by Vicary, Tim
‘Don't worry, boys, it's not your fault. The operation goes ahead as planned. We'll just have to take this car instead, won't we? Come in now and fetch the prisoners, then we'll be on our way.’
As he turned, a shot rang out from the library.
Charles stepped back into the library and stared at his wife and son.
It was a haunting sight. Deborah was in a long brown dress with her fair hair pinned up roughly into two wide swathes at the top of her head, and her hot dark eyes watching him anxiously. She had one arm round Tom, who was still clutching the blankets over the grey school shirt and orange pullover and tie and shorts which he had worn all night in the ice-house. He still shivered occasionally and his face was unusually pale, but his eyes were alight and his chin was raised defiantly as though there was still hope.
When there is none, Charles thought. There should be a portrait of those two sitting like that, mother and son, because they will soon be dead, like all the other sitters in all the other portraits round the wall. And if they are not portrayed like that, no one will see them as they should be remembered.
They will be dead either way. Werner will shoot them if I refuse, and if I agree he will still shoot them in the end because I will fail. I am bound to fail, I am no actor. However hard I try I shall never be able to go up to Carson in Craigavon with a bandage round my head and persuade him to walk beside me to a car full of men who will kill him. It is just not possible.
So Deborah and Tom are bound to die.
He walked towards them slowly across the room. As he did so, another thought came to him.
There is only one armed man in this room.
Franz was watching him calmly, backing away a little towards the windows so that he could cover the three of them easily with his rifle. He didn't look unduly worried, but most of the time the rifle was trained towards Charles, not Deborah or Tom.
What had Werner said? I cannot entirely trust my men to kill women and children. Something like that.
There were a number of small tables in the library, with vases and books and oil lamps on them. To reach the armchairs and sofas round the fireplace, Charles had to pass close by one of these tables with a small expensive black china flower vase standing on it. The vase was about eighteen inches tall, with a long narrow neck and a wide bulbous base to hold the water. There were a number of tulips and ferns in it.
Franz was on Charles's right, the vase was on his left. As he passed the table, Charles moved his right hand across his body, seized the vase by its neck, and flung it back-handed straight into Franz's face.
It was a perfect shot. The base of the vase hit Franz full on the nose, and shattered into a dozen pieces. Water and flowers sprayed everywhere. Franz's head snapped backwards, almost breaking his spine, and his feet took two tottering steps back as well before the momentum of the blow flung him over on his back so that he fell, cracking his head hard against a windowsill behind him. As he collapsed, he pulled the trigger of his rifle.
The bullet ripped into a portrait of an elegant eighteenth century lady and her child on a Shetland pony over the mantelpiece. Deborah screamed. Charles gasped, staggering from the force of the throw which had sent him off balance. His head was reeling, dizzy. But he recovered enough to see Franz lying propped against the wall with his head slumped on his chest and the rifle rolling forwards out of his nerveless hands onto his knees. Charles bent down and picked it up.
Instinctively his military training came into operation. He went down into the firing position, one knee on the floor behind him, the other raised with his elbow resting on it and the rifle pointing towards the door of the library. He flicked the bolt back to eject the used round, and forwards to load a new one. Then the library door opened and Werner ran in with an automatic pistol in his left hand shouting: 'Franz? Was ist los?' and Charles shot him through the chest.
Werner lurched, the force of the bullet carrying his chest backwards while his legs still carried him forward, and then he skidded, fell flat on his back and crashed into a table. Charles flicked the bolt back to eject the used cartridge and forwards to load a new one, saw the massive bulk of Karl-Otto coming through the door with his rifle raised, and fired again.
Karl-Otto stumbled forwards and fired his own rifle into the floor. Charles's shot had taken him high in the left shoulder, but he was not dead. He crashed face down onto the floor on top of Werner, his rifle still clutched in his massive right hand. Charles flicked his bolt back and forwards again, searching for the third target, Adolf. But Adolf took one look through the door and then backed away, flat against the wall in the hall outside. Charles waited. One to go.
