Reckless (53 page)

‘I’ve found that too,’ said Rupert. ‘Someone goes away, and you realise how much you miss them.’

‘I suppose I could go on a buying trip,’ said Hugo, not sounding at all eager.

‘Then when you come back,’ said Rupert, ‘it all seems much simpler. You’ve found out how you feel. You just have to say, “Here I am.”’

Mary’s hand dropped down by her side. Rupert’s hand followed. Her hand found his hand and held it. That was all, but it was everything. He sat still, wanting never to move again.

‘Oh, I know how I feel all right,’ said Hugo. ‘I just can’t see any way out of this that doesn’t create a godawful mess.’

He lowered his hands from his face and gazed at them ruefully.

‘This must be such a bore for you.’

‘You’re the one having the rough time,’ said Rupert.

‘I suppose I am,’ said Hugo. ‘But at the same time, I’m walking on air. She loves me. You’ve no idea what that makes me feel.’

‘You feel everything’s come right at last,’ said Rupert, holding Mary’s hand in his.

‘Yes.’

‘You feel you can be the person you really are for the first time.’

‘That’s just how it is.’

‘You feel your life has just begun.’

Hugo shook his head, amazed.

‘You really do understand! How can I say no to a chance like this? It would be like saying no to life itself. It would be like choosing death over life. We’re not made to do that. We’re made to live.’

His eyes shone.

‘I’m so glad you came over, Rupert.’

‘Well, I really came to see Mary. To hear about her time in Ireland. But I should be going, now.’

‘I’ll walk a little way with you if you like,’ Mary said. ‘Tell you all the news.’

Rupert rose from the table. Hugo reached across and clasped his hand.

‘You’re a good friend,’ he said.

Mary put on her coat and walked with Rupert down the
street. For a little while they walked apart and in silence, in case anyone was watching from the windows. Then Rupert took her hand in his, and they walked a little way hand in hand. In deep shadows, where a tree hid the light of the street lamp, they came to a stop and he took her in his arms and they kissed.

‘My first kiss,’ she said.

Then they kissed again, long and slow, in the dark beneath the tree.

The little red MG climbed the winding road out of the valley, up onto the high Downland. It was a windy day, the sky streaming with clouds in motion, grey against grey. Pamela said nothing as they drove. Ahead was the dark bulk of the Beachy Head Hotel.

‘Do you want me to park by the hotel?’ said Simon Shuttle-worth.

‘Yes,’ said Pamela.

They got out and walked in the wind across the road, over the close-grazed grass, towards the cliff edge. There was no one else to be seen. Beyond the cliff stretched the sea, its various shades of sullen grey merging beyond the blurred horizon into the grey of the sky.

Pamela tied her flapping scarf tighter round her throat.

‘Why are we here?’ said Simon.

‘Because,’ said Pamela.

She didn’t know why she’d come herself. Maybe she just needed distraction. She was waiting.

They came up to a low brick structure built near the cliff edge. Simon found a weather-stained plaque on one outer wall.

‘The Dieppe Raid,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t your father on that? Wasn’t that where he won his VC?’

Pamela stood beside him and read the inscription.

This plaque also commemorates the epic Dieppe Raid in 1942, which was partly controlled from the radar station on this headland. Beachy Head is once more in peace. But the devotion and patriotism of those who operated on this stretch of Downland will not be forgotten.

‘What if we want to forget?’ said Pamela.

‘You wouldn’t want to forget your own father,’ said Simon.

‘I might.’

She walked away from him, moving fast along the cliff edge. The wind was coming off the sea, but even so it was scary.

‘Do be careful!’ Simon called.

She didn’t answer.

She was angry at herself for coming to Beachy Head. It certainly wasn’t an act of filial piety. She came to a stop, close enough to the edge to see the cliff face, and the lighthouse far below, tiny as a toy. Did it take courage to keep walking?

Still the war hero. Still storming that fatal beach.

It felt to her like cowardice, not courage. It was a kind of giving up, the very worst kind. She knew then that she had come to Beachy Head because she wanted to forgive him, but she couldn’t.

The unhappiness is in me. Your bequest to me, Daddy.

