The Man who Missed the War (44 page)

‘Is that so? Thousands of American boys giving their lives every day now? That’s just terrible. Of course, we’ve been out of it all from the beginning, and we’ve hardly heard anything of what’s going on.’

‘If you put it that way, I suppose I would.’

‘Boy says I could pass for an Irish girl anywhere.’

‘He’ll just hate doing that, same as I will.’

After this her disconnected sentences trailed off into a mutter, and Philip fell into a doze himself. They both awoke at the same time when the litter was set down with a jolt.

Their first sensation on waking was one of icy cold, and on looking out between the curtains they saw the reason. The procession had reached the bottom of the mountains and had halted in the middle of a field of snow across which a bitter wind was blowing. The position of the sun indicated that it was now about midday, and seen from the snowfield it had a great double halo round it, caused by a refraction of light, which is one of the strangest features of the Antarctic world.

They had hardly taken in their surroundings when the bearers of the litter pulled the curtains aside and began to get out the equipment for making camp. All of them were dressed in the same fashion as their chief if not with the same grandeur. The patterned featherwork of their cloaks was extremely fine, and thousands of hours of labour must have gone into their making. They were also very practical for such a climate, as layer upon layer of the feathers sewn on some foundation material made the cloaks both wind- and water-proof.

Some of the men gave Philip and Gloria curious looks, but no one spoke to them, and they sat in the litter shivering for half an hour, until a circle of eight round tents looking like large beehives had been erected. A lean-faced man, who was slightly
taller than the rest and appeared to be the foreman of the gang, then motioned them towards one of the tents.

On entering it, they found to their surprise that, although sparsely furnished, it not only appeared quite comfortable but was most agreeably warm. The snow had been covered with thick matting over which coloured rugs were spread, and on these a number of cushions had been scattered. In the centre of the floor stood a small brazier which radiated both light and heat, but it was not burning coal or any other substance.

Philip stooped to examine it, then gave a low whistle.

‘By jove, these boys have got something here! This gadget is made to function by electricity. Nothing else could possibly give this effect. Yet there is no wire attaching it to any generator or battery. It must be animated by some sort of electrical wireless wave; that’s the only explanation. It’s the sort of thing our own scientists have only got as far as dreaming about yet.’

Gloria had seated herself on some of the cushions and was not really listening, but the word ‘dreaming’ caught her ear, and she said quickly:

‘Boy, I had a dream while I was sleeping just now.’

‘I know you did,’ he smiled. ‘You were talking in your sleep like billy-oh. At least, I think you were; but I dropped off myself, and you were saying such extraordinary things that perhaps I only dreamed that you said them.’

‘What sort of things was I saying?’

‘Oh, you were quoting Abraham Lincoln, and it sounded as if somebody had asked you to say what you understood by Democracy yourself and then if you really thought it worth dying for.’

‘That’s it,’ Gloria nodded. ‘All that came into my dream; but you’d never guess who I was talking to.’ ‘Who?’

‘ ’Twas the Canon.’

‘Really! But, hang it all, you never met him when he was alive, so how could you possibly know?’

‘ ’Twas himself all right. I haven’t a doubt of that,’ and Gloria began to describe the figure that she had seen in her dream. When she had done Philip said at once:

‘Yes. That was John Beal-Brookman. How very extraordinary! Do tell me what he had to say.’

‘Well, first he was asking me if I really understood what the war was all about. Then he wanted to know if I’d be willing to face danger and death for what I believe to be right. We had a bit of an argument about that; but I cooked me own goose by saying what I’ve always thought, that women are every bit as good as men. After that ‘twas not so bad because he said that I wouldn’t be expected to do anything that you wouldn’t do, and that when we had to face the music we’d be together.’

Gloria paused for a moment, then went on: ‘The rest of it was mostly himself giving me instructions that I was to pass on to you. These people are the enemy, he said; just as much as the Germans or the Japs, because they’re on the wrong side in the eternal World struggle that has been going on for thousands of years between Blacks and Whites. He said that, although our scientists don’t even know of their existence, theirs know quite a bit about the outer world. They know about the war and they want our enemies to win. ‘Tis for that reason we must make them believe that we’re pro-Nazis ourselves.’

