Past Caring

by Robert Goddard

  “Mr Radford: please ring Alec Fowler urgently on 01–836–2387.”

  A London number. What was Alec doing in the country? It suddenly seemed an age since I’d seen him in Madeira. He’d given me no clue then that he might soon follow me home. And what was so urgent? Alec had often in the past popped up from nowhere, on the end of a telephone, suggesting we drink away old times, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the message, reaching me on a dull morning in the grey precincts of Princes’ Hall, held a tinge of foreboding for me. I couldn’t say why, unless it was that, so soon after I’d agreed with Eve to play Sellick along while we went our own way, Alec’s appearance on the scene seemed a sinister coincidence.

  I dialled the number from a payphone on one of the student staircases. It was a hotel in Drury Lane. They put me through to Alec’s room and he answered straightaway.

  “Martin. Great to hear you. Thanks for ringing.” He sounded a touch more businesslike than usual. “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly but surely. But, more to the point, what are you doing in London? You never told me you were coming.”

  “Bit of business came up unexpectedly. Contact of Leo’s in the holiday trade – you know, some bucketshop billionaire. Possibility of a link with the magazine – for which read money. I’m over to butter him up, persuade him to sign a few cheques, so that Leo doesn’t have to stand all the losses. Thought I’d look you up while I was here. It wasn’t easy. Jerry was even less helpful than usual, but I tracked you down in the end.”

  “How long are you here?”

  “Rest of the week. But I’m working to a tight schedule. Could you come down to London for a jar?”

  “All right, Alec. How about later today?” It struck me that meeting Alec while Eve was away would be the best thing all round. I didn’t want him blurting out something about my marriage to a Couchman and, come to that, I wanted to keep Eve to myself.

  We agreed on a pub halfway between Liverpool Street and Drury Lane – one Alec knew from friends at the City University, a large, dark alehouse in Clerkenwell, full of frosted glass partitions and smoky alcoves. I was there by one o’clock on a drizzly London afternoon, to find Alec consuming British beer and a Fleet Street daily with the enthusiasm of a man breaking a fast. He was perched on a bar stool and shot me a flashing grin through his Madeiran tan and the fuggy interior of the pub as I walked in. We greeted each other and retreated to a table.

  “Cheers,” I said, gulping the first of my beer. “How do you like it back in England?”

  “Beer great, weather lousy. ’Twas ever thus. Now tell me how the research is going.”

  “Like I said over the phone: slowly but surely.”

  “You’ve been at it a month now.”

  “That’s right. Leo should have had three reports from me.”

  “He has. The last one arrived just before I left. Gather you’ve stirred it up with the Couchmans but dug up nothing in the archives.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “No breakthroughs then?”

  “‘Fraid not. But don’t look so disappointed – it’s a slow kind of job.”

  “What’s come out of your Cook’s Tour of the Couchmans’ unwanted past so far then?”

  “I’ve managed to rub Helen and her father up the wrong way. Of course, I’m a past master at that.”

  “But what about this nephew of Strafford’s you dug up in Devon?”

  “Ambrose? A real gem – of the rough-cut variety. He’s convinced his uncle was murdered.”

  “Oh yes? Who by?”

  “That’s the $64,000 question, Alec – or however much Leo’s prepared to pay.” We exchanged a smile at that. “Thrown under a train in 1951 by … well, take your pick: Gerald Couchman, his son, MI5, Winston Churchill.”

  “The KGB?”

  “You’ve got the picture. But seriously, the accident stinks. I reckon Ambrose’s right.”

  “And it was murder most foul?”

  “Could be. I’ll have a clearer idea when we’ve spoken to Lady Couchman – her testimony’s crucial, if we can get one out of her.”

  “We?”

  I’d been caught out, but it didn’t seem to matter. “Ah, well, while I’ve been in Cambridge, I’ve interested an expert on the Suffragettes in a bit of co-research.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Shouldn’t think so – Eve Randall, a fellow at Darwin.”

