The Absolutist (16 page)

“Yes, but when he replied,” said Marian, hesitating, looking almost embarrassed by her words, “he told me that he had some bad news for me.”

“Bad news,” I said, more of a statement than a question, and I had a sudden anxious idea of what this might be.

“He said … I’m so sorry, Mr. Sadler, I mean, Tristan, but it’s really not me who has this wrong because, as I said, I went back and checked, it was just that he must have been so confused, what with all the shelling and the bombing and those awful, awful trenches—”

“Perhaps you’d better just tell me,” I said quietly.

“He said you’d been killed,” she said, sitting up straight now and looking me directly in the eyes. “There, I’ve said it. He said that two days after you left Aldershot, only a few hours after you’d arrived at your entrenchment, you were picked off by a sniper. He said it had been quick and you hadn’t suffered.”

I stared at her again and began to feel dizzy in my head. Had I been standing, I think that I might have fallen over. “He said I was dead?” I asked, the words sounding obscene on my tongue.

“It must have been someone else,” she replied quickly. “He spoke of so many people in his letters. He must have just got it wrong. But what a frightful mistake. Anyway, as far as I was concerned, there were the two of you, thick as thieves on the training ground, and off you go to France together, and the next thing I know, that’s it, you’re gone. I don’t mind telling you, Tristan, that even though I had never met you it had quite an effect on me.”

“My death did?”

“Yes. If that doesn’t sound too preposterous. I suppose part of it might have been that I was projecting your death on to the very real possibility that Will might die, too, which in my own stupidity I had never really thought about very much before. I cried for days, Tristan. For a man I had never met. I said prayers for you, even though I rarely pray. My father, he said a mass in your memory. Can you believe it? He’s a vicar, you see, and—”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I knew that.”

“And he was terribly sorry, too. I don’t think he could think too much about you, if I’m honest, because he was so worried about Will. He loved him so much. As did my mother. But there we are. I thought you had been killed in the war. And then, about three years later, out of the blue, your letter arrived.”

I turned and looked out of the window. The street had grown quiet and I found myself staring at the cobblestones, noting the different shapes and sizes of the pieces. Over the previous twelve months I had felt such pain, such remorse over what had happened to Will and my part in it. And I had grieved so much, too, my feelings for him so intense that I feared I would never be able to see past them. And now to hear this, to hear that he had effectively killed me off after our last night together in Aldershot. I had believed that he could not have broken my heart any more than he had—but now there was this. There was this.

“Mr. Sadler? Tristan?”

I turned back to her and saw that Marian was looking towards my right hand with a concerned expression. I glanced down and saw that it was twitching uncontrollably, the fingers dancing nervously as if independent of my brain. I stared at it as though it were not part of my body at all, but something that a passing stranger had left on the table and was planning to return for later, a curio of some sort, and then I felt mortified by it and placed my left hand over it, quelling the trembling for now.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said, standing up quickly, my chair making a loud scraping noise against the floor as I pushed it back, a sound that set my teeth on edge.

“Tristan—” she began, but I shook my head.

“I’ll be back,” I said, rushing towards the door to the Gents, on the opposite side of the room to the one through which she had disappeared earlier. As I reached it, terrified that I might not make it through in time before the horror of what she had told me overwhelmed me, I saw the man who had entered the café earlier, the one who had appeared to be watching me, suddenly jump to his feet and march hurriedly towards it, blocking my way.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Please.”

“I want a word with you,” he said, in an officious tone, an aggressive one. “It won’t take long.”

“Not now,” I snapped, uncertain why he was bothering me. I had never seen the man before in my life. “Get out of my way.”

“I won’t get out of your way,” he insisted. “Now, look here, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but you and me, we need to talk.”

