Second Intention (14 page)

Although it had been such a significant part of my personal history, the university was really
just another grey, unglamorous nineteen sixties pile. In my mind it had a greater significance than the reality. For nearly two decades I had been looking back on it with fondness. Now, it just made me feel sad.

The reason for my visit
that day made me feel sad as well. I had no idea if she still worked there, or even how I was going to approach her if she did, but knew that this was one of the few things I had to go on. I had made very few enemies in my life, but I suppose Grace’s husband could count as one of them. If anybody had the inclination, or indeed the know-how, to do what Doktor Chuckles had been doing, it was him. The only way I was going to find out was through her.

As I walked along the main part of the concrete precinct which formed the central point of the campus I was surprised to see that many of the shops were the same. There was the Students’ Union mini-market
, the Barclays bank, Waterstones’ bookshop, the newsagent and stationery shop, the launderette, a cyber café (that, at least, was new), and the sports shop, before, finally, the large expanse of plate glass window which fronted the University Conference and Accommodation Bureau.

It was exactly the same as the last time I had seen it. It didn’t even look like they had moved any of the furniture around. Sure, the computers on the desks were a lot smaller than they had been back in the early nineties, but that was about it. Even the
clip-framed posters on the walls looked familiar.

At the back of the open plan office were the little cubicles in which the senior staff were based. Was she tucked away in there somewhere? Was the woman about whom I had felt so strongly all those years ago just a matter of a few yards away now? I looked at the display board on the wall just inside the door, on which the names of all the personnel were listed. Everybody, from the most junior assistant to the director, was mentioned. I quickly scanned down it, but could see no sign of Mrs. G. Webster.

What did I expect? It had been nearly fifteen years. She was bound to have moved on, or patched things up with Martin and started a family, or something like that. It was crazy to think that she would still be there. I had just wasted my morning driving up on the off chance.

I sighed and turned away. What next? Having come all that distance I wasn’t just going to get straight in the car and head for home. I thought
, instead, that I’d go and get a coffee and a muffin in the buttery. After all, it was probably the last time I would ever set foot on the campus, given the way I felt on seeing it again after all this time. I might as well make my last memory of it a positive one.

The muffins were just as good as they had always been. I tucked into a blueberry one, which had been one of my favourites when I was an undergrad, washed down with a cappu
ccino. I had just begun flipping through a copy of
Equerry
, the university magazine, when I was aware of a presence just beside me.

I looked around, and was amazed by just how different she looked. Older, obviously, but there was more to it than just that. Perhaps it was the well cut suit and silk blouse that gave her such a commanding presence, or maybe it was just something about her body language, but this was not the Grace I remembered. No, this was a successful and forceful individual. One used to power.

‘Mind if I join you?’ she said, in a gentler tone than I had been expecting. Her voice, at least, was exactly the same.

‘Please do,’ I replied, half rising, and gesturing to the seat opposite. ‘Hello
, Grace.’

As she set her coffee down and took her seat I noticed the name badge on the lapel of her suit: Miss G. Minney, Director of Estates and Premises. Bloody hell. She had done well for herself.

Miss
G. Minney?

‘Hello
, Richard.’ She reached for her cup. No wedding ring, I noticed. ‘Been a long time.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘So what brings you here today? Just dropping by for old times’ sake?’ I could feel the lack of warmth, even though she was trying to make the tone friendly enough.

‘Yes. Something like that.’ I met her eye. ‘So how are you then, Grace? You’re looking well.’

‘I’m fine, thanks. You?’

‘Oh, I’m doing okay. Keeping busy. You know how it is.’

‘Yes.’

It all felt incredibly awkward. There we were, boxing around and trying to be nice. Neither of us wanted to be the one to say any of the things which had been bottled up inside for years, but still, clearly, were gnawing away at us on the inside.

‘I see you’re a director now,’ I said, trying to keep the harmless chat going.

‘Yes. It’s amazing how suddenly being single opens up so many opportunities for self-advancement.’ She gave me a look which I didn’t quite understand, then glanced down at my left hand. ‘And I see you’re married now.’

