‘Now,’ he said, ‘we must think what we should do about you. You seem to be in a pretty bad way. I hadn’t realized it. Still, there’s nothing that we can’t sort out. Suppose you tell me just what your feelings were when you collapsed like that.’
Roger felt a colossal lassitude.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said dreamily. ‘I suppose it all got too much for me. That’s all.’
‘What got too much for you exactly?’
The mild inquiry.
‘Oh, everything. That cellar, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life there. And I didn’t really much care whether I did or not.’
‘Why not?’
The gentle tweak.
‘Etain, I suppose. When I found out she was your spy at the School it all seemed so futile. I thought I was in love with her. I saw all sorts of new things happening in my life. I felt like something emerging from a chrysalis. I’d been dormant and suddenly when I thought it was too late I felt the pulse of life again. Etain. And then it had to be her who was your agent, who killed Eric for you.’
‘Etain Bloom, ah, yes. Tell me more about her.’
‘There isn’t much more to tell. I was a fool to risk letting myself go with her. I knew she might be unsafe. After all, the secretaries were your best chance: I knew that. And gradually I gave her my complete trust.’
‘Until?’
‘Why, until she tipped you off that I was at Boycott’s meeting. If you’d wanted to keep her identity secret that was a mistake. She was the only person who knew where I’d gone to. But I suppose that by then getting hold of me was more important than anything else.’
‘And you thought you were going to keep out of my clutches for ever?’
‘I did. I couldn’t see why not. After all, you couldn’t spend your whole life here chasing me. And I could spend mine here because that’s just what I intended to do. I thought that was the answer. I thought it was my duty to opt out of your world of black and white.’
‘And now you see that it couldn’t be?’
‘No.’
From the dying embers a bright spurt of flame. And the answering shower of cold water.
‘You can’t see any alternative, though, can you?’
A moment of silence. A moment of chill realization.
‘I can’t see any alternative, but …’
‘But you hoped. Of course you did. Pipe dreams are very pleasant. It would be nice if the world was made of pink sugar. But you know that it isn’t, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
One word.
‘You know that there are unpleasant things in this world, do you not?’
‘Boils?’
The whispered admission.
‘Yes, it didn’t take long to hit on those. You suffered with them as a child?’
‘No.’
A note of wonder. The machine has made a mistake.
‘No, of course you didn’t.’
The calm knowledge.
‘Tell me about them.’
‘It was my mother. She had them all the time. She couldn’t get rid of them. It was in the days before antibiotics, you know. She died from them.’
‘And you’ve had them yourself? Or not yet?’
‘Not yet.’
The bowed head.
‘But even if you’ve escaped them so far, even if you think they could be treated nowadays, when the bombs come you will get them at last. And there won’t be any treatment.’
Roger looked round the room. The impersonal white walls, the black and white carpet, the heavy black curtains over the single window, the harsh central light.
‘You realize that as things are at present the bombs will come, don’t you?’
No answer.
‘Don’t you?’
‘But why?’
‘Because the world isn’t made of pink sugar. You’ve admitted that, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but all the same …’
‘But all the same. But all the same. All the same you would like it to be, isn’t that it?’
Silence.
‘Isn’t that what you mean?’
The bent head.
‘Answer me. You have answered me in your mind. Haven’t you?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes, I have.’
‘Then answer me to my face. You know the world is not all innocence and light, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that any feelings you have that it might be better than it seems, or that it might be made better, are simply pipe dreams, rosy pipe dreams?’
‘Pipe dreams. Yes.’
‘So that our only hope lies in being stronger than our enemies?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do. There is no hope in opting out, is there? You’ve agreed to that.’
‘I suppose I have.’
‘So the only way is to fight?’
‘All right.’
‘With whatever best weapon comes to hand?’
‘Oh yes, it follows. It all follows.’
‘Yes, it follows. It follows that if we need to use your skill with words we must do so. Doesn’t it?’
‘But perhaps that isn’t very important.’
‘Don’t try to dodge. You’ve admitted it to yourself. You must have done. Otherwise you wouldn’t try to produce futile arguments of that sort. It is not for you to judge whether your work is important. Words are part of our weapon. Have we or have we not the right to use them as we think fit?’
‘Yes, you have the right.’
‘And you are the person who can use them for us. Perhaps the only one. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you will come back to Leeds. Yes or no?’
A short silence. The final silence.
‘I’ll come back.’
Chapter Twenty
‘And we’ll be delighted to have you back, my dear chap,’ said the Bosun.
He looked at his watch.
‘But there’s no time to waste,’ he said. ‘The plane for Manchester leaves Collinstown in a couple of hours. Get on to Aer Lingus straight away and book us a couple of seats. They’re open twenty-four hours a day.’
He went quickly across to a small table under the window, picked up a telephone on a long lead, brought it across to Roger and put it on the wide arm of his chair.
‘The number’s 42921,’ he said.
Roger turned to the phone. The mechanical simplicity of the arrangements.
The Bosun went over and swirled back the thick black curtains. The pallid light of winter dawn. A tracery of thin bare branches.
