‘Not yet.’
‘Then why worry? Anyway, he can’t make you do anything.’
‘I know that. But he’s right. We ought to be on active service and if we’re not, we should do what we can.’
‘What is he like, Sheppy?’
So much had been revealed now, that Guy clearly felt there was little point in keeping back the rest. He did not interrupt as Clarence described Sheppy marching into the room where they were gathered at the Athénée Palace, hanging a map on the wall and demanding: ‘What have we here?’ One of the telephone engineers, stepping forward and examining it, had said, as though making a revelation: ‘The Danube.’ ‘Right!’ Sheppy had congratulated him. ‘Now,’ Sheppy went on, ‘I expect from you laddies implicit obedience. Two or three of my henchmen are being flown out and you must regard them as your superior officers. You’ll be rank and file. Yours not to reason why, yours but to do and die. Right?’ He had paused for agreement and been met with silence. He had gone on: ‘I’m not telling you much – security and all that – but I can tell you this. We’re forming a Striking Force to strike the enemy where he’ll feel it most. One place we’ll strike him is the belly. Nearly four hundred thousand tons of wheat went from Rumania to Germany last year – and how did it get there? Along the Danube. Big plans are afoot. We’ll be blowing things up. One of them’s the Iron Gates. Remember, this isn’t a lark: it’s an adventure.’ He had brought his one hand down on the table and his one eye had jerked about from face to face. ‘There’ll be lots of fun, and we’re letting you in on it.’ Then he had drawn himself upright and assuming his machine-gun rattle, had shouted: ‘Be prepared. Await orders. Keep your traps shut. Dis-miss.’
David waited until the end of Clarence’s performance before saying: ‘The Iron Gates? What does he imagine they are? Real gates? Perhaps they hope to blow up the rapids and block the navigable passage close to the right bank. The Germans would soon clear that up.’ He gave a snuffling and derisory laugh. ‘This is “cloak and dagger” stuff, of course. They take on these romantic old war-horses and say: “If you succeed, you’ll get no recognition. If you fail, you’ll take the consequences.” That makes them grit their teeth. They love it.’
At this, Harriet could keep quiet no longer. She said: ‘But Guy would be hopeless at this sort of thing. If he tried to blow up the Iron Gates, he’d be more likely to blow up himself. As for Clarence – trust him to get out of it.’
Reminded of her presence and startled by her outburst, Guy said: ‘Darling, you must not repeat a word of this to anyone. Promise.’
‘Who would I repeat it to?’
Clarence said slowly: ‘Harriet is a bitch.’ After some moments, added reflectively: ‘I like bitches. You know where you are with them.’
Harriet made no comment but she told herself she now knew what Clarence thought of her. The fantasy that had started on the day of Cǎlinescu’s funeral was running its course. The situation had its attraction. It was like being offered a second personality. At the same time, seeing him as he lolled there, smugly smiling, she could have crossed the room and pushed him off the chair.
David, too, must have been feeling something of this, for he said: ‘Let’s do something noteworthy.’
He leant forward and smiled with reflective malice towards Clarence: ‘Let’s de-bag him!’ With a sudden, decided movement, he rose and began to advance on Clarence, stealthily, not wholly playfully. He gave a sideways glance at Harriet, knowing her an ally in this, and she jumped up at once, caught into the same impulse to ill-treat Clarence in some way.
‘Come on,’ she said to Guy and he was drawn into the assault.
Clarence, his chair tilted back, sitting inert, with eyes closed, his head propped against the wall, seemed unaware that anything was happening until they were upon him, then, startled, he opened his eyes; his chair legs slipped and he went down, backwards, thumping his head against the floor. He gazed up at them, as though awakened from sleep, then, closing his eyes again, said dully: ‘What do I care?’
Although meeting with no resistance, David pinned his victim determinedly down like one dealing with a marauder. There was something vindictive in his movements. Clarence might have been an old enemy cornered at last. Harriet flung herself on him and held him down by his shoulders.
‘Really!’ Clarence gasped, making a feeble, almost idiotic, effort to escape. As he wrenched one hand free and tried to push Harriet away, she bit his fingers making him howl. Only Guy was treating the whole thing as a joke.
David began pulling off Clarence’s trousers. Weighty and very strong, he worked with the concentrated gravity of an executioner. On his instructions, Guy pulled the trousers over Clarence’s shoes. When they were off at last, David snatched at them and held them up in triumph. ‘What shall we do with them?’
‘Put them on the balcony,’ said Harriet. ‘Make him go out and get them.’
Clarence lay still, feigning unconsciousness.
As David went out on the balcony, the icy air came a moment into the room, then he returned and slammed-to the door. Sniggering, he said untruthfully: ‘I’ve thrown them into the street.’
‘What do I care?’ Clarence mumbled again.
The force that had activated the others died as quickly as it had come. They sat around, watching Clarence as he lay in his underpants on the floor. When he did and said nothing, they started to talk among themselves and forgot about him.
After a while he began getting himself upright in stages. When in a sitting position, he shook his head and sighed, then rose slowly and went out on to the balcony. He remained out there in the snow, in the mid-winter cold, while he put on his trousers, then he returned to the room, closed the glass doors carefully, bolted them and, without a word went out to the hall. The others had stopped talking. They listened to Clarence’s movements in the hall as he put on his coat. The front door shut quietly after him.
There was a silence, then Harriet said: ‘What is the matter with us? Why did we do that?’
‘It was a joke,’ said Guy, though he did not sound sure of what he said.
‘Really, we behaved like children,’ Harriet said and it occurred to her that they were not, in fact, grown-up enough for the life they were living. She asked: ‘What is wrong with Clarence? He told me once that he fails everyone.’
With ponderous irony, David said: ‘Someone should dissect him and remake him nearer to the heart’s desire.’
Guy said: ‘I might be able to do it, if I had the time.’
‘Harriet could do it, I think.’ David smiled slyly at her.
Harriet grew pink, realising she had felt a pitying sympathy for Clarence as she had watched him picking himself up and taking himself so quietly, so unoffendingly, out of the flat. Both David and Guy were much younger than he and between them there was the understanding of an old friendship. Clarence could not have remained untouched by the fact the two had combined against him. She felt sorry for him, yet she disowned him, saying casually: ‘I don’t want to remake him. Why should I?’ and they went on to talk of other things.
16
The next morning, when alone in the flat, Harriet took out the envelope Guy had given her and opened it by rolling a pencil underneath the flap. Inside there was a print of a section through – what? An artesian well? Or, more likely, an oil well. Something else to be blown up. A blockage in the pipe was tagged with the one word: ‘Detonator’. There was no written explanation of the diagram. She resealed the envelope and put it back into the drawer.