Saturn Over the Water (24 page)

The man who’d yanked us out of the pub came in to hold the door open, for somebody to make a big entrance. It was made by my old
Yarrabonga
bar-and-stateroom chum, Lord Randlong, who entered with an outstretched hand and a wide warm smile. I sprang up, words of welcome tumbling out. But the hand and smile were for Major Jorvis, not for me. The suspect Bedford got one cold quick look, that was all. I sat down again, feeling like a punctured balloon. But while Lord Randlong and Major Jorvis were exchanging some bluff manly downunder stuff and being admired by the other man, Inspector Somebody, I did try to nourish a tiny hope that my butterscotch and other Scotch Australian Uncle Santa would suddenly emerge, give me one of his warm smiles, then prove to Major Jorvis how wrong he was about shipmate Bedford my boy. But the next look he gave me, as he settled down, was even stonier than the first.

‘Well, Major Jorvis, I can answer questions or just tell you what I know.’

‘Just tell us what you know, please, Lord Randlong.’ The major’s sickly sweet manner was a real horror, just the thing for Frankenstein’s Uncle or Dracula’s Cousin.

Lord Randlong cleared his throat, which may have given him some trouble since his recent transformation into a rat, and put on an important but dutiful look. ‘This man Bedford came aboard the
Yarrabonga
at Valparaiso. I’d gone ashore for a couple of days so I didn’t see him come aboard. But a member of the crew, who often makes confidential reports to me – ’

‘A private spy of yours, is he?’ I put in. This went badly with all three of them.

‘This member of the crew,’ his lordship continued, ‘told me that Bedford immediately spent some time in the bar, which shouldn’t have been open then, with the steward Mike – ’ Here he paused for dramatic effect, but Major Jorvis thought he’d been given an opening.

‘Oh – we know all about
him
, Lord Randlong. And he and Bedford were picked up together this afternoon – ’

‘I say, Bedford had spent some time in the bar not only with the steward but also with another man he seemed to know particularly well. A Chilean called Jones who’s known to be a Communist agent. Ask the Americans in Santiago.’ All three looked cloaks at one another and daggers at me.

‘So I decided to cultivate this man Bedford’s acquaintance. Kind of thing I’ve been able to do once or twice before, as you know, Major. We talked a good deal in the bar and over drinks in my stateroom – ’

I had to break in here. ‘Where you promised to do this, that and the other for me in Australia, introduce me to your friends – ’

‘Well, here’s one – Major Jorvis.’ He gave a roar of laughter, and Major Jorvis and the Inspector guffawed with enthusiasm. Then as Randlong pulled his face straight again, to look dutiful, solemn, important, and I stared hard at him, I caught something, another cold flash, just as I’d done after we’d been listening to the radio in his stateroom. It told me at once that this was just as much a performance as the one he’d put on for me, and that he regarded the other two as a pair of zombies that could be useful to him. But not simply to him personally. He wasn’t here on his own account. He’d learnt something about me, since he’d landed, that had brought him here.

‘What I was trying to find out, during these talks,’ Randlong continued, ‘was Bedford’s object in visiting Australia. He’s a painter by profession – there’s no doubt about that – but he admitted himself he’d no idea of painting and selling pictures here. He knows we export artists, we don’t import ’em. Then when I really challenged him to tell me, he hummed and ha’d and finally came up with some stammering lie about coming after a girl. I didn’t ask him what girl. I didn’t believe him and he knew I didn’t. I’d already made up my mind he’s one of these dangerous crypto-Communists – and that he’s here as an undercover man.’

‘What did I say to you, Inspector?’ cried the Major triumphantly. ‘Of course he is.’

‘Is this being recorded?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I hope you don’t mind, Lord Randlong?’

‘Not at all. Why should I? Just doing my duty.’

‘We appreciate your attitude, your lordship. Well, Bedford – it’s all being recorded. So what?’

‘I want to make a short statement, just to have it recorded. As I said before, I’m not a Communist – crypto or otherwise. Lord Randlong knows this very well. He’s using you as catspaws. His object is to prevent my being a nuisance. He thinks I might be because during the last twenty-four hours or so he’s been told that I’m trying to investigate a very peculiar society or organisation. I believe now he’s a member of it. If you people can get me deported or stop me moving around, to find out more about this organisation, then that’ll be very convenient for him and his friends. I don’t expect you to believe this – even though I’m ready to swear any oath you choose that I think it’s true – but I’m making this statement to get it into the record. It may be needed sometime. That’s all.’

