Acts of Allegiance

by Peter Cunningham

  ‘The fact that Ireland was neutral, father, does not mean that Irishmen did not fight,’ I said. ‘My father fought, for example.’

  ‘Good for him.’

  ‘And my grandfather—in the Highland Brigade.’

  ‘The Boer War, indeed. Fought to hold sway over the blackamoor. You think the blackamoor is fit to govern himself? Ask your grandfather. Then ask him what he thinks about the Irish.’

  ‘My grandfather is dead.’

  ‘Nonetheless.’

  ‘The Irish fought the British and won their independence,’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Some prize indeed,’ said Dom Alfred, slyly. ‘Twenty-three per cent of the world’s population look to Westminster for governance but brave little Ireland knows better. By the way, Ransom, why have you been sent here for your schooling and not to a pigsty in Eire?’

  General laughter brought victory to the priest’s cheeks as Welch kicked again, harder, and I felt a surge of fierce loyalty.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ransom? No Irish school suitable, was there?’

  ‘My family have always been educated in England. It is our tradition. I was merely pointing out a matter of fact.’

  ‘And the matter of fact I was making is that a bog will scarcely be enough to feed a nation, even one as used to muck as Eire,’ said Dom Alfred to applause, as the door opened. ‘What?’

  Vance stood there in his sports coat and grey flannels, looking furtive.

  ‘Excuse me, Father.’

  ‘Yes, what is it, Vance?’

  ‘Father Nestor wishes to see Ransom,’ Vance said.

  A winding corridor linked the classrooms to the castle, through a room where our shoes were kept on numbered shelves, by way of the urinals, and led to a flight of stairs laid down in cold brown marble.

  ‘What’s he want me for?’ I asked again.

  ‘Told you, haven’t the remotest, old boy,’ Vance said breezily, although his replies came tinged with a quality of evasion that unsettled me.

  I already smoked quite heavily, and the middle finger of my right hand was tobacco-stained, something Father John had remarked on with displeasure when I had last served him at mass.

  ‘Has Father John complained about me?’

  Smoking was an offence for which I had already been given detention; repeated convictions resulted in flogging, a punishment I was familiar with and whose execution Nessie reserved to himself.

  ‘It’s smoking, isn’t it?’ I asked as we arrived outside an oak door set into a deep, stone wall.

  ‘It’s not smoking, chum,’ said Vance with a little grimace as he pressed the bell, stood back and, with an almost courtly gesture, indicated that I should enter.

  Father Nestor’s study was furnished with a narrow bed, a wash basin, a gas ring with a kettle, an armchair, and a desk frothing with opened books and sundry papers. My previous visits here had involved me lowering my trousers and drawers and leaning forward across the armchair as Nessie had flogged my arse with a bamboo cane.

  ‘Ah, Ransom, come in and sit down, please.’

  Drips fell from Nessie’s nose, his demon eye watered and his Adam’s apple leapt.

  ‘Martin,’ he said with a frown and consulted a file lying open in front of him. ‘It is Martin?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘It’s just that some chaps don’t answer to their christening appendage.’ He wiped his nose with a rag and cleared his throat. ‘Martin, the dear Lord has never given us explanations for His decisions, and we, His little children, are left to trust in His infinite wisdom, which in turn is informed by His love for each and every one of us. It is not our place to question His will, but to accept it, however painful that may be. What do we know of His great design? Almost nothing. Were we, mere children, present at the birth of creation? No, we were not. And even had we been, what could we have contributed to that cosmic drama? Would we have had the vision that saw fish evolving into popes and kings? That saw mice begin their long journey to become the Woolly Mammoth? Not likely, but the Lord did. He is all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving and all-merciful. Happy are we who are called to His table.’

  Amid this mangled excursion through Nessie’s justification of his own irrelevance came the ominous sound of danger and my ears began to hum.

  ‘We are born, we die. Life is but a preparatory stage for the great celebration that awaits us in heaven, that is, awaits those of us who live and serve the Lord. Death where is thy sting? Saint Paul asks in his letter to the Corinthians. Death is nothing, ah, Martin, death is a temporary separation; indeed, death may be embraced fondly as we stumble forward in this life of hard knocks and bumps.’

