The Confidential Agent

  He said thoughtfully, ‘I’ve got another shot.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She sounded scared. She was looking at the gun.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean the miners. The unions. If they knew what this really meant, mightn’t they . . . ?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do something.’

  ‘What could they do?’ she said. ‘You don’t know how things are here. You’ve never seen a mining village when all the pits are closed. You’ve lived in a revolution – you’ve had too much cheering and shouting and waving of flags.’ She said, ‘I’ve been with my father to one of these places. He was making a tour – with royalty. There’s no spirit left.’

  ‘Do you care, then?’

  She said: ‘Of course I care. Wasn’t my grandfather . . . ?’

  ‘Do you know anybody there among the workers?’

  She said, ‘My old nurse is there. She married a miner. But my father gives her a pension. She’s not as badly off as some.’

  ‘Anybody would do for a start.’

  ‘You still don’t understand. You can’t go making speeches. You’d be in gaol at once. You’re wanted.’

  ‘I’m not going to give up yet.’

  ‘Listen. We can smuggle you out of here somehow. Money will do a lot. From one of the small ports. Swansea . . .’

  He looked carefully up at her. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Oh, I know what you mean all right. But I like a man alive – not dead or in prison. I couldn’t love you for a month if you were dead. I’m not that sort. I can’t be faithful to people I don’t see. Like you are.’ He was playing absent-mindedly with the revolver. She said, ‘Give me that thing . . . I can’t bear . . .’

  He handed it across to her without a word. It was his first action of trust.

  She said, ‘Oh God! that’s the smell. I thought there was something wrong. You’ve used it. You have killed . . .’

  ‘Oh no. I tried to, but it wouldn’t work. I’m a coward, I suppose. All I hit was the mirror. That’s bad luck, isn’t it?’

  ‘Was it just before I rang?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I heard something. I thought it was a car backfiring.’

  He said, ‘Luckily nobody in this place knows the real sound.’

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘In there.’

  She pulled the door open. Mr K. must have been listening hard; he came forward into the room on his knees. D. said gloomily, ‘That’s Professor K.’ Then he slumped over and lay with his knees drawn up on the floor. D. said, ‘He’s fainted.’ She stood over Mr K. and looked at him with disgust. She said, ‘You are sure you missed?’

  ‘Oh yes, I missed all right.’

  ‘Because,’ she said, ‘he’s dead. Any fool can see that.’

  [3]

  Mr K. was laid carefully out on the divan: the pious book lay by his ear. ‘God is in the candlelight, waiting in your home.’ He looked excessively unimportant with a red rim across the bridge of his nose where the spectacles had rubbed it. D. said, ‘His doctor had given him six months. He was afraid he was going to end – suddenly – teaching Entrenationo. They paid him two shillings an hour.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘He died because you shot at him – they can call that murder.’

  ‘Technically murder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s the second time. I should like to be charged with an honest malice-aforethought murder for a change.’

  ‘You always joke when it’s you who are concerned,’ she said.

  ‘Do I?’

  She was in a rage again about something. When she was angry she was like a child, stamping and raging against authority and reason. Then he could feel an immense tenderness for her because she might have been his daughter. She made no demands on him for passionate love. She said, ‘Don’t stand there as if nothing had happened. What are we going to do with him – it?’

  He said gently, ‘I’ve been thinking about that. This is Saturday night. The woman who has this flat put out a notice – “No Milk till Monday.” That means she won’t be back before to-morrow night at the earliest. It gives me twenty-four hours – I can get to the mines by the morning, can’t I, if I catch a train now.’

  ‘They’ll pick you up at the station. You’re wanted already. Besides,’ she said furiously, ‘it’s a waste of time. I tell you they haven’t got any spirit left. They just live, that’s all. I was born there. I know the place.’

  ‘It’s worth a try.’

