Appleby on Ararat

by Michael Innes

  Hailstone sighed. “Everything is becoming so complicated. It’s all this war – do you realise what ruination it is for workers like us? Harvard, Tokio, Cambridge, Moscow, Berlin: can you imagine” – he hesitated, searching for an image – “can you imagine something as swift and complicated and exact as first-class tennis happening between all these? In every one of them men waiting for the flashing ball that represents the progress of their subject – waiting to return it with a new spin, an unexpected twist, back over the net? And now this imbecility, with people like Heaven stuffing their pockets with rubbishing stamps and” – his features beneath their blue glasses lit up with sudden humour – “and then disturbing policemen torpedoed on one’s doorstep! But I am sure we ought to be grateful for Appleby. He has put us wise to a possible danger of which we had no suspicion at all. George, we must be on guard – and Dunchue too, of course.” And Hailstone exerted himself to sign for Benedictine.

  The coffee was excellent and worth lingering over, nor was there any disposition to do otherwise. The active mood to which explanations of the dig had moved Hailstone was apparently dissipated; George was sound asleep; Dunchue considerably sobered by the meal, was applying himself to captivating Diana. Appleby watched this latter process with a deplorably absent eye; he sat back, let the Benedictine cap an excellent hock and listened to the sluggish lap of waves which had broken their force on distant reefs. The sound was like the impotent murmuring of hours and days which had lost their power to beckon and compel. And this image in turn worked obscurely on his mind, turned and checked in his mind like a key that feels for its wards. Often such a key turns once only and the intricate thought has to follow it through or be baffled for good… Appleby looked through the fly-wire of a long low window at the wicker chairs and spotless chromium table and abandoned glasses where they had drunk the abominable aperitif favoured by Dunchue; he returned gratefully to Hailstone’s liqueur and stared into a new world in its colourless and tiny deeps. There it was, he said to himself; there it all was – or nearly all. His eye went back to Diana and to Dunchue leaning towards her over a bowl of fruit. They were as spectral, as unconvincing as a half-told film upon which one has suddenly come from the light of day. In five minutes Dunchue would reform; his hair would be brushed and a crease would creep magically into his trousers. But in ten there would be a misunderstanding; he would be drunker than ever and grow a three-days stubble overnight; it would take a tornado and much opportunity for heroism to set things right again. And even in the final close-up he would look engagingly dissipated still; he would have a horrid line of finically trimmed moustache. And Diana, after being soaked to the skin and obliged to undress behind a screen which proved amply decorous in the end – Appleby blinked. He had almost solved a mystery – almost solved a mystery which as yet had scarcely declared itself – but the island was ready to enfold him in its languor still. He drained his glass and as he did so the Swiss Family Robinson, long grown tenuous and remote, dissipated itself finally in air. He took a cigarette and lit it and saw a greater classic form itself in the blue and slowly curling smoke. “Tusitala,” he said suddenly.

  Hailstone looked up, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. I was just remembering a name the natives in these parts gave to Robert Louis Stevenson. Because he was a great teller of tales.”

  14

  The undig dig, thought Appleby. The digger undone… He roused himself to join in the leisurely bustle of going out to inspect. A second umbrella was found for Dunchue and Diana; there was a little picnic basket and a thermos; it was all like a mild amusement planned to fill a children’s afternoon. Hailstone roused George with a sequence of progressively urgent whistles – rather as Montaigne’s father roused the infant essayist with a cautious music – and the party made its way into the beating sun and the louder lap of the sea. Far out the intense blue showed a single line of foam, as if on the impassive face of ocean the odd procession raised a tiny smile. A wandering wind brought a waft, a sob, a sickly and dying fall of music through the groves; an echo uncertainly murmured it ahead. Hailstone, under the stress of his pedestrianism, was silent and appeared to meditate his breathing. Appleby took advantage of his abstraction to study the topography of the place.

