“…during the whole month of September, the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig—and in other Eastern German cities—have been growing steadily. At the beginning of the month, we were still speaking about 1,200 to 1,500 demonstrators, many of whom were beaten or arrested by the police and the army. By September 25, the protests attracted 8,000 demonstrators. Then, the fifth successive Monday demonstration on 2 October attracted 10,000 protesters, and the Party leader Erich Honecker issued a shoot and kill order to the military. The communist authorities prepared a huge police, militia, Stasi, and troop presence and there were rumours of a Tiananmen Square-style massacre being planned for the following Monday’s demonstration on 9 October.
“Now tell me, Harold, you were there in Leipzig and witnessed the outcome, the climax of this dramatic faceoff. First, what was your take on this confrontation beforehand?”
“Well, Alastair, I thought the authorities were making a huge mistake by announcing this repression. If they thought people would stay at home because of it, they were wrong. They could only lose the moral high ground, either by beating down the protest or by backing down. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And the opposition leaders, of course, were smart enough to see that. They didn’t dream of calling off the whole thing…”
“So what happened on the ninth?”
“Well, in spite of the dramatic threats, a staggering 70,000 citizens turned up in Leipzig yesterday, and to make a long story short, the foot soldiers on the ground refused to open fire. Now this victory of the people facing down the communist guns is probably going to encourage even more citizens to take to the streets. So I’m really anxious to see what will happen next Monday…”
Daisy sighed, “Dramatic developments… We’re witnessing the demise of communism, as I already told you.”
“Still seems a bit doubtful to me, that,” Bernard answered. “There have been similar upheavals before, you know.”
“Yes, but this time it’s the Soviets themselves who are stoking the unrest. That Gorbachev is incredible. For the first time the outcome seems wide open.”
“I must admit that I don’t understand that man’s game…”
“You admit that, Bernard? You of all people?”
Bernard chuckled and stretched his arms and neck a little, while Daisy bounded over to his stereo tower and switched off the radio. Her favourite news magazine was over. Then she came back and sat down on her stool behind the wheelchair. With her arms around Bernard’s shoulders and her hands enfolding his face, she started to palpate his features with her fingertips. “Now where were we?”
“The hollow between my left eye and the root of my nose?”
“Yes, your nose! What should I do with it, Bernard? You’ve only got one and it’s badly damaged… Don’t you have a cousin or something, who has the nose you’d have had without the accident?”
“Hmm, clever thinking. I have a cousin named Claire. Nice lady. Not a beauty, but she definitely has the Thistlehurst nose. So you want her to sit for you too?”
“You’ve got it in one! At least if you like the idea of your portrait having Claire’s nose.”
“Oh yes. Even Claire will like the idea, I’m sure.”
Now Daisy let go of Bernard and turned to a modelling stand right next to his wheelchair. There was a life-size clay head set up on a steel armature. The clay had been allowed to go a bit leathery by letting the rags that kept it moist become progressively dryer and dryer. The modelling of Bernard’s portrait was in its last stages now, and that sitting with Cousin Claire would have to be soon. Daisy enfolded the face of the portrait with her hands and started working on it from behind, exactly in the same way she probed the sitter’s features. This was a brand new approach, never tried before, and only suitable for a blind artist, of course. Daisy thought that it worked like a charm. She was very enthusiastic.
“It’s a good thing that paraplegics need to take a bath so urgently after sex. That’s how I found a new way of doing sculpture, just when I was in the right mood to take it up again.”
“Yes, we paraplegics are sometimes full of shit.”
“Bernard, please!”
“Sorry, not funny, I know. Still, I’m very lucky to have you, because it doesn’t seem to put you off in the least…”
“Hush… It would take a lot more than that to put me off. You know, so many things called sex have nothing to do with lovemaking… and sometimes real lovemaking isn’t exactly what you’d call sex… But tell me what’s happening on the river?”
“Ah? How do you know that I’m looking at the river?”
“Easy. You were talking just now when you turned your head. So? What’s so interesting?”
“Well, just a barge. Full of garbage. Doing its rounds. I love to look at the barges, they appear so peaceful.”
“Maybe an illusion? Maybe steering a barge up and down the Thames is a hair-raising experience for all concerned?”
Bernard chuckled and turned around to look at Daisy behind him. How happy and relaxed she seemed.
They were sitting in front of the bay windows in his flat. Bernard had a very desirable place on the Chelsea Embankment, right across from Battersea Park. Looking out over and in between the plane trees, one had a nice view of the recently constructed Peace Pagoda—Bernard called it the “Peace Wedding Cake”—and the river.
