The Ruffian on the Stair

by Gary Newman

  My mind went back to Brogan, and his perpetual pulling of rabbits out of hats to find out what I knew about the Rawbeck affair. Thinking of Brogan made me think of Jersey, the source and beginning of all this, and where, perhaps, the key to the mystery might lie. That discreet island had turned sour on me now, of course, what with my stupid involvement with Pat having begun there. My jag of adulterous lust there a couple of years before had smeared a dirty mark over the happy memories I had of blue bays and sparkling summer seas with Reet and Paul, and, yes, with Frank and Pat in happier circumstances, and other friends we’d had over to stay with us in the farmhouse.

  But this was all maundering self-indulgence: to find out, you had to go and look. I remembered the covering letter from Lawyer Le Touzel to the contents of the Jiffy bag, with his invitation to look him up. First, the practicalities: I’d emailed off the article I’d been working on, and wasn’t expecting anything else for the next few days, so I had a time window. Where to stay on Jersey? Presumably, the agents would have let the farmhouse – they nearly always managed to fill the place between Good Friday and the end of September, and I hadn’t asked for a slot for two years now. In any case, I’d email them. Could I leave it till the weekend? I didn’t think lawyers’ offices opened on Saturdays, and I was curious to see Le Touzel, so it would have to be tomorrow, Friday.

  I’d have loved to take Leah with me, and introduce her to the island, but with term now in full swing I could hardly expect her to reschedule her tutorials at the drop of a hat. Another time, then, for Leah. I’d ring her and let her know my new plan, though – do it now . . .

  Next morning, I had an early breakfast, then took a taxi to Stansted and the Jersey flight. My first call on the island was the airport car-hire facility, and on to the tiny, familiar parish of St Marc’s. I found Lawyer Le Touzel just after midday in his granite mini-manor of an office in the little township. Le Touzel himself came to greet me amid the computer emplacements of the outer office, and led me into his panelled inner sanctum in a sunlit wing of the building. The furnishings were rich and antique, and dim, older Le Touzels looked down from undistinguished Victorian portraits on the walls.

  The suited young lawyer waved me into the stiff, antique chair in front of his wide desk, with its tooled leather top, while he settled into his chair behind it. The whole set-up – like the island these days – stank of money, and I felt distinctly shabby in my Barbour jacket, open checked shirt and jeans. Le Touzel leant forward, arching his long, pink hands on the table, in the process showing off a pair of discreet gold links. He was plumpish in an aquiline way, with longish, dark hair, evidently cut by some chi-chi stylist – Coupes Conseillées in Halkett Place? – and noted me for a moment with his dark eyes. His smile was as impersonal as a treaty, and I was sure that in an earlier era the staff would have referred to him as ‘young Mr Le Touzel’ . . .

  ‘Had a good crossing, Mr Rolvenden?’ came the vaguely Home Counties voice.

  ‘Flew from Stansted, actually.’

  ‘Ah – time – tell me about it . . .’

  ‘First of all, I’d like to thank you for sending on my grandfather’s things.’

  A little fantail with the smooth hands, and the smile grew a little less diplomatic.

  ‘Least we could do, Mr Rolvenden, in view of the fact that your late namesake was such a longstanding client of ours before the – yes, I’m glad you dropped in. You’re a writer, Mr Rolvenden?’

  ‘For my sins . . .’

  ‘Ha! Yes – I’m a local history buff myself, when I’ve the time – and if I could help you, er . . . co-ordinate any enquiries you may wish to make on the island, I’d be more than happy to help. No question of business, you understand . . .’

  I wasn’t sure I could get my head round the idea of lawyers who did anything for free.

  ‘Our firm,’ the lawyer was going on, ‘is one of the oldest established on the island, and our network of local contacts is second to none.’

  I took that to mean that if I wanted to know anything more about my grandfather, I was to come to him and not nose around upsetting people with possibly embarrassing questions. I decided to jump straight in.

  ‘There seemed to be an interesting subtext to the letter you sent with my grandfather’s things – the war . . .’

  A conciliatory nod, and the smile became even wryer.

  ‘People die, Mr Rolvenden, and the things they’ve, er . . . accumulated over a lifetime come out – no need to upset the living – you’ll take coffee?’