  “Age? Vital statistics? Marital status? – in that order please.”

  “Satisfactory on all counts, Alec – if you must know.”

  “So your co-research could extend beyond Strafford’s Memoir?”

  I played coy. “She’s an acknowledged authority in her field.”

  “But no help – on the business in hand?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. She’s found …”

  “What?”

  “Just some evidence that needs checking – but it might be exactly what we’re looking for.”

  “You said earlier you’d not had any breaks.”

  “We don’t want to build up false hopes.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Martin. I’ve no axe to grind. But there’s a lot of ‘we’ in this. Just how closely are you working with this dish?”

  “Eve’s got a book coming out next winter about the Suffragettes. It seemed sensible for us to join forces.”

  “I’ll bet it did. This couldn’t be the reason you feel so happy about working for Leo, could it?”

  “Why should it be?”

  “Because Leo’s given you the opportunity to cultivate a beautiful young academic – while all I get in Madeira is flowergirls and fishwives.”

  “Maybe.” I smiled sheepishly. “But Leo can’t complain, if it helps him as well as me.”

  “How does it help him?”

  “I told you. Eve’s turned up something.”

  “Which is?”

  Suddenly, after all my earlier reticence, I was about to spill the beans. Tongue loosened by drink? No doubt. Eager to prove that I could exploit the chance Sellick had given me? Certainly. Goaded into demonstrating that I hadn’t been wasting everybody’s time? Probably. “The likelihood is that Leo’s grand mystery is just a domestic tragedy. Strafford’s engagement was broken off because he was already married.”

  “You have proof?”

  “Eve found the certificate. Now we’re trying to back it up.”

  Alec whistled softly. “I don’t think that’s the sort of discovery Leo’s hoping for.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I’m saying nothing till the picture’s complete. I’d appreciate your keeping quiet about it when you get back.”

  “Scouts’ honour.”

  I should have stopped there, with Alec’s quip on honour. But I felt a need to expand and justify, so ploughed on. “It’s an instructive little tale really.” I sketched in Eve’s idea of how the Strafford theme might fit into her book. I didn’t attribute it to her, but Alec guessed anyway.

  “So that’s it.” He chuckled. “Leo pays well but Eve’s a better looker.

  “Let’s have another drink and toast whatever kind of partnership you think you’d like best.”

  I was happy to do that. We drank on until the pub closed at three o’clock, then made our way to Liverpool Street for my train back to Cambridge. We waited in the buffet, drinking treacly coffee served by a rotund West Indian lady. I felt a secret triumph at my position relative to Alec’s. For once, I seemed set fair to outstrip him. There was no sign of the Madeira magazine opening doors in Fleet Street for him, whereas the Strafford Memoir had led me to Eve and all her promise. I think Alec sensed that contrast, baulked at it as much as I rejoiced. Of course, he didn’t say anything of the kind.

  “How long will you keep Leo guessing?” he asked, stirring his coffee distractedly.

  “No longer than I need to. Once we’ve assembled the evidence and heard Lady Couchman’s side of the story, we’ll be ready.”

  “And what about Ambro
se Strafford?”

  “We may have to leave the verdict on his story open. But I hope not. For his sake, I’d like to know what really happened the night his uncle died. Again, a lot will depend on what the old lady says.”

  There was a crackly announcement of the train for Bishop’s Stortford, Cambridge, Ely and King’s Lynn. We drained our coffees and joined the file to the barrier, shouting the rest of our conversation above the hollow tannoy and the clattering and whistling of the station concourse.

  “Best of luck then, Martin,” Alec said, clapping me on the shoulder.

  “Thanks – and you with the tourism tycoon.”

  “I’ll need it – so will you. Be in touch.”

  He waved me onto the train, then I saw him stroll away through the crowd with his familiar, casual, slightly loping gait. An old friend, a good companion – and something else neither of us deserved, or, if we did, not in the way it happened.

  When I telephoned South Africa House the following day, they could tell me nothing about the van der Merwes, instead referred me to the Registrar-General in Pretoria, which was no help at all.

