Black Mischief (17 page)

‘Clear
out, Youkoumian, ‘ he said. ‘I want to talk to your boss.’

‘O.K.,
General. I’ll ‘op off. No offence.’

‘Nonsense.
Mr Youkoumian is financial secretary of the Ministry. I should like him to be
present at our interview.’

‘What,
me, Mr. Seal? I got nothing to say to the General.’

‘I wish
you to stay.’

‘Quick,’
said the Duke, making a menacing motion towards him.

‘Very
sorry, gentlemen,’ said Mr Youkoumian and shot through the door into his own
office.

First
trick to Connolly.

‘I
notice even that little dago has the sense to take off his boots.’

Second
trick to Connolly.

But in
the subsequent interview Basil held his own. The General began: ‘Sorry to have
to sling that fellow out. Can’t stand his smell. Now let’s talk. What’s all
this infernal nonsense about boots?’

‘His
Majesty’s ordinance seemed perfectly explicit to me.’

‘His
Majesty’s trousers.
For the Lord’s sake come off
the high horse, old boy, and listen to me. I don’t give a hoot in hell about
your modernization. It’s none of my business. You can set every damn coon in
the place doing crossword puzzles for all I care. But I’m not going to have any
monkeying about with my men. You’ll lame the whole army in a day it you try to
make ‘em wear boots. Now look here, there’s no reason why we should scrap over
this. I’ve been in the country long enough to see through Youkoumian’s game.
Selling junk to government has been the staple industry of Debra Dowa as long
as I can remember it. I’d as soon you got the boodle as anyone else. Listen. If
I tip the wink to the people on the line I can have the whole consignment of
boots carried off by Sakuyu. You’ll get compensation, the ordinance will be
forgotten and no one will be any the worse off. What do you say? Is it a deal?’

For an
appreciable time Basil hesitated in a decision of greater importance than
either of them realized. The General sat jauntily on the edge of the table
bending his riding-cane over his knee; his expression was one of cordiality and
of persuasive good sense. Basil hesitated. Was it some atavistic sense of a
caste, an instinct of superiority, that held him aloof? Or was it vexed
megalomania because Mr Youkoumian had trotted so obediently from the room in
his stockinged feet?

‘You
should have made your representations before,’ he said. ‘The tone of your first
note made discussion impossible. The boots will be issued to the war department
next week.’

‘Bloody
young fool,’ said Connolly and took his leave.

As the
door opened Mr Youkoumian hastily stepped back from the keyhole. The General
pushed past him and left the Ministry.

‘Oh, Mr
Seal, why the ‘ell do you want a bust-up with ‘im for? Look, how about I go
after ‘im and fix it, eh, Mr Seal?’

‘You
won’t do anything of the sort. We’ll carry right on with the plans for the
pageant of contraception.’

‘Oh
dear, oh dear, Mr Seal, there ain’t no sense at all in ‘ aving bust-ups.’

News of the rupture spread
like plague through the town. It was first-class gossip. The twenty or so spies
permanently maintained by various interests in the Imperial Household carried
tidings of the split through the Legations and commercial houses; runners
informed the Earl of Ngumo; Black Bitch told her hairdresser; a Eurasian bank
clerk told his manager and the bank manager told the Bishop; Mr Youkoumian
recounted the whole incident in graphic gesture over the bar of the Empereur
Seth; Connolly swore hideously about it at the Perroquet to Prince Fyodor; the
Minister of the Interior roared out a fantastically distorted version to the
assembled young ladies of the leading
maison de société.
That evening
there was no dinner table of any importance in Debra Dowa where the subject
was not discussed in detail.

‘Pity,’
remarked Sir Samson Courteney. ‘I suppose this’ll mean that young Seal will be
coming up here more than ever. Sorry, Prudence, I dare say he’s all right, but
the truth is I can never find much to say to the chap … interested in
different things … always going on about local politics … Damn fool thing
to quarrel about, anyway. Why shouldn’t he wear boots if he wants to?’

‘That
wasn’t quite the point, Envoy.’

‘Well,
it was something of the kind, I know.’

