Mandrake (2 page)

‘Good evening, James,’ the man said. It was a throaty accent.

‘Come in, my dear fellow, come in. You don’t know David Queston, I think. David, this is Klaus Brunner, of St Catherine’s. One of our best young architects, if he will forgive me for saying so.’

He buzzed over the decanter like a benevolent bee. ‘Klaus and I are among the conspirators, David. That is to say, we are both members of the Ministry’s advisory committee here. Partly responsible, I’d like to believe, for the developments I was telling you about. We’ve worked very closely with the Minister ever since the first Oxford plans began.’ Queston grinned at him. ‘And since when have you become a traffic expert? I can see Mr Brunner’s natural connexion with the business, but an anthropologist…’

Brunner said seriously, in his thick voice: ‘The Oxford Committee is a research group of a rather unusual kind, Dr Queston. Patterns of human behaviour are as important as any architectural aspects of town planning. In some areas of our work especially.’

‘There are other areas?’

‘O come, David,’ said James Thorp-Gudgeon reproachfully. ‘You must have heard something about Mandrake’s record, even in Brasilia.’

‘Mandrake?’

‘The Minister. Excellent man, really excellent. An Oxford man—first in Greats at Trinity. He’s proved himself head and shoulders above the rest of the Cabinet in the last three years—tremendous drive, the way he’s put the country back into working order. Administratively, you know.’

Brunner said, accepting a glass and sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair: ‘Let me describe to you, briefly, Dr Queston. The scope of the Ministry is wider than before. It stemmed from concern over the way many cities were being choked by increased traffic and poor roads, London in particular. That is why I think Mandrake’s work has been so much welcomed. He has not only made changes by his own powers, he has initiated new legislation. The whole country, for instance, is divided firmly into seven regions now nominally under the aegis of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, for the purposes of local government—and to administer education, roads, and many things formerly directed from Whitehall by the Home Office and the Board of Trade.’

‘The Home Office—’ Queston frowned, puzzled. ‘Mr Mandrake sounds as if he’s putting us on the road to federal government. He’ll surely meet a lot of resistance—from the Civil Service if no one else.’

Thorp-Gudgeon chuckled fatly. ‘The wind of public opinion can blow hard even down the corridors of power—ah no, this was an obvious step, just too long delayed. After all, there had been development councils for industry in Scotland and north-east England for years, hamstrung by having too little real power. Local feeling everywhere rose immensely when the proper regional councils were formed. We’re an ancient country, David. I’ve always thought the old kingdoms still existed under the skin. Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and so on. Think of the Roses cricket match—’ Brunner struck a match with a sharp crack to light a cigarette; the reflection glowed briefly in his pale eyes.

‘These things are still only new, of course. The most effective work has been done in making the cities able to breathe. Stopping all office building in Central London, and cutting off other cities from through traffic on the Oxford pattern. York, Gloucester, Durham, Cambridge, and some others. You must visit them, if you are in Britain for long. You will hardly recognize them. The university towns in particular are delightful now. They have given us some of our strongest support.’

Queston shifted in his chair. He could feel his mind teetering on the edge of boredom. Had Thorp-Gudgeon really thought he would enjoy this pompous little German? Of course, James had always loved plotting and planning, the machinations behind a university election; he had revelled in the lobbying over the Oxford road problem for years. He must be a natural for the camp of the efficient Mr Mandrake.

Then Brunner said abruptly: ‘I very much admire your work, Dr Queston. The book on New Guinea was the last one, was it not? James always says you are the greatest wanderer he has ever known.’

‘And the most successful,’ Thorp-Gudgeon said without rancour, smiling from his deep chair. ‘It takes a great man to produce popular anthropology and at the same time retain the respect of the academic world.’

‘Ah, give over,’ Queston said amiably. ‘You old snob, you know the only reason you still speak to me is that I’ve never got to the point of making television films.’

‘My dear boy, you could become a film star of the utmost eminence and I should never know.’

The dark-panelled room was growing murky as the light died outside. Thorp-Gudgeon reached up and turned on a standard lamp beside his chair.

