There are four ways to write a woman’s life: the woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call an autobiography; she may tell it in what she chooses to call fiction; a biographer, woman or man, may write the woman’s life in what is called a biography; or the woman may write her own life, in advance of living it, unconsciously, and without recognizing or naming the process.
CAROLYN HEILBRUN,
from Writing a Woman’s Life
Where Beauty and Beauty meet
All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
And scattering bright the air,
Eddying, dizzying, closing round,
With soft and drunken laughter;
Veiling all that may befall
After-after
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Beauty and Beauty”
The post slid through the letter box, cascading onto the tile floor of the entry hall with a sound like the wind rustling through bamboo. Lydia Brooke heard the sound from the breakfast room, where she sat with her hands wrapped round her teacup. With her morning tea long gone cold, she lingered, unable to choose between the small actions that would decide the direction of her day.
Through the French doors at the far end of the room, she could see chaffinches pecking at the ground beneath the yellow blaze of forsythia, and in her mind she tried to put the picture into words. It was habit, almost as automatic as breathing, this search for pattern, meter, cadence, but today it eluded her. Closing her eyes, she tilted her face up towards the weak March sun slanting through the windows set high in the vaulted room.
She and Morgan had used his small inheritance to add this combination kitchen/dining area to the Victorian terraced house. It jutted into the back garden, all glass and clean lines and pale wood, a monument to failed hopes. The plans they’d had to modernize the rest of the house had somehow never materialized. The plumbing still leaked, the pink-and-white-striped wallpaper peeled delicately from the walls in the entry hall, the cracks in the plasterwork spread like aging veins, the radiator hissed and rumbled like some subterranean beast. Lydia had grown used to the defects, had come to find an almost perverse sort of comfort in them. It meant she was coping, getting on with things, and that was, after all, what was expected of one, even when the day stretching ahead seemed an eternity.
She pushed away her cold cup and rose, tightening the belt of her dressing gown around her slight body as she padded barefoot towards the front of the house. The tile felt gritty beneath her feet and she curled her toes as she knelt to gather the post. One envelope outweighed the rest, and the serviceable brown paper bore her solicitor’s return address. She dropped the other letters in the basket on the hall table and ran her thumb carefully under the envelope’s seal as she walked towards the back of the house.
Freed from its wrapping, the thick sheaf of papers unfolded in her hands and the words leapt out at her: IN THE MATTER OF THE MARRIAGE OF LYDIA LOVELACE BROOKE ASHBY AND MORGAN GABRIEL ASHBY… She reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped as her brain picked out words from among the legalese. FINAL DECREE… PETITION OF DIVORCE GRANTED THIS DAY… The pages slipped from her numb fingers, and it seemed to her that they drifted downwards, cradled on the air like feathers.
She had known it would come, had even thought herself prepared. Now she saw her hollow bravado with a sudden sickening clarity-her shell of acceptance had been fragile as the skin of algae on a pond.
After a long moment she began to climb the stairs slowly, her calves and thighs aching with the burden of each step. When she reached the first floor, she held on to the wall like an unsteady drunk as she made her way to the bathroom.
Shivering, shallow-breathed, she closed and locked the door. The motions required a deliberate concentration; her hands still felt oddly disconnected from her body. The bath taps next; she adjusted the temperature with the same care. Tepid-she’d read somewhere that the water should be tepid-and salts, yes, of course, she added the bath salts, now the water would be warm and saline, satin as blood.
Satisfied, she stood, and the deep blue silk of the dressing gown puddled at her feet. She stepped in and sank into the water, Aphrodite returning from whence she came, razor in hand.
Victoria McClellan lifted her hands from the keyboard, took a breath, and shook herself What in hell had just happened to her? She was a biographer, for Christ’s sake, not a novelist, and she’d never experienced anything like this, certainly never written anything like this. She had felt the water slide against her skin, had known the seductive terror of the razor.
She shivered. It was all absolute rubbish, of course. The whole passage would have to go. It was full of supposition, conjecture, and the loss of objectivity that was fatal to a good biography. Swiftly, she blocked the text, then hesitated with her finger poised over the delete key. And yet… maybe the more rational light of morning would reveal something salvageable. Rubbing her stinging eyes, she tried to focus on the clock above her desk. Almost midnight. The central heating in her drafty Cambridgeshire cottage had shut off almost an hour ago and she suddenly realized she was achingly cold. She flexed her stiff fingers and looked about her, seeking reassurance in familiarity.
The small room overflowed with the flotsam of Lydia Brooke’s life, and Vic, tidy by nature, sometimes felt powerless before the onslaught of paper-letters, journals, photographs, manuscript pages, and her own index cards-all of which defied organization. But biography was an unavoidably messy job, and Brooke had seemed a biographer’s dream, tailor-made to advance Vic’s position in the English Faculty. A poet whose brilliance was surpassed only by the havoc of a personal life strewn with difficult relationships and frequent suicide attempts, Brooke survived the late-sixties episode in the bath for more than twenty years. Then, having completed her finest work, she died quietly from an overdose of heart medication.
The fact that Brooke had died just five years before allowed Vic access to Lydia’s friends and colleagues as well as her papers. And while Vic had expected to be fascinated, she hadn’t been prepared for Lydia to come alive. She’d seen Lydia’s house-left to Morgan Ashby, the former husband, who’d leased it to a university don with two small children. Littered with Legos and hobbyhorses, it had seemed to Vic to retain some indefinable imprint of Lydia’s personality-yet even that odd phenomenon provided no explanation for what had begun to seem perilously close to possession.
Lydia Lovelace Brooke Ashby… Vic repeated the names in her mind, then added her own with an ironic smile. Victoria Potts Kincaid McClellan. Not as lyrical as Lydia’s, but if you left off the Potts it had a bit of elegance. She hadn’t thought much about her own divorce in the past few years-but perhaps her recent marital difficulties had caused her to identify so strongly with Lydia’s pain. Recent marital difficulties, bloody hell, she thought with a sudden flash of anger. Couldn’t she be honest even with herself? She’d been left, abandoned, just as Lydia had been left by Morgan Ashby, but at least Lydia had known where Morgan was-and Lydia hadn’t a child to consider, she added as she heard the creak of Kit’s bedroom door.
“Mum?” he called softly from the top of the stairs. Since Ian’s disappearance, Kit had begun checking on her, as if afraid she might vanish, too. And he’d been having nightmares. She’d heard him whimper in his sleep, but when she questioned him about it he’d merely shaken his head in stoic pride.
“Be up in a tic. Go back to sleep, love.” The old house groaned, responding to his footsteps, then seemed to settle itself to sleep again. With a sigh Vic turned back to the computer and pulled her hair from her face. If she didn’t stop she wouldn’t be able to get up for her early tutorial, but she couldn’t seem to let go of that last image of Lydia. Something was nagging at her, something that didn’t quite fit, and then with a feeling of quiet surprise she realized what it was, and what she must do about it.
Now. Tonight. Before she lost her nerve.
Pulling a London telephone book from the shelf above her desk, she looked up the number and wrote it down, deliberately, conscious of breathing in and out through her nose, conscious of her heart beating. She picked up the phone and dialed.
Gemma James put down the pen and wiggled her fingers, then raised her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. She’d never thought she’d get her report finished, and now the tension flowed from her muscles. It had been a hard day, at the end of a difficult case, yet she felt a surprising surge of contentment. She sat curled at one end of Duncan Kincaid’s sofa while he occupied the other. He’d shed his jacket, unbuttoned his collar, pulled down the knot on his tie, and he wrote with his legs stretched out, feet rather precariously balanced on the coffee table between the empty containers from the Chinese take-away.
Sid took up all the intervening sofa space, stretched on his back, eyes half-slitted, an advert for feline contentment. Gemma reached out to scratch the cat’s exposed stomach, and at her movement Kincaid looked up and smiled. “Finished, love?” he asked, and when she nodded he added, “You’d think I’d learn not to nitpick. You always beat me.”
She grinned. “It’s calculated. Can’t let you get the upper hand too often.” Yawning again, she glanced at her watch. “Oh, Lord, is that the time? I must go.” She swung her feet to the floor and slid them into her shoes.
Kincaid put his papers on the coffee table, gently deposited Sid on the floor, and slid over next to Gemma. “Don’t be daft. Hazel’s not expecting you, and you’ll not get any good mum awards for waking Toby just to carry him home in the middle of the night.” With his right hand he began kneading Gemma’s back, just below the shoulder blades. “You’ve got knots again.”
“Ouch… Mmmm… That’s not fair.” Gemma gave a halfhearted protest as she turned slightly away from him, allowing him better access to the tender spot.
“Of course it is.” He scooted a bit closer and moved his hand to the back of her neck. “You can go first thing in the morning, give Toby his breakfast. And in the meantime-” The telephone rang and Kincaid froze, fingers resting lightly on Gemma’s shoulder. “Bloody hell.”
Gemma groaned. “Oh, no. Not another one, not tonight. Surely someone else can take it.” But she reached for her handbag and made sure her beeper was switched on.
“Might as well know the worst, I suppose.” With a sigh Kincaid pushed himself up from the sofa and went to the kitchen. Gemma heard him say brusquely, “Kincaid,” after he lifted the cordless phone from its cradle, then with puzzled intonation, “Yes? Hullo?”
Wrong number, thought Gemma, sinking back into the cushions. But Kincaid came into the sitting room, phone still held to his ear, his brow creased in a frown.
“Yes,” he said, then, “No, that’s quite all right. I was just surprised. It has been a long time,” he added, a touch of irony in his voice. He walked to the balcony door and pulled aside the curtain, looking into the night as he listened. Gemma could see the tension in the line of his back. “Yes, I’m well, thanks. But I don’t see how I can possibly help you. If it’s a police matter, you should call your local-” He listened once more, the pause longer this time. Gemma sat forwards, a tingle of apprehension running through her body.
“All right,” he said finally, giving in to some entreaty. “Right. Hang on.” Coming back to the coffee table, he picked up his notepad and scribbled something Gemma couldn’t decipher upside down. “Right. On Sunday, then. Good-bye.” He pressed the disconnect button and stood looking at Gemma, phone in hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
Gemma could contain herself no longer. “Who was it?”
Kincaid raised his eyebrow and gave her a lopsided smile. “My ex-wife.”
I only know that you may lie
Day-long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester…
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “The Old Vicarage,
Grantchester”
Following Vic’s directions, Kincaid left the M11 at Junction 12, just before Cambridge, and took the Grantchester Road from the roundabout. The Cambridgeshire sky spread wide before him in a clear light, for the April day had dawned exceptionally mild. He’d tried to persuade Gemma to change her mind and come with him, but she’d been adamant, saying she’d planned to take Toby to her parents. They’d had their Sunday breakfast and tidied up, and she’d kissed him when he’d left her Islington flat, but he felt some discomfort between them. Well, he’d see what Vic wanted-it seemed the least he could do for courtesy’s sake, if nothing else-then that would be that.
He slowed as the first straggling houses appeared, then soon the road became a neatly tended village street. At the T-junction he turned right, into the High Street as Vic had told him, watching carefully for the house on his left. “You can’t miss it,” she’d said, a smile in her voice. “You’ll see.” And almost immediately he did, for it was a higgledy-piggledy tile-roofed house washed in bright Suffolk pink, surrounded by the new growth of roses.
Kincaid pulled into the graveled area in front of the detached garage, stopped the car, and got out, and it was only then that he realized he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say to her. He’d spent the journey remembering Vic as she’d been when he’d first known her. Her reserve had intrigued him-he’d taken it for shyness-and he’d found the seriousness with which she approached her studies endearing, even amusing. “Bloody arrogant, condescending idiot,” he said aloud, his mouth twisting with disgust. He’d assumed knowledge of her that he hadn’t earned, and had paid the consequences when she left him without a word. And now, more than ever, they were two strangers, made more so by the awkward history between them.
How had she changed, he wondered. Would he even recognize her?
Then the side door of the house opened and set his fears to rest, for her face was as familiar as his own. She came out to him, her plimsolled feet crunching on the gravel, and took his hand as easily as if they had parted on good terms only yesterday. “Duncan. Thanks so much for coming.” She tilted her head to one side, considering him as she kept hold of his hand. “I’d swear you haven’t changed a bit.”
Finding his tongue with an effort, Kincaid said, “Nor have you, Vic. You look wonderful.” She looked tired, he thought, and too thin, perhaps even a little unwell. A network of tiny lines had begun forming round her eyes, and the creases between her nose and the outer corners of her mouth stood out sharply. But her hair, though it fell now to her shoulders rather than the small of her back, was still flax fair, and if she wore more somber colors than the pastels he remembered, they gave her a dignity which suited her.
“It has been a long time,” she said, smiling, and he realized he’d been staring.
“Sorry. It’s just… I don’t quite know what to say and I think I’m making an utter fool of myself. Is there an etiquette manual for this sort of situation?” In the moment’s silence following his words, birdsong swelled from tree and thicket, a raucous chorus, and a coal tit whizzed past his head, scolding.
Vic laughed. “We could always invent one. Why don’t I start by inviting you in. Your car should be all right with the top down, at least for a bit.”
Kincaid remembered suddenly that his acquisition of the Midget had caused one of their final conflicts, but Vic had glanced at the car without any sign of recognition. He’d opened his mouth to offer to park it elsewhere when he saw a black-and-white flash and felt the hair stir on the top of his head as the coal tit flew another kamikaze run.
“Come on,” Vic said, turning towards the house. “You’d better dive for cover while you can.” Over her shoulder she added, “It’s such a lovely day, I’ve set lunch out in the garden. I hope you don’t mind.”
He followed her into the house and through a sitting room, where he had a fleeting impression of pale gold walls and faded chintzes, and of a grouping of silver-framed portraits on a side table; then she led him out through French doors onto a stone-flagged terrace. The garden sloped away from the house, and beyond the low wall at its end he could see a meadow, then a curving line of trees that looked as though it marked the course of a river.
“Grantchester gets its name from ‘Granta,’ the old name for the Cam,” Vic said, pointing towards the river.
“The garden’s lovely.” Dandelions and wild onions sprang up in the shaggy lawn, but there were recent signs of prep work in the beds, and against the low wall stood the garden’s crowning glory-an immense old crab apple tree, covered with bright pink blossoms.
Vic gave him the sideways glance he remembered as she gestured towards one of the chairs she’d pulled up to an ironwork table. “Here, sit down. That’s a bit generous of you. My friend Nathan says the garden’s a disgrace, but I’m not a real gardener. I just like to come out and dig in the dirt on nice days-it’s my alternative to tranquilizers.”
“I seem to remember that you couldn’t keep alive a potted plant. Or cook,” he added as he examined the lunch she’d laid out on the table-cheese, cold salads, olives, wholemeal bread, and a bottle of white wine.
Vic shrugged. “People change. And I still can’t cook,” she said with a flash of a smile, “even if I had the time. But I can shop, and I’ve learned to make the most of that.” She filled their glasses, then raised hers in salute. “Here’s to progress. And old friends.”
Friends? Kincaid thought. They had been lovers, adversaries, flatmates-but never that. Perhaps it was not too late. He lifted his glass and drank. When he had filled his plate and tasted the potato salad, he ventured, “You haven’t told me anything about yourself, about your life. The photos…” He nodded towards the sitting room doors. The man had been thin and bearded, the boy fair and sturdy. He stole a glance at Vic’s left hand, saw the faint pale mark circling her fourth finger.
She looked away as she drank some of her wine, then concentrated on a piece of bread as she buttered it. “I’m Victoria McClellan now. Doctor McClellan. I’m a fellow at All Saints’, and I’m a Faculty teaching officer, specializing in twentieth-century poets. That gives me more time to pursue my own work.”
“Faculty?” Kincaid said a bit vaguely. “Poets?”
“The University English Faculty. You do remember my Ph.D. thesis on the effect of the Great War on English poetry?” Vic said with the first hint of sharpness he’d heard. “The one I was struggling with when we were married?”
Kincaid made an effort to redeem himself. “That’s what you wanted, then. I’m glad for you.” Seeing that Vic still looked annoyed, he blundered on. “But I’d have thought two jobs would have meant more work, not less. You’re saying you work for the University and for your college, right? Wouldn’t you be better off to do one or the other?”
Vic gave him a pitying look. “That’s not the way it works. Being a college fellow is a bit like indentured servitude. They pay your salary and they call the shots-they can stick you with a backbreaking load of supervisions and you have no recourse. But if you’re hired by a University Faculty, well, that gives you some clout-at a certain point you can tell your college to go stuff itself. Politely, of course,” she added with a gleam of returning good humor.
“And that’s what you’ve done?” Kincaid asked. “Politely, of course.”
Vic took a sip of her wine and settled back in her chair, looking suddenly tired. “It’s not quite that simple. But yes, I suppose you could say that.”
When she didn’t pursue the topic further, Kincaid ventured, “And your husband? Is he a lecturer as well?” He kept his voice lightly even, a friendly inquiry one might make to an acquaintance.
“Ian’s at Trinity. Political science. But he’s away on sabbatical just now, writing a book about the division of the Georgian states.” Vic put down her bread and met Kincaid’s eyes. “I don’t know why I’m beating about the bush. The thing is, he’s writing this book about Russia from the south of France, and he just happened to take one of his graduate students with him. Female. In the note he left me he said he thought he must be having his midlife crisis.” She gave him a tight smile. “He asked me to be patient.”
At least, Kincaid thought, he left you a note. He said, “I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you.”
Vic drank again and picked at a bit of salad. “It’s Kit, really. Most days he’s furious with Ian. Occasionally he’s angry with me, as if it were my fault Ian left. Maybe it is-I don’t know.”
“Is that why you called me? You need help finding Ian?”
She gave a startled laugh. “That would be bloody cheek! Is that what you thought?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I’m sorry, Duncan. I never meant to give you that impression. What I wanted to talk to you about has nothing to do with Ian at all.”
“It’s that damned McClellan woman again,” said Darcy Eliot as he unfolded the damask napkin and laid it carefully across his lap. “As if it weren’t enough to have to put up with her at College and in the Faculty, she came round to my rooms yesterday to pester me with her tedious questions. Gave me the most frightful headache, I can tell you.” He paused while pouring himself a glass of wine, then sipped and rolled it round his mouth with satisfaction. His mother’s Mersault was excellent, almost as good, in fact, as the store All Saints’ set aside for its Senior Fellows. “If I’d had my way, she’d never have been given a Faculty position, but Iris absolutely dotes on her. What can you do with all these bloody-” With his tongue loosened by several glasses of his mother’s equally excellent sherry before their ritual Sunday lunch, he’d been about to say, “With all these bloody women about the place,” but a look at his mother’s raised eyebrow brought him to a full stop. “Never mind,” he amended hastily, burying his nose in his wine again.
“Darcy, darling,” said Dame Margery Lester as she ladled out the soup Grace had left in a tureen on the table, “I’ve met Victoria McClellan on several occasions and I thought her quite enchanting.” Margery Lester’s voice was as silvery as the hair she swept back in a classic chignon, and although she was well into her seventies, it sometimes seemed to her son that she had condensed rather than aged. The qualities that made Margery uniquely herself-her keen intelligence, her self-assurance, her dedication to her craft-all these seemed to have become more solid as her body inevitably diminished.
Today she looked even more elemental than usual. The pearls she wore against her pale gray cashmere twinset seemed to give a shimmery luster to her skin, and it occurred to Darcy to wonder if one would find quicksilver in her veins rather than blood.
“Just what is it exactly that you find objectionable about her?” Margery asked as she served Darcy his soup, adding, “Grace made cream of artichoke in your honor.”
Darcy took his time tasting the soup, then eased a surreptitious finger into his collar. Perhaps he had been imbibing a bit more than he should lately. His vanity had for many years provided a useful counterbalance to his appetites, but it might be that the flesh was gaining ground. “You know how I feel about the earnest politically correct,” he said as he lifted his spoon to his lips again. “They give me the pip. And there’s nothing I abhor more than the feminist biographer. They take some trivial piece of work and inflate it with Freudian psychobabble and grandiose feminist theory until you wouldn’t recognize it if it bit you.”
Margery’s left eyebrow arched itself more pronouncedly, and Darcy knew that this time he had indeed gone too far. “Surely you’re not suggesting that Lydia’s work was trivial?” she asked. “And you make Victoria McClellan sound like some sort of unwashed bluestocking. She struck me as being quite sensible and well grounded, certainly not the sort I’d expect to lose track of the work in the process of theorizing about it.”
Darcy snorted. “Oh, no. Dr. McClellan is anything but unwashed. Quite the opposite-she could model for an American shampoo advert on the telly, she’s so well washed and groomed. She’s an example of the perfect nineties woman-brilliant academic career, model mother and wife-only, she wasn’t good enough at the wife part to keep her husband from shagging a succession of graduate students.” The image made him smile. Ian McClellan’s only failure had been his lack of discretion.
“Darcy!” Margery pushed away her empty soup bowl. “That was unkind as well as common.”
“Oh, Mother, really. What it is is common knowledge. Everyone in the English Faculty knows all the libidinous details. They just take care to whisper them when the fair Victoria is out of earshot. And I don’t see what is so unkind about the bald truth.”
Margery pressed her lips together, darting a still disapproving glance at him as she uncovered the main course and began serving their plates. Point to me, thought Darcy with satisfaction. Margery was no prude, as the increasingly graphic sexuality of her later novels revealed, and Darcy thought she merely enjoyed playing the shocked matron.
He breathed a sigh of contentment as Margery set his plate before him. Cold poached salmon with dill sauce; hot buttered new potatoes; fresh young asparagus, crisply cooked before chilling-he would rue the day if he ever lost his ability to charm Grace. “And don’t tell me”-he put a hand to his breast as if overcome-“a lemon tart for afters?”
Still unrelenting, his mother attacked her fish in silence. Darcy concentrated on his food, content to wait her out. He took small bites to prolong the pleasure, and gazed out into the garden as he chewed. He’d brought Lydia here once, years ago, to his family’s Jacobean house on the outskirts of the village of Madingley. His father had been alive then, tweedy and self-effacing, his mother sleek in her success. It had been a spring day much like this one, and Margery and Lydia had walked together arm in arm in the garden, admiring the daffodils and laughing. He’d felt an oaf, a lout, excluded by their delicacy and by their aura of feminine conspiracy. That night he’d lain awake wondering what secrets they’d confided.
