Echo of Barbara

by John Burke

  ECHO OF BARBARA

  John Burke

  © John Burke 1959

  John Burke has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1959 by John Long Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  This was the day. Mrs. Westwood glanced at the clock a dozen times during breakfast. She did not really see what the time was: Roger would know when he had to leave, and there was no need for her to worry, but she could not stop those continual glances.

  As soon as breakfast was over, Roger lit a cigarette. He smoked three, one after the other, and told his mother not to fidget.

  ‘He won’t want to be fussed when he gets back,’ he said. ‘For heaven’s sake don’t look so jumpy. Give him a chance to relax.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to talk.’ The bitter lines round her mouth grew darker. She seemed to be biting into her memories as though they were solid things. ‘You don’t know what it’s like for me.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘Just take it easy.’

  He glanced, himself, surreptitiously at the clock.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ said his mother, ‘you ought to be starting out?’

  The morning was still dark grey. The world beyond the window was limp with sea mist. Roger combed his hair, tugged at his jacket, and went into the hall for his coat. His mother followed him out. He knew she was going to speak, and knew what she was going to say.

  It came in an abrupt, despairing rush. ‘Don’t you think, after all . . . perhaps there’s no need to say too much about Barbara. I mean, not yet.’

  ‘Don’t let’s go over all that again.’

  ‘If we want him to settle down quietly, wouldn’t it be better to keep quiet? Just for a bit, anyway. She may decide to come back —’

  ‘She won’t,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure she will. Soon. And then he’d have been upset for nothing.’

  Roger swung the car keys from his little finger. ‘He’s going to know the truth,’ he said firmly, ‘right from the start. We’re not going to hold things back.’

  Unexpectedly shrewd, she said: ‘You want him to see who’s let him down and who hasn’t, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t intend to cover up, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t overdo it. Your father’s no fool.’

  That did not even deserve an answer. Roger needed no telling about his father. He admired him and was proud in the gradually accumulated knowledge of what his father had done; and this was the day when they would come together again.

  He kissed his mother on the cheek. She stood in the doorway and watched as he drove away. He did not look back. She did not wave.

  The mist shrouded the sea from view. Here and there the haze was broken by the shape of one of the houses scattered along this stretch of coast. There was a faintly smoky smell in the air. Not until he was through the town and on the main road, climbing inland, did he emerge into pale sunshine. He accelerated. The car was small, but he had played with it until it gave him its best. When his father was back and they had their hands on all that hidden stuff, there would be a bigger car. Everything was going to be bigger and better.

  He thought, sourly, of Barbara.

  Well, this would show his father, if anything could. Barbara the pet, cherished and spoilt, doted on for all those years; Barbara, demonstrative and cloying . . . and now, at this moment of all moments, she was not here. She had failed.

  ‘I’m not going to be there’ — he could still hear her taut voice — ‘when he gets out. I’ve stuck it until the last minute because of . . . because I wanted to keep things going. I wanted us to keep together.’

  He had laughed derisively.

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ she had said. ‘I didn’t want to leave Mother with you — with only you. But now you can all do without me. It’s all going to start all over again; and I want no more of it.’

  She had never forgiven her father. You could see that. It showed in her hostile eyes and in the way she brushed aside all protests. Not that Roger protested a great deal. Let her show herself in her true colours. It suited him well enough.

  The road was deserted at this time of day. He could keep his foot down until he reached the outskirts of London. A puff of smoke from a train in the valley below kept level with him for a mile or two, then fell behind. A village closed in and dissolved again into the hedges.

  He wondered what his father was feeling this morning, and what plans he was making.

  ‘I don’t want to be around when it starts again,’ Barbara had said tensely. ‘It’ll be just the same — only this time we’ll know. . . . The same old rackets. Living on stolen money, gradually getting things organized once more. Maybe’ — her mouth had twisted — ‘starting in a small way. Organizing the ice-cream vendors in that place you’re going to — or even the donkeys on the shore. Fixing things.’

  And so she had gone. Roger did not know where, and was not much concerned. He was pretty sure she would not come back: reluctantly, he granted her enough guts to do what she had said and not to retrace her steps.

  The green miles dropped away behind and London began to reach out towards him. An electric train raced away from the country town which he had just skirted. A few lorries and private cars came out on the road. Before long the suburban streets were building up the pattern of their insoluble maze around him.

  Roger glanced at the dashboard clock. He would make it comfortably.

  The prison building looked almost warm in the sunlight. Its absurd turrets glowed a mellow brown, and a boy cycling past was whistling as though this were spring instead of autumn.

  What was he going to say to his father? Roger had rehearsed no speech, no calculated welcome. He forced himself to sit back casually in the driver’s seat, as though someone might be watching from one of those slits up there — someone who had to be impressed. The inevitable cigarette came out. He lit it deftly with one hand, and carefully relaxed. A man like his father, who had played that incredible cool-headed game all those years, would not want any fuss or awkwardness now, when he came out. He was going to find that he had a son he could trust — that the two of them were meant to work together.

