The Naylors (24 page)

‘Can you see any of those police cars?’ Henry was unimpressed by this exhibition of learning.

‘None at all. Perhaps they’re having their tea.’

‘Or have gone into ambush.’ Henry turned away from the view and faced the Tump. ‘Hell’s bells!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

This unmannerly demand was made of June Gale, who had appeared as if from nowhere. But that (Hilda might have told herself) was a facile cliché and inaccurate as well. To be thus suddenly on the scene, June must have emerged from the Tump itself. There was plenty of room for her there. The barrow could hold, indeed, a whole committee of conspiring persons.

‘Oh, hallo!’ It seemed that Miss Gale was less aware of the tone in which she had been addressed than of the mere surprising fact of the Naylors’ presence. And to this her reaction was a not very intelligent question. ‘Has Simon sent you?’

‘Yes, he thought we might lend a hand.’ Henry said this promptly. ‘Are any of the others here?’

‘Oh, no. Just me. Manning the command post.’ Miss Gale spoke with a complacency judged by Hilda to be highly absurd. But if the expression was extravagant it was nevertheless evident that Simon Prowse had indeed entrusted the girl with some job of a responsible character. And as she was (as Hilda believed) thoroughly thick, and as she had only recently earned herself a bad mark for her assault on the church notice-board, it was impossible not to conclude that Simon was besotted with her. Even potential Fellows of All Souls, it seemed, could be fondly overcome with female charm. Hilda was more scandalised by this aspect of the situation than she was even by her brother’s high-speed command of a blank lie. Henry, moreover, had committed her to some course of deception herself – which she must now sustain, since it was unthinkable to let him down. But for the moment she thought to temporise, and she searched for something to say of a non-committal sort.

‘Have you been here long?’ she asked.

‘Only Simon at the vicarage – you know about him – and myself with friends about ten miles away. Oh, and some people camping up on the downs somewhere: rather an elderly and churchy lot. We have all sorts.’

‘I believe the churchy ones were in church this morning. But what I meant was, have you been up here long?’

‘Since just after dark last night. So that we shouldn’t be observed, you know.’

‘Do you mean you slept here?’

‘Yes – in that tomb-thing.’ June pointed back at the Tump. ‘Of course I had my sleeping-bag and a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches. It was quite snug.’

‘The associations of the place didn’t disturb you at all?’

At this, June looked first blank, and then faintly suspicious, as if such a question could occur only to an alien mind.

‘I didn’t know you belonged,’ she said. ‘To us, I mean.’

‘Ah! It’s the principle of the cell, you know.’ This was Henry in immediate top gear again. ‘Small groups unaware of each other’s identity. Simon must have told you about it.’

‘Yes, of course.’ June had hesitated for a moment before producing this, since she lacked Henry’s facility in uttering fibs. ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘you might be tied up with the other lot.’

‘Oh, them!’ Henry had, unhesitatingly, a contemptuous view of the other lot.

‘They’re quite idiotic, of course, and not our sort of thing at all. But Simon believes some of them are around.’

‘Elderly and churchy, too?’ Hilda asked.

‘Oh, yes – a good many of them.’

‘Then I think they were in the congregation this morning as well.’

‘So they were – the silly old creatures!’ Henry said robustly. ‘But just what would
they
be up to, do you think? The same as us?’

To these questions – unfortunately, since answers would have been so informative – no answers came. June had looked at her watch, and as a result she gave a screech of dismay.

‘But you’ve made me late!’ she cried. ‘Three minutes late! Come on! Oh,
come on
!’

With this, June Gale turned and ran the length of the barrow, tugging at something in the pocket of tight-fitting jeans as she went.

‘Best from behind, I’d say,’ Henry said. ‘And when in brisk movement. There’s one of your learned words for it. Callipygous, I think.’

‘Don’t be so revolting, Henry Naylor. And we’d better follow her, as it seems to be what she wants.’ And Hilda began to run.

‘It certainly is.’ Henry caught up with his sister in a stride. ‘June’s big moment has come. God knows what it is – but having an audience for it is a bonus we mustn’t cheat her of. Well, I’m damned!’

