“You wouldn’t understand, Edwin. The irony is that I have the title, but you’re the parfit gentle knight, too pure for your own good – and everyone else’s. It’s hard to believe you still exist – here, now, in 1951. Take my word for it: it would have been better if you’d gone over the top one day in trance and not come back.
“Because that’s what happened in 1914 – a world ended. You’re out of place, out of step, out of time. The days of liberal, amateur politics – liberal, amateur anything – are long gone. Remember your touching faith in the demos? Your belief in the sweet triumph of intellectual debate? It was a sham even then. Now it’s an anachronism.
“None of us is free anymore. We lost that, somewhere along the way to what they laughably call a welfare state. I’m not complaining. I turned a profit every step of the way. If they wanted to kill each other, I sold them the means. If they wanted to house or entertain each other, I sold them the homes and the cinemas. You see, I rumbled it all a long time ago. Profit is pleasure. And pleasure is life. I believe in hedonism as an honourable calling. I’ll sell you a silk tie to wear with your hair shirt.
“But freedom? That was the baby that went with the bathwater. We couldn’t have sat at Lord’s in 1939 debating whether to enlist or not, as we did forty years before. We’d have been told. The British have become hostages to history, triumphant in a war but still queuing for meat rations while every black face round the world condemns us as imperialist ogres.
“I have to kow-tow to a load of cloth-capped union leaders who call themselves a government and they have to kow-tow to the Yanks. I suppose we ought to laugh really. It’s all a bit of a bloody joke.
“Hostages to history? Yes, all of us. Even me – especially me. Because you’re my history. You’re my conscience, the albatross I’ve looked out for all these years. I’ve always had a simple approach to problems: change them. You don’t like the past? Then fiddle the books. Rewrite your image until it fits the bill. You’d be surprised how easy it is, as long as it’s just paper and fallible memory. Not so easy when it’s a real, live human being like you. Why didn’t you die on the Somme, Edwin? You’d have done us all a favour, including yourself.
“The trouble with altering the facts to fit the picture is that it’s a cumulative exercise. It starts as a game – a bit of a lark really. Then it gets serious, then complicated, then … then pleasure becomes pain because you find yourself and everyone else believing the charade – living the lie as if it were the truth.
“When did it begin? At Cambridge, I think. I was surrounded by handsome, athletic young men – the cream of England’s youth. And first at cards – and later at almost everything – I found I could dupe them, gull them utterly at the drop of a hat.
“So it amused me to lure them into debts, take them for all they were worth, see how far I could lead them with lies. I almost miscalculated by getting myself rusticated, but even that didn’t turn out badly.
“Then South Africa. I saw it all as a golden opportunity for pleasure and profit. And I was right. The army gave me plenty of both, most of it unofficial But it was something else as well: plain dangerous. Colenso was a revelation to me. I mean, why did we risk our necks at the say-so of that lunatic Buller? You know what happened – I cut and run. I wouldn’t call it cowardice so much as common sense.
“It was a difference of perspective. My father kept me on a short rein at Cambridge – financially. That’s what separated me from all you clear-eyed young gentlemen. I knew the value of money – and of life. You took it all deadly seriously, but were prepared to stop a Boer bullet just like that. And for what? So that a few Uitlanders could get their hands on the Transvaal gold mines.
“And you? Well, Edwin, I’ll tell you now what always niggled me about you. You had all the gentlemanly virtues like the rest of them. But I couldn’t dupe you. You were armoured against me with an incorruptible hide of liberal enlightenment. What was worse, after Colenso, you’d marked my card. You’d rumbled me.
“But then you still trusted me, because that was the decent thing to do. When I volunteered to take your place in Durban, you just said ‘Thanks very much’ and pushed off home. My nose told me this was an opportunity for pleasure and profit not to be passed up. And so it proved.
