Past Caring (68 page)

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying see reason. For once in your grubbed-together life, stop being a bloody fool, stop being a nothing. It wouldn’t involve our seeing anything of each other—you know how repug-nant that is. But it would involve your stopping the slide. Why let everybody else snaffle the good things in life?

“We dislike each other—so what? I’ve learned to live with disliking lots of people. Some of them are my best friends. So Strafford had a raw deal. Why emulate him? I’ll donate something to a memorial down at his blasted Barrowteign, if you like. I’m sorry about his nephew. Maybe you were fond of him. Maybe you think I should have gone over that bridge with him. But think carefully—think more carefully than you’ve ever thought in your life—before you risk going over the bridge along with me.”

He looked straight at me in a strangely impersonal way. “If the possibilities interest you, let me know.” Then he turned his back on me and resumed his study of a bulky file on his desk. I left without disturbing Letty.

On the drive south, I thought, inevitably, of Eve and Timothy.

How much did they know? If Henry hadn’t broken into Lodge Cottage, it must have been Timothy—perhaps at Eve’s bidding.

Did they realize that Henry had been involved in Ambrose’s death? Presumably not. So what was their game? Whatever it was, it gave me something to cling to. So long as they and Sellick were exerting their differing influences, Henry’s offer lacked the simplicity to impose itself upon me. So long as there were other people and problems to think about, I could avoid confronting my own susceptibility to what he’d said.

Elizabeth was waiting for me at Quarterleigh, eager to know what had happened. I’d rather have delayed telling her, but her man-

P A S T C A R I N G

417

ner brooked no postponement. Even so, mine was an edited version. No mention of Henry’s contempt for her and the world in general. No mention of his powerful inducements for me to keep silent. No mention of mechanistic rationale of how to live a life.

Such things weren’t for a mother to hear. Denials that he’d had a direct hand in Edwin Strafford’s death, confession and remorse where Ambrose Strafford was concerned—they were different matters and, for Elizabeth’s sake, I couldn’t help letting them cast Henry in a sympathetic light.

It still wasn’t a good enough light to relieve Elizabeth’s distress. Henry had been a party to his father’s deceit of her. He’d allowed (if not encouraged) officialdom to eliminate Strafford.

He’d tried to cover up his part in Ambrose’s death. He had lots of excuses but none of them gave him any esteem in her eyes. It was breakfasttime the following day before she articulated a response.

By then, I’d spent a largely sleepless night reproaching myself for what I’d found myself hoping: that Elizabeth would call a halt, would destroy the Postscript, would say that enough was enough.

With Henry’s offer still eating secretly into my resolution, I no longer felt ready for us to take the irrevocable step which Sellick’s arrival was bound to represent. Yet with the Postscript in Elizabeth’s keeping, matters were now literally in her hands. If she decided to take the step, I’d have to go with her. And decide she did.

“I trust you agree, Martin, that we should still despatch the letter to Mr. Sellick tomorrow,” she said, pouring coffee into my cup. “Henry’s testimony is in some ways better than I’d feared, in others worse than I’d hoped. It at least gives me the advantage of knowing what wrongs have been done by members of my family.

Some of them concern Mr. Sellick, some do not. Of those that don’t, I think you should advise me what to do about Edwin’s nephew.” She’d spoken calmly, but I’d watched the stream of coffee waver with her trembling.

“Reluctantly, nothing. The inquest concluded it was an accident. Henry’s evidence supports that—though it alters the circumstances. If we believe him, why try to re-open the case?”

“But do we believe him?”

418

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“I think so.” A couple of weeks before, I could have rammed the words down my own throat. Now I just gulped coffee to drown the taste of treachery. “It had the ring of truth.”

“And what about the letter? Are you happy for it to go?”

“Of course—if you think it can do any good.” The implication that it couldn’t dropped delicately between us.

She leant back in her chair. “To do good is perhaps to ask rather a lot—though I have hopes. For the moment, I only propose to see that some form of justice is done to a wronged man.”

So virtuous, so laudable, so misconceived. How can you wrong the chameleon, for whom mistake and delusion are forms of camouflage? Sellick had already mobilized a chameleon’s justice, but we weren’t capable of recognizing it.

