The Ka of Gifford Hillary (49 page)

As well as being my solicitor Eddie also acted for the Company, and James Compton had told him privately of the upset I had caused just before my ‘death’ by proposing that we should refuse the E-boat contract; so he already knew the background of Johnny’s story. He was most sympathetic, accepted Johnny’s assurance that he was innocent, and promised to do his utmost for him; but he could not, as Johnny had thought just possible, suggest any line of enquiry which might solve the mystery of where I had obtained my information.

Dinner was due to be served by the time they had finished their conference and, very decently, Tinegate asked Eddie if he would care to remain for it; so an extra tray was brought in and his cheerful presence helped for a time to dispel the uneasy atmosphere which had developed between the two Wing Commanders owing to Johnny’s gloom and their unnatural relationship.

When Eddie had left them Tinegate again sent to enquire about the Station Commander; but he was still not back, so it now looked as if he had a dinner engagement. As Johnny insisted on seeing him that night Tinegate started on a new
novel, while Johnny restlessly thumbed through a collection of old magazines.

It was nearly midnight before the Duty Officer appeared to say that the Station Commander had returned and would see Johnny. Tinegate accompanied him to the office, and there presented him to an elderly Group Captain, to whom he made his request. It was that he should be allowed out on parole for twenty-four hours, to attend to entirely personal affairs which were urgent and causing him great worry.

Tinegate immediately followed his request by saying that before the Station Commander gave a decision he would like a word with him alone. Johnny was taken into an adjoining room by the Duty Officer, and when he was brought back the Group Captain said to him:

‘I would like to oblige you, but I’m told that you are under arrest in connection with a breach of the Official Secrets Act. That is a very serious matter. No doubt you’ve seen in the papers the frightful rumpus that is going on about Burgess and Maclean, and their having been allowed to get out of the country. I trust there is nothing in these charges against you; but that remains to be seen. And after all, you are an Airman. What is to prevent you pinching an aircraft from some flying club or other, and hopping across the Channel before morning? If that happened it would be the end of me. No, I’m sorry; but I can’t risk it.’

To that there could be no answer, so Johnny returned with Tinegate to their quarters and they turned in for the night.

On Saturday the same routine was followed, except that it was not enlivened by a visit from Eddie and that Sue rang Johnny after lunch. But in spite of a long conversation with her he became even more gloomy and restless, while the unfortunate Tinegate became even more bored and wearied from having to remain constantly with him.

An hour or so after they had finished dinner that evening, Johnny suggested to Tinegate that they should go early to bed. Having yawned his head off while waiting for the Station Commander’s return the previous night Tinegate readily agreed.

When Johnny had shut himself into his room he did not start to undress but sat down, and for the next half hour
endeavoured to occupy his mind by scanning an evening paper. He then switched out the light.

Glancing at the illuminated dial of his wrist watch from time to time, he sat on there in the darkness until it was eleven o’clock; then getting up, he gently opened the door of his room and looked up into the corridor. No one was about, so he tiptoed down it to the sitting-room. Unlike the bedrooms and the lavatory, its windows had no bars. Cautiously putting his head out he saw that the sentry was at his post on the main door of the block. After a few minutes the man turned his back and marched off on his beat. As soon as he was out of sight round the corner, Johnny clambered through the window and, crossing the road, walked quickly through a gap between two other buildings.

There was, of course, no prison compound to have to get out of, as the courts-martial of officers were carried out at the depot only occasionally, but he had to find a place where he could scale the fence that surrounded the great establishment with little risk of being spotted by the few men who were still about. After some ten minutes of wandering among a maze of buildings he found a row of latrines which screened the fence from observation for about forty feet, and, going behind them, managed to scramble over. A quarter of an hour later he was in an almost empty tube train which took him direct to Earls Court. Walking quickly round to his garage, he got out his car, and it was still only a little after midnight when he set out for Longshot.

