Sion Crossing (13 page)

“But—
Lucy
, David—”

“If I don’t know the father, I’m not likely to know the daughter, my dear fellow. I’m not a socializer.” Audley waved a hand at Mitchell. “If she’s got long legs it’s more likely she rings Paul’s chimes of midnight—Paul?”

Mitchell looked at Audley reproachfully. “What?”

“Well, well!” Morris tut-tutted at Audley, ignoring Mitchell altogether. “We haven’t done our homework very well, have we!”

“We haven’t had a great deal of time—the way some of our alleged friends have been up to mischief. And now we are trying to repair the damage.” Audley took refuge in turn in his beer. “So what is so special about the daughter that she should ring our bells?”

Morris smiled. “She’s not really his daughter—that’s what’s special.”

“You said she was.”

The smile became a grin. “A small deliberate mistake, to test you, my dear fellow.” Morris paused deliberately. “This whole situation is becoming over-filled with life’s little ironies. Like … me saving you from a fate worse than death … and then, as a result, having my Saturday night ashore spoilt by you.”

Audley inclined his head graciously. “And my Saturday night, too. Which amused neither my wife nor my daughter—my
real
daughter, that is, of course.” He signalled down the bar. “But if you’ll give me another irony, I’ll buy you another drink.”

“Fair enough.” Morris obviously enjoyed playing with Audley when he had an edge. “‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love’.”

“‘Raisin-cake’, actually.” Audley nodded to Harry.

“Raisin-cake?”

“In the Hebrew. The Revised Version has simply ‘raisins’, but there’s a note about the exact Hebrew. The Douai translation is ‘flowers’—‘Fulcite me
floribus
, stipate me malis; quia amore langueo’—Canticle of Canticles, second chapter, fifth verse. Your ‘flagons’ are only in the Authorised Version. But I wouldn’t quarrel with that here in the Admiral Benbow, not tonight.” Audley waited until Harry had recharged the glasses. “Not in exchange for another irony, anyway.”

“Very good of you.” Morris nursed the glass. “And you wouldn’t be plying me with liquor, would you?”

Audley shook his head. “I’d never ply anyone raised on moonshine whisky. And I’m perfectly well aware that your head is as hard as your black heart.” He raised his glass.

Morris considered Audley affectionately. “You’re a terrible man, David. But that’s why you’re here, of course. Only … you’ve also got the Devil’s own luck, for a damned Anglo-Saxon.”

“Norman, actually. With maybe a touch of Jutish. And I can’t say I feel particularly lucky tonight.”

“Uh-huh.” Morris waved his negative finger. “Being here is lucky for you, I think … but okay—you say you don’t know the daughter because you don’t know the father. But you
did
know him.”

“I did?”

“Long ago. Back in the old days … pre-Patrick Felton, pre Yuri Strelnikov—mid-Philby … maybe post-Philby too, just about … Long time, David—and that’s a fact, by God!”

Again, Mitchell couldn’t resist looking at Audley. Long time was right! He couldn’t even place … Felton and Strelnikov, so they must be ancient history. And Philby—he was right out of legend, the great survivor of that long stern-chase during the dark years, some of which overlapped Audley’s own early service in their own carefully sealed-off section. In fact … although the departmental records of that time, so far as they concerned Philby, were conspicuous by their absence … David must have been one of the gunners on that stern-chase, too old to be a powder-monkey, but not quite senior enough to have sighted the gun and pulled the lanyard on the uproll—?

“Oh yes?” Looking at Audley was predictably a waste of time, all the same: the man was not about to give away any sort of expression about those days in the public bar of the Admiral Benbow tavern on a Saturday night. “Well, I can’t say I remember any
Lucy
from those days. But I’m not too good on babies—they all remind me rather of Winston Churchill: not much hair, but they know what they want, and they’re determined to get it—my Cathy, for example … she was exactly like that, you know, Howard—” Having shrugged off Kim Philby, Audley smiled at Howard Morris “—you’d do much better trying to remind me of Lucy’s mother. I’m much more at home with mothers from long ago.”

“Uh-uh.” Morris wasn’t so easily out-faced. “If you haven’t done your homework, you won’t know her either. She was safely shot of him before you knew him.”

Something changed in Audley’s smile. It didn’t weaken, let alone disappear, but it became curiously fixed, as though a garbled message had reached his face, and the muscles didn’t know what to do for the best.

