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‘I go to Samson and Delilah, in Percy Street, when I can afford it.’
‘Yes, well, we girls think you look quite nice. It’s getting a bit ragged, though.’
Perhaps Haggie could trim it for me, Waring thought, before I, a junior executive, become an object of mockery. He took a letter of his own out of his pocket. Looking at the outside did not make it any different. The Whitstable and Protective reminded him that one of their terms had been that he should within six months replace nearly all the slates on the roof and repoint, repair, make good etc., etc., which work had not so far been notified to them as having been done. Waring Smith’s salary was AP3 £2,922–£3,702 pa + £120 fringe, with £261 London Weighting (under review). He knew these figures very well, and repeated them to himself perpetually. They had seemed quite princely, when he got the job.
Having entrusted all the other letters to the typist, he went to see Sir William.
In the outer office he found Dousha actually asleep, in a quiet, cream-coloured heap over her desk. By her side was a pile of her work, and on top of that a file which she had evidently just put there. It had a green sticker on it, which Waring knew meant top secret, and the subject was the Garamantian Exhibition.
Through the glass door he could hear Sir William in the mid-stream of a conversation. Without any thought of concealment, but with very great curiosity, he began to read the file.
It began with a sheet of thick paper embossed with the address of HM British Embassy in Garamantia, on which was written, in an exquisite script:
We have, of course, not forgotten our Herodotus …
This was partially covered by an attached note:
What the hell does the sod think he’s talking about?
The next minute was typewritten, and read:
Garamantia has no oil, no natural defences, no army, no education, and no bargaining power. She is, therefore, unworried by representatives of UNESCO, the CBI and commercial diplomats. On the other hand the population, insofar as it is amenable to census, is rising by 2.5% a year. Resources are meagre, and the infrastructure can scarcely be said to be deteriorating as there has never been any. Capital is scarcer than labour, but ‘labour-intensive’ hardly describes the Garamantian working methods. More than half of the perfectly healthy work force sleeps the entire day. The present Government (paramilitary group of the uncles of the reigning monarch, Prince Rasselas, down to enter Gordonstoun in 1980) fears takeover, wishes to put itself under the protection of the Union of Central African Muslim States (relations with USSR friendly) but has been told (as a result of consultation with the East German publicity firm Proklamatius) that the only useful contribution they can make to ingratiate themselves with the Union is to exhibit the Golden Treasure, for the first time in history, in the capitals of the West. Hopefully this is to promote the idea of age-old etc. settled cultural ideals and will to some extent combat the extraordinarily powerful presentation of the Israeli case. Hence Garamantian Treasure to be sent hastewise.
The next minute, from the Commercial Attaché, read:
Backing for insurance mounting and transit of the exhibits has been obtained from the Hopeforth-Best International Tobacco Corp. It is agreed that no advertising material shall be displayed or implied, but Hopeforth-Best have given us to understand, in strict confidence, that they feel the association of their product with the much-reverenced Treasure through their widely-used slogan ‘Silence is Golden — Light up a Middle Tar Content’ will prove consumerwise of substantial effect.
A final note from the Foreign Secretary’s office:
We must watch these tobacco people, but it is certainly a great coup for our diplomacy that the Treasure, which of course is going to Paris and West Berlin, should come to London first. A compliment to Sir William Simpkin may possibly be intended, but His Excellency will be congratulated.
Waring shut the file and replaced it by Dousha’s elbow. He stood there, deep in thought, till the door opened and Sir William, with unwonted spryness, looked out.
‘Reading the confidential files, are you? Well, why not, why not? The more people know these secrets, the less nuisance they are. I’d read it out at the conference, only I don’t want to upset the Director’s feelings. No, that wouldn’t do.’
A young journalist, who was on his way out, smiled uncertainly.
‘I’d like to thank you for the interview, sir …’
‘Mind you file it correctly,’ croaked Sir William suddenly. ‘The function of the Press is to tell the truth — aye, even at the risk of all that a man holds dear. Remember to tell them that a camel always makes a rattling noise in its throat when it’s going to bite; remember to tell them that. There’s many a man who would be living yet, if he’d heeded that advice.’
