VISITORS TO THE CRESENT

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I understand.’

  She held out a piece of paper.

  ‘I wrote the name down in case I forgot,’ she explained, and added hopefully: ‘Perhaps it isn’t very important.’

  On the paper were the words: ‘Bell Cottage, Isleworth.’ He looked at them, trying to bring his mind to bear on what she was telling him.

  ‘I only remembered yesterday. Some time ago, I overheard Vickers talking to someone – he mentioned this place. I think he also mentioned something about a barge and a machine-gun.’

  The sergeant stirred at the door. There was no time now. Harper said:

  ‘You can’t go back to your house with Vickers on the loose. We’ll make arrangements for you.’

  She did not argue: she had put herself in his hands now. He gave a few instructions to the sergeant and went out without looking at her again. The sergeant was kind. They would find somewhere for her to stay, and they would give her protection. In the meantime, would she like something to eat and some tea? She said yes, to get rid of him. When he went away, she sat quite still staring in front of her; her body ached as though she had been beaten, but apart from that she felt nothing. Her mind refused to function. It was as though the old Jessica Holt had died and the new person had not yet emerged. She was in a kind of limbo. She hoped that the numbness might last until after the trial. But one day feeling would return, and she knew that the upsurge of life would be painful. Her own body seemed to her like an unexplored territory and the spirit’s resources were equally unknown. She was not sure how much she had to give: she could only hope that it would be enough to meet whatever might be asked of her.

  Chapter Eleven

  I

  The voice beyond the low stone wall invited the occupants of the cottage to come out. Then silence. The silence gave an air of absurdity to the proceedings, as though someone suffering from hallucinations had sudden called out, forlornly seeking human life in a wilderness. The uniformed superintendent was not, however, a man much troubled with imagination; his troubles were of a different kind. He looked at the squat outline of the cottage; it was derelict but sturdy, and it had only a few very small windows.

  ‘Another Sidney Street?’ he said.

  Harper grunted: ‘Not if I know anything about it.’

  The other, who had his doubts about how much the Scotland Yard man knew, relapsed into a disapproving silence.

  He had, it seemed, an ally in the cottage. Silence, however effective, did not appeal to Vickers as a weapon. He hurled words into the darkness; the damp, misty air diluted the violence and gave a flavour of hopelessness which took the fine edge off his defiance. Vickers sensed something of this.

  ‘God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who can fight the English climate?’

  The voice spoke again from the darkness. This time, Vickers answered with a rattle of machine-gun fire, after which communications ceased and the mist took possession.

  ‘Your move,’ Vickers said.

  There was only one move they could make, of course. He glanced down at his watch: a quarter-past ten. Perhaps a quarter of an hour in which to organize themselves for the attack? He looked out of the window but could see nothing but the shrouded wasteland; the lights of the town had been blotted out. Hunter and hunted were isolated. In spite of the chill indifference of the atmosphere, he felt passion stir; a quiver of expectation darted between himself and the watchers beyond, drawing them together. They were a part of his design, and he hoped that they would play their parts well. But one could never be sure. He had wanted a return to the lustful idiocy of war; he had wanted soldiers, not this small contingent of wary policemen. But this was peacetime and respect for human life was in fashion again. Nevertheless, excitement began to mount. He did not want to give full rein to it just yet, so he turned his mind to Saneck. He was sure of the man who had arranged the escape; Janzen would prefer to die here rather than to return to his masters, having failed to carry out their instructions. But Saneck most definitely needed an incentive. Vickers went down the narrow stairs; he was carrying the machine-gun and this meant negotiating the broken treads with particular care. He made sure that Janzen was in position at the back of the cottage, and then he walked through the narrow archway where once a door had hung into the room in which Edward waited. A reluctant sentinel, Vickers thought as he crossed to the man at the window.

  ‘You think there is nothing left for you, don’t you?’ he asked.

