The Truth (23 page)
‘My name is Wendy Lu. I work for Hamish. He asked me to make sure that you have everything you want.’
She was small, middle aged and had an easy, maternal manner, but Mabbut had been unable to conceal his disappointment and she seemed to pick up on this. She gestured to the place opposite her.
‘He said that you have worked hard and you deserve the best meal in Bhubaneswar.’
She looked around the room.
‘And this is the best, believe me. Some say it is the best cuisine on the entire east coast.’
Mabbut opened his mouth to say something, but she chattered on.
‘Their speciality is seafood. I hope you like seafood, Mr Mabbut. A drink first? Maybe you like gin and tonic?’
She giggled rather endearingly and indicated a half-full glass in front of her.
‘My poison, I’m afraid.’
‘When will he be back?’
She summoned the wine waiter.
‘I shall have one more, please, Minoo, and then that’s it, and you must tell me that’s it.’ She wagged her finger coquettishly. ‘And for my companion . . .?’
‘I’ll have, um . . . a glass of champagne, please. Bangalore?’
The elderly waiter bowed politely. ‘We don’t serve Indian champagne here, sir.’
Wendy Lu intervened.
‘A glass of your best French, Minoo.’
‘Certainly, Miss Lu. My pleasure.’
Mabbut wanted to show that he was a bit put out about Melville but Wendy Lu’s almond eyes and playful smile soon dissolved any resentment.
‘You like your Indian wines, then, Mr Mabbut?’
‘Mr Melville gave me some tips.’
‘Ah, of course. A week on the road with Hamish is an education. In many ways.’
‘He must be a very happy man tonight.’
‘We are all over the moon,’ she enthused, before looking around the room and lowering her voice. ‘This is a major setback for Astramex, Mr Mabbut. The first they have suffered.’
Mabbut followed her eyes round the other tables. Their fellow diners didn’t look like the sort of people who would be celebrating the Kowprah blockade. Most were rich Indians, though there was a sprinkling of white and pink faces. An Australian voice carried across the room and at a nearby table two very large Americans, both with black bootlace ties, loomed over their Indian companions. What brought them here, to Bhubaneswar? Mabbut wondered. And hadn’t he seen them before?
Miss Lu leant across the table, spoke sotto voce.
‘Private security companies.’
‘Ah.’
‘They’ll try to blame Kowprah on the Maoists, but they won’t be
able to. The Maoists could never have organised anything on this scale.’
A glass of champagne arrived and was set down beside him. Mabbut felt better. This might be the enemy camp, but that made victory all the sweeter. He raised his glass.
‘I feel we should drink to Hamish.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
They clinked glasses and smiled at each other. How easily they seemed to get on together, Mabbut thought. As if they were old friends. Was this another example of Melville’s people skills?
‘So. When will he be back?’ he asked.
Wendy Lu rolled the ice around her gin and tonic before returning his gaze.
‘He won’t be coming back, Mr Mabbut.’ She reached into a bag on the seat beside her. ‘But he told me to give you this.’
A sliver of pale grey light crept under the rim of his window shutter. Mabbut raised it gently and peered out. There was nothing much to see, just the merest intimation of morning. He lowered it again and checked the screen. Time to Destination: 3hrs 10 mins. The nearest city was showing as Minsk. Mabbut had slept a little but was now, frustratingly, wide awake. He felt in the bag by his feet and pulled out the package Miss Lu had given him. For the umpteenth time he withdrew a small white envelope and unfolded the letter inside. It was handwritten and on the top were the words ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Whitehall’. Crossed out.
Dear Keith
,
Forgive me for being so flagrantly discourteous, but the verdict on Astramex, while great news for us all, is only a temporary reprieve and I want to do everything I can to make it permanent. This involves calling in a lot of favours and making a lot of visits. I wish it were otherwise and that I could settle down in one chair and one bed for more than a night but believe me this work is never done, and keeping one step ahead means always having a bag packed
.
It also means working under the radar. As I think I told you round one of our campfires, as soon as I become the story, then my work, not just here in
India, but in all those other countries where communities are at risk from the Astramexes of this world, becomes much harder
.
Now to my point. I have spent many years fighting off the attentions of those who want the Melville story, and I have no regrets. My life will tell its own story one day, and there is still so much to do that I don’t have the time to nostalgise. (Is that a word? Should be!) At the same time I’m aware that public curiosity is stronger than ever – Wendy will tell you just how many television companies come barking at the door each year – and I know enough about these things to recognise that if you don’t play ball, admiration eventually turns to suspicion, and suspicion to speculation
.
In short, I think the time has come for a pre-emptive strike and this is how it could work. You get your book. I collaborate with you, exclusively, and in so doing I get everyone else who is sniffing about off my back. The two of us can use the book to highlight my work – which we both know is more relevant than my life. I can give you contact details for those closest to me and I’ll assure them that you’re completely kosher. Wendy will give you information on the campaigns we’ve been engaged in, and I’ve enclosed a purely factual biography which has some of the early personal stuff that I’m sure Mr Latham will be looking for
.
All I ask is that you leave me to get on with my work and that there be no attempt to involve me in the day-to-day research for the book or in interviews of any kind. All contact must be through Wendy, who will pass on to me any serious queries or problems
.
