Black Mischief

by Evelyn Waugh

  Prudence disconsolately abandoned her fountain pen and went out to watch her mother thinning the michaelmas daisies.

  Prudence and William had left an inflated india-rubber sea-serpent behind them in the bathroom. Sir Samson sat in the warm water engrossed with it. He swished it down the water and caught it in his toes; he made waves for it; he blew it along; he sat on it and let it shoot up suddenly to the surface between his thighs; he squeezed some of the air out of it and made bubbles. Chance treats of this kind made or marred the happiness of the Envoy’s day. Soon he was rapt in daydream about the pleistocene age, where among mists and vast, unpeopled crags schools of deep-sea monsters splashed and sported; oh happy fifth day of creation, thought the Envoy Extraordinary, oh radiant infant sun, newly weaned from the breasts of darkness, oh rich steam of the soggy continents, oh jolly whales and sea-serpents frisking in new brine … Knocks at the door. William’s voice outside.

  ‘Walker’s just ridden over, sir. Can you see him?’

  Crude disillusionment.

  Sir Samson returned abruptly to the twentieth century, to a stale and crowded world; to a bath grown tepid and an india-rubber toy. ‘Walker? Never heard of him.’

  ‘Yes, sir, you know him. The American secretary.’

  ‘Oh, yes, to be sure. Extraordinary time to call. What on earth does the fellow want? If he tries to borrow the tennis marker again, tell him it’s broken.’

  ‘He’s just got information about the war. Apparently there’s been a decisive battle at last.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’m glad to hear that. Which side won, do you know?’

  ‘He did tell me, but I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll hear all about it from him. Tell him I’ll be down directly. Give him a putter and let him play clock golf. And you’d better let them know he’ll be staying to luncheon.’

  Half an hour later Sir Samson came downstairs and greeted Mr Walker.

  ‘My dear fellow, how good of you to come. I couldn’t get out before; the morning is always rather busy here. I hope they’ve been looking after you properly. I think it’s about time for a cocktail, William.’

  ‘The Minister thought that you’d like to have news of the battle. We got it on the wireless from Matodi. We tried to ring you up yesterday evening but couldn’t get through.’

  ‘No, I always have the telephone disconnected after dinner. Must keep some part of the day for oneself, you know.’

  ‘Of course, we haven’t got any full details yet.’

  ‘Of course not. Still, the war’s over, William tells me, and I, for one, a in glad. It’s been on too long. Very upsetting to everything. Let me see, which of them won it?’

  ‘Seth.’

  ‘Ah yes, to be sure. Seth. I’m very glad. He was … now let me see … which was he?’

  ‘He’s the old Empress’s son.’

  ‘Yes, yes, now I’ve got him. And the Empress, what’s become of her?’

  ‘She died last year.’

  ‘I’m glad. It’s very disagreeable for an old lady of her age to get involved in all these disturbances. And What’s-his-name, you know the chap she was married to? He dead, too?’

  ‘Seyid? There’s no news of him. I think we may take it that we’ve seen the last of him.’

  ‘Pity. Nice fellow. Always liked him. By the by, hadn’t one of the fellows been to school in England?’

  ‘Yes, that’s Seth.’

  ‘Is it, by Jove. Then he speaks English?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘That’ll be one in the eye for Ballon, after all the trouble he took to learn Sakuyu. Here’s William with the cocktails.’

  ‘I’m afraid they won’t be up to much this morning, sir. We’ve run out of Peach Brandy.’

  ‘Well, never mind. It won’t be long now before we get everything straight again. You must tell us all your news at luncheon. I hear Mrs Schonbaum’s mare is in foal. I’ll be interested to see how she does. We’ve never had any luck breeding. I don’t believe the native syces understand blood-stock.’

  At the French Legation, also, news of Seth’s victory had arrived. ‘Ah,’ said M. Ballon, ‘so the English and the Italians have triumphed. But the game is not over yet. Old Ballon is not outwitted yet. There is a trick or two still to be won. Sir Samson must look to his laurels.’

