Mandrake

  He ran a hand over her head and went to unbolt the door; the dog bounded out into the sunshine. Queston crossed to the battered sink in the one square room; splashed water over his face, dried it with the towel hanging from a nail, and buttoned his shirt. He combed his hair, frowning at the length of it bushing out grey-streaked behind his ears, and decided not to shave. So few people ever came near the cottage that there was no point in shaving more than twice a week.

  He filled the kettle and put it on the stove; the flames flickered small and yellow-blue, he would need another cylinder of gas soon. Barefoot on the stone floor, cold and uneven to his skin, he opened cupboard doors, methodically took out cup, saucer, plate, knife, spoon. Breadboard, butter, jar of marmalade, tin of powdered coffee. It was an automatic routine; his senses always woke before his mind. Sleepily he set his breakfast on the scrubbed wooden table, groping at the strange sense of excitement which hovered round him that morning like a child’s anticipation of a treat. Long burial in work had made him absent-minded. Perhaps the feeling came only from the sunshine, the blue-white sky hazed with the promise of a fine day. But he knew the real reason. It was finished. The night before, he had finished the last draft of the book. The pattern of work which had carried one day into the next for almost two years would be different now.

  With one foot he pushed aside the square of flat wood covering a hole in the floor, and took out a carton of milk. It was his private device to vanquish the souring summer heat; the milkman called at the cottage only every fourth day. From the clattering bread-bin he took half a loaf, its exposed surface dry and rusklike even when he had sawn off the exposed end. The baker called only once a week. He had ordered his isolation with care.

  He refilled the dog’s water-bowl; she came padding back in, put down her head and lapped noisily.

  ‘What a noise,’ he said aloud. ‘Suppose I drank like that, now? ’ It would hardly matter, he reflected, if he did; in all his time in the cottage he had encountered no one but the tradesmen, and the village shopkeepers when he drove in to buy food and collect his infrequent post. He had never been so content in his life. He had no idea what Mandrake and his Ministry were up to; it was only from a chance remark of the baker’s that he knew their party was still in power. But his book would certainly shake their planning escapades. What had mattered was to write it. To cut himself off, and retire into the business of what he had to say. Since the village had not changed, there could be no great change in the world. No nuclear cataclysm, presumably, had yet arrived; and if it should be imminent, he would be no better off if he knew.

  He made some coffee, cut himself a slice of bread and marmalade, and went to sit on the doorstep as he ate. The dog lay down at his feet, sniffing suspiciously round at the morning in some inscrutable wariness of her own. Queston watched her. He was not sentimental about animals; he had seen too many gaunt, half-wild dogs in the past, prowling round the fire where the scraps came thickest. So much, he thought, for loyalties. But he respected them; their perceptions covered a wider scale than his own, and that was reason enough. Out of an irrational dislike of calling her by any name, he carried a whistle to summon the dog which blew a high note inaudible to his own ear. And once or twice he had suspected her of seeing things that he did not see.

  He poked at her with his foot, and stood up. Already he felt the sun warm on his skin, though it shone still through an early mist, glinting on spangled webs in the thicket of the garden. He had cleared a patch of ground among the trees behind the cottage, and planted vegetables there, but here in front he had left the brambles and wild roses as disordered as when he came. Although he had cut a way through for the car, resting now beside the cottage in its fabric cocoon, he seldom drove away. Except when his stores ran low, there was no need.

  The stores were low again now, but he felt no enthusiasm at the thought of going to the village. He would go tomorrow. There would be new milk today, and bread; and he would go for a rabbit.

  ‘Rabbits! ’ he said to the dog. Her feathered tail rustled to and fro in the grass. Queston went in and up the ladder for his gun.

  He came up through the floor of the room that he called his study. It was the least austere of the three. The kitchenliving-room below was primitive and functional; he had put in no more than rough wooden furniture, and a rush mat on the floor. And the bedroom was like a cell: bed, wardrobe, chair, white roughcast walls, but nothing else. No curtain at the window, even, since nothing was outside but the trees.

