The Peace Machine

CHAPTER 12

There were several others staying in the Atwood house, but as Hutchman was the only one requiring full board he was invited to have his evening meal in the kitchen with the family. It would be much pleasanter for him, Mrs. Atwood had said, than sitting alone in the dining room, which was difficult to heat anyway. Hutchman was surrounded by a swarming cloud of his own thoughts, through which the conversation of other people reached him as a semimeaningless babble. He had his doubts about the eating arrangements. After a full day in the floralpatterned room, however, the prospect of warming himself at a hearth had become more attractive. There was also the fact that he wanted to avoid behaving in a way which would appear furtive or suspicious.

He shaved his cheeks and lower lip, emphasizing his beard, and went out onto the landing. It was only when he tried to lock the bedroom door behind him that he discovered the significance of the strange bend in the shank of the key. The lock was screwed to the inner face of the door and the key, in spite of its distorted geometry, could operate it efficiently from the inside — but from the outside the key would have had to reach through the thickness of the door, and this was impossible. He could seal himself into the room, but never lock it behind him when he went out.

Subdued by a sudden insight into the way non-Hutchman minds worked on non-Hutchman planes of existence, he went down the stairs and tentatively opened the kitchen door. Warm, meaty air gusted past him from the room which was largely occupied by a table set for four. Mrs. Atwood and the boy, Geoffrey, were already seated at the table, and the biggest man Hutchman had ever seen was standing with his back to a shimmering anthracite fire. His megacephalous figure was swathed in a voluminous Arran sweater which did not disguise the fact that he had the muscles of a plough-horse.

“Come in, lad,” he said in a shock wave of a voice. “Close the door — you’re letting in a draught.”

“Right.” Hutchman went in and, in the absence of introductions, decided that the giant was Mr. Atwood. “Where do I… ?”

“Sit here beside Geoffrey,” Mrs. Atwood said. “I like to have all my boys where I can keep an eye on them.” She uncovered a white-glass casserole dish and began spooning stew onto bluerimmed plates. Hutchman was very much aware of the boy beside him, a tiny hominid the same size as his own son, with the quietly heaving chest of an asthma sufferer. He tried unsuccessfully to catch the child’s eye.

“There you are, Mr. Rattray,” Mrs. Atwood said, addressing Hutchman by the name he had told her. She began to pass him a loaded plate, but her husband advanced from the fireplace.

“That’s not enough to line a man’s stomach,” he boomed. “Give him some more, Jane.”

Hutchman reached for the plate. “No, this is more than enough, thanks.”

“Nonsense!” Atwood’s voice was so loud that Hutchman actually felt the table reverberate under his hand. He saw the boy beside him flinch. “Pay no attention to him, Jane. Fill that plate.”

“I assure you…” Hutchman stopped speaking as he saw the pleading expression on Mrs. Atwood’s face, and allowed her to heap more of the thick stew on top of the ample portion she had already served.

“Get that down you. Build you up a bit.” Atwood accepted his own mountain of food and began eating it with a soup spoon. “You eat yours up too, Geoffrey.”

“Yes, Dad,” the boy said compliantly and began to eat.

A silence fell over the room, broken only by what sounded to Hutchman like the roar of a distant crowd and which he identified a moment later as coming from Geoffrey’s chest. The boy seemed disturbed by his father and Hutchman tried to visualize how the giant must appear through a seven-year-old’s eyes. Enormous, terrifying, incomprehensible. During the soundless day in the bedroom he had passed some time by trying to adopt other people’s viewpoints and had found the experience unsettling. There was, for instance, the question of marital infidelity. Even in the final quarter of the twentieth century most men — I should know — were devastated to discover that their wives had been unfaithful; but how could a man ever appreciate the woman’s point of view? Supposing the situation were reversed and women were the sexual predators? How long would the average man hold out if an attractive woman came pestering him to go to bed with her, pushing and pleading, refusing to take no for an answer? He realized that Atwood had spoken his temporarily adopted name.

“I beg your pardon.”

Atwood sighed heavily, hugely. “I said, what do you do, lad? For a living?”

“At the moment, nothing.” Hutchman had not expected to be quizzed, and spoke coldly to ward off any further questions.

“But when you’re doing something, what is the something you do?” Atwood appeared not to notice he had been snubbed.

“Ah… I’m a designer.”

“Hats? Knickers?” Atwood gave a pleased guffaw.

Hutchman realized he had chosen too exotic a profession. “No. Steel-framed buildings. I’m more what you might call a draftsman.”

Atwood looked impressed. “Good job, that. Plenty of work for draftsmen in these parts.”

“Yes — that’s why I’m here. I’m going to take it easy for a few days, then have a look around.” Hutchman felt he had woven an acceptable story.

