The Confidential Agent

  A voice whispered to him urgently, ‘Get up.’

  He looked up and focused on three young faces. He said, ‘Who are you?’

  They watched him with glee – the oldest couldn’t have been more than twenty. They had soft, unformed, anarchic faces. The oldest said, ‘Never mind who we are. Come into the shed.’

  He obeyed them dreamily. In the little dark box there was just room for the four of them: they squatted on the coke and coal-dust and the bits of old boxes torn up for firewood. A little light came in through the knots in the planks which someone had poked out with a finger. He said, ‘What’s the good of this? Mrs Bennett . . .’

  ‘The old woman won’t carry coal on a Sunday. She’s strict.’

  ‘What about Bennett?’

  ‘He’s properly boozed.’

  ‘Somebody must have seen?’

  ‘Naw. We’ve scouted.’

  ‘They’ll search the houses.’

  ‘How can they without a warrant? Magistrate’s in Woolhampton.’

  He gave it up and said wearily, ‘Well, I suppose I ought to thank you.’

  ‘Stow the thanks,’ the oldest boy said. ‘You got a gun, ain’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The boy said, ‘The Gang want that gun.’

  ‘They do, do they? Who are the Gang? You?’

  ‘We’re the – exexetive.’

  They squatted round him watching greedily. He said evasively, ‘What happened to the constable?’

  ‘The Gang saw to ’im.’

  The youngest boy rubbed his ankle thoughtfully.

  ‘It was smart work.’

  ‘We’re organised, you see,’ the oldest boy said.

  ‘An’ we’ve got – scores.’

  ‘Joey ’ere,’ the oldest boy said, ‘got the birch once.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Six strokes.’

  ‘That was before we organised.’

  The oldest boy said, ‘An’ now we want your gun. You don’t need it any more. The Gang’s looking after you.’

  ‘It is, is it?’

  ‘We got it arranged. You stay here – an’ when it’s dark – when you hear seven strike – you go along up Pit Street. They’ll all be at tea then. Those that aren’t in Chapel. There’s an alley up by Chapel. You wait there for the bus. Crikey’ll be on the watch for you.’

  ‘Who’s Crikey?’

  ‘He’s one of the Gang. He punches tickets. He’ll see you get over to Woolhampton safe.’

  ‘You’ve got it all planned. But what do you want the gun for?’

  The oldest boy leant close. He had a pale thick skin: his eyes had the blankness of a pit pony’s. There was no enthusiasm anywhere – no wildness; anarchy was just an absence of certain restraints. He said, ‘We was listening to you. You don’t want that pit worked. We’ll stop them for you. It’s all the same to us.’

  ‘Don’t your fathers work there?’

  ‘That don’t worry us.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘We know where they keep the dynamite. All we got to do is bust the shed open an’ pitch the sticks down. They won’t be able to work that pit for months.’

  The boy’s breath smelt sour. He felt revulsion. He said, ‘Is nobody working there?’

  ‘There’s nobody up there at all.’

  It was his duty, of course, to take the chance, but he was reluctant. He said, ‘Why the gun?’

  ‘We’ll shoot out the lock.’

  ‘Do you know how to use one?’

  ‘Of course we do.’

  He said, ‘There’s only one bullet . . .’ They were all cramped together in the little shed: hands were against his hands: sour breath whistled in his face. He felt as if he were surrounded by animals who belonged in the dark and had senses adjusted to the dark, while he could see only in the light. . . . He said, ‘Why?’ and an uninterested boy’s voice came back, ‘Fun.’ A goose went winging by somewhere above his grave – where? He shivered. He said, ‘Suppose there is someone up there . . .’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be careful. We don’t want to swing.’ But they wouldn’t swing. That was the trouble – they had no responsibility: they were under age. But all the same, he told himself, it was his duty . . . even if there should be an accident . . . you couldn’t count strangers’ lives in the balance against your own people’s. When war started the absolute moral code was abolished: you were allowed to do evil that good might come.

  He took the gun out of his pocket and immediately the scaly hand of the oldest boy dropped on it. D. said, ‘Throw the gun down the pit first. You don’t want finger-marks.’

  ‘That’s all right. You can trust us.’

  He kept his fingers on it – reluctant to let it go: it was his last shot. The boy said, ‘We shan’t squeal. The Gang never squeals.’

  ‘What are they doing in the town now? The police, I mean?’

  ‘There’s only two of ’em. One of them’s got a bike. He’s fetching a warrant from Woolhampton. They think you’re in Charlie Stowe’s – an’ Charlie won’t let them in to look. Charlie’s got a score, too.’

  ‘You won’t have long – after you’ve shot the lock – to throw the sticks and get away.’

  ‘We’ll wait to dark.’ The hand disengaged the gun; immediately it disappeared in someone’s pocket. ‘Don’t forget,’ the leader said. ‘Seven – at Chapel – Crikey’ll be watchin’ out.’

  When they had gone he remembered that he might at least have asked them for a little food.

