Nemesis

by Rory Clements

  What had Charlecote meant when he said Marfield had been ‘playing with him’? Had he not taken the session seriously? Charlecote had been absolutely furious – and she, too, felt angry. No one liked to be used or taken for a fool. Well – let Marfield do what he damn well pleased. She had better things to occupy her time than chase after him.

  A wind whipped along the street and she wrapped her cardigan around herself as she walked northwards. There was a life growing inside her and she really didn’t know how she felt about it. Motherhood had always seemed some distant possibility, but now – with the outbreak of war? Dear God: men, women and children – people they knew – had been thrown to their deaths in the icy waters of the Atlantic. And that was just the first day of the conflict. How much worse was to come?

  In Bene’t Street, she fished her keys from her bag and unlocked the door that led up to her first-floor office, the place where she compiled, edited and published books of poetry.

  The room was cold. Unsold copies of books lined the shelves. A half-consumed bottle of beer – over a month old – stood on her desk. She slumped down in her chair. Everything seemed pretty hopeless now. And Tom would know soon enough, too. He wasn’t stupid. He must have seen it all before when his wife Charlotte became pregnant; he would know the signs. She felt her options closing in.

  *

  Wilde had rather hoped Lydia would turn up at the college with Marfield: it would have been interesting to see his face when confronted with his secret wife. Before leaving, Claire had told him a little of the circumstances of their romance and marriage. At the time she thought he loved her, but in retrospect it now seemed that it had been her pregnancy that made him ask for her hand. ‘But he didn’t seem at all reluctant, Professor. I didn’t force him into it.’

  ‘What of his parents and yours?’

  ‘I have never had a chance to get to know his parents properly. He said his father was angry with him. I imagine he told Marcus he was a fool, that it was all his own doing and that he could suffer the consequences. There would be no more money forthcoming. If he wanted to stay at Cambridge, he could live by his own means. That’s the way these things usually go, isn’t it?’

  ‘But you had money?’

  ‘Yes, and it would have been enough to keep him on at college and to bring up our son.’

  Wilde had sipped his tea. ‘What is the boy’s name?’

  ‘Walter Marcus.’

  Things were beginning to come together. Perhaps it was the pregnancy and shotgun marriage that had caused the rift between Marcus and his parents. Had the shame been too much for them? For a father who worshipped his son such an episode might have seemed disappointing to say the least, but was it really enough to drive a man to suicide? Still, thought Wilde, who could ever tell the ways of the human heart?

  The question that puzzled him was the timing: why wait until the day his son returned to England to kill himself? Had he somehow discovered that his son was back? There had to be some sort of connection between the events.

  But there was something that didn’t quite add up: why would any parent, however traditional, be ashamed of a respectable daughter-in-law like Claire Marfield? Even if the marriage was rushed and there was a child on the way?

  After tea, and with no sign of either Marfield or Lydia, Claire had taken her leave of Wilde. She lived a little to the north of Cambridge, at Histon, and she gave him her address and telephone number. He promised he would talk to her young husband and gauge his reaction. One way or another, he would contact her.

  At the main gate, he watched as she walked up Trumpington Street towards her bus, then turned and ambled back into the new court. As he did so, he saw the stick-thin figure of the choirmaster Timothy Laker walking towards the chapel, and followed him.

  He caught up with him just as he was entering the ancient building and hailed him. ‘Laker, a quick word if you will.’

  Laker turned and smiled warmly. ‘Oh hello, Wilde, good to see you back from your travels. We were all a bit concerned you might get caught behind enemy lines.’

  Wilde laughed. ‘We had to fight our way past Nazi tanks, all the while being strafed by dive bombers. It was hellish.’

  ‘Worse than the hall dinners you steadfastly refuse to attend?’

  ‘Well, no, not that bad. Why, Laker, have you started eating them?’

  ‘You know me.’

  Laker chain-smoked, but never appeared to eat. He couldn’t weigh more than nine stone and would have made a whippet look fat. Horace had once whispered in Wilde’s ear that Laker considered food a sin. ‘More food for you then, Horace,’ Wilde had retorted.

