Chorus Endings

by David Warwick

  Judge: …I see you have never actually broken the law. Nor, it seems, failed in your civic duty. Can’t you see, it’s that same law that requires you to enlist?

  Derek: It’s the establishment’s war, not mine. Let those who wish to take part in the slaughter do so; it’s none of my business. Nor the state’s to tell me what is.

  Sir John: So, you’d stand by and let others do the fighting? Do nothing to prevent it? Have I got that right?

  Derek: Correct. It’s their business, not mine.

  Sir John: And, as they’ve answered their conscience just as much as you have yours, support the decision they’ve arrived at?

  Derek: Why should I hinder someone in pursuit of their conscience?

  Sir John: Assist them, even? If some way could be found which did not involve you in the action?

  Derek: Certainly, provided I took no part in the killing.

  Sir John: Just so. Then the answer seems obvious.

  For all Derek’s impertinence, maybe because his was the last case of the morning and they were getting hungry, most probably because Sir John’s solution, though irregular, carried weight, the tribunal was lenient. War on the home front was taking its toll. London had been subjected to almost continuous bombing by night and day; Bristol, Coventry, Birmingham suffered in similar fashion. Ambulance drivers, stretcher bearers, firemen were all required to assist the professionals in their work. It was to the latter that Derek was seconded.

  For what should have been the duration. To Veronica’s relief, following basic training he’d been posted not to the capital, but the industrial cities of the North West.

  ‘Occasionally he wrote; mundane stuff, heavily censored, of course.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘So different from the letters he sent from Pendarrell. He’d arrive back unexpectedly as well. Tired and dishevelled, but distant as ever, still with little to say. I was thankful he returned at all; the part of the Midlands where we lived saw so little of the conflict. The occasional air-raid siren, that’s all. The sound of distant gunfire perhaps, and, sometimes, at night, an orange tint in the sky.’

  One raid in particular lived with her always: Liverpool, 12th March, 1941.

  ‘I’d heard the siren, taken cover in the shelter, peered up at aircraft streaming in. Saw them disappear to the north and waited for the all-clear. Thought nothing of it till I read the newspapers next morning, listened to the details broadcast on the radio.’

  Some 400 aircraft there’d been. Heinkels for the most part, four at least brought down by Hurricanes and Defiants, one of the pilots rescued from the Mersey. Shipping, factories, cranes and warehouses their targets, the surrounding area, Wallasey, peppered with parachute mines, incendiary bombs and high explosives. Over 630 people killed. And one of them had been Derek.

  They’d not let her see the body. Or what was left of it, together with remnants of his helmet, buttons and buckle from the uniform melded and misshapen. His possessions had been boxed together and returned to her: wallet, key ring, the book he’d been reading, the watch she’d given him, its hands set permanently at 11.52 – together with the obligatory note of condolence. She’d attended the funeral alongside her mother, half a dozen or so of her friends, the last of his employers and a representative of one or other of the Conscientious Objectors’ Groups.

  ‘So sympathetic they were. The lot of them.’ For the first time there was a catch in Geraldine’s voice. ‘Advised that I put it behind me; make a new life for myself. And so I did. But, no matter what they said, there was this one image I couldn’t get out of my mind. I’ve never quite rid myself of it. Nor wanted to. Those aircraft, dark shapes up there in the moonlight. Only part of the raid, I know, and maybe not the bombers. But they could have been. One in particular among them. Course set, bomb-sights checked. All in readiness, whilst I stood by and watched. Silly, I know, all of them told me so at the time. But it could have been the one. Really it could…’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Love in a Mist

  Geraldine’s story was far from finished, calling for an additional night at The Spurs and Stirrup, spent in the room with the cracked washbasin and creaking floorboards, myself attempting to square the Jimmy that I’d known with the Willow Lane revelations, and Helen – bless her – trying valiantly to suppress that ‘I told you so’ expression. Could Jimmy and Derek be one and the same person? The evidence seemed incontrovertible, yet I remained unconvinced. The orphanage, a taste for the more fanciful of Biblical narrative: yes. Rejection of conscription and teaching in a Sunday School: possibly. But penning love letters? And married? Hardly the Jimmy I remembered. A case of mistaken identity, then? How else could the same person be a victim of the 1941 Liverpool bombings, then telling his stories, painting his pictures, several years later in Bereden?

