The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (8 page)

Zia was impressed. The man's pretence of worldly wisdom seemed to be merely an unnecessary decoration on the real thing.

‘Mr Longwill, you are so wise.'

‘Kind of you, but I doubt it. I can find my way through some wire fences but not that one.'

‘Perhaps you could if you were to go and see Herbert Spring yourself.'

‘I will for your sake, if you can give me something simple and sane to tell him.'

‘You told Georges that Bridge Holdings had interests in Prague, so they must have an agent there. Ask Mr Spring if the agent knew Karel Kren of Intertatry and if he ever gave him the name of Bridge Holdings. If Spring answers that he doesn't know, then someone should go to Prague and talk to the agent. It would be very dangerous to write or telephone. And leave me out of it altogether! Explain that you were brought up with Georges and you're doing it for him. You don't know of my existence. He'll talk to you about me and tell you that I'm an adventuress and a crook. But he liked Georges.'

‘You'll be here for a few days more and all right?'

‘I'll be here till I know what has happened to Georges.'

‘Good! I'll pass the word round that the general has asked me to look after you.'

‘At Eton together?'

‘Do you want to walk home?'

‘If you'll walk with me.'

‘Zia, you are adorable. Count on me!'

He dropped her at the White Hart and drove away after a genial and squirely word with the proprietor. Zia made for the lounge which provided for RESIDENTS ONLY four comfortable chairs and a table with its own serving hatch. A man standing at the bar politely intercepted her and asked:

‘Mrs Fanshawe?'

‘Yes?'

He was wrinkled by the sun with grey stubble on a rugged, badly-shaven face and black, wavy hair turning grey over the temples. Already used to judging English types in a country bar, she decided that he was neither farmer nor farmhand nor one of the bolder spirits out of fast cars who were inclined to approach her and offer a drink. He could be police; he could be worse. But neither were likely as yet to have spotted the connection between Mrs Fanshawe and Georges Rivac.

With his back to the bar he asked in a low voice where he could speak to her. His accent was markedly foreign, probably Latin. She led him out to a garden table between wallflowers and tulips where they could be seen from bar and kitchen windows but not overheard.

‘I come with a message from a man you know.'

‘Oh, thank God!'

‘Wait! No thank God. Not for him. He asked me to tell you that you are quite safe. They know nothing of you.'

‘Who is they?'

‘Those who have him, Mrs Fanshawe. I don't like it here. We can be seen from the road.'

A difficult problem. She could hardly ask a stranger up to her bedroom without arousing curiosity nor could they talk in RESIDENTS ONLY where every word could be heard through the hatch. When she hesitated he said:

‘I came to sell you a motorcycle, Mrs Fanshawe. You answered my advertisement. It is in the garage. I did not want to leave it outside. My name is Diego Irata, at your service.'

Evidently a quick-witted and experienced operator. The garage was empty. Mr Irata ran the engine of his Triumph as if showing it off.

‘Mrs Fanshawe, I do not ask what you are. I take a risk for you and hope you will take one for me. I will tell you frankly about myself. I am a Spaniard and a communist, the servant of an Englishman very distinguished. He too is a member of the Party, secretly, for many years. He is not one of their
policía
. He is bigger than that, an intelligencer. But they were in a hurry and desperate and could find no one else, I think, with the facilities. He had to obey.

‘And why are you, Diego Irata, a traitor, you will ask. I will explain. At last I can go home, if I can get there.'

She could see that Irata was prepared to go on justifying himself indefinitely and firmly switched the conversation to Georges, putting on the manner of a professional interrogator—or as much of it as she could remember—friendly but with a hint of powers in reserve. Irata freely accepted that she had a right to question, but his answers only led to growing despair. No reason to thank God was right.

