In Pale Battalions - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  ‘John’s last picture,’ he cooed, stooping low over the canvas. ‘Lost, as I thought, for ever. But now, mirabile dictu, come once more to delight me.’

  Over lunch, I explained to him how it had come into my possession, though of all that it might symbolize I said nothing. Not that he pressed me on the point: despite the sharpness of his wits, he was a strangely incurious man. For Eric Dunrich it was seemingly enough to gaze at a painting he’d once been promised. Perhaps, I thought, it was his simplicity that had endeared him to Willis, his ability never to enquire where enquiry was unwelcome.

  After lunch, he suggested a stroll and led me up the lane to the headland above the estuary, where an unattended coastguard look-out and the crumbling wall of an old fortification clung to a rocky prominence at the top of sheer cliffs. The sea washed the flat rocks below in foaming sweeps but presented, further out, as calm and placid a face as the day itself. A single figure in the stern of a fishing smack bound for Polruan raised his hand in greeting when I waved. The sun sparkled benignly on the boat’s wake. Gulls swooped and soared. All was warm, breeze-fanned contentment.

  Dunrich settled himself on a rough bench formed by a single plank secured between two buttresses of the ruined wall that adjoined the outcrop of rock. I sat beside him, closed my eyes and let the warmth of the sun seep through my skin.

  ‘It’s a lovely spot,’ I said. ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘I hoped you would enjoy the view, dear lady,’ he replied. ‘But no, I seldom venture here. It is, for me, a place laden with memories.’ I opened my eyes and saw that he was smiling. ‘This is where I first met John Willis. The return of his painting reminds me of all that he did for me. Not that I am ever likely to forget. He saved my live on this spot, twenty-four years ago.’

  He sighed and looked out to sea, as if he intended to say no more. But, this time, there was no ferry boat to bear me away. ‘What happened?’ I said quietly.

  I knew he would tell me. He’d taken me there because both of us needed to hear his story and only in that place could it be told. Only there, in that moment, could understanding be mine, as only now can it be yours.

  John could not teach me to paint as well as he did. That, I fear, is not a transferable gift. But one art he did succeed in teaching me: that of living with one’s own imperfections. Had I possessed it when younger, life might not have proved so fraught, but, by the same token, I would never have met him – or you. So, be assured, I am not about to bemoan my lot.

  I believe I convinced even myself that I had a vocation for the priesthood. When I discovered that it was really only a sensual addiction to the forms and rituals of worship, I should have abandoned the cloth at once. Instead, I allowed myself to be snared by my own faith. Why surrender something which I could so easily simulate? The answer I fear, lies nearer the heart of my addiction.

  Let brevity be the soul of candour. I was choirmaster at a cathedral school, arrested one day on a charge of having committed an act of gross indecency with a boy chorister. Arrested and subsequently convicted. It scarcely matters that I was falsely accused, since I was, undeniably, tempted. So, though not strictly guilty, nor was I strictly innocent. Two years’ imprisonment may have been a harsh punishment, but I cannot claim that it was entirely unjust.

  What I failed to appreciate was that my punishment did not end with my release: it merely entered a more subtle phase. I came to Polruan because it was far from home and because I had once spent a happy holiday here as a child. It seemed an ideal refuge. But scandal’s winged chariot swiftly overhauled me. I became a marked man, reviled by one and all. Even when neighbours were not whispering about me, or warning their children against me, I imagined that they were.

  On Sunday, 18th November 1962, I resolved to make a dramatic exit from this vale of tears. It was a day of wind and rain. When I stood here, late that afternoon, on the very edge of the cliff, the gale tearing at my clothes and the spray stinging my face from the crashing surf below, I knew that I had only to take one step, one small step, and the rocks and surging waves would take me in their arms and bear me away. The coastguard look-out was unmanned. The light was failing. Nobody would be out walking in such weather. Nobody would see me – or care if they did. That day, I yielded to temptation. I stepped from the brink.

