Watcher in the Shadows

by Geoffrey Household

  The real trouble was that Gillon never saw or couldn’t afford to see that capital was essential to consolidate the results of his industry. But, granted a run of luck, it might not have been. The admiral, though ribald, had never discouraged his parson until the arrival of Nur Jehan. At least strawberries and tomatoes could not career down the village street looking for affection, or roll luxuriously in an angry neighbour’s uncut hay.

  Matthew Gillon was unnecessarily grateful and always very conscious that I might be sacrificing my interests to his affairs. He made a point of collecting nature notes from his parishioners in case they might be of use to me, and he pressed his daughter, who was very properly inarticulate about everything she really valued, to show me the secret places of her childhood.

  Benita, however, rather resented my profession since she ascribed to it the sudden fits of distraction which interrupted conversation. In any case she wasn’t interested in causes, only in effects. If you can catch with your pencil the essential mechanics of a bird’s wing and the subtle change of shading which marks on an open down the transition from one grass to another, mere words are dull and the microscope irrelevant.

  She did sometimes condescend to pass on facts in the sort of voice which you would expect from a nymph surprised by a zoologist in dark glasses. One afternoon when her father and I were mucking out the stable and she was soaping leather, she remarked:

  ‘There are squirrels in the Wen Acre Plantation if you want to watch them.’

  The Plantation was of mixed conifers and beech at the head of the dry valley where Benita and I had walked – an early and most successful experiment of the Forestry Commission which belonged to its countryside as honestly as any other Cotswold wood. It deserved to lose its artificial name and be called the Wen Acre Hanger.

  ‘How blind we are!’ Gillon exclaimed. ‘I have driven along that road once a week for eight years.’

  I suggested that he was not likely to see squirrels from a car when passing along the upper end of the Plantation.

  ‘And anyway, Daddy,’ Benita added, ‘they weren’t there last summer.’

  ‘Weren’t they indeed? Well, the little imps have found the perfect home. Bless me, I haven’t seen a red squirrel since before the war! I shall certainly stop when I pass tomorrow.’

  When I saw him the following evening he was full of triumph and humility. He had started early for the weekly visit to a bedridden old shepherd which took him past the top of the Plantation, and had spent an hour wandering under the trees.

  ‘Three I saw for certain,’ he announced, ‘and I believe there were four. I thought I had found the drey too, though on the way home I had to admit to myself that it was an old magpie’s nest.’

  He told us how he had stayed perfectly still for twenty minutes – the amateur always feels that anything over ten is a marvel of patience – and that one of the squirrels had actually come close to his feet, trustful as a grey squirrel in a park.

  ‘I ventured greatly,’ he went on. ‘I offered a piece of biscuit. It took it in its paws and ate it, looking at me all the time. I – I was amazed! And flattered! So you feel, Dennim, that I was justified?’

  ‘Oh, Daddy, it was somebody’s pet!’ said Benita.

  It must, of course, have been a squirrel brought up by human hands and then turned loose. But I did not want to spoil the vicar’s vision of himself as a humble disciple of St Francis. In any case he had every right to pride himself on moving cautiously and giving an impression of saintly harmlessness. It does not take long for a tame animal to become as wild as its companions.

  I could not resist going up to have a look at the squirrels myself. I went alone, for it would have been impossible to explain to Benita why I took such care to avoid cover till I knew it was empty. There were four of them, fine little beasts with rather darker tails than usual.

  I could not find the two dreys any more than the vicar. Normally that would have been a challenge and I should have spent a couple of weeks on verifying what the family life of the two pairs really was. But I was impatient. My time was fully taken up, Nur Jehan had just begun to answer his helm, as the admiral put it, by pressure of legs alone.

  I saw little of him except at dinner, for his local dictatorship extended beyond his own village and vicar and he kept himself busy with all the usual bumbling committees, where he was dreaded for his outspokenness but indispensable. He considered it a duty of hospitality to preserve his guests from the teas and luncheons which accompanied these activities, so that I was surprised when he told me that I had been specially included in an invitation from General Sir Thomas Pamellor.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked.

  ‘The county’s prize pongo,’ said the admiral. ‘Lives just the other side of Cirencester. But he’ll give you the best lunch outside London if you can stand him.’

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Matter with him is that he’s a bore, boy! Good God, when Thomas retired they had to call in extra police to control the celebrations in Whitehall! It had got so bad that if you had a position of any responsibility in this country you couldn’t talk to a visiting Frenchman without Thomas dropping in beforehand to tell you what you oughtn’t to say. Hell’s Bells, if there’s anything we and the French don’t know about each other after a thousand years of fun and games, that ass Thomas is the last person to spot it! But his cook, boy! Mustn’t miss that! A pity we can’t take Frank with us. He might pick up a hint or two.’

  General Sir Thomas Pamellor at once reminded me of a fine, freshly caught shrimp. Not that he was small, but he sprouted hair at odd angles from eyebrows and moustache, and his colouring was exactly the right mixture of sand and grey. Lady Pamellor was a slightly smaller shrimp, but cooked. She was bright pink and had a good deal of pink in her dress. She gazed at her still living companion with admiration. There was not much else she could do, for Sir Thomas never stopped giving us extracts from his unwritten memoirs throughout six courses.

