'He was with Wojek when he came to join you on the train, was he?'
'He was, yes–but I doubt that Jan Wojek will remember anything.
They'd both had rather a lot to drink, but Jan was in the worse condition . . .'
In the end Maclean had become rather fed up with his inebriated comrades, the Englishman full of excitement and misplaced elation, the Pole full of sadness, still fighting the well-founded suspicion that he had won his war and lost his country. So Maclean had settled back in his corner seat listening to his sensible conscience, which told him it was high time to stop flying and start dummy4
his real career. To him, unlike the other two, the war had never been the great adventure, and now it was over anyway.
Audley crunched away down the well-tended drive beside Faith, once more in a gloomy world of his own. He was aware that they had been less than gracious to Maclean at the conclusion of the interview. Faith had rebuffed the man's conventional questions about her mother with short answers; his own equally conventional gratitude had been short and insincere. And each was merely projecting personal feelings.
With typically feminine unfairness, Faith obviously blamed Maclean for everything. He could have been the cohesive force in the crew, tipping the balance against temptation. Instead he had left well alone, saving his strength for himself, so it must seem to her.
But human relations were never as simple as that in reality.
His own disappointment was better founded, for that feat of memory which Faith's disapproval had stirred had thrown the whole question of the boxes' whereabouts into confusion again. If that private joke of Steerforth's had been recalled with any accuracy the boxes were below ground again, where Schliemann had found their contents in the first place. And that would make their rediscovery appallingly difficult, even impossible.
He was tempted to throw in his hand–to insist that the whole idea of tracking down long-lost treasure was a nonsense for which he had neither the aptitude nor the experience. His bouts of confidence seemed in retrospect as misplaced as Stocker's dummy4
confidence in him — if Stocker ever really had such confidence.
But even if Stocker's confidence was assumed, there was still the reality of Panin. The Russian's coming was the one sure proof that the treasure existed and could be found. Yet it made no sense–or it meant that he'd been approaching the problem from entirely the wrong direction. In that case what was needed was–what was it the Arabs called it?–a tafsir il aam: the calculated throwing away of the old rule book which stopped one winning the game.
But to do that would mean returning to London, and then to an unwelcoming home full of electronic eavesdroppers. And it would also lose him the chance of getting into a real bed with Faith.
That was the one worthwhile product of the whole operation, and he wasn't going to ruin it now. As he climbed into the car he could see that she looked as gloomy as he felt, but that smartly-pinned hair would look better spread on a pillow. So the idea of quitting and the tafsir il aam could both damn well wait, and he would go on as planned.
They drove off in silence. The last sight he had of Maclean was of the compact man still standing where they had said goodbye to him, deep in his memories. Audley hoped the lifejacket of his clear conscience would keep him afloat. Then a gleaming wing of Wadham Hill cut him off from view.
They continued without speaking, and for once he concentrated on his driving; Butler's Rover was a car which rewarded effort, very different from his undemanding Austin. But in the end he had to break the silence.
dummy4
'You didn't enjoy that either?'
'Enjoy it? In a way it was worse than Tierney. You should have been nicer to Tierney and nastier to him–my proxy godfather!'
'And then I would have got nothing out of either of them. But he wasn't so bad; you've just got a prejudice against headmasters.'
'Against that one, anyway. He could have stopped my father dead in his tracks if he'd really wanted to. And I think he knew it, too, whatever he said, the sanctimonious bastard.'
She sighed. 'But then my dear father would have got up to some other murky little scheme, I suppose–gun-running, or something like that. You're right, of course: this way's no worse than any other–and at least I've met you this way, David!'
She reached over and put a slender hand on his, and then leant across and planted a light kiss on his cheek.
'"Meet you at the Bull",' she whispered in his ear. 'This way I'm following the family tradition as well!'
XII
If there had ever been any ghosts in the Bull, old ghosts or shadows in RAF blue, they were gone now, thought Audley. The central heating would have been too much for them.
He sat on his luxurious bed and watched Faith double up on hers in helpless laughter. There might be a suggestion of hysterics in it, but it seemed genuine enough even if he was not disposed to share dummy4
it: the Bull had proved a more daunting experience than he had expected. Worse still, the management evidently took them for honeymooners, if not elopers, and this was its special bridal suite.
It might have been the way Richardson had booked them in. It might even have been the awkward way Audley had claimed their room. It might very well have been their arrival without a single item of luggage, an oversight which had struck him much too late.
But he suspected that it had been their actual reaction to the Bull itself which had finally convinced the staff of their romantic status.
No hardened adulterers or casual fornicators would have behaved so eccentrically.
Faith had spent the last half-hour of the journey describing the decaying establishment which had been the rendezvous for the Newton Chester air crews, their families and hangers-on.
Not that the old Bull had been prepared for its sudden wartime prosperity. It had in fact been left high and dry by time until Hitler's rise and renewed friendship with France had caused the migration of the RAF bomber squadrons from their old haunts in the south midlands to a new generation of bases which spread across East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Newton Chester had been the last and the least of these airfields, a temporary intruder which had never managed to attract the biggest bombers.
But if the creaking beds and antique plumbing of the old pub had been strained to the uttermost, so too had the stamina of the wives and girl friends who descended on it. Its draughtiness and arctic conditions beyond the two cheerless bars had been a byword; it dummy4
was a folk legend that the rear upper gunner of a Hampden, who should certainly have been inured to cold, had frozen to death during the winter of 1940 in one of the bedrooms. Circumstantial evidence for this was that his girl had forsaken him for a pilot in the next room–one of the advantages of the place was that it encouraged passionate night-long embraces simply as a means of keeping warm.
It was famous also–or infamous–for running out of beer, for the landlord's habit of despatching patrons to borrow fresh supplies from a pub in the neighbouring village and for his unblushing overcharging of the Samaritans who had helped him. And his whisky, on the rare occasions when it was available, was so heavily watered that flies falling into it were able to swim to safety and take off at once, cold sober.
The meals were more reliable; except so far as Jewish aircrew were concerned, for the menu was always a Hobson's choice based on illicit pigs which the landlord fattened on the choicest scraps bribed out of the sergeants' mess at the airfield . . .