Hand In Glove - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  Absolute silence reigned for the first time since she had entered. It lasted for as long as it took her to return to the hall. Then, as she looked up, Emerson appeared at the head of the stairs, fastening a towelling bathrobe about his waist. He was barefoot and breathless, his eyes narrowing above the falsest of smiles.

  ‘Charlie! Did you ring the bell? I was taking a shower and couldn’t hear much above the spray.’ But his hair was dry. As if aware of the contradiction, he began to tidy it with his hand. ‘How did you … er … get in?’

  ‘There’s a spare key kept in the gazebo.’

  ‘Oh … right.’ He began to descend.

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Oh … er … Sam’s visiting friends, I think. And Aliki has a long weekend.’

  ‘What about Ursula?’

  He reached the foot of the stairs and looked straight at her, his performance growing more accomplished with every second. If she had really just walked in, she would have been fooled – once more. ‘Ursula?’ he said with a smile. ‘I don’t know. Out somewhere, I guess.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s you I wanted to see.’

  ‘You look kind of worried. What’s wrong?’ He reached towards her and must have been surprised by the speed with which she withdrew. ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘I don’t …’ Momentarily, his gaze threatened to shift to the landing. Was he afraid that Ursula had appeared, négligéd and casually grinning? If so, he stifled the fear with aplomb. ‘I don’t know what this is all about, Charlie. Why don’t you tell me?’

  Tristram’s letters were more important than the anger and humiliation churning inside Charlotte. She knew that, but the knowledge made her task no easier. ‘Frank Griffith was robbed last night.’

  ‘Robbed?’

  ‘The letters were stolen.’

  ‘You mean Tristram’s letters?’ Was he a good enough actor to fake the quiver of shock that passed across his face? Charlotte could not be sure.

  ‘You took them, didn’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘You wined and dined and flattered and flirted with me until you were sure he still had them, hidden at Hendre Gorfelen.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why else did you spend time with me? Not for the pleasure of my company. I know that now – as I should have known it all along.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why don’t you admit you have them? There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘Because I didn’t take them. Maybe I would have if I’d known where they were – or been sure they existed. Either way, if I had, I’d be on a plane back to Boston by now, wouldn’t I? Not waiting here for you to brand me a thief.’

  It was a valid point and, for the first time, Charlotte began to consider the possibility that somebody else altogether had been responsible for the theft, somebody who had also murdered Beatrix, somebody whose name and motive she was a long way from discovering.

  ‘Has Frank Griffith admitted keeping the letters?’ said Emerson.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And has he told you what they contain? What big secret Beatrix wanted him to keep?’

  She looked at him and saw then how completely the biographer’s curiosity had taken him over. His expression was more animated than she had ever known it and at last she felt she understood him. Everything he had done since arriving in England had been geared to learning the truth about Tristram Abberley. Nothing else had mattered. Toying with Charlotte’s emotions had meant as much as seducing Ursula. And that was precisely nothing. ‘What did you hope to learn from her?’ she said as she stared at him.

  He frowned. ‘From whom?’

  Charlotte stepped closer to him and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I know Ursula’s upstairs. And I know why. I heard everything. Every word.’ She closed her eyes, then reopened them. ‘Every sound.’

  Incredibly, Emerson smiled. ‘Right,’ he whispered back. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’

  ‘She doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, Charlie. Believe me.’

  ‘I do. That’s what makes it so contemptible.’

  ‘OK. Maybe it does. But listen. Do you know what was in the letters?’ His smile remained, rueful and cynical, not one whit abashed or ashamed. ‘I have to find out.’

  She stepped back, certain now that he was innocent of what she had suspected, just as she was certain of his guilt on almost every other count. ‘You disgust me,’ she snapped.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s an occupational hazard.’

  ‘Get out of my way.’ She moved towards the front door, but he stepped into her path and she pulled up. Still he was smiling, with a sparkle of duplicity in his deep brown eyes.

  ‘Shall I tell you what really disgusts you, Charlie?’

