A Perfectly Good Man (35 page)
It was monstrous of his father not to tell him, petty.
Rather than write, he dared to presume on Dr Powell’s kindness and asked if he could put through a call to Paris. He was allowed to ring from Mrs Powell’s study, a little womb of a room that was in disarmingly feminine contrast to the hard surfaces in the boys’ half of the house. It had thick blue carpet and chintz curtains and, before she left him in peace, she settled him at her pretty, ladylike desk, looking at framed photographs of her wedding and children.
Mr Ewart was startled to hear from him – Barnaby had never rung him before – but then was so shocked and so moved by the news that Barnaby was upset all over again and wept unrestrainedly, in a way he had not managed to do until then.
Mr Ewart had always been rather ironic and careful with him but now he was warmly impulsive.
‘Why aren’t you at home?’
‘Well … I think Prof thought I was better off here.’
‘That’s dreadful. You shouldn’t be there. What was he thinking? Let me look at the flight timetables …’ Paper rustled in the background. ‘Listen, Barnaby, I could be there tomorrow afternoon. I could bring you back here for a bit.’
Voice cracking at the awkwardness of having to point such a thing out, Barnaby explained that this might result in Mr Ewart’s being arrested for abduction, since he wasn’t his legal guardian. Instead he accepted an invitation to visit him over New Year, after spending Christmas
en famille
with Potts. Mr Ewart said he would see that the trust paid for a return ticket on the boat train from Victoria.
After finishing his history essay that evening, Barnaby wrote several drafts of a letter home. In the first version he wrote out all his anger, and resentment at his father and Mrs Clutterbuck, at the lack of funeral, at their coldness. By his final draft, all that remained was calm politeness – precisely the sort of rational tone that would meet with his father’s approval. He told him he would not be coming home in the holidays and explained where he would be instead. He asked Potts to read the letter for him the following morning, to confirm it was entirely inoffensive and clear. He sealed and stamped it but did not post it immediately. There was no hurry; the writing of it was what mattered.
At the end of that week, on the Saturday, two parcels were waiting for him on the post table when he came in from the morning’s classes. One had Sudanese stamps on it, with a giraffe design he recognized instantly. The larger one was from Paris. Parcels in boarding school were an event so at once there were friends around him eager to see what he’d been sent. He stuffed the Sudan one into his school bag, saying it was just boring stuff, and tore open the French parcel. It contained an elegant box of chocolate and coffee macaroons from Ladurée and a card from Mr Ewart saying simply,
A foretaste of treats to come!
He shared out the macaroons after pudding. The second parcel he saved until he was safely in his study and Potts and his other study-mate had clattered away along the corridor in their football boots. There were several layers of thick brown paper which smelled exotic somehow. He half expected sand to trickle out from its folds. Then there was a little red book, fancifully held closed with a purple silk ribbon. And there was a typewritten letter on a familiar school letterhead that made him catch his breath.
Dear Barnaby,
You don’t know me but I rather feel I know you because Alice talked about you so often and used to read out funny bits from your letters sometimes. (Hope you don’t mind.) Anyway, as you’ll have gathered from the return address, I’m a VSO colleague of hers at the school.
She was so amazing. She was already here when I came out and helped me settle in and, although I’m quite a bit older than she was, taught me so much. Your sister had an old soul! She has left a terrible gap behind her. We have a noticeboard dedicated to her where the children have hung poems and pictures and we’ve put up our favourite photographs of her. We have also decided to inaugurate a girls’ cricket trophy in her name. It’s only silver plate but the first girl to be awarded it, who has a stroke just as good as Boycott’s so is nicknamed Geoff, was so proud, she burst into loud tears. Which of course set the rest of us off as well!
We have also planted a lemon tree for her. She grew it in a pot from a pip and now it’s in pride of place in a corner of the playground and the children give it (precious!) washing-up water every day and I suspect confide their secrets to it, as she was that sort of teacher.
Barnaby, she may have been taken from us young but she had already made a difference for the better in the world and so many of us will grow old without the same being said of us. I’m so glad to know you were confirmed last year. Your faith will help you. It may not seem to at the moment, in fact you probably hate God right now and think you have no faith or vision left to you, but trust me: faith is a tough and patient plant that endures long periods of drought.
