The White Father (8 page)

At that moment Mr Gilchrist and Hugh Shrieve came in from the garden.

“Hello, my boy,” said Edward’s father. “Any luck with the treasure trove? Mr Shrieve, this is my son Edward.”

They shook hands. Shrieve was a short, thin man, burned dry by the looks of him, and rather hesitant in manner. His eyes, which were very blue, flinched away from Edward’s, as though he was embarrassed by their brightness. His hair was thin and bleached, and it stuck up awkwardly at the back. His handshake was firm, but he withdrew his hand quickly from it. Although it was one of the warmest days of the summer so far, he was wearing a sweater beneath his tweed jacket, and he looked glad to be back indoors after his tour of the garden.

“Can I fill your glass?” said Edward.

“Oh, thank you. A whisky and soda, please. And please, no ice.”

“Poor Hugh,” said his aunt. “Here we all are in cotton frocks and shirtsleeves, and he feels so cold all the time that I’ve had to light a fire for him in his bedroom.”

“I expect it takes time to get used to the change of climate,”
said Mr Gilchrist. “It’s this air travel. You move too fast for comfort.”

They talked brightly for a few minutes about how much nicer it was to travel by boat. One could acclimatise gradually that way, they all agreed, whereas aeroplanes picked one up in violent heat and humidity, kept one air-conditioned for a few cramped hours, then dumped one down somewhere bitterly cold and dry.

“Are you here for the constitutional conference?” said Edward, thinking Shrieve’s brief contributions to the
conversation
indicated a boredom with the subject equal to his own.

“Yes, in a way,” said Shrieve. He looked down at his glass.

“It’s a damned shame,” said Mr Gilchrist, “the way we’re being pushed out all over the world.”

“Perhaps,” said Shrieve. “It’s not all that different from the way we pushed in, of course.”

“But don’t you feel that a life’s work—many lives’ work—is going down the drain? That there’ll be nothing to show for it after a few years?”

“It will be difficult for a time,” said Shrieve. “More difficult than it need have been, perhaps. The wind of change which everyone’s now talking about has blown so fast.”

“Too fast,” said Mr Gilchrist authoritatively. “They’re not ready for independence, most of them, are they?”

“Not by our standards, perhaps. But I’m afraid we’ve always tended to avoid thinking about the enormous effort that would have been necessary to prepare them for our standard of freedom. We always imagined we were pursuing a gradual policy which would take us gently forward towards some distant day when we would gladly hand over. But that day was always too far ahead to think about, we didn’t imagine it happening in our lifetimes. And now events have caught up with us, and our policy seems to have been much too gradual. I’m really too involved,” Shrieve added almost apologetically. “I shouldn’t really talk about it in this way. There’s a
mathematical word, though, that describes our approach exactly. Something that means a line continually approaching but never actually meeting another line. Asti-something. Astigmatic? No.”

“Asymptotic,” said Edward, upon whom a university education had not been wholly wasted. Besides, he was very good at word games.

“That’s it,” said Shrieve delightedly. “How clever of you to know. It was a word I got from a mathematical friend at the university. He used it to describe his relations with a girl he was pursuing.”

“Doesn’t sound as though the pursuit was too successful,” said Mr Gilchrist. “
Cherchez
la
femme
,”
he added, raising his glass.

“What are you going to do, exactly, at this conference?” said Edward. “It starts fairly soon, doesn’t it?”

“In a fortnight, yes. It’s all a bit complicated to explain, I’m afraid. Officially, I’m just on holiday.”

“Hugh has rather a special job,” said Mrs Shrieve. “He looks after some very backward people indeed, don’t you, dear?”

“Really?” said Edward. “What sort of people?”

“They’re called the Ngulu,” said Shrieve. He didn’t want to talk about them now, to these English country people.

“I’ve heard of them,” said Edward doubtfully. “At least I think I have. Are they the people who only keep cows for sacrifice?”

“For rearing bull calves, yes,” said Shrieve. “How did you know that?”

Edward blushed. “Oh, I was browsing round the
anthropology
section of the College library one day, and I came on some pictures of them.” He wasn’t prepared to admit, scarcely even to himself, that he had been hoping to find some of those exciting photographs of splendidly naked people which so often illustrate serious anthropological works.

