The Return of Captain John Emmett (40 page)

He was surprised by the degree of her loyalty to her mother.

'I don't know why John left money to Mrs Lovell, but I'm glad he remembered William Bolitho,' she said.

'I imagine he liked him, and Eleanor Bolitho befriended him when she was his nurse. Also, he probably wanted to help someone who had ended up in poor shape.'

He still didn't tell Mary that Eleanor had seen John at Holmwood and had passed herself off as his sister. She might even have been the last visitor he saw before he died. Nor did he mention Nicholas. He felt uncomfortable lying by default but he had made a promise.

'That must have made a difference to them,' said Mary. 'I mean, it must have given them hope. Especially for William Bolitho, given he was unlikely to work again. They at least had something to live for. That little boy.'

Laurence looked down and Mary took it for distress.

'Oh my God, Laurence, I'm so sorry. I forgot. I mean, it's awful that I forgot.'

'It's all right. I forget myself sometimes. It seems a long time ago. But I just can't imagine it. It's not real. I can hardly remember what Louise's face looked like and I never even saw the baby.'

'Your son.'

'I wish I had,' he heard himself saying without acknowledging her. 'I wish I knew what he looked like. Though he would have looked like all babies, of course. Small. Round. Cross.' He attempted a laugh.

'Did he have a name?

'Christopher Joseph Laurence. Christopher after my father and Joseph after hers. We were going to call him Kit. For short.'

He stopped, the brevity of everything concerned with his unknown son suddenly overwhelming him.

He took a couple of deep breaths. 'He did all right at first. Louise was virtually unconscious by the time he was delivered. She had a massive haemorrhage, though she did see him, or so her mother likes to believe. He just succumbed. No will to live. A big baby,' he added. 'No real reason for him to die. Not enough oxygen, perhaps, they thought.'

'Oh Laurie,' said Mary, moving to sit on the floor next to him and rubbing his hand. 'You must have been so sad. To lose them both. You must have loved your wife very much.'

'That's the really awful bit of it. I'm not sure I ever did. Not enough. I married her because I was lonely. That wasn't what I thought at the time but looking back I think that's why. I didn't have a family so I thought I could share hers. She was utterly without malice but she was just a girl, unformed. I couldn't talk to her.' He stopped. 'And she didn't like me, not as a husband. Not in a physical way. She liked me as a friend, as someone to be beside her, to sit in a nice house, to tease her and admire her. But me as a man she found very difficult. She was young. She knew nothing at all really about the realities of love or marriage. I think part of her couldn't believe I could want to do something so horrible to her. I didn't have time to get to know her before she was pregnant. Then she lost the baby and was devastated. All she wanted was another baby. When she knew she was pregnant again, that made her happy. Totally, utterly happy.'

He wondered whether he was entering territory that was far too personal to discuss with a woman he had not known long, however intensely he had felt a connection, but he kept on talking. Mary looked interested but not shocked at his openness.

'Once she was pregnant she didn't want me to share a room with her. Of course she was terrified about losing this baby too but it was more than that. I think it all revolted her. All the same, I hated myself for being dissatisfied with her, and yet wanting the comfort of her so much. And meanwhile the war had come.

'When I came back on leave the gulf between us was even greater. All she talked about was the baby or if she discussed the war it was simply how we were winning every battle. She wouldn't hear anything that contradicted that. She wouldn't see what was right in front of her eyes. A couple of times I read reports to her from
The Times:
all highly watered-down versions of what I'd been part of, but she actually put her hands over her ears.'

'Perhaps she was frightened to bring a baby into a world where victory wasn't a certainty?'

Mary stood up as she spoke and he thought she was going into the kitchen. For a second he thought his frankness had disappointed her or even repelled her. However, she leaned over to touch the side of his face. When he didn't pull back she put out her other hand and raised his face to look at her. Then, astonishingly, she bent down and kissed him gently on the lips. 'I'm so sorry,' she whispered.

He looked back at her and her gaze didn't waver. She walked on into the tiny scullery and ran herself a glass of water. He loved watching her take his rooms for granted.

