I thought: the subject of all this is sitting in a chair on a hospital terrace. I would be with him, normally, on a Wednesday. Is he waiting for me, missing me? Or is he none the wiser?
I looked at the lit-up garden walls.
My universe … depended on that piece of rusty metal.…
Quinn sipped his drink. ‘I know what you are thinking. You are wondering what happens now. I can show you the file, the actual letters. You can follow up the threads — as you have done already. You can find out if X was really telling the truth. Real police-work. Is that what you want? Perhaps you want’ — he paused and narrowed his eyes — ‘to destroy your father. But why should you want to do that? Isn’t he — I shouldn’t say this — destroyed already?’
‘Which proves everything!’ I said in sudden rage. ‘His breakdown — at the time when it happened — is the one thing that clinches it all.’
‘No, no, no. It doesn’t clinch the truth of anything. Remember what I said. A breakdown can be triggered by a false accusation, by the threat of blackmail, as well as by the real thing. And in any case, supposing the letter did contain the truth and it did cause the breakdown — hasn’t he effectively put the seal on the matter? Hasn’t he rendered himself immune? And isn’t he giving us a signal? I want silence on this business. I don’t want to be approached. I want to be left alone with my knowledge. You see, it’s the knowledge that matters, it’s the knowledge that makes the difference. Only that. But let’s get back to my point. You can follow the matter up — face it out with your Dad. Perhaps that matters to you. Or perhaps what matters to you is to preserve your father, to preserve the father who is in that book of his Is that the case? Well, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be. All of this perhaps can make no difference, externally; it can matter to no one except you. If nothing happens, the secret — the mystery, if you like — remains only with you, and me. Perhaps uncertainty is always better than either certainty or ignorance. Do you know what I propose? I propose destroying File E. Yes, our job is the preserving of information. Well, you’ll have to shoulder that one when I leave the office — a small burden, perhaps, in the circumstances. The file’s here, in the flat. Yes, another rule broken. It’s up to you whether we destroy it, now. And it’s up to you whether you want to look at it before it’s destroyed.’
I met Quinn’s eyes. I felt like a criminal.
‘What about other people? People still alive — ’
‘There’s always that risk of course. But then all this has slept for thirty years. Why shouldn’t it go on sleeping? Your only real danger is Z’s wife and Z’s son. But Z’s wife is hardly likely to want to publicize matters further, and Z’s son — well, Z’s son’s primary concern was his father’s reputation. Now his father has been cleared of any professional slur, he is hardly likely to want to make known — that’s if my theory about Z’s son is correct — that his father committed suicide because he had found out his best friend was carrying on with his wife. All these skeletons, Prentis, hidden away in cupboards. As a matter of fact, your position and Z’s son’s are peculiarly alike. You both want to protect your fathers. You are both under your father’s shadows. Am I right? You never know, perhaps one day you should meet.’
Z’s son. So, somewhere else in the world, there was someone like me.
‘Shall I get the file?’
‘All right.’
He went in once more. I sat with my drink, looking at Quinn’s trim, new-mown lawn. I thought: this is just another terrace where you sit and play games with the truth.
He emerged with the file in his hand. It was a standard, pale-blue office file with the letters C9/E on it and ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ stamped in purple ink on one corner. He placed it on the table in front of me. I felt like a witness in the dock confronted with some incriminating exhibit.
‘Now — first question. Down at the end of the garden is a little incinerator I use for burning garden rubbish. I suggest we have a bonfire. Do you agree?’
I looked at the file. For a while I didn’t think of Dad at all; only of the implications of destroying official information.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Good. If we don’t decide now we might dither for ever. Second question: do you want to look at it first, before you even answer question one?’
I stared again at the file. I thought of the number of times I’d opened the cover of Shuttlecock hoping Dad would come out; hoping to hear his voice. Was I afraid that the allegations might be true — or that they might be false? And supposing, in some extraordinary way, that everything Quinn told me was concocted, was an elaborate hoax — if I never looked in the file, I would never know. I read the code letters over and over again. C9/E … And then suddenly I knew I wanted to be uncertain, I wanted to be in the dark.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Right. Come on.’
Quinn got hastily out of his seat and took the file. He was like a boy engineering some mischievous prank. Was he doing all this simply to pass the responsibility on to me? I followed him across the lawn. I thought of him running in the fields of Normandy. We reached an unkempt corner of the garden, beyond the screen of the apple trees. Ivy cloaked the walls, and some neglected trees in a neighbour’s garden arched overhead. Bits of garden debris and cinders strewed the ground, in amongst patches of weeds and nettles. It wasn’t the safest place to have a fire.
The incinerator stood in the corner — a shaky, wire-mesh construction, rusty and scorched. Quinn stooped over it. He did not pause. He took a cigarette lighter from his trouser pocket and then dropped the file into the wire frame, lifting his arm, ritualistically, high. He turned to me for final confirmation.
‘I’ve done all this for you, Prentis, but also to put my own mind at rest. If you think I was wrong, tell me.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, resolutely. It seemed to me this was an answer I would give, boldly, over and over again for the rest of my life.
Quinn looked at me, surprised, approving.
‘Are we ready then?’
He flicked alight the cigarette lighter. Before setting the flame to the file he pulled out some of the documents and spread them loosely to help them burn. The papers blackened, curled and flared up. I thought of funeral pyres. I thought: they can arrest us for this.
I’m not superstitious, but I wondered if at this moment, as the flames licked at File E, Dad would be feeling, at the hospital, a glow of relief; whether others there would see his face brighten — his lips flutter. The smoke curled up through the overhanging leaves. The evening shadows had lengthened and the branches and foliage seemed to press round us in complicity.
… the woods and the trees are always on the side of the fugitive.…
Quinn crouched by the incinerator, poking the fire with a stick. The flames lit his face. He might have been an outlaw in some forest hideout.
‘There,’ he said, lifting the last fragments of paper to make them catch. ‘Now it’s done.’
‘And all this was for me?’ I asked. ‘All those mixed-up files; your — behaviour — at the office? And you might never have told me about it?’
‘Not exactly, old chap. There are others like you.’ He smiled rather sourly. ‘My little flock. I just happened to know you.’
I thought: do I really understand Quinn any better? You penetrate one mystery only to find another. I wondered if at work tomorrow he would behave just as before, as if this evening hadn’t happened. Speak to me gruffly; look down at me from his glass panel; treat me like dirt. I looked at him as he crouched. His eyes were hidden by the reflected flames in his glasses. I remembered my arrival when he stood at the foot of the basement steps and everything was different. I felt vaguely as if I were under hypnosis.