‘Ha! Ha!’ said Monsieur
Ballon. ‘Here is a thing Sir Samson did
not
foresee. Where is his fine
web now, eh? Gossamer in the wind. Connolly is our man.’

‘Alas,
blind, trusting husband, if he only knew,’ murmured the first to the second
secretary.

‘The
Seal-Courteney faction and their puppet emperor have lost the allegiance of the
army. We must consolidate our party.’

It was
in this way it happened that next morning there occurred an event unique in
Black Bitch’s experience. She was in the yard in front of her house laundering
some of the General’s socks (for she could not bear another woman to touch her
man’s clothes), chewing nut and meditatively spitting the dark juice into the
soap-suds, when a lancer dismounted before her in the crimson and green
uniform of the French Legation.

‘Her
Grace the Duchess of Ukaka.’

She
lifted her dress, so as not to soil it, and wiped her hands on her knickers.
‘Me,’ she said.

The man
saluted, handed her a large envelope, saluted again, mounted and rode away.

The
Duchess was left alone with her large envelope; she squatted on her heels and
examined it, turning it this way and that, holding it up to her ear and shaking
it, her head sagely cocked on one side. Then she rose, padded into the house
and across the hall to her bedroom; there, after circumspection, she raised a
loose corner of the fibre matting and slipped the letter beneath it.

Two or
three times during the next hour she left her wash-tub to see if her treasure
was safe. At noon the General returned to luncheon and she handed it over to
him, to await his verdict.

‘Hullo,
B lack Bitch, what do you suppose this is? Madame Ballon wants to us dine at
the French Legation tomorrow.’

‘You
go?’

‘But
it’s for both of us, old girl. The invitation is addressed to you. What d’you
think of that?’

‘Oh,
my! Me dine with Madame Ballon! Oh my, that’s good!’

The
Duchess could not contain her excitement; she threw back her head, rolled her
eyes, and emitting deep gurgles of pleasure began spinning about the room like
a teetotum.

‘Good
for the old geeser,’ said the Duke, and later when the acceptance was written
and dispatched by the hand of the Imperial Guard’s most inspiring
sergeant-major, and Connolly had answered numerous questions about the proper
conduct of knife, fork, glass and gloves, and the Duchess had gone bustling off
to Mr Youkoumian’s store for ribbon and gold braid and artificial peonies to
embellish her party frock, he went back to barracks with unusual warmth at
heart towards the French Legation, remarking again, ‘Good for the old geeser.
He’s the first person who’s troubled to ask Black Bitch to anything in eight
years. And wasn’t she pleased as Punch about it too, bless her black heart?’

As the
time approached Black Bitch’s excitement became almost alarming and her
questions on etiquette so searching that the General was obliged to thump her
soundly on the head and lock her in a cupboard for some hours before she could
be reduced to a condition sufficiently subdued for diplomatic society. The
dinner party, however, was a great success. The French Legation were there in
full force, the director of the railway with his wife and daughters, and Lord
Boaz, the Minister for the Interior. Black Bitch as Duchess of Ukaka took precedence
and sat beside M. Ballon, who spoke to her in English in praise of her
husband’s military skill, influence and discretion. Any small errors in
deportment which she may have committed were completely eclipsed by the
Minister for the Interior who complained of the food, drank far too much,
pinched the ladies on either side of him, pocketed a dozen cigars and a silver
pepper mill which happened to take his fancy, and later in the drawing-room
insisted on dancing by himself to the gramophone until his slaves appeared to
hoist him into his car and carry him back to Mine ‘Fifi’, of whose charms he
had been loudly boasting throughout the evening with a splendour of anatomical
detail which was, fortunately, unintelligible to many of the people present.

In the
dining-room when the succession of wines finally ended with the few ceremonial
spoonfuls of sweet champagne and the men were left alone — the Minister for
the Interior being restrained with difficulty from too precipitately following
the ladies — M. Ballon signalled for a bottle of eau de vie and, moving round
to the General’s side, filled his glass and prompted him to some frank
criticism of the Emperor and the present régime.