Georges was held in the house of a Mr Fyster-Holmes, apparently an imposing specimen of the governing class who had retired early from the Foreign Office and was now in his early fifties. Irata did not know the name of the prisoner nor his importance. The house was on the right bank of the Thames up river from Moulsford, with its garden running down to a patch of marsh in which was a small muddy creek and a landing stage. It was approached from the main road by a lane and partly hidden by a belt of trees. Georges was to be embarked on a motor cruiser that very night and taken down to the estuary for transhipment. Irata himself was to go with him.

‘That is why I am here, Mrs Fanshawe. I shall be taken to the east and never allowed to return home. Not to go home to Spain when now at last I can? That I do not accept!'

Zia ordered him to accompany her at once to the police. Whatever the cost to her family and herself, it seemed the only hope. Irata refused, saying she must go by herself.

‘But it will be useless. I tell you this man has served his country abroad with distinction. Think! You say you are told by his Spanish servant that he is a spy and always has been. They will laugh at you. Then perhaps you tell them who is the prisoner and what interest you have. That is more serious. They may take you to higher authority who will give you a nice cup of tea and start enquiries. And while you are waiting and repeating your story to sergeants and colonels and generals of police the boat will have passed out to sea and Fyster-Holmes will deny any knowledge of it, swearing that it was all invented by the communist Irata.'

‘Have they hurt him?'

‘I never heard him scream so I do not think so. Out of respect for Fyster-Holmes they would not risk a scandal. He is frightened enough already. It's bad luck for him that he has so quiet a house by the river.'

‘Who is in the house besides your boss?'

‘Only one. A Czech.'

‘No wife?'

‘No.'

‘His tastes?'

‘As you imagine. But do not mistake our relationship! I was only his servant, both of us at the orders of the Party.'

‘When did you speak to my friend?'

‘This morning. I was on guard outside the door and forbidden to talk to him. But he heard me cursing in my own language because I had dreamed of returning to my hills above the sea and now knew I never could. A man may serve the world,
señora
, but still be sick with longing for one little spot in it. He overheard me and spoke to me in Spanish. “Do me a favour,
compañero
!” he said, and gave me the message for you. It was then I decided I would run. It seemed to me you might be a friend. I had need of one.'

‘Mr Irata, you will take me at once to the house on the back of your motorcycle.'

‘Not I!'

‘Then you'll get no help. It will take time to get your permission to return to Spain. An exiled communist must visit the consulate and register his name and I don't know what else. These people will trace you and kill you. Or the English may put you in gaol as a spy.'

‘It is true I do not know where to stay safely or how to travel,' Irata answered resignedly.

‘I will do it all for you if you will drop me at the lane which leads to the house. Then you are to go straight to Alderton which is near here. Down the road you will see the sign post. Find the Manor Farm—it is the biggest house—and give a note to Mr Longwill. Wait here for me while I write it!'

She dashed to her room and scribbled:

Dear Paul: Please take this man on as your new Spanish valet. Keep him out of sight. I know where Georges is and am going after him. No time for police, but perhaps I can help.

She quickly changed into a sweater and trousers and racked her brains for an excuse to give the landlord for suddenly disappearing on the back of a stranger's motorbike. She wanted to buy one of Mr Longwill's horses, she said, and had asked her husband's farrier to vet it for her. He was free this evening, so she was going to run out to Alderton with him. A weak story even for a vague woman explaining in a hurry, but it would have to do.

The sun had gone down when she set off on Irata's pillion, and the land no longer smiled at her. Irata chugged briskly along narrow roads just below a range of wooded hills with flattish country to the right, sometimes invisible behind the rampant green of May, sometimes mazed with tree and hedge and disappearing into a formless distance. She was disturbed by this journey into nowhere without any mental map or any of Georges's confidence to reassure her.

