The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  THIRTY

  A domestic interlude

  Kingsley felt his isolation keenly that evening.

  Having arrived at Victoria Station, he secured himself a room in a small hotel nearby and set out to walk off his melancholy and perhaps find a chop house for a solitary dinner. Lost in his thoughts, he found himself heading north, first past St James’s Park, then around the palace and across the eastern fringes of Hyde Park. With no real appetite to make him search out supper, he simply walked, and although he had not started his journey with any destination in mind, he began to realize where his feet were leading him.

  How strange it felt to be abroad once more in the city which, apart from three years at Cambridge, had been his home for his whole life. To be in London but not to be a part of London felt miserable in the extreme. He had always been a part of it, more than most men ever are. He had been responsible for its safety, he knew its underside, its dark secrets: the city had been his. But now his home was no longer his home, his beloved place of work was barred to him, probably forever. Those who had once known him believed him dead. Dead and disgraced. With his beard, his spectacles, his hat pulled low and his shabby suit, he had no fear of being recognized; in fact he no longer recognized himself, so utterly unfamiliar was the sensation of walking through streets which he knew intimately and yet having no connection to them whatsoever. He passed shops, hotels and pubs, inside which he knew would be people with whom he was acquainted, some friends even, all strangers to him now. The big police station on Seymour Street, near Marble Arch, had been at one time a home from home for him, for he had drunk brown ale with the friendly desk sergeant many times. The sergeant would no doubt still be there, as he was far too old for military service. The sergeant would be there, but Kingsley was not. He was not there at all. He did not exist.

  He started to make his way up Baker Street. He knew where he was going now, although he did not know what he would do when he got there. He skirted round the western edge of Regent’s Park up towards St John’s Wood and from there up Fitzjohns Avenue.

  He was going home.

  It was not that he had any intention of making himself known to his family but he had to be near them, if only for a moment. He could not help himself.

  It took him nearly two hours to walk from Victoria Station to Hampstead Heath and by the time he arrived at the big houses at the end of Flask Walk the long late-summer evening was over and night had fallen.

  As he walked along the elevated pavement, his collar turned up and the brim of his hat pulled even further down on his forehead, Kingsley noticed a special constable eyeing him with some suspicion. He realized that he was walking like a fugitive so he straightened up, reminding himself that the first rule of disguise and deception was confidence. He sang out a cheery ‘Good evening, officer.’

  The special gave him a wave. She was a woman; they were all women now, or old men. Shannon would probably have observed that being a special constable was as good a job as joining a Pierrot troupe in terms of gaining an unfair advantage with the girls. The constable walked away, clearly relieved not to be forced to investigate a tall, bearded rough-looking fellow. Kingsley knew these ‘specials’ to be the subject of much derisive humour, celebrated in music-hall sketches and in song. Everybody knew that ‘You can’t trust yer specials like yer old time coppers/When you can’t find your way ‘ome’, but Kingsley had always admired them for their enthusiasm and pluck, if not for their efficiency.

  These thoughts provided him with a momentary distraction from the fierce beating of his heart as he approached his old home. How many evenings had he walked up Flask Walk since his marriage in 1912? So many, many evenings. Always the same, up in the lift at Hampstead Tube Station, then left past the newspaper seller, picking one up if he hadn’t done so already. Often also some flowers from the stall on the high street, occasionally some chocolate or a cake from the fancy patisserie. And then home, home to the arms of his beloved Agnes who was always so happy to see him, always so anxious to hear what feats of cleverness and derring-do he had accomplished that day. And little George! It was a rare treat indeed to be home in time to see him before bed, but on the occasions when Kingsley thought that he would arrive in time, how he rushed. How he cursed the grim and inexplicable stoppages of the Tube train, the long queues for the lift made up of crowds of other men all as anxious as him to get home to the bosom of their families. When he could not get home in time, the first thing he would do after embracing Agnes would be to creep up to the nursery and kiss George while he slept. Sometimes the boy would stir and whisper, ‘I love you, Daddy,’ through his dreams. Those were the moments that Kingsley had lived for; those were the moments he had thrown away.

  Now he stood before the gate in the gloomy shadows away from the nearest gas lamp some ten yards further up the road. His gate. His house. He had bought it (or at least a part of it, for Agnes’s family had helped), he had carried Agnes through that gate on the day they returned from their honeymoon, and he had never ever thought to leave it. Now it was the gate of Mrs Beaumont, widow and mother. It was her gate.

  The street was empty, not a soul about. Lights were burning in the windows of his house, burning down in the basement where no doubt the scullery maid would be doing the dishes from supper, burning in the front hall where perhaps Molly the housemaid was tidying the boots and coats, and burning in the drawing room, where Agnes would be sitting. Reading, or at her needlework, or simply sitting. Alone.

