The Slow Death of Maxwell Carrick

by Jan Harvey

  When she had gone, I pulled a chair up to Carrick’s side.

  ‘I understand everything,’ I told him. ‘You wrote it all down so people would know what really happened.’

  He looked at me through rheumy, watery eyes and smiled. ‘I did. I knew that one day someone would come along who understood. Someone who knew what it was like to search for answers. That was you.’

  I felt humbled.

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’

  He sighed and played with Inca’s ears, but his head was drooping and his bottom lip was protruding. I was losing him, he was drifting back to sleep.

  ‘Carrick, what do you want me to do?’ I shook his arm gently. ‘Please tell me.’

  He twitched and shook his head. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  He looked disorientated for a second then he said, ‘I’d like you to take my books and write down my story, tell them it is true, the Amshersts deserve better, not their fault.’

  All of a sudden, a lone blue tit flew in through the French doors and hit the glass of the window as it tried to escape. It crashed onto the sill, dazed, its tiny eyes half closed. I picked it up and felt the weightless bones and feathers in my hand. ‘I walked over to the doors, almost tripping over Inca who was desperate to see what I was holding, then I held out my hands and the little bird took off and was gone in a second, twittering in protest.

  Carrick was watching me. “Good job” he was telling me through kind eyes, I smiled in return.

  ‘I loved animals,’ he said. ‘I loved my Jester. ‘She nearly had him done away with, but I stopped her. They don’t believe me because of my head, but you do, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ I reassured him. ‘I know it’s all true.’

  He smiled and as he leant his head back against the chair, it was a smile so satisfying I felt I had done something really worthwhile, something deeply good. I had taken the time to study his words and bring everything to a conclusion. I had finally brought him peace at last.

  90

  I closed the door on my little arts and crafts house in Oxford for the final time and waved goodbye to Mrs Hall, who was standing in the front window dabbing her eyes with Alice’s handkerchief. She would be happy here and I would make sure she was provided for, she and her girls.

  It was a bright fresh summer’s day, the swifts were swooping overhead and I was reminded, as I so often was, of Lapston and the countryside around it brimming full with wildlife. I missed Jester but he and Beau were assured a happy retirement with grateful new owners in Charlbury. They were in a paddock by the station and I had made a special trip to see them a week earlier Jester came when I clicked my tongue, lumbering across the field in his familiar way. He let me rub his big, broad face over the gate and I felt sad but content in the knowledge they would both be well cared for.

  ‘Farewell, old chap,’ I whispered to him. ‘Look after yourself, my friend.’

  There was time to spare before the train departed Oxford and so I alighted at Handborough and dropped in on Lewis at Blenheim Place. He was sitting, looking overwhelmed, surrounded by teetering piles of boxes and copious brown coloured files, stamped confidential, and all ready to be transferred back to London. He puffed on a big cigar, his face more jowly by the day.

  ‘It’s all over, Carrick,’ he said as he poured me a whisky. ‘I kept this for the big day and now I’m polishing it off out of a sense of duty!’ He laughed, his face free of the heavy burden of war and his unenviable responsibilities.

  ‘How long before it’s completely finished? Japan?’

  ‘We’re all hoping for autumn at the latest. Thank God.’

  ‘I can’t help wishing God had acted a little sooner.’

  ‘Mysterious ways, old chap, we don’t know what His plans are.’

  ‘Well, we seem to have an idea what his plans were,’ I said regretfully. ‘A hell of a lot of devastation and loss is all I can see.’

  ‘And bravery, sacrifice, acts of heroism, unvanquished human spirit and all that. One can only hope that lessons will be learned.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said without enthusiasm because I had cause to doubt it. How long before the next ill thought out conflict? World War Three; they say things always come in threes, don’t they?

  ‘Anyway, you’re off now, to America no less. What are you going to do there?’

  ‘They have new ideas about treating…’ I still found it hard to find the words. ‘Difficulties like mine.’

  ‘Good show, I think that’s a capital idea, and you have the money, Carrick. Use it, learn from what they tell you, the Yanks are always so much more open to these things than us.’ He tapped his cigar on an ashtray. ‘Then where, India?’

  ‘Yes, I plan to meet up with Father. He says he can find me a career behind a desk, some sort of planning operation, I’ll be good at it apparently.’ I didn’t realise, until I spoke about it out loud, just how ghastly it all sounded.

