Echo of Barbara

by John Burke

  Stan solemnly shook his head. ‘Just said he’d be seeing you.’ With apparent irrelevance he added: ‘Any results from your old man yet?’

  ‘I’m working on him. May get a telephone call today or tomorrow.’

  ‘Better be soon, hadn’t it? I mean, if somebody else is after him — or after you, maybe . . .’

  The danger hung in the air all day. Every time there was a buzz from the outer office, or a man’s voice sounded across the studio, Roger felt the pinch of fear in his stomach. He remembered the headlights that had pursued him through the dark countryside, and wondered what sort of car it had been. He would not recognize it if it came after him again; or if it was waiting outside for him this evening.

  It was waiting. It was a fast grey van with its back doors open. It stood a few feet from the office door, with a man leaning over the bonnet. At the end of the narrow street crowds surged towards Leicester Square; lights glowed behind subduing curtains in the restaurant opposite; a woman moved slowly towards the lamp light on the corner, her mauve coat and brown skirt drab against the brighter clash of a large cinema poster on the wall. Roger came out of the office and turned right, and the man by the van straightened up.

  ‘Mr. Westwood?’ he said quietly.

  Roger turned, then tried to carry on walking, more quickly, towards the crowds and the lights.

  There were two men, one on each side of him. The rest of the street was deserted. The girls had left the studio, and Stan Morrison was still upstairs. The noise of traffic and the shuffle of feet was only twenty yards away — utterly unattainable.

  ‘In you go,’ said one of the men.

  ‘I don’t know who . . .’

  His arm was caught and twisted breathtakingly, and he was thrown forward. His knees crashed into the back of the van. One push, and he was rolled forward into the van like a sack. The doors slammed shut. A man leaned over him and held out a knife that shone dully in reflected light from a window somewhere outside — a window that began to move, falling away behind.

  ‘Stay where you are, or I’ll make it painful for you.’

  Roger clung to the floor, being jolted up and down as the van swung round a corner, jerked to a halt, sprang forward again, and then lurched under some arch or bridge that resounded hollowly.

  They stopped. It had taken only a couple of minutes.

  ‘Out,’ said the man in the back, ‘and no bloody nonsense.’

  The doors were opened. Another man stood there. Roger estimated his chances of leaping at this shape against the diffused light; and they were nil.

  He scrambled painfully out. His knees were hurting abominably.

  ‘Move — fast.’

  He was in an alley between a couple of high walls. When they prodded him past the van, he could just see that it was a cul-de-sac, with the van almost blocking the only way out. He was jabbed up towards the end, where he stood with his back to the wall.

  A torch flicked blinding light into his face for a moment. Behind it, the side lamps of the van were pale but watchful.

  ‘Where did your father put the Mannerlaw stuff?’ asked a mild voice with a trace of Northern Ireland in it.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Roger. Even as he spoke it sounded stupid.

  ‘We haven’t got a lot of time,’ said the voice reproachfully. ‘Just tell us what we ask you, now, and we’ll all be happy.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well?’ said a harsher voice from the right of the other man.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Roger. ‘Honestly I don’t know.’ He forced a laugh. ‘You’d better speak to my father about it.’

  ‘All right. Maybe we’ll do that. If you’d just be giving us his address, now.’

  Roger tried to keep his lips from trembling. He wished he could see. The two men were silhouettes against the lamps of the van. The walls around him on three sides shut him off from the world and from hope.

  ‘Well?’ came the demand again.

  ‘You’ll have to find it for yourself.’

  They moved up to him. He smelt the breath of one of them, stale and smoky. When two of them held his arms and pressed him back against the wall, he realized that there was a third one. This third one now moved up between the other two.

  ‘We’re a lot older than you, sonny,’ purred the Irish voice. ‘You’d do well to be taking our advice. Just talk, and it’ll be so much easier.’

