modest and almost painfully retiring person, but the very first time I had entered here, and looked up at the portraits, I had imagined my own dark visage peering down from the wall of honour. I had even selected the pose - seated to avoid undue emphasis on my body, with my head turned half away. I have a good right-hand profile. There would be a flecking of dignified grey at the temples, a gay little ribbon of some foreign decoration in my lapel, Legion of Honour, perhaps. The expression pensive, the brow furrowed…

  ‘Come on,’ said Eldridge, and we went to where the President and a handful of Council Members waited for us with sherry and biscuits, and not a decent whisky in sight. Nevertheless, I was aware that these gentlemen had it in their power to make into reality my imaginings of a few minutes previously. I set out to be as affable and charming as is possible, and it seemed to have the desired effect.

  We discussed the opening of the symposium, which was set for two-thirty the following afternoon.

  ‘His Grace will make the opening address,’ one of them explained. ‘We’ve asked him to keep it down to forty-five minutes, and if possible to avoid reference to orchid-growing or steeplechasing.’

  I would then read my paper. It would rank as a follow-on to the one I had read six years earlier, ‘The Mediterranean Influence on Central and Southern Africa of the Pre-Christian Era’, the paper which had afforded Wilfred Snell and his pack so much sport. They had set aside four hours for me.

  Eldridge would read his paper the following morning, ‘Certain Ancient Writings and Symbols of South-Western African Origin’. The title Eldridge had chosen was purposely vague, so as not to telegraph my punch.

  Eldridge and I reassured ourselves that the exhibits we had brought with us from Africa were safe in the strong-room of the Society, then Eldridge gave me a bad attack of the shakes by driving me back to the Dorchester through London’s rush-hour traffic in his satanical red mini. We were carried around Hyde Park Corner four times, with Eldridge cursing fluently and his bald head shining like a warning beacon while I hung terrified to the door handle ready to bale out, before Eldridge managed to break out of the traffic stream into Park Lane.

  I led him, both of us still palpitating, into the cocktail bar and shot a pair of double Gilbeys into him, and then left him. I had plans for the evening and it was already past six.

  Sally came out of the lifts as I approached them. I mentally apologized to her hairdresser. He had let it lie, still loose and cloudy. They had wrought some sort of magic with her face also. It was all eyes and soft pink mouth. She had on a full-length dress of a floating green material that picked up the green of those eyes.

  ‘Ben,’ she came to me quickly. ‘I’m so glad I found you. I left a note for you under your door. About this evening, I’m terribly afraid that I won’t be able to make it, Ben. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. Sal. It wasn’t definite anyway.’ I told her, hiding my disappointment behind a grin as my plans collapsed like soggy pastry.

  ‘I have to see them. They are old friends, Ben. They’ve come all the way from Brighton.’

  I went up to Louren’s suite, and hung around waiting for him to return, chatting to Hilary and the children. At seven-thirty he phoned, and Hilary put me on after she had spoken to him.

  ‘I was hoping we could have had dinner, Ben, but I’m screwed up here for heaven knows how long. They have made a complete hash of the tax clause in the contract. We are trying to redraft it. Why don’t you take Hilary for dinner, instead?’

  But she pleaded exhau
stion, and announced her intention of making it an early night. I ate alone at Isow’s, a real kosher meal begun with chopped liver and onions. Afterwards I crossed the alley to Raymond’s, and for five pounds watched the loveliest girls in London taking off their clothes. It was a distressing experience. It made me feel even more lonely and despondent, and afterwards, though I am not a lecher, I teetered on the edge of temptation when the girls beckoned from the dark doorways in Wardour Street.

  I rang Sally’s room when I got in a few minutes before midnight, and again an hour later when I had given up my efforts at sleep. Neither call was answered, and the telephone buzzed dismally like an insect sending out an unanswered mating call. It was almost morning before I found sleep.

  Louren woke me, boorishly healthy and hearty at eight, bellowing into the phone, ‘It’s the big day, Ben. Come and have breakfast up here. I’ll order it now, what do you want?’

  ‘Coffee,’ I mumbled, and when I arrived in his suite he had a huge platter of steak and bacon, kidneys and eggs, with smoked kippers and porridge to start and toast, marmalade and coffee to end it. An average sort of breakfast for Louren.

