Next stop, the Gamate Hotel – a likely fishing ground for a man whose beckoning smile and baited welcome concealed so delicately the barb of the hook … Tulbach Browne found himself at home in the Gamate Hotel, as he had been at home in countless other hotels, all the way across the world; before very long, he was the ideal stranger in the bar – hail-fellow with newcomers, ready with drinks all round, making friends as another man might make slick, contriving shadows on the wall. But beneath the surface, he was watchful all the time, and from at least three people he drew a notable dividend towards the contribution he was seeking in Pharamaul.
First there was David Bracken, on his way down from Shebiya, spending by chance a single evening in Gamate. David knew Tulbach Browne well by reputation; aware of what he was doing, he was wary with the other man, taking great care to give him no opening. But his care did not save him from providing Tulbach Browne with one spectacular, infinitely quotable phrase.
They had been talking, naturally, of Shebiya, and the way it was run, and the simple near-savagery that marked its walled-up way of life. David described the Ronalds, and the happiness they obviously found in their strange home, and the inconclusive visit to Gotwela. The latter, he commented, was not a reassuring figure.
‘What’s he really like?’ asked Tulbach Browne. ‘He’s the local chief, isn’t he?’
Round them the bar was, as usual, noisy and full of business. Fellows, the landlord, pushed out the drinks with a will, and the men in their drab, dusty khaki, and the women in long-accustomed print, gossiped and drank and stared. Footsteps slurred on the rough boards, laughter rose high at the bar counter; faces now familiar to David – the Forsdicks, Llewellyn, Captain Crump who was still his cheerful chauffeur, the pretty nurses from the hospital – swam successively into view, then faded again. He concentrated, with a slight effort, on what Tulbach Browne was saying.
‘Gotwela’s the local chief,’ David answered, ‘in a slightly undercover way. He rules the U-Maulas. They’re a breakaway tribe. The Maulas here, of course, don’t really recognize them as a subdivision, but they don’t do anything about it. We work with Gotwela. It seems to be effective.’
‘It’s a compromise, then?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And Gotwela himself?’
‘Large. Tough. Not exactly civilized.’
Tulbach Browne smiled. ‘You make him sound a rather odd character.’
‘He’s all that,’ agreed David carelessly. ‘In fact, when you first meet him, he’s like something out of the zoo.’
Then, also in the Gamate bar, there was George Forsdick: Forsdick (by ill-chance) at his most unreliable, Forsdick at seven o’clock in the evening, flushed with whisky, hating his wife, eyeing the girls: Forsdick, for better or worse the District Commissioner.
‘The trouble with you chaps,’ said Forsdick, sticking a solid thumb into Tulbach Browne’s brittle chest, ‘is that you write such a lot of tripe. I expect you’re paid damn’ well for it,’ he continued, handsomely, slurringly, ‘but that doesn’t cut much ice with us chaps on the spot. We know the sort of game you’re playing.’
‘What game is that?’ Tulbach Browne inquired.
‘Looking for a scandal. Writing a lot of tripe.’
‘Dear me,’ observed Tulbach Browne pleasantly, ‘you don’t seem to like the Press.’
Forsdick’s thumb advanced again. ‘You can say that again.’ He roared with sudden laughter, spilling his drink. ‘That’s what the Yanks say. You can say that again.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Tulbach Browne, with deceptive patience.
‘Christ!’ exclaimed Forsdick. ‘I thought you chaps knew everything.’
‘Oh no,’ said Tulbach Browne.
‘Then why do you do it?’ asked Forsdick belligerently.
‘Do what?’
‘Write a lot of tripe?’
‘I don’t agree that we do.’
‘You wrote a lot of tripe about Dinamaula.’ The thumb came out again, like the classic blunt instrument of all stories of violence. ‘You wrote a lot of tripe about Andrew Macmillan. You can’t deny it.’
‘I do deny it,’ said Tulbach Browne, though without emphasis.
‘One of the best fellows in the world,’ continued Forsdick, unheeding, ‘and you go and write a lot of tripe about him … Have a drink,’ he commanded, ‘and try and be a good chap. In the future. Just by way of a change.’
‘Nothing more for me, thanks,’ said Tulbach Browne.
‘Try and be a good chap,’ Forsdick persisted. ‘It’s not really difficult. Just stop writing a lot of tripe.’
‘Aren’t you the District Commissioner?’ asked Tulbach Browne, closing in.
‘You know bloody well I am,’ said Forsdick. ‘I may not get a lot of money for it. But I don’t write tripe.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘Try and be a good chap,’ Forsdick repeated.
‘You’re in charge here?’ asked Tulbach Browne.
‘Yes. And don’t write a lot of tripe about me. It’ll get you nowhere.’
‘I don’t want to get anywhere.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Forsdick, bellowing with laughter again, ‘because you’re not getting anywhere.’
‘You don’t like the Press?’
‘Not my cup of tea.’
‘What about Dinamaula?’
‘Dinamaula,’ answered Forsdick, with rare, unfortunate, distinct enunciation, ‘is getting too big for his boots.’ Then, for the last time, his thumb jabbed in Tulbach Browne’s breastbone. ‘In the interests of truth,’ he said, ‘that’s not quite true.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ said Forsdick, struggling with sudden mountainous laughter again, ‘he doesn’t wear boots … So if you’re writing some more tripe about Dinamaula, don’t mention boots … Just a barefoot boy,’ he said, with a kind of drunken poetry in his voice, ‘getting too big for the boots he hasn’t got.’
‘Interesting,’ said Tulbach Browne.
