The Old Vengeful

by Anthony Price

  “Professor …” In any other circumstances she would have been nattered by that, and would have reacted to it somehow. But her mind was bobbing wildly in the Shannon’s wake, somewhere between Kyle of Lochalsh and the inner Sound of Raasay.

  “I can see that your brain’s full of new thoughts!” He smiled impishly. “And that’s what makes the historian, Miss Loftus—the sudden fertilisation of knowledge by intelligence, to breed some tiny embryo of truth! Nurture it, Miss Loftus, nurture it and cherish it!” He swung back to Aske. “Now, Mr Aske—?”

  Aske gave Elizabeth another of his quick looks. “Yes, Professor … Allow me to see you out—“

  They went, leaving Elizabeth to her own thoughts, which were carrying her on an irresistible tide past the old Vengeful on the rocks of Les Echoux and the Fortuné on the Horse Sands, towards the Shannon—

  The door-latch clattered again eventually.

  “That wasn’t overwhelmingly civilised, Miss Loftus, if I may say so,” Aske chided her. “The old boy expected a more graceful dismissal, after all his trouble, you know.”

  She heard him, but the words hardly registered; she could think only … if I can see it, why can’t he see it?

  He shook his head. “Maybe he wasn’t quite expecting a peck on the cheek. But you could at least have shaken his hand.”

  Her confidence ebbed. If it meant nothing to him when it was so obvious, then perhaps it was nothing—a thing long since considered and discarded.

  “Now the poor old boy believes you still haven’t forgiven him for whatever it was he quarrelled over with your father—“

  Whatever it was?

  “—and we still may need his help, Miss Loftus.”

  He didn’t know! It seemed impossible to her. But then, when she remembered how contemptuous Paul had been of him, and how Paul had gone about everything, it suddenly didn’t seem so unlikely—it almost became inevitable, rather—

  “Miss Loftus?” He had realised at last that she was only half listening to him.

  “Don’t you know what they quarrelled about, Mr Aske?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Did it matter? Even if he didn’t know, Paul did—and Dr Audley must know too … Was it possible that they hadn’t seen the wood for the trees? Or was there simply no wood to see?

  “It was over the Shannon, Mr Aske.”

  “Oh?” His glance flicked to the Guardian. “Well, I hardly think that matters.” He sounded as though he was finding politeness difficult. “Does it?”

  “She was originally named the Vengeful—until about eighteen months ago, when they were fitting her out. Father got very angry about the re-naming.”

  “Did he, indeed?” He started to yawn, then quickly put his hand to his mouth. “Mmm?”

  “Doesn’t that …” Diffidence almost froze her, but for a tiny red spark of anger which his boredom kindled “… doesn’t that suggest anything to you?”

  “Well … to be honest, Miss Loftus, the only thing I can think about at the moment is my dinner. That’s what the Professor’s steak-and-kidney pie did for me, I’m afraid.” He indicated the door. “Shall we go and see what that precocious child is up to?” He smiled. “Then—“

  The spark blazed into fire. “Mr Aske!”

  He raised his hands. “All right, all right! The Shannon was once the Vengeful. Then so what?”

  “Can’t you see? Isn’t it possible that we—that you—and Dr Mitchell and Dr Audley—that you’ve all been following the wrong Vengeful?”

  He looked at her strangely, no longer bored, but with an expression in which so many emotions conflicted that there was no room for any one of them. “What do you mean—the wrong—?”

  She had to get it right. “This finding out what really happened in 1812, Mr Aske—you don’t really care about that—you can’t care about it … It’s what’s happening now that you care about—about …” she licked her lips “… about what the Russians are doing.” She forced the bogey-name out, even though it sounded unreal to her, on her own lips: she shouldn’t be telling him this—it had nothing to do with her.

  “The … Russians, Miss Loftus?” He seemed to sense her embarrassment, but was not disposed to help her. “The Russians?”

  Only her anger sustained her. “Paul told me about this thing—this Project Vengeful—“

  “He told you that?” Aske’s own anger sparked suddenly. “He had absolutely no right to do any such thing! That’s quite appalling!”