‘Sir William, all that was absolute rubbish,’ said Waring, as the reporter made his escape. ‘Every one of your expeditions was professionally planned and recorded. You’re talking like an old mountebank.’
‘I like a joke occasionally,’ Sir William said. ‘In any case, it’s true about the camels. But my jokes — well, I find not a lot of people understand them now. Your Director now, John — he seems to understand them. I was having a joke with him yesterday.’
‘Did he laugh?’ asked Waring doubtfully.
‘Well, perhaps not very loud. But that’s enough of that. How are things going below? Do you think they really find it was worth coming?’
Waring described what he had seen, this time to a much more sympathetic listener. Sir William’s whole countenance seemed to change, leaving him very old-looking, pale and serious. He shook his head.
‘Have you had a look at these, by the way?’ he asked, pushing forward the bright yellow leaflet.
‘Yes, I saw one or two of them down in the main courtyard. I thought perhaps a religious maniac’
‘I don’t know why madness should always be put down to religion,’ said Sir William, folding the leaflet up carefully as a useful pipe-lighter. ‘Let us confine ourselves to the good we can do here and now. As it happens, I’ve asked you up here to do a favour for me. I want you to spare an hour or so this evening to take Dousha out to dinner. You can see for yourself how tired she is. She’s had a tiring time lately.’
‘I don’t see how I can possibly do that … I’m expected home, I’m afraid … And I’m pretty sure Dousha wouldn’t want to go out with a married man with a mortgage …’
‘If you weren’t married, I shouldn’t trust you to take care of my poor Dousha. It’s an expensive business, however — she eats copiously. I don’t want you to face ruin …’
Sir William took a handful of coins out of the pocket of his coat, a long Norfolk jacket of antique cut, and sorting through some Maria Teresa dollars and Byzantine gold nomismata he produced a quantity of sterling. With difficulty Waring got him to put away the varied hoard, assuring him that it wasn’t like that — Dousha and he would pay for themselves — and found that he had ended by accepting the absurd commission; he would have to go out with Dousha, whom he scarcely knew, and would be obliged to ring up Haggie and make what excuses he could.
With the handful of money Sir William had taken out of his pocket there was a small clay tablet, which was still lying on the desk. It was a palish red in colour, unbaked and unglazed, and covered with deeply incised characters. Waring felt almost sure that it was from the Exhibition.
‘Ought that to be in your pocket, Sir William? Surely it’s from Case VIII?’
‘Quite possibly. I asked Jones to fetch it up for me last night.’
‘But I thought you didn’t want to see the Treasure again? You said you were too tired.’
‘I am tired,’ said Sir William, ‘but that’s not the reason, no. Regret is a luxury I can’t permit myself. Let yourself go back into the past when you’re an old man, and it will eat up your present, whatever present you’ve got. I was a great man then, or thought I was, when I saw the Treasure for the first time. That was sixty years ago. Let it stay sixty years ago. That’s where it belongs.’
‘It would be a wonderful thing for everyone down at the Exhibition, all the same, if you changed your mind.’
‘I shan’t change it. I just took a fancy to have a look at one of these to see to what extent I could still decipher the script. I knew it well enough at one time.’
‘There’s a copy of the Ventris decipherment downstairs in the Staff Library,’ said Waring eagerly, ‘and the Untermensch commentary, which gives you the whole alphabet.’
‘I don’t use libraries,’ Sir William replied. ‘When I was younger I thought, why read when you can pick up a spade and find out for yourself? I’ve published a dozen or so books myself, of course, but now I don’t agree with anything I said in them. As to the Staff Library here, I might just as well throw away my key: they don’t allow you to smoke in there.’
Waring tried in vain to envisage the old man without the wreaths of ascending haze from his briar which, even when he was half asleep, partially hid him from view. And yet, come what might, he felt it was a privilege to be smoked over by Sir William.
‘I know you’ve got to be off, Waring, and earn your living. But just tell me this. Do you feel anything’s wrong?’
Waring wondered exactly what this meant — the mortgage, about which he had confided in Sir William, or more likely the curious atmosphere of expecting the worst which had existed in the Museum ever since the first unpacking of the Treasure. He could only answer, ‘Yes, but nothing that I can put right.’
