Cannibals and Missionaries (23 page)

Her trouble, of course, was that she dressed to get attention, from men, obviously (the idea that women dressed for other women certainly did not apply in her case), and she succeeded; that is, she made herself conspicuous, which was not hard, given her size. She might have taken a leaf from Margaret’s book, but Margaret was all in scale; her height and deep booming voice carried her weight, and the mannish
tailleurs
she wore (always Captain Molyneux) made her look redoubtable, like a monument, which would stand out naturally in a crowd. You could not call the Statue of Liberty conspicuous. And nice men, as anyone could have told Beryl, did not care to be seen with conspicuous women, while the other kind, who would have been attracted anyway by her inherited wealth, seemed to find her an embarrassment themselves in the long run. An heiress who looked like something out of the five-and-ten (there had been Woolworth money, be it said, on Joe’s side) and would not be caught dead in a smart supper club, only the lowest of low dives, must be a chore to run about with, even in Mother’s chauffeured old Rolls. At any rate her “pashes” were always letting her down, and she cried in her bedroom and had orders sent in from the drugstore, rejecting Lily’s trays. Naturally, as with the clothes she set her heart on, she was fatally drawn to men who were crude and common, men who were bound to hurt her. It would not be beyond Beryl to set her cap at one of the hijackers before this was over. The young Arab was
rather
interested; that was clear already. Mohammedans admired fat women, and that milk-white skin and yellow hair had an appeal for the dark-skinned races, as poor Lily had reason to know: a few years ago, there had been a Negro delivery boy who was learning to play the trumpet, but when Beryl had paid for enough lessons he had got a job with a band and skipped out. Even undesirables had their sticking-point—surprising but true. And, however one viewed her appearance, Beryl could be impossibly rude and overbearing.

Yet she could be a sweet child too. Johnnie, who liked to spar with her, was convinced that she was still a virgin. It was a case, he argued, of arrested adolescence; one of his wives had been the same—you could see it in their chubby upper arms. If she could just cut loose from Lily’s apron-strings, she would mature fast, he thought; as it was, her mind had developed, but her body had not kept pace with it. As proof that she had a head on her shoulders he would cite the fact that she had never played around with drugs; she was still in the milkshake stage and did not even like alcohol, except gin alexanders and sweet liqueurs. If Beryl’s sitting-room, as Lily maintained, had a permanent sweet reek of marijuana—damned hard to get out of the draperies, as Johnnie knew from his own progeny’s “dens”—it was only her friends smoking the weed. Milkshakes and crushes and a yen to be different from Mamma, that was all that was the matter with Beryl. She held it against Lily that they were rich (though Lily only had her widow’s portion); that seemed to be the chief grievance, which Johnnie said he could understand—he had faced the problem himself as a young man. She would have to learn to live with it, like everybody else, and stop feeling that it was a “curse” and her mother’s fault. No wonder, though, that she had got a kick out of being hijacked. “Serves us right,” she had repeated, back in the Air France jet, with a triumphant shake of her yellow locks.
“C’est bien fait pour nous,”
she had proceeded to translate, beaming up at the plump young Arab.
“N’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
But the wary youth had had the grace to be evasive.
“Sais pas, madame.”

Well, doubtless it was lucky that someone in the party, for whatever disloyal reason, was enjoying the experience. Beryl’s total fearlessness, you could say, was good for the general morale, which needed some bolstering now that the drinks had worn off. The little curator was shivering in his thin coat; if it had not been for that constant whirring noise, one could surely have heard his teeth chatter—the stewardess ought to have thought to bring some Air France blankets along. And the sun was rapidly setting. They watched it sink like a plummet off to the left of the “chopper,” as Harold called it. To the left and slightly astern. So they were heading northeast. In the glass bubble, beside the pilot, the big tow-headed Teutonic hijacker—they had decided to nickname him “Hans” and his girl friend “Gretel”—was leaning forward and scanning the ground. Were they nearing their destination? The pilot flew lower. He hovered. But below there was no sign of life, nothing to be seen but a ruler-straight highway running through flat unimproved land. No cars, no houses with lights in them, even though they had passed big pylons that must be for electricity. After a long pause, seemingly for inspection, the pilot continued on course, flying low above the empty highway. Far off to the left, where the sun had set, there was a gleam that was probably water, and on the right there appeared to be water too. They must be skimming over an island or a peninsula. Beside the road there were thick bushes and small, evenly planted leafless trees and what might be ditches for drainage or irrigation, but only an occasional shadowy structure that could be a house or a barn—in the gathering dusk, it was hard to tell. Yet there were no animals about, not a single cow or a sheep. “What the hell?” said Henry Potter, speaking his first word in several hours.