  I thanked him, but shook my head.

  ‘You’re planning on staying long?’

  ‘Mmm . . . no. If anything, I just want to get the feel of the island again; there may be something I’ve missed here about my grandfather’s life.’

  Le Touzel nodded. ‘You own a property on the bay, don’t you?’

  ‘A farmhouse: I’ve yet to ring the agents up about it – I’m fairly certain they’ll have let it already, but no harm in asking.’

  ‘Good luck, then! As well as being vicar of St Marc’s, your grandfather had local connections, too, I believe?’

  ‘His mother was a St Ouen’s girl – Alice Le Maistre.’

  ‘Ah, yes – weren’t they shipping agents in St Helier?’

  ‘That’s right, the farm came to Alice through her mother.’

  ‘Why, you’re almost one of us! So, you’re just here to soak in the atmosphere – reacquaint yourself with your roots, so to speak?’

  ‘Just about – I don’t plan on doing any serious research into family history at the moment, or anything of that sort.’

  There was visible relief on the lawyer’s face, and his smile began to look positively genuine. He rose from his chair, and I stood up, then he came round and shook my hand.

  ‘If anything else turns up concerning your grandfather, Mr Rolvenden, rest assured I’ll be in touch with you – I do enjoy following up island history!’

  I thanked him for his time, and insisted I could see myself out. It struck me how tightly the likes of Le Touzel might close ranks if necessary . . . I then rang the letting agency, to find out that new tenants were due to arrive later that afternoon to take up residence in the farmhouse. I’d just go down and take a look at the place, then.

  Setting off along the single tarmac thread of country lane, I drove down through the Norman dairy pastures, almost as far as the reservoir which formed the boundary with the neighbouring parish of St Ouen. It was not long before I was confronting the squat, granite barn of St Marc’s church, where my grandfather had held the cure of souls from 1919 till the dark year of 1940.

  I pulled up on the narrow verge of the lane, got out and viewed the church against the high blue sky of May. It was quiet and deserted, and the double-leafed, studded door was shut. I walked up and grasped one of the pair of iron torques in my hands and gave it a rattle, but it was locked fast, and even after a full minute had passed, there was no response from inside besides the hollow reverberation.

  Lingering awhile, I wondered how many times my grandfather, tranquil or angry, had seized that ring, how many times he’d prayed, alone, on his bony knees in front of the slab of an altar I knew was inside, and in expiation of what strange sins? How many confidences had he kept over the years, that man of secrets, things confided to him in the clipped accents of folk more used to the old Jersey patois than to English? And how had he felt when he’d returned after Liberation in 1945, to find that his home had been looted and defiled by some of the very same people whose confessions he must have listened to before he’d been hauled off to internment in Germany? Had he then come into this now-empty church to kneel and pour it all out before the same altar? But they were all gone now . . .

  I let go of the ring and walked back to the car amid the ambush of shrill birdsong from the hedges on either side of the lane. I drove the short distance to Grandfather’s vicarage, now alienated from the Church and tarted up as a roadhouse hotel-restaurant – no echoes there of any
sort . . . Driving briskly past it, I made for St Ouen parish and so to the beach. It was relaxing to see the familiar ward-boundary signs flash by, as lightly and musically as lark-song: Les Hures, L’Amiral, Les Trois Rocques. Only the Norman place-names left now, of course, the last generation of native speakers having had all traces of the patois caned out of them as wartime evacuees in the board schools of urban Lancashire.

  Then came the nurseries, the gorse-clumped hillocks and La Mare au Seigneur – St Ouen’s Pond – and, finally, the twitchers’ paradise of the marshes before the glorious silver-and-blue sweep of the bay, with its gorse-green escarpment, and, on the gentle, seaward slope, the scatter of neat farmhouses. These were positively Scottish-looking, with their whitewashed walls and slate roofs.

