“Is it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
As if to avoid looking at any of them, Breuner hung his head: he said very slowly,
“No one has asked him if he will hold his tongue—not pass on what he heard from Colonel Lackland yesterday evening.”
“Useless,” Lackland said ironically. “They lie as a matter of tactics.”
A silence.
“How old are you?” Thorburn asked Marriot abruptly.
“Twenty-two.”
Thorburn rubbed his head with the side of his fist.
A year younger than the other one, he thought. Much cleverer—and much simpler. Deeper in the sergeant-pilot than his intellect, he suspected a simplicity and a moral intransigence capable of any folly—and any heroism. And my God, how little heroism serves, he felt wearily; how much better off we should be with less of it and more kindness and modesty.
“Will you—if I kick you through that door—will you hold your tongue?”
Marriot did not speak.
Scarcely feeling Cordelia grip his arm, Kent watched him with anguish. He knew, having come up against it more than once, the pigheadedness that was his friend’s answer to any circumstance when to avoid trouble, or only to get his way, he would need to persuade, humble himself a little. He would try everything short of humility, and then resign himself. Pride? Recklessness? Either or both, Kent groaned. In the end, only an irreducible obstinacy. Against his better judgement, he broke out,
“For God’s sake, Davy, tell them you’re not a sod.”
Thorburn was watching the young man attentively.
“Take it seriously, boy.”
Glancing at him calmly and then at Lackland, Marriot said,
“No.”
“Oh, you bloody fool,” Kent said. Rage and despair dried up his mouth. He took a step forward, and stood helplessly. “You’re mad.” He forced himself to shut off his panic before it could say another word. The colonel’s neat voice, unemotional, tailed off as if it were coming back at him from a moving train.
“Well, sir, you see?”
Gnawing his underlip, Thorburn did not answer.
Clarke leaned forward and tapped Breuner on the arm.
“You spoke out of your turn,” he said, slyly, but with a tart anger. “If you’d been in the army as long as I have, you’d have known enough not to put your oar in.”
Marriot spoke rapidly, with a controlled passion.
“None of you see anything,” he said. “You don’t even see that you’re dead. That the only thing you’re still able to do is to kill living people. In the same way exactly as bodies, if you let them lie about, and rats, breed cholera.” He stood with a nervous immobility, unable to go on, his life had now to be crammed into so few words—it was impossible and it was all nonsense. “For all I know, you can infect and kill everyone still alive in this country. Even then it won’t be yours, for you to colonise from overseas with privileged brutes, rich greedy lazy women, with mystifiers and hangmen, living on new generations of humble people. It belongs to the future. Not to you. Never again to you.” For the first time he looked directly at Lackland, and said quietly, “You’ll do as you like to me. If I could, I’d do the same to you. Before you and your lot can start their murders. That’s all.”
Turning to Thorburn, Emil Breuner said,
“It is a risk I would take.”
“You’re not a soldier,” Thorburn said, with a sadness coming from the depths of his fatigue.
“No. But if I am in this country I am as much in his hands. … I have a horror of human sacrifice.”
Thorburn stood up. He stared at Marriot’s face for a moment or two, absently, as if he were seeing other things through it, then glanced at his useless arm and shrunken twisted fingers.
“I think I understand you,” he said. “You believe you’re acting on behalf of an idea. Let’s call it a religion. In fact, and the circumstances being what they are, you’ve behaved as a spy, you are a spy. You can’t complain if you’re treated as one.”
He paused for so long that Lackland, impatient, began speaking. The glance he got silenced him in the middle of his first word. Thorburn went on,
“This doesn’t prevent my being sorry for you. … I’m afraid I can’t protect you.”
Marriot answered him in a voice at once mocking and careless.
“It helps me no end to know I’m being murdered reasonably and sympathetically.”
Turning away from him, Thorburn spoke to Breuner.
