A Pack of Lies (17 page)

She replied calmly, ‘Then I see my heart was wise to lose its love for you little by little. For you are a bigot and a mad zealot and love has no place in you.’

‘But I love . . .’ He seemed torn between fury and desolation. He paused until fury got the upper hand. ‘Very well,’ he said icily. ‘Let a minister of the Church be summoned and let him marry you here, before my face. Then and then only will I believe that this . . . this creature of yours has taken no priestly vows of celibacy and single life. Well, Jesuit? What do you say?’

The boy was trembling so violently that he could not say a word. His mental struggle was written on his face. ‘My name is Peter Kirby, sir,’ was all he said at last.

Eliott could have called for a bible then and there and got the boy to swear away his faith. But such was the confusion of misery in Priestcatcher Eliott that he was driven on as sure as a man laying a whip to his own back.

The minister came. Eliott saw to it that bride and groom were never left alone together, had no chance for private words, though they sat together on the linen press like gauche sweethearts. But while Eliott told the flustered, dusty minister what was needed of him, Eleanor whispered into Father Kirby’s ear, ‘Never fear! After, you may escape abroad and return to your order.’ The boy only groaned and rocked to and fro and stared into her face as though she were too far away for words to reach.

Richard Eliott never doubted that Kirby was a priest. But he saw his own torture through to the bitter end. No priest he had put to the rack ever suffered as he suffered, forcing his betrothed into marriage with another man, blighting all his hopes and happiness by his own spite. Every minute he hoped to hear the Jesuit break down and confess rather than betray his calling. But Kirby, it seemed, was too afraid, too terrified of torture and hanging to admit to his faith.

When the ceremony ended, Eliott stood with drooping shoulders and a bent head and stared at the gaping wooden press he had intended for his bride’s trousseau.

‘Are you satisfied, Richard?’ asked Eleanor, and the eyes of the whole family told him to go, for he had no more excuse to stay.

When everyone was gone but bride and groom, the boy sat down on the press, buried his head in his hands and burst into tears. ‘I have broken my vows! I’ve betrayed my calling and my order!’

Eleanor began again to reassure him that he had not. ‘So long as we do not live together as man and wife . . .’ she said. ‘And it was no true marriage in the face of God because the minister was not of the true Roman faith! We aren’t married at all!’

But he caught hold of her hands and wrung them violently, furiously. ‘No! No, you foolish woman! No! Don’t you understand yet? For why did I not speak
when he forced us to a marriage? For why did I keep silent?’

‘For fear, I dare say, but there’s no shame in a man feeling . . .’

‘Fear? What has a true priest to fear from the likes of Priestcatcher Eliott? When I first came here and I thought you would betray me, I felt no fear, for I had the certainty of a place in Heaven. Oh Eleanor, fear didn’t seal up my mouth. It was Love, woman. Love. Because hiding here day by day, preaching to you, watching you and your family grow in the faith, I forgot to love you as a shepherd loves his flock and I found myself loving you as a man loves a wife. I didn’t speak because I
wanted
to be wed to you — because I love you above my immortal soul.’ He gave a bitter sort of laugh. ‘So you have betrayed Eliott. Eliott has betrayed his heart and I have betrayed God. A nice piece of work, lady. A nice piece of work.’

And he kicked the carved wooden press as though it were a living thing and it too could feel pain.

* * *

The lugubrious young gentleman in black was overjoyed. ‘I too have had my heart broken!’ he declared, slapping his hand to his chest in case they were in any doubt as to where he kept this unfortunate heart. ‘I shall place it in my rooms at college and fill it with poetry to HER, and when I die, SHE may have it and WEEP!’

MCC grinned and shook his head and got up smartly from the bottom rung of the step-ladder to help lift the chest. The ladder wobbled, and Ailsa, reaching out a hand to steady herself at the top, pulled a span of books from the top shelf. They tumbled down the steps of the ladder, shedding covers and sleeves.

Ailsa and her mother were presented with the sight of fifty-pound notes cascading like a waterfall from ceiling to floor — one from between every page of an epic hardback romance.

