Ian was saying, ruefully, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t inherited my grandfather’s talent for math, but I play the piano, too. I’m over here on a music scholarship, as it happens. I—I’d really like to know what you remember about him, sir.’
‘Mostly his piano-playing,’ Eliot replied, which was being a little more than economical with the truth, considering that the events of those last few days were engraved on his mind as if on tablets of stone, embedded in the silence of the years. And those other thoughts, which flowed like a dark, subterranean stream under the surface, things for years forgotten, or deliberately not remembered . . . those hot summer evenings, the windows open to the scents of the vicarage garden as the sun went down (had ever roses smelt as sweet since?), no lights switched on because of the blackout regulations, just the glow of the sunset filtering into the shadowed room as Sutherland played Chopin, Beethoven sonatas, Schubert. Able to conjure up magic from the piano keys, unable to take his eyes off Leonie, in the dusk pale and insubstantial as a moth. Martin Youlgreave watching them both, and he, Eliot Voysey, quiet, bookish, destined to be nothing but the watcher of them all. Up to a dozen people, besides himself and his aunt and uncle, might have been there at any one of those times, but Eliot only ever remembered these three.
Being physically handicapped guaranteed a certain anonymity, Eliot had already come to acknowledge with some cynicism, as if his brain must be as imperfect as his body. None of them, he was sure, realized how much he knew, or saw. Sutherland, in particular, was careless in his presence. And Youlgreave, brilliant and mercurial, who only came to these little gatherings because of Leonie, patronized him.
Eliot had been almost preternaturally aware of Youlgreave’s jealousy, the level of emotional intensity radiating from him as if he had a fever. He couldn’t believe Leonie wasn’t aware of it, too. Perhaps she was. At any rate, she rather too pointedly ignored Youlgreave, all her interest being focused on the big Canadian in his smart uniform, though he was no oil painting beside the romantically good-looking Youlgreave, a floppy-haired Byronic figure in civilian shirtsleeves and open neck. Every woman in the vicinity—according to Aunt Edith, who was a sharp observer of human nature—was ready to throw herself at the feet of this personable young man, especially since he was the proud possessor of an old Alvis, which was a great draw for the girls. But he scorned them all. His sights were fixed on Leonie . . . and might as well have been fixed on the moon, with Sutherland on the scene.
But even before Sutherland, Martin Youlgreave could surely never have meant more than a passing wartime fancy to Leonie Devenish, daughter of a wealthy upper-class family who had a large formal house in the country, and had owned another in London until the threat of war had forced its prudent sale. A debutante who, had it not been for the war, would have been dividing her time between coming-out balls, lunching at Claridge’s, dining at the Savoy, shopping in Knightsbridge, wearing Schiaparelli frocks, and being seen at Henley and Ascot. Expected to be on the lookout for a husband from within her own class. She had, in fact, worn an engagement ring when she’d first joined them at those evening get-togethers, but her fiancé was never mentioned, and later the ring was not in evidence.
However, Leonie was not a natural social butterfly, but a clever girl who had been well and expensively educated, and when she’d joined the WRNS, was snapped up immediately for work at Bletchley.
How could Martin Youlgreave, handsome and intelligent, but far below her in the social sphere, ever have believed that anything lasting could come of a relationship with her, at a time when social distinctions mattered enormously—more than they ever would again? But he could, of course—his ambition was in every way as boundless as his conceit. He had emerged from Cambridge as one of its most brilliant mathematical minds, his future assured, already a star, and had been one of the first of those approached to work at Bletchley. Perhaps this had encouraged him to forget that his humble origins (he was a grammar-school boy, whose father was a clerk in local government in a small Midlands town) would forever preclude him from anything more than a casual romance with Leonie. It was as doomed as Eliot’s own hopeless passion for her.
Eliot had never been sure how far the affair between them had progressed before the arrival of the Canadian, if indeed it had progressed so far as to be called an affair at all. But it was patently obvious that Youlgreave now mattered no more to her than did Eliot himself, who reflected moodily that at least Youlgreave and he had that one thing in common—although to Eliot, Leonie was always kind. But kindness was not what Eliot wanted from any woman, much less Leonie. He had felt crushed with the weight of his hopelessness. Until the night he had overheard that conversation.
