And of that whole company he alone survived, though regrettably I cannot add to that verb ‘survived’ the common accompanying adjective ‘unscathed’. No, the Great War left its marks on Lieutenant Hugo Strider. After the doctors had done their makeshift repair work on his shattered body, at my father’s invitation he came to stay at our family home Bracketts, there to convalesce and to contemplate the mighty actions in which
The piece stopped, suddenly, leaving two-thirds of the page blank. Whether Esmond Chadleigh had lost interest in what he was writing, decided the article wasn’t up to standard, or had been interrupted, was impossible to know.
Carole was intrigued, not so much by the piece’s content, but why Graham Chadleigh-Bewes had thought it a suitable inclusion in the package of papers that she was due to hand over.
There were two more short letters she glanced at, both written in the same hand as the diary entry, that of Felix Chadleigh, the boys’ father. The first was a copy of the letter in the dining room display-case at Bracketts, a rousing directive to stiffen the lip of his son in France, full of references to ‘King and Country’, ‘doing the job that has to be done’, ‘knowing instinctively and never questioning how a true-born English man should behave’. There was also some rather heavy-handed humour. ‘After your exploits on the rugger pitch, where you were always wallowing in the stuff, I shouldn’t think a bit of mud’s going to put you off.’
Given the fact that the date was ‘24 October 1917’, it was doubtful whether the letter had ever reached its intended recipient. Indeed, Felix Chadleigh may never have posted it, the news of his son’s death having rendered such an action tragically irrelevant.
The other letter was written by his father to Esmond at school and dated ‘5 June 1919’. The paragraph that caught Carole’s eye concerned the heroic Lieutenant Strider.
Hugo is still with us, and I think could stay at Bracketts for a long time. He’s still horribly crocked up by the beastly things that happened to him in the war, and the quacks don’t think he’ll ever recover the power of speech. But he never makes a fuss – against his nature to do anything like that – and I must say I’m extremely grateful for his companionship. He’s still not keen on shooting, afraid he heard more than enough guns in Flanders to last him a lifetime, but we’ve had some very good days fishing on the Fether and caught some good size pike. I enjoy Hugo’s company because we share so much – not just our religion, but a kind of bond forged by Graham’s death. So I’m sure Hugo will still be here when you come home for the summer hols and—
At that moment Carole’s reading was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She gave her number.
‘Good afternoon. This is Professor Marla Teischbaum.’
Chapter Fourteen
Laurence Hawker was a lot thinner than when Jude had last seen him, but still very good-looking. Though the face had fined down, making his nose more prominent, the lips retained their fleshiness; and his hair, though now grey, was still abundant. He wore his uniform black – leather jacket, shirt, jeans and clumping lace-up shoes. He carried his laptop in a soft leather bag that somehow looked Italian. Laurence was too much the archetypal intellectual to be accepted without irony in England. His style went down much better abroad, which was presumably why he had spent most of his working life out of the country.
In spite of the coughs that intermittently rattled his body, at the corner of his mouth still hung a permanent cigarette. The smell brought back to Jude the atmosphere of the Austen Prison visiting hall, which she had only just managed to rid from her clothes.
But it was good to see Laurence, as she had rather suspected it would be.
It was Wednesday lunchtime and they were in the Crown and Anchor. He had been quite happy to come down to Fethering. By train. Moving from university city to university city, he had never felt the need to learn how to drive. And the time involved in taking a trip out of London didn’t seem to be a problem for him.
‘I’m virtually retired now,’ he had said on the phone.
‘Virtually? What does that mean?’
‘Completely,’ he had replied.
Jude had her customary large Chilean Chardonnay. Laurence drank whisky. No water, no ice. It was the only alcohol he drank, though he had at times drunk quite a lot of it.
‘Funny,’ he drawled. ‘I’d never envisaged you ending up in a seaside town in West Sussex. You of all people.’
‘Who said anything about “ending up”. I’m here at the moment. That’s all. I’ve got a long way ahead of me, a lot of time to go to other places.’
‘Maybe,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘And you? Are you “ending up” in England?’
He nodded. ‘Oh yes. Here for the duration.’
His cigarette had reached a point where he instinctively knew it needed stubbing out. The hand movements which killed it in the ashtray, found the packet in his pocket, shook out and lit the next one, were entirely automatic. He sucked on the new cigarette as though it were providing him with sustenance.
It certainly interested him more than the food on the plate in front of him. Laurence had never been much of an eater, though he loved restaurants. So long as he had his whisky and his cigarette, he was quite happy – no he positively enjoyed – to watch his female companion of the moment tucking into the biggest platefuls that the chefs could provide. At that moment he drew pleasure from the sight of Jude working her way through the Crown and Anchor’s Crispy Fish Pie, while he broke the occasional morsel off his ham roll.
Jude would have put money on the fact that he still didn’t sleep much. Still liked staying up late, talking the circular talk of academics, then snatching a few jumpy hours in bed before rising early to light up the first cigarette of a new day.
Laurence Hawker had cultivated self-neglect almost into an art form.
Jude often wondered why she was so drawn to him. Had she ever attempted to describe him, she knew she would project the image of a total poseur. The black clothes, the languid voice, the total unconcern for the practicalities of life, the cigarettes, the whisky, the promiscuity . . . it all made him sound like a refugee from the seventies, the redbrick academic who could spout for hours on the minutiae of the latest vogue in critical theory.
But what no description could put across was Laurence Hawker’s own in-built irony. There was always a twinkle in his eye, an awareness of his potential absurdity that removed the risk of his ever being thought absurd. He had always been post-modernist, even before the expression was coined.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Are you working?’
‘Not a full-time job. But I do some of the healing, counselling stuff, you know . . .’
He nodded. That was another thing about Laurence. Though he could be excoriatingly funny at the expense of other academics, he never sent up his friends. If there was something they took seriously, he respected that. He had never uttered a word of criticism or scepticism about Jude’s alternative therapies.
Mischievously, she thought she’d test the limits of his tolerance. ‘And I have got involved in solving the occasional murder.’
This too he took at face value. ‘You’d be good at that. Good understanding of human nature, suitably lateral mind. Yes, would suit you.’
‘Ever appealed to you, Laurence?’
He chuckled languidly. ‘Well, I certainly know about back-stabbing in academia. Trouble is, there are always too many suspects.’
‘There’s something around at the moment on which you might be quite helpful.’