Hammer to Fall by John Lawton

Author:John Lawton [Lawton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802148131
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

§94

Time had not been kind to Kate Alleyn, née Caladine, now Howard. But then, Bernard Alleyn had not been kind to Kate Alleyn.

Wilderness remembered her picture in the papers when Bernard had been arrested in 1959. The cheaper papers, the ones Burne-Jones would “not have in the house,” had made a “thing” of her—“Married to a Russian Spy! How Could She Not Know?” He supposed she was younger than Bernard, perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three at the time, a flame-haired, second-generation Irish beauty. Some wives might have sued over the headlines. She had kept her silence. And lost her beauty.

At forty-five or so, the flames were dulled and her mouth lined and puckered by chain smoking. She was civil to Bernard but spoke entirely without warmth or curiosity over tea and hot cross buns. She asked Bernard no questions. She saved those for Wilderness.

Trying to give Bernard a few minutes alone with his daughters he had, helpfully he thought, carried cups and saucers back to the kitchen—and she turned on him—a sotto voce hiss.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re one of them. You have to be. He’s never brought anyone before.”

“I’m a student at the university. I’m a friend.”

“He doesn’t have any friends!”

“Bernard and I play chess together a couple of times a week. I have two daughters. He wanted me to meet his.”

“Bollocks. You’re a fucking spy. Are you one of theirs or one of ours? Don’t even bother to answer that. I don’t fucking care and I’m fed up of being lied to. Just stay away from my girls. It’s people like you who ruin lives.”

An uneasy fifteen minutes followed before Bernard led Wilderness back to the bus stop.

Bernard was saying nothing. Perhaps it had not gone well. Perhaps it never went well. Beatrice and Cordelia had been lively and chatty—Beatrice especially when she learnt that Wilderness had studied modern languages at Cambridge. They seemed to work around the stony presence of their mother, not oblivious to it but not letting it be their cue. All the same it seemed to Wilderness that they existed stranded in the chasm between their parents, between truth and lies. Wilderness felt that he’d been shown a vision by the Ghost-of-Christmas-Yet-To-Come. The ruined life that people like Bernard could create. People like him.

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