La's Orchestra Saves the World

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mrs. Agg nodded. “He plays them again and again. It drives poor Agg up the wall.”

  La turned round. The door that led from the kitchen into the yard had opened and Lennie had entered. He looked at her quickly, and then looked away again. La smiled at him and greeted him, but got only a curt nod in return. She noticed that Lennie was carrying a large parcel wrapped up in brown paper and tied with white string. She did not want to stare, but her eyes were drawn to the parcel and then to the leather jacket that he was wearing. The jacket was clearly new; a soft brown leather with sheep’s fleece lining at the collar—the sort of jacket that pilots wore.

  Mrs. Agg intercepted La’s glance. “Lennie, Mrs. Stone has brought us some carrots for carrot cake. Isn’t that kind of her?”

  Lennie said something that La did not quite catch and then hurried through the door that led into the rest of the house.

  “It looks as if Lennie has been shopping,” said La. “His new gramophone. And that was a very nice jacket he was wearing.”

  Mrs. Agg’s eyes narrowed. “Lennie’s not a great one for shopping,” she said. “No man is. But he saves up his money and every so often he has a little spree.” She spoke firmly, as if to dare La to contradict her.

  La did not say what she was thinking. The coincidence was just too great. Henry Madder loses eight hundred pounds and Lennie Agg goes on a shopping spree. There might be no con nection, but La remembered something Dr. Price had said in Cambridge: “People always deny that post hoc means propter hoc. But so often, Ferguson, it does, you know. It just does.” She could not remember in what context Dr. Price had made this remark, but it had lodged in La’s mind, largely because she had used it that very evening when dining in Hall. There had been a heated debate on T. S. Eliot and modernism, and she had entered the conversation with the observation that one had to be careful not to conclude that post hoc was propter hoc. There had been a silence: nobody could see the relevance of the remark, but nobody wanted to be thought stupid. The emperor’s new clothes are often insubstantial, but, as in the story, there are few who want to be the first to ask a gauche question.

  After her cup of tea with Mrs. Agg, La walked back down the lane sunk in thought. It was just before one in the afternoon, on a still day. Although it was late autumn, the sky was filled with clear blue light, and was cloudless, apart from several faint lines and whirls of vapour, fast dispersing, high above her—where aeroplanes had briefly danced, one with another in anger, or so she assumed. A year ago this choreography would have been part of the desperate fight that they knew would determine their fate; now it was merely part of a battle that seemed set to continue for years, as the last one had, until one side bled the other to exhaustion. There could only be one outcome, of course, and everybody, it seemed, knew what that would be; nobody doubted but that Hitler would be crushed, yet it was taking so long, and was such a dispiriting business. What would people remember of this time, La asked herself. The drabness? The fear? The sheer human loss? Or would they remember the camaraderie, the sense of national purpose, the conviction of being engaged together on something immense and dramatic?

  She felt somehow dirtied by what she had seen in the Aggs’ kitchen. There was Lennie, able-bodied and every bit as fit to fight as that boy from the village who had been torpedoed last week and whose mother she had seen sobbing in the post office, comforted by the postmaster’s wife; there was Lennie, who had taken advantage of Henry Madder, a virtual cripple, and stolen his eight hundred pounds. Mrs. Agg must have known that Lennie had suddenly got his hands onto money, with his new gramophone and his leather jacket, and that large parcel, whatever it had contained. She must have wondered where he got it; there would be no secrets in a family like that, all living cheek by jowl in that small farmhouse. La could have told her about the money, could have mentioned the theft, but did not, because just to mention it would have amounted to an accusation, and one could not fall out with neighbours in the country. They relied on one another. She and the Aggs had to live together, and if she denounced Lennie as a thief that would be impossible. Besides, he was, she thought, dangerous. He had broken into her house before, and he would do so again if he thought that she had informed on him. But she knew that this was how evil prospered; this was how appeasement made tyrants confident. One turned a blind eye; it was the same with countries, as it was with people.

