Contango (Ill Wind)

by James Hilton

  A few seconds later the pilot made a perfect landing in a field of barley. After he had shut off the engines and clambered out, he helped his two passenger to alight also. He apologised profusely for having had to come down, and gave some technical reason which Elliott did not understand. “It’s nothing serious, but I couldn’t carry on without making the repair. I hope you weren’t alarmed, sir.”

  “Not at all,” Elliott replied, smiling. “I think I ought to congratulate you on such a fine impromptu landing.” Then he looked about him. He could see nothing but a field, hedges, and that milk-blue sky. “I’m only slightly worried about the delay. Do you think it would be quicker for me to hire a car and get to the nearest big railway station?”

  Hartill considered. “On the whole, sir, I think if I were you I’d take a chance of finishing the trip this way. If the trouble is only what I think it is, I ought to be able to put it right quite soon—especially if Mr. Jevons can give me a hand. And this is a good place for taking off.”

  “Of course I’ll help,” said Jevons. “But where are we, anyhow?”

  Hartill shook his head. “Couldn’t say, exactly. I’ve been flying mostly by the compass, and in this misty kind of weather it’s difficult to get one’s bearings. I should say somewhere about the middle of England.”

  Elliott said he would wait. He took off his flying-kit, lit a cigar, and watched the preliminary activities of the others. After the roar of the engines his ears were conscious of a peculiar, deep silence, a silence that seemed alive in the earth. He walked round the machine in a wide circle, scanning the horizon not very intently and filling the still air with the aroma of his smoke. Probably, he reflected, someone had seen the descent, and a farmer or farm-servant would be along soon. He would have to pay something for the damage to the crops…. A rabbit loped across the corner of the field, and he felt glad that he had decided not to look for a railway station—much pleasanter to stay where he was and take the chance, as Hartill had advised. The chance, yes—it was chance again. What incalculable millions in odds, for instance, had lain against his ever seeing this field and that rabbit. He went to the hedge and looked over, but the view was only of another field and another hedge. He walked along by the side of the barley till he came to a gate that had a smooth and gnarled top-bar, as if it had served for decades of anonymous musings. He climbed up and joined the invisible company, smoking in deep contentment. The silence and sunshine and scents had all the vivid rapture of a dream-memory of boyhood, so that when he asked the question “Where am I?” an answer seemed necessary in time as well as space. But where, after all, WAS he? Hartill had said “Somewhere about the middle of England,” but that scarcely conveyed very much. He called out across the field: “I’m going for a stroll to see if I can find out where we are,” and Jevons looked up and shouted back: “All right, but don’t be too long—Hartill says we’ll be ready in half an hour.”

  Waving cheerfully to them both, Elliott clambered over into the next field, walked across it, and then another field, till he came to a copse of beech-trees bordering a lane. He wondered which way led to the nearest house. It was a narrow lane, with cart-ruts marked here and there by motor-tyres, and in both directions it curved to give no horizon but of hedges. But the hedges were full of pink may-blossom, and Elliott thought it one of the loveliest views he had ever seen. He turned to the right, half-facing the sun, and began to walk on; after a few hundred yards the lane twisted again, and he saw a signpost ahead. Ah, he thought, that would tell him everything; and besides, someone would certainly pass by if he waited a few moments at a cross-roads. He quickened his steps and soon perceived that it was a very old sign-post, tipsily aslant, and with lettering so weather-worn that no passing motorist could possibly have read it. Nor did it mark a cross-roads, but only a junction of another lane that looked neither more nor less important. And one of its arms had fallen off, while the remaining two pointed so vaguely that their intentions were far from clear. Elliott could just decipher, on one arm, “To Upeasy 1/2 m.,” and on the other, “To Beachings Over 2 m.”