  Unable to contain my terror, I sprang up.

  ‘What?’ I cried.

  ‘My poor boy,’ said Dom Nestor, his expression that of someone utterly lost, ‘your dear father is dead.’

  For the remainder of that wretched day, during which I was excused classes and study, Vance never left my side. When I walked from Nessie’s room, weak, shaking and disbelieving, Vance was there.

  ‘You knew,’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid so, chum, yes.’

  Most of the headmaster’s rambling account had escaped me, except for a few essential details: my father had dropped dead in Green Park, not far from his club; cause of death was a heart attack. He had already been cremated. I had not even known he was in London.

  In the woods of Lawrence Abbey, in a draughty hut, Vance produced a packet of Players. The taste of that tobacco, before we lit up, and the first, vital suck of smoke, remains for me the last connection to the Captain. Vance and I sat unspeaking, until, eventually, as if we had been immersed in a discussion, he said, ‘Sounds like he was a really first-class man.’

  ‘He was more than first class,’ I began, as I tried to explain the person I had been so intimately observing and imitating for most of my thirteen years. A man never entirely at ease, but nearest to being happy at night when we were all inside, doors locked, shutters barred. In his mind’s eye he was forever fixed on some scheme or other that would spring him from whatever latest mess he had slid into. He never truly knew what it was like to live, other than to be in perpetual flight, urging himself ever faster to outrun his memories, to launch himself into fresh schemes, and more trouble, as if to obliterate his failures that rolled ever larger behind him.

  ‘I hope he didn’t suffer,’ I said.

  ‘Of course he didn’t,’ Vance said. ‘Heart attack? Happens the whole time. They feel nothing. Take my word for it.’

  I had studied every one of the Captain’s movements: the way he lit his cigarette, how he arched one eyebrow as the first response to a question, and how, when he sat on a wall, or a gate, he brought up his right foot and rested it on his left knee. I recalled how the darkening pomade he put in his hair smelled vaguely like saddle leather. I told Vance about the different voices he used with different people: how he took on a bit of Danny’s accent with Danny; his swift changes between being happy and stern when he spoke to Oscar, my dog; and how, with just the two of us on the mountain, he would sometimes throw back his head and open his mouth to release a prolonged roar of joy.

  Vance listened with polite interest as I described how the Captain, when I asked him what he did when he went away, always became vague. Yet he had spoken warmly of London, and of the great buildings we would one day visit together, and trains that ran underground, and of his club on Piccadilly where he had met the men who ran the empire. The Captain had spoken of balmy Green Park, and Greenwich, which was the time centre of the world, and Harrods, and London taxis, and told me how one day we would go to Royal Ascot together. It was as if he had wanted to imbue me with something that he feared he might lose, or had already lost, as if I were the one to carry forward the precious memories, as if he knew, even as he was making such promises, that these were promises he would never keep. Our discussions happened when just the two of us were out walking the land, Oscar romping ahead and starting rabbits, the warm
th of the sun radiating from the stones in the walls that marked our farm’s uneven divisions. On a clear day, when one could just about see, or perhaps, imagine, the Suir, at such moments, the sense that we in Waterloo were not only safe but somehow anointed was something my father relished, I told Vance.

  When it grew too chilly, we walked into the hills behind the castle, and I explained, as my tears began, how the truth was that my education was being paid for by my mother’s godmother, Auntie Hazel, and that money was a constant source of worry for my father. With his British military title and accent, his larger than life personality and air of entitlement, he had managed all his life to be given credit by bookmakers, hotels, department stores and wine merchants. ‘And yet, I once saw him give a pound note to a beggar,’ I said. ‘A fortune. I asked him why he’d done it and he told me that he wanted to go to heaven when he died.’

  ‘And I’m sure he has, chum,’ said Vance with great seriousness. ‘Without the slightest doubt, that’s where your old man has gone.’

