A Place Of Strangers (16 page)

‘In war, a man’s courage is his capital... but he’s always
spending. Edward was broke in every sense yet they still accused him of
cowardice.’

‘But he’d been a good man till then. How could they do that
to him?’

‘I had to make a report, you see. I felt bad about it but
he’d endangered us all so he was up before a court martial charged with lacking
moral fibre.’

‘What a very English way of putting it.’

‘They’d have called it shell shock back in the Great War but
our top brass thought that if the men started getting out of combat duties by
having breakdowns, it’d spread like a contagion and there’d be no one left to
fight the air war.’

‘So he had to be punished, made an example of?’

‘And very publicly... stripped of his rank and put to
shovelling coal in the boiler house.’

‘Not just treated like a coward but like a criminal, too?’

‘Exactly. Edward wasn’t seen as top drawer, you see, not
from a class where courage was a matter of breeding and character. Those of us
who actually flew aeroplanes and not desks knew this to be utter rot, of
course.’

*

Bea tried to open her eyes beneath the bright hospital
lights. She felt her hand being lifted and put to the lips of a visitor. Then
she was kissed on both cheeks and her untidy hair pushed back tenderly from her
forehead by a lover’s long, tapering fingers.

He had come back to her as she always knew he would.

Chapter Twenty Six

Evie was due to meet Phillip on Westminster Bridge. But her
disorganised husband would be late. He always was – academically brilliant but
unable to find soap in a sink. That was Phillip. They were never truly
compatible because his insecurities were even worse than hers. He kept phoning
her, still desperate for reconciliation after all these months. Everyone needs
hope and she had loved him – after a fashion – since Oxford. So Evie agreed to
marriage guidance sessions, if only to ease the final separation when it would
come. Not till then did she ever think she could tell McCall she had been
married.

Big Ben struck twelve. Tourists pointed, cameras clicked and
the city bustled by. She wondered about all the countless trysts and discreet
moments that would have begun on this bridge. Bea had stood here once... Bea
and the man with no name who looked so happy holding McCall, the child.

What was the story there? Maybe McCall better off not
knowing.

Phillip approached, waving with one hand and holding onto a
plastic shopping bag of history text books in the other. Evie smiled and they
hugged. Who wouldn’t be fond of such a shambles?

*

In the hours before dawn, Garth Hall had the feel of a
studio after the actors and technicians had gone but before the scene-shifters
came in to create a new reality. Sleep was not coming easily to McCall. Evie
called it brain whiz – the uncontrollable pinballing of fears and doubts in the
mind. He lay on the chesterfield in the drawing room, counting the minutes till
seven thirty when he knew Winnie Bishop would have had breakfast, maybe put
fresh flowers on David’s grave and be busy with housework. Then he drove to her
bungalow.

‘I need your help on something important, Mrs B.’

‘Today’s washing day young Francis so I’m busy this
morning.’

‘No, I understand but I need you to look at something. It
shouldn’t take long.’

McCall saw she was intrigued. He drove her back to Garth and
they went through the woods to the dacha where the Eumig and screen were
already set up.

‘This is all a bit mysterious. What’s it all about?’

‘You’ll see, Mrs B. Just watch this little bit of film.’

Then he played the footage of himself as a toddler with his
mother. Bea stood smiling in the garden of the McCall family home as young
McCall was handed to a dark-skinned man who laughed at the camera and put him
on his shoulders.

‘Who is that man holding me, Mrs B?’

‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘Because I think you know him.’

Mrs Bishop sat plucking the hem of her dress as she always
did to cover uncertainty. But she had not looked surprised at what she saw.

‘His name, Mrs B... what is it?’

‘He was a friend of the Wrenns, that’s all I know.’

‘Yes, but what was his name?’

‘I don’t rightly remember. There were so many people coming
here.’

‘OK, then what about his job... do you know what he did or
where he came from?’

‘This isn’t fair, Francis. It’s all a long time ago.’

‘But you’ve usually got such a good memory, Mrs B.’

‘For some things, yes.’

‘Then why not this?’

‘Like I’ve said before, leave people in peace. What’s done
is over.’

