“Fit now?’’ he asked. “Lift weights and so on?’’
“Yes, sir. Perfect, sir.’’
“Long time, isn’t it? Did they order this when you left the hospital?’’
“They said not to go on ship, not lift weight, eat good food, six months. I do as they say.’’
“You’ll get good food here,’’ the skipper said with a faint grin. “And plenty of hard work.’’
“Thank you, sir,’’ Boris answered.
The skipper turned to the passport. The measurements and colour details were near enough, Boris knew. He had an answer ready for the captain’s next question.
“No beard?’’ he asked. “You look quite different without it.’’
Boris allowed himself to smile.
“They shave it off at the hospital. Then my wife like me like this, so I not grow again. Now I grow.’’
The skipper nodded. He put the papers together and handed them back.
“Why d’you want to sail with me?’’ he asked. “We call at Gdynia first off. Stockholm and Copenhagen for cargo on the way back. I took you on because I need a man who speaks Polish. My last chap wouldn’t sign on again. Said he didn’t feel safe there. What about you?’’
“I have my British nationality,’’ said Boris, drawing himself up proudly.
“O.K. It’s up to you. Report to the bo’sun. We take the tide at nineteen hours. No shore leave for you.’’
“Aye, aye, sir. Thank you, sir.’’
Boris turned away. So far all was well. Sergei had told him how to address English ships’ officers. This captain had accepted him; there had been no awkward moments. But Carfax must now know what had happened. Just over two hours and a half till they sailed.
The time passed quickly enough, dumping his possessions, meeting his shipmates, carrying out a variety of orders. He knew the work basically, though it was all done in a slightly different way. The atmosphere was easier, more natural than on Russian ships, though the jobs were more efficiently planned and executed and the gear was much more modern. He thought he would enjoy his voyage. His last voyage. He had already made up his mind never to go to sea again.
At seven o’clock precisely they cast off and left the dockside. In a couple of hours’ time they were out in the North Sea with the light fading and the stars coming out and a half-moon rising from the faint clouds on the horizon ahead. When Boris went off watch he found several evening newspapers lying about the fo’ castle. He read the first accounts of Sergei’s death.
He lay in his bunk but could not sleep. Grief shook him and remorse and fury with that blind, obstinate, stupid unknown man, so careless of life he had fired at a mackintosh and hat he recognized, without making sure of the identity of the man who wore them.
But it was he, not Sergei, who had suggested they should exchange their outer garments that morning when they met at Notting Hill Gate. In the public lavatory they had each put down his own and taken up the other’s. This simplest of disguises had been successful as far as Colin was concerned (the paper mentioned his presence at the hospital), but fatal to Sergei.
The devils! They must have used a silencer. But the fault – the ultimate fault, was his own.
He would not allow himself to believe in the possibility that Sergei had taken his own life. The man knew he was dying of cancer, but he had said several times that he hoped to spend a few more months in his home with the wife and family he loved. He, Boris, had taken away this last happiness. He would never be able to forgive himself for that.
During his next watch on deck Boris became calmer. Every hour took him farther from the immediate danger, the unrelenting pursuit he had suffered almost from the first day of his return to England. He had hoped for too much in his memories of that peaceful, law-abiding island. It was no longer peaceful, but heaving with social change, no longer law-abiding, but racked with crime and open cynical disregard of former moral, even intellectual, standards. And yet all the noisy, self-glorifying, self-exhibiting crew were less frightening than the frozen former leaders of public and private behaviour, who confused their ignorance with loyalty and confessed their prejudices, their ultimate indifference, with a smile. He had no regrets at leaving. The gulf between his life and theirs, his experience and theirs, his hopes and fears and theirs, was too wide.
But he still grieved for Sergei and for his part in the man’s death. It followed a pattern that seemed to pursue him over and over again. Did he lack foresight, imagination, reasonable care? Why did others always suffer, against his passionate wish, against his true love? Often, on night watches as Gertrude made her deliberate way across the North Sea, through the shoal-infested channels into the Baltic and along the shores of North Germany, he put his head down, unseen, on the rail and wept for the ills he had done and could never remedy.
By the time the ship reached Gdynia, Boris had surmounted the sharpness of his self-punishment. He knew what he would do on landing. His English clothes would bring him sufficient currency in the black market to buy his railway ticket. In his grip he also had a duffle coat that he would exchange for some form of casual native dress, tunic, shirt, whatever the peasants now wore. It shocked him to think that he did not know even such elementary things about his native land. From the railway station where he would get off he would set out to walk. After that his future would shape itself. Bearded again, with the Polish identity Carfax had given him and another new name, Boris Sudenic would disappear for ever.
Before he left the ship on the shore leave from which he would not return, he asked to see the captain and alone with him in his cabin handed him an open letter and said, “If I may ask you, please sir, to read this.’’
“A letter to your wife? You want me to read it?’’
“Please. And take it to post in England, not in Poland. There is the censorship.’’
The skipper was used to odd requests, so he did not argue but took the letter from the envelope. It stated simply, ‘Sergei Voliniak, suffering from incurable cancer, will not return to England to distress still more his dear wife. He wishes to die in his beloved Poland.’
The skipper looked up at the vigorous bearded figure standing so quietly before him. He simply said, “You’re leaving us then, Voliniak?’’
“Yes, sir.’’
“I could keep you on board. Forbid a last shore leave before we sail tomorrow.’’
“I would swim there.’’
The captain ignored this defiance which he knew was complete.
“It will be impossible to replace you here in Poland.’’
“In Sweden, sir, it will be easy. That is not far.’’
A flash of annoyance lit the skipper’s blue eyes. “Perhaps you’d like to suggest a few names.’’