  Of course he had never heard of either place. He could not even guess at their county. But if Upeasy were only half a mile away, he wondered if he might have time to walk there, make enquiries, and return. He stood on tiptoe and looked over the hedge. A little way off he saw a round green rise, hardly to be called a hill, with a tiny spire pricking gently into the blue. Upeasy, that must be. It looked a long half-mile, even if the lane were not as meandering as it promised to be; so perhaps he had better not set out to walk there, after all.

  A little girl with very bright golden hair came into view and gazed at him timidly as she approached. He smiled and asked her several questions about the locality, hoping to elicit the name of some neighbouring place that might be known to him; but she was shy, or perhaps too young to understand; and all he could obtain were repeated mentions of Upeasy, whither it appeared she was on her way to school. Then he reflected that it would be quite simple to look the matter up in some book of reference when he reached London, so he need not bother any more. He smiled at the child again and gave her sixpence, which she accepted very doubtfully, and then held tightly in her hand as she scampered off along the lane. When she was nearly out of sight behind the curve of the hedge she looked back, and Elliott waved his hand, but she took no notice.

  Suddenly, alone again, he was stirred by echoes of the words he had read out at breakfast that morning, and as he glanced again at the names on the signpost, he felt that all the glory of England lay in them, far more than in palm and pine and the rest of the showy Kiplingerie of empire. And if, he thought, England should some day perish, other countries might grow to be stronger, wiser, or richer, but none would ever have the absurd and exquisite tenderness of English villages, linked by the hedge-bordered lanes.

  He looked at his watch—five to two. Perhaps he ought to be strolling back. He put out his hand and touched the old wood of the signpost as if to receive some mystic blessing in farewell; and the whimsical remembrance came to him that his political opponents had sometimes called him “a little Englander.” What a phrase—and how like England to use her own name thus derisively! He spoke the words softly to himself as he walked back along the lane—little England—LITTLE England…. Then, in a mood of strange enchantment, he vowed that he would never probe the secret; the atlas should keep its trivial knowledge, while he himself clung to Upeasy and Beachings Over as symbols of things not to be expressed in any other words.

  When he reached the field Jevons had been looking for him. “Oh, there you are, sir. We wondered if you’d got lost. Everything’s all right now. Did you find out where we are?”

  “No,” answered Elliott. “I still haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “We haven’t seen a soul either. Dead-and-alive sort of place, wherever it is.”

  “Yes, it’s quiet enough,” Elliott said, happily regarbing himself for the journey.

  Just over an hour later, after a fast flight, the plane landed at Hendon. He motored with Jevons to the Foreign Office immediately, buying on the way the afternoon papers that were just on sale. They gave no news except what he already knew, though they spun it out with an account of Tribourov’s career and of similar outrages in the past.

  Tommy Luttrell, one of the parliamentary undersecretaries, was waiting for him in his private room. “Glad you could manage it, Elliott—the Chief thought you ought to be on the spot. Rotten thing to have happened just when the Conference looked like doing something.”

  “It’s often the way,” said Elliott calmly. “Any more news?”

  “The woman’s dead, but there’s no further information about Tribourov. The Russians are threatening to leave the Conference.”

  “Yes, one rather expected that.”

  Luttrell nodded. “Little as I like them, I’m bound to admit they have a case. It seems the dead woman was a Russian emigrée— belonged to an aristocratic family in Tsarist days—and she’d got herself
into a job of chambermaid at the very hotel where Tribourov was staying. Pretty slack on the part of the authorities, you know. You’d have thought they’d have taken a few obvious precautions, especially as they knew that threats had already been made against the fellow.”

  “But she didn’t shoot him in the hotel, did she?”

  “No. Might have done, I suppose, but probably she wanted publicity—that kind of maniac is like that. It was in the corridors of the Conference building, with scores of people looking on. Incidentally, she was a French subject by marriage, which might have complicated matters if she hadn’t had the tactfulness to die. There ought to be a message from Walton soon about Tribourov—I should guess they’re probably waiting for some report from the hospital—maybe after an operation.”

  “It’s a damnable sort of business, Luttrell.”

