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The legacies of
British imperialism
By JOHN LLEONART
THE TOY CRUSADERS.
By Richard Jones. Macmil
lan. 320pp. $4-75.
THE SMILE ON THE
FACE OF THE TIGER.
By Doiiglas Hurd and
Andrew Osmond. Collins.
286pp. $3-60.
'THE behaviour of
people who fear they
have no tomorrow is
liable to be interesting
however petty they are.
Richard Jones' people in
'Toy Crusaders' are like this.
They are an unheroic lot who
are virile only in their mali
ciousness and yet, in this bit
ter comedy, Jones has them
leave some writing in the sand.
A bulletin editor for the
BBC's Arabic service, the
author illuminates his story of
a confrontation between cul
tures with a delicate sense of
the moods and landscapes of
North Africa.
Rhoda and Neville, a para
sitic brother and sister team
who have found the pickings
poor in modern Britain, go to
a North African city, she as
the wife of the British Consul
and he as dilettante in resi
dence. They become involved
in the bumbling tragedy of the
life of Brophy, whom some
degree of scholarship and the
old boy network have made
director of a semi-official
economics - cum - political in
telligence organisation.
Soon the brother, sister and
Brophy are pitted against an
equally unprepossessing group
in a vicious round of office
and social vendettas. Neville
and Brophy are, both literally
and figuratively, chasing tails.
And this, despite Neville's
ability as an exploiter of
people and situations and be
cause of Brophy's inconvenient
traces of nobility, makes them
vulnerable. Rhoda, despite her
wit and evident committment
to the idea of all-the-wayism,
opts out when she pauses in
her delicious pirouetting
around. Brophy's sexual prob
lems just long enough to see
that the problems are real.
Part of the conflicts which
wreck the trio are with other
toy crusaders but their most
formidable opponents are the
local Arabs, who are magnifi
cent opportunists. They
realise that one doesn't have
to take the initiative to win —
that if you take a situation as
it comes the one who tries to
make the running will fail be
cause of his internal conflicts.
What is more, as one of the
Britishers finally observes,
"They are even bigger hypo
crites than we are".
Jones, in all of this, reveals
a finely barbed wit and a
highly developed sense of the
subleties of human behaviour.
The people he describes may
have no future but, as some of
the last relics of the decadent
phase of British imperialism,
they are certainly worth re
cording.
'The Smile on the Face of
the Tiger' is also concerned
with the legacies of British im
perialism. But here the mood
is much heartier and the pro
position is that there is steel
in the nerves and red blood in
the veins of the old lion yet.
But Douglas Hurd and
Andrew Osmond are not
nearly so much concerned
with the intricacies of human
behaviour as Richard Jones.
Their purpose- is simply to pre
sent a good political thriller
and they do this with a quite
impressive competence.
Maybe there Is some worth
while commentary on contem
porary Britain in comparing
these two dissimilar books. On
the one hand you have Jones
looking at the bared souls of
his imperial representatives
with a pessimistic cultivated
disgust. Then along come
Hurd and Osmond, both of
them former members of the
Foreign Office and function
aries in the imperial establish
ment. They have no legacies
of guilt to exorcise and no de
sire to moralise too deeply
about the quality of life avail
able to organisational man.
They are building a successful
partnership, having already
rung the cash registers with
their political novel 'Send Him
Victorious'. Now, with The
Smile on the Face of the
Tiger', (hey confirm that they
are a firm able to produce a
well-designed and finely engin
eered literary entertainment.
Briefly, their story is of a
British Government in the
1970s faced with a Red
Chinese ultimatum for the im
mediate handover of Hong
Kong.
The plot is so good that, in
its political propositions, it
could be taken quite seriously
as the prophecy of the kind of
thin ice diplomacy in which
Britain could ultimately have
to engage over Hong Kong.
The authors, in fact, have
their Chinese Prime Minister
draw the analogy of the
British having to skate on past
the thin ice danger signs,
with the Chinese not knowing
whether this is because the
British simply cannot read or
that they really intend to fight
a nuclear war.
Apart from the sound politi
cal content there are, in this
neat product, cleverly inte
grated ingredients of violence,
blackmail and personal stress.
These elements are never over
done and they demonstrate the
truth that no political situation
is ever decided on purely
abstract political grounds. _
$