Black Mischief (18 page)

‘Eggs,
dear, not lambs,’ said her mother and pottered off towards some azalea roots
which were desperately in need of water.

‘Damn
the panorama of life,’ said Prudence, and she began drawing a series of highly
stylized profiles which by an emphasis of the chin and disordering of the hair
had ceased during the last six weeks to be portraits of William and had come to
represent Basil Seal. ‘To think that I wanted to be in love so much,’ she
thought, ‘that I even practised on William.’

‘Luncheon,’
said her mother, repassing the window. ‘Arid. I shall be hate again. Do go in
and be bright to your father.’

But
when Lady Courteney joined them in the dining-room she found father, daughter
and William sitting in moody silence.

‘Tinned
asparagus,’ said Sir Samson. ‘And a letter from the Bishop.’

‘He’s
not coming out to dinner again?’

‘No,
no, it isn’t as bad as that. But apparently Seth wants to pull down his
Cathedral for some reason. What does he expect
me
to do about it I
should like to know? Shocking ugly building, anyhow. I wish, Prudence and
William, you’d take the ponies out this afternoon. They haven’t had any proper
exercise for days.’

‘Too
hot,’ said Prudence.

‘Too
busy,’ said William.

‘Oh,
well,’ said Sir Samson Courteney. And later he remarked to his wife: ‘I say,
there isn’t any trouble between those two, is there? They used to be such
pals.’

‘I’ve
been meaning to mention it for some time, Sam, only I was so worried about the
antirrhinums. I don’t think Prudence is at all herself. D’you think it’s good
for a girl of her age hiving at this height all the year round? It might be an
idea to send her back to England for a few months. Harriet could put her up in
Belgrave Place. I’m not sure it wouldn’t be a good thing for her to go out in
London for a season and meet some people of her own age. What d’you think?’

‘I dare
say you’re right. All that What-d’you-call-it of Life she keeps working away at
… Only you must write to Harriet. I’m far too busy at the moment. Got to
think of something to say to the Bishop.’.

But
next day Prudence and William went out with the ponies. She had an assignation
with Basil.

‘Listen,
William, you’re to go out of the city by the lane behind the Baptist school and
the Jewish abattoirs, then past the Parsee death-house and the fever hospital.’

‘Not
exactly the prettiest ride.’

‘Darling,
don’t be troublesome. You might get seen the other way. Once you’re clear of
the Arab cemetery you can go where you like. And you’re to fetch me at
Youkoumian’s at five.’

‘Jolly
afternoon for me leading Mischief all the time.’

‘Now,
William, you know you manage him perfectly. You’re the only person I’d trust to
take him. I can’t leave him outside Youkoumian’s, can I, because of
discretion.’

‘What
you don’t seem to see is that it’s pretty dim for me, floundering about half
the day, I mean, in a dust heap with two ponies while you neck with the chap
who’s cut me out.’

‘William,
don’t be
coarse.
And anyway, “cut you out”
nothing. You had me all to yourself for six months and weren’t you just bored
blue with it?’

‘Well,
I dare say he’ll be bored soon.’

‘Cad.’

Basil
still lived in the large room over Mr Youkoumian’s store. There was a verandah,
facing on to a yard littered with scrap iron and general junk, accessible by an
outside staircase. Prudence passed through the shop, out and up. The atmosphere
of the room was rank with tobacco smoke.

Basil,
in shirt—sleeves, rose from the deck—chair to greet her. He threw the butt of
his Burma cheroot into the tin hip-bath which stood unemptied at the side of
the bed; it sizzled and went Out and floated throughout the afternoon, slowly
unfurling in the soapy water. He bolted the door. It was half dark in the room.
Dusty parallels of light struck through the shutters on to the floor-boards and
the few shabby mats. Prudence stood isolated, waiting for him, her hat in her
hand. At first neither spoke. Presently she said, ‘You might have shaved,’ and
then ‘Please help with my boots.’

Below,
in the yard, Madame Youkoumian upbraided a goat. Strips of sunlight traversed
the floor as an hour passed. In the bath water, the soggy stub of tobacco
emanated a brown blot of juice.

