Orlando king, p.49
Orlando King, page 49
Agatha looked round quickly. Miss Bannister was in the back room and Miss Wickham, who had seen Imogen’s desperately hurried arrival, was tactfully bent over her embroidery at the other end of the shop.
Agatha, having given her chair to Imogen, sat down on the edge of the table and said, ‘What happened?’
‘They came to see me again, and they know. It’s no good. You’ll have to tell them, Agatha.’
‘Who came to see you?’
‘That Inspector.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He knows about Charlie Edwards and that he arranged Paul’s escape and that you gave them money.’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘He said he knew Charlie Edwards had arranged it.’
‘Charlie Edwards didn’t arrange it. It was a friend of his.’
‘It’s the same thing,’ said Imogen impatiently. The colour was coming back into her cheeks now that the horrifying moment of breaking the news to Agatha was over. ‘It’s no good, Agatha. You’ll have to go and see them.’
‘Of course I’m not going to go and see them,’ said Agatha. ‘Just tell me exactly what he said.’
‘He said you must go and see him.’
‘What did he say that he knew?’
‘He said that he knew it was all to do with Charlie Edwards. He said it was only a matter of time until they found out all the details. He said that if you had given them any money you must go and tell him all about it at once, otherwise you’ll certainly be caught and sent to prison.’
‘If I had. He can’t have known then.’
‘He does know. It’s no good. He does know.’ She had turned white again.
Agatha looked at her. She has told him, she thought.
She stood up and walked slowly away, turned over a book on the top of a pile on one of the tables and walked back. She was fairly certain that Imogen must have told the Inspector everything she knew but she did not want her to have to say so. She would have liked to have embraced her sister, but they had never been demonstrative in that sort of way.
Instead she said, ‘Don’t worry. He may not know as much as he would like us to think. I’ll wait for him to come to me.’
Imogen had screwed up her chiffon scarf into a ball and was turning it round and round in her hands.
‘But if you go to him and tell him, it will be better for you. He said so.’
‘I will do that if it seems the right thing. I don’t think I ought to do it yet. Don’t worry, it will be all right. Leave it to me.’
‘But I don’t want to leave it to you. I want to help you.’
To Imogen’s anxious eyes it was as if Agatha visibly retreated and from a new distance said quietly, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ Then she turned away, without seeing Imogen’s immediate tears, and went into the back room where she said politely to Miss Bannister, ‘I suppose there wouldn’t be any chance of a cup of tea for my sister? She’s had a bit of a shock.’
‘Of course, my dear.’ Miss Bannister at once rose to her feet and set about lighting the gas-ring.
‘Tea? Oh goody,’ said Miss Wickham, hurrying in from the shop and busily setting out the blue-striped mugs. ‘Just what I need.’
They both assumed that Imogen was pregnant and felt very sorry for her, so pretty and so sad. Miss Bannister would have liked to contribute something towards the cost of an abortion, Miss Wickham had already determined to adopt the child. Fortunately both decided that their offers would be premature, and kept them in reserve.
Conrad walked briskly across St James’s Park, with Jess at his heels. It was cold and misty but with a faint suggestion of sunshine through the mist and the smell of burning leaves on the air. He wondered if there had been a frost at Mount Sorrel. He hoped the crisis would not prevent him from getting down there for the weekend.
‘Come along, Jess,’ he said unnecessarily. He felt very well. ‘Sometimes I think one sleeps too much,’ he said, startling a middle-aged woman in a hat who happened to be walking in the opposite direction. ‘An occasional shortage of sleep clears the mind.’ He should not have hesitated so much about Agatha. She should be brought to her senses as quickly as possible and the wretched Paul caught and put away. He had told that Inspector it was time to get a move on. Really it was perfectly disgraceful that they hadn’t found him already.
This evening the bombers would move in. Alert young men – he envied them in a way – their trained reflexes at work, their faculties stretched, coming in low at dusk to bomb the Egyptian airfields, a competent operation to put the places out of action, a definite move, a clear unequivocal statement. How much he had seen bungled by inaction: Italy in 1935, the Rhineland in 1936. ‘You can’t be too nice, you know, in this wicked world.’ And though of course things changed and one had to move with the times, one couldn’t help sympathizing with people who thought the British should never have left Suez in the first place.
‘Robust,’ he said. ‘We must be robust.’ His feeling of well-being was so intense that as he walked along he held his arms in front of him and with his hands open horizontally rubbed the palms briskly together at the same time saying, ‘Ho ho, ho ho, ho ho.’
Jess, delighted by the way things were going, broke into a lolloping canter. A smiling park attendant said cheerfully, ‘Nice morning, sir!’
‘Excellent, excellent,’ answered Conrad.
Of course it was a nice morning. He was going to get a lot done today. He hoped there wouldn’t be too much talking, he had a lot of other things to see to, letters to write, arrangements to make, he really wanted to find time to look at the new chrysanthemums in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Autumn Show too. Still, he might have to let that go, if there was too much on.
‘What an interesting life we lead, Jess, for a couple of old fogeys.’
Henry and Joe had lunch together.
‘I had dinner with Sally last night.’