Roger put down the telephone, leant back and looked up at the Bosun.
‘All okay,’ he said. ‘No trouble at all.’
A warm rush of feeling that everything was going to be all right. The last niggling unease melting.
The Bosun grinned cheerfully down at him. He tousled the scanty golden hair above his rubicund forehead.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you certainly led us a hell of a dance.’
Roger laughed.
‘Did I?’ he said. ‘It was most unlike me if I did.’
The Bosun flopped down on the edge of the other armchair and chortled with laughter.
‘You were most unlike yourself,’ he said. ‘Oh, my dear old fellow, when I think of my quiet little linguistics lecturer escaping from a 120-mile-an-hour Jaguar, inducing a great hulking thug from the docks to half murder a very chancy character from the Curragh, and heaven knows what else, I really can hardly believe it.’
Roger leant back in his chair.
‘I suppose it was me,’ he said, ‘though in a way I feel it wasn’t. It’ll be nice to think that somewhere deep down inside I’ve got the potentialities to do all that.’
‘Oh, it was you all right,’ the Bosun said. ‘You’ll see for yourself in a moment: Collins still bears a few marks left by that desperate chap from the docks.’
He bounced across to the door and opened it.
‘Collins, Collins,’ he called.
There was a distant answering shout.
The Bosun closed the door and came back to Roger.
‘I feel I ought to have a discreet bellpush to summon assistance,’ he said. ‘But perhaps that would only belong to the rather melodramatic persona I’ve had to adopt over this escapade. In any case, I think a yell is the only thing Collins reacts to.’
‘He gave the impression of knowing how to drive a car pretty well,’ Roger said.
The Bosun laughed.
‘Oh yes. That’s his thing. I tell you I’ve had to mix with some quite extraordinary people over here. Collins was a stable lad who not only doped every horse in sight – for which he might have been forgiven – but also rode like a brute, which of course was unforgivable. It was only when he got into something as insensitive as a motor car that he found his true vocation.’
The door jerked open.
Collins’s shiny bullet head thrust in. Not really very much the worse for wear.
A grunt of inquiry.
The Bosun shook his great head in mock despair.
‘Collins,’ he said, ‘get Mr Farrar’s clothes. We can’t have him sitting about looking like that.’
Roger glanced down at his bare feet.
‘And, Collins,’ the Bosun went on, ‘tell Macmanaway we shall want some breakfast right away. Emphasize that he is to confine himself to his English repertoire.’
The door banged to.
‘Thank goodness Macmanaway’s, a cut above his companion in crime,’ the Bosun said. ‘At least he looks desperately respectable. Though as a matter of fact he’s spent about half his life in gaol and the other half indulging in every form of petty –’
He broke off and put a finger to his lips as the door was unceremoniously opened again by Collins. He was carrying the clothes Roger had been wearing when he was captured. He dropped them in a heap on the floor and turned to go.
‘Collins,’ the Bosun said, ‘do you think you could get us a bottle of champagne from somewhere if you took the car?’
‘Sure I could.’
‘Splendid. Another crime I expect, but I really feel we ought to celebrate a bit.’
Collins could be heard to grunt under his breath.
He went out.
The bang of the door.
The Bosun flopped down into his chair and stretched his arms high above his head.
‘I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘Heaven knows what you must be feeling like. Still, a drink and a good breakfast should set us both up. There’s a basin in the loo next door if you want a wash. First on the right.’
Roger looked at the chubby form snuggling into the low armchair. A look of inquiry.
The Bosun grinned.
‘Oh, my dear chap,’ he said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. After all my trouble in getting hold of you, aren’t I taking a risk that you’ll run off if I let you out of my sight? Well, I’m not, am I? You don’t intend to revert to the gangster world, do you?’
‘Heavens, no,’ Roger said.
The Bosun laughed.
‘Neither do I,’ he said, ‘or not until after breakfast anyway.’
Roger picked up the heap of clothes and went out smiling cheerfully. At the foot of a short flight of stairs there was the long corridor he remembered as if from a nightmare. What he had not noticed before was that there were several doors leading off one side of it. He tried the first and found himself in a small lavatory. In it there was a basin as the Bosun had said. Roger turned on the tap marked ‘Hot’.
Cold water.
He tried the cold tap. Hot water.
He giggled with laughter. Things were all right really: it was only that appearances were sometimes deceptive.
He washed himself as well as he could, finding great difficulty in reaching down to his feet without falling over. Then he put on his clothes. It took him an extraordinarily long time.
The clothes seemed very baggy.
He went back to the room where the Bosun was still sitting in his low armchair.
‘That’s better,’ the Bosun said.
He looked Roger slowly up and down.
‘You’ve certainly lost a bit of weight,’ he said. ‘I told you the other day you were getting too fat.’
Twinkling eyes over the rotund cheeks.
‘I suppose it’s a good thing,’ Roger said.
The pleasure of easy acquiescence.
‘Oh, it’s an excellent thing,’ said the Bosun. ‘Nobody should be allowed to get fat, you know. There should be a law against it – with the severest penalties.’
