The Old Vengeful (3 page)

And there, as a reminder of that episode, was huge Mrs McManners herself, just a few yards down the stall, browsing on the ckeapest and tattiest paperbacks—it would never do to let her catch Miss Loftus ogling young men!

“I’ll take these two,” said Mrs McManners. “Both from the 10p box, dear.”

“Thank you, Mrs McManners,” said Elizabeth sweetly. “
Purity
’
s Passion
and
The Sultan
’
s Concubine
—shall I wrap them for you?”

“They’re for my daughter—she’s very fond of history.” Mrs McManners hastily stuffed her purchases into her basket. “I must fly, dear.”

The idea of fifteen stone flying diverted Elizabeth momentarily as she dropped the coins in the box. Then a hand came into the corner of her vision, its index finger running up the titles towards her.

“And I’m very fond of history too.” The finger came to rest on one of Elizabeth’s own contributions to her stall. “
From Trafalgar to Navarino: The Lost Legacy
—by Commander Hugh Loftus, VC, RN.”

But it didn’t say all that on the dark blue spine, thought Elizabeth. There was only
From Trafalgar to Navarino
and
Hugh Loftus
picked out in gold there.

They looked at each other directly for the first time, eye to eye, but whatever she let slip in her expression she could see no sign of any acknowledgement in his that they had already scrutinised each other in the mirror.

“How much would that be, then?” he inquired.

In second thoughts, now that he was right here in front of her, he not only looked ten years older, but Elizabeth had the strangest feeling that she had seen him before somewhere; not before during this same afternoon, in some unregistered fleeting glance in the crowd, but before somewhere else … On a television screen? In a newspaper?

He leaned forward slightly towards her. “How much?”

With an effort Elizabeth shook herself free of second thoughts. “I’m sorry—it’s £1 .50,” she said, fumbling the book out of the line.

“£1 .50?” He smiled at her.

“It’s a mint copy.” It was one of Father’s author’s copies in fact. “And it’s in aid of the church tower restoration fund, so I don’t think it’s too expensive.”

“I wasn’t questioning the price, Miss Loftus.” He took the book from her and opened it at the fly-leaf. “I was just hoping that it would be signed—I see that it isn’t… but it’s cheap at the price, anyway. Only … it would have been even cheaper with a signature—at the price—wouldn’t it?” He smiled again.

Elizabeth swallowed. “I’m sorry. I haven’t got a signed copy.”

“No matter. Perhaps you could sign it instead?” He produced a pen, and held the book open for her.

“I don’t see …” Elizabeth trailed off.

“The next best thing, Miss Loftus. If not the hero himself, then the hero’s daughter. I would have preferred
The Dover Patrol
—more my period. But this will do very well.”

He was an academic, she ought to have guessed that even though she hadn’t started to try to guess what he was: the mixture of confidence and that slightly degage air, plus the Oxbridge voice, were clues enough. Yet, if he was an academic TV or newspaper personality, she still couldn’t place him. But there was an easy way of getting round that now.

She accepted the pen and the book. “To whom shall I inscribe it?”

“Paul Mitchell—‘Mitchell’ with the usual ‘t’.”

That didn’t help matters, even though something still nagged at the back of her mind.

“ ‘To Paul Mitchell from Elizabeth Loftus’—there, for what it’s worth.” She smiled back at him. “That’s the first time I’ve ever signed a book. But I don’t think I’ve added to its value.”

“On the contrary.” He studied the inscription for a moment, then looked at her appraisingly. “For such a unique collector’s item … shall we say £5?”

Elizabeth’s worst suspicions were pleasurably encouraged. Fortuné hunters were out of date, and in any case the details of her official inheritance—let alone the rest of it all—couldn’t possibly be common knowledge. But he was up to something, that was certain.

“The price is £1.50, Mr Mitchell. I couldn’t possibly accept more.” She took his £5 note.

“Mint condition?” He raised the book between them. “The going price in Blackwell’s at Oxford for this is £9.95, you know.”

