Faked Passports (40 page)

Angela rejoined them while they were still examining the packing-cases in the food store to report that the stable was equally well-equipped. The trapper had evidently owned two or three horses, although these must have been driven off by the Russians; but that the horses had been stabled there was
obvious from the sleigh-harness that was still hanging on the hooks, a big
troika
that occupied one corner of the stable and a good stock of corn and hay that had also been left intact.

The examination of the cases, trunks and other items had occupied them for over three hours so it was close on seven o'clock by the time they returned to the living-room. Erika had brought with her from the store a tin of sweet corn, a tin of fruit and half a dozen eggs upon which, with another boiling of coffee, they made their evening meal. While they were eating it, and afterwards, they gave Gregory a more detailed account of the recent adventures in which they had all been involved, but they were still tired from the excitements and anxieties of the previous day so at nine o'clock, having banked-up the stove, they put out the lamp and climbed on to-the warm top of the brick oven again.

They awoke the following morning at seven o'clock. It was still pitch-dark and it now seemed to them that they had not seen daylight for several days, but they got up and prepared breakfast. When they had finished Freddie said that he thought they ought to give some sort of burial to the owners of the place, who were still lying round the corner of the house where he had carried them, warped and frozen, in the attitudes in which they had died.

With Gregory as his meek, willing helper he went outside. Having retrieved the bodies from the previous night's fall of snow they carried them about a hundred yards to a group of trees. Digging through the snow—which was already several feet deep—they laid the four bodies on the iron-hard ground. Freddie could not remember the burial service—apart from the phrase “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust”, but rather self-consciously he said a short prayer over the grave, recommending the Finnish family to the mercy of Almighty God, while Gregory looked on with child-like interest. They then shovelled the snow back on top of the bodies, just as the late dawn was filtering through the silent, snow-covered forest.

Directly they were back in the house Freddie called a Council of War. The one and only item on his agenda was: should they stay where they were or re-harness the horses to the
troika
and try to break through the scattered Russian lines, which lay somewhere to the west, in an attempt to get back to the territory that was still held by the civilised Finns?

Erika pointed out that if they did get back to Finland both he and Gregory were wanted for murder there; at which
Gregory began to giggle. Pulling up short he apologised and said he found that awfully difficult to believe, because he was really a most harmless person and had never raised a finger against anybody in his life.

The others looked at one another and smiled with pained discretion but they forbore to argue with him and Freddie admitted the point that Erika had made. The last thing he wished to do was to expose himself to re-arrest and the possibility of being hanged for murder by the terrifyingly law-conscious Finns.

“The only alternative, then, as far as I can see,” he said, “is for us to strike north towards the coast. It can't be more than forty or fifty miles distant and we ought to be able to find a fishing village somewhere along it where they won't know anything about us. Gregory has plenty of money …”

“Have I?” interrupted Gregory. “But how nice.”

“Yes,” Freddie continued. “From what I remember, you've still got over £500 in your pockets and your boots.”

“Then if we could get home I could buy a cottage somewhere and a lot of books—I'm sure I used to like books,” Gregory remarked with considerable interest.

“You could, but you wouldn't, darling,” Erika assured him. “You'd be much more likely to blow the lot on taking me to Paris if there wasn't a war on, and hiring the Royal suite at the Ritz.”

“The Ritz …” echoed Gregory thoughtfully. “I believe I used to stay there sometimes. I seem to remember a long, long corridor with show-cases on each side of it.”

“Go on,” said Angela, her blue eyes laughing, “go on. What else?”

“There was a foyer as one came in from the square …”

“That's it. The
Place Vendôme.
”

Gregory nodded. “And one went through the long corridor to the bar. It was run by a great character—a fellow who would always cash everybody's cheques. I can't remember his name—wait a minute, though—it was Frank—yes, Frank. He was a grand man, and you could never go into the place without meeting somebody you knew.”

Erika sighed with relief. If he could remember that sort of thing it showed that his past was not a complete blank and that gradually he might recover his memory entirely.

