"That's enough," Lucy told David. She knelt in front of the man.
"Can you make it upstairs ?"
He nodded and got slowly to his feet.
Lucy looped his arm over her shoulders and began to walk him out.
"I'll put him in Jo's bed," she said.
They took the stairs one at a time, pausing on each. When they reached
the top, the little colour that the fire had restored to the man's face
had drained away again. Lucy led him into the smaller bedroom. He
collapsed on to the bed.
Lucy arranged the blankets over him, tucked him in, and left the room,
closing the door quietly.
Relief washed over Faber in a tidal wave. For the last few minutes,
the effort of self-control had been superhuman. He felt limp, defeated
and ill.
After the front door had opened, he had allowed himself to collapse for
a while. The danger had come when the beautiful girl had started to
undress him, and he had remembered the can of film taped to his chest.
Dealing with that had restored his alertness for a while. He had also
been afraid they might call for an. ambulance, but that had not been
mentioned: perhaps the island was too small to have a hospital. At
least he was not on the mainland there, it would have been impossible
to prevent the reporting of the shipwreck. However, the trend of the
husband's questions had indicated that no report would be made
immediately.
Faber had no energy to speculate about perils farther in the future. He
seemed to be safe for the time being, and that was as far as he could
go. In the meantime he was warm and dry and alive, and the bed was
soft.
He turned over, reconnoitring the room: door, window, chimney. The
habit of caution survived everything but death itself. The walls were
pink, as if the couple had hoped for a baby girl. There was a train
set and a great many picture books on the floor. It was a safe,
domestic place; a home. He was a wolf in a sheep fold, but a lame
wolf.
He closed his eyes. Despite his exhaustion, he had to force himself to
relax, muscle by muscle. Gradually his head emptied of thought, and he
slept.
Lucy tasted the porridge, and added another pinch of salt. They had
got to like it the way Tom made it, the Scots way, without sugar. She
would never go back to making sweet porridge, even when sugar became
plentiful and un rationed again. It was funny how you got used to
things when you had to: brown bread and margarine and salt porridge.
She ladled it out and the family sat down to breakfast. Jo had lots of
milk to cool his. David ate vast quantities these days without
getting fat: it was the outdoor life. She looked at his hands, on the
table. They were rough, and permanently brown, the hands of a manual
worker. She had noticed the stranger's hands. His fingers were long,
the skin white under the blood and the bruising. He was unused to the
abrasive work of crewing a boat.
Lucy said: "You won't get much done today. The storm looks like
staying."
"Makes no difference," David grunted.
"Sheep still have to be cared for, whatever the weather."
"Where will you be?"
"Tom's end. I'll go up there in the jeep."
Jo said: "Can I come?"
"Not today," Lucy told him. It's too wet and cold."
"But I don't like the man."
Lucy smiled.
"Don't be silly. He won't do us any harm. He's almost too ill to
move."
"Who is he?"
"We don't know his name. He's been shipwrecked, and we have to look
after him until he's well enough to go back to the mainland. He's a
very nice man."
"Is he my uncle?"
"Just a stranger, Jo. Eat up."
Jo looked disappointed. He had met an uncle once. In his mind uncles
were people who gave out candy, which he liked, and money, which he had
no use for.
David finished his breakfast and put on his mackintosh. It was a
tent-shaped garment, with sleeves and a hole for his head, and it
covered most of his wheelchair as well as him. He put a sou'wester on
his head and tied it under his chin. He kissed Jo and said goodbye to
Lucy.
A minute or two later she heard the jeep start up. She went to the
window to watch David drive off into the rain. The rear wheels of the
vehicle slithered about in the mud. He would have to take care.
She turned to Jo. He said: "This is a dog." He was making a picture
on the tablecloth with porridge and milk.
Lucy slapped his hand, saying: "What a horrid mess!" The boy's face
took on a grim, sulky look, and Lucy thought how much he resembled his
father. They had the same dark skin and nearly black hair, and they
both had a way of withdrawing when they were cross. But Jo laughed a
lot he had inherited something from Lucy's side of the family, thank
God.
Jo mistook her contemplative stare for anger, and said: "I'm sorry."
She washed him at the kitchen sink, then cleared away the breakfast
things, thinking about the stranger upstairs. Now that the immediate
crisis was past, and she knew the man was not going to die, she was
consumed with curiosity about him. Who was he? Where was he from?
