Black As He’s Painted

‘Of the forthcoming visit?’

‘Yes, blast them. Security.’

‘I see. Difficult. By the way, you must have been the President’s contemporary at –’ Mr Whipplestone stopped short. ‘Is it hoped that you may introduce the personal note?’

‘You are quick!’ Troy said and he gave a gratified little cackle.

Alleyn said: ‘I saw him three weeks ago.’

‘In Ng’ombwana?’

‘Yes. Coming the old-boy network like nobody’s business.’

‘Get anywhere?’

‘Not so that you’d notice: no, that’s not fair. He did undertake not to cut up rough about our precautions but exactly what he meant by that is his secret. I dare say that in the upshot he’ll be a bloody nuisance.’

‘Well?’ asked Mr Whipplestone, leaning back and swinging his eyeglass in what Alleyn felt had been his cross-diplomatic-desk gesture for half a lifetime. ‘Well, my dear Roderick?’

‘Where do you come in?’

‘Quite.’

‘I’d be grateful if you’d – what’s the current jargon? – fill me in on the general Ng’ombwana background. From your own point of view. For instance, how many people would you say have cause to wish The Boomer dead?’

‘The Boomer?’

‘As he incessantly reminded me, that was His Excellency’s schoolboy nickname.’

‘An appropriate one. In general terms, I should say some two hundred thousand persons, at least.’

‘Good Lord!’ Troy exclaimed.

‘Could you,’ asked her husband, ‘do a bit of name-dropping?’

‘Not really. Not specifically. But again in general terms – well, it’s the usual pattern throughout the new African independencies. First of all there are those Ng’ombwanan political opponents whom the President succeeded in breaking, the survivors of whom are either in prison or in this country waiting for his overthrow or assassination.’

‘The Special Branch flatters itself it’s got a pretty comprehensive list in that category.’

‘I dare say,’ said Mr Whipplestone drily. ‘So did we, until one fine day in Martinique a hitherto completely unknown person with a phoney British passport fired a revolver at the President, missed, and was more successful with a second shot at himself. He had no record and his true identity was never established.’

‘I reminded The Boomer of that incident.’

Mr Whipplestone said archly to Troy: ‘Y’ou know, he’s much more fully informed than I am. What’s he up to?’

‘I can’t imagine, but do go on. I, at least, know nothing.’

‘Well. Among these African enemies, of course, are the extremists who disliked his early moderation and especially his refusal at the outset to sack all his European advisers and officials in one fell swoop. So you get pockets of anti-white terrorists who campaigned for independence but are now prepared to face about and destroy the government they helped to create. Their followers are an unknown quantity but undoubtedly numerous. But you know all this, my dear fellow.’

‘He’s sacking more and more whites now, though, isn’t he? However unwillingly?’

‘He’s been forced to do so by the extreme elements.’

‘So,’ Alleyn said, ‘the familiar, perhaps the inevitable, pattern emerges. The nationalization of all foreign enterprise and the appropriation of properties held by European and Asian colonists. Among whom we find the bitterest possible resentment.’

‘Indeed. And with some reason. Many of them have been ruined. Among the older groups the effect has been completely disastrous. Their entire way of life has disintegrated and they are totally unfitted for any other.’ Mr Whipplestone rubbed his nose. ‘I must say,’ he added, ‘however improperly, that some of them are not likeable individuals.’

Troy asked: ‘Why’s he coming here? The Boomer, I mean?’

‘Ostensibly, to discuss with Whitehall his country’s needs for development.’

‘And Whitehall,’ Alleyn said, ‘professes its high delight while the Special Branch turns green with forebodings.’

“Mr Whipplestone, you said “ostensibly”,’ Troy pointed out.

‘Did I, Mrs Rory? – Yes. Yes, well it has been rumoured through tolerably reliable sources that the President hopes to negotiate with rival groups to take over the oil and copper resources from the dispossessed who have, of course, developed them at enormous cost.’

‘Here we go again!’ said Alleyn.

‘I don’t suggest,’ Mr Whipplestone mildly added, ‘that Lord Karnley or Sir Julian Raphael or any of their associates are likely to instigate a lethal assault upon the President.’

‘Good!’

‘But of course behind those august personages is a host of embittered shareholders, executives and employees.’

‘Among whom might be found the odd cloak-and-dagger merchant. And apart from all these more or less motivated persons,’ Alleyn said, ‘there are the ones policemen like least: the fanatics. The haters of black pigmentation, the lonely woman who dreams about a black rapist, the man who builds Anti-Christ in a black image or who reads a threat to his livelihood in every black neighbour. Or for whom the commonplace phrases – “black outlook, black record, as black as it’s painted, black villainy, the black man will get you” and all the rest of them, have an absolute reference. Black is bad. Finish.’

‘And the Black Power lot,’ Troy said, ‘are doing as much for “white”, aren’t they? The war of the images.’

Mr Whipplestone made a not too uncomfortable little groaning noise and returned to his port.

‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘I do wonder, how much of that absolute antagonism the old Boomer nurses in his sooty bosom.’

‘None for you, anyway,’ Troy said, and when he didn’t answer, ‘surely?’

‘My dear Alleyn, I understood he professes the utmost camaraderie.’

‘Oh, yes! Yes, he does. He lays it on with a trowel. Do you know, I’d be awfully sorry to think the trowel-work overlaid an inimical understructure. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘It is the greatest mistake,’ Mr Whipplestone pronounced, to make assumptions about relationships that are not clearly defined.’

‘And what relationship is ever that?’

‘Well! Perhaps not. We do what we can with treaties and agreements, but perhaps not.’

‘He did try,’ Alleyn said. ‘He did in the first instance try to set up some kind of multi-racial community. He thought it would work.’

‘Did you discuss that?’ Troy asked.