Who Pays the Piper? (34 page)

“And so there is,” said Mrs. Holt briskly—“and Mr. Merridew's the last one not to take it. And did you get all the business off your mind?”

“Well, I did and I didn't. It's a great responsibility, you know, and all come at once. Mr. Girding taken with a stroke last month—and of course you may say he's been nothing but a figurehead for years, but as long as he was on view, well there he was, and I shouldn't have felt quite so responsible. But there—he's out of it. And now Peterson and Mr. Merridew as well.”

Mrs. Holt poured out his tea, put in a lump of sugar, and pushed it over to him.

“Well, you've seen Mr. Merridew, ducks.”

“Yes.”

He began to tell her about seeing Mr. Merridew. He always told Rosie everything, and she always listened in the same comfortable way, not saying very much, but if there was anything unpleasant, she'd somehow take the edge off it, and if there was anything pleasant, it seemed to get pleasanter as he told it.

The telling took quite a time, because he had to attend to the herrings. Herring-bones require a good deal of attention. When he came to telling her how Mr. Merridew had said, “You're rather a noble fellow,” she got up and gave him a hug, and he very nearly choked. “And so you are, ducks!”

“Oh, no—” he choked again—“I'm not. I didn't do anything at all—it was just his kindness.”

“Take a good drink of tea, ducks, and a bit of bread—that'll settle the bone.”

He drank, and mopped his eyes.

“Well, there's one thing I'm glad about. Those papers in the Tweddle case—you know the state they're in—well, he didn't care about them a bit. ‘Blast the Tweddle papers!'—that's what he said, and a great relief it was to me to hear him. No, the thing he was in a taking about was that parcel for Mr. Rossiter. It's something special, it seems, and it's to be given him by hand—and the trouble is nobody seems to know quite where he is.”

Mrs. Holt poised a piece of herring midway to her mouth. “Not Mr. Merridew?”

Emanuel looked worried. “Well, it seems not.”

“Not Miss Delia? Oh, come, ducks—you'll find Miss Delia will know where he is.”

Her voice had kept its easy country drawl. It was one of the things which made her so pleasant to be with. There was none of the Londoner's hurry or quick clipped speech about Rosie. She popped the piece of herring in her mouth and enjoyed it. Not one to hurry over her food any more than over her speech.

Emanuel shook his head.

“I did take the liberty of putting it to Mr. Merridew that Miss Delia might know, and he said no, she didn't.”

Mrs. Holt laughed. It was a very nice laugh, deep and soft. “A girl don't always tell her uncle what she knows. I didn't when you came courting me, and Emily didn't neither, and I don't suppose girls are any different to what they used to be.” A faint cloud went over her face. “Do you suppose Doris tells us everything?”

Emanuel's mouth fell open a little.

“Doesn't she, Rosie?”

“No, Em, she doesn't. The girl's not born that does. So I say, see Miss Delia for yourself and put it to her, can she get word to Mr. Antony Rossiter that you've got something to his advantage waiting to be handed over to him, and what about it?”

Emanuel thoughtfully removed a bone from his mouth.

“I don't know that it's to his advantage, Rosie.” And then, “Well, you know, I've an idea they've quarrelled.”

Mrs. Holt leaned forward with her elbows on the table and her hands clasped under her chin.

“Oh, Em—and you telling me what a nice pair they were, and how loving they looked!”

“That was after he came back from Dunkirk, when he was getting well after his wound.”

“August,” said Mrs. Holt. “I remember as well as well your coming home and telling me they'd been into the office together, and those were your very words—‘Such a nice pair.'”

Emanuel stirred his tea. With only one lump of sugar to the cup, you had to make sure that it was all dissolved. He had offered to have saccharine instead when the rationing came in, but Rosie wouldn't hear of it. “As long as there's sugar to be had, you'll get it in your tea, and I don't want any arguments about it.” But it was only one lump instead of two, and he really did like two. So he stirred hard.