“I’m a greengrocer, myself,” Atwood said. “Do you take a sup?”

“Beer? Sometimes.”

“Good. As soon as you’ve finished that we’re going down to the Cricketers for a few pots of ale.”

“Thanks, but I think I’d prefer not to have a drink this evening.”

“Nonsense,” Atwood bellowed. “I’m not talking about that southern piss. We’re going to have some good Lancashire ale.” He directed a fierce look at Hutchman’s plate, which was still almost full. “Get that into you, lad. No wonder you’re so skinny…”

“That’s enough, George,” Mrs. Atwood snapped “Rember Mr. Rattray’s a guest in this house.”

“Hold your tongue!” Atwood scowled at her, his massive chin jutting. “Isn’t that why I’m inviting him to have a drink?”

Hutchman felt the boy move uneasily beside him, his breathing becoming noisier. “It’s all right, Mrs. Atwood. I can see that your husband is being hospitable, and on second thought maybe I should go out for an hour.”

Atwood nodded. “That’s more like it. Now finish your supper, lad.”

Hutchman met his gaze squarely as he pushed the plate away. “If I eat a lot, I can’t drink afterward.”

When the meal was over he went up to his room, put on his jacket, and looked out into the night. It had begun to rain and the tiny segments of rooms floating in the darkness seemed more dismal than they had on the previous night. George Atwood was a hulking lout, an insensitive animal who dominated others by his sheer size, but an evening in his company would be better than an evening alone in the room with the advancing floral walls. Vicky, the thought came against his will, look what you’ve brought me to.

He went back downstairs, walked into the kitchen, and saw his own face on the screen on the television set in the corner. Jane Atwood was watching a news program, with her back turned toward the door, and she did not see him enter the room. He left without being heard and waited in the dimly-lit hall for George Atwood to appear. The news bulletin was substantially the same as the one he had heard in the car while driving north — which might be an indication that he had been connected with the antibomb machine. He had provided the authorities with a good, publicly acceptable reason for hunting him down. They would be able to use every communication medium to the limit, and only a few people might stop to wonder why a mere witness in an abduction case was receiving so much prominence. The photograph being broadcast was hauntingly familiar to Hutchman, with its mottled background suggestive of foliage, but he could not remember where it had been taken or who had held the camera. No doubt all his friends and acquaintances had been questioned by the police and possibly by men from some nameless branch of the security machine. Was it possible? Hutchman counted the hours — this was Tuesday evening and the Britain-bound envelopes had not been posted until Monday.

It’s too soon, Hutchman decided, relaxing slightly after the uneasy experience of seeing himself on the screen. I can cope with the police, and the others still have no idea who it is they have to hunt.

“Right, lad!” Atwood bustled out of another door, wearing a hairy coat which gave him bearlike proportions. His sparse locks had been slicked down across his enormous skull with water. “Where’s your car?”

“Car?” Hutchman had parked his car on a cindery patch at the side of the house, and had been planning to leave it there.

“It’s raining out there, lad.” Atwood spoke with ponderous exactitude. “My van is out of action and the Cricketers is a good half-mile from here. If you think I’m going to walk it in the rain, think again.”

Hutchman, needled by the other man’s unvarying boorishness, was tempted to call the expedition off, but reminded himself that the car no longer fitted the broadcast description. It would, in any case, be no more noticeable in a pub car-park than sitting virtually on its own beside the house.

“My car’s just outside the door,” he said. They ran to it in chilling rain. Atwood jigged impatiently until Hutchman opened a door for him, then he threw himself into the seat with an impact that rocked the car on its suspension. He slammed the door with similar violence, making Hutchman wince.

“Let’s go,” Atwood shouted. “We’re wasting good drinking time.”

As he started up the engine Hutchman tried to recapture the odd craving for pints of stout which had gripped him on Sunday night on the way to Crymchurch police station, but all that happened was that he got a cold feeling in his stomach. With Atwood directing, he drove out to the main road, the blue-white lighting of which emphasized the drabness of the buildings, and along it for a short distance to an unimpressive red-brick inn. Hutchman surveyed the place gloomily as he got out of the car. On every past occasion when he had become involved with a dedicated beer drinker and been dragged off to the area’s reputed sole source of good ale the pub concerned had always turned out to be remarkably dismal. This one was no exception to what apparently was a natural law. As they ran to the entrance through the rain he experienced a sad conviction that it was a warm starry night far to the south in Crymchurch. I’m lonely without you, Vicky…

“Two pints of special,” Atwood called to a barman as soon as they got inside the public bar.

“Make that a pint and a whisky,” Hutchman said. “A double.”

