The Ministry of Fear (19 page)

It was at the end of the passage where the tap dripped, a large square, comfortless room with a stone floor divided in half by a curtain – it had probably once been a kitchen. Its new owner had lent it an aggressive and squalid masculinity as if he had something to prove; there were ends of cigarettes upon the floor, and nothing was used for its right purpose. A clock and a cheap brown teapot served as book-ends on a wardrobe to prop up a shabby collection – Carlyle's
Heroes and Hero-Worship
, lives of Napoleon and Cromwell, and numbers of little paper-covered books about what to do with Youth, Labour, Europe, God. The windows were all shut, and when Digby lifted the drab curtain he could see the bed had not been properly made – or else Poole had flung himself down for a rest and hadn't bothered to tidy it afterwards. The tap dripped into a fixed basin and a sponge-bag dangled from a bedpost. A used tin which once held lobster paste now held old razor-blades. The place was as comfortless as a transit camp; the owner might have been someone who was just passing on and couldn't be bothered to change so much as a stain on the wall. An open suitcase full of soiled underclothes gave the impression that he hadn't even troubled to unpack.

It was like the underside of a stone: you turned up the bright polished nursing home and found beneath it this.

Everywhere there was the smell of Caporal, and on the beds there were crumbs, as though Poole took food to bed with him. Digby stared at the crumbs a long while: a feeling of sadness and disquiet and dangers he couldn't place haunted him – as though something were disappointing his expectations – as though the cricket match were a frost, nobody had come to the half-term holiday, and he waited and waited outside the King's Arms for a girl who would never turn up. He had nothing to compare this place with. The nursing home was something artificial, hidden in a garden. Was it possible that ordinary life was like this? He remembered a lawn and afternoon tea and a drawing-room with water-colours and little tables, a piano no one played and the smell of eau-de-Cologne; but was
this
the real adult life to which we came in time? had he, too, belonged to this world? He was saddened by a sense of familiarity. It was not of this last he had dreamed a few years back at school, but he remembered that the years since then were not few but many.

At last the sense of danger reminded him of poor imprisoned Stone. He might not have long before the doctor and Poole returned, and though he could not believe they had any power over him, he was yet afraid of sanctions he couldn't picture. His slippers padded again up the passage and up the dingy stairs to the first floor. There was no sound here at all: the tick of the clock didn't reach as far: large bells on rusty wires hung outside what might have been the butler's pantry. They were marked Study, Drawing-Room, 1st Spare Bedroom, 2nd Spare Bedroom, Day Nursery. . . The wires sagged with disuse and a spider had laid its scaffolding across the bell marked Dining-Room.

The barred windows he had seen over the garden wall had been on the second floor, and he mounted unwillingly higher. He was endangering his own retreat with every step, but he had dared himself to speak to Stone, and if it were only one syllable he must speak it. He went down a passage calling softly, ‘Stone. Stone.'

There was no reply and the old cracked linoleum creaked under his feet and sometimes caught his toes. Again he felt a familiarity – as if this cautious walking, this solitary passage, belonged more to this world than the sleek bedroom in the other wing. ‘Stone,' he called, ‘Stone,' and heard a voice answer, ‘Barnes. Is that you, Barnes?' coming startlingly from the door beside him.

‘Hush,' he said, and putting his lips close to the key-hole, ‘It's not Barnes. It's Digby.'

He heard Stone sigh. ‘Of course,' the voice said, ‘Barnes is dead. I was screaming . . .'

‘Are you all right, Stone?'

‘I've had an awful time,' Stone said, so low that Digby could hardly hear him, ‘an awful time. I didn't really mean I wouldn't eat . . .'

‘Come to the door so that I can hear you better.'

