When it is over, when they are finished, they sink to the floor, exhausted. They lie on the gritty carpet, their chests damp in the warm, still air.
Far below in a world beyond the curtains, cars crawl through the sun-blocked streets, a thousand miles away.
*
‘I’d like to meet your husband one day.’
‘Meet Francis? Wouldn’t that complicate matters for us?’
‘It’s a risk I would take. Anyone in the British Foreign Office is of interest to me.’
‘But Francis is only on attachment. He’s not really a career diplomat.’
‘But I’m told he’s taking a special interest in Palestine.’
‘How on earth would you know that?
‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer – isn’t that what they say?’
‘Francis never talks to me about his work.’
‘Nor should he. But I might be able to help him.’
‘How could you do that? Have you got information?’
‘I’ve told you. We Jews will fight for Palestine. There’s going to be a war and wars are not just fought with guns.’
‘It sounds to me as if it’d be more use for you to talk to a military man like Peter Casserley.’
Arie exhales a white flag of smoke.
‘Did you not hear about Casserley?’
‘No. What happened to him?’
‘He got betrayed. Right at the end.’
Bea might have married Casserley once. Now, it is as if she never knew him.
War blunts all sensibilities. So many have died horribly. Even the human impulse to give meaning to random, chaotic events is overwhelmed and made redundant. She gets up and gathers her scattered clothes.
‘All I can say is that you’re mistaken if you think Francis has any influence with Mr Bevin.’
‘He’s on the inside, Beatrice. That’s what’s important.’
‘Maybe but he’ll not be able to open the gates of Palestine for you.’
‘Bevin has made some serious enemies by his actions. Just ask your husband.’
Bea begins to dress herself. She becomes Mrs Francis Wrenn once more. But she feels like an actress after a matinee. There is still another performance before she can rest that night.
‘How would I explain to Francis that I knew you?’
‘Tell him the truth about how we met, how you got me to England.’
‘He might think it very odd that I never mentioned such a thing before.’
‘Say it was of no consequence to you, now we’ve met again in London by chance.’
It would be the truth but dressed up in a falsehood. Bea is not sure.
‘Francis is the dearest of men, Arie.’
‘Which is why you must have married him.’
‘I would hate to cause him any hurt. Do you understand me?’
‘Of course. We must all be careful.’
*
Francis was seconded from the RAF to the Foreign Office shortly after his father died. The old judge, wizened and cotton-haired, held on for the last months of the war, shuffling between the rooms of memory at Garth Hall, not always knowing where he was.
He took to his bed as the victory bonfires blazed across London, concerned only that Francis was safe. Lavinia assured him Francis had survived and he seemed content at that. His sister held a glass of champagne to his thin, dry lips. He managed a sip or two then fell back on his pillow.
Lavinia telephoned her nephew who drove north early next morning with Bea. The judge lay open-eyed, unable to speak or comprehend. He must have seen that look so many times before, on the faces of those gripping the brass rail in the final assize.
Within a month, Judge Wrenn’s coffin – oak from the Powis Estate – was carried on the shoulders of his son and Mr Bishop with four Shropshire Yeomanry veterans from the Great War. They trod a slow path under the bird-call canopy of Garth Woods where the old judge had played as a child, across the brook he had dammed and fished, then up the field to St Mary and All Angels. He was placed on a bier with care and respect then wheeled to the altar, above the vaulted remains of his ancestors.
It had been a bright, clear day, full of May blossom and promise yet Bea had found it all quite melancholy. Not many relatives answered the summons of the single, tolling bell. The family was thinning out, even then.
All hope turned on her.
*
A year on and Francis is less of an innocent in Whitehall. He had taken his ‘walk in the park’ when the funny people from Intelligence gave him the once over and set a few harmless tasks to see if he could spot a tail – or shake one off. He told Bea he was supposed to think it all very exciting.
‘I said if they’d ever had a bloody Messerschmitt shooting at their backsides then they’d know the meaning of the word.’
Bea spends part of the week with him at her mother’s old apartment in Great Titchfield Street, refurnished and decorated now for the entertaining they have to lay on for foreign diplomats. On Thursdays, she catches a train back to Ludlow for long weekends at Garth Hall. Francis joins her when he can.
Lavinia keeps the house going with part time help from Mrs Bishop. Most rooms are shut off since the fuel crisis but they have logs enough to heat the ones they use. Bea sometimes feels there is an atmosphere, that Lavinia and Mrs Bishop resent her – this absentee new chatelaine who has still not guaranteed the line. Maybe she is too sensitive, imagining slights which have not been made. Mrs Bishop’s baby girl is nearly two now, a bubbly little thing, toddling about with a rag doll, always smiling. Bea hates it when the child is at Garth.
It brings back the pain.
*
‘Are you sure you’ve never had a miscarriage or some pelvic infection?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, that’s hard to believe. There’s evidence of scarring here.’
There was. And not just in her tubes. But she had been too terrified to seek help. Her doctor also attended Daddy. How could she dare take that risk? She had scrubbed the flat from top to bottom, fearful his eye would fall on some spot of sin still to be erased. She thought she had atoned but God punishes in mysterious ways.
