The Courtesy of Death (20 page)

I soon wished I had taken the car, for it was a foul evening with sheets of cold rain swirling up from the Bristol Channel and water gurgling into the drains of the empty road. I skirted
Jedder’s farm and had some trouble in identifying the right barn, which I had never seen in daylight. It was indeed on rising ground, but not easily visible, since it stood in a shallow bowl.
This bowl, which I had hardly noticed as I ran away from it, was, I should guess, the result of subsidence. Beyond the end of the passage and the changing-room there may at some period have been a
limestone dome which collapsed.

I had three hours to wait, so I tucked myself in between a twisted thorn and a dry-stone wall alongside the track to see what I could see. The rain at last eased up. A young brood of plovers
rose from the grass while the parent birds, wheeling overhead, cried what must have been encouragement to their chicks but sounded to me like thin voices of the long-dead hunters. It occurred to me
that they never drew a bird, feeling perhaps that, while earthbound creatures like themselves could live again beneath the earth, it was blasphemy to immure, down there in the silence where no
birds sang, the freedom of the air. Then came the gulls, one wide, purposeful arrow after another marking the high limits of the dusk. And then came a solitary car with Aviston-Tresco beside the
driver.

He dropped the vet at the barn and drove away. When it was already dark, he came back with a tractor and trailer, parked them outside the barn and went in, carrying a drum of paraffin. All was
silent, and I was alone with the surrounding barrows. The millennia had worn them down to a height hardly more than that of a man, but in the scrappy moonlight they doubled their true size. It was
probably the effect of that hardly perceptible bowl.

I took the .45 out of my knapsack and at ten knocked on the barn door. There was dark quiet inside and I had to say who I was. They then opened up. Aviston-Tresco looked intensely relieved so
far as I could judge from the hidden pools of his eyes, and the stark black and white of his head in the light of the standing lamp. His companion was the man I had described to myself as the
cricketer from his far too accurate missiles. I never knew his name. He had more guts than the rest, but even so tended to shy at the formidable weapon in my hand. I do not think Aviston-Tresco had
warned him that the long, black barrel was going to precede me wherever I went.

I thoroughly searched the pair of them, turning out all Aviston-Tresco’s pockets in case he was carrying a syringe or other implement of his trade. I found nothing. He too was nameless and
world-forsaken. He had only a small electric torch, a pocket knife, a few shillings, his cigarettes and matches.

The cricketer expected me to help him to remove the hay bales. I thought it best to carry on with the intimidation and remain at a range where I could not be thrown off my aim by sudden darkness
or sudden movement. I reminded him that we had plenty of time and that Fosworthy had removed the bales single-handed. When he opened the hatch I told him that if at any time I found it shut, that
was the end of Aviston-Tresco.

‘Give me half an hour’s grace,’ he replied. ‘Suppose police or one of Jedder’s farm-hands were trying to force the door, and I had to shut down.’

I agreed to that, but warned him that he would have to get rid of his visitors in half an hour if he wished to see Aviston-Tresco alive again.

Aviston-Tresco calmly supervised the lowering of the drum of paraffin and apologised for the lack of lights down below as if I had been a casual tourist, explaining that in the absence of
himself and Jedder no one had dared to start up any activity in the barn.

He ignored my menacing attitude as irrelevant. As usual this moved me to give some consideration to him.

‘The rope is going to be too painful under your shoulders,’ I said.

‘Is it?’ he answered. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought.’

I looked round the barn for something which would make a cradle for him and found an old cart-horse girth of canvas and leather which was still sound. If he sat on that with a light line tied
round it at the level of his chest, he would have his good arm free to fend off the rock face as I lowered him.

‘By the way,’ he asked, ‘where did you leave your car?’

‘I came on foot. So it’s no good thinking of booby traps.’

He made an impatient gesture which reproached me for being unnecessarily brash. The cricketer lowered the aluminium ladder. They appeared as if about to shake hands, but did not. At any rate a
current of emotion passed between them—naturally enough, I thought, when the job was to pull up their once respected prophet whom Jedder had murdered.

Aviston-Tresco went down first. He was very shaky. It gave me an excuse to get him up on my back when we returned. That would provide certain protection at the one point—emerging from the
hatch—where I was still not quite convinced that I was safe.

