The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

12

Atonement

He hadn’t thought it would be that effortless. There were eighteen Haywoods in the book, but only one woman whose first name was Greek, or what he thought was Greek. Major Payne could hardly contain his satisfaction as he wrote down the address and the telephone number for Andrula Haywood, who lived in Ravenscraig Road, Arnos Grove, London

Was it too much to hope that this was the nanny?

What should he do? Phone first – or simply turn up on the doorstep and take it from there? Play it by ear, eh? Yes, why not. Much better, in fact, when dealing with guilty parties. Receivers could be slammed down only too easily, in fear or in anger, and that would be that, while the vis-a- vis approach had a lot to recommend it if one was playing the detection game. He would be able to observe the eyes, the mouth, the tensing of hands and facial muscles. Watch out for any telltale signs. At this point he had very little to go on. Nothing but guesswork and speculation. The misguided romantic – the lapsed Catholic. Andrula might be neither of these… She had been considered a most conscientious nanny until someone (Lady M.?) had offered her a lot of money to abandon her charge on the morning of 29th July 1981.

What he was going to say to her when they met, Major Payne had no idea, but inspiration, he felt sure, would come. He was a quick thinker, had a sympathetic manner. He wasn’t a bad hand at drawing people out of themselves. He wasn’t easily thwarted or abashed either. People took to him, women in particular – most women.

Women found him charming, reliable, funny, non-threatening. Women frequently made him their confidant – not a role he always relished – it could be a bore. On a number of occasions women had become infatuated with him, which had been a terrible bore. Once an unmarried titled lady had developed quite an obsession with him. She had bought him a Bentley and, when he sent it back, had threatened to shoot a senior member of the Danish royal family, whom she had been entertaining at her country seat; she had finally tried to hang herself in her private chapel but made a botch of it. She had continued writing him notes on perfumed paper from her hospital bed. Now that had been scary. That was the kind of insane thing that happened to celibate priests and popular actors, his late wife had joked – he should have been one or the other.

It was three o‘clock in the afternoon when he walked through St James’s to Green Park underground station and got on the Piccadilly line. It took him thirty minutes to get to Arnos Grove, a pleasant enough residential area, if not a particularly leafy one. It was most certainly not what one would associate with plutocratic excess of any sort. Well, the nanny didn’t seem to conform to the popular idea of the newly rich. He had left his A-Z behind, consequently he got a cab outside the station.

Suburban semi-detached houses. Miss Haywood couldn’t have had an extravagant bone in her body. She hadn’t allowed her sudden riches to go to her head. Or could her ill-gained fortune have run out? Or had she felt so guilty about what she had done that she hadn’t taken full advantage of the hush money -

‘This is it, boss,’ the cab driver said. ‘There’s the church.’

Startled, Payne blinked. ‘Church? What church?’

‘Ravenscraig Road, you said, didn’t you? This address is a church.’

‘It can’t be.’

But of course it was. It didn’t look like a church from the outside, though it said so above the door. Church of the Tenderness of the Mother of God. Underneath an inscription in Greek conveyed the same information. The door was open and he could smell incense.

Greek Orthodox, not Catholic. Crucifixes as well as incense were among the trappings of both religions. He stood in the doorway somewhat disconcerted, tugging at his tie, trying to rearrange his ideas. Andrula Haywood had given this as her address, though she couldn’t live here, surely? Or could she? The church encompassed two semi-detached houses that had been knocked into one.

He walked through the door and was at once enveloped in a mist of sorts. He felt a wave of warm air – a smell of tapers was added to the incense. His impression was that there were hundreds of little lights, flickering like fireflies; thin wax candles sticking out of candelabras that had been positioned at various points around the spacious room. There were curtains or blinds across the narrow windows, so it was difficult to see things clearly, though he did make out an iconostasis and a heavy curtain at one end, also icons in gilded frames on the walls. But for him, the place seemed to be empty.

Then he saw her: a smallish woman dressed all in black, kneeling in front of a large icon. This showed a bearded saint who, judging by his expression, couldn’t make up his mind whether to look stern or benevolent. (I mustn’t be flippant, Payne reminded himself. Causing offence won’t open the gates of confession.)

