Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur - Страница 70

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Thus the pygmies became familiar figures in ancient Egypt.

Over the ages since then, many strange legends have grown up around these tiny forest people, and much that is fanciful and apocryphal has been written about them.  Even their name was based on a misconception.

Tugme was a Greek unit of measurement, from elbow to knuckle, an imaginative estimate of their height by people who had never seen them.

Daniel had read all this before and he passed quickly to the more enjoyable portion of the book, the author's description of three years spent living with a pygmy clan in the depths of.  the equatorial forests of Ubomo.

Kinnear was a trained and professional anthropologist with a keenly observant eye for detail and the ability to marshal her meticulously garnered facts and extract from them reasoned conclusions, and yet she possessed the ear and heart of a storyteller.

These were not dry scientific subjects she was describing but human beings, each with his own character and idiosyncrasies; here was a warm, loving and lovable people pictured against the awe-inspiring grandeur of the great forest, a merry people, wonderfully in tune with nature, expressing themselves with songs and dances and impish humour.

At the end the reader was forced to share with the writer her obvious affection for and understanding of her subject, but even more, her deep concern for the forest in which they lived.

Daniel closed the book and sat for a while in the pleasant glow of wellbeing that it had inspired.  Not for the first time he felt a desire to meet and talk to the woman who had created this small magic, but now at last he knew how and when to do SO.

The annual general meeting of the shareholders of BOSS was set for a week before his departure for Ubomo, and Pickering in public relations arranged an invitation for Daniel and Bonny to attend.

The AGM was always held in the ballroom of BOSS's own magnificent headquarters in Blackfriars.

The AGM was always held on the last Friday of July and began at seven-thirty in the evening.

It ran for an hour and twenty-five minutes: ten minutes to read the previous minutes, an hour of sonorous prose from Sir Peter as he made his chairman's report and, finally, fifteen minutes of appreciation by the members of his board, capped by a vote of thanks and approbation, proposed by an individual planted in the body of the shareholders.  The vote was always passed unanimously by a show of hands.

That's the way it always went.  It was company tradition.

Security at the door was very strict.  The name of every person entering was checked against the current register of shareholders and special invitations were scrutinised by uniformed members of BOSS's security staff.

Sir Peter didn't want wild Irishmen or anti-Rushdie fundamentalists letting off bombs in the middle of his carefully rehearsed speech, nor did he want freelance journalists or trade unionists, or other free-loading riffraff making pigs of themselves at the heavily laden buffet table and complimentary bar.

Daniel had mistimed their departure from the flat in Chelsea.

They would have been at Blackfriars thirty minutes earlier but Bonny had, at the last minute, begun feeling very healthy.  She had made a suggestion which Daniel, always the perfect gentleman, had been unable to refuse.  Afterwards it had been necessary to take a shower together during which Bonny had started a water fight which had reduced the bathroom to a sodden shambles with water running out under the door into the passageway.

All this took time, and then they had battled to find a taxi.

When they finally flagged one down in the King's Road they ran into traffic along the Embankment and only arrived at the BOSS building after Sir Peter was in full stride, mesmerising his audience with an account of BOSS's performance over the previous twelve months.

All seats were taken and the overflow crowded the back of the hall.

They sneaked in, and Daniel shepherded Bonny into a corner near the bar, and pressed a large whisky and soda into her hand.  That should hold you for half an hour, he whispered.  Just please don't start feeling healthy again until we get home.  Chicken.

She grinned at him.  You can't take it, Armstrong.  The shareholders around them frowned and shushed disapproval and they settled down contritely to an appreciation of Sir Peter Tug Harrison's wit and erudition.

On the dais Sir Peter faced them from the centre of the long table with a microphone in front of him and the members of his board spread out on each side of him.  Amongst them there was an Indian maharajah, an earl, an East European pretender and a number of run-of-the-mill baronets. All were names and titles that looked good on the company letter-head, but not a person in the room that evening had any illusion as to where the true power and might of BOSS lay.

Sir Peter stood with his left hand thrust into his jacket pocket, occasionally extending the forefinger of his right hand and pointing at his audience.  As he made each point, he stabbed his forefinger like a pistol barrel at them, and even Daniel found himself flinching and blinking as though a shot had been fired at his head.

Everything Sir Peter had to tell them was good news, from the results of offshore oil drilling in the Pemba channel, to the cotton harvests and ground-nut crop of Zambia, and the increase in both pretax profits and declared dividends.  The audience hummed with delight at each fresh revelation.

Sir Peter glanced at his watch.  He had been running for fifty minutes, ten to go.  It was time to move on to future plans and projections.  He took a sip of water, and when he resumed, his voice was velvety and seductive.  my lords, ladies and gentlemen, I have given you the bad news.  . . He paused for laughter and a volley of applause.  Now let me move on to the good news.  The good news is Ubomo, the People's Democratic Republic of Ubomo and your company's participation in a new era for that beautiful little country, the opportunity that we have, not only to provide employment but also prosperity for a sadly disadvantaged population of four million souls.

For nine minutes more he enthraled them with the promise of bright new profits and skyrocketing dividends and then he ended, And so, ladies and gentlemen, what we see before us is Ubomo, the high road to the future of the African continent.  Hell!

Daniel whispered, his voice blanketed by the applause.  That's a blatant case of plagiarism.

The old bastard lifted it straight from me.  When Sir Peter sat down the company secretary gave them two minutes to express their approval fully before he leaned over his microphone.  My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I am now opening the meeting to the floor.  Are there any shareholders questions, please?  Your chairman and board will endeavour to answer them to the best of their ability.  His magnified voice was still reverberating through the ball when another voice cut in.  I have a question for the chairman.  It was a feminine voice, clear, self-assured, and surprisingly loud, so loud that on the dais Sir Peter winced.

Up until then Daniel had been trying to identify Doctor Kinnear in the body of the crowded hall, but without success.

She was either not present or she was obscured by the crush of other shareholders.  He had given up the search.

Now there was no mistaking her.  She was very much present, standing on her chair, three rows from the front.  Daniel grinned with delight.

The echoing volume of Kelly Kinnear's voice was explained.  She had armed herself with an electronic bull-horn.

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