by Gary Newman
‘No, besides I didn’t even stop there. I can’t get over the reaction of the man in Bill Wallace’s old place in Lympne, though. He definitely recognized me, you know . . . Is it really possible to visit a place – drive along motorways, ask directions, pay for petrol and so on – without actually being aware that you’re doing it? What d’you call it – a fugue?’
‘It’s never very reassuring to realize how little sentience – consciousness – counts for in nature; after all, the greatest order of living things – the plants – have none at all. And think of all the things – driving included – we do automatically, once we’ve learned how. The fugue state is now a humdrum fact of psychology.’
‘But how do I relate all that to my, er . . . walkabouts?’
‘In your case, I’d have said dissociative amnesia’s the most likely condition.’
‘Explain, please.’
‘During episodes of it, you forget everything to do with your personal experience, while still being perfectly on the ball as to how many twelves there are in eighty-four or what the capital of Thailand is.’
‘Or how to drive safely, to ask garage attendants how much you owe them, and so on?’
‘Yes, that goes on unimpaired, just as you don’t have to consciously think about it before taking each breath, but your personal stuff isn’t at home while the fugue lasts. Most dissociative fugues are to do with shutting out traumatic memories, things your system decides it’s better you don’t remember or even have to cope with.’
‘What triggers them off, then?’
‘Something that jogs you into involuntarily recalling the damaging thing that happened to you in the past. For instance, if you underwent some horrific experience in an air raid as a child, a backfiring car exhaust could trigger off the memory, and with it, perhaps, the fugue. Or if you’d once been mauled by a wild animal, a cat suddenly jumping up and nuzzling your neck could be the trigger. When the trigger’s set off, you may goof off from work, or go away somewhere. Later, you’ll just turn up at work again, or come back, and not know what they’re talking about when they ask you where you’ve been.’
‘I can imagine how the old guy in Bill Wallace’s former home would’ve felt if he’d found me on his doorstep asking for Bill, who’s been dead for thirty years . . .’
‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he hasn’t rung the police, after all.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but there are still loose ends to be tied up down Folkestone way.’
‘You mean, find out about the last tenants of your father’s old bungalow in Capel-le-Ferne, and see if Pidgeon’s called on them?’
‘No need to go down there, of course, now that I’ve the house agent’s details: I can just ring them up. In the meantime . . .’
‘In the meantime, you should get some rest – go straight home to bed.’
I fell in readily with Leah’s advice, and, after breakfast next morning, rang up the agency in Folkestone about the Capel bungalow. It turned out that the last owners had moved out to New Zealand to live with their grown-up children. The new owners were moving in on Monday – they’d actually known the former occupants, so they might be able to tell me something I wanted to know on that score.
It was now Saturday morning, so that allowed for another weekend of suspense . . . I went upstairs to work, but couldn’t settle to anything, my mind being constantly gatecrashed by images of Pat Hague – what on earth had happened to the bloody woman? – by the scared face of the Old Man of Lympne peeping through his faded blinds, and by the jovial, dead face of Bill Wallace, with his bril-liantined hair, shaved straight and level above the tips of his ears.
Now there was a new actor in the shadowy drama, a player introduced by Pidgeon when he’d asked Aunt Hertha in Malmesbury if a Mr Francis had ever passed that way, and enquired after my grandfather, more than half a century before. And had Philippe Barre, on his enigmatic – and, it seemed, final – visit to England in 1955, also made a beeline for the home of his old benefactor of Jersey days? Could this Francis have been yet another wartime comrade of Philippe Barre’s? But old Marti in Dieppe hadn’t mentioned a fourth musketeer.
And what on earth had become of Philippe Barre, after he’d disappeared in England all those years ago? Blood of my blood, son of my real grandmother, Carrie Bugle – God! – that was going to take some getting used to! I was still assuming that Philippe would have travelled here using his ex-comrade-in-arms Duzko’s ID as a means of his preventing his wife’s dunning the shipping agents for her maintenance allowance. But what came afterwards? Did Philippe Barre, still in vigorous middle age in 1955, settle down here as ‘Duzko’? Could he have found a wife, and even started a new family? In which case there might be people in England now who went up to the National Gallery in London and looked with special understanding at Rawbeck’s depiction of Carrie . . . But then I woke up – it was so bloody obvious . . .
