although it had lost its savour, life could have been worse – and then Lady Helen received an unexpected phone call, one that in its consequences would prove just as catastrophic as that other call two years earlier, the call that had announced the death of her son.
‘Helen, is that you?’ The voice was weak, yet strangely familiar.
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘Tony Emsworth.’
She remembered the name well: a junior officer under her husband many years ago, later an Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. She hadn’t seen him for some time. He had to be seventy now. Come to think of it, he hadn’t been at either Peter’s funeral or her husband’s. She’d thought that strange at the time.
‘Why, Tony,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’
‘My cottage. I’m living in a little village called Stukeley now, in Kent. Only forty miles from London.’
‘How’s Martha?’ Helen asked.
‘Died two years ago. The thing is, Helen, I must see you. It’s a matter of life and death, you could say.’ He was racked by coughing. ‘My death, actually. Lung cancer. I haven’t got long to go.’
‘Tony. I’m so sorry.’
He tried to joke. ‘So am I.’ There was an urgency in his voice now. ‘Helen, my love, you must come and see me. I need to unburden myself of something, something you must hear.’
He was coughing again. She waited until he’d stopped. ‘Fine, Tony, fine. Try not to upset yourself. I’ll drive down to London this afternoon, stay overnight in town, and be with you as soon as I can in the morning. Is that all right?’
‘Wonderful. I’ll see you then.’ He put down the phone.
She had taken the call in the library. She stood there frowning, slightly agitated, then opened a silver box, took out a cigarette and lit it with a lighter Roger had once given her made from a German shell.
Tony Emsworth. The weak voice, the coughing, had given her a bad shake. She remembered him as a dashing Guards captain, a ladies’ man, a bruising rider to hounds. To be reduced to what she had just heard was not pleasant. Intimations of mortality, she thought. Death just round the corner, and there had been enough of that in her life.
But there was another, secret reason, something even Hedley knew nothing about. The odd pain in the chest and arm had given her pause for thought. She’d had a private visit to London recently, a consultation with one of the best doctors in Harley Street, tests and scans at the London Clinic.
It reminded her of a remark Scott Fitzgerald had made about his health: ‘I visited a great man’s office and emerged with a grave sentence.’ Something like that. Her sentence had not been too grave. Heart trouble, of course. Angina. No need to worry, my dear, the professor had said. You’ll live for years. Just take the pills and take it easy. No more riding to hounds or anything like that.
‘And no more of these,’ she said softly, and stubbed out the cigarette with a wry smile, remembering that she’d been saying that for months, and went in search of Hedley.
Stukeley was pleasant enough: cottages on either side of a narrow street, a pub, a general store and Emsworth’s place, Rose Cottage, on the other side of the church. Lady Helen had phoned before leaving London to give him the time and he was expecting them, opening the door to greet them, tall and frail, the flesh washed away, the face skull-like.
She kissed his cheek. ‘Tony, you look terrible.’
‘Don’t I just?’ He managed a grin.
‘Should I wait in the Merc?’ Hedley asked.
‘Nice to see you again, Hedley,’ Emsworth said. ‘Would it be possible for you to handle the kitchen? I let my daily go an hour ago. She’s left sandwiches, cakes and so on. If you could make the tea.…’
‘My pleasure,’ Hedley told him, and followed them in.
A log fire was burning in the large open fireplace in the sitting room. Beams supported the low ceiling and there was comfortable furniture everywhere and Indian carpets scattered over the stone-flagged floor.
Emsworth sat in a wing-backed chair and put his walking stick on the floor. A cardboard file was on the coffee table beside him.
‘There’s a photo over there of your old man and me when I was a subaltern,’ he said.
Helen Lang went to the sideboard and examined the photo in its silver frame. ‘You look very handsome, both of you.’
She returned and sat opposite him. He said, ‘I didn’t attend Peter’s funeral. Missed out on Roger’s, too.’
‘I had noticed.’
‘Too ashamed to show my face, ye see.’
There was something here, something unmentionable that already touched her deep inside, and her skin crawled.
Hedley came in with tea things on a tray and put them down beside her on a low table. ‘Leave the food,’ she told him. ‘Later, I think.’
‘Be a good chap,’ Emsworth said. ‘There’s a whisky decanter on the sideboard. Pour me a large one and one for Lady Helen.’
‘Will I need it?’
‘I think so.’
She nodded. Hedley poured the drinks and served them. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.’
‘Thank you. I think I might.’
Hedley looked grim, but retired to the kitchen. He stood there thinking about it, then noticed the two doors to the serving hatch and eased them ajar. It was underhanded, yes, but all that concerned him was her welfare. He sat down on a stool and listened.
‘For years I lived a lie as far as my friends were concerned,’ Emsworth said. ‘Even Martha didn’t know the truth. You all thought I was Foreign Office. Well, it wasn’t true. I worked for the Secret Intelligence Service for years. Oh, not in the field. I was the kind of office man who sent brave men out to do the dirty work who frequently died doing it. One of them was Major Peter Lang.’
There was that crawling feeling again. ‘I see,’ she said carefully.
‘Let me explain. My office was responsible for black operations in Ireland. The people we were after were not only IRA, but Loyalist paramilitaries who, because of threats and intimidation of witnesses, escaped legal justice.’
‘And what was your solution?’
‘We had undercover groups, SAS in the main, who disposed of them.’
‘Murdered, you mean?’
‘No, I can’t accept that word. We’ve been at war with these people for too many years.’
She didn’t pour the tea, but reached for the whisky and sipped some. ‘Am I to understand that my son did such work?’
‘Yes,
