Denied to all but Ghosts (30 page)

Now, following the doctor’s visit, the
emotionally retarded Cavendish rested in the chair in Beckett’s
room and could feel his eyelids becoming heavier and heavier. The
stillness of the room and the background noise of Chesterfield
returning to a normal market town lulled him into a fitful
sleep.

He was aware of the familiar dampness against
his bottom, as he shifted his weight he could feel his pyjama
bottoms clinging to his body and the sodden bed sheet slide against
the plastic sheet that covered the firm mattress. He pulled back
the top covers of the bed to look down to his waist, hoping that
the sensation he felt was only a dream.

“
Frau Schmidt!” a voice shouted, “Frau
Schmidt!” He reached for his glasses on the bedside cabinet and
raised himself to support his weight on his elbows. He was in his
room, which he shared with three other boys. One lad was already
awake and was responsible for the shouts directed through the open
door, summoning the matron. The other two boys were sound asleep.
He looked at the clock, it was five thirty and the early morning
spring daybreak was sufficient to fill the room with a grey
half-light.

Frau Schmidt entered the dormitory; she was a
stocky woman in her forties who worked a permanent night shift at
the Academy. She looked down at him, her countenance displayed no
anger but there was a look of disappointment and frustration that
she could not hide as the end of her long shift was in sight.

“
Do be quiet Sepp, you’ll wake the
others,” she said to the boy who had been shouting. “Oh, Marchel,
what are we going to do with you? Out of bed with you!” He
reluctantly rolled out of bed. “Off with those wet things,” she
commanded, not unkindly, but with firm insistence. He removed his
top and drew down the saturated pyjama bottoms, which he hopped out
of and stood naked and exposed in the centre of the room. The boy
who had been shouting watched him, grinning with amusement at his
naked predicament, derisively waggling his little finger with
penile contempt.

He clenched his fists and crossed his arms
across his chest as he shivered in the early morning chill. As the
matron stripped off his bed, a faint smell of urine pervaded the
room, allowing the grinning spectator of his humiliation to screw
up his nose in disgust. Matron collected clean sheets and wiped the
plastic sheet dry before remaking the bed but with only a single
sheet on top.

“
I haven’t a spare duvet at the moment,
Marchel, back into bed with you, now. You’ve another hour or so yet
before you get up.” Frau Schmidt helped him back into bed and ran a
hand through his unkempt, blonde hair before removing his glasses.
“You’re nearly fourteen, Marchel. It’s time you stopped doing this,
eh?” He turned over onto his side to try to seek warmth from the
solitary sheet, which quickly became damp again, this time with
tears. He cried for his Mother and he cried with shame.

Cavendish awoke with a start, it took awhile
for him to realise where he was. Beckett was snoring loudly, lying
on his back. The fretful Untersucher glanced at his watch, it was a
quarter to nine and he could just make breakfast if he went down
now. He took a last look at Beckett before returning to his
room.

“I have seriously mistreated you,” he said to
the sleeping man as he stood beside the bed. “You’ll have to
forgive me, I’m afraid I let my obligations get the better of me.
I’ll do my best to make it up to you and an Untersucher always
keeps his promise.” He knew he could not have said the intimate
words had Beckett been awake yet even so, he shielded himself by
speaking in German.

Marchel Cavendish deposited his coat in his
room and descended to the restaurant for breakfast. It was time for
the play-acting to stop and for the Untersucher medius to act
according to his remit.

“Don’t look so glum, Thomas, your virtue is
still intact. She only drugged you to get the sword, not to take
advantage of you.” Cavendish spoke whilst slowly buttering a bread
roll at the Holmcourt hotel breakfast table.

“You’re a complete bastard, Cavendish,” said
Beckett spitefully as he aggressively carved his breakfast
sausage.

“Don’t be so harsh on me, Thomas. I said I
was surprised by what she did.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better,
is it?” Beckett refused to make eye contact with Cavendish.

“Of course it should.” Cavendish was aware of
the tension festering within Beckett; he had looked unsettled ever
since he took his seat in the restaurant.

