Honourable Schoolboy (51 page)

‘Oh, Mr Westerby,’ she said. ‘From Hong Kong. Hullo.’ The remaining guests were a mixed bag of local traders. Their womenfolk were Eurasian, French and Corsican. A houseboy hit a silver gong. The dining-room ceiling was concrete, but as they trooped in Jerry saw several eyes lift to make sure. A silver cardholder told him he was ‘The Honourable G. Westerby’, a silver menu holder promised him le roast beef à l’anglaise, silver candlesticks held long candles of a devotional kind, Cambodian boys flitted and backed at the half-crouch with trays of food cooked this morning while the electricity was on. A much travelled French beauty sat to Jerry’s right with a lace handkerchief between her breasts. She held another in her hand, and each time she ate or drank she dusted her little mouth. Her name card called her Countess Sylvia.

‘Je suis très, très diplomée,’ she whispered to Jerry, as she pecked and dabbed. ‘J’ai fait la science politique, mécanique et l’éléctricité générale. In January I have a bad heart. Now I recover.’

‘Ah well, now me, I’m not qualified at anything,’ Jerry insisted, making far too much of a joke of it. ‘Jack of all. trades, master of none, that’s us.’ To put this into French took him quite some while and he was still labouring at it when from somewhere fairly close, a burst of machine-gun fire sounded, far too long for the health of the gun. There were no answering shots. The conversation hung. ‘Some bloody idiot shooting at the geckos I should think,’ said the Counsellor, and his wife laughed at him fondly down the table, as if the war were a little sideshow they had laid on between them for their guests. The silence returned, deeper and more pregnant than before. The little Countess put her fork on her plate and it clanged like a tram in the night.

‘Dieu,’ she said.

At once, everyone started talking. The American wife asked Jerry where he was raised and when they had been through that she asked him where his home was, so Jerry gave Thurloe Square, old Pet’s place, because he didn’t feel like talking about Tuscany.

‘We own land in Vermont,’ she said firmly. °But we haven’t built on it yet.’

Two rockets fell at the same time. Jerry reckoned they were east about half a mile. Glancing round to see whether the windows were closed, Jerry caught the brown gaze of the American husband fixed on him with mysterious urgency.

‘You have plans for tomorrow, Mr Westerby?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘If there’s anything we can do, let me know.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jerry, but he had the feeling that wasn’t the point of the question.

A Swiss trader with a wise face had a funny story. He used Jerry’s presence to repeat it.

‘Not long ago the whole town was alight with shooting, Mr Westerby,’ he said. ‘We were all going to die. Oh, definitely. Tonight we die! Everything: shells, tracer, poured into the sky, one million dollars’ worth of ammunition, we heard afterwards. Hours on end. Some of my friends went round shaking hands with one another.’ An army of ants emerged from under the table and began marching in single column across the perfectly laundered damask cloth, making a careful detour round the silver candlesticks and the flower bowl brimming with hibiscus. ‘The Americans radioed around, hopped up and down, we all considered very carefully our position on the evacuation list, but a funny thing, you know: the telephones were working and we even had electricity. What did the target turn out to be?’ - they were already laughing hysterically - ‘Frogs! Some very greedy frogs!’

‘Toads,’ somebody corrected him, but it didn’t stop the laughter.

The American diplomat, a model of courteous self-criticism, supplied the amusing epilogue.

‘The Cambodians have an old superstition, Mr Westerby. When there’s an eclipse of the moon, you must make a lot of noise. You must shoot off fireworks, you must bang tin cans, or best still, fire off a million dollars’ worth of ordnance. Because if you don’t, why the frogs will gobble up the moon. We should have known, but we didn’t know, and in consequence we were made to look very, very silly indeed,’ he said proudly.

‘Yes, I’m afraid you boobed there, old boy,’ the Counsellor said with satisfaction.

But though the American’s smile remained frank and open, his eyes continued to impart something far more pressing - such as a message between professionals.

Someone talked about servants, and their amazing fatalism. An isolated detonation, loud and seemingly quite near, ended the performance. As the Countess Sylvia reached for Jerry’s hand, their hostess smiled interrogatively at her husband down the table.

‘John, darling,’ she asked in her most hospitable voice, ‘was that incoming or outgoing?’