‘The books are very interesting,’ Brunner said persistently, leaning forward with his eyes on Queston’s face. ‘Mr Mandrake was much intrigued by your examination of patterns of migration, I remember. He will be in Oxford for a committee meeting in two days’ time—if you will still be here I know he would be very glad of the chance to meet you.’

Queston shook his head. ‘I have to go back to London tomorrow, I’m afraid, and then abroad again.’ And sharp-witted politicians aren’t my cup of tea, thank you very much, he added to himself.

‘I didn’t know he was coming,’ Thorp-Gudgeon said eagerly. ‘Is this Wednesday’s meeting in the Town Hall?’

‘Yes. He wants to talk about the resettlement plans, I gather. There are a few particular points… but I will tell you about them later. Let us not bore Dr Queston.’

‘He won’t be bored. This is a tremendous thing, David—’

Brunner cut in swiftly: ‘I really think it would not interest him.’ There was an edge on the words, a quick flick of menace that was gone in the second it was there; but clear enough for Queston to catch it. He looked up in surprise.

‘Ah well, you will have to wait, David.’ Thorp-Gudgeon was irrepressible, like a child with a pet secret. ‘But when this plan is working, Oxford will be a true national symbol of preservation. Perhaps more than that, in this disturbed world. It is time people remembered the importance of their roots.’

That was what had produced the first moment of reaction in Queston’s mind: the seed of everything that afterward became an obsession. He looked at Thorp-Gudgeon, sitting paunchy and contented in the cosy shadow of his room, and began to laugh.

‘You know, James, I really think Oxford must be the best subject for anthropological research in the world. You all worship the damn place, even those who come to it late. Talk about the emotional hold of environment—there’s a whole study to be done right here. You should have a try at it. Or perhaps I should—you’re a lot more accessible and articulate than my cave people.’

Brunner was as quick on the words as a terrier. ‘Your cave people? Who are they?’

‘It’s the project he’s been working on in Brazil,’ Thorp-Gudgeon said sulkily. He was better at expressing derision than feeling himself its object. ‘Some kind of tribal off-shoot in an obscure highland area. The University of Brasilia has been maintaining David out in the wilds to report on them, though what they hope to gain from it is beyond my comprehension.’

‘They have their problems,’ Queston said lightly.

‘Hardly the same as ours.’

Brunner was persistent. ‘I am intrigued. Tell me the analogy with Oxford. These people are one of your fossil races—very ancient?’

‘O yes,’ Queston said. He looked at Brunner’s unblinking lizard-like gaze, wondering why the architect should be so curious. ‘The point is that they’re completely tied by their location. Emotionally. You’d find nothing in them from the design point of view—they live in these highland caves without any of the adornments or excavations you get in, say, Arizona. The place is all limestone, honeycombed, and there’s no soil to speak of. They have a few goats, but mostly they live off roots and grubs. Half-starving, so the child mortality rate is enormous and their numbers are steadily dwindling. But the thing that fascinates me is that though there’s perfectly good land unoccupied within fifty miles or so, they’ve never moved, and they still won’t. They’re the prisoners of a kind of pantheism. Well, not quite that, but almost—I’ve come across nothing like it in a primitive people before. In some strange way I’ve only just begun to unravel, they seem to worship not the usual all-permeating spirit, and certainly not individual gods—but the caves themselves.’

‘Unless you are in some charming way equating the caves with the vaults of the Bodleian Library,’ Thorp-Gudgeon said sourly, ‘the analogy with Oxford seems to me obscure. Klaus, have some more port.’

‘It most certainly is not. Do you know the warmest thing you had to say to me about Mr Mandrake? You said: “He’s an Oxford man.” Implication—he belongs, therefore he understands. Well—out there these people exist under the rule of one chief, and he’s a man who belongs too. There are some caves, some of the very deepest, that only male members of the chief’s family are allowed to enter—I could never get anywhere near. They spend a lot of time there, especially at night. All part of the worship. There’s no ceremonial, no initiation, just this curious kind of communion with the caves. It seems to permeate the ruling family’s lives from birth. Not that they have much of a dynasty. When I first reached them there were only three men in the family—the chief, his brother, and his brother’s son. And a few weeks before I left, the chief and his brother were both killed by a fall of rock.’