‘Yes.’

‘Happy?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘Good.’

There was another brief but clumsy silence before I continued.

‘So … you and Martin …
?’

‘Mmmm. About fourteen years ago. Best thing that could have happened. He remarried, and I got myself sorted out. The rest is history. All ancient history now.’

I didn’t really know what to say to that one. Whilst I was happy with Sue, and wouldn’t change it for the world, deep down I think I felt a pang of … I don’t know …
something
. Why hadn’t Grace tried to get in touch and rekindle our relationship, if she split with her husband so soon after my departure? Had
I
been consigned to “ancient history” so quickly?

She seemed to have read my thoughts.

‘We were just children then, Richard,’ she said, with a faint smile. ‘It would never have lasted.’

‘No. No, you’re right,’ I replied, hoping my true feelings weren’t showing through. This was a shock. It seemed as though I had been kidding myself for a long time about just how important I had been to her. Time to change the subject.

‘So … er … you and Martin?’

‘Yes?’ She tilted her head ever so slightly and her eyes narrowed.

‘Do you ever …?’

‘What?’ I could see she was puzzled.

‘Do you still keep in touch?’

‘That would be rather difficult.’ She looked me straight in the eye. ‘Martin was killed in a road accident six years ago.’

‘Oh, Grace, I’m sorry.’ I felt it was the only appropriate thing to say.

‘Don’t be,’ she said, with a restrained force which rather took me aback. ‘Martin was a worthless shit. As far as I’m concerned the world is a much better place without him.’

*                  *                  *                  *

The drive back south was truly awful, the rain slowing all the traffic on the A15 to a crawl for much of the way. At one point, as we skirted Lincoln
, it took forty-five minutes to cover a mere four miles.

It meant I had plenty of time to think about things.

First, my trip up to see Grace had proved useful. Painful, in its own way, like a kind of catharsis, but useful all the same. I now knew that Martin Brewster couldn’t be Doktor Chuckles, which meant I had to find my suspect somewhere else. That was one useful thing.

Secondly, I had seen my relationship with Grace, something which had haunted me for years, in its true light. It no longer needed to niggle at me in the depths of my consciousness, like some unfinished business. On reflection I realised that Grace, for all her apparent vulnerability, was not quite as lovely as I’d thought. What is it they say?
Love is blind?
  Well, the scales had now well and truly fallen from my eyes, and the ghost had been exorcised.

It was one less bit of clutter in the box room of my soul. I could get on with my life with Sue now, and it would never trouble me again, even if only subconsciously.

I was glad I hadn’t had to ask Grace about Martin directly. At least, not ask her anything about whether he might have been the sinister cyber geek who was now stalking me. Knowing what I now knew, that I had never really been that important to her, or presumably him for that matter, it all seemed a ridiculous suggestion.

That led me back to the question of who Doktor Chuckles really was, and just why he was doing this.

The name itself, with its deliberate mis-spelling, and the menacing clown image, seemed intended to shock or scare. It was very,
very
sinister, but I suppose that was the idea. When I had asked Derek about it he just shrugged and muttered something about people out in cyberspace tending to adopt a particular identity or persona.

‘Who knows?’ he said, looking up from his computer, with a grin. ‘Maybe he’s German. Maybe he’s even a real clown. Perhaps you need to check out the local circuses?’

As I sat in the traffic I wondered where I was heading next with it all, and realised that there was another line of enquiry I needed to take. That evening I phoned Sean.

It was funny, but he seemed a little guarded at first, and I wondered if I had been interrupting something. His reputation with the ladies, after all, suggested that he could have been busy.  When I explained what it was I wanted, though, he seemed to relax a little.

‘I’m calling about Toby,’ I said.

‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘Everybody’s favourite spoilt brat, is it?’

‘Yes. I wondered if you knew much about what he does for a living?’

‘What, work?’ He gave a snort of derision. ‘I d
on’t really think our boy Toby has to worry about that sort of thing like you and me. Not when he’s got all his daddy’s money behind him.’

