The Moment of Truth Read online

  He hesitated, and forgot to finish what he was saying. His thoughts went on silently a little further. … We shall set out again; there will be curiosity, a resurrection

  —life, so old, millenially old, and new, dangerous, a birth. But we know where it will lead, he thought.

  “We shan’t see it,” Thorburn said harshly.

  Breuner hurried back from the distance he kept, without knowing it, between himself and others—except, always except his wife.

  “No, of course not,” he agreed smilingly, “it will, I think, be rather dark now for some time. Of course”—his smile became brilliant—“if you are living in it, it will be light enough. When I think of the ninth century I always see a child, a boy, looking up at a—how do you call it?—a may-tree.”

  “You do, do you?” exclaimed Clarke. He had listened with a vacant face, his eyes closed: the moment he opened them you saw the wily sensible devil in him, who never slept, and was (do they say?) not bad at heart, spring joyously up. “I’m sure you’re right, old boy, but it’s beyond me. All I know is, we’re in a hell of a mess—it’s a bad business. I could put it shorter, but I won’t—” he leered slyly at Heron— “not with these masters of prose about.”

  Ignoring him, Heron spoke to Breuner with marked civility.

  “I’ve no doubt you’re right. It’s exactly what I feel myself. Those of us who are, as you say, the future, should take our minds and our knowledge to as safe a distance as possible.”

  Breuner looked at him in surprise.

  “I don’t think I—” he began.

  He was interrupted. The door behind them opened sharply, and Colonel Lackland came in. He might just have got out of bed, he was alert and bubbling with energy: his pale eye—it had a remarkably small pupil—was bright, almost gay. On his heels, detaching himself so far as a slouching walk could do it from this briskness, was Kent.

  Lackland halted in front of the general.

  “This officer has been talking to me, sir. He has something to tell us.”

  Thorburn glanced without moving his head at the young man.

  “Oh, yes?” he said heavily. “What is it?”

  Kent answered in a respectful and very cool voice. He was able to remain cool by saying to himself: I’m in charge here, not these passengers.

  “It’s about your passages, sir. The fact is—the aircraft we expect won’t take all of you. It will only take five. Counting the child, there are eight of you. That means”—he hesitated briefly— “three people won’t be able to go.”

  “What did you say?” asked Thorburn. “Eight of us? Counting you, there are twelve, not eight.”

  Kent smiled slightly.

  “You don’t count us, sir. But there are still three too many of you.”

  From the corner of his eye he had watched Mrs. Heron come in. She must have heard what he said, but she made no sign that it alarmed her. Perhaps, he thought, she hasn’t taken it in. She did not speak to anyone, but in some way, the others, who had been sitting about untidily, displaced persons, in a comfortless waiting-room, now became a group, almost of friends, its centre this plain charming woman. She walked quickly across the room and seated herself on the arm of her husband’s chair. He was disturbed all right; he sat up with a jerk of his elegant shoulders, and spoke to Kent as he might have dealt with an incompetent batman.

  “You didn’t say this at first.”

  “I didn’t want to knock you down with it the minute you arrived,” Kent said.

  Heron’s sallow skin turned dark in patches.

  “Nor have you explained it. Why, may I ask, can’t we all go?”

  His wife had laid her arm along the back of his chair; she allowed her hand to drop so that its fingers touched him. With an air of patience and forbearance, speaking very slowly, Kent said,

  “The aircraft has to carry extra fuel tanks. They add to the weight. This means that five passengers is the limit. If I were to put any more of you on, it simply wouldn’t get airborne.”

  “Then, in heaven’s name, why not use a larger plane?”

  “One reason is that a larger aircraft would need a larger airfield. As it is”—he had begun to enjoy himself—“you have to know every inch of the field—it has very few inches—so that you needn’t drop below the cliffs before you start to climb.”

  The general interrupted him, brusquely, frowning,

  “What is the aeroplane?”

  “An Anson, sir. Obsolescent communications aircraft. Small twin-engine low-wing monoplane—”

  Good-humoured, suave, if a bear can be suave, the general broke in again.

  “This, you know, isn’t a children’s class in spotting aeroplanes.”

  Kent smiled at him ingenuously.

  “No. … I’m very sorry, sir.”

  “The only point of any interest,” observed Heron, “apart from wondering whether you know what you’re talking about, is whether the thing is safe.”

  At any other moment Kent would have repaid with fury the insolence of the other’s manner. But, glancing at him, he thought: Why, he’s positively bilious with nerves—and poor devil, why not? Maliciously, he gave Heron the full benefit of his sympathy.

  “You needn’t worry about that. Once you’re off the ground you’ll be all right.” And down in Iceland and off it again, he thought a little grimly.

  “Do we fly direct?” asked Thorburn.

  “No, sir. You’ll touch down in Iceland, Greenland, Labrador. It’s a regular route—the northern route.”

  “Is it still open?” Clarke put in quietly.

