Before the Poison (37 page)
Authors: Peter Robinson
Tuesday, 17th February, 1942
We are rescued! Last night, under cover of darkness, a small cargo ship called the
Tanjong Pinang
came to rescue us. They already had some survivors picked up from another island, but the captain said they could take all our walking wounded, along with as many women and children and sisters as they had room for. The off-duty sisters were the lucky ones, and those who were on duty were to stay behind with the seriously wounded until more ships came. Brenda and I were both off duty, and while it was sad to leave our patients and our friends on the island, we knew that they would be all right, and this seemed to be the fairest way of organising things. It was very difficult moving the patients on to the
Tanjong Pinang
in complete darkness, though the moonlight did help. With rafts, small boats and pulleys, we managed to get them all on board before dawn and sailed off while it was still dark. I think, in all, there must be about two hundred of us. Brenda and I waved farewell to Pompong as we set sail towards Java, and freedom!
December 2010
I realised that Christmas was fast approaching, and my guests would be arriving soon. I still had presents to buy. The rest was done – tree, lights, tinsel, decorations, turkey – and I was expecting a large delivery of champagne and fine wines within the next couple of days. But there remained the dreaded Christmas shopping. The weather forecast predicted a major snowstorm within the next twenty-four hours, so taking advantage of the first clear day since I’d driven to see Louise in Staithes, I decided to head for York and get it over and done with.
The roads were busy with other people who had the same idea, and I hit a long line of traffic at the approach to the York ring road. I still hadn’t heard from Louise since my visit, I thought, as I edged forward inch by inch, and I wondered whether she had even had the time or inclination to do the background digging she had offered to do. I knew that she was moving to Cambridge and starting a new job, so life would be busy for her. There was no sense in pushing her. She would call in her own good time. I could hardly go to Cambridge and chase her up. Maybe I would send an email, though, if I didn’t hear from her before my guests arrived. I was anxious to know whether I was right about Grace’s illegitimate child, and there wouldn’t be much time to busy myself with such things during the holiday season. I made it to the Park ’n’ Ride at last and caught the bendy bus just before it pulled out.
If I had thought the roads were busy, the streets of York were even more so. It was only a Tuesday, but the Christmas shoppers were out in force. The whole city centre was strung with lights and drenched in seasonal atmosphere. Here and there a Salvation Army band collected money, a Santa Claus rung his bell and ho-ho-hoed, or choirs of singers dressed in Victorian garb collected for various other charities. After a short while, I began to realise there was nowhere you could stand in the whole city centre and not hear Christmas music.
Every time I go to York, I make a point of visiting the Minster, not because I’m religious, but because it’s a beautiful building. I have done the full guided tour once, but it’s not the crypt, the sacristy, the Rose Window or the carvings of the kings of England that draw me back time after time, magnificent as they all are, but a very simple little thing that hardly anybody ever notices.
It is hard to spot, way up on the ceiling above the nave, but if you look hard enough, you can just make out the soles of two feet. That is how the Ascension would appear to someone from below, of course, so that is how the artist painted it, Christ’s feet disappearing into the sky. Something about it tickled my fancy, so I always went to see it.
As good fortune would have it, today the choir was practising for a Christmas concert, so I stayed and listened to ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ and ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’. The harmonies in that vast Gothic space of stone and shadows were exquisite. Goethe spoke of architecture as ‘frozen music’, and I think I know what he meant. It was with an even lighter heart that I lit a candle for Laura, out of pure superstition, just because I was there and I was thinking of her, then I went back out to face the throng.
Even with the crowds, I had finished most of my shopping by lunchtime, just a few small presents for my guests from Molton Brown, HMV, Lakeland, Waterstone’s and one of the second-hand bookshops down Fossgate. Feeling hungry, I found a table in Plunkets on High Petergate, between the Minster and the old Roman wall, and ordered a gourmet burger with wild mushrooms and Brie, and a glass of red wine. Piped Christmas songs played, and a fire crackled in the hearth. Sometimes in York, with its narrow streets, Roman walls and ancient stone buildings, you could easily fancy yourself thrown back to Victorian times, or even earlier, medieval days. Looking out of the window fringed with fake snow, I almost expected Tiny Tim to come wobbling down the street on his crutches.
