The Return of Captain John Emmett (13 page)

'I don't know,' said Laurence and stopped.

He realised as he spoke that behind the vague reply was a profound truth. The chasm of what he didn't know was huge. Mary was the least of it. Everything he thought he knew when he was eighteen had been meaningless. Everything he had thought his at twenty-one was gone. That was undoubtedly why he was devising hare-brained schemes to chase dead men and why he was so fond of Charles who had seemed old at thirteen and would seem young at eighty.

For want of anything else to say he blurted out, 'I'm actually going down to the home, asylum, call it what you will, where John Emmett was a patient. Next week. Just to see whether there's anything I can find out for ... Mary.'

'Wasn't that somewhere in the Cotswolds? Oxfordshire? Gloucestershire?' Charles asked.

'Fairford. The nursing home is called Holmwood, it's in Gloucestershire. It's an hour or so west of Oxford by train.'

'Well,' Charles said, brightening up, 'no need to go by train. We can both go in the car. Good to try her out after her temperamental fit the other day and I haven't got much on during the next week as it so happens. We could leave early, stay a couple of nights somewhere and come back after you've spied out the land.' Reading the expression in Laurence's face, he added quickly, 'Unless you're taking your Miss Emmett and want to go
a deux,
of course?'

When Laurence shook his head, Charles continued, 'Wouldn't get in your way. Have a walk. Take the air. Lovely countryside. Who knows, even pick up a bit of gossip?'

To his surprise Laurence found the thought of going with Charles, even travelling in his car, was a pleasant one. All the same, he needed to explain more about his enquiry.

'I'm afraid I'm not exactly going as myself,' he started. 'I mean, I am going as myself but I'm not going to represent Mary Emmett. We didn't want the Holmwood people to be aware of my specific interest in John's death. I've sort of invented a brother—Robert—whom we might need to place in the care of a nursing home. Bad experiences in Flanders...' He tailed off.

'Well, you are a dark horse,' said Charles happily. 'Reminds me of Bulldog Drummond. Marvellous read.'

The journey started off more like a voyage. It had been raining all night and it continued to pour as they drove out of London at dawn. There were very few other vehicles on the road. Charles swerved vigorously to avoid standing water on some streets, yet water seeped in round the passenger door. The interior of the car smelled of leather and oil, and the windscreen and side windows were soon misty with condensation. But by the time they reached the country roads beyond Slough the clouds broke up, and when they stopped briefly at an old inn at Hurley at midday it was beginning to get slightly warmer as the sun emerged.

Laurence's back ached as he pulled himself upright. It had done so since the war. 'You've got an old man's back,' Charles said as he swung himself nimbly out of his seat.

After a pint of beer, they crunched back through rusty drifts of leaves and bright-green spiked conker cases split open on the steaming path. When they returned to the car, Charles pulled back the roof and strapped it down, then took out two woollen scarves, goggles and a map, giving Laurence the less disreputable scarf. Charles set his goggles in place and looked every bit the fearless aviator his driving suggested. Once Laurence got used to the noise and the air rushing past, he relaxed. When they stopped the car a couple of times for Charles to look at the map, he could hear birds and smell the earthiness of the damp countryside. They made little attempt at conversation; Charles occasionally shouted a brief commentary on the car's performance, which was mostly lost to the wind and the engine, and Laurence made vaguely appreciative gestures with which Charles seemed satisfied.

At one point, where the road was straight and wide, he slowed to ask whether Laurence wanted a go, apparently indifferent to the fact that his friend had never driven a car in his life. Having received a firm refusal, Charles lit his pipe and drove on, occasionally beating off the sparks which dropped on his coat.

They passed through Maidenhead, Henley, Wallingford and Wantage: towns of Georgian brick houses and pale stone bridges with broad and tranquil views of the Thames.

