Next day, I’m on the road by mid-morning. Already, our prime minister’s address to the nation appears to have emptied the Bayswater Road of traffic. Purring from traffic light to traffic light, I catch glimpses of people hurrying along the pavement, heads down, hands thrust in their pockets. A couple of them are wearing face masks as they pass locked shops and shuttered pubs. Post-nuclear, I think, remembering the copy of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach I devoured last year. The bomb’s dropped, the radiation levels are climbing and we’re all doomed.
The M25, if anything, is even creepier, just a scatter of supermarket trucks and white vans hogging the lane of their choice, and by the time I get to the A3 turn-off I realize how much I’ve taken yesterday’s London for granted. I’d assumed that traffic jams, bursting cafes, and the long queue of jets descending into Heathrow were forever. How wrong can a girl be?
I’m a couple of minutes north of the Hindhead tunnel when I register the flashing blue lights in my rear-view mirror. There are two uniformed police in the front and one of them is motioning me on to the hard shoulder.
Shit.
The two officers circle the car, note the registration. Then the younger one asks me to get out. I’m desperately trying to remember Boris Johnson’s very short list of excuses for breaking what the media are already calling ‘lockdown’, when the officer asks me where I’m going.
‘Portsmouth.’
‘You live there?’
‘No.’
He wants to see my driving licence.
‘W4 is London,’ he says. ‘So why Portsmouth?’
‘A very good friend of mine is dying.’ I bite my lip. ‘His partner needs support.’ This, at least, has the merit of being true.
‘She has an address, this lady?’
‘Yes.’ I give him the address. He studies it for a moment, makes another note, and then checks his watch.
‘So here’s how it works.’ He nods down the motorway. ‘If you carry on, there’s no coming back.’
‘Ever?’
The two men exchange glances. At last, I’ve coaxed a smile.
‘Ever,’ he agrees. ‘Life sentence, madam. In Pompey? Your call.’
Cynthia, when I finally make it to Baffins, takes me by surprise. I’ve been expecting someone more motherly, plumper, more Fat Dave. Instead, I’m looking at a tall woman, probably in her late fifties, well preserved, immaculately turned-out, and the house, when I step inside, is a perfect match: subtle greys and dark blues on the walls of the narrow hall, a stand of lilies on an occasional table, and an artful pattern of beautifully framed photographic prints that bring me to an admiring halt. On first sight, this place – unremarkable from the outside – has the feel of a decent art gallery. Intimate? Yes. But elegant, too.
‘They’re all Portsmouth.’ Cynthia is nodding at the closest of the photos. ‘And all Dave’s work.’
I’m standing in front of a black and white shot of a landscape I don’t recognize. The tide is out, and a steely light is gleaming on the exposed mud banks. On the left, the photo is framed by a crescent of footpath that skirts a two-storey clapboard house set slightly back. A Union Jack flies from the flagpole in the garden and on closer inspection, out over the water, I can see a flight of what look like mallards.
‘Langstone Harbour,’ Cynthia murmurs. ‘You know it at all?’
‘No.’
‘Dave’s favourite place. I used to wheel him across there whenever the light was good. It’s a bit of a trek but he loved it.’
I nod, inspecting another shot, a shingle beach this time, the camera low, the pebbles shiny with recent rain. Cynthia’s use of the past tense is slightly disturbing. In H’s world, and increasingly mine, no one ever gives up.
‘They’re great,’ I say. ‘Dave’s got a real eye.’
Cynthia spares me a glance. She looks wistful, under-nourished, and judging by the darkness under her eyes, she’s not getting much sleep.
‘In there.’ She nods at the door at the end of the hall. ‘And thank you for coming down.’
H is waiting in what turns out to be the sitting room. He’s slumped in an armchair that must belong to Fat Dave because it’s enormous, and he’s staring into nowhere, scarcely aware of my presence.
‘Trip down OK?’ he mumbles.
‘Fine. Perfect. I had the road to myself.’
‘No Filth?’
‘One stop halfway down the A3. They were charming.’
‘Really?’ At last, he looks up at me, then gestures loosely towards the window. ‘Fucking sad, eh?’
The back garden is on the small side. A froth of early blossom brightens the single tree, and a tabby cat sprawls on a weathered wooden bench.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Under the blue tarpaulin. See them?’ I shake my head, then look harder.
‘You mean the wheels?’
‘Yeah. Dave’s chair. Poor bastard.’
