La's Orchestra Saves the World
Page 16
She sat down. She felt an emptiness, a rawness within her. She loved Feliks; she admitted that to herself now. I love him. It was an unreciprocated love, yes, but it was love nonetheless. She did not want him to die, to be carried to his death like the man in the story. Yet just as she admitted to herself that what she felt for him was love, so, too, she had to admit to herself that her duty was clear: this war was about evil, and the innocent could well be the agents of evil. Misguided people no doubt believed in Hitler and his cause; might even think they were doing the right thing. Feliks could be one of those; or he might be an uncomplicated patriot, for whom it was not a question of loyalty to Hitler and the Nazis, but to Germany itself. People said that there were officers in the German army who were in that position; men with a sense of personal honour, torn between loyalty and disgust. Oh Feliks …
She had to speak to Tim, not in the indirect way that she had on that previous occasion, but openly and unambiguously. He was rational and level-headed; a balanced man. He would assess whether what she had to say amounted to any sort of evidence at all, or whether there was an innocent explanation.
She telephoned Tim, who was not at his desk. The flight-sergeant who answered, whom La had met in making arrangements for the orchestra, said that he would pass on the message to call her back. Fifteen minutes later, La received the call.
“I suppose you’ve heard,” Tim said to her before she could say anything.
“Heard what?”
“They’ve arrested Feliks.”
Nineteen
SHE DID NOT CARE that it would make her late for the orchestra. It was not an afternoon for cycling, the strong wind in her face making progress slow, but she had pedalled that route to Madder’s Farm so often before that she could do it virtually without looking where she was going. She had been there that morning for the hens and had left at eleven; everything had been normal then. She had exchanged a few words with Henry when she was stacking the eggs, but only a few words. His pain was worse; she could tell that since he was moving slowly, and he was always more taciturn when he was in pain.
She found him in the kitchen, sitting at the table, a half-drunk cup of tea in front of him. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed.
“So, you’ve heard.”
She took off her scarf and tossed it down on the table. “What happened?”
“He stole my money,” he said. “He stole all of it.”
“When?”
He took the cup in his right hand, carefully inserting one of his immobile fingers through the handle. “This afternoon. Lunchtime. I was down at Pott’s, and when I came back up I saw somebody cycling away from the house. It was him. I called after him, but he paid no attention.” He paused. “Then I went in and something made me check the … the place where I keep some money I have. It had been taken. All of it. Near on eight hundred pounds, if a penny. Eight hundred.”
La did not like the way he was looking at her. It was as if he felt triumphant; having suspected all along that Feliks was a thief, now he was being proved right.
“But were you sure it was him?” she asked.
“Yes. Of course I was. I know that man as well as you do.” He looked at her. “Well, maybe not quite as well as you do …”
La ignored this. “Maybe he came to see you. Maybe the money was already gone.”
Henry eyed her. “Wasn’t gone yesterday.”
“Well, it could have happened any time from when you last checked up on it. Where did you keep it?”
“Cupboard.”
“Which cupboard?”
“Cupboard in the sitting room. Round the front.”
La thought for a moment. “That’s a room you hardly ever go into, Henry. The door’s always closed there. You know that.”
He stared at her sullenly. “So? Money’s gone. He was here.”
In the past La had noticed that when Henry decided that something was the case, then it was not easy to shift him. He was doing it again. Feliks had been on the farm and the money was gone. The two facts seemed to him to be inextricably linked.
She tried again. “All that I’m saying is this, Henry. You don’t know when the money went missing. It could have been last night. You never lock your doors, do you? No, you don’t. I know that you don’t.”
He shook his head. “I would have heard somebody. If somebody came in last night I would have heard him. I’m a light sleeper. Always have been. I would have heard somebody downstairs.”
“No, you wouldn’t necessarily. People can be very quiet. You sleep upstairs, don’t you? You do.”
He contemplated this for a moment before he spoke again. “Anyway,” he said. “Percy Brown’s been down here. He said he was going over to arrest him at Archer’s place. So that’s it. And all I want to know is—when will I get my money back? They‘ll find it in his room, likely enough.”
La sighed. “You could be wrong, Henry. Have you thought of that?”
“Ain’t wrong.”
“Well, anybody can be wrong, you included. And if you are, then you’ve accused an innocent man of being a thief. How would you feel if you were accused yourself of stealing something and you hadn’t? Can you imagine how you would feel?”
“Haven’t stolen anything,” he said. “Not me. So your question makes no sense, La. And here’s another thing. Four eggs broken this morning. You’ve got to be more careful, La. Four eggs wasted.”
THE TRIP TO MADDER’S FARM made her arrive ten minutes late at the village hall. They were working on an arrangement of “Brigg Fair” that had been sent from Cambridge, with a recommendation by Mr. Paulson. It was on the outer edge of their abilities, and they were struggling. The percussion was all wrong, and there was a new violinist from one of the nearby villages who was very rusty with the instrument. La glanced at Tim, who shrugged, but smiled encouragingly. It was not going well.
