They came to a small station where no one was on duty but a barn owl. Not far away a stream was flowing under the line. The ripple of water and the timber platform suggested to Bernardo a forgotten quay on some remote Vizcayan estuary; even there one could find no wilder seclusion. The station was called Wotton Underwood, but more important than a mere name was the discovery of a station tap. They could drink and fill the lemonade bottles.
After another hour they crossed a bridge over a main road running east and west—a perfectly useless piece of information provided by the Pole Star. They walked on in a void of friendly, mysterious darkness, not knowing what was in any direction or what would be the result of arriving there. At any rate it was most unlikely to be a place where police were waiting for them.
The first red streaks of the early dawn hung over wide patches of woodland to the right of the line. They cut across the fields and pushed through a belt of hazel into true forest, silent in its age as soon as the clatter of disturbed wood-pigeons had disappeared. The wind was getting up from the south-west, reminding Bernardo of weeks in the two English Mays he had known which would have soaked an Eskimo to the skin and then frozen him. They had had luck with their weather, and now it was over.
Low clouds swept over the trees which at first gave shelter from the driving rain and then very little. Both were already dripping when they discovered a fallen elm under which they squatted, she huddled in the Norfolk jacket, he with her coat over his shoulders. Even Nadya was for once dejected. The rain underlined their helplessness—no more food, no money except for the foreign notes which remained, no certain destination, no possibility of ever getting dry. Bernardo was haunted by a disquieting sense of continuity as if a steady state of desperation had endured from a Moldavian wood into an English one and his existence between the two had been illusion. And illusion it was—he couldn’t get away from that—maintained only by the ridiculous optimism of an unsustainable David Mitrani. Nadya was the only reality.
In the afternoon they moved miserably on, more for something to do than in any hope of a solution. Once out of the trees, they were in the usual meadowland and walked, bundled into themselves, along twisting country lines. Caution seemed a waste of time apart from reconnoitring the bends before committing themselves. Bernardo doubted if the public had been given any general warning to look out for them as if they were a couple of dangerous thugs escaped from prison. To the rare passer-by on foot or in farm cart they appeared huddled, harmless tramps well used to bad weather.
On the outer edge of a straggling village they came to a small, thatched pub standing alone by the side of the lane. It was called The Rising Sun, and it was the cheerful gold of the inn sign which made Bernardo take the risk and damn the consequences. He quickly took Nadya through a gate and behind the hedge before they could be spotted.
‘You’re going to stay the night there if you can talk your way in,’ he said. ‘We daren’t go together.’
‘But what about you?’
‘I shall find a shed or a barn or something. Then you can slip out with a hard-boiled egg and a bottle whenever there is a chance. How much of Scheeper’s money have we got left?’
It came to about five pounds in French francs and bits and pieces of other currencies.
‘Will they let me pay with that?’ she asked.
‘Not a hope! But they won’t ask you to pay till to-morrow or whenever you leave if you look fairly respectable. And by then I will have found a way of changing money.’
The first task was to convert her, so far as it was possible at all, back from a tramp into a simply dressed young lady who had been respectfully beamed at by waiters at Nancy only five days before. She washed her face in the water racing down a field ditch, arranged her hair, cleaned some butter off her hat and shook out her own coat. When she had finished she looked as if she had been caught in the rain and perhaps slipped in some mud; but it was really the seraphic, oval face which dressed her. Such a girl could not be anything but ingenuous and well brought up.
She was unsure of it in this very foreign country.
‘What am I to say?’
‘Anything except that you are Russian. Go straight in and ask if they can put you up. The man will say he doesn’t know and that you’d better ask the missus. God will give you the right story to tell her as soon as you see her face. Remember they are the same in England as anywhere else. A pretty girl who looks honest and lost—they’ll take you in.’
Mr. Brown remembered how he had watched her, always so curiously neat and alluring when seen from the back, walking up the lane to the pub and in at the door and how he had blamed himself for a confidence which might be wholly mistaken.
‘Lord, it’s so much easier to-day!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look at these gallant, young creatures wandering with a bed-roll over half the world and putting up at Youth Hostels or cottage rooms and no questions asked! But they’ve lost something worth having. To-day you’ll seldom get a bed at a village pub. Then nearly all of them would take you in—or if they couldn’t they would send you to the next one—and charge you five bob for bed and all the breakfast you could eat, beer and supper extra.’
Nadya disappeared inside, and a little later he saw the landlady throw open a small lattice window hidden under the deep thatch. So that was all right. The next thing was to find some shelter for himself which would be warm and dry. There was a Dutch barn half a mile back along the lane with a haystack and a couple of wagons inside it. He was by no means sure of English agricultural practice, but surely nobody was going to need hay at a time when the grass was growing almost visibly.
Warmth at last. He scrambled to the top of the stack under the corrugated iron roof and took off all his clothes to dry, undisturbed by men or dogs since the farm was up a drive on the other side of the lane. Though the hay prickled, scent and softness were an opiate. In the early morning he was woken up by some activity below, but it was so obvious that nobody could have any reason to climb to the top of the stack that he went to sleep again. This excellent lodging was one which—with care—he could use as long as he pleased. Food had to depend on Nadya.
