Chorus Endings Read online

  Chorus Endings

  You live your life forward…

  Understand it backwards

  David Warwick

  Copyright © 2016 David Warwick

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events

  and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination

  or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Matador

  9 Priory Business Park,

  Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

  Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

  Tel: 0116 279 2299

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  Twitter: @matadorbooks

  ISBN 978 1785897 221

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  To: Andrew, Eve, Peter, Richard, Susi and Vee;

  the friends of West Dean Writer’s Circle.

  Just when we’re safest, there’s a sunset-touch,

  A fancy from a flower-bell, someone’s death,

  A chorus-ending from Euripides,

  And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears…

  The grand Perhaps

  Robert Browning

  Bishop Blougram’s Apology

  This curious stock in the Meon Valley is supposed to have descended from the Jutes… Everybody thinks them rather curious, both in looks and manner, quite different from us true-blue Hampshire.

  Sydney R. Jones, England South, London,

  Studio Publications, 1948, p. 128

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Sevemteen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Prologue

  Liverpool, 1941

  They came early that night. Sweeping in over the balloons tethered in a protective curtain around the city. Heinkels for the most part, some 400 of them. First, the high altitude Pathfinders, laying a carpet of flares and incendiaries to illuminate the target area. Behind and beneath them, the main force. Altitude 7000 feet, within the range of anti-aircraft fire now. Harried by the fighters, some swinging off-course towards a decoy Liverpool, in flames apparently, to the west. The rest delivering their payload – bombs, parachute mines, further incendiaries – ninety tons of high explosives on shipping, factories and warehouses in the estuary below. The residential areas of Birkenhead and Wallasey also. Three hundred and fifty bombs, he read later, sixty mines, 270 incendiary groupings. Six hundred and thirty-one dead, a similar number badly injured; over 500 houses destroyed.

  The men clearing the debris alongside him said nothing, but he felt their resentment. It had been like that from the outset; each having a genuine reason for being there: firemen, ambulance drivers, those who had failed their medical or were prevented on one ground or another from taking a pro-active part in the war. He alone having to be drafted in. ‘Conchie’ they called him, not bothering to learn his real name, nor his reason for refusing to enlist, few of them searching further than cowardice for an explanation. All might have been well if his objections had been on religious grounds. Some all-embracing theory regarding the brotherhood of man might have won them round. But talk of the inviolability of individual conscience, the ‘establishment’s war’ (had he really said that to the Board?) would have meant as little to them as it was beginning to mean to him. Fine at a distance, to refute the folly by withdrawing from it. Different entirely when viewed up-close, frame by frame; living the actuality rather than thinking the concept.

  A threadbare exegesis; it was the individual tragedies that returned to haunt him. The woman who’d flung her baby from a topmost window; the severed hand he’d found among the rubble; blackened nursery rhyme paper; Three Blind Mice and Ride-a-Cock-Horse peeling off the wall; a splintered cot spilling out among the wreckage in the street below. The Anderson shelter, together with a family, their neighbours and the vegetable patch they’d been tending, all of it blown apart. Above all, the man he’d found in his kitchen a few days earlier.

  A noise in the early hours had brought him downstairs to find the stranger crouched beside the fridge, its contents scattered over the floor, milk dripping from one of the upper shelves. A dishevelled figure, hair matted with sweat, speech slurred but well-spoken. Very frightened, with hands shaking as he raised them to shield his eyes from the torchlight; the ill-fitting suit stained and ripped in places; his fingernails black with grime. To be pitied rather than feared. Above all, needing to be fed.

  As they ate he’d taken stock of the situation. The intruder meant him no harm. Fortunate that. Wiry and emaciated the man might have been, but tall; still able to handle himself, and there were few left in the building he could call upon for help. At least age would have been on his side in a struggle, by twenty years or more if appearance was anything to go by. It was not, his visitor – it transpired – being six months his junior. An officer, lately from the war zone, first separated from his regiment then caught up in the general retreat. Quite obviously a deserter. Or an enemy interloper, the kind they’d been warned about. Not that he’d challenged the man, nor had there been need to do so. Once he’d slept, had a bath, changed into the only clean clothing that fitted – some spare fire-fighting uniform kept at readiness in the wardrobe – he’d been only too willing to talk, in a stumbling manner, incoherent at times, yet eager to share his misfortunes with a total stranger. As if by doing so he could be rid of them.

