They half-dragged, half-carried Mr Goldman between Fisher’s car and the black van, both of which were empty and unguarded, over the road to the doorway of number forty-eight. Lydia dug into the pocket of her coat and pulled out the latchkey. Her hand was shaking so much that she couldn’t get it in the lock at her first attempt. The second attempt succeeded. The door opened into the high, musty hallway, with the dark linoleum stretching away to the stairs.
‘Quick!’ Fenella said in her ear. ‘I can hear them running.’
Lydia and the blonde man, Fenella and Mr Goldman, almost tumbled into the house. Lydia closed the door behind them and rammed the top bolt home. Mr Goldman was gasping for breath.
‘Damned barbarians,’ the blonde man said. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
Lydia ignored them. She knelt and opened the flap of the letter-box. This gave her a narrow, rectangular view across the road to the chapel. At the far right of the rectangle was the left-hand leaf of the double gates to Bleeding Heart Square. To her horror, she saw Serridge standing in the angle between the gate and the pillar supporting it. He was smoking a cigar and staring placidly down the length of Rosington Place.
They had a witness.
Marcus burst into view, followed by three Blackshirts. They hesitated for an instant on the forecourt. Marcus walked into the road and looked up and down. He saw Serridge.
‘I say!’ he shouted. ‘You there! Which way did they go?’
Serridge unhurriedly removed his cigar. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Two women and two men. You must have seen them.’
Serridge pointed the cigar down Rosington Place towards Holborn Circus and the thin, fussy tower of St Andrew’s beyond.
‘But we’d still see them if they’d gone that way.’
‘No, they went down past the lodge and turned right.’ Serridge turned his head to his left. ‘Ain’t that right?’
Another man came into view – Howlett, stately in his uniform frock coat, with Nipper at his heels. He touched the brim of his top hat to Marcus. He looked every inch the loyal servant. But whose servant, Lydia wondered, and why?
‘That’s right, sir,’ Howlett said. ‘Went down there like bats out of hell. As if the devil himself was after them.’
23
You are haunted by the ghosts of what might have happened. If Philippa Penhow had had the sense to run away to the village. If she had hammered on Mr Gladwyn’s door. If she’d run into the Alforde Arms. If she’d stumbled across the muddy fields to Mavering.
Sunday, 20 April 1930
I think he’s looking for this diary. He was searching my things this morning. Someone – it must have been him, unless it was one of the maids – prised open my little writing box where I used to keep the diary. They forced the lock. I didn’t dare say anything.
Rebecca went away last night. Amy’s getting worse. At breakfast, she was positively insolent when I asked for fresh tea. I’m sure she’s wearing lipstick too. Joseph told me to stop fussing. He said I was only making the girl nervous. But she’s a nasty baggage.
I said to Joseph at lunchtime that they must think us strange in the village because we hadn’t gone to church. He said, not at all – he had told the Vicar I wasn’t well, that I’d had a breakdown and couldn’t stand meeting people or crowds, and that was the real reason we’d come to live in the country.
So I see it all now. He’s made them think I’m a madwoman. And he’s made them think that he’s a saint, looking after me. I wish I hadn’t signed all those papers. ‘Another one for your autograph, my darling.’
So you see she couldn’t go to the village or anywhere else because of the shame of it. She believed they already thought her a lunatic. And she and Serridge weren’t married. Either way she would have faced ridicule and censure, either way she would be ruined. At the back of her mind was the bitter knowledge that she didn’t know what she’d signed over to him during the last few weeks.
Most of all, you believe, she stayed at Morthams because in some small and tender place in her heart there still lived a sickly hope that this was really a bad dream, and that soon her Joseph would change back to the man she knew he really was. Perhaps this was some sort of test, and all she need do was endure. Perhaps she could make him love her, as she did him. She would tear out her heart for him if it would make him happy.
The smell of cats was stronger. The cold seeped from the flagstones and oozed out of the walls. He sat on the table, his back against the rough, whitewashed wall.
