LA ROCHE, PICARDY, FRANCE
I
Old age, reflected the Reverend Douglas Woodgrove, as he lay awake in the still hours of early morning, was supposed by many to represent an inexorable dwindling of one’s capabilities and enthusiasms, a fading away of colour and drive. In his own life, however, this had proved to be untrue. His last years of retirement had been amongst the most dynamic of his life, as well as being, without question, the most materially useful.
Beside his bed were piles of paper and correspondence, stacks of reports and files of dreadful possibilities. From almost a hundred sources all over the globe there were reports, accounts, testimonies, written rumours and scrawled whispers, all concerning that great, ignoble project which he had become convinced had been set in motion in the country which had, for most of his life, been home.
Sometimes at the sight of it – this patient accretion of evidence – he felt obscurely ashamed, that he had not done more sooner, that he had not acted with greater speed and ferocity since the truth had come to light. Yet he found great comfort in prayer and at the slow realisation, which he had spoken about for much of his life without (he saw now) ever really understanding it, that God had a plan for each and every one of his creations. The quietness of his early life had been there for a reason as had the gradual progression of his career, meant to bring him into the orbit of Mr Vaughan and others like him. Then, later, of course, the girl and the little ape-creature had been sent to him as a signal for how he should spend the years that were remaining to him.
He lay in bed on that crisp February morning thinking these thoughts and many more besides. Often he simply marvelled at the sheer shamelessness of the project as well as its terrible scope. He still did not, however, have sufficient understanding of how it all had been achieved; the organisation of the many people, from workmen to architects, from suppliers of goods to officers of the law, who would have been necessary to establish this “city” and to operate it.
Woodgrove was turning this over in his mind as the dawn crept into his chamber, casting shafts of thin light upon the bedspread and upon the figure of the woman who lay, still sleeping heavily, beside him. Too alert to return to slumber himself, the old priest considered getting from his bed and going downstairs to sit and pray before the business of the day began in earnest. Then he heard it: the sound, quite distinct, of footsteps. They were, perhaps, intended to be silent but the house was an old one and sound carried. Beside him, Madame Proulx slept on, oblivious to the intruder. The priest leaned over to her and, taking great care not to wake her, kissed her once upon her forehead.
Woodgrove rose softly from the bed and went from the room. He paused in the hallway to murmur the swiftest of prayers then descended the staircase to the ground floor. He did not hesitate or slow his pace nor did he stop en route to pick up some manner of makeshift weapon. Of course, he had long been expecting this visitation, or something very like it.
II
There was a stranger sitting at the table in the kitchen. He had his back to the priest and he seemed to have made himself very much at home. His legs were stretched out and crossed as though he were in his parlour and he had poured himself a glass of red wine from which he was taking regular, liberal sips.
Woodgrove watched him, wondering where he might be from and who might have sent him. It even occurred to the old priest, after some reluctant protestation, that he might have imagined the trespasser, that his odd, incongruous behaviour was the product merely of an elderly mind, sinking into befuddlement and hallucination.
Woodgrove broke the silence. “I imagine you’ve come to kill me?”
The figure in the chair did not turn around. “That’s right, sir,” he said and his lack of surprise made it plain that he had known of the priest’s presence from the first. His accent was English (well spoken with a hint, perhaps, of Sussex).
“Was it Mr Vaughan who sent you?”
“Amongst others, sir, yes.” Still he did not turn about.
Hesitantly, the Reverend Woodgrove approached him. “How do you mean to do it?” he asked.
“Kindly,” said the figure. “I’ll do it quickly, I promise. You won’t know very much about it.” He drank again from his glass. “I’ve got very good at it, you know.”
“I’m sorry that you’ve had to,” said the priest.
The figure in the chair shrugged.
Woodgrove stood behind him, uncertain as to exactly what he should do. He asked for guidance and the words seemed almost to speak themselves. “But you could have done it by now, couldn’t you? While I was sleeping. I might have slept through the whole thing and woken up only in the hereafter.” The figure did not respond. “Is it the case perhaps, Mr…”
“Berry,” murmured the intruder, still unmoving.
“Mr Berry – perhaps you don’t want to do this? Not truly and in your heart? Perhaps you don’t want to murder an old man in his bed and go on abetting the greatest crime of our time?” He paused. “Am I right in any of these assumptions?”
Berry took another sip from his glass.
“I see you’ve found my wine.”
“Yes,” he said. “My apologies for that. Very rude of me. My mother would have been so cross…”
“Poor man,” Woodgrove said and put his hands on the man’s shoulders.
Mr Berry did not stir but allowed the gesture.
“Why don’t you come over to our side?” said the priest. “We can help each other. You can help us destroy what they’re building. Bring it down from the inside.”
“Step back please, sir,” was all that Mr Berry said, and the old priest complied.
Berry rose up, set down his glass and turned to confront the old priest. The face of the invader, Woodgrove saw, was horribly mangled, a tortured mass of scar tissue.
“What did that to you? If you don’t mind my asking.”
He all but shrugged. “It was a fire. I escaped, but barely, and now children scream at the sight of me. Women gasp. Men just cross the street to get away. I suppose you think that it’s God will. A punishment from on high.”
“It may be His will but He does not punish. There will have been a purpose to it. Perhaps to bring you here, today, to my door.”
Mr Berry reached into his pocket and drew out a revolver.
Panic prickled in the old priest’s chest. It was one thing to consider mortality in a theoretical sense but quite another to be confronted by it so baldly.
“Are you alone here, sir?”
Woodgrove wondered whether his visitor had ever been in service, so punctilious and deferential was his manner.
“All alone,” said the priest, a lie but one of which he was proud. “So you’re going to do it then?”
There was a very short flicker of hesitation in Berry’s eyes. “I have to.”
“No, my friend. You don’t have to. Besides, you know that it is wrong. Everything they’ve done. What they’ve treated those poor people. It’s monstrous. We’re both Englishmen. Doesn’t it shame you?”
“Of course.”
“But?”
The revolver trembled a little in the man’s hand. “But if we were not doing it… someone else would. Don’t you think? And perhaps not so humanely. Perhaps they’d be still more brutal than us.”
“These are all old and bloodless arguments, Mr Berry. You know the truth, I think, not in here…” The old priest tapped the right hand side of his head. “But in here…” He touched his chest lightly, just above the heart.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Berry snapped. “Events are too big now. Too full of momentum. Critical mass.”
“Not true, my friend. An individual can still change the course of history. One man can make a difference.”
The ruined face of Mr Berry twisted still further into a snarl. “How can you have lived so long,” he said with a kind of battened-down fury, “yet still learned nothing?”
With this he pulled the trigger.
III
Madame Proulx was woken by a loud retort, like a small explosion. It cut through her dreams and dragged her to wakefulness. Her mind circled a variety of possibilities and alighted on the worst of them. She listened out. No further sound came.
Quickly but stealthily she rose from the bed, draped a dressing gown around herself and descended the staircase. She screamed when she saw the scene that awaited her though the man who had once been her employer was able to calm her panicked sobs.
“What happened?” she gasped.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Woodgrove said as they surveyed the body on the ground before them, the ugly smoking hole in his chest, and the gristle upon the kitchen floor.
“Who was he?”
“He said his name was Berry,” said the priest. “Poor fellow. He was grappling, I think, with a decision of great moment.” He looked down again at the floor and the corpse that lay there. He took the hand of Madame Proulx in his and squeezed. “I suppose he made his choice in the end, though perhaps not the one either of us was expecting.”