Noose

by Bill James

  After that little ceremony at Penarth pier, and then the hints and unexplained behaviour of his mother in the jail execution crowd, it was years before Ian had contact with Emily again. Emily née Bass – rescued as Bass. It came as a big shock. He didn’t recognize her at once, nor she him: after all he’d been a child at the Corbitty memorial. Now he was in his twenties, with a degree, and wearing Royal Air Force uniform. By then – 1952 – there was a new war on. World War Two had finished in 1945 on his sixteenth birthday.

  Naturally, Emily had changed, too. At the memorial ceremony she was shy and a bit silly, he’d thought, going on about herself as object of a tragic attempt at rescue by the captain. That had made him sympathize with his father, which didn’t often happen. As his father had said – and said twice, Ian recalled – he, Laurence Charteris, had got her out from almost under the King Arthur.

  He didn’t recognize her at once. When they met tonight, she was hosting a party, a routine kind of thing for her, he gathered. She dominated. All shyness had apparently been ditched. In fact – an odd thing to say, a melodramatic, purple thing to say – there were moments when he felt a sort of hidden power reaching out from her, even a sort of sinister, unscrupulous power.

  Ian and several of his fellow officer cadets had been invited to the do as part of the social side of their training course. The RAF liked to behave occasionally as a kind of finishing school for its incoming leaders. They had to be shown how to behave in off-duty situations. They would get eased up gently into the officer class. A certain smoothness and polish were inculcated. Emily circulated and, during some general chat, she and he had each gradually begun to realize who the other might be. ‘This is terribly strange,’ he said, ‘but I think I know you from way back. Aren’t you—?’

  ‘You’re his son! Laurence Charteris’s son! My God!’ she said. ‘The wreath! You know, I’ve still got that hilarious note in the envelope that went with it. Your father wrote it – so wonderfully himself!’ Ian might not have agreed with the ‘wonderfully’, but certainly his father was himself. There wouldn’t be much competition from others to be him. She turned and called her husband over. ‘Look who’s here, Frank.’

  ‘Who?’ he said.

  ‘One of your officer cadets.’

  ‘That much I can see.’

  ‘A special one,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’ her husband said.

  ‘His father saved my life,’ she said. ‘The paddle boats. You’ve often heard the tale. Me, full fathom five.’

  ‘Once or twice or twenty times, yes,’ he said. ‘And the wreath and the comment with it in the dinky little envelope.’

  ‘But you must look after this soon-to-be officer,’ Emily told him.

  ‘I look after all of them. Which course are you on?’ he asked Ian.

  ‘White, sir.’

  ‘We always have one of these ice-breaking occasions for new intakes,’ Emily said. ‘As commandant, Frank has to get to know people. But there’s never been anything as brilliant as this before. I should have looked at the list of guests. Your name would have hit me. What luck! I’m not always here, you know. I spend some time in London – for my work. But tonight, here I am. Grand!’

  Ian felt buffeted by her gush. It came near to effusiveness, seemed out of proportion. Perhaps that’s what being hitched to a Group Captain did for her. Yes, some enormous changes had been made. He wondered what her work might be. Perhaps she’d say in a little while. ‘Called up, were you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not career RAF?’

  ‘No,’ Ian said. ‘Two years’ conscription.’

  ‘You’ll do excellently, I know.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I know you will.’

  National Service had arrived for Ian in 1951. He’d just finished his degree. Taking a university course allowed you to delay entry. He’d been drafted into the Royal Air Force Regiment, not aviators but a kind of army division of the RAF, its duties to guard aerodromes. The Regiment might be needed in the Korean War and was expanding fast. To Ian, it seemed more like the infantry than the Air Force. The Regiment bothered a great deal about appearances, liked boot toecaps to be really agleam, and required troops to march with ‘bags of swank’. These were not a priority in the rest of the RAF, where a sort of seeming casualness – even a mild, gentlemanly scruffiness – was encouraged among officers. Flying crew killed people from a distance. The Regiment might have to kill people close. Militariness and pride in it were good – part of the mental armoury. A couple of days ago Ian and the rest of his unit paraded with these bags of swank and fixed bayonets one February morning in the nearby town to mark accession of Queen Elizabeth the Second. It was exceptional for troops to march through the streets with fixed bayonets. Accession of a monarch did rate as exceptional.

