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Face to the Sun
By Geoffrey Household OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1988 Geoffrey Household
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9353-9
CHAPTER 1
My Dear Mayne,
You will be astonished to read that this document from, I believe, your respected friend is the confession of a sneak-thief and – at least in the eyes of North Americans – a communist revolutionary. Your own people know my age, name and birthplace from my passport, and have no reason at all to wave goodbye to a law-abiding and favourite foreigner; on the other hand, British police have a record of my crime but do not know my name and can have only the vaguest description of my personal appearance. So I shall never cause you any embarrassment so long as interested parties are unable to combine the two.
My crime, anyway, was the minor one of petty larceny, of no interest to the Bank of England, the Foreign Office or MI5. One of my motives in setting down on paper a true account of its results and my reactions to them is that you should read it, seal it and deposit it in your inviolable safe to be made public in case of my death, or that of any of my collaborators, by suspected violence. A lesser motive is to demonstrate to the British police – should they ever discover my guilt and contemplate extradition – that my crime was purely impulsive and that I had no notion of the value of the swag. In these days when prisons are overbooked and magistrates inclined to be lenient, I think justice might well be satisfied by a sentence of community service which could vary – according to the skill of the defence and the after-lunch geniality of the Bench – between unblocking the drains of an Old People's Home and sawing firewood for the Police Station.
I was, as you know, an orphan with neither money nor influence but enough intelligence to gain a place at a provincial polytechnic from which I emerged three years later to look for a job on the strength of some insignificant letters after my name. So I answered advertisements – among them, one from a chain of Andalucian hotels on the Costa del Sol which required a British analyst in residence.
Their guests, it appeared, had an annoying habit of putting the blame for intestinal upheavals on the food. The Spanish medical authorities, after careful analysis, pronounced that there was nothing whatever wrong with it. However, the gang of financial crooks, gangsters and drug smugglers who stretched themselves, luxuriously farting champagne over the once pleasant beaches of southern Spain, put no trust in the official verdict; they demanded that an independent British analyst should be in residence. The hoteliers provided one. They knew very well that the stomach upsets of the prejudiced Britons were not due to shellfish but to drink and the devil; and that no high-powered scientist was needed. Anyone cheap who could wear a white coat with authority and handle a makeshift laboratory would do. They took the first who offered – me.
I settled in as comfortably as the hotel cat, well fed and housed, petted by the guests and with no serious work except to learn Spanish. I was surprisingly popular with the local doctors whose expensive and violent remedies I recommended, though both they and I realised that the kitchens were spotlessly clean and that a plain pick-me-up would be sufficient.
Our most distinguished guest in the summer following my arrival was an African general, known as the Father of his Country, who had found that the opportunities for spending his money at home were limited while the opportunities for accumulating it were not. He exploded on us with a small suite, male and female, and occupied half a floor of the hotel. His size and colour were both too overwhelming for our normal collection of criminals and package-tourists but he took to me for four good reasons. I admired his genial and excellent manners; I could, by this time, speak reasonable Spanish and he could not; he had some trouble in making water and feared that he might be incubating the clap. (My polytechnic studies were enough to assure him that he was not.) He was intrigued by a view of the golf links from his bedroom window and I was able to give him his first lessons in that noble game.
After a month of this intimacy he offered me the post of Government Analyst at ten times the salary I was paid by the hotel with a bungalow shaded by the forest and the requisite staff. I did not hesitate. Of course I realised that I should be dependent on a dictator's goodwill but I was prepared to risk it, for I had gathered from his suite that the army idolised him and that rash opponents were seen, if at all, floating downriver indistinguishable from the dung of crocodiles. I accepted the post.
And here my story really begins with two famous drug companies, one American and one Swiss, in competition with each other throughout the Third World, where the liberality of the bribe slipped by the manufacturer's local agent to the buyer had more influence than the curative value of the product whatever their respective laboratories might claim. On this occasion the Americans landed the contract, having very sensibly appointed as their agent the nephew of the Minister of Health. But unusual discretion was required. The Father of the Country, as the General preferred to be called, had recently assured the commercial world that under his government the revolting vice of corruption was at an end and, if discovered, would be punished by a long term of imprisonment.
