‘What are you going to do now this is all over, Geoff?’
‘I don’t know. Carry on as before, I suppose.’
‘But how can you? Things aren’t as they were. And they never will be.’
‘No. I suppose they won’t.’
‘The partnership, for instance. I’ve been wondering lately whether it has any legs left in it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m strictly supernumerary, aren’t I?’
‘I wouldn’t say—’
‘And you’re in need of a fresh challenge.’
‘Am I?’
‘Ever heard me talk about a chap called Phil Murray?’
‘Murray? Yes, I believe I have. Didn’t you serve with him?’
‘Yes. He was liaison-officer in a Canadian regiment we were supposed to support at Ypres in 1915. A fellow-architect, as it turned out. He had a practice in Toronto. Quite successful, I understand.’
‘And?’
‘And we still correspond. He’s often said he’d be interested in taking on an English partner. Me, if I felt up to it, which I don’t. Or somebody I could recommend.’
‘You mean me?’
‘I think you and Phil would work well together, certainly.’
‘You’re suggesting I uproot myself and start afresh in Canada?’
‘What is there to uproot, Geoff?’
I gazed into the fire for a moment, then smiled in concession of the point. ‘Not much.’
‘Then isn’t it worth considering?’
I was still considering Imry’s proposal when I returned to Hyde Park Gardens Mews that night to find a letter from Hermione Caswell waiting for me on the mat.
Brown’s Hotel,
Albemarle Street,
LONDON W1.
1st March 1924
Dear Mr Staddon,
I have hesitated more than is my wont before writing to you, since I know Jacinta’s uncle would disapprove and I suspect Consuela might also. But, as you know, I am not one to be swayed by the disapproval of others!
Jacinta has asked me more than once why, of all the people who contributed to saving her mother’s life, you have since been the least conspicuous. Frankly, I do not know how to answer her. If all goes according to plan, she will soon be leaving for Brazil, perhaps never to return. Do you intend to let her do so without having the opportunity to thank you and to say goodbye? Is that what Consuela asked of you in her letter? If it was, I am probably wrong to say what I am about to. But I shall do so anyway, since, in my opinion, a farewell is the least you and Jacinta deserve of each other.
I have promised to take her to the Zoo tomorrow afternoon. I shall ensure that we stop for tea in the café by the Mappin Terraces at three o’clock. If anybody we know chanced to be there at the same time, it would be a happy coincidence, do you not think?
I remain sincerely yours,
Hermione E. Caswell.
I fell asleep that night vowing I would not go. What was the point? What could it achieve, except to remind me of all I had lost and could never regain? Jacinta was my daughter, but I had forfeited the right to tell her so. Her life had begun where my past in it had ended. Time’s harshest lesson could neither be untaught nor unlearned. There was no turning back, no setting right. There was only the path I had chosen without realizing it.
And so, inevitably, I went. The afternoon was cold and bright, the sun low and glaring over Primrose Hill. I bought a pink balloon from a salesman in Regent’s Park and carried it with me through the Zoo, past the capering children with their doting nannies, the elephants with their keepers, the croaking ravens and the screeching gibbons, and Decimus Burton’s clock tower that showed me 3 p.m. had barely passed.
Hermione and Jacinta were at a table near the door of the café. Hermione was devouring a Chelsea bun, while Jacinta ate nothing, whereas, at every other table, children were gobbling cakes and biscuits whilst the adults fasted.
‘Mr Staddon!’ exclaimed Jacinta at sight of me. ‘What a wonderful surprise!’ She looked so small in her tweed overcoat, so very young in her muffler and her beret. Her face was flushed with the chillness of the air. Her eyes were sparkling. Her eyes were Consuela’s.
‘Hello, Jacinta.’ I clumsily offered her the balloon.
‘Why, thank you.’ She frowned. ‘How did you know we would be here?’
‘Oh, I didn’t. I always buy a balloon when I come to the Zoo, in case I meet a pretty girl to give it to.’
