She finds him on the far side of the hospital garden, partially veiled by the sprawling fronds of a yucca plant. He is sitting in a wheelchair, staring at an empty bird table from behind sunglasses. Across his knees is a blue hospital-issue blanket. By his side is a small portable oxygen tank.
After a month in intensive care and a fortnight in a private room, his doctors had recommended he be moved to a clinic for a further month’s rehabilitation. But Edward had insisted that he was now fit enough to return home, threatening to walk there by himself if he had to. Realizing he was being serious, the doctors had agreed reluctantly. But when they told him arrangements were being made for an ambulance to take him there, he became angry again. He wanted to drive himself home, he said, in his own car, like a normal human being, ‘not some freak’. A compromise was reached. Hannah would drive him and Niall would follow them in his car. So as not to alert any reporters who might be waiting for them at the front of the hospital, they would be allowed to park in the ambulance bay around the back.
As she studies her father, Hannah rubs her arms and regrets wearing a sleeveless top. He might see the Sanskrit tattoo that runs from the base of her neck to her shoulder, the one she has been trying to conceal from him on her visits to the hospital. She worries at the strands of silk and leather about her wrist, tugging them around in full circles before moving to the chunky ring on her thumb and turning that instead. When she looks up, her father is staring at her.
‘Hi,’ she says with a small self-conscious wave from waist height when she is a few feet away from him. ‘You all set?’
Edward smiles unconvincingly when he recognizes her, a stretching of his lips that does not expose his teeth.
‘Got any bags?’
He shakes his head.
‘No. I guess you wouldn’t have. Stupid of me.’ Hannah gives a single clap and rubs her hands. ‘They’ve let me park in the ambulance bay, so we’d better not hang about. Do you want me to push you?’
‘You can drive?’
‘Passed first time,’ Hannah says. ‘You OK for me to push you?’
‘Thank you. I can walk OK but they like you to use these things.’ He taps the armrests of the wheelchair. ‘In case you fall on the premises, I suppose. Liability.’
Spits of rain are falling on the dusty paving stones. As Hannah pushes her father along a path and around the corner of the building, she hums to herself, out of nervousness rather than contentment. When she realizes she is doing it, she stops. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Now close your eyes.’ She brings the chair to a halt in front of his old Volvo estate. ‘OK, you can open them … It’s been sitting in the garage. Mum hardly ever used it.’
Edward nods. ‘She kept it all these years … Maybe I should go in the back. It’ll be easier with the oxygen tank. I don’t really need it but …’
Hannah thinks she would prefer it if he was in the back too, that way they can talk without facing each other. There is an awkwardness to their conversations which she does not know how to avoid. Though she has rarely left her father’s side since his return, they are still strangers. Their discomfort with each other lies between them like a wall of glass.
A few minutes later, as she waits for a Royal Mail van to let her out on to the Cromwell Road, Hannah drums her fingers on the steering wheel. The Saturday afternoon traffic is thickening, she thinks. Conscious that the Volvo smells of rust and damp carpet, she says: ‘I guess she still smells the same.’
‘My sense of smell hasn’t returned yet.’
Hannah angles her rear-view mirror. Her father is staring straight ahead, motionless, as if he’s clicked out the light.
Chelsea are playing at home, she now realizes, so the traffic will be worse the nearer they get to Parsons Green, a couple of miles away. To her house. To their house. Their. Again the word doesn’t seem to fit. At least there is an occupational therapist waiting for them there, one who has been making all the rehabilitative arrangements, preparing his medication, sorting out the beds and chairs. And Niall has briefed the hospital staff about the need for discretion: it would be in everyone’s interests if the press didn’t hear about this homecoming.
‘What was it like in the cave?’ Hannah asks abruptly, surprising herself with the bluntness of her question. She has avoided asking it and the avoidance has built up a pressure in her mind. ‘It must have been …’ She can’t think of a way to finish the sentence. It must have been what? She has no frame of reference.
