by Alan Judd
‘Why is that more likely?’
Maurice looked embarrassed and touched his beard. ‘Well, no, I mean, I don’t mean it’s actually likely or anything. It’s just that you’re more sort of naturally Establishment-minded. You’re more a part of it. I mean, you don’t mind having to wear a suit every day – I have to wear one too, but – well – you know what I mean. Not that there’s anything wrong with it but it’s just an aspect which in your case you embrace more willingly.’ He poured more wine.
Patrick did not like arguments. He smiled. ‘Does that mean I’m more corruptible than lawyers?’
Maurice shook his head. ‘No, no, ’course it doesn’t, nothing like that. It’s just a statement about the sort of people you’re mixing with, you know, the whole scene.’
‘Perhaps I’m already corrupted.’ Patrick smiled again and Maurice began to look less awkward.
‘You must write and tell us all about it, anyway,’ said Rachel, scraping her plate. ‘Except that they might get our address and then get on to us if they wanted. You could send letters via Mummy and Daddy. They’re more respectable, only better not use the title because it attracts attention.’
‘I could send it in the diplomatic bag.’
‘Is that safe?’
‘I think so.’
‘Really, what you’re doing is incredibly brave,’ Maurice resumed with more confidence. ‘I mean, going to a racist totalitarian state, even as a diplomat. You’ll have to live with censorship and imprisonment without trial and all that. But if you find out any interesting information we could pass it on to the freedom fighters. We’ve got contacts.’
‘What kind of information?’
‘Well, you know, secret information.’ Maurice seemed no clearer about his secrets than Mr Formerly had been about his.
‘Two gorgeous blacks,’ continued Rachel. ‘They were in the studio last week and they came to dinner. I think they’re incredibly brave. What they’re doing takes real courage.’
Patrick’s briefings on black movements had not been comprehensive. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Oh, sort of organising and stuff.’ She glanced at Maurice before resuming in a self-consciously offhand tone. ‘Actually, there is something you could do. We’re members of a group that helps a school out there, a black school in Kuweto. We send teaching materials and things. If you could take some out for us it would save an amazing amount of time and money. It could go with your heavy baggage.’
‘Teaching materials,’ Patrick repeated.
‘The black schools are really poorly equipped compared with white schools,’ said Maurice. ‘They don’t get enough textbooks or anything.’
Rachel laughed briefly and pushed her hair back from her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not bombs. We’re not going to blow you up. We’ll write to people out there who can come and pick up the stuff from your house when it arrives. You don’t have to do anything. But I mean don’t do it if you don’t want to. We don’t want to pressurise you.’
Patrick was entitled to take nearly three times as much heavy baggage as he possessed. He did not feel guilty about going to Lower Africa but being the object of moral questioning produced in him a desire to be conciliatory. Anyway, if the school needed textbooks he was happy to help. He agreed.
Later, he helped with the washing-up. Rachel made a point of being boisterously indifferent to household matters but Maurice came from a middle-class nonconformist background in Northamptonshire and was punctilious about everything domestic.
‘I suppose you’ll have a servant out there,’ he said.
‘Yes, a lady called Sarah.’
‘A black lady?’
‘Yes.’ Patrick stopped drying the plate in his hand. ‘At least, I assume so. It wasn’t actually said.’
When he left the kitchen to go upstairs to the lavatory he saw Rachel sitting on it. Her jeans were round her ankles and she leant forward, elbows on knees. The spread of her plump white thighs made the lavatory look small. He looked to see what had happened to the door but there was none.
She smiled at his surprise. ‘We don’t believe in hiding anything. There’s no point. We’re all alike, aren’t we? Nobody’s got any secrets. If we have sensitive visitors I hang up a blanket for them.’
Patrick leant against the wall, shuffling the loose change in his pocket and talking energetically about mutual acquaintances.
‘We might come out and visit you,’ Rachel continued. ‘It would be really interesting to see how the blacks and coloureds live and staying with a diplomat might give us protection from the police. I suppose you’ll have a big house with servants, will you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘God, how awful, I couldn’t stick that. Anyway, we’ll send these teaching materials to your packers if you give us their address.’ She finished. ‘You can go after me. I won’t pull the chain.’