It was nothing very startling that had elicited this exclamation. Just beyond the far end of the Tump was a sizeable plot of ground which had some appearance of having been artificially levelled long ago. Perhaps the eighteenth-century improver had effected this with the thought of erecting a belvedere or gazebo from which to survey the broad prospect beneath. Or perhaps the operation had been of much higher antiquity, and here was a kind of bowling-green expressly created for the funeral games of some monarch of the Megalithic Age. Positioned precisely in its centre there now lay a pile of brushwood such as might result from a hedging operation nearby. Only there were no hedges within several hundred yards. Henry’s surprise had resulted from his making a simple inference. Here was preparation for a bonfire – or, better, for a beacon.

By the time Hilda had absorbed these facts, June was bending over the pile with a box of matches in her hands.

‘Isn’t it cunning?’ she cried out excitedly. ‘You’d never think! Just a heap of twigs and leaves and things. But the real stuff’s scattered underneath. Simon says it’s absolutely fab. We’ll see.’ She struck a match and poked it rather gingerly into the foot of the pile. The twigs and leaves and things weren’t much interested. Nevertheless, there was almost instantly a small puff of smoke. It grew so rapidly that June had to jump back from it. It thickened to the girth of a barrel, rose to the height of a house. Incredibly, it had become a great shaft in the sky. For a moment some downward draught of air flattened it, squashed it at the peak, so that it mushroomed out into a similitude of the most sinister image known to modern man. Then it was a clear white pillar again. It was as if the empyrean had become a kind of St Peter’s Square, and from a celestial Sistine Chapel cardinals like demigods were signalling the election of Christ’s new Vicar on Earth.

‘Pulling out all the stops,’ Henry said. ‘Your blasted Simon ought to be in film. He has the touch.’ Henry paused on this, and scowled at June. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘The cue’s been given, hasn’t it? So what?’

‘Wait!’ June was staring out over the vale. ‘There!’ she said, and pointed into distance.

All that had appeared was a motor-coach: a toy motor-coach to the naked eye, and presumably carrying toy people. It had emerged from the woodland territory to the north, and was heading towards Nether Plumley. But now there was another one, moving at a brisker pace along a road similarly oriented. One after another, further motor-coaches appeared, and the extent to which Nether Plumley was indeed at the hub of a small system of unimportant thoroughfares became plain. Hilda found herself trying to remember whether she had read of ants or beetles behaving in this way – converging in columns upon the stronghold of some adversary. Of course the present spectacle was much more simply military in suggestion. Almost, while one looked, one transformed those harmless conveyances into armoured vehicles, pumping out shell-fire as they moved.

And now there was a hint of real confrontation. Some of the police cars had appeared: two of them shooting out from some lurking-place within the perimeter fence of the Institute, and two more from the direction of Plumley itself.

‘Far too much barging around to make a happy afternoon,’ Henry said, and raised his binoculars. ‘Christ! Just take a look.’

Hilda focused her own glasses, and surveyed what was happening. There had been a collision between two of the coaches at an intersection; one of them had been tipped on its side; people, apparently uninjured but angry, were tumbling out of both – some of them awkwardly burdened with placards attached to long poles. It was evident, even at this remove, that a furious altercation was developing between the two parties. Some of the placards were waved defiantly in air; others were being used as outright weapons in deplorable breach of the Queen’s peace. A police car drove up hastily; three or four constables tumbled out of it, and began waving their arms as if dealing amateurishly with a flock of sheep. And a faint bruit came up to the Tump, so there must have been a great deal of shouting as well.

‘Have a dekko at your pals,’ Henry said to June, and handed her his glasses. ‘Perhaps you can tell if all’s going according to plan. I’m not sure there isn’t a spot of civil war.’

‘There can’t be anything Simon isn’t prepared for.’ Having made this loyal declaration, June surveyed the scene presumably in security of mind. ‘No end of pigs,’ she said. ‘There’ll be splendid pictures in all the papers tomorrow. Even in
The Times
.’

It took Hilda a moment to realise that the pigs were not the research material of the animal geneticists but merely the police. But presumably there
were
members of the brute creation incarcerated in the Institute, since it would scarcely be possible to geneticise without them. She was surprised that she hadn’t adequately reflected on this before. She lowered her binoculars and stared at June.

‘I say!’ she said. ‘Are you Cruelty to Animals people? Is that it?’

‘That’s
them
.’ June said this with a good deal of contempt. ‘Dumb Friends’ Lib.’

