He said: ‘‘When you want to kill someone—it’s always a mistake to fight by the rules.’’
I said: ‘‘ Never worry. I’ll try again.’’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm. There were two Italians squatting beside me, but they didn’t seem to understand any English.
He said: ‘‘Try again … Maybe. But you can’t yet—so I’ll tell you something, as you’ve got this mania tor know.’’
‘‘I think I know enough.’’
‘‘Not quite.’’ He swallowed and lay back for a minute not speaking. Then he shifted and tried to sit up. One of the Italians moved to help him. Martin nodded and vee-ed back his lank hair. ‘‘I wanted to say this before you sank the boat, I wanted to put straight one or two ideas you’d got in your head about Grevil and me. You think I made use of him. Well, so I did. You think I let him down. Well, so I did. That’s all in keeping. But if you think I thought nothing about him, then you’re not even using the right language. I felt more for him, you fool, than I’ve ever felt for an other person in my life, or am likely to do again—certainly for any other man. And I’m not a homo— perhaps even you will count me out on that.’’ He shut his eyes. The little skipper went past and beamed at us. He was as proud as if he’d made a record catch. Perhaps he looked at it that way.
I said to Martin: ‘‘ What are you trying to say?’’
‘‘Simply this. That we met, Grevil and I, and stewed together in that damned hot-house for two months, the only white men in miles. At first I’d got to; it was the only chance I saw of getting the opium home. But after a bit I wanted to. We were spending our days looking for another example of pithecanthropus erectus. We began that way. But we ended putting in more time on the archaeology of our own final causes. And not merely in Aristotle’s sense. It was—do you understand what I’m trying to say?’’
I said: ‘‘I might if I was prepared to believe it.’’
He stayed silent, and I wasn’t sure if he’d even heard.
‘‘He was the ablest man I’ve ever met. He was different and his brain was different. He was clever as hell. We talked—yes, we talked—night after night, any subject on earth. We sharpened our brains on each other—raised argument to a new pitch that I didn’t know existed before. Perhaps he didn’t either. You know the sort of kick you can get in higher mathematics, mounting one peak on another. You know the stimulus of reaching for something bigger than you can ever grasp …’’
The sail flapped over our heads as some straying breeze took it, and the timbers of the boat creaked. We were nearer the mainland.
‘‘That’s something I’ve—missed ever since … Of course we quarrelled too. His way of looking at things was the dead opposite of mine. But you can respect a fighter. And after a time that sort of thing can bring you together. The harder a man hits, the better you know his quality and understand him. There’s an intimacy in battle. Even when you quarrel with the things he stands for you can acknowledge the way he stands for them. He was unselfish and—and uncorrupt …’’
I said: ‘‘You thought so much of him that you let him down, cheated him, left him to make his own way out of the mess you’d landed him in. Is that it?’’
He fumbled in his pocket, took out a sodden packet cigarettes, stared at it with a sharp contraction of the eye-brows. ‘‘I don’t claim any virtues, but I claim consistency. Strange, isn’t it, in your nice little pigeon-holed Jekyll and Hyde? Because I was consistent, I let him down. So what? I’ve told you, I never deceived him for a second about what I thought or believed … That opium was worth a fortune. I’d sunk every penny; and nearly my throat cut as well. Are you suggesting I should have tipped it in the nearest river?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘And with it the opinions about everything that I’ve had all my life, eh? Should I have gone to him and said, ‘My dear Grevil, I have been redeemed by the soul of a good man!’ ’’
Although he’d been speaking quietly he threw the packet of cigarettes out over the sea with a furious gesture of recovering strength. His fingers were trembling.
I said: ‘‘So now you’re telling me that to score a theoretical point over him—’’
‘‘Theoretical point be damned! Why deny sincerity to my opinions because they happen to differ from yours …’’
‘‘Well, then, because you wouldn’t give way to yourself, you let this man you’d come to think more of than anyone else you’ve ever met—that’s right isn’t it?—you let this man carry the can for your own nasty little crime and left him to commit suicide in a back-street canal.’’
