Say Goodbye to the Boys (12 page)

‘We've got to go and get him, Philip,' Emlyn said, but he made no move. Mash had caught one of the feathers in the palm of his hand and was examining it carefully, a smile on his face.

‘Cigarette,' Amos ordered. ‘We stay here. The light is dying.' Emlyn got a cigarette going and we lit up from his. ‘Our friend is an embellisher,' Amos remarked softly. ‘He must always add another little touch.'

‘Supposing he comes belting through the bushes, pumping lead at us?' Emlyn said.

‘No, no, no. It is a conversation,' the old man sighed. ‘He is talking to us with his gun. He is saying, keep away.'

‘From what?'

Amos's cigarette had gone out. He flipped it against the tip of his nose. ‘From Wright's tower – wouldn't you think, Philip?'

‘He's playing cowboys,' I said. ‘He's telling us the Tower is important.'

‘Well, well,' the old man said through his cigarette, ‘Philip is thinking... So the person who sent me a photograph also fired at us seconds ago?' I was watching Mash as Amos spoke. What the hell did he make of all this? And what the hell were we playing at – lying flat out on this rock, chatting, waiting until some trigger-happy marksman packed away his toy and went home for supper? Another shot. Down went our heads. Beech leaves came tumbling. Good God, I was straight out of the army and I had no idea what to do. A partridge went by overhead, like an express coming out of a tunnel and my face was flat against the stone, and Amos laughed. ‘Tell me what disturbed you in the tower,' he asked.

The light was fading fast. In the distance I could see Maelgwyn's lights coming on. ‘The concrete looked new on the floor,' I said, not looking at any of them. ‘There was a wreath of poppies in there. With a card. “To a brave warrior.” Something like that.' And there was a long silence during which I heard a cuckoo from somewhere down in the valley. Near where the wreckage of the car lay, I thought.

‘Let us talk about Ridetski,' Amos said after a while.

‘Did you know he was employed in the photographic section of the Royal Air Force? A round peg in a round hole: Leading Aircraftsman Ridetski was an expert photographer, and what is more an enthusiastic one, which does not always follow. And in pursuit of his hobby he used Air Ministry facilities for developing and printing. He even used Air Ministry paper...'

‘He took the picture you've got?' I asked.

‘Do not anticipate,' he gave me a mean look. ‘I am offering an hypothesis only.'

Emlyn smiled at me. He had very small, even teeth, and smiling made him look younger than ever. ‘I once suffered from a hypothesis...' he said.

Amos chuckled deep in his throat. ‘Now, consider this, since we have nothing better to do than to remain prone here until darkness comes. Consider an absconding Sergeant of the American Army Pay Corps, on the run to some girl perhaps in one of the big cities. In his car mail bags crammed with notes, a considerable sum apparently – the pay centre in Plas Beuno down the coast served the numerous American units. And he takes that bend too rapidly, and then briefly he is airborne, somersaulting through the night, and then he is in an incinerator of his own making. Did the doors burst open as the petrol tank exploded? The mail bags – did they fly out clear of the fire?' He paused. The darkness was settling in around us. ‘Let us not, however, indulge in too much fancy. Let us stick to facts. Not a note survived the blaze, but there were a number of metal rings which might have come from mail bags. Money burns well. Some of the money, clearly, went up in smoke. But was it all burnt?' He looked over his glasses, first at me, then at Emlyn, then back to me.

‘Well – go on,' Emlyn urged him.

‘This is not story time,' he said sharply. ‘I am outlining a general...' He waved a bony hand on the air.

‘I know – but go on.' Emlyn had his face cupped in his hands. A lock of black hair had fallen across his forehead and I noticed for the first time how his hairline was receding. Nothing like lying flat on your face on a lump of rock for making you pay attention to detail. Mash had his huge hands in front of his face, the fingers entwined, and now and then he blew through them softly, owl hoots. Oh Christ, Mash was lost.

