Ancient, scratchy 78 r.p.m. recording of Gilbert & Sullivan – ‘Selections from The Pirates of Penzance’ or something like that. West sits, sipping a tall drink, on the veranda of a modest colonial bungalow, with its owner, Major Brigg, a leathery old party, dressed in khaki shirt, shorts, long socks with a ribbon, in fact everything but the topee. Sundown.
Brigg Well, nice to have some company for once.
West Yes.
Brigg Always enjoy this time of day the best, you know. Sitting down, bit of a drink. Doesn’t last long, of course, it’ll be pitch black before you know where you are. My wife always used to get furious, time for your drink, she’d say, and I’d say, just finishing up one or two things, be with you in a tick, and of course by the time I got out it was like the middle of the night and we’d both be in a temper all evening. (Pause.) D’you think I should go back home?
West To England?
Brigg Yes.
West Well, I don’t know, I think you’d find it very different …
Brigg Oh, yes, I know that. Time of the General Strike I left, you know. Always like to think that was deliberate but actually it was a complete coincidence. Of course, I was there for some of the war, and I’ve been on leave a few times, but you don’t get much impression. Don’t suppose I could afford it, anyway.
West It has got very expensive.
Brigg Yes, and I never paid any of those stamp things, so I wouldn’t get a proper pension. Can’t think why I want to go back really, just a sort of an urge. (Pause. The record has ended. Brigg gets up.) D’you like Gilbert and Sullivan?
West Erm … I really don’t know that much about them.
Brigg Remarkable pair. (He crosses to the gramophone, winds it up and turns the record over.) Damn difficult to get hold of the needles for this thing.
He looks expectantly at West, who, though embarrassed, refuses to take the hint.
West Yes, I’m sure.
Silence. Brigg sits down again and the music crackles out.
Brigg You mustn’t think it’s something new, you know, all this you’ve been telling me. They’ve been killing them off ever since I can remember and before, in fact, good God, they were killing off the poor beggars in Shakespeare’s day. It’s nothing new. But at least when I went into the Indian Protection Service, we actually did make some sort of a stab at protecting them. Now, as far as I can gather, it’s the I.P.S. you go to if you want them done away with.
West There certainly has been a great deal of corruption …
Brigg Corruption? It may be. It may be they’ve just given up in despair. I did. You don’t have the money, you don’t have the equipment, you don’t have the authority. At least when I joined the Service, after the war, you knew more or less what you were up against and you could do something about it. But by the time I left the whole thing had become so industrialized and so efficient, there was absolutely nothing to be done. And I suppose they all feel, well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
West What exactly do you mean, industrialized?
Brigg I can remember, in about ’47 I suppose it would have been, sitting up a tree on the Aripuanã, because we knew these fellers were trying to get rid of some Indians so that they could get at some diamonds or some damn thing or another. Anyway, sure enough, I hadn’t been there very long, when these two chaps appeared in a boat. In those days the favoured approach was to get blankets from the smallpox ward of a hospital and distribute them, you see, among the Indians – that way, with a bit of luck, you could polish off the whole tribe. And, needless to say, the boat was full of blankets. So I shouted to them and told them to stand and deliver, as it were.
West And did they?
Brigg No, they didn’t take a blind bit of notice.
West So what did you do?
Brigg Well, I shot them.
West Ah.
Brigg Shot ’em dead. Oh, yes. You see, that’s what I mean, in those days there was something you could do about it, you could take some direct action. But nowadays, when they use bombs and machine-guns and I don’t know what else, you could sit up a tree on the Aripuanã till you rotted, for all the good you could do. Ready for another?
West (sipping at his still half-full glass) In a minute.
Brigg Good, good.
Silence.
West You must have seen some extraordinary things in your time.
Brigg Yes. (Pause.) You know the strangest thing I ever saw?
Brigg I found this body in the jungle, least it was more or less of a skeleton by the time I came across it. All his equipment and his knife and so on had been stolen, but he’d obviously been English or at any rate English-speaking.
West How do you know?
Brigg Well, this was the thing. He’d carved this message on a huge jatoba trunk, before he died. It said IMAGINEUS, all one word, IMAGINEUS. And underneath, a sort of a map.
West Good heavens, what did you do?
Brigg Well, nothing. I certainly wasn’t going to take any notice of the map, that’s always the first step to disaster, look what happened to poor old Fawcett. But the message was so intriguing, don’t you think, imagine us. What could he possibly have meant, it haunted me for years.
West Did you ever think of a likely explanation?
Brigg Well, I did, yes. In the end I decided his spelling wasn’t very hot, and that what he’d actually been trying to say, in a spirit of bitter irony, was, ‘I’m a genius.’
West laughs, and Brigg looks at him sharply, then smiles.
Ready for another?
West Yes, thanks.
Brigg claps his hands loudly above his head. A moment later, an elderly Indian in an ill-fitting white suit appears, takes the glasses and shuffles back into the bungalow.
Brigg I told you he was the last surviving member of his tribe, didn’t I?
West Yes. What did you say his name was?
Brigg Oh, I don’t know, he has some endless unpronounceable name, but I call him Bert, after my late brother. The rest of the tribe all died of a ’flu epidemic, you know. Caught it off me. One of our many failures. He’s been with me about twenty years, and I suppose he’s the real reason I don’t go back home.
West I wonder if he’d remember any of his tribe’s legends. I think I told you I’m rather interested in collecting legends.
The Indian reappears with the drinks.
Brigg Oh, it’s no good asking him anything like that, I’m afraid he hasn’t got much between the ears, poor old beggar.
The Indian exits. Silence.
I must say, it’s nice to have a bit of company. (Pause.) You know, one thing I never could get used to all those years was them not wearing any clothes. I know it’s silly, but I never could get used to it. Bloody heathen habit, if you ask me.
West Oh, I don’t know about that.
Brigg (vehemently) There’s no hope for them, you know. No hope. Not a chance. Might as well be philosophical about it. I sometimes think the best thing is for them to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Let’s have a record. (He gets up and puts on another record, this time some gay number of the twenties. He sits down again.) Cheers.
West Cheers.
Silence except for the oppressively jolly record.
Brigg Quite good some of this modern stuff.
Silence.
West (pensive) Imagine us.
Blackout.