Red Anger (12 page)

‘Had the car followed you all the way from there?’ I asked.

‘No, only for some miles. But I’ll bet there were pigs of some sort on the road keeping track of me by radio.’

For Tessa it was the last straw that Special Branch, after torturing her mother and herself for weeks—she had almost persuaded herself that it was physical torture—should still be at
it. She arrived back in her Fulham flat at nine in the morning bursting to tell someone about the latest police atrocity, but found that all her friends in the building had left for their offices;
and so, trapped between anxiety for Alwyn and fury with her mother, she called up Rachel Iwyrne—to her the other innocent and persecuted victim of the Mornix case.

I looked sympathetic and said nothing. It was alarming to imagine the girl nobly reminding herself that she must never neglect dear Rachel merely because she had ruined the career of a Minister
by living at an address from which a spy had escaped. Tessa saw right through my tactful silence and said fiercely that I must not be prejudiced; that sort of thing could happen to any woman who
had the courage to reject bourgeois values.

Well, perhaps it could; so I reserved judgment. Later on this Rachel became a far too close acquaintance of mine and I could then understand that to ruthlessly idealistic youth she might be
irresistible.

Rachel had come round to Tessa’s flat at once and calmed her down. Tessa did not mention the reasons for her sudden departure from Molesworthy—that was too delicate ground—but
let go all her resentment at high-handed police action and demanded why she should be suspected of giving lifts to an unknown Ionel Petrescu. Rachel answered that of course there must be some
connection with Alwyn, wherever he was hiding, that the investigation must be still going on and that they should both always be prepared for more questioning. Eventually Rachel helped her to pack
a bag and charitably insisted on putting her up and protecting her for at least a few days.

What, Tessa asked me, did I think of it all? I played it down, saying that probably it had nothing at all to do with Alwyn and that the police might have been looking for some prisoner escaped
from Dartmoor. Anyway, I could not understand why Special Branch should have taken an interest in Ionel Petrescu. But one thing in her story had particularly aroused my curiosity: that Rachel,
speaking of Alwyn, should have used the phrase ‘wherever he was hiding’. Tessa was sure of her words. It sounded as if the woman knew or suspected that he was not in Russia.

However, I was not going to emphasize that and start off my alliance with Alwyn’s difficult cousin on the wrong foot. I found myself fascinated by her as well as respecting her, and I
tried to lead the conversation to Molesworthy and more personal ground.

‘Do you always call your mother Eudora?’

‘Yes. She wouldn’t let Alwyn call her Aunt Eudora because she said it sounded like the family terror. And I picked it up from him.’

‘Where did she get Sack?’

‘Bought the little freak half-grown off a gamekeeper! Her precious Sack! She’s a ridiculous old bag.’

‘But there’s no one who doesn’t love her.’

Tessa growled like an offended cat and did not deny it.

‘Some time you must tell me all the truth. Will you?’ she asked.

‘When there is no more danger, yes.’

‘I think you’ll be bored when there isn’t.’

‘God forbid! I just want to be a simple farmer if there’s ever a chance of it.’

‘You?’

‘I thought you said you weren’t going to ask any questions.’

‘But surely you can tell me about yourself. Why are you doing this for Alwyn?’

‘I don’t know. Because I’m sorry for him. Because we have the same values. It isn’t that I resent injustice. I’ve learned to live with that.’

‘But such a risk for a stranger!’

‘None of you three could ever be a stranger to me.’

‘Or you to us, Farmer Willie,’ she answered.

Her steady eyes held a comradeship which I had never known from any woman of my own age, so I felt I could ignore the plural ‘us’.

The following day I took over the luggage ticket. Tessa hardly stopped. Whatever I was, she had realised that we should be seen together as little as possible. I had the impression that she had
been thinking over her mother’s courage and continual anxiety and at last appreciated Eudora’s determination that no one should end up in gaol but herself.

