Apple Blossom Time (41 page)

And I saw the fight go out of Martin. He stepped back and pushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. I was suddenly shocked to see that it was streaked with grey.

‘And you’re prepared for what it costs?’ he asked, softly. ‘You’re prepared to turn your mother’s life upside down, to crucify Tom, to hurt Kate? To be hurt yourself?’

‘Yes.’ I wasn’t certain that it was true, but I was damned if I was going to admit it to Martin, or to anyone. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Then I’m sorry for you, Laura.’

He began to walk away, stiffly, as though he’d just been beaten, and there was such weariness in the droop of his shoulders.

‘Martin?’ I put out my hand to touch him in a gesture of peace, but he was already beyond my reach. ‘Martin, don’t go.’

‘I have to go back to Germany in a few days. Come with me, Laura. Marry me.’

‘I can’t. Not yet.’

‘I don’t understand what’s happening to you … to us.’

‘I don’t understand myself. I just know that I have to go on.’

‘I can’t fight a ghost. I’m not going to try. I won’t be able to see you again before I go. If you need me, Laura, I’ll get back to you somehow. I hope you find what you’re looking for – but I hope you never have to regret it.’

And when he had gone, I stayed in the wood until the marks of my tears had faded, so that no-one would ask me questions.

Martin was right. I was going to hurt everyone I loved. But I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself.

*   *   *

In his own territory, Geoffrey looked different. On the far side of a walnut desk big enough to hold a respectable little bachelor’s dinner party, he looked unexpectedly remote, disturbingly powerful. His welcoming smile showed none of that eagerness to please that I remembered from his visit to Ansty Parva. He moved more deliberately, with sure strength, in conscious knowledge of his own position in his own scheme of things. The effect was – I was taken unawares – surprisingly sensual. For the first time, I appreciated what Kate had said about her lover. If power is sexual, he was, indeed, a very virile man.

‘Laura, this is nice.’ He shook my hand firmly. ‘Am I allowed to kiss you?’ He didn’t wait for my answer, which would have been ‘yes’ anyway. ‘You’ll be my sister before too long, I hope, so that’s all right. Miss Acott, we’ll have that tea now, please,’ he called and, keeping hold of my hand, drew me to the window. ‘Let me show you my view.’

The window looked over piles of crumbled brick and splintered wood, all the detritus of the Blitz, tumbled haphazardly, as though the hand of a giant, petulant baby had swept across the City and knocked it for six. It was becoming possible to date the ruins. The newer ones, the work of the V1s and V2s, were still bare and black, still acrid with smoke. The older ones, the relics of the Blitz, five years old now, were softened by a haze of pink and purple, colonized by rosebay willowherb and buddleia. Already, the hairy seeds of willowherb were floating on to the newly bombed sites. In a year or so they, too, would have been taken over. Smoke-blackened, water-stained, impossibly beautiful, the bulk of St Paul’s rose above the destruction.

‘Marvellous, isn’t it, a sort of miracle. God’s answer to Goering’s
Luftwaffe.
I waste far too much time just staring at that. But in a few years’ time, I won’t be able to see it from here. See that hole down there?’ asked Geoffrey, pointing in the direction of a row of adjacent bomb craters.

‘Which one?’

‘That one. Look. The one behind the one in front.’

I laughed. ‘Oh,
that
hole.’

‘That used to be my office. I only rent this one and the rent is bloody sky high. So, I started thinking – sooner or later, all those bombed-out businesses that moved away for the duration are going to come back. There’ll be clearing, building – all new, glass, concrete, daylight and space. In a few years’ time we’ll stand here and look at a bright new City, you’ll see. So I’ve bought all the holes I could lay my hands on. I own holes in Cheapside, holes in Poultry, holes in Cornhill and Old Jewry, bloody great holes all over the square mile. The owners can’t believe their luck.’ He grinned. ‘Some people think I’ve lost my marbles!’

‘I don’t. I think you’re very clever and very ruthless.’

‘Amn’t I just! Not bad for the bastard son of a housemaid, eh? Kate’ll be a very rich young woman when I go to meet my Maker. Then she can take her pick from all the men younger and better looking than me.’

I gave him a quick hug. ‘She couldn’t pick anyone nicer.’

