Umbrella (18 page)

upstart jobbers
. Albert, scanning six of the tapes at once, announces: Cotton three per cents dearer on the Bourse than in Berlin, and the London Exchange closed four per cents dearer still . . . As he had observed the flesh-coloured mole under Phillips’s lip and sipped his own glass of the thin Rhenish wine, Albert mused, What precisely do I owe him? Now,
Phillips says: Can it bally-well be countenanced . . . his is a voice
pleased
with its own
enunciation
. . . that they will . . . will, what? I mean what conceivable methods are at their disposal? Albert clears his throat, er-hem, then goes on: They – that is to say the mill owners, sir – may consider their interests better served by putting a stop to all manufacture, reasoning that by such a demonstration of what yet lies within their control they may bring the weavers to their senses.
He paid for me initially, certainly
. . .
although once Albert was at Bancroft’s he was quickly awarded a bursary – and then won a scholarship. Phillips says, Come – and soon enough they are in the library, sunk in armchairs so deep that
intimacy
should be easier than
imposture
. Phillips has known me, Albert thinks, since I was a boy – will he always smell the Foulham on my clothes? Will he always look at me and see clotheslines, chimneypots, tu’penny Eccles cakes? As it is, while Albert’s coat may be comme il faut for the Second Division – well cut by a tailor in Swallow Street – the cuffs of his trousers
are a long way off
on the rug,
and fraying
, something probably seen plainly enough by the grandees who peer down from the library walls with
soon-to-be-cashiered
eyes. The grandees lean on marmoreal pillars, ignoring open tomes and laughing their Harrovian laughs,
A-ho-ho! A-ho-ho!
at
the upstart
. Phillips must have rung the bell because here comes another
retainer, moving from pool to pool of candlelight – no gas in the library, the hiss disturbs readers and sleepers – the facings of his jacket gilded and then not, a salver with decanter and port glasses trembling in his agèd hands. Yes, yes, put it down there . . . Phillips says brusquely, then
takes the sting off
with a florin. They have a glass, another and a third, Albert wishes
I could loosen this damn knot
. . .
meaning all his old ties. This démarche . . . Phillips’s affected jargon demands the right sort of rejoinder . . . – D’you imagine it’ll –? This is the fourth of their annual quartet of club suppers and by tradition it
passes in review
the old year, which is what Albert does, delivering pithy reports on Agadir, Stolypin, Pu Yi and Tripoli in turn, dispatches put together out of snippets of gossip, newspaper reports and some of his own methodical analysis. But what say you, Phillips
tees me up
, to the déjeuner sur l’Afrique? And Albert comes back gamely: It’s rather amusing to think of their funk when, eventually, they qui vive in the jungle . . . This Phillips enjoys a great deal: he guffaws, he
hee-haws – he must be tight!
Albert, phlegmatic, not inclined to introspection, nonetheless understands this: the cross-threading of their sensibilities, as, over time, he has been turned on his benefactor’s lathe, a machine that was fully functioning at the time of
the retreat from Kabul
. An upright Victorian, Phillips
cannot be known by me – or anyone
, he is an established quantity that over the years has remained the same mixture of the furtive and the brazen. Sitting in the far corner of Anderson’s tea rooms day after day and watching. Swapping the Morning Leader for the Daily Telegraph – but always with a paper of some sort, which, when he came in, would be a tightly rolled umbrella. At the exact point where he becomes repelled by his father’s bogusness – Sam’s beery sweats and horsy high spirits – so Albert is drawn into Mister Phillips’s
orbit
, which, because it can be
foretold
, encourages the exercise of his ward’s unusual capacity for calculation – his adding of bills with a single sweep of his bulgy grey eyes, his inability to ever neglect an order, and his capability of performing two, three . . . as many as six tasks at once. Albert’s iron grip on detail has ensured this: a meteoric rise at the Ministry, where the lofty ideals of ceilings edged with plaster laurels are belied by coal fires . . .
dirtier than these
and the schoolroom atmosphere, the clerks and computers pelting each other with bent old nibs, dried-out inkwells, chalk dusters – in short, anything to hand. In the Under-Secretary’s rooms, to which he obediently repairs, Albert may gain a little peace, spend a while looking out on the bodies of the elms – lain dormant since the heat wave – and the sago of ice that’s forming on the ornamental lakes, and the Palace newly faced in the distance. Then he must
square my shoulders
to receive more files: jute statistics from Bengal, the remarks of that
asinine
White Rajah, Nyasaland’s Border Commission – the minutes thereof. The Empire – to one burdened by its minutiae – presents
a paradoxical case, its extremities are vigorous and kicking out, while its heart is as congested as the old King’s
, what with its ports blockaded, gunboats on the Mersey . . . and the Irish,
always the Irish –!
