Inside the gloomy, desiccated citadel of the Scheduled Territories Office, they were already beginning to think about Christmas. The messengers and office keepers were taking out, from a score of forgotten filing cabinets, the tinsel streamers and paper decorations, which, having already done annual duty since the end of the war, were good (they claimed) for many years yet. The typing pool was organizing a penny-a-week collection, towards a Christmas Eve party, and the biscuits, salted peanuts, fishpaste sandwiches, and South African sherry that traditionally went with it. There was one raffle for a prime turkey, another for a goose, and yet a third (restricted to Higher Executive Officers and above) for two bottles of port.
There was even a rumour that Establishments Branch were going to organize a Christmas tree, with envelopes for presents, and inside certain of the envelopes – a promotion, or even a bonus! The latter idea was heavily discounted by anyone who had put in more than a couple of years’ service with the Scheduled Territories Office, and had thus been able to observe Establishments Branch at work; but at least the rumour of it was appropriate to Christmastime – the time of wishing, fantasy, miracles, and overwhelming surprise. If you could believe in Father Christmas, then you could conceivably believe in Establishments Branch and their fabled Christmas tree.
Within his citadel – not so gloomy, nor so desiccated – the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Hubert Godbold, was not thinking about Christmas, nor miracles, nor anything save hard fact. He was thinking about Pharamaul, as he had thought on very many occasions during the past weeks: thinking about the telegrams that spoke daily of violence and danger, thinking of the way that things in the Territory seemed to be grinding to a standstill; thinking above all of the next move.
When he summoned Crossley, his Assistant Under-Secretary, to talk about Pharamaul, he no longer had any need to say to him: ‘Refresh my memory …’ Pharamaul had been in the forefront of Godbold’s mind, for many days and nights. Now, with the Press still ravening, the Secretary of State, Lord Lorde, yawing about like a ship without a rudder, and a fresh spate of Parliamentary Questions (and even a full-dress debate) coming up over the horizon, the time was at hand for the Scheduled Territories Office to confirm, limit, or extend its policy line.
Crossley, small, alert, his ear ever cocked for the faint hint of a far-off stratagem, his nose lifted to catch the cross-wind of rumour and advantage – Crossley stood opposite him beyond the broad, scarlet-topped desk, reading from some notes clipped to the outside of a massive file.
‘There are three more PQs on Pharamaul, sir,’ he began, with just the right touch of deferential sympathy. I’m right here at your elbow, his tone seemed to say. Pray lean on me – I only want to help … ‘Nothing special, except that they advance the thing a stage further. They’re set down for the day after tomorrow.’ Crossley glanced at his notes again. ‘They boil down to this: first, how long are we going to keep Dinamaula away from Gamate? Second, when will he be proclaimed chief? Third, how long will the present state of emergency continue?’
‘M’m …’ Godbold ruminated, his eyes level with the middle button of Crossley’s waistcoat. ‘Who’s asking them, this time?’
‘As usual, sir, the first two are Price-Canning’s. But the third one is from George Bellows–’ he named a sedate Conservative backbencher.
Godbold raised his eyebrows. ‘Bellows? I’m surprised … What’s he getting interested in this for?’
Crossley pursed his lips somewhat primly. ‘Pharamaul has gone beyond the usual crackpot stage, sir. I think we all recognize that … All sorts of people are involving themselves in it. The fact that it’s spread to someone like George Bellows is indicative, I think.’
‘Indicative,’ repeated Godbold, with slight distasteful emphasis. He was not above catching the precise Crossley out in a slipshod expression.
‘Indicative of the widespread interest in Pharamaul,’ said Crossley, correcting himself smoothly. ‘It’s not just one party, or one sort of man, who is worried about this. It’s nearly everyone. We’ve got to be very careful.’
‘How do you mean, careful?’
Crossley sighed a very small, imperceptibly mutinous sigh. He recognized the Permanent Under-Secretary’s mood, which was one of critical irritation. As far as Pharamaul was concerned, things were patently running against the Scheduled Territories Office; Godbold recognized this and, while he did not exactly take it out on his staff (he had never been that sort of man), he was still liable to communicate the resulting personal tension over a wide area. In a way, of course (Crossley realized), that was what his staff were there for – to share the burden of events, good and bad. But it made, occasionally, for missed heartbeats among those nearest the throne.
