Читать книгу The Master - T. H. White - Страница 12

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The yacht left on the second morning. The twins were let out of hospital when she was hull down.

It would be a mistake to think of them as helpless prisoners who needed pity.

For one thing, they had not lived long enough in the world to be sure of what was normal and what was not. They were better able to accept events than older people would be, and, like most children, they were cleverer than they seemed. Nor were they so heartbroken about being separated from their parents as parents would like to think. Judy had accepted the fact that they were there on holiday, and even Nicky—it is sad to confess—had been more worried about Jokey, who depended on him, than about his father, on whom he depended. They had the resilience of youth. They were surrounded by new things. They had puzzles to work out. The challenge to their adaptability was its own tonic.

They were not like Hamlet, who spent the time examining his own inside. They looked outwards, took matters as they came, and were inclined to do things first and think about them afterwards. In short, they scarcely glanced at the departing ship.

Or rather, Judy didn’t. She wanted to find out about the rock.

It was different for Nicky, whose heart was heavier than hers was and who had more to puzzle out. Nothing he could say at breakfast would persuade her that she had not had a long conversation with the wizard, and this, for the first time in their lives, made a gap between them.

Besides, had she?

It was evident that the old man had sent for Jokey, whether they had talked about the dog or not.

There were other problems. How could Dr. McTurk have given the right square root of a figure in millions—for Nicky had worked it out—and why should these people be lurking on Rockall at all? What was the relationship between the different ones they had met? What did the Latin words mean?

He was not a fool. If it was true that the Master had talked with Judy somehow or other, by extrasensory perception or something—and there was the queer way he had laid his forehead against the Chinaman’s—then the “conversation” might really have happened. In that case, the old man had mentioned that Mr. Pierrepoint and the Duke could be useful to a plan. Could this be why they were being held?

On the other hand, he had seen for himself that not one word had passed between the Master and Judy. He remembered the strange look in her pupils. What was hypnotism anyway? How did it work? And if there had been some kind of thought transference, why had there been none with him?

The worst of it was that none of these problems could be discussed with his sister. Whatever the sapphire eyes had done, it lay between them. She got cross at once if anything were said against her new friend.

Nicky was the man of the two—he had the logical worries and the duty of protection.

Above all, what was the Master? How old was he, for instance? And why did Dr. McTurk seem terrified?

Anyway, they were loose. They had been told they could go wherever they liked, and exploring was one thing at least which they could still share.

Judy said, “I think we ought to go outside, in case Jokey wants to do her business.”

The elevator was big enough to carry a small truck and its top floor or landing was a brightly lighted workshop. The big room was empty in the middle, as if something was missing which ought to fit there, and round the walls there were work benches supplied with the machine tools of a good garage—lathes and electric welders and planing machines. There were spare parts in the shape of aerofoils, containers for fuel or lubricants, racks of spanners and screw-drivers and pliers and braces of every possible size, neatly matched. There was a bowser, looking like a big dor-beetle on small wheels. The cement in the middle was stained with droppings of oil like a bus station. At the far wall, running on overhead girders but folded back, was a heavy crane painted orange. Beyond the crane were the doors which they had seen from outside. It was made to swing through them.

The doors were counterpoised. After they had been unbolted, they opened to a gentle pressure.

The weather had changed for the worse, which was one of the reasons why the yacht had been forced to give up searching.

The silence and artificial light of the interior gave place to a great pounce of noise and dazzle as they stepped out on the ledge from which they had been pushed. The sea birds rose with a whirling of wings and a tumult of voices. The wind snatched at their nightshirts—now their only clothes—in which they looked like a pair of small Druids. The waves poised, paused, collected themselves with an outward suction, and heaved, hurled, hurtled upon the cliff-foot. Their plumes climbed into the sunny air with a woof, faltered at the zenith and tumbled back in streaming cataracts of white lace, tattered on the fangs of granite. That evening, an educated voice from the warm rooms of a radio station would be using the familiar phrases about “Rockall, Malin, Hebrides” with the forecast about “reaching gale force at times”. It would be a far voice in every sense from the captured twins.

They withdrew to the garage as soon as the dog was ready, for fear she might be blown away. Jokey, with her hair swept over her head like the White Queen’s in Alice, kicked backwards industriously, to show that she had finished.

The lift took them down to the next floor, which was empty like the top one. It was a recreation room, as big as the one above it. There were two billiard tables, dart boards, a shove-ha’penny board beautifully polished with no beer-rings on it, and a skittle alley—the English kind in which wooden cheeses are thrown, not rolled. Leather settees stood round the walls with buttons to stitch their upholstery, like the buttons in an old-fashioned railway carriage. On the walls themselves, there was the rather touching bric-à-brac which seamen and people in barracks seem to collect—pictures of Diana Dors cut out of magazines, detailed cover illustrations from the Saturday Evening Post by Rockwell or Hughes, views of celebrated objects such as the Eiffel Tower, cheering thoughts by Patience Strong snipped from the Daily Mirror—such as,

Though the sorrows of bereavement linger in the mind,

Happy is the memory that you have left behind

—and photographs of horses being kind to kittens or dogs sharing dishes of food with canaries. These were mixed up with printed notices about fire-alarms and life jackets. There was a notice board which said there would be a smoking concert last Friday, also the usual billiard markers and a couple of chalky slates with numbers written up. One of them had a rough picture of a scrubbing brush drawn at the bottom.

The next floor downwards was bigger. It was divided into cubicles with bunks in tiers and a wash-house with sea-water showers and basins at one end. There were enough bunks for at least fifty people, but only six of the cubicles seemed to be in use. The blankets in the empty ones were folded away. There were no pin-ups on their walls. The bedside chairs were upside down on the blankets.

