Flames Coming out of the Top Read online

  Norman Collins

  Flames Coming Out of the Top

  Contents

  BOOK I:

  Opportunity

  BOOK II:

  The Fiery Mountain

  BOOK III:

  Portrait of an Englishman against a Tropic Background

  BOOK IV:

  A Place in the Sun

  Book I

  Opportunity

  Chapter I

  The Five men came to their decision in the faded gold and mahogany board-room that overlooked the intersected water-ways of the East India Dock. By the time they were agreed, it was already evening; and the sun, setting in a flurry of striped crimson somewhere over beyond Battersea, was flooding the river with fire and casting its brilliant floodlight up into the men’s faces.

  They had been in conference for a long time, since two-thirty in fact and old, white-haired Mr. Fryze was already feeling the strain. In the opinion of the other four he was a little beyond his work; and with the sixth sense of the aged he knew precisely what they thought of him. He surveyed the four lounging figures around him with a cold, embracing dislike—he himself sat upright and correct: from the back he looked like a small, albino guardsman—and proceeded to sum things up.

  “Very well, gentlemen”—he spoke in a crisp, precise voice, pursing his lips like an actress—” we are agreed that we cannot let the affairs of the Compañia Muras continue, and it is the opinion of the board that we should send out someone to inspect the books. We are only disagreed as to the—er—method. I would suggest that the proper course would be to write to Señor Muras and inform him that Mr. Plymme “—Mr. Plymme shifted uneasily in his chair as men do at the sudden mention of their names—” will be visiting him later on in the Summer.”

  “And give Señor Muras six months to get away with our money?” It was young (actually he was over forty) Mr. Govern who spoke: the memory of his father, the original Mr. Govern, of Govern and Fryze, Wholesale and Export Merchants, was still a powerful one in the firm. Anything that the son said was listened to with respect. He was manager of the company, and in his voice the ancestral Southern Scots burr could still be heard.

  “I know that’s your view,” Mr. Fryze continued with a kind of mincing politeness. “But Señor Muras hasn’t run away yet and we don’t know that he ever intends to. It isn’t very nice to send out a spy.”

  “It isn’t very nice not settling the last three quarters’ accounts,” Mr. Govern objected.

  “But we must remember there’s a war on in Bolivia,” Mr. Fryze reminded him. “It’s not England we are talking about.”

  “They’re not Englishmen we’re dealing with,” Mr. Govern persisted stolidly.

  Mr. Fryze was too tired to argue. He looked round for someone he could rely on, someone on whom he could fall back in an emergency.

  “What do you say, Mr. Frampton?” he asked.

  Mr. Frampton seemed embarrassed: he was a thin, awkward-looking man, a jumped-up clerk whose promotion had left him ridiculously stranded somewhere mid-way between the executive and the administrative.

  “I rather side with Mr. Govern in this, sir,” he said. He avoided the chairman’s eye as he spoke: there had been a time when he would never have dared to disagree with Mr. Fryze, but he had long since told himself that the old man could not last for ever, and that sooner or later his bread-and-butter must depend on Mr. Govern.

  The reply seemed to disconcert Mr. Fryze. He sat back and said sadly,” Well, if we are to send someone at once who is there to go?”

  Mr. Plymme coughed discreetly: he was Mr. Fryze’s man. But Mr. Govern interrupted him. “We can’t spare Mr. Plymme at this time of the year,” he said. “Not with the balance sheet to be got out.”

  “There’s no other senior member of the accounts side now that Tillotson’s gone,” Mr. Fryze reminded him.

  At the mention of Tillotson’s name Mr. Frampton shook his head and uttered an involuntary “Ah!” He did not explain this ejaculation, but it was obvious from his manner that Tillotson was one of those legendary figures who dwell on in all old firms, a mythical disciplinary creature whose name had once spelt efficiency.

  “There’s Hardinge,” Mr. Plymme suggested. He knew perfectly well that Hardinge was unsuitable before he mentioned him: he said his name only because he wanted to discredit the idea of sending anyone other than himself. He had been secretly looking forward all through the Winter to this trip to South America, and he didn’t want to see an outsider from another department stepping into the vacant post.