The shipment of Mirabiloil, the much publicised remedy for piles – an inconvenience to which the youth of the nation were very liable owing to their indelicate habits – was unloaded into a lighter which was promptly towed upriver and consigned to the Headquarters battalion of the General's favourite regiment. It seemed unlikely that the well-fed army should be suffering from an epidemic fierce enough to justify such an inordinate quantity of pile lotion and so, as a moderately conscientious Government Analyst, I felt I should know the reason. I had no intention of interfering with the General's sources of income. What I had in mind was weedkiller and the ecology. I had begged the Father of his Country not to spread poisons about so indiscriminately and had possibly made such an impression that he had kept the importation secret; so I borrowed the customs launch and discovered that the lighter had discharged at the remote wharf of the General's country estate, where he was checking a barricade of crates with an air of satisfaction.
Only then did it occur to me that instead of taking the newly forbidden bribe for signing the contract he had bought the whole shipment to be sold for his personal profit. The National Bank, of which of course he was also a Father, could not know it. The Minister of Health and his nephew could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. I apologised for disturbing his leisure and assured him that I was far too innocent to have ever suspected such ingenuity. That half-humorous remark was unwise. He took it as the contemptuous insolence of the white man towards the black – to which he was always sensitive even when it didn't exist – called me a spy and a liar and ordered me to leave for London by the next day's plane or have my tongue analysed in my own bloody laboratory. I prudently chose the former, abandoning the salary due to me and leaving behind my few possessions to be sold at a police auction for what they would fetch. That would be nothing. The Chief of Police had once envied my carpets which I had too innocently shown him.
Enough of these complexities! On arrival in the centre of London I sold the contents of my travelling bag which allowed me to stay a fortnight in a cheap boarding-house. I spent the days in a desperate search for a job and was unsuccessful; without references I could not hope for employment, and even if I was allowed to tell my story, the prospective employer cut the interview short assuming that there was no smoke without fire. I had no family and after working abroad ever since I left the polytechnic no acquaintances to whom I could appeal, let alone close friends.
Now, this larceny which I mentioned would never have been committed if I had had anything to eat for forty-eight hours after my fortnight was up or anywhere to sleep but a park bench. It is proudly claimed that a person cannot starve in England; nor can he if he knows the ropes. But if he doesn't, to what charitable body should he appeal? What story, true or false, will get him a free bed? How disgusting will it be? I accuse myself now of timidity. I should have asked some fellow sufferer sleeping rough. At least he could have directed me to a pawnshop where I could sell my respectable suit and buy some filthy old rags to back up my claim to be utterly destitute. I shrank from any such acceptance of fate. My only asset was my appearance of prosperity. I did not fit into any of the generous nets spread out to catch the needy, although the only possessions I had retained were shaving tackle, a toothbrush and – thank God! – a clothes brush.
My clothes were still good enough for me to appear a possible customer, so I entered Harrods and walked aimlessly through the long halls with a vague and desperate idea of finding some shining counter where samples of exotic food – any kind from fat-free ferret livers to a small carton of camel milk – were handed out gratis. No luck. I wandered on and up in a lift, hunger for once providing energy, until I arrived in some sort of luxurious coffee lounge, full of well-dressed women. On my way round the cake-and-coffee zone I passed close to a table where sat two of them, evidently mother and daughter, excitedly chatting away about invitations to dinners and theatre parties which were awaiting the mother who had just flown in from South America. The daughter spoke English, the mother American with a slight Spanish accent. They had ordered an unnecessary selection of cakes and goodies, so I loitered nearby – looking impatiently over distant tables as if expecting to find a missing wife – in the hope that they might leave something edible on their table when they got up.
The older woman was rotund, swathed in black silk, just like an old-fashioned lodging-house landlady except that every inch of her, every sleekness, every flow proclaimed that she had been dressed by some artist who, unable to give beauty to such exuberance of flesh, had rightly settled for distinction. Her companion, young enough to allow bosom and backside to be discreetly emphasised, leaned towards her across the table as intently as an ant milking its queen. On the floor at the side of the queen's chair was a black bag of crocodile leather with silver fittings.
Leaving them to their enjoyable discussion of the scandalous behaviour of modern youth, I moved away unnoticed. As a first thought, it occurred to me that the older woman deserved to lose the crocodile bag; as a second thought, that the risk of picking it up myself was acceptable. About a foot of the shoulder strap was clear of the bag and on the floor; if I could time my approach for a moment when their attention was completely absorbed by their mutual vivacity there was a chance that neither of them might notice the gentle foot of a passer-by stretched out to catch in the loop and the hand which lifted the bag quickly and silently off the floor. If any of them did notice I could pretend to have tripped over the strap. The unavoidable danger lay in the twenty seconds or so it would take me to reach the nearest exit and disappear.
