A Grave Man

by David Roberts

  ‘Bad business – Benyon being killed like that,’ he said. ‘Is it wrong to thank God that you remained in New York and did not accompany him to Germany?’

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said, showing genuine emotion for the first time, ‘that was horrible. No one seems to know how it happened. Could he have been . . . assassinated, do you think? After all, they tried to kill him on the Queen Mary.’

  Edward was dubious. ‘They would have had better opportunities and, anyway, they had no motive to kill him, once it became known that Roosevelt would not help us rearm. In any case, they would not have deliberately destroyed the pride of their air force. The Hindenburg was a flying advertisement for German air superiority.’

  ‘He was very good to me. Taught me a lot. I’ll always be grateful to him. I was sorry not to have been in England for his memorial service.’

  ‘Nothing happened in New York, then?’

  ‘How do you mean? I met a lot of good chaps. People introduced me to people – you know how it is.’

  ‘But you weren’t tempted to stay on?’

  ‘I’m going up to Cambridge in October, don’t you remember?’ Frank replied virtuously.

  ‘Yes, of course. I am glad to hear it. You’ll have a good time there. You missed the coronation. Your father looked very fine in his robes.’

  ‘Yes, I meant to come back but, I don’t know, I kept on putting it off. Missed the boat, you might say.’

  There was a silence – rather awkward on Edward’s side but apparently not on Frank’s. To fill the silence, Edward told him a little about his meeting with Churchill – betraying no confidences – and asked him if he had heard the word ‘eugenics’.

  To his considerable surprise, Frank seemed excited by his uncle’s casual question. He lost his otherworldliness and seemed energized by the word. He dropped his cigarette in an ashtray, put his cue down on the green baize and came to sit beside him in one of the battered brown-leather armchairs ranged about the room which Edward privately thought were more comfortable than any of the overstuffed chairs in the drawing-room.

  ‘How funny you should mention eugenics, Uncle. The fact is I met the most ripping girl in New York called Miss Schuster-Slatt. She has studied the whole question of race regeneration and she made me think, I can tell you. She’ll be in Cambridge in the autumn – the fall, they call it – which makes me quite eager to go up, don’t y’know.’

  ‘Is she reading for a degree or is she . . . ?’

  ‘She’s reading politics and economics, I think.’

  ‘Where did you meet her – Miss Schuster-Slatt?’ Edward asked mildly.

  ‘I was taken by this girl to a meeting of . . . now, what was it called?’

  ‘Which girl took you to the meeting?’

  ‘I really can’t remember. Some girl . . . what does it matter which girl?’ There was an arrogance in his tone which made Edward wince. He knew what it was like to be an English ‘lord’ in New York. Everything – and that included women – came just that little bit too easily for the good of one’s character. ‘Now you’ve put it out of my mind. No, I remember. It was called the League for the Encouragement of Matrimonial Fitness.’

  Edward wanted to laugh. Instead he inquired, ‘Miss Schuster-Slatt was speaking?’

  ‘She was – on the sterilization of the unfit.’

  ‘And you found nothing . . . ugly about that?’

  ‘No, why should I? Surely it makes perfect sense to strengthen the race by weeding out the weak and the imbecilic.’

  Edward recognized that these were Miss Schuster-Slatt’s words, not Frank’s, but it still made him unhappy to hear him parroting them.

  ‘You’re not a fool, Frank,’ he said sharply. ‘Surely you see what is happening in Germany? That’s just the sort of theory the Nazis use to justify the most terrible injustices. Who decides who is imbecilic? It is our duty to defend the weak – not destroy them.’

  Frank seemed not a whit disturbed to find that he had awoken in his uncle something very much like anger. It had the effect of making him dig his heels in.

  ‘All right, but don’t lose your rag, Uncle. Sadie – Miss Schuster-Slatt – is not advocating murder, for goodness sake. She and her . . . colleagues are only concerned to improve the health of our society.’

