Past Caring

by Robert Goddard

  “Any chance I could come too?”

  A pause of deliberation. “I think you’d do better to carry on here. Duplication of effort would be wasteful.” I’d seen other advantages to a joint visit to London, but Eve’s quiet tone brooked no argument. “Besides, Professor Davis at Birkbeck is very protective about the Archive. He knows me, so there won’t be any problem, but …”

  “Point taken. I’ll soldier on here.”

  “You won’t have to wait long to hear if I find anything. I’ll be back Friday evening.”

  I seized an opportunity. “How about dinner then? I could take you out and you could tell me what – if anything – the late Mrs Kendrick has for us.”

  Even set down her cup and smiled. “That would be lovely, Martin. I’ll look forward to it after the noise and grime of the city.”

  After tea, she walked down with me to the garden and along the gravel path towards the gate into Silver Street.

  “I haven’t thanked you properly for taking me out on Sunday,” she said. “I enjoyed it very much.”

  “I’m glad. So did I. While you’re in London, I’ll have to get used to doing this job on my own again.” Reaching the gate, we stopped.

  “Not for long.” So saying, she leant forward and kissed me, lightly but for long enough to plant a suggestion of more to come in my receptive mind. “Take care while I’m away. See you on Friday.”

  “I’ll call about seven.” She raised one hand in acknowledgement before disappearing round an ivy-clad buttress. That was Eve’s way – to go quickly and leave me thinking. As think I did, more about her and less about the Kendrick Archive than I should have.

  Thursday, with Eve in London, seemed duller in prospect than it proved in reality. I posted another report to Sellick – which said nothing because there was nothing to say – then made my way to the University Library for another dutiful day with the reading list. I stationed myself at a small table in the cavernous reading room with The Women’s Victory & After by Dame Millicent Fawcett and tried to concentrate.

  About an hour later, as I was debating with myself whether to break for coffee, the muted, bookdusty atmosphere around me was rent by a stifled curse to my left of “Oh shit” as half a dozen books crashed to the floor. I jerked round, as did several others with pained expressions, to see Marcus Baxter stooped purple-faced over the fallen pile, muttering to himself as he scrabbled to retrieve it. Breaking off, he dumped his briefcase – with enough force to suggest that he blamed it for the incident – on a chair and, glaring up, caught my eye.

  “Radford,” he rasped. “Don’t just sit there gawping. Give me a hand.” I did of course, while retaining a supercilious expression calculated to annoy. We stacked the books on the table. “Why are you hanging around here?” Baxter went on, eyeing me biliously.

  “Following your advice: spending time with sources on Strafford.”

  “Found anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  He grinned crookedly. “Then you’ve been looking in the wrong place – as usual. I noticed something only the other day that’d repay your careful study, if you know what I mean by that.” I had the impression he’d have spared me the last shot if I hadn’t just witnessed his embarrassment.

  “What was it?”

  He fastened his briefcase. “I’m going for a smoke. Come along and I’ll fill you in.”

  We descended to the tea room, where coffee and cigarettes improved Baxter’s mood – a little. I pressed him for details of his find.

  “Have you been through Hobhouse?” he barked. I took it that he meant Charles Hobhouse, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and later Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under Asquith.

  “I’ve read Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It isn’t. That’s just extracts from his diaries. I mean the unedited version.”

  “Then no.”

  “Typical.” He stubbed out a cigarette in his saucer. “Well, if you had, my boy, you might have seen this.” He rummaged in his bulging case. “Following our conversation last week, I thought I’d check the chronology of references to Lloyd George’s secret talks with Balfour in 1910. I remembered that Hobhouse mentioned them in his diaries.”

  “Over and above what he says in Inside Asquith’s Cabinet?”

  “I’ve told you before Radford, you can’t get away with skimping. Ah!” He pulled out the piece of paper he was looking for and flicked it across the table at me. It was a photocopied page of manuscript, covering three dates in October.

  “What does this tell us?”

