by Bel Mooney
I trust that you will find the above useful. If you should require further assistance, please do not hesitate to write to me again.
Yours sincerely,
A.N. Armstrong.
PS: It is curious that there is no information about Edward’s mother, Rudolph’s wife. The records show that the wedding took place in 1839, a mere six months before the birth of Edward, you will note. You may have more success than I – her name is totally illegible, as far as I am concerned, although the surname looks as if it might be ‘Adams’ or perhaps ‘Eades’. It would seem to me that it is possible to infer, from Ranslavia’s letter to Messrs Barrable, that Mrs Ranslavia died in childbirth, this increasing the father’s bitterness against his only son.
Conrad let out a long sigh, and murmured, ‘Wonderful… wonderful’, as he tucked the sheaf of papers back into their envelope. A change of name; it was quite simple really, but such were the pitfalls and false trails for the genealogist, the subtle shifts and rewritings in the past which allowed it to preserve so many of its mysteries. And would it be easier, in the future, for people to do their detective work, through records, bits of biography, scattered remnants of lives? Conrad thought not. People made telephone calls, they did not write letters, and the millions of computer records were as vulnerable to accident as the faded document on which the name of Ranslavia’s wife was merely a set of sloping symbols attacked by damp. He had read of one publisher of archive material who now kept the most important documents in a fireproof leaden case – like a coffin, he imagined it to be – in case of the war that would destroy all things. But who would be left to read it, and to wonder? Such a decision was, in modern terms, as large an act of faith as any in the gospels; far more telling indeed than the carved initials in the ruins of ancient buildings, where builders had needed to leave their stamp on time. They at least knew that someone would be there, in the future void, to read and grasp the link, but now? He shook his head. The blankness in Paul Anderson’s face, the nameless and pointless despair he sometimes saw on the faces of youth outside The King’s Head at lunch time, when once they would have been at work, the modern sickness of surfeit and the convenient myth of a new global struggle between good and evil in which the suffering individual mattered not at all … all of this (which Conrad absorbed through his skin with a greater intensity as he felt his time growing shorter) mocked his own preoccupations. Yet justified them too.
He sighed again, but happily, finding it impossible to be gloomy, now that he had been given the last clue. That was David’s problem, always … he had no talent for rejoicing in the face of the evidence. ‘Perhaps the secret is to be essentially simple-minded,’ Conrad said aloud, smiling to himself.
He was just about to sit at his desk and make a start, when the doorbell rang twice, in sharp succession. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, and went downstairs. Daphne Ryan stood there, enormous in lemon flowered cotton, with a basket over her arm, like a parody of a winsome shepherdess. ‘I just thought I’d pop in to see if you needed some shopping, Conrad. I’m starting a small service, you know, doing little jobs for the elderly folk, just as I always did but on a regular basis.’
‘I … er … oh, very good of you, Daphne, but I don’t think …’ he mumbled.
‘Oh, do let me peep in your kitchen, dear. I know you don’t eat properly, you know.’ She wagged a finger at him in roguish rebuke, and Conrad found himself standing aside, following her into the kitchen, and submitting to a list of necessary provisions. ‘Let me see … cheese, tomatoes, shall I get you a quarter of nice ham?, baked beans … let me buy you a lamb chop, Conrad, you ought to eat some fresh meat instead of all this dreadful dried stuff.’
‘I don’t think it’s particularly good for one, Daphne, but if you say so,’ he murmured.
He watched her, trying not to succumb. He thought of the envelope upstairs on his desk, and tried harder; fat woman in his kitchen, looking askance despite herself at the dirt and grease, shooing Tansy off the breadboard, complacent in her good deeds in the supermarket … why should she understand? How could she? He felt angry with Daphne, suddenly, for being as he saw her, and to his amazement found himself longing for David’s company with such strength of feeling and such a pang of loss that he reeled.
‘Are you all right, Conrad?’ she asked, looking at him anxiously.
