The White Father

by Julian Mitchell

  He went over to the desk and began to scribble on thick writing-paper. Carver said, “If it’s not a rude question, how did you come to get involved in this business?”

  Edward thought for a moment. “I met Mr Shrieve a few weeks ago, and he asked me if I’d like to help. There isn’t very much to do.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Carver. He smiled knowingly. Edward looked at him blankly. They remained for a minute in silence.

  “Here you are,” said Mallory, turning round but not getting up from his desk. “Just say it’s from me, and they’ll know what it’s all about.”

  Edward took the bulky envelope containing all the various copies of the letter, individually signed, and the note from Mallory.

  “Do you have any idea what tube station The Times is near?” he said.

  Mallory and Carver looked at him in amazement.

  “I should take a taxi, if I were you,” said Mallory, after a pause. “I believe the tube gets so very full of people this time of day.”

  “Well, thanks a lot, then,” said Edward. He moved towards the door.

  “We’ll see you at the party next week, won’t we?” said Mallory. “The party for the African delegates. It’s today week. I do hope you’ll come.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Edward. “I will, yes, certainly.”

  He went down the stairs and into the street, then walked, hoping they were watching him, towards the nearest tube station.

  10

  THE constitutional conference opened at Lancaster House on Thursday morning. Press photographers flashed their bulbs as the delegates arrived, flashed them as they assembled round the long table, flashed them again as the Minister arrived to make his opening speech. Then the journalists were asked to leave and the conference got down to business.

  While Rolls-Royces were still delivering important people to Lancaster House, Hugh Shrieve, his cold now much better, was himself conferring with Colin Hoggart of the Mallory Foundation. Hoggart was an energetic man of fifty-five, red-faced and bald, with a reputation for great efficiency.

  “I’m extremely glad to meet you, Mr Shrieve,” he said, with a firm handshake. “I’ve heard a lot about you and your problem recently. James Weatherby was telling me all about it last night, as a matter of fact, at the club.”

  Shrieve looked interested. He hadn’t seen Weatherby for over a week, though they had spoken several times on the phone. James had said he was fearfully busy, he hoped everything was going well, and he had no new information about what might or might not happen. He was not himself involved with the constitutional conference, of course. He had done a great deal, Shrieve had to admit, wondering if he was being ungenerous to suspect his friend of backing out. It was strange, though, not to have seen him for so long.

  “I’d better begin,” said Hoggart, “by saying straight out that I don’t think there’s much we can do for you, Mr Shrieve, I’m afraid.”

  “Those words are beginning to have a familiar ring.”

  “No doubt. But then, there’s not much anyone can do, is there? It’s all up to this conference, isn’t it?”

  “Yes and no. It depends on what the conference comes up with. I’m afraid they may issue some tiny statement saying that the Ngulu will continue to enjoy their present protected status under the new régime. Everyone will think that’s enough. But it won’t be. I had a letter this morning, as a matter of fact, which makes it quite clear that that won’t be enough.” Shrieve fished in his pocket for Mackenzie’s latest letter. “May I read you the relevant bits?”

  “Just a moment,” said Hoggart. “Before we start going into detail, let me get quite clear what it is you think we may be able to do for you.”

  “Well. You’re a charitable foundation with, I understand, fairly wide terms of reference. You’re not restricted to this country. You can spend your enormous income as you think fit, where you think fit. Isn’t that right?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “I don’t know,” said Shrieve, refusing to be put off, “precisely what you can do for the Ngulu. To start with, as you say, we have to wait for the conference. But what I was wondering was, roughly, whether you couldn’t perhaps make the Ngulu an object of charity—whether you couldn’t, as it were, take them on from the government.”

  “That’s what you said in your letter,” said Hoggart. He hunted around in some papers, then found what he was looking for. “Yes. You thought we might be able to devise a scheme whereby we would run a protective service on roughly the present lines.”