Then quite quickly the darkness closed in round her. Why do I fool myself? What am I waiting for? There’s no hope in the world, and no joy. Alone, with ceaseless effort, we toil onwards to nothing.

‘No!’

She cried out loud, striking with her arms against the darkness.
Fight! she told herself. Fight! Don’t let them take it from you!

But who were they, who so threatened her? And what was it that she defended so fiercely? Some stubborn core self that would not give in. This was no philosophy. This was the kick of the legs in deep water when the body refuses to drown. Instinct at its most primitive, that commands, ‘Do anything, hurt anyone, abandon everyone, but live!’

And can this be done alone?

She found she was weeping. The wind on her face made the tears cold against her skin.

Simon appeared before her, looking wretched.

‘What is it, Pammy? Please tell me.’

She shook her head, turned away. There was the fatal edge: so close, so easy.

He took her hand. Without meaning to, she went into his arms. He held her tight, and for a few moments she allowed herself to be grateful for his solidity, his ordinariness.

‘I think we should go back,’ he said.

She let him lead her back to the car, like a docile child. There was nothing more to do here. In the car, he glanced at her as he drove.

‘What was all that about?’

She shook her head. She didn’t want to explain.

‘I’ve never seen you cry before,’ he said.

‘It was private,’ she said.

‘Yes. Of course. Sorry.’

The wind vibrated the hood of the car over their heads, making a steady thrumming sound.

‘I’ve been promoted,’ he said. ‘From January I’ll be getting over three thousand pounds a year.’

She said nothing.

‘I know that’s boring,’ he said, ‘but it means a lot to me.’

‘It’s not boring,’ she said. ‘Money’s important.’

‘Well, it is.’

They drove on, past the Golden Galleon, up the rising road into Seaford.

‘I expect this is completely stupid,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to say it anyway. You’ve always been the only girl for me, Pammy. Might you ever, not now of course, sometime in the future, think of marrying me?’

‘Oh, Simon.’

She was touched and saddened at the same time. He seemed so infinitely far away. But wouldn’t that be the same with anyone? Today it seemed to her impossible that any two people could find happiness together. There were only arrangements. Alliances against the loneliness.

‘You don’t need to answer,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know I asked. To know I’m there for you.’

He could hardly have said anything more perfect for her current mood. And why not Simon? she thought. He was decent, he was solvent. Marry Simon and become a country solicitor’s wife. Where was the shame in that?

And where the glory?

Of course she knew it was out of the question. That stubborn core self that wouldn’t die was also ambitious. She was still ascending that crowded staircase, approaching the moment of her entrée, when all eyes would be on her, and there would be applause.

She was still waiting.

‘I don’t want to marry anyone right now,’ she said. ‘Ask me again in five years.’

‘Can we cut the difference and say two?’

‘I can’t stop you asking,’ she said.

They had now reached Edenfield. He drove up the side lane to River Farm.

‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ he said, ‘but if you hadn’t
cried up there on the cliffs, I’d never have got up the nerve to say what I said.’

‘Thank you for taking me, Simon.’

She kissed his cheek.

‘When can I see you again, Pammy?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Not for a while. I’m going away.’ He looked crestfallen.

‘Call me when you’re back.’

Off he drove, a young middle-aged man in a red sports car with his life laid out before him. With his life already over.

Pamela went into the house.

It was not true that she was going away. She had nowhere to go. She had only this giant need to go – somewhere, anywhere. The longing for her life to begin.

Her mother called out from the study.

‘Pammy, darling, Hugo phoned for you. About half an hour ago. He said he’d call back.’

Pamela closed her eyes and lowered her head. She drew a long deep breath. Eight days. She had almost given up. But now everything was going to be all right after all. The waiting had come to an end.

She sat by the phone so she could be the one to answer it when it rang. She felt calm and still and right.

When it rang she let it go for two rings, and then picked up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Is that you, Pamela?’

‘Yes. It’s me.’