  All this segment of the island’s east coast was flanked by that line of difficult hills which, from their first encampment, they had called the eastern range. On its lower slopes the jungle seemed here impassable, and before them as they moved south the uplands climbed steadily in formations which were increasingly rocky and forbidding until abruptly they swung east, and ended in precipices sheer above the sea – a Hebridean rather than a Polynesian effect. They were thus walking into a species of natural cul-de-sac. But before the termination of this, and across a narrow neck of land which now appeared on the left before them, lay a peninsula of low sandhills and scrubby grass. It was towards this that they were making their way, with the bungalow now a quarter of a mile behind them and the hotel perhaps a mile and a half behind that.

  Appleby looked at the uplands on his right. Beyond them could momentarily be seen the merest tip of the eminence they had called Ararat; perhaps, he thought, it had now better be renamed Spy-glass Hill. From there the range cut off any view of most of this narrow coastal strip; hence had arisen their first inability to distinguish any signs of habitation on the island. He looked back at the bungalow, planted amid palms where the range swept nearest to the sea. It occurred to him that it would be pleasing to have a revolver – the way they were going could so very patently be a trap. But things might not stand like that at all… And his mind went back to consider the hotel and the shady sanctuary provided by Mr Heaven there.

  Shadowy and unimportant it had appeared hitherto – an odd and possibly rather shameful institution which served as a convenience until one could get away. But now, with things perhaps going to happen – He turned to Hailstone. “This fellow Heaven,” he asked; “he didn’t bring his escapists all in one bunch?”

  “I think they came in two lots. It is a comfort that the place now seems to be full – with yourselves more than full. They are a great nuisance.” Hailstone spoke mildly. “And they seem to dislike George.” His voice held rather more spirit.

  “George scarcely seems disturbed.”

  “George is an exceptionally good-tempered dog. One of them – I think a man named Jenner – kicked him only the other day.”

  “Which lot did Jenner come with?”

  Appleby’s question had – oddly – the air of following logically upon what he had just heard. And behind his blue glasses Hailstone appeared to be staring absently out to sea: he might have been attempting an estimate of something new that suddenly confronted him. “I believe,” he said, “Jenner was with the second lot.”

  “Did you get the impression that the second lot were in any way unexpected?”

  Hailstone stooped to pluck grass seeds from George’s untropical fleece. When he spoke it was in a voice that was frankly disturbed. “You really think–?”

  “It seems not improbable that there are people at the hotel who have designs against you.” Appleby in his turn paused to stare far across the ocean. “How Unumunu’s death fits in I don’t at all know. But when the picture becomes clearer it will find its place. Meanwhile we must be cautious. But I doubt if there is cause for real alarm.”

  Appleby spoke with a cheerfulness which he was suddenly far from feeling. It disturbed him to be told that the man named Jenner had kicked George.

  A gull wheeled overhead; its swift shadow cut the sand like a summons to act. And the dig Appleby felt he would willingly take for granted at the moment; he wanted to get back and, for the first time, really look at Heaven’s hotel. What sort of a rascal was Sir Mervyn Poulish, the defaulting financier? That was important. Was he right in his estimate of Mudge, the only white servant? That was important too. And about Heaven himself – “About
Heaven.” Hailstone’s voice cut startlingly in on his thought. “The more I think about him the more troubled I am. This stamp business you have so brilliantly spotted: surely it can’t all be based on that? I can see that there may be a handsome profit if he has the means of disposing of the things again one day. But banking on the world being busy stamp collecting in the later twentieth century–” He shrugged his shoulders, so that the shadow of the umbrella gave a little jump before them. “I believe he’s up to something else.” He was silent for some minutes; they were now plodding laboriously over soft sand. “Somewhere – right at the beginning – Dunchue may have talked; he was drinking long before we came here, I am sorry to say.” He paused again. “The dig is a prize, you know – in the mere piratical way. There may be untold gold.” He was looking at Appleby, perhaps distrustfully, through the cold blue of his glasses.

  “I certainly believe that Heaven is interested in more than stamps.”

