Touchfeather

by Jimmy Sangster

  ‘Very well, Miss Touchfeather. Tell Miss Moody the route you would like to fly. She’ll arrange it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, getting to my feet. I went to the door; then I turned back. After all, he was three parts right, and it wouldn’t choke me. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr. Blaser. It won’t happen again.’

  He looked at me almost like a human being for a moment. ‘Perhaps the third time will be lucky for you, Miss Touchfeather,’ he said. ‘But do try and do it in your own time.’ I must have looked bewildered.

  ‘Do what?’ I said.

  ‘Fall in love,’ he said. And, although the light was bad, I could have sworn that he blushed.

  EIGHT

  The phone was ringing when I let myself into the flat. It was my car salesman, wanting to know whether dinner was on the cards. I told him that it wasn’t and that I would call him. The department doctor, a dour, uncommunicative Scot, had dressed my burn, but it still hurt, and that, combined with the inside hurt that still nagged away, made me feel anything but sociable.

  I had arranged with Miss Moody that I would be ready for work in three days. I had opted for the New York–Los Angeles run, on United Airlines. They’re a large, well-run airline and, apart from that, my American Flight Captain flew for one of the opposition and, if I played my cards right, I didn’t have to bump into him unless I wanted to. I chose the New York–Los Angeles run because, in spite of what Bill had said, I enjoyed America. I liked the contrast between East and West Coast: New York, brusque, brash and efficient, and Los Angeles, sprawling, warm and more leisurely. Flying from coast to coast seemed as good a way as any of nursing myself back to a normal state of mind. It was a busy route and I wouldn’t have much time to get too sorry for myself.

  The three days’ notice I had given Miss Moody I intended to spend by myself, fortifying and crystallising my memories of Bill. I wanted to establish him more securely in my memory, giving him a permanent niche that wouldn’t suffer from the ravages of time. There was nothing morbid in this; it was merely that I wanted to remember him, and I had so little to hang on to. We had known each other for three days and, apart from the potted autobiography he had given me, I knew nothing about him. Just once I wanted to see the place where he lived and worked, and perhaps meet some of the people who had known him.

  Cumming-on-Hardy was as difficult to get to as it sounded, but I finally made it by four-thirty the following day. There was one pub in the village and, although they didn’t normally let rooms, the landlord and his wife were pleased to see a new face and, while I protested feebly, arranged for their son to move in with his baby sister while I took over the boy’s room.

  Unpacking my small bag, I began to feel like a human being again. The room was small, but reassuring in its normality. There were pictures of the Beatles and Sandie Shaw stuck on one of the walls, and three badly made model aeroplanes suspended from the ceiling; one of these I knocked down within two minutes of coming into the room and I made a note to buy a replacement later. Doris Grierson, the lady of the house, had cleared out one of the drawers, into which I put the contents of my overnight bag. She had also cleared a small space in the wardrobe and lent me a couple of hangers.

  After tidying myself up a little, I went downstairs to accept the Griersons’ invitation to have tea with them. They were a youngish couple, fresh back from Aden, where they had run a small import-export business. Not visualising much future once the Union Jack had been lowered, they had packed up and come home and used their savings to buy the only pub in Cumming-on-Hardy. They weren’t going to make a fortune out of it, but all they wanted was a living and this seemed as pleasant a way as any to go about earning it. Jim Grierson was a little too ‘hail, fellow, well met’ for my taste, but Doris was a sweety. Within half an hour I had offered her the loan of my flat any time she wanted to come to London for shopping or the theatre.

  The bar opened at five-thirty, but no one arrived until half past six, when suddenly the place seemed to be full of large men in tweeds and Wellington boots. Every girl likes to be the centre of attraction at times; it’s good for the morale. That evening my morale received a five hundred percent shot in the arm. The men were all pleasant, and rather like excited schoolboys at having a stranger in their midst, especially since she was female and came from London and wore a moderately short skirt and didn’t mind a not-too-dirty story. It was about half past eight and the bar was packed, when Doris leaned over the bar and pointed towards the door.

  ‘Here come a couple of Professor Partman’s people now,’ she said.