He returned to his work. He had to submit suggestions for the layout of the counters in the new selling hall. The public desire to buy picture postcards had reached such a pitch (15,000 Get Well cards representing the Golden Tomb had already been sold) that it was necessary to clear new premises. A large court off the entrance hall had been pressed into service; it had been filched by the administration from the Keeper of Woven Textiles, who was left gnashing his few remaining teeth. Waring laid out his sketch plans, wishing he had rather more room, and wondering if he could ask to move for a while to the Conservation studios, where there was more space.
He had leisure now to think seriously about the report he had read, and over which Dousha had gone to sleep. He had a glimpse for the first time of the murky origins of the great golden attraction: hostilities in the Middle East, North African politics, the ill-coordinated activities of the Hopeforth-Best tobacco company. Perhaps similar forces and similar shoddy undertakings controlled every area of his life. Was it his duty to think about the report more deeply and, in that case, to do something about it?
Advancing cautiously into this unknown territory, he thought first of his job. He frankly admitted to himself that he would have to be very hard pressed to do or say anything that would endanger his position as an AP3. Secondly came his loyalty to the Museum, a loyalty which he had undertaken, whatever his irritations and disillusions, to the service of beautiful objects and to the public who stood so much in need of them. Lastly he thought of Sir William, who, after all, had read the file and apparently attached no importance to it whatsoever. This was a comforting reflection. Let us pity women, as Sir William had said, and let us not worry too much about our manipulators, for whereas we have some idea of what we really want to do, they have none.
He spent part of his lunch hour telephoning home.
‘Haggie! Is that you? It’s your half-day, isn’t it? No, well, not this evening, because something’s come up.’
‘Is it to do with Dousha?’
‘Look, Haggie, I didn’t know you’d ever heard of her. She’s just Dousha, just Sir William’s secretary. I’m sure I’ve never said anything about her.’
‘Why haven’t you?’
‘This is stupid. I don’t know her, and I don’t want to go out with her. It’s just that I don’t feel I should disappoint Sir William. No, Sir William can’t take her out, he’s too old. I can’t think what we’re talking about. She’s asleep half the time, anyway. I love you, I want to come home.’
Haggie had rung off.
In the great hive of the Museum, with the Golden Treasure at its heart, the mass of workers and young ones below continued to file, even during the sacred lunch hour, with ceaseless steps past the admission counter. The long afternoon began. Above in the myriad cells drones, cut off from the sound of life, dozed over their in-trays. But Hawthorne-Mannering, neurotically eager, spent no moment in relaxation. Dr Tite-Live Rochegrosse-Bergson and Professor Untermensch had both arrived, though separately, had been conveyed from the airport in the same car — rather a shoddy manoeuvre, obscuring the inferior importance of the little German — and were now at the Museum. Elegantly groomed, like an attendant wraith, Hawthorne-Mannering urged them towards the passage and the lift for their conference.
‘… in Sir William’s room … a few words with two selected journalists … my good friend Peter Gratsos … Louis Sintram of The Times you will know of course …’
Rochegrosse-Bergson was a finished product, silver-haired but unmarked by time, wearing a velvet blazer and buckled shoes which could have belonged to one of several past centuries. The aura of one with many devotees, and — equally necessary to the Academician — many enemies, to whose intrigues in attempting to refute his theories he gracefully alluded, hung round about him. Professor Untermensch was smaller, darker, much quieter and much shabbier, but, on close examination, much more alarming, since he could be seen to be quivering with suppressed excitement. His jerky movements, the habitual sad gestures of the refugee, were accentuated, and his nose, as he humbly followed in the steps of the others, twitched, as though on the track of nourishment.
‘Could I have a word with you, Mr Hawthorne-Mannering?’ asked Deputy Security, suddenly advancing on the little group up an imposing side-staircase paved with marble.
‘It’s not at all convenient at the moment. Frankly, I find all these security precautions somewhat exaggerated. One’s distinguished visitors from abroad are disconcerted … After all, it’s not as though there were any specific trouble …’
‘That’s what I wanted to mention to you, Mr Hawthorne-Mannering. The police are in the building.’
