David walked back with Aidan Purves-Brownrigg, downhill into Port Victoria. It was an easy half-mile, with the curve of the bay on their left hand, and the lights of the harbour and the town to draw them on. The chief heat of the day was gone, but the night air still hung languidly. Purves-Brownrigg was making for his flat, David for Port Victoria’s run-down, crumbling Hotel Bristol, where he would have to stay for at least a week before he could move into something more permanent.
Feeling the need for fresh air, they had refused two lifts on their way home – in Captain Simpson’s old and raucous Bentley, and in the Stevens’ family-size Austin. David Bracken hoped that he was not thereby jeopardizing his reputation: Pharamaul was, obviously, a small world. But he felt, in his easy after-dinner mood, that Nicole Steuart might be right about Purves-Brownrigg. When all was said about him, he was lively and entertaining company.
As they strolled downhill, along the dusty, unlit coast road that led to town, Purves-Brownrigg disposed of their late dinner companions, with an unfaltering malice that David knew very well would, in other circumstances, have been applied just as readily to himself. He did not mind.
‘I like the old gentleman,’ said Purves-Brownrigg. (It was his invariable term for the Governor.) ‘He’s getting a bit past it, of course: there’ll be a large blond wig for him in the diplomatic bag, any time now … You wouldn’t think, to look at him, that he once defied the mob in Bengal – not just mowing them down, like that odious General Dyer, but waving his stick, like Gordon at Khartoum, till they all just melted away.’
‘I’ve never heard the details of that.’
‘Give the old gentleman time,’ said Purves-Brownrigg. ‘You’ll hear them … The Governess is the end, of course – so good-hearted and forceful and boring, plodding on and on like arsenic and old lace without the arsenic. And that Mrs Simpson! … What those sailors have to put up with! It’ll be a happy release when the gallant captain is made into an admiral, and she can relax … But then, I suppose, she’ll want to joust with the Mountbattens.’
‘Will Simpson be made an admiral?’
‘They’ve got to keep their numbers up … Actually he’s a rather pathetic old party – I like him. His great-great-uncle was one of Nelson’s captains, and my dear he dreams of action the whole time. And all the action he gets is Mrs Simpson.’
‘Why do we have a naval aide, anyway?’
‘It’s lost in the mists of time,’ said Purves-Brownrigg. ‘But Pharamaul used to be a strategic place – I suppose it still is, with those criminal South Africans beating their chests – and so the dear Lords of the Admiralty gave it a permanent naval background. It’s better than those awful soldiers with bare knees, anyway.’
They were nearing the town now: the air took on a thicker, brinier smell: the lights multiplied, the heat grew oppressive again: the last trams – pride of Port Victoria since 1902 – ground their way reverberatingly towards the terminus.
‘What about the Stevens?’ asked David.
‘Pathetic, aren’t they? He’s so hard-working, it makes me ill to watch him. And all those filthy children – four of them, all wearing each other’s cast-off clothes. My dear, I swear to you there’s one pair of khaki shorts that’s been passing from hand to hand for seven years. And what she looks like, poor soul – that hairdo is obviously straight out of the Kennel Club Magazine – do this with your wire-haired terrier, and win first prize.’
‘You really are a bastard,’ said David, without rancour, almost admiringly. ‘People can’t help it if they’re poor and ugly.’
‘They can’t help it,’ agreed Purves-Brownrigg. ‘But it should all be hidden away … And then there’s that girl …’
‘The daughter?’
‘The monster … What you two were doing at dinner, I’d hate to set down in print. I didn’t dare look under the table. She might have been holding anything … She’s really illegal!’
‘She seemed a little unstable,’ said David.
‘Anthea will end up in jail,’ said Purves-Brownrigg decisively. ‘I can just see it happening … My dear, she devours men – never gives them a moment’s peace. The man whose place you’ve taken – a great beefy athlete of a man – can’t remember his name–’
‘Morrison.’
‘Yes, Morrison. Scottish. You’d have thought he had everything, as far as Anthea was concerned: he weighed about two hundred pounds, he had muscles like iron bands, he had a wife who was ill all the time … We all hoped he was just the thing, and would wind up with a CBE, if not a knighthood.’
‘What happened?’
‘My dear, he had to go to hospital … He used to come into the office every morning, positively tottering with fatigue, and then the phone would ring, and he’d have to crawl across to Government House again … In the end he was shipped out with the most chronic prostate trouble … I believe they’ve given him three years in London to recuperate.’
‘What goes on now? She must be lonely.’
‘Oh, we all do our bit.’ Purves-Brownrigg grinned suddenly. ‘Even me … But I gather you’ve been elected. Truly, I gave a sigh of relief when you walked in this morning. At least you can be on call for public holidays.’
David laughed. ‘That’s not what I came out for.’
‘Little you know … There’ll be a long letter for you in the morning, all about her glands.’
Now they were in downtown Port Victoria itself: the cobbled streets were full of late traffic, the sidewalks were crowded. Men – black men and white – lurched out of taverns, huddled into doorways, pursued a level course for home. There were shops – fly-blown shops with Coca-Cola and stale buns, shoddy shops with cheap clothing, leather belts, checked caps, smarter shops with trunks and nylon underclothes. There was a set of traffic lights. There was a flickering green sign saying: ‘Hotel Bristol. Lounge Bar. Open All Night.’
‘This is your hovel,’ said Purves-Brownrigg. ‘I hope you’re fixed up with something else.’
‘Next week, probably,’ answered David. ‘I’m hoping to get a flat halfway up the hill, overlooking the harbour.’
‘Sounds like Broadlands,’ said Purves-Brownrigg.
‘It is,’ said David. ‘What’s the form?’
‘All right,’ said Purves-Brownrigg. ‘A bit antiseptic. They saved plenty of money on the decorations. But you’ll be travelling about a good deal, anyway.’
‘I start next week. Gamate first, and then right on up to Shebiya.’
‘You might enjoy it.’ Purves-Brownrigg, slowing down for their farewell, looked at him sideways. Now he was suddenly less flippant, less affected. ‘Don’t be disappointed,’ he said.
‘In what?’
‘In us. We can’t have looked much, at that bloody dinner. But the thing works. Pharamaul is a funny country. Hot, backward, dull. In some moods, I could stamp on it, blot it out, throw it away with the cigarette ends and the bottletops. But it grows on you. All we do is run it as best we can.’
‘I’m not disappointed,’ said David Bracken, untruthfully.
‘The thing works,’ Purves-Brownrigg repeated. ‘It’s a second-rate secretariat, but it covers the ground … This isn’t Paris or Washington, after all … I think you’ll do all right here. The ladies will tear you to ribbons, of course, but you mustn’t mind that.’
‘What ladies?’ asked David, confused.
‘The LADIES. They meet every morning for tea, and bitch madly about everything. There’s really nothing else for them to do – except for Anthea Vere-Toombs, and she does it all the time. But you mustn’t mind it if several odious remarks find their way back to you.’
‘Are they all like that?’
Purves-Brownrigg, holding out his hand, laughed suddenly. ‘Oh, no! She’s all right. Pretty, too … Nicole’s a lovely name, don’t you think?’