‘What movie?’ Patrick asked.
‘Mate, if you don’t know, I sure as hell don’t,’ he was told. ‘But there were these frequent conference calls she took in private. She had a screenplay she spent a lot of time reading, but kept the title of it to herself. Secretive kind of lady when she wants to be, your missus.’
Patrick thought he and his missus would doubtless be the subject of speculation in the editing suite at Fox tomorrow. He debated whether to ring his father-in-law, and decided not to. He’d left enough messages for Joanna to get back to him wherever she was, which she would assuredly do.
There was a light shower of rain, but despite it Patrick went for a jog down to the river and along the towpath towards Battersea Bridge. The misty rain seemed to match his mood. Sally’s chance discovery of his whereabouts, apart from the other hares she had set in motion, felt like an intrusion on the idyllic week since moving to Fulham. He was aware how much the call had disturbed Claire, and was angry at his mistake in leaving her phone number in case of emergency. Particularly as the BBC would never have bothered trying to reach him. Charlotte Redmond, from the tenor of their meeting, would have felt only relief at being unable to find him.
The rain became heavier, and he turned back before reaching the bridge. It was slippery on the towpath and he felt it safer to walk. While he trudged through the increasing rain, thinking what a stupid idea a jog was on a day like this, he reflected on the situation he was in. After six years of her father’s hopes and hints, it now seemed as if Joanna had changed her views on parenthood, and he was about to become a dad. Sally clearly thought so.
Despite upheavals of late, he and Jo had enjoyed a passionate relationship. They were on the Sydney list, prominent at show-biz events like premieres and awards functions. Their lives revolved around the profession they both worked in, so Joanna would be concerned if there was a hiccup with the BBC. She’d understand the stress he was under — months of work wasted, as well as a financial loss: tension he was trying to conceal from Claire. He and Jo had known such defeats and disappointments before. Pressure, tough times, even shared failures had bonded them.
But perhaps that was the extent of what they could share. He doubted if Jo would understand other things he was sharing so readily with Claire, like the mystery of his grandfather’s extended life, or tracking down Georgina Rickson, who had caught a glimpse of her past and held his hand like a lover. Even the fascination of the notebook, because he knew that buried somewhere in it was the answer to what had really happened to Stephen Conway. Joanna would profess interest, but unless there was a film to be derived from it, that interest would be brief and limited.
Two very different women and one terminally confused man, he thought ruefully after shedding his soaked clothes, showering and sitting down to read more of Stephen’s notebook. It needed to be handled with great care, for its age was a handicap; despite Claire’s best ministrations the glue that held the pages was breaking each time it was touched. It was difficult in other ways; there were no dates accompanying the entries, unlike the diary that had always given an indication of place and time. The diary had contained a sense of order.
This was completely different. In these pages were sudden comments after Stephen left the hospital, and Patrick had to read very carefully to work out when and where the events had occurred. Some were wildly irrational. One was a surprise that instantly caught his attention.
After Netley I was offered leave, seven lousy days, but who did I know in England, and where would I go? Would I sit in Hyde Park watching the rowers on the Serpentine, or go to St James’s and count the ducks on the ponds? Do I wear uniform, and get pestered by the prostitutes? Or go around London in civvies, and have some mad-eyed woman rush up and hand me a white feather, while ordering me to go off and kill someone for her?
No thanks.
I wanted to tell them to shove their leave, but then I remembered. All of a sudden it came so clear in my mind. Elizabeth Marsden — it was like yesterday, with us sitting in that Lyons Corner House, that cosy teashop, and her saying she lived in a village near Cambridge that was called Grantchester.
SEVENTEEN
A week of leave, they said; it was always a week, a whole seven days offered before anyone was sent back to France. What they meant was a last chance to live a bit, meet a woman, make love, or just catch a glimpse of life before going back to whatever was going to happen over there in hell. I said no, hating the thought of being lonely in London again. Then, half an hour later, I came back to the office and said yes.
