Fellow Passenger

by Geoffrey Household

  When the day was over and the hall locked up, I ate a few biscuits, drank curate’s port with water and tightened my belt. The only shadow of an idea which had come to me was that of borrowing the beadle’s livery coat and making my way through the town in disguise. It seemed worth a trial. The double door of the hall was easy enough to open from the inside; I had merely to pull up the bolts which secured the second half of it.

  The chapter offices were empty. On my floor was nothing of interest except a little pantry for making tea, with a large slice of stale cake in it. I ate that—all but a bit which I left, pitted and crumbled, to put the blame on the mice. There was also a box of matches which was invaluable, for I dared not turn on the lights.

  Downstairs in the passage was a notice board. The hall was open to visitors from ten to twelve-thirty and two to five, except on Tuesday afternoons when the chapter meetings took place. That meant that my cellar was safe till then, and probably longer—for it was unlikely that bottles and glasses would be produced for routine weekly meetings. In the room bearing outside Ring for Attention was the beadle’s coat and tricorne hat. I put them on and walked out, leaving the front door on the latch in case I wanted to return in a hurry.

  It was a little after ten, fairly dark and not too late for a respectable official to be on the streets. My plan was to work round the cathedral in the shadows and thence, by any lanes which looked deserted, to the outskirts of the town. Crossing the close, I was hailed from a distance as ’Erbert, and asked if I were spy-hunting. I vanished with dignity into a porch and from there slipped round the east end of the cathedral. Out into the reach of dim street lamps again, I was greeted by some cheery soul who waddled out of a pub twenty yards away and asked ’Erbert for the loan of ’is ’at. The only way of escape from him was among the noble eighteenth-century tombstones. In my enthusiasm for any sort of trick which might get me unrecognized out of Saxminster, I had forgotten that everyone in a small town knew everyone else’s business. I fled from cover to cover back to the chapter offices without any further attempts to imitate the walk and bearing of ’Erbert. Almightily thankful that no one had been near enough to be sure that I was not the beadle, I replaced his garments on the hooks and returned to the hall.

  That second night I could not sleep. The floor of the gallery was hard and I was very hungry. I was also ashamed of myself. I had proved myself only half an Englishman when my safety depended on being awake to every nuance and custom. I should have known perfectly well that the beadle’s coat and tricorne came off punctually on the stroke of five. A Latin American functionary would wear his uniform all night in any café or public place as a matter of course, but nothing would persuade an Englishman to do so—once he had passed the age of ten.

  On the Friday morning, after I had eaten the last crumbs of biscuit with more curate’s port, I took my place under the benches. Business was brisk and the beadle less fruity than usual. He did his best, but he could not help catching the boredom of his customers. Three-quarters of them were doing the cathedral and chapter house because it was part of their coach tour and they had paid for it—the remaining quarter, younger and more earnest, because it was their self-imposed duty. The collecting-box did well, especially from a party of North Americans who were far more fascinated by the beadle than the architecture. And quite right, too. I sympathized with their transatlantic humanity. I once spent six months in Madrid without ever entering the Prado. Shameful, of course, but I was so occupied by enjoyment of the living that I never had time.

  One man remained sketching while parties came and went. He was of a type strangely common in these days, with a fleshy, full face of coarse complexion, and black, untidy hair that looked as if it had never been combed by anything else but greasy finger-tips. Yet the breed is pure British without a trace of Mediterranean blood. I have a theory that many of them are dark Scots who have taken to the arts, eaten too much starchy food and gone to seed.

  He was wearing a dark-blue turtle-neck sweater, with coat and trousers. It was a coat and they were trousers, and that was about all you could say of them, for they had neither definite colour nor shape. He was not concentrating on his sketch. Whenever the hall was empty, he padded across to the open door, looked out and listened.

  At the lunch hour he had a word with ’Erbert and was permitted to stay on and finish his work. Having seen his restlessness when he thought he was alone, I did not altogether like that. Sketching was not his real interest, though, as I could see when he had his back to me, he was thoroughly competent. He had two different styles—one architecturally exact and one unintelligible. Both seemed to me dull.

