by John Wilson
– He doesn’t trust you.
– I am doing what I can to help him.
– It’s too late.
The blacked-out train trundled back towards the city, and in the blue half-light Jones opened the buff folder and looked again at his evidence so far. If it had been dark when he made his way to Old Kings Road the night was impenetrable when he left. He was forced to check each street sign as he made his way back. Something had jarred. And looking at his accumulated notes he saw it. Tomas Novak had been arrested in the street that ran parallel to Old Kings Road. He and the Hoffers were near neighbours. But neither Milo nor Katya had made any mention of this. Why would they withhold that piece of information?
He put away the buff folder and closed his eyes. His mind filled with an image of white, white teeth and a pink kitten tongue, darting in and out of Katya’s mouth. He hated to think what Mrs Jones would have made of it all.
Chapter Thirty-five
(Thursday 16th January 1941)
Pemberton took his jacket off and hung it on the back of his chair. Samuels had prepared his study for him as usual and the greenish light glowed out from the middle of his desk. It had not been a good day. The encounter with Blytheway had not pleased him and he came away feeling that the man had got the better of him again. They had known one another for thirty years and had studied Law together but he had never liked him. He couldn’t put his finger on precisely why that was. There was his effortless insouciance; that air of the clever student who affects not to work at all but always comes top of the class; his wordplay and wit and his indifference to what others might think of him. That was probably it. Pemberton had always had ambition and he wanted to make an impression on the world. But he made no impression on Blytheway. Put shortly, Blytheway was unimpressed.
For all Blytheway’s student brilliance there could be no doubt that Pemberton’s practice took off more spectacularly. Blytheway proved to be more of an acquired taste. By 1914 Jeremy was a successful junior and married to one of the most beautiful debutantes of the season. Blytheway seemed just to be pottering along. He had not married. It was some years before Pemberton understood why. Pemberton had joined his father’s battalion on the outbreak of the Great War and saw action on the Western front. He led a charmed life and if a spray of machine gun fire was directed at him and his men when he made a charge it would be they that were cut down whilst he remained unscathed. He was decorated several times and kept his medals now in a glass case in his study. Blytheway had opted to work on the ambulances. Their paths had crossed for only a short time towards the end of the war and they had a terrible argument.
****
Pemberton had tried to suppress those memories but they came back to him now.
Muriel Armstrong worked on the ambulances with Blytheway. She didn’t need to be there. She was a woman after all. Blytheway let her do the driving. She was a twenty-three-year-old suffragette and would bang on about the rights and the equality of women. A starched bluestocking with no understanding of Class. There was a young private, whose name he had long forgotten, to whom Blytheway and Armstrong had taken a shine. They would let him into the back of their vehicle to play cards. The war was nearly over and Pemberton had survived. He congratulated himself by drinking the better part of a bottle of whisky – his luck couldn’t last for ever.
He had slipped in the mud and fallen over, and when Muriel Armstrong started shouting at him he saw double. Blytheway was shouting too. Muriel was a very attractive woman. Long dark hair and a mouth with a natural pout. She was covered in mud. She picked up another handful of it and matted it into her face and hair so that all he could see were here blazing eyes.
– You bloody cowardly drunk! You could help us save him.
He slurred:
– We can’t help him. He’s going to die and there’s nothing we can do.
– You could go out there with Roly. There has to be two of you.
– I’m an officer and he’s only a private. It’s too great a risk.
– You bloody, bloody coward!
And then she had rushed at him, hitting him with her muddy fists until Blytheway, caked in mud and slime himself, pulled her away.
– M. M., there’s nothing to be done.
And in the black distance, out in No-Man’s Land, the private with whom Blytheway and Armstrong played cards was screaming and moaning.
****
After the war Pemberton’s world began to fall apart. His joy in the birth of Jenny turned to despair when Joan succumbed to influenza and died. She had only been twenty-nine. He realised too late that he had put his work and his career first and that his assumption that his wife would always be with him had proven to be wrong. He turned to drink and became a fixture in El Vinos, where he would talk for hours about Joan, her beauty and his loss to anyone who was in range, including Blytheway. And Blytheway was initially sympathetic but after a while became impatient with him and chided him for wasting his life. He would speak to him roughly and try to shake him out of it, and Pemberton’s old antipathy, through the haze of drink, regret and guilt, returned. And slowly Blytheway’s stock rose until it could be fairly said that he was at least as successful as Pemberton if not more so. Rumours of the drinking meant that his solicitors became less loyal and Blytheway and others cleaned up.
Then he had met Julia and his life began to turn around once more. She was barely twenty years old and her youth restored him. He became tee-total and slowly a zest for life returned. He was able to turn his practice around and, although he never really got over the loss of Joan, he attempted to be a better husband than he had been before: dutiful and attentive. Then the children had come along and Julia was happy. He even toyed with removing the photographs of Joan from his study. But this was a step too far. Pictures of him with Julia and her children were given a place in an alcove on the stairs. He knew, too, she kept photographs in her dressing room. His study he kept sacrosanct and Julia understood, in the unspoken way of married couples, that it was out of bounds. As a quid pro quo – though, again, nothing was ever said – he would keep out of her dressing room. As to Blytheway, Pemberton’s memories of those lost days left an antipathy that grew darker as the years passed.