‘Did you? How did that come about?’
‘We were both at a boring party. She’s marvellous, isn’t she?’
Henry looked pleased but said deprecatingly, ‘Not too bright of course.’
‘No, she’s quick though, funny.’
‘I’m glad you liked her,’ said Henry.
Joe felt from the easy way in which he spoke that he meant it, and this seemed significant. If Henry did not feel that there was anything that needed to be concealed about his friendship with Sally, presumably he himself no longer thought of it as dangerous. This augured well, Joe thought. For everything.
They talked about mutual friends, gossiping, before going back to the subject of Sally, and the behaviour of Lord Marner, and their joint curiosity about this enigmatic but grand figure.
‘Incidentally,’ said Henry changing the subject abruptly, ‘do you know any really discreet solicitors? There’s something I want to find out but I don’t know who to ask.’
Joe wondered whether he had misjudged the situation. One never quite knew with Henry. On the other hand he had thought he did quite know.
Confused, he said, ‘There’s always poor old David Matthews.’
‘Oh yes, so there is. Poor old David Matthews. Look here, could you ask him something for me? It’s a bit difficult for me. Would you mind? Ask him what would be the sentence on someone who was caught giving money to a group of people who organized the escape from prison of someone who had been given a long sentence.’
‘Cripes.’
‘Supposing the person who had given the money to be a relation of the person who escaped.’
‘Yes. Gosh.’
‘All quite hypothetical of course.’
‘It would probably be only a fine, wouldn’t it?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Oh Lord. I’ll find out.’
‘Just so that one knows.’
‘Does it look like – um – being found out?’
‘I’m not sure. I hope not.’
‘So do I. Good Lord.’
He acted quickly. Late in the afternoon he telephoned Henry in his office. They met on a bench in St Paul’s Churchyard. Joe unfolded a typewritten sheet of foolscap paper.
‘You were quick,’ said Henry.
‘I stood over him while he rang up his friend in criminal law. This is what he says. “A person who harbours an offender under the Official Secrets Act commits a misdemeanour, and the maximum penalty on indictment is two years. I doubt whether the close relationship, or the fact of a first offence, would really be material My feeling is that the Court would want to give the maximum sentence possible.”'
‘Why?’ said Henry.
‘I suppose espionage is considered a bad thing. And helping someone to evade the law. “The matter of bail would presumably be strongly opposed in the case of espionage, and so therefore the person concerned would in practice be starting his prison sentence from the date of arrest.”’
‘No bail,’ said Henry.
They sat side by side on the bench in silence.
‘So really,’ said Henry thoughtfully, ‘a certain line has been crossed. She has put herself on the other side of a certain line.’
‘Yes.’
‘Interesting. Thanks.’ He stood up. ‘You won’t say anything, will you? Nothing may come of it, at least I hope not.’
He nodded, a little preoccupied, and walked away.
‘Keep in touch,’ said Joe anxiously. But Henry did not look round.
Joe walked back towards his office, wishing he could ride beside her, on a tired horse, with a tattered flag. When she swayed in her saddle, exhausted from the battle, he would slip to the ground and be at her side; no one else should support her to the tent and sleep across the entrance through the night while her resting soul renewed itself among its own vast ancient images; no one else in the morning should ride beside her when they went, refreshed, to renew the battle in the plain. Or he would stand up in court and plead for her life with such eloquence that the judge would weep. Then he felt ashamed, and wished his daydreams were not always about himself.
Henry suggested that Agatha should go to the cottage early.
‘It will probably be the last time we can go before it gets too cold. Let George miss one day’s school. They won’t mind. He’s only five. You take the car, and I’ll come by train.’
‘It seems rather extravagant,’ said Agatha doubtfully.
‘I can afford the fare for once. You can meet me at the station. It would do the children good to be there a bit longer this time.’
From his office he telephoned a neighbour of old Mrs Parker who lived in the village and sent a message asking her to go up to the cottage and light the fire and leave a few stores ready. She had done it before for them but they did not like to ask her too often because she was old and though she could sometimes get a lift from the woodmen, of whom her son was one, at other times she had to walk and it was a long way.
When Agatha arrived with the children and found the fire lit and everything made ready, she immediately thought, He must know that I am going to be caught. But it did not lessen her pleasure in the place.
She walked in the woods with the children, available to them in an emergency but in the meantime not listening.
When Lucy said ‘Mummy?’ she said ‘Mn?’ but then Lucy forgot what she had been going to say or was interrupted by George. Sometimes Lucy said ‘Mummy?’ again as if she had something really important to say, and Agatha said ‘Mn?’ again, and again nothing transpired. It was a routine she was used to and in which she could fulfil her obligations without interrupting her train of thought. Possibly Lucy’s train of thought was not interrupted either, always supposing that she had one. Her consciousness seemed still to be almost exclusively occupied by her reactions, often extravagant, to the immediate moment. George, being older, was more given to philosophizing, and when he was alone with either of his parents for any length of time would produce in unhurried but continuous succession the results of his speculations, simple but well-formed concepts on most of the world’s great questions, shining fishes from the clear waters of his mind. When he was with Lucy his conversation was on an altogether lower level. This afternoon they were being rabbits, with voices and sentiments of which any right-minded rabbit ought to have been ashamed. When the squeaks and baby talk penetrated to Agatha she said, ‘Surely rabbits don’t talk like that’ in a shocked voice.
