Past Caring (40 page)

“Why shouldn’t it?”

I couldn’t give Eve the true answer to her question, couldn’t tell her about Ambrose’s not so fantastic claims, because to do so would point the finger at her sponsors, the Couchmans. And to do that would open a door of doubt in our relationship which I wanted to keep firmly closed. So what did I actually say?

“Because, I suppose, he’s paid a high price for what would be a disappointing conclusion.”

“Surely that’s the risk he took when he commissioned this research.”

“True, but you implied we didn’t have to give up here. We could go on digging for more.”

“That’s not quite what I had in mind.”

“It isn’t? Then what?”

“What I meant was: you could use the certificate to write an abrupt but fitting finis to your work for Sellick—or we could put the certificate to work for us.” The last phrase had silent reverberations.

I looked at Eve in puzzlement. “How?”

“I said I wasn’t disinterested, Martin. I made sure you knew that. You also know I’m writing a book about the Suffragettes as pioneer feminists. I don’t want it to be an abstruse, inaccessible work. Genuine human interest would give it depth.”

“What sort of human interest?” I was beginning to catch her drift.

“A young, idealistic girl fights for what she knows to be right.

She is seduced by a politician of charm and intelligence and he seems to be persuaded by her of the rightness of the suffragist cause. But he takes no practical steps to put that persuasion into effect and has all along betrayed the girl by not revealing the truth about himself. In effect, a microcosm of the problems 236

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afflicting the Suffragettes. Told to leave politics to the wiser, better sex, they find that sex incapable of organizing its own affairs, let alone the country’s. With that theme, we’d be on to something of a coup.”

“We?”

“Naturally, Martin, what I’m proposing is a partnership.”

A partnership in crime, I thought, with Strafford as its victim. But any kind of partnership with Eve was too attractive for me to reject, so all I could do was stall. “How would Strafford come out of this?”

“Badly, I’m afraid.” She leant closer to me across the blanket.

“How could it be any other way, Martin? We have clear evidence of his deceit of Elizabeth. As historians, how can we close our eyes to that?”

“I suppose we can’t.” Strafford, I thought, why aren’t you here to stop me condemning you? I can’t remember you or your Memoir when Eve lies so close to me.

“Then surely the logical extension of that is to mine Strafford and his questionable Memoir for our book.”
Our
book—note that.

“But what do we tell Sellick?”

“Nothing, for the moment. He won’t expect to hear anything definite yet. Until he does, he doesn’t need to know that we’re moving in a different direction, does he?”

So, softly in the spring sunshine, with the taste of her wine in my mouth and the touch of her flesh in my mind, Eve led me in the direction she wanted. Who was I betraying? Sellick, Strafford or myself ? All of us, really, but Sellick was far away, Strafford was dead and I, well, I was prepared to trade whatever was necessary for whatever kind of partnership Eve was prepared to offer. I leant forward and kissed her in an act of willing abandonment.

Eve pulled away with mock sharpness. “Are there any Strafford-style secrets in your past you should tell me about, Martin?”

“None, except a poor marriage and a better divorce.”

“In that case, you’ve nothing to worry about.”

After the picnic, we strolled around the earthworked slope, hand in hand. Eve pointed out unusual specimens of orchids and

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I listened, not to learn more of the exotic blooms, but simply to hear more of her voice.

Whether through her concentration on the flowers or mine on her, we were surprised by stormclouds billowing in from the west and caught in a downpour on the uncovered hillside.

Through vertical, drenching rain, we ran to the car and mopped ourselves down. We were soaked through, Eve’s jeans and blouse clinging to her. There was nothing for it but to drive straight back to Cambridge.

Eve dropped me at Princes’ Hall, where I changed hurriedly.

Then I walked to Darwin, the sun now perversely shining. I followed the gravel path round from the Silver Street gate, past the rain-beaded lawn, and looked up at Eve’s room, where, at that moment, a curtain twitched back to reveal her, standing solemnly, wrapped in a yellow bath towel, with wet hair tumbling onto her shoulders in pleasing disarray. She caught my eye, but didn’t pull the curtain back, instead smiled and waved her hand gently in greeting.

