Hand In Glove Part 26

"OK. Maybe it does. But listen. Do you know what was in the letters?" His smile remained, rueful and cynical, not one whit abashed or ashamed. "I have to find out."

She stepped back, certain now that he was innocent of what she had suspected, just as she was certain of his guilt on almost every other count. "You disgust me," she snapped.

He shrugged. "It's an occupational hazard."

"Get out of my way." She moved towards the front door, but he stepped into her path and she pulled up. Still he was smiling, with a sparkle of duplicity in his deep brown eyes.

"Shall I tell you what really disgusts you, Charlie?"

"If you must."

"Still wanting me." He stretched out his hand and, before Charlotte could stop him, slid it down over her breast. "Perhaps wanting me even more now you know what's available."

It was the faint trace of truth in his remark-the incontestable stirring of desire she had felt whilst standing there and listening to what he had done to Ursula-that gouged the deepest. Why did he have to be so loathsome and yet so close to understanding her?

"What's in the letters? You wouldn't regret telling me. I guarantee it."

She pushed his hand away and stared at him. "I'd regret telling you anything. That I guarantee."

"Harsh words, Charlie."

"But meant. Sincerely meant. Unlike a single one of yours. Now, may I leave please?"

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"Sure. I'm not stopping you." He raised his palms in a gesture of surrender. "Go right ahead."

And she did, through the door and up the drive, walking fast without looking back, steeling herself neither to flinch nor falter, holding back the tears till she had reached the privacy of her car and could hold them back no longer. Then, amidst her sobs, she took from her handbag the florist's card he had sent her that bore his flourishing signature. The first large ominous drops of a cloudburst were falling as she wound down the window and cast out the torn fragments.

Then she started the engine and accelerated away.

CHAPTER.

FIVE.

All the strength and self-a.s.surance Frank Griffith had seemed to possess when encountered on his home territory had vanished in the antiseptic surroundings of the Kent and Suss.e.x Hospital. Looking at him, Derek saw only a frail and wizened old man, propped up on a bank of pillows with deckchair-striped pyjamas fastened stiffly round his neck, barely distinguishable in fact from the dozing and dribbling occupants of the other beds in the ward. His eyes had grown dimmer, his voice more gravelly, since their last encounter.

"I didn't steal the letters, Mr Griffith."

"I know."

"Or pay anybody else to."

"I know that too. If you had, you'd have realized by now they couldn't help your brother."

"Maybe so. I only hope something can."

"Why? Why do you care?"

"Because he is my brother, come what may."

"I thought I had brothers once. Hundreds of them. Thousands."

Griffith's gaze moved past Derek and beyond, it seemed, even the wall behind him. "I should have known better."

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"But blood's thicker than water."

"Not at my age. Not at any age if-" He broke off and looked back at Derek. "What did you say you do for a living?"

"I'm an accountant."

Griffith nodded. "Balancing the books."

"Sometimes."

"Not these books though. They're long past balancing."

"Not necessarily."

"They are. Believe me."

"How can I, when you won't tell me what I need to know?"

Griffith fell silent for a moment. A gurgling coughing fit came and went further down the ward, as it had done twice before. Then he said: "What kind of a man is your brother, Mr Fairfax?"

"Colin? He's an antique dealer, as you know. A bit shady, I suppose. I shouldn't care to be responsible for his accounts."

"But what kind of a man?"

"Charming. Entertaining. Plausible. Lovable, in a way. Also vain, untrustworthy and thoroughly unreliable."

"But still you try to help him?"

"Who else would if I didn't?"

"Would he do the same for you?"

"I don't know. The situation's never arisen. Except . . ."

"Except?"

"When we were boys, in Bromley, back in the 'forties, our father built a swimming-pool in the garden. He thought we should both learn to swim. And so we did, though I never much took to it, whereas Colin . . . Well, one day, when Mum and Dad were both out, it must have been the summer I was five, I fell in while larking about on the edge and knocked my head on the side. I must have lost consciousness, because I can't remember anything after hitting the water. Colin was climbing a tree at the bottom of the garden. A big old oak, it was. He saw what happened, saw me floating face down in the pool, must have realized I was going to drown. So, he scrambled down, raced up the garden, jumped in and pulled me out. He saved my life. But for him, I wouldn't be here now."

"So, you see this as repayment of a debt?"

