16
WILL STARED OUT at the wintry view below, where a few brave promenaders staggered against the buffeting winds off the Channel. He was sitting at one of the window tables at Gildersleeves, one ear cocked to the distant thrash of the gale outside, the other distracted by an anxious inner voice: he did not have a third to spare for the waiter’s recitation of the lunch specials. But as usual Will had nodded and given a fair impersonation of having understood. What he had once forgiven in himself as a social duplicity – to seem to be listening while communing with his own thoughts – had, over time, hardened into a habit. Even Ada, who wasn’t especially alert to the currents of social chitchat, had started to catch him out. After yarning away she would come to a sudden halt, and Will would slowly surface from his private burrow of thought (‘Hmm?’) to realise he had just been asked a question. ‘William, have you been listening to me?’ she said the first time it happened, more amused than offended, and he had stammered out an apology. But her tone had become sharper as she perceived that his attention could not generally be trusted for periods exceeding three minutes.
This negligence had provoked a small crisis two weeks before, whose astonishing outcome he was still barely able to comprehend. He had taken her up to London for a new year party, on Reggie Culver’s invitation, and they had sloped off with a group of friends to the Savoy for a sharpener. Will had not been inside the hotel since the evening he had saved Connie from the police, and revisiting those same corridors he had drifted off into a sad reverie of her. Their accidental encounter at the Priory in July was the last time they had spoken, and only when he asked Tam did he hear the full story behind her disappearance abroad. He gathered that she was working at a hospital in Paris. It was unfortunate that Will was still imagining her life there when Ada broke in: ‘You’ve not listened to a word I’ve said, have you?’ He could not deny it. She fell morosely quiet, and he had spent the rest of the night devising a desperate stratagem to appease her.
Too galling to think of where that had led. He had won her round, in the end – and that was how he had found himself, at the turn of the year, betrothed. Betrothed. It was almost inconceivable – but most definitely incontrovertible. His mother, triumphant, had wanted to put an announcement in The Times immediately, but he resisted. He needed to tell Tam first, and had arranged today’s lunch for that purpose. As their meeting approached, feelings of dread had gathered over him like snipers at an ambush, and he half thought about cancelling. His unease was twofold. They had always been bachelors together, and a confession that he was leaving those noble ranks might sound to Tam’s ears a kind of betrayal. But what felt worse was the gradual erosion of their camaraderie, which marriage would only hasten. Tam’s retirement had already driven a wedge between them; no more would they be partnering one another at the crease, or chatting in the slips, or sipping ale, feet up on the pavilion balcony. Tam had entered the exile of the former player, from which there was no return. They had gone from seeing one another nearly every day to meeting once every three or four weeks. And those hiatuses would doubtless extend, once he and Ada set up life together.
He took out his watch. Where was Tam, as a matter of fact? He was now three-quarters of an hour late, and in the meantime Will had exhausted his rereading of the menu; the beef Wellington being served at the adjacent table was making him hungry. He pulled out his pocket diary, and riffled its pages in search of Beatrice Tamburlain’s telephone number. Tam would not countenance having his own telephone installed because the ringing sound irritated him; in fact, the last time they had gone fishing together he had confessed that even the rustling of a newspaper could infuriate him these days. Will left his table and went to the telephone booth just outside the restaurant’s entrance. Beatrice picked up on the fourth ring, and after a brief exchange of new year felicitations he asked her if she knew of her brother’s whereabouts. She had not seen Drewy since the weekend, she said, though there had been talk of his running down to the Isle of Wight for a few days. Will conceded that he may simply have forgotten their arrangement. He thanked her and replaced the earpiece on its cradle.
An hour later, fortified by his beef Wellington and a half-bottle of burgundy, Will exited Gildersleeves and bent his steps towards Warwick Square. The walk took him by coincidence along Prospect Place, and he thought he might as well call by Tam’s lodgings to check that he really had gone. A landlady answered the door, and said that she had heard Mr Tamburlain returning to the house last night, though she didn’t think he had stirred from his rooms today. ‘I believe he was the worse for wear,’ she added, shrugging. Will, looking up at the house, saw that one of the topmost sashes was open. Puzzled, he passed in and took the stairs to the top floor. No response met his knock, yet some unaccountable instinct told him that Tam was at home, probably lying helpless in an alcoholic stupor. He hurried downstairs and asked the landlady to let him into his friend’s flat; the anxiety in his expression did not incline her to hesitate.