Chapter Twenty-Five
I quickly closed and saved what I’d been working on, then surfed the Internet for back numbers of the local Malmesbury newspaper. Unfortunately these weren’t available online, so I shut down the computer and rang a directory enquiries line on my phone. They gave me the number of the Malmesbury paper, which I got through to, and they asked me if I’d write in with details of what I wanted to know. No good – time was of the essence – so I thanked them, and rang up Aunt Hertha, to ask her if she’d help me out.
‘Yes, dear,’ she replied. ‘I can go straight down to the local library, and see if they’ve copies of the paper for the days on either side of VE Day in 1945, and for August 1955. Failing that, I could always pop over to the newspaper offices, and ask there. What was the name you were interested in again?’
‘Duzko Francis or Francis Duzko: D-U-Z-K-O.’
‘Right, I’ll ring back if I can find anything.’
‘Thanks, Aunt Hertha – you’re a star!’
Working, then, on the theory that ‘Duzko’ and ‘Mr Francis’ were simply the constituent parts of the same name, why shouldn’t Philippe Barre, travelling with the ID of his dead ex-comrade Duzko Francis, not have visited the Rolvenden family retreat in Capel-le-Ferne? Just as, fifty-odd years later, Pidgeon seemed to be retracing his steps?
I rang directory enquiries for the number of the Folkestone local paper, but, when I rang it, I got the same results as with the Malmesbury paper: if I wanted to check their archives, I’d either have to email or write, and wait, probably till next week, for a reply, or come down and look them up in person. Anything was better than skulking, clueless, at home, and, since it was already half-past ten, I’d have to get a move on . . .
When at nearly three in the afternoon I arrived in Folkestone, I went straight to the newspaper offices there, and found what I’d been looking for, tucked away down at the bottom of page four of the issue of 9th August 1955. The body of a man, aged forty-seven, identifiable only by his seaman’s discharge book, had been found at the foot of the cliffs south of West Hougham. He’d apparently left his ship in Victoria Dock, London, on the previous day, and it hadn’t been established what he’d been doing in the Folkestone area, nor had anyone come forward to identify him or own to having had any contact with him.
The name on the dead man’s discharge book had been Dusko Francic, and in the brief mention of the coroner’s findings in the issue of the paper of a fortnight later, the verdict had been one of death by misadventure. It seemed that Francic had signed on his last ship – a French-owned vessel – at Rotterdam, and that none of his pay had been deducted by the shipping agents for any dependant’s allowance. This, combined with the fact that his last address had been given as a seamen’s boarding house in the Netherlands seaport, meant that it hadn’t been possible to trace any next-of-kin. The French consul had been duly informed, and that, it seemed, had been that.
So that solved the mystery of my kinsman, Philippe Barre’s, disappearance all those years ago. I took photocopies of the old articles, and left the ne
wspaper offices and made for my car again. There I rang up Germain Barre’s number in Berneval, so that I might break the news to him of the fate of his grandfather. The hotelier’s daughter Liliane took my call at the other end, and promised she’d relay the news to her father, who was at a wedding somewhere. I said I’d keep them in the picture as to further family developments, and rang off. I’d post off two of the photocopies of the respective newspaper articles to Germain in France.
Sitting back in the seat of my parked car, I remembered the VE Day postcard Philippe Barre had sent Marti from England, with its message: Do you remember? Well, we’d never know what Philippe had been thinking about now, his memory-traces having been splattered over the rocks at the bottom of the nearby cliffs. I knew the spot where his body had been found – West Hougham – from boyhood holidays. It was just inland, up the coast from Capel. The cliffs went down just south from West Hougham into East Wear Bay.
