Nothing So Strange (21 page)

“Apple pie?” I suggested.

“Well yes, if you like.”

“Or cornbread … chewing gum … clam chowder….”

By that time he realized I was trying to be funny. And I don’t know why I
was, except in relief at the vision of Mr. Small at home with his
intellectual wife and their solemn discussions of books. Perhaps they
discussed them from one twin bed to another.

“Well, well,” he summed up, “your book certainly made a hit with her. She
also said it could only have been written by one who knew from deep
experience what it means to be born in this country.”

“Except that I wasn’t.”

“Oh?”

He must have known; it would be the first and easiest thing to discover
about me. Was it just another test to see if I were being frank? I went on
with a sort of nervous facetiousness that I don’t like but sometimes can’t
help: “The great event happened in London, England, and if my mother had been
taken ill a few hours later it would have been on the
Olympic
. What
would that have made me—an Olympian?”

He blinked. “I must tell her that…. An Olympian, eh?… One thing,
anyhow, it convinced
me
of … the book, I mean.”

“What?”

He took off his glasses and became suddenly an alarmingly different
person. “That you’re somewhat your own worst enemy, Miss Waring. You’re not
always wise in what you say, or how you behave. I should think you’ve got
into a good many scrapes, one way and another … haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. It was the simplest and truest answer.

“But your heart’s in the right place. And you’re loyal. You’ve been
careful all along not to say anything against a man who was once your friend.
You’ve been equally careful not to lie—even if you’ve concealed a good
deal of the truth. As it happens, the problem ought not to arise for you
again. At least we hope not.”

“Who’s we?”

“The authority I represent.”

“And a nice frank answer, I must say.”

“You couldn’t expect much better in wartime.”

“Something to do with the war—I guessed that. So what do you do if I
lose my memory? Send me to jail?”

“Perhaps I should first tell you some of the things we already know. We
know all about Bradley’s activities before the war, we know of his
friendships with Nazi professors, we know how he defended one of
them—”

“But that’s not true!” I interrupted. “I daresay it may have looked like
that, but—”

“We’re not questioning you about it—that isn’t what I’ve come for.
I’m fairly satisfied that your friendship with this man must have been just
personal—”

“Yes, but—”

“—which is fine—no blame attaches to you at all.”

“But you think it does to
him
?… I see. So he’s under
suspicion…. I can only tell you how utterly wrong you are.”

“Possibly. There may be perfectly good reasons for everything he did, even
for the fact that he worked in Germany up to the very day war broke out in
1939—”

“
What
? He worked in
Germany
?”

“Oh, so you didn’t know that?… Well, let’s not worry too much about it.
The main thing for you to realize—as his friend—is that being
under suspicion means exactly what the word means—no more and no less.
He may be completely innocent—”

“But of
what
?”

“Of anything we could possibly suspect…. We certainly
hope
he’s
innocent, if only because of his army record.”

“Army?”

“Does that startle you too?”

“No … no … but I hadn’t heard from him for so long—I didn’t even
know he’d come back to be drafted. Where is he now?”

“In this country. In a hospital.”

“
Wounded
?”

“Well, injured. A flying accident. He pulled a pilot out of a burning
plane…. At some risk to himself.”

“But what happened to him? You said he was injured.”

“Not very seriously, though he probably won’t be any more use in the Air
Force.”

“Where’s the hospital he’s at?”

“In Arizona.”

“Can I … could I … go to see him?”

“You’d like to, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes—and since it’s only the next state …
Could
I?”

“I don’t think there’d be any objection.” He smiled. “That’s what you get
for writing a good book.”

If he hadn’t mentioned the book again I might not have had the misgiving
that suddenly came to me. I stared over the Santa Modena Valley and wondered
vagrantly if those snow-tipped summits in the distance were reachable, and if
the quest for truth would somehow be easier alone at that level than across a
breakfast table between two persons sparring for position in what was still a
conflict of minds. For already I sensed that it was not quite permission to
see Brad that I had been granted, but rather that Mr. Small was quite anxious
now that I should see him.

