The Tunnel by Eric Williams Page B

afraid I can’t discuss these things.’ ‘Very well.’ He was on his feet again, and this time Peter did not try to stop him. ‘If you choose to be obstinate I’m afraid I can do nothing for you.’ He gathered up the cigarettes and matches from the bed and replaced his cap. ‘If you change your mind, tell the guard, and I will come and see you again.’
    During the days that followed Peter was allowed no exercise and his diet never varied. Since his first visitor he had heard nothing from Intelligence, but now he did not worry any more. The first interrogator had so closely followed the specification given by Pop Dawson that he ceased to dread the next. He spent most of his time lying on the sack of wood shavings, which he had pounded down to fit his shape, and dreaming up fantastic meals.
    For the moment there was nothing more that he could do, and it was a relief to lie back and do nothing, absolutely nothing. It was just like being dead, he thought, except that one day he would go back to it all again. Like being dead long enough to learn how lovely life can be – and then having the chance to live again. Yes, he would live again. And when he returned to life, how wonderful the simple fact of living freely.
    It was pleasant, in a way, suddenly to be lifted out of life and relieved of all responsibility. It was like going sick when he was at school. Now, whatever happened, he couldn’t do anything about it. Unpaid bills, unanswered letters – he was not responsible for anything any more. They all thought he was dead. They wouldn’t know until he got out of the cells that he was a prisoner. When he got to the main camp he would write to his brother about the car and the garage bill. For the moment he could do nothing.
    He lay for hours living his life again, as far back as he could remember. It had been an active life – he had never been alone for more than a few hours at a time. Now he could think, take stock of all that he had done. It did not amount to much; a few drawings that he liked, and a lot of friends.
    He had been lucky in his friends. He took each in turn and piece by piece built up a mental picture, living again the good things they had done together. With Ian, duck-shooting on the Neston marshes, with the sky red over the Welsh hills and the cold salty water running in the dykes; Ian, with his face red as the sun, carrying the long-barrelled twelve-bore that should have been in a museum long ago. The creak of beating pinions as the duck flighted in from the sea; the slow, clean shots in the failing light and the way the chosen birds came tumbling vertically downwards, suddenly bereft of flight. It was not until he too, flying, became a target for guns on the ground that he had known what the widgeon, mallard and teal had known.
    He lay on his bed and saw again in memory the long wedges of flighting ducks driving steadily out to sea in the early morning. The sudden quickening of their wing beats as they saw the strange object on the ground below – almost as though they had changed into a lower gear. The breaking up of the flight as the guns spoke, the way the unhurt birds stalled, wheeled, and formed up again to fly, heads outstretched, in silent urgency for the safety of the sea.
    Or climbing with John McGowan in the Welsh hills; John, with his beetling brow and incredible endurance. Being frightened on the slippery rock face at Tryfan; clinging to the cold grey rock and seeing Lake Ogwen like a pond below; later, in the evening, drinking beer in the Pen-yr-Pas Hotel.
    Or hunting with Punch. Days when the countryside was brown and green and blue, and steam from the horses rose in clouds in the misty winter air. The smell of wood smoke and the thrilling blood-curdling summons of the huntsman’s horn. He had been frightened then, his fingers dead from pulling on that iron mouth. He had known that Punch was a borer, a fool; would as soon have gone through the jumps as over them. But Punch had been