Here Be Monsters

by Anthony Price

  Thoughts jostled Elizabeth’s mind, relevant and irrelevant. She had the other half of his name now, which she had never known, or even needed to know: the unimportant (and quite inappropriate) half. Brian—

  ‘I’ll do that. If I see him.’ What Richardson didn’t need to know Audley wisely didn’t tell him. ‘You wanted to know, Elizabeth—why, was it?’

  If someone, somewhere, had wanted Major Turnbull dead, for whatever reason, then it would have been no problem putting a contract out on him: that didn’t prove anything more than Richardson had already done, with that message of his. The fact of Fordingwell—the terminal event—was less important than its timing; which was what Audley had been saying.

  ‘We have to go on, Elizabeth, because we don’t have any choice in the matter. That’s all.’ Audley leaned forward. ‘Would that be Bomb Disposal logic, from your Royal Engineers days, Captain Richardson?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Richardson held the wheel tightly, letting the car drive itself along a Roman-straight road towards the hilltop ahead, which boasted a tricolore above its ruined tower. ‘But there were such things as anti-handling devices even in our day, designed to blow us up. So we didn’t just hit it with a hammer because it wasn’t actually ticking.’ He half-turned towards Audley. ‘And you seem to think your bomb is still ticking, if I heard you correctly?’

  ‘My bomb?’ Audley sniffed, and turned to Elizabeth. ‘There speaks a peace-time bomb disposal officer, my dear. When my old chemistry master was a bomb disposal officer in London in 1941 he always had half-a-dozen bombs—and a couple of land-mines—on the go, in the Blitz. He always used to say that it wasn’t a question of when he’d be blown up, so much as where. In fact, the last time he came back he got the Head to set the sixth-form scholarship class a variation on the old Would you save the baby or the Elgin Marbles? question: Would you save a row of houses in the East End or the local sewage works? And, I tell you, that really stretched us. Because we’d never seen a sewage works, let alone an East End house.’

  ‘So what was his answer?’ Richardson fell into the trap.

  ‘He never got round to telling us.’ Having caught his man, Audley returned happily to Elizabeth. ‘If I’m wrong about Haddock, it’ll take you months to get any sort of lead, And if I’m not wrong it’ll take you forever. But in the meanwhile I want to get back to a bomb of my own at Cheltenham, which could go up any minute. So let’s hit this one with a bloody hammer … And if it goes off in our faces—if he laughs at us, and tells us that there isn’t one damn thing we can do now … because there isn’t one damn thing we can do—except maybe I can resign, and you can get a feather in your cap, if you want to wear a feather … if he laughs at us, that’ll be something better than nothing.’

  ‘I don’t want that sort of feather, David. But what if he doesn’t laugh?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll laugh—old Haddock’ll see the joke, whether it’s on him or us. He won’t have changed. Aged, maybe … but not changed.’ Audley nodded. ‘He should be just about ready for drinking now: aged in the wood.’ Another nod: he was excited, rather than pleased, at the prospect. ‘Besides which … if I don’t quit—and I’m damned if I’m going to quit for Oliver St John Latimer—what can they do to me? The way things are at Cheltenham, they need me more than I need them right now.’ Another nod. But this time the excitement was smoothed by rather smug confidence. ‘So what can they do to me?’

  ‘Oh, great! Bravo!’ murmured Richardson. ‘Vintage patriotism, 1984: “My country needs me—but it’s paying less than the going rate”. But you’re asking the wrong question, I suspect.’

  ‘And what is the right question?’

  ‘You may well ask!’ But Richardson didn’t seem disposed to answer.

  Audley waited, and Elizabeth decided to wait too.

  The landscape was closing in on them again. There were more orchards now, as well as vineyards—peaches, or almonds maybe, or even olives, but something exotic, anyway; but, more strange than the flora (and there was no sign of any fauna, except Frenchmen in French vehicles, which made the road even more foreign), was the suddenly-jagged landscape.

  ‘It’s not worth looking, Miss Loftus.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Just because you can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Or, anyway, that they haven’t got us covered. They’re at St Servan, anyway.’