The fact of the matter was that when Johnny had telephoned to Sue after his abortive visit to my grave, and told her that he was satisfied, he had not been telling the truth. It will be recalled that, at my funeral, when my coffin was lowered into the vault it had bumped as it came to rest on the one below it, and its lid had shifted slightly. That was how, as an unseen spectator, I had learned that my instructions had been carried out about not screwing the lid down. Johnny had seen the coffin in the beam of his torch before being surprised by Constable Cowper long enough for his brain to register an impression that the lid had been moved.

While driving back to Longshot he had been tempted to sit up for a few hours then return and go down into the vault, but his narrow escape from having been caught in it and
arrested made him consider the factors in the situation with understandable caution.

The only reason for supposing that I might still be alive was the acceptance of occult theories which so far had not been supported by an atom of scientific proof; so, regarded logically and dispassionately, the odds against my being so were very long indeed. Moreover, the further he drove from the churchyard the more doubtful he became whether the lid of the coffin had really been moved or if he had been deceived by an optical illusion. Constable Cowper had said that he often went for night patrols and meant to give particular attention to the churchyard; and Johnny knew that if he were caught he would be liable to be sent to prison. In consequence he had decided that for the outside chance of finding me in a coma the risk of making another attempt that night was too high.

His promise to Sue that he would not had therefore been an honest one; but deep down in himself he was still not altogether happy about me and he had told her a white lie about that to keep her from worrying. Instinctively, too, he had not bound himself by any promise regarding the future. Next morning, while he was getting up, his doubts had strengthened, and he had begun to contemplate making another attempt to set his mind at rest during the very early hours of Friday, as pre-dawn seemed the least likely time for Constable Cowper to be out and about. But after breakfast the telegram recalling him to London arrived, and his arrest had followed.

For the greater part of Thursday he had been occupied with his own intensely worrying affairs but, even so, he had seen again intermittently all day a mental picture of my coffin, and had become convinced that the lid had been moved a little. It was this nagging thought that had caused him on the Friday morning to ask for an interview with the Station Commander.

During the day he had worried himself nearly silly with the thought of me, but had continued to pin his faith on the Station Commander’s accepting his parole, so that he could go down to Longshot on the Friday night and settle his doubts once and for all. As that worthy had not returned until midnight Johnny’s hopes had not been dashed until then; and up
to that time he had not considered any possible alternative.

Again he spent a miserable night of heart-searching and self-reproach that he had not returned to the vault a few hours after Constable Cowper’s arrival on the scene had forced him to leave it; but it had not been until the early hours of Saturday morning that he had begun seriously to consider breaking prison.

He knew that it should not be difficult to do so, as the officers occasionally detained at Uxbridge mostly faced charges only of drunkenness or peculation; so no very rigorous precautions were taken to guard them. All the same to break prison would make his own case infinitely worse; and by Saturday midday he was wondering if, should he succeed in reaching my grave, it would not be too late. I had by then been presumed dead for a week. Even if I had been buried while in a coma and during it my Ka had appeared to Daisy, the shifting of the coffin lid suggested that I had since come out of my coma, and had made an effort to rise from my grave, proved too weak to lift the heavy lid, and had soon after really died.

But, he continued to ask himself, would I necessarily have died? If I had remained in a coma from Friday night until anyhow Tuesday evening, when I had appeared to Daisy, might I not, after a brief rousing sometime during the next twenty-four hours, have fallen back into it and so still have life in my body after a further three or four days.

There was no one he could consult who possessed the authority to dispel his doubts on such a question. Tinegate or the Station Commander would have thought that his own troubles had unhinged his mind. He wished by then that he had taken Eddie into his confidence, although he thought it most unlikely that the lawyer would have put any credence in Daisy’s visions. During the afternoon he had faced the fact that the responsibility was his and that there was no one with whom he could even share it. Either he must be harrowed all his life by the thought of the ghastly death to which he might have condemned me, or blacken his own case for a purpose he might never have able to reveal by breaking prison that night. To him, for having chosen the latter course, I can never be sufficiently grateful; but, for him, it has led to a situation far worse than the wrecking of his Service career.
So for his sake—and to some extent for my own—I could wish now that he had left me to suffer my final agony in my grave.

