‘Max!’ Albert’s outraged bellow rang in his ears. ‘We are talking of crimes! Hideous, horrible crimes!’
‘—whereas very few means not-at-all-many-though-some.’ Max thought his son-in-law looked like a mastodon, a shaggy mammoth with the head of a traffic light. His clothes seemed to go off in all directions. He was rough, springy, hairy and muscular all at once.
There followed what seemed to be a lot of noise, perhaps a sudden storm or low-flying aircraft or those dreadful boys from the school over the road. The ones who teased Beryl who grew hairs on her chin. ‘Show us your beard, Beryl!’ they shouted. Beryl had wept. ‘I know I should have them off – but, see, Mr Montfalcon, they’re all I have!’ And she’d touch the nest of white hairs warming her chin. Max had to put up the shutters in his ears, retreated into strategic deafness, because the noise which appeared to be coming from Albert really was unbearable.
That’s how Cledwyn Fox found them, with Albert declaring, ‘We’re talking about death!’
‘Please, Mr Turberville,’ said Fox quietly, ‘my other guests … You can be heard as far away as D wing.’
‘I don’t care if I can be heard in kingdom come!’
He had what Fox thought of as a House of Commons bray, the sort of voice accustomed to being raised, a weapon to bludgeon the jeering opposition. The phrase ‘kingdom come’ hung in the air and suddenly Albert felt rather embarrassed. He seldom used that phrase, except when he was praying ‘Thy Kingdom come’ and ‘For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory.’
Now in Albert’s heart there warred two conflicting emotions, both deeply embarrassing. He didn’t know which was worse – being ignored by his stubborn, obtuse, infuriating father-in-law or being thought of as religious by the poncey little Welshman with the golden earring.
From down the corridor came the shrill cries of Lady Divina. The widening hole in the ozone layer was disturbing her particularly that day. Now not one hole – ‘But two! But two!’ Dustbowls in Kent and typhoons in Glasgow. Proliferating skin cancers. The Sahara, already swiftly advancing through Africa, now breaking into a gallop.
‘The seas will rise and drown us!’ Lady Divina called in her curious, carrying, fluting voice. ‘And the nuclear fuel we have dumped at sea will break from its concrete casing and poison the whales. Our high streets will stink with dead fish … ’
‘Oh, shut your fucking gob, silly old bitch!’ a male voice further down the corridor now began shouting – Major Bobbno, ex-Inniskillen Fusiliers, Sandhurst boxing champion, decorated in the First World War, recalled to the colours in the Second.
‘Defeatism in the face of the enemy, rank cowardice!’ yelled Major Bobbno. ‘Take that man out and shoot him. It’s not a soldier, it’s a bleating sheep!’
Matron Trump hurried into Max’s room. ‘Oh, come please, Mr Fox! I’m having trouble restraining the Major. He’s fallen on one knee and will not move. He has his light-weight hand-reacher to his shoulder and he’s working those plastic jaws like mad. He has hit Nurse Daly with it, and I fear he’s broken the magnet.’
Down the corridor Major Bobbno’s voice barked stentorian commands … ‘Ready, aim, fire!’ This order was followed by a series of loud clicks and Major Bobbno became the firing squad shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Bang, bang, bang!’
Cledwyn Fox looked darkly at Albert Turberville. ‘You’re causing a disturbance,’ he said evenly. ‘I must ask you to leave.’
But Albert stayed where he was, firmly planted, his House of Commons stance as when ordered by the Speaker of the House to withdraw – mutinous, stolid. ‘Give me one good reason why I should? I pay for my father-in-law to be here, remember? Damn near five hundred quid a week.’
‘I could give you a number of reasons, Mr Turberville. But one will do. You’re standing in a large pool of urine.’
Max smiled.
One afternoon Fox watched as Albert thrust rather fat legs from his Jag, smoothed down the crumpled back of his blue suit, and cornered the little nurse-aide Imelda.
‘Where in Christ’s name is he? Tell me, you silly girl, or I will see to it that you go the same way as Imelda Marcos.’
‘He’s gone out,’ she kept repeating helplessly.
‘Where to?’
