Johnny Under Ground Page 8

  “I don’t cry.”

  “You gave the impression of weeping,” said Jimmy. “I agree that your eyes may have been dry. As far as the Friday evening is concerned, when Beau was killed—I can’t help much. I saw Beau in the Mess early in the afternoon, about two, I suppose, before he went over to the airfield. He looked as white as a sheet and positively ill—not surprising, I suppose, if he’d already decided to kill himself.”

  “Can you remember how you actually spent the evening, Jimmy?” Emmy asked.

  “I’m innocent, Inspector, I swear it!” cried Jimmy in mock alarm. “By God, you’ve picked up a tip or two from your old man, haven’t you? I suppose you’ll write it down as highly suspicious if I can’t remember everything that I did on a certain night twenty years ago…”

  “Not at all. It would be more suspicious if you could remember…”

  “I knew it,” said Jimmy. “Well, you’d better send for the handcuffs, because it just so happens that I can remember. I lunched in the Mess and then went to my billet, where I was working out a circuit diagram for a brilliant anti-jamming device which I only just failed to invent. I was about to go into the bar at six, when I got a call from the Operations Room—something about a radio transmitter going up the spout. So I trotted down there just in time to witness the dramatic disappearance of Snowdrop three-two.”

  “You were there? I never realized…”

  “You weren’t caring much who was there,” said Jimmy. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. You were cool as ice and completely self-controlled, which made it all the harder for the rest of us. You probably didn’t realize that.”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Emmy. She was past denials or protestations.

  “One never does,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “At a moment like that, you were quite rightly thinking one hundred percent about yourself. However, the other people in the Operations Room were not quite without sensitivity, you know. I think it was the sight of you, and your calm efficiency and dry eyes, that made me go off and get drunk as soon as the transmitter was fixed. Sammy came with me. He was staying at the Duke’s Head with his popsy, but he’d dropped into the Operations Room to see the fun. We went back to the Duke together and got as tight as ticks.”

  “I feel ashamed of myself,” said Emmy.

  “Why should you? My dear girl, everyone must be allowed his own reactions. Take Sammy, for instance. He always hated Beau, but he got quite maudlin that night.” There was a pause while a waiter removed one set of plates and substituted another. “Do you remember that little poem by Pudney—the one Michael Redgrave quoted in The Way to the Stars?”

  Emmy nodded. She hoped very much that Jimmy would refrain from quoting it himself, but in vain. “‘Do not despair for Johnny Head-in-Air. He sleeps as sound as Johnny Under-Ground—remember?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Old Sammy was reciting it all the evening, sobbing into his beer. He kept getting it wrong… ‘Do not despair for Johnny Under-Ground,’ he kept saying, as though Beau had been a subway station; and the drunker I got, the less I could remember what was wrong with it. It was a thoroughly nasty exhibition on both our parts,” added Jimmy a little severely. “Sammy insisted he was a resident—which he was—and kept ordering more drinks after closing time. The popsy went to bed alone. She was livid. I got back to my billet about three A.M and was as sick as a cat. I felt hellish. And yet, in a way, I suppose we were mourning Beau in the only way we could.” He paused and laughed a little awkwardly. “It all comes back with a rush, talking about it like this. Makes me feel old.”

  “You’re not old, Jimmy,” said Emmy. “Not like…” She stopped.

  “Barbara is a mess, isn’t she?”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “And don’t talk to me about her bone structure and how well she’s kept her figure. She looks like a revivified Egyptian mummy.” Jimmy looked at his watch. “Heavens, it’s nearly two. My plane goes in a trice. Sorry, darling, but I must be off.”

  He tucked the questionnaire into his breast pocket and promised to fill it in. He then escorted Emmy to a taxi, kissed her warmly, and said that they must meet again soon. She offered her address and telephone number, but Jimmy waved them aside, protesting that if he wrote them down he’d only lose them. He would look her up in the phone book. As the taxi drove away, he was standing on the pavement, a suave and distinguished figure, waving energetically. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared into the crowd of afternoon shoppers. Emmy felt reasonably certain that she would see neither Jimmy nor the questionnaire again unless she took determined steps to do so.

