A Grave Man

by David Roberts

  ‘I can’t help Graham with his book,’ she said decisively. ‘We’re . . . we’re different . . . we look at things differently.’ In fact what she really meant was that they were too similar in their outlook on the world. ‘In any case, I have a job to do. I’m a journalist . . . And he would not want me to help him.’ She knew she was offering too many excuses.

  ‘Of course,’ Maud said meekly. ‘I expect you are right. I hope you didn’t mind me asking?’

  ‘No, of course not. As I say, once it’s finished I’ll help all I can.’

  They were silent again, thinking about what had been said.

  ‘So you tried to kill yourself because Graham won’t marry you?’

  ‘I wasn’t really serious about killing myself.’ Maud smiled almost naughtily. ‘I knew Dominic would save me.’

  ‘You wanted Graham to feel . . .?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t blackmailing him . . . I don’t know – I just felt very low.’

  Verity glanced at the bedside table. ‘Are you taking these to pick you up?’

  ‘Benzedrine? Yes, it’s quite a new thing. Montillo got them for me.’

  ‘Well, be very careful. I used them in Spain when I was very tired but had to be alert. I took too many and started getting hallucinations.’ She laughed. ‘My enemies would say most of my reporting is an hallucination but it isn’t. It’s so cosy, here in England, what I have seen in Spain must seem unreal – like a nightmare.’

  Maud’s eyes widened. ‘I will be careful. They do make me feel funny sometimes.’

  There was a pause and then Verity said, ‘Has he been to see you?’

  ‘Graham? No, he probably doesn’t know yet.’ She sounded like a naughty child – flirtatious and rather desperate.

  Verity felt guilty. Why had it not occurred to her to tell Graham about Maud cutting her wrists? ‘I’ll make sure he knows,’ she said. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me if I am being impertinent, but did you love your father? Ginny says he wasn’t very kind to you.’

  ‘Ginny’s a good woman but she talks about things she knows nothing about.’

  ‘He wasn’t cruel to you . . . your father?’

  ‘He never thought so! It’s not fair to say he was ever unkind to me deliberately – except for that one time. It was just that he lived for his work. He was always searching for that one great find which would give him a place in archaeological history . . . he wanted to be another Schliemann.’

  Verity tried to look as if she knew who Schliemann was.

  ‘Don’t say you don’t know who Schliemann is?’ Maud said, quite shocked.

  ‘I think I do . . .’

  ‘He discovered Troy. He dressed his wife in what he said were Helen’s jewels. He called his children, poor mites, Agamemnon and Andromache. At least my father didn’t call me Sheba!’ Maud seemed quite animated and Verity was pleased that she had made her smile.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said soberly. ‘I love my father but it’s difficult sometimes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s a lawyer . . . a barrister. He only represents what he sees as good causes. I admire that. He defends the indefensible . . . Fenians, murderers . . . anybody who no one else will help. He spends his money on supporting the Daily Worker, which I write for so I know it doesn’t make any money.’ She laughed to show she was not complaining. ‘I love him but I never see him.’

  ‘And your mother. . .?’

  ‘She died when I was born. I suppose I killed her but I am being melodramatic – forgive me. I like to think it gives me an excuse for not leading a normal life.’

  Maud was interested now. ‘You mean being a journalist and not settling down with a husband and children?’

  ‘I do. It’s not approved of.’

  ‘Not even by . . . by your friend, Lord Edward?’

  ‘He says he doesn’t mind and I honestly think he believes it but, of course, he does mind.’

  ‘That’s why you won’t marry him?’

  ‘Yes. I think it would be unfair on him and on me. You see, I love to be free. I can’t bear to be chained . . . not even to someone I love.’

  Maud looked thoughtful. ‘I understand. It was different for me. I could not escape. I did not want to escape . . . not for most of the time anyway. I loved my father. I wanted to help him in his work but in the end, I suppose I thought I had sacrificed myself for . . . for a heap of bones.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She died when I was seven, She was what they would call now a hysteric. I think she was just selfish. Oh sorry, I ought not to say such things about my mother but whenever she wanted something and was frustrated she would scream.’

  ‘Literally?’

