by R P Nathan
“That depends on how long you sleep.”
That was such an infuriating thing to say. I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind when I realised we were at Patrick’s and he’d already rung the doorbell.
The door opened and Aunty Jean greeted us. She looked tired but at least she hadn’t been crying this time. “He’s still much the same,” she said wearily. “But just go on up you two. Julius is with him already.”
John narrowed his eyes but said nothing and we started up the stairs with him racing ahead again, up to the top floor, and after a cursory tap, into Patrick’s room.
Julius was sitting by Patrick’s bedside and looked round as we entered. He stood up and walked towards us and John practically collided with him halfway into the room. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he snarled jabbing a finger at his chest. “Haven’t you done enough damage already?”
Julius ignored him, instead leaning to me and kissing me on both cheeks. “Hi Sarah, it’s been too long. You’re looking lovely as you ever did.” Only then did he slowly turn to John. “And nice to see you too John.” He coughed. “You know I would normally engage in some pleasantries with someone I hadn’t seen for ten years—”
“Cut the crap, Julius. If you hadn’t given Patrick that code none of this would have happened.”
“It’s not his fault,” I said.
John glared at me. “Of course it’s his fault.”
Julius held out his hands, palms up. “Of course it’s my fault. I am to blame.”
“You’re not,” said Patrick and we all started.
He was sitting up in bed, his eyes sleep-filled, his hair tousled. He shifted so that he could lean against the wall, the effort of speaking seeming to sap what little energy he had. “It was my fault,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I saw the code and really wanted to solve it.”
Julius sat down next to him again. “But I should never have allowed you to. I knew the code wouldn’t be good for you. That’s why I didn’t tell you who the letter was really written by just in case it got you... over-excited.” Julius’s voice trailed off and he bowed his head.
Patrick took his hand and patted it. “It’s OK,” he said softly, his voice no more than an extension of his breath. “It’s OK.”
“You can’t let him off that easily! Julius knew exactly what he was doing. And where did the code come from in the first place? From a book he stole from me, that’s where.”
“Be careful John.” Julius’s eyes were suddenly glittering. “I didn’t steal anything from anyone. I found the book a few weeks ago when I was going through some old junk.”
“Oh really?”
“Really. I recognised it immediately and I wanted to return it to you. But Patrick was ill and I had no way of contacting you. So in the meantime I arranged to take it to Oxford this weekend to have it carbon-dated.”
John blinked at him. “But it’s mine.“
“Of course it’s yours. But I thought it would be useful to establish categorically whether it’s genuine or not. Would that be OK?”
“Well… I guess so…”
“Good. Then I’ll let you know on Monday what the conclusion is.” Julius smiled at him but John scowled and looked away.
There was a creaking behind us. Patrick had hauled himself up and was walking over to the bookshelves. We watched as he took down a stuffed A4 card folder. He returned to his bed and slumped back down on it. “I’m knackered,” he said; but there was the faintest glimmer of a smile on his face, the first I’d seen. “Julius, this is the work I’ve done on the code: notes and explanations and so on.”
“We don’t need to think about that now,” said Julius uneasily.
“No I want you to have it. I obviously haven’t actually decoded it yet—”
“Really,” said Julius hurriedly. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll take the file if you want me to but I’m not going to look at it till you’re feeling better.” He stowed the folder under his arm.
“But don’t you even want to know—”
Julius held up a hand. “I mean it.”
“OK.” Patrick shrugged; but then almost immediately seemed troubled. “You will be careful won’t you?”
Julius raised an eyebrow.
“I mean…” Patrick leant forward and whispered confidentially. “There are people after this.”
My heart sank as I heard the words. “Patrick,” I groaned. “I thought we went through this yesterday. There’s no one after your stupid code.”
“Yes there is, Sarah!” His suddenly raised voice shocked even himself. He looked confused, frustrated, then turned to John. “You believe me don’t you?”
John closed his eyes and opened them, a long blink, no more than that. “Yes.”
“Oh, come on! Patrick, he’s just humouring you.” I turned to John bewildered. “You were the one who found him. How can you indulge him like this?”
“I’m not indulging him,” he said quietly. “I just don’t think it’s completely beyond the bounds of possibility—”
“Oh please.” I turned to Julius. “Tell him: he’ll listen to you.”
Julius regarded me and then Patrick. “Sarah’s right,” he said. “There is nothing to worry about. There is no one looking for this book. Why should there be?”
John opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again.
“But there have been people following me. I’m sure of it.”
“Perhaps there were,” said Julius gently. “But not any more. There really is nothing to worry about.” He smiled and put a hand on Patrick’s arm.
Patrick nodded, deep in thought.
“Look,” said Julius eventually. “I’d better get going.”
“But we’ve only just got here,” I said.
“I know. But I think it’s better if I did.” His eyes flickered to John. “I’ll come round on Monday night,” he said to Patrick. “When I’m back from Oxford. We’ll know then one way or the other whether any of this is true.”
