The Loner, page 27
“You see today the American army and air force, making yet another sortie against the Vietcong. But killing the Vietcong does not seem to be winning the war. There seems to be no end to the fighting, and one wonders if the war can ever be won. Many young soldiers are wondering what this war has to do with them. I have just been with the crew of one of these helicopter gunships.” The presenter waved his hand in the direction of the departing helicopters, and continued: “I was surprised to find young men, who had only just left school, committed to this terrible conflict. The officer in charge graduated from high school only last year, and this is the first time he has been away from home. I saw tears in his eyes when he described what it was like to be in combat...”
The television correspondent said much more on the same subject, and with the same theme.
Fiona watched the screen in a relaxed and disinterested way, but Mark’s face was red and twisted in anger; he looked as though he was about to explode – so much so that Fiona switched the television off, and asked him if he was well.
“I can’t stand programmes like this!” Mark exclaimed, after assuring her that he was indeed well. The furrows in his forehead had deepened into a tremendous frown; his lips were tight, and his tenseness and annoyance were evident from a series of involuntary twitches.
“What is the matter with you then? You look as though you’re about to have a fit!”
“That programme is against a war,” Mark said, his face still red with rage. “They shouldn’t be shown. If anyone is to win a war, you shouldn’t question it. If you’re going to achieve anything, you’ve got to go on. If you doubt what you’re doing, you’ll stop.”
Fiona smiled: Mark’s disjointed way of expressing his views was clear proof of their absurdity. “War is a terrible thing,” she said. “Are you saying that, if there’s a war, you shouldn’t question the justness of the war? War is so unnatural, and causes so much suffering.”
Mark avoided the question. The angry frown became more intense. “War isn’t unnatural,” he replied. “I did Latin and Greek ‘A’ levels, and I still read them. Horace says: “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – it is a sweet and honourable thing to die for your country – and the Romans and Greeks were closer to Nature than we are.”
“I read Latin too,” she rejoined. “Isn’t that the quotation which led so many hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths in the First World War?”
Mark did not answer. He simply did not know.
“Come on Mark. Don’t you think the Romans and Greeks are rather old-fashioned these days? Their languages are dead now, aren’t they?”
Mark did not agree. He was by then so carried away with the excitement of his own ideas that he couldn’t resist setting them out in full, however unpalatable they might be for anyone else: “War, violence, aggression are all part of human nature,” he declared frantically. “Soldiers enjoy violence, just like anyone else who likes their job. The gladiators thrilled the Roman crowds, and don’t we all find war films exciting and exhilarating? The more blood and thunder, the better the film, and the more money it makes!”
“You paint a sad picture of the World and the future,” Fiona remarked with a sigh.
“No, not at all. If people would only recognise violence as an instinct, they would know what to do with it. Aggression can be channelled into sport. People fight for ideals and ideas. But do they really fight for the ideas and the ideals? Or are the ideals and the ideas just an excuse for unloosing violence – an excuse which satisfies their conscience. That’s what I think violence is. If people would only see this, they’d find other ways of satisfying their violent instincts which would do no harm to anyone else. If they want to risk their lives, they can go climbing – or potholing – or do some other dangerous sport.”
Fiona shook her head sadly. “I just can’t see the connection between war and sport,” she said coolly. “Besides human nature has changed for the better since the primitive days of Greece and Rome, and all war is wrong.”
“Not, if it’s a war against Communists.”
“You think that because you’re prejudiced, don’t you, Mark? You assume that what’s good for us is good for everyone else, don’t you?”
“Well, Communism is wrong,” Mark retorted, as if this proposition was a self-evident truth.
“I suppose Communism might not do this country much good,” Fiona conceded. “But don’t you think other countries might benefit more from Communism than from our kind of capitalist democracy – particularly some of the developing countries? Don’t you think a Communist system might help them to modernise better and faster? Besides, why should we impose our way of life on another country, if the people of that country don’t want it? Why should they have to accept our coca-cola civilisation?”
“But they don’t want Communism,” Mark persisted. “The North Vietnamese...”
Fiona interrupted in a slow and measured tone: “No-one can prove the North Vietnamese are doing anything more than supplying weapons to the Vietcong. The North Vietnamese army is not in Vietnam – like the American army is.”
“I don’t believe it” said Mark,
“That’s what the newsmen say,” she rejoined.
“Then they’re biased!” he retorted.
Fiona was in a teasing mood, and now she had got the better of him on the subject of Vietnam, she decided to pursue another argument. “I think it’s those Greeks and Romans,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “They’ve given you too many old ideas, and made you prejudiced. Why do you keep on reading those dusty old books, Mark? What possible good can they do you? They’re so hopelessly out of date and old-fashioned. Whatever use they are, they can’t have any relevance to Modern Society.”
Mark’s response was a strange one “But they are good,” he said “Reading the original makes you think logically,...”
“And makes you prejudiced,” she retorted.
“It helps me to relax, and feel less tense.”