He became aware that young Ian, who seemed possessed of the transatlantic passion for facts, was now asking eagerly about the ruins of the moated castle which appeared unexpectedly beside the railway line as the train pulled into the next station. Eliot was, historically speaking, on firm ground here, his own territory: Berkhamsted Castle was where William the Conqueror had accepted the surrender of the Saxons in 1066, he informed the boy.
‘Wow! I’m impressed. Is Milton Keynes as old as this?’
Eliot smiled. ‘It could scarcely be more different!’ He explained that until the 1960s Milton Keynes had been a small village which now stretched out its tentacles to encompass neighbouring villages until they were suburbs of what had grown to be a substantial city, a New Town purposely designed to accommodate the housing shortages still felt after the war. ‘And they’re still building. Round my own village, too. One of these days, there’ll be no space left between. They’ll have joined up.’
And once again, Eliot’s heart jumped at the thought of those flattened acres of farmland around Stoke Peverel, destined to become another prestigious housing development, together with the ancient tithe barn whose owners, after many years of wrangling, had obtained planning permission for its conversion into a dwelling. Now neglected and derelict, fifty years ago it had stood in a field, a secluded trysting-place where lovers often met.
Eliot had never been a violent young man. His disastrous fall at the age of ten, out of a tree from which he’d been scrumping apples, laming him for life, would in any case have precluded violent encounters of a physical nature, but he was basically peaceful and retiring. He’d never asked anything more than to live the quiet and studious life he’d planned, though paradoxically, when the war came, he found it a terrible thing to feel so useless, not to have the chance to fight for his country.
However, whether Eliot was violent or not, the conversation he had overheard that evening had enraged him to a degree not known before or since.
He had been reading in his aunt’s garden, lying propped on his elbow, on the lawn under the big copper beech, when Leonie and Sutherland had come outside, carrying their coffee. They had seen him there and moved away to talk—but Sutherland had barely bothered to lower his voice, which had a carrying quality and was quite audible to Eliot. He’d made no effort to get up—with his disability, getting to his feet was an undignified proceeding, best done when no one else was there to see him, or worse, offer to help. He had always hated pity. But anger made him stay where he was, as well—the assumption that he was of so little consequence to Sutherland that what he had to say to Leonie couldn’t possibly concern him.
It was the mention of the hotel which alerted Eliot and made him listen unashamedly.
Brundell’s, he heard, recognizing it immediately as the hotel where his aunt had always stayed on her visits to London, before the war. Shabby in a genteel way, all faded cretonne chair covers, dusty velvet curtains, sagging armchairs, rather worn carpets and elderly waiters, renowned for its unimaginative but reliable cooking. Aunt Edith had once taken him there for tea on his birthday—numerous dainty sandwiches, of which he’d made short work, in true schoolboy fashion; scones and jam, crumpets with lashings of butter oozing from the holes, cream cakes and chocolate eclairs . . . he had felt slightly sick in the tr
ain on the way home, but it had been worth it.
And now, over ersatz coffee and austerity rock cakes made by Miss Mottley and other ladies of the village, Brundell’s was being discussed, in a way that left no doubts in Eliot’s mind.
Turning his eyes from contemplation of the quiet, unremarkable countryside that was now flashing past, Eliot’s young companion remarked, ‘Someone wrote to my grandmother when my grandad was killed. They said the air raid on London that night was one of the worst of the war, the hotel he was staying in was flattened, not a single survivor, not a trace of anyone. I guess,’ he said slowly, ‘it might have been you who wrote?’
‘No, no, I believe it was my uncle.’
