please?”
If he had asked to be directed to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth,
“Yes.” Now the landlord was nodding. “Miss Becky . . . but she may not be in. I could phone her from here, if you like?”
“That would be most kind.” If he nodded again, his head would fall off. But he must remember where he was. “I may have a drink, meanwhile?” He looked over the range of bottles behind the bar, dummy1
and then at the beer pump-handles. “Lowenbrau—a halfpint, please.”
As he watched the landlord draw the beer he realised suddenly what it was that Audley had won from Cecil. “You will join me, please?” He put a ?5 note on the bar.
“Thank you, but no.” The landlord set the glass down. “It’s only just gone twelve—too early for me. I’ll go and phone for you, though.”
Benedikt drank some of the beer. He realised that Audley had been right—this was Low-en-brow, not Lowenbrau.
A very pretty girl appeared from a door behind the bar, and smiled at him. “Are you being served?” she inquired.
Benedikt lifted his Low-en-brow. “Thank you, yes. Do you serve lunch, please?”
“Bar snacks—what would you like?” She handed him a menu.
The bar snacks were very reasonably priced. And the Low-en-brow wasn’t at all bad, really. And the girl was pretty, and the landlord was being helpful—come to that, even Dr David Audley had been helpful in his equivocal way, just as Cecil had been polite after his fashion. And here he was, an innocent German scholar, abroad on a summer’s day in a tranquil English valley of the sort that few mere tourists ever discovered, since there wasn’t a single sign-post to direct them to it.
“Thank you, but no.” He looked at his watch. “It is only ten minutes after twelve—that is too early for me.”
The pretty girl gave him another sunny smile, and turned away to dummy1
start re-arranging the glasses behind the bar.
It was only instinct, of course . . . that prickling at the nape of the neck which came even against reason from some undiscovered part of the brain, although it always seemed to travel up the spine from the small of his back . . . or, if not instinct, then more simply his subjective reaction to the oil-and-water mixture of so much innocence here with what he knew about Audley and what lay somewhere in that quiet, tree-shaded churchyard.
Then the landlord came back, and as Benedikt rose from the bench on which he had seated himself he thought the man exchanged a glance with the girl. But he also thought he might have imagined what he thought, for she was the sort of girl with whom glances must often be exchanged.
“I’m sorry, but Miss Becky isn’t at home.” The landlord shook his head apologetically. “But I could phone again—they say she could be back any time . . . if you like to wait . . .” He shrugged. “Or . . .
I’m sure it
“Thank you.” Benedikt was pleased to have established his foreignness. “But you will take for the telephone calls, please ... So I will go to the villa, and then return—yes?”
Outside, he first felt so absurdly and irrationally glad to be in the fresh air again, away from the claustrophobic little barroom, that he concluded he was being frightened by shadows of his dummy1
imagination. In the sunlight, with the green leaves everywhere, and the birds singing and fluttering in the trees, there was nothing to fear.
Not the small boy sitting on the churchyard wall, anyway: it was the same snub-nosed Benje who had pushed past the car, with his racing-cycle now propped up beside him.
He gave the boy a nod of recognition as he pushed open the wicket-gate into the churchyard.
It was an English churchyard like any other, with its scatter of newer gravestones among older ones on which the inscriptions ranged from the barely decipherable to mere litchen-covered indentation which only God could read. There was a neat little gravel path meandering between the stones and the occasional yew-tree, to divide just short of the porch, one branch leading directly to the door, the other curving round the building.
Under other circumstances Benedikt would have entered the church, as he had always been taught to do, to say a prayer. But the sun was warm on his face, and in these circumstances, in this place at this time, he judged that Mother would forgive him for breaking her rule, and would allow him to say the words of her old Englishman under the sky, as they had originally been prayed—
Instead, he followed the curving path along the side of the church, to the newest grave of all, which had instantly caught his eye.
dummy1
HERBERT GEORGE MAXWELL
CBE, DSO, MC, RA
1912-1982
The inscription was cut deep into the new headstone: it would take centuries of wind and weather to erase it.
Under the date, but less deeply incised because of its complexity, was a military badge consisting of an antique cannon surmounted by a crown, standing upon the single Latin word ‘Ubique’.
