Short of Glory

by Alan Judd

  Sandy was looking livelier than when in the car. ‘He’s not exactly liberal, either.’

  ‘Compared with me he is.’ They all laughed. There was an appealing frankness in Rissik that bordered on the brutal. He turned to Clifford. ‘What d’you think of our wines, Cliff? Better than all that French plonk, eh?’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Clifford.

  ‘“Not bad,” he says. Damn good, that’s what they are. Damn good.’ Jim put his hand heavily on Patrick’s shoulder. ‘This one’s plonk, though, so watch for the kick-back. You’ll be able to take more when you’re used to the altitude. The best wines come from the coast. This doesn’t. I’m going down there this weekend to stock up with a few crates.’

  Patrick had an idea that the coast was a thousand or so miles away. ‘That’s a long way to go for a weekend, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m borrowing a plane from a friend. Fly it myself. That’s how we live here. He’s seen nothing yet, has he?’ Clifford made a remark about the economy and the wine industry which Jim followed up enthusiastically. Joanna listened, saying little. She had grey eyes speckled with green. She watched Jim talk.

  Patrick did not like it. He turned to Sandy, who was coquettishly touching the rim of her wine glass with the tip of her tongue. ‘A healthy interest for you if you’re not too detached to take one,’ she said quietly. ‘At least she’s unmarried, though that wouldn’t bother you either way, would it?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m interested?’

  ‘It’s obvious. Everything about you is obvious. D’you really think it isn’t? Don’t worry, I’ll see if I can dispose of your rivals. It’ll give me a vicarious thrill.’

  ‘Are they both rivals?’

  ‘Mine would be if he could, except that he’d be frightened to death, poor thing.’

  She turned to Jim and asked him abruptly where he came from. Interrupted in mid-sentence, he told her and she turned to Clifford and asked him if he had not been there. He said he had not, she said he had and Jim began describing the area for Clifford’s benefit.

  Patrick raised his glass to his lips, partly to hide his smile, but managed the matter rather clumsily. When he took his handkerchief from his pocket something fell to the floor and rolled. He looked for a coin and saw the bullet he had found in his bedroom. It rested against one of Joanna’s black boots. She looked down, then up at him, her eyebrows raised slightly and an amused questioning light in her grey eyes. No one else had noticed.

  He bent and picked up the bullet. The action was enough to remind him that he might be slightly drunk. ‘There is an explanation.’ He did not know what he would offer.

  She looked at the bullet as he turned it in his fingers. ‘Don’t some people make beads and necklaces with them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He had been keen to hide the bullet from Sandy but with Joanna he had an impulse to do the opposite, wanting to show off. He held it out. ‘Have it.’

  ‘Don’t you want it?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘In connection with your “explanation”.’

  ‘It’s not mine. Have it.’

  ‘What do you think I should do with it?’

  She had the same clipped speech as Jim but the tone was softer and there was a slight lilt. Patrick had the bullet in the palm of his hand, aware that at any moment the others might see it. He particularly did not want to explain it to Jim. ‘Keep it for luck.’

  ‘Is it a lucky one?’

  ‘It has been so far.’

  She smiled and took it, fingering it for a few moments before putting it in her bag. ‘I’d assumed it was for your gun.’

  ‘I don’t have a gun.’

  ‘A lot of people do. Some carry them all the time.’

  ‘Does Jim?’

  The question came out more abruptly than he had meant. She turned her head a little to one side. ‘Some of the time he does, yes.’

  There was a pause. He had introduced a wrong note and the conversation had lost impetus. He needed to restore it quickly before one of the others noticed they weren’t talking and included them. ‘It was a tiring flight, wasn’t it?’ he said lamely.

  She looked at him before replying. He had assumed that she had seen him at the airport simply because he had noticed her. Now he felt unsure and foolish.

  She smiled. ‘You looked so lost I felt quite sorry for you. You didn’t know where to put yourself.’

  This cheered him. The fact that she had noticed him and had not said so suggested a hint of complicity. ‘It made it worse when you smiled and then went off with someone else.’

