Past Caring

by Robert Goddard

  “I don’t believe I know you sir, but my name is Strafford and I have called to see the young lady of the house.”

  “Miss Latimer is not at home.”

  “Really? Then the elder Miss Latimer?”

  “Is in, but has asked not to be disturbed.”

  “And who precisely are you?”

  “A friend of the family.”

  “A new one, it would seem, for I’ve never met you. Kindly stand aside.”

  He had nettled me by his tone, but it was the unexpected coolness of my reception at this customarily welcoming door that was trying my patience. The man did not clear my path and I might have had to force an entrance, but Mercy appeared then in the hall, clearly upset, and asked him to admit me.

  “What’s going on, M?”

  Mercy’s usual smile had vanished. She spoke in a manner she had never used before. “How dare you come here? Haven’t you done enough?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know full well, young man. If my brother were still alive, he would know how to deal with one such as you. As it is, all I can say is that the hospitality of this house, which you have so vilely abused, is forever denied you.”

  This was surely not dear old Aunt M speaking; I had called at the wrong door, stepped over a threshold into a nightmare in which I did not belong. There was only one way back.

  “Where is Elizabeth?”

  “She is upstairs with Julia, distraught, as you must have known she would be when you were shown in your true colours.”

  “What colours? What does this mean?”

  “It means that a man I respected and my niece loved has been exposed for what he is: a fraud and a villain.”

  The man at the door had come up behind me. “Shall I make him leave, Miss Latimer?”

  “I think that would be best … unless he will go of his own accord.”

  “M, this is madness. I’m not leaving until I see Elizabeth. Has she told you of our intentions?”

  “Her intentions – her hopes – are shattered. Yours do not bear description. Cannot you be content with that?”

  The young man laid a hand on my shoulder. I made a last appeal to reason, as much my own as that of those around me.

  “Call this young lout off before I hurt him. I demand to see my fiancée.”

  The man seized my collar. This was too much. I shook him off, spun round and lashed out in all my baffled fury. My fist caught him square on the chin and sent him reeling back into a mirror that hung on the hall wall He and it crashed to the floor. Mercy screamed. My own violence had only made the nightmare worse.

  “Stop this!”

  The voice was Elizabeth’s. She was speaking from the top of the stairs. I looked up to her there, expecting to see my dearest love in all her radiant calmness, hoping even now that she could turn my world back upright again. She was still in her grey dress, but all else had changed. Her face was a mask, tracked and puffed by tears. She was trembling and sobbing even as she spoke.

  “Edwin, you have ruined me – you have ruined us. Why come here to twist the knife in my wound?”

  I ran to the foot of the stairs and looked up at her imploringly “What wound, Elizabeth? For God’s sake, tell me my offence.”

  She grasped the banisters for support. “It is too much to ask me to put into words the depth of your deceit. You compound it now by feigning ignorance.”

  A young lady appeared at her elbow whom I recognized from a previous encounter as Julia Lambourne. At sight of the figure sprawled on the floor behind me, nursing a split lip, she cried out and rushed down past me to attend him. I remained staring up at Elizabeth, searching in her eyes for the trust I had somehow forfeited.

  “Elizabeth, I will say it once more. Remember all that we have meant to each other and believe me: I do not know of what I stand accused. I have stood by you and my word in all our dealings. This very day I have resigned office for your sake. What has happened?”

  “I remember what you meant to me, what I thought I meant to you. But it was a lie, a mockery. You cannot escape the truth, Edwin. It has found you out, but not soon enough to save me. If my pleas can in any way touch you, grant this one: leave now and never attempt to see me again. One day, I may be able to forget, even forgive, but only so long as I never have to hear your voice or see your face – that were once so dear to me – ever again.”

  “Elizabeth, this morning you agreed to marry me.”

  Elizabeth cried out, put her hand to her face and ran back from the head of the stairs, out of my sight.

  “Mr Strafford, please leave.” Mercy had spoken unevenly from behind me.

  I turned to confront them, Julia now supporting the man as he stood glaring at me, Mercy trembling visibly beside them. Julia spoke.

  “Mr Strafford, you have assaulted my brother and piled further distress upon that which you have already caused Elizabeth. We would all be glad if you now left.”

  I stood in the hall, poised between that tableau of accusing faces and the hurt and wrong I felt from the words flung down at me by Elizabeth. I was dumbstruck, adrift in a nightmare, the real, sure world of the night before, the year before, receding from my faltering grasp. With every denial I was held to further my guilt, with every wild flailing I descended further into the morass. A silence hung over the motionless group until I felt I would cry aloud at all its mute injustice. Instead, I walked quietly to the door, Julia and her brother parting to let me go, opened it and strode from the house.

  Before I had gone a hundred yards, a sense of hopelessness and loss overwhelmed me. A short distance ahead was the church where I had thought to marry Elizabeth one day soon. I could not bear to enter a building with such associations, but sat on a bench amongst the gravestones and wept. After a little while, a lady passed by, bearing flowers to a grave. At this, I composed my self somewhat and left, wandering east by streets I knew not in no particular direction; motion was all I sought, as if by pounding a pavement through throngs of strangers I could beat out the shock of my rejection.

