The Rack Read online

  A. E. Ellis

  * * *

  THE RACK

  Contents

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART TWO Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  PART THREE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  About the Author

  A. E. Ellis was the pseudonym used by British novelist and playwright Derek Lindsay, who was born in 1920. After serving as a captain in the Second World War, he returned to England to study at the University of Oxford.

  After his diagnosis of tuberculosis, Lindsay was treated for some years at a sanatorium in the French Alps, one of the last to undergo this type of therapy. His experiences there were to form a backdrop for his first and only novel, The Rack, which was published in 1958. The novel was met with high critical acclaim, with the Irish Times describing it as ‘quite possibly a masterpiece’. Many fellow authors also praised the work, with Graham Greene writing: ‘there are certain books we call great for want of a better term, that rise like monuments above the cemeteries of literature: Clarissa Harlowe, Great Expectations, Ulysses. The Rack to my mind is one of this company.’

  Lindsay never published another novel, though he did pen two plays, Grand Manouevres (1974) and Seagull Rising (1977).

  Tous ces gens qui font des mots historiques en mourant, qui se raidissent dans des attitudes, comme si le raidissement final n’allait pas dans trois jours leur suffire, qui dans trois jours n’existeront plus, et qui veulent encore se faire admirer, qui posent, qui mentent jusqu’au dernier souffle: m’as-tu vu trépasser? On appelle ça de l’héroïsme. Et moi j’appelle ça quelque chose de misérable. Si une plainte se formait en moi, il faudrait donc que je l’étouffe, pour plaire aux badauds, et qu’ils m’estiment! Plutôt j’amplifie ma plainte, pour montrer une dernière fois le peu de cas que je fais du monde, et de la considération du monde. Il y a quelque chose qui est aux antipodes de la fierté: c’est l’amour-propre.

  “Être un héros et un saint pour soi-même.” Pour soi-même. Et au monde présenter l’apparence d’un foireux ou d’un farceur. Car l’admiration du monde vous couvre de bave comme une limace qui se traîne.

  MONTHERLANT. Mors et Vita

  Part One

  1

  The small town of Uhle in the Haute Savoie lies on the route of the Paris–St. Gervais express. It is neither a watering place nor a centre of industry; nevertheless no train halts there for less than several minutes. Indeed so disproportionate is the size of the station to that of the town which it serves that passengers travelling this way for the first time often spend anxious moments as they seek assurance that the train has not brought them ahead of schedule to their destination.

  Nor is their uncertainty diminished by the sight of the passengers who descend at Uhle, for they are in appearance as cosmopolitan as any who may be encountered on the platforms of European termini. Voices in most European and many Asiatic languages can be heard demanding renseignements of all kinds; individual passengers attach themselves rapidly to small national groups, presenting infinite variations of physique and colour. Irate and declamatory porters, cigarette stubs adhering to their lower lips and cases strapped to their backs, thread their way through the files of passengers and the baggage-littered quais; small electric trolleys, transformed into quivering skyscrapers by their load of crates, trunks and hampers, hoot neurasthenically as they speed up and down the platforms.

  For Uhle, while not a centre of industry, is nevertheless the gateway to an industry, an industry which attracts its clients from all parts of the world. It is located several thousand feet above sea level on the site of a small village which formerly was frequented only by peasants and their herds. This village, which still retains its original name of Brisset, has, during a period of some fifty years, developed so considerably that what originally was a compact settlement of chalets and stables now straggles in all directions about the place of its original foundation.

  For those who live up the mountains, as well as for those who have only gone to stay there for a certain period, Uhle has a symbolic importance. It is, as it were, a kind of free city situated upon the common border of two neighbouring countries, the citizens of each of which are permitted to associate on equal terms. For cross-currents of the world converge at Uhle, and there divide into two such disparate streams that the contrast between each is more significant than that existing between members of different nationalities and races.

  The territory, the borderline of Uhle, must be crossed to gain access to the mountains. Those who are engaging upon a temporary séjour at a high altitude will traverse and re-traverse its brief confines each time a fit of disenchantment drives them to make an excursion into the outer world. And those who cannot descend for some time (and who, perhaps, may descend no more) will, from their balconies on a clear and star-filled night, see the lights of Uhle flickering far below them.

  Whatever the reason (and despite its commonplace main street and its insignificant shops), Uhle rarely fails to make a distinct impression upon those who pass through it for the first time. Its atmosphere, even on the sleepiest midsummer afternoon, has a tenseness which gives an extra-dimensional relief to the façades of its buildings, and sharpens the silence of its squares. But it is not in midsummer that we shall see it first.

  Towards the middle of November, some time after the end of the Second World War, the small electric train which connects Uhle with the mountains had picked up its passengers from the station and was slowly returning along the streets prior to mounting the steep track which leads to Brisset.

  Hailing each other cheerfully, and mostly sitting together, were the residents and merchants (usually synonymous terms) of Brisset. Then in groups of two or three were the temporary residents; after a brief excursion ‘pour changer les idées’, they were returning, resentfully or stoically, to continue their cure. Lastly there were the new arrivals, novices equipped with boxes, cases, articles de sport.

