La's Orchestra Saves the World (21 page)

She told him about the slips—the uncle in Frankfurt and the
we
rather than
they
. He listened carefully, and raised an eyebrow over the
we
.

“Does that sound fanciful to you?” La asked. “I was listening to a story on the wireless the other day about a landlady …”

He smiled. “Oh yes, I heard that. I was in the mess having a cup of tea and it came on. I listened to the whole thing.”

“It was silly,” said La. “Very melodramatic. But it made me think.”

“So you think that you and I are in the same position as that landlady? And Dab is our commercial traveller?”

It sounded ridiculous, put that way, but that, she supposed, is what she thought. She nodded. “Something like that.”

Tim lit his cigarette. La did not like the smell of tobacco, but tolerated it. Everybody smoked now, it seemed, and one could hardly object to the RAF doing it.

“All right,” he said. “We can look into it. My first reaction, though, is that there’s nothing to it. Remember that lots of Poles are German-speaking. Of course Hitler has grabbed
many of those and made them join his army. But there must be some who are not too keen on the Nazis.”

She listened. Confiding in him had been cathartic, and now she felt there was nothing more to say. She had decided it was her duty to betray Feliks, and now she had done it.

Tim looked at her quizzically. “I take it that there’s nothing else. You didn’t see him do anything that made you wonder?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Well, then, there’s a chap at the station who handles this sort of thing. He can get somebody down from London.”

It seemed so bleak. Somebody down from London would interrogate Feliks. And if they found out that he was an enemy agent, then they would execute him. War was like a game; one side did this and the other side did that. There were the rules, and these stipulated that those who played without uniforms would be shot out of hand.

Tim blew smoke into the air. “I wouldn’t worry, La. It’s highly unlikely that Dab is anything other than what he says he is. I like him. I don’t think I would ever feel like that about a spy. I like to think I could tell.”

She thought about this for a moment. What he said was reassuring, but there was still the question of the theft. They had not talked about that. La raised it now, and Tim shook his head vehemently.

“Can’t be,” he said. “I just can’t imagine him taking anything. He’s not a thief, he’s …”

“A gentleman?” La supplied.

Tim laughed. “Exactly. I told your policeman—what’s his name?”

“Percy Brown.”

“Yes, I told Percy Brown it was highly unlikely. He telephoned me because Dab had given my name when he was arrested. He said I would speak for him. So this Brown chap phoned and I said that I didn’t think it very likely that Dab would steal anything.”

La remembered what Henry had said about the possibility that the money would be found in Feliks’s room. She asked Tim about this.

“Brown said he took a look and there was nothing there. He implied that they didn’t have much proof, and that at the moment it was just the farmer’s word.” He paused. “I think they’ll release him, although the intelligence people might want to hold on to him for a little while before they do that. They might take him down to London for a couple of days, but I suspect that he’ll be back. He’ll be playing the flute again in your little band, La. Don’t you worry.”

S
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, when she had finished with the hens, La cycled over to the pig farm. She had seen Henry briefly that morning, but they had not spoken very much. He had made some remark about the weather, and she had given a vague reply. There was still a gloat in his eye, and if he was waiting for a chance to discuss Feliks’s arrest, she would not give him that.

The pig farmer was grooming his horse when she arrived. He was a tall man, with heavy eyebrows and an aquiline nose. Feliks had said that he was a keen horseman, which somehow La did not associate with pig-farming, but here was the evidence.

He did not seem surprised to see her. “You’re the woman who looked after him?” he asked. “The woman with the garden?”

She nodded. “Yes. He helped me in the garden.”

The farmer continued with his grooming, running the brush down the animal’s flank. He slapped at a fly that had alighted on the horse.

“A nasty business. Percy Brown was round here this morning, with him.”

“With Feliks?”

“Yes. They were in a car. I’ve never seen old Percy Brown drive a car, but he had somebody from Bury at the wheel, I think. They came to let Feliks get his things. He’s cleared out now.”

The farmer looked at La and saw the effect of his words. “Sorry. I can see you’re a bit upset about this. Nice fellow, Feliks. And not a thief, I’m pleased to say.”

