THE DROWNING
Richard Herley
Copyright (c) Richard Herley 2011
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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For David and Marcia Harris
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It is therefore not correct to say that the dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea; it is nearer to the truth to speak of the Shining Sea invading the dewdrop.
— Christmas Humphreys, Buddhism
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The boat was done for. And so was he, but he would not admit it. During the second set of explosions he had been thrown against a bulkhead and he was in pain, but far worse was the noise inside his skull, a blare grown monstrous from a tiny seed: the very first sonar ping of the ASDIC.
Soon after the seawater had reached the batteries, those men who had not already been killed and who had been unable to don their Dräger lungs had been choked. Georg had heard some of them quacking like Donald Duck, their voices distorted by the chlorine gas; yet it was even now possible that, elsewhere in the hull, others were being kept alive by pockets of air. Such a pocket remained here in the middle of the boat, under the conning-tower hatch.
His conscience, as much as the pressure differential, would not let him open the hatch. As soon as he unscrewed it, the hull would flood completely.
But his lung – a rubber and canvas life-vest with a rebreather – could only keep him alive for so long. The rebreather comprised a canister of soda-lime to absorb carbon dioxide while breathing foul air. The lung had besides a flask of compressed air, to enable underwater breathing. A lever could divert this air into the vest itself. The more of it he breathed, the less there would be for buoyancy. How long ago had he started using it? Ten minutes? Twenty?
The blackness was colder and more loathsome than anything he had ever known. It was one with the water, the grindingly cold water, shoulder-high, filthy with diesel and debris, rising and taking him with it, so that, every so often, he had to change his position on the companionway.
Even in these, the furthest reaches of human suffering, Georg still would not accept that he was about to die. The intelligence, stamina and good luck that had enabled him to get to the conning-tower were surely tokens of further survival. He had expected to find others here, but no. He was the only one. Through the chaos of the ruined submarine, wading, swimming, pushing bodies aside, solving in pitch darkness three-dimensional problems in topography and logic, he had been singled out by some benign force, some providence; some god.
He had been raised in the Catholic Church. Under his goggles, his nose squeezed by the clip, his teeth clamped on the mouthpiece, inside the blare, he seemed to hear the words: “Nein. Es ist Gott.”
No. It is God.
Georg shut his eyes and tried to remember Helgart, her sodden photos in his wallet, then his mother, then something, anything, from his childhood – a sunlit street, his first bike, but it was no good. All he could think of was the ASDIC.
During the middle watch the boat had been on the surface and surging westwards. At 0057, during an eerie break in the cloud cover, they had seen by moonlight a British warship, a corvette, probably of the Castle Class, alone, range no more than 3,000 metres and heading north, her approximate bearing 350 degrees. Her course and the course of the U-boat were due to have met.
Freshly provisioned and fuelled, the boat was one of two sent out to rejoin five others of the flotilla, but Georg knew that his captain’s orders did not forbid independent action, especially against a vessel so stationed as to attack boats coming in and out of Saint-Nazaire. Despite the nearness of such a formidable enemy as the corvette, Werner calmly descended to periscope depth and released two torpedoes before giving the order to dive.
No impacts were heard: the eels had missed their mark. The corvette would pursue.
Werner was at first confident that he was outwitting her. At a depth of 45 metres and a speed of 8 km/h, to prevent all cavitation from the propeller, he set a course of 051. Once far enough behind the corvette, he headed, at the same speed, westwards for the open Atlantic. They were well out into the Bay of Biscay here, towards the edge of the Continental Shelf. The water was still uncomfortably shallow, between 70 and 95 metres.
At 0211 the hydrophone picked up distant but approaching engine noise and wash: and ASDIC transmissions. Werner then turned north-east and the corvette went past. After that, he let the boat descend to the seabed, so cautiously that the hull, like a living skin, felt and tested the bottom – which seemed to be of sand, almost level – before committing itself to rest.
She lay there for a long time, lights dimmed, her crew conversing only when necessary, and then in whispers. They had endured, and emerged triumphant from, many such games of cat-and-mouse. Werner was a master of disappearance.
But tonight Georg had thought him over-cautious. Had Georg been in command, the boat would have been on the move again by 0400. That might have saved her; or not. The British were quartering the sea. And their captain was no fool.
At 0443, the hydrophone operator reported the return of the corvette. Underwater or on the surface, they could not outrun her. Even starting the engines would risk detection.
Soon the slow, regular pinging of the ASDIC became audible to the whole crew, growing louder, and louder still. Georg remembered looking at his fellow officers, like figures from some sacred painting, ranged about him in that silent, other-worldly light: some with eyes shut, or lips tightly compressed, or grimacing, here a fist clenched against a forehead, there a face raised as if to see through the hull, through eighty metres of night water to the approach of that sinister, implacable churning; and all the while the tones were growing louder and more insistent, ping, ping, ping, increasing in speed as well as volume, pincers of cunning, finding and grasping the length and shape of the boat where she lay.
In the moment before the first slew of mortars went off, Georg caught Werner’s eye and saw him grinning.
Then: pandemonium.
Georg gripped his new rung more tightly. The boat had just listed even more to starboard. Very soon now, she would be full.
He found himself climbing, slantwise, to the top of the companionway. His noisy breath became more rapid and urgent as he struggled with the hatch-screw. It began to move. At the Neustadt Unterwasserschule he had learned about decompression sickness, learned what an uncontrolled ascent from this depth would cause: agonizing joint pains, incontinence, visual abnormalities, burning chest pain in the sternal region, a vile sensation that thousands upon thousands of tiny insects were crawling upon one’s skin, and perhaps even permanent disability. None of these symptoms would arise for at least an hour, however, and for at least some of that precious time he would be breathing sweet, fresh air. He would be alive. He would have a chance. Maybe find some flotsam from the boat to climb up on, hope for a friendly current, a benign, providential current to carry him back to land. If not, the vest would at least keep his head above the surface while, bit by bit, he succumbed to hypothermia.
