Strange Conflict (23 page)

As Philippa sat back from the window they saw that her large dark eyes were half-filled with tears and that she was having great difficulty in controlling her emotions, so for a few moments they looked away from her and busied themselves with their rugs and papers. Then Simon produced from his pocket one of those magic slates consisting of a sheet of celluloid under which, if it is scrawled upon with anything pointed, writing appears but can be wiped out again by pulling the small attachment at the bottom of the pad, which leaves the slate perfectly clean.

On it he wrote: ‘Cheer up! We're all going to the sunshine.'

Marie Lou, watching him, felt how typical of the gentle, thoughtful Simon it was to have foreseen that although the girl could not talk or hear they would be able to communicate with her in writing, and by some strange means, probably
involving considerable trouble, to have procured overnight such an admirable vehicle for the purpose.

Producing a similar magic slate from her bag, Philippa wrote on it: ‘Yes. But I hate leaving London.'

Simon wrote: ‘Why?'

Philippa replied: ‘It seems like running away,' and added: ‘Why are you writing things down? I can hear perfectly well.'

Simon gave her a startled glance and said: ‘I thought you were—er—deaf and dumb.'

She shook her head and wrote on her pad: ‘Only dumb!'

The others, who had been following this interchange with the greatest interest, could hardly conceal their relief at this good news which would make things so much easier, and they all began to talk at once, telling Philippa how much they hoped that she would enjoy the trip out to the West Indies with them.

Before the train was clear of the murky London suburbs they received another surprise. When Philippa learnt that Rex was a fighter-pilot on indefinite convalescent leave on account of a bad wound in his leg, she wrote: ‘As a V.A.D. I nursed a number of airmen and I specialised in massage so I'll be able to give your leg treatment.'

De Richleau expressed surprise that, being unable to talk, she had succeeded in qualifying as a V.A.D., upon which it transpired that her affliction was not a natural one. Her hospital had been bombed the previous September and it was only after the rescue squad had dragged her from under the wreckage that she or they realised that she had been struck dumb by the frightful shock of the explosion. Ever since, she had been treated by doctor after doctor, but none of them had been able to restore her speech; the last had suggested that, although her case seemed hopeless, speech might come back to her if she were sent abroad to a place where there was no chance of her hearing further bombs or explosions for many months to come.

It was still raining when they arrived at the south-coast port which, as the secret war-time terminus of the flying-boats making the daily run to and from Lisbon, must remain nameless. As is usual with air travel, owing to the comparatively small number of passengers, the formalities with the customs and emigration authorities were got
through quickly, and half an hour later a fast launch took them out to the big Empire flying-boat which was rocking gently at its moorings in the grey-green, choppy waters.

They were no sooner safely installed on board than the launch backed away, the moorings were cast off and the engines began to turn over. The flying-boat taxied for about a mile and a half across the bay, turned right round into the wind, and suddenly rushed forward. The passengers could hear the spray sheeting up past the cabin windows but they could not see it, as the windows were blacked out. Abruptly it ceased and the engines eased down as though the plane was about to stop; but they suddenly realised that they had left the water and were soaring up into the air.

De Richleau knew that even if they met enemy planes there was little likelihood of their being attacked, since the Lisbon plane carries all the English papers upon which the enemy rely for a considerable portion of their intelligence. On arrival in Portugal they are immediately dispatched to Germany and Italy; while the returning plane carries back from Lisbon to England copies of all the German and Italian papers for British Intelligence. The outward journey is, therefore, always a reasonably safe one as the Nazis are anxious not to interrupt the flow of information through this neutral channel.

The windows having been blacked out to prevent travellers learning military secrets, the journey was a dull one. As the weather was good none of them were air-sick. They read or dozed most of the way until at half past four the plane banked steeply and two minutes later came down with a splash in the mouth of the Tagus.