Banging
on the door.

‘Heavens,
‘ said Prudence, ‘that can’t be William already.’

‘Mr
Seal, Mr Seal.’

‘Well,
what is it? I’m resting.’

‘Well,
you got to stop,’ said Mr Youkoumian. ‘They’re looking for you all over the
town. Damn fine rest I’ve had this afternoon, like ‘ell I ‘aven’t.’

‘What
is it?’

‘Emperor
must see you at once. ‘E’s got a new idea. Very modern and important. Some damn
fool nonsense about Swedish drill.’

Basil
hurried to the Palace to find his master in a state of high excitement.

‘I have
been reading a German book. We must draft a decree at once … Communal
physical exercises. The whole population, every morning, you understand. And we
must get instructors from Europe. Cable for them. Quarter of an hour’s exercise
a morning. And community singing. That is very important. The health of the
nation depends on it. I have been thinking it over. Why is there no cholera in
Europe? Because of community singing and physical jerks … and bubonic plague …
and leprosy.’

Back in
her room Prudence reopened the Panorama of Life and began writing:
a woman
in love
…

‘A woman,’ said Mr
Youkoumian. ‘That’s what Seth needs to keep ‘im quiet. Always sticking ‘is nose
in too much everywhere. You listen to me, Mr Seal — if we can fix Seth with a
woman our modernization will get along damn fine.’

‘There’s
always Fifi.’

‘Oh Mr
Seal, ‘e ‘ad ‘er when ‘e was a little boy. Don’t you worry. I’ll fix it O.K.’

Royal
interruptions of the routine of the Ministry were becoming distressingly
frequent in the last few days as the Emperor assimilated the various books that
had arrived for him by the last mail. Worst of all, the pageant of birth
control was proving altogether more trouble than it was worth; in spite of
repeated remonstrances, however, it continued to occupy the mind of the
Emperor in precedence of all other interests. He had already renamed the site
of the Anglican Cathedral, Place Marie Stopes.

‘Heaven
knows what will happen if he ever discovers psycho-analysis,’ remarked Basil,
gloomily foreseeing a Boulevard Kraft-Ebing, an Avenue Oedipus and a pageant of
coprophagists.

‘He’ll
discover every damn modern thing,’ said Mr Youkoumian, ‘if we don’t find him a
woman damn quick … ‘ ere’s another letter from the Vicar Apostolic. If I ‘adn’t
ordered all that stuff from Cairo I’d drop the whole pageant. But you can’t use
it for nothing else but what it’s for — so far as I can see, not like boots
what they can eat.’

The
opposition to the pageant was firm and widespread.

The
Conservative Party rallied under the leadership of the Earl of Ngumo. This
nobleman, himself one of a family of forty-eight (most of whom he had been
obliged to assassinate on his succession to the title), was the father of over
sixty sons and uncounted daughters. This progeny was a favourite boast of his;
in fact, he maintained a concert party of seven minstrels for no other purpose
than to sing at table about this topic when he entertained friends. Now in ripe
age, with his triumphs behind him, he found himself like some scarred war
veteran surrounded by pacifists, his prestige assailed and his proudest
achievements held up to vile detraction. The new proposals struck at the very
roots of sport and decency and he expressed the general feeling of the landed
gentry when he threatened amid loud grunts of approval to dismember any man on
his estates whom he found using the new-fangled and impious appliances.

The
smart set, composed (under the leadership of Lord Boaz) of cosmopolitan blacks,
courtiers, younger sons and a few of the decayed Arab intelligentsia, though
not actively antagonistic, were tepid in their support; they discussed the
question languidly in Fifi’s salon and, for the most part, adopted a
sophisticated attitude maintaining that of course
they
had always known
about these things, but Why invite trouble by all this publicity; at best it
would only make contraception middle-class. In any case this circle was always
suspect to the popular mind and their allegiance was unlikely to influence
public opinion in the Emperor’s favour.

