BRIAN ALDISS

The Male Response

Copyright

HarperVoyager an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

First published in Great Britain by Dennis Dobson 1963

Copyright © Brian Aldiss 2015

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Brian Aldiss asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007482382

Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780007482399

Version: 2015-08-28

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

PART ONE: Dark

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

PART TWO: Darker

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

PART THREE: Darkest Africa

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

About the Author

Also by Brian Aldiss

About the Publisher

Introduction

‘To travel is to discover everyone is wrong’

Aldous Huxley

I should like to thank the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose invaluable articles on ‘Africa’, ‘Computing Machines’ and ‘Sex’ I consulted before daring to attempt this story. My chapter headings are quotations from the ‘Ode to Autumn’, by John Keats, to whom I would also have liked to offer thanks.

For advice on the contents of this novel I communicated with celebrated author Aldous Huxley, then living on the western shores of the U.S.A., whose responses proved very helpful.

Brian W. Aldiss

Oxford, 2015

PART ONE

Chapter One

‘… borne aloft or sinking …’

‘Of course, if they had had any sense they’d have routed us via Cairo,’ the engineer from Birmingham said.

This is the miracle of our age: that one may be borne swiftly and smoothly along in winged luxury, constantly fed and reassured, while underneath one unrolls the great viridian mat of central Africa, that territory to be flown over but never conquered, whose mysteries deepen as the rest of the world grows shallower, whose beasts and peoples breathe a secret, greener air, whose prodigality seems to make of the continent a very planet, subject to its laws and psychologies – this, I say, is the miracle, that one may be borne over all this superbity to the tune of turbo-props and notice nothing of it because of the vacuous gossip of an engineer from Birmingham.

‘I mean, Dakar just doesn’t compare with Cairo in any way,’ he added, ‘as regards amenities or anything else.’

Soames Noyes did not remember the chatty man’s name. They had been introduced rather hurriedly by Sir Roger at the Southampton airfield. Soames never remembered names upon introduction; although his thirtieth birthday was creeping up on him as surely as a tide, he was still paralysed on all meetings with people. For an instant, he would be back at his kindergarten, Miss Munnings would be conducting the Deportment Class and saying, ‘Now, when you are introduced to somebody, you stand with your feet so, left hand resting gently on the hip so, right hand extended so, and you say “How do you do?” Now, Soames, will you come out here and give the other boys and girls a demonstration?’; and little Soames would go sacrificially before them all and stick out his rump and hand in such a way that the class burst at once into derisory laughter. And in the moment it took for this splinter of memory to flush through his brain, Soames would have missed the name of the new face, even when the new face was saying, ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Noyes. Of course, managing the Midland branch of Unilateral, I’ve never come in contact with you, but we’ve all heard of you, even up in the wilds of Birmingham.’

‘How are they all in Birmingham?’ Soames asked facetiously, mainly because he guessed that this plump, grey-faced engineer would be what in the lower echelons of the firm was called ‘a good, solid Unilateral man’.

‘Fine, fine. And a lot of them a fair bit envious of your and my little trip to Darkest Africa, Mr Noyes, I don’t mind telling you.’

There were four Unilateral men on the ‘little trip’. In the seat opposite Soames and the nameless Birmingham man were two more engineers, one a cheerful type called Wally Brewer, one a quiet, wiry man called Ted Timpleton who was now white round the jaws and sat looking steadfastly away from the plane window. Soames was not a technical man; he belonged to what was spoken of as the Unilateral façade. His job was to talk charmingly and not too intelligently to Unilateral clients, to soothe away their little worries over expense-account dinners, to reassure them that Unilateral electronic computers were the best in the world, to ingratiate.

The plane contained a fifth passenger: Deal Jimpo Landor. He looked the typical African, clad in magnificent tribal costume, with one black, almost purple, arm resting nonchalantly over the back of the seat in front of him. In fact, he was an eighteen-year-old ex-public schoolboy with a manner, as Soames had already discovered, more reminiscent of a Teutonic philosopher than of the Uele warrior stock from which he came. The playing fields of Eton had made him frightfully earnest. His deep eyes were abstracted now, as if his thoughts ran ahead to his own country of Goya, which the aircraft was rapidly nearing. His father was head of Goya and would have a suitable welcome awaiting his firstborn.

The most valuable part of the pay-load lay not in the five passengers nor the pilot but in the storage compartments of the plane. There, carefully packed, crated, stencilled and numbered were the component parts of an Apostle Mk II, Unilateral’s newest, most svelte electronic computer, bound for the palace at Umbalathorp, Goya.

Six weeks had passed since Unilateral received the order for this machine. Deal Jimpo Landor had come in person to the glossy showrooms in Regent Street. To give his visit an additional touch of unreality, he was dressed in the full official regalia of a Princeling Son of the President of the Republic of Goya. Awed Regent Street assistants ushered him into the manager, Waypole’s, office, where Soames, as it happened, had dropped in for a gossip.

Having been primed for the audition by a hurried phone call from below, Waypole and Soames rose from their chairs and executed stiff bows to the gaudy new arrival.

‘You are not the owner of this firm?’ Deal Jimpo asked, when the introductions were completed and he had accepted a seat.

‘I fear not,’ Waypole said, nervously flicking a speck of pollen from his carnation. ‘I am in charge of this branch of our organisation, however, and can contact our chairman by phone, should that be necessary.’

‘I do not want to cause trouble,’ Deal Jimpo said. ‘Please do not bother the chairman yet. I am wishing to buy just one of your very best computing machines.’

‘May one ask – is it for yourself, sir?’ Waypole said.

‘No, it is for my father’s republic in Africa,’ the young negro replied. ‘In Goya, we are most progressive and have everything on Western principles without any bother from reactionaries. Perhaps you read The Times yesterday where my republic is referred to as “the black Scandinavia”. To become still more progressive we require one computer. I think my people would like best a red one.’

‘They actually are all turned out sprayed slate grey,’ Waypole said faintly, ‘but of course we can make alterations to suit customers’ requirements. Please excuse me just one moment.’ He turned to Soames, who was fighting a stubborn rearguard action to keep his face straight, and said in a low, agitated voice, ‘Soames, my dear man, for heaven’s sake go downstairs and check up if this place Goya exists. I always thought it was a painter. Unless I am mistaken, this is a practical joke being played on me by an odious fellow called Betts-Lewcombe who was on my staircase at Balliol.’

Soames returned from this quest a few minutes later and, standing behind the Princeling, made an involved gesture intended to explain to Waypole that a quick phone call to the Daily Telegraph Information Bureau had revealed Goya to exist in very fact as a small republic wedged between the Congo, the Sudan and a bit of ex-French Equatorial Africa, with a flourishing cocoa bean industry and a President called M’Grassi Landor; that it looked as if, in this instance at least, the odious Betts-Lewcombe’s name was cleared.

Enough of this signal was comprehensible to Waypole for him to gather that its opposite, the bum’s rush, had not been mimed. Casting his eye more benevolently upon Deal Jimpo, he said, ‘I have here some brochures of our various computer models; perhaps you would care to look at them at your leisure and see which you think would best suit your – er, peculiar circumstances.’

Fishing in a drawer of his desk, he produced a batch of sumptuous folders and handed them across to his visitor.

‘Thank you,’ Deal Jimpo said, opening the top folder. Inside was a colour photo of a smartly uniformed young lady pointing smilingly at the bulk of an Apostle Mk II.

‘I will take this one,’ Deal Jimpo said definitely, planting his thumb on the machine.

‘Er, that,’ said Waypole, smiling as if in the throes of gastroenteritis, and nobly giving the stranger a chance to change his mind, ‘is the star member of the entire range of our machines and is only just in full production. We have sold it to Edinburgh, Harwell and the Air Ministry, but so far our only clients overseas are the Saga Uns people in Hamburg and the Sûreté. Its basic price is £400,500.’

‘It sounds as if it should be very suitable for Umbalathorp, thank you,’ Deal Jimpo said gravely. ‘I will write you a cheque now but I shall not require the machine until tomorrow.’

The edges of Waypole’s carnation curled. He slumped slightly in his chair.

‘There may be a slight delay in delivery,’ he said, a wave of emotion rippling on his voice.

‘Of course – for the red painting,’ Deal Jimpo agreed. ‘Well, no hurry at all. I do not sail for home yet for two days.’

It was at this moment that Waypole caught sight of Soames frozen in a column of silent laughter behind the Princeling. His air of distraction relaxed, washed away by a peevish grin. Some of the rough edge which had won him the manager’s chair began to show.

‘You must allow us to make the delivery for you,’ he said, carefully choosing his tone so as to show Deal Jimpo only its silk glove and Soames only the iron hand within it. ‘We shall be delighted to fly the Apostle out to Umbalathorp (do I have it correctly?), and our liaison man here, Mr Noyes, will go with it, so that any little difficulties or misunderstandings which may arise can be dealt with on the spot.’

And that was how it had all begun.

‘Well, I don’t know about you, Mr Noyes, but I shall be glad to get out and stretch my legs,’ the Birmingham man said.

‘Same here,’ agreed Soames. It was a phrase he never used.

‘I wonder what sort of a place this Umbalathorp is?’ the Birmingham man wondered, and then – sagely guessing just how worthwhile any answer of Soames’ would be – he turned round and called to Deal Jimpo, ‘What sort of a place is this Umbalathorp we’re getting to, Prince Landor?’

His voice implied that he might have been requesting information on the nearest brothel from a street tout, but Deal Jimpo replied equably enough.

‘Umbalathorp is the capital of Goya. It is a healthy city without much sickness. Everyone is progressive in outlook and content in spirit. It has a railway which may perhaps one day connect it up to other cities. Its population is ten thousand and rising rapidly.’

