‘No. I often wonder how we’ve let it happen.’
‘You must see things up close, in the Civil Service.’
David looked away. ‘Not really.’
‘I used to try not to think about it, just live quietly. Most people do that, don’t they?’
David looked over at Ben, then back at Frank. ‘Ben said that when you were admitted you were shouting about the end of the world. Is that what you meant, the world situation?’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s what I meant.’ Frank spoke quickly and David sensed he was lying. ‘David, I’m so sorry about your son,’ he said again. ‘That must have been dreadful.’
‘We miss him.’ There was silence again. ‘Look here,’ David said, ‘would you like to say hello to Geoff? He’s just outside.’
Frank thought for a moment, then sighed. ‘Yes, why not?’ David realized Frank didn’t want anyone else to see him in this state, understood how much it had cost to appeal even to him, the shame he must feel. But the Resistance people had wanted to get Geoff’s views, too, if possible.
‘Let’s go get him,’ Ben said. He inclined his head for David to follow him. David had hoped Ben might go and fetch Geoff, leave him alone with Frank for a minute, but he wasn’t going to. David got up and went to the door, pressing Frank’s shoulder as he passed. He and Ben went through the day room, aware of more curious glances. Geoff was sitting in the office, looking out at the mist.
‘He’ll see you,’ Ben told Geoff.
The three of them went back to the quiet room. Geoff went over to Frank and shook his hand firmly. ‘Hello, Frank,’ he said.
‘Thanks for coming. Sorry to drag you here.’
‘That’s all right,’ Geoff said, with a too-brisk heartiness. ‘We’ll have to see what we can do to help you.’
‘David wrote saying you’d lived in Africa.’
‘Yes. Kenya. Been back a few years. I work at the Colonial Office in London now, just round the corner from David.’
‘Are you married, too?’
‘No. Not yet.’ Geoff gave his sharp little bark of laughter.
‘Not met the right girl yet, eh? Like me.’ Frank gave his new sad smile.
‘Oh, I met her all right, but she didn’t think I was the right man.’ Geoff bit his lip, then said, quietly, ‘I’m sorry to see you in here.’
‘You know what I did to my brother?’ Frank asked suddenly.
‘Yes. It was a surprise. You must’ve been provoked.’
Frank blinked. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said eagerly. ‘I was. That’s what I told the police.’
David said, ‘Apparently Frank’s brother got pretty drunk and offensive.’
‘There you are, then.’ David looked at Geoff. He had made Frank brighten up a little.
‘Your brother’s some sort of scientist, isn’t he?’ Geoff continued.
‘Yes.’
‘He won’t help?’
‘No. He won’t even reply to telephone calls.’
Geoff glanced at Ben in the doorway. He shook his head slightly.
‘Listen, Frank,’ David said. ‘I’ll get in touch with my father’s old firm, see if I can find someone who deals with – well, this area of law. See what we can do.’ As he said it he thought, our people probably won’t let me do that. To make it worse Frank’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. He leaned forward, cradling his head on his good hand, and began to cry, a desperate, lost sound. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t seem to – to control myself this afternoon.’
Geoff said gently, ‘It’s all right.’
Frank pulled a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. He looked up, his face red now. ‘I just want to get out of here. I can’t trust anyone, I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t any more. Oh, if only Edgar hadn’t come.’
David put a hand on his shoulder once more. ‘We’ll help you, Frank, we’ll do all we can.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘You can trust us. But don’t tell anyone else we’ve been here, not yet.’ He looked at Geoff. ‘Let’s find out what we can do first.’
Afterwards Ben took them back to his office. They lit cigarettes. Ben said, ‘You two look fair puddled.’
‘What?’ David frowned. He wished the nurse would talk properly.
‘Done in. Knackered.’
‘Well, we’ve done our job,’ David answered shortly. ‘He wants to get out of here.’
Ben said, ‘Would you two agree he’s holding something back? About his brother?’
David looked at Geoff, who nodded slowly. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s at the end of his tether,’ David said.
