Only a Signal Shown

By Leela Dutt

only a signal shown is a long-distance love story which takes the reader from cardiff to nigeria and on to rome, copenhagen and beyond. there are dazzling scenes among the himalayas, and we travel down the grand canyon, see new york celebrating new year's eve, and visit st Petersburg. the climax comes with the armed invasion of lesotho by south africa when the heroine is shot trying to escape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leela Dutt
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311323118

Leela Dutt

I'm an outsider - raised in Golders Green by an Indian father and a Danish mother, after Oxford I've lived all my life in Cardiff, Wales. I've written novels about the peace movement in the 1980s (Rubik's Cube), artificial intelligence and the twentieth century history of an Indian family and a German Jewish family (Mathison) as well as short stories about Quakers (Kingfisher Blue). My latest novel Only a Signal Shown draws on my wide experience of travelling the world.STOP PRESS: new collection of short stories just published by Bridge House - FRESH BEGINNINGSBook launch Thursday March 24th by zoom 7pm GMT. Ask Leela for a link to register for this free event.

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Only a Signal Shown

By Leela Dutt

Published by Leela Dutt

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Leela Dutt

To my father Shambhu Nath Dutt

1900 – 1969

and to his great-granddaughter Bethan Beatrix Long

2001 – 2006

More thanks than I can put into words go to my husband Robin Attfield, who accompanied me to nearly all the places described in this book, usually while he was lecturing in philosophy or giving conference papers. I am grateful also to our wider families in Copenhagen and Kolkata for their friendship and support. The cottage in Powys, mid-Wales, was shamelessly stolen from our old friends Robin and Margaret Fawcett. For the Afrikaans spoken in the chapter set during the armed invasion of Lesotho I am grateful to Johan Hattingh and his son Diederik of Stellenbosch, South Africa. My daughter Jo, who got caught up in that conflict when she went to teach maths in Lesotho, helpfully sent me cuttings about the invasion from the local press afterwards. Nothing that I write gets by without the thoughtful and inspired criticism of my other daughter, Kate, for which I shall be grateful to the end of my days.

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,

Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness;

So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,

Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Contents

Chapter One: Wales, 1972

Chapter Two: Nigeria, 1973

Chapter Three: Rome, 1977

Chapter Four: France, 1980

Chapter Five: Copenhagen, 1985

Chapter Six: Rome, 1986

Chapter Seven: 1986

Chapter Eight: 1987-89

Chapter Nine: India, 1989

Chapter Ten: Emails 1989 – 1993

Chapter Eleven: Finland, 1993

Chapter Twelve: USA, 1995

Chapter Thirteen: Wales, May 1997

Chapter Fourteen: Italy, August 1997

Chapter Fifteen: Italy, September 1997

Chapter Sixteen: Lesotho, 1998

Chapter Seventeen: Wales, November 1998

Chapter Eighteen: Rome, March 1999

Chapter One: Wales, 1972

What the hell is that hideous smell?

Overpowering – burning, surely, but also sweet. Sweet? Kind of orangey.

Breathless, Eleanor paused at the top of the third flight of stairs, clutching a heavy set of books she was trying to return. The smell was stronger up there; surely that was smoke she could see at the end of the dark corridor? The kitchens must all be on that side of the hall of residence.

She hurried along the corridor, and now she could hear someone coughing. Opening the door, she was hit by fog.

A very young man was standing there, looking puzzled. He was tall and he had an untidy mass of black hair which went straight up, and the most peculiar eyebrows. He was staring at the oven; his eyes were the deepest brown she had ever come across. A cartoon character, exaggerated features, shock on his face. On the worktop he had put down a large brown pair of NHS glasses, covered in steam.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, I couldn’t help noticing…’

She opened the oven door and saw a blackened corpse which from its shape used once, perhaps, to be a chicken. She turned the oven off, grabbed a couple of cloths and deftly lifted the tray out and put it down.

‘Oh thanks,’ the young man said. ‘I wasn’t sure what… My name’s Alec Jenkins, by the way.’

‘Enchanted to meet you,’ she said. But he looked much too nice for her brand of sarcasm. ‘Eleanor Larsen-Bruun. That’s a double letter U in Bruun, mind; my father was Danish. What on earth is this?’

She opened the window with a struggle, while Alec told her that he was trying to roast a chicken for the boys and had put marmalade all over the breast.

‘My Mum puts marmalade on chicken,’ he explained, and Eleanor found it endearing that he was still so close to his parental home that what happened there was his standard, his frame of reference. He was surely a first year student like herself.