  “It’s Hobhouse’s diary for October 1910. Look at the entry for Monday the seventeenth.”

  I read it aloud. “Disturbing conversation with Birrell this afternoon. He told me that Lloyd George and Balfour had for some time been meeting at secret venues over and above the Constitutional Conference. It was the first I had heard of such a thing and Birrell implied that their objective was to form a coalition to carry through agreed – though diluted – reforms. Lloyd George had evidently declared to Birrell quite openly that he aspired to the premiership of such a coalition. The price for this would be paid by others. Asquith would have to be ‘put out to grass’ and Churchill passed over because the Tories ‘would not stick him at any price.’ As for opposition from within the party, Lloyd George had pooh-poohed it. ‘Anyone who wants to,’ he had said, ‘can go the way of Strafford.’ What did that mean? Birrell – who replaced Strafford in June as a delegate to the Conference – did not know and nor do I, unless it is that there was more to Strafford’s resignation at that time than met the eye.”

  “‘More to his resignation than met the eye,’” echoed Baxter. “Isn’t that what you’re looking for?”

  “It’s exactly what I’m looking for. This is marvellous.”

  “Don’t get carried away. It’s only hearsay – contemporary, recorded hearsay, but hearsay nonetheless. It’s not much to go on.”

  “Yes it is. It’s somebody other than Strafford quoting Lloyd George to the effect that Strafford was deliberately removed from office.”

  “Not quite. It’s somebody quoting somebody else quoting Lloyd George … tenuous, I’m afraid.”

  “But …”

  “And Lloyd George could’ve been flying a kite. He ‘aspired to the premiership’. When the coalition was actually floated, Balfour was to be Prime Minister – in name anyway. Asquith was to be ‘put out to grass’ – with a peerage presumably. It never happened. The party – people like Hobhouse – wouldn’t have worn it. Maybe the idea that Strafford was deliberately jettisoned was wishful thinking, designed to impress: as it did.”

  “But taken together with Strafford’s own account …”

  “It begins to take shape – as an attractive possibility. Work at it, Radford, and you might have something.” The past taskmaster had spoken.

  “I will. Can I keep this?” I held up the copy.

  “Certainly, my boy. Treat it as a memento of my scholastic integrity.” He smiled and, for once, I had to smile with him.

  I decided to leave the Library early that afternoon. After Baxter’s revelation, there didn’t seem much point in lingering. I’d discarded Fawcett straightaway and gone for the full version of Hobhouse’s diaries, but they contained nothing else on Strafford to compare with what Baxter had given me. It rankled slightly that I’d had to rely on him to point me in the right direction, but it pleased me even more that he’d seen fit to toss me a crumb.

  What I most wanted to do was carry my discovery to Eve in triumph, show her that there was substance in my theory and, for that matter, in me. Because she was in my mind and I was in the Library, it was no more than idle curiosity that made me look her up in the University Calendar. But there was a shock waiting for me in her listing under Darwin College: “Miss E. Randall, M.A. (Couchman Fellow).” Couchman Fellow? What could it mean? I turned feverishly to the section on endowments and found it there.

  “COUCHMAN R
ESEARCH FELLOWSHIP: The Fellowship was instituted in 1955, under the Will of the late Sir Gerald Couchman, to facilitate research and teaching in the Humanities at one of the postgraduate colleges of the University by a suitably qualified woman. The Trustees (the Vice-Chancellor, the late Sir Gerald’s executor and the Master of the College at which the incumbent is to be resident) appoint the fellow annually and have discretion to re-appoint in appropriate cases.” There followed a list of the Fellows since 1955, with, at the bottom, “Miss E. Randall, M.A. – 1976”.

  Why hadn’t she told me? The question rang like an alarm bell in my head.

  There could be no misunderstanding. Eve’s fellowship was in the gift of the Couchmans. The more I thought about it, the more I dimly recollected being told sometime that the family had exercised its generosity in this way – another piece of conspicuous superiority that grated on my marriage to Helen. That was all it had been: a minor, forgotten irritant. Now it was a torment, not by its existence, not even by Eve’s occupation of it, but by the fact that she hadn’t told me. In all fairness – all logic – she should have done.

