From London Far

by Michael Innes

  The moment was bewildering. Meredith’s heels were higher than his head, and he was pervasively bruised. It must therefore be accounted considerably to the credit of his intellectual capacities that he solved the problem of this involuntary levitation as rapidly as if it had been some elementary issue of textual science encountered in the security of the British Museum or the Bodleian.

  The Flying Foxes formed an endless chain. From this it followed that at one terminal point they must move obliquely upwards and at the other obliquely downwards – in this being like the cars on a giant wheel in a fair. If it were at the mainland end that the upward motion occurred, and if it were to be supposed that he, Meredith, had tumbled into a Fox thus rising, an adequate explanation of the phenomena about him would be attained.

  In other words, he was now on his way to Inchfarr.

  As if to confirm this startling but cogent hypothesis, the metal surface upon which he reposed momentarily quivered and swayed, and then perceptibly changed direction. It had reached the limit of the arc upon which it turned, and after travelling upwards and outwards it was now travelling upwards and inwards instead. Presently it would level out and begin its long trundle to the sea. But for the moment Meredith and his conveyance were still within the shelter of the tall shed into which he had bolted with so surprising a result. Looking upwards, he could see a criss-cross of girders, amid which burnt a single and crudely brilliant electric lamp. The light from this grew as he mounted upwards. His immediate surroundings became distinguishable and he was surprised to find himself a centre of interest for four deeply sunburnt small boys.

  The boys were naked – which was absurd in such a climate – and they regarded him fixedly and (he suddenly felt) very much as if about to commit some mild nuisance against his person. Alarmed by this, Meredith abruptly changed his position – and thereby discovered himself to be slithering in a shallow trough or basin of bronze. The Flying Fox swung higher to a fleeting point of maximum visibility. And Meredith saw that he was sitting in the middle of a fountain – mercifully dismantled – and that the four sunburnt boys were in fact so many bronze putti curiously cast in the Baroque taste. He had tumbled, not only into a Flying Fox, but into a Cultural Object as well.

  Nervously – and rather like a naiad exploring the limits of her domain – Meredith clambered to the lip of the fountain and glanced about him. Undoubtedly he was in a Flying Fox – one which contained not only this elaborate waterwork, but a number of small packing cases also. Loading, presumably, must proceed on the lower level. At the mainland end this particular Fox was dealt with and dismissed; just how it would be received at the termination of its journey was a matter impossible to conceive. Meredith, now at ease with the four putti much as, on a previous occasion, he had been at ease with Titian’s Venus, settled himself comfortably in the curve of the fountain and felt for his pipe. Unless – as was wildly improbable – the fantastic truth occurred to his enemies, he was pleasantly secure for a good twenty minutes or half an hour. And to one whose habit has become running like a hare before closely pursuing hounds such a space is as infinity held in the palm of the hand. So Meredith stuffed his pipe with tobacco – the fateful tobacco still – and as he did so the putti departed into shadow, the light overhead vanished, and a draught of cold air told him that his skyey progress had begun.

  The motion – except for certain jerks when the Fox negotiated a pylon – was rhythmical and not displeasing. By clambering from his fountain and mounting a packing case, Meredith found that he was just able to peer out upon the world like a baby first getting to grips with the sides of its crib. The moon was up and the sky was clearing; he could see Carron Lodge gleaming behind its larches, and in the west Venus was sinking towards the sea. It was extremely peaceful. The moon rose higher and its beams, lipping the edges of the Fox, caught the topmost curls on the heads of his bronze companions. Meredith smoked on. The moonlight crept down the finely modelled noses of the putti and caught their delicately dimpled cheeks – so that one by one the naked little boys seemed to break into an enigmatic smile. Their own position was certainly untoward, but even more so was their human companion’s. Meredith, however, was not disturbed. The faint creaking of the Flying Fox held its own sufficient music for one who had suffered so long the cultivated conversation of Don Perez Sierra y Campo. And only once during its dream progress down the line of the Carron could another sound have been heard. It was a long deep chuckle. Meredith was thinking of Shamus and the maenad maids.