  I drove down the path and, a hundred yards from the beach, pulled up in front of our farmhouse and got out of the car. The smell of gorse and seaweed hit me in the spring sunshine, with birdsong on all sides, and, in the background, the steady, diastolic swish of the waves on the shore, like a distant groan of discontent. I took in the couth little building, with its white walls, prim-windowed twin storeys and dull grey slates on the roof. Now I was looking at the farmhouse post-childhood, post-marriage, post – damn her! – Pat. I fingered the keys in my pocket: what would it feel like inside?

  Actually, it just felt like an empty let, and I went through the minimally furnished rooms, where I found everything in A1 order for the next tenants – one up to the agent – to the main bedroom. I flopped on to the bed and bounced gently on top of the coverlet, then sat up against the headboard, and looked across through the window at the sea. A trudge along the beach, down to the Corbière, would clear my mind of cobwebs. I got up, patted and smoothed the coverlet, then walked out of the farmhouse, locking the door behind me.

  Nearer the sea, the breeze got stiffer, and my spirits rose as I strode across the silver sands: this was better than grunts and regrets, better than clapped-out religions and family, with its shames and favouritisms . . . Soon I was skirting the Point, with the Corbière lighthouse atop it. I was squinting out at the glittering immensity of the sea, when, just to remind me that my last meal had been a croissant at six-thirty, my stomach started to rumble. I glanced down at my watch – one-twenty – time to look up some sort of lunch. Unless I wanted a longish drive, the Vicarage Restaurant, just across the boundary in St Marc’s, would be the logical place. I trudged back to the car, and, taking my mental farewell of the farmhouse, retraced my route.

  On the inside, the Vicarage turned out to be OK as such places go, with a non-themed but decent decor, and an Italian man of about sixty in a suit presiding over things. There weren’t that many lunchers, and my lasagne arrived in fairly short order. Eventually, the maître d. strolled across the sparsely occupied room and paused at my table.

  ‘Everything all right, sir? You’re enjoying your meal?’

  ‘Mmm . . . salad’s nicely dressed – walnut oil . . .’

  ‘Good, sir!’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, with the elusive Monsieur Ramier in mind, ‘this place was recommended to me by a French friend, who was here a week or two ago.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it, sir. We get quite a number of French guests – was he a resident?’

  ‘Mmm . . . he may have been. His name’s Ramier.’

  The dark man’s mouth bowed downwards.

  ‘No, I don’t remember such a name – we get so many guests, sir . . .’

  ‘Tall and thin – dark suit – dark glasses outdoors – hair done in a sort of quiff like a cockatoo . . .’

  The urbane hotelier’s sallow face lit up.

  ‘Ah, yes – the gentleman with all the questions!’

  ‘Questions?’

  ‘Yes, he told me he was related to one of the former vicars here before the place became a hotel, and had there been any of the original furniture and paintings left here? Could he look in the cellar? The loft? And such and so! I showed him one or two nice old things that had been left – a few chairs, a little table – but no paintings. I think he wanted a picture of his ancestor. He was all over the place – the village, the farms, the church . . .’

  ‘St Marc’s?’

  ‘Yes, the church just down the road – no one goes there now.’

  ‘Did he stay long?’

  ‘Oh, three-four days.’

  It had been Ramier, all right . . .

  ‘That’s him!’ I remarked with a chuckle. ‘He’s in England at the moment.’

  ‘Well, sir, I hope they tell him what he wants to know there!’

  But not before I find out all about Ramier in Berneval, I thought grimly, washing down a mouthful of garlic bread with the house red. I’d missed the 1.10 hovercraft to St Malo, but let’s see what flights there were . . .

  I managed to get on a flight to Paris, then there was the usual running around before I started the sticky, three-hour rail journey to Dieppe, arriving at dusk. From there I took a taxi the eight kilometres to Berneval, where Ramier’d said he had a hotel. The only other things I knew about the place were that Oscar Wilde had written The Ballad of Reading Gaol there, between 1897 and 1898, and that the town had got seriously in the way of the Normandy landings in 1944.

  The reconstructed remnant turned out to be a clean, airy, seaside place – fine for a quiet holiday – but it had the added advantage for me, late that evening, of being quite small – just an enhanced village, really – and therefore easy to suss out. First, I had to find somewhere to lay my head for the night, so where better – if it existed, that was – than Monsieur Ramier’s place? I hitched my travelling bag manfully on my shoulder and set off down the main drag.