  I went down to the river and walked up the Backs, trying to make sense of it. After all, I told myself, Eve wasn’t to know of my connexion with the Couchmans any more than I was to know of hers. I was afraid anybody who knew of mine would refuse to accept me as an objective researcher. Did Eve fear I would think the same of her? If so, we were in an absurd stand-off.

  I turned in at the back gate of King’s College and walked over the bridge towards the Chapel, too lost in thought to have any taste for the architecture. At first shocked, then dismayed, I now felt only a pervasive uncertainty, the ebbing of a shallow confidence. What was I to do? Trust Eve’s integrity or mine? If she had as little of it as me, I was lost. Yet everything told against that. She had too much grace and beauty for me to judge her by my own standards. I was wrong, I told myself, as I tramped past the Old Schools and turned up Senate House Passage, wrong to feel slighted over this. Why should Eve tell me something which – strictly speaking – wasn’t any of my concern? Surely I could rely on her to resolve any conflict of interest in her own way. Above all, what right did I have to question her impartiality while at the same time suppressing evidence that I was even less impartial? She’d said none of us was disinterested and she’d been right. Had that been a signal, a warning not to expect too much of her? If so, I decided, it was time to heed it – expectation wasn’t my prerogative. But hope remained.

  I drank a lot that night: my normal refuge at times of stress. The stress was wanting Eve back in Cambridge but not knowing whether to say anything to her about the Couchmans when she was back. The stress was being nearer the truth but farther than ever from peace of mind.

  After a wretched night I spent the morning patrolling Great Court at Trinity – Strafford’s old college – lost in thought, a few more drinks at lunchtime, then a walk through the Botanical Gardens to clear my head – which it didn’t – and on to the railway station. I spotted Eve’s MG in the car park and lay in wait on the platform, knowing that, some time that afternoon, she must step off the London train.

  Several trains came and went, each washing a wave of dead faces past me, while I sat on a bench, watched movements in the goods yards and wondered what I’d say when the waiting was over.

  Somehow, I knew the train Eve was on when I saw it nosing up the long straight line towards the station, knew which first-class compartment she would elegantly descend from and knew then, if I’d ever doubted it, that I could say nothing to her about the Couchman Fellowship. For what did I think when I saw her through the crowd, in dark glasses and cream three-piece trouser suit, looking askance and apart on the suddenly busy station? – a superior, supremely desirable being singled out for me from the ruck around us. What did I think? I thought I would follow her to the ocean’s edge.

  “Martin,” she said with a flashing smile, “this is an unexpected pleasure.” The greeting kiss was brief but far from casual. “It’s great to be back – and to see you here.”

  I took her bag and smiled too. “It’s great to have you back.” All my doubts dissolved as we walked towards the ticket barrier. “I couldn’t wait to see you – I’ve got some news.” But not, of course, the news she didn’t want to hear.

  “Same here. We can swap over dinner.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  She said she was tired after the journey and would I drive her back to Darwin? I surprised myself by how well I piloted the MG through the city streets. I wondered if any of the passing students who saw the stranger in the sports car recognized their dream lecturer by his side and found myself hoping they did. I’d booked a table at Shades’ in King’s Parade because it was small, quiet and generally empty even on a Friday night. We walked up to it through the still of early evening, Eve dressed in a black suit over a flounced, white silk blouse, fastened at the neck with a silver brooch, elegant perfection walking with her arm in mine, talking of the contrast between Cambridge and London, flirting on the fringes of our respective revelations.

  That game continued through the aperitifs and whitebait till the wine flowed with my steak and her veal and we came to the crunch over dishes of tender meat.

  “As soon as I saw you at the station,” she said, as the candlelight twinkled on her brooch, “I knew you were dying to tell me something.”

  “But you said you’d not returned empty-handed either.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then ladies first.”

  “Isn’t it the woman’s right to choose? I choose to hear your news first.”

