Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (35 page)

Outside Orpen’s house, there stood a battered baby carriage. Two young girls with lipstick and long wide skirts, hemlines drooping above snow-white ankle socks, rocked its bundle of pink wool and chattered about their boy-friends. They fell silent for a moment, giving Scott Ettley a side glance, a hidden smile, and then they ignored him, but their voices were louder and their laughter was more intense. Until he rang the bell, waited briefly, and was admitted by the complaining door, he was the gallery to which they played. When he had entered the house, they went back to their own conversation. They felt pleased and excited. He hadn’t looked at them, but that didn’t matter. He had inspired a good performance, and Betty Grable and Lana Turner could now become Mae O’Neally and Francis Roth again and wait for their evening dates to show up.

Inside the house, there was a workman kneeling in the dark hall, shining an electric torch on an opened outlet. The house superintendent or handyman or perhaps a combination of the two, Scott Ettley thought, noticing the open tool box beside the man; an electrician would have stopped work by four-thirty. Then Ettley, turning his face quickly aside as if the telephone box on the wall were more interesting, mounted the stairs rapidly. He had never seen any superintendent in this house before. But then, he usually came late in the evening, when the man would be in bed or down in his basement room.

As he reached Orpen’s floor, Ettley looked over the rickety handrail and waited. All he could see was the faint glow from the torch far below in the hall. No footsteps following him. He felt better for having been careful. He gave his accustomed knock on Orpen’s door, and tried to enter. But, today, the door hadn’t been unlocked in preparation for him. He heard Orpen’s voice, low, asking, “Who is it?”

“Scott,” he said, keeping his voice just as low. The door was unlocked, then. He entered, puzzled and wondering.

He might have been more puzzled if he could have seen the superintendent, motionless, sitting back on his heels, the torch playing over the loose wires in the wall, his head cocked to the side as he listened to the mounting footsteps, a smile on his lips as he counted the flights of stairs and each landing passed. The door upstairs closed. It was Orpen’s, all right. Orpen was the only tenant on the top floor.

The man rose, leaving the torch still trained on the opened wall socket. He opened the front door quietly and stood there, propping it ajar with his foot, while he lighted a cigarette in full view of the garage opposite. Then, with a nod for the two girls at the baby carriage—one of whom said, “Hi, Joe!” and then started explaining to her friend that Joe was the new super the landlord had sent round to fix up this dump and about time too—he turned back into the hall and let the door close quietly. He began screwing the protecting plate back into place over the wires. Tomorrow, he thought, I’ll have to work on that cracked plaster. Or perhaps the tenant who lived below Orpen could be persuaded that the plumbing overhead was faulty.

* * *

Scott Ettley closed the door behind him. Orpen’s room was in disorder, as if it hadn’t been cleaned out for days. It needed airing, too. In the searching light from its high window, without shaded reading lamps to soften its sagging ceiling and cracked plaster and stains on the rug, it looked both frowsy and decrepit.

“What’s wrong?” Ettley asked, watching Orpen standing gloomily by the littered fireplace.

Orpen didn’t answer that. “You’re early,” he said. “You’re taking chances.” There was a fleeting smile round his colourless lips.

“What chances?” Ettley smiled. Orpen loved to play the conspirator, he told himself once more.

Orpen roused himself and walked slowly over to the window. The briskness in his movements had gone. They were tired, like his voice. He stood behind the curtains, looking down into the street.

“I thought I might as well find out,” Scott explained smoothly, “where and when the meeting is to be held tonight.”

“You sound eager not to miss it,” Orpen said. “Admirable, most admirable.” He gave a short laugh.

Scott Ettley stared at his back. “What’s wrong?”

Again Orpen didn’t answer. But he turned and came back to the centre of the room, to the table with its pile of newspapers. He stood there, hesitating, looking down. Then Ettley saw that Orpen’s face was paler than he had ever seen it, and that the lines under the eyes had deepened.

“Where’s the meeting?” Ettley insisted.

“The meeting?” Orpen repeated, as if he had only half-understood. “It’s at eight o’clock. Eight o’clock.”

“I asked
where
is the meeting.” Ettley looked at Orpen still more closely. “When did you last have any sleep?” he asked. “Or are you ill?”

“Ill?” Orpen’s small bitter smile appeared and vanished. “Ill...yes, that might be it.” He sat down on a chair, leaning his elbows on the table, resting his head on his hands.

