MAMista Page 6

  ‘Umm,’ said the peer and wrote on his notepad.

  The lawyer, a bird-like old man with heavily starched collar and regimental tie, felt the reputation of the legal profession was in jeopardy. ‘The donor is anonymous but I would have thought it enough that the letter comes from the most reputable firm of solicitors in England.’

  ‘Really,’ said Lucas. ‘I thought that yours was the most reputable.’

  The lawyer gave him a prim smile to show that he refused to be provoked. ‘What we need to know is how badly the money is needed in Spanish Guiana. That means a reliable on-the-spot report.’ He had suggested this at the very beginning.

  The industrialist polished his glasses and fretted. He had to go home to Birmingham. He put on his glasses and looked at the skeleton clock on the mantelpiece. Three-forty, and they were only halfway through the agenda. His role was to advise the board on technical matters and production, but he couldn’t remember the last time that such a question arose. It wasn’t as if the people on the board were paid a fee. Even the fares were not reimbursed. Sometimes he was ready to believe that paying substantial fees and expenses might provide people who were more competent than these illustrious time-wasters.

  The peer pushed his coffee away and, remembering Lucas’ remark said, ‘Not one healthy native? None of us would last twenty-four hours in the jungle, Colonel, and you know it. Are we healthy?’

  ‘You are talking about adaptation,’ said Lucas.

  ‘I agree with Colonel Lucas,’ said the lawyer. ‘During my time in Malaya I saw young soldiers from industrial cities like Leeds adapt to hellish conditions.’

  The research trustee groaned. There were too many people with war experiences on this damned board. If the lawyer started talking about the way he’d won his Military Cross in ‘the Malayan emergency’ they would never get away. He coughed. ‘Can we get back to the question again …?’

  The peer would not tolerate such interruptions. ‘The real question is: one …’ he raised a finger. ‘… Is this board indifferent to the political implications that might later arise …’

  Lucas did not wait for two. ‘Surely the question is entirely medical …’

  The lawyer held up his gold pencil in a cautionary gesture. It irritated him that Lucas should come here in tweed sports jacket, and canary-coloured sweater, when everyone else wore dark suits. ‘It is not entirely medical. We could lay this board open to charges of financing a highly organized and disciplined army that has the declared aim of overthrowing by force the legal government of Spanish Guiana.’

  There was a shocked silence as they digested this. Then the investments man stopped doodling on his notepad to wave a hand. His voice was toneless and bored. ‘If, on the other hand, we refuse to send medical supplies to these starving people in the south, we could be described as suppressing that popular movement by means of disease.’

  ‘I’m going to ask you to withdraw that,’ said the peer, losing his studied calm. ‘I won’t allow that to go on the minutes of this meeting.’

  Without looking up from his doodling the investment man calmly said, ‘Well, I don’t withdraw it and you can go to hell and take the minutes with you.’

  ‘If the army in the south have money enough for guns and bombs, they have money enough for medical supplies,’ said the man from Birmingham.

  ‘Ten divisions complete with tanks and aircraft,’ said the secretary.

  ‘Who told you that?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘It was a documentary on BBC Television,’ said the secretary.

  ‘What about all the money they are getting from growing drugs?’ said the man from Birmingham.

  ‘I saw the same TV programme,’ said the lawyer. ‘Are you sure that was Spanish Guiana? I thought that was Peru.’

  ‘You can’t believe all that BBC propaganda,’ said the investments man. ‘That TV programme was a repeat. If my memory serves me, it was originally shown back in the Eighties before the Wall came down.’

  The chairman watched them but said nothing.

  What a circus! If it was always like this, thought Lucas, it would be worth the journey up to town every month.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said the lawyer in a tone he normally reserved for consulting counsel. ‘While I wouldn’t agree with Colonel Lucas that this is entirely a medical question, I believe we are all beginning to see that we need more medical information before we can make a decision. After all’ – he looked at them and smiled archly before reminding them how important they were – ‘we are dealing with a great deal of money.’

  Clever the way he can do that, thought Lucas. They were clucking away happily now, like a lot of contented hens.

