by Alan Judd
After training as a PE teacher, ALAN JUDD joined the Army, and three years later went to Oxford as a mature student. A Breed of Heroes, his first novel, won the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award and was made into an acclaimed BBC television drama. His biography Ford Madox Ford won the Heinemann Award and his novella The Devil’s Own Work the Guardian Fiction Prize.
He is also the author of four other novels – most recently Legacy – and the biography of the founder of MI6, Sir Mansfield Cumming, The Quest for C. Alan Judd has recently retired from the Foreign Office.
More from the reviews:
‘Alan Judd’s characters are serious. So is Alan Judd. You will laugh like mad . . . his second novel stands comparison with the best this year.’
The Times
‘A very distinguished and often very funny novel.’
New Society
‘An extremely shrewd assessment of modern diplomatic life made in suitably dry ironic tones.’
Daily Telegraph
‘An absorbing and devastating novel of character.’
The Listener
‘The author has a fine comic gift, an awareness of the moral issues, and a good line in characters . . . a delight.’
Spectator
Also by Alan Judd
Fiction
A Breed of Heroes
The Noonday Devil
Tango
The Devil’s Own Work
Legacy
Non-fiction
Ford Madox Ford
The Quest for C
First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1984
This eBook edition first published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
Copyright © Alan Judd, 1984
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Alan Judd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47113-435-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
With thanks to J.G.
For all have sinned, and come
short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
Although the setting of this book is obvious, the towns and regions mentioned are amalgams of various places. There is, for instance, no city that is both the administrative and commercial capital. In order to avoid charges of inaccuracy, therefore, I have invented names; and, to be consistent, I have altered the name of the country itself.
A.J.
Contents
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3
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22
1
Patrick did not read the letter again until after take-off. It was from Clifford Steggles, head of chancery in the British Embassy in Battenburg, Lower Africa. Clifford and his family were staying in the house that Patrick was to move into; a house normally occupied by the consul, Arthur Whelk, who had disappeared. It was a letter of welcome, probably well meant.
‘Dear Stubbs,
Greetings from a cold but sunny Battenburg. It will still be quite cold comparatively speaking by the time you arrive but not long after summer will begin and it should be warmer. Summer lasts for nearly eight months with the other seasons taking up the other four. I am sure you will enjoy being in this idyllic climate.
This house is large with many rooms. We are sorry to be moving out just as we are getting used to it but it will nevertheless be good to get back to our own now that the roof is back. Yours is an ideal family house but I am sure that as a bachelor you will enjoy it. Of course, you are over-housed for your grade and will soon have to move into something smaller and more appropriate. The admin officer hasn’t yet been able to find anything small enough, all the houses here being so big, so make the most of the space while you can!
It has a delightful lounge, a dining room, kitchen, study, scullery, three bathrooms, four loos, six bedrooms, a double garage, extensive outbuildings and not least a veranda and bar. It stands in an acre of walled garden with trees and a swimming-pool. No tennis-court, I’m afraid. We’re trying to get funds for that as in this country it is essential for entertaining to have all facilities.
The main problem that we – Sandy, my wife, and I – think you will have is in finding enough paintings, sculptures, bric-a-brac etc. to fill it up with. At present it still contains Whelk’s effects but they will go eventually presumably, even if he reappears in which case he will doubtless be rapidly posted elsewhere. Therefore bring all your objets d’art. It is of course furnished and decorated by the Property Services Agency (PSA) via the embassy but you are nevertheless responsible for seeing that it is kept in good order and maintenance. I trust you will find nothing to complain of in our “housekeeping”.
Sarah is the maid who lives in the outbuildings and goes with the house. She is in her late 40s/early 50s, a regular church-goer, teetotal and as honest and loyal as can be. She is in all ways an excellent housekeeper and a good cook. In fact, she is better than our own maid and we would take her with us if we could. She is also a passable waitress. We cannot recommend her too highly. A maid is essential for your entertainment.
There is also Deuteronomy, the gardener, who is also hardworking, reliable and honest though he is not teetotal. He does not live in the outbuildings but comes to us for two days a week. Again, you are advised to permit him to continue in your employment. Your allowances should cover this sort of thing.
How do you feel about dogs? Snap is a ridgeback. He is loyal and affectionate and an excellent deterrent to would-be burglars. He is like Sarah and goes with the house. Arthur was particularly fond of him, I believe. I should, however, warn you that, like many Africans, Deuteronomy does not get on well with Snap, being a ridgeback, and though it was hoped that relations would improve after he had been doctored, they did not. Sarah, however, continues to get on well with both and this is not a serious problem.