He remembered Lydia’s profile in the car on the way from Cambridge, pinched with nervousness at the thought of meeting Margery Lester, remembered her too prim dress and neatly combed hair-for once the rebellious young poet had become every inch the small-town schoolteacher’s daughter. It had made him laugh, but he supposed in the end the joke had been-
“Darcy. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
He smiled at his mother. He’d known her pique would pale against the appalling social prospect of a silent meal. “Sorry, Mummy. I was meandering among the daffodils.”
“I said, What did Dr. McClellan want to know about Lydia today?” Margery’s voice still held a trace of exasperation.
“Oh, the usual tiresome things. Did Lydia show any signs of depression in the weeks before her death? Had she communicated any particular concerns, become involved in any new relationships? Etc., etc., etc. Of course I said I had no idea, nor would I have told her if I had, as none of that nonsense has any relevance to Lydia’s work.” Darcy wiped his mouth with his napkin and finished the wine in his glass. “Perhaps this time I made myself quite clear.” A shadow fell across the garden as a cloud obscured the sun. “Look, the rain’s coming on, after all. Why do the bloody weather boffins always have to be right?”
“You know, darling,” Margery said reflectively, “I’ve always thought your position on biography a bit extreme for someone who loves a good gossip as much as any old woman I know. Whatever will you do if a publisher offers you an obscene amount of money to write mine?”
Nathan Winter wiped his perspiring brow and looked up at the clouds scudding across the sky from the northwest. He’d hoped to finish setting out the plants he’d bought that morning at Audley End’s garden center before the weather turned, but he’d got rather a late start. It had been well worth the drive down to Suffolk, though, for the nursery at the Jacobean manor house stocked some old-fashioned medicinal herbs he’d not found elsewhere. And once there, of course, he’d been unable to resist the temptation to wander in the grounds and gardens, had even had a cup of tea and a sandwich in the restaurant.
Jean had loved Audley End, and they’d spent many a Sunday tramping up and down the staircases, admiring Lord Braybrooke’s specimen collection, even giggling as they fantasized about making love on the round divan in what Jean always called “the posh library.” He’d brought her one last time, in a wheelchair on a fine summer day, but the house had been impossible for her and they’d had to content themselves with a slow perambulation round the herb gardens.
Now that he thought about it, he supposed Audley End must have first given him the idea of planting a traditional medicinal garden, but they’d lived in Cambridge then, in a house with a postage stamp-sized back garden, and Jean had wanted every inch given over to flowers.
Nathan sat back on his heels and surveyed his handiwork. This was his first major project for the cottage garden, and he’d spent the winter months studying Victorian herbalists and garden design, adapting them, then meticulously drawing his own plans. Mullein, tansy, Saint-John’s-wort, juniper, mugwort, myrtle, lovage-he stopped at that one, grinning. People always thought it sounded so romantic, and he supposed it did make an excellent cordial for a cold winter’s night, but it was also a powerful diuretic.
A gust of wind lifted his empty plastic containers and rattled them along the ground. Nathan took another look at the dark shelf of cloud building to the west and set hurriedly to planting the last of his seedlings. He tamped the soil carefully around them, collected his tools and his rubbish, then pushed himself up from the damp ground. His knees protested, as they often did these days when the weather changed, and he remembered ruefully the days when he’d been able to spend hours kneeling without feeling the least bit stiff. Maybe he’d better have a good long soak in a lavender and arnica bath before dinner-dinner! How could he possibly have forgotten that he’d invited Adam Lamb for drinks and an early supper? And the man was a devout vegetarian, which meant Nathan would have to come up with something suitable or risk offending him. He made a mental inventory of the contents of the fridge. Eggs, a few mushrooms-he could whip up omelettes, a green salad… there was half a loaf of granary bread from the bakery in Cambridge… a meager supper, but it would have to do. And for pudding he could use the trifle he’d bought at Tesco’s, though he’d hoped to save it for more festive circumstances.
What on earth had possessed him to ask Adam round? Guilt, more than likely, he admitted with a grimace of disgust as he started for the house. He’d always felt a bit sorry for Adam, for reasons he found hard to articulate. Maybe it was that Adam seemed to try too hard at life, but his dedication to any number of good causes never produced much visible result. And the ironic thing, Nathan thought as he held on to the doorjamb and struggled out of his wellies, was that yesterday when Adam had rung him, he’d had the distinct impression that Adam was feeling sorry for him.
Adam Lamb nursed his old Mini out the Grantchester Road, past the University Rugby Grounds, coasting downhill when he could to save petrol. Although he didn’t believe in owning automobiles, his parish work rendered some form of transport a necessity, so he salved his conscience by driving a car that passed its MOT each year only by the grace of God. His rationing of petrol had an economic as well as a moral impetus-a few carefully consolidated trips a week were all his meager budget would allow.
A gust of wind rattled the car and Adam looked back at the overtaking bank of clouds. He should have walked tonight-it was less than two miles, after all, along the river path, and they’d done it without thinking when they were students-but the threat of rain had combined with a nagging cold to dampen his enthusiasm. He felt old, suddenly, and tired.
Adam slowed almost to a walking pace as he came into the outskirts of Grantchester. As near as it was to Cambridge, he hadn’t been here in years. He’d certainly never expected Nathan to come back, at least not alone. When he’d heard through mutual friends that Nathan had inherited his parents’ house and meant to live in it, he’d felt a little frisson of unease.
The Grantchester Road became Broadway, and as Adam inched round the last curve before the High Street junction, he blinked in surprise. Surely this couldn’t be it? The cottage of his memories had been shabby, with crumbling stucco, brambles in the garden, and sparrows nesting in the thatch. But a look at the houses either side assured him that he had indeed found the house, for they fit his dim recollection of the neighbors. He stopped the car against the left-hand curb and got out just as the first fine drops of rain began to fall, forgetting the parking brake in his bemusement. He stood, gaping at the cottage’s new bricked drive and circular walkway, putting green lawn and immaculate perennial borders, pristine whitewash and thatch-someone had worked a miracle.
The front door opened and Nathan came out, grinning. “Leaves you speechless, doesn’t it?” he said as he met Adam and shook his hand. “Good to see you.” He gestured back at the house. “I know it’s embarrassingly quaint, but I have to admit I’m enjoying it. Come in.”
Nathan looked surprisingly well. His hair had gone completely white since Jean’s death, but it suited him, setting off his dark eyes and naturally rosy complexion. Adam remembered how they’d teased Nathan when he started to gray in his twenties, but Nathan had met Jean by then and hadn’t cared a fig for what any of them thought, not even Lydia.
Shying away from the thought of her, Adam made an effort to collect himself. “But how did you… I mean, it must have… surely your parents didn’t…” A big drop of rain splattered on his spectacles, momentarily blinding him.
Nathan put a hand on his shoulder and propelled him towards the door. “I’ll fix you a drink and tell you all about it, if you like.” Once inside, he shut the door against the rain and took Adam’s anorak, hanging it neatly from a pegged rack. “Whisky suit you?”
“Um, yes. Fine.” Adam followed him into a sitting room as transformed as the exterior. Gone was the dark antimacassared furniture, the Victorian and Edwardian knickknacks that Nathan’s mother had loved. Now the accommodating-looking upholstered pieces sported a cheery red-and-blue William Morris print, a thick rug covered the floorboards, and the wood fire burning in the hearth winked from the leaded-glass windows. All in all it was a delightful room, seductive in its comfort, and Adam thought of his Cambridge rectory with a shiver of regret. He went to the fire and warmed his hands as he watched Nathan pour their drinks from a bottle of the Macallan on the sideboard. “A great improvement over the old electric fire,” he said as Nathan handed him his glass. “Cheers.”
Nathan laughed as he settled himself into one of the chairs near the fire. “I’m surprised you remember that. It was a bit feeble, wasn’t it?” Stretching his legs out towards the warmth, he sipped his drink. “My parents had the central heating put in, of course, but it was only allowed on for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. I suppose it did make bathing and getting in and out of bed bearable, but the rest of the time we huddled in here in front of that silly electric bar. The chimney always worked, you know, but once they’d made up their minds that the electric fire was less costly to run, there was no going back.” He shook his head. “I don’t think they ever recovered from the war, or stopped fearing that the hard times would come again. When I cleared out the larder, I found tins of food as old as I am-my mother hoarded them.”
“I never felt deprived here,” said Adam, leaving the fire and taking a seat in the other armchair. “Your mother was kind to us, and fed us all without complaint, ungrateful louts that we were.”
Nathan smiled. “I’m sure she never thought that.”
“I was sorry to hear about your parents.” Adam reached automatically to adjust his dog collar, then remembered he’d worn mufti instead. He always worried that his clerical garb made people uncomfortable in a social situation-even those, like Nathan, who had known him long before he became a priest. “It must have been difficult for you, so soon after Jean.”
Staring into the fire, Nathan turned his glass round in his fingers and said slowly, “I don’t know. I was numb at that point, and it seemed as though I just went through the motions. I’m still not sure I’ve really taken it in.” He looked up at Adam and smiled. “But I was going to tell you about the cottage. That’s what made up my mind for me, about what I should do. I didn’t think I could bear staying in the Cambridge house without Jean, and I’d been toying with the idea of taking rooms in College, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind to do that either. Then when Mother and Dad passed away within weeks of each other and left me this…” Nathan stood and went to the window, shutting the curtains against the rain now driving against the glass.
“It was paid for, of course, but in quite horrendous condition,” he continued. “I felt utterly at sea. It took a friend to pound the reality of the situation through my thick skull. Jean and I had lived in the Cambridge house for almost twenty-five years; the mortgage was near to being paid off, and the property values had shot up.”
“So you sold the house and used the proceeds here.” Adam gestured more largely then he intended, the whisky having rather gone to his head. He’d fasted before Communion this morning, then discovered the bit of vegetable flan he’d been saving for his lunch had gone moldy.
Nathan retrieved his drink and stood cradling it, his back to the fire. “It’s actually been quite liberating, funnily enough. Jean and I put off so many things over the years, thinking we’d wait until we could afford them, but somehow it never came to pass.” Grinning, he added, “Having two daughters probably had something to do with it. Those two delicate little things could go through pound notes like starving dogs in a sausage factory.”
Adam remembered Nathan’s daughters not as the young women, dark clothed and red faced with weeping, whom he’d seen briefly at Jean’s funeral, but as two little girls in white frilly dresses and pink hair ribbons. “Are they both married, then?”
“Jennifer, yes, but Alison’s too busy making her mark on the world to have time for men right now, other than as a temporary convenience,” Nathan said, affection evident in his tone.
“She was always Lydia’s favorite, wasn’t she, your Alison?”
“From the time they were babies, Lydia said Jenny was born with a conventional soul, but that Alison was destined for greater things. Lydia was Alison’s godmother, as a matter of fact. I’m surprised you remembered.” Falling silent, Nathan swirled the dregs of his drink, then finished it in one swallow. “Come through to the back, and I’ll fix us something to eat.”
Pushing himself up from the depths of his chair, Adam followed Nathan into the entry again. Now he saw that in the room to the left, which had been a seldom-used formal parlor in Nathan’s parents’ day, a baby grand piano stood alone on the bare polished floorboards. Adam remembered the old upright that had stood in Nathan and Jean’s sitting room, the recipient of much abuse by Nathan as he pounded out the old music hall tunes he’d learned from his mother. Before he could comment, Nathan beckoned him through the center door.
The back of the house, which had originally been divided into kitchen, scullery, and dining room, had been opened into one large room. A kitchen-dining area filled one end, a comfortable den the other, and windows had been added along the back of the house from which Adam imagined one could see the river on better days.
Nathan gestured towards the table, already laid with place mats and stoneware, as he went through to the kitchen. “Sit down while I organize things a bit. I found some carrot and lentil soup in the freezer, then I thought we’d have omelettes and a green salad, if that suits.” He checked a pot on the stove, gave it a stir, then went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Australian Chardonnay. “It’s all down to Ikea,” he said with a glance at Adam as he started a corkscrew into the bottle. “From the furniture to the cutlery. I’d never have managed otherwise.”
“It’s brilliant, Nathan, really brilliant.” Adam took the glass Nathan poured him. “Here’s to your new life,” he said, raising his glass, then choked as the wine bit unexpectedly at his throat. “Sorry.” He spluttered and coughed, then took another, more careful sip. “You and Jean always entertained well, and you seem to have gone right on with things. I admire that.”
Nathan stopped with a soup ladle poised over a bowl. “The first couple of years I ate frozen dinners in front of the telly. When I ate. And I daresay I didn’t do too well at the housekeeping and laundry, either.” He shrugged and went back to distributing the soup between two green bowls. “But after a while I began to think about how exasperated Jean would have been with me. She followed me around the house, nagging: ‘Nathan, you should be ashamed of yourself, letting things go this way.’ So I cleaned up my act, and I’ve found I actually enjoy it.”
“Do you think you’ll marry again?” asked Adam as Nathan brought soup and a basket of hot bread to the table, then slid into the chair opposite. “It’s been my experience that those who’ve been most happily married often do.”
For the first time, Nathan took his time answering. He buttered a piece of bread, tasted his wine, then said, “I don’t know. A year ago I’d have said absolutely not-even six months ago, the same. But now…” Shaking his head, he grinned at Adam. “Never mind. I’m a foolish, middle-aged man who shouldn’t allow himself to indulge his fantasies. I suppose I’m suffering from a case of delayed adolescence, and that it will pass.”
“And if it doesn’t?” asked Adam, his curiosity aroused.
Nathan picked up his spoon, dipped it into his soup. “Then the Lord help me.”
So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone,
And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I’d gone,
What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard,
Or a sudden cry, that meekly and without a word
You broke the faith, and strangely, weakly, slipped apart?
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Desertion”
A particularly vicious gust of wind snatched Vic’s paper napkin from her lap and whirled it away across the lawn. Kincaid watched her start up out of her chair, then sink back, admitting defeat as the napkin disappeared over the wall. The clouds had been building in the western sky as they’d idled over their garden lunch, and now Vic looked up and frowned. “I think the weather gods have abandoned us, don’t you? It might be prudent to move inside,” she added, beginning to gather their dishes. “I’ll just get a tray.”
Watching her slip from her chair and walk away from him across the patio, Kincaid thought how odd it was to be with her again-and yet how familiar. He was acutely aware of the angle of her shoulder blades beneath the thin fabric of her dress, the length of her fingers, the particular shape of her eyebrows, all things he hadn’t thought of in years. He remembered her quiet way of listening, as if what one said were terribly important-but he also noticed that she still hadn’t told him why she’d called him, and that too struck a familiar chord. When they separated, he realized how seldom Vic had told him how she felt or what she thought. She’d expected him to know, and now he wondered if he’d once again missed his cue.
Returning with a tray, she said, “I’ve lit the fire in the sitting room.” She’d slipped on a long chenille cardigan the color of oatmeal, and she hugged it to her body for a moment before she began loading up the lunch things. “So much for our picnic. But I suppose it was nice while it lasted.”
Stacking plates, Kincaid quipped, “One could say that about a lot of things,” then swore at himself as he saw her wince at the direct barb. “Sorry, Vic. I-” He broke off, unsure what to say. How could he apologize without opening the very can of worms he’d meant to avoid?
Vic took the dishes without comment, then paused with the laden tray in her arms and looked at him steadily for a moment before she spoke. “Sometimes it takes experience to know just how good things are. Or to recognize someone’s worth. I was a fool, but it took me a long time to figure it out.” She smiled and added as Kincaid stood gaping, “Come on, give me a hand getting these things into the kitchen, then I’ll make us some tea. Unless you’d rather have something stronger?”
Taking refuge in the commonplace, Kincaid said, “No, no, that’s all right. Tea’s lovely. I’ve got the drive back to London and the wine will have put me close to the limit.”
He took the tray from her, and as she held the door he maneuvered it into her small kitchen and set it on the worktop. Retreating to the doorway, he watched her as she filled the kettle. Her apology went against all his expectations and he had no idea how to respond.
Gathering cups and a teapot, Vic said matter-of-factly, without looking at him, “You have someone waiting for you.”
“Is that a specific or a general statement?” he asked, grinning. He thought of Gemma, of the precarious balance they’d striven for these past few months, and wondered if her refusal to come with him today reflected more than her desire to spend time with her son. She’d invited him back to her flat tonight, but that didn’t ensure the quality of his reception.
Vic glanced at him, then shut off the kettle as it came to the boil. When she’d filled the pot and set it on the tea tray, she motioned Kincaid to follow her to the sitting room. Over her shoulder, she asked, “Does she appreciate you?”
“I’ll tell her you said nice things about me. A sort of past-user guarantee.”
“Oh, right out of the tabloids, that is. EX-WIFE GIVES ENDORSEMENT. Very effective, I’m sure.”
They settled in the squashy armchairs before the fire, and when Vic had tucked her feet up under the folds of her dress and sipped her tea, she said, “Seriously, Duncan, I’m glad for you. But I haven’t asked you here to pry into your private life, though I have to admit I’m curious.” She smiled at him over the rim of her china cup.
The familiarity of the floral pattern had been nagging at him, and its juxtaposition against her face clicked the memory into place-Vic opening a gift box, lifting out a cup, and holding it aloft for him to inspect. The china had been a wedding present from her parents, a proper set, her mother had called it, as if afraid his own family might offer something unsuitable.
“Curiosity always got Alice into trouble,” he teased. Alice had been his pet name for her, and it had suited her in more than physical resemblance.
“I know,” she said a bit ruefully. “And I’m afraid things haven’t changed all that much. What I wanted to see you about has to do with my work, and it’s a bit difficult. But first I thought I’d get to know you again, see if you’d think I was just some hysterical, bloody female.”
“Oh, come on, Vic. You-hysterical? That’s the last adjective that would have come to mind. You were always the epitome of cool detachment.” As he spoke he thought of the one place she had abandoned reserve, and he flushed uncomfortably.
“Some of the people in my department might use a bit less flattering terms.” She grimaced. “And my choice of subject matter for my book has made me decidedly unpopular in certain quarters.”
“Book?” Kincaid dragged his attention from the photo of Vic’s errant husband. What had she seen in him? McClellan looked tweedy and bearded, handsome in a studiously academic way, and Kincaid could easily imagine him chatting up his students. He supposed he ought to be glad that life had seen fit to make Vic the butt of one of its little retribution jokes-the biter bit-but instead he felt a surge of anger on her behalf.
He had not been blameless in the breakup of their marriage, and they’d both been young, just beginning to discover what they wanted out of life. But he could imagine no excuse for Ian McClellan’s behavior-and what sort of man, he wondered, would go off without a word to his son?
“My biography,” Vic answered. “That’s what I’ve been working on this last year. A biography of Lydia Brooke.” She reached up and switched on the reading lamp beside her chair, casting her face into shadow and illuminating her hands as they clasped the teacup in her lap. “Ian said he’d been displaced, and I suppose in a way it’s true. Men-I don’t like men very much these days. They want you to be brilliant and successful, just as long as it doesn’t take any of your attention away from them and their needs. And as long as your accomplishments don’t outshine theirs, of course.” She looked up at him and smiled.
“I sound an awful bitch, don’t I? I’m generalizing, and I know there are men capable of more, but I’m beginning to think they’re the exception. Ian didn’t start on the graduate students until my salary equaled his.” Her mouth twisted in disgust and she shook her head. “Never mind. What do you know about Lydia Brooke?”
Frowning, he searched his memory, turning up a vague recollection of slim volumes on the shelf in his parents’ bookshop. “A Cambridge poet, a sort of symbol of the sixties… She died quite recently, I think. Wasn’t she related to Rupert Brooke?”
“She was obsessed with Rupert Brooke when she came up to Cambridge. Whether or not she was related to him is another matter entirely.” Vic shifted in her seat so that the light fell across her face again. “And you’re right, Lydia did burst upon the scene in the mid-sixties. Her poems were full of an aching disenchantment, and I suppose they touched something particular in that generation. After a disastrous marriage, she tried suicide, but recovered. She attempted suicide again in her early thirties, then finally, five years ago, she succeeded. She was forty-seven.”
“Did you know her?”
“I saw her once at a College function, not long after I came here. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone well enough to ask for an introduction, and I never had another chance.” Shrugging, Vic added, “I know it sounds odd, but I felt a connection with her even then… the old ‘across a crowded room’ thing.” She smiled, mocking herself, then sobered. “It’s not necessarily sexual, that sort of recognition, and it’s only happened to me a few times. And then when I heard she had died, I felt devastated, as though I’d lost someone very close.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I know that look.” Vic grimaced. “Now you’re beginning to wonder if I am completely bonkers. But I think that sense of kinship with Lydia has contributed to the uneasy feeling I have about the manner of her death.”
“But surely there was no question that it was suicide?”
“Not legally, no.” Vic gazed out the window at the sky, heavy now with darkening clouds, and seemed to gather her thoughts. After a moment, she said, “Let me see if I can explain. Lydia was thought to have killed herself in the midst of one of the periodic bouts of depression she’d suffered all her adult life, but I don’t believe her death fits that pattern.”
Kincaid couldn’t help remembering the hours he’d spent on similar theorizing when he and Vic had first been married, and how utterly disinterested she’d been in his cases. It had been understandable, he supposed, as he’d been new to homicide then, and fascinated with it to the point of boring even the most patient listener. “Why not?” he asked mildly.
Vic slid her feet to the floor and sat forwards. “Both early suicide attempts coincided with long periods where she seemed unable to work. I think Lydia was truly happy only when she was writing, and writing well. If her personal problems coincided with a dry spell, she had difficulty coping, and I believe that’s what happened after the breakup of her marriage. But as she grew older she seemed more and more content alone. If she had a serious relationship in the last ten years of her life, I’ve not been able to discover it.”
“And was she suffering writer’s block before she died?” Kincaid asked, finding himself intrigued.
“No.” Vic put her cup on the side table and rubbed her palms together as if her hands were cold. “That’s it, you see. When she died, she was in the process of editing the manuscript of a new book, the best thing she had ever done. The poems have such depth and richness-it’s as if she suddenly discovered another dimension to herself.”
“Maybe that was it,” Kincaid suggested. “There was nowhere left for her to go.”
Vic shook her head. “At first I considered that a possibility, but the better I know her, the less likely it seems. I think she’d found her stride at last. She could have done so much more, given so much-”
“Vic.” Kincaid leaned forwards and touched her hand. “You can never be sure what’s in another person’s heart. You know that. Sometimes people just wake up one day and decide they’re tired of life, and they don’t leave behind any explanation at all. Maybe that’s what happened to Lydia.”
She shook her head, more vehemently this time. “That’s not all. Lydia died from an overdose of her own heart medication. Don’t suicides usually keep to the same pattern, escalating the violence if they’re not successful?”
