Marazan

by Nevil Shute

  I was surprised at the change. With my hair cropped and the clothes that Compton had been wearing I really wasn’t at all a bad imitation of him. Joan Stevenson was busy with another meal; I sat down at the table, wrote out a cheque to her for thirty pounds, and gave it to her to cash in the morning. We agreed that she should post the money to ‘Mr. E. C. Gullivant, The Post Office, Exeter—to await arrival.’ I had about eight pounds on me, which would carry me to Exeter.

  Then Dorman rang up.

  ‘Is that Dorman?’ I said. ‘Stenning speaking—yes, Stenning. I say, I want to borrow the Irene for a bit. Yes, I’d like to take her on charter if I may—I want her for about three weeks. No, really, if you can spare her I’d rather have her that way. I’ll give you six guineas. You’re sure you don’t need her? All right. Now, I want her at once; I want to start the day after to-morrow if I can. She’s at Salcombe? I know it’s pretty short notice. You’ll telegraph to Stevens about her? Good man. Look. Tell him to fill her up full of water, will you? And about two stone of potatoes. The rest of the stuff I’ll have to get in Salcombe.’

  Joan Stevenson touched me on the arm. ‘Tell him that I’ll go down and provision her for you,’ she said. ‘You won’t be able to.’

  I covered the transmitter and did some rapid thinking. It would be very convenient to find the vessel already provisioned and ready for sea; at the same time, the girl must be kept out of it.

  ‘You won’t have time to get any food,’ she said. ‘They’ll be after you by that time. I’ll go down to-morrow and fix up everything, if you’ll tell me what to do.’

  ‘Then they’ll get you.’

  ‘No, they won’t. I’ll be back in London twelve hours before you get to Salcombe.’

  I uncovered the transmitter. ‘I say, Dorman,’ I said. ‘There’s a cousin of mine here, a Miss Fellowes, who’s going down to Salcombe to buy the stores for me and put them on board. Tell Stevens to expect a lady with the stores to-morrow or on Friday. Yes, old Stevens knows me. What? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What did he die of? Really. I’m very sorry. I don’t think I know the son. Anyway, you’ll tell him to expect me the day after to-morrow and to expect a lady first with the grub. It’s all right—I’m not taking the lady on board. I won’t do anything to sully the fair name of the Irene. Oh, just up and down the Channel—I’ve got a holiday sudden-like. You’ll telegraph first thing in the morning? Right you are. Goodnight.’

  I rang off and turned to Joan Stevenson. ‘Bit of luck there,’ I said. ‘The boatman doesn’t know me. Now look here. I said I’d be there the day after to-morrow—that’s Friday. I probably shan’t get there till the Saturday, but it will keep them up to the scratch if they think I’m coming earlier than I am. Can you go down there to-morrow?’

  She nodded. ‘I can say I’m going up to London for a night,’ she said. ‘I often do that. Then I can catch an express at Reading and be there by to-morrow night.’

  ‘That’s splendid,’ I said. The whisky had killed my fatigue and my mind was in good form for once. I pulled a sheet of notepaper towards me and set to work with her to make a list of the things that she had to get in Salcombe and put on board the Irene.

  Twenty minutes later I turned to her. ‘Now you’ve got to get all that on board on Friday morning,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to catch an afternoon train back to Town. I want to make that pretty clear, please. Anything that you can’t buy or that you haven’t got time to get you must leave to the boatman, Stevens. I don’t want there to be any mistake about that. You’ve got to be out of Salcombe and on your way back to London by two o’clock on Friday. That ought to give you a clear day in which to get away before things start to get warm there. On the other hand, I may be pressed and have to run for Salcombe ahead of my schedule. I may want to get to sea on Friday. If I get there and find you in the neighbourhood still I shall have to dodge back on my tracks. That may be unfortunate for me.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll be away by two o’clock,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Now there’s one thing more. The Irene will be lying in the Bag probably—that’s up the river. I want you to see her brought down to her summer anchorage off the jetty. Tell the boatman that I want her there in order that I can get off at once. See that done yourself: it’s important. And remember, your name is Miss Fellowes, and I’m your cousin.’

