Here Be Monsters Page 21

  He looked over his shoulder, shifting himself gingerly. But there was still no sign of Audley. ‘You said … you are David’s letter?’ He was putting two and two together nicely. ‘Then—I’m afraid it must be my old eyes, but I can’t read what’s written on you, my dear.’

  ‘No?’ When he called her ‘Elizabeth’ she would have won. ‘You’re quite wrong about David, you know, Mr Willis. You shouldn’t be worried about what he may do to your good Dr Thomas—he still believes that he made no mistake there.’ She nodded. ‘You should be worried for David. Because he’s a softie, like you.’

  ‘He is?’ He still wasn’t quite convinced. ‘But you’re not?’

  Smile. ‘Since you like stories, Mr Willis—do you remember the one about young Prince Edward at the Battle of Crecy?’

  He goggled slightly. ‘He was the one who became the bloodthirsty Black Prince, was he?’ He rubbed his chin with an audible rasp, reminding her unbearably of Father, who also hadn’t shaved too closely in his old age. But then he pointed at her. ‘Schoolmistress—the car’s wrong, and the clothes are wrong—but that’s what I would have said, before I knew you better.’ Then he shook his head apologetically. ‘I’m sorry—Prince Edward of Crecy, you were saying—?’

  Damn the man! ‘I’m here to win my spurs, Mr Willis. And my designed job is to get both of them—Dr Thomas and David. Because someone thinks Dr Thomas may be a traitor. And David … because he may have made a mistake, but he won’t admit it.’ She would have liked to have spun it out, but there was a limit to the time Audley could give her. ‘But I’ll settle for Thomas if you give me the chance.’

  He took only half-a-second to digest that. ‘How will my giving you Haddock Thomas help David? Always supposing that I can?’

  But she was ready for that. ‘If he admits the possibility that he was wrong, then he’s got a chance of turning the tables.’

  ‘And supposing he wasn’t wrong?’ His expression depressed her. ‘What then, Miss Loftus?’

  ‘Then I shalln’t win my spurs, shall I?’ They were too far into truth for comfort now. Or was that the truth?

  He seemed to sense her doubt. ‘Or you could just be telling me another story?’

  ‘I could.’ There was no more time for finesse. ‘But if I’m not, then your good Dr Thomas has all the time in the world, but your wicked David hasn’t. And there are two dead men who have no time at all—and you can ask David about them.’ She sat up in her deck-chair, feeling the canvas stretch dangerously under her. ‘David! Where are those drinks you were supposed to be getting? We’re dying of thirst out here!’

  ‘Coming!’ Audley’s voice reached them faintly from inside the cottage.

  She challenged the old man with a look. ‘Well?’

  ‘You’re an evil young woman. And I have insufficient experience of evil women.’ He sat back. ‘Evil boys—yes … Housemasters’ wives—yes, to my cost … And their daughters, latterly.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘But then, I must suppose that you are your father’s daughter—if, as you say, he would have approved of what you are doing … ’

  There was no reply to that: what Father might have thought of this was far beyond her imagination.

  Clink of glasses—David Audley as the drinks-waiter was equally unimaginable. ‘Where have you been, David?’

  He looked daggers at her, which she hoped were stage-weapons. ‘I have been carrying your bag up to the spare bedroom, Elizabeth. And, since there is but one spare bedroom, I have been searching for the Willis camp-bed—a relic of forgotten military campaigns, upon which I hope to snatch a few hours’ sleep before long.’ He presented the tray to Mr Willis. ‘Because we must be up-and-away before dawn, Willy. So I hope you have a reliable alarm-clock.’

  ‘No problem, dear boy. Thank you. I shall ask the telephone to wake us all up.’ The old man looked up at Audley over his glass. ‘So you have not been altogether open and above-board with me, it would seem?’

  ‘I haven’t?’ Audley lifted his tankard of beer off the tray, eyed the third deck-chair again, and then sank down on to the flagstones.

  ‘Not that it surprises me.’ The statement was delivered to Elizabeth. ‘He was always a strange little boy, you know, Elizabeth. And an even stranger youth—gregarious enough on the surface, but solitary and secretive underneath. It was partly due to his upbringing, of course.’ He returned his gaze to Audley. ‘So, at all events, it is you who are in trouble, as much as—or perhaps rather than -Haddock Thomas?’

