It’s a Battlefield (7 page)

‘Jim Drover's my brother-in-law.'

Mr Surrogate was taken aback. Drover was a sacrifice, Drover was a comrade, on Drover's death the British Communist Party would come of age. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. He felt rattled and betrayed by the individuality of men.

‘You needn't for me,' she said. ‘It's my sister who's hurt. I hoped I'd have some news for her. I don't want to go home and say there's nothing going to be done.'

‘The party can do nothing,' Mr Surrogate said.

‘I'm afraid of what Milly will do. She's a quiet one. You don't know what she's thinking. But I know they were happy. They were so dull together, they couldn't be anything else but happy.' Mr Surrogate nearly called to her to stop. Pain was unbearable to him. His nerves shrank from it. He remembered with longing the bare panelled walls of his flat, the glow of the gas fire, the mirror and the Adam mantel. Only one suffering individual penetrated there, and she was dead and could be dismissed and forgotten with a book.

‘They'd been married five years.'

‘Listen,' Mr Surrogate said, ‘there's still the petition.'

‘She doesn't believe in that.'

‘There are things one can do – privately. People one can see. I'll speak to Caroline Bury.'

‘If only there was something I could tell Milly.'

‘There shall be, I promise you.' Somehow the promise of the evening must be re-established, drawn away from suffering. ‘Come back with me now and we'll discuss it.'

‘Shall I?'

‘Go along, Kay,' Jules said. He hoped that Mr Surrogate would invite him to go with them; he too wanted to do something for Drover; he would enjoy a party instead of bed, a little drink, a lot of talk, and after they had discussed what to do, a little music. But his encouragement angered Kay. ‘It's too late,' she said.

Mr Surrogate was taken aback; he had forgotten in his resistance to pain that she was a girl, someone with whom he could discuss the old burning question of the Emancipation of Women. ‘These bourgeois ideas,' he said. ‘I'm surprised.' He waved to a taxi.

*

Conder opened the smoking-room door; in a corner the genteel woman in black velvet sat as usual beside a table of bottles. Over the fireplace hung a photograph of an admiral with a blasé face and a tilted cap; a plaque on the walls stated that a naval officers' club had met in the room between 1914 and 1918.

‘Anyone asked for me?' Conder asked.

‘No, Mr Simpson's not been in tonight, nor Mr Barham, Mr Conder. We've been quite quiet.' Her genteel voice made the words sound like ‘quack, quack'.

‘I'll look in the bar.' Conder went downstairs. But he did not open the bar door, for through the glass he saw Bennett. His back was turned and he had lifted a glass of bitter to his lips. His friends crowded the bar and the noise of their laughter peopled the stair, so that Conder stood for a moment very still, feeling himself the centre of a hostile crowd. The outer door opened, and a large man in a soft hat came in; he wore ordinary clothes like a disguise. ‘Hallo, Mr Conder,' he said. Conder jerked his finger to his lips. ‘Shsh,' he said, and retreated up the stairs. ‘Shsh.' The large man followed him; he took a long look into the bar on the way. ‘What's got you?' he said.

‘I'll tell you in a moment. Have a drink? You're late.'

‘How nice to see a new face,' the woman in black velvet said.

‘Two Basses,' Conder said. The woman trailed back to her corner, an empty bottle in either hand, with the manners of an Edwardian hostess.

‘What's got you?' the man said, and raising his glass, ‘Here's how.'

‘Look here, Patmore,' Conder said, ‘you may get me into trouble. Bennett's downstairs. He's spoiling for trouble. If he saw me with you –'

‘Why, Mr Conder, can't you entertain a friend?'

‘There are only two things, Patmore, you could possibly be, one's a policeman and the other's a bailiff.' The thought of Bennett in the bar frightened and irritated him. ‘I'm tired to death, Patmore, of you fellows at Scotland Yard. You're a lot of ostriches burying your heads in the sand, thinking you aren't noticed. You've released Ruttledge. You haven't an idea about the Streatham Murder. The only man you can get is a poor devil like Drover.'

‘You wanted to talk to me about that, Mr Conder?'

‘And the Assistant Commissioner. . . . He may know how to hang a few natives in the jungle, but he's no good for London.'