"No. I don't. That's not it. I'd be doing this whether or not-" A change of expression on Griffith's face-a twitch of his eyes to the left-halted Derek in mid-sentence. When he looked round, it was to see Charlotte Ladram walking slowly down the ward towards them.

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Her face was flushed and even to Derek's eyes it was obvious she had been crying. "Miss Ladram," he said, rising to offer her his chair, "what's-"

"Emerson McKitrick didn't take the letters," she said in a flat and strangely matter-of-fact tone.

"Can you be sure?" asked Griffith.

"Absolutely." She subsided into the chair whilst Derek fetched another for himself. "Please don't ask me to explain."

"He's still here, then?" said Griffith. "In England?"

"Yes."

"Then I agree. He can't have taken them, can he?"

"No. If he had, he'd have gone straight back to Boston. He said as much himself." She sighed. "I'm sorry, Frank. Really I am." Then she sighed again. "How are you feeling? They tell me they're only keeping you in as a precautionary measure."

"For observation."

"That's right."

He grunted. "I don't like being observed."

"And you won't like what I'm about to say. But it has to be said."

"What is it?"

Derek saw her hands tighten into fists and guessed she had rehea.r.s.ed this speech long and hard. "I will do everything in my power to help you recover the letters, but unless you tell me what they contain-what Beatrix's secret was-then there is nothing I can do."

"You're asking too much."

"We have to be in this together, on equal terms, or not at all."

"But you don't understand the terms."

"Then help me to."

"Would it make things easier," put in Derek, "if I left?"

"Perhaps," said Charlotte.

But Griffith shook his head. "No. If I'm to tell you, I should tell you both."

"This is a family matter," said Charlotte. "Mightn't it be best-"

"No," Griffith insisted. "It's been a family matter too long. Let him stay. Maybe it will help his brother for him to understand what Tristram and Beatrix did."

"Very well," said Charlotte, glancing at Derek.

The imminence of the disclosure hung around them like an elec-trical charge in the air. They crouched forward in their chairs, as if expecting Griffith to whisper the secret in their ears. But when he 156 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

spoke, he did so in an unaltered tone. Now he had resolved to tell all, it seemed he had decided to tell it aloud.

CHAPTER.

SIX.

Bujaraloz, 7th September 1937 Dear Sis, I have reached the front. I've been judged worthy to share the hazards and privations of active military service in the wind-blasted heat-blistered battleground of Aragon. There's almost a s.n.a.t.c.h of poetry in that, don't you think?

But not enough. Not enough by far. It was ever thus, of course. The thought. The image. And now the act. But never the true and sparkling exact.i.tude of the right and perfect word. Unless it's a requiem. Maybe that at least I can hope to compose-or perhaps to inspire.

I must choose my words carefully. It's late to learn such a lesson, don't you think? But there it is. I can't, for obvious reasons, say much of what we're doing here or of how successful our efforts may be. What I can say is that it's grim and mad and maybe even pointless. But it's also glorious and wonderful and worthier than anything I've ever done before.

The battalion's been substantially reinforced with Spaniards, yet its British ident.i.ty remains. At its core are not the officers with their Ruritanian pretensions, their public-school accents and Communist credentials dazzlingly intact.

Oh no. They're so much candy-floss. What holds this battalion together-what binds its wounds and stiffens its sinews-are the rough tough crude complaining working cla.s.s. The Glaswegians and the Geordies, the Scousers and the Swansea H A N D I N G L O V E.

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boys who left the dole queues to come here and fight for freedom.

It's strange and bewildering, sometimes almost embarra.s.sing, to find out what putting principles into practice really means. Not pontification or pamphleteering. Not versifying, either. Nothing so easy or comfortable as any of that. It means marching when you're thirsty, humping loads when you're hungry, fighting when all you want to do is sleep. It means finding out what you're really made of. And not being ashamed by the answer.

There's a sergeant in my company called Frank Griffith.

Hard as granite. Bright as a diamond. Sure of himself. Unsure of what we're doing here. Sick of it, in fact. But he'll never show it. No fool. No hero. But the best and only kind you want beside you at times like these. He won't cut. He won't run. He won't ever let you down.

Do you know what book-what slim little intellectual volume-he carries in his pack? The other fellows told me and I've seen it for myself since, though he doesn't know I have.

The Brow of the Hill. Yes, that's right. The rotten Brow of the fraudulent Hill. Doesn't it make you want to laugh? Or weep?