The White Father (35 page)

“I suppose there are good enough reasons for not having much confidence in the present,” said Shrieve. “Or the future. What the hell am I going to do when I come back?”

“Oh, you’ll find something, Hugh, I’m sure.”

Shrieve smiled. “If anyone were to see us sitting here drinking tea and talking about what’s happened to the spirit of the empire, he’d put us straight in one of those funny films.”

“Yes,” said Weatherby. “We like to laugh at ourselves.”

“Do we? I wonder. I think we prefer cosiness to almost
everything. That’s what I really mean about the loss of moral energy.”

They drank their tea in silence. Shrieve had forgotten about the telephone call that was due from Robbins. He mused on England, on the England he had imagined and the England he had found. Then he thought about the England in which he would soon have to live. Then he thought of Amy, and of whether he would really live in England or not. He thought too, of the distant mountains he could see from his veranda, of the Ngulu village and the river. He heard Big Ben chime the three quarters and wondered where he would ever feel truly at home.

“A penny for your thoughts, Hugh,” said Weatherby.

“I was thinking,” he said, “about myself. James, what on earth will become of me?”

“Oh, something will turn up.”

“I don’t see what. I really don’t begin to see what at all.”

*

“I don’t know. I haven’t the faintest idea. If I knew I wouldn’t be so bloody worried. For Christ’s sake stop asking such damn fool questions.” Shrieve threw some shirts on the bed. “I’m sorry, but I’ve told you all I know myself.”

Edward watched him sadly. “Look,” he said, “your plane doesn’t go till eleven tomorrow morning. You don’t have to be at the air terminal till nine forty-five. It’s now five o’clock in the afternoon. Calm down.”

“I wish to God there was a plane this evening,” said Shrieve. He looked at the pile of clothes on the bed. “There’s this bloodstained reunion tonight, too. It would have to be tonight.”

“Cut it.”

“What’s the point?”

“You could go and say goodbye to your father. Or to your aunt.”

“Oh, my father won’t notice whether I say goodbye or not. I’ll ring Aunt Grace. I shall be back in eighteen months, anyway.”

“In your state of mind, you’re simply not fit to go boozing with the boys, and you know it.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t want to see anyone.”

“Listen,” said Edward. “From what you say, nine Ngulu have died mysteriously. It’s not your fault. The doctor says he doesn’t know what it is yet—doctors often don’t at first. But why should you have to go back? You’re not going to be able to diagnose what it is better than a doctor. And if it’s an epidemic, you may well catch it yourself.”

“Robbins wants me back. And you’re wrong. Primitive peoples sometimes get it into their heads to die. There’s nothing wrong with them physically, but morally they’ve lost the will to live. They just lie down and die. It’s obviously what’s happening to the Ngulu now.”

“There’s nothing obvious about it. It’s far more likely that they’ve got some disease. And even if it is the death-wish they’ve got, what will you be able to do about it?”

“I’m their—damn it, I’m their big white father. Perhaps I can’t do anything. But if I wasn’t there to try and do what I could, I would never be able to face myself again. Surely you understand that? I’ve lived for the Ngulu for years. Not just with them, but for them. Call me what you like, but I love them, tend them, care for them. They’re all I have in the world, all I mind about, all I really feel for.”

Edward looked away. Trying to lower the emotional pressure, he said, “Has there ever been anything like it before?”

“No, nothing.”

“Then surely that’s a hopeful sign? If it was a tradition of theirs to lie down and die when they felt like it, then there really would be something to worry about. But primitive tribes don’t just get ideas out of the blue, do they?”

“I don’t know,” said Shrieve. “No one knows how they think, where they get their ideas. There are the other odd things to take into account, too, remember.” He began to arrange his clothes into piles. “The business of the tree-stump, and the calf-skins. It is true, though, that Amy told Mackenzie that it
was ‘the sickness’, as if she thought it was a disease, not something else. I hope to God it is a disease.”

“It’s bound to be,” said Edward. He wanted to pat Shrieve on the back and tell him not to worry, everything would soon be all right.

