The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (21 page)

‘Have they arrested Paul?'

‘Ever tried to land an eel? How did he do it?'

She told him about the formal arrival of the booted squire. Her Georges crowed with laughter. It seemed to her that she had not heard laughter for years. Laughter was safety. Laughter was the eternal present which would become a future.

‘Why be uncomfortable?' he suggested. ‘If they beat the wood we can hear them long before they get here.'

He settled down on the sand and spread out his coat for her alongside. She nearly answered that she was glad nobody could telephone this time. Too brazen? Yes! He must be allowed his illusions. Probably he would apologise again.

‘I've been so frightened till now,' she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

After the kiss he said nothing but Zia . . . Zia . . . Zia, as if her name was worth all the terms of endearment in the world.

‘No, Georges, no! We may have to run. How can we in this state?'

‘Zia! My lovely Zia!'

Gentle she knew he would be. Too gentle she feared. He might know nothing about women as Daisy had said. But on one point Daisy was wrong . . . very wrong, very wrong.

‘Georges! My love! Oh God!'

She lay still at last, twining him with arms and legs and wishing she could grow more of them just to hold him. And such fulfilment was so gloriously unexpected. But at least she had been right about the apology.

‘Angel, I cannot forgive myself. You are too beautiful.'

‘And if you could forgive yourself?'

‘I should go mad with love.'

‘So that was just when you are sane? Poor Zia, how she must suffer . . . Georges, I beg you, Georges!'

Half asleep she crooned over him, her child, her lover, her comrade. The white flowers of the hawthorn drifted down on him and she kissed them away, regretting that she had nowhere to secrete a handful of them for memory. A beam of the midday sun piercing the canopy fell on her face and startled her from this scented twilight of love into another reality. Distant bodies were splashing down the stream towards them.

There was no time to cross to the safer hazels. Georges picked her up, hardly giving her time to grab her clothes, and slid with her into cover.

‘They are not here,' the colonel said. ‘You're wrong, Longwill.'

‘Then whose are those trousers?'

‘By God, if they've got him . . .'

‘There could be other reasons.'

Georges crawled silently away from her and spoke.

‘I was having a dip in the brook, Paul. You should have given us warning. Kindly pass me my trousers!'

‘Mrs Fanshawe was having a dip too?'

‘We were both rather dirty.'

‘What a revolting expression, Georges!'

Zia, now dressed, decided on the grand manner.

‘Would you please get my bra out of the nettles, Paul? It must have blown there when I hung it up to dry.'

‘With pleasure. General's wives must of course preserve their modesty in the water.'

She burst out of the bushes, flung a lump of mud at him and followed it by herself.

‘You were marvellous, Paul. Thank you, thank you! Did you get away with it?'

‘Well, I put on a show for them, slapping my boots and bawling at Daisy and Mannering for being taken in and never seeing that the girl wasn't ill at all.'

‘And they didn't believe a word of it,' the colonel added. ‘But what could they do?'

He seemed only interested in the clumps of purple flowers which were still standing. Zia assumed that his detachment from the delicate situation was in the best tradition of military politeness.

‘So this is Honesty! In fact, Georges, is it ever pink?'

‘Never. But there is a white form in gardens. It still comes up among the weeds in grandmother's border.'

‘Interesting! Now that reminds me—I have the brochures in my truck.'

Zia exclaimed with joy. It was a god-given day if ever there was one.

‘Hold it, Mrs Fanshawe! They are meaningless unless you and Georges can throw some light on them. The truck, yes. It's waiting for us. An army fifteen hundredweight with the cover up and one of my staff sergeants driving. But we have first to reach it. Thames Valley Police are taking the Rivac-Fanshawe connection very seriously. A distinguished diplomat has been bumped off in their manor.'

He spread Zia's map out on the sand and marked the movements of the searchers. He had watched cars patrolling the road round the northern border of the wood, and a cordon was beginning to work through it from the west. Pickets were on the Alderton—Alderton Abbas road to the east. So they had to break out to the south.