We were meeting Kate later in the evening, perhaps going out to dinner together, but I’d asked Geoffrey if I could see him earlier and alone. Over the pot of tea that Miss Acott brought in – mahogany coloured, thick enough for a fly to leave its footprints, stiff with condensed milk, just the way Geoffrey liked it – I told him everything. I told him about my trip to Netley and what I had discovered there. I told him about Martin’s fears for my safety, about the faulty flue and the shot in the shrubbery. I reminded him about his dripping brake fluid. It sounded more like St Mary Mead than Ansty Parva. Miss Marple would have solved everything in a flash of intuition.

But I was beginning to treat Martin’s theory seriously. I had laughed at him, yet I found myself now looking over my shoulder, listening, waiting. Geoffrey didn’t dismiss any of it. He listened quietly until I’d finished.

‘It’s the not knowing. Who or why. The waiting. I don’t think I can go on any longer,’ I said.

And suddenly, I knew it was true. I hadn’t thought it before that moment. The words had just come to my lips.

‘Because you’re afraid?’ he asked gently.

I considered his question carefully. ‘No,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t think so. Not because I’m afraid. Well, I am, of course. Afraid. It’s hard to imagine that anyone wants to hurt me. It’s different from war, somehow. The
Luftwaffe
may have been tossing down bombs willy-nilly, but no-one ever thought that it was personal. Bombs and bullets didn’t really have people’s names on them. Now, I find the idea that someone may be waiting round the next corner for me – and only me – rather frightening.’

‘I wouldn’t believe you if you said you didn’t. Then why?’

‘Because … because I don’t want to know any more. Not now. I thought that I wanted to know everything – every last detail – it was like a puzzle, a quest for my personal Holy Grail. Edwin Ansty – funny, I think of him more often as Edwin, now, than as my father, as though he was a friend – was unknown and my family had made him unknowable. I wanted to change that, to challenge their right to decide what I knew. But now I’m afraid to find out. It’s all gone too far. I started out to discover who my father was. Well, I’ve done that. I know who he was. I’ve seen what he looked like. That’s enough. If I go any further, I’m going to hurt so many of the people I love.’

All the things that Martin had said – had shouted at me – made sense, but I still hadn’t admitted as much to him. I hadn’t even seen him since that day. Mr Millport would have said that we were both suffering the effects of the deadly sin of pride. He’d have made us see sense. But Mr Millport wasn’t around any longer.

‘And you don’t think you owe it to your father to carry on?’

‘Oh, Geoffrey, don’t confuse me. I used to think that. It was all I thought about. But don’t I owe my mother anything? She doesn’t deserve to be hurt and I don’t see how I can avoid that, if I go on. How can I tell her that she and Tom were not properly married? She would be so distressed. And Tom. He’s a very conventional man and he’s been good to me since I was a child. How can I tell Grandmother that the son she thought had died in 1918 was still alive, for at least another two years? She’s an old woman, nearly seventy. The shock would be too much for her.’

‘Lady Ansty is tougher than you think, Laura.’

‘It would be cruel. And Kate. How will Kate feel when she finds out she was born to unmarried parents? I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have said that – I know that you … I didn’t mean to…’

‘Kate doesn’t need you to protect her. She has me now.’

Lucky Kate. He said it so quietly, so confidently. After all her years of flitting from man to man, never secure, never finding one she could rely on, she had finally met the strong man she had been looking for.

‘Let me show you something. This may change your mind.’ Geoffrey unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out a folder. He pushed it across the desk to me. ‘I’ve been putting out a few feelers myself, through the regimental association and the British Legion. It’s a cross between an old boys’ club and the Mafia, the Legion. If a man’s still above ground, they’ll find someone who knows someone who’s seen him. I wasn’t certain what to do with this. I wasn’t sure whether I ought to show you. But who am I to take decisions for you? Perhaps you have a right…’

Inside the folder were a couple of dozen letters, some very short, some rambling, probably full of long-remembered anecdotes. Geoffrey picked out one, on lined paper torn from an exercise book, written in blue indelible pencil. The writing was large and loopy, filling the space between each line. It was difficult to read.