All at once, some lights went on below—lanterns, probably, for they were moving back and forth, as though signaling. In reply, the pilot put on his landing-lights. The “chopper” came slowly down, grazing the tree-tops. It landed. Right in the middle of a four-lane concrete highway. And they were expected to get out. The side-doors opened. “Welcome to Flevoland!” said the cheerful fellow in the whipcord. He had jumped off first, without a by-your-leave, and stood helping the others to descend. He gave a hand to the creaky old Bishop and then aided Margaret Thorp, who managed to look majestic despite her vast circumference as she was hoisted by the steward and the stewardess into his extended arms. Beryl leapt off quite nimbly, like the equestrienne she had been in her teens, and turned back to assist her mother. The “wife” of the couple-Warren’s friends—helped the older “husband.”

Meanwhile the team of hijackers stood by, grinning contemptuously at these simple displays of courtesy and doing nothing themselves to be useful. Beyond the bright circle made by the helicopter’s landing-lights, other figures could be seen, armed with rifles. Until everyone was out of the helicopter, they too merely watched, making no move. One had the impression they were counting the hostages. The crew, as was proper, stayed aboard till the last and occupied themselves with the hand baggage; impatient looks passed among the hijackers as overnight cases from Gucci and Hermès were carefully lowered. “Hans” snapped his thick fingers and shouted at the crew to hurry up, setting an example by seizing a Louis Vuitton case and hurling it to the pavement—in the stillness, you could distinctly hear the sound of breaking glass. Then the rest of the baggage tumbled out in a heap, followed by the steward and the stewardess and the co-pilot, who was in military uniform, like the pilot. This was a military aircraft, evidently, which helped explain the lack of amenities; Harold said it must be used to carry paratroopers. The pilot was taking his time, methodically collecting papers and checking the equipment; he passed a Red Cross kit down to the stewardess. “Hans” barked an order; the lights went out, and the pilot scrambled down.

In the thick dusk, you could hardly make out anything. The lanterns of the reception committee had been shaded or doused. Impossible to tell where one was or how many of these lurking figures there were. All one knew was that one had been dumped without explanation on a highway that seemed to run through an absolute wilderness. Perhaps vehicles would appear to take them on the next lap of the dreadful journey—cars or, more likely, a truck. Yet, whichever way one looked, there was no faint beam of approaching headlights. They heard footsteps receding, twigs snapping, and the rustle of reeds or underbrush. Were they going to trek on foot with what was left of their worldly goods to some robbers’ den in the woods? Or could a motor boat be moored waiting to receive them? The water they had observed argued for that, but the thought of exchanging
terra firma
for still another unreliable element was more than reason was willing to entertain. They waited.

At last Charles—bless him—took it on himself to confront the skulking gang, whose forms could barely be discerned in the murk. “Well, my dears,” he screeched, “I presume you don’t plan to keep us all night on this public thoroughfare. We’d be grateful if you’d show us promptly to our accommodations. This evening damp is most unhealthy; one could easily take a chill, you see, and you don’t want to turn your ‘hospitality room’ into an infirmary, do you?” He gave that crowing laugh. A soft, gurgling sound like a suppressed giggle came from the plump young Arab, who added a friendly nudge of his weapon at Beryl’s ribs. Gretel was unamused. “You will not move from this place till we tell you. Your comfort is of no interest to us at this time. You will remain here under guard of the Palestine Liberation Army.” In other words, Beryl’s friend, the fatted calf, whom they had named “Ahmed,” and the older one with the mustache, whom they had decided to call “Abdul.” Gretel’s harsh voice continued. “And if any of you is so foolish as to ‘try anything’ during our absence, one of your number will pay the price.” She strode through the group of captives, surveying them with a swiftly produced, pencil-sized flashlight, as though taking her pick. The choice fell on the Bishop. “He will come with us.” Whereupon she and Hans simply melted away into the shadows, along with their band of accomplices and the helpless old man, whom they had deprived of his brolly. They ignored the murmur of shock that rose from the hostages, and the rector’s loud pleas to be taken instead (the Bishop, it seemed, had a heart condition) got only a grunt from Gretel. “And no smoking!” Her “parting shot” was delivered from somewhere in the bushes with terrifying accuracy. “Put that pipe out!” A pipe rattled to the pavement. Dear Gretel must have eyes in the back of her head.

