Short of Glory (13 page)

Sir Wilfrid wore a baggy tweed suit with a large red handkerchief billowing from the top pocket and breadcrumbs on the waistcoat. He smoked a curved pipe which would not stay lit and he had a
new pipe stem behind his left ear. His manner was businesslike, almost tetchy.

‘Expenses and allowances,’ he said. ‘Inspectors are coming, as you know. Looks like allowances will be cut.’ There was a perceptible stiffening around the table. Sir
Wilfrid paused, put his forefinger inside his collar and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Heard from poor old Joe Slingsby in Tripoli. Anyone know him? Married one of the Dalton girls – Lord
Dalton’s. Went all wrong years ago, of course. Then married his secretary like everyone else.’ He pulled his finger out of his collar and examined it. ‘Point is, he’s had
the inspectors at Tripoli and there and elsewhere they’ve cut both allowances and establishment. I reckon they’ll do the same here.’

Most people stared at their notepads. Someone dropped a pencil.

‘How big a cut, sir?’ asked Clifford.

‘About twenty-five per cent, according to old Joe.’

It was as though it had been announced that twenty-five per cent of staff were to be shot. Sir Wilfrid dug into his pipe with his knife, manifesting an unconcern so obvious as to suggest he was
in fact relishing the effect of his words.

Philip leaned forward. ‘Surely, sir, across-the-board reductions on such a scale are inapplicable here?’

‘Don’t see why. Our allowances are probably too high, anyway. After all, they’re supposed to compensate for being abroad and to enable us to live at a properly representational
standard, nothing more. We’re not meant to make money out of them, though people do, of course. I worked for an ambassador once who banked his entire salary and his entire ambassador’s
fund, which was as much again and tax-free. He never entertained anyone to more than one glass of sherry. Bloody awful stuff that was, too. Also, this isn’t exactly a hardship post.
We’re not like those poor devils in Angola, scratching around for a bit of cabbage leaf to see them through the day.’ He knocked out the scrapings from his pipe, carefully closed the
knife and began to refill. ‘Next, the forthcoming visit by our junior minister. Is that in hand, Clifford?’

Clifford was making calculations on his notepad. ‘Ah, yes, sir. All in order. I’m finalising the plans. It’s going to be quite a fuss, this one.’ He laughed.

‘Of course it’s going to be a fuss. He’s a minister.’

Clifford laughed again and nodded. ‘Exactly. I’ll get Patrick to help with the final stages.’ He looked significantly at Patrick, who was surreptitiously rereading the
telegram.

‘Patrick has other business, don’t forget,’ Sir Wilfrid replied in a tone that was probably meant to be discreet but which sounded sinister and caused everyone to stare.

‘Is the ministerial visit before or after the inspectors, sir?’ asked the commercial officer.

‘Before. No good looking to him for help. He’s only a junior minister. It’s nothing to do with him.’ He relit his pipe, waving away the smoke with wide sweeps of his arm.
‘We’ll discuss the visit nearer the time when I’ve seen your proposals, Clifford. Now, what about these riots down south?’

There was some uneasy shuffling. Clifford leant forward, his expression pregnant with news. ‘Up to a thousand rioters. Two dead and a number injured. It’s all quiet now. It was on
the radio this morning.’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Wilfrid mildly. ‘It was in the papers, too. That’s how we know about it. But London will expect us to have an opinion. We have to decide now what it
should be.’

There was a pause. The main effect of the rioting, so far as the embassy was concerned, was that it generated paper. Various opinions were put forward as to the cause of the riot, including the
unusually warm weather in the south, the unpopular increase in bus fares and the extent to which terrorists had infiltrated Lower Africa. The fares issue was thought to be the most important.

Sir Wilfrid nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what the papers say and they’re often right. But of course people in London may question whether they want to maintain an embassy just to tell
them what they can read in their papers on the way to work. They may expect their embassy to contribute more than that, though sadly I doubt it. But that’s by the by. It shouldn’t stop
us from trying.’

He spoke crisply. The faces round the table were puzzled and fearful. Philip leant forward and tentatively scratched his right ankle, usually a sign that he was about to speak.

