The Broken Penny Read online

  ‘It’s too late to be sorry,’ Ilona said flatly. ‘I want a bath.’ The bathroom was unoccupied, the water surprisingly hot. Garden gave her a towel and returned to Latterley, who regarded him quizzically.

  ‘Have you formed an attachment?’

  ‘Ilona and I are going to be married,’ Garden said stiffly.

  Latterley rocked with delight. ‘My dear old Chas, you really are a sweetie.’ What was there, Garden wondered, funny about that? And he was conscious again of irritation, although many years ago he had tried to reconcile himself to the fact that he would never understand Latterley’s sense of humour.

  Latterley said more seriously: ‘A nice girl but sulky, or that’s what I thought when I went down to Brightsand. And not quite in sympathy with a salmon-pink idealist like you, I imagine. You’ll have to watch her carefully, Chas. But that isn’t why I’m here. The chief wants to see you.’

  ‘And I want to see him.’ Garden told Latterley about his telephone calls. When he said that he had telephoned Multiple Steel, Latterley’s head jerked up.

  ‘You know it was agreed you shouldn’t get in touch.’ Garden protested no harm had been done. ‘How do you know? You mentioned your name, you provided a link that somebody may remember one day.’

  ‘It doesn’t need me to provide links. Somebody’s doing that already.’ Garden told Latterley of his certainty that there was a spy inside the English organisation who had revealed their plans to Peplov. He was aware while he talked of Latterley’s bright, mocking look. When he had finished Latterley positively clapped his hands.

  ‘Bravo, my Chas, brilliantly deduced. You must tell it to the chief.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m serious then,’ Garden said half-angrily.

  ‘Serious? I’ve never known you anything but serious in your whole life.’

  ‘You don’t take me seriously then.’

  It seemed only by an effort that Latterley restrained the laughter present in the glance of his eye, quivering in the light tone of his voice. ‘You know me, I never take anything seriously except my own comfort and the things that are said by very young girls. And Stendhal, of course. I take him very seriously.’ He patted the volume of The Charterhouse of Parma. ‘Here’s Ilona. Let’s go and get some lunch. Then we’ll go down and see the chief. He wants to hear exactly what happened from both of you. He’s down at the Multiple Steel factory just outside Maidstone. I’ll give him a ring while we’re having lunch. And now we must get away from here as quickly as possible. The air of Brixton is quite unsuited to a man of my fine susceptibilities. It’s only tough, coarse figures like you, Chas, who can stand up to it.’

  Chapter Two

  A car met them at Maidstone and took them out into a countryside that showed as yet hardly a trace of autumn. As they approached Maidstone in the train the flow of Latterley’s sprightly conversation abruptly ceased. He was silent as they got out of the carriage, nodded curtly to the little man who sprang forward to open the door of the car and looked moodily out of the window when they were in the car. Phrases, sentences, almost whole eloquent paragraphs formed themselves in Garden’s mind as he thought of the coming meeting with Sir Alfred. Green fields, oasthouses, tidy orchards unrolled themselves before his unregarding eyes. Ilona looked from Garden to Latterley as though she expected to find in their relationship the answer to some baffling question.

  The car stopped with a jerk. Latterley said, ‘What’s this?’ Ilona gave a stifled scream. Garden brought himself back from his imaginary exposition and saw with surprise that the driver was talking to a dozen men in uniform. They were all wearing what looked like a new type of service respirator, some carried small revolvers and others Sten guns. Their leader, who had a blue star pinned on his jacket, held up a gloved hand to stop them.

  ‘We got a pass out,’ their driver was saying indignantly. ‘You got no call to stop us.’

  The leading figure came up to the side of the car. The driver held out the pass. The man’s voice came through the respirator, disembodied and almost without inflection, yet thinly clear. ‘Very good. Pass approved. Go ahead.’

  They moved on slowly. More khaki-clad figures appeared, running clumsily over fields, all of them wearing respirators. Few of the men seemed to know just what they were doing.

  Incomprehensible orders were being shouted. Garden became aware of the buzz of training planes and helicopters overhead.