  “Hardinge’s no use; simply get eaten up alive.”

  The speaker, Mr. Verking, was the fifth member of the board. He was a bearded, square-shouldered man. All his life he had lived in one or other of the great sea-ports of the world—Singapore, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, London—and somehow he had acquired the maritime manner. He wore nautical-looking clothes—double-breasted blue serge suits and heavy black boots—and opposed Mr. Plymme in everything the latter said or did. Indeed, opposing Mr. Plymme had become one of his main ends in life; whenever he had circumvented his associate in some small piece of the firm’s business he would return to his neat villa at Clapton confident that he had thereby done his duty.

  “Oh, no, Hardinge’s quite useless,” Mr. Fryze agreed hopelessly.

  “Well, what’s the matter with Dunnett?” Mr. Govern asked. He put the question quietly, as though it were something that he had been saving up.

  “Too young,” said Mr. Plymme hurriedly.

  “He’s thirty,” Mr. Govern replied.

  “But not the type,” Mr. Plymme objected;” no appearance.” He crossed one neatly creased trouser leg over the other and shook his head. A short, plump man, with a round face like a doll’s, he was a great believer in appearance and personal magnetism: he had never doubted that he was possessed of immense quantities of both.

  “What do you say, Frampton?” Mr. Govern asked. “He’s in your department.”

  Mr. Frampton paused, glanced from Mr. Govern to Mr. Fryze, and dropped his eyes on the table again. “I’ve always found him very reliable,” he replied as non-committally as possible. “Very reliable indeed.”

  “Probably got a family that wouldn’t let him go: they all have nowadays,” Mr. Verking observed.

  “But even if he could go it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s suitable,” Mr. Plymme replied. “It’s rather delicate, remember: it needs someone with experience.”

  “Or commonsense,” said Mr. Govern pointedly.

  “You sound very sure of this young man,” Mr. Fryze remarked.

  “I am,” replied Mr. Govern, and added nothing to his reply.

  There was a pause. “We’ll have the young man in,” Mr. Fryze said very deliberately.

  Mr. Plymme shifted in his chair. “I can’t believe that’s necessary,” he blurted out: he could see his long South American holiday disappearing before his eyes as he sat there. “I should have thought we could leave Mr. Dunnett to get on with his work.”

  It was an unfortunate remark, one which touched Mr. Fryze in his most tender spot—his dignity. He turned and faced the speaker. “Mr. Plymme,” he said coldly, “will you please remember that I am chairman of this meeting?”

  Mr. Plymme said nothing, and regarded his finger-nails. There was a further pause, and then Mr. Govern turned towards Mr. Fryze.

  “Well, what about it?” he asked.

  “We’ll see Mr. Dunnett just as I said,” Mr. Fryze replied. “Only we’ll see him after the Board rises.”

  He looked steadily at Mr. Plymme as he spoke. So long as there were Chairmen in this world he was going to see that they were treated with respect. Then, because he was
tired and because authority was vested in him, he rose in his place to conclude the formal ritual of the Board. …

  “Gentlemen, is it your pleasure …” he began in his thin, clipped voice.

  “Mr. Govern wants to see you,” the girl said. “He’s in the board-room.”

  Dunnet laid down his pen and stood up. He was not a tall man when standing, but there was a stockiness about his figure that gave him an air of firmness and purpose. His hair rose to a curly, intractable peak in the front of his forehead and his chin jutted out over the narrow white collar. There was nothing in his face to suggest the possession of any very remarkable talents. The expression was one of resigned aggressiveness, of doggedness rather. The glasses, rimmed in imitation horn, accentuated the whole air of rigid determination. It was the face of a man of many sterling qualities— reliability, trustworthiness, obedience; the face of a man who would perform quietly, unostentatiously, unspectacularly, any task that he might be set.

  There were only Mr. Fryze and young Mr. Govern in the room when he got there. The rest of the board had dispersed and gone back to their several departments. Mr. Fryze was seated in his Chairman’s place looking like the weary patriarch of a diminished tribe. Mr. Govern was walking up and down smoking a large briar pipe. As usual he had everything in hand.

  “Come on in, Dunnett,” he said. “Mr. Fryze wants to ask you a few questions.”