And then he had taken silk and succeeded where Blytheway, despite several attempts, failed. He rejoiced in the other man’s failure almost as much as he enjoyed his own success. Yet Blytheway affected not to care and Pemberton was left with nagging doubts as to whether his elevation reflected a real superiority in ability. For all Blytheway’s “front”, his apparent lack of concern for what others thought of him and the louche stories repeated in the robing rooms, Pemberton felt he knew the man little better than he did all those years earlier.
And so the encounter in the crypt was doubly unwelcome. He had reason to fear Blytheway’s abilities and would have much preferred it if Falling had turned to some fashionable silk. Someone he could impress. But he knew he could not impress Blytheway. There was another reason: Blytheway’s casual and cutting reference to Joan and to his drinking days had hurt him deeply and reopened a wound that had never really closed. But more than that it reminded him of Blytheway’s legendary memory. He had a fearsome reputation as a cross-examiner, and in Pemberton he had a victim he knew only too well. He knew Pemberton’s past and his weaknesses. He had no deference. If Pemberton had made a greater effort to be friendly to the man, who had always put on a façade of amiability to him, Blytheway might perhaps have been obliged to recuse himself. But that was not the case. Pemberton felt the man had shown a glint of pleasurable anticipation in what lay ahead. It was just as well that he felt confident in emerging victorious. Otherwise he might have allowed himself to worry a little.
The journey home from the Temple had been difficult that night and he had some work to do before he retired. He opened his briefcase and arranged a set of papers across the desk. Before he could begin there was a knock at the door. It was Jenny. He beckoned her into the room and motioned t
o a chair across the desk from him. She looked extremely beautiful and was wearing a dress that he recognised as being one of Julia’s. Her hair was immaculately coiffed and she had a hint of make-up which made her pale skin glow. She also looked nervous.
– Jenny, my dear. You look entrancing tonight. How can I help you?
– I want you to look at this, Daddy.
And she handed a small red leather-bound book across to him. It had a little brass padlock clasping it closed and the key was in the lock. Pemberton recognised it as the diary he had given her for Christmas in 1939.
– But Jenny? What’s this all about?
– It’s very private, Daddy. But I want you to look at it. Please open it and look through it. But don’t read the entries. They’re private.
Pemberton turned the key, opened the book and flicked through the pages. They were all filled with Jenny’s neat but girlish handwriting and he was sorely tempted to stop and read what she had been writing. But he remembered her injunction.
– But darling. What is the point of leafing through your diary if you don’t want me to see what you’ve written?
– It’s not the words that I have written that are important.
– What do you mean?
– Look at my entry for the 31st May 1940. But don’t read it.
Pemberton looked down the page and his eyes blurred as he attempted not to read the words.
– What am I looking for Jenny?
– There’s a little cross next to the date.
And so there was. In the same ink as the rest of the entry.
– And what of it?
– Look at the entry for the 4th June.
The same little cross next to the date.
– You see, Daddy. Those little crosses marked the days when I spent the afternoon with Julia. She’s been so good to me and there are certain things that, well, you know, I feel more comfortable talking about with another woman.
– What sort of things precisely?
Pemberton did not like the direction that this conversation was taking.
– Oh. You know, women’s things. I know I’m still only a girl really but it’s not easy growing up and it’s nice to have someone to talk to. Julia’s always been so understanding.
– Well. I’m very pleased that you and she have been able to get on so well in the past, but you must understand I have made my decision.
He was touched at his daughter’s attempts to paint a sympathetic portrait of his wife, but on this thing, at least, he would not allow himself to be bowed to Jenny’s wishes that he and Julia should stay together.
– But Daddy! You’re missing the point!
– What point?
– The dates! Julia let me see the petition. Those are dates when you’ve said that she was with Mr Falling. But she couldn’t have been. She was with me. She wasn’t there!
Pemberton felt his mouth drying and an awful cloud growing in his mind. He flicked more quickly through the diary and the crosses kept on appearing. On through September and beyond. They did not cover every date when he had alleged that his wife was with Falling. But there were enough of them to cast a doubt on his theories. He was troubled. He could see now what his daughter was leading up to. If there were to be a contested hearing, Julia intended to call Jenny in her defence. Sir Patrick Tempest would have to cross-examine Pemberton’s own daughter and call her a liar. He felt a chill shiver through him and he thought again of facing Blytheway in the witness box.