I don’t suppose you’ll remember me after all this time, Mr Paxton, but I was a machine-gunner in A Company and I remember you well. Now I am a storeman at Harvey Nichols Furniture Repository in Westbourne, as you’ll see by the address, which is a very nice job, though heavy and we had a very nice class of furniture in during the war due to all the London houses closing for the duration. I like to keep up with all my old pals, well, the old pals are the best ones I always say. I met Chalky White (ex regimental boxer, bantam weight, you’ll recall him I’m sure) at the Legion the other night and he said he’d been talking to Percy Lowe who told him he’d heard you’d been making enquiries about Captain Ansty. Now there’s a name that rang bells, I said. I hadn’t thought about him in a long time. You probably already know this, as it’s very old news, but I last saw him in a nursing home in Surrey, near Hindhead, very nice place, very select. I was in furniture removals then and delivering a piano, if I remember rightly. Well, that was a surprise, I can tell you. A bit of a shock, in fact. Not that I believe in ghosts, of course, but it certainly makes you think. If ever a man ought to be a ghost, he ought. We were all sure that he’d bought it, one way or another. And here he’d been tucked away in a –
here there were a couple of words crossed out –
asylum all along. He looked well on it though. Better than I did, I must say, though we’d be about the same age at a guess. I made myself known as soon as I could. He was quite friendly, though a bit vague. He didn’t seem to remember me, but it was him all right. It takes them all ways, I always say. Not everyone cares to remember the war and not all the lunatics have been put away, for that matter. I used to go to all the reunions, wouldn’t miss one if I could help it, excepting only for bereavement, but there’s some that want nothing to do with it and I don’t blame them. It takes all sorts, as I say. Shortly afterwards I met Mr Roding at a reunion and I mentioned to him that I’d seen his friend. Well, I could see he was shaken and no wonder. He was very interested of course and asked where and said that he’d make a point of going to see him which I’m sure he would have done as they were such pals. If you want to know more, then Mr Roding is probably the best person to ask, but I can’t help you to get in touch with him, as I never saw him again at any other reunion since. This was in 1927 or maybe early 28. I know that because I left that job shortly after to come down here because of my wife’s chest. The sea air did her a lot of good until she was taken from me nine years ago come November, but it was a mercy she didn’t last longer as her suffering was cruel. Please excuse the writing as I am putting pen to paper at work hoping to catch the post on my way home …

Geoffrey let me sit for as long as I wanted, thinking.

Tom had known. Tom had known for almost nineteen years where my father had been taken and had kept the knowledge to himself.

To protect my mother, my grandmother and my sister, Tom had kept his secret. And keeping it had almost destroyed him.

*   *   *

If I were going to be shut away for the rest of my life, in a place of someone else’s choosing, I might have done a lot worse than Greentops.

Geoffrey travelled slowly up the long drive that finished in a circular gravel sweep before an imposing front door. It was painted a glossy and satisfying seaweed green that rather reminded me of the colour of American military vehicles, but when paint was in such short supply, who would ask questions? The door knocker was well polished. It was a good sign. Once, long ago, before wars and death duties had made it impossible, a family might have lived here very comfortably, supported by a huge staff to run the house from cellar to attic.

It was better and worse than I had feared.

Better because it wasn’t obviously a lunatic asylum. There were no barriers, no wire – not to be seen, anyway. I’d stood outside the high wall at Netley and tried to visualize the pleasant garden on the other side that the RAMC sergeant had told me about and the little summerhouse, where patients could spend their long, empty hours. But all I could imagine was a long corridor lined by the steel doors of padded cells. Greentops wasn’t like that.

It was worse because the painted door and polished knocker gave an impression of unyielding competence. I couldn’t understand why anyone who wasn’t kept by force would want to stay in an institution, however pleasantly it was disguised. An efficient management would know all the other ways of keeping a man in one place for years and years.

The step was scrubbed and the doormat brushed. I had the feeling that not many people passed through the door – in or out.

‘I’m scared,’ I said, sitting in the car with my hand on the door handle.

‘Of course you are,’ Geoffrey agreed, cheerfully.

‘Come with me.’

‘No. I can’t do that. You’ll manage better on your own. But I’ll be here when you want me.’

Inside, the hall looked again like the hall of a well-run country house. Against one wall stood a carved oak chest and on it, catching the light from the open door, stood a jug of copper-coloured chrysanthemums, not the shaggy, earwiggy, comfortable kind, but the perfect spheres, like toffee apples on spindly sticks, the kind that always win the prizes at flower shows, groomed and waxy. Their funeral smell lay on top of all the other smells – beeswax and turpentine, distant gravy and nearby dog fart. On a faded rug, a black Labrador lay, too old and fat to do more than raise his head and wag the very tip of his tail to acknowledge my entrance. Somewhere, a wireless was playing modern dance tunes.