“You don’t know,” said Shrieve. “You can’t know.” He fetched a suitcase. “I think I should have stayed with them and not come here at all.”

“How can you think that? After all you’ve done? You’ve saved them.”

“Have I?” said Shrieve. He began to bundle clothes into the case. “I wonder. I wonder if I haven’t made the most terrible and unforgivable blunder.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Edward. “And that’s not the way to pack. Here, let me do it.” He pushed Shrieve aside and knelt down beside the case. “Trousers go at the bottom, surely you know that?”

Shrieve sat on the bed and watched him. “What I mean is this,” he said. “I’ve lived so close to the Ngulu for so long that I’ve become blind to various things. At least that’s how it strikes me at the moment.”

“For instance?”

“I’ve always known how much they mattered to me, that I’ve truly loved them. But it never occurred to me that I might matter just as much to them.”

“You’re too damned modest, that’s your trouble. Would you mind explaining what you mean?”

“You know they have a hopeless sense of time. They don’t, in fact, have
any
sense of time. Well, if I’ve been, and I’m sure I have without realising it, their moral mainstay all these years, they’ve probably taken my absence at this time to mean I’m not coming back.”

“Why on earth should they do that?”

“Oh, so many reasons. For one, they’ve heard rumours about independence, without understanding in the least what independence means. The Luagabu, though, love to frighten them with stories of what will happen when the British go.
The postman, for instance, used to terrify Amy with all sorts of nonsense.”

“And?”

“And they have no self-confidence whatever. They always come and ask me for permission before they do anything at all. They don’t have to, and they know perfectly well that I never refuse the permission. Yet they always ask, as though the asking was a necessary act that has to be performed before their expedition or whatever it is can get under way. I really have been a little bit like a god to them. What they were really asking for all the time was assurance. They need continual bolstering up. They haven’t, I mean, a single shred of moral fibre.”

“And so?”

“And so, without me, they may have panicked. I tried to explain to them why I was going, but all they got was a general idea that there was some sort of danger I was trying to protect them from. When I first went away, they probably thought nothing of it. I’ve gone away before, of course, though I’ve never previously suggested that it was to prevent something nasty happening. Since I haven’t returned, they’ve probably decided I’ve either been killed, or fled and abandoned them. A notion like that would be exactly the sort of thing to make them simply curl up and die.”

“And you’ve never thought of this before?”

“Never. That’s my criminal neglect. They were always the people I loved. I never thought that they needed and perhaps even loved me as much as I needed and loved them.”

Edward looked up from the case and said, “Is this all you want to take? It’s not very much for such a large case.”

“I always go back with less than I brought,” said Shrieve. “I never seem to find anything in England worth buying for life in the bush.” He caught Edward’s gaze and held it for a moment, then looked away. “I’m sorry to be talking so much.”

“You’re not talking too much for me,” said Edward. “But I really don’t think you should blame yourself, you know. You’ve done everything you could for the Ngulu. You’ve
saved them from extinction by their traditional enemy. You’ve made sure that they’ll survive a little longer, anyway. I don’t see that you have any reason to reproach yourself.”

“The mistake,” said Shrieve, “was to plan a future for people who can’t think beyond the next forty-eight hours.”

“Any mistake you may have made was from loving them too much,” said Edward. He remained kneeling beside the case, his face down. “I think you’re the most unselfish person I’ve ever met.”

Shrieve looked in astonishment at Edward’s bent head. He remembered the boy’s outburst at Mallory’s party, his spirited defence.

“I’m afraid you overestimate me,” he said at last. “I’ve never wanted to do more or less than was my duty. As I saw it, it was my duty to love the Ngulu. Now I feel I’ve betrayed their love for me. I hadn’t expected such dependence in return for my love.”

“I don’t know anything about love,” said Edward, his eyes still on the packed shirts. His hands moved slowly over the socks and pants and handkerchiefs. “But I know I’d give anything in the world to feel the love you feel for the Ngulu. I can’t believe that a love like yours can do harm, ever. I just won’t believe it.”

