The Male Response. Brian Aldiss
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‘You find it so?’
‘I have no complaints so far,’ Soames said, permitting a slight sulkiness to enter his voice.
‘It is good,’ the Queen said. ‘Even the wretched Mr Picket thrives here, although he is an Englishman of another sort. I have read in a Geographical Magazine that the English race comes from the tropics, and Princess Cherry is also very educated, reading great many books. She will make somebody, some privileged personage, a good wife one day. No doubt you are eager to meet her?’
‘Perhaps when my own clothes …’
‘She is engaged with her studies in the library now,’ said the Queen, ‘but it is possible to interrupt. Come, I know you will like her.’
Soames and the little black maid scurried after her, down a dark passage and into a room full of rickety shelves, on some of which reposed books and magazines. On a long cane chair lay Princess Cherry, heiress to her mother’s estate and physiognomy. She wore a heavy, heavily flowered dress; a blue plastic bow slide was clipped into her tight curls. One pair of earrings adhered to her ears, another was clipped to the superb dihedral of her nostril flanges. In her hand, negligently, was a copy of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks; it was right way up.
‘This is the Englishman, Mr Soames, Princess dear,’ said the Queen. ‘Get up and put your shoes on at once.’
The Princess complied and said, guiltily, ‘How do you do? Possibly you like to sit down in my chair and read something?’
‘Perhaps I might borrow something to have in bed tonight,’ Soames said. A slow flush crept over his face, in case they should think he had been attempting an innuendo, but both faces were – features apart – blank.
‘So you are a literary man?’ enquired Queen Louise, looking at her daughter to prompt her to take over the conversation. ‘The English are a great literary nation as well as conquering parts of Africa.’
‘I read quite a bit,’ Soames agreed.
‘The English are a very great literary nation,’ the Princess admitted uneasily.
‘What do you read – besides Buddenbrooks?’ Soames enquired. He would have enjoyed the conversation better had the Queen not been drawn up like an RSM behind him; she was breathing deeply, like a man receiving a VC at Buckingham palace.
‘I read Buddenbrooks for a long time,’ said the Princess sadly. ‘The servants forget to bring me tea when I sit here in this room – library. Also I read John Keats’ “Ode to Autumn”, which I like. It is a poem. Have you heard of it?’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Soames said. They had swotted up the Ode for School Cert, fifteen years ago. ‘For summer has overfilled their clammy cells.’
The Princess clapped her hands and smiled with delight. ‘He knows it!’ she said to her mother. Genuine pleasure filled her, she sat down naturally on the cane chair like an English schoolgirl, and Soames’ feelings changed to liking for her.
‘This is a sad poem,’ she said, ‘but for me mainly puzzling – for you see we do not have autumn in Goya.’
‘Otherwise the climate is excellent,’ said the Queen.
‘Autumn must be so strange,’ the Princess said. ‘I wish John Keats had written a novel also. Will you perhaps explain the poem to me, line by line, if you are not always busy at your machine, for my English is so foul?’
‘I should love to read the poem with you,’ Soames said, ‘but I assure you your English is very good indeed. Where did you learn it?’
The young girl’s manner altered. The smile faded from her face, she turned her head away; she seemed to recall unhappy, far-off things.
‘From Mr Picket,’ she said.
‘Come, we must leave the girl at her work,’ said the Queen briskly, uttering a sharp word of command in Goyese to the maid. Before Soames was bustled out, the Princess rose and curtsied; a memory rose in his mind of a performing bear he had seen as an infant. It, too, could curtsy and look sad.
Outside the door, the Queen, drawing herself up to her full height and girth, surveyed Soames thoroughly. Under the glare of her eyes and nostrils, he felt like a man confronted by a bandit aiming a double-barrelled gun.
‘She is sweet, the Princess, eh?’ the Queen challenged.
Soames nodded once, saying curtly, ‘I should like to talk to her alone sometime.’
For answer, he received a salacious wink. The password had evidently been given; the shotgun was lowered; Greek had met Greek. Queen Louise seized his wrist as they set off down the corridor again.
‘You are staying here not less than two weeks, Mr Soames.’
‘Probably.’
‘That time must be enough for you to grow to love this country. We shall show you up all over it. Perhaps you will not like to leave it then. If it would be so, a very good job can be secured in the President’s government; perhaps the post of Prime Minister could be found for you. I could arrange everything of consequence.’
‘I don’t doubt that, Queen Louise,’ said Soames. ‘But I must get back to England.’
‘You are not married?’
‘No.’
‘You are single?’
‘Yes.’
‘A bachelor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Goya has many attractions for a young man, a single literary bachelor.’
‘That I do not doubt. But I hardly think I shall stay, all the same.’
‘Dumayami, the witch doctor, who is a clever man at reading the future, tells otherwise.’
Lunch was served in the banqueting hall. The small handful of people present huddled round two tables at one end of the room, under the only electric fan which was working. M’Grassi Landor with his two wives, Queen Louise and Mrs President, a buxom Goyese called Tunna, sat at one table with such of their respective offspring as were of manageable age (a category including Princess Cherry and her younger brother Shappy), eating in almost complete silence. At the other table sat Soames with an assortment of black men who were court officials or government ministers. Since none of them possessed much English, silence fell there, too, when they had tried out the little they had. Timpleton was not present, thereby missing an excellent Indian curry.
After the meal, the Indian chef came out of the kitchen to present himself to Soames. He was a slender man whose goat’s eyes did not smile when the rest of his face did.
‘My name is Turdilal Ghosti, sir. I am the head cook to this palace since three years, sir. Was the dinner exactly to your liking, I am hoping?’
‘Excellent,’ Soames said. ‘I am very fond of Indian food. The chicken pilau was first rate.’
‘Is the best, sir. How long you are staying here?’
‘Oh, about a fortnight. I hope I’ll see you again,’ Soames said, shuffling his feet, preparing to leave.
‘I am living in this bloody town, sir, since seven years. Is too long time for me. Here I am all alone with my old mother and my wife and my six little children and my brother and his family and my uncle and some of his relations and their relations.’
‘I noticed there were a lot of Indians in Umbalathorp,’ Soames said. He was cornered in an alcove, and the little chef was adroitly keeping him there. Soames could see that the inside of his mouth was bright with betel.
‘Plenty Indians are living here, sir,’ Turdilal agreed, ‘and all are being so bloody unhappy, sir. This climate only good for black men. No other man is liking, sir. In the Japanese war I was cooking three years in Firpo’s restaurant on Chowringhee Street