‘The radio also said that hand grenades had been found in a servant’s quarters in the northern suburbs,’ he said.

‘Indeed it did, Philip. I listen to the radio too. But if we’re going to say anything about it we should try to assess whether, for instance, this was an isolated incident or whether
it might be part of a campaign to radicalise the domestics in the northern suburbs.’ There was a little awkward laughter. Sir Wilfrid looked at them all. ‘Well, has anyone any
suggestions?’

The security officer, seated at the bottom of the table and generally ignored because he dealt with security, cleared his throat and began to speak in a quiet Midlands accent. He mentioned the
forthcoming trial of some terrorists who had attacked a police station. If they were sentenced to death as was expected there could be widespread trouble. Grenades could indicate preparation for
trouble, just as the finding of them might indicate pre-emptive action by the police. Whatever the present cause of the riots, if they continued until the trial they would inevitably become
associated with it and might lead to further disorders.

He spoke slowly, with several nervous glances at the ambassador. When he finished Sir Wilfrid took his pipe from his mouth. ‘Thank you, Bernard, that was an excellent suggestion and the
first this morning not to have appeared in the press. It may soon do so and thus I think an early telegram to London today is called for – will you draft something, Clifford, and let me see
it before it goes?’

‘Right, sir.’ Clifford nodded and looked at Philip, who nodded bleakly, moving his lips as he made notes on his pad.

‘Good,’ continued Sir Wilfrid. ‘Any other business?’

Harry White, the commercial officer, pulled up his chair and read a report of a visit he had made to a machine tool factory, the manager of which had said that he would have bought British
rather than German and Japanese machinery had it been less expensive, delivered on time, more reliable and easier to service. Harry was an earnest man who the previous year had had printed two
thousand copies of a twenty-page document entitled, ‘Redistribution of Greater London Industrial and Office Employment during the past Ten Years’. The blank sides were now used, without
his knowledge, as rough drafting paper in chancery. Philip had said that the paper was in fact rather well written but he was the only person who had bothered to read it. When Harry finished
reading his report everyone nodded sagely and the ambassador thanked him.

After the meeting Clifford asked Sir Wilfrid if they could have a word about the British-Lower African Trade Association lunch at which Sir Wilfrid was to speak. The ambassador nodded and said,
‘Patrick, come into my office. Time we got cracking.’

Patrick followed, feeling Clifford’s glance at his back. He closed the door as Sir Wilfrid rooted noisily among the pipes in the grandfather clock. ‘God, these meetings drive me mad.
I hope you’ll be spared them by the time you get to my position though frankly I doubt it. Mind you, there might not be a Foreign Office by then because someone one day will wake up to the
fact that if you don’t have an aggressive foreign policy you don’t need a large foreign service. Cut your overseas representation and leave just enough to handle consular matters and to
transmit diktats from London. They’ll say that’s all we’ll need and they’ll be right. It could so easily be otherwise, that’s the tragedy of it. The machine is
excellent but there’s no one to make it work. We need heart, belief, will.’ He came away from the clock with a well-chewed pipe and changed the mouthpiece for the one behind his ear.
His eyes were hard with conviction.

‘D’you think I’m mad?’

‘No, sir.’

He smiled suddenly and his gaze softened. ‘I bet you do but I’ll go on. You see, I think we are the tentacles of the octopus, London, but the heart of the octopus isn’t pumping
out enough blood any more and we are going to die. D’you see what I mean? One day we’ll wither and drop off. Of course, I shouldn’t be talking to you like this, a young man at the
start of your career, but one has to let off steam sometimes.’ He threw the discarded mouthpiece back into the clock, then faced Patrick, his hands in his jacket pockets. ‘Now:
Whelk.’

He was in no doubt that the telegram was from the L and F man, though MacKenzie was not a name he recalled. It didn’t matter because it could only have come from him. Mind you, he
shouldn’t have sent it because the Lower African authorities were likely to get on to it. They might think it odd and so sniff him out. Embarrassment all round, accusations about British
spies and so on. Fortunately the minister approved – which was about the only good thing one could say about this minister – and so the mud would be spread widely and thinly. The point
was that the poor chap must be desperate to have done this. He must really need money and was clearly out of touch with his own people in London. Equally clearly, he was on to something. It would
be asking for trouble, foolhardy, for the embassy to send him anything, nor could he himself, for the same reason. That left Patrick: could he see his way to forwarding something from his own
account to tide the chap over? He would get it back all right – that was guaranteed.