‘Consider then our Polish photographer, a fastidious and artistic man, whose long absences in the dark room or on photographic jaunts cause much domestic bickering. Violent quarrels in fact.' Amos flipped his unlighted cigarette against his nose. ‘Did he walk these fields perhaps with his camera at the ready?' I said, ah, and he told me not to anticipate. ‘He photographed birds in their habitat. Was he, perhaps, on his way home from such an expedition when the Sergeant's car failed to negotiate the bend down there? And was there someone else in these fields that night? Someone who came running to the blaze? Someone who intended rescue but was forced to retreat from the flames and who found mailbags, scattered about and clutched them to him, and opened one perhaps...' Once more he waved a fragile hand on the air, like a conductor inviting an orchestra to respond. ‘When the firemen and the police arrived there was no-one here. Had Ridetski stolen away too, film in his camera that was to prove a passport from a dingy lodging to a little business?' And he made the ticking noise,
tk, tk, tk
. Making a story of it, I thought.

‘Blackmail then?' I said. ‘But Ridetski could have taken the money...'

‘It is my hypothesis,' he spat back at me, and he lapsed into a sulky silence.

‘Makes sense, Philip,' Emlyn remarked. ‘You've got to admit...'

I lost my temper. The night air was cool, the stones under me cold, and how absurd to be spending a Saturday night flat out like this just in case someone took another pot shot at us, listening to the senile ramblings of this old codger. ‘Listen,' I said, ‘you forget about Lilian; you forget about those old girls. Of course Ridetski could have taken the money. Hidden it somewhere. Come back for it, and maybe Lilian had snatched the lot, so he kills her – and then kills the other two to make it look as if there's a maniac about.' A flat silence met this outburst, and I was thinking it sounded like something out of a boys' comic.

‘We may stand now,' Amos said, and he ordered us to lift him to his feet. It was some time before he announced that he was mobile, and I wondered at myself for feeling that this was all part of an act with him. But Emlyn fussed around him, ‘Don't know about you,' he said, ‘but my circulation's packed in entirely.'

‘We are safe now,' Amos declared. ‘I doubt if he can see the Tower let alone us. Marshall – your arm if you please.' He set off in the direction of the car, hanging on to Mash.

‘You go first,' Emlyn said. ‘In my state of health even a passing bullet could prove fatal...'

‘What do you think – all this burning car and a man taking pictures and somebody getting away with the loot?'

The old man and Mash had come to a halt. ‘All bollocks,' Emlyn said. ‘Fascinating you've got to admit – but he's just supposing...'

‘I heard that,' Amos growled. ‘I would have you know that I have gained an international reputation for just supposing.' Then he warned us to be silent in case the marksman was still around.

There wasn't a marksman, I wanted to say. With this old man it was the way he put words to a situation. We reached the gate and hoisted him over. No one had interfered with the car. We climbed in, Amos insisting, in spite of our protests, that he sit with me at the back. ‘I require Philip's company,' he said savagely and we set off. Emlyn and Mash sang the old song ‘Queenie' and the old man made laughing noises at my side.

As we neared the town he gripped my arm and spoke into my ear, ‘so you wouldn't say Ridetski's in the Tower, Philip?'

‘I don't know where the hell he is,' I replied.

‘Someone thinks he's in the tower, though.' His long nose was cold against my ear. ‘Don't you agree?'

 

XII

 

 

 

 