  Through the press of bodies I could just see two men who were removing their topcoats. One was middle-aged, a donnish-looking man, dressed in a neat dark-grey suit. The other was younger, dressed in a scruffy sports jacket and untidy slacks. He was about thirty years old and looked more like a rugger player than a scientist. His nose had been broken somewhere along the fine and it gave his face an attractive, beat-up appearance. Doris called out to them and they forced their way through the press of bodies until they were standing next to me.

  ‘Don Scamper, Mr. Carter, this is Katy Touchfeather. She’s a friend of Bill Partman’s.’

  Immediately both men became a little confused. On the one hand, they wanted to show distress over what had happened and, on the other, they wanted to show pleasure at meeting a friend of Bill’s. Added to this, the younger one, Don Scamper, could hardly contain his exuberance at having struck so lucky as to meet what he obviously thought was a swinging-type bird in a place like Cumming-on-Hardy.

  ‘How well do you know Bill?’ asked Carter, after glasses had been refilled.

  ’Very well,’ I said. ‘But not for all that long a time.’ There was no point in telling them that I had been on the plane; they’d only have wanted to know all the details and I didn’t feel up to going through the whole thing again.

  ‘Funny he never mentioned you,’ said Carter.

  ‘It would have been funnier if he had,’ said Don. ‘Very sensitive about his personal life is our leader.’

  There was a faint edge of sarcasm in his voice, which grated suddenly. Carter looked sideways at him, and he had the good manners to realise that he had dropped a brick; he coloured slightly and buried his nose in his tankard.

  ‘We all miss Bill very much,’ said Carter. ‘But not as much as you, I imagine?’ It was a direct question, and I realised that he was fishing.

  ‘Yes, I miss him,’ I said. ‘Even though it’s only a short time.’ He was dying to ask me how long, but he didn’t.

  ‘Terrible business,’ he said. I agreed that it was a terrible business. ‘Of course, we don’t actually know what has happened to him. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation and he’ll explain it to us all when we see him.’

  Then I realised what had been troubling me since they arrived; they were all speaking about Bill in the present tense. They didn’t know he was dead. All they knew was that he had been taken from an aircraft and then disappeared. I’d dropped a clanger there, I thought. Watch it, Katy. But nobody seemed to have noticed, and Carter continued to probe delicately.

  ‘I’m surprised you bothered to come down here, knowing that Bill was missing.’

  Don Scamper removed his nose from his tankard. ‘Don’t knock it, Harvey,’ he said.

  Carter smiled. ‘I’m not knocking it. I’m truly delighted to be in such charming company. I just said that I was a little surprised.’

  ’I was in Brighton on personal business,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d drop in here on my way back. Bill’s told me so much about the place.’ Don Scamper accepted this at face value, but Harvey Carter still wasn’t convinced. He was going to give me trouble, and I was already beginning to regret the impulse that had brought me down here. I was saved further discomfort though as Don spotted an empty dartboard.

  ‘Do you play darts, Katy? May I call you Katy?’ he asked.

  I agreed that I played darts and that he could call me Katy.

  ‘Ne
xt up!’ bellowed Don, as he pushed his way through towards the dartboard, gaining possession a second before a couple of the locals.

  ‘May I join you?’ enquired Harvey Carter as I climbed down from my stool.

  ‘Please do,’ I said. ‘You can give me moral backing. I’m a terrible darts player.’

  ‘So is Don,’ he said. ‘But he won’t admit it. I’ll fetch you another drink.’

  By the time he joined us at the dartboard, I was already trying to throw my darts everywhere except at the target; I was so far ahead of Don Scamper, who hadn’t yet managed to get his opening double, that it was embarrassing. Not that he seemed to mind. Full of boyish exuberance he continued to hurl his darts so that they stuck a good inch into the board and required considerable effort to get them out.

  ‘She’s more than just a pretty face, this one,’ he said, as he took the drink Carter handed him.

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ said Carter, making the remark for me alone.

  The next time I threw the darts, I didn’t have to aim badly for them to go off target; Carter was making me nervous.