David would have raised his glass, studied the papers, asked the right questions, understood the meaning. Who else was there now? A. N. Armstrong was helpful, and very kind of him it was to take the trouble, but that was not enough. ‘You need someone to tell things to,’ he thought, ‘in the knowledge that they will always make the effort to jump the gap between you, and to feel as you feel. David did that. He listened to my ramblings about Alice, and never once told me that he wanted …’
‘Conrad? Conrad?’ Daphne was peering at him. ‘You look really awful. Come and sit down.’ He allowed himself to be led by the arm and watched her pull back the curtains, letting light into the drawing room, which looked sadder and more neglected than ever. Should he try, risking inevitable rejection? She might nod her head kindly, humouring an old man, thinking him mad, or worse, pathetic. ‘Did you have lunch?’
He nodded. ‘An instant soup. With Paul.’ She sniffed disapproval, and tutted.
‘Daphne?’
‘Yes, dear, what is it?’ Like a child; she was speaking to him like a child, and the child had had a parcel that morning, a fat brown envelope in the post bringing good news, good news to share … Mad, or pathetic? Rudolph Ranslavia wrote a book; historian and poet; the glamour of it dazzled him, so that he grinned suddenly, startling her.
‘I had good news this morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, about Alice … That is to say, her great-great-grandfather. I’ve been searching, you know. Trying to work out her family tree.’ She nodded, still with that surprised expression on herself, like a large chicken astonished to find itself out of the egg, having to cope. ‘It’s a labour of love, you could say,’ he chuckled. ‘Anyway, now I’ve reached the end. I’ve been told that a name was changed, and that this man, the great-great-grandfather, was foreign; Ranslavia the name was. And it became Ranshaw. Do you see?’
‘That’s really very interesting, Conrad,’ she said slowly, and he looked up sharply, sensing mockery in her voice. But the eyes that were fixed on his face were eager. ‘Is there anything more for you to find out?’
A question. She wanted to know. So Conrad began to tell her about his quest, from the beginning, and Daphne folded her hands in her large lap and listened, nodding every now and then and making encouraging noises. At last she said quietly, ‘I can understand why you’ve wanted to do it. It all seems … as if it’s gone, doesn’t it? I often think of my father and mother, and of all the things they threw away, and I wish I knew more. There are old photographs of men and women before the First World War, and we don’t even know their names. Great aunts and uncles, probably. But we’ll never know. It’s a pity, isn’t it?’
His eyes shone as he nodded agreement. She went on, ‘You’re lucky, really. You had the knowledge. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Oh, I could give you some hints, Daphne. It would be no trouble.’
‘Well, that would be nice,’ she said comfortably, ‘But, is there lots more you have to do, before you bother with me?’
Until that second Conrad had not known. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice stronger than it had been before, ‘I’m going to read his book. It must be in the British Library. I still have a reader’s pass. I can go, look it up. I’m sure I’ll be able to find it.’ He stared at her, elated. Don’t fuss over me, he thought pleadingly, don’t tell me I am too old to make the journey, or that it isn’t important enough, please don’t.
Daphne nodded her head, folding and refolding the little shopping list in her hand. ‘Yes. You must,’ she said. ‘It’ll be nice for you to finish the jigsaw, won’t it, dear?’
He beamed at her
with gratitude.
It was the last Wednesday in May. After the cubs had put away their Union Jack, the members of the Women’s Institute set about giving the village hall a thorough clean. As two of them were emptying buckets of dirty water down the drain outside, they noticed Eleanor Anderson’s car pass, and lost no time in rushing indoors to tell the others.
‘Good for her to get out and about.’
‘It’s about time, really.’
‘Can’t go on brooding, can you?’
‘She needs to be taken out of herself.’
‘Sheila do say that she heard Daphne Ryan tell Ray Tilley that she’s planning on a move.’
‘Who? Miss Ryan?’
‘No, dozy! Mrs Anderson.’
‘Well, it’s perfectly true,’ Daphne said briskly, taking them by surprise. Her sleeves were already rolled up; she carried a foam mop and a feather duster under one arm, and her expression was reproachful. ‘I really don’t think it’s right for everyone to watch Eleanor, and speculate all the time. She had a terrible shock, and now she’s slowly coming back to life again.’
‘And if only he could too,’ whispered Margaret Ainslie, but nobody heard.
