by Tom Stacey
Williams got up from ‘Sports’ and went over to the mechanic with his clean photostat of the Emir’s message. Then he crossed to where Jones was slumped in his basket chair, picked up the original where it had drifted to the floor and slipped it between Jones’s finger and thumb. Jones stirred and peered at his watch but couldn’t focus. Normally he filled his parrot’s trough with seed before going to bed.
The mechanic worked on, reassembling.
‘How d’you come by the name Granville? It’s not Welsh at all – Granville.’
A question. A question to answer.
‘I was christened Geraint.’
‘That’s Welsh enough!’ Williams exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you stick with it, for heaven’s sake?’
‘I’m not Welsh.’
‘A name like Geraint, you’re a Welshman!’
‘I’m not Welsh,’ Jones repeated sharply. ‘Nobody knows how to pronounce Geraint.’ It was an affectation of his father. They were a Shropshire family, English side of the dyke. As soon as he got to Fleet Street they advised him to drop it. Nobody had called him Geraint for years.
‘How come Granville then?’
‘My mother’s name.’ It had made her proud, his adopting her name. What he remembered were her fingers on his skin, soaping him in the upstairs bath.
‘You should have stuck with Geraint, boyo,’ Williams chuckled.
In the end – that was before the War – Jones changed it by deed poll, to obviate misunderstandings and accusations of duplicity by foreign officials trying to be obstructive. He was already famous.
The mechanic put the paper back on the tray and clipped the lid shut, all ready to be fed on to the roller.
Williams said rapidly, ‘We’re just about ready to go.’
‘If I go,’ Jones said clearly, ‘could you arrange for someone to look after my parrot? I can’t remember if you know my house.’
The mechanic switched on the power. A green light was on.
‘Did you hear me?’ Jones demanded.
Williams frowned. ‘I don’t honestly get across to the island much.’
Williams himself dialled the prefix for Britain and the number for the Post and when the connection was made the red light went on automatically. The Indian pressed the button to begin transmission. Nothing happened. He scowled at the machine, first from one side, then the other. He withdrew a small screwdriver from his shirt pocket and stood with it poised between delicate fingers as if about to prick the machine viciously into life. As Jones looked across vaguely from his chair, the red light went out.
The mechanic shook his head at the personal affront. He switched off and began to remove a side panel.
Williams demanded futilely what was wrong now.
‘There is vault in the machine,’ the Indian told him. ‘A meghanigal vault.’
Williams undipped the photostat from the drum. He asked the man if there was any point in going on with it.
‘Repair is necessary,’ was all he had to contribute.
Williams put the paper on the Sports Desk. He turned to Jones.
‘We won’t get your second edition now, Gran. I suppose that’s it, then.’ He felt so sad for him: the state he was in, how he would never have such a chance again.
Jones said nothing.
Williams could not tell if he was asleep. He continued gently, ‘I’d like to take you home, Gran. If you’ll just let me give you a hand down to the car.’ He moved across and peered at him cautiously. ‘You don’t want to telex your office?’
One eye opened narrowly, with a gleam of malevolent distaste. ‘Washer purposh of that? Leddum shtew.’
Williams straightened. ‘I suppose that’s it, then,’ he said brightly. ‘I’ll take you home, then.’
But Jones seemed already gone off again. Once more Williams bent over him.
Jones woke with a spurt of ferocity. ‘I’d rather shtay here.’
‘I’m not sure our good friend here will beat the problem. Not tonight.’
The mechanic had already resumed dismantling the machine. ‘Tomorrow,’ he promised hopelessly. ‘Insh’allah.’
‘If you don’t mind, dear boy,’ Jones said suavely, ‘I’d rather shtay here. I’ll just lie down if I may.’ He started to struggle from his chair.
Williams reached out to steady him. He guided him through to the washroom and stood beside while he passed water, then back into the newsroom to his own cubicle, where a piece of stained carpet covered the floor. He made a pillow for him out of a pile of back numbers of his newspaper and the old man lay down clumsily on the floor along the partition of the cubicle, almost filling its length. Williams loosened his canvas shoes and saw the scabs where the thorns had torn him. Beyond the frosted-glass door on the other side of the newsroom the Indian was putting tools meticulously into a holdall.