  She laughed now. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help smiling. You looked so tousled.’

  Further conversation was prevented by an eddy of people surrounding the ambassador, who was now moving through the room. His presence and those attracted to it destroyed the defensive lines of the three main groups. Taller than anyone else, Sir Wilfrid nodded continuously and courteously, saying ‘Yes, yes, quite’ very frequently. He shook hands, attempted to smooth his wild white hair and occasionally touched the knot of his tie. Seeing this last gesture caused Patrick involuntarily to do the same.

  Philip startled everyone by announcing in a high voice, ‘Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, if you would be pleased to go through now.’

  After some hesitation the ambassador proceeded on the arm of the German counsellor’s wife. Jim said something to Joanna and Sandy walked on ahead of Clifford whilst he was talking to her. Patrick was separated from them by a troop of Lower Africans. He had not in any case imagined that he could remain talking to Joanna for much longer. Perhaps there would be a chance later so long as someone else talked to Jim. He was grateful to Sandy and would have thanked her had she not walked off as though everyone was a stranger. However, the prospect of food reminded him that he was very hungry. He entered the next room with a sudden excess of saliva in his mouth.

  Instead of food, though, there were rows of government-issue metal chairs. They faced a piano, beside which stood Claire Longhurst, her hands tightly clasped and her smile fixed with the rigidity of rigor mortis.

  There was a discreet race for the back of the room which was won by the British, able to make use of the national characteristic of self-effacement in order to be more craftily pushy. The Lower Africans seized the front and middle rows to the right of the gangway while the foreign diplomats shuffled disconsolately to the left. Sir Wilfrid was shown to a low armchair on the front right, which meant that his head was on a level with the chairs on either side of him. Patrick and a sulky Frenchman who would not speak English hovered near the door until directed to a row of three chairs at the side.

  The entertainment consisted of Philip playing humorous records as examples for ‘our foreign colleagues, friends and guests’ of what he called English humour. One piece was a recording of Hoffnung’s speech to the Oxford Union which was so crackly that it was impossible to hear what was said and not easy to tell when it was finished. Everyone sat with expressionless faces, except Sir Wilfrid who twice turned to Claire to say that it would do no good to play the record with a broken needle. In order to reply to him Claire had to bend her head to his, on a level with her own knees, causing her skirt to creep up her thighs. She maintained her smile throughout.

  At the end of the records there was silence until the Japanese commercial attaché began to clap briskly, forcing nearly everyone else to join in.

  Philip next read a speech about how the origins of jazz were said by some experts to be found in nineteenth-century martial music and introduced Mr Johann Botha who was to demonstrate on the piano. Mr Botha was a short, bespectacled, bearded man who bowed stiffly and unsmilingly, once to Sir Wilfrid and once to the audience. His spectacles glinted. The Japanese attaché again stimulated applause. Mr Botha looked vainly for the piano stool and bowed again. Philip stepped back, leaving the floor to the pianist. Mr Botha made several silent expostulations. Claire jumped from her chair and whispered to her husband, who looked
with surprise at the piano and then at Mr Botha, who looked back indignantly, his hands clasped behind him. Claire put Philip’s chair by the piano. Mr Botha sat with his back to the audience and his shoulders not far above the keyboard.

  Before Mr Botha could start the ambassador clapped several times, loudly and quite slowly. He told Claire he had enjoyed the comedy. Others joined in the clapping. Mr Botha turned in his seat and bowed his head. He then played rousing martial tunes such as Rule Britannia and The British Grenadiers for about twenty minutes.

  When Philip announced that there would be a break the applause was genuine. Patrick tried to get near Joanna but such was the rush that there was no point in waiting. In the reception room two black servants stood anxiously holding trays of drinks. He ignored them and made for the nearest peanut dish. He next found some crisps. The ambassador appeared, flanked by Clifford and Philip. Patrick went in search of Joanna.

