A Place Of Strangers Read online

  But stitched alongside was something far more familiar... a white circle of cloth and a Nazi swastika, blacker than sin.

  Chapter Four

  McCall stoked the drawing room fire with split cherry logs which cracked and spat beneath the Jacobean overmantle. Beyond the french windows, rooks and crows blew about the frosted trees of Garth Woods like smuts from a chimney. The sandstone tower of St Mary and All Angels was just visible and its bells, cast by Abraham Rudhall three centuries before, peeled out for good people to come and worship.

  Bea was improving but not enough to attend the service. Francis would go alone. McCall had an urge to pray, too – but to what, he was never sure.

  He picked up Francis’s footsteps in the snow, going from the dacha through the stillness of the woods to the bridge over Pigs’ Brook. From there, the field rose steeply towards the church. The sun was low in an intensely blue sky. McCall threw a long shadow but felt very small. He passed between the graveyard’s screen of yews and thought again of Bea’s worries about Francis.

  ‘He treats me like a stranger sometimes, as if he hardly knows me anymore.’

  ‘What’s his general health like?’

  ‘He’ll be seventy five next birthday, Mac. I’m afraid we all wear out one day.’

  McCall heaved open the iron-banded door from the porch into the church. It smelled of tallow and polish and stones laid on damp earth. He saw Francis kneeling alone in the Wrenn family pew where his ancestors had always sat. Their regimental flags, once so proudly followed by the gallus lads of villages thereabouts, hung beneath the hammer-beam roof, threadbare now and gone the colour of dried blood.

  Francis was religious in an odd, English sort of way. Throughout his life, he had believed but would not be remotely surprised if at the comedic end of it all, it wasn’t one huge wheeze and he had wasted a lot of Sundays for nothing.

  On this day, Francis displayed a humility bordering on defeat which McCall had never observed before. He stood quietly by the baptismal font. At what point had his hero yielded to this stranger, this impostor down on his knees before God?

  The service ended and the few elderly faithful departed their hard seats. Just Francis and McCall were left, alone in a timeless silence at either ends of the church. Then the old warrior buttoned his long check overcoat and shuffled down an aisle worn smooth by brides and biers and those who had passed that way before.

  He ignored McCall’s warm greeting and was strangely aggressive.

  ‘Have you started spying on me, too?’

  ‘No, Francis. Of course not.’

  ‘She does, all the time.’

  ‘Who do you mean – Bea?’

  ‘I’ve seen her so she knows I’m onto her.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Francis. What are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. There’s no reason you should understand.’

  They emerged from the porch and stood by the fissured memorials to ancient parishioners. All around, the trees were full of clacking jackdaws. In the distance, a sexton in brown cords and patched tweed jacket dug a new grave in the rusty soil of Shropshire. Perhaps Francis saw this being done for him one day then he, too, would be at peace in the earth of England.

  ‘My mother lies somewhere about here.’

  His voice became softer, gentle like the Francis of memory. He moved away to read the inscription on a leaning slab of plain stone covered in bird lime and rashes of yellow green lichen.

  Death, like an overflowing stream

  Sweeps us away, our life’s a dream

  An empty tale, a morning flower

  Out, down and withered in an hour.

  ‘No, this isn’t the one. I thought it was near here.’

  ‘Let’s come back tomorrow, Francis. Have a proper look, then.’

  ‘No, I want to find it today. It’s got to be close by.’

  McCall knew better than to argue. But it was only then he noticed Francis was in carpet slippers which were soaked through. McCall wanted to fetch the Morgan and drive him home. But Francis, six feet tall and wilful, suddenly forgot all about his mother’s grave and tramped off through the snow towards Garth Woods. McCall could only follow.

  They reached the dacha and Francis’s mood changed yet again. He let McCall kneel and dry his feet with a towel then refill the stove with more wood. Francis’s walking boots were by the door. He just hadn’t bothered putting them on.