  ‘What’s the form then?’ said the man from Birmingham in an effort to move things along.

  ‘An on-the-spot report,’ said the lawyer. He had the infinite patience that the law’s bounty and unhurried pace provide. He gave no sign that this was the fourth time he’d said it.

  ‘In any case, we all agreed that the antibiotics should be sent,’ said the investments man, although no one had agreed to it, and someone had specifically advised against that course of action. ‘Let’s send that immediately, shall we?’

  The lawyer did not respond to the suggestion, knowing that putting it to the vote would start new arguments. Thankful that the dispute about the anonymous donor now seemed to have faded, he picked up a pile of paper and tapped it on the table to align the edges. He did it to attract their attention: it was a trick he’d learned from his partner. As they looked round he said, ‘Getting someone to Guiana and back shouldn’t delay us more than a week or two. Then, if we decide to go ahead, we can airfreight the urgent supplies.’

  ‘If we decide to go ahead,’ said the peer. The lawyer smiled and nodded.

  The secretary said, ‘I think I might be able to arrange the air freight at cost or even free through one of our benefactors.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said the research man.

  Bloody fool, thought Lucas, but he modified the thought: ‘Much better to buy locally whenever possible. Cash transfer. Ship it from Florida perhaps.’

  The lawyer gave an audible exhalation. ‘We must be careful. Graft is second nature in these countries.’

  ‘Easier to protect money than stop pilfering of drugs and medicines,’ said Lucas. ‘In fact we should look at the idea of flying it right down to the southern provinces where it’s needed.’

  ‘And of course there will be customs and duty and tariffs,’ said the lawyer. It would be a nightmare and he was determined to dump it into someone else’s lap if he could.

  ‘That should be arranged in advance,’ said Lucas. ‘World Health Organization people must put the pressure on the central government. It would be absurd to pay duty on medical supplies that are a gift to their own people.’

  ‘Well, that will be your problem,’ said the lawyer.

  Lucas looked at him and eventually nodded.

  The chairman picked up the agenda and said, ‘Item four …’

  ‘Hold on. I don’t understand exactly what we have decided,’ said the investments man.

  The lawyer said, ‘Colonel Lucas will fly out to Spanish Guiana to decide what medical aid should be given to people in the southern provinces.’

  ‘The Marxist guerrillas,’ said the man from Birmingham.

  ‘The people in the southern provinces,’ repeated the chairman firmly. He didn’t say much but he knew what he wanted the minutes to record.

  The lawyer said, ‘The donor has offered to arrange for a guide, interpreter and all expenses.’

  They looked at Lucas and it amused him to see in their faces how pleased they were to be rid of him. It was not true to say that Lucas nodded without thinking about it. He had no great desire to visit Spanish Guiana, but the medical implications of a large organized community living isolated deep in the jungle could be far-reaching. There was no telling what he might learn: and Lucas loved to learn. More immediately; he was the medical adviser to the
board. They’d expect him to go. It would give him a change of scenery and he had no family responsibilities to consider. And there was the unarguable fact that he could report on the situation better than any man round this table. In fact better than any man they could get hold of at short notice.

  Lucas nodded.

  ‘Bravo, Colonel,’ said the man from Birmingham.

  The peer smiled. The jungle was the best place for the little Australian peasant.

  ‘Item four then,’ said the chairman. ‘This is the grant for the inoculation scheme in Zambia. We now have the estimates for the serum …’

  Lucas remembered that he was supposed to meet his daughter next week. Perhaps his sister would meet her instead. He’d drop in on her as soon as this meeting ended. She’d question him about his trip to South America and then claim to have divined it in the stars. Oh well. Perhaps it would have been better if she had got married, but she’d chosen instead to look after his ailing parents. He felt guilty about that. He’d never given any of the family anything to compare with the love and devotion they had given him. Too late now: he’d take his guilt to the grave.

  He’d tell her what he knew himself and that wasn’t much. He looked down at the pad in front of him. He’d drawn a jungle of prehensile trees, each leaf an open hand. On second thoughts he’d tell her little or nothing. He’d only be away three weeks, a month at the most.