Jacinta glanced at Hermione, then smiled up at me. She almost seemed about to laugh, but did not.
‘May I join you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I have a better idea,’ said Hermione, with a mischievous wrinkle to her mouth. ‘Jacinta wants to see the lions and the tigers. But I’m too tired to walk another step. Why don’t you take her, Mr Staddon?’
‘Well … Would you like that, Jacinta?’
‘Oh, yes please.’
Some children were carried on their fathers’ backs. Others merely held their hands. But Jacinta and I walked solemnly apart, two strangers observing the formalities, risking nothing, venturing little. Given a few months, we might have grown to trust each other. In a few years, who knows what might have been possible? But we had only a few minutes, strolling past the barred cages where the lions dozed and the tigers prowled.
‘I wanted to come,’ said Jacinta. ‘I pleaded with Aunt Hermione to bring me. But I wish all these beautiful creatures did not have to be in cages. I wish they were free.’
‘Like your mother?’
‘Yes. That is wonderful, isn’t it, Mr Staddon? Tomorrow, my mother will be free.’
‘Are you looking forward to going to Brazil?’
‘I don’t know. I have been looking at some of the animals I will see there. Reptiles. Serpents. Enormous spiders. I am not sure I shall like those. But it does not really matter, because my mother will be there too, so I know I shall be happy.’
‘Of course you will.’
‘Mr Staddon—’
‘Yes?’
‘Why did my father leave everything to cousin Spencer in his will?’
‘That’s all been changed.’
‘I know. But why did he? What about my mother? What about me? Didn’t he want us to have anything?’
‘I … don’t know.’
‘That is what everybody says when I ask them. Nobody seems to know. Or, if they do, they do not want to tell me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not the case.’
‘Oh, but it is. They all think I am too young to understand, you see.’
‘Perhaps you are.’
‘So, when will I be old enough?’
‘When your mother says you are.’
‘And when will that be?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not for me to say. I’m not—One day, you’ll understand.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Oh, yes.’ I touched her shoulder and gave it the faintest of squeezes. ‘One day, you’ll understand everything.’
She looked up at me, unsmiling now as well as unquestioning. And then, after many minutes had seemed to pass, she said: ‘Well, you must be right, Mr Staddon.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was you my mother said I was to ask for help. And you did help, didn’t you? You helped save her. You kept your promise.’
‘Perhaps. But I haven’t always kept my promises.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Good.’ I looked hastily away, forestalling tears by an instant. Still the sun shone, bright on the pink balloon that wobbled beside us on its string. ‘I’d rather you didn’t believe me, Jacinta. Much rather.’
‘I shall write to you from Brazil.’
‘And I’ll write back.’
‘Will you come to see me one day?’
‘If you ask me.’
‘Oh, I will. When I am old enough.’
‘Then I’ll come.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘Yes, Jacinta. That’s a promise.’
Half an hour later, Hermione and I were seated on a bench near the bear-pit. Jacinta was standing out of earshot by the parapet, gazing down intently at the sad-faced bruins. Hermione, who had returned from Hereford on Friday, was explaining to me the tense and cheerless atmosphere that had prevailed at Fern Lodge.
‘Marjorie is scarcely coherent, I fear. And Mortimer refuses to discuss anything except business. I think he is trying to block from his mind the possibility that Spencer had a hand in murdering his uncle as well as his sister.’
‘He can surely take some comfort from the fact that the police aren’t pressing charges.’
‘Perhaps. But Mortimer is not blind, Mr Staddon, merely dumb. He saw – as did we all – how triumphant Spencer was when he was released. The boy was concerned with only one thing: how to pursue his claim to Victor’s estate.’
‘He must be crestfallen now, then.’
‘So I imagine. But Spencer has either been out or hiding in his room since his interview with Mr Quarton. Consequently, I’ve had little opportunity to assess his state of mind. Frankly, I am more worried about Mortimer. He is too proud to show what he really feels. Rosemary and Victor dead; Spencer disgraced; and, on top of everything, the suspicion that Victor had some involvement in the Peto’s Paper Mill robbery. He cannot even face his own brother-in-law, let alone the outside world.’