  At half past ten, Jim Grierson started to bellow ‘Time!’ and by ten to eleven the place was empty, apart from the Griersons and myself. I’d sidestepped an invitation for lunch and dinner with Don the following day, but I had as good as promised he would find me propping up the same corner of the bar the following evening. I helped the Griersons gather up the empties and dried while Doris washed.

  ‘Nice men,’ she said, meaning Carter and Don.

  ‘Very,’ I agreed.

  ‘Harvey Carter’s a bit of a stodge at times, but he’s very charming when he relaxes.’

  ‘What does he do exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘Who knows what any of them do up there? All I know is that it’s a bit hush-hush and no one’s allowed past the front gate, not even the tradesmen.’

  We finished tidying the bar and retired to the kitchen for a cup of chocolate. By midnight I was tucked in to my junior-sized bed trying to count the number of John Lennons on the opposite wall by the light that came in from the street outside. I’d got to about eighteen before I drifted off.

  I was still sound asleep at nine-thirty when Doris woke me with a cup of tea.

  ‘There’s someone downstairs to see you,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ Apart from the two men I had met last night, I didn’t know a soul for fifty miles in all directions.

  ‘His name is Beamish. He works up at...you know, Bill Partman’s place.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘I want to see you, young lady.’ We both looked towards the door. There was a man standing there. I hastily tried to gather my modesty around me, being addicted to sleeping in the nude, while Doris performed the indignant bit on my behalf.

  ‘Really-Mr. Beamish, this is a bit much,’ she said, angrily. ‘I told you I’d give Miss Touchfeather your message.’

  ’Didn’t want her hopping out of any windows. Eh? What?’ He actually said ‘Eh? What?’ I’d thought up to then that Englishmen only said those words in American movies. He was a small, wiry-looking man with a bright-red face and slicked-back, sandy-coloured hair. He wore the conventional tweeds and Wellington boots with a checked shirt and a lemon-coloured tie which did absolutely nothing for his complexion. The whole thing was topped by a duffle coat two sizes too big for him. He looked like someone attending a bloodstock sale until one saw his eyes, which were pale and rimmed with pink. They looked like pig’s eyes, and I didn’t like him one little bit.

  ‘Hopping out of windows?’ said Doris. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Ask the lady, Mrs. Grierson,’ he said, nodding towards me.

  Poor Doris was completely bewildered, and she took the only course left open to her. ‘I’m going to fetch my husband,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t bother, Doris,’ I said. ‘If Mr. Beamish wants to see me this badly, he must have good reasons.’

  ‘Sensible girl,’ said Beamish. ‘Toddle along, Mrs. Grierson.’

  ‘You toddle along, too, Mr. Beamish,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get dressed. I’ll see you downstairs in fifteen minutes.’

  He glanced towards the window, and decided that it was too small for me to abscond through. ‘Rightyho,’ he said. ‘Fifteen minutes.’ He turned and walked from the room, leaving Doris looking at me with an expression compounded of equal parts confusion and curiosity.

  ‘Who is he, Doris?’ I asked, getting out of bed.

  ‘Something to do with security,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t use the pub much. Don’t you know him?’ I admitted I didn’t. ‘And what did he mean about hopping out of windows? Really, it’s a bit much. You expect this sort of thing in Aden, but not in Cumming-on-Hardy.’

  ’Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what he wants and then send him packing.’ She nodded, reluctantly, and left me to get dressed.

  Beamish was waiting for me in the empty bar. I could hear Jim Grierson pottering around in the cellar, and Doris had decided to leave us strictly alone, disappearing into the kitchen as soon as I came downstairs. He got to his feet as I came into the room, but I don’t think it was out of politeness. If he considered me capable of jumping out of first-floor windows, he probably thought I wasn’t to be trusted.

  ‘You’re a friend of Professor Partman?’ he asked, without preamble.

  ‘I may be,’ I said, and had the satisfaction of seeing him look a little confused.

  ‘You told Harvey Carter that you—’

  I cut in on him, wanting to set the record straight as soon as possible. ‘What I told Harvey Carter is none of your business,’ I said. ‘And, while we’re on the subject, I don’t like you, or the way you burst into bedrooms making stupid remarks, embarrassing me and my hostess. And I don’t think I’m going to tell you one little thing that you’re obviously dying to know.’ So put that up your nose and sniff it, I thought.