La caught her breath. “No? Percy Brown said that?”

The farmer took a small metal comb out of his jacket pocket and began to scrape the impacted horse hair from the grooming-brush. “Yes. Percy Brown took me aside and said there was no real proof that he had pinched Henry Madder’s money. Miser that Henry is. Eight hundred quid? Did you hear that? It’ll be one of the gypsies down at Foster’s. Light-fingered lot.”

“So why didn’t they let Feliks go?” She knew, of course, but she had to ask.

The farmer started to brush the horse again. “Who knows? Something to do with being Polish perhaps?”

• • •

SHE WAITED
to hear from Tim, thinking that he might telephone her. But no word came. Feliks had been arrested on a Monday, and had been driven away on Tuesday. It was now Friday, and La thought that if Tim had not phoned her by mid-afternoon, then she would get in touch with him. She did not like to disturb him at the base; they needed to keep their lines open and private calls were discouraged. She was also unsure if he would know anything; but she had at least to ask.

La attended to the hens, which took her more than three hours, as there was cleaning out to be done. Henry was watching her from his kitchen window, but when she went to stack the eggs in their box he was nowhere to be seen. She decided that he must have been told that Feliks had been cleared of the theft, and imagined he would be sulking. He would not have changed his mind about Feliks’s guilt; she was sure of that. She could just hear him saying, “Percy Brown got it wrong again!” He had little time for Percy Brown, she knew, and he would presumably have even less time for him now. A long time ago there had been an argument between the two of them, and Henry’s resentment had simmered. The country was like that; some arguments went back over generations; disputes over fields and boundaries, livestock, marriages.

Back at the house, La tried to busy herself with domestic tasks. She did the laundry—in her distraction she had
put it off over the last couple of days, but now she was running out of clean blouses and had to do it. She scrubbed and applied washing blue, and thought of Feliks in London, facing his accusers. She wondered whether they would present him with the evidence against him—such as it was; if they did, then he would know who had betrayed him.

At noon, with the washing pegged out on the line, she decided to go over to Mrs. Agg’s. She had harvested carrots and had too many. Agg liked carrot cake, according to Mrs. Agg, and La knew that their carrots had been destroyed by pests that year. Carrots would be welcome.

Mrs. Agg was in her kitchen. She took the carrots gratefully. “Carrot cake,” she said. “Agg loves it.”

La smiled. “I know. You told me that once. There’ll be more carrots. I’ve got lots.”

Mrs. Agg went to a cupboard and took out a small packet. “These are dates,” she said. “For you.”

“How did you get them?” La asked—and immediately regretted the question. One did not ask about luxuries; one was simply grateful for them.

“I had a spot of chicken on my hands,” said Mrs. Agg. “And Jimmy Mason had some dates that he’d got from heaven knows where. He’s not too keen on dates and so …”

“Of course.”

La slipped the dates into her pocket and watched as
Mrs. Agg put the kettle on the range. Then she saw the new gramophone at the other end of the room.

It was standing on a table, with a small stack of records at its side. La looked enquiringly at Mrs. Agg. “That’s new.”

Mrs. Agg glanced in the direction of La’s gaze. “That? Oh yes, that’s Lennie’s. He loves music—always has. Bands. That sort of thing.”

La rose and crossed the room to stand beside the gramophone. The turntable was covered with a rich, red baize; the head of the arm was shining silver. “His Master’s Voice,” she said. “This is very nice.”

She picked up the record on the top of the pile and read out the label.
Billy Cotton and His Orchestra
and underneath
Ellis Jackson Plays
. “Lennie’s?”

Mrs. Agg nodded. “He plays them again and again. It drives poor Agg up the wall.”

La turned round. The door that led from the kitchen into the yard had opened and Lennie had entered. He looked at her quickly, and then looked away again. La smiled at him and greeted him, but got only a curt nod in return. She noticed that Lennie was carrying a large parcel wrapped up in brown paper and tied with white string. She did not want to stare, but her eyes were drawn to the parcel and then to the leather jacket that he was wearing. The jacket was clearly new; a soft brown leather with sheep’s fleece lining at the collar—the sort of jacket that pilots wore.

