‘Sorry I expressed it in that way,’ said Moffatt. ‘I forgot, Alan, you would think it lacked dignity.’
‘All right, Harold, I do believe in dignity, especially here. After all, dammit, the flag does fly above the Residence. I know it’s fashionable to sneer at such things today, but they mean something to me.’
‘I’m glad to hear that, Alan, because it means you are the man I want to help me.’ He took a sheet of parchment out of his brief case and handed it to Wint.
The latter, as he put it down on the desk in front of him, pushed over a pack of cigarettes. ‘By the way, Harold,’ he said, lighting a cigarette himself, ‘perhaps you can help me in a little matter that’s arisen recently. A couple of girls – I think there are two, Afghans from their voices – have taken to ringing me up and, well, making improper proposals. They did it this morning, just half an hour ago. You’re more in the heart of things down there in the city than we are up here in our little enclave. I wondered if you’d heard of this sort of thing happening to others.’
Moffatt grinned at that portentousness. ‘I have.’
Wint was so relieved he threw back his head and guffawed. ‘I knew it,’ he cried, ‘I knew I couldn’t be the only one. Is there any theory as to the culprits?’
‘Schoolgirls, I should think.’
‘Schoolgirls? Here, in this outpost of medieval prudishness?’
‘Yes. At home its equivalent would be scribbling obscenities on lavatory walls. But I suppose they do that here too.’
Wint’s daughter Annette was a schoolgirl in England. He looked shocked but incredulous. ‘Obscenities? Boys yes, but surely not girls.’ Then catching a glimpse in imagination of Annette’s small face so often mysterious in its contemporaneousness, he began to gape as confidence sighed out of him. Paula though, in pig-tails, never had; he was certain of that.
‘They say girls are worse than boys,’ said Moffatt. ‘That’s a City and Guilds diploma, you’ll observe.’
Wint laughed. ‘Who say, old man?’
‘The caretakers of girls’ schools. The diploma was awarded to an Afghan student, Mir Abdul Rahman.’
‘So I see. Would you say there’s no need to notify the police about this telephoning?’
‘You’ll have to decide that for yourself, Alan.’
‘What would you do?’
‘I’d get Abdul to answer them.’
‘This fellow?’ Wint pointed to the diploma.
‘No. My cook. He’s got as rich a vocabulary of abuse as an Irish docker. He’d soon tell them where to stuff their improper proposals.’
‘But, really, Harold, if they’re only schoolgirls!’
Moffatt was growing impatient. ‘You mean, you don’t think you should be rude to them?’
‘Not quite that. Really, doesn’t it come back to dignity again?’
‘All right, Alan. You tell them, with dignity, to—off. That diploma was awarded after a successful five-year course in Civil Engineering, at Brixton Technical College.’
‘Yes, so I see. Who is this Mir Abdul Rahman?’
‘I’ve told you. He’s an Afghan, not long back from U.K. He was sent there on a government scholarship.’
‘That must have cost them a lot. Pretty commendable.’
‘Since he came back he’s been working for the Ministry of Mines. His trouble is, and he’s by no means the only one, his Ministry won’t accept his diploma. They say it isn’t as good as a degree.’
‘Well, is it?’
‘No. But it’s a damn sight better than an American degree, or even many an American doctorate.’
‘I agree. Lord knows what you can get an American doctorate for. Howard says for collecting the tops of cereal boxes.’
‘This diploma represents a lot of hard study.’
‘I should think so.’
‘And a level of proficiency very high by the standards of this country?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Well, Mir Abdul Rahman’s grievance is that colleagues of his who go off to America or Germany and come back in a couple of years or so with one of these phoney doctorates are immediately raised to a certain rank in their profession and paid accordingly. He has applied to be raised to that rank too, but he’s been turned down. He reeled off to me the names of at least six others in the same position, all with U.K. diplomas and certificates whose value isn’t recognized here.’
