The Human Factor (14 page)

‘Which law?'

‘I think you know very well which law.'

‘It's true I'm planning a study on apartheid, the Embassy have no objection, but it's a serious sociological one – quite objective – and it's still in my head. You hardly have the right to censor it yet. Anyway it won't be published, I imagine, in this country.'

‘If you want to fuck a black whore,' Captain Van Donck interrupted with impatience, ‘why don't you go to a whore-house in Lesotho or Swaziland? They are still part of your so-called Commonwealth.'

Then it was that for the first time Castle realized Sarah, not he, was the one who was in danger.

‘I'm too old to be interested in whores,' he said.

‘Where were you on the nights of February 4th and 7th? The afternoon of February 21st?'

‘You obviously know – or think that you know,' Castle said. ‘I keep my engagement book in my office.'

He hadn't seen Sarah for forty-eight hours. Was she already in the hands of men like Captain Van Donck? His fear and his hate grew simultaneously. He forgot that in theory he was a diplomat, however junior. ‘What the hell are you talking about? And you?' he added to Cornelius Muller. ‘You too, what do you want me for?'

Captain Van Donck was a brutal and simple man who believed in something, however repugnant – he was one of those one could forgive. What Castle could never bring himself to forgive was this smooth educated officer of BOSS. It was men of this kind – men with the education to know what they were about – that made a hell in heaven's despite. He thought of what his Communist friend Carson had so often said to him – ‘Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel, our worst enemies are the intelligent and the corrupt.'

Muller said, ‘You must know very well that you've broken the Race Relations Act with that Bantu girl-friend of yours.' He spoke in a tone of reasonable reproach, like a bank clerk who points out to an unimportant customer an unacceptable overdraft. ‘You must be aware that if it wasn't for diplomatic privilege you'd be in prison now.'

‘Where have you hidden her?' Captain Van Donck demanded, and Castle at the question felt immense relief.

‘Hidden her?'

Captain Van Donck was on his feet, rubbing at his gold ring. He even spat on it.

‘That's all right, Captain,' Muller said. ‘I will look after Mr Castle. I won't take up any more of your time. Thank you for all the help you've given our department. I want to talk to Mr Castle alone.'

When the door closed Castle found himself facing, as Carson would have said, the real enemy. Muller went on, ‘You mustn't mind Captain Van Donck. Men like that can see no further than their noses. There are other ways of settling this affair more reasonably than a prosecution which will ruin you and not help us.'

‘I can hear a car.' A woman's voice called to him out of the present.

It was Sarah speaking to him from the top of the stairs. He went to the window. A black Mercedes was edging its way up the indistinguishable commuters' houses in King's Road. The driver was obviously looking for a number, but as usual several of the street lamps had fused.

‘It's Mr Muller all right,' Castle called back. When he put down his whisky he found his hand shaking from holding the glass too rigidly.

At the sound of the bell Buller began to bark, but, after Castle opened the door, Buller fawned on the stranger with a total lack of discrimination and left a trail of affectionate spittle on Cornelius Muller's trousers. ‘Nice dog, nice dog,' Muller said with caution.

The years had made a noticeable change in Muller – his hair was almost white now and his face was far less smooth. He no longer looked like a civil servant who knew only the proper answers. Since they last met something had happened to him: he looked more human – perhaps it was that he had taken on with promotion greater responsibilities and with them uncertainties and unanswered questions.

‘Good evening, Mr Castle. I'm sorry I'm so late. The traffic was bad in Watford – I think the place was called Watford.'

You might almost have taken him now for a shy man, or perhaps it was only that he was at a loss without his familiar office and his desk of beautiful wood and the presence of two junior colleagues in an outer room. The black Mercedes slid away – the chauffeur had gone to find his dinner. Muller was on his own in a strange town, in a foreign land, where the post boxes bore the initials of a sovereign E II, and there was no statue of Kruger in any market place.

Castle poured out two glasses of whisky. ‘It's a long time since we met last,' Muller said.

