The Judas Boy Page 6

  Escape? From a runaway coach doing thirty miles an hour in a tunnel? Nothing for it. Wait. Perhaps it will slow down again, stop. Different noise from the wheels now, lighter, less confined, must be coming out. Slowly, surely. With God's grace it will stop. God, make it stop.

  As the coach passed with a whoosh out of the tunnel, be put his head out of the window again. Far below he could see lights, as of a fair-sized town. The coach, so far from stopping, lurched violently round a bend. The thing was now quite clear. He was descending and rapidly accelerating round a series of loops, and at the next bend or the next but one the coach, unbraked, would simply ride off the rails Into space.

  Get out. Now. How? ... Jump inwards, towards the hillside. But even so, rails, fences, wires, rocks, God knew what beside. Sleeping-car: bedding. He started back towards his compartment. The coach kicked and tilted, throwing him heavily against the side of the corridor; but after a grating of metal and creaking of wood the status quo ante was resumed. Last chance: out before the next corner. He flung into his compartment, seized the piled blankets from the upper bunk. The mattress, use it as a shield. Loaded with mattress and blankets, he staggered back along the corridor to the two side doors at its rear. He wrapped blankets round his loins and round his head; threw open the door which faced away from the gulf below; wrapped his arms and hands in two more blankets: clasped the mattress to his stomach, so that it shielded him from his face down to his lower shins; and then, as the wheels began to grind and squeal against the rails, he took off at a slant (head slightly forward) from the iron steps which descended from the open door. His last thought, as he fell into blackness, was of Gregory Stern's Mezuzah, which he was carrying, wrapped in a handkerchief, in the inner breast pocket next his heart: let the holy name of Shaddai save him if it would.

  3: Intimations and intimacies

  'I bought this stuff for you off the peg,' said Captain Detterling: 'I hope it fits,'

  'It looks rather Greek,' Fielding said.

  'It came from the best men's shop in Athens. Now you get dressed, while I settle up with these hospital people, and we'll be on our way.'

  Detterling sauntered out of the room with a characteristic air of owning the entire building, and Fielding began to put on the clothes from the best men's shop in Athens. The shoes were hideous and the trousers disagreeably wide at the bottoms. Furthermore, while Detterling had bought him a grey homburg (of the type worn by old-fashioned Greek gentlemen when sitting outside cafés) which wasn't at all necessary, he had forgotten to get any underpants, which were. 'But who am I to complain? Fielding thought: I'm bloody lucky not to be wearing a shroud.'

  In fact, things could have hardly fallen out more fortunately. Less than an hour after the sleeping-car derailed itself a search-party from the town below had found Fielding, who was lying by the line suffering from multiple minor abrasions and immobilised by shock. Everyone had been extremely kind and helpful. He had been patched up by a competent doctor, made very comfortable in a private room in a local hospital, and treated with respect, the next morning, by an English-speaking policeman, who was distressed, however, that Fielding had no 'piece of identification'. At Fielding's suggestion, a telephone call had been made to Captain Detterling at the Grande Bretagne in Athens, and two days later here Detterling was, bearing the new clothes which the kind-hearted policeman had warned him Fielding would need after his violent misadventure, and having apparently fixed everything to everyone's satisfaction.

  There was a knock on the door, and Detterling re-entered with a puzzled look.

  They don't want any money,' he said crossly; 'they say that in communist countries medical care is free.'

  'Are private rooms free too?'

  'I mentioned that. They said that you were a guest who had suffered a grave misfortune in their country and was entitled to the best they could offer in recompense.'

  'The Greek thing about hospitality, I suppose. This far south the people are Macedonians rather than Slavs.'

  'I wouldn't know about that,' said Captain Detterling, 'but I find all this sweetness and charity very irritating. Personally, I like to pay the piper myself, so that I can call a disagreeable tune if I feel like it ... Do you approve of that homburg?'

  'I'd sooner have had some pants.'