  XIV

  At least there was a fire in the solar, and after the chill solemnities of the banqueting hall it was cosiness itself. Jean sat on a low stool directly before the flames, the Raeburn looking dispassionately down on her through flickering shadow. On her right Miss Isabella sat bolt upright in a high-backed chair, listening to whatever the constant drift of the centuries through her mind suggested to her ear. On her left Miss Dorcas was murmuring over the encyclopaedia once more, wholly absorbed in the pioneer construction of the Waterloo and City Railway. Had Mr Properjohn proposed to convey guano from Inchfarr, not by an extended telpher span, but by a submarine tube, life at Moila would have taken on an altogether different emotional colouring for this wistfully troglodyte lady.

  But Mr Properjohn had chosen Flying Foxes – and these were moving now. Jean’s ear, strained to catch some distant sound which might suggest Tammas or Mrs Cameron welcoming back Richard Meredith, could hear at long intervals the creak of one of these contrivances making its sinister way through the darkness. To Miss Isabella the sound was sometimes from the oars of the Vikings as their long ships crept into the anchorage below, and sometimes from the rude axle-tree of some primitive piece of ordnance which this or that early king of Scotland was bringing to bear against the recalcitrant chiefs of Moila. To Jean herself the sound spoke of a problem solved, but solved too late. She looked from one to the other of her hostesses, wishing to speak of Meredith – to suggest that with Tammas or alone she make her way to the mainland and find what help she could. But Shamus and Meredith, she knew, had taken the only boat harbouring on this side of the Sound – which meant that at least until morning she was marooned as effectively as ever was Ben Gunn or Robinson Crusoe.

  And the hereditary Captain, reasonably approachable by day, by night plainly departed down the long corridors of history. Her sister, too, departed down corridors of her own, fading away into obscure intestinal explorations with the St Gotthard or the Mont Cenis for guide. Neither of these old ladies, she guessed, was any longer aware of her presence. To test this Jean slipped from her stool and tiptoed from the solar. Neither stirred.

  But solitude she did not want, and Tammas she unreasonably distrusted. There remained Mrs Cameron. Jean made her way to the kitchen.

  Mrs Cameron had finished her labours and was sitting, comfortably enough, before the opened range. Behind her Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego showed equally comfortable in their burning fiery furnace. Open on her lap was a large volume seemingly of a devotional character. And she was drinking claret and hot water.

  ‘I hope’, said Jean, ‘that I’m not disturbing you too much?’ Mrs Cameron was looking so devout that she was apprehensive of being asked to join in extemporaneous prayer.

  ‘Nay, you’re very welcome.’ And Mrs Cameron tapped the open page before her. ‘Might I be asking if you ever read the general observations on vegetables?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ And then Jean, glancing down, saw that Mrs Cameron’s devotional book was nothing less than Mrs Beeton’s monumental work on household management. ‘Well, no – I don’t think I ever read that bit.’

  ‘Are you telling me that?’ Mrs Cameron, much pleased, drew up a chair for her guest, set a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles on her nose, and began to read aloud with serious emphasis. ‘The Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms’, read Mrs Cameron, ‘may be aptly compared to the primary colours of the prismatic spectrum, which are so gradua
lly and intimately blended, that we fail to discover where the one terminates and where the other begins.’ Mrs Cameron paused. ‘Perhaps’, she said, ‘you would be taking another drop of the claret?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Jean looked at the clock ticking on the mantelpiece and stirred restlessly on her chair. ‘Mrs Cameron, do the Flying Foxes often work at night?’

  ‘So far as is at present known, the vegetable kingdom is composed of upwards of 92,000 species of plants.’ Mrs Cameron sipped her claret. ‘The Foxes? About once a month, Miss, this year or more.’

  ‘Would it have something to do with the tides?’