Patrick did not know how much he had but assumed he could afford it. Sir Wilfrid, pleased, then suggested he should visit ‘our friend Inspector Rissik’ before doing so, partly to see
if Rissik dropped any hints about knowing what was going on – in which case, better not send the money – and partly because it was high time Patrick got on with the official liaison
anyway.

Patrick agreed, although he wanted to avoid Jim Rissik almost as much as he wanted to see Joanna. Clifford tried to prevent him going by claiming there was important work in chancery for him
that day. Patrick would happily have done it if Clifford had been prepared to argue with the ambassador, which he was not. He was in fact interested to try some political reporting since it was
supposed to be one half of his job. He did not, of course, know what he would have reported and was already beginning to suspect that the amount of original political thought, insight or opinion
was so small that it had to be jealously guarded.

‘Don’t be more than an hour,’ said Clifford crossly. ‘We’ve got to talk about the arrangements for the ministerial visit. You’ll probably have to work through
lunch.’

Patrick nodded obediently. ‘When is the visit?’

‘No date’s been fixed. That’s why we have to be on our toes, in case they spring an early one on us. Can’t have people swanning off all over the city. One hour,
remember.’

Clifford spoke in the tone he used when he was annoyed with Sandy. Patrick felt less obedient. He nearly asked if they could synchronise watches but thought of Sandy and the bath, and minded
Clifford less.

The police headquarters was a twenty-two storey building near the city centre. It was notorious because of the number of people alleged to have fallen or thrown themselves from
twelfth-floor windows whilst assisting the police with their enquiries. Others had hanged themselves in their cells.

It was like the headquarters of a large company but rather easier of access. A young white policeman behind a desk in the spacious entrance hall gave curt and monosyllabic directions to the
sixth floor. Patrick walked unescorted and unchallenged through clean bare corridors but there was no sign of Jim’s department. All the office doors were unmarked and the rooms empty. He met
a woman with dyed black hair and a well-formed face. Her skin was hard and wrinkled.

‘Jesus, what a bloody place,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to see about my driving licence. D’you know where that bit is?’

They had each been directed by the dour policeman. She glanced irritably up and down the corridor. ‘It’s these bloody old Lower Africans. They’re carved out of the veldt. The
Police Force is stuffed with them, and the Civil Service. That’s what’s wrong with this country. Lot of boneheads in charge.’

In the next corridor they found a helpful black man with a mop and pail who told them that they should be on the sixth floor of B block, not A block.

On the way out Patrick said to the young policeman, ‘The floor was right but the building was wrong.’

The policeman looked up from the booklet he was reading. ‘What?’

‘You should have directed us to the sixth floor of B block.’

‘Yes.’

‘Boneheads, carved out of rock,’ said the woman.

The policeman stared and then continued reading.

In Jim Rissik’s outer office there were two more young white policemen, no older than Patrick. They were smart and looked fit but their eyes and mouths were sullen. When he asked to see
Jim one of them told him he would have to wait and pointed to a chair. He explained that he had tried to ring and make an appointment but the line had been continuously engaged. The policeman
pointed again to a chair. When Patrick said he was from the British Embassy the other got up slowly, knocked on Jim’s door and went in.

Jim came out with his hand outstretched. His naturally strong and regular good looks were enhanced by his uniform. He looked spruce, competent, confident and friendly.

‘I’m glad you came. I wanted to get in touch with you anyway. It’s time we had a talk. Maybe we should make it lunch next time.’ He smiled.

They went into his office, and were soon talking about Philip’s party. ‘I still haven’t got over that,’ said Jim. ‘It just about burned me out. Joanna coped with it
better than I did. Maybe I’ve seen too many diplomatic functions. I mean, what was Longhurst trying to do? What does he think we are, for Christ’s sake? I mean, what do you dips think
we’re like if that’s what you think we like?’ He laughed, picked up the phone and ordered coffee.