  Without giving himself time to consider the consequences, he opened the gate and crept into the garden. He made his way to the house, avoiding the front path and sticking to the shadow of the great elm that stood in the middle of the front lawn, the tree in which he had promised George he would one day build a house and never had and now never would. The lace curtain of the drawing room on the ground floor was drawn but the heavy drapes had not yet been pulled for the night. The room within was brightly illuminated, for the whole house was fully electric, to the delight of Agnes, who had grown up in a big, old country house on which the modern world encroached only slowly. The light within the room would allow Kingsley to see in through the lace and yet, reflected on the delicate white cotton, prevent Agnes from seeing out. If he remained still and silent, he might stand before the glass and look in. He might see her.

  The night was silent, with only the distant sound of revelry at the Flask Inn to disturb the stillness of the air. Checking once more to ensure that the street was empty, Kingsley gently gathered up a wrought-iron chair from the little suite of garden furniture that stood beneath the elm and made his final approach. The drawing-room window was above head height, so he placed the chair against the wall to provide him with a step. Carefully he mounted it and slowly raised himself up before the window, unable to prevent his mind from noting that the sills would need repainting within the year.

  She was there, as he had known she would be. Sitting before the empty fireplace. The first fire of the autumn had not yet been lit and in its place stood the summer screen with its fine equestrian portrait that Agnes had brought with her from her drawing room in Leicestershire. She was in her chair. The one opposite his, which was now no one’s chair, empty, its cushions fully plumped. She had a magazine upon her lap; Kingsley fancied it was the Lady. Agnes loved her magazines and definitely favoured those that were filled with romantic short stories, fashion items and gossip, but these she kept as a guilty pleasure in her bedroom and dressing room and on the little Queen Anne table in her water closet. Downstairs in the drawing room she kept only the sort of magazine which she would wish callers to think she read, Country Life, the Tatler and, of course, the Lady. Not that she received callers any more, not since he had ruined both their lives for principle’s sake.

  Agnes was not reading the magazine. It lay on her lap and she was staring into space, an expression of distant melancholy on her beautiful face. Kingsley had never seen her look this way before. Angry, yes, many times, for she had a fiery disp
osition; sad, petulant, bored certainly, but never melancholic. Agnes’s was a light and easy spirit, or at least it had been, before he had crushed the spirit out of her. As he watched he saw her sigh. It was a long-drawn-out sigh, the sigh of a person with a long, empty night ahead of them. Then she rose and turned towards the window. Every instinct told Kingsley to drop away from the pane, but intellect told him to be still, that sudden movement would be detected. Only stillness would keep him hidden. She began to walk towards the window, towards him. Now she stood before the lace. Suddenly not three feet from him, separated only by a pane of glass and a scrap of embroidered cotton. If she moved the lace to look out she would probably die of fright and he would end up at the bottom of the Thames with a Secret Service bullet in his brain.

  She did not move the lace. She stepped forward to draw the heavy curtains for the night and for a moment they were face to face, he staring into those exquisite pale-blue eyes framed with golden curls that had first captivated his heart at that cricket match in Dulwich seven years before. Except now he noticed amongst her curls a colour that had not been there before, a streak of grey. She was scarcely twenty-four. Every fibre of his being longed to hold her, to wrench up the sash, reach out for her and cover her sweet face with burning kisses. He did not care that she had in a sense betrayed him, that she had not had the strength to rise above the common herd and be proud of him for what he had done. He had always known that Agnes was not the stuff of which that kind of hero is made. She was brave enough and had stood the pain of childbirth with a courage that left Kingsley in awe, but Agnes loved society far too much to have the strength of will ever to stand outside it. But none of that mattered to Kingsley. He had married her for what she was, because he loved her for what she was, and he would not wish to change her in any way.

  Now she stepped aside to unleash the cord that bound the curtains. First one side, then the other. Kingsley watched as she reached a hand behind the curtains, searching for the sash. He wanted to cry out, ‘Don’t pull it! Stay with me a moment longer!’ but he did not and her arm came down and with that movement the curtains closed, blotting out the light.

  Kingsley stepped down from the chair, devastated. Utterly wretched and alone. Perhaps it was this desperation that led him on. Considering the matter later, he wondered if he was not willing himself to be caught. He imagined that it would mean death at the hands of Shannon or his like but at least he would have seen her again. And George. The only creature on earth whom he loved as he loved Agnes.

  Kingsley looked up at the great dark edifice of the house. Four floors plus a basement. At the top were the servants’ rooms, housing two maids, a nanny and Cook. Below that was a guest bedroom, the servants’ bathroom and convenience, a music room and what had been Kingsley’s study and Agnes’s sewing room. The first floor contained a large master bedroom which had been his and Agnes’s, and a beautifully appointed modern bathroom with a separate showering cubicle with glass walls that Agnes’s mother had considered rather racy. Also a dressing room, a nursery with a small bathroom and water closet attached, and George’s room.

  The bedrooms were at the front of the house, two of the big bay windows for the master bedroom and one for George’s room.

  George’s window. The window through which, together, father and son had often watched the moon and stars before story time. George would be inside that room, in his little bed which he had only just graduated to when first Kingsley was forced from his home. The window was open.