Neither MCC nor the self-absorbed student looked round, but lifted and carried the wooden chest, with considerable grunting and panting, out to the boy’s expensive convertible sports car. Before MCC returned, alone, holding the student’s cheque, Ailsa and her mother had gathered up seventeen thousand pounds and were both sitting side by side on the
chaise longue
in a state of shock. He put the cheque in the till and, without seeming to glance at the fallen books or the trembling proprietress, said, ‘I daresay it’s the reason Birdman Sweeney was so very upset about the theft from his luxury penthouse. I suppose you moved the book off the little bookcase that the police took away, and put it on the top shelf when you . . . you reorganized, Mrs Povey. You just happen to have chosen the book where Mr Sweeney kept his small change. I understand he is quite a successful gangster.’

Mrs Povey wanted to return the money at once. She looked up Mr Sweeney in the telephone directory and went directly round to his luxury penthouse. But Mr Sweeney was not there to take back his stolen property.

‘Birdman was nicked this morning, missus,’ said the butler, peering round the door. ‘Latvian Johnny fingered him for the Mons Street job soon as he was collared by the Old Bill. No honour among thieves these days, as I sees it.’ And he shut the door in her face.

She was all of a sudden, as MCC put it, unavoidably rich.

Chapter Eleven

The Lead Soldier:
A Story of Pride

The following evening Ailsa was lying in bed (wondering why her heart was still in her mouth despite the family business being finally secure) when she heard a noise downstairs which made her unaccountably burst into tears. It was the murmur of conversation between her mother and MCC, and she had not heard a man and woman talking downstairs since her father died. It was a good noise. She had not realized how much she missed it. A person could relax and stop worrying when there were coffee-cups and voices drowning out the tick of the handless clock and the clicking of the basketware chairs in the shop. She was too happy to sleep. She got up, washed her face and sat on the top stair with her knees drawn up to her chin. She could just see MCC over the rim of the stairwell, leaning back against the living-room table.

The first thing she heard dispelled the magic.

‘It doesn’t mean you have to leave,’ said her mother’s voice doubtfully.

‘But you’d rather I did.’

‘It might be better. I mean you could take the money. It’s yours by rights. You bought in the book.’

‘I don’t want the money,’ he said impatiently.

‘Not even half? Well, we really ought to discuss wages at least. All these weeks you’ve been working here for nothing.’

MCC disappeared suddenly from sight into the darkened shop and came back and set a single lead toy soldier down in the centre of the table.

‘That’s off the bric-à-brac table,’ said Mrs Povey, puzzled.

‘Yes. Can I have it?’

‘Of course you can have it. Don’t be silly.’

‘Thank you,’ and he put it into his breast pocket. ‘Now I’ve been paid.’

The next moment he was leaning agitatedly on the arm of Mrs Povey’s chair. ‘But what’s wrong with me? What have you got against me? Is it my age?’

‘No! What age are you?’

Ailsa did not catch his answer. ‘Well, is it because I have no money?’

‘No. I told you, the money’s yours if you want it . . . and anyway, I think you knew it was there in the book before we found it.’

‘That’s it, then! You think I was in league with Latvian Johnny or Birdman Sweeney. Ha! You think I’m a criminal on the run! I swear I’m not!’

‘Don’t be foolish. Of course I don’t think that. It’s just that you seem to know a lot more than is quite . . . Look here, MCC. I don’t know anything about you. I mean who are your people? Where’s your family home? What’s your
real
name?’

There was no answer.

‘All right, then. Where are your belongings? Don’t you own anything? Don’t you have a change of clothing anywhere — in a suitcase in a lost property office perhaps? Nothing?’

MCC patted his breast pocket. ‘I have this. It’s a beginning,’ he said hopefully.

‘But that’s what I’m getting at. Where are your
own
toy soldiers, MCC? What became of the toy-box you had as a child? Where did you grow up? Where were you born? Where’s home?’

There was an extremely long pause. MCC took out
the lead soldier again and looked into its blobby, badly painted face. ‘My great-grandfather was a general in the Boer War.’

‘That’s a long way to go back,’ said Mrs Povey dubiously. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re going to tell me a story?’

‘Everyone’s personal history is a story,’ said MCC woundedly. ‘But I won’t tell one if you don’t want me to.’

‘Oh go ahead, do.’