  ‘I was looking at the countryside, actually.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Richardson drove in silence for a time. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Myself, I don’t like the French. But then my mother was Italian, so I suppose I’m biased. However … your Italian—he has his faults, but he wants to be a gentleman, even when he’s picking your pocket, or cutting your throat. But your Frenchman—he’s got style, but no one would ever accuse him of being a gentleman.’

  ‘Balderdash!’ said Audley. ‘Poppycock!’

  ‘Possibly,’ agreed Richardson equably. ‘But when it comes to self-interest—call it La France, if you like—he can be mean and smart, is what I mean.’

  ‘It isn’t what he means at all, Elizabeth,’ said Audley. ‘Come to the point, Pietro.’

  ‘Okay. Have it your own way.’ Richardson shrugged. ‘The further we drive up this pretty road—and if those clouds weren’t in the way you might just see Mont Ventoux, Miss Loftus—the further we drive up it, the queasier I feel.’ Another shrug. ‘If we were just tourists … but no one’s ever going to accuse you of being just a tourist, David … And if Andy Dale got just a whiff of KGB up there, at St Servan, before he glimpsed this French DST fellow … And now you say that it was the Yanks led you to this old boy in the first place—‘ Shrug ‘—God knows what he’s done—I don’t want to know, not now: I want to be able to say Mein Gott! I voss only obeying orders: I voss only drivink ze car! — just so we get in quickly, and then get out quickly. Will you at least do that?’

  It was looking less and less like a good idea, and more and more like a stampeded amateurish error, thought Elizabeth. ‘We won’t stay for lunch, Mr Richardson. All right?’

  ‘I hope you won’t, Miss Loftus—I hope you won’t!’

  ‘There’s a two-star restaurant in St Servan,’ said Audley.

  ‘La Vieille Auberge.’ Richardson nodded. ‘Have you ever been in a French slammer, Miss Loftus?’

  ‘Shut up, Peter,’ said Audley. ‘Just drive.’

  ‘Onomatopoeic, Miss Loftus,’ said Richardson. ‘American slang for the sound of the prison door closing. And I’ll bet there isn’t a CIA man to be found in a thirty-mile radius of us now. Because they’re not nearly as stupid as their allies like to think.’

  ‘Shut up, Peter,’ said Audley again. ‘Just drive.’

  Peter Richardson just drove.

  ‘Have you been in the field long, Miss Loftus?’ he said at length.

  ‘Drive, Peter,’ said Audley.

  She couldn’t even concentrate properly on the countryside, after she found she couldn’t think straight. Not even when she saw a strange field, and caught a stranger smell. ‘Lavender,’ said Richardson obligingly. ‘Or a sort of lavender. What they grow is some sort of hybrid—the real stuff grows wild, higher up, with thyme and rosemary. I remember stopping off up here—oh, it must have been fifteen years ago—when I was driving my first girl down to Amalfi, to see my mother’s folks. We stopped off further north, though—Buis-les-Baronnies, it was … It was okay then, because there were no missiles on the Plateau d’Albion … Now, when I come over, I keep to the autoroute, just to be on the safe side.’

  Eventually he stopped, quite deliberately.

  ‘Phone-box here, just round the corner. Got to make a call.’

  Elizabeth sat in silence, until it became oppressive.

  ‘Have I made a mistake, David?’

  Audley stared down the village street, in which nothing moved. ‘We all make mistakes. Maybe I made a mistake, a long time ago. If I did, then maybe we’ve both made another one now. Join the club.’

  R
ichardson came back.

  ‘That’s okay. He’s just gone out on his terrace, to read his morning paper. He’ll have his coffee. And then some more coffee. By the time we get there he’ll be thinking about his first drink.’ He let in the clutch.

  ‘But I still don’t think I made a mistake, Elizabeth,’ said Audley.

  Peter Richardson just drove, again.

  There were hills now, and twisting valleys, up and down, and through and around, with scrubland rising up here and there above fertile fields, hinting at the wilder country of Peter Richardson’s real lavender. And—

  And that had been the country to which Haddock Thomas had taken his beautiful scheming Delphi, long ago. And had he returned here to die here, because this was where he had once been happy?

  And there were villages, set high up on one side, or low down on another—low down, but still on promontories in their valleys, each with its ruined medieval castle tower and its church—each at once different from the last one, yet identical.

