The Sleeper

by J. Robert Janes

  Verdammt, he wouldn’t leave it. She would have to nod, have to give him that, but first would let him see her indecisively fingering the stem of her glass.

  ‘Who told him, Christina? Look, I have to know, otherwise I can’t …’

  ‘Can’t take me to see Karen?’ she asked, abruptly setting her cigarette aside and removing her hands from sight. It had been his turn to strike and he had.

  ‘Just tell me,’ he said.

  He knowing, she was sure, that she was gripping her thighs in anger. A deal, was that what he wanted of her? she wondered, but would say, ‘Vati has his connections, Ash. He has always had them.’

  Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, thought Ashby grimly. The Abwehr. ‘Is there someone at Grantley’s, Christina? Someone who’s been ordered to wake up and keep tabs on me?’

  Someone close? wondered Christina, relishing the thought. He had had two telephone calls.

  Had one of them been from that school of his? His concern said that it had, but a shrug would be best, for he’d have to notice again those bare shoulders of hers, and perhaps would remember kissing them too, and passionately, while she had stroked his Schwanz and gazed steadily at him. ‘I wouldn’t know about such things,’ she said. ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t. Why should I?’

  Yet she had known the names of the two who had followed him. ‘Could you find out for me?’

  David was watching her too closely now. ‘Is that the price I must pay?’ she asked. ‘You know I can’t be expected to find out such a thing. I’d only get in trouble. Things have tightened up a lot. Henke … Vati’s driver would have told you that at Easter.’

  She was reminding him of what he had done to her, thought Ashby, and when her fingers closed over the magnificent sapphire at her throat, he wondered if she was going to yank it off and throw it at him, but she didn’t do that. She removed it and the earrings, all of which he had given her and all of which they had never sold even when down and out, for they’d been left in the safe-deposit box of that father of hers who had refused to release them.

  Closing her hand over the jewellery, she said, ‘Ash, let’s not fight anymore. Darling, I meant what I said. I’ll stay here in England with you as a married couple with a daughter we both love, but only if you want me.’

  He was, Christina had to admit, still handsome, even with those awful spectacles he had to use, but he was, she also now knew, feeling that he was being watched all the time by someone other than herself, yet he didn’t know who that could be. A colleague at his school, a friend, an associate—even someone he chanced only to meet at that pub he used when seeing that slut he’d been fucking.

  With a finality that troubled him, she put the sapphires away in her handbag and stubbed out the cigarette she had all but forgotten. He would break, she decided, or he would not break. It was fifty-fifty. ‘Well?’ she asked, looking steadily at him now as though wanting him.

  At last he said, ‘Telephone your father and tell him he, and anyone else the Abwehr has got working on it, must leave Karen alone. Those are my conditions.’

  And firm about it, but gut, mein lieber schoolmaster, gut. ‘I’ll call him from my room, but I must warn you, when you took Karen from his house like that, you embarrassed him terribly. Even Herr Himmler soon learned of it, Goebbels too, but worst of all, Göring.’

  Who had, in 1928, been one of the first of the Nazis to be elected to the Reichstag and then, in 1934, had in essence formed the Gestapo and in this year, 1938, been the key figure in the Anschluss, but who was also head of the Luftwaffe and a notorious gossip.

  Ashby settled their bill. He had already called the school, only to find that Tony had gone out for a stroll, a worry since Tony must have known he would call back as soon as possible. Ruth, however, had been terribly upset about something, and when asked, had burst into tears and rung off. He had then called the pub in Saint Ives only to lose the connection the moment Ewen had come on the line. And, yes, Christina was well aware of the fact that he had made those two calls, but not to whom.

  In the lift, neither said a thing. At the door to her room, he waited while she found her key and let them in. Then they stood in the darkness, and he heard her put the lock on, she so close to him, he felt the brush of a bare arm against the back of his right hand.

  ‘Are you still missing me?’ she asked.

  Ashby felt her fingering his tie and knew he had to get her to call that father of hers. ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘Only a little?’ she asked, the teasing laughter in her voice. ‘To be missed at all is good to know. Every woman should hear such a thing from a man she has once loved and hurt so badly.’