So he had done his homework, but if he was trying to pick her up that was to be expected.

“It’s still £1.50.” That “Blackwell’s at Oxford” was a nice touch, well-calculated to arouse her happiest memories, if that was what was intended. Yet, once identified for what it was, it armoured her against him. “Do you mind taking your change mostly in silver?”

“I don’t want any change.” Her intransigence was beginning to unsettle him. “Keep it for the church tower.”

She began to count out the 10p pieces from her cash-box. “You can give them all to the Vicar’s wife, then—she’s sitting just down the end there, and she’ll give you raffle tickets in exchange. You might win a bottle of whisky or an LP. And even if you don’t win anything, she’ll give you a pamphlet on the history of the church for free … seeing as you’re interested in history, Mr Mitchell.”

That, and £3.50 in 10p pieces, ought to damp down his ambitions, whatever they were. And besides, there was a customer waiting further up the table.

She pushed the piles of coins towards him. “Excuse me …”

But when she had completed the sale
of One Hundred Great Lives
and
Civilisation on Trial
, at 40p the pair, he was still there with his coins untouched, looking just a little forlorn.

“Yes, Mr Mitchell?” Elizabeth’s conscience tweaked her slightly. It was after all a church sale, and she had not given him the benefit of any doubt whatsoever, in all Christian charity.

He spread his hands. “Miss Loftus, I confess … I was also hoping to buy a little of your time.”

So at least they had come to the crunch on her terms, thought Elizabeth smugly. “My time?”

“Just that. At least, to start with … I want to put a proposition to you.”

Elizabeth’s hackles rose. She looked up the table for more customers, but there were none, so she could hardly set any price on her time, which patently had no value here and now.

“A proposition?” She could hear the harshness in her voice which was normally reserved for scholarship girls who allowed their precocious sex lives to intrude into the work which had to be done, and who then attempted to fob her off with transparent excuses. “What proposition?”

At least he had picked up the danger signal: she could see that by the set of the jaw. “It’s about your father, Miss Loftus. It relates to him.”

As it invariably did, the direct mention of her father froze Elizabeth, activating her public face to assume its sorrowing-daughter expression.

“I was very sorry to learn of his death.”

There was no earthly reason why he should be very sorry, if he was a stranger. And if he wasn’t a stranger—it occurred to Elizabeth that it was quite possible, if this young man was an academic of some sort, that he might have met Father somewhere, sometime. But then, if he had, it seemed to be unlikely that Father would have endeared himself sufficiently to make him “very sorry”. So, either way, it was merely a conventional insincerity preparing the way for the proposition.

“I read the obituary in
The Times
.”

Everyone had done that—

…
after a long illness bravely borne
…
although badly wounded, refused medical attention
…
continued to direct the engagement
…
successful conclusion of a brilliantly-handled operation
…

Well,
The Times
always did its duty by VCs, and, with the original citation to go on, the panegyrist’s work had been largely done for him in advance, for all that it mattered now, which was no more than any other seawrack from those sunken E-boats of his.

But everyone had read it anyway, even Mr Paul Mitchell.

“That’s why I’m here, really … Perhaps … perhaps I’m rather rushing in—so soon after … But I’m hoping that you won’t think so.”

What Elizabeth was thinking was that her silence was getting to him. And that, if it had merely been a matter of small talk about her irreplaceable loss, would have been fine with her. But with his proposition as yet unproposed it called for a bit of encouragement.

She indicated the stacks of 10p pieces. “You’ve purchased some of my time, Mr Mitchell—remember?”

He gave her a curious look, almost as though she had given him an inkling of the true face behind the mask.

“Yes, of course … Well, the obituary stated that at the time of his death he was engaged in writing a history of HMS
Vengeful
, the destroyer he commanded in the Channel fight in ‘42. Is that what he was doing?”

The question was delivered with a slight frown, indicating doubt if not actual disbelief. And that was interesting because of all the facts recorded in the obituary, other than the long illness
bravely borne
, this was the one
The Times
had got wrong. And—not doubt, but certainty—Mr Paul Mitchell knew as much. But how?