‘Outgoing,’ he replied with a laugh. ‘Oh. outgoing, definitely. Ask your journalist friend if you don’t believe me. He’s been through a few wars, haven’t you, Westerby?’

At which the silence, yet again, joined them like a forbidden topic. The American lady clung to that piece of land in Vermont. Perhaps, after all, they should build on it. Perhaps, after all, it was time.

‘Maybe we should just write to that architect,’ she said.

‘Maybe we should at that,’ her husband agreed - at which moment; they were flung into a pitched battle. From very close, a prolonged burst of pompoms lit the washing in the courtyard and a cluster of machine guns, as many as twenty, crackled in a sustained and desperate fire. By the flashes they saw the servants scurry into the house, and over the firing they heard orders given and replied to, scream for scream, and the crazy ringing of handgongs. Inside the room, nobody moved except the American diplomat, who lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips, drew out an aerial and murmured something before putting it to his ear. Jerry glanced downward and saw the Countess’s hand battened trustingly on to his own. Her cheek brushed his shoulder. The firing faltered. He heard the clump of a small bomb close. No vibration, but the flames of the candles tilted in salute and on the mantelshelf a couple of heavy invitation cards flopped over with a slap, and lay still, the only recognisable casualties. Then as a last and separate sound, they heard the grizzle of a departing single-engined plane like the distant grousing of a child. It was capped by the Counsellor’s easy laughter as he addressed his wife.

‘Ah, well now, that wasn’t the eclipse, I’m afraid, was it, Hills? That was the advantage of having Lon Nol as our neighbour. One of his pilots gets fed up with not being paid now and then so he takes up a plane and has a potshot at the palace. Darling, are you going to take the gels off to powder their noses and do whatever you all do?’

It’s anger, Jerry decided, catching the senior American’s eye again. He’s like a man with a mission to the poor who has to waste his time with the rich.

Downstairs, Jerry, the Counsellor and the American stood silent in the ground floor study. The Counsellor had acquired a wolfish shyness.

‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve put you both on the map perhaps I should leave you to it. Whisky in the decanter, right, Westerby?’

‘Right, John,’ said the American, but the Counsellor didn’t seem to hear.

‘Just remember, Westerby, the mandate’s ours, right? We’re keeping the bed warm. Right?’ With a knowing wag of the finger, he disappeared.

The study was candlelit, a small masculine room with no mirrors or pictures, just a ribbed teak ceiling and a green metal desk, and the feeling of deathlike quiet again in the blackness outside, though the geckos and the bullfrogs would have baffled the most sophisticated microphone.

‘Hey let me get that,’ said the American, arresting Jerry’s progress to the sideboard, and made a show of getting the mix just right for him: ‘Water or soda, don’t let me drown it.’

‘Seems kind of a long way round to bring two friends together,’ the American said, in a taut, chatty tone, from the sideboard as he poured.

‘Does rather.’

‘John’s a great guy but he’s kind of a stickler for protocol. Your people have no resources here right now, but they have certain rights, so John likes to make sure that the ball doesn’t slip out of his court for good. I can understand his point of view. Just that things take a little longer sometimes.’

He handed Jerry a long brown envelope from inside the tartan jacket, and with the same pregnant intensity as before watched while he broke the seal. The paper had a smeared and photographic quality.

Somewhere a child moaned, and was silenced. The garage, he thought: the servants have filled the garage with refugees and the Counsellor is not to know.

ENFORCEMENT SAIGON reports Charlie MARSHALL rpt MARSHALL scheduled hit Battambang ETA 1930 tomorrow via Pailin… converted DC4 Carvair, Indocharter markings manifest quotes miscellaneous cargo… scheduled continue Phnom Penh.

Then he read the time and date of transmission and anger hit him like a windstorm. He remembered yesterday’s foot-slogging in Bangkok and today’s harebrained taxi ride with Keller and the girl, and with a ‘Jesus Christ’ he slammed the message back on the table between them.

‘How long have you been sitting on this? That’s not tomorrow. That’s tonight!’

‘Unfortunately our host could not arrange the wedding any earlier. He has an extremely crowded social programme. Good luck.’

Just as angry as Jerry, he quietly took back the signal, slipped it into the pocket of his jacket and disappeared upstairs to his wife, who was busy admiring her hostess’s indifferent collection of pilfered Buddhas.

