by Jan Harvey
As we reached the bench, midway down the path, we turned and looked back at Lapston.
‘There’s a letter in there, trapped behind the mantelpiece in the library, I’d like to have found it, but I know now I never will.’
‘Martha.’ He paused for a moment before speaking, as if he wanted to save me from hearing something painful. ‘Martha, I’m sorry but they are going to start knocking it down next week. I just heard, I had no idea up until now, and I’m going to lose my knot garden too.’
‘No!’ I was so alarmed and upset for him, I knew how much he loved the place and he looked absolutely devastated. ‘I am so sorry, I wish I could buy it for you, if I had the money I would,’ and I meant it, I’d do anything I could to save his garden, his pride and joy.
We were hugging each other, standing perfectly still and facing that lovely old house. The gentle breeze was tugging at my hair, the warmth of the sun on our backs, a perfect day for our desperately sad final moment.
Then I heard my name being called. It was like being woken up from a pleasant doze. The sound was sharp and loud as it carried on the light wind and Scooter on hearing it too looked up wagging his flag-like tail.
A tall figure was coming up the path towards us.
Steve.
74
Sister Evangelina was diminutive, her pale face heart shaped and framed by her starched wimple. She was standing in the small whitewashed visitor’s room of the nunnery behind the Basilica. I would never have found the tall brick built house, nor made it through the locked iron gates without the help of the young priest. She had her hands pressed together as if in prayer as I entered through a plain wooden door. I have never met anyone so fragile or more birdlike. When she turned to me, her large eyes were a window to the sadness in her soul. They spoke of excruciating things, of pain and suffering witnessed and born in silence.
I extended my hand but she didn’t take it, instead she indicated that I should sit on a small wooden pew that was leaning against the wall.
‘I am Maxwell Carrick,’ I told her. ‘Henry Amsherst is my dearest friend, did you know him?’
She nodded. ‘I did.’
Did.
‘How? Where is he now?’
She took a deep breath and laced her fingers together in her lap. Small white fingers.
‘We found him at the side of a street leading out of the city, back in August. Everything was very bad and we were all frightened. He was semi-conscious and bloody as if he had been hit on the head.’ She touched the top of her head, her fingers lightly indicating where the wound had been. ‘He was moaning, some people thought he was German and would have nothing to do with him. One man even tried to kick him, but thankfully they pulled him away.’
The sister was speaking in an unbearably slow and measured way. It was all I could do to stop myself telling her to speed up. To this end, I interjected rudely.
‘Is he–?’
‘He was very badly injured; his legs were severely damaged. We took him into a house where there was a bed for him. We tried to find help but there were snipers and mobs rampaging through the streets. The Americans were coming, but no one knew when. The family were so good, kind people and they tried to help, but they had no food and they themselves were starving. I dressed his wounds with material from old shirts. The smell, the smell was terrible, like nothing I’d come across before. I knew it was gangrene.
‘One of the men who had helped me carry him into the house managed to find some bandages and iodine from outside, but there was very little I could do. Henry had a fever and he was delirious. When he spoke, it varied between English and French… and sometimes he screamed. He would yell “no, no, no” and push me away, I couldn’t calm him at all. I did search, but there was no identification, no papers on him.’
I felt sick to my stomach. Henry.
‘I mopped his brow and held his hand, I’m sorry but it was all I could do. Then, at one point, he was calm and quiet, it was like he was drifting towards the end and I asked him his name and where he was from. He whispered the name “Lapston.” Then I realised it must be a village in England so I told him I imagined there were trees, hedges, green pastures and spires of churches, everything I could picture of your country, even though I’ve never been. These were the things I had heard about when I was growing up.
‘There was a time when I thought he was going to improve a little. He smiled when I came into the room and told me I was beautiful, but it was fleeting, his face would crease with pain; he had a much weakened voice.’
She hesitated and searched my eyes as if she was wondering whether or not she should proceed.
‘I hate to tell you this, and I don’t have to if you would prefer it, so…’
I indicated that she should continue even as my blood seemed to freeze in my veins.
‘His body was covered in welts and burns, but worst of all were his feet, there was no skin left on them. Someone had wrapped them in cambric and as we pulled the material away his skin came with it. His legs were burnt.’ She dipped her eyes and looked away. How old was she? Twenty? A young beautiful girl, she was no age at all. ‘I am so sorry, I couldn’t keep him alive, I had nothing and though we all tried, we couldn’t find anything, nothing for the pain. We were told to stay inside. You should know that the family were so good and gentle and caring, given that they were so desperate themselves.’
‘He died.’
‘Yes. I was with him and I held his hand. Towards the end, he kept repeating the same name over and over again, he kept saying Alice George, Alice George. I asked him which part of England he came from and he said Oxford, but it was barely a whisper. I wasn’t sure if I even heard it correctly, you see, I only speak a very small amount of English I’m afraid.’