‘We’re not on strong ground, sir,’ he answered, after a suitable pause. The solid room round him, the thick pile carpet, the high vaulted ceiling, all seemed to give the lie to his words, but he pressed on with his thesis. ‘People generally don’t like the ban on Dinamaula’s movements. The Press is dead against it, of course. They still maintain that we tricked him into leaving Gamate … I think that fairly soon we’ve got to say, at least, how long he’s going to be kept away.’
Godbold set his jaw. His eyes rose, above the level of Crossley’s watch chain to the level of his chin. ‘He’ll be kept away until things calm down. If they don’t calm down, he’ll be kept away – full stop. That’s our policy, in two sentences. And we didn’t “trick” him into leaving.’
‘I still think we’re vulnerable, sir.’
Godbold, instead of answering, maintained – even seemed to impose – a lengthy interval of silence. It was, for his staff, the Permanent Under-Secretary’s most disconcerting reaction, but it was not a studied one; if, at any moment of discussion, negotiation, or judgement, he wanted to think, he invariably clamped down on words until the need for thought was fulfilled. Talkative members of the office, high and low, learned not to tamper with these charged silences … In the present case, it was the word ‘vulnerable’ which had sparked the need for thought.
Truly, Godbold did not think that his policy over Dinamaula, so far, was in the least ‘vulnerable’ – that was, susceptible of defeat on valid grounds. But Crossley’s ‘vulnerable’ meant something quite different; it meant untenable in the face of determined criticism, unpopular, liable to lose friends – of whatever quality these friends might be. Crossley meant that the Scheduled Territories Office, having taken a hard decision, were going to have a rough time if they stuck to it. He meant that the rough time was not worth it. He meant that heads might roll, careers falter, strong men trip and fall – bringing lesser men, who chanced to be near them, crashing to the ground at the same time.
Crossley, who wore his future like a precious gem tucked into his navel, was highly sensitive to such tickling draughts of fate. He was near enough to the top slopes of the Scheduled Territories Office to be affected, if their policy became too exposed a target, too unpopular. The taint of unpopularity might prove to be mortally expensive, in the subterranean world of advancement – costing ladder-rungs, costing a decoration in five years’ time, a High Commissionership in ten.
Godbold came suddenly out of his trance, and asked, as Crossley had expected he might, ‘How exactly do you mean, vulnerable?’
‘I mean, there’s been a certain amount of indecision and weak handling, at various levels … For instance, sir, I don’t think Andrew Macmillan has put up a terribly good show.’
Godbold, recognizing the remark at its appropriate value, frowned, preparing to withdraw into silence again. It was one of any number of such remarks which he suspected were being made, at this moment; it was a remark slipped in, in fine print, contributing to a general trend of thought which would seep downwards through the office, adding up eventually to a possible series of demotions, a related shifting of jobs and levels, a KCMG for someone as yet unspecified, in two years instead of three. It was part – a tiny part – of the constant undercurrent of malignant opportunism, which infected many areas of the Scheduled Territories Office – in common with half a dozen other ministries, up and down Whitehall.
In moments of harsher criticism, it sometimes seemed to Godbold that his entire staff were either scheming to usurp his place in ten years’ time, or else wetting their beds nightly about their chances of promotion. The Scheduled Territories Office, with all its manifold responsibilities all over the world, needed every ounce of guts and vision it could command; instead, what it got was the second-raters, the preoccupied careerists, the leftovers from the Foreign Office – and these were the future administrators, Governors, even High Commissioners, of Britain’s overseas possessions! (They were as nothing compared to the wives, he recalled, in morbid parenthesis: the wives who clustered round him like rioting chickens at office parties: the wives who, during his recent tour of overseas posts, had practically sat on his knee at dinner, whispered his ear off, shaved him with their eyelashes, knocked him down in the rush. Those subtle, such-an-asset-to-husband wives …)
But, as Godbold knew well by this time, if he ever tried to recruit from outside the office, in order to fill some crucial post, the STO banded itself together into one united, highly vocal trade union, and its screams of protest echoed and clashed the length and breadth of the Civil Service. There was even some evidence of a trade union within the trade union – a tight-knit Roman Catholic clique, busy, subtle, and exclusive, holding the fort against all unbelievers and assisting each other with extreme unction … They would bear watching – just as, for another reason, Crossley would bear watching.