Fiona smiled. “You mean, reading Latin books makes you feel so bored, you yawn and go to sleep!” she rejoined.
Mark ignored this unkind remark, and continued: “The Classics are relevant Athens was a democracy, and...”
“Had all those slaves!” she interposed dismissively.
Now all his arguments for the pursuit of the Classics had been demolished so easily, Mark brought the conversation back to the subject of Vietnam. “Anyway,” he said. “I reckon, if the Communists win in Vietnam, there’ll be a bloodbath”
Fiona was not at all impressed. She just smiled and said “Nonsense! How do you know what will happen? There’ll be some executions, I suppose, but most people will be all right. When the war stops, the refugees will be able to go home. The Communists aren’t like the Nazis, you know: Southeast Asia isn’t the kind of place where millions of people could he massacred. Things like that don’t happen today.”
Fiona’s flatmate, Susan, had entered the room, while this debate was in progress. She had started some knitting, and took no part in the discussion. Mark did not stay long after the conclusion of the discussion on the Vietnam War, and after he had left, Susan made her own observations:
“Really Fiona, you do have some odd companions,” she remarked. She made an exaggerated imitation of Mark’s angry nervous twitch to emphasise the point.
Fiona laughed.
“He has such tact!” Susan continued. “Such a sense of humour! So entertaining! Ah, what it is to know someone with such modern ideas!”
Fiona giggled softly. “He’s interesting,” she said. “He’s different, and besides, he doesn’t try to flatter me – like other men.”
“He’s not after you then! Oh, how boring!” Susan teased.
Fiona smiled, lit a cigarette, leaned back in her chair, and said sleepily; “I don’t think Mark knows what he’s after. But while my true love’s loyal to me, it’s nice to have a man friend you don’t have to fight off all the time. Such a pity, though, that he always leaves the flat before ten o’clock!”
Mark was beginning to explore the outside world. Hitch-hiking started as a way of getting to Yorkshire and other places he could not afford to pay to travel to. It very soon became an interesting adventure in its own right. Most of the people who gave him lifts were very ordinary, but sometimes he had some very unusual conversations.
Mr. Justice Jolly and his wife were motoring along the A59 from Preston to Leeds. It was a dark night, but the surge of power from the big Rolls Royce gave the man a sense of satisfaction, a mixture of contentment with the eminence he had reached in his career, and pride in his well respected status. It was the kind of satisfaction which could distract him from the cares of family life, but somehow, that Friday night, he found it difficult to lose his worries.
“Such a pity that our boy has such crazy new-fangled ideas,” he was saying. “To think I fought a war to free the world from a madman – and now another madman is our son’s hero! What’s his name, dear?”
“Che Guevara,” his wife replied solemnly. “He’s dead now, but apparently his memory lives on!”
“That wouldn’t be so bad, you know, if only Roland would respect the rule of law in this country. It’s such a pity he can’t accept that the law exists to protect property – everyone’s property. Student sit-ins and demonstrations at University; I ask you, what has the world come to?”
“Don’t worry about our son, dear,” his wife remarked flippantly. “It’s our daughter who worries me. After all the music lessons we paid for, who’d have thought she’d have joined a pop group!”
“Oh, never mind that my dear,” the judge rejoined cynically. “It may not turn out badly in the end. Some pop groups earn more than judges, you know.”
This comment clearly did not please his wife. So he patted her knee reassuringly and added: “She’ll be all right, dear. She always was able to look after herself! All the same, I do wish I knew what makes these youngsters tick.”
At that moment, and as if a god-sent opportunity to investigate this difficult question had arrived, the car swung round a corner, and a hitchhiker appeared in the full glare of the headlights.
“Hmm!” said the judge. “He’s wearing a student scarf. Shall we stop for him?”
“Why not?” replied his spouse. “Looks respectable enough. No long hair – that’s what I like to see. Roland could learn a lesson or two from this young man.”
When they stopped, they saw the hitch-hiker was wearing an imitation sheepskin coat, with its lining inside out to catch the attention of passing motorists with the reflection of headlights on the white artificial wool. A rucksack and a folded tent lay at careless angles on the grass verge. The judge packed the rucksack and the tent in the boot, and drove off.
“So, you’re a student, are you?” the judge asked as they drove away. “What’s your name, young man?”
“Mark,” replied the passenger nervously, in one syllable.
“And what does your father do?” the driver asked, to break the ice.
“I’m an accountant’s son,” the other replied.
The judge paused for a moment to compare the conventional image of an elegantly dressed accountant with his scruffy passenger. But then, he reflected, Roland was equally scruffy. “I see,” he said gravely. “Tell me, young man, do you propose to follow in your father’s footsteps?”
“No,” replied the student curtly.
I thought so, thought the judge sadly – just like Roland! Then he said aloud: “Then what are you going to do, young man?”
“I’m a law student. I’m going to be solicitor and speak in court,” Mark replied.
The judge smiled. That was more like what he wanted to hear!