I stood up and turned away from her for fear she would see me on the brink of tears. My dear friend was dead. It broke my heart to think that he was calling for his brother and sister whilst dying in agony in some grim anonymous house and in a foreign city. I leant against a screen, a carved ornate thing with angels carved crudely into it. My hands grabbed hold of one of the figures and, although the wood was hard under my fingers, I felt I could crush it such was the anger that surfaced in me. The nun didn’t move she sat quietly, back ramrod straight, and perfectly still whilst I took it all in.
‘How did he get there, in the street?’ I was seething inside at the thought of it.
‘We think it was Nazis trying to escape the city, that they took him with them to bargain with. We think this because they took others, important people. As they retreated, they were stopped and burnt out of their vehicles by the mobs. Some of them died, on fire… in the streets, screaming.’
‘Is that what they did to Henry? Was he set on fire?’ I asked, my heart pulsing in my chest.
‘No. These were the well-known wounds of SS torture. We had seen these many times before at the convent hospital when we treated people who were rounded up and suspected of resistance.’
The angels carved into the wooden panel were surrounded by rough-hewn grapes and curling leaves and, as I stood before it, the panel faded in and out before my eyes. Meanwhile she continued to talk, placid, calm and sotto voce.
‘During the war, we had all the right supplies and sisters who knew how to nurse well but, in the last weeks, it was all so very desperate.’
‘What had they done to him?’ I felt morbid for asking, but I needed to know.
‘They had roasted his feet in a fire.’
I thought I might throw up. The room was swimming around me, my head so heavy, pulling me down to the ground like it was made of lead. When I spoke, it was through a cracked and broken voice. ‘What did you do with him, with Henry?’
She turned away and clasped her hands, her veil shielded her face from my view. She couldn’t speak.
‘Where is he?’
Ag
ain silence.
‘Where is he?’
‘You have to understand we were all very scared, the streets were dangerous, the only time the men of the house could risk going out was to try to find food, was at night. We had Germans in the next street holed up in a hotel just shooting at people, anyone.’
‘And?’
‘We dragged him outside during the night and left him on a patch of empty ground. We left him there. There was nothing more we could do.’
I took a deep breath. I could feel the flickering in my eye, the edge of darkness. I must, at all costs, keep focussed, I must not let the demons in. ‘Did you report this to anyone?’
The French family promised me they would tell the Americans when they arrived; they assured me that they would. I had to leave Paris then, I had work to do with women who had been punished for collaborating and so many orphans. Your friend was only one, only one of many who suffered.’
She stood up, her habit rustling as she moved towards me. She curled her small fingers around my hands and gripping tightly said, ‘I did what I could. Later on, I wrote a letter, to Alice George, Lapston, Oxford, England in the hope it would get there. I have no idea if it ever reached its destination, but I prayed each night that it would.’
I knew it had reached its destination, with God’s speed, but I now knew that the devil had intercepted it.
75
‘I knew I’d find you here!’ Steve’s face was puce with anger and I knew he’d been getting himself worked up as he drove over. I should never have told him where I was.
‘And you, you bastard, what are you doing with my wife?’ Steve was standing in front of Rory, until he realised he was lower down and was much shorter. He compensated and went further up the path to gain extra height. As he passed me, I tried to grab his arm, but he pulled away. ‘No, Martha, no!’
‘Steve, we were just leaving,’ I said, trying to be as assertive as I could, I wanted him to just walk away with me.
‘So this is him. The demolition expert and part-time gardener. Do you realise you could have killed my wife taking her inside that wreck?’
Rory moved so that he was standing between Steve and me. It was a bad move because he looked possessive. ‘I knew what I was doing, Steve. I can assure you that Martha was perfectly safe with me,’ he said calmly.
‘Don’t you Steve me, you bastard, I don’t want anything to do with you.’
Steve was angry but next to Rory he looked small and weedy, the pale-faced indoorsy maths teacher facing off against the landscape gardener who had powerful arms and, I suspected, a powerful right hook.
‘Steve, leave it, please, let’s go.’
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ said Rory. ‘We were just close friends.’
‘Friends don’t sleep with each other.’ Steve was spitting out the words. ‘I know all about it.’
Neither of us could say anything because there was simply no way of denying it.
‘Martha loves you,’ said Rory. ‘Do yourself a favour and take her home. You should appreciate that she’s an amazing person, she’s gentle and very beautiful… and so very easy to love.’
I looked up at him, the straggling hair, the six o’clock shadow, the dark circles and those loving eyes that fell on me, even then, as our brief affair was coming to an end. I nodded and acknowledged his words, but I couldn’t speak.
Steve looked like he was in two minds, fight or flight, but he snapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled me away. Then he jerked me down the path, more roughly than he intended to, I’m sure, as he dragged me towards the gate. I managed to shake free, but when I looked over my shoulder, Rory was staring after me, a silhouette against the sunlight, and he was shaking his head.
‘Leave me alone.’ I was disgusted with my husband, with the way he was treating me in front of Rory.
‘I’m ashamed of you,’ Steve said angrily. ‘This is totally humiliating for me.’
‘No one knows,’ I said miserably. ‘No one knows anything.’
‘Except that Simon guy at the church, and everyone he’s told, bloody gossip.’
