A House in Order (8 page)

They played their wretched music after supper that evening, their band in the middle of the compound, the rest of them in rows round the walls. The music was only a tinkle and a clatter to me, but their cheering and clapping and snatches of laughter came over clearly enough – my friends who loved me and were 800 strong behind me. Having reminded me for half an hour that however much I dreaded them I had somehow to get to them, they stopped their noise suddenly, as if preparing for something special, and then began to sing:

After they had sung all the verses of this ‘Harry Ross’, which I had heard them bawling like cretins all through my time in barracks, they switched, as such types always do, to slow songs about cottages and roses. Then they had a short silence, after which they put the best bugler up on the stand alone and all stood at attention while he blew. When he stopped, they cheered him like madmen, laughing and yelling, and marched off at last out of the compound, orderly as ever, but singing: ‘With you tonight, Confucius’ at the tops of their voices. A few minutes after they were all inside, a party crossed the empty compound and the big gate opened to let out the Deputy, whose black car went off in the dusk just as all the prison lights came on. My food came at the same moment and my guards were changed, and it was only then I understood that I had been given
MACKENZIE’S
ORDERS
.

He arrived in the dark about two hours later – such a clever, quiet man that I never heard a sound until he was through the opening at the back of my shed, and then I only heard his breathing. He never said one word, never showed himself, never tried to attract my attention. Twice that night I heard him move – the first time
against a side-wall of the shed, to give me room to come in, the second time when the first glimmer of morning light came and I could hear him pulling his shirt over his head and covering himself as he tucked against the wall again. I sat in my chair as far from him as possible for hours after he came, pretending to fiddle with my wretched pots and mixing and stirring my shavings of soap and disinfectant as well as I could with fingers that had no feeling left. When I didn’t dare sit up any longer, for fear of the guard coming to see why, I laid my blankets at the entrance to the shed and lay down in them there, because I would rather die than get any closer to the man inside and hoped that the stuffy night would make my behaviour look natural to the guard. The only thought going through my head was that I must close the shed door and shut myself off from the prisoner, but I hadn’t the courage even to try, because it would mean getting closer to him and I dreaded the thought that he would speak to me. In fact, I waited for his voice all night and every time the wind made the ventilators rustle or there was a stirring from outside as the guard came near, I heard it as my name being whispered from inside. Then, I told myself: ‘You’ve only to wait till morning – you can close the door safely then’, but at some point when I had told myself this, it struck me that it was only until morning that I would have to hold out, because he wouldn’t dare to crawl out in full daylight and so must go at any minute. So I lay all the rest of the night straining to hear him move and praying that he’d choose a moment when the guard was furthest off, and not be shot so close that they would guess where he had laid up, or put a dog to trace him back to me.

But when daylight began, I could still hear his breathing, and the very sound of it drove me to panic. I thought
first: ‘He will be with you all day. What will you do?’. and then second, and much worse: ‘But they’ll know at the prison any minute now, and trace him here.’ But I had hardly had time to picture this – hearing the alarm bells ring out, watching squads running from the prison, the church bells taking up the alarm, and so on – when their reveille blew as it did every day, the flag rose on the water tower, and the prisoners marched out as they always did and were taken into the fields.

I never worked harder in the greenhouse than I did all through that day, because I knew that if I didn’t work my guard would suspect that something was wrong. And by going on and on in a desperate way I managed not to think too much – and thank God for that, because I had more thoughts going round in my head than I could bear to face and every one of them was enough to make me turn white. I inspected every plant in the house from its top leaves to its roots, and I picked off every single little leaf and shoot that was yellowing or sick, until I had almost a little pile on the path. I don’t think that for days now I had done anything to my plants that wasn’t automatic, because with all my pride gone and only fear inside me and dreams in my head, they might all have been sticks and stones for all I was able to notice them. I wouldn’t have been ashamed if they had all died on account of my having no feeling for them, but this was the last thing they meant to do and there was not one in all those scores that wasn’t thriving and so bursting with life that they put to shame any plants I had grown in peacetime. All I wanted to do myself was lie down on the path and die, but all I saw round me everywhere were signs of my skill and care, which seemed awful to me, because what was the use of it all and what good was it going to do me or anyone? If I touched anything
clumsily, I wanted to scream and whenever I made a noise, even a little scrape, it seemed like a gun going off or a hand reaching for my collar. The worst part of the day was my hour outside, because no matter how I tried to control myself, I couldn’t work my hoe and fork properly and they went so stiff in my hands that I hardly knew which way up I was trying to use them, or even what use I was putting them to. Everything seemed to tell me that while I was out the guard would go in and inspect my quarters, though he had never done so before, and what with watching him each time he drew close and imagining what he would do next, and all the consequences, I turned every minute into terror, and everything made worse by my knowing that the less naturally and easily I behaved, the more attention I would attract. But all the time I was thinking that everything in the world was bound to be in the same state as I was myself, it was all the other way around, just as it was with my plants in the greenhouse; everything was going on as naturally as ever and the guards so used to my harmlessness by now that they hardly noticed me – ‘Which will be all the worse for you when they find
him
’ was all I could conclude. When I felt my old cement path under my feet again and saw all my green pots in rows like a wall beside me, it relieved me unspeakably – as if nobody would pass
me
in order to search for
him,
as if
I
was safer standing between
him
and
them,
and nonsense of that sort – though in a few minutes all the relief was gone through dread of having him at all.