  At the extreme end of the coach was a party of six young Englishmen. Former members of the armed services and until recently students at various British universities, they were now protégés of the I.S.O., or International Students’ Organisation. The committee of this organisation—which was affiliated to the majority of European universities—had recently initiated a scheme whereby treatment in the mountains would be provided for a period of several months to a limited number of students from a dozen nations. Thus a number of other parties of similar size were at the same time, but by different routes, converging upon a common destination.

  The members of the British party, amongst whom an easy friendship was already forming, had met for the first time on the previous day when they had assembled at a London station. There they had been received by a courier of the I.S.O. who had been appointed to conduct the party to the mountains.

  Only one of their number appeared noticeably unwell, an impression arising more from this individual’s colour and bearing than from his physique. Tall, heavily built and wearing an army officer’s greatcoat from which all insignia had been removed, he was experiencing difficulty in remaining upright in his wooden seat: his fair hair had fallen over his brow, whilst his head rested against the freezing interior of the window. A sudden jolt of the train and his head fell forward, and a student sitting beside him grasped his shoulder, and said:

  “Paul, are you all right?”

  And Paul Davenant, a Cambridge undergraduate and sometime captain in an infantry regiment, shook himself, raised his head, opened his eyes and smiled at his interlocutor. At that moment the I.S.O. courier, Mr. James, walked up the centre of the coach.

  “We’ll be climbing soon,” he said cheerfully. “The train turns round and then goes back-ways up. It isn’t half snowing outside.”

  He rubbed energetically at the inside of the window with his handkerchief, oblivious of the fact that the obstruction to the view was caused by the heavy layer of frost which had formed outside it. Then the train came to a halt, a few more passengers climbed in, the guard cried “En voiture!” and, as Mr. James had predicted, it set off in reverse. But, changing to another line, it left the region of Uhle and started to ascend the mountain. “Well, here we go, lads,” said Mr. James, and as no one replied he leant over and, slapping a young man on the shoulder, cried out: “How are you doing, Oxford?”

  Mr. James, belly, bosom and buttocks in uncompromising relief under a tight, military-type uniform of his own design, was a card, a clown, a little light entertainment provided by the I.S.O. Without a word of French, and never before having travelled on the continent, he had been escorted by the party rather than the reve
rse. He had managed twice to mislay his hand baggage, once to lose his own ticket, once the tickets of the whole party; on no occasion had any necessary document been produced without a frenzied search accompanied by oaths, threats and accusations.

  But these slight contretemps in no way reduced his spirits; it was all one long picnic to Mr. James. When not searching desperately through inside or outside pockets for an elusive and essential document, he joked, jested and bantered. Members of the party he addressed either by the name of their university or the region of the country from which they came.

  Between Paul Davenant of Cambridge and the student whom Mr. James had recently addressed as ‘Oxford’, and whose name was John Cotterell, he had attempted to promote a healthy sense of rivalry, awarding or deducting marks according to some system of his own which led him from time to time to cry out: “That’s one to you, Oxford,” or “Keep it up, Cambridge—you’re only a length behind!” To other members of the party he allocated ‘blues’ or ‘half-blues’ for the performance of any act of communal value. Sometimes he would stare disdainfully at the party as a whole, and cry: “Crikey, what a bunch! One Oxford, one Cambridge, one Taffy, two Scotties and a Yorky. Fancy me having to take a load like that across Europe,” and then he would whistle low and long between his teeth.

  The coach was now mounting steeply; its interior—all but her metically sealed by sliding steel doors—was warm and humid. The chatter of the passengers subsided; they sat with their bodies braced against the angle of ascent, their feet in pools of water formed by the melting of the snow brought in upon their boots. In the dim, yellow lighting they appeared to grow out of the benches, and their outlines, so indistinctly revealed, merged one into the other. All that could be distinguished from the windows was the reflection of the lights of the train upon the banks of snow heaped on each side of the track; the noise of the controls was muffled and highly soporific. The progress of this self-propelled self-sufficient, relentlessly ascending cocoon seemed remote in space and detached in time.

  Paul Davenant, without consciously directing his gaze, found himself staring drowsily at a woman who was seated opposite. She started, all of a sudden, to speak to her neighbour, a plump, pink-faced gendarme who was smoking a cheroot and reading a newspaper. Although she did not specifically raise her voice, its pitch was high and penetrating. And at the same time that she spoke she looked in every direction save that of the gendarme and it was as though she were addressing her remarks to the whole coach. “Alors je lui ai dit: ‘Que voulez-vous que ça me fasse?’” she repeated tonelessly, and as her neighbour started to laugh, she added: “Ah non, dites, mais je ne rigole pas, vous savez.”

