Rule Britannia (29 page)

“Be careful,” Emma warned her. “The last time I did that he was having a bath, with hardly anything on. It was rather dreadful.”

“Why dreadful? It’s a relief to know he does take his clothes off and strip occasionally. Some people who live alone don’t wash for years.”

The path widened into the small clearing before the wooden shack. They crept together to the window and peered through the curtainless pane.

“There he is,” breathed Mad, “sitting by the wall there in the far corner writing something on a pad. And look, Sam was right about the homemade radio. He’s got headphones over his ears. We’ve caught him just in time.”

She rapped loudly on the windowpane. The effect was instantaneous, even more rapid that on the morning over a week ago when he had stood gripping the sponge against his belly. Headphones were dashed to the ground, and seizing the shotgun at his feet he whirled round, extinguishing the small lamp at the same time. The hut was plunged into darkness. Everything fell silent.

“Let’s go away,” pleaded Emma in a whisper. “Please, Mad, please.”

“Nonsense.” Her grandmother moved from the window round to the door at the front. “We’ve frightened him. I’d keep a gun if I lived by myself out here.” She knocked on the door, then, seeing a hand-bell hanging on a nail, she rang it, pushing it to and fro so that the clapper struck the side, high-pitched, shrill. “Taffy?” she called. “Taffy? Nothing to worry about, it’s only us.”

Emma had the uneasy feeling that he was watching them from some spy hole which they couldn’t see, some wooden partition in the wall that could be silently removed and then replaced. They waited. Then they heard the bolt withdrawn from the lock. The door opened. He stood there in the darkness, the gun no longer in his hand.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he said. “I’m quite overwhelmed. If I’d known you were coming I should have been better prepared. Are you in trouble up at the house? Have you come for assistance?”

“No,” Mad replied, “we’re managing all right. We just thought we’d pay you a visit and hear your news. The difficulty is our radio batteries are fading and we hardly dare use them, so we’re terribly out of touch with whatever is going on. Sam told us you’re so knowledgeable with radio, and have a set you made yourself…”

She paused, for the sudden drawing inward of his breath was unmistakable. He did not answer. They heard him fumble with something, and then he struck a match and lit the small lamp standing on the table beside him. He held it high and the light flickered on their faces, so that he could read their expressions, but they could not read his. Then he bowed and gave a little laugh.

“Will you come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly? But in this case there are two flies to one spider, isn’t that so? Walk in, ladies, walk in.”

He stood aside and let them pass before him into the hut, and then he shut the door and bolted it behind him.

Mr. Willis turned up his lamp and put it on a shelf where it threw more light about the room. Two logs, uptilted, smoldered on the hearth and he darted forward, seizing an armful of kindling, which he thrust into the fire to catch aflame. Emma glanced about her. There was no sign of the earphones, no sign of the gun. An ordinary, rather old-fashioned type of battery radio stood on a table, but nowhere near the stool where he had been sitting with the earphones on his head and the pad on his knee when they had peered through the window a short while before.

“Sit down, ladies, sit down,” he said, dragging forward a rickety chair and the stool. “Not quite the comfort of Trevalan to which you are accustomed, but clean nevertheless. I have a good scrub round twice weekly. There, I’m falling into vaudeville language from very confusion, twice nightly they used to say in the old days, didn’t they? What can I offer you for refreshment? Alas, no wine from the grape, but I have a home brew fermented from potato. On a winter’s night it can be stimulating.”

Mad favored him with a famous smile and shook her head, gesturing at the same time. “No, really,” she said, “we won’t take anything, and we haven’t come to stay.” For courtesy’s sake she dropped into the rickety chair, and Emma perched on the stool. “We just thought, knowing how good a neighbor you are being to the Trembaths while he is in custody, and to the other farmers’ families too, that you might have heard a little more of what is happening than we do, isolated at Trevalan.”

“Ah!” He smiled for the first time, and the tone was surely one of relief. “I pick up all the local gossip I can, you can rely upon me for that. Whether it is all authentic is another matter, isn’t it? There’s solidarity throughout the farming community, that seems to be truth and not rumor, it comes by word of mouth from one farm to another.”

He sat on the end of his bed, legs crossed, arms about his knees, shoulders hunched. He looks like a gnome, Emma thought, but not one of the jolly elfin ones from children’s fairy tales, more the sinister goblin kind from myth and legend.

“Do you mean that farmers outside our own area know what is happening here?” asked Mad. “Despite roadblocks and a clampdown on news and information?”

“They couldn’t fail to discover it, could they?” he countered. “When the milk never turned up at the depots and there was no communication between Poldrea and the neighboring districts, someone had to take action, and it wasn’t the National Union of Farmers, they were evasive, they said they were waiting for instructions from some new body within the USUK framework. So the farmers stopped deliveries themselves, and it’s a handout sale among neighbors, like our friend Trembath instigated.”

He smiled again, or rather grinned, looking more like a gnome than ever.

