“No. I’d like to know what he was worried about. You see, he mentioned it to me, but only briefly.” Was that a risk? It was a deliberate one. He watched Isenham’s face minutely for even a flicker of the eyes that would give away more than the older man had said, but there was none. Isenham was merely embarrassed.
“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to let down an old friend. Remember him as he was, Matthew.”
“Was it really so bad?” It was barely within Matthew’s control not to lash back.
Isenham flushed. “No, of course not! Just . . . just a misinterpretation of facts, I think. A touch overdramatic, out of proportion. After all . . .” He was trying to make it better, and failing. “We’ve always had wars here or there over the last thousand years or so. It’s our national spirit, our destiny, if you like.” His voice lifted with his own belief. “We’ll survive it. We always do. It’ll be nasty for a while, but I daresay it won’t last more than a few months.”
It was clear to Matthew that Isenham was aware of having revealed his friend’s weakness to the man’s own son, and when John Reavley was not here to defend himself. “I’m sure in a little while he would have seen that,” he added lamely.
Matthew leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What was it he thought?” He felt his heart hammering.
“That’s it,” Isenham said, shaking his head from side to side. “He wasn’t clear. Honestly, Matthew, I don’t think he knew! I think . . . I didn’t want to say this, but you force me to.” He looked resentful, his face red even under his windburn. “I think he got hold of half an idea and imagined the rest. He wouldn’t tell me what it was because I don’t think he could. But it had something to do with honor . . . and he wanted war. There! I’m sorry. I knew it would hurt you, but you insisted.”
It was preposterous. John Reavley would never countenance war, no matter what anyone had done. It was barbaric, revolting! It was utterly unlike anything he believed in and had fought for all his life, against all the decency he had treasured, nurtured, every human faith he had professed! The very reason at the heart of his hatred of the intelligence services was what he saw as their dishonesty, then manipulation of people to serve nationalist ends, and ultimately to make war more likely.
“He wouldn’t want war!” Matthew said aloud, his voice shaking. The mere idea tore away all that was certain inside him.
But then, how well had he known his father? How many children knew their fathers as men, as fighters, lovers, friends? Do children ever become old enough to see clearly beyond the tie of love?
“He wouldn’t ever want war!” Matthew repeated intensely, fixing Isenham with a glare.
Isenham nodded. “He had half a story and he wasn’t making sense of it. He was a good man. Remember that, Matthew, and forget the rest.” He took another bite of bread and pickle, then helped himself to more meat, speaking with his mouth full. “This kind of tension makes everyone a bit jumpy. Fear does different things to people. Some run away. Some go forward to meet it before it’s there—can’t bear the suspense. Seems John was one of those. Seen it out on the hunting field sometimes, more in the army. Takes a strong man to wait.”
Matthew felt the accusation of weakness scald with a pain almost physical. John Reavley was not weak! Matthew drew in his breath in a gasp, longing to retort with something that would crush the notion out of existence, but he could not find even an idea, let alone words.
“There are no grand conspiracies, only nasty little plots now and then,” Isenham continued, as if unaware of the emotions raging inside Matthew. “He wasn’t in government anymore, and I think he missed it. But look around you.” He waved his free hand. “What could be going on here?”
The truth sank in on Matthew with a slowly crushing weight: Isenham was probably right, and the harder he struggled against the realization, the tighter it coiled around him.
“You should remember the best in him, Matthew,” Isenham said. “That was what he was really like.”
Then Isenham deliberately changed the subject, and Matthew allowed the conversation to move to other matters: the weather, people in the village, an upcoming cricket match, the daily minutiae of a safe and gentle life in the peace of a perfect summer.
He walked home again when the rain had stopped. The elms were still dripping, and the road steamed in glittering drifts like silken gauze, too faint to catch, and yet weaving brightness around him. The perfume of the earth was almost overpowering. Wet leaves and flowers shone as the sunlight caught them.
Birdsong was sudden and liquid, a beauty of sound, and then gone again.
As he passed the church he saw a man move very quickly into the shadow of the lych-gate, the thick honeysuckle completely hiding him. When Matthew drew level and looked sideways, he was gone. He was certain from his height and the oddly sloping angle of his shoulders that it was the same man he had seen earlier on his way to Isenham’s house. Was he going somewhere and had taken shelter from the rain? Without having any reason he could name, Matthew went under the lych-gate and into the churchyard.
There was no one there. He walked a few paces between the gravestones and looked toward the only place where anyone could be concealed. The man had not gone into the church; the door had been in Matthew’s sight all the time.
He walked two or three yards farther on, then to the right, and saw the outline of the man half concealed by the trunks of the yew trees. He was standing motionless. There was nothing ahead of him but the churchyard wall, and he was looking not down, as if at headstones, but out across the empty fields.
Matthew bent his head as if reading the gravestone in front of him. He remained motionless for several moments. The man behind the yew tree did not move, either.
Finally Matthew walked over to his parents’ grave. There were fresh flowers. Judith must have put them there. There was no stone yet. It looked very raw, very new. This morning two weeks ago they had still been alive.
The world looked just the same, but it wasn’t. Everything was altered, as a golden day when suddenly the clouds mass across the sun. All the outlines are the same, but the colors are different, duller, something of the life gone from them.
The caltrop marks on the road had been real, the rope on the sapling, the shredded tires, the searching of the house, and now this man who seemed to be following him.
Or was this exactly what his father had done, added together little pieces that had no connection with each other, and made of them a whole that reflected no reality? Maybe the marks were not caltrops but something else, put there not at the time of the crash but some other time that day. Perhaps an agricultural implement of some sort had stopped and left scars from the blades of a harrow?
Had there really been anyone in the house, or was it just things rearranged wrongly in the shock of tragedy, a reversal of habit, along with everything else?
And what was to prove the man behind the yews had anything to do with Matthew? He might not want to be seen for a dozen reasons: something as simple as an illicit Sunday afternoon assignation, or a grave to visit privately, to conceal his emotion. Was this how delusion started? A shock, too much time to think, a need to feel as if you understood, so you find yourself weaving everything together, regardless of wherever it fits?
For a moment he considered speaking to the man, a comment on the rain, perhaps, then decided not to intrude on his contemplation. Instead he straightened up and walked back through the lych-gate and out into the lane without looking toward the yews again.
CHAPTER
SIX
Afew miles away in Cambridge the Sunday was also quiet and miserable. Thunder threatened all morning, and by the afternoon it rolled in from the west with heavy rain. Joseph spent most of the day alone. Like everyone else, he went to chapel at eleven, and for an hour he drowned all thought in the glory of the music. He ate luncheon in the dining hall; in spite of its magnificence, it was claustrophobic because of the heat and the oppressive weather outside. With an effort he joined in casual conversation with Harry Beecher regarding the latest finds in Egyptology, about which Beecher was wildly enthusiastic. Afterward he went back to his rooms to read. The