I woke up at ten, sunlight from the window warm across my legs. I reached for my cigarettes to help the questions along but decided against them. We had crashed the last hour of the dance at the Royal, and Emlyn – blowing so badly that he feared his annual attack of asthma was on its way – had given the three piece band a lift, and had got Mash and me into the band's party afterwards. I had a mouth like the bottom of a parrot's cage, physical conditions not conducive to a spell of reasoning, yet the questions came flitting at me like bats in the dark, and as evasive, not making contact, producing no answers. Ridetski. Behind it all the shadow of the Polish airman. If Ridetski had fired the shots why had he done so? To warn us off? To invite us to investigate the tower? Or was Ridetski buried in the Tower, and was this the marksman's way of telling us? And that wreath of poppies, the photograph too – were they all part of the same message? Ridetski killed by the man who had found the money? Lilian too? Had she continued with demands for money? And were little Miss Porterhouse and Miss Sweeney a blind, an invitation to make false assumptions? Oh, brilliant, Philip Roberts... Question makes question, and the wrong set of questions at that. Two things I knew for certain. One was that all that land, Wright's Tower included, freehold and forever, was now part of George Garston's empire. Gareth Williams had told me in the Royal, adding swiftly, ‘And how did he get on so quick while us boys was away in the war, then?' The second wasn't a fact, but I was prepared to lay money that old crotchety, arrogant, irritating Amos Ellyott had received more than one photograph – otherwise how would he know about a Polish photographer wandering the fields at night with his camera at the ready? I reached for the cigarettes. That line of reasoning had only brought me back to questions once again.

Laura came in smiling from chapel. ‘What a lovely morning,' she said, ‘and just think – nobody was murdered at all last night.'

 

On the way to the boat I met Ceri and arranged to see her that evening. ‘Did you know it's in the
News of the World
?' she said. ‘Miss Sweeney left all her money to a home for stray cats.' She was wearing a yellow dress, her arms bare and brown, and there were tiny freckles on her nose. ‘To the woods,' I suggested, and she said ‘Down Rover!' – her piano was waiting.

Emlyn and Mash were stripped off and working when I arrived. Emlyn called me an idle bugger and set me to caulking the forward part of the deck because it was time we stopped fooling about and got the
Ariadne
ready for the blue water. In the same breath he shocked me by saying that he had decided to give Percy Davies Auctioneers another try. ‘Don't look so mortified,' he said. ‘Everything's getting too bloody bizarre round here. I need some ordinary living for a change. Nine till five.' What about the trumpet? I said. What about the offer from the man who ran the big band up in the port? What about the voyage south? ‘We'll fit everything in.' He assured me. ‘But I need some ordinary stuff first – just to see if it's as bad as I remember.' Then he smiled. ‘Besides – if I don't sign up for old Percy I won't be in a position to tell him to fuck his job when I go, will I?'

I went up on deck wondering if the reason couldn't be money. Emlyn had been home much longer, and Idwal Morton, they said, had gone through everything – ‘From rustling to rags', as he put it – in disastrous litigation not to mention enormous miscalculations in business and far too many years on the bottle. I knelt on the deck and began caulking. This old cow wasn't going to dip her nose into the Mediterranean, was she? Had I ever believed she would? Dreamboat... We'd been playing around, the three of us, celebrating our survival... I looked along the river at the town spread out there beyond the sand hills, tatty old town, a washed-up mess, shut-faced, old stone not married to the new – a place I would have to leave. ‘“Summer has a fine warm face”,' I heard Mash call out below me, and Emlyn made some response and I heard them laughing. And suddenly, continuing the early spell of moroseness, I wanted to get away from the place, sign on a ship and sail away, resume the wandering life.

‘Anchors aweigh!' Emlyn called, ‘and stand by your beds! The ancient mariner is on his way!' And Amos Ellyott came stumping over the dune, a skeletal black spider against the clear blue of the sky.

I spent the afternoon avoiding him, refusing to be drawn into any more theories and speculation. ‘He's a pain in the backside,' I said to Ceri as we walked along the water's edge, our long shadows ahead of us from the evening sun. We picked up shells and examined a dead starfish, and talked. I heard about the girls in London, and nights out at the concerts, and the Professor who was admired and feared. We giggled at our scalloped feet under water. We tried to make out the names of the waiting ships, guessed at their nationality. Was I musical? Only after four pints. She hadn't got it, either – not really – and would probably end up giving piano lessons in a front room. The sun was going down red, the tide coming in. Beyond the roofs of the town the bald hills were as clear as if you had a telescope to your eye. Did I remember Emlyn Morton playing the trumpet during that school assembly? Now I did, but I didn't want to talk about the past. It was here and now with me, marvelling at here and now and being with this one.

