Trouble Brewing (14 page)

He took a cigarette from the box, lit it, and blew out a long mouthful of smoke. ‘I think it started with Polygon Wood. You know Polygon Wood, Major?'

‘Rather too well for my liking.'

Tyrell grinned. ‘As you say. In August'17 I was in the Guards doing my bit to take Westhoek. God knows why anyone would want it. It was just ridges of soft mud filled with holes of softer mud, with nine-twos bursting beside us and machine-gun bullets slashing down like rain. On the sixteenth we moved forward, and I lost twelve of my platoon straight away. I don't know if they were dead or wounded. I remember going forward to see if I could get in touch with Captain Hart and that's the last I actually remember until I woke up in a casuality-clearing station. Apparently I'd been found with a bunch of dead Anzacs in a shell hole between Polygon Wood and Westhoek. We'd obviously stopped a shell.' He hesitated. ‘You'll excuse me for mentioning it, ladies, but the odd thing was that I was in my birthday suit, so to speak. The explosion must've torn my uniform off. I didn't have a stitch on.'

Jack nodded. ‘I've heard of that sort of thing before.'

‘Given the circumstances, everyone assumed I was an Anzac, of course. I couldn't contradict them because I couldn't remember a thing about who I was or where I was supposed to be. I was clutching an ID tag for one John Marsden, a Private in the Sixteenth Battalion, Royal Western Australian Regiment, and that's the name I've been using until a few weeks ago. To cut a long story short, I wasn't much good to the war any longer, so I got shipped off, first to a hospital in England and then to what everyone told me was home.'

‘Australia?'

‘That's right.'

‘Didn't anyone guess you were English, Mr Tyrell?' asked Anne. ‘You don't sound like an Australian.'

‘I'm glad to hear it,' he said with a grin. ‘My accent wouldn't count for anything, Mrs Lassiter. There's thousands of Englishmen in Australia. John Marsden didn't seem to have any family but he'd enlisted at Perth, so that's where I went. I roamed around the outback for a while, picking up jobs in mining towns and sheep stations and so forth, and eventually John Marsden began to have a life of his own. The past was a complete blank, you see. My life had started in that casuality-clearing station. Then, one day, I was in Mullgarrie, Western Australia. It's part of the Coolgardie Goldfields and I'd been sweating it out in one of the deep shaft mines. Mullgarrie isn't much of a town but it had the usual cheap hotel that sold food and drink. I was sitting up at the counter and asked for a cup of coffee, and the barman reached down a bottle of coffee with a blue and yellow label.'

‘Royale Coffee,' put in Pat, with a smile.

‘That's right. Royale Coffee. Well, for some reason the sight of that bottle meant something. I asked the barman to give it to me and, as I held that bottle, my memory started to stir. You know all that stuff on the label? About how it's made from finest coffee from our plantation in Brazil and so on? I sat there with the bottle in my hand, letting my ham and eggs go cold, until the chap behind the bar must've thought I was nuts. But I knew that my past had something to do with this Royale Coffee. I wondered about going to London, where it was made, but I'd been in England and nothing had registered. Could I have lived in Brazil? It didn't spark any memories, but I decided to give it a go.'

‘I can't imagine just setting out for Brazil,' said Pat. ‘I think it was very brave of you.'

‘You must remember how rootless I was. I knew I had a past somewhere and I wanted – wanted more than anything – to find out who I was.'

He laughed. ‘It sounds crazy, but on the strength of that label on a bottle of coffee in Mullgarrie, I trekked down to the Trans-Australian Railway at Karonie and stayed on it all the way to Sydney. In Sydney I got a place on a boat – the
Furneaux
– as a deck hand, calling first at Wellington then at Rio. That's a journey of over ten thousand miles because of a cup of coffee. When we reached Rio I hung over the ship's rail, waiting for my memory to stir.'

His face fell. ‘Nothing happened. Nothing at all. The view as you sail into Rio harbour is one of the best sights on the earth, but it'll always spell disappointment for me. You see, it was all so utterly strange and I wanted to come home.'

Pat reached out and squeezed his hand gently.

