Not Thinking of Death

by Not Thinking of Death (retail) (epub)

  He was stuffing his pipe again. ‘Had a long talk with her, at some stage. During that weekend, I mean. The other thought had been simply – an aberration. I was committed to Diana – totally. Even if she had not put her brand on me. Incidentally, if that had been her intention she’d certainly known what she was doing. Known me, you see. And I had this dream of Guy and Suzie patching it up and making a new start. I told her so – probably rather indirectly, Dymock must still have been very much in her mind, Guy more like an absent brother of whom she was extremely fond. That’s the word for it – fond. I asked her – effectively – to give it time, give him a chance. After what she’d been through – and what he was most likely going through – in due course, not to forget how they had felt about each other – and so forth.’

  ‘How did she react?’

  ‘Well, he hadn’t answered the two letters she’d sent him. Not even after Trumpeter had gone down and she’d managed to get herself into a state where she could hold a pen and make legible marks on paper. All I could say was – that same thing, give him time: and try to make allowances. If he hadn’t been nuts about her he wouldn’t have taken it so hard – etcetera. I was quite deeply concerned for them both: hard to explain, but as if they were two halves of one person – even if they didn’t know it. I personally didn’t come into the equation at all – I want to have that made clear.’

  ‘It will be.’

  A nod. ‘But she had news for me too. Diana had told her – they’d exchanged several letters – that she’d had expressions of firm interest from the Air Survey company with whom she’d been hoping to get a full-time job. And if Suzie could get her “B” licence and put in the required number of flying hours, she might be able to get her into it too. The exciting thing for Suzie now, you see, was that having her own ’plane would make it much easier to clock up the hours. I’m not sure of the figure, but I think it may have been 2,500 she had to have in her logbook. Or perhaps that was what she needed for the “B” licence. Don’t remember. But thanks to the old girl it was all within her reach, and she was – you might say, treading on air. I could see her mind going back to the other thing from time to time – or to worrying about Guy perhaps – she’d have her quiet, reclusive periods…’

  He’d fallen silent, gazing at the sea again… Then – abruptly – ‘This business about Zoe now. Odd, really. I’d effectively put her out of mind – four months back, roughly, barely given her a thought since – and it was Sir Innes and his wife who as it were dug her up again…’

  * * *

  Before lunch on Boxing Day, this was. It was a Sunday and they’d all been to church. Suzie had been right in that forecast – midnight service on Christmas Eve – to which Chalk had not gone – then a Christmas morning service, and today back on their knees yet again. Chalk telling himself When in Rome… He was looking forward to a long walk through the snow that afternoon, in company with Patricia, Suzie, Midge, Alastair and the other young soldier, Forbes, and of course all the dogs.

  Sir Innes began it. ‘That Mrs – er – Buchanan… Last time you left us you were going to pay her a visit, weren’t you. Some messages from her husband—’ glancing round, seeing that Suzie was not in earshot, not even in the room – ‘who’d drowned in Trumpeter?’ Chalk had nodded: Sir Innes asked him, ‘Painful interview, was it?’

  ‘Not too bad. I was only there about ten minutes. At Helensburgh, their house is – or was, I imagine she’ll have got rid of it by now.’

  ‘Pretty woman, eh?’

  ‘Who are we talking about?’

  ‘Lady C-G…’ Sir Innes put down an empty glass. ‘That fellow Buchanan – came here to shoot, once – with a rather striking-looking wife in tow?’

  ‘You were struck, I remember… But didn’t Spynie’s boy bring them?’

  ‘That was what I was about to tell Rufus. You mentioned him before, Rufus – no, I did. Couldn’t think why we’d had him here. And that’s the answer – it came to me when I was talking to old Spynie the other day.’

  ‘Spynie?’

  ‘George Lindsay’s father. Lord Spynie. Vast place in the Borders. Rich as Croesus – put a lot of money into various industrial concerns, doesn’t know the first thing about it himself so he employs various hard-headed business chaps – such as Buchanan – to keep the wheels turning as they should. And that’s the answer. Spynie was a close friend of my oldest brother, who was about ten years my senior and younger than him by as much as another ten. Telling you that just to give you an idea of his vintage. But I saw him in Edinburgh – as I say, about a week ago – in a club we belong to. Lives in a wheelchair now, and looks as if he could be Aunt Mary’s uncle.’