At Neustadt, with the other cadets, he had practised this very manoeuvre. But the water there had been comparatively warm, and it had only been ten metres deep.
The hatch came free. What air remained in the tower wallowed invisibly upwards. Trying to clear his Eustachian tubes, Georg kicked his legs to rise after it; and then his progress was rudely stopped. Something immovable and hard had caught hold of his vest and was pressing into the small of his back.
From both training and temperament, he remained calm. By twisting his body and groping with his left hand he was able to ascertain what had happened. The steelwork of the bridge had been distorted, torn. A stray prong had punctured the vest.
There would be no additional buoyancy on the surface. If he flipped the lever and diverted his air into the vest it would be wasted. The supply was still reaching his mouthpiece and was presumably undamaged.
Far above him, he could see light.
Taking hold of an adjoining section of the bridge, Georg pulled himself downwards, released his vest from the prong, and let himself go.
* * *
Urquhart was looking almost directly into the sunrise, studying with binoculars the smoothness of the swell. “Air bubble, sir,” he said. “Quite a big one.”
Voss grunted. The wily Old Man had seen enough. This could be confirmed as a kill. It was high time to get going.
The first air had surfaced twenty minutes ago. The sea was not only sheened with fuel but dotted here and there with flotsam, some of it identifiable as fresh provisions: apples, lettuces, carrots. “She must have been on her way out,” Voss had observed, when the first of them had appeared. “Bloody good job, too.”
As he scanned the wreckage for floating papers, Urquhart was trying to imagine what it must have been like down there during the onslaught. He was a little claustrophobic and the very idea of service in a submarine appalled him. It was cramped enough here, on board the Arundel Castle.
A new type of ASDIC had been introduced last year, together with the Hedgehog weapon-system, an array of forward-thrown mortars that for the first time had enabled sonar contact to continue uninterrupted during an attack. Until then the Germans had had things all their own way. Now their U-boat losses were just as heavy as those they had formerly inflicted on the Merchant Marine. Fully a third of encounters by destroyers and corvettes were resulting in a kill.
Even as Voss said, “I think we could all do with some sleep”, Urquhart’s attention was drawn to something else. “Man in the water, sir!”
“What?”
“Abeam of us. About a hundred and fifty yards out.” Urquhart’s glasses were equipped with three sorts of internal filter. He slid the polarizing filters aside. That helped, a little, to sharpen the image.
Everyone else on the bridge – Naylor, Thomas, Bentham, and Voss himself – now turned his binoculars that way.
The man’s head and shoulders were filmed with diesel. With the rising sun behind him, the edges of his dark hair seemed bathed in a curious, oily, trembling halo of refractive light. Stubbled and aged about twenty-five or thirty, he was clad in a dark turtleneck sweater and some sort of orange-brown life-vest which seemed, however, not to be inflated. As if one shoulder were injured, he was trying ineffectually to wave. They could hear faint cries. “Helfen Sie mir! Helfen Sie mir!” Help me!
It was incredible that anyone could have come up from that depth. Just incredible, after the bombardment they had meted out. Urquhart looked round, expecting Voss to give the order to lower a boat.
The captain merely lowered his binoculars.
With a premonition of horror, Urquhart glanced at the others. The Quartermaster, Bentham, evidently of like mind, had already turned in mute appeal to Voss. Naylor and Thomas, the more junior officers, were still watching the German.
Lieutenant Commander Voss was a big man, physically, with very blue eyes and a full beard, a captain so distant and severe that the ship’s company had nicknamed him “God”. He was a career officer whose hatred of the enemy was said to have been inflamed by the death of his wife in an air raid on Cardiff. Urquhart did not know the truth of this. He knew only that once, at the wardroom table, he had heard Voss declare that his purpose in life, now, was simply to “kill Germans”.
“Steer 352,” he told Bentham, in the matter-of-fact tone he adopted when giving orders. “Half ahead, both engines; revolutions 120.”
“But sir —”
“Go to it.”
“But sir … if we get him aboard, at least we’ll know the U-number. And Naval Intelligence —”
“Did you hear me, Officer of the Watch?”
Bentham appeared to be on the point of protesting further. Then he said, “Aye aye, sir,” went to the voicepipe, and gave the orders to the wheelhouse and the engine room.
Urquhart looked at Naylor and Thomas. They were not going to intercede. Did they really know nothing about the King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions? Or international law? Or the basic and humane rule of the sea? Perhaps they thought it reasonable that their commanding officer meant to leave a helpless man to die. After all, last night the Krauts had fired two torpedoes at them. Naylor was even wearing the beginnings of a smirk.
Urquhart turned back to Voss. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “It is my duty to remind you that, under the provisions of both the Geneva Convention and the KR and AI, a shipwrecked man of a belligerent force shall be treated as a prisoner of war. He must at all times be —”
“The KR and AI?” Voss said. “You dare speak to me of those?”
Urquhart had begun to tremble with rage. With all his might he was trying not to utter something irrevocable. The reason he and his countrymen were fighting this war was to uphold the values of civilization – the Geneva Convention and all the rest of it. That was why he was here this morning, tired, frightened, his life in abeyance, not knowing whether he would ever see his bride again. If his captain left that man behind it would all be worthless. They would be no better than the Nazis; might as well let them win.
But Urquhart, faced with the intensity of that glare, could say nothing more. He was twenty-six years of age. Voss was fifty.
Below, they had already raised steam. The screw had begun to turn. The ship had begun to move. Soon she would be making twelve knots, back on course from Gibraltar to Belfast and a refit. She was already leaving this place behind.
Voss said, “I’m going to my cabin.”
