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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Blind Detective
- Sprache: Englisch
London, summer 1927. Frederick Rowlands, a First World War veteran who was blinded at Ypres, is working as a switchboard operator in the City when an over-heard telephone conversation draws him into a murder case. From then on, his safe and conventional life, painstakingly reconstructed after the horrors he experienced in the trenches, is shaken to its very foundation. As Fred is drawn deeper into a web of lies and half-truths, he must rely on his remaining senses, as well as his remarkable memory, to uncover the shocking truth about the murder which threatens to undermine everything he holds dear. 'Blinded in the Great War, Frederick Rowlands relies on his other senses to detect what those with clear sight have failed to spot . With a plot that is cleverly contrived and an endearing lead character, this mystery is a sheer delight' Daily Mail 'Brilliant series' Elizabeth Buchan 'Beautifully written, the period is utterly convincing, and the hero is one of the most fascinating detectives' Amanda Craig 'Touch, hearing, smell and visual memory created such full world that it was hard to believe it hadn't been described visually' Helen Dunmore 'A wonderfully atmospheric whodunnit with an interesting detective, clever plotting and a great variety of supporting characters' Mystery People First published as Line of Sight under A. C. Koning.
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Seitenzahl: 525
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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3
THE BLIND DETECTIVE
CHRISTINA KONING
In memory of my grandfather and First World War veteran, Charles Frederick Thompson (1890–1964)
‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.I knew you in this dark.’
Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting
Contents
Chapter One
The fog had made all the trains late. He’d need to get a move on. As always, he was on his feet and had his hand on the catch, ready to lower the window, as the train slowed down. He’d timed it so that he was pushing down the handle as the engine halted; its loud, final expulsion of steam was the signal for the door to be opened. Although this had to be done with caution; it wouldn’t do to knock some poor bloke for six. The juddering lurch as the carriage stopped gave momentum to his first step onto the platform. He’d found that a swift – or at least, confident – progress through the crowd was best. Not that this prevented occasional collisions – ‘Oops, sorry!’ ‘Don’t mention it, old man.’ – but, on the whole, people tended to get out of one’s way, if one seemed to be moving with sufficient purpose. Crossing London Bridge, the smell of the fog was intense, and left an acrid taste in the back of the throat. He resisted the temptation to spit, although others around him were not so restrained. Disgusting habit. Still, the fog was beastly. The way it filled one’s mouth and nose with its sulphurous odour – like a mixture of coaldust, rotten eggs, and bad drains – awakened memories he’d as soon have forgotten: bluish lips fringed with blood and froth. He was still hemmed in by the surging crowd. The inexorable slowness with which it moved was like that of a column of men wading through mud: he remembered the suck and heaviness of it, the way it clogged one’s legs. But it was starting to thin out a little; soon he’d be able to stride more freely. From the traffic lights it was six hundred and seventy paces. After seven years, he knew the route so thoroughly he could have walked it blindfold. St Paul’s was to his left, Tower Bridge to his right, although both of course would now be invisible in the fog. He heard the ghostly booming of a ship’s siren in the distance. From closer at hand, behind and ahead of him, came the steady trudge of footsteps: his fellow toilers in the City’s stony vineyards. Disembodied voices floated towards him.
‘… filthy weather.’
‘… nil–nil draw.’
And, from the pavement, ‘Spare us a copper, guv’nor. Wife an’ kiddies to support.’
‘What was your regiment?’ he asked, bending towards the seated man.
‘Manchesters, sir.’ The whining note was absent, now.
He fumbled in his pocket, found the shilling he had intended for his lunch. ‘There you are.’
A hand reached up to take it.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I was with the RFA. Wipers. A bad show.’
‘It was that, sir. Good luck, sir.’
‘The same to you.’
Another ten steps brought him level with the Monument. Close as it was – no more than a hundred yards away – it wouldn’t be visible in this. He’d climbed it once, when he was a lad. He remembered the view from the top, the river’s brown ripples sparkling in the sun, its forest of ships’ masts, clouds scudding past, and the face of the girl he had been with that day. Maud O’Sullivan. Yellow hair she’d had, coiled in a bun, and beautiful, light green eyes, with pale lashes, that turned to gold in the sun.
‘Look out!’
The impact of a shoulder colliding with his nearly knocked him off his feet.
‘Sorry!’ He put out a hand to steady himself, and encountered the iron spears at the top of the steps leading down to Monument Underground station. ‘This fog …’
‘I know. Dreadful, isn’t it? One can’t see a blessed thing.’
A dray lumbered past, with a steady clip-clopping of hooves, leaving a whiff of horseflesh and leather in its wake. It was followed by the rumble of a motorbus, going more slowly than usual, he guessed.
‘I say, do you mind telling me the time? My watch seems to have stopped.’
‘Not at all. Let’s cross, though, while the lights are in our favour.’ At the far side, his new acquaintance tapped his sleeve. ‘It’s five and twenty past eight.’
‘Thanks awfully.’
‘Don’t mention it, old man.’
Another three steps brought him to the heavy oak doors, whose bronze handles were shaped like a bundle of sticks, with an axe-head protruding. Fasces. Carried by the lictors in front of Roman magistrates, he recalled. Denoting that the said officials had the power of life and death. As a firm specialising in criminal cases, Saville’s dealt with all of it: insurance fraud and embezzlement, but also murder, suicide, and what the newspapers liked to call ‘sex crimes’. One never knew exactly what each day would bring. He entered the echoing vault of the foyer just as the lift arrived. Its doors clashed open, and someone got out, bringing with him a pungent stench of tobacco.
‘Morning!’ Jackson. A pipe smoker. His teeth clenched around the said article. He returned the greeting, stepping past his colleague into the open lift. The concertinaed cage doors were slammed shut, their oily wheeze setting his teeth on edge as always. ‘Well, toodle-oo,’ said Jackson, having performed this operation. ‘I’m off. The Houndsditch case. Back lunchtime, if anybody wants me.’
‘The Houndsditch case,’ he repeated automatically, feeling behind him for the concave brass disc of the lift button. ‘Right you are, Mr Jackson.’ He pressed the button and, with a convulsive jerk that threw him momentarily off-kilter, the lift started to ascend. At the third floor it stopped again, to allow two more people to get on. Miss Poole and Miss Johnson. The Ladies’ Cloakroom was on the third floor, he recalled – a fact which gave rise to frequent complaints from the female staff as to the inconvenience of this arrangement.
