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Authors: Alan Judd

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Clifford got out and hurried forward, his body slightly bent and an expression of barely restrained admiration on his face. Sir Wilfrid Eagle got out of the Jaguar, a slow operation for so tall
a man. A few strands of hair flopped against his cheek. His grey pinstripe was well cut to his lean figure but hopelessly crumpled, the pockets bulging. As he walked away from his car he raised one
hand in its direction as though tied to it by a string. This action lifted his jacket so that his shirt-tail was revealed. His other hand went through the motions of smoothing his hair.

‘It’s got stuck again,’ he said in a loud drawl. ‘Won’t fit anywhere.’

Clifford was eagerly deferential. ‘Shall I have a go, sir? It’s sometimes easier if someone else does it.’

‘Would you? Awfully kind.’

Clifford got briskly into the Jaguar and moved it backwards and forwards several times, but the few inches between the concrete pillar and the next car gave him little room. It was not clear how
the Jaguar could have got into this position. There was a great deal of revving. Clifford’s brow puckered and his lips compressed.

Patrick thought he had better introduce himself. He approached the ambassador with what he hoped was appropriate deference. The ambassador glanced at him quickly then fixed his gaze resolutely
on the Jaguar. It looked very like a physical manifestation of what newspapers called a diplomatic snub. Patrick wondered what rule he could have transgressed and then remembered what he had read
in the handbook in London: he should always be to the left of his ambassador. Or was it the right? Whichever it was, he must have approached from the wrong side.

The ambassador continued to stare at Clifford, who was beginning to sweat with the effort of twisting and turning. Patrick took a couple of steps backwards and approached from the other side. He
was about to say good day when Sir Wilfrid spoke quietly out of the side of his mouth.

‘You decided to come after all, then?’

The tone was enquiring rather than sarcastic. The ambassador did not look angry. He did not look at Patrick at all. Patrick hesitated. ‘There was a little confusion at the airport,
sir.’

There was no response. Was he waiting to be called Your Excellency? To relieve the awkwardness Patrick signalled Clifford to stop as the boot of the Jaguar just touched the car behind. Clifford
edged forward again. The silence continued.

‘Takin’ a chance, ain’t you? Blowing your cover and all that?’ Still the ambassador did not look at him.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t understand.’

The ambassador fished in his jacket pockets and pulled out a pair of spectacles. One arm was Sellotaped to the frame. He slowly turned towards Patrick. ‘Lord. Thought you were the other
chap. Who are you?’

‘Patrick Stubbs, sir, the new third secretary. I arrived this morning.’

‘Did you, by Jove? Well, that explains it. I thought at first you were the chappie I had breakfast with. Wondered why he’d turned up here when we’d agreed he should keep
away.’ He tapped his spectacles. ‘I should wear these things more, you see. Always take them off for driving. Pleased to meet you at last.’ They shook hands. The ambassador bent
his head conspiratorially and spoke quickly. ‘Chappie I had breakfast with was the one from Lost and Found who’s come out to find poor Arthur. The driver picked him up at the airport in
mistake for you. Same plane, you see, and a young chap like yourself. Easily done. White faces look alike to Africans, like black ones to us. Or like white ones to me without my specs. Nice young
chap, cheerful, determined, not short on confidence. Halfway through breakfast before we realised we were talking at cross-purposes. Problem then of what to do, of course, bearing in mind we have
to keep him a secret from the Lower Africans. Had him smuggled out in the boot of the Rolls in the end. Just have to hope he wasn’t spotted on the way in but with luck they’ll have made
the same mistake as me and thought he was you. Simon then went back to the airport to find you. Must be still there. That’s why I drove myself in.’

There was a screech of metal on concrete as the front wing of the Jaguar jammed against the pillar. Clifford’s face was red and angry. ‘Look what you made me do. I thought you were
supposed to be directing.’

His anger was so great and so obvious that it was almost unconvincing. Patrick was careful not to smile. ‘I wasn’t watching,’ he confessed.

‘That’s right, he wasn’t, he was talking to me,’ said Sir Wilfrid.

Clifford’s fury was constrained by his desire to be respectful. He got out to inspect the damage. ‘It could be worse, I suppose.’

Sir Wilfrid regarded the vehicle without interest. ‘Perhaps we’d better leave it as it is and call the garage.’

