Wings of the Morning (27 page)

Tepee gave a cry of surprised delight and rushed to greet them, admonishing her husband for keeping their arrival secret from her. Connie beamed from ear to ear.

David detached himself from conversation with Pente and went forward to meet the Mantels. They exchanged warm greetings: they had heard much about each other.

Pente stepped forward to add his welcome and his huge feet became entangled. His vast frame, swathed in its monk’s habit crashed into Sebastien’s similarly impressive bulk.

‘Zut, I have caught a warring priest,’ cried Seb in the heavily accented speech which he knew the English expected of a proper Frenchman.

‘Hah!’ retorted Pente as he recovered himself, ‘you look like an established sinner. Come and have a few beers of repentance with me!’

The two giants, dwarfing all others in the room, ambled towards the serving table, talking as they went. No problem with those two getting on, David thought to himself as he prised Izzy from
Tepee’s grasp and established what she would have to drink.

And so the party partied. The company swirled, the talk unceasing, the laughter infectious. Plates were piled and glasses brimmed. They sat to eat at various pieces of incongruous furniture,
pressed into service for the occasion. Seb and Connie made out well with a filing cabinet and two office chairs. Ruth and Tepee were dainty on a sofa until Pente plonked himself between them to
risk a major upset. Sol flitted between groups like a hummingbird. Izzy, with her gift for easy talk and extracting information, cornered Martin into sitting on a low bookcase as they exchanged
life stories. David was benign and busy with bottles. Alexa was happy to find herself next to King Offenbach on a couple of huge wing chairs with a coffee table in front of them. He was just as she
remembered him from their Oxford days, and briefly, at her wedding in Sydney. Slim, lounging, elegant: beautifully turned out, if a little formal in an immaculate double breasted dark suit.

‘I want information, King,’ she began and he gave his familiar, enigmatic smile as the fork stopped in mid-air. Alexa went on.

‘You know a lot more about what I’ve been up to over the years than I know about you. Now’s your chance, and I don’t want to hear too much about the spy stuff,’ she
laughed as she waved a finger at him, ‘but thank you anyway for all you did for me.’

King put down his plate as he turned to face her.

‘There’s nothing more to say about all that now, and sure, there’s not much I should say about what I’m doing now. Hell, it’s not too exciting anyway. But I’m
real glad to see you again, Alexa, looking and sounding like you are. You’ve been through a whole lot, and you’ve done so well. And hey, congratulations on the new job. David brought me
up to speed and it does sound great. Hong Kong too — what a place for a new start.’

Alexa drank some wine and looked at him with mock severity.

‘You’re not going to divert me as easily as that, Mr Offenbach! Now tell me about you. When are we going to see you settle down a bit and stop playing the field: and at your age
too!’

He laughed with her, saying ‘not that old yet and not quite over the hill although the view’s getting a mite scary: forty this year.’

‘Wow! Is that really right? Well take some comfort. You look a lot less and with everything to play for. But now tell me honestly, King, has there ever been anyone serious for
you?’

‘I don’t generally speak of it, but hey, Alexa, no reason for you not to know I did get close once: was even engaged to get hitched, but it didn’t work out. It was more my
fault than hers.’

Alexa clunked down her glass in frustration. Getting information out of this man was like pulling hens’ teeth, and she told him so.

King smiled wryly and pulled himself out of his lounging posture to continue.

‘Look, Alexa, it happened this way. She was a fine girl from my Mom’s home town and we courted for maybe a couple of years. I wanted to delay our wedding ’till I had things
properly settled over here but that meant a whole lot of being apart. We got scratchy with each other over the phone, she resented still living with her folks, complaining it was all fine and dandy
and playing around for me. You can imagine.’ He flashed a question mark at Alexa.

‘I certainly can. It’s not a great way for a girl to plan her marriage and I bet her friends were saying she couldn’t hold onto her guy.’

King looked amazed. ‘You reckon that. Honest?’

Alexa couldn’t help but laugh at him.

‘Kingston Offenbach. I know you’re one bright fellow, but on subjects like this, you’re like any man. An emotional dullard.’

To take the sting out of her remark, she leant forward to kiss his cheek, smiling as she did so, and he responded,

‘Yup. I guess you’re right. Right about all of it.’