‘Morning, Mr Rowlands,’ said Miss Poole, with the note of false cheerfulness he’d come to expect from her sort. Miss Johnson’s greeting was more restrained – either from natural reticence, or as befitted her dignity as secretary to the junior partner.
‘Shocking weather, isn’t it?’ continued the irrepressible Miss Poole.
He agreed that it was. Then there was no more conversation until they reached the fifth floor, where a little squabble ensued as to which of them should go first. ‘After you,’ he said, but Miss Poole wouldn’t hear of it of course.
‘Oh no! After you,’ she simpered, so that he had no choice but to give in or risk making more of a fuss than the occasion warranted. With a grudging murmur of thanks, he moved past her, out of the lift, catching a whiff of her sickly-sweet perfume. Californian Poppy. Loathsome stuff. He was glad Edith didn’t use it.
The big clock that hung out over the street above the window was just striking half past as he entered the office: its chimes reverberated through the room.
‘There you are, Mr Rowlands, sir. I was wondering where you could’ve got to.’
A powerful smell of hair oil assailed his nostrils. ‘Morning, Bert,’ he said.
‘I was just saying to Mr Cheeseman here,’ the post-boy went on in his nasal sing-song, ‘“Mr Cheeseman,” I says, “what do you suppose could’ve happened to make Mr Rowlands so late? Seeing as how he’s always in by a quarter past at the latest.”’
‘Trains, Bert,’ he said, suppressing the irritation he felt at this inquisition. Of course he wasn’t late – not even by a minute – but his nerves felt jangled, just the same. Perhaps it had been Edith’s sharpness that morning, their row of the previous night still unresolved. Her furious scraping of the blackened toast (how did she manage to burn it quite so often?) and the irritable way she had of banging down her teacup conveying her feelings more eloquently than words. Poor Edie, he thought, with a guilty flush – for this to happen, when she’d worked so hard to make ends meet, and they’d almost saved enough for her to take the girls to Bournemouth for a week in the summer. It was just their luck. Still, it was hardly the end of the world – a point he’d tried to make to her the night before. ‘It’s all right for you,’ had been her reply. With a sigh, he hung his coat on the rack inside the door, and after switching on the lamp over his desk, for it wouldn’t do to sit in darkness, sat down at the switchboard.
‘I said it must be them blessed trains. Didn’t I say it must be them blessed trains, Mr Cheeseman?’
‘You did that,’ agreed the janitor, with a bronchial wheeze that lent a portentousness to even his lightest remarks. ‘Well, best be getting on.’
‘Yes, thank you, Mr Cheeseman,’ he said automatically. ‘Anybody in, yet, Bert?’
‘Mr Jackson’s been and gone.’
‘Yes, I spoke to Mr Jackson. Nobody else? That’s all right, then.’
‘It’s just that …’ Still the boy hovered. There was a definite whiff of halitosis. If he’d only stand further off.
‘Just what, Bert?’ He tried to keep the impatience out of his voice.
‘If the tellyphone was to ring, like … an’ you wasn’t here.’
‘Then one of the secretaries can answer it. Or you can let it ring. We’ve been through all this before, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, Mr Rowlands.’
‘Well, then …’
Still muttering under his breath, the boy shuffled off. From anyone else it would have seemed like cheek but Bert wasn’t that sort. Not quite the round shilling, poor lad, the mother a widow, out Dalston Junction way. A cramped little flat over a butcher’s shop. Unhooking the earpiece from its cradle, he slipped the wire frame to which it was attached over his head, checking that the mouthpiece was at just the right distance – no sense in deafening them – and made a minor adjustment to the swivel chair. Then, as he did every morning, he ran his hands lightly over the board, feeling the beautiful intricacies of its switches and sockets under his fingers, and making sure that everything was as it should be: the dolls’ eyes open, each cord ready to be connected to its particular jack; each switch in the correct position. It was, he thought, like a great brain: a network of ganglia, across which electrical pulses darted and flickered. Sound waves, communicating information, in a flash, from one mind to another. All done through the magical electromagnetic technology of which he was the conductor. When he’d started this job, the switchboard had been newly installed – a Stromberg-Carlson model, with an oak frame and a bakelite front-panel. Its shape resembled an upright piano, with a high back panel consisting of rows of female jacks (‘jills’ might have been a better word, he thought) and a bank of switches and cords where a row of ivory keys would have been in the musical instrument. There were fifteen lines for incoming calls and the same number of internal lines. A buzzer sounded when the call came in, and you took your cord and plugged it into the right jack, before pushing back the front key in line with the jack. ‘Number, please,’ you said. Then you took the cord which was directly in front of the back cord and plugged it into the jack for the called number, simultaneously pulling the back key towards you to ring the called party’s telephone. When the called party answered, and the call was connected, you closed the talk key. A convex disc called a doll’s eye dropped down when the circuit was in use, retracting when it was idle. At busy times, he’d have five or six calls on the go, whisking the cords in and out as if engaged in a complicated bit of weaving. It had taken him all of a week to get the hang of the system; now, of course, it was second nature. It didn’t bother him in the least that his was generally regarded as a job for women.
His arrival was followed by that of Mr Jardine, smelling strongly of wintergreen, who’d been with the firm eight years, and Mr Mullins, who had joined them six months ago, straight from Oxford. He greeted them both and handed them their letters, already sorted into piles. Miss Foy, one of the younger secretaries tip-tapping on high-heels, appeared next, complaining of the trains. Then came Mr Fairclough, another of the lawyers, who asked that his nine o’clock client should be shown straight in. At five to, a very flustered and out of breath Miss Taylor arrived. She’d walked all the way from Ludgate Circus, she said, the bus having broken down. At five past, the doors swung open to admit the senior partner. ‘Morning, Rowlands.’
‘Morning, Mr Saville.’
‘Any messages?’
‘None so far, sir.’
‘Mr Willoughby in?’
