Follow the Master by Graham Donnelly

Author:Graham Donnelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical fiction
Publisher: Troubador Publishing
Published: 2023-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

FIRST CONTACT

By the time I walked through my front door, the initial misgivings about my active involvement in Alec’s plan had grown into a full-scale regret. Doubtless there are many who, in my position, would have jumped at the chance of being involved in a spot of clandestine heroics with very little risk to themselves but I was not one of them. Perhaps I might have been when I was younger; age rarely makes us more adventurous. I was not fearful for myself, nor did I have any moral qualms. Maynard was undoubtedly a good, as well as a great, man and any blackmailer is beyond contempt. Yet, that evening, as I walked round the garden trying to develop my knowledge of Maynard’s way of speaking into a passable imitation of him, I felt a great unease, without quite understanding why. When I came in from the garden, Lina and I sat down with a glass of sherry before dinner and talked over our day, as was our custom.

“Are you all right?” Lina asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, it’s not like you to wander round the garden when you come in, especially in February when it’s so gloomy. I happened to look out the window and you seemed to be talking to yourself. I thought you might be worried about something.”

I laughed. “I may well have been talking to myself. I needed to sort something out in my mind, nothing important.” I mentioned that I had seen Maynard but that my invitation to lunch had been put on hold. Naturally I said nothing of my conversations with Alec.

“It’s a pity Maynard is so busy all the time. I’d have thought he could fit you into his schedule.”

“He’s backwards and forwards across the Atlantic at the moment.”

“Still, a couple of hours for an old friend.” She changed the subject then and we talked about the war and how it was going in Italy. The fighting was still fierce and our worries surfaced about Charles, who was serving with an infantry brigade.

“I can’t understand why they are still fighting in Italy,” she said. “At this rate, the war will be over in Germany first.”

“It’ll be over in a few weeks,” I said, in hope more than conviction.

Perhaps it was Lina’s brief and slight criticism of Maynard or the fog in my mind clearing, but by the next morning I felt even more disquiet over what I was about to do. I had to face up to the reality that the reason Maynard and I rarely saw each other was because I wasn’t a particularly close friend, despite my attachment to our friendship. I had always suspected as much but had chosen to ignore the fact until it had surfaced when the previous evening I reviewed my extremely sketchy knowledge of his past life. Now I was discovering whole areas of his past that I knew nothing about. This was of no consequence: I was old enough and mature enough not to experience jealousy or loss of self-esteem about my relative lack of importance to Maynard.

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