‘Interesting, Harold, but why bring it to me, except as an illustration of how a backward country always wants to leap too far ahead? They think if they’ve got a lot of men addressed as Doctor they’re an educated country. A lot of cock, of course, but surely you can sympathize with them. Don’t think the Embassy isn’t aware of this apparent discrimination. Howard, I’m sure, could add another half dozen to your list.’
‘The discrimination isn’t just apparent; it’s as plain as your nose.’
Wint smiled; if Moffatt had said his ears, it would have been malicious; these were big, bigger even than Howard’s, but his nose was normal.
‘Even so,’ he said. ‘There’s still nothing we can do about it. It’s purely Afghan business.’
Moffatt chewed at his cigarette; it was a danger signal. ‘What about that ruddy flag?’ he asked.
Wint frowned. ‘Afraid I don’t follow.’
‘I should have thought it was up to us to make sure that where we’re still good – and we are still good, in education – everyone should be made know it and respect it. Especially in a country like this one, still uncommitted. We can’t lend them millions of dollars or roubles, but we can still make it clear to them that the name British on something means it’s good. In the bazaars, you know, British is a synonym for good quality. If they say an article’s British they’re recommending it, even though you find it was really made in Germany.’
Moffatt’s face was red; sweat glistened on his brow. The heat was internal. Only Wint could ever have provoked him into so jingoistic an outburst; and only Wint could have listened to it with such uncynical agreement.
‘I couldn’t agree more, old man,’ said the First Secretary, very warmly, ‘and I’m very glad to hear you say it. Far too many British people abroad think it beneath them to say a word in their country’s praise.’
‘All right, then. What are we going to do about these diplomas?’
‘Insist upon their true worth, of course.’
‘Good. Will the Ambassador himself take it up with the Minister of Education?’
‘I hardly think so. I meant we should insist as individuals. You’re doing a good job, and I thank you for it. No, Harold, I’m serious; I do thank you.’
A wild light had come into Moffatt’s eyes.
‘This is an instance,’ went on Wint, ‘where the onlooker doesn’t see most of the game. You’ve got to be in this job, right in the heart of it, to appreciate the difficulties, and I grant you, the limitations of professional diplomacy.’
‘So as far as the Embassy’s concerned I can take this back to Mir Abdul Rahman and tell him it’s so much bumph?’
Wint looked hurt. ‘I know how you feel, Harold, but you do exaggerate. Be fair. Show a proper sense of proportion. This is really a small matter, rather too small for ambassadorial interference.’ His confidence faltered a little as he remembered the cigarette pack found in the flower bed. ‘Besides, it’s purely an Afghan affair. I suspect it’s a dodge on their part to save a little money. They’ll be out to recoup some of the cost of his scholarship. Is he a friend of yours, Harold?’
‘I never saw him before yesterday when he came to see me at the University.’
‘I hope he realized he was running the risk of compromising you with the authorities. They’ve been known to tear up a contract, you know. What difference is it making to him, in terms of salary, I mean?’
‘Two pounds a month.’
‘You see, it is a small matter.’
‘His present salary is five pounds a month; so to him it’s not such a small matter. T
he Embassy will do nothing, then?’
‘There’s nothing we can do. I’ll put it up for discussion at our next policy meeting, but I’m convinced H.E. will want to let it lie.’
Moffatt grabbed the diploma and thrust it back into his brief case. That light in his eyes was wilder. More percipient friends than Wint would have seen that he was minded to jump up, shout an obscenity from a lavatory wall, and rush away. That he sat still showed the second operation, St George, must be important to him. ‘Well, I’m damned if I’m going to let it lie.’
‘So long as you do nothing rash.’
‘You’ll have heard of Mrs Mohebzada?’
Startled by the transition, Wint reflected suspiciously; he knew how people so often tried to get their own back at him, even when all the harm he’d done was to tell them the truth. ‘Can’t say I have. You know we seldom get an opportunity to meet Afghan women. I take it she is Afghan?’
‘She is, though she was born in Ealing, has blue eyes and fair hair.’
‘Yes, I remember her now. She’s the little English girl who married an Afghan, about a year and a half ago, just before I arrived. She’s not connected with Operation St George, I hope?’