  ‘Christina …’

  ‘Sh! It is almost like old times, yes? Standing so close, knowing there’s a bed on which we can both lose ourselves in each other.’

  ‘The general … You were going to telephone your father.’

  ‘He’ll have gone to bed. He will only say no, in any case.’

  ‘Try him. Tell him I’m going to take Karen to the States.’

  Lieber Gott im Himmel, the States! What the hell did he really want from her? Everything? she wondered, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, forcing his lips to brush against the softness of her hair. If he had wanted to hurt her, he couldn’t have said anything worse! ‘America is so very far. Karen needs me, David—have you not seen that yet? Well, have you not, damn you?’

  They still hadn’t turned on a light, were now facing each other, he not saying a thing, just waiting, thought Christina, she having failed. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, brushing a hand over his chest. ‘Make love to me. Make me feel it as it used to be. Karen needs the two of us.’

  Taking off her shoes, she set his glasses on the side table, he feeling her hand grasp the back of his neck, then her lips, the softness of a breath, she kissing him lightly several times, her tongue now lingering. ‘Come in me,’ she whispered. ‘Make me cry out like you used to.’

  When she unfastened the halter of her dress, Ashby knew he had to leave. ‘Christina …’ he began, only to hear her give a little laugh and feel her breath against his lips again.

  ‘You were so good,’ she said. ‘Those two you found me with didn’t mean a thing. I know how much you must hate me, but what you don’t know is that I cried for days.’

  Fumbling, he tried to find those stupid glasses of his, she to want to break them.

  ‘Think about what I really need from you, Christina. Talk to that father of yours. Ein Schweigeagent, ja? You can reach me at the school.’

  ‘Wetherby Cottage, George,’ said Roger Banfield. ‘Close enough to the school and the graveyard. Ideal for a retirement roost if and when, eh? But easily leased in the interim.’

  Crawley poured himself a little more of Roger’s malt whisky. The rooms in Overton House were comfortable, the fire sufficient. ‘Might cause a stir with all this talk of war,’ he said. ‘Real estate’s bound to go down.’

  Banfield offered up the fags with a grin. ‘Not below five hundred pounds. It’s timely and a bargain.’

  ‘Freehold?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Been empty for quite a while, a bad sign,’ mused Crawley, taking a sip.

  ‘But near a good stream, with reed beds and willows, George. Spring-fed osier beds all gone to growth, of course. Have to copse them back and prune the orchard. Telford could use the refuse. He’s always in need of a new switch.’

  Crawley grinned and said, ‘Birch is better.’

  ‘Never use it. Like yourself, I have always maintained that the tongue is the ultimate weapon. To err is to sin; to worry is to live in hell.’

  ‘Take a look at it, then, shall we?’ asked Crawley.

  Banfield tossed off his whisky. ‘Let the moon and the stars be our guide, but hand me that torch. We’ll take a turn about the school, then go down via the old tote road, which sh
ould bring us out into the graveyard at Saint Mary Margaret’s.’

  Not until they were well away from the school did old George say, ‘Something’s up, Roger. The Lower Fifth is being awfully close about it. Seems they saw something in Ashby’s room, or one of them did, but for the life of me I haven’t been able to pry the rest out of that Hamilton boy. Had to do with headmaster’s wife, though, of that I’m sure.’

  When they came upon Tics, he was in among the blessed osiers, idly fingering the shoots and looking like death.

  ‘We’ll need baskets if there’s another war,’ he said, feeling futile and trying desperately to hide this from them.

  ‘Baskets?’ arched Banfield, lowering the light at last.

  ‘Money, for God’s sake!’ shrilled Pearce, unsettling them. ‘The school’s accounts are overdrawn again. I really don’t know how I can possibly pay you all at end of term.’

  And so much for cottages and real estate investments, or of retiring in genteel quietude. Banfield heaved a sigh. A little firmness and common sense were what was needed. ‘This crisis will pass, Headmaster, as it has even, if I may say so, before your time. I have every confidence in our illustrious Board of Governors come Founders’ Day.’