“August is two months ago,” he said, “and I've an idea they've quarrelled. In fact, between you and me, Mr. Merridew as good as said so. So what am I going to do now? If it was Mr. Merridew, he might be able to find out from the War Office, but I don't know how to set about it. You see, it's a bit awkward asking where people are these days—there might be quite a wrong construction placed on it. And meanwhile there's the parcel, and there's no getting from it it's a responsibility.”

“Why not put it in the bank?”

“Well, our branch—you know they've been bombed, and when I put it to Mr. Merridew he said, ‘No—better keep it yourself.' And I said, ‘But how am I to get hold of Mr. Rossiter?' And that's just where he turned faint and the nurse came in and bundled me off.”

“Well, I should ask Miss Delia,” said Rosie Holt.

Antony Rossiter lay in a ditch and waited for the dawn. From one point of view the darkness would be a protection, but from another it would not. To approach the town before anyone was astir was all right as long as no one really
was
astir. If on the other hand you were encountered, you would naturally become an object of suspicion. Better to wait till the cocks were crowing and the countryside awake and drift in with the normal early-morning tide of traffic. He had been in the ditch since midnight, and though it was dry, or what passes for dry in a ditch, he was not anxious to remain in it any longer than he could help. He had disposed of his parachute by cutting it up and poking the bits into the sides of the ditch. As soon as there was a blink in the east he could get up and stretch his legs.

The blink was a long time coming. When at last he crawled out, he could see the country as flat as a plate. There was low cloud, and a shallow layer of fog spread out all over the fields. He began to walk through it. Sometimes it was no more than up to his knees, and sometimes it was well up over his head. Then he had to walk blind and trust to luck for his direction. The air was raw and cold, and he was stiff from his ditch.

He walked briskly, slapping his arms across his chest. With the practical side of his mind he was thinking about his job and hoping that his Dutch was good enough to see him through, but every now and then this practical side was broken in upon by thoughts of Delia. He wondered when he would see her again, and when they could be married, and where they would live and what they would do when the war was over.

Presently he could hear that he was coming to a road—the sound of wheels, the sound of a man calling to his horse. Mostly horse traffic round here, he supposed, now that petrol was so short—all commandeered for the occupation, or sent to Germany.

He made for the road and trudged along it. More than one cart passed him before he signalled for a lift. He picked a large comfortable man, and was told to jump up. The cart was full of green vegetables.

Antony had his tale ready. His name was Piet Maartens, and he had been working on a bulb farm—“but of course they're broke like everyone else, and I haven't had a smell of work since you know when.”

The man was gloomy enough about the chances of a job. “But of course if you've got friends in the town, they may be able to do something for you.”

Antony said he had an aunt there, a very good sort of a woman. “Keeps an eating-house, and she used to have very decent beer, but I suppose that's gone where everything else goes nowadays.”

The man had a good deal to say about that. He expressed himself with freedom, and hoped that the Dutch beer would choke the Germans who had stolen it.

They went on very comfortably like this, and Antony was pleased to find that his Dutch was passing muster. He did not say more than he could help, and once he had got the man going on the beer shortage there was really no occasion for him to talk.

They came into the town with the subject still not exhausted. Antony said thank you for his lift and dropped off.

Twenty minutes later, when he came into the eating-house kept by Vrouw Brandt, there were a few people there having coffee, or what passed for coffee nowadays. Vrouw Brandt was at the back of the room—a large comely woman with red hair shining in waves all over her head, and a complexion which still bore the light of early morning. She had grown stout, and she would never see forty-five again, but she was a fine figure of a woman and she knew it.

Antony walked in in his shabby country clothes with the dirt of the ditch on his hands, slipped an arm round her waist, and bent to kiss her cheek.

“Well, Tante, here's your Piet back like a bad penny.” He had come upon her unawares. She stood sideways to the room polishing china with a white linen cloth. He felt her stiffen, and wondered for a moment whether he was going to get his ears boxed—it wouldn't have been for the first time. Her hand lifted with the cloth in it, but it fell again. She pulled free and stamped an angry foot.

“Good for nothing that you are, to come creeping in like a thief and scare me out of my life!”

He sat down on the edge of the serving-table and smiled the smile with which he had coaxed her for gingerbread when he was eight and she the tyrant of his mother's kitchen. She had melted to it then, and had continued to do so ever since.