‘So, Brazil really is the best place for Consuela and Jacinta to go. As far away from all that as possible.’
‘Yes. I’ve no doubt it is. I wish them both the happiness they deserve. As to those of us who must stay behind …’
‘What’s to become of us, eh?’
‘What indeed? Would you care to venture a prediction, Mr Staddon?’
‘No. I don’t believe I would.’
The time came for them to leave. They were expected back by five o’clock and Hermione had no wish to arouse the Pombalhos’ suspicions by being late. She would, she had told me, swear Jacinta to secrecy about meeting me. So it was that I procured a cab outside the main gate shortly after half past four and saw them aboard.
Hermione kissed me and Jacinta, as if emboldened by her aunt’s example, did the same. There was the lightest brush of her lips against my cheek, a whispered ‘Goodbye, Mr Staddon – and thank you again for everything you did for my mother’. Then I was shouting their destination to the driver and the cab was moving. Jacinta was waving and I was waving back. Her face became blurred by distance. Then it ceased to be discernible at all. The cab kept moving. The invisible string between us paid out, tightened, stretched taut and snapped. And I stood where I was, more truly alone than I had ever felt before.
I walked slowly back across Regent’s Park and down through the silent streets of Marylebone as afternoon merged with evening. It was colder than ever now, and the sky was no longer clear. Clouds were massing to the north, low and heavy, oddly tinged with mauve and purple.
As I turned in to Hyde Park Gardens Mews, a neighbour with whom I was on nodding terms emerged from his door. ‘Hello,’ he said with a grin. ‘Don’t like the look of that lot.’ He twitched his head towards the cloud-bank.
‘Nor me.’
‘Cold as well, eh?’
‘Yes.’ I glanced up at the sky. ‘I think it may snow tonight.’
Epilogue
‘Mornin’, guv. Where to?’
‘Camden Road, Holloway.’
‘Which end?’
‘Just drive along it. I’ll tell you where to drop me.’
‘Right you are.’
And so we begin, driving cautiously through the freshly layered snow, the sunlight dazzling on its surface. This is London as it is seldom seen: petrified and inviolate. It is almost as if it knows the ends and the beginnings that today will hold: the end of Consuela’s imprisonment and of my attempts to make amends; the beginning of her freedom and of whatever my future is to be, here or far away. She will turn her back on the past today and so will I. I shall watch her walk away and then I shall do the same.
‘Thought we’d seen the back o’ winter,’ remarks the cabby as we turn into Edgware Road. ‘Just goes to show, eh?’
‘Indeed.’
‘What you don’t expect you generally get. That’s my experience.’
‘Yes.’
He falls silent, despairing of a conversation with his tight-lipped passenger. I have no words to spare him. I want to concentrate on every moment and every scene that the next half hour contains. I want to fix the instant of farewell in my mind so that I will remember it always. Nothing has forced me to come except my need to mark the end, to take my leave of all that Consuela has meant to me, now and thirteen years ago. It is not enough to let others bear witness on my behalf, not enough to know, however surely, that it has happened. This time, this last time, I must see for myself.
Marylebone Road. The trams and omnibuses are moving slowly. The delivery-men’s horses plod solemnly through the slush-filled gutters, their breath rising in clouds about them. Shopkeepers in galoshes are sweeping the snow from their frontages. One mob of humanity is squelching into Baker Street underground station while another is squelching out. On we go, while the day strengthens and begins to take hold of our lives.
Albany Street. North now, with the terraces of Regent’s Park to our left, their snow-piled roofs pink and golden in the climbing sunlight. All about us, as far as the eye can see and farther still, the city is stirring, oblivious to my journey. What is she thinking now, she to whom I grow every second a little closer? What does she feel, as her long ordeal expires in pre-determined minutes? Soon, the door will open. Soon, she will be leaving the place where she feared her body would remain for ever. What will pass across her mind as she steps through the wicket-gate and starts towards the road?