‘But I've told him that there's not a hope there,' Paul protested. ‘The right flank of the police line is moving up towards us through the trees along the edge of the glade. We should be in full view of them, crossing the open.'

Georges murmured as if half his mind was elsewhere—as indeed it was—that there should not be any need to cross the glade.

‘She left Paul's horse there. It depends whether there is any other farmhand in sight.'

‘What depends?'

‘Whether I can get away with it. Do they know I'm here?'

‘Hereabouts—unless you and Irata went off on his motorcycle. They have found the hole and have evidence that both of you were in it recently.'

‘Then it's impossible. No, no, too risky. No way of knowing what I might run into. Yes, so I'll try it. The horse, you see—I find it and yell to them.'

Zia implored him not to show his face outside—not now when they were nearly safe.

‘I'd recognise you anywhere,' Paul added.

‘But the police can't be sure. And when I talk to them . . .'

‘That's asking for it!'

‘A good thing sometimes. I'm going to talk to them—and agents from Lille don't speak broad Bucks.'

‘You're too young to speak broad Bucks.'

‘Oi bain't. Mr Longwill, 'e says to oi there's a foiver for ee if ee foinds me 'arse. Oi knaws where she'll eat, oi says. Graass 'er wants. Better graass 'n yourn, Mister Longwillie. Longwillie me faather called 'im an' oi could tell ee for why.'

‘Tell us some other time,' the colonel said. ‘You're in command, Georges. What are your orders for us?'

‘Go down the stream to the edge of the glade. Keep as near to the right of their line as you dare, and fall back in front of them if you have to. Paul knows the wood. When you see some of them break away to talk to me, get through the cordon! Then we must leave it to the colonel to bring up his truck.'

Carrying his bill hook Georges crossed the stream and was instantly lost among the hazels.

‘He's got religion again,' Paul said, ‘like the time he insisted on potting a deer. It worked then.'

They reached the edge of the wood and crouched down. The cordon was still some distance away, beating the wood slowly and thoroughly. A terrified roebuck dashed through the trees, saw them and changed direction, seeming to pirouette like a ballerina on one tiny hoof. The back of another animal was skittering down the ditch between glade and wood with the undulating movement of a stoat; but it was grey and massive and undoubtedly Georges.

‘The mare's too far away,' Zia whispered in an agony of fear for him. ‘He has to go right out over the grass.'

Georges had now left the ditch and stopped dead. Knowing where to look they could see his shape clearly, but he had probably satisfied himself that the cops on the right of the line were far enough inside the trees and not bothering with the sunlit expanse of green where an upright human figure would catch the eye without even watching. He was quite still for more than a minute with his head turned towards the wood and then dashed a good ten yards out into the open and dropped. They waited for the triumphant bark of the police, but the only sound was the steady approach of the rustlings and crackings of the undergrowth.

He was wriggling forward now, taking advantage of a hardly perceptible fold of the ground which might once have been an ancient track. From where they were they could see the full length of it, and it seemed unbelievable that the police, though away to the side, could fail to detect his presence. The colonel stretched out a hand and clasped Zia's, both sure that it must be the end.

‘He could do it when he was a boy,' Paul said, ‘but, oh God, not now!'

‘What time of year?' Mannering asked.

‘September.'

‘Well, it's June, and if his backside is six inches higher, so's the grass.'

Georges rose smoothly from the ground and in four strides was at the wire fence which Zia had jumped. At once he started to knock in a staple with the flat of the bill hook as if he had been there all along.

‘Hi, mister! Lookin' for a 'arse, be ee?'

His hail rang out over the empty glade to them and to the police. They could not distinguish the words of the reply, but again Georges's good Bucks answer carried.

‘Oi sees 'un 'ere! Bay mar-re what ain't ourn!'

