Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  Ockleton frowned. ‘Extraordinary.’ Then he smiled. ‘I congratulate you, Mr Barnett, on teasing out this line of reasoning. It defeats me, I must confess, but clearly there is some strand in it that you are determined to follow. As was Miss Mallender.’

  ‘You admit she came here, then?’

  ‘I never denied it.’ He crossed to a disorderly desk, tugged out a diary from amongst the academic detritus and began leafing through it. ‘Here we are. Saturday the third of September. Yes, indeed. A showery day, as I recall. Miss Mallender called at eleven. She wanted to talk to me about her sister. Clare was a student of mine, you know, and I was naturally distressed by the circumstances of her death, so I offered Heather what sympathy I could. It struck me that she was less brilliant than her sister, both mentally and physically, but also, perhaps as a consequence, less conceited. Clare had evidently mentioned my name to her. At first, especially when she divulged that she was recovering from a nervous breakdown, I assumed that she merely desired a consoling chat with her sister’s old tutor.’

  ‘But she wanted more than that?’

  ‘You already seem to know what she wanted, Mr Barnett: information about Willy Morpurgo.’

  ‘You know Morpurgo works for Alan Dysart?’

  ‘I do now. Heather told me. As a matter of fact, I think I can claim unwitting credit for Alan taking Willy on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Willy’s been more or less gaga since the crash. Brain damage, as you’re probably aware. Such a pity, in view of the quality of his brain. But there it is: poor Willy left his intellect spattered across a dry-stone wall in the Cotswolds and, like Humpty Dumpty, can’t be put back together again. They let him have his degree, of course, out of pure charity. Then I rather think his parents looked after him until they died. Left alone in the world, Willy gravitated back to Oxford, for which, be assured, I who have never been away am unlikely to blame him. He became one of the more notorious tramps of the city, begging and bawling on every street corner. I used to give him a pound whenever I met him: let no-one call me ungenerous. About five years ago, when Alan was campaigning to get into Parliament, he accepted an invitation to take part in a student debate here at Breakspear. The academic equivalent of kissing babies, I suppose. I daresay he wouldn’t bother with such gestures now. At all events, I dined with him when he came up and happened to mention poor Willy’s plight. Alan never said anything at the time, but Willy vanished from Oxford shortly afterwards. I concluded from what Heather told me that Alan had taken him on for old time’s sake.’

  There was something about Ockleton that Harry was beginning to dislike. Informative and amiable as he seemed, he yet possessed a cold inhumanity that seeped through his every witty remark. The contrast between his treatment of Morpurgo- – the occasional condescending coin – and Dysart’s – a roof over his head and some honest employment – was obviously lost on him. Logic he could no doubt purvey in abundance, but of true feeling he was entirely bereft.

  ‘There you are, Mr Barnett: the life of Willy Morpurgo in a nutshell. So much I laid before Heather Mallender and so much I lay before you. The question is: what does it signify? Something – or nothing?’

  The saving grace of Ockleton’s cloistered and analytical mind was that he had no use for deception. Unlike Heather’s family, he had nothing to hide. On his openness Harry now sought to trade. ‘Is that all you told Heather?’

  ‘Not quite. She seemed more interested in Willy’s student days than his subsequent misfortunes. She wanted to know all about the Tyrrell Society, of which Willy, Alan and I were members.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Tyrrell Society. A dining, drinking and debating club for Breakspeareans of similar persuasions, prejudices and pretensions. I believe I quote from the minutes of our inaugural meeting. The original idea was Alan’s, embellished by others. It represented our rebellion against the prevailing student culture of the day. Meditation and Maoism were very much not for us. We preferred to stimulate the sensibilities with something a little more baroque, a little more aesthetically traditional. By your expression, I judge that you suspect me of pseudo-intellectual flim-flam and it is undeniable that our deliberations tended more towards the sybaritic than the Socratic. Nevertheless—’

  ‘Who was Tyrrell?’