‘So he doesn’t actually have a job, as such?’

‘No, I don’t think so, although I’m no expert. You could hardly say that the life and careers of Toby Rutherford is my specialist subject. I just hear odd bits on the circuit, just like you do.’

‘Mmmm, no, of course not.’

‘Although I
did
hear somebody mention that his old man’s a bit concerned about him.’

‘Oh?’

‘Oh yeah. It seems his pa would like to see his little boy make something of his life. Toby is a bit of a waster, after all, and since Old Man Rutherford worked his way up from nothing to get what he has now, he doesn’t want to see him piss it all away. What’s that saying – “Rags to riches to rags in two generations”?’

‘So his father wants him to get himself sorted with a career?’

‘Seems like it. He keeps shunting him around his various companies, trying to get him to stay somewhere for more than just a few weeks but it never seems to last.’

Bingo. Something was now beginning to fall into place.

‘Still,’ continued Sean, brightly, ‘if you’re that interested you can ask him about it yourself on Saturday.’

‘Sorry?’ I had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Sure,’ he went on. ‘Didn’t you know? He’s doing the competition in Copenhagen with us.’

Fifteen

The Danes are just fantastic. I mean, really,
really
lovely people. From the moment we arrived in Copenhagen, it seemed like everybody was falling over themselves to be helpful.

Take that Friday evening, for example.

A few years ago Copenhagen Airport received a major award for being one of the world’s best, and it wasn’t hard to see why. It was bright, clean, well-signposted, and appeared to be very efficient. It was only after we had collected our bags and gone through customs, that we understood how closely it reflected the whole cultural identity of the Danish capital. Having never before travelled abroad for a tournament I was hugely relieved to find my fencing bag had arrived where it should be, unscathed and intact. We walked straight out into the airport concourse and up to the booths where you bought train tickets, where a very polite lady, who probably spoke better English than me, patiently corrected my mis-pronunciation of our destination before handing them over.

Once on the platform we began carefully scrutinizing the route diagram, and another very polite lady, this one a member of the public, came over and asked us, in flawless English, if we needed help.

Once we had made it to Copenhagen Central Station we needed to transfer to the S-Train line to Valby, the suburb where the tournament was being held, and we were approached by a third very polite lady who steered us in the right direction.

Once on the S-Train, the very efficient metro system which shuttles around the capital, I made the mistake of taking the map out again, just to rea
ssure myself that I knew how to get to our hotel. This, coupled with our distinctly English voices, was just the cue yet another helpful Dane needed, although it wasn’t a polite lady this time.

No, this time it was a polite, male drunk.

This chap looked like he had just finished off a hard week at the office by getting a good few drinks under his belt, and was now making his way home. He had clearly heard where we were headed and decided he was going to make sure we got there safely. It’s funny, but in most other European cities I might have been a bit suspicious of a drunk approaching us like that, but we were, by now, beginning to get a feel for how the people of Copenhagen operate.

Once off the train at Valby he pointed down the right road. He then set off ahead of us, striding purposefully forward, but glancing back over his shoulder now and again to make sure we didn’t take a wrong turning. Once we had reached the doors of our hotel, he just vanished into the night.

Sue wondered if Valby had been his stop at all. Maybe everybody in Copenhagen, she conjectured, takes it upon themselves to look after foreigners by going out of their way to help.

It was getting on for nine o’clock by the time we checked in. Neither of us fancied going out to try and find something to eat, so we ordered pizzas from the very polite lady staffing the reception desk, and settled in to our room.

Sue was a lot more relaxed than I had seen her for a while. It had been nearly a week since we had had any upsets at the hands of our mysterious adversary, the time spent at Amy’s had obviously done her the world of good, and it had been really good to get her back. I had not told her anything of Derek’s findings about Doktor Chuckles, or my trip up to the university, and it seemed that the whole business wasn’t intruding into her consciousness. I would never want to deceive her, and if she had asked me anything about it then I would have told her the absolute truth, but I was glad that I didn’t have to. If she could relax and enjoy our time here it would be a very good thing.

