The Yellow Glass (35 page)

She said she had and she did,
but whether it would make the slightest bit of difference, I couldn’t say.
 
What if Uncle Tristram were already
dead?
 
What if he died that very night,
while my message sat on Sergeant Riley’s desk waiting for him to turn up to
work in the morning?
 
Were we supposed to
do nothing but wait, for ever and a day?

I trailed back down the stairs,
suddenly sick to my stomach with apprehension.
 
I stopped off in the kitchen for something to eat, trying to still the
terrible churning in my insides, but there were no chocolate buns left in the
cake tin; probably because I’d eaten them all.
 
Despair truly began to set in.
 

Just then, I happened to glance
through the glass on our kitchen door.
 
A
light burned in Coast Cottage, a warm, amber glow defying the black of
night.
 
What was it Portia had said in
‘The Merchant of Venice’?
[50]
 

That light we see is burning in my hall.

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

I gazed at that light - taking
comfort from it - and, as I gazed, a dark shape stepped into the Dyminge’s side
window and looked straight at me.
 
Major
Dyminge was patrolling the cottage before they turned in for the night.
 
Without a moment’s hesitation, I rapped on
the glass.

We met in Mrs Dyminge’s shingle
garden among moonlit pools of thrift, the sea roaring great guns in our ears.

“You were right, Major,” I
cupped my palms over my mouth to cry into his ear, “there
was
another man involved apart from Arko.
 
Sir Godfrey Hutchcraft, the head of the
British Secret Services.
 
He’s gone
rogue.”

Major Dyminge nodded.

“Big fish,” he shouted
back.
 
“I suspected as much.”

I shivered in the cold, the wind
whisking up my skirts and knotting my hair.
 
A spring gale was beginning to brew.

“They’ve got Uncle Tristram, did
you know?
 
Down by Crab Bay.”

He didn’t move a muscle, yet it
was as if an electric pulse had shot through him and amplified the ferocity of
his singular, blue gaze.

“Oh, Major . . .”
 
Was it tears or the salt spray off the sea
that stung so?
 
“What if they kill
him?”
 
I collapsed onto his shoulder,
openly weeping.
 
“I don’t want him to
die!
 
Oh, Major Dyminge!
 
Don’t let Uncle Tristram die!”

“I should think not!”
 
He fished a white handkerchief out his pocket
and passed it to me, waiting patiently while I mopped up.
 
I handed his sodden hankie back to him and
looked out to sea, at the moon silvering the tops of the maddened waves.

“May I ask a question, Rosa?”

“Y . . yes,” I hiccupped.

“What in the name of all things
holy are we waiting for?”

 
Jay Tamang
escaped.
 
I had to believe that; would
countenance nothing else.
 
For myself, I
got it in the neck from young Joe Bloggs, of course: the neck, the stomach, the
legs and the privates.
 
Christ, did I get
it in the privates!
 
It was a good thing
Kathleen and I’d never wanted children . . not that my wife was still on the
scene.
 
Call me sentimental, but
 
-
 
bruised, battered and back on the caravan floor - it was only the thought
of Kathleen that
really
hurt.

The shadow had spared my face,
so I assumed he’d not been officially let off the leash, that his anger had
built up until he could contain it no longer and he’d acted against orders when
he’d come for me in the night.
 
What on
earth were they keeping me
for
?
 
It took too much energy to speculate any
further, so I tried to keep calm and to rest as much as I possibly could before
I got back to work with the jagged edge of the flint.
 
Jay was more dextrous than I and he’d managed
it before me, but I would get there in my own time.
 
And, when I did . . .
 

Hours passed before I finally
got my hands free.
 
The hood and the ties
around my ankles were childsplay after that.
 
I had to go carefully because parts of me were still horribly tender in
places, but having made the initial, painful, effort to stand upright, I tried
a tentative stretch and, eventually, even managed to perform a few officer
training exercises that I’d forgotten all about in the intervening years since
the war.
 
It wasn’t pleasant, but it was
possible and I was rather pleased with myself.
 
Then I crouched down by the hinge of the caravan door to wait for the
evening visit.

——

“Yes!”
 
Said Jay.

“May I?”
 
Mr Piotrowski enquired.

“Both cars?”
 
Asked my father.

“I’ll drive,” said my aunt.

My mother opened her mouth to
speak, but:

“Sam,” we said.

She closed it again, frowning.

“Excellent,” Major Dyminge
pronounced.
 
“You can drive my car,
Kathleen.
 
Let me just go and get my
gun.”