  Serena Lucas, his unmarried sister, lived in a smart little house in Marylebone. Ralph could never enter it without feeling self-conscious. The polished brass plate on the railings was as discreet as any lawyer’s shingle. Only the symbol beneath her name told the initiated that here lived a clairvoyant.

  A disembodied voice came in response to the bellpush. ‘It’s Ralph,’ he said into the microphone. A buzzer sounded and he opened the door.

  The short narrow hall immediately gave on to a staircase. These houses were damned small: he would not like to live in one. But it was immaculately kept. The carpeting and the furnishings were good quality and carefully chosen. On the wall he saw a new lithograph: a seascape by a fashionable artist. He guessed it had been payment for some shrewd piece of advice. She encouraged her clients to give her such gifts and usually got generously overpaid. The old witch was clever, there was no doubt about that, whatever one thought about the supernatural.

  ‘That’s a fine print,’ said Ralph as his sister came out of her study to greet him.

  They kissed as they always did. She offered each cheek in turn and he avoided disturbing her make-up. Madame Serena was an attractive woman four years younger than Ralph. She was slim and dark with a pale complexion and wonderful luminous eyes that were both penetrating and sympathetic. Perhaps such colouring fulfilled her clients’ expectations of Bohemian blood, but the tailored suit, gold earrings and expensive shoes were another dimension of her personality. The fringed handbag with its beadwork was the only hint of the Gypsy.

  ‘What a lovely surprise to see you, Ralph.’ She pronounced it ‘Rafe’ as one of her well-bred clients had once done. Her voice had no trace of the Queensland twang.

  ‘I was passing. I hope you’re not too busy.’

  ‘The day before yesterday I had a senior Cabinet minister here,’ she said. She had to tell him the moment he got inside the door. She was still the little sister wanting his approval and admiration.

  ‘Not the Home Secretary trying to find a way out of that hospital scandal?’

  She didn’t acknowledge his joke. ‘Ralph. You know I never gossip about clients.’ And yet in her manner she was able to imply that she had been consulted on some vital matter of government policy.

  ‘I’m sent to South America, Serena. Just a week or so. I wonder if you would meet Jennifer next Wednesday afternoon? If not, I will see if I can contact her and change the arrangements.’

  She did not reply immediately. She led him into the drawing-room and they both sat down. ‘Would you like tea, Ralph?’

  ‘Have you caught this appalling English habit of drinking tea all day?’

  ‘Clients expect it.’

  ‘And you read the tea-leaves.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that I do not. Tea relaxes them. The English become far more human when they have a hot cup of tea in their hand.’

  ‘Do they? I shall bear that in mind,’ said Ralph. ‘You’ll meet Jennifer then?’

  His sister and daughter did not enjoy a warm relationship but he knew Serena would not refuse. They had grown up in a warm congenial family atmosphere where they did things for one another. She took a tiny notebook from her handbag and turned it to the appropriate page. ‘I have nothing I cannot rearrange. What time is the plane arriving?’

  ‘London–Heathrow at five.’

  ‘Wednesday is not an auspicious day for travelling, Ralph,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps not, but we can’t consult you every time anyone wants to go somewhere.’

  She sighed.

  Ralph said, ‘I wish Jennifer had chosen a college somewhere in the south.’

  ‘You fuss over her too much, Ralph. She is nineteen. Some women have a family and a job too at that age.’ Serena took a small antique silver case from her handbag and produced a cigarette. She lit it with a series of rapid movements and breathed out the smoke with a sigh of exasperation. ‘You should think of yourself more. You are still young. You should meet people and think about getting married again. Instead you bury yourself in that wretched house in the country and finance every whim your daughter thinks up.’ She extended a hand above her head and flapped it in a curious gesture. Ralph decided that it was an attempt to wave away the smoke.

  ‘That’s not true, Serena. She never asks for extra money. If I bury myself in the country it’s because I’m in the workshop finishing the portable high-voltage electrophoresis machine. It could save a lot of lives eventually.’ He smiled. ‘And I thought you liked my house.’