  Laker removed the last half-inch of a cigarette from his mouth and ground it into the paving stone beneath his foot. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Marcus Marfield.’

  ‘Ah yes, I heard he was back with us. Marvellous news.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Laker looked slightly startled. ‘You sound as though you have doubts, Wilde.’

  ‘No, of course it’s good news. But things seem to be getting rather complicated, that’s all. Would you mind having a little chat with me about him? I think you must have known him better than any of us.’

  ‘Always a pleasure to talk to you, Wilde. Here in the chapel suit you?’

  He followed Laker into the splendid building. They walked towards the vestry where the cassocks and surplices hung, all bright red and white. Laker pulled out a small trestle table and a couple of heavy oak chairs with hard, straight backs.

  ‘Your tipple’s Scotch, isn’t it, Wilde? All I can offer you is a sip of communion wine, I’m afraid. Pretty revolting stuff.’

  ‘I’ll happily pass on that.’

  ‘Me too. God, this bloody war – you see all these beautiful surplices? I’ve been told they are to be intermitted for the duration – too bright apparently. Might attract enemy aircraft. I’m sure the Hun have nothing better to do than strafe choral scholars as they progress across the courts. Mind you, the way things are going, I fear we might not even get a choir together when Michaelmas term begins.’

  ‘Oh you’ll manage somehow. The boy choristers will be at school – and Marcus Marfield is back.’

  ‘Yes, that is a bonus. He’s got perfect pitch, you know. You say C, he’ll sing it. You play C – or any other note – and he’ll tell you what it is. Remarkable.’

  ‘I think the voice is still there. He sang a little Brahms while we were staying in London on our return home.’

  ‘Thank heavens for that.’ Laker brightened. ‘Now, what do you want from me?’

  ‘His background. Everything.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Curiosity. He seems somewhat troubled and I’d like to help him.’

  ‘Well, he entered the King’s School as a boy chorister when he was about eight or nine and ended up as head chorister, before going off to –’ Laker paused ‘ – Uppingham or Oundle, I think. Then of course he came here as a choral scholar. That’s about it to date, apart from his venture to Spain, of course.’

  ‘Why didn’t he go back to King’s?’

  ‘Are you suggesting we’re somehow inferior to King’s?’

  Wilde laughed. ‘Good Lord no! Now, I saw him as just another extremely bright undergraduate. Always produced his essays on time. Always attended lectures as far as I knew. But beyond that, I knew nothing. Who did he consort with? What girlfriends did he have? Did he belong to any political societies? It occurred to me that he might have confided in you sometimes.’

  Laker pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Wilde shook his head and Laker took one, lit it and drew deep. ‘This is just between you and me, Wilde?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Laker hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No, I really don’t want to tell you this.’

  ‘Come on, Laker. You know you can trust me.’

  ‘Can I? Oh, very well. In fact he didn’t confide in me, but another young man did. He – let’s call him Smi
th – came to me in great distress because Marcus Marfield had been making approaches to him of a distinctly sexual nature, and the poor lad didn’t know how to deal with it. He was utterly distraught because, despite his protestations that this wasn’t welcome, Marfield wouldn’t let it lie.’

  Wilde wasn’t surprised. Seeing him together in London with Mr Lincoln Tripp, the junior diplomat from the US embassy, he had wondered on which side of the bed Marfield took his pleasures. The appearance of a secret wife had not changed his thoughts on the subject. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Smith awoke one night to find Marfield climbing into bed with him. Smith tried to push him out, but Marfield was determined and there was a tussle. Smith just about managed to maintain his chastity, but he was deeply shocked by the events and confided in me.’

  ‘You must have said something to Marfield?’

  ‘I did, but Marfield brushed it all aside. He was a little drunk, he said, it was all a bit of a lark, no harm done. I’m afraid I believed Smith’s version, but I didn’t take it any further. It seemed to me Smith needed to toughen up. If he goes into the forces, as they all probably will, he’s going to come across plenty of uncomfortable situations, so he’ll need to be able to look after himself.’