‘‘I left him in a back street! That was all. We’d had a set-to, as I told you. I was flaming angry because the whole scheme had come crashing, and I felt if he’d done one single thing to help, we should have put it through. And I was bloody angry because he seemed to expect a self-sacrifice that I wasn’t even prepared to consider. Why should I! I left him there and made my way back to England—by motor-boat as It happened. It wasn’t till two days later that I knew he was dead. I didn’t believe for a second that he had committed suicide. I felt sure Jodenbree was at the bottom of it—Jodenbree or one of his lot. I didn’t believe any intelligent man could be such a fool …’’
The Italians had drifted away from us. They probably thought we were quarrelling over the sunken boat. One was standing staring at the mainland.
Martin said again in a voice hardly above his breath: ‘‘I didn’t believe any man could be such a fool. Even up to yesterday …’’
‘‘You mean you thought you could shift the blame.’’
‘‘I thought I could make sense out of it. Does it seem sense to you, even now? Why d’you suppose I took the risk of going back with you to Holland in the first place? Why d’you suppose I laid myself open to being found out by you? Because of Leonie? She was a side-issue. I’d have found her in time. Why d’you suppose I encouraged you to go on when you looked as if you might give up? Because we both wanted to prove the same thing—because we both believed or wanted to believe the same thing. Isn’t that so?’’ He sat up, propping himself against the crate behind, whispered; ‘‘It was a challenge, he said. God Almighty, what an attitude to take up! His suicide doesn’t prove, or justify anything—not a thing. It only wastes something, throws it away for a gesture, throws it away. That’s what I can’t get over. He threw his life away.’’
He was so bitter that for a minute or two I was convinced. Nobody could be so bitter who didn’t care. It seemed to me for that moment that the antagonism was gone from between us. We’d had a common aim—now we shared a common defeat.
After a time I said: ‘‘Maybe I can see some sort of twisted sense in it.’’
‘‘For God’s sake, don’t tell me you think it was a good thing to do.’’
‘‘No … But I’m trying hard to put myself in his place. Perhaps he found or thought he found there some truth in what you’said, that the finger was on him as well as on you. Perhaps, it was a personal choice. I don’t know. That’s the way you put it to him, wasn’t it? Greater love hath no man.
‘‘Hell, I was angry, we were quarrelling; people don’t always measure up their words!’’
‘‘No, but you did say it; and perhaps he suddenly thought, that’s right on my doorstep, what am I going to do about it, because however much he’s let me down this man is my friend? We’ve been arguing for weeks on just these issues. What am I going to do?’’
‘‘Did be think he was saving me by what he did? Why on earth——’’
‘‘I couldn’t understand Grevil, with the beliefs that he held, taking his own life. Now I’m coming to see that it was just those beliefs—and you—which put him on the spot. To a Christian, suicide is the worst failure, isn’t it? But where does suicide end and self-sacrifice begin? They can be almost contradictory. What about that fellow, Oates wasn’t it, who crawled out of the tent on Scott’s last expedition? What would you call the thing he did?’’<
br />
There was a long silence. Martin Coxon said: ‘‘Yes, sometimes you’re so much like Grevil … It might be him talking—and his damned habit of making a moral issue of everything. Perhaps you’ll tell me what it’s all supposed to mean to me. If it-was supposed to be a sacrifice on my behalf, what was it supposed to save me from? Arrest and imprisonment? I could have got clear of that without his help. Being wanted by the police? I already was wanted—under that name. No, instead of that he’s burdened me, or tried to burden me with—with this … It was an insufferable thing to do. Why should I carry that with me all my life!’’
You haven’t got to,’’ I said. ‘‘ You can sneer it off. It all depends on whether his estimate of you was the right one.’’
Unnoticed we’d been coming inshore, and I recognised the towering cliffs behind Amalfi. As we ran in under them the skipper came across to us and said something to Martin. Martin turned sharply to me.
