by Trevanian
Jonathan’s fists clenched and unclenched. “He’s quite a number, that vicar. No messing around with fluctuating loyalties for him. When he wants you, he ties you up properly.”
“True. He’s got both of us. And he does the whole thing with a hearty handshake and polite small talk.”
“And a wink.”
“Oh, yes. And a wink. I suppose that winking is just a nervous tic, but it’s a nuisance. It’s infectious when you’re talking to him. You have this urge to wink back, and that wouldn’t do at all.”
Jonathan was relieved that the talk was taking this lighter tone. The last thing in the world he needed was the burden of this girl’s problems or, worse yet, her affection. Lovemaking was no threat to his precious insulation. Two people meet on the neutral ground of lust, they scratch their itches, then they go back into themselves. Nothing shared, nothing lost. But this sort of thing—this sharing of ideas and problems, this quiet talk into the common dark—this could be dangerous. Sapping.
Maggie leaned across him and butted her cigarette out in the bedside ashtray. Then she resettled herself against him and ran her fingers over his stomach idly. “This is kind of old hat for you, isn’t it? I read in your file about that Eiger affair—about that girl who roped you into it.” She felt his stomach tighten, but she plunged ahead with that well-intentioned instinct for the emotional jugular that characterizes good women grimly determined to understand and help. “Her name was Jemima Brown, wasn’t it?”
There was no inflection in Jonathan’s voice when he said, “Yes.”
“Was she at all like me?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Oh.” She removed her hand from him. “Did you love her?”
Jonathan got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Beyond the window, the night horizon was still smudged by a reddish glow of burning stubble out in the fields, but this false dawn was not so distant from the real one, for the birds were beginning to sound the odd chirp in expectation.
Maggie sat up and patted the bed beside her. “I’ll make you a bargain,” she said in comic broad brogue. “Bring your fine body back here, and I’ll not plague you with me queries into your emotional life. Which is not to say that I won’t be making any demands upon you at all, at all.”
He rejoined her, stretching out flat on his back and feeling that he had been childishly touchy. She scooted down beside him and pressed her forehead against his. He looked into her impish green eye—one only and large at this distance. “You have a way of coming out one up, haven’t you?” he said.
“Instinct for emotional survival. Do you realize that we’ve made sexual pigs of ourselves in the little time we’ve had together?”
“Shameful.”
“Isn’t it just. Physically prodigal, I’d call it.”
“I think it’s only fair to warn you that I’m an aging man. I may not be up to it.”
“Lord, I hate double entendre.”
Breakfast, the only meal English cooks feel comfortable with, was interrupted by The Sergeant bursting into the dining room, his face flushed and streaming with sweat. “Where the ’ell ’ave you been!” he shouted at Jonathan, who was finishing a last cup of tea with Yank and Maggie at a corner table somewhat out of the draft. “I’ve been runnin’ me arse off around these bleedin’ ’ills!”
Jonathan set down his napkin and looked out the window on the countryside, where the corn stubble was pastel under the lowering gray sky.
The Sergeant crossed to their table in three angry strides, and his bulk hovered over Jonathan.
“More tea?” Jonathan asked Maggie.
“No, thank you.”
“I’m talking to you, mate!” The Sergeant put his heavy hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. Jonathan glanced down at the thick fingers as though they had dropped from a passing bird, then he looked across at Yank with raised eyebrows.
Yank intervened nervously. “Come on, now. No need to get your dander up. He’s just been sitting here having breakfast with us. Cool it, man.”
“When I went into his room this morning, the bleedin’ bed ’adn’t been slept in. Looked like he’d scarpered. The lads and me’s been all over the grounds lookin’ for ’im!”
“You must have worked up quite an appetite,” Jonathan commented softly. “And it’s obvious that you needed the exercise.”
“I’m fitter than you’ll ever be, mate.”
“In which case, you don’t need my support to stand up.” Jonathan glanced again at the hand, which was removed from his shoulder with an angry snap.
“Let’s drop it,” Yank told The Sergeant. “After all, the Guv has given Dr. Hemlock the run of the place.”
“You know he don’t want ’im up . . . there.” The Sergeant jerked his head in the direction of the path leading to the Feeding Station. “And anyway, nobody told me nothin’ about ’im having the run of the place.”
“I am telling you now,” Yank said distinctly, clarifying for Jonathan the chain of command from the Vicar. “Now be a good lad and sit down to your breakfast.”
The Sergeant glowered at Jonathan, then left, grumbling.
Yank leaned forward and spoke confidentially to Jonathan. “I wouldn’t put him on, if I were you. He’s no quiz kid, but he’s got a temper, and he’s a master of hand-to-hand combat.”
“I am forewarned.”
“By the way. Just out of curiosity, where did you pass the night?”
Maggie smiled into her plate.
Jonathan answered offhandedly, timing his response to catch Yank with a forkful of eggs on the way to his mouth. “At the Feeding Station.”
The fork hovered, then returned to the plate still laden. The color had drained from Yank’s face. “That’s a good deal less funny than you fancy, Dr. Hemlock.”
It amused Jonathan to note that all traces of American accent fled from Yank’s voice under pressure, just as multilingual people always return to their native language when they swear, count, or pray.