“That would have been Nanson and Cowen, I expect,” said Shrieve. “There’s a chapter on the Ngulu in them.”

“I don’t honestly remember. I think there were some pictures of Canadian Indian totems. Bears doing unmentionable things to women.”

“That’s right,” said Shrieve. “How strange that you should have read it. It’s really rather a specialist book.”

“I didn’t really read it, just glanced through.”

“He was supposed,” said Mr Gilchrist, “to be studying English History.”

“You can never tell what may not help with the General Paper,” said Edward, unconvincingly.

“I’ve got a distant cousin,” said Mr Gilchrist, “who’s very worried about the way things are going in Kenya. It’s a damned shame. He went there after the war, spent all his savings on a farm, made a very good thing of it, and now he doesn’t think it’s a safe place to bring up his children.”

“There’s no problem like that where I come from,” said Shrieve. “There’s virtually no white settlement on the land.”

“Why’s that?” said Edward.

“It’s pretty remote, you know, to start with, and the soil is generally poor. It’s not a country that’s been opened up like others. We really went there to keep out any other European power. And to trade, of course. We’ve made a great deal of money out of the mining.”

“But where would they have been without us?” said Mr Gilchrist.

“In the hands of the French or the Portuguese, I expect.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. Where would any of these countries be if it wasn’t for the European capital that’s been poured into them for decades?”

“I suppose they’d be still more underdeveloped than they are,” said Shrieve. “But it hasn’t all been a one-way process, you know. Individuals are going to be hard hit in certain places, I’m afraid, but the mining companies must have earned back their original investments many hundred times over.”

Shrieve spoke softly, Edward noticed, and twisted his fingers, as though he wasn’t at all anxious to discuss the general state of African politics.

“And what about your people, the Ngulu? Are they going to be independent like everyone else?”

“That’s my problem, alas,” said Shrieve, looking Edward squarely in the eyes for once. “You see, they’re genuinely centuries behind their neighbours, and they’re never going to catch up. They’re not interested in catching up. They’re quite happy as they are, doodling about their little village, growing a few easy crops, having their regular festivals. But they can only stay happy if they’re protected.”

“Is that so difficult to arrange?” said Mr Gilchrist. “Surely some sort of settlement can be worked out?”

“I hope so. The trouble is that their neighbours, the Luagabu, may try and wipe them out while no one’s looking. They’re two hundred miles from the capital, and that’s a three-day journey by jeep. At the moment the Ngulu are all right because I’m there, and I’m backed by a reliable police force. But what happens when we go, no one yet knows. We have to try and arrange something which will continue to frighten the Luagabu from attacking. And the independent police are likely to be Luagabu themselves.”

“Yes, quite a problem,” said Mr Gilchrist.

“It’s a question of getting effective sanctions.”

“Have another drink,” said Mr Gilchrist. “I expect it’s pretty thirsty work where you come from.”

Shrieve looked at his aunt, who smiled overwhelmingly. He took it to mean that they had time for another drink.

“Thank you, I will,” he said.

While his father was fetching the whisky, Edward moved his chair nearer Shrieve’s and said, “But it’s fascinating, what you’re doing. Why doesn’t everyone know about it? I mean, if you got public opinion interested here, I’m sure you could cause a big stir—rallies in Trafalgar Square, everything.”

“I’m not sure that that’s quite what we need,” said Shrieve. “I don’t think the Colonial Office would be at all pleased about a rally in Trafalgar Square. And I’m afraid a lot of people already think I’ve just got a bee in my bonnet. They pooh-pooh me, rather, and send me away with soothing words.”

“But you mustn’t let that happen. They sound charming, your Ngulu.”

“They are. But the situation is a little difficult for people in Whitehall to understand.”

“Are you doing all the work by yourself?”

“Virtually, yes.”

“I don’t expect you’d like an idle young loafer to help you, would you?” said Mr Gilchrist. “I don’t know what to do with the boy. He refuses to say how he intends to earn a living.”

“I am looking for a sort of assistant, actually,” said Shrieve. “But I don’t expect——”

“He’d be no use to you, I’m afraid. He has a horror of work.”

“Wait and see,” said Edward, trying to control himself. What his father thought worth doing was contemptible, fiddling with other people’s money on the stock exchange and talking as though you were vital to the country’s economy. “Just wait and see, that’s all. If there was anything in the world worth doing, I’d do it.”

