Ursula shook her head. ‘Don’t be silly, Charlie. It’s my insurance policy, not yours. I’ll use it if I have to, but otherwise not. That’s what I meant by compromise. Maurice may not be a faithful husband, but he’s a generous paymaster. As long as he remains generous, I shan’t quibble.’
‘But don’t you see what the report proves? Don’t you see why Beatrix commissioned it? She must have feared … must have suspected …’
‘I see nothing. Unless I choose to. I shall tell Maurice we met – and why. But I shan’t tell him anything else. If he contacts you – as I suspect your curiosity about his financial circumstances will prompt him to – I advise you to assure him of your absolute confidence in his loyalty and integrity. That way, he won’t think you’re threatening him.’
‘And if I ignore your advice?’
‘You’d be very foolish. I have insurance, remember. You don’t.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie. And dead aunts.’ Suddenly, she extinguished the cigarette and drained her wine-glass. ‘Now, why don’t you ask for the bill? I have the strangest feeling neither of us wants a dessert.’
14
DEREK FAIRFAX’S LUNCH had been a frugal affair: cheese-and-tomato sandwiches followed by an apple, consumed on a bench in Calverley Park. Not that he would have enjoyed anything more lavish. He had too much on his mind to concentrate on what he ate or drank.
The same could not be said of David Fithyan, who returned from his own lunch shortly before three o’clock and clambered from his Jaguar with the clumsiness and flushed countenance of a man to whom food and drink were matters of considerable importance. Watching him from his office window, Derek noted the characteristic scowl of impending liverishness and decided to avoid him for the rest of the day. Unfortunately for him, such a decision was not his to take. Less than ten minutes later, he was summoned to Fithyan’s presence.
‘I said nothing about your absence last week, Derek, did I?’ He spoke in a slurred growl betokening indignation as well as intoxication. ‘You’ll agree that was generous of me.’
‘Er … yes. I suppose it was. I—’
‘Exceedingly generous of me.’
‘Well …’
‘I’m a tolerant man. Always have been. Too tolerant, the wife says.’
‘Really? Well, I’m not sure—’
‘We had to send Rowlandson out to that firm in Sevenoaks to cover for you. He made an utter balls of it.’
‘I know. I’m sorry about—’
‘But I said nothing. And why? Because I thought we understood each other.’
‘We do. I—’
‘No we don’t!’ Fithyan brought the flat of his hand down hard on his blotter. ‘But we will before you leave this room.’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘I had lunch with Adrian Whitbourne.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Whitbourne & Pithey are one of our biggest clients.’
‘I know.’
‘Good. I’m glad you know that, Derek. Perhaps you also know who one of their biggest customers is.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Ladram Avionics. Mean anything to you?’
‘Well, of course. I—’
‘Shut up! Shut up and listen!’ Fithyan’s forefinger waggled ominously at Derek. ‘Whitbourne as good as told me today that if a certain member of our staff goes on antagonizing and harassing the managing director of Ladram Avionics – as he has been doing – then Whitbourne & Pithey will start looking for a new accountant.’
‘Oh.’ Derek looked past Fithyan, past indeed the treetops waving beyond the window, and saw his own naïvety staring back. Maurice Abberley was bound to have contacts and bound to use them when challenged. It was as obvious as it should have been predictable. ‘I see,’ he mumbled.
‘If we lost a client as important as that, we’d probably have to review our staffing levels. We wouldn’t need so many people, would we?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘But we aren’t going to lose them, are we?’
‘I certainly hope not.’
‘We aren’t going to lose them because the managing director of Ladram Avionics isn’t going to have occasion to complain about us to Whitbourne ever again, is he?’
Derek looked at Fithyan and realized the utter hopelessness of appealing to his better nature. The human race was divided in his mind not by race or creed or politics but by whether they mattered or not, whether they wielded power or were wielded by it. On one side of this divide stood Maurice Abberley. On the other stood Derek and his brother. Questions of right and wrong were therefore irrelevant. A man of influence had spoken. And Fithyan had listened.