He went, wondering if she would stay to make sure he had no secrets, but she did not.
3
It was dark as the plane came in to land and the orange street lights of Battenburg were ranged in straight lines like an illuminated chessboard, though all the squares were black. Dawn broke while the travellers queued at immigration. The startling clarity of the light showed up the pallor of their faces.
The immigration officer was plump and serious. He looked closely at Patrick’s passport, where ‘student’ had been crossed out and ‘HM Diplomatic Service’ substituted in Biro. Most other countries issued their diplomats with special passports.
Patrick wore jeans and a crumpled shirt. ‘What is your purpose in visiting our country?’ the immigration officer asked dully.
Becoming a bureaucrat had not increased Patrick’s liking for officials and lack of sleep had left him disinclined to make an effort. ‘To work.’
‘You have a job here?’
The clipped accent was familiar but still it grated. ‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘At the British Embassy.’
‘Do you have evidence of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you show me?’
Patrick produced a Foreign Office document addressed to the Lower African government. The immigration officer read it slowly more than once before reluctantly stamping the passport.
The arrivals hall was busy, sunlit and clean. All directions were in Lower African and English. Patrick looked in vain for someone from the British Embassy. There were a few people holding up placards but none with a title that was remotely official. Perhaps the entire embassy had disappeared along with Arthur Whelk and he was about to discover the Marie Celeste of the Diplomatic Corps. It was not at that moment an unpleasing thought. More likely, though, the plane had arrived so early that no one had wanted to meet it. He headed towards an empty bench.
He had no sooner sat on it than he noticed another some distance away on which there was a woman with such startlingly blonde hair that he could not understand how he had not seen her on the plane. She shook her head and pushed some hair back behind her ear with a quick thoughtless movement that was obviously habitual. Her forearm was bare and she glanced up. For a moment he thought she smiled at him but then he saw that she was talking to a little girl, also with very blonde hair, who stood beside her. She adjusted the little girl’s dress, talking and smiling.
Patrick’s view was interrupted by a dark-haired man in a blazer. The man hugged the woman and stood talking for a while before lifting the girl on to the nearby luggage trolley, where she clapped and laughed. The woman slung a bag over one shoulder and a red coat over the other and all three left. She walked freely and confidently at the man’s side. Patrick leant back on the bench. The sun warmed his face.
He was awoken by a white policeman with polished black boots and holster. The policeman spoke first in Lower African, then in English, explaining that Patrick’s was a bench on which it was not permitted to sleep. Patrick felt like arguing but obeyed without speaking.
He went
next to the gents to wash, where he was greeted by a smiling black attendant who seemed to be hoping for a tip. This reminded him that he had no Lower African currency. He waited until the airport bank opened at seven, cashed some sterling and telephoned Clifford Steggles, the head of chancery.
Steggles’s voice was heavy with sleep. ‘Are you at HE’s?’
‘Where’s that?’
‘The residence.’
‘Whose residence?’
‘The ambassador’s.’ Irritation dispersed the sleepiness in Steggles’s voice.
‘No, I’m at the airport.’
‘You shouldn’t be. You should be at the residence.’
Whilst still six thousand miles away Patrick had known that he and Clifford Steggles would not get on. The letter had been sufficient. Whatever trouble was to come, there was some satisfaction in these moments of confirmation.
‘The ambassador’s driver was supposed to take you to the residence for breakfast,’ Clifford continued accusingly. ‘He was sent to pick you up specially.’
‘Well, he doesn’t seem to be here.’
‘He ought to be.’
Patrick said nothing. He was too tired to care.
‘Chap with a placard with “British Embassy” written on it,’ Clifford said eventually.
‘There wasn’t one.’
‘There should’ve been.’
There was another pause.
‘Stocky chap with a cap,’ resumed Clifford. ‘He might have forgotten the placard.’
