She called back without stopping, ‘Tim Forbes changed his name to Tim Smith, and now he’s Tim Forbes again. Daft, I call it. Yes, he’s still here, but he’ll be in late, he always is.’
The light went out. She called down, ‘Press the light switch, would you, man? It’s on a timer; we’ve got a mean old devil of a landlord.’
He did, and followed her. His son had changed his name to that of his father, Roger, but then back again. He felt a surge of hope. The light went out on the second floor. Tim’s bedsit was at the top. He clambered on up to the fourth floor. He sat outside, on the floor, twisting his cap, waiting in the dark. At eleven thirty the light came on, and he heard steps on the stairs. They sounded like his son’s. The light cut out after thirty seconds.
Jack stood, reached out and flicked the switch. The light came on, as Tim almost reached the landing. He blinked, rubbed a hand across his face, his cap on the back of his head. Jack could smell the booze and stale sweat on him even from here. Tim was looking at the next step, and then the next, and hadn’t seen him. Jack stayed silent, not wanting him to run, wanting him within arms’ length so he could grab him if need be.
At the head of the stairs, Tim fumbled in his pocket. He staggered towards his door, bringing out a clutch of keys. He looked up. Jack reached out, and Tim flinched away. The lights went out, and Tim stumbled against the wall. Jack grabbed him, and his son fought him off. ‘No, get away.’ It was more a sob of terror than a shout.
Jack lunged for the switch. In the light he said, ‘It’s me, it’s your da.’ It was too late, Tim was stumbling towards the stairs. ‘Wait, son.’ Jack went after him, snatching the keys from his hand, holding him close, in a bear hug. Still Tim fought. Jack almost dragged him to the door, then looked for a key that would fit. He opened it, and hauled in his son, kicking the door shut, the stale stench making him cough. They were plunged into darkness. Tim tore himself away. There was the sound of a chair or something crashing over. Jack found the light switch by the door, and flicked it on.
The bed was unmade, the linen was filthy, the small sink full of dirty dishes. On the draining board were half-eaten meals, with cigarettes stubbed out in the remains. Tim slumped onto his bed. Jack dragged across the wicker chair he and Grace had brought the day they had helped him move in.
He placed it in front of his son, but after a moment, he moved to sit next to him, taking him into his arms again. ‘It’s your da, bonny lad. It’s only me. What’s happened to you?’
There was no answer. They sat in silence and gradually Jack felt Tim’s body begin to shudder, and as it grew worse he held Tim tighter, and tighter. ‘It’s your da. I’m here. I was always here, I always will be.’
Tim began sobbing, great hoarse cries, and Jack rocked him. ‘Oh, my boy, what’s happened to you?’
At last the crying stopped, and Tim straightened, digging in his pocket. ‘Let me go, Da. I need a handkerchief, and I can’t breathe, man.’ He was trying to laugh, but it was a creaky sound, as though it was strange to him. Jack dragged out his own handkerchief, pristine white, and handed it to him. ‘I didn’t know you’d come to help with Prancer. Bridie’s only just told us. She didn’t want us hurt. I should—’
Tim smiled, stuffing the handkerchief in his pocket. ‘Bridie, God bless her, she’s an army all on her own. She was right to look after you, it’s what I would have done, should have done. I’ll wash the handkerchief and send it to you, as I expect I’m not welcome.’
‘You’re always welcome.’ Jack said nothing about the punch Tim had dealt Bridie, but waited. His son was exhausted, thin, unshaven; how had he held down his job? Or had he? What the hell had happened? Was it Millie? God, he would swing for her.
Then it all came out: his belief in fascism as a way to get the country on its feet, the increasing anti-Semitism in Germany and at the Hawton meetings which he had totally ignored, feeling perhaps that all collateral damage would be rectified when things were sorted. ‘But that’s a bloody excuse, Da. I just didn’t give it a moment’s thought, man. What the hell’s wrong with me?’