When Edward’s voice eventually drifts over from the back seat it is distant, as though through a mist. ‘Can we talk about it later? I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just I need to …’
Hannah adjusts her rear-view mirror again so that she has a better view of her father’s face. He is staring out of a window braided with rain, nodding as if in mental preparation for a difficult conversation. Bracing himself.
‘What was Niall like while I was away?’
She considers this. ‘He was like our protector. Kept promising he would get you back for us. He was devastated when Mum died.’
‘Why won’t anyone tell me how it happened?’
Hannah answers too brightly, unable to find the right tone. ‘She was found floating in the sea off the Cornish coast. Near Doyden Point. The coastguard said she could have drifted in the current.’ She thinks: if I stick to facts, that will be OK, won’t it?
‘She drowned?’
‘She’d been in the water a couple of days. The coroner’s report mentioned “injuries consistent with an impact”.’
‘Hit by a boat?’
‘They think it’s more likely she fell on to … She fell from a considerable height.’
Hannah has a sudden, unambiguous sense that her father is angry with her, something to do with the way his eyes in the mirror narrow and harden. He seems angry that his daughter is here and his wife isn’t.
‘What was she doing up there?’ There is accusation in his question.
‘Doyden Point was her favourite place. We used to have picnics up there. You remember?’
‘I know all that.’ Impatience in his voice now. ‘How did she seem when you saw her last?’
‘Fine. She’d rented the cottage for a week.’
‘On her own?’
‘She did that sometimes, when she needed a break from the campaign. It was a full-time job for her. The vigils. The TV and radio appearances. Fundraising …’ She knows he has heard about the Friends of Edward Northcote campaign already, but she doubts he has taken much of it in. Perhaps, she thinks, if I raise the subject again now it will deflect the fear I am feeling, fear of this stranger who used to be my father.
But she knows it is also guilt she is feeling: in an effort to escape the relentless campaigning at home, she had sometimes gone to stay with friends, leaving her mother alone and vulnerable. She had been asked on that Cornish trip and had said no. ‘I spoke to her on the phone that day,’ Hannah says in a rush, her voice cracking. ‘She told me she was going for a walk.’ There are tears on her cheeks now. ‘She sounded fine. I didn’t know. It wasn’t my fault.’
For the first time Hannah catches her father’s eyes and sees something approaching paternal warmth in them. It is as if the biological fact of her tears has made him see her as his daughter at last, reminding him that his role is to protect her.
‘She loved walking along those coastal paths,’ Edward says in a gentler voice. ‘Especially in bad weather, when she was wrapped up warm underneath a raincoat. She said it made her feel cosy. More alive.’
‘They found one of her hiking boots up there,’ Hannah says, feeling stronger. ‘At the Point. She might have taken it off to rub her foot.’ She sees her father draw a clenched fist to his mouth. ‘What do you want to ask me, Dad?’ She wants to get this over with.
But he meets her question with silence.
‘Go ahead,’ she prompts.
‘Do you think it was an accident?’
‘Mum didn’t leave a note, if that’s what you
mean. The coroner had to record an open verdict. But if you really want to know …’ Hannah looks at her father, who now has his hands over his face. ‘I don’t think it was an accident.’
By the time they reach Parsons Green, Edward’s eyes are closed. After they have circled the house twice, a parking space comes up a few yards from it. Hannah turns the engine off and jogs up the steps to open the front door. ‘Hello?’ she calls out. When the occupational therapist does not reply she repeats her question, scans the street to see where Niall has got to and then returns to the car. After insinuating an arm behind his upper back and another under the crook of his knees, she lifts her father out. His lightness is shocking, as if he is a Chinese lantern that might blow away.
He does not wake up as she ascends the stone steps, crosses the threshold and carries on up past the ‘welcome home’ helium balloons she has tethered to the banister. She has helped make up the bed in his old room, the bedroom he had shared with his wife for three happy years after they returned to England from Norway. They had met, fallen in love, had a child and married in Oslo, her mother’s home town. Hannah had been a bridesmaid, a three-year-old wearing a lily-of-the-valley hair garland. When her father’s diplomatic posting came to an end, this was the house they had bought together. When her mother died, it had passed to her.