I said: “Well, thanks.” And then, jumping the gun as usual: “Of course I
don’t suppose for a moment you’re doing all this to please me. It’s all part
of some plan or other.”

“Sure, what do you take me for? I’ve a job for you if you’ll do it. You’d
probably be doing it anyway—you’re that kind of person.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open—that’s all.”

“Why?… When?”

“When you meet your friend. Same as you did when you were traveling all
over Europe to get material for your book. If you saw anything then that
struck you as odd or significant you made a mental note of it—I’ll bet
you did. You certainly didn’t miss much, and I’m inclined to think it took
someone pretty smart to fool you.”

“Maybe you’re smart and you’re fooling me now.”

“No.” He added quietly: “I think you’ll know what I mean when you see
Bradley.”

“Why? What’s the matter with him? You said it wasn’t serious?”

“Physically, no…. He’s almost recovered. Now don’t get alarmed. He’s not
a raving lunatic either.”

I said as calmly as I could: “Please—since you’ve said so much about
him- -tell me the whole truth. What’s wrong with him?”

“That’s part of our problem. Dr. Newby here can talk about it—he’s a
psychiatrist. He’s studied the case. He thinks Bradley has something on his
mind.”

I looked then at the other man, who hadn’t spoken a word so far, but who
now seemed to emerge into a private limelight of his own. He was middle-aged,
pale, and soulful-eyed, with a somewhat fussy manner and an air of reaching
out for sympathy but hardly expecting it. Of the few psychiatrists I have
known personally, all have seemed in need of a psychiatrist themselves, and
my snap judgment was that Dr. Newby was no exception. He said in a rather
dulcet voice: “Yes, that would be my opinion. Something on his mind.”

“Why? What makes you think so?”

“We—ell, his behavior—to the trained observer—has been
sending out certain warning signals.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know whether you are at all familiar with the field of
psychiatry, Miss Waring?”

“Fairly.” I don’t think I am, but I wanted an answer.

“We—ell, then you will know what is meant by a complex. Persecution
complex, guilt complex….”

“Is that what he has?”

“To some extent.”

“
Both
of them?”

“Ye-es, I would say so. Plus some queer ideas that are just a little bit
on the psychopathic borderline…. And a neurosis about flying—which,
of course, isn’t uncommon after a plane crash.”

“But he’ll get better—normal again?”

“No reason at all why he shouldn’t—when the cause is removed.”

“Is what you’re doing for him helping?”

“I hope so…. But he doesn’t co-operate very well. He
resists.
If
only he’d talk about himself more.”

“I should have thought that proved how thoroughly sane he is.”

“We—ell, that could be true, in some cases. But in his case I think
it merely shows he has something to hide.”

“I don’t follow that at all.”

Mr. Small interposed. “Let’s stick to the original phrase—that he
has something on his mind. If he has, we all know it would do him good to
talk—but he
won’t
talk—so far—to anybody. That’s his
problem as well as ours.”

“Then why should you think he’d talk to
me
?”

“Because he wrote to you, Miss Waring. He’s been several months in
hospital and you were the only person he wrote to the whole time. That’s what
brought you into the picture. We figured that if you meant that much to him
and nobody else did….”

“So you intercepted his letter. May I have it?”

“Certainly. But it wasn’t a letter.”

Mr. Small took something from his wallet and handed it to me. It was a
highly colored picture postcard of a desert scene, dated the previous March,
and addressed to me care of my publishers in New York. Scribbled in pencil
was the hospital address and the message: “Good book, especially page 117,
last paragraph.—Yrs. Brad.”

“So this is why you got in touch with me in the first place?”

“Yes. And why I got your book. But I really ought to have read it through
instead of just page 117. It would have helped me to understand
you
better.”

“He must have been wondering why I didn’t reply.”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t remember what was on page 117.”