We have lunch around a circular table in a corner of the room. Cynthia serves a fish soup, chunks of cod floating in a thick bouillabaisse, with warm crusty bread and a light green salad on the side. The fish is delicious, perfectly cooked, and while H presses her for more details about Dave, my eyes keep straying to the picture that hangs over the mantelpiece. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s a photo or a clever piece of artwork, but either way there’s no contesting the face. David Bowie, in his prime. Gelled locks, heavy mascara, killer eyes, with a deep crimson wound that seems to slice the image in half.
This, for whatever reason, comes as another surprise. My take on H’s world has been based almost exclusively on mates of his who’ve turned up from time to time at Flixcombe. Fat Dave was one of them. Others had the same tribal markings: fading tattoos, bellies out of control, plenty of Pompey swagger. But barely an hour in the company of this woman tells a very different story, as does her quiet nod to a relationship that plainly means the world to her.
H has brought a bottle of dry sherry to break the ice. By the time we’re done with the fish, the bottle is nearly empty. At this point, I’m bold enough to ask how she and Dave Munroe first met.
‘Ventnor.’ She holds my gaze across the table, her eyes already glassy. ‘Dave was on a job on the island all week and had booked himself in, he and another guy.’
‘Dessie.’ This from H. ‘Dessie Wren. Good bloke for a Filth. Clever, too.’
‘And?’ I’m still looking at Cynthia.
‘He was a lovely man, Dave, you sensed that from the start. He could talk to anyone, and that’s a real talent. He listened, as well, which was unheard of in my world.’
Dave, she said, was especially partial to kippers for breakfast and by mid-week she’d managed to lay hands on a supply of Arbroath smokies.
‘After that, I could do no wrong. The other guy, Dessie, was out most evenings, but Dave would stay with me and we’d sit in the back parlour after I’d sorted all the other guests. There was always a lot to Dave, literally as he got fatter, but the more we talked the more I realized how unusual he was.’
‘Like how?’ I steal a glance at H. His eyes are half-closed, his face clouded by a frown.
‘Birds, for one thing. He was mad about them, knew everything, where they came from, when to look out for them, how to recognize their calls, who they were afraid of, everything you’d ever want to know. After that first week, he’d come back when he had time off. We’d drive over to the nature reserve at Brading, spend all afternoon on the marshes. He taught me so much. He knew so much. And he was mobile in those days. The world …’ She shrugs, a gesture of near despair. ‘Our oyster.’
‘That Dessie,’ H grunts. ‘He nearly had us a couple of times. Canny bastard. Ex-skate. Blokes like that are nearly human beings, easy to take for granted. We saw him off in the end, but only thanks to …’ He nods towards the shrouded wheelchair in the garden. ‘Dave.’
If Cynthia is thrown by this abrupt intervention, it doesn’t show. Instead, at my invitation, she describes where the relationship went next, in particular the holidays they began to take together. Dave, it seems, was still married, with two young daughters, but the Job gave him every excuse in the world to cover his tracks. That first summer, allegedly in pursuit of a suspected kidnapper, Dave decamped to Greece. With Cynthia in tow.
‘Corfu,’ she says. ‘Dave got wind of an apartment for rent in Roda. There was a little beach, tavernas to die for, music and dancing in the evenings.’
‘Dave?’ H looks up. ‘Dancing?’
‘Indeed.’ Cynthia’s smile is unforced. ‘Hidden talents, my Dave. He knew the moves, no problem, and if something new came along he made it up. I think “resourceful” is the word. A couple of ouzos and he’d dance all night.’
H is staring at her the way you might stare at a stranger, and I realize that this woman has the measure of him. My Dave. Not yours.
‘And now?’ I reach for my glass, knowing only too well where this conversation has to lead.
‘Now is horrible. You want to see him? You want to know how bad, how evil, this thing is?’
Without waiting for an answer, Cynthia leaves the room. Moments later I hear footsteps overhead, then she’s back with a big iPad.
‘Dave’s,’ she explains as she opens it up and stations it between H and myself. ‘He used to put all his bird shots on it.’
She stabs a finger at the screen and for the next few minutes we cycle through a series of photos while she provides a commentary. Redshanks. Tufted ducks. A lone marsh harrier. And, just look, a black-crested night heron. Then her finger strays to another icon and suddenly the sunshine and the bird life have gone. Now, H and I are looking at a hospital ward crowded with bulky figures. Masked, visored, gowned, they attend busily to patients fighting – I imagine – for their lives. They could be nurses, doctors, porters, anyone. The only clues are the names in heavy black Pentel, pinned to their gowns.