  As Dunnett came forward on to the big square of Turkey carpet he wondered whether it was possible that anything could have gone wrong, gone wrong so badly that he had to be summoned into the manager’s room to explain. He was aware of a faint contraction of the muscles as he stood there. But Mr. Fryze’s attitude seemed strangely benign for one about to hold an inquest. And Mr. Govern was blowing out clouds of smoke as contentedly as though he had been at home.

  “Would you—er—Mr. Dunnett,” Mr. Fryze asked, “like to—er—go to South America on behalf of the firm?” He contrived to make the question sound as patronising as possible, as though there were something intrinsically absurd in the idea of Dunnett’s going anywhere.

  Dunnett paused, but only for a moment. “I would, sir,” he replied. He recognised this for what it was, the big moment for which he had always been waiting.

  “Can you—er—guess the reason for the visit?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Govern has spoken about it already?” There was a note in Mr. Fryze’s voice that suggested that he suspected that people had been talking behind his back again; he did not approve of his directors discussing things without consulting him first.

  “No, sir, Mr. Govern hasn’t said anything.”

  “He hasn’t?” Mr. Fryze looked confused.

  “I look after the South American accounts, you see, sir. I’ve seen things going wrong for some time.”

  “And you think you can put things right?” Mr. Fryze was being patronising again.

  “I can find out what is wrong, sir, and then we can decide what to do.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” Mr. Fryze beckoned to Mr. Govern and the two men spoke in an undertone for a moment. “Supposing we decided to send you,” Mr. Fryze asked at last, “when would you be able to start?”

  “To-morrow, sir, if you wanted me to.”

  Mr. Fryze smiled faintly for a moment. “I don’t think there’s any need for that,” he said. “Any time this month; any time this month.”

  “Should I be away long, sir?” A faint doubt, which he attempted to stifle, had sprung up in his mind.

  “About four or five months.”

  “Can I take it as definite, sir?”

  Mr. Fryze did not seem to hear the question: he was taking snuff out of a large, old-fashioned horn box; it was a messy process and one that occupied him entirely. Mr. Govern gave Dunnett a nod.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I’ll have a word with you in the morning.”

  It was obvious from the tone of Mr. Govern’s voice that Dunnett was dismissed. “Thank you, sir,” he said and went towards the door. Old Mr. Fryze clearly welcomed his departure. It was an opportunity for him to relax. Dunnett heard him give a little gasp of relief as he sat back in his chair. But when Dunnett reached the door Mr. Fryze called him back again.

  “You—er—speak Spanish, of course?” he asked in his clipped, precise way.

  “I do all the Spanish correspondence here, sir,” he answered.

  “Good,” said Mr. Fryze. “No use sending a man who doesn’t speak the language. Can’t make himself understood. …”

  He checked himself and shaded his eyes with his hand. It was nonsense that he was talking and he knew that it was nonsense just as much as Mr. Govern knew that it was. But there was no help for it; he was tired, very tired.

  In the drawing-room of the small flat where she and her mother lived, Kay Barton took Dunnett’s news very indifferently.

  “Of course,” she said, “if you want to go there’s nothing I can say to stop you.”

  “But do you want to stop me?”

  “Oh no, I don’t want to stop you. Why should I?”

  The reception was strangely unlike what he had expected. He tried to find some way to convey, briefly and without exaggeration, the important fact that instead of being merely anyone—the sort of person who would spend his entire life travelling backwards and forwards between Walham Green and the City, with a fortnight’s holiday sometime in September,—he had suddenly become someone—the kind of man whom large firms send halfway across the world in times of trouble. But after standing for a moment in awkward silence he decided that there was no way.

  “I think you’re being very difficult,” he said at length.

  “I’m not being difficult,” Miss Barton replied promptly.

  “I’m not the one who wants to go to South America for six months.”

  “I never said six months. I said five.”

  “Well, five then. It doesn’t make any difference. Here I am, I get back from the office after a heavy day and you come walking in here like this and accuse me of being difficult.” She sounded as though at any moment she might begin to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” Harold Dunnett apologised. He waited, and added as a brilliant afterthought, “I only thought that perhaps you might have been a bit glad for my sake.”

