The Broken Penny

by Julian Symons

  Trelawney, in fact, was a perfect specimen of his kind. He was just good enough to be true. And with it all, Trelawney was really rather a nice fellow, generous and often spontaneously kind. Spontaneous kindness, however, would hardly extend to helping the enemies of the Republic. If Trelawney saw that photograph, would he recognise it?

  How was it possible to make use of Trelawney? Garden tapped his bony knee. ‘I’m here on a sort of semi-official mission,’ he said. ‘The name’s Charles Rose.’

  Trelawney gave a great horselike guffaw and a prodigious wink. ‘I understand, old boy. Gone native a bit in dress, hasn’t he, Miss —’

  ‘Just call her Ilona,’ Garden said.

  A formidable-looking grey-haired woman with a large flat white face advanced on them, preceded by breasts that jutted forward and upward rather like a large sloping shelf. This was Lady Violet Wythe-Watling, secretary of the Friendship Society and in charge of the touring party. Trelawney introduced Charles Rose, an old friend of his, a progressive here for a holiday.

  Lady Violet listened, frowning. ‘A holiday,’ she said with some disgust. ‘Alone?’

  ‘This is my fiancée Ilona. She is Romanian,’ Garden added to avert awkward questions about nationality.

  Lady Violet thawed perceptibly. A Romanian girl, in these circumstances, was obviously a good card to play. ‘Not much point in going round on your own. That’s what he’s been doing the past day or two, seeing friends in the north.’ Her frowning gaze was bent upon the impervious Trelawney. ‘Bit anti-social. Better join our party, you’ll see everything.’ She whisked out like a conjurer three typed sheets which, Garden saw without surprise, covered every hour of the day for three weeks’ tour. ‘Might help to keep Trelawney in line. He’s got no more sense of direction than a child, missed a splendid performance of local ballet last night.’

  Trelawney wriggled uncomfortably. ‘What time’s lunch, Lady Vi? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’

  Lady Vi fixed him with a steely glance. ‘Breakfast was perfectly adequate for those of normal appetite. Lunch will be at one o’clock.’

  ‘Roll on, one o’clock,’ said Trelawney. To Garden he showed a characteristic officious friendliness. He arranged about rooms for them at the hotel, lent Garden his razor and a new blade and looked critically at his clothes. ‘A bit bohemian, old man,’ he said. ‘You look as if you’d just changed clothes with the captain of a tramp steamer. Haven’t you got anything else?’

  Garden said that their luggage was following.

  When they were upstairs Ilona said, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. If one of them recognises you from that photograph–’

  Garden was slightly irritable. ‘Of course I don’t know what I’m doing. It takes us off the streets, that’s all, and gives us the cover of a crowd. We have to take a chance on the photograph.’ He smelt himself disgustedly. ‘I wish I had some different clothes.’

  They ate lunch with the rest of the party at the Traveller’s Hotel. The meat was unidentifiable, but it was well cooked. It was served with salad, and followed by a good local cheese. Trelawney created a stir by demanding potatoes. There were hurried consultations at the back of the room. At last potato salad was offered to him.

  ‘I wanted fried potatoes,’ Trelawney shouted. He seemed really annoyed.

  Lady Violet called sharply across the table, ‘Trelawney. You know what the harvest figures were like here last year.’

  Trelawney snapped to, as it were, emotional attention at this mention of figures. ‘The harvest figures, yes. Very bad because of the drought. The number of hectares of–’

  ‘Precisely. The harvest was the worst for many years. All the crops suffered. Potatoes are reserved for heavy workers.’

  Trelawney subsided. Amused glances were cast up and down the table. The little man with buck teeth and horn-rimmed glasses on Garden’s right said, ‘He really is a card, you know. Never minds speaking out, always says what he thinks. We all do that, of course, don’t think I mean anything else, but Trelawney – well, he’s a card and that’s all there is to it.’ The little man launched on a sea of personal reminiscence. His name was Dwiggins, and he was a chemist in a large engineering works just outside Manchester. He had come on this tour with Mrs Dwiggins – here a little woman in a peasant smock sitting on Dwiggins’ right suddenly revealed herself, smirked and disappeared again behind Dwiggins – for educational purposes. They had come to see revolutionary socialism in action. Garden nodded.

