Going It Alone (11 page)

‘That was Dave,’ Tim said more quietly. He had turned very pale, but it was impossible to tell whether this was from indignation or dismay. ‘He got away. It doesn’t sound as if any of the others did.’

‘What do you mean – got away? Got away from where?’ It was Anne who, round-eyed, asked the questions. She had perhaps never seen Tim like this before.

‘From the Uffington Street Squat – the one I was covering for
En Vedette
. It’s an outrage. The fuzz broke in on them and yanked them out – without so much as brandishing a warrant or a summons or an injunction from some dotty old judge or what-have-you. Yanked them out, and now they’re all inside.’

‘Inside?’ Lou said. ‘Inside where?’

‘Those bloody little white-washed cells, I suppose. With hulking great brutes standing round them and telling them to say this and that. It’s monstrous. It was a perfectly legal squat.’

‘Can squats be perfectly legal?’ Averell asked. He knew that he was on singularly unfamiliar ground.

‘The next thing to it,’ Tim said – this time a shade uncertainly. ‘I’ve got up the law. We’ve all got up the law. They could only be proceeded against individually and by name and as a matter of civil trespass and all that. But the police have thought up something quite fantastic. They’ve been told they’ll probably be charged with robbing a bank.’

Very reasonably, this produced a moment’s stupefied silence. It had to be broken by Averell.

‘Friends of yours, Tim?’ he asked mildly.

‘Of course they’re friends of mine. Not that I’ve known many of them for long. Only since last week, most of them. But they certainly don’t rob banks.’

‘I suppose not.’ Averell wished he could feel confident about this. In circles frequented by his nephew it wasn’t inconceivable that there were young people who judged banks to be thoroughly iniquitous institutions, and bankers no better than robbers themselves. And he had no faith at all in the notion of a constabulary trumping up a charge of larceny against innocent young persons, however great the nuisance-value of their social or political persuasions. ‘About this Uffington Street,’ he said.
‘Is
there a bank in it?’

‘Of course there is, Uncle Gilbert.’ Tim produced this reply in a tone of wholly unreasonable irritation. ‘Two doors down from the house. I passed it several times when I was mucking in a bit with the Uffington Street crowd. But it just isn’t –’

‘Does your friend Dave know how this robbery is supposed to have been accomplished?’

‘He’s rather vague, but finding out what he can. The fuzz aren’t uttering. I’m going back to London now to blast the lights out of them. You can all come. I’ll ring up and hire a car.’

‘We’d better have some sandwiches,’ Lou said prosaically. ‘I’ll go fix them.’ With this modish Americanism she followed Tim from the room. Averell and Anne were left staring at each other.

‘This is unfunny,’ Anne said. It was clear that she was much upset, so that Averell wondered whether keeping Tim out of mischief was at present her main task in life. ‘Let’s go into the garden, shall we?’

‘Yes, if you like.’ Averell stood up at once. It looked as if Anne might have something to say in confidence about this new and bewildering development. With this in his head, Averell quite forgot the nonsense about Boxes being in a state of siege. And it certainly proved pleasant to be out of doors. There had been a shower during the earlier part of the morning; now the sun was shining; there would be another shower soon. France, it seemed to Averell, or at any rate Paris, didn’t ever run to this quintessentially April-like effect. The earth was gently steaming, and so was Smoky Joe – just as if he were obligingly disposed to justify his name. Anne, who was presumably exploring the place for the first time, led the way between roughly trimmed box hedges towards a tumbledown summerhouse.

‘Don’t the Barcrofts take a newspaper?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think they do. My sister is rather fond of keeping a little clear of the world.’

‘One can’t say that of Tim.’

‘I suppose not. And I admire his power to get concerned about things.’

‘What I was thinking of, Mr Averell, is that this affair must be in the papers today.’

‘The arrest of those young people?’

‘Well, no. That might be sat on for a bit. But the actual bank raid, or whatever it has been. These things seem to be reported fairly quickly. Not that they’re not a bit two-a-penny nowadays.’

‘I suppose they are. In fact I noticed something in a paper yesterday that seemed to be speaking of them in general as quite that. I’m afraid I don’t often actually read about such things.’