‘All natives, I suppose,’ the Birmingham man said flatly.

‘All natives of Umbalathorp,’ said Deal Jimpo with equal flatness. The remark completely won over Soames, who felt a new eagerness to investigate this curious little jungle republic; he had already begun to like Deal Jimpo.

The Birmingham man was not snubbed. Giving Soames a dirty wink, he remarked, ‘I hope the native women aren’t tabu, Prince, anyhow.’

Deal Jimpo did not smile.

‘You will find our standards equal to Western standards,’ he said. ‘Which means promiscuity among the females. Morality was higher under the old tribal customs, that must be admitted.’

‘After you with the old tribal customs!’ exclaimed the Birmingham man, slapping his hands together and making succulent smacking noises in his cheek. He dug Soames in the ribs. ‘Ever tried a bit of the old tribal customs?’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘I had an Arab bint once during the last war. Talk about strong! She got her legs wrapped round me and dug her heels in the small of my back like a human nutcracker. Scared me stiff at first, it did – I was only a youngster in those days.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Soames, feeling enthusiasm was required of him. The Birmingham man was goaded into fresh revelations, so that Wally Brewer and Timpleton leant over to catch what he was saying.

‘I knew a good thing when I found it,’ the engineer boasted. ‘Ah! I was back round there again next evening. “Dig your heels in again, missis,” I said. And she did. Strewth! We’ll be okay if they’re like that in this Umbalathorp, I tell you. She was a nice little bit, that Arab bint. They shave off their pubic hairs before marriage, you know.’

This anthropological detail reminded Brewer of something he had heard.

‘A lot of these African women slap goat dung on it to improve the sensation,’ he said. ‘It’s like using curry powder with meat.’

It was Timpleton’s turn to chip in.

‘You haven’t lived till you’ve had an Italian girl,’ he said.

‘Japanese,’ Brewer contradicted firmly. ‘Japanese. Nothing like a little Jap girl – up to all the tricks, they are, taught about it from the nursery. When we set up that computer in Yokohama last year …’ He guffawed to show that the sentence could not be completed in words, not even over the wilds of Africa.

‘Just let us loose in Umbalathorp, that’s all I say,’ Timpleton remarked.

Soames said nothing. He could not casually reveal his sexual experiences in this way – not that he had ever felt anything so exotic as an Arabian heel grip in the small of his back. Obviously it was time he asserted himself.

Ignoring the chatter of the other men, he fell into a reverie. Now or never, presumably, was his chance to break the bonds of his confounded reserve, to leap free from the constraints of a cold temperament and climate. On this trip he would prove himself a man or die in the attempt.

Sexual fantasies surged through his mind. Massive thighs opened up before him, pair after pair, like doors down a Versailles corridor. Soames went through them all, unruffled, laughingly denigrating his own prowess. The tenth woman, who could speak a little English, cried aloud for mercy.

‘Mercy!’ exclaimed fantasy-Soames. ‘My good woman, this is only a dress rehearsal.’

‘But I cannot exhaust you. You are a Casanova among men.’

‘Nonsense, chicken. It’s just – well, I’m a branch of a lusty family.’

‘Branch, sir? This thing, it is more like a trunk!’

‘It happens to be a prominent feature in the Noyes family, that’s all.’ And as he left, tossing a few dollars negligently to the bowing and awe-struck proprietress, he called over one shoulder. ‘Try and find some fresh girls for me tomorrow night, madame – something with a little fire in it.’

The madame was weeping, trying to give him his money back.

‘Please do not come here again, sir,’ she pleaded. ‘You wear out all my best girls.’

But the girls were protesting to her, begging to be allowed to lie with Soames just once more.

‘All a beautiful dream,’ Soames told himself, sighing heavily.

He glanced out of the window to see if there was any break in the tousled green carpet beneath them. The plane was lurching in rather an un-English manner as if investigating a new way of coping with turbulence. This might have been either because they were flying over a range of mountains or because half of one wing was trying to detach itself from the plane.

This latter phenomenon riveted Soames’ attention. He no longer felt capable of joining in the small talk about him, which had now turned to the possibilities of hunting in Goya. Instead, he gazed sickly at the wing. It was making the leisurely flapping movements of an old pterodactyl; a girder inside the leading edge must have snapped even as Soames looked, for the flapping became abruptly more pronounced. The pterodactyl had sighted food.

Soames was petrified – not by fear but by a less wholesome emotion. He was the son of a doggedly timid father and an assertive mother, and the war between his parents had been perpetuated in him. Now the urge to stand up and do something useful was quenched by a conflicting urge which said to him, ‘Think what a fool you would look if you walked through into the pilot’s cabin, tapped him on the shoulder and announced “one wing’s coming off, pilot” – and he turned round and said, “Yes, I know; mind your own business”.’

The Birmingham man and Wally Brewer were discussing the rival attractions of football and game-hunting with Deal Jimpo. Ted Timpleton stared whitely ahead like an actor whose lines had gone from him for the night – the first night. The sedate flapping of the wing had changed now, changed into an angry shaking, as if the cargo plane were an animal just waking to the hideous injustice of having to carry humans in its digestive tract.

Breaking at last from his trance, Soames stood up. As he did so, the loudspeaker in the cabin broke into life and the pilot’s voice said harshly, ‘I’m going down for an emergency landing. We’ve developed a fault. Strap on your safety belts and sit tight, all of you. No need to panic.’

‘What the hell’s the matter?’ the Birmingham man asked. ‘Do you think we ought to see if we can give him a hand, Mr Noyes?’

‘We’re going to crash!’ Timpleton said, standing up. ‘My wife warned me …’

‘Sit down at once, and do as the pilot says,’ Deal Jimpo said, loudly and firmly.

Both Timpleton and Noyes, rather to the latter’s annoyance, at once obeyed the command.

‘Bugger that, I’m going to see if I can help the pilot,’ the Birmingham man said, running forward and disappearing through the connecting door into the cabin. They were diving now, the turbulent green lurching up uninvitingly to meet them, the plane bucking as it set its nose down. A small suitcase of the Princeling’s shot out of a luggage rack and scuttled down the gangway after the Birmingham man.

‘Oh my God,’ Timpleton said. ‘Now we’re for it, Mr Noyes.’

‘N-nonsense,’ Soames replied with an attempt at a joke, ‘the pilot knows the Apostle is too valuable a cargo to damage.’

Long afterwards, he recalled with surprise how loudly Deal Jimpo and Wally Brewer laughed at his remark; and even in the face of what might conceivably be death-in-a-veil, he found himself resolving to try and make more jokes in future. Then Wally caught his eye, winked broadly to indicate that this was for the abject Timpleton’s amusement, and began to sing ‘Abide With Me’.

The noise in the cabin was so deafening that they could scarcely hear him. The earth which from the serenity of a few thousand feet up had looked as smooth and inviting as an electric blanket, now revealed itself in its true colours: a savage, Jurassic world of broken hill and valley, loaded with rivers and trees. Space in which to land was absolutely nonexistent. Uneasily, queasily, Soames tensed himself for the fatal shock. Just through the window, the wing was a giant fist shaken at him. It sounded like a madman’s banging on shutters.

Now they seemed to be clipping the tree tops. Startled giraffes broke through a tiny clearing and galloped beneath them. The suitcase was shuffling its way back up the gangway.

Four passengers with dry, open mouths sat clutching seat-backs. Their flight was so bumpy they might have been leaping from tree top to tree top. Wally Brewer’s oil-coated hair flapped up and down on his head.

‘We’re going too fast,’ Soames whispered.

Abruptly the jungle stopped. A sea of grass rushed beneath them. The plane dropped towards it. Now they staggered in for a landing, forest fringing them on either side, more rising up like a wave a mile ahead. It had to be now or never.

Their wheels touched the ground. A mighty hissing, a boiling sea of grass-noise, rose round them. And in that instant the loose wing struck the flowing earth.

With a crescendo of noise, the plane was flung round off its course, pitched back into the air, hurled on to one shoulder.

Timpleton screamed and somersaulted across the gangway. He had not buckled his safety belt properly.

A mighty mvule, outrageous, irresistible, spread out its branches to them. Foliage slashed across their windows. With a last heave, the body of the plane struck something solid. Everything in the universe rattled.

Maniac sound, maniac silence.

Chapter Two

‘… whoever seeks abroad …’

The men and dwarfs seemed to be carrying an ocean liner, which was made of rubber and only semi-inflated, so that it flopped about as they dragged it up Everest.

Soames jerked out of his dream and opened one eye.

‘Yes, I’m inside the liner,’ he thought. ‘It’s clear to me now. It’s not made of rubber; it’s made of grey plastic and filled with special grey air …’

His mind cleared. He squeezed his eyes, opened them both, took a deep breath, roused, remembered.

He was still strapped in his seat. He was lying on his back, for the plane had come to rest with its nose high in the air, standing like a tower among a tangle of branches.

All Soames could do for some while was stare stupidly straight above him at the pilot’s door, some feet over his head. He was exceedingly cold. It occurred to him that the grey light was the light of early dawn. They had crashed at about six, or perhaps an hour before sunset; he had been unconscious for some twelve hours. He was too numb to attempt to check this observation by lifting his arm and looking at his wrist watch.

Instead, he turned his attention to the other passengers. Over to his right lay Wally Brewer, in a position much like Soames’ own, except that his head was twisted backwards in such a ghastly fashion as to make it obvious even to Soames – a tyro in such matters – that his neck was broken and he was dead. The grey light, filtering through the leaves, pressed against the windows, lingered complacently on Wally’s staring eyes.

There was no sign of Ted Timpleton.

Twisting himself round with an effort, Soames looked backwards and down to where Deal Jimpo Landor had sat. There was no sign of him either.

