The Moment of Truth

by Storm Jameson

  “What’s this, what’s this?” Thorburn grumbled.

  Lowering his body into a chair, he listened, as if uninterested, to Lackland’s precise account, his head tilted back, so that the light falling over his face allowed him to drop his eyelids: he might have been pondering anything under cover of a sermon. When he moved, it was to stare at Marriot. He reflected that the young man looked decent, intelligent; he had a good forehead, his dark eyes were quite remarkably kind and attentive; certainly he was not a blackguard. As soon as Lackland finished,

  “Well, my boy, what do you want to say for yourself?” he asked.

  After only a brief hesitation, Marriot answered,

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Nonsense. What d’you mean by that?”

  “I mean that there is nothing to say,” Marriot said softly.

  Thorburn shook his head impatiently.

  “Come, don’t be silly.”

  Marriot looked at him with amusement and liking.

  “Colonel Lackland has said everything, and said it fairly. The only thing I could add—I consider his schemes anti-social and vile. And I shall do all I can to stop them.” He hesitated and repeated, “All.”

  Staring at him with dismay and horror, Kent said,

  “Why didn’t I know you were round the bend?”

  “Because I’m not, you fool,” Marriot said, smiling.

  Lackland turned to the general: you could not say there was satisfaction in his manner, still less triumph, yet the movement itself of his strong short body was a conclusion; he had brought down his man—it was enough.

  “If you’ll allow me, sir, to point out the implications,” he began coldly. “It’s true he knows little, but the little he does know would be uncommonly useful to—”

  Thorburn cut him short, with a sudden air of weariness.

  “Yes, yes, I agree with you. No need to drag it out.”

  “It must,” Lackland said, “be dealt with before the aeroplane arrives—a matter probably of a few hours.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  With a sharp movement of his hands, Kent said stiffly,

  “I can’t see what this has to do with you. You’re not in charge of this airfield.”

  He had spoken to Lackland, who answered,

  “Hold your tongue.”

  “It’s out of your hands, my boy,” Thorburn said, “I’m afraid you must keep quiet.” The look on Kent’s face distressed him; he turned from it hurriedly to the girl. “Run along to bed,” he said, “this isn’t the place for a young woman.”

  She stared at him without answering, obstinate and indifferent, as though what he had said was too obtuse to be noticed at all, and moved quietly to stand beside Kent, almost touching him. This brought her close as well to Marriot. Thorburn was struck by a sense that the three of them were together in a way that was not simply physical nearness. With a pang of grief, he looked away from it.

  “Shut the door,” he ordered Smith. Need we, he said to himself, have all that staring in?

  Smith shut it. He came back uneasily and slowly to stand between the two groups, like a dog between two masters, a dog in an ill temper, at that.

  At this moment, the other door opened noiselessly. Hutton came through, shut it again without a sound and stood with his back to it, stiffly.

  Settling himself in his chair, the general exchanged a shrewd glance with Clarke, turned to Lackland, and said in a voice at once fatigued and careless,

  “I take it you want to talk.”

  As confident as if he thought they were eager to hear him, Lackland walked briskly to the desk. Seated there, he looked round, with the smallest flicker of irony in his glance. Thorburn had sunk his head on his chest: without lifting it he watched Lackland. Plain broad face, a very slight smile—the smile, reserved and fine, of a priest—on the thin lips: they were thin but not mean, simply reliant and severe. An actor who knows his part backwards, thought the general, and then was ashamed. No, he corrected himself guiltily, he’s a good soldier, he knows what he has to do, that’s all.

  Leaning back, one arm on the desk, fingers tapping lightly, because he was at ease, Lackland said,

  “There are two possible ways of dealing with the fellow. I think only two. He can be taken to the States, and locked up there in whatever zoo they run for animals of his type. He can be treated as if the Home Army were fully in existence”—he paused briefly, marking his point with a rapid chord—“as in effect it is—and the only executive arm of the administration—”

  Without moving, Thorburn asked,

  “Administration? What administration?”