We had some of  ’em in here . . . Phillips says, breaking in, his cigar ash having fallen and
lies prettily
in a fold of his waistcoat. Right here in the library! One three-parts-gone harpy takes me on, pokin’ me – pokin’ me! – with a wooden spear. I say, who the Devil’re you meant to be? She says, Boadicea, and you’re the Roman oppressor! I say, you’re no such thing – you’re Cecily Gutteridge and I know your mother! Bloody funny, took a while for the peelers to get ’em all out. What I’m trying to say . . . Phillips leans forward and Albert worries that he’s
forgotten himself
and is about to become
intrusive
. In which eventuality:
am I scuppered?
Because no more does Albert speak of his people than Phillips of his. — Once there was a call paid to the villa by the river in Mortlake, and Albert, aged sixteen, declaimed at great length: Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! Oh ye who north or south, on east or western land, Native to noble sounds . . . folding his
cloth ear
to the fact that the least sounds appeared to trouble Missus Phillips excessively, for in the box window she writhed decorously. She wore long white gloves and petted a Persian blue the entire time – years later Phillips vouchsafed that it was altogether absurd, because the creatures
gypped her badly
. Tacitly, the visit was not deemed a success – by either party. This business of moving the old folk and Olive to Cheriton Bishop Phillips does know of and approve. Of
the others
, however, Albert remains silent – and so has Phillips, at least
until now?
—
But it’s nothing to do with that.

. . . is that with Churchill at the War Office it may be the opportune time for you to consider a transfer, not that I’m in a position to know whether such a move can be readily effected . . . I do know Sir Clemens, man-of-the-hour . . . all that. He, I believe, has tremendous sway at the Admiralty . . . Albert swallows heavily and feels his Adam’s apple rasp against his collar,
So
, and, in Euclidean terms:
exactly so
. Now he can see the
precise parabolas
, and he can
call down the speaking tube
and order them to
train the big guns
on Phillips’s commercial target. To ask for a more precise identification – details of ensigns flown, manning, etc. – would’ve been
crass
as well as
impertinent.
Still, Albert knows this much: that Phillips’s dabbling with the Mercers’ Company is pretty much that:
a blind
. He had had a wholesaler from his own pater – but more or less
run it down
. There are investments here and others there – he alludes to visits to Armstrong at Jesmond Dene, and to his role – in a purely non-executive capacity – as one to be relied on to make up the numbers for foreign buyers. There is a special lodge, set apart in the woods . . . a delightful situation, with its wide windows facing out across a leafy ravine . . .
Lohengrin’s horn
sounds
wistful
in the
gloaming: too-too-tooraa-boom-de-ay! Risqué
young ladies in
merveilleuse
dresses
kick their legs,
showing the boys much more than they’ve ever seen before . . . Cliquot! Cliquot!
cries Sir William, his
gull-wing
moustaches
soaring
about above the upturned bowl of the electrolier, for this is a showroom for his products. The
foreign wallahs
admire the table decoration wrought from the casing of a 22-pounder, and the rifle-cartridge cruets – an experimental machine gun fires bread pills, while from the dumb waiter the silent ones
decant soup
. . .
Y’know, Phillips says, and Albert finds such
pathetic awkwardness
in the right-angling of their chairs as he struggles up towards asking about his benefactor’s lumbago – but Phillips trumps him: I am most gratified by your rapid advance, you have more than justified my faith in you . . . His hand sets down his ruby of port, then ascends in arithmetical gestures . . . ten times more – twenty! Albert, unused to drinking this much, wonders if Rutherford’s elementary particles of light have slowed, because he sees
ten
or
twenty
distinct hands – or are they ghosts of hands no longer existent? He raises his knee to where it would need to be were the leading hand to descend upon it – if, that is, there were the remotest possibility of them ever,
ever touching
, instead of
circling and circling and circling
. . .
whirligogs
, which isn’t tactful, he thinks, besides what is it, Scots dialect? Golliwogs, on the other hand, must be just as offensive and yet they’re commonplace – there’s one on Daniel’s bed,
its woolly black face stifled by the white pillow
. . .