‘Make up your mind, laddie,’ the Scottish doctor demanded, after this indecision was reported to him.
‘I’ve made it up,’ I told him, but didn’t explain why. He’d be the last person that I’d tell, how all of a sudden I had remembered the name of the town.
So yes, I said to him, I’ll have my seven days. And I’ll go to Grantchester near Cambridge, and see Elizabeth Marsden. Only I didn’t say that to him or anyone else, because this was personal, my private life, perhaps my private love. Or was it just an afternoon with a nice girl who talked to me kindly, so kindly that I can’t seem able to forget her? Going to Grantchester, I thought, perhaps I can find out the truth of how I felt at last.
They gave me back my uniform and a leave pass. Because I’d mucked them around they got their own back, delaying me until the daily launch across the water to Southampton had gone, so the only way to get to the town and the main line train station was to walk to the terminus. A mere six miles, the Scottish quack said, for a fit bloke like you just a stroll in the park. Halfway there I got a lift on the undertaker’s wagon from the hospital that was taking some poor sods to be buried, and I sat in the back with the cardboard coffins all the way into the station.
The express to London got me there in the late afternoon, into the terminus at Victoria where it was crowded because a troop train had just arrived and another was about to leave. Men were being welcomed home: shabby and exhausted-looking blokes were hugged and met with joyful kisses; others, mostly young recruits on the platform opposite, were being farewelled with hugs and tears. There were ambulances too, and nurses; there was a line of blind soldiers being led, and stretcher-bearers carrying the wounded who could not walk.
On the concourse a young woman took my arm and said she had a room around the corner, and did I want to stay the night? She liked Anzacs, she told me, and didn’t do this for a living — just to distribute a bit of kindness, a bit of warmth and love. I don’t know why, but the use of the word ‘distribute’ seemed to single her out as someone telling the truth. Anyway, I thought she seemed sincere and thanked her, but said I was on my way to meet a young lady I hadn’t seen for nearly two and a half years. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and wished me luck.
I found a room for the night: four beds in an attic, two drunken sailors and an old man for company. It was a relief to get out of there, and by dawn I was walking through Bloomsbury and High Holborn on the way to Kings Cross station. Empty streets in the early morning, bringing back vivid memories of my first leave and the way I’d explored London. I bought a ticket and went to the very same platform where I’d said farewell to Elizabeth. I remembered it so well, even remembered how the fast trains left at fifteen minutes past the hour, and found the timetable had not changed.
‘Nothing ever changes round here,’ a cheerful station guard said. ‘No changes on this line, matey, since they first invented the steam engine.’ I recalled the cranky guard who yelled at me when I was trying to get Elizabeth’s address, but this one was friendly, so that was a change for the better. He asked me about the war; was it as bad over there as people said? The things he’d heard, they surely couldn’t be true, could they? Not wanting to talk about it, I told him about Elizabeth instead. He wished me luck and we shook hands before I boarded the train.
It was not quite ten in the morning when we arrived at Cambridge. I would’ve liked to visit the university, but I wanted to see Elizabeth fi
rst. It occurred to me that after we’d met, we could go there together. Tour Trinity College and its famous quadrangles. Imagine walking where Byron, Isaac Newton and Tennyson all studied in years gone by… And after that we could even hire a punt for the afternoon and enjoy a row on the Cam, like I’m sure Byron did.
I found a bus that went to most of the local villages including Grantchester. People on the bus seemed welcoming. The driver said it was a nice little spot, and when I got off there he also wished me luck. Some of the passengers waved. All these good wishes from strangers were like a favourable omen. It felt wonderful to be among such friendly people, and in such a pleasant village.
How to describe a place like Grantchester? Small cottages, some of them quaint, all old; tiny gardens alive with flowers; a sense of absolute peace that felt as if it belonged to another time. Very few shops, only a chemist, a draper’s, an ironmonger’s and a food store that sold magazines and postage stamps. A corner shop, they call it, with timber beams that looked at least a century old, and a thatched roof. I went in there to ask directions.
