Red Anger (11 page)

The silver estuary of the Exe spread out beneath us, all the way from the unspectacular, very English river to the golden shoals where curlews called and the half ebb streamed fast out of the
narrows with the sand on one side and the red cliffs on the other. I felt that the river presented itself to him as a boundary between his home and the wide world which he proposed to re-enter, as
if once across the Exe he would never return. He was wrong in that. He did return. It had been a brilliant move to hole up in Devon until his escape to Moscow was accepted and he could slide out
unnoticed into exile; but I doubt if he ever realised how strong was his reluctance to leave the deep green womb of his birth.

His physical weariness emphasized melancholy. He needed me, young as I was, for we shared the same sort of upbringing—mine interrupted at the age of twelve, his not until the disaster. The
long shadows of elms on the evening grass were to him sheer poetry, while for me they included the comfort of the cattle beneath them; but our love of the country had the same quality. A peasant
love.

He told me something of the Mornix case, perhaps to dispel any lingering doubts that I might have. When he came to the question of his overdraft I nearly asked him why he had not appealed to
Eudora, but kept my mouth shut on the impertinence. Remembering how she had brought up the pair of cousins, I saw that it would never even have occurred to him. His career, his debts, his future
were profoundly his own.

‘Can’t you think of anybody who knew your habit of shoving bank accounts away when you didn’t want to look at them?’ I asked.

He replied somewhat haughtily that for six weeks he had thought of little else.

‘Not Tessa? She might have let it slip somewhere.’

‘Certainly not Tessa. I’ve never shown her the defenceless side of me.’

‘She seems to think all police are an outrage on humanity.’

‘She’s a sweet joke. Special Branch had to put her through the hoops since she had often visited Whatcombe Street. But they would have got in a couple of interviews all she could
tell them and are unlikely to have bothered her afterwards.’

‘And you’re sure of this Rachel Iwyrne?’

‘Quite sure. She couldn’t possibly know of the bank statements. Tessa was more intimate with her than I ever was. I liked her well enough to recommend her to the Minister when he
wanted to know about communes—and only God Almighty could have foreseen that he would fall in love with her and that Mornix would escape through Whatcombe Street.’

‘From what you tell me about her she sounds unreliable.’

He took up my remark so sharply that I suspected he was not quite so sure of her political sympathies as he had been. He said that it depended what I meant by unreliable, that Cromwell’s
Puritans were unreliable but patriots more flaming in foreign war than the royalist Establishment. Rachel’s passion for turning society scientifically upside down meant more love of country,
not less.

‘Of course she is wide open to libel and misrepresentation,’ he went on. ‘So was Eudora in her youth. So is Tessa. The CIA blew their tops when Rachel took up with her
Minister. But there was nothing treasonable about her. We told them that what was good enough for half a dozen distinguished dons, the London School of Economics and MI5 ought to be good enough for
them. But they suspected the Old Boy Network of stalling them. That was why they went behind our backs to their tame M.P. and leaked the Mornix escape when we were trying to keep it quiet. I
don’t know how the Russians framed me or why. Dog doesn’t normally eat dog. But my duty is to find out. And alone.’

I asked him if he really believed it was worth the risk. After all, with his experience, he could reach Brazil or some other convenient country, and if he had to exchange elms for palms it was
better than the streets of London and getting caught.

‘I won’t be caught by MI5 if I am careful. By the Russians I might be, and that’s goodnight. It’s safe, you see, because I don’t exist. Not a question from anybody
if I disappear completely and for ever as if I were picked off the face of the earth by little green men.’

‘Did they nearly get you the night before last?’

‘I don’t think so. All that is certain is that the two men I saw had tried to follow Eudora and John and lost them in the dark. Now that you’ve given me more details than she
could, I see that it was you they expected Eudora to meet, not me. Whoever wants to talk to you had no idea he was near an unexpected prize.’

‘So you are going back again?’

‘No. That’s over. I’m going first to 42 Whatcombe Street if it isn’t watched.’

He described the commune and its youthful inhabitants.

‘With grey hair?’ I asked. ‘You’ll never pass.’

