*
Bea was always uneasy about going into the attics of Garth Hall. The poorly lit rooms did not bother her any more than the steep stairs, though the frailties of age were taking their toll. It was more the feeling of entering a crypt, a chill reliquary where the paper remains of those long gone were slowly disintegrating into the dust of a past waiting to claim her, too. The buckets beneath the leaking roof had to be checked regularly or they would overflow and ruin the bedroom ceilings beneath. But the weather was turning dry and cold so she had nothing to empty. The gardener said they might be in for a white Christmas.
Bea paused before leaving. There was no sound save for the sigh of timbers shifting one against another under the imperceptible weight of time. Her eyes took in the silt of discarded possessions and all the pieces of furniture neither she nor Francis had wanted after they married. She opened the drawer of a heavy Edwardian sideboard and a hundred years and more of their family histories lay before her – copperplate letters of love and war, mutiny and trade, each full of hopes and plans and the scuttlebutt of daily existence. There were photographs, too, curled into tight little tubes. Bea flattened a few out, pictures of soldiers and sailors and those who would grieve when they did not come back.
But who these people were, what their lives had been, she had no notion any more. Even for her, they were just memories in the minds of those who had joined them since. Only Bea and Francis survived from their ancient lineages of warriors and adventurers and people who did their duty, whatever the cost.
After them – what? The days of their years, their passions and secrets…all this would slip from recall and there would be no trace of their passage to eternity.
She picked up one of the letters and its fibres fell to pieces as soft as snow. What had these ghosts left behind? Maybe a fingerprint of whoever had licked the pale red stamps in Bombay or Benares and posted their dreams across the world to the house where they were born and their spirits would return.
She thought of how little time was given, what little mark we make. Then she heard her husband shouting from downstairs.
‘Bea…Bea? Where are you? Someone’s stolen my keys.’
‘I won’t be long. Give me a moment.’
‘We must lock up or else someone’ll be breaking in.’
‘No, Francis. No one’s going to break in.’
*
The Prime Minister swept out of Lime Grove studios in a black Range Rover followed by another with tinted windows to hide the weaponry and field dressings inside.
A researcher suggested a drink. McCall said he was whacked. This had been a long day. They all were. But for reasons he could not fully explain, he felt an almost agoraphobic paranoia about being in a public place that night. It had struck him before, working in the tribal enclaves of Northern Ireland where all was tear gas and hatred and no one knew when the next car bomb would fill the gutters with blood and glass and waste. He wanted only to feel safe this night. And to lie with Evie.
He drove across London to the garden flat in Highgate he had not visited for weeks. Never phone, never ask, never tell – that was their arrangement.
They had met in a bar, strangers adrift and remaindered for reasons the other did not need to know. He was not required to send flowers or give presents and Evie never questioned whether he had other such comfort women or not. Neither felt bad about using the other.
All life becomes a convenience eventually…something warm, something sweet, something to take away the bitterness of what happens. Everyone needs that. But how to keep it? That was a trick McCall had yet to learn.
He parked the Morgan and crossed the street. Evie’s light was on. He pictured her dresser and its blue and white plates, the antique sycamore table scrubbed till the grain stood proud. Her bed was brass and iron with a hard mattress and soft pillows. She answered his knock in her dressing gown. Her eyes took a moment to smile.
‘Well, well, well – ’
‘Hello, Evie.’
‘ – and there’s you fresh from consorting with the Prime Minister. I am honoured.’
‘You watched it, then?’
‘Of course. Thatcher’s a baleful old witch but she’s still a class act.’
McCall followed her indoors. She nodded to a campaign chair. He sat down as she went into the kitchen. A tape deck clicked on. Goldberg Variations. That brought back their first night. She had sat across him, hands clasped behind her head, baring breasts like bee stings and moaning till she came. He left before dawn next day, fading from her life like they’d never met, leaving no proof they ever had.
Evie returned with two heavy cut glass tumblers and a bottle of rare Bruichladdich. She poured the malt then folded herself into the corner of a low sofa.
‘So, McCall…looking for a bed for the night, are we?’
Both grinned across the bare expanse of varnished floorboards between them. Nothing more needed saying. It was possible McCall could get to love Evie’s smile – slightly asymmetrical but true and honest. Not all those who had smiled at him were that. But this was risky territory. It was safer to talk of terrorism.
‘Your lot must be on high alert.’
‘No more than usual.’
‘Come off it, Evie. The IRA just nearly murdered Thatcher and all her cabinet.’
‘Don’t start fishing, McCall.’
‘And what about all this industrial unrest - the miners fighting it out with the police on the streets. The country’s at war with itself.’
‘Maybe it is.’
‘So the spooks can’t just be watching from the sidelines.’
‘You know better than to ask.’
‘Just this once – ’
‘You’re crossing our line, McCall.’
‘ – but Thatcher says we’re under attack. You must be hearing something.’
‘Only the sound of a lot of people praying.’
*
Bea sat profiled at the dressing table, brushing out her hair for the night. She tilted her head in the mirror, making the best of what remained and pouting the lips so many men once craved to kiss…and some had succeeded in doing.
In a silver-framed photograph by her pots of lotions and creams was a bitter sweet reminder of all that had gone. She had been arriving at some society reception, glittering in diamonds and fur like a movie star with Francis on her arm in all the pomp of his military attaché’s uniform. How glamorous and young they looked, how they shone in those dull days of post war austerity. Even the spies of their opponents were mesmerised. Such times they were…all bluff and double cross and combat to the death back then but lost in unwritten history now.
Francis came in searching for a collar stud box he had misplaced - like much else recently.
‘We are going to see him, aren’t we?’
‘Who, dear ’
‘The boy…for Christmas.’
‘Mac? Of course we are. I’ve told you already.’
‘Is he bringing Helen?’
‘No, Francis. Do try to remember these things. That’s all over long since.’
‘Oh, right. Such a pity. She was jolly good fun, was Helen.’
She might have been – yet she had still betrayed them all. But Helen was not the only one guilty of committing that particular crime.
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