Henley was the only place Laurence had visited before, for the 1911 Regatta. It had been one of the hottest weeks of a blazing summer. He'd stayed with an aristocratic Oxford companion: Richard Standish. The house stood a little way from the town, its park slightly raised above the river. The first morning he had got up early. The air was warm even before the sun rose and as it came up a veil of mist lingered over the water. It was silent at the river's edge, the surface dark and unbroken between the reeds. Standish's people had a large house party. He and Richard and a cousin of Richard's, all unexpected guests, had to share a long attic room in the servants' quarters, under the eaves where they could hear doves cooing while they lay on top of the bedclothes in the stifling heat. It was the week Laurence had met Louise.

Louise, then seventeen, was also staying with friends: a large, noisy family with five daughters. He had sometimes wondered whether their meeting and subsequent attraction had all been based on the fantasy that was that regatta week. Louise was being pushed by her mother to set her sights beyond her mercantile roots. He was lonely and without any family. That week he was ensconced with his titled friend while Louise was nestled at the heart of her ebullient hosts. In those contexts they both seemed to offer what the other most wanted. In fact, when he tried to remember when he first saw Louise—surely this was a crucial moment in any tale of love—he was hard put to separate the pale blur of cream and blue dresses, spinning parasols and straw hats, the chattering and the giggles, into separate young women.

John Emmett was there too, he suddenly recalled, though where he was staying he was not sure. He had forgotten that fact completely but now it occurred to him that was actually the last time he'd seen him. Into his mind came a picture of John standing barefoot on a slip in a rowing vest and shorts, slender but well muscled. It had slipped his mind that John was such a good oarsman. He was not a dedicated one; although he could have been first class, he always maintained a position of ultimate disengagement. Was that just the pose of a very young man, he wondered? But John had rowed for his college, which must have required some commitment. Was there a girl beside him? He rather thought there was, smiling and laughing with an easy familiarity under a ridiculous hat. Was that his fiancée, the Bavarian girl? Had she ever come to England?

Just as Laurence was basking, content and almost hypnotised by the vibrations of the car, lulled by memories of summer and cool water, a bump in the road and a mutter from Charles startled him and instantly his mood plummeted. Of all of them, excited and noisy, it seemed that only he was left. That June, eating strawberries in the shade of pavilions or watching the dripping boats lifted from the river, such a thing would have seemed impossible. They were all so much
there,
so permanent in their world. He had occasionally wondered if it was actually he who was dead and excluded, while the others continued together, missing him from time to time, but busy somewhere else. Suddenly, surprisingly, his eyes stung and a desperate fear swept over him that he would weep, sitting in the front seat of Charles's car, travelling along autumn roads in England, and that if he did so he would be crying not for the dead but in terrible self-pity that things he'd enjoyed had been taken away. He lifted his head to the oncoming wind, glad that his smarting eyes were hidden.

They passed a flock of children coming out of a village school. Several girls in pinafores waved, while small boys in short trousers and boots shouted at the sight of the car. Charles hooted twice. Smoke rose from cottage chimneys. A dog ran out at them yapping and in danger of hurling itself under the wheels in its fury.

They came through Wolvescot, right on the border between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire according to their map, and gathered speed going downhill between an avenue of trees. Charles jabbed his finger vigorously out of the side window and, leaning forward, Laurence could see some sort of tall, dark tower emerging from a dense copse on a nearby hill. There was something Gothic about it, isolated in the English countryside.

'The Folly,' Charles shouted. Laurence remembered it from an outing at school; they must be nearer than he thought to the Wiltshire border.

The countryside became more undulating; the sun was almost directly in their faces, yet it was getting colder. Laurence pulled up his greatcoat collar around the scarf and sank lower in his seat. Charles had come up with the name of both an inn and a small hotel, suggested to him by friends.

They finally rolled into Fairford along a narrow street of honey-coloured, terraced houses. They passed the hotel, a tidy Georgian house, just as they came into a large market place and stopped. An inn, the Bull, occupied almost one full side of the square. Its low, mossy roof and small windows gave it an appearance of great age.

Charles stood by the car, looking from one establishment to the other. He pulled off his goggles; each eye was surrounded by a disc of white in his grimy face.