  ‘Whenever I hear the word “society”, I shudder,’ Edward said, realizing that he was in danger of losing his temper but unable to restrain himself. ‘Society is made up of individuals who agree to live by certain rules. It’s what the Communists and the Fascists have in common. They justify their most horrible policies – institutionalized murder very often – by saying it is for the good of society.’

  ‘But, surely, my uncle died because he believed in our society,’ Frank said haughtily. ‘Are you saying patriotism is wrong?’

  ‘No, of course not. Don’t mention Franklyn’s name in the same breath as your Miss Schuster-Slatt, I beg you. He was the best of us. I still say though that even patriotism can be misused. It’s a slippery word. But that’s beside the point. You know perfectly well what the Nazis are doing to the Jews and to others in “society” of whom they disapprove. You have heard of these camps into which people go without being charged with any crime and from which they never reappear?’

  ‘I am not defending the Nazis. I just said . . .’

  Edward unwisely lost control of himself. ‘I should bloody well hope not,’ he yelled. He got up from his chair, grabbed a cue and paced about the room.

  ‘And do you fancy you love this Schuster-Slatt woman?’ he demanded, even more unwisely.

  ‘It is nothing to you if I do, Uncle. Now, I think I will go to bed, if you don’t mind.’

  As the door closed behind him, Edward snapped the cue across his knee in frustration. He had done exactly what he would have expected the boy’s father to do and he would have tut-tutted and said ‘How typical.’ He should not have shouted at Frank but he loved him and could not bear to see him espouse views that were so abhorrent to him and, he would have hoped, to any civilized man. He told himself that Frank was a schoolboy and Cambridge would educate him, but it was alarming to hear that Miss Schuster-Slatt would be there. He felt suddenly despondent.

  On the Sunday morning, they walked across the field to the little church which served the castle and the village to hear matins. The Duke had his own high-backed pew – in which he was wont to slumber – from where Edward was able to study the memorials to his ancestors, most of whom had died in battle from the Crusades to the Crimea. He was still angry and disgusted – with himself as much as with Frank – that his brother’s sacrifice had been called into question. Franklyn’s body had been brought back from France and buried in the family vault but a plaque on the wall noted that he had given his life for his country in the first weeks of September 1914. He had at least been spared those long dark years of trench warfare which had destroyed the minds and bodies of hundreds of thousands of young Englishmen.

  Edward closed his eyes and pictured – as he had a thousand times before – his brother, revolver in hand, running across a green field. He had led his men against grey-cloaked figures kneeling behind a machine gun. He would have recognized it to be his duty – no question – but did he know he was running to-wards his own death and the death of most of the gallant fellows who followed him? Steel helmets had not yet been issued to British officers and the bullet which had plucked off his cap, with it plucked away his life. For Edward, and for all those left alive at the Armistice, this was the defining moment: England’s little professional army utterly destroyed, vanished into thin air. Now, a new war threatened. The war which politicians had promised would never come because what they called the Great War was the conflict to end all conflicts. As Edward looked down the pew at Frank’s profile, he wondered how he had dared be short with him the previous night. It looked as though he and his generation would be called upon to deal with the mess his uncle’s generation had made of the world.

  At lunch, he made every ef
fort to be cheerful and suggested his nephew might like to stay with him in London for a few days. There was, of course, Mersham House in Hill Street but the Duke seldom used it unless he was attending the House of Lords for some debate about which he had strong feelings. Edward had put Frank up for his club and thought he might like to meet some of the younger members he did not already know. He was pleased that the boy seemed uninterested in ‘doing the season’ – a ritual he had endured under protest finding it demeaning – a marriage market in which deals were made with women hunting men down like frightened foxes. Frank had received a host of invitations to balls from mothers who judged that the next Duke of Mersham might make a suitable husband for their girl but he had accepted very few of them and actually gone to even fewer. It was as though his brief taste of danger, when he had run away to Spain to join the International Brigade, had made him awkward with boys of his own age and impatient with girls whose knowledge of the world was restricted to what their mothers gleaned from Debrett. And yet, Edward thought, his nephew must have his fun before the lights were turned off and the world was once again plunged into darkness.

