'I don't remember now. Oh, she said something began in a stable, and I asked what, but she didn't know. And then she cut up rough.'
'What did you pay her?'
'Nothing. She wouldn't take anything. Said the power was off and the switch wouldn't work, or something of that sort.'
'D'you mean to say that she didn't charge you anything?' Baba seemed strangely impressed.
'Well, she couldn't very well. It was a washout, even if it was partly my fault.'
'You shouldn't have been such a fool. She's very famous. Why, admirals and generals used to go to her in the war to find out what was the best thing to do.'
Kif gave his rare shout of laughter. 'Strewth!' he said. 'They should have come to me. I didn't need any switches and things for that. And I wouldn't have charged them a cent.'
'We'll give her a month to cool off,' said Baba, 'and then we'll go back.'
'Not me,' said Kif. 'You can!'
But by that time Kif was in prison.
On a February night he helped Mr Carroll in a job at the offices of an insurance company off Cannon Street. Carroll had entered and emptied the safe with his usual precision and despatch, and they had spent the rest of the night in the deserted office, until the hour had become one at which two pedestrians could traverse Cannon Street with an air of virtue and early rising. Kif had preceded Carroll downstairs to the marble entrance hall which marked the centre of the ground floor, Carroll being a good flight and a half behind, when he became conscious with that sixth sense which the war had developed in him that there was someone besides themselves in the dark. He was halfway to the door when the knowledge came to him, and he stopped abruptly. Almost before his light went out a pair of arms clutched him from behind, and before he had started to struggle he had warned Carroll.
'Look out! Beat it!' he called, and wondered immediately whether he had done the right thing. There was no sound from above, but Kif was too thoroughly occupied to notice whether there was or not.
'You'd better come quietly,' panted his assailant in the dark; but what had been merely the desire for freedom had become in Kif the rage of the fighting animal, and he was slowly but surely getting the better of the encounter when he became aware that there were now two people beside him. For one glad moment he thought that Carroll had come to the rescue, and then he heard the voice in his ear say: 'Grab him, Tapper, till I get them on him.' That roused him to a blind fury.
It was two strenuous minutes later that Kif felt his wrists imprisoned and heard one of the men cross the hall to the electric switch while the other held his arms above the elbow from behind. The light, diffused from inverted bowls in a ceiling of a subtle oyster shade, shed an incongruously mild radiance on the three dishevelled men.
'It's the chicken!' said the man who had switched on the lights, surveying Kif disgustedly. 'But the old man's somewhere up above. We'll—'
The front door swung gently open in the draught and fell to again, thudding softly against its jamb.
'I thought—' began the man who held Kif. But the other had dashed to the open door. He came back expressing himself with a fluency which roused interest in Kif, who was feeling sick and dazed.
'Surely you could have heard him and warned me?' he finished.
'Me? Talk sense. I was much too busy trussing your damned chicken. If you hadn't given him that wallop we'd be still at it.' He dropped Kif's arms and came round to have a better look at the man who had put up such resistance. 'Daisy, isn't he!' Then, with a sudden change of tone, he said: 'Feeling cheap, chum? Sit down for a minute.' He pushed Kif, whose knees were trembling, back on to a carved marble seat.
Tapper, still mouthing vain curses, went to the telephone, and Kif's captor sat down at the other end of the bench. Something ran down Kif's cheek and dropped on his hand. He looked at it uncomprehendingly and put his hands up to his wet hair. The detective smiled, not unkindly.
'You wouldn't come quietly, you know. You asked for it.'
Kif looked at the blood on his hands and nodded indifferently. 'Give me my handkerchief, will you?' he asked, and the detective searched for it, and having mopped Kif's head handed it over.
Kif was feeling better by the time Tapper came back, but Tapper favoured him with an unlovely stare. 'It's good your girl can't see you now,' he said.
This was gratuitous insult, and Kif roused himself.
'If it comes to that,' he said, 'you're no oil painting.' His eyes indicated a bluish-red swelling on Tapper's cheek-bone. 'And if I'd had a truncheon they'd have needed an identification parade to spot you.'
