The Silent Ones

by William Brodrick

  Like the Prior, Anselm was patient, but part of him wanted to snap that pencil. He said, ‘Why on earth would he do all that?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ intoned Dunstan, insouciance itself. He turned to the Prior as if to get his glass filled. ‘And we don’t want to know. The sooner you show him the door the better.’

  Anselm could have been annoyed but he wasn’t. Dunstan’s days under the sun were almost over and he was making the worst of what was left to him. Between pointless visits to the hospital where he looked down on consultants of various disciplines, he picked silly fights in Chapter, like opposing the offer of a job to a man whose vowels weren’t right. So Anselm wasn’t inclined to argue. He spoke about someone he’d come to know.

  ‘Maybe I lack Dunstan’s experience of duplicity. But I’m not surprised a man lost his faith. I’m not surprised he came to a monastery. I’m not surprised he chose a new name to escape his past. I’m not surprised that seeming friends have turned away. He has my pity’ – Anselm looked at Dunstan – ‘he had it then and he has it now. I’ve nothing else to say. But I do have a proposal.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said the Prior. He’d been watching Anselm intently.

  ‘If anyone has been deceived, it’s me. And I’d like to know the answers to the questions Dunstan doesn’t want to ask. I understand you’ – Anselm nodded at the Weaver – ‘you’re not involved. I am. I’m already responsible.’

  The Prior showed a readiness to quibble but he said, ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Let me find out why John Joe Collins left Edmund Littlemore behind.’ Anselm glanced a challenge at Dunstan. ‘I’ve been told that he’s done nothing wrong. If he has, then I’ll ask him to leave myself. But if it turns out he just needs our help … then we take it from there, step by step. I think that accommodates Dunstan’s caution. I also think it’s fair.’

  ‘To whom?’ enquired Dunstan over an imaginary glass.

  ‘Me. The stooge with the levers. And the man you’d show the door without a hearing.’

  The Prior went to the window and opened it. The sounds of spring came on a breeze. A distant tractor. The scuff of sandpaper on dry timber.

  ‘How long do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Just a day.’ Anselm sought Dunstan’s support. ‘What could go wrong in a day?’

  Dunstan reflected. ‘Burgess and Maclean … Philby … the Arnhem drop.’

  ‘Take the time you need,’ said the Prior. He came back from the window. ‘Just one matter that we might as well clear up now. You think the man who came here was Littlemore’s father? The man he tracked down when he returned to England?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t. You described wit and intelligence but no father could speak of his missing son without anxiety. This man is not a parent. And if I’m wrong, then either his son isn’t missing or he knows the secret of where he is.’

  Part Two

  ‘You’ve got to go back to the police,’ said Gutsy, passing a cigarette to Harry.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can. What was his name again?’

  ‘Sanjay.’

  ‘Well, this time you have to give him the facts. You can’t just sit there and say nothing.’

  They were leaning on the barrier of a wooden walkway built on a lake, one of the filled-in gravel pits on Wandsworth Common. Some ducks were thrashing about in the rushes. Two swans looked over, curious.

  ‘Do you want me to tell him?’ offered Gutsy, manfully.

  ‘Just give us a light.’

  To be healthy Gutsy had nicked a packet of Rothmans menthol, which were disgusting. But they were better than nothing. Having lit up, Harry dropped the burning match into the water. He listened for the hiss, but Gutsy was talking again.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who he is or how important he is, he can’t get away with it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then spit it out.’

  Gutsy didn’t understand. You can’t spit things out without thinking where your glob is going to land.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Gutsy, tapping ash into the lake. ‘Just let it go.’

  ‘I can’t. We’re brothers.’

  They’d tried to cut their thumbs with a bread knife and mingle some blood, but neither of them could face the pain. In the end they’d joined scratch to scratch. It still meant something.

  ‘I know. That’s why I trust you.’

  Harry stared into the cloudy green water, his attention drawn away like a leaf on the surface of the sky.

