For the Good of the State

They may try again.’

‘Oh…’ It sounded not so much like anger as exasperation ‘… oh, all right, Tom—have it your way, then! Let me think, now…’

Tom didn’t require an order, he was surprised enough not only with Jaggard’s second thought, but also with his almost-confirmation of that knife-thrust of suspicion.

‘All right, then—’ Now Jaggard was his old self again ‘… I’m not going to call out the anti-terrorist squad, or the Special Branch, to line every hedgerow. There probably isn’t time, and we as good as promised Panin’s people that we wouldn’t interfere with his business with Audley… Apart from which we might scare off these “Sons of the Eagle” of his, which would only make matters worse, undoubtedly.’

That sounded suspiciously like ‘any aid, short of actual help’.

Indeed, it sounded even more like Jaggard covering his flank against awkward questions in some future inquiry. But what else Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State could he expect? ‘Yes, sir?’

‘But I’ll do what I can for you—I’ll put what I can scrape together on the road. They’ll be just over your skyline in a couple of hours.

And you’ve got the contingency number.’

‘Yes.’ Not good enough. ‘Yes.’ Tom came to a decision. ‘I’ll call you as soon as we’ve got anything.’ He had the contingency number. And he also had another number. ‘Goodbye.’

Audley was mercifully still wrapped in dreams, or daydreams, as he dialled the other number.

‘Green Man Hotel—can I help you?’

I hope so! ‘Room 12, please.’

‘Room 12—putting you through, sir.’

Tom’s conscience pricked him, but only slightly.

‘Hullo there?’

The conscience-pricking sharpened, and he was suddenly aware that his hand was sweaty on the receiver. ‘Listen, Willy—’

Audley yawned, and stretched against his seat-belt. ‘You’ve been a most unconscionable time, dear boy. What have you been doing?’

‘I’m sorry, David.’ Of course the car started at the first touch once more, with malignant obedience. ‘Everyone was busy saving the world.’

‘Oh yes?’ There was only the merest hint that the unconscionable time had re-aroused the old man’s suspicions, which the episode in Farmer Bodger’s yard had momentarily allayed. ‘Since the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State weekend is with us, I’m surprised you found anyone at all there.’

Better to counter-attack, as though from a clear conscience. ‘I didn’t think you were worried.’ He put his foot down as the road opened up ahead. ‘I saw you snoring.’

‘I was not asleep!’ Audley sniffed, and wiped his nose on the back of his huge dirty paw like a geriatric schoolboy. ‘I was thinking of Kipling and Dunsterville… and fact imitating fiction, actually.

Because he must have written Puck of Pook’s Hill… oh, all of thirty years before Dunsterville got the dirty end of the stick on the Caspian—just like Parnesius got the dirty end defending the Roman Wall, and de Aquila did at Pevensey—one of your few good Normans, Tom, defending England for bad Normans against worse ones!’ He studied Tom for a long moment. ‘You’re not married—? No, I can see you’re not! But when you are, and your union is blessed with a son or a daughter… and preferably with a daughter like my Cathy… I shall then present one of my First Edition Pucks, suitably inscribed, to your offspring… In the remote hope that she—or even he— may accidentally read Puck’s Song in it, and then get some faint idea about what it’s all about—

“As for my comrades in camp or highway, That lift their eyebrows scornfully, Tell them their way is not my way—

Tell them that England hath taken me!”

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘But no—I have not been asleep, in answer to your fairly insulting statement. Because, if I looked as though I was snoring, then that is only because I can no longer breathe through my nose.’

Tom felt chastened. But he also wondered whether the old boy had a secret and medicinal hip-flask; only he couldn’t smell anything suggesting that. ‘You weren’t thinking about Panin, then? Or Zarubin?’ Another road-sign, sprouting out of a Normandy-bocage-high bank, indicated that Lynmouth and Lynton were now dreadfully close, with Willy still far behind. ‘Don’t they rate ahead of Kipling, at the moment?’

‘Oh, they do—they do!’ Audley had seen the same sign, but it didn’t seem to frighten him. ‘I thought of them first off, when I made those silly signals to you, Tom—for which I really must apologize… when you were busy, too. But that was when I came back to Kipling, from our previous conversation. And I must admit that I found him much more interesting to think about. And more relevant too, by God!’

‘Relevant?’

‘That’s right. Because he’s already said it all. The way it is, the way it always was. And the way it always will be, Tom—’

There were houses ahead, just the first irregular scatter of them here and there, half-hidden on a steeply- wooded hillside.

‘—which, of course, you know all too well, as you demonstrated back in that farmyard. But which, sitting in my comfortable research department, protected by my great age and seniority, I keep having to remind myself:

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

“No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat, Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow.”‘

There was