Fellow Passenger

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘It just gives us the exclusive right to print your life story, Mr Howard-Wolferstan,’ he explained.

  I reckoned that I had better appear a sporting prisoner—elastic, easy and with a proper British respect for ’avin’ me nyme in the pypers. It surprised me that they should want it. Spies, after all, come a good second to sex, and are not sympathetic to the average reader. I suppose there was a shortage of material. For the last week or two there had been no spectacular murders, and neither Canterbury nor Rome had had any eccentrically erring priests.

  I signed his contract without protest, for at bottom he was a man of enterprise after my own heart; he would have been entertaining in a bar or as a companion in any illegality. But I could not stick his tame photographer, who had the artificial good-fellowship of some mackerel living on the earnings of a prostitute, and just the right face for it. However, I was polite, even cheerful. I did what he told me and showed an interest in his camera. Thank God I had the sense to put on a wide, film-star grin!

  There was half a plan forming. I played the publicity hound. The reporter, who had seen me and listened to me in court, was puzzled, but the photographer naturally assumed that I had a mind like his own. I asked if I couldn’t make a picture of both of them.

  ‘A new idea,’ I said. ‘You can plaster it on the front page. Our representatives taken by the accused himself.’

  The detective believed in keeping in with the press. He was all for it, so long as we wasted no time. He told the constable to turn me loose, and the photographer gave me his camera. They all stayed pretty close, however, although I was obviously a harmless and model prisoner.

  I took a snap, and then complained that I did not think heads and shoulders were going to be really effective. So I grouped them round the door—to allay any possible suspicion—and myself went to the far corner of the room. At last I quickly tried them sitting at the table, with myself at the side of the window. That, I said, was perfect. And then, without any warning, I fell backwards out of the window, grabbing the upright to steady myself.

  I am no acrobat. I do not think I could either have planned or taken the risk if I had not been overcome by the atmosphere which surrounded me—of a certain slimy kindliness, of petty crookedness, of British tastes as reflected in the papers which the masses are supposed—wrongly, I think—to admire. All that, far more than the shock of finding myself a spy and a communist, drove me into not caring if I broke my neck.

  As it was, I merely twisted my right arm and bumped my head. The municipal ash-cans were underneath. The one I hit had its lid on, and I practically bounced off it on to the nearest bicycle. The detective hit an ash-can with its lid off. It took him a couple of seconds to climb out.

  There was an alley leading out of the yard into one of the main streets of Saxminster. I took it, just missing the bumper of a horrified driver. Corners, as in most country towns, were close together. I turned three of them at random, and then looked back. There was no one in immediate pursuit. I turned a fourth corner, and found myself in a narrow road with backs of ancient buildings on one side and an endless row of cottages on the other. Here I was certain to be trapped if I tried mere speed; so I propped my bicycle against the kerb outside a greengrocer’s shop, with the delivery boy’s bicycle to keep it company, and dived into a narrow archway which passed under the buildings on my right. Two minutes since I hit the ash-can? I do not think it can have been more.

  The passage led into the cathedral close. There were already signs that Saxminster resented the affront to its administration. Huddled against the wall, I watched a constable dash into the saloon bar of the leading hotel. He didn’t want a drink; he was alerting the authorities. An excited group poured out of the bar into the street. Had I really been a communist I should have described them as typical fascist hyenas; they’d have sat on my head at once, and that, to judge by the expanse of some of their riding breeches, would have been the end of me. The Black Maria—no time yet to call up any other police car—was cruising between the cathedral lawns and the lovely fat houses of church dignitaries. A constable was at the corner of the next street; another was running to take his post at the main door of the cathedral. I don’t know whether I was expected to take sanctuary or hide in it or blow it up, but evidently the close was the net into which I was to be driven. Naturally enough. If the main outlets from the town were blocked, all other roads led to the cathedral. And there, in fact, I was.