“That's right, old chap,” Freddie encouraged him. “But as I was saying, you've got plenty of money so we could hire
some of the fishermen to take us out in a boat along the coast until we sighted a neutral or British ship; then we'd go aboard and pay our passage back to civilisation.”

Erika lighted one of her few remaining cigarettes. “I think you're underestimating the difficulties, Freddie. You're thinking of the Arctic as though it was the South Coast of England, with towns and villages along it every few miles; but it isn't like that at all. Between Petsamo and Murmansk I doubt if there are more than half a dozen scattered fishing settlements and those will be inhabited only by Lapps. We can't talk their language and, even if we could explain to them what we wanted, the only sort of boat they'd have is the Eskimo
kayak
—a little canoe affair the top of which is covered with skin. We'd need one apiece with an oarsman to propel us and I don't suppose their maximum range is more than twenty miles. The whole world to such people consists of their village and the nearest trading station, and for them to sight a steamer up in those parts is an event which may not happen once in two or three years. If we did as you suggest our chances of picking up a vessel which would take us to a civilised port are unbelievably remote; and on our way to the coast we might easily get lost and die of cold in this accursed snow.”

“If that's the case,” said Freddie gloomily, “it looks as though we'll have to stay here the whole winter and wait to make our attempt to break back to civilisation until the spring.”

Angela smiled at him; she was looking very well and very pretty now that she had recovered from the strain of their flight from Helsinki. “Would you mind having to stay here the whole winter—very much, darling?”

He looked up quickly and a slow smile lit his face. “I suppose it's my duty to get home as soon as I can, since there's a war on, but if it isn't possible that lets me out. There's masses of food and fuel here so we haven't got to worry how we're going to keep alive. Since you're with me, and I've got a perfectly good excuse for staying, nothing else matters as far as I'm concerned.”

“How do you feel about it, darling?” Erika asked Gregory.

He laughed. “Perhaps my loss of memory is a blessing in disguise. If all you tell me about myself is true I suppose I ought to be busy assassinating Hitler or kidnapping President Roosevelt to induce him to come into the war on our side; but as I can't for the life of me remember what I'm supposed to be up to, there doesn't seem much sense in my risking being frozen
to death in order to get myself back into the middle of this scrap that's going on. If you'd like to go somewhere I'll go with you; but if not, I'm perfectly content to stay here.”

She laid her hand gently over his. “I'm so glad you feel like that, dearest. I was afraid you'd want to take all sorts of mad risks to try and get home …”

“Oh, but I never take risks,” said Gregory. “I'm a very cautious person.”

“I'm sure you are,” she smiled. “But I was afraid that you might be anxious to get back to your own country. That would have meant our separating again and, you see, as I now have no country to go to I would much rather stay here with you and rough it than live in a little more comfort in some dreary hotel in Norway or Sweden without you.”

She glanced at the others. “Let's forget the war. If only we can do that we'll cheat the gods, and at least snatch a few months' happiness out of our lives, until the spring.”

As they were apparently safe and well-found where they were, yet could not leave the place while the winter lasted without endangering their lives, Erika's reasoning seemed sound common sense. All four of them were in love and loved by their opposite members in the party. Their duties would be light, as the girls, between them could easily do the cooking and keep the one room tidy while the men looked after the stove and bath-house, tended the horses and cut fresh fuel when required.

The others nodded, smiling their agreement; but it did not prove so easy to forget the war.

It was all very well to decide lightly on taking all the happiness they could while hibernating for the winter and on making their retreat a snow-bound Arcady where they could forget the new madness that had come upon the world; but each of them had friends or relatives who were involved in the struggle and, although they could not hope to secure news of individuals, they had a natural anxiety to know how their countries were faring.

Their conference was hardly over when Angela noticed the little wireless set in the far corner of the room which had been half hidden since their arrival by some furs that Gregory had inconsequently tossed across it. Running over with a cry of delight at finding a radio which could give her dance-music, of which she was passionately fond, she pulled away the furs and switched on. The set buzzed and crackled as she turned the knob, then a foreign voice came through which was speaking English.

