Fellow Passenger (19 page)

‘They may be stuck on with spirit gum.’

‘They are not,’ he replied positively. ‘They are fitted to his chin and held on by elastic.’

He sketched with an excited gesture a band passing under his turban in front of the ears, and over the head.

I am no orientalist, but my guess was that tinkering with other people’s beards might arouse quite unpredictable passions. I also felt that my Sikh was unreliable. He was not so shocked by his compatriot as he pretended to be. He revelled in what he proposed. If he had lived a hundred years earlier, he would undoubtedly have trained his judicial elephant to step with imperceptible slowness upon those who refused his friendship.

The project, however, had too many possibilities to be turned down flat.

‘How would I get in?’ I asked.

‘Down the chimney.’

It’s odd how foreigners tend to accept as unchangeable what they have read. My Sikh still thought that sweeps climbed up and down chimneys as in the days of Charles Kingsley, when a second’s thought would have shown him it was impossible even for a child. But try to persuade an Englishman that the Spaniards are magnificent seamen, or the average North American that a lord has much less power than a senator!

When I had pointed out the diameter of chimneys, he said that there was a flat roof, easy of access, by which I could reach the renegade’s bedroom window.

‘Does he sleep with it open?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes. He was in the Army.’

‘It seems a bit hard on him.’

‘Nothing is too hard on him. I hate him.’

He covered up this sudden lack of urbanity by adding:

‘I am carried away by my religious feelings.’

‘Would they carry you away to the extent of twenty quid?’

‘Fifteen. Five when you start. Ten when you bring it.’

‘If it’s held by elastic, a tug won’t get it off.’

‘Pull it down, and then up over the face.’

I decided that I would go far enough to earn the first five pounds. I couldn’t afford not to. What happened afterwards would depend upon the gods of India; and that did not take me very far, for no doubt there would be at least one to approve the conduct of each of the three parties concerned.

He took me out to show me the flat roof and window. It was well after midnight, for there had been intervals in our conversation, especially in the early part of it, while I attended to his whisky and listened to his charming efforts to put me at ease. Outside the front door, he turned to the left. My bicycle was also facing left. That wouldn’t do. The bicycle had better point the other way in case I returned, as seemed very probable, in a hurry. I pretended my brushes were not secure and changed the direction.

He led me round two corners and into a mews or lane which gave access to the back doors of a street similar to his own. It was a very middle-class district, without any prosperity to attract the ambition of burglars or the zeal of policemen, and depending, I suppose, upon London University for its living.

The flat roof could be reached by walking along the top of a high party wall between two backyards. About four feet above the leads of the roof I could make out the rectangle of an open window, a little blacker than the night. I told the Sikh to give me a leg up on to the wall.

‘This is where I get the fiver,’ I said.

He gave me three, swearing that he had got no more, that the rest was in a drawer at his lodgings. I ought to have come down at once; but, after all, three quid was three quid and I did not intend to give him any value for money.

I crawled silently along the wall and across the roof, and crouched down beneath the open window. When I was satisfied that the person inside was asleep, I stared through the window until my eyes were used to the darkness and I could make out the shapes within. So, very gingerly, over the sill.

The bed was on my left, and furniture, which resolved itself into a chest of drawers and a dressing-table, on my right. There were no false whiskers lying on either of them. The sleeper evidently took no chances with narrow-minded compatriots.

I had no intention at all of risking tricks with elastic; but when I looked at him it seemed so easy. He was lying on his back. The luxuriance of a black beard was spread out over the sheets. Closer inspection showed the presence of a narrow black band in front of the ears. I told myself that it was folly, and then was overcome by that accursed spirit which forces a man to do what his natural caution dislikes - such as diving off too high a rock or riding along a mountain footpath when you ought to lead your mule, or removing detonators when they have failed to function.

I closed my hands on the beard and tested it. The sleeper muttered. I barely moved it, but I could feel it was not attached to his skin. I faced him, so that with one motion I could pull it over his head and dive through the window. I pulled.

My Sikh’s instructions had been quite accurate; but what he did not know or had not told me was that the elastic passed under the bun of the coiled and consecrated hair. I ought to have let go and jumped for safety. So I would have done, if the beard had stuck fast. But the sensation, during that vital second, was so indefinite. The elastic stretched. The bun of hair stretched and gave. The sleeper, still lying on his back, threw up his arms and grabbed hair, not elastic. I was all but away when he twisted on to his stomach and seized my hand. The next moment I was thrashing round the room with what seemed like four tigers and the entire Indian Army, all covered with long hair.

I grabbed a healthy tress and did not let go. His own objective was the precious beard. It could not be fought over and torn so he clamped a grip on my left wrist. That tied us up too tight for very much damage to be done by either side. It was lucky for me. If he had only broken away and charged in again, there would have been a dead sweep in the fireplace in the morning. As it was, he pinned me to the ground, face downwards, and I swear I expected him to bite through the vertebrae at the back of my neck.

We rolled round the room, both of us keeping the silence of evil consciences and neither of us daring to let go of what he had. Since he was trying to break my ribs with his knees, I wriggled half under the bed. He thought he had me then, and concentrated both his hands on my left, which held the beard. I was still hanging on to it because it kept one hand of his fully occupied - if one can talk of a ‘because’ in the mere reflexes of self-preservation.

The bed itself prevented him from twisting my wrist back and breaking it. Meanwhile, with the whole of his attack converging upon my left hand, he did not notice what I was doing with my right. I managed to take two turns of his hair round the leg of the bed, and secured it with a tangled, desperate half-hitch. Then I let go, and relieved the garrison of my left hand.