‘What!’ exclaimed Philip. ‘No damn’ fear! I’d rather tell the truth and shame the devil.’

‘Ah!’ she nodded. ‘I told him you’d hate doing that; but he said to tell you that we must think of ourselves as if we were spies in an enemy country and that the further we can worm our way into their confidence the better we’ll be doing our job.’

‘I see. Of course, that makes a difference. I doubt if it will work, though. We’ve never gone in for Quislings in England, so the idea isn’t really plausible.’

‘ ’Twas that very thing I said to the Canon, and he replied that we’d both better think of ourselves as Irish from now on. The big shots at the place we’re going to are clever, but the knowledge they have is not so hot in many ways. They’ll know that lots of the Irish hate the English, but they wouldn’t be able to tell people of one European race from another just on looks, or way of speaking, and they’ll have no means of checking up on whatever we tell them. ‘Twas the Canon’s idea that we should both take me mother’s name and you could say that your father was murdered by the Black and Tans during the Troubles. But
he was warning me that once we’ve made up our story we must stick to it and act every moment of the time as if we really thought the Nazis were the tops.’

Philip remained silent for a moment, then he said: ‘If they are capable of questioning us at all they will probably question us separately, so we must have a watertight story that we’ll both be able to remember and expand in detail, if necessary, without contradicting each other. We’ll never be able to do that if we try to invent and memorise an entirely false story of our doings over the past five years. I think we’ll have to stick to the truth with just a few cardinal differences.’

‘ ’Twould be much the simplest,’ Gloria agreed. ‘Otherwise, we’ll be tying ourselves in knots about how we got here; it’s just on the cards, too, that they may have come across our raft, although the Canon said nothing about that.’

‘Exactly. We’ll tell the truth wherever possible then. Listen, how would this be? I am Irish, and my name is Philip O’Neil. The raft was a secret device that I was testing out because I hope to be able to help the Germans with it. My idea was that single rafts—we must say nothing about a string of them or the launch—could be camouflaged like bits of wreckage so that the British would allow them to drift through their blockade, and that the Gulf Stream would wash them up on the coast of Norway. The scheme was to use them for running high priority war supplies from the U.S. to the Germans after the war had started. I decided to make the first crossing in one myself and went to New York in the early summer of 1939 to have it built there. I met you. We fell in love, got married and decided to make the trip across on the raft our honeymoon. After that it’s pretty plain sailing.’

‘If your name’s O’Neil what’ll mine have been before I married you?’ Gloria asked.

‘It would prevent any chance of confuson if we say that it was O’Neil also, and that we’re distantly related. That would account for our meeting in New York. I could have had an introduction to your family.’

‘Okay. The family came from Limerick in the west of Ireland, and if the subject of religion crops up it would look more natural if you said you were a Catholic.’

For an hour or more they talked on, discussing the details
of this new rôle they were to play. They had already forgottten that their plotting was inspired by only a dream.

They were interrupted by the entrance of two of the litter bearers, one of whom fixed up a low wooden folding-table, upon which the other set down a tray carrying numerous glazed bottles and bowls containing foods and liquids. This porcelain was so exquisite in design and colour and looked so frail that at first Gloria and Philip hardly dared to handle it but it was now sixteen hours since they had eaten, and they both suddenly realised that they were very hungry.

There were no knives, forks or spoons, but napkins had been spread for them, and the foods before them, although strange, proved delicious. There was a thin soup with a flavour faintly reminiscent of mint, a stew which they thought was based on llama’s meat but spiced with many herbs that did not grow in the pigmies’ valley, and, as a pudding, yellow fruits which Gloria felt sure were some form of mangoes. To wash it down there was a pot of some infusion which was not China tea but something like it, with a faintly orange aroma.

When they had eaten the men appeared, bringing a basin of warm, scented water for them to cleanse their fingers, and then cleared away.

‘Well, we certainly can’t complain of our treatment so far,’ Philip murmured. ‘It’s very different from what I expected after the look the leader of this crowd gave me last night.’

‘I was meaning to ask you, Boy—did it hurt much? What really happened to you?’