‘Well, is he?’
Derek shook his head. ‘No. Absolutely not. If I’d had any idea this would embarrass the company, I’d have—’
‘I want this … whatever it is … dropped. Is that dear?’
‘Yes. Completely. And it will be. You have my word.’ But, even as he said it, Derek prepared an escape clause for his own reference. A promise given to David Fithyan was as valid as a promise given by him. The great divide might yet intrude.
15
THE MORE DISTANT her childhood became, the more often Charlotte revisited it in her dreams. She did not do so as the child she had once been, rather as the adult she now was, dwelling within her vastly younger body, limited by what it could do and say, yet aware of all the knowledge and sadness that was to overtake her as the years passed.
Beatrix was dozing by the fire at Jackdaw Cottage, a book cradled in her hands, a shawl about her shoulders, an expression of perfect contentment on her face. And Charlotte was trying to wake her. She had something to tell her, something very important, something terrible but imprecise which Beatrix would want desperately to know, if only she could be woken. But though she shook her vigorously and shouted in her ear, Charlotte’s efforts seemed in vain. Beatrix’s eyes would not open. Her expression would not alter. And then, as Charlotte persisted, she felt a hand on her own shoulder and a voice clamouring for her attention.
‘Charlie! Listen to me, Charlie. Look at me.’
To turn and look was like wrestling free of a choking but welcome embrace. She did not want to, yet she knew she must.
‘Charlie!’
At that she turned. And woke. And froze with horror. Maurice was sitting on the side of her bed, a hand resting on her forearm, a smile nickering about his lips.
‘It’s all right, Charlie. It’s only me.’ The smile broadened and Charlotte relaxed by the fraction that was sufficient to free her mind and body. It was the morning following her lunch with Ursula. Sunlight was streaming through the gap in the curtains. When she glanced at the alarm clock, she saw it was just after half past seven. And Maurice was there, above and beside her.
‘I rang the bell, but you can’t have heard. So I used my spare key. Sorry to have surprised you.’
She would have heard. She was sure of it. Pushing herself up on her elbows and shaking her head, she stared at him uncomprehendingly. Why was he here? What did he want?
‘I think you must have been dreaming.’ He left the bed and sat down in the nearby chair. He was dressed in a lightweight suit and pale tie and looked groomed and placid enough for this visit to be an entirely normal feature of his journey to work. ‘I brought you some breakfast, by the way.’ He pointed to a tray on the bedside cabinet. ‘Orange juice, muesli and black coffee. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ she heard herself reply. ‘Thank you.’
‘This must seem a strange time to call.’
‘Well …’
‘But I have a busy day planned. So, there seemed nothing for it but to leave home early and take you in on the way, so to speak.’
‘Take me in? I don’t quite—’
‘Ursula told me about your lunch yesterday. About your … request for information.’
‘Oh.’ Charlotte reached for the glass of orange juice
and swallowed some. ‘I see.’
‘Do you, Charlie? Do you really? I have the feeling you may not see at all – and that it may be my fault you don’t.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Maurice stretched out his legs and gazed up towards the ceiling, joining his hands behind his neck to support his head. ‘I was fourteen when you were born. It’s a big gap in age. It made me see you as more of a child than a brother normally would. Then again, when your father died, you were only twelve, whereas I was all of twenty-six, so I not only felt responsible for your welfare, I really was responsible. Everything I’ve done since then has been intended to benefit you as much as my own family. I’ve never looked upon you as an outsider just because your surname isn’t Abberley. You do know that, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never doubted it.’