  “All right.” I conceded with a smile. “But it’s not really my news. Baxter pointed me in the right direction.”

  “Really?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Yes. The diaries of Charles Hobhouse. A bon mot from Lloyd George about Strafford’s resignation, with lots of implications.” I removed the sheet of paper from my pocket and passed it across the table. “Look at the entry for 17th October 1910.”

  Eve pursed her lips and read through it, then sipped some wine. “What did Baxter make of it?” She was less obviously impressed than I’d hoped.

  I sat back in my chair. “You know Baxter. He requires signed affidavits for any conclusions – except his own. Said it was still flimsy. But, taken in conjunction with the Memoir – which he hasn’t seen – doesn’t it reinforce the idea that Lloyd George was out to get Strafford?”

  “No link with the Suffragettes, I see.”

  “Not yet. But isn’t it a start?”

  “Oh yes.” She shot me a reassuring smile. “You’ve done splendidly, Martin. We could look on it as a breakthrough, except …”

  “Except what?”

  “Except for what I found at Birkbeck – in the Kendrick Archive. So many papers, documents, notes, letters – not properly catalogued yet. And there, amongst them, the answer. So simple, really – it shouldn’t be any surprise.”

  Is this it? I thought. Do I get truth served, sweet and simple, as an extra course: bathos in the evening? Does the high priestess just roll me a secret, like a cigarette she doesn’t smoke? Can she pass me Strafford on a serviette? If she can work the oracle, what’s to be my votive offering?

  All those thoughts, in the second between sentences. But all I said was “What is it?”

  “Elizabeth Latimer couldn’t marry Strafford because he was already married.”

  “He was what?” I felt as if the restaurant chair was about to flip me, Sweeney Todd-like, into the world of turned tables and discarded masks.

  “Married. Amongst the Kendrick papers, I found a marriage certificate: Strafford’s, dating from his years in South Africa. He married – and evidently deserted – a Dutch girl there.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Only that the certificate is there – or rather, here.” She reached into her bag and brought out a buff envelope, which she placed on the table between us. I fumbled at the flap, pulled out the folde
d, yellowed, crinkled sheet within and held it to read in the candlelight.

  No mistake. The name was there, recorded for posterity in some rough Boer registrar’s jagged hand. Edwin George Strafford, aged 24, and Caroline Amelia van der Merwe, aged 21, joined in matrimony at Port Edward, Natal, on 8th September 1900.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Do you?”

  “It looks genuine, Martin. It feels genuine. It seems awfully like the truth. I feel sorry that my suspicions have been confirmed.”

  “You suspected this?”

  “Not exactly. Something like it. Something disappointingly conclusive. I’m afraid it was always on the cards that Strafford would turn out to have discredited himself.”

  “But Eve, the Memoir. This goes against everything he wrote in that.”

  “True. But I fear it’s not unprecedented for people – especially famous people – to present their past as they would wish it to have been. There’s no reason to doubt the veracity of the Memoir – as far as it goes. It’s simply that Strafford edited out the one ugly truth he couldn’t face.”

  “But how could he? How could it remain hidden in the circumstances?”

  “I was thinking about that on the train. This document was in Julia Lambourne’s possession. It was she and her brother who were on the scene in Putney to protect Elizabeth at the time of the split, right? Therefore it’s fair to conclude that Julia uncovered this information and showed it to Elizabeth to save her from a bigamous marriage. She’d presumably decided to check Strafford’s credentials when she first realized how close he was to her friend. The enormity of her discovery may have made her hesitate to reveal it, but, when she learned of Elizabeth’s seduction, she could no longer hold it back. As for not making it public, how could they, when to disgrace Strafford was also to ruin Elizabeth? She would have had to admit to adultery, then a considerable social stigma. And what good would it have done the Suffragettes for the public to know that one of their brave, responsible young ladies claiming the right to vote was happy to take a roll in the hay with a Cabinet minister? No, everyone was better off burying the truth – including Strafford.”