  ‘Did you ever sort out that problem with that French woman?’ Lewis asked innocently. ‘I don’t think I ever saw you brought so low as when you told me about her, seems like she really got under your skin.’

  ‘I dealt with her. She won’t be breaking any more hearts.’

  I picked up my briefcase ready for the off. ‘By the way, was there any news of Trevise?’

  ‘No, last heard of in Spain, heading south. Fair play to the man. He stayed on longer than he should have done, volunteered for it, trying to bring together those loose ends and, as you told me, he found out about Henry in the end. One of our best operatives, deserves a medal if you ask me.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said flatly. ‘One of your best.’

  I shook hands with Giles Lewis for the final time, I would never see him again; he would be retiring into the Sussex countryside and taking his secrets to the grave. Then, as I was about to exit his office something occurred to me.

  ‘Lewis, have you ever heard of a Laurent Ducas? In Paris.’

  He looked thrown for a second.

  ‘What yes, that was one of Henry’s covers, Ducas, that’s right. Rainier and Ducas.’

  91

  Alice returned with the coffee after a short while. I had been sitting, quietly reading the last pages of Carrick’s journal again.

  ‘He tries to give them to people to read, you know, the nurses, doctors, the vicar and everyone pretends they will read them, but they never do, they just put them back in the wardrobe.’

  ‘He’s asked me to have them,’ I told her. ‘Is that all right with you? I would really like them.’

  ‘I suppose so, I don’t want them,’ she said, ‘and I’m his only living relative.’

  ‘I find it all fascinating,’ I told her. ‘And, I think you’ll find, from what I have researched, that it is true.’

  ‘If you say so. If it is true, it’s a sad story and, if it’s a product of his imagination, then–’

  ‘It’s a good story,’ I said with what sounded like sarcasm, but it was unintended. ‘I will research more and maybe offer what I find to a military museum to archive, there is one in Woodstock.’

  I squeezed Carrick’s hand and stole a kiss on his forehead. He was almost completely asleep, but I heard him say softly; ‘Goodbye, Inca.’

  Alice and I walked together to his room, passing bland watercolours of roses that were lining the corridor, and I found myself thinking about all the lonely fading lives that were living out their last behind the walls of this place. It was so sad.

  Alice found the first journal amongst the untidy belongings in the wardrobe and gave it to me with no visible sentiment. In truth, I found her quite cold and not someone I could become friends with.

  ‘Are you going to write them up, adding in what else you find out?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think abo
ut it. I’m not sure how everything is going to pan out with me. You see, I’m going through a difficult time myself.’

  ‘Marriage?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m the archetypal retired woman who’s lost her way and who discovers she might have missed out on another life whilst she was busy making other plans.’

  Alice raised her eyebrows. ‘You don’t look the runaway sort to me. Sometimes in life you have to settle for what you’ve got and make the best of it. I broke up a long-term relationship a while back. I miss him every day.’

  I sighed and shook her hand politely as we parted. She was right; it’s about being sure, having a foundation and knowing your ground. Dreams are for dreamers. I crossed the car park of the old folks home and looked back at the nameless, faceless windows and the blotchy yellow turf of its sun-bleached lawns. The shrubs and annuals had gone over, having borne their flowers, and they all had started to die back, tinged with brown. They were rusted and spent of their life force. Autumn, the time of decay, was on its way.

  The car was too hot, the smell of plastic pungent and strong. I opened the windows to let the cool air in before I began fiddling with the sat nav.

  I had my home address set as “previous destination” but, as I went to press the button, something stopped me. I leant back, letting my head clear for a moment. I thought of Carrick and I thought about how his life was wasted, damaged irrevocably making him nothing but the debris of a cruel war. Alice had called it a slow death. And what had she said about me? I didn’t look like “the runaway sort.” Was she right or was that the other me? The spent and rusted me.

  I turned the key in the ignition and released the handbrake, but as I reached the exit I pulled up and took a deep breath, because I realised quite suddenly that I did have a choice. My future was in my own hands and I felt a peace coming over me, a moment of complete clarity. I reached forward and cancelled the ‘previous destination’ on the sat nav, then typed in the name of the place I really wanted to go to instead.