  Roger tried to smile into the unreceptive darkness. The fluttering in his throat was of apprehension, and yet of anticipation. The men’s hands on his arms awoke a crazy response in him.

  ‘All right,’ muttered one of them. ‘All right, then.’

  Roger sagged against the wall, waiting. This was the sort of thing he believed in — the essential violence of the world which his father had made and in which he, too, wanted to live. He was the devotee of a cruel religion, unexpectedly caught up as a sacrifice but still, even as victim, believing . . .

  Until the Irishman softly sighed, ‘All right,’ and the reality descended — the reality of agony.

  He screamed.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘All right,’ said Sam Westwood, ‘let’s have it: what’s on your mind?’

  They were in the sitting-room. They would not be disturbed. There was not even the usual clatter from the back of the house: Mrs. Westwood had been told that this morning was to be the crucial time, and Paula could almost feel her sitting out there, taut and ravaged, longing for release from her ten-year-old resentment.

  She said: ‘Am I supposed to have something on my mind?’

  ‘I can see there’s something fidgeting inside you. It’s not usual for you, Barbie. Usually you let fly at once, no matter what.’ His smile was too real and meant too much: it hurt her. ‘Are you getting bored down here — is that it?’

  ‘I’m not bored,’ she said; ‘but —’

  ‘Don’t be afraid to tell me. I’ve taken a lot in the past. It won’t kill me.’

  Now that she was faced with it, the task was even more monstrous than she had thought. It was simply not possible that she should be sitting here in a strange house talking to a man who was a stranger, preparing to ask him what he had done with the proceeds of a robbery.

  She framed words. When they came out she could not believe that he would understand them: they were gibberish.

  ‘It’s not just about me,’ she said. ‘It’s . . . all of us. Roger, and Mother, myself — and you. You and the rest of us.’ She stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted her.

  ‘You were away a long time,’ she said. This was the beginning of the speech she had rehearsed over and over again. Last night she had hardly slept at all, but had lain awake trying out phrases, practising lines of dialogue in a play that might, when the moment came, have to be written as it went along. ‘I don’t think you’ve quite come back to us yet. There are a lot of things you don’t understand — about any of us. All of us.’

  His eyes soberly encouraged her. He wanted to draw the truth out of her: would he know, when it was spoken, that it was not the truth at all?

  She went on: ‘Life wasn’t easy. It wasn’t what we’d been used to. But we managed. We managed because we thought there was a time limit. When you came back, you would put everything right.’

  ‘You wanted me back,’ he asked dispassionately, ‘for the money I would produce?’

  ‘No.’ She took it very slowly. Now she must act as she had never acted before. She put out her hands towards him in a gesture of love and protest. ‘Sammy, you know that’s not true. What do you think it was like for me when you went away — do you think I was concerned with money? It took a long time — years — before I began to realize what it all entailed. Thoughts about money came a lot later . . . and they were never as important as wanting you back.’

  It rang true because she believed it. Every word was sincere. She was Barbara, and she loved her father and wanted him back.

  Even t
hough the real Barbara had perhaps never felt anything like this.

  ‘I’m sorry, Barbie,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ She felt the warmth of tears in her eyes. ‘And I wouldn’t blame you,’ he said, ‘if you did want money. You were right to expect it. You’d been brought up to expect certain things, and you had a right to go on getting them.’ It was not so much an apology as a statement of fact.

  She said: ‘It doesn’t matter now. It didn’t really matter then, as long as we thought there was going to be an end to it, sooner or later. But —’

  ‘But,’ he finished for her, ‘I’m not doing a thing to turn the diamonds into cash: is that it?’

  It was impossible to tell how far she was provoking him. She must not spoil everything by going too fast. She did not want to lose ground and have to start all over again. Look down your nose, Roger had said. Make it quite casual.

  She said: ‘I can’t imagine why you’re making such a thing of it.’ She tried to laugh, airily. ‘After the lean period we’ve gone through a little of the old luxury wouldn’t come amiss.’