Just at dusk, as usual, the prisoners came back through the big gate – and about fifteen minutes later the alarm began to scream, taking my breath away with surprise. Just as I had imagined, the church bell took it up, and warders began to run across the compound. Little figures
in uniform seemed to appear from every direction, but all of them, as if obsessed, collected and then spread out at the double in the fields behind the camp. My two guards patrolled as usual up and down, but their discipline was not enough for their excitement, and each time they turned I could see them strain their eyes across the valley. The verandah became suddenly like a grandstand, with officers lining the rail and staring into the distance, until the dusk turned to darkness and the fields faded out of sight. But even then the lights of cars could be seen hurrying away over the field roads, while the bells of churches even further away took up the ringing.

When the noise was at its loudest, I heard my shed door being opened, and a little later it was closed. I couldn’t believe my good luck at first because I couldn’t believe anyone could be so mad to choose such a moment to run, but when I got the courage later to look into the shed, there was no sign of anybody and only the mark where he had slept. I felt so content I could hardly sleep; it was like a miracle that a man should be so crazy as to go at such a time.

But when it got light, I saw the idea. Soldiers and civilians were narrowing a circle all round the prison, moving inwards yard by yard as if tightening a belt. It hadn’t struck them that their man had got as far as me – I suppose
MACKENZIE
had rigged things in such a way that the escape seemed to have happened at the very moment it was discovered. But though it frightened me to think of such cleverness and efficiency, because of the risk it had meant for me, the interpreter came down the steps while I was thinking about it and said in a cold voice: ‘Your horticultural friend will be coming for you shortly – in two, or possibly three, days. Get ready to go – and count yourself lucky.’

I began to think that fate or destiny or something of that sort of name had arrived suddenly to make the whole of life happy. I had been happy enough just knowing that
MACKENZIE
’S
visitor had gone, but to be made twice as happy by knowing that I was going too turned me into a sort of fool. I walked up and down my house saying good-bye, almost laughing, to each guard as he paced into sight, to the verandah and the steps, to the camp below me, the circle of beaters around it, to
MACKENZIE
and my 799 friends. I started to feel proud of what I had done, with everything against me – surviving the winter, outwitting the Colonel, sheltering a prisoner, etc., etc., and with all these things to stand up to, still able to have reared three hundred-odd plants, all in marvellous health, and some of them rare and hardly known in the best botanical gardens. I gave all my happiness to them, spending the next three hours or so talking to them in an absurd way while I watered and fed them, and when I saw that one of the agronomist’s leaf-cuttings had put out roots into the gravel, I thought it mad that such a third happiness could be piled on me, and began to laugh and strut about and feel even more my old self than in my best peacetime days. My friend the guard was still black and surly, but I ignored him as the clod he was, and even when the young officer passed without so much as a glance at me, I only felt amused to think how helpless he was to worry me now.

With all this to satisfy me, it was almost dark – and the beaters drawing in a tight circle round the camp walls – before I thought of getting ready to go and began studying my pots and wondering which of them I might be forced to leave behind. Next morning, I began by putting all the most unusual ones in a square together, such as the cranesbills, storksbills, the house-leek and my
cuttings, and then adding the best examples of the more ordinary things, until what with a good many afterthoughts I had such a collection ready that there was little left to leave behind – and even the thought of leaving those made my hair stand on end as I thought of the house I had cleaned up so carefully going back to what it had been when I came, and every plant collapsed under the sun within a week. I found myself wishing that I wasn’t going at all, it seemed so wicked and destructive, and for a few moments I saw it all in my imagination – the stuffing blown out of the holes in the glass, the dust filling the house, the dead plants toppled onto their sides, the flies and parasites crawling and humming everywhere and the glass sheets growing dingier and shabbier week by week, until anyone who passed the wreck would wonder just as I had done at first what sort of monster had left such a disgusting spectacle behind. This made me want to take away with me every last plant in the whole house – which reminded me that it would be a job taking even the ones I had selected, because I had no boxes and hardly anything but rotten cartons.