He wondered how the pilot and the Birmingham man had fared, but there seemed no possible way of getting up to them in the forward compartment. As he stared rather dreamily upwards, the communicating door opened slightly and a head was poked into the cabin; it wore the flamboyant bushwacker hat the Birmingham man had deemed appropriate for the journey.

Soames was about to shout out to him when he recalled he did not know the man’s name (Duncan? Dobson? Hobson? Hobhouse?); again absurd inhibitions overcame him and silenced him. And now the head turned, allowing Soames a glimpse of gleaming teeth and a hairy shoulder.

Just for a startled second, horror invaded Soames. Was the Birmingham man a werewolf? Had the crash released lycanthropic tendencies in him?

Then a grinning chimpanzee, still wearing the bushwacker hat, launched itself into the cabin, swinging down from seat to seat with all the trained abandon of a Palladium act.

‘Shoo!’ Soames said with appropriate force.

Startled, the chimpanzee shed its headgear and beat a retreat back into the pilot’s compartment.

Thoroughly roused, Soames undid his safety belt and set about climbing out of the wrecked plane.

He swung down the seats in a clumsy imitation of the chimpanzee and reached the door, which had been broken open by the force of the crash. Looking out, he found himself some forty feet above ground level. The plane was standing on its tail against a giant tree whose damaged branches seemed to extend like broken tusks all round the fuselage, piercing it in some places.

Unexpected elation coursed through Soames. He was alive! He was romantically in the mysterious heart of Africa. Life was suddenly something worth a hearty cheer. He took a grateful breath of morning air, and found it smelt much like eggs and bacon.

There was no exit for him this way. He jumped down on to what had been the rear wall of the cabin and lowered himself through the door, now hanging open, into the rear of the plane.

Passing the little galley and toilets, he climbed down through another open door into the cargo hold. Here, all the crates containing the component parts of the Apostle Mk II looked still to be in position and unharmed; thanks to careful packing, they had not budged an inch. Working his way carefully down them, Soames reached the cargo hatch. It gaped open, and a steel ladder extended from it down some fifteen feet to the ground.

Descending the ladder, pushing through twigs and leaves, Soames could see that the crumpled expanse of tail plane acted as a pedestal for the wreck. He reached ground and there, a few feet away, Ted Timpleton, sleeves rolled up, was frying eggs and bacon over a stove.

Directly he saw Soames, he came running up, throwing out his arms and clutching Soames’ hands.

‘Oh, Soames,’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you! Oh, what a ruddy relief; I quite thought you had had your lot. You’ve not a clue how terrible it felt here – the only white man …’

With Soames’ anger that this little man should have crept out of the plane without, apparently, attempting to help any of his fellows, went a detached interest in the sudden use of his own Christian name, with all the camaraderie in the face of danger it implied; then these sensations were banished by a more urgent one which rose conquering from the pit of the stomach.

‘Is breakfast ready?’ Soames asked.

In the frying pan, deliciously, joyously, six eggs sparkled and wallowed like suns in the lively fat; close by, waiting to welcome them when they were cooked, stood two plates already loaded with crisp bacon and gleaming rounds of potatoes. A groan escaped Soames’ lips.

Even as he wondered if Timpleton had been intending to eat all this glorious food himself, Soames caught sight of Deal Jimpo propped with his back against the bole of a tree a few feet away. The young negro was covered by a rug; his eyes were closed, he breathed heavily.

‘I had a dickens of a job getting His Highness out of the plane,’ Timpleton said. ‘Nearly broke my back. Of course, it was dark when I came to, and that didn’t make things any easier. He was already conscious and groaning like a boat. I got to him and brought him down here somehow. Then I fixed his leg up in splints. He’s broken it badly. Funny a big chap like that should get his leg smashed up and here’s these eggs with their shells not even cracked.’

‘You did jolly well, Ted,’ Soames said warmly.

‘I don’t know. I was in the Navy in the war.’ The word of praise embarrassed him. He gestured awkwardly at the sleeping man and said, ‘We’ll wake old Jimpo up now and give him a plate of grub. He’ll feel twice the man. I got some coffee out the galley, too.’

He squatted by the stove, slightly smiling, a little wiry Londoner turning grey above the ears, conscious of Soames’ eager looks. Producing a third plate he put the eggs, now done to a turn, two on each plate and shovelled bacon and potato beside them until the plates were equally loaded. He produced knives and forks from a box and handed a pair to Soames.

‘Eating irons coming up,’ he exclaimed. ‘Blast! Forgot the salt! We’ll have to rough it this time. I can’t climb back up there again till I’ve had my grub.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Soames, and before Timpleton could get over to the sleeping man he had begun the attack on his plate.

After coffee, all three of them felt much better. Jimpo, as both the white men had instinctively dropped into the habit of calling him, bore the pain in his leg stoically and assumed command of the party, to Soames’ secret relief.

For the first time, Soames had an inclination to look round. They were at the bottom of a thickly forested slope, among whose branches monkeys chattered. The open ground before them was churned by the crash landing and littered with small branches. Two hundred yards away, forlorn and innocent now, lay the culprit length of wing.

‘One of you must climb to the nose of the aeroplane and see if the two men there are alive,’ Jimpo said. ‘That is first essential.’

‘I will go,’ Soames offered, eager to show his readiness to do anything, for he wanted his two companions to realise as quickly as possible that he was a good chap.

It was not an especially hard climb. Soames took it stage by stage up through the aircraft and, with a final jerk that it would have done his old scoutmaster good to behold, hauled himself up into the pilot’s cabin.

The chimpanzee had vanished. Silence reigned here now. A mighty bough had crashed through the small compartment, shattering the instrument boards and pinning both the pilot and the Birmingham engineer, who had taken the spare second pilot’s seat, beneath it. The Birmingham man’s torso had completely caved in; he lay with his profile turned from Soames, glass frosting his hair. His tongue had been forced out of his mouth like a length of tie. When Soames pulled back the leafy branches, so incongruous in this little, man-made shell, it was to find that the pilot’s skull had been shattered. His face was indistinguishable; a few large blow-flies were inspecting the damage.

Sickened, Soames let the branches sweep back into position. He could do nothing here. Yet he stood there, silent, the air heavy with petrol fumes and sunlight coming in horizontally through the wound in the hull. He was regretting he had not been more genial with the Birmingham man while a chance for geniality existed.

Looking up through the shattered glass, he perceived a face watching him from a branch outside. It was a thin, eroded face, lined with despair, from which peered two hanging-judge eyes; its beak was like a tarnished blade. Even as Soames and the vulture regarded each other, another great bird in its funeral garb came clattering down to take up its perch beside the first. Then they both stared down at the living man without comment. By the time he had disappeared back into the body of the plane, two more friends had joined them; the leader stepped forward and flubbed heavily down into the cabin.

‘This is our best plan,’ Jimpo told them, leaning back against the tree. ‘We cannot be many leagues from my country. That is a fortunate chance, for my leg will allow me to proceed only slowly. Just now I have observed a herd of topi, and from their movements, I suspect there may be water in that direction, through the bushes. We will walk to that water. If it should be a river, it is good for us to make camp there and wait for men to come by in boats. They will take us to my father’s republic.’

‘What you say goes, of course,’ Timpleton said, scratching his neck. ‘It’s your country. But I thought the usual stunt in these situations, from what I’ve read, was to walk to safety. Even if we have to take it slowly, it’s better than just sitting spinelessly by the river waiting for someone to show up.’

‘You have read too many adventure stories, Ted,’ Jimpo said. ‘These jungles are bad and we become quickly lost. We are not Biggles & Co. Best to wait by the river! I will teach you to trap crocodile.’

‘If we set fire to the plane, someone would be bound to see it and come and investigate,’ Soames suggested. ‘We could get all the food out first.’

Something like bad temper flitted across Jimpo’s face.

‘You think I get the computer so near to home and then burn it?’ he asked. ‘That is a silly notion, Soames. Help me to my feet and we will walk to the water.’

They trudged slowly through the waist-high grass. While Soames was in the plane, Timpleton had fashioned a sturdy crutch for Jimpo, with which he was able to proceed without too much discomfort.

The sun was high in the sky and they were sweating profusely by the time they reached the water; by English standards, it was a fair-sized river. The approach to it lay through a thicket of head-high bushes, but on the other bank rose true jungle, dense and unwelcoming. The river itself was deep and flowed so sluggishly it had the appearance of being semi-congealed.

‘This is ideal place,’ Jimpo said. ‘Now I will light fires to scare away the snakes and one of you will go back to the plane to collect the equipment I shall name. It can be dragged back here on the rug with maximum comfort. Which of you likes to go?’

‘Toss you, Soames,’ Timpleton said promptly, producing a coin and laying it on the back of his fist with his other hand over it.

‘I always lose these things,’ said Soames hopelessly. ‘Heads, I suppose,’ and lost. Thus it was he who had the surprise, when he got back, sweating, to the plane wreck, of finding a green bicycle with four-speed, propped against the crumpled tailplane and gleaming in the still sunshine.

‘Who’s there?’ Soames called nervously and then recollecting that this might well be what was French Equatorial Africa, ‘Er – qui est là?’

No answer came to him except the superbly contemptuous twittering of an insect in the long grass. He walked quietly about the wreck and saw nobody. The owner of the bicycle must have climbed up the ladder and entered the cargo hatch.

Slightly nonplussed, Soames was staring up this ladder when a black face appeared at the top and a negro wearing khaki shorts and bearing a spear shinned down like lightning to confront him. They faced each other with rather similar silly smiles before the negro began to talk volubly, pointing to the plane.

‘Sorry, I don’t understand a word,’ Soames said, commencing an elaborate pantomime with swooping hands and explosive sounds to depict the whole drama of a plane crash in which all but three passengers, two white and one black, were killed, the other two being by the river about a mile distant, and would you kindly follow there now bringing your bicycle if needs must …

All this the negro watched politely before shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of bafflement.