* * *
On 2 June, 1944, at about one-thirty in the afternoon, Geoffrey Praed was walking down the Strand, not far from Charing Cross Underground Station, when he saw, among the other pedestrians on his side of the road, the approach of a fellow Navy man with a most familiar face.
“Malcolm! What a surprise!”
“Hullo, Geoff!” Urquhart said, just as delighted to have met so unexpectedly one of his term. “How are you?”
“Well, I’m well, and you?”
“I’m good. Glad to be on leave.”
Praed had already seen from the double stripes on Urquhart’s sleeves that he had been made a lieutenant. There was also the gleam of a newish gold ring. “One snagged you at last, then. You’re hitched, I see.”
“I most certainly am.” Urquhart guided him away from the centre of the pavement and closer to the adjacent shopfront. There, beside the taped window, he pulled out his wallet and produced two photographs of a blonde. At Dartmouth, Urquhart’s looks had done him no harm with the local talent, but this girl was gorgeous.
“You lucky Jock dog,” Praed said. “What’s her name?”
“Sylvia. We got married last year. You?”
“Still single-o, alas. Not for want of trying.” He stood back a little. “What are you up to now?”
“Corvette. She’s in for a refit. That’s how I’m here. Madame and I are spending a few days in town with her mother. But Geoff, tell me what you are doing.”
“Shore job. Supply officer.”
Urquhart gave a rueful smile. “Now who’s a lucky dog? Can you say?”
“I’m Assistant Secretary to the C-in-C.”
“Indeed! Mind you, it’s not the least bit undeserved. Even so, I’m impressed.” He seemed to consider for a moment before he said, “Have you got a few minutes? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
A very great deal was going on, but Praed did not have to be back at his desk just yet. He knew a decent pub, round the corner in Villiers Street. Urquhart bought the drinks and suggested that they occupy one of the booths on the far side of the room.
“It’s about a breach of regulations,” Urquhart began. “I don’t know what to do. My captain is involved.”
“How so?”
“Last month he abandoned a German survivor. Just left the poor bastard to drown.”
Praed said nothing.
“We were in the Bay of Biscay, coming back here. The watch picked up a surfaced U-boat heading west, range about three thousand yards. It was at night. Nearly a full moon. She must have seen us at the same time. She vanished, and a few minutes later we saw two incoming torpedo trails which, thanks be, passed well astern. The captain gave chase, as he would. The Germans knew their stuff but, believe me, he’s better. The sighting was at about one; four hours later he’d found them on the seabed at forty-five fathoms. You can guess what happened next. Then this Fritz popped up. Just the one. God knows how he got out in one piece.”
“And you say he was left behind. Deliberately?”
“I can’t tell you how callous it was.” Urquhart paused. “Even if we leave that aside, what about the intelligence we might have got from him? Wasted. Thrown away. Who knows how many men and ships that has cost us?”
Praed contemplated his beer and realized that he was shocked. Despite all the horrors of the war, despite all that daily passed across his desk, he was shocked. He lowered his voice further, even though the adjoining booths were unoccupied. “Perhaps your captain thought there were other U-boats in the area. Biscay is U-boat Alley, after all: Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, Bordeaux; we think they’re even using Vigo now. It might have been too dangerous for him to linger.”
“He did mention that, just before the man came up, but how much longer would it have taken to bring him aboard? Either we observe international law or we don’t, and if we don’t, what’s the point?”
Praed thought about the moral ambiguity he encountered in his work. In wartime the rules often had to be bent. He said as much.
“Bent, perhaps,” Urquhart said. “But not broken.”
“You helped to kill a whole submarine-full of men.”
“We didn’t kill this one. He needed my help. Mine. I heard him crying out for it. ‘Helfen Sie mir!’ I shall never forget those words. I even dream about them. He was a German, in the Kriegsmarine. My direct enemy. The previous night he’d tried to kill me, but still he was my fellow man. And we just sailed away and left him. Geoff, this was a war crime, plain and simple.”
Praed again regarded Urquhart without speaking. As cadets they had not been especially close: friendly, little more. He had not then seen the extent of Urquhart’s idealism. Or, perhaps, his innocence. He wondered how many other officers would have been so distressed by an incident like that. Nobody human would have liked it, of course they wouldn’t, but, as everyone kept reminding everyone else, there was a war on.
Urquhart put down his beer glass. “The whole ship’s company know what happened. Morale is suffering. I’m dreading the day when we put to sea again.”
“Who is your captain?”
“Voss. Archie Voss, Lieutenant Commander.”
“I don’t know him. What vessel?”
“The Arundel Castle.”
Praed could see the dilemma Urquhart was in. Every man was entitled to have a grievance heard; however, in ascending the chain of command a lieutenant’s complaint was made through his captain. The captain occupied an almost mystical place in the life of his subordinates. To go above his head was unthinkably disloyal and unpleasant. Moreover, such an act was hardly likely to benefit one’s career. “How many witnesses were there?”
“On the bridge, three besides myself. Of those at least one might corroborate.” Urquhart obviously understood the implications for himself. “As for the men, I’m not sure how many saw what happened. But as I say, it’s common knowledge. Among a hundred and seventeen British sailors, excluding Voss and me, many of them on leave and dispersed all over the country.”
“God, Malcolm. This really is pretty horrible. Look. Write to me about it, if you want. Set out all the facts. I’ll show the letter privately to my boss. That’s the best I can promise, but he’s a good sort and I hope he’ll talk to the Commander-in-Chief, who might then talk to the First Sea Lord. That’s more than possible. If it happens, the C-in-C will be compelled to act. Where are you based?”
“Portsmouth.”
“All right. The Flag Officer there will probably be ordered to convene a Board of Inquiry. If your witness comes through, or even just on the strength of your sole testimony, we’re talking next about a court martial. The Admiralty Board will probably be made aware. They won’t like this one little bit and the trial will be held in secret. Can you imagine how damaging this story could be? How much good work it would undo? Not only here but in America. Canada. Among our allies everywhere. We’re supposed to occupy the moral high ground.”
