I felt this so clearly then that she was safely beyond our grasp, saying goodbye to Jackson in his grand office — like a solicitor and client who have completed the sad formalities relevant to a dead friend’s lost estate. And yet a week later a process started which was to lead me into Helen Jackson’s old life — which was to animate her past as sharply as though someone had filmed it all — or at least written a script of it.
6
I had been asked to a reception for new members of the Secretariat given jointly by the US government and the City of New York. The party was held on the top floor of the US delegation’s office opposite the UN building on First Avenue — a long room with a dreadfully slippery floor filled with a lot of awkward foreigners sliding about the place with tumblers of orange or tomato juice. It was an appalling occasion — of well-meant hospitality and formal speeches, which instead of all being delivered at once, which might have saved matters, came in fits and starts throughout the hour.
Between bouts of these kindly homilies on our expected participation in the social delights of New York, Wheel, who had come with me, introduced me to an African girl — beautiful in an un-African way: tall and skinny, everything about her — face, lips, legs — long and thin; semitic-looking, Arab blood from somewhere, a colour like a grey-blue dust powdered over her skin, and eyes the shape of oval saucers, tremendous pools, with circles of dark water in the middle.
She was from Ethiopia, distantly connected with the Royal family there. Recently, she had joined the UN as a guide — a Princess, no less. She was with her younger brother that evening, and he looked just like her. He was in movies — a producer in a company recently formed to make African films — and that was where the script began.
Michael and Margaret Takazze. I suppose he was in his mid —, and she in her late twenties. They had the air of two successful, vivacious, very confident orphans. There was about them the stamp of a long-isolated warrior civilisation, a temperament, I felt, at once intensely civilised and savage.
We talked a little about nothing, about my work in the UN among other things. And then she said, ‘Are you the George Graham that made that documentary on Uganda, that won a prize — what was it called, Michael?’
‘The Mountains of the Moon.’
‘Yes, that’s the one. It was good. Fine. I’ve seen it several times. It was on over here a few months ago, on the educational channel.’
I laughed, agreed that I was the man, and wished that there’d been some real drink about. It was one of Graham’s COI films about the Ruwenzori mountains in the Western Province of the country which I’d seen hurriedly before leaving London. But I’d never been to Uganda.
‘You must know Uganda well,’ she said. ‘Have you been back recently? I was at Makerere University there before I went to the Sorbonne.’
‘No, I’ve not been back, I’m afraid. All that was some time ago. I’ve rather forgotten it all,’ I said quickly, thinking wildly.
Then Wheel said, turning to the boy, ‘Have you found any good stories yet — for one of your African productions, Michael?’
‘Yes,’ he answered with almost tired assurance. ‘We’re working on it at the moment. An extraordinary story by a Kenyan writer, Ole Timbutu. Have you heard of him, Mr Graham?’
‘No, I–I don’t think so.’
‘Yes, he’s written a novel about it — White Savages. It came out here a few months ago. He’s adapting it.’
‘Oh yes? I didn’t see it. I’d like to.’
‘It’s a mad book,’ the Princess put in, smiling. ‘I hope you’d like it — it’s none too kind to the English.’
‘I hold no brief for the British in East Africa,’ I said. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘It’s the story behind Obote’s coup de palais, among other things,’ the Prince explained. ‘Two English people, a man and his mistress — she’s married to someone else — both working for British Intelligence; travelling around East Africa — a love affair — and then how they bring about the fall of King Freddie, betraying him.’
‘And it’s true,’ his sister added. ‘There were these two people — Timbutu got it all from a journalist on the Kenya Standard.’
‘A sort of spy story?’ I asked her carefully.
‘Yes, that’s the basis — but there’s the allegory, White Savages — the two people regress into savagery by the end.’
‘They eat each other?’ Wheel asked hopefully.
‘Metaphorically,’ agreed the Prince.
‘Quite a story,’ Wheel went on. ‘Full colour, wide screen.’
‘I’d certainly like to read the book,’ I said. ‘Do you know where I can get a copy?’
‘I’ve got several, I’ll lend you one. Be glad to hear what you thought of it,’ the Princess said graciously.
7
The novel arrived on my desk some weeks later, dropped by messenger from the Princess. On the same day, I received a note from Guy Jackson asking if I’d like to spend the following weekend with them upstate at his father-in-law’s house. They’d be travelling there by car on Friday afternoon and there’d be a place for me. I called Jackson at his office to thank him, but he wasn’t in.
Wheel and I had a drink together in the Delegates’ Lounge before lunch that day. ‘How are things going?’ he asked.
‘Coming along.’
What about your domestic arrangements — the apartment you were looking for with Mrs Jackson?’
‘Nothing came of it. I’m all right at the Tudor Hotel for the time being. They’ve moved me to a larger room at the back away from the traffic. And the Jacksons have asked me up to their place in the country next weekend.’
‘Oh, yes? Belmont — I don’t know it.’
‘But you know the Jacksons pretty well?’ I asked Wheel. ‘How did you happen across them in the UN? It’s a big place.’
‘No, not that well.’ Wheel seemed anxious to assure me, as though I’d accused him of social climbing. ‘I met him here at the bar. You may have noticed — very few Secretariat people come into the North Lounge at all. We’re a sort of Club, anyone who uses the place regularly. Guy is usually here every day — has two religious martinis, then lunch.’
It seemed a fair explanation. Yet I thought what unlikely friends they were — the meticulous, rather withdrawn Englishman and the gregarious, talkative Middle-West American — the bald and big-boned Wheel and this finicky, discreet Foreign Office figure whose hobby lay in the careful investigation of his cuckoldry. Unusual companions, as different from each other as a rodeo rider and a butterfly collector.
I went back to my office after lunch, closed the door, put aside a two-volume FAO report on the Implementation of Agrarian and Riparian Information for Small Farmers in South East Asia, and took a look at White Savages by Ole Timbutu.
It was a short book, told in the first person by an unnamed narrator, a kind of God-like omnipresence, who, it seemed, had in part actually observed the activities of the two main characters (a man and a woman described simply as ‘He’ and ‘She’), and had filled in the rest from memory or imagination, one couldn’t be sure which.