The Slow Death of Maxwell Carrick

by Jan Harvey

  ‘Have you split up?’ she asked, blunt as ever.

  ‘No, we’re just having a bad time that’s all,’ I replied. I could feel a knot in my throat, and tears welled up in my eyes, but it was Rory I wanted to go to and not Steve. ‘Sarah, I’ll have to call you back, there’s someone at the door.’

  ‘No there isn’t,’ Sarah retorted quickly, outwitting me and being bloody difficult.

  ‘I’ve got to go, I’ll phone you tomorrow.’

  I could hear her protests as I slammed down the phone and stood, palms flat, on the kitchen work surface, as if they might support me and stop me from shrinking into the cold stone flags beneath my feet.

  70

  ‘What did you find out?’ I wasn’t sure I believed Trevise. There was something about the man, some unnerving edge to him, yet he had given up on his new wife to search for Henry. I was still feeling below par, but I was willing myself to fight on regardless. I had promised Lewis I would and I was not going to let him down.

  ‘I came across a Jerry in hiding, he was holed up in a boarded-up shop in the Marais. I caught sight of him behind the shutters and he must have guessed I was English, the hair dye was growing out and I was auburn again. Anyway, he let me in and I had two choices, kill him or throw him to the Resistance, but he had other ideas. He asked me if I wanted to know the whereabouts of an English spy. No name. The man was seriously injured, might even be dead by now, he said, but if I wanted to know where the agent was I needed to fetch him some food and water.

  ‘I brought him some rice bread and coffee the next day. I had struggled to find anything at all. He told me the English man was in an old beamed house in the eighteenth arrondissement, told me it was a small street where Dali had once lived, near the patisserie. I knew where the shop was.’

  ‘Was it true?’

  ‘No, no such house there. I went up to look but it was just another false lead.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I checked it out, then came back to where the Kraut was and cut his throat. I like to think I did him a service; he didn’t stand a chance in Paris, he was finished, he was a waste of bread and coffee.’

  Cut his throat. Collins. The room was becoming airless.

  ‘Strange thing to say all the same,’ I faltered a little. ‘And he hadn’t gone when you returned? If he’d been deceiving you he would have moved on, surely?’

  Trevise sat down heavily in his armchair. ‘I don’t know, I searched for Henry, asked questions, left messages, but I turned up nothing.’

  ‘Let me try,’ I volunteered, although I did feel terribly ill; there was a heavy pressure on the back of my neck. ‘I’d like to try to find Henry for myself.’ I stood up as if I was going to grab my coat and leave, but in truth I was trying to evade the onslaught of what was coming.

  The thick, heavy feeling engulfed me, the familiar rapid pace of my heart and the inky blackness. I pressed my hands to my cheeks and pressed the nails into my flesh, but it was too late. I hit the floor and felt the harsh crack of my head against something solid and I was gone.

  71

  I was reading Carrick’s words. It was three in the morning and I felt the dampness of tears on my cheeks. It probably wouldn’t have affected me so much if I hadn’t met him, the old man, in the home. He was speaking to me, words written so many years before, telling me things no one else knew. They talk now of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but then, seventy years ago, no one would have known what it was. They would have written him off as mad. I closed his book and stared into space, then I picked up the bedside phone and dialled Rory’s number.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hey you.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Sleep would be one option.’ I could tell he was yawning, he would have been fast asleep when I phoned.

  ‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’

  ‘No, I’m glad you did, I keep thinking about you and wondering what you are going to do, but if you don’t want to, you know…’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue what to do, Rory, I’ve never been in a situation like this, I feel terrible and–’

  ‘And frightened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And excited?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And in love?’

  I hesitated. Was I? What is love? What is infatuation? What is lust?

  ‘I can’t…’

  ‘I love you,’ he said with all honesty. ‘I have it bad. Please tell me you feel the same way.’