  The train came to a sudden halt, and a few passengers descended. Mr. James once more rubbed frantically at the window with his handkerchief as he endeavoured to see the name of the mountain station; then he grasped the shoulder of a workman seated beside him and stammered: “Voulez dire … la station ici … je veux …” when to a shout of “En route!” from the guard the train continued on its way. Mr. James, shading his eyes with his hands, pressed his nose against the window and was rewarded with nothing more than his own ill-defined reflection.

  The woman resumed her conversation with the gendarme, adjusting the volume of her voice to the buzz of the train, the two in conjunction forming a toneless and unpleasantly persistent duet. Then the female voice, capable of a greater virtuosity, broke free, soared, and became completely audible again: “Alors je lui ai dit, ‘Vous savez très bien que vous ne devez pas faire de ski avec votre pneumo, c’est pas sérieux, ça.’” She had been looking at Paul, had appeared to be addressing her remarks directly to him, when suddenly, her mouth wide open in the act of articulation, she turned back to her neighbour and met with a great bouffe of smoke which he had just puffed from between his teeth. Momentary spluttering succeeded by a series of coughs, as sharp, distinct and compelling as her voice; pats on the back and cries of “Pardon, madame,” from the gendarme and a choking “Je vous en prie, monsieur,” from the lady. A temporary accroc; the mechanism swiftly adjusted itself and the human counterpoint to the buzz of the train recommenced unimpaired.

  “What does ‘pneumo’ mean?” Paul whispered to John Cotterell; it was the key word to an otherwise incomprehensible sentence.

  “It’s a medical term. It means—oh, never mind. We’ll be hearing it all too frequently in the near future.” John Cotterell dug his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat and, in an effort to restore his circulation, drummed with his feet upon the floor of the coach.

  “I reckon we should get there any minute,” said Mr. James, now rubbing the glass on his watch with his handkerchief, as though to prove to himself that it had not completely lost its power to effect transparency. Then the windows of the coach became suddenly bright, and despite the frost it was possible to make out the shape of a large and brightly lit building. “We’re here, we’re here!” cried Mr. James, as the train came to a stop. “No, you are not ’ere,” shouted in English a guard who had just come through to the coach. “It is a stop. I will say when you are ’ere. It is the next stop.”

  Through the open doors it was possible to catch a glimpse of great banks of snow, and the outline of square, modern buildings. The place could be no more than a halt, for nothing to imply the existence of a station was visible. Half a dozen religieuses, members of a nursing order, apple-cheeked, their veils grotesquely lined with snow, climbed up into the coach. The guard passed a number of parcels and a mailbag through an open window. Then the cry of “En route!” The steel doors slammed, and the train set off once more up the slope.

  As the track became steeper the noise of the mechanism became more insistent. Then suddenly the passengers started to bestir themselves; hats were adjusted, journals were folded and stored in pockets. The corpulent gendarme got up from his seat and re-fastened the belt and lower buttons of his tunic. Mr. James, oblivious of the implications of these signs, opened a small paper packet and took out a hard-boiled egg, which he began to shell. Paul Davenant turned his head, laid his cheek against the freezing window and closed his eyes; to lose consciousness for a second was to lose it, during that second, for eternity.

  “Brisset Village” suddenly shouted a guard, who, as the train came to a halt, jumped out from the coach on to the platform. There was immediately great activity. Two porters who had climbed up into the coach started to hand down baggage from the racks which ran along its whole length; a family made its way along the centre of the coach, each member holding a pair of skis horizontally above his head. The gendarme’s neighbour dropped her bag on the floor, and the gendarme, bending down to pick it up, lost his own peaked cap, which fell from his head on to a heap of melting, dirty snow. Mr. James stuffed what remained of the hard-boiled egg into his mouth and was robbed of speech. The students formed up in a line behind the other passengers who were filing slowly out of the coach.

  The first impact of mountain air on a November evening. One breathes deeply and the interior of one’s chest becomes suddenly, deliciously, frozen. One breathes out and the air crackles in one’s nostrils. The condensation of the breath of the guard, as he helped passengers down the steep steps of the coach, escaped from his mouth like ectoplasm.

  The small station was well lit; the snow cleared from the track had been formed into great mounds at the extremities of the platform. Uniformed concierges, the names of the sanatoria to which they were attached printed in gold upon their caps, were alert for new arrivals, whilst porters, not occupied elsewhere, started to remove the baggage, which filled the whole of a large trailer attached to the rear of the second coach. From outside the station came the sound of horses and of sleigh bells.

  Mr. James marshalled his little squad, now fluttering and coaxing like a hen, now rapping out orders like a sergeant-major, now making a cautious appraisal of the unfamiliar location like the leader of a Resistance group newly parachuted into hostile territory.

  A concierge with the name Les Alpes upon his cap sighted the party through the throng of passengers on the platform, and walked briskly towards it. “You are the British students?” he inquired first in French and then in English. His query meeting with affirmation, he explained that the sanatorium for which they were bound was some two hundred metres from the station, and that they should now follow him. The baggage, assuming it had been properly labelled, would be sorted out and brought up separately by sledge.