  ‘And besides, Laker, you didn’t want to lose your finest tenor?’ Wilde couldn’t resist the dig.

  Laker blew out a ragged cloud of smoke and shrugged. ‘There are always Smiths; a voice like Marfield’s comes along only once in a lifetime.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Elina Kossoff drove her new red sports car at high speed along the road south, then turned off down a secluded farm track to the isolated farmhouse.

  She parked the car and hammered at the door. There was no reply, but then she hadn’t expected there to be anyone here. The door was unlocked and she pushed it open and stepped into the large kitchen. It needed some care, this place. It could be quite nice if anyone took a paintbrush to it, added some utensils and furniture that wasn’t quite so basic. But that wasn’t the point of the house, was it?

  Climbing the stairs, she found what she was looking for in a small back bedroom, concealed beneath floorboards behind a plain old coffer. There was a kitbag of Great War vintage and a soft cloth wrapped into a weighty bundle and tied with string.

  Her plan had been to leave them here a few more days, until they were absolutely necessary. Better that way, of course, but things had moved on; she needed them now.

  She didn’t open them, because she knew what was inside. Lifting the contents out carefully, she replaced the boards and slid the coffer back into place. With the bag and bundle safely deposited in her car, she drove back towards Cambridge, a great deal slower this time. She didn’t want to be stopped for speeding. It wouldn’t do for the police to examine the contents of these particular bags.

  *

  Lincoln Tripp was waiting for Jim Vanderberg at Glasgow Central Station. He immediately offered to carry his bags and escorted him through the concourse.

  Preoccupied with thoughts of his family, of torpedoes exploding, steel ripping through steel, and the bottomless depths of the cold Atlantic, Vanderberg made desultory conversation. ‘I was sure I’d beat you up here, Tripp. These British roads are not good.’

  ‘It seems the railroad has its problems, too, sir.’

  ‘It’s usually a whole lot better than this. Any word from Jack Kennedy?’

  ‘He’ll be up in short order. We’re staying just across the road at the Central Hotel. Not the best rooms, but all I could get. It was either that or accept an offer from the consul general for his spare room. I didn’t think it sounded an appetising option.’

  Vanderberg met Tripp’s eye. ‘What about—’

  ‘No word yet, Mr Vanderberg. I’m sorry. But your boy Henry is here, among the first to arrive, and being well looked after. He’s in hospital. Not sure he needs to be there any more, but it seemed like the best place in the circumstances.’

  ‘I suppose he’ll be asleep now?’

  Tripp nodded. ‘They don’t encourage late visits. You know, sir, I hate to break it to you, but some of the news isn’t at all good. Looks like more than twenty-five, perhaps thirty, Americans have lost their lives.’

  ‘Along with many others.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘OK, well let’s get some food and whisky and make an early start in the morning. Do what we can for the survivors.’

  *

  Henry Vanderberg was eleven, the elder of Jim and Juliet’s two sons. He was sitting up in bed reading a comic book when his father and Lincoln Tripp arrived in the ward at the Victoria Infirmary in the south-east of the city.

  A young nurse in crisply starched uniform was at the bedside and she smiled a welcome as the visitors entered. ‘Mr Vanderberg?’ she said. ‘Your son is doing very well. He is a brave boy.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘A bang on the head leaving the lifeboat, nothing more. He was brought here to keep an eye on him, but everything seems fine.’

  Vanberberg took his son in his arms. He couldn’t hide the tears in his eyes. ‘You look swell, Henry.’

  ‘I’m OK, Pa.’ The boy clung to his father as if he’d never let him go.

  ‘There’s no word on Ma and William yet. But the chances look good . . .’ Jim detached himself and gazed at the boy. ‘What’s the damage?’

  ‘Bumps, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me exactly what happened, son?’

  Henry had sandy hair, cut short, but his usual ready open smile wasn’t there today. He was tall for his age, and strong. One of his teachers back in the States had said he had the eye and hands of a quarterback. Jim Vanderberg, who had never been sporty, had seized on this. What father wouldn’t want their son to be a sports star?

