Lydgate didn't need a truck. Two trips in the car (the second with the small refrigerator roped to the lower jaw of the open mouth of the boot) and his move up the hill was consummated. Why? he asked himself as he steered up the hill road. Why this weak capitulation? But it wasn't capitulation; he was claiming his rights. A right to servants' quarters, to a fan in the dining alcove, to a garden, to be at least on the same level as Mudd. The rent would be the same: for hovel or tropical Gothic mansion it was the same — ten per cent of basic salary. Then sprang up the real reason for the capitulation. Mudd was not going to ride his mare; he was not going to be cuckolded twice in the same year. And if Mudd did try, if Mudd were caught out, he, Lydgate, would have every right to an even wilder justice than that which Forbes had enjoyed. Lydgate was wresting the weapon from Mudd. Lydia had been brought out to humiliate; what Mudd could never have foreseen was the effect on tired glands of a dress torn at the shoulder in a political scrimmage.
How long would all this last? Till it was time to move on, he supposed. When would that be? When, in the neurotic course of mounting monotony and frustration, he would expect to see one particular image in sleep, a particular and impossible figure moving in the street or entering an office. Then it was time to move on. It always had been. Another six months, say. He should have enough money.
The curtains were up; the cook sang dirty love songs while he mixed batter for a Yorkshire pudding. The split week-end — Moslem Friday and Christian Sunday — saw the ornaments and books uncrated. It was all quite tolerable, even pleasant. Pleasant, if he came home from work before she, to sit in quiet or dull Dunia bird-song while the boy brought beer in a tankard. No noise of Forbes's brats, no duet from the other side-presto furioso ma molto pesante. After all, he was moderately civilised: he had had secretaries and telephones, had read certain books, spoke certain languages which had sophisticated literatures: he was entitled to the spinning fan and the bird-song and the vista of purring cars coming up the hill. But at night she cried.
"Why are you so selfish? Why must everything be for you?"
"I can't help it. You know me well enough by now."
"But you don't even try."
He lay back in the dark, silent. How long had it been now? Only just over a week. Inevitably it seemed much longer: the small dram will ring a bell for' all last night's alcohol lying quiescent in one's blood-stream, send it racing round again; one is pushed back by a single finger into the long bout of bottles. Why did women want to be people? He felt ill-used, sullenly smoking in the dark, letting her cry.
"We're going to have a party tonight. Before the show."
"What show?" He was driving her home from the office.
"This show for the Caliph's birthday. In the Chin Chin Cinema. I rang up a few people. We ought to have a party, you know."
"Why?"
"Oh, you haven't an ounce of sentiment in you." She pouted. "Everybody's been expecting us to throw a party."
"Do you mean we've got to have Mudd and Covendry and Brethren and Henryson and Bishopspawn?"
"Not Bishopspawn. Although, of course, he did, in a way, bring us together again."
"Then we ought to have Bastians as well." He was feeling bitter about Bastians: he had been half-blamed for Bastians's illegal entry into the State: he should have suspected something (in a way, he had: that letter had been remarkably literate); he should have checked with the U.N.A.'s office. The U.N. Adviser was in trouble again. Meanwhile Patu produced cast-iron alibis; Sebastian Hup knew nothing. "Or Patrick Ong. Or that blasted ape."
"The ape was rather sweet, really. Don't forget to put on a suit this evening, not just a tie. After all, you are the Controller of Passports."
"So they keep telling me." They mounted the hill. "I do wish you'd consulted me about this damned party. Instead of just slyly ringing people up behind my back."
"You would have said 'no'."
"Too true I would." Shocked by this involuntary Australianism, he turned to her and said, "I beg your pardon."
"I've had to ask one or two of the Aussies. Collie, Clout, one or two others." "That's going too far. Damn it all, to be called a Pommy bastard in one's own house — "
"How do you know they'll do that? Really, Frank, you are stupid sometimes."
It was a typical Dunia party. The days of the big dinners, the servants many and cheap — these had gone with the British Empire. Now one improvised something at the last moment, hurled cachou nuts into bowls, went out for a meal afterwards or, drinking enough, forgot to be hungry. But tonight everybody had to attend the amateur concert-the lighting of the fuse that led to the sparks of the Caliph's birthday, the great explosion of the opening of the Mosque-and the party must end crisply in a jolly town ward procession of cars. Lydia was good, Lydia was excellent. The lights were dim, the gramophone's musique d'arneublement continuous and unobtrusive, the boys filled platters with skewered morsels of cheese and silverskins, kropoks, olives, Gentleman's Relish on toast.