‘I’m not going to open my shirt down to the navel with a medallion of Hitler hanging on it. I have other ideas, Willie.’

I did not at all want to be picked off the face of the earth by little men, red or green. On the other hand, Eudora, Alwyn and the impetuous Tessa—they had become in their way such a
definite, tangible part of all I had longed for in Bucarest and Cairo and Caulby. I was committed to them and nothing else. So I asked:

‘Could I go to Whatcombe Street for you?’

When he refused to allow it, I reminded him that after living at the bottom of society in Cairo and not far off it in Paris I ought to be able to play the part and get away with it. And if
Mornix could make himself unrecognisable, so could I—given a bit of help. But of course I would not know what questions to ask.

He looked at me and through me as if I were a complete stranger who had to be summed up instantly and conclusively. After all, to him I was no more than a companion on a cross-country walk who,
according to his dubious account of himself, had shown some enterprise and ingenuity in the past.

‘Why do you want to mix yourself up in this?’ he asked.

I made a very immature, rambling attempt to explain my motives—a medley of self-interest and liking for them all, together with an incoherent statement of faith which nobody but Alwyn
would have come near to understanding. It boiled down to saying that all this—by which I vaguely meant the tumbled valleys of the Exe and the Otter and the blue, smooth hills of Dorset on the
horizon—would not taste so good if it wasn’t served.

‘You sound like Tessa,’ he said, smiling. ‘You want an earthly paradise.’

‘Tessa hasn’t got it and thinks she knows how to make it. But if you had lived my life, you’d see that now in a way, for me, I
have
got it. And if I feel that to me it
is worth it, that’s my business and I can’t express it any better.’

‘You’ve expressed it well enough for both of us. Now, questions are easy. If you are accepted, you might get some new angle of the story from them without trying. All I want is a
picture of who were the suspects at the end of it all and what 42 Whatcombe Street knew but wasn’t saying.’

‘How shall I find you?’

‘Don’t bother about that! I shall find you. Now, Tessa could help with your appearance. Don’t go near her digs, but telephone her to meet you somewhere—’ he gave me
her home and business numbers ‘—and tell her what you are doing for me, but not a word more than you must.’

‘As Ionel Petrescu?’

‘Not on any account. Just as Willie. Dig up that passport of yours some time and keep it in your pocket as a last resort in any emergency. Are you sure you can find it?’

I explained that since I had hidden it at night it should not be too difficult to pick up the markers at night, and I described the overgrown chalk slope where it was.

I left him tucked in between bales of barley straw with the bats of early dusk for company. I had no anxiety about him in his present circumstances. As he said, he did not exist. Nor, for that
matter, did I. There appeared to be some disadvantages about non-existence, but so long as neither of us ran into someone who was actually looking for us—an unlikely accident—we were
safe.

I crossed the river below Exeter and spent a long, comfortable night in the usual cottage with the usual motherly woman, kindly to youth in spite of the fact that it had a three-day beard and
was a menace to the daintiness of the bathroom. In the morning I took a bus to London, getting off in the outer suburbs. It was a bit of a puzzle where to live until I was ready to tackle Whatcombe
Street, for I had little experience of my own country between the extremes of rural village and respectable lodgings in a provincial town. Eventually I ran across two young men and a girl with
bedrolls on their backs and sandals on their feet who directed me to a cheap and cheerful house in Greenwich, frequented by foreign students who wanted to see the historic river. There I met
contemporaries, not much younger than myself, from very conventional backgrounds compared to my own, yet expressing protest in their style of dress and speech. I liked them, and had little doubt
that I could make myself acceptable at Whatcombe Street.

Alwyn had advised me to call Tessa at her office since at home she shared a downstairs telephone with other young women who were always fluttering to and from it making privacy difficult. She
was secretary to one of the partners in a vast firm of chartered accountants, and one would normally get her at the extension number. The first time I got her boss, so I started a sales patter
until he cut me off. The second time I got Tessa.

I said shortly that I was Willie and would wait in any public place she suggested with news for her. The reply—Temple Gardens at a quarter to six—was immediate and businesslike with
none of the agitation I expected.

