The White Father (26 page)

“Sammy Sweet,” said Martin, wonderingly. “That’s a good name.”

“The choice,” said Bray, “was Mr Brachs’s own. He wants you to listen carefully to Sammy Sweet as he sang the Sway at his audition this morning. He was reading it for the first time, remember. He had never seen the music before. Mr Brachs is much impressed with Sammy Sweet’s vigorous delivery.”

Bray pressed a switch and Edward Gilchrist’s voice came bawling over the television. Martin listened to it with an
expression of enthusiasm, trying to cover his amazement. Bray’s face remained impassive.

“Mr Brachs wishes you to engage Sammy Sweet for a recording session as soon as possible. He is not, however, to know that it is anything more than a test-recording. He is not to know that his name is now Sammy Sweet. He is not to be given any indication of the way we are thinking. Mr Brachs wishes you to remember that there may be other and better Sammy Sweets.”

“Yes, Mr Bray.”

“Mr Brachs is putting you in sole charge of the development and exploitation of the Sway, Mr Martin. You are to have a free hand. You may use what advertising resources you wish. The Brachs empire is at your service. Special consultants on clothing and hair-styling will be attached to your staff. You may choose your subordinates from anywhere within
Champney
, Morrison, Dulake. If you wish for outside help, you may obtain it, after the customary clearance through the personnel department.”

“Thank you,” stammered Martin. He was overwhelmed. “Thank you very much indeed.”

“I will convey your thanks to Mr Brachs,” said Bray. “Mr Brachs wished me to remind you that he will be taking a personal interest in every aspect of the development of the Sway.”

“I shan’t forget it,” said Martin.

“Mr Brachs says that he hopes he will not have to consult with you too frequently, but that you are to feel free to seek his advice at any time, through me.”

“I am most grateful.”

“Good day, then, Mr. Martin. Mr Brachs wishes me to extend you his congratulations on your new appointment. It is a pleasure to add my own.”

“Thank you, Mr Bray. Please tell Mr Brachs that I feel deeply honoured.”

“Good day.”

The picture vanished from the set. Fred Martin mopped his
brow. Then he jumped up from his chair and strode to the window. It had stopped raining, and a watery sun spattered yellow light across wave after wave of roofs. Martin swelled his chest. His big chance had come at last.

*

Although he wasn’t feeling really ill, Shrieve decided not to go to Mallory’s.

“I just don’t feel like it,” he said to Edward, and he
telephoned
Mallory to say he was in bed.

Mallory was almost unnecessarily solicitous. “Have you seen a doctor?” he said. “We don’t want you coming down with anything, do we?”

“I shall be all right tomorrow. I just feel as though my head is full of old nails and boots and things. It’s always like this the first day of a cold. It’ll go away in the night and I shall be all right tomorrow morning—just snuffling like anyone else.”

“If you need a doctor, don’t hesitate to ring me,” said Mallory. “Don’t just go to the nearest quack. I know a really first-class man.”

“Thank you,” said Shrieve. “Shall I send Edward round?”

“Edward? Oh, your young man. Yes, do. I’m up to my ears as usual with work. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind taking the signatures round to
The
Times
for me.”

Shrieve winked at Edward and said, “Oh, I’m sure he’d be pleased to do so. He’s always complaining at not having enough to do.”

Edward made a face.

When Shrieve had finished his conversation, he put down the phone and said, “I knew you’d be pleased. Off you go, now.”

“Damn it,” said Edward, “some people get paid for being messenger boys.” He fussed briefly with Shrieve’s bed, tidying it, made him some tea, and left.

When he reached Davies Street, Mallory was affably offhand as they waited for the post.

“We’ve really done most awfully well,” he said. “Seventeen out of twenty. That’s eighty-five per cent. Of course, it’s not a
very controversial matter, but I wasn’t honestly counting on more than fifteen. This should make the Africans think.”

“I hope so,” said Edward. “And the British, too.”

“Of course. They’re so bland, our people. Charming, but bland.” He seemed to like the word.

“It’s been quite fun, anyway,” said Clive Carver.

“Oh, fun!” Mallory shrugged broadly. “Yes, it
is
fun in a way, of course.” He wrinkled up his eyes, conscious of his age and importance before the two young men. “And thank God for that, it would be impossible otherwise.”

The post arrived, a butler bringing it on a silver tray. There was a further signature, and a card announcing that the remaining one they wanted was on holiday with its owner and wouldn’t be back until October.

“Eighteen!” said Carver. “That’s wonderful, really
wonderful
.”

“Not at all bad,” said Mallory. “But how stupid of me not to remember that Paddy Murchison’s gone to Japan. You should have reminded me, Clive.”

“I’m sorry, Patrick. It
was
my fault. But we’ve got eighteen all the same. I’d have thought that was enough for the Ngulu.”

