by Alan Hackney
“Oh?” said Stanley. “What are they?”
“Reports on Japanese shirt production. An interminable question.”
“They look like the London telephone directory.”
“Yes, don’t they. If you’re feeling strong some day, try and tear ’em in half. Mind you, if you can really master the question you’ll make some sort of name for yourself, if that’s the sort of thing you want. Incidentally, they’ll probably put you down for duty officer straight away. All you do for that is look at everything that comes in and ring people in the early hours, but I shouldn’t advise that much.”
“I suppose not.”
“No. In fact even here, lay off the telephone all you can. I’ve practically given it up. If you ring people they only send you more files. Well, there you are. I’ve got to rush about like a bee on heat now,” he added, opening a file in a leisurely fashion. “Got a Parliamentary Question to sort out for tomorrow.”
*
“Wallace,” said Stanley over beer and sandwiches in St Stephen’s Tavern.
“Yes, Stanley?”
“These shirts. There’s no end to it.”
“Oh, absolutely. One could kick oneself.”
“It isn’t all like this, is it?”
“Not in Bangkok it isn’t.”
*
No messages came in at all for the Duty Officer until half past three, when Stanley, nodding over the Tatler, was presented with a telegram.
RAK 2245
THREE INCIDENTS LAST NIGHT AGYPPIAN-SOLOMONIAN BORDER LOCAL SOURCE CONSIDERS HIGHLY PROBABLE PUT-UP JOB BUT AS MAHOMMED NOW IN UK PRESUMABLY NEGOTIATING ARMS SUPPLY AND EMMANUEL LIKEWISE ABSENT TENSION REMAINS SAME LEVEL MAHOMMED’S NATURE BOYS DRILLING WITH STICKS THROUGHOUT COUNTRY TODAY
MCLOUGHLIN
Stanley rang up Wallace. The telephone rang for a long time before there was any reply. Finally a voice said: “Yerm?”
“That you, Wallace? Stanley.”
“Oh God. What?”
“I’ve just got a telegram in. It says——”
“Don’t read it to me over the telephone, idiot. Is it urgent?”
“I think it must be. What shall I do about it?”
Wallace made the peculiar noise of a man frustrated.
“Ring someone sensible,” he said in a strained voice. “Ring the Minister of State if you like, but not me.”
There was a click.
Stanley picked up the other telephone and dutifully rang the Minister of State.
“Well?”
“Urgent telegram, sir?”
“I should damn well think so. Who’s dropped the Bomb?”
“No one, sir. This is what it says.” Stanley began reading.
There was silence when he finished.
“Thank you very much indeed,” said the voice finally. “Now why don’t you go and boil your fat head?”
“Hullo, is that Mr Brimpton?”
“Bloody lucky for you it isn’t. I’m Julian Briggs, the PA. And who are you? Windrush? Well, I’ll do the same for you some time, I hope.”
*
“Good morning, Wallace.”
“Good morning, Stanley. Improperly dressed for London, I see. Where’s your billy?”
“One of my great-aunt’s dogs chewed the brim overnight.”
“Badly?”
“I’m afraid so. Why did you tell me to ring up Brimpton?”
“Well, he’s such a keen type. He was my CO in the Army, incidentally. It was a rotten unit. You didn’t actually ring him though, did you?”
“Yes, but I got his secretary. He wasn’t too pleased.”
“Ah well. Oh, by the way, I’m down to fetch and carry at this Coloured Conference at Plantagenet House tomorrow. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do when I’m away. Onward with the shirts.”
“I think I’ll burn down shirt factories in my spare time if they send me to Japan.”
My dear Stanley [wrote his father],
I enclose one or two letters sent to you at this address. [Stanley was unable to find these.]
The annual congress of Natural Union ended this week, and a most interesting affair it was. Delegates came from most of the civilized countries of the world (very few from the Eastern bloc‚ unfortunately) and we had a number of interesting discussions. There was a particularly charming man, a Mr Mahommed, who is one of the delegates in the Agyppian mission to London for the forthcoming Coloured Conference. We had a number of little chats and it was stimulating to learn that whereas his government’s policy in recent years has had the avowed aim of clothing the coloured peasantry in Western style, the really progressive opinion in his country is turning more and more (with emancipation) to the way of naturism.