‘Heaven only knows! He used a form of hypnotism, I suppose. Anyhow, the look he gave me seemed to strike me between the eyes like a physical blow, and it laid me out. In a way it was as though I was being drawn forward and downwards into a fiery pit; but it didn’t hurt and I felt no ill effects when I woke up.’

He had barely finished speaking when the subject of their conversation entered the tent. Now that they could see him in a better light he seemed a more imposing figure than ever. He and his people appeared to be of American-Indian stock, but certain ornaments on their clothes and camp equipment all suggested a connection with either the Aztecs of Mexico or the Incas of Peru, although the art of these people seemed much more highly
developed and bore some resemblance to the classic Ming period of China.

The visitor’s face was as inscrutable as ever, and, although he looked in turn directly at them, his eyes did not hold even the hint of a smile. Pointing at himself he said: ‘Coxitl,’ twice, which they took to be his name, so they gave theirs as Philip and Gloria O’Neil in reply; but, as soon as he uttered a sentence, they could only shake their heads.

He spoke again, several times, each time quite slowly and in a way that seemed to differ slightly from his previous utterances, so that they gathered that he was trying them out with a variety of languages. But they could not understand one word he said and, giving a slight shrug, he left them.

Another meal was served in the evening, after which they were not disturbed till the following morning. At dawn camp was struck, and they were led back to the palanquin. There they were given plenty of rugs, foot warmers and a thing that was the equivalent of a hot-bottle, which kept warm all day, until camp was made at dusk. From that point on the same routine continued unbroken.

Apart from the bitter cold in the daytime whenever they put their noses outside the heavy leather curtains of the litter, they had nothing of which to complain. Coxitl did not attempt to speak to them again, and the litter bearers preserved an entirely impersonal attitude towards them. They saw practically nothing of their fellow-prisoners—the twelve little men who had been retrieved from the valley by the big dogs. The brown pigmies were carried in the third litter by day and hustled into one of the beehive tents each night. They now seemed completely apathetic to their fate, and Philip doubted if they had the will to attempt to save themselves, even had he been in a position to organise a mutiny. In any case, with the litter bearers, dog-leaders, musicians and a number of cooks, etc., who completed the party, the men from the mountain numbered nearly fifty, so Philip and Gloria would have stood no chance whatever, had they attempted anything against their captors.

The rate of progress varied according to the ground, as although the great snow plain looked flat and even from a distance, it was far from being so in fact. The wind had packed the snow
in ridges so that its surface was like the waves of a frozen sea. Moreover, at times they came to places where the irresistible pressure of some slowly moving glacier had forced the ice and snow up into great rugged blocks. With the sunlight glinting on them so that they sparkled with every colour in the prism, they looked like the ruins of a fairy city; but they formed barriers that it was no easy matter to cross. Blizzards also twice delayed them, but day by day they gradually drew nearer to the great chain of mountains, the towering heights of which were lit each evening with a golden glory and fantastic colourings ranging from pale pink to deep purple on their lower slopes.

On the twelfth day the mountains bulked over them with truly Himalayan splendour, their lofty peaks hidden in cloud. By afternoon they had reached the base of the range and began the ascent of the foothills. Dusk found them at the bottom of a steeper gradient, and Philip thought that they would camp there for the night, expecting that the following day they would enter a winding pass which would lead them to another valley, greater perhaps but similar to the one they had left. But the caravan pressed on, continuing even after complete darkness had fallen, so that nothing could be seen of the surrounding scene by peeping between the curtains of the litter, except the faint shimmer of snow in the surrounding rocks.

By half past eight they were missing their evening meal, but an hour later they had forgotten their temporary hunger. The gentle sway of the litter made them feel sleepy, and by ten o’clock Gloria had dropped off. Philip thought it unlikely that they would reach the valley until the following morning, so he made no special effort to keep awake and succumbed soon afterwards. Both of them woke with a start on the litter being set down, and, although chinks of light showed between the curtains, they both had the feeling that they had not been asleep very long, and that it was probably not yet midnight. Stretching out a hand Philip pulled back one of the curtains. An extraordinary scene then met their eyes.