F. Cottam - Dark Echo

I can hear the crying of an infant child again. It is no gull. It is coming from outside my cabin door and is my lost sister, Catherine Ann, I fear. Spalding has brought the torment of her back to us.

God bless you, Monsignor Delaunay.

And God help us all.

Martin.

Ten

She was hungover the following morning, waiting for Alice Daunt at a pavement table outside the coffee shop. She had drunk too much wine the previous evening, seeking the numbness of drink because she felt lonely and frustrated with her lack of progress and fearful for Martin. She had a reasonable head for alcohol. But she was slightly built. There was only so much of her. And this morning, most of that felt full of last night’s Merlot. The furled umbrellas of Costa’s lurid purple livery made her wince. In the hard sunlight, they were as bright and poisonous as pirate sails. Everything on the street shared the same vivid, sinister cast. The shadows were black on the pavement and capered when people innocently passed.

Alice Daunt sat down, punctual to the minute. Suzanne looked up at her and tried to conceal a yawn she could not stifle. Alice smiled over her at the waiter from Poland. She took off her Ray-Bans and put her handbag on the table. It was crocodile skin and very glossy with a clasp that wore the dull sheen of gold. ‘One over the eight, dear?’

Suzanne smiled. The smile was rueful. ‘I don’t know, Alice. I lost count at six.’ And most of a pack of Marlboro. She could have done with Jane Boyte’s Dublin ashtray. She could have filled it.

‘The woman you’re researching was a very rebellious creature,’ Alice Daunt said. ‘She was a supporter of the suffragettes from the age when she began to be able to read. She didn’t understand the politics, but she could appreciate the gestures. Flinging bricks through windows. Hunger strikes. Sitting down in Whitehall to stop the traffic. That sort of thing excited her.’

Suzanne nodded.

‘This isn’t my opinion, by the way. It’s received opinion. But I received it from my mother, who was a good woman and an impartial judge.’

‘Go on.’

‘Jane Boyte became disillusioned with the suffragette movement when Christabel Pankhurst started making patriotic speeches at the outbreak of the Great War.’

‘She could only have been an adolescent.’

‘A disillusioned adolescent. But her next big cause wasn’t far away. In 1916, the Easter Rising destroyed a large section of the centre of Dublin. I might add that it did so much to the disgust of the vast majority of the Dublin public. But Miss Boyte had another banner to brandish.’

‘She became a Fenian,’ Suzanne said.

‘Indeed she did. When she was nineteen or twenty, she met Michael Collins. I believe she worked for him. There was talk of an affair, but there always was with that fellow where any woman in his proximity was concerned.’

Suzanne nodded.

‘Overcompensating in my view,’ Alice Daunt said. ‘He was probably trying to cover up his incipient attraction to men.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Suzanne said.

‘Oh?’

‘Only received opinion, Alice. But received from an impeccable source. He really did prefer girls.’

‘Well. Jane Boyte was certainly one of those. I’ll give you no argument in that department.’

‘Was this allegiance embarrassing for her family?’

‘Not really. Certainly not after the conclusion of the war, when it became public knowledge. The Fenian cause would always have had support in and around Liverpool once it gained ground in Dublin. Lot of Catholics of Irish extraction in Liverpool in those days. Even more than now. And Patrick Boyte, Jane’s father, was one of those. And Collins always enjoyed personal popularity in England. When his train pulled into London for the treaty negotiations with Churchill, he was practically mobbed.’

Suzanne knew about that. ‘What else can you tell me about her, Alice?’

Alice Daunt toyed with her coffee glass. ‘Nothing. After Collins’ death, after the fratricidal bloodbath of the Irish Civil War, she became disillusioned with all that, too.’

‘You hinted yesterday that there was more.’

The old lady shifted in her seat. ‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

For a moment, Suzanne did not think that she was going to add to her account. Then she said, almost imperceptibly, ‘Don’t imagine it can hurt, can it? Not after eighty years, it can’t.’

She was talking to herself. It was herself she was trying to convince. She looked at Suzanne and Suzanne knew that her internal effort had succeeded. ‘There was some trouble with the police. Jane Boyte made a very serious allegation against a prominent and wealthy foreigner.’

‘Harry Spalding.’

Did Alice Daunt shudder at the mention of the name?

‘Him. Yes. She made the allegation against him.’

‘Do you know the nature of the allegation?’

‘I do not. I was a little girl at the time. I was never told. You will have to find that out for yourself.’

‘I’ve tried,’ Suzanne said. She gestured back in the direction of the library. ‘I’ve discovered nothing. It all went under the bulldozer, as you said yourself yesterday, when Birkdale library was demolished.’

Alice Daunt drained the last of her coffee. Ice slipped and clacked against her dentures. She lowered the glass. ‘There is one other place you might try. There is a museum in Southport, at the Botanic Gardens in Churchtown. If Jane Boyte had things to say, and I’m sure she did, she might have deposited the relevant papers there. It would be worth a try.’

‘What happened to her, Alice?’

‘She was broken,’ Alice said, simply. ‘The business with the American broke her completely.’

‘You won’t say his name, will you?’

And Alice Daunt smiled, tightly. She put on her sunglasses and she picked up her bag. ‘I never have, dear. And I shan’t as long as I live.’

‘We should confront our fears,’ Suzanne said.

‘My son’s name was David. He was a wonderful boy and a wonderful man. And he was wise, despite the effects of the tumour, almost to the very last. But when he said that, my dear, I believe he was referring to our earthly fears.’

Alice smiled a final time and turned and walked away through the flitting sunlight and the shadows of the trees and the shop awnings lining either side of the street. Suzanne watched her stiff, stately progress until her pale coat disappeared in the throng of shoppers and trippers indistinct in the distance. Then she got up and crossed the road and asked about the opening hours of the Botanic Gardens Museum in the tourist office. The tourist office looked like someone’s giant conservatory plonked on an empty patch of pavement. But they were very helpful. The girl behind the counter did not know the museum opening hours without having to look, which suggested to Suzanne that it was possibly one of the resort’s more obscure attractions. She thought that a good thing. She thought the new, interactive, user-friendly breed of museum both terrible and virtually useless. A repository of the past should be just that, was her opinion. She was provided with a map. The route was north along Lord Street and then east along a lengthy road called Roe Lane. She asked if it was walking distance. The girl screwed her face up, debating this with herself. It was three or four miles. Suzanne decided that she would walk. The exercise would punish her for drinking too much and might cure her hangover at the same time.

Walking to Churchtown, she did not think about Jane Boyte and what she might discover there. She did not think much either about Harry Spalding, or not consciously. She thought about Martin and his love and tenderness and the courage that he had displayed before she had even known him. His bravery she thought remarkable and deeply impressive. She did not think it was a quality of which his father was aware at all.