It was not entirely dark. As his eyes adjusted, Rory made out a faint rectangle at the other end of the room, which must mark the door. On the other side of the door was the cloister and the fading, grey light of a winter afternoon. But very little sound penetrated the thick walls or the heavy door. It was as if he was entombed. The loudest sound was his own breathing. He was very cold – he had left his hat and his raincoat in the undercroft.
They had taken his notebook, presumably during the fracas. In his mind, he went over the sequence of events, trying to memorize them. He was damned if he was going to let them prevent him from writing this article. First, there had been an interruption to Fisher’s speech – the tall old man who looked Jewish, though presumably not orthodox or else he wouldn’t have been here on the Sabbath. Then the scrap, when the Blackshirts waded in to remove him. Then Lydia was mixed up with it and then Fenella and Dawlish.
Why the hell had Lydia been there? Surely she wanted to avoid her husband?
When the row started, Rory had stood up without thinking, drawn partly by a journalist’s instinct to move towards trouble rather than away from it, and partly to help Lydia. But the Blackshirts were already on him.
The timing was important. It suggested they must have been told to keep an eye on him, presumably by Marcus. Told to pounce when there was trouble in the audience, told to extract him neatly and swiftly as though he were a troublesome tooth, and they were a pair of pincers. He gave them full marks for efficiency. They had frogmarched him out of the undercroft. One of them kept his hand clamped over Rory’s mouth. They had been so extraordinarily polite and unemotional about the whole thing.
‘Excuse me, sir, would you let us through? Gentleman needs a breath of air.’
Everyone must have known that he was being ejected, Rory thought, but his escorts contrived to do it in such a way that many of the bystanders would have assumed the fault was his, not the Fascists’.
More Blackshirts had been milling around in the cloister, mainly at the far end, near the door to the street. His escorts hadn’t waited for orders and they hadn’t tried to turf him out. That must be significant as well. They had simply wheeled him round to the right and down into the Ossuary, where they kicked his legs from underneath him and forced him down to the floor.
Rory had forced himself not to cry out, not because he was brave but because he thought if he did he might attract more violence. Mercifully they seemed to lose interest in him: closed the door gently and turned the key in the lock. Darkness fell like a stone. The light switch was outside the door.
When they left him alone, he had stood up and swept his hands over the walls, exploring the Ossuary by sense of touch. All it contained was the table. The chairs had gone. He hooked his hands under one side and lifted. It rose a couple of inches, and then the weight was too much for him. He considered trying to wedge the door with it, but remembered that the door opened outwards, towards the steps down from the cloister.
Sooner or later, he told himself, someone would come. This will end. Everything ends. He shied away from the thought that whatever replaced this might be worse. Time passed. At one point he thought he heard distant music on the edge of his range of hearing. Perhaps the meeting was over, and they were playing the National Anthem. The theory was confirmed when he heard the rumble of voices and footsteps, a whole tide of them, in the cloister. All those clerks and commercial travellers and office boys were going home to the suburbs for the weekend. He would
have given anything to be one of them. He hammered on the door and shouted, trying to attract their attention.
No one came. Had Fenella and Lydia and Dawlish got away safely? It was quite possible that they didn’t realize what had happened to him. It might be hours until he was missed – at the very earliest, not until he failed to turn up at Mecklenburgh Square at half past five.
Everything was now quiet outside. Time trickled slowly away. Rory’s mind wandered. He saw sand dribbling through rows of hourglasses, then the hands sweeping round an infinity of dials, all the clocks and watches of London measuring out his life.
At last, the key turned in the lock, the sound jolting him painfully back into his own chilly and uncomfortable body. The door opened, and blinding light streamed into the Ossuary. In the heart of the light was a shimmering shadow.
‘They’ve gone back inside,’ Lydia said.
‘All of them?’ said the large, untidy stranger.
‘As far as I can see. Serridge and Howlett are still by the gate.’
‘Barbarians,’ Mr Goldman muttered behind her. His face was grey and he was breathing hard.
‘Are you all right?’ Lydia asked.
He nodded. ‘Just out of breath. And angry.’
