It was a Scandinavian girl, about twenty, who had come purposely across the beach to speak with her. ‘You’re a real mermaid,’ she said as Britta dressed. ‘Stockholm?’
‘Norway.’
‘I’ve seen you the last four days … from our apartment. I admire the way you take the water.’
They had talked for only a few minutes when Britta voiced her usual question: ‘How can a girl find a job here?’
‘Not easy. It took me three months.’
‘But you did find one?’
‘Yes. So do most of the kids who stick it out.’
‘How do you live?’
‘A very sweet guy let me sleep in his room. He had his own girl. Every night when I went to bed I prayed. I don’t know what for, but I prayed. And one day a Belgian businessman came to him and said, “I own a bar here but I have to go back to Antwerp. ‘I’ll sell it for what it cost.” And it was in that bar that I got my job.’
‘Is it … decent work?’
‘It’s not a living but it’s better than Stockholm in winter.’ She suggested that when Britta was dressed she might want to stop by the apartment for a drink, and Britta said, ‘My clothes are up there,’ and the Swedish girl looked at the hotel and said. ‘That’s how I got started. On the tenth floor of the Northern Lights. It seems so long ago.’
‘Was it worth it?’
‘Every minute. Now I’m going home to get married.’
Britta froze into position, like a Greek statue, one knee bent, sandal in the right hand. Very cautiously she asked, ‘But if you’re going home …’
‘I am.’
‘Then your job at the bar …’
‘That’s what I came here to speak about.’
Britta went all limp. Her leg dropped and the sandal fell to earth. ‘God bless you,’ she said. Neither girl spoke, then finally Britta asked, ‘What kind of bar is it?’
‘Like the rest. Small, dirty, noisy. I’ll be content if I never hear a note of music the rest of my life. If my husband comes home with a hi-fi set, ‘I’ll throw it in the Baltic.’
Recovering her sandal, Britta experienced a moment of panic and asked abruptly, ‘It’s not a German bar?’
‘Worse. It’s American. A joint they call the Alamo.’
‘Oh!’ Britta cried. ‘I know it! I was there last night!’ She paused. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘Some Swedes gave me a farewell party …’
‘This sounds ridiculous,’ Britta whispered, ‘but when I was in your bar last night, watching that man run back and forth—tend the bar, wait on tables—I said, “He ought to have a helper,” and tonight I was going to go back for one last effort to tell him, “You need a waitress to help you.” You really think I might get the job?’
‘Yes. My name’s Ingrid. Let’s go along and fetch your clothes.’
The remainder of that Sunday, the fourteenth day of her vacation, was one that Britta would never forget, a compound of hope and anxiety. Her hope stemmed from the fact that Ingrid felt sure she could pass her job along to Britta; the anxiety came when the two girls got to the apartment where Ingrid was staying, and found nobody. There were two large beds, and since each was covered with men’s and women’s clothes intermixed, it was obvious that two couples were occupying the room.
‘They’ll be back,’ Ingrid said reassuringly. ‘Probably went somewhere for a drink.’
Britta pointed to one of the beds and asked, ‘Is this part of the job?’
‘Not necessarily.’ Indicating one bed, Ingrid explained, ‘The owner has his girl. He’s very nice. An Italian boy from Lugano. This bed is mine. The tall bartender you saw used to sleep in a bag on the floor. After a while I asked him to join me, so we put the bag away. If you prefer to use it, I’m sure they won’t mind.’
‘You mean I can sleep here? On the floor?’
‘Everybody else does. But you may also want to take over the bed … when I’m gone. He’s a very sweet guy … gentle … confused … not like an American at all.’
They waited for the better part of an hour, talking about Spain and Scandinavia, and Ingrid said that the young Swede she was marrying was an architect, and a good one. ‘I think we’ll be happy. This vacation in Spain …’
‘How long were you here?’
‘Eight months. I tried a Spanish businessman once, but it didn’t work out. They have such silly conventions … such ridiculous ideas about courtship … I was worn out trying to understand what his various tricks meant. All I wanted was a place to stay and enough money to feed myself from Monday through Thursday, but he had this complicated routine and I finally said to hell with it. I hadn’t a coin in my purse, but Jean-Victor met me in a bar … he’s the one who owns the place …’ She sighed and said, ‘It’s been a good eight months and I think I’m ready to go home.’
