Savages

by Shirley Conran

  As he sipped his orange juice, he negotiated a land purchase and short lease on a building on Cherry Street, then had an argument with his insurance agent.

  “Don’t but me, Syd, I want the figures by Monday.” Arthur crashed the phone down, wiped the sweat from his sunglasses and nodded to the bellboy, who held out a silver salver on which lay the 8 A.M. news summary from the hotel wire.

  While Arthur finished his scrambled eggs, he made a quick call to New York to inform Municipal Allied that he was prepared to go ahead, provided they accepted his nominee for the board; he then telephoned his contact on the city desk of the New York Times to leak a story about Municipal Allied.

  After confirming with Delia that all calls had been recorded, he drank a final cup of coffee and direct-dialed someone to check whether she’d gotten his roses. He smiled briefly as her squeals of joy were transmitted over thousands of miles from Pittsburgh.

  Arthur checked his eighteen-karat-gold perpetual calendar Breguet watch, which showed the phases of the moon, could withstand a dive to 2,000 feet underwater and had set his mother back $25,000 on his sixtieth birthday. He frowned slightly at the memory of his more recent birthday. You were as young as you felt, the doctors all said. At sixty-two, Arthur was as fit as a man ten years younger. He didn’t enjoy this business of choosing his successor, but the Board had been pressuring him for two years, so he had finally agreed to let them have his decision by the new year. That way, the next president would be seen as Arthur’s choice.

  Again, he glanced at his watch. The others weren’t due for two minutes; he had time for another call.

  Harry Scott stepped out of the elevator into the soft morning sun. In the distance he could see Arthur lying by the pool, but the boss could wait for a couple of minutes while Harry looked at the splendid view that he loved. He pushed his sunglasses up into his dark, curly hair and narrowed his gray eyes. As a boy he had been teased at school because of his curly black eyelashes, but it had stopped when Harry grew taller and huskier than the other boys in his class. A nose broken by a cricket bat made him look tougher and more aggressive than he was, as did his high cheekbones and sunken cheeks. He was too thin, because he wasn’t very interested in food and frequently forgot to eat.

  To Harry’s left was the Harbor Bridge; on his right, the soaring white shell shapes of the Opera House and, all around them, yachts and ferryboats danced on the blue waters of Sydney Harbor. This spot was where Australia had started, thought Harry. His country was about the same size as the United States, but more than two hundred years after Captain James Cook sailed into Botany Bay in 1717, there were still only fifteen million people in Australia.

  Soon after Cook’s discovery, the American Revolution was lost by the British, which forced them to look for somewhere else to dump their convicts. Australia was chosen for the new open prison; by 1868, when transportation ended, one in every nine Australians was of convict origin, although it was considered an insult to refer to this in any way.

  Harry’s grandfather, Andy Scott, had sailed as a deckhand from Inverness, in Scotland, to try his luck in the first Australian gold rush of the 1850s. Along with thousands of others, Andy Scott hadn’t panned any gold, but when his money ran out he’d taken a job in a silver mine, and so had been in at the start of the Australian mining industry. By 1870, when Andy Scott II was a mining supervisor at Southern Star Mining, Australia was exporting copper, lead, silver and zinc, and James Scott was two years old. James stayed with Southern Star. In 1952 his son, Gordon, became the financial controller of Nexus, Australia, and their geologists discovered huge deposits of coal, bauxite and iron ore. By 1960 oil, nickel and manganese had been found, and Gordon’s twenty-one-year-old son, Harry, had been awarded the Nexus development scholarship. Shortly after Harry first joined the Sydney office as a junior accountant trainee, the world’s largest undeveloped area of uranium had been located in the Northern Territory, and Australia had become one of the world’s leading mining countries.

  The Scotts were not one of the Australian families that had torn a vast fortune out of the ground, somehow it had always eluded them, but they were a family that had lived with the excitement of mining since the industry started, and rarely was anything else (except cricket) discussed over their breakfast table in Cronulla, the pleasant Sydney suburb where Harry Scott had been raised.

  To the pride of his parents, Harry was now responsible for all Nexus activities in Australia, and they were considerable. Nexus mined nickel, iron ore and bauxite in Western Australia, more bauxite and copper in Queensland, more copper and coal at the Wood on golla mine in New South Wales and manganese in the Northern Territory.