  ‘Me?’ Audley raised one shoulder. ‘Could be. But I look after myself perfectly well. So don’t worry about that, Willy.’

  ‘Ah … now you must do better than that, if I am to help you. For Elizabeth here—she has been most persuasive. But not quite persuasive enough.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Audley’s face was set obstinately.

  ‘Be reasonable, dear boy. Why should one superannuated pedagogue wish to spill the beans about another? Such an action required the courtesy of an adequate explanation. You believed Haddock to be loyal after vetting twice long ago—correct?’

  Audley didn’t look at Elizabeth. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you believe him to be loyal still?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In spite of evidence to the contrary?’

  ‘There is no evidence to the contrary.’

  ‘But there have been … occurrences?’

  Audley said nothing.

  ‘What makes you so sure of Haddock?’ The old man accepted his brief as devil’s advocate.

  Audley’s lip twisted. ‘What makes you so sure of him, Willy—that we have to go through this rigmarole?’

  ‘Hmm … ’ The old man gave Audley a flash of loving approval, which he extinguished instantly when he remembered Elizabeth. ‘So we both confide unshakably in our judgements—yours from long ago, mine of a somewhat newer vintage. So why should we fear? Magna est veritas et praevalebit, dear boy—and Truth shall bear away the victory?’

  Audley sniffed. ‘If you believe that, then don’t fight on my side, Willy.’ But then he shifted his postion, bringing up his knees in front of him and clasping his arms across them in a quaintly youthful way which was quite uncharacteristic, but which Elizabeth found oddly touching. For this was how he might have faced the old man forty years ago or more. ‘My world isn’t like that, Willy dear, you silly old bugger. And your world wasn’t like that either, come to that … Besides which, the received wisdom in this case is that once upon a time I made a bad mistake somewhere down the line—do you understand?’ Mr Willis nodded. ‘We all do, dear boy—we all do.’ He didn’t look at Elizabeth. ‘But you didn’t make it with the Haddock—agreed?’

  ‘Right. And nor did I make it with Sir Peter Barrie, who is the other candidate here.’ Audley flicked a glance at Elizabeth.

  ‘Sir Peter—?’ Mr Willis perked up. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Audley shook his head. ‘The point is that I have the distinct feeling that I did make a mistake somewhere. I didn’t think so at first, but now … now we’ve lost a man. And that makes it a First Division match, Willy, I’m afraid. Because the other side wouldn’t have played so rough without damn good reason—‘ He frowned ‘—although I’ve been uneasy from the start, to be honest.’

  ‘Why?’ The old man caught the frown. ‘The original vetting wasn’t just routine.’ Audley shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you about that, Willy—sorry … ’ Another shake. ‘But the Other Side must have known how we’d react—how we couldn’t let it go. Not after other things, just recently.’

  ‘”The Other Side” meaning the fellows with snow on their boots and red stars on their caps?’ inquired Mr Willis gently. ‘The same chaps we ran up against at Balaclava and down the Valley of Death, when they were under different management?’

  Audley’s face screwed up. ‘Uh-huh. And I also can’t help feeling that they must have known damn well that it would be me who would be sent down the Valley again. Because I was there last time. And they know about me, you see. They’ve even go
t a man over there who’s an expert on me, who knows all my little secrets.’

  Elizabeth switched back to Mr Willis just in time to catch a curious flicker pass across his face. ‘All your little secrets, dear boy?’

  ‘All except the ones you know, Willy, anyway—about me being a sullen and solitary youth, and putting my hand up Mrs Clarke’s niece’s skirt in the old barn, on those occasions when I wasn’t being solitary.’ Audley rested his chin on his knees.

  The old man waved a mottled hand irritably. ‘Don’t be flippant, David. What do you mean?’

  ‘What indeed!’ Audley raised his head. ‘What I mean is … whether I was right or wrong about Haddock Thomas and Sir Peter Barrie back in ‘58, there is another interpretation of what I did then, which fits an altogether different scenario for it—one which will even do well enough if I was right, but much, much better if I just happened to be wrong.’ He raised his chin arrogantly. ‘Which I wasn’t, as it happens. But who’s to say that now, when old Fred’s dead, and Brigadier Stocker—and my old tutor at Cambridge—among others? Because if Haddock is a traitor, then why not David Audley too?’