He knew she would be out looking for him, but it was difficult to find her in that closed country; so he tucked himself away in a thicket of tattered, ivy-choked saplings alongside the lane where there was also a spring, and waited sure that at some time she must pass. At last he saw her walking slowly and stopping at intervals to listen. When he called to her she came running with open arms, a parcel dangling, and gave him one of her impulsive kisses from which, as before, she quickly drew back. It occurred to him that the odd position she had adopted when he kept her warm in the railway cutting was the only one which would avoid any frontal contact.
‘Yes, it’s lovely and so clean—sheets, everything. I like it, David. If only we could both stay there! The woman is very clean, too, and rather stern. She told me she had been a parlourmaid in a big house before she married. She took me for a boiar in spite of what I look like and was quite respectful. So I played it from there. There was a calendar from an Oxford brewer in the bar. Is Oxford far away?’
‘I don’t know. It must be all of twenty miles.’
‘Well, I said I had walked from there. I was at the university and they made me wear black because I didn’t know any Greek.’
‘Of all the ...’
‘Well, she didn’t know any better. And I said I was so angry that I had telegraphed to my father in Hungary and walked straight out.’
‘Why Hungary?’
‘Because it isn’t Russia and it isn’t Romania and according to you it’s full of counts. So I’m a countess.’
‘Did she believe it?’
‘She wanted to, but all she said was that there was a bus from Oxford and I needn’t have walked. So I told her that the family never took buses. We walked or we rode. Why are they so impressed by horses, David, when there are some in every field?’
‘I think people only ride for fun. It means you
have money.’
‘Well, anyway here are bits of my breakfast and I asked them to pack me some lunch and there’s that, too. The only wine they had is called whisky, so I brought some. They were a bit doubtful about that and the lunch. I hadn’t any baggage, you see, and I might never come back. I pretended to be very much surprised. You remember you told me the Kalmodys never used money.’
‘You didn’t have the face to tell them that!’
‘Not quite. But it gave me the general idea. Now, here are two cold sausages and half a loaf from breakfast, and bread and cheese and cold mutton sandwiches for the picnic. And cherryade for me because it looked so pretty and whisky for you.’
Bernardo took a hearty swig at the half bottle and filled it up with doubtful water from the oozing spring. Nadya remarked with surprise that she had never known him take water with his wine.
If she was to continue to get away with it, father in Hungary had to telegraph some cash. The ex-parlourmaid was evidently a romantic, but there would be a limit to her trust. Bernardo determined to change money and did not think it too great a risk if only he could avoid appearing in the Norfolk jacket or his shirt sleeves. He asked her to find out what time a bus ran to where and to keep her eyes open for an old coat. Even a coat off a scarecrow might do.
‘And pinch the boss’s razor if you can,’ he added. ‘He can’t possibly need it while he’s serving in the bar.’
Nadya returned after dark with scraps of her supper, a bundle and the news that a bus went to Buckingham at eleven in the morning and back to Oxford in the afternoon when banks would be closed. The bundle turned out to be a farmer’s long, brown, linen coat. It had been, she said, in the cupboard of her room along with other old clothes and was unlikely to be missed. She also had the razor. He shaved painfully and inadequately at the spring.
Bernardo started off in the morning knowing nothing of Buckingham but reckoning that since it had given its name to a county as well as some dukes it ought to have a bank which knew French francs when it saw them. After he had paid his bus fare he had twopence left in the world. Observation of his fellow passengers assured him that he was not conspicuous; he could be taken for a garage hand, say, or a salesman visiting farmers. Nobody showed any curiosity about him when he got on or when he got off.
Buckingham turned out to be only a small market town, but had two banks of which he chose the more imposing. He had intended to appear as a Frenchman with a marked accent but decided that as he looked a possible native of the countryside he would play the honest John Bull. He asked what his francs were worth as if he had never seen such nasty things before and mistrusted them. He was told, and they were changed. No suspicion at all.
He bought a map, soap and a cheap razor and then wondered what to do with himself until his bus left. Hanging round the town with no object was dangerous and he did not want to be seen tramping the roads. Further down the High Street was a lot of activity around the cattle market with drifting groups of men, many of them wearing coats much like his own. He joined them confidently, his position allowing him to keep an eye on the main road to the east while brooding over a pen of sheep—not that he expected to gain any useful information from the traffic, but he wanted to get the feel of this society after slinking through it like a nocturnal animal.
He saw buses to Northampton and to villages, the names of which he memorised and could find later on the map. Movements of cattle lorries were worth watching in case it should be possible to slip into an empty one and escape observation when the driver closed the doors. A police car cruised past the market, but there was no reason to suppose that the arrest of Bernardo Brown had priority over other duties. The search for him ought by now to have gone further afield than this tiny patch of the Midlands.
