Nigel—
before the war. . .and they couldn't have been nicer . . . and I thought, they couldn't have known about this, not Herr Manfred and Frau Clara—they wouldn't have stood for it—
they would have put a stop to that if they'd known about it, they would.'
Out of nowhere, unsought and unbidden, the memory of the report on the Siberian camps and the recent Hungarian deportations came to Roche. It wasn't true to say that he hadn't believed the report; rather, he had accepted it on a level which had somehow rendered belief irrelevant to his own personal existence, his own reality.
But he had stood for it. Or ... he had not stood against it: he dummy5
had felt as anonymous, as removed from cause and effect, as guiltless as a bomb-aimer far above a darkened city, Hamburg or Dresden or Coventry or Moscow, just doing the duty which had fallen to him—which had to be done by someone—and armoured by the belief that the end must sanctify such means.
Yet now . . . even now he didn't know how he had argued himself into that original dishonesty, except that it had somehow been inextricably mixed up with Julie, and that her doubts had become his certainties . . . even, he didn't know how those certainties had become doubts again; or even if they were doubts—or that it was simply the accumulation of his own fears which was finally shooting him down, forcing him to descend into the fires of his own making.
'And then I thought—I can still remember thinking it, seeing our boys there in the film, in that awful place, with all the dead people—I thought 'Lord, I hope Master David isn't there, seeing such things right there in front of him . . .' ' Mrs Clarke trailed off, blinking at Roche for a moment, then taking hold of herself. 'It'd be enough to turn anyone's mind, that.'
So that was the other fear Ada Clarke had slept with, night after night, while her adored Master David had galloped off to the war—and a fear she'd literally slept with, in the person of her Charlie, who had taken his wounds in the mind, on the Dunkirk beaches—that her Master David would also come back unrecognisable, handicapped in the same way.
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He smiled at Mrs Clarke. 'But he did come back all right?' he encouraged her. One thing at least: the excavation of Master David now seemed the most natural thing in the world.
'Oh yes, sir—'
“But different,' cut in Wimpy.
'Not much different, sir. The big difference was before that—
after the Master was killed, and right through until he went off to the war, he was difficult then. But that's not to be wondered at... And he was never an easy boy—'
'Which is not to be wondered at, either,' said Wimpy drily.
'He was too much on his own, that's what. A boy ought to have friends. And being away at school so much— and even during the holidays too sometimes, when the Master was away, when he stayed on at school—he didn't have any friends, not of his own age.' Mrs Clarke sniffed. 'And that Mrs Templeton—'
Wimpy sat up. 'Oh—come on, Clarkie!'
Mrs Clarke shook her head. 'No, sir! I could tell a tale there—
if I chose to . . . which I don't. . . But I could.' Her lips thinned to a hard-compressed line. 'She was a man- eater, she was.'
“But not a boy-eater, Clarkie.'
'Hmmm!' Her jaw hardened. 'More like what they put in the local paper, sir: 'Pedigree bitch—house-trained, eats anything, very fond of children'.'
'Clarkie!' Wimpy sounded genuinely shocked.
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'I didn't say it, sir. It was Mr Deacon that said it—and it was Mr Deacon that put a stop to it too, in the end. You ask him if you think I tell a lie, sir, Mr William.'
'Well. . .' As near as he had ever come to being at a loss, Wimpy was so. 'Well, he never told me, Clarkie.'
'Mr Deacon, sir?'
'David, I mean.'
She shook her head. 'Well, he wouldn't, sir, now would he?
What Master David wants to forget, he forgets, and it's like it never happened to him. But what he wants to remember, he never forgets.'
If Audley had that peculiar ability, it was a blessed gift, thought Roche. But, nevertheless, the boy and the man must still be the sum of this strangely twisted past in which so many influences had combined to tarnish the silver spoon he'd been born with.
'Hah—hmm ...' Wimpy eyed Roche uneasily, as though the dialogue had outrun his intention. 'And how's the house getting on, then, Clarkie?'
'Ah—' she shook herself out of the past gratefully '—that's getting on a treat, sir. They've finished the main roof, with all the timbers replaced that had the death-watch beetle. And they've done temporary repairs on the barn—only temporary, because Master David's coming home in the autumn to have a look at it himself before they do the job properly. . . But they've bought the tiles for that, from an old place up dummy5
Guildford way that's falling down—he won't have anything new, won't Master David, it's got to be just right, no matter what the cost. . . thousands, he's spent on it, my Charlie reckons . . . Old Billy and Cecil have been on it three years nearly now, and not done a day's work anywhere else since they started—they're away today with the lorry, getting the oak beams for the barn that Master David ordered in the spring when he was here last.'
'He was here in the spring, was he?'
