In Pale Battalions - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  Now, at last, I recognised him. It was Marriott, a platoon commander when I first joined the regiment in France, invalided home before Loos, one of those shallow, arrogant young men whom the war seemed unable to touch, with a resilience founded on lack of thought. I made some faltering introductions, he and Fletcher eyeing each other suspiciously.

  ‘I’m in barracks down the road,’ Marriott said, visibly excluding Fletcher from the remark. ‘I didn’t know you were in town.’

  ‘I’m not – officially. I’m still convalescing: came home in July with a shoulder wound.’

  ‘Bad luck. Can’t wait to get back, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing – going back?’

  ‘Yes and no. Bit of a swine, actually. I’d like to be back in the thick of it, of course, but the powers that be have other ideas.’ He tweaked back the lapel of his greatcoat to display a green gorget-patch on the tunic beneath. It was the tab worn by staff intelligence officers. I winced inwardly at the thought of Marriott having a hand in strategy, but clearly he was untroubled by such reservations. ‘Experience is what they need at GHQ these days, I suppose.’ I nodded sagely. ‘Reckon you’ll be fit soon?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘I could have a word with the MO if you like. We can’t afford to have fellows like you sitting things out. Not now we’ve broken through.’

  Fletcher interrupted. ‘What do you mean, Captain – “broken through”?’

  Marriott turned to him with a patronising smile. ‘Don’t you read the newspapers?’

  Fletcher’s mouth was set in a sullen line. ‘I do, yes. But do you?’

  Marriott too was becoming nettled. ‘What did you say your occupation is?’

  ‘I wait – for the country to come to its senses and realize the sacrifice of thousands of lives isn’t worth a politically fraudulent objective. By which I mean what you would call victory.’

  Marriott looked as though he would choke. He glared at me as if I were responsible for what Fletcher had said. ‘You’re mixing in strange company, Franklin. What’s this fellow to you?’

  ‘A friend.’ The words came almost unbidden, but easily, as if they were waiting to be spoken, waiting to test me by what they implied.

  ‘You should choose your friends more carefully.’ He thought for a moment, whilst Fletcher regarded him calmly. ‘But then you always did have some unsound acquaintances.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You hung around with Hallows a lot, as I remember. A disgrace to the regiment, with all his defeatist talk. Look what happened to him. There’s a lesson to be learned …’ He had been raising his glass to drink when Fletcher leant across the table and seized his forearm.

  ‘If there’s a lesson to be learned, Captain, it’ll be wasted on a fool like you.’ The glass fell back on to the table with a clatter and nearly toppled over. Suddenly, there was another man standing beside me: a young army officer, stockily built, with an earnest look.

  ‘Is everything all right, Guy?’ he said to Marriott.

  Fletcher released Marriott’s arm and rose awkwardly from his seat. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he muttered. Then he seized his stick, brushed past the man and headed for the door.

  I made to follow him, but Marriott rose abruptly and blocked my path. With Fletcher’s departure, he seemed to have recovered his confidence. ‘What the devil are you doing drinking with a blighter like that, Franklin? The man’s some sort of pacifist.’

  ‘Is it really any of your business?’

  ‘Yes, it damn well is. He could be a German spy for all I know.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to fetch the police.’

  Marriott’s friend came to my rescue. ‘Forget it, Guy. He was probably just squiffy. Come and have another drink.’

  With a reluctance that was mostly show, Marriott brushed at his sleeve, picked up his glass and moved out of my path. ‘All right. But I won’t forget this, Franklin. I think I will have a word with the MO about you.’

  ‘You do that.’ I paid him no more heed. I hurried to the door, was momentarily blocked by an incoming drunken trio, then gained the street. I looked up and down, but there was no sign of Fletcher. Unless – yes, there he was, standing by a lamp post back the way we’d come. He saw me, then moved on, not waiting for me to catch up, and, before I could, he crossed the next street and turned down a side-alley.

