Waiting for Sunrise

  Soon he stood by the little toll-house where the road narrowed opposite the Spaniards Inn and he smoked a cigarette, waiting for sunrise. Sunrise and clarity, he thought – at last, at last. In the final minutes of darkness he felt more secure, oddly, his back against the wall looking across the road at an inn – there was a light now on in a dormer window – where Charles Dickens himself had enjoyed a drink or two. In his pocket he had a torch and a small hip flask with some rum and water in it. A little tribute to his soldiering life – the tot of rum before the morning stand-to in the trenches – a life that he was about to abandon for ever, he hoped.

  He shone his torch at his watch – 5.55 – an hour to go. He sensed the faintest lightening – tree trunks in the thick wood behind him beginning to emerge and solidify in the thinning darkness and, looking upwards through the branches with their remaining autumn leaves, he thought he could make out the sky above, the faintest lemony-grey, the packed clouds bustling by on the stiff westerly breeze.

  He took a nip of rum, enjoying its sweetness, its warm burn in his throat and chest. A horse and dray clip-clopped by, a coal merchant. Then a telegraph boy buzzing past on a motorbike. The day beginning. He hadn’t even tried to sleep last night – no chloral – but instead had written up a long account of his investigation into the Andromeda affair, its history, his suppositions and his conclusion. It had kept him occupied and made sure his mind was alert even though he was fully aware that the document he was producing was a contingency – a contingency in case he didn’t survive the next few hours.

  He decided not to follow that line of thought – everything was geared to triumphant, vindicatory success – he had no intention of risking his life if he could help it. It was definitely lightening now. He stepped away from the toll-house and moved a few yards into the wood. The sun’s rays would be spearing over Alexandra Palace through the hurrying clouds, slowly illuminating the villages of Hornsey and Highgate, Finchley and Barnet to the east. Now he could actually see the heave and sway of the branches above his head, feel the gusts of wind tugging capriciously at the ends of his scarf. The inn was revealed to him, opposite, its white stucco façade glowing eerily; lights were on in many of the windows and he could hear a clanging sound from the yard behind. He moved a little way further back into the trees. Whoever was coming should think that he or she had arrived early and first – he didn’t want to be spotted.

  He smoked another cigarette and sipped at his rum. He could read his watch now without the aid of his torch – twenty minutes to go. For a moment he had another attack of doubt – what if he was wrong? – and he ran through his deductions again, obsessively. It seemed entirely conclusive to him – his only regret being that he had not had the time or the opportunity to try his theory out on anyone. The rationale and the judgement had to stand on its own terms, its inherent credibility self-sufficient.

  A motor taxi puttered up the hill from Highgate and continued on its way. There was a little more traffic on Spaniards Road – a man wheeling a barrow, a dog-cart with two boys driving – but it was ideally quiet. He had a sudden urge to urinate, quickly unbuttoned his fly and did so. Trench-life again, he thought – a tot of rum and a piss before you went over the top. Think of the big attacks – tens of thousands of soldiers suddenly emptying their bladders. He smiled at the image this conjured up and –

  A taxi pulled into the yard beside the inn.

  Inside he saw a man in a Homburg lean forward and pay the driver.

  Christian Vandenbrook stepped out and the taxi drove away.

  Lysander shouted furiously from the shelter of the trees.

  ‘Vandenbrook! What the hell are you doing here? Get away!’

  Vandenbrook hurried across the road. He was wearing a long tweed coat that almost reached his ankles.

  ‘I sent you the telegram!’ he shouted, peering into the wood, still not seeing where Lysander was. ‘Rief? I know who Andromeda is! Where are you?’ He saw Lysander and ran up to him, panting. ‘It came to me after the theatre – I just had to confirm a few things before I told you.’ He stepped behind a tree and looked down Spaniards Road where it sloped towards Highgate. ‘Someone’s following me, I’m sure. Let’s get away from here.’

  ‘All right, all right, calm down,’ Lysander said and they headed down a beaten earth path that led deeper into Caen Wood. Vandenbrook seemed unusually tense and watchful. At one point he pulled Lysander off the pathway and they waited behind a tree. Nothing. No one.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Lysander asked.

  ‘I’m sure I was followed. There was a man outside my house this morning. I’m sure he got into a motor and followed my taxi.’

  ‘Why would anyone follow you? – You’re imagining things. So – tell me what you know.’

  They were deep in the wood by now. In the grey, pearly dawn light Lysander saw that the trees around them – beech, ash and oak – were ancient and tall. Stands of holly grew at their feet and the undergrowth on either side of the pathway was dense. They could have been in virgin forest – it was hard to believe they were in a borough of north London. The wind was growing stronger and the trees above their heads whistled and groaned as the branches bent and yielded. Lysander gathered in the flying ends of his scarf and tucked them in his coat.

  ‘D’you want a nip of this?’ he held out his hip flask. ‘It’s rum.’

  Vandenbrook took a couple of large gulps and handed it back.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lysander said. ‘So, who’s Andromeda?’

  ‘It’s not a he – it’s a she. That’s what was confusing you.’