  ‘And very likely it would.’ Mrs Cameron spoke absently; she was running her eye appreciatively down Mrs Beeton’s erudite page. ‘Birds, as well as Quadrupeds, are likewise the means of dispersing the seeds of plants. Among the latter is the squirrel, which is an extensive planter of oaks; nay, it may be regarded as having, in some measure, been one of the creators of the British Navy.’ Mrs Cameron glanced over the tops of her spectacles. ‘Now, if that isn’t a wonderful thing!’

  Jean nodded. ‘Talking of navies,’ she said hastily, ‘has Miss Isabella been imagining those Viking ships for long?’

  ‘Creeping into the anchorage?’ Mrs Cameron considered. ‘Only since she took to wandering.’ She settled her spectacles more firmly on her nose. ‘In the Vascular System of a Plant we at once see the great analogy which it bears to the veins and arteries in the human system–’

  ‘Wandering? When does Miss Isabella wander?’

  ‘At night and when the Foxes are working, Miss Halliwell. The creaking of them disturbs her, I think, so that she can’t sleep, poor dear. And then she takes a lantern, maybe, and wanders the castle in the dark, which is no safe thing to do. Even to the cliff’s edge she’ll go, and be staring down at the anchorage. It’s then mostly she hears the long ships – and sees them too, she says; dark shapes with here and there a glimmering light.’

  ‘Do you think she really sees them?’

  Mrs Cameron looked surprised. ‘And what for no? Even Tammas can hear Black Malcolm singing in his dungeon. And why shouldn’t Miss Isabella, that is for ever peering through the years, see the dark ships of Magnus or Olaf?’

  ‘I suppose there’s no reason why she shouldn’t.’ Jean rose. ‘I think I’ll go outside for a little fresh air before going to bed.’

  Mrs Cameron raised a delaying hand. ‘The Root and the Stem finally demand notice. The root is designed, not only to support the plant by fixing it in the soil–’

  Jean slipped to the door.

  ‘–but also to fulfil the functions of a channel for the conveyance of nourishment.’

  The night air was chill. The moon was up.

  ‘It is therefore furnished with pores–’

  Jean closed the door behind her. The sky had blown clear and there were stars. Venus was setting in the west.

  The base-court was two broad panels of moonlight bisected by a dark bar of shadow cast from the keep. The only sounds were of a pig scuffling in straw and small waves very faintly breaking far below.

  An outcrop of stone… Jean could see that in the farther corner of the court one of the massive inner walls seemed to rise up from a raised foundation of living rock. There must lie what Miss Isabella had called the Seaway – that deep fissure through which Magnus Barelegs had come long ago, and Captain Maxwell’s bleating cargo that very morning. And there was a grille. The hereditary Captain, anxious for her castle’s strength, had ordered that it be closed. But had Tammas obeyed? Jean thought it unlikely. Cautiously, and traversing the great shadow of the keep as one who fears an ambush, Jean crossed the court.

  The aperture yawned before her. All that evening she had carried an electric torch in her bag – in Minnie Martin’s bag. She shone it now. An irregular, steeply sloping passage with sheer sides – some work of Nature, perhaps, enlarged by human hands – wound into darkness, chill and smelling indifferently of sea and sheep. Jean slipped past the open grille – a massive barricade enough – and plunged down the cleft, her torch waving before her. Bats flapped. The smooth stone beneath her feet was slippery with the droppings of sheep. Behind her now the opening through which she had come was no more than a dimly moonlit patch upon the darkness. She moved on, only to halt abruptly at a heavy grating sound that echoed dully down the walls. She turned. The opening which seconds before had been a single splash of faint radiance was now a criss-cross of dark lines. Someone had closed the grille.

  She had switched off her torch and now she stood very still pressed against the unyielding rock, her heart pounding. For a moment a massive shadow further obscured the distant light. There was the sound of footsteps, progressing surely in the dark. And then a man laughed – a strange man.