‘Have you far to go?’
‘I have a flat over the shop.’
‘I say,’ the other man said, blinking at her. ‘We should introduce ourselves. My name’s Dawlish, Julian Dawlish. This is Miss Kensley.’
‘How do you do?’ Lydia said automatically. ‘This is Mr Goldman, who has a shop in Hatton Garden. My name’s Lydia Langstone.’
‘Are you related—’ Dawlish began.
Simultaneously Fenella Kensley spoke for the first time: ‘We’ve met, haven’t we? On Remembrance Sunday in Trafalgar Square.’
‘That’s right. You were with Mr Wentwood.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s in there now, you know,’ Lydia said. ‘Did you see him?’
Fenella nodded.
‘I think they may be after him.’
‘Because he’s a journalist?’
‘Not just that,’ Lydia said. ‘There’s – there’s something else as well.’
‘Mrs Langstone,’ Dawlish said, ‘forgive me for asking, but it’s not a common name …’ His voice trailed away before he had actually asked anything.
‘Marcus Langstone is my husband,’ Lydia said evenly. ‘I’ve left him.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, but in the circumstances …’
‘It really doesn’t matter.’ She bent down and opened the letter box again. ‘I can’t see anyone outside the chapel. And there’s no sign of Serridge and Howlett now. If I were you I’d leave while you can.’
‘Yes,’ Dawlish said. ‘Mrs Langstone, I can’t thank you enough.’ He added, stiffly and absurdly, ‘We mustn’t take up any more of your time.’
To her surprise, Lydia realized, she felt quite calm. ‘We had better leave together but then split up. Perhaps Mr Goldman and I should go through the gates to the square and you and Miss Kensley out by the lodge.’
Dawlish nodded. He was peering at the noticeboard listing the house’s tenants. Fenella tugged at his sleeve like a child trying to attract her parent’s attention.
‘Julian, come on. I don’t like it here. Please.’
Instantly he was all concern, enquiring solicitously about how she was feeling while blaming himself for being insensitive. Lydia looked at her more closely. Fenella was trembling slightly and her face was grey.
‘The thing is,’ Dawlish said, ‘what about Wentwood?’
‘There’s not a lot we can do,’ Fenella said. ‘Let’s face it, they can’t really hurt him. Anyway, they don’t know he’s a journalist, and perhaps they’ll leave him alone. You’d think they’d have chucked him out already if they were going to.’
Dawlish looked from one woman to the other. ‘Perhaps we should—’
‘Can we go? Please, Julian.’
‘The sooner we leave the better,’ Lydia said, turning away so neither Fenella nor Dawlish would see the anger in her face. ‘I’ll tell Mr Wentwood what’s happened, if you like.’
They slipped outside. Rosington Place was deserted. Fenella, clutching at Dawlish’s arm, almost dragged him away. He turned and waved to Lydia. She and Mr Goldman went through the wicket gate into Bleeding Heart Square.
‘I can manage by myself now,’ he said, scowling at her. ‘Thank you for your help, Mrs Langstone.’ He stalked off, leaving Lydia staring after him.
‘Mr Goldman?’ she called. ‘Are you all right?’
He paused by the pump and looked at her. ‘No, I’m not, Mrs Langstone. How can I be? I’m frightened.’
He raised his hat in farewell and a moment later was out of sight. It was only as Lydia was letting herself into the house that she realized what he had meant. He was not frightened of the uniformed thugs in the undercroft. He was not even frightened for himself. He was frightened of what the uniformed thugs stood for. He was frightened on behalf of all those people who stood in their way. He was frightened of the future.
Slowly the light faded from the afternoon. Lydia sat at the table in her father’s flat and looked down at Bleeding Heart Square, at the wicket gate to Rosington Place and at the wall of the chapel beyond. Reckless of expense, she had turned up the gas fire as far as it would go and fed the meter with shillings. Her father was still out. Among the butts in the ashtray beside her were a couple from Pamela’s cigarettes. The room felt empty without her.