But enough of my prattle. My real reason for writing is the enclosed book and letter. They only came my way recently and by chance. We found them in the Jeep when it was finally returned to us. The letter wasn’t finished but it was clearly meant to come to you with the book so here they are for you. A rather sad, early Christmas present.
With every good wish (and apologies for this ancient typewriter ribbon),
Cordelia Penberthy
Barnaby opened out the brown paper again, mystified, then thought to undo the ribbon tied around the little book. The second letter was folded tightly and tucked between the pages. It was written on the school paper, as usual, and her tone was so happily alive, no other word for it, that he had to break off reading after a couple of sentences and walk around the little study to compose himself.
Dear Barny, she had written.
Oh but it’s so beautiful here! Such a magical night. I’m writing this by torchlight and there are moths all around me like little fairies. I have been crazily daring and escaped for a whole weekend away on my own, like an intrepid lady adventurer of the 1860s. First I wrapped up like a local and visited the city and now I’m way out in the countryside, camping out in the school Jeep, with a night sky full of stars for company. There’s even a tiny creek where I can swim. Skinny dipping. Scandalous!
Thanks for the lovely letter.
Very
glad you don’t have some stuck-up girlfriend from the local girls’ school. Stick to your studies, my boy, and to flowers. Listen to your nice housemaster and join Bot Soc. Flowers never disappoint. I have dreams of James’s garden sometimes and I swear I can smell those dark red roses. I wonder how his Paul is. Do you ever hear from him? Now
there
was a love!
I’m never coming home. You’ll simply have to come out here to see me in your months off before university. Sod going to Florence and Rome like everyone else to look at paintings and bum around with spoilt Americans. Come out here and discover new ways of enjoying goat …
Khartoum was wonderful. Exhilarating to be completely unknown after months of village life and everyone knowing my every move. I wore an impenetrable veil and strolled around the souk pretending to be a respectable young widow. I found a funny old bookshop. Lots of things in Arabic and the usual sad heap of left-behind Agatha Christies and Desmond Bagleys but then I found this and it sort of spoke to me. Yes, it seems to be a set of instructions to a monk on how to survive and thrive in the religious life, but it’s also full of good sense and I thought it would do pretty well for a clever yoof at bording skool. Lots of stuff about the importance of keeping your counsel and not investing too much in the good opinion of others or prizing mere
stuff
over the life of the spirit. He’s also very keen on warning against becoming seduced by the beauty and charm of your mortal companions. I think it must have belonged to a missionary, don’t you? I wonder what became of him. Roasted or boiled or sold as a sultan’s plaything?
Anyway, better early than not at all. It can be this year’s Christmas present. Imagine Prof’s face if he caught you reading a book with this title! Sorry. Bit pissed. My first beer in about a year. Supper awaits me under the trees. I’ve got a little fire going and I expect I’ll sleep out there rather than locked in the Jeep as it’s so warm and there’s nobody around for miles. I’m cooking something I bought in the souk today. They said it was chicken. Well, ‘bird’ anyway. Like nothing you’d ever find in Sainsbury’s but I have to say it smells delicious and after such adventuring I could eat rook.
Oh Barny, don’t you ever wonder what it’s all for? All this beauty and mess! These glorious moths! Sometimes when I’m lying awake here, especially just after dawn, I get such a powerful sense of
And there she broke off. There was no bloodstain, no jagged tailing off of script. She had simply stopped because she was drunk and hungry and the letter could wait to be finished in sunlight. Had she eaten before they found her? Had she fallen asleep? Did she put up a fight?
In an effort to still his mind, he set her letter aside and opened the little book. She had inked him a little dedication in the front.
Even I found much good sense in here and think you may too! A. Khartoum, November ’67.
He turned a page and began to read.
