Somehow it didn’t surprise Solomon when the next name he came to was Hawes, J., breath catching for a moment in his throat as he remembered Andrew making his mark, with those strange ‘i’s and odd ‘t’s, noting the acceptance of a suit in return for a lucky sixpence. Plus three medals. A Star. A War medal. One for Victory, too.
Everybody was connected, one way or another, that was what he thought.
There were several other men listed in Methven’s notebook whose names Solomon did not recognize. A Private Percy Flint, owner of a reel of pink thread. An Arthur Promise and a George Stone – someone who only ever bet walnuts, as though that was all the men had to eat at the end. Also an Alfred Walker, bet a wishbone, won a green ribbon.
‘Alfred Walker you say?’ Barbara Penny wheezed and flapped her hands from the corner of the sofa at this news, had to be calmed with one of Pawel’s pink wafers before they could go on.
‘The second lieutenant went by the name of Ralph Svenson,’ Pawel said. ‘One of the only men to receive a medal. Mr Methven and I found him in the victory rolls.’
A Military Cross. Silver, on white and purple silk, four crowns on the four tips, east, west, south, north.
‘What was the medal for?’ Solomon asked.
‘Gallantry,’ said Pawel. ‘Or something like that.’
A skirmish at the last. Two dead. Bloody unlucky.
‘Your grandfather was cited for one, too,’ Pawel said, glancing towards Solomon with those soft eyes. ‘We found an extract from the London Gazette. Seems it was never claimed though. Sent to a school in the north of England instead, near the border. Do you know it?’
A school for foundling boys, thought Solomon. Counted out, then counted in again. He read out the last name in the notebook:
Alec Sutherland.
Bet a pawn ticket. Lost it all.
‘Thomas Methven’s real father,’ said Margaret Penny, eyes alight. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’
‘Vanished,’ replied Solomon. ‘According to his service record at Kew. One of the missing, his body never found.’
Solomon’s aunt took a deep breath, then exhaled, laid her hands to rest on the coffin lid, heavy with their silver rings.
‘Well,’ she said as though everything was sorted now. ‘That explains it.’
‘Explains what?’
‘Why your grandfather was paying.’
The debt, of course. The debt. Fifty thousand sewn inside a dead man’s burial gown, in return for the loss of a father who never would come home.
‘This doesn’t prove anything,’ Barbara Penny grumbled, waving towards the little notebook. ‘Only that they knew each other, played a game once.’
Solomon’s aunt put a hand to her hair. ‘Yes, but it chimes with a story Godfrey told, to my mother. About what happened at the end.’
‘What story?’ Barbara Penny said. ‘One can’t decide about money on a story.’
‘That he shot a man once,’ said his aunt, readjusting the spear of her turquoise clasp as though it might prove a useful weapon. ‘Murder. That was what he called it.’
Godfrey Farthing, not a hero after all.
1918
The land lay flat and silent as Godfrey Farthing finally got near. A mile away from the river. Then half. Then a bit closer still. The ground was frozen as he approached, grass grey about his feet. Nothing to hear but a single bird singing above him, somewhere out of sight and reach.
Godfrey stopped when he had a few hundred yards of marshland to cover, wound throbbing beneath his shirt as he wondered whether to go forwards or whether to go back. He knew it was his duty to try and bring them home, whatever remained of his men. Their red discs and their green. Their cap badges and their pocket books. Uniforms. Belts. And bones. But Godfrey Farthing’s heart was in his throat now at the thought of what might greet him – just as it had been when he’d first marched his men to safety down that muddy lane. Not cabbages, or an apron flapping on the line this time. But all that was left of his section slaughtered like the chickens, laid out upon a river’s edge.
Godfrey pressed his belly to the bottom of a frozen drainage ditch, trying to calm the frantic one two of his heart. For the first time since he had crossed that short roiling Channel in a boat full of men, he understood. This was what his mother must have felt when she watched him march away to war. That small thread of fear inside that the worst might happen before her boy could make it home again.
