Уильям Николсон - Motherland

‘There it is,’ says Brunstetter. ‘That’s where the money comes from. You want to know the secret of our success? Control. Ask Sam, he’ll tell you the same thing every time. Control. Control every stage in the process. Planting, growing, transporting, shipping, marketing. And how do you get control? Ownership. Own the plantations, own the railroads, own the ships, own the docks.’

‘Own the countries,’ says Larry.

Brunstetter gives a hoot of laughter.

‘You got it! Own the countries. Damn right! Only we don’t do it the way you guys do it, with your empire. We don’t put our name over the door. That way everyone hates you. No, we leave the local boys to run the show. All we ask is that they run it our way.’

‘So I hear,’ says Larry.

Before he sails for home Larry writes two letters, to Ed and Kitty and to Geraldine, even though he knows they’ll reach England only a few days ahead of his own return.

This trip has taught me so much about this strange business I’m in, and a lot of it’s not very edifying. The general idea seems to be that if it makes money it’s good. There is a kind of logic to this, we all need money to live, so making it is good however you go about it. But the more I think this through, the more it seems to me that the world of business is missing the bigger picture. Man does not live by bread alone. I can hear Ed utter a groan. But you don’t need to bring in God for this. Surely it’s obvious. We need bread to stay alive, but bread is not what we live for . And so it is with money. It’s not an end, it’s a means. The goal we’re all after is the good life. So you see, Kitty, all our talks about goodness turn out to be important after all. Even in the hard world of business, goodness matters. It’s the heart of the good life. To be honest I’m not sure what I mean by this, I’m working it out as I write. What has goodness to do with the good life? I suppose what I call the good life means life that is both happy and valued. We all want to feel our existence has some purpose. And I don’t see how we can feel that if we live in such a way that all our comforts come from the suffering of others. So we need to believe that we’re fundamentally good, on the side of the angels as we say, in order to lead a good life. And yes, we need money too. So the business of business must be to make good money . As soon as businesses introduce a split between their profits and their morality they lose the point of the whole enterprise. You can say, like St Augustine, ‘I’ll be wicked for twenty years and then when I’ve got enough money I’ll be good.’ But in those twenty years you’ve poisoned your world and lost your soul. Yes, Ed, I know you haven’t got a soul. But you’ve got a heart, you live among people you love. Kitty, you tell him. Love is goodness. Love is people being good to each other.

Maybe I’m missing something here. It’s hot as hell and I sweat like a pig. Do pigs sweat? Better say I sweat like a horse. So my brain may be softening. But here’s my confession. I’m excited. I can see a way to use something as mundane as selling bananas to create the good life for several thousand people. I’m sure the company will grow over the coming years. What if it were to be a force for good? We’re so accustomed to think of making money as the devil’s work. I want to reclaim it for God. I expect by now you’re both smiling tolerantly. Poor old Larry, he can’t cross a road without looking for a greater purpose. It’s true, I admit it. I want meaning in my life. But so do you in yours. So does everybody. And that’s what we want our work to give us, more than money, more than status. We’re hungry for meaning.

There, I’ve rambled on for too long. I shall be home in two weeks and four days. I miss you both and long to see you again. Give Pammy and the Monk a kiss each from me, of equal size. We never seem to have enough time together. Why don’t you and the girls join us this summer in our house in Normandy? Seriously, do think about it. We plan to be there all of August.

To Geraldine he writes:

My dear darling. Only two weeks or so before I’m with you again, and by the time you’re reading this it will be only a few days. New Orleans is beautiful and lush and dirty and hot and half-mad, I think. The whole city feels like an overripe fruit about to burst. I’ve met our parent company, but I think they’re not very good parents. All they tell me is, Make money. Oddly enough this place reminds me of India. The same brightness and energy and noise, but underneath, the savagery. I trust you got my second letter from Kingston. I’ve heard nothing from you since Kingston, so I expect your last few letters will follow me home. I’ve had an idea to ask Ed and Kitty and their girls to La Grande Heuze this August. It would be jolly to have children running about, don’t you think? I can’t wait to be home again, and to hold you in my arms again. I feel as if I’ve been away half my life, and when I get home everyone will be wrinkled and stooped and ninety years old, all except you, darling, who are ageless and whose beauty never fades.

Pamela falls in love with La Grande Heuze at first sight. Larry watches her running from room to room, and out into the garden where the great forest begins, and sees in her wide excited eyes the same wonder that possessed him twenty-five years ago and more, when he first came here. That was the summer before his mother died. He was five years old, two years younger than Pamela is now. He has clear memories of his mother sitting in the shade of a giant parasol on the terrace, and walking rather too slowly down the long straight allées that cut through the endless world of the forest.

‘Is it your house?’ Pamela says. ‘Do you really live here?’

‘When I’m on holiday,’ Larry says, smiling down at her.

‘I love it!’ she cries. ‘It’s so beautiful. It’s a secret house in a forest. Can I come and live here with you?’

‘You are living here with me.’

‘No, I mean for ever and ever.’

‘I’m not sure your mother would approve of that.’

‘She could come too. But not the Monkey. She wouldn’t understand.’

In this way Pamela appropriates the house and its garden and its surrounding forest as her rightful domain. She announces that its name, La Grande Heuze, is a reference to herself.

‘It’s hers , you see, Mummy. That means it’s mine.’

‘Well, darling,’ says Kitty, ‘you’ll have to fight it out with Larry and Geraldine. I rather think they think it’s theirs.’

‘Geraldine!’ Pammy is indignant. ‘It’s Larry’s house, not Geraldine’s house.’

Geraldine is looking lovelier than ever. In her light cotton dresses, her sunglasses perched on her blond curls, she looks like summer itself. Under her management, the old house is filled with softly coloured light. She makes sure there are fresh flowers in the rooms every day, and fruit in shallow blue and white bowls, and a large glass jug of lemonade on a table on the terrace.

She asks Ed and Kitty for news of their neighbours in the big house at Edenfield.

‘We haven’t seen them in such a long time. How’s the new baby?’

‘Not a baby any more,’ says Kitty. ‘He’s walking now. But Louisa still isn’t right. I do worry about her. You remember how she was always so jolly? These days she seems much quieter. I don’t think she’s as strong as she should be.’

‘Why does everyone want babies so much?’ says Pamela, scowling at her little sister. ‘I don’t see the point of them.’

‘You were a baby once,’ says Ed.

‘ One baby is all right.’

She jumps up and goes over to Elizabeth, who is toddling out through the open garden doors.