Alarmed by her unusual display of emotion Max held up his hands to calm her but she went on describing the horrific picture of their world just after the war. Once the celebrations abated, the country was a mass of bereft, grieving people. Almost every family had lost someone, their black clothes the outward symbol of their inward mourning, the fortitude to help one another driven out by their own despair. There was no-one to turn to, little care for the sick and injured, and ex-soldiers begged in the streets.
“Alexander didn't leave the house for weeks,” said Charles. We hardly knew how to help him, and even when he slowly began to function again, he was unstable and frightened. Once when Eloise was singing a French lullaby to you, we found him crouched in a corner saying Michael's name over and over again. He couldn't tell us why it affected him, but your grandmother never sang the song again.” He leaned forward speaking urgently, seeking understanding, offering mitigation, “Two years after the war your mother persuaded him to go to church with us on Armistice Day and he collapsed during the service.”
Clarissa finished the story, “We were singing the hymn,
Abide With Me
and he suddenly fell. The scar on his forehead wasn't a war wound it was from that fall. Later when he had recovered, he told Charles that when the war ended they held a service on the battlefield and sang the hymn, that's when he wandered off and got lost and was missing for several weeks.”
Max shivered. The incident in the church they had just described was there in his mind's furthest recesses where other probing had recently intruded.
Higher than usual he was able to look into his grandmother's face and, in spite of her sadness, she smiled at him and gently held his arm with one hand, her hymn book in the other. He was standing on the seat between his mother and grandmother and liked his new, high place.
Something happened, something noisy, Uncle Charles pushed his way quickly along the pew, and Max felt the brush of his black woollen coat against his baby face and his grandmother let go of his arm. Suddenly he wobbled, he was alone in his high place and the grown-ups were on the floor in the side aisle, too far away, just a black huddle around a prone figure. In front of him a row of darkly clad backs and shoulders were gently rising and falling with the music. Unsteadily, he turned to look at those behind him, more dark figures, hymn books raised, mouths opening and closing but eyes turned to the side aisle watching the drama unfolding. A girl about seven years old in an oversized black hat was looking at him her, hands holding the back of the pew on which he stood. He ventured a bewildered smile, but the big girl poked out her tongue. He wobbled dangerously and wailed in fear.
“Was I with you in the church with you?” he suddenly asked taking Charles and Clarissa by surprise.
“Yes,” Clarissa answered distractedly, “you were only two, you were standing on the seat when we all rushed to help Alexander and you got frightened and started to cry.”
At his fearful cries Clarissa and Eloise had lifted their heads, the brims of their large black hats half obscuring their faces tilted upwards to look at him, but they seemed not to move quickly enough to save him. Against the stark white of their complexions and the depth of their black clothing bright red blotches gaped at him. Was it blood in such neat patterns? No, only Alexander had blood on him, oozing from his temple into a white folded handkerchief held firmly in place by Charles. The red shapes were poppies fastened in lapels and buttonholes dancing brightly in the midst of the misery reminders of the shed blood that had brought them to this moment.
“Do you understand what we're saying Max?” his mother pleaded, “damaged men like him ended up in mental institutions for the rest of their days but we didn't let that happen to Alexander because we had each other, we had the pact. We fought to bring him back to us and in doing so, we all became stronger and you were the focus of our lives. I'm sure that's why he killed Claudine. He was wrong, very wrong, but even after all those years he was trying to protect you, surely you can see. He must have momentarily gone insane when he saw her with another man, you told me yourself she was unfaithful, she was ⦔
“She was my wife and the mother of my son,” Max interrupted then turned to stare at his mother. “How do you know what he saw?” he demanded. “How do you know what drove him to do what he did if you didn't discuss it with him? If as you say you didn't know until he was dead, how can you know why he killed Claudine?” His uncle and mother looked guiltily at one another, they weren't used to lying and not very good at it. “Never mind you wondered about it after he died! You've both known all along haven't you?”
“Try to understand,” said Charles calmly, “we didn't condone what he had done; we were appalled. He arrived home that night rambling and incoherent and full of hatred for Claudine. He said he had seen her making love to another man in the bedroom of her flat in London, but she wouldn't do anything like that again. We didn't know if he'd really done something dreadful to her or just frightened her or said he would tell you. And anyway, we were frantic about you Max, not knowing where you were, if you were dead or alive. We got him to bed and the next day he said nothing about what had happened, so we didn't either. Then we got news of you and that was all we could think of.”
“We put it out of our minds,” said Clarissa emphatically, “as if it hadn't happened and we never referred to it again. Even when news of Claudine's death came from her father we accepted that she had been killed in an air-raid, of course, we knew nothing about you being in London at the same time, we thought you were found in Portsmouth. Now it all seems so very confusing.”
Max ignored her comments and asked Charles, “Did Barbara know about this?”
Charles shook his head, “No. Barbara had gone to bed when Alexander came home so I didn't tell her. We kept it between the three of us and as your mother said we put it out of minds as if hadn't happened.”
Max nodded slowly. When it came down to it, even Barbara, the love of his uncle's life, hadn't been able to breach this rock-solid alliance, so what chance had he now. He struggled to take in all this new information and to comprehend the strength of their commitment to one another that had hovered around him throughout his life.
“We couldn't see him go to jail or an institution, not even for you Max and in the end we were just protecting his name, his reputation. You're not going to betray him are you? You can't Max. You can't do it anymore than we could,” begged Clarissa.
“He loved you like a son,” said Charles quietly, “there wasn't anything he wouldn't have done for you; even commit murder and I believe you loved him as a father, the father you never knew. I don't think you can sit there and say you didn't.”
