“What?”
“We aren’t going to keep the civilians quiet much longer. So far, they’ve been magnificent, but…” He shrugged, rumpled up his fair hair with long and rather sensitive fingers. “There’s not a soul among ’em now that doesn’t realize something’s up. They want to see some action being taken. Can’t blame ’em. If only we could tell ’em when the evacuation’s due to start-”
Staunton rounded on him. “Dammit, I’m not H.E. Go and tell him that.”
“People have been telling him that ever since the trouble started, old boy.” Harrison was gloomy, too gloomy to turn a hair when Staunton had snapped at him. “And the old chap’s been magnificent. I’ve been with him most of the time and I know. Admitted, he’s badly bitten by the security bug — but he’s carrying a responsibility that would’ve cracked a lot of senior officers before now.”
“I know that, and he’s absolutely right about the security. Don’t imagine it’s just his years telling him to go cautious.” Staunton paced the room, his dark face lined with worry. “Look, Harry — it’s not my job to make the executive decisions or to worry about the technicalities. My job’s the security side and liaising with Shaw… and he's not doing much good as far as I can see.” He was silent for a minute or so, then he stopped his restless pacing, swung round to face the A.D.C. “But I’ll tell you this much — the Flag Officer was going to get on to H.E. after ringing me.” Staunton walked back to his desk, ripped open a packet of cigarettes, jerked one out, and lit it. “His opinion is that the whole bloody lot’s quite likely to go up in less than seventy-two hours if we’re unlucky. He’s going to tell H.E. that. So the civilians may get their wish about seeing action taken a bit sooner than we thought.” He added, almost to himself, “I hope they do.”
Some fifty miles away by road Mr Ackroyd was in an attitude of listening.
Goats trailed along the high, narrow streets of Vercin, stinking to heaven, an ancient man and a boy chivvying them along in the rear as their sure feet took the stone steps easily. Every now and again they stopped, to have their dugs stretched into buckets outside the dwelling-houses, their restless bells adding to the chattering clamour which was Vercin waking up to another day.
Goats apart, the air at this height was beautifully fresh and invigorating, with the wonderful tang of the early morning in a hot land; the sun was up, but not yet strong enough to bring more than a friendly warmth into the bones. Everything stood out sharply in the clear, crystal mountain atmosphere, though there was a light mist in the valley below the old walled town, a mist which the mounting sun would very soon chase away. The goats moved on from below Mr Ackroyd’s window, taking their smells and bells with them, those bells that tinkled slowly and enchantingly away into the distance down the steps of the street. Voices floated up now — raucous, shrill, and happy and full of life as the stall-holders began setting up the market beyond the end of the street, in the flatness of the town’s main square.
A cacophony of badinage and back-chat heralded an old woman with withered, yellowed cheeks, shrivelled and wrinkled into a million little ingrained seams, drooping from high cheekbones beneath the white hair and the black shawl which fell from her head. She came slowly from the square towards the steps, making for the doorway of the house where Mr Ackroyd lay. The news had gone right through Vercín like a flash of summer lightning four days before that there had been a spectacular car crash, that two men had died, and had been left alone for the routine (and eventual) inspection by officials; and that one — here was the important thing— had lived, but was out of his mind; and, even more important than that, that he now resided in that room in the Calle Salamanca where he was being looked after by no less a personage than old Señora Gallego herself.
Admittedly, Señora Gallego could on occasions be a scold — you couldn’t get round that, and the late Señor Gallego in trying to do something about it had come off second-best every time; and there were some among the citizens of Vercín who, when they heard the news, felt pity for the unfortunate madman. Others pointed out that scold as she might be this childless woman had a very strong maternal instinct; this job of caring for the madman would be after her own heart, and she had got it because of that, and because in days past — as the whole of Vercín knew, but never tired of reminding each other — she had been the mistress of Señor Luica, the late Chief of Police. Señor Luica had been gone a long while since, but Señora Gallego remained, and she was still on excellent terms with the Guardia Civil. The most pious put this down to the belief of the police in the señora’s intercessionary powers with the spirit of their departed chief, Señor Lucia, who would of a certainty look with sympathy upon his struggling comrades-in-arms in this earthly world below — especially if requested to do so by his former mistress; the less pious — there were, of course, no impious in Vercin — ascribed it to Señora Gallego’s excellent cocida, which, with its vegetables and rich olive oil and succulent scraps of good meat, was an angelic stew, and certainly well worth the rough edge of her tongue, scold or not.
All agreed on one thing, and that was that the madman could have done very much worse.
When the Guardia Civil and some townsmen had found this poor madman — which was luckily before the hill-bandits got wind of the car-smash — they hadn’t know what to do with him in the comisaria; but of course there was always Señora Gallego, and she had been approached officially without delay. It would, said the sargento, (who wanted nothing so much as to get back to bed), be the greatest favour if the señora would look after the unfortunate man, at least until other arrangements could be made.
So there it was. And the uninhibited crowd cat-called after the good old woman as she went home with some rudimentary medicaments which she had gone out to get; they cat-called after her only because — poor señora — it was so obviously many, many years since the unchaperoned possession of a man under her roof had been the cause for scandalous gossip.
Mr Ackroyd, lying in the window, was above and beyond all this in the mental sense as well as the physical. He heard the shouts and the laughter but he wasn’t paying any attention to them. For one thing, he was very thirsty. But something seemed to have happened to his vocal cords, or at any rate to his control over them, and he couldn’t say what it was he wanted. The odd thing was, he could still hum that little refrain of his. Mr Ackroyd had a feeling that if only he could overcome something — he didn’t know what — he would be able to speak. But his mind was going round and round in so many circles; he was in that nightmare state in which all his thoughts made nonsense, one thing on top of another and nothing getting him anywhere, and he couldn’t fix on anything.
Mr. Ackroyd’s window happened to overlook the walls of the town across the little stepped street, and the valley below; and by raising his thin body on one emaciated arm — the other hurt if he put any weight on it — he could see part of the track leading up to the town’s gates. Just off the track he could see a patch of ground which seemed a little greener than its surroundings, as though some one cared for it specially; this patch of green was enclosed by walls of a massive thickness in which were set rank upon rank of big tablets interspersed with a few gaping, black-looking holes. Mr Ackroyd didn’t realize it, but this was where the people of Vercín stowed their dead. The coffins were just slid straight into those holes in the stone walls, all ready for easy and convenient emergence on Judgment Day. Mr Ackroyd’s attention, however, was not on Judgment Day; and when he saw a movement on the road near the burial walls his attention wandered right away from the primitive cemetery and fastened itself upon the low, squat, brightly coloured slug which was crawling up the white, uneven track towards Vercín’s gates. After a while it passed from view round a bend in the steeply climbing roadway, and Mr Ackroyd stopped thinking about that as well.