  Their Cockney driver grumbled back at them. ‘Some kind of damn’ silly exercises going on. Barmy if you ask me, playing at soldiers. Exercises!’ He spat contemptuously out of the window.

  Nobody replied to this. One of the hovering helicopters came down very low, evidently to have a look at them. ‘You can see the factory across there, to the left,’ said Latterley. ‘Bensley, where the workers live, is just beyond it.’ Garden had a glimpse of long low silvery buildings, with a high square tower in the middle. Then the car was surrounded by men waving them to stop. One of them wearing the blue star, and blue tabs on his shoulders, said through his respirator, ‘Out at once, all of you. You’re contaminated.’

  ‘Now look ’ere,’ said the driver, ‘we got a pass. You give us the pass yourself.’

  ‘I did nothing of the kind. Let me see the pass. Just as I thought. This was issued by Livingstone, who was contaminated half an hour ago, when we took the farmhouse. I cannot regard it as valid.’

  The little driver shook his fist out of the window. ‘I don’t bleeding well care if it was Doctor Livingstone who issued it. I was given a pass for the works, and that’s where I’m going.’

  ‘Indeed you’re not. You’re in charge, and what’s more you’re contaminated. Take him off to Receiving Station Two.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Latterley got out of the car and addressed the man with blue tabs. ‘I’m Geoffrey Latterley of Central Liaison. I take it you’re in command here.’

  ‘Correct, Mr Latterley.’ The voice through the respirator was thin but clear. ‘Captain Foskett, Ninth Gas Artillery. Sorry to cause you trouble, but we’re carrying out special gas exercises here and GHQ orders are pretty strict. We’ve laid down gas artillery fire over half a square mile, and everything within that area is judged contaminated. You’re inside it now, and we’ll have to take you off to Receiving Station.’

  ‘I appreciate that you’ve got your duty, Captain.’

  ‘Quite so, Mr Latterley, quite so.’ The thin voice said suddenly, ‘Harbord, Gravelney and Waterlow, cover those fields as far as Pinney’s Bottom.’ Garden saw that they had pistols containing little coloured streamers which they fired as they ran.

  ‘Streamers indicate contaminated area,’ said Captain Foskett.

  ‘But we have an urgent appointment on Government business.’

  ‘Can’t help that, I’m afraid. You’ll have to go through the decontaminating process. GHQ are very anxious to know how many people we can pass through the receiving stations.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘Can’t say. Half an hour perhaps, or a couple of hours. Depends on whether they can revive you.’

  Latterley looked urbane but perfectly serious, and even grave. Garden admired him for it, knowing that he would have lost his own temper long ago. ‘Frankly, I’m concerned on your account, Captain. This is a very important conference.’ Latterley brought his head down to the Captain’s ear and lowered his voice.

  ‘Can’t hear you. Speak up.’

  With finely controlled anger, or a good simulation of it, Latterley said very loudly, ‘I’m certainly not going to bawl this out for everyone to hear. If you don’t want to pull the biggest boner of your life you’d better take off that respirator so that we can talk properly.’

  ‘Not really supposed to remove them during exercise,’ Captain Foskett said, ‘but exceptional case I suppose–’ The respirator, removed, revealed a red-faced perspiring man with ginger moustaches and an anxious eye. Latterley took him by the arm and they moved away together, with Latterley talking rapidly.
Whatever tale he told plainly impressed Foskett, for when they returned he was feebly servile. ‘Mistakes will occur even in the best regulated families. My apologies, sincere apologies.’ His voice without the respirator had an incoherent quality, as if he found it difficult to speak at all.

  ‘All right.’ Latterley was not too obviously pleased, still inclined to be a shade severe in fact. He motioned to the driver to get in. Suddenly another group of soldiers, all wearing respirators and led by a man wearing a green star and green tabs, came down the road. ‘Oh, damn,’ said Captain Foskett. He made frantic efforts to adjust his respirator.

