The little hand, with its long thin fingers, covered the braced teeth Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in sudden consternation. At this stage, thought Tom professionally, it was a toss-up whether she’d flower into the slender beauty of her mother or merely end up thin and plain. But either way she would be an interesting young woman one day, for the young man who could match her spirit.
‘Golly—you’re right!’ She ducked out from behind the chair, but then halted in the doorway, just as her father had done, but with her chin up, like her mother. ‘You will look after Father, won’t you?’
What Jaggard had ordered, and what he had almost unthinkingly volunteered to obey in order to get rid of this child’s mother, came home to him again. ‘I’ll do my best. But I rather think he’s quite capable of looking after himself, you know.’ He grinned at her reassuringly.
But she was totally unreassured. ‘No, he’s not,’ She shook her head almost angrily. ‘That’s what everyone thinks—they think he’s so clever, and so does he. But he isn’t at all—he really isn’t.’
‘He isn’t—?’ Tom was totally taken aback.
‘Oh—he knows a lot—’ She caught his thought in midair ‘—he knows everything about everything—’ She had to be quoting someone, thought Tom; and most likely it was her mother ‘—but when he wires up a plug he fuses everything, and when he cuts anything he usually cuts himself too—honestly, he does.’
Definitely, this was Faith Audley overheard; and this child had already proved she was good at overhearing; and yet… in a curious way all this echoed what Harvey had said about Research and Development, too: its unmatched intellectual performance was Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State seldom matched by its performance in the field, whenever it strayed out of its back room.
‘He does need looking after, Sir Thomas.’ The little serious face matched her earnestness. ‘So you will look after him, won’t you?
Won’t you?’
He had to get rid of her, for his own peace of mind. But only one answer could do that. ‘Yes. I will look after him.’
She gave him one dreadful signed-and-sealed nod, and then vanished. But then, just as he was starting to heave a sigh of something less than pure relief, her face appeared again, suspended halfway up the edge of the door.
‘I bet you don’t miss!’
Mm? ‘Miss… ? Miss Audley—?’
‘When you shoot at anyone—you don’t miss!’
Nothing less than a categorical answer was again required. So he turned his hand into a pistol. ‘Never, Miss Audley.’ He pointed the pistol-finger at her, knowing that he mustn’t smile. But that wasn’t difficult because it wasn’t a smiling matter—indeed, it was doubly not so, he thought grimly, because he would need to carry a real gun now, just like in Beirut. And there had been nothing remotely funny about that. ‘Never. So off you go then.’ This time he wanted to smile, but couldn’t. The Special Branch unit would have a couple of revolvers, most likely those ‘safe’ Smith and Wessons they favoured but he didn’t like: he could certainly pull enough rank to get one of those. But meanwhile she was still staring at him fixedly through her pebble spectacles. ‘Otherwise your mother will Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State miss you, Miss Audley. And I don’t think that would be healthy for either of us.’
As he sighted his finger on her she vanished, and a moment later he heard her whistling in the passage with all the preparatory innocence of an old lady who knew just how to answer the question ‘Where have you been?’ with a calculated half-truth. And that would be a Greek-meets-Greek situation, if ever there was one
—
But he mustn’t waste his thoughts on women and children—even Audley women and children (who both agreed that their man couldn’t look after himself!)—
He was looking at his pistol-hand, which was still pointing at the half-open door, out of which that shrill, tuneless whistling still issued, far off now—
He turned back to the desk, to the red phone among the cuttings from Soviet Review and Izvestia and É tudes Russes, and Caesar’s Gallic War.
What was that tune? It ought to be from Anna and the King of Siam
—
He needed a hand-gun. And with all the havering that request would occasion he ought to go and ask for it now. But—
What it ought to be was ‘ Whenever I feel afraid/I hold my head erect—And whistle a happy tune/So no one will suspect/I’m afraid
—’ But it wasn’t—
But he wanted to phone Jaggard again, and ask him what the bloody hell was actually happening.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But it sounded curiously like the proud battle hymn of the United States Marines—
But Jaggard already hadn’t admitted that he had any idea what Panin wanted, so he was unlikely to admit more than that now.
And, for that matter, Audley hadn’t even bothered to ask that same obvious question. So… either he had guessed correctly that Sir Thomas Arkenshaw was not privy to its answer… or he already knew that answer, and therefore didn’t need to ask the question—?
The sound faded into the otherwise-silence of the crazy old house, with its newly-broken window. But it surely had been that old US
marine threat: ‘ From the halls of Montezuma/To the shores of Tripoli/We will fight our country’s battles/By the land or by the sea
—’
The whole Audley family was getting its toothbrushes, and Tom Arkenshaw needed a gun—that was the long-and-short of it, he thought.
But… Tripoli, again?
He didn’t like guns. The theory with guns was that they settled all arguments finally, of kings and cowboys as well as terrorists. But that was as facile as ‘ the best things in life are free’, when Willy (and his best suit, which had not been tailored to suit a Smith and Wesson five-shot hammerless) certainly didn’t come without a credit-card or a cheque-book— guns, experience warned him, were never the end of things, but only the beginning of other things, more complicated and embarrassing first, and more unending afterwards.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But, in spite of all of that, he still needed a gun—
Finally, he got the show on the road, more or less.
There were cases in the hall, with Mrs Audley and Miss Audley beside them, and a plainclothes man beside them.
The front door was open, and he could see Audley himself in the porch, talking to one of the drivers, who had an Ordnance Survey map in his hand.
‘Not outside, sir—if you don’t mind,’ said the plain-clothes man as Tom gestured to Mrs Audley, after he had just failed to stop her husband.
Tom dearly wanted to hear what Audley was saying, but there were limits to what he could achieve, with another Special Branch man — the sergeant, no less — striding towards him now.
‘Mrs Audley—’ He had promised her to keep his eye on her husband, and he couldn’t escape her now.
‘Sir Thomas.’ Unlike her daughter, she wasn’t whistling. But she was still chin-up. ‘I thank you, for all your help.’
The sergeant coughed politely, and offered him a completely-holstered Smith and Wesson, with the good grace to be embarrassed in front of Audley’s family.