Tefuga by Peter Dickinson

Counties …”
    â€œHow did you get it off the ground, Nigel? I mean, I think it’s a terrific script—wild horses wouldn’t have got me here for anything less—and even then if I hadn’t been breaking up with Alphonse—but how did you sell it to them? It isn’t the Raj, is it? No howdahs or durbars or tiger shoots, just three or four people sweating their lives away in a stinking jungle slum. By no means mass audience. How did you get them to spend the money?”
    â€œThe rest of the series is dirt cheap. Me going to places where I’ve done programmes over the years and seeing what they look like now. Old film, talking heads, location shots. Finance department’s dream. I sold them that, then conned them into this as a spin-off. We’re doing this on the cheap too, all things considered.”
    â€œI’m not cheap.”
    â€œBut you’re going to sell the series round the world, they think. My guess is very few networks will buy the whole package, just this and the episode that concerns them, if any.”
    â€œSo it’s going to make a loss.”
    â€œProbably. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve been wanting to do this for over twenty years—effectively since I found the diary among my father’s kit.”
    â€œAnd I’ve been wanting to play Bernhardt playing Hamlet with a wooden leg. Can I get anyone to see … Among Ted’s kit, Nigel?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œBut she says …”
    â€œShe must have changed her mind.”
    â€œI suppose she could have put it there when the kit came back from Africa. It would be a way of getting rid of it. A bit like telling Elongo to bury it in the bush.”
    â€œNo. It came with his stuff.”
    â€œHe’d read it?”
    â€œOne presumes so.”
    Miss Tressider closed her eyes. The archaic smile vanished. Her face became blank and then, without any apparent movement of muscle, underwent faint shifts, hints and suggestions of an underlying personality trying to emerge. She sighed and opened her eyes.
    â€œThank God you didn’t tell me before,” she said. “It changes everything, doesn’t it? If he was going to read every word …”
    â€œShe didn’t know that while she was writing it.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œThere’s no way of knowing. Assuming the diary to be veridical within the limits of my mother’s perceptions, we know what happened up to and including the Tefuga Incident. At that point she says she is going to give it to Elongo to bury in the bush, and we know that that did not happen. That is all we know until my father’s death. You might almost say I brought us all here in an attempt to fill that gap. If so, I am none the wiser. Did Elongo give it to him after she’d gone? Did she leave it for my father to find? Did he purloin it from her cases as a keepsake?”
    â€œWhy don’t you ask the Sarkin?”
    â€œI’ve tried more than once. He changes the subject.”
    â€œYou don’t say anything about it in the script, Nigel.”
    â€œFailure of nerve. As you say, it changes everything. Suppose she left it behind as a way of telling him …”
    â€œI’m not going to think about it. I’m going to forget you told me; I don’t want to know any of that till we’ve got this thing finished. It’s not in the script, that’s all that matters. Talk about something else, Nigel.”
    â€œI was reading, if you remember.”
    â€œBe like that.”
    But as Jackland searched for his place there was a rattle of the door-knob. Miss Tressider flipped a sheet over her body. Jackland rose and tied the belt of his robe before crossing to unbolt the door. These were perfunctory proprieties. The rest of the unit were of course aware of the affair, perhaps rather more interested in it than usual because of the gossip value of anything to do