I am unsure as to what else I can tell you. Battenburg is a large and impressive city offering all the luxuries of a highly developed consumer society (cinemas, theatres etc.) as well as a complete availability of everything needed to make life comfortable. Prices are lower than in the UK except for electrical goods.
Please don’t forget to write the usual courtesy letter to the ambassador if you haven’t already done so. He is greatly looking forward to hearing from you. Also, if there is anything I can do from this end to ease your passage I should be very happy.
Yours ever,
Clifford E. Steggles
PS I don’t know what car you plan to bring. Nearly everyone here has a Ford.’
It was the second time Patrick had read the letter. The first had been some weeks before. He had tried to convince himself that it was merely th
e threat of unaccustomed domestic responsibility that he found so depressing. He could not imagine conducting diplomatic entertainments. He was to be the third secretary in the embassy and Steggles, as head of chancery and first secretary, would be his boss. He was to take on some of Steggles’s work as well as some of the missing Whelk’s, though in neither case had the work been defined.
A stewardess announced that they could unfasten their seat-belts, then apologised for the late take-off. Other stewardesses sold drinks and headphones. The film was a comedy.
2
Patrick had applied to the Foreign Office because it sounded interesting, even glamorous, because it was said to be difficult to get into and because people admired it. He often sought what he thought was most desired by the rest of the world so that he could then feel more a part of it; but it did not always work.
He had passed the written papers and then attended the two-day Civil Service Selection Board. This was not the weekend in a Cotswold house of popular imagination, where the skill was to know how to cope with the peas, but a two-day battery of tests and interviews in London. It was a bureaucratic adaptation of the wartime selection courses for military officers. Assault courses and initiative tests were replaced by committee meetings and drafting exercises. Patrick soon learned that no one in the Civil Service ever wrote; instead, they drafted then sent their papers to someone else for redrafting.
There were several other candidates, one a woman from the University of Sussex with a CND sticker on her handbag. Patrick had most contact with a tall, thin, fair-haired man a few years older than himself. This man hunched his shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back, like a crow folding its wings. When he walked his head nodded from side to side and he grinned nearly all the time as at some private joke. He shot out keen, inquisitive, sideways glances at whoever he was with. He said he had been in the Army and looked a little mad.
‘Fancy a drink?’ he said at lunchtime on the second day. ‘I can’t bear staying in offices all day. Have to get out.’
‘Why are you trying to be a civil servant, then?’
‘Tell you outside.’
They stood in the corner of a crowded pub, drank beer and ate tasteless steak and kidney pies. ‘Point is, I’m not really trying to be a civil servant,’ said the Army man. ‘They won’t have me, I know that. I just thought it might be good interviewing practice.’
‘Why won’t they have you?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ The man was unable to continue because his mouth was full. He chewed energetically and swallowed some beer. ‘Well, Army for a start, you see. They’re suspicious of the military, especially when I said I was leaving because there weren’t any more wars. Then Cambridge – got the Army to send me there for a while’ – he hesitated – ‘before leaving. Well, you know what it’s like these days. Oxbridge backgrounds count against you now. They’re all leaning over backwards to prove they’re not biased in favour of their own kind. I went to a public school, too. You’ll be all right with a state school – am I right? Thought so. University?’
‘Reading.’
‘Subject?’
‘Economics.’
‘You’ll be home and dry as long as you can spell your name. Same with that woman. Sussex and sociology – she’ll get through. My only hope is if I could convince them I’m black.’ He grinned. ‘Perhaps I should’ve worn camouflage cream.’
‘I suppose you weren’t in the ranks?’
The Army man shook his head. ‘I thought of saying I was. It would help but they’d check up and when they found I was an officer they’d probably chuck me out, always supposing they’d let me in, of course. No, it would’ve been better if I’d been wounded.’ He looked thoughtfully at his right knee. ‘I’ve got a pretty good limp on occasion.’
Patrick looked at the knee. ‘What happened?’
‘What? Oh, nothing. Pretty convincing limp, I should’ve said. More so with the right than with the left for some reason. I say it’s shrapnel moving round the body in damp weather, you know. That way I’m covered in case I forget.’ He lifted his leg a little and cautiously wriggled his foot as though it was unused to movement. ‘Got me out of some pretty nasty situations, the old instant limp. Husbands, traffic-wardens, that sort of thing. What do you use?’
The question seemed to be serious. Patrick smiled. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid. I’ve never had a car and I know only one or two husbands. I haven’t yet felt the need for a disability.’
The Army man nodded. ‘Worth bearing in mind, though. Better still if you have a stick.’
They walked back through the lunchtime crowds. Patrick tried to imagine the Army man as a diplomat. Perhaps he had what it took, whatever that was. ‘D’you think you’d enjoy being in the Foreign Office?’
