The White Father (9 page)

“You know,” said Mr Gilchrist, who had gone back to brooding on Shrieve’s African problem, “the fact is that these
Lugu—Luagu—these lugubrious people you were talking about, they respect force.”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Nothing to be afraid of, I should’ve thought. It’s the same in Kenya. Toby Welch-Jackson—he’s my distant cousin—says you have to walk softly and carry a big stick.”

“It’s not been my policy exactly,” said Shrieve. “But it’s certainly true that the Luagabu carry big sticks. They’re fond of long knives, too, as a matter of fact.”

“They’re not ready for independence,” said Mr Gilchrist positively. “And now they’ll jump up in the United Nations and spew out a lot of bilge about colonialism, I suppose.”

“It’s probable.”

“Hugh, dear,” said Mrs Shrieve, “I think it’s time we were going home. The Gilchrists are probably panting for dinner, and ours will be cold unless we leave at once.” She smiled sociably around. “It’s been so nice. You really must come and have a look at
my
garden, Mrs Gilchrist, it’s at its best now.”

“It’s been a good year for gardens,” said Mrs Gilchrist. “In spite of those awful gales in April. One night I thought the whole house was going to be blown down. But the flowers always manage to survive somehow.”

“Are you staying down here for long?” Edward asked Shrieve.

“Just a couple of days. The conference doesn’t begin for a fortnight yet.”

“You must go and look at Edward’s excavation, dear,” said Mrs Shrieve. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“It would be interesting,” said Shrieve.

“Oh, Teddy and his archaeology!” said Jane. “He’ll have you grovelling on hands and knees, peering at a bit of mud, while he tells you it’s a fireplace or something. He makes it all up, I think.”

Shrieve smiled at her uneasily, then said to Edward, “I would like to come, if I may.”

“Of course. Whenever you like.”

“Hugh, we really must go.”

“See you at work, then, tomorrow,” said Shrieve.

Edward nodded, wondering if he wasn’t being condescended to. Behind the departing backs Jane made a face at him.

“How beautiful it is here!” said Mrs Shrieve, crossing the lawn with Mr Gilchrist.

“Yes, it’s not a bad place. Costs the devil of a lot to keep up, of course.”

Mrs Shrieve raised her hands in silent acknowledgement of the cost of everything nowadays.

As her car, a black Humber, disappeared round a corner of the drive, Mr Gilchrist said to Edward, “Nice enough chap, I thought, didn’t you?”

“Very nice.”

“The trouble with people like him, though, is that they see everything from too close to the ground. They forget what civilised life is like, being with the niggers all the time. It takes a pretty rum kind of man to spend his life contentedly among a lot of black savages.”

“I don’t see why you find him so rum. You’re always talking about a sense of service. I’d’ve thought Mr Shrieve is one of the few people you’ve ever met who actually has one.”

“It’s odd, all the same, to spend your life miles away from home. He’s rather reserved, isn’t he, even if he does talk about his blacks quite fluently. I always think there’s probably
something
that’s gone wrong with people like that.”

“Really, Daddy. It’s much more likely that he lives in Africa because he wants to spread sweetness and light than to forget a woman.”

“Not married, though, is he?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It’s not a life I’d choose.”

“No one’s ever asked you to choose it. Anyway, I should think you have to have a vocation. That, and tremendous patience and application and self-sacrifice.”

“Balls,” said Mr Gilchrist. “Utter balls. People don’t stick in the jungle unless they want to. D’you know it’s the first time he’s been home in years?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t like England” said Edward. “It’s a pretty stuffy country to someone who’s been living in Africa, I should think. God, it’s stuffy enough to me.”

“Huh,” said his father. “You!”

*

“Such a difficult child,” said Mrs Shrieve as she drove home. “The Gilchrists really don’t know what to do about him.”

“He seemed fairly bright to me. He’s young, that’s all.”

“Oh, he’s clever enough, there’s no doubt about that. But why won’t he do anything with his cleverness?”

“He is doing something. He’s digging up a Roman villa.”

Mrs Shrieve sighed impatiently. “They say things haven’t been the same with those children since just before we arrived here. Of course, Mrs Gilchrist has never spoken to me about it, we don’t know each other that well, but one picks things up.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s only gossip, I suppose. But it seems there was some trouble in the town the summer before we came. Hooligans, Teddy boys, that sort of thing.”

“I wouldn’t have thought Edward Gilchrist was exactly a Teddy boy.”

“Oh, no, not at all. But I believe there was rather more to it than just hooliganism. Mind you, it’s only what I’ve pieced together from various hints. There was a young man called David Mander—he was the vicar’s nephew—you’ve met Mr Henderson, haven’t you?”

