by Desmond Cory
He listened.
“I hope she was kind to you, Buster.”
“Who?”
“… I really don’t remember her name. Not after so many years.”
“You remember all right,” said O’Brien.
“You were a fool. You were an absolute fool.” And her straight eyebrows plunged downwards to form an arrowhead of vindictiveness. “I still say things would have worked out, if you hadn’t been so impatient.”
“Maybe. It doesn’t seem to matter much now, anyway.” O’Brien looked at Fedora. “Give me some of that brandy, Johnny.”
“… What are you doing now, anyway? What are you doing here?”
“I should ask your brother that.”
“Well - he’s told me something. You were fished up out of the desert, weren’t you? It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I want to know.”
Johnny, who had emptied the bottle into O’Brien’s glass, got up and wandered over to the bar, intent on ordering another. Emerald, who had concluded his whispered conversation with Bailey, came furtively over to join him. “Now this is an awkward thing.”
“It sure is.”
“Embarrassing.”
Johnny nodded. “Let’s get the hell on out of it.”
“No, no - we can’t do that. That boy Bailey’s going to drink himself into a stupor if we don’t watch him. That’s, what he wants to do all right.”
“Why not let him? Pick him up when it’s over.”
“No can do. He gets dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Suicidal.”
“Yes. Me, too.”
“Then what the hell. Let’s all get bloody drunk.”
Johnny groaned. “This is the nearest thing to a loony-bin I’ve ever had the bad luck to step into.”
“Brother - them’s my sentiments. Why didn’t the silly twerp tell us he’d brought the girl? And why couldn’t he have left her in Bloodyville, anyway?”
Johnny shrugged. “That’s none of our business.”
“No? There’s no knowing what is my business and what isn’t; that’s the trouble.”
“It wears a skirt. That means it isn’t.”
“Yes, yes. Fast, but superficial. Leaving aside the Philip Marlowe touch, what do you think?”
Johnny looked in the mirror above the barman’s head. He could see a dark little head bent alertly forward, a shaggy red head sagging over at an angle. “She’s in love with him, I suppose.”
“Still?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t you say so?”
“Maybe. Would account for her not marrying again.”
“She couldn’t. She’s a Catholic. But I think she’s crazy about him, anyway.”
“Bailey seems to think so, too. It worries me.”
“Yes? Why?”
“Well, because he brought the bint. He may be going all maso-what’s-it before he goes round the bend.”
“It’s a thought,” said Johnny.
“You reckon he will go bonkers?”
“What if he does? Nobody’ll notice it here.”
“All right, all right. Be funny. I can tell you, I’m not laughing.”
“Nobody is,” said Johnny. “… Anyway, Bailey ought to know.”
“What?”
“If she’s in love with him or not.”
“He’s been paying plenty of money to keep O’Brien quiet. I suppose that must mean something.”
“Or nothing.”
“Or anything. There’s something not quite right about that set-up.” Emerald fell silent for a moment, while the barman planked a new bottle of cognac heavily down on the counter. “I feel uneasy.”
“That was a good idea of yours,” said Johnny deliberately. “About the serious drinking.”
The clock above the bar struck twelve, its voice a tinny rattle, almost asthmatic. Revie had been nearly four hours dead.
“I’ll always remember that trip. I’m never likely to forget it.” Bailey’s fingers, sticky with perspiration, opened and closed around the stem of his glass. “It was tough. My God, it was tough. Port engine went, to start with. Then the aileron jammed. And that was well the other side of Lâon.”
Johnny nodded, his eyes a trifle unfocused but vigilant.
“Nothing to do but feather the prop and scramble home as best I could. There were three of us, see. Me and Buster and Tony West. About the clearest sky I’d ever seen, and stiff with Focke-Wulfs. They jumped us in that first five minutes, an’ they took Tony West right away.” Bailey clicked his damp fingers; an unpleasant sound. “We’d gone right down to stick our noses in the hedges … He went straight into the ground; side of a road, it was. I saw it happen.”