  'It's bad form,' said Detterling, 'to go bare-headed in foreign countries—particularly poor ones. It looks as if you're saying. 'Why should I bother to dress properly in a mucky little place like this?' The poorer the country, the more correct one should be in one's tenu.'

  'I don't doubt it. But I should still have liked some pants.'

  'We'll get you a pair on the way through Thessalonika.'

  'We're going by car?'

  'Embassy car from Athens,' Detterling said: 'when one's dealing with these Bolshevik chappies it's as well to put on a bit of a show.'

  As the car thumped along the pitted roads towards the border, Detterling explained how matters had been arranged. As a Member of Parliament, he had been well received at the Embassy in Athens, the First Secretary of which had luckily served during the war in his (and Fielding's) old regiment.

  'Before your time, of course,' Detterling said, 'but when I vouched for you that clinched the matter. He made some telephone calls, including one to Belgrade, and turned over this jalopy complete with chauffeur, and by the time I got to the border on the way up there was a security big-noise waiting for me, waving your passport in the air and bursting to tell me the official story.'

  'Which was?'

  'On their version, the police had had a tip-off, now thought to be bogus, that a pair of escaped prisoners had boarded the train at Skopje. So they stopped it for a checkup at some little station farther down the line, and of course the sleeping-car attendant had to get down and account for his bodies, of whom by that time you were the only one left.'

  'I remember stopping at several stations after Skopje, but I can't remember any kind of search.'

  'Well, according to my man the attendant was called out to show them your passport, did just that, and then went off back to his post in the sleeping-car. What they didn't know till later was that he never got there. He was found in the cleaning cupboard of the station loo some hours afterwards with a large lump on his nut and still hanging on to your passport.'

  'All right But how did the coach... break loose?'

  They're not too clear about that. But the theory is that with the attendant out of the way some wicked person or persons were able to unlink all the carriages behind you, and unlink you from everything in front, and then shove you off on a branch line and send you whizzing down the mountain-oh.'

  'Pretty expert job.'

  'That's what I thought. Mind you, it's the sort of thing guerillas and that lot were always doing during the war, and Yugoslavia was swarming with 'em. I dare say they kept in practice ... Anyhow, it seems that about a hundred yards from where you were found the coach took off, plunged down the mountain, fell over a cliff and was smashed to pieces on some rocks at the bottom. There's not a particle of your kit to be found, my man said, and there wouldn't have been a particle of you if you'd still been with it. For all of which, I am to convey to you a hundred thousand apologies from the President and People of Yugoslavia.'

  'But do they know why?'

  'Oh yes. The man told me with a poker face that it was probably an extremist group expressing their disapproval of the luxurious habits of capitalists and foreigners. A protest, you might say, against the International Company of Wagons-Lits.'

  'You didn't let him fob you off with that?'

  'I was eating his luncheon, old man. It would have been rather pointed—don't you think?—to contradict.'

  'Darling.' said Isabel Stern in London, 'I think that at last this is it. Anyway, I'm late.'

  'We shall have a fine son.' said Gregory.

  'And I shall have a groaning,' she said.

  About twenty-four hours after they left the hospital in Yugoslavia, Fielding and Captain
Detterling drove past Mount Olympus. All of it, except the lower slopes, was hidden in thick, fierce cloud.

  'The gods must be sulking.' said Detterling.

  'I expect it's this.'

  Fielding felt in his breast pocket and took out Gregory Stem's Mezuzah. He had found this, when he finally came to his senses in the hospital, tightly clasped in his right hand. Since it had been in the breast pocket of his coat when he jumped, and since the coat, ripped half to pieces, had been (he was told) some yards away from him when he was discovered, this was not easy to explain. Fielding imagined that he must have searched for and found the Mezuzah while still delirious. Such a notion was curiously affecting and much increased his regard, already considerable, for Stern's gift.

  'What is it?'

  'A sort of Jewish charm. Just the thing to upset Zeus and his crew. A present from Gregory. Which reminds me ...'