For here was Crossley, the human windsock, trying to do a delicate initial hatchet job on Andrew Macmillan … He turned abruptly from the general back to the particular: back to Pharamaul.
For the first time he looked directly at Crossley. ‘I think,’ he said, coldly, ‘that it’s much too early to form a considered judgement about Macmillan, or about affairs in Pharamaul generally. We should rather await developments … Personally, at this stage, I should say that Andrew has done pretty well, in extremely trying circumstances.’
Crossley, feeling the cold draught playing round his exposed flank, covered up with an expert twist. ‘Things are certainly difficult enough,’ he agreed deferentially.
‘They’re much more difficult than either Parliament or the Press realizes.’ Godbold, having administered what was, for him, a considerable rocket, relaxed, placing his hands together, staring straight at the problem instead of at Crossley. ‘We know that things are serious, but they don’t look particularly serious from England – scarcely serious enough to warrant our keeping Dinamaula out of Gamate, certainly not serious enough for what we might have to do, in the future. But that is not going to prevent us taking appropriate measures.’
Crossley, in spite of a well-developed self-control, swallowed uncertainly. He did not like the prospect before him, with its developing hazards; but this was not the moment to say so. Indeed, with Godbold in his present mood, such a moment might never come again … After a pause, he asked: ‘What have you in mind, sir?’
Godbold knew exactly what Crossley was thinking, at that instant, and the extent of his professional terror. Firmly he withstood the temptation of piling it on too thick.
‘If things get much worse in Pharamaul,’ he answered judiciously, ‘we may have to do one, or all, of three things. We may have to proclaim martial law. We may have to bring in troops from East Africa. And we may have to remove Dinamaula altogether.’
‘Remove?’
‘Into exile,’ said Godbold curtly. ‘If Dinamaula is the centre of disturbance and revolt in Pharamaul, then Dinamaula himself must go.’
‘Sir,’ said Crossley, stoutly, ‘that would have a terribly bad effect.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ agreed the Permanent Under-Secretary. ‘It would make us very unpopular indeed, nearly all the way round the world …’ He sat up suddenly, put his elbows on the leather-topped desk, and looked up at Crossley under massive lowered brows. He wanted to say ‘Now hear this!’ on the American naval model … ‘I think we’d better take it as axiomatic that, until the rules are changed, it’s our job to maintain order in Pharamaul. That means that we have a clear duty of government, however unpopular we become in the process. Very well, then – we’ll govern!’
He waited for comment from Crossley, but there was none.
‘That being so,’ Godbold went on after a moment, ‘I think we’ll give pretty short answers to those three Parliamentary questions.’ He held out his hand, and Crossley passed him the single sheet of notes. ‘“How long are we going to keep Dinamaula away from Gamate?”’ he read out briskly. ‘As long as is considered necessary, for the maintenance of public order … “When will he be proclaimed chief?” This is not an appropriate moment to forecast the date of such a development … “How long will the state of emergency continue?” I would refer the hon. member to my answer to the first question.’
Crossley, who had been noting down, in shorthand, the replies, looked up as Godbold finished speaking. He was secretly appalled by the curtness of the replies, but this was one tide which he was not, at that moment, prepared to stem. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘there are bound to be a lot of supplementaries.’
Godbold smiled, suddenly in firm good humour. ‘You ask the supplementaries,’ he said jovially. ‘I’ll answer anything you like.’
But when Crossley had gone, with a markedly harassed expression and three pages of close-packed notes, Godbold found his cheerful mood melting into anxiety again. He had many other preoccupations that evening, as he had on every other evening of his life; but Pharamaul was the most complex of all, and the most threatening, and it affected him like a nerve pain, deep-seated and ominous. He was not daunted by the problem, in the sense that Crossley was daunted: he feared, not a blight on his career, but an inability to form a series of cast-iron, patently correct judgements, and to carry them through to the end.
Crossley had annoyed him, and Godbold in his turn had enjoyed administering a rebuke; but basically Crossley was quite right to be worried, fully entitled to oppose his view on this (and any other) policy matter, and eminently correct in his forecast of awkward supplementary questions to come, forty-eight hours ahead, in Parliament.
