The Golden Child

Hawthorne-Mannering stirred slightly, feeling impelled to come to the defence of all savants, and perhaps of all eccentrics.

‘One might feel that last remark as somewhat reductive,’ he said. ‘Professor Untermensch is a noted Garamantologist who has devoted much of his life to a study of the Treasure without, of course, having actually ever seen it except in photographs and from parallel sources. One might call him a kind of saint of photogrammetry. He is, also, the acknowledged expert on the Garamantian system of hieroglyphic writing.’

Deputy Security’s business in life was to secure the safety of the objects he guarded. Their value, and the sanity of the staff, of both of which he had a low opinion, did not concern him.

‘To continue, sir. Our information is that Untermensch is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty cracked. That’s to say he is obsessed with the idea of holding one of these objects from the Treasure, one of these Golden Toys or whatever, of actually looking at it close to and holding it in his hand. I don’t know whether you yourself, sir …’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Sir William. ‘I’ve made it clear enough, to you and to everybody else, that I’ve no intention of going down to look at it and no wish to see those things again on this side of the kingdom of shades.’

‘The Director himself will arrange for Professor Untermensch to have a closer view of one of the objects,’ interposed Hawthorne-Mannering. ‘He is hardly, perhaps, of sufficient standing … but this courtesy is to be shown to him, since he has been so very persistent …’

‘Well, in any case it’s too many people to see on one day,’ said Sir William, ‘but have it your own way.’

Hawthorne-Mannering lingered uneasily on the way out to speak to Dousha.

‘I’m afraid the old man has not been very well,’ he said. ‘At one point he failed even to remember my name. Has his heart been giving trouble?’ He could not make his voice sound sympathetic.

‘Not so much, I think,’ Dousha calmly replied.

As he left Sir William pressed the intercom with an untrembling finger.

‘I didn’t like that fellow, Dousha,’ he said, ‘Why doesn’t Waring Smith come and see me? What’s become of Smith?’

Waring Smith, as a junior Exhibition officer, was not, or should not have been, of any kind of importance in the Museum. Sir William had taken notice of him at the tail end of a committee meeting, because he was young, normal, unimpressed, sincere and worried.

By a turn of fate, however, Waring Smith had recently been given a little prominence. While Hawthorne-Mannering had been on one of the numerous sick leaves which his delicate constitution demanded, Waring had been obliged, since it was a job nobody else wanted, to prepare the catalogue for a small display of funerary inscriptions from Boghazkevi, singularly dull to all but confirmed Hittitologists. By going down and standing over the printers, he had even seen that this catalogue was ready in time. The little success had recommended him for further work on the present great Exhibition. It had, however, earned him the undying hatred of the returning Hawthorne-Mannering.

Yet Waring Smith was scarcely worth such concentrated resentment. He was not an exceptional young man. The average Englishman has blue eyes and brown hair, and so had he. From his grammar school he had gone on to spend three rather happy years studying Technical Arts at University. Locked in the canteen during a sit-in, he had met a young woman who was doing colour chemistry, and persuaded her without difficulty to share his narrow bedroom in the First Year block. They agreed without much resistance on either side to get married as soon as he got his first salaried job. He had asked himself, did he love Haggie? and an unsuspected second self had answered, Yes, he did.

Before his marriage Waring had found his life was one of progressive simplifications. After he had begun to live with Haggie he had seen much less of his other friends. To save housework they had taken off the legs of the bed and put it on the floor, and so on. His assessments mattered to him; he had specialised in exhibition techniques and had worked hard. They went out once a week to see films by leading French and Italian directors about the difficulties of making a film. Then they bought cans of beer and some crisps, went back to their room and expanded warmly in the dark. Now that he was married, on the other hand, he found it rather difficult to think of anything else beyond his job and his mortgage payments. In order to continue living in a very small terraced house in Clapham South, with a worrying leak somewhere in the roof and a stained glass panel in the front door, he had to repay to the Whitstable and Protective Building Society the sum of £118 a month. This figure loomed so large in Waring’s daily thoughts, was so punctually waiting for him during any idle moment, that it sometimes seemed to him that his identity was changing and that there was no connection with the human being of five years ago who had scorned concentration on material things. Furthermore, he was often in trouble with Haggie, who had to work in a typing pool, where her knowledge of colour chemistry was wasted, and felt that he should be able to get home earlier from the Museum than he often did. Yet Waring Smith had an instinct for happiness against which even the Whitstable and Protective Society could not prevail, and it was this instinct which Sir William had discerned and tried to encourage.