“Macallan.” Howard Morris also observed the change, and he moved quickly to pre-empt Audley himself reaching the name. “She was born Lucy
Macallan
, David. Remember?”

“Macallan.” Audley repeated the name with such complete lack of emotion that his rage with himself was transparently apparent. “Bill Macallan—
William O’Reilly Macallan
—of course! He left a family behind somewhere …
‘I am not a Virginian, but an American’
—he would have said
‘I am not a father, I am an American’
—Bill Macallan—Lord! but—” He frowned at Howard Morris “—but …”

“He’s dead?” Morris goaded him.

“That’s right. Dead to all intents and purposes, anyway. If not actually dead.”

“Actually dead now. Couple of months back.”

“Is that so?” Audley caught Mitchell’s questioning expression. “Don’t look at me—I didn’t do it!” He nodded towards Morris. “Ask him—didn’t he have one of those dreadfully incurable and erratic wasting maladies … nervous or muscular … or both?”

“But who was he?” Mitchell pursued his actual question.

“Macallan?” Audley repeated the name unnecessarily, then nodded again towards the American. “He was one of theirs. And a top man in his day—a proper little Wyatt Earp, by God!” Pause. “But a long way back, way before your time!” Pause. “And he was a long time dying, by golly!” Pause. “But then he was always a fighter, was Bill Macallan.” This time Mitchell received the nod. “He’d have made a good frigate captain in your friend Elizabeth’s old US navy—‘Don’t give up the ship!’ and all that.” He swung back to Morris. “And so he left a daughter—?”

“She nursed him, the last year.”

“But she took Cookridge’s name.”

“Cookridge brought her up. Married the mother—hell, more than twenty years ago, it would be.”

“Indeed?” Audley registered polite interest. “Well, Howard, I grant you a little irony there, and perhaps a little coincidence. But it’s mostly history you have, it would seem, rather than homework.”

“You’re dam’ right.
History
is just what I have—American history.” Morris frowned at Audley. “And since when were you a goddam’ expert on it? It’s knights-in-armour and feudal system you’re into, not our Civil War—since when were you an expert on that?”

“I’m not.” Audley raised a shoulder. “The last time I opened an American history book seriously was … let me think now … it would have been about the time Neville Chamberlain was flying to Munich to see Herr Hitler, or thereabouts.”

Christ! thought Mitchell, this was history talking about History: Audley had aged so well, and treated everyone so much in the same way, regardless of age and status, that it was hard to think of him as so old—old enough easily to be his own father.

“Yes.” Audley clarified his recollections. “We did ‘Slavery and Secession’ in School Certificate. I have a clear memory of mispronouncing something called ‘the Missouri Compromise’, much to my form master’s amusement—‘Com-promise’, I made it … And there was ‘the Dred Scott Case’, which must have had something to do with the fugitive slave laws—but I can’t for the life of me remember exactly what … But we didn’t actually
do
the war itself—I remember thinking that that was a rotten shame, because it had all the makings of a most enjoyable blood-letting … the South wrong, but romantic, and the North right, but repulsive—” He stopped suddenly.

“Yes?” Morris pounced on the frown.

“Yes … I was just thinking …” Audley frowned. “About Macallan …
Macallan
was an expert on the American Civil War, if there ever was one—it was his hobby … In fact, I remember arguing with him about it once.” Audley lifted his chin and looked down on Morris in one of his most characteristically arrogant movements.

“Uh-huh?” Morris recognized the signal too. “He was the expert, and you weren’t—but you argued with him?”

“Mmm … I’ve never thought ignorance should preclude a good argument. In some ways it confers an advantage—and a good argument is a marvellous way of obtaining information. I learnt a lot about Bill Macallan by arguing with him. And that was even more valuable, as it turned out …”

Morris said nothing, but merely waited expectantly for Audley to continue, and Mitchell followed his example. Although, thought Mitchell, what they were learning now about Audley was what Audley chose to tell them.

“But I did have another advantage, of course …”

He must have taken his School Certificate, which was now the ‘O-level’ exam, very young, decided Mitchell. But, of course, he would have been at some expensive boarding school which aimed its bright pupils at Oxford or Cambridge from the moment of their arrival, all small and pink and hesitant. That—although it was hard to think of Audley as small and pink and hesitant—went without saying. He might have been a born scholar, but he had certainly been very deliberately hammered and beaten into the required shape at great expense.

