RED FOX

by Gerald Seymour

  The Judas moment, Geoffrey. The betrayal of his society. The boy had read him, that he belonged nowhere, was a part of nothing. 'Answer me, please.'

  Endlessly the boy waited. The wave rolled back from the beach, then gathered itself in white-crested accumulation, burst again, shattering with force on the sand. The reply of Giancarlo.

  'You cannot do anything.'

  'Afterwards I will say what you have told me to say.'

  'Franca has ordered it, you cannot do anything.'

  ' I will go to the newspapers and the radio and the television, I will say what you want me to . . . '

  The boy seemed bored, as if wishing the conversation terminated. Could the man not understand what he was told? 'You chose a way for your life, I have chosen mine. I will fight against what is rotten, you will prop it. I do not recognize the white flag, that is not the way of our combat.'

  Harrison was crying, convulsing, the great tears welling in his eyes, dribbling on his cheeks, wetting his mouth. 'You take a pleasure in i t . . . ? '

  There was a sternness in the boy. 'We are at war, and you should behave like a soldier. Because you do not I despise you.

  It will be at nine o'clock in the morning. You have till then to become a soldier.'

  'You horrid, repulsive little bastard . . . they'll give you no mercy . . . you'll die in the fucking gutter.'

  'We ask for no mercy, 'Arrison. We offer none.'

  Quiet again in the forest. Giancarlo spread himself on the leaves. He pushed with his hands to make the surface more even, wriggled on to his side so that his back was turned on Geoffrey Harrison and beneath a ceiling of moonlight flecked by the high branches, settled himself. For a few minutes he would hear the foreign sounds of his prisoner's choking sobs. Then he found sleep and they were lost to him.

  The sun of the day and the food of the evening ensured the farmer's sleep, and the comatose rest was escape from the worries that burdened his life. The price of fodder, the price of fertilizer, the price of diesel oil for the tractor could be shut out only when his mind was at peace. His child stayed silent, close to the rise and fall of his father's chest and waited with a concentrated patience, fighting off his own tiredness. Beyond the doorway the child heard the sounds of his mother's movements, and they encouraged his stillness as he lay fearful that any stirring on the damaged springs of the sofa would alert and remind her that he was not yet in his small narrow bed.

  Mingled with the music were the mind pictures that the child drew for himself. Pictures that were alien and hostile.

  'Come on in, Archie.*

  Thank you, Michael.* Didn't slip off the tongue that easily, not the Christian name bit, not after the hard words. Charlesworth stood in the doorway with a loose shirt on him, no tie, and slacks and sandals. Carpenter fidgeted at the door in his suit.

  'Come on into the den.'

  Carpenter was led through the hall. Delicate furniture, a case of hardback books, oil paintings on the wall, a vase of tall irises.

  Do all right, these p e o p l e . . . Stop the bitching, Archie, drop the chip off your shoulder. You can't blame people for not living in Motspur Park, not if they've the choice.

  'Darling, this is Archie Carpenter, from Harrison's head office.

  My wife Caroline.'

  Carpenter shook hands with the tall, tanned girl presented to him. The sort they bred down in Cheltenham, along with fox-hunters and barley fields. She wore a straight dress held at the shoulders by vague straps. The wife back in the semi would have had a fit, blushed like an August rose, no bra and entertaining.

  ' I'm sorry I'm late, Mrs Charlesworth. I've been at the Questura.'

  'You poor thing, you'd like a wash.'

  Well, he wouldn't have asked for it himself, but he'd worn a jacket all day and the same socks, and he Stank like a hung duck.

  'I'll take him, darling.'

  An older man was rising heavily from a sofa. Washing could wait, introductions first. Charlesworth resumed the formalities.

  This is Colonel Henderson, our military attach.'

  'Pleased to meet you, Colonel.'

  They call me "Buster", Archie. I've heard about you. I hear you've a straight tongue in your head, and a damned good thing too.'

