The Stone That Never Came Down (19 page)

XXII

“Oh, milady, you’re awake at last,” cried Tarquin Drew, and in his excitement almost dropped the flowers he had brought to replace yesterday’s, now drooping on the bedside table in this neat clean hospital room.

“I woke up hours ago,” Lady Washgrave snapped, laying aside the
Daily Telegraph
she had been reading. “They tried to telephone you, apparently, but you didn’t answer!”

Tarquin blushed brilliant crimson.

“I–uh … Well, for some reason, milady, I’ve been oversleeping. Even though I’ve been retiring early for the past three days, I’ve slept until nearly ten a.m. each morning.” He essayed a little joke. “Sympathetic magic, perhaps!”

He sat down eagerly at the side of the bed, and then caught sight of the headlines on the
Telegraph.
“Oh, you must know already the great news I was going to impart!” he exclaimed. “What a shame!”

“What ‘great news’?”

“Why, that Mr Charkall-Phelps is almost certain to oust the Prime Minister at the next meeting of the Parliamentary Party!”

“It’ll be a sad lookout for the country if he does,” Lady Washgrave grunted.

“Why, milady! What on earth makes you say–?”

“What he’s been saying makes me say!” she interrupted. “Since I woke up I’ve had a chance to catch up on these speeches he’s been making. The man’s mad. Should have realised it years ago.”

Totally disoriented, Tarquin could only stare.

“
Must
be mad!” she declared. “The way he’s talking, you’d think he was a reincarnation of Churchill and the enemy were lining up to invade! Going on about our determination to withstand the most appalling onslaught, confident in our great traditions, and the rest of it. I’d like to see him try and stop an H-bomb with fine words and flowery phrases!”

She glared at him. “Oh, he fooled me all right, I have to admit that. It’s only now he’s coming into the open, showing himself up for what he is–a thoroughgoing megalomaniac!”

“But, milady–!”

“It’s perfectly clear,” she snapped. “Perfectly clear, at long last. If I’d been at the last few rallies of the Crusade, I’d have given him a piece of my mind! Hah! I take back everything I said about Brother Bradshaw. He saw through the sham at once, and I should have done, and I didn’t. To my lasting disgrace! I knew perfectly well that if he was a business associate of George’s he must be a bad egg, and I hid the truth from myself.”

“I–I honestly don’t follow you,” Tarquin whimpered.

“Well, you never knew George. And even if you had met him you might not have caught on. You’re easily fooled by charm, aren’t you?” And, as he bridled, she gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, you know perfectly well you are! Maybe because you have so much of it yourself. Even more than George. Of course, I don’t suspect you of hiding anything under it half as bad as what he did. Vicious bastard.”

“Milady, I–!” Tarquin seemed on the verge of crying.

“Brace yourself, man! You know damned well this is a hell of a world we live in, and lying here I’ve realised that the effort
I’ve
put into trying to make it better was like–like wallpapering a room to hide the cracks and the dry rot! I even managed it inside my own head. But”–her expression changed suddenly; she looked inexpressibly miserable–“but I can’t fool myself any more, Tarquin. It hurts dreadfully, but I have to put an end to it. I have to admit that I knew without knowing how George made that fantastic fortune of his.”

There was a dead pause. Eventually Tarquin said, “In–ah–property, surely!”

“By driving people out of their homes, Tarquin! I was living with him. I knew, all right! I just pretended to myself that I didn’t. That’s one of the reasons I was glad when he dropped dead.”

“Glad?” he echoed in horror. And then, with an unexpected access of boldness, “Milady, can I say something? I”–he had to swallow–“I can’t help wondering whether when you called him vicious just now, you meant …”

It broke off there.

“Vicious to me?” Lady Washgrave said. “Oh, yes. True to type in marriage and out. And I don’t mind who knows it. Not now. There’s a word I’ve often read but never until now grasped the true meaning of:
catharsis.
Like having a boil lanced in your soul. I’ve been hiding knowledge of something foul from myself, under a veneer of ‘good works’. I hope I never delude myself that way again.”

“But your work has been good!” Tarquin insisted. “You’ve done marvels!”