  ‘Lean period?’ he said. ‘You weren’t too badly off.’

  ‘We had to make adjustments,’ she said, finding herself arguing for the sake of arguing. ‘When we moved from the house into that small one — which you’ve never even seen — it hurt. We got used to it. But it hurt.’

  ‘There wasn’t any money coming in while I was in prison, but there was plenty left over from the old days. You ought to have been comfortable enough.’

  ‘It wasn’t the same. How —’

  ‘What did you want for, Barbie,’ he asked, ‘that you couldn’t have?’

  What would the true Barbara (the false Barbara, Paula wildly thought) have answered; what would she have missed and resented?

  Paula said: ‘Never mind about me. Have you thought about Mother?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought about her. A lot. In prison, and here.’

  ‘Nobody would guess it.’ Some uncontrollable impulse drove her on. This was not what she had expected to say, and she was frightened by the sudden rush towards the unknown. But she was possessed by a demon of truth. ‘What do you imagine life was like for her while you were away? She had always had a prosperous life. No questions, no worries — taking it for granted that you ran a respectable business and would look after your family and keep everything snug and decent. Then look at the way it turned out! I was a child — Roger and I, we were both children — but she wasn’t a child. She was set in her ways — ways which you’d taught her . . . or at any rate made possible for her. Then you’d gone, and there was a long wait before you came out again. We waited. Mother stuck it out. And now —’

  ‘And now,’ he took her up, ‘I won’t make you all rich again. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just doing nothing,’ she cried; ‘just sitting there, not telling her, not confiding in her, after she’s kept herself under control for so long —’

  ‘Sitting,’ he said, ‘on the richest haul of many a decade. Mm.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’ She withdrew slightly, beginning to take hold of her part again.

  He said: ‘You are right, of course. I’m guilty of a lot. Particularly where your mother’s concerned.’

  ‘If only you’d talk to her . . .’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I’d got out of the habit of loving her even before I went to prison.’

  It was quiet and appalling. And it was a digression so violent that Paula felt helpless. She could only stare.

  Sam Westwood moved. It was only then, as he pushed himself slightly back into his chair, that she realized how still he had been sitting until now. His arms lay along the arms of the chair, hands limp as the hands of a paralytic.

  ‘I was an actor,’ he said, ‘and I was proud of my acting ability. Have you learnt yet, Barbie, how much of everyday life is acting?’

  Hysterical laughter sobbed in her throat, but somehow it was kept there.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Sam continued, ‘that the pretence grows stronger than the reality. If there ever was a reality. I must once have been a boy, and then a young man, like any other. I must once have been Sam Westwood. But I was fascinated by my own skill at deception. I calculated effects — in everything I did, I struck attitudes and built up personalities that had nothing to do with the real me. At least, at the beginning they had nothing to do with me. And the most convincing fake I ever built up was the Sam Westwood who sat in that office and organized a score of petty crooks into one of the most efficient rackets London ever saw.’

  He was smiling — whether nostalgically or in disillusionment, it was impossible to say.

  Paula said: ‘I know what you mean, but —’

  ‘How could you know what I mean? Even now I don’t know who or what I was. Right inside myself, where it all originated, I don’t know the reasons. And I don’t know when the contrived, specially fabricated Sam Westwood became stronger than the Sam Westwood who used to be around somewhere. I’ve tried to get back to the other one — I had plenty of time to think when I was inside, and I dug down pretty far — but the only one I remember clearly was the man who sat in that office and planned crimes just for the hell of it. Just because other people were so stupid. Just because it was a challenge, and the original Sam Westwood must have enjoyed accepting challenges. There I sat, and organized things. In the early days I did jobs myself, because I wanted to know what it was like: I had to find out before I could rest content. And then when I found how easy the routine work was, and how many ignorant, badly organized men there were blundering about in the throes of the routine, I visualized the next step — I became the co-ordinator. I laughed — yes, I can remember laughing, that much I do remember — I laughed at the picture of Sam Westwood as a big tycoon of crime. Even a small tycoon. The gang boss — it was something out of a film. But once I’d thought of it, I had to try to build it up, just to see. And it worked. Everything I ever tried to do worked. I sat there, and planned, and the wheels turned.’

