The Wood Beyond

xi

When Ellie Pascoe got home she burst into the house like an SAS hostage-rescue team.

'Hello, Mum,' said Rosie, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with an open tin of biscuits by her side and her eyes glued on the TV screen where John Wayne was trying not to be provoked into a fight in a saloon.

Ellie did not answer but moved through the open door into the dining room where her husband was sitting at a paper-strewn table.

'Peter,' she said. 'Do you know what time it is?'

He glanced at his watch.

'Late as that? You haven't been at the hospital all this time, have you?'

'Yes I have. And I tried to ring you three times but all I could get was the answering machine.'

'Sorry. I must have forgotten to switch it off.'

'The bloody phone still rings, Peter!' she cried in exasperation.

'Yes, but only twice when the machine's engaged,' he said reasonably. He ran his fingers through his hair and went on, 'I got carried away. . this stuff. You wouldn't believe it.'

'Probably not. What I did believe was something dreadful must have happened for you and Rosie not to be at home. And what the hell is that she's watching on the box?'

Pascoe rose and peered through into the lounge. Wayne's good intentions had been thwarted and the saloon brawl was in full swing.

'Sorry,' he said. 'But you'll understand when you read this lot.'

'What is it?' she said glancing at the table. 'Jesus, not more bloody Great War gunk? Have you lost all interest in the here and now? Such as, what your child's doing to her mind? And what's happening in Intensive Care?'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Rosie, switch that off. And how's Wendy? Any change?'

'Yes. That's what I rang to say the first time. She's regained consciousness.'

'That's great. What's she say? Does she recall what happened to her?'

Ellie shook her head.

'She's barely awake. They're still not certain how much her brain might have been affected. They let me in to see her briefly. At first I thought she recognized me but then she said, "Cap, Cap, Cap … oh why, why, why?" I would have stayed longer but I was getting really worried about not being able to get through here.'

Pascoe took her in his arms and said, 'Sorry, sorry.'

Over her shoulder he saw that the saloon fight had finished and the hero and heroine were embracing. Rosie, deciding that flesh and blood had it over flat image, zapped them to oblivion and turned to watch her parents.

I bet if we started punching each other, she'd give up telly altogether, thought Pascoe.

He said, 'OK, you sit down. I'll get you something to eat and organize this one for bed. Like a drink to be going on with?'

'That would be great.'

He poured her a gin, put a couple of lasagnes in the microwave to defrost and hustled his daughter upstairs.

She said, 'What about my tea?'

'Oh God, haven't you had anything?' he asked guiltily.

'Yes, I helped myself,' she said grinning.

Breakfast and tea in a single day. Thank God for school dinners, he thought.

He said, 'Don't tell your mother.'

'Don't tell her what?' said Ellie from the doorway.

'That I got into trouble today for throwing stones in the playground,' said Rosie promptly, leaving Pascoe pleased to be off the hook but aghast at the convincing ease with which she lied.

Alone with his daughter, he tried to remonstrate with her.

'Yes, but I did get into trouble for throwing stones,' she said. 'So it wasn't a lie, was it?' This was turning into a problem in logic rather than ethics.

'Even the truth can be a lie sometimes,' he heard himself saying sententiously.

'But can't a lie be better than the truth sometimes?' she argued.

This piece of precocity took his breath away. Having a bright kid was one thing, but childhood could be a long and bumpy road for a smartarse.

Then Rosie yawned and added, 'Like swearing.'

'Have you been talking to Miss Martindale?' asked Pascoe.

'Yes. I got sent to her for throwing the stones. And she said sometimes bad things could be good. Like telling lies. But you have to be careful.'

'And swearing?'

'She said if you dropped something heavy on your toe, it was good to have a special word you could shout out to get the pain out of you, and that's why some words were bad unless you had a pain to get out.'

She was almost asleep now. At the door he paused and said, 'Why were you throwing stones?'

'There was this man walking past the playground with a dog and it wouldn't do as it was told so he started hitting it with the lead and it was yelling. So I threw stones and then he yelled too.'

Downstairs he saw Ellie at the dining-room table with the exercise-book journal open in front of her. As he watched she knuckled a tear out of her eyes. Quietly he went into the kitchen, turned the microwave up, made a green salad, poured a couple of glasses of wine and brought the meal through on a tray.