When I went into the shed to see what was available, I saw what I had missed before – a folded paper left by my visitor, held down at one corner by a pebble. The message was written faintly with a hard pencil:

I went on with my work, as one does when one is too shocked to stop, and soon had the rotten cartons out of the shed and into the light of the house. But the sight of these miserable containers for all the plants I meant to take was so hopeless that after the first look I sat down
on my chair and almost gave up hope of taking anything. Then, the news I had just read began to break in and made me forget even my plants, because I was so thankful to know that
MACKENZIE
couldn’t do any more harm to me and I would be far out of his reach if not tomorrow, the day after. This got me out of my chair to where I had left the note, which I tore to shreds as I had the first one, and then with my boots scrubbed at the form the messenger had left in his sleeping place until no sign was left. But because the shock still kept coming back, I found myself having to repeat reminders again and again – such as ‘It is all quite simple. You won’t be here’ and ‘You have nothing to get desperate about. You’ll not be here’ – until I was fairly calm again and felt only hatred of
MACKENZIE
for trying to make use of me again. And so on, all through that whole day, with the shock coming back whenever I had really forgotten it and me having to tell myself again that all was well. All I wanted to think of was the next morning, with the sun rising over the valley and, after my mug of coffee, the agronomist’s car coming into sight on the road below. Long before they blew the camp reveille, I had my blankets folded and tied and my few things in newspaper, and the house-leek cuttings ready to hand to carry with me. I had a bad conscience about my plants and being ready now to leave them all, but thanks to
MACKENZIE
even my sense of duty didn’t matter compared with my relief in escaping him.

But no car came for me all that day, though I must have seen fifty at least running to and from the camp – and praying each time that each one of them would turn up the gravel road and be for me. But it was easy to guess that every car was connected with
MACKENZIE
’S
business, not mine, because all that day
the big gates stayed shut and the most the prisoners got was an hour’s walk in the compound, one platoon at a time. Every now and then, an officer would appear at the verandah beside me and pause in his duty to lean his hands on the rail and stare curiously down at the camp: even my guards had no interest in me or their household duties and could hardly wait for the moment in their patrol when they could turn and face the valley again. That afternoon, a squad of four, led by the young officer, inspected the garden foot by foot, and when they were done came to the greenhouse door, where the young officer without a word to me or even looking at me, walked through the house, looked into the shed and then returned into the garden. It seemed to me that nobody expected to find anything, but that they were preparing for something they might be accused of.

One feels a fool going through the old routine when one has already left it at heart and is only full of disappointment at being there to do it. But when dusk came, and there was no agronomist, I turned on the tap as always and did my rounds, saying to myself that this was only the second day and that the third must certainly be the one. I was so confident, even though disappointed, that I never even thought to myself: ‘It
must
be tomorrow if you are going to escape
MACKENZIE
.’ But just doing the rounds hurt my feelings enough, because nobody who has never had a greenhouse can know what a wonderful place it is to be and the way in which the things you grow there respond to the care you give them, so that it is like treachery to desert them. When I looked at the cranesbills alone, I said to myself: ‘If you were a
TRUE HERO
, you would never let them die’ and tried to imagine the sort of grower who would tie himself to the staging or sham all sorts of sickness rather than let himself be taken away – and in April, of all months, which is June under glass. My mind began to work so many ways at once that I hardly knew what I was thinking of doing – going one moment to the shed and finding strips of cloth to strengthen the cartons, then in a sweat to think of
MACKENZIE
, then in panic wondering if the agronomist would come, and imagining one second the Colonel’s hard face and, the next, another form stretched on the shed floor and dogs and soldiers bursting in, etc. And then, before it got quite dark, I looked at everything in sight for the first time, as one does when one is leaving a place forever: I looked at the guards and saw their faces and uniforms in details I had never noticed, and saw how the verandah was made and what was really in the garden, etc., all as if I had just arrived and was inspecting a new life. As for my plants, I couldn’t believe I had grown them or worked with them for months, and when I sat on my chair and stared at the foliage and buds, it made me wonder what world I was in and how I could be in it. Then I happened to notice my hands and saw that they were twitching and trembling as if I was going mad, which frightened me enough to pull myself together and try to get some sleep, though I dreamt all night that I was a traitor.