‘When are they coming?’ Britta pleaded. ‘My plane leaves at two tomorrow.’
‘They’ll be here,’ Ingrid reassured her, but night fell and no one came. A real panic overtook Britta and for the first time in many years she actually started to cry. ‘I’m sure it’ll come to nothing … this lovely dream.’ She sat on the bed for some time, holding her face in her hands. Then she said with conviction, ‘If he won’t hire me at the bar I’m going to proposition the first man I see. I will not fly back to Norway.’ She grabbed her topcoat and walked resolutely out the door, and Ingrid followed her, saying, ‘We’ll go to the bar. They’ll have to be there.’
They walked up the hill away from the beach, past the myriad bars where other girls who had landed jobs were beginning to congregate, and into the center of town where restaurants of all nations posted on their windows the names of the travel clubs from Copenhagen, Berlin and London whose members could pay for their meals with the dinner chits the clubs issued. Some of the cheaper restaurants displayed as many as twenty-four decalcomanias, but the girls were not interested in dinner, so they went directly to the Alamo, whose violent music they could hear a block away. Inside, the American soldiers and sailors were having the last noisy drink of the weekend before starting back to their bases on the far side of the mountains, and all of them greeted Ingrid with cheers and kisses, for she did much to make their visits happy. The three sailors who had entertained Britta the night before made a series of whirlwind proposals … they had an apartment … she could use it … there was food in the refrigerator … and next weekend she could decide whether she wanted to live permanently with any of them. She thought how surprised they would be if they knew how close she was to saying yes; she even studied the three to see which she would choose if she had to. She asked, ‘When do you start driving back to Rota?’ and they said, ‘At midnight,’ and she pressed the hand of the least objectionable and said, ‘I’ll be around to say goodbye.’
But sometime around ten the bartender appeared, tall, longhaired and generally presentable. She restrained herself from running up to him and waited until Ingrid called her over. ‘Joe, this is Britta. The Norwegian I’ve been telling you about.’
Joe looked up from his beer bottles and said, ‘I noticed you last night. Think you could run the place?’
‘Yes … if you’d be patient the first days.’
He smiled and said, ‘It isn’t the days that are the problems. It’s the nights.’
‘I am not afraid of nights,’ Britta said.
‘When did you say you were leaving, Ingrid?’
‘The ticket reads Wednesday.’
‘Can you start work Wednesday?’
‘Oh yes!’ She had not wanted to sound too eager, but she could not restrain herself.
‘I’ll have to move her things into the apartment,’ Ingrid said.
‘Why not?’
‘She can use the sleeping bag.’
‘Why not?’
When Joe went back to the bar, Britta said, ‘I want to move in right now. No, I won’t wait till tomorrow, because something might go wrong. He might see another girl who looked better, but if I??
?m sleeping at the foot of his bed …’
‘Few girls look better than you,’ Ingrid assured her. ‘Come along. We’ll get your gear.’
Britta walked back to the Northern Lights as if the pavements of Torremolinos were clouds. She wanted to sing and to kiss everyone who passed, and at the hotel she ran up to the Swedish manager and said, ‘I’ve found a job. You said it couldn’t be done, but I’ve found a job.’ She took his two hands and danced, then went to the tour desk and announced in a voice that could be heard throughout the lobby, ‘You can take my name off tomorrow’s list, I’m not flying back to Tromsø.’ Mette was not in the room, so Britta left her a hastily scrawled note: ‘I found a way to stay here. Hope you do too.’
When he took her clothes to Jean-Victor’s apartment, he and Sandra were in bed, and without getting up they welcomed her, told her how to find the sleeping bag with the tartan cover, and directed its placement on the floor. Sandra said, ‘You’d better pin a note to it: “This bed belongs to …” What’s your name?’
‘Britta. I’m from a little town in northern Norway.’
‘Narvik?’ Sandra asked brightly. ‘My father fought at Narvik.’
