Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘I don’t know, my dear. Colin never mentioned it afterwards. I do know that resolving a dispute with Colin was never easy. He didn’t forgive anyone quickly, if at all. And, of course, he always seemed to despise the Church, even though we were married in one. I didn’t like to mention that before, with you being… He once said Christianity was… not a man’s religion. Certainly not a soldier’s religion.’

‘So could the antagonism between Colin and Syd have been anything to do with the fact that Syd had taken up a religion that Colin had no time for?’

Merrily shifted in the squashy chair. For a moment there, she’d felt something of Syd Spicer in the place. The quietness of him, almost an absence, a soul in camouflage.

‘Possibly… I don’t know,’ Liz said. ‘I thought… this sounds silly, but I kept thinking it was something to do with the books.’

The books had started not long before Byron had left the private-security company in Hereford. When the foreign jobs had become fewer. He’d begun talking about all the money that guys like the man known as Andy McNab were making from SAS memoirs and spin-off novels.

Liz took Merrily upstairs, where there were five bedrooms off the landing, the doors of all of them hanging open. A scent of fresh linen and a light musk from a dish of pot-pourri on a window sill.

Five doors open, one closed: narrow, Gothic-shaped, midway along the landing. The tower room, where Byron had written his books.

‘A lot of controversy at the time about SAS memoirs. The Ministry of Defence didn’t like it and Colin thought they were right. When some new regulations were imposed to make it harder for them, he thought that was good. He always said that what he was doing wouldn’t affect national security in the least. Because his books weren’t about the SAS. Well, not directly.’

‘This is the ancient Britons, the Celts against the Romans?’

‘He said all he was doing was using his experience of close combat to show what it was really like. He was going to be the first writer to really get inside the heads of the old warriors. He used to go running up the hill, where there’s a Celtic fort.’

‘Credenhill? But I thought-’

‘No, the other one. Dinedor. The old Stirling Lines was close to it.’

That was interesting. The SAS had moved its headquarters from the shadow of one Iron Age fortified hill to a site directly below another.

‘I think some Roman remains were also found around the camp itself, and he was very interested in that. He joined a local history group. In fact…’ Liz’s forehead furrowed ‘… I’m not sure they didn’t actually form it themselves.’

‘While still in the Regiment?’

‘He’d read a lot of books. By the time he left, he knew all about the Celts and the Romans. And he had this idea about Caractacus, who he called Caradog, the Welsh name. Colin’s family was from Wales, although he was born in London. The later books were written in the first person – as if he was Caradog, you know?’

‘I’ve only seen the first one.’

‘He was furious when publishers kept turning him down. One of them said it had all been done before, and Colin rang the man up and raged at him – no, this has never been done before, you… effing idiot.’

‘Was it always going to be for children?’

‘Oh, no. No, it wasn’t. It made him furious when the only publisher who was interested said it should be written for children. He said he was going to forget the whole thing. Then the publisher came to see him. A woman. I think she’d persuaded him it was going to make a lot of money.’

‘How many has he written?’

‘Five. He’d stopped by the time we parted. He was quite bitter. Used to say they’d led him on with lies about selling the books all over the world. But they only ever sold one – to America, and the Americans demanded all kinds of changes which made him angry. His publishers kept saying it would build a readership when it became a series, but it never really happened. It was always going to be the next one.’

Liz unlocked the door of the tower room, and the pot-pourri scent followed them up four steps from the landing. The room was west-facing, white-painted walls, one small window. No furniture, only cleaning utensils, bathroom sprays and bumper packs of toilet tissue.

‘He’d shut himself in here for whole days… He could go a long time without meals. I was glad at first when the publishers wanted him to go to schools and talk to children, to promote the books. But he hated that. He didn’t particularly like children. Or pets. An encumbrance. He didn’t like encumbrances.’

Liz looked down at the boarded floor. Had she wanted children and Byron hadn’t?

‘Wouldn’t make any concessions in the books, to young people. I tried to read them, but I had to skip some of it. Scenes where people are garrotted and… worse. There was a lot of bad feeling with the publishers, in the end. His editor… she rang one day, when he was out, very upset. He didn’t like having a woman edit his books. She sounded quite frightened, actually. Very shrill. He didn’t write another one after that. Broke his contract, but they didn’t try to stop him or get any money back. I think they were worried about antagonizing him any more.’

‘Were you frightened, Liz?’

‘I’d learned to keep out of his way when he was angry. I kept thinking of what my father said. The pressure he must’ve been under, the things he’d had to do. He certainly never touched me… in anger. When things became too much, he’d go out walking a lot. And shooting. Sometimes he’d stay out all night. I got used to it. Well, you have to, don’t you?’

Liz had left the door of the tower room wide open, pushed back against the wall. She was standing against the frame, her hair coming loose.

‘Some nights he wouldn’t come home, and there’d be no explanation. I never once thought about other women. He didn’t like women enough. I knew he went to Hereford, drinking with his mates, and I just assumed he was unfit to drive and sleeping on someone’s sofa. Seems everyone knew except me. But then, I’m not very bright. He used to say that.’

Merrily sighed. Liz tried vainly to pile her hair back.

‘Stella, who helps here, told me in the end. I think she was embarrassed on my behalf. Not like it was just one woman. He was playing the field. As if he was in his twenties again. In the pubs and the clubs. He was… you know, walking out with them. Stella’s brother’s a minicab driver in town, and he picked Colin up twice with different women. Drunk and all over one another in the back. I was sick to my stomach, and it took me a long time to ask him about it. When I did, he admitted it at once. Apologized and offered to find me a good lawyer. All very businesslike.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘We’ve been divorced exactly two and a half years. Married Paul last year – known each other since we were kids. It’s fine. It’s all right. Quieter now. I was glad when Colin took his books away – all the second-hand books he’d bought for research. Not the kind of books you wanted guests to see. Pagan religions and the occult. I was always worried he’d leave this door unlocked and someone would come in and… Don’t like this room.’

You could see the marks where bookshelves had been taken out. Liz’s hair had come free now, like a cloud of white steam. She swivelled her head, looking from wall to wall, as if there might be blood oozing out of the plaster.

‘When he left, I cleaned it out and put a bed in here. A woman came to stay for two nights. An older woman. The outspoken type you could imagine as a magistrate. Miss Pleston. Came down to breakfast next morning, and straight out with it: how often do you clean your rooms? Insisting there was a… a men’s stench. It kept waking her up, and she’d had to open the window.’