  Carpenter was led to the peace of an outer bathroom. Time for him as he stood in front of the pan to examine the sentry row of deodorant sprays on the window-sill, enough to keep the Embassy smelling sweet for a month. And books too. Who was going to read classical Greek history and contemporary American politics while having a quick squat? Extraordinary people. The reek of public school and private means. He washed his hands, let the day's grime dribble away, pushed a flannel round the back of his neck. Long live the creature comforts. Soap and water and a waiting gin.

  They sat around in the lounge, the four of them, separated by rugs and marble flooring and sprouting coffee tables. Carpenter didn't resist the demand that he shed his jacket, loosen his tie.

  'Well, tell us, Archie, what's the scene at the Questura?'

  Charlesworth setting the ball rolling.

  ' I think they've screwed i t . . . '

  'For that poor Mr Harrison . . . ?'

  Carpenter ignored Caroline Charlesworth. What did they want, a coffee-morning chat with the neighbours, or something from the bloody horse's mouth?

  Tantardini got her hands on the telephone too early in the game for the trace people. Told her boy to chop Harrison, then pulled the connection. The call was still at switchboard but the boy had the message. He rang off, and that's about it.'

  Charlesworth was leaning forward in his seat, glass held between his hands. The honest, earnest young man, he seemed to Carpenter. 'She gave a specific instruction for the boy to kill Harrison?'

  'That's the way Carboni put it. "I have failed your man", those were his words. Biggest bloody understatement of the day.'

  'He's a good man, Giuseppe Carboni.' Charlesworth spoke with enough compassion for Carpenter momentarily to squirm.

  ' It's not easy, not in a country like this. Right, Buster?'

  The Colonel swirled his whisky round the glass. 'We had full powers in many places, what you'd call nowadays totalitarian powers, in Palestine and Malaya and Kenya and Cyprus. Here the legacy of pre-war fascism is that the security forces are kept weak. But for all we had, it didn't do us a great deal of good.'

  'But that was far from the great Mother Britain,' Carpenter interjected impatiently. This is different, it's on their own doorstep that they're being whipped. Carboni excepted, they're ambling about like bloody zombies . . . '

  "They're trying, Archie,' Charlesworth intervened gently.

  ' I wouldn't care to make a judgement on their efficiency if I'd been here just a few hours.' The Colonel cut at the air, the swinging of the old cavalry sabre.

  Carpenter put his hands above his head, grinned for a moment, dissolved the temper. 'I'm outnumbered, out-flanked, whatever

  . . . So what I want to know is this: when they say they'll chop him, when Battestini says it, do we take that at face, is it gospel ?'

  Caroline Charlesworth started from her chair. The plea to be excused from the blunt assessments. T h e dinner won't be more than a few minutes.'

  'You answer that, Buster,' Charlesworth said. 'It's the pertinent question of the evening.'

  The hard, clean eyes of the veteran fixed on Carpenter. T h e answer is affirmative. When they say they'll kill, they're as good as their word.'

  'Black tie job?'

  ' I repeat, Mr Carpenter, they're as good as their word.'

  Caroline Charlesworth appeared from the kitchen doorway.

  The food was ready. She led, the men followed. In the dining-room Carpenter saw the wine on the table, the port and brandy on the sideboard. There was solace to be found here, escape from a hideous and crippling mess.

  Late into the evening, the child's mother came at last for him.

  With a sweep of her hand she hushed his protest, and swept him up so th
at he sat on her hip as she took him from the side of his father. It was done quickly and expertly and the farmer seemed as unaware of the child's going as he had been of his presence.

  She nuzzled her nose against her son's neck, saw the fight that he made to keep his eyes open and chided herself that she had left him for so long. She carried him to his room.

  'Mama.'

  'Yes, my sweet.' She lowered him into the bed.

  'Mama, if Papa wakes soon, will he come to see me?'

  'You will be asleep, in the morning you will see him.' She pulled the coarse sheet to his chin.

  ' I have to tell him what I saw . . . '

  'What was it, a wild pig, the big dog f o x . . . ?' She watched the yawn break on the child's face.

  'Mama, I saw . . . '

  Her kiss stifled his words, and she tip-toed from the room.