‘I’ll have a look.’ Whilst Patrick was looking the line went dead. He dialled again. ‘Chap with red hair?’
Clifford sighed. ‘No. He’s black.’
‘No blacks with caps.’
There was a further long pause and then, ‘I suppose I’ll have to pick you up myself. I’m not up yet. Stay by the phone booths.’
Clifford Steggles was in his late thirties, short, balding and pot-bellied. The bald patch on his head was burned brown and he wore a moustache that made him look cross. They shook hands unenthusiastically.
‘Is that all the stuff you’ve got? No need for a porter, then. The car’s in the place reserved for diplomats. One of the perks.’ They loaded Patrick’s bags into the back of the big Ford estate. ‘Why have you brought so little — thinking you won’t stay long?’
‘I haven’t got much.’
‘But you’ve got some heavy baggage coming?’
‘Oh yes. It was shipped last week.’
‘Makes no difference. You won’t see it for months. That’s why you should’ve brought more now. Thought they’d have told you that.’
They were soon on the motorway, heading for Battenburg. Despite the sun and the blue sky it was a cold, sharp morning. The motorway was lined by new buildings, many of them petrol stations. Beyond these were low hills covered with dry grass and scrub.
‘When it rains in the summer all this is green,’ Clifford said. ‘We’ve had no rain for weeks. Watch the altitude, till you get acclimatised. Makes you tired at first. Are you tired?’
‘Yes.’
‘Busy day ahead. Why was your flight so late?’
‘Engine trouble.’
‘Fly British Air you never get there.’
It was soon apparent that the more Clifford spoke the more he pleased himself, and so the more he liked whoever was with him. He described how the dry air would crack lips and burn nostrils and how good the wine was and how quickly it went to the heads of the unacclimatised. He wondered aloud a dozen or so times what on earth could have happened to Simon, the driver. The ambassador himself was admittedly rather forgetful but it hadn’t been up to him to remember. The drivers sometimes got things wrong but there was only one airport and they were there once a week to pick up the bag, so they should know it. He had telephoned the ambassador’s residence and spoken to one of the maids but could get no sense out of her, not even whether or not the ambassador was actually there. He did sometimes spend the odd night away, no one knew where. But he should have been expecting Patrick for breakfast because Patrick was to stay at the residence a day or two until Clifford and his wife moved into their own house. Things only really worked at the residence when the ambassador’s wife was there but she was back in Surrey. She was mad, anyway. They spent most of the time apart, quite understandably.
‘You’ve been briefed about this Whelk business, I take it?’
‘Yes. I’m told I’m to liaise with the police and at the same time maintain secret contact with the Lost and Found man.’
Clifford looked offended. ‘I’m not supposed to know about the Lost and Found side of it. You shouldn’t have told me. Breach of security but we’ll say no more about it as you’ve not been here long. Of course, I do know about it because the ambassador can’t help mentioning it but it’s not generally known around the embassy.’ He pulled out to overtake, then quickly back in again to a chorus of hootings from behind. ‘The whole thing’s a lot of fuss about nothing, if you ask me. Whelk probably got drunk and drove off a cliff. Sort of thing he would do. All this unofficial investigation nonsense is improper, in my opinion. The Lower African authorities are quite able to sort it out without us blundering around freelancing. The ambassador hardly thinks of anything else these days. It’s his last post, you see, and I think he’s gone a bit over the top on this one. Very able man, mind you, but rather too much of an enthusiast sometimes. And London don’t help. I hear now that the junior minister’s been bitten by the same bug. Is that right?’
‘Mr Formerly told me he was.’
‘Well, Formerly wouldn’t know it if you hit him on the head with it but I think he’s right in this case, all the same.’ There was a pause while Clifford successfully overtook the petrol tanker he had been stuck behind. ‘What gets me though is the house. Arthur’s is the best one after the residence. Better than the counsellor’s. All right, he is theoretically senior to me in terms of length of service so I can’t object; but he’s a bachelor and I have to live with a wife and two small children in a smaller house. Also, as head of chancery one does have certain responsibilities, to put it mildly.’