“Leave it! Leave it!” said Freddie quickly. “We may hear what's happened to the Finns.”

As they had cut in almost at the begining of a news bulletin they were able to do so. Apparently,
Monsieur
Errko's Government had resigned at midnight on the first day of the war to make way for an all-party Government, under
Monsieur
Risto Ryti, Governor of the Bank of Finland, which was to seek a truce. Their efforts so far had proved unavailing and the Finns had withdrawn a few miles from their actual frontier on the Karelian Isthmus to their most forward posts in the Mannerheim Line, leaving a few small evacuated villages in the hands of the advancing Russians. In one of these Stalin had set up a puppet Government under the Bolshevik, Kuusinen, who had taken refuge in Moscow after the Finnish revolution was suppressed by Marshal Mannerheim in 1918 and had since acted
as secretary to the Comintern. A pact between the Soviet and this Puppet Government was now in the course of negotiation while Soviet troops were hurling themselves against the Finnish lines only a few miles away. So far the only success reported by the Russians during the three days' fighting was the capture of Petsamo, the harbour and fortifications of which had fallen the previous night. On all other fronts the Finns were holding their ground.

After the actual news the commentator gave extracts from the world Press which clearly showed the general horror and indignation which was felt at Russia's unprovoked attack on Finland, and when he signed off they learnt that they had been listening to one of the Swedish broadcasts in English from Stockholm.

“D'you think the Swedes and Norwegians will go in with the Finns?” Freddie asked Gregory; but evidently Gregory's mind was now almost entirely blank on the subject of international politics, as he just shook his head in a puzzled way and said:

“I—I'm afraid I don't even know what they're fighting about.”

Erika suppressed an exclamation of distress. It seemed utterly tragic to her that his fine brain and brilliant reasoning powers should have been wiped out as though they had never existed. In an attempt to cover his lapse from the others she said quickly:

“It all depends on the Nazis' attitude. If it's part of their devil's pact with Stalin that Russia should have Finland von Ribbentrop will exercise pressure on the Scandinavian countries to prevent their going to the assistance of the Finns. He may even threaten them that Germany would invade them in the south if they do. On the other hand, you can be quite certain that the Nazis don't mean the Bolsheviks to walk right through Finland to the Swedish iron-ore mines, so there's just a chance that they may encourage the Swedes and Norwegians to go to the Finns' support.”

During the afternoon and evening they further explored the resources of their new home. The books, unfortunately, all proved to be in Finnish or Swedish and they could find no games or other diversions in the house, so it looked as though they were going to be entirely dependent upon the radio and their own conversation for amusements during the many weeks ahead of them before the thaw was due to set in. But they soon
found that Gregory's loss of memory provided them with an unusual occupation.

All his previous life, all history, all knowledge except the simple, instinctive things, such as helping to lay the table for a meal and stoking up the fire, seemed to have left him. Every few hours he suffered a bout of acute headache and at times his eyes troubled him, as he found it difficult to focus them properly; but his brain was perfectly sound and once given any piece of information it registered again for good. Moreover, as each subject was broached it seemed to unlock a few cerebral cells here and there so that after he had heard them talking about any matter for a little time he was able to join in the conversation quite normally. Yet the sum of knowledge acquired casually in the active life of an educated man is so vast that, once lost, it is an extraordinarily long business to get even a considerable portion of it back, however quick the learner, and during the process the person who is reacquiring his education appears to have almost endless blanks in his mental make-up. If Freddie said “William the Conqueror, 1066”, Gregory would promptly say, “William II, 1087”, and find himself perfectly well aware that William Rufus met his death while out hunting; but that did not give him the slightest clue to any other period of English history. In consequence, they began to employ themselves with his re-education and, as all they had to do was to talk of a variety of subjects for him to regain his knowledge of them, they were amazed at the almost endless interesting discussions which arose as a result of their efforts to help him to get his memory back.