  “—of the government in exile. … I repeat—we can act as if the Home Army were in full existence, and deal with him as a military court deals with deserters or spies. … As I see it, it is impossible to take him to America—we can’t give someone’s seat in the aeroplane to him.” His fingers ceased to tap. “In fact, it’s unpleasant but simple.”

  Clarke had listened to him with attention. Cocking one eyebrow at him, he said,

  “Simple but unpleasant, I think you mean, old boy, simple but unpleasant.”

  Thorburn said nothing. Marriot, who had not taken his eyes from Lackland since he began speaking, said quietly,

  “You mean—shoot me.”

  Almost drily, Lackland replied, “Yes.”

  Still looking at him, Marriot said,

  “Fair enough.”

  Smith started violently. He took a dazed step forward, and stumbled against the chair nearest Kent. In a stupefied voice, he said,

  “But you can’t do that, sir.”

  Kent gripped his arm, savagely, and muttered,

  “See what you’ve done, you fool, see what you’ve done.”

  Smith looked from the pilot’s flushed contorted face to Lackland’s calm one: beside himself with dislike of the officer, he stammered,

  “Eh, you brute, if I’d known you were going to overdo it like this, I’d have kept me mouth shut.”

  Kent gave his arm a final twist and dropped it.

  “Well, you can keep it shut now,” he said. He turned to Cordelia. They looked at each other in silence for a moment. The girl murmured something, and turned to walk quietly out of the room. Only Clarke saw her

  The general had shifted in his chair so that he was facing the desk and Lackland. Something that was neither hostility nor understanding—but partook of both kinds—passed between them.

  “Come now, aren’t you running ahead of your book?” Thorburn said almost casually. “The Home Army—except on paper—isn’t in existence. Nor is the overseas government.”

  “The government, sir, hasn’t ceased to exist because some of its members are still in the cruisers taking them overseas. The essential people, the men who take the decisions, have been flown over already. As I think you know.”

  “All right,” Thorburn said after a moment, “I’ll give you the utmost—a legal basis for your court and the rest of it. All the same, I don’t feel that the political ideas of this foolish young man are serious.”

  In his relief, Kent smiled at Clarke. He was taken aback when the brigadier, pulling down the corners of his mouth, shook his head slowly.

  Lackland’s voice, still brisk—you might say, dapper—startled him by its sudden harshness. Harsh, rasping—Kent shivered, in a nearly physical revulsion.

  “In peace-time, in any well-established society, such as ours was, a political act, even a conspiracy against the State, doesn’t threaten the safety, or the existence, of the nation. But in a country which is in danger—I scarcely think I need point out to you in what danger—any threat is a threat to its mere existence, and must be dealt with ruthlessly. A country whose life and freedom is threatened can’t afford to be indulgent or generous——”

  “I hope,” Thorburn said with a ferocious contempt, “that it can afford to be just.”

  Lackland’s eye sparkled.

  “It can afford an emergency justice. In
civil life one waits—is it so decent or reasonable, after all?—until a murder is committed before condemning the murderer in a proper manner, with wigs and black caps. You don’t, I think, really feel that a State in mortal danger can wait, wig in hand, to have its throat cut. The sole result being that the assassins become the State!”

  He flung his arm out across the desk, arpeggios rippling from his fingers. Thorburn watched him with an expression which from being cold and arrogant became strangely inquisitive. Scratching himself,

  “H’m, yes … yes … it’s exactly what our bolshevik friends—and all other dictators before them—have always said. Their excuse for murdering political opponents and critics and so on.”

  “We’re still at war,” Lackland said swiftly. “The fellow is a deserter and a spy. He happens to be under military justice, not political.”

  “Much the same thing,” muttered Thorburn.

  Staring at the colonel with an ironical smile, Clarke said,

  “You’re a clever fellow, Lackland. You’ll go far.”