“Sometimes, yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always the case.”
“The first time she slit her wrists in the bath-it was only a friend coming in unexpectedly that saved her. The second time she drove her car into a tree and managed to give herself a serious concussion. Later she said her foot slipped from the accelerator just at the crucial moment. Do you see?”
“The third attempt should have been more violent still?” Kincaid shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible. So what are you suggesting?”
Vic looked away for a moment, then said slowly, “I’m not sure. It sounds so daft in the light of day…”
“Come on, out with it.”
“What if Lydia didn’t kill herself? I know with her history it was a logical assumption, but just think how easy that would have made it for someone else.” Vic stopped the rush of words and took a breath, adding more slowly, “What I’m saying is… I think Lydia might have been murdered.”
In the silence that followed, Kincaid counted to ten in his head. Tread carefully, he cautioned himself. Don’t tell her she’s too close, that she’s lost her perspective. Don’t tell her how far people go to deny the suicides of loved ones-and he had no doubt that Vic felt closer to Lydia Brooke than many did to their own flesh and blood-and for God’s sake don’t tell her she’s hysterical. “All right,” he said finally. “Three questions. Why, how, and who?”
Voice rising, Vic said, “I don’t know. I’ve interviewed everyone I could contact, and I can’t even find anyone who had a minor quarrel with her. But it still doesn’t feel right.”
Kincaid drank the dregs of his tea while he considered how to answer. Ten years ago, twelve years ago, he’d been a by-the-book copper, and he probably would have laughed at her suspicions. But he’d learned not to discount intuition, even as unlikely as it sometimes seemed. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right, that there is something fishy about Lydia’s death. What is it that you want me to do?”
Vic smiled, and he saw to his astonishment that her eyes had filled with tears. “I wanted you to tell me I’m not crazy. You can’t imagine what a relief it is just to talk about it.” She hesitated, touching her fingers to her throat. “And then I thought maybe you could look into it a bit…”
Trying to contain his exasperation, he said, “Vic, the case is five years old, and it’s not in my jurisdiction. What could I possibly do? Why don’t you talk to someone on the force here-”
She was already shaking her head. “You’ve got to be kidding. You know perfectly well they’d send me away with a condescending pat on the back and never open the file. They’ve too much to do with gangs and drugs these days to spend time on something like this. Surely there’s something you could do, someone you could talk to, at least open a door for me.”
Kincaid thought of his own caseload, of the scramble for time to spend with Gemma, of his credibility-he’d be an idiot to take this on. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw the photograph, silver-framed on the side table-Vic and her son, and Ian McClellan, smiling into the lens-and he knew he couldn’t refuse her.
Under his breath he muttered, “Oh, bloody hell.” He knew someone on the Cambridgeshire force, a colleague who’d transferred there, hoping for a less stressful life. Just how far could he impose on past acquaintance? “All right, Vic. I’ll try to get a look at the case file. Just don’t expect miracles, okay? More than likely everything in that file is so clean and aboveboard you could eat off it.”
She gave him a quick smile. “Thanks.”
A crack of thunder made them both jump, and as he looked up, rain began pelting against the window. He glanced at his watch, aware suddenly of the lateness of the hour, and wondered if Gemma would be back from her parents’ and waiting for him. “I’m sorry, Vic,” he began, standing and depositing his cup on the side table with a clink, “I’ve got to-oh, Christ,” he swore as the thought struck him. “I’ve left the bloody top down.”
“You’ll get soaked,” Vic said, jumping up. “I’ll get a brolly and a towel.”
Before he could say, “There’s no time,” she’d slipped out of the room ahead of him, and when he reached the door she had a towel and an old umbrella waiting. He grabbed them and sprinted across the gravel, trying to work the catch on the umbrella as the rain stung his skin. As he reached the car the brolly sprang open with a pop, pinching his finger, and he struggled to hold it with one hand while he wrestled the top up with the other. When the latches clicked into place, he looked down at the towel, now sodden, which he’d dropped on the bonnet, and laughed. He carried it ruefully back to Vic, and after trying unsuccessfully to wring it out with one hand, said, “Sorry.”
“I can’t believe you still have that car,” she said, so close to him now that he could see the faint dark flecks in the irises of her eyes. “You know I always hated it.”
“I know. Here’s your umbrella,” he said, hand on the catch.
“You’ll let me know, won’t you, what you find?” She touched his arm. “And Duncan, that’s not the only reason I called. I owed you something. It’s been eating at me for a long time.”
“It’s okay.” He smiled. “They say time heals all wounds-well, sometimes it even brings a little wisdom. We both had a lot of growing up to do.” He touched his cheek to hers, an instant’s brushing of damp skin, then turned away.
As he eased the car out of the drive he looked back, saw her still standing motionless behind the curtain of rain, watching him.
“You agreed to do what?” Gemma turned and lifted a soapy finger to push a stray wisp of hair from her face. Kincaid had shown up just as she and Toby were sitting down to their tea. Taking Toby on his lap, he’d zoomed carrot sticks into the child’s open mouth with appropriate airplane commentary, but he’d hardly touched anything himself, not even the warm meat pies her mother had sent from the bakery. Nor had he said anything about his day until she had asked him, and then his account of his meeting with Vic had been cursory at best.
“I only said I’d get in touch with an old mate of mine on the Cambridge force, see if I could have a look at the file,” he said now, and it seemed to her that his tone was deliberately casual.
Gemma unstoppered the sink in her cupboard-sized kitchen and dried her hands on a tea towel before she turned. From where she stood she could see Toby in the boxroom that served as his bedroom, rooting in a basket for a favorite picture book Kincaid had promised to read to him. “Why?” she said, trying to pitch her voice low enough so that Toby wouldn’t hear. “Why would you volunteer to do anything for her? This woman walked out on you without a word, without a note, marries another bloke as soon as the ink on the divorce papers is dry, and twelve years later she reappears and wants you to do her a favor? What are you thinking of?”
Kincaid had been sitting on the floor, playing at blocks with Toby. Now he pushed himself to his feet and looked down at her. “It’s not like that-it wasn’t like that at all. You don’t know her. Vic’s a decent person and she’s having a rough time just now, as you certainly should know. What would you have had me do?”
The direct jab stung, but she knew from his tone that she’d ventured into forbidden territory, so she smiled, trying to make light of it. “Oh, tell her to sod off, I suppose. To wherever it is ex-wives are supposed to go and never be heard from again.”
“Don’t be silly, Gemma,” he said, not sounding the least bit amused. “Look, I’ll ring Alec Byrne in Cambridge tomorrow, see if he’ll let me have an unofficial look at Lydia Brooke’s file. Then I’ll put Vic’s mind to rest, and that will be that. Let’s not quarrel about this, all right?”
“Me found it, Mummy!” shrieked Toby as he came trotting into the sitting room bearing aloft a book in a tattered dust jacket. “Alfie’s Boots.” He tugged on Duncan’s trouser leg. “Read me it, Duncan. You promised. Read me Alfie’s Boots.”
“It’s Alfie’s Feet, lovey,” corrected Gemma. Toby had developed a strong sense of identification with the little blond boy in Shirley Hughes’s books and demanded the stories so often that Gemma knew them by heart. Kneeling, she took the book from him. “I’ll tell you what, darling. Why don’t you go back in your room and find Dogger, too. Then I’ll read them both to you before bed.” She gave him an encouraging pat on the bottom as she stood and faced Duncan again. “I’m not quarreling,” she said. “You’re being patronizing.”
“You’re making a fuss over nothing, Gemma,” he said, leaning back and propping his hip against the black half-moon table that served as both dining area and worktop in her tiny flat. “You wouldn’t be so upset if I’d agreed to do this for someone else.”
“That’s just too bloody condescending,” she hissed at him. “You wouldn’t have done it for someone else!”
A shadow passed across the uncurtained garden windows, then a moment later came a tap at the door. Gemma took a breath and rubbed at her already flushed cheeks.
“Expecting someone?” Kincaid asked. Arms folded, he looked maddeningly unperturbed.
“It must be Hazel.”
Gemma gave him one last furious look, crossed the room, and slid back the bolt. When Gemma had given up the house she’d shared with her ex-husband and moved into the garage flat in Islington, she’d acquired an unexpected friend in her landlady, Hazel Cavendish, and Toby an ally in her daughter, Holly.
“Hullo, love.” Hazel greeted Gemma with a hug, then brandished a video in one hand while waving at Kincaid with the other. “Hullo, Duncan. We’ve rented The Lion King-again-and I thought maybe Toby could watch it with us before bed. And if the kids should happen to fall asleep on the sofa in front of the telly, we’ll just tuck them up and let them snooze.” She gave Gemma and Duncan a conspiratorial grin.
“You’re too good, Hazel,” said Gemma in an effort to recover a little composure.
“I’m not. You’ve had him out all day and Holly’s pining for him. I can’t bear listening to her whine another second. Humor me.” Hazel crossed the room to Kincaid and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Mmmm, you smell lovely. Nice shirt, too,” she added, rubbing a bit of the sleeve fabric between her thumb and forefinger.
“Thanks, Hazel. I’m sure that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.”
It was Gemma’s favorite shirt, a fine-textured dark blue denim that made Kincaid’s gray-blue eyes look uncompromisingly blue. The realization that he’d worn it to visit Vic made her temperature start rising again.
“Auntie Hazel!” Toby darted into the room and clung to Hazel’s leg like a limpet. “Are we going to watch The Lion King?” He made growling noises and pranced round them, king of the jungle.
“I suppose you are,” said Gemma, giving in gracefully. “We’ll get no peace otherwise, now.” She tousled his fair hair.
“You, too, Mummy,” he demanded. “You watch, too.”
“No, sweetheart, I-”
“Do, Gemma,” Kincaid broke in. “I’ve got to go, anyway. It’s been a long day, and we’ve an early start in the morning.” He retrieved his jacket from the back of the chair, gave Gemma a quick kiss that just missed the corner of her mouth, then knelt and held out a palm for Toby to slap, saying, “See ya, sport.” At the door he turned back. “’Bye, Hazel. Gemma, see you at the Yard first thing, all right?” He smiled at them and slipped out.
Gemma and Hazel stared at each other as the echo of the door closing died away, then they heard the distant sputter of the Midget’s engine.
“Gemma, love, did I do something wrong?” asked Hazel, frowning. “Put my foot in somehow?”
Gemma shook her head wordlessly, then managed a strangled, “Of all the bloody cheek…”
Assessing the situation, Hazel said, “I think it’s time for a bit of female bonding. I vote we move the party. What do you say, Gemma?” Seeming to take Gemma’s nod for acquiescence, she shepherded her and Toby out the door.
The garage flat stood at a right angle to the Cavendish’s Victorian house, below and behind its garden. Gemma locked the flat’s yellow door, then they climbed the steps that led up from the garage forecourt. Squeezing through the iron gate, they picked their way along the flagged garden path in the dark, Toby leading as comfortably as a cat. The flat’s windows were now at a level with Gemma’s knees, and glancing down, she could see through the half-open slanted blinds. Empty, the flat looked serene in its simplicity, yet lived in, and with a jab of awareness Gemma realized how much she loved it. To her it represented escape from the conventional, semidetached life she’d been expected to embrace-and independence, for she could afford it without help and without strain.
Toby reached Hazel’s back door first and let himself in, as at home here as he was in his own flat. Gemma, trailing, entered the kitchen to find Hazel’s husband, Tim, stirring something on the cooker, and the children chanting, “Chocolate, chocolate,” like little demons. Hazel referred to them as Night and Day, for blue-eyed Toby’s fair hair was straight, and Holly had inherited her mother’s curls, along with her father’s dark hair and eyes.
A clinical psychologist, Hazel had taken leave from her practice to care for her small daughter, and had soon insisted on taking Toby as well-on the grounds that two were much easier to entertain than one. She charged Gemma the going rate for child-minding-though Gemma suspected this had more to do with salving her pride than Hazel’s financial gain-and never seemed fazed by the demands of the boisterous three-year-olds.
“Fancy a milky drink while we watch the video, Gemma?” Tim flashed her a welcoming smile, just visible through his dark beard.
Giving her husband an affectionate pat as she passed, Hazel said, “I think Gemma and I will join you in a bit, love. We’ve a weekend’s worth of gossip to catch up on.” She moved efficiently about the kitchen, fetching mugs, spoons, and the Cadbury tin.
After removing a broken crayon and a naked baby doll, Gemma sank into her usual chair at the kitchen table. It seemed impossible not to relax in this room-Gemma had often told Hazel that its essence should be bottled and sold as a sedative. She looked about her, noting the details, deliberately letting their familiarity calm her. Colorful cookery books vied with Hazel’s knitting wool for space on the worktops, a basket filled with toys and picture books stood next to the Aga, and the braided rug on the floor invited games of make-believe beneath the table. Even the sponged peach walls and dusty-green cabinets added comforting warmth.
“I was going to offer you coffee and fresh strudel,” Hazel said to Gemma when she’d dispatched Tim into the sitting room with a tray, children in tow. “But let’s open that bottle of Riesling I’ve been saving for you instead. You look as though you could do with a medicinal drink.”
“No, coffee’s fine. It would be a shame to waste the wine on me tonight. I don’t feel very festive.” Then, afraid she’d sounded ungrateful, Gemma made an effort to smile and added, “And I’d hate to miss your strudel.”
Hazel gave her a considering look, her round face grave, but said only, “The carbohydrate will make you feel better.” In a few moments she’d settled opposite Gemma with the filter pot and a warm pan of apple strudel. She poured coffee and served generous portions of pastry onto two plates, pushing Gemma’s across the well-scrubbed pine table. “Thank God for frozen puff pastry,” she said as she took a test nibble, then, satisfied, she fixed all her attention on Gemma. “All right, tell.”
Gemma shrugged, shook her head, picked at her strudel, then put her fork down. “He went to see his ex-wife today. Dr. Victoria Kincaid McClellan, he said her name is now. After twelve years of absolutely F-all, she rings him up and he shot off to her like a bloody homing pigeon, can you believe it?
“She has some case she wants him to look into, and he agreed to that, too. Apparently, her husband has run off with a graduate student, and instead of saying serves her right, he feels sorry for her.” Pausing, she sipped at her coffee and winced as it scalded her mouth.
“Do I take it he told you about this beforehand?” asked Hazel, brows lifting. “That he intended seeing her?”
“Well, he couldn’t very well help it, could he? I was there when she rang.” Reluctantly, Gemma added, “Although… I suppose he did ask me to go with him.”
“You suppose?” Hazel asked, amused. “And I suppose you climbed on your high horse and refused?”
“I’d promised Toby we’d visit Mum and Dad today. You know how they look forward to our coming.” It sounded a weak excuse to Gemma even as she said it-she could have easily postponed the visit a week.
Hazel didn’t offer any encouragement. “So who are you really angry with, him or her?”
“Her, of course,” said Gemma, incensed. “Of all the nerve, after the way she treated him.” She raised her cup to her lips again, more gingerly this time, then stopped as she saw Hazel’s expression. “Oh, all right. I’m bloody furious with him, if you want to know. He was such a pig about it. He said I didn’t know anything, and he more or less told me to mind my own business.”
Hazel took a bite of strudel and chewed it. “Well, what do you know about their marriage?”
Gemma shrugged and went back to flaking off bits of strudel with her fork. “Just that she left him without a word.”
“Has he said why?”
“He said it was because he worked too much and didn’t pay her enough attention,” Gemma admitted grudgingly.
“So if he’s not blaming her-what’s her name? Victoria?-then why are you? Surely you don’t wish she hadn’t left him?” Hazel grinned impishly. “Then you might have some real competition.”
“No, of course I don’t wish that.” Gemma pushed her coffee cup away. “Can we open that wine after all?” She watched as Hazel went to the fridge and retrieved the bottle.
“What’s so complicated about it?” Hazel asked as she brought the bottle and two glasses to the table. “Why do you feel threatened by his relationship with Victoria?”
“Vic. He always calls her Vic.”
“Vic, then.”
“I don’t feel threatened,” Gemma protested. “And I’m not jealous. I don’t go about thinking he’s going to chat up every woman he meets.” She accepted the glass Hazel filled and handed to her. “It’s just that… I don’t know where he stands with her.”
“Why don’t you ask him how he feels? Tell him that the situation makes you uncomfortable.”
“How can I?” Gemma choked on the wine she’d been sipping and coughed until her eyes teared. When she could speak again, she added, “I’m the one who insisted we not set those kinds of limits on each other, because I didn’t want to feel suffocated. And how could I possibly say anything after he was so bloody about it?”
“Has it occurred to you that he might have been reticent about his visit because he was worried about your reaction?” asked Hazel. “And I gather you certainly lived up to expectations.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Gemma said disgustedly. “I’d been stewing all weekend, and tonight I waded into it at the first opportunity. Sometimes I think I should have been born with my foot in my mouth.” She shook her head. “So what do I do now?”
“Grovel?” suggested Hazel kindly. “Look, love.” She leaned towards Gemma, elbows on the table. “Just for once, forget your dreadful ex-husband; ignore all those little red flags that pop up at the mere suggestion of setting parameters. One of the reasons you and Duncan work so well together is that you communicate.” She jabbed her finger at Gemma for emphasis. “Why not extend the same honesty to your personal life? You’ve been tiptoeing round this ‘we don’t make demands on our relationship’ crap for how long now-since November? That was all very well in the beginning, but relationships are about demands, and obligation, and commitment. If this one is to continue, one of you is going to have to step up to the net.”
The storm had passed through, leaving the air cool and cleansed. Vic tightened the belt on her dressing gown and stepped from the terrace into the dark garden so that she had an unobstructed view of the stars. She’d never managed to learn the constellations, and as she looked up she felt a sudden longing to put names to the clusters, to match them to the sticklike drawings she’d seen as a child. Perhaps she’d buy Kit one of those glow-in-the-dark sets she’d seen at the bookshop in Cambridge, and they could learn them together.
Poor Kit, she thought with a sigh. Since Ian’s disappearance, her parents had taken it upon themselves to fill the gap in Kit’s life, and had succeeded in giving his hostility a new target. The more he resisted, the harder they pushed, and Vic was finding the contest more and more difficult to referee. Today they’d met him off the King’s Cross train, determined to take him to an exhibition at the British Museum, while Kit had been equally determined to cajole them into visiting the Piccadilly Circus video arcades.
He’d come home sullen and disappointed, of course. Vic had known his wishes wouldn’t stand a chance against her mother’s agenda, but she’d made him go because she hadn’t been ready for him to meet Duncan. Not yet, not until she was sure about him, sure he hadn’t changed in the things that counted.
Turning, she looked to the north, where Nathan’s cottage stood out of sight just round the bend in the road. She’d meant to ring him, perhaps even to slip away for a glass of wine and a half-hour’s visit before the fire in his sitting room. But Kit had needed her attention, and her guilt had dictated she spend the evening with him in front of the telly, watching some awful action film he’d begged to see.
Now it was too late to ring anyone, but she felt restless, unable to settle. She ought to be in bed, but she knew she’d only lie awake, wide-eyed, replaying the afternoon’s conversation with Duncan in her head. Did she say too much? Did she say enough? Did he take her seriously, or was he merely humoring her?
She closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself drift in the dark, then turned and let herself quietly back into the house. There must be something she’d missed, something conclusive that she could show him. Making her way by touch down the dim corridor, she slipped into her office and stood staring at the clutter of papers illuminated by her desk lamp. She would simply start again, from the beginning.
Newnham 7
October 1961
Dearest Mother,
Oh, how I wish you were here. It’s everything we dreamed of, yet in some ways nothing like we imagined. Newnham isn’t the least bit cold and forbidding, its red brick and white trim are charming, and I’ve been given the loveliest set of rooms, on the corner, overlooking the gardens. You’ll have to think of me here, once I’ve hung my prints and put my bits and pieces about, curled in my chair in front of the gas fire, reading, reading, reading… I met my Director of Studies today, Dr. Barrett, and I think we’ll get on famously. The trouble is going to be in choosing which lectures to attend and which papers I’ll do this term. I feel like the proverbial child in the candy store, overwhelmed by bounty.
So far the other girls seem nice enough, if a bit standoffish. Daphne, the tall redhead across the hall, seems the best prospect for striking up a real friendship, as she’s from some village in Kent the size of your thumb. That gives us at least one thing in common.
Last night I went to Evensong at King’s for the first time. Oh, Mummy, it was incredible. The voices soared, and for a little while I soared with them, imagining myself floating above Cambridge in the clear night, held only by a silver tether of sound. I sat next to a Trinity boy, very serious, who invited me to a poetry reading on Thursday in his rooms. So you see, I already have a social engagement, and you needn’t have worried about me.
If the weather’s fine on Sunday I mean to walk to Grantchester along the river path. I’ll pretend I’m Virginia Woolf going to visit Rupert Brooke. We’ll have tea in the garden at the Old Vicarage and discuss important things: poetry and philosophy and life.
Darling Mother, I’m sure I haven’t thanked you properly. You made me work when I felt tired or cranky; you encouraged me when I couldn’t see past some trivial setback; you built me up when I lost faith in myself. If it weren’t for your vision and determination I’d probably be standing behind the chemist’s counter today, dispensing cough syrup and milk of magnesia, instead of here, in this most glorious of places. I’ll write in a day or two and give you my schedule. I want to share this with you.
Your loving… Lydia
My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river
Stirs anguish in the heart of me.
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Blue Evening”
Kincaid had kept his word to Vic, ringing his friend, Chief Inspector Alec Byrne, first thing Monday morning, but it wasn’t until midday Wednesday that he found the time to go to Cambridge. Having decided he’d put enough wear and tear on the Midget for one week, he took the train, stretching his legs out in the empty compartment and dozing between stations. A little more than an hour after leaving King’s Cross, he paid off a taxi in front of the cinder-block building on Parkside Road that housed the Cambridge police.
A blonde constable with traffic-stopping legs escorted him to Byrne’s office, ushering him in with a smile and the merest suggestion of a wink.
“Watch out for our Mandy,” Byrne said with a grin as the door closed. He stood and came round his desk. “She’s been through every man in the department once, and now she’s starting on the second round.”
“I’ll exercise proper caution,” Kincaid assured him. “It’s good to see you, Alec. They seem to be treating you well, if the accommodations are anything to go by.” He raised an eyebrow at the furniture and carpeting, a definite step up from Scotland Yard standard issue.
“I can’t complain. Executive loo and three squares a day.”