‘Well,' said Tyrell, ‘there I was in Rio. I left the ship and, feeling as if I was on a fool's errand, started to find out a bit more about Royale Coffee. I hadn't realized what a barrier the language would be. I assumed, God knows why, I'd find plenty of people who could speak English, but apart from a few words, everyone talked Portuguese. However, there's nothing like being in a country for getting to grips with the lingo. Within a few days I worked out that coffee grew in São Paulo, so I got on the train and headed down there. São Paulo City is a big, bustling place with trams and traffic everywhere and, as I got off the train with my bottle of Royale Coffee still in my pack, I felt pretty hopeless, believe you me.'

Tyrell put his hands wide. ‘I won't bore you with all the ins and outs of what I did, but you know how the label on the bottle has a picture of your Uncle Harold on it, Pat, as he looked in about 1890? It gives his name underneath and eventually I came across a reception clerk in a hotel who knew the name of Hunt. There was a sort of conference with everyone adding their bit, and it eventually came out that this Senhor Hunt used to live in São Paulo a long time ago but must, so everyone thought, be dead by now. I'd wondered if he was a relative of some sort, although the name didn't ring any bells. I seemed to have come to another dead end. However, one of the men knew that the Hunt Plantation was still in existence, although the chief was a Brazilian called Ariel Valdez.'

Jack leaned forward expectantly.

Tyrell grinned at his expression. ‘The rest was surprisingly easy. Valdez turned out to be well known in the town and I also learnt that, although the plantation was up at a place called Branca Preto, in the coffee country, Valdez was a frequent visitor to São Paulo, and the man himself was expected at the hotel in the next few days. I hung around and introduced myself to Valdez when he arrived. He was intrigued by my story. He didn't know of any connection between John Marsden and the company, which wasn't surprising, but the upshot was that he invited me up to Branca Preto to see the plantation for myself. It ended by Valdez inviting me to stay on as assistant manager. I think he fancied having a European around the place. He tended to be a bit dismissive of his fellow Brazilians. In July of last year I officially went on the payroll of Hunt Coffee.'

Pat shook her head wonderingly. ‘It's incredible to think I believed you to be dead while Uncle Frederick was paying your salary.' She turned to Jack. ‘That's why Meredith Smith called this morning. He brought the wages book and so on, that showed Larry worked for us in Brazil.'

‘Was your uncle checking up on me?' asked Tyrell with a frown.

‘You can't blame him,' said Jack quickly, seeing Pat was stuck for an answer.

‘I suppose so,' said Tyrell, in a disgruntled way. He thought it over, then shrugged. ‘I'm not used to having my word doubted, that's all. Anyway, after a time I began to think I'd imagined the whole idea of a link between my past and Hunt Coffee. Valdez never mentioned the name “Helston” or something might have twigged, but all Valdez talked about was the Hunt family, and Senhor Frederick in particular.'

‘Did you think of trying to trace the Hunt family in England?' asked Jack.

‘No. It seems like the obvious thing to do, but I'd been invalided back to Blighty without any memories stirring and I thought I'd covered that end of things. You must remember I was convinced I was John Marsden, an Australian. Of Pommy origin as the Aussies say, but definitely an Australian. In the end, I made my mind up to move on. I'd decided to leave when Valdez returned from London. He left me in charge quite happily. It was just a case of keeping the place ticking over and sending off the occasional report to the head office in London. He sailed on the thirteenth. Unlucky for some, eh?'

Jack nodded. ‘What were his plans while he was in London? Did he talk about meeting up with any old friends?'

‘I don't think he had any old friends in London. He'd been here before, but that was about three years ago.'

‘That's right,' said Pat. ‘Mark knew him, of course, and so did Uncle Frederick and H.R.H., but they're business acquaintances, not friends.'

‘Valdez never mentioned anyone in London apart from your family, Pat,' said Tyrell. ‘What he was really looking forward to was spreading himself a bit in Paris. Rightly or wrongly, he thought Paris had more to offer him than London. I suspect he was probably right about that but I didn't enquire too closely.' He grinned. ‘That was his affair.'

‘So he didn't have any worries about his trip? Business worries or any other sort?'

‘None whatsoever. As I say, he was looking forward to it.'

‘There's been a suggestion he quarrelled with Mark Helston. Can you imagine what that quarrel might have been about?'

