Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [97]
Forbes smiled. “Very likely,” he agreed. “But then any advantage to one nation is a disadvantage to others. If you were afraid of offending people, you would never do anything at all. It’s a matter of degree.”
Narraway knew they were playing games with words. They had not touched the real issue yet. “You believe the project can succeed?”
“Yes. Dunkeld will not stop until he has done so.”
“And make himself a fortune.” It was a conclusion rather than a question.
There was a change in Forbes’s face so small it could have been no more than an alteration in the light. “I imagine so.”
“And so will the providers of timber, steel, labor, and the shipping of gold, diamonds, copper, timber, and ivory,” Narraway added.
Forbes’s face was motionless. He drew in his breath, then let it out with a sigh. “You want to know why I am not concerned to be involved with the railway. You think perhaps it is more of a personal issue with Cahoon Dunkeld? You are mistaken. I have spent over half my life in Africa.” Now there was unmistakable emotion in his face. It was clear in his eyes, his mouth, even the tightening of the muscles in his neck. “I love the country. It is the last great mystery left in the world, the one place too big for us to crush and occupy with our smallness, trying to impress our image on its people and convince them it is the likeness of God.”
Narraway was stunned. The passion in Forbes had taken him totally by surprise.
“You don’t know Africa, Mr. Narraway,” Forbes said softly. “You have never felt the sun scorch your face and smelled the hot wind blowing across a thousand miles of grassland teeming with beasts like the sands of the seashore. You haven’t seen the sky flame with sunset behind the acacia trees, heard the lions roar in the night with the Southern Cross burning in the darkness above you, or put your ear to the ground as it trembles with the thunder of a million hoofs. Have you ever seen a giraffe’s eyelashes? Or a cheetah run? Felt the terror in your blood and in your bones when you know there’s a leopard stalking you? Then you know how sweet life is, and how unbearably fragile.” Forbes shook his head fractionally, a denial so small Narraway almost missed it. “Here in England there’s a glass wall between you and the taste of reality. I don’t want to see the last true passion tamed by railways, and men with Bibles telling everyone to cover their bodies.” He spread his powerful, elegant hands. “Play your string quintets, by all means, Mr. Narraway, but don’t silence the drums simply because you don’t understand them. The men who play violins have steel and gunpowder, and the men who play drums don’t.”
Narraway did not answer immediately. He studied Forbes’s intense face, the powerful nose and curious, thin-lipped mouth, which was yet so expressive.
In the end he waited so long it was Forbes who broke the silence. “Is that what the Empire is for?” he asked. “To change everything into something we can buy and sell?”
Narraway was repulsed by the thought. It was worse than offensive, it was blasphemous. But he did not want Forbes to know that. That he should be so moved was a revelation he could not afford to make. “Exploitation?” he said calmly.
“Isn’t it?” Forbes’s black eyebrows rose. He was watching Narraway intensely.
“And you are against it?” Narraway allowed no more than a shred of sarcasm in his voice.
Temper flared in Forbes’s face, then vanished. “A longer view,” he said softly. “What will Africa be a century from now? Dominion, friend, enemy, battleground?”
Again Narraway said nothing.
“We will not be alive then,” Forbes answered himself. “Is that all that matters, the basis of all judgment?”
Narraway did not answer. “But you think Dunkeld will build it anyway?” he said instead.
“Not easily, and not with my help, but yes, he will build it.” Again Forbes’s face was dark with emotion, but with such a conflicting mixture