The place was small but well appointed, situated on the top floor of an extraordinary Victorian mansion block, nowadays equipped with a lift—which was indispensable for this tenant. In fact, the blind and the wheelchair-bound have a lot in common in their needs for their homes’ arrangements. No carpeting, no rugs. Daisy and Bernard had both had the thresholds removed from the inner door-openings. It was a pity, though, that Daisy’s place could only be entered by a steep stair. That’s why she came here most of the time, and she loved it. The only thing that Daisy found a bit disturbing here was that many of the amenities were rather low-slung for her, especially in the kitchen and in the bathroom.
But the main attraction of course was the view. Bernard had gone out of his way to describe it, the first time he took Daisy to his flat. Now the nook by the bay windows was their favourite spot, and Daisy professed to enjoy the view just as much as Bernard did.
Presently, probing his face once more, Daisy said, “You know, Bernard, feeling all these bumps and craters, I’m getting very curious about this mysterious accident of yours. Do you mind telling me what happened?”
“All right… Well… It was a polo accident… I told you we did a lot of sports at school and that I was no good at it? Well, there was one exception. As a child I had always been an excellent rider, even as a toddler on my first pony. And at seventeen I was an excellent polo player. Now, we didn’t have stables at school, but there were enough polo enthusiasts among the elder students to organize two sides and play a match from time to time. You know: on an appointed weekend the families would bring over the horses in their trailers and a match would be held on one of the lawns. As it happened, I became the captain of the Reds, and Cedric was the captain of the Blues. Competition was fierce, of course. The whole school was watching. And one day at the end of May 1940, the lifechanging mishap occurred. I had an accident. I fell off my horse during a run to the goal and I was trampled under the hooves of other players on their mounts. I was badly injured.
“I was rushed to a hospital in London, where my parents thought I could get the best care available in the country. This would normally have been the case, but the country was at war, and the casualties evacuated from Dunkirk were flooding all the hospitals, the good ones as well as the lesser ones. I landed in a ward with other kids of my age, or rather, just six months older than me, but they had been shot at by German artillery and the Luftwaffe. When the surgeons and other staff looked at the chart hanging from my bedstead and they saw the mention ‘polo accident’, I could hear them scoff. What a despicable patient I was; they couldn’t care less about my wellbeing.
“My wounds were numerous, extensive and severe, and required a great deal of reconstructive surgery. Apart from a spinal cord lesion, I had broken ribs, a broken jaw, cheekbone, nose and eyebrow. I had to be operated repeatedly; the rosters of the surgeons were packed full. I suffered hellish pain, but painkillers were rationed. The treatments went on and on, and in July, just as the casualties from Dunkirk were leaving, the first wounded of the Battle of Britain were brought in. Bombed out RAF ground personnel; fighter pilots, real heroes all of them!
“And as I told you briefly before, throughout this whole ordeal there was a bizarre blind angel of mercy hovering by my bed, a creature of infinite kindness and beauty, wisdom and caring. A creation of my own mind, I was aware of that, but it was a tremendous consolation to know that she actually existed somewhere in the real world, outside of my feverish brain. The proof of her existence was the fact that she had a name: Daisy Hayes! And I thought of her all the time; and she helped me to pull through.”
Daisy now chuckled a bit uncomfortably. “For me that last part sounds rather disturbing, Bernard!”
“I know. Don’t pay any attention; it was long ago; another example of childish foolishness. But anyway, if I’d had my accident only a year before, or a couple of years later, my treatment would have been much better and the consequences not as visible, apart from the wheelchair of course. And the strange thing is, I’d always thought that I’d have to fight a war when I turned eighteen, but instead I was almost the only one of my generation who didn’t go into battle…”
“What do you mean by that, I’m not sure I understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Yet another instance of childish foolishness. You see, when I was a little boy, the Great War was still close in the past and in the minds, and people talked about it a lot, about England’s finest snuffed out in the prime of their youth and all that. I listened, and drew the conclusion that when a boy turned eighteen, he had to go to war. And so I assumed that ‘they’ would stage a brand new war, just for me, when I would get to that age. I regretted bitterly that I wasn’t a girl, I can assure you. Of course, the war for me actually materialized at the appointed time, but I was not in it, as it turned out.”
“Oh Bernard, what an anxious child you were!”
“Yes. And I’ve been thinking this over lately. But it stands to reason, really. Our parents were of a generation that was not capable of talking to their children. No one ever explained these things to me. We had to be seen, not heard. The rest of the time we were ignored. With hindsight I now realise that my parents were incredibly immature. And when I was a child, I just wondered why I was there at all. My parents didn’t seem to have any use for me; none whatsoever. And that was long before I ended up in a wheelchair. I distinctly remember feeling suicidal at nine or ten years of age. I thought that this longing for death was normal, part of being ‘a big boy’.”
“Oh, no, no! That was not normal at all. With me it was not like that… At least my father was different. My mother definitely found it hard to talk to a child, but never Daddy… You see, my father would have liked to have many children, and at least one son, but instead he only got one daughter, and a blind one at that. But in the end it didn’t make any difference to him. He was remarkably openminded for a man of his generation and he always treated me like he would have treated a son. He respected my intelligence and accepted me as I am. Always.”