This is a novel, and the central characters are fictional, but the historical details are as accurate as I’ve been able to make them. Actions and opinions ascribed to historical characters – McGeorge Bundy, Oleg Troyanovsky, Mountbatten, Macmillan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and others – are all sourced from contemporary accounts. Ivanov and his attempts to create a ‘back channel’ with the help of Stephen Ward are real, though Rupert Blundell’s involvement is of course fictional. The world of Stephen Ward in the novel is based closely on what is known of the reality.

In the months following the period described in the novel, a political and social scandal overtook many of its real-life protagonists. In June 1963 the Minister of War, John Profumo, admitted that he had had a brief liaison over a year earlier with Christine Keeler, a known associate of the Russian spy, Ivanov. Profumo resigned in disgrace. The press began to carry stories of orgies rumoured to have taken place at the Astor estate of Cliveden. Senior members of the establishment were implicated. Police hunted in vain for evidence of criminal acts. Appalled and fascinated, the British public called for the guilty men to be punished. But who was to blame? The newspapers, the establishment, and the police all required a focus for their anger and revulsion. They picked Stephen Ward.

In July 1963 Stephen Ward was put on trial for living on immoral earnings. The police applied pressure on Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies, and a number of known prostitutes to testify that Ward had procured their sexual services for money. The prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones, who had unsuccessfully prosecuted
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
two years earlier, described Ward and his world as ‘the very depths of lechery and depravity, prostitution, promiscuity and perversion.’

Ward’s many friends, terrified by the bad publicity, deserted him. Faced by the mass of fabricated evidence, Stephen Ward realised the case would go against him. His career was over. On July 23, 1963, he killed himself.

In October 1963 Harold Macmillan, tarnished by the crisis, resigned as prime minister. In November 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In October 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was forced from power, in part because of the catastrophic failure of his Cuban gamble.

The secrecy surrounding the deal that defused the Cuban missile crisis created the impression that President Kennedy had won a victory by unwavering firmness. ‘By keeping to ourselves the assurance on the Jupiters,’ wrote McGeorge Bundy in 1988, ‘we misled our colleagues, our countrymen, our successors and our allies. We allowed them to believe that nothing responsive had been offered.’ This sent a message to the American people that a confrontational policy was more likely to succeed than one of diplomatic negotiation. This myth has proved enduring.

Today the nine countries known to possess nuclear weapons hold around twenty thousand warheads, with a total destructive power of over six thousand megatons, or six billion tons of TNT. For comparison, the destructive power of all the bombs dropped in World War Two is under three megatons.

All these countries – the United States, Russia, the United
Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – describe their nuclear arsenals as defensive. All say they continue to possess such devastating destructive power for the purposes of deterrence, not for actual use.

The story of Mary Brennan and her visions has its origins in the true story of Conchita Gonzalez. In 1961, at the age of twelve, Conchita and three other children saw visions of the Virgin Mary near the village of Garabandal, in northern Spain. Garabandal subsequently became, and remains, a place of pilgrimage. In my days as a documentary producer for the BBC I made a film about Conchita, who by then was living on Long Island with her husband, the owner of a pizza restaurant, and her children. I have never forgotten her honesty, her humility, and her beauty. I have no reason to suppose that, like my fictional character, she had come to doubt her visions; but she had certainly sought to escape the fame and pressures of being a visionary.

I’m indebted to my wife, the social historian Virginia Nicholson, who has been working on her own book about the experiences of women in the 1950s as I’ve been writing my novel. Her researches have guided and informed me in countless ways. To give one small example: the incident at Mountbatten’s Irish retreat, Classiebawn, in which Mountbatten takes over Rupert Blundell’s car and controls his manoeuvre, reversing out of the castle yard, is lifted from a memoir Virginia stumbled on in the course of her
own researches. I love this glimpse of Mountbatten’s character. Real life is always so much richer than anything I can imagine.

I’m also indebted to Janet Lovegrove for her precise memories of fashion in 1962.

Readers may like to know that some of the characters in this novel have appeared in my earlier novel,
Motherland
, set in the years 1942–1950. Pamela Avenell is born in this book, and reaches the age of seven, and sees Hugo Caulder kissing her mother. Larry and Kitty Cornford’s love affair is the heart of that novel. Lord Mountbatten appears as a minor character, as do Rupert Blundell and his sister Geraldine.