He patted his roundly protuberant stomach cheerfully. Abruptly he burst into a peal of laughter. Irrepressible, contagious.
Roger found himself smiling, tittering, giggling again. The Bosun wiped tears from his dumpling cheeks.
‘I’m sorry, my dear chap,’ he said, ‘but I suddenly thought of the whole spectacle of one immensely fat professor chasing one decidedly tubby lecturer puffing and panting up and down the streets of Dublin. It was altogether too much.’
He laughed once more. Wheezing, spluttering.
Roger laughed.
The door behind him was flung open. Collins and the respectable Macmanaway came in carrying between them a small polished wood table. They set it down and Collins dropped on to it a white tablecloth which he had been carrying tucked under one arm. He went out leaving the door swinging. Macmanaway assiduously smoothed the cloth.
He avoided looking at Roger.
Collins returned with a tray of cutlery and plates which he dumped on the table with a jarring bang. When Macmanaway had quietly arranged them he turned to the Bosun.
‘Breakfast is ready now, sir, if you wish it,’ he said.
He spoke with a consciously English English accent.
‘We’re starving,’ the Bosun said. ‘Bring it in, bring it in.’
Macmanaway left. The discreetly closed door.
The Bosun tiptoed over to Roger.
‘He did four years for bigamy and asked for twenty-seven breaking and entering offences to be taken into consideration,’ he whispered.
He began to giggle again.
‘And he’s so delightfully upright,’ he said. ‘I wish I could have seen him tearing after you across St Stephen’s Green. He nearly caught you too. It was an outrageous piece of luck for you bumping into your friend Courtney Myles like that and getting him to whisk you into his club.’
Roger grinned.
‘It was luck that he was there,’ he said, ‘but I deserve full credit for getting into the club with him.’
The Bosun laughed.
‘You do,’ he said. ‘My dear chap, you were devilishly resourceful.’
‘Especially as at that time I had grave doubts about the colonel,’ Roger said.
‘Doubts? Oh, of course, yes, you must have thought he might be my Infiltraitor – what a lovely word.’
‘I did. After all, it looked very likely on the surface. He had been in the employ of the War Office all his life, and he had only just come to Dublin. It might –’
‘I must say,’ the Bosun broke in, ‘I admired the thoroughness with which you went out to Brownstown to check up on him. No, to check him. I’ll have to remember your passionate dislike of unnecessary participles.’
Roger smiled.
‘You never used to,’ he said affectionately. ‘But did you know that the colonel had been over to Yorkshire since he returned to Ireland?’
‘No, good heavens. That was luck to me. What did he go for?’
‘To visit Marston Moor, which must be quite near Leeds.’
The Bosun laughed.
‘My dear fellow, Marston Moor’s all of twenty miles from Leeds. Myles wouldn’t have gone anywhere near Leeds. He almost certainly stayed in York, which is quite near, or even in one of those Harrogate hotels with central heating and palms in pots.’
Teasing affection.
‘So all my grand debat
e with the colonel on how far duty will carry you was purely academic,’ Roger said.
‘You gravely discussed all that? Was that in the club?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I was freezing to death in the appalling car waiting outside.’
The Bosun was still laughing when there came a well-tempered knock at the door.
‘Come in, come in,’ he called.
Macmanaway entered with a tray bearing a large entrée dish with a silver cover on it. He placed it gently on the table and fetched two chairs from the corners of the room.
The door shot open and Collins marched in, swinging a bottle of champagne in one hand.
The Bosun’s plump hands extended in a gesture of dismay. Collins looking through him.
‘Will that be all, sir?’ asked Macmanaway.
‘Yes, yes. We’ll look after ourselves.’
Macmanaway waited for Collins to go out. The door quietly swishing closed.
The Bosun looked at the table and clapped his hands together in delight.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s sit down. I’m longing for a drink.’
They sat opposite each other. The appetizing smell of fried bacon. The gentle warmth of the room.
The Bosun caught hold of the champagne bottle and began tugging at the wire with plump inexpert fingers.
‘There’ll be the most confounded bang when I get this off after the way Collins was swinging the bottle about,’ he said.
Delighted expectation.
Roger sat back in the upright chair and looked at him.
The sudden frown of concentration as the twisted wire began to surrender. Child-like lack of the correct blasé attitude.
The cork shot off. The Bosun hopped back. Champagne frothed out on to the white carpet.
Giggling uncontrollably, the Bosun waded across to the table and poured some of the spuming wine into two flat glasses. Almost as much spilt on to the tablecloth.
He put down the bottle and picked up his glass.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘a toast.’
Roger took his glass. He could feel the faint pricking of the bursting bubbles on his face as he held the glass waiting for the Bosun to speak.
‘I give you Ireland,’ the Bosun said.
An exuberant shout.
‘Ireland, Eire, John Bull’s Other Island, the Dark Rosaleen, an Poblacht, Erin, Eriu, the Twenty-six Counties and the Thirty-two.’
The Dog It Was That Died Page 20