Death and the Visiting Fireman Read online

To the major’s hinted bow a correct nod.

  ‘Our host of course you know.’

  ‘Yes. And old Joe Dagg and I have met on a good many occasions of this sort over the years. Believe me, when he holds the ribbons you’re in good hands.’

  Above them on the box Joe Dagg, without turning, gave a twirl of the long whip held upright still and said:

  ‘Morning, colonel.’

  ‘You mustn’t take old Joe’s way with the ranks too seriously. I was never near a colonelcy. In fact only became a major on the point of retiring. Joe has his own way of going about things.’

  ‘I can see your aid is going to be invaluable,’ said Smithers.

  For Wemyss the quick look of reminder from the fourth-form repertoire.

  ‘And myself. I mustn’t forget. I’m Smithers. I teach history at Darlborough.’

  ‘Then I know what you are doing here. I’ve read and reread the section on coaching in your History of Travel, sir. Only wish I could afford all fourteen volumes. I don’t suppose you’ve much need of my services. Homo multarum literarum.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure of that, major. Do you know, this is the first time I’ve actually ridden in a coach? I’m afraid my knowledge, such as it is, is sadly bookish. It was that that tempted me to accept this offer.’

  A tinge of regret.

  ‘Now you are here you’d better get aboard, major,’ Hamyadis said. ‘We must do something to liven things up.’

  The major put a foot on one of the spokes of the rear wheels and heaved himself up resignedly.

  ‘Mr Dagg,’ said Hamyadis, ‘give them a hoot on that horn and then drive about a bit. Put on a show.’

  ‘Right you are, Air Marshal.’

  But no more response.

  Once again the long shining horn raised in the air and the simple music. A long call then a little tune.

  ‘Not generally done to play tunes,’ the major explained – the quiet commentary voice – ‘but in the circumstances perfectly justified. Usually the horn is kept as a signalling device only. There are calls to indicate to traffic ahead every possible happening of the road.’

  Now the liner’s side once more an amphitheatre. A quiet word to the horses from Joe Dagg. The coach moved forward. They took a wide sweep round the open space between the dockside and the quay buildings. The passengers played their parts, as actors, as sportsmen, as willing but ignorant.

  With an exception. In mid-phrase Major Mortenson’s commentary ceased. Total abstraction. But too much was happening. On the second circuit they gathered speed. When the horses changed from a walk to a trot the major jerked to and told them. They went on to a canter. From the liner applause. More people at the rails. A buzz of excitement.

  Wemyss leant forward and spoke loudly above the clatter of the horses’ hooves, the creaking of the coach, the jingle of harness, the grating of iron-rimmed wheels on the stones of the quay.

  ‘He’s lucky, the boss. If they got bored with the whole idea on the boat they might have gone up to London by train. And he’s got a pack of motor coaches waiting for them to follow our journey in. He’d have lost a lot of money.’

  No answer. None to make.

  And faster went the coach, with tighter turns. A sense of exhilaration. The major, eyes gleaming, everything else forgotten, commentary staccato.

  Now, in the centre of the circus ring still at speed, tight short circles. With the sense of tipping in every part of the fragile vehicle.

  ‘Perfectly safe,’ said the major. ‘But damned exciting, eh?’

  The others held hard to the slender black-painted rail and nodded. With as little movement of the head as possible.

  Only above them Hamyadis stood up and turned easily to watch the ship all the time.

  ‘Gangplanks going down at last,’ he said. ‘Finish up now, Mr Dagg. Give them a curtain though. Make a show of it, make a show of it all the time.’

  ‘Right you are, Admiral.’

  From the tight turns larger sweeps and increasing speed. When they were pounding along at the stretch the coach jerked round to face the black wall of the liner’s side. And at it.

  A blur of wild cheers.

  The ship looming high, high over them.

  And at last the merciful squeal of locked wheels. The horses fighting against the momentum of the vehicle. Rearing forefeet.

  A final stop with a bare yard separating the animals from the deep gap between the quay’s edge and the ship’s side.

  As the noise of the wild halt dimmed, the sound of running feet from the direction of the gangways.