  In Wandsworth, a tavern was opening its doors for evening trade as I passed. So I abandoned my grim patrol and entered, hoping to drink myself into a merciful oblivion. The publican was clearly curious that such a well dressed and spoken customer should cross the threshold of his large, sawdusted alehouse, but my money satisfied him. Hunched in a corner as the inn filled slowly through the evening, I drank cheap beer until all my senses, even of loss and sorrow, were blunted. Then I could bear to be alone, so left and took to the streets again.

  Some hours later, I found myself on Westminster Bridge, the familiar bulk of Parliament before me. Now I no longer felt part of its hectic life, dislocated in a self-imposed exile from love and politics – from all that I had thus far lived for. I stared down into the murky, turbid waters of the Thames, tempted to think, for a moment, that there, if anywhere, my hurt could be healed.

  “Don’t I know you sir?”

  A voice had spoken from behind me. I turned from the parapet to face a policeman.

  “Yes, surely it’s Mr Strafford.”

  “No longer your master, constable.” I must have reeked of alcohol.

  “Don’t you think you should be going home, sir?”

  “But where is home?”

  “Where the heart is, according to the poet, sir.”

  “Then that’s why I’m on this bridge, constable. My heart is with the river, flowing out to sea.”

  “I’ll call a cab to take you home, sir.”

  He walked me to the Embankment and put me aboard a hansom. But I discharged the fare some way short of Mallard Street and wandered again wherever my steps took me.

  At last, with dawn breaking, I did return home, for want of anywhere else to go. A milkman was on his rounds, whistling as he went. He passed a word with a postman, who had just stepped back from my door. All was unforced jollity in Mallard Street, until my bleak homecoming.

  I opened my front door and, i
n so doing, stirred a letter on the mat. Recognizing the hand as Elizabeth’s, I seized it and wrenched it open, desperately scanning the contents for some sign that all might yet be saved.

  6 Sutler Terrace

  Putney.

  23rd June 1910

  Dear Mr Strafford,

  I write following your visit here this afternoon, since there seems some possibility that you will seek to brazen out your deceit of me. Be clear, then, that I wish never to see you or hear from you again. I am only prevented from invoking some greater sanction against you than this by the knowledge that incidents such as this afternoon’s will only heighten my distress and that of my dear aunt. Do me one small service after all your dissembling: leave me alone.

  Yours truly,

  Elizabeth Latimer.

  It was appalling. It could not be true, yet it undoubtedly was. Elizabeth had rejected me, in the coldest and most outright terms, apparently believing me to be guilty of some vile outrage. I staggered into the study, seized some notepaper and wrote a reply.

  Elizabeth,

  Wherein have I offended?

  Edwin.

  I sealed the letter and went to post it, already fearing that it would never be opened. I returned to the house, a cold dread upon me. There I brewed and drank strong coffee in a bid to confront the unthinkable in a sober state, gazed blankly out at the slowly stirring street, numbed now by it all, uncomprehending but no longer disbelieving. What was to be done? I could not go back to Putney, but elsewhere life held nothing for me. I had but lately abandoned a career, which might have been an anchor of a kind.

  This last, I resolved, was one area in which I could act, and action alone assuaged my anguish. I washed and shaved, striving to keep a grasp on what had, until today, been a life of order and progress. I donned clean clothes and set off for Downing Street, arriving shortly after nine o’clock. Asquith’s secretary received me and presented some objections to my seeing the Prime Minister, but I was not in the mood to be trifled with and he seemed to recognize this.

  Asquith was in his study, reading The Times. He glanced up quizzically at my entrance.

  “To say that I’m surprised to see you, Strafford, would be to put it mildly.”

  “No doubt, Prime Minister. May I come straight to the point?”

  “By all means.”

  “I wish to withdraw my resignation.”

  “If this is a joke, it’s in damned poor taste.”

  “Levity could hardly be further from my thoughts.”

  “Good. This newspaper” – he flourished The Times – “will tomorrow report your going as a private decision occasioning dismay and regret to the government. You and I both know that, so far from that, it is the only honourable course open to you. So what do you mean by coming here today speaking of withdrawal?”

  “Prime Minister, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Two days ago, you pleaded with me to stay.”

  “Now, I have been given certain information which suggests you are unfit to be a minister of the Crown, for that matter a Member of Parliament.”

  “What information?”

  “It concerns your proposed marriage to Miss Elizabeth Latimer, for which you have so often proclaimed your eagerness in past months. How you could deceive the young lady as you have, I do not know.”

  “In what way deceived?”

  “Let that remain a matter between you and Miss Latimer. For her sake, I shall not speak of it. But it will do no good to try to outface the situation.”

  Had everyone conspired against me? Was I alone not to know the act for which I was to be punished?

  “Prime Minister, as God is my witness …”

  “Don’t say any more, Strafford. Just get out.”

  “But …”

  “Go.”

  There seemed no point in persisting. I turned to the door.

  “One thing, Strafford.” I paused, but did not look back. “Any application from you for the wardenship of the Chiltern Hundreds will be sympathetically entertained.”

