Beyond Recall

by Robert Goddard

  “Attaboy.”

  “Pam will blame me, won’t she?”

  “Naturally. But she won’t be able to prove it.”

  “That’ll only make it worse.”

  “What can I say, Trevor? I’m not offering to save your marriage. Just to find the person responsible for wrecking it. Other than you, of course.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “A bunch of keys is what I need.”

  He scowled. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “I seem to recall you derived considerable pleasure from my breakup with Miv.”

  “That was different.”

  “You’re right. You didn’t do me any favours at all.”

  “This is a favour?”

  “Could be.” I smiled. “We’ll just have to see how it turns out, won’t we?”

  On the Sunday following Michael Lanyon’s and Edmund Tully’s committal for trial, all six of us Gran, Grandad, Mum, Dad, Pam and me piled into the Talbot and drove up to Perranporth. This profligate use of carefully conserved petrol was justified on the grounds that we needed a break: a dose of seaside normality as well as a breath of fresh air.

  Truro had closed in around us over the past month, as the consequences of Uncle Joshua’s murder seeped slowly into the nooks and crannies of our lives. There would be no break for the Lanyons, of course. For them, dread and uncertainty stretched out into the future. But we didn’t mention them while we paddled and pottered away the afternoon. I for one tried not to think about them. They were part of what we were escaping.

  And they were also part of what we returned to early that evening. A gently hushed sabbath dusk was settling over Truro as we drove up Chapel Hill and turned into Crescent Road. There was hardly anyone about, and we’d fallen silent in the car, wearied by wind and sunshine, depressed by the close of the day and the end of our journey.

  Dad pulled up at the foot of our drive and I scrambled smartly out of the bench seat at the front which I’d been sharing with Pam; opening the garage doors was one of my responsibilities. Mum, Gran and Grandad began to make a more sedate exit from the rear as I started up the drive.

  Halfway to the garage, I stopped. Cordelia Lanyon, looking haggard and ill and wearing a long grey overcoat despite the warmth of the evening, was standing by the front door of the house, framed in the arched porch way She neither moved nor spoke, but stared at me impassively, with a strange expression I couldn’t decipher at the time but remember now as infinitely regretful.

  I heard the car doors slam and the engine cut out, then cautious footsteps on the drive behind me. I was aware of Gran standing at my shoulder, breathing faster than normal. At the sight of her, Cordelia moved out of the porch and advanced a few paces towards us, her expression stiffening.

  “What brings you here, Cordelia?” Gran said.

  “I thought you’d like to know, Adelaide.” It was strange to hear Gran’s name spoken. Nobody else, even Grandad, seemed to use it.

  “We’ll be leaving Tredower House tomorrow.”

  “Where are you going, my dear?”

  “Exeter. We’ve found lodgings there. It’ll make visiting Michael easier.”

  “But what about Nicky’s education?”

  “We’ll arrange schooling for him in Exeter. I’ve withdrawn him from Truro School, if that’s what you mean.” It was a bigger bombshell to me than anyone. I’d been assuming I’d meet Nicky face to face in a few days’ time at the start of the year. Now, suddenly, that wasn’t to be, and I didn’t know whether to feel glad or sorry. “As things are, we’d be in no position to pay his fees even if we stayed here.”

  “It must be difficult for you.”

  “Difficult?” Cordelia walked down to where we were standing and stopped in front of us. Closer to, her gauntness was still more apparent. Her skin, stretched taut over her high cheek-bones, had acquired a bluish translucency. Her eyes seemed larger than I remembered. “It’s been that and no mistake.”

  “You mean to shut up the house?”

  “No. The Ellacotts will look after it.” Mr. and Mrs. Ellacott had worked for Uncle Joshua as gardener and cleaner respectively since before the war. They were a reticent and dependable couple. “No call for you to be concerned, Adelaide.”

  “I wouldn’t want anything to go wrong. It’d be no bother to ‘

  “Stay away.” Cordelia’s face coloured as she snapped out the words.

  LHer gaze narrowed as she added, “If you can.”

  “It was my brother’s home.”

  “But not yours. Not yet.”

  “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

  “Until the trial’s over.”

  “We must pray …” From the corner of my eye, I saw Gran lick her lips nervously. Then she said, “For a true and just outcome.”

  “That we must,” said Cordelia slowly, staring at Gran as she spoke.

  Then she gave the faintest of farewell nods and walked smartly past us down the drive. Mum, Dad, Pam and Grandad parted to let her through and we all watched in silence as she headed off towards Chapel Hill.

  Only when she was out of sight did Dad say, “I wonder how long she was waiting here just to say that. She could have telephoned. Or written a letter.”

  That wouldn’t have been her way,” said Gran. “She knows she won’t be back.”

