War Damage (32 page)

thirty-six

F
OR THE LAST TIME
Charles trudged across the playing field and turned the key in the lock of the art annexe. It was risky, but he had to find the photo. Mr Tolliday and the headmaster had made a search of the annexe in an effort to find some clue as to Carnforth's disappearance. Later they'd searched a second time in the hope of finding an explanation for his suicide. The police had searched the place too, but if the photographs were there, they'd all missed them.

Charles assessed the scene. On a number of occasions, when painting the scenery, he'd nosed about. The only thing of interest he'd ever found was an ancient snapshot of his mother, which must have been taken before the war, before he was born most probably. Charles had wondered why Carnforth had kept it there instead of wherever he lived, but then it occurred to him that he might have made, or wanted to make, a copy from the print in the darkroom.

He'd found the photo when he'd noticed that a corner of the linoleum covering the concrete floor was detached and when he'd lifted it up, there was the photo. So now he looked in the same spot.

Freddie's photo of the two of them lay there, along with the snap of his mother. Charles lifted both prints between his fingers. He looked at the photo Freddie had taken. It was the only one he had of Freddie. But he hesitated only for a moment and then took both prints into the darkroom, put a match to them and held them over the butler sink until the flames nearly singed his fingers. He relit the scraps that had failed to burn the first time and then broke up the ash until it was small and powdery, turned on the tap and brushed the fragments down the plughole. He rinsed his hands under the running water and dried them on the towel Carnforth always kept there.

He switched out the lights, locked the door and walked away towards the goods entrance. He had thought the playing field was deserted, but then he heard the soft thud of footsteps coming up behind him. He swung round to see Harry Trevelyan trotting along behind.

‘What are you doing here?'

Trevelyan was a little out of breath, but he smiled his endearing freckly smile – though the freckles were but a memory, since Charles couldn't see them in the dark.

‘I might ask the same of you, Hallam. What were you doing in Carnforth's art annexe?' Something about the kid had subtly changed.

‘I was looking for something that belonged to me. He'd taken something of mine and I needed it back, that's all.' He carried on walking, irritated by the younger boy's presence.

‘It was awful, him dying like that, wasn't it.' Harry kept up with him easily; he'd grown too.

‘Yes.'

‘Perhaps you didn't mind too much, though.'

Charles ignored the remark.

Trevelyan did a little hop to get slightly ahead of Charles, then turned round and trotted backwards, facing him for a moment. ‘I know what happened.'

‘What happened about what?'

‘I followed you. I followed you – more than once. After you chucked me.'

‘What are you talking about? Anyway, I didn't chuck you. It was just that Carnforth smelt a rat.'

‘I saw you and him walk up to Hampstead Heath that day and go into that garden.'

‘Have you gone mad or something?' Despite himself, Charles tried to grab the boy, who skipped out of range.

‘I shan't tell anyone. You needn't worry.'

‘I don't think it's a good idea to threaten me, Trevelyan, in fact it's rather absurd.' Charles hoped his drawl sounded unconcerned.

‘I'm not threatening you. It's just our secret, isn't it, you and me.'

‘Get lost, Trevelyan.' They were near the goods entrance now. Charles stopped in his tracks. He turned to face Trevelyan full on. ‘Get away from me. Just go. You're talking utter balls. You're talking through your hat. If you ever come near me again, I'll – I'll get you expelled if it's the last thing I do. Go away.'

Trevelyan didn't give ground. ‘I'm not fibbing. I do know what happened. But I wouldn't ever tell anyone. I just want you to know that I know.' He laughed, an unnatural, high-pitched sound. ‘It'll be our secret.'

‘Bugger off. Or I'll kill you.' Charles feinted a lunge towards the boy and grinned in the darkness. That had frightened the boy. He could tell. He really believes I'd do it. He knows I've killed one man already.

Now the boy did scamper away. Charles walked on slowly. His thoughts were churning as he opened and shut the goods entrance gate. He took the key to the art annexe from his pocket, wiped it carefully with his handkerchief and, looking round to make sure the coast was clear, chucked it down a drain as he passed it. No one saw him. Trevelyan had vanished. The road was shrouded in fog.

epilogue

H
EAT PULVERISED THE CAMPO
. The sun's glare bleached the paving stones and flaking walls. The tall houses leaned stiflingly inwards so that the square felt like a roofless room. Regine was weighed down by the heat as were the pale cat, stretched out on the cobbles, and the two old ladies on a bench beneath the single withered tree.

When two men entered the square, their footsteps shattered the somnolence. Their voices ripped the motionless air. They bore down on the café where Regine was idling away the afternoon.

It was only the movement he made as he sank into the plastic chair that aroused a long-forgotten memory, for his long dark curls and lean, tanned face bore little resemblance to how he'd once been. If she'd passed him in one of the
calle
or in some square crowded with tourists she wouldn't have recognised him, looking like so many others in his hippie flares, collarless shirt and bead necklaces, but that careless, lazy movement and those heavy-lidded eyes …

She stared at him so hard that he looked up. She saw, from the expression that flickered across his face, that he at least half-recognised her too, but his gaze shied away again, as if he'd decided the encounter wouldn't be worth the effort.

She, though, as always, automatically smiled, reaching out and offering her warmth. ‘It is – isn't it – Charles Hallam?'

He half-rose from his seat in a gesture of politeness. ‘
Regine
. Christ! What an amazing – How are you? What are you doing here?'