  Hailstone sighed. “I am used to an enigmatic attitude. George has something of it… Ah, here we are.”

  A Brobdingnagian child, playing patty-pans amid these low sandhills and armed with something the size of a cinema, might have turned out just such a memorial as Hailstone’s barrow. It loomed above and before them, a vast severe cube of sand and tussocky grass, the absoluteness of its geometrical form scarcely eroded by time. Diana cried out, like a tourist when the coloured lights are switched on in the cave; Appleby stared at the thing, perplexed. “You could play cricket on it,” he said.

  Hailstone laughed. “We have never thought of that. But it’s a big proposition, as you see. One begins to feel like the rat gnawing at the mountain.”

  “But surely they can’t have buried all that? It would require a modern liner–”

  “There was a little fleet, I suspect.” Dunchue was looking at the barrow like a lover, and now turned from Diana for the first time since they had set out. “But it’s as big as you see it because for some reason it has steadily accreted sand. Particularly on top – and yet always keeping its own form. Something to do with the binding action of winter grasses, Hailstone thinks.” He shook his head, with one of his intemperate transitions into gloom. “Impacted, too, after a little way. Getting to the stuff will be like burrowing through a pyramid.”

  Diana looked dismayed. “You mean the treasure’s very far inside?”

  “Far enough inside to make a steam shovel desirable. Not even Hailstone getting us all on our toes, George included, is likely to make short work of it.” Dunchue sat down and, as if for want of a better object, began to excavate the picnic basket.

  “George,” said Hailstone mildly, “is doing his best.” And this was true. It was evident that the vast and unaccountable object, so severely angular amid the lush and convoluted life of the island, presented this monstrously lazy dog with an irresistible intellectual stimulus. He had bounded off to the barrow with a yelp and was absurdly scratching at the nearest of its massive bastions. “I often remark that George is an example to us all.”

  “Couldn’t you blow it up?” asked Diana.

  “Conceivably we could.” Hailstone looked slightly shocked at the question. “But unfortunately we are quite without explosives. And one couldn’t tell what damage one might do to fragile and crumbling objects inside. Would you care to climb to the top? There is an easy route from the other side.”

  Leaving George to his futile labours, they climbed. The barrow, Appleby saw, was very near the ocean’s edge; one could look down on deep water almost immediately below. But this was not the observation of most immediate interest to be made. For planted in the centre of the sandy plateau on which they now stood, and applying himself to what had every appearance of being a bottle of champagne, was his host of the hotel. Like the saints in the hymn, they had toiled up to Heaven. But if there were golden crowns to gain it appeared to be the hotel-keeper who had an eye on them. Beside him on the sand lay a formidable spade.

  He rose as they approached, and Appleby scrutinised him more carefully than before. His head moved uneasily upon his shoulders and his features worked uneasily about his face – a moon of a face that matched his lank body no better than a shuddery polyp accidentally impaled upon some spider-like creature of the deeps. And he advanced upon them to an accompaniment of little, inchoate, involuntary sounds – a strange mooing as of beeves on distant pastures, or thunder infinitely remote, or swallows in the great chimneys of an ancient house. He advanced thus and with his eyes screwed up against the light: unprepossessing, affected, perhaps formidably intelligent. With a hand from which there gleamed a large diamond he swept his topee from his head – and far away across invisible valleys the cattle lifted their heads and bellowed to the breeze; he bowed to Diana and spoke to the newcomers at large. “A delightful eminence from which to take the air. Mrs Kittery, gentlemen – a glass of wine?” High up the swallows wheeled and twittered amid the crumbling stones.