“Get out of my way!” I repeated, shouting it now, and I saw the couple and the waitress turn to look at me in surprise. I wondered whether Marian had heard me, but our table was around the corner and not in my sight line, so if she had I would not have known. I pushed the man roughly aside. He didn’t struggle with me, and a few moments later I locked myself in the lavatory and placed my head in my hands, devastated. I was not crying, but there was a word being repeated over and over, I thought in my head but actually aloud, and I had to make a concerted effort to stop myself saying
Will, Will, Will
as I rocked back and forth, as if this was the only word that had ever mattered, the only syllable that held any meaning for me.

When I returned from the Gents, I felt embarrassed by my behaviour but was unsure whether Marian had even noticed how upset I had become. I didn’t turn to look in the direction of the man who had insisted on speaking with me but I could sense his presence, smouldering like a dormant volcano in the corner of the room, and wondered who exactly he thought I was. His accent betrayed his Norfolk roots but as I had never been to this part of the country before there was no possibility that we had ever met. At the table, Marian and our waitress, Jane, were deep in conversation, obviously reconciled, and I
looked from one to the other a little nervously as I sat down again.

“I was just apologizing to Jane,” explained Marian, smiling across at me. “I think I might have been rather rude to her earlier. Which she didn’t deserve. Jane was very kind to my parents. Afterwards, I mean,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

“I see,” I replied, rather wishing that Jane would go back behind her counter and leave us alone. “You knew Will, then?”

“I knew him since he was a boy,” she said. “He was a few years behind me in school but I had a right crush on him back then. He danced with me once at a parish social and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” She looked away as she said this, perhaps regretting her choice of words. “Well, I’d best be getting on,” she said. “Can I get you anything else, Marian?”

“Some more tea, I think. What do you say, Tristan?”

“Fine,” I said.

“And afterwards, we can go for a stroll and get something to eat. You must be hungry.”

“I am now,” I admitted. “But more tea first is fine.”

Jane disappeared to fetch the tea and Marian followed her with her eyes for a moment as she busied herself behind the counter. “She wasn’t the only one, of course,” she said, leaning forward and lowering her voice in a conspiratorial fashion.

“The only one of what?” I asked.

“Who was half crazed for love of my brother,” she said, smiling. “You’d never believe the way the girls around here threw themselves at him. Even my own friends were sweet on him and they were years older than he was.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, smiling. “You’re only a few years older than me. You’re not ready to be put out to pasture yet.”

“No, of course not,” she said. “But it used to drive me crazy. I mean, don’t misunderstand me, Tristan, I loved my brother to distraction, but to me he was always just a rather messy, rather
unkempt, rather mischievous little boy. When he was a child, the difficulty my mother had getting him to take a bath was quite extraordinary—he would scream the house down the moment the tin appeared—but then I suppose all little boys are like that. And some of the older ones, too, if the chaps I know are anything to go by. So when I saw the effect he had on women as he grew older, it took me quite by surprise, I don’t mind telling you.”

I nodded. I wasn’t entirely sure that this was a line I wanted to pursue but there was a part of me, a masochistic part, that could not help itself.

“And he reciprocated their affections?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she said. “There was a string of them at one point. You couldn’t walk down to the shops without seeing him strolling along with some hare-brained thing in her Sunday-best dress who’d put a few flowers in her hair for effect, thinking she might be the one to catch him. I couldn’t keep track of them, there were that many.”

“He was a good-looking fellow,” I remarked.

“Yes, I suppose he was. It’s hard for me to recognize it, being his sister. Almost as hard as it is for you, I suppose.”

“Me?”

“Well, being a man.”

“Yes.”

“I used to rag him about it, of course,” she continued. “But he never seemed to pay any attention to me. Most boys, of course, would have flown into a fury and told me to keep my nose firmly out but he just laughed and shrugged it off. He said he enjoyed going for long walks, and if some girl wanted to join him for the company, then who was he to stand in their way? To be honest, he never seemed particularly interested in any of them. That’s why it was pointless to tease. He really didn’t care.”

“But there was a fiancée, wasn’t there?” I asked, frowning, wondering what to make of all of this.

“A fiancée?” she asked, looking up and smiling at Jane as she placed the fresh pot before us.