  The green-tabbed figure spoke. The effect was eerie, for behind the respirator his voice had exactly the same thin and colourless tone as Foskett’s. ‘Got you all. I declare you prisoners of Green Defensive Force. As for you, whoever you are, you’re under arrest,’ he said to Foskett. ‘You know it’s an offence to remove respirators during an exercise.’

  Foskett pulled off his respirator again, defiantly. ‘Now look here, don’t talk a lot of cock. I had to take it off–’

  Green Tabs laughed. ‘That’s what they all say. Anyway, I’m not talking to you, you’re dead.’

  ‘If you’d read Orders properly you’d know that casualties are listed as contaminated, not dead. If they’re got down to the Receiving Station quickly enough it may be possible to decontaminate them.’

  Green Tabs laughed again. ‘Come on then, let’s have you down at the Receiving Station. You too,’ he said to Garden and Ilona. ‘Out of that car, please. You’ve got no business in an exercise area.’ They got out. A helicopter came down low to have a look at them and ascended again. The blue-starred men, accepting capture most willingly, all took off their respirators.

  Latterley and Foskett both began to explain things to Green Tabs, who waved them aside. ‘Got no time for all that nonsense. You can complain to the Colonel afterwards. I’m trying to stop Kent from being overrun by gas artillery groups.’

  At this Latterley did lose his temper, and caught Green Tabs by the arm. He was seized instantly by two of the soldiers. Garden looked across the fields. The factory was plainly visible, tantalisingly near, separated from them only by a five-barred gate and a field. He pressed Ilona’s arm and looked meaningfully over the field. She nodded.

  Foskett had put on his respirator again, and motioned his men to do the same. They did so unwillingly. His voice, when he spoke again to Green Tabs, was transformed accordingly. ‘Look here, old chap, how did you come down this road? I thought we had it covered.’

  ‘Came along through Simley–’

  ‘Through Simley, yes.’

  ‘–took a short cut by Haddocks Wood, if you follow me–’

  ‘I follow you perfectly. A short cut by Haddocks Wood. And what then?’

  ‘Over Double Bottom bridge and down this road.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Foskett, ‘I thought so.’ A note of triumph could be heard in his voice, even inside the respirator. ‘Double Bottom Bridge was atomised early this morning.’

  ‘Nonsense. There’s no atomisation tag on it.’

  ‘Then someone’s taken it off. Atomised early this morning, I assure you. There’s no way you can get through to this road from Haddocks Wood, no way whatever. You’ll have to go back.’

  ‘Now look here–’ Green Tabs pulled out a map. The two officers bent over it. ‘Now,’ said Garden to Ilona. Two steps brought them to the five-barred gate. Garden lifted her and swung her over, then vaulted over himself. Latterley saw what they were doing and made an unsuccessful attempt to wrench himself free. Some of the men began to climb the gate in a half-hearted way. By the time they had done so Garden and Ilona were halfway across the field. At the other side of it a stile led into the main road. Just across the road stood a gate above which the words MULTIPLE STEEL appeared in a great glittering horseshoe. The gate was closed, but a small gatekeeper’s house stood by it with a bell push and a notice above it, WHEN GATE IS CLOSED PLEASE RING. Garden rang this bell.

  Chapter Three

  A door of the gatekeeper’s house opened, and there appeared the peroxide curls and enamelled cheeks of Miss Fanny Bone. She looked at them, a little disconcerted. ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘It got mixed up with some gas exercises. So did Latterley and the driver.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I’ll just say you’re here.’ She vanished again, came back within a few seconds and opened the gates. ‘Over to the big building. The lift will be waiting for you. Go up to the top floor.’

  Garden stared round him with interest. What had looked from a distance like a tower was, he saw, simply a central administrative block from which long low workshops radiated off in all directions. The place was as silent as the deserted playground of a school. ‘Nobody working,’ he said to Fanny Bone. ‘Is there a strike or something?’

  ‘Don’t you know what day it is? It’s Saturday. Multiple Steel works a five-day week.’

  ‘How long have you been gatekeeper?’

  She gave him her varnished look. ‘Go right across. The lift will be waiting.’

