The Human Factor Part 28

'Take another drink, Maurice. Things are not so bad. You just have to be patient, that's all.'

Castle took the drink.

Chapter III.

I.

The doctor confirmed Sarah's fears for Sam, but it was Mrs Castle who had been the first to recognise the nature of his cough. The old don't need medical training-they seem to acc.u.mulate diagnoses through a lifetime of experience instead of through six years of intensive training. The doctor was no more than a kind of legal requirement-to put his signature at the end of her prescription. He was a young man who treated Mrs Castle with great respect as though she were an eminent specialist from whom he could learn a lot. He asked Sarah, 'Do you have much whooping cough-I mean at home?' By home he obviously meant to indicate Africa.

'I don't know. Is it dangerous?' she asked.

'Not dangerous.' He added, 'But a rather long quarantine '-a sentence which was not rea.s.suring. Without Maurice it proved more difficult to disguise her anxiety because it wasn't shared. Mrs Castle was quite calm-if a little irritated at the break in routine. If there had not been that stupid quarrel, she obviously thought, Sam could have had his sickness well away in Berkhamsted, and she could have conveyed the necessary advice over the telephone. She left the two of them, throwing a kiss in Sam's direction with an old leaflike hand, and went downstairs to watch the television.

'Can't I be ill at home?' Sam asked.

'No. You must stay in.'

'I wish Buller were here to talk to.' He missed Buller more than Maurice.

'Shall I read to you?'

'Yes, please.'

'Then you must go to sleep.'

She had packed a few books at random in the hurry of departure, among them what Sam always called the Garden hook. He liked it a great deal better than she did-her memories of childhood contained no garden: the hard light had struck off roofs of corrugated iron onto a playground of baked clay. Even with the Methodists there had been no gra.s.s. She opened the book. The television voice muttered on below in the sitting-room. It couldn't be mistaken even at a distance for a living voice-it was a voice like a tin of sardines. Packaged.

Before she even opened the book Sam was already asleep with one arm flung out of the bed, as his habit was, for Buller to lick. She thought: Oh yes, I love him, of course I love him, but he's like the handcuffs of the Security Police around my wrists. It would be weeks before she was released, and even then... She was back at Brummell's staring down the glittering restaurant papered with expense accounts to where Doctor Percival raised his warning finger. She thought: Could they even have arranged this?

She closed the door softly and went downstairs. The tinned voice had been cut off and Mrs Castle stood waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

'I missed the news,' Sarah said. 'He wanted me to read to him, but he's asleep now.' Mrs Castle glared past her as though at a horror only she could see.

'Maurice is in Moscow,' Mrs Castle said.

'Yes. I know.'

'There he was on the screen with a lot of journalists. Justifying himself. He had the nerve, the effrontery... Was that why you quarrelled with him? Oh, you did right to leave him.'

'That wasn't the reason,' Sarah said. 'We only pretended to quarrel. He didn't want me involved.'

'Were you involved?'

'No.'

'Thank G.o.d for that. I wouldn't want to turn you out of the house with the child ill.'

'Would you have turned Maurice out if you had known?'

'No. I'd have kept him just long enough to call the police.' She turned and walked back into the sittingroom-she walked all the way across it until she stumbled against the television set like a blind woman. She was as good as blind, Sarah saw-her eyes were closed. She put a hand on Mrs Castle's arm.

'Sit down. It's been a shock.'

Mrs Castle opened her eyes. Sarah had expected to see them wet with tears, but they were dry, dry and merciless. 'Maurice is a traitor,' Mrs Castle said.

'Try to understand, Mrs Castle. It's my fault. Not Maurice's.'

'You said you were not involved.'

'He was trying to help my people. If he hadn't loved me and Sam... It was the price he paid to save us. You can't imagine here in England the kind of horrors he saved us from.'

'A traitor! '

She lost control at the reiteration. 'All right-a traitor then. A traitor to whom? To Muller and his friends? To the Security Police?'

'I have no idea who Muller is. He's a traitor to his country.'

'Oh, his country,' she said in despair at all the easy cliches which go to form a judgement. 'He said once I was his country-and Sam.'

'I'm glad his father's dead.'

It was yet another cliche. In a crisis perhaps it is old cliches one clings to, like a child to a parent.

'Perhaps his father would have understood better than you.'