“Bad luck,” said Johnny.
“That’s right. It was just too bad. I was too busy to worry about it much, though. They kept on coming and coming; six of them in all … seemed more like sixty. Old Buster sat on my tail like a rock. Shot away now and again for a quick squirt, then came back to roost. At that height, the bastards just couldn’t get in at me. In the end, one of them hit a telephone-pole with his wing, just through trying too hard; the others got a bit discouraged and off they went. God, though; we stopped a packet between us. They shot Buster’s crate nearly to ribbons and they killed poor Willy Johnson. Willy was his observer. It was a rocky trip … taken all round.”
That seemed to be the conclusion of the anecdote. Johnny had not been interested so much in the story as in the curious phenomenon of Bailey’s diction; the more he drank the clearer it seemed to become. He rested his elbows on the bar and fiddled with his glass: “So you got back all right, in the end.”
“Oh yes. We got in all in one piece. The F.W.’s never found us again. Apart from a nasty moment over the Channel, the rest was a piece of cake. Best man I ever flew with,” Bailey added inexplicably.
“Who?”
“Buster, of course. Buster. Mind you, he got away with murder.” Bailey seemed totally unaware that his choice of idiom had been somewhat unfortunate. “But the point is, you can’t keep on doing that unless you’re a real top-rater. He got a few gongs, of course, but to my mind he was under-decorated.”
With a hand that trembled slightly now, he poured out his fifteenth glass of cognac.
“They weren’t bad days at all,” he said. “In fact, they were pretty good. I wouldn’t mind going back to them. No. Not in the least.”
“But we can’t do that,” said Johnny. “None of us can.”
The Director was in his office, seated in a deep and comfortable arm-chair. A thread of smoke rose tranquilly into the air, smoke from the large cigar clamped between his fingers. The ash upon it grew, undisturbed. On the table to his right was a cup of coffee, half-empty; a notebook, open; a small bedside clock. The Director breathed slowly and rhythmically.
In the corner of the room, the wire spool unrolled itself monotonously, sending into the air the sound of a cool and unemotional voice. The words that the spool formed in the stillness seemed divorced of meaning, seemed only to make little patterns of sound that broke unexpectedly into silence before re-forming again.
“… Preparing to level and coast. She’s behaving pretty well so far. … No trouble at all. Watching out …”
Mr. Mitchell closed his eyes. He could see before him now an instrument panel, a dull grey metal panel bristling with dials, with gauges, with incredibly complicated meters. And beyond, a whirling colourlessness; a great blank tinged with the symbols of impending dark …
“… I am levelling now … Yes. She’s coming round beautifully … She’s on level flight. And coasting. I’m moving onto jets.”
“Confirm transference to jets,” said another voice in the stillness. “Course zero-nine-four.”
“Zero-nine-four. She’s responding well. Very well. Steady on course.”
“On radar …” Mr. Mitchell’s lips moved, silently miming his own voice. The clock at his side ticked rhythmically, gently; much too gently to be heard. But an insect was buzz
ing loudly somewhere; counterpointing those voices that continued to build their zigzag patterns in the air …
“Well, she’s building up all right. Phenomenally. I’m now approaching change velocity.” The Director opened his eyes suddenly; the words were taking on meaning now. “Reading nine-twenty and increasing bloody fast. Thirty. Forty … Am beginning to straighten out.”
“Switch on stabiliser, Don.”
“Right. I hadn’t forgotten. On stabiliser, then. And am levelling now …”
The ash fell from the Director’s cigar. He pulled himself up slightly in his seat, and reached for his coffee; it was almost cold. The ghosts went on talking to one another, calmly, steadily … “Here we go. Stick back. And on change.” And into the great yawning circle of silence forming somewhere in the middle of the pattern
God
kicks like a bloody horse acceleration’s phenomenal
can’t move Christ can’t bloody lift her
so bloody heavy I haven’t got
Click
And the silence again. Except for the fly that was buzzing.