  ‘Yes, literally. She had migraines. When she got one she would scream like an ill-behaved, dispossessed child. My father would have to massage her neck for hours. She used it as an excuse not to sleep with him.’

  ‘But you . . .’

  ‘Yes, I was born . . . I don’t know how because they never shared a room. She never forgave me for the pain I had caused her. It’s a terrible thing to say but I think I was glad when she died.’

  ‘And he had his triumphs . . . your father. I read about them in his obituary.’

  ‘He was lucky. There has to be luck in archaeology. You can dig for months . . . years even and find nothing, while someone with half your skill can dig a few thousand yards away and find gold. Actual gold. My father’s very first big find was when he was working with Leonard Wooley in Ur of the Chaldees. He found several tombs . . . a royal cemetery. Abraham’s city they called it. Among the first things he found was a gold dagger and sheath – maybe five thousand years old. The hilt was decorated with lapis lazuli and studded with gold. The blade was burnished gold in a sheath of solid gold, its front intricately carved in filigree. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Then he found a gold wig that a king would have worn. It was two thousand years older than Tutenkhamun.’

  ‘It must have been wonderful. When did your father become involved with Sir Simon?’

  ‘He financed the 1933/34 season. He hoped to prove some ridiculous theory he has on race.’

  ‘Did your father believe in it . . . this theory?’

  ‘He went along with it. He needed the money. He would have said anything to get it.’

  ‘So he wasn’t a friend of Sir Simon’s?’

  ‘My father had no friends,’ Maud said bitterly. ‘He had disciples and he had enemies . . . a bit like Jesus,’ she added, making a choking sound which might have been a laugh.

  ‘And Mr Temperley . . .?’

  ‘Sidney found this tomb at Nineveh . . . but I don’t want to talk about it. My father claimed . . . he said he found it. What did it matter? It was my father’s dig. No one was going to cheat him of the glory but . . . you can’t imagine how important it is to find something newsworthy. Most of the time archaeologists just turn up rubbish – I mean literally rubbish. From ancient rubbish dumps you can piece together how a whole civilization lived, worked and died, but it’s not dramatic. It’s not beautiful. It is only interesting because it is so old . . . because it survived.’

  At that moment there was a knock at the door and, without waiting for an answer, Virginia came in with Dr Morris.

  ‘Oh good,’ she said, ‘I see you are feeling better, Maud? I hope Verity hasn’t been tiring you?’

  ‘No. I am feeling better. Miss Browne and I have been talking of fathers. It seems we have more in common than I had at first imagined.’

  5

  Saturday morning found Edward at rather a loose end. He woke early and, feeling a little queasy, made himself a cup of tea, dosed himself with Lacteol and then Eno’s for good measure and went back to bed with the paper. After returning from Chartwell, he had spent a long evening at Brooks drinking and smoking too much and playing backgammon increasingly badly. It was hardly surprising he had woken with a headach
e. There was nothing in the newspaper and he fell into an uneasy doze. Twenty minutes later he woke with a start and found he had a stiff neck. He tossed away The Times in disgust and jumped out of bed. The sun was shining and he did not feel in the least like staying in London for the weekend. He did his stretching exercises and wondered, as he always did when he was flat on his back with his legs in the air, if he was getting old. He tried to work out why he was so restless and came to the conclusion that it was the almost tangible absence of Verity that so disturbed him. He imagined her surrounded by tweed-suited hearties enjoying herself and playing fragile, which she did sometimes when she wanted to ingratiate herself with the male sex. It didn’t work with him, he told himself, pursing his lips. He knew her too well. She was as tough a nut as ever fell off a tree and cracked open a man’s skull. But then, he reminded himself, she could be deliciously vulnerable and he would want to protect her. Was that an act? No, she was complicated and that made her interesting.

  Then there was Fenton – he missed having his valet bring him his lapsang souchong in the morning, knowing instinctively when he was awake and shamming sleep. The tea would be exactly the right temperature – not too strong, not too weak – and, ten minutes later without fail, Fenton would inform him that his bath was drawn. That, too, would be just the right temperature so that he might be tempted to sing ‘Stormy Weather’, which he did execrably but to his own satisfaction. All through the day there were these little rituals, culminating in a whisky and soda dead on six o’clock which he drank before dressing to go out to the club or to dinner. If he were not in the mood to go out, Fenton would grill him a chop and he would sit in his smoking jacket pretending he was as much an old fogey as his older brother, the Duke of Mersham.