The good Revd Bowen had felt compelled to write, having known Sutherland and entertained him as a guest at the vicarage, and having received in return the immense pleasure of listening to his music. Afterwards, he said it was one of the hardest letters he had ever had to pen: there had never been any indication, until after he died, that Sutherland was married, much less that his wife was expecting their child. When the truth was learned from his commanding officer, it had somehow seemed like a betrayal of trust, though perhaps, excused the vicar, it had simply been that they had known him such a short time, that their acquaintance had really been of the most superficial. Certainly the unworldly vicar had never suspected anything between Sutherland and Leonie—and it had somehow escaped even shrewd Aunt Edith’s notice. Or had it? Eliot was to wonder afterwards. He himself had always preferred to believe that Leonie had not known the true facts, either.
Later that last evening, when the final notes of the ‘Pathetique’ had died away, Sutherland had announced that he had a forty-eight hour weekend pass and would be spending it in London, pooh-poohing the danger of air raids. He had never before visited the capital and, war-torn as it was, there were places he wanted to see in case they disappeared for ever.
‘You must go and hear Dame Myra Hess, too, at one of those lunchtime piano concerts of hers—I hear they’re becoming quite famous. I wish you a pleasant, or at least an interesting, time,’ said the vicar, excusing himself to go back to his study, being very much preoccupied at the moment with the funeral on Friday of Bert Havelock, the sexton, and his replacement as gravedigger, general factotum, school caretaker, ARP warden for the village, and sergeant in the Home Guard. He had been leader of the bellringers, too, though sadly they no longer rang, being silenced for the duration.
Leonie, too, it transpired a few minutes later, had four days’ leave coming to her, but she would be spending it at home, she said, in Norfolk.
‘What a journey you’ll have, my dear, the trains so full, and so unreliable!’ Eliot’s aunt had declared, looking up from turning the heel of a khaki sock and giving Leonie a steady look. ‘Must you go?’
No stauncher patriot existed than Aunt Edith. She had an undaunted belief in eventual victory—but only if everyone implicitly obeyed every government exhortation, such as, Is Your Journey Really Necessary? Not to mention the fact that one might well, have to stand all the way, with trains so jam-packed there was often no room even to sit on suitcases.
‘I feel I should. I haven’t seen my parents since—’
‘My dear, how foolish of me! Forgive me.’ Aunt Edith paused. ‘Of course, you must be so anxious to see them. Your sense of duty does you credit.’ Her knitting needles resumed their clicking. ‘And it will do you good, too.’
Leonie had the grace to blush.
She had recently suffered the personal sadness of having two brothers killed in action, and she hadn’t seen her parents since the last one, her eldest brother, had gone down with his ship when it was torpedoed. At that time, too, the war was going badly, while activity at the Park was increasing and personnel were working in three shifts round the clock. The strain was telling. Anyone who cared to notice couldn’t help but see that Leonie, like many more, was living on her nerves.
‘Oh. Oh, yes, well . . . Yes, I think it will buck my mother up to see me,’ she said lamely.
Eliot felt sick at heart at her duplicity
It wasn’t until later it occurred to him that, simply by informing Youlgreave of what he’d overheard, and where Leonie was to meet Sutherland the following night, he had in fact engineered the perfect crime.
He hadn’t envisaged murder, certainly, or ever dreamed that jealousy would go so far. But who could tell what had been in his young, heart-sore mind at the time? That Martin Youlgreave would knock Sutherland down? Quite likely. That he would shame Leonie out of the clandestine weekend? Possibly. The war had made young people more willing than ever to kick over the traces, and even some of the older generation had become more tolerant, but, though standards of behaviour were slipping, there were still nice girls—and he liked to think Leonie was one of them—who cared about their reputations. There must have been gossip already, of course. The pretty, clever little Wren and the big Canadian—their attraction for one another couldn’t have gone unnoticed, nor the coincidence of their going on leave at the same time. But then, they weren’t the only couple to plan a weekend together. Life could be short, and time was precious.
‘Will you give Ian this letter, Eliot?’ Leonie had asked him breathlessly the following day, dropping off the waiting ‘jolly boat’, as the small truck used for transport was known to the Wrens. ‘I couldn’t find him, and I must catch the next train or I’ll never get to Norwich.’