“Good enough to repay the people who were driven out of their homes to make the fortune I enjoy?” rasped Lady Washgrave. “And you of all people should condemn some of the consequences I’ve aided and abetted, like what led to that gay club being burned out and seven people killed!”

Tarquin gasped. “Milady, I–”

“Come off it, you’re as queer as a coot and you know it and I know it and to be absolutely honest the only thing I can genuinely regret about it is that it means I can’t invite you into bed with me. George was the only man I ever had, and he was so unspeakably incompetent I don’t suppose our marriage ever recovered from the ghastly honeymoon he inflicted on me. Of course I took it for granted that that was how all men behaved to their wives, but it obviously can’t be true because so many women actually
like
sex.” She eyed him speculatively. “It may be a bit late in my life but I do feel it’s high time I–Tarquin!”

But he had rolled his eyes upward in their sockets and slid off his chair in a dead faint.

It was forty-nine hours before he reawakened.

The news was of frantic in-front-of-the-scenes speeches declaring determination to stand firm and not to compromise and frantic behind-the-scenes negotiations undertaken in the intervals of trying to find the right person to bribe for a booking on a ship or plane bound for the Southern Hemisphere and drafting advertisements to sell desirable residential properties at ridiculously low prices, “owner unexpectedly posted overseas”.

But there was reference, a long way down the News in Brief column, to a curious sickness afflicting troops on duty in Glasgow.

“Well, Vee, how d’you like Canberra?” Harry Bott said proudly.

“Don’t,” she answered sullenly. “Not much, anyway.”

“Ah, I know it’s going to be tough for a while. But I have a job already, don’t I? Not much of a job, but enough to make ends meet. With one of the best air-conditioning companies in the whole of Australia!”

“And all of us packed in two rooms!” she snapped back. “At least at home we’d have been in four rooms!”

“If we’d stayed at home I’d be in jail!” Harry exploded.

“Yes, and it’d have been no loss …” Vera pushed back a stray tress of hair from her face. It was beginning to grey near the roots.

And then, as if she had overheard herself say that in memory, “Harry! I didn’t really mean it! Don’t hit me!” She cringed away from him, one arm raised as though to ward off a blow.

–Lord. Have I made her that scared of me? I suppose I must have. Makes me so angry with myself, deep inside. I feel ashamed. There’s more to life than playing out a part. I been doing that far too long.

He reached for the bottle of Foster’s beer which he had going and hesitated as he poised it over his glass. “Er–want some?” he ventured. “You haven’t tasted this Aussie beer yet, have you?”

Not quite believing that he hadn’t hit her, she lowered her arm slowly and stared at him.

“Harry, what’s come over you?” she said at last.

“I’ll tell you one day,” the grunted. “For the time being mark it down to my being so pleased that I’m here, not sweating out five years’ bird!”

–And … Well, I don’t know how he fixed it, I really don’t. But I’m going to keep my side of the bargain I made with Mr Sawyer. When those new air-conditioning units go into that posh hotel all the MP’s and diplomats use, there’s going to be that little gadget added to each one I can get my hands on. Not much to pay back for years of extra life, is it?

“I’ll find you a glass,” he said. “Or a cup, or something.”

The news was of a crisis in Japan, with a fervent right-wing movement demanding that advantage be taken of the mess Europe was drifting into, and of a violent argument between those Australian politicians who maintained that old loyalties required them to support the British government come what may, and their opponents, who declared that the British had long ago cut them loose by their repeated perfidy.

And the days of the ultimatum were wearing down, like rock eroded by the swift tumult of a river.

“Oh, it is a very great day for all of us here in Arcovado,” the priest said, rubbing his hands as he led Bradshaw through the bitterly cold church. In the past week he and his American visitor had become fast friends. Belying his modest disclaimers about his ignorance of the language, the latter had been able to pose amazingly technical questions about ritual, vestments, the sacrament of the mass, and other abstruse theological subjects, and had shown a greater and greater interest in the Roman confession, to the point where the priest was if not confident at least optimistic about the chance of welcoming this declared heretic into the fold.

“Yes!” he went on. “Without misusing the term, one might well refer to Marshal Dalessandro as the saviour of Italy, the man who will restore the true faith … Forgive me, I am admittedly prejudiced in that area!” He laughed as he opened the door from the nave into the little stone-walled room where the raw materials, as it were, lay waiting: the wafers and the wine, not yet transubstantiated by blessing.

