The Yellow Glass (23 page)

He patted my shoulder and began to pry my hand from my
uncle’s body.

 
That night was all weeping.
 
The Major hadn’t wept on the journey home,
but the sound of him repeating, over and over again, “I should not have let him
come.
 
I should not have let him come”,
was almost worse than any storm of tears.
 
When my mother came to the door of Shore House, she didn’t hear the news
from me, for I was quite incapable of speech by that time, but from him,
standing back as she held me while I shook, his head bowed low.

“I found him hiding in the back of the car.
 
He knew Rosa was missing and was determined
to come.
 
I don’t know how he knew.
 
I should have turned back there and then, but
I didn’t.
 
I made him promise to stay on
the road and come for me if he saw anything.
 
But I should
not
have let him
come.”
 
His gruff voiced cracked.
 
“Oh, Millicent, I should
not
have let him come.”
 

My tiny mother had never looked taller than that
night, supporting her daughter with one arm and taking Major Dyminge’s hand in
the other.

“I
won’t
have you blaming yourself, Major, do you hear me?
 
You’re
not
to do it.”
 
She was as fierce as I’d ever
heard her be.
 
“You were our Albert’s
friend; the first real friend the poor boy had.
 
Don’t you
ever
let me hear you
blame yourself again.”

But, deep into the night, I heard her voice through my
bedroom wall, keening softly to my father.

“I kept him safe after Mum died.
 
All those years I kept him safe by me, Jerzy,
and
she
had to bring this to our
door.”

And I knew that it was me she blamed.

 
Policemen came to the house in the morning
and I suppose I must have squeezed out some words for them, but I can’t
remember what they were.
 
I wasn’t
interested any more, you see, not in the yellow glass, or HQ, or any of
it.
 
There was nothing left to be
interested in, not in the whole, wide world.
 
I lay on my bed and pulled the covers over my head and wept.
 

Every now and again, people would come and tell me
things, as if they thought I was the same person I’d been before; that person
who had been interested in everything.
 
Somebody told me that they couldn’t get hold of Uncle Tristram and asked
me if I knew where he was, but I knew nothing and I wasn’t interested.
 
Then Sam rushed in, bubbling over with
excitement that our Aunt Kathleen had arrived, expecting me to be interested,
but I . . just wasn’t.
 
I refused to talk
to her when she knocked on the door.
 
After all, what could I possibly say?
 
I got your brother killed?
 
If it
wasn’t for me, he’d be here?
 
Sorry?
 
Days passed and I wasn’t interested.
 
I was much too busy weeping.
 

But then . . there was the funeral at the local
church, and I couldn’t get out of that.
 
It
was drizzling with rain and we hung about outside - just us, the Dyminges and
the Hawkings - all dreading going inside that empty church.
 
Eventually, my father put his arm around my
mother and steered her in and we had to follow.
 
I dragged in last, head down.
 
Only the sound made me lift my head.

The light hum of chatter.
 
It was as if the church were full of
birds.
 
As if a great flock of tropical
birds had alighted on the pews, feathered shocking pink and violet, netted and
beaked with copper and silver.
 
They
strained their delicate necks to look at us and hummed amongst themselves.
 
For the first time in days, I felt my
interest stir.
 
I followed my parents
down the aisle and sat down beside my mother.

“Who
are
they?”
  
I whispered.
 

“His hats,” she whispered back.
 
“Your uncle was a master at his trade.
 
It’s a
grand
tribute to our Albert that they’ve worn his hats.”

When the service was over, we walked back down the
aisle together and the hats nodded as we passed; as if all of Uncle Albert’s
birds had flown home to roost together.

 
That night - the night after my uncle’s
funeral - my mother came into my room without knocking and sat down on my bed.

“What’s all this, Rosa?”

I’d stopped weeping, but I had nothing to say.

“We want to see you,” she said.
 
“We need to be together at this time.”

“Be together without me,” I rolled my face down onto
my pillow, choking out the words.
 
“I
don’t belong with you, anyway.
 
I don’t
belong anywhere.”