  ‘But have we seen it? I’m rather doubtful. Do you read the papers?’

  Garden felt a chill of alarm. ‘Just a few words.’

  ‘My wife has a certain – ahem – proficiency in the language.’ Mrs Dwiggins appeared again, smirked, bowed her head slightly in ladylike acknowledgement of this recognition of her accomplishment and disappeared. ‘Only one or two others in our party have it. She has been reading the reports of this rising, this conspiracy against the government. Lady Vi insists of course that it is nothing, the plot of a handful of bandits, but I’m not so sure. We’ve seen things even here in Dravina that, quite frankly, I didn’t like.’ Very solemnly Mr Dwiggins said, ‘I wonder whether we are not being influenced by propaganda.’

  They drank coffee, real coffee, Garden noticed. But it was quite natural – even a good thing perhaps – that real coffee should be offered to tourist parties. Dwiggins leaned over and whispered in Garden’s ear. It was plain that he was anxious not to be overheard. ‘I am convinced that there is a kind of – State police. The country seems in fact to be a sort of – dictatorship.’

  Garden said nothing. At his left side he could sense Ilona sitting up straight, tense with alarm.

  Trelawney pushed his long neck across the table. ‘Dwiggins, old boy, there’s a treat in store for you. Inspection of the Dravina car works this afternoon. Got the details here. Working from an American Ford prototype, they’ve produced a car which–’

  Dwiggins coughed. ‘Not quite in my line, I’m afraid. I’m a chemist, not an engineer.’

  ‘Good for you, old man.’ Again Trelawney showed his strong yellow teeth in a great laugh, as though this were a tremendous joke. Then he became intensely serious. ‘But my word, whatever you are, it’s grand to see a real constructive job going on in a socialist country, isn’t it?’ There was a murmur of agreement with these unimpeachable sentiments from those still at the table. ‘At the end of the war the factory started production. Now just listen to these figures. Take 1946 as the norm and the production in 1947 was a hundred and eighty per cent of the norm, in 1948 three hundred and fifty per cent, in 1949 seven hundred and seventy per cent. Do you know what it is now? Over three thousand five hundred per cent.’

  A round-faced man smoking a pipe and wearing baggy plus fours said, with a trace of Yorkshire in his speech, ‘Depends a bit on the original norm, doesn’t it?’

  ‘There’s too much emphasis always, in my humble opinion, on the American prototype, as though people here had to rely on the Americans for construction of their cars.’ This came from a tall, thin, nervous man with a face furrowed by years of agonised thought. A chorus of ‘Hear hears’ went round the table, but they seemed somehow not quite wholehearted.

  Trelawney was delighted. ‘But the whole point is how much improvement has been effected on the prototype. This car does fifty-three miles to the gallon with a maximum of sixty-three miles an hour, an increase on the prototype of thirty per cent in mpg and forty-seven per cent in–’

  ‘I stick to the point,’ said the thin nervous man. ‘To talk so much about the prototype is virtually to accuse the people here of lacking original engineering capacity.’

  ‘I’m only quoting the figures they give themselves, old man,’ Trelawney said mildly.

  ‘And I say that the emphasis on the prototype is an insult to national prestige,’ said the thin man. A slight hubbub ensued through which there emerged the voice of the man wearing plus fours:

  ‘I still say it would be inter
esting to know the original norm of 1946.’ Nobody took much notice of this, but his next words produced a sudden silence round the table. ‘And it would be interesting to know the effect on production of all the recent arrests that we have seen.’

  ‘Hear hear,’ said Dwiggins unexpectedly.

  The thin man turned on him savagely. ‘If you are referring to the recent attempts by bandits to sabotage socialist production I must say that I am surprised you should think–’

  ‘Come on now, Moxon,’ said the man with plus fours. ‘That was no sabotage. You saw what happened as well as me. Men taken away from their homes, beaten up by the police, wives and children crying.’

  ‘I suppose saboteurs don’t possess wives and children, Bridgewater?’

  ‘’Course they can do. But these were ordinary workers, pulled out of their beds in the middle of the night. They weren’t plotters.’

