by MARY HOCKING
Dulac interrupted. ‘Aren’t we being a little ridiculous? What has happened, after all? Doyle has been seen talking to Karel Vanek. As Pickard said, it is not wise to make friends with these people for their own sakes but just because Doyle is unwise, does it follow that he is engaged in underground activities? As for his remarks to Kate, those are just the kind of wild things one would expect him to say, especially when he had been drinking.’
Dulac was anxious to put an end to the conversation; it was the kind of thing on which Pickard’s hatred would feed, and that hatred, Dulac sensed, had recently become obsessive.
‘If anything does develop here,’ Pickard persisted, ‘it would be a gift to the special police to get their hands on a genuine foreign agitator.’
‘I must go.’ Dulac pushed back his chair. ‘I shall forget this conversation.’ He was looking at Pickard.
They all looked at Pickard, who nodded his head. ‘Yes, yes, of course; it would be most dangerous to talk along such lines.’
But as Helen and Paul left a few minutes later, they heard him say to Dr. Van Hals: ‘Just the same . . .’
V
‘As you have to work tonight, perhaps you should eat?’ Paul suggested some twenty minutes later as he watched Helen toying with her food.
‘I don’t seem to be hungry,’ she said, and added unconvincingly: ‘I had a big lunch.’
Paul glanced around him. They were sitting in the centre of the dining hall and none of the tables near-by were occupied.
‘You mustn’t worry about Doyle,’ he said gently.
‘But I didn’t tell them everything.’
And she told him the whole story.
While he thought about Doyle, Helen thought about Paul. For her, time had ceased, and the world was limited by the four walls of this room; the crowd in the bar across the foyer, the people moving in the dark streets, were part of a fantasy which she had once mistaken for life. Here was the only reality. She longed to know that he felt the same, and she said:
‘It is foolish, isn’t it, for Doyle to become involved in events here?’
She could never hide her feelings, and although experience had taught her that love can sometimes be resented, she had not learnt to dissemble. When Paul looked at her, he saw that her eyebrows were raised and her forehead lightly puckered, as though she were about to cry; although her mouth was smiling, the lower lip trembled slightly. As he looked into her troubled eyes, he realized the extent of her love for him. He turned away, as though she had hurt him.
‘What is it?’ she asked in a low voice.
There had been many women with whom he had found pleasure and he had imagined that the sharpness of love had been deadened. He was surprised to discover that he was wrong. His self-confidence was shattered; he was miserably unsure of himself, of his need for love and of his capacity to return it. The waiter was hovering by their table, casting disapproving glances at their uneaten meal. Paul found his presence embarrassing, but Helen was oblivious of all external matters.
‘What is it? Please tell me. You mustn’t be afraid that I will be hurt, or create a scene.’
‘I just wonder,’ he said, ‘whether it is wise for us to see one another.’
‘Because you feel that I am beginning to care for you?’
She had composed herself and she spoke calmly. Paul realized that she had made the effort for his benefit, so that things should be easier for him. He was very touched.
‘No, I don’t mean that,’ he said huskily. ‘I feel that we are beginning to care for one another.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘I tend to make a mess of my personal relationships.’ He felt incredibly tired and tarnished as he spoke. ‘I don’t know whether I could start again, whether I am to be trusted.’
‘Is that all?’
Behind her, as she spoke, he saw the windows; beyond there was darkness, but he was aware of the city, its pulse beating feverishly in the night. Perhaps he should have spoken to her of this, but he scarcely understood his own thoughts.
‘That is all,’ he said.
She picked up her fork with a hand that trembled with relief.
‘I see,’ she said gently. ‘Well, we won’t worry about that. The risk seems to me to be well worth taking.’
The waiter, losing patience, removed their plates and brought them a sweet which they did not eat. Later, he brought them coffee which they drank.
‘I hope you won’t regret this,’ Paul said.
‘I shall never regret it,’ she said quietly, ‘whatever happens.’
Paul walked back to the Embassy with her. When they came out of the Hotel Kapitol, they found that it was raining. The avenue was dark, and a faint breeze blowing from the river drove the rain against their faces. Paul saw Helen put her hand to her hair as a tendril blew across her cheek; her face, glimpsed dimly in the darkness, was animated as though she were embarking on a journey. An irresponsible happiness filled him as he slipped his arm through hers. The lamps were lit and there was a blurred halo round the lights; the trees were black outlines, the rain dripping from their scarecrow branches. They could hear the beat of the rain on the pavements and water running in the gutters; in the air there was a cool, country smell of rain-wet earth. They walked in silence.
Chapter Eight
FRIDAY
I
The door of the farmhouse stood open; it was early, before cockcrow, and a few stars lingered. Doyle could hear the soft, incessant rhythm of the rain. He walked to the door and stood on the threshold. He could see a glimmer where water lay in pools on the track which only a few days before had been iron-hard beneath his feet. There was a smell of damp straw and dung. The horses were restive, he could hear them thrashing about in the stable near-by.
Doyle shivered, and the vibration which passed through his body was like an electric shock, quickening his nerves and stimulating his senses. It was the same quiver of anticipation that he had had sometimes during the war in those still moments when the mind and the body were fused in an intense awareness of life.