  ‘So follow it through rationally, as if it were a piece of academic research. “Begin at the beginning. Start with the facts that are known to us. Then, and only then, decide on the questions we must ask.”’ Something I’d driven into my students’ heads a hundred times over, and Helen, leaning back against the side-table, thumbs tucked into the lapels of her jacket, gave a very good impression of my doing it.

  Well then, if Geraldine – or Veronica as she then called herself – was to be believed, Derek would have slipped out of her life at the moment – give or take a few years – Jimmy had entered mine. She’d got the background right as well. Neither Bereden nor Northampton – where they’d lived at the time – had been targeted during the Blitz, but each lay on routes favoured by enemy bombers; hers to the industrial north, mine to the south coast dockyards. She remembering the decoy Liverpool over to the west, luring the bombers away from more valuable targets; I the make-believe artillery emplacements set up around the village, no resemblance to the real thing but an enticing target at 15,000 feet. And we shared the experience of waking to the sound of sirens in the night, being hurried to the safety of a shelter, the pulsing drone of aircraft far above, later the spluttering of V2s, the woof of distant gunfire; most memorable, the glow of cities burning in the distance. Thereafter our memories differed somewhat: hers of Coventry in ruins; my own of Bargate, Southampton, bombed-out end-to-end, as was the King’s Road, Portsmouth.

  Which got us very little further; the ‘research’ angle even less successful when applied to matters of the heart. ‘In the early days,’ I conceded, ‘he might – just might – have fallen for her wiles. He seems to have lost interest once he returned home, so I suppose he could have faked his own death? Marriage would have seemed like imprisonment for him.’

  ‘Just as it would for Veronica,’ Helen had no doubts. ‘The demure little housewife, doing what she was told without a murmur, whilst he took himself off, or out into the countryside whenever things got too hot to handle. An “open prison” by comparison. Come on, Peter, even you grew out of him. She spotted it the moment you met.’

  ‘That was completely different. I was hardly into my teens. Showing off, I admit it; trying to prove how grown-up I was.’

  Which must have been the reason I reacted so badly when reintroduced to Veronica – or Geraldine as she was now. Embarrassment; the reminder of all that adolescent lust; of a betrayal I thought I’d left behind me. Ushering this woman into Jimmy’s life – reushering if what she said was true. A reporter, I’d been sure, following up on Jimmy’s Shakesphere success, or his tracking down and rescue of Howard – together with the unwelcome hoard that followed in her wake. But why had Veronica, who’d made all the running, disappeared so suddenly once she’d discovered the deception and run him to ground? As, with my help and her artifice, we agreed she must have done.

  ‘A mistake; it must have been,’ I concluded. ‘‘Veronica in pursuit of the husband she’d given up for dead catches up with him; finds it’s the wrong man, beats a hasty retreat.’

  Nothing, though, would be achieved by further confrontation. This wa
s no longer the auburn-haired siren who’d beguiled me all those years ago but an old lady well into her seventies, and we were guests in her house. Far better to play it her way and see what emerged, as we did from the moment we arrived at 52 Willow Lane next morning.

  ‘Did my best to be a good wife,’ she now told us.‘ Waited in vain for him to notice the care I’d taken over the darning of his socks or the sewing on of his buttons. But no. Far too engaged with his inner self or spats with one employer after another.’

  Yet it was precisely these talents – the sewing, running up of dresses, emergency repairs; her flair at ‘make do and mend’ – that was to bring her face to face with Derek fifteen or so years after she’d seen him buried. The route as indirect as it had been fortuitous.

