Grant expelled his breath in the nearest he had come to a laugh for months. Tommy had been commiserating with Headquarters, not on the loss of his genius, but on the lack of his presence. His ‘family’ attitude had been almost identical with the professional reaction of his Chief. ‘Sick leave!’ Bryce had said, his little elephant eyes running over Grant’s healthy-looking frame and coming back to his face with disgust. ‘Well, well! What is the Force coming to! In my young days you stayed on duty until you fell over. And you went on writing up your notes until the ambulance carted you away off the floor.’ It had not been easy to tell Bryce what the doctor had said, and Bryce had not made it any easier. Bryce had never had a nerve of any sort in his body; he was mere physical force animated by a shrewd if limited brain. There had been neither comprehension nor sympathy in his reception of Grant’s news. Indeed, there had been a subtle suggestion, a mere whiff of an implication, that Grant was malingering. That this so-strange breakdown that left him so markedly well and fit in appearance had something to do with the spring run in Highland rivers; that he had already arranged his fishing flies before going to Wimpole Street.
‘What will they do to fill the gap?’ Tommy asked.
‘Promote Sergeant Williams, probably. His promotion is long overdue anyhow.’
It had been no easier to tell the faithful Williams. When your subordinate has openly hero-worshipped you for years it is not pleasant to have to appear before him as a poor nerve-ridden creature at the mercy of non-existent demons. Williams, too, had never had a nerve in his body. He took everything as it came, placid and unquestioning. It had not been easy to tell Williams and see the admiration change to concern. To—pity?
‘Push over the marmalade,’ Tommy said.
2
The peace induced by Tommy’s matter-of-fact acceptance of him deepened as they drove into the hills. These two accepted him; standing around in a detached benevolence, watching him come in a familiar quiet. It was a grey morning, and still. The landscape was tidy and bare. Tidy grey walls round bare fields, bare fences along the tidy ditches. Nothing had begun to grow yet in this waiting countryside. Only a willow here and there by a culvert side showed live and green in the half-shades.
It was going to be all right. This is what he had needed; this wide silence, this space, this serenity. He had forgotten how benevolent the place was; how satisfying. The near hills were round and green and kind; beyond them were farther ones, stained blue by the distance. And behind all stood the long rampart of the Highland line, white and remote against the calm sky.
‘The river is very low, isn’t it?’ he said, as they came down into the valley of the Turlie. And was invaded by panic.
That was the way it always happened. One moment a sane, free, self-possessed human being, and the next a helpless creature in the grip of unreason. He pressed his hands together to keep himself from flinging the door open and tried to listen to what Tommy was saying. No rain for weeks. They had had no rain for weeks. Let him think about the lack of rain. It was important, the lack of rain. It spoiled the fishing. It was to fish he had come to Clune. If they didn’t have rain there would be no run of fish. No water for them. Oh God, help me not to make Tommy stop! No water. Think intelligently about fishing. If they had had no rain for weeks then rain must be due, mustn’t it? Why could you ask a friend to stop the car and let you be sick and yet not ask him to stop the car so that you could get out of its small shut-in-ness? Look at the river. Look at it. Remember things about it. That was where you caught your best fish last year. That was where Pat slipped down when he was sitting on the rock and was left hanging by the seat of his pants.
‘As nice a clean-run fish as ever you saw,’ Tommy was saying.
The hazels by the river made a bright mauve smudge in the grey-green of the moor. Presently, when it was summer-time, the cold clattering of their leaves would make an obbligato to the river’s song, but just now they stood in a pink silent huddle along the bank.
Tommy, looking at the state of the water, also noticed the bare hazel twigs, but being a parent he was not moved to think of summer afternoons. ‘Pat has discovered that he is a diviner,’ he said.
That was better. Think about Pat. Talk about Pat.
‘The house is strewn with twigs of all shapes and sizes.’
‘Has he discovered anything?’ If he could keep his mind on Pat it might be all right.
‘He has discovered gold under the sitting-room hearth, a body under the whatyoumaycallem in the downstairs bathroom, and two wells.’
‘Where are the wells?’ It couldn’t be so very long now. Five miles to the head of the glen and Clune.
‘One under the dining-room floor and one under the kitchen passage.’
‘I take it that you haven’t dug up the sitting-room hearth.’ The window was wide open. What was there to worry about? It wasn’t really a closed space, not a closed space at all.
‘We have not. He is very peeved about that. Said I was a once-born.’
‘Once-born?’
‘Yes. It’s his latest word. It ranks just one degree below a stinker, I understand.’
‘Where did he get the word?’ He would hang on till they got to that birch wood at the corner. Then he would ask Tommy to stop.
‘Don’t know. From some Theosophist woman who talked to the W.R.I, last autumn, I should think.’
Why should he mind Tommy’s knowing? There was nothing shameful about it. If he were a paralysed syphilitic he would accept Tommy’s help and sympathy. Why should he want to keep from Tommy’s knowledge the fact that he was sweating with terror because of something that didn’t exist? Perhaps he could cheat? Perhaps he could just ask Tommy to stop for a little while he admired the view?
Here was the birch wood. At least he had lasted that far.
He would make it the bit of road level with the bend of the river. He would make the excuse of having a look at the water. Much more plausible than looking at the view. Tommy would look with alacrity at a river and only with passive protest at a view.
About fifty seconds more. One, two, three, four….
Now.
‘We lost two sheep in that pool this winter,’ Tommy said, sweeping past the bend.
Too late.
What other excuse could he make? He was too near Clune now for excuses to be easy to find.
He could not even light a cigarette in case his hands were shaking too much.
Perhaps if he did something, however trivial….
He took the bundle of papers from the seat by his side, rearranging them, shuffling them busily and without point. He noticed that the Signal was not among them. He had meant to take it with him because of the odd little tentative verse in the Stop Press, but he must have left it in the hotel dining-room. Oh, well. It didn’t matter. It had served its turn in giving interest to his breakfast. And the owner certainly would not want it again. He had achieved his Paradise, his oblivion; if that is what he had wanted. Not for him the privilege of uncontrolled hands and sweating skin. The privilege of wrestling with demons. Not for him the clean morning, the kind earth, the loveliness of the Highland line against the sky.
For the first time it occurred to him to wonder what had brought the young man to the North.
He had not, presumably, engaged a first-class sleeping compartment just to drink himself insensible in. He had had an intended destination. He had had business and desire. A purpose.
Why had he come to the North at this bleak unfashionable season? To fish? To climb? The compartment as he remembered it had given an impression of bareness, but the heavy luggage might have been under the bunk. Or, indeed, in the van. Apart from sport what was there?