  He wondered idly if he could ever bear to live with Verity for any length of time. He loved her. Was it exaggerating to say she obsessed him? But, in many respects, a valet was much to be preferred to a wife – particularly if that wife were as messy as Verity. He stooped and with one finger lifted a pair of her knickers off the floor. He caught a scent of her body and – absurdly – looking round to see if he was being observed, pressed them to his face and breathed deeply. Annoyed with himself and faintly disgusted, he chucked them in a corner. Then it occurred to him that Fenton was due back from Margate the next morning and it wouldn’t do to have him clean up after Verity.

  Edward knew some men would laugh at him for minding what his valet thought but he and Fenton had a relationship based on mutual respect for each other’s feelings. He retrieved the knickers and then went round the flat collecting up further evidence of Verity’s residence. He thought, ruefully, that she would never get away with murder. She left too much evidence behind her. He tossed all her stuff into the battered suitcase which, until yesterday, had accompanied her on every journey and then pushed it into a cupboard. Rather to his surprise, Verity, who normally did not care about such things, had looked critically at the case the day before and gone out and bought a smart one into which she had tipped a few necessary garments before catching the train to Swifts Hill with Mrs Cardew.

  He paced about smoking, unable to decide what to do. Eventually, he decided he must get out of his rooms or he would suffocate. He went to the telephone in the hall, raised the receiver, hesitated and replaced it on the stand. He returned to the drawing-room and poured himself a gin and tonic though it was still only ten. Glass in hand, he walked indecisively back into the hall and eyed the black Bakelite warily. Finally, he made up his mind and put in a trunk call to Mersham. He had an excuse for bothering his brother and sister-in-law, he told himself. His nephew Frank was due back from New York – might already be back – and he could show avuncular concern without revealing he was simply at a loose end.

  The Duke hated the telephone and employed a butler – Edward sometimes thought – solely to answer it for him. So it was with surprise that he heard Gerald’s clipped voice shout, ‘Yes? Who is it?’ The Duke always shouted down the telephone on the grounds that the person he was speaking to was too far away to hear him unless he did. ‘Ned, is that you? Amazing thing, these instruments. I hadn’t even picked up the what-d’you-call-it and there you are.’

  From which incoherent babble Edward was made aware that his brother had been just about to ring him. ‘I say, Gerald – what’s the news of young Frank?’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly what I was telephoning you about. Are you still there?’ There was a sound, which might have been the telephone being shaken, and then the Duke’s voice again even louder. ‘Can you hear me?. You know how I hate these bally things. We are at our wits’ end and . . . and . . .’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Gerry. Is Frank ill? Where is he?’

  ‘He’s here at Mersham – arrived two days ago. Of course he’s not ill. Why should he be ill? He’s just been on holiday.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Oh dash it! We don’t know what the problem is. He just lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling . . .’

  ‘Is he eating?’

  ‘Not according to his mother. I can’t say I have noticed anything.’

  ‘Sounds to me he’s in love.’

  There was a strangled cry at the other end of the line. ‘Whatd’y’mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gerry, but it sounds like a bad case of love. I know the symptoms – uninterested in food, lying about mooning . . . Has he said anything to you about a girl?’

  ‘No. I say, Ned, could you possibly come down for the night and talk to the boy? The thing is, he’s going up to Trinity – at least I think he is. But he keeps on saying he’s going back to America . . . says he is going to be an American. I ask you!’

  Edward smiled to himself, remembering his own early passions which at the time had seemed of world-shattering significance. Could he now even recall the names of the girls? He closed his eyes and visualized a black-haired buxom girl who always smelt slightly of bleach – the daughter of a college servant – who had relieved him of his virginity. Now, what had she been called? Something out of a novel by Walter Scott . . . Ah! he had it: Rebecca. He sighed. Wasn’t there something . . . some disturbances called the Rebecca riots? He had written an essay on the subject for his tutor, G.M. Trevelyan. He realized with a start that his brother had ceased wailing at him and was calling for an answer.