  I made her repeat her instructions till I was sure she had them perfect, and then I sat down and had a meal. She offered to make me some coffee, but I refused that, had another whisky, and followed it down with a couple of plates of coldham. One thing she got me, though, that went down well, and that was a little bottle of aspirin. I took four or five of them and they eased off my headache a bit, so that by the time I’d finished my meal I was very nearly fit.

  I looked at my watch; it was a little after three. I lit a pipe and strolled to the window. It was a wonderful night. The clouds and the wind were all gone and there was a full moon dying down upon the horizon, big and red. Faint, earthy, flowery smells came in from the garden, and away in the field there was something squeaking plaintively, continuously, as it had been while I was waiting to enter the house. I leaned on the window-sill smoking and wondering what should be my first move; it was clear that I must begin operations at a considerable distance from Stokenchurch. It seemed to me that Abingdon, five miles south of Oxford, would be a good place to lay my first red herring; it was fully twenty-five miles away and on my road to Salcombe.

  The curtain was pulled aside and Compton came and stood staring beside me. He didn’t speak, but stood there staring moodily out over the garden, his hands in his pockets. And presently I heard him mutter to himself: ‘The New Utopia.…’

  ‘Eh?’ said I. ‘What’s that?’

  He didn’t answer, but began to ask me how I was going to pick him up at the Helford River. I told him about a little beach that there is there close to the entrance; we fixed that I should be there from eleven o’clock till three on the night of the 18th–19th, and again, if he didn’t turn up, on the night of the 19th–20th. If he wasn’t there then I would give it up and return to Salcombe.

  He understood what he was to do all right, but for the rest he was distrait and moody. I knew all the time that I was talking to him that I held only a part of his attention; he seemed incapable of concentrating his mind on the measures that I was working out for his own safety. I am surprised that this didn’t irritate me; as it is, I can only remember thinking how woefully unfitted he was for the business that he had taken on. I was sorry for him, I think.

  He roused himself at last and turned from the window. ‘I’d have done better on a pig farm,’ he said, a little bitterly.

  For the moment I didn’t quite see what he was driving at. ‘I’ve always thought myself that there was money in pigs if you go about it the right way,’ I said. ‘But it needs a good bit of capital. And they say there’s a lot in the breed—more than you’d think. I was talking to a man at Amesbury about it last month.’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘I always had a great fancy to keep pigs,’ he said. ‘Live-stock of all sorts—but pigs in particular. I don’t know why. My grandfather was the same. I used to look forward to it as a thing that I might do when I retired from business. I suppose I hadn’t the courage to break off into it when I was young.’

  He paused for a minute, and then he said: ‘Shall I ever be able to come back to England?’

  I knew that the girl was watching us; I could feel her looking at me for my reply. I couldn’t see her, but I knew that she would be standing very straight, looking straight at me from her grave, deep eyes. I knew then what it was that embarrassed me whenever she spoke to me, something that I suppose I had never met in a girl before. Behind her were centuries of tradition, the traditions of a good college, of a good regiment, of a good club. She could have answered his question so much better than I could—but then, I don’t suppose he’d have paid much attention to her.

  I checked the emphatic negative, and
turned to him. ‘Man alive,’ I said slowly, ‘you’ve been a ruddy fool over this. What on earth made you break prison?’

  He was going to speak, but I stopped him. ‘I don’t know what it is that you’ve got on hand,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to. If all goes well we can get you out of the country all right. But—is it worth it?’

  He didn’t speak, but stood staring out into the dim shadow of the woods. I went on:

  ‘You’ll never be able to come back to England now, you know, unless it’s under a false name.’ It was as if I had been speaking to a child. ‘You’ve done with England. Your best line—the one that I should try if I were you—is to try and ship before the mast on a French vessel. Become a sailor for a year or two and see where that takes you to. Maybe you’ll end up in America. But you’ve done with England.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ve done with England.’