“Nonsense,” she said.
 
“What utter nonsense you can talk, my girl.”

I started to cry again.

“How can you bear to look at me?
 
Knowing it was all my fault?
 
I hate myself!
 
Why didn’t he kill
me
, instead?
 
I wish I was
dead . . .”

She let me bawl and then she picked up my hand, and
held onto it with a vice-like grip when I tried to pull it away.

“Bear to look at you?
 
My beautiful, clever girl that I’m so proud of; that we’re
all
so proud of.
 
Even your Uncle Albert . .”

I flung the pillow off my bed and sat up.

“But
I
got
him killed, Mum.
 
It was all my fault.”

“
You
didn’t
do it; you must never,
ever
, take
that on yourself, Rosa.
 
An evil man
killed my brother, not you.
 
Albert got
in the way of a chain of events . . somebody else’s plan . . story . . call it
whatever you like.
 
It was terrible, but
terrible things
do
happen, you’ll
discover.
 
They happen, and we can’t hide
away from them because they come and find us whatever we do . . .
 
You only did what any of us would have done
in your place (and
did
do in our
time, believe you me; even your tiresome, old mother).
 
Come on, now, love . . .”

She pulled me off the bed, towards the door:
 

“It’s hard enough missing our Albert; we can’t miss
you
as well.”

 
A spy came to talk to me early one morning; a
stranger with owlish, black-framed glasses and a shiny, grey suit, a mackintosh
over one arm and a briefcase in the other.
 
I didn’t like him, but that was neither here nor there.
 
I offered him a cup of tea after his travels,
but he would only take a glass of water, so that was all he had.
 
We sat down at the dining-room table,
underneath the ceiling of painted stars, and he began to de-brief me once
again, asking me questions about Magnus and the Arkonnen family, about the
platter and the contents of the shed.
 
I
forced myself to think of my country - to answer as best I could - and I think
I was making a relatively decent fist of it until he asked about Uncle Albert.

“What made Albert Smith come after you, Miss
Stone?
 
Had you informed him of your plan
to visit the bungalow?”

I gulped nervously, trying to see my way clear,
because a change had come over me since my uncle’s death and, instead of the
flowing stream of fact after fact that had always come so easily, I’d become
quite clogged up with anxiety.
 
What
should I say?
 
Should I mention Major
Dyminge, or would it be kinder to leave him out of it?
 
I couldn’t bear to do any more damage, you
see.

“I . . I . .”

The dining-room door flew open and Aunt Kathleen
appeared, her face all high cheek-boned and white against her black, silk
dress.
 
(My mother and father were at
work and Sam was at school, so I was alone in the house with my aunt that
morning.)

“I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
 
She said.

The spy glanced up at her and his mouth, literally,
fell open.

“She’s told you all she knows and you’ve had your
money’s worth out of the poor girl.”
 
She
had her hands on her angular hips and looked just like a photograph by Richard
Avedon in Harper’s Bazaar.
 
“Just take
yourself
 
back up to London, why don’t
you?
 
You can give Hutch the latest and
let my niece get on with her life in peace.
 
She
never
should have been
involved in the first place, it was absolutely criminal, and if you see my
impossible husband you can tell him that I blame this entire, ghastly tragedy
on
him
. .”

The spy pulled himself together and closed his mouth.

“It’s Kathy Smith, isn’t it?
 
‘Zombie Girls On Bikes’ was a corker, if I
may say so . . I don’t suppose you’d give me your . .”

“No I bloody well wouldn’t!”
 
She exploded.
 
“Excuse my French, Rosa, but this is the last straw.”
 
She advanced upon the man as if she were
about to pull his chair out from under him.
 
“Go on you . . hop it!”
 
Her
accent, which was generally BBC newscaster to a fault, had lapsed into
undiluted North London.
 
“I mean it . .
sling your hook!”

The spy gathered up his brief-case and mackintosh,
looking understandably put out.

“I hear you’re married to Upshott,” he muttered.
 
“Poor devil.
 
No wonder he’s done a runner.”

