Past Caring (23 page)

“After we met in France, I wondered what had become of you,”

he said. “Then I heard you were laid up here, so thought I’d
look in.”

“It’s kind of you to have called, Winston. The leg’s not too bad.

They tell me I should be up and about in the New Year with just a
limp to show for it. What are you up to now?”

He leant forward confidentially. “I’m back at Westminster.

The wind seems to be blowing my way again now that L.G.’s at
number 10.”

“I read about that: Asquith out at last.”

“Yes—and good riddance. He never had the heart for a war—

and that’s a sure way to lose one. L.G. won’t let anything stand in his
path. I have high hopes.”

“Of him—or for a post?”

He grinned. “Both, actually.”

I wished him well, without hypocrisy. A man who could sustain
such zest for life deserved well of it. The war had blown away my
bitterness, though not my sadness. And it was that last commodity

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that prompted me to beg a favour of him before he went. Favours
were his stock in trade, so I had no compunction.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Edwin?”

“Perhaps there is. Just before the war broke out, I commissioned some work of which I’ve subsequently heard nothing. You
might be able to find out how matters now stand.”

“What sort of work?”

“Some minor confidential enquiries. I used Palfrey—you’ll remember him. He never reported back, which was unlike him. I
wrote to him last month but have had no reply—he may have
changed his address. I wondered if you could ask around to see
what’s become of him.”

“I’ll do what I can, Edwin—have a word with people I
still know at the Home Office. I’ll let you know if Palfrey’s still
around.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

And I was obliged to Churchill, though not for news of Palfrey,
for he never gave me any. I went back to France in March 1917, forgot my passing recollection of that unfinished business and found
myself promoted to the rank of major but consigned because of suspect leg and lungs to tedious administrative duties at regimental
field headquarters. Then, in May, I heard that Churchill had received the reward he had looked for from Lloyd George: the post of
Minister of Munitions. Within a few weeks, I was reassigned to
oversee, with the rank of colonel, armaments distribution in our sector of the front. Churchill sent me a congratulatory note leaving me
in no doubt that my appointment had been at his behest. Strangely,
he made no mention of Palfrey. He may well have had more important things to think about. Certainly, I was kept busy at his bidding,
taking some grim satisfaction from endeavouring to ensure that, if
men had to continue fighting, they could at least do so adequately
armed.

In that way I passed the remaining eighteen months of the
Great War. In November 1918, it finally ground to an armistice:
a mutual acknowledgement of the absolute futility of further
slaughter. We who had been lucky enough to survive felt no exhilaration at victory, only relief. What we celebrated was a resumption
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of life. In most cases this meant the secure normalities of home and
family. What I had forgotten in my own case, but remembered
as soon as I was demobilized, was how little there was for me to return to.

They tried, I cannot say otherwise. Barrowteign in the late autumn
of 1918 welcomed home its flawed if favoured son. My mother was
overjoyed that I had survived and content with that. And so, for a
while, was I. Sitting in my home, walking in the village of my birth,
escorting my mother to church—these quiet, domestic pleasures
were balm to my shaken spirit. So long as I was engaged upon a
process of recuperation, they sufficed.

Poor little Ambrose had contracted the virulent strain of in-fluenza that carried off so many war-weakened souls that winter. I
sought to hasten his recovery and occupy my mind and hands by
constructing for him an elaborate model castle for Christmas. It
was an intricate task in which I could lose myself and gain a degree
of tranquillity. And I was gratified to see how happy it made
Ambrose when presented to him under the Christmas tree. Having
spent many hours in designing and building it, I was obliged to
spend many more instructing him in its ways—how to operate the
drawbridge, where the secret doors were, how a toy soldier might
enter the keep. All this spared me the necessity of indulging his interest in my wartime adventures, which I wished only to forget.

That Christmas, playing with Ambrose, Mother beaming at us
from the hearth, I was a man restored, but restored to what? I picked
up some of the pieces of my life, but knew that others had all along
been missing. I began to think again—though less intensely—of
Elizabeth and recalled to mind the unfinished business of Palfrey’s
enquiries on my behalf. I might have decided that they should be
left undisturbed, but, in truth, I had little to distract me from morbid
reflection and that was translated into something more active by the
New Year’s honours list of 1919. I scanned
The Times
resumé for
names I knew and there one sentence struck home with a force
undimmed by the passage of time: “Among industrialists honoured,
Gerald Couchman , the munitions manufacturer, receives a knighthood in recognition of the outstanding production record of his

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company over the past four years and its contribution to the war effort during that time.”

So Gerald Couchman , coward of Colenso, had spent four lucrative years manufacturing the weapons of destruction , married to
the woman I still loved, whilst I had gritted my way through four
years of sustained miséry in the Flanders trenches, serving a cause
in which I had no faith and gaining no reward beyond an accidental exemption from death. This was too much to bear.