‘I wouldn't say you were wrong about him, Mr Conder. There are a lot of us at the Yard who don't like him. The trouble is he wants to know too much. He won't leave things alone. The Yard's a complicated place. You can't know it all. You can't know all there is about finger-prints if you are going to know all there is about blood tests. He won't understand that. He wants a finger in every pie. F'rinstance, Mr Conder, it would surprise you if you knew where he was tonight. It's his own fault if he gets himself hurt one of these days.'

Conder put down his glass suddenly, and the beer slopped over on to the marble top of the table. ‘What's that?' Somebody fell up the stairs. ‘For God's sake stop talking shop, Patmore. They are coming up.'

The woman in black velvet frou-froued to the door. ‘Quaietly, quaietly, Mr Rowlett,' she breathed to somebody outside. A flushed young man came in. ‘Look here, Miss Chick,' he said.

‘It's nace to see your face,' Miss Chick said.

‘The fellers pushed me from behind. They're all drunk in the bar. Ought to call a policeman.' He stared at Patmore with a glazed eye and then went out again hurriedly. ‘You oughtn't to think any harm of him,' Miss Chick said, trailing back to her corner and the beer bottles.

‘It's not safe here, Patmore,' Conder said. ‘That man Bennett is a suspicious creature. He'd never understand there was no harm in my meeting you.'

‘All I want to know, Mr Conder, is what was said about Drover tonight.'

‘Why?'

‘We want to know what's thought about the case.'

‘There you are again. That's Scotland Yard all over. You go on worrying about a man you've got, but you don't know from Adam who cut up Mrs Crowle. I tell you, Patmore, a journalist sees a lot, but that trunk gave me the biggest turn of my life. Old-fashioned, the kind of thing my mother used to take to the sea, and inside thick with blood. Blue stripes like a shirt and thick with blood.'

‘I could tell you something about that, Mr Conder. We aren't as slow as you think.'

Conder sipped his beer, his bald gleaming head bent; for a moment he forgot Bennett while he followed a story through the dark streets towards Euston in the wake of a fast car. ‘You go and release Ruttledge just because of a few finger-prints.'

‘We had no call to keep Ruttledge.'

‘You go on worrying about Drover.'

‘That's what I want, Mr Conder. Just what did happen tonight about Drover? There were speeches of course, but was anything arranged? Any demonstration? Any propaganda? How did they take it?'

‘You are asking a great deal, Patmore,' Conder said. ‘You are asking me to betray my friends. Two more Basses, Miss Chick.'

‘It's just an exchange of stories, Mr Conder. I'll be able to give you a first-class sensation for your midday edition.'

‘You can promise that, exclusive, for certain?'

‘Yes, Mr Conder.'

‘Well, I'll tell you. Surrogate spoke and Bennett spoke and someone from the garage tried to speak. That's all. Nothing's going to be done about Drover. Everyone'll sign the petition, of course. But you can take it from me, Drover's forgotten. He's as good as taken the drop already. What they are interested in is this fellow at Aldershot who's been given two months for distributing papers. They'll make the hell of a noise about him.'

‘Thank you, Mr Conder. That's all I wanted to know.'

‘Well, then, drink up your Bass and come away.'

‘How are the children, Mr Conder?'

‘The children – oh, the children. They're all right. That's to say, one of them has whooping cough.' While Patmore drank his beer, Conder enlarged his tale, the new home, the defective bathroom; every word, every phrase, every fake image was an indictment, an indictment drawn with care to allow no loophole for an acquittal, against life, life without children or wife or home.

‘The bill, Miss Chick.'

‘Good night, Miss Chick.'

He opened the door; Bennett stood outside.

It was impossible to tell whether he had been listening. He rocked drunkenly on the landing with his hands in his pockets. Conder heard Patmore inside the smoking-room paying a heavy farewell to Miss Chick; he heard Miss Chick say, ‘It was nice to see you. We are always very quiet here'; he saw Bennett rocking gently backwards and forwards; he was afraid to go on for fear that Bennett would block the way and afraid to stay for fear of what Patmore might disclose. Then Patmore came out on the landing and said in his heavy cheerful way, ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Conder. A taking girl that.' Conder stepped forward, Bennett stepped to one side, Patmore went on talking all the way down the stairs. To Conder it seemed that every word was shod with policeman's boots.