  For the moment, however, she did not allow this thought to bother her. She went home and wrote up her notes carefully. At six o’clock she telephoned Lofty, made a full report on her progress, and arranged with him a working schedule for the following week. This included spending Thursday afternoon visiting Dymfield—it seemed that an old friend of Lofty’s, now at the Air Ministry, had promised to arrange the necessary permission and passes.

  It was while Emmy was cooking supper that the telephone rang. A gruff and grudging voice informed her that she was speaking to the Reverend Sidney Guest, that he had received her letter, and that she might, if she wished, visit him the following morning.

  Henry was late getting home that evening. Routine jobs had kept him at his desk until nearly eight. By the time he put his key into the lock at half-past, he was feeling ready to be pampered. It was therefore disconcerting to find that Emmy was not only unsympathetic but angry.

  “I have to leave for the country early in the morning,” she said snappily, disappearing into the kitchen. “I suppose that never occurred to you.”

  “How could it, when I didn’t know?”

  “Dinner is ruined, of course. It was ready at half-past seven. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Now look, Emmy…”

  “I’m sorry,” said Emmy. She appeared at the kitchen door, wiping an arm across her damp forehead. “I know I’m being a bitch.”

  “You certainly are,” said Henry crossly, and stamped off into the living room, where he opened his newspaper with an ostentatious crackling. For some ten minutes a silence of the kind sometimes described as pregnant permeated the small flat. Then Henry decided to swallow his pride and went into the kitchen.

  “I really couldn’t help being late, darling,” he said.

  Emmy was standing at the stove looking hot and bothered. “Dinner is ready,” she said. “If you’ll get out of my way, I’ll serve it.”

  “But…”

  Henry had no time to get more than one word out, when Emmy brushed dangerously past him carrying two steaming dishes. He followed her into the dining room. The table was laid for one.

  “Which of us,” he asked, “is having dinner?”

  “You, of course. I don’t want any.”

  “Now, Emmy…”

  “I had a big lunch. Anyway, I’m too…” She stopped.

  “Too what?”

  “Why should I tell you? It’s obvious that you don’t care.”

  “If you think that I’m going to sit here by myself and eat dinner…”

  “It is a matter of complete indifference to me,” said Emmy with a slight fissure in her voice, “whether or not you eat. I have provided food, which I think is all that is required of me under the terms of my contract. Now, for God’s sake leave me alone.”

  Henry heard her run into the bedroom and slam the door. After that, there was silence. He sighed deeply and with anger. Then, to his surprise, he found that he was extremely hungry. From the hotplate, one of his favorite steak-and-kidney pies smiled up at him, steaming and succulent, flanked by fresh green beans tossed in butter and a fluffy mound of pommes mousseline. On the side table an iced gooseberry fool stood beside a bowl of whipped cream. Henry decided to postpone the domestic peace talk until after dinner. As he ate voraciously, his chief emotion was pity for Emmy. She was missing an excellent meal.

  By the
time he had reached the coffee (which was bubbling in a thoughtfully-provided percolator), he was wondering what could have come over Emmy. Certainly he had been late getting home, but that was not so unusual. Certainly dinner had had to wait, but it was none the worse for that. It wasn’t a soufflé, after all. He could only suppose that it was something to do with this book of Lofty’s that had upset her.

  He was honest enough to admit to himself that he felt a sort of jealousy. He had done all he could to encourage Emmy to take up outside interests, but he certainly had never intended that those interests might become more important in her life than he was. That had not been his intention. Immediately he pulled himself up and felt ashamed. “Like a Victorian paterfamilias,” he admonished himself; and went to face the inevitable reconciliation.

  Emmy was lying on the bed reading Winnie-the-Pooh. One look told Henry that she had been crying. As he came in, she put the book down, smiled, and said, “I’m terribly sorry, darling. Please forgive me. It’s,” she hesitated. Then, raising the book again, “‘It’s a little Anxious,’” she quoted, “‘to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water.’”