2
‘THE police! One imagines they may well be here constantly, with the vast intrusion caused by the Exhibition …’
Hawthorne-Mannering realised at once that ‘intrusion’ was not the word he should have chosen, but he was too proud to change it.
‘If you could step in here, sir, just for a word with the police. Mace is the name — they’ve sent Inspector Mace from the station.’
‘But one’s guests …’
‘I could take them to the staff cafeteria if you think fit, for a glass of wine before the conference.’
This was a handsome offer from Deputy Security, but Hawthorne-Mannering received it with a finely-tuned suggestion of irritation.
‘I have already given them a glass of wine, though not from the staff cafeteria. I don’t know that Untermensch should have any more. He might easily become tipsy.’
Inexorably Deputy Security led the two savants away, while Hawthorne-Mannering was left in a small, almost disused room off the corridor, lined with cases containing some hundreds of Romano-British blue glass tear-bottles. Inspector Mace, more solid than anything else in the room, rose to meet him.
‘Well, Inspector, I hope you won’t regard it as offensive if I say that one is rather in a hurry …’
‘Quite so, sir. I’ve no intention of wasting time, either ours or yours. It is simply that due to increasing our force patrolling the area during the Exhibition it has been reported in passing by one of my men that cannabis indica is being illegally grown on one of the ground-floor window sills of the Museum. This, as you know, is a serious offence.’
‘In what possible way, Inspector, can I be concerned with this?’
‘We have been given to understand, sir, that you’re in charge of the Department of Funerary Art. The cannabis was being grown in what I am given to understand are known as “death pots”, that is, large funerary urns from your department. They were put just inside the window in an empty room to get the benefit of the central heating.’
‘With the Museum full of gold, you bother about two pots! If you mean to say that this is my sole connection with the affair …’
‘Have you noted down two pots as having gone missing, sir?’
‘The Museum has a holding of several thousand urns. Very few are on show at one time. I have not checked them personally for some months …’
‘I see. Meanwhile, perhaps you could inform us as to whether there are any registered addicts among your personnel?’
‘I can only say that I regret I am unable to help you. I recommend you to apply to Establishment, who engage the clerical staff. Meanwhile I recommend you, or implore you, or what you like, not to take any further steps until the Exhibition has been running a few more weeks. One has enough on one’s hands already.’
‘I am afraid we shall have to press the charges, sir,’ said Inspector Mace, but hesitation could be detected beneath his firm exterior. ‘The preliminary steps might, perhaps, be deferred a week or two. Of course, sir, we don’t wish to interrupt the wonderful public service the Museum is doing, in welcoming thousands of ordinary folk and giving them an opportunity to share its treasures …’
Escaping from the Inspector, Hawthorne-Mannering ascended with flying steps to Sir William’s room. The conference had already begun. Dr Rochegrosse-Bergson and Professor Untermensch had understandably declined the opportunity of a visit to the staff cafeteria, and had proceeded direct to the conference. All were seated, and the telephone had just rung, so that Miss Rank could signify that the Director was almost ready to join them. In another minute she rang through again, to say that he was on his way.
The queue, when Sir John glanced at it from the arched window which shed a chilly light into the corridor, looked tranquil enough. Frozen into submission, another fifty schools were marshalled into line, ‘closing up’ at every opportunity to give an illusion of forward motion. Round the WVS tea-stall the ground-frost had now melted, making a dark circular pattern. The whole area had become littered with plastic cups and spoons. Everything was orderly, there was no trouble at all.
The Director was well-known for his astounding power of cutting off his attention from one subject and focussing it on another, as a result of which, by the way, he had made a number of rather unwise decisions. But it enabled him now to forget both the enormous and the petty problems of administration as he entered Sir William’s room and looked round the assembly. The two journalists, exquisites for whom life could hold no further surprises, and removed by their foreign education from crass British prejudices, sat in their Italian silk shirts and deerskin jackets, waiting, in a kind of energetic idleness. Sintram had folded his long legs and placed one well-turned ankle on the opposite knee. Hawthorne-Mannering, pale as alabaster, was evidently dreadfully fussed. Sir William, having risen to greet the French and German scholars, had slumped down low, alarmingly low, in his easy chair and almost disappeared in his cloud of pipesmoke, depriving them of the formal speech of congratulations which both had intended to make. They were opening their briefcases. Rochegrosse-Bergson’s white hands slid over the golden clasp; the Professor’s case was shabby, and fastened with an unyielding zip. He sat altogether in the background, unconsidered and largely unaccounted for. As soon as the Director came in he fixed his sharp little eyes on him and concentrated on nothing else.
