The Stars’ Tennis Balls (20 page)

‘What was Othello’s crime? He was big, handsome and successful. And he had Desdemona.’

‘But Rufus had never even set
eyes
on Portia. Ashley met her the same day that I did, but
Ashley
… I mean, there were always rumours that he might be, you know, queer …
not
that that means I agree with you when you said that he might be in love with me,’ Ned added quickly. ‘After all, he can’t have loved me and hated me at the same time.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten all that Catullus I once tried to ram into your head,’ said Babe sorrowfully.

‘Odi et amo,
yes I know. And if you’re trying to tell me that Portia hated me too then I’ll just walk away and never talk to you again. I
know
that isn’t true. But if…’ Ned’s voice trailed away and he stared down at the table, thinking furiously.

‘An idea taking shape, is it?’ Babe asked after a long pause. ‘If there were an art to find the mind’s construction in the face, then I would say you were thinking imponderable thoughts and that light was beginning to break.’

‘Gordon.
Gordon Fendeman.’ Ned drew the name out slowly. ‘Portia’s cousin. If I think very hard … the way they were when I met them at the airport. They’d been on holiday together and it irritated me the way he stood next to her. I wasn’t jealous exactly, but I remember that I didn’t like it. It made me uncomfortable. And Portia told me she had never read my last postcard to her because Gordon had ruined it. Accidentally, she said, but maybe not.’

Babe listened carefully to everything Ned had to say about Gordon.

‘Let’s see if I’ve got this clear,’ he said. ‘Ashley and Gordon went off together to look at the House of Commons the day you got back from Scotland and Portia and Gordon got back from Italy?’

‘That’s right, I remember thinking that it would be nice for Gordon to see the Mother of Parliaments.’

‘Dear me, I hope you didn’t actually
say
that?’ Babe smothered a smile.

‘And just what exactly would be wrong with that?’

‘Just a
tiny
bit pompous perhaps?’

‘Well, perhaps…’ Ned smiled too. ‘Anyway, the point is that later, when Portia and I were still…, when we were still upstairs making love, they came back.’ Ned struck the table again. ‘God, that must be it! That must be it!’

‘Gordon and Ashley came back?’

‘Yes, but with Rufus. Don’t you see? Ashley must always have been going to meet up with him in a pub somewhere. He and Rufus were thick as thieves. Rufus came down to London from Scotland on the same train as me. Ashley took Gordon off to meet Rufus in a pub and they all came back while Portia and I were still upstairs.

‘What did they say?’

‘It was only for a moment. Ashley said … what did he say? Said there was something he had to fetch. He called up to me. “You young people enjoy yourselves…“ those were his exact words. And Babe, listen to this! My jacket was hanging on the banister in the hallway downstairs. Jesus, they must have sat there in the pub and planned it all. They even knew where I was going! They knew I was going to Knightsbridge with Portia to…’

‘Calm down, Ned. Calm down.’

‘Can’t you just picture them sitting there, getting tanked up around a pub table and moaning about Ned bloody Maddstone and how they’d like to see him come crashing down? That’s when they decided to ruin my life. All they had to do was make an anonymous phone call to the police. And they laughed as they planted the stuff in my jacket. “You young people enjoy yourselves!” Those are the words that Ashley called up and I heard Rufus and Gordon smothering their giggles. I remember feeling touched and proud. I thought my friends were giggling like naughty schoolboys at the thought of me and Portia upstairs and I was proud. But they were laughing because they knew I was about to be destroyed. And I’ll tell you something else! They
watched it all happen!’
Both Ned’s legs were jogging up and down uncontrollably as revelation after revelation poured into his head. ‘I distinctly remember laughter from the doorway opposite as the police pushed me into their car. They destroyed me and they
laughed.’

Ned’s face was white and spittle creamed at the corners of his mouth as it did on the lips of some of the real lunatics they saw every day. Babe leaned forward to touch his arm. ‘It’s all right, my friend. It’s all right. Take it slowly. You
may
have landed on the truth here

‘Of course I have! That’s
it!
How in hell could I not have seen it before?’

‘You
know
how you didn’t see it before. I told you. You didn’t see it before, because you were not looking clearly. Look clearly now. Four schoolboys, a stupid prank played on one them, that is what you are talking about. Nasty perhaps, certainly nasty, but don’t allow yourself – ‘

‘They
laughed,
Babe! They laughed at me.’

