Dunster

by John Mortimer

  Around 9.30 we saw lights coming up the unmade road from the town to the old church. It was a dark night but very still. Then we heard the sound of singing. Someone, I think it might have been Maddocks, said, ‘Christ, the bloody fascists are singing hymns!’ I believe we laughed; as I say, we were exhausted and not quite sane. Then we saw white figures – boys in surplices or something like it, some were carrying candles; there was a tall banner with the Saint’s picture on it and the priest giving out benedictions. We could see all that in the candlelight when they passed immediately below us. Then came the fascists, the thugs in bits and pieces of uniform, all armed as they always were when they met at the church. And then – and that was the sight that gave me a dry mouth and a rising panic – a long procession, it seemed never-ending, of men, women, children, young girls and grandmothers, old men walking with sticks and boys not yet out of school. A lot of them had candles, most of them were singing. They were on their way to church, to meet their death on a saint’s day no one had told us about.

  ‘What the hell do we do?’ I was Captain Cris, and meant to be in command. But there I was asking my sergeant for orders. He said, ‘Bastards! They all gave our boys to the fascists. Got them shot, didn’t they? Don’t lift a finger for them.’ That’s exactly what he said, so far as I can remember. You see, Philip, I’m not trying to excuse anything, but at least I can tell you the truth now. Blaker’s dead, so he hasn’t got anything to worry about – and he always did worry.

  I don’t know what you’d have done, and I hope you never have to make a decision like that. I don’t know what Dunster would have done, would he have rushed down that mountain to tell the people, and been shot by the fascists? Perhaps we could have shouted something from where we were. Perhaps we could have fired warning shots, but that would have given away our position. I knew what the others wanted to do, and I suppose I felt a rising anger at that pious procession, people who could betray our men and see them executed and then go off to pray. What we did, I suppose, was the worst thing we could have done. We did nothing. We turned our backs and climbed away up and across the mountain towards our camp. We were too far away to see what we had done but, of course, we heard the explosion.

  Jaunty Blair got to know about it. He got to know about everything. We talked about it that night and I told him we must say the Germans did it. Well, I couldn’t have the people in the village against us. Anyway, we weren’t meant to be fighting that kind of war. It was only later that Jaunty began to suggest that the whole incident would look pretty bad if it got known. He told me he was afraid the men might start talking. He also hinted, when he was searching for war criminals in Austria, that he wouldn’t like to have to add my name to the list. Money solves a good many problems and I had it. I always met Jaunty’s demands; he was sensible enough not to make them excessive. I helped Maddocks start up various businesses and, even though he’d deserted, I bought Natty Suiting a bar in Maltraverso. Sergeant Blaker was beyond help.

  Of course I thought about it a lot after the war. I used all the arguments. I told myself that bomber pilots over Dresden and Hamburg killed men, women and children in their thousands. Civilians had been blown up nightly in London and Coventry and Berlin. My first duty, after all, was to my men and I couldn’t risk their lives. I used all those arguments, but I couldn’t help but find myself guilty.

  I suppose that’s why I wanted to do the War Crimes series. I didn’t have any desperate urge to expose myself; I didn’t want to make a public confession. But I wanted to say that ordinary people, quite decent people as a matter of fact, could do extraordinarily brutal and merciless things if a war gave them permission. I wanted that to be understood. So I started something that our friend Dunster finished. Does that serve me right? Perhaps you’ll think so.

  Why didn’t I admit the truth of his attacks and explain it all, as I have tried to explain it to you? To start with I had Angie to consider. She could only be protected, I thought, she could only be kept safe and happy if I won the case. Imagine the headlines if I had admitted blowing up a church full of worshippers. After that, Dunster would have been at my throat forever. He might have gone on to find out more about the money I’d paid, settling blackmail he’d call it, and I could never stop him. So I had to win, and to do that I had to lie.

  Winning has been the hardest part to bear. Now it’s over, I think I might have been able to cope with losing. You see, I’ve twice run away from the truth. Once in the night in Pomeriggio and once in broad daylight in that dreary law court. It’s time I stopped running away.

  Luckily my father had an old hammer shotgun. When I was a boy we had a neighbour who had to get through a hedge to collect a pheasant he’d shot. He went down on his knees to crawl through and pulled the gun after him. By the barrel. The hammer caught on a low branch and the gun went off and shot him through the head. It’s an accident that can happen with that type of weapon.