  While at that moment the Envoy was saying: ‘Of course, it’s all a question of the altitude. I’ve not heard of anyone growing asparagus up here but I can’t see why it shouldn’t do. We get the most delicious green peas.’

  Chapter Three

  Two days later news of the battle of Ukaka was published in Europe. It made very little impression on the million or so Londoners who glanced down the columns of their papers that evening.

  ‘Any news in the paper tonight, dear?’

  ‘No, dear, nothing of interest.’

  ‘Azania? That’s part of Africa, ain’t it?’

  ‘Ask Lil, she was at school last.’

  ‘Lil, where’s Azania?’

  ‘I don’t know, father.’

  ‘What do they teach you at school, I’d like to know.’

  ‘Only niggers.’

  ‘It came in a cross-word quite lately. Independent native principality. You would have it it was Turkey.’

  ‘Azania? It sounds like a Cunarder to me.’

  ‘But, my dear, surely you remember that madly attractive blackamoor at Balliol.’

  ‘Run up and see if you can find the atlas, deary … Yes, where it always is, behind the stand in father’s study.’

  ‘Things look quieter in East Africa. That Azanian business cleared up at last.’

  ‘Care to see the evening paper? There’s nothing in it.’

  In Fleet Street, in the offices of the daily papers: ‘Randall, there might be a story in the Azanian cable. The new bloke was at Oxford. See what there is to it.’

  Mr Randall typed: His Majesty B.A…. ex-undergrad among the cannibals … scholar emperor’s desperate bid for throne … barbaric splendour … conquering hordes … ivory …. elephants … east meets west …

  ‘Sanders. Kill that Azanian story in the London edition.’

  ‘Anything in the paper this morning?’

  ‘No, dear, nothing of interest.’

  Late in the afternoon Basil Seal read the news on the Imperial and Foreign page of The Times as he stopped at his club on the way to Lady Metroland’s to cash a bad cheque.

  For the last four days Basil had been on a racket. He had woken up an hour ago on the sofa of a totally strange flat. There was a gramophone playing. A lady in a dressing jacket sat in an armchair by the gas-fire, eating sardines from the tin with a shoe-horn. An unknown man in shirtsleeves was shaving, the glass propped on the chimneypiece.

  The man had said: ‘Now you’re awake you’d better go. ‘The woman: ‘Quite thought you were dead.’

  Basil: ‘I can’t think why I’m here.’

  ‘I can’t think why you don’t go.’

  ‘Isn’t London hell?’

  ‘Did I have a hat?’

  ‘That’s what caused half the trouble.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘Oh, why don’t you go?’

  So Basil had gone down the stairs, which were covered in worn linoleum, and emerged through the side door of a shop into a busy street which proved to be King’s Road, Chelsea.

  Incidents of this kind constantly occurred when Basil was on a racket.

  At the club he found a very old member sitting before the fire with tea and hot muffins. He opened The Times and sat on the leather-topped fender.

  ‘You see the news from Azania?’

  The elderly member was startled by the suddenness of his address. ‘No … no … I am afraid I can’t really say that I have.’

  ‘Seth has won the war.’

  ‘Indeed … well, to tell you the truth I haven’t been following the affair very closely.’

  ‘Very interesting.’

  ‘
No doubt.’

  ‘I never thought things would turn out quite in this way, did you?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve given the matter any thought.’

  ‘Well, fundamentally it is an issue between the Arabs and the christianized Sakuyu.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I think the mistake we made was to underestimate the prestige of the dynasty.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve never been satisfied in my mind about the legitimacy of the old Empress.’

  ‘My dear young man, no doubt you have some particular interest in the affairs of this place. Pray understand that I know nothing at all about it and that I feel it is too late in the day for me to start improving my knowledge.’

  The old man shifted himself in his chair away from Basil’s scrutiny and began reading his book. A page came in with the message: ‘No reply from either of those numbers, sir.’