In the
drawing-room the French ladies crowded about their new friend, and before the
evening was Out several of them, including Madame Ballon, had dropped the
‘Duchess’ and were on terms of calling her ‘Black Bitch’. They asked her to
come and see their gardens and children, they offered to teach her tennis and
piquet, they advised her about an Armenian dressmaker in the town and a Hindu
fortune-teller; they were eager to lend her the patterns of their pyjamas; they
spoke seriously of pills; best of all they invited her to sit on the committee
which was being organized in the French colony to decorate a car for the
forthcoming Birth-Control Gala. There was no doubt about it; the Connollys had
made the French set.

Ten
days later the boots arrived at Debra Dowa; there were some formalities to be
observed, but these were rendered simple by the fact that the departments
involved were now under the control of the Ministry of Modernization. Mr
Youkoumian drew up an application to himself from the Ministry of War for the
delivery of the boots; he made out a chit from the War Office to the Ministry
of Supplies; passed it on to the Treasury, examined and countersigned it, drew
himself a cheque and in the name of the Customs and Excise Department allowed
his own claim to rebate of duty on the importation of articles of ‘national
necessity’. The whole thing took ten minutes. A few hours later a thousand
pairs of black boots had been dumped in the square of the Guards barracks,
where a crowd of soldiers rapidly collected and studied them throughout the
entire afternoon with vivid but nervous interest.

That
evening there was a special feast in honour of the boots. Cook-pots steaming
over the wood fires; hand drums beating; bare feet shuffling unforgotten tribal
rhythms; a thousand darkies crooning and swaying on their haunches, white teeth
flashing in the fire-light.

They
were still at it when Connolly returned from dinner at the French consulate.

‘What
in hell are the boys making whoopee for tonight? It’s not one of their days, is
it?’

‘Yes,
General, very big day,’ said the sentry. ‘Boots day.’ The singing reached Basil
as he sat at his writing-table at the Ministry, working long after midnight at
the penal code.

‘What’s
going on at the barracks?’ he asked the servant.

‘Boots.’

‘They
like ‘em, eh?’

‘They
like ‘em fine.’

‘That’s
one in the eye for Connolly,’ he said, and next day, meeting the General in the
Palace yard, he could not forbear to mention it. ‘So the boots went down all
right with your men after all, Connolly.’

‘They
went down.’

‘No
cases of lameness yet, I hope?’

The
General leant over in his saddle and smiled pleasantly. ‘No cases of lameness,’
he replied. ‘One or two of bellyache, though. I’m just writing a report on the
matter to the Commissioner of Supplies — that’s our friend Youkoumian, isn’t
it? You see, my adjutant made rather a silly mistake.

He
hadn’t had much truck with boots before and the silly fellow thought they were
extra rations. My men ate the whole bag of tricks last night.’

Dust in the air; a light
wind rattling the leaves in the eucalyptus trees. Prudence sat over the
Panorama of Life gazing through the window across the arid Legation croquet
lawn; dun grass rubbed bare between the hoops, a few sap-less stalks in the
beds beyond. She drew little arabesques in the corners of the page and thought
about love.

It was
the dry season before the rains, when the cattle on the hills strayed miles
from their accustomed pastures and herdsmen came to blows over the brackish
dregs of the drinking holes; when, preceded by a scutter of children, lions
would sometimes appear, parading the streets of the town in search of water;
when Lady Courteney remarked that her herbaceous borders were a positive
eye-sore.

How
out of tune with Nature is the spirit of man!
wrote
Prudence in her sprawling, schoolroom characters.
When the earth proclaims
its fertility, in running brooks, bursting seed, mating of birds and frisking
of lambs, then the thoughts of man turn to athletics and horticulture,
water-colour painting and amateur theatricals. Now in the arid season when
Nature seems all dead under the cold earth, there is nothing to think about
except sex.
She bit her pen and read it through, substituting
hot soil
for
cold earth.
‘I am sure I’ve got something wrong in the first part,’ she
thought, and called to Lady Courteney who, watering-can in hand, was gloomily
surveying a withered rose tree. ‘Mum, how soon after the birds mate are the
lambs born?’