Past Caring (53 page)

“Well might you shiver, Strafford. Perhaps somebody’s walked
over your grave.” I could not hope to make him comprehend the

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deeper perfidy he had unwittingly uncovered. As soon as I saw the
address recorded for Caroline van der Merwe—Ocean Prospect,
Berea Drive, Durban—it struck a chord. That was the address I
had been bound for, as part of my diplomatic work in the Dutch
community, during the autumn of 1900, when news came of a general election at home, necessitating my precipitate departure for
England. Who had taken my place in Durban? Who had successfully mimicked his friends’ handwriting at Cambridge? Who had
the nerve to marry under an assumed name but not the nerve to
charge in battle? The answer to all three questions was my old
friend, Gerald Couchman.

Sellick was still talking to me. “I soon discovered which regiment had occupied Culemborg Barracks in September 1900: the
Devonshires. The Regimental Archivist in Exeter supplied me with
what information he had on you—your political and military career, your present address.” What better than proof that I was already married to destroy Elizabeth’s faith in me and make her
think me no better than a scoundrel, a worthless seducer? Who
gained more from our engagement being broken than the man who
eventually married her? Who could be better placed than he to produce the bogus evidence of my infamy?

“I prepared myself for this encounter by a close study of your
life, Strafford. You seem to have specialized in loss of nerve—running out on your wife, then politics, then your family in Devon.

Now you’ve buried yourself here, what do you feel when you look
back on it all—satisfaction? Or the disgust it causes me?”

“Neither, Mr. Sellick.” How could I explain that we had both
been deceived—both betrayed—by the same man? I hardly noticed
Sellick’s expression as he eyed me across the verandah. In my mind,
I saw only Sir Gerald Couchman , arms dealer, happily married
man , proud father, gambler, coward, mountebank and bigamist,
who had ruined me—and the woman I loved. “What I feel is . . . vindication.”

Sellick glared at me. “Vindication? Haven’t you been listening?

You can’t outface me, Strafford. I hold the proof of your ruination of
a good woman , your culpable neglect of your responsibilities, your
casual disposal of any moral . . .”

I rose quickly from my chair. It seemed to take him aback.

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“Save your breath, Mr. Sellick. You have my sympathy—but you
have the wrong man.”

Sellick jumped up also and pointed the gun at me. “I ought to
kill you now, Strafford. Haven’t you even the decency to be sorry?”

I sat down again. I saw that Sellick was a real problem. I
could hardly hope to convince him ofthe truth—it was, even to me,
incredible—yet how could I satisfy him? I owed him nothing, but
his father—whoever he was—did and, for that reason , I should
perhaps have been more open with him, but I was an old man , suddenly in a hurry, anxious to have done with a tiresome interview
and call a guilty man to book. Therefore, I had no choice but to dissemble. “Mr. Sellick. Conceive it possible”—the phrase itself caused
more echoes in my head—“that you may be mistaken.”

He shook his head. “Not possible. You are the man. Hand me
back the certificates.”

“Very well.” I did so. “What do you want of me?”

He smiled. It was a cruel, slavering smile, a smile suggestive of
his lineage. “What I require of you, Strafford, is a public admission
of your guilt, a full statement of your miserable conduct in respect
of my mother.” Clearly, this was a more pleasing prospect to him
than any mere execution.

“Do you think anybody will be interested?”

“Oh, I think so. A candid memoir to appear in a Fleet Street
newspaper. A graphic portrayal of how a former Cabinet minister
conducted himself in wartime. An exposure of the truth about their
Consul’s past likely to interest the British community here on
Madeira.”

“Assuredly. And I have no choice but to comply?”

“None. I will do it without you if necessary.”

“I see. Then how do you wish to proceed?”

“I have an appointment with a journalist in my hotel at seven
o’clock this evening. Be there—ready to volunteer a confession—or
I’ll ruin you slowly, first with your family, then your regiment,
then . . .”

I held up a hand. “Pray do not continue. I will cooperate.”

“I thought you would. I reckoned you wouldn’t have the
courage not to—and I was right. Hunting you down has been disappointing in a way. You’re not worthy of the kill.”

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I shrugged my shoulders, endeavouring to look crestfallen for
his benefit. I was busily thinking of ways to keep this aggressive
South African quiet for a while—but I wanted him to think, for the
moment, that he had me where he wanted me: at his mercy.

Sellick slipped the revolver into his jacket pocket. He looked at
me as if I were a cornered, frightened animal. “I’ll leave you to
compose your thoughts then . . . Father. I’m staying in Reid’s Hotel.

I’ll expect you there, promptly at seven.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Be sure you are.” He walked smartly down the verandah steps
and away round the side of the house.

After a few minutes, I walked after him. From the side of the
house, I could see down the length of the drive to the gates. Sellick
had just reached them and was climbing into a waiting car. The
door slammed and it sped away, back up the valley road towards
Funchal, raising dust behind it as it went.

Back on the verandah, Tomás was awaiting me anxiously.

“Senhor Strafford,” he said. “I was concerned about your . . . visitor.