  It would be you who thought of that one, Kent said to himself. He met with deliberate candour the brigadier’s shrewd little eyes, glaring mercilessly into his, and said briefly,

  “So far as I know.”

  “In any case,” Thorburn said, impatient, “we have to take our chance on it?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m afraid so,” answered Kent.

  He noticed Mrs. Heron, when her husband was about to speak, try by laying her hand on his shoulder to distract him—without any luck: he looked at her with a weary severity, lifting his eyebrows, and spoke with a sarcasm the young man would have resented more if it had not struck him as ridiculous.

  “We’re getting away from this question of only five passengers, aren’t we? If a little energy were used, I daresay something could be done about it.”

  There was a pause.

  “I would prefer in any case not to go,” Breuner said quietly.

  “My good man, if only one person could go it should and will be you,” Thorburn said. He frowned. “You’ll be of more value over there than any of us. Enough, that’s enough,” he said impatiently, seeing that Breuner was preparing to argue. Breuner was silent.

  Grinning a little, like a cunning good-natured old fox, Clarke said,

  “I can’t believe that our young Nick counts as a person. And you can leave me out and welcome.”

  “Shut up,” Thorburn growled.

  “All right, all right, all right. … Send out the boys of the old brigade, They made old England free-hee.… But sending them to America—no, no, that’s going too far.”

  Thorburn turned his head towards Kent.

  “Tell me, my boy. Before we rolled up here—you’d had a definite order to go yourselves? Eh?”

  Staring at him, the young man said,

  “Definite orders have been fairly hard to come by, sir, these last two weeks. There was a general order for all personnel to leave.” What the hell does he think, the old ape? he wondered bitterly.

  Throughout this talk about the aeroplane, Colonel Lackland had been standing with an expression so tensely of energy at bay that when he spoke it had all the effect of a rifle going off in their ears. Heron winced as though he had been trodden on, and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  “May I say something, sir?”

  The general did not look up.

  “Yes? Well?”

  “I ought now, I think, to giv
e you certain information … a scheme—”

  “Oh, heaven help us,” Clarke interrupted him, “I thought we’d got shut of those for a bit.”

  “This one hardly concerns you, sir,” said the colonel icily. He turned to Thorburn again. “I should like the others in, sir. May I send Pilot-Officer Kent to fetch them?”

  “Run along and get them, my boy,” Thorburn muttered. He let Kent reach the door, and shouted, “And let’s have some light here.”

  “The electricity isn’t running, sir,” Kent told him. “We have a lamp or two, though. I’ll see about it.”

  He went out. The general glanced heavily round at the others.

  “They expected to go, of course.”

  “We have spoiled their chances,” murmured Breuner. “It seems a pity.”

  Heron opened his eyes slowly and painfully, as though he would gladly have slept for weeks.

  “I have no doubt they’ll fix something up for themselves.”

  Clarke’s little eyes shone with a spiteful joy.

  “Birdie wait a little longer, Until little wings grow stronger, Then fly away,” he said in a jeering voice. “What an optimist you are for other people, my dear Heron.”

  Before Heron could retort, Kent, with Marriot and Cordelia, came back. Behind them was Smith, carrying an oil lamp only just lit. He set it down on a table and turned the wick up, fiddling with it for a moment, until the light sprang up and out, making a harsh circle round their faces and thickening the web of shadows waiting above and behind them in the low room. Now what had been half-light became darkness—except outside, on the airfield, never in June darker than it was now, the horizon gone, but a soft watery glow springing away on all sides as though spouted from the sea. Smith went back into the passage and took a second lamp from Hutton, placing it behind Breuner on the desk.

  Perhaps because he had moved quietly, to stand, some way from the others, against this desk, Breuner saw them with an extreme clearness. The three that to himself he called the young air ones were together, distinct and together. Kent had propped himself against the back of a chair where the other boy sprawled, legs crossed, the ankle of one resting on his knee, his useless arm hanging; the girl sat awkwardly on one of the small chairs, her hands folded; profiled on the darkness, her smooth cheek, the long line of her jaw, fine nostrils, startled Breuner; he had seen it before, and after a moment he remembered where—the decrepit 12th-century church in a French village, and the figure of an angel with the joyful head of a girl, modelled, obviously, from life. … Thorburn was sitting with the light full on his powerful nose and big arched forehead. Why is he a soldier? Breuner wondered; some other form of discipline would surely have suited him better? … Mrs. Heron had moved to a couch and put her feet up, long shapely legs crossed—charming—a charm also modelled from life. Her husband drew his chair nearer, and she smiled at him, a friendly smile. … A prudence that was second nature had sent Hutton and the other fellow to stand side by side at the back of the room, where they could see without being seen.

  Lifting his head, Thorburn asked,

  “Well, Colonel Lackland? What d’you want to say?”

  “In the first place, sir, that I’m not coming to America. I intended to tell you so nearer the time.”

  The general looked at him with some distaste.

  “Oh, did you?”