  Moxon put his thin head on one side. ‘You speak the language here, I suppose, Bridgewater?’

  ‘You know I don’t, any more than you do. Don’t need to when you see police using force on workers. I know which side I’m on then, Moxon. I’m with the workers. What about you?’

  Moxon hunched his shoulders, rolled his eyes alarmingly and murmured, ‘Petty bourgeois opportunism.’

  ‘Call it what you like. Shall I tell you what I think?’

  ‘Oh, by all means tell us what you think. I am sure it will be most instructive.’

  ‘I think this is nothing more nor less than a police state.’ Bridgewater knocked out his pipe defiantly. ‘And I should very much like to know the actual production figures in 1946 of this factory we’re going to see. But I doubt they’ll be available.’

  Trelawney made uneasy flapping gestures with his long arms. The sleeves of his sports jacket shot back showing the hairy red wrists. ‘Moxon and Bridgewater, break it up now. There’s nothing I like more than a good old argy-bargy, but you can go too far. Here comes Lady Vi,’ he said with relief.

  Lady Vi surged forward, booming out suggestions that had the force of commands. ‘Three o’clock at the Dravina Engineering Works. The Tourist Bureau has thoughtfully provided a coach. Just twenty minutes to spare, time for a wash and brush up.’

  ‘Lady Vi.’ The voice belonged to little Dwiggins. ‘My wife has rather a headache. We’ve done a lot of sightseeing in the past week. We should like, if you don’t mind, to be excused this afternoon.’

  ‘Say it straight out, man,’ said Bridgewater encouragingly.

  ‘You don’t want to see this factory, that’s it, isn’t it? And I must say I agree with you. I’m not much inclined for the trip myself. All right, then, we’re all paying our way and there’ll be no offence taken. Isn’t that so, Lady Vi?’

  Lady Vi, however, seemed to think that offence would certainly be taken, and that even if it were not taken an undoubted slight would have been put upon their hosts. Her flat face showed some sign of emotion as she spoke of the trusting confidence with which their hosts had made these arrangements, of the modest pride they had felt in showing the achievements of their people to friends from another country. And now what happened? A slap in the face from a section of the party (for half a dozen others had now indicated that they would prefer to walk about the town, or even sit in their rooms, rather than look at the factory). Their hosts extended the right hand of friendship, said Lady Vi, and received a slap in the face by way of return. Some people were too tired, or too bored or too little interested in the achievements of a socialist country, to be able to spare time to look around a factory working in the service of the people instead of for private profit…

  As Lady Vi waxed strong, so the resistance of her listeners wilted. At last only the Dwigginses and Bridgewater remained recalcitrant, and determined to spend the afternoon on their own. Garden wondered why Lady Vi was so concerned that everybody should visit the factory, and decided that it was because of the recent troubles. The seeds of disaffection were obviously present in the party already, and one or two more incidents might mean the failure of the tour.

  ‘Mr Rose.’ Garden came out of his reveries with a jerk. ‘You and your friend are not, strictly speaking, members of our party, but if you would care to take two of the vacant places–’

  Garden hesitated. By going with the party they would preserve their cloak of collective anonymity. By staying at the hotel they would obtain seclusion and a precious rest, but they would offend Lady Vi. He was about to say that they would go, when Ilona decided for him.

  ‘If you please, would you excuse us. I am so tired – we travelled most of last night and had very little sleep. And I am sure Charles is tired too. It is not that we lack enthusiasm.’ She gave a shy smile to Lady Vi, who received it with comparative graciousness, and to Trelawney, who responded with a toothy grin.

  Five minutes later they were in Ilona’s bedroom, which was large and furnished with light oak furniture that bore a strong resemblance to English utility. A private bathroom was attached. ‘I found this on my plate while we were having coffee,’ she said.

  It was a slip of paper, printed in capitals, which said: DO NOT GO TO THE FACTORY. STAY IN THIS AFTERNOON. WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS.

  Garden read it with astonishment. Someone in the party, then, knew their identities and was prepared to help them. ‘How did it get on your plate?’