‘But this man obviously knew my mother... and he was at the
funeral so he’s still alive and I can talk to him about her if only I can find
out who he is.’

‘That’s as may be but I want to go home.’

If nothing else, it was interesting she did not tell him to
ask Bea. They drove back to her bungalow in silence. McCall regretted ambushing
her, making such a big deal out of it. Mrs Bishop turned to him as she unlocked
her front door.

‘You’ve had no breakfast, have you?’

She scrambled eggs and watched him eat as she always had.
They sat drinking tea, still saying nothing but smiling when their eyes met.
McCall thought he should go but she motioned him to stay where he was.

‘You see things when you work in other people’s places,
young Francis... you see things and hear things but it’s best to keep your
mouth shut in service.’

She looked out of her window, over the graveyard and the
trees of Garth Woods to where the big house stood beyond.

‘Your mum came up here on her own more than once... came
here when you was just little, before you came up here full time.’

‘I never knew this, Mrs B.’

‘Well, it’s true... on David’s memory, it’s as true as I sit
here.’

‘So you actually met my mother... talked to her?’

‘Many’s the time, yes.’

‘Tell me what she was like as a person.’

‘She had trouble at home, that was clear as day but a nice
enough little woman, only ordinary like the rest of us but a decent soul.’

‘What did she tell you about her family, where she came
from?’

‘No, nothing... she didn’t seem to have no people of her
own.’

‘And the man in the cine film... who was he, Mrs B?’

‘All I know is he was on the wireless a lot, reporting on
wars and such, like you.’

‘You mean for the BBC?

‘Like from places where you’ve been, yes.’

McCall could not understand her reluctance to tell him any
of this. Nothing she said could offend anyone. Yet she started ruching her skirt
again.

‘Is there something else about this man, Mrs B?’

‘Gossip, yes.’

‘What kind of gossip?’

‘About him and Mrs Wrenn.’

‘You mean they were having some sort of affair?’

‘I never said that. It wasn’t my business to know and I
never stuck my nose in.’

‘No but that’s what you meant, isn’t it?’

‘Always going away, she was. She’d get a phone call and
she’d be away.’

‘With this man?’

‘I don’t know who she went with or where she went but all as
I do know is that’s why you had to live at my house so much.’

*

McCall saw Bea naked once... in the room where he now stood,
about to play the burglar. At six years old, it had been the most confusing
sight he had ever seen.

He’d cut his finger so ran to the house for a plaster. All
the old lead pipes were gurgling so he knew she was emptying her bath. Some
primitive compulsion was at work and he found himself crouching on the step of
the maid’s stairs, peeping down the long landing. Part of him was playing a
made-up story about secrets and spies. Part of him wasn’t.

Bea came out of the bathroom and walked towards her bedroom.
She was completely undressed... just as something inside of him wanted her to
be. It felt naughty but he went to Bea’s door and stood watching her towelling
her glossy hair. As she did, so her breasts swayed above the inexplicable black
bib at the root of her soft white belly. Here was infinite strangeness,
compelling but beyond his understanding.

Bea looked up and smiled. She did not shout or make him feel
dirty but just pulled on her nylon stockings then selected her clothes from the
wardrobe and dressed for the day. No words passed between them. McCall
pretended concern for his cut finger which dripped little poppies of blood onto
Bea’s carpet.

So now he knew. She’d had an affair and betrayed Francis...
their Francis. She was no better than Helen.

Bea’s bureau was open but its hidden compartment wasn’t and
he had no idea how to spring the lock. So he stole through her other belongings
like a thief. He turned out every drawer, cupboard and closet and even the
pockets of her dresses and coats. There was nothing – not a scented envelope or
a coded note. He even checked the floorboards but none was lose enough to make
a hiding place.

How any of this would help him to find the truth about his
real family, he neither knew nor cared. It just got rid of some of his anger.

He was interrupted by someone knocking the porch door. It
was the rector’s wife who was also village correspondent for the Ludlow
Advertiser. She wanted to check Francis’s war record for an obituary. McCall
made her coffee and saw she had a list of mourners from the funeral.

‘Where’d you get those?’

‘We leave cards on the pews and people fill in their
details.’

