OH MY GOD! shouted Sibylla. He’s OUT! He ESCAPED! This is WONDERFUL!
And striding up and down she said that Red Devlin had escaped three months ago and had just walked into the British Embassy in Tbilisi. She said: I’ve actually kind of MISSED those gap-toothed urchins toting Kalashnikovs. She was bounding around as though the gravitational force of the planet had suddenly dropped by a third.
I thought: It’s got to be Devlin.
I read one of his books a long time ago. It was called Get Out Before I Throw You Out. He wasn’t much of a writer; his talent was for making outrageous demands which people found impossible to refuse. For instance he once asked to go up with some paratroopers over a war zone and was told this was against all regulations.
Oh go on, said Red Devlin.
X: Oh all right then but no one must know this is strictly on the Q.T.
Red Devlin was equipped with a parachute purely as a safety precaution and then when the paratroopers jumped he jumped out too before anyone could stop him and got some story that no one could have got who had not gone in with the paratroopers. A newspaper hired him on the strength of this story and then fired him for refusing to file some other story, and then another newspaper hired him because he had penetrated a guerrilla hideout by going into a local bar and saying ‘I’d like to visit that guerrilla hideout.’
Barman: Nobody knows where it is. It’s a secret.
Red Devlin: Oh go on, you can tell me.
Barman: Oh all right then, you take the first right— Tell you what, we’ll go in my car.
Sceptics had pointed out that there was only Red Devlin’s word for this, but since most of the people he talked to refused to talk to anyone else you could either argue that he must have been telling the truth or that there was no way to prove that he wasn’t.
Red Devlin had once helped a couple to adopt an orphan from Romania. The couple had visited Romania and seen an orphanage and on their return to Britain they had decided to adopt a little girl. They had immersed themselves in Romanian and they had talked to people who had adopted Romanian children and they had tried to initiate adoption procedures and had been told it was out of the question. Both were women so that they were a man short and one woman too many. The couple argued passionately and described in graphic detail the conditions of the orphanage but rules were rules and there was nothing to be done.
The couple went outside and sat shivering in the sun. And now by a piece of luck Red Devlin came down the street. He had lost a job again so his time was his own.
What’s the matter? said Red Devlin.
They explained and he said he would help them.
The couple were so convinced that rules were rules that they thought he was offering to marry one of them. Red Devlin laughed. He said he was a married man. He said he would go to Romania and get the child. The couple explained patiently that you could not get the child out of Romania or into Britain without the adoption papers.
Is that a fact? said Red Devlin.
Red Devlin knew maybe three words of Romanian. They may have meant ‘Oh go on’ to start with; if they didn’t, they did by the time Red Devlin was through with them. He went to the orphanage and asked for the girl, and each time someone objected he brought out his three words of Romanian and the long and the short of it was that in three days he drove out of Bucharest with the girl beside him.
Some people smuggle children over borders in the boots of cars. Some people dress them as giant dolls, or stuff them in suitcases. Some people stick them under a blanket and hope for the best. Red Devlin would drive up to the border with the girl in the front seat.
Officiaclass="underline" Where are her papers?
Red Devlin: She doesn’t have any papers.
Red Devlin would explain the situation.
I’m sorry, but she will have to go back.
Red Devlin would explain the situation again.
Believe me, I sympathise, but there’s nothing I can do.
Sure you can, said Red Devlin. Anyone can say it, but Red Devlin really believed it, and every time he said it people who had only been doing their job stopped doing their job. Back he came to Britain with the girl to discuss the matter with a member of the Social Services.
This was not a pushover. The woman said she was only doing her job and Red Devlin said Oh go on, and instead of saying Oh all right then the woman came back with Rules are rules. Red Devlin said Oh go on again and this time the woman said there was nothing she could do. Red Devlin said Sure you can and the woman said My hands are tied. They talked for a whole hour, and the whole time they talked Red Devlin never once argued passionately or said but SURELY or but can’t you SEE or How would you feel if it were YOUR child. They talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and even after an hour of Red Devlin the woman didn’t say Oh all right then, but she said she would see what she could do. The long and the short of it was that the girl got to stay. There were hundreds of episodes like this but then he had been taken captive and held hostage.
Sibylla said what had probably happened was that they had kept him gagged for five years and then one day someone accidentally took off the gag and Red Devlin said I’d like to go home and they said Oh all right then.
I waited for her to say something else but she just walked up and down and suddenly as she walked by she saw The Eskimo Book of Knowledge.
What’s this? she asked, and picking it up began to look at it and to read out as soon as it pleased White damsels to adorn their necks and shoulders with the soft white fur of the fox, then there were many young men eager to make glad the hearts (and the vanity) of their damsels with gifts of white fox skins; and when their wives were sad, husbands learned to make them happy with gifts of white fox-skins and to say This is amazing and When was it published?
1931 I said.
1931 said Sibylla and this is, let’s see
1998
1998 so that’s 67 years, so in 67 years it will be
2065
2065. Exactly. Just think Ludo in 2065 people will probably consider it absolutely BARBARIC that a child should be condemned to work 12 years without pay in absolute economic subjection to the adults into whose keeping fate has consigned it and BARBARIC that people should be brought into the world into circumstances they did not choose and then COMPELLED to remain REGARDLESS and they will not know which is more surprising, the absolute SILENCE on these subjects at the present time or the absolute RUBBISH routinely published on the subject of marriage between members of the same sex in papers which PURPORT to
Is Red Devlin my father? I asked.
She said:
I don’t want to talk about it.
She did not come to earth. My mother was now on a planet with a deadly atmosphere and gravitational force of 17. Leaning heavily on the chair and looking down at The Eskimo Book of Knowledge she said after a pause with a gallant effort:
But what a marvellous language let’s see kakortarsu is obviously the white fox so we’ve got kakortarsu kakortarsuk kakortarsungnik kakortarsuit and there’s puije and puijit for seal further up the page it looks like puije is the accusative puijit is the nominative which would make kakortarsuit nominative piojorniningillo is vanity on the previous page we seem to have puijevinit seal meat puijevinekarnersaularposelo you will also gain a greater supply of seal meat I’ve always wanted to learn a agglutinative language
I said: Three’s not enough?