Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [32]
Three hours later Corker and William sat down to luncheon. The menu did not vary at the Liberty; sardines, beef and chicken for luncheon; soup, beef and chicken for dinner; hard, homogeneous cubes of beef, sometimes with Worcester sauce, sometimes with tomato ketchup; fibrous spindles of chicken with grey-green dented peas. "Don't seem to have any relish for my food," said Corker. "It must be the altitude." Everyone was in poor spirits; it had been an empty morning; the absence of Hitchcock lay heavy as thunder over the hotel, and there was a delay of fourteen hours in transmission at the wireless station for Wenlock Jakes had been letting himself go on the local colour. "The beef�s beastly," said Corker. "Tell the manageress to come here..." At a short distance Jakes was entertaining three blacks. Everyone watched that table suspiciously and listened when they could, but he seemed to be talking mostly, about himself. After a time the boy brought them chicken. "Where's that manageress?" asked Corker. "No come." "What d'you mean 'no come'?" "Manageress say only journalists him go boil himself," said the boy more explicitly. "What did I tell you? No respect for the Press. Savages." They left the dining-room. In the lounge, standing on one foot and leaning on his staff, was the aged warrior who delivered the telegrams. William's read:�
PRESUME YOUR STEPTAKING INSURE SERVICE EVENT GENERAL UPBREAK
"It's no good answering," said Corker. "They won't send till tomorrow morning. Come to think of it," he added moodily, "there's no point in answering anyway. Look at mine."
CABLE FULLIER OTTENER PROMPTLIER STOP YOUR SERVICE BADLY BEATEN ALROUND LACKING HUMAN INTEREST COLOUR DRAMA PERSONALITY HUMOUR INFORMATION ROMANCE VITALITY
"Can't say that's not frank, can you?" said Corker. "God rot 'em." That afternoon he took Shumble's place at the card table. William slept.
The special train got in at seven. William went to meet it; so did everyone else. The Ishmaelite Foreign Minister was there with his suite. ("Expecting a nob," said Corker.) The Minister wore a Derby hat and ample military cape. The stationmaster set a little gilt chair for him where he sat like a daguerreotype, stiffly posed, a Victorian worthy in negative, black face, white whiskers, black hands. When the cameramen began to shoot, his staff scrambled to get to the front of the picture, eclipsing their chief. It was all the same to the cameramen, who were merely passing the time and had no serious hope that the portrait would be of any interest.
At length the little engine came whistling round the bend, wood sparks dancing over the funnel. It stopped and at once the second- and third-class passengers � natives and near-whites � tumbled onto the platform, greeting their relatives with tears and kisses. The station police got in among them, jostling the Levantines and whacking the natives with swagger-canes. The first-class passengers emerged more slowly; they had already acquired that expression of anxious resentment that was habitual to whites in Jacksonburg. They were all, every man-jack of them, journalists and photographers. The distinguished visitor had not arrived. The Foreign Minister waited until the last cramped and cautious figure emerged from the first-class coach; then he exchanged civilities with the station-master and took his leave. The station police made a passage of a kind, but it was only with a struggle that he regained his car. The porters began to unload, and take the registered baggage to the customs shed. On the head of the foremost William recognized his bundle of cleft sticks; then more of his possessions: the collapsible canoe, the mistletoe, the ant-proof wardrobes. There was a cry of delight from Corker, at his side. The missing van had arrived. Mysteriously it had become attached to the special train; had in fact been transposed. Somewhere, in a siding at one of the numerous stops down the line, lay the newcomers' luggage. Their distress deepened but Corker was jubilant and before dinner that evening introduced his elephant to a place of prominence in the bedroom. He also, in his good humour, introduced two photographers for whom he had an affection. "Tight fit," they said. "Not at all," said Corker. "Delighted to have your company, aren't we, Boot?" One of them took William's newly arrived camp bed; the other expressed a readiness to "doss down" on the floor for the night. Everyone decided to doss down in the Liberty. Mrs. Jackson recommended other lodging available from friends of hers in the town. But, "No," they said. "We've got to doss down with the bunch." The bunch now overflowed the hotel. There were close on fifty of them. All over the lounge and dining-room they sat and stood and leaned; some whispered to one another in what they took to be secrecy; others exchanged chaff and gin. It was their employers who paid for all this hospitality, but the conventions were decently observed