‘Tam?’ he called out on entering the hall, the woman close at his heels. He turned into the living room, icy cold from the open window, now shivering in its frame. In the kitchen an array of bottles had congregated over the table, not all of them empty. The landlady picked one up, and gave a prim told-you-so moue. He came at last to the bedroom, and turning the doorknob he craned his head within. The curtains were drawn, but he could see Tam lying on the bed, still in his clothes, sound asleep, his right hand apparently wrapped in a bandage. A stale, burnt odour suffused the air. Will called his name again, softly, then walked to the window. As he pulled back the curtain, he saw something had spilt on the pillow by Tam’s head – then he took it all in at once. The reddish-brown stain was drying blood, the turbaned bandage on his hand was in fact a towel, from whose tapering end poked the pewter-coloured barrel of a pistol. The charred smell, he realised, was cordite. Behind him he heard the landlady step into the room, and a sudden dismayed ‘Oh’ escaped her lips. She stood there, a hand across her mouth, until Will came round the bed and said to her, quietly, ‘Fetch the police.’ Her eyes, round with horror, flicked briefly up to his, and she backed out of the violated room.
On hollowed legs he moved along the bedside, and, swallowing hard, sat down. He took Tam’s wrist in his shaking hand, and felt its cold, pulseless weight. Without letting it drop, he stared at the half-closed eyes, at the mouth hanging open, as if he had been about to speak. The towel would have muffled the report of the gun, perhaps to spare the landlady a fright. From down below he heard a door slam, and footsteps hurrying down the path. For long minutes he stared at the contours of his friend’s face (the violet-coloured lips, the slackened mouth) and the glistening soot-blackened hole at the temple which had emptied it of expression, forever. Then, placing the left arm gently across his chest, Will stood up and walked to the door. He was going to step out of the room when an impulse stayed his hand on the doorknob, and he returned his gaze to the bed: nothing had ever made him feel so alone as the sight of that mute, untenanted body lying there. He felt a single, anguished sob break from his throat. It would have to do as his farewell.
* * *
Three days later Connie turned her bicycle into Place Dauphine, a triangular-shaped cobbled hideaway off the Pont Neuf. She had been living here, in a tiny third-floor apartment, since her precipitate flight from England last summer. On reaching Paris she had applied to Brigstock, who had gallantly put his studio at her disposal while she searched for a place of her own. She sometimes imagined that the oils and white spirit that permeated the room still clung to her clothes even now; they would always remind her of those early weeks of exile. Her only obligation had been to feed his cat, less imperious than Maud, the creature he had kept at Mornington Crescent, though her equal in selfishness. She didn’t really mind, finding the cat a useful listener for her French, which, learned from the schoolroom, was sufficiently archaic to make Brigstock hoot with laughter (‘I don’t think they’ve used that word since about the time of
Corneille’). She had been grateful to the painter these first few months; having arrived at his doorstep without a suitcase, he had provided ‘the outlaw’ with clothes and dresses left by – he made no pretence about it – the parade of models who passed in and out of his studio. The garments were mostly clean, which she regarded as a bonus. Brigstock’s circle of acquaintance proved inexplicably wide, and not exclusively racy, either, which was how he had secured her a nursing job at a hospital run by an order of Catholic nuns near the Sorbonne.
He had arranged to meet her that afternoon at the cafe opposite her apartment, and as she propped her bicycle against one of the impassive plane trees standing sentinel around the Place Dauphine she spotted him, wreathed in cigarette smoke, at a window table. It was a kind of reunion, for Brigstock had spent Christmas and the first week of the new year in Venice. He rose from his seat as she entered the smoke-fugged establishment. His dark double-breasted overcoat with astrakhan collar seemed to invite comment.
‘Greetings, m’dear,’ he cried, with a flamboyant bow. ‘And belated felicitations. I trust the new year finds you well?’
