In the lounge of the Pharamaul Club, a row was under discussion, as it had been for many days past. It was a very special row – in fact, there had been nothing like it, in scope and fury, since the Ladies’ Annexe row that had split the club from top to bottom in 1933. Indeed, in the opinion of some of the older members, this was really a bigger row than the Ladies’ Annexe row, because it involved so many people who were on the Committee, including Twotty Wotherspoon, the chairman of the House Committee itself.
Basically, as everyone knew by now, it was a row between Twotty Wotherspoon and Splinter Woodcock. But of course, there was a lot more to it than that. Anyone who knew anything about the inner workings of the Pharamaul Club knew that it went a lot deeper … It had been boiling up for a long time, and it was going to spread. In fact, already the women were taking a hand in it. Mrs Wotherspoon had hinted that she was going to boycott the tennis finals. The Woodcock girl was talking about a club referendum (there had only been one, in the whole history of the club since 1892). Mrs Burlinghame had actually torn a page out of the ladies’ Suggestion Book. There was going to be another first-class row about that.
And Binkie Buchanan, whose car had been involved in the original argument, had threatened to resign altogether – from everything.
Tulbach Browne, waiting in one corner of the crowded lounge for Lou Strogoff, the American consul, to join him for a pre-lunch drink, listened to the discussion with irritated attention. He was quite unable to determine what it was all about, even after half-an-hour’s close eavesdropping; occasionally he turned his head, to identify a new speaker, but the new speaker never seemed to have anything new to say. Tulbach Browne surveyed them all with spiteful contempt. Just you wait, he thought, as he had thought when he had been with the Governor. Just you wait – I’ll give you something to talk about …
‘Splinter Woodcock was wrong.’
‘Depends how you look at it, old boy.’
‘He shouldn’t have said it in the first place.’
‘Twotty Wotherspoon shouldn’t have said what he said.’
‘Depends how you look at it.’
‘Binkie Buchanan has a perfect right to park his car wherever he wants to.’
‘Except blocking the chairman’s enclosure.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘But there was no need for Twotty to take a strong line. This is a club, after all.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘There’s too much of that sort of thing.’
‘But you’ve got to have rules.’
‘I still say Splinter Woodcock was wrong.’
‘Besides, going back to the original argument, what does it really matter if someone lights a cigarette before half past one at lunchtime? No one ever bothers about that nowadays.’
‘A lot of people don’t like cigarette smoke all over their lunch. I don’t, for one.’
‘If the House Committee is appealed to, they have to stick to the rules.’
‘But this is a club. Not a bloody girls’ school.’
‘Well, of course, if you’re going to take that line, old man.’
‘What other line is there to take?’
‘Binkie Buchanan’s car uses up too much room, anyway.’
‘For Christ’s sake, there’s no law against a club member having a Rolls-Royce! Not yet, anyway.’
‘Pity he doesn’t keep it properly clean, though.’
‘You’ve got a point there, old boy. There’s nothing I like less than a dirty Rolls.’
‘The point is that the rules are made to be obeyed.’
‘Or scrubbed out, and rewritten altogether.’
‘I say, old boy, steady on!’
‘Sounds a bit bolshy to me.’
‘No, I think he’s got a point there.’
‘We wouldn’t have had any of this, if Twotty hadn’t taken such a strong line in the first place.’
‘What else could he do?’
‘I’d like to tell you in detail.’
‘Steady on, old man!’
‘I still say Splinter Woodcock was wrong.’
It was something of a relief when Lou Strogoff arrived.
They had not met for some weeks, and Tulbach Browne was curious to know how the other man would greet him; in the intervening time, things had moved on in Pharamaul, and the position of special correspondent to the Daily Thresh had acquired a particular local significance, the sort of thing likely to arouse strong feelings among most of the white population of the island. Indeed, Tulbach Browne had heard a rumour, a few days earlier, that he was to be asked to resign his temporary membership of the Pharamaul Club, because of what he had written about the Governor. Perhaps the idea had been lost in the later Twotty-Wotherspoon-Splinter-Woodcock-Binkie-Buchanan holocaust.
