The Stone That Never Came Down (18 page)

XXI

The phone said, “Malcolm?”

“Yes, David?”

“Get out, fast, and preferably out of the country.”

“What? Why?”

“Arthur and Wilfred were arrested by Special Branch this afternoon on Gifford’s orders.”

A score of alternative plans flashed through Malcolm’s mind as he looked along his hallway, imagining the quantities of VC breeding in his kitchenette.

“Very well. Valentine has his, you have yours, Bob has his and is probably on his way by now. Ruth speaks German.”

“You speak French?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll miss the house, though, I must say … Still, all being well it’ll be here when we come back. ’Bye!”

The news was of the joint ultimatum issued by the other signatories to the Treaty of Rome, demanding that Italy resume adherence to it within twenty-one days. So far there had been no response.

Bradshaw woke from an uneasy doze as the train, which had been grunting up the northerly inclines of Italy, slowed to a halt. He was alone in his compartment; it was clear that even though this was normally a popular resort area the whole year round few people felt inclined to risk heading for it now the crisis was intensifying to the point where the possibility of actual fighting was being openly debated.

He slid up the window-blind, to find grey dawn-light beyond. Half-hidden by mist, mountains white with snow loomed in the distance. And, on a twisting road which at this point the railway overlooked …

–Troop-carriers! Half-tracks!

A whole convoy of them, reassigned from duties farther south to judge by the olive-drab of their paint, conspicuous against the off-white piles of snow flung aside from the road. But the men they carried were properly clad for winter in the mountains, wearing all-white insulated clothing and with anti-glare goggles loose around their necks.

The train moved on. Beyond the next curve was another line of military vehicles, this time trucks with snow-chains around their tyres, passing through a small village where a man with bright fluorescent batons was directing them which route to take at an intersection. Early-rising locals were staring in amazement as the tinny bell of the church announced the first mass of the day. It was Sunday.

Bradshaw glanced up at the one lightweight travel-bag he had brought with him, containing something far more important than clothes or shoes or money. His thoughts were grim.

–Still … A twenty-one day ultimatum is far better than we were hoping for. Do the meteorologists expect the weather to have broken by then? Right now fighting over this kind of terrain would be as bad as the Russian front in winter 1941.

Not that it would be the same kind of fighting.

Abruptly the door from the corridor was flung open and an officer in a greatcoat and an armed private were demanding,
“I sui documenti!
”

He produced his forged passport and leaned back in his seat unconcernedly. While staying with Hector and Anne he had let his beard grow, then trimmed it neatly into a shape he had never worn in any rôle for movies or TV.

“Ah, you’re American, Mr Barton,” the officer said as he leafed through the passport. His English was impeccable. “What brings you here?”

–I wonder whether acting will disappear in the Age of VC. When everybody can do it perfectly … No, of course not. It will remain a talent, a greater concern for some people than others. But I never dreamed I could outface suspicious officials so easily. He no more recognises me as Bradshaw than did the immigration people at Milan airport

“A sentimental journey,” he said with a shrug. “My mother’s family was Italian. Her name was Gramiani, and her father was born in Piedmont. But he died before I was born.”

“I see. Where exactly are you going at present?”

“To a little town which has surprised me by suddenly becoming famous. Arcovado.”

–No point in lying about that. But what’s the betting he will now search me, and my bag?

The reason for its sudden notoriety was simple. It was the ancestral home of Marshal Dalessandro; his family owned large estates in the neighbourhood. Moreover, he was due to come back to it next weekend, assured of a rapturous welcome.

–But well guarded against assassins, no doubt!

The search followed, as predicted. On finding his travelling medicine-kit, the officer inquired what each item was or carefully read the label. For diarrhoea; indigestion; headache; earache; cuts and bruises …

It was clear the officer thought him a thorough hypochondriac. However, he replaced everything and shut the case with a shrug.

“Tell me, Mr Barton,” he said musingly, “what do you think of–ah–recent developments here in Italy?”

