Short of Glory (3 page)

It was acceptable, however, to try to win by deceit provided one could do so without being caught. Mr Formerly explained the case of Whelk in these terms. To inform the Lower Africans of the
involvement of L and F would imply that HMG did not trust the Lower African authorities. This was in fact the case, but it was important to pretend otherwise. If, on the other hand, the Lower
Africans discovered that L and F were trying to make contact with the hypothetical kidnappers then HMG could plausibly claim that they must have been hired by the family. Actually Whelk had no
family but that was neither here nor there.

‘But might he not simply have fallen off a cliff?’ asked Patrick. ‘Or thrown himself?’

‘He might.’ Mr Formerly’s gaze returned to the window, where it was most at rest. The window was spattered by raindrops. ‘I doubt it, though. I know Arthur Whelk of old,
you see. Not the sort of chap who drives over cliffs. Most likely he’s simply gone off and got himself another job without telling anyone. In the Middle East he was working for a sultan the
whole time he was there. Procuring something or other, it was never clear what. Actually had a desk in the palace. Used to drop into the embassy in the mornings for his mail and then disappear. Bit
of a fuss when the ambassador found out but the sultan sent a message to London saying he’d rather have Arthur in his country than the whole of the rest of the embassy and so that was that.
Very embarrassing if we’d all been declared persona non grata – png’d. Arthur served out his time.’ He turned wearily back to Patrick. ‘Point is, the ambassador wants
you to liaise with the police about this but also with the L and F chap when he gets there in secret. Keep him in the picture and so on without letting the police know. Sounds a recipe for disaster
to me. Arthur will turn up when it suits him, I’m sure.’

A sudden commotion announced the return of the four men, this time with a security cupboard which had a combination lock. They dragged the second cupboard across the floor and banged it heavily
against the first. Its one door came open and a file fell out. The men left.

Mr Formerly gazed at the file which was marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL’. ‘Not that I imagine you’ll be in a hurry to find Arthur. At least not while you’re living in his
magnificent house. You’d otherwise be in a flat for a Grade Nine in a noisy part of Battenburg. I should get on with your personal admin if I were you. Awful lot to do and all very boring.
Make sure you claim your full allowances.’ He reopened
The Times.
‘Anything I can do, don’t hesitate.’

Patrick stepped carefully over the file. The rain beat steadily against the small window.

Mr Formerly looked up. ‘Couldn’t switch on the light on your way out, could you?’

Patrick flicked the switch. Nothing happened, but Mr Formerly was already reading.

Not all Foreign Office briefings were like Mr Formerly’s. Some were lengthy and thorough, even energetic. The longest and worst was the two-day Going Abroad course for
those on their first postings.

They were issued with a booklet describing diplomatic life overseas. From this Patrick learnt that he should always, whether walking or in a car, keep to the left of his Head of Mission; that he
should acquire a stock of superficial topics and gambits for use in diplomatic conversation; that he should prime himself before going to a party with useful and effective small-talk; that if he
had to speak a foreign language in which he was not fluent he should, before attending a function, learn a dozen or so new phrases and try to bring them into the conversation; that he should pay
attention to placement at table and be prepared to take advice on dress. The handbook’s stated purpose was to make social intercourse easier.

Most of the fifty or sixty people on the course were clerks, guards, telex-operators and wives. The other dozen or so were of diplomatic rank, like Patrick. They were given a lecture on security
and another from a doctor who warned against the dangers to health of unhealthy climates. A titled lady, wife of a former ambassador who was now a very senior man in London, spoke of how spouses
could contribute to their husbands’ careers and advised strongly against complaining. By the end of the course the audience was bored, bemused and mutinous. Patrick fell asleep during the
second afternoon and awoke only when the two books on his lap slipped to the floor with a double bang.

What Mr Formerly had called personal admin was indeed very tiresome. There were medical and insurance formalities, clothes to be bought, allowances to be claimed and spent, even a will to be
made. The allowances seemed very generous and it was soon clear that they were for many people the crucial aspect of any posting. Accommodation was furnished at public expense but each person was
given money for the tax-free purchase of washing machines, fridges, cutlery, crockery and any other necessary or unnecessary household goods. This applied only to the first posting but shipping
costs were paid for all postings. There was an allowance for moving, an allowance for being abroad and an entertainment allowance to be claimed once there. Petrol would be tax free. Patrick’s
bank account swelled overnight to undreamt-of proportions.