We heard his steps receding down the stairs. I turned to John. “So what’s this book Julius is meant to have stolen from you?”
He stared back at me unblinking. “We found it in Rome when we were on holiday that time. Girolamo Polidoro’s journal. It got left behind in Venice when Patrick and I had to get out quickly.”
“Well I certainly remember that.”
“But wasn’t there another book as well?” said Patrick. His voice had a spark in it all of a sudden and he was sitting up alert. “A soldier’s diary?”
“Yes. Henry Shaeffer’s notebook. It found its way into my rucksack but somehow not Polidoro’s journal.”
“Did I read it?” I asked frowning. “It seems familiar somehow.”
He looked back at me, directly at me. His eyes were grey-blue, a steel and flint kind of colour. “Yes,” he said. “You read about his last days in Rome and of how he went round the Accademia —”
“That’s it!” I was surprised by the intensity of the memory. “That Veronese portrait of a man with a goitre. We went round the whole place looking for it.”
The barest shadow of a smile crossed John’s face.
“We walked round Venice together didn’t we?” I said bemused as the scenes came back, synoptic sparks, each one overlaying the last, a three dimensional holographic past, satisfying, colour saturated. “Why was that? Where were the others?”
“Patrick and Maya had gone to Murano and Julius and Duncan were still in the hotel.”
“Yes that’s right.” He watched my face as though sharing in my glimpses of recollection. “I remember. Shaeffer’s notebook was really interesting. Do you still have it?”
“I still have it,” and, as surprising as anything that had happened that day, he blushed, his whole face turning in an instant to rose pink. “I carry it with me,” he said looking defiant, expecting a comment but I said nothing, intrigued as he pulled the small clothbound notebook from inside his jacke
t. He hesitated and then held it out. I took it from him. Feeling the fabric cover against my fingertips, I remembered something else, of how we had sat together in the square and read portions of the diary; such sadness, I recalled. “He died at Gallipoli didn’t he?”
John nodded, his face grave. I opened the notebook close to the end and started to read.
And then Frances. She will be eighteen months old now and to have her in front of me, or dandling on my knee would bring me more happiness than I could ever put into words. You say that she is starting to talk. Please, my love, teach her “Papa” as well as “Mama” so that when I am there again she will have a good word for me. When I think of her my heart jumps and I feel a pure warmth inside and I know that even if I am killed or my name besmirched that her love for me will persist as long as she herself has breath; and one day a child of hers will love her in the same way—
I snapped the book shut feeling my eyes prickle with tears. As I had ten years before. A lifetime ago. “His family ought to have this,” I said softly. “His wife must be dead but Frances could still be alive...” I looked up and found John watching me uncomfortably. “You know don’t you?”
He frowned. “Perhaps.”
“What does perhaps mean?”
“I mean…” He drew breath and looked from me to Patrick and back again. I found his face impossible to read, no softness at all, a facts and figures face. How could anyone love a face like this?
“I mean I have looked into it,” he said. “I found out from the Public Records Office that Anna Shaeffer – his wife – died in 1976.” He sighed. “Frances is still alive or was two years ago. She’d be eighty-eight now.”
“Have you contacted her?”
“No. All I did was a directory enquiries search in Cambridge which is where Shaeffer was from. The number they gave me is for a private line at an old people’s home called Darnley.
“Then there’s Henry himself. The PRO couldn’t tell me exactly when he died even though I told them it was some time in 1915. They were having problems with their First World War records when I went there which is a shame because if we knew the exact date we could work out which bit of the campaign he died in. He was in the Royal Naval Division which led an attack up the coast from ANZAC Cove. But later on they joined the 29th Division who were pushing up from Cape Helles at the bottom of the Gallipoli peninsular. Most likely he died here during the summer of 1915 as the fighting ground into stalemate—. What’s wrong?”
I’d been staring at him so hard that he’d had to break off. “What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You’re more interested in your military facts and figures than you are in real people. Who cares which bit of the campaign he died in? What matters is that his daughter is sitting in an old people’s home and you’ve got something that belongs to her.”
He frowned. “The book belongs to me.”
“It does not. It was meant for his wife and daughter. You should return it.”
“She’s right you know,” said Patrick his voice again taking us by surprise. “We should go and see Frances and give her the book.”
“Assuming she’s still alive,” said John coldly.
“Well then we’d better do it soon, hadn’t we? Jesus, don’t you have any feelings at all?”
He glared at me, his breathing heavy but in the end he just said, “Fine,” and looked down at the ground.
“Great,” said Patrick and I was astonished to see a smile had broken out on his face. “Well let’s do it this weekend. Have you got the info on Frances?”
“I’ll text it to you,” he muttered. “When I get back home.”
“Great. Well, let’s talk tomorrow then and we’ll aim to go up on Sunday—”
“Hang on Patrick,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? You’re not well. You’ve been lying here for days hardly saying a word and now you suddenly want to take off for Cambridge? You need to take it easy.”