In less than half an hour Irata crossed a stone bridge, ran through a country town with a flickering of lights and a drawing of curtains and then turned left between the river and another range of hills. So that was the famous Thames which she had only known in London where it possessed a certain dignity like a raddled and incontinent old duchess in attendance on the court. Up here it was the duchess in youth, pretty but undistinguished . . . What a closed country this England was, without any great river, lake or mountain! The inhabitants perceived its singularities with pride, though to the foreigner it was all the same and mysterious in its sameness. And here she, a Hungarian, rode behind an unknown Spaniard launching herself into an obscurity of night and geography. The only comfort was that Appinger might find it no less foreign. To this Fyster-Holmes, however, there would be no mysteries and Irata too seemed quite at home.

‘How long have you been in England?' she asked him.

‘Five years.'

‘And before that?'

‘Mexico.'

‘You have liked it here?'

‘In everything except that it is not Spain. Look! I have read history. England like Spain has lost an empire. We sank very low. So could England. The hope for both is to be part of something greater than ourselves.'

That in a way was what had accounted for the sympathy between Kren and Rivac; the mirage of a unity less rigid than that of communism. It reminded her that she had a creed to support her; she was not just a foolish woman adventuring in a void.

Irata pulled up.

‘Round the next corner is the lane to the house,' he said. ‘I shall go straight past, stopping for an instant to let you get off. Take cover in the trees, and God be with you if there is one!'

‘Is the house guarded?'

‘No. Now that I have gone, only the boss and the Czech will be there. But the boat may bring others. How much am I to tell this Longwill?'

‘Nothing yet. If I am free I will telephone him. If I disappear, tell him all your story.'

She slid off and into the trees at the entrance to the lane. The noise of the motorbike faded away. The road was fairly busy, headlights streaming past the inconspicuous way to the house, yet the house itself had a quiet and natural privacy protecting comings and goings without any need for special security. No wonder Fyster-Holmes was nervous at the sudden intrusion of violence! Here by the river he could relax, certain that his home had never been under suspicion and had never given reason for it.

It was now dark enough to sneak cautiously along the verge of the lane. Though Irata had assured her there were no guards she was alarmed by every patch of darkness and once suffered from a shivering which could not be put down to the chill of evening. As soon as she could make out the outline of the house she was calmer. It was an elegant rectangle with a circular gravel drive to the left and to the right what looked like lawns and flower beds. A few dim lights were showing.

She followed the scanty cover to the right and discovered that the garden was terraced. That was fine. By keeping low she could work her way along the south side of the house and see before she was seen. Then the river, black and silent, came into view. The east side faced it across an indeterminate distance which had to be the marsh. The creek was hard to distinguish. Eventually she found that it was not in that direction at all but below the garden on the south side. Steps led down through two low terraces to a wooden landing stage above a black pool. That must be where the motor launch would arrive. The water, still and unbroken, looked deep enough.

Zia decided that it was pointless to close in on the house. The only useful action was to await the boat; at least she could take note of its name, size and colour and describe it to the police: Looking for cover from which to watch she explored the bank of the creek, revetted with planks and still a little boggy from spring floods which had come up as far as the lowest terrace. Beyond the landing stage the pool ended in hummocks of black mud with slimy water glistening between them in the scanty light of a waning moon and clusters of rushes from which half the length of a punt was sticking out. Even if one could get into the reeds without sinking it would be impossible to escape without a noisy, squelching struggle.

The only possible hiding place was in a tangle of twigs and rushes where the main branch of a leaning willow had fallen into the water and was carrying on its own amphibious life. The punt too was tempting if it could be reached; lying down in it she would be covered from the landing stage but probably in full view of the boat as it came up the creek. The punt on closer inspection was not moored to anything at all. The visible timber was clean and polished, so it was not derelict. It must have been given an impatient shove into the reeds to make room for the expected craft without bothering how it was to be recovered. There was other evidence of haste, now that she had time to think about it. On the edge of a flower bed she had passed a wheelbarrow half full of weeds or plants with a garden fork leaning up against it. Somebody had stopped work in a hurry and had been too occupied ever since to finish and put tools away—perhaps when Georges arrived or Irata left.