  John was sitting where we are sitting now. I had failed to notice him in the rain and gathering darkness. He had watched in silence as I stood on the edge of the cliff and summoned my courage to leap. He must have wondered what my intentions were, must have assumed – until the very last moment – that they could not be what they seemed.

  As I made to jump, he seized me round the waist. We fell sideways, away from the sheer drop, on to shelving ground where there were boulders and bracken to cling to. Even so, I nearly took him with me. But his strength was that of ten men. He hauled me back up to this platform, where we crouched, panting for breath, and the rain fell in torrents. My clothes were ripped, my hands bleeding from the sharp rock, my face washed in rain and sweat. I began to weep. He dragged me to this bench and made me take some whisky from his hip flask, let me gather my wits and catch my breath.

  I looked at him: an older man than me, no less shabby or desperate, to judge by appearances but with a glint in the eye some would call crazy, others a passion for life. His very spirit shamed me.

  ‘You’re Eric Dunrich, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve heard people gossiping about you. I expect you can guess what they say. Is that what brought you here?’

  ‘Yes. Death seemed to offer some kind of solution.’

  ‘It never does that, my friend. Death is only ever a defeat. Why defeat yourself?’

  ‘I already have done. Didn’t you listen to what they said?’

  ‘I could hardly not. But do you seriously suppose there’s a man in this village – me included – who hasn’t at least one secret to hide that’s every bit as shameful as anything you’re supposed to have done? What you fear isn’t the truth about yourself, but the prejudices of others. They’re worthless, believe me. Accept an offer of friendship. Begin again.’

  I said nothing. I was too shocked at my own susceptibility to what he had said. What was my iron resolve worth if it could be so easily undermined by a stranger? It was laughable.

  After a moment, he spoke again, more earnestly than before. ‘If you want to go through with it, I won’t intervene a second time. But if you decide not to, you’ll be doing me a favour as well as yourself.’

  What I said next was out of embarrassment at my own weakness as much as resentment that my grand gesture had been frustrated. ‘Why should you care?’

  ‘Because this has happened to me before,’ he replied. ‘I once offered a friend a way out of certain death – and he refused. By stopping you just now, I was giving both of us a second chance.’

  I stared at him incredulously. ‘You make a habit of this?’

  ‘Far from it,’ he replied. ‘The man I refer to had suffered much on my account. I offered him the only thing I had: my life in exchange for his. I offered to die in his place. But he refused. I’ve never stopped wondering what would have happened if he’d accepted, never stopped imagining how it would have been. But he didn’t accept. He turned his back and walked away to his death. It stayed what it always was. A dream. An illusion. A lie I told to others and to myself. For my sake as well as yours, don’t turn me down a second time.’

  As you see, he was successful in his plea. We heard each other’s confession, Mrs Galloway, then and later. The unfrocked priest and the unshriven sinner: a pretty combination, do you not think?

  Judge not, that ye be not judged? Let him who is without sin, et cetera? None of that suffices, I suspect. Then what? He would have died for his friend, but his friend was too great a friend to let him. I know that he came to you with a lie, another man’s story, a tragedy marginally different from his own, yet I beg you not to think harshly of him. His errors were
borne, not of cowardice, but of love. He wished only to give you the memory of a father to be proud of. It is not an un worthy wish. All that he told you was true, save in that one particular. All that he learned from exile was barren, save in that one pretence.

  He painted the third Bartholomew in order that he might face squarely all that was worst in himself and best in the woman he loved. Yet what he achieved transcended his purpose. It is why I so dearly wanted the picture and why, now that you have given it to me, I have broken my pact of secrecy with a long-dead friend.

  Driving home from Polruan that evening, I pulled off the road halfway across Dartmoor and got out to watch the sunset: a fading slash of red on the horizon far to the west, somewhere beyond Cornwall. A breeze was getting up on the moor, tugging at the gorse and bracken and draining the warmth from the day. But I was in no hurry to return to the car. My mind was still on Eric Dunrich’s parting words as I’d left Seaspray Cottage an hour or so before.