‘Not yet, sir. The fog—’
‘Yes, yes.’ His lumbago must be playing up again. ‘Well, send him along as soon as he gets here, will you?’ By a quarter past, the dolls’ eyes were dropping down, with that peculiar ticking sound they made, as his colleagues started making the first calls of the day. The buzzers signalling an incoming call were going every couple of minutes now, sometimes two at a time, but he was used to that. Most of these were routine enquiries, some of which he dealt with directly – one woman wanted to know if they handled breach of promise cases; from the faint tremor in her voice he guessed it must be her own case she was referring to, and put her through to Mr Jardine, whose manner towards the ladies was more sympathetic than that of most of his colleagues. At half past nine he put through a trunk call for Mr Saville: the Scottish fire insurance case proving a bit sticky, he surmised. It took him all of fifteen minutes, but in the end he got his man. Well, he and the five other operators between here and Inverness-shire. Being in the telephone service, like being in the army, was all about teamwork.
For the next hour, he barely took his hands away from the board: it was all switch, flick, switch – deftly putting the cords in and pulling them out of their sockets as the calls came in. He didn’t mind it, being busy, the rhythm of it, the constant click and shift and after seven years he’d grown pretty quick at the game. The trick was not to let your concentration slacken, even for a moment. Knowing just where to find everything was another must. He prided himself on running a neat switchboard: no tangled cords, or switches left carelessly open for him, thanks very much! It was pretty much like operating a battery, he’d sometimes thought. There was the same need for absolute precision, the same series of meticulous actions to be gone through – whether what you were doing was focusing a sight on a target, or managing a row of ‘supervisories’. Discipline. Order. Taking pains. These were his watchwords. It was all about having a system and sticking to it, no matter whether it was a network of telephones one was minding, or an 18-pounder gun. A vivid image of the weapon he’d spent three years of his life getting to know filled his mind for a second: the shine of its brass fittings and its great barrel, painted dark green for better concealment (mud colour would’ve been better), the oily gleam of its firing mechanism, the delicate calibrations of its adjustable sight. He saw in his mind’s eye the great wheels – nearly as tall as a man – on either side of the gun, and the little saddle-shaped brass seat where you sat. But what he remembered most was the way the whole thing recoiled, when the shell was fired. That, and the smell of the cordite after.
At ten o’clock, he was relieved by Mrs Gilbert, who did the mid-morning shift. Carrie Gilbert’s husband (who’d escaped with his life but with his nerves in pieces from the tunnels at La Boisselle) couldn’t be left until there was a neighbour on call to see to him. Sometimes, when the nights had been very bad, Mrs Gilbert didn’t get in till nearly eleven; then it was up to him, as the senior telephonist, to cover for her, although the partners had turned a blind eye so far.
‘Morning, Mr Rowlands.’ She brushed past him with an apologetic murmur, bringing with her a smell of cold. ‘Sorry if I’m a bit late. The fog …’
‘Dreadful isn’t it? Don’t worry. It’s been a slow start.’
These courtesies having been exchanged, he went outside for a smoke. If anything, the fog was worse than it had been before. Choking, filthy stuff, that clung to one’s face with a palpable clamminess like the touch of dead fingers. Sounds, in this dense atmosphere, had a curious quality, seeming at once to come from very far off and, disconcertingly, to be close at hand. A laugh jumped out at him, as if from a hole punched through glass. A snatch of talk: ‘—find the necessary, never you fear …’ Out on the bridge, a klaxon hooted softly. The traffic must be at a standstill, he guessed. What it would be like by this evening, he hated to think. He hoped it didn’t make him too late home. Edith was in a rotten enough mood as it was. Not that she didn’t have cause to be, poor old girl. Ever since she’d found out there was another on the way – and how were they to feed the two they had already, on the pittance he earned, and the small return she got from those shares her father left her? – she’d been out of sorts. He hadn’t made matters any better by saying he’d look for another job. ‘What kind of job?’ she’d replied scornfully. ‘There are no other jobs, or none that – Oh, never mind!’ She’d meant jobs that he was fit to do. She was right of course, there weren’t many. Still he’d persisted (he never did know when to shut up), ‘I could get an evening job. They’re looking for staff at the Brockley Jack.’
‘What! And have the girls know that their father works in a public house? I don’t think we’ve quite come to that.’
It was at times like these that the gulf between their respective backgrounds, which had seemed of no account when they’d first been married, seemed all too apparent. Because of course they were from different worlds, he and Edith. That she, who’d grown up in a big house with servants, whose brother had gone to Oxford, and who might have married a doctor, or a solicitor, should have ended up with him – a mere telephonist, although, admittedly, one that worked in the City – was a come down, to put it mildly. To have given up her world of ease and privilege for the one they now inhabited – a world of narrow streets, and mean little houses, and front gardens scarcely big enough to house the dustbins – was surely more than most women would have endured without complaint. ‘Do you think I like living here?’ she had wept, towards the end of last night’s quarrel. ‘Being surrounded by these people …’ She meant their neighbours: the Wilkses on one side, the Dooleys on the other. Mrs Dooley was impossible for several reasons. She was fond of drink; and she dyed her hair. As for Mrs Wilks … ‘No one, I hope, could accuse me of being a snob,’ said Edith, ‘but really, when that woman insists on discussing her husband’s difficulties with his “waterworks”, I draw the line, I really do.’
For his own part, he thought Mrs Dooley a pleasant enough soul, even if she did like a drop now and then. Mrs Wilks wasn’t a bad sort, either: she’d been very kind that time Margaret had been taken bad with croup. But he saw Edith’s point. ‘I don’t mind for myself,’ his wife had said. ‘But the girls, Fred, it’s so hard on them.’ Privately, he doubted that their neighbours’ carryings-on could mean much to children of seven and five. It was Edith he was sorry for. She’d been brought up to expect a different sort of life, that was all. ‘Stuck-up,’ Dorothy called her. His sister had never been one to mince her words.
The rest of the morning passed quickly enough. Flick. Switch. Flick. Two more trunk calls, Bristol and the Coningsby case; and Stratford. At lunchtime, he eschewed, as he often did, the society of the office canteen for the anonymity of the city streets which, after seven years, he’d come to know with a thoroughness that would have made the Major proud.
‘Think of it as reconnaissance,’ the Major used to say. ‘Like making a mental sketch map of enemy territory.’