  In a moment more, he fell asleep in his scuffed leather armchair. McCall saw he was not wearing his small dental plate, nor had he shaved properly. Tufts of whiskers sprang from the cleft in his chin and on his cheek-bones, made pink by the wind and patches of broken veins. His thick white hair, once so neatly trimmed, was over his grubby shirt collar.

  Something disturbing was happening to Francis. This most cultured and particular of men was letting himself go. Worse than that, he seemed to be losing his mind.

  *

  The hall clock was silent. It had always been Francis’s job to re-wind it each night but he no longer bothered. Francis forgot so much these days. Bea, still weak and unsure about why she had collapsed, pulled on its ropes and reset the ornate hands to chime the hours. She thought of the Christmas to come and those long gone. They must enjoy themselves this year, be happy and make Mac’s new lady friend feel at home then who knows...

  She went back upstairs to her attic letters. Some had envelopes, others didn’t and many bore the bite marks of mice. Bea handled each with infinite care, as if these were the mortal remains of a loved one. In a way, they were and must have brought comfort to those with nothing else to hold.

  It began snowing again. Bea watched from her window as it fell, softly, like time itself, slowly blurring her memory of whatever had been there before. Nothing moved outside. Hard days were coming... cold, hard days when the earth could not be dug for the dead. She saw again the walled yard and its iron gate through which the black sleeves of those outside flapped like the wings of birds trapped in a cage.

  Bea asks the name of the only one she can set free.

  ‘I am called Arie.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘From the city of Vilna.’

  ‘Then what are you doing in this place?’

  ‘I was trying to leave.’

  ‘So what is happening here?’

  ‘Our world is coming to an end, that is what is happening.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Please. There is no time to talk. I am a Jew. Help me. Please.’

  And the wireless announcer’s words still drip like acid in her ears.

  ‘...the slightest resistance to the occupation will lead to the most brutal reprisals.’

  Long into the night, Bea hears the ceaseless movement of displaced people and the grating iron wheels of their handcarts, loaded with possessions, being pulled across the cobbles outside. And in the underground sluice rooms of Pankrac Prison, the torturers hone the guillotine’s blade and oil the runners of their meat hook gallows. Far in the distance, great black locomotives coal up in the snow-blown marshalling yards and shunt their wooden freight wagons into place for the one-way journeys eastwards yet to come.

  *

  McCall saw in Francis’s sleeping face what he had so recently observed in Bea’s. This is how the end would look, both dead to the world. He had little notion of life after Bea and Francis. They had always been there – the constellations by which his uncertain life was navigated. They alone had never betrayed him. He crossed to the table, spread with a disorganised jumble of Francis’s wartime papers and intelligence reports about Allied bombing raids for the book he had always threatened to write but never had.

  An aerial reconnaissance photograph showed the catastrophic damage to the German port of Emden in spring 1941. The caption said a new bomb had caused people’s houses to take to the air. Nearby was an Air Ministry assessment of Bomber Command’s fighting men which Francis had underlined in green pen.

  ...triumph
and disaster are met and vanquished together. If the first be their lot, the thankfulness, the exaltation, are shared equally by the crew; but if the “whirligig of time brings its revenges”, they have mounted it together. They are of necessity subjected to strain but are men in the prime of youth. For them, the shapes of life and death are very real. Each man’s life may depend at any moment on the skill and courage of his comrades.

  Francis began to move in his chair. McCall hurried to put the papers back when he caught sight of Francis’s handwriting in his pilot’s log book.

  Detail of work carried out. 4/3/40.

  Aircraft: Wellington.

  Duty: Attack German submarine off Heligoland.

  Remarks: Duty successful, submarine hit from 1,400 ft.

  Crew: Captain Fl Lt Francis Wrenn, Navigator P/O Thomas Eaton, 2nd Pilot F/O Paul Moore, Wireless Operator Sgt Peter Plowden, Rear Gunner Sgt Edward McCall.