'Not so much lip,' said Tapper sourly. 'You'll learn not to be so free with your tongue before we've done with you—you and Carroll.'
'Who's Carroll?'
'Very clever, aren't you?' said the detective. But Kif merely looked vague.
At the station a fat and sleepy sergeant wrote in a book while a constable bound up Kif's head deftly and impersonally, very much as an habitual church-goer turns up the epistle to the Ephesians, and he was consigned to a clean little room which he supposed was a cell.
He was terribly, abysmally tired. There was nothing he wanted in all the world but to go to sleep. His freedom, Baba, his old life—last night seemed years away—were mere names to him, unattractive and without meaning. All he wanted was to sleep. And as soon as he lay down sleep deserted him, and he lay watching the dawn come, his head throbbing, and every aspect of his predicament growing steadily clearer with the growing light. But he pulled his mind resolutely away from the future. Things were only bearable in this life if you didn't think about them; he had found out that long ago at Tarn; so he turned, and turned again, wearily, in the grey light, busying himself with his physical discomfort lest his mind, already pulling on the leash like a too inquisitive dog, reach the thing he knew was there—the locked door and all it stood for.
When he was brought into court in the morning he looked round eagerly for a familiar face, but there was no one there. He listened as one at a play to Tapper giving evidence of his arrest, of the implements found in his pockets, of his abnormal violence, and found no reason why he should not be committed for trial. With another despairing glance round the court he departed to a new temporary home. Two weeks later he was sentenced in the presence of Angel, Baba and Danny and an indifferent crowd of some fifty idlers to twenty-one months' hard labour. The young and earnest lawyer who had been presented to him for his defence could in the circumstances confine himself merely to the plea for leniency. The forces of the Crown, however, while admitting that there was no previous conviction recorded against him, had incontrovertible evidence of the violence of his character; and Kif listened in amazement to an account of his attack on his superior officer while in the army, and of his obstructing a police-sergeant while in the execution of his duty in January of the previous year. Kif's counsel, after a consultation with him, explained the reasons for Kif's two attacks on authority, and made the most of his war record. But the impression remained, even in Kif's own mind, that he was a desperate character. His thoughts went back to an interview he had had with Tapper shortly after being committed for trial. Tapper had begun on the 'You be sensible and we'll see what can be done for you', tack, and had asked, 'What was Carroll going to do with the stuff he had that night?'
'What Carroll?' Kif had said again.
Tapper had adjured him not to be foolish; it wouldn't pay him to make enemies of the police; and it would probably make a difference to his sentence if the stuff was recovered. But Kif was not going to be led into any admission that Carroll had been his partner.
'I suppose you'll admit that you know Carroll?' asked the detective, exasperated and sarcastic.
'I know a Carroll,' Kif said. 'The tobacconist on the Walham road.' And Tapper had snorted and called him a fool.
And now the world called him a desperate character. A bad lot, in fact. It was quite a new idea to him.
The judge pointed out that a good war record was not in itsel
f any mitigation of his offence; the fact that he had fought for his country in war did not make him free to rob his neighbours in peace. What would have been mitigation would have been any evidence that the crime was committed through the urge of need or distress; as true, but there was no such evidence. This was, it was true, the accused's first essay in crime—that was to say it was the first occasion on which he had been arrested. In most cases of a first offence it was usual to give a light sentence. But there had been a wave of this type of crime lately, and it was very necessary that a salutary example should be made in order to prevent others embarking on that first all-important step. Moreover, the large haul of booty which had been obtained from the offices burgled by the accused and his confederates was still untraced, and the accused had shown no anxiety to assist in its recovery. They had evidence that the accused had a distinct bias towards violence. There was no doubt in his own mind that he was a danger to law-abiding citizens. In these circumstances he sentenced the accused to twenty-one months' hard labour.
Kif heard the sentence without realisation. The thing was over and he was 'for it'; that was all he knew. It was a queer mix-up, but he had undoubtedly asked for it, and it didn't bear thinking about.