However, a few minutes more shunting, twisting and turning saw the car parked. ‘Thank you, Clifford,’ said Sir Wilfrid, slamming the door twice before it would shut. ‘I’m
sure there’s something wrong. It ought to be easier to park than that.’

Clifford was further annoyed to find that the ambassador and Patrick had already introduced themselves. The confusion at the airport was explained to him, with whispered references to the Lost
and Found man. He shook his head and exhaled noisily through his nose. ‘Sometimes I despair of these African drivers, sir.’

Sir Wilfrid raised his eyebrows. ‘Very understandable mistake. After all, I made it myself.’

When they were safely in the lift the ambassador put one hand in his jacket pocket and held his glasses with the other, scratching his jaw with the Sellotaped arm. ‘Told the L and F chap
to go to earth. He must lie low for a while to make sure no one’s on to him, otherwise he’ll disappear, too. Damn shame he was brought to the residence like that. Good idea for you to
lie pretty low as well, Patrick.’

Patrick was not sure what this involved. ‘Does that mean I stay at home, sir?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. Just keep a low profile. Try to act normally. Don’t do anything to make LASS take an interest in you or you’ll lead them to the L and F chap.
You’ll have to meet him eventually, of course, to hear how he’s getting on, but not yet. I’ve every confidence in that young man. He’s bound to turn up something sooner or
later.’

They got out of the lift. Sir Wilfrid put his spectacles back on and his hands fluttered over his pockets. ‘Briefcase. Damn. Must’ve left it in the car. Or at home. Got to have it
because it’s got all yesterday’s telegrams.’

‘Patrick will get it,’ said Clifford.

Sir Wilfrid turned to Clifford, his hearing apparently no better than his eyesight. ‘Would you? Most kind. I’ll give Patrick his introductory lecture.’

As the lift doors closed on him Sir Wilfrid remarked that Clifford would need the keys. ‘Never mind. I’ll leave them with Jean, my secretary. Come in and have the welcome chat. I
always give it to newcomers. Don’t s’pose it does any good but does no harm, anyway.’

They walked quickly through reception, a shower of respectful glances falling upon Sir Wilfrid. The receptionist pressed a buzzer to open a door marked ‘Private’, which led into a
corridor at the end of which was another door marked ‘Chancery’. This was normally opened by pressing buttons in a secret sequence but for the ambassador it was held open by his
secretary who had been warned by reception. She was a slim, severe-looking woman in her late thirties with dark hair and thin lips. She held out a cold bony hand to Patrick when they were
introduced and smiled with a sudden, desperate friendliness.


So
pleased to meet you,’ she said.

Sir Wilfrid gestured at the heavy door. ‘All this in case of terrorist attack. Chap came all the way out from London and said we were at risk. God knows who they think is going to get at
us here. Not easy to carry out a terrorist attack in a police state.’

The ambassador’s office had a conference table at one end and a desk and leather armchairs at the other. It looked across the city to the great slag-heaps outside, produce of the gold
mines, levelled, squared-off and neat. The conference table was polished and had pencils and notepaper set out. On the desk was a confusion of books, papers, ink-wells, newspapers and pipes. To one
side of the desk stood a tall grandfather clock showing ten past four. The door of its front hung open, revealing an immobile pendulum, weights and chains.

Sir Wilfrid waved at a chair. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and gazed out of the window, his back to Patrick. Patrick removed a crumpled brown tie from the chair and sat down. There
was silence.

‘Real problem here is heartlessness,’ said the ambassador firmly, without looking round. ‘Lack of heart. People don’t care for other people. The evil that this country is
so rightly condemned for is not the essence of the problem but its symptom. They’re self-righteous, obdurate, thick-headed, hard-hearted. They don’t want to feel. That’s one side
of the pioneering coin, you see. They’re also determined, loyal, resourceful, brave. They’ve set their faces against the world and told themselves they’re hated. And so they are,
now. They themselves have brought about that which they feared and it need never have happened, that’s the tragedy. They pretend they don’t care but they do. They feel guilty. And so
they harden their hearts and pretend they don’t.’

He turned to face Patrick, jingling the loose change in his pockets. The seriousness and urgency with which he spoke contrasted sharply with his relaxed manner. ‘’Course, you
haven’t been here for five minutes. After a while you’ll see what I mean. Perhaps you won’t, though, p’raps you won’t. Depends how sensitive you are. Are you
sensitive?’

Patrick smiled, partly from embarrassment. ‘Not at the moment. I’m rather dull.’