He stayed exactly where he was, kneeling in the firing position, rifle cocked, finger on the trigger, butt pressed into his shoulder, staring at the door. One second . . . two . . . five seconds . . . ten . . .
Tom let out a tiny, strangled whimper as though he might be hurt. Charles glanced swiftly over his shoulder and saw Deborah with both her arms wrapped round him and Tom peering out over his blankets with eyes black with utter terror. Charles frowned at them both, meaning: Keep down! Keep quiet! and turned his eyes back instantly to the door. Nothing. No sign of Adolf. He waited.
Karl-Otto groaned. Charles risked another swift glance away from the door. Karl-Otto was hard to see. He was lying face down on top of the inert Werner, half-hidden behind a small desk, and an ornamental table had collapsed on top of his head. He groaned again, and moved a little bit, and Charles saw the big brawny right arm that still held the rifle shift slightly. He couldn't quite see the rifle though, it was hidden beneath a pile of papers and the remains of a potted fern that had fallen on top of him with the tables. But he thought the rifle was moving.
Cautiously, making no sound, Charles rose to his feet and took a single step forward, swinging his rifle round to his right and downwards as he did so. He was right— there was Karl-Otto's big determined face looking up at him as the German rolled onto his left side. Karl-Otto's rifle came up in his massive right hand until the little dark muzzle of it was wavering upwards like a single deadly eye pointing at Charles's face . . .
Charles fired.
The bullet smashed straight into Karl-Otto's chest. His huge body leapt like a clubbed seal, and his hand twitched and fired his rifle upwards into the ceiling. His legs came up and folded briefly into the foetal position, and then he slid off Werner's body and lay face upwards on the floor beside him.
As Karl-Otto's rifle clattered to the floor, Charles flicked his own bolt back and forwards and looked up towards the door, but it was already too late as he had feared it would be, because Adolf leaned round the doorpost with his rifle cocked and ready and all the time Charles was raising his own rifle — so slowly it seemed, as though moving underwater — he could see Adolf's finger tightening on the trigger and then he felt the explosion in his chest and saw the flash of light together and then nothing more ever on this earth.
Only when Charles lay face upwards on the floor at her feet did Deborah move. Slowly, she stood up. She did not let go of Tom for a moment but forced him roughly behind her so that she was shielding him with her own body.
She stared at the man, Adolf, standing in the door.
He was tall, bonier than the others. He had a thin face with dark receding hair and the hands that clutched the smoking rifle had tattoos on them, an anchor on one and a sailing ship on the other. He had dark brown eyes that looked as frightened as her own.
For a long moment he stared at her, while the blue smoke from his rifle barrel drifted up towards the shattered ceiling, and she waited for him to lift the gun again and point it at her. Then something unfroze in his mind.
‘Ach nein,’ he said. He shook his head once, and then again more definitely, stepped back into the hall, and closed the door. She heard his boots on the steps outside, and, a moment later, the ignition firing in the Daimler. Then came the sound of the wheels on the gravel and the car's engine receding down the drive.
Tom crept out from behind her but she did not let go of him; she did not think she would let go of him ever again so long as she lived. The room reeked of blood and cordite. The two of them knelt beside Charles, pale, frozen, while the portraits of his ancestors smiled down at him from the walls.
32
THE LANCIA crawled cautiously up the drive towards Glenfee. It was overburdened — there were eight people jammed into its six seats, and four more hung outside on the running board. All of these except two — the driver and the woman — held new Mannlicher rifles, cocked and pointed in the air, ready for action, so that the car crept forwards across the gravel like a porcupine, its spines raised to defend itself.
As if this were not enough, two motor-cycles growled behind it, the pillion passengers similarly armed. Behind them came a third motor-cycle with a small machine gun mounted on a side-car, which the gunner swivelled warily from side to side as they went through the gates and drove past the wide lawns towards the house.