  ‘There’s the alternative,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I knocked my pipe out sharply upon the window-sill. ‘That you should go back and finish your sentence,’ I said. ‘When you’ve finished it, set up a piggery somewhere here in the south. There’s money in that. In that case I’ll borrow the car and run you up to Scotland Yard in the morning. Don’t think that I’m suggesting this because I’m lazy.’

  I turned round and saw the girl standing close behind us. ‘Don’t you think that would be the best thing to do?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t do that,’ and from his tone I knew that that was final.

  ‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘It’s time that I was starting. I must be well away from here by daylight.’

  The girl produced a rucksack from a cupboard; I had decided that I would pose as an art student or somebody of that sort on a walking tour. I chose an art student because I had knocked about a bit with them in their less artistic moments both in London and Paris, and I knew enough of the jargon to pass with anyone but an artist. The girl helped me to pack the bag with the convict suit and one or two things that she thought would come in handy, including an immense packet of ham sandwiches that she had been cutting all evening.

  As we bent over the thing on the floor, tightening its straps, she leaned towards me. ‘It was frightfully good of you to say that,’ she muttered.

  ‘I’m only sorry that he won’t do it,’ I said.

  She tugged at a strap. ‘You mustn’t think it’s going to be any easier for him this way,’ she said. ‘I do wish he could tell you about it. You’ve been such a good friend to us.’

  We finished with the rucksack. Then we tidied up the room as well as we could, and made sure that there was no trace of Compton left behind us. We couldn’t entirely do away with all evidence that the room had been occupied; the girl would have to see to that with the maids. Then we got out of the window, closed it quietly behind us, and went round to the garage. We had to be pretty quiet here to avoid waking the servants; for silence we pushed the car outside the gate and a hundred yards down the lane. There we started her up, got in, and trundled off for Oxford.

  It was about half-past four. The girl drove and I sat with Compton in the back seat. He was deep in his own thoughts; for a while he tried absently to make conversation, but soon relapsed into a silence that stretched unbroken through the miles. I remember he asked me if I had any ties in particular, if I was married or engaged.

  ‘Lord, no,’ I said. ‘Nothing like that about me.’

  I think he may have learned more from the tone in which I spoke than from my words, because he nodded slowly.

  ‘There’s safety in numbers,’ he said. ‘And it’s really the happiest way, I suppose. Just take what you can get, and be thankful.’ He relapsed into silence again, but something in the way he said that had given me a nasty start. It may have been that I was tired. It may have been that it was the sanest, most horrible hour of the twenty-four, when the cold grey dawn comes creeping up over the fields and means the beginning of another blasted day. I only know that my whole life was summed up in those words of his. I only know that they’ve come back to me time after time, and always with the same bitter ring in them. ‘Take what you can get,’ he said, ‘and be thankful.’

  A little later I said: ‘It’s getting quite light.’

  He smiled. ‘Hassan,’ he said, and I wondered what on earth he was talking about.

  ‘Thy dawn, O Master of the world, thy dawn;

  The hour the lilies open on the lawn,

  The hour the grey wings pass behind the mountains,

  The hour of silence, when we hear the fountains,

  The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder,

  The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder——’

  He stopped short, it seemed to me in the middle of a sentence. I didn’t remember all this stuff, of course, but long afterwards Joan built up the quotation from my garbled memories, and she wrote down a copy of the lines and gave it to me. I kept that carefully and I have it still—not for the poem, but for another reason.

  It was very cold. The rush of cold air made my head sing and throb painfully; I wanted to concentrate on my plans, but couldn’t focus my mind at all. Then I realised that I’d made a slip; I should have brought a flask of that whisky with me. I was sobering up. That meant that I should be no good at all until I had been to sleep; indeed, it was imperative that I should get some sleep soon. I was frightfully done. I had intended to lay my first red herring that very morning and clear off out of the neighbourhood; I saw now that that was impossible. I must lay my red herring after I had slept, or I should be an easy mark.