“I think so.”

“A nice man. A very nice man. But his nephew, they say, wasn’t a bit nice. He went after the village girls, and then there were drinking parties on the islands in the gravel pits, and I don’t know what else besides.”

“What’s all that got to do with the Gilchrist children?”

“Well,” said Mrs Shrieve, “I shouldn’t really say this, because it
is
only gossip, of course. But apparently he had an affair with Jane. She was one of his victims.”

“I suppose she is quite attractive.”

“Anyhow, that’s what they say. And they also say that neither Jane nor Edward has been the same since.”

“I don’t see how Edward fits in.”

“Nor do I, to be honest. But it’s what they say. I thought you might be interested.”

“Oh? But you haven’t told me anything at all, except that Jane Gilchrist, who is an attractive girl, may have had an affair two years ago with someone I’ve never heard of.”

“
And
neither she nor her brother has been the same since.”

“Really, Grace, you surprise me.”

“I’ve found that Miss Spurgeon is usually right.”

“And who is Miss Spurgeon?”

“She’s one of the old ladies I visit.”

“I see.”

“There’s no need to be stuffy, Hugh.”

“I’m not being stuffy.”

“You are. And now I’m going to ask you to do me a favour. Will you go and visit Edward’s excavation for me? He seemed so anxious that I should go, but I really don’t understand archaeology. It’s more for a man, I think. Would you mind?”

“Not at all. I expect it’s very interesting.”

“Good boy,” said Mrs. Shrieve. She took a hand from the wheel and patted him on the knee. He winced.

“T
HIS
,” said Edward, pointing into a trench, “was probably the main living-room. There isn’t time to do a thorough excavation this year, so we’re not too sure about all the details, but the general outline is clear. Between the house, where we are now, and the outbuildings over there, there ran a sort of corridor which I’ve been unearthing for days. I’ll show you that in a minute. If you come over here, you can see a corner of the mosaic we’ve discovered- –it doesn’t look terribly
interesting
so far, but we’re leaving it till last in case it’s worth rolling up and taking away. Otherwise it’ll just be covered over, and I suppose no one will uncover it again for centuries.”

Shrieve was in his overcoat, and still felt cold enough to keep his hands in his pockets. He listened to Edward’s explanations, looked dutifully into a large number of similar holes and trenches, and shook Armitage’s hand when it was offered.

“Mr Gilchrist’s been showing me round most admirably,” he said. “I almost feel I’ve been digging here myself.”

“It’s a jolly little site,” said Armitage. “Pity we haven’t got more time. There’s never time for a really lengthy dig these days. It’s all rescue work, taking a quick glance at a site already half ruined by bulldozers before it’s covered over with layer upon layer of reinforced concrete.” He smiled briefly and went over to a new transverse ditch to see if any of his predictions looked like coming true.

“I dare say your Ngulu don’t leave much in the way of traces, do they?” said Edward. “Do they build with stones?”

“No,” said Shrieve. “The Ngulu were already an extremely backward people even when the Romans came to England. Their chief interest, to some anthropologists, is that they have survived at all.”

“You’ve virtually seen it all now,” said Edward. “Unless
you’d like to look at the stables—they’ve only been excavated in spots.”

“All right.”

They walked past mounds of earth towards the area of the outbuildings, and found Belinda Hayes, her bottom rather too big for her jeans, bent over a small patch of burnt earth.

“Hello,” she said, straightening. “I don’t think this should be here, do you? Mr Armitage didn’t say anything about finding fires over here.”

“The house was almost certainly burned down,” said Edward. “There are marks of burning all over the place.”

“I think I’d better tell him,” said Belinda. She rubbed her brow with a dirty hand and said, “Phew, but I get giddy bending down all the time.”

Shrieve and Edward went back to the corridor Edward had been so patiently uncovering. Workmen employed by the Ministry had removed all the topsoil for ten yards of a wide trench. Below lay another foot of mixed earth, with fragments of wood and occasional patches of different coloured soils: this showed, said Armitage, that the roof had fallen in. The villa could have been burned either before or after the roof
collapsed
, however: the signs of burning might indicate no more than that the debris had been used by beggars, of a much later period, to keep themselves warm in what remained of shelter. Coins found on the site suggested that the villa had been
abandoned
some time after 480. A great many things could have happened in nearly fifteen hundred years.

“It’s not very interesting,” said Edward, looking
dispassionately
at his pavement. Its single strip of red ran monotonously along one side, occasionally lost in the eruption of a root, but always reappearing a little further on.

