The Human Factor

  Mrs Castle had lunch – a joint of roast beef – served very punctually at one. ‘Shall we listen to the news?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Don’t play with your napkin ring, Sam dear,’ Mrs Castle said. ‘Just take out your napkin and put the ring down by your plate.’ Sarah found Radio 3. Mrs Castle said, ‘There’s never news worth listening to on Sundays,’ and she was right, of course.

  Never had a Sunday passed more slowly. The rain stopped and the feeble sun tried to find a gap through the clouds. Sarah took Sam for a walk across what was called – she didn’t know why – a forest. There were no trees – only low bushes and scrub (one area had been cleared for a golf course). Sam said, ‘I like Ashridge better,’ and a little later, ‘A walk’s not a walk without Buller.’ Sarah wondered: How long will life be like this? They cut across a corner of the golf course to get home and a golfer who had obviously had too good a lunch shouted to them to get off the fairway. When Sarah didn’t respond quickly enough he called, ‘Hi! You! I’m talking to you, Topsy!’ Sarah seemed to remember that Topsy had been a black girl in some book the Methodists had given her to read when she was a child.

  That night Mrs Castle said, ‘It’s time we had a serious talk, dear.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You ask me what about? Really, Sarah! About you and my grandson of course – and Maurice. Neither of you will tell me what this quarrel is all about. Have you or has Maurice grounds for a divorce?’

  ‘Perhaps. Desertion counts, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Who has deserted whom? To come to your mother-in-law’s house is hardly desertion. And Maurice – he hasn’t deserted you if he’s still at home.’

  ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, Mrs Castle. Can’t you just wait awhile and not talk?’

  ‘This is my home, Sarah. It would be convenient to know just how long you plan to stay. Sam should be at school. There’s a law about that.’

  ‘I promise if you’ll just let us stay for a week . . .’

  ‘I’m not driving you away, dear, I’m trying to get you to behave like an adult person. I think you should see a lawyer and talk to him if you won’t talk to me. I can telephone Mr Bury tomorrow. He looks after my will.’

  ‘Just give me a week, Mrs Castle.’ (There had been a time when Mrs Castle had suggested Sarah should call her ‘mother’, but she had been obviously relieved when Sarah continued to call her Mrs Castle.)

  On Monday morning she took Sam into the town and left him in a toyshop while she went to the Crown. There she telephoned to the office – it was a senseless thing to do, for if Maurice were still in London at liberty he would surely have telephoned her. In South Africa, long ago when she had worked for him, she would never have been so imprudent, but in this peaceful country town which had never known a racial riot or a midnight knock at the door the thought of danger seemed too fantastic to be true. She asked to speak to Mr Castle’s secretary, and, when a woman’s voice answered, she said, ‘Is that Cynthia?’ (she knew her by that name, though they had never met or talked to each other). There was a long pause – a pause long enough for someone to be asked to listen in – but she wouldn’t believe it in this small place of retired people as she watched two lorry drivers finish their bitter. Then the dry thin voice said, ‘Cynthia isn’t in today.’

  ‘When will she be in?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’

  ‘Mr Castle then?’

  ‘Who is that speaking please?’

  She thought: I was nearly betraying Maurice and she put down the receiver. She felt she had betrayed her own past too – the secret meetings, the coded messages, the care which Maurice had taken in Johannesburg to instruct her and to keep them both out of the reach of BOSS. And, after all that, Muller was here in England – he had sat at table with her.

  When she got back to the house she noticed a strange car in the laurel drive, and Mrs Castle met her in the hall. She said, ‘There’s someone to see you, Sarah. I’ve put him in the study.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Mrs Castle lowered her voice and said in a tone of distaste, ‘I think it’s a policeman.’

  The man had a large fair moustache which he stroked nervously. He was definitely not the kind of policeman that Sarah had known in her youth and she wondered how Mrs Castle had detected his profession – she would have taken him for a small tradesman who bad dealt with local families over the years. He looked just as snug and friendly as Doctor Castle’s study which had been left unchanged after the doctor’s death: the pipe rack still over the desk, the Chinese bowl for ashes, the swivel armchair in which the stranger had been too ill at ease to seat himself. He stood by the bookcase partly blocking from view with his burly form the scarlet volumes of the Loeb classics and the green leather Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition. He asked, ‘Mrs Castle?’ and she nearly answered, ‘No. That’s my mother-in-law,’ so much a stranger did she feel in this house.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m Inspector Butler.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve had a telephone call from London. They asked me to come and have a word with you – that is, if you were here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They thought perhaps you could tell us how to get in touch with your husband.’

  She felt an immense relief – he wasn’t after all in prison – till the thought came to her that this might be a trap – even the kindness and shyness and patent honesty of Inspector Butler might be a trap, the kind of trap BOSS were likely to lay. But this wasn’t the country of BOSS. She said, ‘No. I can’t. I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Castle, it’s partly to do with a dog.’

  ‘Buller?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Well . . . if that’s his name.’

  ‘It is his name. Please tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘You have a house in King’s Road, Berkhamsted. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave a laugh of relief. ‘Has Buller been killing a cat again? But I’m here. I’m innocent. You must see my husband, not me.’