  He found her queuing with other women for one of the lavatories. Her grey eyes showed faint surprise when he stopped. For a moment he was almost reduced to complimenting her on her black jacket and skirt but a happier inspiration came.

  ‘Is Jim getting you a drink?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. There’s another loo somewhere. He’s probably gone there.’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Red wine, please.’

  ‘Large?’ He was not aware that there was any choice and had asked only because he felt self-conscious before all the women.

  She smiled. ‘Very.’

  Back in the reception room people talked and drank with boisterous relief. They formed three camps roughly as before, but common adversity had brought about some mixing. Patrick lifted two glasses of wine from a tray of four that a servant was taking to someone. He planned to intercept Joanna in the corridor so that they could talk away from the others.

  ‘Kind of you, Patrick, thank you.’ Sir Wilfrid took a glass from him. Clifford was about to take the other but Patrick held it closer. Sir Wilfrid waved his pipe whilst complimenting Philip on the mime show at the start of the piano-playing. Takes an awful lot of rehearsal, that sort of thing.’

  Philip smiled awkwardly, caught Patrick’s eye and looked away. Clifford stared uncomprehendingly at the ambassador, then resentfully at Patrick’s wine. Sir Wilfrid said it was time he did his bit of mixing and moved off towards the Lower African camp. Philip redirected a waiter towards the Lower Africans as Clifford was about to take a glass from him.

  Jim was talking to some Lower Africans. Patrick met Joanna as she came through the door. They stood by a sideboard.

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’ she asked.

  ‘I was but the ambassador took it. He thought it was for him. I’ll get another.’

  ‘Does that sort of thing often happen to you?’

  ‘Quite often, yes, but I usually overcome it somehow.’ He was the only person in the room without a drink but if he went for one someone else might talk to her. ‘Actually, I’m more interested in food at the moment.’

  ‘You’ll be out of luck there. Diplomats have a reputation for not being over-generous when it comes to entertaining the natives. Despite handsome entertainment allowances, I’m told.’ She smiled as she looked round. ‘There were some peanuts on this sideboard earlier – or did the ambassador take those as well?’

  ‘No, I got them – and the crisps. It’s all right, I’ll nip round the corner and get something afterwards.’

  She laughed as at something quaint. ‘No one “nips round corners” in northern Battenburg. There’s nowhere to nip. There aren’t any pubs or fish and chip shops or Chinese take-aways like in England. Everyone drives to restaurants. Why don’t you come back with us and have something? We’re going to eat anyway.’

  This was more than he expected but the implied cohabitation was a setback. Jim was already watching when she turned to wave him over. ‘Patrick is starving. I said we’d feed him afterwards. He can come back with Sandy and Clifford.’

  Jim clapped Patrick on the shoulder again, like a father trying to put some gumption into his weakling son. ‘Needs feeding up, does he? Well, you’ll get it, Pat. It’ll be a good old Lower African fry-up, nothing fancy. We’d go outside and have a braii – barbecue in your language – if it weren’t so damn cold. What d’you reckon of the show? I don’t get it at all. Is this really how people entertain in England?’

  Patrick did not hesitate long over the question of loyalty to diplomatic colleagues. ‘No. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Then what the hell are they doing it for?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘So what do people like this do in England?’

  Patrick thought. ‘I’ve never met people like this in England. Perhaps they’re only like it when they’re abroad.’

  Philip announced ‘round two’ and there was a rush to top up glasses. Jim yet again put his hand possessively on Patrick’s shoulder. ‘I’m glad you’re coming back. We must get to know each other. I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about, you and I.’

  His friendly manner had an unasked-for complicity about it. ‘What things?’

  Jim grinned. ‘Just things.’

  Philip told his audience that Mr Botha would now demonstrate how the American musician Scott Joplin had adapted early jazz rhythms to his own use. Mr Botha, seated on a higher chair this time, demonstrated with precise severity. Between tunes Philip read aloud from a potted biography of Joplin, at one point getting the pages wrong so that Claire was halfway to her feet and gesturing with her braceleted arm before he corrected himself and inserted the missing decade. A plume of smoke from Sir Wilfrid’s pipe became a slowly revolving cloud which enveloped the piano, causing Mr Botha to cough twice and look round. Philip stepped forward to see where the smoke came from, saw and stepped back.