  I left then, the final insult inflicted upon me. I wandered west through St. James’s Park, bearing with me misery and despair enough for a dozen men.

  So that was it. Strafford had been cast adrift. It came as some kind of consolation to a man who’d also endured a bitter transformation in life, the staples of marriage, parenthood and career swept suddenly from my grasp, that the wealthy and powerful were not immune to such impenetrable workings of fate.

  Judging by my own example, I could hardly believe that Strafford was as innocent as he appeared. Conspiracy or blind nemesis were attractive alternatives to the greater likelihood of some culpability Strafford couldn’t admit, even to himself. Yet, as an historian enticed by mystery, I yearned for something more sinister and as a man who’d inflicted many misfortunes on himself, I was eager to demonstrate that it was possible to attract them undeserved.

  Alec returned around dusk and insisted I drag myself away from the Memoir and join him on a visit to some English friends – the Thorpes – who lived in a small quinta of their own on the hilly fringes of Funchal. Reluctantly, I went, but didn’t regret going. Mrs Thorpe cooked a fine meal and her husband seemed to know everybody who was somebody on the island. I mentioned Sellick and Thorpe described him as “a good man to have on your side”. There was an implication he was a worse man to oppose. As a businessman of some repute, it seemed Thorpe ought to know.

  On our way home that night, I asked Alec if Thorpe, being a moneyed Englishman, might have been interested in financing the magazine.

  “He was a natural candidate, but didn’t fancy the economics of the operation. I tried several like him and it was the same story. Only Leo was prepared to put up the cash.”

  “Fairy godfather to both of us, then?”

  “You said it, Martin.”

  The next morning, my last, the Manager of Maritimo was giving a press conference and Alec had to be there. I took myself into the garden, where it was warm and quiet and shady under the palm tree. There, in a final session before my flight home, I resumed Strafford’s story.

  Memoir

  1910–1950

  I can give no clear account of myself in the days following my rejection by Elizabeth and Asquith’s refusal to let me withdraw my resignation. I went home, knowing that I could be alone there, and drank steadily until I was no longer conscious of what had befallen me. Oblivion was surely the best state for me at that time.

  My family read in the newspapers that I had resigned, then found they could not contact me. Concern became alarm and, midway through the following week, Robert came up to London with the Prideaux to root me out. He later told me of the scene they found at Mallard Street and had cause to thank his instinct in not allowing my mother to accompany them. I was, by then, a drunken and dishevelled wreck of the man they thought they knew.

  A doctor was called and I was put to bed, fed by Mrs Prideaux, denied alcohol and restored to some degree of normality. When I was able and when I could bear to, I told Robert what had happened. He expressed astonishment that his talented young brother should have been brought so low. It was nothing to my own shock at the speed with which my world had disintegrated. Wisely, Robert did not indulge my morbidity. As soon as I was up and about, he took me back to Barrowteign.

  There, he and my mother sought to raise my spirits by arranging all manner of diversions during the summer. Even Florence tried to jolly me along, though to the opposite effect. But I had no wish to forget Elizabeth or the tragedy of our parting. The pain was all I was left with to remember our love by. Even when I summoned up some good cheer for my mother’s sake, it was a feeble and ephemeral affair. Although I no longer looked to liquor for consolation, I remained entrenched in my misery, pacing the Moor through the long days of summer, finding in that harsh landscape a determined bleakness to match my own. I wrote several letters to Elizabeth, hoping against hope for a reply. None came, then the letters began to be returned unopened. At that, I ga
ve up.

  One evening in early September, over dinner, my family’s impatience with my melancholia could be contained no longer.

  “The Haddows have invited us to dine with them next Saturday,” my mother announced. “They’re having quite a party down for the weekend. I said that we’d all go.”

  “You’ll have to count me out, Mother,” I said.

  “Do you have a prior commitment, dear?”

  “No. I’d just rather not go.”

  “Haddow keeps a fine table,” said Robert.

  “I’m hardly in need of food.”

  “It would do you good,” said Florence.

  “You concern is touching, Florence, but I’m sure I’ll survive without a visit to the Haddows’.”

  Robert decided to play the elder brother. “You’ve seen no-one outside the household since coming down here, Edwin. Couldn’t you make the effort?”

  “I think not.”

  “Isn’t that what it comes down to, though?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you’re simply not prepared to make the effort to recover from what’s happened. We’ve all tried to help you, but sometimes you don’t seem to want to be helped.”

  Mother was alarmed by this sudden note of fraternal friction. “That’s going too far, Robert.”

  “No, no, Mother,” I said. “If that’s what Robert feels, he should say so. Maybe he’s right. But I’m not able to consign a marriage and a career to the past without a few regretful backward glances.”

  Robert snorted. “You’re still an M.P., remember.”

  “For how much longer? I’m clearly a marked man as far as the leadership is concerned.”

  “But why?”

  “Robert, I wish I knew.”

  “You were marked the day you decided to marry that woman,” Florence put in.

  “In what way, Florence?” I struggled to remain calm.

  Florence warmed to her theme. “I simply do not understand how a man in your position can have thought to marry a shameless Suffragette.”