  “Yes. It’s not that the new government will make any effort to harm the Ngulu. Rather the opposite, I should think. But there’s going to be chaos and old night for the next few months in the capital, and probably for a few months after independence, too. God knows what they’ll want to do. They probably haven’t thought about it much. I should think they’d leap at any offer you made. It wouldn’t, I mean, be difficult to negotiate.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Hoggart. “It would be quite unprecedented, of course. We’re not the Red Cross, you know.”

  “Of course not. And the whole business would have to be managed with great tact. But I don’t think Bloaku would have any fundamental objection.”

  “I see. I think your idea is an excellent one in many ways, Mr Shrieve. So do my fellow directors of the Foundation. But I’m afraid we simply can’t do it, much though we’d like to. We’re limited, as you’ll realise, by the trust made by our founder. We can, it’s true, stretch the terms of the trust to include the Ngulu so long as they’re under British protection. But by a singular piece of irony, we can do nothing once the British leave the colony. I’ve discussed the matter with our lawyers. They’ve done their damnedest to find a loophole in the trust. But there just isn’t one. The day the new government takes over, we can do nothing for the Ngulu. And that, of course, is the day you want us to start acting.”

  “Oh,” said Shrieve, hopelessly. He hadn’t expected anything definite to come from the meeting, but he had hoped they might explore beyond a blank wall.

  “What we can do, and would be glad to do,” said Hoggart, “is finance an anthropological expedition from a British, or Commonwealth, university to study your people. We can subsidise any books that might be published about them by a British or Commonwealth university press. But we can’t look after the Ngulu themselves. I wish we could. But our hands are tied.”

  “But the country will remain within the Commonwealth,” said Shrieve eagerly. “Couldn’t you do something through the university there?”

  “I’m sorry, I spoke inexactly. When the trust was established there was still an empire. Mr Mallory confined his benefactions to universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, ironically, South Africa. He didn’t envisage our withdrawal from Central Africa.”

  “Well, that’s it, I suppose, then,” said Shrieve. “It was a pretty long shot, anyway. I just hoped—you know, one does have hopes about huge organisations like yours.”

  “So many people do. You could try the big American foundations. The Free people. Ford and Rockefeller. We’re terribly restricted by the original trust.”

  “So it seems.”

  “I’m very sorry about it, Shrieve,” said Hoggart. “I’d really like to do something for the Ngulu. Mallory’s conditions have proved terribly frustrating. The money pours in, and we just can’t spend it as we’d like. Most of it goes on medical research—cancer, especially. We don’t have any trouble spending it, I mean, but we do often wish we could spend it more widely.”

  “It’s not a problem I’m familiar with,” said Shrieve.

  Hoggart laughed. “Obviously not. We get a bit like bankers here, I’m afraid. We tend to think in terms of millions when in fact, of course, all most people want is a fiver.”

  “There’s nothing you can do, then?”

  “Not that will help your immediate situation, no. But I mean what I said about an anthropological study. There isn’t a really full account of
the Ngulu yet, is there?”

  “No. There may never be. From what I’ve just heard there may not be any Ngulu to study soon.”

  Hoggart refused to be drawn into hearing whatever bad news it was Shrieve had in his pocket. “Look,” he said, “let’s keep in touch. As soon as you know definitely what the conference has done, or is going to do, let me know. We’ll try and fix something up then.”

  “It’s very kind of you,” said Shrieve. “I was at an anthropological conference in Oxford last week. I’m afraid I haven’t got that proper academic detachment.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” said Hoggart warmly. “But don’t be too gloomy. From what Weatherby said, you seem to have done a great deal. And that letter in yesterday’s Times can’t fail to do good, you know.”

  “You thought it was all right?”

  “Excellent. Exactly the right tone. Neither querulous nor aggressive. And a most distinguished lot of signatures. I’m sure it’ll make the conference sit up.”

  “I hope you’re right. I don’t see what there’s left for me to do, except try and have the odd word with the African delegates themselves.”

  “It’s been very nice talking to you,” said Hoggart, “and I’m really very sorry indeed that there’s nothing immediate we can do. But there it is. Old Mallory’s word is law.”

  “Is Patrick Mallory a relative of his, do you know?”