  ‘Heavens.’ The great-aunt had joined them. ‘Are you talking about Methuselah?’

  ‘No. Spynie.’

  ‘Oh, that old codger. What about him?’

  ‘Telling Rufus here about a man who worked for him. Where’d I got to… Oh, yes. He mentioned him – Spynie did – in connection with the Trumpeter disaster. He more or less owns Barlows’, you see, put Buchanan in to lick its finances into shape. That’s why we had him here – Spynie asked me if I’d introduce him to a few mutual friends, we had this shooting party coming up and Lindsay was coming that weekend anyway. So he brought ’em along. And that’s your answer, Rufus. Pleasant-enough chap, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Couldn’t shoot for toffee, I remember.’

  ‘Who couldn’t?’ Patricia had drifted in. Her great-aunt told her, ‘Somebody called Buchanan.’

  ‘Oh, the one with the tarty wife?’

  ‘You, my dear—’ Sir Innes reminded his wife – ‘were scheming to throw Patricia at George Lindsay – or vice versa?’

  ‘What a good idea.’ The great-aunt held out an empty glass. ‘This seems to have evaporated… If you could put up with him, Patricia – heavens, you’d be Lady Spynie before long, and quite disgustingly rich!’

  ‘Couldn’t put up with him.’ Patricia shuddered. ‘And I hate that name.’

  ‘One of the oldest baronies in Scotland.’ Sir Innes turned back to Chalk. ‘I was going to say, George Lindsay’s been in America for several years now. His father packed him off to look after interests they have there. He must have been over here on a visit to the old boy – and Eve saw her chance.’ He winked. ‘Speed of a striking cobra, eh?’

  ‘I may have considered it as a remote possibility. Why shouldn’t I? But as it turned out, he and Mrs Buchanan took a great shine to each other. D’you remember that, Innes?’

  He sighed. ‘You’re getting it wrong again. They’d known each other long, long before that weekend. They arrived together, in one car. Remember that? Look – Buchanan had worked for George’s father – that company of his – for quite a few years, George was also in the business—’

  ‘He looks like a pig.’ Patricia told her great-aunt, ‘Mrs Buchanan is more than welcome to him.’

  * * *

  ‘It seemed to me,’ Chalk told me – with his back to the sea now, pipe filled but unlit in his hand – ‘that this provided the key to understanding Zoe’s strange behaviour. She and this Lindsay had known each other for years and were on terms of – well, enough for it to have been obvious to all and sundry that there was something going on between them. I asked Sir Innes later, when we were on our own, what about her husband, didn’t he object at all, and Sir Innes said no, either didn’t notice or acted as if he didn’t. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, say he didn’t know what was going on. And to become the wife of one of the richest men in the land – I could well see Zoe going for that. But old Spynie rode George on a tight rein – Sir Innes told me and he was very straight-laced indeed, wouldn’t for a moment have tolerated his son’s involvement in a messy divorce case. Could he have disinherited him, I asked, and the answer was probably not, but he might have been able to isolate him from the business – which is where all the money comes from. It was what we’d call a group, nowadays, a conglomerate
controlled by the holding company, and he might perhaps have seen to it that George didn’t get a foot in that door. Fired him from whatever his job was, and appointed other relations – or employees, Buchanan types – to control it. Something like that. So they’d have been waiting for the old boy to drop off the perch, you see. Meanwhile George was in the States – except for occasional visits, presumably – and we’ve no reason to believe that Zoe was actually in love with him, have we? She had her own tastes and proclivities, though, and she’d no doubt want to keep her hand in – didn’t for some reason hit it off with her husband – and that’s where chaps like Dymock and I might have come in – fairly rootless, unencumbered, tending to be here one day and gone the next – d’you see?’

  ‘Why the recent brush-off?’

  ‘If you’d had time to think it out, you wouldn’t have to ask. Her husband was dead, she’d become a widow, so the door would be open – no divorce case necessary. Might wait for the old boy to expire, might not, but either way she’d have to go straight at least until she had Lindsay in the bag. So she wouldn’t have wanted the likes of me around. Get it?’

  I nodded. The recorder humming faintly to itself…

  ‘Anything later to confirm this theory? Or have we finished with her now?’

  ‘Not quite finished.’ He smiled. ‘But – for the time being…’

  It was necessary to press on, anyway.