Mr Mahommed was delighted to hear that I had a son at the Foreign Office and expressed the hope that he would be able to meet you during the Conference.
I make no claim to understand international affairs, but I do understand putting our own house in order. Until the misguided majority gives up pursuing the chimeras of welfare and subsidy, and returns to an appreciation of Natural values, human dignity is at a discount, and I shall keep mine here.
The weather prophets, on the whole, forecast a fine Autumn. Let’s hope they’re right.
Your affectionate,
Father
The much-publicised Coloured Conference had originally been a scheme to bring to London as many eminent black, brown and yellow men as possible, in order to feel the way towards some method of increasing waning British influence in the world, and promoting trading arrangements which did not involve lending any money.
At first it had been going to include representatives from the British Colonies, who, it was hoped, would be able to convince the coloured foreigners what a good thing it was to trade with the Old Country. The affair was then to have been run jointly by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. There had been, however, some reluctance by certain states to come on this inferior footing, and friction had arisen between the two departments.
Eventually, the idea of including the Colonials was dropped and only the non-British coloured men invited. A large number of these were coming, mostly for the ride, and visits for them had been arranged, after the early meetings of the Conference, to academic and industrial centres. Several large firms were giving hospitality, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been prevailed upon to give, more economically, a number of honorary doctorates. The whole business, vigorously opposed by the Daily Rapid, seemed likely to last well into the autumn.
Plantagenet House, a nobleman’s former town residence sold very profitably to the nation, and now the scene for international consultations in an ostentatious mood, was all a-bustle with preparations for the conference, and presently, with the airborne arrivals of delegations filling the television newsreels, the conference began.
Wallace, in his confidential messenger-boy role, almost forgot his yearning for Bangkok in the unaccustomed glamour of the proceedings, but on the evening of the ninth day, when the expensive conference was nearly reaching agreement on what was to be discussed, a motor car knocked him down in Park Lane, and he was taken concussed to Charing Cross Hospital and treated for a fracture of the right leg.
At four o’clock the next morning the telephone rang in the hall at Eaton Square. After some time Stanley became aware of it and went down. One or two of Aunt Dolly’s dogs, roused by the noise of Stanley’s walking into a door on the way down, accompanied him.
He groaned into the telephone.
“Ullurgh?”
“That you, Stanley? Julian.”
It was Brimpton’s secretary.
“Oh, is it? You know the time? I’ve just walked into a door because of you.”
“Bad luck. However, Wallace has broken his leg. I’ve just had a message you’re to stand in for him today. Thought I’d give you as much notice as possible.”
“Very thoughtful of you. You couldn’t have waited a few hours, I suppose?”
�
�Sorry, Wallace has just woken up too. That’s how the hospital knew who he was. Anyway, I had to check up you were available.”
“Well, thanks very much. Now I’ll go and lie down again if you don’t mind.”
“Entirely a matter for you to decide, my dear fellow. Oh, and better come to the office to start with, and go on from here.”
The dogs followed Stanley indifferently up the stairs.
CHAPTER 4
THE ULTIMATE breakdown of the Coloured Conference will no doubt be attributed by historians to the distrust by coloured peoples of Europeans which increased so much in the middle years of the twentieth century. That this distrust was felt by their governments rather than by the people themselves may find mention in the annals of the time.
The futility of the whole venture will become in time apparent (an American observer summed it up as being, in his opinion, ‘a declaration of faith in arrested development’), but at the time all this was masked by such considerations as a widespread feeling of goodwill towards the emerging coloured races, a mixed sense of guilt and fair play, and the necessity of securing valuable sources of raw materials even at the cost of actual friendship with the suppliers; an essentially unbusinesslike arrangement.