  We’d hung the third Bartholomew in a place of pride, on the chimneybreast in the tiny, congested sitting room. I took a final, wistful look at it, then turned away and walked out to the front door, where Dunrich was waiting for me. He was smiling broadly, with something akin to exultation suffusing his features.

  ‘You’ve seen it too now, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘You’ve seen it in her face. She’s forgiven him, Mrs Galloway. I am glad of it. Not merely because he was my friend, but because he was the finest man I ever knew.’

  Tyne Cot is still and silent in the hottest hour of the day, its gravestones massed in obedience to the purposes of the dead and the pretences of the living. In all its vast immobility of names, nothing moves save two figures progressing slowly down the sloping avenue towards the lych-gate and the Passendale road beyond.

  Leonora Galloway has completed her story. She has made her peace with the past and paid her debts to the present. She walks erectly, almost proudly, as they leave the cemetery and move towards the car. By contrast, her daughter Penelope seems hunched, bowed and thoughtful in the face of too much knowledge. She unlocks the car, climbs into the driving seat, leans across to open the passenger door for her mother and starts the engine.

  Before climbing into the car herself, Leonora takes a last look back at the cemetery beyond its perimeter wall. On the Memorial at its summit, she knows that the sun still etches in shade the name of one of the missing, whilst far to the south, at Thiepval, another name commands its place on a lofty pillar. Two names for the same lie – if a lie forgiven should be called a lie. This, then, is whence her search ends. And where did it begin? She remembers it well, to this day: Droxford railway station, all those years before. But now, for the first time, another fragment of that memory crystallizes in her mind.

  A woodland path, a shady summertime route back to Meongate. Charter carried her on his shoulders. She pulled at the straw of his hat. The sun-patched grass between the stretching boughs was as green as the trimmed blades at Tyne Cot, the shadows of the arching branches as deep as those beneath the pillars at Thiepval. He made her laugh. She cannot remember how, but he made her happy, for that brief space, after the sadness of parting. At the edge of the wood, by the stile that led into the grounds of Meongate, he lifted her down, sat her on the rail and leant beside her, recovering his breath and mopping his brow. He must have said something to amuse her, though all she can remember is laughter – his and hers.

  Leonora climbs into the car and closes the door. She has a train to catch, a home to return to, a present to rejoin – and a long forgotten promise to keep.

  ‘How does it make you feel, Mother?’ says Penelope as she pulls away. ‘The knowledge that, in the end, he deceived you?’

  Leonora’s attention is elsewhere. When she replies, it is in response not to her daughter’s words, but to her great-grandfather’s. ‘I will.’

  ‘Will what?’

  ‘Be happy.’

  Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you

  Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

  It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

  Great death has made all his for evermore.

  About the Author

  Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire and read History at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. His first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue, was winner of the first WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award and was dramatized for TV, starring John Thaw.

  Robert Goddard can be found on the web at www.robertgoddardbooks.co.uk

  Also by Robert Goddard

  In order of publication

  PAST CARING

  A young graduate starts to investigate the fall from grace of an Edwardian cabinet minister and sets in train a bizarre and violent chain of events.

  ‘A hornet’s nest of jealousy, blackmail and violence. Engrossing’

  DAILY MAIL

  PAINTING THE DARKNESS

  On a mild autumn afternoon in 1882, William Trenchard’s life changes for ever with the arrival of an unexpected stranger.

  ‘Explodes into action’

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

  INTO THE BLUE

  When a young woman disappears and Harry Barnett is accused of her murder he has no option but to try and discover what led her to vanish into the blue.

  ‘A cracker, twisting, turning and exploding with real skill’

  DAILY MIRROR

  TAKE NO FAREWELL

  September 1923, and architect Geoffrey Staddon must return to the house called Clouds Frome, his first important commission, to confront the dark secret that it holds.

