Paradise Lane (14 page)

Nutty pondered, nodded. ‘That’s very kind of you, sir.’

Tom smiled, saw the tic at the corner of Nutty’s mouth, noticed a slight tremor in the young man’s hands. This chap’s nerves were stretched to breaking point. The airman had coped with the war, with his wounds and his scars, but now, reaction had set in. Would he ever plane wood again? wondered Tom. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he told his companion.

Tom sped up some stairs to his solicitors’ office, pushed open a door, demanded to see Peregrine Fotheringay.

‘Name?’ asked a woman with tight lips and a ploughed forehead.

‘Goodfellow.’

She pored over a tome. ‘Your appointment is for ten-fifteen.’ She made much of looking at the clock, referred to her watch for confirmation. ‘You are early and your appointment is with Mr Matthew Marsh.’

If she would only keep her eyebrows in their proper place, the skin above them would be less furrowed, he thought. And she had been over-enthusiastic with the tweezers, had left two very thin lines of hair that did nothing to enhance her unfortunate appearance. He leaned over her desk. ‘Perry is a friend of mine,’ he said sweetly. ‘If he isn’t busy, please tell him I’m here.’

He sat down in the waiting area, thought about the human tragedies hidden behind Chancellor Dalton’s words. More than half the money loaned by America had been spent, and there was little hope of repayment. The British had been warned that a further period of austerity could be expected, that the months to come might be worse than the war years. A worldwide shortage of dollars was leaving soldiers, sailors and airmen with precious little beyond the training schemes thought up by the Labour government. Attlee was under threat of being ousted by Bevin, and many older members of parliament had collapsed into illness under the strain of running a bankrupt country. Germany, Tom decided, had done very well . . .

‘Tom!’

The two shook hands, clapped each other on the back. ‘I’m here to see the bigwig,’ said Tom. ‘Have I been cut off for ever? Have they found a way of depriving me of Mother’s money?’

Peregrine laughed over-heartily. ‘Nothing like that.’ He glanced at the receptionist. ‘Make yourself scarce for a few secs, Joyce. Go and have a cup of tea.’

Tom looked his friend up and down, decided that Mr Fotheringay’s dress sense had deteriorated even further. Peregrine was an oddity, probably felt forced to be different because of his name. Tom grinned, sympathized. Goodfellow was not a handle he would have chosen, either, though he’d never bothered to change it. ‘Have you a few pounds?’

Without hesitation, the lawyer rooted in various pockets of a suit that might have fitted a man twice his size, came up with a squashed sandwich, two bus tickets and a five-pound note. ‘This do?’ he asked.

‘Thanks.’ Tom dashed down the stairs, gave the fiver to Nutty. ‘My address.’ He thrust a bit of paper into Nutty’s hand. ‘Don’t hesitate to get in touch. Let me know how you and your wife are faring, and the little ones, too. Go home now. Go and look after your family.’

Nutty gulped, folded up the money and the scrap of paper. ‘You always was a gent, sir.’ Despite the fact that neither man was suitably dressed, the rear gunner saluted the officer. ‘Thank you.’

To save further embarrassment, Tom said goodbye, then went back inside. It would have been dreadful if those wet eyes had spilled into Regent Street. Nutty could go and cry in dignified solitude now.

Peregrine was on the landing. He reached out a hand to impede Tom’s progress. ‘Hang on for a sec. I shouldn’t tell you, but it might save you a shock when old Matthew sends for you. Matthew’s bedside manner is non-existent. Take a deep breath.’ He paused for a second. ‘There’s no way of saying this gently, so I’ll come straight out with it. Lady Sarah is dead.’ He reached out again and steadied his friend. ‘She took her own life, Tom.’

The world was going completely mad, then. Sarah had been a wonderful girl, a credit to her family. Until . . . Until Tom’s brother had altered her life beyond repair. ‘I’m still not sorry,’ he told his friend, though the timbre of the words betrayed a degree of uncertainty. ‘I . . . did the right thing.’

Perry nodded. ‘Of course you did. Anyone decent would have acted in exactly the same way. The fact that you didn’t manage to save your brother is irrelevant. You saved Lady Sarah.’

‘Yes. And she killed herself.’

The receptionist poked her corrugated face on to the landing. ‘Mr Marsh will see you in ten minutes,’ she told Tom.