  Her mother’s death had followed on shortly from her husband’s. There’d been a small legacy, but for the most part she’d scraped a living through needlework and the embroidery that was beginning to find its way into nearby craft shops. And so things might have gone on indefinitely, but for a set of table decorations – Field of the Cloth of Gold – that came to the attention of the county magazine. A feature article was commissioned, followed by a complete series, Behind Every Man, suggesting how the hard-pressed housewife might send her smartly dressed spouse off to work each morning. From there her interests had broadened out, into the regional and historic aspects of fabric design. Features by ‘Geraldine Leapman’ – a combination of her mother’s Christian and her own maiden name – now appeared in glossy magazines and, almost without knowing it, she found herself consultant to one of the newer television companies. She was now able to establish her own business, specialising in folk art, coming by chance upon the work of an obscure artist from the rural depths of Hampshire whose paintings seemed ideal for embroidery and taking herself off to meet him.

  It was, of course, Derek.

  ‘Recognised him the moment I set eyes on him.’ Geraldine paused, selected a cigarette from a silver box on the table beside her and, both of us having declined to join her, lit up. ‘Not got into the habit then?’ Her eyes narrowed as she inhaled. ‘Not after all these years? Almost killed you last time, remember? Trying so hard to be grown up, he was.’ This to Helen. ‘Still, it’s not done me any harm, no matter what the doctor, or Mildred here, says. Derek most of all. And, God help me, I do believe I had one of these in my hand the moment I saw him there.’ The fingers that held the cigarette trembled slightly. It glowed momentarily as she gazed through the twisting smoke into her past. ‘Like I say, knew it right away, him propped up there against the war memorial, surrounded by children. Older, of course, eyes sunken, but not in an unattractive kind of way. Hair beginning to recede and he’d grown a beard. Taken to wearing a medallion as well, which he’d never have done the whole of the time I knew him. Relaxed and smiling; that’s the thing I remember most of all, always will. Derek smiling, just as he used to in the early days. Not that he’d seen me. Before I’d time to say or do anything he was up and away, with the children swarming after him. And I knew. Instantly. What he’d done and why he’d done it.’

  She leant forward and stubbed out the cigarette. ‘The doubts came later. Had I really seen what I’d seen? Or was it my imagination? Like in the days after the funeral, when I’d catch sight of him everywhere I looked. Well, no problem this time. Merely a question of slipping back to the village, watching everything he did; asking questions from the locals, delicately, in case after all I’d been mistaken, but getting no replies. Finally latching onto the one person who seemed willing to talk. Using all my charms on him. And most susceptible he turned out to be, didn’t you, Peter? A rotten trick to play on a kid, I realise that now.’

  ‘And when you were sure, what then?’ Helen came in quickly, unsure as to what my own response might be.

  ‘Once I’d got over the first shock I began to see things more clearly. This was Derek right enough. Just as reserved, as determined in his outlook, impatient with those who failed to see things his way, detesting authority in any shape or form. Just as you told it, Peter. Discovered that for myself all those afternoons I stood and watched. As skilled at story-telling as he’d always been, but far more relaxed, comfortable in his new lifestyle. Talented in other ways, too. I remember you telling me about his “doodlings”. Never imagined one day I’d travel half-way across the country to search them out. Quite obviously he’d regained his old self; discovered something I could never supply, and found something more precious: contentment, self-fulfilment, so, how could I destroy it? He’d deserted me, it’s true, and who’s to say he wasn’t right to do so? Minor feelings – indignation, anger, resentment, humiliation – didn’t come into it. The test of my love was the distance I would now put between us.’

  Helen’s words, both of us realised, almost precisely, that time she left me. ‘You never went back?’ I heard her ask.

  No response; exchanged glances with Mildred, rather; another cigarette lit, smoke exhaled. So, did her resolve break? Had she returned to find her Derek?’

  ‘Let that wait. It’s about time we heard your side of the story, Peter.’ The abrupt change-of-topic clinched the matter; so she had gone back. Just as Helen had returned to me.

  ‘What exactly did happen after I’d left?’ she was asking. ‘Reporters, photographers you said. You’re right, he’d have hated it. Nothing to do with me, though, I promise. So, what precisely were they after?’