  Edward had, in fact, decided that there was one thing left for him: to dissociate himself from Vickers. He wanted to demonstrate, not to the watchers outside, but to himself, that he did not after all belong with Vickers. Unfortunately, the will to act was lacking, and a chill helplessness, intensified by the mist, was stealing over him. His belief in himself was too wavering a thing to withstand the power of Vickers’s personality.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he answered.

  Vickers moved closer.

  ‘As it happens, it does matter; because there is everything ahead of you.’

  Edward shrank back, alarmed by this attempt to inject courage into him. If Vickers had approached him with a hypodermic syringe, he could not have been more uneasy. It was too dark to see Vickers’s face very clearly, and this uncertainty added to his fear.

  ‘I haven’t told you this before because I was afraid that you might do something desperate,’ Vickers said. But now was the time for desperation, so he went on: ‘Your wife has been freed; she and the boy are waiting for you in Austria.’

  There was a shot from the back of the cottage. The constable who had been sent out on a reconnaissance rolled over and lay still; the shot was not repeated, and when he judged it safe he began to crawl back towards the stone wall, uninjured, but with his taste for adventure somewhat staled.

  The uniformed superintendent looked at Harper.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ Harper said. ‘Leave the next move to them.’

  He did not feel as sure of himself as he sounded. His reasons for waiting were mixed and he suspected his personal involvement. He was taking a risk, and it was not the kind of risk of which he approved; he had, in the past, been very sarcastic about other people who attempted to be clever on such occasions.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ he repeated.

  The uniformed man at his side said: ‘You know best,’ in a tone that implied the opposite. Harper understood how he felt. These were his men surrounding the place; he did not want their lives to be endangered to test the fancy theories of the Scotland Yard man.

  A ’plane came over, very low; the mist was not thick above the ground and they could see its landing lights, bright and steady. Harper waited until the noise diminished, and then said:

  ‘They’ve trapped themselves anyway,’ He wanted to reassure himself. ‘Nowhere for them to run to, except the river. They’ll never make that barge now. And even if they do . . .’

  The uniformed man, who had himself informed Harper that the river police were on the barge, did not bother to reply. Instead, he said:

  ‘What can they hope to get out of it?’

  Harper’s hand rested on the gun in his pocket. He had a good idea what Vickers hoped to get out of it, and he did not mean to oblige him. Not yet, at any rate. The part of him that was a policeman felt very certain about that; he wanted to see Vickers in the dock more than he had ever wanted to see any man there. But there was another part of him that wanted to play God, to sort out the sheep from the goats, to spare one man’s weakness. He knew that it was this part of him that kept him here, waiting. There was not much that he could do for Saneck, but he could give him a little time. It was a small enough gift; but if things went wrong Superintendent Harper would pay heavily for it.

  ‘How many in there, do you think?’ his companion asked.

  ‘Two at least; probably the man who was driving the car on the Embankment as well.’

  A ragged cloud of mist was curling up along the deserted fields; all around them men stirred uneasily. Harper wondered whose will would
break first.

  Vickers watched the mist swirling capriciously around the cottage; sometimes it was thick, then suddenly it would lift and he could see quite clearly in the thin moonlight how the desolate wasteland tapered away unbroken to the river. It was hard to believe that there was anyone living out there. At first, he was grateful for this period of waiting because it heightened his desire, titillated his urge for violence. But gradually, as time passed, he became impatient. He was conscious of a will opposed to his, a will that was stubborn, tenacious, and more patient than his own.

  He turned to Edward, who had no will of his own, for relief. A little moonlight filtered into the room as the mist cleared again; he could see Edward moving his head from side to side, restless, like a man with a fever; his lips twitched as though he were talking to someone but the only sound that emerged was a faint, subdued whimpering. The fool, slobbering with excitement at the thought of reunion with a woman whom he would probably not have recognized anyway! It was almost too easy to dupe Saneck. Well, let him dream.

  ‘I’m going upstairs,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anyone sneaking in that upper window.’ He pointed to the machine-gun. ‘If they start to move in, open up with that.’