  Without it the hours went all the more slowly; he opened the door of the shed a crack, but all he could see was a dry shrub, a few feet of cinder path, the piece of coconut on its dirty string. He tried to plan ahead, but what was the good when life took you like a high sea and flung you . . . ? If he got to Woolhampton, would it be any use trying the station . . . or would it be watched? He remembered the bandage on his cheek. That was no longer any good; he tore it off. It had been bad luck that the woman should have found Mr K.’s body so soon. But he had been pursued by bad luck ever since he landed – he saw Rose again, coming down the platform with the bun. If he had not taken a lift from her, would everything have been different? He would not have been beaten up, delayed. . . . Mr K., perhaps, would not have suspected him of selling out and become determined to sell out himself first . . . the manageress . . . but she was mad, L. said. What exactly had he meant by that? Whichever track he took seemed to begin with Rose on the platform and end with Else lying dead on the third floor.

  A small bird – he didn’t know the names of English birds – was sitting on the coconut. It pecked very quickly and pecked again: it was having a good meal. Suppose he got to Woolhampton, should he aim at getting back to London – or where? That had been the idea when he said good-bye to Rose, but things had changed now . . . if he were wanted for Mr K.’s murder, too. The hunt would be far more serious than before. He didn’t want to mix her up more than he had already done. It would be so much simpler, he thought wearily, if a policeman now just walked in. . . . The bird suddenly took off from the coconut: there was a sound on the cinder path like somebody walking on tiptoe. He waited patiently for capture.

  But it was only a cat. It looked in at him, black and tailored, from the bright winter daylight – regarded him, as it were, on an equality, as one animal another, and moved again out of sight, leaving behind a faint smell of fish. He thought suddenly: the coconut . . . when it’s dark enough I can get the coconut. But the hours went by with appalling slowness. At one time there was a smell of cooking, at another high words came down to him from an upper window . . . the phrase ‘bringing disgrace’ and ‘drunken brute’: Mrs Bennett was probably trying to get her husband out of bed. He thought he heard her say, ‘His Lordship,’ and then a window slammed, and what went on after that went on without the neighbours knowing, in the dreadful secrecy of a home – man’s castle. The bird returned to the coconut, and he watched it jealously; it used its beak like a labourer does a pick; he was tem
pted to scare it away. The afternoon light flattened over the garden.

  What troubled him now more than all was the fate of the gun. Those boys were not to be trusted. Probably the whole story of the explosives-shed was false, and they just wanted the weapon to play with. Anything might happen at that moment. They might let it off in mere devilry – not that you could think of high spirits in relation to those pasty and unwanted faces. Once he was startled by what might have been a shot until it was repeated. It was probably the agent’s car. At last the dark did fall. He waited until he couldn’t see the coconut before he ventured out. He found his mouth was actually watering at the prospect of that dry bird’s-leaving. His foot crunched over-loudly on the cinder track, and a curtain in the house was drawn aside. Mrs Bennett glared out at him. He could see her plainly, dressed up to go out, flattening her nose against the kitchen window, beside the cooker, the jealous heartless bony face. He waited motionless; it seemed impossible that she shouldn’t see him, but the garden was dark and she let the curtain fall.

  He waited a while, and then went on to the coconut.

  It wasn’t, after all, much of a feast; he found it tough and dry in the throat. He crouched in the shed and ate it in small shreds: he hadn’t got a knife and he wore down his finger-nails scraping off the hard white food. At last even the longest wait is over; he had thought of everything – of Rose, the future, the past, the boys with the gun – until there was no more to think about at all. He had tried to remember the poem he had copied out into the notebook which L.’s chauffeur had stolen. . . . ‘The beat . . . something of thy heart and feet, how passionately and irretrievably . . .’ He gave it up. It had seemed at the time to mean a great deal. He thought of his wife: it represented all the ignobility of life that he felt the tie weakening between him and the grave. People should die together, not apart. A clock struck seven.

  [2]

  He came carefully out of the shed with what was left of the coconut in his pocket. He realised suddenly that the boys had never told him how he was to get out of this back garden. That was like a child: the immense organised plan and the small practical detail forgotten. It was madness to trust them with a gun. He supposed they had gone themselves over the wall the way they had come. But he wasn’t young; he was a weak, hungry, middle-aged man. He put his hands up: he could reach the top of the wall, but he hadn’t the strength in the arms to raise himself. He tried again and again, each time more weakly. A very young voice from the lavatory whispered, ‘That you, mate?’

  So they hadn’t forgotten the detail.

  He whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a loose brick.’

  He felt along the wall until he found it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come over quick.’

  He landed on his feet where his escape had begun. A small dirty urchin watched him critically. ‘I’m the lookout,’ he said.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  He jerked his head up towards the dark background of slag which hung like a storm cloud above the village. ‘They’ll be at the pit.’ He felt the sense of apprehension grow: it was like the five minutes between the warning and the first bombs; he had a feeling of merciless anarchy let loose like thunder on the hill.

  ‘You go an’ wait for Crikey,’ the minute grubby creature commanded him harshly.