  Dunchue set down the picnic basket once more – but this time rather as if he were preparing for a fight. Hailstone planted his umbrella like a standard in the sand. George, appearing breathless from his burrowing, growled a new growl – a growl disconcertingly like cattle mooing beyond a shadowy horizon. And for a moment Heaven’s confidence flickered; his face twitched into uneasy smiles, his head jerked on his shoulders, his free hand made indecisive gestures before his chest. And then like a watery lightning a snicker and chuckle sounded through the far thunder; his eyes screwed up farther and glinted darkly from some hidden depth of malice and power. He was laughing at them. And then he turned and lifted from its little ice-box the bottle of champagne. “You will take wine with me?” he repeated – and stood suave and slightly twitching before them.

  “Thank you, we have our own provision.” Hailstone spoke with his wonted mildness. But he was standing very upright beneath the umbrella – determined to get on his toes, Appleby thought – and it was a poise which held its own affectation. For Hailstone was fundamentally not rigid or upstanding; despite the efficiency of his bungalow his languor was real – real or based on the reality of something supple, devious, pliant in his nature. Parendo vincitur, thought Appleby. And he remembered that on Unumunu’s beach it was something ambiguous about Hailstone by which he had first been struck. But at least the man was bent on giving a very different impression now; he was standing up to this queer creature from the hotel with all the directness of a Colonel Glover.

  “Mr Heaven,” said Hailstone, “may I ask what you are doing on this tumulus with a spade?”

  “This tumulus?” Heaven’s head lunged queerly on his shoulders; it was the motion of a cow obeying an attenuated instinct to butt, and the likeness was enforced by a faint mooing as he peered innocently about him. “Can I have strayed across your dig? I am exceedingly sorry, my dear sir. And as for the spade” – the snicker interpolated itself again between Heaven’s syllables – “I am afraid that it is employed in the service of the stomach rather than of the mind. Edible worms, Mr Hailstone; we had hoped this evening to serve an entree of edible worms. A delicacy very little known outside a restricted gastronomical circle.” Heaven snickered and mooed, as if this palpable fantasy pleased him very much. “And found exclusively in the south seas. I found them mentioned in a curious treatise by Pierre Colet, for many years chef to the French governor of New Caledonia. One digs quite deep in the sand–” And with another snicker and snigger Heaven thrust the spade deep into the surface at his feet.

  The gesture was something between a mere impertinence and a manifesto. Dunchue, who had been glowering in the background, took it for the latter. He strode forward, and it was evident that to cope with a situation such as this came more naturally to him than to his chief. “This barrow,” he said evenly, “is of great importance to something called Pacific archaeology. It may help us to sort out the movements of all the peoples of the Pacific basin. We are not going to let it be interfered with by rubbis
hing people hoping to fill their pockets from some non-existent treasure. You understand me?”

  He was glaring at Heaven, and Heaven smiled, twitched and produced several new varieties of inarticulate sound. Angry sound, Appleby reflected – and kept a watchful eye for the man’s next motions with the spade. But Heaven presently spoke as from a mood of considerable amusement. “Do I understand, Dunchue, that you claim an exclusive legal proprietorship of this part of the island?”

  “There is no law on the island. For that matter, there is lawlessness; a stranger was murdered here only the other day – and Mr Appleby here is going to ask the reason why. We shouldn’t care to overburden him with homicides.” Dunchue took a further step forward. “But law here is for resolute men to make. This dig is ours. And if you interfere I promise that you shall never dine on worms again. The boot will be on the other foot.” And Dunchue’s harsh laughter rang out over the sandhills.

  Diana had sat down and was watching the warming-up of this scene with wide-eyed satisfaction; it was clearly not such situations that tended to make her feel blue. She was looking at Dunchue with what Appleby – his mind straying momentarily to irrelevancies – felt to be distinctly facile admiration. Nevertheless he was not disposed to step into a prominent role himself. Instead, he sat down too and fell to tickling George’s ear with a straw. George made indecisive noises, perhaps tentatively trying out a snicker of his own. Hailstone altered the pitch of his umbrella, as if feeling that the temperature on top of the barrow might be lowered that way. For seconds the whole scene hung in air, with no obvious sequel in sight. And then Heaven turned and walked back to the spot where they had first discovered him. The swallows flew up out of the chimney and were gone.