  But in the room where he worked he had sanded and polished the floor, and covered it with bright rugs; brought in bookshelves, a couch, pressure lamps—everywhere else he had used candles, with a masochistic pleasure in the dim light. Here, he had worked; sitting at the big table with his back to the window, behind him the waving treetops that whistled in winter and in spring foamed in a pink-white sea. Two drawings hung on the walls: John Piper, Henry Moore. They had seemed to fit; to catch the ideas that he had been trying to mould. The one in rocks, the other in men and women carved as if excavated from rock. Looking inward at them and at the room, he had worked; remembering, interpreting, living in the fantasy-world of the ideas that grew and writhed and intertwined, now that he had at last given them release, like a rising pillar of smoke. The cottage was an irrelevance, an irritation, but less so than any other surroundings would have been. Writing of man’s attachment to place, he still found no smallest sign of it in himself.

  He took the gun from a cupboard, with a packet of slugs. Below, the dog suddenly barked. Queston glanced at his watch; the milkman was early. Peering down through the trap, he saw the figure silhouetted in the doorway against the sunlight.

  ‘Morning, George. Got some eggs for me as well?’

  The figure moved a step forward. ‘Mr Queston?’

  Queston frowned, and climbed down the ladder. At its foot he stumbled over the dog; she stood there rigid, growling. ‘Shut up,’ he said to her.

  The man was stocky and dark, with a round head. He was shorter than Queston. He wore a dark-grey suit that puckered at the shoulders where it did not properly fit, and he carried a briefcase. ‘Mr Queston?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I thought you were the milkman. Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning.’ The man did not move. Queston saw his downward glance, looked down at the gun, and laughed.

  ‘O—don’t be alarmed. Not my greeting for strangers.’ He propped it against the table. ‘I was going out for a rabbit.’

  The man showed no trace of a smile, but stood there clutching the handle of his briefcase. He said stiffly: ‘You live off the country?’

  ‘To some extent,’ Queston said cheerfully. He sat on the edge of the table. ‘What can I do for you?’

  The man fumbled with the straps of his case; gold initials glinted on its flap. ‘Our office in Winchester would like you to answer a few questions, if you will. I’ll leave a form with you, but there are one or two points we could clear up now, if you have a moment.’

  ‘All the time in the world. I’ve been meaning to write, but I didn’t get round to it.’ Queston remembered the three tax demands which had been waiting in his last batch of post, and felt an involuntary flicker of guilt. He waved at the single wooden chair. ‘Sit down. Have a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ The man would not be thawed.

  ‘Well, I will.’ He moved round the table and spooned more coffee into his cup, whistling between his teeth; the elation of the morning still washed over him warm as the sunshine. He said: ‘I did fill in a return last year, you know.’

  ‘A return?’

  ‘Income tax.’

  ‘O,’ the man said, faintly pitying. ‘This is not to do with tax. You might call it a census.’ He sifted through his papers as if they were gold leaf. ‘Now, if you would confirm… your name is David Wayland Queston, you are forty-five years old, British by birth, and you are by profession an anthropologist and writer?’

  Queston put the kettle back on the stov
e. ‘All correct.’

  ‘And this is your handwriting? ’ The man held out a piece of paper. Queston glanced at him curiously as he took it, noting the high colour and thick dark eyebrows of the Wessex Gelt. But for the solemnity, ill-fitting as his suit, he might have been of one family with all the men in the village.

  He looked down at the paper. Then he put down his cup abruptly.

  ‘Copley Hotel, Bruton Street…’ Surely not. But it was his own writing. The form he had filled in a few years before, at the airport, when he came back from the States. He looked up. The man was gazing impassively at him, through him; Queston was suddenly aware of a nebulous uneasiness he had not felt for a long time. At the same moment he heard a low continuous noise in the room, soft and sinister. His imagination leapt in a frantic spasm, and then he saw the dog.

