Here Be Monsters

Audley said nothing for a moment, as the sound of a car, close but invisible, rose from below the terrace wall.

Beep-baaarp-beep!

'Haddock.' The two men measured each other for changes. 'It's been a long time. But you look well.'

'A long time, indeed. So do you. still doing the same job? Much higher up, though?'

'The same job, Haddock,' said Audley gently. 'I follow my destiny.'

'Still on The Wall?' Haddock Thomas looked at Elizabeth. 'I'm sorry, Miss Loftus. An old joke - a very old joke, indeed.'

She mustn't let them patronize her. 'But they say the old jokes are the best ones, Dr Thomas. May I share it?'

'I don't know that you will find it very amusing.'

'An RAF joke?' She watched him. 'Or a Civil Service joke, perhaps? Or a schoolboy joke?

Give me a clue.'

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He measured her with a look. Actually, he had measured her already, but with an eye only on bust and waist, hip and leg, quite unashamedly. But this time the measurement was a different one. 'It is a Kipling joke, Miss Loftus. A Rudyard Kipling joke.' The Welsh was more pronounced. 'Are you a reader of the great mart's works?'

She dared not look at Audley. Paul always made outrageous fun of his obsessive weakness for Kipling, deliberately quoting back to him. But somehow she didn't think this was that kind of joke. 'I read him when I was a child, Dr Thomas.'

'But not afterwards? A pity! Much of his best work is for grown-ups. But then the English have a blind spot there. Which is all part of their guilty misapprehension of their history, as well as of him. But no matter, eh?' He was looking at Audley now. 'I told him - oh, it must have been almost before you were born, I told him - that he would never gain preferment in his line of business… Or, that when it was offered to him, he would not want it - like Kipling's Roman centurion… who was not a Roman at all, of course, for he had never seen Rome, nor known the heyday of Rome, but only lived with his legends and his illusions.

But there! I told him he would gain no preferment, and receive no thanks, if he chose to serve on The Wall - the Great Wall - the wall which the Emperor Hadrian caused to be built, to keep out the dreadful barbarians, when he realized that the game couldn't be won.' He smiled. "The same emperor, my dear, who knew how small and defenseless and ephemeral was his soul - " Animula vagula blandula, hospes comes-que corpora"… But he would have none of it, for he knew the Roman's reply: " I follow my destiny" , he said. And off he went!'

' Harumph!' grunted Audley. 'One of the things you must understand about the Welsh, Elizabeth, is that they are greater liars than rugger players. For this is the advice I gave him, not the advice he gave me.'

'Is that so?' Haddock Thomas glanced at Audley for a second. 'Well, let's say that we gave each other the same advice, then? And I took his advice - but he did not take mine, eh?'

Given half a chance they would go on sparring like this forever, thought Elizabeth. But if Peter Richardson was right they did not have forever left.

'You had a visitor last week, Dr Thomas. An elderly American.' She tried in vain to match Audley's casual tone. 'Can you tell us about him?'

Haddock Thomas measured her again as he smoothed his thinning hair and replaced his panama.Then he shook a little brass bell which had been hidden on the table and gestured Elizabeth to an empty chair. 'Yes… yes, I wondered about that.' He smiled at her again.

'After what David's said, I mustn't be a Welsh liar, must I?'

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She sat down. And she caught him admiring her legs as she crossed them carefully, the way she had been taught to do. 'I beg your pardon - ?'

He gestured towards Audley. 'Get a chair, David… It wasn't really just his voice, Miss Loftus: he's been in the back of my mind for a week or so… when I can't honestly remember recalling him these last ten - or even twenty - years or more.' He watched Audley retrieve another chair from the shadows under the vines. 'But that's not true, either… It's more like never quite forgotten, but never quite remembered.' He cocked his head at her. 'One day you will discover how very protective memory is, my dear: it tries to dignify us as well as soothing our pain, so that we can believe that we are the masters of our fate… at least, if we are satisfied with the outcome, anyway - eh?' Once again he was watching. 'Free will is always better than predestination, don't you think?'

He was pushing her out of her depth, making her wonder how she had got here, to St Servan-les-Ruines, after all those years with Father.

'The American reminded you of David?' The memory of Father steeled her to the more important business in hand. 'Major Parker?'

'Major Parker - ' For one fraction-of-a-second he looked clear through her ' - Major Parker!'

'Who saved your life?'

'Is that the story now?' Haddock Thomas looked past her. 'Ah, Madame Sophie!'

A minuscule Frenchwoman deposited two glasses and another bottle on the table, swept away the half-full bottle with a hiss of disapproval, and was gone before Elizabeth could react.

Haddock Thomas shrugged at Elizabeth. 'You didn't knock at the front door, so she hasn't looked you over - so she disapproves of you.'

'But she'll finish the bottle herself, nevertheless?' said Audley.

'That may well be.' Haddock Thomas pointed at Audley. 'You know too much, David -

about people. That is one of the things I remember about you now.' He filled the three glasses, and presented one to Elizabeth. 'And you know too much about me, I am thinking now, Miss Loftus. For a stranger.'

'She knows far too little about you, my dear fellow,' said Audley, reaching for a glass. 'That is the whole trouble.'

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'The whole trouble?' Haddock Thomas looked at each of them in turn. 'But whose trouble?

Mine, would it be?'

'Ours, Dr Thomas,' said Elizabeth. 'Didn't Major Parker save you once? A long time ago?'

'A very long time ago.' He nodded. 'But you know his name nevetheless. And you know he was here - a very short time ago. Did he tell you that?'

'Did he save you?'

'He plucked me from the sea - yes. He and a spotty-faced youth in a helmet much too big for him. I could have kissed them both. Perhaps I did, I don't remember. Did Major Thaddeus Parker tell you that also?'

'He didn't tell us anything, Dr Thomas. He's dead.'

'Dead? How - ?' He looked at Audley suddenly. 'Not my trouble, did you say?'

'I didn't say, as a matter of fact, Haddock.' Audley sipped his wine. 'Your trouble…

perhaps. Mine - certainly.'

Haddock Thomas said nothing for a moment, but simply stared at Audley. Then he started to say something, but stopped.

'Why did Major Parker come to see you, Dr Thomas?' asked Elizabeth.

'Why should he not?' Haddock Thomas still didn't look at her. 'How did he die, Miss Loftus?'

'He was murdered, we think.'

Again, Haddock Thomas didn't react immediately. Instead he took up his own glass and turned away from them both, looking out over the valley beneath, full-face into the sun, drinking slowly but steadily until the glass was nearly empty. Then he poured he last of it on the ground at his feet.

'They threw him over the cliff at the Pointe du Hoc, Haddock,' said Audley brutally. 'Just about where he climbed down that morning, before he rescued you. We think he may have had a rendezvous there. But it wasn't the one he was expecting.'

The old man turned slowly back to Audley, ignoring Elizabeth. 'So it's all starting again, is dummy2

it, David? After all this time? Is that really possible, man?'

Elizabeth was tired of being ignored. 'Perhaps not, Dr Thomas.'

This time he did look at her.

'If it never ended, Dr Thomas - ' She looked down Admiral Varney's nose at him ' - why then, it has no reason to start again, has it?'