The silence again.
Well, thought Mr. Mitchell, why couldn’t you lift her? Why didn’t you lift her, damn you? She should have gone up like a bird. The figures all say that she should have. The figures can’t be wrong. And what is the use of rescuing your voice from the grave if that is all that it can say to us?
Oh Revie. Revie and Benthall.
Gone into the world of light. While I am here alone. Alone and puzzled; do you know that? Puzzled. For though I and my science can recapture the past and make a dead man speak, his words now form nothing but patterns like patterns of stone in a wilderness, and the past is the past and the future is the future as irrevocably as now and as then. Going forward was the illusion one fought to preserve; really, one was held for ever prisoner within the circle of a gigantic question-mark - which you could call God if you liked.
… Mr. Mitchell wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. He was worried, suddenly worried at the direction his thoughts had taken, were taking him. It might be as well, perhaps, to have a word with Dr. Wray …
Because he was tired. Yes, he was certainly terribly tired …
Wray was a Sussex man. He kept on his desk a large coloured photograph of the Downs above Storrington, with Chanctonbury Ring in the distance; and at this he would frequently stare with an unashamed nostalgia. His office displayed no other photographs. Wray was a bachelor.
Painful blisters developing, he wrote slowly, on shoulder and upper arm. Lower abdomen tender. Loss of hair at base of scalp; skin of affected areas sensitive. Apart from these local symptoms, slight temperature and feeling of lassitude. Evident loss of weight.
Operation will be performed by Sir Robert Sweet at 1500 hrs. today.
Wray screwed on the top of his fountain-pen and remained for a few moments in meditation, snapping the pen’s clip motivelessly. The air in the room was heavy, much too warm. Wray wished that he were back in England once more.
It was half-past twelve, though; time to resume routine. He pushed his fountain-pen into his pocket and stood up with a resigned exhalation of breath. Finally, he folded the notebook and slipped it into a drawer.
He thought that maybe he would not be using it again.
In the bar, too, it was growing hot and stuffy. A few more officers had come in, most of them moving rather wearily, to form a separate group at the far side of the room. From there they cast curious glances towards O’Brien and Margaret … Emerald, still seated at their table but not included in their conversation or indeed in their thoughts, smoked tranquilly and gazed at the ceiling.
He had drunk a great deal of cognac and he was - though very slightly - drunk. When he got up, he would be sober; now, reclining in his chair, he was - very slightly - drunk. Isolated phrases, coming from nowhere, were apprehended by him and given a new significance, were given meanings different to the ordinary. The base of all these random phrases was one word, sabotage; a word that kept repeating itself in the depths of Emerald’s mind …
“They got married in ’44,” said Bailey. “I was there, too. In London, it was. But we kept the whole thing a secret.”
“Why?” asked Johnny pugnaciously. He had a professional’s dislike of secrets.
“Because my people wouldn’t have worn it. My old man didn’t cotton on to Buster; which shows,” said Bailey bitterly, “that he had more common sense than I thought at the time. Of course, Buster was a Catholic, too, then. Which made the whole thing easier. Anyway - in the end, they got married.”
Johnny nodded sagely, and wondered whether or not to embark upon yet another glass of cognac.
“Then, of course, Buster went funny.”
“How d’you you mean - funny?”
“You know. After the war. It took a lot of people that way. Sort of restless - not able to settle down to anything solid. He got mixed up in some sort of surplus equipment swindle before he’d even got demobbed, and then he just disappeared with some girl or other he’d known in Exeter.” Bailey shook his head. “Of all unlikely places.”
“What’s wrong with Exeter?”
“I suppose it’s all right.” Bailey shook his head. “We were pretty cut up about it, Margaret and I.” At times, thought Johnny, he sounded remarkably like the Queen. “Nothing to do, though, of course.”
“No, nothing.”
Bailey shook his head.
Johnny began to pour himself another glass. Not that I’ve ever met the Queen, he thought.