  The first of the delegates. Shouts, yells, cheers, hats flung high. Laughter. Success.

  On the coach, hands sweaty at the palm released from their hold. Smiles of relief. Hamyadis sat down quietly. The horses breathed heavily. Joe Dagg turned round on the box and winked at the major. The wink returned. Round them the gathering crowd.

  Invested with a broad smile the major said to Daisy Miller:

  ‘This as exciting as the first night of “Only A Rose”?’

  ‘I’ve never been so-’

  She stopped. A tangle in the stream’s smooth flow.

  ‘I know this sounds silly. But do any of you believe that sometimes people have premonitions about things?’

  ‘I see something’s worrying you,’ the major said. ‘Just the effect of physical excitement. Well known thing in its way.’

  ‘Oh, no. This was something quite different.’

  A simple statement.

  ‘You see, I ought to have been excited just now. Anything like that usually makes me tingle all over. But instead all the time I felt a stronger and stronger sense of warning.’

  She shrugged. An effort.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘it’s much too late anyhow to change all the plans.’

  Two

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen, the name is Schlemberger. Foster P. Schlemberger, president of the American Institution for the Investigation of Incendiarism Incorporated.’

  The voice stridently America of America, no lazy Southern charm, no Bostonian distinction. The straight whisky rye, the hamburger, the bulbous automobile.

  And the man’s appearance when they had picked him out of the crowd of his compatriots backed the voice. Wide-brimmed hat, rimless glasses, multi-coloured tie, cream-coloured suit generously cut, white and brown shoes.

  Foster P. Schlemberger threw away a half-smoked cigar. The time was 6.37 a.m.

  ‘Mr Schlemberger, may I extend the heartiest of welcomes to Britain to you and all your fellow delegates,’ said Hamyadis.

  Not the bowing merchant of the markets; no servile hand-soaping; no fawning; no cringing. Nothing that could be pinned down. From the American a long look of appraisal. A meaning look. Then:

  ‘Delighted. Delighted. But am I speaking to—’

  The glance down at a small plastic ‘public man’s memory aid’ in the hand.

  ‘- to – er Mr John Fremitt, president of the British Fire Prevention Society?’

  Curiously emphatic

  ‘No, my name is Hamyadis. Fve had some correspondence with you.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember the name. Though my secretary handled all the details.’

  ‘This is Mr Fremitt.’

  Fremitt leapt up from his seat, hurried to the side of the coach, leant over, considered turning and climbing down, leant over again. Foster P. Schlemberger shook him by the hand. For a long time.

  ‘On behalf of the Fire Prevention Society, er – welcome,’ said Fremitt.

  ‘On behalf of the Institution for the Investigation of Incendiarism Incorporated’ – unabashed the syllables – ‘I am happy to accept your most kind welcome,’ Schlemberger said.

  ‘Perhaps I should introduce these other ladies and gentlemen,’ said Fremitt.

  But conversation had become impossible. The interchange of welcomes had spread a prairie fire of cheers among the delegates. Noise, noise pure and simple.

  Hamyadis jumped
down from the box, heavily but without care. He took Schlemberger by the elbow and piloted him round to where a light ladder could be fixed to the side of the coach. With a jerk he took it from its place and hung it for Schlemberger to climb. As soon as he was on board Hamyadis swung his heavy bulk in one massive heave up on to a wheel and into the box.

  ‘Get clear of all this,’ he said.

  Joe Dagg sounded the horn.

  ‘That’s the “Clear the Way”,’ said the major.

  Its effect was to thicken the crowd to suffocation point.

  But by shouting and waving and using the horses as a wedge a path was cleared and the coach began to move. When they got to the dock gates the spectators had strung out enough for talk to be possible without faces being thrust within inches of each other. Loudspeakers began to hector the ship’s passengers to their motor coaches.

  Fremitt performed introductions. They stopped and there was a shuffling of places. Hamyadis told Kristen Kett to sit inside the coach. She climbed down the narrow iron ladder with pantonmime squeaks of fear.

  The obedience routine: the sex mouse.