It was a senseless quarrel like the one she had that last evening with Maurice. She said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that.' She was ready to surrender anything for a little peace. 'I'll leave as soon as Sam is better.'

'Where to?'

'To Moscow. If they'll let me.'

'You won't take Sam. Sam is my grandson. I'm his guardian,' Mrs Castle said.

'Only if Maurice and I are dead.'

'Sam is a British subject. I'll have him made a Ward in Chancery. I'll see my lawyer tomorrow.'

Sarah hadn't the faintest notion what a Ward in Chancery was. It was, she supposed, one more obstacle which even the voice that had spoken to her over the telephone of a public call box had not taken into account. The voice had apologised: the voice claimed, just as Doctor Percival had done, to be a friend of Maurice, but she trusted it more, even with its caution and its ambiguity and its trace of something foreign in the tone.

The voice apologised for the fact that she was not already on the way to join her husband. It could be arranged almost at once if she would go alone-the child made it almost impossible for her to pa.s.s unscrutinised, however effective any pa.s.sport they arranged might seem to be.

She had told him in the flat voice of despair, 'I can't leave Sam alone,' and the voice a.s.sured her that in time ', a way would be found for Sam. If she would trust him... The man began to give guarded indications of how and when they could meet, just some hand-luggage-a warm coat -everything she lacked could be bought at the other end-but 'No,' she said. 'No. I can't go without Sam' and she dropped the receiver. Now there was his sickness and there was the mysterious phrase which haunted her all the way to the bedroom, 'a Ward in Chancery'. It sounded like a room in a hospital. Could a child be forced into a hospital as he could be forced into a school?

2.

There was n.o.body to ask. In all England she knew no one except Mrs Castle, the butcher, the greengrocer, the librarian, the school-mistress and of course Mr. Bottomley who had been constantly cropping up, on the doorstep, in the High Street, even on the telephone. He had lived so long on his African mission that perhaps he felt really at home only with her. He was very kind and very inquisitive and he dropped little pious plat.i.tudes. She wondered what he would say if she asked him for help to escape from England.

On the morning after the press conference Doctor Percival telephoned for what seemed an odd reason. Apparently some money was due to Maurice and they wanted the number of his bank account so that they might pay it in: they seemed to be scrupulously honest in small things, though she wondered afterwards if they were afraid that money difficulties might drive her to some desperate course. It might be a sort of bribe to keep her in place. Doctor Percival said to her, still in the family doctor voice, 'I'm so glad you are being sensible, my dear. Go on being sensible,' rather as he might have advised 'Go on with the antibiotics.'

And then at seven in the evening when Sam was asleep and Mrs Castle was in her room, 'tidying' as she called it, for dinner, the telephone rang. It was a likely hour for Mr. Bottomley, but it was Maurice. The line was so clear that he might have been speaking from the next room. She said with astonishment, 'Maurice, where are you?'

'You know where I am. I love you, Sarah.'

'I love you, Maurice.'

He explained, 'We must talk quickly, one never knows when they may cut the line. How's Sam?'

'Not well. Nothing serious.'

'Boris said he was well.'

'I didn't tell him. It was only one more difficulty. There are an awful lot of difficulties.'

'Yes. I know. Give Sam my love.'

'Of course I will.'

'We needn't go on pretending any more. They'll always be listening.'

There was a pause. She thought he had gone away or that the line had been cut. Then he said, 'I miss you terribly, Sarah.'

'Oh, so do I. So do I, but I can't leave Sam behind.'

'Of course you can't. I can understand that.'

She said on an impulse she immediately regretted, When he's a little older...' It sounded like the promise of a distant future when they would both be old. Be patient.'

'Yes-Boris says the same. I'll be patient. How's Mother?'

'I'd rather not talk about her. Talk about us. Tell me how you are.'

'Oh, everyone is very kind. They have given me a sort of job. They are grateful to me. For a lot more than I ever intended to do.' He said something she didn't understand because of a crackle on the line something about a fountain-pen and a bun which had a bar of chocolate in it. 'My mother wasn't far wrong.'

She asked, 'Have you friends?'

'Oh yes, I'm not alone, don't worry, Sarah. There's an Englishman who used to be in the British Council. He's invited me to his dacha in the country when the spring comes. When the spring comes,' he repeated in a voice which she hardly recognised-it was the voice of an old man who couldn't count with certainty on any spring to come.