To give Major Jorvis his due, he’d listened to me quite attentively, not trying to interrupt. I think he couldn’t help being a bit impressed not by what I’d said but by my air of sincerity. He looked at Randlong, who smiled contemptuously, the man of the great world, and then said: ‘Will you allow me, Major? Thank you.’ He looked at me, all easy mockery in front but with a chill glitter of purpose behind it. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bedford, and I don’t believe you do. To start with, I must belong to fifty societies and organisations, some here, some in the old country. No fellow member of any of them has spoken to me about you, Bedford. You’re overestimating your importance, aren’t you? And I’ve never suggested you ought to be deported or locked up. But I wouldn’t be happy, as a good Australian who knows what Communism can do, if I thought you were being allowed to go anywhere and everywhere doing anything you wanted to do.’ He stood up. ‘I’d like a word with you in private, Major Jorvis, if you please.’

They went out. The Inspector, the same big wooden-faced fellow who picked us up in the pub, stared hard at me in an impersonal way, as if I was something in a shop window. To prove I could talk, I said: ‘Don’t forget that Mike – I don’t know his other name – was bar steward and had been serving me drinks for nearly three weeks. So when I ran into him this afternoon and he asked me to have a drink, I agreed.’

‘That bastard’s been in trouble ever since the old I.W.W. days,’ said the Inspector. ‘Understand him being a Commie. But what they got for you?’

‘I can’t tell you because I don’t happen to be one. As I keep saying.’

But the Inspector had put me back into the shop window, where obviously I wasn’t worth the price on the ticket.

When Major Jorvis came back, he was smiling and clearly pleased with himself. This put me on my guard, not off it. ‘I’ll go easy with you, Bedford, for the time being. You’re free to go, but you’ll report to the Inspector here at twelve noon on the dot tomorrow.’

‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘I’ve other things to do.’

‘Not at twelve noon tomorrow, you haven’t. And if you fail to report, you’ll commit a serious offence.’ He sat down at his desk as if I’d already gone.

‘Out,’ said the Inspector, opening the door. But as we went along the corridor together and then down the steps towards the entrance, I noticed he deliberately wasted some time, even taking my name and address all over again. Now I felt fairly sure what the plan was. Once out in the street I walked very quickly, then suddenly wheeled and stopped, to look at a tobacconist’s window. I repeated the performance a few hundred yards further along. The tall young man with the long neck wasn’t in uniform but he just as well might have been.

I went back to the garage where I’d arranged to hire the Buick for a week. In the little central office, surrounded by cars, I found a different man on duty, but he knew about the Buick transaction and thought I’d called for the car. ‘Not yet,’ I told him, then obviously hesitated. He was a black Irish type, with centuries of rebelliousness behind him, and I decided to chance it.

‘I want your advice. I’ve hired this car to take me tomorrow up into the back country to find a girl I know. But I’m having a little trouble with the police here – no crime, just a technical offence – ’

‘Don’t I know the silly bastards?’ he cried. ‘Never satisfied till a man’s in trouble.’

I told him about the tall young man with a long neck, who was probably waiting for me now at the garage entrance. He went to have a look at him, and came back jeering. ‘The like o’ that fella’s no bloody brains at all. He ought to be in the water disguised as a swan. I could lose him if I was driving a hearse.’ We sat in the office, with a can of beer each, occasionally interrupted by callers on the telephone he told not to bother him, and we worked out a police-dodging scheme for the next morning. He was to take part in it himself, and I promised him five pounds if it came off, though I believe he’d have done it for nothing.