McCall went down the names. All the old Whitehall spooks
were there – Evie, too. But no one whose name sounded foreign. The missing
mourner had not signed in.

*

Bea was a stubborn and awkward patient, much given to stick
banging and glaring at speech therapists and nurses. But they didn’t mind her
annoyance and frustration. It showed spirit, a will to fight the depression
that can overwhelm those who have suffered a stroke.

She was still grieving, not just for Francis but for the
person she once was and whose freedoms she had taken for granted. Yet after a
visit from an elderly man as smart and elegant as Bea herself, the
rehabilitation nurses saw improvements. He sat holding her hand, his head close
to hers. They heard him whispering in a silk-soft voice and saw the tears.
After he went, she was happier than they had ever seen her. The specialist
thought she might yet recover some speech. It seemed she had something to live
for.

Bea was propped up against her pillows when McCall visited.
A hairdresser had been in to wash and set her hair. She had make-up on, too.
Bea gave McCall a guarded, lop-sided smile and wrote him a message on her pad.
Go
home
, I. It would be a while before her mental grammar improved. Soon go.
McCall nodded encouragement.
Garth go, me
.

McCall felt rather ashamed after rummaging through
Bea’s possessions. It had been a sordid intrusion into her privacy, however
upset he was with her. Yet what he was about to do was more of the same.

He took out the four photographs she dropped on the
orchard lawn and laid them out to see her reaction... the Nazi soldiers, the
concentration camp victims, herself and her alleged lover. He watched closely.
The stroke may have twisted that once beautiful face but it could not rob the
truth from her eyes.

‘What is his name?’

Bea shook her head. If she had been unaware of what McCall
was really after before, she knew now.

‘I missed him at the funeral, Bea. I want to write and thank
him for coming. I thought he could be one of Francis’s old diplomat friends.’

She scowled and waved him out of the ward. McCall’s audience
was over. Bea turned her back and did not even watch him go.

*

Next morning, McCall received a registered parcel and a note
from Edgar Fewtrell.

I enjoyed our supper. Can we meet at my office next
Wednesday morning at 10? We can conclude the business I mentioned to you. The
enclosed sealed packet is from your guardian who left me instructions to post
it to you exactly a fortnight after his death. I have no idea what is in it so
I hope he has left some explanation of his own.

He hadn’t. Inside, McCall found four more reels of cine film
which Francis had labelled A, B, C, and D in red felt tip pen.

With them was a large black and white photograph of a
well-dressed, intelligent-looking man with a small swastika badge in his left
lapel. Beyond that, the package was empty. Francis never lacked a sense of
theatre.

McCall did what he knew he was meant to and hurried down to
the dacha. The first cassette was Super 8 with integral sound. McCall laced it
in and the screen showed a locked-off shot of Francis’s leather armchair by the
pot-bellied stove. Someone could be heard moving behind the tripod. Then
Francis walked into view and sat down. He looked at the camera, fiddling with
his glasses like a politician about to do an election broadcast – but in
gardening clothes and from a shed.

Bit awkward this, Mac... know you’ll understand,
though. Couple of things I want to get straight with you. First off, if we’d
been able to have a son, you’re just the sort of chap I’d have wanted... we had
some good times, didn’t we? A few larks and stories and I only wish I’d been
around more in the early days and we could’ve spent longer together. Anyway,
wasn’t to be. Drawn a veil over most of those times, now. Best thing, too...
not that anyone’s going to let a scribbler like you get wind of them.

I’ve not always been proud of some of the things I’ve
been involved in... bit late to make amends now, I know. But see what you can
make of these bits of home movies I’ve asked old Fewtrell to send onto you. I
had some others once upon a time but can’t seem to keep track of everything.
Still, you always liked a challenge and these’ll give you that, all right.

Steer clear of the Official Secrets Act if you can
and all those silly buggers in bowler hats who go round snooping. Never liked
them... anyway, that’s about it. Good luck in life, Mac... goodbye, little
friend.

Francis half smiled and began to rise out of his chair. He
was stopped by a final thought, one last little message.

Don’t forget me, Mac... will you ?
I’ve always tried
to do my best. Remember me...

He moved out of frame to switch off the camera. McCall
stayed where he was, unable to see anything else, anyway.