Dying Flames Read online

  The applause was warm, though not particularly involved. Graham was a credit to the school rather than someone they remembered at all well. George went on to a further five minutes of reminiscence and thanks to all those who had arranged the dinner, then sat down with impeccable timing. But not without a nervous glance at Table Five, which was applauding enthusiastically with the rest. Satisfied all was well, George Long turned to the Old Boys around him.

  But all was not restored to good humor at Graham’s table, and he was a bit bemused as to the reason. Garry McCartney, after the clapping and cheers, sat slumped in his chair. Surely he was not still resenting the parody of his stupefying sporting stories? Well, yes, he probably was, Graham thought. But five minutes later Garry broke into speech with Ted Bareacres, the man sitting beside him.

  “Peggy,” he said.

  “Come again?”

  “I’ve been trying to think of the name of the girl who played Saint Joan. Lovely little creature, and brilliant with it. You know me, Ted: lit-er-a-chewer is not really my thing, but she was fabulous. I was Robert de Baudricourt, and I just worshiped her. Peggy was her name.”

  “She was good, wasn’t she? I wasn’t in it, but I saw her.”

  “Fabulous…. Peggy something…Just brilliant, she was. And then—nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I said: nothing. Moved away quickly. Nobody knew where she’d gone—not her schoolmates, not George.”

  “I expect the parents moved.”

  “I expect they did. But why, and why were there no contacts kept up? There were rumors. I bet someone knows.”

  “Who knows? Knows what?”

  “There were rumors about him too. More than one rumor. But if I get to know who the guttersnipe was—” Was it just Graham’s self-consciousness that said that McCartney was not just looking across the table but was looking at him? “If I knew who the guttersnipe was, I’d make him pay.”

  Bareacres was looking at McCartney, mystified. “Why should you care? That’s the drink talking.”

  “Everyone who knew her cared. She was like a…a shining light…. I wish I could remember her name.”

  People around Garry McCartney were grinning at his violence in the cause of a girl whose name he could barely remember. But Graham wasn’t grinning. Graham could remember the name of the girl who had played Saint Joan. And he was thinking that this might be the last year he came to the reunion for George Long.

  Chapter 2

  The Loneliness of the

  Long-Distance Author

  The next morning Graham was disturbed in his hotel room by a ringing telephone. Plenty of people knew he was staying at the King William in Colchester, but none that he could think of would want to ring him at seven forty-five.

  “Graham Broadbent,” he said.

  “Oh, I say, look, I mean—this is Garry McCartney. The chap who—”

  “I remember which chap you are, Garry,” said Graham coolly. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, it’s just that…well, people said—Ted Bareacres rang last night, and he said people were saying—well, that I’d come on a bit strong yesterday at the reunion.”

  “A bit strong, Garry?” said Graham smoothly. “I don’t see that. You felt strongly so you spoke strongly. Nothing wrong in that.”

  “Good of you…er, Graham. I do feel strongly. People think I’m a bit of a thug, but really I’m very sensitive. And she was so—”

  “She was lovely. I didn’t know you and she had anything going, but I just had a bit part with you in the first scene.”

  “We didn’t have anything going.” The voice was suddenly loud, then softened again. “I told you, I’m the sensitive type. I was seventeen, but I wasn’t…you know, experienced. And in those days kids weren’t at it at twelve, like they are today. I worshiped her from afar—that’s how you literary types would put it, isn’t it? I could see she was something different, way out of my league. And then when some oaf went and got her in the family way, or that was what the rumor said…well, I just went ballistic.”

  “You didn’t think, Garry, did you, that it was me who did it?”

  “No. You know how it is, old man. You get funny ideas after you’ve had two or three drinks.”

  “Because apart from backstage, when everyone was watching, the only time I met her was one day when I went to see that old Anglo-Saxon church, near—”

  “You don’t have to explain, old man. I just got this mad idea into my head. Will you just forget about it? Please?”

  “Of course, Garry. I’ve forgotten about it already. We neither of us had much to do after the first scene, did we? Just be extras and shout ‘rhubarb.’ But it was a joy just watching her, I agree with you there. Happy times. Well, I’m off to my breakfast.”

  “Oh, of course. Hope I haven’t kept you. Have the full English, eh? Only way to justify the prices these hotels charge.”

  For some reason when Graham went down to the breakfast room, he didn’t fancy one of the monstrous fry-ups that hotels specialize in. He had a couple of poached eggs and bacon, then filled up on toast and marmalade and coffee. He settled up his bill, keeping the receipts for the Inland Revenue, who subsidized quite a few of Graham’s pleasures, then finished packing and took the case out to his car.

  He was thoughtful during the hour-long drive home to Suffolk. He had half-expected the girl to reappear at his door after breakfast and felt disappointment in the pit of his stomach that she hadn’t. What was her name? Christa, that was it. It sounded somehow German, or perhaps Scandinavian, but she had said it was just short for Christabel. He fantasized that she might have hidden herself on the floor at the back of the car and, even, on a stretch of deserted road, turned round and had a look.