Perry glanced at the clock. ‘I must leave you now,’ he said. ‘Stop feeling guilty, Tom. I’ll try to catch up with you later. Things to do,’ he muttered vaguely before stumbling towards his own door.

Had the situation been different, Tom might have laughed out loud at Peregrine’s caperings. How on earth did such a scatterbrain manage within the strait-laced architecture of British law?

The view from the window was dull, just some courtyards and an expanse of dirty sky. He picked up a 1945 magazine, a ragged piece of literature whose skeletal construction spoke volumes about the paper shortage. On the cover, thousands of people waved flags and shouted words that were frozen for ever by the camera’s lens. Sarah. No, he would not think of that . . . He sat down, stared at the photograph.

Jon stood at the foot of the stairs. ‘He did it,’ he screamed at the governess. ‘He wrote those words on the blackboard, Miss Simms. He tore up your papers and locked the cat in the cellar.’

Miss Simms was no fool. She wore small, wire-rimmed spectacles and sensible black skirts. ‘Thomas would not do such a thing,’ she replied. Miss Simms had little time for the wayward and stubborn Jonathan.

‘I hate you,’ screamed the son and heir of Goodfellow Hall. ‘I hate everybody.’

Joyce entered the room via a squeaky inner door, her brow smoother, as if she had been comforted during her brief absence. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, the tone almost kind.

‘Yes.’ He wasn’t all right, though there could never be any help for him, could there? Could there? He must not give up hope.

Jon went through infancy, childhood, puberty and young manhood with the same attitude, the same contempt he had shown to that long-ago governess. At school, he even organized a gang of youths who stole property and frightened people just for fun. ‘Expelled?’ roared his father. ‘Expelled, you say?’

As if disturbed by that blustering echo from long ago, Tom jumped and looked across at Joyce. She was typing, one eye on him and the other on her work. He had killed his brother. No, no, he had simply failed to save him. Whatever, this ugly woman was right to watch him. Something was happening to him, because he was reliving times long gone, events that had been buried with Jonathan. Sarah now. Poor Lady Sarah had been returned to the soil from which mankind had supposedly risen. Tom tried to smile at the secretary/receptionist, managed, just about, not to scream with the pain and noise inside his head. Watch over me, he said silently. I think I’m going mad.

No-one ever knew how to handle Jonathan.

The boys’ mother, Lady Goodfellow, died after years of abuse from the fool she had married. Although she was never physically beaten, she was a victim of a different and slightly more subtle cruelty. Lord Goodfellow had an eye for the ladies, and his paramours, with or without their legal spouses, were often flaunted at dinner parties and weekend shoots. Tom’s mother simply faded away, as if she had shrivelled and dried into non-existence beneath her husband’s contemptuous gaze.

‘Did you hear me, Mr Goodfellow?’

There was tenderness and concern in the woman’s face. He reached out and touched a dry, sandpapery hand. Many females had hands like these, because decent soap was still hard to find. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Miles away.’

‘Coffee?’ she repeated.

‘No. No, thank you.’ He needed her to stay, didn’t know why he needed her. ‘Life has a habit of catching up, doesn’t it?’ he remarked.

She folded her other hand over his, held on tightly. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘If you want anything, you only need to ask.’

Tom leaned back into the chair, gripped the edges of the seat with fingers that were suddenly cold and stiff after being deprived of Joyce’s touch. He watched her as she returned to her tidy desk, breathed a sigh of relief because she was staying. She was strong, he thought.

Lord Goodfellow exercised his droit de seigneur many, many times, laughed when his older son followed suit. ‘Bloody buffoon,’ he roared at Tom. ‘Stop complaining about your brother. At least he has some spunk. Somebody’s got to break in these damn fool women.’ Tom tried to comfort the weeping girls, the anger-crazed parents. He never quite managed that, though. The young creatures were usually married off quite swiftly to some suitable lad on one of the estate farms.

‘Shouldn’t be long now, Mr Goodfellow. Just a couple of minutes.’ There was misery in his face. It was as if he were in two places at once, as he seemed not to hear the words.

Tom looked at her without seeing her.

It was drink that finally pushed Jonathan Goodfellow over the edge. Sober, he was unpleasant. Drunk, he was positively dangerous. Right from the start, Jonathan Goodfellow had reacted strangely after stealing wines from his father’s cellar. In drink, he was wild, uncontrollable and unnaturally strong.