It was easy to move the scene of this undignified brawl a foot away from the bed. The jerk naturally disconcerted him. He let my hand go, and grabbed at the knot. For a moment I was clear of all interference. I plunged through the window and over the flat roof. Lights were going on. Several voices were shouting, some in foreign languages. My late enemy, who had freed himself - probably by just raising the bed - was already on the roof while I was running along the top of the party wall. I dropped into the lane and sprinted round the two corners, passing Sikh No. 1 on the way. He must have been waiting in the road and gloating over the bumps and crashes. He, too, began to run after me - not, I think, to pay the twelve pounds he owed me, but to clear himself of all complicity. Or he may have been just bolting for his own front door. I didn’t stop to find out. I had visions of being ceremoniously impaled upon a spike of London railings by both of them. He was a faster runner than I, and it was fortunate that my bicycle was facing the right way.

I vanished at top speed, and then rode more sedately in case I met a policeman. I told myself severely that these high-spirited and infantile risks simply must not be taken. I had merely acquired a beard which I did not particularly want, and failed to borrow a turban, which I did. And I had been very lucky to get off with bruises and an aching wrist. If that was a fair example of a Sikh with somewhat effeminate tastes, I imagine that a more normal warrior could tear up the average European with one hand while continuing to comb his hair with the other.

I thought it unlikely that there would be any hue and cry after a sweep, and that the disturbance would be put down to fun and games among Indian students. The offended party could not tell degrees of colour in the dark; he had taken me for an Indian and hissed curses at me in languages which I did not understand. As for Sikh No. 1, having failed in whatever perfidy he intended, he could only pretend that he knew nothing and that I was no agent of his.

I settled down to pass the rest of the night in that bombed site which I had already visited. It was too cold to do more than doze with my knees up to my chin. But discomfort is relative; I had only to remember my buoy of the previous night to feel that I was well off. At dawn I repaired my make-up, which had suffered from the incidents of the night. There was the usual, pathetic fireplace embedded in a shattered wall, with sound, pre-war soot in the opening of the flue.

Exploration of the black brick wilderness around the North Eastern Goods Depot rewarded me with a so-called cafe which was open at 6 a.m., and a mound of hot bacon sandwiches. The proprietor was curious that sweeps, like railwaymen, should work at night, and bombarded me with questions. I took refuge in my former pose of an honest working man sullen with grievances.

I did not dare read the morning papers under the eyes of another human being. I bought a couple, looked firmly away from my own face on the front page and shoved them in my pocket. The district was short of open spaces in which to read a paper. Eventually I struck the Regent’s Canal. There on the towpath, leaning against a filthy wall with the revolting canal liquid at my feet, I lit a cigarette and read. My reactions were extraordinary - a mixture of fear and amusement which made me giggle aloud. My mechanism was out of control, as if I had been hit hard on the funny bone.

The ship had landed her passengers on the afternoon tide. The party line - it was the only possible line - was to stick to my story that they were returning me as an example of their bona fide love of peace and fair dealing. I had both stowed away and been permitted to escape by the treacherous collaboration of the anarchist officer who was responsible for security on board.

All this might have made a fine impression if apologies and explanations had been offered graciously and frankly; but of course they were as boorish as possible. Nobody but the British police and Customs had been allowed on board the ship. The communiqué was nothing but a sulky handout from the Embassy. None of the officials would reply to questions. In propaganda on both sides of the Iron Curtain charm is rare, for it is a quality in which propagandists are, by nature, notably deficient. Give me my small room in the Tower - or even the Kremlin - and a printing-press, and I would guarantee to improve manners all round in a month.

Comment was banished to the middle pages, where leaders and special articles were busy attributing all the wrong motives to everyone concerned with astonishing ingenuity. The front page was entirely occupied by the traitor Howard-Wolferstan. The distressed Spanish seaman had been identified; as soon as that friendly interpreter had been reminded of my existence, he, of course, recognized me. The chemist from whom I bought my bandage had come forward at once. So had the second-hand clothes dealer. They were busting with excitement, and their shops had been photographed. Elias Thomas Conger had made a gallant effort to hog a column for himself, but had been swamped by the tall American, who was looking deliciously slim and shy, and exhibiting a shapely leg while seated on her baggage. Of Karlis there was nothing at all. He had not yet been picked up, and his existence was taken with a grain of salt.

The police were giving away everything they knew, so that the public could help. In the stop press of one paper was a paragraph to the effect that a man with a dark face and a bandage over one eye had been seen in Wapping. But that would be the end of the trail. Unless the watchman at the coal yard had seen me - and I was sure he had not - my metamorphosis into a sweep was going to take a long time to trace. Sikh No. 1 might recognize me, even from the film-star photograph, for he had certainly been staring into the question of what I looked like underneath the coal dust; but a sure instinct told me that his life among private friends and compatriots would be, for some time to come, too agitated to invite the unpredictable questions of European police.

Still, a second change of self was undoubtedly due - if there were any possibility of building it upon the magnificent set of beard, moustache and whiskers carefully folded up and stuffed inside my shirt. I retired again to a public lavatory - welcome though they are to any man, they seem to be essential to the criminal — and examined my remarkable piece of loot. It was expensively made by a first-class craftsman out of human hair, and undetectable so long as one wore a pugaree or turban well down to the ears to hide the elastic. A convincing headdress was what I had to buy.

The place to find that was Covent Garden. To pass the time, I walked there, pushing my bicycle. I attracted no attention at all beyond occasional kindly smiles from passers-by and once from a policeman. What swift promotion would have been his, had he stopped to wonder how a sweep could be so dirty early in the day! At half-past nine I found a small theatrical costumier’s open. Again I had to take to cockney. I damned the expensive education which had landed me with a class accent. Ordinary, standard, gruff speech would have fitted a sweep perfectly well, but that was far harder to imitate than dialect.