As I sat sipping my wine, basking in the glow of my visit to the Minster and a successful shopping expedition, I realised that this odd feeling I was experiencing was happiness. Simple happiness at being alive. It was something I hadn’t experienced in a long time, I realised, certainly not since Laura’s death, and it came for no special reason, and definitely not from any sense of accomplishment or achievement. After all, I hadn’t finished my piano sonata, hadn’t found out the truth about Grace Fox, hadn’t just completed the best film score I had ever written, hadn’t won another Oscar and given a brilliant acceptance speech. Nothing. I had simply walked around a crowded historic city, stood for a while listening to a choir sing in an old Minster and had a couple of sips of wine, but I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning, when he realises he’s still alive – the Alastair Sim version, of course. I managed to stop myself from cackling and dancing a mad jig, but that was how I felt.
After a short walk on the Roman wall, I made my way back to the bus stop. As I waited in the long queue for my bus back to the Park ’n’ Ride, I checked the emails on my iPhone. There was one from Louise, and with mounting excitement, I opened it. I was disappointed when it simply read ‘Call me’ and listed her phone number in Cambridge. The bus was coming, so I decided I would call her as soon as I got home.
‘So what you’re telling me is that there was no child, and this mysterious young soldier is just as mysterious now as he was before?’
‘I suppose that’s it, yes,’ said Louise. ‘Sorry.’
I had been so sure of it, the evasion, the ‘nervous disorder’, the visit to the distant aunt. It was so typical of its time. Grace had clearly been a romantic and headstrong girl, had committed an indiscretion, and her parents had married her off to Ernest, an older family friend, in the hopes of settling her down. ‘So Grace really did have a nervous breakdown?’
‘A minor one, yes. Of course, the term covered any number of disorders in those days. I don’t know any details. It was a miracle I found out at all, but—’
‘Yes, you said. Her aunt’s neighbour’s son is still living next door. Was he able to tell you anything else?’
‘He was only a child at the time. He just remembered being told to play quietly because there was a lady who was poorly staying next door.’
‘So he wouldn’t have been old enough to know whether she was pregnant or not?’
‘She wasn’t. I checked all the records, and there was no record of a baby born to anyone living in that house at that time. I also checked up on my grandmother’s home address in Saltburn and, just for good luck, Thomas Murray’s. Nothing.’
‘Maybe they sent her somewhere else to have the child. Maybe they didn’t register the birth under her name. Maybe—’
‘Chris,’ she said with long-suffering patience, ‘why can’t you just accept it? Grace Fox did
not
bear Thomas Murray’s child. There would be
some
record of it somewhere, and believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time combing the records. Time I should have been spending settling in at work, I might add.’
‘I’m sorry, Louise. Really. I do appreciate all you’ve done. Thanks. It’s just so . . . frustrating. Now I’m back to square one.’ I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my voice. All my speculations had come to nothing, my house of cards fallen before it was built. The pure happiness I had felt earlier in the day was fast becoming a distant memory.
‘Not quite,’ Louise said. ‘You know now that he wasn’t her son. Who does that leave?’
‘It could be anyone. A stranger.’
‘No. It was someone she knew. He was an acquaintance, perhaps someone she hadn’t seen in a while. Grandmother might have been many things, but she was at least discreet, no matter what some of those gossips tried to insinuate. She would not have gone walking in public in the town centre with a young man if she didn’t know him, and she certainly wouldn’t have done it if it had been anything other than an innocent acquaintance. Think about it, Chris. You’re letting your disappointment skew your better judgement.’
She was right, of course. And it wouldn’t have been the first time. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Thanks for everything you’ve done.’
‘Think nothing of it. I want to know the truth as much as you do. I haven’t finished with all this yet. She was
my grandmother.
Remember,
I’ve
read her journal, too, and I don’t believe a woman like her could have done what they said she did. Goodbye, Chris. Got to go now. Keep in touch.’
