He shook his head and lowered his eyes, looking for old Uncle Rodney’s name. There it was, right at the bottom. He pressed his hand to the wall alongside the green print Uncle Rodney had made. And as he held it there, something odd about the neighbouring print impinged itself upon his consciousness.
It was incomplete. The top knuckle of the middle finger was missing.
He was nearly thirty minutes late for the Selection Board meeting. Malleson and Liz were standing outside the Labour Club like a pair of anxious wedding guests sent out to look for a late bride.
‘Where the hell have you been!’ cried Liz. ‘I’ve been looking for you all morning.’
Malleson was much calmer.
‘It’s OK. No harm done. You’re third alphabetically and they’ve still got the first one in. Plenty of time to tidy yourself up.’
Goldsmith shrugged, indifferent to either greeting, and ran his hand through his hair. Liz shrieked.
‘Bill, what have you done to your hand?” He glanced down.
‘Only paint,’ he said. ‘It’ll wash off.’
‘I hope so,’ said Malleson. ‘Keeping the red flag flying is one thing, but this lot don’t actually want to see the blood of the martyred dead. Let’s get in.’
He put himself in their hands and ten minutes later he was judged presentable enough to join the other candidates in the waiting-room. He nodded at them and sat down next to a long-haired, sharp-faced young man whose name was Croxley, but whom he always thought of under Liz’s sobriquet of ‘the little shit from LSE’.
‘Thought you’d changed your mind,’ said Croxley amiably.
‘No. Just the traffic.’
It was a lie. But then to say he’d almost changed his mind would have been far from the truth too. For a while, the Selection Board had merely been relegated to a very minor place on his scale of things-that-mattered. Indeed, it hadn’t risen very far up the scale; it was just that when a man wants something to occupy his body and mind for a few hours, whatever has been timetabled comes easier than thinking of something new.
‘I’ve been in,’ said Croxley. ‘Davis is in now. You’ll be next.’
He paused, clearly expecting to be asked what it was like.
‘Why don’t you piss off home then?’ said Goldsmith.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
At first it had been simple sexual jealousy that had flooded his body and mind as he became more and more certain that the deformed hand-print was Templewood’s. He had never called, or heard anyone else call him anything but ‘Tempy’. But he managed to conjure up an image of his name on documents and company orders. Templewood G. R. It fitted.
So at first it had merely seemed that Templewood, quick off the mark as ever, had exercised his usual charm on Jennifer Housman and followed up their first meeting with a panache outside Goldsmith’s capacity. But things did not quite hang together.
He had met Goldsmith coming away from Greenmansion the previous Saturday after what was allegedly his first and only visit. Yet Dora, standing in the rain at the Land-Rover window, had reminded Templewood he had promised to mend her bike. And Dora was returning to the house not coming away from it.
In addition he recalled the thick, expensive-looking gold bracelet which had looked so heavy on Jennifer’s delicate wrist. Uncle Rodney’s present, Dora had said. But Jennifer Housman was not the kind of woman to accept such a present from a man she had known only two days. Not even if the man were Templewood? he asked himself. He mustn’t allow his own resistance to the man’s charm to make him disregard its existence. Any woman I can’t have up against a wall in ten minutes … he recalled Templewood’s old boast.
But no. He could not accept this or anything like it of Jennifer Housman.
Why not? he asked himself angrily. What did he know about her?
Very little. And very little more after searching her house from top to bottom without paying much attention to concealing the traces of his search.
He had thought of sitting in the lounge, waiting till they came back, but impatience and a desire for more thinking time had sent him out of the house and brought him finally here.
‘Mr Goldsmith.’
The tone of voice indicated that the speaker was repeating himself. He opened his eyes and looked up.
‘The Board’s waiting for you, Mr Goldsmith,’ said Malleson from the door. He was doing the formal, neutral ushering bit.
‘I’m sorry. Right.’
He stood up.