“Then what?”
“Goodbye Voss. He’ll be removed. You’ll get a new captain.”
“How will they keep the trial secret?”
“A D-Notice. D for ‘defence’. They’re issued quite often these days. The Press are requested not to report, as a matter of national security. An editor ignores a D-Notice at his peril.”
“What will happen to Voss? Will he be cashiered?”
“I can’t say. How old is he?”
“Fifty.”
“And still only a lieutenant commander? I’m beginning to get the picture.”
Urquhart sat back, as if a great weight had just been lifted from his mind. “Geoff,” he said, “I’m so glad I ran into you today.”
Roland turned the page and was about to continue reading when he sensed that George was watching him.
The boy had put the end of his fountain-pen between his teeth. His gaze, as if seeking inspiration, now went to the ceiling of the schoolroom.
“You won’t find them up there,” Roland said.
“I can’t remember, Mr Singer. I can’t get started.”
“Did you revise?”
“Yes.”
“Truly?”
“I wrote them all out, lots of times.”
Roland arose and moved to stand by George’s wheelchair. So far he had merely written the heading 16 July, 1965 and below that Test, Second Conjugation, Active Voice, Indicative.
“Moneo?” Roland said.
“I advise or am advising.”
“Mones?”
“Thou advisest or art advising.”
“Conjugate, please.”
“Moneo, mones, monet, monemus, monetis, monent.”
“That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? Write it down.”
George bent his blond head and, fiercely gripping the pen, began to scratch the six words of the present indicative. With a surge of protectiveness, Roland observed the sulcus in his neck, the slender shoulders, the little tuft of hair at his crown that would never lie flat.
Since last January, when Mr Urquhart had engaged him as a tutor for his twelve-year-old son, Roland had become very fond of his charge. At first he had simply felt sorry for him. At the interview, Mrs Urquhart had explained that he had been born with a form of spina bifida called myelomeningocele. He had escaped the hydrocephalus that often accompanied this condition, but was nonetheless unable to walk. His mental faculties seemed not to have been impaired. Indeed, he was an intelligent boy, even if he had little interest in Latin – a trait Roland himself could well understand.
George looked up again.
“Future simple?” Roland said. “I shall advise.”
“Um …”
“You ought to know this backwards by now.”
“I’m sorry, Mr Singer.”
“You’re not sorry at all, are you?”
“Not really, sir.”
Roland could not forbear smiling. “Monebo.”
“O yes. Monebo, mone … mone …”
“Monebis.”
“Monebis, monebit, monebimus, monebitis, monebint.”
“Bunt. Monebunt.”
“O yes.”
“Write it down, please.”
Absently, as if gliding, Roland crossed the parquet floor to the window. The terrace below was deserted but for the two gaily striped parasols which, in the afternoons, gave shade to the recliners where Elspeth and Isobel sometimes lay. They were twenty, and George’s lissom sisters.
He gave a faint sigh and, again sensing George’s gaze, turned round. “Now the imperfect. I was advising.”
This time George conjugated without fault.
“Very good. Write it down, please.”
Imperfect. That was not a word Roland would use to describe Elspeth Urquhart. By now he could readily tell her from her sister, though he was careful not to look at her too closely for fear of giving himself away.
In the early, snowy days when he had been getting to know George, Roland had been dazzled equally by the twins; as he had become drawn into the household their individual characters had emerged.
Their personalities did not so much differ as overlap. Where they converged it was almost as if one girl existed in two bodies; where they didn’t, understanding and introspection claimed Elspeth as their own. Her tastes tended towards poetry, Isobel’s towards pop music and the cinema. Yet even here they overlapped, and the girls often went to the library or the pictures together, even arm-in-arm, drawing after them many a male gaze. And Roland, who would never be rich or interesting enough to lay claim to either, had daily to sit at table with them, with George, and often as not with one or both of their parents. He had to sit there and eat politely the delicious fare laid before him by the servants; sit there like a tailor’s dummy and pretend that he had not fallen wretchedly in love with his employer’s younger-by-five-minutes daughter.
Roland had thought of resigning, but the job was too difficult to replicate for that. Everything about the rest of it suited him perfectly: the agreeable Mr Urquhart, his house and walled garden, the life he had created here, and George of course. It was true that Roland did not much care for Mrs Urquhart’s religiosity, and his room could have been a bit bigger; and unfortunately his window did not overlook the cathedral close with its spacious lawns and its surrounding company of elegant houses.
When first he had set eyes on Alincester, Roland had experienced an unaccountable feeling of homecoming. Just as he had grown fond of his pupil, so had he grown fond of this, one of the most venerable of English cities: its medieval streets with their medieval names, its greenery, the ruins of the flint walls, and the transparent river, full of trout, that ran so swiftly through its centre. In his free time he still wandered about like a tourist. He poked around the many second-hand bookshops – silent, dusty places in the main, in which turgid ecclesiastical works were absurdly over-represented. He occupied solitary benches here and there in the public gardens near the bishop’s palace, reading his latest acquisition, perhaps bathed in a network of shadow cast by overhanging leaves. Roland was not much given to alcohol, but he was slowly sampling the city’s pubs. And he was not much given to Christianity, but he was fascinated by the cathedral itself and had already spent much time exploring it. On his own account he rarely ventured beyond the city walls; he had the use of a car, and drove once a fortnight to visit his father, eighty miles away.
George said, “Can we go on an outing tomorrow, Mr Singer?”
The morrow was an intermediate Saturday, when Mr Singer did not have leave to go to Aylesbury. “What about the other tenses?”
“I’ve done them. I remembered. The others sort of set me off.”
Roland went back to George’s desk and picked up the exercise book. “You’ve even got the future perfect right.”
The future perfect. Would that such a thing were possible.