I didn’t want to tell her that the person I suspected of being our mystery stalker was here in Copenhagen with us.

*                  *                  *                 *

I really was a bundle of nerves that Saturday morning. All through breakfast, and the short cab journey down to Valbyhallen, the vast hall where the tournament was being held, I was on edge. This was the most important competition I had ever entered, and I felt that however I conducted myself it reflected on British fencing as a whole.

I really didn’t want to screw up.

I warmed up, and had a quick few hits out
on one of the pistes with Sean before they called the pools for the first round. I had seen Toby, briefly, as I jogged around the hall. He had chosen to plant himself on the opposite side, about as far away from Sue and myself as possible, and he said nothing as I passed him. He just gave me a dark look, which was a cross between a grimace and a scowl.

Surely he couldn’t really be the one behind it all? I mean, he was an annoying little git, but was he really
that
unhinged that he would do all those things?

The call went out for us to gather over by the tournament director’s table, and we duly pulled on our tracksuits and trooped across. The competition, they explained, would consist of two rounds of pools, followed by a direct elimination. There were
fifty-three in the men’s epee event, from eleven different nations, and it was impossible to accurately establish a seeding just by using the fencers’ national rankings. The first round, therefore, would be used purely to seed the second round. The results
only
from the second round, where we had been sorted by ability according to our earlier performance, would be used to seed the DE.

I wasn’t that bothered at this stage. I just wanted to get on with it. I figured that however they organised the competition it wouldn’t affect me too much.

I hauled my bag over to piste number nine, where I found I was in a pool with two Danes, a German, a Finn, a Swede and a Frenchman. I didn’t recognise any of them, but they all looked a lot more relaxed than I was feeling. They must have all done this sort of thing a hundred times before, I thought. I am going to get pasted.

My first fight, against the young lad from Sweden, was the second bout in the pool. I swear it was the nerves making me feel tight, but I didn’t quite have the measure of him, even though I realised he wasn’t actually
that
good. He took the fight 5-4, but it could have gone my way, if only I’d been a bit more fluid.

Maybe, just maybe, I thought, I might not disgrace myself here after all.

My second bout, against the German, Hahn, took ages to get going. A thin, serious looking young man with glasses, he clearly hadn’t sorted his kit out beforehand, and he got himself an immediate red card before we had even begun by having two epees which failed the weight test.

That was encouraging, surely, I thought. If he hasn’t even tuned his weapons before the tournament he must be something of a novice, although what he
was doing in a “B” grade international heaven alone knew. I was already one hit up, so I figured the victory was mine.

Unfortunately, whilst he may have been sloppy about his equipment, there was nothing sloppy about his parry riposting. His was blindingly quick, and very tidy, and I found myself on the wrong side of a 5-2 defeat before I knew it.

As I came off the piste I tried not to let Sue see how I was feeling. This could all prove to have been a big waste of time, money and effort, and if Toby got further than me in this company then everybody on the epee circuit back in Britain would soon know about it.

I was determined to play it more cautiously in my third fight, against the Finn, Sorkinnen. Whatever happened, I was going to hang back, and not make the same mistakes I had made against Hahn. It nearly paid off, too, although after the string of doubles which took us to four all he finally sussed out my timing and managed to get the final hit as a single.

Bugger. I had now racked up three straight defeats in a row. It was a long time since that had happened, and it was a feeling I wasn’t used to. As I unclipped myself and plodded back to the end of the piste I wondered what I could possibly say to Sue which could put this right.

There were no excuses. I must just
be hopelessly out of my depth. She said nothing, but handed me my drink bottle and place a hand gently on my shoulder. That one gesture alone was exactly what I needed. It’s okay, she seemed to be saying.

Just before I took to the piste for my fourth bout I strolled over to the president to take a look at the pool sheet, and noticed that Sorkinnen had already got four straight victories.