  It was perched on the side of a ridge—a plateau, almost—also just as different, but just the same—

  ‘I’ll go straight in, and drop you off outside his place. I can turn round at the top, somewhere … I have to come down a different way, but I’ll sound the horn—one short, one long, one short—as I come by, underneath his terrace. Then I’ll fill up the tank at the gas station, and I’ll have a drink at the auberge—for an hour?’ Richardson glanced over his shoulder at Audley. ‘Same signal -okay?’

  Elizabeth cracked. ‘And if everything isn’t all right?’

  ‘Long-short-long … if I’m lucky.’ He signalled and slowed to leave the main road. ‘Dead silence if I’m not. Okay?’

  Elizabeth craned her neck to try to take in the terrain of St Servan-les-Ruines, but too late, because of listening to Peter Richardson: the huddle of the village was already lost behind a screen of trees, and she had lost the shape of everything. But it was still so peaceful that the whole charade was utterly unreal, anyway.

  ‘Here we go, then,’ said Richardson, in a voice so suddenly-serious, like a fighter pilot making his low-level run, that she was jolted from unreality to reality.

  It was larger than it had seemed, on that first uninformed look, when it had been just another village: there was a street, and another street, with shops in it—even a shop with dresses in it, which no English village would ever have possessed; but then no English village she knew of still had a baker’s shop—a butcher’s shop—never mind a two-star auberge —

  The Fiat swung sharply, through 180 degrees, under a cliff of ancient stonework, towards a tiny fortified gateway, under a cascade of flowers which reminded her insanely of old Mr Willis’s cottage far away in soft green England, which was so near in time, but so desperately and helplessly far away in miles.

  ‘Where are the ruins?’ She heard her own voice almost with surprise, it was so sharp and confident.

  ‘What ruins?’ Richardson slowed to negotiate the gateway.

  ‘St Servan-les-Ruines?’

  ‘Search me.’ He changed gear once he was through. ‘It all looks fairly ruined to me. I never thought to ask.’

  Just as unexpectedly as they had arrived in the village, they were unexpectedly out of it again, into an area of stunted old oaks and scrubby vegetation, but with an equally sudden view of a fertile and well-cultivated valley below, bathed in hot sunshine.

  Yet not quite out of it after all, maybe: the narrow road fell gently towards a final huddle of houses perched on a flat shelf in the hillside amid a cluster of shade trees.

  ‘Prepare to abandon ship,’ said Richardson. ‘Dale’s people will have their eye on you from up there.’ He pointed up the hillside, to a modern house almost on the crest of the ridge, not unattractive, but sited with fine (and presumably French) disregard for an otherwise unspoilt landscape. ‘He was lucky to pick that up, it overlooks the old dog’s kennel perfectly … They’re supposed to be a honeymoon couple. But I won’t tell you any more, just in case the worst comes to the worst.’ He twisted towards Elizabeth as he slowed down. ‘Honeymoon couples inspire a certain delicacy even in the worst and most nosey of people, Andy Dale reckoned, Miss Loftus. And they keep themselves to themselves.’

  Where had she heard that before, just recently—?

  ‘Out,’ said Richardson, just as she remembered. And the remembrance of Haddock Thomas and his bride here all those years ago, and in the very year which mattered, was a cold and desolate thought, quite unwarmed by its irony.

  But Audley was already out of the car, and had skipped round to open her door with uncharacteristic good manners.

  ‘Good luck—‘ Richardson’s glasses were black in the glare ‘—to us all, Miss Loftus.’

  The house was very old, and not very large though unnaturally high for its size, but sturdily restored up to the iron water-spouts under its pantile roof.

  The car accelerated away, leaving Audley standing somewhat irresolute before the choice of a front door and the wrought-iron gate in a shoulder-high garden wall. Then he resolved his irresolution simply by peering over the wall on tip-toe, and choosing the gate for her.

  There was a little shady garden, under a pergola of some sort of vine, with all the light and colour concentrated on the edge of a terrace, where a man in a panama hat sat amidst a blaze of red flowers and scatter of books and newspaper pages, with a glass in his hand and a puff of blue-grey tobacco smoke above him.

  But the gate had squeaked, and the man changed the picture as it fixed itself, turning towards her.

  ‘Dr Thomas?’

  ‘Hullo there—?’