‘ICU,’ Cynthia mutters. ‘Three days ago. These people are incredible, believe me. Twelve hours at a stretch, wearing all that? This is war. This is their armour. We’re back in the Dark Ages.’
The Dark Ages. Like every other next of kin, Cynthia has been denied access to the ICU, and like every other wife, husband, mother, or lover, she’d pleaded for some kind of conversation, just a word or two, and a squeeze of the hand – anything to reach across this terrifying abyss.
‘They do their best,’ she says. ‘You phone up and ask for the latest news, and they’ll tell you straight out, no flannel, just the facts. At the start of the weekend Dave was still conscious, just. The ventilator makes proper conversation impossible, but I knew he could hear me, and that’s what mattered.’
I nod. H doesn’t move. He can’t take his eyes off the frozen image of the ICU, and the sight of Fat Dave, already diminished, propped up on a bank of pillows. The ventilator tube disappears down his throat while a thousand other leads tether him to what’s left of his life. His head is half-turned towards the camera, pale, drawn, a poor-quality version of the face I remember from H’s fiftieth.
‘Go on then.’ H nods at the screen.
Cynthia hits the Play arrow, and then looks away. I’m guessing she must have seen this sequence dozens of times, playing and re-playing it, her last contact with the man she’d shared so many happy years with. Someone at the bedside is obviously holding up a phone or a tablet for Dave’s benefit, and the moment he recognizes Cynthia he tries to muster a smile. I can see he’s doing his very best, but the result is grotesque, the grimace of a man who knows the darkness is coming for him, and all the time I can hear the steady, remorseless suck and wheeze of the ventilator, Dave’s chest rising and falling in tune with the machine. This is dancing with a difference, I think.
‘Dave?’ Cynthia’s voice on the recording. ‘It’s me, Cynthia. Hang in there, yeah? I love you, my angel. I just want you to know that. Whatever happens, however bad it gets, just remember me. You hear what I’m saying? The times we’ve had? All those times to come? Just nod, Dave. I know it’s hard but do it for me. For us, my angel. I love you, Dave, I really do.’
The picture wobbles a moment, and then I watch Dave struggling to manage a grunt or two, desperate to cheat the virus of its winnings, but his face has purpled the way you might react to a fish bone in your throat, a moment of panic and then the gravelly choking rasp as he tries to hoist whatever he needs to get rid of. This is a man who knows he’s drowning. Not in some terrible accident, but in the swampy wreckage of his own lungs.
‘Easy, my darling. Easy.’ Cynthia again.
Dave looks briefly grateful, and then collapses back against the pillow, his eyes closed. Moments later, nurses are crowding around the bed, and in a moment neither H nor I will ever forget, Fat Dave raises a thin white arm and his hand trembles as he waves goodbye. Then his fingers clench and we’re left with a single raised thumb. I did my best, he wants to say. And I love you, too.
We leave the house a couple of hours later. Both of us have done our best to comfort Cynthia, to tell her that there may yet be hope, that modern medicine can work all kinds of miracles, but I can tell from her face that she doesn’t believe me and by late afternoon it’s obvious that she wants to be left in peace.
We say our goodbyes at the door, give her a big hug, make her promise to phone the moment she needs us, but all she can manage is a tired nod. Her eyes are welling up again. She seems resigned, already in mourning. After the front door closes, H and I briefly confer beside his car. Thanks to Tony Morse, he’s acquired the key to a vacant apartment down in Southsea. I’m to follow him through the city. The fact that I’ve given Cynthia’s address as my Portsmouth lockdown address doesn’t seem to bother him.
‘You don’t want to go to the hospital?’ I ask. ‘Try and talk your way in?’
The question is superfluous. H stares at me for a long moment and I can tell by the way he rubs his eyes that the afternoon around Cynthia’s table has left him well and truly beached.
‘God, no,’ he says at last. ‘Anywhere but that fucking tomb.’
We spend the evening in the apartment Tony Morse has volunteered. It’s at the top of a property that overlooks Southsea Common, and the views from the third floor are sensational. The Common itself, green after recent rain, stretches away to the distant seafront. Nearer, on the left, I can see tennis courts. To the right, more distant, the Hovercraft departure terminus for the low grey swell of the Isle of Wight. This stretch of the Solent, H tells me, is prime viewing for big-ship nerds. Two generations ago you would have caught the giant Cunarders, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, heading up towards Southampton. Tonight we have to make do with a huge container ship the size of umpteen city blocks.