Williams stood. ‘There wouldn’t have been much of a chance of changing anything on the island. Those bastards are there to stay.’ But Jones seemed to hear nothing. Williams locked up the bottle of siddiqi in a drawer of his desk. ‘I’ll warn the night watchman. You might give him a fright. Not that he stirs from his bunk.’ He could not make out if Jones was drunk or senile.
He left the door of his cubicle ajar and a light on over the Sports Desk. ‘Get some sleep, Gran,’ he called, as he accompanied the mechanic down the stairs.
Get some sleep, Gran.
And if we hurry now – as hurry we must – to enter Jones’s sleeping mind, we find him transported back a quarter-century to that very first interview with the Emir on his third day ever on the island, and for reasons that belong to the preceding night, he has entered the palace in immortal rapture. He has a notebook open on his knee, but is not writing in it.
The two men are seated across the corner of the great chandeliered chamber, newly finished (that same chamber where, only yesterday, Hatim the son received the aged Jones in unwanted audience).
And now the Emir is saying, ‘You appear to have learned very much about our country during a short visit, Mr Jonas.’ The Emir’s Arab accent is throaty and strong.
‘It’s an impression we like to give,’ Jones tells him. ‘Ours is a grasshopper profession.’
‘Grasshopper?’ The Emir smiles and makes a hopping motion with his hand.
‘Grasshopper . . . butterfly . . . Sir Geoffrey Burton has briefed me well. Miss Romy has driven me around. Including to her archaeological site.’
‘Ah, yes. Miss Romy is giving us a long history.’ A marked rapport has flowered between the two men, even in this brief hour or so of their first meeting. In this, Romy has played a critical part – that she should have accepted Jones, she who to the Emir was everything pure, deep-trusting; for he has known her since she was a child and saw her slip quietly into the place her mother left, succouring the Wazir with the clear wisdom of childhood. The Emir has learned of this acceptance of Jones from the tone of his voice as he spoke of her, for he has already brought her into their talk several times. But now the Emir introduces a jarring note. ‘Please, Mr Jonas, to prevent the mistakes, I request to read what you write before you will send it to your newspaper.’
‘I feared Your Highness was going to ask such a thing.’
‘Thair-fore?’ All at once Jones perceives the Emir is an old man; he is only assuming middle age in a mutual pretence that Jones is a newcomer, for the sake of this re-enactment.
‘Therefore I would prefer that you trusted me,’ Jones replies.
‘This is our country, Mr Jonas,’ the Emir returns sharply, though this sharpness, too, is put on. ‘Usually, I do not receive journalists. We do not permit the journalists to make the visits.’
‘I’m honoured that you should see me, Highness.’ Jones counters his bluff with courtly charm. ‘It will help me write the truth about your country.’
The Emir regards him haughtily.
‘I have been a newspaper reporter all my life,’ Jones resumes. ‘I don’t remember a time when I was not a newspaper re
porter. It’s the only thing I know how to do. I grew up in the old school and the old school in Fleet Street where our newspapers are printed has a saying, “Facts are sacred.”’
‘Sacred?’
‘Holy.’
‘Then you may show me what you write.’
‘Supposing I show you my dispatch, Highness. You will read it, and you will say, “Mr Jones, you haven’t written this and you haven’t written that. There are important benefits I have brought to my people. On the other hand, you have written this and that which will not help my people.” I have to say to you, “You have the task of capturing the love of your people, and I have the task of capturing the love of my readers.” It’s unlikely these tasks will match each other.’
The Emir makes a wry face. ‘The love . . .’
It is the proper word, Jones knows. ‘Certain countries,’ he tells the Emir, ‘have forbidden me to return, because I have written the truth and the truth has hurt.’
‘ “The pen is more strong than the sword.” Correct, Mr Jonas?’
