‘Want some help?’ a man said.
I heard the sneer in his voice and then I felt a savage kick on my buttocks and my toes obligingly met my hands for the first time. I tumbled painfully on to the hard ground and viewed with terror the two pairs of heavy black trainers in my eye-line. I shifted a little only to view four more pairs and I knew that I was surrounded. And then the battery began. Their kicking was brutal, frenzied and in perfect rhythm with their curses. ‘Child-killer,’ they kicked, and ‘Scumbag Jew’. These oaths were repeated over and over again, for even in the lexicon of cursing they had limited vocabulary. I lay there helpless and in worsening pain and as I listened to their fulsome rebuke I wondered how they viewed themselves. Would they have kicked themselves with that same fury knowing that they were killers? Would they have tortured themselves for their lack of remorse, those men who had killed their wives, murdered their business partners, tortured their enemies and mangled their remains? Did they think well of themselves, well enough to forgive those who had similarly offended? It occurred to me then that the child-killing had nothing to do with their rage. Guilty or innocent, it was the Jew and all that he stood for they were kicking. And I, writhing on the ground, was the representative of that cursed race on whom to vent their scapegoat spleen. I was not surprised when the ‘Child-killer’ abuse was gradually withdrawn and ‘Scumbag Jew’ wholly took over, confirming my view that, killer or not, in my Jewish skin I happened to be a handy butt for their sublime frustration. I wondered if I had to endure their punishment until the whistle blew or whether perhaps I should show some kind of resistance. I decided on the former, hoping that they would grow bored with such a defenceless target. And indeed they soon tired. The kicks grew desultory and the curses wearied too. And I lay there with throbbing prints of their canvas jackboots pulsing through every pore of my body. The pain was tempered with the relief that the torment was over, together with a small sliver of gratitude that they had left my face alone. I marvelled that, in the abject wretchedness of my present state, I could still cling to my vanity.
I lay there until the whistle blew. The two guards had not once moved from their sentry position. But they had witnessed the whole spectacle, and no doubt had viewed it with approval. I tried to stand, but I did not trust the alignment of my limbs. I managed slowly to get to my knees, then I felt two strong grips on my elbows as I was raised from the ground. The guards had taken their time. Without a word, they helped me back to my cell, and though I did not look at their faces I knew that they were smiling.
It was a relief to lie on my cot and let my pain rage and slowly subside without witness. For the whole of that day I lay there. I ignored the lunch and the supper bells. My pain forbade movement. My absence would no doubt gratify my tormentors. They would link it with cowardice. But oddly enough I was not afraid. I would rejoin them once the pain had ceased. I would not be kept from the exercise yard. It must have been my innocence that gave me courage.
The following morning I forced myself to rise and rejoin the community. I was driven more by hunger than heroism. My body ached but I forced myself to walk erect. I made my way to my sordid table and I was surprised at the friendliness that greeted my arrival. And offended by it too, for I did not want to be counted amongst them.
‘We don’t go out for exercise,’ one of them said. ‘We do press-ups in the cells.’
‘They’re not going to stop me,’ I said.
This only served to increase their admiration. I had the sour impression that I was about to be appointed their leader. So I said no more. I could not even smile at them. I wanted them to hate me because I was not one of them. But they would never believe that. In their eyes I had murdered a child as they had done, and as such I qualified for their club. Membership was obligatory.
After breakfast I took myself to the exercise yard. I was aware of glances of surprise and as I made my way to my corner I heard the phrase ‘ready for seconds’. I was not fazed and I thanked God for my courage. I hummed my grandmother’s song and I decided to begin with my trotting around the yard. The ragged ball game ceased, as did the press-ups and general exercises. I had an audience. In silence they watched my unhampered run and heard my joyous song and after my second lap they returned to their own work-outs and for the rest of the exercise period they left me alone. I felt I had scored a small victory. Back in my cell I lay my throbbing body on my cot, and the relief was sheer joy.
For the next few weeks I dined and exercised with the scum I was forced to associate with and by then I thought I had made my point. Thereafter I exercised each day alongside my cot, and my meals were brought to my cell. During my short time in prison, the governor had already befriended me. Occasionally he would come to my cell to check on my welfare. I think he must have believed in my innocence. He brought me news from the outside and sometimes left me a newspaper. I think he understood my need to be alone. I had never reported my beating, but he must have heard about it and he was concerned for my safety. So he granted my request though it was uncommon. For a while I relished my privacy, but I could not deny that I was desperately lonely. But the thought of the company on offer was sickening enough to lift that depression. The days passed very slowly but counted as nothing when measured against the fifteen years that was my term. Lucy’s regular visits and the family news that she brought cheered me for a while and then only served to remind me of all the living that I was missing. But I still had hope. I still could not believe what had happened to me. It was a farce, and I smiled sometimes until I caught sight of the bars on my window.
