Hammond Innes: The Doomed Oasis

‘Dafydd!’

Mrs Thomas was standing in the doorway, her hands plucking again at the apron. ‘I can’t stand any more.’ There was an edge to her voice that seemed to get through to him and he relaxed slowly and stepped back from me. ‘I’ll come for that address,’ he muttered. ‘Sooner or later I’ll come to your office and get it out of you.’ He was back at the window again, looking out. ‘I’d like to talk to my mother now.’ He stared at me, waiting for me to go.

I hesitated, glancing at Mrs Thomas. She was still as stone, and her eyes, as they stared at her son, were wide and scared-looking. I heard the slow intake of her breath. ‘I’ll go and make some tea,’ she said slowly, and I knew she wanted to escape into her kitchen. ‘You’d like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you now, Mr Grant?’

But before I could reply and give her the excuse she needed, her son had crossed over to her. ‘Please, Ma.’ His voice was urgent. There isn’t much time, you see, and I got to talk to you.’ He was pleading with her — a small boy now pleading with his mother, and I saw her weaken at once. I got my hat from the roll-top desk where I’d left it. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Thomas,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you now.‘There was a phone on the desk, an old-fashioned hook-up instrument standing amongst a litter of books on greyhounds and racing form. ‘You can always phone my office if you want me.’

She nodded dumbly. She was trembling slightly and I could see she was dreading the moment when she’d be left alone with him. But there was no point in my staying. This was something that lay between the two of them, alone. ‘Take my advice,’ I told him. ‘When the police arrive, be a little more co-operative with them than you have been with me if you want to avoid trouble. And stick to your mother’s story.’

He didn’t say anything. The sullen look was back in his face. Mrs Thomas showed me to the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s upset.’

‘It’s not unnatural.’ I was remembering how I’d felt when I learned that my parents were divorced. I’d heard it first from a boy at school and I’d called him a liar and half murdered the little swine. And then when I discovered it was true, I’d wanted to kill my father and had had to content myself with a letter, which for sheer brutality had been inexcusable. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t tell him before.’

‘I always meant to,’ she said. ‘But somehow-’ She shrugged, a gesture of hopelessness, and as I went out to my car I was wishing I could have done more to help her.

As I turned out of Everdale Road a squad car passed me. There were four of them in it, including Sergeant Mathieson of the Cardiff CID. It seemed an unnecessarily large force to answer Dr Harvey’s call, but I didn’t go back. It was past five already and Andrews would be waiting to clear the day’s business.

Andrews was my clerk. He was also secretary, switchboard operator, office boy. Poor devil, he had come to me with the furniture and the two-roomed, dingy office, all that remained of my uncle’s once-prosperous business, which he had left to me in a fit of misplaced optimism, for though I’d passed my law exams, I’d never practised. There’d been the war and then I had drifted to Tanganyika and tea-planting, a venture which had turned out badly, leaving me virtually broke at the time of his death, so that the legacy of that miserable place seemed like the smile of fortune.

‘Know anything about a Mrs Thomas?’ I asked Andrews as he helped me off with my coat. He had drawn the curtains and with the coal fire burning brightly in the grate, the place looked almost snug, despite the dust and the piles of documents and the black deed boxes littering the floor by the open strong room door. ‘It’s a matter of a small allowance she claims we handle for her.’

‘Mrs Thomas is it?’ I had seated myself at the desk and he stood over me, tall and slightly stooped, the skin stretched taut as vellum across the bones of his long face. ‘You know, Mr Grant, almost half our clients are named Thomas.’ It was part of the game that he must always make the simplest thing appear difficult.

‘It’s one of your old clients,’ I said. ‘Something I have apparently quite unwittingly inherited from the old man.’

‘From Mister Evans, you mean.’ That, too, was part of the game, and because his position was privileged I had to humour him. ‘All right, Andrews. From old Mr Evans.’ The firelight flickered on the lined, hang-dog face bent obsequiously over me. He’d been with my uncle since before he was articled and had stayed with him right through his long illness until he had died two years ago. God knows how old he was; his scrawny neck, covered by a hard stubble, stuck up out of the soiled stiff collar like the flesh of a plucked fowl. ‘Well, what about it?’ I said impatiently. ‘I inherited so little in the way of business that it rather narrows the field. Does the name Whitaker ring a bell?’

‘Whitaker?’ His Adam’s apple moved convulsively. ‘Ah yes, of course. Colonel Whitaker. A little matter of a settlement. It used to come to us quarterly from Bahrain in the form of a banker’s draft, which we cashed and forwarded to an address in Grangetown.’

I asked him to get the file. But of course there wasn’t any file. However, whilst I was signing the letters, he managed to dig up some record of the arrangement. It was written on the firm’s notepaper in my uncle’s sloped writing and went back to before the war. In it Charles Stanley Whitaker undertook to pay to Sarah Davies the sum of twenty-five pounds quarterly for a period of fifteen years , or in the event of his death, a lump sum from the estate equivalent to the balance ALWAYS providing that such sum … The clue to what it was all about was contained in the final paragraph, which read: THIS settlement to be binding on my heirs and assigns and to be accepted by the said Sarah Davies in full settlement of any claims real or imagined. The signature at the bottom was a barely decipherable scrawl, and below it Sarah Davies had signed her name in a clear, schoolgirl hand.

‘If you ask me, Mr Grant, the Colonel got this young lady into trouble.’

The dry snigger with which Andrews accompanied this appraisal of the situation annoyed me. The young lady, as you call her, is now an unhappy and rather frightened woman of middle age,’ I told him sharply. The son, according to this, is nineteen and he’s only just discovered that he’s illegitimate. There’s a twin sister, too. Not a very amusing situation.’ And Whitaker — was he still in Arabia, I wondered? ‘Do you think the man has any idea he’s a son and daughter here in Cardiff?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

‘Have we got his address?’

The bank in Bahrain. That was the only address we ever had.’

And Bahrain was in the Persian Gulf. But it was over three years since the last payment had come through. He might be anywhere now — back in England, retired, probably. ‘A pity we haven’t got his address,’ I said. I was thinking that the son must take after his father: the beaky nose and strong jaw were both physical characteristics that didn’t suit his circumstances. This is all we’ve got on Whitaker, is it?’

Andrews nodded.

Then how the devil do you know he’s a colonel? There’s no mention of colonel in this settlement.’

Apparently Andrews had seen his rank given in some newspaper story. ‘Something to do with oil concessions, I think. There was a picture, too, with some sheikhs in flowing robes and Colonel Whitaker in the centre dressed in khaki shorts and a military cap.’

‘How did you know it was the same man?’

‘Well, I couldn’t be sure. But I don’t think there could be two of them out in that area.’