  ‘And men were killed,’ she heard herself saying.

  ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘men were killed. Maybe that’s when it became unreal. I mean, that’s when the made-up Sam Westwood took over.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Paula murmured. She had no idea now whether she was still playing her part or whether this was herself. She was enmeshed in Sam Westwood’s own tortures. ‘For you to order men to be killed — I don’t see how . . . it doesn’t fit.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. It never happened as obviously as that. I moved a lever, maybe — put it like that — and the lever moved something else, and a long way away . . . something happened.’

  ‘As callously as that.’

  ‘Men drop bombs from aeroplanes,’ he said. ‘They press a button and kill hundreds or thousands. Does the man pressing the button consider the lives that he is blotting out? I doubt it. There is a certain job waiting to be done, and he knows the procedure through which he must go in order to get it done. He is flying in a machine which is a triumph of modern science, he is in charge of a missile magnificently constructed by master craftsmen for one purpose and one purpose only . . . and there is a certain aesthetic satisfaction to be derived from ensuring that this work of art fulfils its purpose.’

  ‘War is different.’

  ‘Is it? Killing men and women like yourself, against whom you have no personal antipathy? All I did was to make plans, and then when a difficulty arose I worked out the best way of overcoming the difficulty. Then I passed on the problem to the men who worked for me.’ He began to frown, as though listening to someone else arguing and trying to catch the significance of it. ‘The job was done, and there I was, sitting in my office.’

  ‘While we’ — so, she thought confusedly, now I am certainly Barbara again — ‘were at home, living on that sort of money.’

  He nodded. ‘And I don’t want you to think,’ he added, ‘that I’m saying I got pangs of conscience when I was in prison. No brooding and repe
nting. It’s not that.’

  ‘But what, then?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘And when you do?’ In her own ears it was almost a scream.

  ‘When I do,’ he said, ‘maybe you’d like me to do some talking about the Mannerlaw diamonds?’

  ‘You make it sound like a joke. You’re trying to find excuses, and none of them make sense. Trying to make out that while you were in prison —’

  ‘I had such a lot of time for thinking while I was there,’ he quietly shouldered his way through her outburst. ‘And most of the time I thought about you, and wondered how you came to be my daughter. Or Sam Westwood’s daughter. I didn’t know whether the two were identical. I wondered who you were, behind the mask that Sam Westwood had painted on you with his money and the demands he made on you.’

  ‘Demands?’

  ‘I forced you into becoming the sort of Daddy’s girl you became. It formed the right element in the picture. I insisted that you should be spoilt, that you should make a fuss of me, and then I was doting and incapable of resisting you. It was the essential set-up for the tough, cool organizer who sat in his office and ruled a tight little empire of scruffy criminals. I prodded you about and shaped you just as I shaped everybody else. But when I’d finished’ — his voice sank almost into inaudibility — ‘I still loved you. That was the difference. I got caught again in one of my own designs — and this was one time when I was lastingly caught. Nothing else — nobody else — ever stepped out at me and turned the tables quite as you did.’

  Desperately she tried again: ‘Mother —’

  ‘Your mother,’ he sighed, ‘ceased to exist a long time ago. I wanted her. I needed her. But not as a person. She belonged in the setting I had devised for myself, but that was all. She loved parties, and I saw to it that she had as many parties as she wanted. In my position, she needed the best, and she got the best. She was right for the part: she was beautiful, and in those days she had the manner . . . yes, and I know it’s my fault if she’s embittered now. But she wouldn’t have had it so good then if I hadn’t been the sort of man I was.’