“No,” said Max after a lengthy pause, “I can't.” He looked into their faces and suddenly saw them as they really were, no longer the stalwarts of his childhood, part of the brave quartet that rose like Lazarus from the ashes of two wars and kept the family bound together, but two frail old people rather out of touch with the world, conspiring with the very last of their strength to be faithful to allegiances and promises made generations before.
Charles, the most stable but racked with guilt, must have seen the pact as his absolution, no wonder he was happy to throw in his lot with Alexander, who was above reproach. Alexander and Clarissa were driven by love for Michael and one another, and Eloise was mother to them all. Right to the end they had watched over one another. Who now could say they were wrong or should have done things differently, certainly not he who at his birth had been the catalyst for their complex loyalties.
“I'm a police officer,” he said quietly, “Claudine's death has been laid at the door of another person and that's wrong. I have a duty to the truth.”
“A duty stronger than to Alexander,” challenged Charles quickly. “Surely not. Please don't betray him Max. Don't dishonour his name. We couldn't bear it. Douglas Hood is dead and you said yourself, he was a cold-blooded killer, his reputation will hardly be sullied by this.”
Inwardly Max struggled with the concept. When he believed himself to be the killer he had eventually been prepared to leave retribution to a higher judgment as much for them as for himself. Could he do less now he knew himself to be innocent? “No,” he said at last, “I can't betray or dishonour him.”
Together Charles and Clarissa breathed out their relief. “I'll make a cup of tea,' said Clarissa as she had on a thousand occasions. As she passed Max she kissed the top of his head and when she left the room Charles nodded his approval but remained silent until she returned with the laden tray.
Pouring tea into the china cups Clarissa handed them around as if they had been discussing the garden or the grandchildren. Max half expected her to offer him a chocolate biscuit. She took her seat next to Charles and side-by-side they sipped their tea watching him over the rim of their teacups. Beside them Max could see or, perhaps just feel, the presence of Alexander and Eloise. They had succeeded where many a hardened criminal had failed. They had beaten âRed Max'.
Epilogue
Sitting on the battered blue box in the living room of Top Cottage, Max drained his coffee mug. The room was bare and empty without furniture but still had a warm, friendly feel to it. His uncles Charles and Alexander and his mother had all lived here until they died and could not have been happier. He hadn't spent many years in this house, but it had been a good place to live and to come home to and, as his mother would have said, had seen some golden moments. He smiled yet again at the memory of Annie Rudge in hat, coat and woolly gloves and Edwin Scott in evening dress, both now dead, waltzing around in this very room. Whatever ghosts there were would be friendly.
In the guest room upstairs he and Claudine had made love for the first time, Jules had been born in the same room and taken his first wobbling steps in the garden. Alexander, Charles and his mother had all died in this place and no doubt their spirits still hovered.
“Are you ready?” said Sarah coming in from the hall in her jeans and a dusty tee shirt, her hair swept back and tied in a scarf. “I've had a look around upstairs and it's all in order, there's only the box you're sitting on to go into the car. Where did it come from?” She bent down to examine it more closely, “It's got drawings of some sort on it.”
Max looked at the now faint images of moons and stars around the sides of the box, “Believe it or not this was my toy box and Mother's before me. I found it in the attic. It's very sturdy considering how old it is but it's a bit battered after all these years. We'll probably throw it out with the rest of the rubbish now.”
Sarah took his coffee mug and put it in the box. “I'm glad the new people are moving in tomorrow, I hate empty houses and this one, in particular, is a house that should be full of people. I think it would be lonely standing empty and quiet.”
“You're an incurable romantic Sarah Darrington,” Max laughed, “but in this case I think you're right, however, the new folks have five kids so it won't be quiet for long.”
“How do you know they have five kids?”
“Ruby Rudge, of course.” Briefly their laughter echoed around the empty room and Max looked sad. “I'm so glad they died together, it was a bit of a shock, Mother one day and Charles the next but at least neither one of them was left alone, especially mother. She was very afraid of being on her own and now they're reunited, the four of them, just as they were all those years ago when Alexander came home from the First World War and they began their lives over again, a quartet rising from the ashes of destruction.”
“It's what they wanted Max, although I would have thought Charles would've wanted to be buried in Oak Hathern near Barbara rather than in London but he was adamant about staying with the others.”
Max felt a sudden desperate urge to tell Sarah everything about the pact and its dreadful secret consequences but something of its power held him in its grasp. It would have been a betrayal.
They picked up the box between them and Sarah let her end slip sending a photograph frame smashing to the floor. Max picked it up and pulled a face. “Alexander,” he said looking at the severe, youthful but handsome face of his uncle in uniform. “What a person to drop!”
Shaking the broken glass from the frame he took out the picture while Sarah swept up the wreckage. “I can almost hear him buggering and blasting about my carelessness,” she said wistfully. Max didn't answer he was staring at the picture of the young woman that he had fallen from among the sheets of backing paper in the photo frame. “Who's that?” asked Sarah.
“No idea, but read the message on the back.”
Sarah's mouth dropped open. “Well, well, well,” she said smiling, “I always thought there was more to Alexander than met the eye. I wonder who Michelle was and if your mother knew about her? It's a mystery we shan't solve now they've all gone. He was such a dark horse.”
“Oh! There was a lot more to Alexander than anyone knew and some of it very dark,” Max shuddered. “Come on let's get going.”
Max locked up the cottage after they had packed the last odds and ends into the car. He got in beside Sarah, started the engine and moved forward a few yards then stopped and got out again and stood looking back toward the front door. Sarah got out too and stood beside him.
“I can see them too Max, feel their presence, the three of them standing in the doorway and waving goodbye to us.”
Max put his arm around her. “Four of them,” he corrected, “There are four of them standing there, they are together for eternity now.”
The got back into the car and Sarah slipped her arm through Max's but didn't speak as they drove off down the hill.