Red Anger

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘I should think just the belt of beeches and nothing of the ditch.’

  The CIA had left the lower end of the Wansdyke wide open for our escape. They realised, I suppose, that a lot of good it would do us; if we broke cover there they must see us either on the road or climbing up to the desolate Ridge Way where they could probably run us down without much fear of interruption. The essential from their point of view was to cut us off from the woodland. I was inclined to try for the hills, though doubtful if Alwyn could stand the pace. But it was not that which set him against it. He was still obsessed by the need to avoid any emptiness where the KGB could get at him without any witness.

  The evening silence was absolute. I had the impression that the CIA agents were not confident away from city streets. Though they had plunged fast and intelligently at the opportunity we had given them, they were now showing extreme caution. They may have been unduly disconcerted by the covered way of the Wansdyke which required three men to search it efficiently—one down the middle and one on each bank in case we broke out over the side. That left only the fourth man to keep watch on the upper end.

  We were beginning to hope that the stalemate would last till nightfall when we heard a car stop at the road end of the Wansdyke and remain there. I crept along the bank to look at it and found the three men and the boatwoman in the pleasant dell at the foot of the ditch, again innocently picnicking. Very cautious. No aggression. No reconnaissance until they had some idea what they were reconnoitring. It was a brilliant move and a neat piece of map-reading. The blue and yellow car, after receiving the look-out’s news of all this significant hide-and-seek, had made a considerable circle at speed and had come up from the south so that it never passed the T junction. The CIA party would have noticed it coming up the road, then lost it to sight and assumed it had gone on towards Marlborough. Alwyn was right in his guess that they would not recognise it.

  As all was quiet, one of the men left the picnic, went some way up the Wansdyke and lay prone on the north bank. From that position he could give warning of anyone coming down the bottom of the ditch. He could not see the edge of the West Woods. He did not have to. Any unexpected movement there could be at once reported by the walkie-talkie up on the Ridge Way. Or thereabouts. I have always wondered in what dimple of the dead the watcher made himself comfortable.

  We ourselves moved a little further uphill and lay down on the outer side of the opposite bank, our heads high enough to see the bottom but well concealed behind seedlings of elder. Alwyn was tense as an animal uncertain whether to charge, his nostrils slightly flared and quivering. I had seen that expression before—for example, when I invaded his privacy at the birthday hut.

  ‘Beer and the sword do leave presences, Willie,’ he said.

  ‘Yes? I could do with some beer.’

  ‘You will have that tomorrow.’

  I remember that he said ‘you’ not ‘we’. At the time I saw no special meaning in it.

  ‘He left red anger behind.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Do I know? I only feel. Isn’t that what you meant by a presence? He fought berserk in Woden’s Ditch. It was his land, not theirs.’

  I suppose the red anger had mounted up in him—against himself during those weeks in the darkness of the derelict when he must have wondered whether he should not come out of hiding and challenge his fate, win or lose. Now in his mind as well were the images of our journey through the fairest, calmest counties of England until we came to my hills where the first of us cut terraces for their corn and knew their home for a home, building for the gods and honouring their dead. So all the afternoon since the meeting with Marghiloman he must have been dreaming of revenge. But revenge is the wrong word. He was not that sort of man. I would call it protest—the ultimate and only protest against two gangs of infidel trespassers.

  ‘He was without hope as I am, Willie. His sword will not be hard to get. Lie still where you are and never move! Watch and remember and drink my health in the beer tomorrow!’

  He crawled down the reverse side of the ditch and along the trunk of a fallen beech where he became completely invisible among the foliage. The Russian—if he was a Russian—went back to his picnic party silently and springily over the carpet of dead leaves. We had seen him very wisely inspect the tree when he first passed it and he now walked under it without more thought.

  I saw Alwyn dive with outstretched arms so that one hand closed immediately over the man’s mouth before he could make a sound. The other hand seemed to hit the back of his neck, but the attack was fast as the stoop of a hawk and hard to analyse. At any rate the fellow lay there motionless on his stomach with his head back at a most unnatural angle.