On fine days he’d walk down Gracechurch Street and Cornhill Row and along Cheapside towards St Paul’s, and Hatton Garden. There was a bench in Bleeding Heart Yard where he liked to sit and eat his sandwiches. Or he’d go the other way, along King William Street, past the Bank of England, to Finsbury Circus or when he was in the mood for a good walk, to Bunhill Fields, it was Bone Hill really – a hill full of bones, and the company of its illustrious dead. Blake. He’d always liked Blake. Although all that stuff about Albion was a bit beyond him. There was the one about London. How did it go, again? I wandered through each something street, near where the something Thames does flow … Today the filthy taste of the fog in his throat made him disinclined for a long walk, so he settled for a cold pork pie, washed down with a cup of tea in the Kardomah Café in Clement’s Lane, with a cigarette for afters.
Walking back towards the office, he could hear the strains of the organ of St Mary Woolnoth, as he neared the intersection with Lombard Street. He checked his watch: there was still fifteen minutes before he’d be expected back. Too good a chance to miss. He slipped into a pew near the door. It wasn’t a piece he was familiar with. Bach, or Handel, he guessed. He wished he could say for certain. Although there was a gramophone at home – a parting gift from Ashenhurst and the rest of his Pals at the Lodge – there hadn’t of late been the money for new recordings. The few discs he had – Melba singing arias from La Traviata, John McCormack’s ‘She Moved Through the Fair’, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Chopin’s Nocturnes, and Beethoven’s Eroica – had been played almost to death. Of course there was always the wireless. But by the time he’d got home, and had his supper, and the children had been put to bed, they’d usually missed half the classical concert. In the early days of their marriage, he and Edith had been in the habit of going along to the weekly concerts at the Wigmore Hall. Of late, there’d been no time for such civilised amusements. Now, their social life revolved around the monthly game of Bridge which took place at the house of one or other of their group of friends – couples, for the most part, in the same situation as themselves. He focused his attention once more on the music. How grand to be able to make a sound like that! To fill a great space like this with such cascades of notes, such peals … Like bells, like the skirling of pipes and the beating of drums, all rolled into one … How it made one’s heart beat! Such intricacies of sound … Lifting one’s spirits up, far above the misery, the pettiness of life … ‘’Scuse me, is this seat taken?’
It was a woman – a girl, really – who’d spoken. He realised that he’d had his eyes closed all this time. He opened them, and got to his feet, to allow her to get past, catching as he did so a whiff of her violet scent. ‘Thanks. It’s ever so nice, isn’t it, the music?’
There was a slightly over-eager note to her voice, a tone Edith would have called ‘gushing’.
‘Yes.’
‘I often come here, in my lunch break.’
‘Do you?’ He’d really rather not have got into conversation.
‘Oh yes. D’you know, I’ve seen you here before? Last week, it was. Or maybe the week before that. I watched you for ever such a long time, but you never once caught my eye. Lost in the music, you were.’
A sort of horror came over him. He got to his feet. ‘Awfully sorry.’ He made as if to glance at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I really ought to be getting back.’ Before she could say anything more, he turned on his heel, striking his elbow sharply on the end of the pew as he did so.
Back in the office, he settled to his work again. Hours passed, without his being aware of their passing, so caught up was he in the intricate patterns of what he was doing. Flick, switch, flick. His hands moving over the rows of switches with the deftness of a concert pianist – if the piece he played had been an arrangement of human voices. He put through calls from Cherrywood, seeing in his mind’s eye drifts of pink and white blossom; the South Wimbledon exchange; and Coppermill, which was Walthamstow, a fiery-red gleam of hammered metal; from Dreadnought – Earls Court – an iron hulk painted battleship grey and Hogarth – Shepherd’s Bush, a vision of Gin Lane. When he’d first started this job, it had taken him quite a while to learn the names of the exchanges, to remember that ‘Trafalgar’ was Whitehall, ‘Laburnam’ Winchmore Hill; that ‘Museum’ was Bloomsbury, and ‘Primrose’ St John’s Wood. Now he had them all by heart – the poetic and the mundane.
It was the same when he’d first arrived in Flanders: the way everything had its particular name. Each trench and dugout christened with whatever the incumbent regiment thought fit – so that for the Jocks it was all Balmoral and Stirling Castle; for the Taffs, the Rhondda Valley and Swansea Town. At the Salient, he’d been with a crowd of London boys, and so a city had grown up in those first months, that seemed a shadowy version of the one they’d all left behind. In Ploegsteert Wood – ‘Plug Street’, as it soon became – you’d follow the line of a trench called ‘The Haymarket’ to get to ‘Piccadilly Circus’, off which branched not only ‘Regent Street’, but, by some topographical incongruity, ‘Fleet Street’ as well. One dugout he’d been allocated during the autumn of 1914 – an image of its thick clay walls, lined with sheets of tin, came at once to mind – had rejoiced under the name of ‘Claridges’; ‘The Ritz’ was across the way. Funny, the things you remembered.
Mrs Gilbert left at three-thirty, to be home in time to cook her husband’s tea. After that, Rowlands was on his own again – not that he minded a bit. He put through a call to Holborn (Chancery) for Mr Fairclough, another for Mr Saville to Grosvenor Square. He connected a trunk call to Harrogate for Mr Jackson in under ten minutes. Asked a client to wait (Mr Jardine being occupied with another). Sent Mr Mullins’ four thirty straight through. Then, just after five, one of the buzzers went. He inserted the rear cord into the jack and flicked the front key forward.
‘Saville and Willoughby. Good afternoon. How may I help?’
‘Oh, hello.’ There was a slight, but perceptible, pause, as the speaker, a woman, appeared to consider the wisdom or otherwise of proceeding. Evidently she decided she would risk it, for she went on: ‘This may seem an odd question, if it turns out not to be the case but …’ Again, she seemed to hesitate. ‘I’m looking for Gerald Willoughby,’ she said at last. ‘Is that by any chance his office?’
‘It is.’ Suddenly it was as if everything else fell away – Edith’s cross mood that morning, and the fog, and the trains, and that girl in St Mary’s – annihilated in an instant, by the sound of a voice. Creamy, he’d have described it as. Satiny. Low. An excellent thing in a woman …
‘Oh, good. I was hoping it might be. Is he there, do you know?’