Hannah lowers her father on to the bed and sees her fingers have left an impression on his skin as if it were warm wax. As she draws a coat up around his neck like a blanket, he asks drowsily: ‘Frejya? Is that you?’
Hannah lays the back of her hand on her father’s brow. ‘I wish it was,’ she says.
VI
London. Early summer, 1940
THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB HAS ONLY ONE TELEPHONE, A 1920S BRASS candlestick set with a separate earpiece on a cord. As the porter hands it to Charles, he moves along the reception desk to afford him some privacy, a futile gesture given that the entrance is silent save for the tock-tock of an early Victorian longcase. Every word of both sides of the conversation can be overheard.
‘Charlie? This is Funf speaking.’
‘Hello, Funf.’
Charles covers the earpiece and says in a stage whisper: ‘It’s Funf, the German spy.’
Creases appear at the sides of the porter’s eyes, and these tunnel to the corners of his mouth in matching bands. Like everyone else, he listens to It’s That Man Again on the wireless. He knows all the catchphrases. Is in on the joke.
In fact the caller is Charles’s friend and sailing companion Eric Secrest, a GP with a practice in north Kent and a fifty-seven-foot motor yacht moored at the Isle of Dogs. Eric is the only one of Charles’s friends who knows about his court martial, and the dishonourable discharge from the RAF that resulted from it.
Charles suspects that some members of the club may know the truth, but none has raised it with him yet. As for his other friends, most seem to have accepted that the reason Charles is not protecting the retreating British Expeditionary Force in the skies over France is that he has been taken off front-line RAF duty for ‘medical reasons’ (kept vague), and has been given a desk job somewhere at the War Office instead.
And at least Charles’s parents never heard about his disgrace. They had died in a plane crash when he was seventeen, old enough to ignore his father’s ambition that he should follow him into the diplomatic service. He is sure they would have been upset by the language used at his trial – ‘You have been found guilty as charged of gross indecency and conduct unbecoming an officer.’ The formality and Englishness of those words – and the polite restraint with which they were delivered – would have eaten into their souls like acid.
‘Well?’ Eric prompts. ‘I’m returning your call.’
Charles lowers his voice: ‘You heard that announcement on the wireless about everyone with a small vessel having to register it with the Admiralty?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘You know what it’s about, don’t you?’
‘I can guess.’
‘So what do you think? You and me. We could sail The Painted Lady over to France like in the old days. Do our bit …’ He hears a click as the connection is lost. ‘Hello? Funf?’ He shakes his head at the porter. ‘German spies,’ he says. ‘So rude.’ He jiggles the grip up and down a couple of times and stares at the earpiece. The line is dead. While he waits for it to ring again he does a thumbnail sketch of Anselm on the blotter. Eventually he looks up and says: ‘I’ll be in the bar if …’
He orders a whiskey and sits on a high stool a few feet away from a man he hasn’t seen in the club before, a drinker judging by his cratered and purplish nose. As he waits, Charles plucks grapes from a bowl on the bar and takes in, with sidelong glances, the man’s thinning dirty-blond hair. It is threaded with grey and frosting at the temples. The man half turns his back towards him, as if worried his drink might be stolen. Charles stares at the empty grape stalks. They look sinister now, like birds’ claws.
He puts a cigarette in his mouth and pats his pockets. But instead of a box of matches he takes from his pocket the letter he received from Anselm four months ago. He rubs it between his finger and thumb, as if the friction will bring it to life. It was sent via the Swedish Embassy in Berlin. Though he knows every word by heart, every endearing misspelling, grammatical mistake and unneeded Gothic capital, he re-reads it.
My dear Grumpy,
If you have receive this letter it means my friend at the Ambassy has been true to his word. I hope it is finding you in a better state than me.