  He obeyed. There wasn’t anything else to do. The long grey street was badly lighted, and the Gang seemed to have chosen their time correctly – there was nobody about at all. He might have been going through a deserted town – a relic shown to tourists of the Coal Age, if it had not been for the light in the Chapel windows. He felt very tired and very sick, and every step he took his apprehensions gathered. He felt a physical shrinking from the sudden noise which at any moment now would tear across this quiet. In the north-west sky there was a glow of light cast by Woolhampton, like a city on fire.

  A narrow passage ran up between the Baptist Chapel and the next house – it gave it a spurious detached dignity in the crammed village. He waited there with his eyes on the street for Crikey and the Woolhampton bus. The only policeman left was presumably keeping an eye on Charlie Stowe’s while he waited for the search warrant. Straight up at the back rose the mountains of slag, and somewhere in the dark the boys were gathering round the explosives shed. Inside the chapel the tuneless voices of women were singing ‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height . . .’

  A thin rain began to fall, blowing from the north across the hills of slag. It was impregnated with dust – it streaked the face like diluted paint. A man’s voice, rough and tender and assured, said distinctly, close to his elbow, ‘Let us all pray,’ and the impromptu prayer began to roll magnificently on its way: ‘Fountain of all goodness and truth . . . we bless thee for all thy gifts so freely bestowed . . .’ The cold seeped through his mackintosh and lay like a wet compress on his breast. Was that the sound of a car? It was. He heard it backfiring furiously down the street, and he came cautiously to the entrance of his burrow, hoping for Crikey.

  But he started quickly back into the dark: it wasn’t the bus – it was a motor-bicycle ridden by a policeman. He must have got back from Woolhampton with the warrant; they would soon discover that he wasn’t at Charlie Stowe’s. How long would the bus be? They’d search it, surely . . . unless the Gang had thought of that, too, and got a plan. He flattened himself against the chapel wall, presenting as little surface as he could to the penetrating rain, and heard the prayer going on and imagined the big bare lighted interior with the pitch-pine panels and the table instead of an altar and the hot radiator and all the women in their Sunday best. . . . Mrs Bennett. . . . ‘We pray thee for our torn and tortured world . . . we would remember before thee the victims of war, the homeless and destitute . . .’ He smiled grimly, thinking: they are praying for me if they only knew it; how would they like that? They began to sing a hymn; the words came erratically and obscurely out from their prison of stone and flesh: ‘In heavenly love abiding, no change my heart shall fear . . .’

  He was flung right across the passage and fell with the back of his head against a stone; glass flew like shrapnel. He had a sense that the whole wall above him was caving in to fall upon his face, and he screamed and screamed. He was aware of violence and not of noise – the noise was too great to be heard. You became conscious of it only when it was over, and there were only barking dogs and people shouting and the soft sifting of dust from a broken brick. He put his hands over his face to protect his eyes and screamed again: people ran along the street: not far away a harmonium began defiantly to play, but he didn’t hear it, he was back in the foundations of a house with a dead cat’s fur touching his lips.

  A voice said, ‘That’s him.’ They were digging him out, but he couldn’t move to avoid the edge of a spade or the point of a pick: he sweated with fear and called out in his own language. Somebody’s hand was passing over him – and his mind went flick! flick! and he was back on the Dover Road and the chauffeur’s large and brutal hands were touching him. He said fiercely, ‘Take your hands off.’

  ‘Has he got a gun?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s that in his right pocket?’

  ‘Well now, isn’t that a funny thing? It’s a piece of coconut.’

  ‘Hurt?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the voice said. ‘Just scared, I reckon.’

  ‘Better put on the cuffs.’

  He came back down the long track which led from the dead cat to Benditch village by way of the Dover Road. He felt his hands gripped and his eyes were uncovered. The wall still stood above him and the thin rain came steadily down: there was no change. Violence had passed, leaving only a little broken glass. Two policemen stood over him and a small dismal crowd had collected at the entrance of the alley and watched avidly. A voice said, ‘The Scripture lesson is taken from . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ D. said. ‘I’m coming.’ He got up painfully; the fall had strained his back. He said, ‘I’d be glad to sit down, if yo
u don’t mind.’

  A policeman said, ‘You’ll have plenty of time for that.’

  One of them took his arm and led him out into the dingy street. A little way off stood a bus marked Woolhampton; a youth with a satchel slung across his shoulder watched him with poker face from the step.

  He asked, ‘What are the charges?’

  ‘There’ll be plenty,’ the policeman said, ‘don’t you worry.’

  ‘I think,’ D. said, ‘I have the right . . .’ looking at his cuffed hands.

  ‘Using words likely to lead to a breach of the peace . . . an’ being on enclosed premises with the purpose of committing a felony. That’ll be enough to get on with.’

  D. laughed. He couldn’t help it. He said, ‘Those are two fresh ones. They mount up, don’t they?’

  At the station they gave him a cup of cocoa and some bread and butter and locked him in a cell. He had not experienced such peace for a long time. He could hear them telephoning to Woolhampton about him, but he couldn’t hear what was said beyond a few words. . . . Presently the younger policeman brought him a bowl of soup. He said, ‘You’re quite a catch, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘They want you up in London – and in a hurry, too.’ He said with respect, ‘They want to question you . . .’

  ‘What about?’