Park Street. The route is straight now, north-east and unerring towards our destination. I shield my eyes from the sun as it lances between the buildings and, as I do so, I contemplate the strangeness of time. All the actions and words that the past contains were stored against this day. Once it is done, they too will be done, melted and drained away like the snow, held in the memory but never again to be seen or heard or touched.
Camden Town railway bridge. Not far now. Not long in which to prepare myself. I glance at my watch. There is time enough. Not much. But enough. I lean forward and peer past the driver. Soon, the prison will be in sight. Yes. There it is. I tap the glass.
‘Here, please!’
‘What? Oh, righto.’
We pull up. I climb out, lean into the cab and pay him. The tip is generous. He grins. My taciturnity is forgiven.
‘Blimey! Thanks, guv.’
I step clear. He starts away. I move to the snow-stippled hedge bounding the pavement and watch the cab descend the hill, then turn right and vanish. But the prison does not vanish. It waits, brooding and patient. Another glance at my watch. Five minutes. No more. Just five. And then it is done. I cross a side-road and pause to light a cigarette. I can see a cab waiting ahead. That must be Windrush. So long as I keep in close against these straggling privets, he will not catch sight of me. Even if he does, he will not recognize me at this range.
I cross a second side-road and stop. Three minutes. I lean against a low wall between the trees that over-arch the pavement, their bare branches adrip with slowly melting snow. A policeman has appeared ahead, detailed, presumably, to deter sightseers. But there are none to deter, save me, and he does not look in my direction. He moves to the cab and leans in for a word with the occupant. Two minutes. He steps back and the occupant climbs out. It is Windrush. I recognize his spindly frame. He pulls out his watch. So does the policeman.
One minute. I crush the cigarette against the brickwork of the wall and take a deep breath. The end is very close now. She will cross the pavement ahead of me, enter the cab and be borne away to Brown’s Hotel and the fond reception that awaits her there. I will never see
her again. This solitary stolen glimpse will be my farewell. And then? I neither know nor care. I will, when afterwards begins, but, until it does—
A church clock has begun to strike the hour. One. Two. Three. I put my watch away and push myself upright. Four. Five. Six. I turn and look. Windrush and the policeman are gazing intently towards the gate of the prison. I can almost hear the bolt being slipped, the door being pushed ajar, the parcel of her belongings rustling in her hand. Seven. Eight. Nine. Step through and out. Into the light.
Silence. Time suspended in the frozen air. Neither bird-song nor human voice. Then the policeman moves away to one side. And Windrush raises his hand. He has seen her. She is free. In a second or less, I will see her with my own eyes. Windrush steps forward. And she appears. She is wearing a long dark fur-trimmed overcoat and a matching narrow-brimmed hat. Windrush extends his hand. She takes it.
Who is that? Suddenly, from the tree-fringed entrance to a private drive about halfway between me and the group by the cab, a figure emerges. It is as if he has been hiding there, awaiting, like me, this very moment. A thin man in a half-belted brown overcoat and grey fedora. He flicks his cigarette towards the gutter. I glance ahead of him. Windrush is indicating the cab to Consuela, stepping back to let her pass. The policeman is standing next to the vehicle, ready to open the door for her. I glance back at the stranger. As I do so, he slips his right hand into his overcoat pocket, pulls something out, and ceases to be a stranger. He is Spencer Caswell.
I am running after him, gathering my breath to shout. It is a gun. I see the barrel of it pointing down, see his finger on the trigger, his thumb braced against the cock. I know what he means to do. It cannot be, but it is. I never expected this. Never.
‘Look out!’ Windrush and Consuela turn towards me, uncertain, uncomprehending. Consuela’s face is pale, crossed with a puzzled frown. ‘Look out! He’s got a gun!’
Spencer darts a glance at me over his shoulder, then looks back at Consuela, raising the gun as he does so. The policeman is moving. So is Windrush. So too another policeman from the direction of the prison gate. But they will not be quick enough. He is too far away, Consuela too clear in his sights.
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