I recovered the suitcase and changed in the station lavatory, blushing for myself. Tessa’s choice for me was far worse than the Afghan garment. She had bought what appeared to be a
Hussar’s frock-coat, dark blue with decaying frogs. A florid label from a Youth Boutique had been loosely sewn over the discreet original of Savile Row. There were also jeans and sandals to
which a note was attached:
take off your socks
. When I emerged from the lavatory, a passing porter remarked:

‘Lost the band, squire?’

Probably I should not have laughed, only proceeded on my way in unshaven dignity. But my amusement did a lot for morale, getting me contentedly into my part as the first burst of applause must
do for an actor.

The scene at 42 Whatcombe Street was much as Alwyn had described it. There was a girl in the porch dressed in plastic deer skin and an old curtain with an enormous sphere of frizzy blonde hair.
She was thoughtfully scratching it while talking to a bloke whose merry eyes were just visible and dominated a splendid set of dark whiskers. I passed them with a hello, went in boldly, sat down on
the floor with my back against the wall and began to eat some stale food from my knapsack. My uniform coat and sandals seemed to be a passport, but hair and beard were hopelessly insufficient. I
decided that my two elder brothers—stockbrokers both of them—had held me down and cut it all off.

Nobody paid more than passing attention to me. I was there, and since a roof over his head was every man’s right I could stay there. Having finished my stale bread and jam, I asked where
the tap was. Whiskers had dropped his girl and come in to inspect me. He tossed me a can of beer and asked me where the hell I got that coat. I said it was my grandfather’s and he
hadn’t missed it yet.

There were three large rooms in the flat with a kitchen and bathroom at the end of a passage. Eight occupants were visible when I arrived. After dark there were thirteen. How many were visitors
and how many permanent lodgers, and of the lot how many slept there on any given night it was difficult to establish. Special Branch would certainly have had a job to sort them out. They looked
damned odd, but the communal living was a successful fact and would have suited me fine if I had had the enterprise to discover a similar joint in Paris instead of struggling on my own. Furniture
was common property, mostly broken but serviceable, bought for a song and left behind when a member cleared out. If you hadn’t got a bed you used a sleeping bag or—in any case—the
floor, frock-coat and a borrowed pillow. Yet things were comparatively orderly as I found when I slipped out to buy some chops and asked Whiskers and his girl to join me. We waited patiently for
our turn at the kitchen, and I was not popular when I wiped the grease off used plates with a banana skin instead of washing them. I had thought it was a nice touch and in character.

In the course of the evening questions about my life were perfunctory, but about my opinions they went fairly deep. The members of the commune were consumed by curiosity about a very
unsatisfactory world and I sympathised with their enthusiasm for change, futile though it was. I tended towards a Maoist position, with which I was familiar from lectures at school on Marxist
heresies and from reading the
Little Red Book
which always seemed to me an admirable manual for Boy Scouts, easily defensible and possibly what China needed.

Nobody bothered about where I came from or what my surname was. Willie was enough. They did ask me who had told me I could find friends there, and I produced Rupert. Oh, yes, he had been very
much one of them in the spring before the fuzz turned the place inside out. I pretended alarm and asked what the fuzz had been after. And so that first night I got an outline of the story from
their point of view.

The house belonged to Rachel Iwyrne who had let the ground floor flat to the commune and herself lived above. Lieutenant Mornix had walked in with a nod and a smile past a group of four who were
sitting in the porch enjoying the sun. They thought he was going upstairs to see Rachel, but instead he entered the flat, the door of which was always open. There he was ignored; they supposed he
was an architect or builder come to see about some promised alterations.

He went down the passage and out of the back door into a little yard containing only the dustbins and a plane tree. Most of the space was occupied by a chap called Bob who was mending a sofa and
half blocking the door. No one actually saw Mornix’s movements; he must have come back, nipped into the bathroom which was just inside the back door, changed there and jumped out of the
window into the yard. The next thing was that Bob and a stranger looking like an extra hairy apostle walked out of the front door, said they had some money and why not all go round to the boozer?
So a few of them did. Bob set up the drinks, left the bar with his friend to telephone and was never seen again.