“But don’t you think it would be good for me to get some fresh air?”
“Of course, but—”
“And you proved to me yesterday that there’s no one following me so there’s nothing to be afraid of outside.” He smiled innocently. “So it’s settled. This Sunday?”
He looked at me and John and when John sulkily nodded I realised I had been out-manoeuvred and, having suggested returning the book in the first place, I could hardly back down now.
I frowned at him. “OK, but you stick with me the whole time.”
I made to give the notebook back to John, but he shook his head. “You and Patrick seem pretty certain about what should happen to it,” he said bitterly. “So you take it.” He looked at me and there was real anger in his eyes. But it lasted only a split second and then he had turned for the door and was gone.
Chapter 33
Aunty Jean was over the moon when I went over there to collect Patrick on Sunday. “He’s been so much better the last couple of days,” she said. “Talking and laughing. It’s like he’s back to normal again. I don’t know what you all did for him but it really helped.” She put her arms round me and hugged me and there were tears in her eyes which put tears in mine. I was happy for her, of course I was, but I was uneasy too.
Patrick really was transformed though. “I think it’s a very important thing we’re doing,” he said chirpily as we faffed around before we left. “We’ll be helping someone by doing it. That’s really key. If you help somebody you help yourself.”
Which sounded a bit New Age to me but he was grinning when he said it and just generally looked so happy that I didn’t have the heart to rubbish it. It was as though the breakdown had never happened, and he was the Patrick I’d always known again. I was as willing to buy into that as anyone.
Leaving the house was when the reality of our trip seemed to dawn on him though. He said walking up the road felt like wading through treacle, and I caught him a couple of times snatching glances over his shoulder; but he managed to hold it together and once we got into the Wood, he seemed more relaxed. After that it was only a few minutes further to the enclosed safety of the Tube.
We met John at King’s Cross and he was as lacking in personality as he had been a couple of days previous. He hardly said a word and made no attempt to respond to any question beyond yes or no. He didn’t seem at all cute any more, just impossibly rude.
The journey was spent sitting opposite him. Luckily we were on the fast train – well, fast for a Sunday anyway – which was so noisy that it made conversation almost impossible. Patrick and I took turns looking at Shaeffer’s notebook while John just stared stonily out the window.
At Cambridge station we got a taxi and were driven through wide yellow-brick streets, the roads tree-lined, leafy, until we reached Darnley residential care home, a large Victorian mansion with a modern extension on one side. We walked in silence up the broad gravel path and straight in to reception. A lady in her forties in a nurse’s uniform greeted us.
I looked at the boys and realised that I was expected to do the talking. I summoned a smile. “We’re here to see Frances Shaeffer. We’ve got an appointment.”
The nurse peered into a big desk diary then nodded and called over a girl in her mid-twenties. “Margret can you show these visitors to the Sunshine Lounge please.”
Margret led us down a dark hallway with doors on either side, through a TV area where a number of residents were dozing in front of the afternoon matinee, then round a corner, past a dining room from where a waft of institutional cooking hit us – no nostalgia in that smell, just mince – and finally into the lounge. There was a small conservatory at one end where glass doors opened onto the gardens. There were a dozen people sitting in the conservatory all quite elderly looking, most in wheelchairs, enjoying the sunlight which streamed in through the glass roof. Margret sat us down at a small table a few metres away from them and went to get Frances. I smiled at the residents who were watching us
with interest and then felt a jolt inside as I realised that they were all female.
“Have you come to see me, my dears?” a lady in a wheelchair called over in a frail voice. She must have been about ninety and looked at us hopefully. I stared back at her my eyes wide, biting my lip, doing anything to hold back the sob which was building inside of me. I was wondering what I was going to say when I heard a voice beside me.
“We’ve come to see one of your friends actually.” It was John. His voice was different to the way I’d heard it before. It was deep yet extremely calming, no edge or chippiness to it any more, just soothing warm honey. And then he had stood up and was walking over to her. He waved a sunny hello to the other ladies as well most of whom waved back and then he knelt down by the lady’s wheelchair and started talking with her. She listened enraptured and then giggled and whispered something back to him. The lady nearest to her was craning forward to catch their conversation. John turned so that she could hear as well and she giggled and then leaning almost out of her chair she said something to them both and the three of them burst into laughter.
Margret re-emerged through the double door on the right with an elderly lady walking beside her using a stick. She was dressed neatly in a blouse and cardigan and a pair of slacks and she walked steadily if slowly.
John returned to us, giving his new friends a parting wave. They waved happily back.
“What were you talking about?” I asked him astonished.
“Oh I couldn’t tell you.” He said looking at me sombrely and then his face split into a grin. “It’s far too rude.”
Frances shuffled over and we stood up to greet her. She looked at the three of us in turn and then back at Margret.
“I don’t think I know any of them Maggie. But I might be wrong...”
Again it was John who spoke, his voice gentle, kind. “Miss Shaeffer—”
“Oh please call me Frances.”