  It was the work of the Agente to check finally the cell doors after the prisoners held in maximum security had finished communal recreation and were consigned for the night to their individual cells. His practice was to take a quick glance through the spyhole and then slide the greased bolt. Others would come after him when the lights were dimmed to make the last muster call of the night.

  The Agente had found the paper, folded once, on the mat at the front door of his house. A small piece, ragged at an edge where it had been torn from a notepad. There was a pencil-written number on the outside flap that was immediately relevant to the Agente. Three digits, the number of the cell of the Chief of Staff of the Nappisti.

  When he reached that door, the Agente pushed it a few inches, tossed the paper inside, crashed the bolt home, and was on his way. Any colleague who might have seen him would not have been aware of the passing of the message.

  The capo abandoned his weekly letter to his mother in the hill city of Siena, saw the paper and slipped from his chair to gather it.

  Uamministrazione dice non per Tantardini.

  No freedom for Tantardini. It was as he had said. What he had anticipated, because the Englishman was of insufficient importance. Inevitable, but better that way, better if the ultimatum were to expire, the gun were to be fired. The strategy of tension they called it in the Roman newspapers, the creation of intolerable fear. The death of the enemy created fear, something not achieved by negotiation and the making of deals. Better if the Englishman were killed.

  But who was the boy, Battestini? Why had he not heard of a youth who could implement so much? The radio in his cell had told him the police held the opinion that the boy worked alone

  . . . remarkable, outstanding... and the commentator called him the lover of Franca Tantardini and expounded that this was the reason for the boy's action. Who in the movement had not been the lover of Franca Tantardini ? How many of the Nappisti in this same cell block had not taken comfort from hours spent strangled by the arms and legs of Tantardini, taken pleasure from the flesh and fingers of the woman? His table lamp lit a mirthless smile.

  Perhaps it was the boy's first time, and he believed he had made a conquest. If it was the first time the boy would climb a mountain for that woman, perhaps he'd die for Tantardini. Certainly he would kill for her. When the ultimatum was met he would issue a communique in his own name from inside the walls of Asinara.

  Courage, my child. We love you, we are with you. But why had he not been told of this boy?

  Like sharks homing for offal, the mosquitoes slipped through the opened window of the farmhouse parlour and turned their incisive attention to the arms and neck of the resting man.

  Instinctively he slapped the side of his face in irritation, and in his growing consciousness there was the drone of their wings, the rising surge of their attacks. He started up, blinked in the flickering light of the television and heard the sounds of the kitchen through the closed door, water running, the quiet clatter of dishes and tins. He scratched savagely at the bitten skin where the bite mark had grown enough for him to gouge a sharp trickle of blood, he rubbed the back of his hand into his eyes, then headed for the kitchen. Time for him to be going to his bed, time for him to encourage her to follow.

  His wife put her finger across her mouth, the call for quiet, and pointed to the half-open door that led to their son's room. A tall, broad-shouldered woman, red-faced, dark hair pulled back in an elastic band, thick bare arms and a faded apron. She had been his woman since he was seventeen and had shyly courted her with the encouragement of her parents, who knew of the farm he would inherit.

  'The little one is sleeping?'

  She worked at the final flurry of the day's sink work. 'It's taken him long enough, but he's nearly there.'

  'Did he tell you where he'd been?'

  She slopped warm water from a kettle into the bright plastic sink bowl. 'In the woods, where else?'

  'What kept him there?' He was tired, yearning for his bed, and there was much hay to be moved by trailer in the morning. Per-functory conversation, made only because she was not ready to follow him to their cumbersome, heavy oak wedding bed.

  'He saw something, he said.'

  'What did he see?'

  ' I don't know - something. He wanted to tell you about it. I said it would keep till morning. Perhaps it was a pig T

  'Not this far down the hillside,' he said softly.

  She sluiced the pan in which she had made the sauce for the pasta.

  'You have much more to do?' he asked.

  ' I have to wash some socks through, then it is finished.' She smiled at him, kind and dark-eyed.

  ' I'll say good night to the boy.'

  The frown crossed her face. 'Don't wake him, not now. He's dead to the world, don't wake him now.'