  “But he did, Mr Aske.” She hated Aske then, as irrationally as she loved Paul, so that both emotions were equally painful to her. “He trusted me.”

  “That’s what’s so appalling!” snarled Aske. “My God! I’ll see him hang for that!”

  “You’ll see him hang?” Elizabeth’s loyalty fixed itself irrevocably on Paul. “But you’ll phone London first, Mr Aske.”

  “I’ll phone London?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  Why? But she wasn’t going to argue with him. “Because I want you to do that—that’s why.”

  Not for Humphrey Aske was Paul’s Theory of Contemporaneity— that would only make him laugh at her, and at Paul too!

  “That’s not a reason, Miss Loftus. I’m not about to make myself a fool for you.”

  Then more fool he! But she wasn’t, in her turn, about to explain why the timing of the Russians’ Vengeful Project and the re-naming of the Vengeful made sense to her: if that was foolishness, it must be hers, not Paul’s. That was the least she could do for him.

  “Then I’ll phone London, Mr Aske. Cathy will give me a number—she’s precocious enough for that. Or there’ll be a number somewhere—I’ll go on phoning until I get it, starting from 999 and working upwards, even if I’m still trying to find it when Faith Audley gets back—and then she’ll give it to me.” She looked down at him obstinately. “And then we’ll see who’s the fool—you or me.”

  “I already know who the fool is.” He tried to stare her down, and she felt his will harden against hers, as it had never hardened before. But that only made it a straight contest, and in a contest she outnumbered him—all the ghosts from the past crowded behind Commander Loftus’s daughter: Lieutenant Chipperfield and Midshipman Paget, and Tom Chard and Abraham Timms, who had kept faith and had done their duty after their fashion, even though faith and duty had made fools of them.

  His will crumbled against such odds. “Very well. I give you best, Miss Loftus—I’ll telephone for you, if that’s what you want. But on your head be it. What do you want me to say?”

  “Just remind them that the Shannon used to be the Vengeful.”

  “Is that all?” He seemed on the point of refusing again, but then thought better of it. “All right. But you stay here while I phone—if I have to make a fool of myself I’d prefer to do it by myself. I’ll do it on those terms only.”

  “Thank you, Mr Aske.”

  He stared at her. “I think I’d rather you didn’t thank me, Miss Loftus.”

  Time stood still as she waited: the effort of imposing her will on him seemed to have drained her energy, and she found it impossible to concentrate on anything except the need to wait patiently. The house was very quiet, she thought.

  Then the door opened, and Aske was staring at her again. “I’m sorry, Miss Loftus,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I owe you an apology.” His lips tightened. “We have to go to London now—at once.” The skin had tightened on his face too, heightening the cheek-bones and jaw-line with stress; except that such a transformation must be in her own mind, imagined out of the change in his manner.

  “We’ve got to go to London?” she echoed him stupidly.

  “You have. I have to take you there.” The stretched skin shivered. “I spoke to David Audley. I told him what you said about the Shannon—and the Vengeful. He was … he was rather upset by it, Miss Loftus.”

  Her mouth opened. “David Audley?”

 
; He nodded. “I spoke to him. He’s getting a message to Kyle of Lochalsh, to our security people there. They’re going to abort the trials, Miss Loftus.”

  Her mouth closed, but her brain swirled. “You spoke to … David Audley?”

  “Yes.” He gestured urgently. “Come on—at once means what it says in our business. It means drop whatever you’re doing and move—it means this instant, Miss Loftus. It means now—“ he turned on his heel and opened the door for her.

  She couldn’t think straight. “But, Mr Aske—“

  “Come on, Miss Loftus—now!”

  She went through the door. The passage was dark now, no longer green-shadowed, with the feeble light of the distant chandelier in the hall blackening the windows.

  He overtook her at the entrance, reaching past her to lift the heavy iron latch on the outer door.

  She didn’t want to go outside, even though outside was only blue-grey, and much lighter than the yellow gloom around her.

  “Quickly, Miss Loftus—“ He handed over her raincoat.