“Yes, he told me once that he had a sweetheart back home and they were engaged to be married.”

She stopped pouring then but held the pot in mid-air as she stared at me. “Are you quite sure?” she asked me.

“Perhaps I have it wrong,” I said nervously.

Marian looked out of the window and remained silent for a few moments, considering this. “Did he say who she was?” she asked, turning back to me.

“I’m not sure if I can recall,” I said, although the name was firmly emblazoned in my memory. “I think it was Ann something.”

“Ann?” she asked, shaking her head. “I can’t think of any Ann. Do you have it right?”

“I think so,” I replied. “No, wait. I have it now. Eleanor. He said her name was Eleanor.”

Marian’s eyes opened wide and she stared at me for a few seconds before bursting out laughing. “Eleanor?” she asked. “Not Eleanor Martin?”

“I’m not sure of the surname,” I said.

“But it must be her. She’s the only one. Well, yes, he and Eleanor did have a thing, I suppose, at one point. She was one of those girls who were always hanging off him. I imagine she would have liked nothing more than to marry my brother. In fact,” and here she tapped the table several times as if she had just recalled something of importance, “Eleanor Martin was the one who wrote him all those soppy letters.”

“When we were over there?” I asked, surprised by this.

“Well, possibly, but I don’t know anything about that. No, I mean she used to send these extraordinary letters to the house.
Frightful, scented things with little flowers crushed inside that fell out over his lap whenever he opened them and caused a terrible mess on the carpets. I remember once he asked me what I thought they were supposed to signify and I told him nothing at all, other than the girl’s utter stupidity, because—and you can trust me on this, Tristan—because I’ve known her since she was a child, that girl has no more sense than a postage stamp. I remember that she would write long essays on the theme of nature—spring, rebirth, little bunny rabbits, all that rubbish—and she sent these along, convinced that they would somehow captivate my brother. I don’t know who she thought he was, Lord Byron or someone. What a fool!” She raised her cup to her lips and held it there for a while. “But you say that he claimed they were engaged?” she asked, frowning. “But it can’t be. If
she
had said it I could put it down to the fact that the girl’s a complete idiot, but him? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Perhaps I have it wrong,” I repeated. “We had so many conversations. It’s impossible to remember half of them.”

“I’m sure you must have it wrong, Tristan,” she said. “My brother was many things but he would never have given up his life to share it with a fool such as her. He had more depth than that. Despite his good looks and his ability to captivate any woman in sight, he never seemed to take advantage of any of them. I rather admired him for that. When his friends were chasing girls like crazy, he seemed to lose interest entirely. I wondered whether it was out of respect for our father, who would not have been happy, of course, to have a son who was the village cad. Being a vicar, I mean. I find that many handsome young men are cads, Tristan. Would you agree with me?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I really couldn’t say, Marian.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” she said, smiling gently, teasing me a little, I thought. “You’re almost Will’s equal, as far as I can see. That lovely blond hair of yours and those sad, puppy-dog
eyes. I say this strictly from an aesthetic perspective, Tristan, so don’t get any ideas, since I’m old enough to be your grandmother, but you’re rather a dish, aren’t you? Good Lord, you’ve gone quite red.”

She was speaking with such good humour, such unexpected joy in her tone, that it was hard not to smile back. This was not a flirtation, I knew, not anything of the sort, but perhaps it was the beginning of a friendship. I realized that she liked me, and I knew that I liked her, too. Which was unexpected. That was not what I had come here for.

“You’re not old,” I insisted, mumbling into my cup. “What age are you, anyway? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it was rude to ask a lady’s age? And you’re just a boy. What are you, nineteen? Twenty?”

“Twenty-one,” I said, and she frowned, thinking about it. “But hold on, that would mean—”

“I lied about my age,” I told her, anticipating the question. “I was only seventeen when I was over there. I lied in order that they would accept me.”

“And I thought Eleanor was a fool,” she said, although not unkindly.

“Yes,” I muttered, looking down at my tea.