On leaving the seaplane for a launch they were all struck by the difference in the climate, and it seemed quite miraculous that such a change could be brought about by a five-hour journey. Instead of the grey, wintry skies of England, the Portuguese capital lay basking in the sunshine, and after half-empty London the bustle of Lisbon streets, teeming with traffic, filled them with a strange exhilaration. They drove past the crowded cafés facing on to the famous Rolling Stone Square and pulled up at a big luxury hotel, the Aviz, in the Avenida, where rooms had been reserved for passengers in the
Clipper.

As they had all heard, Lisbon was packed with war
escapists. Great numbers of wealthy French people had fled there after the collapse of France. There were also many Jewish refugees from Germany and Italy and a certain number of English, most of whom—to their shame— were skulking there after having been driven from their safe retreats in the South of France.

In Lisbon the only evidence of the war, apart from the unusual fullness of the great hotels and cafés, was a serious shortage of food, as Portugal, although a neutral and not officially blockaded by either of the belligerents, was feeling the pinch through the Nazis' ruthless sinking of shipping.

Having rested after their journey they came downstairs to get as good a dinner as could be procured, and then went out to see what for them, after nearly a year and a half of black-out, was an incredible sight—a great city in all the glory of its lights and sky-signs.

After they had walked through the crowded main streets for a while de Richleau, who knew Lisbon well, took them to the Metropole, the star night-club, and his friends were amazed at its palatial dimensions.

The great tiled entrance-hall was built like a Moorish colonnade. Under each archway was a separate shop; flowers, chocolates, scent, handbags, fans, jewellery, and so on, could all be purchased on the spot by the male patrons of the place who felt generously disposed towards their fair companions. Upstairs there were gaming rooms on one side and on the other a restaurant with a big dance-floor, where they later witnessed a most elaborate cabaret.

To Rex's fury, he found that his leg still pained him too much to dance; and the Duke—even if the wound in his foot, which was now healing well, had not still to be treated with care—never danced. But Richard, Marie Lou, Philippa and Simon all thoroughly enjoyed themselves and for a time forgot the war as they mingled with the crowd on the dance-floor.

Leaving them to it after the cabaret, the Duke and Rex made for the tables. Laughing, wisecracking and grumbling to his neighbours, Rex dropped quite a packet at Roulette; but de Richleau, playing Baccarat with the impassivity of a professional, managed to pick up over fifty pounds in a couple of hours.

They had set out with the intention of getting back to their hotel soon after midnight, as they had to be up by half past four in the morning, but they all enjoyed themselves so much that they stayed on at the Metropole until three, having decided that they would only go back to the hotel for a hot bath and breakfast before starting out to the
Clipper.

Dawn found them, tired but happy, installed on board the giant American seaplane in the Cabo Ruiva airport, and as the first red streaks coloured the eastern sky over the lines of Torres Vedras, where long ago Wellington had held Napoleon's armies at bay, the great flying-boat took off on its long journey across the Atlantic.

The weather was good, and, having adjusted to an almost prone position the comfortable ‘dentist's chairs' with which the plane was fitted, lulled by the steady hum of the engines they soon dropped off to sleep. However, when they had been in the air for some three hours the weather changed for the worse. They were wakened by the plane bumping badly, and Marie Lou and Simon were both air-sick.

For what seemed a long time they flew on through rough weather and they were all heartily glad when at last the plane circled and came down in the harbour of Horta, the capital of the Azores.

The navigator told them that the weather was too bad to attempt a further ‘hop' that day, so they were taken ashore to an hotel, and as they had had only a few hours' sleep since leaving England they all went to bed for the afternoon.

When they met again for dinner they found that the shortage of food caused by the Nazis' massacre of shipping was having its effect far beyond war-torn Europe. After a somewhat meagre meal they went into the lounge for liqueurs and coffee, and Philippa, who had already learnt that the others were going to Haiti, wrote a question on her tablet asking if they knew anything about the Black Republic.