A woman serving behind the counter was slicing bacon and weighing it while talking with a customer. I stood waiting near the door until they had finished, and became conscious they had noticed my uniform and the slouch hat. The customer paid for her groceries and started to leave, so I opened the door for her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and that was when I couldn’t help staring at her. She had the same fair hair and grey eyes, a slim nice-looking woman in her forties, with a face that was at once recognisable to me. It felt like a sort of miracle, but after all, it was a tiny village. She started gazing curiously at me while I kept holding the door open. It seemed like a long time that I waited for her to speak.
‘You’re Australian,’ she said finally, and even though the voice was similar, she seemed uncertain. ‘We rarely see that uniform here.’ She shook her head. ‘Almost never. But surely… you couldn’t possibly be… it’s too unlikely.’ She shook her head again and walked past me. I shut the door and followed her outside.
‘Elizabeth Marsden,’ I told her. ‘That’s who I came to see. You look so exactly like her.’
She gazed at me again, so silent that I began to wonder if she would answer. Then she finally nodded. ‘So you must be Stephen. But I thought… I was told you were a sergeant.’
‘I was in those days.’
‘But not now?’
‘No.’ I thought it was a subject for later discussion when we were better acquainted, and apologised for my sudden appearance. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the number of your telephone, or I would’ve rung up to see if it was convenient.’
‘We don’t have a telephone,’ she answered.
I started to realise she was different to her daughter. Despite the similar appearance she was not the same — not a bit the same — quite difficult to talk to, in fact, and without any trace of Elizabeth’s vivacious smile and warm manner.
‘I’ve been in hospital,’ I said, trying to start a conversation.
‘Were you wounded?’ she asked.
‘In here,’ I replied, and touched my head, a clear mistake for it made her look worried. ‘It’s really nothing,’ I quickly tried to assure her. ‘In fact they say I’m so well they’re sending me back to France, but I have a few days’ leave. And although it’s more than two years since I last saw Elizabeth, I’ve often thought of her. I’m the one who made her miss her train that day. Several trains in fact,’ I admitted with a smile.
‘Yes, she told us,’ her mother answered in a flat, toneless voice. She no longer sounded the least bit like Elizabeth, and I began to wonder what was the matter with her. All this time we were still standing just outside the shop. An elderly man approached and went inside after a nod to Mrs Marsden and a curious glance at me. When he’d gone I asked her if I could carry her basket for her.
‘We live past the church, along this street,’ she replied after a pause, handing me the basket with some reluctance. She added that I might as well walk home with her. There were things to talk about, she said.
But she didn’t do any talking. I felt impelled to fill the void between us. I praised the lovely village she lived in, told her how much I liked the old houses with slate roofs or thatch. I said the thatch seemed best to me, because it was not something we ever see back in Australia. We walked past a large Victorian house — it was the manse — then a sturdy Anglican church with its tall spire dominating the village and the fields around it. The sign on it said it was erected in 1790, and I told her how strange this antiquity was for me and that there were no real buildings in Australia back then, except perhaps the governor’s cottage. Governor Phillip, I explained, who brought out the First Fleet and several boatloads of convicts. They had nothing to live in but mud huts, or sometimes bark and wattle shelters called humpies, while the army had tents.
She listened constantly, but made no reply, so I felt I had to keep talking.
‘It’s so beautifully peaceful here, Mrs Marden, so English. I saw countryside like this in Hampshire, when we first came here after being evacuated from Gallipoli. But it was winter then. On the train yesterday the same fields were growing crops, and they were full of activity. Farmers cutting hay, cattle and sheep grazing. It’s a lovely part of the world… I don’t know how to describe it exactly… serene, perhaps. I like the hedges, so orderly the way they divide up the farmland. I like the symmetry of them. I admire the whole English country so much, I feel so content here that I might not want to go home again.’
Her silence made me talk too much, I knew that; but all she did was nod and shrug. Then suddenly she stopped and asked me what hospital I’d been in.
