Hand In Glove Part 16

"Colin, for G.o.d's-"

"Why not come out and say it? You don't much care whether I'm guilty or innocent. Either way, you think I deserve what I've got coming. Just like everybody else."

Derek knew hardship and frustration were what had driven Colin to throw such accusations in his face. But the knowledge did not make them any easier to bear. "This is ridiculous," he protested. "I'm doing everything I can to help you."

"Is that a fact? Well, you could have fooled me." Colin leaned forward across the table, fixing Derek with his bloodshot eyes. "Or perhaps it's just that help from you is indistinguishable from hindrance."

Derek flinched. "Is that what you really think?"

"Yes. It really is."

In Wales, Charlotte's day pa.s.sed listlessly, with no word from Frank Griffith. By the evening, she and Emerson had agreed they could leave matters in his hands no longer. They would return to Hendre Gorfelen next day, invited or not. Emerson's argument was that if Griffith intended to co-operate, they would already have heard from him. If not, they had nothing to lose.

Charlotte was less certain. Griffith was not a man to be rushed or crowded. He had laid down the terms on which he might be approached. To disregard them was to court failure. Yet they could not wait indefinitely. Somehow, at some time, the issue had to be forced.

And so it was, but not by them. When Charlotte returned to her room after dinner, the telephone rang before she had even closed the door.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Miss Ladram?"

"Mr Griffith. I thought you'd never call."

"So did I. But we were both wrong, weren't we? Are you alone?"

"Yes."

"Can you be here at seven o'clock tomorrow morning?"

"Seven o'clock?"

"Too early for you, is it?"

"No. Not at all. We'll be there, Mr Griffith, rest a.s.sured."

"You misunderstand. I mean just you, Miss Ladram. Not Doctor McKitrick. I'll talk to you alone-or not at all."

"But-"

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R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

"I'm not open to argument. Take it or leave it." He paused, then added: "Should I expect you?"

Charlotte hesitated only momentarily before answering. "Yes, Mr Griffith. You should."

CHAPTER.

NINETEEN.

Driving alone through the green and empty heart of Wales early that summer Sunday, Charlotte felt as if the world had been newly made and revealed to her. The colours of sky and gra.s.s were clarified, the sounds of birdlife and running water magnified, till nothing beyond the hills where Frank Griffith had found and made his home seemed real any longer.

At Hendre Gorfelen, the dog sat waiting in the yard, snapping at stray flies that floated in the sunshine. It p.r.i.c.ked up its ears when Charlotte drove into sight and barked twice, but did not stir even when she climbed from the car and walked towards the house.

The door opened before she reached it and Frank Griffith stepped out to meet her. He was bare-headed, his grey hair thin and crew-cut, and he was smoking a pipe, holding it oddly by the stem a little short of the bowl. His shirt and trousers were ironed and pressed, as if in honour of her visit, and she felt quite touched by the smartness of his appearance. But he was not smiling. Indeed, looking at him, she could scarcely imagine a smile crossing his lined and wary face.

"You came, then," he said neutrally.

"Surely you knew I would."

He nodded. "And McKitrick?"

"I'm alone, as you can see."

"Good."

"Why didn't you want me to bring Emerson?"

"Because I don't trust him."

"But you do trust me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

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93.

"Because Beatrix said I could. Quite a compliment, isn't it?"

"Yes . . . I . . ."

"How did you know she helped me buy Hendre Gorfelen?"

"It was just a guess. She helped Lulu Harrington in a similar way."

"And others too, no doubt. She was a fine woman. And a foul-weather friend: the best kind."

"She came here every year?"

"Yes. Every year since I bought the place. Since we bought it, I should say. That was in 1953. How she explained her trips before the arrangement with Lulu I don't know." He glanced up at the sky, then said: "It's going to be a grand day. Will you step up to the top with me?

You'll enjoy the view, I think."

Instructing the dog to stay where it was, he led Charlotte up a narrow path adjoining the entrance to the yard. It wound up between stone walls to a stile in the corner of a steeply sloping field, where sheep were busily grazing. Griffith set off across the field at an angle, setting a pace Charlotte found difficult to match. "Did you . . . farm before you . . . came here, Mr Griffith?" she panted.

"No. I'm a Swansea boy, born and bred. The first time I came to the mountains was on a steelworks outing. I knew then it was where I wanted to end up. Never thought I would, though. Never would have, come to that, but for Beatrix. It was a better cure for what ailed me than a dozen doctors had prescribed."

"And what . . . did ail you?"

"People. People and what they do to each other."

"Is that why . . . you didn't want anybody . . . to know you were here?"