  ‘You still there, Ned? Say, you’ll come . . .’

  Mersham Castle – whenever he saw it after an absence – made his heart beat a little faster. He regarded it as his home. It was where he had spent the happiest days of his childhood. He had explored every cranny and, he was sure, knew it more intimately than his elder brother though nobody could love it more than Gerald. He stopped the Lagonda – as he often did – just beyond the gates, turned off the engine, took off his goggles and flying helmet and drank in the evening air. He lit a cigarette and contemplated the house, trying to pin down its allure. It was seven o’clock and the light was softening. The ancient brick had begun to blur at the edges as though it might one day vanish into thin air. He had never found adequate words to describe it and had therefore given up trying. Epithets such as ‘ethereal’, ‘floating’, ‘fairy-tale’, were used by visitors with wearying regularity but none captured the mystery of Mersham Castle, built over three hundred years ago by the Swedish lady-in-waiting to a virgin queen.

  He recalled Duncan’s words outside Macbeth’s house – ‘This castle has a pleasant seat, the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.’ And how had Banquo confirmed his king’s commendation? ‘This guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet, does approve.’ He thought that, if ever he were to write a novel, he would call it This Guest of Summer. Then he reminded himself that all this had been a forerunner to murder. Duncan had been murdered by his host – an unforgivable sin. Was pleasure always bought at such a cost?

  He tossed his cigarette out on to the gravel and restarted the car. To coax and chastise a nephew was surely not such a high price to pay for a
night or two in such a place.

  ‘Ned!’ The Duchess kissed him on the cheek. ‘How good of you to come.’ Edward was very fond of his sister in-law and squeezed her hand affectionately.

  ‘Connie! How are you? I gather the boy is causing Gerald heartache?’

  ‘He said you diagnosed love?’

  ‘I did. If you leave us alone after dinner to play a rack or two . . .’

  ‘Of course, and he is smoking too much – in his bedroom. He knows it upsets me when he smokes so he tries to hide it from me but he would never make a very good criminal. His sins find him out. Isn’t that Hamlet?’

  She was trying not to sound worried but Edward knew that Frank mattered more to her than anyone or anything else. He wanted to say that he thought the same about Verity – that she wasn’t adept at concealing her tracks – but restrained himself for fear of provoking embarrassing questions.

  At dinner the Duke was silent except for barking an occasional remark at Edward with reference to the imbecility of the Government, the iniquity of death duties, the outrageous behaviour of the Duke of Windsor who, according to The Times, was planning to meet Hitler in Berlin, but was perhaps most bitter at the local council which was doing its best to prevent him improving the farm workers’ cottages.

  Frank, who had greeted his uncle with a pleasant display of affection, had relapsed into dreamy silence. Edward eyed him speculatively as he made conversation with Connie on anodyne subjects such as the village fête and the new vicar who was said to be ‘high church’.

  With dinner at an end, Edward suggested a game of billiards to his nephew before they turned in. He hoped the invitation did not sound too premeditated.

  They strolled downstairs to the billiard room, which was cool and restful.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ Frank said, a silver cigarette lighter in his hand. Edward was chalking his cue.

  ‘Not at all, old chap.’ Edward had given up trying to stop him smoking. After all, who was he to preach? He had smoked his first cigarette on his tenth birthday and had been sick as he leant over to blow out the candles on his cake. As far as he knew, it had not done him any harm in the long run. For fifteen minutes there was only the calming click of ivory ball cannonading with ivory ball to break the silence. Edward was content to let his nephew begin the conversation. Frank was playing with the careless confidence of one who could not mind less if he won or lost and consequently won. Edward, who rather fancied himself at billiards and had won the Club tournament three years in a row, could not hit a thing. Missing an easy pot, he threw down his cue in exasperation and went over to the side table to pour himself a brandy. Still not wanting to ask Frank directly if he were in love and, if so, with whom, he asked how he had got on in New York. The boy had been acting as a dogsbody for Lord Benyon.