‘You do realise what this means, Miss Bowen?’
‘No, I don’t think I do.’
‘What are you... 25, 26 ? Well, I doubt you’ll ever be able to have children of your own.’
Bea had stared at him, this bristle-stiff medical officer, not truly understanding his verdict was final and beyond appeal. The weight of his words did not sink in, not then... not with Arie just gone from her life and the threat of invasion and death on everyone’s lips.
‘Am I fit enough to join the WAAFs or not? That’s all I need to know.’
‘Didn’t you hear what I just said, young lady?’
‘Yes. Perfectly – but there’s a war on, isn’t there? We must do our duty.’
*
Now, six years into her marriage to Francis, the truth was getting harder to hide as every bloody month went by.
‘Anything to report, darling?’
‘No, not this time.’
‘We’ll soon have to get you checked over by that vet in Harley Street, won’t we?’
She’d laughed at first. They both had.
*
It was Francis who suggested Arie should spend a weekend at Garth Hall.
‘If he knows as much as you say, maybe I should give him a punt.’
‘It’s certainly getting nastier in Palestine. The papers are full of it.’
‘You don’t have to tell me. Those damned Jewish terrorists have even started blowing up our planes.’
‘You know it’s all Bevin’s fault, don’t you, Francis?’
‘Maybe it is but we haven’t enough rope to hang all these Jews and even if we did, there’s plenty more where they came from.’
Bea listens for Francis getting back from Ludlow Station.
She said Arie looked like a highly strung violinist who
had lost his instrument. Lavinia will join them for supper. It will make conversation easier. Even before Arie arrives, Bea is reliving the high wire giddiness of Prague. But she knows it is a long way to fall.
Mrs Bishop is staying late to help. She needs the money. Alf’s finding work in civvie street hard to get. Francis rings from the coin box at The Feathers.
‘Just buying our friend a pint of best. Back in half an hour.’
Supper is Welsh lamb and a great success. Francis and Arie could have been friends for years. They talk of war and politics and the seismic shifts in the power of nations. Bea feels almost excluded – and is afraid Lavinia is suspicious about Prague.
‘How could you not have told us about such an adventure, Bea?’
‘We simply caught a train together, that’s all.’
‘But the risks you must have taken. One only reads about such things in novels.’
Arie senses danger.
‘Beatrice is guilty only of modesty... a charming trait of the English.’
‘And when did you say you met again?’
‘Two weeks ago, in Bedford Square. Beatrice was coming out of a shop.’
‘What an unbelievable coincidence, Mr Minsky.’
‘Indeed, I thought so, too. But it is a very small world.’
‘And when you got to England from Prague, what did you say you did next?’
‘I enlisted in the British army.’
‘In which regiment was that?’
‘It was not a regiment, more of an irregular unit.’
‘I don’t understand. Where did you serve?’
Bea interrupts this time. It is clear Francis’s aunt does not like or trust their guest.
‘Arie served behind enemy lines in Europe, Lavinia. It was the most dangerous work imaginable.’
‘So you were a saboteur, Mr Minsky. How brave of you.’
‘You’re too kind but I was simply a linguist, a liaison officer really.’
‘But Bea just said – ’
‘No Lavinia, it’s Arie’s turn to be modest, now. We must respect our guest’s wishes.’
‘I do, dear. I was simply expressing an interest in Mr Minsky’s extraordinary life.’
Francis watches at the margins like a line judge but says nothing.
Mrs Bishop fills their coffee cups and they move to easy chairs by the inglenook. Lavinia soon excuses herself and retires to bed. Bea pleads tiredness, too. She kisses Francis and holds out her hand to Arie who takes it and bows from the waist. Francis pours two decent measures of cognac. Bea closes the drawing room door and hears her men toast each other.
‘Cheers, old chap. Here’s to friendship.’
‘L’chayim, Francis – to life.’
Upstairs, Bea lies on her marriage bed. Through the window, the moon is a thin yellow feather curling between the clouds. Two worlds are passing perilously close. She feels the magnetism of both – one mundane and secure, the other unpredictable and fast. Each in its own way sustains her. But which would she choose – or is that very thought a prelude to destruction?
Bea rolls across the bed to Francis’s side where their favourite wedding photograph stands on his cabinet. She looks again at how they once were, held in time under a swirl of confetti, laughing at the fates. On the floor below is the black leather briefcase she had bought him for his new job. It is not locked and would normally be in the safe downstairs. The voices of Arie and Francis are barely audible from the far end of the landing. Bea is tempted.
She slips off the bed and crouches in the shadows and undoes the case. Inside are classified documents about Palestine. One says a Jewish terrorist group called Irgun is behind a campaign of sabotage and murder aimed at destabilising the British mandate to rule the territory. Another is a copy of a briefing note for Mr Attlee, the Prime Minister.
Our agent in Jerusalem says that Irgun have set up a cell in London along the same lines as the IRA.
Clipped to it is an MI5 memorandum.