  ' I'll see his bedclothes aren't on the floor.'

  When he had gone, she could muse as she doused the socks in water that her man loved his child as the most precious thing in his life. God be thanked, she thought, that if we were to have but one child it should have been a boy. Someone for him to work for, someone for him to dream would one day take over the running of the farm. She worked quickly, the soap lathering in a sea of bubbles among the wool, some whole and some darned.

  Shirts she would do in the morning, after the chickens had been fed.

  'Mama.'

  She turned abruptly in response to the strained voice of her man. He stood at the kitchen door, his face dazed and in shock, his hand resting loosely on the shoulder of his son.

  'You've woken him.' The petulance rose in her voice.

  'You never asked him what he had seen?' The farmer spoke hoarsely.

  'A fox, a rabbit, perhaps a heron, what difference does it make, what difference at his age?' She bridled, before her senses responded to the mood her man set. 'What did he see?'

  'He found a red car hidden in the bushes beside the small field and the wood. He has a toy, a toy car that your mother gave him last Easter, the one he plays in his bed with. He said to me that the toy was the same as the car that he had found. His toy is a red Fiat Uno Vente Sette. They showed a car on the television, the car for the foreigner who was kidnapped. Fiat Uno Vente Sette, and red . . . '

  'A red 127, there would be half a million . . . ' Her hands were drawn from the water, wiped nervously at her apron. There should be no involvement, not with something hostile.

  'He found a man who was tied.'

  T h e boy dreams. It is a world of his own.!

  'He saw a youth come, with a gun.'

  She stammered, 'It's not our business.'

  'Dress him.'

  Her eyes wide, her lips moving in fear, she attacked in defence of her child. 'You cannot take him there, not in the darkness, not if you believe that he has seen these things.'

  'Get his clothes and dress him.' It was an instruction, a command. She did not resist and scurried to the child's room for his day clothes.

  From the hallway the farmer took a thick sweater and the small-bore shotgun that he used for pigeon and rabbit when he went with his neighbours to shoot on a Sunday morning. From a nail hi
gh in the back door to the yard he unhooked a rubber-coated torch.

  Together they dressed their son.

  'You remember, Mama, what Father Alberti said at the Mass after Moro. He said these people were the anti-Christ. Even Paolo Sesto they rejected, even the appeal by him that Moro should be spared. They are the enemies of the Church, these people, they are the enemies of all of us. You remember what Father Alberti said? On the television it was said they would kill the foreigner tomorrow morning. We have to go, Mama, we have to know what the boy has seen.'

  They slipped the child's shirt and coat and trousers over his pyjamas, drew on his boots over his bare feet. The mother's hands fumbled and were slower than her man's.

  'Be careful, Papa, be careful with him.'

  The father and his son walked out of the door and into the night. She followed the passage of the torch before the bend in the lane obscured its light, and then she sat at the kitchen table, very still, very quiet.

  The wine had gone and the port after it and Caroline Charlesworth had fled the scene for her bed. The three men sat around the table and the ash and cigarette ends made their molehills in the coffee saucers. They'd been over all the ground, all the old and trampled paths. The issues of principle and pragmatism were digested and spat back. The debate on negotiation had been fought with anger and spite. And then the brandy had taken its toll and soaked and destroyed the attack of Carpenter and the defence of Charlesworth and the attache. They were resting now and the talk was sporadic. Geoffrey Harrison was no longer the principal subject, replaced by the rate of income tax, Church aid to the Patriotic Front of Rhodesia, decadence on the streets of London. The familiar fodder for Britons abroad.

  Michael Charlesworth stood up from the table, murmured something about checking with the Embassy, and moved unhappily away from the safety of the chairs.

  'He's a damn good man.' Carpenter had problems with the words.

  'Damn good,' growled Buster Henderson. 'You're right, you know, a damned good man.'

  ' I've given him some stick since I've been here.'

  'Wouldn't give a hoot. Knows you've a job to be getting on with. A damn good man.'

  ' I've never felt so bloody useless, not in anything before.'