‘Good luck,’ said Croxley. ‘Fingers crossed.’
‘Why don’t you piss off?’ said Goldsmith again. And went through into the committee-room.
His memories of the interview were few and fragmented. There seemed to be about a dozen people on the Board, many of them familiar faces, a couple anonymous. ‘Straight bat,’ Malleson had advised in a incantatory whisper as he went through the door, but the mood was on him to swing at everything, and though some runs came, they were generally off the edge.
‘What brought you into political life, Mr Goldsmith?’
It was Edmunds who started, easing him with an obvious question.
‘My mother. And a midwife. And when I first went out into our town, I wished they hadn’t bothered.’
A couple of laughs. Some smiles. A gaunt man, whose teeth seemed to indicate that his Socialism hadn’t caught up with the National Health Service yet, drew a large question mark on the doodling sheet before him.
‘Seriously, Mr Goldsmith …’
‘Seriously, I suppose the war.’
That was the right answer, or at least the right start to the right answer. Lots of nods.
‘You were captured, weren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
There had been other tribunals, other bouts of questioning, sometimes from as many as these present, sometimes only one.
‘It changed my way of thinking, I suppose. It changed a lot of people.’
‘So after demob, you joined the Party.’
He shook his head.
‘I joined the other losers.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t understand, Mr Goldsmith.’ A prim lady with a WI hat. What was she doing here? ‘We won the election in’45’
‘I won a medal in ‘44. I still spent eighteen months in a prison camp. No, I saw that how the world worked was by the few permanent winners letting most of the permanent losers imagine they were winning for some of the time. So I decided the thing to do was never to forget which you were. Politics reminded me.’
‘Do you still think you’re with the losers, Mr Goldsmith?’ The speaker was a solid man in late middle-age, his face darkened with a miner’s small scars. Goldsmith knew something of his background. His pit had closed in the last twelve months and a new road had been put through the terrace of houses he had lived in since birth.
‘Ay,’ he answered. ‘Don’t you?’
So it went on. A lot of it may have got across like good social indignation, and he had neither the energy nor the inclination to attempt to communicate the turmoil in his mind now, nor at any time in the past twenty years.
‘Are you happy to follow Harold Wilson?’ someone asked. He had shrugged.
‘A hound’ll follow a trail to a cliff’s edge, but he’d be a daft dog to go over, no matter how strong the scent.’
Finally, ‘You’re not married, Mr Goldsmith?’ It was the WI hat again. Perhaps she was a spy.
‘No.’
‘Is there any chance of a change, I mean, something definite?’
‘Well, I’m not queer, if that’s what you mean. As for a change, well, we live in hope.’
She wouldn’t let it alone.
‘These questions have to be asked, Mr Goldsmith. An MP’s wife is important.’
‘Everybody’s wife is important.’
It was meant to be dismissive, but it set the heads nodding again like buttercups in a summer breeze. Even the WI’s gaudy lemon flower bobb
ed elastically.
‘How was it?’ asked Malleson when he came out.
‘Christ knows. Or even worse than that.’
Liz took his arm and looked at him thoughtfully. She knows something’s up, he thought, but felt intruded upon rather than comforted by this empathy.
He wanted to go now, but they made him wait and he did not have the will to resist.
It was nearly six when the last of the candidates got through. Then came another fifteen minutes’ wait.
Finally Edmunds appeared.
‘Gentlemen, we’ve reduced the short list to a short short list of three and we’re going to need more time for our deliberations. The three still under consideration are Mr Croxley, Mr Goldsmith and Mr Wardle. Thank you all for your courtesy and patience. Thank you.’
The only name which surprised Goldsmith was his own. They really must be moronic.
‘The obvious three,’ said Liz delighted. ‘I don’t know why they bothered.’
‘Still it’s cause for a third of a celebration,’ said Malleson. ‘A couple of pints and a curry. What do you say, Bill?’
‘Why not? He might as well stay with the losers, he thought.