  Ian’s officer training for the Regiment took place on an almost abandoned airfield originally laid out in 1940 at the start of the Second World War. Lincolnshire, winter and very cold. And it was now, at this cadet unit, that he bumped into Emily Stanton, who had been Emily Bass and, as he discovered, Emily Something Else in between. She was on her second marriage. Members from all the training courses were invited in at some stage to meet the commanding officer and, perhaps, his wife, for a session of civilizing drinks and conversation in the Mess.

  Group Captain Frank Stanton, the CO, and Emily circulated separately, chatting to their young guests. Grinning, affable, assured, she’d approached Ian almost at once: ‘Excuse me. I’ve made a bit of a beeline for you. Please don’t take fright. I heard your accent when you spoke to one of your friends just now. Cardiff?’

  ‘I thought I’d got rid of it.’

  ‘Why should you? I haven’t. But some despise it, I know. Caaardiff, as it’s said. And the famous rugby ground, Caaardiff Aaarms Parrrk.’

  ‘You’re Cardiff?’

  ‘Marlborough Road. You?’

  ‘We moved to Barton Street from Hunter Street.’

  ‘Hunter Street,’ she muttered. This second address seemed to intrigue her, make her a bit breathless for a second. At that stage he still didn’t understand. She pursed her lips and slightly frowned, as if doing some kind of quiet calculation. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I was famous in Cardiff and thereabouts for a while.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’d have been a whippersnapper at the time – about four or five.’

  ‘Famous for what, please?’ he said.

  She seemed to become devious. ‘Do you know the pier at Penarth?’

  ‘Of course. It’s still there.’

  ‘And the passenger steamers in the Channel?’

  ‘The King Arthur and the Channel Explorer for instance?’ He gazed at her and began to snigger as the realization and recognition came gradually to both of them. She’d called to her husband. A smile stayed on her face but her eyes popped in astonishment. ‘Hunter Street. Oh, Lord! So, the service will have to promote you to squadron leader at once.’

  ‘At least,’ her husband said.

  ‘Right – on a two-year stint, are you Officer Cadet Charteris?’ She spoke in a mock military voice. ‘National Service used to be only eighteen months, didn’t it? But now there’s Korea.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ian said.

  ‘Might you sign on for a longer career with the RAF at the end of your time?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He’d been thinking about newspapers, journalism.

  ‘You’d be, what, twenty-two, three?’ Emily said.

  ‘Two.’ She must be just over forty, he thought, still slight. Her hair had darkened slightly from when he last saw her pictures, but it had no grey, or no visible grey. Although she’d had a drink or two and was slightly flushed, her skin looked unlined. She had a round, lively face and friendly but unfoolable pale blue eyes.

  ‘Yes, about five when it all happened – the two ships?’ she said. ‘And later you were one of the stars at the memorial service with the wreaths, weren’t you? And are you Korea bo
und?’

  ‘Darling, he wouldn’t know that. Nobody knows that at this point in their training,’ Stanton said.

  ‘Married? Girlfriend?’

  ‘Girlfriend. Rather off-and-on.’ Yes, his relationship with Lucy had its deep, recurrent difficulties lately.

  ‘Does she understand you might be sent to Korea?’ she asked. ‘Is that what puts her off?’

  ‘I’m not sure what it is,’ he said.

  ‘Did Emily tell you she actually still has the envelope and note?’ the group captain asked.

  ‘Do you remember it, Ian?’ she said.

  Of course he remembered it. His father’s personality was in those farewell words – lively, unforgiving, inventive, effortlessly cantankerous and mean. But somehow Ian felt he should act dumb. ‘A note with the wreath?’

  ‘You and the other children threw wreaths into the sea from the pier to commemorate Captain Corbitty. You’ve forgotten? But you were only a lad. It’s a long time ago.’

  ‘I think I recall the wreath. Not the note. Would I have looked at it?’