“For God’s sake, Orpen!” Ettley began in alarm.

Orpen said slowly, “Don’t worry. I’m not ill.” He took off his glasses. He drew a hand over his brows, over his eyes, and let it rest at his lips.

“Look,” Scott Ettley said, his relief giving away to irritation, “you aren’t the only one with troubles. Don’t you want to hear my news? Don’t you want to hear what’s been happening?”

Orpen raised his head, letting his hand fall on the table, and looked at the younger man. Again, the brief fleeting smile appeared, a smile with no humour but—so it seemed to Scott Ettley—much pity.

“Rona has left me,” Scott said. He turned away, unable to face Orpen. “Doesn’t that give you something to crow about?”

There was a silence. “I’m sorry,” Orpen said at last.

“Sorry?” Ettley’s anger was released. “You sorry? You made everything as difficult as possible from the first. It was you who started the trouble.”

“I?” Nicholas Orpen’s voice was almost inaudible. “Is that the way you see it, Scott? Didn’t you start the trouble for yourself?” He pressed his hand wearily to his eyes again, and then replaced his glasses.

Scott turned to stare at the older man.

“You can’t divide your loyalty,” Orpen went on. “If you’ve come for advice, here’s what I say. There are two things you can do. And only two. The first is that you devote yourself to your work, give all your obedience to the Party, and be glad that Rona had the impulse to break with you. The second is that you can return to Rona, tell her everything, ask her to stay with you, and renounce your loyalty to the Party. That’s your choice.”

“Orpen—are you—”

“No, I’m not crazy. That’s the only choice you have.”

“Renounce my...” Scott couldn’t finish the question!

There was silence in the room for a long moment. From outside came the shouts of boys playing in the street, the heavy roar of a truck pulling out of a warehouse, the warning horn of a car turning into a garage.

Scott said, “Do you realise what you’ve just suggested?”

Orpen nodded. “Yes, I know.”

Scott took a deep breath. Orpen is proving me, he thought, this is the final test. “I won’t betray the Party,” he said flatly. “It is more important than I am, or you, or Rona.”

Orpen rose, lifting his hands helplessly. He walked back to the window, and stood there, hidden by the curtains, while he looked down at the boys playing in the street. He said, his voice expressionless and clear, “It would be easier for you to break with the Party, now. Later, if you have doubts—later, if you find your conscience refuses to let you go on—later, it will be hell. An endless and torturing hell. The more deeply you are involved and the more you know—the more dangerous it is to leave. You see that, don’t you?”

Ettley smiled. “But I don’t see myself ever getting into the position of quitting.” He watched Orpen’s back. And he suddenly noticed, by the droop of the shoulders, by the bent head, an admission of hopelessness. Of defeat, almost. “Orpen,” he asked sharply, “what the hell’s wrong?” There was real concern in his voice. Have we run into trouble? he wondered, anxiously. But how? Everything had been working so smoothly, so well.

Orpen came back to the table. He looked searchingly at Scott Ettley, he looked long and carefully, and he saw sympathy and worry in the younger man’s eyes. His hand gripped Ettley’s shoulder. Then he picked up a paper from the table, a paper with blue-pencilled paragraphs, and handed it silently to Ettley.

“I saw this a couple of days ago,” Ettley said, glancing quickly over the account of the arrest and trial in Czechoslovakia of prominent Communists. “Well, they are getting what they earned, I suppose.” Traitors, he was thinking, traitors and deviationists.

“Are they?” Orpen took back the newspaper and laid it carefully on the table. He seemed to have forgotten about it, for his voice became more normal and there was a smile on his lips as he changed the subject. “Scott, do you remember a man called Jack who was here recently?”

“Why, yes!” Scott Ettley was surprised. It was less than a month ago when Jack had paid his last visit to Orpen’s room just before flying back to Europe. He had talked a good deal about his experiences during the war in organising Communist cells in the French underground. That was the night, Ettley remembered, he had ’phoned Rona at her sister’s—the night that Paul Haydn had been up there and had brought Rona home—the night that had started Rona’s betrayal. “Yes, I remember that night well,” he said. Then, forcing himself away from thoughts of Rona, he added, “Did Jack get safely back to France?”

“He got safely back. Not to France. He was only assigned to France during the war.”