La remembered the words. They came back to her as she struggled with the music: It was on the fifth of August, the weather fine and fair / Unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined. She thought: to repair somewhere with love. To repair somewhere with love. I took hold of her lily-white hand, O and merrily was her heart / And now we’re met together, I hope we ne’er shall part.
She looked down at the music on the stand in front of her. She tried to keep time, but she lost the place and had to turn a sheet quickly. The orchestra continued, although one or two of the violins faltered. Tim looked up at her sharply. She concentrated on the music, but the words returned to her mind. Brigg Fair. I hope we ne’er shall part. One did not dare hope that; not these days, when people were thrown together in the arbitrary confusion of war and parted as easily and as quickly as they met. Yet people loved one another; in the interstices of all this, love was possible.
La put down her baton. She could not continue, for the tears she had fought to suppress now overcame her. She turned away, so that people might not see her cry. She put her hands up over her face.
One of the sisters from Bury was beside her. “La, dear. La.” There was an arm about her, and she was led to a chair at the side of the hall.
“I’m sorry. I’m just all over the place tonight. I’m sorry.”
“Hush. Hush. You don’t have to say sorry. There, La. There.” She leaned forward and whispered, “It’s Feliks, isn’t it, La? It’s Feliks?”
Tim was standing behind the woman from Bury. “Is there anything …”
“She’ll be all right.”
La looked up at Tim. She saw that the orchestra had broken up and people were packing their instruments away.
“Tim, I’m so sorry. I should have asked somebody else to take over tonight.”
He nodded to the woman, who moved away to let him forward. She threw an anxious glance at La.
La looked up at Tim, who had reached out to take her hand.
She had a handkerchief and wiped at her eyes. The tears had stopped, but her cheeks were still moist. “Can I talk to you in private?”
They did not wait until the hall had been closed off, but went out to Tim’s car and drove back down the lane. Tim was quiet in the car, although he said, “It’s been a difficult day for you. I can tell that. I was pretty taken aback myself.”
In the house, she put on the kettle and they sat down at the kitchen table.
“So,” said Tim. “Dab has been arrested. A nasty business.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s not that. Not the theft.”
He was puzzled. “He’s been arrested for something else? Where did you hear that?”
“No, I don’t mean the arrest at all. I want to talk about something else. I think that Feliks may be German.”
For a few moments Tim said nothing. Then he reached into a pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. “I see.” He extracted a cigarette and tapped it against the table. La watched him. “And why do you think that?”
She told him about the slips—the uncle in Frankfurt and the we rather than they. He listened carefully, and raised an eyebrow over the we.
“Does that sound fanciful to you?” La asked. “I was listening to a story on the wireless the other day about a landlady …”
He smiled. “Oh yes, I heard that. I was in the mess having a cup of tea and it came on. I listened to the whole thing.”
“It was silly,” said La. “Very melodramatic. But it made me think.”
“So you think that you and I are in the same position as that landlady? And Dab is our commercial traveller?”
It sounded ridiculous, put that way, but that, she supposed, is what she thought. She nodded. “Something like that.”
Tim lit his cigarette. La did not like the smell of tobacco, but tolerated it. Everybody smoked now, it seemed, and one could hardly object to the RAF doing it.
“All right,” he said. “We can look into it. My first reaction, though, is that there’s nothing to it. Remember that lots of Poles are German-speaking. Of course Hitler has grabbed many of those and made them join his army. But there must be some who are not too keen on the Nazis.”
She listened. Confiding in him had been cathartic, and now she felt there was nothing more to say. She had decided it was her duty to betray Feliks, and now she had done it.
Tim looked at her quizzically. “I take it that there’s nothing else. You didn’t see him do anything that made you wonder?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Well, then, there’s a chap at the station who handles this sort of thing. He can get somebody down from London.”
It seemed so bleak. Somebody down from London would interrogate Feliks. And if they found out that he was an enemy agent, then they would execute him. War was like a game; one side did this and the other side did that. There were the rules, and these stipulated that those who played without uniforms would be shot out of hand.
Tim blew smoke into the air. “I wouldn’t worry, La. It’s highly unlikely that Dab is anything other than what he says he is. I like him. I don’t think I would ever feel like that about a spy. I like to think I could tell.”
She thought about this for a moment. What he said was reassuring, but there was still the question of the theft. They had not talked about that. La raised it now, and Tim shook his head vehemently.
“Can’t be,” he said. “I just can’t imagine him taking anything. He’s not a thief, he’s …”
“A gentleman?” La supplied.
Tim laughed. “Exactly. I told your policeman—what’s his name?”
“Percy Brown.”
“Yes, I told Percy Brown it was highly unlikely. He telephoned me because Dab had given my name when he was arrested. He said I would speak for him. So this Brown chap phoned and I said that I didn’t think it very likely that Dab would steal anything.”
La remembered what Henry had said about the possibility that the money would be found in Feliks’s room. She asked Tim about this.