Shrieve looked at him, amazed. “Nothing worth doing?” he said. He sounded shocked.

“Worth doing, worth doing,” said Mr Gilchrist. “I’ve never heard such nonsense, and I don’t expect Mr Shrieve has, either.”

“I’ve read in the papers,” said Shrieve pacifically, “that the young are discontented, or disillusioned, with the world their elders have made.”

“Disillusioned?” said Edward. “Don’t tell me you think illusions are worth having?”

“I’ve never thought of myself as exactly deluded,” said Shrieve. “But I’ve always liked my work.”

“I can see that. Obviously it’s fascinating work. But I can hardly do it, can I? We’re being chucked out of everywhere—and quite rightly. And the only equivalents—the United Nations, UNESCO, those things—they’ve all got far too many English people already. We’re stuck in our own country now for good.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that. I can see it must all seem quite different for you. I suppose people of my generation must be the last to have had a clear run in that way.”

“It’s terrible,” said Mr Gilchrist. “Just what’s going to happen when you chaps leave, that’s what I want to know?”

“I’m afraid it’s something we all want to know.”

“It’s simply not fair. And when I hear my own son saying there’s nothing worth doing, it makes me despair for the future of this country, really it does.”

“Do you have no idea at all of what you want to do?” said Shrieve to Edward. “Surely you must at least have
inclinations
?”

Edward smiled warily. “I’m waiting to hear the Oxford results. I may go back and do some research.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs Gilchrist, who had manœuvred Mrs Shrieve over towards them, “that what he really wants to be is one of those dreadful young men who howl on the radio all day long. It’s degrading, but that’s what he wants.”

“It’s not degrading. It’s simply a very good way of making an awful lot of money extremely fast.”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs Gilchrist, turning to Mrs Shrieve. “Our cook has the radio on all the time. I simply don’t know how she stands it. It’s moaning and screaming from morning till night.”

“The B.B.C.,” said Edward between his teeth, “seems to think that the Palm Court Orchestra is the very latest musical sensation. There are only about two programmes a day of genuine pops, and as for jazz——”

“I can’t say I ever listen to the radio,” said Mrs Shrieve. “I seem to have so much to do, always.”

Edward looked at her in disbelief. He turned to Shrieve and said, “It’s the generations gap. My parents think that because I prefer to dress comfortably——”

“Sloppily,” said his father.

“——my mind must be, all right, sloppy, too. But I’ve got a perfectly good mind, and if I don’t accept the things they believe in, it’s because I can see just how sloppy they are,
all lip-service and dressing-up, no reality. I’d rather have nothing than the tired old lies masquerading as middle-class morality.”

“Your son is an idealist, I see,” said Mrs Shrieve. “I
remember
feeling just the same when I was your age, Edward. And look at me now!”

Edward looked at her. Her smile became a little fixed.

“All nonsense,” said Mr Gilchrist. “It’s simply a question of what works. If we’re hypocrites, and perhaps we are in some ways, at least we’re charitable hypocrites, we help our
neighbour
and so on.”

“Indeed we do,” said Mrs Shrieve.

“There’s nothing hypocritical about your dislike of pop music, though,” said Edward. “You think it’s degrading. But degrading whom? And from what?”

“Degrading popular taste,” said his father.

“What do you know of popular taste?”

“I’m afraid our family arguments can’t be very entertaining for you, Mr Shrieve,” said Mrs Gilchrist.

Shrieve was smiling. He was about to say something when Jane came into the room.

“Good evening, Mrs Shrieve,” she said.

Mrs Shrieve pressed her hand and said, “And how are you, my dear? Got over that strained muscle?”

Jane looked puzzled. She hadn’t strained a muscle for months. But she smiled and said, “Oh, yes, thanks.”

“Have you met my nephew?”

“How do you do, Mr Shrieve. Goodness, from what Mummy said, I wasn’t sure you weren’t coal black.”

“There are people who think I’ve gone native, Miss Gilchrist. But one can’t, without a lot of effort, change the colour of one’s skin.”

“Dear me, no,” said Jane, in her best party manner. She gave a silly laugh to annoy Edward, who, she could see, was cross at having his conversation interrupted.