Her left arm was in a sling with the ends of two splints sticking out from a bandage grubby with the reddish stains of dead leaves and blackberries caught up by swift passage through the forest. She looked a little pale but none the less alluring for that, since in her hair a crescent of ivy had twined itself, fit to crown a nymph of the green roads.
Pretorius rushed to her, pitiably demanding whether they had any proper antibiotics.
‘Oh, some mushrooms which Guelph’s aunt brewed in a saucepan. Humphrey, it’s nothing at all.’
‘My darling, George must have hurt you horribly.’
‘No, he stuffed me full of gin first. It only hurt afterwards when I was sick.’
Pezulu and Aranda exchanged sly and joyous glances.
‘Middlesex, this is beyond …’ Pretorius began pathetically.
‘Don’t worry, Excellency! George would never have let her go if she wasn’t fit to travel. The affection of the guest for the host,’ Humphrey added vaguely, ‘and the host for the guest – customary, you know, but sometimes we express it strongly. I cannot tell you how sorry I am. I thought of the Chancellor, but ponies never entered my head.’
Meanwhile Thea had coolly summed up a disquiet in the room which had nothing to do with herself.
‘Without a hostess, father, you are quite lost,’ she said.
Followed anxiously by Humphrey, who seemed to be jealous of the sling and ready to carry the broken arm himself, she slid back a panel to reveal racks of glasses together with flasks in the bright colours of flowers. Pezulu and Aranda made thankfully for the bar. Pretorius and the Dowager were left behind, discreetly inspecting each other.
‘Madam, you have been most kind,’ said the High Commissioner respectfully.
‘You don’t like the colour of my face, do you?’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I said: you don’t like the colour of my face.’
‘I find it – er – most exotically – er – fascinating.’
‘And I don’t like the colour of yours. That girl and Humphrey, eh? Wouldn’t suit either of us, eh?
‘You thought the affection was a little more than customary?’
‘Stuck out a mile! Can’t be anything serious in it, though. Always doing the rounds with me she was, except when she had gone off to bed. What’s the boy come to see you about?’
Pretorius hesitated, uncertain of how much she knew.
‘He was, shall I say, emphasising your native disregard for human life. And among other things he wants me to release Silvia Brown.’
‘Just like his grandfather! First one knew of what he wanted was when he’d got it. Pretty, is she?’
‘To British taste irresistible, I should say.’
‘With a sound, solid father like hers there can’t be much wrong. She shouldn’t have taken a pot at you of course, but a day or two after rabbits will soon get all that out of her system.’
‘If she were in your charge, do you think you could …?’
‘Of course I could! Clean young British girl like her – she can run the Little Sisters for me. They swear an oath to keep the paths open and the maps up to date. Keeps ’em out of mischief!’
‘That does not involve permanent celibacy?’
‘Lord, no! Humphrey used to take a great interest in the Little Sisters.’
Thea, chatting gaily to Aranda, had kept one ear open to what her father and the Dowager were saying. She firmly interrupted:
‘What would you like to drink, Dowager?’
‘Gets the title right every time, Excellency. Too formal but she does try. All made of flowers are they, Thea? Queer thing, civilisation! Nothing between daisy water and jet alcohol! Make mine half-and-half. Half-and-half for the Dowager of Middlesex!’
Chuckling with laughter and arm in arm with an embarrassed Pretorius, she dragged him to the bar. There was nothing for it but to show himself decisive, and the only chance for peremptory action was Little Sister Silvia Brown.
‘Middlesex, I am glad there has been a moment for tempers to cool,’ he said. ‘I have decided to release Silvia Brown unconditionally – a sort of thank-offering for my own daughter’s escape, shall we say?’
‘Very generous indeed of Your Excellency! Only a really strong man could have done that!’ He strode to the private door and threw it open. ‘Come on in, both of you! Alfred, your patience and self-control have persuaded the High Commissioner to pardon Silvia.’
Alfred and Silvia entered the seat of authority, followed by the Inspector who looked at his chief for orders.
‘Just remain outside,’ Pezulu murmured. ‘There could be circumstances in which I shall need you.’
Humphrey ironically raised his glass to Pezulu, appreciating the threat.
‘Excellency, I never thought you had it in you!’ Alfred Brown exclaimed.
‘And you remember this, young Silvia,’ Humphrey added. ‘As soon as we stopped threatening him, Ali Pretorius was able to be his natural, kindly self.’
‘I will not accept my pardon unless my people have it too!’ she yelled.