The view is a godsend because the rest of the apartment, in H’s phrase, is a dump. It smells of decay, of dodgy drains, of surrender to old age and maybe infirmity. The paintwork is shabby, the taps in the kitchen leak, there’s a steady draught through most of the windows, and if you ever thought anaglypta wallpaper was a distant memory, you’d be wrong. There’s a damp problem in the tiny bathroom and when I inspect the contents of the bucket beside the sink I find a balled prescription for, among other things, warfarin. This, I happen to know, is a blood thinner routinely prescribed after minor strokes, and this begins to suggest a picture of who might have been living here.
Another clue, more graphic, is the part-completed jigsaw we find on the threadbare carpet in the living room. The accompanying box is still brimming with spare pieces, but there’s enough on the floor to suggest some kind of battle at sea.
‘Trafalgar,’ H grunts, turning away, and when I finally find the lid of the box, I see he was right. Admiral Nelson’s flagship laid up against the French fleet. Our diminutive hero directing events from the quarterdeck with nerveless aplomb.
H and I do our best to settle in. H insists I take the bigger of the two bedrooms, while he’ll doss down next door. I dump my bag on the rumpled counterpane and pull the curtains back. An inspection reveals that the big freestanding wardrobe is empty, save for the lingering scent of mothballs. Ditto the chest of drawers. It’s at this point that I conclude we may be spending the night with a ghost. Warfarin probably wasn’t enough. Whoever lived here, whoever began to piece together those bloody hours off Cape Trafalgar, is probably dead and gone.
Either way, I tell myself I’m only here for a single night. I can hear H in the bedroom next door. He’s on the phone to a long list of local names, telling them about Fat Dave, and so I return to the living room at the front of the apartment, stepping carefully around the bones of the jigsaw, the abandoned homage to blood and treasure, knowing I have a couple of calls of my own to make.
The first goes to Malo. After I’ve closed the door, I tell him about our visit to Cynthia.
‘Your dad’s definitely in a state,’ I whisper. ‘It’s worse than I thought.’ From the sound of his voice, I can tell that Malo is disturbed. Once again, he offers to come down.
‘Don’t,’ I tell him. ‘They’ve sealed the borders. Police everywhere. On-the-spot fines. Heavy jail sentences. Transportation, if you’re lucky. You heard it here first.’
‘But what about you, Mum? You’re supposed to be in London.’
‘I’m back tomorrow.’
‘How?’
‘God knows. I’ll phone you if I make it.’
‘And Dad?’
‘I’m guessing he’ll stay.’
‘All by himself?’
‘In this city? I doubt it.’
We part as friends. He tells me to take care and says that Richmond Park has never been so empty. My son, bless him, is back in training for his first triathlon after a succession of injuries, and now runs most nights.
‘And Clemmie?’
‘She comes with me.’
‘Good. Keep it that way, eh?’
My other call goes to Tim. I’ve no idea where he lives in this place, but that turns out to be irrelevant.
‘I’ve self-evacuated,’ he says at once. ‘Think the Blitz. Think 1940. I’ve got a label round my neck and a packet of sandwiches but they can’t spell my name right.’
‘As in …?’
‘Tom. Funny thing is, I quite like it. Nice period touch. Young Thomas setting out on his big adventure.’
‘This has to be a joke.’
‘No way. Have you ever been out in the country? Free-range chickens at the bottom of the garden? Fresh-baked bread every morning? Home-smoked bacon? I thought Waitrose had it nailed, and you know what?’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Yeah. Again.’
‘So, where are you?’
‘Bere Regis.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Dorset. Ask that hooligan mate of yours. He might know.’
‘I doubt it. You’re there for the duration?’
‘Yeah. God willing.’
‘Relatives?’
‘My mum. Are we getting the picture here? I’m doing it for her sake, of course. I just have to find room for all this tucker before I explode.’
Tucker. When I finish talking to Tim, I start wondering about something to eat. The fridge in the kitchen is turned off and empty. The old-style pantry offers nothing more than a little scrap of discarded muslin, the dried corpse of a sizeable bee, a packet of pasta, and a box of Oxo cubes. I look in on H but he’s still deep in conversation. When I do the knife and fork mime and tap my watch, he simply nods. Your call. I retreat to the living room to scroll through the take-out offers on my phone and settle for an Indian restaurant that seems to be round the corner. The food is with us within half an hour, the bagged cartons left outside the front door, my card swiped at arm’s length.