He drove on, telling of his last time in Berlin, the beatings, the cell, Otto’s death, his fear, no, his terror. At last his realisation of the nature of a state with no democracy, the absence of a legal presence, the evil of it all, which was why he no longer considered himself a fascist. Finally he said, ‘It’s the nightmares. So damned silly. If I go to sleep I dream, so I don’t want to sleep. I stay awake, and instead I hear and smell it. I’m so bloody tired, and all the time I need a drink. It’s the only thing that blunts it. I’m on a warning at work, and I don’t blame them.’
Jack waited a moment, and then said, ‘I had those, after the war. Lots of us did; they ease and then end, in the main, if you talk to someone and are patient. I was beaten, as a prisoner, and locked up in a cell in a salt mine. That is what I remember most about being a prisoner: the terror of being alone, the worry about my men, because if I still fought against the enemy then me marras suffered penalties too. That’s something I never discovered the answer to . . .’ He drifted off into his memories, which was a place he preferred not to be, and knew that tonight he would dream about it again. ‘And there was no law, not really, in a bloody enemy salt mine, or any other of their mines. So I know exactly what you mean.’
Tim looked at him now. ‘I thought you would.’
Jack said, ‘You have a letter downstairs from your mother?’ It was a question. Somewhere a clock was ticking, or was it a tap dripping? He looked around. It was the clock on the mantelpiece, next to a photograph taken when Tim was ten, with Bridie and James. There was another, of Tim with Gracie and Jack, another of Tim with Mart, Jack, Charlie and Aub after a day at the races. There was not one of Millie, or Heine.
‘Mam is my mother.’ Tim was picking at the skin around his thumbnail, a nail that was dirty. Well, they all were. Jack placed his hand on his son’s, and held it, as he had done when he was a child. He placed his other around it. ‘You’re right, son, and she always will be.’
Jack felt a growing relief. Then his son explained about the earlier need to find the letter which Millie had said was forged, and the stolen silver. He added that, of course, the family probably knew that Bridie had found him searching, and had tried to help.
Jack shook his head. ‘No, she said nothing. You asked her not to, I reckon?’
He saw his son’s eyes fill with tears, which he brushed away. For a moment, neither said anything and Jack pictured his niece, so like her mam, so rock solid, so formidable, but vulnerable.
A memory came to him from that terrible day when his son had hurled abuse at him in the club then stormed out: amongst all the ranting, there had been something about the theft of the silver and a forged letter. Now it all made sense. He said, ‘I certainly remember about the stolen silver. Lord Brampton reported it to the police, and then set his private detectives on it. They harassed your grandparents until your Uncle Aub put a stop to it.’
‘I know she lied to me, because the silver is there, in her vitrine. They need the letter so she can marry Heine, or so she says. But it’s probably something to do with his job. I’m never going back, Da. I don’t trust them, either of them. They were so angry last time, and there’s just something about people who take apartments from others, who wade through lives . . .’ He trailed off and shuddered. ‘There’s an evil . . .’ He gave up.
‘Come with me now and see your mam. She knows I’m here, and just loves you, so much. We all do, especially me.’ Jack’s mind was racing. Heine needed the letter, and they needed Heine to help James, but not this way, not using his son. There was no way Jack was going to let him back into that cesspool, so how else could they use that lever? He’d have to be the one to go, that’s all.
‘Da?’ Tim was looking at him, his head cocked to one side, as he did when he knew there was something happening.
Jack repeated again, ‘Come back with me, lad, let your mam look after you for a while.’
/> ‘What’s up, Da? Why have you come now? It’s not one of the youngsters, is it? What have they been up to?’ He laughed again, and this time it sounded amused. He was patting his pockets, and drew out a packet of cigarettes. His fingers were nicotine stained. He offered one to Jack.
Jack shook his head. ‘I’m just here to check on you. I know you haven’t been to the Hawton meeting rooms, and I just wondered what your beliefs were, and how you were, but I know that now.’
Tim threw the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table next to an overflowing ashtray. He pushed himself up and walked to the sink, running the tap onto the dirty dishes, the old water heater on the wall flaring. ‘I live in a pigsty. Help me?’
Jack tipped the unfinished meals into the bin, found a tea towel, and dried as his son washed.