When Soames, after taking a refreshing swig from the water container Timpleton had left under the tree, began to head back for the river, he beckoned industriously to the negro and saw him seize up his bike, swing it over one shoulder by the crossbar, and follow. ‘Good boy … that’s it … someone who’ll be able to make you savvy when we get there … yes, come on … he’ll make it worth your while … good,’ Soames muttered in a kind of dreary undertone of encouragement as they proceeded.

The negro fell in beside him, cutting off the mumble with a long account of his own which he interspersed with frequent laughter, rather to Soames’ irritation.

‘What’s the good of going on, old boy, when you know I don’t understand a word?’ he enquired, but the negro was still laughing and talking when they reached the river bank. Pushing his way forward, keeping his bicycle miraculously free from entanglements with bushes, he came to where Deal Jimpo was lying.

The latter uttered a few curt sentences, evidently announcing who he was, for at once the newcomer lay down beside him and clutched his hand; he broke into what sounded like an incoherent address of welcome to Jimpo. While they were talking together, Timpleton reappeared, grimy and hot, having set fire to the grass according to Jimpo’s instructions. Soames rapidly explained to him what had happened.

‘We have fortune in some things at least,’ Jimpo said, rising with the newcomer’s aid and leaning on his crutch. ‘This good man, Tanuana Motijala, tells us we are less than a day’s journey – even with my slow progress – from Umbalathorp itself. He will escort us along the trail and we can leave at once.’

This was indeed good news. Both Soames and Timpleton had had private dreams of spending a week by the surly river, beating off crocodiles, rhinoceros and water snakes with fragments of girder from the plane.

‘Thank him very much indeed and ask him where the hell he got his push bike,’ Timpleton said.

A brief exchange between the two black men followed and then Jimpo explained, ‘He won it in a raffle.’

Once more they did the journey to the plane under the blazing sun. Jimpo assured them that directly he reached the capital of Goya an expedition would be despatched to bring back everything from the wreck, including their luggage, and on this understanding they set off light-handed, Timpleton and Soames bearing haversacks containing water and food.

Tanuana’s trail lay some distance beyond the plane. It was a relief to find themselves in the shadow of the jungle, but this benefit was short-lived, for soon the trail was winding uphill fairly steeply. Both white men began to blow hard, and Jimpo’s face was grim with effort; Tanuana, noticing nothing, chattered and laughed in the same cheery way he had done when Soames first met him.

‘Whatever is he talking about?’ Soames enquired irritably at last, when the trail momentarily levelled out.

‘Saying he explore wreck of flying plane before you appear,’ Jimpo said. ‘Saying he kill four vulture birds in nose of flying plane. Saying they eat too much, too fat to get out hole they come in by. Saying he got four good beaks in saddle-bag.’

Thereafter they lapsed into silence. Gloom rose in Soames. He disliked the way Jimpo’s English was growing worse; it might be only the pain he was suffering; or it might be that the eighteen-year-old ex-Etonian was reverting to type. Now that Umbalathorp actually lay ahead, it no longer seemed the inviting haven it had a few hours earlier. Obviously the first thing to be done was to get a radio message through to Unilateral, asking for rescue at once. Primitivism cast no spell over Soames; he was a Guardian man.

Gradually the distances between the figures grew. Ahead was Tanuana, sometimes uttering a brief snatch of song. A short way behind him came Jimpo, with Soames following close and Timpleton much in the rear. The jungle, moody and fascinating at first, soon became, like an expanse of moody and fascinating contemporary wallpaper, something to pass with averted eyes.

The morning drew on, the trail widened, every step became a burden. After a long time, when there was no sign of Tanuana ahead, nor had been for some while, Jimpo halted, leaning against a tree until Soames caught up with him.

‘You look bad, Jimpo,’ Soames exclaimed, seeing his haggard look and grey face. Sweat sprayed from both their foreheads.

‘Is nothing. We will stop here for rest. Bloody man Tanuana go too fast for me. Wait for Ted to bring us water.’

They both lay down and rested. Ten minutes later, Timpleton appeared, trudging with his head down, his thumbs hooked into his haversack straps.

‘Don’t they have any ruddy buses on this route?’ he asked, sitting down beside them and swinging his haversack off his back. His morale was so good that Soames’ also improved.

As they ate canned peaches and cheese biscuits, Jimpo announced that they were near a village; he ‘could tell’, he explained. He thought that Tanuana might soon return with villagers to help them.

‘What, a lift?’ Timpleton asked. ‘Litters or elephants?’

‘Possibly a handcart,’ Jimpo said. ‘Now we will press on again. We must remain on our legs.’

‘If you will stay here with Ted, I will go on and hurry them up,’ Soames said. ‘I don’t think you are in a fit state to walk any further.’

‘It will not be fit state for my father’s people to find me lying down,’ Jimpo said. ‘Help me to stand.’

They had been on the move again only another ten minutes when they came into a clearing. From the other side of it, a reception committee was approaching. Ten men, among whom were Tanuana with his green bicycle, several women, and a flock of naked children, jostled round a large barrow loaded with flowers. The three from the plane were rapidly surrounded by people and voices.

With a splendid show of patience, Soames and Timpleton stood for a long while listening to speeches all round.

‘What’s it all about?’ Soames asked.

Jimpo eyed him rather superciliously.

‘They made delay to decorate my triumphal cart appropriately,’ he said, as willing hands bore him up on to the bed of flowers. The procession then gradually moved off, the two white men following behind the main crowd.

Some hours later, when shadows lengthened over patchily cultivated land, they entered, the capital of Goya, and an old man of benevolent aspect came forward with pineapple ice cream, smearing it ceremoniously over their faces and hands.

Chapter Three

‘… And full-grown lambs loud bleat …’

Without putting too philosophical a shine on the matter, we may say that cities are places where men gather. It follows therefore that, as no man is perfect, no city he builds is without fault. Hong Kong has its overcrowding, Peking its interminable walls, London its traffic, New York its pavements, Bombay its hideous buildings, Paris its foreigners, Buenos Aires its residents. Umbalathorp has its biting things. It was a peevish Soames Noyes who climbed from his rush bed next morning and cursed all the nocturnally feeding species who had banquetted upon him.

‘We’d have done better to stay in the plane,’ Timpleton said, running a thumb-sized bug to earth in his arm pit.

‘Jimpo said we’d be moved to the palace today. It should be slightly less inhabited there.’

‘Soames … Do you reckon those black women’ll come and bath us again like they did last night? That was a queer stunt, if you like.’

Soames emitted a giggle. He had yet to orient his feelings with regard to that ceremony.

‘They did you all over,’ Timpleton said musing. ‘Christ, I ask you, Soames, if they’ll wash your crutch what else won’t they do?!’

‘The same thought occurred to me, Ted,’ Soames admitted solemnly and was surprised when Timpleton burst into laughter.

The bathing ceremony had occurred at dusk last night, shortly after the weary travellers had arrived. By then, Jimpo had already left them to be carried to his father, informing them they would be well looked after. That they certainly had been, and the three girls apiece who scrubbed Timpleton and Soames, despite their coy protests, in ceremonial concrete baths, had not lacked ardour. Soames had to admit that the only offensive note in this covertly erotic ceremony had been the emptying of an entire carton of detergent into their water.

While they were still being dried by their handmaids with wads of cotton waste, an English-speaking native appeared. He escorted them, when they were ready, to a brick building where an excellent meal was served. Then he took them through the strange-smelling darkness to this beehive-shaped hut in which they had served as nourishment all night.

‘All Umbalathorp men make to you much apologise for this dead-end-kid mansion,’ he told Soames and Timpleton. ‘Better you to sleep here one night while room for you in President palace not sweep. Tomorrow room in palace be much sweep for you. Be nice for you. Be clean like England hospital tomorrow. Only tonight not sweep.’

‘I suppose it never occurred to the blighter that this place wasn’t sweep either,’ Soames grumbled, when the man had gone, after producing – or so it had seemed – a lighted candle for them from his pocket.

‘This must be where they usually keep the palace tigers,’ Timpleton said, sniffing suspiciously.

‘Subtle effluence of cat,’ agreed Soames.

‘Subtle? Have you got cotton wool up your nose?’

Now Soames emerged into the open air, nervously rubbing his hands together. He wore, with an uneasy air, the European clothes the handmaids had given him the night before, in exchange for his own sweat-stained garments. The clothes did not fit properly, hence his nervousness; to a casual observer he might have been taken for a repentant amateur clothes thief, or an ex-jailbird without the strength of his previous convictions.

Directly Timpleton joined him, similarly disguised, their guide of the night before appeared and escorted them to breakfast.

‘After this foregoing meal you are have a shave in the barber’s and next then go to palace,’ he told them.

When they left the barber’s shop, a large hut with a number of smelly charms for sale on the walls, a rickshaw was waiting to take them to the palace. This ride gave them their first good chance of seeing Umbalathorp. The capital, although small, was dispersed over uneven ground broken by several streams and bounded on the one side by a hill they later knew as Stranger’s Hill and on the other by the Uiui River, whose opposite bank rose in places to become almost unscaleable cliff. In the town itself, streets and roads, with few exceptions, were sketchily marked, huts, bungalows and larger buildings facing this way or that according to the whim of their owners. Patches of cultivation or strips of jungle stood even in the heart of the town, giving Umbalathorp a desultory air. The total effect was as if Bideford had suddenly been elected capital of England, whereupon everyone’s garden had grown eaves high, and the town council, to celebrate, had planted thousands of giant straw beehives in the streets as far as Northam and Buckland Brewer.

