The Male Response

Slightly nonplussed, Soames was staring up this ladder when a black face appeared at the top and a negro wearing khaki shorts and bearing a spear shinned down like lightning to confront him. They faced each other with rather similar silly smiles before the negro began to talk volubly, pointing to the plane.

‘Sorry, I don’t understand a word,’ Soames said, commencing an elaborate pantomime with swooping hands and explosive sounds to depict the whole drama of a plane crash in which all but three passengers, two white and one black, were killed, the other two being by the river about a mile distant, and would you kindly follow there now bringing your bicycle if needs must …

All this the negro watched politely before shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of bafflement.

When Soames, after taking a refreshing swig from the water container Timpleton had left under the tree, began to head back for the river, he beckoned industriously to the negro and saw him seize up his bike, swing it over one shoulder by the crossbar, and follow. ‘Good boy … that’s it … someone who’ll be able to make you savvy when we get there … yes, come on … he’ll make it worth your while … good,’ Soames muttered in a kind of dreary undertone of encouragement as they proceeded.

The negro fell in beside him, cutting off the mumble with a long account of his own which he interspersed with frequent laughter, rather to Soames’ irritation.

‘What’s the good of going on, old boy, when you know I don’t understand a word?’ he enquired, but the negro was still laughing and talking when they reached the river bank. Pushing his way forward, keeping his bicycle miraculously free from entanglements with bushes, he came to where Deal Jimpo was lying.

The latter uttered a few curt sentences, evidently announcing who he was, for at once the newcomer lay down beside him and clutched his hand; he broke into what sounded like an incoherent address of welcome to Jimpo. While they were talking together, Timpleton reappeared, grimy and hot, having set fire to the grass according to Jimpo’s instructions. Soames rapidly explained to him what had happened.

‘We have fortune in some things at least,’ Jimpo said, rising with the newcomer’s aid and leaning on his crutch. ‘This good man, Tanuana Motijala, tells us we are less than a day’s journey – even with my slow progress – from Umbalathorp itself. He will escort us along the trail and we can leave at once.’

This was indeed good news. Both Soames and Timpleton had had private dreams of spending a week by the surly river, beating off crocodiles, rhinoceros and water snakes with fragments of girder from the plane.

‘Thank him very much indeed and ask him where the hell he got his push bike,’ Timpleton said.

A brief exchange between the two black men followed and then Jimpo explained, ‘He won it in a raffle.’

Once more they did the journey to the plane under the blazing sun. Jimpo assured them that directly he reached the capital of Goya an expedition would be despatched to bring back everything from the wreck, including their luggage, and on this understanding they set off light-handed, Timpleton and Soames bearing haversacks containing water and food.

Tanuana’s trail lay some distance beyond the plane. It was a relief to find themselves in the shadow of the jungle, but this benefit was short-lived, for soon the trail was winding uphill fairly steeply. Both white men began to blow hard, and Jimpo’s face was grim with effort; Tanuana, noticing nothing, chattered and laughed in the same cheery way he had done when Soames first met him.

‘Whatever is he talking about?’ Soames enquired irritably at last, when the trail momentarily levelled out.

‘Saying he explore wreck of flying plane before you appear,’ Jimpo said. ‘Saying he kill four vulture birds in nose of flying plane. Saying they eat too much, too fat to get out hole they come in by. Saying he got four good beaks in saddle-bag.’

Thereafter they lapsed into silence. Gloom rose in Soames. He disliked the way Jimpo’s English was growing worse; it might be only the pain he was suffering; or it might be that the eighteen-year-old ex-Etonian was reverting to type. Now that Umbalathorp actually lay ahead, it no longer seemed the inviting haven it had a few hours earlier. Obviously the first thing to be done was to get a radio message through to Unilateral, asking for rescue at once. Primitivism cast no spell over Soames; he was a Guardian man.

Gradually the distances between the figures grew. Ahead was Tanuana, sometimes uttering a brief snatch of song. A short way behind him came Jimpo, with Soames following close and Timpleton much in the rear. The jungle, moody and fascinating at first, soon became, like an expanse of moody and fascinating contemporary wallpaper, something to pass with averted eyes.

The morning drew on, the trail widened, every step became a burden. After a long time, when there was no sign of Tanuana ahead, nor had been for some while, Jimpo halted, leaning against a tree until Soames caught up with him.

‘You look bad, Jimpo,’ Soames exclaimed, seeing his haggard look and grey face. Sweat sprayed from both their foreheads.

‘Is nothing. We will stop here for rest. Bloody man Tanuana go too fast for me. Wait for Ted to bring us water.’

They both lay down and rested. Ten minutes later, Timpleton appeared, trudging with his head down, his thumbs hooked into his haversack straps.