  ‘I can’t…’

  There was an ugly silence broken only by a slight crackle on the line. When I began to speak again, I realised there was no point; he was gone.

  72

  It was Henry. He was alive! His face swam in and out of my vision. He was obviously worried about me, for his eyebrows were knotted together in concern, but it was Henry. I was right to come to Paris, to have taken so long to get here: the discomfort; the endless miles and begging for lift after lift; paying for American soldiers to drive me along countless broken and damaged roads. It had been worth it, I had found him.

  ‘Carrick, old man,’ his voice was strange, inaudible, his eyes the wrong colour. I was lying on the floor as he patted my cheek to bring me round. He helped me up onto my elbows and, tilting my head towards him, let me a sip from a glass of cloudy water. It was Trevise.

  ‘You took a bit of tumble there, old man, may have walloped your head.’ He helped me to my feet. ‘What is it? Epilepsy?’

  ‘No, no, must have been exhaustion, long journey.’ I stumbled towards the cot he had under the eaves. ‘If I could just lie down.’

  ‘Could be the flu, old chap,’ Trevise offered. ‘Lot of it about.’

  When I awoke again, Trevise had gone. There was a slicing pain in the base of my skull where I’d banged my head. I washed my face in a dribble of water, pulled on my overcoat and, as I headed down the steep stairs, my footfalls caused doors to open ajar in my wake and thin curious faces peeped out timidly.

  Trevise was coming into the building with a brown paper bag in his hands as I opened the front door.

  ‘Croissants,’ he said. ‘Fresh. Quite a rare treat. Feeling better?’

  I pushed past him into the dark dirty streets where a scruffy child was staring at me, wide-eyed, as he sucked on the cuff of his jersey.

  ‘Where are you going?’ shouted Trevise after me.

  ‘To look for Henry,’ I replied, turning up my collar to stave off the cold.

  ‘Good luck!’ he shouted after me, but if he said anything else it was caught on the wind.

  Montmartre was full of artists plying their trade but it was obvious, post occupation, for a fraction of the money. A man with a long thin moustache beckoned me over to his easel. ‘Monsieur your portrait, five hundred francs only.’ I shook my head. ‘Three hundred?’ he offered. His eyes were sad, his face skeletal. I gave him the five hundred, but waved away the offer of a sketch.

  ‘I’m looking for an Englishman, undercover agent. Have you seen him?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, sir, I cannot help you. I have seen no one.’ He looked genuinely upset. ‘We owe you English a great deal, sir.’

  I had spent the day asking for help in all the shops and cafés around the steep and unnerving streets of Pigalle and the Goutte d’Or where suspicious eyes watched me from darkened doorways. I found myself looking over my shoulder on more than one occasion.

  By the time I threaded my way up through the cobbled streets of Montmartre, to the top of the hill, I was exhausted. I shuffled along the narrow uneven streets, my feet sore and my back aching, but wherever I asked heads were shaken regretfully and apologies were offered with great sadness but there was still no information. Not a glimmer of hope.

  It was late afternoon when I turned the corner to be faced with
the magnificent Sacré-Cœur itself, its imperious edifice rising up to a gunmetal sky. Two verdigris horsemen stood guard before the magnificent white dome, their faces looking out across the entire city.

  When I turned around, halfway up the steps, there was before me a vista with no equal. A thin haze of purple mist had descended upon the city, the sky above dark and threatening, but every so often, across the cityscape were pinpricks of golden light, the low winter sun catching in glinting windows. No camera in the world could ever reproduce the breadth or beauty of that sight, and even the most talented of artists could not have portrayed the splendour of that moment. Paris was finding her inherent beauty once again, rising phoenix like. There was hope for London and Coventry, and those sad dockland cities up in the north of England too.

  As I slipped inside the cool darkness of the Basilica, I had an overwhelming gush of emotion for the fact that that magnificent building had survived in an occupied city. Trevise had told me about the threat to lay waste all the great buildings of Paris as the Nazis retreated, but the Sacré-Cœur stood defiantly intact, still remaining in her stately beauty long after the hate, fear and terror had receded.