  As soon as the hall was closed for lunch, he whipped a pair of cotton gloves out of his pocket and set to work on the collecting-box with a skeleton key. The box had a general iron-bound air of being built to withstand the mediaeval thief, but possessed a quite ordinary lock. Though my artist had not, I think, any professional qualifications as a cracksman—beyond some practice and a draughtsman’s neatness of touch—he had the box open in a couple of minutes.

  The position was obviously packed with opportunities for my escape, though how to take advantage of them I did not yet know. I jumped up from the pile of furniture, regardless of minor crashes.

  ‘We’ve had our eyes on you for some time, my lad,’ I said, advancing down the stairs with the kindly, confident air of the police. After all, I had had some time to study them.

  My shot went right home. He didn’t protest or ask for pity. He just sank into himself, burning and sulky and resigned to the inevitable.

  ‘It’s not as if I were robbing an individual,’ he said, with a good, educated accent.

  ‘And all right so long as it goes into your pocket, what?’

  ‘If you put it like that, yes,’ he answered, looking at me with sudden insolence.

  I remembered that I was unshaven for at least a day longer than he, and that my suit was a good deal dustier than that of a plain-clothes detective.

  ‘And what about all the church offertory boxes?’ I asked him. ‘I tell you, I’m sick of sitting up all night for you under pews and tombstones.’

  After that I had him where I wanted him—running through in imagination the prison sentence ahead. He obeyed without question when I told him to take off his gloves and lock the box up again. It occurred to me that I was a far more likely criminal than he, and that the guilt had better be settled before we went any further. I forced down his fingers on the inside of the box before he shut it up.

  ‘I’ll tell that to my solicitor,’ he said.

  ‘But the magistrates won’t believe it of Saxminster police,’ I assured him.

  I told him to pack up his drawing-board and pencils and to precede me up the stairs to the gallery. He, of course, assumed that we were going out by the cellar door. So we were—but my difficulty was to prevent him seeing that it led nowhere.

  He waited opposite the door for me to turn the handle, and I pretended to think that he was meditating escape. I ordered him sharply to turn round and lock his hands behind his head.

  ‘You don’t want another six months for resisting the police, do you?’ I asked in the reasonable, firm tone that was so familiar to me.

  While he stood with his back to me, facing the hall, I opened the door.

  ‘Six paces backwards—march!’

  He obeyed, grumbling. It was luck that he had never been in the hands of the civil police before, but I think he may have had trouble with the military. At any rate he shambled backwards into the cellar as if he were used to meaningless severity. I then turned him about, and shut the door on the pair of us.

  ‘Could we possibly have some light?’ he complained.

  I found it hard to be polite to a nasty piece of work which lived by robbing collection boxes. An honest burglar—whom, of course, I could never have deceived for a moment—would have been far more congenial company
in the cellar. However, there was nothing for it but to use a sympathetic approach. A struggle in the dark might be overheard, or end with the wrong man being hit over the head by a bottle.

  ‘You’re a very lucky fellow,’ I said.

  ‘And why?’ he sneered.

  ‘Because I am not a detective.’

  ‘My opinion of the police is restored. Shall we go on?’

  ‘We’ve arrived,’ I answered. ‘There is no on.’

  That made him think a bit. It was pitch dark and he was at the far end of the cellar. All he could feel were stone walls. I myself was in the little bay where the wine was kept. He could tell by my voice that I was in some other passage, but he could not possibly guess that the space was as confined as it was.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked him—not that I had anything to offer, but I wanted to know with what sort of man I had to deal.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Then why the collecting-boxes?’

  ‘Because I myself am a more deserving charity than ancient timbers. What’s your racket?’

  ‘Very simple. I want your clothes in exchange for mine, and your sketches and drawing-board.’

  ‘You won’t get ’em.’

  ‘Yes, I will. I’m a deserving charity, too.’