When I reached the room, she was wearing a kimono and welcomed me with a formal, dampish kiss. She smelt of bath oil and spring sunshine, looked, if anything, even more ravishing rumpled and unready than in any finery.

“I made a pot of coffee,” she said. “Have some while I get dressed.”

I walked over to a small table by the window, where she’d stood the coffee, poured some and sat drinking it in an armchair splashed in aqueous sunlight.

On the table, next to the coffee, stood a file and some papers, including the envelope that had contained the marriage certificate and, underneath it, several photocopies of the certificate. I picked one up and looked at it with more concentration and less shock than when Eve had first unveiled it. Strafford—his name and signature—was still obstinately there, along with Caroline van der Merwe, joined by a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at the Veltenschrude Chapel, Port Edward, Natal, in the presence of . . . blast, nobody I knew, no familiar ghost like Couchman, just two names which meant nothing, but, then again, no van der Merwes either, which was odd. Why was no 238

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member of the family on hand for the biggest occasion in a young girl’s life? I looked at the addresses. Strafford’s was shown as Culemborg Barracks, Capetown, and Miss van der Merwe’s as Ocean Prospect, Berea Drive, Durban. I seized an atlas from Eve’s bookcase. Port Edward was a dot on the map of South Africa, about a hundred miles south of Durban—a long way to go for a wedding. With no relatives witnessing the event, it smacked of an elopement—even, perhaps, an abduction.

Eve returned to the room, wearing jeans and a sweater.

“Any clues there?” she asked, seeing me with the atlas. I told her of my tentative conclusions. She stooped by the table and poured coffee. “You could be right, Martin,” she said. “But does it really matter?” I was shocked and obviously looked it. “Let me explain.” She sat down on the couch near me. “For our purposes, it’s surely the effect, not the circumstances, of Strafford’s South African marriage that counts. The Memoir gives us his side of things, distorted to suit. What about other people’s?”

“Such as?”

“Such as Julia Lambourne. The personal papers in her archive may tell us how and why she came by this evidence.” She sipped her coffee. “And then there’s Elizabeth. I expect you realize she’s still alive.”

“Oh yes.” It sounded simple to say, though it wasn’t. This was the first time we’d spoken of the present-day Couchmans and I dallied with the idea that Eve would now volunteer her connexion with them. But she didn’t. “So what’s the next step?”

“Glean what more we can from the Kendrick Archive before tackling Lady Couchman.” I had a mental picture then of Elizabeth, the Elizabeth I knew from the Memoir, grown old gracefully, serving tea and angel cake in the drawing room at Quarterleigh even as we sat debating her past in Cambridge, unaware, in her antimacassared world, of the old grievances conspiring to catch up with her. “I’ll go down to Birkbeck tomorrow and make a start.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“Keep on with the reading, Martin. I want us to be equally knowledgeable about the Suffragettes before we announce our-

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selves. I won’t be gone long—I’ll certainly be back for my next lecture on Wednesday.”

“Fine. I’ll be there.” It wasn’t fine, of course. I was already deciding to spend the time trying to verify the certificate, however immaterial Eve thought its details to be, and I should certainly have asked myself: if you’re prepared to let Eve trust you to carry on reading at her direction while actually following an independent line, how can you be so sure she’s really only going to London to look at the Kendrick Archive? But her persuasive talk of “announcing ourselves”—the seductive promise of a literary partnership delivering me material and emotional success on a plate—made me forget all such doubts.

Next morning, I saw Eve off at the railway station and walked slowly back to Princes’ Hall, wondering quite how I could find out more about the van der Merwes of Boer War Durban. What was waiting for me at the college, however, drove such thoughts from my head. As I strolled through the gate into First Court, one of the porters dashed out of the lodge.

“Mr. Radford,” he said, “I’ve got a message for you here. I was just going to deliver it to your room.”

“Thanks.” I raised my eyebrows in mild surprise. I hadn’t expected any mail to reach me there. In fact, it wasn’t mail, but a telephone message taken by the porter. I started to read it as I walked across the court, then stopped dead as it sank in.