‘Seven years?'

‘It's good of you to ask me to have dinner at your own home.'

‘C thought it was the best idea. To break the ice. It seems we have to work closely together. On Uncle Remus.'

Muller's eyes shifted to the telephone, to the lamp on the table, to a vase of flowers.

‘It's all right. Don't worry. If we are bugged here it's only by my own people,' Castle said, ‘and anyway I'm pretty sure we are not.' He raised his glass. ‘To our last meeting. Do you remember you suggested then I might agree to work for you? Well, here I am. We are working together. Historical irony or predestination? Your Dutch church believes in that.'

‘Of course in those days I hadn't an idea of your real position,' Muller said. ‘If I'd known I wouldn't have threatened you about that wretched Bantu girl. I realize now she was only one of your agents. We might even have worked her together. But, you see, I took you for one of those high-minded anti-apartheid sentimentalists. I was taken completely by surprise when your chief told me you were the man I was to see about Uncle Remus. I hope you don't bear me any grudge. After all you and I are professionals, and we are on the same side now.'

‘Yes, I suppose we are.'

‘I do wish though that you'd tell me – it can't matter any longer, can it? – how you got that Bantu girl away. I suppose it was to Swaziland?'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought we had that frontier closed pretty effectively – except for the real guerrilla experts. I never considered you were an expert, though I realized you did have some Communist contacts, but I assumed you needed them for that book of yours on apartheid which was never published. You took me in all right there. Not to speak of Van Donck. You remember Captain Van Donck?'

‘Oh, yes. Vividly.'

‘I had to ask the Security Police for his demotion over your affair. He acted very clumsily. I felt sure that, if we had the girl safe in prison, you'd consent to work for us, and he let her slip. You see – don't laugh – I was convinced it was a real love affair. I've known so many Englishmen who have started with the idea of attacking apartheid and ended trapped by us in a Bantu girl's bed. It's the romantic idea of breaking what they think is an unjust law that attracts them just as much as a black bottom. I never dreamt the girl – Sarah MaNkosi, I think that was the name? – all the time was an agent of MI6.'

‘She didn't know it herself. She believed in my book too. Have another whisky.'

‘Thank you. I will.' Castle poured out two glasses, gambling on his better head.

‘From all accounts she was a clever girl. We looked pretty closely into her background. Been to the African University in the Transvaal where Uncle Tom professors always produce dangerous students. Personally, though, I've always found that the cleverer the African the more easily he can be turned – one way or another. If we'd had that girl in prison for a month I'm pretty sure we could have turned her. Well, she might have been useful to both of us now in this Uncle Remus operation. Or would she? One forgets that old devil Time. By now she'd be getting a bit long in the tooth, I suppose. Bantu women age so quickly. They are generally finished – anyway to a white taste – long before the age of thirty. You know, Castle, I'm really glad we are working together and you are not what we in BOSS thought – one of those idealistic types who want to change the nature of human beings. We knew the people you were in touch with – or most of them, and we knew the sort of nonsense they'd be telling you. But you outwitted
us
, so you certainly outwitted those Bantu and Communists. I suppose they too thought you were writing a book which would serve their turn. Mind you, I'm not anti-African like Captain Van Donck. I consider myself a hundred per cent African myself.'

It was certainly not the Cornelius Muller of the Pretoria office who spoke now, the pale clerk doing his conformist job would never have spoken with such ease and confidence. Even the shyness and the uncertainty of a few minutes back had gone. The whisky had cured that. He was now a high officer of BOSS, entrusted with a foreign mission, who took his orders from no one under the rank of a general. He could relax. He could be – an unpleasant thought – himself, and it seemed to Castle that he began to resemble more and more closely, in the vulgarity and brutality of his speech, the Captain Van Donck whom he despised.

‘I've taken pleasant enough week-ends in Lesotho,' Muller said, ‘rubbing shoulders with my black brothers in the casino at Holiday Inn. I'll admit once I even had a little – well, encounter – it somehow seemed quite different there – of course it wasn't against the law. I wasn't in the Republic.'

