Shuttlecock (23 page)

I looked at him, puckering up my face.

He nodded. ‘But that’s not all. There’s one thing I’ve never told anyone about that moment. When I brought my foot down – it was only a split second, but I remember this much – I thought: he’s had it, I can still save myself. I was glad.’

I turned my eyes to the garden. As the shadows crept upwards, they made the remaining chequers of sunlight, on the walls, the roses, the apple trees, more intense and dazzling. A sweet smell came from the honeysuckle.
I remembered our garden in Wimbledon. Mother’s kitchen garden. Her clump of lavender.

The smell of apple wood is the smell of sanctuary.…

I thought: I’d wanted Dad to come back to me. Perhaps now I had the words – the question – that would shock him out of his silence. I could say to him: Did you betray your comrades? And his eyes would start into life. But at what cost to him? Was that the price of having Dad back? That he must know that I knew he wasn’t a hero. And
did
I know that? If I found out myself – if I looked at the files and followed them up (how could I tell that Quinn wasn’t still holding back some clinching piece of evidence?) – then I would know; but the world need never know. We could destroy the files. Was that what Quinn was offering me?

And in that case Dad must remain a silent statue.

I thought: if I knew that Dad hadn’t been strong and brave, then I wouldn’t hit Marian and shout at the kids and sulk around the house. But I didn’t want to know that Dad wasn’t strong and brave.

Quinn said: ‘What are you thinking about?’

I’d never have guessed Quinn had no foot. He was patched up with metal, like the Bionic Man.

I said: ‘I was thinking about my hamster. Do you know, for the last couple of months I’ve kept thinking about my hamster?’

He looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘Will you have that other drink now?’

‘Please.’

He got up. While he was indoors one of the cats drew near. I put my hand out to stroke it, but it backed away.

When he returned I said: ‘You haven’t told me what was in the letter to Z.’

‘That’s true.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve been saving it. Go back for a moment to what I said at the beginning. If you want to call a halt to this little discussion, just say so, whenever you like. Are you sure you want to know what was in the letter to Z?’

‘Yes. I want to know everything.’

‘All right. X’s letter to Z was not, strictly speaking, a blackmail letter, since there was no accompanying demand. Though I suppose it might have been turned to that end later. It supports, again, the theory that X’s allegations were purely malicious. The substance of the allegation was that your father had been having an affair with Z’s wife. At the time of the letter this had been going on – so the claim was – for nearly a year.’

‘But that can’t be true.’

Quinn eyed me abruptly. I had not denied the other charges against Dad so hotly. All the strength of my denial was based on my memory of Dad and Mum.

‘It needn’t be true. Once again we’re dealing with something that, quite possibly, was wholly trumped up. But let me – since you want to know everything – put the opposite case. Z committed suicide at a time soon after he may have come into possession of this letter. No other motive for the suicide was revealed other than his wife’s statements about their ruined marriage. That presumably had been a source of distress for some time, so it doesn’t necessarily explain why Z took his life when he did. But supposing he suddenly gets knowledge of his wife’s infidelity. That might have been the last straw, that might have brought him – why do we keep using this phrase? – to the breaking point. And not just his wife’s infidelity. Z was a friend of your father – your own researches turned that up – a long-standing, close friend. He admired your father, respected him enormously.
Compare their war records – doubtless you tracked this down too. Your father was all the things Z never quite became himself. You see, though Z became professionally successful, we’re dealing with another man who was perhaps dissatisfied with his achievements, who perhaps had a nagging sense of inadequacy. What was intolerable about X’s letter – if we assume he took it seriously – was not just his wife’s behaviour but the fact that a friend he looked up to – even idolized, who knows? – had cheated him, and probably knew, what’s more, via his wife, all his own pathetic circumstances – assuming
those
to be true – as a husband. A stronger man might have had it out with your father. What’s a strong man? Z just collapsed. All this doesn’t conflict with the wife’s evidence. If her marriage to Z was really as she described it, she would have been ripe for an affair with another man. And, of course, she would have pushed the evidence she did give for all its worth – so as to hide the fact of her infidelity. Then there’s Z’s son. Remember, I told you that he turned against his mother after the inquiry. Might that not have been because he knew all about his mother’s affair? He hated her both for her original unfaithfulness and then for dragging his father’s name cold-bloodedly through the dirt.’