“When I got there, I pretended to be you just for the sake of it, just to see if I could get away with it. The van der Merwes were unsuspecting sobersides – the old man a magistrate and Lutheran lay preacher. They were all so impressed by me it wasn’t true. They had a gruelling week of dinners and meetings arranged for me to butter up the Dutch community. I dodged most of them.
“But as soon as I met the daughter of the house, it was a different story. Rembrandt would have died for her. Whether because I was in a foreign country or because she was far from ancestral Holland I don’t know, but she had a mystical lightness to her beauty, a cool, liquid apartness. You could say it was merely lust and I couldn’t deny it. She was twenty, always severely dressed in drab colours at her father’s insistence, but that only made it worse. Remember, I was no gentleman. But, in Durban, I enjoyed your gentleman’s licence.
“Caroline fell for me readily enough but could not be seduced. She would marry me – elope to escape her father’s disapproval – but otherwise she would neither give herself nor could she be taken. So, quite consciously, quite deliberately, I decided: why not? Why not push my luck? I was, in a way, getting back at you, abusing their hospitality and your identity, sullying your spotless reputation which had so shown up mine at Colenso. The beauty of it was its outrageous plausibility. Who would ever check up on a tumble in the Veldt? Who would ever know?
“So I eloped with Caroline van der Merwe. We stole out of the house and rode through the night to an obscure railway station. The next day, we reached Port Edward – as far as we could from Durban without straying into Cape Colony. I’d wired ahead to make the necessary arrangements and the ceremony was over in a trice. If I say so myself, it really did look like your signature on the certificate.
“Three days later, I deserted Caroline, left her asleep at our hotel in Port Edward. I thought the van der Merwes would find us soon and, besides, I’d got what I wanted. She wasn’t too bright, actually, inside that trusting, princess’s body. I just took my kit bag and walked away in the middle of the night, cool and calculating as you like. Stupidly, I’d left my revolver and harness in Durban. Well, who elopes carrying a gun? I had to do a lot of explaining about that. It’s strange it should turn up again, after all this time.
“Back in Capetown, I read about your election to Parliament and enjoyed the joke. Then the joke turned sour on me. So far from being over, the war dragged on for eighteen miserable months. You politicians had a lot to answer for. Still, when it was over, I was posted to India and enjoyed it. An officer’s life was good there, before they started agitating for independence.
“I had eight good years in India. Then I ran into a spot of bother. Caught out using mess funds to settle a gambling debt after a run of bad luck. To save the regiment’s honour, I was allowed to resign my commission. Best I could have hoped for, really, hut it left me down on my hunkers when I stepped off the boat from Bombay. It was the spring of 1910.
“Lo and behold, what should I find but that you were now Home Secretary? There I was, after ten years’ serving King and country, penniless and unwanted in my homeland, reading in the newspaper about what an able and accomplished minister you made. It stuck in my throat, I can tell you.
“I thought I’d soon put my finances back on an even keel by gambling. The cards had always been my friends. But not any more. A question of insufficient capital, I suppose. At all events, it went from bad to worse and soon, so far from being penniless, I was up to my neck in debts I couldn’t hope to pay. My luck, you could say, had run out good and proper.
“I thought you’d like to know it was desperation that made me turn to the certificate. I still had my copy, tucked away. It suddenly occurred to me that ev
idence of the Home Secretary’s secret marriage must be worth something. But how? You were still single, so blackmail was out of the question. Besides, I reckoned you’d break my neck if you ever detected my hand in anything like that.
“So I had to be devious. And luck smiled on me again. A fellow I knew from India – before the upset over mess funds – popped up in a gambling den I used: Archie Lambourne. I cultivated him – at first for the loans he was worth. He mentioned in passing that his sister was an active Suffragette and, in a drunken moment one night, he let slip what his sister had obviously told him, that you – the Home Secretary – were sweet on a Suffragette.
