Past Caring (25 page)

“I shan’t. But don’t expect me to apologize for doing well. I
know it must have been hell for you in France, but I worked hard
here for what I’ve got. I’ve known bad times too. Remember when
you swanned off home from South Africa to fight an election , leaving me stuck in a war that dragged on for two years?”

“Be thankful that you know why times have changed for you,
Couch. My transformation is a mystery to me. So tell me what happened to you in South Africa.”

“It wasn’t anything like Colenso, if that’s what you think.

Kitchener shut up the entire population in camps and we had to patrol them while snipers took pot shots at us. When that was over, I
was posted to India, where I drank, gambled and played polo. Then
I got sick of the whole business, resigned my commission and came
home.”

“And then?”

“Then I met Elizabeth. She’s the best thing that ever happened
to me.”

I gripped the arms of my chair to remain calm. “She was the
best thing that ever happened to me too.”

“Then you shouldn’t have let her go.”

“I didn’t, as you must know.”

“On the contrary. Elizabeth’s never told me why you broke up
and I haven’t pressed her on the point. It’s something she doesn’t want
to discuss. It’s obviously a painful memory, best left alone to heal.”

Suddenly, I found myself questioning my anger. That I resented Couch’s material success was undeniable. That he had won
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what I had lost, the love of Elizabeth, was a thorn in my flesh. That
Couch’s past did not suggest an honourable or courageous man was
not necessarily to the point. After all, Elizabeth was a fine enough
person to have improved if not reformed him. Perhaps in me there
had been , after all, too little to change.

But what was I thinking? There remained a mystery which
could not be dismissed, which insisted on driving me on. What was
there left for me but to seek the reason why I had been brought so
low? Perhaps Couch knew nothing. Perhaps he was just the lucky
beneficiary of my rift with Elizabeth: he had always been lucky at
other people’s expense. Yet somebody knew, for somebody had
called off Palfrey from the scent, somebody not a thousand miles
from the Cabinet which I had left as precipitately and inexplicably
as I had lost Elizabeth. Who and why? Somebody knew but nobody
was telling.

Certainly not Sir Gerald Couchman , who sat opposite me in his
plushly appointed office, cowed a little but still, I could have sworn ,
laughing silently at me.

“Why not give it up, Edwin?” he suggested. “Why not just get
on with your life and leave us to ours?”

I did not answer. There was no need. I had no life with which to
proceed. There was only one other person I could look to now for the
truth and it was the one person I could not bear to confront. Yet there
were one or two shots left in the locker for Couch first.

“I can’t help noticing,” I said, “how well you’ve served and been
served by former colleagues of mine—Lloyd George, Churchill . . .”

“Both Ministers of Munitions, Edwin. Obviously I’ve had
dealings.”

“Lloyd George is now Prime Minister. And they say he can be
persuaded to name a price for any honour. What is it for a knighthood?”

Couch turned grim. “That’s enough. You’ve no right to insult me.”

“Haven’t I? Wouldn’t a lot of people be surprised at how a
knight of the realm conducted himself at Colenso?”

“Save your breath, Edwin. Nobody would believe your malicious lies.”

“They wouldn’t be lies.”

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Couch rose and walked to the window. He gazed out at the activity in the yard beneath him. Then he turned and spoke. “We are
what we are, Edwin. But strangely enough, I’m a better man than I
was. I employ hundreds of people and make a good deal of money.

Yet that’s not what I mean by better. What I mean is that I have a
loving wife and a young son . . .”

“A son?”

“Yes—born last summer. He and Elizabeth have given me a
home and commitments. I’m not the young wastrel I once was, nor
the coward you think me. I’m not sorry I succeeded where you
failed—with Elizabeth—but I am sorry for you because of it. A lot
of people have come home from the war with not much to return to.

If there’s something material I can do to help you, I’d be pleased
to . . .”

I rose from my chair and looked levelly at him across the desk.

“The last thing I need from you is charity. I’ll tell you what I think
and you can make what you will of it. I don’t know why Elizabeth
rejected me and maybe I never will. But if I ever find that you had
some part in it, I’ll kill you: you have my word as a gentleman on
that.”

Did I really mean it? I cannot tell. In the heat of that moment,
with Couch’s offer of knightly largesse ringing contemptuously—

and contemptibly—in my ears, I suppose I did. At all events,
Couch’s blanched countenance told me that he believed I meant it.

He made no attempt to interrupt me.

“Just after your marriage, I hired a private detective to investigate you, but his enquiries were stopped—by somebody in a powerful position. Since I only told one person what I had done, I suspect
he may be that somebody. It so happens that he was one of those
Ministers of Munitions you served so faithfully during the war. I
have no precise allegations to make, only this feeling that such coincidences add up to something suspicious. Maybe you are innocent—but it would be unlike you.”

“I told you I’d changed.”

“Not that much.”