“Oh yes, we’ve done very well. Really very well.” Mallory rubbed his hands. “I wonder if we mightn’t have made the letter just a little bit stronger after all, you know. Never mind. I’ll just write a brief note to go with all the signatures, Gilchrist, and then you can take them round. They’re expecting them—all you have to do is hand them in. I sent them a copy of the letter in advance, and they said it would be perfectly all right. They even offered to send me a proof, would you believe it? I shan’t be a minute.”

He went over to the desk and began to scribble on thick writing-paper. Carver said, “If it’s not a rude question, how did you come to get involved in this business?”

Edward thought for a moment. “I met Mr Shrieve a few weeks ago, and he asked me if I’d like to help. There isn’t very much to do.”

“Oh, I see,” said Carver. He smiled knowingly. Edward
looked at him blankly. They remained for a minute in silence.

“Here you are,” said Mallory, turning round but not getting up from his desk. “Just say it’s from me, and they’ll know what it’s all about.”

Edward took the bulky envelope containing all the various copies of the letter, individually signed, and the note from Mallory.

“Do you have any idea what tube station
The
Times
is near?” he said.

Mallory and Carver looked at him in amazement.

“I should take a taxi, if I were you,” said Mallory, after a pause. “I believe the tube gets so very full of people this time of day.”

“Well, thanks a lot, then,” said Edward. He moved towards the door.

“We’ll see you at the party next week, won’t we?” said Mallory. “The party for the African delegates. It’s today week. I do hope you’ll come.”

“Thank you very much,” said Edward. “I will, yes, certainly.”

He went down the stairs and into the street, then walked, hoping they were watching him, towards the nearest tube station.

T
HE
constitutional conference opened at Lancaster House on Thursday morning. Press photographers flashed their bulbs as the delegates arrived, flashed them as they assembled round the long table, flashed them again as the Minister arrived to make his opening speech. Then the journalists were asked to leave and the conference got down to business.

While Rolls-Royces were still delivering important people to Lancaster House, Hugh Shrieve, his cold now much better, was himself conferring with Colin Hoggart of the Mallory
Foundation
. Hoggart was an energetic man of fifty-five, red-faced and bald, with a reputation for great efficiency.

“I’m extremely glad to meet you, Mr Shrieve,” he said, with a firm handshake. “I’ve heard a lot about you and your problem recently. James Weatherby was telling me all about it last night, as a matter of fact, at the club.”

Shrieve looked interested. He hadn’t seen Weatherby for over a week, though they had spoken several times on the phone. James had said he was fearfully busy, he hoped
everything
was going well, and he had no new information about what might or might not happen. He was not himself involved with the constitutional conference, of course. He had done a great deal, Shrieve had to admit, wondering if he was being ungenerous to suspect his friend of backing out. It was strange, though, not to have seen him for so long.

“I’d better begin,” said Hoggart, “by saying straight out that I don’t think there’s much we can do for you, Mr Shrieve, I’m afraid.”

“Those words are beginning to have a familiar ring.”

“No doubt. But then, there’s not much anyone can do, is there? It’s all up to this conference, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. It depends on what the conference comes up
with. I’m afraid they may issue some tiny statement saying that the Ngulu will continue to enjoy their present protected status under the new régime. Everyone will think that’s enough. But it won’t be. I had a letter this morning, as a matter of fact, which makes it quite clear that that won’t be enough.” Shrieve fished in his pocket for Mackenzie’s latest letter. “May I read you the relevant bits?”

“Just a moment,” said Hoggart. “Before we start going into detail, let me get quite clear what it is you think we may be able to do for you.”

“Well. You’re a charitable foundation with, I understand, fairly wide terms of reference. You’re not restricted to this country. You can spend your enormous income as you think fit, where you think fit. Isn’t that right?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“I don’t know,” said Shrieve, refusing to be put off, “precisely what you can do for the Ngulu. To start with, as you say, we have to wait for the conference. But what I was wondering was, roughly, whether you couldn’t perhaps make the Ngulu an object of charity—whether you couldn’t, as it were, take them on from the government.”

“That’s what you said in your letter,” said Hoggart. He hunted around in some papers, then found what he was looking for. “Yes. You thought we might be able to devise a scheme whereby we would run a protective service on roughly the present lines.”

“Yes. It’s not that the new government will make any effort to harm the Ngulu. Rather the opposite, I should think. But there’s going to be chaos and old night for the next few months in the capital, and probably for a few months after
independence
, too. God knows what they’ll want to do. They
probably
haven’t thought about it much. I should think they’d leap at any offer you made. It wouldn’t, I mean, be difficult to negotiate.”

“Perhaps not,” said Hoggart. “It would be quite
unprecedented
, of course. We’re not the Red Cross, you know.”