Mr. Small opened his briefcase. “You see I carry it around.” He passed it
to me. It opened at the page where the corner was turned down. The last
paragraph read:

One day I walked with a very good friend of mine into the Burggarten where
the open-air orchestra was playing the Overture to
Egmont
. We watched
as well as listened, because the spectacle of so many music-lovers following
the score, which at some trouble they must have brought with them, seemed the
strangest possible contrast to the rioting in the streets, and perhaps a
reassurance that when all the nonsense of the modern world has exhausted
itself, Beethoven will remain, together with (my friend insisted) the
Binomial Theorem and a few other intangibles….

“Was Bradley the very good friend of yours?” Mr. Small asked.

“Yes.”

He had been keeping his eyes on me with a sort of lie-detector intensity,
but that didn’t bother me, because I usually tell the truth, as I did then,
and I only lie when I can justify it to myself enough to be able to stare
anyone in the face. There was, however, a core of puzzlement in me about the
whole business that I thought might soon make me look confused, so I was glad
when Dr. Newby created a diversion by asking: “What exactly do you mean by a
very good friend, Miss Waring?”

I stared at the doctor and thought how dreadful it would be to have that
melancholy raffishness around all the time, which presumably was Brad’s fate.
He looked as if his experiences, whatever they were, had converted a slight
original eagerness about life into mere inquisitiveness. I couldn’t resist
the temptation to shock him.

“I mean that I’d have gone to bed with him if he’d ever asked me.”

“Even though he was married?” Mr. Small put in quickly.

“Oh, so you know that too?… No, I didn’t really mean it. I was just
joking.”

“Did you know his wife?”

“Slightly.”

“What happened to her?”

“I heard she died.”

“How?”

“I don’t know…. You said I could visit him at the hospital. When?”

Before he could answer Dan came from the house to say that Mr. Chandos was
on the phone. I was glad of the chance to excuse myself. All Mr. Chandos
wanted was to convert the following Wednesday’s appointment into a lunch
date; he sounded very cordial and chatted so desultorily that, thinking of
Mr. Small waiting for me all the time, I was probably rather abrupt in my
replies. When I did return to the terrace, however, there was already a
changed atmosphere. I guessed they had been discussing me during my absence,
and that some kind of clinching conclusion had been reached. It was not long
in disclosing itself, for Mr. Small opened up briskly: “We’ve had an idea,
Miss Waring. Perhaps a good idea, if you think it is too. How would you like
Bradley to visit you here instead of you going to Arizona to see him?”

I was a bit amazed by the proposition. “Well yes,” I answered, perhaps
seeming doubtful. “Yes, that sounds all right.”

“Only all right?”

“All right is all right, isn’t it?”

“So you agree to it?”

“Sure … why not?”

“Would it be convenient for him to stay perhaps a week or ten days?”

I hadn’t envisaged that even as a possibility, but it came as an
increasingly welcome one. “I think so. It’s my father’s house, as you know,
but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t object. And it’s big enough —nobody
need get in anyone else’s way.”

“Exactly. An excellent place from every standpoint…. Why don’t you write
today, asking him here for a visit if he can get leave? Dr. Newby will
arrange the rest.”

“Very well. I’ll do that.”

“In fact you might write now and we can air-mail it from
town—that’ll be quicker.”

I went back to the library and wrote a brief note, as in answer to the
postcard, which I said had been unaccountably delayed through reforwardings.
I sealed the envelope and stuck some of those charity stamps over the flap;
when I handed it to Mr. Small I saw him notice them; perhaps he thought they
would make it harder to open the envelope and reseal it. I was fairly certain
he intended to read what I had written.

They left soon after that, and I took them to the car in the driveway.
“Maybe he won’t resist
you
so much,” said Dr. Newby, pumping my hand
up and down.

“I shan’t mind if he does. He’s not the type for all this confession
business—you ought to have seen that for yourself. You’d probably
rather confess to him, but he wouldn’t like that either.”

Mr. Small smiled as he took my hand after Dr. Newby had let go of it. I
think he enjoyed the way I tore into the poor little doctor.