  ‘Not this time. Not when they hear how much we are in overdraft.’

  Damned chilly that, thought Crawley. Damned odd, though, baskets as a way of paying off the school’s arrears. Everyone knew Headmaster was a dud when it came to the finances, but baskets?

  It was Roger who said, ‘Now come along, Headmaster. Do try not to take it so hard. A spot of whisky is what’s called for. Your digs or mine, George?’

  ‘I’m really quite all right,’ said Pearce. ‘It’s just the threat of closing the school.’

  And with another war coming on, thought Banfield. Tics hadn’t come out of the last one a well man. Fear was a terrible thing, and fear of death under constant fire, perhaps the worst of all.

  * This prayer was recited before meals by children in Cologne, according to James D. Forman in his book Nazism, published by Franklin Watts in New York and London in 1978.

  4

  Waves pounded into the cove at the base of the cliffs, the black slates glistening, and where the boat shed had its broken ramp, the sea all but rushed to its door. It was 1300 hours, Sunday, 29 May, and Ashby knew he had to have some answers ready. Monica and Ewen had been adamant. The Bowker-Brown girl had discovered the truth and was refusing to have anything more to do with them. Karen was threatening to run away and had refused to speak to him. He hadn’t told her Christina was in London and that he had seen her. Karen wouldn’t have understood. It wouldn’t have helped.

  Turning from the cliffs, he looked towards the grey granite walls and slate of the cottage, which was partly hidden behind a gentle rise. Bleak was the word that best described it. Beyond the cottage, the rising slopes of the moor bled the world of everything but the distant narrow, winding track of a furtive road and the towering ruins of that old engine house high on its hill. Somewhere there was a sleeper. Jackie Peterson had known he’d gone to London, and Jackie always received twice-weekly telephone calls from his father, but Jackie’s dad couldn’t be the one.

  When he knocked again on the door to the cottage, there was no answer and, reaching for the knob found that the door opened far too easily. At a glance, he took in the writing table in front of one of the two small windows, the chairs, the hearth, pots and pans, bed with its patchwork quilt and pillows, boots against the wall, clothes hanging from pegs, no bureau, nothing like that.

  Knowing that he was invading her privacy, he moved self-consciously about, and when he came to the writing table, ran his gaze quickly over the makeshift shelf of books: A Londoner’s Walk to the Land’s End, Rambles Beyond Railways, The Cornish Miner … Nearly all of them had been written in the last century. Pebbles, bits of wave-washed wood, seashells, brittle stars, lobster claws and other ‘drift’ indicated not only a beachcomber’s love of ‘wrecking’ but an artistic bent.

  The flyleaf of her leather-bound journal—the only bit of wealth apparent—held a terse note from her father: Hil, this business of earning your way as a writer is a bloody piece of nonsense and you know it!

  An entry read:

  The shafts to the Wheal Deep must go down more than a thousand feet. I really must get a plan of the workings. Money’s such a problem, but I have to know what Pindanter can now expect, for the mine has been closed for several years, and he’s going to have to go down there to hide. It’s his only escape. What will he find, how will he manage? When one drops a stone, it falls for ever and is really quite frightening, yet I am drawn to the shafts as to the well of my story, and feel so close to things when I stand looking down into either of them, for courage is required, not folly.

  The entry was dated Sunday, 22 May, the day he had first met her. The shafts couldn’t be any more than three hundred feet to water, the mine flooded probably in the late 1870s when the price of tin had again crashed and so many of Cornwall’s mines had finally closed.

  Flipping back through the handwritten manuscript yielded:

  Haunted by the child’s screams, Pindanter ran across the moor, her blood still on his hands. As always, that last wild look of despair under lantern light was with him, he having savagely clubbed her to death, a child of seven with long fair hair and the bluest of eyes.

  Reaching the mine at last, his pursuers not far behind, he scrambled down the first of the ladders, and pulling it in after himself, hid in the darkness, he still feeling her twisting this way and that and hearing her terrified screams.