And then one day, my life changed. I did not know it at the time but now in hindsight I realise how much that visitor turned my life around. Sam Temple came to see me that day. I have to confess I did not take to him on the first meeting. Perhaps in my desolate state I would have taken to nobody. But then I think he found me faintly resistible too. I was short with him, and possibly rude. I was deeply out of practice socially and when he had gone I regretted my coolness. But I did start to write. It might have been because I had nothing else to do. But once started I had a purpose. I had found a way to prove my innocence. Or so I thought. Since that time, I have had moments of deepest doubt, sensing the futility of my pursuit. But in the main the writing itself has given me – may I say – joy, and the occasional magic moment in which my prison bars can play no part. Sam has been a frequent visitor, and I venture to say, a close friend. He has met my family and is in constant and generous touch with them. Above all, he is a listener, a sympathetic ear. He clears my mind of its confusion of reality with fiction. In many ways, I owe him my survival.
They have just brought me my supper on a tray. My body aches but I know I shall sleep well for tomorrow Sam is coming, and I shall read to him and he will listen.
Chapter 30
Ronnie Copes, Rebecca’s private eye, had surpassed himself and enjoyed a pretty good holiday into the bargain. For he had travelled widely. His first port of call was at a little village in the Austrian Alps. Pre-investigation led him to the village where Eccles had taken his students on their regular skiing trips, and with little difficulty he had also located the Viennese family with whom James had stayed during his term’s leave from school. On the pretext of looking for a week’s lodgings, Ronnie called on them. He was offered a room and moved in straightaway. During the course of that week he ingratiated himself with the family. Frau Müller was English, and had been born in Sheffield. As a young girl, on a skiing trip to Austria, she had fallen in love with her ski instructor and they had married. Only once had she returned to Sheffield, but she no longer had any interest in her place of birth. ‘Vienna’s my home now,’ she told him ‘and I am very happy here.’
She had two children, she said, both married now and living in Münich. She had shown him photographs of her family. Amongst them there was a portrait of a young man in uniform.
‘That’s Peter,’ she said proudly of her husband.
Peter, when Ronnie met him, never
ceased talking of the ‘good old days’. ‘I thank God that my children have inherited that sense of honour, of patriotism, and know of the glory of those days that will come again.’
Ronnie Cope left the Müilers before the week was out. But he had stayed with them long enough to gather a fund of information which he found both fascinating and disgusting at the same time.
His next port of call was Marseilles, and using clues that he had picked up from the Müllers he located Eccles’s friends. In their company, he played the part of the disgruntled Englishman irritated by the hordes of immigrants that flooded his country and by the unscrupulous power of the Jews who seemed to run everything. Poor Ronnie practically choked on his every syllable. He was warmly welcomed into their circle, and that Marseilles sojourn proved even more fruitful than his stay with the Müllers.
From Marseilles he took himself off to the Appalachian mountains in Virginia, honed in on his prey and dug up information which confirmed his earlier findings.
The little village in Kent, the site of George Tilbury’s burial, was Ronnie Cope’s last port of call. From the investigative view, it had turned out to be a gold-mine. He had the names of those locals who had borne witness against Dreyfus in his trial. Spending most of his time in the local pub in the guise of a tourist, it took two weeks of intensive ferreting to investigate them all. Yet not one of them suspected that they were being subjected to scrutiny. Ronnie returned to London triumphant and presented all his findings to his impatient employer. Rebecca was delighted. Ronnie’s discoveries represented a major breakthrough in her searchings. They almost had enough evidence to warrant an appeal. But one piece was missing. A major piece. James Turncastle. She had no evidence that his story, should he even wish to tell it, would confirm any of Ronnie’s findings. All she knew was that the young tormented James Turncastle had Dreyfus on his mind.
It was some months since she had last seen him. She had made roundabout enquiries and had learnt that he had been discharged from hospital shortly after her last visit. But she had no idea where he was. A letter to his Devonian aunt had elicited no response and even Ronnie, with all his ingenuity, could find no trace of him. They both feared that James had left the country. She sifted through all their findings to date and put them in a suitable order for presentation, for she had already begun to draft a letter to the Home Secretary asking for an appeal and as she read it over the gaps in the evidence were plain enough. Only James could corroborate what they had found. But the new discoveries were rich enough to share with Matthew. She would tell him that evening at home. For home it had become. Some months ago, Matthew had moved into her flat. Their relationship was no longer clandestine though, by some fortunate omission, it had not reached the press. Lucy shared their happiness with sealed lips, as did Sam Temple, who visited them often. If Susan was aware of Matthew’s move, her lips were sealed too, but in shame and jealousy. Dreyfus was still ignorant of Susan’s betrayal but on his regular visits to his brother Matthew sensed that Dreyfus knew of the rift, but did not want to reveal that he knew. For he never asked after Susan and Matthew volunteered no information on her well-being.
That evening over supper Rebecca itemised all the new evidence that Ronnie Copes had collected. She was hopeful she said, but insisted that Dreyfus should not be told of the new developments. ‘If I cannot get James,’ she said, ‘we don’t have a watertight case. This is presuming James is willing to tell his story. And moreover to testify in court. He could be anywhere. Who knows?’
‘You could try his parents,’ Matthew said. ‘Perhaps by now they might have shown some interest in him.’
‘I’ve already done that,’ Rebecca said. ‘They say they don’t know where he is, and they don’t seem to care.’