“Well, to be fair I must say that with my parents it was not all doom and gloom, either. They really loved to go to the seaside, for instance, and so did I. And when we were at home in London and it was raining, I would ask myself, ‘Why don’t we go to the beach? The sun always shines there!’”
“Oh, I love that! Thinking that the sun always shines at the beach!”
After going back and forth a few times more between her sculpture and Bernard’s face, Daisy declared herself washed out, and decided to stop. “Shall we go for an early dinner in the park?”
“Excellent idea!”
Daisy covered the clay with damp rags and a sheet of plastic, then she and Bernard went to the bathroom, she to wash her hands, he his face. “But first call your cousin Claire. I want to study her nose. Does she live in London? It would be nice if she could come over later, after dinner.”
“Should be feasible; her place is not that far from here.”
And then they were walking towards the Albert Bridge along the Embankment, Daisy pushing the wheelchair and Bernard steering. He started to describe the autumn colours of the plane trees. As they crossed the bridge, Daisy sighed with satisfaction. “Do you think it will always be this enjoyable if we’re together all the time?”
“Well, darling, we certainly get on like a house on fire. But don’t ask me if it will last or pall. I was never married; you had that privilege twice.”
“Yes, but don’t you see? For me this is also an entirely new experience. Ralph and Richard were both pilots, they were hardly ever at home, and I had my own job. Now we’re both pensioners, if we wanted we could be together all day long, every day.”
“Yes, we could. I’d like that. But before that can happen, we still have some unresolved issues to discuss.”
“Oh, bother!”
“I’m sorry, Daisy, as much as I love you, I don’t want a relationship based on lies… or omissions. You told me about Richard, and how he adamantly refused to recognise Jonathan. How you two got divorced. I suspect that this was an example of a relationship that faltered because there were secrets between you; things you didn’t tell him and that he was very much shocked to find out in 1967…”
“Yes, yes, you’re quite right, Bernard.”
Those last words were said in a way to close the conversation, in a tone that suffered no contradiction. In the meantime they had entered Battersea Park and were walking towards the Boating Lake. As soon as they reached the Central Avenue, Daisy cried, “Shall we have a run, Bernard?”
“Oh no, not again! You didn’t say beforehand.”
“I don’t need to; I’m wearing trainers and a sports bra all the time now. Come on, just five hundred yards, don’t be a spoilsport!”
And off they went, by now a quite familiar sight to the regulars walking their dogs: an ugly man in a wheelchair bombing along at full clip, pumping with his arms, with a blind lady running at top speed behind him, pushing on the handles. Quite extraordinary.
Then they were sitting on the covered terrace of the Lakeside Café, waiting to order dinner. It was a circular brick building from the forties with a covered terrace under a concrete canopy. Bernard described how the arc of the terrace was lined with slender steel columns, designed to avoid obstructing the view over the lake. He reported how pretty the park looked in its autumn attire.
Daisy said, “Speaking of architecture, there’s one place I’ve heard about recently that I’d like to visit very much.”
“Tell me.”
“There was a thing on the Beeb about the new Lloyd’s Building. Very spectacular, apparently. If we could visit it together, you could describe what you see and help me get an idea of the place.”
“I’m not sure the public can visit…”
“No, they can’t, but you’re not the public. Can’t you make up a good reason to search the premises? I’d be your assistant, of course; just tell them I’m a clairvoyant!”
Bernard burst out laughing. “I’ll see what I can do. I’d certainly like to indulge you on this. But you must understand that I’m no longer a police official. I’m a pensioner. Even when I told you I was a Detective Chief Superintendent, on that first day, remember? Well, that was the last rank I held, but it was given to someone else when I retired, of course. I was only sitting in that office as a consultant, and the rank no longer applies.”
“In that case you’ll have to use your wiles to get in, like everybody else.”
They were silent for a while, just enjoying the moment. Then suddenly Bernard said, “Listen, Daisy, you’re always doing all you can to wriggle out of the conversation about your relationship with Martin McCullough, so I’m going to try a new approach. I understand that all this is very painful, so I have concluded that the best way to go about it is to offer you a theory of my own. Then you can tell me if I’m completely wrong or not.”
“All right, Bernard, if it can’t be avoided, let’s have it. I’m all ears…”
“First I want to talk about Cedric Clifton’s death in 1950.”
“Yes, I know when he died. That was a long time ago.”
“Well, you see, when I read the police report at the time, I didn’t believe for one moment that it was a shooting accident…”
“No, me neither. Go on.”
“Cedric’s death was clearly made to look like suicide, but I didn’t believe that either.”
“No?”