Something nagged at Kincaid, and after a moment he realized what it was. Alec Byrne had quit smoking. His desk no longer held ashtrays, and the hand he’d held out for Kincaid to shake was scrubbed pink, only the nails of his thumb and forefinger still showing faint yellow stains. When they’d been fledgling detective constables together, his friend had seldom been seen without a cigarette adhering to his lip or dangling from his fingers. Kincaid had always found it odd, as Byrne was a most fastidious man in other ways.
“I see you’ve given it up,” he said as he settled into the visitor’s chair.
“Had to, I’m afraid. Developed a bit of a spot on my lung.” Byrne shrugged a bony shoulder beneath an exquisitely tailored suit jacket. “Decided it wasn’t worth dying for.”
“You look well.” Kincaid meant it sincerely. A tall man, still as thin as he’d been when Kincaid had first known him, Byrne looked whippet fit. His reddish fair hair had receded above the temples, leaving him a pronounced and rather distinguished widow’s peak.
“I’m not too stubborn to admit that I feel better.” Byrne smiled. “I knew becoming a fanatic was the only way I Could do it, so I changed my diet and I started exercising-I’m rowing again, can you believe it? Joined a club.”
Byrne had been nonchalant concerning his Cambridge blue, but he’d also made sure it got about among his fellow rookies, and his athletic prowess had done much to alleviate their distrust of his upper-class background. The suspicion Byrne’s Cambridge degree had aroused seemed odd now, in this new era of educated policing, but it seemed to Kincaid that the man had always had an instinct for being ahead of his time.
“Thanks for seeing me, Alec. I know how busy you must be.”
“You know all too well, I’d imagine-and of course that makes me wonder what you’re doing here, but I’ll try to keep my curiosity in check. I’ve had the file you asked for brought up from the dungeon. I’d suggest you take it to the canteen and look at it while you have a cuppa.” Byrne handed a folder across his desk to Kincaid. “But you owe me, old chap.”
“I’m sure you’ll find some suitable revenge.” Kincaid accepted the fat file and realigned the errant papers.
“You can buy me a pint when you’ve finished. I’m sure they’ll never miss me.”
“Privilege of rank?” Kincaid suggested.
Byrne answered in his most sardonic drawl. “Hardly worth it, otherwise, I dare say.”
“I see you didn’t handle Lydia Brooke’s case,” Kincaid said as he set two foaming pints of bitter on the table at The Free Press. The pub was tucked away in a residential street behind the station, and was, Byrne had informed him zealously, the only nonsmoking pub in Britain, at least as far as he knew.
“No, the Brooke case was Bill Fitzgerald’s, one of his last before he took his peptic ulcer and his pension off to a bungalow in Spain. He sends us a postcard occasionally.” Byrne raised his pint to Kincaid. “Cheers. May we someday do the same.”
“I’ll drink to that.” For the first time in years, Kincaid had a brief vision of his honeymoon with Vic in Majorca. Sun and rocks and scarlet bougainvillea climbing on stuccoed walls… He shook himself back to reality. “About Lydia Brooke-did you know her when you were at Cambridge?”
Byrne shook his head. “No, she left a few years before I came up, but I heard the occasional odd thing about her. I remember the case well enough, though. Just about this time of year, wasn’t it, five years ago? She died from an overdose of the medication she took for her heart arrhythmia, leaving everything to her ex-husband. It seemed a fairly obvious suicide, and it at least got her a mention on the local news. You know-’tragic death of award-winning Cambridge poet’-that sort of thing.”
Kincaid pulled his notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open, then drank off a bit of his pint. He’d taken the bench, putting the wall at his back, and from where he sat he could see the day’s specials carefully lettered on the chalkboard over the bar. “Mushroom stroganoff,” it read, and “Courgette flan.” It followed, he supposed, that a smoke-free pub would also be vegetarian. Glancing at the notebook, he said, “I understand that Brooke had a history of more violent suicide attempts.”
“She had a reputation as a bit of an hysteric, if I remember correctly. All part of the artistic persona.”
“What crap,” Kincaid said. “In my experience, artists are more likely to be driven like furies, and are a hell of a lot more disciplined than your average accountant.” He sat back and lifted his pint once more. “Do you remember the details of the previous attempts?”
Byrne shook his head. “Not really, except that they seem to have been rather elaborately staged, as was this one.”
“Yes… except there were one or two things about this one that seemed a bit odd to me. Her clothes, for instance.”
“Clothes? I don’t remember that there was anything unusual about them.”
“That’s the point. Lydia Brooke seems to have had a heightened sense of the dramatic, I will give you that.” Kincaid smiled at Byrne, then glanced again at his notes. “According to her file, there was music repeating on the stereo when her body was discovered, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, to be exact. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the piece at all, but I’d say it’s probably the most wrenchingly sad music I’ve ever heard.”
“I know the piece,” Byrne said. He closed his eyes for a moment, then hummed a few bars, keeping time with his finger. “And I’d be inclined to agree with you. It’s quite powerful stuff.”
“So picture this,” Kincaid continued. “She lay on the sofa in her study, arms crossed on her breast, a candle burning on the table beside her. In her typewriter there was a fragment of a poem about death, and the music playing.” He pushed his pint aside and leaned forwards. “But she was wearing khaki trousers and a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Eat Organic Food.’ She had dirt under her fingernails. For Christ’s sake, Alec, she’d been gardening. Are we to surmise that Lydia Brooke had a particularly difficult encounter with her herbaceous border and decided to end it all?”
Byrne tapped his long fingers on the tabletop. “I take your point. After she went to so much trouble to set the scene, you’d think she’d have worn something more suitable to the occasion. But I think you’re stretching it a bit-suicides aren’t always so logical.”
Kincaid shrugged. “Perhaps. It just struck me, that’s all. I don’t suppose anyone checked to see if she’d left her gardening tools out?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. I wouldn’t be willing to wager on it.”
“Do you remember the statement of the man who found the body?”
“No,” Byrne answered, beginning to sound a bit exasperated. “I can’t say that I ever actually read the file. I only know what was circulating in the department at the time.”
Consulting his notes again, Kincaid said, “His name was Nathan Winter. He was a friend, apparently, as well as her literary executor. Brooke had rung him and asked him to come round, but when he arrived later that evening he found the porch dark. She didn’t answer when he rang the bell, so he tried the door and found it unlocked. Do you know if anyone ever found out why the light was out?”
Frowning, Byrne studied Kincaid. “I suspect where you’re going with this, and I think I’ve contained my curiosity long enough. Why this interest in a straightforward case that’s been closed for almost five years? Do you think we’re not capable of doing a job properly?”
“Oh, bollocks, Alec. You know perfectly well that’s not true, so don’t come the injured provincial with me. Besides, it wasn’t your case. You were the new boy on the block then, remember? And isn’t it just possible that old Bill was more interested in looking at travel brochures than in doing much digging on a case that came all wrapped up in a pink ribbon?”
For a moment Byrne seemed to be concentrating on placing his tankard in the exact center of his beer mat, then he looked up at Kincaid. “Even supposing you’re right-and I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far, mind you-why are you sticking your nose in?”
It was Kincaid’s turn to fiddle. He drew rings in the moisture on the tabletop, wishing he’d started as he meant to go on. Finally, he said, “It’s personal.” When Byrne merely raised his brows expectantly, Kincaid went on. “My ex-wife-her name is Victoria McClellan-is working on a biography of Brooke. She’s at All Saints’-a Fellow-and she lectures at the University as well,” he added quickly, as if Byrne had questioned her credentials.
“I see,” Byrne drawled. “She asked you to ferret out the details so she could use them in her book. And you agreed?”
Kincaid bridled at the mildly amused censure. “Not at all. I’d not have agreed to it, for one thing, and for another, I think scandal value is the last thing on Vic’s mind. Look, Alec, I know how it sounds, but Vic isn’t given to flights of fancy. I daresay she knows Lydia Brooke down to the color of her knickers, and she doesn’t believe Brooke committed suicide.”
“Murder?” Byrne laughed. “Tell that to the AC, with bells on. Just let me be there to see his face turn that lovely apoplectic purple.” His mirth subsiding, he looked pityingly at Kincaid. “Duncan, I can tell you now, you don’t stand a hope of getting the AC to reopen this case unless you come up with some new, absolutely incontrovertible physical evidence-or you get a confession.” He shook his head and eyed his friend ruefully. “And I’d say your chances of doing either are about on a par with the proverbial snowball’s.”
Kincaid stood outside the police station, watching squirrels chase one another across the green expanse of Parker’s Piece. Two young men played a desultory game of Frisbee with a mongrel dog, and a woman pushing a pram crossed the space slowly on the diagonal.
Reluctantly, Kincaid pulled his phone from his breast pocket and punched in Vic’s number. He supposed he might as well get it over with, see her while he was in Cambridge and tell her he’d done what he could. Alec Byrne was right, of course: a few unanswered questions were not going to arouse the local lads’ interest in an old case more conveniently let lie.
As he listened to the distant ringing, a cloud skittered across the sun, momentarily erasing the long afternoon shadows. He heard a click, then Vic’s voice, and so immediate and natural did she sound that it took him a moment to realize he’d reached her answer phone. At the beep he hesitated, then hung up without leaving a message. He glanced at his watch before again consulting his notebook. There might still be time to catch her at her office, but he realized she hadn’t given him the number. Glancing up, he saw a taxi rounding the corner. If he hurried, he might just make it in person.
A black cab delivered him swiftly to a Victorian house across the river. He stood a moment after paying the driver, regarding the sign near the gate that informed him that this was the UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, NO UNAUTHORIZED PARKING ALLOWED. A heavy screen of evergreens partially concealed a graveled car park, but in a sheltered spot near the house he could see a battered Renault and an N registration Volvo. It looked as though he might find someone lingering past the stroke of five.
The gray-brick, peaked-roof house had seen grander days. Overgrown shrubbery and a swath of dead creeper across the facade gave it a desolate air, alleviated only by clean white trim round the windows and a glossy navy blue door. Kincaid knocked lightly, then turned the knob and stepped inside. He found himself in a small reception area that originally must have functioned as the entrance hall, and as he stood for a moment wondering which door he should try, the one on the left opened and a woman looked round the edge at him.
“Thought I heard someone come in, and I didn’t recognize the tread.” She smiled and came through into the hall, and he saw that she was plump and pleasant-looking, with wavy brown hair and glasses that slid down the bridge of her nose. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“Um, I was hoping I might catch Dr. McClellan before she left for the day,” said Kincaid, wondering a bit late about the advisability of intruding unannounced into Vic’s life.
“Oh, too bad. You’ve just missed her by a few minutes. Kit had a soccer match this afternoon and she does like to be there if she can.” The woman held her hand out. “I’m Laura Miller, by the way, the department secretary. Can I give her a message?”
“Duncan Kincaid,” he said, shaking her hand. “Just tell her I dropped by, if you wouldn’t-” He paused as a door slammed above, then came the sound of quick, heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Damn it, Laura, I can’t find that bloody fax anywhere. Are you sure it’s not gone out with the rubbish?” A man-large, leonine, and flushed with the high color that derives from quick temper-followed the voice round the last landing of the stairs. “You know what liberties Iris takes with other people’s papers, it’s a wonder one ever finds any-” He stopped in midtirade as he reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Kincaid. “Oh, hullo. Sorry, sorry, didn’t know anyone else was about. You’d think we had pixies, the way things disappear in this place.” A lock of the thick gray-brown hair flopped over his brow as he gave Kincaid an apologetic grin. “And poor Laura bears the brunt of our frustration, I’m afraid.”
The secretary gave him a sharp look, but answered easily. “For once it is on Dr. Winslow’s desk, Dr. Eliot. But since it concerned the entire department…” She glanced at Kincaid, then amended whatever she’d been about to say. “I’ll just get it for you. I’m sure she won’t mind you taking care of it.”
With a smile for Kincaid, she slipped back into the office on the left and returned a moment later with a flimsy sheet of fax paper. “Iris Winslow is our Head of Department,” she explained. “We’ve been in a bit of a bother over a change in some of the University exam procedures. Dr. Eliot”-she nodded at the large man by way of introduction-“teaches the history of literary criticism, among other things. Dr. Eliot, this is Mr. Kincaid. He was asking after Vic.”
Kincaid felt the level of interest rise in the room as Eliot eyed him speculatively.
“You don’t say. Is it anything we can help with?” The urgent fax apparently forgotten, Eliot slipped a hand inside his jacket, resting it against his plum-colored knitted waistcoat in a vaguely Napoleonic gesture.
The waistcoat, Kincaid thought at second glance, looked to be cashmere, and the jacket Harris Tweed. Eliot and the secretary watched him expectantly, smiles hovering, eyes bright, and he had the sudden feeling he’d wandered into a tank of barracuda. “No, thanks. Please don’t trouble yourselves over it. I’ll just give her a ring.” He nodded and went out.
He walked slowly down West Road until he reached Queens’ Road again. The crossing light was red and he looked about him as he waited, hands in pockets. The way to the train station lay to his right, across the river. The carriages would be jam-packed this time of day, stuffy with the remnants of the afternoon’s warmth, and he found the prospect of fighting the crowds unappealing. He cursed himself doubly for not bringing the car-as well as avoiding rush hour on British rail, it would have allowed him to drive to Grantchester and wait for Vic at her cottage.
But even though he couldn’t fulfill his main objective, he thought, shrugging, why should he hurry back to London? Since Sunday, Gemma had treated him with studied politeness at work and had been conveniently busy afterwards, and he had no reason to suppose this evening would be any different.
The light flashed yellow and he crossed with the flow of pedestrian traffic, then paused on the opposite pavement. With sudden decisiveness he turned left, taking the path that meandered along the Backs. He could see King’s College Chapel across the river, and as he walked, the clouds parted and the last of the sun’s rays gilded the tips of the spires. Did one take such sights for granted, he wondered, if one saw them every day?
Had Lydia Brooke grown accustomed to them as she went about Cambridge on her business, her head full of lectures and love? And most likely in reverse order, he added to himself, smiling, then he sobered as he thought of the report he’d read that afternoon. He understood Alec Byrne’s defensiveness, but the case had an unfinished feel, and he thought if it had been his he would not have been satisfied with such a pat solution. Had anyone tried to discover what she’d been doing that day? Or whom she’d seen, and what she might have said to them? And if she’d been gardening, as seemed obvious, had there been anything unusual about that day’s tasks? Had she done what looked to be a final planting, for instance, or some sort of grand tidying up, as if she were taking her leave of the garden?
The business about the porch light nagged at him as well. Had anyone checked to see if it had been out for some time, or had it just coincidentally expired on the night of Lydia’s death?
Kincaid stopped and consulted his pocket map of Cambridge. To his right a lane led to an arched bridge over the river, and Vic’s college lay just the other side. He took the turning, and when he reached the summit of the bridge he paused for a moment and leaned on the railing, gazing downstream at the willows, whose drooping fronds reached out to touch their own reflections. The tightly furled pale yellow buds dotting the branches might have been painted there by Seurat, and the tethered punts provided contrast, solid blocks of green and umber, gently rocking.
Across the river a sturdy redbrick building stood guard over a walled garden. It would be All Saints’ Fellows Garden, he supposed, thinking it unlikely that the dons would allow mere students the best view.
As he turned to continue on his way, a bicycle whizzed soundlessly by him, nearly clipping his shoulder. He went on more warily after that, staying close to the railing and checking behind him for oncoming cyclists. The lane narrowed the other side of the bridge, with the walls of All Saints’ rising on the right and those of Trinity College on the left. At the first All Saints’ gate he stopped and peered into the manicured quad curiously. Didn’t Lydia’s file mention that the Nathan Winter who discovered her body was a don at All Saints’? And hadn’t Vic mentioned a friend called Nathan? Cambridge was indeed a small world, he thought, if the two were the same, and he wondered if Vic had met him in the course of her college duties, or as a result of her research on Lydia Brooke. Winter was a botanist, according to the file, and he vaguely remembered Vic referring to Nathan when they’d talked about her garden. It seemed a bit odd, now that he thought of it, that Lydia had named a botanist as her literary executor.
He shrugged and walked on, rounding the corner into Trinity Lane. And yet there was something odder still, he thought as he went over his conversation with Vic. He could only recall her mentioning one marriage, and that quite early in Lydia’s life. Why would Lydia have left everything to a man from whom she’d been divorced for almost twenty years?
He hugged the wall as another cluster of cyclists shot by, then he stumbled into a bicycle left standing outside a shop. Bloody bikes, he thought. You could hardly move for them in this town.
Newnham
16 November 1961
Darling Mother,
Your birthday gift was much appreciated, and was just enough to purchase a good secondhand bike. It has a few dents in the fenders andscrapes in the paint, but those just add character in my opinion. You’d be proud of me-I’ve got quite good already, and cycle my way round almost as easily as if I were navigating the lanes at home on Auntie Nan’s old clunker. I was sure you wouldn’t mind my spending the money before my actual birthday, as the bike was so sorely needed.
I can’t imagine Cambridge without bicycles. They fly by, the student’s black gowns flapping like crows’ wings, or stand riderless, clumped together in mute and inebriated herds. Even if undergraduates were allowed cars, there would be no place to park them, so I suppose the system works rather well.
Thanks to the bike I venture a bit farther afield each day, so that I am beginning to feel I own this place, with its narrow twisty streets and forests of chimney pots. I seem to find a fascinating little shop round every new corner. I gaze at knitting wools, and jumpers, and cookware, but I spend my pocket money in the secondhand bookshops. I love the dry, musty smell of the volumes, the tissue-thin feel of the paper. Even the typefaces speak of vanished elegance. Already the books are accumulating in my room, and nothing, I think, makes a place more like home. In the evenings I curl up in my window seat and look out over the rooftops as the light fades. Sometimes I read, sometimes I just hold a book, and I feel the strongest sense of contented elation.
If it sounds as though I’ve been leading a solitary life, I assure you that’s not the case. Cambridge has societies representing everything from doily making to penguin equality-well, maybe they’re not quite that outrageous, but some of them are certainly bizarre-and they are all enthusiastically recruiting. The major inducement at these functions is free drink, so one has to be rather carefully abstemious, and not carry one’s checkbook just in case one is too easily persuaded. The only thing that does NOT seem to be well represented is writing, but I’m fast making like-minded friends and perhaps we can create our own sort of society. In the meantime I am seriously considering joining the University paper. That should at least give me a creative outlet until I can schedule time for my own writing.
I’ve been invited out and about so much that I’ve decided it’s time I should reciprocate, so therefore I’m hosting my first sherry party in my room on Thursday. I’ve invited Adam, the boy I told you about meeting at King’s. He’s a Trinity man, reading philosophy, and he seems to seepoetry primarily as a vehicle for expressing social views. On this matter we have already had some wonderfully heated discussions.
Adam took me to a Labour Club dance last Saturday, where I met a delightful boy called Nathan, whom I’ve invited as well. He’s sturdily built, with fair skin, dark hair, and the merriest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. A natural sciences student, he means to be a poet as well as a botanist, in the manner of Loren Eisley.
Daphne from across the hall will make up a fourth, and I intend to serve them decent sherry and biscuits, and feel oh so sophisticated.
And in case you think from this account that I’ve done nothing but swan about, I assure you, Mummy dear, that I have been a model student. I’ve chosen the three exams I will read for, and have begun the lectures Miss Barrett and I decided would be most helpful in preparing me. My lecture schedule is about eleven hours during the week and includes such luminaries as F. R. Leavis on criticism, and I must admit I feel quite intimidated, being lectured to by men whose books are filling my shelves. Most of my lectures are in the morning, and there are surprisingly few women. I usually cycle back to Newnham for lunch in Hall, then most afternoons are divided between supervisions and reading either in the library or in my room. Such order makes me feel as though I might possibly grasp all this, if only I am disciplined and dedicated enough.
I’ve chosen to celebrate my birthday this evening alone in my room. This is not because I’m feeling sorry for myself, mind you, but because this is the way I feel closest to home, and you. It’s a lovely crisp evening with the hint of wood smoke in the air, and I picture you and Nan sitting by the fire after tea, reading, talking now and again, perhaps deciding whether or not to make cocoa and listen to a program on the wireless. I know your thoughts are reaching out to me as mine are reaching out to you, and I think if I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough I could almost… be there.
Love,
Lydia
Vic pulled her old cardigan from the hook and slipped out the back door as soundlessly as possible, reminding herself to lubricate the hinges. She’d tucked Kit into bed at ten, amid the nightly routine of his protests. He thought eleven much too grown up to have a set bedtime, in spite of the fact that if she let him stay up much past ten o’clock, he’d sleep straight through his alarm the next morning.
Shrugging into her cardigan, Vic stood on the terrace a moment, looking up at the sky. The clear day had become a crisp night, but the stars looked blurred round the edges from moisture in the air, and to the north they faded against the pink glow that was Cambridge. She doubted tomorrow would be as fine.
When her eyes had adjusted, she stepped from the terrace onto the lawn, crossed it swiftly, and let herself out the gate at the bottom of the garden. There was no moon, but she knew the path to the river almost by instinct. A shadow moved beneath the chestnuts at the water’s edge. As she drew closer the shape coalesced into a man, stocky, starlight gleaming faintly from the surface of his oiled jacket and his silver hair.
“Nathan.”
“I thought you might come. Kit giving you fits again?” So rich was his voice in the dark that it seemed to her it might stand alone, disembodied, a condensation of personality.
“It’s these dreams,” she said, huddling a bit more tightly into her sweater as she felt the chill rising from the river. “It’s odd-he never had nightmares when he was small.” She sighed. “I suppose it has to do with Ian, although if he misses Ian he never says so. And he won’t tell me what the dreams are about.”
“Children’s capacity for forming little hedgehog balls round their suffering never ceases to amaze me. Our adult propensity for exposing all our traumas to the world must be a learned behavior,” he said, chuckling, but she heard the sympathy in it.
“It’s silly of me, but sometimes I forget you’ve been through all this. I just see you as Nathan, complete in yourself, without all these family appendages that most of us carry round.” Then, as she realized what she’d said, she gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Nathan, I’m so sorry. That was incredibly thoughtless of me.”
This time he laughed outright. “On the contrary, I take it as a compliment. Have you any idea how hard I’ve worked these last few years to achieve that sort of self-sufficient independence? At first it was merely a defense against the well-meaning-I couldn’t bear being fussed over-and then it became something I needed to do for myself. I’d had twenty years of operating as one half of a whole, and there were times when the task seemed insurmountable.” He paused, as if aware of the weariness that had crept into his voice, then added more heartily, “And as for my girls, you just haven’t met them yet. You’ll have no doubt that I’m fully parentally qualified, though I have to admit I sometimes find it difficult to believe they’re my biological offspring. Perhaps all parents feel that way.”