He did not announce himself at the door . . . and left like he was not
happy.”

“We can’t be happy all the time, Tomás, even in the Porto Novo
valley. Will you get the car out for me, please? I have urgent business in Funchal.”

I regretted the necessity for the action I next took, yet I did not hesitate for a moment. Whatever awaited me in England—where now
I knew I must return—was, in a sense, pre-ordained, determined
and decided the moment Couch—for I did not doubt that it was
he—put my name to that marriage certificate in South Africa fifty
years before. I was not about to seek out the myriad of whys and
wherefores in a spirit of vengeance. Too many years had passed for
that. It was, rather, with a sense of detached curiosity that I embarked upon the crowning act of my life, to test how much I still
cared, to determine if it were still possible to identify an unalloyed
truth about what had happened to me, to confront that truth and see
it for what it was.

The task of neutralizing Sellick was, in all this, no more than a
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preliminary trifle. Yet its accomplishment was distasteful, obliging
me as it did to seek favours from old friends, to wield influence
where, properly, I should have had none.

I drove straight to police headquarters in Funchal and was
warmly received by the Chief of Police, Carlos Garrido. We had
been firm friends since the 1931 Revolution , when I had been able to
prevent the authorities in Lisbon making of him a scapegoat.

Garrido was not a man to forget a kindness, which was as well, since
I now had one to ask of him.

“Carlos, I’ll come straight to the point. I want you to arrest
a man.”

“Edouin , when you were Consul, all you asked me was not to
arrest people. Now . . . so, who is the man?”

“Leo Sellick, a South African staying at Reid’s.”

“What has Senhor Sellick done?”

“Threatened me—with a gun.”

“I do not allow people to threaten my friends, Edouin. Senhor
Sellick will be seeing me.”

“Wait. It’s not as simple as that. It’s true he threatened me and
that he has a gun. But it’s only an antique. And I won’t testify
against him. I just want him held for a while.”

“How long?”

“A few weeks. I have to go to England and I don’t want Sellick to
follow me.”

“It can be done—passport irregularities, threatening behaviour—detained in custody. I give you”—he paused—“one month.

More I would give no man. Then: we let him go—unless you give
evidence.”

“I won’t. We British handle South Africa’s consular business—

I’ll arrange for my successor to drag his feet if Sellick complains. To
you, old friend, I’m grateful. I wish I hadn’t had to ask you such a
thing.”

“Then do not ask again , Edouin. This one—it is for the old
times.”

“One other point. The gun is the property of a . . . friend of
mine . . . in England. I’d like to return it.”

Garrido spread his arms theatrically. “Ah, removing the evi-

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dence also—why not? Come here tomorrow and I will see what I
can do for you.”

I thanked him again and left. My next call was on Brown, the
British Consul, at his official residence—once mine—on the hillside above Funchal. Brown was an amenable fellow and agreed to
play his part. Between them, he and Garrido could be relied upon to
hold Sellick for the duration of that month’s grace which they had
given me. I returned to Quinta do Porto Novo well satisfied—in the
strictly personal sense—with my afternoon’s work but impatient to
progress to what really occupied my thoughts.

My suspicions had not stopped at Couch and any hand he had
had in my estrangement from Elizabeth. For I knew that there were
other, even more sinister, connotations. I passed the night rehearsing
in my mind the events of 1909 and 1910, considering who had stood
to gain by my removal from the political arena: Lloyd George for
one, the Suffragettes for others. The evidence of my apparent deceit
of Elizabeth could have been used to condemn me in Asquith’s eyes
as a dangerous and despicable philanderer of whom he was well rid.

Could the opportunistic Couch have sold for a goodly price the
means to cast me as a villain? For did I not know too much of Lloyd
George’s regal intentions for his peace of mind?

Still and all, Lloyd George was six years dead and beyond my
reach. The man at the centre of all my suspicions—Gerald
Couchman—lived still, married to Elizabeth, a knight of the realm.

He was the man who deserved my immediate attention.

I had forgotten one of the penalties of old age: lack of stamina.

The following day, the sun shone. It was April 20th, my seventy-fifth birthday. The Porto Novo valley was a pluperfect copy of
England in spring, the apple blossom in the quinta seducing me to
stay with its powdery promise. Tomás served breakfast on the verandah and brought my birthday cards on a silver tray, adding fe-licitations of his own. Who but a madman would have wanted to
uproot himself from such serenity?

I suppose it was madness of a kind: an inchoate strand in an old
life which commanded me to follow, an Anglo-Saxon restlessness
which refuted the Latin languor. And, overriding all else, there was
the pathetic eagerness with which I checked through the cards, as I
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had every birthday and Christmas for thirty years, half-hoping,
against all reason , that one card, one day, would be from Elizabeth.

Yet it never was.

So I returned to Funchal and Garrido’s office, determined to
follow the strand to its source.

“We have Senhor Sellick in custody,” Garrido announced. “He
was with a . . . newspaperman . . . when we arrested him. Now . . . he
complains loudly. Maybe the newspaperman will also. You have
given me a problem, Edouin.”