What had he been doing in the storm? Did he have a family? Why did he
have workman's clothes, a clerk's hands, and a Home Counties accent? It
was rather exciting.
It occurred to her that, if she had lived anywhere else, she would not
have accepted his sudden appearance so readily. He might, she
supposed, be a deserter, or a criminal, or even an escaped
prisoner-of-war. But one forgot, living on the island, that other
human beings could be threatening instead of companionable. It was so
nice to see a new face that to harbour suspicions seemed ungrateful.
Maybe unpleasant thought she more than most people was ready to welcome
an attractive man ... She pushed the thought out of her mind.
Silly, silly. He was so tired and ill that he could not possibly
threaten anyone. Even on the mainland, who could have refused to take
him in, bedraggled and unconscious? When he felt better they could
question him, and if his account of how he got here was less than
plausible, they could radio the mainland from Tom's cottage.
When she had washed up she crept upstairs to peep at him. He slept
facing the door, and when she looked in his eyes opened instantly.
Again there was that initial, split-second flash of fear.
"It's all right," Lucy whispered.
"Just making sure you're okay."
He closed his eyes without speaking.
She went downstairs again. She dressed herself and Jo in oilskins and
Wellington boots, and they went out. The rain was still coming down in
torrents and the wind was terrific. She glanced up at the roof: they
had lost some slates. Leaning into the wind, she headed for the cliff
top.
She held Jo's hand tightly he might quite easily be blown away. Two
minutes later she was wishing she had stayed indoors. Rain came in
under her raincoat collar and over the tops of her boots
, and she was
soaked. Jo must be too, but now that they were wet they might as well
stay wet for a few minutes more. Lucy wanted to go to the beach.
However, when they reached the top of the ramp she realized it was
impossible. The narrow wooden walkway was slippery with rain, and in
this wind she might lose her balance and fall off, to plunge sixty feet
to the beach below. She had to content herself with looking.
It was quite a sight.
Vast waves, each the size of a small house, were rolling in rapidly,
close on each other's heels. Crossing the beach the wave would rise
even higher, its crest curling in a question-mark, then throw itself
against the foot of the cliff in a rage. Spray rose over the cliff top
in sheets, causing Lucy to step back hurriedly and Jo to squeal with
delight. Lucy could hear her son's laughter only because he had jumped
into her arms, and his mouth was now close to her ear: the noise of the
wind and the sea drowned more distant sounds.
There was something terribly thrilling in watching the elements spit
and sway and roar in fury, in standing fractionally too close to the
cliff edge, feeling threatened and safe at the same time, shivering
with cold and yet perspiring in fear. It was thrilling, and there were
few thrills in Lucy's life.
She was about to go back, mindful of Jo's health, when she saw the
boat.
It was not a boat any more, of course; that was what was so shocking
about it. All that was left were the huge timbers of the deck and the
keel. They were scattered on the rocks below the cliffs like a dropped
handful of matches. It had been a big boat, Lucy realized. One man
might have piloted it alone, but not easily. And the damage the sea
had wrought on man's craftsmanship was awesome. It was hard to spot
two bits of wood still joined together.
How, in Heaven's name, had the stranger come out of it alive?
She shuddered when she thought of what those waves and those rocks
might have done to a human body. Jo caught her sudden change of mood,
and said into her ear: "Go home, now." She turned quickly away from
the sea and hurried back along the muddy path to the cottage.
Back inside, they took off their wet coats, hats and boots, and hung
them in the kitchen to dry. Lucy went upstairs and looked in on the
stranger again. This time he did not open his eyes. He seemed to be
sleeping very peacefully, yet she had a feeling that he had awakened
and recognized her tread on the stairs, and closed his eyes again
before she opened the door.
She ran a hot bath. She and the boy were soaked to the skin. She
undressed Jo and put him in the tub, then on impulse took off her own
clothes and got in with him. The heat was blissful. She closed her
eyes and relaxed. This was good, too: to be in a house, feeling warm,
while the storm beat impotently at the strong stone walls.
Life had turned interesting, all of a sudden. In one night there had
come a storm, a shipwreck and a mystery man; this after three years of
tedium. She hoped the stranger would wake up soon, so that she could
find out all about him.
