A Place Of Strangers

by Geoffrey Seed

  McCall now crumbled the last of his Lebanese Black into a joint and wished he could sue for peace with his parents for getting killed, with Bea and Francis for lying.

  But these were new sores... more salt into the open wound left by Helen. Yet Fewtrell’s advice about McCall’s chimerical parents was sound. Nothing would harm if their son waited a little longer to find them. So he put a record on Francis’s gramophone and remembered how the music of Elgar and Beethoven and the voices of Callas and Caruso would come through the woods as he skimmed stones across the brook or lay on his back watching the clouds being ripped to shreds by the branches of the mile-high trees.

  McCall listened now as he once had and wanted only to understand and to become whole again.

  *

  The four photographs Bea dropped when she collapsed were spread out on the dacha table. She and the unknown dark-skinned man on Westminster Bridge were dressed in the styles of the late forties, early fifties. Why Bea had pictures of Nazi soldiers and concentration camp victims, McCall could not think – unless they were mementoes from Fewtrell’s war crimes trials. He wondered if that was where the Nazi armband came from, too.

  McCall set up the Eumig to go through the remaining footage from Fewtrell’s box files. He watched sequences of Bea cleaning the Alvis, another of arty shots of sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows of St Mary and All Angels and even a reel of McCall in a cowboy outfit in Garth Woods, firing a toy six-shooter at the camera.

  Bang! Bang! You’re dead.

  He was lacing up the last cassette when Evie knocked and came in.

  ‘I’ve made some supper for us.’

  ‘Shan’t be a minute, just watching this.’

  The picture wobbled up from Francis’s shoes, across an ill kept, muddy garden to reveal a place McCall could now never forget.

  It was Mendip Cottage – his first home.

  ‘God Almighty – ’

  The roof bellied in and the walls bellied out. Some of the windows were broken and the kitchen door was half off its hinges.

  ‘– look, Evie. It’s my house.’

  A woman emerged into shot, carrying a child not yet three years old.

  ‘And that’s my mother.’

  The camera moved in closer and Elizabeth’s pride filled the screen with a smile so much more pretty than in the still picture he had seen. The child overcame his shyness and turned to face the visitor. Elizabeth hugged her precious boy.

  ‘That’s me, Evie. Me and my mother.’

  These silent images mesmerised McCall. This was who he had been, where he had come from... and in his mother’s arms. And yet this had all been kept from him.

  But why?

  The shot panned from Elizabeth, across a few scratching chickens to establish another female figure smiling, almost coyly. It was Bea – Bea who said she did not know Elizabeth and hadn’t had contact with her. Here was proof of yet another lie. McCall waited for his father to appear. But he didn’t.

  A different man walked into frame instead. Elizabeth handed her son to him. He lifted McCall up onto his shoulders and beamed at the camera, full face. Then the screen went blank. McCall could not move.

  The man who held him was the man in the photograph... Bea’s foreign looking friend on Westminster Bridge.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Francis Congreve Wrenn died soon after six the following morning. A nurse rang McCall thirty minutes before the end. The phone bell tolled down the long landing and through all the empty rooms before he and Evie woke and knew at once a death was being announced. They arrived at Francis’s bedside a few minutes too late. The curtains were already drawn and porters on the way up from the morgue. McCall touched Francis’s face and felt the life cooling from it. He had rehearsed this moment for months yet could never be word-perfect. Here was McCall’s past, in the clay of this shrunken effigy. Somehow, it must be understood... understood then laid to rest.

  *

  ‘Where’s Bea gone, Francis?’

  ‘She’s had to go away for a few days.’

  ‘Is she coming back?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She always comes back to us, doesn’t she?’

  ‘But who will look after us if she doesn’t come back?’

  ‘You mustn’t fret about that. She’ll be back in her own good time.’

  ‘What shall we play till then?’

  ‘Let’s make a camp fire in the woods and see if we’ve any sausages in the pantry.’

  ‘We’ll tell Bea all about it when she comes home.’

  ‘That’s right. We’ll do just that and she’ll be so upset she’s missed a treat.’

  ‘Why’s she gone away again, Francis?’

  ‘Best not keeping asking me, little friend. I haven’t the answer.’

  ‘So we’ll just have to pretend to be brave till she gets back, won’t we?’

  And so it was. Always pretending.

  *

  A nurse eased the plain gold ring from Francis’s wedding finger and McCall signed for it. He was told a doctor could break the news to Bea if he wished. He said he would do it himself. This was a filial duty. Evie waited in reception.

  McCall felt weightless, as if observing himself from above, floating down a corridor towards an intense blaze of white light. Death and fasting keen the senses.

  Breakfast was being delivered to the ward. All the female patients looked alike, pale bed jackets, paler faces. Bea saw McCall before he saw her.

  No words were needed between them. McCall took her left hand and placed Francis’s ring in the soft warm palm and closed her fingers over it.

  *

  For Bea, Francis had died long since. She had already mourned his passing, wept in silence for the man she had loved and hurt for so many years. What else was there to say in a world where she could hardly speak anymore? It was fitting for Mac to bring the final message. Why had she never had the courage to tell him the truth? There was still bitterness in his eyes. A falsehood repeated often enough attains a sort of reality but is still a lie at its black heart.