  Lackland answered in a civil, almost a deferential tone.

  “You are going to America yourself, sir. The fact that this chap can denounce his countrymen will be of little importance to you.”

  At this moment Cordelia came back, with Emil Breuner. As he came in, unsmiling, he glanced from one to the other, a quick searching glance, but said nothing. For no reason, the sight of his brown face, his neatness, the almost elegance of his dark-clad body, aggravated in Kent the sense he had of being caught in an unpleasant dream. The room, which had always seemed large, had shrunk: he wanted impatiently to open the door and let the night air into it, and with it the airfield, the sea, the immense dark bubble of the sky, indifferent, cancelling this room, the living body of his friend near him, Lack-land’s mouth talking coldly about justice … cancelling the weak cries lost in it of children dying of their wounds and of terror, of the women whose eyes the heat of the bombs—was it Clarke had talked about it—or Lackland?—had melted in their heads … cancelling the tortures, the fears, the hunger, the deaths. … He pulled himself back sharply. Isn’t one nightmare at a time enough? he thought drily.

  Looking at Marriot, he saw that he had—for the first moment, perhaps—understood that he might be going to be killed. Who else would have known it—since the only sign was the slight trembling of Marriot’s lips? A feeling of rage seized him. He felt giddy.

  Marriot looked at Lackland with a fixed stare.

  “I’ve denounced no one. You’ve no reason to suppose I would. You want to shoot me for something you think I might do, some day.” He hesitated, and said in a strangely young weak voice, “You’ll do it because, politically, I’m on the other side—nothing more.”

  “A taste of your own medicine,” Lackland said quietly. “Have you any idea how many honest men your friends have strung up for no worse crime than being on the other side? In 1943 I was fighting with them.” Of its own accord his left hand went up to touch the patch over his eye. “If I’d been one of their own people they’d have rewarded me afterwards by shooting me. … You, too,” he said, with sudden sharpness, to Kent. He glanced briefly and forbiddingly at Smith. “And you.”

  “If you say so, sir,” Kent said.

  Smith cleared his throat.

  “What the lad wants is a good thrashing. I’d have given him it and had done.”

  He met Lackland’s glance with a stolid reserve.

  A hatred and a bitterness he could not control seized Marriot.

  “I’m not a deserter,” he said between stretched lips. “I’m not clearing out to live on a pension. Nor am I carrying on an American war against our own people. Against the men and women who want to make the country fit to live in. Fit for anyone except tired old men and bastards.”

  “My poor fellow,” Thorburn said, “you don’t think that’s what your friends are handing you out, do you?”

  Marriot turned on him.

  “You don’t believe you ought to kill me—for no reason. Except that you’re afraid I might take it into my head to behave badly—some time—perhaps next year.”

  The general’s face twitched.

  “Surely that’s exactly what your co-religionists do as a regular habit!”

  “Excuse me,” Marriot said swiftly, “I believe we’re always at war—either against ourselves—anyone can go wrong—or against famine or microbes. But you—you’d be going against everything you believe”—a sudden passion made him raise his voice—“wouldn’t you? Whatever this bastard thinks, you’d know you were murdering me. …”

  The general looked at him with half-smiling kindness.

  “Shut up, you’re talking too much—”

  “If I’m a deserter,” interrupted Marriot, “why don’t you shoot that pompous ass Heron for sneaking off to America?”

  “A damn sight too much,” Clarke said under his breath.

  Cordelia touched Breuner on the arm.

  “Why don’t you say something?” she whispered. She was pale, even her lips; her hands were shaking.

  Breuner said quietly,

  “This is the first time I am not an exile. I am not in England.”

  Clarke rolled an eye at him.

  “I don’t quite take you, old boy.”

  “It could be anywhere in the darkness of Europe.”

  Beside herself, Cordelia said roughly,

  “Oh, what is the good of talking politics? You said you would help.”