“It may not be true,” said Shrieve. He stood up. For a moment he felt that Edward must be right. “It ought to be as you say, Edward, that love can’t hurt the loved person or people. But perhaps you can only really do harm to the people you love. Perhaps that’s the only harm that counts.”

Edward closed the case and began to fasten it.

Shrieve watched him, then he said, “All the really terrible things that have happened in the world have happened in the name of love. Love for individuals or love for God, or for race or country, it doesn’t matter. Wars, murders, massacres, everything awful, can be traced to the wish to love or be loved. It’s the most difficult thing to accept about human beings, that when they most want to show their love, they are at their most dangerous.”

“Do you really believe that?” said Edward. He was buckling the old leather strap that had encircled Shrieve’s case since he had first taken it to school, when the now faded black lettering of
H
.
SHRIEVE
had been new and shiny.

“Yes, I believe it. Where one most loves, one does most harm.”

“I’ve never been in love with anyone,” said Edward.

“No?”

“Not the sort of love you’re talking about. I’ve yearned after people, of course. That’s not quite the same thing, though, is it?”

“Perhaps not. I’m not sure. I don’t think one’s love for an individual is basically different from one’s love for a whole community. There’s sex, of course, but when you allow for that, I think the feeling’s really the same. A desire to cherish. It’s what I’ve always had for the Ngulu. It was easy for me, in a way. I’ve never got on with ordinary people very well. When it became my duty to love the Ngulu, then it was simple.”

“You’re not an ordinary man, are you?” said Edward. He got up from the floor and brushed the knees of his trousers.

“I suppose not. I don’t think I should like to be ordinary.”

“No.” Edward looked round the room. “Do you know what we’ve done? We’ve packed your clean shirt for tonight. For your reunion.”

“No we haven’t,” said Shrieve. “It’s in the drawer.”

“So you meant to go all the time?”

“Oh, yes. One can’t let people down. And they’ve been expecting me for years, they say.”

Edward looked at him for a few moments, then lowered his eyes and said, “I wish I could tell you how sorry I am about the Ngulu. You’ve made me really care about them, even though I’ve never set eyes on them and probably never will.”

“You’ve been a great help to me,” said Shrieve. “I don’t expect you realise how much. I don’t pretend to be able to understand you or your friends, but if they’re all like you, I think they must be all right.”

“What a backhanded compliment,” said Edward. He grinned, delighted. “That’ll be great news for the boys.”

“I wish I could do something to show how grateful I am, Edward, for all you’ve done.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“Oh yes, you have. Just by being around you’ve helped a great deal. I really can’t explain it. You must just take my word for it.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Edward lightly. He cleared his throat nervously and added, “I admire you, Hugh, and what you do very much indeed, you know.”

Shrieve laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “How very English we both are,” he said. “Why don’t we have a drink to show each other how enormously we admire each other’s way of life?”

“I don’t have a way of life.”

“Oh, but you will, Edward. I know you will. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to buy you a small token of my esteem.”

“A what?” said Edward, alarmed.

“I was going to give you some purely symbolic thing like a cigarette-case for helping me,” Shrieve explained. “But you don’t smoke, do you?”

“Please don’t do anything like that,” said Edward. “I should be horribly embarrassed, really. I don’t like symbols much. And people don’t do that sort of thing any more, you know.”

“Oh, you young people, what
do
you do and like, for heaven’s sake?”

“I think we like the thing itself,” said Edward. “We like the real thing. We think symbols are strictly for the squares.”

“I see. I’m sorry I suggested it.”

“Don’t feel that, please. I’m sorry, I’ve been very rude.”

“Not at all. Even squares like myself prefer honesty to its pretence, you know.”

“Indeed I know. It’s what we admire in you so much.
Sometimes
I feel that the real thing is just a mirage, a convenient mirage. But now I’m sure it’s not.”

“Now what can that mean?”

“Ah,” said Edward. “The real thing, that’s not something you can put in words. Words are just symbols, you see. The real thing, that’s just the real thing.”

*

Mr Brachs’s two confidential secretaries looked at each other. Neither spoke for a while. Burgess took off his horn-rimmed spectacles and polished them. Bray drummed on the desk with his fingers.