I said nothing to my mother, gave her no hint of what I felt,
merely announced calmly that I would, the following day, be going
to London for a few days to attend to some matters of business. She
had not noticed the news of Couch’s knighthood by the time I left.

On the first morning of 1919, I stood in my greatcoat on a chill,
deserted Dewford railway station—my runabout motor having
been ransomed to the post-war fuel shortage—waiting for the train
that would connect at Exeter with the London express, questioning
in my mind the wisdom of another stirring of my past, knowing in
my heart that too much of my loss was unexplained for me to leave
unasked the questions that still gnawed at me: Why did you reject
me, Elizabeth? Why did you marry Gerald Couchman? Wherein
did I offend?

The train carried me away from Dewford, over the very crossing where my brother had perished eight years before. At least, I reflected, his death had been an accident. My disgrace seemed a more
malevolent working of fate which did not even deign to show its motive. In London , I hoped to smoke it out.

Upon arrival, I made my way to Palfrey’s office in Rotherhithe,
dingily unchanged in its housing beneath an arch of a railway
viaduct on the fringes of dockland. There was nobody in , so I
waited, as the trains rattled overhead and the sleet fell about me. It
was a grey, dank place, cold as death that New Year’s afternoon. But
it was, for good or ill, where the trail lay. And, sure enough, Palfrey
eventually returned to his haunt. I laid an arm on his shoulder as he
turned a key in the door.

“Mr. Palfrey, do you remember me?”

“I don’t rightly think so.”

He admitted me to his office, one place made more tolerable by
the chill. Perhaps he would not have done so had he recognised me
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at first, for he turned a paler shade of grey when I identified myself
and mentioned our unfinished business.

“Lord, sir, that was before the war.”

“What of it?”

“I never thought to see you again , sir. So much ’as changed
since then.”

“Not my interest in Sir Gerald and Lady Couchman.”

“Sir Gerald?”

“Didn’t you know of his knighthood?”

“No, sir, but it don’t surprise me.”

“Why not?”

“He’s a well-connected gentleman—like yourself.”

“My connections are sundered. What about yours? Does the
Home Office still look after you?”

“We do business when there’s need—as in your day, sir.”

“Then what of our business, Mr. Palfrey? I paid you to obtain
information , no matter that it was four and a half years ago.”

“I’ve nothing to report, sir. Naturally, you can ’ave your advance back.”

“Why nothing to report?”

“My enquiries was not fruitful.”

“Why not?”

“Sir, it was business, as you say. So I’ll repay the money”—he
pawed at a cashbox—“and that’ll conclude our business.”

“Before it’s even begun?”

“As you say, sir”—and here he risked a meaningful look—

“before it’s even begun.”

He had thrust some grubby notes into my hand. They were
clammy with his sweat, for all that it was bitterly cold. Palfrey was
a frightened man. Nothing could be more graphic than his return of
money on a lapsed debt. I despaired of extracting anything from
him and turned to go.

“One thing, Mr. Palfrey,” I said as an afterthought. “You must
know Mr. Churchill, one of my successors.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he—or anyone else—approach you about your enquiries
on my behalf ?”

“No, sir.”

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“This would have been about two years ago.”

“Not then—not ever, sir.”

He was lying—I felt certain of it. But there was nothing to be
gained by pressing him further. I let the money fall from my hand
and left him to stoop after it. As I walked away from his office, the
conviction grew on me that his enquiries had not stopped but been
stopped. Strangely, I exulted at this conviction , for it proved for the
first time that there was something behind my disgrace beyond a
whim of fate: some human , calculating force working against me.

To a soldier, it was some kind of consolation—especially after the
war I had just fought—to know that the enemy existed.

I booked into a hotel near Leicester Square for the night to plan
my strategy. The loss of Palfrey’s reconnaissance struck me as no
great problem. The telephone directory yielded the information I
most needed: the address of the Couchman works in Woolwich, the
home address of G.V. Couchman in Hampstead. But I did not propose to beard Couch in either lair without first exploring the strange
question of the silencing of Palfrey. My recollection of Winston
Churchill’s solicitous call upon me during my wartime convalescence was newly suspicious in this light. I had asked him to chivvy
Palfrey on my behalf but all I had received was an arduous new
posting at his instigation.

Accordingly, the following morning, I telephoned Churchill’s
new ministry—the War Office—and, after repeating my name several times, was put through to him. Parliament being in recess and
his duties at a low ebb, he was delighted at the prospect of meeting
me for luncheon. As a matter of fact, I had never known him to refuse an invitation to luncheon however busy he was at the time. His
appetite and ambition alike knew no bounds. To be fair, nor did his
humanity and it was on this last quality that I was banking.

Gaspard’s Restaurant in the Strand was better suited to the
gourmand than the gourmet and I was neither. But Churchill set to
with a will, leaving me to insinuate leading questions between
courses.