“We may boast we’ve started something in this peninsula,” he told them, “for they say there isn’t a farmer in Cornwall that isn’t protesting at our men being taken into custody. Give them a day or two, and it will spread to Devon and to Dorset. The doctors are doing the same. Communications must be restored to this area, lighting, water, telephone, or they’ll practice no medicine, visit no patients, perform no operations. It isn’t a strike for money, you see, it isn’t a strike at all. It’s a protest against domination by the strangers in our midst over one section of a small community.”

He leaned over from the end of the bed and threw a piece of his driftwood planking onto the fire. The driftwood spat and the flames leaped high, showing blue lights. He isn’t a gnome, he’s a wizard, thought Emma, and Mad is a witch, and in a moment the incantations will begin, the spells will start.

“No doubt about it,” he said, “we have them on the run. You’ve only to fan the flame, and the chimney roars. Damp wood is sluggish, but the true salt burns.”

“You mean the marines, the U.S. forces?” persisted Mad.

“The U.S. forces here locally, and wherever else they’ve established themselves,” said Mr. Willis. “The Coalition Government up at Whitehall will have to think again, or they’ll find the population of this country splitting into sections. But there, it’s an emotional matter, isn’t it? You said you wanted to hear the news. I doubt if there will be anything fresh since one o’clock.”

He climbed down from his bed and switched on the set. It was just before six. They heard the weather report and the time signal. Then the regional announcer, after a momentary hesitation, said there had been a few minor disturbances throughout the west country, chiefly among the farming community, but that the situation was well under control. He then passed on to the news they had already heard at lunch.

“As I expected,” Mr. Willis said. “The usual repetition, with one exception.” He looked at Emma and her grandmother, and smiled once more. “They’ve been forced to take notice, and it’s only the beginning. Minor disturbances, they say, and the situation under control. Well, this won’t be the last allusion to our activities.” He removed his glasses, still smiling. “I wish you ladies would celebrate with me in a glass of potato wine.”

Emma glanced at her grandmother. She was watching Mr. Willis closely. Then she suddenly spoke. “Taffy,” she said softly, “why were you wearing headphones when we looked through the window? Does it mean you have a second radio that works differently from this one here?”

Mr. Willis paused in the act of polishing his glasses. He lifted his head and returned her gaze. The fact that he did not stop smiling made the gaze the more sinister.

“When I was a boy we had an old saying,” he murmured. “It takes a peeping Jenny to catch a peeping Tom. You learned the habit behind the curtain, now, didn’t you? Looking down at the men and women in the stalls, and taking a dekko at the boxes too. Will they laugh or will they cry, you must have asked yourself? And adapted your performance accordingly.”

“Sometimes,” Mad agreed. “It was customary in the profession in old days, but mostly in the provinces, on the road.”

“I thought so. Well, I’m by way of being a performer too, but in a modest capacity. I listen, and sometimes I give tongue. What is it, then, that you would have me tell you?”

“Only if you know more than you’ve told us already,” she replied. “Only if you can give us any information, however slight, about our boys.”

Slowly he got off the bed and walked towards the corner of the room where they had seen him first. “There’s something I can tell you, which is they’ve not been ill treated,” he said. “Stomachs rumbling a bit, maybe, but not manhandled. You wouldn’t think a tourist paradise could be turned so easily into a milder version of Devil’s Island, would you?”

It was as though he was playing with them, Emma thought. His analogy of the spider and the fly was very apt. A feeler stretched out, and then withdrawn.

“Lundy?” asked Mad. “St. Michael’s Mount?”

He shook his head. “It’s simple, really,” he said. “Try further west amid the lapping ocean waves, and if you guess the Isles of Scilly you’d be right. Don’t panic, now, with the way things are they’ll soon be home again. Mind you, I’m not talking of your boyos only but all the men they’re holding for questioning, and it amounts to a fair number since the first landings.”

The Scillies… Joe, Terry, Mr. Trembath, the other farmers from their own district, the Poldrea and Falmouth dockers who had felt themselves ill used, the clay-workers who had lost their jobs, anyone, perhaps, who might have questioned, might have demurred—was it possible men could have been picked at random and just removed?

“Taffy,” said Mad gently, “where do you get your information from?”

He laid his finger against his nose and winked. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it? The air is full of language if you listen for it. Watch, I’ll show you something.” He stooped, and removed a floorboard from under his feet. There was something there that looked like an oblong box, with headphones beside it, and wires, and knobs. “This is my box of tricks,” he said. “Brimful of magic I am, like Prospero in his cell. Love of music started me off, so I could hear opera from Vienna and Milan. Then little by little I heard voices too.” He beckoned to Emma. “Now, let me crown you.” She shook her head as he picked up the headphones. “No need to be frightened,” he told her. “You won’t hear anything but human voices, I haven’t yet made contact with the stars.” He was playing with her, joking, yet even so there was something forbidding about the crouching figure, the shock of white hair, the eyes glinting behind the spectacles.

“Crown me, Taffy,” said Mad. “Prospero’s cell can’t frighten an ageing actress. Besides, I want to know if the magic works.”