  As I arrived at the edge of the Cotswolds, a brooding sky sat darkly on the horizon, threatening a storm and trees were shivering in the wind. I felt a moment of absolute fear and a tremor of guilt ran right through me but, as I breached the top of the hill where the chequerboard fields of the valley lay before me, a bright shaft of sunlight emerged from behind the iron-grey clouds and lit up the road in front of me, bright as gold.

  Epilogue

  The great hulk of the Gray Ghost was waiting in the docks, towering above us all. I’d never seen a ship like her and down below, in the shadows and crammed into every square foot of the dockside were, in their countless thousands, GIs in worn and dirty ochre uniforms. They were playing cards, throwing dice, smoking, laughing, relieved it was finally all over. They were on their way home, at long last, to the people they loved.

  I observed them from a distance, an invisible watcher, set apart as I was in my suit and tie. Relief was writ large upon the face of every man but, in the midst of them, in the gaps between uniformed limbs and piles of worn out kitbags, I saw the faces of those who suffered like me. The bloodshot eye, the trembling hand, or the wary haunted look I recognised in myself.

  We blended into the masses with nothing physical to give us away and we were, all of us, individually, trying to disguise our pain and erase the torture of our memories.

  It was going to be a long road, but we had to face the future and believe that one day, on some dim and distant horizon, we would come to know ourselves once again.

  Acknowledgements

  As a writer, you hope that people might like your first novel, but it’s impossible to predict how it will be received by its readers, so The Seven Letters being so very successful has been tremendously rewarding for me. I have saved every kind comment, read and re-read each treasured review and I have been very honoured to hear that the book has so many loyal fans.

  There were highs and lows. I had moments of great joy and soaring hopes that were equalled by deep disappointment and dreams that didn’t quite come true, but throughout the whole experience I learned a lot.

  My husband Paul supported me to the full and without him, neither of my books would be published. Sarah Fitzgerald listened, advised and cheered me on as only a true friend can. Nina Smith showered me with her experience and insider knowledge and Annette Rainbow picked me up, dusted me down and set me off again on many an occasion. Thanks go to Liz Ringrose for moral support. For those special words of praise for the book that meant so much to me I must thank my great friend, Oggie Arathoon.

  The Madhatter Bookshop in beautiful Burford deserves special mention for not only getting behind The Seven Letters but selling countless copies and championing it right from the outset. The independent bookshop is king and this is one of the very special ones.

  So many people helped me with research for this book: Nancy and Ken James, Robert Waller, Ingram Murray, Dr Bill Larkworthy and Françoise Jellis, to name but a few. Also there were the many people of Paris who, often although completely bewildered, answered many an author question with such unceasing grace.

  My readers Mike, Nina, Liz, Sarah and Mandy are owed special thanks for giving The Slow Death of Maxwell Carrick the green light. Your comments mean the world to me.

  I must thank Troubador Publishing for being so brilliant. Jeremy, Stephanie, Rosie and Alexa have been wonderful to work with and I should also give Chelsea a mention for the two amazing cover designs that have received so many plaudits. Thank you too to Morgen Bailey for the copy editing.

  And finally, to my readers, bloggers and reviewers you have given me so much support and I appreciate everything you have done for me, truly. I hope I have brought you another novel that you will cherish as much as The Seven Letters.

  Jan Harvey

  About the Author

  Jan Harvey has made numerous trips to Paris to research her books. The City of Lights has been a source of inspiration for her and provided her with many an adventure.

  Jan is also an artist, working in acrylics, watercolour and glass. Her artwork has been sold worldwide.

  In her spare time, Jan enjoys listening to jazz, walking her flat-coated retriever, Byron, who is every inch as naughty as Scooter, and watching old black and white films.

  To receive updates about Jan, please do visit her website and follow her on Facebook – she loves to hear from her readers.

  www.janharveyauthor.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorTheSevenLetters

  Book Group Questions

  Carrick suffers from PTSD and possibly a head injury. Does this make him an unreliable narrator, or was he telling the truth?

  What were Cécile Roussell’s motivations for her actions?

  What did you make of this sentence: ‘A small hand, possibly that of a child, fiddled with the catch then withdrew inside.’

  Why did Cécile tell her neighbour to let Laurent Ducas into her apartment?

  If you were Martha, would you have stayed or would you have left?

  If you enjoyed The Slow Death of Maxwell Carrick you will probably want to read The Seven Letters and you can buy a signed copy directly from the author at:

  www.janharveyauthor.com

  Book club notes are available there too.