Together they stripped the bed and remade it with clean sheets. Tim bundled up the dirty ones into his linen bag for the laundry as Jack tipped the ashtray into the bin, washed it, and returned it to the table. He ran a cloth over the surface of the small table at which Tim ate, and Tim put the linen bag by the front door. ‘So I don’t forget it in the morning.’
He stood watching as Jack washed out the cloth, and muttered, ‘It can only be Spain. Bridie’s back here, so it’s not her. James was so dead set on doing something, and that’s where the young men are going. It is, isn’t it, and it’s gone wrong? Just tell me he’s not dead.’
Jack sat down at the table, exhausted suddenly. It was all such a bloody mess, and Tim would think that he’d only come to put him in the lion’s den.
Tim stood at his side, and now as he put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, it was he who comforted his da. ‘You have to tell me, Da. I need to do something for you all, really I do. And I know you would have come anyway, sometime.’
Finally, Jack told him that James was a prisoner. ‘Potty has strongly advised we do all we can to get him home, and I thought that you might still be in with the Nazis through Heine, but you’re not, and I’m having no part in sending you back into that situation. So I’ll take the letter over there, if it still exists, and maybe he’ll do an exchange.’
Tim shook his head, squatting before his father and clasping his hands in a strong grip. ‘Da, I need to do this. You must all look for the letter, and if you find it, I’ll come at the weekend to collect it. It might work – they were in a right lather about getting it, and probably still are. I’ll know when I read the letter. Don’t worry, it will all be alright. Now you must go home, Da. I’m tired and I need to think, and I need to sleep – and tonight, maybe I will.’
Jack eased himself up. Tim said quietly, ‘Don’t tell the others about my change of heart. You don’t know who is around the place, reporting back to the Nazis. It’s safer, Da. If I’ve learned nothing else from them, it’s that. You have no idea how long their tentacles are. So let the family continue to be wary of me, even to hate me. Until this is over.’
After leaving his son, Jack hadn’t gone home to Easton, but driven straight to Home Farm to speak to Aub and Evie. He’d explained that his son was still in touch with his mother and would act on James’ behalf, but had said nothing of the lad’s feelings and beliefs, and they had not asked. Since then the families had all spent every spare moment up until the weekend looking for the letter, which Evie had forgotten all about. Finally, it was Bridie who found it, on Saturday morning, in the Hall kitchen, tucked in one of Evie’s cookery bibles, which was where she had also pressed the first flowers that Bridie had picked as a toddler. She had telephoned her mother at Home Farm immediately, and pedalled like fury down the lanes to deliver it.
Bridie arrived just after the postman, who had delivered a tattered and stained note from James, saying that he could not return, not yet. In it, he explained that the note was to be carried across the Pyrenees by one of the guides.
Ver was there, and handed the note to her niece, kissing her. ‘Look at the date. It was early on and before term started, but enough of that. You’ve found it, the lever we’ve all been hunting for, so thank you, dearest Bridie. I had almost given up hope.’ Her face was pale with worry. She had lost weight, as had they all.
Bridie said, ‘You need to thank Tim, it’s he who has to do it.’ She left for the stables, where things were simpler and she didn’t have to see Tim, who was still a fascist, still happy to pop across to his Nazi mother.
Evie read Millie’s letter aloud to Richard, Aub and Ver as the clock moved towards eleven o’clock. Ver sipped a sherry with hands that trembled, as they did all the time now, and would until her son returned. God knew what would happen if he didn’t.
Well, Evie,
The tree is my goodbye present for you. I said I’d get you, but you probably still don’t know why. It’s because you’re just so smug, so bloody perfect with your hotel plans, with your do-gooding. You and your family is always at it, and so I got to do it as well, and will have to go on doing it, if I stay, because you’ll get your hotel, you see if you don’t, and I’ll have to do the laundry, or something.
It’s been hell, working in a freak show. And it’s not over, because Jack will come home, and we’ll have his bleeding shouting all night and who knows what he’ll look like, and if you’re daft enough to think them Bramptons will still be friendly and nice when they don’t need us, you got another think coming. They’ll be back to the masters and we’ll be the servants.