  They walked together slowly across the gravel and she stood watching them, hands on hips, a spot of radical colour in her yellow blouse and red skirt against the prevailing silver and grey of the workshops. Walking across the gravel, Garden wondered what he was reminded of. Schooldays? Then he remembered the airfield and the wet tarmac and the three figures advancing briskly to meet them. The end of that had been disaster. But this, he reminded himself, was a traditional England in which the routine of life remained undisturbed. Then he thought of the men in respirators running about with their toy pistols, dealing an imaginary death with coloured streamers, a death rendered somehow indifferent by its reduction of human beings to the status of mere contaminated things – and he was not so sure.

  The high glass doors of the square building opened at a touch. They stood in an empty hall, with murals on every wall showing the development of man through the power of steel. Or did they show only the place of steel in the life of man? The floor was of foam rubber. They moved over it noiselessly to a lift at one corner, above which a red light glowed. Garden closed the doors behind them and pressed a button numbered 8. Gently the lift whirred upward.

  What had he expected to see when the lift stopped, and the doors opened? There was a pleasant sense of light and air, explained by the fact that no brick but only glass was visible

  on this top floor. And there was Sir Alfred facing him, hand out-thrust, bald head jutting forward, tie a little on one side, chunky body formidable in its ash-stained suit. He did not smile – the occasion was too serious for that – but the grip of his hand was reassuringly firm. To Garden he said nothing, to Ilona only the words, ‘You’re the niece, yes. Very glad to see you.’

  He led the way into a large glass-walled room in which the sensation of space was even more marked. There was a comfortable fitted carpet, a desk with papers, half a dozen chairs and nothing else. A door stood open on to a large sun roof. They went out with him and saw the works below them, absurdly squat and small. Beyond lay wooded country, the small town of Bensley built by Sir Alfred for his workers, the sports grounds and swimming pools he had provided, on which tiny figures now dissipated energy innocently kicking large balls, striking small ones, jumping into water or running round a track.

  ‘I like to stand out here and look at it,’ Sir Alfred said in his thick voice, hands gripping the guard rail, eyes staring round at village and country, pressing shops and furnaces. ‘Makes me feel I’ve done something more real than talking. People make things here, things that get used, things you can touch and hold. Stand here on a workday and you can see what you’re doing is adding something to the world’s wealth. That’s more important than talking, eh?’

  Garden stared down at silver workshops and green fields and the little figures going through the formal motions of Saturday afternoon. It all looked more remote even than it was. ‘I used to think so. Now I’m not so sure.
’

  ‘To build a world,’ the other said with no sign that he had heard Garden’s words. ‘And to build it right, that’s what’s important. But can you make them see it? They’re born fools, and that’s how they die.’ The reference of his words was not clear. A cloud obscured the sun, dulled silver, darkened green, cast its shade upon the tiny figures. Sir Alfred turned abruptly, went back through the window into the room, flung himself down in the chair behind his desk. Garden realised that this was in fact an old man. The temples were marked with the peculiar white of age, the hand that played with a paper knife on the desk was beginning to shrivel.

  ‘You have come back, Mr Garden. I congratulate you on that, and you too, Miss Arbitzer. But there congratulations must end.’

  ‘We were betrayed,’ said Garden. Ilona stared from one of the men to the other.

  ‘You were betrayed,’ Sir Alfred repeated slowly. ‘By Peplov.’

  ‘And over here.’ Outside the lift whirred faintly. Now Garden spoke logically, eloquently, in the phrases he had planned. The arguments ran as he had intended, he spoke plainly of his suspicions that little Mr Hards had killed Peterson, he told of his own earlier knowledge of Peterson, he mentioned barely admitted doubts about Bretherton and Colonel Hunt. One of these, he said, had told Peplov that Garden and Arbitzer were on the plane. There was no other way in which he could have been certain of it.

  The paper knife tapped on the desk. ‘What happened over there?’

  Garden told him the whole story. Sir Alfred put on a large pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and made notes. Once or twice Garden shifted and saw Ilona’s gaze upon him, fiercely protective and pitying. The sun shone again.

  ‘You have told nobody else this story since your return to England?’