With which muddled but true summing-up he turned to smile at Baba and left the dock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kif found prison not at all the place of half-grim half-picturesque incarceration he had unconsciously pictured. It was a place of iron routine and heart-searing monotony. It was like hospital without the companionship and good-humour. In some ways it reminded him of the army; the new-comer as in the army—as in most human communities—found himself doing the least bearable work; 'scrounging' and 'winning' were certainly not possible through lack of opportunity, but wrangling was in full swing; and if he were particularly young and innocent, which did not apply in Kif's case, his mates took an unholy delight in opening the new-comer's eyes to the wickedness and hardship of the world. Kif bore the dull work and the incredibly dull food with philosophy; he had asked for it; he recognised that. Even if he were still puzzled by his arrival in that galère, he admitted that he was paying the inevitable penalty for bad luck and illegal practices. But the monotony ground his philosophy into dust and ashes. He did his best to avoid it by getting himself shifted from one kind of work to another as often as chance offered or could be manufactured; he had not had four years of army service in war-time without learning all that was to be known of self-preservation. But the monotony remained: smothering, maddening, indescribable. He had thought the hours of soap-selling monotonous, but he knew now that they represented the wildest excitement; there was all the world to look at and wonder about, all the crowding petty incident which he had never noticed and which made life bearable. He had rebelled at the moribund life at Tarn, but, even there, there had been the spice of variety; what he had thought of as a smooth sphere was a thing of many facets; a journey to town to-day, to-morrow snedding turnips, at the end of the week a dance; if there was nothing more there was the changing weather. Here there was the same work at the same time with the same faces, the same food, the same surroundings, and the same atmosphere—always. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow. To Kif especially, that was unspeakable misery. He had bouts of cafard which expressed themselves only in an added quiet, but while they lasted warders would look at him a second time and thereafter appear aware of him; and Kif, always quick to notice atmosphere, became aware of their attitude; which was very bad for Kif. He was a bad lot, was he? And they were frightened of him? Well, that was a good jape. No one so far had ever feared him—his hand or his eye or his tongue. And Kif, good-natured, easy-going, not yet twenty-two, found some relief from the awful monotony in the thought that he counted as different from the herd, and in watching the warders watch him.
His biggest anchor to sanity and to his native good-humour he found in the books with which the chaplain supplied him. (Visitors other than the padre he resolutely refused to have, either 'outside' or 'prison'.) They did for him now what they had done at Tarn—created a coloured world in a drab one. The padre was a cheerful Christian with a high ideal of brotherly love and a habit of not listening to what was said to him. He approved of Kif, and though their tastes in literature lay far apart—the chaplain's ideal would have been a mixture of Mrs Hemans and R. M. Ballantyne, and Kif preferred a dash of reality in his mixture—he nevertheless took considerable pains to bring to him what he called 'the nearest to specification'. And Kif approved of him to that extent. He listened politely on the few occasions on which the clergyman was moved to 'say his little piece', as Kif put it mentally; that was his job. The chaplain had been through the war—at Rouen—and liked to think that he understood 'the men'. But he knew nothing about things really, thought Kif. Black was black and white was white to him. He didn't understand things. He wouldn't see—even if he would listen while he was told—that Angel and Danny were decenter really than some of the fat rotters who came to his church, and who had never seen the inside of a cell in their lives, and never would because the things they did weren't punishable by law.
So the padre said his little piece about going straight, and making a new start, and virtue being its own reward (he did not put that last quite so blatantly—even to his intelligence it needed wrapping up), and was never told anything about Collins, or Angel, or—Baba.
Baba! She was as potent in absence as ever her shining aloof presence had been. It was she who defeated Kif's policy of not thinking of things. At nights her pale triangular face hung against the dark, and swam under the closed eyes pressed into his pillow. Baba with her pale turned-back mouth and her white neck, her infinite variety, her givings and withholdings, her boon-companionship; she was a torture to him. He would not think of her! And even while his mind protested, he was remembering for the thousandth time the men he had left with a fair field. They were seeing her talking with her, dancing with her; and he had not the flimsiest hold over her. Two years. Oh God! What might not happen in two years!