  She made herself a cup of tea and took it out into the garden, to drink it there. The ground was hard with the cold; the clear weather had brought frosts at night that had frozen the crenellations of the mud into tiny, brittle fortifications. The mounds where she had planted potatoes were wavering lines, miniature hills and valleys marching across the garden’s landscape. This was her plot of earth, the bit that she would have to die to defend, if it came down to it.

  She suddenly felt defeated, and lonely. She had not realised how important were the visits that Feliks had paid to her garden. She had watched him working; they had talked. He knew what she was saying; he thought the same way: it was a question of simple understanding of the world. He understood. He was a friend—that was all—a friend whom she had come to love, but who would never love her back in that way. She could accept all that, but she would still miss him, she would miss him so acutely.

  She did not think that she would see him again. Whatever happened to him, he would be unlikely to come back. They had taken him to London and he would be swallowed up by the city, carried away somewhere on the shifting tides of war, just one more displaced person in an ocean of human flotsam.

  And it was now, as she walked slowly about her garden, that she decided that she would give up her orchestra. She no longer had the spirit for it. She wanted simply to withdraw to her house, to read, to listen to the wireless, to struggle with her vegetables. She would look after the hens—perhaps seek out more war work of that sort—but she would keep to herself, in the little world that she had made for herself, where she could be safe.

  But she knew that there was something she must do. The whole point about this war was that it involved doing the right thing. She had to speak to Percy Brown.

  SHE FOUND HIM in the police house, in his stockinged feet, while Mrs. Brown fried something on the stove; sausages, La thought, from the smell.

  “My tea,” he said, almost apologetically. “Not that there’s much meat in sausages these days. I sometimes wonder what they put in them. Do you know?”

  “Bread, I think. Bread and dripping. A bit of gristle.”

  He grimaced. “I shouldn’t have asked. But they smell nice.” He looked down at his feet. “I must put on my shoes.”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t bother on my account. I won’t keep you long.”

  He gestured to a chair, and then sat down himself. “Well, I assume it’s about that man. That Pole. I’ve had no news of him, I’m afraid. They took him to London for questioning and they haven’t let me know what happened. They never do, these hush-hush types. They don’t trust anybody. Not even policemen.”

  “It’s the times we live in,” said La. “It makes us all suspicious. The powers that be encourage it, don’t they?”

  Percy Brown agreed with this. “Quite right, Mrs. Stone. Quite right.” He raised an eyebrow. “So there we are. We’ll just have to wait until he comes back—if he comes back, should I say.”

  “It’s nothing to do with his being questioned,” said La. “It’s about the theft of Henry Madder’s money. I understand that you decided there was nothing to link Feliks to that.”

  “That’s right. Henry Madder just caught a glimpse of a man on a bike. I pressed him on this and he had to admit he couldn’t say for definite it was the Pole. And if you get a witness like that in court, the case usually collapses. Magistrates don’t like that sort of thing. It wastes everybody’s time.”

  “Of course. But what about information that somebody’s suddenly begun spending money very freely? If that sort of information comes in just after a theft, what then?”


  The policeman frowned. “It can do. Thieves often give themselves away like that. We had a man over in Bury who bought a car two days after a house-breaking. He didn’t have a penny in the bank until then. Then he goes down to Ipswich and comes back with a nice little Austin. A bit like yours, actually. That was his undoing.”

  There was a noise from the kitchen. A door closed, and the smell of sausages faded. Percy Brown leaned forward. “You’ve seen somebody spending money?”

  La swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  La held the policeman’s gaze. If she had been a suspect, she would have found his eyes the most difficult of all. They were the eyes of a countryman, but there was a knowingness about them.

  “Lennie Agg,” she said quietly.

  She had not expected her words to have quite the effect they had. Percy Brown sat back in his chair, as if he had been pushed by an unseen hand. It was a few moments before he spoke. “What did you see?” he asked.