He reached for his weapon, released it from its holster, put the cold grip in his hand. All around an early morning fog had gathered, everything indistinct, nothing to see but the immediate ground in front. As Godfrey began to slither forwards again, something dug into his side – the black half-shell of a walnut, forever in his pocket, never yet set sail on the pond. It was then that he saw them. Ghosts heading in his direction, moving silent through the frozen grass.
Mist clung close to the ground like gas in a trench as Godfrey peered towards the apparitions inexorably sliding his way. Khaki or field grey? Old men or boys? He found it impossible to tell, nothing to hear but the soft clink and jink of weaponry sounding through the foggy air as they slid by, barely a yard or two in front. Godfrey held his breath as they passed, started with his counting:
One soldier.
Two soldiers.
Three.
Praying it was all that was left of his section on which a captain could rebuild. Rather than the enemy on manoeuvres, crossed the river for one final skirmish before the bells began to peal. Men in Feldgrau headed towards the farmhouse and James Hawes in the chicken shed, guns held out in front. The soldiers were almost gone, Godfrey about to turn and follow, when he felt the knife at his throat. The prick of a blade all nobbled and pitted on the handle, sharpened to a glitter at the top.
‘Not a word, or I’ll gut you.’
One slice across his neck, like a chicken bleeding out.
Thick fingers tasting of dirt and the faintest hint of apples, forced his face into the earth. Then there was the breathing right in his ear, as though it was inside Godfrey’s own head, his sudden realization that this was where it was going to end. Never would live long enough to hear the clear note of the bell ring out across the empty fields. Or to celebrate, champagne mixed with brandy, cherry on the side. Nothing left of Godfrey Farthing but a body laid out in a drainage ditch, blood all along his collar, a field postcard and a notebook buttoned over his heart.
Then the weight suddenly lifted, Godfrey’s whole body light as the blade disappeared, too. He choked and touched a hand to the chill of his bare skin, as beside him another man fell back, eyes wide in the grey light as though he had seen a ghost himself.
The two men lay gasping on the frozen turf as though they were fish landed from a river, almost drowning in the air. It was Godfrey who spoke first, his voice ragged, words hoarse as he spat dirt from his lip.
‘What the hell, Stone.’
The old sweat sprawled next to him, white rime about his mouth. Between them a knife lay abandoned on the ground. George Stone swore, his voice a rasp.
‘Christ, sir! Didn’t realize. Thought you might be one of them.’
The enemy, crossing the river further up, perhaps, coming for them now. Godfrey wiped at his face with his tunic sleeve, tasted damp wool and soil as he twisted in an attempt to see the ghosts once more.
‘Where are the rest?’ he whispered.
But the men were gone, vanished into the mist, making their way forever forwards, forwards, never looking back. Stone rolled over, lay on his belly, panting.
‘I told them to withdraw,’ he said.
‘How many?’ said Godfrey.
Stone hesitated. His voice was low when he said it. ‘Four.’
A Jackdaw.
A Promise.
Percy Flint.
And Alfred Walker with his dreams. Plus George Stone, the old sweat, of course, survived from the beginning right through to the end.
Godfrey pressed his cheek to the
ground for a moment, sick feeling in his stomach, the scent of lemon oil suddenly in his nostrils.
‘What about the second lieutenant?’ he said.
George Stone’s face was all shadow, hard to see.
‘The lieutenant got caught on the far side of the river, sir,’ he said. ‘We had to leave him. Too much damn lead.’
‘Was he injured?’ Godfrey whispered.
Stone hesitated. ‘That’s what he said, sir. Not sure it wasn’t a funk though. Too scared to swim back.’
‘Christ!’ Godfrey was the one to swear now. ‘He’ll be dead before the sun’s up then.’
George Stone turned his gaze to the horizon, grey light rising. ‘What happened to Methven, sir?’
There was silence then, before Godfrey shook his head.
Together the two men lay on their bellies in the drainage ditch, breathing in and breathing out, breath clouding over their heads to mingle with the mist. Somewhere above them a bird began to sing a few notes, then stopped. Beneath them the ground was chilled. Between them nothing but the sharp blade of a knife. When the bird did not call again, Godfrey gathered himself, checked his holster, the cold grip of his pistol in his palm.