  ‘Frankly I never knew a Frenchman I couldn’t get on with,’ said Pamellor. ‘I was only a colonel then, but whenever and wherever there was trouble with the French Churchill gave the same order: turn Pamellor loose on ’em!’

  ‘Very right!’ the admiral agreed naughtily. ‘You’re the last person they would suspect of playing a deep game.’

  ‘Exactly, Cunobel! A simple soldier and simple liaison. You can’t have too much of it. Now then, mon vieux, I used to say, here’s British policy! And I’d tell him. Here’s French policy! And I’d tell him that, too. Then all we had to do was to go our own way and make the thing work.’

  ‘He speaks such very beautiful French,’ said Lady Pamellor, making her sole contribution to the conversation.

  And on he went.

  ‘Just tell me what you want, I said to de Gaulle, and I’ll see that Churchill falls in with it. So far as he can, of course, so far as he can! Our own army, that was the trouble. I remember one of our very high commanders. I won’t mention his name. “Any more from you,” I said, “and I’ll send a signal straight to the Cabinet.”’

  ‘And did you?’ Cunobel asked.

  ‘God bless my soul, yes! I was always sending signals direct to the Cabinet. I remember a major of the Deuxième Bureau, when I was in Paris after the war, warning me that they had copies of all of them.’

  ‘Broke your cipher, you mean?’

  The admiral choked, and did his best to pretend that a truffle had gone the wrong way.

  ‘Good Lord, no! My little secretary had been pinching the en clair drafts from the wastepaper basket. “Never mind!” I said to the major. “There’s nothing I tell my government that I am not prepared to tell yours.” A pity that I hadn’t more influence on policy! I could have made us just a band of brothers.’

  When Lady Pamellor had swum delicately off and hidden herself beneath the rocks of the drawing room, Sir Tho
mas pressed cigars upon us and one of the finest brandies I have ever tasted. I can well imagine the French putting out a legend that they found him useful.

  ‘I hear you’ve been in a spot of trouble, Dennim,’ he said.

  I instantly joined the odd thousand Europeans who must have thought it wise to impress Sir Thomas with their sincerity.

  ‘Trouble?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘No.’

  ‘Bomb, eh?’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Shall we say I read it in the paper?’ replied the general with heavy diplomacy.

  Cunobel was magnificent.

  ‘Dam’ Cypriots!’ he exclaimed. ‘Didn’t leave that kind of thing to the army when I was a boy! Sent a cruiser, gave ’em a party and showed ’em over the gun turrets!’

  ‘Cypriots?’ Sir Thomas asked. They didn’t tell me you had been in Cyprus.’

  ‘I’ve been in a lot of places, my dear general,’ I said mysteriously. ‘Now which particular they are you referring to?’

  He was a little taken aback. He had evidently thought this was going to be a straightforward job where the renowned Pamellor frankness would be effective.

  ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been directly approached by French police. They want to know if you can give any description at all of the man who sent the bomb.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ I answered. ‘And, anyway, Scotland Yard knows all I know. But how did the Sûreté find out that I was staying somewhere near you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose Scotland Yard told them that much but wouldn’t tell them any more. Hidebound! I could recommend them half a dozen first-rate fellows who would improve liaison with the Sûreté out of recognition. But there it is! They are up against British mistrust all the time! So what more natural than to appeal to me? Our good friend Pamellor, somebody says, hides himself in his little gentilhommière at a few kilometres from Chipping Marton. Lui, il fera notre affaire!’

  ‘I do wish I could help a bit more,’ I said heartily. ‘But, to tell you the honest truth, I am not even sure that the bomb which killed our postman was meant for me.’

  ‘I may pass that on, Dennim?’

  ‘Of course. Was the inquiry from Paris?’

  ‘From the very top. But it’s quite likely they were passing on an unofficial inquiry from one of the departments. We old comrades of the Resistance, we serve each other without questions.’

  We retired to the drawing-room for coffee, where the admiral discussed with Lady Pamellor some fussy problem of the Girl Guides and the Grammar School, while I was lectured by Sir Thomas on the blindness of the Foreign Office. When at last we got away, Cunobel’s driving expressed his feelings. He roared down a mile of straight, screeched round two corners and stopped.

  ‘What do you make of it, Charles?’

  I said that it seemed incredible but that I was sure the inquiry really had come to Sir Thomas from France.

  ‘You don’t think Pongo is after you himself?’

  ‘Not enough sense.’

  ‘Or friend of Pongo?’

  ‘That’s possible. Likely, even. I can imagine him poring over the map to see who he knows or ever has known within riding distance of Chipping Marton. But I don’t think he’d risk writing to Sir Thomas himself or calling on him. Not yet. And why should he when he can get some French official to do it for him?’

  ‘But damn it, the man we want is English!’

  ‘If he is, he has some very influential friends in France.’