  ‘Tyrrell?’ Ockleton looked peeved to have his reminiscences directed along such practical lines. ‘Dear me, Mr Barnett, do you not know?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because you, like all of us, were a schoolboy once. Walter Tyrrell was the man alleged to have slain King William Rufus with an arrow, either deliberately or accidentally, in the New Forest on the second of August in the year 1100.’ Ockleton smiled at Harry’s frown of puzzlement. ‘Perhaps the allusion was a trifle abstruse. The point of the episode, so far as we were concerned, was that the truth of it has never been established. Tyrrell remains an enigma. Was he an assassin or an innocent? A daring and devious regicide or merely a clumsy archer? We shall never know. It was on such ultimately unanswerable questions about the past – and, indeed, the present – that we chose to dwell. The name was Alan’s suggestion, and an apt one we all thought it. Apt, as it turned out, in a way none of us could have anticipated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You referred earlier to the death of Ramsey Everett and there you have my meaning, for the exact circumstances of his death remain elusive in a truly Tyrrellian fashion.’

  ‘I gathered he fell from a window whilst drunk.’

  ‘Quite so. It would be absurd if it were not so unlikely. As I told Heather – But wait: you should see something that will add piquancy to a bald recital of what few facts are known.’

  It was necessary for Ockleton to push an armchair out of the way to reach the cupboard he sought, set low in a corner wall. After crouching by it for several minutes, sifting through the contents, he uttered a triumphant ‘Aha!’ and pulled out a large framed photograph, from which he blew a cloud of dust before placing it on the desk and inviting Harry to look at it. It showed a dozen or so young men casually grouped around a bench on a sunlit lawn, wearing knife-creased flannels and striped blazers: the very antithesis of student life in the sixties. Harry recognized Dysart among the trio seated on the bench and Ockleton standing to the rear, clumsily clutching a champagne bottle.

  ‘You’ve spotted Alan and me, have you?’ Ockleton asked after a moment.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Willy’s the one to my left.’

  ‘Good God.’ Harry could not at first believe that the tall and graceful youth beside Ockleton in the picture was the same man he had met at Tyler’s Hard. If only Morpurgo had been a less thoroughbred specimen the contrast with what had subsequently overtaken him would have been easier to accept.

  ‘What a falling-off was there, eh? That’s Ramsey.’ Ockleton pointed to another member of the group. Stockier than Morpurgo, with a less untroubled brow and a glare at the camera of barely bridled contempt, Ramsey Everett looked of the whole pack the one most prone to question their right to behave as they wished. ‘And they, you may care to note, are Jack Cornelius and Rex Cunningham.’ Ockleton pointed in turn at a broadly built man smiling conventionally towards the camera and a short, fleshy fellow beside him raising a glass as if to join in a toast.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Patience, Mr Barnett, patience. First I have some questions for you. How did you come to meet Alan Dysart? If you will forgive me for saying so, you scarcely seem his type.’

  ‘He worked for me during university holidays.’

  ‘He worked for you?’

  ‘Yes. I ran a garage business then, in Swindon.’

  ‘Swindon? Of course. I might have known. Thus the whirligig of time, etcetera, etcetera.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind, Mr Barnett. I have not yet done with questioning you. How did you come to be Alan’s employee, when he was initially yours?’

  ‘Hard times. Perhaps y
ou’ve never known them.’

  Ockleton smiled. ‘Alan is a universally charitable man, it seems.’

  ‘Yes. I think he is.’

  ‘And what do you hope to accomplish by retracing Heather’s movements in this way?’

  ‘I hope to find her.’

  ‘You think she is alive, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then your motive is a laudable one. She seemed a charming girl to me. So much more genuine than her sister. Clare was a true Breakspearean: too subtle for her own good. But Heather? Fortunately, she had never fallen into our clutches. She remained … unsullied.’

  They stared at each other in silence for a moment, surprised to find that they shared some fragment of a common cause: the unsolved mysteries that troubled them both, though twenty years and half a world apart, were somehow one and the same.

  ‘Are you in a hurry to be be on your way, Mr Bamett?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then come for a drive, if you will. I will take you where I took Heather. And show you what I showed her.’