‘Well perhaps your mother doesn’t use quite so much marmalade,’ said Eleanor, noticing a half-empty jar on the table. ‘And what have you got inside it? Oh no…’ She reached inside the bird and pulled out a melted plastic bag containing what could only be the giblets. She suppressed a giggle. ‘Actually I think you’re supposed to take these out before you cook it,’ she told him, trying to sound kind. He really was a very nice young man; he probably shouldn’t be allowed out alone, and being unkind to him would be like kicking a kitten.

‘Look, it isn’t that bad,’ said Eleanor, pulling at the outside skin. By now the smell had changed, and she was beginning to get a whiff of what could be rather pleasant roast chicken. It was a very long time since breakfast, and she hadn’t had time – or money – for any lunch today so she had worked all day in the lab without a break. ‘There should be enough here for you and your friends if you cut it carefully.’

‘Well no, actually, I don’t think any of them are free this evening. There’s a match on the box – I didn’t realise.’

‘Oh, is there?’ Matches tended to pass Eleanor by.

‘But it seems a shame to waste the chicken. I’m starving!’ he said with a sudden grin. ‘I don’t suppose… Would you like some? There’s plenty.’

‘Well if you insist…’

Eleanor found a couple of plates in a cupboard and started to hack at the bird. ‘Potatoes? No, don’t worry: someone’s left a loaf here – surely they won’t mind if we liberate a couple of slices?’

Cutlery was apparently in short supply. ‘Hey, who needs cutlery?’ Eleanor said as she carried the chicken into Alec’s room along the corridor. They curled up on the bed with it, attacking the sticky meat with fingers.

‘These black bits of skin are nice, you know,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’ve always loved burnt toast, too. My mother thinks I’m mad. But then she thinks I’m mad whatever I do. So does my sister.’

They got their hands and faces covered in stickiness, which Alec seemed to mind more than Eleanor did.

‘My father always said that if it has wings, you are allowed to pick it up in your fingers and eat it. That’s a Danish rule, he said…’

‘He sounds nice, your father. Is he…?’

‘He’s dead now.’

‘Oh I’m so sorry.’

‘He died when I was fifteen,’ Eleanor went on. ‘I loved him very, very much but he died anyway.’

Why on earth did I say that? I’ve never said that to anyone before.

‘My mother’s Italian,’ she went on. ‘She’s a lot older than me – she was forty-three by the time she had me, but she tries gamely to keep up. We live in London.’

‘Italian, is she? That’s where you get your looks from, then,’ Alec said, getting out his hanky to wipe his chin.

That’s what they all say. Bugger.

They washed the chicken down with some cans of coke – which was all he had in his room. Eleanor drank his coke that evening, and it was several days before she told him that she had never liked fizzy drinks, especially the sort that come in cans.

‘We could go to the Union for a drink,’ he suggested, and she found that she didn’t have anything at all pressing to do that evening.

He had long thin hands – that much she remembered noticing on the first evening, as she drew a quick sketch of him the next day. Piano player’s hands, but he said not: it was his younger brother Charlie who was the musical one in the family. A budding genius, thought their mother, but geniuses have to practise, and Charlie was reluctant, since he had a theory that the more you practise the worse you become.

Alec didn’t seem keen to talk about his family, so Eleanor asked him instead about his subject. He was reading history, but his real passion was archaeology. His whole face lit up as he talked to her about the Romans at Caerleon. ‘Have you been to see the amphitheatre there? I could take you…’

Next morning Alec turned up at Eleanor’s shared house first thing. She hadn’t had breakfast – and the place was a mess.

‘Sorry to be so early,’ he said, trying to look contrite. ‘But I thought you’d be going out any minute…’

Indeed she should be, but she found it much more agreeable to offer him coffee and sit down opposite him in the communal kitchen. With a bit of luck no one else from the house would drift in; they were a nosey lot, her housemates, but not being scientists they didn’t get up that early.

In the cold light of day Alec looked – what? More real? His hair was even more all over the place. She worked out what was so odd about his eyebrows: they went up like gable ends. He had an infectious laugh and a fresh, just-washed smell.

‘I could make you toast,’ she offered. She never normally had time for toast. ‘I promise not to burn it!’

He laughed. ‘I don’t care if you do! Yes, please.’

‘I’ve got plenty of marmalade,’ she told him. ‘You’ll want that.’

He went on to explain that it really was urgent to see her because he’d just remembered that a mate of his was having a party the following night and he wondered if she’d like to come. ‘It might be terribly boring but you wouldn’t have to stay long if you don’t like it…’

She hated parties.