‘Good.’ He glanced across at her, then back at the ceiling. ‘Ladram Aviation was a disaster until I took over. Your father was a lovely man, but he had no grasp of business principles. My father’s royalties were the only thing keeping your father afloat. I don’t say that out of resentment. I say it to remind you of the uphill task I had to put the company – and the family – back on its feet. It was when I enquired into our finances and found out how dependent we were on Tristram’s royalties that Mother told me the truth about his poems. She had to. Otherwise, I might have questioned why so much royalty income found its way to Beatrix, for her to spend on God knows what.’ He chuckled. ‘We know now, of course, don’t we? A retirement home for Lulu Harrington. A farm for Frank Griffith. And probably a host of other gifts to people we’ve never heard of. Beatrix was a generous woman, wasn’t she? Generous to strangers, anyway.’
‘Maurice—’
‘Please listen to me, Charlie. I’ve never said this before and I never want to say it again. A son either idolizes his father or hates him. That’s human nature. Well, I idolized Tristram. He was dead, he was a poet, he was a warrior. What more could a son ask? Can you imagine, then, how it felt to be told he was no poet at all? To be told his sister had written every word for him? To be—’ He broke off, then resumed in a more measured tone. ‘Well, that was a long time ago. I’ll spare you the soul-searching I went through, as I spared it you then. I was persuaded the secret had to be kept, but against my better judgement. Once I knew, I wanted us to make a clean breast of it, to face the world with the truth about Tristram Abberley. But Beatrix didn’t want that to happen. She was afraid of being branded a fraud and a cheat and maybe she was right to be. At all events, without her co-operation, nothing could be done. I’d have made a fool of myself if I’d announced our secret to the world without a shred of proof and then been contradicted by Beatrix. Not to mention my own mother. How would she have explained the publication of Spanish Lines without admitting her part in the deception? No, the reality was that they were right. The secret had to be kept.’
He rose and strolled to the window, whilst Charlotte sipped abstractedly at her coffee and watched him. He was the only one left alive of those he had named. He was free to say whatever he liked about them, to confer upon them the motives and intentions most suitable to his version of events. As he opened the curtains wide and turned back to face her, it was as if he were unveiling a stage-set of his own past, on which the characters would move and speak according to the script he had written for them.
‘But Mother and Beatrix are dead now, Charlie. We’re free to set the record straight. Don’t you think we should? Don’t you think the world’s entitled to know the truth about Tristram Abberley?’
‘Er … Yes. I suppose it is.’
‘I’d have told you sooner, but, to be honest, I was hoping to avoid having to admit lying to you all these years. That’s why I approached Emerson McKitrick. I thought that, if you and he found the letters together, the truth would emerge without my part in it becoming known. It was vain and foolish of me. I see that now. Will you forgive me?’
She replaced the coffee-cup on the tray and summoned a sisterly smile. ‘Of course.’
He returned to the chair and lowered himself into it. ‘Mother told me about the letters. Beatrix had shown them to her to convince her she really had written the poems. I knew McKitrick would be interested in finding them and I persuaded him not to reveal the source of his information. But I hadn’t realized Beatrix would go to such lengths to conceal them. Once you’d established they were hidden at Hendre Gorfelen, McKitrick was bound to try and steal them. I was worried he’d succeed – and destroy them when he found out what a threat they posed to his academic reputation. So, I decided to forestall him. I told Fairfax about the letters, knowing he would alarm Griffith into retrieving them. And I employed … well, let’s just say I employed somebody … to take them off him. I wouldn’t call it theft. They belonged to my father. I was simply repossessing them. Naturally, I’m sorry Griffith was injured in the process. That was never my intention.’
‘What is your intention – now you have them?’
‘Publication. Next year, perhaps. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of my father’s death.’
‘You know what some people will say, don’t you?’
‘That money’s my real motive? Of course. The petty-minded will always say such things. But you and I know they’re wrong. It was naughty of you to ask Ursula rather than me.’ He raised his finger in good-humoured reproof. ‘But never mind. Perhaps she convinced you where I couldn’t. I’ve reached a position in life where money doesn’t matter, as Ursula explained to you.’
