The Human Factor (31 page)

‘Not a soundproof one. If you mean to shut him up there.'

‘I notice sir, that in your right pocket you seem to have a gun – or am I mistaken?'

‘I thought if the police came . . . There's only one charge in it.'

‘The counsel of despair, sir?'

‘I hadn't made up my mind to use it.'

‘I would rather you let me have it, sir. If we were stopped, at least I have a licence, with all this shoplifting we have nowadays. What's his name, sir? I mean the dog.'

‘Buller.'

‘Come here, Buller, come here. There's a good dog.' Buller laid his muzzle on Mr Halliday's knee. ‘Good dog, Buller. Good dog. You don't want to cause any trouble, do you, not to a good master like you have.' Buller wagged his stump. ‘They think they know when you like them,' Mr Halliday said. He scratched Buller behind the ears and Buller showed his appreciation. ‘Now, sir, if you wouldn't mind giving me the gun . . . Ah, you kill cats, eh . . . Ah, the wicked one.'

‘They'll hear the shot,' Castle said.

‘We'll take a little walk down to the cellar. One shot – nobody pays any attention. They think it's a back-fire.'

‘He won't go with you.'

‘Let's see. Come on, Buller, my lad. Come for a walk. A walk, Buller.'

‘You see. He won't go.'

‘It's time to be off, sir. You'd better come down with me. I wanted to spare you.'

‘I don't want to be spared.'

Castle led the way down the stairs to the cellar. Buller followed him and Mr Halliday tailed Buller.

‘I wouldn't put on the light, sir, a shot and a light going out.
That
might arouse curiosity.'

Castle closed what had once been the coal chute.

‘Now, sir, if you'll give me the gun . . .'

‘No, I'll do this.' He held the gun out, pointing it at Buller, and Buller, ready for a game and probably taking the muzzle for a rubber bone, fastened his jaws around it and pulled. Castle pressed the trigger twice because of the empty chamber. He felt nausea.

‘I'll have another whisky,' he said, ‘before we go.'

‘You deserve one, sir. It's odd how fond one can get of a dumb animal. My cat . . .'

‘I disliked Buller intensely. It's only . . . well, I've never killed anything before.'

6

‘It's hard driving in this rain,' Mr Halliday said, breaking a very long silence. The death of Buller had clogged their tongues.

‘Where are we going? Heathrow? The immigration officers will be on the look-out by this time.'

‘I'm taking you to a hotel. If you open the glove compartment, sir, you'll find a key. Room 423. All you have to do is take the lift straight up. Don't go to the desk. Wait in the room until someone comes for you.'

‘Suppose a maid . . .'

‘Hang a Don't Disturb notice on the door.'

‘And after that . . .'

‘I wouldn't know, sir. Those were all the instructions I have.'

Castle wondered how the news of Buller's death would reach Sam. He knew that he would never be forgiven. He asked, ‘How did you get mixed up in this?'

‘Not mixed up, sir. I've been a member of the Party, on the quiet as you might say, since I was a boy. I was in the army at seventeen – volunteered. Gave my age wrong. Thought I was going to France, but it was Archangel they sent me to. I was a prisoner for four years. I saw a lot and learnt a lot in those four years.'

‘How did they treat you?'

‘It was hard, but a boy can stand a lot, and there was always someone who was friendly. I learnt a bit of Russian, enough to interpret for them, and they gave me books to read when they couldn't give me food.'

‘Communist books?'

‘Of course, sir. A missionary hands out the Bible, doesn't he?'

‘So you are one of the faithful.'

‘It's been a lonely life, I have to admit that. You see, I could never go to meetings or walk in marches. Even my boy doesn't know. They use me when they can in little ways – like in your case, sir. I've picked up from your drop many a time. Oh, it was a happy day for me when you walked into my shop. I felt less alone.'

‘Have you never wavered a bit, Halliday? I mean – Stalin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia?'

‘I saw enough in Russia when I was a boy – and in England too with the Depression when I came home – to inoculate me against little things like that.'

‘Little?'