  In the early morning sun, as Harry Scott walked around the deserted hotel swimming pool, Ed and Charley, casually dressed but carrying briefcases, stepped from the elevator and joined their boss. Harry wondered which of those two blokes he’d be reporting to in the future; both were valuable men in their different ways. Nothing ever seemed to go wrong when that notoriously efficient lawyer Charley was involved, but Ed, a geologist, was equally efficient and he had the rare quality of exciting people; anyone who worked on one of Ed’s projects was always devoted to it—and to Ed.

  Arthur pulled a Hawaiian shirt over his head and greeted the lean, tanned newcomer. “Everything fixed, Harry?”

  “Exactly as we hoped. On Saturday morning we fly from Sydney to Paui in the Lear. It’s a two-thousand-mile trip, so we’ll arrive around three in the afternoon and helicopter to the hotel. On Sunday morning we all go swimming—as if it’s the start of a lazy holiday. On Sunday afternoon we take a relaxed sightseeing trip around the island, again by helicopter. You’ll be sitting behind the pilot, Arthur. Ed will be sitting next to you and he’ll point out all the beauty spots. When we get to our proposed sites, he’ll rub his nose, once for cobalt, twice for uranium.”

  Ed thought, And when I take off my sunglasses, that means chromite.

  Charley asked, “Is this cloak-and-dagger stuff really necessary?”

  Harry said, “The pilots are real gossips, and it’s surprising what they pick up.” He thought, The speculative price is high enough, but if anyone knew what was there, the price would soar, and it would take years to get an agreement. The favorite Paui sport was bargaining.

  Arthur said, “Get on with the briefing.” A summary wasn’t really necessary; a ninety-two-page written report was locked in his briefcase and all prices and payments had already been secretly agreed, but this meeting had been arranged in case of last-minute changes in plan.

  “On Monday we all go deep-sea fishing, still relaxing,” Harry said. “On Tuesday morning the helicopter collects us to fly to Queenstown. Ostensibly, we’re inspecting the mine. A car will be waiting at the airport, but before we visit the mine we will, of course, pay a courtesy call at the Presidential Palace, which is just south of Queenstown. When we arrive, only Arthur will get out of the car. He will be kept waiting—I don’t know how long, ten minutes should be sufficient for status purposes—but if he’s kept longer than thirty minutes, then Arthur leaves. However, that won’t happen. The President will offer coffee, which Arthur will accept. No business will be discussed. Arthur will leave when the President stands up.”

  “How long should the meeting be?” Charley asked.

  “Allow twenty minutes. When Arthur reappears, the Nexus party drives off to visit the mine, which is twenty-seven miles north of Queenstown.”

  “And after that?” Charley asked.

  “On Wednesday morning the President will send his personal helicopter to collect Arthur. I’ll go with him. We’ll meet with the President and the Minister of Finance. Arthur will then make our first offer, which will be refused, whereupon Arthur and I will return to the hotel and go fishing.

  “On Thursday, Arthur and I again visit the palace, and again we will be kept waiting before seeing the President. This time we’ll see him alone and he will be prepared to cede all mineral and mining rights on Paui to Nexu
s, but he’ll ask for a higher price than our first offer. Arthur then makes our second offer, which will be refused. Arthur and I then leave and have lunch at the Queenstown Hotel.

  “After lunch a messenger will arrive from the Finance Minister to take us to his office. He will agree to a price slightly above our second offer and we will sign the Heads of Agreement. We’ll have to make their private payments to Switzerland before the final agreement is signed, but that’s Charley’s department.”

  Charley said, “That’s some charade you’ve organized.”

  Ed said, “You’re getting off lightly. If you treat with certain tribes in Papua New Guinea, you’re obliged to lick the chief’s armpit as a sign of goodwill.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Things would have been a lot easier if the Nationalists hadn’t been kicked out just as we were about to renegotiate. With Raki, it would have been merely a question of how much, where and when. But these Democrats are left-wing idealists. The guys in charge see themselves as the Kennedy boys of Paui.”