  McCall ran his finger over the words like a slow reader and spoke his father’s designation and name. Rear Gunner, Sergeant Edward McCall.

  He felt a tug on his line, far away, in the deepest waters of memory.

  *

  ‘Good Lord, Mac – you shouldn’t have let me nod off like that.’

  ‘No, but you were too content to wake.’

  ‘Decent walk that, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly was. I’ve made some tea.’

  ‘Good. I’ve got some biscuits somewhere.’

  Francis rooted among his tins and found half a pack of digestives. He was back to his jovial self again, as if nothing abnormal had disturbed the regard between them. Here was the Francis of old, stretched out in his torn leather armchair, feet towards the open doors of the stove, every inch the pilot waiting to be summoned to combat.

  The light outside was dying.

  ‘So you still go to church regularly, Francis?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve got to meet my Maker one day.’

  ‘But not for many years, I hope.’

  ‘I don’t know about that but I still need to understand my life and what it’s been for.’

  ‘You’ve led a good life, Francis... an honourable life.’

  ‘That’s what you think, old son. There’s much you don’t know about.’

  ‘What don’t I know about?’

  ‘Most of it, I’m afraid.’

  McCall looked closely at Francis and saw some distress pass across his eyes.

  ‘Tell me, Francis. I’d like to hear.’

  ‘You know, these days I can’t always remember but I know there’s something.’

  ‘Something to do with the war?’

  ‘Of course, everything’s to do with the war.’

  ‘But what about it worries you?’

  ‘Everything, Mac. Every bloody thing I did.’

  ‘You had to. The Nazis would’ve overwhelmed the world.’

  ‘But I was up there, up there in my aeroplane looking down.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘So I saw exactly what we did, what hell we created.’

  ‘But British cities were bombed first, Francis ... people died in their thousands.’

  ‘Yes, I know all about that. But I saw what I did, Mac – me.’

  Then, without warning, Francis’s head went down on his chest. His shoulders began to shake, slowly, remorsefully. McCall put his arms around him as he would a tearful child.

  ‘Francis, Francis... come on, what is it?’

  ‘All those bombs... those poor, poor people, Mac.’

  ‘You must try to forget those days.’

  ‘How can I forget? Whenever I close my eyes I’m down there in that furnace and it’s my skin on fire, my lungs full of flames and I’m responsible. I did it.’

  In all the years and in all his stories, Francis had never spoken like this.

  ‘You did your duty, Francis. You’re not a murderer.’

  ‘No, not a murderer... a mass murderer.’

  Chapter Five

  Evie’s train journey from London took eight hours – yet another IRA bomb scare at Paddington then a landslip near Ludlow, caused by heavy snow. When McCall met her, she was tired and cold and regretting the ordeal.

  ‘If there’s a next Christmas McCall, you come to me.’

  Bea was well enough to oversee Garth Hall’s preparations. An aroma of spices spread through the house from a juniper and port marinade being prepared for the Parson’s Venison – lamb done up above its station. Every bauble, streamer, plait of holly and ivy was positioned just right. The cleaner, Mrs Craven, polished each piece of drawing room furniture till they glowed darkly. She even shampooed the carpets.

  McCall seemed restless and distracted. Bea wanted to believe this new girl was special, that he was just anxious for her to be impressed. She had never understood why he was still unmarried at nearly forty. He was no matinee idol but he’d had enough women. They fell for his eyes, soft and brown like his long twisty hair but sad, too. Yet his relationships never lasted. No female could be content with him away at wars and far off places.

  Bea longed for him to find someone and return home then maybe a child might run about the old place. Only the sound of its laughter and tears could buy the promise of tomorrow.

  McCall arrived back with Evie shortly before supper.

  ‘You are most welcome, my dear, most welcome indeed.’

  They touched cheeks and smiled.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Wrenn. What a magical house you have.’