  Away from the ether of Breakspear and deprived of his occupational gown, Cyril Ockleton was transmuted into a more subdued and less boyish version of himself, as if sensing that his true persona required a measure of disguise in the wider world. Piloting his tinny little car west out of Oxford with blithe disregard for the rules of the road, he declined to specify their destination – beyond the fact that it was where Morpurgo had met with his accident – and instead treated Harry to a detailed account of the death of Ramsey Everett, an account which he had previously given Heather, almost, it seemed, word for word.

  ‘The Tyrrell Society comprised, as you might imagine, good and ostentatious patriots. St George’s Day was thus red-lettered in our calendar. On the twenty-third of April each year, we held a dinner, at which, in honour of the patron saint, over-indulgence was not simply customary but mandatory. So it was on Tuesday the twenty-third of April, 1968, an occasion given a special fin de siècle luminosity by the knowledge that, for many of us, it was the last such event in our Oxford careers. At some late and inebriated stage of the proceedings, Ramsey Everett made his way, alone so far as could be established, into an adjacent sitting-out room. Both it and the Tyrrell Society meeting room, where the dinner was held, were on the second floor of Old Quad. The night being unseasonably warm, most of the windows were wide open. Ramsey presumably leant out for a breath of air. There was a suggestion at the inquest that he sought to relieve himself out of the window rather than trudge down to the jakes in the basement, a distressing but not unprecedented recourse for chaps well gone in their cups. However that may be, and for whatever reason, he lost his balance, the window being set hazardously close to the floor, and toppled out. Unhappily, he landed on the flagstones, not the lawn, and head-first at that, fracturing his skull and snapping his spine. Death, we were assured, was instantaneous.

  ‘This dreadful incident was, as you may imagine, a shattering blow to the society. Ramsey, though a touch priggish at times, was well-liked. The stupidity of his death made it somehow the harder to accept. To make matters worse, the college authorities interpreted it as a reflection on the conduct and organization of the society, which they accordingly ordered to be disbanded with immediate effect.

  ‘Formally, the Tyrrell Society came to an end the day of Ramsey’s funeral. Alan, I recall, took it particularly hard. Naturally, some of us continued to meet from time to time, constituting the Tyrrell Society in all but name. It cannot be denied, however, that Ramsey’s death cast a shadow over all our activities. Nothing seemed as carelessly enjoyable as before.

  ‘Some of us hoped that, once the inquest was past, our spirits would be revived. It was scheduled to open on the twentieth of May. As the date approached, those due to give evidence became increasingly nervous and depressed. Willy exhibited these symptoms to the most marked degree, which I for one thought odd, since he and Ramsey had often clashed. A few days beforehand, Jack Cornelius suggested a jaunt into the countryside to cheer us all up. Alan’s car was in dock, so Willy, the only other car owner, agreed to drive. There were five takers originally, but only four could hope to squeeze into Willy’s Mini, so Alan volunteered to drop out. That left Willy, Jack, Rex Cunningham and me. On Friday the seventeenth of May – mark the date – we set off. It was a bright spring morning. Our destination – then and now – was the village of Burford.’

  They were speeding along the A40 trunk road now, the landscape growing ever more undulating as the Cotswolds drew near, the pale winter sunlight falling warmly on honey-stoned farmhouses and curving boundary walls. Why Burford? And why the seventeenth of May? Harry did not even need to ask the questions before Ockleton supplied the answers.

  ‘How are you on seventeenth century history, Mr Barnett? Rusty? Or was the metal never applied in the first place? I trust you have heard of the Levellers, our homegrown sans-culottes. They were the most intelligent and least deferential members of the army raised by Parliament to defeat the King in the Civil War, who believed, God help them, that victory would usher in a democratic state. Needless to say, the generals, stolid landowners to a man, never had any intention of allowing such a thing to happen. Such concessions as they made were mere delaying tactics. When the time was ripe, they struck back, ordering the Leveller regiments to Ireland and withdrawing all their hard-won rights. Those who resisted were denounced as mutineers and treated accordingly. The last such mutiny was put down at Burford on the thirteenth of May, 1649, by Cromwell in person. He confined 340 mutineers in Burford Church for the next three days under general sentence of death. Then, on the seventeenth, he spared them, save for three ringleaders, whose execution in the churchyard the others were forced to watch. So ended the Burford mutiny.