  Frank accepted his uncle’s invitation and it was silently agreed between them to forget their little tiff over Miss Schuster-Slatt. In the broad light of day, she did not seem a serious threat. Edward had enough confidence in his nephew’s good sense to believe that if she were what he thought she might be, Frank would soon be bored with her. Anything else he might say could make Frank attach himself to her more firmly rather than give her up. Before he left for London, he was able to have a few words with his brother in private and reassure him that Frank was suffering pangs of puppy love which should be ignored.

  Edward was never quite sure how the row had started. They were sitting in the drawing-room in Albany later that evening. He had been waxing enthusiastic about Winston Churchill but become aware that Verity was not chirrupping comments – in fact had been completely silent.

  ‘What is it, V? You look as though you’ve sucked on a lemon. I suppose you are going to tell me that you still hold the view that Churchill is an “enemy of the people” – isn’t that how you described him? Forgive me for saying so, but that’s utter nonsense and, if you met the man, you would know it.’

  It was quite the wrong thing to say. Verity puffed herself up like an angry toad and let him have it.

  ‘He is an enemy of the people and I have no intention of forgiving you for allowing yourself to be mesmerized by him. And I certainly have no intention of meeting him.’

  She went on to give him a summary of Graham Harvey’s views on Churchill’s shortcomings and Harvey would have been proud of the way she had memorized his arguments. When she had finished, they looked at each other with dislike, each wondering how they could possibly have thought they were in love with someone so pig-headed.

  ‘That’s not you speaking, is it?’ Edward said at last, his nose looking more hawk-like than usual.

  ‘What do you mean? Of course it’s me speaking.’

  ‘But all those quotations carefully taken out of context . . . All those “views” lumped together from thirty years of politics. I bet if someone had collected your more idiotic “statements of fact”,’ he went on icily, ‘it would make as much sense as . . . Comrade Stalin’s.’

  Verity had never seen Edward so angry and it was borne in upon her that Churchill had become very important to him. He was usually so wary of politicians and cynical about their motives but she saw that, for some reason, he had let his defences drop and taken this man, whom all good democrats detested, to his bosom. And, quite simply, she would not have it.

  ‘It is true that while I was at Swifts Hill, I met a man called Graham Harvey who is writing a book about Churchill and he gave me some interesting facts and figures – but the views are mine. He merely gave me evidence to back up my instinctive dislike of the man.’

  ‘Well,’ said Edward with a great effort, ‘let’s agree to differ, shall we? Tell me what you found out about Pitt-Messanger’s death.’

  Coldly, Verity related the events of the weekend including what Maud had told her of her affair with Sidney Temperley, the abortion carried out by Dominic Montillo and Maud’s suicide attempt. She mentioned finding the diary in the bath-room, empty except for Pitt-Messanger’s initials against April 27th.

  ‘I checked to see if it was her father’s birthday but he was born in October and Maud in June so it must be another date important to her.’

  Edward listened in silence and, when she had finished, said, ‘“And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, the honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.”’

  ‘You are quoting poetry again! I have told you before it irritates me.’

  ‘Sorry, it’s Tennyson’s Maud. It just popped out. I wish there was some way of meeting Simon Castlewood. I have grave doubts about this Foundation of his. This doctor fellow – Montillo – is, I believe, a charlatan and maybe worse. We agree on that at least, I imagine.’

  ‘Certainly, and there is no problem about you meeting Castlewood. I was asked to invite you to a cricket match next weekend. He makes up a team every year, apparently, to play the village side. I said I was sure you would come but that I would send a telegram to confirm.’

  ‘Very good! Do we know who else will be playing?’

  ‘Edmund Cardew, Roddy Maitland for sure. I don’t know who else.’

  Edward clicked his fingers. ‘I wonder if I could bring young Frank with me. He might benefit from a change of scene and he loves cricket. He was in the eleven, you know.’

  ‘Why does he need a change of scene? I thought he was going up to Cambridge in a couple of months.’