Sir Wilfrid laughed loudly and stamped one foot. ‘We all are, we all are, blunted by habit. The immigrants are often the worst but also the short-stayers like us, so watch it. In fact, the
sensitive are sometimes the worst of all. Because they won’t admit to feeling guilty they’re filled with self-hatred, which is unbearable, and so they externalise it and hate other
races, creeds, opinions instead. Poisons everything. Their whole lives become one long monotonous excuse, an attempt at self-justification which becomes less consoling the longer it lasts.’
He shook his head. ‘I know you probably think I’m an eccentric old fool, going on like this, but no one else will say it if I don’t.’

He picked up a pipe from the desk, put it in his mouth, removed it immediately and examined the mouthpiece, which had been bitten through. He tossed the pipe into the open interior of the
grandfather clock and picked up a stained meerschaum from another part of the desk. Patrick shifted in his seat and was about to attempt a remark about self-deception when the ambassador continued.
‘The other sort are less passionate. They cut themselves off and pretend they don’t see and in the end perhaps they don’t. They’re the majority. Kind, decent, honest,
ordinary, indifferent. You will meet them in this embassy.’ He lit the pipe, which billowed smoke, then took it from his mouth and examined it again. ‘I say this to all new arrivals.
They laugh behind my back but never mind. It ought to be said.’

Jean came in with coffee and chocolate biscuits. ‘Clifford is in my office asking for your car keys.’ Sir Wilfrid gave them to her and she went out, another smile drawing a thin line
across her face in the direction of Patrick.

Sir Wilfrid sat in an armchair and crossed one long leg over the other. He waved to Patrick to help himself. He swallowed his first cup of coffee and poured another, took two biscuits and then,
whilst he was talking, took the last.

‘Read much?’ he asked, his mouth full.

Patrick nodded and swallowed. ‘A fair bit. Not as much as I’d like.’

‘Novels and what-have-you?’

Patrick nodded.

‘That sort of thing?’ Sir Wilfrid waved at the books scattered on his desk.

There was Josephus’s
History of the Jewish War,
volume M–S of the Battenburg telephone directory, David Jones’s
In Parenthesis,
three books in Lower African
and two of Evelyn Waugh’s early novels.

‘I’ve read most of Waugh,’ Patrick said.

‘That’s what this country needs, a humorist, someone to show them themselves. It can’t come from outside, it has to come from within and he has to stay here. He mustn’t
leave. He’s got to see it through.’

The ambassador talked enthusiastically until Clifford returned. He put the briefcase reverentially on the desk then sat quickly on the nearest empty chair to the ambassador. He glanced at the
coffee pot.

‘Just telling Patrick here what this country needs,’ said Sir Wilfrid.

Clifford nodded. ‘Oil.’

The ambassador had been running his hand slowly through his white hair and now stopped, his palm on the top of his head. ‘Oil? Why?’

‘Well, sir, the country has virtually none of its own and although they turn coal into oil that isn’t very efficient.’

‘And what would having oil do for them?’

‘It would make them wealthier and less dependent upon the outside world.’

‘What a bizarre suggestion.’ Sir Wilfrid kept his hand on his head.

Clifford looked bewildered and wretched, like a dog that does not know what is expected of him.

‘The very last thing we want,’ the ambassador continued slowly, ‘is for this country to become independent of the outside world. Then, they’ll be impregnable,
they’ll never compromise, they’ll be impossible to influence. No, no, what we’d decided they really need is a Waugh.’

Clifford frowned. ‘With whom?’

Sir Wilfrid tipped the coffee in his saucer back into his cup and gulped it. ‘Well, I won’t keep you.’ He picked up his pipe and stood so abruptly that the others were left
sitting. ‘You’ve got plenty to do, no doubt, settling in and all that. But remember’ – he lowered his voice and pointed his pipe at Patrick – ‘low
profile.’

Once away from the ambassador Clifford began to reassert his authority. He spoke of the importance of trade with Lower Africa and of the extent of British investments. ‘No doubt HE gave
you the usual ear-bashing, did he? He always does. Perfectly correct in its way – from the point of view of policy, that is – but not always practical for those of us down in the
boiler-room. You’ll find you just have to get on with things as they are. No point in theorising about them, trying to change what’s beyond your control.’ He hesitated, perhaps
thinking he was on the verge of impropriety. ‘Mind you, he’s a very clever man.’

BOOK: Short of Glory
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