‘‘Why did you tell them we came from Amalfi?’’
‘‘Because I didn’t want to go back—yet.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Nothing’s finished between us, is it? I’m sorry to disillusion you.’’
He stared at me, his face fine-drawn as a fencer’s. Then he was helped to his feet. I got up on my own. It was siesta time, and there was nobody about on the quay except two men sleeping in the shade of a wall. There was hardly anybody to be seen anywhere, but a bus palpitated, just about to start, on the sea front.
I shook hands with the skipper, thanking him in a few halting words for the favour of his rescue. He beamed and patted my shoulder. Coxon said nothing at all.
As we came right in and it was almost time to land, he turned to me and said: ‘‘These men come from Salerno. Why have you chosen Amalfi?’’
I said: ‘‘Isn’t that where Leonie is?’’
Chapter Twenty
Weak and unsteady, we stood together on the quay like rescued comrades, and watched the fishing-boat luff up into that faint air which did duty for a breeze and make off under her own diesel for the southern headland of the bay. I never knew the skipper’s name, and if I read the name of his boat I have forgotten it. We stood together alone, Martin Coxon and I, still damp in the heat of afternoon sun.
He said: ‘‘ This thing has gone far enough between us.
‘‘It’s gone too far. That’s why it can’t stop here.’’
He started at me. ‘‘What d’you propose to do—fight it out with bare nails on the quay?’’
‘‘No … I’m going up to find Leonie.’’
‘‘Look,’’ he said. ‘‘Leave her out of this. Leave Leonie out of it. She had nothing whatever to do with Grevil.’’
‘‘No, but she’s had something to do with me.’’
‘‘You fancy she had, but it meant nothing. She’s come back to me. I warn you to keep out.’’
I ran a hand through my hair, trying to flatten it, took out my handkerchief and squeezed it but it was already dry. As I turned away he said: ‘‘Where are you going?’’
‘‘I’ve told you.’’
‘‘And what good will it do you if you find her?’’
I said: ‘‘You’re free to catch that bus if you want to, Martin, I can’t stop you. You’re free to go. But you’ve something to gain by following me, because as long as I’m alive you’ll be a wanted man.’’
I walked off along to the end of the quay and past the bus and turned into the centre of the town, past the cathedral and up the narrow street where Leonie had bought the scarf. I found I could only just keep steady on my feet. I didn’t turn to see if he was following.
The shop where she’d bought the scarf was shut along with all the others, but two of the older children were playing with a kitten on the doorstep and they recognised me. I knew just enough Italian to say: ‘‘Dove Poltono’’, and then ‘‘lento, lento’’ as their replies flooded over me.
One of them knew a word or two of English, and in the end I understood. If I wanted to follow the motor-road I must go back along the sea front for a kilometre to the next village and turn sharp inland past a church with a clock tower; but if I did not mind the climb, then I should continue up this street and follow the dried-up bed of the stream until I reached the second of two ruined mills, when I should see the main road above me to my right and could climb to it over the rough ground between.
I thanked them, and as I turned to go on Martin was standing at the end of the street watching me.
The street climbed sharply uphill and soon became a track, first flanked by orange groves and vines and then almost overgrown with rank weed, with a few broken-down cottages, and hens picking among the rubble. Then I saw the bed of the stream, pebbly and overgrown, winding ahead of the valley.
I stopped once but saw nothing more of him. The sun hammered down like a July day, and soon I was swearing as I climbed. It grew to be desolate, lonely country, and when I got to the first ruined mill there was no other house in sight. The sides of the valley had narrowed sharply, and it was now almost a ravine. Just then I didn’t think much, because my mind was fixed on what I had to do and on the effort of doing it. By the time the second mill came in sight I was feeling very tired. I stopped once and waited in the hope of catching sight of Coxon, but he didn’t come, so I went on.
