Tomorrow's ghost Page 9

  ‘Oh, no! He’s sending you home—Fighting Jack is. And that’s a very different thing …

  You’re missing the point, Princess. And that’s not like you.’

  ‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’

  ‘Not flattery. It’s just that I need straw to make my bricks.’

  ‘And I don’t?’

  ‘Sometimes you don’t, I’ve noticed. I was hoping this might be one of those times.’

  ‘Not this time. Why don’t you ask Colonel Butler?’

  ‘Ask Fighting Jack? You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, I’m not … kidding.’ (She had heard the anger in her voice under the weariness, but had no longer cared to conceal it.) (‘You seem to have some sort of bee in your bonnet about him, but I think he’s pretty damn good, what I’ve seen of him. So why don’t you stop bitching—‘ (Sod it! She had used that word again!) ‘—stop complaining and just ask him straight out?’

  (He had laughed then.) ‘Oh, Princess—you are under par! That’s the whole point—that’s what is really odd about us being here, and we don’t know why—that’s bad enough. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but it has to somehow, that’s all … we just can’t work it out.’

  ‘Yes?’ (She had shivered again: the aftermath of fear was this bone-deep chill, a deja-vu of the grave.) ‘So what?’

  ‘Christ, Frances! He doesn’t know the answer either—like, he’s a convoy commander, and they’ve sent him a couple of battle-cruisers—‘

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Paul … spare me the naval history.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t even know what a battle-cruiser is—and I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh—sorry. Princess. But what I mean is—‘

  * * *

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Sir Frederick Clinton. ‘That must be Orion—the belt with the little dagger … and that reddish star in Taurus—‘

  * * *

  ‘—what I mean is. Butler doesn’t know why we’re here either. As if he hasn’t got enough to worry about as it is … But then he’s a crafty old devil—which is why he’s packing you off home, Frances dear.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Paul?’

  ‘Top brass sends you up—he sends you packing. If we’re meant to be a team he’s splitting us up before we’ve got started. So if they send you back again they’re going to have to do some explaining. I tell you, he may look like the very model of an old-time major-general, but he’s one smart operator, believe me. I’ve been watching him—I haven’t had anything else to do but watch him—and I’ve changed my mind about him.

  He’s bloody smart.’

  * * *

  ‘—and that reddish star in Taurus must be Aldebaran. And there’s the Plough, bright as anything—quite splendid! Do you know about stars, Frances?’

  Butler, thought Frances. She had learnt precious little about Comrade O’Leary (in fact, she had learnt more about John Ronald Reuel Tolkien than about Comrade O’Leary), and even less about surveillance technology, but she had had a grandstand view of Colonel Butler in action, and so had Paul Mitchell.

  ‘No, Sir Frederick.’

  It was no longer totally black. Her eyes had become used to the darkness, so that she could make out the loom of him against the darker mass of shrubbery.

  ‘A pity, with this sky of yours.’

  Butler. But why Butler? It didn’t make sense.

  The darkness which remained was a comfort to her: it not only equalised Robbie’s old dressing 99 gown with what would surely be an immaculate overcoat, but it also concealed her bewilderment.

  ‘Yes. But do you know about battle-cruisers?’

  ‘Battle-cruisers?’ She could hear his surprise, the darkness seemed to magnify it.

  ‘Battle-cruisers?’

  She had the initiative now, but she would have to work hard to keep it.

  ‘They’re no good for convoy work, I believe.’

  ‘Yes .. . that is to say, no … unless the enemy was using some powerful surface ships as commerce raiders, I suppose…’ He trailed off uncertainly.

  ‘So what were battle-cruisers used for?’

  ‘What were they used for?’ He paused for a moment. ‘Well, if I remember correctly, the theory behind them was big guns plus high speed, but not much armour. So they could catch anything, and run away from anything they couldn’t sink … Though I don’t think it worked out quite like that in practice …’ He paused again. ‘But I thought you were an expert in fairy stories—I didn’t know you were interested in naval matters.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Frances decided to let the negative serve for both subjects; it would be too exhausting to explain away the first misapprehension, and it really didn’t matter any more, anyway.

  ‘No?’ The single word was heavy with curiosity and caution, carefully packed in his habitual politeness. He had decided to concede the initiative, and was waiting to see what she would do with it.

  ‘But Paul Mitchell is.’

  ‘Paul Mitchell? I thought military history was his special subject. In fact, I’m sure it is.’

  ‘Well, he’s into naval history now. Sir Frederick.’

  ‘Is he now? With a particular emphasis on battle-cruisers?’

  ‘Not particularly. He has some extremely complicated theories—mathematical theories—about the size of convoys in the last war.’

  ‘Indeed?’ He was smiling at her again. She couldn’t see the smile, but she could sense it. ‘That would be like him, of course—he has an insatiable appetite for facts and figures … and for facts in general. It’s the historian in him … And you get on well with Paul, do you, Frances?’

  If we’re meant to be a team he’s splitting us up before we’ve got started, thought Frances.

  He meaning Butler—

  It was time to stop sparring.

  ‘So where did the battle-cruisers come in?’ Sir Frederick jogged her obligingly.