  I had no need to worry: he didn’t mean to lose me. The alley led between two warehouses and, at its end, I could see a narrow wharf giving on to a reach of the harbour. There, reclining against a bollard and gazing out at the calm water, I found him. The night was windless but still wet, the rain turned to gathering mist. It was quiet on the wharf, with only the wailing sirens of distant craft in the harbour to break the silence. He looked up at the sound of my approach and nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘Why make a scene like that?’ I asked. ‘There was no need.’

  ‘There was every need. His kind sicken me.’

  ‘Aren’t I his kind?’

  ‘No more than Willis.’

  ‘Willis?’ I remembered then what the boy in Copenhagen Yard had said. ‘Is Willis in the Army too?’

  ‘He’s a deserter.’

  Then I thought I understood. ‘So you hired those rooms to shelter him. Hence all the secrecy. But why what is he to you?’

  ‘I felt I owed it to him.’

  ‘And how did he come to be acquainted with Leonora? The Powerstocks know nothing of him.’

  ‘Don’t you understand yet, Franklin? Willis was in your regiment.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘Yes, you have. By his real name. Hallows. Captain the Honourable John Hallows.’

  I stared at him, not in disbelief but in awe of my own reaction. Hallows’ face in the cheval-glass in Olivia’s bedroom was there, calmly watching me, at the edge of the waters that lapped in lazy mockery about the wharf. He was not dead. Somewhere, he still lived and breathed and kept his counsel. And somewhere too my sense of loss was stung by something worse: if he lived, he could not be the man I thought I knew. If he lived, he was diminished, and I with him.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ Fletcher continued. ‘I don’t think I would have told anyone else. I wish it had been someone like Marriott who came looking instead of you.’

  ‘Hallows is alive.’ I could only voice the thought, inadequate, shallow, awesome as it was.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fletcher. ‘Hallows is alive. Dead to his family, his country, his regiment. Yet stubbornly, inconveniently alive.’

  ‘But … how?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you. He came to me in June and I agreed to shelter him under a false name in those rooms I rented on his behalf. He said that he had deserted, but was presumed dead: that he just wanted time to think, to be alone. I gave it to him. It didn’t seem much.’

  ‘Why did he come to you?’

  Fletcher smiled. ‘Of all people, you mean? That’s the strange thing. He was still at school when Miriam died and I’d have thought he knew nothing of me. But it seems she confided in him where she couldn’t confide in her husband. It was a secret he intended to keep for ever – would have done, but for the war and whatever drove him to cut and run. Alone and frightened in the country that had once been his home, I suppose he turned to the only other … exile … he knew, or knew of. He must have reckoned that, for his mother’s sake, I wouldn’t turn him away, must have judged by what she told him of me that I wouldn’t hold desertion in the face of this war against him. And he was right. I think he was surprised to find me still alive, still living at the Mermaid, still waiting for him.’

  ‘Waiting?’

  ‘Yes. When he walked in from nowhere, when he explained who he was, when he confessed with relief what had brought him to me, I realized that I’d been waiting for him ever since Miriam died. For eleven years I’d waited for some message from her. Then, suddenly, her
message was standing in front of me.’

  I walked to the edge of the wharf, moving slowly to stem somehow the flood of consequences that Fletcher’s words had released. ‘Leonora has known this all along. She is pregnant by her own husband, but her husband is meant to be dead. How did he contact her without the rest of his family knowing?’

  Fletcher’s reply came from behind me as I gazed out across the gloomy, turbid water. ‘I don’t know. He claimed nobody but me knew he was alive. Had I thought otherwise, I’d have been more anxious. As it was, I calculated that nobody would be looking for a dead man. Even so, Copenhagen Yard was only a temporary berth. I advised him to leave Portsmouth, head north, lose himself in some big city. He was too near home here for peace of mind – his or mine. Now I think he wanted it that way. He told me the war was too awful to bear, and that was easy to believe, but now I think there was more to it than that. There was some purpose to his flight beyond a horror of war.’

