Fear to Tread (8 page)

“Ah,” said Sergent Donovan. “Yes.”

“Next day Peter didn’t turn up at school. There was some cock-and-bull story about him having chicken-pox. I went round in the afternoon to find out about it. There was only old Mrs. Crowdy in. She said come in the evening, so I went round again, after I’d made a few inquiries about him first.” He told Sergeant Donovan about Bill Fisher and Jock’s Pull-In for Carmen. He omitted any mention of his own panicky conduct, but otherwise he gave him a fair account of it all. “That was last night. I saw Mr. Crowdy. There was no mistake about it that time. He
was
drunk.”

“Did he have anything to say for himself? It’s a thing people do sometimes when they’re drunk – talk.”

“Nothing very sensible. He talked in a general way about the dangers of stepping off the straight and narrow path. He might have meant something, or he might just have been philosophising.”

“That’s another thing they do when they’re tight,” agreed Sergeant Donovan non-committally.

“Now look here,” said Mr. Wetherall. He tried to remind himself that the formidable person in front of him had once, not so very long ago, been a boy to whom he had taught the dates of the Kings and Queens of England. “I insist on knowing what this is all about.”

Sergeant Donovan got up.

“You asked me if I thought it was an accident,” he said.

“Yes.”

“If it
was
an accident, all I can say is it’s not the sort I want happening to me.”

“What?”

“I don’t think Harry Crowdy fell off that bridge, Mr. Wetherall. Experienced rail men don’t fall off bridges – even if it’s a bit dark or slippery, and a mist about. Nor I don’t think that the train which went over him afterwards did all the damage. I think he was thrown over. And if you want the truth, Mr. Wetherall, I think he was broken up before he was thrown.”

“Broken up,” repeated Mr. Wetherall stupidly.

“A pick helve or a spade,” said Sergeant Donovan. “Not nice,” he added, as he walked over to the window.

Mr. Wetherall said nothing. He was thinking of Mr. Crowdy, as he had seen him the night before, red-faced, stupid, well-meaning, drunk – frightened.

“Why would anyone do that?” he said at last.

“They’re a nasty crowd,” said Sergeant Donovan. “I’d say they’re the nastiest we’ve seen in England for some time. And when money’s the object, they aren’t going to pull their punches. But all the same, I can’t see them doing a thing like that to a harmless old packet like Crowdy unless – well, unless they thought he was stooling.”

“Stooling?”

“Informing. There’s almost nothing they wouldn’t do to an informer.”

“This is Fawcus,” said Colonel Bond. “We hope to persuade him to join our committee. He’s had a lot of experience of educational problems.”

Mr. Fawcus was a small pink man with grey hair, very neatly parted, and rimless glasses. Mr. Wetherall shook hands with him warily and asked “Where – for your sins – did you teach?”

“I have never—ah—actually taught at a school,” admitted Mr. Fawcus, “but I have had a certain amount of experience of them. I was for many years on the governing council of the Kim-Alla School in Northern Nigeria.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall.

“And I was adviser on schools to the Government of Hyderabad.”

“Mr. Fawcus has strong ideas on the modernisation of education, haven’t you, Fawcus?”

Mr. Fawcus raised himself a couple of times onto his toes – a purely symbolic gesture, demonstrating the strength of his ideas – and said: “Speaking for myself I should like to see all curricula founded on a flexible basis of stenography, shorthand, double entry book-keeping, and elementary commercial law – only elementary, of course. Can’t turn boys into jurists. No, no. Just a basis of accountancy and a basis of law. What do you think, Colonel?”

“Well, really,” said the colonel. “What do
you
think, Wetherall?”

“I may be old-fashioned,” said Mr. Wetherall, “but I must confess that I hold the opinion that education is a general training of the mind for
all
vocations. I’m sure you agree, Colonel?”

“I’m just a plain man of action,” said the colonel. “Not one of your long-haired theorists. What do you say, Fawcus?”

“In a limited sense—”

“After all,” said Mr. Wetherall, “once you start on that line, where are you going to stop? If you try to foresee what job each boy’s going to do in life, and then get his poor little nose straight down to that particular grindstone, you’re back in the days of child labour and the Factory Acts.”

