James Long - Sixth Column

My wife. Not my second wife. My wife. Johnny had never thought of his father having a wife, not after Lady Viola.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, then, because he couldn’t stop himself: ‘Do you have children?’

‘No,’ said Sir Michael, ‘not really,’ and he bent to open a cupboard.

‘Look,’ said Johnny, ‘I think I’m putting you to a lot of trouble. I’ll go and find a hotel. It won’t be a problem.’

‘Please don’t,’ said the old man, straightening up with a bottle in his hand and turning to look directly at him. ‘There’s a room made up. Mrs T. always leaves a room made up. She knows I like people to drop in.’ He looked at Johnny and took two glasses from the shelf with his other hand. ‘Come and have a glass of something through here.’ He nodded sideways at a door in the far corner of the kitchen.

Although it was summer there was an night-time chill as they went into what was clearly Sir Michael’s study, and he switched on an old-fashioned two-bar electric fire. Two walls of the room were completely filled by packed bookshelves and another, against which stood an old oak roll-top desk, was almost equally covered with pictures and photos. He poured Johnny a glass of Laphroaig.

‘I’m glad to have the company,’ he said, sinking into a chair and waving Johnny into the one opposite. ‘It’s a bit quiet round here at the moment. My old dog died last week.’ He paused for a moment, clearly moved by the reawakened memory. ‘Fifteen years old. Pretty good for a spaniel, but it’s quiet without her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Johnny.

‘These things happen. In fact they happen more and more as you get older.’ It could have sounded maudlin but he said it with dignity and a wry smile. ‘Now, Heather was telling me that you’re a pilot.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and immediately felt keen guilt because he knew, uncomfortably, confusingly, that this wasn’t at all like talking to a stranger. At some genetic level there was contact between them. This was, unmistakably, his father to whom he had just told the first of what looked set to be many lies.

He told the rehearsed fiction of his recent years but that wasn’t enough for the man sitting opposite him. His questions sought to carry Johnny ever further back into increasingly dangerous territory, where he hadn’t even begun to construct considered answers.

To distract as much as anything, he asked, ‘How long have you known Heather?’

The old man wrinkled his brow. ‘A year or two, I suppose.’ He nodded. ‘We met under somewhat unusual circumstances. I was supposed to be giving her the sack.’

‘Why?’

‘All this Ramsgill Stray business. It was just after the first time she was arrested. My fellow trustees at the Hall were, let’s say, a somewhat conventional group of people. They didn’t think it was at all right that someone who was employed to be a calming influence for delinquent boys should herself be up on a charge. I was deputed, as chairman, to back up the director and deal with her. I have to admit it took about five minutes at the outside to make me realize that you simply couldn’t hope to find a more honest, impressive person of integrity than Heather Weston. Fortunately the Director agreed with me.’

‘What about the other trustees?’

‘We have a slightly different group now.’ He chuckled. ‘They know my views.’

‘Jo told me you’d helped the peace group a lot.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve given them a bit of guidance on their court cases.’ His voice took on a greater intensity. ‘I mean, if they go closing off public rights of way and things like that, they simply have no right to arrest people walking across them. No right at all. The greatest mark of civilization is the preparedness to live by the laws you create, not bend them when it suits you.’ He stretched out with the bottle and topped up Johnny’s glass.

‘What about Councillor Percival and his line? “The base is doing us all a service”?’

The old man looked down at the fire. ‘In the days when I earned my daily bread representing HMG’s point of view and trying to turn America’s eroding sentimental affection into something a bit more tangible, I would have agreed with that. I don’t know now. I’ve seen some things recently…’ He seemed to stop himself. ‘Things those women have shown me. I think it’s a huge cuckoo in the nest and what we’re doing feeding it, I simply can’t imagine. Protecting that place, against our own people.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Johnny, rubbing the back of his head.

‘Do you? I’d be surprised if you do. I think there are very few people who have any real idea what’s going on in there.’

‘No, I just meant I had a close encounter with Sergeant Hayter this afternoon.’

‘Yes, Heather told me. I can well understand that their tactics annoy the police. It must be dreadfully difficult to be put in the position of having to enforce unenforceable rules but those police have a heavy responsibility to control their behaviour and what they did to her was unpardonable. You do know she’s facing prison, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I simply can’t imagine what it will do to that girl, and then look at what happened to Jo.’

‘You believe her account?’

There was a sharp, tense silence and Sir Michael’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at Johnny in surprise. ‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘I didn’t mean to sound suspicious. It’s just I only heard the story this evening.’

‘Make up your mind about the person and all the rest follows. Allow a bit for over-excitement, emotional involvement and straightforward observational error and that still leaves me convinced – and that counts for both of them, Jo and Heather.’

‘Isn’t there anything Heather can do?’

Sir Michael got up and crossed to the desk. Its cover was rolled three-quarters open and every pigeonhole was stuffed with papers. From the top drawer he pulled out a pink cardboard folder, checked its contents and tossed it to Johnny.

‘If you want some bedtime reading, it’s all there. Statements, the doctor’s reports, the whole lot. There’s no doubt in my mind.’

‘Do you think she has any chance?’

‘She could have. She could have if they could find the doctor.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s a doctor who got her to hospital who’s a key witness. Mysteriously enough the doctor has suddenly moved away.’

‘They can’t find him?’

‘It’s a her. No, they can’t. The hospital and the BMA won’t give any information at all. So far it’s a dead end.’

‘Maybe I could help,’ said Johnny, lulled by the whisky and the warmth, not thinking.

‘How?’ The man’s tone was curious.

‘Oh, well. I’ve just got a bit of time on my hands. I could do some looking.’

‘You like Heather, don’t you?’

It wasn’t hard to sound convincing. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘I’m very fond of Heather. She’s like – well, I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have a daughter, but I certainly think of her as a niece.’

Johnny understood it as some sort of warning, given in a lighter tone than it deserved.

He cradled his whisky glass and a silence fell between them and when he broke it, it was with a question that maybe the moment or maybe the whisky made him ask.

‘You said you didn’t really have children. I wondered what you meant.’

It seemed to him that Sir Michael looked at him for a long time.

‘I was married before. A long time ago and only for a year or two. We had a boy. She took him with her. That’s all I meant.’

Johnny’s room was simple and comfortable. He sat in the bed against fat pillows, switched on the bedside light with its tasselled floral shade and opened the pink file. He read the statements and the medical reports and a detached part of him was capable of showing surprise at the anger it stirred up in him. He made a note of the doctor’s details: Caroline Beevor, with her last address in Leeds. He put it down and switching out the light, heard an owl screech somewhere out in the night. His head was full of swirling words and sleep was not going to be easy. Making a black central shape in his mind’s eye, images kept creeping in, the study, the whisky, the desk. He pushed them out, tried to suppress Sir Michael’s voice but the images persisted.