  Back in October – after Harry had spent twenty minutes in the hospital interview suite staring in silence at Sanjay’s Reebok trainers – the policeman had gently pulled the plug. As a last resort he’d invited Father Eddie down to the station but ten minutes into the confrontation the priest had done a runner. The next morning Harry’s mother had called Uncle Justin. Like Geraldine, he was a specialist in trauma. Only his methods were different. And so Uncle Justin came round with his holdall full of crampons and clips and all sorts of stuff Harry had never seen before. They went into the garden.

  ‘He’s out of reach, now,’ said Uncle Justin, taking a thick yellow rope out of his bag. ‘He hasn’t gone back to the States because that’s the first place anyone would look. I bet he’s in Spain, sunning himself. And as long as no one says anything, no one’s going to chase after him.’

  Uncle Justin was lean and muscular. His blond hair had been ravaged for years by the wind and rain. He was the Marlboro Man. All year he’d been denying he was forty.

  ‘This Littlemore will start a new life. And so must you. And that means learning how to get away from the things you can’t forget.’

  Harry didn’t respond so Uncle Justin placed a hand on each of his shoulders, looking at him as if they were brothers in arms. His eyes were green and cloudy like the water in a lake.

  ‘You have to trust me,’ he said. ‘Climbing is all about trust. And trust is all about knowing you’re secure. And being secure is all about the knot around your waist. So that’s where we begin, with learning your knots. And the first and most important knot is the bowline.’

  Uncle Justin had climbed every dangerous rock face in Britain. He’d founded the Bowline Project for the homeless. The BBC had produced a documentary showing how he’d worked wonders for people with nowhere to turn. He hadn’t just taken people off the street, he’d given them experiences that changed how they saw things. They’d conquered mountains, restored a shepherd’s cottage in Wales, gone on holidays together. He’d just been one of them, another man making his way through thick and thin. Harry had always adored him. Now things were different.

  ‘To learn the bowline, all you’ve got to do is think of a rabbit coming out its hole,’ he said, uncoiling the rope.

  He’d said the same thing to Fraser and Kenny and Jock. The three of them had appeared in front of the camera to explain how Justin Brandwell had used climbing as a means of helping them turn their lives around. They’d all escaped life on the street, beginning with the safest knot in the business.

  ‘It’s like a bedtime story,’ he said, giving the rope-end a shake. ‘A rabbit comes out of its hole, takes a wander round a tree and then goes home again.’

  Uncle Justin made a loop and fed the tag end through the hole. His hands worked expertly, taking the rabbit on its little outing. When he’d finished, he untied the knot and threw the rope at Harry.

  ‘Your turn.’

  The programme had ended with Kenny, a former glue-sniffer from Scarborough, twitching at the base of a windy outcrop in North Yorkshire. ‘Once you’re down,’ he’d laughed, ‘there’s only one place to go, and that’s up.’ Which was a depressing moment, in retrospect, because after the broadcast, Jock was arrested for theft in Marylebone High Street and Kenny was found dead, fished from a canal in Birmingham. He’d been seventeen years old.

  ‘Remember what I said, the rabbit comes out of the hole.’

  Harry kept
trying, but the rabbit was confused, going round in circles, unable to make its way home. Truth be told, Harry wasn’t thinking about any kind of bedtime story. He was thinking of that scene in Jaws – Uncle Justin’s favourite film – where Quint is teaching the same knot to Police Chief Brody on the Orca. ‘The little brown eel comes out of the cave, swims into the hole, comes out of the hole, goes back into the cave again.’ And that’s the beginning of the end, really, because seconds later the fishing reel is whizzing and that great white has got them hooked.

  ‘Try again,’ said Uncle Justin.

  But Harry had stopped playing the game; he’d let the rope fall and he was staring at his uncle, searching for words that might even begin to express his anger and confusion. But nothing came out of the black hole in his mind, just more self-disgust, slithering into his consciousness. Uncle Justin was watching him – just like Quint when his spool began to click.