“I think you exaggerate,” said Mr. Fawcus. “In my experience—”

“—silly old fool,” said Mr. Wetherall to his wife, when he managed to telephone her. “Lock him in for an hour with one of my junior forms and he might begin to understand what education’s about. After all that I shall be too late to get back for lunch. Has Peter Crowdy arrived?”

“Yes. He’s here.”

“Is he all right?”

“I think so. He’s very quiet.”

“I’ll get home as early as I can this evening.”

When Mr. Wetherall got home he found his wife and Peter Crowdy sitting in front of the fire.

He thought at first that the scarlet patch in each of the boy’s cheeks might have been caused by the heat of the room, but then he realised that he was wrong. Although outwardly his pale-faced, reserved, polite, awkward self, there was now something at work inside. It was something bitter and shocking and only partly understood.

The first thing the boy expected was to have to answer questions. His defensive position told Mr. Wetherall that. Accordingly he asked him none at all. He talked for a time, in his easy way, to both of them, and soon after supper he sent Peter to bed.

“What’s wrong with that boy?” said Mrs. Wetherall.

“Shock, wouldn’t you think. Losing his father—”

“Yes, I know. But it’s something more than that—I thought—I don’t know.”

Mr. Wetherall badly wanted to talk to someone about things. It would have been nice to talk to his wife, but the ice of years is not easily broken.

He supposed that there might be marriages, not just work-a- day, good-enough, bread-and-butter marriages like his own, but the true and lovely thing itself where no barriers existed and no reticence was possible.

His mouth was open to speak when the telephone rang in the hall.

It was Sergeant Donovan.

He said: “Have you got that boy there, Mr. Wetherall?”

“Yes. I’ve just sent him to bed.”

“Best place for him. I rang up to warn you not to be surprised if you saw a couple of characters hanging about in the street. One of them might even be me.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Nothing in particular. We don’t want to lose this one, do we?”

“No,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Of course not. But has anything in particular—”

He was speaking to a dead telephone. Sergeant Donovan had gone.

He made his way slowly back to the sitting-room.

“Who was it?”

“Patsy Donovan.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Wetherall went on with her knitting without comment. Not long afterwards she rolled it all up into an untidy bag and went off to bed. Before he followed her, Mr. Wetherall went into the kitchen, got up on a chair, felt inside the cupboard in the corner, and turned off the gas at the main. He did this quietly and almost guiltily, but he did it nevertheless. Whatever Sergeant Donovan might say, in his opinion Peter Crowdy’s worst enemies were inside his own head.

Later, in bed, Mrs. Wetherall said: “That telephone’s a very loud speaker. You can hear every word from the drawing-room. Don’t tell me if you’d rather not, but—”

Fortified by the friendly darkness he lay back and told her everything.

At the end of it, and for perhaps the first time in their married life, she managed to surprise him.

“You always resented missing the war, didn’t you,” she said. “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall “I did. Why?”

“It looks as if you’ve got one on your hands now.” Then they both went to sleep.

Mr. Wetherall woke, for no reason at all, at five o’clock and tiptoed into the room next door. Peter Crowdy was sleeping peacefully. He then went out into the passage and looked out of the end window. It was difficult to be certain, but he fancied that somewhere among the shadows between the street lamps a man was standing. He got back into bed and, feeling that he was not going to get any more sleep, he composed his mind to his problems.

It occurred to him that he could do with a bit of help. It was all very fine and large for Alice to talk about war, but wars were fought by armies; and armies had Transport and Supplies and Signals and Provost and Intelligence Services. The latter in particular. What he most needed at the moment was an Intelligence Department.

Even as he considered it a name came into his head. Todd. Alastair Todd. “Sweeney” Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. So pleased was he with this inspiration that he at once fell asleep, with the smile still on his lips, and he awoke to find his wife shaking him and telling him that she had called him twice, that his toast was burnt to a cinder and don’t blame her, and did he want to be late at the school?

“That’s all right,” he said. “Not going in this morning. Too much to do.”

After breakfast he made three telephone calls. The first was to Peggy, telling her that he hoped to be in some time during the afternoon. If anyone important wanted him she must say that he had a touch of pulmonary gastritis.