When we walked, Elizabeth and I together, to the post office in Miston that unremarkable Wednesday morning, to despatch the letter to Sellick, I myself could have asked Strafford’s question: which was the dream and which the reality? It had a dreamlike quality, that early stroll in the patchy sunshine, but its consequences were harsher than any reality. When we stopped to put flowers on Couch’s grave on the way back, there was in the action as much appeasement as irony. Which was as well, since later there was indeed much to appease.

I didn’t expect a reply that week, so reconciled myself to a wait that was bound to be hard on the nerves. Strangely, the days became easier as they passed. Elizabeth and I kept each other supportive company, became comfortable in a routine of spending time harmlessly together, insulated for a while from all the problems certain to beset us.

In fact, we became too comfortable, to the point where I wished I could stay at Quarterleigh forever with Elizabeth in her restful old age, mature and rounded in her judgements and reflections, slowly adjusting to our new-found knowledge, absorbing it as part of her wisdom. I came to understand—in strolls or drives along the Downs—why she felt it important, at the close of

P A S T C A R I N G

419

her life, to re-open—as some would see it—an old wound.

“Because,” she said once, “it can’t be reopened if it’s never closed. This is a necessary act of healing.” Only the very old or the very young could be so hopeful.

As it turned out, we didn’t have as long to wait as I’d thought. On Sunday evening, the telephone rang. Elizabeth answered.

“It’s for you, Martin—a gentleman named Fowler.”

I grabbed the receiver. “Hello—Alec?”

“Yes, Martin, it’s me.” His voice had a gloomy tone, as if he didn’t expect me to be pleased to hear him. Perhaps for that reason, he didn’t waste his words. “Leo got your letter yesterday. He’s flying over tomorrow. But he sent me to make some arrangements in advance.”

“Where are you?”

“Here, in Miston. I’m at The Royal Oak. I expected to see you in the bar.” The joke fell flat. “Could we meet to talk?”

“Okay. I’ll come over straightaway.”

I put the phone down, explained to Elizabeth and headed off without delay. The village and the Downs above were huddling in preparation for darkness as a still evening succeeded a breezy day.

The lane was quiet, but, in the trees around the church, birds were roosting noisily. The flowers we’d placed on Couch’s grave on Wednesday were still fresh, in mind and bloom, but something intangible had changed in the ordered environs of Miston.

Alec was waiting for me in the homely bar of The Royal Oak and nothing would ever be the same again.

I found him in the saloon—larger but emptier than the public bar, drinking English beer and smoking French cigarettes in one of the corners by the wide chimneybreast. He smiled and nodded, but waited for me to join him with my drink.

“I didn’t expect us to meet again so soon,” he said.

“Neither did I.”

“It was only a month ago.”

“It seems longer. A lot’s happened in that time.”

420

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“Not to me. Except, of course, these two trips. Your letter came as something of a bombshell.”

“I suppose it would.” We were fencing, probing conversationally to see if we could put any weight on a friendship we both knew to be bankrupt. “I’ve only done what Sellick asked.”

“And then some.” Alec smiled uncertainly. “News of the Postscript took him aback.”

“I’m glad something did.” I’d tired of the bluff. “Lately, I’ve had the impression Sellick knew more about what I was doing than I’ve told him.”

“What do you mean?” He smiled, as if he knew all too well.

“I mean he’s been checking up on me.” It was still only a guess, because Eve had suggested another explanation for my past being divulged to her, but Alec’s shiftiness supported my belief that that had only been a ruse.

“In what way?”

“In the way that he’s sent you here in advance. Why would that be but to find out what I’ve been up to?”

Alec looked defensive. “Leo’s an old man not used to travelling. He wanted me to book a hotel and, yes, spy out the land here.

But there’s nothing sinister in it.”

“Alec, we’ve known each other for ten years now. Even if I’ve acted like a fool at times, don’t treat me like one. When we met in London, I told you about my hopes and plans involving Eve Randall. You agreed not to mention them to Leo.”

“I remember.” His voice had sunk to a murmur.