“Yes.” Audley looked for a moment into the smoke-filled air of the Admiral Benbow public bar, projecting the long-forgotten documentary of the Audley-Macallan Civil War arguments into the haze. “I’d read
Gone With the Wind
—and he hadn’t—”

“What?” Howard Morris slopped his beer, which he’d been in the act of raising. “
Gone
—”

“—
With the Wind
.” Audley completed the title. “A damn good book! If you haven’t read it, Howard, then you ought to have done—and more fool you for not having done so already! If I’d written
Gone With the Wind—
”

“—You’d cry all the way to the bank!” Morris had his beer under control.

“Too bloody right! Except I wouldn’t be crying.”

“You wouldn’t?” Morris held his beer steadily.

“You better be careful, Colonel.” Mitchell decided to intervene, remembering the contents of one of the rooms in Audley’s rambling farmhouse. “David’s an authority on historical novels, from G. A. Henty to Alfred Duggan and Rosemary Sutcliff. He’s got shelves full of them.”

After all, keeping a good argument going could be very useful!

“Yeah?” Either Morris was playing the same game by design, or so many pints of English beer had made him reckless. “Like
Forever Amber
, and—and …” He ran out of historical novels too quickly for conviction.

“And
I
,
Claudius
and
Princess in the Sunset
… and
The Last of the Wine
?” Mitchell decided to join the winning side.

“And Mills and Boon?” Morris obviously knew he was fighting a rearguard action, but he wasn’t ready to throw his rifle away and run yet—his instinct and training held him steady.

“Nothing wrong with Mills and Boon.” Audley came back to them. “Charlotte Brontë would have been published by Mills and Boon … but Bill Macallan didn’t read historical novels—
Gone With the Wind
was beneath his dignity, is what I mean … And there’s as much real history of the American Civil War in that as there is of the First Crusade in Alfred Duggan’s
Night with Armour
—if you read that, and the first volume of Runciman’s history, then you can take on all comers, I don’t care who … So I had enough to take on Bill Macallan, when it came to the American Civil War, anyway. Okay?”

Okay? Mitchell stared at Howard Morris—and Howard Morris was thinking very hard, he could see that.

“Okay.” Morris reached his decision. “So that was how Bill Macallan reckoned you were an expert years ago, maybe. But it sure as hell doesn’t tell us why Cookridge wanted you last evening,
of all people
, David.”

Mitchell continued to stare at the American. He wanted to look at Audley too, but it was Morris who wasn’t making the most sense now, after what had gone before. “But … if Cookridge wanted an expert … her real father could have told her about David—and she could have told her stepfather, maybe?”

Morris looked at him, almost slyly, with an almost cynical expression. “That’s what worries me, Doc—now, anyway.” He turned to look at Audley. “Though it wasn’t that bugged me last evening, David—I just thought you were you, old buddy—and that was enough to scare the hell out of me, you understand? But this scares me more.”

Audley looked at his friend, quite inscrutably.

Mitchell looked from one to the other. With honest enemies you had a fair chance of guessing what they were at, but with these two honest friends in different camps it was impossible.

Audley lingered on the American for a few extra seconds, then switched to Mitchell. “What he means, Paul, is that Bill Macallan and I worked together in the old days.”

The old days?

“Hand-in-glove,” supplemented Morris, white teeth showing under the bedraggled moustache. “Special relationship.”

The old days?

“Chalk and cheese, Paul.” Audley sighed, and his face hardened. “We hated each other’s guts.”

It had been there before, thought Mitchell: Audley had not mourned the news of the man’s death, never mind the onset of that “incurable and erratic malady” long ago.

But that cleared the way for the obvious question. “Professional or personal?”

“Both.” Audley regarded him bleakly. “He was the senior partner—it was after Suez, and we both knew the score after that. So … he thought I was a hangover from the decline and fall of the British Empire, which was screwing up the American take-over, to save the world for democracy one jump ahead of Russian fascism—” he nodded at Mitchell “—we didn’t disagree on everything—that was what made the split between us worse … If he’d been a Rhodes Scholar we might have swung it between us, but he didn’t make the grade—Christ! maybe that would have done it! I just don’t know …”