‘Don’t they have any ruddy buses on this route?’ he asked, sitting down beside them and swinging his haversack off his back. His morale was so good that Soames’ also improved.

As they ate canned peaches and cheese biscuits, Jimpo announced that they were near a village; he ‘could tell’, he explained. He thought that Tanuana might soon return with villagers to help them.

‘What, a lift?’ Timpleton asked. ‘Litters or elephants?’

‘Possibly a handcart,’ Jimpo said. ‘Now we will press on again. We must remain on our legs.’

‘If you will stay here with Ted, I will go on and hurry them up,’ Soames said. ‘I don’t think you are in a fit state to walk any further.’

‘It will not be fit state for my father’s people to find me lying down,’ Jimpo said. ‘Help me to stand.’

They had been on the move again only another ten minutes when they came into a clearing. From the other side of it, a reception committee was approaching. Ten men, among whom were Tanuana with his green bicycle, several women, and a flock of naked children, jostled round a large barrow loaded with flowers. The three from the plane were rapidly surrounded by people and voices.

With a splendid show of patience, Soames and Timpleton stood for a long while listening to speeches all round.

‘What’s it all about?’ Soames asked.

Jimpo eyed him rather superciliously.

‘They made delay to decorate my triumphal cart appropriately,’ he said, as willing hands bore him up on to the bed of flowers. The procession then gradually moved off, the two white men following behind the main crowd.

Some hours later, when shadows lengthened over patchily cultivated land, they entered, the capital of Goya, and an old man of benevolent aspect came forward with pineapple ice cream, smearing it ceremoniously over their faces and hands.

Chapter Three (#ub094c41d-8dec-5246-976c-ade47befc427)

‘… And full-grown lambs loud bleat …’

Without putting too philosophical a shine on the matter, we may say that cities are places where men gather. It follows therefore that, as no man is perfect, no city he builds is without fault. Hong Kong has its overcrowding, Peking its interminable walls, London its traffic, New York its pavements, Bombay its hideous buildings, Paris its foreigners, Buenos Aires its residents. Umbalathorp has its biting things. It was a peevish Soames Noyes who climbed from his rush bed next morning and cursed all the nocturnally feeding species who had banquetted upon him.

‘We’d have done better to stay in the plane,’ Timpleton said, running a thumb-sized bug to earth in his arm pit.

‘Jimpo said we’d be moved to the palace today. It should be slightly less inhabited there.’

‘Soames … Do you reckon those black women’ll come and bath us again like they did last night? That was a queer stunt, if you like.’

Soames emitted a giggle. He had yet to orient his feelings with regard to that ceremony.

‘They did you all over,’ Timpleton said musing. ‘Christ, I ask you, Soames, if they’ll wash your crutch what else won’t they do?!’

‘The same thought occurred to me, Ted,’ Soames admitted solemnly and was surprised when Timpleton burst into laughter.

The bathing ceremony had occurred at dusk last night, shortly after the weary travellers had arrived. By then, Jimpo had already left them to be carried to his father, informing them they would be well looked after. That they certainly had been, and the three girls apiece who scrubbed Timpleton and Soames, despite their coy protests, in ceremonial concrete baths, had not lacked ardour. Soames had to admit that the only offensive note in this covertly erotic ceremony had been the emptying of an entire carton of detergent into their water.

While they were still being dried by their handmaids with wads of cotton waste, an English-speaking native appeared. He escorted them, when they were ready, to a brick building where an excellent meal was served. Then he took them through the strange-smelling darkness to this beehive-shaped hut in which they had served as nourishment all night.

‘All Umbalathorp men make to you much apologise for this dead-end-kid mansion,’ he told Soames and Timpleton. ‘Better you to sleep here one night while room for you in President palace not sweep. Tomorrow room in palace be much sweep for you. Be nice for you. Be clean like England hospital tomorrow. Only tonight not sweep.’

‘I suppose it never occurred to the blighter that this place wasn’t sweep either,’ Soames grumbled, when the man had gone, after producing – or so it had seemed – a lighted candle for them from his pocket.

‘This must be where they usually keep the palace tigers,’ Timpleton said, sniffing suspiciously.

‘Subtle effluence of cat,’ agreed Soames.

‘Subtle? Have you got cotton wool up your nose?’

Now Soames emerged into the open air, nervously rubbing his hands together. He wore, with an uneasy air, the European clothes the handmaids had given him the night before, in exchange for his own sweat-stained garments. The clothes did not fit properly, hence his nervousness; to a casual observer he might have been taken for a repentant amateur clothes thief, or an ex-jailbird without the strength of his previous convictions.