  You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Apart from this one thing, so unexpected and so long ago, I’ve had a very happy life. Angie’s been marvellous, and I think you and I have always hit it off, haven’t we? I’ve always felt we understood each other in those terrible board meetings, and I was pleased to make friends with someone too young to give a damn about the war. I would like you to be happy and have no regrets on my account. You were always on my side and supported me, even when I shouldn’t have been supported.

  I’m sorry to burden you with this knowledge, but there is no one else in the world I can tell. Forget it all now and burn this letter. The past is over and done with.

  Hope Sid Vicious doesn’t bore you to extinction when he’s chairman. Tell him not to make a speech at my memorial service. If he does I won’t listen.

  Ever,

  Cris

  That was the last time I read the letter. I got a baking-tin and put the pages in it, then I found the kitchen matches. The flames shot up high over the table for a minute and then died down. When only ashes remained I put them in the bin and went to bed. There was nothing more I could do. The past, as Cris had said, was over.

  Chapter Thirty

  I grieved for Cris but grief is never a full-time occupation. Three weeks later I was back in the Malibu Club with a distinct stirring of excitement at the prospect before me. Things were already changing at Megapolis. Sydney Pollitter had been appointed chairman more or less automatically. He was an unknown figure to most of the staff because he never appeared in the canteen – with or without his jacket. I had been told by Gary Penrose that he ‘didn’t feel the need to work closely with any particular member of the staff’ and I no longer visited the chairman’s office. All in all, it seemed a good time to think of ways of escape from Megapolis.

  Mr Zellenek arrived exactly a quarter of an hour late, accompanied by an unnaturally tall woman whom he introduced as his ‘Girl Friday, Posie Mendelssohn’. When they entered together, she looked like a tall grass, waving over some small and hairy insect. Like Peregrine Gryce, Maurice Zellenek seemed to favour the larger personal assistant.

  ‘I told Posie here all about you, Mr Progmire. She’s been longing to meet you, sir.’

  ‘Zelly’s never been so enthusiastic about a project.’ Posie’s big, dark eyes were full of adoration. I was flattered by this until I discovered that she bestowed the same melting glances at the waiter who took our order, and even at complete strangers at adjoining tables.

  ‘To play roles as far apart as Trigorin and the Scarlet Pimpernel. What range, Mr Progmire! Larry might have done it. Say what you like about Larry Olivier, he sure had range.’

  ‘Range,’ Posie told me, ‘is what Zelly admires most of all.’

  ‘Range,’ Zelly repeated, ‘is the name of the game. Have you ever considered taking a crack at Hamlet?’

  ‘I did it once. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘You did it once! What a track record, and you’re so cool about it. You’re still a young man, Mr Progmire. You have all sorts of career opportunities openin
g before you. You know how old I am? I want you to guess.’

  He offered me his small, smiling face to examine, unnervingly bald above and fringed with hair below.

  ‘Zelly is sixty-nine,’ Posie let me into the secret. ‘But he keeps in shape.’

  ‘I work out, Mr Progmire. With the stationary bicycle. Five miles every morning and I never leave my bathroom. You know who the archetypal figure of today is, naturally?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Tell him, Posie.’

  The Girl Friday looked at me adoringly and whispered sexily, ‘The chartered accountant!’

  ‘You see,’ – Mr Zellenek looked at his assistant with enormous pride, as though she had just revealed the secret of the universe – ‘Posie’s got the message. Who is the guru of our days, the power behind the throne, the priest in the confessional? Nobody but you, Mr Progmire.’

  ‘Me?’ I had never thought of myself as a priest before.

  ‘Forget doctors. Doctors went out with Dr Kildare. Forget lawyers. Perry Mason put paid to lawyers. Social workers? Out of date, with all due respect to your great company. No, Mr Progmire. We are planning a new series. Open-ended and with international appeal. And you know what we shall call it?’

  ‘I couldn’t guess.’

  ‘We shall call it Accountants.’

  ‘As simple as that,’ Posie whispered.

  ‘Posie’s right. That says it all. One principal character is a guy about your age, I’d say. Overworked, marriage breaking up, schemed against by the younger accountants from the floor below. Involved with some girl accountant, most probably. And he’s the one who gets to know the client’s secrets. You would have a natural understanding of such a character, Mr Progmire.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I believe I would.’

  ‘Then will you come on board?’

  ‘Zelly hopes tremendously that it will be a yes.’

  ‘It’s very tempting, of course.’