"In part. Beatrix understood. I don't expect you to."

"How did you . . . first meet her?"

They arrived at another stile on the farther side of the field. Here Griffith stopped and waited for Charlotte to catch her breath. The land fell away sharply behind them, a tumbling succession of stone-walled fields dotted with sheep and interspersed with thickly wooded coombes, all bathed in sharp morning sunlight. The mountainous horizon to the west created the illusion that this landscape was limitless, that nothing save ever-rolling hills lay between it and infinity.

Griffith re-lit his pipe and gazed about him, Charlotte's question apparently forgotten.

"It's a lovely spot," she ventured.

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"It is that."

"I was asking . . . wondering, that is . . ."

"When I came home from Spain in December 1938, I called on your mother to tell her how her husband had died. I'd written to her previously, enclosing his few papers and possessions, but it seemed only right to pay my respects in person. I'd admired Tristram Abberley long before I met him, on account of his poems. A copy of The Brow of the Hill was one of the few items of luggage I took to Spain. To find myself fighting alongside him was a great honour. So, naturally, I did what I could for him after his death. I visited your mother. And then I visited Beatrix. She insisted I stay with her at that little cottage in Rye for a week or more while she fed me up and listened to me talking about her brother. G.o.d knows what the neighbours thought." He paused, then added: "Not that there was anything for them to think."

Was that true? Charlotte wondered. Had she stumbled on an old and secret love affair? Beatrix had always seemed immune to such emotions, but she had also been adept at concealing what she really thought or felt. "You don't have to explain yourself to me, Mr Griffith."

"No? I rather thought I did." He sucked at his pipe for a moment, then said: "Well, let that pa.s.s. When I left Rye just before Christmas, 1938, I never expected to see Beatrix again. She urged me to keep in touch-to let her know if I ever needed any help-but I no more took her offer seriously than I envisaged having to take her up on it. I intended to go back to Swansea, find work and forget everything about Spain."

"Was fighting there such a disillusioning experience?"

"Fighting anywhere's a disillusioning experience. But that's no bad thing. The illusion is to believe it can be enough merely to fight.

I see that now. Now I'm too old for it to matter. I went to Spain because I was as short of money as I was of patience with a rotten, raddled system. Marked down because I was self-educated, well-read and not about to say "thank you very much" when a cigar-sucking manager told me I had to take a pay cut in the interests of the company's shareholders. Betrayed by so-called socialists like Ramsay MacDonald.

Punished for the ultimate sin of not knowing my place. To men like me, communism represented the best-the only-hope for the future. A stand had to be taken. Against capitalism. Against fascism.

Against the entire cla.s.s system. That's why I went to Spain. And that's H A N D I N G L O V E.

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why I was sickened by what I found there. Because it was no more a crusade than any other war. Because settling old scores and winning internecine squabbles mattered more to the Republican rag-bag of an army than ensuring the defeat of fascism. Which is why, of course, it wasn't defeated. And why my faith in my fellow man finally was.

They gave us a farewell parade in Barcelona. And, when we reached Victoria station, they cheered us to the rafters. But they were nowhere to be seen when I returned to Swansea. Cold shoulders and dark looks were the only welcome I had there-from family and from friends. I was an embarra.s.sment to one and all. I'd not only been stupid enough to go to Spain, I'd been inconsiderate enough to come back alive."

"What did you do?"

"Survived as best I could. Served in the Army during the Second World War. Did my little bit to kill off fascism, in Germany and Italy if not in Spain. Afterwards, I drifted. I must have had a dozen different jobs in a dozen different towns before . . ." He tapped his forehead.

"Before something snapped here and I fetched up in a mental hospital, trying to glue it back together again. I mentioned Beatrix's offer to one of the doctors, apparently. I can't remember doing it. But he wrote to her on my behalf and she responded. She became a regular visitor. And eventually she became a friend. The farm was her idea for when I was well enough to leave hospital. And it was a good one.

Out here, I don't have to listen to lies or breathe polluted air or swallow my principles. Sheep don't pretend to be clever, you see. They're just grateful for the life they lead for as long as they lead it. And so am I."

"Was it you or Beatrix who wanted to keep your friendship a secret?"

"It was both of us. Beatrix because she didn't want her family to think her gullible or sentimental. And I because I didn't want people like Emerson McKitrick beating a path to my door looking for t.i.t-bits of knowledge about Tristram Abberley's last days."

"What did Beatrix do here?" Charlotte hesitated as the impu-dence of the question dawned on her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"She tramped the hills. She cooked meals for me. We reminisced.

We laughed. We quarrelled. We spent time together."

"Every June-for more than thirty years?"