‘Why not?’ he said.
CHAPTER XVIII
SUNDAY WAS a grey day. The weather was dull, he had a hangover, and even bright sunshine and good health would have been insufficient to remove the deep depression of spirit he felt.
Liz turned up at lunchtime with Mrs Sewell close behind, examining the exterior of the cottage with a critical eye. The Land-Rover was parked at an odd angle across the front yard.
He kept them on the doorstep.
‘We were going for a drink,’ said Liz. ‘How about joining us? Then lunch?’
‘Not today, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m busy. And not very hungry.’
He tried to smile in reference to his unremembered excesses of the night before, but got no response.
‘She’s worried about you,’ said her mother. ‘Didn’t like the way you looked and talked last night.’
‘What did I say?’ he asked, suddenly alert.
‘Nothing. Just reaction, I guess,’ said Liz. ‘So you won’t come?’
‘No, thanks. I’ll see you during the week.’
Liz ran a hand through her wild hair and returned to the car. Mrs Sewell stared calmly at Goldsmith.
‘She’s not very sharp, our Liz, but it’ll get through eventually,’ she said in a conversational tone.
‘What will?’
‘The big farewell. Only don’t make it a soldier’s, will you? I expect you’ll even manage to remain just good friends. You can go far, Billy.’
She raised a hand in a semi-military salute.
‘’Bye,’bye, bastard.’
He felt wretched as he watched them drive away, but there is a limit to unhappiness beyond which its separate causes become indistinguishable, and his farewell to Liz (if that indeed was what it had been) was quickly subsumed by the general depression.
He lunched on the remnants of a bottle of scotch and afterwards followed his usual path up the ridge to the ravaged grove. Here he leaned against the middle tree and stared gloomily down at the rapid, shining river. His own thoughts drifted more turgidly and darkly. Perhaps the time had come to move. The suburban leprosy had not yet infected the village, but other things, other people, just as insidious in their own way as bricks and mortar, were pressing him hard. Perhaps the time had come for that flight to the hills which had always existed in his mind as the secret escape route to a final refuge. His purchase of the cottage had been a step in that direction, counterbalanced by his almost simultaneous political involvement. The tension had been preserved, but it could not be maintained for ever. His performance at the Selection Board the previous day must surely have eased it in one direction. His selection for the final three couldn’t be anything more than a sop to local feeling. So there would be little to keep him here if he decided to go. Bow out gracefully at the next local elections, resign from his job, sell the cottage and with the proceeds and the tidy bit of savings he’d got safely invested, he could set out to find that small-holding or croft where he could prove his self-sufficiency.
Everything seemed clear. He could not understand why he had delayed so long. As if in sympathy with his mood, a wind sprang up, stirring the low cloud-cover to turbulence and moving the black branches of the dead trees into sinister life. He breathed deep, sucking in the cool air. Above him the tree creaked and groaned. He turned to go, heard a crashing splintering noise and looked up to see a six-foot length of branch tumbling down on him.
He flung himself against the bole of the tree, pressing hard against the flaking, charcoal-like bark. The branch struck his shoulder glancingly, bounced from the ground and fell against his left leg as though in a final effort to cause some damage. Neither blow was strong enough to do more than bruise, and the branch lying still on the ground looked a slight, harmless piece of firewood. But Goldsmith felt himself menaced and moved swiftly away down the hill towards the cottage.
Halfway down he stopped and looked back. His mood had switched completely and now he found himself able to laugh at his own stupidity.
Wandering around like Heathcliff, planning to become a hermit! And all because of what? A hand-print! The number of men with a bit of finger missing must be enormous. Why the hell should it be Templewood’s?
And even if it were, so what? Templewood was only a man, could be confronted, challenged, defeated, like any other man. It had been loose ends, which had started all this. He was not going to move on and leave any more behind. For the second time in five minutes, the future seemed completely simple.