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘Still wanting me.’ He stretched out his hand and, before Charlotte could stop him, slid it down over her breast. ‘Perhaps wanting me even more now you know what’s available.’

  It was the faint trace of truth in his remark – the incontestable stirring of desire she had felt whilst standing there and listening to what he had done to Ursula – that gouged the deepest. Why did he have to be so loathsome and yet so close to understanding her?

  ‘What’s in the letters? You wouldn’t regret telling me. I guarantee it.’

  She pushed his hand away and stared at him. ‘I’d regret telling you anything. That I guarantee.’

  ‘Harsh words, Charlie.’

  ‘But meant. Sincerely meant. Unlike a single one of yours. Now, may I leave please?’

  ‘Sure. I’m not stopping you.’ He raised his palms in a gesture of surrender. ‘Go right ahead.’

  And she did, through the door and up the drive, walking fast without looking back, steeling herself neither to flinch nor falter, holding back the tears till she had reached the privacy of her car and could hold them back no longer. Then, amidst her sobs, she took from her handbag the florist’s card he had sent her that bore his flourishing signature. The first large ominous drops of a cloudburst were falling as she wound down the window and cast out the torn fragments. Then she started the engine and accelerated away.

  5

  ALL THE STRENGTH and self-assurance Frank Griffith had seemed to possess when encountered on his home territory had vanished in the antiseptic surroundings of the Kent and Sussex Hospital. Looking at him, Derek saw only a frail and wizened old man, propped up on a bank of pillows with deckchair-striped pyjamas fastened stiffly round his neck, barely distinguishable in fact from the dozing and dribbling occupants of the other beds in the ward. His eyes had grown dimmer, his voice more gravelly, since their last encounter.

  ‘I didn’t steal the letters, Mr Griffith.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Or pay anybody else to.’

  ‘I know that too. If you had, you’d have realized by now they couldn’t help your brother.’

  ‘Maybe so. I only hope something can.’

  ‘Why? Why do you care?’

  ‘Because he is my brother, come what may.’

  ‘I thought I had brothers once. Hundreds of them. Thousands.’ Griffith’s gaze moved past Derek and beyond, it seemed, even the wall behind him. ‘I should have known better.’

  ‘But blood’s thicker than water.’

  ‘Not at my age. Not at any age if—’ He broke off and looked back at Derek. ‘What did you say you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m an accountant.’

  Griffith nodded. ‘Balancing the books.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Not these books though. They’re long past balancing.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘They are. Believe me.’

  ‘How can I, when you won’t tell me what I need to know?’

  Griffith fell silent for a moment. A gurgling coughing fit cam
e and went further down the ward, as it had done twice before. Then he said: ‘What kind of a man is your brother, Mr Fairfax?’

  ‘Colin? He’s an antique dealer, as you know. A bit shady, I suppose. I shouldn’t care to be responsible for his accounts.’

  ‘But what kind of a man?’

  ‘Charming. Entertaining. Plausible. Lovable, in a way. Also vain, untrustworthy and thoroughly unreliable.’

  ‘But still you try to help him?’

  ‘Who else would if I didn’t?’

  ‘Would he do the same for you?’

  ‘I don’t know. The situation’s never arisen. Except …’

  ‘Except?’

  ‘When we were boys, in Bromley, back in the forties, our father built a swimming-pool in the garden. He thought we should both learn to swim. And so we did, though I never much took to it, whereas Colin … Well, one day, when Mum and Dad were both out, it must have been the summer I was five, I fell in while larking about on the edge and knocked my head on the side. I must have lost consciousness, because I can’t remember anything after hitting the water. Colin was climbing a tree at the bottom of the garden. A big old oak, it was. He saw what happened, saw me floating face down in the pool, must have realized I was going to drown. So, he scrambled down, raced up the garden, jumped in and pulled me out. He saved my life. But for him, I wouldn’t be here now.’

  ‘So, you see this as repayment of a debt?’