  ‘And I’ll be all alone in here,’ she said. Her head poked inside the coach. A wiggle of the hips.

  Wemyss leapt over the side of the vehicle. Misjudged the height, landed awkwardly, recovered.

  ‘Not all alone,’ he said.

  He handed her in. Triumphant gallantry.

  Hamyadis talking evenly to Schlemberger.

  As soon as the door had closed Kristen poked her head out of the window.

  ‘It’s too hot in here,’ she said. ‘And it smells musty.’

  ‘No laudator temporis acti there,’ said the major. ‘Did you know, Mr Schlemberger, that the inside seats used to be for first-class passengers? They paid a good deal more and had the privilege of sitting still when the others had to get down to go up hills. On the old stage coaches, which came before the mail coaches, there weren’t even proper seats on the roof. The passengers who clung there had to help push when it came to a hill.’

  ‘Very interesting. Very interesting.’

  Schlemberger looked pleased. A sum disbursed, profits beginning to come in.

  ‘And what’s next on the schedule?’ he asked.

  ‘We go to Winchester, stopping at an inn on the way for a real old coaching breakfast,’ said Hamyadis. ‘I’ve had a couple of marquees put up for the rest of the party. There’ll be bacon and eggs, devilled kidneys, kippers, porridge, everything. Ending up with a stirrup cup before we go on.’

  ‘You understand we’ve had to take certain liberties,’ said the major.

  Rancour avoided, but with effort.

  ‘I guess I daren’t take such liberties with my stomach,’ Schlemberger said, ‘Was there chilled tomato juice in those days?’

  No sign of irony in the dead-pan voice.

  ‘I’ve seen to all that,’ said Hamyadis. ‘Coca-cola stirrup cup too if you want it.’

  He spoke quickly. A stage direction.

  The coach moved off again. Schlemberger an incongruous twentieth-century figure among the dressed-up party. The party incongruously dressed up.

  Schlemberger looked round.

  ‘So this is old England?’ he said. ‘My first visit.’

  ‘There I have the advantage of you,’ said Fremitt. ‘I’ve paid two brief visits to your delightful and exciting country. Just on business, you understand. The last was only for a few days because of dollar restrictions. But I was over there before the war for a month. A firm in Chicago asked me to come to advise them on development.’

  ‘Guess the boot’s pretty well on the other foot now,’ said Schlemberger.

  A statement.

  ‘I’ve never had the luck to cross the Atlantic,’ Smithers said. ‘We schoolmasters are expected to keep our advice for the young.’

  ‘And nobody’s ever crossed the road, much less an ocean, for my advice,’ said the major. ‘Been the same all my life.’

  From Daisy Miller no contribution. Smithers turned to her.

  ‘Were you ever over there?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Or, that’s to say only once, a long time ago. We took a show to Broadway but it never caught on. I scarcely remember it.’

  ‘You two didn’t meet over there?’ Smithers asked Fremitt and Schlemberger.

  ‘No, I’ve never visited Chicago in my life,’ Schlemberger said. ‘We held our congress there one year, but I had to be in Reno for my second divorce. I certainly wish the two hadn’t fallen together.’

  ‘I think in many ways I must have lived a rather isolated life during my Chicago visit,’ Fremitt said quickly. ‘When I returned people kept asking me about the gangsters but I saw nothing of them.’

  ‘Used to think of marrying, of course, when I was a young fellow,’ said the major. ‘Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus’.

  A silence.

  ‘Is England much as you expected?’ Smithers said to Schlemberger.

  ‘Guess not.’

  Schlemberger was silent for as long as it took the clopping horses to go thirty yards.

  ‘Guess I expected it to be a mite more… Well, more kind of feudal,’ he said.

  They passed through the suburbs of Southampton. Schoolchildren stared and waved. Girls giggled. Middle-aged men pretended not to see them.

  ‘Feudal?’ asked Smithers.

  ‘I might as well come straight out with it,’ said Schlemberger. ‘I wasn’t a hundred per cent in favour of holding the congress over here.’ The smooth fall of conversational cards on the green baize. And suddenly a joker. ‘In fact if it hadn’t been for domestic reasons I might have quit the presidency when the vote went against me. Back in Kansas we hold strong views about British policy, particularly your colonial policy.’