I drove off up there, and, twenty minutes later, pulled up at the Martello tower that dominates the slopes above East Cliff Sands. I got out of the car, and went and stood on the slope, taking in the busy harbour, with its Channel ferries, and the steep hill of Old Folkestone, with its castle-like parish church on top. It felt good as I did a little walkabout in the fresh sea air, getting as far as the soft maquis tangle of the chalk-shelves of the Warren towards Dover, then, accompanied by the song of birds, down the springy turf to the actual cliff edge, with the chalk of the out-jutting curve of the cliff on my left dazzling white in the late afternoon sunlight.
With the smell of the short grass in the mellow sunshine, I shut my eyes and remembered my kinsman, Philippe Barre alias Dusko Francic, who had fallen out of time in the grey-blue vastness beneath me. I remembered again the expression my grandfather had used for a similar remembrance: pax cineribus – peace to his ashes. As if in answer, a nightingale began its thin song somewhere, and I opened my eyes and started to walk along the chalk path again, musing as I went.
At one point I craned slightly over the cliff edge, and, all of a sudden, the May sunshine was eclipsed as a dark horror overtook me, its unbidden outrider being the terrified voice of a small boy – my voice – in my head: ‘Let go my arms – don’t want down there!’ I’d have been three when Philippe Barre had last passed this way, and at the time – August – I’d have been with my parents at the bungalow at Capel, just down the coast. Why, our paths might have crossed . . .
I stopped and began to block out a mental scenario of what might have happened if such an encounter had taken place. In my imagination, Philippe, probably hard up, had got wind of where our bungalow was, and was making his way along the path towards Capel, agog to know what the son of his old benefactor in Jersey would make of him. I’d have been playing in the turf, while, out of sight in some sheltered hollow, Dad would’ve been snoozing among the picnic debris. As usual, Mother would have contrived to be somewhere else . . .
In my reconstruction, then, I’m playing near the cliff path – probably beyond it – in spite of Dad’s stern warning never to go near the cliff edge. By and by, a burly, dark, rough-looking man comes into view along the cliff path – I imagined Philippe as looking like his grandson Germain in Berneval – and spots me. In a well-meant gesture, he steps off the path and attempts to take my hand, in order to lead me away from the cliff edge and find who’s supposed to be looking after me.
Naturally, I’m frightened by this swarthy giant with the rough hand and funny accent, and I try to wriggle free, in the process possibly getting nearer the cliff edge . . . Alarmed, Philippe grabs both my arms to keep me from getting any nearer the edge, and my terrified, three-year-old self gets the idea he’s actually trying to drag me over the cliff . . . I scream in terror: ‘Let go my arms – don’t want down there!’
My screams wake up Dad, and he scrambles to his feet and dashes to the cliff edge, where he sees a scruffy type manhandling his little boy. He sees red, and, grabbing me away before Philippe has time to explain, sloshes the half-brother he’s never met. As I watch, my three-year-old self screaming in horror, Philippe totters back under the blow, loses his footing on the turf, and goes over the edge . . .
Poor Dad! I could just picture him, horrified at what had happened, and wondering how to cope with my distress. In my mental reconstruction I imagined him as he tried to comfort and reassure me: ‘Now you’re to forget all about the horrid man, old chap – just a nasty dream, really – d’you see what can happen when you go too near the cliff edge? There, there, it’s all right now – horrid man’s never, never coming back – and no need to tell Mummy, eh? We don’t want to upset her, do we? No need to tell anyone, really – why don’t we make it our secret, eh? Always . . . Now let’s forget all about it, and go and see if Mummy’s back yet . . .’
Back in the twenty-first century, I stood staring unseeingly over the indifferent waters of the English Channel. I felt quite out of myself, like a shaman in a revelatory trance. It all fitted perfectly: a complete unity of time, place and motive. After the cliffside horror in 1955, Dad would have taken me straight back to my normal three-year-old’s life, and, little by little, I’d have blanked the episode out of my conscious mind. Except whenever, in later life, someone would inadvertently grab my arms, as poor Philippe Barre had done when he’d tried to keep me away from the cliff edge, and then my unconscious would step in and draw the healing blanket of forgetfulness over me. Then I’d go walkabout for a while, until everything was all right again, and I’d come back to myself near white cliffs . . .