  ‘No. I don’t. That’s not it. I’d be doing this whether or not—’ A change of expression on Griffith’s face – a twitch of his eyes to the left – halted Derek in mid-sentence. When he looked round, it was to see Charlotte Ladram walking slowly down the ward towards them. Her face was flushed and even to Derek’s eyes it was obvious she had been crying. ‘Miss Ladram,’ he said, rising to offer her his chair, ‘what’s—’

  ‘Emerson McKitrick didn’t take the letters,’ she said in a flat and strangely matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Can you be sure?’ asked Griffith.

  ‘Absolutely.’ She subsided into the chair whilst Derek fetched another for himself. ‘Please don’t ask me to explain.’

  ‘He’s still here, then?’ said Griffith. ‘In England?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I agree. He can’t have taken them, can he?’

  ‘No. If he had, he’d have gone straight back to Boston. He said as much himself.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Frank. Really I am.’ Then she sighed again. ‘How are you feeling? They tell me they’re only keeping you in as a precautionary measure.’

  ‘For observation.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He grunted. ‘I don’t like being observed.’

  ‘And you won’t like what I’m about to say. But it has to be said.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Derek saw her hands tighten into fists and guessed she had rehearsed this speech long and hard. ‘I will do everything in my power to help you recover the letters, but unless you tell me what they contain – what Beatrix’s secret was – then there is nothing I can do.’

  ‘You’re asking too much.’

  ‘We have to be in this together, on equal terms, or not at all.’

  ‘But you don’t understand the terms.’

  ‘Then help me to.’

  ‘Would it make things easier,’ put in Derek, ‘if I left?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Charlotte.

  But Griffith shook his head. ‘No. If I’m to tell you, I should tell you both.’

  ‘This is a family matter,’ said Charlotte. ‘Mightn’t it be best—’

  ‘No,’ Griffith insisted. ‘It’s been a family matter too long. Let him stay. Maybe it will help his brother for him to understand what Tristram and Beatrix did.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Charlotte, glancing at Derek.

  The imminence of the disclosure hung around them like an electrical charge in the air. They crouched forward in their chairs, as if expecting Griffith to whisper the secret in their ears. But when he spoke, he did so in an unaltered tone. Now he had resolved to tell all, it seemed he had decided to tell it aloud.

  6

  Bujaraloz,

  7th September 1937

  Dear Sis,

  I have reached the front. I’ve been judged worthy to share the hazards and privations of active military service in the wind-blasted heat-blistered battleground of Aragon. There’s almost a snatch of poetry in that, don’t you think?

  But not enough. Not enough by far. It was ever thus, of course. The thought. The image. And now the act. But never the true and sparkling exactitude of the right and perfect word. Unless it’s a requiem. Maybe that at least I can hope to compose – or perhaps to inspire.

  I must choose my words carefully. It’s late to learn such a lesson, don’t you think? But there it is. I can’t, for obvious reasons, say much of what we’re doing here or of how successful our efforts may be. What I can say is that it’s grim and mad and maybe even pointless. But it’s also glorious and wonderful and worthier than anything I’ve ever done before.

  The battalion’s been substantially reinforced with Spaniards, yet its British identity remains. At its core are not the officers with their Rumanian pretensions, their public-school accents and Communist credentials dazzlingly intact. Oh no. They’re so much candy-floss. What holds this battalion together – what binds its wounds and stiffens its sinews – are the rough tough crude complaining working class. The Glaswegians and the Geordies, the Scousers and the Swansea boys who left the dole queues to come here and fight for freedom.

  It’s strange and bewildering, sometimes almost embarrassing, to find out what putting principles into practice really means. Not pontification or pamphleteering. Not versifying, either. Nothing so easy or comfortable as any of that. It means marching when you’re thirsty, humping loads when you’re hungry, fighting when all you want to do is sleep. It means finding out what you’re really made of. And not being ashamed by the answer.

