Henderson's Spear

by Ronald Wright

  “Liv! That’s very rude. Sorry, Mr. Lumley. She’s only a child. She looks older. People don’t realize.”

  “You don’t want to hear about me. You ladies’ll be wanting to know why I’m here.”

  I liked being a “lady.” He’d brought a tan dispatch case with RAF wings stamped on the pigskin. From this he took a folded cloth. Inside it were a few small objects wrapped in tissue paper. Moving his teacup to the carpet, he laid out cloth and contents on the table.

  “Bloody bought it, poor chap! Bloody bought it, poor chap!” called a maniacal voice from the pantry.

  “Heavens! Who’s that? Sorry. Not my business.”

  Mother laughed nervously. “No need to apologize. It’s only Lord Jim. The parrot. Something in your voice must.…” She fell silent, fingering her necklace.

  “A parrot! My auntie had a parrot—her late husband’s. Navy man. Torpedoed in the Med. That bird said frightful things whenever the vicar came to tea.” Lumley laughed easily, then composed himself. He had a generous mouth, good teeth, the lips full, a perfect Cupid’s bow.

  “Let me say at the outset that there’s nothing conclusive, one way or another. We still can’t say whether your husband survived the downing of his plane in ’53. There’s still no wreckage. We haven’t a shred of evidence to support—or dismiss—the speculation that he or others might have been taken alive. What I’ve brought are these. I can’t tell you exactly how they came into Ministry hands. Don’t know the answer myself—those Whitehall types have lockjaw. But they have asked me to ask you to take a look. Can you bear to?”

  Lumley unwrapped the things and passed them to Mother. They were small. Corroded and pitted. Like ancient coins.

  “Condition’s poor, I’m afraid. More or less what you’d expect for the soil conditions over there.” He lowered his voice. “They grow everything with nightsoil, you see.”

  Mother clenched her fist around them suddenly. She was crying.

  “Take your time.”

  She sat up on the edge of her chair, dabbing at her eyes with a lace hankie she always kept in her cuff. “I remember buttons like these on my husbands uniform. There’s a uniform upstairs. We could check if they’re the same. But surely these could have come from any RAF officer of the time?”

  “I’m afraid that’s so.”

  “Then why come all this way to show them to me? I’m sorry if I sound ungrateful. I just can’t see the point.”

  “I … we have no wish to distress you, Mrs. Wyvern. But we feel it important to include you in any findings. Some people in your position have told us that we go about things too … quietly.”

  “Can I see, Mummy?” She poured the things unsteadily from her palm to mine.

  Two brass buttons and a cap badge. Heavily verdigrised, as if they’d been in the ground for centuries, like Roman coins.

  “There’s one thing more. The most important, actually. It is rather fragile. I must ask you not to take it out of the wrapper.” From the dispatch case he withdrew a small document sheathed in cellophane. Mother examined it, looked up at me with watery eyes. She passed it over, turning quickly away.

  It was a fragment of my fathers handwriting. I recognized it from old birthday and Christmas cards I kept with my jewellery. I didn’t understand what it might mean. It was just a scrap—not much bigger than a cigarette paper—crumpled and stained. I could read five words: … recce SW quadrant and report…

  “Where did you get this?” Mother asked. “And when? Surely you must have some idea.”

  “Then it’s authentic?”

  “Yes. Unless. …”

  “You have any doubts?”

  “There’ve been false trails before, haven’t there? Cruel hoaxes. …” She began to cry again.

  “I know.… I can’t imagine how one copes. If I may say so, you strike me as a very brave woman, Mrs. Wyvern. And so do you, Miss Wyvern. Other people I’ve seen recently have responded—how shall I put it?—irrationally. People need to believe.” He sat quietly for a moment. “I can tell you only what I know. These things have come from overseas sources we believe to be reliable. As to what their appearance, or release at this time may mean, I’m as much in the dark as you are. I’m awfully sorry if my coming here’s upset you. As I said, there’s been a change in policy at the Ministry under the Labour government. They feel that next of kin should be kept abreast of developments. That hasn’t always been the case.”

  “You mean there’s other information—kept from us?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Probably nothing of substance. As you perceive, even physical evidence like this is open to a number of interpretations.