‘Man there seemed interested,' Patmore said, ‘stared at us all the way down. Friend of yours?' Conder had never felt so shaken. On the pavement he stood awhile, after Patmore had left him, and tried to light a cigarette, but the match blew out twice between his fingers. Then he felt threatened by the emptiness of the street and ran for the first lighted corner. A bus roared by, its lights vibrating across the blank glass of an unlit untenanted shop. Scarlet strips of paper read, ‘Sale before Lease Expires. Sale before Lease Expires'. He ran a little farther and leant against a shop front. A woman with ravaged restored face said, ‘What's the hurry, dear?' and went hopelessly on. ‘Sale', ran the notice on the shop. ‘Sale. Premises damaged by fire.' It was a pawnbroker's and the window was guarded by iron bars. Watches, old bracelets, a clock and china figures, a shot-gun, the shelves marked the devastation of a hundred homes. He was shaken out of his sense of dissatisfied safety; it seemed to him that the street was falling round him in decay, fires and expiring leases and age pitting the face. He was not himself again until, in a telephone booth across the way, he found the number of his news-editor's house, but with his hand on the receiver, his lips to the black orifice, his heartbeats were normal.

‘This is Conder speaking. I'm going to have a lead for the midday. Exclusive. The Ruttledge murder, I think. The Flying Squad went up Euston way. I shouldn't be surprised if there's not a first-class story in it. Yes? Yes? No. Will you put in a paragraph about Drover's petition, keep him alive? They are still interested at the Yard. I don't know why,' but he accepted the news-editor's denial without objection, blown into the ruined street over ten miles of cable: ‘The chief's not interested in Drover.'

*

Mr Surrogate leant comfortably back in the taxi and half closed his eyes. He was settled in the past, a past which held no Bennett or Drover, but did not exclude a young woman shaken against him as the hansom jolted over Chelsea Bridge. ‘Women's rights,' he said.

‘Surely you don't hold the old view –' and a little later, as the taxi crossed Gower Street, ‘Birth Control,' Mr Surrogate said. ‘We must have clinics,' and he laid a friendly hand on Kay Rimmer's knee. A street lamp shot a ray of light into the dark interior, and Mr Surrogate, catching a glimpse of her smiling expectation, withdrew his hand suddenly. One mustn't be rash; it was so easy to be misunderstood; and he trod very softly ahead of her up the stairs to the first floor of the converted house, afraid that the landlord might appear out of his sitting-room by the entrance. He was glad that Davis slept out.

‘I live all alone here,' Mr Surrogate said, a little stiffly and sadly, ‘my wife is dead.' He switched on a light and the white walls rose round him. ‘Have a nut while I light the fire?' He knelt and the gentle hissing flames sprang from his match-end.

‘It's lovely here,' Kay Rimmer said. ‘What a lot of books you have.'

‘Those are my own,' Mr Surrogate said.

‘It must be wonderful to write.'

‘One tries to exert an influence. Would you like to see the flat? It's small, but choice, I think. Of course,' Mr Surrogate added with lowered respectful voice, ‘it lacks the female touch. A man's den.' But the word den was a shocking misnomer; Mr Surrogate went from room to room switching on the lights, and everywhere he went white panelling, cream walls, pale jade walls sprang, like sentries, to attention. He never looked round; he was aware behind him of her dumb approval. No woman's taste could have been more adequate; the few objects which broke the bareness of the drawing-room and dining-room were chosen with an impeccable appreciation: a papier-mâché tea-caddy, a glass painting, a slender painted Empire table in the jade room. Mr Surrogate padded ahead, switching on the lights; he drew attention to nothing; with his smooth blond head deprecatingly bent he might have been the humble custodian of his treasures; no one could have guessed the fierce smothered pride which bowed his head in recognition of his own perfect taste.

‘My bedroom,' he said a little drily, opening a pink door, turning on several lights. Kay Rimmer gave a gasp of pleasure at the rose hangings, the semi-circular bed, the silk bedspread like a waste of fallen petals.

‘Oh,' she said, catching sight of the great mirror with its deep reflections, which flattered her more than a soft-spoken man. ‘Oh,' she said again at sight of the only picture on the walls, ‘how lovely. Who's that?'