  She was lying crouched beside the door, ears flat back against her head; her eyes were fixed on the stranger, and the long low rumbling came from her throat, an eerie unbroken growl like an incantation. He had never heard her make such a sound before.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, girl’ He went over to her, and caressed her head. The long warning did not waver. ‘Get outside, then,’ Queston said, and heaved at her collar. He had to drag her to the doorstep; her body was rigid and bristling, and all the while her head turned growling towards the man in the dark suit. As Queston pushed her over the step she gave one high snarling bark like a gun-shot, and slunk off into the garden.

  Queston came back, clutching for common sense. ‘So sorry.’

  He might never have moved. The man sat patiently waiting, his eyes on the form.

  ‘This is my handwriting, certainly. You’re pretty thorough with your census, aren’t you? It must be two years ago I filled this in.’

  The man said: ‘We understand from one of your referees that you have not led a settled life in this country since childhood.’ The unwavering composure of his Hampshire burr began to be irritating; he spoke slowly, deliberately, with an air of detachment as if all the time he was listening for some other voice, looking through Queston for some other face.

  ‘I’ve been here for two years, writing,’ Queston said. ‘Before that my work took me all over the place. I came back to England to write a book—just finished it, as a matter of fact.’ He savoured the sound and feeling of the words, and felt less irritable.

  The man had a notebook on his knee. ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Yorkshire. I thought you had that on the airport form. Somewhere near Catterick, I think it was.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘My father was in the army, we moved about a lot. And I never really knew my parents—they died when I was young.’

  ‘Your birth was registered in Darlington, according to our records.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, if you’ve checked my birth certificate why ask?’

  The man frowned. ‘Be careful, Mr Queston.’

  Queston stared at him. Was he mad, or just stupid? The man paused, with the same distant expression, and seemed to change his mind. He said, more mildly: ‘Any inaccuracy makes things difficult for us, you see. Tell me, are you particularly attached to Yorkshire?’

  ‘I don’t remember it. I believe we moved soon after I was born.’

  The man wrote; then looked up again. ‘What about this part of the country?’

  ‘It’s very beautiful. Very English.’

  ‘Would you say your roots were here?’

  ‘O Lord no.’

  ‘Yet you chose to come here to write your book.’

  ‘I wanted peace and quiet.’

  ‘But you would be distressed if, say, you had to leave this cottage tomorrow? You would miss it?’

  ‘I have a ten-year lease,’ Queston said dryly. ‘With the option of renewal.’

  The man looked at him, and smiled. He took a long breath, with the air of one trying a new approach to a simpleton. ‘There must be one place from your early life that you remember with most affection. Where would you say your roots are, Mr Queston?’

  The same word again, that struck an oddly unpleasant note. ‘I don’t have any roots. Damn it, I’m not a plant.’

  ‘We all have roots,’ the man said, patiently.

  ‘Well, I don’t.’ Queston picked up his cup, but the coffee was cold. He leaned across to jerk it into the sink. The sunlight still streaming in through the door made him restless. ‘Look here, if you’ll forgive my saying so, I don’t see much point in all this. I’m living here, and that’s that. What more do you want?’

  ‘I have my instructions,’ the man said.

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘The Ministry of Planning.’

  Queston paused. ‘Indeed,’ he said slowly.

  ‘There are three questions I have to put to you, Mr Queston.’ The round dark eyes were wide with self-conscious pomp in the round dark head. ‘I should advise you to answer them as best you can. You say you have no roots. But if your first son were to be born, where would you like it to be?’

  ‘I am unmarried. And careful.’

  The man sighed. ‘Very well. If you knew you were to die in a month’s time, where would you choose to spend your last days?’

  Queston stood up. His growing resentment had become active dislike. ‘Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘You are not being helpful,’ the man said stolidly.

  ‘You are most perceptive.’

  ‘One more question. If you were forced to leave here, where would you go?’

  ‘I’m afraid my time is valuable. If you don’t mind—’

  The man spoke very quietly. ‘Answer my question.’

  ‘I don’t know where the hell I should go. Since this cottage is legally mine for the next eight years the question hardly arises.’