  ‘You are going to need your strength, partner. Get in there and eat, boy.’

  With my spirits bolstered by this solid bulwark, I was carried through the morning on a cresting wave of expectation and I felt like a lion when we went down to meet our guests at noon. When I say lion, I mean a man-eating lion. I had anointed my smoothly shaven cheeks with a double handful of Dior aftershave, I wore my dark cashmere suit with a white shirt and maroon tie, and Hilary had found a carnation for my buttonhole. I smelt like a rose garden, and there was an eager snap to my step and the hunter’s warm thrill in my belly.

  Louren and I entered the private lounge together, and the buzz of conversation dwindled. I don’t pretend that my entrance to a room can command silence, but Louren’s certainly can. Only one voice continued raised; in a convincing imitation of the British upper class, it brayed across the lounge. Wilfred Snell stood in a circle of his sycophants, towering above them much bigger than life size, almost like a badly executed monument to himself. His legs were set apart and his body braced in the stance of a heavily pregnant woman to counterbalance his monstrous gut. It was as though he carried a half-filled winesack under his vest. The expanse of pearl-grey suiting material necessary to cover this bulge was as vast as a theatre curtain. His face hung down on his chest in a series of chins like the ripples on a pond. It was white and soft-looking as though a plastic skin had been filled with dirty milk. His mouth was a deep purple gash in the whiteness, loose, perpetually open, even when he was not talking, which was seldom. His hair was a wild curling bush from which a gentle white rain of dandruff sifted down onto his shoulders and lapels, and he was hung with things - a pair of reading glasses around his neck like a tank commander’s binoculars, a golden cigar-cutter, from his money pocket, from his lapel a monocle on a black ribbon, a watch chain and key ring.

  I approached him obliquely, stopping to greet friends, to chat with colleagues, but moving in on him steadily. Someone put a glass in my hand and I looked around.

  ‘Scotch courage,’ Sally smiled at me.

  ‘I don’t need it, luv.’

  ‘Let’s go talk to him,’ she suggested.

  ‘I was sort of making the pleasure last.’

  We looked at him openly, this self-appointed drummer of archaeology, whose half-dozen books had sold 500,000 copies, books that aimed at and struck squarely in the centre of popular tastes. Books in which he flirted dangerously with the laws of plagiarism and criminal libel; books in which cant masqueraded as erudition, and facts were squeezed, ignored or subtly altered to suit the argument.

  I am not a bitter man, not one who bears grudges, but when I looked at this great bloated executioner, this torturer, this - well, when I looked at him I felt the blood bubble and fizz behind my eyes. I started towards him directly.

  He saw me coming, but ignored it. The entire room was aware of what was happening, had probably been anticipating this confrontation since the day they received their invitations. The circle about the master opened giving me space to approach the presence.

  ‘There is no doubt—’ Wilfred brayed, his gaze passing several feet over my head. He usually precedes each of his statements with an advertising plug.

  ‘As I have always said—’ his voice carried to the farthest corners, and I waited patiently. I have a carefully rehearsed smile which I use at times like this. It is shy, self-effacing.

  ‘It is generally agreed—’ Such a recommendation from Wilfred usually means that the theory in question is the subject of a raging controversy.

  ‘To tell the truth—’ And he went on to tell a blatant lie.

  At last he glanced down, stopped in mid-sentence, screwed his monocle into his eye, and to his delight and surprise, discovered his old friend and colleague Dr Benjamin Kazin.

  ‘Benjamin, my dear little fellow,’ he cried, and the diminutive stung like a dart in the hump of the bull. ‘How very good to see you!’

  Then Wilfred Snell did a very rash thing. He dangled his great soft white hairy paw languidly in my direction. For an instant I could not believe my good fortune; at the same instant Wilfred remembered the last time we had shaken hands six years before and tried to snatch it back. His reactions are no match for mine, and I had him.

  ‘Wilfred,’ I cooed, ‘my dear, dear chap.’ His hand felt like a glove full of warm jelly, it was only when my fingers had cut in for an inch or two that you could actually feel the bones.

  ‘We were absolutely delighted that you could come,’ I told him, and he made a little mooing sound. A few loose drops of spittle spattered from the slack purple lips.