‘Very well, thank you.’ As one used to solitude, it hadn’t occurred to him that Connie might have preferred some company over Christmas. But she was too proud to say so. ‘Is that a new coat?’
He stroked its sleeve admiringly. ‘Indeed it is. They’re all wearing them in Italy. Makes me look rather un homme serieux, d’you think?’
She considered him. ‘Serieux – et vieux,’ she added, to tease him.
He frowned at this. ‘Good Lord, what a thing to say!’ He glanced anxiously at his face in the mirror behind her. ‘You shouldn’t joke. You know, I’ll be fifty this year?’
‘But I was joking,’ she said consolingly.
‘Sounds a nasty word, fifty,’ he murmured, still testing his reflection. ‘Sort of stiff and dusty …’
‘How was Venice?’ said Connie, carefully changing the subject.
‘Hmm? Oh, filthy – and beautiful. Hasn’t changed much in the twenty years since I was last there. The food is appalling, but you could forgive a lot else for those views. Ruskin was right – “it is the Paradise of cities”.’
‘I’d like to visit. To be poled around in a gondola …’ she mused.
‘Ah. You’ll see a fine armada of them at the Danieli, all black and gleaming. Like floating coffins.’
‘That’s a little morbid.’
He curled his lip sardonically. ‘Well, at my time of life …’ He was not going to forget her jibe too soon. Once coffee arrived at their table she managed to cajole him into a lighter mood, and he showed her some of the loose sketches he had brought back. ‘While I remember, I should nip to the shop round the corner for some charcoal,’ he said, rising. ‘Would you mind these for me? Oh, and here’s a Daily Mail to pass the time.’
While he was gone Connie idly flicked through the paper, which was a day old. She found that she did not greatly miss English newspapers, partly because her job at the hospital preoccupied her, and partly because she had grown sick of the press, the recriminations, and the hysteria targeted at the Union. In the reports of the arrest of Edith, Ivy and Miss Webster, the tone of self-righteousness complicated her private relief that the bomb plot had been thwarted. That wasn’t all: she had received a letter from Lily concerning a rumour that Connie herself had tipped off Special Branch detectives, who had subsequently allowed their ‘spy’ to escape abroad. At first she was astonished by this hearsay, and felt certain that nobody in the Union would give it credence. Then The Times picked up the story and ran it as though her treachery were now an accepted fact. She was briefly tempted to write a letter defending herself, but then felt too disgusted by the charge to give it even that much dignity. People who knew her, who knew what she had been through, would damn it as falsehood in any case.
She was turning the pages of the Mail in a brisk, careless sort of way when her eye was snagged by a name, and she narrowed her focus. It was an account of the career of A. E. Tamburlain. Realising the column had begun on the previous page, she turned back and saw the story’s headline: SUICIDE OF FORMER TEST CRICKETER.
She stared at it for some moments, unable to move. Her eyes coursed rapidly, disbelievingly, over the newsprint, alighting on phrases whose finality jolted her – found at home … a single bullet to the head … depressed at retirement … lived alone … a great loss to the game of cricket. She had to catch her breath from the sudden shock of it. She began to read the story again, trying to digest its terrible truth, and baulking at the attempt; her resistance to it felt almost physical. Her heart seemed to have retreated to her stomach in sympathy. She raised her eyes and looked about the cafe, at its unheeding walls and murmuring clientele, as indifferent to her distress as the birds of the air. Oh, Tam, what madness or despair could have driven you – She was trying to recall now the last time he had written. When she had first arrived here they had corresponded in quick succession. She had sent him her temporary address and he had replied with a letter of such kindliness and concern that she felt the dreadful weight of her solitude almost crushing her. Some weeks later her suitcase arrived, with a note from Tam apologising for its tardy liberation from the local constabulary. Once she found her footing in her new abode she became less assiduous a correspondent, though there was no hint of reproof from him if weeks elapsed before she managed to write. When had she last written to him?
Connie found a second article on Tam in the sports columns. Its spirit of lamentation was keener, and one phrase in it cut her deeply.
One wonders in how many houses a portrait of Andrew Endall Tamburlain at this moment hangs with those of other great sportsmen of the day. Had his admirers but known of his private difficulties would they not gladly have ended them? It is unfortunate that something – pride, perhaps – made him unwilling to ask for help. It is all too sad for words.
