Only Samantha was there to see her off and she did not supply a cheerful farewell. Charlotte found her consuming a laggardly breakfast, downcast and déshabillé, in the lounge.
‘Not dressed yet, Sam? Your mother will not approve.’
‘She doesn’t approve of very much at the moment, does she? Why should I be the exception?’
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
‘Haven’t you noticed the prickly atmosphere round here? Mum and Dad have been stalking each other for days like two alley-cats who can’t decide to strike first.’
‘You’re imagining it.’
‘No. You’re just too dazzled to have noticed.’
‘Dazzled? By what?’
‘By who, you mean. Did he take you somewhere swish last night?’
Charlotte leaned close to Samantha’s ear and whispered: ‘Mind your own business.’
Samantha blushed, then giggled. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie. You’re right. What’s it got to do with me? Emerson’s a gorgeous guy. I wish you luck.’
‘Thank you,’ said Charlotte with a sarcastic curtsy.
‘But tell me, do you know what’s gnawing at Mum and Dad? Something is.’
Charlotte could easily have guessed. Perhaps Ursula had told Maurice what was really in Beatrix’s letter. Or perhaps she had not. Either way, the fact of it could not be wished away. How they coped with that knowledge was their affair. One Charlotte was too preoccupied to concern herself with. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam. And now I must be going.’
Derek reached Tunbridge Wells in the middle of the afternoon. He was tired and dispirited, filled with a sense of his own inadequacy. To go home was as unthinkable as a late appearance at Fithyan & Co. He was a fugitive lacking direction as well as purpose. And so, with a kind of logic he thought Colin might applaud, he found himself at the Treasure Trove, repository for much else that was worthless and unwanted.
He let himself in with the key Colin had given him and gazed around at the dust that had settled on every horizontal surface. The place had always been somewhat down-at-heel. Now the stale air of neglect was there to compound the effect. The gilt-framed hunting scenes; the Hogarth prints; the antique maps; the horse-brasses; the bust of Cicero; the grandfather clock; the stuffed bear; the elephant’s foot; the chaise-longue; the cheval-glass; the pine chest; the sparsely filled cabinet of Tunbridge Ware: all bore the same grey blur in testimony to their owner’s absence.
Derek leaned back against a table and surveyed the scene. Beyond the window, no passers-by paused to peer into the shadowy interior. The Treasure Trove was closed and was not expected to open. Tomorrow, Colin Fairfax-Vane, proprietor, would be committed for trial on charges he could not hope to rebut. Tomorrow, the hollowness of his last pretence would be exposed. And his brother would watch it happen. There was nothing else he could do. Nothing, at all events, that a stuffed bear and a dead Roman could not match.
Charlotte had only been back at Ockham House a few minutes when the doorbell rang. Answering it, she found a girl standing on the step with an enormous bouquet of flowers: lilies, dahlias, carnations and chrysanthemums, riotously coloured and scented in a haze of gypsophila.
‘Miss Ladram?’
‘Yes. But there must be—’
‘For you.’ The girl lowered the bundle into Charlotte’s arms. ‘There’s a note attached.’ She smiled and turned to go, leaving Charlotte to close the door and carry the flowers to the kitchen before she could spare a hand to open the tiny envelope pinned to the cellophane.
There was nothing on the card save Emerson’s Christian name, signed with a flourish. But there did not need to be. Leaning back against the sink, Charlotte could fill her lungs with the heady aroma of a future she had never till these last few weeks anticipated. Out of Beatrix’s death might come her happiness. And the possibility dispelled all sense of irony, let alone of doubt. She raised the card to her lips and kissed it.
29
MIDNIGHT. AND AT the twelfth stroke of the clock, Frank Griffith stirred wearily in his chair. He had delayed long enough, he knew. If he delayed any longer, he might never do it at all. Yet do it he must. To have held back when he first received Beatrix’s letter was understandable. To stay his hand once more when Charlotte found him was excusable. But now understanding and excuses had run out. Fairfax’s visit had proved what he should have recognized all along: that Tristram’s secret would not be safe until his letters to Beatrix were destroyed.