  Slow, gravelly voice, the sound filtered through many years and many bottles. But years of what else? wondered Elizabeth: just many years of hie, haec, hoc, and Caesar’s Gallic Wars? Or many years of treason?

  She felt Audley’s large presence at her back, pushing her forward, overawing her from behind even in the shadow. And in that instant she steeled herself against disappointment. For, whatever he was, and whatever he had been, Haddock Thomas could only be an anti-climax in the flesh, innocent or guilty.

  ‘Hullo there?’ He peered towards them over his spectacles, which had slipped far down his nose.

  Elizabeth advanced. Just for this brief moment she might be as beautiful as Helen of Troy for all he knew, and that wouldn’t do at all.

  ‘Dr Thomas?’ She whipped off her dark glasses and entered a shaft of sunlight which cut through the canopy above.

  ‘Yes.’ He placed his glass carefully on the table beside him, rose to his feet, and finally removed his panama. ‘Once upon a time, anyway.’

  The light had half-blinded her for an instant, but her next step took her into shadow again.

  Nothing very special, indeed: neither horns nor halo, neither Caliban nor Hyperion in retirement. Just another old man.

  ‘Forgive me, Dr Thomas.’ In that moment of half-blindness she had missed his first reaction to her. Now she saw only that he wanted to recognize her, from his gallery of wives and sisters of long ago, but couldn’t do so. ‘Elizabeth Loftus, Dr Thomas.’ Just another old man: younger than old Mr Willis, but much taller and thinner, and sun-browned (sun-browned with perhaps a hint of dear Major Birkenshawe’s whisky-flush, maybe), leathery-tanned by age and sun and alcohol. ‘We haven’t met.’

  ‘Until now.’ He smiled the correction at her, and pushed his spectacles up his nose with his index finger. And then smiled again, without embarrassment at what was in sharp focus at last.

  ‘But we have met,’ said Audley from behind. ‘Back in the deeps of time, Haddock.’ Haddock Thomas stared past her, frowning slightly, but only with the effort of memory, with no outward hint of any emotion. Yet then, if he wasn’t what he had seemed all these years, he would be good, thought Elizabeth bleakly. Too good, in fact.

  ‘Don’t tell me, now.’ For the first time there was the very slightest hint of Welshness beneath the gravel. ‘My eyes are not what they were—‘ The ey
es, faded china-blue, came back to Elizabeth ‘—too much staring into the sun, you see, Elizabeth Loftus. Long ago it was a matter of life-or-death to look into it—“The Hun in the Sun” behind you was very likely to be the last thing you ever saw, with no need to worry about old age. But from this terrace I have watched the sun over too many cloudless days, and the moon rise over starlit nights of dreams—Axel Munthe was right, he knew the price of sinning. But, of course, he also knew that the price was worth paying, for the sin. And that’s one of the world’s troubles today: the crass belief that we have a right to something for nothing. When, in fact, we have no rights at all—and even nothing is expensive. Indeed, nothing may prove to be the most expensive commodity of all -even more costly than the sun itself.’

  ‘He was always like this, Elizabeth,’ said Audley. ‘Or, perhaps not quite so philosophically pompous when he was younger. But quite bad enough, as I remember.’

  Haddock Thomas continued to look at her. ‘It’s the voice, you see, Miss Loftus—Mrs Loftus—?’

  ‘Miss, Dr Thomas.’ She mustn’t like him: they had all succumbed to him—his pupils, his equals, even his interrogator and the friend whose girl he had taken—they had all liked him.

  ‘Miss Loftus. The eye can be a great deceiver. Not merely in the present—not merely the picture which lies, or the quickness of the conjuror’s hand—it deceives memory too. Smell is much better, perhaps best of all, so long as it lasts. But sound now … “a tinkling piano in the next apartment” and the cry of John Peel’s hounds, and the leather on the willow … ’ He placed his cigar on an ash-tray beside his glass and then offered her his hand. ‘And now I believe they’ve proved that every voice has its print, as unique as every finger, Miss Loftus.’

  Audley loomed in the corner of her vision, in full sunlight.

  ‘And David Audley?’ He relinquished her hand and offered it to Audley. ‘”Dr Audley, I presume?” should I say?’

  Audley said nothing for a moment, as the sound of a car, close but invisible, rose from below the terrace wall.