The Honourable Mr. Tomlin received news that Mr. Rowlandson, District Adviser, had lost his head. He was suffering from one of his periodical bouts of dengue when the message came. He sat at his desk, his teeth chattering, forehead hot and feet cold, an obstinate ringing in his left ear, the deafer of the two. The brandy flask rattled against his incisors, and a decollated image of Rowlandson hung in the air, Rowlandson's voice, whining Lancastrian, sounded through the ringing. "Don't send me back there, please. Anywhere but there. There's going to be trouble, honest there is. Please, please." Rowlandson had been compelled to return to his duty, to teaching football and emotional stability to a people half devil and half child. Well, there it was. And now, thought Mr. Tomlin, the authorities would be after him again. He winced at the last rebuke, hearing again odd words spoken in that flat and comfortless voice. "Political agitators in the town — the spirit of unrest spreads easily — keep the head cool and the limbs will dance the right steps."
It was some time before Mr. Tomlin realised that the telephone was ringing. This was because he now had the impression that the telephone was ringing all the time. The line crackled and the voice seemed to come from an immense distance. For a moment, hearing slow monophthongal speech, he fancied in his fever that Rowlandson was chiding him from the world of the dead. But it was not Rowlandson; it was Al-Haji Abu Bakar, Private Secretary to the Caliph, who said:
"He would like you to come up and see him now, if it is not inconvenient."
"But, hang it all, it's nothing to do with H.H. It's between me and my own masters. Moreover, it's one of the Queen's subjects, not one of his."
"I did not realise that the Queen now ruled Italy." The line crackled, the ringing spread to Mr. Tomlin's right ear.
"So if you could come up right away —" The line went dead. Mr. Tomlin took another swig of brandy and a couple of Amplex tablets and, with bowed shoulders, left his office. He walked down the stone steps, not pausing to admire the big-breasted female sculpture — recently imported from a fun-fair in Brighton — that personified Holy Living, cynosure of the loungers in the lobby of the Government Building. Mr. Tomlin got into his little car, his wife having taken the official monster to the beach, and drove slowly through crowds that, for some reason or other, gaped towards Mecca. He passed workmen placing flood-lamps outside official buildings, under a triumphal arch erected, in honour of the Caliph's birthday, by the Indian community of the town. Lamps, lamps everywhere, though dead in the sunlight, as he now sped towards the Astana. In their corral the royal elephants were being experimentally decked with tasselled headgear and trunk-bells. More bells for Mr. Tomlin, but swallowed by the noise in his ear: there the idiot finger stayed on the button that said "Press". 'Press,' he thought. They must keep Rowlandson's head out of the papers. But perhaps it was already too late: Sebastian Hup had been seen rubbing his hands, grinning in great pain. "Reality," groaned Mr. Tomlin, "come to terms with reality."
The policemen at the Astana guard-room tried to prevent Mr. Tomlin's entering the grounds. Only two days before, a go-getter Bengali commercial — in a car not unlike Mr. Tomlin's — had actually, through some mistake, found his way to the Presence and tried to sell it a gross of lavatory brushes. But one of the palace servants, holding hands with a corporal, said laughingly that he knew who this was: the Caliph had a picture of him, a picture he seemed to prize. He should be permitted to enter.
The Caliph, black trousers, silk shirt, cutlass in belt, cigarette, flunkey carrying tin and lighter on a salver, received Mr. Tomlin in his dining-room. There was to be an official banquet after the opening of the Mosque, and servants were practising the correct laying of a table. Also the Caliph was supervising the hanging of his pictures on the wall that faced the sunlight of the huge handsome windows. There were portraits of past rulers, including the original piratical Abu standing Byronically on a storm-racked deck, the Caliph's grandfather painted by Sargent, the Caliph's father painted by Wyndham Lewis, four original drawings by Smetana.
"Those," stuttered the U.N. Adviser, "those. Surely you're not going to have those there?"
"The peace of God be with you," said the Caliph cordially. "What do you mean by allowing that young Italian to lock himself in at the top of the minaret?"
"I understand," began the U.N. Adviser. He corrected himself. "Dog understands that the work is going ahead quite satisfactorily. You can't have those pictures there," he said. "I protest. As representative of the United Nations Organisation, I protest in the strongest possible terms."
"Get him down," said the Caliph more loudly. "Get him down at once."
The U.N. Adviser moved towards the pictures. "Dog is glad that Your Highness is going to be reasonable," he said.
"Listen, can't you?" said the Caliph, so loudly that he coughed. "That young Italian imagines himself to be some sort of princess in a tower. He seems to have climbed up there last night. He will not come down. It is your job to get him down."
