Long Time Coming (42 page)

‘You’ll be in the remove this year.’

‘Yes. I will.’

‘I’ve had my eye on you.’

‘Have you?’ This sounded bad. Swan did not crave the attention of Linley or any other prefect.

‘I’ll be needing a fag. And I thought of you.’

This sounded better – much better. A second year of general fagging duties, at the beck and call of any senior, was an irksome prospect. Only selection as a prefect’s personal fag could earn Swan
exemption, but he had not been prepared to do any of the sucking up which might have secured such a position. It was therefore a surprise, to say the least, that Linley should have considered him for the role.

‘What do you say?’

‘Gosh. Well, thanks, Linley. I’d, er … be honoured.’

‘Splendid. We’ll regard that as settled, then. Any questions?’

‘I, er …’ Swan hesitated.

‘Why? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? Why in the world should I select you of all people to fag for me?’

Swan was indeed wondering that. But he did not deem it politic to say so. ‘You must … think I’ll make a good job of it.’

‘You better had. But there are dozens of boys who’d do it just as well. No, no, young Swan. Or Cygnet, as I think I shall call you. I haven’t chosen you because of your zeal and energy, in both of which departments you’re reliably reported to be lacking. I’ve chosen you because you’re a good deal cleverer than the other candidates and I don’t care to have fools about me, even when all I require is the running of errands and the cleaning of my boots and shoes to a mirror-like finish. Who knows? There may be occasions, if you demonstrate your suitability, when I set you more demanding and indeed rewarding tasks. We shall see. As it is, I’ll expect you to be at my disposal from tomorrow.’

‘Very good, Linley. And … thanks very much.’

As Linley ambled back to the more densely populated middle of the platform, he was buttonholed by one of the other prefects, a tall and angular youth named Melrose.

‘Was that Swan you were talking to?’ he asked.

‘It was, yes,’ Linley replied, smiling superciliously.

‘What did you want with him?’

‘I’ve recruited him as my fag.’

‘Swan? A rum choice, old man.’

‘You think so?’

‘The boy’s a slacker. And too clever by half. You’ll have trouble with him, mark my words.’

‘
You
would have trouble with him, Melrose. I don’t doubt that for a moment. I, on the other hand, won’t. I shall enjoy managing young Swan. It’ll add a little zest to life at the old place. Besides, if he doesn’t come up to the mark, I’ll simply get rid of him. I’m sure I shan’t find that very difficult. If it proves necessary.’

Swan had watched Linley walk away and was still studying him as he chatted to Melrose. He had a shrewd and indeed accurate idea what Melrose, a prefect he had fallen foul of the previous year, might be saying. Yet he did not think Linley was likely to change his mind. His decision to choose Swan to fag for him seemed to have been carefully weighed.

Swan was sure he should feel flattered by this. Certainly there were others who would envy him. It was, in every respect, a stroke of good fortune. Yet something troubled him. Some sense he could not have put a name to told him that the advent of Miles Linley in his life was not necessarily to be welcomed.

The clunk of a signal being raised heralds the arrival of the train, shortly afterwards confirmed by the sound of the engine and the sighting of its plume of smoke in the middle distance. The boys of Ardingly begin to gather themselves and their belongings together. This interlude in the September sunshine will soon be over. No one present has any reason to suppose it will have consequences that will require many decades to reveal themselves. That is merely one of time’s many invisible tricks, which it plays even as it passes.

This year, had he lived, my uncle Eldritch would have been a hundred. Unsurprisingly, given his fondness for cigarettes and strong liquor, he actually died more than two decades ago, after what Marie-Louise described to me at his funeral as ‘some very good years’ with her on the French Riviera. It didn’t turn out too badly for him in the end. And I smile whenever I think of him, which is probably the best tribute any of us can hope for.

I’m not far short now of the age Eldritch was when I first met him. In the thirty-two years since, our children, Rachel’s and mine, have become adults, in one case with children of their own. Most of the people I encountered during those few hectic weeks in the early spring of 1976, when Eldritch did Rachel and me the great if unwitting service of bringing us together, are, like him, dead and buried.

Of them all, only Sir Miles Linley merited obituaries in the national press. The Provisional IRA claimed responsibility for the car bomb that killed him, though the official record of his years with the British Legation in Dublin hardly seemed to make him an obvious target for them. Perhaps they knew more than they were telling.