‘Where’s she moving to?’
Daphne frowned. ‘Oh, she hasn’t decided. Somewhere very near, of course.’ They looked surprised and Daphne glanced around with an air of superiority. ‘Now could you have thought anything else? Eleanor couldn’t possibly leave Winterstoke. We’re all she’s got.’
‘Did she say that?’ asked Margaret, wonderingly.
‘Well, not in so many words, but … I know it’s true. Paul’s going back to London tomorrow, poor dear, and Eleanor has promised me she’ll make a big effort and come to the concert. So we’d better get this hall looking really smart, ladies!’
Eleanor has decided to make this journey, not knowing that her son did the same. She glances at the clock on the dashboard then at her watch. ‘Yet why am I so interested in the time?’ she wonders as she does these things. ‘There is plenty of time. Cubs was at four thirty, after school, and now the WI is getting the hall ready for Friday, and so by about six I should be there,’ she thinks, puzzled all the time by what she is doing, and by how, despite herself, her own movements cannot help but dovetail with those of Winterstoke: that collective village existence which flows along whatever happens, carrying all who live there along with it like twigs and fish and pebbles and minute particles of life, and absorbing, in the end, all disturbance and dissent. Even the stones are washed by the stream, and useful as shelters to small creatures; in the end the most obdurate object is worn down, subtly altered by the movement of water.
Eleanor drives briskly, without consulting her road atlas, confident that she knows the place. They told her in detail, although she did not listen carefully at the time. Now she heads for Rookcombe with determination, not glancing to right or left at the tall hedgerows gilded by the late afternoon sun.
He must have come this way, Eleanor frowns, trying to imagine what it must have been like for him: the chilly, windy day, his old case lying on the seat beside him, or did he put it in the back? It does not matter. He came along this road, passing cottages and farms, and gradually leaving the parish and his patients behind, as she is now. That is something she can understand; the necessity of the journey, so that all temptingly familiar sights would melt away, leaving the mind free for its purpose.
There is no pain worse than the inward gnawing of people who refuse to cry, and Eleanor screws up her face suddenly as if an unseen assailant had jabbed her with a spike.
Not since the news of the post-mortem result, not since the wordless embarrassment on the faces of the police, has Eleanor unblocked her eyes, and they ache with the restraint. Implacable, they have gazed back at her from the mirror, full of dislike; unrelenting. They have seen the person left behind; the rejected one with no value, the one not strong enough to haul her husband back from his black cul-de-sac. The one who heard no evil, saw no evil, spoke no evil; the deaf, the blind, the dumb. ‘It was for all that he wanted to punish me,’ she is thinking as she drives, as she has brooded ceaselessly each day. ‘It was because I was no use to him any more, and at last he had to tell me what an empty thing our marriage was. It’s all very well for Daphne, and Conrad – and Paul too – to expect me to soften, and to forgive him. What is there to forgive? It is me who can never be forgiven. Me, me, me. I was the one he said goodbye to, and what was he thinking then? He wanted to punish me, he wanted me to be shaken: stupid, complacent cow!’ She holds her hands rigidly at ten to two on the steering wheel and her knuckles are white.
She drives through Rookcombe, past the pub and the church and the village green, and on for about fifteen minutes. At the crossroads she stops, and looks confused. She picks up the map, flicks through the pages, then throws it down again. She stares around her sightlessly, not taking in any details of the landscape: soft curves of land rising all around, mellow tones of green and brown and purple, creamy sheep in a green field by her car, bright dandelions in a cluster at the foot of the confusing signpost. How did David find his way? she wonders, for the first time, imagining him actually making plans. Did he come here first, on another day, and find the spot? They had said that his car was hidden; was that good fortune or the result of a careful reconnoitre? And if he came before, to choose his place, then when was it? He disappeared on a Monday, or was it Tuesday? I had to go to Sealsham Holt, the Red Cross meeting, and so it must have been …? But that weekend he did not go out, so perhaps it was the week before.
