For the Good of the State

‘Right.’ Audley nodded submissively. ‘The door at the end of the landing is the one you want.’

‘Close all the doors behind you as you go.’

‘Okay—I know the rules.’ Suddenly there was a note of weariness in Audley’s voice which made Tom pause. The man might know the rules, but it was probably a long time since he had had to apply them, so there were allowances which had to be made. Indeed, he had said as much— I’m not in practice for this sort of game‘, he had admitted.

He grinned at the big man—big old man, was what he had to remind himself: considering that the last time Audley had been shot at (or the last time he was admitting to it, anyway) had been Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State before he, Tom, had been born… and considering also that the man had now just been shot at with his family around him and his garden bonfire smouldering peacefully—considering all of that…

he could have been a lot more troublesome. ‘It’s just a precaution, Dr Audley,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Almost certainly quite unnecessary. Because I think he’s long gone. I wouldn’t have put my head up if I’d thought otherwise.’

‘Aye.’ Audley gave him an old-fashioned look, as though he understood exactly what Tom was doing. ‘And you’d never be able to face your dear mother if you’d lost me, would you?’ Then his expression hardened. ‘So let’s get on with your unnecessary precautions, shall we?’

The old house was wrapped in stillness ahead of him, so that every sound he made echoed for an instant and was then extinguished as the silence damped it down. But at least that made their passage easier, the more so since the man at his back really did remember the rules, standing still whenever he stopped, and moving again only when he signalled, until they reached the room at the end of the landing.

Suddenly the carpet was thick underfoot, after the stone flags of the ground floor, which had seemed to have the whole world under them, and then the solid oak of staircase and landing, with only the occasional rug from Bokhara or Tabriz which (with everything else around him) had served to remind him that Audley did not depend on his pay for his lifestyle.

This was the master bedroom, with a duvet-covered bed tailored to Audley’s size and the loneliness of the long-distance runner before Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State finding any other occupant. But, more importantly, there were windows on three sides of it, with views of front and back.

‘Wait!’ Audley’s voice had recovered its note of command during their journey.

Tom watched him fumble beside the bed, observing his bedtime reading at the same time with a sense of unreality: on the oak table in the hall below there had been the whole morning’s take of newspapers, from the Sun to Pravda; but here was Patrick Wormald’s Festschrift for his old tutor, Wallace-Hadrill, of early medieval fame; and Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society somehow weakened his hold on more pressing matters.

‘What are you doing?’ He forced himself to check the terrace first, through an arrow-slit window alongside a very twentieth-century en suite bathroom which had been built into one corner of the vast bedroom.

‘I’m… I’ve just switched on the bloody alarm system—’ Audley straightened up cautiously, as though he well knew how close his head came to the beam directly above him ‘—is what I’ve just done. So now… any exterior visitor will be welcomed with a klaxon loud enough to wake the dead.’

Tom commenced the long walk to the dormer window at the other end of the bedroom. ‘So you’re used to this sort of thing, then?’

‘No—’ Audley followed him with his eyes ‘—no, we damn well are not!’

The sweep of gravel at the front, with his black Rover in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State middle of it, was equally empty. But Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society had hardened Tom’s heart. “Then why such a sophisticated alarm system?‘ He turned back towards Audley, setting the butt of the shotgun on the carpet.

Audley’s face became brutal. ‘There are such people as burglars—

they wear masks and striped jerseys, and have bags over their shoulders labelled “Swag”—don’t you have them in London?’

Audley paused. ‘Or Beirut? Or Athens? Or Cairo and Alexandria and Khartoum?’ Another pause. ‘Or is your brand of security purely political, and not capitalist?’

Tom admired the view from the third side, across open fields in which sheep were busy recycling grass on the edge of the downland ridge for half a long mile, up to a fence beside a road which climbed the ridge. That would be the road which connected with the track… but there was nothing on it now, of course.

‘I used to keep geese, to do the same job much less expensively.

And I ate the ones I didn’t sell at a profit,’ said Audley bitterly. ‘I rather like geese. They treat human beings with proper contempt.

But Faith doesn’t fancy them—either as geese or goose. And…

she’s a scientist by training, so she has to believe in electronic gadgets.’

Tom thought of the Persian carpets, which would roll up very easily, and of some of the other objects he’d seen. So burglars was fair enough—except for one thing. ‘And what is “limejuice”, then?’ He tore himself away from Audley’s rural tranquillity. ‘And why “limejuice”, anyway?’ He injected pure curiosity to soften the sharpness of the question with a half-smile, remembering that he Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State must make allowances.

Audley blinked. ‘I once had the doubtful honour of serving with an armoured regiment which couldn’t really protect itself properly when it ran into Germans.’ He blinked again. ‘In great big tanks.’

Tom waited. And then restrained himself, and continued to wait.

‘Eighty-eights were fortunes of war—misfortunes, rather… And Mark IVs were about even-steven—’ Audley looked clear through him ‘—the only trouble was, the Germans were better than we were, like the First XV playing the Second XV… On a good day, with the wind in our favour, and some of them sick,