In Pale Battalions (32 page)

I didn’t close the gap, sensed instead that it was necessary if she was to tell me what had happened.

“That Saturday night, I went to bed early. I usually did when Mompesson was visiting us. The strain of being polite to him exhausted me. I fell asleep more quickly than I had done in weeks.

“When I woke, I thought I was dreaming. John was there, above

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me, his hand over my mouth to prevent me crying out. An illusion, a nightmare: what else could it be? But then he spoke and I knew that he really had returned. And when he spoke, I knew that something had changed in him. The husband I had thought dead was still alive, but yet not whole, not restored to what he had been.

“ ‘I am not a ghost,’ he said, ‘and I am sorry you should ever have been led to believe I was dead.’ He sat on the bed and took his hand from my mouth. I did not cry out, though I could have done, for joy at his survival. I thought—in so far as I thought at all—that there had been some absurd mistake which he could now put right.

He told me he had entered the house secretly. Nobody but I knew he was there, or still alive. It was, he said, how he wanted it. And all that mattered to me in that moment was that my love had been restored to me. When I held him in my arms, I held a miracle.” She turned round and looked at me again. “Can you imagine what that meant to me, Tom?” “Did he tell you what had happened, how he had survived?”

“Later. I had slept a little and woke to find him standing by the window, smoking a cigarette and watching dawn break over the park. I saw him then more clearly than before: rough clothes, unshaven, no uniform, no luggage. With a shock, I realized he had the look of a fugitive. And something in the way he looked at me—the instant before he noticed I was awake—made me realize something was wrong.

“ ‘I’m going to have to leave you again,’ he said. ‘Officially, I must remain dead.’ Then he told me. His death was no bizarre misunderstanding, but a fraud. He had deserted. He said that he had thought of doing so often, that the war was an ugly, brutal farce he could no longer tolerate. When the opportunity had come, he had taken it. Cut off in no man’s land, he had left his papers on a dead companion and stolen away from the battlefield. He wouldn’t go into details, wouldn’t say where he’d been since then. He had come to me in the hope that I could somehow absolve him of the guilt that he felt, somehow divine what it was that he should do.

“But I couldn’t. That was when I failed him, at his time of greatest need. I love him and he loves me. I was—I still am—overjoyed that he did not die in France. But it isn’t as simple as that, is it? Doesn’t some part of you resent him as a traitor? Wouldn’t the 214

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whole world condemn him as a coward if they knew how he’d cheated death?”

What she’d said was true and I could only admit it. “John’s right: the war should not be allowed to continue. But, as long as it does, it will demand its due. It isn’t cowardly to seek a way out. In fact, it takes a special kind of bravery. But you’re right too: the world wouldn’t understand such an act.” She sighed. “That’s what I told him. That, sooner or later, he would be found, that what would happen then would be worse than to lose him in the war, however dreadful, however pointless.”

I thought of the punishment meted out to deserters. “It is so. It may still be so.”

“I urged him to go back to his regiment. Then he might have some chance of talking his way out of a charge of desertion. He said he didn’t think it would work, that they wouldn’t believe whatever story he invented. So I asked the question I most dreaded putting to him. If he did not give himself up, how could we remain together? If he was to stay in hiding, how long must I go on pretending he was dead?” I expected her to continue, but she did not. A silence fell, clarifying the rustle of the grass in the breeze around us. She seemed to need some prompting. “What was his answer?”

She shook her head. “He had none. He said that he saw the sense of what I was proposing, that what I’d told him only confirmed what he’d so often told himself. Yet something seemed to hold him back, something beyond mere indecision. It wasn’t as if he was hesitant, or nervous, or even much afraid. There was a calmness about him, a detachment I found more disturbing than anything else.

“Then he said he’d have to go. It was beginning to grow light: he couldn’t risk being seen. I tried to win from him some promise to do as I’d advised him, or, failing that, some agreement to meet me again, but he said he could guarantee nothing, beyond his love for me. Before he left, he mentioned you.” “What did he say?”