  ‘I don’t know. A waiter must have put it there I suppose. I saw it suddenly, a little screwed up piece of paper. Or it could have been flicked across somehow. I don’t know and I don’t much care. I’m going to have a bath.’ She went into the bathroom and came back in a moment wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘I might have known it. The water is not hot. In hotels like this it used to be hot.’

  Garden was quite unreasonably annoyed. ‘Since then they have had a war and a revolution. You might remember that.’

  She shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘The water used to come out hot, steaming hot, the moment you turned on the tap. Now it is filthy tepid stuff that leaks out thinly and meanly. There’s your revolution, that’s what you’ve been working for all your life – no hot water and an efficient secret police.’ She began to laugh.

  ‘Stop it,’ Garden shouted. ‘Stop it.’ In a paroxysm of anger and love he gripped the shoulders that seemed to melt into nothingness under his large hands. They fell heavily on to the bed together and he saw her face beneath him pale and bloodless, eyes closed, mouth like a red flower. She remained in this passive attitude, allowing him to do whatever he wished, during the moments that followed. It was like making love to a statue, Garden thought, and tried furiously to bring the statue to Galatean life. But in this he failed, except that once she moaned faintly and passed her hand over the short crisp hair at the back of his head; and at last she subdued him (as he felt) to her own passivity and he lay quietly on top of her, a mere weight. Her eyes opened and looked up at him with no expression.

  ‘That wasn’t very good. I’m sorry,’ she said, and slid herself away from beneath him. Her body, half-dressed, looked unformed and childish as she walked to the bathroom. Garden heard the sound of running water. Then her head peered round the door, suddenly gleeful. ‘The water’s hot.’

  ‘The water’s hot,’ Garden echoed.

  ‘You don’t know what a difference it makes. I was dying for a bath.’ She came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘I really do care about things. And about you too. Who do you think sent that note?’

  ‘I think Milo or Theo must have got it to us from outside, through a waiter. Otherwise it was somebody in the party, but goodness knows who.’ Garden stifled a yawn. He felt immensely tired.

  ‘Go and lie down in your room. I’ll come to see you when I’ve finished.’

  His room was next door to hers, with a communicating door. It contained exactly similar furniture, two single beds, a wash basin. He crossed to the window, pulled up the Venetian blinds and looked out upon the Bay of Dravina, with a few fishing boats in harbour, and the water grey and desolate und
er slanting rain. In a full-length glass on the wall he saw his own reflection, and laughed aloud. This clownish figure in a seaman’s cast-off clothes certainly looked quite unlike Garden the night watchman, or for that matter Garden the guerrilla fighter in the photograph. ‘Garden the knockabout performer,’ he said, pulling off his boots, taking off the dirty wadded coat. ‘Garden the hunted man.’ He sank on to the bed which was cool and comfortable, and a phrase came into his mind. He stretched to grasp it, but could never quite manage to do so. The phrase turned strangely into something tangible, something opalescent and shining (a stone perhaps, in whose depths could be discovered an image of satisfied desire). He remembered, or imagined, some lines of poetry lucidly burning:

  This image salvaged from futility,

  A warm bronze body by a waveless sea.

  Breasts, belly, tapered legs fulfil a dream

  Of sensuality, the red lips seem,

  Though silent, to be moving longingly…

  ‘The waveless sea,’ he said. ‘The waveless sea’; and sank down into it.

  Chapter Seven

  He woke feeling cold, and with a sick certainty of catastrophe. At first it seemed this was connected with his own body – he was paralysed, perhaps, or tied to the bed. Staring up at the white ceiling he cautiously moved arms and legs and was happy to find them in working order. Something pressed urgently against the small of his back – what was it? He flung himself to one side and clapped one hand to his back. Of course, the revolver! Still only half-awake he rolled off the bed and sat on the edge of it, rubbing his eyes with his fists. His watch said six fifteen. He had been asleep for more than three hours.

  The note lay underneath the door, at the edge of the thin carpet. It was typed on a sheet of ruled lines, perhaps torn from an exercise book, and it said: ‘Go with the party this evening to the Cultural Reception. Leave at ten o’clock. Go with the girl down to the Riva Dock. A man wearing a yachting cap will be waiting. Say to him in English, “A fine night.” He will reply, “The water is smooth.” Then follow his directions.’