“To think that in the morning he and so many of the famous will take the communion here! Oh, it’s the fulfilment of a dream, the answer to a thousand prayers … Excuse me, is something wrong?”

Bradshaw was sniffing the air suspiciously.

“Father, you’ll forgive me if I mention a most delicate subject, I’m sure,” he said. “Perhaps through long habit you simply do not notice, but … Ah–is there sewage, somewhere nearby?”

The priest blinked rapidly several times. The point sank home. He said, “Oh!”

“I believe I’m right,” Bradshaw said. “There is an open drain to windward of here somewhere. While I’m certain that in cold weather it can lead to no possible harm, the aroma, the effluvium … Your distinguished visitors, after all, do hail from somewhat more prosperous localities!”

“Yes, how terrible, I should have thought of it before, with so little time to go before the great occasion …!” The priest was close to babbling in his agitation.

“Never mind, leave it to me,” Bradshaw said.

“You, Mr Barton? You can help me?”

“I can indeed. By pure chance I happen to have with me one of the newest aerosol products from America. It will disguise unpleasant stinks more efficiently than the finest of all possible incense. Allow me to offer it to you in the morning prior to the mass which Marshal Dalessandro will attend.”

“And two other cabinet ministers, and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and hundreds of journalists, and–oh, the Good Lord knows who else!” Clasping his hands, the priest turned to Barton-Bradshaw.

“What requires to be done?”

“Merely that I should come here a little early, perhaps by half an hour, and wander around spraying it in the most strategic places. That is all.”

“I shall make sure you are admitted,” the priest promised, and could not restrain himself from embracing the marvellously helpful stranger. “What a shame, Signor Barton, that you are not of our persuasion, for clearly you have its interests at heart, and what is more those of the country from which your ancestors hailed!”

“But of course,” Bradshaw said modestly. “Would a man be able to call himself a man if he did not?”

–If the officer who searched my bag on the train were to learn of this and start wondering how I laid hands on this “new aerosol from America”, there’d be trouble. Thank goodness (a very interesting phrase, indicative of the way human thinking may well develop in the next age after ours, invoking pure concepts rather than hypothesising personal deities … but skip that!) it takes VC to make one treat that kind of insight as a matter of course. I’m half-scared by the success of this plan. One could not be
sure
until his helicopter landed that Dalessandro was going to do the “obvious thing” and celebrate his birthday in a suitably symbolic fashion, here on the land his ancestors used to farm. One makes a guess: human beings react more predictably the more stress they have to endure. Small wonder, if so, that governments have always found it easier to cope with a population threatened by war, unemployment, epidemic, injustice, what have, you? A totally free man is also totally unpredictable to anyone else who is not himself free. And in Donald Michael’s immortal phrase, “anyone who offers himself for election under a democratic system automatically disqualifies himself, because those who crave power are those least fitted to wield it!” Addicts. That’s what they are.

“Why do you smile, Signor Barton?” the priest inquired.

“Because I’m pleased to do you this small service,” Bradshaw returned, bowing. “You, and everybody!”

The news was of a form of narcolepsy.

It seemed to have no aftereffects worth mentioning. It certainly did not adversely affect the health of any known patient.

And it did not appear to be an epidemic in the formal sense. There was no clear vector-pattern, as far as computer studies could reveal.

It was fairly common in Glasgow.

There was a discernible incidence in London and elsewhere in the Southern Counties of England.

There were foci in Bonn and in the South of France, not far from the Italian border.

There were minor outbreaks in and around Rome, connected in a manner which did hint at the possibility of a link with other affected areas, inasmuch as everyone concerned had been at the same place at the same time.

But on the other hand there was a totally separate outbreak in Australia, and it was suggested by authoritative experts that the likeliest common cause was stress. The persons who succumbed were typically involved in politics or some other extremely demanding occupation, such as active service with the forces, or else were facing a crisis of conscience of unparalleled severity. The spokesmen cited army chaplains in particular, who were confronted with the dilemma posed by the risk of nuclear war, and those soldiers who had been day and night on patrol in the riot areas of Glasgow.