‘So,’ Ben asked. ‘Where do things go now?’
‘I don’t know,’ David answered. ‘We have to report back.’
‘That woman with you, she’s in charge of this op, isn’t she?’
‘Natalia? Yes.’
‘I’ve heard she’s good.’
David looked at Ben. ‘Frank trusts me to get him out of here. But not enough to tell me about his brother. And I don’t think he trusts you completely, he doesn’t understand why you’re helping him.’
Ben laughed dryly. ‘No’ such a heidcase as he looks then, is he?’
David said angrily, ‘You scared him into phoning me.’
Ben’s face reddened. ‘Don’t you get all moral with me,’ he snapped. ‘Mister fuckin’ la-di-da. You’ve been given a job to do, just like me.’
‘David,’ Geoff said, putting out a hand. ‘He’s right.’
David brushed it off, glaring back at Ben. ‘I care about Frank, and don’t you bloody forget it.’
‘Dae ye?’ Ben leaned forward and spoke with a quiet, angry intensity. ‘Then you ought tae be thinking about how to get him out of here, pal, before he tells whatever it is that’s so bloody secret to the wrong people. Because if that happens, Mosley’s guys will take him and they won’t fanny around. I got done over in ’41, when the Communist Party was banned, that’s how I got this nose. But that’s nothing to what they’ll dae to him. They’ll squeeze him like a bloody orange. And none of us wants to see that.’ He stood up. ‘Now come on, do you want people to hear us arguing, you silly prick?’
‘Look here—’
‘We all want him safe,’ Geoff said firmly, looking Ben in the eye.
David took a deep breath. ‘All right. But don’t forget what I said.’
‘And dinnae you forget I’m the one keeping him safe, day after every fuckin’ day. Now come on.’
Ben took them outside, locking and unlocking door after door. There was rain in the mist now. Natalia was still sitting in the car. She had turned the engine off; David thought she must be cold. The three men stood on the steps. Ben looked around, then handed an envelope to David. ‘I’ve lifted the key to Frank’s flat from the stores,’ he said curtly. ‘You’re going over there now, yes?’
‘That’s right. Natalia has the address.’
‘And the place in town to drop the keys off afterwards? Natalia knows where?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good. I have tae get the keys back to the stores, or I’ll be in the shit.’
‘We’ll make sure they’re returned.’
Ben said, ‘Right then.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been told it might become necessary to spring Frank, get him out of here. If he knows something important and he’s keeping mum, that’s maybe just what the big bosses will decide to do. Try and get him out of this country.’
‘But how could he be got out,’ David asked, ‘with the security this place has? And if anyone tried to take him by force, he’d yell the place down.’
Ben spoke quietly: ‘There’s only one person who’d be able to inject him with something to keep him quiet, then persuade the other staff they was authorized to take Frank outside. Me. Then I’d have a price on my head, pal, and my job gone too. I’d be well and truly fucked. But you can tell them in London I’ll do it if I’m told to.’
David saw Ben’s utter
determination. He nodded. ‘All right,’ he said quickly.
‘Now fuckin’ hook it.’
They all looked round as the main door behind them opened and a patient was led out by an attendant, holding him by the arm. Ben nodded to him as he led the man down a side path. The attendant wore a peaked cap but the patient was bareheaded; he didn’t react as the cold rain fell on him. Ben looked at David again. He said, more calmly, ‘Dinnae worry. I’ll keep him safe.’
Chapter Nineteen
DAVID TOOK THE BACK SEAT AGAIN; he could think better there.
They told Natalia about what had happened at the hospital: Frank’s quiet desperation, his unwillingness to talk about his brother, the visit from the police. She thought for a moment, then said, ‘So you think he may have some secret.’
‘Maybe. Or perhaps it was just something personal.’
‘My sense was it was more than that,’ Geoff said quietly.
‘And the police,’ Natalia said. ‘It is worrying they are still interested.’
‘That chap Ben said he didn’t tell them any more than he had already.’