'It was the war,' she said as she came back through the door, 'and it was like nothing else. It complicated things. Not just for soldiers.'

He sensed she was pondering whether to continue.

'I wasn't honest with you,' she said finally. 'Sins of omission and all that.'

His heart sank. He wasn't sure whether, after all this time, he wanted to know any secrets she'd been holding back.

'There was somebody.'

Laurence felt a terrible sadness, then simultaneously—and, he knew, demeaningly—a hope that the past tense meant just that.

'He was married,' she said, sitting down next to him on the floor, her back against a chair. 'It was a very unhappy marriage. Among other things, his wife found she couldn't have children. Very sad for them both. Although she found someone else, they were Catholic; hers was a very old recusant family so the world turned a blind eye. Richard found himself sort of in limbo. He loved the estate—just two farms and a beautiful Tudor house, though a very dilapidated, very cold house.'

She smiled, apparently in recollection, and Laurence's heart sank again.

'My father was dead. My mother, well, you've seen her. She seldom thinks of anyone or anything outside the effort of just living her life. So there was nobody to inveigh against my unsuitable relationship.'

She looked straight at Laurence but he found it hard not to avoid her eyes, hoping she didn't mistake jealousy for disapproval.

'Nobody to tell me that my reputation would be besmirched or that I'd never find a decent husband. Of course we didn't know there'd be a war, but if we had, we'd probably just have seized the day.'

Although the grin she gave him was partly bravado, he thought, it made her look like a schoolgirl.

'Anyway, Richard was as much a husband as I can imagine any man being. Not at first, not for a long time—I was quite young, of course, and he was dreadfully anxious about protecting me from scandal, whereas I didn't really give a fig myself—but, in the end.'

Laurence desperately wanted to swallow but she was looking at him too closely. She seemed to be testing his response despite her apparent certainties.

'Anyway he stayed in the country in Sussex, in the old, cold house overlooking the Downs. He'd been born in that house. His wife, Blanche, lived in their flat in London. He was lonely but he loved the countryside. The cloud shadows over the hills, the foam of hawthorn in spring: he used to say the whole landscape echoed the sea. His house was a bit like an old ship, stranded inland. It was all faded reds and silver wood, overhanging upper storeys, barley-sugar chimneys.

'We met at the house of mutual friends one weekend. I think we each sensed loneliness in the other. We took to meeting just to walk and talk. Over the next months and years we must have explored the whole county in every season and every kind of weather. He liked the crumbling cliffs, the sea mists and the rattle of the sea on the shingle; he tried to go into the navy when he saw the way things were going, but it was quicker'—she grimaced—'and easier to get a commission in the army. My own favourite place was the Long Man of Wilmington—a huge chalk figure with a stave in each hand—and a little medieval priory or something near by. A place of ancient peace. I often go back there now.'

Laurence felt the tiny satisfaction of incorporating another bit of her life into his understanding of her. This was the scandal Charles had spoken of and also why he had bumped into her in Sussex. He wanted to ask the identity of the man she had met but not introduced him to at the Wigmore Hall, but it still wasn't the right moment.

'I expect people talked,' she said. 'But it was a long, long time until he asked me if I would consider being his. He was such an extraordinarily decent man. He told me he could never offer me marriage. Never bring me to his house as its chatelaine. Not in his wife's lifetime. That people might despise us and we would have to be terribly careful not to have a child. But he loved me. He loved me and I loved him, so it was an easy decision. And I was never happier.' She stopped. 'Do you think the less of me?' she said almost triumphantly.

'Of course not,' he said. His chest hurt with it.

'Well, it's different now. Since the war. These times we live in. But it was a bigger thing then. My mother wouldn't speak to me when the penny dropped. Not for about three weeks. Which is ages in her book.' Her lips twitched and a small dimple showed that she was trying not to smile.

'What happened to him?' asked Laurence. 'Was he lost in the war?'

'Yes.' Her animated face seemed to freeze.

Then, seeming to think this inadequate information, she added, At Vimy Ridge. Just a tiny piece of shrapnel. A lethal sliver of hot metal burning its way through his brain. He wasn't touched otherwise.' She seemed momentarily lost. 'He was very ... beautiful,' she said.

