must allow us to make the delivery for you,’ he said, carefully choosing his tone so as to show Deal Jimpo only its silk glove and Soames only the iron hand within it. ‘We shall be delighted to fly the Apostle out to Umbalathorp (do I have it correctly?), and our liaison man here, Mr Noyes, will go with it, so that any little difficulties or misunderstandings which may arise can be dealt with on the spot.’
And that was how it had all begun.
‘Well, I don’t know about you, Mr Noyes, but I shall be glad to get out and stretch my legs,’ the Birmingham man said.
‘Same here,’ agreed Soames. It was a phrase he never used.
‘I wonder what sort of a place this Umbalathorp is?’ the Birmingham man wondered, and then – sagely guessing just how worthwhile any answer of Soames’ would be – he turned round and called to Deal Jimpo, ‘What sort of a place is this Umbalathorp we’re getting to, Prince Landor?’
His voice implied that he might have been requesting information on the nearest brothel from a street tout, but Deal Jimpo replied equably enough.
‘Umbalathorp is the capital of Goya. It is a healthy city without much sickness. Everyone is progressive in outlook and content in spirit. It has a railway which may perhaps one day connect it up to other cities. Its population is ten thousand and rising rapidly.’
‘All natives, I suppose,’ the Birmingham man said flatly.
‘All natives of Umbalathorp,’ said Deal Jimpo with equal flatness. The remark completely won over Soames, who felt a new eagerness to investigate this curious little jungle republic; he had already begun to like Deal Jimpo.
The Birmingham man was not snubbed. Giving Soames a dirty wink, he remarked, ‘I hope the native women aren’t tabu, Prince, anyhow.’
Deal Jimpo did not smile.
‘You will find our standards equal to Western standards,’ he said. ‘Which means promiscuity among the females. Morality was higher under the old tribal customs, that must be admitted.’
‘After you with the old tribal customs!’ exclaimed the Birmingham man, slapping his hands together and making succulent smacking noises in his cheek. He dug Soames in the ribs. ‘Ever tried a bit of the old tribal customs?’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘I had an Arab bint once during the last war. Talk about strong! She got her legs wrapped round me and dug her heels in the small of my back like a human nutcracker. Scared me stiff at first, it did – I was only a youngster in those days.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Soames, feeling enthusiasm was required of him. The Birmingham man was goaded into fresh revelations, so that Wally Brewer and Timpleton leant over to catch what he was saying.
‘I knew a good thing when I found it,’ the engineer boasted. ‘Ah! I was back round there again next evening. “Dig your heels in again, missis,” I said. And she did. Strewth! We’ll be okay if they’re like that in this Umbalathorp, I tell you. She was a nice little bit, that Arab bint. They shave off their pubic hairs before marriage, you know.’
This anthropological detail reminded Brewer of something he had heard.
‘A lot of these African women slap goat dung on it to improve the sensation,’ he said. ‘It’s like using curry powder with meat.’
It was Timpleton’s turn to chip in.
‘You haven’t lived till you’ve had an Italian girl,’ he said.
‘Japanese,’ Brewer contradicted firmly. ‘Japanese. Nothing like a little Jap girl – up to all the tricks, they are, taught about it from the nursery. When we set up that computer in Yokohama last year …’ He guffawed to show that the sentence could not be completed in words, not even over the wilds of Africa.
‘Just let us loose in Umbalathorp, that’s all I say,’ Timpleton remarked.
Soames said nothing. He could not casually reveal his sexual experiences in this way – not that he had ever felt anything so exotic as an Arabian heel grip in the small of his back. Obviously it was time he asserted himself.
Ignoring the chatter of the other men, he fell into a reverie. Now or never, presumably, was his chance to break the bonds of his confounded reserve, to leap free from the constraints of a cold temperament and climate. On this trip he would prove himself a man or die in the attempt.
Sexual fantasies surged through his mind. Massive thighs opened up before him, pair after pair, like doors down a Versailles corridor. Soames went through them all, unruffled, laughingly denigrating his own prowess. The tenth woman, who could speak a little English, cried aloud for mercy.
‘Mercy!’ exclaimed fantasy-Soames. ‘My good woman, this is only a dress rehearsal.’
‘But I cannot exhaust you. You are a Casanova among men.’
‘Nonsense, chicken. It’s just – well, I’m a branch of a lusty family.’
‘Branch, sir? This thing, it is more like a trunk!’
‘It happens to be a prominent feature in the Noyes family, that’s all.’ And as he left, tossing a few dollars negligently to the bowing and awe-struck proprietress, he called over one shoulder. ‘Try and find some fresh girls for me tomorrow night, madame – something with a little fire in it.’
The madame was weeping, trying to give him his money back.
‘Please do not come here again, sir,’ she pleaded. ‘You wear out all my best girls.’
But the girls were protesting to her, begging to be allowed to lie with Soames just once more.
‘All a beautiful dream,’ Soames told himself, sighing heavily.
He glanced out of the window to see if there was any break in the tousled green carpet beneath them. The plane was lurching in rather an un-English manner as if investigating a new way of coping with turbulence. This might have been either because they were flying over a range of mountains or because half of one wing was trying to detach itself from the plane.
This latter phenomenon riveted Soames’ attention. He no longer felt capable of joining in the small talk about him, which had now turned to the possibilities of hunting in Goya. Instead, he gazed sickly at the wing. It was making the leisurely flapping movements of an old pterodactyl; a girder inside the leading edge must have snapped even as Soames looked, for the flapping became abruptly more pronounced. The pterodactyl had sighted food.
Soames was petrified – not by fear but by a less wholesome emotion. He was the son of a doggedly timid father and an assertive mother, and the war between his parents had been perpetuated in him. Now the urge to stand up and do something useful was quenched by a conflicting urge which said to him, ‘Think what a fool you would look if you walked through into the pilot’s cabin, tapped him on the shoulder and announced “one wing’s coming off, pilot” – and he turned round and said, “Yes, I know; mind your own business”.’
The Birmingham man and Wally Brewer were discussing the rival attractions of football and game-hunting with Deal Jimpo. Ted Timpleton stared whitely ahead like an actor whose lines had gone from him for the night – the first night. The sedate flapping of the wing had changed now, changed into an angry shaking, as if the cargo plane were an animal just waking to the hideous injustice of having to carry humans in its digestive tract.
Breaking at last from his trance, Soames stood up. As he did so, the loudspeaker in the cabin broke into life and the pilot’s voice said harshly, ‘I’m going down for an emergency landing. We’ve developed a fault. Strap on your safety belts and sit tight, all of you. No need to panic.’
‘What the hell’s the matter?’ the Birmingham man asked. ‘Do you think we ought to see if we can give him a hand, Mr Noyes?’
‘We’re going to crash!’ Timpleton said, standing up. ‘My wife warned me …’
‘Sit down at once, and do as the pilot says,’ Deal