Many people were about, mostly negro, the variety of their features suggesting that several races mingled here; a number of Indians could be seen, carrying umbrellas and looking important. Once Soames thought he saw a European, but the man vanished into a shop. A few American cars were in evidence, outnumbered by pariah dogs by ten to one.

The rickshaw made its way slowly through the market place, its owner adding his voice to the babble of the crowd; they swerved down a wide road and came unexpectedly on the Presidential palace, from which a crimson, scarlet and black flag flew. Guards at the gate waved to the vehicle as it passed them and turned up the drive.

The palace looked like one of those great grey barracks the British used to build with such tedious frequency in Central India, but its gauntness was relieved by a riot of creeper which attempted to swarm up every balustrade and into every window – something never permissible in Central India, for fear the local women took advantage of this unorthodox staircase to accost the troops. From the tessellations which crowned the building floated a great brown banner bearing a word that, in these unexpected surroundings, took on a resonant ambiguity: DUNLOP. On the wide steps below, flecked by the droppings of a thousand brightly coloured birds which flitted ceaselessly in and out of the creeper, ten black soldiers in white uniforms stood with rifles at the slope, open umbrellas attached to the rifles in place of bayonets, lest they should become flecked like the steps on which they stood.

This impressive scene was marred only by a discarded bath full of Coca-Cola bottles and rainwater lying by the drive, from which a dog drank in insolent disregard of the nearby soldiery.

When Soames and Timpleton dismounted from their chariot, their guide paid off the owner and led them quickly up the steps. They proceeded through an archway and down a corridor to a small room, the door of which the guide opened for them.

‘Please wait here; someone else come see you soon, gentlemen.’

‘This is like a dentist’s waiting room only more so,’ Timpleton remarked, as the guide left.

On the benches round the room two men were already sitting, as far apart from each other as possible; Soames and Timpleton selected an intermediate position and eyed the magazines piled on a central table. The only English language offerings were two copies of Drum and a Radio Times for week ending 5th March 1955.

Soames had no sooner settled down to scratch a cluster of tiny, red-hot tents erected close to his navel by an exploring insect party the previous night, when one of the two waiting men shuffled over and addressed him.

‘Is it my pleasure and fortune to be soliciting the two flying British who are transporting the magical scientific box hitherwards?’ he enquired, in an English so elaborately broken that the two flying British were left rather in the air. ‘Possibility that it can be no others makes a double delight.’

Always anxious not to make an inadequate response, Soames rose, bowed awkwardly, and said, ‘How do you do? This is my colleague Mr Edward Timpleton: my name is Soames Noyes.’

The stranger received these names with relish, repeating them to himself with his fingers on his lips, as if to get the feel as well as the sound of them.

‘So!’ he said. ‘No meeting for me can be more too delightful,’ and he announced himself with a flourish as José Blencimonti Soares. This done, he shook hands warmly and protractedly with both Soames and Timpleton, producing a bandana after the operation, on which he thoroughly mopped his podgy hands.

He was a dumpy man in his fifties, dressed in a tropical suit, from the starched lapels of which burst a large flower like a geranium, its brightness in striking contrast to the grey jowls which brushed it during excessive outbursts of expressiveness.

‘I am for long resident in Umbalathorp, sirs,’ he said, ‘and delighted to show you its attractions, if of convenience. I have the pleasure and fortune to be leader of local Portuguese community. We see few Europeans here: last one was an American called Mr John Gunther, and brand-new faces like yours always welcome, also pleasantness of visit very much agreeable. My residence, my wife, my food and my beautiful daughter Maria are open to you eternally.’

Ignoring the sly kick this last remark prompted Timpleton to give him, Soames offered his thanks and enquired innocently if there were any Englishmen in the town. At this Soares’ pudgy face clouded like a peke’s with toothache, and he said, ‘Only one outcast family, señor, the Pickets, at whom you should be advised to steer clearly.’

Timpleton waved him nearer with two beckoning fingers.

‘Here, Mr Soares, give us the lowdown on this dump. Never mind the English – what we want to know is, how about the women?’

The Portuguese laughed. Soames recognised that laugh; it had frequently been described in the literature of his boyhood as ‘a greasy chuckle’.

‘So you are what you call an old dirty man,’ he said, nodding approvingly. ‘In all the world is women to be had, and in Goya many good variety, what colour or size to fit the individual whimsy. Only one thing to be warned is of dreaded akkabaksi pox.’

‘What the deuce is akkabaksi pox?’ inquired Soames, alarmed and interested.

Soares rolled yellow eyeballs and puffed out yellow-grey cheeks expressively.

‘Akkabaksi pox is very nasty local disease, misters, I telling you, cause much misery in the bazaar.’

‘What is it?’

‘Is caught from dirty woman, pfafft, just like that. After two days catching it, the victim finds hugest black scabs of matter at point of contact. Then he will pack up three days ration for food and water and will march off into the jungle.’

‘What for?’ Timpleton asked. He had turned an unsuitable shade of grey round the jowls.

‘Is finished, sir,’ Soares replied simply. ‘Has no cure. Not Western medicine or witch doctor Dumayami can cure dreaded akkabaksi pox. In three four days, all the bones turn to jelly, the stomach will explode. Pfafft! Is finish!’

‘Good God!’ the two Englishmen exclaimed in chorus.

Switching his mood and expression from supreme dejection to extreme elation, Soares leant over and smacked them on the knee.

‘But is no need for worry for you. Trust to me who can be your friend. Always I sell you good clean girl. Come to old Soares for priceless virgin flesh. Guaranteed no disease. Fresh as a sea smell.’

Changing this subject abruptly, he asked, ‘Now you have an auditorium with President Landor, yes?’

‘I suppose so,’ Soames said. ‘The arrangements seem a bit vague. We only got here last night, you know.’

‘Any difficulties, come at a run to me, I insist,’ Soares said, smiling winningly. ‘Because I do much trade in Goya. I have pleasure and honour to hold ear of President.’ He tapped his heart impressively as if he kept this presidential appendage in his breast-pocket.

‘We’re going to live in the palace,’ said Timpleton. ‘Is it OK here? Give us the lowdown.’

‘Hunky dory,’ Soares told him unexpectedly. ‘All plumbing throughout by courtesy of José Soares and his company. All business here, my business.’

A palace guard entered and spoke briefly in Goyese to Soares.

‘Now is time for my auditorium,’ Soares said. ‘Gentlemen, we are bounders to meet again.’ Bowing, smiling, nodding, wagging one finger above his head, he left with the guard.

Half an hour later, the same guard appeared and beckoned to the two Englishmen. As they left, Soames glanced back at the other occupant of the waiting room. He was an ancient, white-haired negro with a battered cardboard box on his knee. Not once had he stirred since Soames had been there. Perhaps, like the 1955 Radio Times, he went with the room.

Soames hurried to catch up with Timpleton, who was slicking back his hair with a pocket comb preparatory to his audience with President Landor.

President Landor was worrying his hair with a pocket comb preparatory to his audience with the Englishmen when they arrived and bowed to him. He was a tall and splendid man just beginning to run to fat. His face creased into a broad smile when Soames and Timpleton entered, and he came across the room with outstretched hand, leaving the comb hidden in his crinkly hair.

‘The geniuses from Unilateral Company, the splendid survivors of the air crash, the rescuers of my son Deal Jimpo,’ he said easily, speaking in French. ‘I regret that I have no English. Queen Louise, whom you will certainly meet, speaks it fluently, but not I, alas; a deplorable omission. I trust you both have command of French?’

Soames had, Timpleton had not.

‘We shall get on splendidly,’ the President said to Soames. ‘You must tell your friend what I am saying. Sit down here and try with me some of this Canadian rye whisky which the all-too-capable Señor Soares has just left as a token of his esteem.’

They settled themselves in wicker chairs while an attendant filled their glasses and the President spread himself comfortably and looked them over. He wore Indian chaplis, white starched shorts and a white shirt over which latter was an unbuttoned brocade waistcoat, the magnificence of which robbed it of any incongruity it might otherwise have had.

‘You do not mind to sit with me?’ he asked.

‘No. I’m sorry – should we – of course, we should have remained standing,’ Soames said.

‘No, no. That was not my point. I wondered if you subscribed to this popular thing, the colour bar.’

‘The colour bar – is not reasonable,’ Soames said.

‘Possibly so. That does not prevent many millions of people being swayed by it.’

‘Unfortunately people in the mass are swayed most easily by the unreasonable,’ Soames replied, colouring slightly.

‘You should have been a politician.’

‘In England now, to be a politician one must also be photogenic, in order to appear on TV. My nose is too irregular for affairs of state, Mr President.’

‘Just call me “President” – or “King” if you like it better, for I am both President of Goya and crowned King of my territories.’

‘How unusual,’ Soames said, smiling, for the President was also smiling. ‘A surprising mixture of the American and British constitutions.’

‘We try to retain here the best features of both great democracies,’ the President said.

‘What are you two on about?’ Timpleton asked. He had finished his drink far ahead of the others. ‘What’s he doing about our rooms?’

‘I’m just getting to that, Ted,’ Soames said and then, tactfully, to President Landor, ‘My friend is enquiring after the health of your son, Deal Jimpo.’

‘His leg will mend. The witch doctor, Dumayami, has seen it and proclaimed the omens right. Jimpo is out now with the palace lorry and a host of porters supervising the transportation here of the all-important cargo of your plane.’

‘My clean clothes,’ exclaimed Soames gratefully.

‘The computing machinery,’ added the President gently.

He then pressed them for particulars. Timpleton agreed that when all the parts of the Apostle Mk II were brought to the palace he should be able to assemble them in three days, provided the parts had not been damaged in the crash. (Under the original contract, with the Birmingham man and Brewer to help, this process was only to have taken a day.) Two further days would then be needed to install the generator, which had also been flown in, and to carry out extensive tests, etc.