‘Then I ought to tell you that I’m all for libbing dumb friends. It’s a much simpler issue than the bomb.’

‘But a damned sight less important. Cease your chattering, women.’ Henry must have been a good deal excited by the spectacle of turmoil at Nether Plumley. ‘Time to join the party. So get moving. We can be home inside twenty minutes, and in Nether Plumley five minutes after that. Even in your awful old car. Are you game?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Hilda spoke with a firmness she didn’t quite feel. Dispassionate observation – she may have judged – wouldn’t have much of a spin in the middle of a riot. ‘We’d better see the thing through.’

‘And will you take me?’ June asked. ‘I’m expected to get back on my own.’

‘Why not? We’ll restore you to the arms of your great commander. Just yank your sleeping-bag out of that bloody great coffin, and I’ll carry it down for you.’

‘Oh, Henry, I think you’re fab!’

This was not, of course, quite Hilda’s estimate of her brother. It was true that Henry showed signs of being, as Uncle George had prophesied, her family’s dark horse. But he would be very much a donkey if he signalised his growing up by falling for the callipygous June Gale.

George and Father Hooker had also gone for a walk, accompanied by the spaniels, Bill and Bess. Their route was along a field-path leading to Nether Plumley, and they had not progressed far before Hooker embarked upon what was to prove, for George, a disconcerting line of thought.

‘I was much impressed,’ he said, ‘by the Director, Dr Scattergood – and, indeed, by his younger colleague as well. The younger man was Younger.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Of the two men, the former was Scattergood and the latter was Younger.’ Hooker appeared unaware of anything odd about this information, which recalled to George the fact that Robert Elsmere and
Robert Elsmere
were not the same person. George also wondered whether there was in all England another man liable, like Hooker, to use expressions like ‘the latter’ and ‘the former’ in a conversational way. ‘And both Scattergood and Younger,’ Hooker went on, ‘appeared to me to be intelligent men.’

‘As one might rather expect, don’t you think?’ George suggested innocently. ‘Animal genetics isn’t likely to be run by donkeys.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Or whatever animal genetics may stand in for.’

‘My dear Naylor, I scarcely follow you.’ Father Hooker had paused momentarily in his measured perambulation. ‘You can hardly believe in these wild rumours about the Institute that appear to be circulating among the uninformed?’

‘Well, you know,
interdum vulgus rectum videt.
Or is it
interdum stultus opportuna loquitur?’
It amused George that the learned Hooker – perhaps because of his early education as a scientist – was sometimes not too quick at picking up simple Latin tags. ‘And, for that matter . . .’ But George broke off. That there was a perplexing and alarming police presence round about the Plumleys was a fact bound up with his own encounter with that cruising car and its photographer. And in the incident there had been something ludicrous that he hesitated to embark upon. Father Hooker at once filled the momentary silence.

‘It would appear that Scattergood and his colleague, although at the Institute since its inception, happen not to have worshipped in your parish church until today.’

‘So I gathered.’ George wasn’t sure that St Michael and All Angels should have had that ‘your’ attached to it.

‘I must admit to feeling it a gratifying circumstance.’

‘Naturally you would. Church-going isn’t what it was – is it? You must always be pleased to hear of anybody turning up.’ George knew very well that it wasn’t exactly this that was in his companion’s mind. But it was hard not to make fun of Father Hooker from time to time – the more so since, as now, Hooker could be unaware it was going on.

‘It must be presumed that they had heard I was to preach. And Dr Scattergood expressed himself very courteously at the end of the service. We had a little chat in the churchyard. Unfortunately both men had to plead pressure of their affairs when your sister-in-law invited them to come and take sherry at the Park.’

Hooker, George noticed, had taken to saying ‘the Park’ like this with a kind of naïve satisfaction curious in a distinguished theologian. But powerful minds may go astray in more directions than one, and George suspected that Hooker was overestimating his pastoral appeal. Those two scientists had gone to church for much the same reason that Hooker himself had gone into the Plumley pub: to take (as Hooker had expressed it) the temperature of the flock. They had heard about June Gale’s injudicious little placard; like the police, they knew there was trouble brewing; they had decided to vet the natives. But it would be ungracious in George to put this point of view to his brother’s guest, and George therefore held his peace and looked about him.