  ‘The wreath didn’t drift far. It was washed up at Penarth on the next tide,’ she said. ‘Someone recovered it from the beach and must have realized where it came from. Most people in Penarth knew about the memorial ceremony. The message in the envelope was rather disrespectful, even cruel.’

  ‘Oh? Who on earth would write something like that?’ Ian said.

  ‘I think the man who found it wondered if I’d written it,’ she said. ‘He must have thought the newspapers would be interested and told the Western Mail. They sent a reporter over to get the thing from him and then came out with it to where I was living then with my first husband. We had a flat not far from my parents’ house in Marlborough Road. The memorial organizers had my address. The reporter must have got it from them. This newshound kept asking if I’d written the words and, if not, did I know who had? Did I recognize the handwriting? I said I hadn’t and I didn’t. He saw I wouldn’t shift and said I could keep the envelope and its contents.’

  ‘It’s prized, I can tell you,’ Stanton said. He moved off to talk to some of the other cadets.

  ‘The reporter suggested that if I hadn’t written the less than fond goodbye he supposed your dad, Laurence Charteris, must have. But that wouldn’t make a news story, because it would appear malicious and petty and backbiting. They couldn’t publish something that might diminish a hero.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Ian said, ‘I suppose it would have done that.’ ‘Malicious.’ ‘Petty.’ ‘Backbiting.’ These were terms which would suit his father from time to time. Or more often. Hi, Dad, I recognized you instantly.

  ‘It troubled me, that poisonous adieu. It was from somebody hurt and resentful. I thought, yes, possibly your father.’

  ‘Oh, surely not,’ Ian said.

  ‘Possibly,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘The sight of that non-eulogy – anti-eulogy – in the envelope made me realize I’d been rather offhand about the rescue. Someone – Captain Corbitty – had died for me, and I think that became an enormous, engulfing idea in my head. Possibly rank came into it. I might have been impressed – stupidly impressed – because a ship’s master had tried to save me, the captain of a vessel. Your dad – only a crewman. It was a disgusting attitude. My life had depended on your father. That was the positive side of the incident, and perhaps the more important. No two ways about it, I’d been foolish. I knew I’d better get in touch with Laurence again. Make it up to him, show I wasn’t really someone bamboozled by rank – and by a death.’

  ‘Get in touch with him? Did you?’

  ‘I decided I had to thank him properly, put things right. I actually hung about in Hunter Street one day until I could nab him on the quiet. He was astonished to run into me there. I had to do it, though.’

  ‘I didn’t know about this,’ Ian said.

  ‘No, nobody did, except your father and me.’

  God, what was she saying? She’d ‘nabbed’ him. What the hell did that mean? ‘Oh, I see,’ he replied.

  ‘I didn’t want my then-husband asking a lot of unhelpful questions, did I?’

  ‘Unhelpful?’

  ‘That sort of thing. Negative. Possessive.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And your father would have been careful not to speak of it at home, I imagine.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘It would have been awkward. Unnecessary. But there were bound to be unique feelings between Laurence and me, weren’t there? A bond, formed first in that grubby Penarth sea. There aren’t many such bonds, you know.’

  ‘Did Dad say he’d written the abusive cheerio, when you’d nabbed him on the quiet?’

  ‘How is he?’ she replied.

  ‘Dad? He’s fine.’

  ‘Good. That first marriage broke up and then I met Frank towards the end of the war.’

  ‘Broke up?’

  ‘We had certain serious differences. That can happen in a marriage and I began this Service life, trying to fit it in with my own career.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Government work, mainly in London. It’s interesting, perhaps important.’

  ‘A civil servant?’

  ‘Government work, yes.’

  ‘And have you any children?’ he asked.

  ‘In the RAF you never know when the next posting will come, nor where to,’ she replied. ‘As you may discover! Eventually, it became impossible to keep in touch with Laurence.’ She amended this familiarity: ‘With your father. The demands of my own job, which could be quite severe, and then Frank’s also.’

