Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (3 page)

He knew that his responsibility to the bereaved, for example, extended far beyond the simple act of taking a funeral. In fact, those who had lost someone they loved often needed more comfort after the initial shock of death had gone, when their friends had resumed their daily lives and the public period of mourning had passed. It was the task of a priest to offer constant consolation, to love and serve his parishioners at whatever cost to himself. Consequently, Sidney had no hesitation in stopping off on his way into Cambridge the next morning to call on Stephen Staunton’s widow.

The house was a mid-terrace, late-Victorian building on Eltisley Avenue, a road that lay on the edge of the Meadows. It was the kind of home young families moved to when they were expecting their second child. Everything about the area was decent enough but Sidney could not help but think that it lacked charm. These were functional buildings that had escaped wartime bombing but still had no perceivable sense of either history or local identity. In short, as Sidney walked down the street, he felt that he could be anywhere in England.

Hildegard Staunton was paler than he remembered from her husband’s funeral. Her short hair was blonde and curly; her eyes were large and green. Her eyebrows were pencil-thin and she wore no lipstick; as a result, her face looked as if her feelings had been washed away. She was wearing a dark olive housecoat, with a shawl collar and cuffed sleeves that Sidney only noticed when she touched her hair; worrying, perhaps, that she needed a shampoo and set but could not face a trip to the hairdresser.

Hildegard had been poised yet watchful at the service, but now she could not keep still, standing up as soon as she had sat down, unable to concentrate. Anyone outside, watching her through the window, would probably think she had lost something, which, of course, she had. Sidney wondered if her doctor had prescribed any medicine to help her with her grief.

‘I came to see how you were getting on,’ he began.

‘I am pretending he is still here,’ Hildegard answered. ‘It is the only way I can survive.’

‘I am sure it must feel very strange.’ Sidney was already uncomfortable with the knowledge of her husband’s adultery, let alone potential murder.

‘Being in this country has always seemed strange to me. Sometimes I think I am living someone else’s life.’

‘How did you meet your husband?’ Sidney asked.

‘It was in Berlin after the war.’

‘He was a soldier?’

‘With the Ulster Rifles. The British Foreign Office sent people over to “aerate” us, whatever that meant, and we all went to lectures on
Abendländische Kultur
. But none of us listened very much. We wanted to go dancing instead.’

Sidney tried to imagine Hildegard Staunton in a bombed-out German ballroom, dancing among the ruins. She shifted position on the sofa and adjusted the fall of her housecoat. Perhaps she did not want to tell her story, Sidney wondered, but the fact that she would not look him in the eye made it clear that she intended to continue. Her speech, despite its softness, demanded attention.

‘Sometimes we went out into the countryside and spent the nights drinking white wine under the apple trees. We taught them to sing “Einmal am Rhein” and the Ulstermen gave us “The Star of County Down.” I liked the way Stephen sang that song. And when he talked about his home in Northern Ireland, he described it so well that I thought that this could be my refuge from all that had happened in the war. We would live by the sea, he said, in Carrickfergus, perhaps. We were going to walk by the shores of Lough Neagh, and listen to the cry of the curlews as they flew over the water. His voice had so much charm. I believed everything he told me. But we never did go to Ireland. The opportunity was here. And so our marriage began with something I had not been expecting. I never imagined that we would live in an English village. Being German is not so easy, of course.’

‘You speak very good English.’

‘I try hard. But German people are looked on with suspicion, as I am sure you know. I can see what they are thinking still, so soon after the war. How can I blame them? I cannot tell everyone that I meet that my father was never a Nazi, that he was shot at a Communist protest when I was six years old. I do not think I have done anything wrong. But it is difficult for us to live after such a war.’

‘It is hard for everyone.’

Hildegard stopped and remembered what she had forgotten. ‘Would you like some tea, Canon Chambers?’

‘That would be kind.’

‘I am not very good at making it. Stephen used to find it amusing. More often he drank whiskey.’

‘I am rather partial to Scotch myself.’

‘His was Irish, of course.’

‘Ah yes,’ Sidney remembered. ‘With a different taste and a different spelling.’

Hildegard Staunton continued. ‘It was Bushmills. Stephen called it the oldest whiskey in the world. It reminded him of home: a Protestant whiskey, he always said, from County Antrim. His brother sends over two cases a year, one on Stephen’s birthday and the other at Christmas. That is, two bottles a month. It was not enough. Perhaps that is why he went up to London before he died. It wasn’t for business. It was to collect more whiskey. We couldn’t find Bushmills in Cambridge and he wouldn’t drink anything else.’

‘Never?’

‘He said he would prefer to drink water. Or gin. And when he did that he drank it like water in any case.’ Hildegard gave a sad smile. ‘Perhaps you would like sherry instead of tea. Priests often have sherry, I think?’

Sidney did not want to have to explain his dislike. ‘That would be kind . . .’

Mrs Staunton moved to the glass cabinet on the sideboard. There were not many books, Sidney thought, but he noticed an upright Bechstein piano and some tasteful reproductions of landscape paintings. There was also a collection of German porcelain, including a fiddler wooing a dancing lady, and a Harlequin twisting a pug dog’s tail. Most of the figurines were of children: a boy in a pink jacket playing the flute, a girl in the same coloured top with a basket of flowers, a little ballerina, brothers and sisters sharing a picnic table.

Sidney remembered his reason for coming. ‘I’m sorry if I am intruding. But I like to think that you are one of my parishioners . . .’

‘I am Lutheran, as you know. We are not regular churchgoers.’

‘You would always be welcome.’

‘
Kinder, Küche, Kirche
.’ Hildegard smiled. ‘The German tradition. I am afraid I am not very good at any of them.’