  I wept openly, unashamed, as all my memories of the Captain came tumbling out, including how he claimed he had taken ninety Germans prisoner on the Rhine and then driven into German-held Düsseldorf for a beer, and how he’d got wounded in the backside in a house outside Antwerp where he’d been in bed with a nurse when the roof came in. Without warning, Vance began to laugh, and to my surprise, so did I, my tears of desolation turning to fierce, defiant pride, as if we were two brothers for that small window of time.

  7

  NEAR WATFORD, HERTFORDSHIRE

  Spring 1967

  In a long, book-filled study where a tray with a whisky decanter and tumblers was set out before a fire of aromatic beech, table lights with green shades glowed. Beyond the tall windows I could make out brooding parkland.

  ‘Is Alison here?’

  ‘Couldn’t make it, old boy, but sends her warmest regards.’ I remembered the big, hooked nose and the feathery eyelashes, except that now they belonged to a rather thickset man. ‘Goodness, I often think about the old days! How on earth were we educated—eh? All those bloody monks, queer as tuppenny bits. Still, it was the best my parents could afford at the time.’

  We raised our glasses.

  ‘Your father was a diplomat,’ I said.

  Vance frowned. ‘No, I think you must have the wrong chap. My old man worked for a chartered accountant.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought he worked abroad.’

  ‘Never left London in his entire life, but sent me to school in Shropshire, as you know.’

  ‘I must be thinking of someone else,’ I said as the past scurried through my mind.

  ‘Alison tells me you live on an absolutely gorgeous estate in Ireland,’ Vance was saying. ‘Mountains, lakes. A beautiful wife, a baby and another expected. A paying job in Dublin. Well done, chum!’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Two boys,’ he said with a little smile. ‘We live in Suffolk and I spend three nights a week in London. Our lads will go to the local grammar, can’t afford otherwise. The tax in this country is a real bummer, take my word for it.’

  After school, he had joined the RAF and had been posted to a base in Kent, where an unexploded German bomb had gone off one night outside the officers’ mess and shattered his eardrum, he told me. ‘Been behind a desk ever since.’

  ‘What do you do, Vance?’

  ‘I suppose you could say I keep in touch with certain people,’ he replied genially. ‘Listen to them with my good ear, so to speak. Provide a link, if you know what I mean. Try to use what I hear to smooth things out, to make sense from nonsense, to occasionally stop people making fools of themselves. Get around the bloody mountains of paperwork. I’m a very small cog in a very big wheel.’

  ‘Foreign Office.’

  ‘Well, yes, exactly. Full of the most boring old farts who’ve been there since the Flood, celluloid collars and bowlers, wandering around dreaming of gin, some of them have spent their lives in Burma, or Ceylon, or Hong Kong. We’re just nannying them, basically, until it’s time for them to go home and die. But I expect you have them too.’

  ‘I work as a higher executive officer in the political division of External Affairs,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it’s like watching paint dry.’

  ‘But you at least had a bit of excitement after school, from what I hear.’

  ‘It wasn’t all that much, believe me.’

  He offered cigarettes from a sandalwood-lined box. ‘What regiment?’

  ‘Royal Engineers.’

  ‘Ah, the good old sappers!’

  ‘A mere probationary second lieutenant, I’m afraid. Africa.’

  ‘The dark continent,’ Vance said. ‘If you ask me, we’ll be damn lucky to get out of it.’

  ‘I was in charge of a military survey team, three hundred miles south-west of Nairobi. One night, the Mau Mau ambushed me when I was out having a piss, shot and ate my horse and then tried to hold me hostage.’

  Vance’s eyes shone with admiration. ‘But you made a run for it.’

  ‘After ten days, when it was touch and go whether I’d be next on the menu. Walked for five days,’ I said. ‘I was rescued by some Maasai.’

  ‘And now we have all your chaps’ maps to show for it, but no bloody country.’ He leaned back and joined his hands. ‘History is a bugger, isn’t it? A small island like ours, by virtue of philosophy, brains, guts and vision manages to take over half the bloody world. I mean, look at what the Venetians achieved—all they owned was a sodding swamp and yet they controlled the Mediterranean. However, one has to believe in something, so for me that something is what we still have and are trying to hold on to. A way of life, things I dare say you understand, chum.’