‘We have to get him, Stone,’ he said. ‘Can’t leave him there. You go, call the men back and meet me at the river’s edge. I’ll lead from there.’
But George Stone cast his dark eyes to the frosted earth, refused to look at his captain, shook his head. ‘Tried that already, sir. Didn’t work. Men chose to leave.’
‘What do you mean “chose”?’ said Godfrey, staring at his cook. ‘Who gave the order?’
George Stone shifted, rolled over to stare back.
‘They tossed for it, sir,’ he said. ‘Heads or tails.’
Godfrey Farthing saw it then, a coin falling in the grass, deciding who would live and who would die. Five ordinary soldiers taking their chance, just as the officer in charge had taken his chance with them. He breathed in frost, the sweet nip of grass frozen beneath his fingertips, reached to touch a hand to his old sweat’s sleeve.
‘All right, Stone,’ he said. ‘You catch up with the others and take them to the walnut trees. Wait for me there.’
‘What will you do, sir?’ Stone’s voice was nothing more than a rough murmur amongst the sough of the willow trees.
‘I must go forwards,’ Godfrey replied. ‘Find the lieutenant.’
George Stone hesitated, adjusted his Enfield on his back, fingers trembling with the cold. He turned towards where the rest had vanished into the mist. Then he looked to his captain again.
‘We need a story, sir. If you get him.’
‘A story?’
‘About what happened.’ Stone’s eyes were black now. ‘You know what he’ll say if we don’t.’
It was only as they parted – the old sweat disappearing in pursuit of the remains of the section; Godfrey Farthing ready to cross the river at last – that Godfrey realized they had missed one at the reckoning, turned back to call.
‘Stone! Stone,’ he hissed. ‘What about the new recruit? Was he with you?’
Heard the answer float towards him across the frozen marsh.
‘He’s in the river, too.’
What does it mean to love a man? That was what Captain Godfrey Farthing found himself asking as he crawled and slithered across the few frozen yards towards the river, nothing but saplings and stubby reed beds, a grassy field on the opposite bank waiting to become a killing ground; the perfect place in which to shoot a man dead. Beneath his shirt he could feel the shrapnel shifting, a ghost beneath his skin. He had spent four terrible years pondering that question and the closest he had got to an answer was watching two boys kiss in the shadow of a barn.
Godfrey had never tasted love himself. At least not in a way he had imagined it might be. With a girl who swung her skirts and dared to show her ankles, someone he could have taken home for his mother to meet for tea. But now, as first light started silvering the willows, Godfrey wondered if in fact he had understood love only too well. Here in this Eden, crawling through a drainage ditch to save who might be left. And before, amongst the mud and oily soup of a trench, men of every shape and distinction lying about his feet. Godfrey had understood it then and he understood it now, that feeling deep inside that once released might keep him from having the courage to stick the bayonet in. Like Hawes. Like Beach.
Now that’s really something.
Shine on a young man’s eyes.
Or perhaps, Godfrey thought, he had understood it right from the start. With the touch of an old man’s hand on a son’s shoulder as he showed him how to wind the clock at night. Small sun descending. Moon rising. Time passing as it must.
The river ran swift and dark, ice gathered on its fringes as Captain Godfrey Farthing approached to salvage what was lost. A young man with two dice in his pocket. Or a new recruit with nothing but a rabbit’s foot in his, a boy Godfrey had sworn he would keep safe. As he lay within feet of the target, water flowing swift and silent in front as dawn approached, Godfrey felt his old wound aching as though the bullet had only just gone in. All around him the early morning mist rose from the grass like a wraith. From the earth. From the surface of the water. A kind of miasma making it hard for Godfrey to see. He touched his forehead to the cold ground, teeth clenched, hand gripped on the handle of his weapon. It was when he looked up again that he saw it. Another ghost, approaching through the grass.
The ghost was coloured grey like the enemy, uniform stained dark with the water it had waded across, rising from the lip of the river and drifting towards Godfrey in silence. Godfrey pressed himself to the earth, felt its cold seep into the very marrow of his bones. Through the haze he caught a glimpse of Feldgrau, the scatter of broken walnut shells trailing at the ghost’s boots. Then he looked again and it had hair bright amongst the grey, a boy walking towards him out of the dawn as though sauntering through a field of clover, buttercups all about his feet.