‘We don’t exactly know.’ Mr Fox came up quietly behind them. ‘Imelda, Lady Divina needs changing. I’ll deal with this.’
‘Are you telling me that my father-in-law is wandering about London? And unattended? You don’t know where he is? What kind of authority are you?’
‘We are not an authority, Mr Turberville, this is a nursing home. I’ve told you before. Your father is what is known as a “wanderer”. That’s why we’ve wired him up. I shall soon be fitting him with an electronic tracking device – once I can decide on some part of his person where he won’t know about it. When he finds a homing device, he rips it off.’
‘He should be confined.’
‘What would you like us to do? Lock him in his room? I tell you this is a nursing home, not a prison camp.’
‘A pity,’ Albert Turberville had replied.
Now what on earth, wondered Cledwyn Fox, did he mean by that? But there was no time to go into it because Matron Trump bustled in and announced that old Maudie Geratie was ‘just leaving’. And then Dr Tonks popped in and said, yes, Mrs Geratie was going ‘and going quite splendidly quickly too. I’m very, very pleased with her.’ And when Matron suggested it was really Dr Tonks who had done most of the work in getting old Maudie this far, Dr Tonks demurred and said: ‘No, no. She’s done most of it herself.’ Dr Tonks, in his white coat and his belt, rather like a cartridge pouch, where he carried his ampoules and syringes. ‘My ammo,’ he called them.
‘You don’t seem to keep your patients for long,’ Albert suggested rather sharply. ‘They’re out and about all over the shop.’
Mr Fox pulled at his lower lip, a movement he invested with gentle scorn. ‘You don’t understand. This elder is not going for a little walk. She’s dying, Mr Turberville. Leaving. They do it regularly in Serenity House.’
Then as if by magic Jack appeared. Albert noted that he had a Mouse head tucked beneath his arm. The eyes were black, the nose bulbous. Black lips were parted in a rigid smile to show a poisonously red tongue. A furry black scalp beginning with a pronounced V swelling into big looping black ears. ‘Hiya, Mr Turberville, sir.’ Jack greeted his new landlord.
‘Jack’s a marvel!’ Mr Fox said. No-one in Serenity House is ever quicker to the bedside of a departing elder than our Jack. You know about old Maudie, don’t you, Jack?’
The boy lifted a thumb. ‘On my way, captain.’
‘I think he must have a nose for it,’ said Mr Fox. ‘Often he seems to know an elder is on her way before the elder knows herself!’
Jack looked at Albert and winked. Then the boy donned his head and sped lightly away to watch over the departure of old Maudie.
Jack had become an indispensable member of the staff of Serenity House. It was as if he had always been there. He wore the white uniform and took much pride in it. ‘If only Marta could see me now,’ said Jack as he preened in front of the mirror. Night Matron was especially pleased with his progress. ‘He has energy, strength and no qualms whatsoever,’ she reported to Cledwyn Fox, who beamed at the news and slept like a baby in his bed at nights’. He was worth at least two members of staff.
No one knew where Jack went when he clocked off. It was vaguely understood that he was ‘putting up’ somewhere. It could not have been far away for it was observed that he walked to work. He had no social security number, no bank account, no address, no apparent friends. True, Edgar the chiropodist had invited him to a meeting to protest against Economic Monetary Union, and had spent a fortune on perfume for the occasion. Then Edgar had failed to turn up at Serenity House for a full fortnight and when he did appear he sported the ghost of a black eye and his pink lapel button – Eurobugger – And Proud of It! – had been badly dented. Jack and Edgar did
not speak again after that – but no one noticed. Everyone thought he was simply brilliant. A triumphant addition to the cast of Serenity House.
Cledwyn Fox saw Albert to his car and he did not mince his words. ‘May I speak to you, man to man?’
That’s rich, Albert thought.
Cledwyn Fox had a good idea what Albert was thinking and it only made him angrier. Homophobic bastard, he said to himself. To Albert, he said: ‘If you’re unhappy with the facilities at Serenity House, I’m sorry. I want your father-in-law to be happy. I respect Mr Montfalcon. He’s a gentleman. But I have to consider our elders. And my staff. Your visits are disturbing them. Some of our frailer guests are showing symptoms of distress. Serenity House, Mr Turberville, is like a heavily loaded ocean liner. Not as young as she used to be. Not as – shall we say – balanced? If we’re going to make waves, then we should leave the ship.’