  “A new gramophone. And a leather jacket. And he had something else in a parcel. All wrapped up.”

  He considered this quietly. “I see.”

  La felt that she had to explain. “Lennie never gave any sign of having much money. His clothes … Well, he dressed very simply, mostly in working clothes. Even on Sundays, nobody saw him in anything special. Then suddenly this very expensive leather jacket appeared. And where would you get something like that these days? You’d have to pay through the nose on the black market. And the gramophone—it’s an HMV—must have been very expensive. There were records, too …”

  Percy Brown was looking away. She could tell that what she had said was not welcome. Again, it must be a question of her having an unfounded suspicion.

  She felt foolish. He must think that she was one of those ridiculous people who imagine all sorts of crimes; first, the man breaking into her house; then Feliks; now Lennie. He might be wondering when she would denounce him himself. After all, being a policeman would be perfect cover for anything.

  “The only reason I mention this,” she said, “is because I feel sorry for Henry. If Lennie has stolen his money, then you might be able to get it back before it’s all spent. It’s not easy for me, you know, to come to you and accuse my neighbour’s son. You do realise that, don’t you?”

  He turned to her again. His expression had changed; it was more closed now. “Yes, I realise it, Mrs. Stone. And I’m not criticising you for coming to me. It’s just that I know that Lennie Agg, whatever else people may say he is, is not a thief.”

  “But how can you be so sure?”

  “Because he’s my nephew,” said Percy Brown. “And I’ve known him since he was that high.”

  Twenty-one

  IT WAS TWO DAYS before Tim came to see her. He came un announced, at a time convenient for afternoon tea, which they drank in the sitting room, where La had treated herself to a small coal fire. It was the warmest room in the house, anyway, at that time of day, when the afternoon sun, if it shone, painted light on the floor and walls near the French windows.

  Tim looked tired. “We’ve had a beastly time of it,” he said. “We’ve lost more crews than we can afford. Far more. And I’m having difficulty getting supplies that I used to get more or less automatically. There’s some chap in the Air Ministry who seems determined to thwart me. I think it’s personal.”

  La looked sympathetic. “Wish for his promotion. Then he can go and make somebody else’s life difficult.”

  Tim smiled. “A nice tactic, La. One wishes for the promotion of one’s enemies and feels good about one’s charitable thoughts. And all the time …”

  “Exactly. I’ve often noticed how there are people who always talk about doing the right thing. But when you look closely at what the right thing is, it happens to be what’s in their best interests anyway.”

  “Human nature.”

  La nodded. “That’s what they say.”

  She looked at Tim. His face was drawn, and there was a pallor about him that she had not seen before. “You’re really tired, aren’t you?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Yes. But I’m alive. When I look at the list of names—the list of chaps we’ve lost—that brings it home to me. I’m not on the list.”

  She reached across and poured him a cup of tea. “You need a break. Can’t you get some leave? Even a few days.”

  He shook his head. He told her that he had applied for a long weekend to visit his wife in Cardiff, but his request had been turned down. He had even arranged the transport—a plane was going over there and they could take him—but it had made no difference. “So I’m stuck. But … I suppose I can take a few hours to practise for the Christmas concert.”

  La hesitated. It hardly seemed the time to mention her decision to stop the orchestra, but she feared there would never be a right time.

  “On that,” she began, “I’ve been thinking and … well, I feel that I’ve done everything I can with the orchestra. I thought I might stop.”

  He stared at her. He was aghast. “Stop the orchestra?”

  I have the right to do this, she thought. “Yes. We’ve been going for quite some time now. And … and I just don’t know. I feel there’s not much point to our carrying on doing the same old thing. Struggling through our somewhat limited repertoire. Not playing all that well. It’s been fun, but …” She struggled to identify what it was that she wanted to say. “I’m tired, I suppose. It’s been fun, but you can’t carry on indefinitely doing the same old thing, can you?”