  ‘And? –’

  ‘The person who’s blackmailing me is a woman – a woman called Anna Faulkner. Don’t be confused by the name. She’s Austrian. The enemy.’

  ‘She’s dead. She killed herself.’

  ‘I know but –’ Vandenbrook stopped, looking suddenly shocked. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Because she is – she was – my mother.’

  Vandenbrook stared at him and Lysander saw his expression change from excited near-panic to something colder, icier. All pretence gone. Two men in a wild wood at dawn with a gale blowing about their heads.

  Vandenbrook reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a revolver. He pointed it at Lysander’s face.

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ Vandenbrook said.

  ‘Under arrest? Are you mad?’

  ‘You and your mother – you were in it together – two Austrian spies. You were both blackmailing me.’

  Lysander didn’t mean to laugh but one burst out of him all the same.

  ‘I have to hand it to you, Vandenbrook – you’re exceptional. You’re the best actor I’ve ever seen. Better than any of us. Best ever. You missed your vocation.’

  Vandenbrook allowed himself a small smile.

  ‘Well, we’re all actors, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘Most of our waking lives, anyway. You, me, your mother, Munro and the others. Some are good, some are average. But nobody really knows what’s real, what’s true. Impossible to tell for sure.’

  ‘Why did you do it, Vandenbrook? Money? Are you stony broke? Did you want to get back at your father-in-law? Do you hate him that much? Or was it just to feel important, significant?’

  ‘You know why,’ Vandenbrook said, evenly, unprovoked. ‘Because I was being blackmailed – blackmailed by that bitch Andromeda –’

  A fiercer gust of wind whipped Lysander’s hat off and, an instant later, Vandenbrook’s head seemed to explode in a pink mist of blood, his body thrown violently down to the ground by an invisible force.

  Lysander closed his eyes, counted to three and opened them. Vandenbrook still lay there, the left half of his skull gone, matted hair, brains bulging, spilling, blood flowing thickly, like oil. Lysander picked up his hat, put it on and backed off so he couldn’t see. He turned to find Hamo striding through the trees, shouldering his Martini-Henri.

  ‘You all right?’ Hamo asked.

  ‘Sort of.’
>
  ‘I would have plugged him earlier – soon as he drew his gun – but I was waiting for your signal. What took you so long?’

  Lysander wasn’t really concentrating. He was looking at Vandenbrook. From this angle all he could see was a small red hole under his right ear.

  ‘Sorry, Hamo, what were you saying?’

  ‘Why did you wait so long to take your hat off?’

  ‘I was trying to squeeze some more information from him, I suppose. Get a few more answers.’

  ‘Risky thing to do when a man is pointing a gun at your nose. Strike first, Lysander, and hard. That’s my motto. That’s why I used a dum-dum. One-shot kill required, no messing about.’

  Hamo went to check on the body and examine the effects of his expanding bullet. Lysander took a notebook from his pocket and tore a sheet from it.

  ‘So this is the man responsible for your mother’s death,’ Hamo said, looking down on Vandenbrook.

  ‘Yes. And he managed to kill her without so much as laying a finger on her. He was going to use her – and me – as his ticket to freedom.’

  ‘Then may he rot in hell for several eternities,’ Hamo said. ‘A good morning’s work, I say.’

  Lysander scribbled a word on the sheet of paper and unclipped a safety pin from behind his lapel. He stooped and pinned the note to Vandenbrook’s chest. It read, ‘ANDROMEDA’.

  ‘I assume you know what you’re doing,’ Hamo said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Lysander prised the revolver from Vandenbrook’s fingers and walked a few yards away before firing one shot into the ground. Then he fitted the gun back into Vandenbrook’s hand, pushing the forefinger through the trigger guard.

  ‘That little pop-gun couldn’t do that damage,’ Hamo said, almost sounding offended.

  ‘They won’t care. Andromeda killed himself – that’s all they need and want. We won’t hear another word about it. Where’s your motor?’

  ‘Round the corner on Hampstead Lane. I think he thought he was being followed – had the taxi take all sorts of turnings and doublings-back. Didn’t want to risk him spotting me.’

  Lysander put his arm around his uncle’s shoulders and squeezed. He had tears in his eyes.

  ‘That was absolutely the right thing to do, Hamo. I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘I told you to call on me, my boy. Any time.’

  ‘I know, now we have our secret.’

  ‘Silent as the grave.’

  They walked away from Vandenbrook’s body, through the wood towards Hampstead Lane, as a weak sun managed to spear through a gap in the rushing clouds and, for a few seconds, the light was burnished, a pale gold.

  20. Autobiographical Investigations

  My mother’s grave is in the north corner of St Botolph’s graveyard, Claverleigh’s parish church. It is a bare and rather cold patch but away from the vast spreading yews that line the path to the porch and that make the place look dark and grim. I wanted some light to shine on her. Hugh Faulkner has planted two flowering cherries on either side of the headstone. I’ll come again in the spring when they’re in blossom and think about her in more tranquil times. Her headstone reads,

  ANNA LADY FAULKNER

  1864–1915

  Widow of Crickmay 5th Baron Faulkner

  1838–1915

  Formerly wife of

  Halifax Rief

  1840–1899

  Mother of

  Lysander Rief

  ‘For ever remembered, for ever loved’

  So our complicated personal history is edited down to these stark facts and these few words and numbers.

