The Twilight Hour (30 page)

twenty-nine

THE DAY BEFORE COLIN'S APPEAL
we were back at the Abrahams office. I hoped this would be our last visit. Julius and Naomi were both there.

‘I'll just go through it with you,' said Julius, ‘so that you're completely in the picture. Dinah – your going to see Pauline was very important, it's put a different slant on everything. But let's deal with Joan Mainwaring's evidence first. I think she was being perfectly truthful when she says she saw Colin. She may be confused as to which evening it was, but the police are ultimately responsible for that confusion too. Dinah – the night you went round and discovered the body, it had stopped snowing.' I nodded. ‘The previous night there'd been a blizzard. Mainwaring says it was snowing, so it was the evening
before
. But the police were convinced Mavor died the evening you found him, Dinah. Owing to their own bungling they weren't willing to consider an earlier time of death. But, if you think about it, he was cold when you found him. He must have been killed earlier that day – even perhaps the evening before. You understand what I'm saying?

‘What is more – but this is only, absolutely
entre nous
and you can be sure it's not part of the appeal case – Colin has now admitted that she was right.
She actually saw him because he was there.
At the last conference we had with him in private he finally told us he did go round to Mecklenburgh Square. He wanted to have it out with Titus – not kill him, of course, just have it out. No one answered when he knocked, but he gained access to the house the same way you did; the door didn't shut properly. Titus wasn't there. Must have been out in spite of the weather, or more likely staying with some girl and never came home. God knows what prompted Colin out on such a terrible night, but he said he'd worked himself up into a state about it. It had become an obsession.

‘So Joan Mainwaring's evidence isn't a lie; it's just part of the confusion around the time of death. And we're going to go for that. We're going to argue that the police were completely incompetent and had no real idea when he'd died, or anyway, he couldn't have been killed at the time they thought he was. And then your evidence, Dinah, backs that up.

‘Your account of what Pauline told you – Gwendolen Grey's confession at second-hand, as it were – isn't admissible evidence. On the other hand Gwendolen was murdered in the same way as Titus – and the very
fact
of Gwendolen's death muddies the waters because Colin can't possibly have murdered
her
. Finally, you told me, Dinah, about Dr Carstairs.'

‘Did I?' I said. ‘I'd quite forgotten.'

‘I told you,' said Alan.

‘Naomi went to see him, and he's made a statement.'

Naomi leaned forward and turned over the papers on the desk. ‘He seemed a kindly sort of man,' she said, ‘but he blamed himself …' She hesitated. ‘This is more background than anything, but it all adds to the picture.' She began to read.

‘“It is the case that both Hilda Howard and Pauline Goodman were at St Swithins Asylum, Broadstairs, when I was appointed consultant there in 1940. It was my first consultant's post. However, neither of them was employed there. Hilda Howard was a patient, not an orderly. She was there because she'd tried to kill her mother. She was brought up by a foster mother, but was not told this until shortly before the attack. The foster mother felt that might have been the reason for the antagonism. Hilda had attacked her with a knife. The foster mother was lucky to survive.

‘“Pauline Goodman had been a nurse, but she had suffered a mental breakdown. She, too, was a patient, which she found very difficult. She was always trying to act as though she were still a nurse. She would take fellow patients under her wing and try to develop a quasi-professional relationship. But it went further with Hilda than anyone else. Hilda had been in a locked ward to begin with, but she responded well to the regime. She calmed down and was moved to an open ward, gained some privileges, seemed to be making great strides. We organised occasional games of tennis and she even played in one or two of those.

‘“But Pauline Goodman tried to gain an ascendancy over her, just as she had with several patients before. She became possessive; we had to separate them. Looking back, I can see it was a kind of
folie à deux
– that is, when a sane person becomes fatally involved in the delusions of someone deranged. Although that's not really the right term, since in this case neither of them was really sane.

‘“They went missing, the two of them. We were very short-staffed – with hundreds of patients and soon matters were chaotic with Dunkirk and then the Blitz, so we can perhaps be forgiven for their having managed to abscond. If it hadn't been for the war, we would have made every effort to trace them. As it was, we reported matters to the police, and after that they got more or less forgotten. That was a dereliction of duty. When I saw Gwendolen Grey – Hilda Howard, as I thought, I assumed Gwendolen Grey was her stage name – at the dance, I again pondered what I should do. But after worrying about it for some time I decided that after so long, it was acceptable to leave things as they were.”' Naomi stopped reading and looked at us. ‘That's all,' she said, ‘but it does make things clearer.'

‘The last piece of the jigsaw,' I murmured. Yet nothing in life was as simple as a jigsaw, with one right answer for everything and everything slotting into place.

.........

Flashlights exploding – the journalists jostling at the foot of the steps – the statement Naomi read out: a flickering newsreel scene to be plastered all over the headlines the following day. Colin's conviction was quashed. The appeal was a sensation. Our grey austerity world created an audience ravenous for scandal, and the crowd that would have rushed the prison gates for the notice of Colin's hanging was now ready to cheer the Houdini who'd escaped a wrongful conviction.

Colin was free; justice had been done. It wasn't only that Julius had cast more doubt on the police assessment of the time of death. Whatever the legal niceties, he'd managed cunningly to bring Gwendolen and Pauline to the centre of the picture in such a way as to undermine the evidence against Colin. In the appeal court there were no smears about Colin's politics. The entire police case against him looked shakier and shakier until at last it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. In a way I too was exonerated – but the most important thing was Colin was free.