Stone said, ‘They've got me in one of these strait-jackets. They said I was violent: I don't think I was violent. It's just the treachery . . .' He must have got nearer the door, because his voice was much clearer. He said, ‘Old man, I know I've been a bit touched. We all are in this place, aren't we? But I'm not
mad
. It just isn't right.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I wanted to find a room to enfilade that island from. They'd begun to dig, you see, months ago. I saw them one evening after dark. One couldn't leave it at that. The Hun doesn't let the grass grow. So I came through into this wing and went to Poole's room . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘I didn't mean to make them jump. I just wanted to explain what I was after.'

‘Jump?'

‘The doctor was there with Poole. They were doing something in the dark . . .' The voice broke: it was horrible hearing a middle-aged man sobbing invisibly behind a locked door.

‘But the digging?' Digby asked. ‘You must have dreamed . . .'

‘That tube . . . It was awful, old man. I hadn't really meant I wouldn't eat. I was just afraid of poison.'

‘Poison?'

‘Treachery,' the voice said. ‘Listen, Barnes . . .'

‘I'm not Barnes.'

Again there was a long sigh. ‘Of course. I'm sorry. It's getting me down. I
am
touched, you know. Perhaps they are right.'

‘Who's Barnes?'

‘He was a good man. They got him on the beach. It's no good, Digby. I'm mad. Every day in every way I get worse and worse.'

Somewhere from far away, through an open window on the floor below, came the sound of a car. Digby put his lips to the door and said, ‘I can't stay, Stone. Listen. You are not mad. You've got ideas into your head, that's all. It's not right putting you here. Somehow I'll get you out. Just stick it.'

‘You're a good chap, Digby.'

‘They've threatened me with this too.'

‘You,' Stone whispered back. ‘But you're sane enough. By God, perhaps I'm not so touched after all. If they want to put you here, it must be treachery.'

‘Stick it.'

‘I'll stick it, old man. It was the uncertainty. I thought perhaps they were right.'

The sound of the car faded.

‘Haven't you any relations?'

‘Not a soul,' the voice said. ‘I had a wife, but she went away. She was quite right, old chap, quite right. There was a lot of treachery.'

‘I'll get you out. I don't know how, but I'll get you out.'

‘That island, Digby . . . you've got to watch it, old man. I can't do anything here, and I don't matter, anyway. But if I could just have fifty of the old bunch . . .'

Digby reassured him gently, ‘I'll watch the island.'

‘I thought the Hun had got hold of it. They don't let the grass grow . . . But I'm sometimes a bit confused, old man.'

‘I must go now. Just stick it.'

‘I'll stick it, old man. Been in worse places. But I wish you didn't have to go.'

‘I'll come back for you.'

But he hadn't the faintest idea of how. A terrible sense of pity moved him; he felt capable of murder for the release of that gentle tormented creature. He could see him walking into the muddy pond . . . the very clear blue eyes and the bristly military moustache and the lines of care and responsibility. That was a thing you learned in this place: that a man kept his character even when he was insane. No madness would ever dim that military sense of duty to others.

His reconnaissance had proved easier than he had any right to expect: the doctor must be taking a long ride. He reached the green baize door safely, and when it sighed behind him, it was like Stone's weary patience asking him to come back. He passed quickly through the lounge and then more carefully up the stairs until he came again within sight of Johns' open door. Johns wasn't there: the clock on his desk had only moved on twelve minutes: the papers lay in the lamplight. He felt as though he had explored a strange country and returned home to find it all a dream – not a single page of the calendar turned during all his wanderings.

3

He wasn't afraid of Johns. He went in and picked up one of the offending papers. Johns had arranged them in order and marked the passages. He must have been bitten by the passion for detection. The Ministry of Home Security, Digby read, had replied months ago to a question about a missing document in much the same terms as in the later case. It had never been missing. There had been at most a slight indiscretion, but the document had never left the personal possession of – and there was the great staid respected name which Johns had forgotten. In the face of such a statement how could anyone continue to suggest that the document had been photographed? That was to accuse the great staid name not of an indiscretion but of treason. It was perhaps a mistake not to have left the document in the office safe overnight, but the great name had given his personal assurance to the Minister that not for one second had the document been out of his possession. He had slept with it literally under his pillow . . .
The Times
hinted that it would be interesting to investigate how the calumny had started. Was the enemy trying to sap our confidence in our hereditary leaders by a whisper campaign? After two or three issues there was silence.