‘They come in various shapes and sizes. Sometimes crooks simply dash into a bank waving guns, and grab what they can and depart again. Fairly primitive, that – and not likely to result in a big haul. Then there’s the trick of hiding in the place overnight, and pouncing on some wretched understrapper when he opens up in the morning. And, of course, there’s all sorts of stuff with hostages. It’s astonishing what you can do with an advanced technique there. Make the manager drive up with the keys in his shiny car, and depart in the shiny car yourselves when you’ve cleared the place out. But then it’s fifty-fifty there will be a chase, and when that happens the odds are on the police.’ Anne paused in this well-informed discourse to admire some primroses. ‘But the really superior method is tunnelling. You start from, say, an empty shop near by; keep on burrowing and burrowing like a mole; and if you emerge at the right spot all you have to do is turn the key deftly in the oiled wards. I think Keats or somebody put it that way.’

‘He well may have. But are you saying, Anne, that this affair has probably been like that?’

‘Yes, I am – and that when the police got into the bank’s vault or whatever it was, and worked back through the tunnel, they found themselves in the middle of this idiotic squat. So they naturally nicked everybody they could lay their hands on.’

They had reached the summerhouse, which faced into the sun. Anne dusted down a bench as carefully as if she had been in a ball-dress, and perched herself on it.

‘Romantic seclusion,’ she said, ‘but I’m not expecting a declaration. Sit down too, Mr Averell, and tell me what you think.’

‘I think you may well prove to be right.’ Averell sat down as he was bidden, although not without a fear that the bench might be a little damp. ‘But it doesn’t take us far with what we have really to think about.’

‘Which is just what connection all this has with people wanting to kill Tim? There must be a connection, I suppose.’

‘I’d rather imagine so. But I’m not at all clear about his role, Anne. He doesn’t seem to have been particularly closely connected with this squat – if that’s what it’s called. Was he simply going to do a report on it?’

‘More or less that – though mostly it would have been his photographs. And it was just to be part of a series. The idea was to show squatting and sitting in and so forth in the rather domestic and civilized way it usually happens. People get the impression that squatters pee on the carpet, and get drunk and quarrel, and end by breaking everything up. So there was to be lots of good humour and co-operative effort and listening to Bach as well as pop. It was to be a public relations exercise of sorts. Say a counter-blast to the media.’

‘I see. And Tim mayn’t really have known all that much about this particular crowd?’

‘No, he needn’t. And I don’t know how often he went round there. I haven’t been hearing an awful lot about his movements lately, as a matter of fact.’

Averell considered this for a moment in silence. He had already been wondering whether perhaps Tim didn’t care about Anne as much as Anne cared about Tim. He resolved to steer clear of this if he could. It decidedly wasn’t territory upon which an elderly relation could trespass to any good effect.

‘Just before that telephone call came,’ he said, ‘Tim seemed about to give me the results of a kind of diary of his recent movements. But I didn’t get the impression he’d recalled anything significant. The real puzzle, in a way, is his being so puzzled.’

‘Yes, something must have happened without his realizing its significance – like what you said about a man in a tube train. When he was being a bit dopey, perhaps.’

‘Dopey?’ Averell repeated, alarmed.

‘No, no – just being dreamy. Would you say Tim was rather thick?’

‘Certainly not.’ Averell found himself resenting this sudden sharp question. ‘It is the general expectation at Oxford that Tim will take a most creditable degree.’

‘Wouldn’t that be super?’ Anne asked ironically. But it was evident that she was pleased. ‘If he ever gets as far as the examination room,’ she said. ‘But remember that they do have it in for him. They may really put him in prison this time.’ As she faced this dire possibility, Anne broke most unexpectedly into tears.

Averell was appalled. He would have been distressed merely by the bobbing up once more of the shocking notion that the police could ‘have it in’ for his nephew. But to have a young woman weeping on his bosom in a secluded situation was infinitely alarming. And it was on his bosom. Quite instinctively he had put an arm round the weeping girl in what he judged vaguely to be an avuncular manner, and she had promptly responded by burying her nose in the region of his breast-pocket handkerchief.