  Swiftly, I was discerning what that purpose might have been. ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Friday the fifteenth. I went round there once a week to check how he was. I advised him again to leave Portsmouth. He said that he would but I didn’t believe him. Last Friday, when I went, he wasn’t there. It was unusual. He never went out during the day. But I didn’t think too much of it until I read in the evening paper on Saturday about the murder at Meongate.’

  So now we had come to it. ‘You think Hallows did it?’

  ‘All I know is that a man was murdered at Meongate and Hallows disappeared. Make of that what you will.’

  ‘If the police knew Hallows were alive, they would suspect him. He could well have had reason to kill Mompesson. And … there are other things.’

  ‘Yesterday, Hallows’ wife came to see me. I had no idea she knew of me, far less that Hallows had been in touch with her. I linked her anxiety with the murder. I told her where she might be able to find her husband. But we know now that she was too late. And we also know why she was so anxious to contact him. Perhaps she’d not told him she was pregnant. Perhaps …’

  I turned back to face him. ‘Where did she go? Where can I find her?’

  ‘She said she was hoping to stay with a friend on the Isle of Wight – a schoolteacher there. I have the address. You’re welcome to it. Maybe you know why she wasn’t going back to Meongate.’

  ‘I think I do. She would have been forced to name the father of her child. And she could not give that name if she was to keep his secret.’

  He pushed himself upright and moved closer. ‘I didn’t know I was sharing a secret. What I did wasn’t for Hallows, of course, or his wife. It was for … someone else.’

  ‘For Miriam?’

  ‘For her sake, for her secret, I’d have killed you in that alley.’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘She did. She wouldn’t have wanted that. No secret can be kept for ever. That’s why you found me, in my buried life. That’s why you’ll find Hallows. Not because of a murder. Nor because you’ll know where to look. But because, eventually, he won’t want to stay hidden. There’s no comfort in hiding, my friend. Nor much in revelation. But, at least, there’s the honesty of being in the open, of seeing the enemy, of looking him in the eye, squarely, without flinching.’

  ‘Who is the enemy?’

  ‘I wish I knew. For a while, I thought you were. But now I see you’re just another victim like me. Like Hallows.’

  Fellow victims. That was our shabby fellowship, our share of whatever Hallows’ fate was. We walked in silence back to the Mermaid. Too much had been said for further speech. And, as we went, I trawled my memory of all that had happened for some clue to explain it. Hallows’ papers had been found on a corpse in no man’s land. Had he, then, planned his escape? If so, why had he encouraged me to go to Meongate after his death? What thoughts ran through his head as he lay on the truckle-bed in Copenhagen Yard? When did he and Leonora meet? If there was a clue, it was in my compulsion to know, the compulsion Hallows had fed, and primed, and left to find its target. If he had planned my pursuit, its end was already known to him, wherever he was, waiting for me to find him.

  At the Mermaid, Fletcher’s sister brought us beer and some supper in the back room. I was hungry and tired after the night’s events, but not too tired to tell Fletcher some of what I knew about Hallows’ family. Late into the night, long after the pub had fallen silent, we sat and talked about Mompesson, the hold I thought he must have had over Leonora, the part I feared Hallows might have played in his death. It was the least I owed Fletcher: some part of what I knew. By the time I’d finished, I was certain Hallows had killed Mompesson, that he had foreseen what would happen to his home and his family without him, what mischief Mompesson would work with them, had foreseen it all and resolved to prevent it.

  Yet, when I woke the next morning in an upper room of the inn, I knew it didn’t make sense. Desertion and murder would hurt Hallows’ family more surely than his death. The price of thwarting Mompesson was worse than the evil he might have wrought.

  I had resolved to go at once in pursuit of Leonora. She had written where she might be found on a scrap of notepaper and left it with Fletcher: ‘c/o Miss Grace Fotheringham, East Dene College, Bonchurch, near Ventnor, Isle of Wight.’ I stared at it morosely as Fletcher’s sister served me breakfast in the tiny kitchen.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ I said, to break the silence.