How little she knew him, thought Vic, and how odd that she felt so comfortable with him, as she had never been one to form easy alliances. She must have come to All Saints’ shortly after his wife died, and she remembered having a vague awareness of him as an attractive, if somewhat abstracted, man with whom she exchanged occasional pleasantries over sherry in the SCR. But their paths rarely crossed outside college functions, and it was not until she began her preliminary research on Lydia Brooke that she’d learned Nathan was Brooke’s literary executor.
When approached, he’d been helpful enough in supplying Lydia’s materials, but he had not offered any reminiscences. It was only when she’d mentioned living in Grantchester by chance one day that he’d responded in a more personal way, and since Ian’s disappearance they had spent more and more time together.
“Listen.” Nathan put a finger to his lips. “Do you hear that?”
Vic held her breath, listening. She heard the blood in her ears, then on the threshold of sound, a shriek. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A barn owl. It takes some perseverance to hear them these days; they’re becoming quite rare. Reminds me of my childhood, that and the sound of the tree frogs. I loved the river then. Sometimes I would imagine it moving in my blood.”
“Kit feels that, too, I think. I envy you both a bit. I appreciate this”-she gestured round her-“but it’s in an objective way. What you and Kit have seems to be almost organic. He can stay down here for hours at a time, watching bugs in the grass.” She smiled.
“A naturalist in the making,” Nathan said thoughtfully. “I’d like to know him better. Does he read? He doesn’t look bookish, and I suppose I’d thought of him as a rugger and football sort of boy.”
“Oh, he’s capable enough at games, and he does what’s necessary to fit in at school, but his heart’s not really in it. And it’s odd, because he’s always been ferociously competitive about his schoolwork-even more so since Ian left. The other day I found him crying over an exam score, and then he was furious with me for catching him at it. He didn’t speak to me for two days.” Vic hadn’t told anyone this, and now she didn’t know if she felt relieved, or guilty for betraying Kit’s confidence. These were the sort of things meant to be shared by parents, she thought, but she wouldn’t have told Ian even had he been round to tell. He’d have gone all pompous and preachy about it, and he’d somehow, as always, manage to miss the point.
“Poor kid,” Nathan said, his jacket rustling as he moved in the dark. “Perhaps you could encourage him to love the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, separate from the carrot system of education.”
Vic heard a soft plop from the direction of the river. A frog? Or a fish jumping? Did fish sleep? she wondered. She thought of asking Nathan, then dismissed it as being too humiliatingly ridiculous. How ignorant she was of anything outside her own little area of expertise. Tonight the river seemed merely a dark void in the landscape-she had never thought of it being full of life as complicated and messy as her own.
Now she found that if she stared long enough at the water she could see light and movement, the reflection of starlight filtering through the chestnut branches. “So how do I go about it, teaching Kit to love knowledge for itself?”
“Look at yourself,” said Nathan softly. “Have you forgotten why you do what you do? That’s a start. And I’ve some books he might like. Why don’t you come up to the cottage with me?” he added, cupping a hand round her elbow. “I’ve something for you, as well.”
Vic found that her odd, new awareness had spread from the perception of outward phenomena to her body. She felt the heat from Nathan’s hand through the bulky sleeve of her cardigan and the sensation left her suddenly ripe, aching, weak-kneed with desire. Oh, Lord, she had forgotten this, the strength of it, and she was not prepared. She thought of Nathan’s hand on her breast and stumbled, gasping.
“Are you all right?” He tightened his grip on her arm.
“Fine,” she said, a bit breathlessly, fighting laughter, trying hard to stamp down the singing joy rising in her. “Just fine.”
“Fancy a drink?” Nathan asked. “Wine or-”
“Whisky,” Vic interrupted decisively. She stood before the fire in his kitchen-dining area as if she were cold, but her cheeks were stained with pink.
Watching her while he filled two tumblers from the bottle he kept in the kitchen cabinet, Nathan wondered if she might be coming down with something. Come to think of it, she’d been behaving very oddly these past few minutes. She’d not often touched him, yet tonight when he’d let go her arm on reaching the level path, fearing he’d overstepped his bounds, she’d walked so close beside him that their shoulders bumped.
Nathan delivered her glass and raised his. “Cheers.”
Vic took what on anyone less delicate looking he would have labeled a swig, then coughed and sputtered. When he patted her solicitously on the back, she shivered.
“Honestly, Vic, I think you’re not well. Let me-”
“No, I’m fine, Nathan, really,” she said, her eyes still watering. “I just got a bit carried away with this stuff” She took a much smaller sip. “See? I’m quite all right. Now, tell me about those books for Kit.”
He went to one of the bookcases that lined the wall opposite the garden windows, and she came to stand beside him. “Gerald Durrell,” he said, running his finger along the shelves as he scanned, then stopping on some slender spines. “Has he read these? They’re marvelous, all about his childhood on Corfu with every kind of insect and animal imaginable. And what about Laurens Van der Post? He made me want to see Africa, follow in the tracks of the Bushmen. Or Konrad Lorenz, the grandfather of animal behavior?” Stop it, he told himself, pulling books from the shelves. You’re chattering like a bloody adolescent on a first date. And to make it worse, he was probably imagining that her nearness was deliberate.
When Vic took the proffered books and retreated to the chair beside the fire, he excused himself. “Idiot,” he said aloud as he stepped into the darkness of the hall, then took a deep breath before going up to his study. When he returned, he found her leafing idly through a book, but her gaze was focused on the fire, and he suspected she hadn’t the least idea which volume she held.
“I found this the other day,” he said, sitting opposite her. “There were still a few boxes from the Cambridge house in the loft. I thought you might like to have it.” She blinked and smiled a bit vaguely as she took the book from his hand, then her breath caught as she took in what it was.
She touched the cover. “Oh, Nathan, it’s lovely.” Opening it, she lifted the tissue-paper flyleaf with care, then smiled as she looked down into Rupert Brooke’s eyes. “And what a wonderful photograph. I’ve never seen this one.” She went back to the cover, then looked at the back of the title page. “It’s a first printing of Edward Marsh’s Rupert Brooke: A Memoir,” she said unnecessarily, as if Nathan didn’t know perfectly well what it was. “Nineteen nineteen. Where ever did you get it?”
“It was Lydia’s.”
She looked up. “But… are you sure you should… are you sure you want to-”
“I can do whatever I please with Lydia’s things, and I think it only fitting that you should have it.”
“Surely it must be valuable.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Vic laid the book in her lap and spread her long, slender fingers over the cover, and he took it as acquiescence. “Nathan, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.” She paused and took another sip of her almost empty drink. “Lately, I’ve wondered if this biography was jinxed from the start. When I began, I’d never have imagined that two of the people who could help me the most were the two I’d feel the least comfortable asking. Does that make sense?” she added, tilting her head to one side and frowning. “Anyway, you can imagine how difficult it is to talk to Darcy…” She rolled her eyes and Nathan laughed. “He’s insufferable enough without further instigation.”
“Are you saying you’ve found me difficult to talk to?” asked Nathan, refusing to be diverted.
“It just seemed such an imposition. I was afraid it might upset you to talk about Lydia, and I didn’t want to do anything that might damage our… friendship. And the others…” Grimacing, she tossed back the last of her whisky. “Of course her ex-husband, Morgan Ashby, refused to see me at all.” She colored as if she found the memory unpleasant and hurried on. “Daphne Morris was perfectly cordial and as bland as unbuttered toast. You’d have thought she barely knew Lydia, from the way she talked. And Adam Lamb…” Vic looked away from Nathan, into the fire. “Adam Lamb wouldn’t even talk to me on the telephone.”
“Vic, what is it exactly that you want me to do?”
She placed the book on the side table, then rose abruptly and stood before the fire, her back to him. “I hate asking favors. That’s all I seem to be doing lately, asking favors and apologizing to people. And now I sound churlish when you’ve been so kind.”
“Vic-” He got up from his armchair and stood beside her, so that she had to turn and face him. She held her arms crossed tightly across her chest.
“Would you talk to Adam Lamb for me?” she said in a rush. “Ask him if he’d see me for just a few minutes?”
Nathan laughed. “Good God, is that all? I thought you were going to ask me for something I couldn’t do. Of course, I can’t guarantee I’ll have any influence with Adam-sometimes the Lord moves him in mysterious ways-but I’ll give it a try.”
Vic smiled and seemed to relax a little. “And you don’t mind talking about Lydia?”
“It’s not that I mind, exactly, it’s just that it was all so very long ago. You’ve been immersed in Lydia’s life in a way I never was, and you must understand that it’s much more immediate for you than it is for me. But you can ask me anything you want, and I’ll try.” He resisted the impulse to touch her cheek. Surely he had said nothing to deserve the intentness of her expression?
“Nathan.” Vic took a breath and dropped her arms to her sides. “Take me to bed.”
“What?”
“You heard me. This has nothing to do with Lydia, or Ian, or anything in the past. It’s just between us. Do you not want to?”
So she had drunk the whisky for the Dutch courage to seduce him, and all the while he’d been bumbling round like an idiot, trying not to presume too much. “Of course I want to. But I didn’t think… and I’m old enough-”
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re old enough to be my father. That’s absurd, unless you were a very precocious adolescent, and anyway, what would it matter?”
“But it’s been-” He found his tongue hung on the words since Jean died. He swallowed and substituted, “such a long time,” but Vic was laughing now and he couldn’t go on.
“It’s just like riding a bloody bike, Nathan, for heaven’s sake,” she managed to sputter. “You won’t have forgotten how.”
Her laughter died as suddenly as it had begun. He reached out and touched her cheek, and when she turned her face into his hand he felt her trembling.
“No,” he said, tracing the curve of her jaw with his fingers, then the corner of her mouth. “I think it will all come back to me very, very quickly.”
Is it the hour? We leave this resting place
Made fair by one another for a while.
Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace;
The long road then, unlit by your faint smile.
Ah! The long road! and you so far away!
Oh, I’ll remember! but… each crawling day
Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile
Dull the dear pain of your remembered face.
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “The Wayfarers”
Morgan Ashby pulled his battered Volvo into the drive of the house on St. Barnabas Road. There was just enough light left for him to see that the hedges needed trimming, yet the lamps in the houses next door and opposite had come on, defense against the evening. No light shone through the stained glass transom above the door of number 37.
The door of the Volvo creaked as he swung it open, and he felt an answering ache in his knees as he stood. Rheumatism? The afflictions of age so soon in what he staunchly maintained was the prime of his life? Perhaps, he thought, but he knew the truth. It was dread.
The bequest of this house had been Lydia’s last malicious joke, perpetrated from beyond the grave, and he had cooperated, God rot both their souls. Taking the key from his pocket, he fumbled at the front door’s lock in the dusk of the porch. He should have sold the house. He’d known then that he should sell it as soon as the ink on the probate papers dried. Francesca had pleaded with him to sell it, to sever the last link, and yet some perversity in him had made him hold on. Had he thought some positive thing would come of the nagging discomfort, some pearl of good character form under his hide? He snorted derisively in the darkness and the tumblers clicked over.
In the end, he’d leased it to a married couple, both University dons, and their tribe of screaming children. They had stayed for five years, troubling him little but for the occasional request for a plumber or repairs to the roof, and had just last week decamped on the improvement in their financial fortunes.
He felt for the switch inside the door, then blinked as light flooded the entry. Leaves had crept over the sill and littered the black-and-white tile floor, their twisted brown shapes looking for a moment like small dead birds.
The pale pink striped wallpaper that lined the entry and climbed up the stairs looked even more dilapidated than he remembered. The seams curled, and in a few places near the ceiling it had come away entirely-Lydia would probably have said the drooping swags looked like stained petticoats, he thought with a grimace. At thigh level the children had scrawled across it with crayons.
It would mean keeping the tenants’ bloody deposit back, he supposed, but he was not sure he could be bothered. Moving towards the back of the house, Morgan steeled himself to assess the rest of the damage. First the sitting room, cold and empty, the carpet threadbare and spotted, the cushion on the window seat ripped with the stuffing spilling out. Lydia had liked to read here on fine mornings when the sun flooded through the bay window, warming the room. He remembered her choosing this wallpaper, with its intricate pattern in rose and green and dull gold. It had been years before the resurgence in popularity of William Morris, but Lydia had been determined to find something with the feel of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
They’d had a furious row over it, because even her innocent decorating enthusiasms had reeked to him of her involvement with her pretentious literary friends, and he had despised them.
He moved on, down the hall, bypassing the door to Lydia’s study. Whatever havoc the little monsters had wreaked in there would have to go unremarked, because he could not bring himself to enter the room where Lydia had died.
The kitchen was best, he thought as he opened the door at the end of the hall. First the little reception area with the space for the telephone, and the bookshelves for the cookery books. Then round the corner into the kitchen proper, and beyond that the dining area with its vaulted ceiling and windows overlooking the garden. This they had planned and built together, using part of his small inheritance, and it had been white and clean and untainted. His reflection stared back at him from the black mirror of the uncurtained garden window-a tall, thin shape, shoulders hunched, dark curling hair, a white blur of a face. He framed the shot in his mind, blinked.
They had shared thinking in images, he and Lydia. He had understood her need to write poetry, for he had gone about photography with the same dedication. It was the other things he hadn’t understood: her need for drama and atmosphere, her desire to exist within a group, her obsession with the past.
He looked upwards, towards the first-floor bedroom. For a long while, they had patched over their arguments with lovemaking so fierce it left them sobbing and exhausted. Destructive, yes, but he had never since known anything so intense, or so addictive. In his blackest moments, he wished he had killed her then, and himself, put them both out of their misery.
The sound of a door closing came from the front of the house. Morgan stopped his prowling about the empty room to listen. Some neighbor come to investigate lights in a vacant house, perhaps? God forbid he should have to be sociable, especially here, and now.
“Morgan, darling?”
Oh, Lord, it was Francesca. The last thing he’d meant to do was upset her. How in hell had she found him?
“In here,” he called out, and hurried to meet her in the more neutral territory of the hall. She stood beside the cold radiator at the bottom of the stairs, huddled in the old brown coat she kept for taking out the dogs.
He grasped her shoulders and looked down into her anxious face. “Fran, what are you doing here?”
“I came into town with Monica to get some knitting wool. I ran out of the indigo. And then when we drove by I saw the car.”
“The wool shop is nowhere near St. Barnabas Road,” he said gently. “Nor do you go to town in that old rag of a coat.” He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up so that she had to look into his eyes. “How did you know?”
“I knew you’d have to come. And I knew you wouldn’t tell me.”
“Only because I didn’t want to worry you.”
Francesca reached up and pushed a stray lock of hair from his brow. “When will you ever get it through your thick head that the not knowing, the not talking about it only makes it worse? You’ve been moping about the house for days, working yourself up to this. I could feel it.”
“You’d think I’d have learned, by this time, that I can’t keep anything from you,” he said, forcing himself to smile. “But the house had to be attended to, and I didn’t see why you should be upset by it.”
“Then let it go this time, Morgan. Let her go. You’ve been picking at this scab for more than twenty years and it will never heal unless you stop. Call an estate agent tomorrow and you need never set foot in this place again. We have a good life together. Let us get on with it. Please.”
Morgan gathered his wife into his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest. He stroked the top of her head, then the thick plait of brown hair, now finely threaded with gray. Francesca had rescued him from the disaster of his first marriage, and he had loved her because she was everything Lydia was not. She had less pretension about her than anyone he had ever met, and though intelligent, she lacked any intellectual conceit. Steadfast, she had supported him in his battle with depression, buffered others from his moods and his temper, and she’d borne with grace and courage their failure to conceive the children she had wanted so badly.
They had made a good life. Francesca’s reputation as a textile artist had grown over the years, as had his as a photographer, and together they’d turned their renovated farmhouse studio in the countryside west of Cambridge into an artistic retreat. What more, he asked himself, could any man want?
And how could he possibly tell Francesca that he could not let Lydia go?
Afternoon tea at last, Daphne Morris thought with a sigh of relief as she heard the knock at her office door. She looked up from the history essays she’d been marking and called, “Come in,” as she pulled off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose.
“Sorry it’s a bit late,” Jeanette said as she maneuvered the tea tray through the heavy door. “What with one thing and another.”
Daphne smiled beneath her tented fingers. Jeanette was always “a bit” late, what with one thing or another. But she was so invaluable to the running of the school that Daphne had learned to adapt. After all, what did a few minutes matter?
“It’s that Muriel again,” Jeanette informed her as she set the tray on the desk and poured tea into Daphne’s favorite mug. “She’s been bothering Cook, telling her the girls have all decided to eat ‘lower down the food chain,’ or some such nonsense, and so apparently they’ve decided to boycott beef. Can you imagine?” She sank into the chair on the other side of Daphne’s desk and sighed. “I had to chase her out of the kitchen, then it took me a good half hour just to smooth Cook’s feathers.”
“I’m afraid I can imagine all too well.” Daphne rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Are you not having yours?” she added, nodding at the teapot as she sat back with her mug and nibbled on a Rich Tea biscuit.
“Had my tea with Cook. Seemed the best way to mend the bridges.”
Daphne smiled and made a mental note to add that to her collection of Jeanette’s mixed metaphors. “You’d better send Muriel on to me and I’ll sort her out,” she said without relish. “I’m sure this was all her idea, but still I suppose I’d better speak to the assembly about it. I wouldn’t mind if I thought this business was motivated by any genuine concern for the environment, but I smell the unpleasant odor of lemminglike political correctness.”
“I heard her instructing some of the more feebleminded girls, in a huddle under the staircase. Jarvis, and the new girl, what’s-her-name with the horn-rimmed spectacles and beetle brows.”
Daphne laughed. “Oh, Jeanette, you’re too awful. You know perfectly well her name is Quinta. You’re just being stubborn because you think it’s affected. And anyway, it’s not the poor girl’s fault her parents gave her a dreadful name, and she’s really not that bad, just easily influenced.” The thought sobered Daphne, and brought her back to the matter under discussion. “The girls can certainly leave meat off their plates if they are so inclined, but I won’t have Muriel browbeating them into submission.”
Thank heavens this was Muriel Baines’s last year at St. Winifred’s, for the Head Girl had sorely tried Daphne’s policy of impartiality. Some of the teachers whose heads had been turned by Muriel’s flattery had coaxed Daphne into appointing her Head Girl, against her better judgment. She had never liked Muriel, with her bossy manner and jutting bosom, and closer acquaintance had done nothing to improve her opinion.
As difficult as it was not to show her dislike of Muriel and a few other girls, it was more difficult to disguise her affection for those she did like. But that, Daphne had learned early on, was something a good headmistress must never do. Girls were too vulnerable to crushes, and the slightest remark could be misinterpreted under the influence of adolescent longing, the simplest gesture mistaken for a declaration.
“Well, I’d best be getting back to the fray,” said Jeanette, pushing herself to the edge of the chair. “Rested my pins for long enough.”
Startled out of her reverie, Daphne said, “Oh, Jeanette, I’m sorry. Was I daydreaming? It’s been that sort of day, I’m afraid.”
“Never mind. It gave me a space to collect myself.” Jeanette smiled, and Daphne thought, as she often did, what a good, kind face her assistant had. She might never by any stretch of the imagination be called beautiful, with her pockmarked skin and the limp, fair hair which she wore chopped off at the chin and pulled back from her face with a hair slide, but when she smiled she looked beatific.
Jeanette was more than an assistant. In fact, in the years since Lydia’s death she had become a friend-someone to confide in, if not to love in the way Daphne had loved Lydia.
Turning back from the door, Jeanette said, “Don’t forget I’m going to ferret out that Muriel and send her to you. You’d best be prepared.”
As she watched her go, Daphne noticed that the cardigan she wore over her navy polyester dress sagged in the back, and a sleeve had started to fray. Jeanette had a birthday coming up-perhaps she should buy her a new one. Of course Jeanette might interpret the gesture as criticism, and Daphne would never wish to hurt her feelings. Maybe she should just leave it alone.
Rising, Daphne went to the window. Her office was on the second floor, overlooking the circular drive and the parkland running down to the road. Even in the early evening dimness she could still see the splash of the daffodils in the grass under the spreading trees. They had been late this spring, hesitant to show their faces after a particularly harsh winter.
For a moment, she allowed herself the indulgence of imagining that nothing had changed, that she could spend this April evening as she had spent so many others. She would slip away after dinner in Hall and take out the little Volkswagen she kept parked behind the outbuildings. Down the drive, out into Hills Road, a right on Station Road, a jog into St. Barnabas. Then a precious hour or two with Lydia, curled up on the sofa in the study, drinking sherry, listening to music, talking about their respective days.
She would tell Lydia the latest Muriel anecdote-Lydia would laugh and they would spend a delicious few minutes inventing mythical punishments for the poor girl. Daphne smiled at the thought of Muriel chained to a windy crag, awaiting the arrival of a fire-breathing dragon. A lot of good her busty bossiness would do her then.
Lydia would read Daphne the poem she’d been working on that day and they would discuss it, tweaking it here and there until Lydia pronounced herself satisfied. Although Daphne’s field was history, she had a good ear, and Lydia often said that the mere act of reading a poem aloud let her see what it needed.
Their companionship had been easy, undemanding, yet more satisfying than any Daphne had ever known.
She turned away from the window and straightened her skirt. Enough was enough. Too much nostalgia quickly became a maudlin wallow, and she had business to attend to. A small framed mirror on her bookcase allowed her to pat her hair into place and adjust the collar of the white silk blouse she wore with her suit. She supposed she had better put on the tailored navy coat, the better to intimidate Baines.
How could she possibly have imagined, in those long-ago Cambridge days, when they had defied anything and everything just for the sake of it, that she would become the very thing railed against?
Frowning, Kincaid sidestepped the group of giggling teenagers who had nearly cannoned into him. Hampstead High Street seemed exceptionally busy for a Thursday evening, and as he walked downhill from the Underground station, he negotiated the crowded pavement with less than his usual good humor.
He’d stalled at the office, finishing paperwork that could have been put off till tomorrow, hoping for a word with Gemma, only to discover she’d left for the day without telling him.
Now, as he made his way home in the twilight, he felt both exasperated and unsettled. Accustomed as he was to making professional decisions with ease, he found himself at a loss when it came to dealing with the polite distance Gemma had put between them. Was she waiting for an apology? he wondered as he turned into Carlingford Road. But why should he apologize when he’d done nothing deserving of censure?