He was suddenly at a loss for words. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll just see. Who should I say is calling?’
‘It’s Celia West. Although he’ll remember me as Celia Verney. Just tell him it’s Celia. He’ll know.’
Celia West. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t at once say why. With a conscious effort, Rowlands pulled himself together. ‘One moment, please.’ He plugged the front cord into the jack, and pulled the front key backwards. Willoughby answered on the second ring. ‘Hello?’ It was well disguised, but there was still the trace of a boyhood stammer. H-hello.
‘A Mrs Celia West for you, sir.’ Old habits died hard. Even though it was ten years since he was obliged by the difference in their respective ranks to call the younger man by that honorific, he’d never dropped it. ‘She said you’d known her as Verney.’
‘Celia Verney. Good Lord!’ It was hard to tell from Willoughby’s voice whether he was dismayed or pleased. ‘It’s ages since … Well, well. Do put her through, Rowlands. And, by the way, it’s Lady Celia. Not that you were to know.’
Now he knew why the name had seemed familiar. Celia West belonged to that select set whose comings and goings between Mayfair and Monte Carlo, Westminster and Biarritz, were regularly chronicled in the Society pages of TheTimes. Not that he bothered with all that sort of thing, but Edith took an interest. He transferred the call, waiting just long enough to make sure that the two were safely connected, and to hear his employer’s voice – now registering unqualified pleasure – say: ‘Celia? How v-very nice. It’s been a long time.’ And the reply: ‘Yes, I suppose it has. Five years or more. Isn’t it too absurd?’
He arrived home at half past six, to a smell of charring lamb chops and a clashing of saucepans, and Edith’s black mood still filling the house like smoke from an ill-extinguished fire. Setting down his briefcase in the hall, Rowlands hung up his coat – he never wore a hat – and ran a hand over his hair to smooth it. No excuse for looking as if you’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.
‘Daddy!’
There was the soft thud of feet descending the stairs, and then Anne hurled herself at his middle.
‘Steady on!’ He dropped a kiss on the hot tangle of her hair. ‘You almost knocked the stuffing out of me. And I wouldn’t be of much use then, would I? A daddy with no stuffing to hold him up.’ He sagged at the knees, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and she gurgled delightedly. ‘Silly Daddy.’
Margaret, with the gravity of her two years’ seniority to her sister, waited until he and Anne had finished larking about, before resting her small hand upon his sleeve. He bent to kiss her. ‘How was school today, Meg?’
‘All right. We did Long Division. I know how to carry.’
‘Good show.’ He knew not to tease Margaret. ‘I’ll test you after supper, shall I?’
‘Girls!’ came Edith’s voice from the kitchen. ‘Go and wash your hands.’
As his daughters scrambled back upstairs to obey their mother’s injunction, she came out into the hall. He leant to kiss her, but she moved swiftly past him, towards the dining room. ‘You smell of the fog,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s still bad out there.’
‘Pretty bad.’ He followed her into the room, as she started laying the table for their evening meal. There was an energy to the way she did this – as there was to the way she did everything – that struck him, in his present mood, as excessive. Flap went the cloth. Crash went the plates. Clash went the knives and forks as she set them down. ‘Edith,’ he said quietly, so that the girls wouldn’t hear. ‘Just stop that a moment, would you?’
‘Supper’s ready.’ But there was a pause in the crashing of plates and the jangling of cutlery, as she waited for what he had to say.
‘Look, I’m sorry about last night.’ If you could hear yourself, he’d said.
She sniffed. ‘Nothing to be sorry about.’
‘Yes, there is. Edith …’ He held out his arms. There was a moment’s hesitation, before she came into them. ‘Dearest girl …’ He stroked her hair, lovely soft hair. Why she’d had it shingled, he couldn’t imagine. Women and their ridiculous fashions. ‘We’ll manage. I promise.’
‘Will we?’ Her face was against his chest, so that the words sounded muffled. But she let him hold her; he felt her soft weight, her solidity. Did he imagine it, or was she already heavier, more substantial, than the last time he had her in his arms, her newly gravid state declaring itself in the increased heat of her skin, and in the faint exhausted sigh with which she disentangled herself at last? ‘Come on, girls,’ she said, suddenly brisk, as the two of them came clattering in. ‘Don’t stand there dawdling. Margaret, you can fetch the potatoes. Anne, you can put out the napkins. Left-hand side, remember?’
He returned from washing his hands to find his wife and daughters already seated, Anne kicking the table leg as usual, until reproved by her mother. ‘For these and all Thy gifts,’ he murmured, his fingers automatically straightening the knife and fork on either side of his place mat, and positioning his glass, side plate, and the napkin in its bone ring, so that they were just so. There was an answering sound from his wife signifying ‘Amen’, and they began eating. And, after all, the chops were not too badly burnt, and the mashed potatoes only slightly lumpy. The cabbage was undeniably overcooked, but he’d had worse. When she married him, Edith had never set foot inside a kitchen, except to pass on her mother’s orders to the cook. Her efforts in that department, though better than they had been in the beginning, were often a bit hit and miss. Not that he would ever have dreamt of saying so. ‘Awfully good rice pudding,’ he said.
‘Hmff,’ said Edith, as if she did not quite believe him.
‘Rice pudden’s my fav’rit.’
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, Anne. Margaret, if you’ve finished, you can help me clear the table.’
Crash. Bang. Crash. It was a wonder they’d got any crockery left that wasn’t chipped. At once he reproached himself for the disloyal thought. Poor Edie. She couldn’t have had the least idea what she was letting herself in for, when she’d thrown in her lot with him. Not only having to be her own cook general, but her own scullery maid as well. From the kitchen came another series of crashes and bangs, as his wife, assisted by their elder daughter, got started on the washing-up. ‘Leave the saucepans,’ he called, knowing she’d probably do them anyway. ‘You never get them quite clean,’ she’d say, if pressed. For all her practical inexperience in household matters, Edith had firm views as to what constituted men’s and women’s work. Putting out the rubbish, mowing the lawn, sweeping up leaves and, under supervision, cleaning the windows all counted as men’s jobs. The rest was her department, like it or not.
‘Daddy …’ Anne scrambled up onto his knee. He smelt her sweet baby smell. ‘Tell me a story,’ she said.