“I think it’s fascinating,” said Shrieve. He squatted down and touched the stones with his finger-tips. “You know, you may think Roman Britain was primitive, but in my part of Africa you won’t find anything as simple—and difficult, of course—as mosaic. Yet it’s such an obvious idea, and they don’t lack for stones.”

“Oh, it’s all to do with the climate. People in cold climates have to think of things to do to keep warm.”

“Perhaps. The climate certainly makes for laziness where I come from. Tell me, now, why should this place have been abandoned?”

Edward assembled his fragmentary knowledge of the departure of the Romans from Britain. His dates were not too certain, but his general air was impressive enough to convince Shrieve.

“It may not have been abandoned—it could have been sacked. Some people stayed on, even though they were cut off from Rome. These Romano-Britons may have been
descendants
of generations of intermarriage, perhaps. Anyway, they probably stuck it as long as they could, until one of the endless series of raiders came and beat them up, killed them or drove them away, and sacked the farm. Otherwise, the farm may simply have been abandoned when the owners followed the legions back to Rome—deciding there was no future in England any more. I don’t really know about that, to be honest. But there was no constitutional conference or
independence
day, with fireworks and so on. I think things just drifted for fifty years or more. All the evidence is very tentative. But once the farms were left to rot, then the locals probably pillaged them, taking stone for their own houses, carrying off useful beams. After a time there wouldn’t be anything to see except a patch of nettles and foxgloves, and perhaps a bit of broken wall. Trees grew over and got their roots in everything, as you can see. The grandeur that was Rome became a dank spot in the woods.”

“A dank spot in the woods,” said Shrieve. He looked sad.

“The foundations remained,” said Edward. “They built pretty well, the Romans.”

“It’s an eternal process, isn’t it?” said Shrieve. “Colonisation and collapse, colonisation and collapse, with the colonisers collapsing and being colonised in their turn.”

“Who do you think will be the next lot to colonise us?”

Shrieve laughed. “I must be getting back for lunch,” he said. “It’s really been most interesting.”

They began to walk down the path to the lane. Suddenly Shrieve stopped and turned something over with the toe of his shoe.

“Good God,” he said. “It can’t be.”

“What’s the matter?” said Edward. “It’s only a Free bottle top. Haven’t you ever seen one before?”

“Seen one? The whole of Africa is full of its beastly broken bottles.”

“The new international coloniser,” said Edward.

Shrieve flicked the tiny piece of metal into the bushes and they walked on. It was a cloudy day, and damp. The earth stuck to the soles of their shoes.

“Thank you so much for showing me round,” said Shrieve. “I really did find it most interesting. I can’t help, you see, thinking about what’s going to be buried in Africa.”

“Surely it’s not that bad?”

“No, perhaps not. But the really important things we’re leaving don’t have any outward and visible signs. And I wonder how long our foundations will last.”

Edward was about to speak, but checked himself.

“It’s all such a very long way from this,” said Shrieve, gesturing at the thick trunks of beeches, the heavy branches, last year’s mast beneath their feet. “I always forget how beautiful England is. You can’t know how beautiful, living here.”

“Yes, well,” said Edward. “I dare say it does seem like that after Africa. I can’t stand it myself. There’s nothing to do.”

Shrieve looked at him in amazement. “You do seem to have problems about your activities. Is it that there’s nothing worth doing, or that there’s nothing to do?”

“Both,” said Edward. His hands were thrust down the front pockets of his jeans, and his shoulders were hunched as he walked. “I mean, in the country there’s nothing to do whatever. I couldn’t plough fields and milk cows all my life, could you? And—oh, I don’t know. I just don’t see the point of
sitting in an office all my life, either. When I’m dying, and I ask myself, well, was it worth it?—what am I going to say? Yes, it was lovely, I earned ten thousand pounds a year by the time I was forty-five? Or, no, it wasn’t, I just filled up my time with boring work because I couldn’t think of anything else to do?”

“You do take extreme positions,” said Shrieve. They had come to the lane where the Humber was parked in a gateway.

“One has to. We don’t believe in anything nowadays, we’re all agreed on that. But do
they
,
the nits that grumble about it, do
they
believe in anything?”

“I really couldn’t tell you. I’m afraid I’m really only a visitor here.”

“Sorry. I just get so fed up sometimes. I think people are born and then they live for a bit, and then they die, and that’s it. So it’s a crime to waste what little there is.”

“Oh, quite,” said Shrieve. He gazed over the fields beyond the woods. “Forgive a visitor for asking, though, whether it’s really making the most of a life to spend it saying there’s nothing to do.”

“O.K.” Edward grinned. “
Touché.
Got any suggestions about what I should do about it?”

“None at all.”

