The Alien (15 page)

“Are we?'' Boris said, counting heads and allowing for Louise.

“John isn't here yet, Colin. I suppose he is really coming?
He
hasn't sent a note.''

“He'd ring up,'' Colin answered, still busy with the bottles.

“Mr John Carfax,'' said Louise from the door.

Colin broke off to introduce the late arrival. Margaret made the signal she had arranged with Louise to tell Mrs. Ogden that everyone had arrived. The hired waitress, who had watched the arrivals from the back of the hall, though not condescending to open the door to them, retired to the dining-room. Conversation in the drawing-room became general, voices rose as alcohol reached the blood-stream, Carfax worked his way by degrees to Boris's side.

At last a booming noise arose in the hall, developing from a low throb to a shattering roar.

“She's found the gong!'' Margaret yelled above the din. “Shall we go in, everyone?''

“Haven't heard the old gong for months!'' Colin was beaming. He had brought the thing down from Higlett, but for some reason the Ogdens never used it in this house.

He offered his arm with a formal gesture to his mother-in-law and led her off. Sir Charles captured Ann from Stephen who politely latched himself on to Louise. Margaret looked helplessly at the two men left standing together.

“They've taken the bit between their teeth,'' she said. “My family's manners are very deficient. I'm afraid we're one short. Shall we go in?''

“I'll be with you in a second,'' Carfax said. He had moved to a table by the window and seemed to be having difficulty with his cigarette holder.

Margaret, surprised, put out, hesitated for a couple of seconds, but getting no help from Boris, said lamely, “They'll be all in a muddle over their places. Buck up, John! Bring Boris with you.''

She went out quickly, not noticing, as both men had, the light flickering through the window curtains, nor hearing the heavy tread on the iron steps to the balcony.

Carfax, who was the nearer, took a step forward, pulled aside one half of the curtain, unlatched the window on that side and thrust it open. He saw a tall blue-uniformed figure with a constable's helmet above a very young face. Stepping back a little in surprise he noticed that Boris had moved with great swiftness into the corner between the curtain and the wall. He was aware, in the same instant, that there was a gun in the Pole's hand.

“This isn't the front door, officer,'' Carfax said, pleasantly. “Hadn't you better go round and ring the bell?''

As he spoke he edged sideways towards Boris, both to allow the constable to enter if he insisted and to cover Boris, particularly his armed right hand, with his own body.

The young policeman came forward a little into the room. He acknowledged Boris's presence with a nod. Carfax moved a little farther back until he was almost touching the Pole.

“I did ring, sir. There was no answer. There was a lot of noise inside. I made my way down the passage at the side to the back door and knocked.''

“No answer again?''

“No, sir.''

“It's a dinner-party,'' Carfax explained. “Everyone very busy, you know. Meal just going on. Can I help you?''

“It's about a car, sir. ADF 5000. Parked outside here.''

“Mine. What's wrong?''

“No lights, sir.''

“There's a street lamp.''

“Too far away, sir. Regulations say—''

“Don't tell me. Want me to move it?''

“If you please, sir.''

“Right. You go back round and choose the spot you'd like me to occupy. I'll shut this up again and come out of the front door. O.K.?''

“Thank you, sir.''

The worried young face disappeared into the night, Carfax shut the window and pulled the curtain across it. When he turned to look at Boris the latter was still standing in the corner but the gun had disappeared.

“You shouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly,'' Carfax scolded him. “Not in this country. Get what he wanted?''

“Something to do with your car?''

“That's right. Now look. You go and tell that true story to the dining-room lot while I pacify the law. After dinner I want a little chat with you. Colin will arrange it. He knows.''

“What does he know?''

“That I want a chat with you. Do stop arguing, like a good chap, and go into the dining-room or we shall have them all coming out to look for us.''

Boris left the corner and walked across the room behind Carfax. As they reached the door the latter said, “I hope that gun's licensed. Where did you get it?''