It was de Richleau who replied. ‘I know only the rough outline of its troubled history. It was, of course, one of the first islands to be colonised by the Spaniards under Columbus, but the French turned the Spaniards out, and for the best part of two hundred years it was rich and prosperous.
Then, inspired by the French Revolution, the population rose and, having butchered the wealthy planters, succeeded in getting some sort of independent constitution for themselves from the National Assembly in Paris.

‘The French aristocrats who had escaped the massacre called in the English to their assistance but a slave named Toussaint l'Ouverture led another revolt in which most of the Whites were murdered. Napoleon made a half-hearted attempt to bring the island back under French rule and l'Ouverture was arrested and taken to France; but I suppose the Emperor was too busy in Europe to bother much about his West Indian possessions, and the Revolution had already played the devil with all law and order in the island. Anyhow, in 1804 the slaves rose again and the Europeans were finally slaughtered or driven out. Ever since it has been a Negro Republic.'

‘I had no idea that the slaves had had their freedom there for so long,' remarked Richard. ‘It'll be interesting to see what they've made of the place in the best part of a hundred and fifty years of self-government.'

Rex grinned. ‘If you're looking for innovations you'll be mighty disappointed. As the Duke says, when the French had it that island was one of the richest in the Indies, and it's still got all its natural capacities for producing wealth, but the Haitians have just let the place go to rack and ruin.'

‘Have you ever been there?' asked Marie Lou.

‘No. But a friend of mine in our Marines was stationed there for some years and he told me a heap about it. Their presidents made our crook politicians look like kindergarten kids at the graft game. Not one of them held down his office for a four-year term, and with every buckaroo who elected himself with a knife gang it was a race as to whether he could grab enough dough in six months to get out to Jamaica or if he got his throat cut by a would-be successor first. That's why the States took it over for a while and put in the Marines.'

‘And what were we doing to let you?' inquired Richard with a smile. ‘I thought it was Britain's exclusive privilege to do that sort of thing. I'm afraid the old country must be losing its grip after all.'

Rex laughed. ‘It so happens that you had a war on your hands; it was in 1915 that we went into Haiti; but, in
any case, you land-grabbing Britons wouldn't have been allowed to muscle in there. Maybe you've heard of the Monroe Doctrine? And, as a matter of fact, you were glad enough for us to intervene. For years past the Germans had been lending these Black four-flushers money in the hope of getting a grip on the island and being able to play bailiff one day, but the United States scotched that idea and gave British interests a fair deal—which is a darned-sight more than the Germans would have done. For nineteen years we kept the peace among our poor black brothers, then we handed them back self-government and sailed away.'

‘It was only quite recently you cleared out, then?'

‘Yep. During Roosevelt's first administration, as a part of his good-neighbour policy.

Philippa had written something on her tablet and showed
it to Simon, who read out her question: ‘Do any of you speak Creole?'

The others looked hopefully at the Duke, who was a linguist of quite exceptional powers, but he shook his head.

‘No. I'm afraid Creole is beyond me; it's a kind of bastard French; but I imagine there must be plenty of people in the island who speak proper French or English.'

Philippa wrote another sentence, ‘Very few. Only a year or two before the Americans took over they had a President who couldn't even read or write.'

‘Dear me,' murmured de Richleau, ‘what a bore; but I've no doubt we'll be able to hire a French-speaking Mulatto as our interpreter.'

They went to bed early that night as, if the weather improved, the
Clipper
would be making an early start again the following morning. As they went upstairs Marie Lou asked the Duke if they ought to take any precautions against being attacked on the astral while they slept, but he shook his head.

‘No. As I told you in London, since we left Cardinals Folly in daylight it is a million to one that the enemy has lost track of us. Doubtless he's wondering where we've got to and he may by now have traced us as far as my flat; but there's nothing there which would give him any clue as to our intentions so he might roam the world for a hundred thousand nights and still be no nearer finding us. We should continue wearing our charged amulets, but I'm confident that we haven't the least cause to worry.'