  “What happens if they don’t agree to our second offer?” Charley asked.

  “Then Arthur leaves, looking unconcerned, and goes fishing. They may well choose to make it a tight deadline—in fact, that’s what I expect. We may find ourselves negotiating at the airport, right up to takeoff. But Arthur must not deviate from his timetable, or Nexus will lose face.”

  Charley said, “You’re sure that the President doesn’t know what we know?”

  “You can never be sure, Charley. But nobody in Nexus knows, except us four,” Harry said. “And if there’s a leak, then Brett is on the spot, ready to be briefed. He can defuse anything, or red-herring the press.”

  Charley said, “Has there been any more trouble with General Raki?”

  “Sure,” said Harry. “He’s holding court at the Port Moresby Travel Lodge in Hunter Street, doing his best to convince me that he’s still an influential bloke on Paui and whingeing because we stopped his payments. All the other Nationalist ministers were either killed, jailed or thrown off Paui eighteen months ago when the Democrats took over.”

  “So Nexus is not returning Raki’s calls?”

  Harry nodded. “And he hasn’t received any special payment, not since his party lost power.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, Annie and Duke, Ed and Carey sailed in Sydney Harbor in Harry’s eleven-meter racing yacht. After a week spent in the hotel conference hall, the men were enjoying the spring sunshine of November and the feel of the wind on their faces. The two American men wore new casual clothes, picked out for the trip by their wives, but Harry wore jeans and a battered navy windbreaker.

  Harry warned Carey, who’d never been sailing before, “Duck when we come about or the boom will hit you. Ready about? … Lee-o.”

  The Sea Witch swung out on the opposite tack, sailing past Fort Denison, where convicts used to be imprisoned, and made for the Heads at the entrance to the harbor.

  “Feel like taking over?” Harry offered. He knew that Duke would want to take the wheel, and preferred to let him handle the Sea Witch inside the harbor, where he couldn’t do much harm. She was only carrying a mainsail and a number two jib, which shouldn’t get him into any trouble.

  “Only thing to watch out for is the Sow and Pigs, that reef in the middle of the harbor,” Harry warned as Duke took the helm. Although it was clearly marked, people always forgot the Sow and Pigs. He added, “And watch out for the rock on the southeast side of the reef.” Apart from that, there weren’t any obstructions in this part of the harbor. When they reached the entrance, Harry would again take the wheel.

  Annie knew why Harry had handed the wheel of his beloved boat to Duke with such alacrity.

  Harry moved forward to take Duke’s place beside Annie. He whispered, “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  The sun seemed to flicker red sparks from Annie’s hair as she shook her head. Harry thought, I don’t know what she’s done to herself, but she looks just like she used to.

  Of course I’ve been avoiding you, Annie thought. Harry never stopped putting the pressure on her, whenever they met. Thank heaven Duke had no idea. It was so unfair of Harry. After all, he’d only kissed her once, years ago. Most men would have forgotten that.

  It had happened when Harry was working in Pittsburgh and spending the Christmas vacation with Annie’s family at their ski chalet in the Alleghenies.

  When they took him skiing, Harry turned out to be a natural. Annie still remembered that first day, when she had yelled at him to bend his knees more and lean out from the hill, and he had asked at what angle. When they all told him how good he was, Harry had just shrugged his shoulders and said that the gravitational situation was pretty similar to riding a motorcycle. He’d done a red run on his first day out and was doing blacks by the end of the week, after which, suddenly, all the girls in the resort had noticed this dazzling new skier. But Harry never returned their interest.

  He and Annie had been skiing alone one day when, on their last run, it started to snow. Annie took a fall, and she heard the crunch of Harry’s skis as he pulled up beside her. He held out his pole and pulled her up out of the snow. Then he leaned forward and gently kissed a snowflake from Annie’s nose. They looked at each other without speaking, and Harry took her in his arms. Annie’s mitts, still clutching the ski poles, were also clutching the back of his parka. Her knees seemed to give way, she lost her balance and they both fell in the snow, lying wrapped around each other.