  ‘So – you’d have gone back to London, to the Tribunal of Inquiry and your Admiralty desk-job. Oh, New Year first, I suppose… Was there a letter on the mat from Guy?’

  ‘No.’ He stooped to rub the setter’s ears. ‘No, there was not.’

  Chapter 15

  He telephoned Glendarragh to tell Suzie that no letter had arrived – she’d asked him to let her know either way – but Lady C-G told him she’d flown down to Buxton to collect her Puss Moth, and Patricia had gone with her. He left the message for her – no letter yet…

  There still wasn’t one when he came back from Betty’s on the Sunday after New Year’s Day. It had been a sombre opening to 1938: fairly acute concern for Guy, by this time, and the start of a year in which war with Germany looked like an odds-on bet.

  The Tribunal of Inquiry ended in the third week of January. In that period he had several calls from Suzie – worrying about Guy and raving about her aeroplane – and he took Patricia out several times, in and around London. He was thinking at first that he wouldn’t mention this at all to Diana, who’d seemed to have unjustified sensitivities in that area, but he decided it would be better to tell her – casually, as something to be taken for granted – because otherwise Suzie might let it slip out in one of her letters, and then there would be problems. As it was, Diana wrote:

  I’m glad you see Patricia now and then – at least she’s the devil one knows! Very nice too – as devils go – and most attractive. Do you get any fascinating Foreign Office gossip from her? I’m sure there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that we never hear about. Give her my love when you see her next – and while you’re at it, ask her if she’d like to be Matron of Honour at our wedding in the summer?

  Early in February, Hitler appointed himself Minister for War; on the 15th, Franco’s forces re-occupied Teruel; and on the 20th, Anthony Eden resigned as Foreign Minister. Lord Halifax took over from him. In the Commons, Winston Churchill was leading an outcry against Chamberlain and his Appeasement policy; Eden’s resignation had been partly in protest against it, too, but – Patricia told Chalk over a Sunday lunch at Skindles – more because policy decisions had been taken behind his back. Halifax’s visit to Hitler, for instance, when Eden had been advocating closer liaison with President Roosevelt – to deter Hitler rather than grovel to him. Whether American support would have been forthcoming was a matter of opinion; Chamberlain thought not, that a recent proposal by Roosevelt to stage a world conference to solve all current problems didn’t indicate any readiness to line up against the dictators. So in his view playing the American card would have amounted to playing a busted flush. Despite Flanagan and Allen singing – in their Crazy Gang show The Little Dog Laughed, at the Palladium – How can he be a dud, Or a stick-in-the-mud, When he’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones?

  Chalk took Patricia to see it. That morning he’d received official confirmation of his appointment to the COQC starting in April; so their date turned out to be a celebration. He was to be relieved in the Operations Division in mid-March, and would be on leave then until the course started.

  She asked him at supper after the show, ‘Diana’ll be back by then, won’t she?’

  ‘Depends on her mother’s state of health. Calling a spade a spade, whether she’s still alive or not.’

  ‘If she’s not back, what d’you think you’ll do?’

  ‘Don’t know. Haven’t had time to think about it.’

  ‘Well – do bear in mind that the parents would love to have you at Glendarragh.’

  ‘What good taste they show.’

  ‘Don't they. Suzie and I have brought them up quite well, I admit.’

  ‘Would you be there?’

  ‘Might get a few days off, I suppose.’

  ‘Not worth it, just for that. Make it a week. Better still, a fortnight.’

  Perhaps, he wondered, kissing her goodnight, Diana’s instincts were sharper than his own?

  He was shaving next morning when he heard the post pushed through the door. Riffling through it – soap on his face, still – he found the letter he’d been waiting for. Dreading, but in his heart of hearts knowing it would be on its way.

  A creased, rather dirty envelope, with the only legible cyphers in the postmark – across a Spanish stamp – showing the year of despatch as 1937. Minimally two months in transit, therefore – the period during which one had not heard from Guy. He was hollow with certainty now, with dread.

  Dear Commander Chalk,

  My name is Gerald Oakes, and I have been fighting alongside your brother Guy for the past six or seven months. I cannot tell you how much it pains me to have to tell you that Guy was killed yesterday in the fighting for a place called Teruel. He was shot in the head, so died instantly, I’m sure couldn’t have known a thing about it.

