Mrs Brock continued, ‘You’ve all to stay here a few days.’ She had seemed nervous last night but the news seemed to have energized her. ‘There are roadblocks round Birmingham. That’s good, though, because they must think Dr Muncaster’s been taken there.’ She gave Frank a quick look; like her husband she seemed a little frightened of him. ‘The submarine will be off the south coast to pick you up at the weekend. In the meantime, when it looks quieter, you’ll all go down to London.’
Her husband asked, ‘Do we know where on the south coast?’
‘No, they’re not telling us yet.’
Colonel Brock nodded. ‘That’s wise.’ He looked around the group. ‘Well, looks like you’ll be here for a while. Please don’t go out, and stay away from the first-floor windows. Passers-by can see up there from over the wall.’
‘We’re safe here?’ Geoff asked.
‘Yes. So far as the neighbours are concerned we’re just a couple of retired local worthies.’ He nodded at his wife. ‘Mrs Brock’s the producer of the village Christmas panto.’
Natalia said, ‘We ought to hide the car. Just in case.’
Colonel Brock nodded. ‘Quite right. I’ll put it in the garage, under a dust sheet. So,’ he said emphatically. ‘We all know where we are then, eh?’
They stayed there four days, not leaving the house. The weather remained cold and dry, with frosts each night. Frank spent most of the time in his bedroom. There was always someone with him, usually David or Ben. He said as little as possible and to his relief they kept their word and didn’t ask him about what had happened with his brother. Sometimes they played chess, a game for which Frank had always had a gift. Ben gave him his drugs regularly, and always watched carefully to make sure he swallowed the pill. At night, as at the hospital, he had a double dose to make him sleep. He wondered how much Ben had given him on the night of their escape. He saw little of Natalia or the Brocks, though from his window he would see Mrs Brocks going out from time to time, presumably to the village, and twice a day Colonel Brock took the black Labrador, like its master stiff and elderly, for a walk. When they met for meals Ben would sometimes try to provoke the colonel into an argument. One evening the colonel showed them a gold-gilt carving of the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesha, a beautiful thing. ‘Picked it up in Bombay for a song,’ he said proudly.
‘Looted it from the subject peoples, eh?’ Ben said.
The colonel reddened and Frank thought he would explode, but he only snapped, ‘I paid the fair market price.’ Frank wished Ben wouldn’t do things like that.
He still intended to do away with himself if he got the chance, but they watched him constantly. Meanwhile he tried to find out as much as possible about what was going on. In their room he asked Ben about his past, how he came to be working in the asylum.
‘I was already there when you came,’ Ben said. ‘There’s a lot of people in the Resistance now, we’re everywhere. There’s sympathizers, and activists, in most of the bigger asylums.’
‘How did you come to be in that job?’
Ben smiled, showing crooked teeth. ‘A few years ago I’d been in trouble up in Glasgow. Fighting the Fascists. They decided I needed a new identity and a new job. I’d got into trouble when I was a lad, too. So I got a new name and applied to train as a mental health nurse. It’s easy to get into, even these days, the job disnae exactly attract thousands of applicants. And I can handle myself, that’s important in the job.’
‘So Ben’s not your real name?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Mind, I’ve been Ben Hall for so long I’ve near forgotten my old one.’
‘What sort of trouble did you get into when you were young?’
Ben shrugged. ‘I got put in a Borstal when I was seventeen, I got radicalized in there. Afterwards I was a union organizer in Glasgow, for the Party, trying to get people to stand up for themselves. A few fights, too, when they sent the Auxies in.’
‘The party – you mean the Communist Party?’
‘That’s right.’ He looked at Frank. ‘We’ve never been frightened of getting our hands dirty.’
‘Killing people, you mean,’ Frank said.
‘Ye cannae make an omelette without breaking eggs.’
Frank thought of Russia, all the prison camps the Germans had discovered. ‘Poor eggs,’ he said.
‘Ye’ve nae idea what life’s like for poor people.’ Ben glowered. ‘Prices going up, wages going down, locked up if you protest or strike. That last strike I organized, in the shipyards. We marched into Glasgow, a peaceful demonstration, plenty of Labour and non-political people wi’ us, but as soon as we got near the city centre the Auxies came out with batons, just hitting out at anybody, and when we tried to run they had a crowd of SNP thugs waiting for us in the side-streets. They laid into us with knives and knuckledusters while some cunt in a kilt stood on some steps playin’ the bloody bagpipes. One of them hit me on the head. I’d’ve been a goner if some of my pals hadnae got me away. That’s when it was decided I needed a change of identity. They’d had me marked out.’
Frank looked at him. ‘We had a teacher at Strangmans who was a Scottish Nationalist. History teacher, always going on about the English landlords and the Highland clearances.’
‘He wasnae much good then. It was mostly Scottish landowners who cleared the Highlanders out of their crofts for sheep. The SNP.’ His face wrinkled with distaste. ‘There were some Fascist sympathizers among them that founded the SNP. Everything for the glorious nation. Some romantic-minded left-wingers too, but they got kicked out after 1940. You know, the Nats opposed conscription in 1939, sayin’ it wis against the Act of Union for Scots to be conscripted into the British army. That was more important to them than fighting the Nazis.’ Ben laughed bitterly. ‘Whenever a party tells you national identity matters more than anything else in politics, that nationalism can sort out all the other problems, then watch out, because you’re on a road that can end with fascism. Even if it doesn’t, the idea that nationality’s some sort of magic that can make other problems disappear, it’s like believin’ in fairies. And of course nationalists always have to have an enemy, the English or the French or the Jews, there always has tae be some other bugger that’s caused all the problems.’
Frank didn’t answer. He was a little scared by Ben’s passion.
‘That Edinburgh school you were at, did you get bullied for being English?’ Ben asked.
‘Not really. Though sometimes they’d shout English – well, and a rude word. But I’m half-Scottish, my dad was Scottish.’
Ben looked at him curiously. ‘How d’yae feel about Scotland?’
Frank shrugged. ‘As you said once, I’m sure there are places just as bad in England. I don’t care about whether people are Scottish or English, all this stupid nationalism. I agree with you there. But I’m not a Communist either.’
Ben nodded, smiled sadly. ‘Ye’re a good man, Frank, ye’ve nae malice in ye.’
Frank hesitated, then said, ‘You remember you told me it was in my hospital notes that I got my bad hand through an accident at school?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, it wasn’t an accident.’
‘You mean someone did it deliberately?’ Ben looked shocked, though Frank wouldn’t have thought anything could shock him.
Frank shook his head. His head felt a little odd suddenly. He had said too much.
Frank found it easier talking to David and Geoff. They would reminisce about their time at Oxford. Still trying to find out as much as he could, Frank asked them how they had come to join the Resistance.
‘For me it was seeing the blacks cleared off their lands in Kenya, to make way for settlers.’ Geoff took his pipe from his mouth, pointed the stem at David. ‘Then I recruited this chap.’