That did the trick. Two constables ran out from the wood and he pointed out the mare. A third man appeared, whistled and was joined by an Inspector. Georges looked as if he were being stupid, slow and persistent, pointing to the horses and describing at length the differences between them. It was now plain why he had said that success depended on no other farmhand being in sight; if there had been, the local man would have joined the party and asked Georges who he was and for whom he was working.

Paul moved cautiously ahead and beckoned them on. By the time two of the police had strolled back to their posts on the right of the line they were through it and lying still as the beat proceeded away from them. Through a gap in the trees Zia could see that the remaining two had wriggled under the wire and were standing guard over the mare, finding that without a halter it was impossible to detain her for questioning. Meanwhile Georges was shambling towards the cover on the far side of the glade, inspecting posts as he went.

They waited just short of the road until the army truck drove slowly past. The colonel stopped it, raised the bonnet and pretended to be examining the engine as a patrol car came up. He raised an innocent and interested face, replied to a question and when the car had gone on signalled to Zia and Paul to make a dash for the back. He himself got in alongside his sergeant and they were off to pick up Georges.

Safe in the green twilight of the canvas cover Zia changed into WRAC uniform which was laid out for her—Paul pointedly keeping his eyes on the driver and, she was sure, taking a quick and critical glance while the khaki blouse was over her head. Opposite the other half of the wood they met Georges coolly walking along the road with his bill hook, now confident that his farce was acceptable to any spectators. For him too there was a uniform. It was entirely right for him, Zia thought. She had summed him up, with his two opposing nationalities, as less decisive than herself. Was that true? He had so often been decisive, but always at the last moment.

The colonel half turned towards them.

‘Sparks,' he said to his driver, ‘these are friends of Lukash.'

‘Glad to meet them, sir! We haven't heard from him lately.'

‘We shan't hear from him any more. But they have brought a message from him if we can decipher it.'

‘The computer, sir?'

‘I don't think it's the kind of food it's going to eat. Now, we'll drive through Alderton and drop this gentleman in boots and breeches as near as possible to the Manor Farm when the road is clear. Then to our second home!'

Paul slid out when the truck stopped. After half an hour it stopped again. A civilian guard spoke to the colonel, looked into the truck, let it through some unseen barrier and on to an even, concrete road.

‘You can get out now. You're as safe as in gaol, guarded with the utmost efficiency by Gerald and his thugs.
He
doesn't know all of what he is guarding and
I
don't know exactly what he is up against. Everyone to his own galley as Georges would say.'

A young officer in uniform passed, and Georges, living up to his new part, supposed he ought to salute him and did.

‘Attached to the establishment by Signals,' the colonel explained. ‘My fellows remain civilians unless it's useful not to.'

They were outside a low brick building set on a slight plateau of grass with the farming Midlands rolling away in field and copse on all sides. Around them, spaced over a quarter of a square mile were masts linked by cables to each other and to the central building.

‘It doesn't belong to me,' Mannering assured them. ‘I just have a room here in case I need it.'

Carrying the brochures, he led them into a small office bare as a turret except for a trestle table along one side, hard chairs, a large desk and a formidable safe.

‘Sparks, we didn't have time for any breakfast and can't think on empty stomachs. We'll all have a stiff gin first and then you might go round to the canteen and bring us lots of anything edible. By the way, did you have any trouble with the police?'

‘Just a few questions. I was an army dendrologist recording the effect of laser guidance passing through thick timber.'

‘Did they know what a dendrologist was?'

‘No, sir. So I was able to blind them with science and cause some delay.'

Sparks returned with heaped plates of eggs and bacon, saying that the roast was off and he couldn't see anything else fit for distinguished foreigners.

‘How do you know I'm not British, Sparks?' Georges asked.

‘You gave the French salute, mate.'

When Zia and Georges were restored, the colonel placed the Intertatry brochures on his desk and pulled up chairs for them alongside him.

‘Now first of all are these two the same?'

‘I think so. Kren gave me two in case the Ministry lost one.'