Above Suspicion, Page 3

  “I hope we meet again,” he said. “And don’t worry, Mrs. Myles. You will see that England will not be at war. You are all good pacifists, here. Enjoy yourselves abroad.”

  Richard said, “I hope so,” and smiled. He took his wife’s arm and piloted her skilfully to the door. Frame waved a sherry bottle from two groups away.

  “Lively party,” Frances called over to him, but the noise of voices around her drowned her words. Frame’s answer was also unheard. They exchanged smiles of understanding, a wave of the hand, and then Frances and Richard were outside the room into quietness and fresh air.

  Richard lowered his voice. “I got to you as quickly as I could when I saw an argument had developed. I thought you had sense enough by this time not to waste your breath arguing with a Nazi. He is, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. I think he didn’t mean to show it, but I made him angry.”

  “What interests me is what he said to anger you.”

  “Was it obvious?” Frances was dismayed.

  “To me, yes. No one else would notice. What was it anyway?”

  “Britain.”

  “Anything else?”

  Frances shook her head.

  “All right; let’s drop it. I hope you weren’t too intelligent, though. Peter wants us to be the unworldly don with his dim wife.”

  Frances stared. “But we needn’t start that business until we are on the boat train.”

  “Probably not; still, you didn’t notice Peter taking any chances, did you?”

  “I must say I thought he was a little—theatrical. He was very unlike himself.”

  Richard shook his head slowly. “No to both of these. He was too worried to be theatrical. By the way, he didn’t turn up at the party.”

  “Perhaps he changed his mind,” said Frances.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps he was just being very sure that he wouldn’t meet us again. That’s probably nearer it.” Richard’s voice was gloomy.

  Frances pressed his arm to her side. “Cheer up, Richard, or you’ll have me worried in case I spoil your fun. It’s one of the troubles of having a wife, you know. You just can’t get rid of her.” She was rewarded with almost a smile.

  But the sun had gone, and with it the bronze in the leaves overhead. The playing fields were empty. Over the grey walls and the sharply pointed rooftops the sounds of bells followed them as they walked slowly towards their house.

  3

  FAREWELL TO SAFETY

  The rest of the week passed quickly. Frances was busy with the closing of their house. She also made a hectic dash to London for some clothes she “simply must have.” Richard finished the odds and ends of work which face a tutor towards the end of term—but from Peter Galt they heard nothing.

  “Which means we are to go ahead,” said Richard at breakfast on Wednesday.

  That morning he bought their tickets to Paris and interviewed the bank about a supply of Traveller’s Cheques and some French money. The expense of their unknown journeys had worried him, but his bank manager, who had always been tactful about overdrafts, met him with a discreet smile. The bank had been authorised to give Mr. Myles a letter of credit. Richard did not ask who had authorised it. The bank manager treated it all as something merely routine.

  In the evening Richard hunted through his bookshelves and picked out the Baedekers and maps. He had a fair collection of these, for since his first year at Oxford he had spent part of each summer walking and scrambling his way across mountains into villages. He spread them out around him as he sat on the floor of the study, and lit his pipe. He wondered which he could omit: surely the Pyrenees and Majorca would be unnecessary. Peter had hinted in the direction of Central Europe. Still, it was better to be safe; he knew his way about these maps, and they ought to go along, all of them. He would take less clothes if his suitcase got too crowded.

  Frances came in, her hair brushed loosely to her shoulders.

  “Don’t overwork, darling,” she said with mock concern. “I begin to feel exhausted. I came in to ask you to sharpen my pencil.” She held out a miserable stub.

  “What on earth do you do with your pencils?” asked Richard. “Gnaw them?”

  Frances disregarded this with the adroitness of four years of marriage. She looked at the note-book in her hand, and checked off the items she had written there. Richard watched her as she bit her lip and counted. He felt that wave of emotion which came to him when he looked at Frances in her unguarded moments; and he had the bleak horror which always attacked him then when he thought how easy it might have been never to have met her.