“Oh, I think a foreigner should defer judgement,” Bradshaw answered easily. “Though of course if law and order can be restored and the country regain its prosperity, I’ll be one of the first to applaud.”

“Good. Thank you, and apologies for putting you to all this trouble.” The officer returned his passport and then, struck by an abrupt thought, reached past and slid down the window-blind again.

“Take my advice, and leave it that way for another half-hour,” he said with a wry smile. “It may enable you to relax a little more during your vacation.”

The news was of reinforcements joining the American Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, and of the Austrians following the example of the Swiss and issuing preliminary mobilisation notices to twenty thousand reservists.

So far this morning all had been quiet around the perimeter of the embattled strikers’ no-go zone. Having made a complete circuit of the area he was responsible for, Lieutenant Cordery returned to his sergeant at the headquarters radio vehicle.

“I saw a tea-van in the next street,” he said. “I think you might as well let the men take ten minutes’ break by twos. And–ah–you might get someone to collect a cuppa and a roll of some sort for me, would you?”

“Right, sir!” the sergeant said smartly, and after glancing around pointed at two of the nearest of the shivering soldiers. The snow was lasting much longer here than in the south; there had been a fresh fall last night and the air continued to wear its knife-cruel edge. “You two! Ten minutes for chah and wads. There’s a tea-wagon in the next street. And bring some rations back for Mr Cordery.”

“Here’s fifty pence,” Cordery said. “That ought to be enough.”

“Okay, sir,” the man who took it said, and moved off gratefully. He was out of earshot when he said to his companion, “Well, hell. Never thought the day would come when I’d be glad to see a blackie!”

But Valentine Crawford heard him, and wryly countered inside his head as he put on his best Uncle Tom grin and leaned past the wisp of steam escaping from his big urns.

–Never thought I’d be glad to see a buckra soldier with a gun, baby! But it all adds to the day’s business, doesn’t it?

Aloud, he merely said, “Yes, gents? Tea, buns, sausage-rolls, ham-rolls, cheese sandwiches–all here and waiting!”

“Hah!” one of the soldiers said, looking at the neat piles of food under their scratched plastic domes. “Not doing much trade, are you?”

“Only just started for the day, sir. Thought you ought to have first call!” Broadening his grin still further.

“We deserve it, no doubt of that. Okay, tea, and plenty of sugar. And a cheese sandwich.”

“Coming up!”

Over the next week, he became a familiar and popular visitor to the nearby streets.

The news was of Russian forces being unexpectedly assigned to “manoeuvres” in southern Hungary, and a call for stern resolution in the face of trial issued by the Right Honourable Henry Charkall-Phelps at a giant Moral Pollution rally in Birmingham, where he was cheered nonstop for almost five minutes.

–So little of it available … If only Malcolm hadn’t had to flee, destroying half of what we’d painfully bred for fear Gifford’s people might discover traces of it! I’m not sure he had tracked the connection between Malcolm and the Institute, but obviously he must have been monitoring phone-calls from and to there, so the risk was acute.

Sawyer shifted from foot to foot and blew into his hands. It was chilly waiting here in the line for admission to the Public Gallery of the House of Commons, but it seemed like an absolutely perfect target, far better than cinemas or tube-trains or other obvious possibilities. Particularly today, when it was being rumoured that at long last Charkall-Phelps would launch his personal attack on the Prime Minister, expected since his recent veiled insults on TV and at public meetings. Of course, it would not be in the gentlemanly tradition of British politics to hold a fight out in the open; the real business would be conducted behind the scenes, so that the country would eventually be presented with a
fait accompli
under the guise of democratic process. But certain aspects of what was happening might now and then be glimpsed between the drifting smoke-clouds of verbiage.

–Even if I don’t manage to get to the head of the line in time for the big speech of the afternoon, it’ll be worth going in anyhow. And I’ve already done marvels, though I say it myself. That special service for forces chaplains at St Paul’s yesterday: that was a real stroke of luck! I wonder whether Malcolm’s friend at the Epidemic Early Warning Unit has begun to notice another outbreak of this curious variety of narcolepsy … Probably not. We’re having to spread the VC so thinly, it’s an even chance whether people are actually receiving the threshold dose. Apart of course from Lady Washgrave. Reminds me: I should see how Cissy’s doing.