  ‘Did you have a good trip?’ I asked, still smiling shyly. Wilfred had begun to do a little jig, skipping from foot to foot. My fingers had almost disappeared in the soft white flesh, I could now feel every knuckle very clearly. It was rather like playing a jelly fish on a trout rod.

  ‘We must make time for a little private chat before the end of the symposium,’ I said, and the air started to leak out of Wilfred. He was making a soft hissing sound, and he seemed, to shrink like a punctured balloon. Suddenly I was disgusted with my brutality, my weakness in giving in to it. I let him go, and the return of blood to the abused hand must have been more painful than my treatment of it. He held it tenderly to his chest, his big pansy eyes were filled with tears and his lips trembled like those of a petulant child.

  ‘Come,’ I told him gently. ‘Let me get you another drink.’ And I led him away unprotesting like an elephant and its mahout. However, Wilfred Snell is nothing if not resilient, and he came back strongly. Throughout the luncheon snatches of his monologue carried across to our table. He was ‘making no bones about it’ and ‘letting them in on a little secret’ in his best form. From what I could hear he was repeating his conviction as to the medieval age and Bantu origin of the central African ruin system, and was lightly and amusingly debunking my own writings. At one stage I glanced across to see that he had Ophir open beside his plate and was reading from it to the general merriment of his table companions.

  However, I had another crisis threatening which took all my skill to avert. Sally was my lunch partner and we sat opposite the Sturvesants. Within five seconds of seating ourselves, Sally noticed Hilary’s new diamond. She could hardly overlook it, it was throwing slivers of light about the room, bright as arrows. Sally was silent for half the meal, but her eyes were drawn to that flaming jewel every few seconds. The rest of us were vying for an opportunity to speak, and there was much laughter and excited banter. Louren seemed to be especially attentive to Hilary, but suddenly there was a momentary silence.

  Sally leaned forward, and in her sweetest voice, told Hilary, ‘What a pretty ring. You are so lucky to be able to wear costume jewellery, my dear. My bones are too small. It doesn’t suit me, I’m afraid.’ And she turned back to me and started chattering brightly. She had
ruined the mood with one expert thrust. I saw Louren frown, and flush angrily. Hilary pursed her lips, and I saw a hundred retorts pass in review behind her eyes but she withheld them. I plunged gamely into the void, but even my charm and social grace could not restore the mood. I was relieved when at last Louren glanced at his watch, then looked across at the BYM who was in charge of the arrangements and nodded. Immediately this gentleman was on his feet, shepherding the unwieldy party out to where the cavalcade of cars waited. As we passed through the lobby, Wilfred Snell cleaved a path to my side with a swarm of his admirers following him in grinning anticipation.

  ‘I was glancing through your book again during lunch. I had forgotten how amusing it was, my dear chap.’

  ‘Thank you, Wilfred,’ I replied gratefully. That’s jolly decent of you to say so.‘

  ‘You must sign it for me’

  ‘I will. I will.’

  ‘Looking forward to your paper this afternoon, my dear little chap.’ And again I shuddered with the effort of suppressing my feelings and keeping my voice mild.

  ‘I hope you’ll find it amusing.’

  ‘I am sure I will, Benjamin.’ He let go a fruity chuckle and moved off like a crowd. I heard him saying to De Vallos as they climbed into their limousine, ‘Mediterranean influence! My God, why not Eskimo while he is about it.’

  We went through the park like the mourners at a state funeral, a convoy of black limousines, and turned out of the second gate into Kensington Gore.

  We were set down at the door of the Society, and moved into the lecture hall. The speakers and Council Members were on the platform, and the body of the hall filled solidly. Wilfred was in his place, front centre, where I could watch every expression on his face. He was surrounded by his hatchet men.

  They led in His Grace, smelling of cigars and good port. They pointed him at the audience like a howitzer, and let him go. In forty-five minutes he had covered orchids, and the steeplechase season. The President began tugging discreetly at his coat-tails, but it was another twenty minutes before I had my chance.

  ‘Six years ago I had the honour of addressing this Society. My subject was “The Mediterranean Influence on Central and Southern Africa of the Pre-Christian Era”. I come before you now with the identical subject, but armed with further evidence that has come to light in the intervening period.’