I will fully understand if you choose not to go down this path, but I’m afraid it’s the only thing I can offer while remaining true to what I do. We talked enough about the world as we see it for me to sense that we think the same way in many respects. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think we share a common desire for justice and truth, we identify with the weak rather than the strong, we believe, as a wise man once said, that ‘there are no superior or inferior cultures, there are just cultures which satisfy the needs of their members in different ways’
.
This is a message that seems self-evident yet everywhere it is under threat as each country and each religion seeks to promote its own interests at the expense of others
.
So, Keith, there is a risk on both sides. You must believe in me, and I must believe in you. It would be too much to say that together we can make the
world a better place, but we can, perhaps, add a little to the sum of human understanding
.
I’m sure we will meet again some time but until you have completed your work I’ll leave you to it. It’ll be better this way. We can be friends, but it’s much better for both of us that the outside world shouldn’t know this
.
So farewell. And good luck. Whatever happens, I’ve enjoyed our time together. And if all else fails we could use you out here. No money, but job satisfaction guaranteed!
Your friend
,
Hamish M
There was no question in Mabbut’s mind that he could now write the book. A book about a remarkable man, remarkable for his achievements certainly, but also for his modesty, his carelessness of reputation. Mabbut could show the rest of the world that these unfashionable talents were something not just to be celebrated, but emulated. It would be a handbook of how to make things better, how to change the world from the bottom up, how to do good without being a do-gooder. Such was the tide of positives on which he was riding that he took out his notebook and began to scribble down the opening lines. He paused and checked the flight map. They were approaching Warsaw.
*
T
hey had agreed on a delivery date of the end of April, which gave Mabbut marginally less than six months to complete the work Ron Latham had decided to call
Melville: The Real Life of a Legend
. This came with the dangling carrot of sixty thousand pounds on delivery and another sixty if the book made it to publication. This in addition to the sixty thousand Silla had already secured for him on signature, most of which had gone towards repaying the last few years of household debts. Mabbut had never been a conspicuous spender and the promise of financial abundance was as bewildering as it was welcome. It certainly improved his frame of mind as he sat down at the laptop and tried out the title for the first time. It also helped to assuage the sharp pang of guilt he felt as he cleared
Albana
away into a box which he stowed in a bedroom cupboard where Krystyna had once kept her dresses.
Though meeting Melville may have been something of an epiphany for Keith Mabbut, he knew that he owed it to his subject to remain clear eyed and avoid the trap of sanctifying or sentimentalising him. To remind himself of this he found a photograph of Mother Teresa, which he stuck on the wall in front of him and across which he drew a thick red line.
He started by typing up the notes he’d taken in India, for this had to form the central core of the book. This was the seam of gold. This was what only he knew and what only he could deliver. From here there would be flashbacks to different parts of Melville’s life. The more he investigated the contacts Melville had given him over the weeks that followed, the more convinced Mabbut became that this was the right approach. Interesting as the memories and anecdotes
might be, none came as close to revealing the essential Melville as the information he had culled from his ten days in India.
Miles Cardish, a friend from Melville’s schooldays, had been charming, telling stories of how the two of them got into frequent trouble as a result of Melville’s devotion to practical jokes. Chamber pots on top of flagpoles, collapsible bicycles, glue on walking sticks. Cardish and his ailing wife had been quite surprised that such a persistent offender should end up ‘saving the world’. And no, they didn’t see him much nowadays.
Friends of the family up in Cumberland had not been as surprised by young Hamish’s later career. They reminded Mabbut that Melville’s parents had been members of the Humanist Association and that he had been brought up in a passionately irreligious household. The only substantial contact had been a man called Charley Murray, a friend of Melville’s from his university days, still a bachelor at seventy, who lived amid an erotic art collection in a fourth-floor flat beside the Albert Hall. They’d talked over tea as the first snow of winter settled on Kensington Gardens. Charley was a delight. A fine raconteur, full of keen insights. On many dark evenings Mabbut replayed the recording he had made to remind himself of the essence of the young Hamish Melville.
I suppose I knew him as well as anyone, which is not saying much. Hamish was always a loner. We played a lot of sport at university. He was a half-blue in athletics and a very fine cricketer too. Could have played for his county, but as soon as he’d mastered something he’d drop it. He tried for the Foreign Office but didn’t get in so we both headed for banking. He worked for Cazenoves for a while. Did very well. He had a talent for cultivating the right client. Usually foreigners. He’d go out and spend time with them. Whereas most of his colleagues sat about in London having long lunches, he’d be off to Nicaragua or Swaziland or wherever his client lived. He preferred being abroad, I think. And he picked up languages just like that. Used to say that you only need to know five hundred words to speak any language fluently. I suppose that’s where it all started. He was in the army briefly. He once told me he’d quite like to have been a regular if he hadn’t had to kill anybody. I think it was the training and the discipline he admired. Extraordinary man. Doing what we all ought to be doing, eh?
It was Murray who told Mabbut about Melville’s short, tragic marriage to a South African heiress called Zena Carlsson. They had met in Kenya. She was very beautiful, but had a wild side. Their fights and arguments were famously fierce. They’d been together for only two years when she was killed in a plane crash on the Kenya–Tanzania border while trying to photograph the wildebeest migration.
He came home for a while and tried to pick up his old life, but he was never comfortable staying in one place. Then both parents died within a few years of each other and that freed him to become this sort of international guru. Thing is, Hamish could do pretty much whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted. He was incredibly well connected, but always hated the establishment. That’s the thing
.