  Cobwebs of rain drifted around her, and the wet smell of the countryside entered her lungs—the smell of growing things, sharpened by a distant hint of autumn to come.

  Aske crunched past her on the gravel, reaching this time for the car door—swinging it open for her.

  No!

  He was already moving round the front of the car, as though he took for granted that the open door must suck her in, regardless of her own free will.

  She straightened up. “I can’t go just like this, Mr Aske. I must say goodbye to Cathy.”

  She didn’t wait for his reaction, but turned on her heel back towards the house.

  Through the door again—then to the doorway into which Cathy had disappeared—through that door—

  A waft of warmer air and light engulfed her simultaneously: the kitchen was huge and bright with the innumerable reflections of electricity on copper pots hanging in descending size from a great beam, and Cathy herself was bending over the kitchen table—a great expanse of ancient working surface which looked as if it had been not so much scrubbed as holystoned colourless like the old Vengeful’s quarterdeck, only by generations of kitchen-maids under cook’s eagle eye.

  “Oh, Elizabeth!” Cathy half-straightened up over her own small area of chaos in the expanse. “Something’s gone wrong with Mummy’s crèmes brulées—they haven’t bruléed properly, darn it!”

  “Where’s your father, Cathy?”

  “He isn’t back yet.” Cathy bent over the chaos.

  “But you said he went somewhere with your mother?”

  “Um—yes.” Cathy prodded one of the messes tentatively. “They went to Guildford to look at curtain material.”

  “Together?”

  “Uh-huh. She’s been on at him for ages—it’s for his study, so she says he’s got to like it. And when he couldn’t go to France she said she’d got him at last.” The child looked up again. “He was waiting for you, but he didn’t expect you so early—he’ll be back any moment, I should think.”

  “He didn’t go to London?”

  “Why should he go to London?” Cathy looked puzzled. “The curtain shop’s in Guildford.”

  “Could he have changed his mind?”

  “Why should he do that? It’s a super shop.” Cathy licked her finger. “He didn’t, anyway.”

  “How do you know, dear?”

  “Because he left the telephone number. He always leaves it, when he knows where he’s going, in case an urgent message comes. So if he’d changed his mind he’d have phoned. That’s the proper drill, you see, Elizabeth.” The child spoke with all the certainty of someone who knew her drill and was proud of being a Ranger’s daughter. “And he wouldn’t leave Mummy in Guildford—there are no buses home … What’s the matter, Elizabeth?”

  The front door clattered.

  “They’ll be back soon,” Cathy reassured her. “They must be caught in the traffic.”

  Elizabeth walked quickly round the table and picked up one of the brulées.

  “Miss Loftus!” said Aske sharply from behind her.

  “You’re right, dear.” She scrutinised the brulée closely. “Could it be something to do with the sugar you used?”

  “Miss Loftus!” He sounded close to bruléeing himself.

  “I was just coming, Mr Aske.” She allowed herself a touch of irritability, but then smiled at the child. “I would leave them, if I were you, Cathy dear—they’ll be all right.” She set the brulée down among its fellows. “But now we must go, dear—“ she started moving as she spoke.

  “What?” squeaked Cathy. “But, Elizabeth—“

  “Must go!” She blotted out the child’s voice with her own as she accelerated out of the kitchen. “Give my love to your mother, and tell her I’ll be back soon—“ Aske was standing aside for her, but was looking past her at the child, and that wouldn’t do “—come on, Mr Aske, then! Don’t just stand there!” She checked her advance momentarily, long enough to shepherd him ahead of her before the child could betray them both, almost pushing him. Yet even as he moved, he did so crab-wise and doubtfully, still looking past her, as though spiked on a dilemma.

  “Elizabeth!” she heard Cathy call behind her.

  “That poor child!” snapped Elizabeth severely at Aske. “You didn’t give me a chance to explain—she won’t know what to think … . Do you want me to go back? Have we time for that? Surely we have?” She slowed down perceptibly.

  “No.” Aske’s doubts resolved themselves. “We must go—you’re right. I’ll get David Audley to phone her.”