I have a right to a whole man, with nice skin, no blue scars, and I’m going to have him. Heine likes me, and I will make him love me. I will. And we’ve got our start in life, thanks to the bloody Bramptons. We’re going on a boat, but you won’t know where, and now things will work for me. Just look after Tim, because Heine doesn’t want him. I had to choose. You Forbes took him away from me anyway. He loved his gran more than me, so now you lot can do the donkey work, and anyway, Jack loved the bairn, not me. Don’t think I didn’t know that. Just like you he is, the big person helping the little people. Well, get on with it, and thank you for the silver. I hid it in the garage attic, so you got that wrong. But I was right, it will make a good train play area. Put up a plaque with my name.
Millie Forbes
Evie said, ‘We can’t let the lad see this, we really can’t.’ The others were looking beyond her, aghast.
Tim said from the doorway, ‘I don’t need to, I’ve just listened to it.’
Evie folded the letter and stood quietly. Her nephew was pale and thin, but clean-shaven.
He said, ‘So the tree was their goodbye present? They’re the ones who blew it up. Well, well . . .’ His voice was expressionless. Was he proud of his mother? Or appalled? She couldn’t tell.
She said, ‘People change, Tim.’
Behind him stood Jack, his hand on his lad’s shoulder. Grace had her arm around her son’s waist. Evie didn’t know what to think, looking at him, for she saw Millie in the set of his chin. Would he really help them?
‘Are you sure, Tim?’ She smiled, but knew it didn’t reach her eyes.
‘Yes, Aunt Evie, I’m sure.’ He looked at the letter, not at her. ‘It’s more than time I paid another visit. She is my mother, after all.’
She handed him the letter. ‘I will do what I can,’ he said simply, then turned and left, his parents by his side.
Ver ran after him. ‘Thank you, Tim.’
‘It’s my pleasure,’ Evie heard him call, his voice still expressionless. Would he, Millie and Heine sit around the dinner table in Berlin, mocking them? Were Jack and Gracie to be hurt all over again? Questions, questions, when all they could do was to wait.
Before Tim left, his father took him into Aub’s study and they telephoned Potty. A few days earlier, Jack had told the Colonel about Tim’s change of heart and willingness to co-operate, and Potty had agreed with Tim that it was best to pretend to everyone else that he was still a fascist, because Nazi agents were almost certainly active, especially within the BUF circle. Now Jack read out the letter to see if Potty felt it was enough of a leve
r.
Tim listened too, his head pressed hard against the earpiece.
Once Jack had reached the end of the letter, Potty said, ‘It might be enough, because it does mention Heine by name, but if they think Tim could be useful to them in other ways – intelligence, for instance – they might be prepared to put themselves out a bit more. Put Tim on, would you, Jack?’
Tim took the receiver, and now it was Jack who pressed his ear against the receiver. Potty said, ‘Strange bit of business, dear old pumpkin. I did a trace for the police records on your mother’s case. All gone. At about the same time a constable with fascist affiliations left the force and bought a fish and chip shop in Hartlepool – in 1936, about the time of your father’s wedding, actually. I’m wondering if a package was delivered to your mama and Heine at about that time. Not via you, was it, Tim?’ His voice was quiet now.
Tim shook his head. ‘Absolutely not.’ Then he paused. ‘The only package I delivered was from Sir Anthony to do with the rehabilitation project.’
‘Ah, of course. Good idea, that, what?’ There was a long pause. ‘Telephone me from Newcastle, a public telephone if you will. I do so enjoy novels such as The Thirty-Nine Steps. One learns so much. I will beaver through it, and others, to see if there are more things writ large that might keep you safer.’ The line went dead.
*
Tim watched Bridie as she leaned on the fence observing David and Estrella with Terry. He’d been glad she hadn’t been at Home Farm, because he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, after all he’d done to them. Now he had an apology to make to this girl. Estrella was riding, wearing a pair of Bridie’s jodhpurs, and David was near the mounting ramp, giving instructions. Tim heard Bridie laughing quietly, heard her call, ‘Leave her be, bossy boots. Let the girl feel her way.’
Tim said, ‘Who’s the bossy boots?’
She swung round. ‘I heard you were coming. I thought it would be best I wasn’t there. You’d think I told, and besides, I sent you away—’
A House Divided: An Easterleigh Hall Novel Page 22