  Annie still couldn’t understand how she could have felt such searing passion when she’d been wearing about three layers of underclothes, a woolen hat and a scarf that went up to her nose. She remembered hoping that her skis wouldn’t come off, because there was no other way of getting down the mountain. And then she’d ceased to care whether or not she reached the bottom of the mountain.

  They’d stopped, dazed, only when Harry’s ski came off. Luckily, the leather strap around his ankle had held. They both realized that the light was nearly gone and they had to move. Annie had never skied so badly, or felt so exalted, as on that twilight run, racing down the quiet, white mountain behind Harry.

  That night she hadn’t been able to sleep. Crossly, in the middle of the night, her sister had complained, “Annie, will you quit bumping around for water and climb back into your bunk. Honestly, this is like sharing a cabin with a bear.”

  The next morning Annie had a temperature of 104 degrees and she spent the rest of the holiday in her bunk with influenza, feverishly worrying whether she could be in love with two men at the same time. Her mother stayed in the chalet until Annie recovered, and by the time she got back to Pittsburgh, Annie had missed twice (she’d hoped that the skiing would fix it), and had no choice as to which man she loved. Her eldest son was on his way.

  * * *

  Water hissed softly against the hull of the Sea Witch. Annie’s hair blew in the harbor breeze as she sneaked a sideways look at Harry. He wasn’t a man you’d notice in a crowd, he wasn’t obviously attractive. Below that knobbly broken nose was a wide mouth that lifted to the left; his high cheek-bones and sunken cheeks had made Annie’s mother want to fatten him up. Harry wasn’t bold or thrilling, Harry had no wild romantic gestures, but he was thoughtful, kind and caring—a really nice guy. If he hadn’t been so persistent in his ridiculous obsession, Annie would probably have forgotten him long ago, or so she always told herself. She wanted to forget how she’d felt when, a few years ago, one Easter, Duke had unexpectedly brought Harry home to visit and Annie’s heart had turned over. Her whole body had trembled, as it had so long ago on that snowy mountainside. Annie had been horrified by this physical treachery. Nothing was going to upset her marriage, she told herself. So she had taken Harry aside, walking him to the end of the garden, ostensibly to show him the new Cunningham Whites that she’d planted in the shrubbery, but really to tell him he ought to stop this nonsense. Harry was a dynamic, international businessman and should forget this teenage stuff.

  Ha
rry had nodded. “You’re right, Annie,” he said. “For years I’ve been telling myself all that you’ve just said. Believe me, I’ve tried everything I can do, but it won’t go away. I’m stuck with the way I feel about you. It seems to be a part of me, whether I see you or not.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Harry. Nothing can ever come of it.”

  Harry had given her an odd look and said, “I’ve told myself that for years. And I’ve never said a word against Duke to you. But I would care for you, Annie. And your boys are nearly grown.” He had then taken a step toward her, and she’d fled back to the house.

  Waves slapped against the hull of the Sea Witch. To Annie’s left rose Sydney’s skyscrapers, a dramatic background to the yachts tacking across the sheet of blue water. The harbor was so large that you couldn’t see the end of it, or grasp the shape of it. Harry was sitting close enough to Annie to touch her, and she was conscious of his shoulder, his arm and his lean thigh against hers. She moved away slightly but so did Harry. Annie quickly looked toward the bow. But no one was watching; Carey and Ed were gazing at the undulating foothills and creeks of North Sydney.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” Harry repeated softly.

  “If you don’t stop,” Annie whispered crossly, “I’m going to tell Duke.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” whispered Harry. “That’s my complaint.”

  The Sea Witch came about and headed toward the harbor entrance.

  “Do you think you’d like to live here, Annie?” Harry asked.

  Annie jumped at the seemingly innocent question, thinking, Please, Harry, don’t start this again. Her feelings hadn’t changed since Harry had first brought this up, years ago. Annie was a happily married woman, with a family that she loved dearly, and she couldn’t help it if she was the first and only girl that Harry Scott had ever fallen for. She refused to be held responsible for Harry’s embarrassing devotion. Of course she was fond of Harry—he’d been a part of her girlhood—but she didn’t want him to upset her, or worse, upset Duke. Duke always had a lot of work at these conferences, and he needed a few days’ rest afterward, before returning to the rigors of his job and the Pittsburgh winter.