I walked to the door, but he called after me. “Edwin , think
about what I said when you’ve calmed down.” I paused and he
walked to my elbow, becoming almost confidential in his manner.

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“You should exploit whatever advantages are available—or are offered. After all, I know you have in the past.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, let’s face it, old man , I didn’t marry a virgin.”

That is when I struck him, before the curl of his mouth could
broaden into an insufferable smile. The blow took him on the chin
and sent him sprawling onto his dense Turkish carpet.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “You’re no better than you ever were—

and that’s worse than I once thought.”

I turned on my heel and walked out. I slammed the door behind
me, exchanged a swift glance with the secretary in the outer office,
then hastened from the building.

The Couchman residence in Hampstead was a large, gabled house
set well back from the road in wooded grounds. Had it not been winter, I could not have seen beyond the wrought iron gates and sweeping drive. Yet the view through the bare trees afforded me no
intelligence when I first made my way there on the afternoon following my visit to Couch at his works. I lingered on the sloping edge
of the heath that ran along the roadside opposite the house, hoping
for some glimpse or glimmer that would tell me how best I might
approach Elizabeth. I had not the nerve to walk straight in , so
awaited some other opportunity, which did not come my way that
afternoon. A tramp eyed me balefully while he shuffled around the
bench on which I sat and the light slowly failed and nothing else
happened until Couch’s Bentley sped up the drive and I knew that it
was time to retreat.

Saturday was more promising: a bright, sharp day, with the
frost still on the Heath when I reached Hampstead in midmorning
and strolled with assumed nonchalance where I could keep watch
on the house. The war had taught me patience and perseverance in
the long intervals between acts of conflict—had made me, in fact,
savour the lull—so I was content to await my chance. The war had
also given me the sapping cough which the chill air aggravated that
morning and which made me more conspicuous than I had hoped.

Still, I sustained my patrol well into the afternoon.

By then, the sun was stronger and, well-muffled on a bench, I

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could almost imagine that it was warm. Certainly I had fallen into
a reverie, if not a doze, when I caught myself up at the sight of a figure pushing a perambulator down the drive. As it reached the gates,
I realized that it was not—as I had feared—a nanny, but Elizabeth
herself. I might have known that she would take her son out herself
on an afternoon stroll and the characteristic act suited my purpose.

I had not seen Elizabeth since that terrible day of my rejection
by her in June 1910. I saw, as she crossed the road, that the years
had not changed her. She was still the same elegant figure, clad now
in a black, fur-trimmed coat and hood, a proud young woman showing her son a small part of the world. They took a curving path that
ran away from where I was seated and then circled round above
me. They did not glance at an obscure figure on a bench. Why
should they?

When they had reached the curve of the path remotest from me,
I left the bench and hurried up the sloping ground behind it to a line
of trees flanking the route that Elizabeth was bound to take. There I
waited, leaning against one of the trees. I lit a cigarette to sooth my
nerves, realizing that my heart was not pounding merely because
men with suspect legs and lungs should not run up slopes in winter.

Elizabeth’s fingers were playing some game with the occupant
of the perambulator as she came towards me. Then she looked up at
me and I at her, at an unchangingly beautiful face so often in my
mind during 8 1⁄2 years apart. For all that I was a greyer, grimmer
man than when last we had met, she knew me at once and did not
put her recognition into words. The shocked silence was stiller than
the air between us.

“You never used to smoke,” she said at last, in a voice as pale as
her face.

“Many things have changed,” I replied, walking across to the
perambulator and glancing in. A wide-eyed baby stared unblinkingly up at me. I was mesmerized for the moment by his innocent
gaze, knowing that, in different circumstances, he—or someone very
like him—could have been my own. Then I noticed Elizabeth’s grip
tighten on the handle.

“What’s his name?”

“Harry.”

I felt oddly cheated by the calmness of our exchanges, as if
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raging recrimination would have been preferable to icy indifference. I was ill-prepared to find that we were neither friends nor foes
but strangers. I sought to repel the notion. “You don’t seem surprised
to see me.”

“Gerald told me what happened yesterday. I feared you would
not be content until you had seen me, though I can’t think what you
hope to gain by it.”

“The truth.”

“You already know it—that you cruelly deceived me and went
some way towards ruining my life.”

“I did no such thing.”

“In time, I recovered from the blow—with Gerald’s help—and
made a new life as his wife and Harry’s mother. I wish you no ill,
but I ask you, as I asked you once before, to leave me—to leave us—

alone. Is it too much to ask?”

“Until you tell me the truth, yes.”

“I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

“You can. All you have to do is tell me how I deceived you.”

Elizabeth’s face reddened and she made to move off, but I
placed a restraining hand on the hood of the perambulator. I tried a
plea. “Elizabeth, please—in God’s name.”

She looked at me then with loathing in her eyes. Anger or distress I had expected, but not this clear message that I was held beneath contempt. It disarmed me, made me want to walk away and
not prolong the agony. But I knew the agony could not truly be
ended until we had the matter out.