“It is licensed,'' Boris answered. “Also it belongs to me from before the war.''

With which surprising statement he walked stiffly across the hall and opened the dining-room door, to be greeted with cries of astonishment and question.

Carfax slipped out of the front door and ran briskly down the steps to his car. The constable was standing beside it.

“What did you mean about that gun of yours?'' Carfax asked, an hour later.

Boris told him, simply and truthfully. Stephen had preserved this relic of bygone days, proudly at first and secretly, as he was under age for ownership at the time. Later he had licensed and looked after it in memory of someone he expected never to see again.

“He has this shy, stiff, sentimental attitude, so endearing in the English,'' Boris explained, earnestly. “Was it wrong, legally wrong, to give me back my property?''

“I'm not a lawyer,'' said Carfax, equally grave. “I wouldn't know.''

Boris sighed his relief. The dinner had been a protracted torment. Outwardly calm, chatting amiably with Lady Lang on his left and Ann Phillimore on his right, avoiding Louise's eye opposite, he had felt more shaken inwardly than at any time since the fiasco of his arrival in Higlett Bay. Was he developing a guilty conscience after all these years, he wondered? Why else should he assume that the child in police uniform had come for him? Why lose his head so utterly as to draw a weapon? To shoot the poor young man, or to shoot himself? He really did not know which.

The worst of the situation was the way in which this man, Carfax, handled it. Regardless of any kind of personal danger, more as if he were protecting an aggressive infant from the consequences of an uncontrolled impulse, he had hidden the gun with his own body. He had exposed himself to being shot in place of the police officer. This was profoundly humiliating.

And the whole scene! A parking offence! What could be more futile, more unpolitical, more unemotional, more British?
Enfin
, more civilized? He had never in his life felt so strongly the force of this alien self-confident culture.

Lady Lang found nothing amiss in his behaviour. His manners had always been perfect, she remembered. After all, he was born a gentleman, if a Pole. He had lost nothing vital in the course of his dreadful experiences, she concluded. She told him about her garden and her dogs and her difficulties with maids.

“I'm not so lucky as Margaret,'' she said. “There are no Ogdens in my family or in Charles's. Ann won't mind doing everything for herself. The young generation was born to it. It was difficult for me to begin in middle-age.''

“That I can believe,'' he answered, suppressing a vision of Lady Lang, her well-arranged hair beset by steam, her long rope of pearls dangling into a saucepan as she struggled to make a simple dish for Sir Charles. At least, they did not starve, he decided, instantly attacked by visions of those who had done so before his eyes in Siberia, fading from life day by day, diminishing literally and visibly until the morning of their ultimate stillness on the sleeping board or in the snow.

The meal of four well-cooked courses came to an end. Margaret took the women away to the drawing-room and sent Louise to fetch the coffee. The men filled their glasses and Colin said, “Carfax wants a word with you, Sudenic, if you don't mind. I suggest we all join the ladies for coffee and I then take you two off to my study to look at maps or prints or something and leave you there for a bit. You won't take long over it, John?''

“In connection with – the car-parking offence?'' Boris asked, as casually as he could.

Stephen laughed. The story had certainly broken the ice after that rather uncomfortable pause when Boris had arrived late in the dining-room, with a white face and frozen explanations. Until John dashed in full of apologies and a well-clowned account of his brush with the law.

Colin looked awkward. Carfax said, quietly to Boris, “As a matter of fact, I asked Colin to arrange for me to meet you.''

“Don't you know?'' Stephen added, irrepressibly, “John is M.I.5. Ever heard of it?''

Boris had heard of it. He said so. He did not say that he had recognized Carfax from the beginning and that this had added to his anxiety when the policeman arrived. He saw Sir Charles looking at him with a new speculative gaze that did nothing to comfort him.