Castle called out! ‘Sarah, bring Sam down to say good night to Mr Muller.'

‘You are married?' Muller asked.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm all the more flattered to be invited to your home. I brought with me a few little presents from South Africa, and perhaps there's something your wife would like. But you haven't answered my question. Now that we are working together – as I wanted to before, you remember – couldn't you tell me how you got that girl out? It can't harm any of your old agents now, and it does have a certain bearing on Uncle Remus, and the problems we have to face together. Your country and mine – and the States, of course – have a common frontier now.'

‘Perhaps she'll tell you herself. Let me introduce her and my son, Sam.' They came down the stairs together as Cornelius Muller turned.

‘Mr Muller was asking how I got you into Swaziland, Sarah.'

He had underestimated Muller. The surprise which he had planned failed completely. ‘I'm so glad to meet you, Mrs Castle,' Muller said and took her hand.

‘We just failed to meet seven years ago,' Sarah said.

‘Yes. Seven wasted years. You have a very beautiful wife, Castle.'

‘Thank you,' Sarah said. ‘Sam, shake hands with Mr Muller.'

‘This is my son, Mr Muller,' Castle said. He knew Muller would be a good judge of colour shades, and Sam was very black.

‘How do you do, Sam? Do you go to school yet?'

‘He goes to school in a week or two. Run along up to bed now, Sam.'

‘Can you play hide-and-seek?' Sam asked.

‘I used to know the game, but I'm always ready to learn new rules.'

‘Are you a spy like Mr Davis?'

‘I said go to bed, Sam.'

‘Have you a poison pen?'

‘Sam! Upstairs!'

‘And now for Mr Muller's question, Sarah,' Castle said. ‘Where and how did you cross into Swaziland?'

‘I don't think I ought to tell him, do you?'

Cornelius Muller said, ‘Oh, let's forget Swaziland. It's all past history and it happened in another country.'

Castle watched him adapting, as naturally as a chameleon, to the colour of the soil. He must have adapted in just that way during his weekend in Lesotho. Perhaps he would have found Muller more likeable if he had been less adaptable. All through dinner Muller made his courteous conversation. Yes, thought Castle, I really would have preferred Captain Van Donck. Van Donck would have walked out of the house at the first sight of Sarah. A prejudice had something in common with an ideal. Cornelius Muller was without prejudice and he was without an ideal.

‘How do you find the climate here, Mrs Castle, after South Africa?'

‘Do you mean the weather?'

‘Yes, the weather.'

‘It's less extreme,' Sarah said.

‘Don't you sometimes miss Africa? I came by way of Madrid and Athens, so I've been away some weeks already, and do you know what I miss most? The mine dumps around Johannesburg. Their colour when the sun's half set. What do you miss?'

Castle had not suspected Muller of any aesthetic feeling. Was it one of the larger interests which came with promotion or was it adapted for the occasion and the country like his courtesy?

‘My memories are different,' Sarah said. ‘My Africa was different to yours.'

‘Oh come, we are both of us Africans. By the way, I've brought a few presents for my friends here. Not knowing that you were one of us, I brought you a shawl. You know how in Lesotho they have those very fine weavers – the Royal Weavers. Would you accept a shawl – from your old enemy?'

‘Of course. It's kind of you.'

‘Do you think Lady Hargreaves would accept an ostrich bag?'

‘I don't know her. You must ask my husband.'

It would hardly be up to her crocodile standard, Castle thought, but he said, ‘I'm sure . . . coming from you . . .'

‘I take a sort of family interest in ostriches, you see,' Muller explained. ‘My grandfather was what they call now one of the ostrich millionaires – put out of business by the 1914 war. He had a big house in the Cape Province. It was very splendid once, but it's only a ruin now. Ostrich feathers never really came back in Europe, and my father went bankrupt. My brothers still keep a few ostriches though.'