Charlotte could not help wondering whether she would have believed Maurice if Ursula really had told her money meant nothing to him. She suspected not. But it scarcely mattered. She knew now she could not believe a single word he said. He changed his account of himself as he would his suit, to match the company and fit the facts. If one seemed inadequate, there was always another, pressed and waiting in the wardrobe. Money was his motive. And time was running out. Indeed, it would have run out but for Beatrix’s death. As the thought struck Charlotte, a shudder ran through her. The hired thief must be Spicer, supposedly sacked more than seven months ago. That meant Maurice had been planning this even then. And what he had been planning included Beatrix’s murder. There was as little doubt of it as there was proof.
‘Are you cold, Charlie?’
‘No.’
‘I thought I saw you shiver.’
‘Well … a little perhaps.’
‘I’d better leave you to dress, then.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I must be going, anyway. Duty calls.’ He rose, smiling, and stepped towards her. ‘Still, I’m glad we’ve had this little chat.’
‘So am I.’
‘It clears the air. Ensures we both know where we stand.’
‘Yes.’
He was leaning over her now, one hand resting on the headboard, the other hovering above the coverlet. ‘He was my father, Charlie. Nobody else’s. I think I’m the best judge of how he should be remembered. What do you think?’
She looked up into his face, forcing herself to smile, recalling the multitude of times she had trusted him – as she never would again. ‘Oh, I think you’re right, Maurice. Absolutely right.’
‘That’s my girl.’ He patted her outstretched hand. ‘You just leave it to me.’ Then, stooping forward, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘All to me.’ And somehow, with an effort she hardly thought she was capable of, she did not scream or recoil, but continued to smile, willing him to believe he had convinced her. As he had. Only too well.
16
Alfambra,
1st January 1938
Dear Sis,
I couldn’t see the New Year in without penning you an overdue line, though, to be honest, being held in reserve while the battle we may join rumbles on to the south doesn’t encourage seasonal reflection. Nor, come to that, does this frozen-to-the-bone pueblo where we’re billeted. When it isn’t snowing, there’s a marrow-chilling frost and our real preoccupation isn’t the state of the war or the prospects
of peace, but how to keep warm and dry. My good friends Frank Griffith and Vicente Ortiz appear to be more adept at this than I do, but I’m slowly learning their secrets!
What the British press may have said about the Teruel offensive I don’t know, of course, but we reckon the generals hope Republican success there (which seems at present to be coming to pass) will persuade Franco to offer a truce. If so, they’re whistling in the wind to my way of thinking, because Franco just isn’t the compromising kind. And an icy wind it is too. According to Vicente, who knows the town, Teruel is the coldest place on Earth (by which he really means the Iberian peninsula) and he may well be right. If he is, the good news we’re getting from the units engaged there may not outlast the winter. Vicente’s also heard that one of the colonels on the Fascist side is a bloodthirsty devil called Delgado, a fact which seems to depress him beyond measure.
We had a visit from three Labour Party bigwigs early last month. No doubt you read about it. Clem Attlee, Ellen Wilkinson and Philip Noel-Baker sat down to dinner with the battalion, condemned non-intervention, ate heartily, sang The Red Flag and departed to a chorus of hollow cheers, hollow because most of the chaps here would have been glad to go back with them, rather than face a second winter fighting Fascism. It’s my first, of course, so I haven’t any of their excuses. Even so, I have to say that my morale was singularly unboosted by the event.
Not that it was in need of boosting. Despite all the privations, I don’t want to be anywhere else but here when this war ends. I want to see and hear and feel and understand it happening. I want to be part of it. And so I shall. Which is why, without a single hint of irony, I can wish you the very happiest of New Years.
Much love,
Tristram.
17
SIX WEEKS AGO, all in Charlotte’s life had been sane and normal. Beatrix had still been alive, whiling away her octogenarian days in Rye. Maurice had still seemed the model half-brother, affectionate without being over-bearing. And Tristram Abberley had still been the poet whom one remembered as a brother and the other as a father.
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