Netley, I told her, and when she admitted she’d never heard of it, I started to explain. I told her about the Scottish quack, and how I’d been given electrical shocks, but when she looked alarmed I explained the way the treatment had been changed to the so-called talking cure. Away from Netley all this seemed impossible. In the quiet of this Cambridgeshire village everything I told her about Queen Victoria’s grand hospital sounded utterly bizarre.
I began to wonder if my telling her all this was unwise, but I felt reassured and able to talk this way because she looked so like Elizabeth. Or at least the outward resemblance gave me confidence. Her lack of response I took for shyness, I suppose, but it did occur to me that until then she had not actually mentioned Elizabeth’s name.
‘How is Elizabeth?’ I asked. After all, this was my purpose here.
She made no attempt to answer. But she stopped walking and I knew we’d reached their house. I admired it, said it was beautiful, which it was. There was thick Virginia creeper all around the oak front door, and window boxes full of colour. It looked like the kind of English house I had seen in magazines when I was a child.
But even while admiring it I realised Mrs Marsden had not replied. That was when I began to feel sure that she didn’t like me. She seemed to flinch each time our gazes met, as if she were afraid. I thought I must be mistaken — after all, she had nothing to fear from me. I hadn’t come here to make trouble. I’d just come to see her daughter again.
‘Is Elizabeth home?’ I asked, now determined to put an end to this. ‘I’ve come all this way, so may I please see her?’
She just stood there staring at me. ‘Elizabeth is dead’, she finally said.
I took a sudden step backwards, stumbled and almost fell. I shook my head in disbelief. It was some mistake or a dreadful joke. It made me angry, because it had to be a lie. I wanted to shout at her, ‘Elizabeth is young, my own age, and she’s beautiful; I have been secretly in love with her since we met, and it is not possible she is dead!’ I started to say some of these things at this cold woman, then the front door to the house opened.
‘She’s dead!’ I heard his voice before I saw the man standing there. A tired, middle-aged man who looked like a schoolteacher. It was then I recalled her telling me her father was a teacher. In the same moment that
the man came to take his wife’s arm, she removed the basket of groceries from my grasp. They moved towards the house in an oddly defensive manner that looked as if they would stand guard there against me trying to enter.
‘But how?’ I asked him numbly. ‘How could she be dead?’ I felt like screaming at him.
‘Your fault!’ His voice was like ice.
‘That’s not fair.’ It was the mother who had found her voice. ‘You ought not to say that; he’s not himself. He’s been ill.’
‘It was his fault,’ her husband persisted, staring into my face. Perhaps he could see that I didn’t understand how it could be my fault, because he continued. ‘All your fancy talk about your convicts and currency lads. All that illusion. Put strange ideas in her head, you did. She was a quiet girl, settled in her ways — she had a chap. Simon. He was a nice boy, exempted from conscription because he was studying to be a dentist. After the day she met you, she couldn’t be bothered with him; could hardly be bothered with any of us. We were ordinary: not from a far off place on the other side of the world. We weren’t over there in France, fighting for King and Empire.’ Stephen felt the man was about to cry. ‘Our daughter, our lovely gentle Lizzie, gave Simon a white feather. She told him her Aussie friend was in France defending us, while he was spending the war learning to fill teeth.’
‘Stop it, Jamie!’ Mrs Marsden begged him, while I stood mute as though stricken.
‘No, I’m sorry, but I won’t stop it.’ He gazed at me as if puzzled by what he saw. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t entirely your fault. Perhaps our girl was a silly child, and invented some kind of romantic nonsense. But Simon took it badly. Gave up his studies, enlisted and went to the war. For six months he was in the trenches, then we heard he was coming home on leave. I think Elizabeth felt guilty: any rate, she dressed up to meet him. Looked a real treat, she did. A pretty girl — I’m sure you remember she was pretty.’
I nodded. It was all I could do. His voice became quiet; there was a feeling of exhaustion as if he could hardly bear to relive this.
Barbed Wire and Roses Page 21