  I stared up at Gran in amazement, realizing the accuracy as well as the sincerity of her words. I’d sensed the awareness of it in Cordelia but hadn’t understood what it amounted to. The Lanyons were leaving Truro and they could only return if Michael was acquitted. Then they’d all be vindicated. Otherwise … “They’ll never come back?” I murmured plaintively.

  “Never’s a long time, Christian,” said Gran. “But that’s how long they’ll be gone, you may be sure. A precious long time.”

  My parents reacted in predictably contrasting ways to the news about Pam and Trevor. Mum wanted to dash up to Truro straight away and envelop Pam in a warm fug of maternal sympathy. Dad veered more towards impatience with both parties. Though willing to admit Trevor might have behaved stupidly, it seemed unreasonable to him that Pam should wish to end a marriage one year short of its silver wedding anniversary on account of a compromising photograph of her husband.

  Just how compromising I didn’t spell out, but that somebody had it in for Trevor was clear. Dad regarded this as an extenuating factor and declared his intention of underlining the point to Pam once the dust had settled. He apparently believed the breach was eminently reparable, a possibility Mum was also eager to entertain. In the end I gave up trying to point out that what had happened was irrevocable.

  They’d realize that eventually and probably blame me for encouraging false optimism. Either that or Pam would cave in and have Trevor back, only to regret it shortly afterwards. Between stonewalling Dad’s demands to know who Pam’s anonymous informant might be and reassuring Mum about the state she was in, I

  weighed the alternatives in my mind and realized both were equally feasible.

  All too soon we became bogged down in a debate about how the hotel would operate in Trevor’s absence. My own opinion, that it would run all the better without him, was regarded as unhelpful. But then Dad had never valued my opinion about anything, so I saw no need to put a lot of thought into shaping one. It was obvious where we were heading.

  Pam had already foreseen the threat and pleaded with me to fend it off.

  But that was easier said than done.

  “I’ll have to lend a hand,” Dad declared eventually. “Pam won’t be able to cope without help.” And so saying he bustled off to his study to clear his diary for the rest of the week.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mum as soon as he was gone. “It won’t come to anything.”

  “I hope not for Pam’s sake.”

  “But while he’s out of the room, there’s something else I want to discuss with you.”

  “About Pam?”

  “No. Nothing to do with t
hat at all.”

  “What, then?”

  “Well, it’s rather odd, actually.” Her voice fell to a confidential whisper. “It’s been going on for a couple of weeks now. Your father says I should ignore him and he’ll go away. But I’m not sure he will and, anyway, all he wants is to talk to someone.”

  “Who does?”

  “I’ve answered the telephone to him a couple of times myself and he sounds sensible enough, though your father thinks he’s probably senile.

  He won’t go into details over the telephone. In fact, he won’t say anything. Except that there’s something he wants to tell us -something important. Your father reckons it’s nothing of the kind and we shouldn’t encourage him, and I dare say he’s right, but what harm L can it do just to humour the poor old fellow if he’s ‘

  “Who? Who are we talking about?”

  “Oh, you probably don’t remember him. His wife was a good customer of ours over the years though she’s dead now, poor soul. He lives at Playing Place. They moved out to a bungalow there when he retired.

  They used to live in Fairmantle Street, of course, just round the corner from us in Cardew Street. Still, Playing Place isn’t far from Truro. Since your father refuses to see him and won’t hear of me going, I’d thought of asking Pam. Just as well I didn’t, in the circumstances. Anyway, now you’re here with some time to spare, I thought ‘

  “Just tell me who he is, Mum.”

  “Didn’t I say?” She frowned at me as if the oversight was somehow my fault. “Sam Vigus. Do you think you could possibly find out what he wants?”

  They were gone. I knew they would be, but the fact of it only really sank in as I crept across the empty lawn and stared up at the blank windows. Tredower House was deserted. Uncle Joshua was dead and the Lanyons had departed. There, with the drought-stunted grass rustling beneath my feet and the first tinges of autumn browning the trees around me, I confronted what seemed like the end of childhood.

  It wasn’t, of course. It was only the end of one phase of it. But also of an era. Though what the new one we were all entering was to comprise I could never have guessed. Everywhere I looked, there was only uncertainty. Michael Lanyon’s trial; my friendship with Nicky; my senior-school career: they were formless and unknowable, outside my control even though they were part of my future.

  Eleven is too young to glimpse the insecurity of life. It can seem bewildering at any age, but the brink of adolescence is likely to turn bewilderment into oppression. I walked down to the horse chestnut tree in the corner of the garden, sat on the swing and pushed myself aimlessly back and forth, listening to the rope creak on the branch and wondering when or if Mr. Ellacott would remove it. I looked up at the knots, knowing Uncle Joshua had tied them, imagining his stubby but nimble fingers manipulating the rope. Then I thought of Don Prideaux, with his cackling talk of the noose, and jumped off the swing so suddenly I nearly fell over as its momentum carried me forward.