‘And there’s been no one since?’

He smiled at her, ‘a few playmates maybe, but nothing serious. No. Not that. And you know, I don’t think there ever will be. I guess I’m a very self-sufficient sort of guy.
Plus, it doesn’t help that I do a job which encourages me to stay ... well sort of private you might say.’

Alexa looked up to see Pente weaving an uncertain path towards them and knew that these two soul mates would want to spend some time together.

‘You know, King,’ she said rising gracefully to her feet, ‘you may just be right and for myself, you strike a particular chord. I don’t think that I’ll be falling
in love either,’ and she smiled wistfully at him as she turned away, ‘but now I must get to the loo which David tells me is downstairs. I’ll leave you to Pente for a
bit.’

Tepee climbed up out of the sofa to join her, and the two girls went downstairs together. Izzy was helping Ruth to conjure coffee for everyone from the percolator and David was circulating with
a small choice of liqueurs. Sol had temporarily subsided and seemed to be taking a snooze in the corner.

The party mood was changing gear. David wanted to propose a loyal toast which seemed appropriate and was warmly supported.

‘If there’s one thing certain in this changing world,’ he announced to the gathering at large, ‘it’s that she’ll still be going strong for her Golden
Jubilee.’

Martin chimed in, ‘that’ll mean a celebration in the next century. It’ll be 2002 by then.’

It was an obvious cue for general conversation, although Sol continued in a noisy slumber. The remaining men drew their various seats closer together as David moved amongst them, topping up
their glasses. Conrad commented that he was more interested in the next two or three years than the new century, and Pente came in to agree.

‘We live in such turbulent times,’ he said heavily, ‘it makes me really fearful for humanity.’

‘We’ve surely seen a lot worse,’ said Martin with unspoken reference to his father’s lifetime experiences, but Pente anticipated him.

‘That’s what troubles me most, Martin. The War is not so long behind us, just an eyeblink in history, and you’d think that lessons had been learnt. But since then we’ve
had cold wars and standoffs. We’ve had assassinations and blackmails, we’ve got repressive regimes all over the shop and there’s now more starvation in the Third World than ever
recorded. That’s to say nothing of urban terrorism. I wonder if the West Germans will ever be able to keep those Baader-Meinhoff people behind bars now they’ve caught and convicted
them. I’m sure it’s all enough to make the Almighty tear his beard out.’

King intervened. ‘I’m pretty damn sure He’ll be pleased by some developments, Pente. Just taking civil rights in the US as an example, we’ve made a helluva lot of
progress there and I should know. I’m one of the beneficiaries.’

Pente waved his cigar in acknowledgement and it was Sebastien who spoke next, but tentatively, not on account of language as his English was excellent, but rather to recognise that he was the
newcomer amongst a long established group.

‘I think that you are both right,’ he said tactfully, ‘but it is a favourite maxim of my father that we should all try to look at things through the eye of history, and to
imagine what might have been the views of those who have gone before us on the challenges we face today.’

David was intrigued by this and asked, ‘what do you mean precisely, Seb?’

‘Oh I can tell you that,’ put in Connie, ‘I’ve often listened to the Colonel’s musings. He was shattered by the French defeat in Indo China by the Vietminh: it
turned his universe upside down and blew apart all his life assumptions. In a form of therapy he invented for himself, he found it helped to look at things through a reverse telescope. So, in this
example, would Alexander the Great have ever got himself into Dien Bien Phu, and if not, why not?’

Seb took it up again, ‘or the Berlin Wall for instance and the division of a country. How much sense does that make and how much misery has it caused? So how would Metternich have handled
it? Or our very own Napoleon Bonaparte? Of course, we can only speculate my friends, but the mental exercise gives a new perspective on whatever crisis is tormenting you. It’s something like
an out of body experience.’

David liked the theory, but suspected that he was himself too obsessed with practicalities to embrace it. For now, he was keen to move the conversation.

‘Seb, we have our expression here about an ill wind. I imagine that international jitters of any sort may be, in their own way, welcome to Bastion?’