A rather frightening fascination lay in these months-old newspapers. Digby had slowly had to relearn most of the household names, but he could hardly turn the page of any newspaper without encountering some great man of whom he had never heard, and occasionally there would crop up a name he did recognize – someone who had been a figure twenty years ago. He felt like a Rip Van Winkle returning after a quarter of a century's sleep; the people of whom he had heard hardly connected better than he did with his youth. Men of brilliant promise had lapsed into the Board of Trade, and of course in one great case a man who had been considered too brilliant and too reckless ever to be trusted with major office was the leader of his country. One of Digby's last memories was of hearing him hissed by ex-servicemen from the public gallery of a law court because he had told an abrupt unpalatable truth about an old campaign. Now he had taught the country to love his unpalatable truths.

He turned a page and read casually under a photograph: ‘Arthur Rowe whom the police are anxious to interview in connection . . .' He wasn't interested in crime. The photograph showed a lean shabby clean-shaven man. All photographs of criminals looked much alike – perhaps it was the spots, the pointilliste technique of the newspaper photograph. There was so much of the past he had to learn that he couldn't be bothered to learn the criminals, at any rate of the domestic kind.

A board creaked and he turned. Johns hovered and blinked in the doorway. ‘Good evening, Johns,' Digby said.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Reading the papers,' Digby said.

‘But you heard the doctor say . . .'

‘This isn't a prison, Johns,' Digby said, ‘except for poor Stone. It's a very charming nursing home and I'm a private patient with nothing wrong except loss of memory due to a bomb . . .' He realized that Johns was listening to him with intensity. ‘Isn't that about it?' he asked.

‘It must be, mustn't it,' Johns said.

‘So we must keep a sense of proportion, and there's no earthly reason why, if I don't feel like sleep, I shouldn't stroll down the passage to your room for a chat and to read . . .'

‘When you put it like that,' Johns said, ‘it sounds so simple.'

‘The doctor makes you see it differently, doesn't he?'

‘All the same a patient ought to follow the treatment . . .'

‘Or change his doctor. You know I've decided to change my doctor.'

‘To leave?' Johns asked. There was fear in his voice.

‘To leave.'

‘Please don't do anything rash,' Johns said. ‘The doctor's a great man. He's suffered a lot . . . and that may have made him a bit . . . eccentric. But you can't do better than stay here, really you can't.'

‘I'm going, Johns.'

‘Just another month,' Johns entreated. ‘You've been doing so well. Until that girl came. Just a month. I'll speak to the doctor. He'll let you have the papers again. Perhaps he'll even let
her
come. Only let me put it to him. I know the way. He's so sensitive: he takes offence.'

‘Johns,' Digby asked gently, ‘why should you be afraid of my going?'

The unrimmed glasses caught the light and set it flickering along the wall. Johns said uncontrollably, ‘I'm not afraid of your going. I'm afraid – I'm afraid of his not letting you go.' Very far away they both heard the purr-purr of a car.

‘What's wrong with the doctor?' Johns shook his head and the reflection danced again upon the wall. ‘There's something wrong,' Digby pressed him. ‘Poor Stone saw something odd and so he's put away . . .'

‘For his own good,' Johns said imploringly. ‘Dr Forester knows. He's such a great man, Digby.'

‘For his own good be damned. I've been to the sick bay and talked to him . . .'

‘You've been
there
?' Johns said.

‘Haven't you – ever?'

‘It's forbidden,' Johns said.

‘Do you always do exactly what Dr Forester tells you?'

‘He's a great doctor, Digby. You don't understand: brains are the most delicate mechanisms. The least thing to upset the equilibrium and everything goes wrong. You have to trust the doctor.'