  “I’d better be getting along. Here’s where you can reach me. Though don’t be surprised if you have trouble getting through. The right hand never knows what the left hands doing up there. They won’t even tell you if it’s raining outside in case it’s a state secret. Speaking of which, I must ask you both to sign this. Silly. Just routine.”

  Lumley produced a form entitled Official Secrets Act. We read and duly signed. Though it seemed so pointless. Thirteen years ago was an age to me. Most of my life. The images of Jon in my mind—real ones, not photographs—were fleeting, indistinct. He’d died. … He’d “gone missing,” as Mother insisted, when I was three, an age when you can’t distinguish between the height of your father and the height of a tree—I remember thinking that the crown of his head and the treetops were equally far out of reach. I’m left with bits of him. Big hands clasping my waist as I learnt to ride a trike. A stern face and a spanking when I chased a neighbour’s chickens. The sandpaper of his cheek at bedtime. His smell of wet tweed, jet fuel, pipe tobacco. Now, of course, I can see how recent it still was in 1966, how to Mother it must have seemed that Korea had ended only yesterday, that the trail was warm, that her husband could still come back.

  “Good Lord, that’s rather fine. Looks terribly old. What exactly is it? Suppose I ought to know. Never much good at history.” Lumley laughed. Mother made her usual little speech: “I believe it’s called an assegai. An ancestor of my husbands brought it back from Africa.”

  “May I?” He stood up and approached the spear, ran a caressing hand along the polished wood. “People used to make things so beautifully, didn’t they? Reminds me of a wooden propeller we had in the mess. Same craftsmanship. Fascinating.”

  He opened his case, gathered the things he’d shown us. “If it was up to me I’d leave these with you, but I’m afraid the Ministry won’t allow it. Force of habit. They’ve a grip like Scots on a ten-pound note. On anything at all. What I can give you is a photo of the small finds—here—and a copy of the paper fragment. I’ll be in touch the minute I hear more.”

  That evening we had a cold supper of bread and cheese. Mother drank several whiskies, something she rarely did. She even gave me a small glass.

  “You know what’s odd about those things, Liv? I wish I’d thought to ask that man before he left. Those buttons and the badge, they’re from Jon’s—from someone’s—dress uniform. Why would he have been wearing, or carrying, a dress uniform on a mission? It doesn’t add up.”

  It wasn’t long before she had a chance to put that question. About three weeks later Lumley rang, said he was nearby, thought he’d pop in. I was at school. He told her nothing new. Had no idea why dress buttons had been recovered from a combat zone. But she was tipsy when I got home. Mother and Lumley had had a rather cosy afternoon. He’d revealed why he had to leave the service: malaria and deafness as well as an “uppity amoeba.” And as for her, it was just so marvellous to talk about things with someone who’d been there, who understood, who remembered. Who hadn’t forgotten what we’d fought for, and who wasn’t out in Trafalgar Square chanting from Mao’s wretched little book.

  Mother loathed the sixties. “Everything I’ve believed in,” she used to say. “Everything I’ve paid dearly for is now held cheap and ridiculed.” I tried to persuade her that it wasn’t like that. That she and Jon
, and their parents before them, had fought those terrible wars to end all war, and my generation was agreeing with them, saying hell no, we won’t go; make love not war. But our style put her off—the music, the hair, the clothes—too big a step from ration cards and Vera Lynn. I always won the argument, but she never changed her view. She’d throw up her hands and say, “Olivia, darling, you could talk the hind leg off a donkey.”

  Throughout that summer Lumley came to see us every few weeks. He said he lived nearby, in Royston, which is why he’d been given our “case.” He took us there once to see the Royston Cave, a vault hollowed down into the chalk beneath the town centuries ago. The bottle-shaped cavity was dank and smelt vaguely of pee. By the light of a dangling bulb I saw writhing figures and cabbalistic symbols, scratched crudely on the pale stone. A creepy place, more dungeon than cave, where witches and heretics were said to have hidden in the Middle Ages, or been imprisoned, or tortured.