“Brown said he took a look and there was nothing there. He implied that they didn’t have much proof, and that at the moment it was just the farmer’s word.” He paused. “I think they’ll release him, although the intelligence people might want to hold on to him for a little while before they do that. They might take him down to London for a couple of days, but I suspect that he’ll be back. He’ll be playing the flute again in your little band, La. Don’t you worry.”
Twenty
SHE FOLLOWING DAY, when she had finished with the hens, La cycled over to the pig farm. She had seen Henry briefly that morning, but they had not spoken very much. He had made some remark about the weather, and she had given a vague reply. There was still a gloat in his eye, and if he was waiting for a chance to discuss Feliks’s arrest, she would not give him that.
The pig farmer was grooming his horse when she arrived. He was a tall man, with heavy eyebrows and an aquiline nose. Feliks had said that he was a keen horseman, which somehow La did not associate with pig-farming, but here was the evidence.
He did not seem surprised to see her. “You’re the woman who looked after him?” he asked. “The woman with the garden?”
She nodded. “Yes. He helped me in the garden.”
The farmer continued with his grooming, running the brush down the animal’s flank. He slapped at a fly that had alighted on the horse.
“A nasty business. Percy Brown was round here this morning, with him.”
“With Feliks?”
“Yes. They were in a car. I’ve never seen old Percy Brown drive a car, but he had somebody from Bury at the wheel, I think. They came to let Feliks get his things. He’s cleared out now.”
The farmer looked at La and saw the effect of his words. “Sorry. I can see you’re a bit upset about this. Nice fellow, Feliks. And not a thief, I’m pleased to say.”
La caught her breath. “No? Percy Brown said that?”
The farmer took a small metal comb out of his jacket pocket and began to scrape the impacted horse hair from the grooming-brush. “Yes. Percy Brown took me aside and said there was no real proof that he had pinched Henry Madder’s money. Miser that Henry is. Eight hundred quid? Did you hear that? It’ll be one of the gypsies down at Foster’s. Light-fingered lot.”
“So why didn’t they let Feliks go?” She knew, of course, but she had to ask.
The farmer started to brush the horse again. “Who knows? Something to do with being Polish perhaps?”
• • •
SHE WAITED to hear from Tim, thinking that he might telephone her. But no word came. Feliks had been arrested on a Monday, and had been driven away on Tuesday. It was now Friday, and La thought that if Tim had not phoned her by mid-afternoon, then she would get in touch with him. She did not like to disturb him at the base; they needed to keep their lines open and private calls were discouraged. She was also unsure if he would know anything; but she had at least to ask.
La attended to the hens, which took her more than three hours, as there was cleaning out to be done. Henry was watching her from his kitchen window, but when she went to stack the eggs in their box he was nowhere to be seen. She decided that he must have been told that Feliks had been cleared of the theft, and imagined he would be sulking. He would not have changed his mind about Feliks’s guilt; she was sure of that. She could just hear him saying, “Percy Brown got it wrong again!” He had little time for Percy Brown, she knew, and he would presumably have even less time for him now. A long time ago there had been an argument between the two of them, and Henry’s resentment had simmered. The country was like that; some arguments went back over generations; disputes over fields and boundaries, livestock, marriages.
Back at the house, La tried to busy herself with domestic tasks. She did the laundry—in her distraction she had put it off over the last couple of days, but now she was running out of clean blouses and had to do it. She
scrubbed and applied washing blue, and thought of Feliks in London, facing his accusers. She wondered whether they would present him with the evidence against him—such as it was; if they did, then he would know who had betrayed him.
At noon, with the washing pegged out on the line, she decided to go over to Mrs. Agg’s. She had harvested carrots and had too many. Agg liked carrot cake, according to Mrs. Agg, and La knew that their carrots had been destroyed by pests that year. Carrots would be welcome.
Mrs. Agg was in her kitchen. She took the carrots gratefully. “Carrot cake,” she said. “Agg loves it.”
La smiled. “I know. You told me that once. There’ll be more carrots. I’ve got lots.”
Mrs. Agg went to a cupboard and took out a small packet. “These are dates,” she said. “For you.”
“How did you get them?” La asked—and immediately regretted the question. One did not ask about luxuries; one was simply grateful for them.
“I had a spot of chicken on my hands,” said Mrs. Agg. “And Jimmy Mason had some dates that he’d got from heaven knows where. He’s not too keen on dates and so …”
“Of course.”
La slipped the dates into her pocket and watched as Mrs. Agg put the kettle on the range. Then she saw the new gramophone at the other end of the room.
It was standing on a table, with a small stack of records at its side. La looked enquiringly at Mrs. Agg. “That’s new.”
Mrs. Agg glanced in the direction of La’s gaze. “That? Oh yes, that’s Lennie’s. He loves music—always has. Bands. That sort of thing.”
La rose and crossed the room to stand beside the gramophone. The turntable was covered with a rich, red baize; the head of the arm was shining silver. “His Master’s Voice,” she said. “This is very nice.”
She picked up the record on the top of the pile and read out the label. Billy Cotton and His Orchestra and underneath Ellis Jackson Plays. “Lennie’s?”