And Kif would fall asleep, worn out, an hour before reveillé, and would start the day in despairing quiet. And the warders would cast that second glance, and Kif would be sardonically amused.
He earned his full remission of sentence, however, belying his reputation. The last three months were almost easy, so wonderful was it to have something to look forward to. Baba had written to him, and Kif had read her characteristically non-committal sentences until he had them by heart; and over his work would shred them carefully phrase by phrase, turn the phrases inside out and shake them for hidden meanings, fit possibilities to them, search behind them, make them new by changing the accented word. There was nothing to tell him what he wanted to know.
His final interview with the governor found him in no mood to listen to sane advice. He was about to be free—free to walk down a road, and smoke a cigarette, and talk to people, and have a drink, and do any blame' thing he liked. The nightmare was behind him, and he'd come out of it well, and he'd take jolly good care he never went back. He had learned a tip or two in his stretch. He would never be so easy again.
'You have behaved very well indeed, Vicar,' the governor said.
He was not in reality at all impressed by Kif's good behaviour. All the hopeless cases behaved exemplarily; it paid them to. He was merely agreeably surprised; they had not expected to find him tractable. Kif had been the subject of no complaints, and had himself complained only once, when the complaint had proved justified. 'I don't know what your plans are, but I want to say that if you find a decent job you will have no trouble from the police. This is your first offence, and there is no reason why it should not be your last.' Kif was admiring the way he clipped out his phrases without waste or preamble. Like Heaton. He rather liked the governor. 'There's the address of people who will help you to a job if you want it. Good-day and good luck!'
At eight o'clock the next morning the gate shut behind Kif's tall figure in a rather creased brown suit, and he s
tepped into the deserted sunny street half fearful, half expectant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sunlight fell about him like a garment, and the warm air was a benediction. A July morning and he was free. But he was afraid suddenly. And then he saw the only other occupant of the street. The clothes were unfamiliar and it was a moment before he recognised Angel.
Angel met him with a very little more demonstration than usual, but that little was, in him, significant. His eyes were very blue, and he had in excelsis his usual air of having bathed in celestial dew; a true son of the morning,
'Baba's making breakfast,' was all he said. 'I expect you can do with it.'
They sat on a bus-top in the sun, and while Kif watched the vans, the drays, the stray taxis, and the buses of the early morning traffic, Angel sketched the history of the last eighteen months. They had all had influenza; that seemed to be the most important event. And Carroll senior had done two more jobs, and Kif's share was waiting for him; one of them had been a really good one—a jeweller's. And Carroll had disapproved of the percentages he had been given on the last occasion by the fence, and had tried to send the jeweller's stuff straight to Holland. And the ways they had tried and the way that had succeeded. And of course Sammy was out a long time ago, but he was working with a man he had met in prison. He wasn't staying with them.
The last item was a crumb of comfort which sustained Kif through the desert of suspense and inarticulate questioning that lay between him and his meeting with Baba.
The house was cool and empty as they passed through the open door from the already hot street, and there was a faint sizzle of cooking from the kitchen.
'Baba's through there,' said her brother. 'I'll be down in two shakes,' and he disappeared up the stairs.
Kif opened the door of the kitchen with a thumping heart. Baba was standing with her back to him at the frying-pan, rapt in the process of bringing the contents to perfection. She had not heard him, but a second later she turned, wiping a thumb in a long sweep down her green apron, and their eyes met. Kif felt as if he were being hung over a bottomless pit by a piece of gossamer; his throat was dry and his palms were wet. And then her arms were round his neck and he was saying her name unintelligibly into her hair. He forgot his shabbiness—which had worried him when dressing that morning—his doubts, his lack of standing with her, the eighteen months he had been away, everything but the fact that she had welcomed him and that he had her in his arms. Everything was all right.