  ‘I don’t know,’ Henry said, twisting the sheet in his hands. He looked up at his father. ‘It was kind of confusing. We were in our cabin below decks. It was, you know, crowded, and we had to share with this old lady, Mrs Ballantyne, and her maid, Emmy. I asked Ma if I could go up on deck for a while to watch the sun go down before dinner, and she said I could. I saw this line of bubbles in the sea, Pa, like soda water. Just bubbling through the water like a white streak, coming directly at us. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it might be a whale. But then it hit us with an almighty great bang and I was thrown from my feet. I guess it was a torpedo.’

  Jim put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Can you remember what happened then?’ he asked gently.

  ‘When I got up, I saw black smoke at the back of the ship, and in the last of the sunlight I thought I saw a submarine break the surface not far away, maybe a couple of hundred yards. I wanted to get back down to the cabin to Ma and Willie, but all the lights had gone inside the ship and I got lost. Then the lights came back on, but I still didn’t know where I was. A sailor grabbed me and told me to get out on deck, to the lifeboats. I told him I needed to find my mother and brother, but he said they’d be all right. Everyone was going to get off. I struggled with him, but he put me under his arm and hauled me out on deck to the lifeboat. Pa, there were people there who had fallen down. I didn’t know whether they were dead or alive. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t help Ma and Willie.’

  The boy was fighting back tears. Vanderberg put his arm around him again, and the boy buried his head in his father’s neck, overcome with hot angry sobs.

  ‘I know, son. I know you would have walked through fire to help your ma and brother. I know that, son.’

  At last the boy won the battle against his tears and furiously wiped them from his face with his pyjama sleeve. ‘Someone put a lifejacket on me and tied it tight, then a lady put a fur coat around my shoulders. After that, I don’t remember. Next thing I know we were at sea in a boat, all crowded in together, looking back at the ship. At first it didn’t seem to be sinking, but it began slowly going down at the rear.’ He shuddered.

  ‘How long were you in the lifeboat, Henry?’
<
br />   He shrugged. ‘All night. It was really cold and I couldn’t sleep and it seemed like forever. I gave the fur coat to an old man who looked like he was about to die, then he passed it on to someone else.’

  ‘You must have seen people in other boats.’

  ‘I kept looking for Ma and Willie, and calling for them, but I didn’t see them, nor hear them. There were a lot of lifeboats out there and it soon got dark. The sea roughened up and the wind was blowing up too. I thought we’d get turned over. The sun was just rising when the warship came and picked us up. She was called the Electra. HMS Electra – that stands for His Majesty’s Ship, Pa – did you know that? They put me in one of the sailors’ hammocks and I fell asleep. That’s all I know. Here I am. It’s Scotland, right, Pa?’

  *

  Vanderberg secured Henry’s discharge and, together with Tripp, they toured the hospitals and the hotels seeking out American survivors to see how they could be helped. He had spoken to the ambassador and had been reassured that all survivors would be offered alternative transport home and that they would be cared for.

  None of the surviving passengers Vanderberg spoke to knew anything of Juliet and William. No one even recalled seeing anyone of their description. They all expressed their gratitude to the crews of the Athenia and the rescue ships, but there was deep anger and resentment towards the Germans for attacking a civilian liner. And they were fearful of being put on another ship home unless it had a sizeable escort of American warships.

  Many passengers had still not arrived in Glasgow, but Vanderberg was beginning to lose hope. He couldn’t let Henry know that. His mind stretched back across the years to the day he met Juliet at a dinner party in Chicago. It was apparent to both of them that they had been fixed up by their friends, and as it turned out, their friends had been excellent matchmakers. Juliet came from a well-to-do middle-class family. Her father was an attorney-at-law and her mother the daughter of a judge.

  Juliet had had every advantage. Private school, tennis lessons, a pony and holidays in Europe. The one thing she lacked was a pretty face. But she had a great smile and a dirty laugh. Anyway, Jim Vanderberg knew he wasn’t much in the looks department.