Dennis Wheatley - Black August

'What's your view, Ann?' Gregory smiled, noting that a touch of colour was creeping back into her lovely face.

No more ships for me, thank you,' she said promptly; 'and anyhow I'm quite near my home now.'

'I don't see how that will help you, or us. However, what do you say, Rudd?'

'I'm for doin' jus' what you think best, Mr. Gregory, sir. I don't doubt but we'll manage ail right.'

'Yes, but I'd like to have your opinion all the same.'

'Well, if that's your wish, sir, this is 'ow it seems to me. Mr. 'Arker there, if 'e'll excuse the expression, said a mouthful. Wiv invalids an' ladies pardon me, Miss 'ow are we goin' ter get another ship? But if we stays put in this 'ere tower we could 'old it against the 'ole blinking Army if we wants to, an' speakin' for meself I've 'ad worse vittals than those we 'ad fer breakfast many a time, so wots the matter with a bit of a 'oliday by the sea?'

Gregory nodded. 'Well, you all seem pretty unanimous against any further attempt to leave the country, although frankly if I thought there was any reasonable chance of capturing a sea worthy ship, I'd take it, whether you came with me or not. I can see some sort of decent future for myself if only I could get to a black man's country where the climate's good and the food abundant, but I can't see any here. In a week or so the people from the towns will have permeated the whole countryside and then it will be dog eat dog. Once our ammunition is exhausted we shall stand no better chance of surviving than the rest, and if we do, it will be to drag out a miserable existence through a bleak East Coast winter on a diet of herring. However, there is no prospect of a ship at the moment, and as Rudd says, we can hold the fort if we're attacked by any starving rabble, so we had best dig in here for the time being. Now I'm going to have a talk to Sergeant Thompson about the men.'

'One moment, General,' Silas raised his pointed eyebrows. 'Are you banking on our friends in the village feeding us all the time?'

'They don't imagine that they are going to at the moment, but, of course, they will.'

'Does that mean that King Sallust is going to do his buccaneer act again?'

'No, I hope that won't be necessary. There are many ways in which we can be useful to the locals and earn our keep. The gift of our protection alone is worth a lot at a time like this.'

Silas looked up in admiration. 'Give them your protection in exchange for fish, eh you're a marvel. Al Capone would have gone all green with jealousy if he had ever heard about you.'

Gregory grinned back. 'Well, at least I'm adaptable. If I can't be King of the Hebrides, I certainly mean to be King of Shingle Street, and that before the day is out.'

'Sure,' drawled the American, 'and what do we do now?'

'Sit in the sunshine while I see Thompson, and discuss the future with the Mayor and Corporation,' With a little laugh Gregory moved away.

'Kenyon,' said Ann quietly, 'I want to talk to you.

He looked up catching his breath a little as he met her eyes. 'Righto, let's walk down to the shore.'

Side by side they strolled across the little valleys of shingle, the pebbles jumping and sliding under their feet until they reached the last ridge above the gleaming line left by the turning tide.

As they sat down Kenyon felt a nervous apprehension, the tension was almost visible between them now, then slowly, awkwardly, Ann broke the silence.

'This has been an incredible experience, my dear, and I shall never forget you, as long as I live.'

Something seemed to sink in the pit of Kenyon's stomach as though he was falling in a rapid lift. 'What on earth do you mean, Ann?' he managed to say.

'Only that, although I was stupidly angry with you at the time, I do realise that you saved my life by dragging me out of London, and I wanted to thank you before I go.'

'Go!' he echoed with dismal foreboding, 'go where?'

'To Uncle Timothy at Orford. It's only five miles away, you know, and I must see what has happened there. I'm naturally anxious about him.'

'But you won't stay there, will you?'

'Yes, if everything is all right.'

'You'd be safer, much safer here with us.'

'Why, it's such a quiet little place I don't suppose for a minute that it's been affected any more than Shingle Street, and it's my home. The people there have known me all my life and would never dream of doing me any harm besides '

'Besides what?'

'Well, I don t want to see you again for a long time.'

'But why, Ann, why? What have I done? I know I behaved like a fool in London, but everything seemed to happen so quickly. My head was bung full of the election when I met you, and before I saw you again we were right on the verge of the crash. I hadn't a thought of marrying anybody, and was only living from day to day, just wondering what was going to happen to us all. I loved you before that night in Grosvenor Square, you know that, but I hadn't properly woken up to it, and because I hesitated a second you're holding that against me. Surely you're not going to turn me down because of that?'

Ann sat silent, staring at the countless spangles of dancing sunshine which flickered on the sea. In her heart she knew she loved him, and she was fighting a bitter battle with herself. If she had been certain that Gregory was right and everything was going sky high she would not have hesitated, the trimmings of civilisation were not essential to her happiness, and she would have remained cheerfully, joyfully adapting herself to a new and primitive existence, where she would cook and fend for Kenyon while he snared game or gathered shell fish from the beach; and both would laugh together over silly stupid things till dawn dimmed the camp fire, then sleep, his curly head pillowed upon her breast, far into another day. Ann, perhaps, was more bitterly disappointed even than Gregory that their fortunes had not carried them to Southern Seas. There it would all have been so simple but here the old problems remained.

Kenyon had taken her hands in his and was kissing the small grubby palms while he went on pleading fervently for her to stay, but she could only mutter: Don't, my dear, don't,' and stubbornly shake her head as she visualised the actual possibilities.

If Gregory was wrong, and, after a period of violence, order was restored again, where would she be if she had married Kenyon in the meantime, as he was pressing her to do now? That streak of pride in her which took the form of queer inverted snobbery, revolted at the thought of the position she would occupy. His wife, but not quite of his world, if only ail the women were like Veronica, but they weren't and she was tortured by a vision of their subtle slights, aimed at her but lodging in Kenyon's heart and therefore causing her a hundred times the pain and mortification.

He could laugh over it now and call her 'a precious little fool with absurd notions about people she did not know,' but would he laugh after a year or so if they went back to Grosvenor Square? If she married him and then lost him she thought it would kill her, and her resolve not to let him see her true weakness for him made her harsher in her refusals than she knew herself. Yet despite the pain in his face she was determined not to give way and chance spoiling his life by a surrender to this passion scarcely yet a week old.

She even refused to allow him to accompany her to Orford saying that she had already spoken to Gregory who had promised her Rudd and two men as an escort for that afternoon.

For an hour he reasoned, and finally, driven by the ill success of his arguments, bullied; but her firmness shook him, and as he talked on. reverting again to tender expostulations at her hardness, he began to be conscious of a horrible feeling of futility, that whatever he might say or do she would not alter. His awareness of it sapped the logic from his contentations and the passion from his pleading, so that after a time he found himself stupidly repeating the same phrases over and over again, and at last, by sinking into a miserable silence, he acknowledged defeat.