Martin’s voice intruded on them. ‘What exactly is going on here? You two having some kind of lover’s quarrel?’

Ned almost betrayed his understanding of Swedish by leaping in with an angry retort, but Babe beat him to it.

‘Not a quarrel, Martin… can’t remember the numbers.

Can’t remember the numbers,’ he said in a dazed mumble, staring down at the invisible backgammon board.

‘You two,’ said Martin in English, ‘both crazy. Everyone here crazy,’ he spread his arms to include the room, ‘but you two most crazy of all. Is time now you go to rooms. Tomorrow shall be an inspection. Shave in the morning, be behaving well.’

Ned did not sleep that night. Around in his head revolved three laughing faces. Fendeman, Garland and Cade. The names repeated in his mind like the rhythm of a train or the thunder of hooves on a racetrack.

Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade.

Babe also lay awake that night, and for many subsequent nights. He had detected a change in Ned that worried him.

‘I don’t like to see you thrashing your engine like this,’ he would say. ‘There is nowhere to take it. It can only burn you up.

Ned seemed to take no notice and retreated more and more into the past where he relived his final days in the world over and over, hearing again each syllable that had been spoken to him by Fendeman, Garland and Cade, seeing once more in his mind’s eye every glance and gesture they made. He had built up a picture of himself through their eyes.

He saw from Rufus Cade’s point of view an image of Ned the arrogant, Ned the cocky, Ned the careless and vain. Every sweet smile, every polite mumbled apology seemed to him now an obvious cause of resentment.

Ned understood how to Ashley he must have represented everything assured, everything attractive, everything unattainably privileged, perfect and graceful. Even the act of securing him summer employment as his father’s assistant could appear patronising and offensive.

Gordon too, arriving in a foreign land, would naturally look upon Ned Maddstone as the living image of all that was remote, English, gentile and alien. To see his cousin Portia ignore him in her obsession with a boy so opposite to himself could certainly drive Gordon to hatred.

Everything Ned had and was he could now interpret as repugnant, ugly, oppressive and obscene. Everything in and of him – the V-neck cricket sweaters, the flopping fringe of hair, the rueful smiles and pretty eyes, the lazy athleticism, the delicate skin and peachy blush, the voice, accent, manner and gait – all of Ned Maddstone stood as a monument that those of spirit would cry out to despoil.

Yet how dared they? How dared they not see that Ned had been unaware of all this? How dared they not understand that he was blamelessly unimaginative, gentle and innocent? Whatever arrogance he may have displayed, Ned would never in those days have assumed that his feelings had primacy over those of others. That they could be so confident in their interpretation of him was an arrogance way beyond anything he had been capable of. They hid their rage. They pretended to like him. They coldly planned to disgrace him in the eyes of his father and his lover, as if he had no emotional life, no point of view and no right to happiness of his own. That they could treat him as a symbol without life or capacity for pain marked them down as evil beyond imagining. There did not exist the faintest possibility that Ned could ever forgive them.

Fendeman, Garland and Cade. Fendeman, Garland and Cade.

‘I have been trying to apply the same thinking to what happened after my arrest,’ he said to Babe one morning, while Babe sketched a circuit diagram.

‘Let’s just concentrate on what we’re doing, shall we? Have you an idea what it is yet?’

‘It’s a hi-fl amplifier circuit.’

Babe shook his head. ‘You’re not trying. Count the capacitors.’

‘An electronic calculator. A central heating thermostat. Controls for an automatic milking parlour. Who cares? Babe, we’ve got this far, we’ve got to go further. I’m right about everything that happened up to my arrival at the police station, I know it. Those three planned my arrest. But they knew nothing about the letter. I need to understand what happened next.’

Babe sighed and put down his pen. ‘A burglar alarm, and such an elegant one too,’ he said, folding the diagram in half. ‘Here, you can study it later. I shall be asking you questions about it another time.’

Ned took it impatiently. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Another time.

‘Tell me once more,’ said Babe. ‘You were taken by a man called Oliver Delft to a house in the country. You sat in the kitchen and explained to him how you came by the envelope and its incriminating code words. You are there again now. Picture it. Feel yourself there, Delft in front of you with a glass of wine, you at the table with your carton of milk.’

Ned closed his eyes and tried to recall the dialogue.