  She said, ‘I don’t mind your being dead. But I can’t bear your dying.’ She had no sense of shame at all – she acted and spoke without reserves. He remembered her coming down the foggy platform with the buns. It was impossible not to love her in a way. After all, they had something in common. They had both been pushed around, and they were both revolting against the passive past with a violence which didn’t really belong to them. She said, ‘It’s no good saying – for my sake – like they do in stories. I know that.’

  ‘I’d do a lot,’ he said, ‘for your sake.’

  ‘Oh God!’ she said, ‘don’t pretend. Go on being honest. That’s why I love you – that and my neuroses, father complexes, and the rest.’

  ‘I’m not pretending.’ He took her in his arms; it wasn’t this time such a failure: everything was there except desire. He couldn’t feel desire. It was as if he had made himself a eunuch for his people’s sake. Every lover was, in his way, a philosopher: nature saw to that. A lover had to believe in the world, in the value of birth. Contraception didn’t alter that. The act of desire remained an act of faith, and he had lost his faith.

  She wasn’t furious any more. She said sadly, ‘What happened to your wife?’

  ‘They shot her accidentally.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They took her as a hostage for the wrong man. They had hundreds. I expect, to the warders, they all looked much alike.’ He wondered whether it would seem odd to peaceful people, this making love with a dead wife on the tongue and a dead man on the divan. It wasn’t very successful, anyway. A kiss gives away too much . . . it is far more difficult to falsify than a voice. The lips when together expressed a limitless vacancy.

  She said, ‘It seems odd to me, this loving someone who’s dead.’

  ‘It happens to most people. Your mother . . .’

  ‘Oh, I don’t love her,’ she said. ‘I’m a bastard. Legitimised by marriage, of course. It oughtn’t to matter, ought it, but in a curious way one resents having been unwanted – even then.’

  It was impossible to tell what was pity and what was love, without a trial. They embraced again beside Mr K. Over her left shoulder he could see Mr K.’s open eyes, and he let her go. He said, ‘It’s no use. I’m no good to you. I’m not a man any longer. Perhaps one day when all the killing has stopped . . .’

  She said, ‘My dear, I don’t mind waiting . . . as long as you’re alive.’

  It was, in the circumstances, an enormous qualification.

  He said, ‘You’d better go now. Make sure nobody sees you when you go out. Don’t take a taxi within a mile of this place.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Which station?’

  She said, ‘There’s a train from Euston somewhere near midnight. . . . God knows when it gets there on a Sunday morning . . . you’d have to change. . . . They’ll recognise you, anyway.’

  ‘Shaving off the moustache made a difference.’

  ‘The scar’s still there. That’s what people look for.’ She said, ‘Wait a moment,’ and when he tried to speak she interrupted him. ‘I’ll go. I’m going to be sensible, do anything that you say, let you go anywhere. There’s no point in not being sensible. But wait just a moment.’ She disappeared into the bathroom; her feet crunched on Mr K.’s spectacles. She returned very quickly. ‘Thank God,’ she said, ‘she’s a careful woman.’ She had some co
tton-wool in her hand and some plaster. She said, ‘Stand still. No one’s going to see that scar.’ She laid the cotton-wool over his cheek and stuck it down with the plaster. ‘It looks convincing,’ she said, ‘like a boil.’

  ‘But it’s not over the scar.’

  ‘That’s the cunning. The plaster’s over the scar. The cotton-wool’s right up on your cheek. Nobody’s going to notice that you are covering something on your chin.’ She held his head between her hands and said, ‘I’d make a good confidential agent, don’t you think?’

  ‘You’re too good for that,’ he said. ‘Nobody trusts a confidential agent.’ He suddenly felt a tremendous gratitude that there was somebody in the warring crooked uncertain world he could trust besides himself. It was like finding, in the awful solitude of a desert, a companion. He said, ‘My dear, my love’s not much good to anyone now – but it’s all yours – what’s left of it,’ but while he spoke he could feel the steady tug of a pain which united him to a grave.

  She said gently, as if she were speaking in terms of love, ‘You’ve got a chance. Your English is good – but it’s terribly literary. Your accent’s sometimes queer – but it’s the books you’ve read which really give you away. Try to forget you were ever a lecturer in the Romance languages.’ She began to put her hand up to his face again when the bell rang.