Half of that was true. His parents certainly didn’t care but equally certainly, they knew where he was. They had never seen his apartment but had bought it over the telephone through an estate agent. A luxurious one, sumptuous enough to square the most guilty of consciences. As it had done for them. The stunning living-room, the Italianate terrace, the formal dining-room, the sanitised bedrooms and showers redeemed their lifelong parental neglect. The tasteful Swedish furnishings, the silver and the plate settled their debts of love withdrawn, and the absence of telephone, fax or e-mail spelt out in clear terms their taboo on communication.
As James rattled around the apartment, viewing each separate pay-off, he slowly began to pity them. During his sojourn at the clinic, his rage against his parents had subsided. Gradually he had freed himself from their reluctant hold, a hold that he himself had nurtured and colluded with. Now they were a mere couple in another part of the world, pursuing their selfish ways, and very slowly, he had begun to savour his own freedom. That achieved freedom that comes with the nonchalance of being unsired. The freedom of being one’s own person, of never having to crave approval or to live in terror of its withdrawal. A consummate freedom, he tried to convince himself, yet he knew that it was not entire. That the road to his absolute relief was not a freeway. There were parking bays for reflection, roundabouts for second thoughts, and perhaps a closed lane or road-block that would stop him in his tracks. As long as he stayed in his luxurious apartment, he felt safe. He risked no obstacle. But occasionally, in brave moments, he would take himself to Rebecca’s chambers and he would hang about outside and look up at her window. The occasional sight of her, cemented his feet to the ground. He dreaded the temptation to move towards her, to tear down the final obstacle to his freedom. He knew that one day he would have to find the courage to confront her, to unburden himself of the very last dregs of his conscience. But each time he turned and walked away he consoled himself with the thought that he had made certain moves towards that final confession. Since leaving the clinic he had made enquiries. He had read the newspapers and eavesdropped on sundry grapevines, he had heard that she was working on an appeal, he had found the address of her chambers. He had learnt about Matthew, the brother of that man whose name he still could not utter in fear of the pain that it would breed. He knew as much as he would ever know from behind closed doors. He had done his homework, and comforted himself with the facts that he had gleaned and hoodwinked himself into believing that research was all. But as the weeks passed he found he could not stop himself from leaving his flat almost daily, and from loitering outside those windows behind which that unspeakable name chimed with equal echoes of hope and despair. Yet still he cemented his feet to the ground.
The unspoken name, whose parcelling rotted so unjustly behind bars, became a daily waking thought, and James’s sortie to her chambers turned into an addiction, and he knew that in time the name would have to be spoken aloud.
One day he even made it to the entrance of her building but at the lift his feet refused, and he fled back to his stand on the street corner. The following day he managed to call the lift, but he faltered when it arrived. It took him a further week to actually enter the lift and take himself to the fifth floor, the site of the offices that echoed with that name, but his hand was firmly on the ‘down’ button.
But the following day he forced himself into the lift, and on to her floor, and outside her very offices, his hand knocking on her door. Suddenly he found himself inside, and facing a woman at a desk who asked his business. He stammered Rebecca’s name because he had to say something, and with a sublime relief he heard that she was in court.
‘But you could wait,’ the woman said. ‘Miss Morris is expected shortly.’
‘I’ll come back,’ he said, and fled to the door.
He had tried, and the attempt itself was a minor triumph. His steps towards the lift were jaunty. He pressed the down button and waited. The lift silently settled on the fifth floor and the door slid aside like a gentleman. To let out that face he had never forgotten, that mouth from which still hung that grievous name. And now he seemed to see it, the clear letters, the D, the R, the E, the Y, though he needed no more. They faced each other in unavoidable confrontation. Rebecca
wished to embrace him, to hold him for her own relief and for his courage. But instead she put out her hand.
James took it. It was the first instalment of his confession. It would be done. It would be out. It would be over. He would have spoken that name, that name he had so often confused with ‘Father’. And sometimes, not even confused, but truly believed. For that name had loved him as a son.
‘You’ve come to see me?’ Rebecca asked.
‘I’ve come often,’ he said. ‘This time I’ve been caught.’
‘I think you wanted to be caught,’ she said.
She led him into her office. ‘Sit down and tell me how you are.’ She decided that she would not broach the Dreyfus subject. She would wait in the hope that James would volunteer. She would not risk that loaded name a second time.
‘I’m better,’ James said. ‘I left the clinic four months’ ago.’
‘And where are you living now?’ she asked.
‘In Fulham,’ he said. ‘I bought a flat. Or rather my parents bought it for me.’ He gave a hint of a smile.
‘Then you’re in touch with them again?’
‘No,’ James laughed. ‘They just sent me the money. Money, if you have it, is the easiest thing to give. It costs less than caring or loving.’
There was no bitterness in his voice. He had come through his pain and distrust. He now seemed to view his parents as a sick joke.
‘It’s really lovely to see you again,’ Rebecca said. ‘I missed our little get-togethers. After the last one, I didn’t think I’d see you again.’ She hadn’t meant to make a reference to it, and she feared his reaction. But he was smiling.
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