Though he was breathing in through his nose, the cold air was aggravating the back of Philip’s throat, making him cough. It was making his eyes water, too, but that was as close as he ever came to tears. He almost envied the damp-eyed young widow holding a wreath next to him. Iraq possibly. Or Afghanistan. She was sniffing and dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue. It wasn’t that he lacked compassion; merely that he had never cried in his life and was too old to learn how it was done. The closest he had come was when his first wife had died of ovarian cancer, or rather when, at her funeral, the five-year-old Daniel had felt for his hand by the graveside. He thought of this now and of how, more recently, when his older sister had died, he had delivered a eulogy in a voice so steady Daniel had come up to him afterwards and said in an affectionately teasing undertone: ‘Marble, Dad. You’re made of bloody marble.’ Actually, he thought – but did not say at the time – it is you who is made of marble, Daniel. When your mother died you decided there was no God, that it was all a lie, that you would have to put your faith in science. You have never once wavered. Never once reconsidered your rejection. If anyone is made of marble …
His thoughts on his son, Philip felt in his overcoat pocket for his mobile, turned it on to check for messages, and, seeing there were none, turned it off again. He did a mental calculation: Daniel and Nancy had left Heathrow on Thursday morning, they were due to fly on to the Galápagos Islands the following morning but their flight had been delayed by a day. So they should have got there on Saturday morning. Yesterday.
Philip had been trying Daniel’s mobile every few hours, but had not wanted to leave a message about Martha’s hypo. That would only cause unnecessary worry. Besides, he had wanted to talk directly to Daniel about another matter. He wanted to say that, upon reflection, he thought it would be best if Nancy did not translate Andrew Kennedy’s letters from the trenches. He would explain why when they returned.
A frown knotted his brow. Why wasn’t Daniel answering his mobile? He had said he would call when he reached the islands. Presumably he hadn’t been able to get a signal. That must be it. It made sense actually, because when they were at the ice rink there had been a voice message left on Martha’s iPhone that sounded like Nancy, but it had been too broken and crackly to make out what was being said. A bad signal. Unable to get through on Nancy’s mobile either, Philip had rung the travel company. They had said that the seaplane had landed safely near the Galápagos Islands. But Philip was still uneasy. As a precaution, he had called in a favour from Geoff Turner, a friend who worked for the Security Services. Could he double-check about the flight? See if the British Embassy in Quito had heard anything? The friend would see what he could do.
Philip always felt a small stab of melancholy when he thought of Daniel. It wasn’t that he thought his son a failure – far from it – it was more that, despite their best efforts, they had never managed to be close. As a child, Daniel had never caught his attention. Philip had pretended that he was interested in his games, and drawings, and songs, but his look of distraction had never been well concealed. The truth was, Philip had never even caught his own attention. He knew this. He was aware of his hollow centre, of his cauterized emotions, of the father-shaped hole in his own life.
He checked his medals again. They didn’t just glitter, they cast a shadow. Philip had lived in the shadow of his father’s posthumously awarded VC all his life. In the summer of 1944, Captain William Kennedy, ‘Silky’ Kennedy as he was known – the nickname came from his insistence on wearing silk underwear bought from Jermyn Street – had led his unit in a suicidal charge on a farmhouse, a German machine-gun position that was pinning down British and Canadian troops on the road to Tilly-sur-Seulles. Silky had managed to put it out of action with grenades but was shot several times in the chest as he did so. A glorious death. Philip often wondered what manner of man his father had been: brave, obviously, but also phlegmatic and good-humoured, he imagined. According to regiment folklore, Silky Kennedy had looked down at the bullet holes in his tunic as he lay dying and said: ‘You have to admire the grouping!’ His last words.
Philip studied the rows of Chelsea pensioners in their wheelchairs. They were from the Second World War, Silky’s generation. There were no First World War veterans left to take part in the march past, although he had noticed, with a disapproving eye, a Wren in her forties, thirties possibly, holding a wreath of poppies on behalf of the SAD campaign. Shot At Dawn. The red poppies had white centres. These symbolized the white patches of cloth placed as targets over the hearts of the soldiers shot for cowardice and desertion. Philip had been asked to support the campaign but had declined. He had also argued at a meeting of the War Graves Commission that the SAD campaigners shouldn’t be part of the parade. They made a mockery of the men – men like his father and grandfather – who had given their lives gallantly in battle.