The foot and hand skilfully obeyed. The following twenty seconds were the worst. I was sure I had not been seen by the two women. But from some other table? Not daring to hurry, I listened for the yell of STOP HIM. I had never stolen anything in my life and so had none of the technique and experience of the pickpocket. I had been mad, I screamed to my panicking self, to trust beginners' luck. Theft could not be so easy. I waited for the rush of an attendant or policeman. I had a flashed vision of the waiting cell. I swear I even heard the door close on me. Then I was through the exit, dripping cold sweat. The bag must surely have been missed by now.
To get rid of it was the next task. I hadn't thought that out, and it didn't occur to me that the terror which seemed timeless to me was still only twenty seconds to the two chatterers. At the end of the department was the sign GENTLEMEN. I nearly broke into a run, but forced myself to march straight ahead for safety, like a gentleman indeed. I locked a door on myself and collapsed on to the friendly seat.
I now had privacy in which to think undisturbed. With my heart beginning to slow its beat, I opened the bag to see if it contained any money. Money was all I wanted. In a pocket at the top was a wallet stuffed with a wad of notes which I took with a relief which overwhelmed all feelings of fear and guilt. Below were three flatfish cases of expensive leather. When I opened the smallest I found, to my horror, that on a nest of blue velvet lay a tiara of diamonds and exquisite emeralds. She can hardly have been strolling in public with that. My guess was that she had been met on arrival by her daughter and had sat down with her for coffee, cakes and a gossip, before placing her jewellery in Harrods' safe deposit.
I left the other cases unopened. I had landed myself in real trouble. She must have missed the bag by now and alerted the lounge with her screams. In those twenty seconds I might with luck have drawn no attention to myself for there was nothing exceptional about a man carrying large business documents in an oversized portfolio. On my way to my present refuge, however, I had been seen by dozens of shoppers. Could one of them describe me? Very vaguely. The black bag would be clearly remembered once the alarm had gone out, but nothing recognisable about the individual who was carrying it through a moving crowd. An attendant in the gents' lavatory would have been deadly, but none had been visible.
The next move was to get clear of Harrods as soon as possible. I placed the bag by the side of the seat – an outlandish home for that tiara – unlocked the door and cleared off. Then morality took over. I had what I needed. Had I any right to deprive the old girl of immensely valuable jewels, leaving them where anyone could pick them up? My conscience was evil. She could obviously spare the cash I had pinched; she could not spare the tiara. On my way out I glanced into the coffee parlour. The loss had been discovered. Two managers, the waitresses and the occupants of neighbouring tables were all standing up in a huddle and all squealing at once. I left them to it, descended the stairs with dignity and found myself next door to the sports department. My eye was caught by a range of canvas cricket bags. Inside one of those the jewel cases could be hidden and probably even the bag itself would fit. Why not? If it was left in its place, the chap who found it would have the hell of a time clearing himself. Hypocrisy? Yes, my true motive in recovering the swag was a thought of the reward that would be offered for its return. I bought a canvas bag and, for good measure, a bat. Then I went cautiously back to GENTLEMEN. Apparently, nobody had chosen my compartment for a visit. I locked the door, filled my cricket bag and left Harrods with the light steps and squared shoulders of a county bowler.
A taxi drew up at the side door and discharged its passenger as I came out. I jumped into it and told the driver to go to Lords. If and when the police saw a possible connection between the missing black bag and the cricket bag and traced the taxi-driver, my destination would indicate that the theory was wrong. As soon as the taxi had driven away from Lords I took another to Soho, and there, guarding my bag between my feet, recovered with a half-bottle of claret and an ample meal.
At last, with a full and grateful belly, I counted the money in the wallet which came to over six hundred pounds. The next task was to buy an ordinary suitcase together with pyjamas, clean shirt and underwear, and in another invaluable public lavatory pack into it the contents of the cricket bag, which was no longer a saviour but a clue. I deposited it in the left luggage office at King's Cross station, and then found a room and bath – safer and cheaper than a hotel – in the respectable neighbourhood of Gower Street.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Face to the Sun by Geoffrey Household. Copyright © 1988 Geoffrey Household. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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