‘But you can’t force ’em to lock you up and monkey with your brain box, girl. What you need,’ the Dowager prescribed, ‘is a month with us to see how the humble half of the British live.’
Thea protested that it was late for her to start tribal life.
‘What have you got to do with it?’ Silvia asked.
‘I was only trying to help you.’
‘So you think I’m in need of care and protection!’
‘Of course not! You’re an experienced revolutionary.’
‘She’s eighteen,’ her father said bluntly.
‘And it would be a pity if she came under the influence of Smith and Green again,’ Humphrey added.
The Dowager asked who the devil were Smith and Green.
‘Some immigrants whom Black Rod is looking after, mamma.’
The High Commissioner heated up again.
‘Before I even listen to what you may have to say Smith and Green will be handed over to me.’
‘Alive or dead,’ Pezulu insinuated.
‘Couldn’t this be treated as a routine police matter?’ Humphrey suggested. ‘Well, give-and-take between the Pasha and myself?’
Pretorius refused. Silvia stormed that it was unthinkable, that Humphrey of Middlesex was not to hand them over.
‘Now, now, girlie,’ said Alfred Brown, ‘I give you my word that he won’t.’
The High Commissioner delivered his final judgement.
‘You, Brown, and your wife and daughter will go back to Tunis Garden City, and you, Middlesex, to your settlement.’
‘My father!’ Thea protested.
‘You must understand how serious this is, Thea. Middlesex threatened to hang me.’
‘Excellency, it was not a threat. I said that if I was compelled to do so I should be unable to trust my voice.’
‘And what had you threatened him with?’ Thea asked Pretorius.
‘Extermination!’ Humphrey answered as if shocked by such brutality.
‘My father – no!’ she protested.
What game her Humphrey was playing she could not guess, but strongly suspected that the High Commissioner was the woodlouse being tickled to see how fast it could run. Both must be brought to order.
‘Oh, but this is beyond belief!’ she cried, pretending horror.
‘Middlesex, drop this lunacy!’ Pretorius appealed. ‘These units are so used to welfare. They are not trained to create anything for themselves. They couldn’t understand your way of thinking.’
‘They are passionately fond of their little gardens.’
‘By God, they are!’ Aranda agreed. ‘A chap put in some marvellous roses round the mess.’
‘Always these irrelevancies!’ Pretorius complained. ‘You can’t settle them in the forest. They are terrified by it. Will somebody talk sense? You, Mr Brown, you at least are an able politician. Just what is your proposal? What powers do you wa
nt for the Special Commissioners you mentioned?’
‘Advisory.’
‘And if we don’t take your advice?’
‘You take the consequences,’ Humphrey said.
‘Then you need us still?’
‘My personal relations with the High Commissioner should be as close as between a father and a son.’
Pretorius looked suspiciously from Thea to Humphrey, but their bland smiles could not be interpreted. He took refuge in economics.
‘But you are asking – if I understand you at all – for political responsibility without financial. That will get you nowhere.’
‘Is there such a thing as social responsibility?’
Thea replied that once there was, and it was called monarchy.
‘Absolute power?’ Pretorius asked.
‘In Britain, we think, the monarch had no power at all. His duty was to keep a sense of shame in those who had.’
Alfred Brown chuckled.
‘You could do that, lad,’ he said. ‘Just keep it growing but don’t call it anything. Slowly does it. That’s what I have always told them.’
‘But what is to grow?’
‘The nameless,’ Humphrey replied. ‘The nameless, as Alfred says. What once flowered and could again.’
‘And if I offer you Britain as it was – to grow in your own way without Avebury or immigrants?’
‘No. I will not have the immigrants cleared out.’
‘But you hate their childish, dangerous patriotism as much as I do. You don’t care whether they have self-government or not.’
‘Patriotism? Government? What do they matter to us, the last few British?’ Humphrey answered slowly. ‘Let us be free to love and we want no other freedom. Do you make war for the sake of the long shadows of elms upon the evening grass? Yes, we would. Will you die for the sake of the bare western downs folded around the sheep? Yes, I will. Don’t ask me the logic of it – there is none. Do you believe that in the days of their greatness the British ever cared for trade, for towns, for power? That was as a man buys jewels for his wife. Only the wife remains now, and she was all they ever wanted. Perhaps they, too, became towards the end like these unhappy freedom fighters, losing every day a little of the power to love. That union with their land, for me never broken, is the right of my people. No law, neither yours nor theirs, can give it to them. If Alfred is right it may be, may be that I can.’
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-5040-0643-9
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Arrows of Desire Page 11
