of theirs this afternoon – and then you can go to that Ryle meeting tonight as Cox suggested. It might even be useful, you never know.' Audley had rubbed his hands. 'And I've got a lot of catching up to do to find out what the hell's really happening ...'
Very pleased with himself, David Audley had been, like an old warhorse smelling battle on familiar territory.
Roskill had been very much less pleased; it might be a jolly game for Audley, but he sensed that in Audley's game he was becoming something less even than a junior partner. And yet he could see no way of avoiding his downgrading: without Audley he didn't stand a chance of attaining his own vengeance, and the big man was dummy2
incapable of playing second fiddle to anyone. So all he could do was to follow instructions, keeping his own counsel and never forgetting his objective.
'And first thing tomorrow you can slip down to Firle and scout around,' said Audley. 'You can reach me at home if you turn anything up. After that we may have something of our own to work on.'
Slip down to Firle! Roskill's jaw had tightened at that – so easy to say and so agonising to carry out!
Well, there would come a time maybe when Audley wouldn't find it so easy to control the action . . . there would come a time...
Roskill started guiltily, catching himself in the very act of falling off his chair. He looked around him, fearful lest he had drawn attention to himself, but the rest of the audience seemed either equally withdrawn or, like the fat Arab with the scarred face in the row ahead of him, unhappily restless. There was a subdued undercurrent of movement – of legs stretching and bottoms searching for comfort.
He looked at his watch again, to find that only another five tortoise-minutes had crawled past. The bloody man was still only at the beginning of the 19th century.
' . .. and so we come to what may be considered the dawn of modern times...
The speaker paused to consult his notes. But as he raised his head, his mouth opening to greet the dawn, the fat Arab began to clap vigorously.
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For a moment it was touch and go; the speaker looked around wildly and those of the audience who were still with him stirred uneasily. But the Arab clapped more enthusiastically than ever, looking to left and right as though to shame the laggards into action.
The crammer's advice not to draw attention to himself flashed through Roskill's mind, only to be instantly extinguished as his hands came together on their own initiative. The woman on his left looked at him briefly in surprise and then joined in, followed by the man on her left. Spontaneously applause flared up in a dozen different parts of the hall, those who genuinely thought the lecture had ended rushing to join the dissidents who knew all too well that it hadn't.
Last to join in were the handful who had actually been listening, but when they did so they clapped louder than the rest to hide their embarrassment. There were even a few shouts of 'bravo' – one coming from the Arab himself. Such was the storm of applause that in the end the speaker's chagrin turned to gratification. He had probably never encountered such enthusiasm before.
Altogether, thought Roskill as he joined the stampede towards the refreshment room, it was a notable landmark in Anglo-Arabian understanding: for once the silent majority had cooperated to liberate themselves.
He held back until the worst of the crush along the tables had thinned out, disagreeably aware that the contents of the silver bowls ahead of him was as fruity as he had feared. After carefully dummy2
scanning the faces of the waiters and waitresses dispensing it he edged his way towards a wizened little man whose magenta nose promised sympathy, even though he was presiding over a bowl in which sliced fruit floated like dead fish depth-charged to the surface.
'Is there any alternative to this – this – ' Roskill indicated the bowl
'whatever it is?'
A glimmer of recognition lit the bloodshot eyes. There were some pale, intense English faces among the gathered friends of Arabia he had already seen, but there were also ageing, darkened skins which must have weathered in the forts of trucial levies and Arab Legion messes. There
The eyes took in Roskill's tan, which had been started under Israeli skies and consolidated in Greece.
Roskill slid a 50-penny piece across the white tablecloth, under the napkin by the man's hand.
'For the love of God,' he hissed, 'give me a decent drink.'
'This is a very thirst-quenching drink, sir,' said the little man, without looking down but with his fingers testing the coin's heptagonal shape. 'For the Arabian gentlemen, that is.'
He bent down briefly behind the table, reappearing with a tall glass on the side of which he deftly fastened a sliver of cucumber.
'Window-dressing, sir – merely window-dressing,' he murmured reassuringly.
It still looked more like a long drink suitable for the Arab gentlemen, and Roskill sniffed it suspiciously.
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It was Scotch. He took a slow sip. And not just Scotch, but the purest, mellowest, most exquisite malt whisky, unadulterated and possibly the largest straight measure he had ever received. The Foundation certainly looked after its own, and with his weak head for spirits he'd have to watch his tongue.
He nodded gratefully and turned away to scrutinise the crowd again for the faces in Cox's file of probables and possibles. So far he hadn't seen one of them, wide though the range at the gathering was: pouchy, easy-living faces; lean, bitter faces; ugly, pitted complexions like the surface of the Moon and that almost feminine beauty which was the inheritance of Circassian ancestry.
The faces reminded him of what the Foreign Office man had said in his enthusiasm: the Middle East had melted down so many races, conquerors and slaves alike, that spotting bloodlines was a game for the experts. Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Albanians, Normans, Napoleon's veterans and Australians oif the Imperial Light Horse – the greatest of Islam's admirals had been red-haired.