  Quite unmoved, Lackland went on in the same even tone,

  “The fact is, sir, I have different orders. My job is to stay here and take part in organising a Home Army—it will have some points of resemblance, perhaps not a great many, with what used to be known, in our last war, as the maquis. You may remember, sir, I had a good deal of experience on those lines. It was, though I didn’t know it then, a sort of rehearsal for this. Supplies will be dropped to us in the same way, and we shall base ourselves in country where we can feed ourselves, at least partly. You won’t expect me to go into details—I’ll only say that we shall be justifying ourselves if we make it necessary for the invader to keep half a million troops here to look after us.” He stopped abruptly, and sent a sharp glance round their faces. “I think that all of you,” he went on, in a lower voice, “even those of you who were children in the last war, have some picture in your minds of the sort of resistance proposed.”

  No one spoke for a moment, then Thorburn said, with a curiously sorrowful reluctance, as if the words had to climb a long way and push aside a great deal of earth,

  “Well. I must say I expected something like this—but I didn’t know it was under way already.”

  “Is it?” asked Heron.

  Lackland stared at him.

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  Heron appeared to chose his words carefully.

  “Is it anything more than a—slightly fantastic idea?”

  “I’m not in the habit of taking up fantastic ideas,” Lackland said.

  Thorburn silenced them both by striking the flat of his hand noisily against his chair. He made an effort to ignore the mild dislike he had always felt for this one of his officers. What displeased him in the fellow were the very qualities that made Lackland a first-class soldier—his single-mindedness and his complete indifference towards people and objects he could not use. He would feel no grief if, in order to make a strongpoint of it, he had to destroy an old beautiful house or an abbey. Yet Thorburn was ashamed of not liking the man—there was so much in him you could admire: he was incorruptibly honest, brave, in his way kind, and, with all his intelligence, simple. Thorburn forced himself to speak warmly.

  “I must confess, Lackland, I don’t see that you can hope to have here the success—if I may say so, very meagre, the form wasn’t very good—of the resistance some of the European countries put up during the last war. And would they have done it at all if this particular bridgehead … if this island hadn’t been unconquered and uninvaded? What d’you think?”

  Lackland’s voice sharpened.

  “We’re counting on the very fact, sir, that Europe doesn’t exist.… No one can handle a breakdown that size—no administration, however ruthless, could do it. In any case, ruthlessness is not another name for efficiency, as I happen to know—”

  “Ah, you know everything,” interrupted Clarke, with a sour smile.

  The colonel ignored him.

  “The remoter areas, and difficult bits of country, will break away—or be left alone. It’s not impossible—certainly it’s not fantastic”—something like a smile flashed across his broad face—“to think that a strong force, airborne, can clear at least England and Scotland and hold them as an outpost.”

  Heron was shaken out of his composure.

  “My God,” he cried, “an outpost of what?”

  “No,” Thorburn said, “no, it’s not impossible.” He rubbed his head furiously—he had very few gestures; this one did duty with him for excitement, pleasure, doubt, nearly every emotion, in fact, except anger—and repeated, “Not by any means impossible.”

  When the colonel was explaining himself, Breuner had watched the young air ones. Kent and the girl did not move; he stared with a stupid almost morose face at Lackland: she was sitting with bent head, and only once glanced up, during Lackland’s speech; for less than a second she looked at Kent, her eyes dilated by, yes, fear—of what? Breuner wondered. His attention was caught suddenly by the other young man. Leaning forward in his chair, the sergeant-pilot was listening with a vivid interest; his eyes were darkened by it and brilliant, his hands trembled slightly. He was at this moment extraordinarily attractive, but the sight of his burned claw-like fingers twitching distressed Breuner. He looked away. … Lackland was talking again. He had stepped back so that he was outside the ring of light thrown by the lamps. Light of a sort fell on him from the open door; he was standing stiffly, his short sturdy body drawn very slightly back; in this calm white northern darkness his face with its black patch seemed paler, and the blue of his eye colder and lighter. But he has become, Breuner thought, anonymous—yes,
anonymous. The thought struck him then that so must the English soldier always have looked to the eyes of continentals like himself—during the Hundred Years’ War—and before that. He is a gesture this country has always been making, he said to himself, not an individual. Yet this is perhaps the last time, and I am the last who will see him—see that coolly observant glance, not unkind, not much interested, not stupid—heavens no, not stupid. …

  Lackland was speaking with less self-confidence, in a lower voice.

  “Put it at its very worst, sir—it means that some of us will be free as long as we live. One of the crofters up here, or a man farming the lost end of a Yorkshire dale, or a Cornishman, opening his door at night to a quiet knock, will talk for a few minutes to a man who answers by talking about freedom. At the worst, we shall be a few men digging this word freedom into soil used to it”—he made an abrupt gesture, instantly cut short— “A country doesn’t hand over its memories to an invader, you know.… And apart from that—if we’re wiped out there’ll be someone, perhaps a child, one child, who will remember hearing one of us use the word, and he’ll repeat it to his children—and so on. It’s a word you can’t kill so long as it’s even spoken—”