  ‘Now that’s an interesting thing,’ the major said.

  Breaths held. A heavy siege gun rumbles into action. For battle? As a toy? As both?

  ‘I happen to have been in the Indian Army myself, so naturally it’s a subject that interests me.’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t want to say anything that might be offensive. Not right at the start of what I hope will be a long and valuable friendship. So with your permission I’ll just change the subject.’

  Pent breath released. Uneasy smiles.

  ‘I would like to say,’ Schlemberger went on after a pause, ‘that during the ten days of the congress any of you ladies and gentlemen are welcome to attend any of our lectures or our sightseeing tours. Just say the word.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s very handsome of you,’ said Smithers.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the major, ‘but I’d like to have this matter of colonial policy out.’

  Tension. And exasperation.

  ‘I can take hard words as well as the next man,’ he went on. ‘And I hold no brief for a great deal that’s been done in the colonies.’

  ‘Just as you like, major,’ said Schlemberger.

  The horse lifts its head scenting battle. A gleam in the eye of the wary wrestler.

  ‘Let me tell you a little story,’ said the major. ‘Just listen to me and then give me your honest opinion.’

  ‘Major.’

  From above them on the box the almost forgotten voice of Hamyadis. A new element.

  ‘Major, I suggest you tell Mr Schlemberger and the others something about the coach and its history.’

  Bland. The order given.

  ‘We’ve a good many hours to while away yet,’ said the major. ‘We’ve got on to a very interesting subject.’

  A contract broken. Unexpectedly, wantonly.

  ‘But I want Mr Schlemberger to know the history of the coach.’

  A rebellious child taken by the shoulders, turned round.

  ‘Mr Schlemberger,’ said the major, ‘you can see there’s a bit of a disagreement between Mr Hamyadis and – or rather between my employer and myself. I leave you to decide. Would you like to hear about the coach straight away or would you like to hear an old s
oldier’s tale about a little town on the North-West Frontier called Anamapur?’

  The coach gave an unexpected lurch.

  ‘Steady on, guv,’ came Joe Dagg’s voice. Soothing.

  ‘All right, you’d better tell your tale, major,’ said Hamyadis. ‘Otherwise we’ll get no peace.’

  He humped forward on his seat above them.

  ‘Well now,’ the major leant back, expansive, the storyteller. ‘This is a tale with a moral. For you Mr Schlemberger the question to keep in mind is: who was oppressed and who was the oppressor? It happened about the turn of the century. In the district of Anamapur there were only two things which counted: the wealth of the town and the rapacity of the tribesmen who surrounded it. All through the history of India the situation had occurred time and again. The town would build up its wealth, the tribesmen would sack it. Until the British Army put a garrison there. Only a handful of men, but enough. For once the town grew wealthy and remainded unsacked.’

  ‘Very admirable, but -’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘No, let me finish. One day the secret of the town’s defences was sold to the tribesmen, by an Anglo-Indian trader, a man with the very English name of Brown.’

  The name an epithet. Into the past historic the present definite.

  ‘It was a matter of knowing just exactly where one single sentry from the little garrison was posted. A silent death for him, poor chap, and that was that. But the ones who died in the fighting were luckiest. The town was sacked, and there were no survivors, not one.’

  Schlemberger leapt in. Cat on to mouse.

  ‘Very instructive, major, very instructive, no doubt. But you must forgive a suspicious old hick who’s been smelling out fire insurance rackets all of forty years if he asks one little question.’

  ‘Come,’ said Smithers quickly, ‘an allegory is an allegory. We mustn’t expect every detail to be absolutely water-tight. You ought to have simplified it a bit, major. Then you wouldn’t have had to account for the story existing in such detail when everybody is supposed to have been killed.’

  ‘I hadn’t meant to go into details,’ the major said, ‘but as a matter of fact there was one survivor from the garrison. Left for dead but still with a spark of life in him. I – I heard the story from his own lips.’