Relief flooded Godfrey’s limbs, the sudden tingle of blood in his fingertips at the thought that it was Alec walking towards him out of the morning vapour, as the boy had walked towards him down that muddy lane only a few days before. He put a hand to the breast pocket of his tunic where a field postcard was fastened down, felt the shock of a frozen brass button beneath his thumb.
Then he looked again and saw that it was Beach ahead of him, arm raised as though to wave.
I’ll be seeing you then.
Those flat grey eyes.
Godfrey closed his eyes again, counted:
One leg;
Two legs;
One arm;
Five fingers.
Opened them to see Second Lieutenant Ralph Svenson sauntering towards him across the frozen field. A young officer who had led a forlorn brigade in the absence of his captain, come out whole-skinned on the other side with a story of his own to tell. Of mutiny. Of men who would not follow orders. Of desertion at the last. The wound beneath Godfrey’s shirt burned like ice as he breathed out out out, tasted a boy’s palm stained with berry juice, caught the silver glimmer of a cap badge tossed amongst the chiff chaff as though it was nothing, heard the sound of a bullet firing, one man shot to warn the rest.
The bells had still not rung in the village as Godfrey stood, holding his revolver as he’d been taught. Arm straight. Back straight. Directed at the enemy – a ghost walking towards him out of the past. Second Lieutenant Ralph Svenson looked bewildered for a moment when he saw his captain there. Then Godfrey Farthing pulled the trigger. Aimed for the heart.
2016
Blood money. That was what it amounted to, Godfrey Farthing’s debt. One man shot to save the rest, before the end had come.
‘Murder!’ thrilled Mrs Maclure, crushing three spring roses against her breastbone.
‘Expediency,’ declared Solomon’s aunt.
‘An accident,’ said Margaret Penny. ‘Unintentional.’
Or just something that happened in a war.
Either way Solomon Farthing knew what it meant. Thomas Methven’s legacy was tainted. Definitely something that would leave a stain. He perched on the corner of the brocade chair that was propping up his dead client, pondering the likelihood of Iris Fortune signing now that he had established where the fifty thousand began. Forty per cent? Thirty per cent? Or something much lower than that. It was Barbara Penny who interrupted his reverie, always ready with an opinion where money was concerned.
‘It’s not right,’ she insisted. ‘To burn that much cash, wherever it came from. Whatever it was for. Iris Fortune must be persuaded to see sense.’
But Solomon’s aunt who was not his aunt, refused.
‘Absolutely not,’ she insisted. ‘It was Thomas Methven’s when he was alive. And it’s Thomas Methven’s now that he is dead. The money should accompany him into the fire.’
‘Margaret!’ Barbara Penny stamped her stick on the carpet for the thousandth time. ‘Can’t you intervene here? Don’t you need payment for the funeral at least?’
‘Well, yes,’ her daughter replied. ‘I can insist on that. But not the rest.’
Solomon Farthing perked up at that. Perhaps he could petition for expenses, at least. Present himself at the Office for Lost People with an invoice for a four-day search east, west, south and north.
‘Fifty thousand,’ sighed Mrs Maclure. ‘That’ll create quite a blaze.’
‘Fifty?’ said Solomon’s aunt. ‘What do you mean, fifty?’
But it was a new voice entering the fray that silenced the lot.
‘None of you will be getting anything if we can’t find the actual cash.’
DCI Franklin, resplendent in a coat with a peach lining, leaning on the doorframe of a dead man’s living room. PC Noble standing behind. And bringing up the rear, Colin Dunlop of Dunlop, Dunlop & Dunlop, come to find out what had happened to a stolen dog.
The money was gone. Disappeared from the safe at the nursing home, fifty thousand in used notes lifted in the night. DCI Franklin hadn’t bothered to ask around, she’d come straight to the sitting-in for a dead man.
‘Something told me the answer might be here.’ She pointed towards Thomas Methven hidden in his coffin. ‘Where all this rigmarole began.’
The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing Page 35