All the next day I stayed on, establishing my bona fides by carrying a banner in a minor demo against the borough council—for what cause I never knew—and cultivating Whiskers’
friendship. When we went out together in the evening he became very frank over his red plonk. His name was Ciampra and he was a Maltese whose parents had sent him to England to complete his
education, enrolling him in a college which advertised extensively in the hope of catching innocents abroad and specialised in fake degrees.

Ciampra discovered the swindle in a matter of weeks but had not enlightened his parents. He had reverted to the normal interests of Mediterranean youth and by means of passing from one
opinionated girl to another had eventually arrived at the haven of 42 Whatcombe Street. He had no moral sense whatever, but instead of living off the vices of society, like so many of his London
compatriots, he had decided to exploit the virtues. His ambition was to buy a degree in theology from his college and start up a new religion—likely to be more profitable in the long run than
a new brothel with the advantage that the police could not demand a cut. He had seen through me, he told me. I’d got too much sense of humour and was over-acting. That frock-coat had shown
him that I was out for an easy pad and girl friends just as he was.

I said that after the story I had heard about a spy escaping I’d have thought they would all be more suspicious of strangers.

‘We are, Willie,’ he replied. ‘Two narks we’ve thrown out already. They made the mistake of never washing. Over-acting, like you. But I could see they weren’t
enjoying it. Too serious. Too many questions.’

‘Did they find out any more, do you think?’

‘They can’t have done, because I hear Miss Rachel is still around. She used to come downstairs and look us over like a bloody anthropologist. Influence of Premarital Sex on Political
Concepts. Title of Thesis! Saw it on her notebook!’

‘Wouldn’t you expect her to be still around?’

He reminded me that everyone assumed Mornix had changed in the bathroom. The door was locked; his clothes were found inside; and he had got out through the window, which was open, to join Bob in
the yard.

‘Anything wrong with that?’ he asked.

One had to have lived in the place to find anything wrong with it. I said that what with girls washing their hair or their panties, blokes outside yammering for a pee, somebody having a bath,
somebody else wanting the soap so he could wash at the kitchen sink, it seemed to me difficult for this Bob to have ensured that the bathroom was free when Mornix needed it.

‘And you can’t do a job of that sort without split timing,’ he pointed out. ‘I know.’

He didn’t say how he knew. It was unnecessary. I think it likely that his quick intelligence had been recognised in a less high-minded world than Whatcombe Street and that he had sat in on
the neat plotting of crime.

‘Notice the plane tree and the high wall round the yard?’ he asked. ‘There’s one of Miss Rachel’s windows which can’t be seen at all from over the way.
Suppose she drops a knotted rope or something? Mornix is up there in three seconds flat. Changes Drops down. And there he is helping Bob to knock tacks in the sofa.

‘Bob waits till he can make a jump for the bathroom. Throws down Mornix’s clothes on the floor, locks the door, gets out of the window and off they go. That puts Miss Rachel in the
clear. She swore to Jesus that she’d been up in her flat typing out notes on the sleeping arrangements of the natives down below and had never seen or heard a thing. And there wasn’t a
scrap of evidence against her.’

The following morning before I left I went with him to have a look at the yard, the window and the plane tree. His theory held up. Mornix’s quick change could very well have been managed
that way, taking the risk of someone leaning out of a window in the adjoining houses at the wrong moment.

I asked him why he had not put it to the police who might have been able to find some trace of the rope on the window sill or in Rachel’s flat. He was shocked that I should think he could
be that sort of bloke. Some of those innocents in the commune might be capable of it, he said, but not he.

‘I’m a good citizen,’ he added. ‘And you know what that means—keep clear of the fuzz!’

‘But if you believe the woman was an agent of the KGB?’

‘So what? Start mucking about with her and they’d whip her off to Russia like Rory. And I’ll tell you another of them—Rory’s cousin Tessa. Friend of Rachel’s
she was and belongs to the IMG.’

‘What’s that?’

‘International Marxist Group. That old billy-goat Trotsky.’

‘Then she wouldn’t be mixed up with the Communist Party.’

‘Well up in it all, aren’t you? I heard you carrying on about Mao as if you believed it. Now, how do you think we could make a bit out of what we know?’