‘That’s only what you’d expect,’ the guy presiding said, in perfect English. ‘He’s the Finnish number one, and he’s ranked one hundred and third in the world.’

It gave me a boost. Not much, but it was enough. As I squared up against Nielsen, the older of the two Danes I had to face, I began to believe that I could still turn this around.

Now, if I’m brutally honest I would have to say that Nielsen was probably the weakest in our pool of seven, but that didn’t really matter. I had total control throughout the fight, and my 5-2 victory was no more than I deserved. I was back in the winning groove and that was all that mattered.

The relief on Sue’s face was enormous. I could tell that she had been getting really worried at the prospect of trying to console me if I bombed out completely. I gave her the closest thing to a hug I could, given that I was dripping with sweat, and told her that it was going to be alright.

Three down and one up. Not where I would have wanted to be, but it was better than nothing. Now, what could I pull out of the bag in my last two fights?

The first of these was against the Frenchman, Poulet. He was clearly a hot-blooded, forceful type of fencer, who really liked to be on the attack. Fine. Let him, I thought. Why should I waste energy taking the fight to him, when all his body language was shouting out his intentions well in advance?

It was the best fencing I had produced so far that day, my combination of stop hits and ripostes quickly putting me three hits up. With time running out, he knew he had to keep attacking, which suited me perfectly.

It was the turning point in the whole day for me. I eventually won 4-1 at full time, and I realised that I
wasn’t
out of my depth after all. These weren’t fencers from Planet Krypton, they were regular guys like me.

And they were
beatable.

Afterwards, Sue said the change in me was really noticeable. My head was up, and there was a fire in my eye. This was the man she had seen reaching the semi-final of the Oxford Open two weeks earlier.

The young Dane, Larsson, didn’t know what had hit him in the last fight. Sure, he got a couple of lucky doubles, but there was no way he was going to take me. As we came off the piste I could see he felt he would never have won that particular bout.

And somehow, I couldn’t help feeling that he was quite right.

On checking the pool sheet I was astonished to see that I hadn’t done so badly after all. With three victories and three defeats, and a good indicator, I had actually come third in the pool.

Third!

It was incredible. Less than forty minutes ago it looked like I was going to crash and burn, and now there was every chance I would be in the top half going into the second round!

I had a couple of jaffa cakes and drank about a litre of water, then pulled on my tracksuit. Whatever happened now, I could relax. I hadn’t disgraced myself or my country. I couldn’t remember when I had last felt so relieved at a tournament. 

*                  *                  *                  *

There was yet another agonizing wait before the first round rankings were posted, as the organisers had to get the women’s event under way. When they finally stuck the lists up I was amazed to see that I’d actually come out of it rather well.

I was ranked 22
nd
overall, whilst Sean, who had also got three victories but with a worse indicator, was three places behind me. Toby had actually managed one victory in his pool, which put him down in the forties somewhere.

So, maybe my presence there wasn’t so inappropriate, I thought.

Later that day Sue told me that the fencing I produced in the second round was the best she had ever seen from me. I was confident, but controlled. I was patient and restrained, but had the fire when I needed it. I varied my style exactly as the circumstances dictated: I attacked when I could see my opponent was weak in defence; I parry riposted or stop hit when I could see half-hearted attacks coming in; and I threw in some brilliant second intention moves, picking up my opponent’s counter attacks and dominating the fights.

With each victory I grew stronger. I began to believe in myself more and more. I’m doing my country proud, I thought. The fencers in this pool will never underestimate a British fencer again.

Unfortunately, it was my confidence which ultimately produced my only upset of the pool. Having defeated a Czech, a Norwegian, two Swedes, and a Dutchman, I reasoned that there was absolutely no threat from the Swiss, Krauss. He must have been in his early fifties, I suppose, and surely wasn’t going to pose a problem to me. Not when I was fencing that well.

Pride goet
h before a fall, they say, and I certainly fell at his hands. I blundered straight into my only defeat in the pool.

Okay, so it was a mistake, but at least I have learned from it. I will never again underestimate an opponent in epee just because they are old.