‘Later. When you’re tucked up in bed.’
‘Do you want to hear my two times table?’
‘Rather.’
Anne was just coming to the end of her sing-song recitation, when his wife returned with the tea tray. ‘Bath time, girls.’ There was the usual cry of protest. He intervened, as he usually did.
‘Let them have another five minutes.’ Then there was just time for Margaret to demonstrate her prowess at long division – she’d a good grasp of mathematics, that one, unusual in a girl – and for Anne to sing him the song the infants were learning for assembly:
Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear, light
Like a little candle, burning in the night.
After this, the girls went upstairs for their bath, which they had to share, because, as Edith was never slow to point out, hot water cost money. He poked up the fire and threw on a shovelful of coal, to get it burning brightly. Coals cost money too, but it was a miserable night and if they couldn’t have a decent blaze every now and again, then what had things come to? He wondered, as he sat there, crouched over the fire – any closer, and he’d be in the fire, his wife was fond of saying – whether other men felt like this. So … so unequal to what was expected of them. Or was it just those like himself? He thought of Ashenhurst – ‘Hello-ello, old man’ – was it like that for him too? Or Pearson, always so cheery, poor chap; though God knows he had little enough reason to be. No, on reflection, he had no right to be blue.
As if she divined his thoughts, Edith leaned across and put her hand on his. ‘You look all in,’ she said, in a gentler tone than before. ‘Want me to read to you?’
‘That’d be nice.’
‘Just let me get the girls settled.’ She got up and went to the door. ‘Margaret! Anne! Don’t forget to clean your teeth. I’ll be up in five minutes to switch the light out.’ She returned to her seat. ‘What’s it to be?’ she asked. ‘Another chapter of Bleak House, or just the paper?’ This was their nightly ritual, instigated by Edith when they’d first started walking out together. It was better than the wireless, in his opinion, although when he’d said this to Edith once she’d laughed. ‘At least,’ she replied, knowing his fondness for all things musical, ‘you don’t expect me to sing.’
On most nights, he’d have gone for the Dickens. There was nothing like a bit of fiction for lifting one’s mood. But tonight his concentration wasn’t up to it. ‘Oh, just the paper, I think,’ he accordingly replied. ‘It’s in my briefcase.’
‘I’ll get it.’ Before he could stop her, she jumped up again. He heard the click of her heels on the hall’s tiled floor.
‘You oughtn’t be running around like this. You’ll tire yourself out,’ he told her, as she settled back down again, with a creaking of springs, in the armchair facing his.
‘You know me, I was never one for sitting still,’ she replied, disregarding this allusion to her condition as if it were of no account. She’d been just the same when she was expecting the other two: always on the go. Apparently, it slowed some women down, being in the family way, not his Edith, though. She unfolded the newspaper with a brisk little shake. ‘Now. Where would you like to start? Births, Deaths, and Marriages?’
‘It’s as good a place as any.’
She began reading, and he closed his eyes. Already he felt calmer, the strains of the day conjured away by a soothing litany of names, dates and places. Although it wasn’t so much what she read as the sound of Edith’s voice that soothed him. It was the first thing he’d noticed about her: her voice and its distinctive timbre. She’d laughed at him when he’d called her beautiful. ‘How on earth can you tell?’ she’d said. But he’d insisted that it was how she sounded to him. ‘Then it’s lucky you can’t see me,’ she’d said, but she’d been smiling as she said it. That woman who’d rung this afternoon to speak to Mr Willoughby, she’d had a lovely way of speaking, too. Honeyed. Was that the word? He’d never understood what it meant till now. A voice like that hinted at a world of possibilities.
‘On January 14th, at 19, Queen’s Gardens, Ealing, a son, to Muriel, wife of Roderick Brooke,’read Edith. ‘Now it’s just the Deaths. At Hyde Park Gate, on January 16th, after a brief illness, Sir Percival Harrington, Bart., aged 84.’
He checked her with a wave of his hand. He didn’t want to hear about those who’d died in bed, after long, comfortable lives. ‘Read the On Active Service column.’
‘I was just about to.’
‘How many are there?’
‘Not many today. Three. No, four.’
‘Of course the main push didn’t start until April.’
Edith cleared her throat. ‘In loving memory of my husband, A. B. Burgess-Smith …’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘… died January 17th 1922, of an illness contracted in the Great War …’
‘Probably a lung case. Like poor Perkins, you remember.’ That terrible, gargling cough he’d had. Poor devil, he hadn’t lasted long.
‘Yes.’ A brief pause in acknowledgement of poor Perkins. ‘In loving memory of Ralph, only son of Mr and Mrs P. L. Cotton, Second Lieutenant, Manchester Regiment, died of wounds, aged 18, January 17th 1915 …’
‘Does it say where?’
‘No. Just “in France” … In ever-beloved memory of Brian (Frederick Brian Arthur) Fargus, Lieutenant commanding Machine Gun Section, Queen Victoria’s Rifles, 9th London Battalion, killed in action at Le Petite Douve, Wulverghem …’ She stumbled over the word, he corrected her:
‘Say it as if you’ve got a frog in your throat.’
‘Wulverghem, Flanders, January 17th 1917 …’
‘That was a beastly show.’ Bodies all flung down together and frozen in mud.
‘In loving memory of Henry, 2nd Baron Gorrell, Major RFA …’
‘Did you say Gorrell? I think I knew a Gorrell.’
‘… killed in action in Flanders, January 16th, 1917.’
‘It has to be the same one. Major Gorrell. Well, well. D’you know, I think it was Major Gorrell who took us for our first training session when we got to France. Quiet sort of chap. Looked as if he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Damn good officer, though.’
‘I don’t think you’ve mentioned him before.’
‘No. Well, one lost sight of people. Except those in one’s own detachment, of course.’
‘Yes.’ Edith sounded as if she was swallowing a yawn. ‘Shall I read on?’
‘Not unless there’s anything particularly interesting in the news.’
She skimmed through the next few pages. ‘There’s not much. Another big demonstration in Trafalgar Square …’
‘Oh dear.’
‘“Oh dear” is right. We’re getting just like Berlin, or Rome. Fascists shouting abuse from the tops of buses. Communists spouting a lot of hot air about goodness knows what.’