In the morning I packed my two cases, took them down to the desk and told the porter they’d be called for shortly (by my Irish colleague in the Buick), paid the bill and went out. The swan sleuth was in attendance. I went to a bank and cashed some travellers’ cheques. When I left, he followed. The next was the tricky part. My Irish colleague had had a job once in a large store. As well as a dozen public entrances along the front, it had a staff entrance down a small alley. Into this alley, at exactly five minutes to eleven, he would reverse the Buick, keeping its door open and engine running until five-past, ready for a quick getaway. What I had to do, just before eleven, was to try to keep plenty of people in the store between me and the policeman, make for the stairs, then on the first half-landing turn down a little corridor to the right, towards a door marked
Staff Only
, then make like a bat out of hell for the outer door and that back alley. And it worked. I don’t know how close behind me the policeman was, because to have turned round then might have given something away, but I do know there was a great swarm of us going up those stairs and my quick turn to the right could easily have been missed. The
Staff Only
door was opened and then closed behind me in under two seconds. I hurried along a corridor past washrooms and cloakrooms, clattered down some narrow stone steps, almost leapt past the clock-punching department and the man who’d just time to cry ‘Hey yew!’ and then was outside, into the Buick, and off. It was important of course that the policeman shouldn’t get out in time to recognise the Buick. And he didn’t. I looked back as we nosed our way out of the alley, and he wasn’t there.

My Irish friend drove me almost out of the sprawling city, very sensibly because he knew the roads and could make better time, and also provided entertainment by sketching twenty other ways, most of them much simpler, of dodging the police to get out of Melbourne. ‘I could lose them fellas, silly bastards, pushing an emu tied to a handcart an’ me stark naked. In Melbourne, not in Sydney. In Sydney they’re just plain bastards. They’ll run you in and get you fined there for saying good-morning.’

After pocketing the fiver, which he proposed to spend on drink and the races, he put me on the road to Ballarat. I found my way there without any trouble. The Victorian ironwork along the balconies of the older buildings looked aloof and elegant, like some women in crinolines among a crowd of rock-and-rolling tight pants and bobby socks and hair like dirty string. I drank some beer so cold it made my throat ache, and tried to eat two large sandwiches made of very white bread and dark leather. It was much cooler and pleasanter here than it had been down in Melbourne, but I pushed on quickly, wondering if I wouldn’t have enjoyed Ballarat more a hundred years earlier. Anyhow, I knew roughly where Charoke was, and these Australian miles seemed on the long side, and even down in this corner of the island continent, there were obviously a devil of a lot of them. So I lashed the Buick’s thirty invisible horses along the trail.

15

It may seem odd that my final adventures with the Wavy Eight people should have happened in Australia. But I believe you would feel this only if you hadn’t ever seen Australia. In its own way the country seemed to me just as mixed-up and contradictory, peculiar and mysterious, as the Wavy Eight setup was. Take that drive of mine from Ballarat to Charoke, across a good section of the State of Victoria. Sometimes I might have been driving through an emptier and warmer bit of Bucks or Northants, or passing central sections of Watford or Nuneaton that had been left out in the sun. Twelve coach parties from Women’s Institutes might arrive at any moment. But then at the next turning the road might run straight into some lost world. If there were woods, then there were strange trees and giant ferns, good grazing for dinosaurs. But mostly, and especially later in the afternoon, I’d find myself running along a road, like a hammered rod of blue metal laid across the landscape, apparently going nowhere past a lot of nothing. That Buick might have been the Time Machine arriving at either extreme. At one place, where I stopped to use the thermos I’d bought and had filled at Ballarat, I had the whole visible world to myself. If anything else was alive, it kept dead quiet. Under silvery clouds the horizon all round was simply so much grey-blue haze. Between that and the road and me was desert that started as a light yellow ochre in the foreground and then deepened to a dark ochre and some patches of raw umber. And there was nothing else to be seen there except some blackened stumps of trees, which might have been slashed into a pale water-colour by somebody who was impatient and wanted to try a stick of charcoal. It was like drinking tepid strong tea and then lighting a pipe when somehow you’d missed your own time by a million years. Anybody who could look at that landscape and still think in terms of votes, taxes, annual revenues and radio sets, would have to have either a lot less imagination or a lot more than I have. And I might as well add here that all the time I was in Australia this sense of the huge dusty old continent, haunted not by men and their history but only by ghostly gum trees, never left me, just seeped through everything. So no matter how crazy the Wavy Eights turned out to be, they couldn’t be out of place, so far as Tim Bedford’s ideas of a normal life and background were concerned, here in Australia. If this was to be the last act, as I hoped it would be, then it had been given the right setting.