  Bea guessed she was quite a few years younger than Mac, self-assured and pretty enough. But her most striking feature was the hair – billows of it, gloriously pre-Raphaelite and gingery red... exactly like Helen’s. Evie was not some random selection. She had been chosen for a reason.

  Bea instinctively listened for an accent, an assuring clue to class and origin, but detected only received pronunciation. She gave their guest the usual tour, showing the rare pieces of porcelain on the Montgomeryshire dresser and explaining who was who in the line of ancestral portraits hanging from the pastel blue panelling.

  ‘The house must be terribly old.’

  ‘It is, very old. I doubt that Shakespeare had learned his ABC before it was built.’

  ‘Goodness. So was this your family home?’

  ‘No, Francis’s... but we’ve lived here since the war.’

  The door opened and Francis came in, snow on his gardening cap, and carrying a heavy wicker basket of logs from the shed outside.

  ‘This is Evie, dear... Mac’s friend.’

  Evie smiled and offered a hand which Francis did not take. He stared at her instead, as if trying to recall her face. Then said he hoped she had brought a toothbrush.

  ‘You could be stranded here for days. Bloody unions.’

  Supper was onion soup, pate and smoked salmon but they had hardly sat to the table when the electricity flickered off. They were left in candlelight which could have made for more intimacy but only worsened Francis’s brittle mood. He picked at his food and drank too much wine. Then he turned to their guest.

  ‘Who did you say you were, again?’

  ‘I’m Evie, Mr Wrenn... a friend of Mac’s.’

  ‘And what work do you do?’

  ‘I’m a civil servant.’

  ‘Yes, but what do you do?’

  ‘I analyse information for the government.’

  ‘What sort of information?’

  ‘Pretty routine stuff, really.’

  ‘Yes, yes but I want to know exactly. Tell me.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry but I don’t think – ’

  ‘What department are you in?’

  ‘We work closely with the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence.’

  ‘Is that right? So I shall conclude you’re engaged in some sort of covert activity...’

  ‘Mr Wrenn – ’

  ‘...what we used to call ‘spying’ in my day. Don’t worry, missy. I’ve met plenty in your devious trade.’

  Bea shut her eyes in embarrassment
so McCall intervened.

  ‘Francis was a diplomat, Evie.’

  ‘Oh, whereabouts?’

  ‘Eastern Europe then Scandinavia, along the Soviet border... he knows a bit about intelligence work.’

  Francis stared at Evie over his glasses.

  ‘But only from a desk, you understand.’

  McCall began to say that was not the whole story but Francis cut across him.

  ‘There’s an old Russian proverb, missy... the less you know, the better you sleep.’

  *

  McCall lay with Evie in the bedroom he’d had since childhood. The wallpaper was plain yellow and the woodwork cooking apple green. Christmas eve became Christmas day. Neither was able to sleep. The toys and presents of earlier times still sat on his shelves – Dinky cars, a clockwork engine, William Brown books, a wooden fort and plastic planes to endlessly replay Francis’s war.

  The room was like the rest of the house, a kind of museum kept just as McCall had left it... a shelter should life go wrong. Here was security, an absence of threat. Evie was intrigued by it all, just as McCall had meant her to be, subconsciously or not.

  ‘What’s the story here, McCall?’

  ‘That depends which one you mean.’

  ‘OK, why don’t we start with yours?’

  ‘Isn’t Francis more professionally interesting to you?’

  ‘I don’t sleep with Francis.’

  ‘So what do you want me to tell you?’

  ‘Why you’re a bit of a mess, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Come on, Mac. You know what I’m saying. Tell me about your real parents, how you came to live with Bea and Francis.’

  McCall took a moment to reflect. To answer was to embark on a journey with no clear destination. That was why he had never set out on it. Yet why did it feel safe to submit to Evie’s questions now?

  ‘My parents are both dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry. What happened?’

  ‘Car crash. I wasn’t with them. I was only very young.’