Yet in fact he was not quite free. The following day the papers were full of barbed innuendoes. Somehow it wasn't enough that he'd been wrongfully convicted, some even queried whether justice in the wider sense
had
been done. They dragged up all the political stuff from the original trial again, hinting at what he might have been up to in the war, suggesting that at best he'd been a confused fellow traveller, at worst a fifth columnist or stooge of the Soviets and diehard Red. That was the trouble, I rapidly learned, some of the mud always sticks.

I'd believed you were innocent until proved guilty. To be acquitted on appeal was to have your name cleared. Now these illusions were shattered. How naïve I was. Still, I'd rather be naïve than cynical. World-weariness was the biggest bore. And I – we – Alan and I – still believed in him.

We'd expected him to come with us right after his release for a first celebratory drink, but he said he needed some time on his own. There was to be a celebration the following evening in any case.

We gathered in a rather anonymous hotel in Bloomsbury. Alan and I got there first and loitered at the bar with the next arrival, Naomi. The euphoria of the day before had evaporated and we felt rather flat.

We waited a little anxiously for more friends to turn up: Noel; Alan's BBC friends; some of the old Wheatsheaf crowd – they'd all promised to be there; Hugh and Radu – maybe; possibly a few of Colin's CP comrades. And of course the man of the hour himself: Colin. He should have been there from the start.

The first guest startled us: Colin's mother. None of us had ever met this stalwart elderly woman who wore a once-smart black coat, as though she were in mourning – although of course no one wore mourning any more. Alan valiantly bought her an orange squash and tried to make conversation. Actually, she was quite talkative. Impossible, she explained, to come to London during the trial, as she'd been nursing her eighty-year-old mother. Alan's face assumed a mournful expression in anticipation of the old lady's death, but in fact she'd recovered.

Jock Bunnage, Colin's branch secretary, turned up, looking uncomfortable, then a few Charlotte Street regulars; Noel and a friend from the Courtauld Institute came along.

Finally, Colin arrived with Julius, plus a reporter from the
Daily Worker
. We all had a drink and raised our glasses to Colin.

Yet everyone was ill at ease. There was a peculiar absence of rejoicing. Alan bustled around Colin trying to get a smile out of him, but after the months in prison he looked haggard rather than elated.

I watched the entrance in case Hugh and Radu turned up. Eventually Hugh peered self-consciously round the door and sidled in.

Alan made a speech. Somehow he came across as overbearing as he clumsily tried to inject some vitality into the proceedings.

I watched him. I'd hardly known him when we married. Passion had blinded me to our differences in temperament, but now I saw his faults so clearly. And now too there was the ever-present shadow of his anger. He hadn't hit me again, but I feared his temper. I hadn't forgotten; it hadn't gone away. And although he thought I'd been plucky and smart over Pauline, at heart he had such old-fashioned ideas about women.

Still, we were married now for better or worse and I was determined to carve out an independent place for myself within that marriage. It would be difficult to resist as he tried to push me into a narrower role as His Wife. Now he was settled at the BBC he was edging away from our bohemian existence and wanted something more orderly. Soon, I knew, he'd decide it was time to have children. I wanted children too, but however difficult it might be, I refused to turn into my mother. I had to have some separate life as well.

So I watched him rather critically as he lurched red-faced through his speech. Yet as he stumbled on, my heart softened. For there was also his honesty. He was more honest, more honourable than the others. Hugh, Dr Carstairs, Radu, Noel, even Stan – had temporised and done what was easiest; Alan had stood by Colin, never wavered.

I too, after all, had been foolish. I saw that, now that I'd given up the silly Hollywood dream Radu had indulged me in. As if every girl didn't want to be an actress! It was a clichéd adolescent dream. Noel had nurtured in me a new and more realistic interest in art. Before Alan had squashed the frail beginnings of conviviality with his clodhopper speech, Noel's Courtauld Institute friend had been telling me about the courses you could do there. You should enrol, he'd said, the director, Anthony Blunt, is inspirational. If I trained there I wouldn't be just a secretary; I'd be a specialist. I'd work my way up from being Noel's assistant. One day I might even manage a gallery myself; or publish art books, or a magazine.

Alan ground to a halt. There was an awkward silence. Everyone looked at Colin, expecting him to reply. He was standing near Hugh. Both were scowling. Then Hugh said – lightly, but it was so venomous – ‘A few words, don't you think, Colin? Aren't you going to thank British justice, even if you work for a system that doesn't have any?'

That was uncalled for! Why had he had to say
that
! There was a horrid silence. The audience, like clusters of statues, stared in mute embarrassment. The tableau was a momentary caricature of some religious painting with Colin at the centre, his mother on one side in supplication, like the Virgin Mary, an awkward band of disciples – Jock Bunnage, Julius, the
Daily Worker
reporter – huddled on the other, while Naomi stood apart like the Angel Gabriel. And Hugh – well, Judas Iscariot or Saint Peter, he was accuser and betrayer all in one.

Then Colin stepped forward, out of the picture. His face looked bonier than ever. He said quietly: ‘I do indeed owe thanks to my legal team. Naomi and Julius have done more for me than I could ever have possibly asked or imagined. My friend Alan Wentworth has done even more. They all kept me hoping when there wasn't any. What I've been through this last year I can't begin to describe and I don't even want to. And yes, British justice has been vindicated – just about. But remember that British justice will only ever be as good as this rotten system we live under lets it be. Whatever the gutter press says about me and however many fair-weather fellow travellers find it all too much of an effort, the important thing for me is to go on struggling for international socialism. And that's what I intend to do.' And he turned and walked out of the bar.