On that fateful day, Jon had consumed two bottles of very old Mouton Cadet. Tom, who was often a victim of his brother’s cruel jibes, decided to absent himself. Goodfellow Hall was a large building, but nothing was big enough to contain the heir when he was drinking. There was no hiding place inside the house, so Tom made for the grounds.

Joyce licked an envelope, sealed the flap, applied a stamp. The man in the chair had gone white beneath a layer of tan. Any minute now, he would surely slump to the floor in a dead faint.

As if reading her thoughts, Tom spoke. ‘Make my apologies . . . I need . . . some air.’ He stumbled to the landing.

The frenetic pace of Regent Street gave Tom no comfort, but that poor woman did not deserve to see a man torturing himself in this way. He missed her, felt totally alone, but he leaned against the wall and allowed his mind to open fully.

He came through from the kitchen garden after a short conversation with a groundsman. The balustrade was on higher ground, and he climbed the steps, stood facing a wide sweep of lawn. Beyond the small and carefully sculpted maze, he glimpsed a flash of colour, imagined a shriek. No, no, someone really was screaming. Tom’s temper finally snapped. His brother, drunk as the lord he aspired to be, was no doubt committing another foul crime.

Tom ran, skirted the maze, ground to a halt a few yards from the lake. ‘Jon!’ he yelled. ‘Jon!’

The woman’s clothes were torn. Her upper body was naked and her face was a mask of terror. As if mesmerized by the horror of it, Tom froze. He watched while his brother picked up the woman and tossed her like a broken doll into the lake. The water was deep, full of giant carp and underwater weed.

It was then, just after the water broke loudly to receive the victim, that Jonathan’s wine-soaked body stumbled into the lake.

Tom was not a strong swimmer. Anaesthetized beyond rational thought, he jumped absently into the icy mass, his heart suddenly beginning to pound with panic. What was he doing? He could scarcely save himself . . .

Her arms circled his neck as he turned and looked for land. A fish brushed past his face, seeming to mock his inadequacy. With lungs like saturated sponges, Tom fought for life, dragging behind him and often beneath him the inert body of a woman who might already be dead. She no longer clung to him. He felt her essence draining away, as if the lake were actually feeding on its human sacrifice.

She wasn’t dead. While water poured from his own throat, he pummelled her torso until she heaved and coughed. It was only afterwards, as he thanked his lucky stars, that two facts hit him hard. The half-naked woman was Lady Sarah Collingford, and the lake’s surface was glassy smooth. Jon could not swim at all.

Help arrived. Lady Sarah was covered and carted back to her home. The water was dragged until Jon’s body lay exactly where the daughter of an earl had recently come back to life. But Jon never breathed again.

A grim silence emanated from the Collingford estate, and no representative of that family attended Jon’s funeral. Tom’s father, after burning out his temper by turning on his one remaining son, took refuge in the very substance that had killed his heir. Lord Goodfellow’s anger was fuelled not by guilt and sorrow, but by impatience and malt whisky. His older son had committed three unforgivable crimes. Jon, while in his cups, had mistakenly raped a lady rather than a labourer’s daughter, had been caught in or after the act, had died carelessly and needlessly.

After a while, Tom Goodfellow simply left home.

‘Are you ill, sir?’

Tom shook himself into the here and now, looked into the face of a bowler-hatted city man. ‘I’m better now, thank you.’ Strangely, he was better. Perhaps he had purged himself, perhaps the memories had paid one last, brief visit before leaving him in peace.

The man pointed a folded umbrella towards the pavement and strode away.

Yes, Tom was all right. Sarah, too had been settled for a while, had married, he understood, had borne children. But something had died in Sarah that day. Tom had saved her body, but the emotional damage had persisted. Tales of declines and rest cures had been whispered round the Hampshire dinner tables. And now, the poor woman had taken her life.

Careless of the time, Tom wandered about until he found a Lyons’, then sat nursing a cup containing what tasted like mud. He nibbled at a margarine-smeared scone, returned with flagging feet to Regent Street.

Joyce looked up, smiled encouragingly. Perry appeared, an expression of concern lengthening his usually cheerful features. ‘Are you up to seeing the old boy, Tom?’

Tom nodded, surprised to find himself feeling almost cheerful, almost cleansed. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you.’ He allowed himself to be guided to the senior partner’s door. ‘Thanks,’ he said to Perry. ‘For trying to prepare me.’