  We went through Stokenchurch, down the Aston Rowant hill, and on over the plain through Tetsworth and finally by Wheatley. I should have gone on through Oxford, but the girl knew a trick worth two of that, and we turned off in Wheatley and for half an hour went wandering through lanes that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular. Presently she stopped the car by the side of the road and pointed to a spire about a couple of miles away.

  ‘That’s Abingdon,’ she said.

  I took my rucksack and got out of the car. She gave me the map that was kept in the pocket of the car; it was a fine large road map covering the whole of the south of England. We bent over it together and she showed me where I was, about two miles to the west of Abingdon.

  ‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘Now you’d better get along back.’ She was to drop Compton at a railway station; it was his business to lie low till the hue and cry was finally established after me. Then she was to get back to Stokenchurch before the servants got downstairs, and be ready to make an excuse and start for Salcombe after breakfast.

  She turned to the car, and for a minute we stood together in the road, unwilling to separate. Then I shook hands with them and wished them luck. The girl got in and I started up the car for her, wondering if I should ever see either of them again. Then they drove off. The last I saw of them was Compton looking back at me, white and impassive as he had been all the time. It worried me, that look of his.

  Well, there I was. It was about half-past five in the morning, and to all appearance it was going to be as hot a day as the day before had been before the rain. I picked up my rucksack and trudged along the road, only half awake, looking for somewhere to sleep.

  And then I saw the haystack. It stood by itself in the corner of a field; it was a fairly low one with a tarpaulin pitched over it like a tent. There was nobody about; I summoned up the last of my strength and climbed up on top of it. There was a space about two feet high beneath the tarpaulin. I took off my boots, dug myself a nest, made myself thoroughly comfortable, and fell fast asleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT must have been about midday when I awoke. I opened my eyes and lay blinking at the tarpaulin above me. It was getting very hot beneath the covering. I lay for a little collecting my thoughts; then I put on my boots, collected my things, and crawled to the edge of the stack.

  It wasn’t long before my troubles b
egan. I looked round and didn’t see anybody about, so I dropped the rucksack down on to the ground and half-slid, half-fell down after it. I reached the ground more or less inverted in a flurry of hay, and sat there for a bit trying to get it out of my ears.

  At that point somebody shouted: ‘Oy!’

  I looked round, and there was a stocky-looking young man in breeches and gaiters striding up the field. From the first I disliked the look of him. He was one of those flamboyantly sharp young fellows that you sometimes find in the bar of a country pub; I suppose every village has one or two like him. He would be the local Don Juan, the crack billiard-player, the acknowledged authority on last year’s musical comedy, the smart lad of the village. I looked at him with misgiving.

  ‘Here comes trouble,’ I thought. And I wasn’t ready for trouble. I hadn’t made any plans.

  ‘Oy!’ he said again. ‘Coom on aht of that.’

  I got to my feet and picked up my rucksack. By this time he was quite close.

  ‘Coom on,’ he said. ‘You git on aht o’ this. What the ruddy ’ell’s the game? Hey? I seen you. You was up on top o’ the stack. Hey?’

  ‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘I’ll move on.’

  He stepped in front of me. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘You don’t catch me like that.’ He laughed. ‘Not likely. What’s the game? Hey?’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ve been sleeping here. That’s all.’

  He took me up at once. ‘No, you wasn’t,’ he said. ‘You was up on top o’ that stack. I seen you slide down.’

  ‘Damn it,’ I said, ‘I was sleeping on top of the stack.’

  That seemed to amuse him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You was, was you. You can’t come it over me like that.’ Then, as luck would have it, he caught sight of the rucksack. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ he said. ‘Coom on. Let’s ’ave a look.’