We passed through the yellow mud of that badly shored gallery which always offended me, and down what was left of the companion ladder into the darkness. Aviston-Tresco had not seen the damage
before and did not expect it. I helped him down and he politely thanked me.

In the changing-room we filled and lit some lanterns, and then visited the tool-store to examine the winch. Aviston-Tresco was quite right; there was nothing very heavy except the wooden stand
and the main cog. A lever and ratchet raised the stand on its wheels, which were a good foot in diameter, or lowered it to rest firmly on the ground.

I measured and tested the rope, which was first-class stuff. Jedder was no builder, but reliable in the mechanical tasks of a seaman. It was obviously impossible to keep Aviston-Tresco covered
during all this preparation, so I made him sit down at a distance and shone my torch on him from time to time to see that he was behaving. When I had fixed the sling, I told him to walk slowly
ahead of me holding a lantern while I trundled the trolley along behind with another lantern and some tools lashed to the winch. I was glad of the activity, for the passage began to oppress me as
soon as we were engaged in it. A pigsty smell hung in the still air, undoubtedly left by me. The ghost of one’s own animal stench is an odd and disturbing thing to revisit.

Aviston Tresco stopped at my alcove and looked at the ashes of the fire and the bones and scraping of my revolting diet.

‘The working floor,’ he murmured.

We passed through the great cave by following the wall and the useless wires of the lighting system. Even with our two paraffin lamps and my electric lantern, that was the only sure way. At this
point I had an attack of shivering. Poor monster! He had only been desperate and frightened. He was still unduly nervous and would have shot at the first sound from nothingness.

I had never looked down the precipice on the left of the wired passage, having no interest in it before Fosworthy’s death and only paraffin lamps afterwards. Without lying on one’s
stomach on the sloping, slippery track—which I had no intention of doing—it was hard to see anything but the irregular wall of the cave on the far side.

Keeping Aviston-Tresco well away, I explored the edge of the drop. Further along the passage, the lip curved out a little, forming a promontory which ended in a lump of rock. It gave an illusion
of safety while kneeling alongside, for there was enough of it to lean against. I screwed up the lens of my fine, new light and threw a beam on the bottom of the cleft, more like eighty than
seventy feet below. It was wider than the top, and dry. Boulders and rocks covered the floor, none of them water-worn. Plainly a cave roof had at some time fallen in. Among the smaller rocks was a
long, narrow one with a white patch at the far end of it. It was Fosworthy’s body.

I now knew where to site the winch so that Aviston-Tresco would come down more or less in the right place. Its lack of stability bothered me; as an engineer I probably tended to fuss too much.
In the end I squared off a crack in the cave wall at ground level, and pushed into it the back of the stand, supporting the front on chocks. My companion watched all this disinterestedly.

I made him sit in the girth and ran a line round the canvas and his chest, telling him to hang on to the rope with his good arm. Owing to the overhang he would not have to fend off the rock
face, but he would probably spin. I promised him that there was no risk of the rope fraying since I had chosen a channel for it which was smooth with a film of deposit. He submitted resignedly to
every one of my suggestions.

He wriggled over the edge, and I let him down slowly. The winch was so close to the cave wall that I had to work it with my back to the drop, shouting to him at intervals for a progress report.
He said that he was spinning, yes, but not fast, that he was well out from the rock and could not bump into anything. He told me when he was near the bottom, and I let out rope gently until the
weight came off it. Then I went out to my promontory to help him with a beam of light. He himself had only his pocket torch.

He had landed right by Fosworthy’s feet. So far as I could see, he was not at all shaken by the proximity. He slipped out of his lashing, and then to my alarm cast off the sling from the
rope. I shouted to him to leave it alone since with only one hand he might not be able to attach it again by a secure knot, but he paid no attention. He tied the rope tight round Fosworthy’s
waist and told me to go ahead. I wound the drooping bundle up as respectfully as I could, reminding myself that affection, even as casual as mine for Fosworthy, should not be disturbed by the
results of decomposition.

