“I go back occasionally,” she answered, concealing, by the languidness of her words, the hundreds of hours she had spent pacing the quaint cobblestone streets, interrogating startled strangers, desperately scouring every face for the young woman. Wanting to say, “I’m sorry about your baby.” Needing to say, “I’m sorry about your baby.” More than fifty years — still trying to make sense and move on, still trying to pull part of herself away. Like a harassed mother dragging a screaming kid from a toy shop window, knowing the moment she lets go he’ll race back.
“What about parachuting? Did you ever do it again?” he asked as the platters were taken away.
“I was going to once, just for fun, to celebrate my fiftieth …” she paused in thought. “Or was it sixtieth? Anyway, when I went to the place they made such a fuss — training course; medical examination; static lines; instructors and such. I couldn’t be bothered with all that nonsense and I said, ‘Look here, young lady. I was jumping out of planes while your dad was still in short pants.’ It didn’t make any difference. They wouldn’t let me — not without all the rigmarole.”
Daphne ordered the Black Forest Gateau for dessert — “There’s irony for you — now I’m eating their cakes.”
“The same for me,” said Bliss, too pre-occupied to make his own choice, and they sat in tense silence as the pressure built in his mind. There was more to be said, he knew it — Daphne sensed it. But it was his turn, not hers. Tell her about Mandy Richards, tell her about the baby.
“I killed a baby once,” he announced inside his mind, but the words wouldn’t come out. “I was hoping to get away from it eventually.”
What is this? he asked himself. A competition? My ghosts are more frightful than yours. Would it make her feel better? Would it make me feel better?
What would she say? One look at her sorry face gave him the answer: You’ll never escape completely.
A wooden cuckoo popped out of a clock and jump started the time.
“So, I suppose you’re gearing up for the auction tomorrow,” he said, enthusiastically digging into his gateau.
Chapter Ten
The driver of the blue Volvo shrank quickly out of sight as Bliss drove past on his way up the quiet street to deliver Daphne home.
“I can manage,” Daphne said, as he started to get out to escort her to the door. Ignoring her, he opened the gate and accompanied her up the front path, waited while she flicked on the light and turned the key, then brushed her cheek with a chaste kiss.
“Ooh, Chief Inspector,” she giggled.
“Thank you, Daphne,” he said with a depth of meaning way beyond her comprehension. Thank you for your courage, your sacrifice, your modesty. Thank you for making me realise the insignificance of my fears.
“No … Thank you, Chief Inspector,” she replied, letting herself in. “And I hope I didn’t spoil your evening,”
“I learnt a great deal,” he said, heading back to the car and driving off without noticing the Volvo — too many other considerations occupying his mind, too many plans to make, too many demons to slay.
He had intended returning to the Mitre and set off in that direction, but fate snatched the wheel out of his hands and spun him around in a U-turn, leaving the driver of the following Volvo no choice but to dive for cover up a side street. By the time he re-emerged, Bliss had gone — speeding recklessly down dark narrow lanes, inspiration weighing his foot on the accelerator, feeling that, if he drove fast enough, he might somehow break through the time barrier and go back eighteen years. But if he could go back to the bank and fall dead in place of Mandy — would he?
The road became a switchback as he raced headlong into the night and he allowed the car to choose its own path — tearing through villages, laughing at speed limits and screeching at corners. Deep down he knew where he was headed and he finally knew he had run out of road when the tyres scrunched on the sand-swept tarmac of a beach-side car park. The English Channel lay ahead, and, beyond the narrow choppy sea, France.
Two cars, sinisterly dark, sat at either end of the car park and his first instinct was to seek somewhere more solitary, more remote for his deliberations, but, as he rolled to a stop, his lights picked up a flurry of activity on the beach and two figures scurried in opposite directions. Twenty seconds later the two cars burst simultaneously to life and crept away into the night without lights. “Oops,” he said to himself, but isn’t that the thrill of adultery — the risk of being caught.
The beach turned inky black as he switched off his lights and cut the engine, then gradually came back to life as his eyes and ears acclimatised, and he sank in his seat, exhausted, letting the gentle swishing of the surf wash over him and erase his stress. Ahead, over the ocean, a couple of hazy lights flickered hypnotically and held his attention, then an armada of grey shadows steamed sluggishly out of the mist and rolled over him. He fought off the drowsiness for a few seconds, swimming back to consciousness a couple of times before surrendering to the waves.
A thousand battleships drifted slowly out of the haze and sailed through his mind as he floated weightlessly on the sea. Above him, the deck rails of the silent ships were lined by grey lifeless men — men with faces pulled gaunt by fear. Silent men, immobile men, dead men. Men who had beaten the bullet and found death before it had found them. Wasn’t it easier that way — less painful for all concerned. Wasn’t it better that each sombre faced man had already accepted his destiny and said his last goodbye. “Don’t worry — I’ll make it back,” he would have said with a forced smile, his own obituary already written and in his pocket ready for the burial party to find. “My Dearest One — I expect you’ve heard the bad news by now …” or, more often, “Dear Mum and Dad …”
Where were the happy cheering hordes that filled the Pathe newsreels at the Saturday Matinee? Where were the happy-go-lucky Yanks, Canucks and Aussies who always had a kitbag on one arm and a girl on the other as they headed for the gangplanks?
Endless fleets of ships with countless dead-pan faces sailed by and disappeared slowly over the dark horizon, then he slipped beneath the black oily surface; exhaustion dragging him deeper than dreams, beyond the depths of even the darkest nightmares.
An hour later the cold sea-breeze bit into his bones, rousing him sufficiently to fire up the engine and turn on the heater. Waves of warmth soon lulled him back to sleep and he picked up the dream as Daphne, (or maybe it was Mandy), rode a bicycle up a sun-soaked beach at the head of a column of dead men. Daphne — surely it was Daphne — enthusiastically waved her frilly knickers in the air, and in her basket, the wicker basket slung on the handlebars, was a skull — a grotesque skull, a skull with bulging eyes and a gaping fleshless mouth shouting encouragement.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” The staccato rattle of automatic fire burst through the dream. Margaret Thatcher with a machine gun leapt out of the scrub firing from the hip.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” Daphne crashed off the bike, blood pumping out of her chest, her skirt up around her waist, her knickers still in her hand — still waving.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” The Major’s skull, still screaming orders, rolled along the beach.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” Bliss cringed as a searchlight picked him out and Margaret Thatcher turned the machine gun in his direction.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” Get down — get down. I can’t, Daphne’s behind me.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” “Sir … Are you alright?”
The searchlight beat into his brain and Margaret Thatcher faded in its glare.
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” “Open the door.”
“Rat-ta-ta-tat.” “Open the door, Sir, or I’ll have to force it.”