“Certainly not. At the time I came to the conclusion that Cedric had been executed.”
“Good God! How so?”
“My theory is that you, Daisy, hired Martin McCullough to kill him…”
“All right… Remarkable theory… Could you elaborate on that?”
“Certainly. You see, when you called me on V-E Day, I clearly perceived that you were hiding something from me. You asked me about a pharmacist’s letter, but you didn’t dare to ask what you really wanted to know… By the way, was that pharmacist named Dobbs?”
“Yes. But that was the father. The list from 1967 was compiled by his son.”
A waiter now approached to take their orders, and they had to interrupt this very confidential exchange, that they had been holding almost under their breath so as not to be overheard by anyone sitting at the other tables around them. Daisy was sometimes unaware of eavesdroppers, but Bernard was very vigilant, and would signal to keep their voices down when needed. They both ordered a hamburger with a Caesar’s salad.
“Now, in 1949, when Ralph’s father passed away and I realised that Cedric was the heir to the title, it finally dawned on me that he really had many motives indeed to murder Ralph. Apart from the fact that he was madly in love with you and that you were happily married to Ralph, there was now the matter of inheriting Ralph’s title as well. So I had to think back to our conversation on the phone, and I started to wonder if you had thought all along that Cedric might have killed your husband. You had already done an admirable job by finding out that Ralph had been poisoned; maybe you also thought that you had enough evidence to inculpate Cedric? Of course I’d read Chief Inspector Cockett’s report—with growing disbelief! I now realised how frustrating it must have been for you to be foiled by such a fool.”
“Ah, at least you admit that I was wronged?”
“Oh yes, you were wronged, but then you took the law into your own hands. Never a good idea… Cockett’s report also made me aware of the fact that Victor Hadley, Ralph’s batman, was a bookmaker and something of a kingpin of the London underworld. Our own files on him described your friend Hadley as a ‘positive and stabilizing influence’ in the criminal circuit, so we always left him alone. But he must have been the man who recruited McCullough for you… So, to recap a long and hypothetical story, McCullough was able to blackmail you in 1967, because you had hired him to kill Cedric in 1950. Does this make any sense?”
“Hmm, let me think… You know we’ve decided that I would admit the truth when you had put your finger on it? Well, you certainly did that just now. Up to a point. The only thing you’ve got wrong is rather essential: I didn’t hire McCullough to kill Cedric, I executed him myself. McCullough only provided the weapons I needed: a miniature explosive lens, and dumdum bullets of the right calibre for a Luger.”
“Good God, Daisy, now you’re really making me curious. What happened?”
“Long story, Bernard. We’ll need to have another one of our sessions of here and now narrative. For the moment, let’s enjoy our meal.”
The waiter was back and served them their food. Bernard thought it diplomatic to stay quiet for a while. He enjoyed his meal, Daisy’s company—still—and the nice surroundings. He peered at the waterfall on the opposite shore of the beautifully landscaped boating lake. But then he couldn’t help saying, “I believe we’ve made a good start, at last…”
“Oh yes. I must admit that you’re pretty brilliant at this kind of thing. But there’s one small detail in your story that strikes me as odd, even though you seem to know what you’re talking about. Do you really think that Cedric loved me? I always assumed he only thought he loved me, because he wanted to have everything that Ralph had.”
“Oh no. In his crazy way Cedric really loved you. Let’s finish our plates first, then I’ll tell you a story from school about that.”
By the time they’d been served their coffee, Bernard started his tale.
“It must have been at the beginning of October, just like now, only in 1939.
“Here we are, at school, wiling away a lazy afternoon on the grounds, me just minding my own business with a good book. It’s that precious time of day, after lessons and study and before dinner, when everyone can do their own thing. Suddenly an ambulance with clanging bells comes speeding up the drive and stops by the main entrance. The paramedics rush into the building with a stretcher. We all flock around to have a look. Moments later they come out of the building, carrying Cedric. There’s blood on his uniform and Cedric, always a pale chap, is now as white as a sheet. They put him in the back of the ambulance and drive off with clanging bells.
“You can imagine the excitement, the speculations. But no one has the slightest idea what happened. A couple of hours later Cedric is brought back by the ambulance, without the clanging bells this time, and he is carried directly to the infirmary. We are not allowed to visit him there, for he is under disciplinary detention. And so he remains in exile for a week. Then he’s finally released from the infirmary. And at the first occasion, during the long morning break, we older students congregate around our classmate in a remote corner of the grounds and we demand to know what happened.
Cedric smiles without a word, starts undoing his belt, and with his legs held slightly apart, he lets his trousers drop to his knees. He turns in such a way that we can take a good look at his left thigh. And then we see and we understand. Cedric’s thigh has been butchered, it is crisscrossed with cuts, a battlefield of dried blood, stiches and bright red mercurochrome. Cedric annou