When I had stretched the body out at some little distance, I lowered the rope again and returned to the promontory in order to direct Aviston-Tresco how to attach the sling if he was inclined to
do it carelessly. He was sitting on a boulder smoking a cigarette and making no move towards the dangling rope.

‘Are you tired?’ I asked.

He did not raise his voice. It came faintly echoing up in a clear, articulate whisper as if he were speaking from the darkness alongside me instead of eighty feet below.

‘No,’ he replied, fiddling with his shoe lace, ‘not very. But I am not coming up.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because this is the end for me.’

I tried to encourage him. I thought he had merely given up, or perhaps had at last been overcome by guilt in the presence of what was left of Fosworthy. I was eloquent about his hills and
animals.

‘You don’t understand, my dear Yarrow,’ he said. ‘There is nothing in this life to detain a man who loves his profession and can no longer follow it. I have left a note
in my surgery that I intend to walk out into the mud of the Parrett until it has me. It will be hopeless to search for my body once the tide has come up and ebbed again. But I shall not hang about
down here to embarrass you. This will release me in a second.’

He took off his shoe which of course I had never thought of searching. I could hardly see what he held between finger and thumb. At the end of the beam was just a tiny spark of reflecting
glass.

‘But I can never get you up,’ I reminded him. ‘Think, for God’s sake, of Cynthia Carlis! Suppose she does tell what she knows and the place is full of police. It’s
no good hauling up Fosworthy and leaving you.’

‘Miss Carlis will never talk, Yarrow. She believes Filk did it, and that is that. My explanation to you was deliberately a little complex.’

‘But then why bother with all this? Why not jump?’

‘It was essential, you see, to keep you happily occupied. I have noticed that you are always entirely absorbed by any mechanical task.’

Again I asked why.

‘You might have kept an eye on the hatch. You might have decided that there was no reason why our friend up there should not be with us. I was afraid you would.’

‘Where is he?’ I shouted.

‘Gone home with his tractor and trailer. He knew what I intended.’

Gone home! How could I guess? All my plans and precautions had been founded on the natural assumption that Aviston-Tresco wanted to get out alive. I took the man’s normal fear of death for
granted in spite of so much evidence that this particular man had none.

‘I hope that you will soon forgive me,’ he said. ‘It will all seem so unimportant when you and I and Barnabas meet.’

The cave wall transmitted every sound. I swear that I actually heard the crunch as he put the capsule between his teeth. It took effect at once.

I did not yet go back to the hatch to see if he was telling the truth. I knew it. I realised that the draught in the passage had long since stopped. It was barely noticeable, a mere caress of
ice on the cheek, but always there when the hatch was open.

I went and sat on the winch, bewildered that he would sacrifice his life to ensure my eternal silence, bewildered by his absolute, proved certainty of survival. What a creed for soldiers! Well,
but there is nothing new under the sun. The fanatics of the early armies of Islam believed it and were unconquerable.

The thought passed through my mind that I might as well slide over the edge myself. But while I was considering this in all honesty, I put out one of the lamps. There was no avoiding the irony
of that. Something in me wanted so badly to live that it was already economising paraffin. I must be the very opposite of Aviston-Tresco—a creature of simplicity, never seriously questioning
instinct, never doubting that, whatever the purposes of life are, one of them is to live it.

It was no good sitting there. First, I rushed to the hatch in a wild access of optimism. Perhaps Aviston-Tresco had not in fact told the cricketer of his intention. But he had, and it was shut.
Then I wallowed in many minutes of emotional despair. There would never be any opening of the cave by those spiritless, guilty cowards up above on the Mendips. Jedder might do it if he could limp
his way down, but that day was far off. The Gate of the Underworld had closed on me as inexorably as on my only companions.

In order to generate in myself some sense of calmer acceptance, I decided to revisit them. In the Painted Cave I used, as always, only lanterns; they were still far brighter than the blubber
lamp and its eddying pencil of smoke, on which the artist had counted to give the stir of movements to his hunters while they killed and were forgiven. There they were, as they had been for the
last twenty-five thousand years, abandoning themselves to their environment with a gaiety which we have forgotten. The interrelationship between them, the deer, the horses and the accepting mammoth
belonged to the science of ecology rather than anthropology.