His thoughts were on his grandfather now. Private Andrew Kennedy’s name was listed on the Menin Gate Memorial as one of the missing, and according to regimental records he had been killed in action on the first day of Passchendaele, but that was all that was recorded about him. There was no other mention of him in the day-to-day war diaries kept by the officers of the 11th Battalion, Shropshire Fusiliers. No latrine duty. No sentry duty. Nothing about his training at Étaples, the infamous ‘Bull Ring’. He was the Unknown Grandfather. The letters he had written in French represented the first contact Philip had had with him, the first indication, after a lifetime of speculation, of what kind of a man he was. What would they reveal? That Andrew was cruel? Gentle? Lazy? What? The letters seemed to represent a threat to Philip’s own legitimacy, somehow. They raised long-buried suspicions. Half-suspicions. Why were they written in French? This was why they made him feel uneasy. Sometimes it is best not to know these things. Would Nancy have begun translating them yet? Damn, he wished he could get through to Daniel on the phone.
He passed his cross of poppies from one gloved hand to the other and wriggled the fingers of the now empty hand to get the circulation back into them. This prompted a distant memory. When he had arrived at Sandhurst, his fellow officer cadets had wanted to shake his hand. Word had spread that not only had his grandfather been killed at Passchendaele, but his father had won a posthumous VC for his part in the Normandy Landings. It was quite a double: two generations of fighting men buried in foreign soil. It was remarkable. It did merit a shake of the hand. Philip accepted that. But he had nevertheless been a reluctant celebrity at the academy. Even the commandant at Sandhurst had joined in. ‘If there is such a thing as heroic blood,’ he had said, ‘you must surely have it.’ Philip had muttered something about how everyone was capable of selflessness, given the right circumstances. But he had often wondered since whether that was the case, whether there might not be a bravery gene.
He checked his medals once more. Had Daniel lived in the shadow of his MC? He hoped not. He had tried not to talk of it, dismissing it almost. He hadn’t even shown his son the short version of his citation, the one not covered by the Official Secrets Act. It described how, at the height of Operation Desert Storm, Philip had gone on treating his comrades after a ricochet had ripped off the top half of his ear and pierced his eardrum. The longer version of the citation explained that it had been a friendly fire incident – a ‘blue on blue’ in which a US helicopter gunship had attacked an eight-man SAS team travelling in two armoured jeeps. Two were killed and another five wounded, most of them seriously, with missing limbs and third-degree burns. By the time Philip and his medical team were helicoptered in, the Iraqis were also arriving. The one uninjured SAS soldier held them off while the medics evacuated the injured. His friend Geoff Turner was one of the survivors. That, indeed, was how they had become friends. Turner had since left ‘the Regiment’ and joined ‘the Service’. Philip checked his mobile. Still no message from him.
The Bishop of London’s procession was arriving. The royal family should be next but there was as yet no sign of them. Big Ben started chi
ming the hour. People in the crowd began looking at one another in puzzlement. Seconds passed and the silence filled with coughing and shuffling and distant traffic. Philip was too distracted to compose his thoughts. Something odd was going on. He could see the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition being led by a policeman back inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Another policeman emerged, whispering into a microphone on his lapel. The two-minute silence ended with the traditional firing of an artillery gun by the King’s Troop and Last Post sounded by buglers of the Royal Marines. But before they could finish, a policeman ran out of the Foreign Office carrying a loudhailer. He stood in front of the Cenotaph facing the 10,000 former servicemen and women who were packing Whitehall all the way back to Trafalgar Square and barked. ‘Will everyone please make their way to Horse Guards Parade. Everyone back! Now! This area is being evacuated!’
Six other policemen in luminous green jackets formed a cordon and began directing people back with their arms. The crowd erupted in noise: talking, shouting, the scrape of shoes. Some began shoving when it became apparent there was no give in the crowd. A bottleneck was forming at the archway leading on to Horse Guards Parade.