It was time she started cooking lunch for the men. She had some breast
of lamb to make a stew. She got out of the bath and towelled herself
gently. Jo was playing with his bath toy, a much-chewed rubber cat.
Lucy looked at herself in the mirror, examining the stretch-marks on
her belly left by pregnancy. They were fading, slowly, but they would
never completely disappear. An all-over suntan would help, though. She
smiled to herself, thinking: Fat chance of that! Besides, who was
interested in her tummy? Nobody but herself.
Jo said: "Can I stay in a minute more?" It Was a phrase he used, 'a
minute more', and it could mean anything up to half a day.
Lucy said: "Just while I get dressed." She hung the towel on a rail
and moved toward the door.
The stranger stood in the doorway, looking at her.
They stared at each other. It was odd Lucy thought later that she felt
not a bit afraid. It was the way he looked at her: there was no threat
in his expression, no lewdness, no smirk, no lust. He was not looking
at her pubis, or even her breasts, but at her face into her eyes. She
gazed back, a little shocked but not embarrassed, with just a tiny part
of her mind wondering why she did not squeal, cover herself with her
hands, and slam the door on him.
but she saw admiration, and a faint twinkle of honest humour, and a
trace of sadness and then the spell was broken, and he turned away and
went back into his bedroom, closing the door. A moment later Lucy
heard the springs creak as his weight settled on the bed.
And for no good reason at all she felt dreadfully guilty.
TWENTY
By this time Percival Godliman had pulled out all the stops.
Every policeman in the UK had a copy of the photograph of Faber, and
about half of them were engaged full-time in the search. In the cities
they were checking hotels and guest houses railway stations and bus
terminals, cafes and shop-ing centres; and the bridges, arches, and
bombed lots where the derelict hang out. In the country they were
looking in barns and silos, empty cottages and ruined castles, thickets
and clearings and cornfields. They were showing the photograph to
ticket clerks, petrol station staff, ferry hands and toll collectors.
All the passenger ports and airfields were covered, with the picture
pinned behind a board at every Passport Control desk.
The police thought they were looking for a straightforward murderer.
The cop on the street knew that the man in the picture had killed two
people with a knife in London. Senior officers knew a bit more: that
one of the murders had been a sexual assault, another apparently
motiveless, and a third which their men were not to know of was an
unexplained but bloody attack on a soldier on the Euston-to-Liverpool
train. Only chief constables" and a few officers at Scotland Yard,
realized that the soldier had been on temporary attachment to MI5 and
that all the murders were connected with Security.
The newspapers, too, thought it was just an ordinary murder hunt. The
day after Godliman had released details, most of the papers had carried
the story in their later editions the first editions, bound for
Scotland, Ulster and North Wales, had missed it, so they had carried a
shortened version a day later. The Stockwell victim had been
identified as a labourer, and given a false name and a vague London
background. Godliman's press release had connected that murder with
the death of Mrs. Una Garden in 1940, but had been vague about the
nature of the link. The murder weapon was said to be a stiletto.
The two Liverpool newspapers heard very quickly of the body on the
train, and both wondered whether the London knife murderer was
responsible. Both made enquiries with the Liverpool police. The
editors of both papers received phone calls from the Chief Constable.
Neither paper carried the story.
A total of one hundred and fifty-seven tall dark men were arrested on
suspicion of being Faber. All but twenty-nine of them were able to
prove that they could not possibly have committed the murders.
Interviewers from MI5 talked to the twenty-nine. Twenty-seven called
in parents, relatives and neighbours who affirmed that they had been
born in Britain and had been living there during the twenties, when
Faber had been in Germany.
The last two were brought to London and interviewed again, this time by
Godliman. Both were bachelors, living alone, with no surviving
relatives, leading a transient existence.
The first was a well-dressed, confident man who claimed implausibly
that his way of life was to travel the country taking odd jobs as a
manual labourer. Godliman explained that he was looking for a German
spy, and that he unlike the police had the power to incarcerate anyone
for the duration of the war, and no questions asked. Furthermore, he
went on, he was not in the least interested in capturing ordinary
criminals, and any information given him here at the War Office was
strictly confidential, and would go no further.
The prisoner promptly confessed to being a confidence trickster and
gave the addresses of nineteen elderly ladies whom he had cheated out
of their old jewellery during the past three weeks. Godliman turned