  ‘I do, Ralph.’ He’d discovered the ramshackle clapboard cottage on the Suffolk coast, and purchased it against the advice of everyone, from his sister to his bank manager. It was now a welcoming and attractive home. Ralph had done most of the building work with his own hands.

  Sitting here with his sister – so far from the home in which they’d grown up – Ralph Lucas wondered at the way both of them had changed. They had both become English. His sister had embraced the English ways enthusiastically, but for Ralph Lucas change had come slowly. Yet even his resistance and objections to English things had been in the manner that the English themselves rebelled. Nowadays he found himself saying ‘old boy’ and ‘old chap’ and wearing the clothes and doing all kinds of things done by the sort of upper-class English twit he’d once despised. England did this to its admirers and to its enemies.

  ‘South America,’ said Ralph to break the silence.

  ‘I knew you’d be crossing the water, Ralph,’ she said.

  ‘Do you make it three weeks or a month?’ he asked with raised eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, I know you’ve never believed in me.’

  ‘Now that’s not true, Serena. I admit you’ve surprised me more than once.’

  Encouraged she added, ‘And you will meet someone …’

  ‘A certain someone? Miss Right?’ He chuckled. She never gave up on arranging a wife for him: a semi-retired tennis champion from California, an Australian stockbroker and a widow with a flashy country club that needed a manager. Her ideas never worked out.

  She leaned forward and took his hand. She’d never done anything like that before. For a moment he thought she was going to read his palm but she just held his hand as a lover – or a loving sister – might. He recognized this as a sign of one of her premonitions.

  ‘Chin up! I’m only teasing, old girl. Don’t be upset. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘You must take care of yourself, Ralph. You are all I have.’

  He didn’t quite know how to respond to her in this kind of mood. ‘Now! Now! Remember when I came back from Vietnam? Reme
mber admitting the countless times you had seen a vision of me lying dead in the jungle, a gun in my hand and a comrade at my side?’

  She nodded but continued to stare down at their clasped hands for a long time, as if imprinting something on to her memory. Then she looked up and smiled at him. It was better to say no more.

  4

  TEPILO, SPANISH GUIANA. ‘A Yankee newspaper.’

  Ralph Lucas did not much like flying and he detested airlines and everything connected with them. He dreaded the plastic smiles and reheated food, their ghastly blurred movies, their condescending manner and second-rate service. He had not enjoyed his ‘first-class’ transatlantic flight from London to Caracas via New York. Waiting at Caracas, he was not pleased to hear that the connecting flight to Tepilo was going to be even more uncomfortable. After a long delay he flew onwards in a ten-seater Fokker which had República Internacional painted shakily on the side. He shared the passenger compartment with six old men in deep mourning and six huge wreaths.

  The flight was long and tedious. He looked down at the fever-racked coastal plain and the shark-infested ocean and remembered the joke about President de Gaulle choosing France’s missile launching site in nearby French Guiana. It was not sited there because at the Equator the spinning earth would provide extra thrust, but because ‘If you are a missile there, you’d go anywhere.’

  Neither the runway nor the electronics at Tepilo airport were suited to big jets. A Boeing 707 with a bold pilot could get in on a clear day; and out provided it was judiciously loaded for take-off. Such an aviator had brought in an ancient Portuguese 707 that Lucas saw unloading cases of champagne and brandy into the bonded warehouse as he landed. There were other planes there: some privately owned Moranes, Cessnas and a beautifully painted Learjet Longhorn 55 that was owned by the American ambassador. There was a hut with ‘Aereo-Club’ on its tin roof so that visiting pilots would see it. Now alas, windows broken, it was strangled under weeds.

  The main airport building – like the sole remaining steel-framed hangar – provided nostalgic recognition to passengers who had encountered the US Army Air Forces in World War Two. Little changed, these were the temporary buildings that the Americans had erected here, alongside this same runway, and the subterranean fuel store. Tepilo (or Clarence Johnson field as it was then named) was built as an emergency landing field for bombers being ferried to Europe by the southern route.