  ‘By God!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re the escaped spy!’

  ‘Quite right. And you’re shut up in the dark with him in a place he knows and you don’t.’

  ‘Try that game, and the noise we’ll make will be the end of you.’

  ‘End of you, too. I’ll bet you left your fingerprints on a dozen church boxes before you took to using gloves. Besides, be reasonable! What do you care whether I’m a spy or not?’

  ‘Well, I don’t much. And that’s a fact,’ he answered in a tone of surprise and self-satisfaction. ‘Curious how one can never get rid of primitive reactions!’

  ‘In that case you have everything to gain. You’ll get six or seven pounds from any dealer for my suit, and that will make up for your own clothes and the quid I’m going to borrow off you.’

  ‘I haven’t got a quid,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll make it two—if it isn’t in your trouser pocket when you hand ’em over.’

  ‘Damn you! They’re too long for you.’

  ‘Too wide, but about long enough. Hurry!’

  ‘Look here,’ he protested, ‘how do I know you won’t leave me here stark naked?’

  ‘You don’t know. And if I have to leave you here, it won’t matter.’

  ‘Well, if you want to be hanged—’ he began.

  ‘You bloody fool!’ I answered with gusto. ‘Don’t you realize I’ll be hanged for High Treason, anyway?’

  That really broke through his arrogance, and he sounded ready to panic. I certainly did not want hysterics, so I passed my own trousers in his general direction to restore mutual confidence and asked for his own. They had the quid in the pocket, too—as well as some small change that he was in too much of a hurry to remove.

  He was restive during the afternoon. I do not think he had ever sat still for so long in all his life. Whenever we heard ’Erbert’s voice droning away in the hall below, he was inclined to make little noises—accidentally as it were. I had to remind him that, since he had no use for patriotism, he had nothing to lose by keeping quiet, and that if he didn’t I had a wooden mallet handy.

  After nightfall we walked out together, and in the cathedral close I said good-bye to him with apologies. I felt inclined, as the older man, to tell him to mend his ways, but under the circumstances he was hardly likely to care for my opinion. I merely impressed it on him that if the police got hold of me through any information of his I should tell them to check the fingerprints inside the collecting-box with others on their files.

  ‘Howard-Wolferstan,’ he replied, ‘I sincerely hope you get away. I want to read some morning that you have been liquidated with every possible Russian refinement.’

  I put my faith in his drawing-board and sketches, which I held carelessly open on a level with my chest, as if I were just on my way home, deep in thought, from an evening’s work. For the rest, my face had three days’ scrub on it, and I arranged my hair to make myself unrecognizable to a casual glance. After all, a woman can change her whole appearance, and character as well, by monkeying with her hair, so why not a man? I have always worn my own neat, parted and rather long over the ears. I wetted it from a puddle—for no one could tell the difference between grease and water in the dark—and then made it look as if it were only kept out of my eyes by continual, nervous movements of the fingers.

  I simply trusted to different clothes and different bearing, and whether I was ever closely examined by police I do not know. Keeping my eyes helplessly on my sketches, I made little effort to avoid lights or people, and tried to keep an even, innocent pace until I was clear of the town. Then I took to open country and footpaths, moving fast but very cautiously south-east, and by two a.m. had the best part of twelve miles between myself and Saxminster.

  I was impatiently hungry. Impatiently rather than physically. Wine and a pound of biscuits—to say nothing of a substantial slice of cake—are quite enough to keep a man going for fifty-six hours so long as he is well-fed to start with. I have known much worse. But I had to think, sanely and impudently. You can’t do that on an empty stomach. And at the beginning of June the English countryside produces absolutely nothing to eat: no berries, no harvest.