  “Silly fool,” he said to himself. Being a realist he added, “She wasn’t even small.”

  He got home to Hepton Magna by half past eleven. It was not one of those ostentatiously villagey villages, just a moderately attractive collection of small and middle-sized houses and cottages, solid and unshowy. A bit like Graham Broadbent novels one interviewer had said, but she had specialized in the casual sneer. Graham’s was one of the middle-sized houses, now rather too big since his wife had decamped. While the toasted cheese for his lunch was under the grill, he walked around the ground floor and noted for the umpteenth time how little of his wife, who had been gone for nearly a year, was now left in the house. It was not that she had lacked personality, or that he had systematically tried to erase all trace of her, merely that she had not cared to impress herself on the house. Probably she had guessed from early on that the marriage was unlikely to be long-lasting. Graham was a one-night-

  stand lover—two or three nights at a pinch. He gave little and he took little. It did not make for a stable marriage, and Ellen had slipped out of his life with as little fuss as he had made about having her in it.

  “At least you’ll be free now,” she had said on the phone. “You can do what you want when you want. No more subterfuges.”

  Sitting with his sizzling plate at the small table in the dining room, Graham felt a certain satisfaction at being home. Around him were the tools of his trade—the reference books, the classic novels he loved, the works of his contemporaries. And there was the modest achievement of the shelfful of his own novels—those low-keyed stories of lonely people that one sarky critic had described as “like Anita Brookner without the passion.” Graham did not apologize for his books. They were like himself. They were a faithful mirror of what he was—no, of what he had become. Low-key, unassertive, but full of unrecognized passions.

  There was no getting any writing done that day. He played some music on the CD, went to stock up on basics at the local shop, vacuumed the downstairs rooms. His mind was buzzing as he did all these things. There was every reason to do nothing about the strange incursion into his life that had occurred at Colchester. Every reason—and yet all sorts of irrational urges acted against those reaso
ns. Graham was not a man for irrational urges. He knew that common prudence demanded that he listen to the sensible advice of his brain, and yet…

  He dialed directory inquiries.

  “What name is it, please?” the voice said.

  “The name is Webster. Margaret Theresa Webster.”

  “And what town?”

  “The town is Romford, in Essex.”

  “I see…. Do you have an address?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There are two M. T. Websters in the Romford directory. Oh…one is a reverend. Could be a woman, but…Shall I give you the other number to start with?”

  “Please. And could I have the address too, please?”

  “I’m afraid we’re not allowed to divulge addresses.”

  “But it will be in the directory.”

  “As I say, we are not—”

  “All right: the number.”

  The human voice was succeeded by a disembodied one.

  “The number you require is 01705 642971.”

  The disembodied voice then offered him (probably mendaciously) further help if he needed it, and he rang off.

  Graham’s first thought was to ring his editor at Harcourt and Gormsley to see if he had a southeast London telephone directory there. The thought of explaining himself put him off the idea. His editor was the first resort for any problem great or small in his professional life. The tiny bit left that was his private life he had always kept to himself. It was by now three o’clock. He decided to get into his car again and drive to Ipswich, and to its public library.

  There—as so often in libraries, particularly reference libraries—the problem solved itself. In the residential directory for southeast London he found:

  “Webster, M. T., 25 Milton Terrace, Romford 01705 642971.”

  He also, since he was there, noted the address of the reverend gentleman or lady. Presumably it was not necessary: surely Christa would have told him if her mother was a minister of religion?

  He pondered this last thought, though. Christa was, in his judgment, a tease. It was one of the things he found delightful about her. She had told him what it suited her to tell him at that point in their relationship. And no more. Even the Theresa he had had to remember for himself. She had told him nothing about her own life—whether she was employed, unemployed, a student, in a relationship, still living at home, straight, gay—nothing. He felt sure it was her intention to pursue the matter. Pursue him. She could even find his address without too much trouble: it appeared in an American directory of contemporary novelists, and now for the first time (because fans had not come in droves to bang on his door) he regretted giving them permission.

  Or did he regret it?

  He found that in the car on the way home he was weighing up in his mind the best time to drive to Romford. If he was to drive around the streets hoping for a glimpse of Christa or her mother (but would he recognize her?), when would be the best time of day to do it?

  He was conscious that there was no conditional tense in his deliberations: not “should he decide to go,” but a mental stance of “granted that he had decided to go.” His caution, his rationality, had been thrown to the winds. His urge had taken him over. He regretted his caution and rationality, but felt excitement at their overthrow. It occurred to him that they, and indeed the whole shape of his personality, were a consequence of what had happened in the summer of the year 1979. The summer following the school production of St. Joan.