So after some more conversation and some really excellent coffee and brandy Colin performed his part and Boris found himself alone with British security. The matter of the gun seemed to be cleared. He had not been asked to give it up. It was not the real object of this conversation. He waited.

“There has been some sort of schemozzle,'' Carfax said, slowly, “between two groups of our Iron Curtain friends. At least between the king-pin and a satellite. In the street, of all places.''

“Did the man die?'' Boris asked.

Carfax laughed. He was beginning to like this enigma who had caused so much argument among his superiors.

“No. Was it you chivved him, as they say in our underworld?''

“Do you expect me to answer that?''

“Not really. But you may like to know that they were not able to cope themselves and had to get in outside help and the chap was whisked off to a private nursing-home and a surgeon called in to sew him up. Very hush-hush, but the surgeon was interested. The wounds did not fit the story offered and the patient, who thought he was going to die, expressed a wish for revenge when his political principles were loosened as he came round from the anaesthetic. He suggested that certain Poles were responsible.''

“Polish communists were attacked by Russian communists,'' Boris said.

“Surprising, but so I gathered. It's all rather vague, but the surgeon was interested, as I said. He talked to Scotland Yard and they asked him to collect a sample of the patient's blood. It matched some blood the constable on the beat had the presence of mind to mop up from the pavement at the scene of a scuffle he had noticed from a distance. Nothing at the spot but the blood. Suggestive, isn't it?''

“Very.''

“You wouldn't have sent a suit to be cleaned in the last few days, by any chance?''

“No.''

Carfax did not pursue this. Instead he said, “You wouldn't care to tell me what you were doing with that bunch? We know you had dinner at Paul's restaurant and four men joined you there.''

“I should like to tell you,'' said Boris. “Then you can make up your mind about the truth of this matter.''

“Can I? Won't I just make up my mind the way you want me to?''

“I think you are not so easily influenced.''

“Go ahead. Don't bother about me, one way or the other. What are you doing in this country at all, for a start? Planted, weren't you?''

“Oh, yes. Let me tell you my own way.''

Boris repeated what he had told the Polish comrades. He described again the Russian clumsiness in imagining he could get into close touch with Colin, simply because, years before, he had been engaged to his wife.

“Could they not imagine that I would be the last man Colin would make a friend? Some men, perhaps, but not Colin. They have theories – correct theories, they call them. Do they never see that theories about people are always wrong or at least half-wrong? Because a man is too complex to become a theory?''

“I know what you mean. Get on with the story.''

“I have nothing to report,'' Boris said, simply, “so I report nothing. They are instantly suspicious. They try to kidnap me to the Embassy, perhaps back to Russia.''

“I thought it was something like that. Where do those Polish comrades come into the picture?''

“They want me to work for them, instead.''

“And it isn't quite the same thing, is it?''

“No.''

They looked at one another, each trying to judge the amount and accuracy of the other's knowledge.

“Are you going to work for the Poles?'' Carfax asked, presently, not expecting an answer.

“Which Poles?''

“Oh, for heaven's sake!''

“They all want me,'' Boris said, with a grin that relieved the tension between them. “I am – popular, isn't it?''

“Much sought after, yes.''

“Like a girl with a fortune, eh?''

“You couldn't be less like. What about it, though?''

“If I had decided I would not tell you. But at present I work for no one.''

“Except the Swedes,'' said Carfax.

Boris stared, open-mouthed, then he laughed loudly.

“Ericson!'' he declared. “I have always wondered. It must be Ericson – no? Oh, then you can help me. I owe this Ericson – let me see – it would be fifty pounds in your money. What I tell you now is worth fifty pounds, I think. You will pay him for me? I have been worried that I could not pay Ericson.''

“The devil you have!''

Carfax had no ready answer to the proposed bargain. Boris was proving too much for him and he knew it. All this candour, all this truthful revelation had told him precisely nothing. The fellow wasn't a double agent. He was a universal. Had he built it all up as a seaman in the Baltic? It was incredible.