‘Then I commence work,’ Soames said. ‘I will train the local man you have selected to operate the Apostle. There may be some difficulty in interpreting the results the machine gives, just at first. I shall be at hand to explain. These machines operate normally on the binary system, producing answers which only skilled mathematicians can comprehend. On your model, Unilateral have greatly modified input and output circuits, with the result that problems can now be typed out on an ordinary typewriter keyboard, whence they feed automatically into the machine on a roll of paper like pianola music; similarly, the machine’s answers will be ejected, typed in English, from a slot on another piece of paper.’

‘In English?’ repeated the President.

‘Yes, I hope that is what you wished? Your son, Deal Jimpo, was firm on the point in his contract.’

‘Quite correct. Too many sons of guns, including myself, speak French here. But English, correctly spoken, is managed by but a very few. Therefore a mystery is created, and my people respect a mystery. Or rather – they fear enlightenment.’

‘It is the same with the masses in England,’ Soames said with unconscious priggishness.

‘Ah, but their feeling is to be respected,’ said the President, catching the note of condemnation in Soames’ voice. ‘Enlightenment is like a tearing down of old familiar rooms when we are left to squat in a desert of disbelief. What has education to offer but the truth of man’s smallness and beastliness? What is knowledge but the gift of danger? – Did not one of your poets say that?’

‘Pope said that a little learning was a dangerous thing.’

‘Well? All learning is little, a block and tackle job of dismantling the gods.’

‘Yours sounds a very disillusioned philosophy, President,’ Soames remarked.

‘Yes, it goes badly with this excellent rye whisky, eh? By tomorrow I shall probably have thought of a totally different set of things to say, thank God.’

‘What the hell are you two jabbering about, Soames?’ Timpleton asked.

‘Be quiet,’ Soames said.

‘What I was going to say was to warn you,’ the President told Soames. ‘You more than your friend, for he is the hard worker and you are the talker on this job. Therefore my people will instinctively hold you responsible for any changes the machine introduces; they know – forgive me, but I am also in your category – that the talker is the curse of the world. The old mysteries are still here. Umbalathorp looks ahead, yes, but the jungle and the river are close, and the spirits of the jungle and the river are still strong. They look backwards, far backwards. Your machine will offend them. My witch doctor, Dumayami, will be offended. That is why you and the machine have been established in the palace. Not only is this a beautiful palace, but it is protected by guns and soldiers.’

All this was said lightly enough, but Soames was aware as he listened that the President was watching him searchingly, as if to see how he reacted to a hint of danger. While he was casting about for the answer which would create the best impression, Timpleton broke into the conversation in dog French.

‘Où est la chambre pour nous dormir, monsieur Président?’ he asked angrily. ‘Vous et Soames ici sont parlent très beaucoup. Dernier soir, nous a dormi dans une – une, er, mud’ut très terrible, beaucoup de fleas, puces, très grands puces. Où est une belle chambre? Et avez-vous des femmes pour nous?’

President Landor rose, one eyebrow cocked at his visitors. He appeared more amused than put out.

‘Désirez-vous une femme de plaisir noir?’ he asked Timpleton.

‘Oui,’ Timpleton said emphatically, ‘si vous n’avez pas les blanches. Toutes les femmes sont seulement femmes, après tout.’

‘It is a thought which has echoed down history, though frequently better expressed,’ the President said, as if to himself. ‘If you will leave me now, gentlemen, I will attempt to see that your wants are attended to.’

Chapter Four

‘With patient look, thou watchest …’

All men think alike; no two act alike.

In Umbalathorp there were, quite unknown to Soames, several people who considered themselves interested parties where he was concerned and who, from the moment of his arrival, vibrated with a passion of curiosity about him. In the thoughts of each, he appeared as a pawn merely, an object they could profitably, for one reason or another, incorporate into their own designs. But the ways in which they set about arranging a meeting with him were diverse; the meeting became, to one, an ambush, to another an attack, to another a lure, to another only a wary circling.

Timpleton also was under surveillance, but to a lesser degree. It was recognised from the start, in the uncanny fashion one does recognise such things, that Soames, of the two, was – in the expressive American phrase – loaded. Soames, though he would have shrunk from the idea, conformed to the slightly dated and therefore doubly appealing world-image of The Englishman Abroad to a remarkable degree. His indecisiveness, by which an inward panic frustrated all outward action, chimed curiously in all its external aspects with the British tradition for keeping one’s head while all around are losing theirs; and the delicacy with which, on first riding through Umbalathorp, he had averted his eyes from its grosser squalors had easily been misinterpreted as the chill aloofness of a white barra sahib.

Eyes, hostile, friendly and calculatingly neutral, had read these marks upon Soames on his arrival and during his ride through the market, and had laid their plans accordingly. The first of these plans to develop from the theoretical to the practical phase was that of Queen Louise.

The Queen descended upon him while he was still surveying his room. Timpleton had been shown by a servant to another, similar room down the corridor. Apart from the tropical generosity of window space, this might have been the cell of a top-brass priest on Mount Athos; it was of whitewashed stone, furnished only with bed, chair and chest of drawers. The bed was covered with a bright rug. The big brass bowl on top of the chest contained a handful of dead leaves.

The Queen knocked and swept into Soames’ room, accompanied by a small, tittering maid, almost before he had time to cry ‘Come in’. She was a large, ugly woman, with nostrils as mobile as gills and skin the colour of strong tea; when she announced herself, one heard the loud but inaudible fanfare of trumpets.

‘You may kiss my hand, Mr Soames,’ she said, in clear English, ‘but otherwise no formalities. Kindly address me as “Queen Louise”, as do my other subjects. Come, I shall be good enough to show you round the palace.’

Soames protested that his clothes looked too disreputable, that when the expedition to the plane returned he could make himself more presentable for such an honour.

‘If I show you round as you are, that only makes the honour more great,’ Queen Louise said. ‘Please step along – I am, alas, not with much patience.’

It was difficult to decide what to say to this lady, Soames thought, as he followed into the corridor, jostling to get past the little maid to the Queen’s side, for her manner was impersonal enough to make one wonder if she was being formal or friendly. In the end, he tried for common ground by saying, ‘It is a pleasure to meet the mother of Deal Jimpo, whom I have grown to like very much.’

‘Of course,’ the Queen said. ‘I shall not deny you any pleasure you ask. You shall see her copiously soon.’

This plunged Soames into eddies of confusion. He felt like a male Alice walking beside a composite of the Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty. Either Queen Louise was referring to herself in the third person, in the manner of Caesar’s ‘Caesar is turned to hear’, and offering to strip for him, or they had somehow come a cropper over the language barrier.

‘You are Jimpo’s mother?’ he enquired hesitantly.

‘Not I,’ said the Queen. ‘I am the mother of lovely, intellectual Princess Cherry, whom you shall soon meet. Jimpo is the son of the President’s wife.’

‘But you are the President’s wife.’

‘I am the King’s wife.’

‘But President and King are one!’

‘They are held by one person, but they are two separate offices, each of which is entitled to one wife.’

‘Oh.’

‘I make bed with the King; that is fealty. I must not make bed with President; that would be adultery.’

‘You must find these rather fine distinctions difficult to draw at times,’ Soames murmured.

‘It needs mighty discipline,’ said the Queen with relish.

She swept him into an empty banqueting hall, clapped her hands and ordered him to sit down on a couch. She deposited herself beside him. When the gamelan-like harmonies of the springs had died, she began to interrogate him, first about England, then about himself. To excuse this interest, she claimed she had British blood in her veins, but did not amplify the point.

‘The climate of Umbalathorp is good,’ she said, changing the subject abruptly. ‘You find it so?’

‘I have no complaints so far,’ Soames said, permitting a slight sulkiness to enter his voice.

‘It is good,’ the Queen said. ‘Even the wretched Mr Picket thrives here, although he is an Englishman of another sort. I have read in a Geographical Magazine that the English race comes from the tropics, and Princess Cherry is also very educated, reading great many books. She will make somebody, some privileged personage, a good wife one day. No doubt you are eager to meet her?’

‘Perhaps when my own clothes …’

‘She is engaged with her studies in the library now,’ said the Queen, ‘but it is possible to interrupt. Come, I know you will like her.’

Soames and the little black maid scurried after her, down a dark passage and into a room full of rickety shelves, on some of which reposed books and magazines. On a long cane chair lay Princess Cherry, heiress to her mother’s estate and physiognomy. She wore a heavy, heavily flowered dress; a blue plastic bow slide was clipped into her tight curls. One pair of earrings adhered to her ears, another was clipped to the superb dihedral of her nostril flanges. In her hand, negligently, was a copy of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks; it was right way up.

‘This is the Englishman, Mr Soames, Princess dear,’ said the Queen. ‘Get up and put your shoes on at once.’

The Princess complied and said, guiltily, ‘How do you do? Possibly you like to sit down in my chair and read something?’

‘Perhaps I might borrow something to have in bed tonight,’ Soames said. A slow flush crept over his face, in case they should think he had been attempting an innuendo, but both faces were – features apart – blank.

‘So you are a literary man?’ enquired Queen Louise, looking at her daughter to prompt her to take over the conversation. ‘The English are a great literary nation as well as conquering parts of Africa.’

‘I read quite a bit,’ Soames agreed.

‘The English are a very great literary nation,’ the Princess admitted uneasily.

‘What do you read – besides Buddenbrooks?’ Soames enquired. He would have enjoyed the conversation better had the Queen not been drawn up like an RSM behind him; she was breathing deeply, like a man receiving a VC at Buckingham palace.