‘I heard a couple of chaps talking about it on the train.’ (‘“Minimum wage.” I’d give ’em a “minimum wage” all right. String ’em up, I would. Bloody Reds.’)
‘I suppose your sister was there.’
‘I’ve no idea.’ He knew his wife’s view of Dorothy’s activities well enough by now not to want to prolong this discussion. ‘I haven’t spoken to her this week.’
‘Well, I just wish she wouldn’t get involved in all that kind of thing.’
‘Edith, we’ve talked about this before. You know that nothing I can say will make the smallest bit of difference.’
‘It’s not a woman’s place, in my view, to get herself mixed up in politics. I suppose it’s Viktor’s influence.’
‘I expect you’re right. Is there any other news, or shall we have the wireless?’
‘I mean, I know she means well, but I can’t help feeling that all this speechifying and campaigning she does is rather beside the point. There’ll never be a revolution here – and thank heavens for that, I say!’
There were tanks in Piccadilly last year, he thought but did not say. He didn’t feel like getting into an argument. And it was true his sister could be a bit much sometimes, with her causes and her crusades. Her heart was in the right place, though – even Edith had been known to admit as much. Edith yawned. ‘There’s not a lot else. “A Morris Cowley two-seater, belonging to Mr L.G. Greatrex of Harrow, was stolen from outside the Northwick Park Lawn Tennis Club, Wembley, on Saturday night …”’
‘What colour was the car?’ Not that it mattered tuppence, but he liked to be able to picture things. ‘It doesn’t say. “Four Whitstable boys were bound over at Canterbury for breaking into a store …” Oh! How dreadful!’
‘Doesn’t sound especially dreadful to me …’
‘No, I meant the murders. Quite horrible. Listen to this: “At Riverview Villas, Barnes, on Saturday morning, Mr Alexander Filson (47), his son Robert (19) and daughters Catherine (14) and Mary (7) were found shot dead …”’
‘Daddy …’
Neither of them had heard the child come in.
‘What is it, Margaret?’ Edith said sharply. ‘You’re supposed to be in bed.’
‘Daddy said he’d read us a story.’
‘Your father’s resting. Now run along before I get cross.’
He got to his feet. ‘It’s all right. I’ll go up. You carry on with your paper.’
As they went upstairs, Margaret said thoughtfully, ‘Seven. That’s the same age as me.’
It took him a moment to realise what it was she meant.
Chapter Two
He was glad he’d only got daughters. He wouldn’t have wanted a son. Because who could say when it might not start again, the nightmare? Then all that effort of watching over the boy, his shining face looking up at you, of feeding and clothing him, and teaching him to know right from wrong, would have been for one purpose only: to have him sent away at eighteen – or even younger – to be blown to bits, or shot, or to die in a beastly swamp like Ypres, coughing his lungs out from poison gas … No, he’d never wanted a son. Edith felt differently, of course. But then she hadn’t seen the things he’d seen. He thought of the man he’d stumbled across that time in the trenches at Zonnebeke, with half his face shot away. A horrible look in his one remaining eye, as he lay there, the blood gurgling out of the ragged hole that was his mouth, as if he cursed those that were trying to help him for being alive, while he was in agony. Or poor young Earnshaw, with a bloody stump instead of a hand, a fragment of exploding shell having blown away his fingers. Staring at the dripping thing, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. ‘Funny kind of thing to have for a hand,’ he’d seemed to be saying. Not that he’d said a word. These, and other no less hideous images, came back to Rowlands still, on the edge of sleep or, sometimes, when he was thinking about nothing at all. All of a sudden, that bloody head would rear up, with its one-eyed glare, such hatred in that look; or Robin Earnshaw would turn, with that frightened half-smile, holding up what was left of his hand.
Strange that these sights should have been the last that remained to him. Men scrambling up the ladders, and ducking under the wire. Star shells exploding all around – ah! those bursts of white fire! – quite beautiful, he remembered thinking, like a particularly deadly kind of firework. Then there was the trench they’d taken over near Bellewaarde Wood, with the dead men lying at the bottom of it: arms and legs sticking out stiffly in their field-grey uniform, like terrible, life-sized dolls. What a mess that had been! Broken rifles and entrenching tools all flung down in the mud, with cartridge clips and machine gun ribbons, empty food tins, water bottles, unexploded shells – all of it turned to rubbish, just as they had been turned to rubbish … a ghastly sight, all told.
What he wouldn’t have given to see it all again.
At once he pulled himself up. There was nothing to be gained from such thoughts. Better to keep your eye on the road ahead, as the Major would have said. And in truth he’d never been bitter about what happened, knowing, as he did, how much worse it had been for some. Pearson, for example, who had lost his hands as well as his eyes, when a grenade went off in his face – such injuries being all too common. He wondered what had happened to poor Earnshaw. He – Pearson – had made light of it, of course, in the way so many of them did, joking that the only thing he missed was being able to fill his pipe. He’d still managed to feed himself, though, with the aid of that pincer-like contraption they’d rigged up for him in the workshops. Necessity being, as ever, the mother of invention, a man without hands will starve faster than a man without eyes. ‘Good as new,’ was how Pearson said it had made him feel, the first time he’d used the thing. ‘You almost don’t miss the old system, once you’ve got the hang of it.’
Then there was Ashenhurst, who’d lost not only his sight, but the one bit of happiness he might have hoped for, to make up for that loss. It was Ashenhurst who’d taken him under his wing when he’d first arrived at the Lodge. That was the way it worked there, with all of them teamed up with a Pal. Showing them the ropes, was what the Major called it, ‘Quite literally, in our case!’ he’d laughed. That was one of the ways you learnt: following the guide-rails, or wires, that were strung along the corridors. It wasn’t difficult, Ashenhurst said, you just had to make sure you knew which direction you were setting off in. After that it was simply a matter of keeping the wire to your left, or your right, as the case might be. This place was all right angles, he’d find. Or he could try keeping to the strip of linoleum that ran along beside the carpet – all the corridors had it. When he was ready to go out into the garden he’d find the same arrangement, only with gravel paths. A wooden board marked the top of every step. You soon learned to distinguish one kind of surface from another. Gravel or grass. Granite slabs or cobblestones. To tell one season from another by this method, too. Autumn leaves, by their smell and sound, as well as the way they felt underfoot. Snow, of course, its soft crunch when new-fallen; its smooth treachery, as it melted and froze again to ice.