  Frances straightened her legs. “That’s that,” she said. “Just my own things to pack tomorrow after Anni departs. Richard, that is going to be a difficult moment. Other summers it was different. She always knew she would be coming back in time for October. She seems to feel she will never be back here. I found her packing in floods of tears this evening. I’ve sent her out now to say goodbye to her friends. So there goes the best cook we shall ever have. It was really rather painful this evening. I’ve got just as much attached to her as she has to us. She wants her father’s farm to have the honour of a visit from the gnädige Frau and the Herr Professor, if they should visit Innsbruck this summer.”

  Richard finished sharpening the pencil. “Her people were pro-Dollfuss, weren’t they?”

  “They were… I have a feeling that they have changed. Anni has been very silent about them since she returned last year. One thing she did tell me. Her sister told her that if she came back to England and a war broke out she would be stoned to death. That is what they said we did in 1914. Isn’t it appalling?”

  “Well, I suppose if a nation allows concentration camps, it will find it hard to believe that other people don’t use similar methods. Cheer up, old girl, who cares what a lot of uncivilised people think anyway? It’s only the opinion of the civilised that really matters.”

  “Yes, but it looks as if a lot of the civilised will be killed because they ignored the thoughts of the uncivilised. Ignoring doesn’t expose them, you know, Richard.” She traced a pattern on the carpet with her pencil. “Sorry, darling, I’m tired, and depressed. We’ve all gone so political these days. I worry and worry inside me, and I think everyone else is doing the same; it is difficult to forget what we all went through last September.”

  Richard tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. “Yes, it’s difficult,” he said slowly. “I shan’t forget helping to dig trenches in the parks, or the paper tape on all the windows, or the towels we were told to keep beside a bucket of water. All the time I was digging I kept wondering whether the trenches would be any good at all, and I knew they wouldn’t be. I didn’t think much of the towel idea either. But what else was there? And then bastards like von Aschenhausen come along all smiles and bows. And wonder why people are not enthusiastic about them. They blackmailed us with bombers one year, and go back on the agreement they had extorted out of us, and then expect to be welcomed as friends. All within nine months. All that, Frances, makes one of the reasons why I listened to Peter. If I could put a spoke of even the most microscopic size in the smallest Nazi wheel, I’d think it a pretty good effort.” He had risen, and was pacing up and down the study.

  “I think this interruption is due. I see that ‘proposition look’ dawning in your eye. Don’t try, don’t you try to leave me at home. I’m coming.”

  “I was afraid you were.”

  “Richard, my dear, you know that whenever you imagine exciting things they always turn out duller than a wet day in Wigan. It’s the parties you don’t get excited about which turn out to be fun. Now here we are, both thinking of ourselves in terms of Sard Harker. What will happen? We’ll go to Paris, and then find that the man does not turn up. I’ll wear a red rose for three nights, and you’ll spill Cointreau for three nights, until the whole cafe is gaping at us. And then we’ll go on our holiday, wondering if Peter’s sense of humour has become over-developed since Bucharest.”

  Richa
rd laughed. “You sound almost convincing Frances. But I know that you know what I know. This is no bloody picnic.”

  She rose from the floor, and went over to the window. It was wide open. She leaned forward to breathe in the dewy smell of the earth. The lilac trees at the end of the garden had silver leaves. Richard came to her, and slipped an arm round her waist. They stood there in silence watching a garden moonlit. Frances glanced at him. He was lost in thought.

  “If you want to know,” he said at last, reading her thoughts in the uncanny way two people living together learn to do, “I am thinking we should photograph this in our memory. We may need to remember it often for the next few years.”

  Frances nodded. Around them were the other gardens, the mixed perfume of flowers. The walls hung heavy with roses and honeysuckle, their colours whitened in the strong moonlight. The deep shadows of trees, blurring the outline of the other houses, were pierced here and there with the lights from uncurtained windows. The giant elms in the Magdalen deer park stood sentinels of peace.