She said, 'Maurice, Maurice, please go on hoping,' but in the long unbroken silence which followed she realised that the line to Moscow was dead.

2.

Colonel Daintry had a two-roomed flat in St James's Street which he had found through the agency of another member of the firm. During the war it had been used by MI6 as a rendezvous for interviewing possible recruits. There were only three apartments in the building, which was looked after by an old housekeeper, who lived in a room somewhere out of sight under the roof. Daintry was on the first floor above a restaurant (the noise of hilarity kept him awake until the small hours when the last taxi ground away). Over his head were a retired businessman who had once been connected with the rival wartime services SOE, and a retired general who had fought in the Western Desert. The general was too old now to be seen often on the stairs, but the businessman, who suffered from gout, used to get as far as the Carlton Club across the road. Daintry was no cook and he usually economised for one meal by buying cold chipolatas at Fortnum's. He had never liked clubs; if he felt hungry, a rare event, there was Overton's just below. His bedroom and his bathroom looked out on a tiny ancient court containing a sun dial and a silversmith. Few people who walked down St James's Street knew of the court's existence. It was a very discreet flat and not unsuitable for a lonely man.

For the third time with his Remington Daintry went over his face. Scruples of cleanliness grew with loneliness like the hairs on a corpse. He was about to have one of his rare dinners with his daughter. He had suggested giving her dinner at Overton's where he was known, but she told him she wanted roast beef. All the same she refused to go to Simpson's where Daintry was also known because she said the atmosphere was too masculine. She insisted on meeting him at Stone's in Panton Street, where she would expect him at eight. She never came to his flat-that would have shown disloyalty to her mother, even though she knew there was no woman sharing it. Perhaps even Overton's was tainted by the proximity of his flat.

It always irritated Daintry to enter Stone's and to be asked by a man in a ridiculous topper if he had booked a table. The former old-fas.h.i.+oned chophouse which he remembered as a young man had been destroyed in the blitz and been rebuilt with an expense-account decor. Daintry thought with regret of the ancient waiters in dusty black tails and the sawdust on the floor and the strong beer specially brewed at Burton-on-Trent. Now all the way up the stairs there were meaningless panels of giant playing cards more suited to a gambling house, and white naked statues stood under the falling water of a fountain which played beyond the plate gla.s.s at the end of the restaurant. They seemed to make the autumn strike colder than the air outside. His daughter was already waiting there.

'I'm sorry if I'm late, Elizabeth,' Daintry said. He knew he was three minutes early.

'It's all right. I've given myself a drink.'

'I'll have a sherry too.'

'I've got news to give you. Only Mother knows as yet.'

'How is your mother?' Daintry asked with formal politeness. It was always his first question and he was glad when he had disposed of it.

'She's quite well considering. She's spending a week or two at Brighton for a change of air.'

It was as if they were speaking of an acquaintance whom he hardly knew-it was odd to think there had ever been a time when he and his wife were close enough to share a s.e.xual spasm which had produced the beautiful girl who sat so elegantly opposite him drinking her Tio Pepe. The sadness which was never far away from Daintry when he met his daughter descended as always-like a sense of guilt. Why guilt? He would argue with himself. He had always been what was called faithful. I hope the weather will be good,' he said. He knew that he had bored his wife, but why should that he a cause of guilt? After all she had consented to marry him knowing all; she had voluntarily entered that chilling world of long silences. He envied men who were free to come home and talk the gossip of an ordinary office.

'Don't you want to know my news, Father?'

Over her shoulder he suddenly noticed Davis. Davis sat alone at a table laid for two. He was waiting, drumming with his fingers, his eyes on his napkin. Daintry hoped he wouldn't look up.

'News?'

'I told you. Only Mother knows. And the other, of course,' she added with an embarra.s.sed laugh. Daintry looked at the tables on either side of Davis. He half expected to see Davis's shadow there, but the two elderly couples, well advanced in their meal, certainly didn't look like members of the Special Branch.

'You don't seem in the least interested, Father. Your thoughts are miles away.'

'I'm sorry. I just saw someone I know. What is the secret news?'

'I'm getting married.'

'Married?' Daintry exclaimed. 'Does your mother know?'

'I've just said that I told her.'

'I'm sorry.'