  They stood motionless in the middle of the little female room: it was like a legend where death interrupts love. The bell rang again.

  He said, ‘Isn’t there somewhere where you can hide?’ But of course there wasn’t. He said, ‘If it’s the police you must accuse me straight away. I won’t have you mixed up in things.’

  ‘What’s the use?’

  ‘Go and open the door.’ He took Mr K. by the shoulders and turned him over to face the wall. He pulled the counterpane up round him. He was in shadow; you couldn’t very easily see the open eyes: it was just possible to believe that he was asleep. He heard the door open. A voice said, ‘Oh, excuse me. My name’s Fortescue.’

  The stranger came timidly and penetratingly in: an old-young man with receding hair and a double-breasted waistcoat. Rose tried to bar his way. She said, ‘Well?’ He repeated ‘Fortescue’ with weak good humour.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  He blinked at them. He had no hat or coat. He said, ‘You know I live up above. Isn’t Emily – that is Miss Glover – here?’

  D. said, ‘She’s away for the week-end.’

  ‘I knew she meant to go – but when I saw a light . . .’ He said, ‘Good God, what’s that?’

  ‘That,’ Rose said, ‘as you so winningly put it, is Jack – Jack Owtram.’

  ‘Is he ill?’

  ‘He will be – he’s passed out. We’ve been having a party.’

  He said, ‘How very extraordinary. I mean Emily – Miss Glover⎯⎯’

  ‘Oh, call her Emily,’ Rose said. ‘We’re all friends here.’

  ‘Emily never has parties.’

  ‘She lent us the flat.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. So I see.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  That’s going too far, D. thought: this flat can’t supply everything; we may be wrecked, but this isn’t a school-boy wreck which supplies the right thing to Crusoe at the right time.

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ Fortescue said. ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t – drink, I mean.’

  ‘You must. Nobody can live without drinking.’

  ‘Oh, water. I drink water, of course.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh yes, undoubtedly.’ He looked nervously again at the body on the bed, then at D. like a sentry beside it. He said, ‘You’ve hurt your face.’

  ‘Yes.’ Silence was present: it was the most prominent thing there, like the favoured guest who outwaits all the others. Fortescue said, ‘Well, I must be getting back.’

  ‘Must you?’ Rose said.

  ‘Well, not literally. I mean, I don’t want to interrupt a party.’ He was looking round – for the bottles and glasses: there were things about this room he obviously couldn’t understand. He said, ‘Emily didn’t warn me . . .’

  ‘You seem to see a lot of Emily.’

  He blushed. He said, ‘Oh, we’re good friends. We’re both Groupers, you see.’

  ‘Gropers?’

  ‘No, no. Groupers. Oxford Groupers.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rose said. ‘I know – house parties, Brown’s Hotel, Crowborough . . .’ She reeled off a string of associations which were incomprehensible to D. Was she going to be hysterical?

  Fortescue brightened. His old-young face was like a wide white screen on which you could project only selected and well-censored films for the family circle. He said, ‘Have you ever been?’

  ‘Oh no. It wouldn’t suit me.’

  He began to penetrate back into the room towards the divan; he had a liquid manner – you had to be very careful how you tilted the conversation or he would flow all over the place. He said, ‘You ought to try. We have all kinds of people – business men, Blues – we once had the Under-Secretary for Overseas Trade. And of course there’s always Frankie.’ He was almost up to the divan explaining ardently, ‘It’s religion – but it’s practical. It helps you to get on – because you feel right towards people. We’ve had an enormous success in Norway.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Rose said, trying to tilt him the other way.

  He said, with his rather protuberant eyes upon the head of Mr K., ‘And if you feel bad about things – you know what I mean – there’s nothing clears the air like sharing . . . at a house party. The other fellows are always sympathetic. They’ve been through it too.’ He leant a little forward and said, ‘He does look ill . . . are you quite sure?’