  Luttrell answered, as befitted a younger man, in the younger idiom. “Yes, perfectly bloody. Did you know him?”

  “Not personally…. Of course, if the Russians do leave, everything goes to pot.”

  “Yes, looks like it.”

  “I’d better see Lindley. Where is he?”

  “Over the road, waiting for you.”

  “Right, I’ll go along. You might stay here, Jevons, and telephone Barrowby I shan’t be able to get to the dinner to-night. Smooth him down if you can—he’ll be pretty sick about it. Tell the broadcasting people too, and then wire Kennersley that I can’t be back at Chilver for a few days. He’ll probably guess what’s happened.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  An hour later Elliott left the house in Downing Street. He would have liked a walk in the Park, but at that time of day there would be too many there who recognised him, and he didn’t care for ostentatious shadowing by detectives. He hailed a taxi and asked to be driven slowly round Hyde Park, by the inner road; he wanted an hour or so alone to think over what the P. M. had said. It had been disquieting, though not absolutely unexpected, to learn of important forces in England opposed to the Conference, and ready to welcome the Russian withdrawal, if it took place, as an excuse for British withdrawal too. Lindley had mentioned the names of certain newspapers and big industrialists. The position was complicated by the fact that at the moment Elliott was technically a nobody; until East Northsex actually made him its member he could neither speak in the House nor take part officially in Cabinet councils. For six more days he would be thus muzzled, and during such an interval much—too much—might happen.

  Anyone who chanced to look into the cab as it skimmed past the crowds on the sidewalks, would have seen an old man, white-haired and hatless, leaning in a corner with his chin resting in the palm of one hand. A thoughtful, perhaps slightly troubled attitude, and one that emphasised the years. Sixty—spent in a struggle that was not yet over…. At fifteen, after a grammar-school education, he had begun in the office of the Creeksend Colliery; at twenty-five, Oxford, attained by means of mathematical scholarships; at thirty, admittance to the Bar; from thirty to forty, lawyering and political work; M.P., after five unsuccessful tries, at a by-election in 1912; the War; the peace; but the struggle continued. There had been nothing absolutely sensational in such a career—no Limehouse or Sidney Street to tie a label on it. He doubted whether he could feel sure of being mentioned in any history exam-paper of the year 2032. He was not particularly modest, but he was far too self-critical to be conceited. On the whole, he did not think his life could be counted a failure; he was certainly not a Lloyd George or a Disraeli, but he was perhaps near the front of the second rank. He had worked hard and had usually managed to do the jobs he had tackled. He had kept himself free in thought, cautious in speech, and practical in action. He had altered his opinions, not once, but constantly; he had changed parties; he had been illogical and inconsistent, and had grown used to being called, from right and left respectively, a woolly-headed visionary and a hard-boiled legalist. Sincerely hating war, he got on rather better with soldiers and sailors than, as a rule, with professional pacifists; privately something of a sceptic, he nevertheless disliked blasphemy and would always defend religion. In these and other ways he had for three decades offered discrepancies of belief and behaviour which hostile critics could and did denounce as hypocrisy, but which he himself knew to be nothing of the sort. The fact was (as he often joked) he was English, and therefore handicapped by race for the task of governing England—a remark which he would amplify by claiming to be the only member of the Cabinet who wasn’t wholly or partly Scottish, Irish, Welsh, or Jew.

  But this Conference fretted him a little. It was, in a sense, the fruition of the policy of reasonableness which he had always championed; it was an attempt to find a common denominator in European politics that would attract, not the visionary and the diehard, who must be left to cancel each other out, but the vast body of experienced practical opinion in every country. And to see it all jeopardised, at the last moment, by a bullet! He wished he had gone out to the Conference himself, instead of Walton; Walton was a good fellow, but not perhaps over-supple in an emergency. After a third circuit of the Park he gave the driver the name of his club in Pall Mall, and on arrival rang up the Office and spoke to Jevons. But there had been no more news. “I’m dining here and will look in later on,” he said.