  His red face went even redder, except for two white spots that appeared high on his cheekbones. He wasn’t used to being talked to in this way, especially by a chit of a girl.

  ‘Now just you listen here, Miss Touchfeather—if that is your real name.’

  ‘You don’t think I’d make it up, do you?’

  ‘It is my duty to investigate any person who behaves suspiciously in this area. And from what I heard of last night, you fall into that category.’

  ’I beat Don Scamper three times at darts and I bought him and Harvey Carter a pint of bitter each,’ I said. ‘If you call that behaving suspiciously.’ But I was playing for time now.

  ‘Do you deny that you are a friend of Professor Partman?’

  ‘I don’t deny it at all.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he said, feeling himself on firmer ground. ‘What is the nature of your business in Cumming-on-Hardy?’

  ‘Didn’t Harvey Carter tell you that as well?’

  ‘I want to hear it from you.’

  ‘I had personal business in Brighton and I thought I’d call in here on the way back.’ It didn’t sound as convincing as it had last night.

  ‘Knowing that Professor Partman wasn’t here?’ I nodded, wondering what had possessed me to come on this bloody trip at all. ‘I’m not entirely satisfied, Miss Touchfeather,’ he said pompously.

  ‘I don’t really care whether you are or not, Mr. Beamish,’ I said.

  He ignored this. ‘I would like you to come along with me to answer a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, sorry?’

  ‘I mean I’m not going anywhere, except back to London by the first available transport.’

  The white spots appeared on his face again. ‘Now see here, young lady—’ he started.

  But I decided I had better try to finish the whole thing here and now. ‘No,’ I said. ’You see here. You may be all sorts of a big wheel where you work, but you don’t work here. I assume your job is looking after security at Professor Pa
rtman’s establishment. I suggest that you attend to it, and stop bothering me, before I call the police and have you charged with breaking into a woman’s bedroom.’ I turned and started out of the bar.

  Then, like an idiot, I fired a parting shot. ‘Perhaps if you’d been doing your job better, you’d have talked Bill into not taking that trip. Then none of this would have happened.’

  That did it. I think I realised it before he did, but even so, he was quick. He shot across the room and grabbed my arm in a tight hold.

  ‘Why should Professor Partman not have taken the trip?’ he asked, his pig eyes positively glowing.

  I tried a bluff which I didn’t think would come off. ‘He’d be here now if he’d stayed in England.’

  It didn’t come off. His grip tightened; he was surprisingly strong for so little a man. ‘But why should I, as a security officer, have cause to warn him off?’

  ‘Take your hands off me, Mr. Beamish,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  I gave him one more chance. ‘If you don’t let me go, I shall break your arm,’ I said. He tightened his grip, beginning to enjoy his work now.

  While I didn’t actually break his arm, I made a considerable dent in his dignity. He picked himself up from the floor, looking hate at me and at the same time wondering how such a thing could have possibly happened. Then he turned and opened the door and called outside.

  ‘You two! In here!’

  A moment later the bar seemed crowded as two men came in. Both were dressed in a security police style of uniform, not unlike blackshirts, with breeches and leather boots. If this was the type of private police force Gerastan Industries ran, it wasn’t surprising that Bill had been impressed when he visited California. Both the men were young and very large. I think I could have taken them both had surprise been on my side, but I had made enough scenes for one day, and I went like a lamb.

  We drove out of the village for three miles and then turned into the gates of what had been a large country estate. There was barbed wire on top of the original brick wall, and another line of wire ten feet inside it. There was an impressive-looking guardhouse, with two checkpoints separated by a kind of no man’s land. Then we were bowling up the drive towards the main buildings. The original house was still there, but it had spawned a group of newer buildings which grew out from it in all directions. We turned off the main drive fifty yards before we reached the house and drove between some low, squat buildings, pulling up eventually outside the last in the line. Beamish, who hadn’t spoken a word during the journey, now told me to get out of the car. This I did, following him into the building, with the two large young men on either side of me. We marched down a corridor and into an office where I was told to sit and wait.