“I was thinking we might go to the seaside. I do like it so.”
“Where?”
“Selsey.”
“Again?”
“Can we go, please please, Mr Singer?”
“I’ll have to square it with Mrs Urquhart.”
“She’s bound to say ‘no’.”
“She didn’t before.”
“Only because Manners came with us.”
Away from the formality of the house, Roland had found on that afternoon that he got on well with the butler. “Mr Manners likes the seaside, too. He used to be in the Navy, you know.”
George frowned.
“Let me see what I can do.”
It had gone half-past twelve. The lesson was over. Roland wheeled George along to his room so that he could wash his hands and face and comb his hair in readiness for his mother’s inspection at lunch. “Better straighten your tie, old chap,” Roland said. “Do you need a pee?”
“Not yet.”
Once Roland had visited the guest bathroom to perform his own brief ablutions, he operated the stairlift and accompanied George to the ground floor.
Mr Urquhart was in London, so his place at the head of the dining table remained unset. Mrs Urquhart, at the far end, waited while Manners dispensed the watercress soup. Her blonde coiffure had been freshly permed and perhaps tinted: Roland could smell the chemicals, whatever it was the salon used, and her face was still flushed from the dryer. She should have been attractive, but there was something about the lines of her mouth he did not like, made worse by her crimson lipstick. It occasionally got on her white, neatly formed teeth, giving a wholly inappropriate hint of vampirism.
As soon as Roland had been served and the tureen had retreated, she put her hands together, shut her eyes, and bowed her head.
“For what we are about to receive, may the good Lord make us truly thankful.”
“Amen,” everyone said.
There followed a shaking-out of napkins and a selecting of bread-rolls. Roland noticed that Elspeth, diagonally across from him to the right and opposite Isobel, did not take one. Her appetite had decreased of late. Perhaps she was slimming, not that she needed to. Or perhaps – and the thought filled Roland with a mixture of jealousy and anguish – she was pining for her fiancé, a junior member of the diplomatic corps who had recently been sent to Portugal. With his sports car, his “people”, and his Oxford first in PPE, Roland would have loathed him anyway.
Mrs Urquhart lifted her spoon, the signal to begin.
Isobel said, addressing her brother, “And what have you been stuffing your brain with this morning, young sir?”
“Latin,” George said. “Maths and English before that.”
“I could never get on with Latin,” she said. “What’s the point of it? Who speaks it now? Only the Pope.”
Roland took another spoonful.
“Quite handy if you’re granted an audience, though.”
“Isobel!”
“Sorry, Mummy.”
He risked a sidelong look. Isobel appeared not the least bit contrite. Like her sister’s, her luxuriant auburn hair had today been tied back, albeit in a different style. She issued him a little smile before returning to her soup.
“Mrs Urquhart,” Roland said. “George and I would like to visit the coast tomorrow, if that’s all right.”
“What part of the coast?”
“Selsey.”
She was obviously on the point of refusing when Isobel said, “You should really say ‘Selzey’. That’s how the natives pronounce it.”
He glanced at her again. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “Thank you.” She returned his glance, and seemed to understand that he was not thanking her so much for the lesson in pronunciation as for intervening to forestall her mother’s refusal.
This had not escaped Elspeth’s notice. Her kindly, beautiful, greenish eyes now met Roland’s.
George was having the good sense to keep quiet.
“We had such an interesting time before,” Roland went on. “We’re studying longshore drift, and it made a real difference for George to see it in person. The Selsey – the Selzey peninsula is almost completely flat. Flatter than Holland. The soil is extraordinarily rich. Did you know there are more glasshouses there per acre than anywhere else in the county?”
“I didn’t know that, no.”
Isobel said, “The bathing’s pretty good, too. When your lessons are over, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go to the beach again.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Roland.
“I expect the water’s so clear just because it’s a peninsula.” She turned to her mother. “It’s pure as you like. I adore Selsey. Simply adore it. You can keep your Witterings, East or West. Give me Selsey every time.”
“I’m afraid a swim will be out of the question,” Mrs Urquhart said. Dr Horner had recommended sea bathing, but there had to be what Mrs Urquhart regarded as proper supervision. On the previous occasion, both Roland and the butler had gone into the water with George. “Manners is needed here. We’re entertaining tomorrow, as you know.”
“I’m sure George’d be in safe hands with Mr Singer,” Isobel said.
“I’m sure he would. However, I cannot permit it. Suppose they both got out of their depth?”
“Bel,” said Elspeth, “what are you doing tomorrow?”
“You know very well. Nothing in particular.”
“Mr Singer, would you mind if we came with you?”
Disguising his astonishment, he said, “Not in the least. Unless you find geology too boring.”
“What a super idea!” Isobel cried. “Let’s take a picnic!”
Mrs Urquhart still looked doubtful.
“A picnic sounds lovely,” Elspeth said. “O George, let’s hope the weather stays fine!”
For fear of smiling, Roland examined his plate. Somehow, she had dealt the coup de grâce. Unbending as Mrs Urquhart could be, she had been boxed into a corner. Yet her opposition was based in love for the poor, sweet-natured boy who was her only son. And it was love that had overcome her resistance. Roland was overwhelmed by the sensation of being bathed himself, not in water, but in the love that filled this room, here, today, now. He had identified the appeal this household held: its appeal, as well as the fountain-head of its glamour. It was not only Elspeth he loved, but all of them.
She said, “What time do you want us back, Mummy?”
“Six will do. We shan’t be sitting down till nine.”
While the arrangements for the picnic were being settled, Roland felt himself resiling from the juvenile effusion of sentiment that had seized him just now. The reality of his existence reasserted itself with all its power. Even the prospect of a whole day in Elspeth’s company was not enough to cheer him. In fact, it would make things worse. He did not know how he was going to handle the dynamics of having all three of them together for so long. The twins had joined forces to change their mother’s mind. It had been hypersensitive, almost telepathic, and that was how it always was. And tomorrow he would have to fool Elspeth and Isobel not just severally, as if they were normal people, but jointly. To betray himself would make life here impossible. He would have to leave.