  ‘A master storyteller’

  INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

  HAND IN GLOVE

  The death of a young English poet in the Spanish Civil War casts a shadow forward over half a century.

  ‘Cliff-hanging entertainment’

  GUARDIAN

  CLOSED CIRCLE

  1931, and two English fraudsters on a transatlantic liner stumble into deep trouble when they target a young heiress.

  ‘Full of thuggery and skulduggery, cross and doublecross, plot and counter-plot’

  INDEPENDENT

  BORROWED TIME

  A brief encounter with a stranger who is murdered soon afterwards draws Robin Timariot into the complex relationships and motives of the dead woman’s family and friends.

  ‘An atmosphere of taut menace…heightened by shadows of betrayal and revenge’

  DAILY TELEGRAPH

  OUT OF THE SUN

  Harry Barnett becomes entangled in a sinister conspiracy when he learns that the son he never knew he had is languishing in hospital in a coma.

  ‘Brilliantly plotted, full of good, traditional storytelling values’

  MAIL ON SUNDAY

  BEYOND RECALL

  The scion of a wealthy Cornish dynasty reinvestigates a 1947 murder and begins to doubt the official version of events.

  ‘Satisfyingly complex…finishes in a rollercoaster of twists’

  DAILY TELEGRAPH

  CAUGHT IN THE LIGHT

  A photographer’s obsession with a femme fatale leads him into a web of double jeopardy.

  ‘A spellbinding foray into the real-life game of truth and consequences’

  THE TIMES

  SET IN STONE

  A strange house links past and present, a murder, a political scandal and an unexplained tragedy.

  ‘A heady blend of mystery and adventure’

  OXFORD TIMES

  SEA CHANGE

  A spell-binding mystery involving a mysterious package, murder and financial scandal, set in 18th-century London, Amsterdam and Rome.

  ‘Engrossing, storytelling of a very high order’

  OBSERVER

  DYING TO TELL

  A missing document, a forty-year-old murder and the Great Train Robbery all seem to have connections with a modern-day
disappearance.

  ‘Gripping…woven together with more twists than a country lane’

  DAILY MAIL

  DAYS WITHOUT NUMBER

  Once Nick Paleologus has excavated a terrible secret from his archaeologist father’s career, nothing will ever be the same again.

  ‘Fuses history with crime, guilty consciences and human fallibility… an intelligent escapist delight’

  THE TIMES

  PLAY TO THE END

  Actor Toby Flood finds himself a player in a much bigger game when he investigates a man who appears to be a stalker.

  ‘An absorbing display of craftsmanship’

  SUNDAY TIMES

  SIGHT UNSEEN

  An innocent bystander is pulled into a mystery which takes over twenty years to unravel when he witnesses the abduction of a child.

  ‘A typically taut tale of wrecked lives, family tragedy, historical quirks and moral consequences’

  THE TIMES

  NEVER GO BACK

  The convivial atmosphere of a reunion weekend is shattered by an apparent suicide.

  ‘Meticulous planning, well-drawn characters and an immaculate sense of place… A satisfying number of twists and shocks’

  THE TIMES

  NAME TO A FACE

  A centuries-old mystery is about to unravel…

  ‘Mysterious, dramatic, intricate, fascinating and unputdownable’

  DAILY MIRROR

  FOUND WANTING

  Catapulted into a breathless race against time, Richard’s life will be changed for ever in ways he could never have imagined…

  ‘The master of the clever twist’

  SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

  LONG TIME COMING

  For thirty-six years they thought he was dead… They were wrong.

  ‘When it comes to duplicity and intrigue, Goddard is second to none’

  DAILY MAIL

  BLOOD COUNT

  There’s no such thing as easy money. As surgeon Edward Hammond is about to find out.

  ‘Mysterious, dramatic, intricate, fascinating and unputdownable… The crime writers’ crime writer’