The policeman with the loudhailer turned towards the side area where Philip was standing. ‘Will you people please make your way into Parliament Square. Quickly now! Move!’
Philip was almost carried along, so close were those around him huddled. He saw one old man stumble to the ground in the crush but couldn’t turn round to help him. When other hands raised the man up, he concentrated on staying upright himself. The human tide of shuffling feet and pressing bodies roiled past the entrance to Westminster Tube before losing momentum. People were slowing down and breaking into a normal walk now. Mobile phones were being switched on. He carried on walking over Westminster Bridge, feeling confounded and anxious. What was going on? There had been no explosion. Was it a false alarm? Police must have had reports of a terrorist threat and evacuated the area as a precaution. He didn’t stop until he was in Kennington, within sight of the Imperial War Museum’s copper dome. This was familiar ground to him. He felt safe here. Still carrying his wreath, he walked stiffly past the giant naval guns in the museum grounds, past a spray-painted fragment of the Berlin Wall, up the steps and through the lichencovered columns.
Once inside, he stared ahead blankly as a broad-chested security guard frisked him. He paced back and forth, under a Sopwith Camel suspended from the ceiling, past a First World War tank, around ‘Ole Bill’, an omnibus that had seen action at Ypres, and returned to the entrance where he stood catching his breath, his heart palpitating.
He was in front of a plaque explaining that this building was the former Bethlem Royal Hospital – better known as Bedlam. Unable to take the words in, he stood for a few minutes reading and re-reading them. The museum was almost empty and so the same security guard who had searched him came over and asked if he was all right. He nodded in answer, turned and walked to the back of the hall, past a glass case containing the 1000cc motorbike on which Lawrence of Arabia had been killed, and down the stairs to the basement. Once there he followed signs to THE FIRST WORLD WAR and came to a framed poster of Kitchener pointing his finger at YOU. Beyond this was a cabinet containing wire cutters, chainmail body armour and medieval-looking weapons used for hand-to-hand combat in the trenches: knuckle-dusters with blades, a mace, a nail-studded cosh, a gauntlet punch dagger. Philip stared at them. The next gallery was dominated by a wall of wooden signs: SUICIDE CORNER, PETTICOAT LANE, THAT TIN HAT YOU PASSED JUST NOW IS WORTH MONEY – PICK IT UP AND TAKE IT TO THE SALVAGE DUMP. Above him a large screen was showing flickering images of the Western Front on a continual loop: jerky footage of horses wearing gas masks and soldiers bustling over the top in fast motion, one of them not making it over the parapet before sliding back down the bank of soil.
He continued on to THE TRENCH EXPERIENCE, a walk-through recreation of a front-line trench. It was too dimly lit for his tired eyes, and the sound and chemical-smell effects did not register on his senses. He removed his gloves and ran a stiff hand over a sandbag that had been daubed with brown paint to make it look muddy. Beyond this was a cross-section of a recent trench excavation showing rusty shells, bayonets and bullets found below the topsoil. Philip thought again of his grandfather’s newly discovered letters and felt restless. It was as if a shelf of soil had collapsed, disturbing the long-buried dead. Realizing he was still carrying the cross of poppies, he laid it against the perspex-covered soil and retraced his steps. Once outside in the crisp London air he checked his pocket watch – noon – and turned on his mobile. He listened to a message to call Geoff Turner. He pressed the ‘return call’ option and waited.
‘It’s Philip. You left a message.’
‘Thanks for calling back. I can’t talk now. There’s been an incident at the Cenotaph.’
‘I know, I was there. Hello? ... I can’t hear you very well.’
‘We’re being told it’s a false alarm. But listen, I wasn’t ringing about that. It’s Daniel. I’ve just found out his seaplane never landed. I’m afraid it is being reported as missing … Hello? Philip? Are you there?’
‘The seaplane never landed?’
‘Afraid not.’