He stood alone. A rocket fell, and this time it was close. The candles went out and the night sky seemed finally to be splitting with the strain of this illusory, Gilbertian war. Mindlessly the machine guns joined the clatter. The little bare room with its tiled floor rattled and sang like a sound machine.

Only as suddenly to stop again, leaving the town in silence.

‘Something wrong, old boy?’ the Counsellor enquired genially from the doorway. ‘Yank rub you up the wrong way, did he? They seem to want to run the world single-handed these days.’

‘I’ll need six hour options,’ Jerry said. The Counsellor didn’t quite follow. Having explained to him how they worked, Jerry stepped quickly into the night.

‘Got transport, have you, old boy? That’s the way. They’ll shoot you otherwise. Mind how you go.’

He strode quickly, driven by his irritation and disgust. It was long after curfew. There were no street lamps, no stars. The moon had vanished, and the squeak of his crêpe soles ran with him like an unwanted, unseen companion. The only light came from the perimeter of the palace across the road but none spilled on to Jerry’s side of the street. High walls blocked off the inner building, high wires crowned the walls, the barrels of the light anti-aircraft guns gleamed bronze against the black and soundless sky. Young soldiers dozed in groups and as Jerry stomped past them a fresh roll of gong-beats sounded: the master of the guard was keeping the sentries awake. There was no traffic, but between the sentry posts the refugees had made up their own night villages in a long column down the pavement. Some had draped themselves with strips of brown tarpaulin, some had plank bunks and some were cooking by tiny flames, though God alone knew what they had found to eat. Some sat in neat social groups, facing in upon each other. On an ox-cart, a girl lay with a boy, children Cat’s age when he last had seen her in the flesh. But from the hundreds of them not one sound came, and after he had gone a distance he actually turned and peered to make sure they were there. If they were, the darkness and the silence hid them. He thought of the dinner party. It had taken place in another land, another universe entirely. He was irrelevant here, yet somehow he had contributed to the disaster.

Just remember the mandate’s ours, right? We’re keeping the bed warm.

For no reason that he knew of, the sweat began running off him and the night air made no cooling impact. The dark was as hot as the day. Ahead of him in the town a stray rocket struck carelessly, then two more. They creep into the paddies until they’re within range, he thought. They lie up, hugging their bits of drainpipe and their little bomb, then fire and run like hell for the jungle. The palace was behind him. A battery fired a salvo and for a few seconds he was able to see his way by the flashes. The road was broad, a boulevard, and as best he could he kept to the crown. Occasionally he made out the gaps of the side streets passing him in geometric regularity. If he stooped he could even see the treetops retreating into the paler sky. Once a cyclo pattered by, toppling nervously out of the turning, hitting the kerb, then steadying. He thought of shouting to it but he preferred to keep on striding. A male voice greeted him doubtfully out of the darkness - a whisper, nothing indiscreet.

‘Bon soir? Monsieur? Bon soir?’

The sentries stood every hundred metres in ones or twos, holding their carbines in both hands. Their murmurs came to him like invitations, but Jerry was always careful and kept his hands wide of his pockets where they could watch them. Some, seeing the enormous sweating roundeye, laughed and waved him on. Others stopped him at pistol point and gazed up at him earnestly by the light of bicycle lamps while they asked him questions in order to practise their French. Some requested cigarettes, and these he gave. He tugged off his drenched jacket and ripped his shirt open to the waist, but still the air wouldn’t cool, him and he wondered again whether he had a fever, and whether, like last night in Bangkok, he would wake up in his bedroom crouching in the darkness waiting to brain someone with a table lamp.

The moon appeared, lapped by the foam of the rainclouds. By its light his hotel resembled a locked fortress. He reached the garden wall and followed it leftward along the trees until it turned again. He threw his jacket over the wall and with difficulty climbed after it. He crossed the lawn to the steps, pushed open the door to the lobby and stepped back with a sick cry of disgust. The lobby was in pitch blackness except for a single moonbeam, which shone like a spotlight on to a huge luminous chrysalis spun around the naked brown larva of a human body.

‘Vous desirez, monsieur?’ a voice asked softly.

It was the night watchman in his hammock, asleep under a mosquito net.