I thought: whose side is Quinn on? What does he want?

‘And one other thing corroborates X’s letter. To do with the dates. Nearly a year – ’

‘You mean – I know what you are going to say – it dates everything from shortly after my mother died.’

I thought of Dad’s coldness to Marian.

‘Yes. It would be another factor to support X’s allegation. But, also – if we suppose that allegation wasn’t false – something to mitigate your father’s action. A man who
loses his wife, quite without warning, still in his middle years. Grief; loneliness. He turns to another woman for some kind of solace. Oh, he’s not absolved, by any means. But isn’t he doing, again, what any ordinary man, with only so much strength, might do?’

I’d never wanted any other woman than Marian; only to be closer to Marian.

I turned my face again from Quinn because my eyes were smarting.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve put everything in the most unfavourable light. You wanted me to tell you. If you wanted me to tell you, there seemed no point in softening the implications. You must think I’m a bit of a bastard. But, remember, all this can just as well be explained as an invention of X’s spite. As a matter of fact, X’s own marital history isn’t irrelevant. Yes, he was married. Children. He was divorced about five years ago and about a year before his dismissal from the Home Office. His wife brought the petition. The grounds were cruelty.’

‘Cruelty? Was the business of Z’s wife mentioned, too, in X’s letter to Dad?’

‘Yes. X threatened to make it public.’

I thought: the subject of all this is sitting in a chair on a hospital terrace. I would be with him, normally, on a Wednesday. Is he waiting for me, missing me? Or is he none the wiser?

I looked at the lit-up garden walls.

My universe … depended on that piece of rusty metal.…

Quinn sipped his drink. ‘I know what you are thinking. You are wondering what happens now. I can show you the file, the actual letters. You can follow up the threads – as you have done already. You can find out if X
was really telling the truth. Real police-work. Is that what you want? Perhaps you want’ – he paused and narrowed his eyes – ‘to destroy your father. But why should you want to do that? Isn’t he – I shouldn’t say this – destroyed already?’

‘Which proves everything!’ I said in sudden rage. ‘His breakdown – at the time when it happened – is the one thing that clinches it all.’

‘No, no, no. It doesn’t clinch the
truth
of anything. Remember what I said. A breakdown can be triggered by a false accusation, by the
threat
of blackmail, as well as by the real thing. And in any case, supposing the letter did contain the truth and it did cause the breakdown – hasn’t he effectively put the seal on the matter? Hasn’t he rendered himself immune? And isn’t he giving us a signal? I want silence on this business. I don’t want to be approached. I want to be left alone with my knowledge. You see, it’s the knowledge that matters, it’s the knowledge that makes the difference. Only that. But let’s get back to my point. You can follow the matter up – face it out with your Dad. Perhaps that matters to you. Or perhaps what matters to you is to preserve your father, to preserve the father who is in that book of his Is that the case? Well, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be. All of this perhaps can make no difference, externally; it can matter to no one except you. If nothing happens, the secret – the mystery, if you like – remains only with you, and me. Perhaps uncertainty is always better than either certainty or ignorance. Do you know what I propose? I propose destroying File E. Yes, our job is the
preserving
of information. Well, you’ll have to shoulder that one when I leave the office – a small burden, perhaps, in the circumstances. The file’s here, in the flat. Yes, another rule broken. It’s up to you whether we destroy it, now. And
it’s up to you whether you want to look at it before it’s destroyed.’

I met Quinn’s eyes. I felt like a criminal.

‘What about other people? People still alive – ’

‘There’s always that risk of course. But then all this has slept for thirty years. Why shouldn’t it go on sleeping? Your only real danger is Z’s wife and Z’s son. But Z’s wife is hardly likely to want to publicize matters further, and Z’s son – well, Z’s son’s primary concern was his father’s reputation. Now his father has been cleared of any professional slur, he is hardly likely to want to make known – that’s if my theory about Z’s son is correct – that his father committed suicide because he had found out his best friend was carrying on with his wife. All these skeletons, Prentis, hidden away in cupboards. As a matter of fact, your position and Z’s son’s are peculiarly alike. You both want to protect your fathers. You are both under your father’s shadows. Am I right? You never know, perhaps one day you should meet.’