I hung up the phone and glanced over at the Christmas tree by the window. Louise had been out the first time I rang, so I had busied myself by decorating it instead of pacing up and down and wearing out the carpet. The lights twinkled, and the tinsel sparkled as it fluttered in the draught from the window frame. I didn’t have many ornaments, but for next year I would get the old ones out of storage in Los Angeles, if I could bear to see them again by then. Laura and I had collected them over the years on our travels, and each one held a particular memory.
I noticed that it was snowing outside and checked the time. Heather would be arriving in half an hour, and I hadn’t started on dinner yet. Still, it wouldn’t take long to throw something together. As I salted the water and put it on to boil, I wondered why I hadn’t waited until later to trim the tree. It was something Heather and I could have done together. Then I realised it was far too soon for something as intimate as that, something Laura and I had shared every year we’d been together. I always complained about fixing the tree in the stand – they never seemed to be quite adequate for the job – and she always carefully unwrapped each decoration, all our memories. What kind of person was I? I could take the woman to bed, but I couldn’t decorate a Christmas tree with her. Goddam it, I wondered, my eyes stinging, when would the bloody pain go away. I only half blamed my tears on the onions I was chopping.
20
Extract from the journal of Grace Elizabeth Fox (ed. Louise King), February, 1942. At sea
Wednesday, 18th February, 1942
I am now in such despair that I can hardly bring myself to write. I doubt that anybody will ever read this journal, anyway, as I am sure it will soon be at the bottom of the sea along with its writer.
I had thought things had been as bad as they could get, but I was wrong. We spent all day yesterday sailing towards Java, tending the wounded, as usual, changing dressings, handing out rations, trying to ease the pain with what little morphia we have whenever we could. It was a tiring day, and by sundown we were ready for sleep. The
Tanjong Pinang
is a small ship, and all the passengers had to go down in the hold, but in reward for our hard work, the captain let the sisters sleep on deck, where it was cooler and less crowded.
Just as we were settling down to sleep, at about half past nine, we were blinded by searchlights, followed by two almighty explosions. After that it was chaos. I seemed to be unscathed, but all around me, people were dead or dying. Brenda could walk, but she had a ragged wound down her right side, and she was losing a lot of blood. I bound it up as best I could with strips of torn clothing.
The smoke was making breathing difficult, and we could hardly see more than a few inches in front of our eyes. Everywhere we went, we tripped over bodies. I headed for the hold to see what I could do for the women and children down there, but a V.A.D. emerged, covered in blood, and told me it was no use, everybody down there was dead. They had received a direct hit. Nobody knew whether it was a submarine or a gunboat that had attacked us, but it did not matter. The damage was done.
The ship was now listing and sinking so quickly that the only sensible thing to do was jump. I took Brenda by the hand, and together we stepped over the side. The sound of the screams in the dark was terrible, and I thought we would either be sucked down by the ship sinking, or that we would simply drown before we found any form of flotation.
I kept an eye on Brenda. Even in her weakened state, she was a strong swimmer, and we were far enough away when the ship went down that the suction did not drag us under with it.
The crew had thrown a number of life-rafts overboard. Brenda and I managed to get hold of two of these and fasten them together. After that, we went around searching for survivors and managed to get enough to fill the tethered rafts. When there was no room for any more, people clung on to the sides, and we drifted away into the night.
I do not know what happened to the others on the ship. I can only believe that most of them are dead. Now it is just after dawn on the following day, and it feels already as if it is going to be a hot one. We have no protection from the sun. We lost two people during the night, both of whom had been clinging to the side of our raft. By morning they had simply disappeared. The children are hungry and crying already, their poor mothers trying in vain to comfort them. There is no comfort. We have no food or water. Brenda has a fever, and the wound in her side looks angry. She will need stitches and antibiotics soon, though, or infection will surely set in. When I look around, I see only the ocean, which, thank heaven, is calm today, and a few small islands dotted about. All we can do is keep trying to head west to Sumatra and hope a friendly ship rescues us before the Japanese find us.