“Of course not. And the whole business would have to be managed with great tact. But I don’t think Bloaku would have any fundamental objection.”

“I see. I think your idea is an excellent one in many ways, Mr Shrieve. So do my fellow directors of the Foundation. But I’m afraid we simply can’t do it, much though we’d like to. We’re limited, as you’ll realise, by the trust made by our founder. We can, it’s true, stretch the terms of the trust to include the Ngulu so long as they’re under British protection. But by a singular piece of irony, we can do nothing once the British leave the colony. I’ve discussed the matter with our lawyers. They’ve done their damnedest to find a loophole in the trust. But there just isn’t one. The day the new government takes over, we can do nothing for the Ngulu. And that, of course, is the day you want us to start acting.”

“Oh,” said Shrieve, hopelessly. He hadn’t expected anything definite to come from the meeting, but he had hoped they might explore beyond a blank wall.

“What we can do, and would be glad to do,” said Hoggart, “is finance an anthropological expedition from a British, or Commonwealth, university to study your people. We can subsidise any books that might be published about them by a British or Commonwealth university press. But we can’t look after the Ngulu themselves. I wish we could. But our hands are tied.”

“But the country will remain within the Commonwealth,” said Shrieve eagerly. “Couldn’t you do something through the university there?”

“I’m sorry, I spoke inexactly. When the trust was established there was still an empire. Mr Mallory confined his benefactions to universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, ironically, South Africa. He didn’t envisage our withdrawal from Central Africa.”

“Well, that’s it, I suppose, then,” said Shrieve. “It was a pretty long shot, anyway. I just hoped—you know, one does have hopes about huge organisations like yours.”

“So many people do. You could try the big American
foundations. The Free people. Ford and Rockefeller. We’re terribly restricted by the original trust.”

“So it seems.”

“I’m very sorry about it, Shrieve,” said Hoggart. “I’d really like to do something for the Ngulu. Mallory’s conditions have proved terribly frustrating. The money pours in, and we just can’t spend it as we’d like. Most of it goes on medical research—cancer, especially. We don’t have any trouble spending it, I mean, but we do often wish we could spend it more widely.”

“It’s not a problem I’m familiar with,” said Shrieve.

Hoggart laughed. “Obviously not. We get a bit like bankers here, I’m afraid. We tend to think in terms of millions when in fact, of course, all most people want is a fiver.”

“There’s nothing you can do, then?”

“Not that will help your immediate situation, no. But I mean what I said about an anthropological study. There isn’t a really full account of the Ngulu yet, is there?”

“No. There may never be. From what I’ve just heard there may not be any Ngulu to study soon.”

Hoggart refused to be drawn into hearing whatever bad news it was Shrieve had in his pocket. “Look,” he said, “let’s keep in touch. As soon as you know definitely what the
conference
has done, or is going to do, let me know. We’ll try and fix something up then.”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Shrieve. “I was at an
anthropological
conference in Oxford last week. I’m afraid I haven’t got that proper academic detachment.”

“Of course you haven’t,” said Hoggart warmly. “But don’t be too gloomy. From what Weatherby said, you seem to have done a great deal. And that letter in yesterday’s
Times
can’t fail to do good, you know.”

“You thought it was all right?”

“Excellent. Exactly the right tone. Neither querulous nor aggressive. And a most distinguished lot of signatures. I’m sure it’ll make the conference sit up.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t see what there’s left for me to
do, except try and have the odd word with the African delegates themselves.”

“It’s been very nice talking to you,” said Hoggart, “and I’m really very sorry indeed that there’s nothing immediate we can do. But there it is. Old Mallory’s word is law.”

“Is Patrick Mallory a relative of his, do you know?”

“I think he’s a great nephew, yes. Do you know him?”

“He organised the letter to
The
Times
.”

“He’s a great one for that sort of thing, Patrick. Well, let’s get in touch at your convenience, shall we?”

“Thank you,” said Shrieve. He believed Hoggart when he said he would have liked to have done something. But there was a world of difference between well-wishing and action, between an anthropological study and saving the people to be studied. It wasn’t Hoggart’s fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. There were always trusts and conditions to excuse the failure to act. And now, in the long conference room, the future of the Ngulu was being settled by men to whom a stone-age tribe was worth a phrase or two in a complicated treaty, at most a couple of paragraphs; paragraphs which could mean the difference between extinction and survival.

He came out into the sunshine, feeling Mackenzie’s letter next to his handkerchief. Hoggart hadn’t wanted to hear it, and it couldn’t have altered the situation, anyway. No one breaks trusts for stone-age tribes.