‘I'm waiting for my daughter – she went off to try and find a little hat shop we'd seen. She's probably lost by now – impossible to find your way around Venice, isn't it, we're always getting lost.'

‘Well –' and he smiled at his friend, ‘you work it out eventually – it does have a logic of its own. Took me six months though.'

His friend said something in Italian.

‘Sorry – this is Renato.'

Regine didn't entirely like the look of Renato. His weaselly face was not improved by a straggly little beard and his straight blond hair was even longer than Charles's, giving him that rather awful Jesus Christ look so many young men went for now – Pre-Raphaelites on the cheap.

‘I'm living here at the moment.'

‘Here? In Venice? I thought you were teaching at Oxford.'

‘Oh, I chucked that up ages ago. Oxford was so bloody stuffy. I couldn't stand it any longer.'

‘Is that why you didn't write another book? Everyone thought your first was so good.'

‘Of course – you married my publisher. How is William?'

‘We're not together any more.' No need to tell the whole story. ‘These days, well, recently I met an old flame. He's back at the hotel. The heat of the day's too much for him. He likes his siesta.'

Charles was obviously not very interested. But she knew why she'd had to say it – to show him she wasn't a woman on her own, that she still had a man.

An awkwardness came between them. After the silence had lasted too long, Charles said: ‘I meant to write another book, but writing's such a chore. And anyway I don't have time to write out here – it's wall-to-wall politics in Italy, so much going on.'

Renato pulled at the whiskers round his lips and frowned. Charles spoke to him in Italian. She prided herself on at least understanding Italian, even if she hardly spoke it, but she couldn't catch the words. Charles's hand was on the other man's thigh. ‘Italian politics – shit, man, it's something else, isn't it.
Lotta Continua
– the Red Brigades –'

Regine smiled, but it seemed …
wrong
, somehow, for a man his age – what would he be now – getting on for forty? – to behave like some student revolutionary.

The waiter sauntered out from the cavern of the café and Charles looked up at him, ordering
due birre
, flirting with the boy before turning back to Regine. ‘Anyway, how
are
you? You're looking wonderful.'

She smiled harder, but she knew that her hair was now brighter than it had ever been, too bright, thanks to henna, while her skin had faded to dry, freckly middle age.

‘I'm well – I'm just here on holiday with my daughter and my … friend.' Which was true, yet not quite one hundred per cent of the truth.

There was another little silence. To break it, she said: ‘So you're actually living here. I envy you. Venice is so beautiful.' Such a cliché, but what could you say about Venice that hadn't been said a thousand times?

He smiled, but it was an empty smile. There was dead space between them. The vacuum of the afternoon. The cat was giving herself a dust bath, rolling over and back again on the uneven pavement.

Then suddenly Charles spoke. ‘Freddie always used to say he'd take me to Venice one day.'

Freddie! Startled, she put her hand up to her necklace. ‘Yes … I suppose … I never thought … yes, he'd have loved it – did love it. I think he was here at the end of the war.' And she felt guilty, for it must be – oh, aeons – since she'd thought about Freddie.

‘I wonder what he'd make of it all today.' Charles squinted away into the white heat of the square. ‘He'd be bored by the politics. Bombs, kidnapping, revolutionary violence, that wasn't exactly his scene.' He grinned. Renato shifted in his seat and an odd, flickering glance passed between the two men.

‘I suppose Freddie was more of an aesthete.'

Again the silence became awkward, with Renato fidgeting and then, when the waiter brought the beers, questioning Charles in Italian.

‘That whole business fucked me up completely for years.' Charles was looking at her again now. ‘I was so angry with Freddie for dying. I hated everything, I hated everyone. Actually, that's what I like about Italy now. Everyone's so fucking angry.'

And his anger still lurked in some deep unconscious crevasse, she thought. She went on playing with her necklace. That phrase of Dorothy's she'd never forgotten: the idealised violator … loving your abuser … Freddie ‘adoring' Charles and Charles subjugated and yet enthralled and … perhaps it was wrong, but he'd always have been
gay
(the word you had to use now) anyway and if Freddie had lived it would have worked itself out, come to a natural end; only as it was, death had cut off love or fascination, if that's what it was, while it was still a living thing, so that it was somehow unnaturally mummified … oh, but perhaps …

‘What a beautiful necklace,' he said.

‘I had it in Shanghai.'

Eugene held it out to her. The beads dangled, intensely green. The smooth rosary of emerald lozenges slid between her fingers. The cold green jade of the necklace, lying coiled like a snake in a drawer all those years.

Eugene had been right, of course, not to believe her, but she'd stuck to her story, hadn't once wavered … until, that is, the very last time, that last time on the Heath she'd cracked, she was too frightened, she'd held the beads in her coat pocket as she walked towards Eugene, about to call truce, to hand them over … and then that foolish young policeman had shot him … It was her fault, she shouldn't have told Murray she was meeting Eugene … had she wanted him to be killed? … but no, she'd never dreamed they'd shoot him … she frowned, impatient now with Charles for having reminded her of … everything. ‘It's supposed to be valuable. It probably isn't, it could be a fake,' and with a laugh, ‘I might have to find out soon – Ronnie and I aren't exactly millionaires.'

And they were here in Venice to sell it, but Charles wasn't interested in her necklace. She looked at him as he turned to his lover, and as he lounged back on his little chair she wondered what had happened to the marble ephebe of all those decades ago, and most of all she wondered at how her brief, mad desire for him could have disappeared so completely, how a once-living passion could have turned so completely to dust.