“I thought he was French.” There was amazement, a touch of disbelief in Scott Ettley’s voice. A touch of correction, too, Orpen noted with amusement. Young men always knew so much.

“He isn’t French. That was only his cover.”

“Efficient.”

“Yes. What did you think of him, by the way?”

“He seemed all right to me. Very much all right.” Orpen nodded. Then he said, “He’s probably the best friend I’ve ever had. I used to work in close contact with him when I was visiting Europe. I’ve talked with him a lot. A good man, a sound man.”

“Plenty of guts,” Ettley said, remembering Jack’s story of the German occupation. “He’s been a fighter for a long time. Didn’t he serve in Spain?”

“He’s served longer than that. He began with Lenin in Switzerland in 1916.”

“It must be something to be known that way,” Ettley said half-admiringly, half-enviously. Yes, that was something to be proud of...

“Yes,” Orpen said quietly. Then he suddenly pointed to one of the names of the Communists on trial in Czechoslovakia. “There he is!”

Ettley stared at him as if Orpen had suddenly turned insane.

“There he is!” Orpen repeated. “Now they say he was in Nazi pay. Now they say he’s an American spy. That’s Jack—a man who devoted thirty-four years of his life to the Party, five of them in prison, eighteen months of them in a German concentration camp—a man who helped make Czechoslovakia a Communist state.”

“He is a Czech?” That was all Ettley could say at first. He read the charges against Jack again. “I can’t believe it,” he said slowly. “Why, it’s only three or four weeks since he was right here in this room.” Talking and arguing with all the zest of a man half his age. Then Ettley began to see what must be wrong. He looked up suddenly at Orpen. “This can’t be pleasant for you,” he said sympathetically. “But surely you won’t be blamed for having been deceived by Jack? We all were. Spies can infiltrate the most careful organisation. We know that.”

“You think
that
is what is worrying me?” There was almost contempt in Orpen’s voice.

“Well, what then?” Scott asked. It was the only possible explanation. But Orpen was taking it all too seriously. After all, his own record was faultless: he had done his share of fighting and suffering. Then Scott, speaking now consolingly, said, “And I suppose our present visitor from Czechoslovakia is here to find out what information Jack extracted from us? But Jack didn’t do too much damage, did he? He did most of the talking, it seems to me.”

“You think Jack is a traitor?”

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

Orpen smiled. “Let me put you right about one thing,” he suggested. “Then the rest will seem clearer.”

“And what have I got wrong?”

“Our present visitor from Czechoslovakia, called Comrade Peter, whom you met for five minutes or so, is not a Czech.”

“No?” And I spent longer with Comrade Peter, wherever he comes from, than just five minutes, Scott thought angrily.

“No. He only visited that country recently. He’s making a tour of inspection. First it was Hungary, then Bulgaria, then Poland, then Czechoslovakia. He leaves a trail of accusations and trials.”

“You are hinting he’s tracking down disloyalty and inefficiency?”

“Or men who have fought for Communism in their country and think they ought to be allowed to run it when they succeed.”

“What could he hope to do over here?” Ettley was incredulous.

“Mark the men who might be future deviationists. They will never get very far in their political careers, it doesn’t matter how loyal or efficient they are as Communists.” Orpen’s voice suddenly dropped and became desperate in its intensity. “Don’t you see, Scott? Once we are in power, those of us who want to be free of foreign controls are going to find ourselves in the dock like Jack, labelled as traitors.”

Scott Ettley said worriedly, “You’re ill, Orpen; you don’t know what you are saying.”

“So you don’t think that you, some day, could be Jack? It couldn’t happen here?” Orpen began to laugh. “My God!” he said, almost hysterically. Then he took a deep breath. “Don’t look at me that way, Ettley. I’m no traitor. I’ve worked for the Party. And I’m loyal to it. But will we get our Party when we are in power?”

“But America is different. It’s bigger, farther away. We make our own decisions.”

Orpen sat down wearily. “Not one important decision is ever made by us. Not one.
I
know that.”

Ettley stared at him unbelievingly. Then he said, hesitatingly, accusingly, “Well, you need the help and the experience of those who led the way in revolution. That’s only logical. You’ve accepted that for years. And then one little newspaper report comes along and you talk like a—” Ettley couldn’t say the word. He flushed, shrugged his shoulders as if to excuse himself.