Unable to eat, Yank excused himself and left.
“That was cruel,” Maggie said.
“Uh-huh. What do you know about this Feeding Station?”
“Nothing, really. It’s up the path there. Guards and dogs and all. Sometimes the guards come down here to the bar or to take lunch, but they never talk about it.”
“Can you find out about it for me?”
“I can try.”
“Do that.”
It had turned wet and blustery by the time Jonathan was allowed to walk to the vicarage with only the light guard of Yank, who kept up a running conversation of trivia, quite recovered from his crisis of distrust over the mention of the Feeding Station. When they reached the gate. Yank joined two other young men dressed in the flared dark suits and wide bright ties that were almost a Loo uniform. Jonathan could not help noticing how much like East End hoods they looked.
He found the Vicar in his garden, dressed in a stout hunting jacket and twill breeches tucked into thick stockings. His shoes were heavy, boat-toed brogans. The costume contrasted sharply with Jonathan’s close-fitting city clothes and custom-made light shoes. The Vicar did not seem to be aware of Jonathan’s presence as he muttered angrily to himself while scattering fish food to the carp in his pond. Then he looked up. “Ah, Dr. Hemlock! Good of you to come.”
“You seem distressed.”
“What? Oh. Well, I am a bit. Nothing to do with your affair. It’s that damned Boggs! Will you take something? Coffee, perhaps, or tea?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Just as good. I was hoping we might take a little walk through the fields as we chatted. No place like the open country for privacy. There are insects in the hedgerows, but no bugs—if you have my meaning there.”
Jonathan looked up at the threatening, gusting sky.
“No worry about the weather,” the Vicar assured him. “Forecast predicts only occasional rain.” He winked.
Jonathan shrugged and followed him to the bottom of the garden wher
e the path became a narrow foot trail through a tangled coppice. “How did this Boggs get damned?” he asked the back of the figure trudging out briskly before him.
“Pardon? Oh, I see. Well, Boggs owns the land next to the church. A farmer, you know. Been ripping out hedgerows again. Do you know that more than five thousand miles of hedgerows are ripped up annually in England?”
“Pity they didn’t get this one,” Jonathan mumbled after stumbling over a root.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Five thousand miles of homes for small creatures and nestings for birds torn out every year! And some of our hedgerows were planted in Saxon times! But the farmers say they get in the way of modern machinery. They are sacrificing the inheritance of centuries for a few pounds’ profit. No sense of responsibility to nature. No sense of history. Oh, I am sorry! Did that branch catch you as I let it go? And do you know what Boggs has done now?”
Jonathan didn’t care.
“He sold off the tract next to the church to construction speculators. Think of it! In a year’s time there may be an estate of retirement homes abutting the churchyard. Thin-shelled boxes with names like ‘End O’ The Line,’ and ‘Dunroam Inn’!”
“Does all this really matter to you? Or is this a little show for my benefit?”
The Vicar stopped and turned. “Dr. Hemlock, the Church is my life. And I take a special interest in preserving the living monuments of its architecture. Every penny I make from my avocation with the government goes to that end.” He winked.
“And is that how you justify the ugly things your organization does?”
“It might be. If patriotism required justification.”
“I see. You picture yourself as a kind of whore for Christ. Presumably Magdalen was your college.”
The Vicar’s expression frosted over, his face seemed to flatten, and he spoke with crisper tones. “It occurs to me that we might do better to confine our communication to the problem before us.” He turned and continued his walk, pushing through the brush to a field of stubble.
“Let’s do that.”
“It goes without saying,” the Vicar spoke over his shoulder, “that everything you learn in the course of your work with us is absolutely confidential. My young assistant—the man you know as Yank—has told you in outline the function of the Loo organization. Rather like the Search and Sanction Division of your CII, Loo is assigned the thankless task of providing protection for MI–5 and MI–6 operatives by technique of counterassassination. For good or for ill, our position as most secret of the secret and most efficient of the efficient brings extraordinary tasks to my doorstep. The affair at hand is one such. It is not in essence what your people would call a sanction. There is no specific assignment to kill a given person. To state it better: The affair does not absolutely require assassination. But the chances are you will be pressed to that extreme in an effort to remain alive yourself. Oh, my goodness! I should have warned you about that boggy spot. Here, give me your hand. There! Ah, you seem to have left a shoe behind. Never mind, I’ll fetch it out for you. There. Good as new!”
The Vicar pressed on, inhaling deeply the brisk breeze that carried needles of rain with it. “I think it would be clearer if I presented the situation to you in terms of morals, for modern trends in turpitude lie at the core of the issue. Sexual license, to be specific. The New Morality—which is neither true morality nor particularly new, as a casual reference to the social lives of the Claudian emperors will affirm—has infected every stratum of society, from the universities to the coal pits—not that that is such a great gulf fixed, what with the democratization of the schools. Perhaps it is only natural that a generation that has passed the greater part of its life under the covert threat of atomic annihilation, that has seen the traditional bulwarks of family and class crumble under the pressures of enforced egalitarianism and liberalism gone to seed, that has experienced the decline of formal literature and art and the rise of television, pop art, folk masses, thriller novels, happenings, and the rest of it—all of which appeal to the nerve ends rather than to the mind, and to immediate reaction rather than to tranquil contemplation—perhaps it is only natural that such a generation would seek the sexual narcotic. Although as a churchman I cannot condone such activities, as a humanitarian I can grant the existence of powerful stimuli prompting people toward burying their minds in the mire of flesh and orgasm. Wish we had a flask of tea with us. That would warm you up. Come, let’s press on and get the blood circulating.