“And the fact that you suspected she might
drug me to nick the sword, well, that’s okay is it?”

“Thomas, I didn’t say I thought she would, I
said I wasn’t surprised that she did. If I told you about all my
suspicions, then we would be here all day.” Beckett considered
Cavendish’s words, the more he deliberated the angrier he
became.

“You really are a complete bastard!” shouted
Beckett. A family on the next table looked at Beckett following his
last vehement utterance. The mother gave him a distasteful
look.

“Thomas, get a grip on yourself,” demanded
Cavendish sternly but sotto voce.

It was Tuesday morning and Beckett had spent
the previous day in bed recovering from the effects of the drug.
His body felt as if it had been on a weekend binge, his mind
unfortunately had no joyous anecdotes upon which to quell its
physical protestations.

“What do you remember of Sunday evening?”
Cavendish asked with a little more sympathy.

Beckett's mind had relived the evening many
times and come to many, varied conclusions. What hurt him most of
all was not the physical pain but the disappointment, and dare he
say heartache, that Emily had caused him. Why had she done it to
him? He knew he had not imagined the chemistry they shared that
evening and appreciated that he had been bewitched by the charms of
the Good Doctor. He was unused to the confusing delicious emotions
that had flourished within him, for many years had elapsed since
Beckett had enjoyed the companionship of a woman. Yet he decided
that there was nothing wrong with the way he had thought about her,
and he was convinced they had shared a blissful moment, despite
what she had done to him. That was why he was still hurting.

“Nothing, it’s a complete blur,” lied
Beckett.

“I’m sorry, Thomas.”

“Sorry for what? Sorry that you lost the
sword? Sorry that Emily is miles away with a day’s head start?
Sorry that you’ll get a bollocking from the Grand Wizard of your
unholy order?”

“Sorry that you got hurt.”

“Bollocks, you don’t care one tit. In fact, I
really don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here!” The family on the
other table had endured enough of Beckett’s profanities and
abandoned their table, the mother planning punitive action.

“You’re helping me, Thomas,” said Cavendish
gently.

“Helping you? Quite what the fuck am I doing
that is helping you? Oh, silly me, I forgot, I let myself be duped
by a woman into losing the one thing that I was supposed to be
fuckin’ looking after. Well done, Tom!”

The morning receptionist entered the
restaurant with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I’m
going to have to ask you to leave the restaurant, you’re upsetting
the other guests.”

“I’m sorry,” said Cavendish, “we’ll leave
now.”

“I’m not leaving,” said Beckett stubbornly
folding his arms across his chest.

“Come on, Thomas, let’s go.” Cavendish leant
forward and placed his hand on Beckett’s shoulder.

“Get your goddamn Kraut hand off me!” shouted
Beckett angrily.

“What?” asked a stunned Cavendish, taken
aback by Beckett’s insult. Cavendish removed his hand from
Beckett’s shoulder as he stood up to leave.

“For Christ sake, Thomas, calm down,” urged
Cavendish, uneasy with the way the situation was developing. He had
naively not foreseen Beckett’s sustained anger. The Bristolian
stood and angrily confronted the German.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, you German
prick! Piss off back to the Fatherland!” Cavendish replaced his
hand on Beckett’s shoulder, hoping to calm his partner. Beckett
clumsily responded by wafting his left arm to dislodge Cavendish’s
hand and in doing so, inadvertently sideswiped Cavendish’s cheek
with the back of his hand.

Cavendish reacted instinctively and threw a
punch so fast that Beckett never saw it coming. One minute he was
standing, the next he was crashing against a breakfast table,
spewing plates and crockery in all directions. He lay on his back
amongst the breakfast debris clutching a bloody nose. Cavendish
stood in shocked silence, not able to believe what he had just
done.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” he implored as he bent
over to offer a hand to assist Beckett from the floor.

Beckett brushed the hand derisively aside and
stood shakily to his feet, snatching a serviette off an empty
table, which he held to his blooded nose. He stood glaring at
Cavendish, whose face wore a look of dismay. Beckett raised his
right hand, dropped it contemptuously and hurriedly left the
restaurant, making straight for the main entrance. Cavendish
remained standing, rooted to the spot.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” said Cavendish
despondently.