‘Are you asking me to take Max away?’
‘I will do anything to keep Serenity House on an even keel.’
‘Like throwing an old man overboard?’
‘Mr Turberville, I’m in complex negotiations with colleagues abroad to form a loose association with similar eventide refuges on the continent. Naturally my business partners wish to see a calm, happy ship. Like any institution we have rules. And if an elder is disrupting the lives of others, I can ask the elder’s child to remove her.’
‘Or him.’ Albert was suddenly terrified.
‘You could always take him home, Mr Turberville. As you’re so concerned about his tendency to wander, take him. You could keep a close eye on him at home.’
Albert remembered how sorry he’d felt for Max when he found him wrapped in string, with only his blue eyes moving to tell Albert he wasn’t dead. If only Elizabeth had gone on to kill her father. Driven out of her wits by the old man’s cunning intolerable ways, his saintly daughter does for him. It happened more often than people liked to suppose.
Instead, Albert had saved Max. He made Lizzie see sense. He’d made other arrangements. And where had it got him. Erica Snafus in the House tea room: ‘I hear Superintendent Slack’s team have almost completed their enquiries in Poland. He wasn’t joking when he promised to hit the ground running. They’ll be home any day now. They’ll want to talk to your father-in-law. If you ask me, Albie, the net’s closing. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. What’s the matter, Albie? You look as if you’ve been kicked in the balls. What a surprise! Never thought you had any.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fee fi foh fum . . .
Jack and Innocenta kept to separate rooms in the big house on Highgate Hill, though Innocenta secretly wondered how long this would last. Jack had built a new wall across his room, of empty polystyrene boxes from the Green Dragon. The place smelt heavily of soy sauce. He did not like people sneaking up on him. ‘I’d burn someone sneaking up on me.’ Innocenta had laughed because she was sure he was joking. Wasn’t he? Any day now she must tell Max she had taken Jack home and given him a room and was keeping an eye on him like mad.
Elizabeth interrogated Albert nightly. ‘What do they say he’s done?’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘Your father went back to Germany off his own bat, in nineteen thirty-eight. Until that time he’d been a student at Oxford.’
‘But he’s British!’
‘He was once. Then he wasn’t. Then he was again. He’s had three lives.’
‘Does he have another six to go?’
‘That’s cats, Lizzie. He’s had it. They’re close behind him and they’ll get him. The net’s closing. They’ll be banging on the door of Serenity House before long. As soon as they’re sure that Maximilian von Falkenberg who went back to Germany and your father are one and the same. Unless he has the good sense to pop off.’
‘Why did he go back?’
‘His parents lived there. And apparently he felt a sense of duty towards his country. Anyway, once back in Germany he dropped out of sight. Until nineteen forty-one. Then he appears on the staff of the Nazi University in Poznań, Poland. The Germans had invaded Poland and their scholars were trying to prove that parts of Poland were German or had been long before they were Polish. This meant doing all sorts of research into the earlier settlements, as well as genetic and biological investigations into the differences between the races. Scientifically it was a lot of tripe. Nazi delusions about racial purity. Apparently that’s what he did. A year later, in nineteen forty-two, he leaves the Reichsuniversität, and goes to work in some unidentified concentration camp in Poland. In the medical research block.’
‘Where he did these things?’
‘According to the allegations, yes.’
‘Killed people – right? How many people?’
‘No one knows. They don’t even know precisely what he was doing. He may have been involved in experimenting with recessive genes governing eye colour. The eyes of prisoners were used for this research. He was also interested in the different shaped heads of the so-called pure Germans. He investigated the difference between the shapes of heads of Germans, Slavs and Russians. They say the prisoners were killed. Using phenol injections. Whether he killed them or not – isn’t clear. Apparently this stuff was injected straight into the heart. Death followed minutes later.’