“What do you mean?”
 
Aunt Kathleen asked.

“I mean to say, being hitched to you . .”

“Not
that
;
what do you mean ‘done a runner’?”

“They say he’s upped and gone without a murmur to
anybody.
 
His secretary disappeared
around the same time, but that
is
a
stretch of the imagination, whatever the girls say . .”
 

He gulped down the rest of his water and bared his
teeth at us, in a nasty sort of sneer and then he hurried out of our house,
before my aunt had the chance to boot him out (which I’m sure she would have
had no qualms about doing, had he remained any longer).

She sat down at the table and put her blond head in
her hands, her shoulders heaving with the force of her emotions, and it felt
like aeons before I could think what to say.

“Don’t blame him.”

“Him?”
 
Her
voice was husky, as if she’d caught her throat when she’d shouted.
 
“He’s just another spy; another empty spy.”

“I meant Uncle Tristram.”

“So did I.”

“Uncle Tristram’s not empty,” I said.
 
“He’s wonderful.”

She raised her head and smiled at me, sadly.
 
There were tears in her dark blue eyes.

“Oh, Rosa,” she said.

“He is, you know.
 
Really wonderful.
 
Brave and
clever and handsome and . . everything he does is in the service of his
country.
 
You’re so,
so
lucky to be married to him and I don’t believe a word about the
stupid secretary.
 
If I were you, I
couldn’t rest until I’d discovered where he’d gone and brought him back to
us.
 
In fact . . if you don’t do it, then
I jolly well will!”

And I got up and ran out of the dining room and then
out of the front door and all the way along the beach, until my breath went and
I had to bend over double, coughing and spluttering like billy-o, my eyes
streaming.
 
My aunt caught up with me and
put her hand on my back while I coughed, rubbing between my shoulder blades as
if she thought I’d choked on a fishbone.

“Are you alright, darling?”

I straightened up, wiping my eyes and smiled at her,
ruefully.

“Not really, no,” I managed.
 
“I think I may’ve been poisoned again.”

——

 
I wasn’t quite the bastard Magnus Arkonnen
seemed to think I was.
 
Nearly, but not
quite; give me another twelve months in the service and he’d be spot on with
his diagnosis.
 
You’ll be glad to hear
that I wasn’t about to leave technical whizz and ex-Gurkha, Jay Tamang
completely vulnerable to the tender mercies of Dilys Arkonnen.
 
I’d taken her for an accomplished fantasist,
but the lady was more than that; she was in thrall to her husband to the point
of lunacy.
 
More to the point, she was
dangerous.
 
I’d no way of knowing whether
she’d taken a life before, or simply thought about it, but the scene on board
the Humber had convinced me that she was certainly unstable enough to
kill.
 
I had to find a way to put her out
of action temporarily, and it had to be in as natural a way as possible to
avoid alerting the barge skipper, Severs and, then, her husband, Reg
Arkonnen.
 
I instantly thought of the
well-stocked first aid box.

I stubbed my cigarette out
with the toe of my shoe and bent down to flip the butt into the familiar, dusty
corner beneath the bunk beds.
 
Then I did
the same with the one I’d been sticking in young Magnus’ mouth.

“Hey,” he protested, “I’d
not finished with that.”

“Sorry, interval over.
 
We’ve got to crack on, Magnus and the smell
of tobacco isn’t going to help our cause.”

I began flapping at the
fumes with my arms and then I went to the sink and sloshed the bottle of bleach
about; Dilys Arkonnen was the kind of woman who breathed bleach and she’d
hardly notice a drop more.
 
Then I took a
good look in the first aid box.

“What’re you doing now . . ?
Don’t worry about me, man - I don’t need any more dope - it’s Mr Tamang
 
you should be helping!
 
Christ, if I only had the use of my arms and
legs!”
 
Magnus positively seethed with
frustration.

“Tamang’s tougher than he
looks,” I replied, delving through the usual sticking plasters and bottles of
aspirin.
 
“Aha!
 
What do we have here?
 
Morphine and a bloody great syringe.
 