  Which was the strange thing about the affair. No one ever did discover just what all the excitement was about. It had been the talk of the village for weeks. They’d just appeared from nowhere, poring over maps, looking at compasses, not one of them saying why they were there or what they wanted. The rectory was their first port of call, but Codpiece was out, so it was off to take photographs of the bell-tower and Third Class Cottage. Jimmy was apoplectic, of course; took himself into the woods, with the lot of them trailing after him. At which point Sir Desmond arrived on the scene. Not that they listened to him either. A novel experience that, the best part of it for some of us. Anyway, he stalks back to the Hall, makes a telephone call – a London number according Andrew’s mother, who worked there at the time. Next thing we know the Lone Granger’s summoned from his lunch by God knows who, astride Wild Silver, and two black cars with enormous headlights and swept-back mudguards pull into the village. Six or seven men leap out, meet up with the PC Granger, consult Sir Desmond; the reporters are bundled into the cars, their cameras and notebooks confiscated and the Squire waves them off.

  ‘Which was the last any of us heard about it,’ I told her.

  Geraldine was shaking her head. ‘And you thought that somehow I was responsible? Do I look like a reporter?’

  That had been the popular opinion. Obvious really: glamorous outsider appears from nowhere; is fascinated by the village and its past; noses around for a day or two asking silly questions; disappears as suddenly as she’d arrived; then, for whatever reason, sends in the heavy mob. Jimmy’s rescue of Howard after the escapade in the forest was the most common explanation – the kind of human interest story we devoured so avidly in the tabloid press. Except this was happening on our doorstep; involved one of our own. Bereden closed ranks, protecting my brother from the results of his stupidity; unaware of how far Veronica, as she then was, had duped her way into my confidence, wheedled enough information from me to fill a dozen or so articles, then summoned up the cavalry and all that followed: Jimmy’ in disgrace, his sudden departure, Third Class Cottage trashed, the forest placed out of bounds. For all of which I felt personally culpable.

  ‘Never really forgiven yourself, have you?’ Geraldine seemed to have read my thoughts. ‘Nor me, either. Took an age to put it all behind me and, if you take my advice, that’s what you’ll do. Move on, I mean.’

  ‘Just as he did.’ Mildred would have none of it. ‘First as Derek, then Jimmy. Made quite a habit of it in fact, and for all we know, there�
�s a third version lurking out there somewhere. A fourth or fifth even, doomed like the Wandering Jew or the Flying Dutchman to roam the world forever. If you ask me, Frank Murgatroyd came nearest the truth. Said the man didn’t really know who he was, and I reckon he got it about right!’

  ‘Unpopular by all accounts. Third Class Cottage trashed. Attacked by villagers with flaming torches?’ Geraldine stepped in quickly to preserve the peace.

  ‘Hardly. And, in any case, that was after he’d gone.’ Her version, unpalatable though it was, had begun to make sense; interlocking with the facts as I knew them, like the jigsaw puzzles we’d pieced together under Miss Quintock’s watchful eye. There were gaps, just as there always had been, some of the pieces lost forever, those that remained belonging to another set, but an overall picture was emerging and Jimmy was not coming too well out of it.

  ‘His home,’ she repeated. ‘Destroyed, and after he left?’

  ‘That’s right. Vandals must have got in. They had a wonderful time, turning everything upside down, smashing the furniture – what there was of it – even up-ended floorboards. No doubt looking for what loot they could find, but a complete waste of time. Anyone could have told them Jimmy earned very little and that was spent almost immediately. The books had been removed, apart from which there was very little of value to be had.’

  The wildest notion crossed my mind: Geraldine returning to wreak vengeance on Jimmy’s home, or sending Mildred to do so.

  ‘And they were never caught?’ Further glances between the two of them.

  ‘No. PC Granger made some enquiries, but they never amounted to much. And he had more serious crimes on his hands.’

  ‘What about the Squire? Didn’t you say he once worked for Intelligence? Helped Jimmy find a new identity?’

  ‘Well, yes, but that was during the war and another branch entirely. He might have been able to pull a few strings for Jimmy when he first he arrived – ration book, identity card, etc. – but this was several years later. Nor was he minded to help Jimmy last time they met.’