  She said suddenly, “Richard, let’s go up the river; just for half an hour.”

  “The dew is heavy. You had better wrap up well.”

  “I shall. It won’t take five minutes.” She kissed him suddenly and left him. He heard her running upstairs, the banging of the wardrobe door in their bedroom. So Frances had this feeling too, this feeling of wanting to say goodbye.

  She came downstairs in less than her five minutes dressed in a sweater and trousers, and with one of his silk handkerchiefs round her neck. They walked the short distance to the boathouse in silence. They got out the canoe in a matter-of-fact way, as if they were defying the moonlight to weaken them. They paddled swiftly up the narrow river. White mists were rising from the fields on either side of them, encircling the roots of the willows which edged the banks.

  “When I used to read my Virgil this is what I thought the Styx might be like,” said Frances. Then suddenly, “Richard, what are you planning to do in Paris?”

  “Water carries sound,” he reminded her. To prove his words, they heard low voices and the laugh of a girl, before they saw two punts drifting to meet them.

  “You have your moments, don’t you, Richard? By the way, I think you will like the hat I bought yesterday in London. A little white sailor with no crown to speak of, yards of black cloud floating down the back, and a saucy red rose perched over one eye.” She heard Richard laugh behind her. “Practical, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” he said, and laughed again. “Good Lord—trust a woman to think up something like that.”

  Frances was serious again. “Richard, do you think there will really be war this summer?”

  “It’s anyone’s guess. The President was lunching yesterday with Halifax. He said—”

  “Halifax?”

  “Yes. He said no one in the Cabinet knew. It all depended on one man.”

  Frances was silent for a space. When she spoke, her voice trembled with its intensity.

  “I resent this man. Why should the happiness of the whole civilised world depend on him? Why, for instance, should I, an Englishwoman, have to look at my countryside and even as I look remember that last September I had planned to help to take the Brown children in this canoe up this river, to hide them under the willows until the air raids had passed? I had blankets and towels and tinned food and chocolate all packed in a basket. A Hitler picnic indeed. There is not one of us who hasn’t had fear and horror creep into all our associations. As I pass these willows I keep wondering just which one of them might have been sheltering the Brown children, and whether it would have done its job. And all because of one man. Think of it, Richard, there wasn’t a farmer who didn’t look at his land and the farmhouse his great-great-grandfather had built and wonder. There wasn’t a townsman who didn’t look at his business or his home and everything he had earned for himself and wonder. There wasn’t a man or woman who did not look at the children and wonder. Richard, I resent this man and his kind of people.”

  “You aren’t the only one.” Richard pointed the nose of the canoe back down the river. “You aren’t the only one. We have all had a year of brooding. And we have all come to the same decision. If anything does start the man who starts it will be sorry he ever thought of himself as a kind of god. But take it easy, Frances. Promise me you will stop worrying while we are on this holiday. It may be the last”—he paused—“for a long time, anyway. There is nothing more that rational beings can do, anyway, except wait and watch. And when it comes the Brown children will have better protection than the willows this September. And that’s something.”

  “Yes, that’s something.” Frances’ voice was quieter. “But when I meet some of those armchair critics who sit beside their radio in a part of the world which can’t be bombed from Germany and hear them tell me how England should have fought I am liable to be very very rude. And I bet, if war does come, these same people will suddenly start talking about the greatness and glories of peace. Britain will then be just another of those belligerent countries. That is how we will be dismissed, as if neutrality implied a special sanctity. There now, Richard, I’ve got it all out of my system. I shan’t mention it again.”

  “That’s the girl. Remember this part of the river?”

  Frances gave a shaky laugh. “Yes, darling. I was a sweet girl undergraduate, and you were in all the importance of your final year. Good bathes we had, too, in just this kind of moonlight. Look, there’s some more of us.” Some punts were moored under a bank and the wet figures as they balanced to dive gave a moment’s illusion of silver statues.