  ‘No, I can see that.’ This nabbing and the watery bond had caused Ian a bit of thought, and might have produced a start-ling revelation. ‘Tell me, were you in a jail crowd at an execution in 1941?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d heard about the murder from your father, naturally, and read the papers. I thought he might have attended because of your connection – chance of an extra meeting. There had been some cherished interludes. I hope you’ll look kindly on this unique closeness. There were times when I felt carried back to those moments under the surface near the paddle steamer and I’d see your father through the murk of the sea there and his hand, sure of itself, precise in its exercise and determined, reaching for the shoulder of my jacket to pull me up into the air, his face bold, certain of triumph. Yes, yes.’ She seemed to de-trance herself. ‘But it was your mother with you at the prison gates, wasn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘And did she know you were … that you’d been in this special … this special, well, in touch with Dad?’

  ‘My pictures had been in the Press, of course,’ she said. ‘Your mother would have seen them, I expect.’

  ‘Dad has the cuttings. I think she spotted you and wanted to leave at once.’

  ‘Yes? Well, obviously, I have to recognize that she might have heard rumours. These tales take on a kind of abounding strength and self-perpetuation, don’t they?’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘There’ll almost always be gossip, won’t there, Ian?’

  ‘I was puzzled at the time,’ he said. ‘And disappointed, I think – pulled away suddenly from that jail-gate gang for I didn’t really know what reason. I’d been getting lionized. I was a sort of exhibit, the one who’d made this occasion at the prison possible.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to assume Laurence – your father – was the cause of my divorce.’

  ‘Your divorce? Certainly not.’

  ‘Career pressures as much as anything. I’d done some Government Service exams and tests and to my astonishment passed first place for my intake. All right, I think I’d always known I was reasonably bright, but this – well, imagine! I’d left school at fourteen, no college, yet I could come out top in a quite tricky lot of papers. I was offered a very desirable and demanding job. I grew up. Home life suffered. I’m still a consultant there, but am able to pick and choose when I work. That’s necessary b
ecause Frank might get a posting to some far-distant spot.’

  ‘Consultant where? Which part of Government Service?’

  ‘I still feel for … I still feel very obligated to your dad,’ she replied. ‘Isn’t it inevitable? And, of course, I’ll do everything – shouldn’t say this, should I? – but I’ll do everything I can for you here, although I’m only the CO’s missus, not the CO, and quite often his missus in absentia. It’s a kind of contact with Laurence, isn’t it – I mean, via you?’ This time she let the name stand, the name she’d known him by. ‘That’s precious to me, even so long after.’ She touched his arm very briefly. ‘Now, I fear I must talk to some others. I have my duties! I’ll drop you a note through your pigeon hole in the Mess if I have any further thoughts.’

  ‘Well, thanks. But you mustn’t inconvenience yourself.’

  ‘I’ll enjoy helping. I’m away a fair bit, but I should be able to make sure things go well for you.’ She put two fingers to her closed lips, signalling that she shouldn’t say or do this, but had said it, and said it twice, and would try to do it.

  He considered it would be wisest not to tell his parents he’d run into Emily Stanton, née Bass, here. Old resentments might surface again in his mother.

  SIX

  It wasn’t quite cold enough to freeze the mud in the trenches up near the control tower. Trenches? These dimples in the ground hardly deserved the word, Ian thought: nothing like those deep, lived-in networks of the First World War he’d read about as a kid and seen sepia pictures of. There had been a song still around when Ian was a child making fun of the exceptional care for their own safety shown by some officers and non-commissioned officers at the front. It went:

  If you want the sergeant major, I know where he is, I know where he is;

  If you want the sergeant major, I know where he is, I know where he is.

  If you want the sergeant major I know where he is:

  He’s down in the deep dugout.

  It was a simple melody playable on that pocketable, popular Great War instrument, the harmonica. The tune might owe a bit to that nursery song about ‘the big ship Ally Ally Oh’. But move forward a quarter of a century to another World War, the Second, and there’d been no deep dugouts for sergeant majors to hide away in during bombardments. In 1940, troops sent to guard this airfield from possible Nazi invaders had been hurried and careless about the digging. Blockhouses on the perimeter were supposed to stop the enemy. If they got this far, it would be only a matter of holding them for a couple of minutes so the tower could be sabotaged and evacuated. These basic, two-man, shallow ditches were considered enough for that kind of token defence. Most likely the walls had started to crumble before the spades were out.