  We sat there in the car trying to think it out, but got no further than the obvious fact that the tiger wanted to know whether I could or could not recognize him. That proved he had not the least suspicion that I had examined him at leisure; but he could not be sure how much I had seen from my perch in the alder. In fact the action on the edge of the badger fortress had been too quick and darkness too far advanced for me to make out anything more than a lump of darkness detaching itself in five quick strides.

  The admiral drove on along the top of the Cotswolds while I sat beside him watching that soft sweep of windy country and wondering how and with what gentlemanly excuse the tiger would propose to spring. He was planning to walk straight up to me, perhaps with a cheerful good evening. But where? What lonely spot would allow him to play with his victim, kill and retreat unnoticed? Since few of my movements were regular or easily to be anticipated, how was he to ensure my unsuspecting presence on the ground he had reconnoitred and chosen? Telephone? False message? But I would suspect any and every appointment which might be with death.

  What had been his movements since meeting Georgina and confirming that we were both likely to be at Chipping Marton for some time? He might have gone over to France and back several times. He might have been in the Wen Acre Plantation when the instinct of the hunted told me he was thinking of me and made me look again and again behind me.

  France … the Plantation … and then I saw it. The tails of the squirrels! I had noticed the darker red of the tails and accepted it as a mildly interesting sport of colour in the native English breed. But they weren’t English. They were French squirrels. That was why neither Gillon nor I could find the dreys. That accounted for his St Francis act. Three bagged wild, and one from a pet dealer!

  And how beautifully simple! The price of my death in Wen Acre Plantation was four red squirrels flown over from France and let loose in a perfectly natural home. A gamble, of course. I might not hear of them. I might pay little attention to them. But if I did, and made a point of watching them, what an opportunity! And he had lost it just because of the one slip of putting France into my head.

  I kept this discovery to myself, for I was not yet sure what use I could make of it. I was far from the mood of friendlessness and distrust which had first led me to tackle the whole business alone; but there was no direct help which I could ask. To expose Georgina, the Vicarage and Cunobel to anxiety and possible danger was unthinkable. Tying out the goat when the result mattered only to himself was allowable. Tying him out when he was a village pet was cruel.

  There were other reasons why the Plantation could not be put to use. I was up against the old problem in its clearest form. Picket the Wen Acre with police and we should have no more news of my persistent follower, however well their presence was hidden or disguised. Tempt him by leaving it wide open and I should be hit before I dared shoot. The right policy was to station a first-class shot able to arrest or wound in the second or two after the tiger had made his criminal intention plain. But, assuming the police believed every word of my story – and it was a big assumption – where would they find such a man, willing and able to work patiently day after day with me? Anyway that plan had already failed, even with Ian to help.

  No, there was nobody but myself. And I must never accept the tiger’s conditions; I must impose my own. Against his superb cunning in approach I must set my own superiority in fieldcraft and the overwhelming advantage of being able to recognize him when he had no suspicion that I could.

  Back I was going – and in that I was determined – to what I called the Saxon England, that imitation of forest which was no forest at all. But how? I was having no more of lonely cottages where sleep and food were so dangerous that I could never stage a convincing act of living a normal life.

  The admiral’s usual evening meal was leisurely and ceremonious, but after lunching with Sir Thomas all we could face was a poached egg and some beer. When we had finished, there were still two hours of soft midsummer daylight. Cunobel settled down on the grey stone terrace with a blueprint of the plumbing in a proposed village hall, for he would never admit to himself that he intended to be idle. I guessed that what he really wanted was to admire his roses in peace, so I strolled down to the Vicarage.

  Georgina, alone on the lawn and smoking a cigarette much too fast, was very glad to see me. Her mood resembled th
at of some kindly cavalry colonel with a nasty hangover; she was dignified, hurt and well aware that she had brought her troubles on herself. We now had the fences of the Glebe meadow in first-class order, so she had taken it upon herself – pooh-poohing the advice of Gillon and Benita – to introduce Nur Jehan to the opposite sex under her personal supervision. The stallion had found his companion charming but annoyingly affectionate. He preferred to talk to Georgina over the gate.

  She therefore left him alone. Quarter of an hour later she heard screams for help from the vestry window of the church. Nur Jehan had kicked down the wicket-gate between the meadow and the churchyard. The latch on the church door gave him no trouble at all. Once inside and needing comfort, he was delighted to find a human being; it was the organist, a maiden lady of vaguely artistic leanings and excitable. When her variations on the Wedding March were interrupted by a velvet nose pushed into the back of her neck, she had rocketed off her stool and taken refuge in the vestry.

  My aunt, whose first duty was to the valuable mare now loose on the road, had been short and notably profane. By the time she had caught and stabled both horses, and the Vicar and Benita had rescued the organist, there was an interested crowd outside the church. Even Georgina, who had no false modesty, was inhibited from explaining the situation to so large an audience.

  ‘What Nur Jehan needs,’ I declared, ‘is work. No kitchen. No petting. Hard work.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, Charles,’ she said. ‘I do not know how they manage these things in Persia, but it stands to reason that when a horse is surrounded by boundless desert he must be taught to consider the master’s tent as home. And how to unteach him, I frankly do not know.’