She felt a sudden spasm of guilt flash through her. Private difficulties … The phrase unavoidably recalled an earlier bereavement. Ignorance of those difficulties besetting her father had not assuaged the pain of his suicide, but it had at least excused her any personal blame. With Tam the case was different. While their friendship had not been intimate, she had been close enough to know that he was, essentially, quite lonely – The scrape of a chair interrupted her reverie, and Brigstock, returned from his errand, was staring at her with an expression of dismayed enquiry.
‘My dear, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
Connie, benumbed, nodded slightly and handed him the newspaper. Without looking up, she waited while he perused the story. Presently, with a soft sigh of resignation, he laid down the paper on the table between them. When at last he spoke, the tenderness in his voice was palpable.
‘I’m so very sorry, Connie,’ he said, and the words, dissolving the composure she had struggled to maintain, forced helpess tears to run down her face. Only afterwards did she realise that the last time such weeping had overcome her was that rain-blurred night she left Folkestone, and England – which was the last time she had seen Tam, or would ever see him.
Later that day, as the light faded in her bedroom, Connie lit another of the acrid-tasting cigarettes Brigstock had given her, and pulled out the drawer of her bedside table. In among the letters from Fred, her mother and Lily, she located one that bore Tam’s handwriting, its postmark dated 6 November 1913. She withdrew its single sheet and read:
My dear Constance,
Thank you for your last. I am glad to learn that you are finding the work less troublesome at the hospital. You make fun of your alleged inadequacies as a French speaker, but I imagine the comfort and cheer you bestow upon your patients would transcend any limitations of language – it is your gift. (I still recall the sweetness of your condolences to me on the death of my mother.)
You remarked upon the ‘troubled’ tone of my previous letter, for which I must offer apology. Retirement does not sort well with me; formerly the winter would have been
occupied with a club tour to Australia or South Africa, and I feel the absence of the game hanging heavy. It is the price one pays for choosing a young man’s profession – after one’s brief spell in the sun there seems to be too much time to fill.
Sometimes I fear that I have devoted myself to cricket at the expense of making a life. Yet I chose the game willingly, so there is nobody to blame but myself. Such dismal ruminations! I beg your pardon.
Beatrice asks after you, and sends her regards. She was sorry to hear that your period of exile must be indefinitely extended – as was I. Please to be assured that, whenever that period should end, there will always be a welcome for you here. Until then, believe me sincerely,
Your friend,
Andrew
Connie read the letter a second time, and felt again that obscure but insistent needling of her conscience. She discerned now an appeal in his words, and a sense of regret – there is nobody to blame but myself – that required a friend’s consolation. Given all that he had done for her, ought she not to have been more solicitous of his troubles? Perhaps – though in what manner she might have helped him she didn’t know, and now the chance had gone. Your friend, Andrew. The sign-off had become a valediction, and pierced her to the heart. The newspaper had it right, for once – all too sad for words. Turning up the gas lamp, she found a sheet of writing paper and her pen. She crushed out her cigarette in a little saucer. Dear Beatrice, she began the letter, I am at a loss to express my sadness – and several hours of sorrowing meditation would intervene before she could bring herself to finish it.
It was another day of rain-washed skies and scuttling, wispy clouds as Will followed the coffin out of the church and down the path, thronged now with beady-eyed men in overcoats and bowlers. The press were out in force. He felt Ada’s hand resting lightly in the crook of his arm as they stepped beneath the dark cage of ancient yews. His mother and Eleanor walked just ahead of them. Nearly hallucinating with sleeplessness, he had spent the last few days in a determined frenzy of activity, helping Beatrice to organise the funeral, arranging the caterers for the wake at Silverton House, fielding enquiries from the newspapers – anything, in short, that would prevent him brooding too much on his late friend. He dreaded breaking down, in public or in private, and had decided that his best chance of self-control lay in a willed benumbing of his senses. The struggle of it must have told on his face, however, because when he had collected Ada at her house that morning he saw her eyes widen in alarm.
Half of the Human Race Page 31