  At the end the Japanese and his wife again led the company in quick-fire applause which was prolonged by relief and embarrassment. When Mr Botha bowed Philip clapped more vigorously than before and the applause was renewed. It had already gone beyond what was polite or credible and was beginning to die away when Sir Wilfrid, who had been groping for his pipe after it had fallen from his mouth during the first barrage, began to clap loudly and widely as if to make up for his tardiness. Those whose hands were slowing then speeded up. Mr Botha bowed twice more, smiled nervously and hurried out.

  The ambassador left immediately afterwards, which permitted everyone else to go. Patrick travelled with Sandy and Clifford. They argued about whether or not the evening had been good for him. Clifford thought it had been a useful experience ‘in itself’ and also because it enabled Patrick to be seen.

  ‘Why’s that important?’ asked Sandy.

  ‘For his job, of course. It means that people will know him. They’ll take him more seriously.’

  ‘More likely the opposite. People take diplomats less seriously the better they know them. You’d all be better thought of if none of you ever met anyone. Though since most diplomats spend most of their time talking to other diplomats I don’t s’pose it really makes much difference.’ She turned and smiled at Patrick. ‘Like your tie.’

  Patrick touched it again. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘A girlfriend gave it to me.’

  ‘You should be so lucky.’ She laughed, then argued with Clifford about the route he was taking. From this it became apparent that Jim and Joanna had separate houses and did not live together.

  6

  Jim’s bungalow was small compared with diplomatic housing. Patrick looked automatically for the pool and was not disappointed. It was green and kidney-shaped, with a springboard. Inside the bungalow almost every wall and most shelves, sideboards and tables bore some reminder of hunting, either in the shape of antique weapons or the heads of shot beasts. Hunting prints and pictures abounded.

  ‘Did you shoot all these?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘Wish I had.’

&n
bsp; Both women and Clifford disappeared to various lavatories. Jim led the way to the veranda. ‘Wait, I’ll settle the dogs. Otherwise they’ll have you.’

  He whistled and two black Alsatians padded out of the darkness. He directed them to sniff Patrick. ‘Beautiful beasts, aren’t they? Dangerous and beautiful. Sometimes I wish I was one. D’you ever think like that?’ He glanced at Patrick, then continued without waiting for a reply. ‘They’ll be okay now that they’ve seen you with me. I’m going to the bar to fix the drinks. What d’you want?’

  The effects of the earlier wine had still not worn off. ‘A tomato juice.’

  Jim looked at him scornfully. ‘I was offering you a drink.’ Since meeting Jim he had sensed there would be a confrontation but this was as absurd as it was unexpected. ‘And I asked for a tomato juice.’

  Jim hesitated, then grinned and shrugged. ‘Your choice.’ Patrick stepped out on to the veranda and the two dogs slipped into the house behind him. He could hear Jim talking to them in encouraging, friendly tones. It was a clear evening with a touch of frost, the kind of night he loved in England. He walked across the grass to the pool, in which was reflected the garden light of the house on the other side of the road. He had been in Lower Africa a little over twelve hours. It was impossible to believe that he would actually last the full four years. Rachel had been in his mind throughout most of the day, which was curious because he did not often think of her. He kept imagining her reactions, perhaps comparing them with the lack of his own. Maybe Sandy had been right in saying he did not care about anything. He wondered if he would care about that, if it were true; or whether Joanna would think the same, if she were interested in noticing. Perhaps he was just tired. Even so, it was always the women that he thought of.

  He heard Joanna’s footfall on the grass behind him a moment before she spoke. ‘Dreaming of England?’

  It was not easy to see her features against the house lights but he thought she smiled. She had probably noticed that he was startled. ‘The weather reminds me of it,’ he said.