  ‘Yes. Well—‘ Frances drew a long careful breath ‘—he was wondering—Paul was wondering … and so am I, Sir Frederick … what a pair of battle-cruisers were doing in Colonel Butler’s convoy, where they were absolutely useless—where they weren’t needed and they weren’t even wanted.’

  ‘Ah—I see…’ For a moment there was silence between them. ‘Yes … and where one of the battle-cruisers was very nearly sunk without a trace this afternoon, to no very good purpose too—so it seemed to you, eh?’

  There was no answer to that, only a memory which would have been ridiculous if it had not been still so terrifying: sunk without a trace in a duck-pond, H.M.S. Fitzgibbon.

  ‘And did you come to any conclusion about this … incomprehensible piece of naval strategy, Frances?’

  Frances swallowed. ‘Not at the time. I think Paul was close, but he didn’t have enough to go on.’

  I need straw to make my bricks.

  ‘But now you have enough to go on?’

  He was here, standing in the darkness of her garden, that was all she had to go on, thought Frances. And if that was enough to make her reach for a conclusion, that certainty, it was still not enough to make the conclusion a believable one.

  ‘I require an answer to that question, Frances.’

  That was a direct order, as direct and explicit as he could make it short of grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking an answer out of her; require—she could remember David Audley defining the difference between ‘request’ and ‘require’ in a way which made time stand still over two centuries of military and diplomatic semantics—require left a subordinate not a millimetre of choice, one way or another.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then why do you think you and Paul were sent to Yorkshire?’

  ‘To watch Colonel Butler.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  Require was still in force.

  ‘Because that’s what we did, in effect.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Because nothing else makes sense.’

  �
�Go on.’

  ‘And you are here now.’

  ‘Which you think makes it a matter of internal security. Go on.’

  She was tired, and the thick serge material of the old dressing gown no longer kept the night chill from her shoulders.

  ‘Which still doesn’t make much sense … sir.’

  ‘And do you think Colonel Butler could reach the same conclusion—that you were sent to watch him?’

  ‘I don’t know Colonel Butler well enough to answer that. I didn’t have long enough to watch him.’

  ‘But I require your opinion.’

  Require.

  ‘I think … no, I don’t think so. I think—Paul thought—that he wanted to know why we’d been sent to him, and that was why he sent me back home. If you want me to go back again to watch him I’ll have to have a much better cover story.’

  ‘He smelt a rat, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that.’ Frances thought hard for a moment. It occurred to her that Butler would have to be damn good to have worked out what they had been doing, since they hadn’t known themselves what they were doing.

  But then Butler was damn good.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think he simply didn’t know what to make of us … I suppose it depends whether or not he’s expecting to be watched. If he is, then … yes. If he isn’t … then I don’t think so.

  He had a lot of other matters on his hands.’

  Silence.

  ‘Good.’

  More silence. It was almost like being blind: she could sense the presence of the things she knew were around her. Sir Frederick two yards in front of her, the incinerator on her right, the cricket stump at her feet, and on her left the scatter of Marilyn’s proofs of identity bulging out of the plastic handbag—Birth Certificate and National Insurance card. Post Office Savings book and Agency references … even the misspelt letter from ‘Dad’ and the holiday snapshot of Marilyn in her bikini, posed self-consciously against the alleged beach umbrellas of Torremolinos. So much effort for nothing!

  ‘What is your opinion of Colonel Butler?’

  It was a logical question after her last answer. And it required—required—the truth.

  Nothing else would do.

  ‘I think he’s good.’

  Well, that was nothing more than the truth, anyway. If she was expected to have noticed more than that it was their hard luck, they’d have to go to Paul for that.

  ‘But you said you didn’t see very much of him really, did you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ The truth requirement roused her obstinacy. ‘But I liked what I saw.’

  ‘Yes. But that wasn’t a great deal, was it?’ He pressed the point again, like a man committed to pushing a door marked ‘Pull’. ‘I’m afraid things didn’t go quite according to plan there. We were expecting him to keep you alongside him a little longer—as he did with Paul.’

  If by ‘things’ he was referring to a certain briefcase, then things had certainly not gone quite according to plan, thought Frances. Yet she had never observed such insensitivity in him before, and he wasn’t the sort of man who pushed ‘Pull’ doors. So he was after something else.

  ‘I think he sent me to the Library because it was supposed to be safe. Sir Frederick.’

  ‘Because you were a woman, d’you mean?’

  He was goading her, quite deliberately.

  ‘Possibly. I gather he doesn’t altogether approve of women, that’s true … But I’d guess it was also because I’d never worked for him before, so he didn’t want to have to worry about how I’d perform.’

  ‘Yes?’ He’d wanted more, and now he knew it was coming.

  ‘You can check with Paul—as you say, he saw more than I did…’ And what would Paul say? she wondered. Well, Paul was no fool, and even with no straw for his bricks he’d been way ahead of her this time. In fact, he’d had the answer in the palm of his hand—he’d grasped it, but he simply hadn’t recognised it. Which wasn’t really surprising, because it was an almost unbelievable answer.

  The enormity of it—her answer, her conclusion—hit her again.