‘I thought if there was anything I could do . . .’

‘You took my husband’s funeral. That was enough, especially under the circumstances.’

‘They were difficult.’

‘And after so much death in the war. To choose to die in such a deliberate way after you have survived. It’s hard to understand. I am sure you disapprove.’

‘We do believe that life is sacred, given by God.’

‘And therefore God should take it away.’

‘I am afraid so.’

‘And if there is no God?’

‘I cannot think that.’

‘No. As a priest that would be a bad idea.’ Hildegard smiled for the first time.

‘Very bad indeed.’

Hildegard Staunton handed Sidney his sherry. He wondered why he had got himself into all this. ‘Will you go back to Germany?’ he asked.

‘Some people say there is no Germany any more. But my mother is in Leipzig. I also have a sister in Berlin. I do not think I can remain here.’

‘You don’t like Cambridge?’

‘It can be dispiriting. Is that the right word? The weather and the wind.’

Sidney wondered if the Staunton’s marriage had ever been happy. ‘I was thinking,’ he began tentatively. ‘Did your husband share your feelings?’

‘I think we both felt that we were strangers here.’

‘He was depressed?’

‘He is from Ulster. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think all Ulstermen are depressed, Mrs Staunton.’

‘Of course not. But sometimes with the alcohol . . .’ Hildegard let the sentence fall into the silence between them.

‘I know . . . it does not help.’

‘Why did you ask that question?’ Hildegard continued.

‘I apologise. It was intrusive, I know. I was only wondering if you had any fears that this might happen?’

‘No, I did not.’

‘So it came as a shock?’

‘It did. But then nothing surprises me, Canon Chambers. When you have lost most of your family in war, when there is nothing left of your life, and when the only hope you have turns to dust, then why should anything shock you? You fought in the war?’

‘I did.’

‘Then I think, perhaps, you understand.’

If Sidney had been a better Christian, he thought, he would try to talk to Hildegard about the consolation of his faith, but he knew that it was not the right time.

The conversation was unsettling because there were so many subjects moving through his mind: the nature of death, the idea of marriage and the problem of betrayal. To concentrate on any one of these issues was likely to upset Hildegard and so he tried to keep the conversation as neutral as he could.

‘And you are from Leipzig?’ Sidney continued.

‘I am.’

‘The home of Bach.’

‘I play his music every day. I studied at the Hochschule in Berlin with Edwin Fischer. He was like a father to me. Perhaps you have heard of him?’

‘I think my mother might have one of his recordings.’

‘It is probably
The Well-Tempered Clavier
. His playing was filled with air and joy. He was a wonderful man. But, in 1942, he went to Lucerne, and I lost my confidence.’

‘The war, I suppose.’

‘It was many things.’

‘And do you teach?’

‘In Germany I had many pupils. You know that work is our weapon against world-weariness.’

‘
Weltschmerz.
’

‘You are familiar with the word?’ Hildegard smiled once more. ‘I am impressed, Canon Chambers. But here, work is not so easy. When I return to Germany, then, perhaps, I will teach every day. I need to work. I do not know what my husband did with money.’

‘He left no will?’

‘I do not think so.’

‘Perhaps your husband’s business partner was waiting until after the funeral to tell you about it?’

‘I do not know him well. My husband was private about his work. He told me that it was unfulfilling. All I do know is that Clive Morton felt the same. I think he was more interested in golf than law.’

‘Perhaps I could enquire on your behalf, if it might be helpful?’

‘I would not like to trouble you.’

‘It is no trouble,’ said Sidney.

‘There is nothing that is urgent . . .’ Hildegard Staunton continued. ‘I have my own bank account and enough money for now. It is only that I am so tired. I think it must be the sadness. It is like looking down a lift shaft. The gap is dark. It goes down and you can see no ending.’

Sidney sat down beside her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Staunton. Perhaps I should not have come.’

Hildegard met his eye. ‘No, I am glad. I am not myself. I hope you will excuse me.’

‘You have had a terrible loss.’

‘I was not expecting it to be so violent. I knew that Stephen kept his revolver from the war. He told me that sometimes he thought about what he had done with it. The people he had killed. He had such a conscience. I think it was too much for him, the memory of that conflict. Perhaps marrying me was an attempt to make up for what had happened, but I think it made it worse. He kept thinking that he might have killed people I had known; teachers, friends, relations. It was hard to know what to say to him. It was not good.’

Sidney remembered his own war, fighting in the last year with the Scots Guards, the long periods of waiting, the sleepless nights before moments of violent activity, risk and death. He didn’t remember the killing so much as the guilt and the loss: men such as Jamie Wilkinson, ‘Wilko’, whom he had sent out to have a look at the enemy lines and who had never come back. He recalled the fear in men’s faces; the sudden bursts of action and then, afterwards, the swift, brutal burial of friends. No one spoke about it and yet Sidney knew that they had all kept thinking of the things that had happened, hoping their thoughts and fears would recede. The rest of their lives would be lived in the shadow of death, and they would spend time involved in activities that were unlikely to have as much impact as anything they had done in those years of war.

‘Are you listening?’

Sidney remembered where he was. ‘I’m very sorry.’

Hildegard was almost amused by his lack of attention. Sidney saw the beginnings of a smile. He liked her mouth.

‘You were perhaps dreaming, Canon Chambers. Such a thing is normal for me, even more so than what is real.’

Sidney remembered why he had come. It was not going to be easy to continue but he had to do his best to discover the truth. ‘I meant to ask you a question. I hope you do not mind.’

‘I hope I can answer it.’

‘I know this may sound strange,’ Sidney began tentatively. ‘But do you think anyone would have wanted to harm your husband?’