I have been on trial at the Volksgerichtshof, the People’s Court in Berlin, and sentenced to five years in an Erziehungslager, or ‘education camp’. I am not told yet where they take me but I will write and tell you when I am knowing. Do not worry for me.
I hope you are well. What happen to you after Picaddilly? Remember our Deal to meet at the Union Bar at the Slade. Remember? I think of you.
Yours, Dopey
Yours. When he had first read that ending to the letter, he had wondered why his friend had not been warmer in tone. Was it simply a matter of Anselm’s written English being less impressive than his spoken? Did he think it would be incriminating? But then Charles had decided he couldn’t have asked for more. Anselm meant: ‘I am yours.’
Since that communication, Charles has heard nothing from his friend, his own letters back via the diplomatic pouch at the Swedish Embassy in London having gone unanswered. He has even written to Anselm’s parents in Aachen but this letter, too, has not received a reply, as he knew it wouldn’t. All post from Germany is routinely intercepted.
If only he knew where this ‘education camp’ was. Anselm had mentioned the name of the court in Berlin and he did wonder if there might be some way of gaining access to its records. He had weathered the suspicious glances of the staff at the London Library in order to go through the German newspapers held there. But if Anselm’s trial had been reported, he hadn’t been able to find any references.
His whiskey arrives and he drinks it in one gulp before nodding at the barman for a refill. The drinker seated two stools away now turns and looks him down and up. He has a frayed collar and food stains on the tie that is resting on his bloated belly. ‘What’s your excuse, then?’ he says. His tone is not friendly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Why haven’t you joined up?’
Charles stares at the grape stalks. ‘I’m an air-raid warden.’
The man gives a dismissive grunt and half turns his back again.
Charles stares at the letter. An ‘education camp’ doesn’t sound as if it would be a particularly difficult place from which to escape. A few guards perhaps, but if the inmates are expected to work as well as attend classes, presumably they will be going in and out all the time.
In moments of desperation, Charles has considered volunteering for the Red Cross, in the vain hope that he might be able to join one of their concentration camp inspection teams. But he knows this is unrealistic. Of course they won’t use a
n ex-RAF officer, not when the country is at war and the Red Cross is supposed to be neutral.
But anything would be better than the monotonous routine of his life here at the club these past nine months, waiting every day for word from Anselm. He keeps himself busy painting at night while doing his Air Raid Precautions training during the day, a course that has mostly involved simulated fire-fighting, blackout patrols and stretcher-bearing. But this is more pretence. More phoniness for this phoney war.
Feeling emboldened by the whiskey now, Charles mulls over the new idea he has had for getting himself to France: persuading Eric to sail over there with him as part of the rumoured evacuation of the BEF. It seems a long shot, but …
The drinker on the stool is studying him again. ‘You’re that queer, aren’t you?’
Charles folds the letter and slips it back into his pocket. He does not make eye contact.
‘I’ve heard about you,’ the man continues. ‘Bloody queers. Shouldn’t be allowed in here.’
The porter has appeared and is clearing his throat. ‘Your caller is on the line again, sir.’
Charles reaches the front desk before the porter. ‘Funf? We were cut off.’
‘Yes, yes. I know. Look, Charlie. I can’t just drop everything …’
Charles doesn’t fill the silence.
‘Hello? Are you still there, Charlie?’
‘Yes.’
‘What have you heard?’
‘That they, the Admiralty, need shallow-draught boats to help with the evacuation, to act as a shuttle. The navy can’t get close enough to the shoreline with their destroyers.’
‘Where?’
‘No one is saying. Calais, I should imagine.’
It is Eric’s turn to be silent for a moment. Then he clears his throat and says: ‘The Painted Lady isn’t really seaworthy. I was planning on giving her a proper overhaul this summer.’
‘I could get over there this afternoon. Make a start. Is she still at the Isle of Dogs?’
‘My patients will need …’ Eric’s protestations are sounding weaker.
The Road Between Us Page 4