  ‘Tempting,’ Mr Zellenek admitted, ‘is exactly what it is.’ ‘The trouble is’ – I didn’t want to make difficulties – ‘I haven’t got an Equity card.’

  ‘Quite unnecessary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Zelly’s right.’ Posie confirmed it. ‘Absolutely no Equity card required. Not for a technical adviser.’

  I suppose I must have looked crestfallen, as the door slammed on my entry into show business.

  ‘We want you to technically advise, Mr Progmire. We’re going to rely on your experience and expertise to get every detail of an accountant’s life true and convincing.’

  ‘He wanted you for that!’

  I had got home, tired and a little dispirited after my meeting with Mr Zellenek and Posie Mendelssohn. A hard day at the office, I had discovered, isn’t nearly so exhausting as lunch at the Malibu Club. ‘That was all he wanted.’

  ‘He didn’t want you to act at all?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Not even an extra in board meetings?’

  ‘Not even that.’

  We were in the kitchen. Lucy was pouring tea. Her hand was unsteady so she missed the mug and splashed the table. Her sudden affliction was uncontrollable laughter.

  ‘So you’re not going to become a star!’ She only just managed to get it out.

  ‘Not this week, anyway.’

  ‘Did you really think you might be?’

  ‘Everything’s possible.’

  ‘Of course. Everything.’

  It was a sound I hadn’t heard much lately, the sound of laughter. I could do nothing but join in. I don’t know if that was the moment when I fell in love, or if I suddenly recognized what I should have known for a long time.

  It was in that dead week between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve when hardly anyone goes to work and a curiously eerie silence, as well as a powdering of snow, had fallen on Muswell Hill. An elderly Volkswagen car drew up in front of our house at midday and out got Natasha and a tall, dark young man with a plum-coloured velvet waistcoat and a black cap. She introduced him as Jasper Wren. Once again she brought me presents, including a bunch of flowers, only a little wilted, for Lucy. All that had happened at our last meeting seemed to have been forgotten. She thanked me for the money I had sent her and gave me some green candles, an Edwardian biscuit tin and an interesting shoehorn she had picked up in the Portobello Road. Throughout the presentation Jasper Wren preserved a discreet silence and sat staring out of the window. When I went to get them drinks Tash followed me out into the kitchen.

  ‘What happened to George?’ I asked her.

  ‘I gave him the boot.’

  ‘But he seemed so fond of you.’

  ‘I know. That was his trouble. Too horribly devoted. George didn’t represent any sort of a challenge at all.’

  ‘Is Jasper a challenge then?’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘He doesn’t talk much.’

  ‘No. He’s impenetrable.’ She said it with considerable pride.

  ‘One of the silent sort?’

  ‘I’ve got absolutely no idea what’s going on inside him.’

  ‘That’s what you like?’

  ‘Well, it is interesting. Dad, I wanted to tell you about Dunster.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, it’s very odd. He’s sort of changed.’

  ‘Has he?’ I uncorked a bottle and tried one of Jasper Wren’s looks of detachment.

  ‘He seems to have rather lost his pip.’

  ‘Tash, what on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he hangs around the house, worrying if he was right about that case. It’s not like him at all. He seems full of doubts.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. He made a lot of mistakes.’

  ‘But it is not like him to worry about mistakes. To be honest, I think Mum’s getting just a bit fed up with him. More than a bit, actually.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s not a challenge any more.’

  ‘No.’

  I found a tray and put the glasses and the bottle on it. I put out cheese biscuits which Tash began to eat thoughtfully. ‘Whatever’s happened,’ I said, ‘It’s bloody marvellous to see you here again.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Dad. You’re beginning to sound like George!’

  When we got back into the sitting-room Jasper Wren had taken off his cap. A black lock of hair had fallen across his pale forehead, and he never said a word.

  Lucy and I were married in the Muswell Hill register office. Natasha came and the ever-silent Jasper Wren. Nothing could keep the Mummers away and a reception was held in the Mummery bar. At one happy moment I saw Lucy and Tash talking together in a corner and I realized that something new and entirely different was beginning. Cris had gone, with a wave of his hand and without turning round as he left us on the steps of the Law Courts. The truth had been told and the dead at Pomeriggio had been avenged at last. But above all, Dunster had gone; my Dunster, the great challenge, the perpetual opponent, had vanished as completely as those dead spirits, to be replaced by a new and doubting stranger with whom even Beth was apparently dissatisfied.

  Life was going to seem very odd without Dunster