“Now that set me thinking. I took more of an interest in the Suffragette movement then, read up about their antics and their leaders. Since they were at loggerheads with the government, since the suffrage was fairly and squarely Home Office business and since I knew you were secretly consorting with one of their number, it seemed to me that there was money to he made from that certificate. Pleasure and profit, you see. One breeds the other.
“I persuaded Lambourne to introduce me to his sister. And I gave her a message to take to Christabel Pankhurst: that I had damning evidence against you in which I felt sure she would be interested.
“She was. Julia Lambourne arranged an audience. I put it to Miss Pankhurst that I had heard of your involvement with a Suffragette. She’d already heard the same thing, apparently. I put it to her that, having served with you in South Africa, I was in a position to know that you were a married man. I said that I had proof and could supply it – for a fee. I cited £1000. I said that the only condition was that you should never know the source or nature of the information, on the grounds that you would undoubtedly seek to avenge yourself on me. Miss Pankhurst was very cool and said that she would think it over.
“It was a week before I heard from her again – this time via Anne Kenney, not Julia Lambourne. We were, to put it crudely, in business. Miss Kenney told me that evidence of the kind I claimed to have interested not only the Suffragettes – out of sympathy for their deceived sister – but a colleague or colleagues of yours outraged by your double-dealing.
“It was an unexpected twist. I’d expected a quick trade with the Suffragettes, not some complex political deal. But I couldn’t afford to quibble. Another meeting was arranged. This time I was to come up with the goods.
“It wasn’t the kind of meeting I’d anticipated. Miss Kenney insisted on blindfolding me in the cab. It was a shabby hotel somewhere – some sweltering quadrant of the East End. And Miss Pankhurst wasn’t alone. Of all people, Lloyd George was with her.
“Bit of a shaker, really. I thought at first he was going to put the lid on it. But not at all. He and Miss Pankhurst were in league. Just goes to show that the public doesn’t know the half of it. Anyway, they wanted to do business. The money for the proof. Simple as that. I was to say nothing about it, dismiss it from my mind. That was no problem.
“Mmm? The date? It was the longest day – June 21st, if it matters. There was quite an interrogation, but I was an old hand at brazening it out. Besides, my impression wasn’t that they doubted the authenticity of the document. I don’t think they really cared one way or the other. It was a question of how it could be used.
“Secrecy seemed to suit everyone. They wanted to discredit you without you knowing. I assumed that was because they couldn’t be seen to have intrigued together and it was a condition of mine from the first. We tacitly agreed that secrecy was necessary to ensure my safety. And Miss Pankhurst said that the deceived Suffragette should not be exposed to public ridicule. By that I took it she meant the movement.
“Later, of course, Elizabeth told me that Miss Pankhurst had agreed a truce with Lloyd George until the Constitutional crisis was over, that there had been talk of a coalition led by Lloyd George in which the vote might be given to women. Not that it ever happened. Lloyd George must have been flying a kite, trying to get the credit for the Suffragettes calling off their campaign.
“My luck turned that summer. The £1000 revived my fortunes. I prospered at the card table and the race track and … something else. I fell in love.
“I first met Elizabeth at a party Julia Lambourne arranged – largely for Elizabeth’s benefit, I suspect, to draw her back into society. It was late July, I think, held at her father’s house by the Thames out at Marlow.
“Elizabeth moved through the evening like a ghost, pale, distracted and grave. Julia introduced us, but Elizabeth hardly seemed to see me. That evening, for the hand I’d had in breaking her youthful spirit, I felt regret. That night I began to care.
“Later that summer, she went abroad with her aunt. I followed and staged a chance meeting in Switzerland. We went on together to Italy. When we returned to England, I was set upon marrying her – honourably, permanently, respectably. It took a long time, not just to persuade her, but to salvage her from the shadows of depression. We’d hurt her deeply, you, I and the rest, and it took a long time to heal. And I had to change my way of life. Gambling was foresworn. I had to become a man of business.