‘My dear Anne –’ he began – and suddenly stiffened and straightened up. From somewhere close at hand, in fact from just outside the summerhouse, had come a most alarming sound. It was the sharp
click
! surely to be associated (Averell thought) with the cocking of a pistol, if pistols are in fact things one does cock. He was uncertain about this – but in no doubt of the resurgence of what a writer of romance might entitle
Peril at Boxes
. Here was the enemy again: the prowler of the previous afternoon, the intruder at the bedroom window, the ruffian who had so outrageously bashed him on the nose. And Averell’s duty was plain. Standing as he did the sole protector of the girl at his side from an assailant who might be sheerly mad, it was his duty once more to grapple with him as he could. Averell disengaged himself from Anne (who was a little bewildered and unwilling to let go), sprang to his feet, and undauntedly dashed from the summerhouse. And at this Anne for some reason decided that it was her duty to follow, so that the two tumbled out of the place almost together. It was at once evident that the miscreant was not meditating a more effective attack, since he was in fact plainly visible retreating rapidly down the garden path. Perhaps, Averell resourcefully thought, that click had been the sound made by a pistol when it goes abruptly out of working order. At least the man was now a fugitive. And he was to be pursued.

The man ran, Averell ran, and Anne ran too. Anne, ashamed of her moment of womanly weakness, was showing herself a tough girl. She was still at Averell’s shoulder when Averell caught up with his quarry. This he succeeded in doing only because the fugitive made a mistake, turning down a path that proved to be a blind alley. Unless he showed fight and got the better of the encounter, he was cornered at last! Averell, whose blood was up, had no intention of being worsted.

But now the fugitive, realizing that he could no further go, halted and turned round. Averell halted too, and even more abruptly. For here was none other than Monsieur Gustave Flaubert, his vexatious acquaintance of the flight from Paris. And Flaubert, as if making the best of things, was entirely composed. He was wearing his silly little hat of the previous day, and this silly little hat he now elevated in air, while at the same time making a courteous bow.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur le Prince
,’ Flaubert murmured (as one might to an acquaintance in the Champs Elysées, or some such place). And he glided past Averell’s shoulder and walked collectedly away.

‘Just what was that in aid of, Mr Averell?’ Anne asked. ‘I’m sorry that I turned so sappy, by the way.’

‘It was only natural,’ Averell said – much at random. ‘And – well, I thought I heard him doing something to a gun.’

‘You heard him doing something with a camera. He had it slung over his shoulder when we came up with him now. But I don’t understand this at all. He seemed to know you. Is that right? And then you seemed to feel that the sooner he just cleared out the better.’

‘I encountered him on an aeroplane yesterday. He is a most annoying person, and I certainly never want to see him again.’

‘He called you something funny, Mr Averell.’ Anne was looking at Tim’s uncle with momentary frank suspicion. ‘Only I didn’t quite catch it.’

‘He called me
Monsieur le Prince
.’ Averell came out with this quite firmly.

‘And are you a prince? Nobody told us, if you are. Of the Holy Roman Empire or something?’

‘Certainly not.’ Averell positively snapped this out, since he had in fact become extremely embarrassed. ‘It is an absurd affair of mistaken identity, which it would take too long to explain. I think we had better return to the house.’

‘It has nothing to do with this bank robbery, and the attacks on Tim?’

‘So far as I can see, nothing whatever.’

‘Then why did he try to come at Tim last night in his bedroom?’

‘He didn’t. He had something quite different in view.’ As he said this, Averell began to walk rapidly back to the house, somewhat ungallantly leaving it to Anne to follow if she chose. He hadn’t quite worked it all out, but he had, as it were, got the idea. And to say another word about it now to this blameless child would just be too humiliating altogether.

Uffington Street and Elsewhere

There was more telephoning, as a result of which the young man called Dave drove out from London to a rendezvous with the party from Boxes at a ‘service area’ on the M4 near Heathrow. It was a species of amenity for travellers quite unfamiliar to Gilbert Averell, although it might have been described as a somewhat graceless first cousin to places of roadside refreshment into which he had occasionally been introduced in both France and Italy. There were acres of parked cars, and further acres of coaches, and yet further acres of transport Juggernauts. And there was a complex of wash-places both for automobiles and humans at the core of which was a further complex of cafeterias and snack-bars and a scurrying restaurant in which the air was pervaded equally by deplorable music and a clatter of crockery. Harrassed men and women, mainly from distant quarters of the globe, swished out-size mops round your toes and swabbed down little tables under your nose; myriads of children howled for cokes and chips and fish fingers; brawny men gnawed pies.