  By the time he arrived back in Hepton Magna he had decided that the early morning was the best time to visit Romford. And that it had better be done while the determination was in him. He watched the headlines on the ten o’clock news, then turned in for an early night, setting the Teasmaid for 6 a.m.

  Driving through the streets of Romford was not a spirit-elevating experience. He had found Milton Terrace from a London A to Z he had bought when writing his novel The New Prufrock (long-listed but not short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1997). He made the street his center of operations and drove around noting shopping streets and office blocks where Christa might be employed and places of education where she might study. Milton Terrace itself was a street of “nice little semidetacheds,” exactly as the girl had said (Graham clocked it up as the first verified truth he had heard from her lips). It was surrounded by many others, some slightly better, some slightly worse. In the property market of his youth, the differences would have meant a thousand or two either way on the market price. In today’s mad world of London’s and near-London’s house prices, the difference was probably near fifty thousand either way.

  Graham groaned at the modern world. He knew about it, but did not understand it. His books more and more were getting set in the recent past. By the time he died he’d be writing historicals.

  Then he saw her.

  She was five minutes away from her home, in a little group with three other girls. They were talking and laughing and now and then exchanging greetings or badinage with some boy or other. Young men, he should say. They were part of a larger group, almost all young people, and he felt sure they were all on their way to the Jeremy Bentham College, which he had noted on his drive around. He could not go as slowly as they were walking so he drew to the side of the road. As they went beyond his field of vision, he drove forward again and was just in time to see the little group turning in through the college gates and toward the main building.

  He drew to the side of the road again. What did he do now? The obvious thing was to return to Milton Terrace, since Christa’s mother was quite probably there on her own now. His mind rejected this at once. He was not ready to see Peggy Somers again yet. Someday he would—he was sure the time would come, and perhaps soon. But today it was all too new, too strange. He drove forward as if in a trance, then through the college gates, parking in one of the spaces reserved for visitors. Then he sat and watched the waves of young people—he felt he had never seen so many young people together at one time—until the waves ebbed to a trickle. Classes must have begun.

  At twenty past nine he got out of the car and strode toward reception. It was all rather like a hotel, he decided. Should he ask to see the manager? The woman in Reception added to this illusion: he could imagine her behind the desk in some old-fashioned West Country hotel.

  “I wonder if you could help me,” he began. “My name is Graham Broadbent.” There was a tiny flicker on her polite features. “I need to see the—what is it?—principal of the college?”

  “The director.”

  “Ah, yes. Er, I’m a stranger in Romford, and I don’t have an appointment—”

  “The director is free until nine forty-five. Could I ask what you wish to see him about?”

  “It’s rather personal. I’m a writer—”

  “Yes. The Day Wanes.”

  He felt absurdly pleased. “You make things much easier. The matter is entirely personal, but it does concern someone who I think is a student at this college.”

  The woman opened her mouth, and Graham was sure she wanted to ask whether it was a male or female student. She was too wise to do that, asked him instead to wait for a moment, then disappeared along a corridor. When she came back, she simply said, “Dr. Warhope will see you now,” and ushered him to the director’s door.

  “Ah, Mr. Broadbent,” said a bearded, bespectacled man, strong on authority and decisiveness. “I know of your books, I’m afraid, rather than knowing them as I should, but I’m afraid I’m a scientist by training. Anyway, we’re honored by your visit. And a bit curious too. Please sit down and tell me how we can help you.”

  Graham sat cautiously on the seat facing the director, feeling glad he was beyond being a student.

  “Yes, I’ll try to do that,” he said. “I’d better tell you what happened to me on Tuesday. I presume anything I tell you will be in total confidence?”

  “Of course.” The fingers of the director’s hands made a neat triangle on the desk.

  “On Tuesday eve
ning I was in the King William Hotel in Colchester. It is my hometown, and I was there for a school reunion. There was a knock on the door, and when I opened it, a girl stood outside. She was a complete stranger to me. The first thing she said was ‘Hello, Dad.’ ”

  The man’s eyes widened. “I can see you must have been disturbed.”

  “To put it mildly. In subsequent conversation—”

  “You asked her into your room?”

  “Yes. I suggested coffee downstairs, but she said wasn’t it too public for the conversation we were going to have? I didn’t think I had any choice. In that conversation it emerged that she must have been conceived in 1983, when I was working for Christian Aid in Mali.”

  “I see…. Do you mind giving me her name?”

  “The surname she uses I can’t be sure about. Probably Webster. The Christian name is Christa. She said it was short for Christabel.”

  “You can never be sure these days. I do seem to remember…” He pressed keys on his computer, then looked intently at the screen. “Yes, we have a Christa Webster. Second year, has been studying Art History. It became popular when Prince William did it at St. Andrews. Quite a lot of dropouts recently…Her birth date is given as August twenty-first, 1984.”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “And that makes any involvement of yourself unlikely?”

  “Inconceivable…. Sorry. Couldn’t have chosen a worse word.”