Frank leaned forward to tap out his pipe against the fender, then rose and rubbed some of the stiffness out of his lower back. In front of him, dimly reflected in the clock-glass, he could see his lined and hollow-cheeked face. He had been strong and lithe and handsome once, striding the cobbled streets of Swansea while white horses rode the bay and factory hooters blared out their summons. So young and confident of his place in the world, with a tireless body and an inexhaustible mind, hard as the steel he forged, bright as the sun on the hills. All that was gone and wasted now, shed and shattered in dole queues and hunger marches, sloughed like a flayed skin on the snowy heights above Teruel.
This should have been done years ago. They should have been buried with Tristram in Tarragona. Or consigned to flame somewhere far back along the road that ended here, in his old age and solitude. But they had not been. So now, as the new day inexorably advanced, he would have to ensure that at long last they were.
He made his way to the kitchen, moving slowly and quietly so as not to rouse Bron. There he put on his boots and a jacket and took down the torch from its nail beside the range. He opened the back door and stepped out into the garden, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the moonlight. He shivered and chuckled faintly at how frail he had grown. He felt cold even on a balmy midsummer night, whereas once—
Stifling such futile thoughts, he walked round to the wicket-gate and let himself into the yard, raising and lowering the latch with punctilious care, for he saw no sense in taking any risks, even if in truth there were none to be run. He gazed about him and breathed deeply. All was still and silent. The wind had died with the day, leaving the moon to preside in pale and ghostly splendour over the empty black gulfs of field and moor. He knew them all. He knew them well. Every peak and slope, every rain-hewn cleft. Every boulder, every blade. This was home. This, he supposed, was where, one day not far off, he would die. And at least, after this night’s work, he would die with a clear conscience.
Old age craves reassurance as well as rest. He waited longer than necessary for certainty to creep upon him through the chill. Then he marched across the yard and entered the barn, slipping in through the half-open door. And there he stopped once more. The darkness was absolute, but silence did not impose itself until a fraction of a second after his entrance. No matter. The scratching had been unmistakable. It was a dormouse. Nothing more and nothing larger. It would not move again while he remained. And he would not remain long.
He switched on the torch and ran its cone of light along the upper half of the left-hand wall, counting the trusses as he went. There was the ladder, propped against the wall. And there, he knew, wedged between the fifth beam and the thatched roof, was what he had come for. Tristram’s letters from Spain and fifty years ago. His confessional. His apologia. His secret.
Frank stepped across to the ladder and moved it to a position just short of the fifth beam. Clutching the torch in his right hand and trailing its light on to his feet, he began to climb, placing both feet on each rung before moving to the next. Five rungs took him to within reach of the hiding-place. Raising the torch, he shone it into the gap and made out the familiar shape and metallic sheen of the biscuit tin he had used. It had once contained shortbreads, a Christmas present from Beatrix. Now it contained a fragment of his own past, and the lie of another’s, preserved in ink and paper, bound in string and secrecy.
Transferring the torch to his left hand, he reached out with his right and picked up the tin, then started back down
the ladder. So light his burden, so simple his task: soon it would be safely done. The next rung was the last. Then it only remained—
He was pulled off the ladder so suddenly and violently that he hit the straw-scattered floor before he was aware of what was happening. The torch had fallen to his left, the tin had slipped from his grasp. As he tried to rise, he was dazzled by the brilliance of some more powerful torch than his own, then his head was jerked aside by a gloved hand. There was a movement above him, a stumble, an oath, a stooping form faintly discernible, black moving against black, an arcing flash of light, then a scrape of metal on stone. Whoever he was, he wanted the tin and what he must know was inside. And now he had found it.