‘Even farther north. Tromsø.’
‘Daddy was there too. In a destroyer. He says it’s wildly beautiful.’ Sandra maintained a running comment about her father and the battles he had engaged in off the Norwegian coast. Obviously she liked her father, and Britta said, ‘My father was in the mountains signaling your ships,’ whereupon Sandra leaped from her bed, naked, and ran to kiss their new guest. ‘You’ll like it here,’ she said warmly.
And in the second week, after Ingrid had returned to Sweden, Britta lay one night in the tartan sleeping bag and heard Jean-Victor and Sandra in their bed and thought of Joe sleeping alone in the big bed, and the arrangement seemed ridiculous, so quietly she crept out of the sleeping bag, walked the short distance to Joe’s bed, and shook him gently by the shoulder, saying, ‘It’s no fun down there,’ and he said sleepily, ‘Come in here where it’s warm,’ and the pathway back to Tromsø closed forever.
III
MONICA
An Englishman is never at home except when he is abroad.
There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortal Gods.—Hazlitt
Finally we arrived at that mysterious plateau where the rivers begin, and wherever I went I was attended by a thousand birds of colorful plumage. If I tried to cross the swamp I saw before me hundreds upon hundreds of hippopotamuses who lazily moved aside at my approach. And if I went to the dry areas I found myself surrounded by a multitude of wild animals, some of whom I could not even identify, so abundant were the species, and I said, ‘This is Africa, the real Africa that will never perish so long as the plateaus are preserved and the men who govern them share their responsibilities one with the other.’ For remember that it was a black guide who had brought me to this place, to share its wonders with me.
—Lord Carrington Braham, February 1899
Burn pot, not people.
A great empire and little minds go ill together.—Burke
Hire the morally handicapped. It’s more fun.
The blunders of youth are preferable to the success of old age.—Disraeli
For more than eighty years we have been the wards of Great Britain. Today we become the friends of Great Britain and I am certain that it will be as difficult for us to be peaceful friends as it was to be obedient wards. Many Englishmen lie dead in this land, heroic men who fought our fathers to establish empire here; and beside them lie many of my ancestors, who tried to prevent empire from intruding on our ancient ways. Out of those battles we built a mutual respect, upon which we shall operate in the future. In Vwarda there will always be a home for such Englishmen as choose to live with us. In Vwarda there will always be businesses for Englishmen to run, offices for them to fill, jobs for them to perform, because I promise you this, the Negro Republic of Vwarda will never be an anti-white government, for we have learned how fruitful the cooperation of white and black can be.
—Inaugural address of President Hosea M’Bele, August 1958
Whom the gods would destroy they first make promising.
It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of Paradise.
—Mark Twain
The stability of England is the security of the modern world.—Emerson
To use bad English is regrettable.
To use bad Scotch is unforgivable.
It is my pleasure to confer upon you this Knighthood in honor of the great services you provided our former subjects in British Congo and the creative assistance you gave our newest ally, the Republic of Vwarda, in the critical days when it was designing the patterns under which it would operate.
—Queen Elizabeth, at the investiture of Sir Charles Braham, Buckingham Palace, December 1958
Sex to a young girl is like a bed of flowers to a honeybee. She can sense its existence even though she has not yet seen it.
All empire is no more than power in trust.—Dryden
All government is the same.
(Scrawled in the margin of the book)
Please behave like decent young ladies and gentlemen. No suicides, no dynamiting, no abortions.—Sign in a Torremolinos hotel
Of the six young people I was to meet that year, the one I was closest to was a dark-haired English girl whose family I had known in the Republic of Vwarda when I was arranging industrial loans during that exciting decade when African Negroes were assuming control of their governments.
At first I did not work directly with the new Negro president of Vwarda, nor even with members of his cabinet, for in that beginning period the new nation had no Negroes sufficiently informed to handle the economics of an international loan. I conducted my discussions principally with Sir Charles Braham, in many ways the archetype of the British colonial servant, in others about as atypical as you could find.