‘She’s living in my house, or was when I left this morning.’
‘I see.’ But clearly Wint did not. Moffatt’s was one of the most hospitable houses in Kabul. Representatives of at least thirty nationalities visited there, including Afghans who, in their own capital, were more elusive even than Russians. That he should have received this fellow countrywoman as his overnight guest was hardly remarkable.
‘She’s run away from her husband.’
‘Has she, indeed?’ Still Wint saw no reason for much concern. All over the world women were running away from husbands, or husbands from wives, especially in the most civilized countries. Afghanistan with reluctance admitted herself to be backward industrially, but claimed with some justification to have been civilized long before Britain. She had cinemas, though none suitable for Europeans; a theatre where in crude adaptations of Molière or Shakespeare boys took the parts of women; buses, presented by the Russians; macadamed main streets, also the result of astute Russian benevolence; electricity and automatic telephones, thanks to the energy and enterprise of Germans; and two daily newspapers, published by the government. Why then should she not also have runaway wives and shattered marriages? It would probably astonish everyone, Wint had often mused, to learn what went on under those shaddries and behind those high compound walls.
‘And from her child, too.’
Ah, that was different. That was not merely symptomatic of civilization in malaise: it represented a tragic failure of humanity. Wint had two children, Annette and Paul, snug at school, but snugger still in his own and Paula’s affection. The Moffatts so far had none, though they had been married for five years. Were they afraid that their little slant-eyed half-castes would be received unkindly by a world itself so impure and mongrel?
‘And she’s threatened to kill herself rather than go back to him.’
Now Wint perceived through the veil of his thoughts that a human being – familiar, bristling, and crimson with passion – was across his desk talking to him about another human being – female, British in origin and outlook, in distress about her child and husband. He could not quite see Moffatt as St George, nor any Afghan as a dragon, nor Mrs Mohebzada (whom he remembered as a rather unintelligent girl who had worked in a shoe shop and no doubt had been enticed away with lies of riches and luxury) as an innocent maiden to be liberated. Still, the situation was of more consequence than small or capital m’s, or cigarette packs in flower beds, or walnut trees chopped down.
‘And she means it.’
Then, in the midst of his compassion, it struck Wint with the impact of a camel’s hoof that in this case, too, there could be no interference.
‘You’ll have to persuade her to go back, Harold.’
Moffatt’s pugnacious jaw dropped. ‘Did you hear what I said? She’ll kill herself rather than go back.’
‘Distraught women say that often enough, Harold. The point is, she comes under Afghan jurisdiction; we’ve got no responsibility for her at all. I’m not saying we don’t want to have. She has never registered here.’
‘You know they don’t allow that.’
‘True, but it can be done, in secret. Not, mind you, that it would have made much difference. I don’t want to seem brutal, Harold, but the first thing you should have made clear to her is that by marrying this chap, she virtually put herself beyond our protection.’
‘That’s been clear to her from the minute she arrived here.’
‘All right. It’s as well her eyes were open. What about her husband? Is he going to make trouble? Does he know she’s at your place?’
‘He does. I telephoned him at his work this morning.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Damned little. I didn’t give him the chance. I did all the saying.’
This was the Harold Moffatt, Wint thought, who, despite his intelligence and knack of getting on with people of all races, could never have been a diplomat. He was almost melting and spluttering with anger; whereas he, Alan Wint, had seldom felt so cool and resourceful. Yes, there were at least a dozen things to be considered before Mrs Mohebzada was allowed to kill herself.
‘And what did you say to him, Harold?’
‘I told him she was at my house, and as long as she wanted to stay there she could.’
Wint smiled. Rash, extravagant, indiscreet words, but not disastrously so. Still, there might have been others.
‘And I also told him that if he made any attempt to come and take her back by force I’d kick his teeth in.’
And doubtless, thought Wint in a spasm of that kind of irrelevance into which his mind, confronted by threat of disaster, loved to retreat, Mohebzada had excellent white teeth. Then reality had to be faced. ‘Good Lord, man surely you weren’t so foolish and provocative!’