As there was little traffic on the road during the midnight hours he made the journey to Longshot in excellent time, arriving at the churchyard by half-past two in the morning. This time he left the car at the lych-gate, then walked swiftly up the slope to reconnoitre Constable Cowper’s cottage. It was in complete darkness which gave Johnny good hope that Cowper was there and sound asleep. Turning back towards the church he made straight for my grave, pulled the tarpaulin back from over the vault and shone his torch down into it.

Ankaret’s coffin had not been there at the time of his previous visit. Now it was on top of mine. He scrambled down into the vault and with some difficulty managed to drag her coffin across on to that of my father. It was not until he could shine his torch again, right on to my coffin, that he saw my fingers sticking out from its side.

His horror can be imagined. Kneeling on Ankaret’s coffin he bent over, grasped the lid of mine and pulled it up sideways. Staring down at my body he took in the twisted limbs, the crushed hand red with clotted blood, the crimson sore on my neck where I had torn at my jugular vein and my forehead black and blue from the bashing I had given it. At first he thought I was dead, but he lifted my right arm and as the wounded hand came away from the coffin’s edge I gave a deep groan.

Later, Johnny told me that never in his life had he heard anything so terrifying. But it was clear proof that I was still alive. His efforts to rouse me from my torpor produced only a fluttering of the eyelids and more groans. He could now have run up to Cowper’s cottage to get help, but he had very good reasons for not doing so. Somehow he got my heavy body out of the vault on his own and laid it among Ankaret’s comparatively-fresh floral tributes. Going down into the vault again, he replaced the lid of my coffin, lugged Ankaret’s back on top of it, climbed out, pulled the tarpaulin across and replaced the bricks that he had had to move to roll it back.

Half carrying, half dragging me, he got me to the car, laid me on its back seat and wrapped a car rug round me. That done he immediately drove off, but only half a mile along the
lane; then he pulled up on the grass verge to think out what he had best do. It took him about ten minutes to make up his mind. I was still less than half conscious, so had not yet realised what had happened or where I was, and when the car started into motion again I had no idea that I was being taken to Longshot Hall.

Johnny drove straight through into the old stable yard, got out, collected from the shed where it was kept the key of the spare garage, which he always used when he came to stay, unlocked its doors, and backed the car into it. Belton, who slept over the main garage at the far end of the yard, was the only person who might have heard him. But he knew that Belton was used to him putting his own car away late at night and sometimes getting it out very early in the morning.

Closing the garage doors, Johnny switched the light on, propped me up, and made a more careful examination of me. My hand had started to bleed again, but otherwise my injuries were only superficial and my heart, which had always been strong, was beating steadily. Reaching over for a firstaid pack from the dashboard shelf he got busy on my hand. As the iodine entered the wounds fresh stabs of pain brought me round. With a cry, I started up and stared about me.

‘It’s all right, Giff,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s me, Johnny. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I got you out—out of your coffin. Poor old chap, you must have been through Hell. But you’re quite safe now.’

I could only nod weakly. I felt incredibly cold. A shiver ran through me and my teeth began to chatter.

As soon as he had finished bandaging my hand he drew the rug up to my chin, tucked it round me, and said: ‘Stay still. Relax as much as you can. I’m going to the house to get something to warm you up. I shan’t be long.’

I clutched at him with my left hand and croaked out my first words; ‘Don’t leave me! For God’s sake don’t leave me!’

‘I must,’ he insisted. ‘You are safe, I tell you. If you go off into another coma I won’t let them put you back. I swear I won’t. But if I don’t get some warmth into you pretty soon you are going to die of pneumonia.’