  Karen … Had she been thinking of Karen when she wrote this?

  A marginal note read: Wouldn’t these ladders have been fixed in place by bolts? Must somehow check.

  A single-barrelled, .410 shotgun leaned against the corner into which Hilary Bowker-Brown’s bed had been pushed. Taking it up, he checked the breech and found it loaded. A fish knife, razor sharp in its sheath, was hidden beneath the pillows, while a bone-handled skinning knife rested on a shelf before a scattering of books.

  He had no right to put her life in danger, should have warned her, should have told her the truth.

  When he turned, Ashby saw the girl standing in the doorway, silently watching him, but looking very French and of the Midi.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?’ asked Hilary. ‘I might have been able to help. I’ve friends, people who know of me. I haven’t always lived like this.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry …’

  ‘Don’t even bother. Just bugger off, Captain. That daughter of yours is a very disturbed and emotionally upset little girl. If I were you, I’d give her back to her mother before she runs off and kills herself. The Abwehr,’ she said, swinging two dead rabbits she must have trapped up onto the table. ‘God Almighty, I might have known, and God forgive me for taking his name in vain. Six bloody pounds a fortnight, right? A fortune, and unsuspecting me goes and lays my life and career on the line and you don’t even bother to tell me!’ Throwing her beret onto the table, she turned away to pull off the gumboots and canvas duck coat.

  ‘Miss Bowker-Brown …’ he began.

  ‘So it’s to be formal, is it, Captain? I thought I told you to leave. Damn it, don’t you dare grin at me!’

  ‘Sorry, it’s just …’ He shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I like the way you stand up for yourself, and I am sorry. It wasn’t right of me and I know it, and now I’ll leave.’

  ‘Things are never simple,’ she said, pulling off a dark, knitted turtleneck. ‘I just knew there had to be something wrong with that deal you offered. Too fast, too smooth, too much lolly, and then the child muttering prayers to bloody Adolf Hitler!’

  ‘She is upset, and I do know how unhappy she is.’

  ‘Eine eingefleischter Nazi, ja?’ she asked, regretting it, for he looked so unhappy himsel
f. Knowing she oughtn’t to prolong things, she made her way across the room to the Primus. ‘Tea?’ she asked, striking the match on the wall. ‘It’s the least I can do for the condemned. There’s no sugar or milk—I’m too poor at the moment—but the tea will be black as ink unless you prefer it weak, as I suppose you might, but did you really manage to get yourself past all those border guards like that and into the Third Reich?’

  Monica must have told her. ‘I did, but I am ashamed of myself for not having been straight with you.’

  He was grey with fatigue and worry, and must have driven nonstop from London, fearing for the safety not just of his daughter but of his friends, herself included.

  ‘When we first met,’ said Ashby, ‘I honestly didn’t know if I could trust you, fluent in Deutsch as I’d been told you were. I was afraid, that I’ll admit, and certainly on the run.’

  ‘Aren’t you always?’

  ‘Not generally. In the boat shed, you mentioned that I wasn’t one of them. Whom did you mean?’

  ‘My “friends,”’ she said sadly. ‘Their names I can’t tell you. If I could, I would, but it’s as hush-hush as that daughter of yours, and that I do find a strange coincidence, but then random chance is often just as much a part of life as anything else.’

  Like buying a derelict mine, thought Ashby.

  Hilary found two mugs, blowing into each to clear them of possible cobwebs and such, the schoolmaster watching in silence as she filled the teapot and set everything on the table. ‘I really can’t tell you who they are,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘But they might help if you asked them? Come on, Miss Bowker-Brown, MI5 or MI6? I may be a schoolmaster, but I’m not exactly unaware of things.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were.’

  ‘Your German, for one,’ he said, sitting down across from her at last. ‘Your French. They’re MI6, aren’t they? What did they want a lovely young woman like yourself to do, probably without even giving you any training? Pose as a foreign student on a visit to the Reich while having a good look at the submarine pens and shipping yards, or was it the airfields, or anything else of interest, even simple things like how well the railways were running and how good was the rolling stock?’