Entering his building, he climbed the stairs without bothering to switch on the lights, relying on the faint illumination from the window in the upstairs landing. In the dim silence of the stairwell, he heard the pounding of his heart, and the small voice asking him if he were sure Gemma had no cause to be upset. What did he feel about Vic, seeing her again after all these years?
The question hung unanswered as he let himself into his flat. At the sound of the door opening Sid looked up from his position on the sofa, stretched, blinked, and promptly went back to sleep.
“So you’re not thrilled to see me, either,” Kincaid said, giving the inert cat a scratch behind the ears. He went on through the sitting room and out the French doors to the balcony. The garden lay in deep evening shadow, and the kitchen lights came on in the house opposite as he watched. He felt isolated, and suddenly the prospect of an evening alone in the flat with only the cat for company seemed very uninviting.
He remembered when he’d welcomed such evenings as a much-needed buffer from the demands of work, had even resented all but the occasional social obligation. But it seemed he had changed without realizing it. He missed Gemma, damnit, and to his surprise he found he missed Toby and the usual confusion of their evening routine.
A shadowy movement in the garden below caught his eye, and the shape coalesced into his downstairs neighbor, Major Keith, rising from a kneeling position. Although he and the Major had become friends upon the death of their neighbor, Jasmine Dent, and the Major often looked after Sid for him, Kincaid had seen him little the past few months. “Major! Come up for a drink,” he called on impulse. That omission, at least, was something he could rectify.
The Major waved at him in acknowledgment, and a few minutes later appeared at Kincaid’s door, looking freshly scrubbed and brushed. A short, stocky man, his skin had never lost the tropical sunburn acquired during his years in India, and his thinning, iron-gray hair still bristled with military correctness. Kincaid had found, however, that the man’s gruff and reticent manner concealed a kind heart and a keen perception, and he had come to both like and trust him.
When the Major had settled into Kincaid’s armchair with a generous whisky, he cleared his throat and drew his brows together. “So, Mr. Kincaid, I haven’t seen your young lady about much recently.”
It was as close to a direct question as Kincaid had ever heard the Major ask, and deserved an honest answer. “Um, she’s a bit put out with me, actually. My ex-wife rang me up out of the blue, asking a favor, and the whole business seems to have made Gemma cross.”
“Did you grant the favor, then?” asked the Major.
“As much as I could, yes. It was a professional matter, and I haven’t quite wrapped it up.”
The Major looked at him thoughtfully, and after a moment said, “Could it be that you’re not eager to wrap things up, as it were?”
Kincaid looked away from the Major’s direct gaze. Was he delaying things unnecessarily? In the beginning, he’d been motivated only by curiosity and courtesy, but now a simple phone call telling Vic what he’d learned would have discharged his obligation-had he really needed to arrange to see her again?
He had to admit he was intrigued by the contrast between the woman he’d known and the woman she’d become, and yet at the same time he was drawn by the familiarity of her. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
The Major appeared to give this inadequate answer due consideration while he sipped his drink, then said slowly, “Tempting as it may be, I’ve found it unwise to try to recapture the past.”
Newnham
21 April 1962
Dearest Mummy,
I’m a bit late with my letter this week, but I’ll write until I can’t keep my eyes open a moment longer.
The day began gray and drippy, a good day for working, so I settled in early at my desk, surrounded by an enormous pile of books, and started the outline for my paper on the English Moralists. This is my opportunity to synthesize all the reading I’ve done the last two terms, as well as to express my own opinions, and I must say I feel enthusiastic about it, daunting as it is.
By noon the wind had scoured the sky of clouds and I was bursting to get outside and stretch and breathe in the glorious day, so I knocked up Daphne and told her to get dressed for a walk. Poor girl, she was still yawning and knuckling her eyes in her nightdress after an all-night swot, and with that mass of auburn hair and oval face she looked a bit like the risen Venus. But she’s a good sport and soon had herself tidied up and kitted out, so off we went.
It was a cold, clean day, and our feet seemed to take the way to Grantchester without volition. We swung briskly along on the river path with the north wind pushing at our backs, and before we knew it we’d reached the meadows. There is a certain spot that I love, perhaps a bit more than halfway, and I always feel I deserve to stop and rest for a minute and survey my domain. To the north the spires of Cambridge float, disembodied, above the plain. Revolve, and to the south lies Grantchester’s huddle of rooftops, and above them spires of wood smoke rising to dissipate in the flat blue bowl of the Cambridgeshire sky.
The sky here is like nowhere else I’ve ever seen, so wide and limitless, and yet I have the oddest feeling of belonging, of having been here before. Daphne has been studying comparative religion, and we’ve talked about different philosophies. I’ve found myself wondering lately if there isn’t something to the idea of reincarnation-if that doesn’t shock your good old C. of E. sensibilities, Mummy darling-but it at least provides some explanation of what I feel. And this is not only a matter of space, but of time as well. I quite often feel displaced in the present.
Of course Cambridge itself is bound to give one a sense of continuity, of timelessness, but I seem to have a particular affinity for the years before the Great War. When I read about Rupert Brooke and his friends, it’s as if I can almost see them. I know what it felt like to be there, having tea in the garden at the Orchard, reading poetry aloud to one another before the fire in Rupert’s study at the Old Vicarage, swimming in the Mill Race.
We did just that, Daphne and I-had tea at the Orchard, I mean-sitting in the lawn chairs under the apple trees with our faces turned up to the sun. We had pots of tea and huge slabs of cake to warm ourselves, then when the light began to fade we went inside and had more tea before the roaring fire.
Afterwards we went and peered through the fence at the Old Vicarage next door, watching the lights come on in the dusk. The place looks a bit run-down, and the garden overgrown, but I think Rupert Brooke preferred it that way.
As I watched, I imagined them moving on the dim paths of the garden, arm in arm, the women in long, white, high-collared dresses, the men in tennis whites or striped blazers. Their voices came faintly, fading in and out on the wind, but I thought I recognized their faces. Dudley Ward and Justin Brooke, Ka Cox, the Darwins, James Strachey, Jacques Raverat, and is that little Noel Olivier, perhaps, on Rupert’s arm, her dark head tilted up as she listens to him? They are talking of politics, socialism, art, and I daresay there’s much silliness and teasing as well.
I feel a kinship with Rupert that goes beyond our common name. I share his passion for words and dedication to his craft-and I hope I have his discipline. How little things change. In 1907, Brooke and some of his friends at King’s formed a society called The Carbonari just for the purpose of thinking and talking, a way of sorting out what they thought of the world. One night Brooke said, “There are only threethings in the world. One is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry.” According to Edward Marsh (from whose biography I just quoted), Brooke said that at rare moments he had glimpses of what poetry really meant, how it solved all problems of conduct and settled all questions of values.
So inspired have I been by these words that I’ve given up all ideas of working for the paper, etc., in short, of doing anything other than practicing my craft. Putting it off until I could schedule big blocks of time for my own work was the worst sort of procrastination, like waiting to live until one’s life is perfect-the day never comes. So I’m writing whenever I can, in between lectures and papers and required reading, and I find everything is fuel for my fires. You can’t separate poetry from life-life insists on bleeding over, in all its myriad and messy ways.
I’ve finished a long poem I think is quite good, called “Solstice,” and I’m enclosing a copy for you. Tell me what you think, Mummy darling, and be honest (but gentle if you think it’s awful). I’ve sent it off to some of the magazines as well, and wait for the inevitable rejections.
Daphne and I plunged home in the almost-dark, arm in arm, heads down against the buffet of the wind. Then hot baths to thaw us, and late suppers in our respective rooms, as we’d missed dinner in Hall. But well worth it, such a lovely day, to be taken out and remembered when the crush of study seems too overwhelming.
We’ll anticipate summer evenings and picnics on the river. Nathan’s family actually live in Grantchester, did I tell you that? He’s promised to invite us home for a weekend when the weather is fine, and perhaps we’ll even try a midnight swim in Byron’s Pool, just downstream from Grantchester, past the Mill. Rupert Brooke is reported to have convinced Virginia Woolf to swim naked there one summer night.
Much love to you, and Nan,
from your sleepy-Lydia
He had said half past six, Vic thought as she glanced at her watch and gave another frustrated push on the bell. She’d written the time down carefully in her calendar, and the place, although she knew the gray stone church in Trinity Street well. In fact, when Adam Lamb had first refused to see her, she’d thought of coming here to a Sunday service just so that she could see him from a distance.
Would Nathan be pleased that his intervention had saved her from a spot of spying, she wondered, smiling. It was tempting to think of Nathan, even standing in the chill of the vicarage porch, but much too distracting. Instead she made an effort to prepare herself by picturing Adam Lamb as he’d looked in one of Lydia’s old photographs, a thin-faced boy with tight, dark curls, unsmiling-and now a hostile man who had agreed to her presence only at the request of an old friend.
Vic licked her lips and rang the bell once more.
The door opened when she’d half turned away. She hadn’t heard footsteps, or the lock turning, and she took a sharp, surprised breath.
“Hullo, I’m-”
“So sorry, so sorry,” said Adam Lamb breathlessly. “A distraught parishioner on the telephone. It’s always something, isn’t it? And one can never get off when one needs to, not until they’re satisfied they’ve told you every detail three times over. Let me take your coat,” he added, and smiled at her.
The vicarage hall was even colder than the porch, and Vic shivered as she felt a current of frigid air against her bare calves. She’d worn a tailored Laura Ashley suit in navy, a long double-breasted jacket over a short pleated skirt, in hopes both that she looked reassuringly businesslike and that Adam Lamb appreciated legs. Now it seemed that neither option was to do her much good. “No, thank you,” she said regretfully. “I think I’d better keep it.”
“Quite wise of you. If you think this old place is drafty now, you should feel it in midwinter. But I’ve got the gas fire lit in the sitting room, and I thought we could have some sherry, or Madeira if you prefer.”
“Sherry would be lovely,” Vic said as she hurried after his retreating back, trying to collect herself He was taller than the photographs had shown, and still thin. The dark curling hair had gone mostly gray but was still abundant. The thin face was heavily lined, as if he’d not lived an easy life, and he wore a heavy gray cardigan over his clerical garb. All this she could fit over the image in her mind as one would lay a transparency over a diagram-even the gold-rimmed thick spectacles that gave his blue eyes an owlish look-but nothing had prepared her for the grave sweetness of his smile.
She registered faded lino beneath her feet and dark mustard color on the walls, then he opened a door at the end of the passage and ushered her through. It was warm, amazingly enough, and she sat gratefully in the armchair he indicated.
“If you’ll just excuse me for a moment,” he said, “I forgot to turn the answer phone on, and I’d better do it, else we’ll be interrupted.”
His absence gave Vic a chance to examine the room, and she saw that this was where he had made his mark on the shabby anonymity of the vicarage. A colorful rag rug covered most of the fitted mustard and brown patterned carpet, and deep red velvet curtains covered windows that she thought must overlook the narrow lane beside the church. A fine set of cut crystal glasses stood on the low table before her chair, and the jewel-like reds, greens, and blues winked at her in the light of the gas fire.
Books lined every available bit of wall space, and that, at least, didn’t surprise her.
She had just slipped out of her coat and stretched her feet towards the fire when Adam Lamb returned. He poured her a sherry from the crystal decanter, and when she sipped it she found it fine and very dry, just the way she liked it.
He folded his long body onto the red Victorian love seat opposite her and raised his glass. “Here’s to warmth,” he said with feeling. “I spent five years out in Africa, and I don’t think my blood ever regained its good British fortitude. Sometimes I dream of the sun, and of nights under the mosquito netting. But you don’t want to hear about that.” He gave his disarming smile again and sipped from his glass. “You came to talk about Lydia.”
“You’ve been very kind,” Vic said hesitantly, “and I don’t mean to seem rude, but I had the impression when I rang you before that you didn’t want to talk about Lydia.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about Lydia,” Adam explained. “But, you see, I didn’t know you.”
“Me?”
Adam sat forwards, hands on his knees, his expression earnest. “I didn’t know if you were sympathetic to Lydia. You might even have been-if you’ll excuse the expression-a muckraker. And I couldn’t participate in a book that focused on the more scandalous personal episodes in Lydia’s life rather than her work. ‘The poet as neurotic,’ you know the sort of thing.”
“You talked to Darcy, didn’t you.” It came out as a statement rather than a question. “To check me out.”
“You said you were on the English Faculty when you wrote.” Adam seemed suddenly much preoccupied with examining his fingernails. “So he seemed the obvious person to ask for a reference. I didn’t know you knew Nathan. Personally, I mean, rather than merely as Lydia’s executor.”
“And Darcy told you that I wasn’t academically sound, didn’t he? That I intended writing some hysterical feminist tract.” Vic could feel the hot patches of color burning in her cheeks. She told herself she wouldn’t undo Darcy’s damage by getting angry at Adam, and took a calming breath.
“He didn’t actually say that…” There was an amused twist to Adam’s long mouth, and much to her surprise, Vic found herself smiling.
“He merely implied it.”
“Something like that.” Adam had the grace to look sheepish. “I think I owe you an apology, Dr. McClellan. I’ve lived in Cambridge long enough to know what interdepartmental rivalries are like, and I should have taken it for just that.”
It was best to let it pass, she thought, and give Darcy a piece of her mind at the first opportunity. “You can start by calling me Vic,” she said. “My friends do.”
“And Adam,” he responded. “Call me Adam. My motley flock calls me Father Adam, but there’s no need for you to do so.”
Now that they were so cozily established on a first-name basis, Vic thought she’d better make sure they had no further misunderstandings. “Look… Adam,” she said, and found that the use of his name made solid the link in her mind between the boy in Lydia’s letters and the man sitting across from her. “I think it’s important I make my position clear to you. I don’t intend to focus on the emotional difficulties in Lydia’s life, but I can’t gloss over them, either. There’s not much point in my writing this book if I don’t attempt to portray Lydia as a whole person. Either you take Darcy’s deconstructionist view and hold that no artist’s life is relevant to his work because no one’s life is relevant, period, but is merely a feeble construction by the ego to camouflage our inadequacies…”
Vic took a sip of sherry to wet her lips and continued, “… or you decide that art, or in this case poetry, springs from life and experience and is only truly meaningful in that context. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the power of language-that’s what draws us to poetry in the first place-but I believe that if you see it only as an exercise in style and imagery, you create a moral vacuum.” She found she’d sat so far forwards that she was in danger of sliding off her chair, and that she’d clenched her fingers round the stem of her sherry glass. Setting the glass carefully on the butler’s table, she sat back and said, “I’m sorry. That’s my soapbox, I’m afraid, and I do tend to get a bit carried away.”
“That’s quite all right.” Adam reached out and refilled her glass without asking. “For a moment, I thought I was at college again. We used to have the most marvelous talks. Sometimes we’d walk all night in the courts and along the river, and we debated things with such passion. We thought that we were revolutionaries, that we would change the world.” He said this without cynicism or bitterness, and just for an instant Vic saw him as he must have been, an innocent beneath the sophisticated trappings of a university undergraduate. Was that what had drawn Lydia to him?
“You came from a village, too, didn’t you? Like Lydia.”
Adam smiled. “Only mine was in Hampshire, and had no literary distinction. I remember Lydia telling me the night I met her that she came from a place quite near Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s house. She was quite fascinated by Virginia Woolf.”
“Do you suppose that was the beginning of her interest in Rupert Brooke?”
“It could have sparked it, certainly. She’d read everything she could get her hands on about Bloomsbury, and would have come across a multitude of references to him, even though he was never officially a member of that group.”
A gust of wind rattled the casements behind the red velvet curtains and Vic took another warming sip of sherry. “Bloomsbury, the Neo-Pagans… Why do you suppose Lydia was so drawn to the idea of an intellectually compatible group?”
Adam shifted and recrossed his long legs, and Vic saw that his black lace-up shoes were scuffed and worn down at the heel. “Her background provides the obvious explanation. A fatherless only child growing up in a small village… If she had any real friends, she never spoke of them, so I suppose from the time she learned to read she longed for that sort of companionship.”
“And her mother? Was Lydia really as dutiful a daughter as she sounds in her letters?”
“They had an odd relationship.” Adam held up a hand as if to stop an expected response. “And I don’t mean in the sense that it was unhealthy, although nowadays any parent-child relationship seems to be suspect. They were more like sisters, or friends, and if Lydia felt she’d been pressured to live out her mother’s dreams, she never showed any obvious resentment.”
“She was a schoolteacher, wasn’t she?” Vic prompted, although she knew all the recorded details of Mary Brooke’s life.
“A very bright girl, apparently, who’d earned a place at Oxford before the war,” said Adam. “But she didn’t take it up. She stayed at home and married her childhood sweetheart, afraid he wouldn’t come back from France-”
“And he didn’t,” Vic finished for him, and sighed. “I wonder if she ever regretted her choice.”
“She’d not have had Lydia,” Adam said reasonably, as if that alternative were unthinkable. “What else would you like to know?” He cast a surreptitious glance at his watch, and Vic suspected he had another appointment but was too tactful to say so.
“The impossible.” Smiling at Adam’s startled expression, Vic said softly, “You see, I want to know what she was like. I want to see her through your eyes, hear her through your ears…”
Adam looked past her, and after a moment he said, “That was the first thing one noticed about her-her voice. She was small and quick, with a dancer’s litheness and that wonderful dark, wavy hair cut in a twenties bob-but when she spoke you forgot everything else.” He smiled at an image Vic couldn’t see. “She sounded as though she’d sung in every smoky bar from Casablanca to Soho. It made her seem exotic, and yet beneath the huskiness you could hear the Sussex village.”
“Still endearingly English?”
Adam laughed. “Exactly. But that’s not what you want to know, is it? How she looked, I mean.” Pausing, he refilled his glass and took a small sip. “How can I possibly condense Lydia?”
“Pick an adjective,” suggested Vic. “Just off the top of your head, without thinking about it.”
“Parlor games?” Adam sounded dubious.
“You think that doesn’t sound suitably academic? Think of it as a poet’s game,” Vic challenged him. “After all, you were a poet, too.”
Adam made a rueful grimace. “But not a very good one, I’m afraid. All right, I’ll give it a try.” He frowned and thought for a moment. “Intense. Moody, funny, bright, but most of all, intense. Intense about loves and hates-and especially intense about work.”
Nodding, Vic gathered her courage to venture into painful territory. “You kept up with one another, didn’t you, after her separation from Morgan? I know,” she added carefully, “that it was you who found her, and saved her, that first time. What I don’t know is whether you had any idea what she meant to do.”
“She certainly didn’t threaten suicide, if that’s what you mean. Didn’t even hint at it. But…”
Vic felt her heartbeat quicken. “But her behavior wasn’t normal, was it? How was she different?”
“Calm,” said Adam. “Much too calm, in a dazed sort of way, but I didn’t realize then. She’d forget what she was saying in the midst of a sentence, and then she’d smile.” He shook his head. “I should have known-”
“How could you?” Vic protested. “Unless you’d had some experience dealing with depression.”
Adam shook his head. “Oh, I see it so often now that I recognize the earliest symptoms. But common sense should have been enough, even then.” His hands moved restlessly over his knees. “If I had been thinking of Lydia, rather than myself…”
“What do you mean?” Vic asked, puzzled.
“I had another agenda, you see,” he said, not meeting Vic’s eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
“It all sounds ludicrous… too ridiculous. But what harm can it do now, other than make me look as big a fool as I did then?” He pinched his lips together in a self-deprecating grimace. “I was glad when Morgan left her. I thought she would get over him soon enough, and then perhaps we could go back to the way things were in the beginning.”
“In the beginning? You and Lydia?” Vic heard the surprise in her voice and silently cursed herself. She couldn’t afford to alienate him now. “Of course,” she added quickly, “what could have been more natural? And when she didn’t seem to be terribly unhappy, you thought-”
“Well, it was all a long time ago, and hopefully I’ve grown less foolish in my dotage.” He set his empty sherry glass down on the butler’s table in a deliberate way that suggested he’d had enough of talking as well.
He was the same age as Nathan, Vic thought, and yet she had the sudden impression that he felt life had defeated him.
“Adam,” she said, before he could politely terminate their interview. “What about the second time Lydia tried to kill herself? Did she have the same symptoms of depression or disassociation? Surely there must have been some indication-”
“I wouldn’t know,” he interrupted her. Then, as if afraid he’d been too sharp, added, “I was gone by that time. Kenya. Teaching in a mission school.” Standing up, he went to the bookcase behind the love seat and took something from the shelf. “One of my students made this for me.” He held out a small pottery vase for her inspection. It was clear glazed, the color of sunburnt skin, and black-etched antelope ran endlessly round its circumference.
“It’s lovely.” Taking it from him, Vic closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the surface as if she were reading braille. “It reminds me of a poem of Lydia’s, the one called ‘Grass.’ I always wondered where the images came from. Did you write to her?”
Adam shrugged. “Occasionally. The evenings could be very long. I suppose she didn’t save the letters?”
“If she did, I’ve not seen them among her papers,” Vic said, not sure whether that would please or hurt him, but she felt a spark of hope on her own behalf. “Did she write to you, by any chance?”
“Yes, but we had a fire in the mission not long before I came back to England. I lost most of my personal belongings, such as they were, and Lydia’s letters were among them. I’m sorry,” he added, and Vic knew her disappointment must have shown.
“Never mind,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m sure it was a much greater loss for you than it is for me. But I wonder…” She hesitated to push him, but on the other hand she’d best make the most of her opportunity. “Do you remember anything odd about her letters before-”
“She ran her car into a tree?” For the first time, Adam sounded angry. “What a bloody stupid thing to do. I heard afterwards that she said she just lost control, but I never believed it for a minute. She was a good driver, very focused, as she was on most things she undertook to do well.”
“But the letters-”
“I wasn’t privy to anything but the most innocuous gossip,” Adam said, and stood up abruptly. “If you want to know about her state of mind, you had better ask Daphne.”
In the silence of death; then may I see dimly, and
know, a space,
Bending over me, last light in the dark, once, as of
old, your face.
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Choriambics-I”
Newnham
20 June 1962
Darling Mummy,
There’s so much to tell you that I don’t know where to begin. I haven’t been to bed since night before last, but I’m still too wound up for sleep and so thought I’d try to describe May Week to you before the lovely details fade.
As soon as I finished my exams (in a haze of exhaustion), the parties began, and a good thing, too, otherwise I think I would have felt quite ill while waiting for the results to be posted. It’s all a bit hysterical, as everyone is feeling the same sort of relief and trepidation, and most are muddle-headed as well from end-of-term all-night swotting. Daphne and I trooped bravely from college to college and staircase to staircase, determined not to miss out on a single invitation. Some of the do’s were quite elegant, while others were last-minute affairs dependent upon potato crisps and bottled beer, and often those were the jolliest.