  ‘The law changes, Mr Queston.’ He stood up, closing his briefcase. ‘You have been—out of touch.’ He turned towards the door, then said, casually: ‘Perhaps your roots were with the lady in Brazil?’

  The faint but unmistakable stress on the word ‘lady’ brought anger whipping away astonishment. How had they known about that dead affair? ‘Get out,’ Queston said. He put his hand on the butt of the gun where it rested against the table, and saw the man’s eyes narrow. Suddenly he felt an extraordinary undercurrent of menace; the man’s impregnable confidence was that of one backed by an enormous weight of organized authority.

  ‘You will be hearing from us, Mr Queston.’ His eyes slid away again with the same other-attentive air as before. He stepped out past the dog, who lay on the doorstep; she put back her ears, but did not growl.

  The man gestured at her, and said over his shoulder: ‘They should all be sent back to Scotland, where they belong. It will be seen to, soon enough.’

  ‘The breed’s Welsh, as it happens. And she came from a farm two miles from here.’ Queston’s retort came automatically triumphant, like a child’s jeer, before he had realized quite what he had heard. But while he realized, the man had gone, and he saw only the dew glinting on the wet red blackberries and filigree cobwebs laced between the leaves, in the small jungle that cut off the cottage from the road.

  The milkman’s van did not come until the sun was dropping into the trees. Queston heard its clattering engine, and waited at the door.

  ‘George! Where the hell have you been? I’m gasping for a cup of tea. Have the cows run dry?’

  George was an amiable, dim-witted youth, vainly seeking sophistication in a leather jacket and black jeans. He wore them in all weathers, and the air now was close and hot. He mopped his red, large-featured face. ‘Three pints?’

  ‘That’s right. Got any eggs?’

  ‘Dozen?’

  ‘I’ll come to the van. What made you so late?’

  George seemed uneasy, his eyes vacant and dazed. His rural drawl was more impenetrable than usual. ‘Men in the village, from the office. Couldn’t get owt sooner.’ He put down the cartons of milk and made off towards the road. Queston followed, and took the tra
y of eggs that the boy thrust at him.

  ‘Come and have a cuppa,’ he said impulsively, surprised to find himself grasping at a chance of company. ‘It must be the end of your round.’

  ‘Can’t,’ George said. He climbed into the driving-seat.

  ‘Thanks all the same. Gotta get home.’ He looked out furtively at the fields edging the road, as if expecting something to pounce. ‘That’s right. Home.’

  Queston stared at him. Was the boy drunk?

  ‘What did you mean about men in the village from the office? Was it some census chap from the Ministry of Planning?’

  George reacted as if the words were some unutterable blasphemy. He jerked suddenly in his seat, and hastily started the engine. He said a third time, barely audible: ‘Gotta get home.’

  Queston stepped back, puzzled, but as the engine belched the boy leaned across the nearside window and shouted to him over the din. He looked across Queston’s shoulder, without meeting his eyes. ‘Shan’t be calling any more, Mr Queston. Sorry. Not allowed. You’re beyond the line. Have to come and get your own milk, if you like.’

  Queston opened his mouth to argue, but the van began to move. He caught a last glimpse of George’s hot, confused face, and heard him call: ‘You’re beyond the line.’

  He went back to the cottage, carrying the eggs. Beyond what line?

  The night was airless and hot; as he lay in bed the darkness pressed insistently round him as if it caught away his breath. Yet September was half gone already. Every year it had been the same, since he came to the cottage. The summers long, hot, longer every year, the cauldron of sunshine cooling only when the first autumn mists began.

  And even the nights hot, that was the strange thing. He had grown accustomed to heat in the last twenty years; but to a heat that died into vicious cold at night when summer was past its peak. Not this, now: this was different. The nights were hot, without wind, without moisture; even tonight, though dew would form before morning, the stars were brilliantly clear. It would be the same until winter came, a sudden, brutal winter, biting into the year with animal teeth. No heat or mildness then; only cold, low cloud, and snow in the wind.