With the ease of long practice — evidently he could have lectured from a housetop, or in the middle of a desert — Rochegrosse-Bergson, in fluent English, commenced his discourse. After an entrée en matière, lasting a quarter of an hour exactly, he proceeded to a refutation of his unseen enemies.
‘Let us admit that Man, when he looks round at the world, tries, as his nature demands, to put some order or pattern into the confusing mass of objects he sees. What is this order? It is the error, the childish error of structuralists to believe that we divide all our concepts into twos, and only into twos. Mentally, do we not on the contrary see everything about us in threes?’
‘Some things look better in pairs,’ Sir William said. ‘They’d look odd if there were three of them.’
‘Yes, the universe is trinary,’ Rochegrosse-Bergson continued, courteously ignoring the interruption. ‘Just as the Ancients conceived of Three Graces linked in a circle and the Manxman dreams of three legs, so life is an eternal triad — going out — coming back and going out again. To understand the myth I proclaim to you that we must fold it in three.’
He moved his dapper hands with the gestures of an expert laundryman.
‘Compare the Ball of Golden Twine, for example, which, in my view, is the most important object in your distinguished Exhibition, with the clue of thread given by Ariadne to Theseus — and again with the cat’s cradle, a game, chers auditeurs, which, unlike string itself, has no end. What do we find? We find, gentlemen, that we go into the labyrinth to discover what we once were. Holding firmly the precious thread of golden twine, we ascend to the upper air, but knowing that we shall have once again, one day, to return to the interior of our unacknowledged selves. The journey of humanity is a progression neither forward nor backward, but noward. All our thoughts are, to use my own word, my own chosen signifier, la pensée-stop — the irresistible impulse to stop thinking at all. Our art — for every man, let us admit it, is an artist — is to achieve absolutely nothing!’
Amazingly enough, this arrant nonsense was eagerly taken down by the two journalists. Their cynicism was gone; they appeared hypnotised. A serious résumé would evidently appear in the Times Literary Supplement. Trained in French lycées, they were unable to resist the rounded sentences which now dropped a couple of tones to announce the coming peroration.
‘And thus, my friends, I have endeavoured to make perhaps a little clearer this evening …’
Broad winter daylight shone through the windows. The journalists scribbled on.
Professor Untermensch also knew, from long habit, the falling sound of the peroration. His time was coming; he was drawing nearer to the fabled gold to which, at one remove, he had devoted so much of his life’s work. His eagerness was distinctly embarrassing. As the Director rose he also got up, ready to follow him like a shadow.
Hawthorne-Mannering was in agitation, feeling that things were not being done properly. Nobody had been thanked.
‘If you could just manage a few words,’ he murmured, hovering over Sir William. ‘If you could just make some acknowledgement … if you could recognise the name of Rochegrosse-Bergson …’
‘Why should I?’ asked Sir William. ‘It may be somebody’s name, but it’s not his.’
Waring had received a message from the impeccable Miss Rank. She rang down. The Director required the Golden Doll from the Exhibition, to show it, as he had undertaken to do, to Professor Untermensch.
‘Isn’t that really Hawthorne-Mannering’s business? He’s inclined to be a little touchy if he thinks I’m doing his job.’
‘The exhibit should have been up here with us four and three-quarter minutes ago,’ Miss Rank replied.
‘But I can’t go and open the cases until the public have left and the place is clear. I don’t think you can actually have been down there. They’re packed six abreast. It’s impossible.’
‘The object Sir John requires is not in the cases. I have checked that it has gone to Records. Your friend Len Coker is supposed to be making a scale drawing of it in the Records studio, but he should have finished and sent it up long ago.’