‘Don’t know. Might be fun. Get around a bit. Doesn’t strike me as a ball of fire, though. Still, I’m surprised I got this far, really. Perhaps I should’ve applied to the Min of Ag and Fish or something.’ He laughed with disconcerting abruptness, then frowned. ‘Mind you, I reckon they’re having us on with all this guff about needing high-quality candidates for the Foreign Office and the Treasury. I mean, what are the two great areas of British failure since the war? The economy and foreign policy. The rest of the country works all right. I reckon they must send all the wets and no-hopers to the Treasury and the FCO and all the good guys to the Inland Revenue and the bloody Customs and Excise. They work well enough.’
Patrick was not put off. He wanted a career. The Foreign Office sounded fine. It turned out that only he and the woman from Sussex were selected to go forward to the final board, a long and testing interview at the end of which he was asked by a lady novelist – one of a panel of co-opted outsiders – whether his late father, a vicar, had ever preached a sermon in Wigan on the need to sin boldly. He did not know but thought it sounded likely. His father had had many parishes. The lady had once heard such a sermon and had incorporated it into one of her books. It had been a remarkable message, preached with fervour, and much needed in Wigan.
Patrick was surprised and very pleased when he heard he was successful. His delight survived even the first few days of his contact with the Training Department but it began to fade on contact with Personnel. There he was received by a big flabby man with an unhealthy complexion and an irritable manner. The man shuffled papers slowly on his desk as if looking without hope for one in particular.
‘It is the Secretary of State’s pleasure,’ he said dolefully, ‘that you should serve in’ – his podgy hands continued shuffling the papers and he did not look up – ‘The Republic of Lower Africa. You will be third secretary in chancery. Are there any questions?’ He gave up with the papers and clasped his hands limply, staring at the wall behind Patrick. His eyes were grey and watery, as if the colour were running out. ‘Normally you’d serve on a desk here for a time but they need someone as soon as possible. LAD – Lower African Department – are very keen to get you out there.’
Patrick would have liked time to go away and think about questions. When he joined he had wanted to go abroad but now that he was faced with the prospect he did not know whether he really wanted to or not. It was also strange to think of someone being ‘very keen’ to have him. He wondered for what. ‘Don’t I need to learn Lower African?’
‘They all speak English as well, you know. Of course, LAD may think otherwise but it’s not for me to say. I would only point out that it is essential in our work to maintain a certain detachment from the country one is in, otherwise one’s reporting suffers. People sometimes worry too much about languages.’
‘How long is the posting?’ asked Patrick.
‘Normally four. Two two-year tours with leave in between. To start with you’ll be doing some consular work as well as your chancery work because of that man Whelk going off like that or disappearing or whatever he’s done. You know all about that, do you? No? Well, LAD will tell you. Whelk was or is the consul – deals with passports, rights of British subj
ects, visas, that sort of thing. He has an assistant there so it won’t be too onerous for you.’ A gentler, more reflective look came into the man’s watery eyes. ‘Comfortable posting, Lower Africa. Good allowances, too, twenty years ago. Don’t know what they’re like now, of course.’ His podgy hands resumed their slow shuffling of papers and he replied to Patrick’s farewell without looking up.
The more Patrick thought about it the more he liked the idea. Lower Africa was an exciting, controversial country, a place where things happened, a place of sun and storm. Four years was a long time, though, and the knowledge that he was leaving them for so long lent the grand shabby corridors of the Foreign Office building a surprising charm.
LAD was said to be two floors, three corners and two wings distant from Personnel. The lifts were out of order and he was soon lost. He passed numbers of busy geographical department offices where through the huge half-open doors people could be glimpsed drafting, dictating, discussing and – presumably – deciding. He had never seen so much paper nor so much earnest busyness. The Foreign Office began to recover some of its appeal.
He asked for guidance in the Heads of Mission Department, an office whose purpose was to administer ambassadors and high commissioners. Following their directions led him to the Secretary of State’s Private Office where he almost collided with a young male clerk who wore a gold ring in one ear. The clerk directed him towards what had been the old India Office.
The post-war history of the Foreign Office – indeed, its twentieth-century history – was one of remorseless bureaucratic expansion. It had grown in inverse proportion to the decline in Britain’s overseas responsibilities. The India Office, the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office were swallowed up as soon as they became dispensable. This expansion of function could be read in the building: obsolete signs remained in inaccessible places; statues brooded in scruffy corners; imposing staircases were neglected and led nowhere, holes had been knocked through the walls of conquered departments. He went through one. It was a small hole, reached by steps, and it was necessary to stoop. Through the dirty windows of the final corridor he saw a neglected glass-roofed courtyard, its walls bearing in faded lettering the names of forgotten viceroys, victories and campaigns.