  ‘Don’t you hate London?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Don’t you hate London?’

  ‘No, I do not. Lived here all my life. Never get tired of it. Fellow who’s tired of London is tired of life.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Basil.

  ‘I’m going away for some time,’ lie told the hall-porter as lie left the club.

  ‘Very good, sir. What shall I do about correspondence?’

  ‘Destroy it.’

  ‘Very good, sir. ‘ Mr Seal was a puzzle to him. He never could forget Mr Seal’s father. He had been a member of the club. Such a different gentleman. So spick and span, never without silk hat and an orchid in his buttonhole. Chief Conservative Whip for twenty-five years. Who would have thought of him having a son like Mr Seal? Out of town until further notice. No letters forwarded he entered against Basil’s name in his ledger. Presently the old gentleman emerged from the smoking-room.

  ‘Arthur, is that young man a member here?’

  ‘Mr Seal, sir? Oh yes, sir.’

  ‘What d’you say his name is?’

  ‘Mr Basil Seal.’

  ‘Basil Seal, eh? Basil Seal. Not Christopher Seal’s son?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is he now? Poor old Seal. ‘Pon my soul, what a sad thing. Who’d have thought of that? Seal of all people …‘ and lie shuffled back into the smoking-room, to the fire and his muffins, full of the comfort that glows in the hearts of old men when they contemplate the misfortunes of their contemporaries.

  Basil walked across Piccadilly and up to Curzon Street. Lady Metroland was giving a cocktail party.

  ‘Basil, ‘ she said, ‘you had no business to come. I particularly didn’t ask you.’

  ‘I know. I only heard you had a party quite indirectly. What I’ve really come for is to see if my sister is here.’

  ‘Barbara? She may be. She said she was coming. How horrible you look.’

  ‘Dirty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not shaven?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only just woken up. I haven’t been home yet.’ He looked round the room. ‘All the same people. You don’t make many new friends, Margot.’

  ‘I hear you’ve given up your constituency?’

  ‘Yes, in a way. It wasn’t worth while. I told the P.M. I wasn’t prepared to fight on the tariff issue. He had a chance to hold over the bill but the Outrage section were too strong so I threw in my hand. Besides, I want to go abroad. I’ve been in England too long.’

  ‘Cocktail, sir.

  ‘No, bring me a Pernod and water will you? … there isn’t any? Oh well, whisky. Bring it into the study. I want to go and telephone. I’ll be back soon, Margot.’

  ‘God, what I feel about that young man,’ said Lady Metroland.

  Two girls were talking about him.

  ‘Such a lovely person.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just gone out.’

  ‘You don’t mean Basil Seal?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Horrible clothes, black hair over his face.’

  ‘Yes, tell me about him.’

  ‘My dear, he’s enchanting … Barbara Sothill’s brother, you know. He’s been in hot water lately. He’d been adopted as candidate somewhere in the West. Father says he was bound to get in at the next election. Angela Lyne was paying his expenses. But they had trouble over something. You know how careful Angela is. I never thought Basil was really her tea. They never quite made sense, I mean, did they? So that’s all over.’

  ‘It’s nice his being so dirty.’

  Other people discussed him.

  ‘No, the truth about Basil is just that he’s a bore. No one minds him being rude, but he’s so teaching. I had him next to me at dinner once and he would talk all the time about Indian dialects. Well, what was one to say? And I asked afterwards and apparently he doesn’t know anything about them either.’

  ‘He’s done all kinds of odd things.’

  ‘Well, yes, and I think that’s so boring too. Always in revolutions and murders and things, I mean, what is one to say? Poor Angela is literally off her head with him. I was there yesterday and she could talk of nothing else but the row he’s had with his committee in his constituency. He does seem to have behaved rather oddly at the Conservative ball and then he and Alastair Trumpington and Peter Pastmaster and some others had a five-day party up there and left a lot of bad cheques behind and had a motor accident and one of them got run in — you know what Basil’s parties are. I mean, that sort of thing is all right in London, but you know what provincial towns are. So what with one thing and another they’ve asked him to stand down. The trouble is that poor Angela still fancies him rather.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to him?’