  “Oh, but I am. I am really,” Miss Barton assured him. “Mother will be glad too. Mother! “—she started to call her mother in before Dunnett could stop her.

  Mrs. Barton came quickly and obediently. She was a small, wiry woman, with a thin, puckered mouth. Dunnett sensed that, in some protective maternal fashion, she was hostile to him.

  “Harold’s going out to South America,” Kay told her.

  “For good?” Mrs. Barton enquired.

  “No, only for five months.”

  “What for?”

  “The firm’s sending him.”

  “When’s he going?” It was noteworthy that Mrs. Barton did not address any of her remarks directly to Harold Dunnett; she studiously and significantly ignored him. In her opinion her daughter was making a sad mistake in having him about the place at all. Her own husband had been a diminutive, thin-faced clerk who had never escaped out of the wage rut, and she had hoped for something better for Kay. She could think of two or three young men straight out of her head whom she would rather have seen standing there.

  “It’s not settled yet,” he told her, trying to get inside her guard. “I expect I shall go in about a month.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoy it,” she said. “The change’ll do you good.”

  Kay went over and put her arm affectionately around her mother. Dunnett looked away. He hated to see her festooning herself about the withered Mrs. Barton in this way. She only did it to be provoking, to show how loving she could be to other people. But for some reason, this time she suddenly changed her mind.

  “You go along, mother,” she said. “I shall be coming in a minute.”

  As soon as Mrs. Barton had gone�
��she left them reluctantly as though doubting whether Dunnett were really to be trusted —Kay turned towards him.

  “I’ve been horrid,” she said.

  “No you haven’t,” he assured her. “Of course it’s rotten being sent away like this—just now I mean.” It was the first time she had ever apologised to him and he did not quite know how to take it.

  “Don’t be cross with me,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “I know I’ve been beastly. But it isn’t very nice to come home and find that somebody you’re fond of is going away for five months.”

  “Are you fond of me?” he asked.

  “You know I am.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how much.”

  “You can kiss me if you want to.” She let herself go limp in his arms.

  He had never kissed her like this before. The sleek waves of her pale gold hair became ruffled and fell in little tresses over her face, and her smart organdie bow was reduced to a piece of crumpled rubbish.

  “Shall we get married straightaway?” he asked stupidly, as though the miracle could happen on the spot.

  “When you get back, perhaps,” she answered.

  “What do you mean, ‘perhaps’?”

  “Perhaps you won’t want to. You may see somebody else you like better.”

  “I shan’t see anybody I like better,” he told her. “I want to marry you and I don’t want to marry anyone else, and I never shall.”

  “I shouldn’t be too sure,” she said faintly. “There are lots of things that might happen.”

  “Not to us, there aren’t,” he said. “Not if you really love a person.”

  When he got to his boarding house he went straight to his room. He had called in at the Public Library on his way back from the office and the Librarian had given him everything about South America that he had. The books lay on the flimsy table beside the bed. He kicked off his shoes and stretched himself out to read up his subject. For a start, he reached out for The South American Handbook. But it was Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru that came to his grip. The words were strange and his eye caught something. “… the voyagers were now abreast of some of the most stupendous heights of this magnificent range,” he read; “Chimborazo, with its broad round summit, towering like the dome of the Andes, and Cotopaxi, with its dazzling cone of silvery white, that knows no change except from the action of its own volcanic fires.” With the feeling of unknown excitements just beyond his grasp he turned the page and read on. “The people of Tumbez were gathered along the shore and were gazing with unutterable astonishment on the floating castle, which, now having dropped anchor, rode lazily at its moorings in their bay. …” Somehow the Handbook lay neglected; outside his window, the glow of London hung like a dome in the sky and the noise of its inhabitants was a reverberation that would have muffled an explosion. But Harold Dunnett had been transported away from all that; he was on the other side of the world now, with the Conquistadores. “On landing,” the words ran on enticingly,” Molina was surrounded by the natives, who expressed the greatest astonishment at his dress, his fair complexion and his long beard. The women especially manifested great curiosity in respect to him, and Molina seemed to be entirely won by their charms and captivating manners. … They urged him to stay among them, promising in that case to provide him with a beautiful wife.”