"She's dinky-die," said Collie of Bridgetown, cocktail beer in his hand. "You know, I don't mind telling you, that a lot of the boys were getting a bit crook seeing you doing what you did to her. Some of them wanted to do you in. But it's all right now," he said, taking one of Lydgate's cigarettes. "They reckon you can be one of the boys now. You've a real bonza kiddy there, old man."
Mr. Covendry, the State Irrigation Officer, keeping up his reputation as the town intellectual, spoke to Lydia of modem literature. J.B. Priestley," he was saying. "A bit too advanced for me. A bit too consciously clever. You know, style and what not. Give me Hugh Walpole any day. Modern, but not too modern, if you see what I mean."
"Evelyn Waugh?" suggested Lydia.
"With all due deference," smiled Mr. Covendry, "I never really cared for women writers much."
Not all the conversation was highbrow. Clout said that, with the completion of the road linking Dunia Town with the mines, there was going to be yet more unemployment. But even he, in an atmosphere that Lydia's elegance, Lydia's metropolitan accent refined, was led to a sort of puzzled speculation as to the future. In his glasses, with his thin shoulders and stoop, he propounded his doubts almost professorially.
"I mean, you just can't live on uranium, can you? I mean, you can't just sit back and draw sort of dividends from it, can you? I mean, not everybody can, can they? They've got to have some sort of a job to do, haven't they? And what the hell can they do?"
"What did they do before?" asked Mrs. Covendry. She was a compact plump woman who spoke queenlily. She seemed to Lydgate like a publican's wife who, promoted from back street pub to neon-lighted road-house, had now reached her social peak-lady of the President of the local Licensed Victuallers' Association. But on the back of her neck prickly heat flourished, ill-hid by powder.
"Oh," said Collie, "they live in those houses over the water, all of them, fishing through the floor-boards. Now they've been landed, a lot of them, and they can't swim back. A bloody shime, but it's not our look-out."
Lydgate remembered the old days, visiting from Kenya only a few years before-wooden buildings, mud streets, the Caliph carried in a kind of litter, only a few European traders. It was frightening, the speed with which you could build a modern state. You could run the film back as quickly, but you didn't revert to the simple dignity of shacks on stiIts with grass roofs. Instead you got peeling stucco, a rusting telephone exchange, carious stone, unexpected craters in the main roads. Five more years of uranium. After that what? An abdicating Caliph perhaps, well able to pay for his suite at Claridge's. Emigration of the Chosen People to other parts of the continent. Fishing and a little maize, the days of Cadillacs and Cinemascope stirred into the pudding of myth. But, by then, he himself would have long moved on.
Mudd had his arm round Lydia's shoulders and she was giving him the sugar icing of her smile. There was no soft sponge under that icing. Mudd brought Lydia towards Lydgate's group, lordly, proprietorial, giving the bride away.
“I'm very happy, Frank," he said. "We're all very happy. It's just like old times, isn't it? Now you try to be a good boy and live happily ever after." Lydgate went stiff as a dead cat.
"Shall I," said Lydgate, "get a peep-hole bored in the bedroom?"
"Oh, Frank," said Lydia. "Please. Not at a party."
Mudd laughed.
It was time to be moving. Mudd said, "Who's going with who? There's no point in taking all the cars." ("With whom," corrected Mr. Covendry quietly.)
"Because we'll be coming back after the show," said Mudd.
"Will we?" said Lydgate.
"Lydia says so." Mudd looked round. "Right, Frank, you can take Helen and George. And, Bert, you take Miss Pearce and John can keep her company in the back. And I'll take Lydia. And, let me see. We don't want too many cars. Parking's always a problem down there."
"Oh, Frank," ordered Lydia, "do tell the boys to lay on a few more things for when we get back. And ask someone to go over to Harry's place and get a few bottles of soda. And a bottle of whisky. We're nearly out of it."
"The Pope's telephone number," suggested Mr. Covendry. "Vat 69." Lydia tinkled a laugh, pretending not to have heard the joke before. Lydgate was grim. 'How can women?' he thought. 'How can they do it? Hypocrites, the lot of them.' "I'll come down on my own," said Lydgate. "No point in keeping other people waiting."