“I don’t ask you to approve; I know you don’t, or you won’t. But I should like you to realise that I’m responsible for a great many lives. Neither you nor I have any notion how many.” A something meant for a smile showed his blackened teeth for an instant. “I’m sure that in the third form you read the story about the dyke, and the hole in it no bigger than a child’s fist—it had to be stopped up or it would have drowned the country. …”
“If it is the same story,” murmured Breuner, “I remember that the child stopped it with his own hand.”
“Ah,” Thorburn said, with an effort, “you don’t help me.”
Breuner was silent.
“Which of you,” asked Marriot quietly, “is going to do me in?”
As if he were talking to himself—he was, perhaps—Clarke said,
“No, it’s a bad business.”
“You, of course,” Marriot said to Lackland. His glance rested for less than a second on the faces of Kent and the girl, seeing only Kent’s lips pressed together, eyes half-shut, a mask he had seen before, in a moment of extreme danger. He looked away from it, and watched Lackland get up and walk to the door. Opening it, the colonel stood looking out. A greyness that was neither dawn nor night had taken the place of the brief darkness. It must be about one o’clock.
With a brusque gesture, Thorburn said,
“Miss Hugh-Brown, I should be obliged if you would go.”
Anxious to get rid of her, he kept out of his voice the futile pity roused in him by her youth and weariness. We are all tired, and she ought not to be here, he thought, hardening his heart. He was vexed when she said,
“No. I can’t.”
Lackland turned round and spoke to Thorburn.
“It’s not light yet. Have to wait an hour or two. I don’t want to make a—” he hesitated, his mouth held open while he sought for the word, lips wrinkled—“a bad show of it.”
“That’s fair enough,” Marriot said, without any apparent irony.
Cordelia moved towards him, her face made so grotesque by her effort to keep quiet that Thorburn put his arm out to stop her. She flung it off violently, rounding on him.
“Why did you come here? And why have you turned into murderers? That’s what you are, and you’re disgusting. You’re going to kill one of us, and you make it worse by talking about security and justice. … I couldn’t have believed that people like you exist.”
“Quiet, lass, quiet,” Kent said, under his breath.
She turned.
“You won’t stand for it, Andy—you can’t.”
“This woman must go away,” said Lackland coldly. He gave Breuner a peremptory glance. “Help her out, please. You.”
Breuner looked at her but did not move.
“Run away, Browny,” Marriot said.
She looked at him. In a more urgent voice he repeated,
“No, run away. It’s all you can do for me. Go away, old Browny—at once. Don’t speak.”
“All right, Davy.”
She even smiled at him—and turned instantly to Breuner.
“Shall we go?” she asked him politely.
He nodded, but did not follow her at once. He looked attentively into Marriot’s face for a second. “I am sorry, If I could I would help you,” he said softly. He walked away, stumbling a little from fatigue. Kent had walked with Cordelia to the door; he held her arm and whispered to her briefly, then pushed her gently out, and held the door for Breuner. Hutton had stepped o
ut of the way hurriedly, and was gazing fixedly, as though his eyeballs were immovable, over their heads.
“Do you mind, sir, if I lie down for an hour?” Lackland said. “My wrist is tired and very stiff—too much pen-pushing.”
“Do anything you please.”
“Very good, sir.”
He glanced round the room, beckoned Hutton—the young soldier strode forward promptly, with an air of embarrassment—and gave him his revolver.
“You’ll look after that door”—nodding towards the airfield—“You”—he glanced at Smith—“are responsible for the other. … No one else need stay with the prisoner.” He swung round on Kent. “This goes for you.”
Kent swallowed his rage. He felt sweat running from his armpits.
“It does, does it?” he said quietly. “But the fact is, I’m still in charge of this airfield, and I prefer to stay here.”
Surprisingly without displeasure, the colonel hesitated. As he opened his mouth to speak, Thorburn said roughly,
“He’s right. He ought to stay. What’s more, I propose to stay here myself.” He waved an arm at Smith. “You—you can go. Be off.”