  Old Mr Willis’s jaw dropped slightly. ‘But that’s daft, David.’

  Audley shrugged. ‘There’s a man back in our office—a “grandee”, you would call him, Willy—a bloody basket-hanger I’d call him—who’s gunning for me. But he doesn’t matter, I can take him any day, with one hand tied behind my back and one foot stuck in a bucket. But if the KGB is setting me up now—if they’re sicking me on like a hunting dog on to a motorway, after a real fox or an imaginary one—then that could be tricky.’

  Good God! thought Elizabeth: This was something which not even Paul himself had thought of—although David himself had pointed at it already, when he’d said ‘If it was disinformation once, it can be disinformation again … There’s a man on the other side … if I was in his shoes I know exactly what I’d be doing.’

  ‘I see.’ The old man eased himself forward, first to the edge of the deck-chair, then up and out of it. ‘Let me get you something, then.’

  Audley fumbled around for his glass. ‘That’s very civil of you -‘

  ‘Not that!’ Mr Willis shook his head at Elizabeth. ‘Carrying bags and looking for camp-beds, indeed! More likely, he’s already had more than his fair share, surreptitiously … ’He shuffled towards the cottage, still shaking his head.

  Audley’s eyes fixed on her over his beer as he drank. ‘And just what did you say to him … other than what he let slip?’

  He didn’t sound at all grateful, thought Elizabeth. ‘I asked him what was in Sir Frederick’s letter.’

  ‘Huh! Old Fred must have had something juicy on him, to make him swallow his liberal conscience.’ He gazed up at the thatched roof, on which a flight of house-sparrows was dog-fighting noisily. ‘They first met during the retreat to Dunkirk, in which Willy’s battalion was massacred and Fred acquired a mysterious DSO. And they never quite lost touch after that. In fact, I suspect Willy did a job or two for him later on. But he’s never talked about it.’ His eyes came back to her. ‘And I’ll bet he didn’t tell you a damn thing, either.’

  ‘He said he had a little secret, actually.’

  ‘He did?’ He watched the birds again. ‘I’ll bet it wasn’t so little! But when you’ve got a man’s secret, you’ve got the man himself. “If I told thee all was betrayed, what wouldst thou do?”—he knows his Kipling, does our Willy: he read me that when I was a boy. And now someone seems to be trying to tell me that, in a way … The only trouble being, I don’t know what this particular secret of mine is.’ Once more he came back to her. ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘He said his secret was safe now.’

  ‘Mmm … ’ He nodded. ‘It would be now that Fred’s dead. Because Fred kept all his promises, right to the end. Lucky Willy!’

  ‘And lucky David.’ The voice came from behind them: the old man had returned noiselessly. ‘Why lucky Willy, pray?’

  Audley waited until the old man had seated himself. ‘Your little secret—your little sin … or your little mistake, anyway … it died with old Fred, presumably? Or did you miss that obituary?’

  ‘No, dear boy. But it didn’t say much about him, did it?’

  ‘No.’ Audley shook his head. ‘But then it couldn’t, could it? It could hardly say how he burnt the midnight oil all those years so that you could indulge your liberal conscience in safety, could it?’ Audley paused. ‘Why “lucky David”? I don’t feel so lucky at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, but you are, dear boy, you are!’ The old man searched for his glass on the flagstones, and then sipped from it. ‘Lucky in love—to have such a beautiful and understanding wife, and intelligent to boot … and a daughter who takes after her mother, not her father.’ He set down the glass carefully. ‘Lucky to be a round peg in a round hole—or whatever shape it is, it is your shape, at all events.’ He looked at Elizabeth. ‘Lucky in this instance too, to have so loyal and persuasive a colleague—undeservedly lucky there indeed, as in those other regards.’ He smiled at Elizabeth. ‘And he was lucky in war, also. For I vividly recall—all too vividly still!—having occasion to trace the route of his armoured regiment across the Norman bocage, shortly after its passage therein … Purely by chance, you understand, Elizabeth. For I had other fish to fry … But it was not difficult—it was well-marked with burnt-out tanks and the fresh graves of their occupants. So many, in fact, that I gave up stopping to check identities after a while, where there were identities, as the odds on finding his name shortened. For I wasn’t so sure that he was so lucky then, you see.’ He switched to Audley suddenly. ‘Forty years to the day now, that would be, almost—eh, dear boy!’