‘I read Buddenbrooks for a long time,’ said the Princess sadly. ‘The servants forget to bring me tea when I sit here in this room – library. Also I read John Keats’ “Ode to Autumn”, which I like. It is a poem. Have you heard of it?’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Soames said. They had swotted up the Ode for School Cert, fifteen years ago. ‘For summer has overfilled their clammy cells.’

The Princess clapped her hands and smiled with delight. ‘He knows it!’ she said to her mother. Genuine pleasure filled her, she sat down naturally on the cane chair like an English schoolgirl, and Soames’ feelings changed to liking for her.

‘This is a sad poem,’ she said, ‘but for me mainly puzzling – for you see we do not have autumn in Goya.’

‘Otherwise the climate is excellent,’ said the Queen.

‘Autumn must be so strange,’ the Princess said. ‘I wish John Keats had written a novel also. Will you perhaps explain the poem to me, line by line, if you are not always busy at your machine, for my English is so foul?’

‘I should love to read the poem with you,’ Soames said, ‘but I assure you your English is very good indeed. Where did you learn it?’

The young girl’s manner altered. The smile faded from her face, she turned her head away; she seemed to recall unhappy, far-off things.

‘From Mr Picket,’ she said.

‘Come, we must leave the girl at her work,’ said the Queen briskly, uttering a sharp word of command in Goyese to the maid. Before Soames was bustled out, the Princess rose and curtsied; a memory rose in his mind of a performing bear he had seen as an infant. It, too, could curtsy and look sad.

Outside the door, the Queen, drawing herself up to her full height and girth, surveyed Soames thoroughly. Under the glare of her eyes and nostrils, he felt like a man confronted by a bandit aiming a double-barrelled gun.

‘She is sweet, the Princess, eh?’ the Queen challenged.

Soames nodded once, saying curtly, ‘I should like to talk to her alone sometime.’

For answer, he received a salacious wink. The password had evidently been given; the shotgun was lowered; Greek had met Greek. Queen Louise seized his wrist as they set off down the corridor again.

‘You are staying here not less than two weeks, Mr Soames.’

‘Probably.’

‘That time must be enough for you to grow to love this country. We shall show you up all over it. Perhaps you will not like to leave it then. If it would be so, a very good job can be secured in the President’s government; perhaps the post of Prime Minister could be found for you. I could arrange everything of consequence.’

‘I don’t doubt that, Queen Louise,’ said Soames. ‘But I must get back to England.’

‘You are not married?’

‘No.’

‘You are single?’

‘Yes.’

‘A bachelor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Goya has many attractions for a young man, a single literary bachelor.’

‘That I do not doubt. But I hardly think I shall stay, all the same.’

‘Dumayami, the witch doctor, who is a clever man at reading the future, tells otherwise.’

Lunch was served in the banqueting hall. The small handful of people present huddled round two tables at one end of the room, under the only electric fan which was working. M’Grassi Landor with his two wives, Queen Louise and Mrs President, a buxom Goyese called Tunna, sat at one table with such of their respective offspring as were of manageable age (a category including Princess Cherry and her younger brother Shappy), eating in almost complete silence. At the other table sat Soames with an assortment of black men who were court officials or government ministers. Since none of them possessed much English, silence fell there, too, when they had tried out the little they had. Timpleton was not present, thereby missing an excellent Indian curry.

After the meal, the Indian chef came out of the kitchen to present himself to Soames. He was a slender man whose goat’s eyes did not smile when the rest of his face did.

‘My name is Turdilal Ghosti, sir. I am the head cook to this palace since three years, sir. Was the dinner exactly to your liking, I am hoping?’

‘Excellent,’ Soames said. ‘I am very fond of Indian food. The chicken pilau was first rate.’

‘Is the best, sir. How long you are staying here?’

‘Oh, about a fortnight. I hope I’ll see you again,’ Soames said, shuffling his feet, preparing to leave.

‘I am living in this bloody town, sir, since seven years. Is too long time for me. Here I am all alone with my old mother and my wife and my six little children and my brother and his family and my uncle and some of his relations and their relations.’

‘I noticed there were a lot of Indians in Umbalathorp,’ Soames said. He was cornered in an alcove, and the little chef was adroitly keeping him there. Soames could see that the inside of his mouth was bright with betel.

‘Plenty Indians are living here, sir,’ Turdilal agreed, ‘and all are being so bloody unhappy, sir. This climate only good for black men. No other man is liking, sir. In the Japanese war I was cooking three years in Firpo’s restaurant on Chowringhee Street at Calcutta; there I am learning all my culinary skill, sir. Perhaps one night you will come to honour my house with your presence? Then I am cooking for you a splendid meal, sir, and displaying to you my children.’

‘It’s really awfully kind,’ Soames said, ‘but I fear I’m going to be very busy during my brief stay.’

‘I have very nice house, sir, half up Stranger’s Hill. You will be having good entertainment.’

‘Oh, I’m sure.’

‘When I am in Calcutta I am having a white friend, sir.’

Growing more embarrassed, Soames attempted a feeble joke and said, ‘I’d like to come. It’s just that I think Queen Louise has my spare time pretty well arranged.’

‘The Queen is a bloody old hag, sir, if you excuse the word,’ Turdilal said, with no trace of anger in his voice. ‘I think later you are regretting you don’t come my house like I am asking, sir.’

He turned on his heel and snaked down the corridor. Soames sighed, abandoned his alcove, stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered down a flight of stone steps into the sunshine. Here, he was at the back of the palace; it was private and a rough attempt had been made at a garden. The trees were beautiful; big green lizards scuttled up them like rats as he approached.

Soames was enjoying himself. People are taking an interest in me, he thought self-indulgently; they may be no less self-seeking than my fellow-countrymen, but they go about the business with more originality, more verve. They are more amusing. The real reason for his enjoyment, however, was a deeper, sillier, better, less analysable reason; he was living in a strange land.

It was a different thing altogether from holidaying in a strange land. Here, although only temporarily, he belonged, was in touch. It was something, for all his excursions abroad and the brief business trips to Brussels and Paris, he had never managed before.

At the bottom of the garden flowed the river Uiui, only five feet below the brow of a tiny cliff. Soames stared down into the flood, its surface green and turbulent as it hurried along. A small fishing boat, manned by four negroes bent sweating over the oars, laboured against the current. A hill rose sheer out of the opposite bank, its jungle studded with jagged outcrops of rock. ‘Africa,’ whispered Soames to himself, ‘darkest Africa’; and he exulted.

There seemed to be no reason why his stay here should not be entirely pleasant, despite the vaguely disturbing warnings of M’Grassi Landor about the witch doctor. Already, reports of the situation had been transmitted home from the wireless room in the palace. What had threatened to be a difficult monetary situation had also been cleared up by M’Grassi Landor and a gentleman grandly styled Minister of Finances who turned out to be manager of the Umbalathorp Bank. Both Soames and Timpleton had been loaded down with doimores, the local coin; twenty mores equalled one doimore, and one doimore was worth ten shillings at the current rate of exchange.

Feeling both at peace with the world and excited by it, Soames turned left and made his way upstream by a path along the bank of the river. It wound enticingly, hedged with flowers and sheltered from the piercing sun. Soon he had left the palace grounds behind; the growth on either side became thicker, the path more devious. He passed an almost naked hunter, who stood gravely aside for him without a word or gesture. The dappled shadows ahead, the silence, led Soames on as if under an enchantment; he walked dreamily, mind a blank.

When he reached a square-framed reed hut, Soames halted, telling himself there was no point in going further. Suddenly he was tired. The hut was empty, its interior cool and inviting. Inside was nothing but a bundle of rags in one corner and an old orange box in another; gratefully, Soames went in and sat on the box.

He mopped his brow, letting his chin droop on to his chest as he rested. Warm drowsiness overcame him.

A sudden sense of being watched jerked his head up. A man stood in the doorway, staring at him with unfriendly eyes; he must have come up with almost supernatural quietness.

‘You frightened me for a moment,’ Soames said, aware that his start had been observed.

‘I am Dumayami, chief witch doctor of Umbalathorp. I want speak with you,’ the stranger said soberly.

It invariably happens that in those parts of the world which, disregarding the opinions of their inhabitants, we call remote, the products of the white man are more welcome than his presence. They precede him, they succeed him. In the heart of Sumatra (as dangerous now to a pale-haired one as it was two hundred years ago), you may come upon old men drinking from little round tins which once contained fifty of Messrs John Player’s cigarettes; the petrol can of the Occident is the foundation stone of the Orient; Coke bottles clog the very source of the untamed Amazon. Knowing this, Soames felt little surprise to find Dumayami clad in an undoubted Church of England surplice with, pinned to it, a badge saying ‘I like Ike’, just possibly a souvenir of the recent Gunther safari.

Apart from this, the witch doctor was an impressive figure, a giant feather nodding over his scaphocephalic skull, his face notched with tribal marks and wormed with wrinkles. An air of confidence and a whiff of rotten eggs surrounded him. Soames’ alarmed thoughts took on a defensive tinge; alas, he was armed with nothing fiercer than a nail file.

‘I am resting,’ he said. ‘What is it you wish to say?’

‘I think you already know that,’ Dumayami told him. ‘The many spirits of Umbalathorp all speak out against your coming. They declare only ill will come from your visit.’

‘What am I supposed to have done? Do the spirits tell you that?’

‘Spirits tell Dumayami all things,’ the witch doctor said, squatting for comfort on the threshold of the hut. The pupils of his eyes held a malevolent, tigerish glint. ‘Spirits say you come with machine to make much trouble here.’

‘Of course,’ said Soames. ‘The Apostle will trespass on your pitch in some respects, eh?’

‘In Umbalathorp is room for only one law. Now you bring Christian devil box, cast wrong spells, make much trouble.’

