A Murder in Mayfair (4 page)

“It is.”

“You're right, you know. There's nothing to hope for. It's a pity the Good Lord if He exists didn't make the physical decay go along with the mental one, so the agony wasn't prolonged. But there you are—He didn't.”

George always spoke respectfully of God, in case He existed.

“I hate seeing him there. It's as if he was stranded and unhappy in a foreign country,” I said. “Dad was such a home person—always there, either in the house or pottering around the garden. It's like a ghost house now.”

“It's the same for me when I walk past and see the garden,” said George. “That's where I saw him first.”

“I know. You brought him a cutting.”

“That were a day or two later. I first saw him the day you all moved here, with the Pickford van in the street and your dad supervising the men. I didn't guess what mates we were going to be. But the next day I spoke to him in the garden. It was a bit overgrown, like it is now, and your dad never liked mess. So I leaned on the fence and we had a bit of a natter. I liked him at once, but with your dad—and your mam, too—you only got close step by step.”

“Mum and I were up here by then?”

“Oh yes. We'd only been talking for a few minutes and you started crying in the house. Your dad excused himself and ran inside. I thought to myself: ‘You're a new father, for all you look middle-aged and older than I am meself.' ”

“Did you see me then?”

“No, I didn't catch sight of the mighty morsel that you were till some days later. That's when I first met your mam. I called with a cutting from my garden for their garden-—I used to like to do that with new people in the area, as you know, Colin; it gave us a link, a talking-point. Of course with your dad and mam it grew into something much more than that. Anyway, your father was out, and your mother was rather shy, as she always was, but welcoming for all that. You were in your pram in the hall, and as soon as you decided to have a bellow she was there, and taking you up in her arms, and behaving as if she thought your last minutes were come.”

“Mum always was overprotective.”

“Terribly. I gave her advice—our Ray was five by then, and we'd been through it all before him with the two elder ones, as you know, so we were quite relaxed about it all. Over the years she improved, gave you plenty of freedom, though it went against the grain as I'm sure you grew to realize. If she could have had you within sight for twenty-four hours of the day that's what Elizabeth would have liked. But there—she was a
sensible woman, and she saw it wouldn't do. And of course when I first saw you, you were no age. It's natural to be overprotective of a new baby.”

“How old was I?”

“They said three weeks, but I'd have guessed less.”

At that point he looked up, and saw something in my face.

“Sorry for all these questions,” I said hurriedly. “I suppose it's natural, seeing Dad in his present state, wanting to go back to the beginning.”

He digested this while pouring us both second cups of tea.

“Nay, lad, don't treat me like a goobie,” he said at last. “You've been coming to see your dad at the Ivies these last six months, and dropping in on me afterward as often as not, but we haven't had any of these trips down Memory Lane. Come clean, Colin. What is it has sparked all this off?”

So I swore him to secrecy (which was unnecessary) and told him. George took his time before he responded.

“I always like the simple explanation, at least until it becomes impossible to hold it any longer. I think somebody's got the idea you're getting too big for your boots—not that you
are,
Colin, don't get me wrong. Or maybe this someone thinks there's a danger of it, and you ought to be warned.”

“In that case they should have sent messages to all the new ministers. We're all facing the same moral dangers, and some of us are outgrowing our boots at double-quick speed. But I've not heard of any other cards.”

“Mebbe them as receive them kept quiet about them because they're too sensible to take it as seriously as you do, lad—have you thought of that?”

“I'll keep it in mind as a possibility,” I said, grinning. He grinned back. We understood each other perfectly, George and I—in some ways better than my father and me, because we were on the same political wavelength. When I was in my teens
we would often go off on long tramps around the hills and moors of West and North Yorkshire, sometimes talking, sometimes companionably silent. My father had shown no jealousy about this. George Eakin was one person he trusted absolutely.

“You said I looked less than three weeks old,” I said—and George sighed, because he'd have preferred to let the thing drop entirely. “It seems odd to move with a baby that young.”

“Probably they had no choice. Your dad was moving to a new job, remember.”

I pursed my lips skeptically.

“He was high up in the Milton Council planning offices. Surely they'd have given him a few weeks' leeway?”

“He could have wanted to make a new start: new baby, new job, new part of the country to live in . . . I'd have to admit there was a bit of comment at the time: the neighbors wondered why she didn't stay behind with friends or relatives, then come up when the baby—you—was a little bit older.”

“I never heard of any relatives or friends back in the Southampton area. It was as if they made a clean break.”

“I admit they never talked about anyone close, or had anyone to stay. There again, even if there was anyone your mam could have stayed with, a middle-aged couple with a longed-for new baby—and you were that, lad, that I do know—would probably want to share the first few weeks of his life, be together for it.”

“I'm sure they did. But I bet they could have shared it back in Southampton if they'd really wanted to.” Something he had said earlier had struck me, and I went back to it. “I think you hit the nail on the head when you said new baby, new job, new part of the country. The question is why? If—”

“Aye, lad, you don't have to spell it out. I'm not so failing in my mind that I don't get your drift.”

“If,” I went on, remorseless in the face of his disgust, “I hadn't been born to them, if I had been acquired by them in some
unofficial, even illegal, form of adoption, then they would have
needed
to make a completely clean break.”

George Eakin nodded.

“And would it make any difference to your feelings for them if that's what did happen?”

“No, I've thought about that. No difference at all.”

“Then why are you mithering and worriting about it?” he said, not concealing his exasperation. “Let sleeping dogs lie—sleeping demons, more like.”

“If I'm right about the postcard the demons are not lying anyway. They're rearing up and making their presence felt.”