  ‘We’ve tried to, Mrs Castle, but we can’t reach him. His office says he’s not been in. He seems to have gone away and left the dog, although . . .’

  ‘Was it a very valuable cat?’

  ‘It’s not a cat we are concerned about, Mrs Castle. The neighbours complained about the noise – a sort of whining – and someone telephoned the police station. You see there’ve been burglars recently at Boxmoor. Well, the police sent a man to see – and he found a scullery window open – he didn’t have to break any glass . . . and the dog . . .’

  ‘He wasn’t bitten? I’ve never known Buller bite a person.’

  ‘The poor dog couldn’t do any biting: not in the state he was in. He’d been shot. Whoever had done it made a messy job. I’m afraid, Mrs Castle, they had to finish your dog off.’

  ‘Oh God, what will Sam say?’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘My son. He loved Buller.’

  ‘I’m fond of animals myself.’ The two-minute silence that followed seemed very long, like the two-minute tribute to the dead on Armistice Day. ‘I’m sorry to bring bad news,’ Inspector Butler said at last and the wheeled and pedestrian traffic of life started up again.

  ‘I’m wondering what I’ll say to Sam.’

  ‘Tell him the dog was run over and killed right away.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose that’s best. I don’t like lying to a child.’

  ‘There are white lies and black lies,’ Inspector Butler said. She wondered whether the lies he would force her to tell were black or white. She looked at the thick fair moustache and into the kindly eyes and wondered what on earth had made him into a policeman. It would be a little like lying to a child.

  ‘Won’t you sit down, Inspector?’

  ‘You sit down, Mrs Castle, if you’ll excuse me. I’ve been sitting down all the morning.’ He loo
ked at the row of pipes in the pipe rack with concentration: it might have been a valuable picture of which, as a connoisseur, he could appreciate the value.

  ‘Thank you for coming yourself and not just telling me over the telephone.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Castle, I had to come because there are some other questions. The police at Berkhamsted think there may have been a robbery. There was a scullery window open and the burglar may have shot the dog. Nothing seems to have been disturbed, but only you or your husband can tell, and they don’t seem able to get in touch with your husband. Did he have any enemies? There’s no sign of a struggle, but then there wouldn’t be if the other man had a gun.’

  ‘I don’t know of any enemies.’

  ‘A neighbour said he had an idea he worked in the Foreign Office. This morning they had quite a difficulty trying to find the right department and then it seemed they hadn’t seen him since Friday. He should have been in, they said. When did you last see him, Mrs Castle?’

  ‘Saturday morning.’

  ‘You came here Saturday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He stayed behind?’

  ‘Yes. You see, we had decided to separate. For good.’

  ‘A quarrel?’

  ‘A decision, Inspector. We’ve been married for seven years. You don’t flare up after seven years.’

  ‘Did he own a revolver, Mrs Castle?’

  ‘Not that I know of. It’s possible.’

  ‘Was he very upset – by the decision?’

  ‘We were neither of us happy if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Would you be willing to go to Berkhamsted and look at the house?’

  ‘I don’t want to, but I suppose they could make me, couldn’t they?’

  ‘There’s no question of making you. But, you see, they can’t rule out a robbery . . . There might have been something valuable which they couldn’t tell was missing. A piece of jewellery?’

  ‘I’ve never gone in for jewellery. We weren’t rich people, Inspector.’

  ‘Or a picture?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it makes us wonder if he might have done something foolish or rash. If he was unhappy and it was his gun.’ He picked up the Chinese bowl and examined the pattern, then turned to examine her in turn. She realized those kindly eyes were not after all the eyes of a child. ‘You don’t seem worried about that possibility, Mrs Castle.’

  ‘I’m not. It isn’t the kind of thing he’d do.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Of course you know him better than anyone else and I’m sure you’re right. So you’ll let us know at once, won’t you, if he gets in touch with you, I mean?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Under strain people sometimes do odd things. Even lose their memory.’ He took a last long look at the pipe rack as if he were unwilling to part from it. ‘I’ll ring up Berkhamsted, Mrs Castle. I hope you won’t have to be troubled. And I’ll let you know if I get any news.’

  When they were at the door she asked him, ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Neighbours with children get to know more than you’d allow for, Mrs Castle.’

  She watched him until he was safely in his car and then she went back into the house. She thought: I shan’t tell Sam yet. Let him get used to life without Buller first. The other Mrs Castle, the true Mrs Castle, met her outside the sitting-room. She said, ‘Lunch is getting cold. It was a policeman, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Maurice’s address.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Did you give it him?’

  ‘He’s not at home. How should I know where he is?’

  ‘I hope that man won’t come back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he does.’