It was peace again to be driving down the hill road alone. Should he, he wondered, go to the show? A few quiet whiskies in the Kool Kaffi.. And then not come back to the resumed party. People would wonder where he was. Self-pity began to form like mist on the windscreen. He would be the centre of interest. Lydia would be abashed. But, no. That was not it at all. He would meet his responsibilities. Was he becoming a better man for recognising them? He thought not.
He could not see Mudd's car in the parking lot by the cinema. Inside it was dark. The show had already started. He sat near the back, alone. On the stage, in warm lemon-coloured light, stood Fredericks, donating his turn. In silent politeness sat the National Language speakers, uncomprehending. The turbaned elders smoked local shag rolled in strips of young bamboo.
"Oh, you lucky people," pattered Fredericks. "Here," he said, "here. I was speaking to the Caliph the other day, and I said, 'Who was that lady I seen you with last night?' 'That was no lady,' he says, 'that was the Sultana.' 'Sultana?' I says. 'You're lucky. Myoid woman's a raisin.' 'Raisin?' he says. 'Ay,' I says, 'always a raisin hell.' Here— " The wrinkled patriarchs were impassive. There were European groans. But there came no sound of a laugh from Lydia. "Now then," said Fredericks, "a little song entitled 'I Don't Like Fat Girls 'Cause They Roll Off My Lap'." And, to a scratched record, he moved, with shrugs and ceillades, into a slow step-dance.
Frankie the Sudu, in a European gown with a false bust, plastered make-up ghoulish in the dim spots, winked over-blued eyelids at the audience. The young responded in glee. Polite still, with a little wonder mixed, the aged looked on, smileless. Frankie sang, in fair Christian Brothers English, that he was in the mood for love. Lydgate grew restless. Then came Dominic de Cruz, the Inspector of Vehicles, and David Lloyd-Evans, head of the Municipal Dog Catchers. Both wore blazers. De Cruz had a guitar. They sang a song they had composed for the occasion:
"I'm not in a state of grace.
It's something far far loonier.
I'm a terrible case; see the lines on my face?
I'm in the State of Dunia."
"Well," said Sebastian Hup, sitting down next to Lydgate, "here you are again, all alone."
"Yes."
"Mr. Mudd and the lady whose house you are living in. They did a very strange thing. They came down the hill and turned and went straight back up again."
"How much do you want for that information?"
"I'm not in a state of sin.
Indeed, I'd very much soonier.
I'm getting so thin; what a mess I am in.
I'm in the State of Dunia."
"Oh, I don't think there's any question of paying anything to anybody. Not now, Mr. Lydgate. But you mustn't worry about this lady you're living with and Mr. Mudd. There are far bigger things to worry about."
"Such as?"
"Oh, Mr. Carruthers Chung thinks it would be such a good idea if you came along to the next bridge party and really confessed everything."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You're such an unhappy man, Mr. Lydgate. People only want to help."
"Went up the hill, did they?" said Lydgate, rising. "Let me get past."
"If you could spare a few bucks, Mr. Lydgate, it would be a very great help. I'm ashamed to say this, but this is one of the very rare nights when I have to get drunk. You see, Mr. Lydgate, there's so much I could say and so much I don't say, and then I'm never sure which country I really belong to, and sometimes I feel so violent. I have a lot pressing to get out." In agony he pressed it in, holding his Golgotha skull tightly with both hands. "So, when my friends have finished their turn on the stage there, Mr. Lydgate, we shall go to some little back room and get drunk. Then I can shout my head off. I have to do it sometimes, and it's better that I should — among friends, in a little private room. Shout my head off," he giggled. "That's a very painless way of losing it. Not like that poor man up-river. The U.N. Adviser's always in trouble. Now they'll be wanting his head in the General Assembly, poor man."
"I'm not in a state of health —
My voice gets croakier and croonier.
But I've picked up some wealth, and I've
done it by stealth,
For I'm in the State of Dunia."
"Very good, very clever," said Sebastian Hup, clapping delicately. "Don't push me, Mr. Lydgate, I don't like being pushed. There," he said, taking his knees from the chair-back in front and swinging them into the aisle, "now you can get out." He said this smoothly and courteously.
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