  Roger smoked his cigarette with a series of rhythmic gestures. He swung it up towards his mouth, poised it for a second, looked up at an angle as though smiling at some remote audience, and then opened his lips appreciatively. Every time he exhaled he smiled.

  A small door in the great main door opened. A man came out with a suitcase in his right hand. The door closed behind him.

  Roger sat very still for a moment, then opened the car door and got out.

  His father looked very small. Roger had remembered him, somehow, as a tall, well-built man who dominated whatever company he was in. Now he was crushed by the gross building behind him.

  He moved away from the door, and put one hand slowly up to his eyes, although the sun was not bright.

  Roger cleared his throat. He felt cold. He said: ‘Hello, Dad.’

  Sam Westwood did not hesitate, but
he did not quicken his pace. He advanced as though he were afraid that the earth might crumble beneath him; he was not quite steady on his feet.

  At last their hands touched. There was no strength in Sam Westwood’s grip.

  ‘Hello, son.’

  Roger opened the near-side door, took his father’s case and put it in the back.

  ‘It’s a fine morning,’ he said. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

  His father looked into the car. He said: ‘I suppose Barbara’s at home . . . waiting at home?’

  Chapter Two

  Sam Westwood had shrunk. His whole face seemed to have sagged, and the pinkness of his cheeks had faded to a leathery yellow. There was no sign of that once-characteristic little swagger of his. Even sitting down, it used to be obvious: when he talked he would twitch his shoulders eagerly to and fro, as though striding along a road. And now his voice, too, had altered. It was little more than a whisper, like that of a man who had suffered from an attack of laryngitis and never recovered.

  As they drove out of London he spoke little — only to ask: ‘How’s your mother?’ and to comment: ‘Nice little car, this.’ Then, ten minutes later, he added: ‘You’ve grown. I don’t think I’d have recognized you. I suppose Barbara will have changed, too.’

  It was the opening Roger needed, but he did not take it. Telling his father about Barbara was going to be more difficult than he had realized. It was going to hurt.

  ‘We’ll stop for a drink when we get nearer home,’ he said loudly and cheerfully.

  There was no reply. His father was watching the countryside opening up on either side. What did it mean to a man who had not seen the outside world for ten years? The green trees and tilting fields . . .

  Roger kept his eyes on the road as it wound through a straggling village and round a blind corner. It was silly to wonder about things like that. His father was probably thinking of something quite different. He was not likely to notice the scenery. Sam Westwood belonged to the city — to the throbbing city with its shining streets and clubs and restaurants, the places where men and women were bought and sold.

  The silence was as chill and grey as the mist that had drifted across the sea early this morning. Roger had not expected it to be like this. He had expected his father to be jubilant, emerging at last from prison with all his old determination. He remembered him as a restless, exuberant man: and here was a shadow.

  Roger began to talk. He talked too much, because he got so little response.

  ‘I hope you’ll like the house we picked out. I’ve seen better, but it’s all right. And you did tell Mother that you wanted to be by the sea for a little while, didn’t you?’

  His father nodded abstractedly.

  ‘Anyway, it’ll do until you’ve decided what to do next.’

  He waited. Just a hint of a plan would have been something to go on. His father would not have wasted his time in prison: he must have everything figured out.

  There was no response.

  Roger went on: ‘I’ve got a couple of rooms in London, you know. I’m taking a week off to settle you in, and then I’ll be seeing you maybe a couple of times a week. I’m in quite a nice little racket up there.’

  His father turned and studied him curiously.

  ‘My — er — associates,’ said Roger with a knowing smile, ‘think the world of you. Your name still means a lot, you know — in the right circles. They needle me a good bit — always asking why you didn’t let me in on where you dumped that stuff.’ His father’s bleak, puzzled expression alarmed him suddenly. He hastened to add: ‘But I knew you were right. You could have got word out to me — or anyone else, for that matter — but you wanted to work on your own, hm? You wanted to keep quiet until you could deal with the thing yourself.’

  A bus came down the hill from a squat old church tower, and startled a hen that had been pecking at the roadside.

  Sam Westwood watched it scurrying into the hedge. He made a noise in his throat that might have been a laugh.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Roger, ‘I think my own bunch are pretty trustworthy. I’ve worked in with Lew Morrison off and on. He thinks you’re the tops.’

  ‘Stay away from Lew Morrison,’ said his father, not turning to look at him.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Roger made it sound bright and happy. ‘Sure, Dad. Now you’re back, I’m in with any set-up you want. It’s just that I’ve been finding my way around. You know how it is.’ He stopped, and again there was silence. He plunged into it. ‘Mind you, it’s been hard going sometimes. We could have done with some of that haul of yours. Even Mother said —’

  ‘And Barbara?’