  ‘What’s up, Harry?’ he said, coming close, tears of grief suddenly appearing. He knew the adoration had gone. He’d seen it die. ‘You’re not frightened of me, are you?’

  ‘No,’ replied Harry, thinking rage must look like fear.

  Uncle Justin’s green eyes turned dark. ‘I think we’d better get you on a rock face,’ he said. ‘It’s the best place to understand what I’m trying to teach you.’

  Harry gathered the spit in his mouth, forming a sort of liquid ball. He was looking down at the water while Gutsy struck matches, letting them fall and fizz. A breeze sent a shiver across the lake and the reeds began to sway.

  ‘I’m going to keep on twisting your arm,’ said Gutsy.

  Harry’s cheeks and tongue carried on working.

  ‘I’ll stop when you finally spit out what happened.’

  Gutsy waited for a reply, bringing the thrill of tension between them, but all at once the air held its breath and the ripples vanished among the reeds. Harry could see the dark outline of his head resting on the wooden barrier, his features browned like a corpse and speckled with flies.

  ‘Well?’ asked Gutsy.

  Harry didn’t stir, save to suck at the walls of his cheeks. When he’d filled his mouth, he released the heavy glob of spit, letting it drop on to the reflection of his face.

  Gutsy backed away, frightened. ‘You’re disgusting,’ he said.

  5

  Robert Sambourne still couldn’t feel anything. His dad was dead and he couldn’t feel a thing. When he got the call ten days back from his mother, he almost burst into tears but didn’t want to break down in the office with everyone watching. He made his excuses and went outside into Balham High Street thinking he’d explode as soon as his feet touched the pavement, but nothing happened, the emotion got trapped somewhere frighteningly deep, leaving its hand on his throat as a warning that one day it would rise to the surface and squeeze the life out of him. There’d been an upsurge only a few hours ago when, at the end of the funeral, he followed his dad out of the church. He raised his eyes to the coffin, aware of the faces looking on with pity, but all his attention lay on the pine box on the shoulders of strange men, used to the graft of grieving for a wage. And all at once he felt abandoned, cut off from someone absolutely vital and irreplaceable. The big strong man had gone. It simply wasn’t possible, but he was lying in that heavily varnished box. Robert had wanted to turn aside and bury his face in someone’s lapels, escape the pain and the brutality of the moment, but he couldn’t. He was a man, now, walking down the aisle on his own, two steps behind his mother. By the time he’d reached the porch the emotion had subsided again, once more leaving its thumb pressed against his throat, threatening to return. For a moment he almost believed in God: the depth of feeling, its content and power, was simply terrifying – it was greater than the Bomb: it couldn’t spring from some biological connection alone, a chance ordering of atoms in a here-today-gone-tomorrow world. There had to be something else. But there was only one brute certainty: the bond between father and son had been severed as if it meant nothing. Robert’s dad had been lowered into the ground. He’d been covered in clay

  ‘Have a ham sandwich.’

  Robert hadn’t heard the French windows open. Crofty had turned the handle quietly and was now at his side with a plate in his chubby fingers. They were standing on decking in a small neglected garden that backed onto a railway line. This was Robert’s parents’ home in Raynes Park. His mother’s place, now. At the end of a short flagged path, beneath trees, was his dad’s old workshop; the place where he’d made magic out of wood.

  ‘There’s cheese, too.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Go on. I made them myself.’

  Alan Croft was more than Robert’s boss, editor of the South London Chronicle. He was a part of Robert’s childhood, an amateur magician who’d messed up all the well-known tricks. A Les Dawson of the Magic Circle, his party piece was to try and cut his wife Muriel in half, breaking the saw instead. He’d also been Robert’s dad’s closest friend. They met on stage in 1964 after the young Lenny, fresh from Western Australia, came to England on the Fairsky seeking a new life among the Poms. He’d joined the Wimbledon Light Opera Society, drawn by a production of The Sorcerer in which Crofty landed the title role. Robert’s dad, on account of his accent, was consigned to the male chorus. They became drinking partners, Crofty forging a career in journalism, Robert’s dad working as a carpenter on various construction sites throughout London. By the time of Robert’s birth, Crofty had become an editor and Lenny the master of his own business. The drinking was replaced by more enlightened pursuits and when Robert failed his degree – the natural result of a predilection for failed relationships with haunting older women – Crofty offered him a job on the paper. He’d schooled him in the craft.