Who might have drawn their attention to him can only be guessed at. Moira Henchy did quite a lot of guessing at the time, but failed to uncover the truth. I’ve never come to any firm conclusion myself. Conceivably, his wife could have contacted the
IRA through former colleagues of her brother. But I couldn’t quite convince myself she’d have gone so far as to do that. Then there was Eldritch. He must have served his time in Portlaoise prison alongside several IRA members. And what had he said to me in Antwerp? ‘
There’s only one way to get the better of a giant: hire a bigger giant.
’ I never summoned the nerve to ask him outright. I knew he’d deny it. I just didn’t know whether his denial would be genuine. In my more cynical moments, I also wonder if Tate’s bosses in London didn’t simply decide Linley was more nuisance than he was worth. It would have been a fitting fate for him in many ways: to be betrayed by those he thought he could rely on for protection.

A few weeks after his murder, Simon Cardale contacted us with an unexpected proposal. He and Isolde Linley were willing to help Rachel pursue her family’s claim against the Brownlow estate after all. With Sir Miles dead, Tate and his ilk no longer had any interest in the case, so there was nothing to prevent its revival and their testimonies, even without the photographs, would come close to the proof we needed. Isolde wanted to clear her conscience and realized she could never do so while that old injustice went uncorrected.

And so Rachel achieved what she wanted just when she’d finally accepted she never would. It hadn’t been easy for us to feel our way back to how we’d felt about each other before her arrest in Belgium. There had been times, quite a few of them, when I’d doubted we ever could. But we’d managed it somehow. Love, I suppose, really does find a way. I was worried that reviving the lawsuit would spoil everything all over again, but Rachel assured me she wasn’t about to let that happen. She’d come to believe as well as to understand the truth of what I’d said to her just before the car bomb exploded that day in Basingstoke. Linley wasn’t worth ruining her life for. And nor were the Picassos.

In the event, the Brownlow estate settled out of court, paying her mother a sum of money about halfway between what the Picassos would have been worth in 1945 and what they were actually worth in 1976. That still represented a fortune, most of which she sank
into a charitable foundation for Vietnam veterans with psychiatric problems. She asked Rachel and me to run it, with Joey’s assistance. It turned his life around and, I’m proud to say, the lives of many like him. You could say it turned our lives around too. We’ve extended its remit to other wars since. It doesn’t look as if it will run short of people to help any time soon.

Recently, some of the foundation’s resources have been used for a post-war development project in the Congo. It’s little more than a trial effort. The difficulties of operating in that part of the world are formidable. But it seems only right that some of the wealth Isaac Meridor took out of the country should find its way back, to do what good it can.

Earlier this year, I found myself near Haywards Heath, with time on my hands. On a whim, I diverted to Ardingly to take a look at Eldritch’s old school. It was a wet day in half-term and the place was virtually deserted. Perhaps that was why the past felt so close at hand in its dusky cloisters and empty courtyards. If the fourteen-year-old Eldritch had come running round a corner ahead of me on some fagging errand for Linley, it somehow wouldn’t have surprised me.

According to an advert I spotted on a noticeboard, a history of the college had just been published to mark its sesquicentenary; a copy was available for inspection at the senior school office. I wandered along and asked to see it.

Leafing through its glossy pages, I came across a section of potted biographies of eminent Old Ardinians, Sir Miles Linley among them. There, in a few paragraphs, was summarized a life of duty and attainment, tragically cut off when he should have had more years of his well-earned and honour-laden retirement to look forward to.

Needless to say, there was no potted biography – and no listing in the index – of Eldritch Swan. Some are remembered. And some are forgotten. But it isn’t always the right way round.

Malcolm MacDonald’s mission to Dublin in June 1940 is a matter of historical record, as is Éamon de Valéra’s subsequent rejection of a deal that might, just might, have secured what he claimed so passionately to desire all his life: a united and independent Ireland. But the Long Fellow, as his political career clearly shows, was a man who liked to say no.

A man who delights in saying yes, however, is my good friend Chris Allen, a style icon to all who know and love him, who generously shared with me his memories of a fag’s life at Ardingly. I am also very grateful to Sven Lommaert for schooling me in Belgian police procedure. My thanks to them and to everyone else who helped me during the writing of this novel.