Armistice (11 page)

Twenty minutes had passed while she looked at the paintings. She sought the owner out in order to say thank you before she left, but the woman hadn't seemed to expect anything of her; she'd just waved her away. Philomena tried to place Dan and Jonathan and Major James within the worlds depicted in the art. Mud, blood, metal machinery; masses of men, dead children—the hell they'd inhabited so recently. How much should she take that into account?

She allowed Jonathan to see her before he entered his chambers. He stopped and studied her from twenty feet away. What had he been going through since he'd told her his story? What on earth was she going to tell anyone back home? She couldn't return that night and start telling relatives, friends, that Dan might have been murdered.

Jonathan was still a few feet away when she heard herself say to him, “It's Dan's birthday, today.”

Then they were in Jonathan's office and he was sympathizing with her and saying he hadn't known that and quizzing her about what she'd done that day.

“Here. Have a drink of this.” He was standing over her.

“Oh,” she said, smelling the brandy, “no thank you.” But she felt so tired and so in need of comfort, and so friendless.

“Go on, yes.”

And in the moment when she took the glass he was giving their fingers touched and recoiled before Jonathan let go.

“Happy birthday, Dan,” she said.

“Happy birthday, Dan,” echoed Jonathan.

They both sipped their drinks. After a few moments she asked: “What did you hope I'd do after you told me your story?”

“I didn't have a single objective,” replied Jonathan. “You have a right to know.”

“You wanted me to know so I would have to share the burden,” she countered, firmly.

He neither confirmed nor denied this.

“I want you to meet me when your work is over for today,” she said.

“May I ask what for?” said Jonathan.

“I don't know yet.”

She hadn't known until that moment that she'd stay another night.

She found a cleaner hotel, The Whitehall, in the same relatively inexpensive part of the city. Her room still didn't have much in the way of furnishings, but there was no sewerage pipe running from ceiling to floor. Her view was restricted to, mostly, a tenement block, but at least there was a margin of sky.

She sent a telegram to Jo, apologizing for staying another day. After recreating her shrine to Dan she lay down on the bed and allowed her hands the freedom to make unconscious shapes in the half-light.

No rest. She found she'd adopted a new, less elegant habit; twisting the cheap metal band on her wedding finger. She rose and went to the window. Across the way in the tenement block a young, white-faced man in shabby army uniform stared out of his window. Against the dark of his room his face appeared almost translucent. Philomena couldn't tell if the young man was looking back at her. The distance between them, and the angle, and the fact that he was immobile made it impossible to know. She took up her coat and hat and set off to meet Jonathan at the cafe they'd eaten in after their first
meeting—The Conduit—the one with the friendly waitress.

“Why do you like it so much here?” she asked Jonathan.

“Did I say I liked it so much?”

“You come here a lot, I can tell. They know you.”

“It's a bit of a strange reason, actually,” Jonathan admitted. “Some might think it a macabre reason.”

She looked around for signs of anything macabre. It all seemed spick and span and newly decorated. The waitress thought she was looking for her and came over so Philomena had to apologize; they had everything they wanted.

“Are you going to tell me why you like it here so much?” she asked.

Jonathan shifted slightly and smiled nervously.

“It was bombed in the war. A Gotha dropped a bomb on the street.”

“I see.” She thought about Gothas and Zeppelins. Their deadly visits had been front-page news during the war, as had the bombings of German civilians.

“I suppose I first came here to have a look at what remained of the damage. It interested me, the idea that while I was fighting in another country my own was being bombed from the air. I'm not sure that that's ever happened before. I came to the street and this place was open. I came in. I liked it. I've never discussed the bombing with anyone here. I feel at home. I don't know whether that has anything to do with the fact it was war-damaged.”

Philomena looked up and around for any signs of damage. Jonathan's story made her regard the cafe's near-perfect condition
differently. The recent decoration had been a necessity, the completion of a rescue.

“How's your new hotel?” he asked.

