For the Good of the State

‘Huh! Or as clean as you know how, anyway!’ Audley shifted, to fix a direct eye on him. ‘Last night you were pissed off… You Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State didn’t know what the hell was happening, Tom— I know the signs… because I have been there before myself— in no-man’sland, with one hand tied behind my back, and one foot in a bucket, and some silly fool to look after… I have been there, so I recognize the symptoms… so don’t fuck me around, eh?’

This was bad, thought Tom: once again, he had underestimated the man, and he needed more time to sort out the how and the why.

‘What—?’

‘I said—’ Audley stopped suddenly as the road narrowed and fell away steeply between high earth-banks. ‘Watch your speed, man, watch your speed!’

Tom was already doing just that, with the garage man’s warning about the brakes suddenly ringing in his ear. The old car could certainly show a clean pair of rear wheels to its peers on the straight, he had established. But it wasn’t good running he had to worry about now, it was good stopping. And, from the way he was tensed up in the passenger’s seat, Audley was sharing his fears.

Slowly, under insistent pumping of the foot-brake, the car agreed to decrease its speed to the point where he could enlist the gears to help him. ‘I’m sorry, David. I was thinking of other things.’

‘So was I.’ Audley sniffed and hugged himself. ‘This bloody bocage— it always gives me the creeps.’

‘“Bocage”?’ Then Tom remembered Audley’s ancient history as a teenage yeomanry tank-commander in 1944, and seized on it gratefully. ‘You mean, this is like Normandy, is it?’

Audley didn’t reply, but sat hunched up and silent until Tom Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State himself recalled out of his subconscious the long lines of graves in the Polish war cemetery on the road from Caen to Falaise, so many of which marked the last resting place of tank crewmen who had died half a continent away from home, for their country’s freedom and in vain.

‘Yes—’ Audley sat up suddenly ‘—yes and no. Like and unlike.’

Sniff. ‘Funny thing, memory: it goes away for years. Then it comes back.’ He sniffed again, and turned towards Tom. ‘Now, young Thomas Arkenshaw… alternatively, you said. And, alternatively…

someone didn’t need to follow us yesterday because that someone already knew where we were going, hey?’

Tom nodded. Over the next ridge, then Mountsorrel would be somewhere down the other side, to the left. ‘It’s possible.’

‘Yes,’ Audley agreed harshly. ‘Our side knew. And Nikolai Andrievich’s side knew. And neither of those sides can be trusted, for a start. But there’s more to you this morning than that deplorable truth. Which, for another start, wouldn’t cheer you up—’

‘David!’ Old memories of blazing tanks, more often British and Polish than German in the bloody bocage, had given Tom more time, and more time advised him to come clean. Or, at least, fairly clean. ‘Let me—’

‘No!’ Audley cut him off. ‘Don’t attempt to deny it—or explain it… at least until I have finished thinking aloud, anyway.’ Sniff.

‘Yesterday you were unhappy… and, as you have admitted, somewhat careless. Today, you are happy, but careful… And you refused to talk business until we were away from the Green Man and in a safe—huh! relatively safe—car, in the middle of nowhere.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Right?’

Tom managed to open his mouth, but Audley forestalled him. ‘And I do not think—I do not believe— that your happiness is simply the product of youth and a good night’s sleep.’ A handkerchief appeared from nowhere and the old man blew his nose on it.

‘Whereas I had a dreadful night, full of fly-blown nightmares…

But that is because I have heard the chimes at midnight too often, and now I like to have my own true woman within reach beside me, and my own true mattress beneath me… But now the fresh air has blown the cobwebs from my brain and I can see clearly again.’

The old man balled up the damp handkerchief and stuffed it into the pocket of his pale expensive raincoat, and flourished a fresh one from another pocket. ‘So—I tell you this only for your dear mother’s sake—so if you are about to deceive me, I caution you to do it well. Because, for her sake, I have decided to trust you this morning until I think you are playing me false. But then, also for her sake, I will pack you back to that pen-pushing paper-hanger Frobisher, and you can make your peace with him as best you can.’

Audley wiped his face with the fresh handkerchief. ‘Is that crystal clear, now?’

They breasted the new ridge, and Tom caught a glimpse of heather-dark moorland away to his left, with its sharply treeless skyline under the rain-clouds. But he knew that he couldn’t see so far into Audley in spite of Jaggard’s calculations and the man’s own admissions—even in spite of that once-upon-a-time special relationship with Mamusia. Because Audley had his own true woman now; and, anyway, Audley was also not to be trusted, in his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State own right.

‘Crystal clear, David.’ And yet, in spite of that mistrust (and perhaps because of Mamusia; but more, perhaps, because he had never met anyone in the service like this strange, garrulous, dangerous old man), he felt himself drawn to him, and into the game. ‘If I double-cross you, then you’ll shop me. Right?’

‘Hmm…’ For the first time, Audley was taking notice of his surroundings. ‘Just tell me one thing then, Tom —’

‘One thing?’ They were going down again. But this time he had the right low gear in advance; because, although he could see nothing as the high Devon bocage banks reared up again on each side, he knew that Mountsorrel must be down there somewhere, just ahead and to the left, on its own spit of land above the ancient river crossing.