Mr. Tomlin's fever was beginning to clear a little. "Dog's job, Your Highness? Dog has no jurisdiction over the Mosque. The limitations of Dog's authority have been made very clear to Dog by Your Highness." (‘The bloody young fool,' he was thinking. Still, he had said his say before; he would wash his hands of the whole business; this was the Caliph's pigeon.) "Your Highness is, if Dog may remind Your Highness, sponsor to this young Italian. Your Highness, not Dog, is responsible."
"It has been reported to me," said the Caliph impatiently, "that he is already creating a disturbance. He is shouting abuse down to his father, for one thing. For another, some of the disaffected elements of the town are treating him as a kind of hero .. Members of the People's Party have been cheering him. Men with beards have been taking up curries and cases of beer. Beer!" cried the Caliph. "Beer in the holy place of God's word."
"Beer and God can go together, Your Highness," said Mr. Tomlin. "There is a poet called Chesterton —"
"I don't want to hear about infidel poets," said the Caliph. He strolled a few paces, gracefully smoking, angry. "Get this man down."
"Dog is sorry," said Mr. Tomlin, "but Dog would not presume to interfere in a matter involving religion. To Dog's simple mind the presence of an infidel in an Islamic place would seem to be a matter for the religious authorities. Moreover, Dog made it quite clear to Your Highness some time ago that, if Dog had his way, both these Italians would have long ago caught the plane to Tripoli. Your Highness must now bear full responsibility."
"But," said the Caliph, now, in his agitation, with a cigarette in each hand, "I have, under the United Nations agreement, no power to call out the police. I have, under that agreement, no power at all. And here I must sit back and see my Mosque desecrated. Desecrated," he repeated, "because a stupid U.N.O. official will not do the job he is paid to do."
Mr. Tomlin was almost pleased with the Caliph for speaking so clearly, so loudly. Never before had he been able to hear the Caliph so well. But his left eye caught his portrait on the wall, and those of his wife and daughter — heads stilled, in certain ridiculous postures — for ever and ever. He thought of poor young Rowlandson and said, with something like anger, "Don't talk to Dog about not doing his job." (The pension would be adequate; he had money saved; he would receive no decoration on retirement, but still — ) "You're only able to indulge in your beautiful Islamic dream because we do the dirty work. Who found uranium? Was it you? No, it was a handful of engineers and geologists, men with adequate salaries but never destined to become millionaires. It's you who've made the real money. And, while you become rich and your lazy Chosen People watch the coconuts fall, people like me and young Rowlandson, poor young Rowlandson, try to give you government, try to show you how to build a modern state, damn it, even try to show you how to build a mosque. Young Rowlandson's dead, and he hasn't even died for an ideal which you, some day, may grow up to appreciate. You've no interest in the aborigines of this State. You're a pirate king, ruling retired pirates, intruders just as much as we are. Now other people are digging out the gold for you and you have nothing to do except turn it into blasted moidores. Don't talk to me about beer being drunk in the minaret. Think about poor underpaid officials like Rowlandson, his head lopped off, his body eaten, in an up-river village." He panted audibly. The Caliph impassively smoked. Mr. Tomlin said, "Dog begs your pardon for speaking like that, but Dog had to say it."
"Yes," said the Caliph, "I see that." Then he said, "I don't think there's any useful purpose to be served by your staying here any longer. We've had the best of you. You're not like the people of the old days that my grandfather used to tell me about-people who really built, who really made laws, people who had visions. You've been a competent little man, but not quite competent enough Soon we shall be rid of the white man altogether. In the meantime, I suppose I shall have to continue to have a U.N.O. official here. But I don't want you any longer. I shall ask the authorities to send me somebody else. Mr. Mudd can, presumably, take over from you till the new Adviser comes. But you," said the Caliph, and in deference to the occasion he put his cigarette down on an ash-tray; never before had he been seen with both hands free, "you have twenty-four hours to leave the State. I will not have my Mosque desecrated."
"I doubt if the authorities will approve of this high-handed attitude," said the U.N. Adviser. "The General Assembly will have something to say."
"This is not a colony," said the Caliph. "Nor do I imagine that anybody is going to be seriously annoyed. There won't be any gun-boats sailing up the river. There'll certainly be no desire for renunciation of the uranium concession. Besides, I know my rights. You can tell everybody that you have to leave at once because you're ill. I shall communicate with your masters. And," said the Caliph, "I shall take down the pictures you dislike so much. If you like, I'll send them to you as a farewell present. They don't really fit in," he said, looking through his dark glasses at the Byronic portrait of his piratical ancestor, a great wind blowing out of the canvas, the waves all black dragons.
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