Eager to test my theory, I dug in my pocket and whipped out my mobile, then frantically pegged in the number of the Holt. My son’s voice came over from the other end.
‘Paul,’ I began, ‘you’re just the one I want to talk to – can you remember the time we had that row at the cottage in Dunstanburgh? The one just before your mother and I finally split up?’
‘What’s this all about, Dad? Where are you now?’
‘On the cliffs, near Capel-le-Ferne.’
‘I can get someone down there, if you’ll just hang on . . .’
I laughed out loud.
‘Oh, I’m not thinking of jumping, if that’s what you’re thinking! Perish the thought on a lovely day like this. No, on the contrary, I feel as if a weight’s been lifted off my mind. It’s about Dunstanburgh – it’s important . . .’
‘Yeah, I remember the row – you threw a real wobbly. What d’you want to know about it?’
‘Did you grab my arms at any point?’
‘Mmm . . . come to think of it, I did – to calm you down. You just pushed my hands away and stormed out to your car and zoomed off . . .’
So that had been the pattern of my fugue incidents: a sudden physical or emotional start, combined with the trigger of seized arms, then forgetfulness and flight to some place of peace near white cliffs, just as, way back in 1955, my father must have comforted me and taken me away from the yawning, nightmarish jeopardy towards which I’d thought the hapless Philippe Barre was dragging me. All a horrible joke, really, like so many bad incidents in life, since my kinsman Philippe had only been trying to prevent my three-year-old self from falling over the cliff. It occurred to me how much the cruel ironist Julian Rawbeck would have relished such a situation . . . Perhaps he’d have wanted to paint my father under the title of Cain . . .
‘Dad, are you still there?’ Paul’s voice on the mobile tore me out of my reverie. ‘Dad?’
‘Yes, Paul, I was woolgathering for a moment.’
‘Look, Dad, what’s this all about? Why are you wandering around in Kent? I’ve had just about enough of this –’ ‘Pat Hague’s disappeared, and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Disappeared? Have the police been told?’
‘They’re on the case now; in fact, they suspect . . . but look, I can’t explain now. I’ll catch up with you when things have cleared up a bit.’
I rang off, and, realizing how far I’d wandered away from my car, turned
on my chalky heels and walked back along the cliff. I hadn’t gone far, when a thought stopped me again in my tracks. Cliffs, white cliffs . . . I remembered when I’d told Leah about the row I’d had with Reet and Paul in Dunstanburgh in Northumberland, when my son had grabbed my arms, and my fugue state had set in, ending with my coming to beside the usual chalk precipice. Leah had said she knew the area well, having spent seaside holidays there as a child. But the cliffs there were hard basalt – there were no white cliffs in Northumberland . . .
Just then my speculations were interrupted again, this time by the bleating of my mobile. I took the call – Reet’s voice this time.
‘I’ve just got in,’ she said quickly. ‘Paul’s told me you’re in Kent – is it true that Pat Hague’s disappeared?’
‘Yes, she hasn’t been seen or heard from since last Thursday – she left her car behind in the garage at their boathouse in Wivenhoe, and Frank found her coat inside, with her money and keys – everything. She hasn’t made contact with anyone since. The police seem to think –’
‘Have you been to the bungalow in Capel?’
‘I drove past it.’
‘You didn’t go into the house, or into the garden? It’s important . . .’
‘Neither: I was going to stop – I slowed down to a crawl – but when I saw a Sold sign up and no curtains at the windows I didn’t bother, just accelerated and drove away.’
‘Right – where are you now?’
‘I’m walking along the cliffside path above East Wear Bay, making for my car.’
‘Get in it, then, and drive back to Essex – don’t stop on the way – and before you go back to the lighthouse, drop in at the police station in Colchester and ask if there’s been any news of Pat – anything, so long as you show your face at the station.’
‘But what’s it all about? In any case, I’m not sure the coppers who’re dealing with the case will be on duty on a Saturday –’
‘It doesn’t matter a toss who’s on duty there!’ Reet snapped. ‘As long as you show your face in the police station – d’you understand?’