Pharamaul, as public and private reaction had already shown, held all the seeds of a furious Parliamentary row. The coming Question Time, and the curt, offhand answers he had dictated for his Minister, Lord Lorde, might well lead to an adjournment of the House, and a full-scale debate – unless Lord Lorde achieved an unusual level of firmness and competence. Godbold acknowledged to himself that the dictated replies were risky. But they were morally essential, and therefore had to be made. All that mattered was the manner of their delivery. Somehow he had to find a way, for the nth time, to stiffen the sinews of that forlorn old hop pole, the Secretary of State for the Scheduled Territories Office.
But even so, a debate, by itself, need not greatly matter: the Scheduled Territories Office had plenty of friends in the House of Commons, as well as such sniping critics as Emrys Price-Canning, and bumbling inquirers like Major the Hon. George Bellows. The outcome of such a debate, however, if it took a wrong turning, could be disastrous.
One possible outcome – the very worst – might be a reversal of policy in Pharamaul, with Dinamaula restored to the chieftainship, and red faces all round. That, he himself would fight to the last ditch, and would galvanize Lord Lorde to fight also. Another might be the usual feeble kind of self-inflicted stalemate: Dinamaula would be allowed to return (though hedged about with complex and unworkable safeguards), if within a certain time (say, six months) the level of crime, public violence, and provocation in Pharamaul (as calculated from police records) had not risen above an agreed percentage of an index figure to be determined by bi-partisan arbitration – October, 1947, for example.
That would be a compromise, straying near the lunatic fringe of administration. Across the margin of that fringe, there lay a third, horrific possibility – the despatch of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to Pharamaul itself.
The Permanent Under-Secretary, with thirty-five years of public service behind him, could not fail to have the liveliest and most morbid memories of all Commissions of Inquiry. He had indeed, as a much younger man, served as rapporteur on two or three of them; he remembered them only as time-wasting, and wholly ineffective. Of others which he recalled, on the many occasions when Parliament, wishing to shirk an issue or postpone a decision, had used this shoddy weapon of disengagement, there had scarcely been one which did what it was presumably designed to do – observe the facts, hear the evidence, reach a conclusion, and present it in such a way that no body of honest men could avoid implementing it forthwith.
In the event, Commissions of Inquiry always deteriorated into a racket, an exercise of Olympian detachment, a high-level jaunt, or a farce. It depended on the people involved, and the people involved were usually of an identically dismal quality – busybodies, crusaders, pompous pro-consuls, men with so much time to spare that they should automatically have been suspect, on that account alone.
He remembered, in particular, a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry which had gone out, under the aegis of the Scheduled Territories Office, a couple of years before. It had been a three-man commission, despatched to determine the rights and wrongs of an offshore fisheries dispute affecting various parts of British East Africa.
The three men involved had been a Conservative MP, an Oxford don of pronounced left-wing views, and a retired judge notorious for his erratic obiter dicta from the Bench. It would be an understatement to say that they made an ill-assorted trio; indeed, they were not on speaking terms, even before they sailed from Southampton.
On arrival, the judge, a greedy octogenarian, had succumbed almost immediately to ptomaine poisoning – from fish, naturally – and had been shipped home, never to be replaced. The Conservative MP, an old Etonian, spent much of his time deep in the interior – shooting big game, reading old copies of Esquire, and attending consular cocktail parties; subsequently he broke his arm playing squash rackets, lost all his notes in a sandstorm, and refused to greet the Oxford don, on the only public occasion when they were billed to appear together.
The latter, deeply concerned with the interior melancholy of the underdog, fraternized with the natives to such an explicit degree that the local authorities were plagued by real and fancied paternity suits for many months afterwards; he got drunk, made inflammatory speeches, and (as a climax) swept off his solar topee at a multiracial Government House reception and hurled it at his fellow Commissioner, when the latter, mounting the platform, turned his back upon him.
The missile had described a rare, triumphant arc before it knocked its quarry senseless, under a frieze of Union Jacks.
The Commissioners’ report, after two years, was still awaited. It was safe to say that the only thing to emerge from that particular Commission of Inquiry was a conviction, in all the territories concerned, that the white man was entirely, entertainingly, and unquestionably mad.
The same sort of thing, in one degree or another, might happen in Pharamaul; it would bring, to a country and a people already distraught, a final ruinous touch of confusion. It must be avoided, at all costs.
It all depended, for good or ill, on the Secretary of State, Lord Lorde.