  Something almost primal inside Kingsley compelled him now. He simply had to see his son. He took hold of the thick iron drainpipe, one of several that snaked down from the guttering on the roof above, and began to climb. The pain in his ribs was considerable but Kingsley paid it no heed at all and in a few moments he found himself hanging spider-like from the wall outside his son’s window. It was a sash window, open only a few inches to allow fresh air into the room. Holding fast to the pipe with one hand, Kingsley reached out with the other and placing his hand inside the opening he pushed. The window slid open noiselessly. He did not give himself time to consider the possible consequences of what he was doing; for a rare moment in his life his heart was leading him and not his head. Placing one foot upon the bracket that attached the pipe to the wall, he stretched out the other until he had it on the window sill. Then, in one single movement, he hauled his body across. Now he was squatting on the sill, a hand holding either side of the frame, his knees pushing against the curtains. Kingsley glanced behind him: the elm tree masked him from the road, he was still unobserved.

  Slipping between the curtains, he entered the room.

  Lowering a leg to the floor, he just stopped himself from stepping on a rubber figure of a clown. Kingsley knew that clown. When squeezed, it made a noise that was supposed to sound like laughter, although to Kingsley’s mind it sounded more like chronic wind. He reminded himself that George’s room was likely to be littered with possible booby traps that squeaked, rattled and squawked. The previous Christmas Eve, whilst attempting to load George’s stocking, he had nearly been given away by a jack-in-the-box that popped open with a shriek when you dropped it.

  Carefully lowering himself to the floor, Kingsley parted the curtains behind him so that moonlight could illuminate the room. It was all just as he remembered it: the toys on the floor, the little basin in the corner, the pirates on the wallpaper and the little boy asleep in the bed with the fairy-patterned coverlet. George was his usual sleeping self also, his sheets and blanket kicked away, his little body stretched at an extraordinary angle, pointing the wrong way in the bed, his back arched and his head hanging over the side in a rather alarming manner.

  Kingsley did what he always did when looking in on George at night. Stepping forward, he gently picked up his son and laid him out properly, with his feet pointing towards the foot of the bed and his head upon the pillow. Then Kingsley pulled the sheet and blanket up under George’s chin, arranged them neatly and tucked everything in.

  ‘There, there, little boy. Snug as a bug,’ he whispered and, leaning forward, kissed him.

  The boy stirred a little, his eyelids flickering, but he did not wake.

  ‘I love you, Daddy,’ he murmured through his dreams.

  Kingsley could not raise his head in time to prevent two tears from falling on to George’s little face.

  ‘I love you too, Georgie Porgie pudding and pie.’

  Then Kingsley heard a noise upon the stair. It was Agnes come to check on George. Her tread was different: before she had flitted lightly about the house and now the step was slow and weary, but from her sigh he knew that it was she. There was no time to retreat; he must hide instantly. In one corner of the room stood a hatstand on which hung George’s dressing-up costumes, a pirate, a prince, a knight, a maharajah, a soldier and, of course, a police constable. Kingsley knew those costumes well; he had hidden behind them before when playing hide-and-seek with George. Now he hid behind them under very different circumstances, ducking deep into the shadows just as the door opened.

  Once more he saw her, or at least her outline, silhouetted in the light of the doorway. He had not expected this second encounter and the pain was even more intense; it felt so unmanly to be cowering in his own child’s bedroom, afraid to face his wife. Agnes paused for a moment where she stood, clearly perplexed. She was looking at the open window. She took a step back into the hallway.

  ‘Elsie! Elsie, would you attend me a moment, please,’ she called. Kingsley did not recognize the name. Agnes must have taken on new staff. Clearly his wife had not been exaggerating when she had told him that some of the servants were ashamed to work for her. A young woman appeared beside Agnes, dressed in the black skirt and white pinny of a housemaid.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Beaumont?’ Of course, she had resumed her maiden name. How it pained Kingsley to hear his wife thus described.

  ‘George’s window. Did you open it and draw his curtains?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I did not.’r />
  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Quite sure, ma’am.’

  ‘Very well. Perhaps he opened it himself to look at the moon — he’s getting so clever and independent all of a sudden. Imagine if he had reached out and fallen! He always likes to look at the moon before he sleeps, it’s what he did with…what he did before.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Shall I shut it?’

  ‘No, I shall see to it. We must arrange to have a lock fitted. We will speak to Mr Pierce when he comes to clean the gutters.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you, that will be all.’

  Agnes sounded so lonely, chattering to her housemaid for want of other company. Not that she was ever brusque with the servants, but on this occasion she was sharing more of her thoughts than had been her habit in the past.

  The girl left and Agnes entered George’s room once more. She crossed to the window and closed it but fortunately did not slip the latch; had she done so, she might have been left wondering in the morning how it came to be undone. She reached up to draw the curtains but then, turning to see George asleep in bed with the moonlight on his face, she thought better of it. He looked like an angel at his rest. Agnes crossed to the little bed and kissed the boy.

  ‘No need to tuck you up tonight, sweetums? You must be having gentle dreams.’ She kissed him again and turned towards the door.

  ‘Mummy,’ said the boy, still half asleep.

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘I dreamed I saw Daddy.’

  ‘Oh darling, did you?’

  ‘He was here. He kissed me.’

  ‘If he was here I’m sure that’s exactly what he would do.’