The used cubicles had tables next to the bunks, with hobbies spread on them—a ship being put in a bottle, a lobster pot being woven, a collection of shopping bags being netted out of string, a fretwork pipe-rack, a cushion cover beautifully embroidered with humming birds, a dozen cigar boxes decorated with glued feathers in fancy patterns.

“Where is everybody?” asked Judy.

The next landing had the usual tiled corridors going to the four points of the compass. The lower the elevator went, the more space there was, because the rock was narrower at the top. Some of the rooms must have been below sea level.

The passages had doors with names on them. There was their own door (HOSPITAL), next to CHIEF ENGINEER, STEWARD, DARK ROOM, S/LDR. FRINTON, SURGERY, ACCOUNTS. One of the passages was taken up with STORES, KITCHEN, MESS DECK, and another was devoted to various offices. The fourth passage led to the ebony door. The Master’s quarters were on the other side of its blank wall.

The lowest floor and the biggest had people in it at last. On one side of the lift there was the passage leading to the ebony door, on another side the one leading to the casement by which they had entered—but the other side stood in a great engine room like the bowels of a liner, in which the men in dungarees moved about their business. It would need a qualified engineer to explain the wonders of this workshop and mass of machinery—the power plant, the heating system, the air conditioner, the lighting and the rest.

But it was domestic. Nothing was being made there, so far as they could see, except the needs of life.

The men in jeans were pleased to meet the twins and enjoyed patting Jokey. They showed off their dials and gauges with honest pride—keeping the dog away from moving parts—and answered technical questions from Nicky without reserve.

Yes, they said, the main problem was drinking water, which had to be brought by sea in the trawler and pumped into these here tanks under the floor. They insisted on lifting the man-holes to show the water supply—the dank humidity of lightless water underfoot. And yes, the twins would see the trawler in a day or two, when she paid her next visit. No, they explained, there were no more people living on the rock than themselves. Sometimes the crew of the trawler slept there for a night or two—or some of them did—but the tiers of bunks in the forecastle were a left-over from the time the island was hollowed, which was long ago. The workmen had gone now, nobody knew where. They were mostly Italians.

No, they said laughing, they were not making hydrogen bombs—just maintenance, that was all they were.

What were they maintaining? Well, they were working for the Master.

Nicky noticed that, although they liked answering questions about their engines, they began to look vague on wider subjects. Their eyes grew horse-like, just as Judy’s had done the night before, and the replies were duller the further you went, till they became blank with silence. The men were not hiding anything. They simply did not know—were not interested—and seemed even to forget the questions while they were being put. It was like water off a duck’s back.

All he could gather was that the Chinaman and Dr. McTurk and the negro—whose name was Pinky—and the squadron-leader, whose name they had seen on a door, were the experts helping with the Plan. What plan? The answer was a stare.

Except for this deadened place in their minds, which was as dumb as novocaine might make it, the men in jeans were normal—like lighthouse keepers, whom they resembled. Lighthouse keepers are inclined to dislike one another, being cooped up together, so that they grow silent and attend to their own hobbies, but apart from the slight tension of knowing each other too well the engineers were tranquil. They were even cheerful for the time being, since Jokey and the twins were a novelty for them—giving them something new to think about. One of the men had actually kept a bone for Jokey, which he presented shyly, and which Jokey accepted out of politeness but hid behind a transformer.

“Who stole Jokey?” asked Judy, remembering about this.

They did not know.

They were grieved to hear she had been stolen.

They had only seen her when she was rescued from the sea.

A rather pathetic thing was the way they made up to the little dog and envied the one who had thought of the bone. Perhaps all men want to have something to look after, even if it is only a wife, and this may be the reason why sailors are always turning up with parrots in cages or ship’s cats or green-furred mona monkeys who generally die on passage.

Judy was not particularly interested in pressure gauges, and most of Nicky’s questions were out of keeping with her mood. They grated on her. She knew what the Master’s plan was—although she had forgotten its nature so that she could not exactly explain. The questions seemed suspicious to her, if not bad manners. After a time, she exclaimed impatiently, “Let’s go and see the kitchen.”

On the way up in the elevator, Nicky made a last attempt.

“You were rude,” was all she said.

“But why didn’t they know about it?”

“I suppose they were hypnotized,” she said sarcastically, “like me.”

“Please, Judy.”

“Oh, shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

And she began dancing about in the cage of the elevator, chanting these words in a way which she knew infuriated him.

The kitchen was almost as technical as the engine room. Its deep-freeze and refrigerators and electric whisks and washing machines and potato peelers and tin-openers which wound with handles were not common objects in England, even in a ducal mansion visited by the public at two shillings and sixpence a time—guide book extra. The housewife in Judy was enchanted. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Look, cardboard cups you can throw away!”

The occupant of the kitchen was the negro, Pinky, and he was as delighted as Judy was, to receive a visit. Although the men had said that he was one of the higher technicians, he was the cook as well. He took them round in a delicious whiff of vegetable soup, and onions being slowly cooked golden with the lid on.

Jokey got a steak done from inside by radiation in two minutes, which she ate voraciously, while the huge black man grinned all over his face and snapped his fingers.

Nicky tried him with questions when he saw that his sister was poking about the bread ovens.

The man smiled and nodded and twinkled his treacle-coloured eyes, but answered nothing.

Finally he opened his mouth like a great codfish, or like lifting the lid of a piano keyboard, and held it for the boy to see.

There was no tongue in it.