Nevertheless, as the salad was being served, Roland could not help but see the continuing excitement in George’s eyes, and so could not help but be pleased by the outcome.
* * *
To applause, Elspeth left the tennis court behind. Robert, her partner in the mixed doubles, was beside her: ahead walked Isobel and her own partner for the afternoon.
“Well played,” drawled Tony Fitzgibbon, as they reached the tables and the shade of the beech trees. “Splendid work, El and Bel. You fellows weren’t too slack, either.”
A few of the others made similar remarks, but attention was already focused on the next one-set match, the women’s doubles.
Elspeth laid her racquet and towel beside an empty chair and helped herself to iced tea. She perused the array of dainty sandwiches, pastries and cakes, but decided she wasn’t hungry. Having sat down, she sipped her tea and let the conversation go on without her. She felt odd, reflective, and just for a minute wanted to abandon altogether any pretence of frivolity.
This was the second time she had been invited to a tennis tea at Downham House. Before her engagement such events had occupied most of her life. Now she went mainly for Bel’s sake. Often, as today, much the same people would be there.
Tony had once attempted the fortress that was Isobel. After that he had directed his fire at her sister. This afternoon he had been flirting with her again, which she thought very bad of him, especially as he was supposed to be Charlie’s friend. Throughout the match she had felt Tony’s eyes following her about the court. He had spoiled every point and every game. Not that she cared overmuch about tennis, or winning: Bel was far more competitive, far more sporty. Elspeth preferred to watch.
Tony was an ass. He was now boasting in an especially loud voice, and she knew it was for her benefit. No doubt he had indulged himself too much with the claret cup.
“Oh, good shot, Venetia!”
More applause.
“Love fifteen,” the umpire intoned.
“In, surely it was in!”
The balletic figures on court, young, nubile, healthy and rich, in fetching whites and wielding expensive racquets, were loosing their hold on her interest. She was thinking again about Mr Singer at lunch, his linen jacket, the pleasing timbre of his voice and the diffidence – scarcely even a hesitancy – with which he usually spoke. He was not like the men around her here. She could not imagine him flirting with a woman he knew to be engaged, particularly as he had been introduced to Charlie.
She thought about the way in which he had broached the trip to the seaside. Before then she had not understood, not fully, how he felt about George.
Singer: was that a Jewish name? He even looked a bit like Mahler, she had decided at their first meeting. The young Mahler. Good-looking, in that intellectual way. He had attracted her from the start. Perhaps she was even a little in love with him. Certainly she felt a catch on those rare occasions when he met her glance, as he had today, over the lunch table. He could be very dry, even if he was careful not to show it in front of Mummy, and that attracted her even more.
Was it so wrong secretly to feel like this? Nothing could ever come of it.
Except at meals and by mistake, he was never around for long: always in the schoolroom, or off somewhere with George. At other times he kept to himself. In any case he could not possibly be for her. She was already promised, destined, firmly settled. She mused on him merely as some sort of alternative companion, an occupant of bohemian fantasies in which featured books and music, the theatre, poetry, conversation. He was widely read, unlike Tony Fitzgibbon. Or even, she was tempted to concede, Charlie. No: she quickly closed that avenue off.
Elspeth had known for months that he was in love with her. That appeal to her vanity could hardly be ignored; it too must have had an influence. Had she encouraged him thereby? Was that not cruel of her? No wonder she felt bad about tomorrow.
Thinking further, remembering Mr Singer’s mien each second Sunday during the family service, she wondered if he really believed. Like her, was he too cowardly to stop going?
Ever since reading, by chance, an article in the paper, Elspeth had become more and more interested in Buddhism. She had bought a paperback on the subject written by Christmas Humphreys – a Commissioner at the Old Bailey, of all people. Though some of the philosophy was difficult, she had at once felt that this might be the answer. Since then she had read more, including everything in the public library’s collection. For some reason – she was not normally given to deceit – she had kept her studies private. There was no one she could discuss them with, not even Daddy; the idea that Mr Singer might be sympathetic had long since crossed her mind. Not that she would ever know him well enough for that.
Elspeth had surprised herself by suggesting that she should accompany him. At the time it had just seemed right, but now she felt guilt and trepidation instead. Unfortunately Bel had played her part too well. She also had known how disappointed George would have been.
George’s education was a difficult thing. He was so easily bored that it required a perceptive teacher to enthuse him. Daddy had mooted a special school, where George would at least have been able to make friends. As it was, he knew only a handful of other boys, the sons of neighbours, mainly; and she knew how much he chafed at being trapped not only in that chair but in the house. His mother, however, had insisted that he be taught at home.
Her protectiveness went beyond the bounds of reason. Elspeth had begun to wonder about her mental state. Last spring she had even come up with the grotesque idea that George, now that all medical intervention had failed, should submit himself to the whims of the divine: she was taking him next month on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where she had convinced herself, and George, that a miracle cure would be their reward. This final and inevitable failure would be a blow from which George might never recover. In desperation, Elspeth had appealed to her father, to no avail. He had, uncharacteristically she thought, refused to listen. She would never have believed him capable of such indifference. Perhaps that was why she was so glad of the influence of Mr Singer.
He was not only perceptive and benign but skilful: his predecessor had been a disaster. Nowadays George was obviously enjoying his lessons. The syllabus had of necessity to be limited to the theoretical: there could be no chemistry practicals or woodwork. That aside, the unfolding plan was to equip him as much as possible for a normal career.
The image of Mr Singer looking down at his soup-plate, trying not to smile, recurred to her yet again. He really was a most likeable young man. Yes, she thought, if she had earned any merit at all today, it was by helping George to go on that seaside picnic with his mentor and friend.