  But Francis always said only the present and the future mattered, that the past was a foreign country beyond our power to conquer and change. He believed we were the sum of our experiences, good or bad, and the drama of life flowed from how we dealt with the calamities our foolishness created.

  Bea wanted to think she had always done her best, done what was right. So had Francis. But now, as she could also see the end of it, Bea was required to offer up a more persuasive plea of mitigation.

  *

  ‘Mac? Where are you?’

  ‘Come on out, little friend – don’t hide from us.’

  ‘Francis has got something for you. Come and see.’

  They are in Garth Woods with Arie. Francis has just collected him off the London train. Arie is soon to leave for Budapest to cover the growing political crisis there. They have bought Mac a present on the way home from the station – a cricket set.

  ‘You’ll never guess what’s here for you, Mac.’

  Bea is worried about Mac. Mrs Bishop’s boy died last week and Mac saw her almost fall into the grave with grief, screaming David’s name. David was Mac’s friend and Bea did not think the teachers should have allowed the children to see the burial. Mac could go mute again, as he had been when they first took him in – and when Lavinia passed away, too. A specialist said Mac’s only way of dealing with loss was to disappear inside himself. But it is so frightening when he does. He shuts himself down mentally and it is as if there is no one inside him for days on end.

  They see a movement in the big chestnut tree overhanging Pigs’ Brook. Mac drops down and runs towards them, shorts torn, shirt filthy. He has always been a ragamuffin of a child.

  ‘There you are, Mac. Come and meet a friend of ours.’

  ‘Hello Mac, I’m Arie.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘You can call me uncle if you want.’

  ‘Hello, Uncle Harry.’

&nb
sp; They laugh but Mac does not see why. Then Arie gives him the new cricket bat so he doesn’t care. They knock the wickets into the orchard lawn and try to teach Arie the rules. But he does not understand them and Mac bowls him out. The child immediately trusts this stranger – and that is rare. He takes Arie back into the woods and shows him the rope swing over the brook and bets Arie can’t guess where his dens are hidden. Arie’s skin is very brown and Mac has never seen someone this dark before.

  ‘Are you from a long way away, Uncle Harry?’

  ‘Yes, a long way away.’

  ‘My other Daddy’s name was Edward. You’re not a German, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not a German, Mac.’

  ‘My other Daddy and Francis killed lots of Germans in the war.’

  ‘Why did they do that, do you think?’

  ‘Because the Germans are bad people, that’s why.’

  Over supper, Bea watches Mac’s commensal eyes study their visitor with a child’s fascination for the exotic. Arie’s hair has grown long again and hangs in girlish ringlets over the open collar of his blue shirt. He stresses words and ideas with an invisible baton between finger and thumb and his coal-black eyes can still go afire with all the passion Bea remembers. They talk of Hungary and what is to happen now its communist rulers have become a hated elite. Francis dryly asks Arie if this is the socialist paradise he espouses.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. Socialism has no place for torture chambers and show trials.’

  ‘But that’s what it has come to, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes... the secret police are no better than licensed murderers.’

  ‘And what do you think the ordinary people will do, Arie?’

  ‘My guess is they’ll rise up and demand their political freedom.’

  ‘And Moscow will answer in the only bloody way it knows how.’

  They drive to Anglesey early next morning. Arie sits in the front of the Alvis with Francis. The weather is hot and the white sands of Aberffraw are deserted. Mac chases off to find the gang of smugglers he is sure are hiding beyond the waving grasses on the dunes.

  Arie uses Francis’s cine camera to film him and Bea dancing across the beach. Their feet leave a trail of happiness across the watery sands. Then Mac and Francis play cricket and Bea goes to the car to fetch their lunch of fish paste sandwiches, apples and bottles of beer and lemonade. She pauses, holds back her breeze-blown hair with a free hand and gives Arie a movie première smile.

  They finish eating and Arie takes Francis to the water’s edge where they walk and cannot be overheard. Their friendship is very masculine. They trade secrets, for information is power in their trade. Bea feels more left out than ever. But then, so must Francis when she travels away for her reasons. And he never asks questions.

  Maybe he does not need to. Someone in Francis’s world of shadows probably tells him that is going on. She hopes he realises she loves them both... equally and forever.

  How could he possibly not know that?

  Mac is digging a moat around a sand castle and talking to the commanders of his invisible army who will lead the attack he is planning. He trots to the sparkling sea to fill his bucket. The air is filled with the sounds of waves and gulls. Bea lies on a large white towel... lies very still with her left arm under her head and her right folded across her stomach.

  Mac runs back to his castle. He sees Bea and stops. He stands absolutely motionless. The tin bucket drops from his fingers and the water soaks into the sand.

  In a moment more, he is at Francis’s side, grunting not speaking but terrified of something he cannot describe. He keeps pointing toward Bea’s prone body. Francis is alarmed and takes Mac in his arms. The child is breathing hard and his little chest pumps against Francis’s like bellows. They run back to Bea who is obviously asleep. She stirs and comes back to life. Mac stares then turns away and hides his face against Francis’s shoulder.