  My stumbling steps became a run. I burst out from beneath the tree, crossed the lawn at a sprint and turned down the drive. Suddenly all I wanted was to be away from Tredower House, peopled only by a throng of memories, loud only with the absence of voices. I’d had enough of death and doubting. Tomorrow would be my first day at Truro School.

  I’d expected to dread the event. Now I positively craved it. Slowing as I ran down the road towards Boscawen Bridge, I prayed for the future to speed on and over me, like a wave that breaks but doesn’t bruise; and for a sight of clear water beyond.

  Playing Place straddles what was once the Falmouth road but is now a quiet lane a couple of miles south of Truro. The Fifties and Sixties had seen a ribbon of bungalows strung along the route. According to my mother, Sam and Doreen Vigus had moved into one of these after Sam’s retirement from Killigrew’s. But Doreen was dead now and maybe Sam was losing his grip on reality, living alone away from their old neighbours in Fairmantle Street. That was certainly one way to explain his recent telephone calls.

  But I didn’t believe it any more than Mum seemed to. And though the stooped and wheezy old fellow who answered the door was a sad and deflated parody of the cheery dough-bun of a removal man I remembered, it didn’t sound to me as if his mind had decayed anything like as rapidly as his body.

  “Christian Napier. That’s who it is, isn’t it? Well, I’ll be blowed.

  You’d best come in.” His head sagged and his chin was clumsily shaved, but his eyes were bright and alert. He was wearing trousers large enough for a clown, held up nearly to his armpits by short braces over what looked like a pyjama jacket. There was a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, apparently by some force of its own, and a growly cough lurking behind his every breath. “Your father sent you, did he?”

  “Mother, actually.”

  “Ar, well she always had the better manners of the two, so that’s no surprise. Come in and take the weight off, why don’t you?”

  Sam shuffled down a short length of hall and into the sitting-room, where an armchair, an ashtray and a racing paper were waiting for him beside a paraffin stove that seemed to be the only source of warmth in the house. A vast pair of off-white combinations hung drying on a rickety clothes horse in front of the stove. Otherwise the yellowing stacks of old newspapers, stray gatherings of empty cider bottles and random scatterings of cigarette ash suggested he hadn’t acquired many of the skills of house-husbandry since Doreen’s death. I had to remove a jumble of football-pools coupons and cellophane cigarette-pack wrappers from the second armchair before taking up his invitation to sit in it. Tea wasn’t suggested and I declined the offer of cider.

  “Expect you’re wondering what this is all about.”

  “My mother is, certainly.”

  “But not you, boy?”

  “I’m definitely curious.”

  “Ar, and we know what curiosity did.” He let out a long rattling cough. “Hear about Nicky Lanyon?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I was the one who found him.”

  “Were you? The papers didn’t mention that. Kept it quiet, did you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Your family’s always been good at keeping things quiet. Or getting them known. Depending which serves them better.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Mr. Vigus?”

  “There is. And to ask you. Though I reckon I know the answer in your case. With you and Nicky being pals and you nought but a lad anyway, there’d have been no cause for you to know a thing about it. I just want to know who cooked it up, see. Whether it was all of you or just the one. I’m not going to do anything about it. No sense. Besides, I come out of it worse than anyone. It’s eaten at my conscience all these years. I can stand it eating on for the few that are left to me.”

  “Does this concern the evidence you gave at Michael Lanyon’s trial?”

  “That it does, boy. That it does.”

  “What about it? It was the truth, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, there was truth in it. I suppose I can say that.”

  “You saw Michael Lanyon hand an envelope to Edmund Tully in the Daniell Arms two nights before the murder.”

  “I did.”

  “You overheard him telling Tully to get the job he was being paid for done quickly, and you saw them looking across at the Lander Monument as if selecting the spot where it was to be done.”

  ‘ Ar, well, that’s where the truth finishes, if you really want to know, and something a sight more fanciful takes over.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’ve been turning it over in my mind since Nicky Lanyon strung himself up, wondering if that tale I told back then might have made the difference. I mean, did it tip the balance, do you think? It was the truth about the envelope. I saw that right enough. But the rest…”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I made up the rest.” He discarded the remainder of his cigarette and stared across at me, breathing heavily. “I never heard a word they said.”
/>
  I stared back at him, as amazed as I was confused. “You heard nothing?”

  “I wasn’t close enough. They were whispering, like they were plotting something. But what they actually said’ He shook his head dolefully.

  “I couldn’t swear to that.”

  “But that’s exactly what you did do. You swore to it.”

  “Ar. I know. Perjury it was, right enough. I varnished the facts to make things look blacker for Michael Lanyon. I can come out and say that now, with my old lady dead and gone. Leastways, I can say it to you, can’t I? There’s no fear of it going any further. It’d be the worse for your family if it did. You’ve more to lose than I have. And I reckon it’s time you knew that, assuming you don’t already. Time we shared the poison round a bit. When all’s said and done, it’s as much your fault as it is mine.”