  “I think he’s a great nephew, yes. Do you know him?”

  “He organised the letter to The Times.”

  “He’s a great one for that sort of thing, Patrick. Well, let’s get in touch at your convenience, shall we?”

  “Thank you,” said Shrieve. He believed Hoggart when he said he would have liked to have done something. But there was a world of difference between well-wishing and action, between an anthropological study and saving the people to be studied. It wasn’t Hoggart’s fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. There were always trusts and conditions to excuse the failure to act. And now, in the long conference room, the future of the Ngulu was being settled by men to whom a stone-age tribe was worth a phrase or two in a complicated treaty, at most a couple of paragraphs; paragraphs which could mean the difference between extinction and survival.

  He came out into the sunshine, feeling Mackenzie’s letter next to his handkerchief. Hoggart hadn’t wanted to hear it, and it couldn’t have altered the situation, anyway. No one breaks trusts for stone-age tribes.

  “I’m rather worried,” Mackenzie had written, “about the general situation. Not only are the Luagabu behaving very queerly, but your Ngulu are acting out of character, too. The Luagabu in my area are disappearing for several days at a time—the men, that is—with their arms, and when they come back they spend a good deal of time huddled together. They just clam up when I try to question them. My spies report that they’re angry about what’s going on in the capital—while Bloaku’s away a lot of little dictators are shouting their heads off. Chief trouble-maker is Viniku—he’s always hated Bloaku, and he’s furious that he’s not been asked to the conference. He’s trying to get into a position of strength for when the delegates return. He’s a Kwahi-Nuaphi, of course, and the Luagabu huddlings are probably more anti-Kwahi-Nuaphi than anti-Ngulu, but you know what the Luagabu are like—they’ll attack anyone who isn’t of the tribe when they’re feeling like it. Nothing has actually happened yet, but Robbins has given a general warning that there may be trouble when the delegates return, if not before.

  “Now for the Ngulu. I don’t recall you ever saying that they went in for fetiches. But that’s exactly what they seem to be going in for at the moment. There’s a tree-stump just outside the village—you know it, of course, it’s right by the track to town. As I was driving in yesterday, I noticed there was something bright on it, so I stopped to have a look. It was a piece of coarse cloth, torn, I’d say, from a woman’s skirt. It seemed to have blood on it. There were other scraps of cloth about the place, too. I went on into the village and talked with the chiefs. They seem perfectly happy, though those calf-skins are still stinking the place out. I asked if they had any problems, and they smiled and said no. I don’t know what the gesture means, but they swung their hands back and forth in front of their private parts as I got up to leave. Is that usual? I went to see Amy next. I hadn’t asked the chiefs about the tree-stump, because it was obviously some feminine thing, and you know how bloody-minded the men get when you ask them what their women are up to. Amy looked alarmed when I mentioned it and muttered something about it not being right. She wouldn’t say, though, what wasn’t right about it, or what it was. She seemed well, and asked anxiously after you. I gave her a summary of your news, such as would interest her, and she nodded and said I was to tell you she hoped you were keeping well and eating properly. I said I thought you were probably all right. Her girl was there, too, with your little Tom, both in splendid health. But when I asked about the tree-stump, Amy made Dayu go out of the room.

  “All this makes me suspect that the blood on the rags is menstrual blood, and some kind of fertility nonsense is going on. I hope that’s as should be. I had another look at the stump on my way home—I couldn’t stay long, with the Luagabu up to their tricks—and noticed bits of hair (probably pubic hair) on the bark. It looked, to be frank, as though women had been rubbing themselves against it. It’s a common enough practice, of course, but I don’t remember you ever saying anything about it. The general atmosphere of the village was happy enough, though, apart from that rather sad gesture the chiefs made at me as I left. Does it mean anything in particular? Your people are really so very different from mine. I tried to explain that you were doing great things on their behalf, and they smiled and nodded at your name, so they haven’t forgotten you yet, you’ll be glad to hear.

