Gordon Ferris - The Unquiet heart

Whether she knew it or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re just puppets, Danny, and it’s our subconscious that pulls the strings.

Partly we’re in thrall to the habits we picked up as kids. But mainly we just follow the groove of our nature. Free will is a grand notion.” He went quiet.

“But I think it’s a bit of a con, so it is.”

I must have looked sceptical.

“Take a look at yourself. How did you react when you found she’d gone to Berlin?”

“I went after her. I loved her, Mairtin.”

“One man in ten, or a hundred, might have done what you did. Most would have stayed at home and pined. Not you. She probably knew that’s how you’d react. She was counting on it.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t want to go, I guess. Her heart wasn’t in it. Or maybe she was just plain scared and needed to know you were going to ride in on your white horse, Sir Galahad. It’s like suicides. Some, anyway. They make sure they take an overdose just before their loved one comes home. Or they jump off a bridge into the river and find their arms making swimming motions involuntarily.”

I took these thoughts home with me and nursed them to me as evidence that this affair hadn’t been so one-sided after all. Whether she realised it or not. Of course in some ways it made things worse. I missed her funny face. I could only picture her in the early days, when she was full of challenge and fun. And love.

While Eve’s vanishing act had failed to cause a public ripple, Wilson’s disappearance had generated plenty of column inches, often on the front page. It began slowly but then grew to a crescendo of speculation about a brave policeman missing in gangland. There was one cautionary call from Cassells just before I was raided and interrogated for eight hours at Charing Cross nick. But they had nothing to pin on me, not a shred other than a chance meeting the day before he disappeared. Why had I met him? What did we talk about? Did I still have a grudge over the Caldwell business? What was the link between me and the spy Ava Kaplan? And so on. But once I started to ask them about her, the whole apparatus closed down. I was ejected into the street and left alone after that.

Then things went quiet. The press were off chasing the latest accusations of corruption at the Board of Trade. Then Cassells called me and asked to meet.

I sat on the bench in St James’s Park watching the ripples on the grey water.

Summer had long gone and the trees were melting back into the earth. Their gold and yellow finery lay mouldering round their bases, and a cold wind probed my overcoat. I checked my watch. It was time to go. I left my park bench and walked round to the ale house. It was the same tawdry atmosphere. The same lack of customers. Cassells was nursing what looked like a shandy.

“What happened to the pub idea?” I asked.

“What?”

“You were going to buy a pub. Fill it with big-breasted serving wenches. Drink yourself to a happy retirement.”

I swear he blushed. “A chap has dreams.”

“So why are you still here?”

“I get a good pension. Just another ten years. Then I’m out.”

“Despite the Americans?”

He shrugged. He drew patterns on his glass. “I also believe in it. There’s wickedness out there. We may not eradicate it. We may not even make a dent in it. But would you have me stop trying?”

“There’s too many people with beliefs. That’s where the fighting starts.”

“Like your girlfriend? Finding her cause at last? Fighting for it. Like we were.”

“What was that again? I forget sometimes. Freedom, was it? Is this what freedom looks like? Is this what we do with it?”

“What a world-weary chap you are.”

“Don’t bloody patronise me, Gerald, old boy!” I felt a flush on my cheeks. I was angry with everything these days. “Sorry. It’s all such a mess.”

“Conscience?” he asked gently.

“For what?”

“Wilson. It was you, wasn’t it?”

I held his gaze. “I didn’t kill him. I don’t know what happened to him.”

He studied me. “Well, that’s all right then. I needed to know.”

I guessed. “They’ve found him?”

He nodded.

“Alive?”

He shook his head. “In the river. Very low tide. Body weighed down by chains.

Covered in burns. Looked like a gangland killing. There was talk, a while back, that he was on their payroll.”

I searched for some compassion in my heart and found none. Had I fallen so far?

Seen too much inhumanity? Like a camp guard? “Was this why you called me, Gerry?”

“Thought you might want to know. Also…”

“Yes?”

“Your girl. For what it’s worth, the Americans deny it.”

I nodded. He got up then. He pushed on his hat and gave it a firm tap. He smiled and walked out the door. He didn’t shake my hand.

Winter laid siege to the capital and turned us all into hoarders. We hoarded coal and tins of Spam. We hoarded blankets and we hoarded our emotions. We each became an island of shivering humanity, too cold to talk, to meet, to reach out to each other. I filled another foot of shelf with bright orange Penguins, wondering, with each acquisition, if she would have liked it. I could afford more, now I’d given up the fags.

Surprisingly, business ticked over. I had a nice line in advising companies on security in their warehouses. Tommy Chandler had spread the word. It was enough to keep me in scotch and food. I’d cut down on beer too. I’d stopped going in to the George every night. It had got harder to keep up the banter with the lads after leaving Wilson to the hyenas. Even Stan looked like his conscience troubled him, or maybe he regretted giving up the blowlamp to someone else.

New Year came and went and there was no softening of winter’s grip. They began to cut rations again. Disillusion set in with Attlee and co. Fine promises but none of them kept. It was as though we were tipping back into the gloom of the war years. But this time – apart from winter itself – we had no common enemy.

Just each other.

I was sitting in my bedroom, a quilt pulled round my shoulders and the heat from two sullen briquettes cooking my shins. One hand peeked out to hold the latest book. The other nursed a scotch. It was early evening and sleet was falling past my window. The wet flakes sparkled briefly in the light from the street lamp and were gone.

The door was closed to my office but I heard footsteps on the stairs and then the landing. My outer office door was tried and opened. Someone entered. The steps were hesitant and soon came to a halt. I put down my book and shrugged off my quilt. I got up and opened the dividing door.

She was standing there, hands deep in her pockets, the scarf round her head dripping with melting snow.

“Can I come in?”

I inspected my glass.

“One too many.”

“Not like you, Danny.” Eve smiled and walked towards me.

“I’ve done with ghosts.”

“Oh, I’m real all right.” On cue the cat slid round the door and mewed. It ran forward waving its stumpy tail and wrapped itself round her legs. Eve bent and picked it up. She walked up close to me and dropped it on my chest. The cat hissed, sank its claws in me and leapt off.

“You’re real all right.” I rubbed at my wounds. “Are you staying? Dump your coat and come in. There’s a bit of a fire in here.”

She hesitated.

“Oh come on, Eve. You’re back from the dead. We can celebrate. A wee bit.”

She pulled off her coat and hung it on the hat-stand by the office door. She took off the scarf and shook it and hung it on top. She walked back to me. She looked good, but different somehow. It wasn’t till she came into the light that I realised her russet mop had grown back. It was also now a dark brown.