‘Oh yes, that sounds lovely. Thanks.’

Hell – why did I say that? Now I’ve got to find something to wear, and I have absolutely nothing – repeat, nothing – that will stop me looking like a small dumpy woman with too many cardigans.

He was right: it was a boring party. The mate who was holding it turned out to be more of an acquaintance, and there wasn’t anyone else there whom either of them knew.

There was a hopeless squash around the food, and he had to put his arm around her to guide her to where they might get some.

That’s nice – do keep your arm just exactly there.

He took a couple of plates and began to pile them high with a bit of everything. ‘Don’t know what this is, do you? Never mind, we’ll try it.’ There was quite a lot of not altogether unpleasant wine.

Eventually they noticed that they hadn’t actually spoken to anyone else since they entered the room, and he suggested that they went elsewhere. ‘Sorry Eleanor – when you’ve taken so much trouble. Getting dressed, I mean. I like that green thingy, by the way – what would you call it? Your blouse, is it? Whatever. We can stay if you want…’

‘I do normally, you know. Get dressed. Before I go out anywhere.’ She giggled. ‘But I don’t mind leaving. We can go back to my place if you like.’

Her place was mercifully empty, it being Friday night. There was a smell of stale baked beans, and someone – Her Upstairs probably – had left the cheese and its dirty grater out on the table as usual.

He did not appear to see the clutter in her room. Swiftly she swept up the jumble of stuff on her bed – lecture notes, mainly, and a recent letter from her sister, a dirty bra and a couple of half-eaten apples – and made a space.

At least he can’t think I was planning all along to bring him back here.

He looked round for a chair to sit on. There was only the one, so very carefully he lifted up the papers and a couple of books, straightened them into a neat pile, and placed them on the desk. He sat on the chair while she curled up on the bed.

‘Why don’t you come onto the bed too?’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of room.’

‘Oh! Well, all right, then.’

She shifted along and he squatted gingerly on the edge of the bed.

She smiled encouragingly, but he didn’t quite seem to know what to do next. ‘Well…this is nice. Have you lived here long?’ he said after a moment.

‘Long enough,’ she laughed, taking his hand. She leant forwards and kissed him on the mouth. For a fraction of a second he looked startled.

* * *

It was pouring with rain when he took her out to see the Roman remains at Caerleon next day. They had to catch a couple of buses, and by the time they arrived the damp was seeping into Eleanor’s socks. On the way Alec had made some silly remark about another passenger on the bus – something about a woman’s hat looking as though it had two or three birds nesting deep within its environs, and Eleanor found to her embarrassment that she couldn’t stop laughing. Nor could Alec.

‘I’m sorry we couldn’t borrow my Dad’s car,’ he said at last, taking her hand and leading her straight to the museum to get out of the rain. ‘But my brother Charlie wrecked it last weekend, taking Milly to some dance.’

‘Milly?’

‘Oh, she’s just an old family friend. My Mum was at school with her mother. Mum’s always wanted one of us to marry Milly…’

‘So she’s Charlie’s girlfriend?’

‘Ah no, not seriously. Charlie’s got several girls on the go at the moment. He’s just using Milly. He always uses people,’ he went on. He sounded venomous, she thought in surprise.

‘So how does Milly feel about it?’

Alec paused. ‘I think, poor kid, that she’s rather keen on my brother.’ He reached in his pocket for some change to pay the entrance fee. ‘Anyway Charlie wrapped Dad’s car round this lamppost, didn’t he… Bit of a cliché, but then my brother’s a walking cliché.’

‘How fast was the lamppost going?’

Alec grinned and put his arm round her waist. ‘So Dad’s not speaking to Charlie, and there’s no car for me to borrow just now. He won’t let anyone else touch the courtesy car.’

They went into the museum and shook the rain off their clothes like a pair of puppies.

‘I don’t usually…’ he said, pausing by an exhibit of Roman helmets in the first room. ‘You know, sleep with someone on the first date.’ He looked at her anxiously. ‘But it was OK, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh but it wasn’t our first date!’ She laughed. ‘Chicken dinner was the first, remember, then you came for breakfast… No, last night was our third at the very least, if we are counting.’

He kissed her nose and an elderly man of about forty, who was escorting a party of school-children, turned round and frowned.

Alec had planned to have lunch at the pub in the main street, but when they stood outside in what was by now a light drizzle, looking at the menu, he realised in horror that he hadn’t in fact got enough cash on him.