He turned from Emma, and as Mad rose, and pulled her chair nearer to the box beneath the floorboards, he placed the earphones on her head with a reverent gesture, as though he were indeed some priest placing a crown or wreath upon the brow of an initiate. Then he bent to the box and turned a knob. Emma watched Mad’s face, and the terrifying thought suddenly came to her that Mr. Willis was indeed mad, that he was not a radio “ham” or whatever the expression was for those who could pick up shortwave messages, but an expert in some ultra-high frequency, and Mad would suddenly collapse, her brain pierced.

Nothing so appalling happened. Mad listened, appeared absorbed, then smiled and removed the headphones.

“It’s Welsh, isn’t it?” she said. “I wish I could understand it. What are they saying?”

He took the headphones from her and placed them upon his own head. He nodded once or twice and smiled at her.

“It might be just as well you couldn’t understand,” he told her. “It is not very complimentary to the English people as a whole. Wait, now, while I translate.”

He seized the pad from beneath the floorboards and began to scribble. Emma dragged her stool next to her grandmother’s chair and took her hand. Mad pressed it in sympathy.

“I told you he was Owen Glendower,” she whispered. “What a pity we never made him read that scene from
Henry IV.
Next time he comes to the house we must. And
The Tempest
too. The man’s a born actor.”

Mr. Willis, unconscious of the roles they were assigning him, removed the headphones and switched off his box of tricks. “Civil disobedience in Scotland and in Wales,” he said. “No striking, no violence, just nobody going to work. The men staying at home, the shops putting up their shutters. They can’t arrest people for sitting at home, can they? It will take a little time to spread throughout both countries, but where one starts the next man follows suit, and you’ll soon have every county forming a cell of resistance on its own.” He smiled, and began stacking the earphones neatly beside the homemade radio set.

“Doesn’t it work both ways?” Mad asked. “Can you not also pass information on to the people who are informing you?”

“Indeed I can, and do,” he replied. “I had finished transmitting a short while before you played peeping Jenny through my window. One local piece of information, however small, however insignificant, can form a link in an ever-widening chain. I transmit in two languages, Welsh and Cornish.”

“Cornish?” Mad raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Mr. Willis nodded. “You seem surprised. No necessity. The Celtic languages have many factors in common once you study them, and the Celtic peoples too. Welsh nationalism and Scots nationalism have been irritants in certain governmental circles for many years now, we all know that, but the Cornish are, shall I say, more secretive behind the usual open front. They are strong underground, very strong indeed. But with mining stock that’s natural, isn’t it?”

Mad appeared to be thinking. Surely, Emma wondered, she didn’t take him seriously?

“I never can make up my mind about nationalism,” said her grandmother. “It’s inclined to turn fanatical, and the fanatics make such a point about where one is born. I was born in Wimbledon, and although I used to adore going to the tennis there in old days I wouldn’t die for it. In fact, it wouldn’t worry me if Wimbledon and all its houses ceased to exist. But I’ve made this corner of this particular peninsula my home for a long time now, and I’d certainly die for it if I thought it would do any good.”

Mr. Willis paused in the middle of stowing away the installation under the floorboards.

“Which it wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s a form of mistaken idealism the way men and women sacrifice themselves, only to be forgotten by their contemporaries and their immediate successors. In a hundred years they may be resurrected as heroes and martyrs, but it’s a little late then for the project in hand. On the other hand, as an actress you have a fine ear for intonation. One or two practice attempts, and I would have you speaking Cornish, Welsh or Gaelic in the manner born. A woman’s voice would make a great impression, and yours especially.”

He squatted back on his haunches, staring at her. Oh no, thought Emma, she mustn’t fall for it, heaven knows what he mightn’t make her say—encourage arson, anarchy, blowing up bridges. Someone would recognize her voice and trace it back.

“H’m,” said Mad thoughtfully. “ ‘We must be free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake’… Who was it said that?”

“Wordsworth,” replied Emma hastily, “but darling, honestly…”

“Apropos of what?”

“One of the sonnets to liberty. ‘Milton, thou should’st be living at this hour.’ ”

Mad looked over to where Mr. Willis was rapidly uncovering his radio set for the second time.

“I wouldn’t mind quoting ‘We must be free or die,’ ” she said, “but wouldn’t it sound rather foolish pleading for the tongue that Shakespeare spoke if all your contacts want to do is to spout in Welsh or Cornish?”

Mr. Willis dismissed this with an airy gesture. “It’s the meaning behind the words they listen for,” he told her. “I like ‘We must be free or die,’ I like it very much, it strikes the authentic note for all of us.” He had placed the headphones over his ears and had started fiddling with the knobs. Mad was murmuring the phrase over again to herself.

“Mad,” said Emma, “you can’t do it, you might get into the most terrible trouble, and for all we know these short waves are picked up with the greatest of ease down in the camp. They are probably listening in the whole time for something of this sort, it would be part of their job.”