“Within days, I’d been discredited in Eve’s eyes. Somebody had told her all about the end of my teaching career—chapter and verse. I . . .”

“It was me.” He looked straight at me, with a frankness in his eyes which had once been charm. “I told her. I encouraged you—with a few insignificant disclosures—to tell me exactly what you were thinking of. When I met her, it was easy to understand why you should throw Leo over for her sake. Ordinarily, I’d have wished you luck.”

“But . . .”

“But I’m not a free agent. I’m Leo’s errand boy. Let’s not dress it up—that’s how it is. He sent me to see what progress you

P A S T C A R I N G

421

were making and, because Eve seemed to be leading you astray—as far as he was concerned—he instructed me to end your association by whatever means I judged necessary. I couldn’t see any other way to do it.”

I put the only question I could: “Why, Alec? Why sell yourself and me down the river?”

He drew on a cigarette and gazed past me. “Money, old son.

It’s as simple as that. I ran short of collateral in a cash-conscious age. That magazine I told you was my passport to fame and fortune in Fleet Street—a sick joke. A loss-maker from day one.

Sellick let me run up debts with him as if they meant nothing—then, suddenly, called them in. At the same time, I discovered he was the faceless proprietor behind the casino where I’d salved my boredom with some mindless gambling—and lost heavily. I woke up one day in my banana paradise to find a South African capital-ist had me by the short and curlies.”

“So how did you pay him off ?”

“I didn’t—hadn’t a hope. But Leo offered to commute the debt. A well-qualified, footloose English intellectual in his pocket was just what he was looking for. I’d been set up.”

“But why?”

“Because of the Strafford thing—because of you. It was eating away at him for years before I obligingly walked into his web.

I couldn’t fathom it and I certainly couldn’t afford to appear too curious, but what he wanted was some kind of entrée to English intellectual society. He thought I was it and I had to try to live up to that. When I mentioned you as an historian I knew, he was over the moon. I reckon he knew even then about your link with the Couchmans, though I admit it was me who told him why the link had been broken. That pleased him all the more. You were available and known to be antagonistic towards the Couchmans: two qualifications which made you the man for the job.”

Now that Alec had said it, it seemed just what I might have expected. “So you didn’t invite me to Madeira for a friends’ re-union? Sellick’s offer wasn’t just a lucky windfall? It was part of the scheme.”

Alec shrugged apologetically. “That’s about the size of it. Leo reckoned it was an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

422

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“He was right.”

“He usually is.”

“But why? What’s the point? Now you know about his connexion with Strafford, what do you reckon he really wants?”

“I don’t know. He wanted you to act as his surrogate. He thought you’d share his motives. That’s why Eve was such a threat. What those motives are I can’t say. Your guess is as good as mine. It’s been like he knew what you’d find all along. None of your reports surprised him—until the last.”

“He didn’t know about the Postscript then?”

“Definitely not. That was a bolt from the blue. Not to mention the old lady’s invitation.”

“Why has he accepted?”

“Martin, I’m not paid to solve such riddles. I’m just kept happy with some hack writing and spurious local celebrity. I do his bidding, but I don’t have to understand it—or like it.”

I looked at him: somehow shrunken in my mind, while I’d grown—however uncomfortably—in the trials of my task. I should have felt anger or contempt. Instead, I pitied him. “Alec, didn’t you ever hesitate to lead me on, knowing what you were getting me into?”

He smiled wryly. “Once or twice. When we met in London, I tried to imply how things really were. But you failed to take the hint and I couldn’t risk making it explicit.”

“It doesn’t say much—for our friendship.”

“No. But then Leo enjoys making people face their own inadequacies. So he relished the fact that we were friends, revelled in forcing me to betray you—along the way, as it were, as a sideshow in his larger scheme. As for us, telling you I had no alternative won’t wash. I could say I thought the job would be good for you—but I had a bad feeling about it all along. The truth is that Leo’s promised to use his money and influence to get me a break in journalism—if I serve him well. After all the false starts and missed opportunities in my life, I just couldn’t resist, couldn’t let slip what might have been my last chance. For that, I was prepared to play my part in his plans. I didn’t realize what it would involve, of course, and, by the time I did, it was too late to back