‘Oh, never mind.’ She grinned. ‘I’m not hungry enough for a steak! Wasn’t there a café we passed near the bus stop?’

The café was small and crowded, full of wet customers and a smell of freshly cooked chips and damp clothing. Luckily some people left just as they walked in, so Eleanor grabbed their table while Alec went over to join the queue at the counter. He ordered two plates of egg and chips. As he balanced them on a tray and turned to carry it across to Eleanor, he stooped over the tray, frowning with concentration, and she saw for the first time that he had a curious way of walking, with his feet turned out like a Scottish dancer’s travelling step. She smiled across the room at him.

The weather cleared up later and they were able to go and see the open-air amphitheatre.

‘This is one of the best preserved amphitheatres that we have,’ he told her. ‘But then I suppose you’re used to Roman amphitheatres.’ He took her hand and led her into the middle, their feet squelching on the grass. The wind was beginning to get up again. ‘Have you been to Rome often?’

‘I have, yes. My older sister Gabriella lives there now – she’s married to an Italian journalist. Me and my mother are going out there for Christmas.’

‘Oh. Christmas, I see.’ His face fell. ‘How long will you be away?’

‘Not that long. You’ll be in Cardiff with your family?’

He sighed. ‘Oh yes. One big happy family, us. You’ll have to come and meet them before the end of term, I guess.’

‘No hurry.’

‘No there isn’t, is there?’ He grinned. ‘Are you warm enough, Ellie?’

‘Just a little on the chilly side,’ she admitted. Her coat was still damp from the morning.

‘Well let’s go and see the baths, then we can get the bus back.’

It wasn’t until they got back to Alec’s room that Eleanor finally dried out. He lent her a huge, thick green sweater which she snuggled into, while he investigated what food he had. He suggested bacon and eggs for supper, which sounded good to Eleanor.

‘So what’s so peculiar about your family?’ she said several hours later, as she lay propped up on the pillow in his bed.

He stretched out his foot and hooked it round her legs, placing his hand on her stomach. ‘You are incredibly beautiful, you know. I can’t believe that someone as lovely as you should want to –’

‘Don’t change the subject – you haven’t answered my question, Alec. Go on, I’m interested. I’ve never had much in the way of family.’

He sighed. ‘How long have you got? Well there’s my father – he gets these terrible nightmares. Always has, as long as I can remember. He was at Monte Cassino during the war but he never talks about it. No one is allowed to mention it, ever. I mean, seriously, ever. My little sister Roz tried to, once. He exploded!’

‘Did he really?’

‘We didn’t know what hit us. My Mum rushed him away upstairs, and he didn’t speak to any of us for a week. Oh and I’ve got a mysterious uncle that we never talk about either. But never mind about all that now – would you like to…?’

She smiled and put her arms around his neck. ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ she said, kissing his ear.

* * *

By the time Alec reluctantly took Eleanor to meet his parents, it was already December and his mother Barbara was hanging elaborate decorations on what struck Eleanor as a very early Christmas tree. They lived in a huge house in Lisvane, set back from the road with an enormous front garden, an even bigger one at the back.

Barbara paused briefly, put down the bowl of baubles and pushed the hair back from her face. ‘Oh hallo there. You must be…?’

‘This is Eleanor, Mum. I did tell you.’

‘So sorry. I’m good with names, but Charlie, that’s my other son,’ she went on, sticking her hand out briefly. ‘Charlie brings back a different girl every fortnight; I simply can’t keep up with them!’

‘Is Charlie around?’ There was a distinct note of hesitation in Alec’s question.

‘Oh yes, he’s here somewhere. Supposed to be revising for his Mock A Levels but you know Charlie. Probably playing the guitar.’

Charlie was her favourite, obviously.

As Barbara stretched up to hang a big golden globe near the top of the tree, her foot slipped. ‘Damn!’ She clutched at Alec’s arm. ‘I can’t quite reach. Could you be a brick…’

Alec took the bauble off her and hung it as high as he could. ‘Chin up, old bean!’ he cried with a grin, and Barbara gave a great guffaw at what Eleanor took to be some obscure private family joke, as indeed it was: Alec later explained to her that his mother used to say that to her children when they were tiny, and they teased her about it as they grew older.

‘Now look, darlings,’ Barbara said, getting her breath back. ‘Do you mind leaving me in peace for half an hour? I must get these blooming decorations finished while Norman is out, else he’ll come back and want it done differently.’

When Eleanor knew the family better, she realised that this was unlikely, for Norman never criticised anything that Barbara had already