‘How could I? I was thousands of miles away. There certainly wasn't anything wrong with the plantation, that's for sure.'

‘No . . . You'd know if there was, I suppose?'

‘Certainly. Don't forget I'd been there since July and had sole charge of the place whenever Valdez was absent. It was a decent post, as I say, but I'd had enough. I had a hankering to see what the rest of the country was like. The coffee country is fertile but not much to look at. It's a series of dusty red plains, stretching endlessly for miles. I had a yen to go further afield, up to tropical Brazil. According to the stories you hear, there's gold and gems for the taking all along the Amazon and I thought I'd try my luck. I'd done a good bit of prospecting in the Outback and thought I stood as good a chance as anyone. With that in mind, I waited for Valdez to return.'

‘But he didn't come back.'

‘No.' Tyrell crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘He should have got to Rio on the twenty-fifth, but I didn't think anything of it until a couple of weeks later. As I said, I thought he'd stayed on in Rio. After a while I cabled the head office in London to see if he'd been delayed, to be told that, as far as they knew, Valdez had sailed on the tenth.'

‘Did you inform the police?'

Tyrell shook his head. ‘No. I agree that's what you'd probably do in London but Branca Preto isn't London or anything like it. As he had all his valuables with him, I assumed he'd upped and left. I stuck it out at the plantation until March. I left the foreman, De Oliveria, in charge.'

He smiled. ‘I didn't bother too much about that part, to tell the truth. I felt I'd been left holding the baby when Valdez hadn't showed up, so the first London knew of my departure was my last report when I told them I was off. When I got to Rio I tossed a coin and got a boat which eventually wound up at Para, on the mouth of the Tocantins. I'd meant to get onto the Amazon itself, but I met up with three Brazilians on the boat who told me that they intended to get a launch up to Maraba and there get a boat of their own up the Araguya, where, according to them, the river virtually ran with gold.'

He looked at them ruefully. ‘That's where things went badly wrong. To listen to these three talk, you'd think they knew the jungle like the back of their hand. After a couple of days on the launch it was obvious they'd never been away from the coast in their lives. We got to Alcobaca and they refused to move another step. I pressed on to Maraba, convinced I could do better by myself. It was a crazy thing to do but having come so far, I didn't want to back down. I did get a boat, but that's the only thing which went right. It holed on some rapids, I cracked my head on the rocks and only just managed to make it to the shore, where I lay, thinking my last hour had come. I can't really tell you what happened next but it was a priest, a Freire Jose, a Dominican missionary, who picked me up from the riverbank. I got him to write down what had happened afterwards, because I couldn't remember any of it.'

He lit another cigarette. ‘I don't know if it was the bang on the head that did it, but I woke up in the whitewashed room at the Dominican mission knowing I was Laurence Tyrell of the Irish Guards. I didn't know where I was or how I'd got there. The last thing I could clearly remember was the war. Eventually, over the next few days, it came back to me. It was the oddest sensation, I can tell you. I stayed at the mission until I was well enough to travel, then I got back to Para and there took a ship to Madeira and so on to London. Fortunately my wallet and passport had been buttoned into my shirt pocket when my boat capsized, so they were safe. I travelled home as John Marsden, as my papers were in that name and I didn't want to explain myself to any officials.'

He leaned back on the sofa. ‘And that's just about that. It came as a bit of a facer to find you were married, Pat. Mr Stafford, the solicitor, annoyed me. He so obviously didn't believe I was the long-lost Larry Tyrell, even when I showed him Freire Jose's statement, that I wanted to prove it to him. When he suggested I come with him to see you, I jumped at the chance. It was only in the taxi to your house that he told me you'd remarried.'

‘Is the statement from Freire Jose still at the solicitors?' asked Jack.

Tyrell raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, it is. Why?'

‘Oh, no reason, really. It's just a fairly important document. I'm glad to know it's in safe hands.' He rose to his feet. ‘My congratulations on your return, Mr Tyrell. What do you plan to do now?'

‘That rather depends on my wife,' answered Tyrell with an affectionate look at Pat. ‘I don't know if I can settle in this country any longer, but that's up to her.'