When he hung up, David did not immediately sit down. Instead, he stood in the middle of the shabby sitting-room, cherishing his half-empty glass in his hand, enjoying his private stillness. He felt possessed by a secret exhilaration; it was partly whisky, as he well knew, partly the result of Aidan’s telephone call. For the first time he had been given something important to do, not because he was the only available man, or because he was the next in line, the man at the near end of the bench – but because Authority had picked him out as the appropriate choice.
Once or twice, the same thing had happened during the war (he had won his MC on an identical basis of selection, for a daring, coast-hopping raid along the Italian shoreline near Salerno); but it was the first time it had happened to him on the dustier shoreline of civil life.
So they wanted him to run a Press conference in Gamate, at this crucial moment? By God, he’d run one fit to knock their eye out!
He tossed off the second half of the glass of whisky, and immediately poured himself a refill from the chipped decanter. He had a momentary qualm about the likelihood of a hangover next morning, but the thought passed swiftly. Nothing could stop him now; if necessary, he could run a Press conference from inside an iron lung.
He sat down, relaxed, happy, and gave himself to blossoming thought. Sometimes he spoke aloud, and when he did so, he spoke to Nicole.
On the telephone, he had said that it was time to strike a blow for their own side, and now the thought returned, strongly buttressed by the prospect of action on the morrow. He was to be given the chance, after weeks of frustration, and official inaction, and watching the Press outrun the best efforts of himself and his friends, by many a weary country mile. The thing couldn’t be reversed at a single stroke, but it could be reversed, on a long-term basis. Tomorrow the foundation would be laid, the beginning of the long haul. And he had been chosen to make that beginning.
To hell with them all, anyway! (– now the whisky spoke, potent and rousing). Who were they, and why should he or anyone else be afraid of them? They weren’t supermen, they weren’t God Almighty, they couldn’t dictate the course of events … They were just chaps with pencils and typewriters, who chanced to have the public ear. They’d made their mark on Pharamaul, because no one had dared to withstand them, no one had been smart enough to foresee their tactics, and forestall them. But tomorrow …
‘Be with me, Nicole,’ he said aloud. It was not a prayer, it was an invitation, formally proffered, to some notable entertainment. He tipped his glass, and the whisky flowed anew, crude and mellow at the same time. ‘I want you to be proud of me, I want to deserve you … I have grown up a bit in the last few months … I have changed, and I think it’s for the better.’
Whisky or no whisky, it seemed undeniably true at that moment. On the wavering edge of drunkenness, he surveyed the curious past and the crystal-clear present. He had come to the Island with nothing much to show for the vanished years – not much more than a Military Cross, a dislike of pansies, and a wish to liberate the blacks … Where was he now? He still had the MC – honestly earned; but Aidan had shown him something new about homosexuals – their humorous, intuitive understanding, their devotion, their capacity to entertain – and already he realized that most blacks, in Pharamaul at least, were not nearly ready for liberation, and might indeed be destroyed by it.
‘Must remember to say that tomorrow,’ he muttered vaguely. He looked up at the tall grandfather clock at the other end of the room. ‘Today, that is … Be with me, Nicole. I’ve got a hell of a job to do.’
His thoughts strayed further, on this theme of work to be done. Andrew Macmillan was forever dead – the forlorn room round him echoed the recollection. Something precious in Pharamaul had died with him. Now there was a vacuum, crying out to be filled. Perhaps, in twenty years, he could come to fill it himself. He wanted nothing better than to be allowed to do that … But already, today, the vacuum gaped in readiness for assuagement. On one small part of it, he could start to work himself: The Press part, the information part, the fair-dealing, honest-effort part. He could do it, because he felt so strongly about it. Indeed, what was he afraid of?
‘I’m afraid of making a fool of myself,’ he told the room, and Nicole. ‘It boils down to that … But that’s not going to stop me. I’ve got some things to say, and I’ll say them … For you, and for Andrew … Then I’ll stay here, and work very hard, and be the District Commissioner, and then the Resident Commissioner … As long as you’ll be with me. Both of you. You and Andrew. You and Nicole.’
It was time to go to bed. The whisky was finished, and his thoughts were finished, and he had told Nicole enough, for one evening … When, presently, David fell asleep in the armchair, he dreamed of Nicole; but it was an innocent dream, not like the dreams of other nights, the lovemaking, the warm and shaking congress of their bodies. He was addressing a crowd, and she was watching him, and smiling. He was acquitting himself well, and Nicole was pleased.