“Pleasant surprise never kills, dear Aunt.”

“Pleasant?” She tossed her head. “And what's pleasant about you turning up, I'd like to know! Out of a job too, by the look of you.”

Antony nodded. “I've walked my legs off, and I'm hungry.”

And this was true enough. Even the substitute coffee smelt like a beautiful dream.

Anna Brandt took up a cup and set it upon its saucer. Her glance travelled over him with disfavour from the unshaved chin, past the dirty hands, to the muddy boots. There was a large patch on one of them—a piece of corroborative detail which he could have done without. If it hadn't already rubbed a blister, it was going to the next time he had to walk a mile. She said in angry voice,

“No one eats food in my house with hands like that! And half the mud of the road on your feet! Get in and wash! You know the way.”

He was scrubbing his hands at the sink when she came through to him.

“Are you mad, Mijnheer?”

He looked up, grinning.

“Piet,
Tante Anna, and don't forget it.”

She made an impatient gesture.

“There's no one here. The girl has gone to the market, and I can tell you she doesn't hurry herself to get back. Why have you come? You are quite mad. When you did it before—well, it would pass as a joke. We hadn't these German pigs in the country then, and the worst that could happen would be a bit of gossip among the neighbours, and some of them thinking it's easy enough to say Aunt, but it doesn't make every young scallywag who says it your proper lawful nephew. But now, Mijnheer, it's not just a bit of gossip we're risking—and God knows the neighbours will always find something to talk about unless one's as ugly as sin. No, it's our lives. And you mayn't value yours, but I've got a use for mine.”

Antony went on washing his hands.

“If you go on calling me Mijnheer, Anna dear, I'm afraid it isn't going to be much use to you. Piet Maartens is my name, and I'm the son of your sister Marthe, the one you used to tell us about who was weak in the head and ran away with a no-account fellow from Friesland.”

Anna threw up her hands.

“If it stopped at being weak in the head! Mad—that's what you are, coming along here like this! What do you want?”

“I want to see Cornelius.”

“Dragging him into it too, are you? Well, they say shooting's an easy death. But mind, you and him'll get that. They'll put me in one of their filthy concentration camps, I shouldn't wonder—and by all accounts it's better to have a bullet in you and be done with it.”

Antony took no notice. He was drying his hands.

“Can you get word to him?”

She tossed her head.

“I can, but that's not to say I will.”

“Dear Anna!”

“Don't you ‘dear Anna' me! How long do you aim at staying?”

“I don't know till I've seen Cornelius. Look here, if he comes along at the rush hour he can slip out to the back, and who's going to be any the wiser?”

She stood there frowning.

“I don't know. The girl would be here. It's more than four hands can do as it is—I can't send her out. There's my own parlour—if you were there and he came in the back way, you could let him in by the window.”

“Is that the best way?” said Antony, and she jumped down his throat. He might still have been eight years old.

“There isn't any best way, I tell you! There isn't any good way at all. We'll all end up in our graves more likely than not. He'll scratch on the window, and you can let him in. But mind you latch the window after him and see there aren't any creaks. And see that you keep your voices down, and be as quick over the whole business as you can. There's no sense in asking for trouble.”

He laughed. “What an efficient woman you are, Anna! Lead me to the coffee substitute.…”

As soon as he heard the sound that he was waiting for, Antony turned out the light. It was the least possible tapping upon the curtained window of Anna Brandt's parlour. The light died, the darkness swallowed up the red carpet, the brightly polished tiles, the round table with its red plush cover trimmed with crochet edging. They vanished together with the family Bible, the Delft jars, and the photographs of the late Josef Brandt and of Antony's parents.

Antony crossed to the window and opened it, holding back the curtain. He said, “Come in, Con,” and Cornelius came in over the sill. The latch clicked to, the curtain dropped, and the light came on again. There was Anna's room, with every bit of furniture shinning with polish, and there was Cornelius, looking as impassive as if he had come in by the front door and he and Antony had been meeting every day. He walked to the chair which had been Josef's and sat down.