‘If you will forgive me saying so, sir, your conscience is rather selective. I could say to you – Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima. Didn't they shake your faith a bit in what you call democracy? Perhaps they did or you wouldn't be with me now.'

‘That was war.'

‘My people have been at war since 1917.' Castle peered into the wet night between the sweeps of the wipers. ‘You
are
taking me to Heathrow.'

‘Not exactly.' Mr Halliday laid a hand light as an autumn Ashridge leaf on Castle's knee. ‘Don't you worry, sir.
They
are looking after you. I envy you. You'll be seeing Moscow I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Have you never been there?'

‘Never. The nearest I ever came to it was the prison camp near Archangel. Did you ever see
The Three Sisters
? I saw it only once, but I always remember what one of them said and I say it to myself when I can't sleep at night – “To sell the house, to make an end of everything here, and off to Moscow . . .”'

‘You'd find a rather different Moscow to Chekhov's.'

‘There's another thing one of those sisters said, “Happy people don't notice if it's winter or summer. If I lived in Moscow I wouldn't mind what the weather was like.” Oh well, I tell myself when I'm feeling low, Marx never knew Moscow either, and I look across Old Compton Street and I think, London is still Marx's London. Soho's Marx's Soho. This was where the
Communist Manifesto
was first printed.' A lorry came suddenly out of the rain and swerved and nearly hit them and went on indifferently into the night. ‘Shocking drivers there are,' Mr Halliday said. ‘they know nothing's going to hurt
them
in those juggernauts. We ought to have bigger penalties for dangerous driving. You know, sir, that's what was really wrong in Hungary and Czechoslovakia – dangerous driving. Dubcek was a dangerous driver – it's as simple as that.'

‘Not to me it isn't. I've never wanted to end up in Moscow.'

‘I suppose it will seem a bit strange – you not being one of us, but you shouldn't worry. I don't know what you've done for us, but it must be important, and they'll look after you, you can be sure of that. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't give you the Order of Lenin or put you on a postage stamp like Sorge.'

‘Sorge was a Communist.'

‘And it makes me proud to think you are on the road to Moscow in this old car of mine.'

‘If we drove for a century, Halliday, you wouldn't convert me.'

‘I wonder. After all, you've done a lot to help us.'

‘I've helped you over Africa, that's all.'

‘Exactly, sir. You are on the road. Africa's the thesis, Hegel would say. You belong to the antithesis – but you are an active part of the antithesis – you are one of those who will belong to the synthesis yet.'

‘That's all jargon to me. I'm no philosopher.'

‘A militant doesn't have to be, and you are a militant.'

‘Not for Communism. I'm only a casualty now.'

‘They'll cure you in Moscow.'

‘In a psychiatric ward?'

That phrase silenced Mr Halliday. Had he found a small crack in the dialectic of Hegel, or was it the silence of pain and doubt? He would never know, for the hotel was ahead of them, the lights smudging through the rain. ‘Get out here,' Mr Halliday said. ‘I'd better not be seen.' Cars passed them when they halted, in a long illuminated chain, the headlamps of one car lighting the rear lamps of another. A Boeing 707 slanted noisily down on London Airport. Mr Halliday scrabbled in the back of the car. ‘There's something I've forgotten.' He pulled out a plastic bag which might once have contained duty free goods. He said, ‘Put the things out of your case into this. They might notice you at the desk if you go to the lift carrying a suitcase.'

‘There's not enough room in it.'

‘Then leave what you can't get in.'

Castle obeyed. Even after all those years of secrecy he realized that in an emergency the young recruit of Archangel was the real expert. He abandoned with reluctance his pyjamas – thinking, a prison will provide them – his sweater. If I get so far, they will have to give me something warm.

Mr Halliday said, ‘I have a little present. A copy of that Trollope you asked for. You won't need a second copy now. It's a long book, but there'll be a lot of waiting. There always is in war. It's called
The Way We Live Now
.'

‘The book recommended by your son?'

‘Oh, I deceived you a little there. It's me that reads Trollope, not him. His favourite author is a man called Robbins. You must forgive me my little deception – I wanted you to think a bit better of him in spite of that shop. He's not a bad boy.'