A traffic jam was just building up at the corner where an excited and athletic heifer had broken away from the auction ring and was being doubtfully contained between a bunch of Buckinghamshire farmers waving arms and sticks and a horse box which had drawn up across the road. Half a dozen loafers, full of market day beer, were betting on the chance of the heifer getting a clear run up the High Street. A couple of women with perambulators had taken refuge in a shop. Bernardo joined the crowd. At the far end of the queue of traffic he saw a face, tanned and moustached, which he could have sworn he recognised, above the wheel of a black car so imposing that it ought to have been chauffeur-driven. The heifer was cornered; the traffic loosened and streamed away. It was Kalmody. Not a shadow of doubt. And his driving was typical. The two perambulators, casually emerging into what seemed safety, were only saved from demolition by his astonishing swerve.
Only one reason could have brought Kalmody to Buckingham. Bernardo was appalled at his own importance. As assassin of Grand Dukes, forger of francs, spy for anyone you like to name, perhaps he should have expected it. He skulked towards his bus, hat well down over his eyes. On a sudden, ridiculous impulse he bought a half-crown bracelet of imitation silver for Nadya to remember him by when she was an old maid in—in God’s name where?
When he arrived back in the village, she was most unwisely waiting in the street: a sure sign that she felt greater anxiety than she had ever admitted. They passed each other without a glance and he strolled off, taking a roundabout route to the ivy-choked saplings and the spring. She was there before him.
She was absurdly delighted by the bracelet, far more than by the money which allowed her to pay her bill and gave a day or two more of security. It was possible, he thought, that since childhood she had received few tokens of affection, however trivial. He wanted to go on watching the sudden vivacity of her face and did not mention Kalmody.
‘What have you been doing all day?’
‘Out. I can’t just sit there.’
‘Good; Then you can say you got your money from a Post office.’
‘Which one?’
‘There are several different Claydons on the map. One of them must have a Post Office. Just say Claydon if anyone asks. Where were you really?’
‘In your haystack. I left some food and beer there in case we missed each other. And then I stayed. It was so comfortable.’
He waited till dusk before returning to the haystack himself in case her visit had been noticed. The puzzling presence of Kalmody showed that the hounds were too close on their scent for any risk to be taken. He might have been called in to identify the criminal or—a more disturbing thought—he might have come over to keep in touch with the case and to ensure that Bernardo Brown disappeared finally and for ever before he could be interrogated in more depth. But it was near impossible for Kalmody to find him before the police did, since they must be his only source of information.
He slept a third night in his haystack, thankful for the bread and cold meat which Nadya had left. Over at the inn they must think she had an astonishing appetite. He left the barn at dawn before the unseen labourer could arrive and do whatever he did do. Suppose the fellow brought a dog which started to bark at the stack? His instinct for self-preservation had become much sharper in the night and compelled him to spend the early morning lying on the reverse slope of some rising ground from which he could see the backs of houses and sections of the road where it entered and left the village. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared except some young Hereford bullocks which came up and sniffed at him and jumped away. His own forebodings seemed just as senseless, but there they were. Though it was much earlier than Nadya’s usual time of arrival at the rendezvous he decided to go down and wait for her.
She turned up ten minutes later. Something was badly wrong. He thought he knew all the moods of that exquisite face—resignation, calm, mischief, affection—but this was new. It was the face of the woman she was becoming, not that of the child he was always too inclined to think her. The skin was tightly drawn over the high cheek-bones, masking the soft oval.
‘Let’s go away, David!’ she said. ‘Anywhere—but away!’
‘What’s happened, dragutsica?’
; ‘That woman! And she couldn’t even bring herself to say why!’
‘The police?’
‘No! She was looking at me very queerly last night. I think it was the Post Office. They all know each other round here. I think she may have telephoned and caught me out in a lie. Afterwards I heard them counting the cash in the till and it wouldn’t come right and then it did and she said something about that girl. If people like that see they have been fooled, they never forgive it. I’m sure she suspected that when I was out all day I was stealing the money to pay my bill.’
‘Well, but it doesn’t matter.’
‘She must have watched me through a hole in the wall or something to see what I did or what was in my bag.’
‘She wouldn’t have got much change out of that.’
‘But you don’t understand! I haven’t any night-dress or dressing gown and I hate sleeping in my clothes. And this morning, not a word! She just told me to get out as if I were unclean. Oh, David, pity me—pity me! Can I never have what I want? They’d be kind if I were a hunchback or a cripple. But I’m like a leper used to be. I’m an animal—a bitch with teats, inhuman, horrible. Men, yes, I know. But a woman? Shouldn’t she feel for me?’
Nadya was dry-eyed and for the moment beyond comfort, looking past him and hardly listening. She would not let him touch her beyond the hand which he held.
‘Do you think she will talk?’ she asked.
To console her Bernardo said he did not think so. But he knew the type of that ex-parlourmaid though he had not set eyes on her—respectable, suppressed and, worst of all, with a false, romantic view of the world which, when she was faced with reality, left her as helplessly resentful as a beetle kicking on its back. One didn’t find so many of them in Latin countries where women—at any rate after marriage—were conditioned by common sense and sorrow to extend their natural generosity.
The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown Page 25