‘They have witchy fluffy voices,’ said Lucy sillily.
‘For heaven’s sake.’
But they had gambolled on ahead, stopping every now and then to waggle their bottoms, which presumably had witchy fluffy tails on them, and Agatha waited until they were out of earshot before following them down the field, hoping that by the time she caught up with them they might have moved on to some less objectionable fantasy.
They were going down to the old Timberwork mill, where the children liked climbing on the ruined walls. It was the first time they had been that way since Dora’s death. The fact that Dora had been run over coalesced in her mind with her feeling that Henry must know more than she did about the police inquiry, and produced in her a feeling, not unfamiliar, of her own inadequacy, of there being really nothing else for her to do but take things quietly: she knew that there was a certain sense in which as far as the outside world was concerned she really had no idea how to behave. Henry, on the other hand, had.
The rough wood on the slope above the mill was neglected. Branches which had fallen in last winter’s winds had not been cleared away for firewood: the undergrowth was thick and the paths hard to find. It was as if Conrad had not the heart to apply his science there, so near the scene of former disappointments. Elsewhere his woods were beautifully tended, his timber-growing a serious business. Rides were kept clear between plantations, the trees thinned and pruned; but here a thin uprooted wych-elm could lean across the path, held from falling completely by the branches of other trees which supported too huge a growth of old man’s beard, whose abundance looked from a distance like a great fall of soft grey roses. Agatha paused, near a tangle of brambles from which a month or two earlier she had picked enough fruit for six pounds of blackberry jelly. She looked for late remnants but after the recent frosts there was nothing. She stood still and could just hear the children’s voices. They had run on so far that they might already be down at the bottom, at the mill. Their voices came to her with a slight echo. Otherwise there was no sound except gentle continuous rustling, so much like rain falling on the trees that she looked up towards the grey sky; but it was only the last yellowish leaves falling all round her, singly and slowly through the damp windless air. Here all was well. For once she did not feel out of place.
She liked the feeling of her trousers over her stomach, pulled tight by her hands being in her pockets; the longer strides she had to take because her boots were rather big: by such little things could messages of liberty be conveyed; also by the touch of damp air on her cheeks, the smell of leaves, moss, fungus, the slow sound of cawing rooks. Her sense of isolation was acceptable here, but must never be relished because that would be pride. There were so many errors into which she might fall, and the God in whom she did not believe had been besought for forgiveness so much lately that it had become a habit to have the words always somewhere near the topmost layer of her mind. If she were to be run over crossing a road she would die with such a shriek of ‘Oh forgive me!’ that everyone would be left wondering what horrible crime she had committed, not knowing how private were her sins.
One of them she had recently diagnosed for herself as displaced jealousy. Never having allowed herself to feel jealousy of Sally – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, having most vigorously rejected, because it seemed to her so horrible, her jealousy of Sally – she had allowed the snake she held to recoil and feed on her restraining arm. That is to say, as well as the lowering of morale consequent upon her husband’s having fallen in love with someone else she was suffering from an extra anxiety and self-hate which came from her absolute refusal to hate the husband and the someone else. She guessed that by now; and since she knew that the worst was over, that it was largely a question of time, of all three living it down, she sometimes consciously tried to dismiss Henry as selfish, Sally as vain and frivolous, by cursing them aloud. It did no good.
It was easier to believe the fault lay in her own over-estimate of what was to be expected from marriage. She had thought of it as some kind of Holy Grail, in the quest for which, that is to say in the daily renewal of the attempt to do it perfectly, self would be transcended and the soul satisfied. She could see that might be a terrible bore for someone who just wanted to be comfortable. She had no right to be demanding, must therefore adapt. But if, in adapting, a certain amount had to go, what was she left with? Her work was to rear her children, but to lose herself in them would be wrong, not to say impossible, feeling as she did the weight of her own personality. What else? These dripping woods.
She remembered reading about some clever person who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge at a young age and lived in keen daily expectation of meeting the really brilliant people. After a year or so he realized that the really brilliant people were himself and his friends: it was a severe disillusionment. In adult life Agatha had looked for the visions and the certainties; perhaps the visions and the certainties were only the vague intimations of her childhood. Which brought her back to the Mount Sorrel woods. And to those intimations for which she often had to wait so long and which alone had the power to renew themselves.
‘Parthenogenesis,’ she said, pronouncing the word pedantically, walking downhill now quite fast, her gumboots flumping against her legs, her hands still in her pockets. ‘Love must commit parthenogenesis.’
She took her hands out of her pockets and began to run.
When she reached the mill she found that the children were climbing up the most dangerous part of the ruins, behind the mill, where the drawing offices and the canteen had been built on to the more solid eighteenth-century structure in about 1932. This part was mostly a heap of rubble now – willow herb and buddleia had had time to take a hold, a few rank elders too – but a couple of walls were still standing and there was scope for climbing.