Castle shook Mr Halliday's hand. ‘I'm sure he's not. I hope all goes well with him.'

‘Remember. Go straight to room 423, and wait.'

Castle walked away towards the light of the hotel carrying the plastic bag. He felt as though he had already lost contact with everything he had known in England – Sarah and Sam were out of reach in the house of his mother which had never been his home. He thought: I was more at home in Pretoria. I had work to do there. But now there's no work left for me to do. A voice called after him through the rain, ‘Good luck, sir. The best of luck,' and he heard the car drive away.

7

He was bewildered – when he walked through the door of the hotel he walked straight into the Caribbean. There was no rain. There were palm trees around a pool, and the sky shone with innumerable pinpoint stars; he smelt the warm stuffy wet air which he remembered from a distant holiday he had taken soon after the war: he was surrounded – that was inevitable in the Caribbean – by American voices. There was no danger of his being remarked by anyone at the long desk – they were far too busy with an influx of American passengers, just deposited from what airport, Kingston? Bridgetown? A black waiter went by carrying two rum punches towards a young couple sitting by the pool. The lift was there, beside him, waiting with open doors, and yet he hung back amazed . . . The young couple began to drink their punch through straws under the stars. He put out a hand to convince himself that there was no rain and someone close behind him said, ‘Why, if it isn't Maurice? What are you doing in this joint?' He stopped his hand half-way to his pocket and looked round. He was glad he no longer had his revolver.

The speaker was someone called Blit who had been his contact a few years back in the American Embassy until Blit was transferred to Mexico – perhaps because he could speak no Spanish. ‘Blit!' he exclaimed with false enthusiasm. It had always been that way. Blit had called him Maurice from their first meeting, but he had never got further than ‘Blit'.

‘Where are you off to?' Blit asked, but didn't wait for an answer. He had always preferred to talk about himself. ‘Off to New York,' Blit said. ‘Non-arrival of incoming plane. Spending the night here. Smart idea, this joint. Just like the Virgin Islands. I'd put on my Bermuda shorts if I had them.'

‘I thought you were in Mexico.'

‘That's old history. I'm on the European desk again now. You still on darkest Africa?'

‘Yes.'

‘You delayed here too?'

‘I've got to wait around,' Castle said, hoping his ambiguity would not be questioned.

‘What about a Planter's Punch? They do them OK here, so I'm told.'

‘I'll meet you in half an hour,' Castle said.

‘OK. OK. By the pool then.'

‘By the pool.'

Castle got into the lift and Blit followed him. ‘Going up? So am I. Which floor?'

‘Fourth.'

‘Me too. I'll give you a free ride.'

Was it possible that the Americans too might be watching him? In these circumstances it seemed unsafe to put down anything to coincidence.

‘Eating here?' Blit asked.

‘I'm not sure. You see, it depends . . .'

‘You sure are security minded,' Blit said. ‘Good old Maurice.' They walked together down the corridor. Room 423 came first, and Castle fumbled with his key long enough to see that Blit went on without a pause to 427 – no, 429. Castle felt safer when his door was locked and the Don't Disturb notice was hanging outside.

The dial of the central heating stood at 75°. It was hot enough for the Caribbean. He went to the window and looked out. Below was the round bar and above the artificial sky. A stout woman with blue hair weaved her way along the edge of the pool: she must have had too many rum punches. He examined the room carefully in case it contained some hint of the future, as he had examined his own house for any hint of the past. Two double beds, an armchair, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a desk which was bare except for a blotting pad, a television set, a door that led to the bathroom. The lavatory seat had a strip of paper pasted across it assuring him that it was hygienic: the toothglasses were swathed in plastic. He went back into the bedroom and opened the blotting pad and learned from the printed notepaper that he was in the Starflight Hotel. A card listed the restaurants and the bars – in one restaurant there was music and dancing – it was called the Pizarro. The grill room by contrast was called the Dickens, and there was a third, self-service, which was called the Oliver Twist. ‘You help yourself to more.' Another card informed him that there were buses every half-hour to Heathrow airport.