A commotion brought her out of her reverie. The first game had just been won.
* * *
On most weekdays Roland was released from his duties at four-thirty. Often he chose to remain with George, but this Friday afternoon he set out at once across the green, lighting a cigarette as he went. He lingered near the west door of the cathedral while he finished it, crushed the remains into a sand-filled bin, smoothed his hair, and descended the four broad steps to the threshold.
Behind her donations desk, the attendant, an elderly volunteer with whom he had once or twice chatted in the past, greeted him with a smile. Roland smiled back and strode across to the north aisle. He felt agitated and paid no heed to the wonders passing him by – the ornate tombs of dukes and bishops, the Norman font, the priceless cope chest. He paid no heed to the decorated pillars, the ancient flagstones, the breathtaking effrontery of the vault, or indeed to anything else, even though his reading of the guidebook was as yet incomplete and he had examined in detail no more than a fraction of the cathedral’s contents. Choral Evensong was scheduled for five o’clock. He wanted to avoid it: either to be out before it started, or to find somewhere to hide himself from view.
Coming to the choir, he turned left into the north transept. There, behind the furthest pillar, he found his customary spot in one of the rows of hard seating usually occupied only during crowded services.
He unfastened the middle button of his jacket, sat down, and exhaled. The air here was musty, the light dim, filtered through high, stained glass windows.
He was not sure why he found the cathedral so comforting. Even during his upbringing, his supposed indoctrination in the ways of the Anglican Church, he had known that it was intellectually dishonest to be other than agnostic. How could one see beyond the material world? From time to time he had undergone what he had perceived as mystical experiences, usually short-lived and, in hindsight, trite, such as watching a prolonged sunset over the sea or gazing into the immensity of the night sky. As a student he had read St Matthew’s gospel during the passage of one Easter, on his own account and from start to finish. It had affected him, but he lacked faith, and that was the indispensable ingredient.
Yet he liked to visit churches, especially this one. He relished the silence, the peace, the feeling of history and continuity. For their sake he tolerated the crucified figure above the altar, the candles left burning by the desperate, the suspicion that he might be regarded as a trespasser. One afternoon in May, while sitting here alone and thinking of Elspeth, he had been tentatively approached by a bald, bespectacled cleric. “I have no wish to intrude,” the man had said, a remark so completely English that Roland had not minded when he had added, “but I have often seen you here. Are you troubled?”
“No,” Roland had claimed. Well, he was certainly troubled now. In the first place, why had she suggested that she and her sister should come with him and George? Nothing like it had ever happened before. Then there was the connection when her eyes had met his. More disturbing than any of this, though, was that sensation of being bathed. Try as he might, dismiss it as he would, he could not get it out of his head.
Activity could be heard in the choir. The boys and lay clerks had gathered. Worshippers were arriving. The organ began to play. He wondered whether to go. Where? Not back to the house. To the public gardens? Or should he just walk around the streets?
The music ceased. He remained where he was. The officiant started to recite the preces.
“O Lord, open thou our lips:”
The answer came from the congregation. “And our mouth shall show forth thy praise. ”
“O God, make speed to save us:”
“O Lord, make haste to help us.”
Roland stared at the floor. Open thou our lips.
The first reading was from the Book of Jonah. “Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying: Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”
The reader fell silent. The point had been made.
A solitary tenor, noble, exalted, started to sing the Magnificat in plainchant, joined almost at once by other, contrapuntal, voices: an alto, trebles, a baritone, so beautiful and startling that Roland felt himself riddled, shot through, with shafts of light. Elspeth. It was more than he could bear. He rose up and fled to the west door.
Just as he reached the donations desk he managed to recover himself sufficiently to face the attendant.
“Which … whose setting of the Magnificat is that?”
“I don’t rightly know,” she said. “I’ve got some programmes here. Look. Manuel Cardoso, baptized 1566, died 1650.”
“Thanks,” Roland said, and went outside, stepping into the sunshine and the ordinary.
Some of the dwellings surrounding the cathedral dated back to the tenth century, but most had been knocked down and rebuilt at least once. Over the years the quaint old streets had filled up and new ones had been laid. Few houses in the precincts of the cathedral itself were in private hands. One was a museum, another the headquarters of a charity, and many still belonged to the Church. Those not rented out were used as offices or accommodation for the senior clergy of the diocese, including the bishop himself. The former bishops’ residence, the palace, was now also a museum, attracting many tourists and school parties.
The Urquharts’ house had been built in 1790 by a slave-dealer, rivalled the bishop’s in size, and outdid it completely in luxury. The family employed five live-in servants: the butler, a housekeeper, a cook, a footman and a housemaid. A kitchen maid and the gardener lived out.
Roland had no idea how much all this cost, and had only a hazy notion of what Mr Urquhart did for a living. He knew that he owned a firm in the City of London and was a ship broker, which Roland understood to mean an agent in the sale, purchase, and leasing of ships. From table talk he had gathered that the firm specialized in oil tankers. Whatever it did, it seemed to generate huge amounts of money, enough for Mr Urquhart to have outbid everyone else when this wonderful house in the cathedral close had come up for sale in 1959.
Formerly he had lived in the country, six miles away. The move to Alincester had apparently been prompted by Mrs Urquhart’s desire to bring the family – George, in other words – closer to the amenities of a town – such as doctors and the district hospital, Roland supposed.
There was no through traffic, and when the close was empty of visitors the air could be extremely quiet. The back garden, which on two sides was protected further by a red-brick wall, even had the feel of a country place. Its wide lawn sloped down to the river, where stood a summerhouse in which Roland had been given permission to conduct lessons. This he did whenever the weather allowed and whenever George didn’t need to write too much. Reclining in a rattan chair, George listened to Coleridge or heard about the Hellenes; he was palpably happier there than in the confines of the house, and kept looking out at the passing water and the occasional passing mallard or coot. Manners would send his footman down with lemonade and biscuits or afternoon tea. When both were busy elsewhere Mrs Beasley, the cook, did the honours.