“It was pulmonary gasworks last time,” said Peggy.

“All right, I’m going to a funeral. Near relative.”

He rang off, dialled “Trunks” and spoke for some time to a man called Ap-Lloyd, whom he seemed to know very well.

After that his address book came into play again and he dialled a number at Wimbledon.

The telephone at the other end went on ringing for quite a long time, but Mr. Wetherall persevered. Finally there was a “clunk” and a sleepy voice said: “Todd here.”

“It’s Wetherall.”

“Who?”

“Wilfred Wetherall.”

“Good God!” said the voice. “I thought it was the News Editor. No one else would have got me out of bed. What the hell do you want?”

“Some information.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Just at the moment,” said Mr. Wetherall firmly, “nothing. Eventually, I really think, possibly something quite big.”

“Hump!” said the voice. “The last time you asked me along, if I remember rightly, was when the Reds broke up that Fascist meeting in Thorneycroft Street and I got a black eye.”

“And a good story.”

“Is this as big as that one?”

“Bigger than that.”

“Crime?”

“I imagine so.”

“All right. It’s not really my pigeon now, but fire away. Only try and make it snappy, because I haven’t got my slippers on.”

“Well, this is what it is. I want to find a place – I imagine it would be a restaurant or a night-club, or a pub or something like that. The only thing I know about it is that those who are in the know call it the Aldershot Ladies.”

“You don’t want much, do you? Aldershot Ladies?”

“Yes.”

“Ring you back.”

When Peter Crowdy had repacked his one suitcase – he had pathetically few clothes but amongst them a set of good silk shirts a size too big for him – Mr. Wetherall took a cautious look out into the street.

He could see no one but the milkman and the lady from next door holystoning her front step. It was hard to be sure. A lot of people were passing and re-passing at the end of the road where the High Street crossed it.

He decided that a Wellingtonian simplicity was to be the order of the day. He went back to the telephone and rang up a Mr. Atkins. After enquiring about Mr. Atkins’ family (it seemed that Mr. Atkins too, was an ex-Battersea pupil) he asked him if his cab was available.

“On the spot,” said Atkins.

“Then would you please bring it round to the end of Brinkman Road. Don’t turn in. Park it fifty yards up in the High Street, facing north.”

“Quick get-away,” said Atkins. “What is it this time, Mr. Wetherall? Police after you?’’

“That’s right. Exactly ten minutes from now. And keep the engine running.”

It was eight minutes later when he and Peter let themselves out of the front door and walked down Brinkman Road. A man came out of the telephone box on the corner as they passed it, but otherwise their arrival seemed to cause no flutter. They crossed the road. The taxi was there all right. Atkins was leaning half out of the driver’s seat, apparently doing something to his windscreen wiper.

As they came level, Mr. Wetherall exclaimed: “Well now. Just the thing. Let’s take a cab.” He pulled the door open, pushed Peter in, threw the suitcase in and jumped after him. The cab started with a wrenching jerk which threw them both onto the back seat, twiddled around a corner, slipped along a side street, turned right and left half a dozen times and emerged unexpectedly into the Walworth Road.

“Clean as a ruddy whistle,” said Atkins cheerfully. “Did-jer see em all running?”

“I’m afraid I hadn’t time to look.”

“Three of em. Let’em run. Won’t catch us now. Where to?”

“Waterloo,” said Mr. Wetherall.

When Mr. Wetherall eventually got back to the school that afternoon he found a few matters waiting his attention. Colonel Bond had called and would call again later. Sergeant Donovan had rung up, and had said that he would try to catch Mr. Wetherall that evening before he left. An unknown gentleman had telephoned, but had refused to state his business. Fifteen boys had been sick. The stew at lunch was suspected.

“Quiet morning really,” said Peggy.

The telephone started again.

“Todd here. That business you were talking about this morning. What is it? Competition or something?”

“It’s a sort of competition,” said Mr. Wetherall guardedly. “Have you got the answer?”

“I’m not sure. ‘Two Aldershot Ladies’, so my colleagues tell me, is a term used by the lower income groups in connection with their pastime of darts.”