“I’m rather worried,” Mackenzie had written, “about the general situation. Not only are the Luagabu behaving very queerly, but your Ngulu are acting out of character, too. The Luagabu in my area are disappearing for several days at a time—the men, that is—with their arms, and when they come back they spend a good deal of time huddled together. They just clam up when I try to question them. My spies report that they’re angry about what’s going on in the capital—while Bloaku’s away a lot of little dictators are shouting their heads off. Chief trouble-maker is Viniku—he’s always hated Bloaku, and he’s furious that he’s not been asked to the conference. He’s trying to get into a position of strength for when the
delegates return. He’s a Kwahi-Nuaphi, of course, and the Luagabu huddlings are probably more anti-Kwahi-Nuaphi than anti-Ngulu, but you know what the Luagabu are like—they’ll attack anyone who isn’t of the tribe when they’re feeling like it. Nothing has actually happened yet, but Robbins has given a general warning that there may be trouble when the delegates return, if not before.

“Now for the Ngulu. I don’t recall you ever saying that they went in for fetiches. But that’s exactly what they seem to be going in for at the moment. There’s a tree-stump just outside the village—you know it, of course, it’s right by the track to town. As I was driving in yesterday, I noticed there was something bright on it, so I stopped to have a look. It was a piece of coarse cloth, torn, I’d say, from a woman’s skirt. It seemed to have blood on it. There were other scraps of cloth about the place, too. I went on into the village and talked with the chiefs. They seem perfectly happy, though those calf-skins are still stinking the place out. I asked if they had any problems, and they smiled and said no. I don’t know what the gesture means, but they swung their hands back and forth in front of their private parts as I got up to leave. Is that usual? I went to see Amy next. I hadn’t asked the chiefs about the tree-stump, because it was obviously some feminine thing, and you know how bloody-minded the men get when you ask them what their women are up to. Amy looked alarmed when I mentioned it and muttered something about it not being right. She wouldn’t say, though, what wasn’t right about it, or what it was. She seemed well, and asked anxiously after you. I gave her a summary of your news, such as would interest her, and she nodded and said I was to tell you she hoped you were keeping well and eating properly. I said I thought you were probably all right. Her girl was there, too, with your little Tom, both in splendid health. But when I asked about the tree-stump, Amy made Dayu go out of the room.

“All this makes me suspect that the blood on the rags is menstrual blood, and some kind of fertility nonsense is going on. I hope that’s as should be. I had another look at the stump
on my way home—I couldn’t stay long, with the Luagabu up to their tricks—and noticed bits of hair (probably pubic hair) on the bark. It looked, to be frank, as though women had been rubbing themselves against it. It’s a common enough practice, of course, but I don’t remember you ever saying anything about it. The general atmosphere of the village was happy enough, though, apart from that rather sad gesture the chiefs made at me as I left. Does it mean anything in particular? Your people are really so very different from mine. I tried to explain that you were doing great things on their behalf, and they smiled and nodded at your name, so they haven’t forgotten you yet, you’ll be glad to hear.

“How goes it in London? The conference will have started by the time you get this. There’s an air of subdued confidence in the capital—people seem to think there won’t be too much trouble. The Luagabu mutterings are worrying, though. The thing is that Bloaku’s such a strong personality that he’s managed to unite a great many disparate elements. But when he’s away the unity cracks, and local chiefs rush to assert themselves. The big man in my area is being a confounded nuisance. He’s eighty, and claims to remember the days before the British came—quite untrue, of course, but it gives him considerable stature just to tell such a whopping lie. He’s too bloody clever, that’s my problem. His son was at the London School of Economics and is itching to take over. He’s always talking about ‘négritude’, and now the father’s picked up the word and uses it all the time to defend the indefensible. When I remonstrate about something, he says ‘It’s part of our heritage of négritude’, and grins happily. But I think it’ll all be O.K. The old men are playing while Bloaku’s away, but they’ll shut up again when he comes back. At least I hope so.”

Mackenzie concluded with a page about local affairs, of little interest to Shrieve, who had never taken any part in such attenuated social life as existed in the area. But he was deeply worried by the Luagabu’s mutterings and very puzzled by the tree-stump, rags and hair. There was an elaborate Ngulu ceremony for pubescent girls, but it involved no tree-stump
and no fetichism. The stump in question was, in any case, fairly new. The tree had been cut down three years ago to provide wood for repairs to Shrieve’s bungalow. There couldn’t be any ancient superstition attached to it. It was possible, of course, that any stump more than a few months old might be taken by the Ngulu to be a very ancient stump indeed, what with their notion of time and lack of interest in the past. But it was most unlikely, and besides, there was no precedent for the women to practise fertility rites of that kind. It was true, as Mackenzie said, that women rubbed themselves against various objects from Tangier to the Cape of Good Hope, and probably in Europe, too, where superstition was supposed to have been conquered. But the Ngulu women had never, to Shrieve’s knowledge, gone in for it. Nor had the other officers in charge of them ever mentioned anything of the sort.