Smith moved his head involuntarily to look at Marriot. The sergeant-pilot looked back at him with unsmiling mockery. Straightening himself—he had been standing with bent shoulders and sagging arms—Smith turned clumsily and went away without saying a word. Marriot shrugged his shoulders.
Levering himself out of his chair, Clarke muttered,
“This is no place for poor Willie Clarke. I’m worn out. I’ve never attended one of these affairs, and I’m too old to start a new habit. I’ll say good-night to you.”
No one answered him, and as he shuffled out he felt a sudden lifting of his spirits. For the last hour he had been keeping at its distance an idea too good to be true—that his lumbago was about to leave him. No doubt about it now, he was all but free of it: he felt tempted to hum, and resisted. Poor lad, he thought; it’s a rotten business and I don’t like it. … The new feeling of ease in his body exhilarated him. Praise be to God I can stand up, he thought.....
“I must remind you,” Lackland began curtly.
Thorburn cut him rudely short.
“My dear chap, there’s nothing more you need remind us of. For God’s sake go and lie down.”
As soon as the door closed, Thorburn seated himself in an armchair near the desk, collapsing into it, shoulders drawn up, arms hanging over the sides of the chair. He moved one of them with an effort, to unbutton his jacket, and leaned back again, closing his eyes. For the first time since the door on to the airfield had been opened, he felt in the room a cool breath. He was thankful for it; the day would probably be too hot. Then he thought that Marriot would not feel it. The thought pierced his exhaustion. It was sharper and more unbearable than his thoughts of the defeat. This, too, was a defeat.
There was a silence. The two young men looked at each other, and Marriot tried to smile.
“Can I have a drink?” he asked.
“Beer or water?”
“Beer.”
Kent went out of the room to get it, and Hutton, standing in the doorway with his back to the airfield, moved quietly a couple of steps forward.
Marriot smiled.
“I shan’t try to bolt.”
“That’s all right,” Hutton said indistinctly. He turned red—as always when he had to speak to anyone of the persons he thought of as “them,” animals not of his race.
His awkwardness and embarrassment infected Marriot: he wanted to say something friendly but nothing occurred to him. He glanced at his wrist.
“Damn it, my watch has stopped,” he said under his breath. He noticed the tone of his voice, hearing it spoken in his ear.
Carrying a cup and jug, Kent returned, and Hutton shifted back to the open doorway: he kept his finger on the trigger of the revolver, and stared at Marriot’s left shoulder.
“What time is it?” asked Marriot.
“Nearly half-past one,” Kent said. He gave Marriot the cup he had filled. “Here you are.”
Marriot emptied it.
“More?”
“Yes, I’m thirsty.”
He drank the second cupful, dropped the cup on the desk, and held out his wrist with the watch.
“Here. Unstrap this and give it to Browny to keep for you. Then the next time you lose yours …” He broke off, smiled briefly at Hutton, and said, “Y’know, he loses everything.”
Kent looked at him without moving. After a moment Marriot let his arm fall. He glanced at Thorburn, and saw that he had fallen asleep. His head hung sideways over one shoulder. Its look of authority and placid arrogance had slipped from his face, it was only old and exhausted; a thread of saliva fell from the lower corner of his mouth, which was open. His body sagged.
Following his glance, Kent turned to look at the old man; he gazed at him for a second and turned swiftly back.
“Davy—”
Marriot smiled with his eyes.
“Yes, old dear?”
“You could have stalled.”
“I could.” He yawned suddenly.
“Why, in God’s name, why didn’t you?”
He hesitated, and said softly,
“I don’t know, but it just struck me … there’s very little one obscure person, that’s David Marriot, can do at a time as deathly hard for people as this—you didn’t imagine I think a revolution is pleasant!—except his job. My job—as scientist—only exists so far as I’m absolutely honest. And then”—he glanced briefly at his burned hand—“I’m not sure whether I’m worth very much now.” He laughed, and said simply, “I couldn’t be bothered to lie to them, you know. I tell you I hate the old. Everyone over forty-five is a scoundrel—oughtn’t to be alive.”