Modest hated to admit it but Johnson’s suggestion that he take over the parish magazine was a stroke of genius. Ostensibly he was deemed to be suited to the work, being a retired bookseller, just the stupidly pointless connection people liked to make; actually it suited him because it placed him securely and squarely at the village’s heart. Certainly he was handling announcements of the next bring and buy sale or Charles Causley evening, not earth-shaking gossip, but it was surprising how much he learned when gathering in his copy. He passed none of this on; they’d stop confiding in him if he became known as a gossip. It was the possession of the knowledge that excited him. His predecessor in the post had always delivered her newsletter by car, longsuffering husband at the wheel. He had not driven since his pre-Portsmouth days, letting his driving licence and all the related expense go the way of the former identity now known only to the Probation Service.
His crime, punishment and release all predated the Sex Offender Register, of which he had read with mixed smugness and relief. The register caught up with him, however, after his move to Cornwall and in the most irritating and demeaning way. He posted a miscellaneous bundle of smutty photographs and magazines to a regular customer who had never given him trouble. A week later the police arrived with a warrant to search the house and carry off his sales records and he was taken in for questioning.
The customer, a Plymothian, had been arrested for exposing himself to schoolchildren on buses and his flat been discovered to house an array of paedophile pornography. Just one photograph in the drab stash Modest had sold him gave cause for concern. Luckily there were no other such pictures in Modest’s stock so he escaped with a fine while the customer was jailed. His court appearance in distant Plymouth, under his real name, went miraculously unreported in
The Cornishman
’s terse column of court reports. However, in what seemed a piece of pure malice, the addition to his record for crimes of a sexual nature led to his name, his real name, being added to the register. Once a year he was required to call in and sign against his name at Penzance police station and, which was worse, to keep him on his best behaviour, the police reserved the right to call in on him unexpectedly. They had done so just once, nearly five years ago. It was a horrible, demeaning experience, reminding him that his new life and new identity were made of fragile stuff, and he lived in dread of its repetition.
Modest Carlsson was a harmless old man to whom people chatted in bus shelters. He delivered the magazines by hand and recipients, seeing him coming up to their doors, breathless in summer or fumbling with his gloves in winter, often asked him in and seemed to enjoy plying a fat man with cake.
This was how he had come to know Nuala Barnes. He was well aware of the Australian potter’s reputation as a godless rebel but had always wanted a closer look at her fascinating house. When it suited him, he decided he was not simply delivering the parish newsletter but representing the Church’s hand reaching out in fellowship.
A former shooting lodge – some said it had always been a love nest – of a once powerful local landowner, Redworks Cottage lay high above the sea, on the edge of moorland. It was nearer Bossullow than Morvah and must surely have been at the outer limit of Johnson’s parish if not actually in Zennor. There was an American-style post box on a pole at the beginning of its lane, alongside the wheelie bin and recycling box, but he had chosen not to see it. The long route to her front door wound between fenced-in pastures and was utterly exposed to view so she would have ample opportunity to see his approach and choose not to answer her doorbell.
He rang twice and there was no answer but then she emerged from the outbuilding where she presumably had her studio and asked him abruptly what he wanted. As he’d expected, she said she did not take the parish magazine but he had done his homework and added, ‘It’s not for you, it’s for Lenny. I gather he was confirmed last year.’
‘Yeah,’ she said with a scowl. ‘Christ knows what that was about. Teen rebellion, I guess. Well …’ She grinned mischievously. ‘Can’t have him losing touch with the flock.’ And, claiming she was breaking off for tea in any case, she asked Modest in.
He continued delivering the magazine and she continued asking him in long after Lenny had dropped all claims to a faith in favour of rugby and his girlfriend, who continued coming to church without him. Nuala confessed she read the magazine herself. She had even been known to bring old clothes and books to jumble sales and to donate pots to fundraising auctions. She had no idea where in Pendeen Modest lived, and she never invited him further into her house than her kitchen. (He had once faked a weak bladder and been disappointed to find her downstairs lavatory lay unrevealingly nearby.) But she seemed to regard him with a kind of affection as a fellow outsider and he in turn enjoyed her battered glamour and caustic wit. She took it into her head that he was good, however, profoundly good, even wise. Nothing he said, no amount of scandalmongering or back-biting, would convince her.