Absurd of her, though, to think that anyone would try to escape. True, the two Arabs did not look very fit and might be overpowered by sheer force of numbers, but where did one take it from there? Quite apart from the horrid threat to shoot the Bishop—surely that was what she had implied?—at the slightest false move from the others, it would be madness to strike out into this unknown terrain in mid-January and with no proper footwear to boot. By now it was pitch-dark. The hostages’ eyes, still not adjusted to the blackness, could hardly distinguish the shape of the giant helicopter a few yards away. Tomorrow it might be another story. They would be able to see the lie of the land and take their bearings from the sun. Now fog was swirling in; no guiding stars were visible overhead, and not a glimmer of a rising moon. The most they could be sure of was that this sinister, deserted spot was somewhere near the sea. “Why, for all we know, it might be the Faroe Islands,” declared Lily. “My God, Mother!” Beryl chided. “Didn’t they give you any geography in that finishing school of yours?” “I was speaking figuratively,” said Lily. “And you know very well that Saint Tim’s is not a finishing school. It offers an excellent education.” Good marks for Lily! In these trying circumstances, she could have been forgiven if she had mentioned the string of schools and colleges that Beryl had been asked to leave.

The luminous dial of Johnnie’s watch—the latest thing in digitals—showed 6:02. Unbelievable. It felt more like midnight. And a good half-hour anyway must have passed since they had been left standing here in a huddle like cattle, but there was no way of telling, as nobody had thought to check the time when they landed. Or had the pilot noted it in his log? In the stillness, they could hear the occasional toot of a foghorn and the cry of a night bird, hawk or kestrel. Then, in the distance, a rustling and skittering that was surely animals, squirrels or rabbits or weasels, depending on the latitude. Finally a few in the party with sharp ears became aware of another sound, dull and regular, as of far-off pistons. “Do you hear that?” Harold Chadwick whispered. His wife listened. “Yes. What on earth can it be, Chaddie?” He did not know. For some reason, that rhythmic mechanical sound, in the absence of any of the normal noises of civilization, was very unnerving, like the pulsing of an infernal engine. “Sounds like a pump,” said Henry. But as they all listened, it stopped, and the night became utterly silent. Then it resumed.

“It
is
a pump.” That was the man in the whipcord again; his pale scarf, folded like a stock, could just be made out. In a body, the first-class hostages turned to him; all the carefully built little social barriers came down, as of course they had to in an emergency, with everyone standing here chock-a-block. He talked with quite a strong accent, difficult to place, but he sounded like a person who was very sure of himself. What they were hearing, he said, was a pumping-station. They were in Holland. And he was Dutch himself, naturally. “But I thought you said ‘Welcome to Flevoland’ or some name like that,” protested Beryl. She was right; it
had
been somewhat misleading. But “Flevoland,” it seemed, was the name of this part of Holland. From a lake which used to be here in Roman times that the Romans had called “Lake Flavus,” meaning yellow.

“I’ll be darned,” said Johnnie. “What happened to the lake?” Well, that was a long story, said the Dutchman, and then proceeded to tell it, as people always did when they said that. But it was interesting and gave them something to think about besides the state of their extremities and the clammy fear that was starting to creep over them like the fog. The temperature was close to freezing, and standing on the icy concrete was an ordeal, especially for the women in their thin shoes. The group was at a loss as to how to interpret Gretel’s injunction not to move—did it mean stay glued to the spot or could they take a few steps to stretch their legs instead of just shifting from foot to foot?