  “I’ve found the difference between twenty and thirty,” said Richard. “At twenty you never think of rheumatics or a chill in the bladder.”

  They guided the canoe back to the boathouse. They stood together on the landing-place in silence, looking at the river and the white mist rising.

  They walked slowly home. At the gate they met Anni.

  “Guten Abend, gnädige Frau, Herr Professor.” She was a tall girl, with a pleasant, open face, and fair hair braided round her head.

  “Good evening, Anni. Did you see your friends all right?”

  Anni nodded. Her arms were full of small parcels. “We had cake, and tea, and then we sang. It was very gemütlich.” She looked down at the parcels. “They gave me these presents,” she added. She spoke the careful English which Frances had taught her. “I’ve had so much pleasure.”

  “I’m glad, Anni. You should go to bed soon: you have a long journey tomorrow.”

  Anni nodded again. “I wish you good night, gnädige Frau, Herr Professor. Angenehme Ruh’.”

  They walked round the garden after she had left them.

  “It’s funny, Richard. I really am tired and there is a nice large bed waiting for me upstairs and yet I keep staying out here looking at the stars.”

  “I hate to be unromantic, but I do think it is time we got some sleep. Tomorrow’s a bad day. It always is: you have a genius for finding last-minute things to do.” Frances smiled, and felt Richard’s arm round her waist guide her to the house. On the steps he stopped to kiss her.

  “That’s to break the enchantment,” he said. His lips were smiling, but his eyes were the way Frances loved them most.

  4

  BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY

  There was always a feeling of excitement after the unpleasantness of a Channel crossing, while the train waited patiently on the Dieppe siding, for the last passengers. They emerged, in straggling groups, from the customs and passport sheds. Frances, already comfortably settled in her corner, watched them with interest. She glanced at Richard opposite her, leaning back with his eyes closed. He was a bad sailor, but he managed things like customs officials very well indeed. Thank heaven for Richard, she thought, watching other wives followed by harassed husbands whose tempers didn’t improve under commiserating looks from unhurried bachelors. It was the stage in the journey when most people began to wonder if it all wasn’t more trouble tha
n it was worth.

  The last nervous lady was helped into the train. The confusion along the corridors was subsiding. They were moving, very slowly, very carefully. Two young men had halted at their compartment.

  “This will do,” said one, after hardly seeming to glance in their direction. They swung their rucksacks on to the rack and threw their Burberries after them. Undergraduates, thought Frances, as she looked at a magazine. Like Richard, they wore dark-grey pin-stripe flannel suits, brown suede shoes well worn, collars which pointed carelessly, and the hieroglyphic tie of a college society.

  The train travelled gently along the street, like a glorified tramcar. The children with thin legs and cropped hair and faded blue overalls halted in their games to watch the engine. Their older sisters, leaning on their elbows at the tall narrow windows, looked critically at the people travelling to Paris. The women, standing in the doorways or in front of the small shops, hardly bothered to interrupt their gossip. It was only a trainload, and a full one too. All the better for their men who worked on the piers: the arriving tourist tipped well. The old men, who sat reading the cafe newspapers at the marble-topped tables, looked peacefully bored. One of them pulled out a watch, looked at it, looked at the train, and shook his head. Frances smiled to herself. Things had been different when he worked in the sheds, no doubt.

  She discarded her magazines. It was almost impossible to read on a foreign train. The differences in houses and people, in fields and gardens, fascinated her. She looked at Richard. He was staring gloomily at the fields, making up his mind to move.

  As he caught her glance he roused himself.

  “Come on, Frances, tea or something. You’ve eaten nothing since breakfast, and I haven’t even that now.” He rose, and steadied himself. “There’s nothing like being back on solid ground, even if it does lurch at the moment.”

  They negotiated the two pairs of long legs, with the usual “Not at all” following them. In the corridor Richard grinned and squeezed her arm.