He looked at Patrick as though seeking agreement. Patrick nodded.
‘And now because London can’t decide whether or not Arthur’s coming back they’re going to let you live in it, which is bloody outrageous. A lot of people here are rather upset about it, to speak plainly. Nothing personal, of course. If Arthur does come back he’s hardly likely to be kept on here after this so they might as well reallocate the house now. And to have let us live there whilst ours was being done up just rubbed salt into the wound.’ He glanced again at Patrick. ‘Of course, you could always claim it was too big for you and not move into it. Doesn’t make much difference where you live when you’re single.’
Patrick’s tiredness made him proof against threats of even universal unpopularity. ‘Are we going to the residence now?’
‘No, we’re going to our house – Arthur’s. Yours. I’ll find out what’s happened at the residence later.’ They drove on for a while in silence.
There were familiar makes of car on the right side of the road and familiar advertisements on hoardings except that some were styled differently. The Marmite advertisement was a big black jar held before a big black face. From a distance Battenburg appeared to be built upon hills with the highest in the centre, crowned by tower-blocks that were brilliantly white in the early sun. Above the city there was a dirty haze.
‘That’s always there in the mornings. It’s called inversion. All the smog gets trapped.’ Explaining made Clifford feel better. ‘The smog clears off as the air gets warmer. It’s caused by the warm air being trapped by the cold.’
‘Is it really?’ Patrick tried to sound impressed but his tone was wrong.
Uncertainty and irritability returned to Clifford’s face. ‘Well, that sort of thing. Or the other way round. Makes no difference.’
In the city the pavements bustled with people, black, brown and white. The
shops were busy. Clifford drove with aggressive incompetence, swearing most of the time. Everyone else was doing the same. The distant sky showed in vertical strips of blue between the tall buildings, while that above was still hazy.
They stopped suddenly at a corner crowded with pedestrians. ‘You have to give way to them at junctions though they’re only supposed to cross when the lights say they can. It’s bloody inconvenient for everyone. Cars can’t go round corners without stopping and pedestrians can’t cross until the lights say so. The police keep cracking down so most people obey.’ The next sudden braking was at traffic lights which Patrick had not seen because they were high and insignificant. ‘They call them robots,’ said Clifford.
Soon they were in the northern suburbs where opulent houses were set amidst spacious grounds behind high walls. Elaborately-wrought iron gates showed swimming-pools and tennis-courts. There were large shopping centres but no small shops. New cars, mostly Mercedes or BMWs, cruised with quiet ostentation along broad tree-lined avenues. The only people were a few black servants and gardeners who walked slowly or sat in small groups on the wide sunburnt grass verges. They gazed without apparent curiosity at the cars that passed, much as they might have gazed at the wall opposite when there were no cars.
Clifford waved a hand. ‘Jacarandas.’
Patrick looked at the group of blacks. The word was familiar, possibly a tribal name.
‘Bloom in the spring. Bloody nuisance for the pool, though. Fill it with leaves.’
Patrick looked at the trees.
They passed by a long white wall before turning abruptly into the drive. It was lined by trees and shrubs and had a well-watered strip of grass running up the middle. The house was large and white with a red tiled roof. Broad gleaming white steps led up to the front door.
Clifford drove into the double garage and was soon locking the car. ‘You have to. Must lock everything all the time. Lots of thieves.’
Inside it was cool and dark, the rooms large and high. The furniture was an uneasy mixture of the standard PSA issue and the accumulations of someone who had travelled and collected promiscuously. The mounted heads of wildebeest, stags, tigers and one polar bear competed for space with South American wall-hangings, Chinese jade, Japanese prints, Flemish reproductions, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, works of reference and a set of boleros. There were some old chests and sturdy chairs which went ill with the PSA living-room suite. In the dining-room was a solid PSA table which seated twelve and smelt of polish. Fastened to the underside was a bell for summoning the maid. French windows led from the dining-room to the veranda, beyond which the lawn undulated down towards the sparkling blue swimming-pool.