He hesitated, as if collecting the words of the story together in his head. His face took on a great sadness. Mrs Povey clearly saw it, for her old apologetic voice returned just for an instant. ‘I only want what’s best for Ailsa.’

‘That’s dangerous,’ he said, placing the lead soldier precisely in the centre of the table again.

‘I think I know what’s best for my own child!’ Mrs Povey retorted hotly.

But MCC had squatted down beside the table and had his chin resting on its edge, looking at and beyond the soldier through one eye, as if it were the sights of a rifle. Ailsa crept two stairs lower and forgot that she was trembling from head to foot.

* * *

‘You shame me, boy!’

Wellington George Armstrong stood on the hearthrug between the two winged chairs which flanked the blazing fire. On the one side sat his godfather, silent, smoking; on the other his father, shouting and as red-faced as the King’s Scarlet. Wellington George Armstrong bowed his head.

‘Stand up straight, boy! Stand to attention!’ blared his father. ‘I would have thought that uniform had backbone in it even if you haven’t. You shame me in front of your godfather!’

‘I don’t mean to, sir.’

The General gave a snort of disgust and, taking a pair of walnuts from the dish beside his chair, cracked them together between his two hands, as if he would have liked to do something similar to his son. ‘Cowardice! I never thought to give life to a coward! I’d sooner have stayed a bachelor.’ He threw the broken shells into the fire where they burned with a series of pistol-crack explosions. The General seemed to take delight in the start his son gave at the noise, thinking it proof of cowardice. What he did not quite realize was that a shard of hot shell had flown off the coals and struck the boy’s hand. Wellington George Armstrong bit his lip. The pain of the interview was far greater.

‘It isn’t that I
don’t
want to be in the army, sir. It’s just that I
do
want to be a doctor, sir,’ he said, but the heat from the fire behind him felt like a foretaste of Hell whose oven doors stood open in wait for him for speaking such blasphemy.

‘Don’t bandy words with me, boy. You’ve been bred a soldier, educated for a soldier, dressed as a soldier — and now you say you don’t want to be a soldier. You want to be a doctor instead! It’s a coward’s excuse. It’s a callous, wilful slight on me and on your grandfather and on his father before him! Cowardice makes a fellow spiteful. I’ve seen it in the regiments. A coward’s always out to make the unkind cut. Well, you’ve hurt me, boy, if it gives you any satisfaction. You’ve really put the blade to my heart and twisted it, boy, and things will never be the same between you and me!’

Wellington George Armstrong was helpless to defend himself. He was well aware that his father’s feelings were indeed hurt — that he was probably heart-broken by the announcement that his only son did not want to be a soldier. It had taken every ounce of courage Wellington could muster to speak his mind. That courage had quickly run out. Everything his father said was true: he was a coward. He had come home from the military
academy determined to be a doctor instead of a soldier. His trunk was not yet unpacked and his resolve was already weakening.

He had steeled himself against all the wrong things. The beating and the bellowing he had foreseen. But one glimpse of the misery behind his father’s bulging eyes and Wellington was all set to surrender, to crumble, to give in and to be a soldier.

If only his godfather would intervene! Wellington had staked all his hopes on Uncle Charlie: he was an army surgeon, after all, and ought to understand. And he had always been sympathetic, in the letters they exchanged during termtime. But now he just sat in the wing-chair and smoked and smiled and smiled and smoked, as Wellington’s resolve melted away.

‘I’ll give you one last chance,’ growled the General in a menacing, low voice. ‘Give up this fool’s idea of yours and swear allegiance to the regiment as you did on your eighth birthday with your poor mother looking on. Your hand on Halbeard! Do it!’

Oh how well Wellington remembered that eighth birthday, that ritual swearing of loyalty to the family regiment, his hands hardly able to reach the stuffed head of a past regimental mascot which hung over the fireplace. Five years later the mangy old hound still glared out into the room, baring its yellow teeth, its glassy eyes dulled by soot from the fire. Halbeard, the dead mascot, growled down at Wellington, full of disappointment. Wellington quailed, his determination and all his hopes ebbing into the hearthrug. He reached up to put his hand into the open, mummified mouth . . .

‘Tell you what!’ exclaimed Uncle Charlie, lurching forwards in his chair with an amiable grin. ‘Why don’t you fight it out on the battlefield — the two of you — man to man?’