Frank propped himself up on one elbow and saw the man crouching a few yards away, with something clutched against his chest. It was happening too fast for him to intervene. It was happening and he was losing what he should never have preserved. Cursing his age and his indecision, he began to struggle to his feet. ‘Stop!’ he bellowed. ‘Stop, damn you!’
Suddenly he was blind, assailed by white glaring light. He could see nothing and hear less. He tried to turn, to escape for the moment he needed to understand where he and the man and the door were in relation to each other. But it was too late. After all the moments he had frittered away since the letter arrived, another was too much to ask. He knew that. It was the only thing he did know.
Something struck him in the chest with such force that he was thrown backwards off his feet. There was a falling plunging instant, too brief for him to form a single thought beyond the burning shame of his stupidity. Then he hit the wall. And broke through into oblivion.
Part Two
1
Madrigueras,
29th July 1937
Dear Sis,
Well, I did it, didn’t I? It’s what you suspected I was going to do all along, I know, even though you never said so. But we don’t need to speak in order to communicate, do we? Not you and I. We understand each other. We always have and we always will. Even if sometimes we don’t like what we understand.
The Writers’ Congress was a bigger farce than I’d anticipated, which is saying something. The usual caravanserai of windbags and wineskins swapping insults and exhortations, gesturing with clenched fists and feeble minds. If I hadn’t been planning to enlist when I came out, I think their intellectual posturings would have convinced me I should. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to leave them to it and make the only gesture that means a damn thing in this tortured country. I should have volunteered for the International Brigade last autumn. Would have, but for Mary and the boy. Well, better late than never, I suppose.
I won’t pretend this outfit isn’t amateurish and inefficient. I certainly won’t claim I’m being adequately trained or am likely to find myself properly armed and equipped when the time comes to fight. But that isn’t the point, is it? The point is simply to do something – anything – rather than sit idly by and let the Fascists do as they please. All the reasoning – all the temporizing – in the world won’t stop them. Maybe nothing will. I don’t give a lot for our chances and that’s a fact. But at least we have a chance – a fighting chance. It’s the only kind that really matters.
I know what you’ll be thinking. I know because I often think it myself. Am I trying to live – or die – up to Lionel’s example? Am I trying to prove a point to those who reckon I’m just another high-sounding nothing? Well, maybe. Maybe and why the hell not? I’m not Byron or Brooke or Cornford. Not yet, anyway. If I end up being killed out here, it will be a kind of immortality, judging by their examples, but then poets ought to die in battles rather than bathchairs in my opinion!
What do you say to that, Sis? After all, your opinion’s worth more than mine. It always has been, ever since you first planted the idea in my mind. When was that, do you remember? Nine years ago, or ten? A long time, anyway. Too long, some would say, to be living a lie. And I’d agree with them. Even though the lie has often seemed more like the truth than those burrs to the spirit we call facts. It can’t continue. I know that. But how to end it? How and when? Perhaps by coming here I’m trying to run away from the answer. You wouldn’t have run, I know. You’d have consented to whatever I decided. But you’re stronger than me and you haven’t had to carry this pretence as I have all this time, like an invisible ball and chain round my feet, pulling me back, weighing me down, reminding me that every accolade is hollow, every triumph a defeat in disguise. How apt that my poetic début should have been entitled Blindfold, since a blindfold is what my readers have unwittingly worn over the years. I wonder if it will ever be removed.
The boy is the problem, Sis. Maurice Tristram Abberley. Just four months old and already I feel he’s reproaching me. Friends, lovers, critics, poets and the whole great gullible reading public were fair game. Even Mary’s starry-eyed trusting nature doesn’t seem to have troubled my conscience. Not half as much, anyway, as having a son who will one day grow to be a man and want to know the truth about his father.
The truth for the moment is that I’m doing my bit for Spain, for which read the lost cause of socialist brotherhood, and am proud of what I’m doing. Fear, anger, frustration and disillusionment are no doubt queuing up outside even as I write these words, but they haven’t battered down the door yet and, when they do, I can be sure of facing them without feeling like an impostor.