He stood very still, watching her profile. He rubbed his eyes, which had started smarting. Despite the inadequate lighting, he recognized her at once from Antonia’s description – the sallow complexion, the slightly crooked nose, the chunky golden crucifix on a chain around her throat. The hair was no longer blonde and done in a fringe, but dark, streaked with grey, parted in the middle and pulled back. Though she couldn’t be more than in her middle forties, she looked older, much older. The face was lined, haggard, and there were dark circles around her eyes, which were shut. Her lips were pressed tightly together. She looked at least fifty-seven or eight, if not older. She had aged prematurely, that much was clear.

Payne stroked his jaw with a forefinger. Had her conscience been troubling her? Was that the reason for the way she looked? Worn out – with care or with guilt. She was leaning forward, her hands clasped in front of her. She hadn’t opened her eyes. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. The thin lips had parted and were moving silently. Praying. Payne wondered whether it was for the soul of little Sonya Dufrette – or for forgiveness… He saw tears rolling down the withered cheeks.

He stepped back quietly, waiting for her to finish. Interrupting her prayer wouldn’t do. If she was aware of his presence, she didn’t give any sign. He backed further and leant against the wall. He saw he was standing beside an icon that showed another saint, much younger and more vigorous than the one Andrula Haywood was praying to, though of a somewhat androgynous aspect. He – Major Payne was sure it was a ‘he’ – was in the process of pulling a devil from the turbulent sea with his left hand, while in his other hand he brandished a hammer.

Eventually Andrula Haywood opened her eyes, crossed herself and started to rise. Payne made a movement towards her, but the next moment three more people entered the church. Two women and an elderly man on crutches. Andrula quickly walked up to them and kissed each one in turn, placing her hands on their shoulders. Payne remained standing beside the wall, watching them. They talked in an animated manner but their conversation was conducted in demotic Greek.

He had done Greek at school, but that had been classical Greek. There had been no classes in colloquial Greek… What a grammatical inferno Greek tragedy had been! As for doing Greek composition, he had thought of it as brutal bludgeoning – not so much different from the fate that awaited the devil in the icon, in fact.

He saw the elderly man with the crutches kneel. Andrula laid her hand on his shoulder and shut her eyes once more. Her lips started moving but this time she spoke the words aloud – Greek again. She spoke with fervour. The two women who had come with the man also reached out and placed their hands on his arm and they too spoke aloud. The man bowed his head. They were praying for his healing, Payne felt sure and, though he didn’t understand a word of it, he felt touched.

He was reminded of the words of Achilles’ ghost to Ulysses: I would rather be a slave at another’s plough, one who is poor with little means of livelihood, than rule all the dead and departed. Well, Andrula had chosen a life devoted to serving people in need… It didn’t seem she had got married either… Her conscience had prevented her from finding happiness of the more conventional kind.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that nearly twenty-five minutes had passed since he had arrived. He remembered his grandfather saying that a true gentleman’s concerns weren’t supposed to include the passage of time. He must have been no more than eleven or twelve at the time. Funny, how some memories stuck in the mind -

He caught a movement. The tableau had broken up and the man, supported by the two women, went to light candles. Andrula Haywood turned round and seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said, smiling, and crossed through the swirls of incense, proffering both her hands. ‘Welcome. I have never seen you here before, but I hope you will find what you are looking for.’ She spoke with a slight Greek accent. Her eyes were kind, but full of pain. (He was sure he wasn’t imagining it.)

‘As a matter of fact I was looking for you, Miss Haywood. Could I have a word?’

There was a pause. He hoped he didn’t sound too intimidating – like a plain clothes policeman.

‘You want to talk to me? Of course. Let us go to my office. There will be a baptism here soon and we will be in the way.’

As though on cue, there entered a tall priest. He was youngish, in his thirties, with a trimmed dark beard and wearing a festive black cassock and the tall cylindrical black hat that went with it. ‘Sister Andrula,’ he said in English.

She bowed down and kissed his hand. ‘Father,’ she said.

‘God is good. Is everything ready?’