‘Ah, that’s better,’ said the big Frenchman with a grin spreading over his face, ‘I like to hear the thoughts of a good English cynic. But David, I know you speak from
experience of the places that you visit and here in London. But you’re right of course. Sometimes I think that the world has as much conflict as ever, but just now we are in a period which is
more subtle and selective in its enmities. Whatever, we are busier than we’ve ever been, and that goes also for Conrad’s operation here. Connie has done marvels in the last two years
but it’s just the tip of an iceberg of opportunity.’

There was a moment’s pause. Alexa and Tepee remained standing by the door as they chatted, but Ruth went to join Martin and Izzy stood behind Seb’s chair, ruffling his hair
playfully.

‘This sounds like serious talk,’ she said lightly.

‘Serious reflection, more like, Izzy,’ drawled King as he smiled at her, ‘and like most heavy lunch time sessions, we’ll struggle to draw much conclusion from it all. But
just to put in my bit,’ he went on addressing himself to the group as a whole, ‘I’ve been bashing around black Africa for most of ten years now, so a fair part of the “winds
of change” era, and I’ll say that what gets most to me is that almost everywhere is going downhill. It’s great to be post-colonial, but how much has that improved the lives of Mr
and Mrs Average? Where’s the democracy for them, and where’s the future for all their kids?’

‘Oh come on now, King,’ Izzy shot back at him, ‘the poor buggers running these places have been left with nothing and no place to go. Look what the Portuguese did: they simply
abandoned both Angola and Mozambique, and that was only a few years ago.’

David was impressed by this firebrand girl, but he didn’t want his party to descend into impassioned argument, so he spoke mildly.

‘You’re right there, Izzy, but the people in both places are battling on, and of course the crisis came from rebellion within Portugal. Even so, Lisbon was guilty of having no
colonial policy rather than the wrong one ... or that’s the way it seems to me.’

Before Izzy could respond, David could see her husband putting a ham hand of gentle restraint around her waist, and perhaps Pente, always alive to the sensitivities of a gathering, noticed the
same as he chipped in quickly.

‘I only know about the East Coast, but I do worry about the conditions of life where I’m living now. Tanzania’s got a brave new political scene under Nyerere, but one heavy
cost is in agriculture. Tanzania used to be a bread basket, but as things are now, she can no longer feed her own people.’

‘But that’s all part of development, isn’t it’, said Conrad, ‘fledgling countries must be allowed, encouraged even, to go their own way, and we should stop foisting
our standards and ideas on them. At the very least we should stop the exploitation by our First World corporations. I must say that I never had much time for Ted Heath, but I did admire him for
bawling out Lonrho as the unacceptable face of capitalism.’

Martin surprised them all with his comment.

‘Of course, I mostly keep the books back here and it’s David who travels to all these places, but from what I see, you’ve got to wonder about many of them. Are the new rulers
starting new countries, or are they more in the business of robbing the old? And that begs the question, does a dictator have the right to dispossess his people of their previous lifestyle? Can
circumstances ever justify that?’

They had not noticed Sol waking from his siesta, but as he rose from his chair in the corner, it was obvious that he had been listening to the recent exchanges and David was fearful that the
congregation might be in for a bit of a sermon, so he prepared himself to step in. But Sol spoke mildly.

‘You know, Martin, many would argue that we did precisely that with the help of the British in order to create our own home. That’s how Israel came into existence.’

A sudden light came on in David’s head, sparked by this conversation amongst his greatest friends. By any measure, Black Africa is going backwards, but maybe there is a way to revive even
a slice of this magic continent. It would take brains and balls and money — lots of it. It was a thought to conjure with and he savoured the fire of interest running through him.

But now it was approaching 6.30 pm in the summer evening and there was the beginning of a natural move amongst the party to call it a day. The Kirchoffs went first, Ruth telling David she had
made arrangements for a big clear up the following morning so he could abandon ship when he was ready. They were followed by the Avelings who left with Seb and Izzy. Pente and King departed
together. With each contented farewell, there was the spontaneous commitment that this reunion must not be the last. The Oxford Five, together with honoured extras, must assemble again, and perhaps
next time it could be in Singapore, Seb had invited with a booming laugh as his mighty feet clumped down the stairs.