Mark Flitley could not get over the novelty of being in such a posh car. He used to think rich people never gave lifts. Lorry drivers with noisy cabs; bored salesmen who needed company to keep themselves awake on the motorways: these were the people to expect lifts from – never before a gentleman in a Rolls Royce! Prince Philip had been rumoured to stop for a student in the remote highland moors, but that was not the sort of luck Mark had, and besides, he was not hitch-hiking in Scotland!
So, with these thoughts in mind, and with some sense of awe, Mark asked naively “You know, I’ve never been given a lift in a Rolls before.”
The judge assured him it was really quite an old model, and that such cars did not hold their value like they used to.
“You know,” the passenger continued, “this reminds me of another lift I had?”
“Oh!” exclaimed the judge, wondering if he had ever met this passenger before.
“Yes, that driver had an expensive car too – but not a Rolls.”
The judge relaxed. He had never seen this student before. His memory was not playing him false after all.
The passenger continued “I told the driver what I was studying, and I asked him what he did. He wouldn’t say – except that he was in the Law too. So he made me guess. I asked him if he was a barrister, and he said no. I asked him if he was a solicitor, and he said no. He told me he wasn’t a lecturer or in business or in Local Government either. I just couldn’t guess what he was. Then he told me he was a judge. Fancy judges giving lifts!”
The judge smiled benignly, and tried to laugh at the joke.
After a while, the passenger plucked up the courage to ask the other the question he feared. “Tell me,” he asked, “what’s your job?”
The judge preferred not to answer a personal question of this kind, particularly bearing in mind Mark’s last comment. “I’ll tell you when I drop you,” he replied, hoping the passenger would forget, and he would not have to honour his undertaking.
His wife was tired with the interrogation of her husband, and decided to find out more about the student. “Have you come far?” she asked.
“From Liverpool,” was the reply.
“My word, that is a long way. Where are you going to?”
“To Settle, and then to Horton-in-Ribblesdale. I’m camping there with some friends.”
“Really! At this time of year!”
“You have to – if you go potholing.”
“So you’re a potholer.” There was silence, while the judge and his lady digested this intelligence. Visions of scruffy young men in dirty clothes floated across their imagination.
Some miles further, they reached Gisburn, and Mark asked to be dropped on the junction of the road to Settle. The passenger was so casual about this request that he might have been on a bus, the judge thought. The car stopped. Mark retrieved his rucksack and thanked the driver. The judge was just about to drive off, glad that the question he feared had been forgotten, when the student reminded him of his promise. “You did say you’d tell me what your job is,” Mark said.
The driver hesitated, and murmured reluctantly: “Yes, I suppose I did.” A whole world of horrors was opening up on him. In his mind’s eye, he could already see the banner headlines in the local newspapers: “Famous judge gives student lift!” But, as a judge, he had always honoured his undertakings. So he replied sharply: “Let me put it this way, young man – you might just have met another judge!”
“Oh!” said Mark, wishing he had never mentioned his previous encounter.
The car drove off: “Well,” said the lady, “what is the world coming to? In my day, students used to dress well – and no-one went exploring caves – too scruffy!!”
The judge was more tolerant. “There are worse things students can do,” he said gruffly, thinking of their children. “I’d rather see Roland down a pothole than in a student sit-in!”
The lady made no comment. The car swerved suddenly round an unexpected bend, and they both heard a noise in the back of the car. “What was that?” asked the judge. “I didn’t think we were carrying anything in the boot.”
“The hitch-hiker must have left something behind,” rejoined his wife.
“Well, I hope not intentionally,” murmured the judge, as he tried to set aside a fast growing nightmare of his career ending in disgrace before newspaper headlines accusing him of theft. “We must go back. I do hope he’s still there.”
Mark was indeed still waiting. The judge opened the window. “There’s something rolling about in the boot of my car. It doesn’t belong to you, does it?”
“My tent!” Mark exclaimed in genuine relief.
The judge did not look very pleased. He unlocked the boot, and the student recovered his tent, stammering an apology.
“Well, let me tell you something, young man,” the judge said sternly, straightening his back, as he often did, when he came to pass sentence. “If you appear in court before me, don’t ever forget your papers!”
It was late the next morning, when Pablo stood at the top of the entrance shaft of Rift Pot on the Ingleborough Allotment, full of enthusiasm for the imminent underground adventure. The same enthusiasm seemed to inspire all the other members of the team – except one. Pablo watched Mark disdainfully, and wondered what it was he was trying to prove. He had hitch-hiked up to Yorkshire on his own; he had walked keenly across the moorland, but now he was actually at the cave entrance, he showed no signs of looking forward to the trip at all, and his face was a mask of fear. Pablo reflected on his own experience of life; it had always been hard. His parents had had to struggle to make ends meet. His schooldays had been spent in one of the roughest estates in a Northern city, and if he had learnt little else, he had found out how to stand up for himself. He had followed his father in developing some very practical skills, and the thought of an academic career, with what he considered a soft job at the end of it, filled him with horror – in spite of the encouragement of his teachers, who had always reckoned he was bright.