‘Fascinating … Have another drink.’
‘Nothing more,’ said Tulbach Browne, ‘for me.’
Looking back on it – as Tulbach Browne did, with rare delight, many times afterwards – it seemed to him that it was that moment of that evening in the Gamate Hotel which somehow gave the signal for everything in Pharamaul to go wonderfully, irrevocably wrong. Hitherto – again in retrospect – he had been playing with the story, fiddling about, merely amusing himself; he had been able to provoke Dinamaula a little, on the plane to Port Victoria, he had enjoyed some easy, knock-down fun with the Governor, and the rest of the well bred turnip-heads at the Pharamaul Club; he had found it possible to prick Andrew Macmillan into an encouraging display of indiscretion.
But now, as he stood at ease in the bar, these preliminary swings regained their modest perspective, and he realized that there was much more to come, and the path of history seemed suddenly to take a new, ecstatic, and disgusting turn. Like a gourmet of deeply perverted taste, who could enjoy only entrails and excrement, Tulbach Browne sniffed the air of harlotry, drawing deep down into his lungs a beloved corruption. He knew, with true instinct, that the story he had come to find was now very near to him.
David Bracken had given him a superbly quotable phrase; Forsdick, less than sober, had left him ample room for attack. Soon he would see Dinamaula, and Dinamaula, beyond doubt, would crown with degraded spices this stinking dish.
He looked about him, seeking a bridge between promise and outcome, and he found it in Oosthuizen, Oosthuizen the farmer, who was nearest to him as Forsdick turned away.
They had already been introduced. ‘So you’re a farmer,’ said Tulbach Browne, picking it up at random. ‘Must be interesting. How many people do you have working for you?’
‘About five hundred.’ Oosthuizen had spent some time in the bar already, but, as with most big men, alcohol took a very slow toll of his senses. The seven glasses of beer he had drunk had induced no more than a careless contentment. He leant against the bar counter, his blond head and enormous frame jutting like a lighthouse from some friendly promontory. ‘That is, including the women and the klonkies.’
‘The what?’
‘The kids. They do a good day’s work too, leading the plough-oxen or running errands.’
‘What do you pay them for that?’
Oosthuizen stared, confronted by total ignorance. ‘Man, you must be crazy! They live on my land, they eat my mealies. I don’t have to pay them.’
‘Sounds like the feudal system,’ said Tulbach Browne.
‘Yes,’ said Oosthuizen, ‘and a bloody good system too!’
Fellows, the landlord who had been a boxer, pushed a drink across the counter, and said: ‘Compliments of the District Commissioner.’
‘Thanks,’ said Tulbach Browne automatically, his hand curling round the glass. He looked negligently about the room. ‘Pretty crowded tonight … Does Dinamaula ever come in here?’
‘Dinamaula?’ repeated Oosthuizen, uncomprehendingly.
‘The new chief … He’s been in Gamate quite a few days.’
‘He doesn’t come in here,’ said Fellows simply.
‘Why not?’
Fellows shrugged. ‘He just doesn’t, that’s all. He can come round to the hatch at the side door, any time he likes, and I’ll serve him, quick enough. Beer, brandy, whatever he wants. The DC has said that’s all right.’
‘But why not in here?’ persisted Tulbach Browne.
‘Do you want him in here?’ asked Oosthuizen, with emphasis. ‘All chums together, eh?’
‘That’s not the point,’ answered Tulbach Browne. ‘Why shouldn’t he come in here, if he feels like it? This is British territory, isn’t it? There’s no colour bar. Why shouldn’t he drink with us?’
‘It’s not the way things are done here, that’s all,’ said Fellows. He was ill at ease, swabbing the bar heavily without looking at it, aware of a new, uncomfortable element within touching distance. ‘This bar is reserved for white people. Liquor isn’t sold to blacks, anyway, though the Regents can have what they want. That’s the way it’s done in Gamate.’
‘But it means there’s a colour bar,’ insisted Tulbach Browne.
‘All right,’ said Oosthuizen, suddenly much larger and nearer. ‘It means there’s a colour bar. What the hell do you know about it? Have you ever seen a nigger with a couple of hard drinks inside him? Man, he’d have your guts to darn his socks with …’
‘I don’t like that word nigger.’
‘I don’t like that word nigger,’ Oosthuizen mimicked savagely. ‘All right, call him something else. Call him–’ he drew, laboriously, on some remembered newspaper phrase, ‘–call him a man with a slight difference of pigmentation. Know what that means? It means he’s a Maula, and Maulas don’t drink with whites in this territory. It’s not a new rule, it’s an old custom. You want to change it? Don’t change it. You’ll be starting something that someone else will have to finish.’
‘I still say,’ said Tulbach Browne patiently, ‘that in British territory, there shouldn’t be a colour bar. Dinamaula should be as free to come into this room as I am.’
‘You can’t have that,’ said Fellows stoutly. ‘And it’s no good covering it up with a lot of talk about democracy, and what they do in London. You just can’t have Dinamaula coming into the bar here, mixing with people.’
‘Isn’t Dinamaula “people”?’
‘He’s black, Mr Browne. This is a hotel for whites. He can’t come in here.’
Tulbach Browne faced him, aware of the other man’s broad shoulders, aware also of his basic simplicity. This, also, was likely material … He looked from Fellows to Oosthuizen. He was alone among large tough men, of demonstrable strength. He turned aside, smiling. To himself he murmured: ‘What’ll you bet? What’ll you bet?’ Aloud, he said, cheerfully, dismissively: ‘Time I bought us all a drink.’