  A funeral mass was underway inside, a nun singing incantations. The smell of incense was rich and intoxicating. All eyes were fixed, if not on the nun, then up at the towering figure of Christ that emerged from a backdrop of gold, silver, purple and crimson high above us, his arms wide open in risen glory. The singing of the lone nun was mesmeric as it soared up into the cupola, she had a quite angelic voice. Then the other sisters and the organ struck up, the exquisite blend of everything made my head swim and, all at once, I was swept away with regret. I was thinking of George in that cold wet English soil back at Lapston. What on earth had I done? I had denied him all ceremony and due respect. I had deprived him of a history and a true remembrance. What madness had overcome me and what did I think I was doing?

  I rubbed my fists into my eyes, grinding them into the sockets to cause myself pain. Nothing was right, nothing. Everything was gone, all of it.

  ‘Sir, are you quite all right?’

  The French was spoken in the softest accent. It was an old woman, her face wizened, her back bent and her eyes a translucent blue. She was dressed in widow’s weeds.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I told her, but when I went to stand up there was no strength in my thighs and I gave in to it.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  I felt I was reaching the end of my search with no conclusion at all and I was so very tired. I rattled off the sentence I had used on other people earlier, but it came out part whispered. ‘I’m looking for someone, an Englishman, possibly injured,’ I told her. My French accent has never been all that passable, not like Henry or even Alice, but she nodded and rested her hand on my forearm.

  ‘Wait here please.’

  She returned ten minutes later with a priest. He was young, fresh-faced and willing to help, so very young. It fell to these children to find a way now. ‘May I help you, sir? Madame Jellis here tells me you are looking for the Englishman.’ I noted the word ‘the,’ it lifted my heart.

  ‘Yes, Henry Amsherst, a British agent, missing since the Liberation. Do you know anything of him?’

  ‘Come with me, sir.’ He half bowed and led me to a side door, though first we had to wait for the priest and his entourage to proceed down the nave. I can still recall every detail of that captivating sight: the incense, the coloured smoke, the glittering silverware, and the nuns passing me with absolute serenity in their devout and quite ethereal faces.

  Finally I had a breakthrough! When I thought it impossible to go on and at the point of giving up entirely, I was going to find Henry.

  73

  ‘Please meet me @ Knot Garden. Come thru church g8.’

  It was a text. The ping of my phone had broken my concentration. I was reading Carrick’s book and wanted to know if Henry was alive. It was nine o’clock in the morning and I was still in bed. Inca was curled up next to me, her head resting on my leg. I had found huge comfort in her being on the end of the bed at night, even if it broke all the house rules, and the counterpane bore a circle of muddy brown where she lay.

  Outside, a bright sunny day was pushing through a hazy mist. Finally, after three weeks of heavy driving rain, “the wettest July on record,” the sun was making an appearance. I rubbed my hand across the cover of Carrick’s book. So much pain and loss, and all of it so typical of war, all those silenced histories consigned to the grave.

  Inca moaned and licked my hand. She needed to go out and I had to see Rory.

  I set off for the Lapston at ten, the bright beautiful day belying the butterflies in my stomach and the weakness in my jelly knees.

  As I made my way through the churchyard, I stopped at the yew tree, Carrick’s yew tree, the one that marked George’s sad forgotten grave. What did Emily Brontë call it? “Unquiet slumbers… in that quiet earth.”

  The gate in the wall was stiff and took some pushing and, although I managed it, I couldn’t make it close behind me. It was wedged against a tussock of grass then, as I took the path up to the house through the whispering gold grasses, my mobile rang.

  ‘I’m coming home to talk, I’ll be there in an hour.’ Steve, despite the brevity, sounded kinder and more himself, but even so my heart sank. He would have to call at that precious moment. ‘Are you in?’