Eleanor closes her eyes, dizzy with the effort, the circular pattern, of remembering. And what was the point? He might have come here weeks before, or even months. Perhaps he found his lonely place last year, or the year before, and all this time was waiting for the moment, and watching her every day in the full knowledge. Perhaps he planned it the year they got married. Perhaps he had been waiting, for all those years in between, for the moment when he could at last escape from her.
Jerkily she starts the engine, drives straight on for a mile, then executes a neat three-point turn in the road, and returns the way she came. Back at the cross roads she turns right, drives for about two miles, then turns again and comes back to the same point. She stares at the map; they said there was an Ordnance Survey post near the place, and so it must be off the road, but where? She narrows her eyes, examining the map closely, but the letters and little symbols, and pinks and greens on the page blur, and in disgust she throws the book on the floor in front of her passenger seat. ‘I’ll go back to Rookcombe, and ask someone,’ she says aloud, crashing her gears and reversing. But what would she ask them? ‘Excuse me,’ she says, making her voice a parody of itself: exaggeratedly polite and middle-class. ‘Excuse me, can you possible direct me to the place where the Winterstone doctor killed himself? You must have read about it in the papers.’ Guided tours, she thought bitterly, that was what she needed: visit the beautiful Quantocks where miserable people have come for years and years to get away from it all.
She sees the Norman tower of the church at Rookcombe and stops briefly by the lich-gate, staring at the shapes of headstones just visible through gaps in the hedge. ‘What a comforting cliché it would be to wander in there,’ she thinks sardonically, ‘to meet the rector perhaps, or to fall on my knees and find comfort. Andrew Dunn came to see me twice and I sent him away. How relieved he looked! Like a bearded rabbit, nose twitching, scenting danger all around: people actually making demands on God, and asking Why does all this happen? If you are there, then tell me … what, no reply? There, that proves it! That’s something else you have done for me, David dear; you have killed God at last. You saw me going to church each Sunday, dressed in my good suits, picking up the Prayer Book as if it belonged to me and complaining when Andrew came and insisted on switching to the other dreadful book – you saw all that, David, and you knew it was a sham. So you decided to do it all at one stroke; to murder God and stuff his putrid corpse down the drai
n at home, so that I should smell it each time I pass. I can smell it now. It hangs in my nose every day, David, just as you intended. You see, that’s been the hardest thing to accept – that in your silence you knew I would have to respond like this, with no choice. You told me nothing else. You gave me no comfort. Look at it! Tower, clock, headstones, and inside, the pews … they’re famous here, I remember now, with their carved bench ends. We came once, years ago, not long after we’d moved I think. Those were the days we travelled round with a guidebook, looking for things to see. You stop looking … Anyway, I know exactly what the place would be like, were I to get out of the car, and take the path, looking for explanations in the one place there are plenty. But not me, David. Not now.’
She starts the engine, and drives on into the village. There is a small car park by the village green. Eleanor stops and gets out, looking for someone to ask. An old man sits on a bench; two youths kick a football in the distance; three women stand in a cluster outside the shuttered shop; a small child pulls impatiently and a dog’s lead twists around her mother’s legs, until the woman, irritated with both of them, cries out ‘Stop it, stop it!’ Her voice echoes in the quietness, making Eleanor smile at the intrusion of humanity into the picture-book scene. Two cars draw up outside the pub; the old man rises, leaving his bench to walk slowly across the grass in the direction of ‘The Dog and Flute’. As he passes the granite war memorial in the centre of the green he stops for a fraction of a second, bowing his head, before continuing on his way.
Slowly Eleanor walks in the same direction, and the women by the shop pause for a second to stare at the stranger, before carrying on with their conversation. The evening sun is warm on her back, as Eleanor stands in front of the pinkish-grey granite memorial, which contrasts so oddly with the golden stone all around. ‘All those men,’ she thinks, ‘all those names, all those families,’ and like a child, she starts to count. ‘Roll of Honour’ it says; and from this small parish it took six Nurtons, nine Chilcotts, five Gradons, six Gunninghams, seven Paynes, two Littons, and one Hancock – Robert Hancock, the one officer. There are other names too, single sons of other families, but Eleanor has lost her place. ‘Eternal life …’ she murmurs aloud, reading the conventional inscription beneath the names with a shiver.