  Henry sat down on the bed. “What makes you think you are?”

  “I have to go and see Beau’s father tomorrow,” said Emmy, “the Reverend Sidney.”

  “Well, he can’t eat you.”

  “If it were only the Reverend Sidney… Oh, well. Never mind.” She held out her arms to him. Sometime later, her voice blurred by the fact that her face was buried in his jacket, she added, “It’s so much more friendly with two.”

  Henry did not even attempt to interpret this remark. He realized, however, that his wife’s earlier fit of temperament had been caused not by anger but by fear.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE REVEREND SIDNEY Guest was a robust, white-haired man who wore his seventy-five years not so much lightly as with impatience. In the course of a life ostensibly devoted to the service of others, he had, in fact, never given a serious thought to anybody but himself. Being therefore quite unaware of the strain which consideration for others puts upon the human constitution, he was a picture of hale heartiness and was continually irritated by the spinelessness of his nearest and dearest. Mrs. Hardwater, for example. Mrs. Hardwater was a gentle, widowed lady in straitened circumstances, who had come to housekeep for him after the lamentable episode of his wife’s defection. For the bitter fact was that Mrs. Guest (her name had been June, of all things) had tired of her husband as long ago as the early nineteen-twenties, and had run away with a jazz saxophonist.

  The Reverend Sidney had never, of course, considered Mrs. Hardwater as anything but a housekeeper. Even had he wanted to marry again, his cloth and convictions would have made it impossible. He had steadfastly refused to divorce June, even though she had had a child whom she wished to legitimize. That, reflected the Reverend Sidney with satisfaction, should teach her a lesson.

  Meanwhile, he became quite attached to Mrs. Hardwater. She could be relied upon, which was a great blessing. He seldom had to make an unpleasant scene more than once about the exact cooking of his eggs or the precise way he liked his bed made. It seemed, therefore, like a betrayal when one day, after more than thirty years in his service, Mrs. Hardwater had collapsed. Just before the Harvest Festival, too. The doctor had insisted on removing her to the hospital, and in three days she was dead at the ridiculously early age of sixty-nine. The doctor’s opinion was that Mrs. Hardwater’s heart attack had been brought on by mental and physical exhaustion.

  “Tcha!” said the Reverend Sidney. “Lack of stamina, that’s all.” He did not add, “Most inconsiderate of her,” because he knew that the doctor was foolishly sentimental when it came to physical disability, nevertheless he appended the phrase mentally. The Reverend Sidney Guest, as he himself frequently remarked, had never had a day’s illness in his life. He was very proud of this fact.

  At the time of Mrs. Hardwater’s death, Sidney Guest was seventy. After several unhappy experiments, he came to the conclusion that in these days of too much pay for too little work, it was impossible for him to find a good, honest woman who would look after him as he wished for the salary which he offered. Consequently, he was prepared to listen sympathetically when his Bishop spoke of the desirability of a move to a smaller house. The Bishop, who was the soul of tact, never mentioned the word “retirement.” He proposed that the Reverend Sidney should give up his rambling rectory and his straggling parish and move to a small modern bungalow, which was situated equidistantly from the East Anglian villages of Upper Charwood, Snettle, and Dymfield. The vicars of these three parishes, said the Bishop, were grossly overworked, and would welcome assistance in the form of occasional officiation at services.

  When the Reverend Sidney looked dubious, the Bishop played a small but telling trump card. “The vicar of Snettle,” he said, “is—this is between ourselves, Guest—is a very elderly man of sixty-two. He finds the early morning Communion service rather too much for him.”

  “How far did you say it was from Snettle Church to the cottage?” demanded Sidney. “Six miles? Tell him I’ll ride over on my bicycle to take the seven o’clock service. Perhaps he’ll be kind enough to give me breakfast afterward, if he has succeeded in leaving his bed by then.”

