Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

Charles was on the point of becoming angry. ‘Look… you said you had something important to say. The way I spend my evenings is of no importance —except to me.’

‘She is a very charming girl.’ Palan slumped into an easy chair and stretched his legs. ‘Do you remember, M’sieur Anderson, last night you invited me here for a drink, but I permitted myself to take a rain-check.’

‘A WHAT?’

‘I beg your pardon—an American word, meaning that one expects on a later occasion the pleasure one has previously declined.’

‘All right, but I have only whisky.’

‘Excellent.’

As he was pouring it Charles could not repress the instincts of the host. ‘I hope you don’t mind Irish. The flavour is perhaps an acquired taste.’

Palan took it, sniffed, swallowed, and nodded. ‘It has my full approval.’ He swallowed again. ‘I must explain that I did not follow you tonight with any sinister intent. I merely wished to see you as soon as possible without interfering with any other engagement you had.’

‘That’s all right. Anybody can follow me who wants to.’

‘You are, I am sure, quite proud of that. It is like your English boast that your policemen do not carry guns, and that your speakers in Hyde Park are allowed to say what they like. It is all so very true—up to a point. But where IS that point?’

‘Yes, indeed, since it’s getting on for two o’clock and we resume our official discussions at eleven.’

‘M’sieur Anderson, you have come to the point yourself with great accuracy. I do not think that I shall be resuming any official discussions.’ Palan pulled out a case and chose a cigar, offering one to Charles.

‘No, thanks… What do you mean?’

Palan lit his cigar with deliberate slowness, but Charles was now tolerant, for he could detect emotion behind the movement and knew that everyone is entitled to some such technique of delay and self-control.

Palan said: ‘You who have made so many small jokes about me at the Conference—and of course I know you have—must now learn that the biggest joke of all is not ABOUT me, but ON me. Simply this—that I have been recalled to my country.’

Charles was silent, asking the question merely by the way he placed an ashtray at Palan’s elbow.

Palan continued: ‘They are not satisfied with the way I have conducted its affairs at the Conference. They think I have not been strong enough.’

‘WHAT?’ In his utter surprise Charles was aware of a pleased puzzlement that anybody should think his own side had had even any degree of success, and an equally puzzled and sudden sympathy with Palan which, as he diagnosed it, he knew to be absurd. He exclaimed: ‘But that hardly makes sense! It’s MY country that should complain, not YOURS! Why, dammit, you’ve had your own way nine times out of ten in everything so far!’

‘But you do not realize, M’sieur Anderson, that nine times is not enough for my country. It must be ALL the times. Anything less than that is failure. Of course you cannot understand that. You cannot understand the methods of the cold young men who are rising to the top. So I will tell you what will happen now that I have been recalled. They will send you one of them to take my place and he will not give way even that tenth time. He will be like my son.’

‘Then the Conference will fail.’

‘It has already failed. Though it may continue for some time after my successor arrives.’

‘But how about your chief in all this? Surely he must back you up— you’re under his direction—he can hardly let a subordinate be blamed —’

‘You think he cannot? Remember, M’sieur Anderson, that as a nation of innovators we are capables de tout.’

‘But what’s the evidence against you? If you’ll accept a left-handed compliment, I think you’ve handled your side of things deplorably well.’

‘It is charming of you to say so. Such a testimonial at my trial might be of great help.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Or perhaps no, there may be no trial. I shall be liquidated without any.’

‘Oh, come now—It can’t be so—so—’

‘So SERIOUS, eh? You are now seeing the joke?’

‘I must admit I—I mean, it’s hard for me to—’

‘Because naturally you are not afraid of being liquidated yourself?’

‘ME? Good God, no.’

‘Your people do not do that sort of thing, as I am so well aware.’

‘Even if we did, I don’t think Sir Malcolm and I would be in much danger. Responsibility for the failure of the Conference is so obviously not ours.’

Palan considered this for a moment, then said half whimsically: ‘M’sieur Anderson, will you forget you are a diplomat for a moment and answer truthfully a very simple question?’

‘I can’t promise, but you can ask.’

‘All right… Just this: If, by pressing a button, you could set off an earthquake to destroy my country, what would you do?’

Charles smiled grimly. ‘I wouldn’t want to destroy your country, but if by pressing a button I could destroy your government I’d not only press it, I’d lean on it for an hour to make quite sure.’

‘So when you forget you are a diplomat you become a schoolboy?’

‘It was a schoolboy’s question.’

‘Would you have answered it differently when you were one? Our Revolution took place when you were at school—how did you feel about it then?’

‘So far as I can remember, everybody was most enthusiastic. We all hoped your country was going to become more like our own.’

‘And of course you could not set for us a higher standard.’

‘I daresay. We were very na ve. We still are. We’re a na ve country.’

‘It is your rightful boast. Nothing else could have saved you in 1940… But I wonder if our personal positions had been reversed—yours and mine, at that early age—I wonder if I should have been more like you, or you more like me?’

‘I doubt the latter. I can’t imagine myself dynamiting trains.’

‘Oh, but I can. Very easily… Surely you will not admit that there is anything an Englishman cannot bring himself to do in an emergency? Why, you have even beheaded your king—a somewhat more barbarous regicide, would you not say, than the one you condemned us for recently? In our country yours has always had many admirers, including those who—returning the compliment, as it were—hoped that yours was going to become more like ours. Or does the idea of that shock you?’

‘If you mean going Communist it doesn’t shock me at all. I personally would be against it, but if it had to happen we might do a better job than your people have. Of course it wouldn’t be the same job and we shouldn’t give it the same name. Your own melancholy example would guide us a lot in what to avoid, but besides that we have certain advantages—our Civil Service, for instance—reasonably efficient and free from corruption. Then too our traditions, which we should keep as intact as possible—and our constitution that so happily has no existence in any written document. After all, a thousand years’ experience of making changes IS rather a help in disguising them—next to the Papacy I daresay we know more of the tricks of successful survival than any other institution in history.’

‘And all THIS… from STUFFY ANDERSON!’

After the initial shock Charles was neither so startled nor so affronted as he would have expected. He merely replied: ‘I suppose you overheard that somewhere.’

‘A few of your younger colleagues—speaking of you entirely without malice.’

‘I’m quite sure of that. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course not. It was just their way of liquidating you.’

‘WHAT?… Oh, nonsense—why, I’ve had that nickname for God knows how many years.’