After lunch, once she had tidied everything up, Carole sat back at her dining-room table, and took out the file she had been given by Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Although literature had never excited her that much – except as a point of reference for the Times crossword – recent events had made her hungry to find out more about Esmond Chadleigh.
There were twenty or thirty papers, some single sheets, others untidily stapled together. Only one dated from later than 1935, and she soon decided that it had been put in the file by mistake. Sent only the week before and addressed to Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, the letter was from a publisher, asking permission to reprint ‘Threnody for the Lost’ in an anthology of War Poetry for schools.
She rang through to Graham immediately, describing the letter and asking if it was meant to be handed over to Professor Marla Teischbaum. Her surmise proved correct. He reckoned he must have picked it up with the other papers. (Having seen the state of his desk, she didn’t find this hard to believe.) With no apology, he asked if she was going to be back at Bracketts soon; could she drop it in? Carole said that was unlikely, and he instructed her to post it back to him as soon as possible. The petulant tone in which he said this suggested that the misappropriation of the letter was her fault rather than his.
After this rudeness from Graham Chadleigh-Bewes, she had no qualms about reading the contents of the file. (Nor did she feel guilty when, later in the afternoon, she went down to the Fethering Stationers and took photocopies of all the documents.) If she was going to be used as a mere messenger by the Bracketts Trustees, then at least she had a right to know the message she was carrying. Besides, the schoolboy glee in Graham’s manner had suggested Professor Teischbaum was going to be offered little that was controversial or confidential.
So it proved. The photocopies were mostly scraps of drafts from articles and verses written by Esmond Chadleigh, or correspondence written to him. His distinctive untidily small handwriting, which veered slowly upwards to the right-hand side of unlined pages in his creative writing, was in evidence on none of the letters. Somewhere, presumably, was a collection of the letters that he had actually sent, rather than received. As she had the thought, Carole remembered Graham Chadleigh-Bewes at the Trustees’ Meeting talking about ‘getting together a selection of the letters’. If he was making as much progress on that task as he was with the biography, it might be a while before the published edition saw the light of day.
Thinking back to the Trustees’ Meeting, Carole also recalled the vehemence with which Graham had insisted that no contact should be made with ‘that dreadful woman’. He’d had quite a change of heart since then; now he was actually volunteering material – albeit of minor importance – to Professor Marla Teischbaum. Though the idea for this diplomatic rapprochement had come from Sheila Cartwright rather than Graham himself.
There were only a few of the photocopied documents to which Carole gave more than a cursory glance. The first attracted her attention because it looked like a pastiche of a schoolboy’s letter home. There were crossings-out and misspellings, and occasional splutterings of ink, where the writer’s pen could not keep pace with his thoughts.
17 Leinster Terrace,
London W.
29 December 1917
Dear Chadders,
It was topping to see you over Christmas. Back here in London under the beedy eye of Aunt P., I realize what an absolute collosal bore it would have been had I had to stay with her right through the festive season. I don’t think she likes anyone – certainly not me or Mr Lloyd George, so she’s in an even sourer mood than usual. You’re a real brick to have arranged my visit to Bracketts, and, as a small expression of my gratitude, my tuck box is open to you any time you feel a bit peckish next term. You never know, I might some day soon get some scoff through from the Aged Ps. When he started the war, the Kaeser should have been a bit more considerate, and thought about the effect it was going to have on communications between people in Calcutta and their poor starving sons incarserated in British public schools.
Talking of Aged Ps, I have, needless to say, done the proper thing by yours. The Bread and Butter Letter went off by yesterday’s first post, so I hope it’s arrived by now. They were real sports to take on another ravening inkey thirteen-year-old, and I really apreciated their generousity. I thought they seemed in frightfully good spirits, given the beastly circumstances.
I was also glad to meet Lieutenant Strider – what a brave chap. Seeing someone like him makes me feel really cheesed off yet again that we aren’t old enough to go out and have a pot at Fritz ourselves. I’d like to get a bit of revenge for all those chaps Strider lost on the Somme. He seemed raring to go back, didn’t he, champing at the bit to finish the job? Now our boys have got those new-fangled tanks out there, it shouldn’t take long. You can see why Lieutenant Strider wants to be in at the kill, can’t you? Be a real frost to miss the end, wouldn’t it – like being run out on 99 and not making your century? Did you hear, incidentally, that old ‘Rattles’ Rattenborough, School Captain of a couple of years back, has died of wounds he sustained during that Somme fixture? Bit of a damper when you hear about chaps you know, but it seems to be happenning all too often these days.
On a more chearful note, your new house is an absolute pip. I just hope, when the Aged Ps finally come back from India, they get somewhere half as nice for us to kick our heels in. I know the place is a bit run down, but gosh, it’s going to be topping when the builders and gardners have been let loose on it. I enjoyed the shooting we had on Boxing Day and, when the woods have been properly tidyed up, it’ll be even better. Lieutenant Strider’s a pretty handy shot, isn’t he? I wonder if there’s anything that fellow can’t do? From what he was saying – though of course he didn’t brag – he’s a very useful batsman too. (I’m really determined to get into the nets early next season and consentrate on my batting.) You’ve got plenty of space in the grounds at Bracketts too, haven’t you? I hope you do manage to persuade your Old Man to have a tennis court laid. That would be corking fun in the summer, and I hope I’m invited to have a game with you. Maybe I’ll get my revenge for the trouncing your lot gave us in the House Cricket Competition!
So thank you, my dear old chum, for a topping Christmas. I was delighted to be part of your first one at Bracketts, and wish you and your family many more happy Christmasses in that jolly house. And you and I will meet up all too soon, won’t we? Assuming the Kaeser doesn’t suddenly invade, or we haven’t starved because of the price of bread, within a week the prison gates will once again close behind us, and we’ll face another term sentenced to the inhuman cruelty of Father Grey’s pep-talks about ‘Unhealthy Thoughts’ – not to mention ‘Blotter’ Parsons’ Irregular Verbs. ‘Moritui te saluant’, or whatever that wretched tag is he keeps quoting. It’s a monumental bore to have three more years of school to face, when I for one would much rather be out there for King and Country giving Fritz a bloody nose!
On the train, make for the second carriage from the back, last compartement, as usual. If there are any little Remove Worms in their before I arrive, I know I can rely on you to send them packing with flees in their ears.
Your chum,
Pickles
1917. So it was in that year that the Chadleigh family had moved to Bracketts. The year their elder son Graham was lost at Passchendaele. ‘Given the beastly circumstances’, it must have been hard for Mr and Mrs Chadleigh to appear to be ‘in frightfully good spirits’ that Christmas.
She flicked through the papers and found confirmation of their moving date in a photocopy of what appeared to be a page from a diary. The original must have been blotched and foxed by damp, which made it difficult to read. The handwriting was much better than Esmond’s, a spidery but regular copperplate, and the contents suggested it must have been written by his father. There was a splodge over the year, but the writer had firmly written in ‘1917’ over it.