‘They may come back,’ Natalia replied.
David looked at her face in the mirror. ‘So what happens now?’
‘It will be for Mr Jackson and the people above him to decide.’
‘If Frank were to be got out of England,’ Geoff asked, ‘how would that be done? It would have to be by sea.’
‘I don’t know.’
David saw Natalia give Geoff a quick, sharp look. He thought, is that what the people at the top are planning? He wondered, too, if Frank had some big military secret, the Resistance might want it for themselves. He realized suddenly that although he had been active among them for more than two years he still thought of the Resistance as an entity separate from him. He said, ‘How could you get Frank to the coast? It’s well over seventy miles in any direction.’
‘And he’d probably try to get away,’ Geoff added.
Natalia looked at David in the mirror. ‘Unless he was travelling with someone he trusted.’
‘You mean me?’ David frowned. ‘I doubt he’d trust me that far. Especially if I’ve said I’ll help him, and then I kidnap him.’
‘And what will happen to him if he knows something important and lets it slip in that place?’ It was more or less what Ben had said. Natalia went on, ‘I am not being unfeeling. I am sorry for your friend. But nothing good can happen to him in that asylum.’
‘I know,’ David said. Natalia was still studying him, the slightly angled Tartar eyes hard again, calculating.
As they approached the southern outskirts of the city the weather was still foggy, a wet mist through which light rain fell. They came onto a main road, driving past a complex of low factory buildings from which they heard a continual mechanical crashing. They passed a vast space where hundreds of identical cars stood, end to end. A sign by the gates was marked Longbridge Works.
‘That must be the big Austin Morris factory,’ Geoff said. David saw there had been a fire in a tall building beside the road; it was a black skeleton. Geoff continued: ‘I heard an office block got burned down last month. The workers rioted over not being allowed to join a union. It’s not just happening in the North any more.’
Natalia said, ‘Remember that lorryload of soldiers we saw on the way up? Things are getting rough in Yorkshire.’
‘There’ll be a lot of bloodshed,’ David said.
‘What else are people to do?’ she demanded.
‘What are you hoping for?’ David asked her. ‘The workers’ revolution? I think that’s what that nurse Ben’s after. I doubt Churchill would agree.’
‘The Resistance is an alliance of anti-Fascist forces, like every resistance movement in Europe. When we win, there will be elections and people can choose their own government. And, no, I am not looking for the revolution.’
Geoff said, ‘I wish we could go back to where we were before the war.’
‘That is a dream,’ Natalia answered flatly. ‘Things will get worse before they get better. Whatever comes in the end, it won’t be like the world before 1939. We must get used to that.’
Following directions Natalia had memorized, they passed the university and drove into a district of terraced houses, shabby front doors giving straight out onto the streets. As they continued east, though, the houses became bigger, with little gardens in the front. They neared a park, then found themselves among streets of big, detached Victorian villas, three or four storeys high. Lights were already on in the murky afternoon, the windows yellow squares in the mist. In one house David glimpsed a high-ceilinged lounge, mirrors and pictures on the walls, a man with a little girl on his knee. In the top flat of the next house he saw a middle-aged woman stirring a pan on a cooker. They drove slowly along, peering at the houses to try to make out their numbers. Then Geoff said, ‘Stop here. See, a first-floor window’s been boarded up.’
They got out and approached the house. Compared to its neighbours the building was shabby, streaks of moss on the red bricks. Mizzly rain dampened their faces. The ground and first floors were in darkness, though a light was visible at a second-floor window. They walked up the little path. David looked at the boarded-up window, then at the paved area below, where weeds sprouted between stone flags. ‘Frank’s brother was lucky he didn’t break his back.’
‘It would have been a murder charge then,’ Geoff agreed.
The front door was big and solid, three doorbells beside it. David took out the two keys Ben had given him, tied together with string. He inserted the larger one in the lock and the door opened smoothly. A damp, cold smell came from inside. Natalia was looking up and down the street, checking. Nobody was about on this unpleasant Sunday; it was getting dark, streetlights would be coming on soon. David stepped inside, pressed a light switch. A bare bulb revealed a dusty tiled floor, walls with blistered paint.