When he got back to the cottage, he dialled the Housman number. The phone was lifted almost immediately.
‘Jennifer?’ he said. ‘Bill Goldsmith. I should like to come round to see you if I may.’
‘Of course,’ she said in her perfectly composed way. ‘But not today. Tomorrow evening, would that suit you?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Shall we say about eight-thirty? Good. I shall look forward to that. Goodbye, Mr Goldsmith.’
The receiver was replaced.
Wearily Goldsmith climbed up the stairs to bed. It was only teatime but he felt exhausted. And he also felt as if the initiative had somehow been taken away from him once more. Mr Goldsmith, she had called him, as though he were an insurance salesman making an appointment. There had been the usual absence of surprise, no reference to his visit the previous day.
He would surprise her once before they were finished. But now as he lay on his bed he felt as physically and mentally lifeless as he had done on rising from it that morning.
After a seemingly endless day at work, he returned home on Monday evening and began to prepare himself for his visit to Greenmansion. It seemed important to appear perfectly groomed, and he was shaving for the second time that day when the phone rang.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Goldsmith? That you? Maxwell here.’
He had half expected it would be Malleson or perhaps Liz, and it took him a moment to readjust.
‘Oh, Colonel. Hello.’
‘It was about that letter of yours. Got it on Saturday and of course I put things in train at once.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry to have bothered you, probably nothing I realize, but …’
‘Not at all. You were quite right. You’d be surprised how often this kind of thing happens, and unless the chap concerned has the sense to get a proper investigation started immediately, it can often become an obsession. Consequences nasty sometimes.’
There was a pause. Significant? wondered Goldsmith guiltily. But there was a crackle of paper at the other end and the Colonel’s voice resumed.
‘Here we are. So, when this arrived on my desk just as I was leaving this evening, I thought I’d give you a ring straightaway.’
‘Thank you. It’s very kind …’
‘Yes. Well, it seems there were at least t
hree sets of prints on that letter you sent us. Lot of them blurred of course, but three good thumb-prints. It’s the way people hold a piece of paper, you see.’
‘Yes. Could your people identify any of them, Colonel?’ he asked urgently.
‘Oh no. Sorry. I should have said. Oh no. Put your mind at rest. There’s a very well-authenticated set of Hebbels prints in existence and these bear no relationship to any of those on the letter. Well, there you are. Pity. It would have been a real turn-up for Hebbel to be found hiding in England. And for him to be spotted by one of the principal witnesses against him! Fleet Street would have loved that. Anyway, how are things with you? Well, I hope? You got home safely after the reunion? I was a bit concerned.’
‘Yes, thanks. I’m fine. I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble.’
‘Never in the world. How are the politics, by the way? Things going well there? They’re certainly very thorough when it comes to vetting their prospective candidates, aren’t they?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Goldsmith.
‘Well, about a week ago, a police chap was round asking questions about you. War record, that kind of thing. Fellow named Villers, Vickers, something of the sort. Very interested in the reunion. Checking on your drinking habits, I shouldn’t wonder! I put him right, of course. Told him you were good Prime Minister material, if that’s a compliment! Still, I suppose it’s comforting to know they do these things so thoroughly.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ said Goldsmith.
‘Good. Best of luck. See you at the next reunion if not before. Goodbye now.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Goldsmith, replacing the receiver. The earpiece was flecked with foam, reminding him that he had not finished shaving.
He had been warned, he realized. The thought made him smile. Old traditions died hard. An officer protected his men as much as possible. The thin red line could be as effective against one’s own civilian authorities as against the enemy.
But the important information was that Housman was not Hebbel. It had not really penetrated yet. What did it mean to him? He was not yet able to say. There was an emptiness somewhere inside him whose dimensions were not measurable. Certainly there was no immediate in-rush of guilt and remorse. The hunt for Hebbel had at least sufficiently distanced Housman’s death to put him out of range of its most devastating reactions.
A Very Good Hater Page 16