Thomas Beckett found himself shivering on a
park bench in Queens Park overlooking the boating lake. The sun
briefly burst through a gap in the clouds that the blustery
southwesterly wind had fashioned. A pensioner sat feeding the ducks
on an adjacent bench and a swarm of mallards and sparrows greedily
accepted her offerings. He looked across the lake towards the
bandstand and watched the workmen taking down the last of the
marquees from the weekend’s activities. As the main canvas was
lowered to the ground so too was Beckett's take on the world, it
was a reaffirmation of his melancholic credo.

The past week with Cavendish had been a
whirlwind trip. It was hard to believe all the things that had
happened in such a short space of time. He had been sitting at
home, hoping for a phone call to offer him a commission, too scared
to seek assignments proactively for fear of rejection. Then the
German reappeared on the scene like a tornado of intent. Cavendish
had brought him along on his interviews and trips, making no
demands, and after a night where the air was filled with craziness,
he self-righteously believed himself to be a victim of the man’s
ambition.

What the decent Beckett failed to comprehend
was that he and Emily were indeed victims of Cavendish’s
Machiavellian scheming, albeit upon the insistence of Steinbeck.
Yet for all that, he needed Cavendish, for he offered the potential
of aiding his daughter’s ambitions.

Cavendish walked slowly to the park, his coat
tightly buttoned against the breeze, his hands deep within the
pockets, his sunglasses masking any emotion that his eyes might
betray to the world. He guessed where Beckett would go, a place
with happy memories in an unfamiliar town and had left him to stew
for half an hour. He saw Beckett and slowly made his approach.

“This is nothing like where I live, you
know,” said Cavendish, “it is quintessentially English. Even the
Englischer Garten in Munich is nothing like this.”

“Where exactly do you live?” asked Beckett,
neither man diverting their eyes from the view ahead.

“Oberammergau,” answered Cavendish.

“That’s a mouthful, what’s it like?”

“It is a beautiful village in the Ammer
valley in Upper Bavaria. Many people find it rather kitsch, trading
on its association with the famous Passion Play. But I love it,
You’d like it too. You could come for a holiday. There are plenty
of things to do, hike in the mountains, swim in the local pool.
You'd love the beer, brewed in accordance with the Reinheitsgebot,
that’s the purity laws to you, no artificial preservatives and all
that. You could even try yodelling.”

Beckett let out a tut of disapproval. “Why do
you correct people when they call you a German?” asked Beckett.

“Because I am English,” replied Cavendish
with a half-truth, to say he enjoyed being contentious seemed
inapposite. Beckett tutted once more at Cavendish’s reply.

“If you’re English then I’m a Dutch uncle,”
announced Beckett flippantly.

“You know my father is English and you know
my mother is French, if anything they should say that I’m
French.”

“But you don’t come across as English, do
you. You come across as German. What do you consider your native
tongue?”

“German.” replied Cavendish, almost as a
denial.

“Where do you live?”

“Germany.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Germany.”

“Where did you go to University?”

“Heidelberg.”

“Do you prefer the witness for the
prosecution to continue?”

Cavendish laughed sharply at Beckett’s
joke.

“Do you know what it’s like being raised in a
foreign land?” asked Cavendish softly.

“No, but I could take you to a few inner city
schools in your beloved England and ask a few school kids
there.”

“I endured a lot at school,” Cavendish said
mournfully.

“So do a lot of kids, Marchel. You’re not
about to go off on some reminiscence about shorn scrotums are
you?”

“I don’t pretend to understand all the things
you say, Thomas. I know I said sorry earlier, I should not have hit
you, it was wrong, I, I...”

“We lost it, Marchel. It’s perfectly normal
in our house.”

“I don’t act impetuously. Or at least, I
shouldn’t,” declared Cavendish quietly.

“No, I guess you don’t very often, I should
be flattered really, the man who made the inquisitor lose his
cool,” said Beckett, conveniently forgetting the episode with
Simeon Goldstein.