ROMAN CHARITY

In some day and age which I won’t try to identify—it might be now—Rudolph Campion was sent to prison. Campion wasn’t his real name; it was a name he had assumed partly because some of his forebears were English, which was then, and still sometimes is, a recommendation, something to put on a passport, or what served him as a passport, for he had more than one. Rudolph Campion, Englishman. He himself could hardly remember what his real name was. It certainly wasn’t English; but then, as now, it was a disadvantage to be stateless, especially for someone who travelled about the world as much as Rudolph Campion did.

Living such a nomadic life, it was surprising that Rudolph was married, and not so much that he was married, as that he still had married ties. His wife had left him, bored with his itinerant life, in one of the countries that he from time to time frequented; she wanted to settle down, she said, and not always be a camp-follower, often living under canvas, whatever the weather. So at some point in his wanderings, not too far from a capital city where such civilization as recent wars had left, still remained, she told him she had had enough, and would seek her fortune in this city; she did not say how.

In her late thirties, she was almost as good-looking as he was; in fact if it hadn’t been for his good looks—bearded, moustachioed, with thinning hair, unkempt and shaggy—a man of today he might have been—she wouldn’t have stuck to him as long as she did. But there were other men with equal physical attractions, who liked a settled life, and a home, and she didn’t despair of finding one.

It took her some time to come to this decision, for had they not been married twenty years? and she, like many women in this and other ways more far-sighted than men, valued a stable personal relationship. This she had enjoyed with Rudolph (Rudy to her, though never rude). He might have strayed; he probably had; but she was not upset by the suspicion of his possible infidelities, when he was out of sight (as he so often was) but not out of mind. He always came back to her, and was as loving as he was loved; and though she didn’t really know, and didn’t much want to know, what his actual business was, although she did know that an element of danger attended it, when they pitched their moving tent a day’s march nearer a destination in this country or in that, his friends, for he had friends or accomplices in many countries, knew that she came first with him. The news of their relationship seemed to precede them: she never had to explain who she was; she was accepted, in whatever society, as belonging to him and he to her; a good-looking and above all, an inseparable couple. The personal vanity, the sense of being esteemed for their own sake, which many people and most women have, was amply satisfied for Trudi by her Rudy—a joke which his friends, who were seldom hers, often made. Never could she remember a time when, however little she had to do with the business in hand, Rudy had pressed her to make herself agreeable to some hard-faced little man, on whose favour, or favours, success depended. She might have yielded, for Rudy left her much alone, and as the Italian proverb says, ‘One gets tired of home-made bread.’

No, in their twenty years together he had never, so to speak, pushed her into a corner, never made her feel that she was just an adjunct, a useful business-asset, but otherwise rather a drag. Perhaps he hardly could have, for she couldn’t enter a room without making her beauty felt.

All this she realized; but as the rain dripped through the canvas of the tent—they didn’t always live in a tent, but between times they had to when they were on the run—she said to her daughter who shared two-thirds of the tent with her, the other third being curtained off for sleeping-quarters, and other masculine requirements. Rudy didn’t seem to mind the dripping rain.

‘Angela, I think I shall have to make a change. I’m very proud of your father, but this sort of life doesn’t suit me. It may be all right for a man, but I’m getting too old for it. And now that you’re engaged to be married—’

‘I was married yesterday, Mother, but you were so busy with one thing and another, I didn’t like to tell you.’

The mother and daughter turned to each other on their dampening beds.

‘You didn’t like to tell me?’

‘No, I thought it was kinder not to.’

‘Speak lower, he might hear you,’ Trudi began to whisper.

‘Oh no, he sleeps like a log. But I know I’m a responsibility to you in the odd life he makes you lead, so when Jacko asked me to marry him—’

‘Jacko?’

‘Yes, you’ve seen him several times. Well, I said yes.’

‘Jacko?’

‘Yes, he’s got a job as a courier, and we like each other. I mightn’t have done it, but I knew it was a strain for you, living with Father, in these conditions, and with me in tow. I didn’t know that you were going to take the step of leaving him—but I would have married Jacko even if I had known you had—.’

‘Jacko?’

‘Yes, he’s a nice fellow, a reliable sort.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Oh yes, quite sure. He’s not a substitute for Father, whom I’ve always loved, just as you have, and shall always love. But I can’t do anything for him, any more than you can. He’s a lone wolf, and picks up his living wherever he can find it. I don’t think we need feel sorry for him—he’ll always fall on his feet. But I shall always keep in touch with him, as no doubt you will, and if ever he gets into a jam—’

‘I shall hear what he says, I shall hear what he says,’ said her mother. ‘At any rate he will have you to fall back on.’

‘Yes, always.’

‘Jacko or no Jacko?’

‘Yes, Father will always mean more to me than anyone. And to you, Mother?’

‘I’m not quite so sure. Twenty years is a long time. I’ll tell him tomorrow.’

They listened to the dropping of the rain, a soothing sound, before they too dropped off.

So next day Rudy learned that in a very short time he was to be wife-less and daughter-less.

In those days, as in these, political prisoners were not always well-treated and if they fell into the wrong hands—and there were a good many wrong hands to fall into, no matter whom they might be working for—their lot was not likely to be a happy one. It was a risk of Rudy’s trade—his international trade—and he was prepared to accept it, just as any man who engages in one of the many sports and occupations which involve risk to life and limb, is prepared to accept it. Indeed, it was no doubt the risk attached to his present job, whatever it was, that made him choose it; he wouldn’t have been happy in a humdrum occupation where no danger lurked. No thrill, no wondering if he would just turn the corner, no spice of life.

And so far it had worked quite well. There had been anxious moments when he was glad to have his car outside; moments when his command of languages (he had been brought up to know three) suddenly failed him; moments when some suspicious looking stranger followed him to the door, and asked for his address. He would give an address, an imaginary address, and within an hour or two he and Trudi would be far away, pitching their tent; and Angela would be with them. The tent was in the boot of the car, and they had brought pitching it to a fine art; in half an hour or so it would be ready and soon afterwards a delicious meal would be ready, too; for Rudy was a big man and a hungry and a thirsty man; leading the life he did, with much strain on his nervous and physical constitution, he couldn’t go without sustenance for long. Both his wife and his daughter enjoyed seeing him tuck into his food and swallowing down a bottle of wine. There was another bottle for them, too, if his mission had been successful. What matter if they were on the run? Being on the run brings appetite and thirst.