  ‘It’s kind of Dan,’ she replied, without smiling. ‘He’s too kind. Always has been. That’s his trouble. I never met her’ – I knew at once who she meant – ‘but that was the start. He lost everything because of her.’

  ‘Then he’s fortunate to have a sister like you.’

  ‘My Bill was dead by the time Dan came out. The brewery wouldn’t have let me keep this place without a man to help me. I’ve done him no favours. But this I will say.’ She leant over me. ‘Your type bring him nothing but bad luck. Leave him alone. That’s all I ask.’

  Fletcher walked down with me to the Hard, where I was to catch the Isle of Wight ferry. The sun was shining, though it did not soften the stark streets of Portsea. To our right, as always, loomed the Dockyard wall.

  ‘Your sister wants you to be left alone,’ I said as we passed the Main Gate.

  ‘We can’t all have what we want. You should know that.’

  ‘Sheltering a deserter is a serious offence, especially for somebody with a previous conviction.’

  ‘We’re both taking risks. I wonder if you realize how great they are.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘For instance, I don’t expect you’re aware that we’re being followed.’ I made to swing round, but he restrained me. ‘Don’t look. Take my word for it, I saw him hanging round the Mermaid this morning and I’ve brought us here by a roundabout route, which he’s followed every step of the way.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A policeman, I reckon. Do you know why they should be after you?’

  ‘I told you Shapland’s no fool. But can you be sure?’

  ‘Sure enough. We’ll put it to the test, though.’

  We walked down the jetty to the ferry pontoon. There I bought a ticket and waited with Fletcher on a bench where we had a good view of the other passengers. Fletcher nodded towards a thickset, overcoated man in the ticket queue.

  ‘There’s your man. And this is what we’ll do. He’ll have instructions to follow you, not me. So you’ll wait until the last possible moment before boarding the ferry. He’ll do the same, of course, to be sure you don’t trick him. But I’ll prevent him getting aboard.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Leave that to me. And don’t worry. The worst he can do is arrest me.’

  When the ferry came in – a chugging, compact little steamer – the other passengers bunched near the gangway, but I hung back and, true to Fletcher’s prediction, so did the man in the overcoat. He seemed to glance anxiously towards us, trying to guess what move we would
make. After the passengers had gone aboard, some freight was loaded, but still the three of us stood where we were. By then, the other man must have known we had his measure.

  It was as the crew were raising the gangplank that Fletcher twitched at my sleeve and I lunged forward. Already, the ferry was easing away from the pontoon as I jumped aboard. The deckhands gave me straight looks, but I was only interested in what was happening ashore.

  The man in the overcoat had evidently tried to follow me. He and Fletcher were still entwined, the other man gesticulating and mouthing words I couldn’t hear above the ferryboat’s engine. A porter bustled over to placate him, while Fletcher said something – probably an apology – and glanced in my direction with a half-smile. The ferry was well away now, white water churning behind it as it manoeuvred out into the harbour mouth. Shapland might have been too clever for me, but not for Fletcher.

  EIGHT

  THERE WAS A breeze getting up in the Solent. I sat on desk as we buffeted across, looking back at Portsmouth as we left it, then ahead at the green mass of the island.

  From Ryde, I took a train across the island to Ventnor on its south coast, a holiday resort emptied by the war but still genteelly picturesque, a scatter of white-faced buildings fringing the sea at the foot of a steep, wooded slope. At the railway station, I asked directions to Bonchurch and followed them, out of the town to the east, where the houses became larger and less congested, leisured villas tucked away in thickly leafed parks.

  The village of Bonchurch was a cluster of mellow cottages round a pond overhung with willows. At the post office, I was told how to find East Dene College. It lay down a winding, rhododendron-lined drive, at the head of which a sign declaimed: EAST DENE COLLEGE, ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES. Not that any of them were in evidence as I approached. The courtyard was deserted, the grey-stoned building in silence amidst the swaying trees. But, as I neared the entrance, a stern-faced lady in a black dress emerged, snapped shut the book she was reading and cast me a sharp look.