H is still on the phone. The gas stove turns out to be working and I manage to light the oven to keep the food warm. Back in the living room, waiting for H, I browse the books on the many shelves. The shelves themselves are DIY, poorly done. I doubt they were ever troubled by a spirit level, but the harder I look, the less that matters.
Books appeal to the detective in me because they can tell you everything you need to know about the reader, and the more attention I pay to the choice on offer, the more intrigued I become. Five Joseph Conrad novels, including Nostromo and Typhoon. The near-complete works of Patrick O’Brien. Several wartime biographies from warrior scribes on the Atlantic and Russian convoys. A rich selection of reads on the Nelsonian Navy. Books like these connect directly with the jigsaw at my feet but even more intriguing are the contents of the shelves below, most of which address crime and punishment. Famous murder trials. Legendary miscarriages of justice. Ten Rillington Place I happen to have read twice, not least because I was in for a part in the BBC radio drama adaptation. A fine book, deeply shocking.
‘What am I smelling?’ H is at the door, just off the phone. I’ve ordered his trusty favourites, which appear to pass muster. He has a selection of lagers in his suitcase, plucked from the fridge at Flixcombe Manor. Chicken jalfrezi with all the trimmings, plus a can or two of warm Stella, isn’t a combination I’d normally go for, but under these circumstances it feels curiously apt. Tim had it right. We’re all living through the Blitz again.
We eat in near silence. H is preoccupied, remote, distant, and when I ask who he’d talked to he tosses me the bones of the conversations. Wesley Kane, his one-time enforcer, is pissed off. He’s watched Goodfellas twice in twenty-four hours and doesn’t know where to turn next. Mick Pain, another stalwart back in the day, has developed Type 2 diabetes. While Gloria, an enormous Jamaican who once serviced Fat Dave in a private suite in a seafront hotel, has moved to London. In short, the passage of the years, and now the virus, are moving the Pompey story on.
‘Had to happen.’ H forks another cube of chicken. ‘Stay put in this life and you’re half fucking dead already.’
What I really want to talk about is H himself – what’s gone wrong, how he’s coping, and just how difficult this situation of his could get – but the last thing I want to do is betray any of my son’s confidences. And so I start at the other end, with Malo.
‘So what do you make of him these days? Our boy?’
‘He’s fine,’ H grunts. ‘Shaping up nicely.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I had my doubts about all the Doomsday crap but hey …’ He looks around and spreads his hands wide. ‘Turns out that mate of his was right.’
Malo’s mate is Sylvester Penny, the only son of our sometime ambassador in Berlin. The moment I first met him, the physical likeness to my son was uncanny – the fashionable gypsy tangle of black curls, the hint of predatory glee in his smile, his easy charm, and the sheer tightness of his focus when something interesting pops up on his radar screen. Sylvester’s big idea throws the mega-rich a lifeline in the face of numberless catastrophes – anything from nuclear war to, God help us, global pandemics – and just now his superyacht packages offering sanctuary at the ends of the earth are heavily over-subscribed. Malo, through his own efforts, has become part of this adventure, winning his father’s guarded approval.
‘He told you about the Audi?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘Gone. Binned. Sold on.’
‘And now?’
‘He’s driving a series-seven Beamer. How many twenty-one-year-olds spend that kind of money to look like a middle-aged twat?’
The Audi was a present from H after we all returned semi-intact from the D-Day beaches. Malo selling it, I’m guessing, has hurt.
‘He’s still running,’ I point out. ‘He’s off the booze. He and Clemmie seem pretty tight. He’s making a name for himself, thanks to Sylvester. Do I hear a round of applause?’
‘No fucking way.’ H isn’t having it. ‘That boy thinks he knows every trick in the fucking book. Fact is he doesn’t, and won’t for a good while, but when did he ever listen to me?’
‘He loves you. To bits. Doesn’t that matter?’
H has always been uncomfortable with the word ‘love’, but I’m sensing, once again, that something has changed.
H takes a final swipe of sauce with what’s left of his chapati and then pushes the plate to one side. Only then does he look up.
‘He loves me? He said that?’ He very badly wants me to nod.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He did.’