Her head was resting on his shoulder. He stroked her hair with his right hand and absent-mindedly tucked a strand behind her ear. She turned her face towards him just as his arm gave way and they both fell to the floor. He was more or less on his back, rubbing his arm to restore circulation. She pushed herself up to a half-sitting position, leaning over him. For a second she just looked at him. The fire popped. Then she reached out and dragged a cushion off the chair, putting it behind his head. The top of her own was framed by the window and the light of the sinking sun illuminated individual hairs like fine copper wires. He pulled her towards him and kissed her. It was clumsy, the adjustment of unfamiliar bodies. Her mouth was little and controlled at first and then became softer as he kissed her. His hand curved round the back of her neck and he moved it downwards, feeling the depressions of her collarbone, sliding under the neckline of her dress with his fingertips.

She pulled away slightly but still lay with the top of her body over his. Her eyes were grey and solemn, her eyelashes surprisingly dark. He noticed she had tiny freckles on her nose, so faint he had never seen them before. He watched himself touch her. She had looked so boyish, yet felt all curves and pliancy in his arms. This time she kissed him.

'This isn't about Richard,' she said after a long time. 'It isn't even about John. It's certainly not about Louise or the war or either of us feeling sorry for the other one. It's just about you and me.'

She traced his lips with her fingers. She was smiling.

Many hours later he woke in bed feeling cold. It was just light and at some point in the night they'd moved from the floor to his bed. Mary was nestled, fast asleep, between him and the wall, with his arm under her neck and her back curved into him, but the blanket had barely covered them both and his naked shoulders were cold. He propped himself up awkwardly on one elbow and looked down at her. His fingers hovered over her ear; although he longed to touch her, he didn't want to wake her up. Her curls lay flat against her cheek. He felt a charge of happiness. It was as if the intensity of his gaze reached her because suddenly she gave a sigh, turning over and nearly knocking him out of bed. He held on to her and her eyes opened. She blinked a couple of times.

'Ooh, you're cold. You'd better kiss me.'

'Such self-sacrifice,' he said, pulling her towards him.

She smelled warm and musky. His hand followed the contours of her neck and shoulder. Moving to her breast he was filled with joy as well as desire when he felt her nipple harden again beneath his fingers.

It was nearly lunchtime when they finally got up. As she sat on the edge of the bed she picked up his copy of
The Jungle Book.
He was about to justify it being there when she said, 'I love these stories. I've still got mine. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was my favourite. That's why I kept a ferret; it was the nearest I could get to a mongoose in Suffolk.'

Once out of bed he felt slightly awkward, although Mary seemed completely at home, both with him and with the acceleration of their relationship. He'd intended to make breakfast but by the time he had washed and shaved she had already pulled the bed together, gathered up their discarded clothes off the floor, cooked scrambled eggs on toast and made a pot of tea. She was walking around in his dressing gown. He picked up a piece of hot bacon between his fingers. They had eaten nothing the evening before and he was famished.

'This is a good thing that's come out of all this unhappiness,' she said, her knife and fork clattering on the plate. 'One really good thing. Us finding each other.'

He looked at her but didn't speak. He was happier than he could remember being in ten years but despite it all he felt an underlying disquiet.

When he returned from seeing her off at the station, the flat seemed quiet without her, yet it still held echoes of her presence. He felt calm and hopeful. He was able to settle to work for most of the day. For the first time he could see that he might write his book and return to teaching. All the while he deliberately left the washing-up, the two plates, two teacups, two knives and teaspoons, on the side.

Charles's disappointment at finding that Laurence had dealt with Chilvers by himself was palpable. As a result, he insisted on accompanying him around during his next day's errands. Despite Laurence's half-hearted protestations that it would be too cold and too boring for Charles to drive him to the Bolithos', he was glad to have him as a chauffeur. Charles could even take him on to see Mrs Lovell, leave him there and still have time to see his tailor as he'd apparently planned, while Laurence could go on to Fleet Street by bus. He had woken up determined to catch Brabourne at the paper at the end of the day.