He paused, and for a moment he did not see the glint of glass or the walls of books, with Brunner’s dark-patched face leaning forward peculiarly intent. He was back beside a fire on the scant grass of a South American hillside, near the looming dark mouth of a cave, waiting with the small lean people round him for the two men to come out of the hillside and perhaps, that time, explain to him a little of what it was that they always said and found and felt. Only, the two men had never come out. There had been a faint distant mutter, as if a wind sighed somewhere in the still night, and then the fire had suddenly flickered violently in a wave of air from the cave. And in the glow of the other small fires along the hillside, he had seen puffs of dust drift silently out from the other cave openings in the earth.

He said: ‘After that only the boy was left, and they made him chief. He’s very young, only about twelve, but there was no question. He rules without any kind of regent. The point for them is, you see, not just that he’s his father’s son—but that he’s the only one left with this kind of psychic communion with the caves.’ He grinned at Thorp-Gudgeon, suddenly feeling self-conscious at the monopolizing sound of his own voice. ‘See, James? He’s an Oxford man.’

Thorp-Gudgeon gave his shrill jay’s cackle of laughter, and wagged a finger as if at a child. Queston remembered from years before how quickly, almost hysterically, his fits of peevishness had unaccountably come and gone.

‘David, your feet have left the ground. It’s long past time you came back to teaching.’

‘You are going back there? ’ Brunner said. His thick voice was excited, and Queston realized with a shock of something between alarm and distaste how intently the light eyes had been staring at him as he had talked. Now the man said again, urgently, ‘You are going back to Brazil?’

‘Yes, I am. Next week.’

‘You must meet the Minister before you go.’

Everything seemed to come back to the one request. Queston said easily: ‘O really, I’m not a very political animal, Mr Brunner. James will tell you, I tend to be—disengaged. It’s kind of you, but I think not.’

Brunner said: ‘It is important.’ There was a Teutonic brusqueness in his manner that made the words into a command; suddenly irritated, Queston stood up.

‘I must let you two talk your committee business, it’s getting late. Glad to have met you, Mr Brunner. I hope the town and country planning goes on well.’

Standing to shake hands, Brunner had said curtly: ‘Good-bye,’ with resentment and a residue of determination behind the strange face; and Thorp-Gudgeon came with Queston to the bottom of his staircase.

‘We’re having lunch tomorrow, before you go back?’

‘Fine,’ Queston said. ‘But spare me the man from the Ministry this time, will you?’

‘O,’ Thorp-Gudgeon said mildly, ‘don’t judge us too hastily. I think you’ll find, David, that this is only a beginning.’

When Queston glanced back from the edge of the quadrangle, he was still standing there watching him: a small, paunchy, somehow secretive figure half in shadow underneath the pointed arch. Then in the same moment he moved swiftly backwards, and disappeared.

Queston walked back to his hotel with a nebulous feeling of disquiet. Perhaps it was no more than the unfamiliarity of finding a politician’s orderly aims applying themselves to the University of Oxford’s charmingly disarrayed mind. Odd to find someone like James Thorp-Gudgeon mixed up in planning committees—furthering the ambitions of the obviously publicity-conscious Mandrake. The Oxford man: the guardian of the place… he felt his mind drifting back to the Amerindians of the caves.

All around him the streets were deserted, the shop-fronts silent and dark. Oxford was asleep; enclosed, obedient. Under the lamps the pavements stretched before him yellow and empty; but the lamplight seemed dim. At the end of Broad Street he grew aware of a dark mass in the middle of the road, blotting out the great wrought-iron gates of Trinity; he crossed the road to look.

There were two machines, ancient and clumsy, great metal trolls looming out of the night. He recognized the arms they reached down towards the road; the enclosed spray, for forcing out fire. He had seen them before, used to destroy an old surface before a new one was laid.

The road felt unfamiliar and lumpy beneath his feet; he looked down. It was some seconds before he realized that the lumps were stones, set in deliberate order. The last relic of medieval Oxford, removed fifteen years ago to smoothe the way for the cars. The cobbles of Broad Street were being laid again.

‘Evening, sir,’ said a deep voice at his side. He saw the blue uniform half-consciously with his nearer eye; in any case, only a policeman would have a voice like one of these machines.