Irgun is made up of desperate men and women who regard their own lives cheap. They have been training selected members for the purpose of travelling to Europe to assassinate a prominent British politician.
And there in bold type, Bea sees the name of their target – Ernest Bevin.
Chapter Eighteen
McCall found Francis kneeling by his hospital bed, plucking flowers off the carpet pattern. He did it slowly and with loving care, arranging each invisible bloom into a bouquet only he could see. A male nurse brought him a plastic beaker of tea with a spout so it would not spill.
‘Still gardening, squire?’
It was McCall who felt the hurt of this mockery.
‘His name is Mr Wrenn.’
Not all the contempt in McCall’s voice was for the nurse. It hid the self-loathing at what he himself was about to do. He gathered Francis close and helped him to his feet. Beneath the blue hospital-issue pyjamas, the bones of his skeleton were hard to the touch.
‘Come on, Francis. Let’s have a talk.’
‘Are you the ambassador?’
‘No, I’m Mac.’
‘Mac?’
‘Yes. You and Bea brought me up.’
‘Did we?’
He led Francis towards the communal sitting area, past other etiolated patients lying on beds by lockers of photographs of families they could not remember in homes they did not know. McCall took a long white envelope from his pocket.
‘This is an important document, Francis.’
‘Is it?’
‘The ambassador needs you to sign it.’
‘Never liked him... never told him everything...’
‘Really?’
‘...some things it was best for him not to know.’
Then Francis slowly turned his gaze on the barred windows that imprisoned him. In that exact moment, McCall felt sure a faint light of understanding passed across Francis’s eyes, as if some tiny function in his brain had miraculously repaired itself. Francis had woken up in his own nightmare and was seized by panic.
‘Get me out... I must get out.’
‘Francis? What is it?’
‘Help me, Mac. Help me.’
He rose up and gripped McCall’s arm then stumbled towards the door. McCall could not imagine which was worse – Francis being lost in his world or found in this.
‘They’re going to kill me.’
‘No one’s going to kill you.’
‘They will. They’ve done it before.’
‘What do you mean, Francis? Who’s tried to kill you before?’
McCall tried to keep him talking.
‘They want me dead.’
‘Who does? Who wants you dead, Francis? Who?’
Yet as quickly as his eyes had filled with understanding, so they died back to indifference.
‘Say something... please, Francis.’
But the resurrection was over, the real Francis gone. McCall had no choice now but to betray this innocent, mannish child. He put a pen in Francis’s hand and guided it to make his signature. McCall felt only disgust with himself.
‘I want my flowers...’
‘All right, Francis. You can show them to Bea this afternoon.’
‘Yes... such beauty.’
Francis returned to his secret garden, barefoot and feeble. McCall bent down on the patch of carpet with him. He put his head close to his.
‘I always loved you, Francis...’
McCall could hardly hear his own voice.
‘...you know that, don’t you?’
But Francis just kept on picking the prettiest flowers he could see.
*
McCall parked near Mr Fewtrell’s office across the street from the ruins of Ludlow Castle. Edgar Fewtrell had always acted as Francis’s solicitor. They had been grammar school boys together – Francis, physically strong, intellectually lazy, Edgar shy and bookish, limping in a heavy metal calliper on his left leg after infantile polio.
Francis was his protector. Whoever w
ould torment Edgar had Francis to deal with first. Fewtrell would not know how to retire. He sat behind his father’s old desk, head sunk between his shoulders like a turtle in glasses, peering at the document Francis had just endorsed.
‘Good, good. All seems in order.’
Both knew that was not true. Francis lacked the mental competence to sign over his financial affairs to anyone. Nevertheless, Fewtrell added his witness signature. Bea was owed a duty of compassion in all her troubles.
‘Beautiful she might be but Beatrice never had Francis’s head for business.’
‘It’s the roof that’s worrying her.’
‘Well, it needn’t now. You’ll soon be able to bring the builders in.’
McCall was about to drive away when Fewtrell emerged on the pavement carrying three black box files tied with string. He said they were not important – just unwanted papers Francis had long since forgotten about.
‘Put them on a bonfire if you want because I will if you don’t.’
*
McCall was due to meet Evie at Ludlow Station next day. She had a week’s holiday and suggested they both needed to get away for a break.
‘It’ll blow our cobwebs away, Mac.’
She had become anxious about him, adrift on his own in no-man’s land where Francis lay dying and the father he replaced was beyond reach.
McCall found space for Mr Fewtrell’s files in the dacha with all the other boxes, books and paper trails of a man’s life. Here was ambiguity... the living, the half dead and the dead who lived in the heart. Not for the first time, it struck McCall how little he knew, how little he understood.
*
‘Was my other Daddy brave?’
‘The bravest of brave men, yes.’
‘Tell me all about his job in the war again.’
‘Well, he had to shoot down the horrid Germans before they could shoot us.’
‘But why didn’t he sit at the front of the aeroplane with you, Francis?’
‘Because we all had different jobs and he was the gunner at the back of the aeroplane.’
‘Where was my other Mummy then?’
A Place Of Strangers Page 11