Free In Pale Battalions by Robert Goddard Page A

his story.
    “Come in, Mr. Willis.”
    He followed me into the lounge, declined an offer of tea and looked around awkwardly before taking a seat.
     
    54

R O B E R T G O D D A R D
    “My husband will be back shortly,” I said. “He’s taken the children to the park.”
    “You have children?”
    “A boy and a girl.”
    He nodded. “Well, I’ll be gone by the time they get back.” He said it as if he intended to make sure he was. He glanced around again. This time, his gaze alighted on our wedding photograph, which I kept on top of the wireless. He stared at it for several moments. “Your wedding, Mrs. Galloway?” “Yes.”
    “I don’t see Lady Powerstock in the group.”
    “She didn’t attend. So, you knew my grandmother.”
    “Yes.”
    “And my father?”
    “I served with him in the Army. Through him, I met your mother and stayed at Meongate. There I met Lord and Lady Powerstock.”
    So he knew them all. The names of people and places who clustered in my earliest recollections, spoken casually by a stranger: it was unnerving.
    “I’ve had no contact with your family since 1916,” he continued.
    “Why now?”
    “Because, with Lady Powerstock dead, I’m free to tell you what I think you ought to know: the truth about your parents and your grandparents, the truth about Meongate and what happened there thirty-seven years ago. Above all, the truth about your father.” Who was the pretty lady, Fergus? Where is my mother’s grave?
    What murder? The answers might tumble like a stone down a slope.
    Once released, its progress could only be watched, not arrested.
    Once the truth had been set in motion, we could no longer intervene. This was the choice laid before me by my quietly spoken, un-invited guest.
    “What is the truth, Mr. Willis? What have you come to tell me?”
    “It’s a long story. But one you should hear: one you’re entitled to hear. Could you spare me an hour or so . . . sometime soon?”
    “Why wait?”
    “Because your husband will be back shortly. You said so yourself. If I’m to tell you this, we mustn’t be interrupted.”
    “You’ve chosen a bad time.”
     

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S
    55
    “The time chose itself. I’m staying at the Red Lion in the High Street. Could we meet there?”
    “I’m very busy at the moment. The coronation, you see . . .”
    “I can stay till Wednesday.”
    Even as he put a term on his availability, I knew I would see him again. I couldn’t walk away from what he had to tell me.
    “Wednesday then. Not the Red Lion, though: I know the proprietor.
    The gateway leading from the Market Place to the Bishop’s Palace.
    It’s called the Bishop’s Eye. Ten o’clock, Wednesday morning.”
    So it was agreed. After he’d gone, I began to doubt my own word. He wouldn’t turn up, or I wouldn’t. Somehow, our next encounter couldn’t really happen. When Tony brought you two back from the park, tumbling and clamouring for tea, I began to think I might have imagined Willis’s visit altogether, might have fashioned his very existence from my desire to know the truth.
    Yet I knew it was not so. I knew pretending I wouldn’t see him was only an excuse for telling Tony nothing. Not that Tony would have forbidden me to meet Willis. It was not fear of his reaction that made me keep it from him—it was fear of my own. To want something so badly, so hopelessly, for so long, to convince yourself at last that not only can it never be yours but that you no longer truly desire it anyway, then to have it offered you, unlooked-for, un-heralded, unsought: I could only cope with the prospect if I kept it secret.
    I went through the street party on Coronation Day in a trance, a trance that did not end until ten o’clock the following morning. I’d arranged for Mrs. Jeffries to come in all day so I could be free. I walked down Milton Lane through the warmth and sunshine of a placidly ordinary day in June. The neighbours I nodded to had no idea of the