We found a hollow in the dune and sat there. I took off my jacket and spread it out on the cooling sand, and she lay back and I kissed her on the mouth, on the warm soft skin along her neck and down her shoulder. For a time like that, pausing to smile, my knee between her legs, her arms around me. Then she eased me away, brought her hand to my mouth.

‘Half a ton of lipstick,' she said. And she kept her hand there and said, ‘How much do you know about me, then? You don't ask questions. I'm what – a year younger than you, and I've just done one year in London.' I felt her shiver as she spoke. ‘What about the gap – from leaving school to last October?' She smiled and looked up at the sky and I held her and waited. ‘Haven't you heard talk about me? I had a wild time. Went off with a bloke. I was with him ten months, three weeks and a day.' She looked at me. ‘Then he went back to his wife.' She took her hand away. ‘Did you know?' I shook my head. ‘Not here in the town – up in the port. Mam and Dad's security must have been first class. I just thought I'd let you know.'

I tried a laugh, heard myself say, ‘so what – it's your affair.' And I pulled her closer.

‘I thought I'd tell you,' she said.

‘Before somebody lets me know?'

She shook her head decisively, her mouth small and tight for a moment. ‘No – just to tell you I'm playing around, Philip. That's how it is. Playing the field.' And she ran her hand down my side and over my thigh, rubbing between my legs. I was on top of her my mouth against hers, my knees pushing her legs apart and I was back to playing around wasn't I? Then I looked up and the marram grass above us had parted in two places, two narrow white faces there, wide eyed and watching. Robert Owen. Captain X.

I rolled over on my knees and Ceri was pulling her dress down. ‘Oh, good God no,' I yelled at them. ‘Will you bloody well clear off?'

‘Wasn't watching,' Captain X replied, his villain's eyes fixed and unblinking.

‘Just get lost, the two of you!'

‘You told us off last time,' Robert Owen said, a note of hurt in his voice. ‘This time, it's the truth.'

They both stood, both of them pointing up the beach in the direction of the town. I got to my feet. Ceri grabbed my arm and pulled herself up. The light wasn't good, but most of the men in a half circle at the water's edge were clearly policemen, and there was an ambulance lurching up the beach to the promenade.

‘We can tell the truth when we want to, see?' Robert Owen said.

‘She came in with the tide – in a boat,' Captain X added. ‘Another one of them...'

We began to walk towards the town, the boys following. Robert Owen said, ‘There was a seagull sitting on her head.' It was Tom Hughes's boat, we were told, and Tom had been on the look out for it all day.

‘Say you're sorry,' Robert Owen called after us.

I turned to look at them. They looked small, standing there, and very defiant. ‘Why should I be sorry?'

‘Liars you called us. We can tell the truth good as anybody when we want.'

‘OK – sorry. Now come on with us off this beach.'

They walked between us. We saw a stretcher go into the ambulance, saw the police heave the boat up clear of the high waterline, saw the ambulance go bumping up the beach.

Captain X turned out to be a Cyril. His mother came out of the crowd on the promenade screaming, ‘Come here Cyril, you bloody idiot! Murder you I will!' The town, she told us, wasn't a proper place for bringing up children any more.

Voices from the crowd told us the deceased was a widowed lady. Mrs Hilda Palmerstone. From Bristol way. Lived in a flat on the front past Ocean View. Very refined. Been in the town for most of the war. And she had gone out on the ebb tide during the night, had been there in the estuary all day long, made a landing not so very far from where Tom Hughes usually had his boat beached. Mrs Palmerstone. The fourth.