Capital.”

“Hey!”
 
Magnus cottoned on.
 
“That’s more like it; happen you’re not as
useless as you look.
 
I’ll call her down
here under some pretext or other and you can hide under the bed again and jab
her in the leg before she knows what’s hit her.”
 

Amateur night; the boy
simply didn’t know how to think things through properly.

“Hardly!”
 

I carried the equipment over
to the table and began to fill up the syringe, hesitating over the quantity
required for such a slight woman (I was no anaesthetist and it’d be easy to get
it disastrously wrong; I didn’t want to put her out for good, after all.)
 
Then I took the lid off the cake.
 

“Think straight, Magnus:
torn stocking and puncture mark equals obvious assault.
 
We need something a fraction more subtle;
just enough to put her out of mischief for the journey but not arouse the bargeman’s
suspicion.
 
We want him to take us to Reg
Arkonnen and we’ll work it out from there.”

I gave up the guess-work
with weights and measures and saturated the fruitcake with liquid morphine,
having come to the conclusion that they’d only be having a slice each and not
the entire cake.

“But . . what about Mr
Tamang?
 
You’re not going to leave him
trussed up on deck, are you?
 
I mean, he
could be fatally wounded!”
 
Magnus was
getting het up again.

“Don’t shout at me, you
fool!
 
The game’s well and truly up if
you shout.”
 
I cocked my head to listen
to a slight sound that had nearly been masked by his histrionics.
 
“I told you; Tamang is as tough as they come.
 
If he’s fatally wounded, then that’s that - damn
shame and all, but so it goes - otherwise, I’m sure he can sweat it out.”

“Man, you’re a cold-blooded
bastard.”

I glanced at him:

“I’m afraid so.
 
Now, listen carefully to what I say because
we’re not at school and there’s no time to spell it out on the blackboard for
you.”
 

His face had reddened to the
tips of his ears in his fury at me.
 
His
juvenile emotions disabled him far more than any broken limbs.
 
I spoke as quickly as I could:
 

“I’ve injected the cake with
liquid morphine and you’ll both be having a slice.
 
You can do some theatrical stuff with your
piece if you really must; some stalling and nibbling from the edge and so
forth, but you’re not my wife and I’m prepared to bet that when it comes to
acting, you’re an excellent journalist.
 
Your face gives you away, in other words.
 
So just chomp it down and have some more kip,
eh?
 
You’re twice the size of your aunt,
so you won’t be out for nearly as long, and you’re pretty damn useless at the
moment anyway.
 
Understand?”

He stared, mutinously, at
me.
 
I just hoped I’d played it correctly
with the boy.

“Good.
 
Now, prove me wrong and give it the full
Donald Wolfit
[40]
.
 
You want tea and cake and you’re going to
grovel to get it.
 
Go on, Magnus,
grovel,” I stuffed the medicine and the syringe back into the box, deep beneath
rolls of gauze and bandage and slipped back under the bed, “because I just
heard Jay Tamang scream and I don’t
ever
want to hear that sound again.”

——

 
 
I took a couple of deep
breaths and then I yelled.
 
The bed
trembled with the force of it.

“Aunt Dilys!
 
Aunt Dilys!”
 

Nothing happened, so I did
it again.

 
“Aunt Dilys!”

Footsteps; her light tread
on the steps.

“What is it now,
Magnus?
 
I’m busy.”

“I want to apologise,
Auntie.”

There was a pause before she
answered.

“I’m glad you’ve come to
your senses, but I’m busy at the moment and I’m afraid you’re interrupting me.”

Don’t let her get away.
 
Grovel, Arkonnen, like you’ve never grovelled
before.

“Please, Auntie!
 
Let me apologise.
 
Talking to you like that; I don’t know what
came over me.
 
I’ve not been in my right
mind with all the medicine and that.
 
They
stuff you full of pills and you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.
 
And the kidnap was a bit of a shock, to be
honest, ‘though I know you’ve only got my best interests at heart and a holiday
by the sea will be
just
what the doc
ordered and . .”