‘In a world growing daily smaller and smaller,’ announced the thinkers of the Western nations, ‘we cannot afford misunderstandings and ignorance. Whereas East was once East and West was West, the Asian and African are now our next door neighbours. The aeroplane, etc., etc….’
The fact was that, brought thus airborne face to face, everyone’s worst suspicions were confirmed by closer acquaintance.
The exact point at which the deterioration set in at the conference is uncertain, but the appearance of Stanley Windrush at Plantagenet House, in the entourage of the British Foreign Secretary, may well have struck the first discordant note.
Just before ten o’clock, Stanley stood about despondently outside the great conference room. Despite the urgency of his summons there seemed little likelihood of there being anything much to do, and the lump on his forehead smarted. There was a good deal of glare from the gilding and the white paint, intensified as the dozen or so photographers, clustering round, flashed at the arriving delegates. One photographer with halitosis, representing an illustrated magazine, came close to Stanley and began gloomily talking.
“Too much legwork and not enough legs,” he complained cryptically. “Never go in for this lark. What you done to your head? You know, they sent me to cover this but ten to one they won’t use it. It isn’t this stuff sells the paper, and no drinks on expenses eether. I don’t know. Cabaret at the Club Godiva, or girls on the swings when it’s a bit windy, that’s what they want. That’s what put the paper where it is. But Oo by Christ you pay for it.”
“Really?” said Stanley. “That’s extraordinarily interesting. It costs you money?”
“Eh? No, standing around all weathers. It gets you in the back. Best get one of Mr Mahommed coming in. Morning, sir!” he called, raising his camera in an indifferent fashion to the leader of the Agyppian delegation.
“Oh, so that’s Mr Mahommed,” said Stanley as the flash lit up a large smiling, muscular man, whose air of sparkling health seemed to burst through his dark grey suit.
Mr Mahommed had genially shaken a number of hands on his way in, and now offered his hand to Stanley.
“Mister…?”
“Windrush,” said Stanley. “I believe you met my father.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr Mahommed. “It is so pleasant. He was looking very healthy, I remember. You yourself do not, if I may say so. Now perhaps you would come this evening when I am holding a cocktail party at six.”
And Mr Mahommed, teeth glittering, passed into the conference room.
“Suit yourself,” said the magazine photographer to Stanley. “I thought you might’ve been interested in going with me to Vespucci’s tonight, but Mr Mahommed might have some nude dancers laid on too, for all I know.”
The day passed unsensationally. For the first hour or so there were speeches of a welcoming sort, the tail end of the series of opening addresses, which had occupied the conference so far, but after lunch the principal delegates went into closed session and Stanley was left outside, filling in time chatting to one of the secretaries of the Burmese delegation, a young man who, it turned out, had been to a much better-known public school than Stanley’s. By five o’clock the conference, a little nearer to agreeing on what they should talk about, adjourned, and Stanley went home to change. The feeling that he had been there simply to make the number up had by now grown into a firm conviction. Some people would have been depressed by this, or felt outraged in their dignity, but in Stanley’s case it greatly relieved his mind, and he set out in good heart for Mr Mahommed’s party.
*
At the Agyppian Embassy in Kensington, excited persons of all colours were busy making an unusually confused din. Some, whose creeds forbade alcohol, seemed to be getting equally bright-eyed on tomato-juice. A few of the guests were in full evening dress with decorations though most were in what Stanley correctly took to be their normal clothes.
A genial and broad-smiling Mr Mahommed greeted him.
“Ah, Mr Windrush. It is most enjoyable to see you. You are well once more?”
“Oh, I feel very well,” said Stanley. “I hear you enjoyed your stay at Sunnyglades?”
“Ah yes. I am very interested in the Body, you know.”
“Is that what the people they call Mahommed’s Nature Boys are interested in?”
“Ah, you keep in touch, I see, Mr Windrush. Yes indeed, they are a movement I started to keep my country fit, you know. You are perhaps in the Middle East Department, then?”