When Dousha rang down to Waring’s ill-ventilated cubby-hole of an office to say that Sir William would be glad of a cup of coffee with him, Waring had to ask whether he could come rather later, as he had been told to go down and see how things were going in the Exhibition itself. He had to check with Security and Public Relations, make sure that the display material was in place, and report back to Hawthorne-Mannering, still supposedly in charge of co-ordination.

At the sight of his tiresomely energetic subordinate, Hawthorne-Mannering felt his thin blood rise, like faint green sap in a plant, with distaste. He closed his eyes, so as not to see Waring Smith.

The closed eyes worried Waring a little, but he blundered on.

‘You ought to go down there, HM, you really ought.’ He had never quite known what to call Hawthorne-Mannering, who was too young — or was he? — for ‘sir’. Throughout the whole building he was known as the May Queen, but Waring tried to put this out of his mind. ‘It’s an amazing sight,’ he went on eagerly, ‘I’ve made a few notes, if you’d like to see them.’

‘How very much more than thoughtful of you. There will be no need, then, for you to tell me about it.’

‘But it’s worrying, honestly it is. They’re sticking it out so well — the queues, I mean — you can’t help feeling sorry for them. And when they get in they’re getting caught in the bottle-neck — the entrance to the Chamber of the Golden Child. They’re only letting them in four at a time. It’s like the Black Hole of Calcutta.’

‘The point of your comparison escapes me,’ said Hawthorne-Mannering. ‘The bottle-neck, as you call it, whatever objections were made by Security, is of course a simulation of the entrance to the original cave itself, so that the general public can recapture the atmosphere two thousand years ago, at dead of night, when the pitiful sarcophagus was secretly carried to its final resting-place.’

‘But they might go mad at any moment. Security knows that, but I don’t think the authorities do. And the cafeteria! There’s a life-size replica of the Golden Child in hardboard to beckon you in and even at this time in the morning there’s nothing left but luncheon-meat rolls.’

‘What is luncheon meat?’ asked Hawthorne-Mannering, shuddering slightly.

‘Why should they suffer like this?’ Waring pleaded. ‘Some of them have been all night in the train.’

Hawthorne-Mannering, still without opening his eyes, stretched out his long pale hands, turned them slowly over, and spread them out in one of his chosen gestures.

‘One’s hands are clean,’ he said.

Waring reminded himself that if he did not keep this job, it was not at all certain that he would get another one, and that the whole question of his salary was constantly under the scrutiny of the Whitstable and Protective Building Society. He returned to his cubby-hole, and went rapidly through his correspondence, which represented the scourings of a great Museum, passed on from the other departments. A series of letters begged the Museum to join the campaign against the misuse of resources; a dinner was to be held, at £15 a head, where the menu was to be written on the tablecloth to save paper. The NUT wanted all the glass cases in museums removed, so that the exhibits could become a meaningful action area, and the children could pick them up and relate them to their daily lives. ‘Why not?’ thought Waring. ‘It would pretty soon clear a bit of space.’ A confidential minute from Public Relations referred to Professor Untermensch. Properly it was their business to entertain him, but apart from his great knowledge, which could be taken on trust, was he of any real importance? Could not the Exhibition Department take him out for a meal (Category 4 Grade 2) and perhaps an entertainment? As he appeared to be German, what about an operetta? ‘A what?’ thought Waring.

He wrote careful notes on the letters and went to see if he could find someone to type his replies. He was in luck, and one of the girls was free.

‘Where do you have your hair cut, Mr Smith?’ she asked casually as she took his notes.

‘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:

1. The Foreign Secretary2. FO Head of African DepartmentHead of Chancery to3. The Minister, Department of Education and Science4. Director, Institute of Strategic Studies

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 …’