Philip was sitting down on a bench, next to the section of the Berlin Wall. The mobile was on the seat beside him. His hands were cupped neatly on his lap.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WATER HAD TURNED CHOPPY. DANIEL WONDERED ABSTRACTLY if he had found the current that would pull him to the islands, but he was too exhausted to swim any farther and find out. Lactic acid had built up in his legs. They felt like concrete, and cramp was knotting them. Part of him knew his swim would now not end other than in his own extinction. The long swim. He felt he had been swimming this distance all his life and all he wanted was sleep. To compound his agony, his eyes were stinging and blurred from the seawater and tears, and he felt as if he had swallowed splintered glass. His lips were cracked and swollen. Only the imperative of rescuing Nancy and seeing Martha again was now keeping him clinging to life.
Over the next two and a quarter hours he drifted as much as swam. The pain from the jellyfish stings had become so intense he found himself retching every few minutes. He was also shivering convulsively and feeling delirious: symptoms of sunstroke, or shock, or swallowing salt water – he was no longer sure which. Nevertheless, he managed to calculate that if he had been swimming on the right course, the islands would have been in sight by now. He stopped swimming as he realized this; and pictured himself alone in a vast, cold ocean, waiting for death to bear him away. As he had done on the crashing plane, he resigned himself to the inevitable – only this time his death, he knew, would be a slow and agonizing one, from dehydration and hypothermia. His only alternative was to remove his life jacket and allow himself to sink. Drowning is supposed to be painless. After the initial panic you feel nothing but tranquillity. Anyway, his life jacket had given him blisters under his arms. It was slowing him down. He would be better off without it.
The cramp moved to his feet and interrupted his thoughts. To relieve the pain, he pulled his fins off and watched them sink away into the velvety depths. With water-wrinkled hands, he removed his mask and let it float away, too, the snorkel still attached. An indifferent wind picked up and, as he bobbed in the swelling water, he thought about how he had abandoned Nancy, how he had pushed his hand against her face, how he deserved this punishment. As he fumbled to untie the cord across his chest, his head lolled backwards. So far, he had been avoiding staring at the sun but now, as he narrowed his eyes in its glare, he could no longer remember why. A stab of migraine jolted his head forward again.
Then he saw him. A young man with a lapidary smile and protuberant wide-set eyes was treading water no more than ten yards away, gently beckoning with his hand. Delicate-boned, oliveskinned and with contour, quiddity and mass, the man was completely present, yet could not be. Only his head and shoulders were visible –
he wasn’t wearing a life vest – and in the trough that followed a cresting wave he disappeared.
Daniel reached limply to his other arm and, in order to recover a connection with reality, tapped his watch twice. It was 5.40pm. No longer knowing what the numbers meant, he looked up at the man again, but he was gone. A hallucination. His face had been familiar though. Daniel longed to see it again. Left with a feeling of post-coital languor, he closed his eyes and a yellow glow lingered on his retinas. Already he was uncertain whether he had actually seen what he thought he had seen. He opened his eyes again and began swimming towards where the young man had been, the point at which the blue of the sky met the blue of the ocean. Twenty minutes later he lost consciousness and drifted, held afloat by the life vest he had, in a moment of distraction, failed to take off.
*
The water was as black and glossy as lacquer when Daniel regained consciousness. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes on what looked like phosphorescence. He looked up at the sky. A full moon. A canopy of stars.
He was moving.
His life jacket had snagged on the rim of something and it – slimy, leathery, barrel-shaped – was pulling him slowly along in its wake. It was a giant shell, at least seven feet long. Large, spadelike hind flippers were acting as a rudder. He could see a beak opening and closing silently. A leatherback turtle. The cord of his life vest, Daniel realized, had wrapped around one of its elongated forelimbs, keeping it on the surface. He unwrapped it and the creature swam away, shuddering with each sinuous stroke, leaving a trail of silver bubbles.
Faltering, milky light was bleeding into the darkness. Seabirds, shearwaters and a lone albatross, were wheeling and screeching overhead. Daniel’s feet touched something soft. A sandbank. He slid out of his life vest, and lay half submerged in the water. Feeling warm – a symptom of hypothermia, he knew, of blood leaving the brain – he prepared to swim the final few hundred yards. A congregation of storm petrels appeared, soaring and swooping above high cliffs.
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