  Roger braked for a turning. The road went over a bridge and through a small town. Traffic was brisk now. It gave him an excuse for not replying for a couple of minutes. When they came out the other side, his father’s harsh whisper came again:

  ‘And Barbara? How did she feel about it?’

  Then Roger told him. Barbara was gone. Barbara had hardly ever mentioned her father’s name while he was away; when she did, it was to express disgust. The ten-year-old who had been Daddy’s darling had reached the twenties, and her love had not lasted. He spoke more savagely than he had intended; the memory of his father’s preference for Barbara, and the injustice of it, rose with an irresistible pressure that forced the words out.

  Then it was over. The truth was spoken.

  Sam Westwood said nothing.

  His only sign of life came when the car emerged from the trees above the saltings and dipped down towards the twisting creeks that broadened into the sea. Then he leaned slightly forward. He stared down at the water. The land swayed slowly ahead of them, flattening as they reached the level. Now the town was an untidy huddle on their right, leaking away into a spattering of houses and bungalows.

  The car turned away from the town. Sam Westwood looked out at the houses near the sea. There was no apparent enquiry in his gaze. He simply looked. His expression did not change when the car stopped outside the isolated house which stood close to the first yellow line of shingle.

  ‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘here we are.’

  His father got out and stood for a moment by the car as though needing its shelter. Then he lifted his eyes slowly, narrowing them against the shrouded grey brightness of the autumn sky.

  The door of the house opened. Sam Westwood moved towards his wife.

  She did not run to meet him. Her smile was speculative and at the same time nervous. Roger, coming behind his father, could have groaned; nearly did groan aloud, in fact. The quietness, the deadness of it all . . . His mother looked more as though she were about to whine about being left alone for ten years than to welcome her husband home.

  Sam Westwood put his arms round her and held her for a long time. She remained stiff and unsure of herself: she looked enquiringly into his face as soon as he released her.

  ‘So this is the place,’ said Sam in that new, disconcerting whisper of his.

  ‘This is it,’ Roger took him up. ‘Nothing wonderful, but you can put your feet up for a while. And then — well, we’ll see, won’t we?’

  He gripped his father’s arm and smiled. There was no responsive movement. The arm felt as though all strength had gone out of it.

  It was all too quiet. The homecoming was drab and meaningless. You’d have thought a man getting out of prison would have wanted to talk and sing and shout — would have wanted to have a few days in town with lights, noise, music . . .

  Maybe that would come. Soon that would come.

  ‘As soon as you feel like it,’ Roger tried, knowing that soon it must all come right, ‘we’ll go and have an evening in the town here. Not much of a dump, but you find quite a good crowd there at weekends. Anyone with any initiative could build the place up’ — he winked — ‘in all sorts of ways.’

  Even the donkeys on the shore, murmured a stupid echo in his mind. He blotted it out.

  His father would not sit down. He kept moving across the s
mall room to and from the window, looking out at the tough spiky grass and the shingle, then turning away — and turning back abruptly, as though he might catch the mirage dissolving.

  Distantly, it might have been to himself, he said: ‘All those people, on top of you . . . the weight of them all round you and over you and under you.’

  Time, thought Roger. It would take time. He must be patient. His father had got to have time to find out how well he could be trusted; take it easy, and let him get used to being out in the world again, and it would all work out fine.

  *

  ‘Walking,’ said Sam Westwood: ‘funny — I never seemed to do much walking, did I?’ His voice was as hushed and hoarse as the persistent voice of the sea on the shingle. ‘And going out fishing — that’s something special, I’ve heard.’

  He gave the impression of experimenting timidly with life. Roger found that his company was not wanted. His father preferred to stroll aimlessly across the saltings alone. If he ever went into the town, he did not mention it. When he did make a friend, it was a leathery, taciturn old fisherman who took him out in a battered trawler. From these trips on foot or afloat he returned with no sign of having enjoyed himself: he described nothing, commented on nothing, asked no questions; he could have been quietly content or utterly indifferent.

  Roger imposed patience on himself. It was difficult. The last few months, as the day of his father’s release grew closer, had been tiring: they had been tolerable only because of the thought that when the day came everything would be sorted out. And now this was his father — this drained, withdrawn creature.

  Time. Give him time.

  A week away in London, thought Roger, and on his return he would find his father slowly changing. He would relax, grow more expansive, realize that he was free again. Not right away, of course. Next weekend . . . or the one after . . .

  And then the one after that, and yet another.

  Still there was no change. Sam Westwood was courteous to his wife, and helped about the house. He smiled when Roger returned from London, and patted him abstractedly on the shoulder. For hours in the evening he would listen to the radio, though with an air of detachment that made one doubt whether he heard anything. He might almost have been waiting for something — filling in time, waiting with unwavering calm for some plan to mature or someone to appear.