  And the Pointe du Hoc too, give or take a week or two, thought Elizabeth as she switched also.

  Audley’s face was a blank mask. ‘You said you were getting something, Willy. But I don’t see anything. And I’m hearing nothing whatsoever of interest.’

  Mr Willis raised a mottled hand. ‘Season your impatience! “Comes the deer to my singing—Comes the deer to my song”—you remember that Red Indian poem we found, about the hunter lying in wait? You have sung your song, so now I have sung mine, over the telephone just a moment ago. And you are still most undeservedly lucky, because this deer is getting into his Jaguar car not far away—very close, indeed—and coming, because I have asked him to do so … And that he is even here, in his little house across the hill, is further proof of your outrageous luck, when he could have been the other side of the country, in his new factory in the Cambridge Science Park. Although, I do admit that I did ask him to stay, after you telephoned me this morning.’

  ‘Who, Willy?’ Audley interrupted him sharply.

  ‘Wait and see. Meanwhile I shall use these unforgiving minutes to tell you what you don’t know about Waltham School.’ He reached down for his glass, but raised his eyes to Elizabeth as his hand closed on it. ‘Or perhaps you do, eh?’

  The eyes were sharp and bright, belying the rest of the face. ‘It’s a very good school, I believe, Mr Willis.’

  That’s not the half of it, my dear.’ He let the hock-and-Seltzer moisten his lips. ‘Waltham is that rare perfect blend of pretension and common sense: it is that rare public school—or private independent school, in the modern jargon—in which any sensible child would like to be a pupil, or any fortunate teacher would like to be a master … or even an ancillary hanger-on—‘ He watched her carefully ‘—yes?’

  If he was testing her then she might as well pass his test. ‘It does take girls in its sixth form though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Only as an experiment.’ He twinkled with satisfaction. ‘But my spies tell me that the experiment is shortly to be abandoned, in any case. Does that please you?’ He waited only long enough to accept her nod. ‘And to what do you attribute Waltham’s excellence, eh?’

  Enough was enough. ‘You tell me, Mr Willis, I’m not an educationist.’

  ‘Money, Elizabeth, mon
ey!’ He slapped his knee, delighted with the outrageousness of his answer. ‘Enlightenment based on hard cash—the wickedly acceptable face of multi-national capitalism is its sure foundation.’ He challenged Audley in turn with this sudden departure from liberal conscience. ‘Did you know that, dear boy?’

  If Audley knew it, he didn’t show it. ‘I’m not an educationist either, Willy. I’m a heptagonal peg in a heptagonal hole—remember?’ The old man pointed at him. ‘Immingham is what you are—St Martin’s School, Immingham: a very minor public school, with much more pretension than common sense … even though it did get you into Cambridge, David.’

  ‘We beat Waltham at rugger. And you taught there, Willy.’

  Mr Willis pointed at him. ‘We beat Waltham because I coached the 1st XV—and because the headmaster regarded rugby as a form of Christianity. And there is no disgrace in giving one’s whole loyalty to a second-rate battalion.’ He gave Elizabeth an old-fashioned look. ‘Besides which, I doubt if Waltham would have taken a second-rate classics master, Elizabeth.’

  Audley had the agonized expression of a man who wanted to say something agreeable, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do so.

  ‘But at least those were the days when the classics still mattered, before Oxford and Cambridge had sold their birth-right, and the pass with it.’ Mercifully, the old man was still staring at her. ‘You know what they used to say about a classical education, my dear?’

  It was not the moment to recall her brief career as fifth-form Latin mistress, acting, temporary, unpaid and only prepared one lesson ahead. ‘No, Mr Willis.’

  ‘Hah! It enables us to look down contemptuously on those who have not shared its advantages. And it also fits us for places of emolument not only in this world, but in that which is to come.’

  Elizabeth could no longer pretend she wasn’t looking at Audley, because he was growling now.

  ‘Take no note of him, Elizabeth,’ the old man pulled her back to him. ‘That is an apocryphal rendering of a remark allegedly made in a Good Friday sermon in Oxford Cathedral. And it is no longer true, alas—although it once was … except at Waltham School, perhaps. For there the classics still have status, thanks to the tradition established by the Haddock who was senior classics master there for many years.’