  ‘I’m at Lapston, but I’ll be home soon.’ I wanted to be truthful. If we were going to talk I was determined to tell him everything.

  ‘I won’t ask if you’re meeting him.’ His voice remained even, no trace of anger or resentment, and then I wondered if he was reconciled to our parting and if it really was all over. The lurch of sickness in my guts felt hot and raw as I realised I might have lost him.

  ‘You’ve come.’ Rory was standing in the middle of the knot garden his face so full of relief it nearly crushed me. He threaded his way towards me and Scooter, who had been chewing sticks on the grass border and making a complete mess, leapt to his feet and began his wagging twisting dance, barging between my knees at one point so that I nearly fell over.

  ‘Scooter, no! Stay down!’ Rory shouted as Scooter jumped over the low hedge. He grabbed the dog and made him lie down though the flat-coat was visibly trembling with excitement.

  When Rory hugged me his strong arms were like a sanctuary, a safe harbour.

  ‘Oh Martha, I’m sorry,’ was all he said.

  I felt very weak, tired and, if I’m honest, frightened. ‘You don’t need to be sorry,’ I said, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt.

  ‘I put pressure on you, it was silly of me, I know I rushed it, I just thought…’ He took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes. ‘You look terribly tired.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I pulled away because I was scared he was going to kiss me.

  ‘Come over and sit here on the wall.’ He took me to the side of the house, to the cool shade, and to where, whilst we were talking, Scooter had scooted on his elbows and was now lying flat out on the gravel path, his pink tongue flopping.

  ‘He could really use a swim to cool down, but the river has deep currents here, I worry about him. It’s better further back under the bridge.’ Rory sat on the low brick wall and indicated for me to sit next to him. I did so, but not too close, not touching.

  I looked up at the house, Carrick’s bedroom above us. I could visualise him now, looking over the knot garden and watching George and Cécile walking there that morning. Before it all began.

  ‘Rory, I can’t do this… us.’ I spoke softly. I was looking down at my legs, they looked aged, white, unattractive. I told myself that I should stop wearing shorts, I was getting too old. It was such a stupid thought to have at that moment, the very moment I was about to let go of a man I adored.

  ‘Is it something I said?’ he asked. ‘Because whatever it was I would
un-say it in a heartbeat.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have I upset you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was I no good in bed?’

  I felt the corners of my mouth turn into a smile that didn’t quite reach my lips. ‘No, you were… ’

  ‘Phenomenal?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked up at him and, on seeing the expression on his face, I had to smile, but I also noticed that he had dark rings under his eyes. ‘I’ve never known anything like it truly, it was like every stupid metaphor in every book I ever read.’

  He smiled kindly but the joker was gone, he knew we had shared something special. ‘But you love your husband?’

  ‘I do. I have done for forty odd years. He and I, it’s… we are a good fit.’

  He sighed. ‘My loss,’ he said, and as he did so, I noted a quiver in his voice and that pinched my heart.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. ‘Really, truly sorry.’ I reached up and touched his face. There was rough stubble around his chin, he’d had a sleepless night and come up here early without shaving.

  Just for a moment, I was looking into his eyes, the deep limpid pools of brown, and he was holding my gaze.

  It was I who broke the contact and stood up because I simply didn’t trust myself, not one bit. One touch would be all it needed for me to cave in. ‘I hope something good happens to this house,’ I said, clumsily changing the subject. I leant a hand against the warmed stone. ‘Because it holds some good memories of good and honest people.’

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked turning to look up too. ‘Have you been ghost hunting again?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m close to laying some of them to rest.’ I didn’t want to tell him any more than that. I had not told him about my meeting with Carrick and, in a strange way, I felt the separation of them in my mind was a good thing.

  ‘I’ll walk you back to the car.’ He took my hand and called to Scooter who had fallen asleep. ‘Then, I’ll try to let you go.’