  Meanwhile Alwyn had picked up his complicated weapon and was striding fast over the soft, brown floor of the Wansdyke. The KGB party took a little time to react, for they were still sitting close to the roadside and could not see the beech which crossed the ditch. They heard the thud of the fall but it was followed by nothing.

  Alwyn was now out of my sight. He must have emerged from cover close to the edge of the West Wood and the waiting station wagon. I imagine that he deliberately showed himself and turned back in simulated panic when he was seen. I heard the pack crashing after him down the middle of the Wansdyke and at last realised, helpless and appalled, what his intention was. The presence? It could be. I only know that the hunted Alwyn now blazed with the same fury as that figment of a warrior who had hurled away his shield in defiance and fought, naked and red, in the twilight of the ditch.

  The picnic party held a hasty conference. It must have been clear to them that they had at last trapped Rory in just such a private spot as they had hoped; on the other hand an embarrassing confrontation with their opposite numbers seemed to be on the cards. The boatwoman stood by the car innocently packing up the picnic. Her two companions advanced cautiously up the ditch. When they saw the body beneath the tree they drew their guns and ran to him, one bending down and covered by the other.

  At that moment Alwyn appeared with the four CIA men close behind him. He turned, took out the Russian gun from under his coat and fired a short burst at them. He could not possibly have missed at so close a range but he did. Deliberately, of course. Allies should be treated with tact and courtesy at all times. He swung round and killed one of the astonished Russians—one only—with a single shot. The other plunged for the cover of massive beech roots and riddled Alwyn with rapid fire which shattered the head of one of the CIA agents and dropped another. Their two companions flung themselves behind trees and continued the battle. I have no experience of war, but I think I would prefer honest bangs to the sharp and terrifying sibilation of the silencers.

  Desultory shots died away and discretion took over. Both sides were quiet, waiting to see if any despised peasant of the host country had been attracted. But in the depths of the Wansdyke silencers were effective. Some homing farmer, not too far off, may have wondered that a sudden gust of wind, funnelling up the dyke, should have so swished the leaves, but continued on home to his family, his supper and the racket of his television. I think, to judge by what followed, that it was as well for him that he did. Once upon a time they would have said he had been snatched by fairies.

  Myself I had been fairly safe where I was, out of the line of fire as Alwyn knew I would be. Resting my head on my arms I mourned for him, trying to reconcile that blood-soaked corpse with my friend, so quickly responsive, and I began to wonder how well he had foreseen the efficiency of both sides at clearing up their more inconvenient necessities of state.

  It was my boatwoman who, with feminine commonsense, made the first move. She was Russian all right—possibly an unsuspected refugee with complete freedom of movement. From my side of the bank and uncomfortably close to me she shouted in English:

  ‘You bloody fools! You could have had the police on the lot of us.’

  I don’t think she realised that it was Alwyn who had provoked the battle. I was near to hy
steria anyway and her remark nearly made me sob with laughter out loud. The over-riding anxiety was lest Law should suddenly appear from some Wiltshire Sinai in the shape of two grave young policemen, unarmed but inviolate.

  There was a silence. I thought I heard whispering from the cover on the other side of the ditch, but it may have been holly leaves using the light wind to settle down for the night. Soon a voice asked:

  ‘Have you a car?’

  ‘Yes. And we know you have.’

  ‘Get on with it then! We’ll pick up ours.’

  The CIA carried their two dead up the ditch. The messier casualty left a trail behind, but they did not bother about that. They were quite right. The floor of leaves was red-brown anyway, and the carrion crows would deal with the brains at dawn. If he was British, I suppose they had to produce some story of a death at sea where his body probably ended up; if American, it might be harder to tidy up the matter in view of the national custom of shipping home those dead on service. A waxwork head, perhaps. Lips of the living would never detect the difference.