‘And rumour and hearsay are more dangerous than the facts. Your enemies will write about your country whether they have access to the truth or not. They are not interested in the truth: they are interested in power.’
The Emir’s knee has begun to jiggle up and down. ‘The young Mr Fuad Al-Bakr,’ he says suddenly, giving Jones a narrow look: ‘What is your judgment?’
‘I have not met him.’
‘But you have heard.’
‘He wants to be Emir, Your Highness.’
‘And so?’
‘He was born into the wrong family for that.’
Jones knows that at this first meeting he has struck just the right note. Henceforth, all that passes between them is infused with rapturous humour.
‘Look at me carefully, Jonas.’
Jones looks.
‘You will observe, my beard is not coloured.’ It is quite white, Jones sees with surprise. ‘You know’ – the Emir strokes his jaw, where the old scar shows – ‘for fifteen years this is the colour.’
‘I would never have imagined, Highness.’
‘You are lying, Jonas. You knew well it has been truly white for many years.’
Jones returns a look of exaggerated seriousness.
‘But you have never informed your readers,’ the Emir continues.
‘I have not indeed.’
‘But it is a fact, Jonas! Sacred – correct? So now I wish you to inform them. That for fifteen years it is this white. I do not wish any man to think that our trouble turned my beard to white. Perhaps I shall make it black again. I think not, however. Now is time to be an old man. Is it not time also for you?’
‘I am well known to be extremely old,’ Jones agrees, for all pretence is shed. ‘It’s my characteristic.’
‘So I see, Jonas. Even two legs are no longer enough; you must have a third.’ (Jones has acquired a walking-stick.) ‘Even so, when you require to be a young man, you run about, you cross the sea, take the risks. Why?’
‘I have to feed my parrot, Highness.’
Jones knows that the Emir finds his answer very witty. They are full of devotion for one another and there is great joy in their ancient comradeship that Romy Burton has blessed. Yet only the slightest of smiles lights his friend’s beaked face.
‘Your parrot? Is that what old men require to do – to feed the parrot? I must make a note.’ The suppressed hilarity persists. ‘Soon, before long, I shall retire. When my son is married, I think, then I will begin to “feed the parrot”.’
‘Which son?’ Jones is suddenly curious.
‘My son Hatim. Tomorrow I will announce his appointment as Heir Apparent. The boy needs experience. The ulema have agreed. You may send this decision to your newspaper today. I do not expect the people in England, in the West, to understand. Perhaps you can make an explanation for them. “The Red Prince” I believe they named him in certain newspapers. It is their privilege. It is also the privilege of the young to change from colour to colour . . . Now, Jonas. We old men have few desires. I ask you: you wish to remain here on our island?’
‘Your Highness permitting.’
‘It is permitted. And your house – does it satisfy?’
‘Yes.’
‘There will be repair. Our contractor will visit you. I have been speaking to your neighbour, Suleiman bin Abdullah. He has arranged that you shall not pay the rent. The rent is finished, khalas! Moreover, you also have sons? Two, three?’
‘I do not deserve,’ Jones says. But the Emir’s face has begun to shine, indeed the whole chamber seems transfigured and to hold promise of overwhelming love. ‘I do not deserve, I do not deserve,’ Jones can hear himself repeating.
8
As Jones dreamed that night in Williams’s cubicle, Sandy McCulloch and Lou Rivers are at work by torchlight on the premises of another small newspaper, that which McCulloch edits on the island across the straits. The machine which occupies them is identical to that which the Indian mechanic has repeatedly dismantled and reassembled in Williams’s newsroom on the mainland.
The two men converse in whispers, and as little as possible, for they can hear from a floor above them the erratic sounds and spurts of chatter of the detachment of soldiery that the usurpers have detailed to garrison the newspaper’s office. McCulloch, for his part, is doing this against his better judgment, for as he has pointed out, what is the value to any of Associated Press’s client newspapers of a piece of facsimile Arabic handwriting with a caption giving a translation and adding merely that ‘supporters of the deposed Emir are claiming that the message is genuine’? McCulloch has only consented to this escapade because he feels himself protected, by association, by the fame of ‘The World This Week’ and the ultimate inviolability of the British media.