At last the meeting in the undercroft came to an end. Most of the audience walked down Rosington Place towards Holborn. A trickle came through the wicket into the square, among them Mr Byrne from the Crozier and one of the mechanics from the workshop at the other end of the square. Mr Fimberry hurried after them.
But there was no sign of Rory. Lydia didn’t want to feel solicitous about him but it seemed she had no choice. Bloody Fenella didn’t give a damn about him. Anyway, she needed to tell him about the typewriter.
Ten more minutes passed at a funereal rate. There was still no trace of him. She went downstairs and tapped on Mr Fimberry’s door. There were shuffling footsteps in the room. The door opened a crack.
‘Mrs Langstone!’ The eyes blinked behind the pince-nez. ‘What – what can I do for you?’
‘Do you know where Mr Wentwood is?’
‘No.’ Fimberry was in his shirtsleeves. ‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid.’
‘Was he still at the meeting when you left?’
‘Oh no. He left just after you did. Were you all right? I was quite worried.’
‘Never better, thank you. When you say Mr Wentwood left, what do you mean exactly?’
‘A couple of the Blackshirts escorted him out. I didn’t see quite what was happening but I’m afraid he upset them.’ He peered at Lydia. ‘In fact I assumed you had all gone together – you and he and those other people.’
‘No. We got away.’
‘I – ah – I expect he will turn up.’ Fimberry swallowed. ‘They – they were rather rough, weren’t they?’
‘They behaved like animals,’ Lydia snapped. ‘Do you have your set of keys?’
‘Eh? Oh – you mean for the chapel? Of course. I shall go in later and make sure everything’s shipshape.’
‘So the Fascists were still there when you left?’
‘They were tidying up. They do a very neat job, I must say, unlike some.’
‘Will you come over there with me?’
‘Now?’
‘Yes – with your keys.’ She spoke slowly, as though to a child. ‘You’ve a perfect right to be there. After all you’re representing Father Bertram. And you need to make sure everything’s safe and sound.’
‘But what about you, Mrs Langstone? If your husband—’
‘That’s my affair, thank you.’
Mr Fimberry wilted under her gaze. To her horror, Lydia saw that the eyes behind the pince-nez were swimming with tear
s.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. The door began to close. ‘Really I am. But I’m not a brave man. Physically I – I suppose I’m a bit of a coward.’ He was trembling now. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve seen too much. I’ve seen what’s under the skin, you see, all the flesh and bone. It was the war, Mrs Langstone. I was very different before the war.’
Shades of dark grey became blinding white. Rory screwed up his eyes against the glare from the light bulb dangling from the vaulted ceiling. Iron scraped on stone. He slid off the table and stood up. The door opened. Slow footsteps approached.
Three men faced him: two Blackshirts and, standing in the doorway with his back to the cloister, the dapper figure of Sir Rex Fisher.
‘Good – not damaged,’ Fisher said to the two Blackshirts, addressing them with a certain formality as if he stood on a lecturer’s podium. ‘Force should always be proportionate.’ He abandoned his lecturer’s manner and approached Rory, limping slightly. Lips pursed, he stared at him. There was something both fastidious and contemplative about his gaze: he might have been at Christie’s, examining a picture which had little obvious merit and which he did not want to buy. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘And what were your instructions exactly?’
‘Mr Langstone—’
Fisher hissed, a tiny sign of displeasure.
The man recovered swiftly. ‘This chap was pointed out to us before the meeting began as a likely troublemaker. Believed to be a communist agitator, sir. If there was any sort of trouble, we was to nab him and put him in here. As you see.’ There was a hint of truculence in the man’s voice. ‘Nipping trouble in the bud, that’s what we was told.’
‘Has he been searched?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
Fisher’s neatly plucked eyebrows rose. He turned back to Rory. ‘And what is your name?’
‘Roderick Wentwood.’
‘Address?’
No point in concealing it: they would find out soon enough if they searched him. But would Fisher know that Lydia Langstone was living under the same roof?
‘Seven, Bleeding Heart Square.’
Bleeding Heart Square Page 35