Boris was silent. After a second or two the skipper handed him back the letter and envelope, which was addressed to Carfax.
“Better seal it yourself,’’ he said. “I’ll post it in Harwich.’’
When he had it back he put it down on his table and held out his hand.
“Good luck,’’ he said. “Whoever you are.’’
Boris thanked him. He had complete confidence in this man; he knew his letter would be posted and that the captain would never disclose to anyone any part of their conversation.
In the evening, two days later, in the heart of Poland, Boris walked away from the railway into a land he knew and loved, whose people he understood, whose language he spoke, whose present conditions he meant to accept and in whose future, however it might develop, he meant to share.
The captain posted Boris’s letter as he had promised. When he read it, Carfax at once arranged to go down to Reading, taking the letter with him. It would not surprise Mrs. Voliniak, he knew, for he had, immediately on learning of her husband’s death and Boris’s fresh disappearance, taken steps to prevent any inquiry and unwanted publicity by informing the widow that her husband wanted her to know he had gone to sea again. This, Carfax calculated, would kee
p her quiet until he had further news to offer her and could lead her, unspectacularly, to accept the fact of his death. All thoroughly unethical, he knew, but entirely necessary.
Mrs. Voliniak took the letter and Carfax’s explanations, limited to the voyage of the Gertrude, very quietly. She cried a little, but said she had suspected it from the time he left her, only a couple of days out of hospital, to go and see a friend in London.
“I knew at the time it was phoney,’’ she said. “He took his sea clothes with him, I found out afterwards. That spoke for itself. They told me at the hospital he hadn’t more than a month or two to live. It’s my belief he guessed it himself from the start. Cancer patients often do, don’t they?’’
“Yes,’’ Carfax answered.
“I don’t blame him,’’ she went on. “It was to spare me and the children partly, as he says. We were happy enough together, though he was away a lot, of course. But he never really settled down in England. Foreigners don’t, do they?’’
“Sometimes they do,’’ Carfax said. “Not very often.’’
He began to hint, as tactfully as possible, that she might be in need of financial assistance and perhaps he could put her in touch—
“No,’’ she told him. “That Polish gentleman that shot himself. You won’t know this – it didn’t come out in the papers – but he was the son of the old Count Sudenic that Sergei worked for as a lad. He told me that. This Mr. Sudenic went to the hospital to see him twice. Well, he must’ve been told about Sergei’s illness, because he’s left him quite a bit of money in his will.’’
“Indeed?’’ Carfax said. “I’m very glad to hear it.’’
So, he thought, would not be the governments of England, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and perhaps others. But then none of them, except England, would ever know.
“Yes,’’ Mrs. Voliniak went on. “The solicitor, a Mr. Phillimore, wrote and a Polish gentleman came to see me – elderly man. I couldn’t pronounce his name. Very kind and considerate. He told me—’’
She broke down again and Carfax took his leave of her. He wondered how much old Scziliekowicz really knew. He had attended the funeral of the supposed Boris Sudenic. Come to think of it he had told him he was winding up Boris’s affairs. This was part of his mission, evidently. With the help of Ann’s lawyer brother. Perjury on the part of the legal profession itself. All in a good cause – or was it? What were we all coming to?
Carfax went back to London. The Sudenic file was closed. One more case disposed of, perhaps permanently. He devoutly hoped so. A very troublesome alien.
In the Brentwood family circle the secret of Boris’s escape leaked by degrees during the next few months, until every member knew exactly what had happened. In her growing contentment and happiness Margaret refused to keep anything back from Colin and he, who would never be able wholly to rely on the continuance of his present good fortune, was careful not to argue or criticize or even blame any of them for keeping him in ignorance for so long.
Together he and Margaret regretted Boris’s lawlessness, his instability. His frightful experiences had ruined him, they concluded. He had lost his principles, his code of decent conduct, everything that meant civilized living. They thanked God that Britain had retained these things, at least in the circles that mattered.
As for the Ogdens, they had guessed the course of events quite accurately. Putting together the detail from hints and fragments of conversation they had heard was child’s play to them. As servants who had lived in their employers’ homes all their lives, they had acquired a special technique, not exactly of eavesdropping, but of becoming aware of most of the family secrets and all of the family goings-on.
Late that autumn Ogden came in from brushing leaves under the trees at the bottom of the garden. He had been reminded of the summer days when Mrs. Colin and Mr. Sudenic had sat there, talking, screened from the house and all prying eyes.
“Seems he was a spy,’’ Ogden said, “but I reckon he never told her nowt.’’
“That’s why she was so mad at him, poor lad,’’ Mrs. Ogden said, pityingly.
“I don’t believe that other chap did himself in. They Russians got ’im. Silencer on the gun, it said int’papers. What for’d he use that to kill himself?’’
“Happen you’re right, Sam, but it don’t do to go repeating it. Spy or no spy, that warn’t the reason ’e come here.’’
“Not reason?’’
“Nay.’’
“Then why?’’
“Just wanted to live,’’ said Mrs. Ogden, firmly. “Like ’e always had. Like any normal creature should and does. No one couldn’t have gone through what ’e did without he clung to life itself. Just that. It’s what he’s doing now, I’ll be bound. Take a lot, it would, to put that one under. ’E ’ ad the will.’’
“You make it overly simple, Martha. The lad were double spy, as they call it. Mr. Colin knows and that Mr. Carfax. Not straightforward at all, it weren’t. You should listen to them. Hear what I’ve heard.’’
“Oh, aye, them,’’ said Mrs. Ogden, unconvinced. “They’re the clever ones.’’
THE END
Copyright
First published in 1964 by Geoffrey Bles
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1964
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