  Within the next minute someone was sure to go through the dark length of the passage and discover me. My only possible refuge was a door with a brass plate on it, marked CHAPTER OFFICES. I entered with reverent assurance, as if I had been booking orders for a cheap line in chasubles. The attitude was wasted, for there was no one to receive me. On the ground floor were two offices, from one of which came the sound of a typewriter. The other had a little frosted glass window and a notice: For Attention, Please Ring. I decided against Attention, though considering it as a possibility. In these canonical offices no one would know my face, and with a good enough story I might have been allowed to sit down and wait for the Dean. The bicycle—an old, black one—was unlikely to attract attention, and, with luck, it would not be found and identified by its owner for some hours.

  The stairs, however, were more tempting. I went up. There were three doors on the landing. Two of them looked businesslike and unceremonious; but the third, a double door of black oak, was ecclesiastic. You could bet that there was emptiness behind—in a worldly sense, I mean. I opened it, ready to retire hastily with an excuse, and found a very fine seventeenth-century hall with a long table down the middle. There the Dean presumably presided over his chapter.

  It was too late for any directors’ meeting, and so, if canons kept the same hours, their board-room seemed to offer shelter for the night. But there was no cover. The curtains, of faded magnificence and rich in folds, would not do; it might be somebody’s duty to come in and draw them. From the walls portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century churchmen looked down upon me. They had the casual air of aristocrats who had merely dressed up in bands and black for the purpose of being painted. I was fortified by their approval.

  At the far end of the room was a gallery with a little curving staircase leading to it—a real, Carolean show-piece, with all the balustrades delightfully carved. I explored it, stepping over a rope of red velvet which hung across the foot of the stairs. Against a side wall were a few stools and benches—probably for musicians—which would do for a hiding-place so long as the person who pulled the curtains and gave the hall its good-night inspection did not deliberately search for me. At the back of the gallery and in the centre of its panelling was a small door. I thought I had better make sure that no one would come in by that, so I turned the wrought-iron handle and gave a firm pull, slightly lifting the door to keep it silent.

  It was locked, but the mortice which projected from the panelling seemed to be loose. One is always vaguely fascinated by doors which are supposed to be secure, and are not; so I fiddled with the mortice and found that it could be lifted out of its seating. The flange at the bottom, which should have been sunk into the wood to a depth of two or three inches, had been filed away so that only an eighth of an inch remained.

  The door led to a deep, cool cupboard in the thickness of the stone wall, fitted with racks for bottles. The set-up was obvious. The chapter’s butler or the Dean himself kept the key of this little cellar, but somebody else had decided that the servant was as worthy as the master. His neat bit of jobbery, which showed signs of considerable age, had never been detected. It was not surprising. Who in so smoothly run an establishment would tug or rattle at the door—which might have torn the lower flange of the mortice clear out of the wood—or who would lift the door, as I had done, and spot that the mortice was loose? Like had spoken to like across the decades.

  I looked for whisky. When a man is hot, thirsty and distracted, there is nothing
else. It is the sole creation of the British Isles of universal, irreplaceable value. Parliamentary government? For most countries, an illusion. Bits of machinery? Every sane man wishes they had never been invented. Shakespeare? We could get along very well with Cervantes and Rabelais. But a world without whisky would be the poorer by an essential pleasure.

  That is by the way. A mere remembering of my disappointment. There was no whisky. The cellar made no concessions whatever to hot and thirsty vulgarians beyond a tap for rinsing glasses. Three-quarters of the bins were empty. The rest contained only port and Madeira, and I never had any great opinion of either. On principle I disapprove of the dry, fortified wines beloved of the English, and the prejudiced Spanish half of me refuses to admit that the Portuguese know anything of wine. But I now apologize, sincerely and from the depths where lives the palate, to our oldest alliance.

  One bin of Madeira bore the date of 1851. There were only four bottles left. In a calmer mood I should not have dreamed of depriving the Dean and chapter of the last of their treasure. I must have been feeling more of an outcast from society than I realized. Or was it the power complex of a man on the run? At any rate, I opened a bottle, decanted it—a last clinging to the decencies of civilization—and restored myself.