Atwood raised his eyebrows and parodied Hutchman’s homecounties accent. “Ho, pardon flipping me! If you wants whisky, Trevah, you can flipping well pay for it.” He leaned on the dark wood of the counter, shaking with amusement, then doggedly pursued his joke. “Ay’m reduced to common beastly beer this month — pater has cut may allowance, you see.”

Giving way to his annoyance, Hutchman took the thick roll from his pocket and threw a five-pound note onto the counter without speaking. When his drink came he drained the glass. The liquid warmed his stomach immediately, then seemed to follow an anatomically impossible radiant course into the rest of his body. During the following two hours he drank fairly steadily, paying for most of the rounds, while Atwood engaged the barman in a long, repetitious dialogue on football and greyhound racing. Hutchman wished for someone to talk to, but the barman was a tattooed youth who viewed him with scarcely veiled hostility; and the only other customers were silent, raincoated men who sat on bench seats in darker recesses of the room.

Why is everybody doing this? He was filled with a dull wonder. Why are they all here, doing this?

There was a doorway behind the counter which led into the select bar, and through it Hutchman caught brief glimpses of a queenly barmaid. She seemed to laugh a lot, gliding easily through the cozy orange light of the other room. Hutchman prayed for her to come and talk to him, vowing he would even refrain from looking down her blouse if she would only lean on his part of the bar and talk to him and make him feel partly human again. But she never entered the public bar and Hutchman, absurdly, was trapped with Atwood. As his loneliness grew, the familiar lines from Sassoon returned with almost unbearable poignance… and tawdry music and cigars, I oft-times dream of garden nights, and elm trees nodding at the stars… his throat closed painfully… I dream of a small fire-lit room, and yellow candles burning straight, and glowing pictures in the gloom, and friendly books that hold me late…

Sometime later the young barman drifted away to other company and Atwood, after a disappointed look around the room, decided to focus his conversation on Hutchman. “Good paying job, a draftsman’s, isn’t it?”

“Not bad.”

“What’s the screw?”

“Ten thousand,” Hutchman guessed.

“What’s that a week? Two hundred. Not bad. Does it cost much to get a boy in?”

“How do you mean?”

“I read that when a kid’s going to be an architect his folks have to put so much…”

“That’s architecture.” Hutchman wished the barman would return. “A draftsman serves an ordinary apprenticeship so it wouldn’t cost you anything.”

“That’s all right then.” Atwood looked relieved. “Happen I might put young Geoff into being a draftsman.”

“Supposing he doesn’t like it?”

Atwood laughed. “He’ll like it all right. He can’t draw very well though. The other day he tried to draw a tree — and you should’ve seen what he did! All whirls and squiggles it was. Nothing like a tree! So I showed him the right way and — give the lad credit — I must say he picked it up right fast.”

“I suppose you showed him how to do a comic-book tree?” Hutchman dipped his finger in a spot of beer and drew two straight parallel lines surmounted by a fluffy ball. “Like that?”

“Yes.” A suspicious look passed over Atwood’s slablike face. “Why?”

“You fool,” Hutchman said with alcoholic sincerity. “do you know what you’ve done? Your Geoffrey, your only child, looked at a tree and then he put his impressions of it down on paper without reference to any of the conventions or preconceptions which prevent most human beings from seeing anything properly.” He paused for breath and, to his surprise, saw that he was getting through to the big man.

“Your boy brought you this… holy offering, this treasure, the product of his unsullied mind. And what did you do, George? You laughed at it and told him that the only way to draw a tree was the way the tired hacks who work for the Dandy and the Beano do it. Do you know that your boy will never again be able to look at a tree and see it as it really is? Do you realize he might have been another Picasso if — “

“Who d’you think you’re kidding?”Atwood demanded, but his eyes were clouded with genuine concern. Hutchman was tempted to confess he had only been playing with words, but the giant was discovering that his privacy had been invaded by a stranger and he was growing angry. “What the hell to you know about it, anyway?”

“A great deal.” Hutchman tried to be enigmatic. “Believe me, George, I know a great deal about such things.” I’m the ground zero man. Didn’t you know?

“Get stuffed.” Atwood turned his head away.

“Brilliant,” Hutchman said sadly. “Brilliant repartee, George. I’m going ho… to bed.”

“Go ahead. I’m staying on.”

“Please yourself.” Hutchman walked to the door with unnatural steadiness. I’m not drunk, officer. Look! I can crawl a straight line. It had stopped raining, but the air outside was much colder than before. An icy, invisible torrent flooded around him, robbing his body of heat. He took a deep breath and launched himself through the darkness in the direction of his car.

There were only four vehicles in the parking lot, but it took Hutchman a considerable time to accept the simple fact that his car was not among them.

It had been stolen.