“Are you sure,” Kent said quickly, “you didn’t get yourself wrapped up as one way out?”
Marriot did not answer.
“If I’d known you were in that state—”
“What state?” asked Marriot, yawning. “I’m not.”
Kent moved nearer to him, stooping a little to bring his face level with his friend’s, and said in a low voice,
“Christ’s blood, Davy, what are we going to do?”
Marriot felt exhausted.
“Ask me!”
His back to Hutton, Kent went through a brief pantomime of strangling him. It started a ripple of amusement in Marriot. He shook his head.
“Do you want to be put off like a dog with the mange?” Kent asked in a fierce whisper.
“No.” He hesitated, and passed his hand over his face. Smiling—it was, he felt, a poor sort of smile, but he found it difficult to push aside his weariness—” You know what I’m like, I hate to run after a bus because I think if I miss it what a fool I shall look. No million-to-one chances for me, thank you. … And get it in the stomach, very likely. Very careless, these army types.” He yawned again. “Sorry—I can’t stop yawning.”
“But for these cows, we should have been over there by now.”
“I wasn’t going.”
“What?”
“I meant to clear off at the last minute,” Marriot said. “What d’you think?”
Kent moved his hands helplessly.
“You’re not sane.”
“No—listen, Andy. If it makes it any better for you, I believe what I said to them.”
“I know. It doesn’t help.”
“Oh,” said Marriot easily, “my being turned off isn’t important, except to me. There are too many of us. What’s an endless defeat for Thorburn and the rest is for us … certainty … comprehension …”
Kent looked at him.
“If I went into Lackland’s army, and you caught me—would you string me up?”
“Luckily, you’re not going in,” Marriot answered, after a moment.
A silence. Kent turned roughly on Hutton.
“Do you like this?”
Hutton said nothing for a full minute.
“No.�
�
“It’s murder, isn’t it?”
Hutton moved his shoulders convulsively: he clenched his free hand, stared at Marriot, and mumbled,
“Why aren’t you on the same side as the rest of us?”
“No time to tell you that now,” said Marriot lightly. Another gaping yawn seized him.
Unnoticed by any of them, Thorburn woke up, suddenly, as he had dropped asleep. He sat on unmoving in his chair, not even lifting a hand to dry the moisture he felt on his chin. In his broad face, his eyes seemed to have dwindled; they were scarcely visible below ragged grey lids, yet nothing else in his face lived.
“He’s pigheaded—a perfect bloody fool—I know him. I tell you he’s not a swine. … There are three of us here, you and us. Do we have to cut each other’s throats because a crew of old bastards says so?”
Hutton blushed: his eyes, very small, purely blue, started in his head with the effort he made to overcome his diffidence and distrust of words. It was not that he did not know clearly what he wanted to say; he knew very well, in his short life he had had time to turn over, slowly, the ideas he had found in his mind, seemingly rooted there, he would have been put to it to know when. Turning a still darker red, he spoke in a fierce mutter.
“If th’ country’s invaded, I’m against th’ invader, whoever he is.”
“Yes, but what sort of a country?” persisted Kent. “Fine country where we’re all crawling about doing each other in.”
“I’m sorry for him,” Hutton said, with the same effort, “but he knew where he was going.”
Kent’s face was no less crimson than Hutton’s; his tongue felt dry and thick.
“Ever shot one of your friends? You’ll like looking at it afterwards.”
“I said I was sorry for him,” Hutton whispered. He rubbed his hand over his forehead to dry the sweat trickling into his eyes. “I’m sorry for you as well. But I heard him m’self say he was on the other side.”
“Give it up, me dear,” Marriot said, smiling.
“Shut up, can’t you?” said Kent. “God, how you babble.” Looking into Hutton’s face, he spoke slowly. “All you have to do is remove yourself outside for a minute. It’ll be my funeral.”
Hutton’s voice exploded in the room.
“No.”
“Damn you, don’t bawl.” Kent turned his head, and met the general’s glance fixed on him, tired, old, ironical.
The Moment of Truth Page 13