  I never went back to the Annexe – I kept nothing in Room 205 – and was glad to be rid of the place with its persistent, lingering odour of antisepsis. I did return to The White Palace Hotel in Pimlico to collect my unforwarded mail and provide the management with my new address. I had grown strangely fond of flat 3/12 Trevelyan House and I gave up the lease on Chandos Place when the news reached me of poor Greville Varley’s death in Kut-al-Amara, Mesopotamia, from dysentery. Amongst my mail – mainly circulars and commercial solicitations (the bane of any serving officer’s postal life) – was a letter from Hettie:

  Lysander, darling,

  Can you forgive me? I was so horrible to you because I was so upset. However, I should never have said the things I did (particularly about Lothar – photograph enclosed). I feel ashamed and I rely on your tolerant and understanding nature. I have decided to divorce Jago and go to the United States. I want to live in a peaceful, neutral country – I’m sick of this ghastly, endless war. A friend of mine runs an ‘artists’ colony’ in New Mexico, wherever that may be, so I am going to join him and become a teacher.

  I have to tell you that Jago is not taking this at all well and, perversely, thinks you are to blame. Apparently he has been going up to London and following you. When you saw him the night of the Zeppelin raid he panicked and confessed all to me.

  I know we will always be friends and I wish you every bit of good luck for your forthcoming marriage (lucky girl!).

  All my best love, Hettie (never more Vanora)

  PS. If you could possibly find your way to send £50 to me care of the GPO in Liverpool I’d be undyingly grateful. I set sail for ‘Americay’ in two weeks.

  LINES WRITTEN

  UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF CHLORAL HYDRATE

  The heat, that summer in Vienna, was immense.

  It slammed down out of a white sky, heavy as glass.

  I do not hope

  I do not hope to see

  I do not hope nor see

  Why were those bands playing in the Prater?

  No one told me what was going on.

  She was schön.

  She was sympatisch.

  We couldn’t be left alone

  At the Hôtel du Sport et Riche.

  I do not see hope

  Hope does not see me

  Blackblackblackblackwhiteblackblackblack

  We turned on our backs in the flax

  We strove in the shadows of the apple grove

  We found bliss beneath the trellis of clematis

  Roll me over, lay me down and do it again.

  It’s black, alack – I can’t see a thing.

  Tara-loo, Madame, tara-lee, tara-loo-di-do

  I dream of a woman.

  Blanche and I have set a date for our wedding in the spring – May 1916. Hamo is to be my best man. Blanche and I spend many nights together but I find I still need chloral hydrate to sleep. I visit Dr Bensimon in Highgate once a week and we talk through the story of the last two years. Parallelism is working, slowly – I’m beginning to live with a version of events in which the man with the moustache and the fair-haired boy scramble out of the sap before my bombs explode. They’re both lightly wounded but both regain the German lines. The more I concentrate on this story and manufacture its precise details the more its plausibility beguiles me. Perhaps one night I’ll sleep peacefully, unaided by my chemicals.

  I wrote to Sergeant Foley at the Stoke Newington Hospital for the Blind but have received no reply to date. Perhaps it might be better if I don’t learn any more facts about that night – it’s been hard enough dislodging the ones that are haunting me – but I feel I need to see Foley and explain something of what was really going on.

  I have an audition tomorrow – my old life returning. A revival of Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw.

  I sit here looking at Hettie’s photograph of Lothar that she sent me. A studio portrait of a little glum boy – close to tears, it seems – dressed to all intents and purposes as a girl in some embroidered pseudo-peasant smock. Long, dark curly hair. Does he look anything like me? One minute I think – yes, he does. And the next I think – no, not at all. Is he really, truly mine, in fact? Hettie betrayed Udo Hoff with me – might she not have been betraying me with somebody else? Can I ever be certain?

  And on this note I think back, as I often do, to that October dawn on Hampstead
Heath as I was waiting for sunrise, waiting for Vandenbrook to arrive. I knew it would be him and I hoped that sunrise that day would bring understanding and clarity with it – or at least clearer vision. And I thought I had it as I pinned ‘Andromeda’ to Vandenbrook’s coat. Everything solved, explained. But as the day wore on other questions nagged at me, troubled me and set me thinking again, until by dusk all was confusion once more. Maybe this is what life is like – we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be. The more we strive the murkier it becomes. All we are left with are approximations, nuances, multitudes of plausible explanations. Take your pick.

  I feel, after what I have gone through, that I understand a little of our modern world now, as it exists today. And perhaps I’ve been offered a glimpse into its future. I was provided with the chance to see the mighty industrial technologies of the twentieth-century war machine both at its massive, bureaucratic source and at its narrow, vulnerable human target. And yet, for all the privileged insight and precious knowledge that I gleaned, I felt that the more I seemed to know, then the more clarity and certainty dimmed and faded away. As we advance into the future the paradox will become clearer – clear and black, blackly clear. The more we know the less we know. Funnily enough, I can live with that idea quite happily. If this is our modern world I feel a very modern man.