  Petrie, who had the Colonies, was at the next table, and asked him how the by-election was going. Then they discussed the Tribourov affair and politics generally. Petrie said that any revolutionary government that had used the weapon of assassination before its rise to power must expect the same weapon to be turned against it afterwards; and Elliott agreed, but added that he thought assassination all the more terrible because it was really so logical. “If you believe quite passionately that a certain person is a social menace, what more meritorious than to risk your life in ridding the world of him? Perhaps the chief reason why we in England aren’t much given to that sort of thing is that we don’t believe passionately enough. After nearly a thousand years of nationhood, we’re sure enough of ourselves to admit our own private doubts.”

  “Yes, I think that’s rather true. Which reminds me, Elliott, talking of passion and the lack of it, I had a visit from that fellow Gathergood the other day. You remember the case?”

  “GATHERGOOD? I do seem to have heard of the name, but—”

  “He was the Agent at Cuava and mishandled some native trouble that cropped up. The Court of Enquiry sat on him pretty heavily.”

  “Ah, yes, that was it. And as a result of the Enquiry, we’ve more or less annexed Cuava, haven’t we?”

  “‘Annexed’ is a pre-War word, Elliott. Say rather we’ve accepted a mandate to look after the place, though it isn’t, I’m afraid, going to be the brightest jewel in the British Crown; on the contrary, there’s already a deficit of a hundred thousand or so in the local budget. We’re building roads and bridges as if the Pax Britannica were going to last for ever, and the natives are taking all we give them and hating us for it. Lord knows why we do these things… but I was mentioning this chap Gathergood. A queer fellow.”

  “It seemed to me at the time, I remember, that he’d been unfortunate rather than blameworthy.”

  “That’s more or less what he told me himself. Very chilly, strong-jawed type—absolutely without emotion—a. Frenchman or an Italian or a Russian would probably have been in tears or shaking their fists over the business.”

  “Yes, I should have guessed him to be cool-headed. What did you do for him?”

  “What could I? Nothing fails like failure, and there are still a few messrooms where, if you say ‘Gathergood,’ you’ll get an immediate explosion. Even a first-rate civil service has to have its occasional scapegoats—Pontius Pilate, for instance…. D’you feel equal to a liqueur brandy upstairs, by the way?”

  “Thanks, I don’t mind. But I must look in at the Office again soon. Perhaps Walton will have ’phoned through.”

  “What’s your opinion of Walton? Do you think it was a wise choice to send him out?”

&n
bsp; “He’s a sound fellow.”

  “But don’t you think a somewhat younger man—?”

  Then, for the first time, Elliott’s voice was raised a tone. “Good God, Petrie, he’s only sixty-four—a man’s not on the shelf at that age. Why, I’m sixty myself—sixty to- day.”

  Petrie laughed. “Congratulations. I’m glad you mentioned it.” Then, summoning the waiter, he added: “Wash out that order I gave, and bring Napoleon brandy—in the big glasses.”

  “Extravagance!” said Elliott, smiling.

  Towards ten o’clock he walked across Horse Guard’s Parade. There was a full moon, and all was very still and peaceful; the traffic along the Mall was only a glittering, murmuring horizon. He noticed a young man embracing a girl in the shadow between two lamp-posts, and for a moment he envied them their ecstasy, but more so their ease of mind and unconsciousness of time. He knew, from such envy, that he was doing what he rarely did: he was worrying. This Conference business … if it all broke down, nothing very dreadful was to be expected immediately, or even soon; but years hence, probably long after he was put to earth, something MIGHT happen… or mightn’t. Then why bother? One made all these efforts, one ached over these hopes and anxieties, and all the time one grew older—forty, fifty, sixty—while the world went on with an apparent heedlessness of whether one cared about it or not. Life was too short for an ordinary man of affairs (which was all he reckoned himself) to touch the wheel of destiny with more than a finger-tip; while even a Napoleon or a Mussolini could get no more than half a hand-grip—for half a second.