  Kneeling, the letter crumpled in his hands, picturing Guy as he’d seen him last – in Glasgow, boarding the London train, looking back over his shoulder – that lop-sided, boyish grin…

  Trying to read more: smoothing out the cheap, rough paper, seeing it through tears now.

  I would like to tell you how bad I feel about him getting killed, how I and others as well in this platoon will miss him and his comradeship and what a lot we all thought of him. He was like my brother – if this had not happened I guess we would have stayed friends all our lives. Maybe that says it. It can be no real help, I know, I am writing partly because we had an understanding that we would do this for each other if such a thing did happen, but also because I sincerely want to tell you that you are not alone in—

  He’d never been so alone in his life. Hadn’t guessed what total loneliness could be like, what grief was like. If Mrs Eason had felt anything like this, he thought, he hadn’t offered her one hundredth of the sympathy and comfort he should have. Probably no-one could. You tried to make it not true – it hadn’t happened, none of this existed – but it did, and he’d sooner have been dead himself. Fleeting recollection of an earlier thought – that it was those left behind who suffered most. Not that one had sympathy to spare for oneself: only awareness of the hitherto unsuspected depths of sorrow. He couldn’t see properly, barely recognized the noises he was making as emanating from himself, but he was fumbling through the telephone book looking for the name Eason. Somewhere in south London, she’d been going. Might not be there now, obviously, but – Christ, hundreds of them. Whole columns. And as likely as not she’d have been going to her own family, not his. Telephone-book paper was absorbent, the pages of names starting with the letters EA were blotched with his tears, soaked right through. He
had to get dressed. Or ring, tell them he was sick? They wouldn’t be there yet, though.

  Told you not to go. Argued all bloody night, but you’re so damned obstinate…

  Dressing, it felt wrong to be performing tasks as he’d performed them before he’d read that letter – which was dated – going back to it and smoothing the damp, smudged paper out again – 23 December. He’d travelled to Scotland that night. Guy had been dead and he hadn’t known it: had at times lost sleep over the uncertainty but hadn’t really, deep-down, accepted that it could happen – could have happened… He’d slept well on the train, he remembered: while Guy had been lying dead. Rhythm of the train’s wheels – if he’d had ears to hear – Guy’s lying dead, Guy’s lying dead, Guy’s lying dead…

  Actually, he wasn’t. The bullet had, as it were, created a corpse – probably one of hundreds – but Guy himself was here – everywhere.

  Always would be, he thought. Always will be.

  He went to work. Having thought of telephoning to tell Suzie but deciding to leave it until this evening: partly from a dread of finding himself incapable of coherent speech when she came on the line. He’d looked at the letter yet again – to make sure of that date, as it seemed unlikely that it could have taken so long to come through. But there it was, 23 December. He took it with him in his pocket: deadly as it was, it was a link to Guy. He wondered if it might have been in Gerald Oakes’ pocket or pack and retrieved by some other companion when he’d been killed. But Oakes wouldn’t have been carrying it with him all that time. Unless he’d been killed very soon after he’d written it and they hadn’t searched him there and then. Or if only much later someone else thought of putting a stamp on it and posting it. But that didn’t make sense either – the postmark, it had been posted before the end of the year. Oakes had supplied his home address anyway – in Toronto, Canada – so he could write to him or to the Oakes family – some time… Taking the letter with him to his pointless, time-filling work at the Admiralty it occurred to him that if he’d fallen – or dived – under a bus it might have been found on yet another corpse: and the coroner might have accepted it as explanation, proof of intent. Traditionally it would have been a tram one dived under, but trams were being replaced by trolley-buses in London at this time. He travelled on one, and got off in Trafalgar Square. Had he been in uniform this would have been a breach of King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions: an officer in uniform was not permitted to travel on a bus or tram, or for that matter to carry a brown-paper parcel. But it was all right in a dark suit and bowler hat; and carrying the tightly-rolled umbrella was more or less de rigueur. Alighting in Trafalgar Square – in a cold northerly wind, litter scudding along the gutters – he had it hooked over his left arm, fingers of the right hand in his pocket in contact with the letter as if to guard it against pickpockets: a tall, spare man, red-haired, grim-faced, stepping on to the pavement after crossing Cockspur Street, telling himself again that it was true, inescapable, had to be faced up to and lived with – Guy had been shot dead, before Christmas.