  It was a fantastic country, D. thought. Civil war provided nothing so fantastic as peace. In war life became simple – you didn’t worry about sex or international languages or even getting on: you worried about the next meal and cover from high explosives. Fortescue said, ‘Wouldn’t he feel better if – well – you know – if he brought it up?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Rose said, ‘he’s better as he is – just lying quiet.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said meekly, ‘I don’t know much about these things. Parties, I mean. I suppose he doesn’t hold his drink very well. He oughtn’t to do it – ought he? – it can’t be good for him. And such an old man too. Forgive me – if he’s a great friend . . .’

  ‘You needn’t mind,’ Rose said. D. wondered: will he never go? Only the warmest heart could have failed to be frozen by Rose’s manner.

  ‘I know I must sound prejudiced. You see in the Group we learn to be ascetic – in a reasonable way.’ He said, ‘I suppose you wouldn’t care to step upstairs to my place . . . I’ve got a kettle boiling now for tea. I was going to ask Emily . . .’ He leant suddenly forward and said, ‘Good heavens, his eyes are open . . .’ This is the end, D. thought.

  Rose said slowly, ‘You didn’t think – did you? – he was asleep.’

  You could almost see a terrible surmise come up behind the eyes, then fall again for the mere want of foot-hold. There was no room for murder in his gentle and spurious world. They waited for what he would say next: they had no plan at all. He said in a whisper, ‘How dreadful to think that he heard everything I said about him.’

  Rose said harshly and nervously, ‘Your kettle will be all over the floor.’

  He looked from one to the other of them – something was wrong. ‘Yes, it will be, won’t it? I hadn’t meant to stay.’ Back and forth from one to the other as if he wanted reassurance – to-night he would have bad dreams. ‘Yes, I must be going. Good night.’

  They watched him climbing up the area steps into the safe familiar reassuring dark. At the top he turned and waved his hand to them, tentatively.

  PART THREE

  The Last Shot

  [1]

  It was still dark over the whole quiet Midland countryside. The small unimportant junction lay lit up like a centre-piece in a darkened shop
window: oil lamps burned beside the general waiting room, an iron foot-bridge straddled across towards another smoky flame, and the cold wind took the steam of the engine and flapped it back along the platform. It was Sunday morning.

  Then the tail-light of the train moved on like a firefly and was suddenly extinguished in some invisible tunnel. D. was alone except for one old porter hobbling back from where the luggage van had stood. The platform sloped down past a lamp into the indecipherable wilderness of lines. Somewhere not far away a cock crew, and a light which hung in mid-air changed from red to green.

  ‘Is this right for the Benditch train?’ D. called out.

  ‘It’ll be right,’ the porter said.

  ‘Is it a long wait?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be an hour . . . if it’s on time.’

  D. shivered and beat his arms against his body for warmth. ‘That’s a long time,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t expect different,’ the porter said. ‘Not on a Sunday.’

  ‘Don’t they have any through trains?’

  ‘Ah, they used to when the pits was working – but no one goes to Benditch now.’

  ‘Is there a restaurant here?’ D. said.

  ‘A restaurant!’ the porter exclaimed, peering closely up at him. ‘What call would there be for a restaurant at Willing?’

  ‘Somewhere to sit?’

  ‘I’ll open the waiting-room for you if you like,’ the porter said. ‘It’s cold in there, though. Better to keep moving.’

  ‘Isn’t there a fire?’

  ‘Well, it might’ve kept in.’ He took a monstrous key out of his pocket and opened a chocolate-coloured door. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘it’s not so bad,’ switching on the light. There were old faded photographs all round the walls of hotels and resorts, fixed benches round the walls, two or three hard movable chairs and an enormous table. A faint warmth – the memory of a fire – came out of the grate. The porter picked up a black ornamental cast-iron scuttle and shook a lot of coal-dust on to the dying embers. He said, ‘That’ll keep it in.’

  D. said, ‘And the table. What’s the table for?’