——

 
They must have
imagined I’d be a bloody and broken reed because they sent just the one.
 
I smashed the door into his face, tied him
and locked up behind me with his key.
 
There was nobody at all about, because the world outside had changed
beyond recognition and a storm was raging.
 
When they’d taken us it had been sunny spring, but now the grass lay
flat in the wind and everything banged and rattled and icy rain - or was it
spray off the sea? - whipped at my face, blinding me for a moment.
 
The noise of the sea kicking up a storm was
simply staggering - would have been staggering to anyone, but to a man who’d
been kept blindfolded and bound for days on end, it was overwhelming.
 
I had to force myself to open my eyes wide
and then to get down on my hands and knees and crawl in the teeth of the wind
towards the lift shaft.
 
Because I wasn’t
about to go home.

They’d hidden it behind a
hummock of sandbags, as if some type of sea defences were being built.
 
I spent interminable minutes dragging the
damp bags to one side, before I could bend over and peer down the shaft.
 
There was distinct light at the bottom of the
rabbit hole.
 
I thought back to the day
Jay and I’d arrived; I’d been in a pretty bad way after Severs had walloped me,
but I didn’t remember the sound of a lift door shutting.
 
It had to be an open, step on, step off
contraption.
 
As I gazed down the shaft, surprising
wisps of intense heat reached me, sufficient to warm my cheeks, before the wind
took off with them.
 
Nobody was coming up,
but, then, why would anybody wish to come up on such a night?
 
I leant over to grasp the rope that held the
lift, curled a foot around it and jumped.

——

 
When Major Dyminge
returned, it was with a pistol and his wife.

“Babysitting?”
 
She asked.

My mother smiled.

“Thank you, Frances,” she
said.
 
“Jerzy, I’m coming with you in the
Crossley.”

We were piling in when I noticed
that Jay had disappeared.

“What’s that boy doing down by
the sea?”
 
My father asked.
 
“The storm waves will drag him in, if he’s
not careful.”

“Jay!”
 
I hollered and he came back, bent double
against the wind.

He was carrying a rusty, old
petrol can with a screw-top that he’d filched from Major Dyminge’s boat.

“What are you doing with
that?”
 
I asked.

“Oh, it’s just an idea.
 
Are we ready to go?”

——

   
I landed on the
roof of the lift - a light, metal grille tacked into the upper frame - and
bounced up and down, aiming to get the whole lift to drop enough for me to to
slip through the gap and out onto the floor.
 
The lift failed to budge, however, but a corner of the grille gave way
and I tore the rest of it free and slid through, down into the lift and then
out into the operations room.
 
The
sweltering heat immediately blasted into my face; a dry, desert heat that
sucked the lingering damp of the storm from me, like blotting-paper.
 
The operations room was empty.
 
Nevertheless, I kept flush to the wall while
I had a look around.
 
Our arrival the
previous week hadn’t given me much time to take stock, but I’d certainly
clocked the giant piece of apparatus in the middle of the room.
 
Yet, incredibly, given the size of that
great, glass chemistry set, it seemed to have disappeared altogether.
 
And that smell, too - an overpowering stink
of rotten meat, or pickled shark that nobody, however done in, could have
failed to notice - had dissipated, somewhat.
 
It hadn’t gone altogether, but it was definitely less raw.
 
Only a smattering of desiccated, brown flakes
marked the site where the distillery had stood.

As I watched, a breath of hot
wind scooped the flakes up from the floor and swirled them into the air, where
they spiralled, as if caught up in an invisible tornado.
 
I searched for the source of the wind and soon
found it; the heat was funnelling through a narrow opening within the cave wall.
 
I went over and peeked in.
 
A tunnel was plainly visible, stretching for
fifty feet, or more.
 
I squeezed inside
the opening and struck out.
 

The tunnel was wider inside than
the aperture had suggested, but that was soon to change.
 
The ground beneath my feet began to narrow,
inch by inch, and the light to dwindle so rapidly that I could see little of my
destination.
 
I wobbled precariously, one
foot balanced in front of the other, and stepped out into the strangest place.
 
I was skewered by a sudden sense of vertigo,
for the tunnel had delivered me to a ledge, high up on the cliff wall and the
floor of the cavernous chamber in which I found myself lay a full fifty feet
below.

The
chamber
was full of seaweed, as if it were
still possessed by the sea.
 
Racks had
been nailed into the chalk walls and ceiling - everywhere one looked - and
immense lengths of dry, brown seaweed had been draped over them, like drowned
men’s trousers hung out to dry.
 