  I had asked my nihilistic friend in the cellar what he did when he was broke and really hungry. ‘Pinch milk bottles, of course,’ he replied, as if everyone knew that. To swipe the baby’s milk off the doorstep before the family woke up was a crime entirely in keeping with his character. But what of it? My own crime fitted my character, too—or at any rate my upbringing. A fat and sleepy lamb. I cut him up with my pocket-knife and built a small fire in the middle of a copse and grilled his chops, inadequately, on the ashes. It was an anxious business, but, when there was light enough to see smoke, only red embers and a pleasant smell remained.

  Burying all traces of my sheep-stealer’s feast, I lay down out of the wind and considered what on earth was to be done next. My strong impulse was to make for the nearest port, Bristol or Southampton; but it stood to reason that the ports were just where the police net would have the closest mesh. An experienced stowaway who knew all about seamen’s pubs and seamen’s papers might be able to slip through, but I did not think much of my own chances. London, then? But hadn’t I read that all wanted men tried to disappear in London? And how the devil did one live in London—apart from pinching milk bottles—with no money and no identity?

  I think what really influenced me against the life of a fugitive in a town—certainly as sordid and depressing in reality as in imagination—was the grey village down the hill towards which my feet were pointing. It was just waking up, and satisfying to all senses. I could smell the wood smoke drifting up from the new-lit breakfast fires and hear the distant clink of a bucket where some honest woman preferred her well water to the tap for making tea. The harmonies of English summer sights, which affect me more deeply than any ingenious arrangement of sounds, led from movement to movement, each one expected and yet individual: the colour of roofs, the early-morning mist on water, the flowers in the rectory garden, the long shadows of hedges and elms on meadowland, the leaping green of hill turf.

  Damn it, I thought, if I am going to hide, let it be where I can enjoy myself! And if I am caught, at least I shall have a few pleasant days to remember. I knew what I was talking about. I’d had ten days in gaol. And during all of them I was keenly conscious of the pleasure which my memories of a May night and Dr Cornelia were providing.

  So I was all for staying in the country, so long as I could quickly put a good many more miles between myself and Saxminster, and then find a quiet spot in which to grow a beard. Movement was the diffic
ulty. Any simple alteration of my appearance would pass in the dusk, but to travel in daylight by public transport or to trudge along the roads was asking for trouble. I had not seen a paper since my escape, but I had no doubt that my photograph was now familiar to every reader of English between Land’s End and Alaska. There had been no such sensation since the reappearance of Chris Emmassin in Moscow. For headlines I expect I beat him. He had only deserted, whereas I had escaped from the magistrates’ court in broad daylight with—for surely one could trust the newspapermen to add it—all the atomic secrets of the nation.

  Lying on the hillside and poetically digesting the loin of that unfortunate and unrationed lamb, it occurred to me that since I was a communist to the whole world except myself, I might as well get some help from my fellow outcasts. True, I only knew one, and him by hearsay—poor Cecil Reyvers, who kept a bookshop in Saxminster. He sounded like a local joke, more resembling a harmless atheist or anarchist.

  Down in the village the red box of a public telephone glittered in the morning sun and tempted me. The police, against their better judgment, would probably be keeping an eye on Cecil Reyvers’ shop, but they could not think the town eccentric of such importance that his telephone would be tapped. Whose signature was necessary to tap a telephone? The Home Secretary? A Justice of the Peace? I could not remember. If done at all, it was probably with a sound John Bullish denial that such an outrage was possible.

  I was sorry for Cecil Reyvers, but I was going to larn him to be a communist. I waited till ten to give him plenty of time to arrive in his shop, and then walked down the lane which led from my copse to the village of Kingston Dray. I passed a few people, but they did not pay the slightest attention to a scruffy and preoccupied artist. My disguise was better than I realized at the time. A well-dressed South American type was what my fellow-countrymen were looking for. The newspapers, as I found later, had impressed on the public that I was a handsome Latin. Some of them called me slick, and others called me sinister; but they were all agreed—damn them!—that I was a maiden’s dream out of a cheap dance hall. At that period there was no photograph of me available beyond the picture, taken in the courthouse, with the unrecognizable grin, and none in my flat for the police to collect. I dislike photographs of myself. They always make me look too dark.