'Shall we try the inn first?' he asked, to Laurence's surprise. 'Village hostelry by the look of it; sort of place one might find oneself buying a drink for a local and picking up a bit of gossip. Hotels only have guests, strangers like us, nothing to be gained there.'

Not for the first time, Laurence looked at him in admiration.

As they walked into the dark, low interior of the inn, the landlord appeared, looking surprised, wiping his hands on his apron. Charles took a large, plain room with double windows overlooking the market square, while Laurence chose a much smaller bedroom with a beamed ceiling and a tiny fireplace, but a view towards the spire of Fairford church. A boy brought in their bags and they agreed to meet in half an hour.

After a while there was a knock on Laurence's door and a plump girl stood with a large jug of steaming water. 'D'you want the fire lighted?' she asked.

Laurence shook his head and took the jug from her. He heard the squeak of floorboards as she went downstairs. He hung his coat in a wardrobe that smelled strongly of camphor, then, stripping off his jacket, shirt and vest, poured the contents of the jug into the bowl on the washstand and leaned forward, steeping his arms halfway to his elbows. His skin tingled with the sudden heat.

Peering into the speckled glass over the basin, he realised that his face was as creased and filthy as Charles's—no wonder the landlord had looked surprised. He was quite stiff and weary, as if he'd had a day's exercise rather than a ride in a motor car. When he'd washed he lay down on the bed and pulled the eiderdown up over him for warmth. The bed sank deeply beneath him, softened by age; it reminded him of school where generations of boys had shaped the mattresses into hammocks. Under the feather pillow was a horsehair bolster.

He lay on his back, looking at a ceiling yellowed with age. With his ankles crossed and his hands on his chest, he was as still as an alabaster knight. All he needed was a small dog under his heels, he thought. He was drifting. The eiderdown became an ancient flag over the catafalque. He remembered a cathedral where his father had taken him as a child. Military colours and standards hung high in a side chapel, flag after flag, generation after generation: stained, torn, repaired and decayed. The lower ones were still dyed deep red and blue, and retained threads of tarnished gold; the highest had faded into soft, bone-coloured gauze, the distant regiments and battle honours that they represented as invisible as their mottoes had become. He must have been very small because his father had been holding his hand.

***

An insistent rapping at the door woke him.

'Laurence. Are you coming down?'

Laurence looked at his watch but had to strike a match to read it. He'd been asleep for nearly two hours. He swung his feet out of bed and pulled on his discarded jacket.

'God, Charles, I'm sorry. I must have just dropped off' he said as he opened the door.

'Not a problem. I've been having a little look around, spoken to our landlord: font of wisdom, and he's happy to serve a simple dinner in the parlour. You dress and I'll see you downstairs in a quarter of an hour, say?'

'Yes. Of course. Sorry, just went out like a light,' Laurence said.

When the door closed he lit the lamp then scrabbled to find a clean shirt and socks. He peered in the glass again, damped down his hair and combed it through with his fingers. He hardly recognised the man with the deep lines round his eyes and a few first grey hairs. When had he got so old?

Downstairs a coal fire burned in a back room which smelled of smoke and tar. Plates of cold tongue, chunks of fresh bread and some cheese had been set out on a table next to a stoneware jar of pickles.

'I hope the beer suits you,' Charles said. 'Local brew but the landlord assures me it's good.'

Laurence was ravenous and the food was much better than he'd expected. There was occasional laughter from elsewhere in the building but muffled by thick walls, and from time to time a heavy door slammed shut. Otherwise the only sound was of their knives scraping on the plates. The beer was as good as Charles promised and when the girl he'd seen earlier came in to take their plates and refill their tankards, he sat back, content.

'Nervous about tomorrow?' Charles asked.

'I expect I should be but in truth I'm quite curious.'

'See what you can extract for Miss Emmett?' Charles looked amused as he pulled out his tobacco pouch.

'Actually, it feels more as if I'm doing it for John himself and, less creditably, my own curiosity. But it's certainly because of Mary's suspicions about how the place was run. Eleanor Bolitho, too—she was pretty damning about these set-ups. Not that I can do a thing about it anyway.'

Charles was concentrating on tamping his pipe.