Then I was left alone. My watch said seven o’clock. The girl secretaries home from work would be taking their geyser-fed baths in Notting Hill Gate, the chaps from Lloyds, the Stock Exchange and the City offices would be suburb-bound through all points of the compass to their mock-Tudor villas and Kent farms, or be in their London clubs, hot hands already round their third whisky, Miggs would be in his office, feet up, listening to Alfred’s scurrilities, Mrs Meld would be leaning over the gate waiting for Meld to come back with the evening Guinness, Olaf, tired from badgering Mrs Burtenshaw for news of me, would be sunk in a rum depression, the Prime Minister would be struggling with his dress studs before going to a City Livery dinner, and clouds of starlings and pigeons would have settled around Trafalgar Square to unload another night’s guano harvest, and the world would go on turning, slowing down a little each minute but not really worried about deceleration. That was my worry, unique and unavoidable, I was decelerating fast. I would never sleep with another woman, never have a drop too much to drink again, never take that first morning draw on a cigarette and lie coughing happily in bed listening to Mrs Meld giving out with ‘Old Man River’—I suppose I should have been preparing my soul for the final fence. I even considered it, and then said, What the hell? My soul had been a non-runner for too long to think it could start steeple-chasing at this late hour, I turned over and went to sleep , . . sleep . . . chief nourisher in life’s feast. Well, tomorrow I would be absent from the board.
They woke me at nine o’clock. Four of them, Manston, Perkins, Hackett and a bloke I’d never seen before who had a long, drawn, hanging face and bad teeth. Sutcliffe no doubt was watching over the closed-circuit television.
Hackett and the strange man had me flat on my bunk the moment I made a move. Perkins stood by with a hypodermic syringe while Manston slowly rolled up my right shirt sleeve.
‘Usual disposal, Mr Manston?’ said Hackett.
‘No.’ Manston shook his head. ‘We’ve used Greenwich enough lately. Take him up river. Above Richmond.’
Hackett beamed. ‘Right you are, Mr Manston. Make a nice change. Jim and I can have a drink at Kew Green on the way back.’
I started to fight but they held me down. I started to shout and they let me. Alfred would have been proud of me. Perkins leaned over and jabbed the syringe in my arm. The fighting and the shouting died—and so did I—amazed how quick and painless it all was, and with no time to speculate on my destination.
*
It was the wink that did it. A little muscular flick of the eyelid that briefly spelled hope, a tiny signal picked up and registered within a tenth of a second.
Rooks were cawing, there was the noise of a tractor, distant, ploughing the Elysian fields or more likely carting away clinker from the great fires of Hades. Water was splashing somewhere, but was probably unreachable, a diabolical tantalization. Warmth and comfort. Maybe a gentle initiation that would rise to red-hot discomfort. Naked, of course. Naked ye come and naked ye go. Music, too. Organ music, deep, welling up, fading, a long slow monotony of sound. No brass bands, thank God or, more probably, the Devil. Voices, too. Probably the central bureau of registration, manned by trusties, privileged types who were allowed a long drink once every decade. Church bells, distant, subtle torture since to have heeded their call in the old days would have changed one’s ultimate destination. A dog barked, a long, fierce, gritty sound prefacing the biting of some toiling buttock, some pain-wracked body.
I lay there, eyes shut and in no hurry to open them. I considered the wink, that last-moment act, obscured from all the others, as Manston leaned over, watching me. It had to mean something, surely? Or had it just been a nervous tic? I didn’t want to open my eyes in case it had been. The beds in the place were comfortable anyway, even if they did tuck you in without pyjamas. I felt well, but bruised, rested but not eager for action. A telephone rang, distantly. That didn’t surprise me. From the tractor I knew that the place was modernized.
I stretched, took a deep breath and got a whiff of tobacco in the air. Snout. That meant I would have to get on the right side of the barons.
A voice said, ‘Why he so long?’
Nobody answered. The voice was familiar. I ignored it. I was comfortable.
There was the chink of a glass and then the long, slow hissing of a siphon. A delicious sound. Not to be ignored. I opened my eyes and sat up, naked.
It was a nice bedroom, diamond-paned windows, a candlewick bedcover, white carpet, a bow-fronted Sheraton chest of drawers, some tapestry-covered chairs and a little Regency desk by the window. From a transistor set on the desk came the sound of organ music. Through the window I could see a row of elms, rooks flying around their crests, and a stretch of hop garden with the bines well up the wires.
Olaf was standing by the window. He reached out and switched off the set. He looked absolutely miserable. Manston was sitting in a chair by the desk. He had a glass in his hand. Close to him was a low table, sunlight streaked across it, sparkling on crystal of decanters and glasses. A silver-meshed siphon stood on a silver coaster.
I said, ‘Is it Sunday?’
‘Yes,’ said Manston. ‘The bells are from Sissinghurst church. Wind’s in the west. Morning service.’
‘It’s a bit early for a drink, isn’t it?’
‘If you lead a conventional life, yes.’
He reached out for a decanter of whisky.
‘Three-quarters of
