‘Foggartism in action!’ thought Michael bitterly. ‘So endeth the First Lesson!’
The hut looked lonely in the threading moonlight and the bitter wind. Inside, Mrs Bergfeld was kneeling beside the body placed on the deal table, with a handkerchief over its face. Michael put a hand on her shoulder. She gave him a wild look, bowed her head again, and her lips began moving. ‘Prayer!’ thought Michael. ‘Catholic – of course!’ He took Boddick aside. ‘Don’t let her see Swain. I’ll talk to him.’
When the police and the doctor came in, he button-holed the hairdresser, whose shadowy face looked ghastly in the moonlight. He seemed much upset.
‘You’d better come down to the house for the night, Swain.’
‘All right, sir. I never meant to hurt the poor beggar. But he did carry on so, and I’ve got my own trouble. I couldn’t stand ’im monopolisin’ misfortune the way he does. When the inquest’s over, I’m off. If I can’t get some sun soon, I’ll be as dead as ’im.’
Michael was relieved. Boddick would be left alone.
When at last he got back to the house with Swain, Fleur was asleep. He did not wake her to tell her the news, but lay a long time trying to get warm, and thinking of that great obstacle to all salvation – the human element. And, mingled with his visions of the woman beside that still, cold body were longings for the warmth of the young body close to him.
The photographs were providential. For three days no paper could be taken up which did not contain some allusion, illustrated, to ‘The Tragedy on a Buckinghamshire estate’ ‘German actor hangs himself’; ‘The drama at Lippinghall’; ‘Tragic end of an experiment’; ‘Right to Left: Mr Michael Mont, Member for mid-Bucks; Bergfeld, the German actor who hanged himself; Mrs Bergfeld.’
The Evening Sun wrote more in sorrow than in anger:
‘The suicide of a German actor on Sir Lawrence Mont’s estate at Lippinghall has in it a touch of the grotesquely moral. The unfortunate man seems to have been one of three “out-of-works” selected by the young Member for mid-Bucks, recently conspicuous for his speech on “Foggartism”, for a practical experiment in that peculiar movement. Why he should have chosen a German to assist the English people to return to the Land is not perhaps very clear; but, largely speaking, the incident illustrates the utter unsuitability of all amateur attempts to solve this problem, and the futility of pretending to deal with the unemployment crisis while we still tolerate among us numbers of aliens who take the bread out of the mouths of our own people.’ The same issue contained a short leader entitled: ‘The Alien in Our Midst’ The inquest was well attended. It was common knowledge that three men and one woman lived in the hut, and sensational developments were expected. A good deal of disappointment was felt that the evidence disclosed nothing at all of a sexual character.
Fleur, with the eleventh baronet, returned to town after it was over. Michael remained for the funeral – in a Catholic cemetery some miles away. He walked with Henry Boddick behind Mrs Bergfeld. A little sleet was drifting out of a sky the colour of the gravestones, and against that whitish sky the yew trees looked very stark. He had ordered a big wreath laid on the grave, and when he saw it thus offered up, he thought: ‘First human beings, then rams, now flowers! Progress? I wonder!’
Having arranged that Norah Curfew should take Mrs Bergfeld as cook in Bethnal Green, he drove her up to London in the Manor car. During that long drive he experienced again feelings that he had not had since the war. Human hearts, dressed-up to the nines in circumstances, interests, manners, accents, race, and class, when stripped by grief, by love, by hate, by laughter were one and the same heart. But how seldom were they stripped! Life was a clothed affair! A good thing too, perhaps – the strain of nakedness was too considerable! He was, in fact, infinitely relieved to see the face of Norah Curfew, and hear her cheerful words to Mrs Bergfeld:
‘Come in, my dear, and have some tea!’ She was the sort who stripped to the heart without strain or shame.
Fleur was in the drawing-room when he got home, furred up to her cheeks, which were bright as if she had just come in from the cold.
‘Been out, my child?’
‘Yes. I –’ She stopped, looked at him rather queerly, and said: ‘Well, have you finished with that business?’
‘Yes; thank God. I’ve dropped the poor creature on Norah Curfew.’
Fleur smiled. ‘Ah! Yes, Norah Curfew! She lives for everybody but herself, doesn’t she?’
‘She does,’ said Michael, rather sharply.