  It was always assumed he’d be a soldier, the intruder told him; taken for granted, for as long as he could remember. A tradition that ran in the family and, lest he forget, there were albums filled with faded photos, framed prints of men in uniform, medals displayed in velvet cases, to remind him of the fact. The prospect had not daunted him. Nor had the training: marc
hing and counter-marching, lectures on leadership and battlefield strategy, long nights of simulated warfare between mock battalions out there on Salisbury Plain. Nothing, though, had prepared him for the gut-wrenching terror he felt the first moment they’d set foot abroad, increasing as they advanced into enemy territory, paralysing him completely the moment they came under fire.

  Up to then he’d coped, given orders in a confident manner, had been able to set an outward example at least. Now, with the eyes of his men upon him, eagerly awaiting some response, he froze, unable to think or to act. The sergeant it was who stepped forward, had hurried them under cover, summoning up the counter-attack. Who’d brought him tea in a tin mug, spoke affectionately, assured him these were symptoms common to all subalterns. Unexpected and completely at variance with the man’s raucous barrack-room manner. Surprising also, the NCO unfastening the medallion from around his neck and handing it over. St Christopher carrying the Christ-child to safety over a raging torrent, given to him by his mother before she died. He’d refused at first, but the sergeant was adamant and, from that moment, had become a father-figure; keeping the young officer always in his sight, providing medication that saw him through the worst of the bombardments, helping him avoid the action whenever possible as, with communications down, they fell back from position after position, continuously under fire, taking heavy casualties as they went. Remember the St Christopher, the sergeant had told him; the words inscribed on the reverse: Vade Mecum – Constant Companion. They’d come through this together.

  But they hadn’t. The end came at dusk one evening, holed up in woodlands, pinned down by sniper fire; he ridden with guilt, the men battle-weary and fractious, becoming increasingly suspicious. The sergeant merely smiled, passed the mess can across, took a shot through the neck, lay spluttering at his feet. No paralysis on this occasion. Revulsion rather. And fear. Pure, primitive, undiluted. Propelling him up and out of the bunker. Zig-zagging through a hail of bullets. Abandoning helmet and rifle, before collapsing down into a ravine. Screaming all the way.

  Just how he made it back to England was far from clear. Part bluff, part bribery; a good knowledge of French, some German and the assistance of collaborators en route. Ingenuity and a large helping of luck also. Followed by life continuously on the run, living hand-to-mouth, forever frightened, suspicious of all those around him. But staying well clear of home territory. No one had witnessed his flight; better his family knew nothing of it. ‘Lost in action’ they’d have been told. ‘“Some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England”.’ The stranger smiled ruefully and, by way of proof, pushed the medallion across the table to where Conchie sat sipping the last of his tea. Hardly conclusive, such items were obtainable anywhere. Picked up from the battlefield even, accounting for the chain, which had snapped. Spies, so they said, came in many guises, nuns on bicycles being the running joke. Playing for time, he’d promised to think matters over, do nothing till a full recovery had been made, hoping that by then, spy or no spy, the man would surely have made his escape.

  In the meantime, he must return to work. A metal helmet, purloined from the stores, would offer some protection should the worst happen. The stranger, huddled down in a corner, comatose almost, convinced that it would. He caught himself envying the man. Freed, at a stroke, to remake his life. Loss of face, position, the regard of others, family even, a small price to pay for independence; jettisoning forever the restrictions of what, for Conchie, had become a jaded domesticity. The moment passed. He said nothing, merely fetched the helmet from the cupboard, strapped his watch to the other man’s wrist, promising that, whatever happened, he’d be back within the hour. And he’d get the medallion’s chain repaired so it could be worn around the neck once more.

  The Heinkels beat him to it. Some 400 of them. Diverted to a decoy Liverpool west of the city – starfish they called it – they’d flattened Wallasey. Shipping, factories and warehouses. The residential area also. Six hundred and thirty-one dead, the stranger among them. Watch and helmet smashed, remnants of the uniform he’d borrowed melded to a body burnt beyond recognition. A fate that both men might have suffered but for that five-minute delay in dismissing the squad; the moments spent, a few yards only from the doorstep, unbuttoning his tunic in search of the keys, remembering he’d lent them to the deserter. The flash projecting his shadow, instantaneous and enormous, onto the wall opposite; the blast, felt rather than heard, spinning him round. In time to catch the fireball rolling, phoenix-like skywards. Grasped by some invisible hand, flung backwards into the smouldering bushes. Coming to – ten minutes, ten hours later? – to hear familiar voices. ‘Conchie,’ they were saying, ‘it’s Conchie’s house.’ He struggled to get upright, tried to call out but no sound came. ‘Still in there. What’s left of him.’ A scrabbling among the wreckage. He fell back exhausted.