‘What a dump,’ Geoff said.
‘Keep your voice low,’ Natalia cautioned.
They climbed the stairs. There was a landing with a door, marked Flat 2. David unlocked the door. He switched on the light and they entered a little hall with a threadbare carpet. He noticed a musty, unwashed smell. There were several closed doors; they opened each tentatively. There was a small, rather dirty bathroom, mildew on the tiles, and a kitchen with a blackened old cooker. All the kitchen cupboards were open, cans and broken crockery strewn over the floor. The large bedroom with its single bed and ancient wardrobe seemed to have escaped destruction. The last room was a cavernous lounge, the big window boarded up. The room had been wrecked; pictures hung askew; chairs lay on their sides. Books and magazines, science fiction from what David could see, had been pulled from the big bookcase and left on the carpet. The television had a crack in the screen. The only undamaged piece of furniture was a large rolltop desk. A couple of photographs lay face down on the floor beside it.
Geoff said, ‘Good God, did Frank do this?’
‘He must have.’ David looked at the blocked-up window, heavy chipboard nailed to the frame. ‘I wonder who organized this; the landlord perhaps.’ He turned to the photographs. Like everything else they were dusty. One was their college photograph, from 1936. He picked it up; his younger self looked out at him, along with Geoff and Frank, with his strange grin. The other, smaller photograph was of a man in uniform, looking out with an apprehensive stare.
Geoff whistled. ‘It’s Frank’s spitting image. It must be his father.’
Natalia studied it. ‘I have a photograph of my brother, just before he was sent to fight in Russia.’ Her voice softened. ‘His expression was like that.’
‘Frank’s father was a doctor,’ David said. ‘What did your brother do?’
She smiled sadly. ‘He painted, much better than me. He had an exhibition in Prague once.’ She turned away and opened the desk, rolling up the wooden slats with a clatter. ‘We must search this flat. You two, please search the other rooms. Look for letters, any papers or noteb
ooks.’ She began removing papers from the dockets inside the desk, riffling through them expertly. ‘Please, we should work quickly. Pull the curtains before switching on any lights.’
Geoff said bleakly, ‘She’s right. If there’s anything here the authorities shouldn’t see, Frank would thank us for taking it.’
David went into the kitchen. His feet crunched on broken plates; there were dents in the plasterboard wall where cans had been thrown. It was hard to reconcile the pale, shrunken figure in the hospital with this manic destruction. All the cupboards were empty, bar some battered cutlery in the drawers. Geoff appeared at his elbow. ‘Nothing in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d leave the bedroom to you.’
‘Okay.’
David went into the bedroom. He searched the bed – the sheets needed washing – riffled through the socks and underwear in the chest of drawers, then the pockets of the few jackets and trousers hanging in the wardrobe. He found nothing apart from a farthing and screwed-up bus tickets. He bent to look under the bed and saw a big brown suitcase there. He pulled it out and slipped the clasps. Inside was a packet of some sort, wrapped in brown paper. He lifted it. Papers. His heart quickened as he undid the parcel, but it was just a collection of pornographic magazines, naked women lying on beds or sitting astride chairs. There was a collection of film magazines from the early thirties too: Jean Harlow and Katherine Hepburn and Fay Wray in soulful romantic poses. He made himself look through the magazines in case anything was hidden inside them but there was nothing. He rewrapped the packet and shoved the suitcase back under the bed, stirring up a cloud of dust.
In the lounge Geoff had righted an armchair and was sitting riffling through the books and periodicals. Natalia was still poring over the papers at Frank’s desk. She looked up.
‘Anything in the bedroom?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I’m seeing if there are any papers hidden in these,’ Geoff said. ‘Nothing so far.’ He held up a copy of an American magazine, Amazing Science Fiction. ‘Just Frank’s cup of tea.’