****
Jenny watched her father with a mix of nervousness and fascination as he leafed through her diary. He ran his fingers through his hair and polished and re-polished his gold-framed spectacles. He must never find out the truth. It was only a white lie after all. And it would keep Julia and her father together. The use of the diary was her idea. At least she thought it was. In truth Julia and she had been meeting and chatting regularly over the last nine or ten months and Julia would take her step-daughter out to tea at the Ritz on occasion so that they could have some privacy. Jenny had no one else she could talk to about the things that troubled her. And more recently, those little chats had intensified. For Jenny was in love. Simon, the officer she had taken to the Café de Paris, had occupied much of her thoughts and scarcely a day would go by without her talking to Julia about him.
In the course of one of these conversations the previous week in Julia’s dressing room, Jenny had asked again about the divorce proceedings. Julia had recovered much of her poise since the day the petition was served, and, although she affected to demur, she allowed Jenny to see the allegations that had been made against her. The first had been dated the 31st May 1940.
– But isn’t that one of the days that you and I were together?
– I really don’t know Jenny.
She had fetched her diary but the entry for the day didn’t spark any memory.
– I can’t remember whether it was or wasn’t.
She was downcast.
– Oh, don’t worry, Jenny. Thank you for trying anyway. It was a good idea. I suppose it could have been. Isn’t it a pity we didn’t keep any records of when we had our little meetings. It could have been so helpful.
– I suppose. If it was one of the days that we met up, I could try and add in a line to say that we did. But it wouldn’t look right. It would be all squashed up and you’d be able to tell I’d added it in afterwards … even if it was true.
– Never mind. And anyway, you wouldn’t put in your diary the things that we’ve been talking about in case someone else read it.
– That’s true.
Jenny sighed again. Julia continued:
– I suppose the most you would have done would be to put some little mark next to the date. Like a cross or an asterisk …
– That’s it!
– What? What do you mean?
– I could put a little cross next to some of the dates. I can’t be sure now of when we met but they could easily have been those days. Because you weren’t seeing that man Falling were you?
– No, I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. But what a clever idea, Jenny. I would never have thought of that.
– And even if the dates aren’t exactly right. It would only be a white lie. Wouldn’t it.
Beseeching uncertainty. There was a long pause.
– Jenny. That’s really kind. But I wouldn’t want you getting into any trouble …
– I wouldn’t be getting into any trouble. And anyway, if a little lie helps bring out a big truth, it’s got to be the right thing to do hasn’t it?
Ever since the night at the Café de Paris, on the evening when Julia had begged her to help, Jenny had been looking for a way to do so. And now it had come to her. She knew Daddy would be upset. But he would be grateful in the end. And he and Julia would be able to stay together.
Pemberton shut the diary so that it made a small slamming noise and made to hand it back to his daughter. He looked weary.
– Well. Thank you, Jenny. That is most kind of you. You must have your diary back. Now, please forgive me. I have some work that I must do. We shall talk about this again very soon.
– No, Daddy. Please keep the diary. For now at least. I’m on my new one now. But please don’t read the entries.
Jenny went round the desk to her father, leaned over him and kissed his cheek. Her dark hair fell across his face and an unmistakeable perfume drifted across him loosing flower-bursts of bittersweet memory. She squeezed his shoulders, then headed for the door. He saw the ghost of another woman merging with her as she left, and felt tears forming in his eyes.
****
He was alone. The green light glowed out. The little red diary, still unclasped, with the key next to it, lay in the middle of his desk. He reached out a hand to it, then drew back. His papers lay to one side, forgotten. He reached out again, picked up the diary and held it to his face. The smell of leather and perfume. He secured the clasp, locked the diary and put diary and key in his middle drawer, clo
sing it gently. He tried to return his attention to his work but the words would not stay still before him. It was half past eleven and beyond the closed door of the study a silence had descended and all was dark. He opened the drawer again.
He opened the diary from the back. It would do no harm to look at just the last few entries. Jenny would understand …
31st December 1940
This has been a lovely day and a horrible day all at the same time. Julia was right about Daddy. The atmosphere in the house has been getting worse and worse and I couldn’t wait for Simon to pick me up and take me out. I’ve been so looking forward to showing him the Café de Paris. I won’t be able to see him for months and months after tonight. I decided on the green dress Julia lent me and put my dark red lipstick on. Oh, and some matching green shoes. Then Samuels came and told me Daddy wanted to see me. Julia was on the landing looking at her pictures but when she turned round I was really shocked because she was crying and upset. I’ve never seen her cry before. And she asked me to help her. Daddy was really strange. He kept calling me “Joan” and he told me he was going to divorce Julia. And I couldn’t persuade him not to. I had to go upstairs and start all over again with my make-up.
The lovely bit was with Simon. He loved the Café de Paris and he made me so happy. Snake Hips Johnson and his band were playing and Simon said he had never heard music like that before. And we danced and drank champagne and I wished life could always be so good and happy.
Pemberton felt himself reddening, at the reminder of how he had referred to Jenny as Joan, and at his breach of his promise to his daughter. He made to close the diary but could not prevent himself from peeping at the previous day’s entry.