I made a circuit of the second mill and looked about. Not a bird stirred in the bushes. Here and there, among the more familiar things, plants of cactus stood up like the listening ears of strange animals. The stream-bed wound on and up, but I’d been told … And then I saw the road.
It was two or three hundred feet above me. The hillside climbed sharply and the green scrub was broken by sharp bluffs of rock. Evidently the boys scrambled up this way, for nearly all Italian children can climb like monkeys, but it wasn’t exactly going to be an easy job.
I got about half-way, tacking a good bit to avoid the loose boulders and the denser thickets, and then I stopped to look down the valley. There was still no sign at all of Martin. It looked as if he’d not taken up me challenge. Perhaps I’d been a fool to suppose that he would. And yet …
I turned to look up, and saw him watching me from the road above.
At first I thought he had found some even shorter cut than mine, but then I realised he had probably taken the Salerno bus as far as the foot of the hill and walked up the main road. So he had got ahead of me. Evidently he wanted to reach Leonie first.
As I went on I saw there was another reason. He had three or four big stones on the parapet wall beside him. They may have weighed about twenty pounds each. He called out: ‘‘Can you hear me?’’
I didn’t answer but went on climbing.
He said: ‘‘Go back, Philip. I’ve warned you. You’re not coming up this way.’’
As I went on, it came to me at that odd moment to wish I still didn’t feel something about Martin Coxon. It would have been ten times better if I could have gone about this cool and detached. But I couldn’t. An old deep-rooted liking makes the disliking more bitter and more intense. If I hadn’t muffed the struggle in the sea he would have been finished before the fishing-boat came up. If I could have felt no hatred now my hands wouldn’t be fumbling over stone and rock.
As I got nearer I could see the sweat on his face. He said: ‘‘This is as far as you’ll come, Philip.’’
We stared at each other. I still had about twenty feet to climb to the parapet. As I took another couple of steps he flung the first rock. I flattened myself in the undergrowth, and it flew wide over my head and crashed away down the hillside.
Lying there I looked to right and left. It might be possible to edge along and make the road a hundred yards down, but I supposed there was nothing to stop him following me. I took two more steps and another rock crashed past.
‘‘The next one will finish you,’’ he said.
I was of the same opinion and lay quiet for a few seconds. Where I was now I was partly sheltered, though with a bit of luck he
might get my legs, which wasn’t a nice thought.
I began to edge over on the new tack. He could probably see me, but I was still in semi-shelter. I made about ten yards of side progress this way and then raised my head, rather expecting him to have moved also. But I found I couldn’t see more than a few feet of the parapet from here, and he wasn’t to be seen in this limited area.
I went on, expecting a stone any time, and at last came to clear country where there was no shelter at all. He’d disappeared from the parapet and was nowhere to be seen. Neither were his remaining stones, I tried to consider it for a minute or two, not to get over-impetuous or in a sweat. There was still nearly twenty feet to go from here. If I waited to get my breath back and rushed it … He might be waiting over the top ready to knock in my head, but it was a risk I was prepared to take.
I got my breath back, and then I gathered my strength and jumped up.
I got to the parapet unscathed and clawed my way shakily over it, ready for the worst.
The road was empty. I looked up at the overhanging cliff above the road and ahead to the next hairpin bend. It was unlike him to give up a position like that without making good use of it, but that apparently was just what he had done. All he had done was delay me five minutes. If there was a catch somewhere, I couldn’t see it.
I made the next hairpin, but the road was climbing steeply and I couldn’t get a clear view. It wasn’t until I’d climbed for another five minutes that I briefly caught sight of him on ahead. He was walking quickly and had established a good lead. I tried to break into a trot gave it up after a minute or two.
We were right out of the valley, now, and the road had probably risen seven or eight hundred feet. In the distance the sea glimmered hazily, and all round were the mountains in knotted clusters like the muscles of an old giant. Beside the road the foliage was grey with dust, and here and there a crumbled wall stood to mark the site of a dead cottage. I wondered why people had gone, whether industry had moved or whether some pestilence had struck them a century ago.