  ‘Of what interest, you may ask, was this incident to the Tyrrell Society? The answer lies in its ambiguity. Cromwell had thrown in his lot with the Levellers when it suited him two years before and so was regarded by them as no better than a mutineer himself when he turned against them. Yet at Burford, within a matter of days, he converted all the rebel officers to his cause. An air of double-dealing and deceit hangs over those negotiations, as if to suggest that the record of them is in itself a distortion. Who betrayed whom? And why? We shall never know. For that reason Burford was a singularly appropriate destination for our excursion. We were celebrating the anniversary of what we most adored: an enigma.’

  At Burford, they left the main road and headed down the sloping High Street. Harry glimpsed the typical slate-roofed tea rooms and cream-stoned antique shops of a well-to-do Cotswold town, primly battened, it struck him, against all suggestions of treachery. Then Ockleton turned off along a narrow lane and, a few moments later, they pulled up by the church.

  ‘This was naturally our first port of call,’ Ockleton continued, climbing from the car and leading the way into the churchyard. ‘Willy rambled on about Norman archways and Perpendicular naves, as if glad to have some arcane topic to take his mind off the inquest. Rex mooched about the graves wondering when we were going to have lunch. That left Jack and me to pay some attention to the history of the place. Jack’s Irish blood made him sympathize with the Levellers – the Irish have never forgiven Cromwell for the Drogheda massacre, you know. I had a pretty open mind on the subject. Still have, if it comes to that. Couldn’t have abided the Levellers’ politics, of course, but betrayal always leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, don’t you agree?’

  They entered the church: large, high-roofed and multi-chapelled, reflecting much of Burford’s past and present wealth in its vaulted tombs and grandiloquent memorials. Harry trailed along behind Ockleton, bemused as he always was by beeswaxed pews and glittering plate in what experience had taught him was an irreligious world. They came to the font and halted. Standing beside Ockleton, Harry could see centuries-old graffiti scratched on its leaden lip. Ockleton pointed to one of them and read it aloud.

  ‘ “Anthony Sedley. 1649. Prisoner.” I wouldn’t have n
oticed this if Jack hadn’t drawn it to my attention. One of the Levellers carved it, in desperation I suppose, during their confinement here. Pity the poor blighter couldn’t spell. Moving, what?’

  Ockleton had spoken sarcastically, but Harry was genuinely moved by what he saw. Sedley had carved the Ns the wrong way round and omitted the O from ‘prisoner’, but these mistakes only heightened the poignancy of his message. On their way out of the church, Harry took from the rack of postcards one reproducing Sedley’s inscription. He felt surprised by his own honesty in dropping the requested payment into the box and could not quite fathom his motive in lodging the card in the same envelope in his pocket where he kept those of Aphrodite and Silenus.

  ‘There’s nothing like trudging round a cold church to raise an appetite, Mr Barnett. Jack, Willy, Rex and I took ourselves off to the Lamb Inn for lunch and put away as much ale and steak and kidney pie as four young men could desire. I entertained Heather to lunch there as well. Regrettably’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘it will not be open at this hour. I therefore suggest—’

  ‘I’d like to see the pub where you took Heather though, if that’s possible.’

  Understandably, Ockleton was puzzled by Harry’s request, but he raised no objection. ‘Very well. We’ll drive round that way.’

  The Lamb Inn lay on the other side of Burford, down a side-turning off the High Street. As soon as Harry saw it, he felt reassured. It was unquestionably the subject of the sixth photograph, as Ockleton at once confirmed.

  ‘Strange you should want to take a look at this place. As we were leaving, Heather took a snap of it. Pretty enough, I suppose, but hardly photogenic, is it?’

  ‘Obviously Heather thought it was.’

  Ockleton frowned. ‘You seem about as forthcoming as she was, Mr Barnett. I bring each of you on a guided tour of my past and you each remain tight-lipped. Why is it, then, that I have the impression you each perceive something here that I have overlooked?’