“He’d spoken of you before, of course, so your name wasn’t new to me. ‘Franklin may come to see you,’ he said. ‘If he lives. If he remembers. Keep the truth from him at all costs. But trust him. He deserves that.’ He was right: you do.”

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“Maybe. But I’ve been no help, to either of you.”

“That’s because John can only help himself. He left that Sunday morning and I’ve not seen him or heard from him since. I saw him slip into the trees at the edge of the park after one backward glance and I prayed then that he might not stray too far from me. I felt sure he would, after all, give himself up. Instead . . . nothing. No news, no word from him. To the world, he remained dead. As the days passed, so did the tension of waiting. I began, at times, to think I’d only dreamed his return. But it was not so. My own body gave the lie to it. When I realized that I was pregnant, I realized also the impossibility of my position. I could not keep John’s secret without seeming to have betrayed him. I could not sustain his family’s belief in him without destroying their belief in me. And the one man I needed most to confide in—whose mind might have been changed by my news—I did not know how to find.” “As you say: an impossible position.”

“But about to become worse. At the beginning of August, Mompesson showed his hand. He had often asked me to go for a drive with him. I had as often refused. This time I had no choice. ‘I wish to speak to you about your husband’s supposed death,’ he said.

‘Would you not rather do so in private?’ My blood ran cold. He knew.

“He drove out along the Winchester road and stopped near the golf course. There he told me. He had seen John leaving Meongate that Sunday morning in June. He knew he was alive and that I also knew. Now, he had had him traced to an address in Portsmouth. He would not give it to me, but this he made clear: unless I cooperated, he would go to the authorities. John would be seized and shot as a deserter. He left me in no doubt of it. Unless, as I say, I cooperated.” She turned away again and looked out to sea. “What choice did I have? I couldn’t call his bluff, because he wasn’t bluffing. I couldn’t warn John, because I didn’t know where he was. I could confide in no one. I was obliged to meet the terms that Mompesson set upon his silence. They were more severe than I’d imagined. He did not want money. He wanted me. You know something of his ways—I shall not speak of them. He wanted to use me as he would have done the slaves he felt were his birthright, denied him by history. For John’s sake—for no other reason, I promise you—I agreed to let him have his way.

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“That was not the worst. There was a heavier penalty still. He wanted to marry me. It was absurd, yet horribly cunning. We would know it was a bigamous marriage, of course, but nobody else would, so long as the secret was kept. And how could I not keep the secret?

How could I not agree? When he found out—through Olivia, I think—that I was pregnant, he was delighted. Everyone would assume he was the father: he would make it his business to ensure they did. So the marriage would hurt Lord Powerstock just as it pleased Mompesson.

“At heart, though, he still wanted Meongate more than he wanted me. I began to see how he might have planned it. To marry me was only the start. Posing as the innocent, he could then expose John and ruin both of us. Such a blow would kill Lord Powerstock, clearing the way for Mompesson to marry Olivia and acquire the estate and privileges he desired. By keeping John’s secret, I was only serving Mompesson’s ambition. Perhaps you think it fanciful, but that is how it seemed to me.” “It sounds all too likely.”

“Shall we walk on a way?” She moved off and I followed, trailing slowly along the overgrown path. Three girls, carrying butterfly nets, seemingly bound for East Dene, passed by and bade us courteous good mornings. When they’d gone, Leonora resumed. “I didn’t know what to do. There seemed no way out, no one to turn to. When you came, with your gentlemanly offers of friendship, it only made matters worse, only reminded me of the bitterness of my plight. I feared it might be so when Lord Powerstock said that he’d recognized your name on one of the lists Lady Kilsyth circulated, but I didn’t try to stop him inviting you. Besides, time was running out.

When Mompesson next came, he set a term on my compliance. I was given until last Friday to surrender myself to him.” She shuddered visibly in the warm air. “That was to be followed by an announcement of our engagement.”

“I had some inkling of it. I overheard part of your discussion with him in the rhododendron glade.”