  Afterwards Lumley drove us past a house he said was his—quite grand with a circular drive, barely visible from the road behind curtains of rain—but he couldn’t ask us in because of his old mother. “I feel I know you ladies well enough by now to be perfectly frank. You see, the dear old thing’s off her rocker. Senile dementia.”

  Embarrassed by this disclosure, neither of us thought to question it, slumped as we were in the warmth and soft leather of his Alvis after the crypt-like chill of the cave.

  Were Lumley and my mother lovers? I doubt it, but I think she was tempted. Mother was a heavy smoker in those days, though she gave it up later on. It used to be “Run down to the corner and get me twenty Seniors, will you, dear? There’s a good girl.” Now she was smoking a Turkish job with a gold ring round the filter, and there were no more errands to the corner shop, which didn’t stock exotic brands. They were his. I would come home to find a dozen in the ashtray, six on one side, six on the other with scarlet daubs.

  Later I wondered if he came to me because she turned him down. I’ll say one thing for the cad: he didn’t kiss and tell. Discretion was his stock in trade. He was as secretive by nature as that Ministry of his.

  He was, I suppose, what is nowadays called a sexual predator, with a taste for widows and daughters. Though predators a bit strong. In my book seductions an art, not a crime. As far as I know he never used force, only deceit. He knew exactly what he was doing: not a finger did he lay on me until I turned sixteen. Perhaps confidence man is the term. Lovable rogue? You decide. (I’m cutting him all the slack I can for you.) He even gave a sort of warning that wasn’t a warning, like a cobra that mesmerizes before it strikes. He said, as if advising in a fatherly way on boyfriends, “All’s fair, little Liv, in love and war. Remember that.”

  A stroke of genius, little Liv. From a shorter man I’d have suspected sarcasm, but I believed him because he was tall. It was the afternoon of the World Cup final, the one when England beat Germany and the Germans said we cheated. Perhaps we did. Perhaps dishonesty was in the air that day.

  I’d gone to the Saracens Head with three or four friends. Kenny Watt for one, showing off his red motorbike, taking those who dared for a quick burn-up round the block until he got too pissed for anyone to risk it. Sarah and Jane turned up in a back-seatless Beetle with two boys I didn’t know.

  It was a bright long late summer day, and people had spilt out around the country pub like drunken bees. Indoors, on a shelf, a TV was blaring live from Wembley Stadium to a rolling surf of cheers and jeers. You couldn’t move or speak. The mood was tribal, one big boisterous family: England. England was going to beat Germany. Again. Just to remind them who won the war. And to hell with all their money and Mercedes-Benzes and that Common Market rot.

  Songs arose, peaked, died away. “Rule Britannia,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Deutschland über Alles.” Not that there were any Germans present. The Nazi hymn, with its sublime music and mad words, was belted out mockingly, out of time and tune. Two gins down my throat and I was singing it too.

  Commotion somewhere over my shoulder, Lancashire vowels. “I didn’t lose five of me best mates to a U-bowt to coom in ere and hear poncey long-haired pups like you singin’ for fookin’ Hitler!”

  “Sorry, mate. Don’t mean nuffink. Just sarcastic, like.”

  GOAL! Germany scores! A simian howl. Yellow submarine, yellow submarine … And so it went on until the referee’s call. Pandemonium, the floor awash. Rattles ratcheting. Whirling dervishes in England scarves. I was dressed up for once, Kenny’s arm around me, hoping he wouldn’t throw up on my Mary Quant. Everyone’s arm around me, all of us singing, singing. Land of Hope and Glory.

  “My God! It’s little Liv! Does your mother know you’re out?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You do sound pleased to see me. Actually, I was looking for your mum.”

  “She’d never come down here. If she did I wouldn’t. She’s at home, glued to the telly like the rest of the country.”

  “I can’t bear that song, can you?”

  “‘Yellow Submarine’?”

  “The one I really hate’s the ‘Deutschland.’ Lost a brother to Adolf.”

  “Was that you? Were you one of them making all the fuss over there?”

  “No. But I’m with ‘em. You young have no idea.… Buy you a drink?”

  “So here we are, all on our high horse about the war, trying to corrupt a minor?”

  “I mean a Babycham. How old are you, Liv? Fifteen?”