  I had better luck at the University Library, where they turned up some old street directories of Durban, dating from when Natal was a British colony. In an 1897 copy, I found what I was looking for: the household of Ocean Prospect, Berea Drive recorded and listed. Just bald names and initials, though I knew who one of them was: van der Merwe, J.G., Mrs O.C., J.I., P.J., Miss C.A. The next copy dated from eight years later and no van der Merwes appeared at Ocean Prospect, instead a Mr and Mrs Franklin. The lapse was tantalizing. Where did they go? What became of them? Above all, what happened to Miss C.A. van der Merwe, later Mrs Strafford? The dusty old directory held no answers.

  Eve returned on Wednesday. She left a message for me at the college asking me to dinner at Darwin to “hear the latest”. Not that that was really the greatest attraction of the invitation. I went eagerly.

  The dining hall at Darwin was small, intimate and modern. With no undergraduates at the college, there was a restrained and cultured air. Eve, wearing her gown over a pink dress, added a stunning beauty. The staff served her with a deference and attentiveness denied others, while the fellows at our table savoured her words as they would a fine wine. There were quizzical glances at me – a stranger in their midst, a mysterious escort for their enigmatic colleague. I enjoyed their envy, although, if they’d only known, my understanding was, if anything, less than theirs.

  Eve and I restricted ourselves to small talk over dinner. We adjourned to her rooms for more serious discussion. It was a warm, humid night. We opened the windows for air and sat by them, sipping calvados with our coffee.

  “I went through the whole Archive in minute detail,” Eve said, sighing a little from memory of the effort.

  “And?”

  “And I needed to, to find what little I did.”

  “Which was?”

  “The slender file on the bureau.” She looked towards it across the room. “It contains copies of the only two documents – other than the certificate – which are likely to help us. Take a look.”

  I fetched the file and looked through it. Photocopies of two letters, both handwritten and evidently to Julia Lambourne. The first bore no address, but was dated 21 June 1910.

  Julia,

  Much relieved to hear that you feel able to act for us in this matter. We must not flinch from unpleasant duties when the good of the cause dictates. Annie will deliver the document to you tomorrow. It would be best not to allow Elizabeth to take possession of it. Keep it safe and secret, since we may yet have further need of it.

  C.H.P.

  I looked up at Eve. “The initials are those of Christabel Pankhurst,” she said. “Annie is almost certainly Anne Kenney, her trusted lieutenant. As for the document, what can it be but the certificate?”

  “I suppose it must be. The timing’s certainly right. But this suggests Julia played no part in finding the evidence of Strafford’s marriage.”

  “Perhaps she asked others to check for her. But have a look at the second letter.”

  Hotel des Sommets,

  St. Moritz,

  Switzerland.

  18 September 1910.

  My dear Julia,

  I have felt so guilty about not writing to you. Please forgive me. At all events, here are the latest tidings, written on the hotel terrace, within sight of the snow-covered mountaintops.

  The air here is quite different to London, as you might imagine. I find it positively enervating, such that all I can manage some days is to sit in the sun, listen to the cowbells and read. Zola is my favourite at present. He has a keen eye for so much that is wrong with society.

  By contrast, Aunt Mercy has been invigorated by the atmosphere. She tramps the Alpine meadows quite tirelessly, and has developed an enthusiasm for natural history, so much more exotic here than in Putney! I have latterly found pretexts upon which to avoid participation in her excursions. Rest assured, however, I never allow her to go without a guide.

  Fatigue is not the only reason, though, for my not accompanying Aunt. Passing through Zurich at the end of August, whom should we meet at our hotel but Gerald Couchman? – that very nice man to whom you introduced me during the summer, at a time when I was scarcely fit to meet anybody socially. He promised that our paths would cross here and so it has proved. He has been at this hotel for a week now and has provided me with charming, considerate and amusing company, being sufficiently aware of my recent distress deftly to avoid preying upon the subject without, at the same time, seeming to underestimate its significance for me. Last night, over dinner, he asked if we could tolerate his company when we move on to Venice at the end of the month. Although I may have appeared less delighted at the prospect than Aunt, it was, entre nous, entirely the other way about.