Varya moved across the room, and stood with her hand on the door. Doyle turned away regretfully.
‘Nothing is gained by being careless,’ she said as she shut the door.
The little boy, who was eating from a wooden bowl, paused with the spoon half-way to his mouth and looked at his mother.
‘Have you finished?’ she asked.
He shook his head and inserted the spoon slowly into his mouth. His dark eyes transferred their curious stare to the fireplace where his father was struggling into heavy mountain boots. He sat and sucked the spoon, gazing at his father.
‘Come,’ Varya said. ‘You are finished now.’
The child climbed down. Karel came to him and kissed him, but by now the little boy’s attention was concentrated on Doyle; he turned his head away from his father, pointing at the stranger. Karel laughed and ruffled the dark, silky hair. Varya picked up a torn rag doll which was lying near the fireplace and took the child by the hand.
‘You must play in here for a little while.’
Karel watched them as they went out of the room. ‘He will have a better world in which to grow up.’
Doyle was startled to hear these words, spoken with burning conviction, words which had become a stale joke to him. Laughter flickered uncertainly in his blue eyes.
‘You believe that?’
‘But, of course.’
The man’s angular, rather harsh features softened. He sat down at the table and leant towards Doyle; he was very excited and he sat with his legs apart, his hands gripping his knees.
‘Several years ago, when I was young and full of idealism, I thought that men fought for intellectual ideas, for the rights of man, and the liberty of the mind! But that isn’t so, you know. The need to fight is felt in the stomach, not in the mind. My child is my flesh. He is at that age where every day brings a new discovery; I have watched his eyes travelling first round his bedroom, then ex
ploring the house, peering through the windows to the sheep pens and stables; every day the horizon widens, the world expands. There is a hill beyond the farm. You know it well. The greatest journey I have ever taken was the first day that I went to the brow of that hill.’
Doyle was watching with narrowed eyes, his face closed, refusing to be drawn into the other man’s mood. It was sufficient, he thought, that he should work with these people; it was not to be expected that he would become involved in their emotions. He said:
‘Your son, when he reaches the brow of that hill, will see the same view that you saw; perhaps a tree will have fallen and another tree will have grown. Nothing else will have changed.’
‘But it HAS changed!’ Karel stabbed a triumphant finger at Doyle; his eyes glinted and strands of hair fell across his forehead. ‘There is a bright, new schoolhouse down in the valley, and there, in three years’ time, my child will attend for his indoctrination; day in, day out, poison will be administered. The Chinese, you know, used to bind their girl children’s feet so tightly to keep them small that when the children grew up, their feet were crippled. Here, it is the spirit that is crippled. There will come a day, perhaps, when my son will come across books in this house which he knows are forbidden; and he will have to fight his first battle with conscience, whether to respond to the dimly-felt blood tie—which, of course, he knows to be wrong—or to do the brave, honourable thing and report on the enemy of the people.’
‘Don’t you exaggerate?’
Karel shrugged his shoulders. ‘It may not be as dramatic as that, but the break will come. Two beliefs, so different, cannot live in one house.’
‘Then you want to impose your beliefs on your child?’
‘I do not want to impose anything on him; he must be free to make his own mistakes and learn by them. But what meaning is there in life, if a man cannot try to signpost the way for his children?’
‘You are fighting, after all, for the rights of man, and the liberty of the mind.’
‘But I feel it here.’ Karel pressed his hand to his stomach. ‘I feel it every time that I look at him. Every faltering step that he takes is a reproach to me because it leads him nearer to enslavement, an enslavement against which I have not rebelled with sufficient courage. I am of the Greek Orthodox Church. I have told him about God and Jesus Christ. But sometimes I feel guilty, I feel it is a terrible risk to take, to sow the seeds of conflict in his young mind. It has come to that, you see; already I am afraid to do for my child the things which I believe to be right.’
‘I think there is a flaw in your argument,’ Doyle said.
Karel flopped back in his chair. ‘There is a flaw in man.’ He smiled, a little crookedly. ‘Even in you.’
There was an awkward silence and Varya, who had been standing in the doorway listening, came into the room.
‘Let us hope you do not talk so loudly when you are out,’ she said. She closed the door and went across to the table where she began to collect the breakfast things together. Every now and then she looked up, darting glances at the men in which pity and contempt mingled.
‘How is this going to end?’ she asked eventually. ‘Or haven’t you thought of that?’
Having issued her challenge, she stood with her hands hidden in the folds of her black dress, her face impassive. Watching her, Doyle had a vision of her as she would be when she was very old, the flesh wrinkled around the wide cheekbones, the eye sockets deeply hollowed, the obstinate mouth sunken; a face scarred by time, yet timeless, withered, but enduring.
‘The beginning is enough.’ Karel got to his feet and fetched his overcoat which was hanging on a peg by the yard door.
‘Is it?’ she said. ‘Enough to carry you through failure? If you have to watch this little light that you are kindling go out, won’t the darkness be more than you can bear?’