She stopped and glanced at me. “But you could not have guessed what lay behind our words.”

“Only that he had some kind of hold over you.”

She nodded and moved on. “As truly he did. I think he enjoyed giving me so much time to contemplate what would happen.”

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“Before he left, he boasted that you would agree to marry him.”

“A measure of his confidence, and a warning to you, no doubt.

After he’d gone, I racked my brains for some way to defeat him. It seemed to me that my only hope was to contact John. All I knew was that he was somewhere in Portsmouth. But why? A naval town seemed a strange place for a deserter to hide. I thought about all that he’d said, went over it again and again. There was nothing in it to suggest why he’d gone there. Then, out of the blue, it came to me. Charter happened to say something about John’s mother. That wasn’t unusual. But it reminded me of her work in Portsmouth. It made no sense, but it was John’s only connection with the town. I resolved to go there, in search of a clue as much as of him.” “But I met you off the ferry and spoiled your plans.”

“Not exactly. I didn’t have any plans. Meeting you made me realize how futile my journey was. I still had no idea where to look.

When we returned to Meongate, I was no better off.”

We had come to the end of the path. It faded away amongst some gorse bushes where the sloping ground steepened towards the clifftop. We stopped and looked at each other. “When I made my own foolish proposal, I now see you had no alternative but to reject it as you did.” She smiled faintly. “None, Tom. None at all. I’m sorry. Shall we go back the way we came?” We began to retrace our steps. “I felt that unless I made the rejection conclusive, you would persist, which could only have hurt both of us. So I told you I was pregnant and left you to jump to the obvious conclusion: that Mompesson was responsible. For me, it was only a foretaste of what everyone would think.

“But it solved nothing. I was left to keep my appointment with him that evening, with all that it entailed. I had run out of time and hope. So, as a last, desperate throw, I slid a note beneath your door. I went to the observatory and trained the telescope on Mompesson’s window. I hoped that you would go there, that what you would see might make you understand that I was his victim, not his mistress, that it might prompt you to save me from him.” She glanced at me.

“But I suppose that’s not how it looked.”

I felt shamed by the faint hope she’d placed in me. “For someone as trustworthy as John said I was, it might have been enough.

But no, it’s not how it looked. Not to me.”

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“When I heard that Mompesson was dead, I thought I’d gone too far, that I’d driven you to murder for my sake.”

“Nothing so noble. A drunken night in a barn is all I was equal to.”

“Then a different suspicion formed in my mind.”

“That John killed him?”

“Yes. At first, it seemed absurd, but, after all, who else? Was that his real purpose in coming back—to protect me from Mompesson?”

“I’m certain he saw Mompesson as a threat.”

“As I am. When you told me that the observatory had been unlocked, I felt sure it must be so. I had locked it after setting the telescope. There was only one other key, which I’d last seen in John’s possession.”

“Why should he have gone there?”

“Because he knew he would be safe there, able to monitor the comings and goings of the house, able to spy on Mompesson.

Maybe he saw something that night that finally convinced him Mompesson had to die.” She paused and, in the space before she began again, I imagined what he might have seen.

“More than ever, I had to speak to him. And, at last, I guessed where he’d gone. I read his mother’s chapter in the Diocesan Committee Report—and knew it was the connection I’d been looking for. You almost guessed yourself—until Inspector Shapland interrupted us. I’m sorry I had to deceive you in order to make my departure, but I couldn’t afford to explain what I was doing.” “I understand that now.”

“I made my way to the Mermaid Inn. There I met Mr. Fletcher.

When I told him who I was, that I knew John was alive, hiding somewhere in Portsmouth, he seemed to soften towards me. He told me where John had been living, but warned me that I was too late: John had gone. And so it proved. I left the note in the hope he might yet return.” “It doesn’t look as if he will.”

“Grace is my oldest friend. She is the only person in all the world I could trust with such a secret. And I could no longer bear it alone. So I came to her and she did not disappoint me.”