George considered this in his habitual measured way.

“Colin, you've had your photo in the papers, been on telly when the poll at Milton was announced, before long you'll be interviewed about this and that, and your face will go into houses up and down the country. You have a pretty individual face—not the standard article. What if the poor girl who gave you up as a baby, maybe for money, sees you, recognizes herself or your father in you, and says, ‘That's my child, grown up.' Do you think it would add to her happiness? Do you think if she made herself known to you that you would take the time or trouble to form any kind of relationship with her that would mean anything to her or to you?”

That I did have to think about.

“At the moment probably no.”

“Then forget about it, lad. The way you're going can't possibly lead to happiness, and most likely would lead to pain. Pain probably for you, almost certainly for her.”

I thought about that for a time, and was forced to agree.

“You're right, George. I'll forget about it.”

So we talked about other things, and eventually I went home, back to the semidetached I grew up in, back to sleep in my own bedroom, with the Roald Dahl books on the bookshelves,
along with my old school textbooks, and the classic novels I'd studied for exams with all my scrawled notes in the margins, and the old exercise books with the essays I'd written in them. The detritus of a life that had seemed crowned with hope and success, but which suddenly seemed empty. Who was I? Where had I come from? Why was I now, with my father senile, left without relatives, without anybody with links to the past who could tell me how I had come into the world?

I would forget about it, I had said to George. But I now made the mental proviso: if I am allowed to forget about it. And something in me hoped I would not be.

 • • • 

It was early afternoon when I got back to my Pimlico flat, and I settled into a session at my ministerial papers. It was about seven o'clock when I had a surprising phone call.

“Colin Pinnock speaking.”

“Hello, Colin.”

“Susan!”

Suddenly she was there before me, the wide-spaced eyes, the thick auburn hair forming a flaming halo, the mouth set in a slightly skeptical expression. I knew from just the two words that she would be skeptical that night.

“I'm just ringing to congratulate you on your new greatness.”

“Don't give me that line. I'm as lowly a drudge as any government could employ.”

“Hmm. You sound pretty pleased with yourself. I thought of ringing last week, but I knew you'd be busy and . . . well, somehow it seemed to look bad.”

“It wouldn't have. We're still friends, aren't we?”

“I suppose so. It's just that we're friends who haven't seen each other or exchanged a word since we split up.”

“No, I suppose we haven't.” I was unable to keep the surprise out of my voice, because I really hadn't realized. She obviously
had. “I suppose as usual it's really a matter of me getting totally caught up politically.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” said Susan dryly.

“By the way, my dad thinks we're still together. Asks about you every time I go to see him.”

“Really? I suppose that means he's getting worse.”

“Yes. Quite quickly. He's in a nursing home, and just about knows me. It seems better not to try to tell him about us. Not that he'd take it in if I did.”

“Sad. I always liked him.”

“I know. And he you. . . . To me he'll always be my dad.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Sorry, I was thinking aloud. It's . . . something that's come up. It's been suggested I was adopted, maybe illegally.”

Susan practically brayed at me.

“For God's sake! ‘It's been suggested!' You sound like a government minister already.”

“I am a government minister already. All right, then: I got a postcard saying ‘WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?'”

“Good question. Obviously from someone who thinks you're beginning to sound like a pompous prat. I thought the same a moment or two ago.”

“I got it on the day I got the Education job.”

“Oh . . . still, they could have been following you during the election. Was likely victory and possible government position making you swell like a bullfrog? All right, don't answer that. Maybe it was one of the people standing against you wrote the card, wanting to get a dig in. Everyone knew it was going to be a landslide, but if it hadn't been the Tories and the Liberal Democrats would both have been in with a chance in the Milton seat.”

“Hmmm. I'll keep the possibility in mind.”

“Though actually, when I come to think about it . . .”

“Yes?”

“It always struck me that physically you had not the slightest resemblance to your father or your mother.”

“That's not unusual.”

“No. But you have such a strongly marked face: thick eyebrows, strong chin, somehow
assertive
in the effect you make. Whereas your father's was a quiet, retiring type of face, in spite of the cragginess. And your mother, even in old age, was sweetly pretty.”

“I never thought I resembled them as a person either.”

“No. Too hail-fellow, too assured and emphatic.”

“I love your command of English, but I can think of nicer adjectives for myself.”

I could hear Susan thinking. We really know each other very well by now.

“Colin, if you ever want any digging done about yourself, just say the word. Either I can do it myself, or I could find someone who would do it for you without charging the earth. You know I'm interested in demographic change in the postwar period, particularly relocation.”

“You mean people moving. Now who's sounding like a pompous prat? At least you're not telling me to let it alone.”

“When did that ever stop you doing what you want to do?”

“Thanks anyway, Susan. I may well get in touch.”

“I could tell you were worried, and wanted to talk. Otherwise you'd never have said that about he'd always be your dad.”

She knew me quite as well as I knew her, or better. She knew I hadn't been thinking aloud, but had dropped it into the conversation deliberately. Susan is a historian specializing in the postwar period, with a bias in favor of the view that changes of government generally made no difference at all to ordinary people's lives. That hadn't helped when I spent on political
matters most of the time I should have spent with her. I stood for a moment when I'd put the phone down, wondering whether I welcomed her reappearance in my life, and deciding that on this semiprofessional level I did welcome it, but it didn't change the fact that I was not interested in getting into a relationship that was a sort of spare-time recreation, coming a bad second to my job.

I often think I have a lot of rather old-fashioned Puritan attitudes, probably inherited or acquired from my father.