‘And I’ll do it, too! She was in a terrible state.’
Here was the crux, Mrs Mohebzada’s state, and the reasons for it. Had cruelty been inflicted on her, or was her desperation caused by the too painful contrast between the life she’d led in Ealing and that lived here? If the latter, then it might well be that her husband was hardly to blame, except insofar as he had wilfully deceived her with stories of his wealth and position.
‘Does he insist she wear a shaddry?’
‘No, but the rest of his family do, and because she refused they make her life a hell. She’s kept more or less a prisoner. She’s not allowed to visit other foreigners. She never has a penny of her own.’
‘Can’t she get work here? Other women married to Afghans do.’
‘Why should she go out to work and keep his whole family? In any case, they’re so bloody prejudiced they won’t allow her. And what work could she do here, anyway? She can’t type, teach, or nurse.’
Wint reflected that in the whole country, of twelve million people, there wasn’t one woman serving in a shop.
The telephone rang. He picked it up cautiously, thinking it might be the Ambassador. But it wasn’t; it was a woman’s voice, as quiet as the lascivious schoolgirl’s but sweeter and far more sane; it was, in fact, Mrs Moffatt’s. She wanted to know if her husband was there. ‘Yes, Mrs Moffatt, as a matter of fact, he is. Do you want to speak to him?’
‘Please.’
He handed the telephone over. ‘Your wife, Harold.’
Moffatt’s anger vanished as he took the receiver. Wint, uxorious himself, was almost embarrassed by the effect upon the other man of merely touching a telephone, knowing his wife in a moment would speak to him through it. The smile on Moffatt’s face was too unadulteratedly happy. No matter how deep and genuine his love, a man ought always to keep in it a grain of scepticism for purifying purposes.
‘Hello, Lan darling. Harold here.’
It was interesting thereafter to study Moffatt’s face. The happiness ne
ver faded, yet at the same time it expressed surprise, anger, and anxiety, while at least once he muttered: ‘Christ!’
‘Now don’t you get upset, Lan. It wasn’t your fault. How could you have prevented her? No, I couldn’t. I’ll be home as soon as I can, in about twenty minutes, I hope. You can tell me all about it then. Don’t worry.’
He put down the receiver, his plump face radiant and furious.
‘So she’s gone back?’ said Wint.
‘Yes. He stood outside the gate with the baby. It cried, as if it was in agony. Maybe the bastard was squeezing its leg.’
‘Now, Harold! I shouldn’t be surprised if he was crying himself. You know how prone they are to tears. She’s his wife, after all, and in his own way no doubt he loves her.’
‘She went, breaking her heart. Lan’s pretty upset. I’ll have to hurry back. Strange as it may seem, Alan, it wasn’t Mrs Mohebzada I originally meant to speak to you about this morning. She arrived last night, a bolt from the blue. This letter’ – he threw it on the desk – ‘was given to me yesterday afternoon. Lan brought it home from the International School. You’ll notice it’s addressed to the U.N. Tom Lorimer passed it on to the Principal, Mrs Mossaour, who wanted my opinion. I telephoned her that I thought you should be consulted. She thought it was a good idea.’
‘Did she?’ Wint’s smile was a wince. The English wife of a Lebanese U.N. official, Mrs Mossaour was caustic about British diplomacy in the Middle East.
He took the letter out of the envelope. It was typed. The writer’s own address was Manchester.
DEAR SIR,
As I intend shortly to come to Kabul to marry my fiancé, Mr Abdul Wahab, of the Ministry of Education, I should be much obliged if you could let me know what employment, if any, you could offer me on my arrival.
I am thirty-three. I have a B.A. (Pol. Econ.) of Birmingham, and also a teaching diploma. Though not professionally proficient I am able to type. At present I am employed in the British Civil Service, in the administrative branch of the National Insurance Department. I have also had two years’ teaching experience.
I hope you do not consider this an impertinent request. I shall be most grateful for any help you can give me.
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