She never failed to exchange a few words with Roland and was especially kind to George. It was no surprise that she had gone to such trouble with the hamper. Roland had sneaked a look just before stowing it in the boot of the ageing Austin Cambridge that went with his job. Beside the hamper he placed four folding beach-chairs, a small folding table, the bulky bags containing towels and whatnot for the girls, and another bag for the things he and George were taking. On top of all he placed the olive green canvas wheelchair-cover.
He reversed out of the garage, leaving behind the twins’ open-topped Morris Minor and the Urquharts’ Mercedes, nosed along the passageway beside the house, through the arch, and out into the close, where he parked in front of the ornate, central, wrought iron gates.
The cloudiness of the morning had raised in him the hope that the swimming would be abandoned, that the sisters would withdraw and let him and George go on alone, but at breakfast Isobel had quoted the weatherman’s optimistic prediction and declared that it was always sunnier south of the Downs. There was no question of a change of plan. As he realized this, eating his egg and bacon, Roland also realized that part of him was glad. Elspeth too, the Elspeth across the table, was coming. Last night he had allowed himself to acknowledge that he might be seeing her in a swimming costume, and she might be seeing him. Instead of Manners, he might enter the sea with her, supporting George in the shallows, encouraging him to float and to extract some movement from his withered legs. Each with one parental hand under a shoulder and another under his waist, they might stand face to face in the water, divided but also joined by him. And George, looking up at them alternately, might make one of his droll remarks, cause their eyes to meet, and bring about some acknowledgement, some reprise, of yesterday’s magical feeling of subsumption.
O God, he had thought, while lying in his bed. I’m madly in love with her. That cliché, so well worn and reliable, expressed it exactly.
He was indeed mad. She had shown no sexual interest in him whatsoever. She was engaged to be married to an alpha male, an assured, aristocratic, and independently wealthy man, and might become in due course the wife of an ambassador. Roland was gauche and penniless and had no future except as a teacher. He could not afford to leave this post without a good reference.
As the front door opened, he admonished himself most severely. Today he would be treading a narrow ledge. He had no choice but to keep his balance.
Clough, the footman, carried George down to the car and helped him into the front passenger seat. Roland, having accepted the folded wheelchair from Elspeth, opened the rear offside passenger door for her while Clough did the same for Isobel on the near side. The wheelchair went into its cover; the boot again clunked shut; and Roland started the engine.
To begin with the atmosphere was awkward.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses, Mr Singer,” said Elspeth.
“Only for driving and the cinema. I’m a bit short-sighted.”
“They suit you.”
“I hate them.”
They were leaving the city behind when Isobel said, “I vote we go to the beach first. If the sun comes out. Which it will. Geology later.”
Because he could see both girls’ faces and they could see him looking, Roland had so far been sparing in his use of the rearview mirror. He allowed his eyes to acknowledge Isobel’s remark.
“Isn’t that up to Mr Singer?” Elspeth said. “We’re only passengers, after all.”
“Actually,” George said, half turning in his seat, “the beach is where the geology is today.”
“Correct,” said Roland. “Longshore drift. Groynes. All that.”
“Ooh, goody!” Isobel said.
Roland smiled and saw that Elspeth was smiling too. “All what?” she said.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“That’s put you in your place, madam,” said Isobel.
Elspeth’s smile broadened. Knowing that she was watching, Roland winked at George.
The conversation flowed more freely after that. Although Roland kept reminding himself of the narrow ledge, he was finding it hard not to become intoxicated by her presence and the promise of a leisurely day with her. They suit you. What had made her say those words? Did they mean anything? No – she had meant nothing, nothing. But there she was behind him, directly behind him. She was no longer diagonal, at one remove, her customary position not just at table but in his whole life. Then what about that smile? Her manner had changed. It had softened. Of that there was no doubt. And beside her, reinforcing her, sat the stunning Isobel. Any red-blooded man would die to receive her favour. She set a standard that only her sister could surpass. Their nicknames, together, made an anagram of belle.
He ordered himself to calm down.
George chattered; the countryside went past. As they descended into Chichester the sun came out. “Told you so,” Isobel said. “It’s going to be a scorcher.”
They stopped for petrol, crossed the A27, and followed the narrow, twisting roads that led to the sea.
Isobel asked, “Does it matter which part of the beach we go to? I suppose Church Norton’s out of the question.”
“Too much shingle to negotiate,” Elspeth said.
“The East Beach, then.”
George said, “That’s where we went before. Not so many people. So many humans. Hu-mans. Hu-man beans.”
That was also where Mrs Urquhart had again told Roland to go for bathing today. “It shouldn’t be too crowded,” he said. “Don’t forget the schools haven’t broken up yet.”
He easily found a shady spot to park, beside an anonymous hedge in a residential road. There were no other parked cars, a favourable omen, though it was still only ten o’clock.
There followed some discussion about the logistics of getting everything to the beach. Roland gave George a fireman’s lift; Elspeth carried the folding chairs and Isobel the hamper.
With difficulty Roland covered the few yards to the end of the road. It gave straight on to the shingle. He climbed the shallow ramp, the girls behind him in their sunhats, and crossed the asphalt promenade, which terminated here.
The beach was divided by wooden groynes into sections about fifty yards wide. Manners had carried George before, and for an instant, his feet crunching as he went down the slope into the nearest section, Roland had the horrible feeling that he was going to fall.
“Are you all right?” Elspeth said, moving closer.
“Yes, yes, we’re fine. Thank you.”
George, he knew, disliked being carried even more than he disliked his wheelchair. To Manners he had said, “I’m just a sack of potatoes.”