  Oh, but my dear Dean, my reverend chapter, what a noble wine have you there! If ever, in your weekly mourning for the missing bottle or in the regret that steals upon your souls while listening to Bach upon the organ after evensong in summer, grief is more poignant for the thought that it vanished down the unthinking gullet of some housebreaker, let me assure you that, after the first careless swallow, I sipped it fasting, as it should, I think, be sipped, with no disturbance but the excellent dry biscuits from the tin upon the shelf. And never was it more gratefully appreciated, never did it make so generous a return. By itself, it called me back to a proper mood of urbanity in which a charge of High Treason resumed its place as a mere triviality in the normal and genial nihilism of mankind.

  No more agitated movement was demanded, no skulking under furniture. I had only to drink Madeira and eat biscuits. But one drastic action I had to take. I picked up a brewer’s mallet which was on the shelf and slammed back the lock with a sharp blow. Nobody paid any attention. Probably the noise was not so loud as it seemed to my agonized ears. Thereafter I was free to go in and out by using the latch only.

  I replaced the mortice and shut myself up in the cellar, keeping close to the large keyhole in order to listen to the evening routine, whatever it should turn out to be. I had little fear of discovery. It stood to reason that the person who tampered with the cellar lock had done so before the war. In these days of high prices and church poverty no Dean and chapter could possibly be robbed of their liquor without noticing it.

  After an hour or so, someone entered the hall, drew the curtains and went out. Then all was silent and I emerged into the darkened hall. The double doors had been locked for the night. That suited me very well. The police could busy themselves heavily in the streets while I was tucked up under the wing of the Dean. I had some more biscuits and finished the bottle. With an optimism entirely due to Madeira I slept under the great table until the first light woke me up in a panic.

  The dawn mood was not so cheerful. My wholly unjustifiable confidence was overwhelmed by the practical difficulties. I had no money and only the conspicuously well-cut suit in which I was dressed. It had been brought to me from my flat, at my own request, that I might appear at my best before the justices. If I had ever considered that I might be on the run—and, Lord help me, I hadn’t even thought that I should be sent for trial!—I should have appeared in the windbreaker and shorts which I was wearing when handed over by Peter to the police.

  And where to go if ever I got clear? Ecuador was a sure refuge, for all my friends, including the Chief of Police, would have hailed it as the jest of the year that I should be accused of communism. But was the rest of my life to be spent there in exile? Divided loyalties are hard to explain. In every way Latin America suits my taste and my character. Yet England is more deeply my country. Even its police and justices are in my blood, indispensable—to say nothing of the great Alexander Romillys and the little doctors of metallurgy. Put it this way. I take it that any man or woman would rather be at a generous party of congenial spirits than elsewhere. But you can’t make a home of a party.

  However disastrous the future, the game now was to see as much as possible without being seen. The gallery appeared fairly safe. Whoever locked up the night before had not bothered to climb the steps, and there was evidence that he seldom did. The balustrade was dusty; so was the pile of ancient stools and benches against the wall. I concealed myself among them. Through the gap between two of the close-set, heavily carved posts I had a perfect view of the hall below.

  At half-past eight precisely the porter or caretaker unlocked the door of the hall and set down his brooms and polishes. He was a tall, thin man, with fifty years of respectability and indigestion stamped upon his face, in shirt-sleeves and trousers—blue trousers with a line of black braid down the sides which suggested that, when he had finished his morning chores, he would put on a uniform coat or gown. He drew the curtains and dusted the window-sills perfunctorily with a feather brush. He then settled down to a serious and quite unnecessary polishing of the table, which was obviously his real love, and finally placed upon it a cardboard notice: Please Do Not Touch.

