It stopped, Sean spoke again and, as he took in the full implication of his words, a shaft of intense pity pierced Wexford. Perhaps, he thought, there are few things so sad as eavesdropping on a man alone with his daydreams, a man indulging his solitary, private and ridiculous vice.
‘And now,’ said the disembodied voice, ‘what you’ve all been waiting for. You’ve come a long way tonight and I can promise you you’re not going to be disappointed. Here he is, boys and girls. Let’s have a big hand for your own Scan Lovell!’
Unaccompanied, he began to sing. Wexford walked away, very delicately and softly for such a big man, his feet scarcely causing a crackle on the needled forest floor.
He knew now what Sean had been doing that night, what he did every night and would perhaps do for years until some girl caught him and showed him how daydreams die and that life is digging a rich man’s garden.
15
WEXFORD was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as his head was on the pillow. Like most people approaching that phase of life which succeeds middle age but is not yet old age, he was finding it more and more difficult to get a good night’s sleep. Years ago, when he was still young, he had acquired the sensible habit of emptying his mind at night of all the speculations and worries which troubled him during the day, and of turning his thoughts to future domestic plans or back to pleasant memories. But his subconscious was outside his control and it often asserted itself in dreams of those daytime anxieties.
So it was that night. In his dream he was down by the Kingsbrook, the scene of many of his favourite walks, when he saw a boy fishing upstream. The boy was fair and thin with a strong-boned Anglo-Saxon face. Wexford went nearer to him, keeping in the shadow of the trees, for some inexplicable dream reason not wishing to be observed. It was pleasant and warm down by the river, a summer evening that, he felt, had succeeded a long hot day.
Presently he heard someone calling and he saw a girl come running over the brow of the hill. Her light, almost yellow, hair and the cast of her face told him she was the boy’s sister, older than he, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. She had come to fetch him away, and he heard them break into bitter argument because the boy wanted to remain and go on fishing.
He knew he had to follow them across the meadows. They ran ahead of him, the girl’s hair flying. Above him a plane zoomed over, and he saw the bombs dropping like heavy black feathers.
Something of the house still remained standing, bare windowless walls enclosing a smoking mass from which came the cries of those buried alive.
The children were neither shocked nor frightened, for this was a nightmare where natural emotions are suspended. He watched, a detached observer, as the girl groped her way into the black inferno the boy at her heels. Now he could see a long pale arm protrude from the rubble and hear a voice calling for help, for mercy. The children began shovelling with their bare hands and he came closer to help them. Then he saw that they were not uncovering the screaming faces but burying them deeper, laughing like demons as they worked furiously to finish what the bomb had begun, and he jerked awake as he shouted to them to stop.
Conscious now, he found himself sitting up, his shouts coming as half-choked snores. His wife, lying beside him, hadn’t stirred. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the luminous hands of his watch. I ‘ t was five past two.
If he awoke at that hour he knew he would never get to sleep again and his usual habit was to go downstairs, sit in an armchair and find something to read. The dream stayed with him, vivid and haunting, as he put on his dressing gown and made for the stairs. In the morning he would set in motion the research necessary to discover exactly what had happened that day the Villiers’ home was destroyed. Now for something to read ...
As a young man,whe-n he had had more spare time and less responsibility, he had been a great reader, and literary criticism and writers’ biographies had been among his favourite reading matter. Mrs Wexford couldn’t understand this and he remembered how she had asked him why he wanted to read what someone else said about a book. Why not just read the book itself? And he hadn’t quite known how to answer her, how in this field he couldn’t trust his own judgment because he was only a policeman and he hadn’t a university degree. Nor could he have told her that he needed instruction and knowledge because the purpose of education is to turn the soul’s eye towards the light.
Thinking of this and of the pleasure he had had from such works, he turned his physical eye to Wordsworth in Love which he had left lying on the coffee table. After only four hours’ sleep he was no longer tired and far more alert than when he had formerly tried to apply himself to this book. He might as well have another go at it. Pity it was about Wordsworth, though. Rather a dull poet, he thought. All that communing with nature and walking about in the Lake District. A bit tedious really.
Now if only it had been about Lord Byron, say, that would have been a different matter, something to get his teeth into. There was an interesting character for you, a romantic larger-than-life man with his sizzling love affairs, his disastrous marriage, the scandal over Augusta Leigh. Still, it wasn’t; it was about Wordsworth. Well, he would read it and maybe, even if it bored him, he would get some idea of the nature of the fascination the Lake poet had for Villiers, the obsession almost that had made him write God knew how many books about him.
He began to read and this time he found it easy and pleasant to follow.
After a while he began to wish he had read more of Wordsworth’s poetry.
He had no idea the man had been in love with a French girl, had been involved in the Revolution and had narrowly missed losing his head. It was good, bracing stuff and Villiers wrote well.
At six he made himself a large pot of tea. He read on, utterly absorbed, and by now considerably excited. The room began to fill with light, and slowly, with the same gradual dawning, Wexford’s mind was illuminated. He finished the last chapter and closed the book.
Sighing, he addressed himself coldly, ‘You ignorant old fool!’ Then he rubbed his stiff hands and said aloud, ‘If only it had been Byron! My God, if only it had. I would have known the answer long ago.’
‘The first Monday morning of term,’ said John Burden, finishing his t.hird slice of toast and marmalade, ‘is worse than the first day of term.’ And he added gloomily: ‘Things really start getting serious.’ He prodded his sister with a sticky finger. ‘Isn’t it time you started being sick?’
‘I’m not going to be sick, you beast.’
‘Why ever not? Today’s worse than the first day, much, much worse. I bet you’ll be ever so sick when you start at the High School. If you get there. You’ll be too sick to do the exams.’
‘I shan’t!’
‘Oh, yes, you will.’
‘Be quiet, the pair of you,’ said Burden. ‘Sometimes I think there’s more peace and quiet down at the nick.’ He left the breakfast table and prepared to go there. ‘You must be the most unnatural brother and sister in Sussex,’ he said.
John looked pleased at being placed in this unique category. ‘Can I have a lift, Dad? Old Roman Villa’s taking us for Prayers and there’ll be hell to pay if I’m late.’
‘Don’t say “hell to pay”,’ said Burden absently. ‘Come on, then. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.’
A day of hunting for a needle in a haystack, of running a predator to earth. He marched into the police station and met Sergeant Martin in the foyer.
‘Anything turned up on Twohey yet?’
‘No, sir, not as far as I know, but Mr Wexford’s on to something. He said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in.’