The
Churches came out strong on the subject. No one could reasonably accuse the
Nestorian Patriarch of fanatical moral inflexibility — indeed there had been
incidents in his Beatitude’s career when all but grave scandal had been caused
to the faithful — but whatever his personal indulgence, his theology had always
been unimpeachable. Whenever a firm lead was wanted on a question of opinion,
the Patriarch had been willing to forsake his pleasures and pronounce freely
and intransigently for the tradition he had inherited. There had been the ugly
affair of the Metropolitan of Matodi who had proclaimed himself fourth member
of the Trinity; there was the parish priest who was unsound about the Dual
Will; there was the ridiculous heresy that sprang up in the province of Mhomala
that the prophet Esaias had wings and lived in a tree; there was the painful
case of the human sacrifices at the Bishop of Popo’s consecration — on all
these and other uncertain topics the Patriarch had given proof of a sturdy
orthodoxy.’

Now, on
the question of Birth Control, his Beatitude left the faithful in no doubt as
to where their duty lay. As head of the Established Church he called a
conference which was attended by the Chief Rabbi, the Mormon Elder and the
chief representatives of all the creeds of the Empire; only the Anglican Bishop
excused himself, remarking in a courteous letter of refusal, that his work lay
exclusively among the British community who, since they were already fully
informed and equipped in the matter, could scarcely be injured in any way by
the Emperor’s new policy; he wished his Beatitude every success in the gallant
stand he was making for the decencies of family life, solicited his prayers
and remarked that he was himself too deeply embroiled with the progressive
party, who were threatening the demolition of his Cathedral, to confuse the
issue with any other cause, however laudable it might be in itself.

As a
result of the conference, the Patriarch composed an encyclical in rich,
oratorical style and dispatched copies of it by runners to all parts of the
island. Had the influence of the Established Church on the popular mind been
more weighty, the gala should have been doomed, but, as has already been
mentioned, the Christianizing of the country was still so far incomplete that
the greater part of the Empire retained with a minimum of disguise their older
and grosser beliefs, and it was, in fact, from the least expected quarter, the
tribesmen and villagers, that the real support of Seth’s policy suddenly
appeared.

This
development was due directly and solely to the power of advertisement. In the
dark days when the prejudice of his people compassed him on every side and even
Basil spoke unsympathetically of the wisdom of postponing the gala, the Emperor
found among the books that were mailed to him monthly from Europe a collection
of highly inspiring Soviet posters. At first the difficulties of imitation
appeared to be insuperable. The
Courier
office had no machinery for
reproducing pictures. Seth was contemplating the wild expedient of employing
slave labour to copy his design when Mr Youkoumian discovered that some years
ago an enterprising philanthropist had by bequest introduced lithography into
the curriculum of the American Baptist school. The apparatus survived the
failure of the attempt. Mr Youkoumian purchased it from the pastor and resold
it at a fine profit to the Department of Fine Arts in the Ministry of
Modernization. An artist was next found in the Armenian colony who, on Mr
Youkoumian’s introduction, was willing to elaborate Seth’s sketches. Finally
there resulted a large, highly coloured poster well calculated to convey to the
illiterate the benefits of birth control. It was in many ways the highest
triumph of the new Ministry and Mr Youkoumian was the hero. Copies were placarded
all over Debra Dowa; they were sent down the line to every station latrine,
capital and coast; they were sent into the interior to vice-regal lodges and
headmen’s huts, hung up at prisons, barracks, gallows and juju trees, and
wherever the poster was hung there assembled a cluster of inquisitive,
entranced Azanians.

It
portrayed two contrasted scenes. On one side a native hut of hideous squalor,
overrun with children of every age, suffering from every physical incapacity — crippled,
deformed, blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with
paternity squatted by an empty cook-pot; through the door could be seen his
wife, withered and bowed with child-bearing, desperately hoeing at their
inadequate crop. On the other side a bright parlour furnished with chairs and
table; the mother, young and beautiful, sat at her ease eating a huge slice of
raw meat; her husband smoked a long Arab hubble-bubble (still a caste mark of
leisure throughout the land), while a single healthy child sat between them
reading a newspaper. Inset between the two pictures was a detailed drawing of
some up-to-date contraceptive apparatus and the words in Sakuyu: WHICH HOME DO
YOU CHOOSE?