About to leave for Bert Havelock’s funeral, Eliot had, after several moments spent wrestling with his conscience, torn open the letter. When he’d read it, he saw it was as he’d thought, that wiser counsels had prevailed after all. Leonie had decided against the weekend in London, and wouldn’t be meeting Sutherland as they’d arranged. It had obviously been easier to say something like this in a letter than to tell him in person. Eliot thrust it into his pocket and conveniently ‘forgot’ all about delivering it to Sutherland.
That he subsequently bitterly regretted this petty and malicious action, and was to be ashamed of it for the rest of his life, made no difference. Especially now, when he knew what the builders must find among the accumulated debris of years as they moved in to begin restoring the old tithe barn. Old bones, scraps of clothing, uniform buttons perhaps. For Eliot had known that Sutherland, still expecting Leonie would be there, would go to keep his rendezvous with her. He could never have left for London the next morning. He was already dead by then.
Unable to sleep with his uneasy conscience that same, hot, airless night, listening to the drone of heavy bombers leaving for Germany, Eliot had at last gone outside in search of coolness, limping along the unlit village street towards the stream that crossed it and ran alongside the churchyard. He found Youlgreave leaning against the stone parapet of the narrow bridge, looking down into the slow-moving water. He had a cut lip and the makings of a black eye, he was filthy, and it was evident he was very, very drunk. He would not otherwise have spoken to Eliot as he did, albeit in a largely incoherent fashion—about Leonie, about upstart Canadians and the bloodiness of life in general. Before staggering away to his waiting car, he had confessed: ‘Well, I’ve done it at last. Finished it once and for all.’
And that fateful bombing of Brundell’s Hotel had, in fact, provided the perfect cover-up for Sutherland’s murder. No survivors, bodies damaged beyond recognition, no records left to show who had registered there, or who had not. Eliot knew he should have informed the police of the true facts, but he found it impossible, then or afterwards.
The train was gathering speed as Leighton Buzzard was left behind. Eliot checked his watch. Less than fifteen minutes before the arrival at their destination, where his wife was meeting him with the car. He felt slightly embarrassed that there hadn’t, after all, been much he could tell the boy about his grandfather, but young Ian seemed satisfied. Eliot began gathering together his unread papers, putting them into his briefcase while Ian talked about his plans to stay in the area for several days. Did he expect to be offered
a bed? People across the Atlantic were so hospitable. But Eliot knew he couldn’t ask that of his wife. Perhaps he should ask him to drop in for a cup of tea when he visited the Park? No, he didn’t think that, either. He found himself greatly relieved when the boy confessed he was going to stay in Milton Keynes with his girlfriend who, he suspected, had every minute planned.
‘Thank you for talking to me about my grandad. My grandma will just love to hear about it.’
‘I hope it won’t bring back unhappy memories.’
‘Oh, she doesn’t mind talking about him. She married again, you know, and she’s had a very happy life.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
They shook hands and said goodbye, and in a few moments Ian Sutherland and his backpack had disappeared from Eliot’s life.
Eliot didn’t go straight to the car park, but made his way into the station waiting-room. Once there, he took the letter from Youlgreave out of his wallet. He sat for several moments with it held in his hand, bracing himself to read it.
He’d last seen Youlgreave on television a few weeks ago. Lord Youlgreave, he was now, having gone into politics and taken his seat in the Lords after receiving a baronetcy in the New Year’s Honours list some years ago. Tall and handsome as ever, over eighty though he was, his trademark the white hair that flopped untidily over one eye, reputedly a millionaire several times over, he was a popular media figure who could always be relied on for an amusing quote or an outrageous opinion. Martin Youlgreave had achieved even more than his early ambitions could have envisaged. Monetary success and recognition had come early. Moreover, the social revolution which had taken place after the war had allowed an interaction between the classes that no one could have dreamed of—and he had, in the end, married the daughter of a penniless peer of the realm. She was rather a pretty young woman, nothing on Leonie for looks, but they made a handsome couple.
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