Mrs. Agg intercepted La’s glance. “Lennie, Mrs. Stone has brought us some carrots for carrot cake. Isn’t that kind of her?”

Lennie said something that La did not quite catch and then hurried through the door that led into the rest of the house.

“It looks as if Lennie has been shopping,” said La. “His new gramophone. And that was a very nice jacket he was wearing.”

Mrs. Agg’s eyes narrowed. “Lennie’s not a great one for shopping,” she said. “No man is. But he saves up his money and every so often he has a little spree.” She spoke firmly, as if to dare La to contradict her.

La did not say what she was thinking. The coincidence was just too great. Henry Madder loses eight hundred pounds and Lennie Agg goes on a shopping spree. There might be no con nection, but La remembered something Dr. Price had said in Cambridge: “People always deny that
post hoc
means
propter hoc
. But so often, Ferguson, it does, you know. It just does.” She could not remember in what context Dr. Price had made this remark, but it had lodged in La’s mind, largely because she had used it that very evening when dining in Hall. There had been a heated debate on T. S. Eliot and modernism, and she had entered the conversation with the observation that one had to be careful not to conclude that
post hoc
was
propter hoc
. There had been a silence: nobody could see the relevance of the remark, but
nobody wanted to be thought stupid. The emperor’s new clothes are often insubstantial, but, as in the story, there are few who want to be the first to ask a gauche question.

After her cup of tea with Mrs. Agg, La walked back down the lane sunk in thought. It was just before one in the afternoon, on a still day. Although it was late autumn, the sky was filled with clear blue light, and was cloudless, apart from several faint lines and whirls of vapour, fast dispersing, high above her—where aeroplanes had briefly danced, one with another in anger, or so she assumed. A year ago this choreography would have been part of the desperate fight that they knew would determine their fate; now it was merely part of a battle that seemed set to continue for years, as the last one had, until one side bled the other to exhaustion. There could only be one outcome, of course, and everybody, it seemed, knew what that would be; nobody doubted but that Hitler would be crushed, yet it was taking so long, and was such a dispiriting business. What would people remember of this time, La asked herself. The drabness? The fear? The sheer human loss? Or would they remember the camaraderie, the sense of national purpose, the conviction of being engaged together on something immense and dramatic?

She felt somehow dirtied by what she had seen in the Aggs’ kitchen. There was Lennie, able-bodied and every bit as fit to fight as that boy from the village who had been torpedoed last week and whose mother she had seen sobbing
in the post office, comforted by the postmaster’s wife; there was Lennie, who had taken advantage of Henry Madder, a virtual cripple, and stolen his eight hundred pounds. Mrs. Agg must have known that Lennie had suddenly got his hands onto money, with his new gramophone and his leather jacket, and that large parcel, whatever it had contained. She must have wondered where he got it; there would be no secrets in a family like that, all living cheek by jowl in that small farmhouse. La could have told her about the money, could have mentioned the theft, but did not, because just to mention it would have amounted to an accusation, and one could not fall out with neighbours in the country. They relied on one another. She and the Aggs had to live together, and if she denounced Lennie as a thief that would be impossible. Besides, he was, she thought, dangerous. He had broken into her house before, and he would do so again if he thought that she had informed on him. But she knew that this was how evil prospered; this was how appeasement made tyrants confident. One turned a blind eye; it was the same with countries, as it was with people.

She made herself a cup of tea and took it out into the garden, to drink it there. The ground was hard with the cold; the clear weather had brought frosts at night that had frozen the crenellations of the mud into tiny, brittle fortifications. The mounds where she had planted potatoes were
wavering lines, miniature hills and valleys marching across the garden’s landscape. This was her plot of earth, the bit that she would have to die to defend, if it came down to it.

She suddenly felt defeated, and lonely. She had not realised how important were the visits that Feliks had paid to her garden. She had watched him working; they had talked. He knew what she was saying; he thought the same way: it was a question of simple
understanding
of the world. He understood. He was a friend—that was all—a friend whom she had come to love, but who would never love her back in that way. She could accept all that, but she would still miss him, she would miss him so acutely.