“Mr. Radford: please ring Alec Fowler urgently on 01-836-2387.”

A London number. What was Alec doing in the country? It suddenly seemed an age since I’d seen him in Madeira. He’d given me no clue then that he might soon follow me home. And what was so urgent? Alec had often in the past popped up from nowhere, on the end of a telephone, suggesting we drink away old times, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the message, reaching me on a dull morning in the grey precincts of Princes’

Hall, held a tinge of foreboding for me. I couldn’t say why, unless it was that, so soon after I’d agreed with Eve to play Sellick along 240

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while we went our own way, Alec’s appearance on the scene seemed a sinister coincidence.

I dialled the number from a payphone on one of the student staircases. It was a hotel in Drury Lane. They put me through to Alec’s room and he answered straightaway.

“Martin. Great to hear you. Thanks for ringing.” He sounded a touch more businesslike than usual. “How’s it going?”

“Slowly but surely. But, more to the point, what are you doing in London? You never told me you were coming.”

“Bit of business came up unexpectedly. Contact of Leo’s in the holiday trade—you know, some bucketshop billionaire.

Possibility of a link with the magazine—for which read money.

I’m over to butter him up, persuade him to sign a few cheques, so that Leo doesn’t have to stand all the losses. Thought I’d look you up while I was here. It wasn’t easy. Jerry was even less helpful than usual, but I tracked you down in the end.”

“How long are you here?”

“Rest of the week. But I’m working to a tight schedule. Could you come down to London for a jar?”

“All right, Alec. How about later today?” It struck me that meeting Alec while Eve was away would be the best thing all round. I didn’t want him blurting out something about my marriage to a Couchman and, come to that, I wanted to keep Eve to myself.

We agreed on a pub halfway between Liverpool Street and Drury Lane—one Alec knew from friends at the City University, a large, dark alehouse in Clerkenwell, full of frosted glass partitions and smoky alcoves. I was there by one o’clock on a drizzly London afternoon, to find Alec consuming British beer and a Fleet Street daily with the enthusiasm of a man breaking a fast.

He was perched on a bar stool and shot me a flashing grin through his Madeiran tan and the fuggy interior of the pub as I walked in. We greeted each other and retreated to a table.

“Cheers,” I said, gulping the first of my beer. “How do you like it back in England?”

“Beer great, weather lousy. ’Twas ever thus. Now tell me how the research is going.”

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“Like I said over the phone: slowly but surely.”

“You’ve been at it a month now.”

“That’s right. Leo should have had three reports from me.”

“He has. The last one arrived just before I left. Gather you’ve stirred it up with the Couchmans but dug up nothing in the archives.”

“That’s about it.”

“No breakthroughs then?”

“ ’Fraid not. But don’t look so disappointed—it’s a slow kind of job.”

“What’s come out of your Cook’s Tour of the Couchmans’ unwanted past so far then?”

“I’ve managed to rub Helen and her father up the wrong way.

Of course, I’m a past master at that.”

“But what about this nephew of Strafford’s you dug up in Devon?”

“Ambrose? A real gem—of the rough-cut variety. He’s convinced his uncle was murdered.”

“Oh yes? Who by?”

“That’s the $64,000 question, Alec—or however much Leo’s prepared to pay.” We exchanged a smile at that. “Thrown under a train in 1951 by . . . well, take your pick: Gerald Couchman, his son, MI5, Winston Churchill.”

“The KGB?”

“You’ve got the picture. But seriously, the accident stinks. I reckon Ambrose’s right.”

“And it was murder most foul?”

“Could be. I’ll have a clearer idea when we’ve spoken to Lady Couchman—her testimony’s crucial, if we can get one out of her.”

“We?”

I’d been caught out, but it didn’t seem to matter. “Ah, well, while I’ve been in Cambridge, I’ve interested an expert on the Suffragettes in a bit of co-research.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Shouldn’t think so—Eve Randall, a fellow at Darwin.”

“Age? Vital statistics? Marital status?—in that order, please.”

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“Satisfactory on all counts, Alec—if you must know.”