Don’t worry too much about your little brother. Spare any sympathy you have for Mary, who deserves more of it than I do. I shall probably be back sooner than I expect, shame-faced and resentful at the premature end of my preposterous adventure. You can tell me then what a fool I’ve been. Or maybe I’ll tell you.
I’ll write again as soon as I can.
Much love,
Tristram.
2
CHARLOTTE’S DROWSY IMPRESSION was that the doorbell had been ringing for some time when she finally woke. It was just after seven o’clock according to her alarm clock and therefore too early even for the postman. Clambering from bed and struggling into a dressing-gown, she crossed to the window and parted the curtains, peering out through the gap to see who her caller could possibly be.
It was Frank Griffith. She recognized his Land Rover, parked in the drive, even before she saw him standing below, stabbing impatiently at the bell-push. For an instant, the incongruity of seeing him there overwhelmed her reactions. Then she pulled back the curtains, raised the window and leaned out.
‘Frank!’
His head jerked up. As it did so, a white patch of bandaging became visible beneath the rim of his hat, along with a pale smear of grey stubble on his chin. He looked weary and unkempt. There was a glimmer of something akin to desperation in his eyes.
‘What … What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Of course not.’
He took a long deep breath, as if to calm himself, then said: ‘Can I come in?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ll tell you inside.’
‘Very well. Can you wait while I put some clothes on?’
‘I’ll wait.’
She opened the front door to him a few minutes later. At closer quarters, he looked even more ragged and distraught, with dark shadows beneath his eyes and a sheen of perspiration on his face. He had removed his hat and was holding it awkwardly, crumpled in his hands. The bandage encircled his head and was stained brown with dried blood behind his right ear.
‘What’s happened to you?’ she asked.
‘Not an accident.’
‘Then … what?’
‘You said we could talk inside.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry. Come in.’
She stood back and he stepped past her into the hall. As he did so, the thought struck her that he must have started from Hendre Gorfelen well before dawn to have arrived so early.
‘Would you like … some tea … or coffee?’
‘Water, if you can spare some.’ There was
no trace of sarcasm in his voice, but his tone had unquestionably altered since their last meeting. Some of the layers of suspicion had been restored and she could not understand why.
‘Come into the kitchen.’ She led the way and poured him some water, which he gulped down in three swallows. ‘Tell me what this is about, Frank. Please.’
‘The letters have been stolen.’
‘What letters?’
Anger flashed across his face for an instant, then he set his glass down and said: ‘I didn’t destroy them. You knew that all along. Didn’t you?’
‘Suspected, yes. Or hoped. But … you say they’ve been stolen?’
‘I had a visit from Derek Fairfax yesterday.’
‘Fairfax? How did he—’ As Frank glanced reproachfully at her, she broke off. ‘I didn’t tell him anything. As God’s my witness.’
He stared at her for a moment, then said: ‘Fairfax made me realize how foolhardy it was to keep the letters. Last night, I went to fetch them from their hiding-place in the barn. I was going to burn them, as I should have done the day they arrived. But somebody was waiting for me.’
‘Who?’
‘I never saw their face. They took me by surprise. Threw me against the wall.’ He pointed to the bandage round his head. ‘I must have been knocked out for a few seconds. When I came to, they’d gone. And so had the letters.’
‘Oh, God.’ Charlotte put her hand to her mouth, struggling to come to terms with what Frank had said. Tristram’s letters existed after all. And were important enough for somebody to resort to violence in attempting to steal them. As perhaps they had before. Looking at Frank, she saw it was not mistrust that had overtaken him, but shame. Then she noticed the bloodstain on the bandage again. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘No.’
‘You must. You may be concussed. At the very least, you should have the wound—’
‘There’s no time for that!’ he shouted, so loudly that Charlotte fell instantly silent. Then, seeing her shocked reaction, he added: ‘I’m sorry. I drove straight here after cleaning myself up.’
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