He had also to buy a car. For this there was an interest-free loan based on grade and repayable over two years. There was also diplomatic discount, no tax and no VAT. Shipping was free provided
the car was British. Patrick had never owned one and had never seriously thought about which kind he would like. He determined to avoid Fords because of the implication in Clifford Steggles’s
letter that he ought to have one. He tried Vauxhall but the model he wanted was not available in time; Talbot had something he liked but although theoretically British it had in fact been made in
Europe and was therefore ineligible for the loan; the Leyland man was still at lunch at half-past three and so, one wet afternoon, he slunk into the Ford export office and signed for one, still
unsure what it looked like.

During the last few weeks in London Patrick went to as many plays and films as possible on the mistaken principle that experience was entirely quantitative, to be stored and
drawn on later, like nuts. Since his father’s death his mother had lived in Chislehurst, a suburb of London flush with estate agents, riding schools and new Jaguars. He did not stay with her,
though, because at home his impending departure felt like an intimation of mortality. She was sad and anxious and he was tense; neither could enjoy the last few days because of the knowledge that
they were the last. He stayed instead with a friend in Southwark who worked for an American bank and spent half his time in New York.

On the last but one night he had dinner in Clapham with two other friends from Reading, Rachel and Maurice. He knew them through his former girlfriend, Susan. The acquaintance survived his
break-up with her probably for no better reason than habit. Rachel was on a BBC trainee producer scheme which, she said, took men and women in equal numbers no matter how many or what quality of
each applied. Maurice was training to be a solicitor. He hoped to specialise in trade union law and intended to stand as a local councillor at the next election. Rachel said that they would start a
family in due course but they were determined not to marry.

They sat on the bare floorboards of the large main room. The furniture was sparse and plain. Maurice was proud of a sofa with a broken arm which he had taken from a rubbish skip in the street.
He said he liked it because the colour of the stuffing matched his beard. A friend of Rachel’s had painted an abstract mural on one wall – angular shapes of black and white with a red
sun or football in one corner – which was reflected in a large Victorian mirror hanging above the bricked-up fireplace. Rachel explained that this came from her parents’ Cotswold
home.

They ate rice with meat of some sort, tired lettuce and wrinkled tomatoes. They drank a large bottle of sweet white wine. The claret that Patrick had brought was left unopened.

Rachel balanced her plate on crossed legs and dug in with a fork, her brown hair falling forward over her face so that the fork had to be manoeuvred towards her mouth as if through curtains.
‘To be honest, Patrick, I don’t know how you can do it,’ she said, with energy but no annoyance. ‘I mean, you must be really determined or thick-skinned or something.
Perhaps you’re a racist under the skin. Perhaps that’s what it is.’

Patrick paused in his eating. ‘Under the skin?’

‘Yes. Daddy is. Above the skin too now because he’s been corrupted by all those dreadful Lower Africans until he’s come to agree with them. He says it’s the best thing
for everyone. We had a blistering row about it over Christmas lunch and I left before the pudding and came back to London he was so awful. Mummy was in tears.’

‘I’ll have to see for myself.’

‘But the trouble is you’ve already put yourself on the side of the status quo by joining the Foreign Office. You’ve sold out just as much as if you’d gone into business
or something. You’re committed to a point of view, like it or not.’ She negotiated a piled forkful through her hair. ‘I don’t mean it personally, you know. It’s just
the position you’re in. Really I don’t think we should even recognise them diplomatically.’

Patrick was still uncertain as to what exactly he had committed himself to in joining the Foreign Office. He hesitated. ‘Well, diplomatic recognition doesn’t signify approval or
disapproval. It’s simply the way of dealing with the acknowledged power in a country.’ It sounded like one of his briefings. He wondered how long it would be before he ceased to notice
such changes in himself.