Karel was in a fever to be gone and he scarcely heard her words. But they rankled with Doyle. Karel had risked everything and if he lost he would be annihilated. Doyle, who prided himself on taking risks, suddenly realized how little he stood to lose in comparison with men such as Karel. Dimly, he began to see that his own attitude was not a very responsible one. He was an intruder; he was not even linked to these people by sympathy or understanding; unlike Paul, he had no compassion for them, he felt no compulsion to share their suffering. As he turned to follow Karel out, something made him look at Varya; she did not speak and she made no gesture of farewell, but her eyes held his with a question.
II
Party Secretary Keltner frowned at the documents on his desk, and for a moment Rakov thought that he was not going to sign them.
‘There was some kind of pirate radio on the air this morning,’ he said, partly in the hope of diverting Keltner’s mind, and partly to emphasize the seriousness of the situation.
Keltner reached for his pen. ‘What do you mean—"some kind of”? Either it was, or it wasn’t.’ He signed one of the documents and turned to the other. ‘Why wasn’t I told of this before?’
‘There is a report on your desk.’
‘What did they say?’
‘The transmission was rather bad.’ Rakov permitted himself a faint smile. ‘I doubt whether many people bothered with it; I had to lie flat on the floor with my ear to the set.’
‘Really? I hope you found it worth such enthusiasm?’
‘There were reports of incidents in several parts of the country, some of them very trivial, but, of course, these things can be made to sound . . .’
‘Incidents that we have been at pains to keep secret, no doubt.’ Keltner pushed the documents to one side. ‘Well, I have more important worries; that kind of thing can be tracked down and dealt with quickly enough.’
‘I don’t know so much. It is more difficult if they are mobile. Our people did the same kind of thing during the war, if you remember.’
‘That was in order to refute German propaganda.’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope you are not suggesting that there is any comparison?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And in the end, if I remember rightly, all our people were caught?’
‘Yes.’
‘A bad omen for these fools.’
Keltner got up and walked to the window. The rain was drenching down and, where a drain was blocked, people were splashing ankle-deep in water.
‘I’m not sure that I wouldn’t welcome a flood. A natural calamity would provide an admirable diversion at the present time.’
There was a knock on the door and two men in police uniform entered. Keltner pointed to the two documents on the table.
‘I want this done with as little display as possible, you understand? It isn’t to look like a triumphal entry.’
Rakov handed the documents to the two men who then withdrew. Keltner frowned down into the street.
‘And that,’ he said, ‘must be the end of concessions. The danger is that people may regard it as a beginning.’
III
Action, Doyle thought, was the ideal purgative. At the farmhouse he had been the prey to strange misgivings; he had fancied that as he looked into Varya’s eyes he saw himself for the first time; the experience, at that hour in the morning, had seemed almost in the nature of a revelation. But the excitement of the broadcast, made all the more precarious by the muddling inefficiency of his confederates, had exhilarated him and put everything else out of mind. By the middle of the afternoon, after a brief sleep and an even briefer meal, he felt fine.
At half-past three he put in an appearance at the Embassy. His paper was beginning to take an interest in the situation and he was himself anxious to verify one or two rumours. On his way out, he paused by the reception room. Obviously a party had recently been held. The big centre table was a clutter of empty bottles, glasses, soiled napkins, half-eaten savouries and heaped ash-trays from which an acrid smoke still rose. The electric light had been turned off and the room, with its dark panelled walls was sombre in t
he fading light. Rain streamed down the windows.
The room would have presented a picture of unrelieved gloom had it not been for Rosamund who was standing at the far end of the table with an empty glass in her hand, splendidly disdainful amid the ruins. Doyle seldom saw her alone now. In the days when they were lovers she had conducted their public encounters with what had seemed to him a fanatic discretion, insisting that they should barely acknowledge one another. ‘It doesn’t help to preserve secrecy if you look as though I had raped you every time I say “good afternoon”,’ he had once said to her. But she had believed that one should conform to certain rigid rules of conduct, particularly in the conduct of affairs; since Doyle never long adhered to any rule, their relationship had been short-lived. Once their affair had ended, she had allowed herself more freedom, treating him with an amused raillery, but she was still excessively careful of her reputation. From time to time, he took a malicious pleasure in teasing her with threatened indiscretions. The opportunity now presented was irresistible. The reception room was situated in the heart of the building and both doors were open, leading onto well-frequented passages.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said.
His intentions were really quite innocent, so he picked up a handful of cocktail biscuits, and added.
‘I didn’t have much lunch.’
She turned her gleaming, flaxen head and looked at him, a long look down the long length of the room. Doyle was surprised.
‘So?’ she said.
Doyle ate a couple of biscuits while he considered the situation. He felt rather as though the ground had shifted beneath his feet and any moment the whole structure might come tumbling down. In which case, of course, the sensible thing to do would be to go away; but he did not feel sensible, he felt like a child who wants to find out how far it can go. He finished the biscuits and began to walk towards her. She watched him with a look which, in any other woman, he would have considered a wanton provocation. Madness, Doyle thought, was indeed in the air. She was wearing a dusty pink dress which fitted her figure immaculately; her hair, too, was immaculate, piled on top of her head, sleek, without a wisp anywhere. Such perfection, Doyle thought, was a temptation to a man.