  There’s a sergeant in my company called Frank Griffith. Hard as granite. Bright as a diamond. Sure of himself. Unsure of what we’re doing here. Sick of it, in fact. But he’ll never show it. No fool. No hero. But the best and only kind you want beside you at times like these. He won’t cut. He won’t run. He won’t ever let you down.

  Do you know what book – what slim little intellectual volume – he carries in his pack? The other fellows told me and I’ve seen it for myself since, though he doesn’t know I have. The Brow of the Hill. Yes, that’s right. The rotten Brow of the fraudulent Hill. Doesn’t it make you want to laugh? Or weep?

  I’m glad he hasn’t faced me with it. I’m glad he hasn’t requested an autograph or told me ‘False Gods’ is his favourite poem of the century. Because I don’t know what I’d say if he did, I really don’t.

  The old lie is redundant here, you see, just like every other preconception. It won’t serve. It’s not enough. It’s less than men like Frank Griffith deserve. I’d gag on the words. I’d choke on the lie I’ve spent ten years perfecting. I simply couldn’t do it.

  Pray he doesn’t speak, Sis. Pray for my sake and for yours. Because, if he does, I’ll have to tell him the truth. I’ll have to tell him who really wrote the poems, every one, every verse. My dear unworldly neglected sister, who wants neither credit nor fame. Not me. Not the bronzed and burnished simulacrum of a poet they call Tristram Abberley. But you. The overlooked twenty-four carat reality of rhyme and reason.

  Don’t worry too much. It’ll probably never happen. He won’t speak and neither will I. Our secret’s safe. I’ll go on pretending to be what you can never be and what I can’t help being thought: a soldier and a poet.

  I’ll write again as soon as I can.

  Much love,

  Tristram.

  7

  ‘WELL?’ FRANK GRIFFITH looked at each of them in turn, a measure of defiance restored to his gaze. ‘Don’t you have anything to say? You wanted to know Tristram’s secret. Now you do.’

  De
rek frowned. ‘He wasn’t really a poet at all?’ Charlotte heard the remark clearly enough, but it seemed to echo, as if reaching her along a speaking-tube from a distant room. At every turn, it seemed, her hopes were to be dashed, her assumptions overturned. Emerson McKitrick was not to be trusted. Ursula was not to be relied upon. And everything Beatrix had ever said about her late and lionized brother was to be disbelieved. ‘Beatrix wrote the poems?’ she murmured. ‘All of them?’

  ‘Every one,’ Frank replied, his voice grim and insistent, as if he had decided to spare her no single fragment of the truth now she had demanded to be told it. ‘Tristram’s mind was alive with ideas and images, but he lacked the facility to translate them into poetic form. Beatrix, on the other hand, was uninspired but technically brilliant. Together, they made a poet. Apart, they were merely a dreamer and his down-to-earth sister.’

  ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘When I reached Tarragona in March of ’thirty-eight and found him dying. He told me then. It was his deathbed confession. He didn’t want a priest to absolve him. He wanted me – one of his readers.’

  ‘And did you absolve him?’

  ‘As far as I could. I was shocked, of course, but I didn’t feel betrayed. I’d grown to know and like him for the man he was rather than the poet he wasn’t. The poems were just words, whereas he was flesh and blood. The fact he hadn’t written them couldn’t blot out our friendship or diminish the memory of him I was determined to hold. Tristram Abberley was a good man. Even then, I understood that was more important than being a good poet.’

  ‘But why? Why did they do it?’

  ‘It started as a joke, while Tristram was at Oxford. They submitted “Blindfold” for inclusion in the anthology Auden edited as an experiment, to see whether it would be praised or derided. Beatrix had deliberately guyed the style of Auden’s circle and had predicted the poem would be well received by them so long as they thought it was the work of one of their own kind. Well, she was right. It attracted more favourable attention than either of them had anticipated. The title was part of the joke. “Bind the cloth tightly, lest you see too brightly.” “Who faces the men? Who holds the pen?” There were hints and double meanings in virtually every line, but nobody noticed them, or understood them if they did. The experiment was a complete success.’