“Why d’you want to know, Mr Mitchell? Does it matter what he was writing?”

He shook his head vaguely. “I seem to remember … about two or three years ago … he wrote a letter to
The Times
trying to get in touch with anyone who served on the previous HMS
Vengeful
—the one which fought at Jutland in 1916, or any next-of-kin with letters and suchlike … And he also explained then that he was writing a book about all the ships of that name which had ever served with the navy—am I right?”

“Yes, Mr Mitchell.” She had typed the letter herself, as always, from that scrawl which only she could read. And there was no point in denying it because there was nothing vague about his memory, it was exactly right.

“So
The Times
was wrong?”

Elizabeth nodded. But she had asked
why
and he had answered
how
, she realised.

“All the
Vengefuls
.” He nodded back. “And there were twelve of them, I believe? Or nearly thirteen, but the Admiralty changed its mind about the last one, and finally called it something else—
Shannon
, it is now … so that doesn’t qualify. And your father commanded the penultimate
Vengeful
, then.”

Elizabeth nodded again. “You’re very well informed, Mr Mitchell.”

“Not really. I just read the newspapers, that’s all.”

“Then you have a good memory.”

He grinned at her. “Especially for letters in
The Times
. Because that wasn’t the only one your father wrote, was it!” The grin started to broaden, then disappeared instantly as he remembered also that such levity was inappropriate to the occasion. “I’m sorry …”

“There’s no need to be.” It didn’t suit Elizabeth for him to become inhibited by her bereavement, not now that she understood exactly how he had become so knowledgeable. “You mean the
Vengeful-Shannon
correspondence, I take it?”

He nodded cautiously, still doubtful about her reaction to the memory of that long, acrimonious and ultimately hilarious battle of the letter-writers in the columns of
The Times
.

“You found it amusing?” Elizabeth fabricated the ghost of a smile to take the sting out of her question. She could well believe that outsiders might have considered it so, that passionate and useless controversy about the naming of a warship which the letters editor had headlined variously, tongue-in-cheek, as “The last fight of the
Vengeful
”
and “A hard-fought engagement”.

He took encouragement from the ghost-smile. “To be honest… I thought it was the jolliest
Times
correspondence since those dons got to arguing about how fast and how far the ancient Greeks could row their triremes.”

Of course, he couldn’t know how she had suffered through it all, with Father tearing into each morning’s newspaper and his alternate bouts of rage and triumph as the argument swung this way and that.

They had shamed her, those letters, for the contempt the recipients must have felt for him; and doubly shamed her, as he made it so very clear that in some twisted way he had come to regard his immortality as descending somehow through the renewed name of his beloved ship, rather than through his unloved daughter, who was plainly useless—very plainly—for such a purpose, and fit only to type his letters and his books, and cook his meals, and wash and fetch and carry and clean for him.

Well—so much for that! It was all flotsam now that time and events had revenged her on the last captain of the penultimate
Vengeful
— time and events and the Admiralty!

“My father didn’t find it so funny.” This time she didn’t pretend to smile.

“No, I rather gathered that.” He took his cue from her. “But to a landlubber like me ships’ names really don’t have much significance. In fact, they often seem to me to be rather idiotic—like the names people give to racehorses.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Elizabeth found the mention of racehorses slightly unsettling, however accidental it might be, as a reminder of Father’s weakness. Except that, judging by the contents of the safe deposit boxes and the cash-box under her bed, it could hardly be called a weakness.

“But didn’t they call one of the Flower class corvettes in the last war ‘Pansy’?” countered Paul Mitchell. “I can’t imagine what the sailors made of that!” He lifted
From Trafalgar to Navarino
. “And what was it Nelson’s sailors turned the
Bellerophon
into … because they couldn’t pronounce it, let alone spell it—‘Billy Ruffian’, eh?” The grin came back. “God knows what they made of the
Euryalus!
”

So the landlubber knew something about ships, Elizabeth noted. But if ships’ names drew him out towards his proposition, then so be it.