  ‘England’s record is poor when it comes to Ireland.’

  ‘“Poor” is kind—I would say appalling. Which is a very good reason for wanting to correct the balance. We have no huge expectations that matters in Ulster will ever be other than bloody awful. The way they rig the voting and stack their police force with Unionists. Sooner or later it’s going to come back to bite them. Our wish would be to contain the thing when it blows up. To at least know what’s going on.’

  ‘You think it will blow up?’

  ‘We play second fiddle in this to our friends in the Special Branch of the Met, who’ve been hunting down Fenians for a hundred years. But bad government—and Ulster’s is the worst kind—always blows up eventually. And here’s the thing, chum: you never know where it might end. Could well spill across the border and swallow up you chaps. Which is the last thing anybody wants, I think you’ll agree. The problem is, if that does happen, we don’t think you lot have, shall we say, the resources to contain it. We think you’ll need some help.’

  ‘What kind of help?’

  Vance got to his feet and grimaced as he stretched his back. ‘What we have in mind is friendly awareness. Uncle and nephew is far too patronising, but you get the drift. A way of sharing common thoughts and concerns. A way of making what’s blocked, fluid. Both sides working in each other’s best interests.’

  He was pacing down to the book-lined far wall, and back again, swinging his arms.

  ‘So, we might ask you, chum, what exactly is the thinking regarding such-and-such—off the record, of course—and you might say, well, our chaps can’t get anywhere with, whomever, in Ulster, and we might say, well, we’re paying the fat bastard’s salary, why don’t you let us give him a little nudge, eh? And that’s it really. You may not always know the answers, of course, but your ministry, if you’ll permit me to say so, is on the small side, and therefore information is probably more shared than not. Look, no one expects hundreds of years of history to dissolve over a wet weekend, but at least if we can help each other informally, then surely that’s the least we should do?’ Vance looked suddenly at his wristwatch as if he had just remembered another appointment. ‘But I mustn’t keep you; you’ve already been more than generous with your time.’

  ‘I’ve
taken the day off,’ I said.

  ‘The least you deserve,’ he said as we walked towards the hall and I heard the car outside starting up.

  ‘Vance.’

  His crooked grin. ‘Old boy?’

  ‘There is one thing.’ I drew him into an alcove beside the hall door. He nodded as I spoke and his fixed regard never left my face. ‘I’ve searched extensively, but I can’t seem to find a record of it,’ I concluded.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Vance said. ‘Happy to try and help, chum.’

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, I’m not trying to take advantage … ’

  ‘Nonsense! What are friends for?’ he asked as we resumed our progress towards the car.

  It had stopped raining and I could now see ancient trees in the nearby paddocks.

  Vance said: ‘Further to what we’ve just discussed, you’ll find some small concessions from Whitehall that should go down well. Important that your career be a success. And of course, regarding today, just pull the ladder up behind you, what?’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent.’

  ‘So … how do we … converse?’ I asked.

  Vance laughed. ‘As simply as possible, please God. My word, what a bloody day. I fantasise at times like these of being in the South of France, but of course I’ll never be able to afford it.’

  8

  PARIS

  April 1969

  Spring blossom scents skirmished with those of French tobacco and high octane gasoline. Waiters in green aprons brushed out their cafés and restaurants. On an impulse, I purchased, for the equivalent of nearly ten pounds, a swooping panama with a black band from the millinery establishment of Motsch Fils & Cie on the Avenue George V.

  ‘You look splendid!’ Sugar said.

  I loved the way she drew men’s glances, how her neck arched when she turned to me, her reflection in the windows of shops and parked cars, which sometimes made me look twice, as if I had just seen her for the first time. We lunched in Fouquet’s, on asparagus and artichokes, a veal chop and a piece of sole. A bottle of Montrachet. Something utterly affirming about sitting on one side of a white-clothed table, looking out over boxes of geraniums at the spinning world.