Ellie said brightly, 'He's got your attitude to punctuation. When in doubt, miss it out.'

'Him and Bernard Shaw.'

'And his writing's worse than yours. I can't make head or tail of this.'

She indicated the small leather-bound volume.

'You need a glass. It's his trench journal. So far as I can make out it stops in spring 1917 when he was home on leave. He probably left it at home for safekeeping and started a new one back in Flanders. God knows what happened to that.'

'And these?' said Ellie indicating the document folder.

'I haven't sorted them out yet, but it looks like a record of Ada's efforts to get some real information about what actually happened to her father. Letters to the War Office, MPs, that sort of thing. And their replies. A record of frustration. But the earlier documents are the ones that signify. Here. Imagine that dropping through your letter box.'

He extracted a folded and faded sheet of paper and laid it before her. It was from the Infantry Records Office, dated November 1917.

Dear Mrs Pascoe

I am directed to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office that your husband, Sergeant Pascoe, Peter, was sentenced by court martial to suffer death by being shot, and this sentence was duly executed on November 20th 1917.

I am, madam, Your obedient servant.

The signature was illegible.

'Oh God,' said Ellie. 'I can't believe they really sent things like that.'

'Only about three hundred of them,' said Pascoe.

'The bastards, oh the bastards,' said Ellie.

'It was all a long time ago, and what's three hundred against the millions who died in those years,' said Pascoe. 'I paraphrase.'

'Don't get clever,' she said fiercely. 'We've barely enough time and energy to fight the here-and-now battles without busting our guts to right old wrongs. But this isn't a principle in here, Peter. This is a person. This is a whole sodding family!'

She banged her hand down on the open exercise book.

'Yeah. Ironic, eh?' said Pascoe. 'Sorry, I'm not doing an I-told-you-so. I've found myself wishing that Ada had done what she felt tempted to do and burnt the whole bloody lot instead of dumping it in my lap.'

'She might as well have done. It's not as if you're going to be able to get beyond the dead end she hit, are you?'

'I don't know. All I know is that somehow I seem to be right in the middle of it. You know what the house was called where Peter was brought up? Wanwood. And the family his mother nursemaided for were the Grindals. And this medical genius Sam Batty, his descendants and the Grindals' still run the company. Look, there's a letter here from Herbert Grindal, commiserating with my great-grandmother. He was an officer in the Wyfies, and when I was looking through the old records at Wanwood this morning I came across his name as a patient there when it was a hospital during the war. I tell you, it's like being out in the Salient with shit coming at you from all sides!'

Ellie hacked a piece out of her lasagne, glad to be back in her role of the voice of reason.

'No shit, just good story lines for a Victorian novel,' she said. 'Where does it get you? Nowhere. Ada hit a barrier. You're going to need more than a bit of creepy coincidence to get you over it.'

'There's always Poll Pollinger.'

'Details of the trial, you mean? Don't build up your hopes. From the sound of it, these things weren't exactly conducted in ideal circumstances with a stenographer making a verbatim record. You know what he was charged with, you know he was found guilty. I suspect that even if Poll manages to wheedle a transcript out of her bent colonel, it'll occupy half a sheet of paper and won't tell you much more. This is personal, Peter. Keep it that way. Read his journals. From what I've seen so far, he sounds the kind of man you can be proud to be descended from. And if the war and the system broke him, then pray that you and yours will never be tested to breaking point. Every day I look at the telly and see things that make me think, that is beyond my endurance. Do that to me, and I would go under. Maybe we can change some of those things. Meanwhile, be proud, be hopeful, and eat your lasagne.'

'Well, bugger me, as our daughter might have said before Miss Martindale waved her magic wand,' said Pascoe. 'I married a philosopher. Here's looking at you, Socrates.'

He raised his glass. The phone rang.

'Shit,' said Pascoe, feeling Miss Martindale would have approved.

He got up and went through into the hallway. Ellie heard his voice distantly but deliberately made no effort to organize sound into sense.

She saw by his face when he returned that she'd been right. This was not something she wanted to know.

'What?' she asked.

'It was Andy,' he said. 'Wendy Walker's died. And they've arrested Cap Marvell.'