Warlight(25)

What did we ever really know or discover about Arthur McCash? He spoke French, as well as other languages, though he never referred to this ability. Perhaps he assumed he would be mocked. There was even a rumour, or was it a joke, that he knew Esperanto, the supposed universal language, which no one spoke. Olive Lawrence, who spoke Aramaic, might have appreciated such knowledge, but she had left us by then. McCash claimed he’d recently been stationed abroad doing crop studies in the Levant. Later I would be told that the character of Simon Boulderstone in Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War may have been based on him. In retrospect it feels almost believable—he did seem part of another era, one of those Englishmen who are happier in desert climates.

Unlike other guests, McCash was quiet and modest. He somehow always positioned himself alongside whoever was arguing loudly—it meant he was not expected to intercede at all. He nodded over a questionable joke, though he never told any—save for a surprising night when, possibly intoxicated, he recited a limerick that involved Alfred Lunt and No?l Coward, which startled the room. It was never quite remembered properly even the next day by those who had been near him.

Arthur McCash would confuse my understanding of The Moth’s activities. What was he doing in this company? He seemed unlike the rest of that opinionated group, behaving as if powerless and without self-worth, or perhaps with so much that he did not wish to expose it. He kept to himself. It is only now I recognize that there may have been in him a shyness, possibly disguising another self. Rachel and I were not the only ones who were young.

I am still unable to give precise ages to the individuals who had taken over our parents’ home. There’s no trustworthy recording of ages when seen through the eyes of youth, and I suppose the war had further confused the way we read age or the hierarchies of class. The Moth felt the same age as my parents. The Darter a few years younger, but only because he appeared less controllable. Olive Lawrence younger still. She appeared that way, I think, because she was always glancing to see what she could go towards, what might capture her and change her life. She was open to alteration. Give her ten years and she could have a different sense of humour, whereas The Darter, though full of shadowed surprises, was clearly on a path he had beaten down and travelled along for years. He was incorrigible, that was his charm. That was the safety in him for us.

—

I got off the train at Victoria Station the next afternoon and felt a hand on my shoulder. “Come with me, Nathaniel. Let us have a tea together. Here, let me take your satchel. It looks heavy.” Arthur McCash took hold of my school bag and walked towards one of the railway cafeterias. “What are you reading?” he said over his shoulder, but kept walking. He bought two scones and some tea. We sat down. He wiped the oilcloth on the table with a paper napkin before leaning his elbows on it. I kept thinking of him coming up behind me and touching my shoulder, taking my satchel. They were not usual gestures for someone who was essentially a stranger. The train announcements, loud and incomprehensible, continued above us.

“My favourite writers are French,” he said. “Can you speak French?”

I shook my head. “My mother can speak French,” I said. “But I don’t know where she is.” I surprised myself at mentioning this so easily.

He looked at the side of his cup. After a moment he lifted it and slowly drank the hot tea, watching me over the brim. I stared back. He was an acquaintance of The Moth, he had been in our house.

“I must give you some Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “I think you will like him.”

“I’ve heard him on the radio.”

“But read him as well.” Then he began quoting something as if in a trance, intoning in a high, clipped voice.

“I was certainly surprised to find you there, Holmes.”

“But not more so than I to find you.”

“I came to find a friend.”

“And I to find an enemy.”

The quiet McCash seemed energized by his own performances, which made the lines funny.

“I hear you had a close call in one of the Underground lifts….Walter told me about it.” And he proceeded to ask me about it in detail, exactly where it had happened, and what the men looked like. Then, after a pause, he said, “Your mother is probably concerned, don’t you think? Being out that late at night?”

I stared at him. “Where is she?”

“Your mother is away. Doing something important.”

“Where is she? Is it dangerous for her?”

He made a gesture as if sealing his lips and stood up.

I was unnerved. “Shall I tell my sister?”

“I have spoken with Rachel,” he said. “Your mother’s all right. Just be careful.”

I watched him disappear into the crowd at the station.

It had felt like an unravelling dream. But the next day, arriving at Ruvigny Gardens again, he slipped me a paperback of Conan Doyle stories, and I began to read them. Yet although I was full of curiosity for answers to what was happening in our lives, there were for me no fog-filled streets or back alleys where I might find clues as to my mother’s whereabouts, or what Arthur McCash was doing in our house.





“?‘I used often to lie awake through the whole night, and wish for a large pearl.’?”

I was almost asleep. “What?” I said.