  So it was arranged. And so it was that Emmy—having taken a train from London to Colchester, and then a smaller one to Snettle, and finally an asthmatic bus—found herself at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning ringing the bell of a whitewashed modern bungalow a few miles from the village of Upper Charwood.

  To tell the truth, the Reverend Sidney had been much disturbed when he received Emmy’s letter. His son, twenty years dead, belonged to the same category, the same world as June. Certainly, Sidney had kept and reared the boy, but there had never been any real contact between father and son. The boy grew up looking far too much like his mother. And he had developed, as he grew older, the same slyness, combined with physical beauty and a warped sense of values, which had finally made the Reverend Sidney heartily glad to see what he hoped was the last of June.

  There had been a monumental row when the boy had insisted on joining the Air Force in 1939 when he was barely twenty. The Battle of Britain had been an embarrassing period for the Reverend Sidney, for people were continually congratulating him on his heroic son—and it seemed hardly the moment to deny him openly. Nevertheless, at that epoch as at every other, Sidney’s good sense told him that the boy was a scamp and a scallywag, exactly like his mother. At the time of the first crash, and through the long weeks of plastic surgery, Sidney was heartily thankful that his son expressed no desire to see him. After the way that Sidney had expressed his views on his son’s marriage to a loose, painted Jezebel from the variety stage, any interview between father and son could only have been painful.

  When it came to his son’s death, the Reverend Sidney felt even greater resentment than in the case of Mrs. Hardwater. She, poor woman, had behaved with singular feebleness, but at least she could not help dying. His son, on the other hand, had apparently committed suicide when in a state of health so nearly perfect as to make no odds and in a manner calculated to bring notoriety and opprobrium to his family. This disregard for a father’s feelings seemed to Sidney the most self-indulgent kind of behavior.

  For many years now he had succeeded in burying any thought of his son so deeply in his subconscious that he himself was unaware that it might persist. Marriage and fatherhood were linked together in his mind as a single, lamentable event. Emmy’s letter jolted the Reverend Sidney’s memory in a most unpleasant way, and caused him to be even snappier than usual with the Vicar of Snettle at their weekly meeting. His first instinct was to tear up the letter, unanswered. On reflection, however, he decided that this would be foolish. If these tiresome people were set in their purpose of writing a book about his late son, then it was only prudent for him to take a hand in order to insure that the final result was as innocuous as possible. So he telephoned Emmy a
nd made the appointment.

  Emmy was not easily intimidated, but her heart sank when the front door opened and she found herself looking up into the unfriendly brown eyes of the Reverend Sidney Guest. For a start, he was disquietingly like his son—Emmy could see now that the strength of Beau’s face had come from his father. Sidney, with his shock of snow-white hair and his rugged chin, looked like an Old Testament prophet. Emmy noticed, too, the lines of intolerance around his mouth and his thin lips. He did not look at all like the kindly old clergyman of Barbara’s description.

  “Mrs. Tibbett?”

  Emmy’s heart turned over. It was a deeper version of a voice she remembered so well. “Yes. You must be Mr. Guest.”

  “Come in.”

  The old man turned on his heel and led the way into what might ordinarily have been the drawing room of the bungalow; but drawing rooms, with their associations of social gatherings, soft chairs, and pretty furnishings, played no part in the Reverend Sidney’s austere life. As the largest room in the house, it had automatically become his study. There was a large, plain desk covered with papers. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases were crammed with leather-covered volumes, whose contents promised to be even weightier than their bindings. A paperback book of crossword puzzles—the impossibly complicated and erudite kind—gave the only clue to the old man’s recreation. There was a rigidly upright wooden armchair behind the desk. In front of it stood a dining chair, which Emmy rightly concluded had been brought into the room expressly for this interview. Normally, the Reverend Sidney neither expected nor received guests.

  Silently, he indicated to Emmy that she should sit on the dining chair, while he established himself in his usual place behind the desk. Then he said, “I understand that you wish to speak to me of Alan.”