‘… you’ll be home before the
News at Ten
… Don’t mind a tape-recorder do you? Tell me more about your friend Leclare … He wasn’t my friend, he was just the school’s sailing instructor … We went on lots of school trips … More questions. Endless questions.

‘Can you remember them all?’

‘He asked me everything. Everything about the sailing trip. How long did we stay at the Giant’s Causeway…’ Ned screwed his eyes tighter. ‘He was relaxed, bored almost. You’re doing well, Ned, very well. Not too far to go now…, was it a moonless night?… That’s good, Ned. Excellent, excellent. And the envelope came from where? … Well, a shop I suppose, a stationer’s … No, no, he
produced
it from where? His pocket? A safe? What? … Oh, from a small bag on the chart table … Any maker’s name? Adidas, Fila, that sort of thing? … Good, good. Nearly there, old son. Your chum Rufus Cade still out of earshot, was he? I see. Nothing written on the envelope was there? … On and on came the questions.

‘And he’s standing over you,’ Babe’s voice seemed to come from far away. ‘He’s questioning you, the tape is running and you say he looks almost bored?’

‘He had a sudden twinge of cramp and that woke him up a bit,’ said Ned.

‘Cramp?’ said Babe, frowning. ‘What do you mean cramp?’

‘Well, he leapt out of his seat and started walking up and down. I asked him if he was all right and he said it was just a touch of cramp. Then he went out of the room for a moment and came back with a bag of clothes…’

Babe leaned forward. ‘What had you said?’ he asked. ‘What had you said just before he got cramp? What
exactly
were your words?’

‘He had been asking me about the envelope, who Paddy wanted me to deliver it to, all the details…’

‘But what exactly had
you
said?’

‘Well, I told him what Paddy had asked me to do – I told him the envelope was to be delivered to a Mr Blackrow, Philip R. Blackrow in… what was the name of the street? It was a square, Heron Square, W1. Number Thirteen, I’m pretty sure – ‘ Ned broke off. Babe was staring across the table at him with a look of horror on his face. ‘What? Babe, what on earth is the matter?’

Babe shook his head and made a noise that sounded like something between a groan and a laugh.

‘Are you all right? What is it?’

‘Oh, Ned, Ned, Ned.’ Babe rocked backwards and forwards in his chair. ‘Why did you never tell me that part of it before? You only told me Blackrow. But Paddy didn’t say
Philip
Blackrow, that isn’t the name he gave you.

‘Yes it was. I was the one there, for God’s sake, not you! The name was Philip R. Blackrow, 13 Heron Square. I heard it clear as anything.’

Babe had started to shake with laughter. ‘Philip R.

Blackrow! Oh, you poor young donkey, is that what you heard? Don’t you see? It wasn’t Philip
R.
anything, it was
Philippa. Philippa Blackrow.
That was the name. Philippa Blackrow.’

‘Philippa? But how could you be so sure of that?’ Ned stared at Babe in bewilderment. ‘I mean it’s possible, I suppose but – are you saying you
know
her?’

‘I should have joined the dots earlier,’ said Babe. ‘You mentioned the name Blackrow and I never made the connection. What a fool you are, Babe.’

‘What connection? Babe, if you know something, then tell me.’

‘Delft and Blackrow, I can’t believe I’ve been so slow. But there again, who but I would have remembered those names from just one glance at a file over thirty years ago? Oh, you’re an unlucky man, Ned Maddstone, a most unlucky man.’

‘Tell me, Babe. Tell me everything.’

‘Did you ever hear of Jack Custance?’

Ned shook his head.

‘Shot as a traitor during the Second World War. English as a china spaniel, but Fenian to his core. He left a wife and one child, a daughter called Philippa. The wife died in Canada, so her rich brother Robert Wheeler brought little Philippa back to live in England with his family. She grew up as Philippa Wheeler and in due course married one Peter Delft, bearing a child, unnamed, ungendered and undated in the file. Peter Delft died in September, nineteen sixty-one, if memory serves – which of course it does. In April nineteen sixty-three she remarried the merchant banker Jeremy Blackrow and by the time I came across the file in sixty-three no one had ever bothered to update it from that day forward. Thus Philippa Custance became Philippa Wheeler became Philippa Delft became Philippa Blackrow. I only read Jack Custance’s file to research his early life. I had been given the tedious job of writing a paper on the profile of your typical British republican sympathiser, as if such a definable type ever existed.’