‘He won’t have said anything, he doesn’t even know.’ I was struggling to keep up with my husband as he strode on long legs down the uneven path. ‘Oh but he does you stupid cow, he asked me all about your boyfriend, told me he’d seen you out and about together and how you must be “good friends” because you seemed “so close.”’
‘He doesn’t know anything, nothing, he’s just nosey that’s all.’ I pleaded a defence but it fell on deaf ears.
‘Do you know how that makes me feel?’ Steve shouted as we reached the gate. ‘Do you know how embarrassing it is to have your wife shagging another man?’
And suddenly I felt utterly dreadful. I had made him feel this way, I was cuckolding my husband. I was all the people you read about, a duplicitous cunning two-timer who had chased excitement and lust, and I had made a huge calamitous error.
I was about to grab his arm to pull him towards me and hug him. No, I was going to cling to him, because suddenly I wanted to promise him the world and tell him how much I loved him, but just as I reached out for him I heard a loud, urgent shout from over by the river. ‘Scooter, oh my God, no!’
76
I was sitting in a café bar when Trevise located me.
‘You found out?’
I nodded.
Trevise ordered drinks and as the barman placed a Ricard in front of me on the table he paused and asked my companion if I was unwell. Trevise waved him away impatiently and then turning to me said, ‘Bad?’
I nodded again.
I couldn’t shake the image of Henry, his legs burnt, his skin peeled off, lying there abandoned on the side of a road. Surely someone would have done something, taken him somewhere. Perhaps if I asked around, if I paced the streets, talked to everyone, if I put up notices…
I felt the tight blistering pain behind my eyebrows, damnable pain and the Ricard smelt overwhelming, a thick aniseed that filled my nostrils. I pushed past Trevise and threw up on the cobbled street outside. A passerby, a woman, only just avoided my vomit as it splashed into the gutter. Her brown court shoes topped with a delicate silver buckle, scurried away from me.
For a moment, my world was the uneven cobbles and those feet. The pain tore through me, a great heaving ripping pain and I was with Collins. He had no face, then he did, it was Henry’s face. He was laughing, throwing back his head, his green polo shirt, then he was screaming. He was not laughing, he was screaming I was completely wrong and–
‘Come on, old man,’ said Trevise grabbing my arm. ‘Let’s get you home.’
Trevise was asleep when I woke up, soft morning light falling on the floor from those low dirty windows. The shadows of the dead plants outside, ghost plants, twisted and untended, fell across the linoleum floor.
I watched for a while, making the random elongated patterns and shapes into pictures. Another day, in another time, I might have experimented with painting the dark greys onto a patterned background of a similar tone. But not now, nor ever again. I would never paint, nor even sketch, and I would never find happiness or contentment, of this I was certain. These were my friends, my family and all of them dead and sickeningly I knew I was the unifying factor. I was the bad omen, the spurious link between their fates. Except of course I wasn’t. I had been a bystander, a unwitting spectator, this whole situation – Henry, Alice, George – this had been the result of a catalyst. Blue, green, red, blue, green, yellow… I remembered the experiment at school, the litmus test.
I was hoarse with thirst, but the rusted tap had run dry. Trevise had placed a pail of water in the corner from God knows what source. I drank a little but didn’t risk too much.
He was in the armchair, head lolling backwards, mouth open. I shook him awake and I’m afraid I startled him. He pushed me away before he r
ealised who I was and was all set to lunge at me. Then he collected himself, shaking his head, and apologised.
‘Sorry, old chap, I do that every time. Can’t get used to life being normal again.’ He rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his auburn hair. ‘Thought you were Jerry coming after me.’
‘Do you have a gun?’
‘Three,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
‘I need one.’
He reached under the bed and pulled out a small tattered box. Resting on top of the box, which was full of bullets, was a Luger. He passed it to me. ‘What are you going to do?’ I think he seriously thought I might be about to top myself.
My mind made up, I had reached the point of no return.
I was going after Cécile Roussell.
77
I ran back up the incline and reached the riverbank, so dense with nettles and shrubs I could hardly see the water. Rory’s voice alerted me to Scooter whose long sleek body was submerged under the eddying brown water. There were cloudy swirls of muddy water churning up around him. He was paddling, his head just above the surface and he was making frightened snorting noises.
‘Come on, Scoot, come on.’ Rory was standing on some sort of wooden promontory, part of an old bridge or boat launch. He was leaning out over the water coaxing his dog and acting like he had something in his hand. ‘Come on, Scoot, see here, come here lad, a Bonio, look here.’
The current of the river was barely detectable but it was stronger than the dog could cope with. He paddled faster, his paws broad and webbed, making no difference at all. For all that he swam against the current, he was getting nowhere.
‘Rory, throw a stick.’ I pointed down river. ‘Throw a stick and make him turn side ways, towards us.’ Rory tore away a piece of the old wood from the bridge and lobbed it into the water. As it splashed, Scooter looked over his shoulder, but it was obvious he couldn’t move, and was spluttering and coughing.