  It was Miss Dorcas’ world, but turned to nightmare. Jean forced her limbs to move and pressed on down the pitchy passage. The man laughed again. It was the laugh of one who follows a secure quarry. She gritted her teeth. At the other end was at least the landing-stage, the anchorage, the sea. If she could only make that she might conceivably have a chance to swim for it. She stumbled and fell heavily, bruising her knees, so that involuntarily she cried out with pain. The man laughed once more. Jean felt cold as ice, impossible to say whether with fear or rage. She turned – or was by the curve of the passage bumped round – a corner. Before her was the faintest possible radiance – an effect only perceptible because of the utter darkness from which she had come. The anchorage lay before her, a deep well unplumbed by moonlight or favouring stars. Only two dull red lights glowed near the surface of the water. She took a few more steps forward and was in open air.

  Low-pitched voices murmured in the night. One light was moving. And across the centre of the anchorage lay a long, low shape, with immediately above it another dark mass suspended in air. Jean, poised to dive, hesitated while taking another glance at this obscurely significant thing. And as she did so a hand fell upon her shoulder from behind and the laugh sounded anew. ‘Guten Abend,’ said a low ironical voice. ‘Wie geht es Ihnen, gnädige Frau?’

  Jean turned. ‘Who are you?’ she asked steadily. ‘And how did you come to be in the castle?’

  The man kept his hand on her shoulder, spoke again in German, checked himself. ‘We usually send someone to the head of that passage, to see that all is quiet in the ruins. Tonight I went myself – and it was not.’ He paused. ‘You are fortunate.’

  ‘Am I?’ Jean had detected something oddly sombre in the stranger’s voice. But this did not obscure the fact that he had laughed when she fell. ‘At least I haven’t been driven daft, like poor Higbed.’

  ‘Higbed?’ The stranger was at a loss. ‘I know nothing of him – nor of you either. But plainly you have been more inquisitive than is discreet. You were bound to be caught. And your good fortune consists in having been caught by us and not by them. They are common criminals, you know – no more. They would simply have dropped you into the sea.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ Jean, who thought it politic to scout this indubitable truth, tried to catch a glimpse of her captor’s face. ‘And you?’

  ‘At first we were their employers. They were mere cogs in a system by which we got as much foreign currency as we could. But now that it is all over they have turned the tables on us. We are a mere ferry-service – and perhaps we might be called pirates, too.’

  ‘Well, you know, you were always that, after all.’

  The stranger dropped his hand to his side. ‘We are broken soldiers, surplus war material – what you will.’ His arm shot out again, but this time only to point to the dark low streak on the surface of the anchorage. ‘She sank a British cruiser. And now she carries away the treasures of Europe to satisfy the vanity of–’

  ‘I know all about that.’ Jean found the noble melancholy of this German ex-sailor not particularly appealing. ‘But surely you
can’t keep so complicated a thing as a U-boat in commission all on the quiet – as those other people do their furniture vans?’

  ‘Obviously not.’ The man standing in the darkness laughed again. ‘She becomes more absurdly unseaworthy every week. Quite soon now she will submerge for the last time. The moment will come to surface, gnädige Frau, and surface she will not. I wonder what, on that occasion, will be on board? A crate of Russian ikons, perhaps, and the better part of some great private collection from Poland or Belgium. That will be sad! And I, since I am her commander, shall be on board too. Sad, again. And you–’

  ‘I?’ said Jean. ‘But didn’t you say I was fortunate?’

  ‘Why, yes. Your watery grave will now not be a solitary one, after all. But here is the boat.’

  A tiny dinghy with muffled oars had glided up to the landing-stage, and for the first time Jean fully realized that she was about to say goodbye to Moila. The prospect of indefinite voyaging in an unseaworthy submarine was not pleasing, and less pleasing still was the thought that it must be in the hands of men very little under even the remnants of decent discipline. They were defeated enemies engaged in what might be called a blind-alley profession of the queerest sort. It was rather like being pitched into Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, which she remembered as about a super-submarine manned by outlaws. ‘I suppose’, she said, ‘that you are Captain Nemo?’