  Edward did not reply, but Vickers saw him put out a shaking hand and touch the machine-gun as though it were a sacred symbol of deliverance. Vickers was smiling as he went away.

  Edward was indeed in awe of the machine-gun. It seemed to him all-powerful, a cold, relentless instrument against which nothing could stand, a material assurance of escape. His shivering became more violent. Over the years, despite the bleak evidence of the letters, he had managed to preserve the illusion that Sonya was alive; it was a comforting illusion which enabled him to explain his own actions in simple terms of love and duty. But lately this comfort had been denied him, the façade of the illusory world had begun to crumble. Now, Vickers had intervened, bringing news of a miracle. The illusion had become reality: Sonya had defeated death. At the end of this journey which only a short time ago had seemed a fantasy, Sonya would be there. The thought blotted out all reason; its effect on him was so tremendous that he never for one moment doubted what Vickers had said to him. The injection had succeeded far beyond Vickers’s expectations, already the poison was working deep, probing along the dark veins towards the heart.

  Edward peered out of the window; the mist was thinning and in the distance, a long way away, he could see the lights of houses and the flicker of a car’s headlamps along a road. But in between him and the far lights was a great hollow of darkness. It was difficult to believe that there were men in that hollow, waiting; men who might yet stand between him and Sonya.

  The uniformed superintendent was watching the lights, too. He had hoped for reinforcements which had not come. Why the hell did this thing have to coincide with one of the biggest manhunts in this part for years?

  ‘And if anything goes wrong,’ he said bitterly, ‘you can be sure they’ll complain the place wasn’t adequately covered. We’ll have an inquest that’ll go on for years.’

  Near by someone sneezed and a voice muttered:

  ‘If that’s all you get out of it, you’ll be lucky.’

  Harper passed his tongue across his dry lips.

  ‘How do these men feel about MacLeish?’

  ‘The ones I can trust the least are down by the river,’ the other answered. He turned his head towards Harper. ‘And he won’t get that far, will he?’

  Harper looked at the stone wall with the jagged glass encrusted along the top. Beyond it there was a no-man’s-land of about twenty-five feet and then the cottage: a not-so-very formidable stretch. He began to dwell on the possibility of assault and found it to his liking. The urge to violence was infectious. A hot wave of anger quickened his blood at the thought of Vickers. Why not go in there and force events to work the way that he wanted? There might be an argument for sending one man in alone. He strained his eyes in the darkness, searching for the break in the wall. The urgent drive of his body threatened to push the argument beyond the bounds of reason. He dug his fingers into the rough soil beneath him, twisting the coarse, mist-slimed grass round his throbbing wrists.

  ‘Now!’ Vickers said as he stood by the upper window. ‘It should happen now!’

  He began to pace up and down the low room. Time was on his side, of course; sooner or later they must move in. And yet, he knew that time was really his enemy. He could not wait; he must have his ecstatic moment now, later desire would wane. It must be now, now! Yet nothing happened. How could they treat him like this, sending a handful of men after him as though he were only a miserable cur snapping at the heels of mankind? How could they deny him his final consummation? He drove his fist against the long-broken window, tearing his flesh on the jagged glass; he pounded on the sill, crushing the glass into his hands until the agony of it made him scream. Janzen ran into the hall and peered up the stairs. He saw that it was only Vickers up there; it seemed to Janzen that the man was losing his nerve.

  Edward alone was undisturbed; it was in another world that a man was torturing himself in a derelict cottage by the river Thames. The sound of the breaking glass merged with the tinkle of the sleigh bells. Edward was having his last adventure with time. The memory of the old house in the small village was stronger than it had ever been, it moved him with the wild grief of a final farewell. He remembered that the rhythm of life had been slow there, and that all that had been required of him was to move to the rhythm. The rhythm was in his veins when he was born, it pulsed around him with never a missed beat in his early years. When had the rhythm been lost? The fevered beat of his pulse gave urgency to the question. In historical terms, he could give the answer easily enough; yet there had been those who had continued working in the fields as they had worked all their lives without being greatly disturbed by the coming and the going of the Germans and the Russians. There had been harmony still. Why had he not stayed among them? How had the harmony been broken? The answer came suddenly In a torrent of bitterness more terrible for the years it had been dammed. There had been no challenge to the harmony until Sonya came.