  ‘I know. That’s the point. Barbara says she won’t do another thing for him.’

  Someone else was saying, ‘I’ve given up trying to be nice to Basil. He either cuts me or corners me with an interminable lecture about Asiatic politics. It’s odd Margot having him here — particularly after the way he’s always getting Peter involved.’

  Presently Basil came back from telephoning. He stood in the doorway, a glass of whisky in one hand, looking insolently round the room, his head back, chin forward, shoulders rounded, dark hair over his forehead, contemptuous grey eyes over grey pouches, a proud, rather childish mouth, a scar on one cheek.

  ‘My word, he is a corker,’ remarked one of the girls.

  His glance travelled round the room. ‘I’ll tell you who I want to see, Margot. Is Rex Monomark here?’

  ‘He’s over there somewhere, but, Basil, I absolutely forbid you to tease him.’

  ‘I won’t tease him.’

  Lord Monomark, owner of many newspapers, stood at the far end of the drawing-room discussing diet. Round him in a haze of cigar smoke were ranged his ladies and gentlemen in attendance: three almost freakish beauties, austerely smart, their exquisite, irregular features eloquent of respect; two gross men of the world, wheezing appreciation; a dapper elderly secretary, with pink, bald pate and in his eyes that glazed, gin-fogged look that is common to sailors and the secretaries of the great, and comes from too short sleep.

  ‘Two raw onions and a plate of oatmeal porridge,’ said Lord Monomark. ‘That’s all I’ve taken for luncheon in the last eight months. And I feel two hundred per cent better —physically, intellectually and ethically.’

  The group was slightly isolated from the rest of the party. It was very rarely that Lord Monomark consented to leave his own house and appear as a guest. The few close friends whom he honoured in this way observed certain strict conventions in the matter: new people were not to be introduced to him except at his own command; politicians were to be kept at a distance; his cronies of the moment were to be invited with him; provision had to be made for whatever health system he happened to be following. In these conditions he liked now and then to appear in society — an undisguised Haroun al-Rashid among his townspeople — to survey the shadow-play of fashion, and occasionally to indul
ge the caprice of singling out one of these bodiless phantoms and translating her or him into the robust reality of his own world. His fellow guests, meanwhile, flitted in and out as though unconscious of his presence, avoiding any appearance of impinging on the integrity of this glittering circle.

  ‘If I had my way’, said Lord Monomark, ‘I’d make it compulsory throughout the country. I’ve had a notice drafted and sent round the office recommending the system. Half the fellows think nothing of spending one and six or two shillings on lunch every day — that’s out of eight or nine pounds a week.’

  ‘Rex, you’re wonderful.’

  ‘Read it out to Lady Everyman, Sanders.’

  ‘Lord Monomark wishes forcibly to bring to the attention of his staff the advantages to be derived from a carefully chosen diet …‘ Basil genially intruded himself into the party.

  ‘Well, Rex, I thought I’d find you here. It’s all stuff about that onion and porridge diet, you know. Griffenbach exploded that when I was in Vienna three years ago. But that’s not really what I came to talk about.’

  ‘Oh, Seal, isn’t it? I’ve not seen you for a long time. I remember now you wrote to me some time ago. What was it about, Sanders?’

  ‘Afghanistan.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I turned it over to one of my editors to answer. I hope he explained.’

  Once, when Basil had been a young man of promise, Lord Monomark had considered taking him up and invited him for a cruise in the Mediterranean. Basil at first refused and then, after they had sailed, announced by wireless his intention of joining the yacht at Barcelona; Lord Monomark’s party had waited there for two sultry days without hearing news and then sailed without him. When they next met in London Basil explained rather inadequately that he had found at the last minute he couldn’t manage it after all. Countless incidents of this kind had contributed to Basil’s present depreciated popularity.