In Shebiya, and Gamate, and Port Victoria, all was now very quiet. Visitors, observers, curiosity-seekers – all were gone; in their place, soldiers stood on guard, and officials ruled a silent people. It was not the silence of ill-omen, but the silence of guilt and second thoughts. The tide of violence had ebbed again, leaving the wreckage to be sorted by the dull professionals.
The ebb bore away the Pressmen as well; martial law had made it a very meagre dish for them, and no one seemed inclined to improve the fare at all. With scarcely a pause to pen a round-up word-picture of this rape committed on the prostrate body of Pharamaul, they took off for other beds and other battlegrounds.
John Raper of the Globe had already gone, leaving a decoy suitcase and an unpaid bill at the Hotel Bristol, and a note for Anthea which read: ‘Darling, Wonderful while it lasted. See you one day, I hope.’ Little did he know … Clandestine Lebourget and Noblesse O’Toole had also left, for New York via Paris, where they planned to do a series illustrating all aspects of French decadence. Pikkie Joubert was back in South Africa, reporting Rugby football matches, routine burglary, and minor outbursts of rape and murder in the native locations.
Axel Hallmarck of Clang received one of Clang’s cablegrams, signed by its foreign editor: ‘Return forthwith,’ it read. ‘Meet me lunch Antonellis one pm Thursday.’
It was, he knew, the axe. Clang’s editorial lunches were in three tiers; at ‘21’, at Toots Shor’s, and at Antonelli’s. ‘21’ meant that you were celebrating a promotion. At Toots Shor’s, you were holding your own, subject to an inspection and a pep-talk. Antonelli’s, a glorified spaghetti joint on East 35th Street, was where you discussed your severance pay. There were no other gradations.
Father Hawthorne also tore himself away, from a country which (as he admitted on leaving) had grown very dear to him. But rumour had reached him from a totally reliable source of yet another diabolical injustice rampant within the Commonwealth, and he embarked hotfoot, cassock flying, to bring it under the microscope of world opinion.
This time, alas, it was in British Columbia, where hard-faced Canadian uranium barons were now known to be holding their workers in miserable peonage, aided by union spies, mounted Cossacks in red coats (these had actually been observed), and the usual loathsome democratic double-talk. By courtesy of Trans-Canada Airlines and the United Front for World Decency, he galloped to the rescue.