The news was of shouting-matches behind closed doors at EEC Headquarters in Brussels, with the big countries’ delegates–those from France, West Germany and Britain–insisting on a hard line and the literal execution of the ultimatum, while the smaller countries, led by the Dutch, were claiming that there would be no way of confining a war if it broke out, and although big nations might have a faint hope of surviving nuclear attack small ones would be completely depopulated with half a dozen bombs.

Not that anyone ought to have needed to be told.

This winter, the most popular of all restaurants as a rendezvous for members of the Bonn parliament was
Am Weissen Pferd,
whose proprietor was a great sentimentalist. On noticing an attractive dark-haired woman weeping openly before one of the city’s countless monuments to Beethoven, it was only natural that he should stop and inquire what was the matter.

Having been reassured that she was in tears purely because she was overwhelmed by the awareness of walking on ground Beethoven himself had trodden, he equally naturally invited her to visit his restaurant. He was married and had three grown children, but he was a notorious womaniser.

Besides, he was extremely proud of his cuisine, and took her on a tour of his kitchens to demonstrate that even in this heavily polluted land of Western Germany it was possible to eat at certain places, even now, without risking one’s health because the food was contaminated with artificial substances, preservatives or insecticides or flavour-enhancers.

Fascinated, she inquired why he did not offer sea-salt, but had ordinary commercial salt on every table, and he told the sad story of the salt from Aigues-Mortes which had proved to contain more than one per cent of some fearful industrial waste-product, and resulted in many of a rival restaurant’s clientèle being taken to hospital.

He had not, as it happened, heard of Maldon salt, from the still relatively uncontaminated North Sea, and by way of making a gesture towards repayment of his hospitality and generosity she obtained some for him, which he had tested and was able with a clear conscience to give his guests. Overjoyed, he asked her advice in other matters, and was equally pleased to discover that she herself was an immensely knowledgeable cook.

–If he only knew that it’s all book-learning … But VC does make the most incredible acts of imagination possible. Like reading the score of a symphony; Ernest Newman once said that was a purer pleasure than listening to even the best orchestra under the best conductor! A cook-book can be a banquet for me now. Luckily eating is still better, in my view, or I could find myself sitting over a bowl of soup, reading about a gourmet meal, and paying no attention to the muck I was actually ingesting. Didn’t realise until now how much of what we’re sold as food really is muck. Dangerous, too …

When she produced, with a flourish, a seasoning he had never heard of but which at her table at least, in the small apartment she had temporarily rented, seemed to make the simplest food taste exquisite, he had no qualms at all about trying it out at
Am Weissen Pferd.

Where, sadly, the majority of the customers continued to do as they had always done: drink so much they blunted their sense of taste, smoke between courses and even during them, and leave half the food on the plate.

But that was politicians for you. And with the clouds gathering over Europe, it was perhaps less than surprising.

The news was of a mounting roar of support in Italy for the New System of Marshal Dalessandro, of recognition of his government by Greece first, then Spain, then Portugal, then the United States. And of air-raid warnings being tested, and shelter-drills for schoolchildren, and the printing of ration-cards.

“Que je suis désolée, mais aujourd’hui il n’est pas vraiment possible!”
the madam exclaimed, and it was obvious that she really meant it. Within a week or so of his arrival this English milord–unmistakably a milord, even though he was travelling incognito as a plain
mee-stair–
had become the most popular client her house had ever had. “It is the
armée,
” she added by way of explanation, and spread her hands.

“Mais je comprends parfaitement,”
the Englishman said. And did. The existence of this streetful of brothels in this small garrison town was tolerated on conditions, chief among which was that when one of the locally stationed regiments was dispatched for active service its men would have first call. “Another time, then. For tonight, perhaps you would distribute these among the girls as a token of my appreciation?”

He snapped his fingers, and the young man who seemed to be his valet produced an armful of expensive and delicious candy, at least a dozen boxes.