‘Yes, Father,’ she answered and pointed her hand towards a screen, which presumably concealed the baptismal font.

‘I am a little early but I want to pray.’ He had given Payne an amiable nod.

‘Yes, Father. I won’t be long. This gentleman has come to see me.’ She then led the way across the room, past the iconostasis, which she described as ‘one of the finest products of the nineteenth-century School of Debar’, whatever that was. ‘I had it sent from Smyrna, my home town. That’s where I spent my childhood. It was a lovely place in the mid-fifties. I understand it’s somewhat spoilt now. Through here

…’

She pulled aside a heavy brocade curtain, pushed open a door and they entered a small, cell-like room with plain walls. There wasn’t much in it, apart from a small bookcase, a metal safe, a desk with a computer on it and two. wooden chairs. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said. ‘I’m not offering you coffee because I’m in a hurry. I am a bit worried about the baptism.’ She took the seat on the other side of the desk.

He cast a glance round. ‘Do you live here?’

‘Yes. I have two rooms and a shower at the back.’ She pointed towards a second door in the wall behind him. ‘That’s all I need.’

‘And you – you actually run this church?’

‘I run it, yes. I am the owner as well as the manager. Or do you say “proprietor”? It’s not that difficult, if one has faith. I get a lot of help from my brothers and sisters – there are fifty-three of us.’

She must mean that in a spiritual rather than filial sense, Payne reflected. ‘It doesn’t look like a church from the outside – no cupola, no dome.’

Suddenly, something she had just said jarred. The mid-fifties? He must have misheard…

‘No. It used to be my old house. My neighbours happened to be moving out, so I bought their house as well. What’s your interest in the church? You aren’t thinking of making me an offer, are you?’ She smiled.

It was then that Payne had his happy inspiration. He cleared his throat. ‘You had the church built twenty years ago, didn’t you?’

She looked at him with a little frown. ‘That’s correct.’

He leant slightly forward. ‘You had a windfall. A big sum of money, but you weren’t happy because of the way the money had been acquired.’ His eyes never for a moment left her face. ‘So, to appease your conscience, you built a church. It was a form of – atonement.’

There was a pause. Her face had gone pale, the lines running down from her nostrils to the ends of her mouth deepened, but she remained composed. ‘As a matter of fact you are right, in every detail. How do you know all this? Have you come here to tell me my fortune? This is remarkable, but you must know that I do not approve of fortune-telling.’ Her dark eyes fixed on his regimental tie and she smiled once more, a faint smile. ‘You don’t look like a fortune-teller. Who are you?’

‘You don’t know me. My name is Payne.’

She drew in her breath. ‘Pain? Well, if you must know, that’s what I’ve been feeling all these years – here.’ She touched her heart. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Pain. That’s what I’ve had to live with. Sorry…’ She shook her head and wiped her eyes.

‘I’d like to know what exactly happened on 29th July 1981.’ Major Payne delivered this boldly, in measured tones, watching for her reaction. He felt sorry for her but he didn’t want to lose the momentum. ‘Who was it that paid you to pretend your mother was ill and leave Twiston in the morning? Who telephoned you?’

‘Twiston?’ She frowned, a look of utter incomprehension on her face. ‘What is Twiston?’

(Was she pretending? She must be.)

‘What did they do with little Sonya Dufrette?’

‘Sonya -?’ She broke off and he saw her expression start changing. It was very peculiar. Her mouth opened slightly. Her eyes stared back at him. She looked startled – shocked. She looked as though she had had some sort of revelation, one that had confirmed her worst fears, that was how Payne was to describe it later to Antonia. He couldn’t understand.

She whispered, ‘Is – is that what happened? Someone phoned her in the morning and – and said I was ill? Is that what happened?’

What was the woman playing at? ‘Miss Haywood, it was you somebody phoned -’

This time she corrected him. ‘Mrs Haywood.’

It was only then that realization dawned on him. Smyrna in the mid-fifties – the accent – her age. (She looked in her early sixties because, well, because she was in her early sixties.) It all made perfect sense now. He had been an ass.

‘Good Lord,’ Major Payne said. ‘What an absurd misunderstanding. You are her mother.’