“Slightly less gruesome than the first.”

Even he didn't know where she was staying, now.

“So you didn't go straight back to Major James or march up to Anthony Dore and blurt it all out and drop me in it,” said Jonathan, trying to grin.

“I went back to Major James. I don't think I dropped you in it. I didn't say how I'd come by the information—I didn't say I had any information, actually. I was a bit sneaky. I said that one of the letters I received about Dan's death described it as a crime.”

Jonathan wrinkled his nose, recalling his letter to her. He certainly hadn't used the word “crime.” “Is that an actual letter or one you created?”

“Actual.”

Now he leaned forward, and his voice took on an edge. “May I ask who wrote it and are they a potential witness?”

“They're not a potential witness, no.” She added nothing, waiting for him to have to ask another question.

“That's a pity,” said Jonathan, sagging. “It was a general statement, that Dan's death was a crime. When they said ‘crime' they obviously meant what a godawful waste of a life at the end of a godawful waste of millions.”

“I thought so at the time. Until you related your story.”

It took a few seconds for Jonathan to work out who the writer of this letter might be. Philomena saw him arrive at
the name and then discount it. He looked to her, a dazed expression in his eyes.

“He
wrote
to you?”

“If you mean Anthony Dore, yes.”

“He wrote to you,” repeated Jonathan, almost to himself. He grimaced. Something perhaps even more horrible occurred to him. “Condolences?”

She nodded. She could see the anger rising in him.

“I'm almost speechless,” said Jonathan.

He had so much energy churning inside him that Philomena feared he might combust. For the first time she understood how someone can be described as “beside themselves.” And she felt in danger. The heightened animation she'd previously witnessed in Jonathan on his feet in court inhabited him now, seated next to her. His mouth was open, his eyes blinked and flickered, his brow furrowed deeply. The forces at work here were intense and very powerful. Philomena was being caught up in them. They were threatening to encircle her. She could feel Jonathan's energy pressing her to do his bidding, and Major James also pressing, and Dan, and on the fourth side a shadowy gray energy that she imagined was Anthony Dore. Her hands had lifted and were pressing outward; the backs were trying to make way for her to pass.

“I can only think of one word to describe Anthony Dore, and it's far too rude to say out loud,” said Jonathan. “It's a short word.”

“I think I know the word. But his letter proves nothing as far as I'm concerned.”

Jonathan changed, and studied her closely, and she could see he was putting the professional, lawyer part of his brain to work, to assess what she'd said.

“Yes. I can see that,” he said. “You've no reason to take my word as gospel. I can see that. I've grown accustomed to being disbelieved. At first I thought the force of my belief would carry, but what you eventually come to realize is that it's possible that nobody else feels the same as you about something that you think is the most important thing in the world.”

There was no rancor in his tone, no accusation, no suggestion that he was leveling anything at her. Philomena decided that if ever she was in court accused of anything she would want Jonathan Priest to be defending her.

“Show me Anthony Dore. Point him out,” she demanded suddenly, surprising herself.

“You haven't met him, then?” said Jonathan.

She shook her head.

“Come on,” said Jonathan, standing up.

“I don't want to meet him,” she blurted out. “I just want you to show him to me, without him knowing.”

Jonathan opened his mouth to ask something, but didn't ask it. He said something else: “He might know that you're here by now. Someone might have told him.”

“Major James?”

“Or someone in his office, or someone else he has told about you. You can't trust anyone.”

“I know,” she said, shooting him a look.

* * *

En route she didn't let on to Jonathan that she'd already been to look at Anthony Dore's house. Being less than candid with him felt awkward, but not deceitful, as she was sure that he hadn't told her everything either. She felt that she needed to act in her own interests—hers and Dan's, and if that meant keeping secrets from, or omitting to offer information to even the man Dan described as his “new best friend,” so be it.

They took up watch in the Mayfair square, their backs to the railings around the private gardens.