  There was a sufficiency of hotels, as I tramped, bone-weary, along, but none with any suggestion of a name like Ramier on its fascia. I finally slumped down, done in, on a high stool of a bistro at the far end of town, and ordered a cold beer. The proprietor, who was a local lad, had never heard of any Paul Ramier, but if later I didn’t have any luck, he’d be able to fix me up with a room at a very reasonable rate.

  I thanked him, and said I’d remember his offer, then went out for a last look round: it was dark now, and the lights were on above the hotel and shop fronts. I walked back up the street, and there, over a little bar under the Hôtel Solidor, was a brightly lit sign I hadn’t noticed earlier when it hadn’t been lit, with a nineteenth-century cancan girl depicted in the middle. She had a mop of orange hair, a dead-white face and pillar-box red lips. Glaring in scarlet letters was the title, in English: Carrie’s Bar.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My weariness forgotten for the moment – could it be the same Carrie? – I went into the bar and sat down at the counter next to a trio of loud characters in blue overalls. The barman paused in his animated conversation with them on – what else? – football, and turned his attention to me. He was a chunky, red-faced individual of around forty-five with an adjusted Elvis hairstyle and hairy, gold-laden wrists. I asked for a Stella-hot-dog, and without a word he poured the drink from a dispenser, then turned to a microwave behind him to attend to the snack, which he soon plonked down on the counter in front of me. He told me the price, speaking slowly to allow for my shaky command of his language, and I counted out the money. I summoned up my best French, and, thinking of what Ramier had told me in England about his being a hotelier on a spring break, asked innocently if the patron was on holiday.

  ‘Moi, je suis le patron,’ was the deadpan reply. ‘I am the owner . . .’

  I then gave a stumbling outline of Ramier’s story, the barman’s eyes narrowing as I went on. The noisy men in the blue overalls were guffawing and addressing remarks to him, but he clearly only had ears for what I was telling him. At length, he jerked his head over my shoulder, and an attractive, intelligent-looking girl in a blue apron took her place beside me.

  ‘Je vous présente ma fille, Liliane,’ he explained. ‘She spik good English . . .’

  With the proprietor’s daughter Lilia
ne to help me with my French and her father with his English, things went more smoothly, but the improvement in communication did nothing to lessen the patron’s evident astonishment at what I was telling him.

  ‘Mais, c’est dingue . . .’ he said when I’d finished.

  ‘Crezzy . . .’

  Crazy because, word for word, Ramier’s story about his being Carrie Bugle’s great-grandson, including all the family details, applied exactly to the man I was talking to!

  ‘I am Germain Barre!’ Liliane translated her father’s rapid, indignant French. ‘I am the great-grandson of Carrie Bugle! She was a star of the music halls over there in England, and that is why this bar takes its name from her. Do you know that the design of the bar sign outside was taken from a painting of her by a great artist? This man Ramier is an imposter! He has been impersonating me . . .’

  ‘And was your grandfather’s name Philippe?’ I pressed.

  ‘But of course! As you say, he was Carrie’s son, and lived with her in Jersey before the war. He was later embarked at Dunkirk, and was in London before serving with de Gaulle’s forces all over the world. Again, as you’ve just described, he joined the Merchant Navy after the war, but disappeared after visiting England fifty years ago. What does this Ramier look like?’

  I described the tall man with the Tintin quiff, and the patron rolled his fists out in front of him, snapping both forefingers against his thumbs.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he asked his daughter-cum-interpreter. ‘I said I shouldn’t have given him Marti’s address.’

  ‘Bernard Marti?’ I asked. ‘Carrie’s son Philippe’s wartime comrade?’

  ‘That’s right: the man you’ve described came here a couple of weeks ago, claiming to be a descendant of one of my grandfather’s old pre-war friends. He seemed to know more about our family than we did . . . He even knew that old Marti had celebrated the end of the war in London in 1945 with my grandfather Philippe. Anyway, the tall man you call Ramier asked if I knew when old Marti had died, and I told him he was in fact still alive, but very frail, and lived with his daughter in Dieppe. The top and bottom of it was, I ended up by giving the man their address.’