“Are you following all this, Johnny?”
“Oh yes. Perfectly.”
“Well then. You can see what a dreadful situation it all was. Things just went from bad to worse. Finally we heard some rumour that he’d been killed in a rough-house somewhere in Saudi Arabia - I didn’t know if it was true or not, but I encouraged the kid to think so. It seemed the kindest thing.”
Johnny nodded. “Listen, Mike.”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind not shaking your head to and fro all the time? It’s rather trying.”
“Was I? I’m sorry, dear boy.”
“Not at all. Please carry on.”
“Where was I?”
“… Dead in Saudi Arabia.”
“Oh yes. Well, of course, he wasn’t. I met him in Syracuse. We had a long chat and he agreed to stay out of the way for Margaret’s sake, and I gave him some money and that was that.” Bailey looked down at his fingers. “It wasn’t blackmail, y’know. He never looked at it that way. It was more as if … as if he was sore because the parents didn’t approve of him, and he wanted to make them pay for it … Well, there’s something very child-like about old Buster, when you get down to the bottom. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. I think I know what you mean.”
Bailey looked up at the clock, interpreting its message with some difficulty. “You don’t mind my running on and on like this, do you?”
“Not a bit,” said Johnny.
“Helps to get things off my mind, somehow.”
“I suppose it does.”
“… And now it looks as though he really has bought it. Buster, I mean. Well, he’s a bad hat all right; there’s no doubt about that. But when you look back to the bad old days … it all seems rather a pity …”
Heads bowed, leaning heavily on the bar, they thought together of the bad old days. Emerald stirred in his chair. O’Brien and his wife, seated at the table, were saying nothing to each other. While Bailey’s dark-haired head moved rhythmically to and fro, to and fro, swinging like a pendulum on silence …
Sir Robert Sweet was playing chess. He was a keen student of the game, with a style modelled closely after that of the great Dr. Lasker. His opponent was Captain Garrett, an old hand who was accustomed to while away his leisure hours before the board; it was proving a most enjoyable and intellectually taxing game.
“Well,” said Sir Robert, surveying his forces, “the position presents the
maximum of interest. Ha. As our friend Capablanca would say.” He moved; rook to king’s seventh. Garrett inspected this fresh development with the air of one whose worst forebodings have been realised. Eventually he removed the rook with his queen. “Damn,” said Sir Robert involuntarily. And chewed fearsomely at his lower lip.
Once again he had been left with two alternatives. Heaven knew which was the best …
Comparatively rapidly, and in silence, they exchanged queens. A longer pause. Then the game continued …
Emerald and Fedora stowed Bailey carefully away into the back of the jeep; drove him to his quarters, undressed him and put him to bed. He breathed stertorously throughout these operations, but remained quiet and docile; struggling only when Emerald revved up the jeep’s engine a little too fiercely. A damp lick of hair was plastered to his forehead; his hands jumped nervously from time to time. Johnny watched him as he lay on the bed.
“He went out like a light, you know. In mid-sentence, more or less.”
“It affects some people that way,” said Emerald. “He must have put away a fearful lot.”
“My goodness, yes. He did.”
… They watched him as he lay on the bed, dressed now in tree-green pyjamas, his legs thrust out at all angles. Now and again his left cheek twitched. But he seemed to be breathing evenly.
“Should we send for the doctor?” Emerald asked Margaret.
“No,” she said. “He’ll be all right now.”
“Well,” said Emerald. “That’s fine. I rejoice to hear it.” He and Johnny left the room. The girl sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at Bailey. Eventually she stood up again; went to the bathroom to fetch some water.
… Outside, the day had declared its ultimatum in heat. The jeep danced feverishly in the sunlight, its metal parts too hot to be touched, its chassis thinly coated with burning dust. Neither Johnny nor Emerald felt any great inclination to clamber back into it; instead, they stood just inside the shade of the front porch, enjoying the comparative coolness there.