  2

  But the days passed without Inspector Butler and without news. She made no further telephone calls to London. There was no point to it now. Once when she telephoned to the butcher on her mother-in-law’s behalf to order some lamb cutlets she had an impression the line was tapped. It was probably imagination. Monitoring had become too fine an art for an amateur to detect. Under pressure from Mrs Castle she had an interview at the local school and she arranged for Sam to attend it; from this meeting she returned in deep depression – it was as though she had just finalized the new life, stamped it like a document with a wax seal, nothing would ever change it now. On her way home she called at the greengrocer’s, at the library, at the chemist’s – Mrs Castle had provided her with a list: a tin of green peas, a novel of Georgette Heyer’s, a bottle of aspirin for the headaches of which Sarah felt sure that she and Sam were the cause. For no reason she could put a name to she thought of the great grey-green pyramids of earth which surrounded Johannesburg – even Muller had spoken of their colour in the evening, and she felt closer to Muller, the enemy, the racialist, than to Mrs Castle. She would have exchanged this Sussex town with its liberal inhabitants who treated her with such kindly courtesy even for Soweto. Courtesy could be a barrier more than a blow. It wasn’t courtesy one wanted to live with – it was love. She loved Maurice, she loved the smell of the dust and degradation of her country – now she was without Maurice and without a country. Perhaps that was why she welcomed even the voice of an enemy on the telephone. She knew at once it was an enemy’s voice although it introduced itself as ‘a friend and colleague of your husband’.

  ‘I hope I’m not ringing you up at a bad time, Mrs Castle.’

  ‘No, but I didn’t hear your name.’

  ‘Doctor Percival.’

  It was vaguely familiar. ‘Yes. I think Maurice has spoken of you.’

  ‘We had a memorable night out once in London.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember now. With Davis.’

  ‘Yes. Poor Davis.’ There was a pause. ‘I was wondering, Mrs Castle, if we could have a talk.’

  ‘We are having one now, aren’t we?’

  ‘Well, a rather closer talk than a telephone provides.’

  ‘I’m a long way from London.’

  ‘We could send a car for you if it would help.’

  ‘We’, she thought, ‘we’. It was a mistake on his part to speak like an organization. ‘We’ and ‘they’ were uncomfortable terms. They were a warning, they put you on your guard.

  The voice said, ‘I thought if you were free for lunch one day this week . . .’

  ‘I don’t know if I can manage.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about your husband.’

  ‘Yes. I guessed that.’

  ‘We are all rather anxious about Maurice.’ She felt a quick elation. ‘We’ hadn’t got him in some secret spot unknown to Inspector Butler. He was well away – all Europe was between them. It was as though she too, as well as Maurice, had escaped – she was already on her way home, that home which was where Maurice was. She had to be very careful just the same, as in the old days in Johannesburg. She said, ‘Maurice doesn’t concern me any more. We’ve separated.’

  ‘All the same, I expect, you’d like some news of him?’

  So they had news. It was as when Carson told her, ‘He’s safe in L.M. waiting for you. Now we’ve only got to get you there.’ If he were free, they would soon be together. She realized she was smiling at the telephone – thank God, they hadn’t yet invented a visual telephone, but all the same she wiped the smile off her face. She said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t much care where he is. Couldn’t you write? I have a child to look after.’

  ‘Well no, Mrs Castle, there are things one can’t write. If we could send a car for you tomorrow . . .’

  ‘Tomorrow’s impossible.’

  ‘Thursday then.’

  She hesitated as long as she dared. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘We could send a car for you at eleven.’

  ‘But I don’t need a car. There’s a good train at 11.15.’

  ‘Well then, if you could meet me at a restaurant, Brummell’s – close to Victoria.’
>
  ‘What street?’

  ‘There you have me. Walton – Wilton – never mind, any taxi driver will know Brummell’s. It’s very quiet there,’ he added soothingly as though he were recommending with professional knowledge a good nursing home, and Sarah had a quick mental picture of the speaker – a very self-assured Wimpole Street type, with a dangling eye-glass which he would only use when it came to writing out the prescription, the signal, like royalty rising, that it was time for the patient to depart.

  ‘Until Thursday,’ he said. She didn’t even reply. She put down the receiver and went to find Mrs Castle – she was late again for lunch and she didn’t care. She was humming a tune of praise the Methodist missionaries had taught her, and Mrs Castle looked at her in astonishment. ‘What’s the matter? Is something wrong? Was it that policeman again?’

  ‘No. It was only a doctor. A friend of Maurice. Nothing’s wrong. Would you mind just for once if I went up to town on Thursday? I’ll take Sam to school in the morning and he can find his own way back.’

  ‘I don’t mind, of course, but I was thinking of having Mr Bottomley for lunch again.’

  ‘Oh, Sam and Mr Bottomley will get on very well together.’

  ‘Will you go and see a solicitor when you are in town?’

  ‘I might.’ A half-lie was a small price to pay in return for her new happiness.

  ‘Where will you have lunch?’

  ‘Oh, I expect I’ll pick up a sandwich somewhere.’

  ‘It’s such a pity you’ve chosen Thursday. I’ve ordered a joint. However’ – Mrs Castle sought for a silver lining – ‘if you had lunch at Harrods there are one or two things you could bring me back.’

  She lay in bed that night unable to sleep. It was as if she had procured a calendar and could now begin to mark off the days of term. The man she had spoken to was an enemy – she was convinced of that – but he wasn’t the Security Police, he wasn’t BOSS, she wouldn’t lose her teeth or the sight of an eye in Brummell’s: she had no reason to fear.