  Slowly, but relentlessly, the hidden thoughts assembled. He saw her standing before him on the day that he deserted her; he had talked of her following him, knowing that it would never be possible. She had accepted his going without bitterness, certainly without surprise. She had long ago assessed his value to the cause and he could read the judgement in her eyes. He had accepted the judgement then; but now, he answered her across the years, the words tumbling out eager for release.

  ‘Yes, you may well look at me,’ he said, staring at the ravaged face with the piercing, indomitable eyes. ‘Weak, broken, running away. But why should you expect more? I was not made for the great enterprises; I was a man who should have lived his life in a backwater. My talent, if any talent I had, was for the small change of life. But you wanted to refashion me in your image. You hurled me on to a battlefield; you laid burdens on me that I was not strong enough to bear; you crippled my spirit, and when I needed you most you were not there.’

  But the eyes continued to judge him, forced further confession from him.

  ‘I didn’t betray you; not when they tortured me and not afterwards during those dreadful months in solitary confinement. But all my strength was dredged out of me and there is none left now. And there is no love left, either. I have been burnt out in your cause.’

  He pressed his hand against his mouth, closed his eyes, his whole body contracted in a frantic endeavour to block the passage of thought. But even as he strained with aching muscles, he experienced in his body the soft, treacherous release he had felt when he left her. How gladly he had relinquished her to the forces closing in upon her! It was only later, when he learnt that she was in prison, that he began to be afraid. Afraid for himself. He knew now that it was not to protect her that he had become entangled with Vickers. He had been sure that she would soon die. He had spied as a kind of recompense, an act of appeaseme
nt to her watching spirit, an expiation for a sin he had not dared to acknowledge. He hated her, and because he hated her it had been necessary to offer her some kind of sacrifice.

  Edward thrust out his hand as though to fend off the thought and his fingers fell on metal, cold and unforgiving. Terror awakened him and he remembered that a miracle had been performed. Sonya was alive; she was free and she was waiting for him. This deadly- machine was his passport to her. Yet there was no torment he would not face rather than the torment of seeing her again. All the small confusions were swept aside, and from the intricate tangle one thing emerged with stark clarity. His ‘sacrifice’ had been only another instance of that intellectual weakness of which Sonya had always been so contemptuous; because, of course, he had betrayed Sonya on the day that he agreed to spy for her enemies. It was something she would never forgive.

  He looked beyond the machine-gun; through the cracked pane of glass he could see a small path which led round the side of the cottage towards an outside lavatory. His eyes followed the path until suddenly it dissolved in mist. It seemed to him that the edge of the world lay at the end of that path and that there, beyond the last foothold, she would be waiting for him. Then as he watched, something seemed to move at the furthest extreme of vision.

  They were inside the stone wall now; if the mist remained thick all would be well, but it was a doubtful ally. Harper put heroics behind him, shaken and a little ashamed of the squall of violence. Saneck and Vickers ceased to exist for him. There was only the cottage, the figures in it were pawns on a chess board; his one interest in them was to discover their positions at the present moment and to anticipate the moves which they might be expected to make. The cottage was very small; only a couple of rooms downstairs; there was no inside sanitation and, judging by the slope of the roof, it seemed possible that there was only one room upstairs. There would be a man in the front covering the ground floor window and the door; there would be a man at the back covering the window and the side-door; and a man upstairs. They would be wise if they stood their ground, but an attack on the front door would probably shift at least one of them. The front door was recessed slightly; once reached, the projecting wall would give shelter from the machine-gun fire.