  They mentioned Petrescu. I gathered that he had slipped away into the woods while his companion provided the daring diversion. There was no conversation between the two sides. KGB 13 had no reason to say who Petrescu’s dead companion was. I am sure that they assumed the CIA knew who he was, for never at any time in the future did they dare to claim he was in Russia as Alwyn always feared they would. That, too, must have been in his mind. He had once said to me that he did not have to live so long as he made it impossible for the Russians to claim he was alive.

  Together with his two victims he was removed by the boatwoman and the only remaining picnicker. I could not see their arrangements. No doubt the boot of the car was reasonably well prepared in case of accidents to Marghiloman or myself. But three bodies were a lot for that blue and yellow saloon; as soon as it was dark they must have dropped the over-spill in a secluded spot and telephoned to some very unwilling friend to come out with a van and pick it up. The CIA, expecting only a drugged Petrescu, must also have had trouble with space though the station wagon was more commodious and the two empty seats could be folded back. An innocent load of sweet hay gathered from any wayside stack might have been their answer.

  There at the Wansdyke I left that much wanted trawlerman from the Russian fleet. Nobody has ever wanted him since or, I am sure, hoped that he might turn up. He walked away and lay shocked and in tears on the smoothly sloping tomb of some other nameless occupant until at dawn he took a train from Swindon and became Adrian Gurney.

  I arrived in Worcestershire and at once found profitable work picking fruit for the market. I was dazed by the problem of how to get in touch with Tessa and Eudora, desperately anxious in Molesworthy and without news. I could not know whether telephones were tapped and letters opened—justifiable activities if Rachel was still missing and Alwyn suspected of abducting her. It may be that my mind was too tired for any more ingenuities and that I was clinging to mechanical, open-air labour to save me from thinking.

  After a week I recovered the power to make a plan and wrote to Forrest at Molesworthy under the letterhead of The Black Bear—the village pub where I sat in the evening with fellow workers, or alone and drinking too much. I asked him if he would care to receive a free trial case of our home-bottled cider—the pub did not make any but I reckoned no one would investigate—and thanked him for his kindness to our representative when he was in the district. I signed the letter Adrian Gurney, saying that I was usually in after working hours and would be glad to see him or any friend of his. Forrest could have no idea who Adrian Gurney was, but he’d be at Cleder’s Priory with the mysterious letter half an hour after receiving it.

  I expected them in the evening two days later—a miserable evening of utter indecision. I did not want to be caught in The Black Bear unavoidably drinking. I could think of no excuse for hanging about alone in the village street. I did not know by what road they would come or how to break the news. Eventually I waited, skulking in cover as if expecting Marghiloman, by a cross-roads which I was sure they must pass. When they did not, I returned to The Black Bear where I found Tessa nervously waiting in the car park.

  It was too public a place for emotion and I was still inhibited by anxiety lest she might have been followed; so I got quickly into the car and directed her to a quiet spot among the nearby orchards where we could talk. When we were clear of the village she stopped and for a moment was in my arms, but the Wansdyke was still behind my eyes.

  ‘Has he escaped?’ she asked.

  I told her that he was dead. She took that in silence, a dry-eyed statue hardly listening to the beginnings of my too fast, incoherent story.

  ‘Eudora knew it. I think she wants you to herself, which is why she didn’t come.’

  ‘Or couldn’t bear to see me. How did she know?’

  ‘They were very close always.’

  After more of our journey and its end I tried to explain that when he left my side on the bank of the Wansdyke I could have no idea of what he intended.

  ‘And you don’t even know what they have done with his body!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What does his body matter? He carries with him what it loved.’

  Poor comfort—but I did not know how to cherish her, vaguely understanding that no comfort was possible and that her mind was in the same chaos as my own, drifting in the past with no hold on the present. She must have felt subconsciously that her passionate grief for Alwyn was a disloyalty to me and her love of me a disloyalty to Alwyn. Neither could be expressed.