  ‘He is but he has fallen in love with a Miss Schuster-Slatt – an American girl with views about racial purity similar to Montillo’s. Maybe they even know each other. Let’s get every-one together and stir the pot. Who knows what hornets we will set flying around our heads! I tell you what, before we go I’ll have a word with Chief Inspector Pride. If I catch him in a good mood, he may bring me up to date with his investigations into Pitt-Messanger’s death. The fact that there has been silence from that quarter makes me suspect that the investigation has stalled.’

  ‘Hornets sting, don’t they?’ Verity said, the gloom lifting slightly. ‘We had better be careful. By the way, why are you suddenly so interested in Swifts Hill? Is it because you want to find out who killed Pitt-Messanger or is it something else?’

  ‘I’m not madly interested in who killed the old boy. From all I hear, he had it coming to him. He seems to have ruined a few lives – not least his daughter’s. I am concerned about what devilry Montillo and Castlewood may be up to with their Frankenstein ideas about developing a “pure” race – whatever pure means. You agree they ought to be stopped?’

  ‘Devilry may be too strong a word for it but I certainly hate “eugenics”. It doesn’t sound like science to me, just witch doctor stuff, but I may be wrong. My only worry is that Virginia invited me to Swifts Hill as a friend. If I end up making trouble for her husband, she will have every right to feel betrayed.’

  ‘I hope it won’t come to that but, if it does, I’ll take all the blame.’ He grinned at her but she did not return his smile.

  It was just three days ago, Edward thought wryly, that they had been in bed together, feeling part of one another and contemplating a life together. Now a coldness had sprung up between them like a stalactite. Drip, drip – an icicle coming between them. But he would never give in to her on this one matter – his admiration and faith in Winston Churchill. He believed he had found his cause and he intended to stick to it – whatever the price he had to pay.

  6

  Technically, the cricket pitch was part of Swifts Hill but, when Sir Simon bought the estate and began work on the house, it had been given to the village for the recreation of residents and his tenants. It was, Edward thought as he came off the pitch, an archetypal scene. The sun shone, the grass was ver
y green and the white flannels very white. The pavilion – a small wooden structure with a wooden platform in front of it – stood to his right. There was a scoreboard on which a thin, earnest youth hung numbers painted in white on tin panels. The village had declared at a hundred and twenty-nine and the knowledgeable among the spectators took the view that this was a winning score. It was four o’clock and time for tea.

  Tea was very important to the players. It was rumoured that one of the best bowlers in the village team had been lured away to play for a neighbouring hamlet with the promise of better teas but there was certainly nothing to complain about today. Trestle tables were groaning under cakes and ale. Fenton was helping the ladies dispense cucumber sandwiches, potted meat sandwiches and strawberries and cream. There was strong ‘sergeant-major’ tea, lemonade and ginger beer to drink, and scrumpy for the unwary. The village captain, Herbert Jenks – in civilian life the village butcher – as a matter of course tempted the Castlewood players, dry from their exertions, to slake their thirst with a pint or two of this dangerously unassuming local cider. Sir Simon had forcibly to remove a pint of it from Frank, just as he was about to sink it in one brain-numbing swig.

  Virginia bustled about achieving very little of a practical nature but, Edward observed, raising everyone’s morale and bridging any awkward conversational gaps between the ‘gentlemen’ and ‘players’. She was obviously popular with the tenants and villagers. She had a word for each of them, never at a loss for a child’s name and seemingly up to date with the state of old mother Barker’s rheumatics, Police Constable Peake’s painful feet and the ‘brittle bones’ which made the life of the retired school-mistress, Miss Tabitha Summerly, an agony. Virginia’s Pekinese, Halma, had chummed up with Mrs Cardew’s Lulu and together they chased cricket balls and had to be hauled off the pitch in disgrace. Sir Simon had taken Mah-Jongg from his cage and attached a long piece of string to his collar which enabled him to run up and down scaring the ladies and entrancing the children who fed the lemur sandwiches and ice-cream.