  “How goes it in London? The conference will have started by the time you get this. There’s an air of subdued confidence in the capital—people seem to think there won’t be too much trouble. The Luagabu mutterings are worrying, though. The thing is that Bloaku’s such a strong personality that he’s managed to unite a great many disparate elements. But when he’s away the unity cracks, and local chiefs rush to assert themselves. The big man in my area is being a confounded nuisance. He’s eighty, and claims to remember the days before the British came—quite untrue, of course, but it gives him considerable stature just to tell such a whopping lie. He’s too bloody clever, that’s my problem. His son was at the London School of Economics and is itching to take over. He’s always talking about ‘négritude’, and now the father’s picked up the word and uses it all the time to defend the indefensible. When I remonstrate about something, he says ‘It’s part of our heritage of négritude’, and grins happily. But I think it’ll all be O.K. The old men are playing while Bloaku’s away, but they’ll shut up again when he comes back. At least I hope so.”

  Mackenzie concluded with a page about local affairs, of little interest to Shrieve, who had never taken any part in such attenuated social life as existed in the area. But he was deeply worried by the Luagabu’s mutterings and very puzzled by the tree-stump, rags and hair. There was an elaborate Ngulu ceremony for pubescent girls, but it involved no tree-stump and no fetichism. The stump in question was, in any case, fairly new. The tree had been cut down three years ago to provide wood for repairs to Shrieve’s bungalow. There couldn’t be any ancient superstition attached to it. It was possible, of course, that any stump more than a few months old might be taken by the Ngulu to be a very ancient stump indeed, what with their notion of time and lack of interest in the past. But it was most unlikely, and besides, there was no precedent for the women to practise fertility rites of that kind. It was true, as Mackenzie said, that women rubbed themselves against various objects from Tangier to the Cape of Good Hope, and probably in Europe, too, where superstition was supposed to have been conquered. But the Ngulu women had never, to Shrieve’s knowledge, gone in for it. Nor had the other officers in charge of them ever mentioned anything of the sor
t.

  Perhaps, then, it wasn’t a fertility rite? But what was it? Why did Amy send Dayu out of the room when Mackenzie asked her about it? Why did she mutter that it wasn’t right? Shrieve wished he had never left the Ngulu. He had accomplished so little for them, anyway, by his absence. Yet previous absences had caused no outbreak of fertility nonsense. Then there were the calf-skin or skins. They shouldn’t be stinking still—they were usually dry and hard after three or four days’ sunshine. Had the Ngulu killed more calves? Were they the same skins that Mackenzie had seen the previous week, or new ones?

  Shrieve took Mackenzie’s letter from the side-pocket into which he had slipped it during his talk to Hoggart, and put it into his inside breast-pocket. His fingers touched another envelope, of thicker paper than Mackenzie’s flimsy air mail stuff. On top of all the worry about the Ngulu there was Jumbo Maxwell. The letter was from their old commander, Sidney Trevelyan, in reply to Shrieve’s greetings and questions.

  “My dear Hugh,” he began, “It’s extremely good to hear from you after all this time. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to the reunion on Friday week. I don’t honestly enjoy these affairs much usually—the war seems very long ago, and I try not to think about it—but it will be a very great pleasure to see you again.

  “As for Jumbo, well, it’s a sad story, I’m afraid. He’s had a rough time, and I’m sorry to say he’s thoroughly deserved it. I’m not in the least surprised to hear that he tried to touch you—though I’m staggered that he had the nerve to try for so much. He’s been in prison twice, as you obviously don’t know, for fiddling little frauds and confidence tricks, and he’d been on probation first, too. He was always a swindler, I fear, but a petty one, and without the guts or intelligence to make a decent job of it. He got the probation for cashing a phoney cheque for three pounds ten—what a miserable sum, I ask you! Then he went to jail for misapplying the funds of some awful little drinking club he’d somehow persuaded someone to let him manage. Again, a trivial sum—forty odd pounds. He got two months that time. That was about four years ago. Then last year they caught him again. He’d been living with some woman, and he’d got hold of her Post Office Savings book and managed to forge whatever signature was necessary. For his twenty-two pounds he got another four months.