‘My dear man, the Apostle Mk II does no more than juggle with given data,’ Soames said; this old man was clearly a bit of a loon. ‘You’d better come up and look at it when it’s installed and set your mind at rest.’

Dumayami performed his own equivalent of crossing himself at the very suggestion.

‘First Apostle Mark come,’ he said gloomily, ‘then other apostles, Luke, John, maybe Paul. You must not have success here.’

‘Oh, how are you going to stop us? Burn cockerel feathers or something? Progress, Dumayami, has reached Goya at last.’

‘Already spirits pull down your flying machine,’ Dumayami said darkly. ‘Next blow up Christian devil box machine.’

It was, Soames mentally conceded, a crafty point; some people might even have been impressed by it.

‘And me? What’s going to happen to me, Dumayami?’ he enquired.

The witch doctor rose lazily, shaking his head as if to say that it was better for Soames not to know that. Groping under his surplice, he produced what looked like a sharp bone. With two backward paces he was out of the hut. He bent down and used the bone to inscribe a sign in the dusty earth of the threshold.

‘If you do not step over this sign, you do not leave Africa,’ he said. Raising one hand, he stepped from view and was gone as noiselessly as he came.

‘Damned silly,’ Soames muttered aloud. ‘Of course I can step over it.’

He went over the doorway to examine the mark Dumayami had made. Before he got there, two little yellow and red birds had fallen squabbling and copulating on to the path outside. Their bright wings, fluttering in lust and anger, erased the witch doctor’s sign. Soames stood there blankly, not heeding them as they plunged away.

At last, taking a long step over the threshold, he emerged from the hut and hurried back to the palace. Of Dumayami there was neither sight nor sound.

Chapter Five

‘And now with treble soft …’

Later that afternoon, the expedition to the wrecked plane returned. Wending its way through the corn patches and streets of Umbalathorp came a caterpillar of slow men bearing, across poles slung over their shoulders, the crates which bore the component parts of the Apostle Mk II, the generators, the cables. Leading this procession was the palace lorry, a dilapidated Dodge 3-tonner which looked as if it had just made the journey from Cape Town on foot. It was loaded up and weighed down with the heavier crates.

Grunting with disgust, it slewed round in front of the palace in a paddy of dust. Gradually it became motionless. From the passenger’s seat in the cab climbed Jimpo, easing his broken leg down. The twelve guards presented arms to him, their umbrellas trembling above them.

Now disorder broke out. The bearers jostled and vied with each other to dump their burdens as near to the Dodge as possible. Scores of pot-bellied children cheered them on. When Soames appeared on the scene, attracted by the noise, he found the lorry had nearly disappeared behind a wall of crates.

Timpleton was there, standing back from the mêlée, regarding it with a seraphic grin. Following his gaze, Soames saw he was looking at the boxes themselves, and his own heart quickened as he read the words stencilled boldly on their sides:

UNILATERAL LONDON ENGLAND.

It was a pleasant reminder of home.

Going over to Timpleton, Soames said, ‘It’s good to see them here. None of them looks damaged.’

Timpleton smiled. ‘Warms the cockles of your heart, don’t it? That’s what they need here, a spot of civilisation.’

Soames was about to enquire why the engineer should believe that something which had brought no happiness to Europe should work more beneficially here when he checked his tongue. No good would come of antagonising Timpleton. Already they had had a short, explosive altercation after the interview with King Landor, when Soames had protested against Timpleton’s using the King as a common tout. At least Timpleton showed no sign of umbrage now, for which Soames was glad.

‘Where were you at tiffin time?’ he asked conversationally.

Timpleton’s manner immediately became withdrawn.

‘Oh, knocking about,’ he said noncommittally. ‘What have you been doing, Soames?’

‘I, too, have been “knocking about”,’ Soames said, a little primly. Then he relented, and after a minute, told Timpleton of his encounter with the witch doctor.

Jimpo had now begun to restore order among the bearers, calling for Timpleton and Soames to help him. Skins of cool water having been carried out from the palace, the men refreshed themselves and then again shouldered their loads. The Dodge reappeared. The battleship grey boxes with their yellow, white and black stencilling were borne up the steps and into the building. Here, a large room facing out to the river Uiui had been set aside for the Apostle. Standing on the first packing case to arrive in this room, Timpleton began shouting instructions to the porters, cheerfully disregarding the fact that none of them spoke English.

‘That’s it now! That one over there, Johnny, that one over there. Easy with it, you silly sod – treat it like it was crockery. Now bring that one here. You! Bring it here. Here, you clot! That’s better. Well, get your great foot out the way. Where are you going? Where are all them others? Come on, chop-chop, you black bastards, my grannie could move quicker. No, that’s Number Twenty Crate, that goes right down that end. Further. Further still. No, not there. There! Good lad.’

The porters seemed to understand. They loved being sworn at. Grinning broadly, they parrotted Timpleton’s words, calling to one another, ‘No. Not dere,’ ‘You black basads.’ Eagerly they fought for the diminishing pile of crates outside, in order to relish the joy of being cursed again inside. So forty-six grey boxes came to be strung out in line down the length of the room, in numerical order according to the stencilled numbers on their sides.

Timpleton rubbed his hands. He picked up a crowbar he had been using as a conductor’s baton during the cursing operations.

‘OK, Jimpo,’ he said. ‘Let’s open a test case and see if anything’s broken.’

Working delicately with the crowbar, he prised the lid off Crate Ten. Inside, packed tightly, partitioned with thick rubber, cushioned with foam rubber, each gripped in place by a spring clip, stood rows of transistors and valves as delicate as Fabergé jewels. The electronics engineer grunted, eased one of the partitions out and removed a valve from its clip.

It was pear-shaped, sixteen slender prongs protruding from its base. The lower half of it was silvered. Timpleton held it up to the light with a connoisseur’s eye. Inside it was a lattice of wires and grids, a tiny structure as dainty as a fairy palace in a bottle, while through its interstices could be glimpsed the river Uiui, flowing darkly on.

‘That’s OK,’ he said finally. ‘And if a 10 CAAL 10 pentode has stood the journey, the rest of the equipment will be OK. I’ll get started putting it together as soon as possible tomorrow morning, Jimpo.’

‘Excellent, Ted,’ Jimpo said. ‘I will get down two of our radio engineers to assist you in any way.’

‘Yes, they can help over things like bolting the main framework together,’ Timpleton assented.

‘I shall take this very good news to my father,’ Jimpo said. ‘Your personal luggage, by the way, is in the cab of the lorry. A bearer will fetch it to your rooms. Tomorrow the lorry will go back to the wreck and will transport the bodies of the dead men – so much as remains of them – here for burial.’

The last meal of the day was taken at sundown, and consisted chiefly of a porridgy meat mince which Soames did not enjoy. Turdilal Ghosti, the chef, was evidently off duty. None of the royal and presidential families was present except for Princess Cherry, who sat alone at the royal table, and Jimpo, who came down to the commoners’ table to discuss computers and the wonderful science of electricity with Timpleton and his two radio engineers, Gumboi and L’Panto.

Eventually, Soames got up and left on his own.

The palace, which during the day preserved the quiet of a village church, was now as noisy as a village fair. From being nearly empty it had become nearly full. Thronging groups of black men and women made the corridors as unruly as hospital corridors at visiting time. Vendors descended on Soames, volubly offering him peanuts, cotton vests, sweets, drugged parrots and nicely shaped bits of old sardine tins.

Someone touched his arm and gently spoke his name.

‘Come away from this maddening crowd with me, Mr Noyes. Outside it is pleasant weather before the rain breaks. We will find silence outside.’

An old Chinese with a dark skin and sleepy eyes stood there smiling, introduced himself as Ping Ah and repeated his invitation to the great outdoors. ‘Who am I,’ thought Soames, ‘that all nations should love me?’ He suddenly felt sour and suspicious, for the recent meal lay heavy on his stomach.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I am tired. I don’t want to walk tonight.’

‘Then it would be very nice thing if you will come to my room here in the palace. Take a cup of tea with me, Mr Noyes. Discuss old times.’

‘What old times?’ (Even as he spoke, he was being manoeuvred down the passage, gently, celestially.)

‘As a young man, my wife and I live in England five years,’ the Chinese said. ‘We make money there and enjoy. Liverpool very interesting city. You come from there perhaps, Mr Noyes?’

‘No. I’ve been there, though.’

‘Is very interesting city, no?’

‘Very interesting.’

‘In Liverpool are many Chinese men. This is my room now please.’ Ping Ah seized Soames by the sleeve, opened the door wide enough to stick his head in, stuck his head in, and shouted sharply in Cantonese, whereupon there came an almighty scuffling inside, followed by silence.

‘Just I call to see if my missus at home,’ explained Ping Ah blandly. ‘Please do me a favour of stepping inside.’

They entered what Soames soon found was the palace laundry; Ping Ah was in charge of it. The multitude who had scuttled into hiding had made an excellent job of it; nobody, as they walked through into Ping Ah’s inner sanctum, was visible but his wife, whom he addressed as Rosie, pronouncing it Lousy. She came forward smiling through her rimless glasses, shaking her head, bowing, a little plump woman with dimples and a magnificent coiffure. She had no English.

‘In Liverpool, she was always indoors, washing, ironing, seeing nobody, eh, Rosie?’ said Ping Ah affectionately. She bobbed in answer.

They seated themselves round a scrubbed, bare table. Ping Ah clapped his hands, whereupon a girl hurried out to throw a pretty cloth over the white wood and lay out the paraphernalia for tea. As she did so, the Chinese talked.

‘Anything you have for wash or clean,’ he said, ‘you bring down here, Mr Noyes, and we will attend to with greatest attention and lowest cost. No article is too small or too big for us. All notions of cleanliness admiringly observed.’

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