Even the posh parties were very relaxed and informal, with lots of drinking and talking and dancing and people wandering about. If anythingmarred our fun, it’s that I seem to have acquired a persistent suitor, through no fault of my own. He’s a dark, brooding Welsh boy named Morgan Ashby, an arts student who has a knack for turning up wherever I make an appearance. He then looks soulfully at me from across the room, which is quite off-putting. Finally, he mustered the courage to ask me to his May Ball, but I have no desire to play Cathy to his Heathcliff, and refused. Besides, I’d accepted Adam’s invitation months ago and wouldn’t have stood up dear, sweet Adam for the world.
We made a foursome, Adam and I, Nathan and Daphne, and the heavens conspired to make it perfect for us-the end of our first year at Cambridge, and our first May Ball. Moon full, stars shining, an almost tropical night (truly a gift of the gods, it was so warm we could wear our gowns outside the marquee without wraps). In the garden, they’d strung fairy lights in the trees, making it look quite enchanted, and we danced on the lawn. Daphne and I both wore gossamer white, and pretended we were naiads (or is it dryads?) floating diaphanously about.
We can now count ourselves among the Survivors. We stayed up through the wee hours, and at dawn we punted to Grantchester for breakfast, a bit bedraggled but still game. There we met up with Adam’s friend Darcy Eliot and his date, an insipid blond girl from Girton who hadn’t a sensible word to say about anything. It was too bad, really, because I think Darcy is destined to be one of us. Not only is he smashingly good-looking and charming and a promising poet, but his mother is Margery Lester, the novelist. Talk about icing on the cake! You know how much I love her books-you’re the one who introduced me to them. I daren’t allow myself to hope that I might meet her one day, and if I did I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to think of a thing to say.
Picture me, curled up in my window niche in my nightdress, scribbling away to you. The morning light has gone all soft and shadowless, and if I close my eyes I think I can smell the faintest hint of rain through the open window. My ball gown lies discarded across the chair, a bit tawdry, perhaps, in daylight, and for a moment I feel bereft, Cinderella the morning after. This time won’t come again, and I wonder if I can bear to let it go.
Needs must, though, as Nan would say, and my eyelids feel heavy as the best parlor curtains, thick and velvety, with the scratch of old dust. One more thing to tell you, though, the best last. When we finally straggledback to Cambridge, my exam results had been posted on the boards outside the Senate House. It was a good thing I had Adam to hold me up. My knees went all jelly and I had to close my eyes while he read them to me, because I couldn’t bear to look myself. But it was all right. I did better than I expected, in fact, I really did quite shockingly well.
But nicest of all, darling Mother, is that we’ll have all the Long Vacation to be together. I’ll have to study, of course, for they don’t expect me to be idle, and it will take me another week or so here to organize all the books and things I’ll need over the summer. Then the counties will click by outside the train windows, and you’ll be waiting at the station with the old Morris. And maybe Nan will come, too, and you’ll bring Shelley, who will pant and tail-wag in doggy anticipation, and then I will be home.
Lydia
Gemma regretted her decision more with every passing mile. After their disagreement last Sunday over his visit to his ex-wife (You started a row, she reminded herself), she and Duncan had spent the workweek avoiding one another. It wasn’t that they made a habit of spending every minute together, but he usually came round to her flat several evenings during the week, and when circumstances permitted she went to his. By Friday, having found herself missing him dreadfully, she faced up to the fact that she was going to have to apologize.
She’d caught him in his office just as he was slipping into his jacket. “Um, could we have a word?” she asked a bit hesitantly. “I thought maybe we could go round the pub for a drink-that is, if you’re not too busy.”
Kincaid had stopped shuffling papers into his briefcase. “Business or personal?” he asked, looking up at her, still pleasantly neutral.
“Personal.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you buying?”
She smiled. His teasing was a good sign that he wasn’t still too miffed with her. “You’re tight as a miser’s bum, but I suppose I can stand you a drink.”
“That’s settled, then,” he said, and ushered her out the door.
Without discussion they walked towards the pub on Wilfred Street, not too far from the Yard, where they’d gone for afterwork drinks since they first became partners. A surprisingly bitter wind had sprung up during the course of the day, and by the time they reached the pub they felt grateful for the warmth of the closely packed room. Gemma watched for a table to open up while Kincaid braved the crush at the bar. “I’ll let you off the hook tonight,” he said over his shoulder as he disappeared into the haze of smoke. “But next time, it’s on you.”
They had a favorite table, in the corner near the gas fire, and Gemma thought it a good omen when the couple occupying it stood up just as Kincaid appeared bearing their drinks. She dived for it like a rugby forward, and beamed up at him when he reached her.
“Good job,” he said as he waited for her to wipe up the drink rings and crumbs with a tissue she’d found in her handbag; then he set the drinks down and slid in beside her. He raised his glass to her. “It’s been a long week.”
He’d given her an opening, Gemma thought, and she’d kick herself if she didn’t take it. She took a sip of her shandy to wet her lips, and plunged ahead. “I’m sorry about last Sunday. About what I said. I was way over the mark, and it was none of my business.” She’d been studying her beer mat intently-now she raised her eyes to his. “It’s just that… I know it sounds stupid… but the idea of your seeing her makes me feel… uncomfortable.” She looked away again.
He was silent for a long moment, and she wondered just how big a fool she had made of herself. Then he said, “I know. I should have realized from the first.” Startled, she looked up and started to speak, but he continued, “But you haven’t any need to feel uncomfortable. Or threatened.”
She made a small gesture, halfway between a shrug and a nod of assent, but didn’t trust herself to speak.
Moving his glass a fraction of an inch on the beer mat, he added, “I have to admit that it threw me a bit, seeing Vic again. We’d left a lot of things unfinished.”
“Did you…” Gemma stopped and swallowed. “I mean, have you resolved them?” she finished carefully.
“I’ve been thinking about it all week. And I’ve found, rather to my surprise, that I like her very much. But I’m not still in love with her.” He met her eyes. “Vic said she knew, somehow, that I had someone waiting, and I said I thought I did.”
Gemma felt herself flush with shame at the thought of the reception she’d given him. “And this thing she asked you to look into-what did your friend in Cambridge say about it?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.
“It wasn’t his case, but he let me see the files.” Kincaid shrugged. “And I think there are some very odd things about it, but I don’t see what I can do.”
“Have you told her yet?” Gemma asked, not having reached the point where she felt comfortable saying Vic.
Shaking his head, he said, “Thought I’d better do it in person. And I wanted to go over the notes I made from the files with her, in case she found any of it helpful. I’ve rung her and said I’d come again on Sunday.” He paused, looking at Gemma, then smiled his most winning smile. “Would you go with me this time? I could use some moral support.”
She managed to nod yes, and before she could backtrack, he took her hand in his and said, “Are you busy tonight? I’ve missed you.”
Gemma was suddenly very aware of the shape of his fingers covering hers, the day’s-end shadow along the line of his jaw, and his knee touching hers under the table. She cleared her throat. “I told Hazel I might be a bit late tonight, end of the week and all…”
He grinned. “Clever girl. Come to the flat. We’ll collect a take-away for dinner-unless you’d rather go out somewhere posh?” Her expression must have been answer enough, because he pulled her up, leaving their unfinished drinks on the table. “Let’s get out of here.”
And so they had made up very satisfactorily, and on Saturday they had spent the day together, taking Toby to Regent’s Park Zoo.
Now it was inevitably Sunday and they were speeding down the motorway towards Cambridge. “When are you going to buy a new car?” Gemma asked, grousing to cover her increasing nervousness. “I swear these springs have poked holes in my bum.” She shifted in the passenger seat of Kincaid’s Midget, trying to find a more comfortable position. “And this window’s starting to drip at the join again.” It was drizzling, just enough to coat the windscreen with the slimy muck thrown up by the other cars’ tires, but not enough to wash it clean.
She glanced over at him. “I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother. ‘It’s a classic,’” she mimicked, rolling her eyes. “Now, an old Bentley is what I’d call a classic. Or a Roller. Something with style and lots of chrome. This is not a classic.”
“That’ll give you and Vic something to talk about,” he said with a wicked smile, then he sighed and added, “But I suppose you’re right. It is getting a bit doddery. And it makes it difficult taking Toby anywhere.”
Gemma absorbed this unexpected remark in silence. She’d no idea such concerns had even occurred to him, and the thought implied an intended permanence to their relationship that both pleased and terrified her.
“That’s true enough,” she finally replied, as offhandedly as she could manage. “For outings and things.”
“We could go to the seaside in the summer, the three of us. Toby would like that, don’t you think?” He flicked on his indicator. “Here’s our turnoff.”
“Mmmm,” Gemma answered distractedly. If only she’d said no when he’d invited her to come with him today, she thought. Surely she could have come up with some brilliantly clever spur-of-the-moment excuse. A tactful and gracious refusal-a sick aunt in Gloucestershire would have done nicely. She unclasped her hands and swallowed against the tight feeling in her throat. The mild curiosity she’d felt about Vic, and even the barely admitted desire to do a bit of possessive crowing over Kincaid, seemed to have evaporated entirely and she wished herself anywhere else.
But a few short moments later Gemma glimpsed a straggle of cottages facing the road, then a few semidetached villas, and she knew they were coming into Grantchester. Kincaid slowed, turned right into the High Street, then almost immediately left into the drive of a slate-roofed cottage washed in Suffolk pink. Even in the rain the color looked warm and welcoming, and Gemma told herself that perhaps the woman who’d chosen a pink house might not be as bad as she’d imagined. In any case, there was nothing for it now but to carry on as if she met her lover’s ex-wives every day.
She waved away Kincaid’s offer of an umbrella. Opening and shutting it would be more trouble than it was worth in the soft drizzle, and she needn’t worry about her clothes since she’d refused to dress up for the occasion. A natural wool jumper over a printed cotton skirt, lace-up boots, her hair pulled loosely back in a clip at the nape of her neck-all good enough for her usual weekends, and so would have to do for this. Gemma climbed out of the car bareheaded. She walked slowly to the porch, enjoying the feel of the cool moisture beading on her face and hair after the overheated interior of the car. By the time he rang the bell she felt more collected, and readied her face for a polite smile.
Then the door flew back with a crash, and Gemma found herself staring down into the inquisitive blue eyes of a boy with a shock of straw-colored hair flopping on his forehead and a faint dusting of freckles across his nose. He wore a faded rugby shirt several sizes too large, jeans, and the dirtiest white socks she’d ever seen. In his right hand, he held a slice of bread spread with Marmite.
“Um, you must be Kit,” said Kincaid. “I’m Duncan and this is Gemma. We’re here to see your mum.”
“Oh, yeah. Hullo.” The boy smiled, a toothy grin that won Gemma instantly, then took an enormous bite of his bread and said through it, “You’d better come in.” He turned away and started down the hall without waiting to see if they followed.
They wiped their feet on the mat, then hurried to catch up with him as he disappeared round a turn in the passage. As they came up behind him, he shouted, “Mum!” at ear-splitting volume and entered a room on the right.
Gemma had a vague impression of a small room crowded with books and papers, but her gaze was held by the woman who sat at the computer. The heels of her long, slender hands rested on the keyboard, but as Kit came in she swung round and turned a startled face to them.
“Duncan. I didn’t hear the door. The bell’s not working properly.”
“It just makes a little pinging sound, but I can hear it,” volunteered Kit as he propped himself on a small clear space at the end of his mother’s desk.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re here,” said Vic, smiling. She took off the pair of tortoiseshell glasses she’d been wearing and stood up. A bit shorter than Gemma, she was slender in a fine-boned way, with straight fair hair falling to her shoulders and a delicate face bare of makeup. She wore a long aubergine-colored tunic over black leggings, and would, thought Gemma, have looked elegant in a flour sack.
“You must be Gemma,” said Vic, holding out a hand to her. So he’d rung ahead and warned her, thought Gemma as she touched Vic’s cool, soft fingers with her own. She glanced at Kincaid and was not surprised to see a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He was enjoying this, the bastard. Suddenly she wished she’d at least brushed her hair and checked her lipstick.
“Come through into the sitting room,” said Vic. “Kit and I have made a proper tea. All that’s lacking is to boil the kettle, and that won’t take but a minute.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to such trouble,” protested Gemma as she stepped back to let Vic pass.
“Actually, it’s a treat-and an excuse to make Kit the goodies he likes. We don’t have guests very often.” Vic led them back the way they’d come and through a door at the opposite end of the passage.
Following her, Gemma saw a comfortable, lived-in sort of room with a squashy sofa and armchairs, fringed lamps, and the Sunday papers neatly stacked on an end table beside silver-framed photos. At the far end French doors led into the rain-damp garden.
“Make yourselves comfortable, and Kit will light the fire. Won’t you, sweetie?”
Kit made a disgusted face at his mother as he knelt by the hearth. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Oops. Sorry.” Vic grinned unrepentantly, and suddenly looked about ten years old herself.
“Can I help?” asked Gemma, feeling she ought to offer.
“No, we’ve got it all under control. Kit’s promised to be my dogsbody today-it’s my reward for making scones and cake.” Vic put a hand on Kit’s back as he returned to her, and pushed him gently out of the room.
When the door had closed behind them, Gemma joined Kincaid, who stood with his back to the fire, warming his hands.
After a moment, Gemma broke the silence. “She’s nice.”
Kincaid glanced down at her. “What did you expect?” he asked, sounding definitely amused. “Horns and tail?”
“Of course not. It’s just…” Deciding she’d better not dig herself into an inescapable hole, Gemma changed the subject. “Did you meet Kit when you came before?”
“He was away that day, visiting his grandparents, I think.”
Slowly, Gemma said, “He seems so familiar… Maybe it’s just that I imagine Toby will look like that in a few years.” Toby’s hair would darken to just that barley color, and he would move with the same coltish grace. Already Toby was fast losing his baby softness. Soon he’d grow into Kit’s sort of stretched leanness, as if every calorie spared from upward growth was shunted directly into the production of kinetic energy.
The hallway door creaked open and Kit shouldered his way through the gap, bearing a heavily laden tea tray. Hastily clearing the table for him, Gemma said, “I can see why you like an excuse for your mum to make a proper tea. And I think it’s a good thing we didn’t have any lunch.”
“She’ll do scones or cake sometimes if it’s just the two of us, but not both,” Kit said, glancing up at Gemma as he knelt with the tray. He transferred plates and dishes from tray to tabletop, then arranged them with meticulous care. A platter of scones, a dish of strawberry jam, a dish of cream, a plate of thin sandwiches on brown bread, another with thick slices of raisin-studded cake-all apparently had to occupy a certain position, and Gemma knew better than to offer help.
Sitting back on his heels as he surveyed his handiwork with a satisfied expression, Kit said, “Mum’s bringing the tea.”
“I thought your mum couldn’t cook,” Kincaid said from his stance before the fire.
“She can’t, really,” Kit admitted. “She only learned these special things for me. And anybody can make sandwiches.” Reaching towards a slice of cake, he glanced furtively up, then smoothly returned the offending hand to his knee when he saw them watching. “I can cook,” he offered as a distraction. “I can do scrambled eggs on toast, and sausages, and spaghetti.”
“Sounds a perfectly good repertoire to me,” Kincaid said, then he nodded towards the platter. “Go on, have some cake.”
Kit shook his head. “She’ll kill me if I forget my manners. I’m not to touch anything until the tea’s served.”
“Then I’d not take the risk,” Kincaid said, grinning. “It’s hardly worth the consequences.”
Pushing himself up from the floor, Kit straddled the arm of the sofa and studied Kincaid curiously. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?” he said after a moment. “Mum told me. Why aren’t you wearing a uniform?”
“Well, it’s my day off, for one thing. And I’m an investigator, and investigators don’t usually wear uniforms.”
Kit thought about this for a moment. “Does that mean you can ask people things and they don’t know you’re a copper? Cool.”
“Whenever we question anyone we have to show them our identification,” Kincaid said a bit apologetically. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.” When he saw Kit’s disappointed expression, he nodded towards Gemma and added, “Gemma’s a police officer, too.”
Kit’s eyes widened. “No way. I thought that was just on the telly. The only copper I know is Harry. He’s the bobby here in the village, and he’s thick as two planks, you know-”
“Kit!” Vic had come in quietly, carrying a second tray. “What a horrid thing to say.”
“You know it’s true.” Kit sounded more injured than abashed. “You said so yourself.”
“I said no such thing. Harry’s very nice.” Vic looked daggers at her son.
“Nice is the first requirement for village bobbies,” Kincaid put in diplomatically “Except we call it community policing.”
Gemma controlled a snicker and went to help Vic. “Here, let me take the cups.”
When the tea had been poured and handed round, Kincaid said, “Kit’s shown great restraint over the cake, I think.”
Vic laughed. “Oh, all right, go ahead. Just save some for the rest of us.”
Kit fell upon the cake with a whoop and slid the two largest slices onto his plate.
“I swear I don’t know where he puts it,” sighed Vic. “It just disappears. And the cake won’t stop him stuffing himself with sandwiches and scones.” She took a sandwich and bit into it. “I hope you both like cucumber.”
Gemma took a sandwich for herself and sat back, nibbling and letting the talk eddy round her. Listening to the easy banter between mother and son, she had to keep reminding herself that this slender woman with the pleasant smile was the cold and formidable ex-wife who had callously walked out on Kincaid. For the first time, she wondered if she might have distorted the few comments he’d made about Vic to suit her own ends. What had he actually said?
Suddenly she wished she knew how Vic had seen things. Why did you leave him? she thought. And why did you leave him that way, without a word? But of course she couldn’t ask. Watching them, she tried to imagine them together, but she couldn’t separate Kincaid from her own experience of him.
Vic had taken the armchair opposite, with Kit perched on its arm like a tawny-crested bird, while Kincaid sat beside Gemma on the sofa, tea plate balanced on his knee. She was as aware of the warm solidity of his presence as if he’d been touching her, and she wondered what had been more important to Vic than that.
“Another scone, Gemma?” asked Vic.
Startled, Gemma thought she had better make an effort to pay attention. “Oh, I couldn’t manage another bite, but thanks. It was all lovely.”
They’d all reached the wiping-up-the-crumbs stage, Kit having polished off the last piece of cake. Gemma saw Vic glance at Kincaid and sensed the unspoken communication that passed between them before Vic said, “Kit, if you’ve finished-”
“I know, you want to be rid of me,” he said, vaulting from the sofa arm and landing with a thump. He didn’t sound the least bit unhappy. “Since you’re not using the computer, can I play Dark Legions? Please, please, Mummy?” he wheedled, grinning, already sure of getting his way.
“Oh, all right.” Vic gave in gracefully. “Just be sure to save my document.”
Kit leaned down and gave her an unselfconscious kiss on the cheek. “Brilliant cake, Mum,” he said, then bounded from the room before she could change her mind.
When the door had slammed behind him, Vic said, “I don’t know why I nag him. He knows more about the computer than I do. He’s the one who helps me when I get stuck.”
“Illusion of power,” said Kincaid, teasing.
“You’re lucky. He’s a nice kid,” said Gemma, knowing even as she did so how inadequate the word sounded, but Vic gave her a pleased smile.
“I know. He doesn’t deserve what he’s been through this last year.” Vic glanced at Kincaid, then back at Gemma. “He’s told you about Ian?”
Gemma nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. At least not for my sake, and I’m beginning to think it may not have been such a bad thing for Kit, either. Ian was so critical… Kit must have felt he could never please him.” For a moment Vic gazed consideringly into her teacup, then looked up at Gemma and said softly, “And you know what’s odd? After so many years together, I’ve never missed him. Not for a day, not for a minute. You’d think that just the familiarity would be enough to make you miss a person a little, no matter what they’d done. Oh, well.” She set her cup on the table and smiled at them. “You didn’t come to talk about that.”
Kincaid shifted beside Gemma as he reached into the inside breast pocket of the sports jacket he’d worn over his jeans. “I’ve brought you the notes I made from Lydia Brooke’s case file. I thought you might like to see them yourself.” He handed over a folded sheaf of papers that Gemma recognized as torn from his spiral notebook. “You understand that I couldn’t take the file away with me.”
Vic took them as though they were fragile, then moved across to the other chair so that she could unfold them in the cone of light from the lamp. She read slowly, frowning in concentration, and they waited in silence. Gemma was suddenly aware of the fire hissing, and of the almost imperceptible sound of the light rain against the windowpanes.
Finally, Vic settled the pages back in their original order, and looked up at them. “Nathan found her?” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own words. “Nathan never told me he found her.”
The strong lamplight lit her face and Gemma saw for the first time the tiny creases round her eyes and the lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth.
“Should he have done?” asked Kincaid.
Vic colored and looked away. “It’s just that… I thought… we were friends.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to distress you,” suggested Gemma, wishing now that she’d read the notes herself and not been satisfied with Kincaid’s quick summary. “Or he found it too difficult to talk about.”
“Surely there was some other record,” said Kincaid.
“Such as? There were two brief mentions in the local paper, the first stating that Lydia Brooke had been found dead in her Cambridge home; the second that she had died from an overdose of her own heart medication, and that her death had been ruled a suicide by the coroner’s office. Full stop.”
“What about academic gossip?”
“For once, the gossip mill proved strangely unproductive,” Vic said disgustedly. “You’d think that a door had slammed shut when Lydia died-after that, no speculation, no reminiscences, nothing.” Then, as if she could contain her frustration no longer, she stood and began pacing before the hearth. “I wasn’t prepared for this. And it’s not as if I see myself as Quentin Bell writing about Virginia Woolf, either. Lydia wasn’t a major literary figure. Nor was she particularly well connected in literary circles, so I knew I couldn’t hope for scads of revealing letters turning up among other people’s correspondence. But I never expected this… this… possessiveness about her, as if no one who knew her can stand to let anything go. Her ex-husband was actually abusive when I tried to talk to him.
“And this”-she waved the sheaf of papers she still held-“this is all wrong.”
“What do you mean, wrong?” Kincaid asked, and in spite of his casual tone Gemma sensed his interest.
Coming back to sit on the edge of the armchair, Vic leaned towards them. “Nathan, for one thing. Why did Lydia call Nathan and tell him she wanted to see him?”
“I imagine they assumed she wanted him to find her rather than the cleaning lady or some unfortunate neighbor,” Kincaid offered.
“She would never have done that, don’t you see? Not to Nathan. They were very old friends, and he’d just lost his wife a few months earlier after a long battle with cancer. She wouldn’t have deliberately subjected him to such distress.”
