Sewell - The White Umbrella

First published in 2015 by Quartet Books Limited

A member of the Namara Group

27 Goodge Street, London W1T 2LD

Text Brian Sewell 2015

Illustrations Sally Ann Lasson 2015

The right of Brian Sewell to be identified

as the author of this work has been asserted

by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form or by any means without prior

written permission from the publisher

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7043 7390 7

Typeset by Josh Bryson

I

Mr B rescues a donkey foal

Mr B, a wiry little man of fifty with white hair, was sitting in the back of a big white Land Rover when he saw the donkey. It was early evening and the dense rush-hour traffic in Peshawar was moving at a snails pace which was just as well, for Mr B suddenly opened the door, leaped down onto the road and, without a word, sprinted away between the carts and lorries, the buses and the motorcycles.

His companions, a television crew from London for Mr B was in northern Pakistan to make a film about that countrys ancient history were taken by surprise. Dominic, the youngest and least important of them, but the tallest and the most willowy, had the sense to jump out too and run after Mr B. They did not much like him. He was serious and knew a great deal of ancient history, but he failed to understand that in making programmes for television what he knew was of absolutely no importance and that, as a presenter, he was no more than the puppet of the director and the cameraman.

Within two days of reaching Pakistan they were hardly speaking to each other. The cameraman was only interested in filming the brightly-painted trucks and lorries that constantly thundered past with passengers clinging to anything that offered support for hand or foot. The director, if they encountered a buffalo or camel, at once ordered Mr B to clamber on its back; he was also compelled to eat food offered in the street or play musical instruments. Mr B, however, knowing that two thousand, three hundred years earlier Alexander the Great, the most formidable of heroes in the history of Ancient Greece, had marched his armies all the way from Macedonia to Pakistan, was anxious to know if any traces of that conquest still survived in modern language, customs or culture. Most of all he would have liked to find a fierce Pakistani warrior in the remoter regions of the Hindu Kush, capable of conversing with him in Ancient Greek but for two long weeks Mr B had been allowed to find nothing of the kind and now was boiling over with frustration.

That they called him Mr B was an indication of the rift between them. Feeling deeply unfriendly toward him, they did not want to use his first name, and to have turned to the formality of his surname might have suggested that they held him in high respect for his knowledge which was far from the case. It was young Dominic who, if truth be told, liked and respected him very much and perfectly understood the anguish that he felt when the programme that he had hoped to make faded into oblivion, who began to address him as Mr B, and then the others took it up. To call him Mr B was not aggressively unfriendly, yet suggested a certain distance, and Dominic could make it seem genuinely affectionate.

When Dominic caught up with Mr B, he found him with his arm around the neck of a tiny donkey, dabbing his handkerchief in four deep wounds on her back, from which flowed strong trickles of blood. These had been caused by a wicker saddle used in Pakistan to provide a flat platform for the enormous loads that donkeys are often forced to carry. But this donkey, Dominic could at once see, was far too young to work. He could also see that Mr B was magnificently angry. I doubt if she is six months old. She may still be drinking her mothers milk. Any fool can see that the bones and joints of her legs are not properly formed

At this point the fat director and the cameraman, panting and drenched with sweat, arrived. Dominic explained. Leave the donkey and get back into the car, demanded the director. Not without the donkey, said Mr B, I cant and wont just leave her here. As they argued, the volume of their voices rose and a ring of uncomprehending spectators formed about them. Reason dictated that they should leave the donkey to her fate and drive on to Islamabad where, next day, they were to board a plane to Heathrow, but Mr B was not a reasonable man indeed, when provoked, he could be a most unreasonable man. Well leave you, threatened the fat director. Do, Mr B replied with remarkable force and clarity for such a short and simple word. The cameraman took his arm, but Mr B shook him off. What will you do if we leave you? asked Dominic very quietly. Walk home, said Mr B, with the donkey, a broad grin spreading over his face.

For a whole hour they wrangled and the crowd, bored by an argument in which no one was murdered or even came to blows, thinned until only Mr B and the television crew were left. Night fell, but not even the chill of darkness dented Mr Bs determination. In the end Dominic fetched Mr Bs luggage from the car and, into a small and comfortable knapsack that had been his companion on many earlier journeys and long-distance walks, helped him to pack only what was really useful. Into it went his sponge bag, scissors shaped for cutting fingernails, a fresh notebook, spare pens and everything that might keep him warm and dry. He remembered too to bring Mr Bs umbrella no ordinary umbrella, but one of strong white canvas on a frame of metal ribs exquisitely engineered about a stock as heavy as the strongest walking-stick, specially made for him ten years before, hardly a stones throw from the British Museum, by James Smith and Sons (and Grandsons, Great-Grandsons and more and more, for they made their first umbrella in 1830, the year that William IV came to the throne). The canvas was no longer white, for this was an umbrella that had crossed the Sahara and its sand-storms when Mr B was searching there for evidence of prehistoric human occupation, that had been with him in Pompeii and furthest Sicily, indeed everywhere from Barcelona to Baghdad, and had proved to be the Rolls-Royce of umbrellas.

What shall we tell them when we get back to London? asked the director, still not quite believing that this was about to be the parting of their ways.

Tell them the truth that I found a baby donkey and I am walking home with it.

You are mad, said the director.

Perhaps, said Mr B, but it is a decent sort of madness of which you are incapable. We shall see you in a year or so.

To this the director ungraciously replied, I dont care if I never see or hear of you again. You and your damned donkey.

Dominic, last to return to the Land Rover, gave Mr B a hug and whispered, Ill tell the Foreign Office and Mrs B, of course.

II

Farooq the pharmacist

So there was Mr B, shivering a little in the cold that tumbles down on Peshawar from the Himalayas so that, though by day the temperature can be roasting hot to an Englishman, by night it can be as cold as Christmas. All this time the donkey foal had stood close to him, pressing, much as big dogs often do against their masters thighs. Feeling her shiver too, he pulled his one warm wind-cheating garment from his knapsack and, knotting the sleeves about her neck, just about covered her shoulders with it; then, taking the old leather belt from his trousers, soft with long use, he slipped this too about her neck like a dog collar and lead. All but one of the shops nearby had closed, but a bright light announced the exception to be a PHARMACY, and that was exactly what