But in any case, it was somewhat disconcerting that Lou Strogoff made no mention of any of these things, and that his manner when they met was as bland, courteous, and noncommittal as ever. Their talk continued for some minutes before Tulbach Browne felt constrained to bring the question up.
‘I had quite a time in Gamate,’ he remarked cheerfully, bridging a pause in their conversation. ‘There was a fantastic incident at the hotel there.’
‘I read your article,’ said Lou Strogoff, in much the same tone as the Governor had used, earlier that morning.
‘Weren’t you surprised?’ asked Tulbach Browne.
‘I’ve been to Gamate before,’ answered Lou Strogoff gravely. ‘I know the set-up there.’
‘But you don’t agree with it, surely?’
‘I agree with people making their own rules, and abiding by them, as long as they don’t hurt other people. That’s my brand of democracy.’
‘But there’s a colour bar!’ said Tulbach Browne disgustedly.
‘You can call it that,’ agreed Lou Strogoff. ‘It’s not the only one in the world. In this case, it means nothing worse than that the white people in Gamate want to drink, and meet each other, in their own surroundings. Why shouldn’t they? It’s something you yourself do every day in London.’
‘I drink in a Fleet Street pub,’ said Tulbach Browne stoutly. ‘Anyone can come in there, as long as he’s got the price of a pint of beer.’
Lou Strogoff sipping his Manhattan, cocked an eye at him. ‘Any negroes come in?’
‘One or two.’
‘Suppose it was one or two hundred. Suppose you and the city editor of the Daily Thresh were the only white men who could ever find room to have a drink.’
‘It’s not that sort of pub,’ said Tulbach Browne sulkily.
‘It’s not that sort of world,’ corrected Lou Strogoff. ‘Land’s sakes, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, in wanting to mix with your own kin!’
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of, in wanting to break down the colour bar system, either.’
Lou Strogoff nodded, eminently reasonable. ‘Sure thing … No one’s stopping you, Mr Browne. You can bring negroes into your Fleet Street pub, as many as you like. And you can go and drink in lots of negro nightclubs in New York or Paris – if they want to let you in. Some of them don’t, you know … What you can’t do is take a negro into the Gamate Hotel, because the majority there is against you. Equally, what you can’t do is have dinner at the Periscope Grill up in Harlem, because the majority is against you there also.’
‘What sort of a dive is that?’ asked Tulbach Browne contemptuously.
‘Very select,’ answered Lou Strogoff dryly. ‘The only white man allowed in is the man who collects the trash. You can’t park within a hundred yards of it, unless you’ve got a great big yellow fishtail Cadillac convertible … I can tell you, it’s right outside my income bracket.’
Tulbach Browne smiled briefly and irritably, no longer enjoying the conversation, or considering it worth pursuing. That was the worst thing about Lou Strogoff, and all other expatriate Americans – and expatriate Englishmen, for that matter: they lost sight of the fundamental truths, they could settle down quite happily in a home-made paradise served by unlimited cheap black labour; they seemed to think that they had a right to enjoy themselves, no matter how much that right clashed with accepted opinion in their own homeland, no matter how dated, how reactionary that enjoyment was … He swallowed his drink with an air of dismissal, and made as if to stand up.
‘How about lunch?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a story to file, some time this afternoon.’
Lou Strogoff, courteous as ever, rose to his feet. ‘Certainly,’ he agreed. ‘Now that you remind me, I’ve got a whole raft of papers, waiting for me back at the office … What’s your latest story?’
Tulbach Browne smiled thinly, preceding him into the dining-room. ‘The best one yet,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘Though I suppose you would call it sensational, or unscrupulous, or something like that.’
‘It sounds very interesting,’ said Strogoff, without great attention. He was examining the stacked rows of cheeses, ranging from Stilton to Port Salut, on the centre table, and looking forward to the part of his lunch that he chiefly enjoyed.
‘I hope you’ll think so … It goes off this afternoon, anyway. And after that I’ve got a date with the editor of the Times of Pharamaul.’