–
I say.
I say?!!
– Mboya . . . I can’t go on. I mean, we’re working together so closely, we – I. He stops, the noise about them in the canteen is terrific, the clashing of scores of knives on plates, forks on knives, the grinding of so many robotic mandibles all linked to the same chain that loops down from the low ceiling driving them on through sausage, chips and beans. From the slim paperback tucked in the pocket of Busner’s white coat floats this conundrum:
I respect Jack because he does not respect me
. . .
and he sighs, ahhh, and thinks, What kind of idiocy is this? Ronnie . . . Ronnie – you’ve gone to bloody pieces! From a gaping serving hatch the dinner ladies labour hard to supply this
industry of mouths
, but why, why must they bash-bash-bash with their ladles so? Why – why’re we all so ravenous, the patients too? Whitcomb told me he’d an obsessive who wouldn’t say boo. Looked in his hamster cheeks, found paperclips, screws, bulldog clips . . . Sent him down to Gower Street, they X-rayed him, then cut him open, found thruppenny bits, syringes – with needles! – several teaspoons, fondue forks, a yard of garden hose – with the squirty thing . . . Why? A comforter, without doubt – also a schizophrenic incorporation that betokened an inability to see the object as . . . the other. And us? Busner looks around him at the ravening mouths . . . We would like to
eat
the hospital.
Take the Hatch
from
the serving hatch
and put it down
the hatch
. . .
He grimaces and Mboya cannot tell if this is directed at him or at Busner’s forkful of mash with its pebble-dashing of beans. He says, Doctor Busner? And Busner cries, That’s it! That’s what I wanted to say. Mboya, can’t we call each other by our first names? Mine is . . . He sets down his cutlery . . . Zachary, but mostly I’m Zack. Mboya takes the hand, his own is
dry, amazingly dry
in contrast with his face, which today looks
pulpy, that’s a truly dreadful shaving rash
. Feeling the
hardwood
of Mboya’s hand, Busner thinks, Surely this is the wrong way round? We should’ve been introduced with surnames and handshakes, this further intimacy demands . . . what, a kiss? Mboya smiles. Enoch, he says, and Busner laughs. Yes, Mboya says, shaking his head ruefully, like Enoch Powell. No, Busner counters, I was thinking that we’re both biblical prophets. Mboya ends the clasp and begins to intone: In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold of all the languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you. The psychiatric nurse and the psychiatrist sit in silent contemplation for a moment, then: Zechariah, Chapter 8, Verse 23. Busner is appalled by it all, and cannot take his eyes off the cross
Coptic?
that hangs around Mboya’s neck, but Mboya laughs a laugh
I haven’t heard before
, one that’s
warm, companionable
, and says, Don’t worry, Zack, the churchgoing is pretty much done with now, I got the cross because Hendrix was wearing one on the cover of one of his albums. Still, you can take the boy out of the mission school. He stuffs the cliché with a mouthful of sandwich, and Busner is momentarily silenced by egg and cress being tumbled in the
pink cement mixer
, before expostulating, You don’t mean to say you know the entire bloody thing off by heart? Mboya shrugs, No, ’course not – but a good portion, I’m blessed with a pretty near photographic memory. Busner would like to ask Mboya
all about himself
, there’s much that’s intriguing: his almost accentless English, his air of
containment
, which is familiar
because I share it
. Also, he has been at Friern for over a decade, he must
know a lot
. . .
Instead Busner says: I want to photograph the post-encephalitic patients, will you help me? And Mboya drops one heavy eyelid over a bloodshot white. He’s tired, Busner thinks, we’re all tired – like we’re all ravenous. Mboya sucks his cheek, chk-chk,
shutter clucks.
– D’you want me to use my memory, Zack, because I do remember most of them –. No, no, Busner begins in all seriousness. I have a 35-millimetre and a Bolex for cine films . . . then he realises: You’re teasing me! And this is the most pleasingly intimate thing that has happened to him in a long time, to be teased. Teasing him is what Miriam did when they were first together, and this gentle ridicule somehow annulled all the grosser abuse he had suffered at boarding school – the anti-Semitic taunts, his underpants torn from him in the changing room,
Henry
quite powerless
to intervene
. . .
She doesn’t tease him any more, though – she has modulated her critique into
humiliation
. Busner pushes his plate to one side, he begins to roll and then unroll the end of his tie
once Maurice’s
, which is heavy, knitted silk,
one of the
few left.