  He picked up his tea-cup and drank from it, watching her over the rim. Then, putting down the cup, he leaned forward. “No, La. That’s where you’re wrong. We have to do the same old thing. We have to.”

  “Why?”

  He leaned forward even further, and took her hand. The gesture surprised her, and she wanted to withdraw it. But she could not; he gripped her. “Why? You ask why? Because your orchestra, La, stands for everything that we’re doing. We meet once a month and play because that’s what we do. It shows anybody who cares to look that we are not giving up. And none of us can give up, can we? If we give up what we’re doing, then everything’s lost.”

  She looked down at the floor. He was still holding her.

  “Believe me, La,” he went on. “Believe me. Your little orchestra means a lot to every one of those people playing in it. It means a lot to the chaps from the base. It means a lot to the sisters from Bury, to that old fellow who plays the tuba, to everyone, La. You are one of the things that are keeping us all going. Don’t you see that, La?”

  He let go of her hand and sat back in his chair. She looked at him, and their eyes were upon one another. She saw a tired man who sent other men to their deaths in great, lumbering planes; he saw an attractive woman, who was lonely and upset, and exhausted and dispirited by looking after hens and digging up potatoes.

  He transferred his gaze out of the window. There was sunlight on the few lavender bushes that had survived the vegetable campaign. The grey-green foliage was briefly touched with gold.

  “Oh my God, La,” he said. “It’s so damned hard. It really is. I know I shouldn’t be defeatist, but we’re on our absolute uppers. And it goes on and on. Maybe we should just …”

  “The Americans might come.”

  He shook his head. “Do you really think so? We can’t assume anything, you know.”

  It was a while before she responded. She closed her eyes, and the thought came to her: defeat. She had heard about the exode in France over that terrible June; a Frenchwoman whom she had met in Bury had told her about it, in vivid detail. Of the families aimlessly wandering along the roads of rural France, fleeing the Germans; of the young women who covered themselves in Dijon mustard so that the Germans who raped them might be stung; of the young men being rounded up and taken off in trains; of the abandoned harvests and the empty towns. It might not be exactly the same, perhaps, but it would not be dissimilar. “No,” she said. “You’re right. We’ve got no alternative but to
carry on. We—you and I—can sit here and have our doubts about everything, but we can’t let people see that, can we?”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  “And if the orchestra grinds to a halt, then people will know that we’re giving up. They could think that, couldn’t they?”

  He smiled. “It could get back to Churchill. Somebody could whisper to him, Bad news, sir. We’ve lost La’s Orchestra.”

  They both laughed.

  “More tea, then?”

  He accepted the offer, and she poured the tea into his cup.

  “You’ll have been thinking about Dab?” he asked.

  She looked up sharply. She had not wanted to press him, in case he did not want to talk about it. But now he told her. “I managed to get through the impenetrable barriers of the counter-espionage people. I happen to know somebody in London who does something in that department. He made an enquiry and let me know—off the record.”

  She held up a hand. “You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not.”

  He shook his head. “It’s all right. It’s not going to make much difference to the price of fish—or the war effort. Dab is in the clear. A bona fide Polish airman who had an unequal brush with the Luftwaffe in France and ended up here. As I always thought. Nothing untoward at all.”

  She put down her cup. Her relief made her feel shaky.

  “So he’s coming back?”

  Tim sighed. “Sorry, La. But no. They’ve found some work for him in Cambridge. They needed somebody with languages—which Feliks has got. You know he’s fluent in German and French as well as English? That sort of chap is very useful, and so at long last they’re going to be using his talents. Listening to radio traffic or something like that. Anyway, he’ll be happy to be back in the fray. No more pigs.”

  La’s voice was quiet. “No. No more pigs.” She waited a moment or two. Then she asked, “Have you got an address for him? Do you know exactly where they’ve sent him?”