He was archetypal because of his education at a good public school plus later attendance at Oxford, two experiences which imparted that serene mixture of cool superiority and amateurish bumbling which mark the English gentleman. He had been born into one of the historic rural families, which gave him the appreciation of nature so common in the best Englishmen. And he had grown up in an atmosphere of public service, his various uncles having distinguished themselves in places like India and Afghanistan; it was said by the shopkeepers of his home county that ‘the Brahams are so incapable of handling their own affairs that the only thing they can be trusted with is public service … especially in the colonies.’ Sir Charles’s father, having started his career in Vwarda when it was known as the British Congo, terminated it in London as cabinet minister specializing in empire problems.
I was not surprised, therefore, when reporting to Sir Charles’s office in Vwarda, to find framed behind his desk this motto:
Not lust of conquest
but love of order
is at the basis of Empire.
—Duff Cooper
With Sir Charles this boast was not pompous; he believed that the duty of empire was to bring order into any part of the world which strove to discard ancient patterns and accept new. In 1948, when the British government proposed that he give up his comfortable job in London and go out to the British Congo to help whip that faltering colony into shape, he never thought of protesting, for this was the kind of challenge a gentleman accepted. As he told his wife on the day of his appointment to the Congo, ‘It gives us an opportunity to put into practice what we’ve been talking about here in London.’ He was also mindful of the fact that he would be following in the footsteps of his father, ‘and it isn’t preposterous to think that perhaps I, too, may be recalled one day to serve in the cabinet, mayn’t I?’
His record in Africa had been outstanding and he should have been brought home in 1958, but that was the year the British Congo was scheduled to become Vwarda, and he had been designated by the
Queen to supervise the transition, a ticklish job which he performed with such ease and good will that both England and the new nation wanted him to stay on for just a few more years. Government knew that he was not the stuff from which cabinet ministers were made and judged it propitious to leave him in Vwarda, where he served a useful purpose.
Now, in September 1968, when spring was blossoming in heavy splendor, he was ending his twenty-first year of service and had come to think of Vwarda as his homeland and these people as his charges, whether they were, as in the past, the illiterate and savage servants of an empire or, as now, the well-intentioned rulers of a wealthy new republic. He was fond of saying at banquets, ‘I was seconded here for a crisis job of four months. I have stayed twenty-one years. Either the crisis was bigger than they thought, or I was smaller.’
He had behaved with a certain grace in those years of change, shifting from his role as representative of the Queen, with all the panoply and prerogative that this conferred, to his present role of paid public employee of the Negro republic. It had not been an easy transition—overlord in be-medaled uniform one day, hired hand in blue serge the next—but he had drawn upon his training as a gentleman and had shown lesser men how easy it was to take orders from Negroes to whom they had been giving orders only the week before. Observers could not detect whether Sir Charles was indeed embittered by this dramatic shift in fortune. He said simply, ‘Vwarda is my home and all men are obligated to till their own gardens, aren’t they?’
The only petulance Sir Charles ever demonstrated came in his private talks with me. We spent some months together, trying to wrap up the loan which would enable Vwarda to build its hydroelectric dam, and sometimes late at night, when things had gone wrong, he would confide his disappointments. In his huffing, stumbling manner he would growl, ‘Thing I object to most is the damned postage stamps. In the old days we had those superb stamps … great dignity … portrait of the Queen … splendid etching, just that and nothing more … subdued color, marvelous design … and those simple words … British Congo. Now what do we have? These damned tropical birds and animals … looks like a bloody zoo … and the new name plastered over everything … no taste … no feeling for dignity and propriety.’ Later I found that his real complaint was against the change in name. One night when we had taken on a rather heavy burden of gin at the British Club—formerly the Colonial Club, one of the stuffiest in the empire—he confided: ‘Thing I simply cannot understand is why they felt they had to drop that splendid old name British Congo … you knew what it was, where it was, what it meant. What does the new name stand for? A bloody river that not one person in a thousand ever heard of. Vwarda!’ He snorted with contempt, then quickly apologized: ‘I must tell you, though, that these blighters are damned decent to work for … and they do pay their bills, first of every month. Fact is, if the truth were known, it’s somewhat better working for Vwarda that it was working for the Labour Government in London, what?’