The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac by Geoffrey Household Page B

repeating your story to sergeants and colonels and generals of police the boat will have passed out to sea and Fyster-Holmes will deny any knowledge of it, swearing that it was all invented by the communist Irata.’
    â€˜Have they hurt him?’
    â€˜I never heard him scream so I do not think so. Out of respect for Fyster-Holmes they would not risk a scandal. He is frightened enough already. It’s bad luck for him that he has so quiet a house by the river.’
    â€˜Who is in the house besides your boss?’
    â€˜Only one. A Czech.’
    â€˜No wife?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜His tastes?’
    â€˜As you imagine. But do not mistake our relationship! I was only his servant, both of us at the orders of the Party.’
    â€˜When did you speak to my friend?’
    â€˜This morning. I was on guard outside the door and forbidden to talk to him. But he heard me cursing in my own language because I had dreamed of returning to my hills above the sea and now knew I never could. A man may serve the world, señora , but still be sick with longing for one little spot in it. He overheard me and spoke to me in Spanish. “Do me a favour, compañero !” he said, and gave me the message for you. It was then I decided I would run. It seemed to me you might be a friend. I had need of one.’
    â€˜Mr Irata, you will take me at once to the house on the back of your motorcycle.’
    â€˜Not I!’
    â€˜Then you’ll get no help. It will take time to get your permission to return to Spain. An exiled communist must visit the consulate and register his name and I don’t know what else. These people will trace you and kill you. Or the English may put you in gaol as a spy.’
    â€˜It is true I do not know where to stay safely or how to travel,’ Irata answered resignedly.
    â€˜I will do it all for you if you will drop me at the lane which leads to the house. Then you are to go straight to Alderton which is near here. Down the road you will see the sign post. Find the Manor Farm—it is the biggest house—and give a note to Mr Longwill. Wait here for me while I write it!’
    She dashed to her room and scribbled:
    Dear Paul: Please take this man on as your new Spanish valet. Keep him out of sight. I know where Georges is and am going after him. No time for police, but perhaps I can help.
    She quickly changed into a sweater and trousers and racked her brains for an excuse to give the landlord for suddenly disappearing on the back of a stranger’s motorbike. She wanted to buy one of Mr Longwill’s horses, she said, and had asked her husband’s farrier to vet it for her. He was free this evening, so she was going to run out to Alderton with him. A weak story even for a vague woman explaining in a hurry, but it would have to do.
    The sun had gone down when she set off on Irata’s pillion, and the land no longer smiled at her. Irata chugged briskly along narrow roads just below a range of wooded hills with flattish country to the right, sometimes invisible behind the rampant green of May, sometimes mazed with tree and hedge and disappearing into a formless distance. She was disturbed by this journey into nowhere without any mental map or any of Georges’s confidence to reassure her.
    In less than half an hour Irata crossed a stone bridge, ran through a country town with a flickering of lights and a drawing of curtains and then turned left between the river and another range of hills. So that was the famous Thames which she had only known in London where it possessed a certain dignity like a raddled and incontinent old duchess in attendance on the court. Up here it was the duchess in youth, pretty but undistinguished . . . What a closed country this England was, without any great river, lake or mountain! The inhabitants perceived its singularities with pride, though to the foreigner it was all the same and mysterious in its sameness. And here she, a