  Almost three weeks pass before he says another word. He never told them what was wrong. But they knew, anyway.

  *

  The funeral director was not happy when McCall said Francis’s coffin had to be carried from the house, through Garth Woods and across the brook to the church field and St Mary and All Angels beyond.

  ‘Might it not be more dignified for the deceased to be driven to the service?’

  ‘Mr Wrenn wished to be carried in this way. It is a family tradition.’

  ‘What if someone trips and we drop the casket?’

  ‘Then I’m sure he won’t mind in the least.’

  All repair work on the roof was suspended for that day. The mourners assembled in the stable yard. Mrs Bishop was there with her daughter, Mrs Craven, and a dozen or so villagers. Mr Fewtrell attended with a few other elderly men, black-coated and rheumy-eyed at yet another funeral for a friend.

  Only Bea would be driven to the church, accompanied by a nurse. Bea’s attendance was against all medical advice. But she scratched a jumbled message on her pad – funeral, must go. I not be stopped.

  The procession filed behind the coffin, carried by six suited bearers. They followed McCall across the orchard lawn into the woods where he paused them outside the dacha and closed his eyes. All that could be heard was the slow tic... tic... tic of a cock pheasant and the swilling waters of the stream.

  McCall moved on. Each slow step was a retreat from the past... by the clump of ash trees where his play house rotted in peace, by all the hides and secret places to which he could never return.

  The rector stood at the bridge over Pigs’ Brook and led from there. Bea waited in a wheelchair in the porch below the church tower’s bickering black crows.

  She could see where the sexton had been digging, close by the yews where she and Francis first lay on that windless summer morning in 1940 and he died his little death, knowing it might happen for real before many weeks were out. The symmetry of life is only revealed to those about to depart it.

  McCall wheeled her to the Wrenn family pew where they sat together. Even through her fur coat, he could tell how reduced she was becoming, how impermanent.

  He looked round for Evie who had promised to take time off work to come. The church was barely half full but he could not see her. The choir sang The Lord Is My Shepherd then the rector spoke.

  ‘Today, we must pray for ourselves, not just for Francis. There may be those here who need to search their souls, to ask what they are running from. Maybe it is God himself, so they must answer honestly the question who am I in his purpose?’

  McCall mounted the pulpit steps. The lies Bea and Francis had told him seemed less important, now. His mouth was dry, his eyes wet. He started to talk, but almost inaudibly. Two people entered the church from the porch. One was Evie, the other an old man he did not recognise.

  ‘We each have our memories of Francis and that’s what they should stay... our own. All of us here have somehow fitted into his extraordinary life, a life that was complex and exciting but about which few people know much. It’s probably better that way. But we who are left salute a hero, a patriot, a man of honour and integrity we all loved and were proud to call husband, friend, comrade... or father.’

  He looked down at Bea. She was close enough to touch the coffin. But there were no tears behind the veil of her black velvet hat, just the faintest of sad smiles.

  The choir ended with Housman.

  ‘Take my hand quick and tell me,

  What have you in your heart.

  Speak now, and I will answer;

  How shall I help you, say;

  Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters,

  I take my endless way.’

  Then they put Francis in his grave.

  *

  Bea and the other mourners left for Garth in three polished funeral cars. McCall set off alone, walking down towards the woods. Evie hurried to catch up and began dragging him back towards the church.

  ‘Quick – there’s someone you’ve got to see.’

  The man who arrived lat
e with her was saying goodbye to Mr Fewtrell by the lych gate. He was tall once, straight-backed and sinewy, but looked arthritic and bent now, like an old soldier on Remembrance Day, anxious to be out of the cold.

  ‘It’s him, McCall. I swear it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man in the cine film – the one holding you as a baby.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I’ve just been sitting next to him, haven’t I?’

  They were about a hundred yards apart. McCall immediately began running up to the graveyard. But the man’s chauffeur was already closing the rear door of a silver Jaguar. McCall shouted and waved but the car accelerated away. All he could see was its diplomatic plates as it disappeared down Church Lane.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  The hospital nurse clucked over Bea in the back of the lead funeral car.

  ‘Your husband wouldn’t have wanted you risking your health today of all days – ’

  Bea prayed for her power of speech to return, if only to tell this drone to shut up.

  ‘– you’re very wilful and if I’d had my way, you’d still be on the ward.’

  Bea closed her eyes. Francis was gone. It was all over – done and finished with forever. The future was Mac’s, now. Yet how ruined he seemed at the graveside, even more so than those who had played the great game with Francis. Mac might never truly forgive her or stop worrying whatever bones he had unearthed. But she could not even beg him to anymore.

  What an odd little boy he had been... robust enough on the outside but God alone knew how fragile within. Francis always said they must see him as a blank sheet of paper on which they could write whatever they wished. Nothing was that simple – not when the child was the sum of its fears.

  At least Evie showed up. Such a striking woman should not be in church for a funeral. She and Mac could make much of a life together. Everything in Garth would be his. She and Francis had only wanted the best for him... only the best.