  I had visualized the Dean and chapter gathered daily round the table, with sheets of blotting-paper in front of them, to settle the affairs of the cathedral. But that was clearly wrong. The beadle went out and returned with a folding-table and a formidable oak collecting-box, which he set up near the door. Chapter Hall Fund. Visitors are Urged to Contribute to the Repair of the Ancient Timbers—which harboured not only me but death-watch beetles. A third notice, CLOSED, went up at the foot of the stairs to the gallery. Quite rightly. They would not have stood half a ton of visitors.

  This changed the direction of such vague plans, or hopes rather, as I had. It was clear that I had taken refuge in a historic monument, used on occasion for its original purpose—witness, the cellar—but normally a mere show-place for the public. Thus it was a fair gamble that I could live for a few days between cellar and gallery until all search for me in the town had ceased. There were water and biscuits and a cheap port—reserved, perhaps, for the more evangelical clergy—which I might reasonably use for sustenance. It would, I felt, be an outrage upon the Dean’s hospitality to continue the consumption of Madeira. What had been excusable at my agitated arrival on his premises would be mere insolence now.

  When the beadle had gone, I considered returning to the cellar. I found myself reluctant to do so. Sitting there in the dark was safe, but led nowhere. If ever I were to get a space of daylight between myself and the horde of angry officials who were spending their morning in explanations why a dangerous spy had got away and why they hadn’t caught him, I had to be sensitive to my environment.

  And pretty sensitive I was a moment later when the police arrived. I ought to have expected them. The bicycle left in the road outside the chapter house passage showed—when at last the greengrocer reported it—that I had probably gone through the archway. A constable and a sergeant accompanied the beadle. He was now wearing a long blue livery coat with brass buttons, and held a silver-topped staff of office. That all helped. It was somehow unthinkable that a criminal should approach the ward of such a personage.

  They came up to the gallery, treading with care. The sergeant asked about the door, and was told that it gave access to the service cellar of the chapter and the Dean held the key. ‘Service Cellar’ sounded magnificent; it implied another vaster cellar, a veritable cathedral crypt, from which every year or so the service cellar was restocked. If I had believed the beadle I might have permitted myself another bottle of the 1851 Madeira. But I didn’t. He was only keeping up the prestige of the Established Church.


  They neither saw me nor looked for me—though they had only to move a couple of forms. The hall gave such an impression of clean and lovely emptiness that the one spot where it wasn’t empty was taken for granted. They discussed me at length. The constable was of opinion that I was hiding in the cathedral. The sergeant, pretending to knowledge of mysterious worlds within worlds, snubbed him and said that Politicals went Underground. This amused the beadle, who pointed out that Cecil Reyvers was the only Communist in Saxminster and that he wouldn’t be much help to any underground. The sergeant was not so sure. With the full responsibility of his rank he suggested that Cecil Reyvers’ bookshop might be a blind and that Chris Emmassin—God rot the newspapers which publicized him!—had his organization all over England and could spirit a man away to Russia as easy as kiss your hand.

  As soon as the police had gone, I found an overwhelming reason for movement. The needs of nature were imperative. I leapt back to the cellar and its empty bottles; and, once there, there I had to stay for the morning. Sightseers were arriving at irregular intervals, and I never could be sure of a free half minute in which to leave the cellar and settle myself comfortably under the pile of forms.

  It was a safe bet that the hall would be closed during the beadle’s lunch hour, so at half-past one, when he was reasonably certain to have his feet under a table, I resumed my position in the gallery. The afternoon was busy and at first enjoyable. The beadle had dignity. His tone as he explained the dates and named the master craftsmen was sepulchral, fruity, and quite unlike that of the ordinary pattering guide. Conducted parties of visitors went on and on, and by the end of the day I knew his little lecture by heart. In moments of boredom the thing still runs round my head. I wish I could drive it out by listening to one of the Tower wardens at the same game; but state prisoners are not exhibited to the public. A pity. I wouldn’t mind coming to an arrangement with my gaolers whereby I could be examined for half an hour a day at a pound a head, and we would split the proceeds.