They both laughed. Edward decided he liked the little man with his hair sticking up and his hollow cheeks: he didn’t seem to be full of the usual dreary assumptions.

“Do you really need someone to help you?” he asked
suddenly
. “I mean, I’ve got nothing to do. I’m going to London to play in a band next week, but that won’t take all day.”

“A jazz band?”

“Yes. I play piano. And I’m going to make a test recording, too, as a singer.”

“I don’t know anything about jazz,” said Shrieve.

“I don’t know anything about the Ngulu. I don’t know anything about anything, actually, but I could address envelopes or something.”

“I’m not sure that I do really need anyone,” said Shrieve slowly. “I’ve been wondering whether I was the right person to
attempt the job singlehanded, that’s all. And I suppose it would be nice to have someone else to talk to who cared about it.”

“I can’t guarantee to care,” said Edward. “I think I could manage a little lively interest, though.”

Shrieve laughed. “Well, thanks for the offer. Why don’t you ring me when you come to London? I’m staying in a friend’s flat in Kensington.” He wrote the address and
telephone
number on a piece of paper.

“O.K.,” said Edward. He put the piece of paper in his
hip-pocket
. “I’ll probably be in London on Monday.”

“Ring any time. I’m in most of the day, writing bits and pieces about the Ngulu.”

“See you, then,” said Edward.

Shrieve started to put out his hand, then saw that Edward’s thumbs remained in the loops of his belt. “Goodbye,” he said.

Edward nodded.

As he drove away, Shrieve wondered what he had let himself in for, then decided that it was most unlikely that anything would come of it.

*

At lunch-time the excavators assembled from all over the site. Besides Armitage, Mrs Blewett, Belinda Hayes, Edward and two workmen employed by the Ministry, there was a small, thin boy of fourteen with ears that stuck out and an
encyclopaedic
knowledge of coins. His spectacles were held together with electrical tape, and his name was Simon Lowther. He was the son of the headmaster of Cartersfield Grammar School.

They had all brought their own sandwiches, and they sat politely apart from each other, dreading, Edward guessed, that someone might offer something to someone else. If that happened, there would have to be a general sharing. They drank from thermoses or bottles, except for Mrs Blewett who had an old army water-bottle, though as she always slept for an hour after lunch, it might not have held water. Edward found that he had left his bottle-opener behind, and he spent several vain minutes trying to prise the top off a bottle of Free.
It came off with a sudden fizz, and rolled along the ground a few feet before falling into a trench. Armitage frowned: he was a man who liked a tidy site. Edward went to pick the cap up. As he dropped into the trench, the cuff of his jeans caught in some loose soil; bending to sweep it up, his eye caught a flash of green. It was a coin, caked in mud. He rubbed it against his shirt and saw that it was in excellent condition, unusually legible.

He put his head over the top of the trench and said, “Look, a find!”

Armitage thought he was being facetious. One didn’t excavate during the lunch break. He drank some tea from the cap of his thermos flask, then looked up to see the others gathered excitedly round Edward.

“Very, very good!” said Simon Lowther, rubbing his hands and standing on tip-toe. “Gosh, that really is something, Edward. Well done!”

“Hmm,” said Mrs Blewett. She took the coin from Edward as a mother might take a valuable plate from a child. “Yes, indeed, Simon, we really have made a discovery.”

“It’s late,” said Simon, his brow furiously wrinkled. “It can’t be earlier than 493, can it?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to look it up.”

She took the coin over to Armitage, who was still sipping his tea. “What’s going on?” he said.

“Look at this, Francis. It’s in beautiful condition, too, much the best we’ve found.”

“Where was it?”

“In that trench there,” said Mrs Blewett. Both their faces fell. They had decided only that morning that the pieces of masonry found in the trench belonged, at most, to a patio: the ditch was to be filled in.

“Oh dear,” said Armitage. “This may complicate things.”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs Blewett. “They were so careless, weren’t they?”

Simon hovered over the two professionals while Edward and Belinda lolled on the damp grass.

“I’m glad I’ve done something good for a change,” said Edward. “Armitage makes me feel I’m terribly—terribly
disloyal
for leaving at the end of the week.”

“I wish,” said Belinda, “God how I wish, that I could find one really stunning thing. Just one. A gold helmet. Or a hoard of silver plate. Then I could retire, famous.”

“Oh, this is an agreeable way of passing a summer, don’t you think?”

“No,” said Belinda. “I wish I’d never taken up the subject. It was the anthropology that interested me, anyway, not the archaeology. Was that the Ngulu man you were talking about who came this morning?”

“Yes, that’s right. He’s rather nice.”

“They’re looney, the Ngulu. Rather sweet, but looney.”