  Fielding went on to give Detterling the substance of Gregory Stern's messages. When he finished, Detterling said:

  'He's wrong about the Cavafy memoirs. We must have them if we can. If he won't pay for them, I will.'

  'He seemed very sure about it.'

  'I hope,' said Detterling, 'that this new Jewish act of his is only on the surface. I've no objection to his giving you amulets or whatever, but if he lets it affect his judgment ... if he suddenly wants to be forever doing Jewish books by Jewish authors ... then it'll be very awkward.'

  'There's no sign of that.'

  'I've been working with him for three years now. I'm fond of him. and I know him really rather well, and I can tell you for certain that any time up to six months ago this Cavafy book would have been just the sort of thing to make him dribble at the mouth. The memoirs of a modern Greek poet who specialised in erotic themes with a strong historical flavour ... Quite irresistible. But now? Now he just dismisses it as one more "bugger book". And why? Because Cavafy is in the Hellenist tradition, whereas Gregory's getting obsessed with the Judaic. I'm going to put a stop to that rubbish if I have to beat it out of him.'

  In the seventeen years, on and off, that Fielding had known Detterling he had never seen him so heated. That this blasé and elegant aristocrat should suddenly fly into a passion on behalf of a minor Greek lyric poet was a real eye-opener.

  'I never knew you were so involved,' Fielding said.

  'Neither did I,' said Detterling, his voice crackling with irritation, 'or not until a few weeks ago. I woke up one morning, after a late sitting of the House, with a terrible liver and one word hammering in my head: lies. I'd spent half the previous night, half the previous decade come to that, listening to politicians on both sides of the House mouthing out great big greasy lies. On the other hand, the one thing which had always impressed me, since I first joined in with Stern, was the extent to which those authors of his were concerned to tell the truth. They were a scabby lot, most of them, cranks and socialists and cheque-bouncers and niggers, but at least each of them, in his own dotty way, had a—how shall I put it?—a hankering for the truth. And suddenly that morning, while my liver festered and my head thumped, this seemed to be a remarkable and even a very moving thing. I became, as you put it, involved.'

  'And yet,' said Fielding, 'a good half of us are professional liars. Novelists, certainly. We record what never occurred.'

  'But unlike politicians you admit that before you start. Your truth has nothing to do with actual facts. Your truth consists in taking theoretical characters in theoretical situations and then tracing what you think would be the practical, moral and emotional consequences. If we, your readers, respond by saying "Yes, yes, that is how it would be", then you have told the truth.'

  'Very often,' said Fielding, 'we just trick you into that response. Later on. when you close the book, you realise you've been conned ... that it's all been done with mirrors and not by real creative magic.'

  'An interesting point,' said Detterling. 'But I suppose in that case we can just be grateful to you for a brilliant illusion. At least you're only using your trickery to entertain, not to impose your own will on other people's lives ... Which brings us away from my involvement and on to yours. How are you involved?'

  'In general—'

  '—Not in general,' said Detterling softly; 'here and now. You are, it seems, at present involved in such a project and in such a way that someone has just tried to ... do ... you ... in.'

  'We can't be certain that what happened was deliberately aimed at me.'

  'No. But we can be certain—or at least I can—that the Yugoslavs couldn't wait to get you out of their country. No request, you notice, that you should stay and help with the enquiries. Just, "So glad you've come, Mr Detterling, and please take him away as soon as he can move.'' They know there's someone after you, you see. and they don't want your corpse on their hands. Or so I should surmise.'

  Fielding looked back at Mount Olympus. The clouds were less angry and were beginning to lift. Now that I'm receding, he thought, and taking the Mezuzah with me, the gods are starting to smile again. Perhaps the sacred name of Shaddai is not a blessing but, here at least, a curse.

  'I was warned,' he said to Detterling abruptly. 'It's no good my pretending. I was warned, and so what happened must have been meant for me. What shall I do?'

  'Take the first plane home from Athens.'