‘They’re bound to get at you in one way or another,’ said Maurice. ‘I mean, look at LASS. They’re as bad as the KGB.’

‘Worse,’ said Rachel. They’re really really bad. They’ll probably get you in bed with a black woman then photograph you and then you’ll be tortured.’

‘Why should they do that?’

‘Or they’ll corrupt you with their point of view, which is more likely,’ continued Maurice.

‘Why is that more likely?’

Maurice looked embarrassed and touched his beard. ‘Well, no, I mean, I don’t mean it’s actually likely or anything. It’s just that you’re more sort of naturally
Establishment-minded. You’re more a part of it. I mean, you don’t mind having to wear a suit every day – I have to wear one too, but – well – you know what I mean. Not
that there’s anything wrong with it but it’s just an aspect which in your case you embrace more willingly.’ He poured more wine.

Patrick did not like arguments. He smiled. ‘Does that mean I’m more corruptible than lawyers?’

Maurice shook his head. ‘No, no, ’course it doesn’t, nothing like that. It’s just a statement about the sort of people you’re mixing with, you know, the whole
scene.’

‘Perhaps I’m already corrupted.’ Patrick smiled again and Maurice began to look less awkward.

‘You must write and tell us all about it, anyway,’ said Rachel, scraping her plate. ‘Except that they might get our address and then get on to us if they wanted. You could send
letters via Mummy and Daddy. They’re more respectable, only better not use the title because it attracts attention.’

‘I could send it in the diplomatic bag.’

‘Is that safe?’

‘I think so.’

‘Really, what you’re doing is incredibly brave,’ Maurice resumed with more confidence. ‘I mean, going to a racist totalitarian state, even as a diplomat. You’ll
have to live with censorship and imprisonment without trial and all that. But if you find out any interesting information we could pass it on to the freedom fighters. We’ve got
contacts.’

‘What kind of information?’

‘Well, you know, secret information.’ Maurice seemed no clearer about his secrets than Mr Formerly had been about his.

‘Two gorgeous blacks,’ continued Rachel. ‘They were in the studio last week and they came to dinner. I think they’re incredibly brave. What they’re doing takes real
courage.’

Patrick’s briefings on black movements had not been comprehensive. ‘What are they doing?’

‘Oh, sort of organising and stuff.’ She glanced at Maurice before resuming in a self-consciously offhand tone. ‘Actually, there is something you could do. We’re members
of a group that helps a school out there, a black school in Kuweto. We send teaching materials and things. If you could take some out for us it would save an amazing amount of time and money. It
could go with your heavy baggage.’

‘Teaching materials,’ Patrick repeated.

‘The black schools are really poorly equipped compared with white schools,’ said Maurice. ‘They don’t get enough textbooks or anything.’

Rachel laughed briefly and pushed her hair back from her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not bombs. We’re not going to blow you up. We’ll write to people out there who can
come and pick up the stuff from your house when it arrives. You don’t have to do anything. But I mean don’t do it if you don’t want to. We don’t want to pressurise
you.’

Patrick was entitled to take nearly three times as much heavy baggage as he possessed. He did not feel guilty about going to Lower Africa but being the object of moral questioning produced in
him a desire to be conciliatory. Anyway, if the school needed textbooks he was happy to help. He agreed.

Later, he helped with the washing-up. Rachel made a point of being boisterously indifferent to household matters but Maurice came from a middle-class nonconformist background in Northamptonshire
and was punctilious about everything domestic.

‘I suppose you’ll have a servant out there,’ he said.

‘Yes, a lady called Sarah.’

‘A black lady?’

‘Yes.’ Patrick stopped drying the plate in his hand. ‘At least, I assume so. It wasn’t actually said.’

When he left the kitchen to go upstairs to the lavatory he saw Rachel sitting on it. Her jeans were round her ankles and she leant forward, elbows on knees. The spread of her plump white thighs
made the lavatory look small. He looked to see what had happened to the door but there was none.

She smiled at his surprise. ‘We don’t believe in hiding anything. There’s no point. We’re all alike, aren’t we? Nobody’s got any secrets. If we have sensitive
visitors I hang up a blanket for them.’