I did not expect either that she would look as she did when she walked towards me between the lawns of the Gardens. Evidently social revolution was kept for evenings and week-ends. She had
caught from Eudora the upright, debonair way of holding herself, more common among American women than English. She was also very charmingly dressed in the kind of tunicky thing which had just
become fashionable. With her fair hair shoulder length she looked at a little distance like a picture of some Anglo-Saxon boy in a history of costume, and close to was all the more feminine by
contrast.

I explained to her that I wanted the right clothes in which to idle up to 42 Whatcombe Street and ask if I could have a pad for the night.

‘Don’t ask for anything,’ she said. ‘Just wander in and sit down. If somebody offers you pot, take it. But perhaps you like the stuff?’

‘I’ve smoked hashish in Egypt and much prefer alcohol.’

‘You’ll find they don’t use it much. What were you doing in Egypt?’

I pulled myself up. That had been a quite unnecessary remark.

‘On my way to Portugal.’

‘Thank you. I won’t ask any more questions.’

‘That takes a weight off my mind. Your mother said I was a very poor liar.’

‘I had the hell of a row with her. Why do you all distrust me?’

‘Because you are utterly honest, Miss Hilliard. And so the less you know, the better.’

‘Oh, I see! You mean I’m a poor liar too.’

She cheered up a lot. That was not at all the same thing as being accused of indiscretion.

‘You’ll need jeans instead of trousers, and that windbreaker is too square,’ she said. ‘I think you’d be all right with an Afghan coat and some beads. And if anyone
asks you who recommended Whatcombe Street, say it was Rupert and you met him in Cornwall.’

After giving me a good description of the young man, his normal wanderings and his opinions, she promised to buy me a proper outfit in the King’s Road and leave it in a suitcase at Charing
Cross Station. If I turned up next day at the same time she would give me the ticket and I could collect it.

‘May I ask just one question? It might be useful to Alwyn when you see him.’

‘Provided you don’t go off the deep end when I refuse to answer.’

‘Have you met anyone called Ionel Petrescu?’

‘No,’ I replied truthfully. ‘Why?’

She then told me all that had happened after we said goodbye to her. Alwyn’s premonition of trouble had been right.

When Eudora returned from the Cricket Club dance, she was intercepted on her way to bed by her excitedly whispering daughter. Tessa delivered Alwyn’s message and was bitterly hurt when her
mother, too, refused to tell her where he had been hidden or to give any clear account of what I was doing in his company. The fact was, of course, that she did not know and must have been anxious
lest I should turn out, after all, to be an incredibly clever security agent.

‘I was so proud of her and eager to help,’ Tessa said, ‘and then she accused me of coming down to the Priory to poke about in the middle of the night instead of staying in
London with my half-baked friends like Rachel Iwyrne to whom I’d introduced Alwyn.’

I am sure the insinuation was not anything like as strong as that, even allowing for her mother’s anxiety, but it was strong enough for an over-sensitive Tessa who night after night had
accused herself of being indirectly responsible for the whole disaster at Whatcombe Street. The result was that she swore she would never again come down to Cleder’s Priory so long as she
lived, jumped straight into her car and started back to London.

She was belting along between Bovey Tracy and Exeter, probably driving as dangerously as any twenty-year-old in a filthy temper, when a car passed her and waved her down. Two men got out, shoved
official-looking identity cards at her and claimed to be police officers. Having searched the back of the car and the boot, they flashed lights on the nearside hedge as if thinking it possible that
a passenger had jumped out. They asked her why she was in such a hurry and if she did not realise that she was endangering other lives besides her own. When they had reduced her to pulp by their
air of authority they invited her to help the police with their enquiries.

They were, they said, Special Branch officers on the look-out for a certain Ionel Petrescu and had reason to believe she might be giving him a lift. She angrily denied any knowledge of Petrescu
and asked what he looked like. The description seemed vague, as all police descriptions are except to policemen, and she was too impatient to listen carefully. She never spotted that it fitted me
and assumed that they were really on the trail of Alwyn after she had aroused suspicion by her fast, sudden departure from Molesworthy.