Sarah Becket sat in the front seat of the Lancia, between the chauffeur and Sergeant Cullen. Very soon, she knew, she would collapse with exhaustion; but for the moment she was simply terrified. If the Germans were still here, there was likely to be a gunfight with Deborah and Tom in the middle of it; if they had already left, they would probably have taken Tom with them, and he would be in worse danger than before.
Nonetheless, she had done her best. She glanced gratefully at Robinson, the chauffeur, beside her. When the Lancia had stopped for her in the lane, an hour or so ago, she had felt certain the two men in it were Germans. But they were not. The man with the shotgun had been Charles's butler, Smythe, who had realised that something was terribly wrong in the house when he had looked out of a window and seen two men he had never seen before carry a wounded Charles into the library. Then there had been shouts, and another shot. He had distrusted Werner from the first, and had not believed these men were soldiers in the UVF. So he had gone on his own initiative to rouse Robinson, and the two of them had pushed the Lancia quietly down the back lane, past the stables, until it was too far away from the house for the sound of its engine to be heard. Then they had driven towards the village with the idea, like Sarah, of seeking help from Sergeant Cullen.
Sergeant Cullen had been roused many hundreds of times before dawn in the African veldt and the North West Frontier. He had learnt, long ago, that speed of thought and action meant the difference between life and the broad blade of a tribesman's spear through your neck. Within ten minutes he had sent a despatch rider speeding towards Craigavon; within twenty he had a convoy driving back towards Glenfee. But he was not accustomed to dealing with hostages.
As the Lancia scrunched to a halt in front of the wide front steps and the verandah, Sarah thought the house had a dreadful, deserted feel. Birds were singing energetically from the trees, but there were no fires lit, no smoke from the chimneys, no faces at the windows. We're too late, she thought. They've gone.
Four men leapt from the running boards and dropped to one knee in the firing position, their rifles aimed at the house. Four others jumped out quickly to join them. Sergeant Cullen barked orders to the motorcycles to drive on round the back.
The front door of the house opened. A woman came out, with a small boy clutched to her long skirts.
Deborah and Tom.
With a little cry of relief Sarah leapt from the car and ran towards the steps to join them, but Sergeant Cullen caught her arm and held her back.
‘Wait! Just a minute, Mrs Becket,’ he said. ‘It may be a trap.’
Deborah walked very quietly forward to the top of the steps and gazed down at them. There was no emotion on her face, none at all. Just a pale haunted weariness, as though she found what was in front of her eyes too hard to comprehend. She saw the lines of armed men and ignored them.
‘Sarah?’ she said. ‘Sarah — come up.’
‘Wait.’ Sergeant Cullen said again. He called out: ‘Mrs Cavendish? Where is your husband, ma'am?’
Deborah looked down. ‘Oh, it's you, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘You've come too late. My husband's inside, but he's dead.’ She waved her hand briefly towards the door, and moved it back quickly to clutch Tom as though she feared he might escape unless she held him. ‘They're all dead, except one, and . . . there's so much blood.’
Sarah saw her sway again, and this time the Sergeant let her go, so she ran up the steps and put her arms round Deborah gently. Soldiers ran past them in their heavy boots, pushing the door open warily and stepping inside. Sarah guided Deborah to a garden seat on the verandah, between an urn of geraniums and a sculpture of a small lion. The seat was wet with rain but it didn't matter.
Sarah said: ‘What happened?’
Deborah sighed, staring out across the park to where the great trees waved by the road in front of the grey squally waters of the lough.
‘Charles shot two of them, and then . . .’ Slowly, piece by piece, the story came out.
‘He would have got them all if . . .’ Tom's thin, shocked, high-pitched voice piped up for the first time, and the two women stopped, waiting for him to finish. But he didn't finish, his voice tailed away.
There are no ifs, Deborah thought. Only what happened. Those endless seconds when he raised the rifle too slowly. And all the waste of our lives before that.
Ifs don't matter.