The side away from Philomena, Jonathan had his hand in his jacket pocket, manipulating a pack of playing cards, his nervous displacement. The Dore house was dark except for the entrance light and two upstairs windows. There was hardly anybody else on foot in the vicinity. For minutes on end all that could be heard were motor engines, horses' hooves, cart wheels. From time to time Philomena asked a question.

“Is he married?”

“No. He lives with his father.”

Dogs in the distance. Ruff, ruff! Ruff! Echoing.

“What else do you know about him?”

“I know his walk, his shape, his rhythm—” Jonathan broke off because a male pedestrian had entered the square. The figure neared. Jonathan pressed back into the shadows, urging Philomena to follow suit.

“Some of his habits,” he continued, in an undertone.

He could see that Philomena expected him to say that this figure was Anthony Dore.

“Is that him?” she hissed.

“No.”

Another pedestrian entered the square from the other direction. Philomena looked again to Jonathan.

“You've been here before, doing this, haven't you?” she asked.

“I've investigated him, yes,” he replied.

A dog snuffled loudly somewhere nearby in the dark. They both feared it would discover them and bark.

“Can you hear that?” whispered Philomena.

Jonathan's answer was to press back against the railings. Their sides came together awkwardly but neither dared move until the danger was clear. The dog sounded as if it was rooting right at their feet now, which was strange, because they still couldn't see it. A pile of last autumn's leaves, trapped against the foot of the railings, moved.

“It's a hedgehog!” giggled Philomena.

“Some spies we make,” retorted Jonathan.

They settled back to watching the house.

“He's an only child now,” said Jonathan,
sotto voce
. “Mother deceased. Two brothers perished in the war. Anthony's the middle one.”

A man appeared, heading into the square. Jonathan began to tremble. Philomena looked up at him and this time he gave a tiny nod of confirmation. In his pocket his hand fumbled the playing cards.

They watched the figure walking the other side of the road. So this was Anthony Dore? Philomena glanced sideways at Jonathan. His features were set. His jaw flexed as he ground his teeth. She experienced a surge of energy. She wanted to
act, to achieve more than merely watch Dore walk the pavement, climb the steps to his house, and enter. Suddenly she found herself moving out of the shadows and taking a line that would allow her to pass him. Jonathan took a step and reached forward to grab her but he hadn't reacted quickly enough. If he made another attempt he was at risk of revealing himself. She heard him stifle a cry then curse her roundly under his breath.

From a distance, but closing, she took in Dore's appearance. Shorter than Jonathan or Dan, slighter than Dan, he seemed a little off-balance. Under the influence of something. She saw him register her presence. He'd seen what? A lower-class sort of a girl, to him. But good posture. Walking alone. Hmmm. Would he be able to hear her heart thumping in her chest? She noted everything she could about him as they closed on each other. Round face, thin mustache, uneven gait. But what she was really looking for was of course not visible. He slowed down, and cheekily raised his hat to her. Philomena became scared that now she was the object of his scrutiny. Her impetuous action started to seem more like dangerous folly. She tried to end the situation by speeding up a little, but couldn't resist—right at the last, just as she passed—glancing into his eyes.

He smiled but she didn't. Did he do lower-class girls? Was that a reasonable presumption? She kept going, fearing Dore might call out something, but he didn't. Behind her she could feel that he had turned to watch her walking away.

“Go home, go home,” urged Jonathan under his breath until
Anthony Dore turned and continued to the steps up to his house. When he had one foot on the lowest Jonathan's impatience to get after Philomena won out. He broke cover to pursue her, but Anthony stopped! Jonathan froze, mid-step, in full view if Anthony looked his way. Out of the corner of his eye Jonathan monitored him—an agonizing wait while Anthony continued to watch Philomena … and watch her … and watch her … until she was out of sight. Only then did he climb the steps to his house. Unable to wait for him to get inside, Jonathan sneaked away, and as soon as he felt that he was in the clear, he ran after Philomena.