Not that he wouldn’t take a tumble or two, while he was finding his feet, Ashenhurst said. ‘For the first six weeks after I got here, I gave myself some wonderful black eyes.’
When he’d registered surprise (thinking himself, absurdly, the only one in darkness), Ashenhurst seemed amused. ‘Didn’t you realise? We’re all in the same boat, here. Except for the doctors, and the girls, of course.’
He’d heard women’s voices on more than one occasion since his arrival, but had assumed they must be those of visitors. ‘Girls?’ he’d echoed.
‘Yes. Our VADs.’ Was there the faintest trace of irony in Ashenhurst’s voice? ‘You’ll meet them soon enough – in fact, you’ll probably be assigned one of your very own. Like dancing, do you?’
He was taken aback for a moment. ‘Well …’
‘Oh, don’t worry – we’ll have you tripping the light fantastic in no time. That’s where the girls come in, of course. It’s one of the things they’re good at, getting us back on our feet, so to speak.’
And in fact it was only a week later that he’d had his first dancing lesson, with a VAD named Vera. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony here.’ She was a cheerful sort, he remembered her firm, round body pressed against his, her smell of talcum powder, and had kept up a constant stream of chatter about all sorts of things, as she’d steered him, quite skilfully, around the floor, to the strains of the ‘Missouri Waltz’. It had felt all wrong to him, not to be the one leading, even though he’d quite enjoyed her chaff. ‘What’s your name, Tommy?’ had been her first question, and when he’d told her she’d hooted with laughter. ‘Frederick! That’s a bit grand. I think, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll call you Freddie.’
The sandman is calling when shadows are falling,
While the soft breezes sigh, as in days long gone by …
When it was over, he’d found he was trembling, as much from the novelty of having a woman in his arms again, as from the strain of having to concentrate so hard on the music. Although wasn’t that what he’d always done? For the life of him, he couldn’t recall. So many things were different now. Things one had taken for granted, descending a flight of stairs, say, or where one’s feet went in dancing a waltz, had become fraught with difficulty. Other couples were circulating; he could hear their talk and laughter above the music, a foxtrot this time. How they managed it he couldn’t imagine. It was worse than firing practice.
In fact, he’d gone back the following week for his lesson but only because Ashenhurst said that if he didn’t find dancing to his taste, then he might like to try sitting in with the orchestra: ‘You did say you played the piano, didn’t you, old man?’ The second time wasn’t so bad. By the third, he was quite looking forward to his spin around the dance floor with Vera. But when he got there, Vera was not to be found. Another VAD was there in her stead.
‘It’s Miss Tremlett’s afternoon off,’ said this new voice. A nice voice it was, pitched agreeably low, with the rounded vowel sounds and crisp consonants that denoted a lady. Some of them were from very good homes. Wanting to do their bit, he supposed, although why they should have chosen to spend their time with a lot of stumbling crocks, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine. ‘I expect she’s gone shopping for her trousseau. She’s getting married next month.’ His surprise must have registered on his face. ‘Oh dear, have I disappointed you? I’m Edith Edwards, by the way. I do hope we’ll be friends.’
He supposed that this had been the turning point, for him: the moment when it began to seem as if his life might once more have a purpose. It had taken him a while to realise it, of course, since at the time he was much too preoccupied with not treading on Miss Edwards’ toes. No, it wasn’t until several weeks had passed, and he and Edith had started walking out together – quite literally, since, with her assistance, he was now venturing as far as the Brompton Road – that he’d come to see the progress he’d made, since the dark days after his return from Flanders. It wasn’t just that he was capable of doing more for himself, that came with practice, as Ashenhurst never tired of telling him. It was the way he felt … as if he’d come alive again, after lying for so long in a black tomb. He’d never known what it meant before, that story about Lazarus coming out of his grave. He was Lazarus. Death had wrapped him in its embrace but he’d broken free, and walked out, into the light …
Not that it was light, exactly, where he was now: a sort of twilight, rather. Yellowish, like a dirty pea-souper. He’d one-eighth of his vision in his right eye, the doctor who’d patched him up had told him. That meant he could distinguish light from dark, and shapes of things, if the light was good enough. Everything else was lost to him. People’s faces, flowers, the colour of the sky, but if you said the word ‘blue’, that was what he saw, or thought he saw, like an echo of long-ago heard music in the brain.
Still, his case was a lot better than some. Young Atkinson, for instance, who’d lost both eyes to a sniper’s bullet, when he was taking a sighting through binoculars. The damage wouldn’t have been so great if one of the cylinders hadn’t exploded, driving splinters of metal into his unprotected face. They’d had to extract these with a magnet, Atkinson said proudly, his voice from the next bed sounding painfully young. Or there was Parry, who’d lost his sight to gas, in that beastly show at Langemarck, in ’14. He’d been one of the lucky ones in his platoon. The rest had died, choking on their own blood and the froth from their corrupted lungs.
Knowing he himself was luckier than some wasn’t much consolation, all the same, when he’d woken every morning to nothing but darkness. Even the terrible dreams from which he woke, sweating and terrified, were preferable to this. In those dreams he was always back there and he could always see – only too clearly. That trench with the dead Germans, their legs sticking out so stiffly; the look of hatred in a dying man’s eye … He’d had a bad spell, soon after he’d been discharged from hospital. He was perfectly fit, they’d told him, as fit as he’d ever be. No sense in taking up a bed that some other man might need. So he’d gone home to Camberwell. His mother had still been alive then. It was then that he’d understood what his life would be. Other men, those who’d lost limbs, or suffered nervous collapse as a result of what they’d been through, might recover; he would not. He found himself envying them: the men with damaged bodies and minds. You could replace a limb with something almost as good; heal, in time, a shattered spirit. What he had lost could never be replaced, or healed. He was shut in for ever, in this smothering dark.
Sometimes, waking from sleep, he’d forget, for a split second, what had happened. Opening his eyes in the expectation of seeing, only to find that expectation cruelly thwarted. Those were the worst times. Once his mother had come into his room when she heard him sobbing – harsh, tearless cries that seemed to tear the throat. Because what use