Elizabeth wasn’t satisfied. ‘You still haven’t said how many.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Lizzie. Stop going over this.’
But she refused to give in. Albert would go over it again. ‘They don’t know how many, Lizzie. Anyway the figure is likely to be pretty much academic. Around four million are said to have died in Auschwitz alone. How many he killed personally is not an issue. Tie him to one murder and he’s guilty.’
‘Go on.’
‘Around nineteen forty-three he disappears again. We don’t know why. Next thing he’s heard of fighting Russians on the eastern front. This puzzles the investigators. Some think it must be a kind of punishment. He can’t have volunteered because a posting to the eastern front was virtually a death sentence. So to request a posting would be the same thing as asking to commit suicide.’
‘Perhaps he went there to measure heads, kill more people?’
‘No. By that time most Jews in Russia were either dead or they’d fled. Max served on the eastern front as an ordinary soldier. He saw action near Minsk, and then when the German armies began falling back, he retreated with them. Captured by the Russians we think he spent the next three years in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp.’
‘How many?’ Elizabeth’s voice rose to that high quaver pitch that made Albert cringe.
‘Only he knows that. Don’t ask me Lizzie. The Russians let him go in ’forty-five and he returned to Berlin. There, for some reason, God knows what, the Americans took him in tow. Maybe they saw him as a prize of sorts.’
‘Why didn’t the Americans arrest him? Why didn’t they charge him?’
‘Nothing to charge him with. Perhaps to them he was an ordinary soldier released by the Russians. Or maybe he was useful. Perhaps he had information. Who knows? At that time the Nazis were no longer the enemy – it was the Russians. Camped in their half of Germany. Max was in American hands for about eleven months. The next thing we know, he’s in Britain. The suspicion is that there was some kind of deal done between the American and British Intelligence Services. About two hundred thousand people arrived in this country after the war. Unlike other immigrants from the war zones, your father was never screened. Why not? Never vetted. Never questioned. He did not enter the country illegally. He just appeared. The change of name is nowhere validated, yet his claim to be Max Montfalcon can’t be disproved. Either you accept there were two Maxes – or this thing was covered up. From one day to the next it seems Maxillian von Falkenberg became Max Montfalcon. That’s what they are saying. That a German became an Englishman. On what your father likes to call the Mountbatten principle. Remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ said Eliz
abeth. ‘Battenberg into Mountbatten. He was always a great admirer of Lord Mountbatten.’
‘One or both Maxes had been English from infancy. To all intents and purposes. He was schooled here. He was at university here. It wasn’t all that difficult. Yes, he became an Englishman so like the real article you can’t tell the difference. Once upon a time there was a German who turned into an Englishman.’
‘From Harwich,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Have you got any sense out of him?’
‘This last time I saw him I thought I just might break through. Then they had a drama. One of the old biddies began dying. Everyone flew around like mad. The old people were terribly upset. It seems Jack was in the vicinity and whenever Jack is close, someone dies. He asked me if you enjoyed trying to kill Max,’ her husband revealed. ‘I said he’d have to ask you. Then he asked me if you’d killed anyone else. He seems to think that’s what people do.’
Was the idea, then, something they picked up from Jack? The way one picks up flu, or meningitis, from close exposure to the agent of infection?
She asked him if he thought Jack ‘might’?
Instead of saying ‘might what?’ Albert said that Jack might see to it that ‘progress wasn’t impeded’.
‘It would be a considerable relief all round,’ said Lizzie. ‘Not least for Daddy himself, I’m sure. Will you speak to him?’
‘The sooner the better. We’ll take him for a drive somewhere we can talk privately. We’ll sound him out.’
Instead he made a speech: ‘I’m rather worried about my father-in-law. I don’t think he knows himself how much he’s suffering. Thing is, when death comes for Max Montfalcon, I’d be very grateful to anyone who didn’t get in the way.’
‘How grateful is grateful?’ asked cunning Jack.
‘Of course this would have to be stricly between ourselves … if we – um – made some arrangement. Innocenta wouldn’t understand.’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, you nearly popped him yourself,’ said Jack, turning to look admiringly at Lizzie in the back seat.
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