I
reached out to touch a ribbon of the stuff and found the edge to be as crisp as
any biscuit; when I took it between finger and thumb, it promptly crumbled and
flakes sailed down into the chamber below, circling and dancing on currents of
hot air.

The giant, glass chemistry set
had been brought into that eerie place and I could have sworn that it had
grown.
 
From my perch high up on the
wall, it almost seemed alive, a creature of the depths crouched in its lair,
shrieking and gulping as it churned up its insides in that festering heat.
 
The stink was so horrendous that I was afraid
I might swoon at any minute and drop, like a dead fly, from the ceiling.
 
There was only so long that I could stand
that stink, and I was preparing to turn tail and re-trace my steps when, down
below, two men entered the chamber.
 
One
was bald and stooped and I knew him as the Monk, the other wore dark glasses
and, when I’d last seen him, had been a Finn by the name of Arko Arkonnen.

“ . . more glass?”
 
Arkonnen’s voice echoed around the hollow
void.
 
“I don’t see . .”

“It’s imperative, Mr Arkonnen,”
replied Professor Monkington.
 
“We cannot
proceed without it.
 
I hope you’re not
going to renege on our agreement?”

A crackle of dry laughter.
 
I knew that laugh.
 
Where the devil was he?
 
An umbra parted the curtain of seaweed and
stepped into the chamber.
 
Hutch.

“That wouldn’t do, Reginald old
boy.
 
Just wouldn’t do.
 
As it is, you’ve been flailing about like a
pig in mud.
 
Am I right?”

“Godfrey!
 
You made it!”

“Mmm.
 
I’ve been rather held up by our friends in
town; not answering my messages and so forth.”
 
Hutch’s habitually dreary conversational tone barely made it up to me on
my ledge.

“Ah, we
wondered
what was keeping you.”
 
Arkonnen went over and shook his hand.
 
“Good to see you, Godfrey.”

Professor Monkington wandered
off to a set of filing cabinets that were ranged the length of one wall and
bent to retrieve something within.
 
He
was still rootling around when the shadows burst into the chamber.
 
There were five of them, each with a gun in
his hand.
 
It was difficult to see from
my vantage point, but I was prepared to bet that one of them was Joe.

“Sir.”
 
One addressed himself to Hutch, breathing
hard, as if he’d been running.
 

“What is it?
 
What are you boys doing in here?”

“Sir.
 
We wouldn’t interrupt, sir.
 
Only, the prisoner’s gone missing, sir.
 
We put a man on the gate after the other one
escaped that way, but he swears he hasn’t got past him, sir.”

“What?
 
It’s not bloody Upshott, is it?”

I was pleased to note that Hutch
sounded as riled as I’d ever heard him.
 
It wasn’t much, but his smooth feathers had been ruffled.

“Yes, sir.”

“Find him, do you hear me?
 
I’ve underestimated that spy; he’s a cleverer
bastard than I took him for.
 
Oh, and
change of orders, lads.
 
I calculated I
had enough on that ponce to contain him, but it’s much too late for that now,”
he stirred himself just enough to squeeze out a final, lacklustre,
suggestion.
 
“Shoot to kill.”

——

 
Jay and I were in
the Crossley with my parents and we took the lead on the road to Crab Bay.
 
Major Dyminge and Mr Piotrowski followed in
the Hillman Husky with my Aunt Kathleen at the wheel.
 
I turned to wave at them from the back window,
but torrential, driving rain had obscured the rest of the world.

“This is
exciting
,” I whispered to Jay, beside me.

“No, Rosa,” he replied.
 
“You are not to leave the car.
 
This I have promised Mr Upshott and I always
keep my word.”

“Oh, Jay, don’t be such a wet
blanket.”
 
I was beginning to wish I’d
gone with the Major.

“Mr and Mrs Stone,” Jay said
loudly, “please assure me that Rosa won’t be allowed to leave the car.”

“Certainly,” agreed my
father.
 
“You should have stayed at home
when you were told to, bubuleh.”

“But that’s not fair!”
 
I protested.
 
“You’ve got no faith in me, none of you!
 
Not Uncle Tristram, nor Magnus . .”

“Magnus Arkonnen!”
 
Jay exclaimed.

“Yes, that traitor,” I replied.

“Traitor!”
 

“Yes.
 
Why do you keep repeating everything I say?”

It took him a while to answer,
but when he did his tone had completely changed.

“I can’t believe that I forgot
all about Mr Arkonnen,” Jay muttered under his breath.

He had shifted along the back
seat until he was as far from me as it was possible to get.