  Gerald has a happy knack of enabling me almost entirely – at least for several hours at a time – to forget my past troubles and for more than that I cannot presently ask. Be sure to pass on to Miriam, the Twins and your brother my heartfelt thanks for their support and assistance when it was most needed. To you and the sisterhood in general, I extend my best wishes and encouragement. It seems to me, as I assess matters in repose, that insofar as my experience holds any lesson for the movement, it is that we should look for victory to our own resources and nowhere else. Christabel may, as you say, have arrived at a crucial understanding with those most likely to effect the necessary legislation, but it is the kind of intrigue in which, I am sorry to say, I can place no faith.

  Not that any of this, dear Julia, need blight our friendship. I am already feeling much better than I did before we left England and, when we do return, I hope you will find me very much like my old self, never to be, I suspect, wholly restored, but certainly up to – indeed, already looking forward to – a good gossip with an old friend.

  With much love from

  Elizabeth

  Odd, and unsettling, to step outside Strafford’s vision and version of events to see them from Elizabeth’s oblique, understated angle. My mind played with the meanings that lay between the lines. The proof of Strafford’s unworthiness handed to Elizabeth’s friend by Christabel Pankhurst, who also has “a crucial understanding” with … Lloyd George? Was Strafford’s removal one side of a bargain and, if so, did Elizabeth realize the full depths of the intrigues which she “had no faith in”?

  A further thought: Elizabeth referred to being introduced to Couchman “during the summer”. I recalled, from the Memoir, Couchman assuring Strafford that he’d not met Elizabeth until after she’d broken her engagement. Though strictly consistent with her letter to Julia, the proximity of the events now seemed suspicious.

  “Well,” said Eve, slicing gently through my thoughts, “what do you make of them?”

  “They support both our theories. The note from Christabel hints at a deal with Lloyd George. The letter from Elizabeth points the moral: that the Suffragettes would have been wise to fight
for their rights without trying to persuade politicians to make concessions to them.” In fact, my second remark was my concession to Eve.

  “Aren’t the theories basically one and the same?”

  “Are they? Surely Elizabeth was expressing disapproval of any deals or compromises. And remember, she was proved right.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, if Christabel really did strike a bargain with Lloyd George and deliver Strafford’s disgrace as her side of it, then she was taken for a ride, because Lloyd George never repaid her with votes for women.”

  “We don’t know any such bargain was struck. We can assume Julia alerted Christabel to Strafford’s involvement with Elizabeth and that Christabel in turn alerted Julia to Strafford’s deception of Elizabeth. We can even assume Strafford’s removal from office suited Lloyd George, but we can’t assume there was any formal bargain.”

  “Surely Elizabeth, in her letter, refers …”

  “To an understanding, nothing more. Christabel may well have negotiated with Lloyd George. After all, it was he who eventually conceded the issue.”

  “Not until 1918.”

  “True, but political favours have to be earned. That’s not an operation for the gullible. Remember I criticized the Suffragettes for not exploiting their advantages?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, maybe Christabel should be exempted from that criticism. She would never, you see, have trusted a politician. To do so was Elizabeth’s mistake.”

  “Even so …”

  “I think,” said Eve, standing up with a silencing air of decision and walking to the window, where she stood with her back to me, “I think we would do well to concentrate on that aspect of the affair.” It was a calm and modulated statement, but, unmistakably, an instruction. Her very pose, feet apart on the carpet, one hand on her hip, a lithe figure outlined against the night, seemed to place the matter beyond debate. “If, that is,” she continued, “a combined approach is to prove successful.” Beyond debate, then, if I wanted to remain close to her, in the working sense, or any other sense I cared or could be led to imagine. When she turned to look at me again, my own reaction reminded me that such closeness was now my prime objective. “It would seem such a pity to spoil that.”