  I asked her if it was safe for Eudora to meet me. She replied that it was, in a tone which suggested the complete triviality of safety.

  ‘And Rachel?’

  ‘She has gone. That’s all I know.’

  Tessa drove me back to the village and left me there, saying that she must return to Eudora at once. I felt guilt and desolation, for I knew she would be crying her eyes out by the roadside and I would not be with her to help, nor knew how to help.

  No word came from Eudora. In my mood of depression I told myself that there never would, though commonsense—as far as there was any left—assured me that so long as she was at home she would take care that there should be no detectable communication between Adrian Gurney and Cleder’s Priory.

  On the fourth day after Tessa had gone I had at last a wire from London:

  ‘Staying at the Ritz drop everything and come: Eudora’

  I sent my reply and left—after pleading illness in the family, since I wanted to be sure of getting my job back when I returned. My kindly employer, who must have quietly noticed my melancholy, told me I’d never have to look for a job so long as he was in business and I should cheer up and not worry. Cheer up I could not, but his words at least gave me back some self-confidence.

  The Eudora I now met was a woman I had never known before. At Molesworthy I could not think of her as anything but pure English in her tastes and manner of living, but now in London she looked the American grande dame, dressed all in black—the only and very private sign of her mourning. The air of decision and the humorous eyes were the same as ever and yet authority and distinction were more evident. Heads turned in curiosity about her as she crossed the foyer to meet her shabby friend.

  She did not use words to put me at ease. She gathered me up and kissed me like a son. I was in her world again. I had no other, and it was still there for me.

  As soon as we were up in her room I asked her how Tessa was.

  ‘My poor Willie! I sent you Tessa so that you could comfort each other. But I should have known you are both too young and too straight.’

  ‘She was so cold.’

  ‘What did you expect? That Tessa would throw her arms round you and scream “Thank God you’re safe”?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I have persuaded her to go back to London and her friends.’

  ‘But she has changed. She has grown out of all that.’

 
; ‘Yes, dear Willie. So she will be sure at last where she belongs.’

  ‘At Molesworthy?’

  ‘Never at Molesworthy. For many reasons I cannot bear it any more. I am going back to America.’

  I asked her why and she replied that she had no other duty any longer.

  ‘When I was young, I was in revolt against the exploitation of the helpless,’ she said. ‘Now that I am growing old, I am in revolt once more—against all the conduct we are accepting, Willie. The plain citizen is no angel. Never has been. But if we allow his moral sense to waste away, we’re going to have a culture of devils where no man can trust another’s word or hand. Such money as I have will be used to stop the rot.’

  And a very formidable opponent she would be, I thought, always a law to herself in friendship or vengeance.

  ‘But I shall leave one sound investment here which Alwyn wished—a farm in our west country with the most reliable tenant I can find. That happens to be you. It’s a straight business transaction, Willie. You won’t have learned anything about farm tenancies in Romania, but they’ll become very familiar to you after a year’s training here. You’ll pay me rent because you’ll have to, and it will be lent back to you for the few years that you are likely to need it. That’s settled. Now, tell me calmly about his death.’

  It was easier this time to relate the whole story of our journey and the Wansdyke, for she understood every facet of Alwyn’s character, even that defenceless side which he concealed from Tessa.

  ‘Was it suicide, Willie?’ she asked.

  ‘No, never! He was like the warrior he dreamed of. He wanted to kill, not to die. But if it cost him his life, he didn’t care.’

  ‘His own justice,’ she said. ‘Sometimes when one defends what one loves there is no other way.’

  ‘And Rachel? Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know. The last time I went to see how she was getting on I found only Sack.’

  ‘Sack?’

  ‘He must have crawled into the derelict when I brought her food. There was only a foot or two of water and I was so frightened of the boat being stranded on the mud that in the hurry I never noticed he had gone.’