  “Sixteen last month. Old enough.”

  “Not for drinking.”

  “I bloody work here two afternoons a week! Pulling pints. One of my regular’s a copper. Nobody checks. They think I’m twenty. And don’t you dare blow my cover! I’ll have a gin and lime, thanks.”

  Outside, dusk now, the crowd thinned.

  Cars driving by blowing horns, bursts of song:

  I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it,

  It’s just like a bit of velvet….

  Summer sounds calling back from shadows, crickets in the grass, rooks squabbling in the churchyards blighted elms. (All gone now. I can hardly remember what an elm tree looks like, and I bet you’ve never seen one in your life.) Kenny wobbles over, asks if he can give me a lift to Sarah’s place, “Party’s moving over there. Her old man’s away.” He winks. Lumley and I (I will not call him Victor) look at each other and smirk.

  “If I were you, young man, I’d toddle off and come back for that bike of yours in the morning. I’ll bring Liv along presently.” Kenny leaves, suggestible.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “That’s the idea. Keep ‘em guessing.”

  Mist rising off the river.

  “I’m getting cold.”

  Lumley’s smoky tweed around my shoulders. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not hungry. Full of bloody gin.”

  “You swear too much for a nice young lady.”

  “Who says I’m nice?”

  “I think you’re sweet. I’m sure it isn’t easy, being you.”

  “You should meet my sister. She’s the pretty one.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. I’ve seen your mother’s photos. I think you are.” Flirting with me! Should I have been flattered or outraged? Of course, being me, tall me—twenty at sixteen, far too old for twerps like Kenny—I was flattered.

  Did I find him attractive, this man old enough to be my father? Maybe. But it wasn’t really about being attracted. I can see that now. He never claimed to have known Jon (he knew better than to play that card, too easily called) but he’d known the ground, that faraway land that had swallowed my father. Victor Lumley’s grey eyes had seen what Jon had seen. His nearness to that mystery drew me to him, gave him power. And his coming back alive made it seem less impossible that Jon might do so, made Lumley an envoy from the past, my fathers proxy. And even though he’d returned with only minor scars, he had my admiration and my pity. A woman’s pity sinks her every time.

  He w
as going to buy me dinner. Somewhere in town. My choice. No man had ever asked me to dinner before, not like that—long-stemmed glasses, candlelight, glances across a red carnation. I saw myself very elegant, hair up, in my Mary Quant. (It had black and yellow bands, like a wasp.)

  Out along the lane in his sleek car with its walnut trim, green leather, and smell of an old glove. Leather and strong outlandish tobacco—the exotic smell of Man.

  “Christ! A copper. Why isn’t the bugger home watching the match?” Lights off. Lumley did something clever with the hand-brake that turned the car half-circle. Tyres sowing gravel, snarls from the big engine.

  “Don’t you need lights to drive?”

  “Didn’t need ‘em to fly. Eyes like a cat, I have. I’ll shake him behind the turnips. He should be going after the likes of your friend Kenny.”

  “Poor Kenny.”

  “All’s fair, little Liv, in love and war. Remember that.” The car rushing on in the night, Lumley driving by the sky’s glow, braking and turning, hedgerows hurtling past like unlit trains. He was good.

  “Slow down. Please.”

  “Soon.”

  “Please. I’m frightened.” I may have put a hand on his knee.

  Bumping down a track. Slower.

  “Stop here! I think I’m going to be sick.”

  It was a good place for it. A gravel pit in a wood. I got out and retched. I thought, That does it. That’ll cool him off, a puking girl. At least that’s what I think I thought. I hadn’t been so woozy since the night at Lottie’s. But did I want to put him off? Why not get it over and done with, become a woman and make an old man happy? Now that I’m telling you this it makes no sense at all, but it made sense that night. It made sense to the person I was at sixteen.

  “Hold me up, or I’ll fall over.”

  Lumley’s arms around me. “You’d better lie down.”

  “I know your sort. My mother’s warned me about men like you.” The sandpaper of his chin. He was kissing me, and I was thinking, How can he bear to do that?

  “Because I love you.”

  “You can’t. I’m a mess. I’m at my worst.”