“Oh no. I do Japanese shirts usually but I saw a thing the other night about your movement. Actually I rang the Minister of State about it, but it wasn’t important, apparently.”
“Really? Do take another drink. Of course Mr Brimpton is very overworked now with this Conference, like us all.”
“Oh yes. He looked pretty tired this afternoon, but I heard him say he’d feel much better after he’d seen Mr Emmanuel.”
“The Solomonian delegate? Now that’s very interesting. I hadn’t heard of a meeting. I wonder what about.”
“Oh, I’ve no idea. He just said something about getting it all tied up. Will you be in England long?”
“It depends, Mr Windrush, it depends. Now perhaps you would like to talk to some of the Japanese delegation?”
“No, no, please,” said Stanley. “Not off duty.”
Mr Mahommed clapped him heartily on the shoulder.
“Jolly good!” he cried, laughing resoundingly. “Not off duty. I know what you mean. Well, I have all Asia here for you to choose from. Perhaps you know Billy? He’s from Burma. Billy!”
The Etonian Burmese disengaged himself and came over.
*
“You heard that?” said Mr Mahommed furiously, when Stanley had moved off. “Seeing Emmanuel, eh? Getting it all tied up beforehand, are they?”
“Some swindle is doubtless being prepared,” said his PA. “Emmanuel wants them to turn the blind eye, of course. They call it the spirit of Nelson. Collusion, of course.”
“Very true. But they are a nation of shopkeepers too. We must see how much they will sell us.”
*
Stanley, blissfully unaware of having revealed anything, resumed his afternoon’s chat with the Burmese. He was quite enjoying being a representative of his country.
“Well, my dear fellow,” said the Burmese, “how are you enjoying our peculiar Oriental ways?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’re peculiar at all,” said Stanley. “Only for some reason, I can’t remember why, I’d been half expecting some sort of cabaret.”
“Cabaret? What on earth put that in your head? Did you expect those Balinese chaps would give you a bit of a dance? You mustn’t try to undermine our dignity, Mr Windrush.”
A large perfumed Sikh, cl
asping a tomato-juice, leaned closer to take this in. Two tiny Indonesians beside him prepared quite brazenly to eavesdrop.
“You are imperialist, sir?” asked the Sikh politely. “Ah, but much water has flowed under bridge.” His beard had been curled in over retaining-threads which disappeared upwards under his pale-cream pugri.
“Oh, you’re absolutely right,” agreed Stanley. “We aren’t imperialists any more.”
The Indonesians smirked at each other.
“Ah, there is no doubt you would wish to be,” pointed out the Sikh. “Not your good self, of course, but your government cannot get out of the habit. Isn’t it so?”
“What Mr Singh means,” said the Burmese superciliously, “is that your Asian policy is distrusted. You’d better tell him it’s O.K., hadn’t you?”
“Oh, I dare say he’s perfectly right,” said Stanley. “But I can only tell you about Japanese shirts with any authority.”
“Ah, we too have felt the rod of Colonialism on the backs of our people,” cried one of the Indonesians. The other gave him vigorous support with nodding. “Our motto is Unity Through Diversity, and all this is founded on clear philosophical principles. Never is it too late to negotiate!”
“You’re absolutely right, of course,” agreed Stanley in some puzzlement.
“You speak of Japanese shirting,” resumed the Sikh, elbowing the Indonesians aside to continue. “But no doubt some swindle is being prepared behind our backs. It is Divide And Rule as always. You are aware of situation in Calcutta mills because of this?”
“No, I’m sorry but I’ve no idea,” said Stanley. “Is it bad?”
“Of course it is bad. And everywhere you are leaving vacuums.”
“Vacuums?”
“Naturally. And what is filling them?”
Stanley was losing the thread of this conversation, but luckily a nearby Malay broke in:
“Mr Singh excuse me but you make an error. The correct plural is vacua.”
Mr Singh flared up.
“Vacua? Vacua? What is this you are talking? That is not correct English usage. Vacua? Vacua?” He kept repeating the word in tones of mounting annoyance. “What do you know about it?”