“It suffices to say that a general retreat into sexual excess has become a fact of life in all circles, save the working class, which has been protected from infection by virtue of its want of imagination. And it would seem that unnatural sexuality is a habit-forming vice. Once he embarks on its use, the thrill-seeker develops a tolerance for the more . . . ah . . . commonplace activities, and finds they no longer serve to relax him and to dim his mind. The nerves seem to develop calluses, as it were. And so the sybarite is pressed toward more . . . ah . . . unconventional . . . ah . . .”
“I see.”
“I thought you might. For some years now this grass fire of the senses, if I may avail myself of metaphor, has been spreading amongst persons in the government and civil service. At first it was limited to the relatively safe and pallid practice of exchanging wives while on holiday. But in time, the fire demanded more occult fuels. And, as one might expect, certain organizations sprang up to supply these demands. Most of them are smutty little operations offering simple varieties of number, race, and posture, together with the dubious advantage of becoming famous through the efforts of spying newspaper photographers. A little higher on the scale were places that offered variants long popular on the Continent—particularly in France, of course. Girls dressed as nuns, girls in caskets—that sort of thing. Look there! Did you see them? Two hares bounded across that bit of meadow. The autumn hare! Memories of boyhood, eh?”
Jonathan turned up the collar of his jacket and stared ahead miserably.
“At the apex of this pyramid of vice—Oh, my, I do wax Victorian. At the apex is a small and terribly expensive operation that offers to elite clientele what might be described as sexual maxima. I shall not abuse you with the details of these events. Suffice it to say that the organization in question is also involved in the importation of Pakistanis—illegal immigrants who cannot find gainful employment and who are driven to extremes to stay alive. This organization finds particular use for Pakistani children of both sexes between the ages of nine and fifteen. And I must confess that it is not only men in government that frequent this establishment, but often their wives and daughters as well. And all this nastiness goes on to the accompaniment of excellent wines and lobster—in season.”
“I assume the clientele is not limited to clerks and middle-management personnel.”
“Sadly, it is not. I blush to admit that among the clients are certain Very Highly Placed Persons.” He winked.
“Do the bed linens bear the stamp ‘by appointment’?”
The Vicar flushed, angry. “Certainly not, sir!”
Jonathan held up one hand in a gesture of peace. “Just wanted to know what league I was playing in.”
“I see.” The Vicar was not mollified. He turned and continued trudging on, entering an overgrown wood, anger making him increase his stride and breast his way through the tangle. When his anger had burned out, he continued. “For a year or two, this activity went on. A deplorable business, but not one that endangered the security of the country, so far as we knew. But then something happened that required me to review my evaluation of The Cloisters—for that is the ironic name of the resort in which these excesses take place.”
“It’s in the country somewhere?”
“No. London. Hampstead, in fact. Look there! A rhododendron! Like you, a visitor to our shores.”
“What happened with The Cloisters? Blackmail?”
“No. Not really. And that’s the uncomfortable
part of it. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
“One afternoon—just after tea, as I recall—I received a confusing call from my opposite number in MI–5. He had a report, the content of which had galvanized that normally lethargic branch of the service into activity. As one might suspect, they had no idea what to do with the information, but they had the good sense to push it over onto my plate. A man had stopped by at their office, a civil servant in the middle ranks with the Defense Ministry, and had boldly revealed to them a number of astonishing facts. Getting a bit above himself, he had participated in the leisure activities offered at The Cloisters. I don’t know whether his money ran out or his conscience prevailed, but after a time he discontinued his visits. Then one afternoon he was visited by a caller who, with all the trappings of civility, demanded that he come later that evening to The Cloisters. The poor wretch dared not refuse. When he arrived, he was taken to a private salon where he was treated to a private showing of motion pictures.”
“And he was surprised to find himself the star of the film. Argh-ga!”
“You anticipate correctly. Good Lord! I knew it! I told Boggs a dozen times that stile was rotten and wanted mending. I knew it would give way just when someone was straddling the fence. You didn’t by any chance—”
“No! I’m all right!”
“Could I give you a hand down?”
“I’ll make it!”
“You’re quite sure you’re all right? You’re walking a bit oddly.”
Jonathan crashed angrily on through the pathless thicket.
“The strange thing,” the Vicar continued, “was that there was no threat of blackmail. Indeed, no pressure was brought to bear on the official to continue frequenting The Cloisters. But it was made perfectly clear to him that any mention of their activities would be met by an immediate publication of the film. As you might suspect, he was distressed beyond telling, but he was assured that he was not alone in this uncomfortable position. They evidently had a large number of films implicating a wide spectrum of government personalities.”