“Fortuitously, my father – whom I hadn’t seen in years – died in 1913 and left me the money with which to start up the armament works. Even if nobody else did, I smelt war in the wind and weapons I judged to be a sound investment. How right I was. Elizabeth and I were married six weeks before war broke out.
“The arms business renewed my connections with Lloyd George, who was, by then, Minister of Munitions. We had an unspoken understanding based on our previous dealings. It acknowledged the value of money. Need I say more?
“Wealth begets wealth. I found making money became second nature. And social position? Well, for a suitably generous contribution to party funds, Lloyd George provided that for me with a knighthood. Quite a joke, eh? Sir Gerald Couchman. I suppose I knew enough to make it seem wise to him to keep me sweet. And when I told him that you were back in England after the war, looking for trouble, he dipped into his pocket and catered for you too.
“I made Elizabeth happy again and she made me happy. I’m not saying I was better for her than you. But she possesses a gift for improving a man that probably had more to work on in me. It’s just another irony. We have a son and grandchildren by him. We have a home in the country. We’re old and harmless. We’re not really much of a target anymore.
“So I’m not going to beg for mercy. You have the means to destroy me and I probably deserve it. But let’s not pretend you’re doing this to save the regiment’s honour or Caroline van der Merwe’s soul. Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that anybody’s life is a clean sheet. If you do this, then you’ll prove my point. You’ll be no better than me.”
I seemed still to hear Couch’s voice around us in the night after he had ceased to speak, a whispered echo rustling back to me from the soft, sighing darkness. Its murmur was of mockery, of scornful, grinning, flaunted imperfection. He had been honest. He had volunteered the devious twists and turns of his fraudulent life. Perhaps for the very first time, he had told the truth. But the truth, as he would have been quick to point out, was outrageously unlikely compared with the credible charade of a life which he had painstakingly constructed. The truth, he had implied, was for our ears only. We were old enough to bear it.
Age did not prevent me feeling surprised, surprised not at the multi-layered depth of his deception but at the apparent calmness of my response to it. Where once I would have shaken him by the throat and demanded restitution, now I merely accepted his offer of a drink from the hip flask and shivered a little at a cold draught from the window.
“Can you find nothing to say, Edwin?”
“What would you have me say?”
“You could voice the disgust you must feel, or say you still don’t believe me.”
“Oh, but I do believe you. Not even you could manufacture such an account. It’s the only version that really does fit the events, so much so that I could believe I knew it all along. Every fact – every feat
ure – confirms it.”
“Is that why you asked the date of my meeting with Lloyd George and Christabel Pankhurst?”
“In a sense. That was largely to check my own memory. The day before you met them, Lloyd George had tried to enlist me in his coalition conspiracy, but I had refused, so making me dangerous to him as an openly declared opponent who knew of the plot. It may be that Miss Pankhurst had already approached him about your claims and that he wished to discover whether he should use those claims to remove me from his path or to bind me to him. Once I had shown my colours, he did not hesitate to choose the former course. They must have planned the sequence of events carefully, waiting until the moment I resigned before confronting Elizabeth with your evidence and simultaneously condemning me to Asquith.”
“You’re taking this very calmly.”
“Not calmly – slowly. Let’s take stock. You warned me not to cite false motives, so I shan’t. Honour and truth are, in your contention, relative terms, though I can’t think of anything less honourable and truthful than what you’ve now admitted. But let’s leave aside – for the moment – the forgery of my signature, your impersonation of me, the desertion of your wife. Let’s even forget the casual sabotage of my political career. Let’s talk instead about the overriding issue between us: Elizabeth. What do you expect me to do about your theft of her from me?”
“Remember, Edwin, I hadn’t met Elizabeth when I sold the certificate. I wasn’t selling it to win her. She came later. A happy accident, you could say. Of course, I knew what you would make of it, but that at least I didn’t plan.”
“Yet you planned to marry her – bigamously. Do you realize what that makes you – and her – and your son?”
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