  Later still: a spattering of rain, men heaving bricks, masonry, charred rafters aside. The body found. Comments, reaching him from a great distance, a chasm, so it seemed. ‘Not such a bad chap.’ ‘Kept himself to himself.’ ‘Stoic.’ ‘Pity we didn’t get to know him better.’ He heard them called away, shuffling off through the debris. ‘Wrong-headed, that’s all.’ And they were gone. His strength returned. Raising himself painfully up, he peered through the foliage. The house had been wrecked, one crenulated wall upright, the others reduced to rubble. Plaster, bricks, broken glass strewn everywhere; two pieces of charred wood tied together to form a rough cross. Marking the spot where they’d found the body? The stranger – his houseguest – the interloper, of course. And Conchie gone with him. Remembered with greater affection by his colleagues than ever he’d earned during his time among them.

  Two deaths for the price of one. He dozed, stirred, slept once more, then woke to birdsong and the realisation as to precisely what this meant. Overnight, his dream had become a reality. Anonymity; the freedom to go where he liked, do as he wished. So why did he feel responsible for what had happened? There’d hardly been time to get to know the man; he’d neither invited him into the house, nor scheduled the raid that had killed him. And the guilt. As if he’d conjured up the whole episode. Willed that particular plane to drop that specific bomb on that precise building at exactly that moment. Achieving the independence that now was his. Not that he’d get far in his condition, on the remnant of last week’s wages. Gingerly he felt in his pockets. Two ten-shilling notes, four half-crowns, a handful of copper. And the medallion. Cheap, mass-produced, hardly worth the chain on which it now hung, pirouetting; catching the morning sun as it did so.

  A magic charm when all was said and done. Lent a certain cachet by the church, but no more efficacious than a clover leaf, rabbit’s foot, or lucky birthstone. Constant Companion, yet dispensed with so readily by the sergeant, who’d been killed in action a few days later. The mother dead, too, no sooner than she’d parted with it. As was the deserter, lying out there among the ruins. Whilst he, with the St Christopher safe in his pocket, had survived. He’d never been superstitious, but the medallion’s pedigree spoke for itself. From around him came the sounds of the old world awakening. Vade Mecum: literal translation, Go with me. A stronger chain would be required, that much was certain. And to put as much mileage as possible between himself and the man they’d called Conchie.

  Part One

  Every Story Tells a Picture

  Chapter One

  Fiddlers Three

  You live your life forward; understand it backwards – that’s what they tell me. And I’d go along with it. It’s one thing to have witnessed betrayal and espionage, treachery and insanity, attempted murder even, when not yet into your ‘teens. Quite another for them to have passed you by. There’d been clues of course, and I might have spotted them – if I’d paid a little more attention to what was going on around me. Had I not watched without seeing; heard rather than merely listening to what I was told. And who knows, I might even have remained ignorant to this day, but for ten min
utes of a television programme, caught almost by accident, some thirty years down the line.Which is as good a starting-point as any…

  …Harrogate, 1985: an autumn evening mid-way through my university career; Helen just beginning her own as a librarian. No longer my student, not yet my wife – Mrs Rayner, that is. ‘Partners’ I suppose you’d call us these days. The ‘living-in’ sin was how her mother described it.

  The scene’s a domestic one. Myself out in the kitchen preparing after-dinner drinks; Helen curled up on the sofa watching a variation of the Antiques Roadshow recorded earlier in the week. Members of the public bringing treasured possessions to be valued by a team of specialists. These seem to have been chosen at random, with no clue as to what’s coming next. Otherwise I’d have been in there glued to the set from the beginning.

  There’s a shout from the front room: ‘Quick, Peter, it’s that hero of yours. The one you keep going on about. And they’ve got some of his pictures.’

  No name required; the tone of voice, that ‘going on about’, spoke volumes. The picture I recognised the moment I saw it: Fiddlers Three. I’d been there when it was painted – though ‘picture’s’ hardly the word to describe it, nor ‘painting’ the technique employed. Magnificent to the eyes of a nine-year-old, but what had any of us known about art? Nor, till then, did I realise he had any sort of a following. The critics, the few of them who knew of his existence, had been dismissive, but a small band of aficionados appeared to have taken him to their heart.

  I took the zapper and reversed the tape. Fiddlers Three disappeared into a shopping trolley; the waiting queue shuffled backwards towards the exit, then forward again in real time as I pushed the button and the sequence recommenced. ‘My word,’ Frank Murgatroyd, the resident expert, known throughout the business as ‘Murgo’, is saying in that excited, avuncular manner that’s made him a household name on our side of the screen; the darling of chat-show hosts and impressionists on his. ‘It’s years since I’ve seen one of these.’