Ceri said she wanted to go home, and although she linked her arm in mine we were silent all the way. At her door she said, ‘Anything I'm likely to say is going to be a waste of time. Right?' The light came on in the street. A ship in the estuary brayed across the town. I wanted to stay with her, oh Christ I wanted to talk to her, hear her talk. But I knew it would be a waste too, and I let her go. After the door had closed the street was a stony, desert place, dark and empty.

Any night but Sunday night I would have made for the first pub. But Sunday was dry-day and I wasn't a member of the only club with a seven-day license, so I headed for the Crescent, and Emlyn was up in his room at the top of the house, letting the neighbours have it with ‘My Very Good Friend The Milkman', full trumpet blast. I didn't give him a knock. Anything I might say to him would be a waste of time too, I felt.

So I wandered the town – back home to Laura was unthinkable – and by the entrance to the station I paused to light a cigarette and discovered my lighter had gone. It wasn't a particularly good lighter, had one of those flames that blacken your fag. But it had come back with me from Burma and I went in search of it, remembering that I had taken my jacket off and spread it out on the sand. On the promenade, a crowd of people still there under the street lamp talking and staring out at the estuary. I kept away from them and took the steps down on to the black beach and headed for the dune. Not a chance, of course, but I had to do something for God's sake.

Your eyes become accustomed to the dark, as the story books say. I kept close to the dune, the sand I kicked up cold as ice under my trouser legs. Two stars in the sky, winking lights from the ships out in the estuary, and an occasional blast from the sirens, the lap of small waves further down the beach. Some night bird went whirring past, made me catch my breath. I tried to gauge where the hollow was, looked out to sea remembering that there had been a big tanker close inshore. A steep bank of sand that I remembered. Then a ridge of marram grass. I heard myself breathing heavily. And I was kneeling in the hollow, one hand sweeping across the cold sand. This hollow? This place? It all depends on what you remember, and what you remember of it: one of Amos Ellyott's remarks in my head. My hand closed around the lighter and I gripped it tight, and stayed there like that, and remembered her, how she looked, what she said, taste, touch...

Then there was a scuffling sound in the darkness above me. ‘Who's there?' I said, and all I could think to do was flick the wheel on the lighter. It fired first time and I held it out at arm's length, staring over and beyond its ragged flame. A man there, big and bulky, crouching in the grass. His face turned slowly towards the light. ‘Where am I?' Mash said.

 

I went over to him saying, ‘It's Philip – what are you doing here?' The lighter went out, failed to fire again. ‘Mash – what the hell are you doing here?' I touched his hand. Colder than the sand. ‘Come on, mate – what are you doing here?'

‘I was sleeping,' he said. ‘I was going and I got lost.'

I put my hand under his elbow. ‘Come on. You can't stay here.' He shook it away and I was suddenly afraid of him, and began talking, saying the first thing that came into my head. ‘Come on. It's bloody cold – you'll get piles worse than Emlyn.'

‘Emlyn?' He said. He got to his feet. ‘Where's Emlyn, then?'

‘In his bed,' I said. ‘Come on. It's me – Philip. Let's get you home...' Then he was walking next to me along the beach, rubbing his huge hands and mumbling, ‘Cold, cold, it's cold.' And I was having to stretch out to keep up with him. He was making for the lights on the promenade, but I edged him over and said ‘We'll stay on the beach,' and wondered why I'd said it.

He didn't object. ‘All right on the beach, Philip. Cold. I'm cold.' We both stumbled in the ruts the ambulance had made. There were still people under the same lamp on the promenade. I moved him down almost to the water's edge as we drew level with them. Rationalised the act by asking myself what I would I say to them if they asked where we'd been. Taking it no further than that, but wondering at myself all the same.

We walked on. No one yelled from the promenade, no policeman rose out of the sand to halt us. We climbed over the railings at the far end of the promenade, and now he knew where he was and went on ahead of me. I followed him to the gates of the Grange. He sprinted up the driveway without a word. The house was in darkness but lights came on all over as soon as he opened the front door. I waited for a while; I didn't know what for. Then I walked slowly back to the town.