The sunlight hurt her. It was bright clean sunlight, gleaming out of a clear blue sky on to fields and woods that were still sodden with yesterday's rain. There was still mist along the streams and rivers and in all the dips and valleys of the fields, and the newly-washed leaves on the hedges and trees beside the road glittered and sparkled as they drove past. Despite the sunlight the road was still damp, and sometimes spray whooshed up from the tyres as they drove through puddles where branches overhung the road, and occasional rivulets of water splashed down on their heads and trickled icily under their collars and down the backs of their necks. Yet all the time the sunlight warmed their faces.
If only the sun had shone like this yesterday, Deborah thought bitterly. But on the day of Charles's funeral the rain had come down in torrents. She had stood beside the sodden grave, throwing mud on the coffin instead of dust, and had squelched, shivering, past the honour guard of drenched UVF soldiers with her soaking son's hand clenched tight in her own. There had been so much rain she had not known if there were tears on her face or not, but she must have been crying because of the pain in her chest and throat.
Sir Edward Carson had been there. He had spoken to her kindly and given Tom a little Union flag with the Red Hand of Ulster in the middle. He still held it proudly in his hand now as he sat between Deborah and Sarah in the back of the Lancia on his way to school.
He was proud of his father, Deborah knew. That was the greatest gift Charles had been able to give the boy. He had died like a hero; Tom had seen that. Yesterday Sir Edward Carson had come to Glenfee and said to Deborah, in front of Tom: ‘If it had not been for the heroic actions of yourself and your husband, Mrs Cavendish, not only would I probably be dead, but, far more important than that, this province would have been plunged into the unnecessary chaos of civil war, which I still pray God we can avoid. Not only Ulster but the entire nation is in your debt.’
It appeared that the government in London agreed with him on that if nothing else, because the police had confirmed to Deborah that, because of her sister's part in the events at Glenfee, no attempt was to be made to secure her rearrest. Quite apart from certain embarassing disclosures in London, newspaper interest in the deaths at Glenfee had been intense, and the government would have been extremely foolish to imprison anyone who had played a part in foiling the German plot.
Of the two surviving Germans, one, Adolf, had escaped, and the other, the injured Franz, confirmed what Charles had told Deborah, that Simon Fletcher had been promised a fortune in German marks to betray UVF secrets and kidnap his commanding officer's son. Sometimes, in her prayers, Deborah had asked God why thi
s thing had had to happen to Charles, instead of any one of dozens of other senior officers of similar background in the UVF. But the only one who knew the answer to that was Werner, and he was dead.
As they approached St Andrew's Preparatory School Deborah clutched her son's hand more tightly. I can't do it, she thought, I can't let him go again. But the headmaster, Dr Duncan, was there with his wife on the main steps to meet her, and Tom was clearly so embarrassed by his mother's concern that she had to let go. Dr Duncan himself was crippled with guilt and determined to make amends in any way he could.
‘Under no circumstances, madam,’ he repeated endlessly as they toured the building and settled Tom down again in his dormitory, round the door of which peered the wide, curious eyes of half a dozen of his friends. ‘Under no circumstances whatsoever will young Cavendish or any other boy from now on be allowed to leave the grounds of this school without being accompanied by a member of staff — and Tom will not be allowed home unless you personally come to fetch him. It was a most dreadful thing, dreadful, and I am determined it will never happen again.’
Of course it won't, you silly man, she thought wearily. My husband's dead, no one would want to kidnap Tom now. And, in a strange way his pompous, pointless assurances helped her to deal with her own anxiety. Life had to go on, Tom had to grow up, he couldn't stay tied to her skirts forever.
Nevertheless Tom allowed her to kiss him, and she saw tears well in his eyes, briefly, as she left. In the car, Deborah waved and waved until the car turned a bend in the rutted track and the old ivy-clad school was out of sight. Sarah touched her arm.
‘He'll be all right, Debbie,’ she said. ‘Truly.’
Deborah dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know he will. Oh, that stupid man!’
‘Who? Dr Duncan?’ Sarah smiled. ‘I expect if any German comes he'll bite their legs like a bulldog.’