  'No. Not now I've come this far.'

  'Don't be obstinate. Fielding.'

  'It's not that. It's what you were talking about just now— a hankering for the truth.' Fielding explained the genesis of his mission; how he had been reluctant at first, then half tempted by the chance to write revengefully of Cyprus, and finally won over by the personal nature of Tom's appeal. 'So you see,' he said, 'when I started I wasn't in the least concerned with the truth. Rather the reverse. But now ... now they've done this.... I must go on. To return now would mean that I'd allowed myself to be bullied—bullied out of my right to know.'

  'Idiotic pride.' Detterling said.

  'Partly. I don't like being denied. But there's also real curiosity. If someone has gone to such lengths, there must be something worth uncovering—don't you agree?'

  'If someone has gone to such lengths, he'll go to greater.'

  'I shall ask for protection.'

  'If you ask for protection, you'll just be told to go home.'

  There must be a way.' His one eye pleaded. 'Res unius, res omnium,' he said, quoting the motto of their old regiment.

  'It's just conceivable,' said Detterling at last, 'that I know of someone who might help.'

  In London, Somerset Lloyd-James, MP, called on the Most Honourable the Marquis Canteloupe.

  Lord Canteloupe was a conservative peer who had been given minor office under the Government, some years before, as Parliamentary Secretary for the Development of British Recreational Resources, an appointment considered apposite since he had been long and profitably engaged in exploiting his own west country estate as a popular pleasure ground. Although his efficacy on the national scale was somewhat impaired by a feudal manner and a low habit of mind, he had shown undeniable talents in the field of publicity and advertisement. He had therefore been put in charge of a newly formed Department of Public Relations and Popular Media, on the strict understanding that he should confine himself to devising propaganda and take no overt part in its dissemination.

  The noble lord's job was to ensure, as far as possible, that the views which the nation formed of events domestic and foreign were the views which suited the Government. This was very far from easy; the newspaper editors, the radio and television producers, through whom, for the most part, he must operate, were not at all inclined to adopt Lord Canteloupe's line simply on Lord Canteloupe's suggestion. However, he had found that a quid pro quo in the shape of some juicy, giblet of 'inside information' would often win him a degree of co-operation, and he had become skilled in the confection of confidential items true enough to pass immediate scrutiny, false enough to give the impression he wanted to give, and apparently significant
enough to earn editorial gratitude. In these semantic exercises he was assisted by a Member of Parliament called Carton Weir (who represented the Department in the Commons) and also, less officially but even more effectively, by Somerset Lloyd-James, who had long been editor of an influential journal called Strix and was happy to offer up his expertise in exchange for his lordship's patronage.

  On this fine April morning their meeting had almost the appearance of an allegorical tableau: Somerset, with his scrawny limbs, bald head and pasty complexion, might have represented Winter in cringing withdrawal, while Canteloupe, with his vigorous and multi-hued presence, was for all his years the embodiment of sappy Spring. But any such interpretation of the scene would have been mistaken, for it was Somerset whose authority prevailed.

  'Cyprus,' Somerset said: 'I don't like it'

  'Not more wog-trouble?'

  'Only if it's deliberately stirred up. We've been at great pains to put over a reassuring image. In Cyprus, we have conveyed, reasonable concessions have been made in response to reasonable and democratic pressures. So all, we have implied, is now peace and contentment; there has been no retreat, only a diplomatic adjustment.'

  ' "Please adjust your dress before leaving",' Canteloupe interjected. 'Then you can pretend you never went in there.'

  'We therefore ring down the curtain,' Somerset continued firmly, 'amid restrained but real applause, and forget the whole affair. So the last thing we want, the last thing your Department wants, is for the drama to be started up again —and there is no immediate reason why it should be. But if someone goes out there deliberately looking for trouble, trouble there will certainly be.'

  'Well, it won't be our fault any more. Whatever happens there now, provided our troops stay in their bases and don't interfere, no one can blame us.'