  They had been watching Colonel Butler.

  And it was a matter of internal security.

  She knew she was right. Even if Sir Frederick hadn’t yet confirmed it in so many direct words, she knew she was right, just as she knew that Colonel Butler was formidably good at his job even though she had observed him directly for only a few minutes. But she also knew that there was something not right—something not wrong, but nevertheless not right either—with her conclusion.

  And part of that not-rightness lay in the way Sir Frederick was waiting so patiently for her to put her thoughts together, too patiently for the circumstances, as though she had all the time in the world; time which he couldn’t have, otherwise he wouldn’t be here, in the dark of her garden.

  ‘I don’t know …’ What he wanted her to explain couldn’t rationally be explained; even in the dark it would be like taking her clothes off in public before an eager and critical crowd. Yet his patience hemmed her in on all sides. ‘I suppose you could say I saw him when he was up against it—first on a job he hated and then when everything was going wrong … and you can’t measure time in minutes at times like that.’

  ‘So you had enough … of that sort of time to observe Colonel Butler to your satisfaction?’ He sounded unsatisfied.

  ‘I thought so, yes.’ She knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

  Thought?’

  ‘After what you’ve said—‘

  ‘Forget what I’ve said.’ He cut her off quickly. ‘I haven’t said anything.’

  ‘But you have.’

  ‘Then you must consider the possibility that you may have misinterpreted it.’ He paused. ‘You were very impressed with Colonel Butler’s performance under stress.

  That’s understandable—he’s an extremely competent man. He wouldn’t be where he is, doing what he’s doing, if he wasn’t. You’re only telling me what I already know, Frances.’

  ‘What else do you want?’ She heard her voice sharpen defensively. ‘What else do you expect?’

  ‘From you—I don’t want sentences beginning “I suppose you could say”. I know what I’d say. I want to know what you can say. I want to know what you felt.’

  Now he was spelling it out, what she had already sensed. And now she could also sense the urgency beneath his patience, like blast-furnace heat through thick asbestos.

  But how did he know that she had felt anything about Colonel Butler? And even if he thought he knew—he couldn’t know a thing like that, it wasn’t possible to do more than think it—why did he want to know what she felt? Of what conceivable value would that be to him?

  ‘Come on, Frances—‘ the voice out of the dark was gentle, but inexorable ‘—just tell me what you felt about him. It’s quite simple.’

  ‘It isn’t simple—‘ Her own voice sounded harsh and uncertain by comparison. ‘No, I don’t mean that—it’s very simple. But it isn’t rational. I mean, I can’t explain it rationally.’

  ‘Then don’t explain it. Just describe it.’

  ‘But it’s too fanciful.’

  ‘So … you wouldn’t put it in a report to Brigadier Stocker—I accept that. But you are not reporting to Stocker now, you are reporting to me. And I want an answer.’

  Frances felt a stirring of fear again, but this time it was a fear she could handle.

  Indeed, it was almost—or not almost, but actually—a sensation she found pleasing: if fear was a habit-forming drug then there were some varieties of it to which she was immune, like the briefcase fear; but this variety was indistinguishable from pure excitement, like the recurrent dream of bird-flight she had had in the old days—in Robbie’s days—when she had not understood how she could fly, or why she was flying, but only that the ground was falling away from her and she was free of it.

  So now she was in the middle of something she didn’t understand, somethi
ng which was very perilous—to be off the record with Sir Frederick must be altogether perilous: if she was flying, then it was as Icarus had flown, towards the sun—but at least for a moment she was free of restraint, and of the shyness which always clogged her opinions. ‘You want me to be—you require me—to be fanciful?’

  ‘Require? Oh yes, I see—“require” according to David Audley—is that it?’ The smile was there in the darkness again. ‘Well, then—yes. I require it, Frances.’

  ‘All right. Then I had a feeling—a fancy—about Colonel Butler. If you like … an instinct.’

  ‘An instinct … Yes?’

  ‘I said I thought he was good.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘So you did.’

  ‘It was a Freudian choice of words. I didn’t mean simply good at his job—efficient, formidable—I meant good.’

  This time she understood his silence. It was an awkward word to digest, even an anaconda might think twice before trying to swallow it whole.

  ‘Good .. . meaning virtuous?’ He surprised her by not even attempting to belittle the word down to manageable size with an easier one.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. Which accounts for your disquiet—whatever side a virtuous man is on, that’s the right side. Do you think that is invariably the case?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But in this case you hope so—even if it makes your other guess wrong?’

  ‘Is it wrong?’

  ‘A good question. Do you often have instincts like this about people?’

  He was playing with her, thought Frances bitterly. And yet she could have sworn that a moment before, when he had required her to tell him what he felt about Colonel Butler, he had been deadly serious.

  But that moment was over. ‘Why are you so interested in my so-called instinct. Sir Frederick?’

  ‘Not only yours, my dear.’

  ‘But mine in this instance.’

  ‘True … Then for two reasons.’ He paused. ‘You see, everyone has the faculty of instinct, more or less—it’s a survival from our animal past. Our pre-prehistoric legacy, if you like.’