He switches on. ‘Let’s have it, then, Lou.’
Rivers hands across his photostat. McCulloch fits it over the drum of the machine and dials the 14-digit number. He presses the button: instantly the drum begins to revolve.
McCulloch throws a plastic typewriter cover over the machine to muffle its humming and regular clicking. He glances at Rivers and catches his grin. Rivers whispers, ‘That’ll take the smile off young Prince Hatim and his funny friend.’
‘AP may push it out,’ McCulloch replies, ‘but what newspaper will treat it as significant?’
‘Look, Sandy,’ Rivers says, so close that McCulloch gets a whiff of his excitation, ‘when I went into this business, someone told me: If they give you a sheet of ruled paper, write the other way.’
Upstairs, a sudden burst of laughter, then violent clumping.
Dreams, it is said, even those of great complexity and extended narrative and prescience too, occur in a trice. By the same token, relatively tiny occurrences bear within them a whole train of preceding events and consequences. The occurrence later that night in Williams’s – nothing more than the telex machine coming spontaneously to life, as telex machines do, and issuing forth on its roller a message of less than twenty words:
ATTN GRANVILLE JONES
CONGRATS SUPERB EXCLUSIVE. PAGE ONE LEAD 25 INCHES PLUS PHOTO OF EMIR’S MESSAGE RECEIVED VIA AGENCY.
REGARDS EDITOR
Jones would have guessed the events it implied. It meant that through the deceit of Suleiman and his son a copy of the Emir’s repudiation had reached the whippersnappers and one of them had succeeded in transmitting it to a news agency, which had in turn disseminated it to clients. And in the Post’s newsroom quite late that night – between the second and third editions – the Night News Editor would have telephoned the Editor at home or at dinner somewhere and the decision would have been rapidly taken to remake page one for the last two print runs, the big ones. The Chief Sub would have whipped Jones’s copy, already set, off its spike and redrawn the front page on a layout sheet with a wax pencil with remarkable swiftness – thirty seconds or so – making a double column space for his facsimile handwritten Arabic message. For n
one of the opposition would have old Jones’s story: it was too late for them to catch up now: with the Emir’s message as authentication, it was a major Post exclusive. And it would immediately affect the interpretation of the coup in the major Western capitals.
Could Jones actually have known of this? There are certain clues.
The old man must have stirred in his sleep that night, perhaps feeling cold from the air conditioning. For he pulled out copies of Williams’s newspaper from the little heap that formed his pillow, and awkwardly distributed them over his legs and body.
There is the following further evidence, however, that he woke fully.
At the dawn call to prayer, the night-watchman stirred himself. Williams had warned him the previous evening of the Inglisi asleep upstairs. He entered the little newsroom quietly and saw beyond the door into Williams’s cubicle the feet in their loosened shoes and the scabbed ankles. The watchman put his head round this door, and there he was, an old man nested among newspapers up to his face. He attempts to rouse him with a cough, for he would bring him sweet tea. The head is tilted away but the eyes begin to tell him, since they are open, and perhaps open on nothing. When he lifts one of the Inglisi’s long legs and it resists with the resistance not of will but of matter, he cannot doubt further: the intrusion here upon his premises is more than that of an old stranger and the sleep longer than any night’s. Then he sees the brief telex message, already quoted, gripped in the dead man’s mottled hand. The thought occurs to him, Could it have been bad news that killed him?
The following morning – that is, the Tuesday – Carew of Reuters crossed the foyer of the Darwish Hotel carrying a copy of the Morning Post, dated the previous day and just flown in from London. Guests conferred excitedly in knots. No soldiers were in evidence now.
‘Hey, Shaun!’ It was Rivers accosting him, with Mick and Phil in attendance, loaded with their filming and sound recording gear. ‘What’s the latest?’
Carew frowned. It was time, he felt, for Rivers to gather some news on his own account instead of milking it from other journalists.
‘Do I hear Al-Bakr’s scarpered?’