  The delicate spatter of rain had increased to a drizzle slanting out of a uniformly grey-black sky pressing down on them, out of which the dark had come prematurely.

  “A damned dirty night,” said Aske. “And by the look of it there’s most of it still to come. Fasten your seat-belt, Miss Loftus. The roads are going to be slippery.”

  Elizabeth fastened her belt unwillingly: it was like snapping her freedom away.

  Then the engine was alive; and in quick succession the headlights blazed ahead, darkening the half-light, and the windscreen wipers swept the rain away contemptuously.

  “Where are we going?” She tried to push back the reality with a matter-of-fact question as the car moved forward.

  Fact—matter-of-fact: they had turned themselves inside out with so many theories, these last twenty-four hours, that the fact of his deliberate lie filled her mind like a monstrous plant in a hot-house which had stifled all other growth.

  “London,” he answered eventually. “I told you.”

  “But where exactly?”

  “One of our places. You don’t really need to know, and I’m not at liberty to say, anyway—sorry.” He shook his head apologetically.

  She tried to think. “Paul said we should stay inside the house, and not go anywhere.”

  “Yes. But Dr Audley says otherwise, and he outranks Dr Mitchell. He’s the boss.” He braked suddenly, and swung the wheel. In the half-gloom Elizabeth missed the signpost and could see only that they had taken a more minor road at a junction.

  She tried to look over her shoulder. “I think you’ve taken the wrong road—“

  “This is a short-cut. Don’t worry.”

  They were never going to meet Audley and Faith coming back from Guildford on this road, thought Elizabeth.

  “You must be tired,” said Aske solicitously. “Why don’t you lie back and close your eyes, and leave the navigation to me? I’ll wake you up in good time.”

  “Yes…” She was aware of the truth of what he had said: under her present mental confusion and disquiet she was bone-weary. So much had happened so quickly, and all of it so strange and so frightening, that it was no wonder she couldn’t think straight—that she was starting to imagine things … and it was all beyond her understanding in any case. There was nothing she could do … there never had been anything she could do, from the start she had been helpless, pushed one way,
then pulled another—it was her role in life, it seemed. “Yes … perhaps I will.”

  “That’s right … You can let the seat back, if you like—there’s a catch down by the side somewhere.”

  “Yes.” She fumbled between the seats.

  “Don’t undo the safety-belts by mistake … When we’ve had our little talk with Dr Audley I’ll put you into a nice hotel for the night,” he said soothingly.

  A little talk with Dr Audley, she thought to herself almost lethargically—she could feel the seat-belt releases, but not the seat-reclining catch, darn it!—but that was one thing she wasn’t going to have …

  “Then you can dream about Lieutenant Chipperfield, and Mr Midshipman Paget, and Chard and Timms, and all the rest of them,” murmured Aske.

  Elizabeth’s hand found the catch, and closed on it.

  Lieutenant Chipperfield, and Midshipman Paget, and Tom Chard, and Abraham Timms—they had all been trapped by misfortune, far from home and in a hostile land—

  The car slowed.

  “What is it?” asked Elizabeth.

  “There’s a phone-box just ahead.” Aske brought the car to a halt, and Elizabeth saw the dim-lighted box in the headlights. “There’s another routine call I’ve just remembered I ought to make, in case anyone phones the house. I won’t be a moment, Miss Loftus.”

  They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with no other light in sight through the rain-blurred windows of the car, and only a road sign warning “Bend” picked out in the dipped beams as an evidence of civilisation.

  She stared at the shadowy figure in the phone-box, and a terrible certainty consumed her, driving out everything else—a certainty built out of innumerable small happenings cemented to that one great lie by an instinct which was suddenly so strong that she could feel her hand on the seat-catch shake—

  Treachery!

  Treachery? But if not treachery—if she was wrong?

  No. No, no, no, no, no—treachery!

  “Well, that’s all right, then!” said Aske cheerfully, glancing at her quickly as he let out the clutch. “But you haven’t put the seat down yet—you’ll doze much better with it down.”