  “I am sorry,” he murmured. “It is not really politics.” He turned his eyes—a film had come over their brightness, because he was unhappy, or because he had not slept—on Lackland. With an unconscious formality he said, “Colonel Lackland, you are treating this boy—he is a boy—as if he were rather vile. You will forgive me, but I think you are wrong. Of course he would be behaving foolishly, perhaps with wicked foolishness, if he gave away valuable information to the enemy. But you should, surely, pay some attention to his motives? It is a kind of young excitement and idealism—don’t you agree? And it’s not incurable.”

  For a moment it looked as though Lackland were going to ignore him. Then he said curtly,

  “I daresay. If this were a classroom—or if we were not at war—talk about motives would do no harm. This happens to be a question of security. Your what d’you call it?—psychology—is out of place.”

  “Yes—no doubt. But, if there are only a few who believe like him, it is not serious. If there are a great many, all is already lost.”

  “Oh, rubbish,” Lackland said.

  In an even gentler and easier voice, Breuner persisted,

  “We should reflect whether the idea of justice, and the idea of people being innocent when they have not yet done their crime—perhaps I should say the passion for justice, perhaps it is not only an idea—whether it isn’t part of the human estate, so to speak—and ought to be saved. Perhaps it oughtn’t to be let go—either in the hope of saving something else, a country even—or simply out of despair.”

  Lackland struck the edge of the desk, with his fingers, a light sharp sound.

  “That’s enough nonsense.”

  Marriot looked at Breuner with a caressing smile.

  “You’re out of date.”

  “Yes—I think so,” Breuner murmured.

  The general shifted his great shoulders about his chair like a dog trying to make itself comfortable in bed. An expression between disgust and annoyance came across his face when he had settled himself, and could attend to Lackland.

  “Psychology may at this stage be out of place,” he said testily. “I’m by no means convinced yet that this poor silly fellow can do any harm.”

  After a moment,

  “Have you any right, sir, out of”—Lackland half closed his eyes—“charity—or because you don’t admit that liberal ideas are admirable in their place and flat treachery out of it … have you the right to let him loose on us? All very fine to feel sorry for him—I’m sorry for him myself�
��I shall feel a deal sorrier for any decent chap of ours who’s caught and strung up because this wretched fellow told what he knew about our plans.”

  “Oh, nonsense—nonsense—a young ass, of no importance.”

  The change in Lackland’s face might have been anger or resolution.

  “The chain of hands can be as long as you like—from this boy to ditches where people are shot in the neck.”

  Thorburn frowned.

  “Yes, yes. … Then let me say no more than that—as one member of a military court, a highly irregular military court—you can’t impose the sentence.”

  For the first time, Lackland’s air of respect cracked. He raised his voice.

  “You’d take it on yourself to turn this chap loose?”

  “Don’t be impudent,” Thorburn said, staring.

  Breuner came forward slowly to the desk.

  “Can I see this paper you took from him?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “I am a scientist,” said Breuner mildly. “I shall know what it is, perhaps.”

  “Show it to him,” ordered Thorburn.

  Lackland handed the sheet of squared paper across the desk into the slender brown hand held out for it. He turned, with an air of deference, to Thorburn.

  “I should like you to consider, sir, that this is not a military court. It is a maquis court. You yourself are leaving the country in a few hours. Before you leave you release a man who means, at the first opportunity, to betray the people you are leaving behind. Whether you can justify it at G.H.Q. is not my affair. I fail to see how you justify it to yourself.”

  Before the general could answer, Breuner laid the paper down on the desk in front of Lackland, murmuring,

  “This is not very important.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Lackland.

  “It is already quite well known about.”

  Clarke lifted his doubled hand and shot out a stubby finger, pointing at Marriot. His voice broke on something between a yelp and a jeer.

  “Aha, me cunning Roman. …”

  “Are you sure?” the colonel asked Breuner.

  “I am quite sure.”

  “As you like,” said Lackland curtly. “It’s irrelevant.”

  Breuner looked anxiously at Thorburn.