window.
Juliet was delighted, too, and we worked on the document until two o’clock in the morning.
At ten o’clock I drove round to Hurley Mews, of Belgrave Square, and found his number, 25, and saw it painted on the door.
At first I thought I had gone to the wrong house. The window panes were broken or missing. The interior looked gutted, the paper hanging in shreds on the walls.
When I had checked the number with the address he had written for me I thought I might as well ring the bell, but it didn’t work, of course, so I knocked. It was quiet in the mews, and very deserted, considering the time of day.
When there was no reply, I tried the door, and found it unlocked. I went in, not knowing quite what to do.
In the event, I didn’t have to do anything much, except gaze for a moment at the dusty, uncarpeted stairs, because inside, on the floor, was a buff-coloured envelope addressed to me.
It was typed on my own machine, of course, like the other notes, prepared in advance for just such a contingency. The message was quite short:
I told you the truth. We have been very patient with you. It is as well we met.
Ricketts.
I stared at it, feeling suddenly sick. And then dizzy; and then neither sick nor dizzy but just numb, my brain refusing to function clearly.
Then my heart started beating very fast indeed. I did not tremble, but I heard my heart beats growing louder and louder in my ears.
After a while I tried to think.
I saw now the three lines of defence.
First, the self-generated attempts by the little fish to save themselves; then the partial truth, revealed by Col. Pearson; finally the full truth, told me to my face, blatantly, by the man calling himself Ricketts.
I stared down at the note again, re-reading it, while the fear pain, which is not exactly a pain, but more of a muscular contraction, caught me in the stomach.
Outside, a late autumn breeze blew gustily, the hanging, shredded wallpaper rustled. A little trickle of plaster detached by the wind dropped at my feet, as if it had fallen from the nest of some animal.
The peasant, even the humblest peasant, particularly the humblest peasant, thinks he is safe in his obscurity and comparative anonymity. Let me be, he says, let me till the soil and I will mind no other business but my own, but he never was, never is and never will be safe, I thought.
One innocent, unlucky step, even on the well-trodden paths, and he comes within the scrutiny of the eyes in the surrounding jungle, and if he is alert he can hear the faint crackle of twigs and the slither of the hidden bodies in the undergrowth. He does well to shift his spear forward, and make the sign of the Cross, or glance towards Mecca, or finger his sacred, pagan amulet.
Men must fight, and some will win and some will lose, as I had lost.
For the greater the cause, in the end, the greater the tyranny which it erects to defend itself. Before the noble and good concept of complete democracy a man might travel where he wished in the world, without much let or hindrance, whereas now he was boxed in by frontiers, passports, and visas and walls, and interdicts, and laws, and police, to preserve the liberty and freedom of the individual.
And under some monarchies it was permissible to cry, “Down with the monarchy!” and under some democracies it was forbidden to cry “Down with democracy!” and under dictatorships it was forbidden to cry “Down with dictatorships!” and it was all, all in the interests of the freedom of the individual.
So the peasant must be vigilant, taking care not to be pushed around, and if necessary the peasant must fight, as he always has done, even though his fight end in martyrdom, or is brief and un-heroic, as mine had been. It all helps.
Did I really think all this, as I read the note from the man calling himself Ricketts?
Certainly not.
It was thought out and disentangled afterwards. But at such moments there is an exploding germ, a chaotic, expanding universe of logic and emotion, which contains within itself the essentials for future dissection, and this I experienced.
This, too, I did think, in sadness and despair: the tribe is so busy protecting the tribe, that it has no time to protect the individual.
Then I felt upon my neck an increasing coolness, as the street door was opened more widely. But before I could turn round I was struck on the nape of the neck, not by an instrument, but by a hand which hurled me so violently forward that I staggered and fell at the foot of the stairs.
I looked up from the dust, still clutching the note in one hand, and in the other doorway I saw Ricketts, still wearing his Gunners tie, and the man who called himself Sergeant Matthews, with his good-natured, brown bovine eyes, and two other men, one in a knee-length leather jacket, whom I recognised.
Ricketts said:
“You haven’t been playing fair with us, have you?”
I made no reply.
It is tempting to put into my mouth, in retrospect, some telling riposte. But I said nothing, because I was too afraid. I would like to explain that feeling. It was partly a natural fear of death, but partly also because I had a vision of Juliet waiting for me, and the hours passing, and Juliet still waiting.
“We have been very patient-haven’t we?” said Ricketts, and kicked me in the ribs. “Well, haven’t we?” he asked again, and kicked me again.
I nodded. He said:
“I can slug you and gag you and tie you, and put you in a crate which is upstairs, or you can come voluntarily with us in the back of the van outside. Which do you want?”
“I’ll come,” I said.
“Well, get up then. Go on, get up.”
I got to my feet slowly. Grimy. Dazed. Beyond hope. Thinking of the red geranium.
I heard him say:
“This man’s got a pistol with a silencer.”
I nodded.
I stumbled towards the door, and the group parted, and then closed round me. Outside stood a nondescript green van. I had not heard it draw up. I climbed into the back. There was no partition between the back and the driver’s seat. I waited for the others to get in.
The van had no side windows, and there were no seats at the back. Brown-eyed Matthews and a fourth character, a squat, sallow-skinned type, waited to climb in after me. Sallow-Face motioned me to sit on the floor. Brown-Eyes slumped down opposite me. He caught my eye for a second, gave an almost apologetic half-smile, shrugged, and looked away. I saw Leather-Jacket open the driver’s door, and Ricketts by the opposite door. Ricketts was saying something to Sallow-Face, who had paused by the rear door of the van.
Through the windscreen I saw a big, dark-blue van manoeuvring to turn in the narrow mews about twenty yards away. It seemed to be having some difficulty. In fact, when it was broadside on it stayed that way, as though the engine had stalled, though in fact the engine had probably been switched off, because almost at once four men in plain clothes jumped out of the back and began to approach us at a sort of half-run, half-walk speed.
Leather-Jacket glanced at them, then flicked his head round and looked in the other direction, and then shouted something, and looking through the rear of the van I saw the exit from the opposite end of the mews blocked by two black cars, shining, meticulously clean, side by side, fronts pointed towards us. Four other plain- clothes men were approaching from that direction, at the same half-run, half-walk speed. I could see them quite clearly because Sallow-Face was no longer blocking the view at the rear of the van.
Ricketts and Leather-Jacket had slid momentarily out of sight, but I heard the thud of their feet as they pounded back to the house. It took Brown-Eyes a few seconds to gather what was happening. He was fumbling