  ‘Your dad was a good man,’ he said, as if making a point of order. ‘He fought the good fight and now … well, I’m going to miss him.’

  ‘Me too.’

  A train thundered along the line, shaking the trees and the shed.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  Crofty tucked in, guilty to be hungry; guilty – Robert imagined – because he hadn’t found any tears either. The loss was too sudden for both of them, too great to be managed by a sudden outburst of grief. They were both dry-eyed like gatecrashers at a wake. Neither of them felt they belonged.

  ‘But of this you can be sure,’ said Crofty, finishing a speech he hadn’t made, ‘your dad thought the world of you. He’d have walked on nails to make you happy. There aren’t many sons who can say that about their father.’

  ‘There aren’t.’

  ‘And that’s his legacy.’ Crofty sniffed. He was looking at the envelope in Robert’s hands, curious to know who it was from. It had arrived at work that morning. After reading it several times, Robert had slipped the letter into the pocket of his black suit and then rushed to the church. He’d taken it out for another reading just before Crofty appeared with the sandwiches, leftovers after the well-wishers had said goodbye.

  ‘Take some time off,’ said Crofty, glancing over his shoulder back into the house.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘The news can wait.’

  ‘No, I want to work. I’ll take a break when I finally feel something.’

  Crofty sniffed again and nodded at the envelope. He was curious – it was written all over his ample freckled face – but on this day of bereavement he imagined it was from an old friend of Robert’s father … maybe someone he knew.

  ‘Words of comfort?’ he asked, tentatively.

  ‘Not really. Do you remember that American priest who vanished last year?’

  Crofty made a start as if he’d just heard a mild profanity. If they were going to talk at all, it had to be about Lenny Sambourne, Robert’s dad, but Robert pressed on. His mind and heart were numbed. What else could he do?

  ‘I was in the police station when he ran off. Don’t you remember?’ Crofty said he didn’t – which was ine
xplicable, because Robert had wanted to follow up the story but Crofty hadn’t been in favour. They’d argued the merits and Robert had lost. But now, looking at the envelope, Crofty frowned, inviting a rehearsal of the particulars he couldn’t seriously have forgotten. So Robert went back to the beginning.

  He’d gone to a police station to check up some details on a local murder when a Catholic priest came striding out of an interview room, practically knocking him over. It turned out that an allegation had been made against the priest in relation to a young boy, but once the boy had sat down in front of the video gear, he just clammed up. So the police had invited the priest down to the station, hoping for an admission. When they quizzed him about his past, he’d taken off.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Crofty, with another backward glance. ‘And you wanted to chase after him.’

  ‘No. I did chase after him. I practically camped outside his window, saying I wouldn’t go until he gave me an interview.’

  ‘Yes … and one night he slipped out of the back door leaving the place wide open.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Suddenly, there were raised voices from inside. Robert turned round. His mother was squaring up to Muriel, Crofty’s wife. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She’d been crying and confused for days, though she’d managed to pull herself together for the service and burial. Against Robert’s expectations, she’d been incredibly dignified in public … like a statue, no emotion on her face, cold even, looking beyond the ritual to something visible only to her. But now she’d cracked again and Muriel was nodding slowly like a nurse trained in palliative care. She was stroking her friend’s arms, calming her down. Everything was going to be all right, her manner said, everything was going to be fine … she was unfolding a tissue now, she was gently dabbing those quivering cheeks. Robert frowned because Muriel almost looked as if she was acting. She’d played Aline in The Sorcerer.