Z’s son. So, somewhere else in the world, there was someone like me.

‘Shall I get the file?’

‘All right.’

He went in once more. I sat with my drink, looking at Quinn’s trim, new-mown lawn. I thought: this is just another terrace where you sit and play games with the truth.

He emerged with the file in his hand. It was a standard, pale-blue office file with the letters C9/E on it and ‘
CONFIDENTIAL
’ stamped in purple ink on one corner. He placed it on the table in front of me. I felt like a witness in the dock confronted with some incriminating exhibit.

‘Now – first question. Down at the end of the garden is
a little incinerator I use for burning garden rubbish. I suggest we have a bonfire. Do you agree?’

I looked at the file. For a while I didn’t think of Dad at all; only of the implications of destroying official information.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Good. If we don’t decide now we might dither for ever. Second question: do you want to look at it first, before you even answer question one?’

I stared again at the file. I thought of the number of times I’d opened the cover of
Shuttlecock
hoping Dad would come out; hoping to hear his voice. Was I afraid that the allegations might be true – or that they might be false? And supposing, in some extraordinary way, that everything Quinn told me was concocted, was an elaborate hoax – if I never looked in the file, I would never know. I read the code letters over and over again. C9/E … And then suddenly I knew I wanted to be uncertain, I wanted to be in the dark.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Right. Come on.’

Quinn got hastily out of his seat and took the file. He was like a boy engineering some mischievous prank. Was he doing all this simply to pass the responsibility on to me? I followed him across the lawn. I thought of him running in the fields of Normandy. We reached an unkempt corner of the garden, beyond the screen of the apple trees. Ivy cloaked the walls, and some neglected trees in a neighbour’s garden arched overhead. Bits of garden debris and cinders strewed the ground, in amongst patches of weeds and nettles. It wasn’t the safest place to have a fire.

The incinerator stood in the corner – a shaky, wire-mesh construction, rusty and scorched. Quinn stooped
over it. He did not pause. He took a cigarette lighter from his trouser pocket and then dropped the file into the wire frame, lifting his arm, ritualistically, high. He turned to me for final confirmation.

‘I’ve done all this for you, Prentis, but also to put my own mind at rest. If you think I was wrong, tell me.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, resolutely. It seemed to me this was an answer I would give, boldly, over and over again for the rest of my life.

Quinn looked at me, surprised, approving.

‘Are we ready then?’

He flicked alight the cigarette lighter. Before setting the flame to the file he pulled out some of the documents and spread them loosely to help them burn. The papers blackened, curled and flared up. I thought of funeral pyres. I thought: they can arrest us for this.

I’m not superstitious, but I wondered if at this moment, as the flames licked at File E, Dad would be feeling, at the hospital, a glow of relief; whether others there would see his face brighten – his lips flutter. The smoke curled up through the overhanging leaves. The evening shadows had lengthened and the branches and foliage seemed to press round us in complicity.

 … the woods and the trees are always on the side of the fugitive.…

Quinn crouched by the incinerator, poking the fire with a stick. The flames lit his face. He might have been an outlaw in some forest hideout.

‘There,’ he said, lifting the last fragments of paper to make them catch. ‘Now it’s done.’

‘And all this was for me?’ I asked. ‘All those mixed-up files; your – behaviour – at the office? And you might never have told me about it?’

‘Not exactly, old chap. There are others like you.’ He smiled rather sourly. ‘My little flock. I just happened to
know
you.’

I thought: do I really understand Quinn any better? You penetrate one mystery only to find another. I wondered if at work tomorrow he would behave just as before, as if this evening hadn’t happened. Speak to me gruffly; look down at me from his glass panel; treat me like dirt. I looked at him as he crouched. His eyes were hidden by the reflected flames in his glasses. I remembered my arrival when he stood at the foot of the basement steps and everything was different. I felt vaguely as if I were under hypnosis.