“Sometimes when people are depressed they do un-”
Vic was shaking her head adamantly. “And what about her clothes? Lydia had style, damnit-you can’t possibly think she’d have set such an elaborate scene, then killed herself in old, grubby things?”
“I have to admit it seemed a bit queer to me,” Kincaid said cautiously. “But sometimes-”
“And the business about the poem is absurd,” Vic went on, unheeding. She started rifling through the pages. “Let me just-”
“Why?” The sharpness in his voice made Vic look up, hands stilled for a moment on the pages. “Why is it absurd?” he repeated.
“Because she didn’t write it,” Vic said flatly. “It’s an excerpt from a Rupert Brooke poem called ‘Choriambics.’”
“Could I see it?” asked Gemma. She took the page from Vic’s outstretched hand, and when she found they were both watching her, she began to read aloud slowly.
In the silence of death; then may I see dimly, and
know, a space,
Bending over me, last light in the dark, once, as of
old, your face.
Gemma looked up. “It does seem fitting, especially if she’d lost a great love.”
“And if she was obsessed with Rupert Brooke, what could have been more appropriate than to use one of his poems as her final message?” said Kincaid.
“Rather than her own voice?” Vic shook her head and took a breath, a calming effort. “Lydia was a poet first. That’s what made her who she was. That’s why I wanted to write about her. Women need those kinds of models-we need to hear the stories of women who have lived out their dreams, regardless of the cost. That way maybe we can get there, too, and without so much suffering along the way.”
“Then why would she have had an excerpt from a Brooke poem in her typewriter if it wasn’t meant for a suicide note?” Kincaid asked, raising a skeptical brow.
“I haven’t a clue. All I can tell you is that she would never have used someone else’s words.” Vic rubbed at her face, then said through splayed fingers, “Oh, how can I make you understand? Words were everything to her-her joy, her sorrow, her comfort. She would not have abandoned them in the final extreme. It would have been a betrayal beyond measure.”
The fire popped, and in the silence that followed, Gemma said, “I do. Understand, I mean. I think I understand what you’re saying.”
“You don’t think I’m daft?”
“No. Even if I don’t know much about poetry, I understand about not giving up who you are.”
Vic turned to Kincaid. “And have I convinced you?”
After a long moment he said a bit grudgingly, “Yes, I suppose so. But I still don’t see how-”
“There’s more,” Vic said. “Since I saw you last. Last week Nathan gave me a book he found among Lydia’s things, Edward Marsh’s memoir of Rupert Brooke. It was published in 1919, and included the first posthumous collection of Brooke’s poems. It was one of Lydia’s treasures-she found it in a secondhand bookshop her first year at Cambridge.
“I put it in the stack on my bedside table”-she flashed a smile at Kincaid, and Gemma wondered if Vic’s habit of taking books to bed had been a point of contention between them-“but it wasn’t until last night that I settled down to have a good look at it. You can’t imagine how I felt when I leafed through it and the manuscript pages fell out.” Vic smiled as if even the memory were delicious.
“What manuscript?” asked Kincaid, sounding thoroughly confused. “What did you say the author’s name was?”
“Edward Marsh,” Gemma said helpfully, but Vic was shaking her head.
“No, no, it was poems, drafts of Lydia’s poems. Let me show you.” She went quickly from the room, returning a moment later with some folded papers and wearing her tortoiseshell glasses. Sitting across from them again, she held the pages up for their inspection. “Lydia still used a typewriter rather than a computer. She was stubborn about it-she said she needed to feel some sort of physical connection between herself and the words and the paper. Sometimes she wrote first drafts in longhand, but when she typed she always made carbons.”
Gemma could see that the paper was tissue-thin copy paper, and the typescript had the smudgy look of carbon ink.
“Some of these poems were published in her last book,” Vic said, folding the pages in half again and smoothing them across her knees. “But there are others I’ve never even seen drafts of before.”
“Student poems she didn’t think worth saving?” suggested Kincaid. “If she’d had the book since she was at college.”
“No. These are better than her best-polished and mature. And they explore the same themes as many of the poems in her last book.” Vic paused as if weighing her words, then she said deliberately, patting the sheets on her knees, “These were meant to be read with the ones in the book, I’m sure of it.”
Kincaid glanced at Gemma before he said, “Maybe she was dissatisfied with them.”
“No. Lydia was unfailingly honest with herself about her writing. She recognized crap, and she knew when she’d done good work.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
Palms up in a helpless gesture, Vic shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Could she have decided not to publish them for some other reason?” Gemma asked.
“I don’t know what it could have been,” Vic said, then added thoughtfully, “One of the things I admired most about Lydia was her utter disregard for whether or not she offended people.”
Kincaid reached for the teapot and poured a little cold tea into his cup. “Would these”-he nodded at the sheets in Vic’s lap-“have offended anyone?”
“Some men. In a series of metaphors, she equates sex with death. It’s couched in symbolic terms, but there are men who are incapable of dealing with ideas about gender roles except in a personal way.”
“God forbid I should be one of them,” Kincaid said in mock horror.
Vic rolled her eyes at Gemma. “Is he as liberated as he thinks he is?”
“Not half.” Gemma smiled at her and a spark of understanding passed between them.
“If you ladies have finished amusing yourselves at my expense… perhaps we could get on with things.” Kincaid sipped at his cold tea and grimaced. “Vic-”
“Let me make another pot,” Vic said, reaching for the teapot, but he glanced at his watch and shook his head.
“We’d better be getting back. Toby will have worn out his welcome at Gemma’s parents’, I’m afraid.”
Vic sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, like a child awaiting bad news.
Kincaid cleared his throat. “Vic, I’ll agree with you that there are things about Lydia Brooke’s death that seem odd, but I simply don’t know what we can do about it at this point. It’s all supposition, and the police won’t even consider reopening the case without some sort of hard evidence.”
When she didn’t respond, he said, “One of the things I’ve learned over the years in police work is that sometimes we just can’t know all the answers-life doesn’t always tidy itself into neat little compartments. It’s frustrating and infuriating, but if you don’t learn when to let go, you can’t stay in the job.”
“Is that what you’re saying I should do? Let it go?”
He nodded. “Write a good book about Lydia and about her work. It’s the story that counts, not how it ends.” Shrugging apologetically, he added, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t know what else to suggest.”
Vic sat quite still, her face blank with disbelief. After a moment she seemed to collect herself. “I don’t know what I expected,” she said, and gave him a brittle smile. “It was kind of you to listen to me, and to take as much trouble as you have.”
“Vic-”
“Don’t worry, Duncan. I know you mean well. You’ve been a great help, really. Not to mention the fact that your visit to the Faculty will fuel the office gossip for months. I’m sure they’ve all paid up their outstanding parking tickets, just in case you come back.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding a bit injured. “I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you.”
“I should be used to difficult by now. I can’t imagine the days when I thought academia would provide a peaceful life. Do you mind if I keep your notes?”
“Not at all.”
She scooped the pages from his notebook off the lamp table and added them to the neat stack in her lap. “Will you get in trouble with your mates if I use this information in the book?”
“I’m not going to worry about it.” Kincaid’s smile held a hint of acid. “Besides, you know policemen don’t read.”
“Too right,” Vic said, making a visible effort to parry the thrust lightly. “Well, if you must go, I’ll see you out.”
In the hall, she stopped and called out to Kit.
“Just a sec,” he yelled back, and a moment later appeared from the office. “I had to pause it,” he explained. “I made it all the way to the seventh level.”
“What does that mean?” asked Gemma.
“It means I’m lean and mean and one cool dude.” Kit swaggered. “And I toasted a whole platoon of aliens.”
“Kit!” Vic tousled his hair. “You sound like some character in a bad American film. I think we’ll have to cut back on the videos.”
Ignoring this for the empty threat it undoubtedly was, Kit caught up to Kincaid at the door. “Can I look at your car? Mum says it’s awful, so it must be pretty cool.”
“Sure. You can even start it.” They went out and walked across the graveled drive to the Midget.
Gemma and Vic stood on the porch, watching them. The rain had stopped, and a few gaps in the western clouds hinted at a glorious sunset. “Is Toby your son?” asked Vic.
“He’s three. And he already loves cars. Must be genetic.”
“I know. And to think I used to believe all that stuff about raising your children free of gender stereotypes.” She laid light fingers on Gemma’s arm. “I’m glad you came.”
The Midget’s engine sputtered to life. Kit jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran across to them. “It’s really neat, Mum. Can we get one like it? Our car is so boring.”
Vic laughed. “I like boring.”
Kincaid had followed Kit and now shook his hand. “I’ll sell it to you when you’re sixteen.” He pecked Vic on the cheek, then took Gemma by the elbow. “’Bye, thanks for the tea.”
There was something in Vic’s stance, thought Gemma, looking back as they pulled away, that could be read as easily as words on a page-an invisible angle of determination. Liking the pattern the words made in her mind, she repeated them to herself, and she felt an odd quickening inside her, as if something stirred in its sleep.
By the time they reached the motorway the fissures in the clouds had widened, revealing the sunset in full hue. Kincaid always thought of sunsets as feminine, and this one was particularly voluptuous, with rosy-gold billows of cloud forming shapes reminiscent of reclining Rubenesque nudes. He smiled at his metaphor and glanced at Gemma, wondering if she’d accuse him of sexism if he shared it with her.
She sat silently beside him, watching the sky, not even complaining, for once, about his car. He thought about asking her what she was thinking, but just then a passing lorry spattered sludge on the windscreen, and fighting its back draft while momentarily blinded required all his attention. When he could see again, he put a piano cassette in the tape player and concentrated on his driving.
They found the lights switched on in Gemma’s flat and a vase of daffodils on the table. Beside it lay a note from Hazel, a pot of beans, and a loaf of homemade bread. “Have a good feed,” the note read. “Gourmet beans on toast.”
“I see your fairy godmother’s been,” said Kincaid, dipping a finger into the still warm beans for a taste. “If she weren’t already taken, I’d snatch her in a minute.”
“She wouldn’t have you,” Gemma said equably. “Just count yourself lucky to get some of the fringe benefits.”
When Toby had been fed and put to bed, and they’d finished up the last of their toast and tea, Kincaid rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I’ll do the washing up,” he offered, “if I can have a glass of wine. I could swim in the tea I’ve drunk today.”
“Red or white?” Gemma stood on tiptoe as she reached for the glasses in the cupboard.
He admired the elongated line of her body as she stretched, and the curves hinted at beneath the bulk of her jumper. Stepping up behind her, he laid his hands lightly on her waist. “Mmmm, red, I think.”
Gemma slipped out of his grasp with an abstracted smile. When she’d poured them both a glass of burgundy, she cleared the dishes from the half-moon table while he ran hot water and squirted soap in the basin.
“Sit,” he ordered her as he began the soaping and rinsing. “There’s not room for us both in here-or there is, but it’s quite distracting.” When this mildly flirtatious comment received no response, he looked round as much as his dripping hands would allow. She sat in one of the slatted chairs at the table, booted feet stretched out before her, staring into the wineglass cradled in her lap. He started to speak, then thought better of it, slotting the last of the plates into the drying rack before he wiped his hands and turned to her.
“Gemma, what is it?” he asked, taking the other chair so that he could look directly into her face. “You’ve hardly said a word since we left Cambridge.”
“Oh.” She looked at him as if surprised to find him there. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”
“So I gathered. Care to elaborate?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to put it into words.”
With some trepidation, he asked, “Is this about Vic?” He’d thought taking Gemma with him the best way to allay her fears, but perhaps it had been a mistake.
To his surprise, the corners of Gemma’s mouth turned up in a smile. “I didn’t expect to like her, you know, but I did. Even though there’s still a connection between the two of you, I found I didn’t mind. I don’t know why I was so frightened of it, or why I expected to be so intimidated by her.”
“Intimidated by Vic? Why?”
Hesitating, Gemma looked away from him, then said slowly, “You know I did my A levels, but then I decided on the Academy rather than University. I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk to her-that we wouldn’t have a thing in common. Or worse, that she’d talk down to me, be all smug about her education and her career.”
“Why on earth should she-”
“No, wait, let me finish.” Gemma gave him a quelling look, her brows drawn together again. “It didn’t turn out that way at all. The things she said made sense to me, and the funny thing is, I think I understood something you didn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, thoroughly puzzled now.
“You told her that the end of her book about Lydia didn’t matter. You didn’t see that it’s the end that gives the book its truth.” He must have looked blank, because she shook her head in frustration. “Look at it this way. Vic’s right about women needing stories about other women’s accomplishments. Do you know how much it would have meant to me when I started out in the Met if I’d had another woman’s experience to guide me?
“There were less than a handful of female DCIs then, and they were playing by men’s rules. But I wanted something different. I thought that I could be a good police officer-maybe even a better police officer-because I’m a woman, not in spite of it, and there were times, especially in the beginning, that I almost gave up. There was nobody to reassure me that I had something special to offer, that I wasn’t crazy, that it could be done.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, taken aback by her intensity. “I didn’t know that’s how you felt. You’ve never said.”
“Those aren’t things that are considered appropriate to say.” Her smile held little humor. “And that makes other women’s stories even more important, including Lydia’s. But if Lydia killed herself, it changes her story. I’m not saying that it makes it invalid, but it does make it a different story.”
“I don’t understand. Surely she would still have accomplished the same things?”
“But they wouldn’t matter in the same way. Suicide is an admission of defeat. It tells us that she couldn’t put all the pieces of her dream together, and if she couldn’t, maybe we can’t, either.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t have told Vic to leave it alone?”
Gemma took a belated sip of her wine. “Not exactly. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what you said, because Vic needs Lydia not to have committed suicide, and she can’t let it go. And you didn’t see that.”
“What else could I have done?” he said defensively, feeling as though he’d been tried and found wanting. “You were the one who thought I shouldn’t bother with it at all.”
Shrugging, Gemma said, “I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”
Newnham
30 January 1963
Dearest Mummy,
Sometimes I think this poetry is a curse, not a gift. The words haunt me when I should be sleeping, haunt me when I should be working, and they’re black, cold beasts I can’t tame into acceptable shapes. Six rejections just this week, without even a hint of encouragement. Why can’t I give it up, concentrate on my studies?
Last term’s workload was difficult-this term’s may be insurmountable. If I had been better prepared I might not be floundering so now, trying to make up for the lack of depth and breadth in my reading. And what shall I do with this degree, if I somehow manage to earn one of any distinction? Teach sixth-form girls in some dreary comprehensive, in the hopes that one of them will possess the gift I lacked?
Do you know how many women manage to publish poetry? And of the few that do, most have their work reviled by the critics for being too pretty, too feminine, but if they write anything else it’s said to be unsuitable. If I’d had any sense. I’d have taken that clerk’s job in the Brighton Woolworth’s. I’d be taking the bus home in the rain, warm and dry on the upper deck, not cycling everywhere through slush and sludge, rain cape and boots perpetually soaked. I’d have met some nice fellow and I’d go to the cinema with him on Fridays, and if he were persistent enough I might bring him home for tea. Marriage and babies would lurk in the offing, and these spiky thoughts would not jostle so in my head.
Oh, poor Mummy, forgive me this outpouring of misery. I feel small and mean, burdening you with it, but I simply couldn’t go on without the hope of comfort. Tell me these feelings will pass, that the rain will stop, that my dreadful cold will go away, that someone, somewhere, will publish one of my poems.
Your Lydia
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin
dead hands.
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Day That I Have Loved”
Vic often thought that this was her favorite time, Kit asleep, the house still and quiet except for the occasional creak as it breathed. She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of milk hot from the microwave, for once neither reading nor writing, but simply thinking about her day. This was a habit begun in the last years with Ian as a way of avoiding bed until she knew he was asleep, and now enjoyed for its own sake.
They’d never had the money to do the kitchen up properly, so she’d got creative with paint and jumble sale finds, discovering an unexpected sense of pleasure in the process. Blue on the cabinets, sunflower yellow on the rough plaster walls, junk shop jugs and pitchers on the worktops and windowsill. The Welsh dresser with its blue-and-yellow Italian pottery she’d found for a song at an estate sale, along with the small oak, drop-leaf table and her Tiffany lamp. At least she always thought of it as her Tiffany lamp-it was probably a cheap imitation, but she meant to have it valued some day, just in case.
Her mother, whenever she came to visit, threw up her hands in despair at the sight of Vic’s kitchen. A proponent of hygienic, synthetic surfaces, with a fetish for appliances (her latest acquisition was a rubbish compactor), Eugenia Potts had no patience with her daughter’s contentment. It was a good thing, thought Vic, that she didn’t really want a dishwasher or a refrigerator the size of cave, because without Ian’s salary the possibility of refitting had receded further than ever.
For a moment, she allowed herself the luxury of wondering what her life would have been like if she’d stayed with Duncan. Would they live in the flat he’d described in Hampstead, with its sunset view over the rooftops? Would she be teaching at London University, in a department less difficult? Would she and Duncan have ironed out their differences, she growing less jealous of his work as she became more absorbed in her own?
The one thing she felt quite certain of was that she wouldn’t have begun a biography of Lydia Brooke, and she was beginning to think that might have been a blessing.
Even after so many years apart, it had felt quite odd today to see him with another woman. She hadn’t felt jealous-she had, in fact, found herself unexpectedly drawn to Gemma-but she had experienced a sense of displacement.
Just how honest had she been with herself about her reasons for contacting him? Oh, she’d had legitimate need, and he had been helpful, but now that he’d done as much as he felt he could in the matter of Lydia, she found herself wanting very much to maintain the friendship, for Kit’s sake as well as her own. Kit had few enough male role models, and it was especially important now that Ian-
The phone rang. She lunged for it instinctively, hoping it hadn’t waked Kit. Even as she lifted the handset from the cradle, she knew who it was.
“Vic? I hope it’s not too late, but I managed to get away from the conference a day early.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m still up,” she said, her breathing quickening at the sound of Nathan’s voice.
“It was a bloody weekend, I can tell you,” he said, and she could imagine him smiling. He’d gone unenthusiastically on Friday to a botanists’ meeting in Manchester, mumbling that they could hardly have picked anywhere less appropriate.
She hadn’t often talked to him on the telephone, and she thought how much she liked his voice, deep, with laughter resonating under the surface. She’d always been a sucker for voices, Duncan’s, too, with its hint of Cheshire drawl, blunted now by so many years in London.
“Come round and I’ll tell you about it,” Nathan urged.
Hesitating, Vic felt the anxious knot of dread forming in her stomach. Did she want to confront him tonight? No point putting it off, she thought, and took a deep breath.
“Yes, all right. I suppose I can come over for a bit.”
“Come the front way. The garden’s a bog.” He added, teasing, “I don’t think the neighbors will see you this time of night.” The phone clicked, then the dial tone buzzed in her ear.
He still wore his jacket and tie, though he’d undone his collar button and pulled the knot of his tie down to a rakish angle. “I’ve got the fire going,” he said, ushering her into the hall. “Let me get you a drink.”
She shook her head. “Not just now.” The door to the music room stood open and the lamp on the piano was lit. “You’ve been playing,” she said, wandering in and touching the sheet music open on the stand. It was handwritten, and she recognized Nathan’s strong, black script.
“Just doodling while I waited for you.” He stood in the doorway, looking perplexed.
Vic slid onto the piano bench and stared at the keyboard. After a moment, she began to pick out a hesitant, childish version of “Chopsticks,” all she remembered from the brief lessons forced on her by her mother. Her rebellion had taken the form of stoic silence coupled with an adherence to the exact number of minutes she was required to practice. After a few months, her mother had given up in defeat. Vic was not musically gifted.
Ballet had been next. She should have stuck with piano.
“Didn’t you tell me that you were writing music based on DNA sequences?” she asked. “Is that what this is?”
“In part. It’s an idea mentioned briefly in a lecture by Leonard Bernstein, and I’ve always been fascinated by it. An innate universal musical language.” He left his position by the door frame and came towards her. “Vic, I happen to know that your interest in the mechanics of music lies somewhere on a par with your interest in particle physics. And you haven’t once looked at me since you came in. What is the matter? Has something happened?”
She turned towards him. “Nathan, why didn’t you tell me that you found Lydia?”
He stared at her. “It never occurred to me. I suppose if I’d thought about it, I’d have assumed you knew.”
“No. I’d no idea until I saw a copy of the police report today.”
“Does it matter?” he asked, sounding baffled. “Did you think I was deliberately keeping something from you?”
“No, not really,” she said, not willing to admit what she had thought in the face of his matter-of-factness. “It’s just that everything surrounding Lydia’s death seems so elusive.” She shivered with a sudden chill.
“It’s cold in here. Come in by the fire,” Nathan said with instant concern, and this time she followed him obediently.
“Why didn’t you ask me?” he said when he’d settled her in the armchair nearest the heat. “I’d have told you anything you wanted to know.”
“I didn’t know to ask. And even now I feel uncomfortable, because I’m afraid talking about it might distress you.”
“Ah.” Nathan sat across from her and took a sip of a drink he’d apparently made while waiting. “It was very distressing, actually, at the time,” he said slowly. “And I didn’t speak about it to anyone except the police, but I’d always assumed it had got about somehow, as everyone seemed to avoid the subject so assiduously.
“But it’s been a long time, and I don’t mind talking about it now, if you like.”
A simple explanation after all, thought Vic, and she had worked herself into a lather over it. Was she becoming paranoid, imagining conspiracies, and suspecting Nathan, of all people? Collecting herself, she said, “The police seemed to think that Lydia asked you to come that evening because she wanted you to find her.”
Nathan shrugged. “I suppose that’s the logical explanation. Or perhaps at some level she was hoping to be rescued.”
“As Adam rescued her the first time?”
“Poor Adam. At least I didn’t find her floating in her own blood. Sorry, love,” he added with a grimace. “Not a nice picture.”
“She wrote about it-Life blood/Salt and iron/cradle gentle as a/mother’s kiss…” Vic recited softly. She stood up and went to the old gramophone cabinet Nathan used to store drinks in the sitting room. Pouring herself a generous sherry, she said, “What did she say when she called you that day, Nathan? How did she sound?”
He thought for a long moment. “Tense… excited… almost combative. I suppose all of those would be natural if she were working herself up to suicide.”
“But what exactly did she say? Can you remember the particular words or phrases?” Vic came back to her chair and curled up with her feet beneath her.
Nathan closed his eyes, then said slowly, “She said, ‘Nathan, I simply must see you. Can you come round this evening?’ And then she said, ‘We need to talk.’ Or was it, ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about’?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”
“And then what did she say? When she rang off?”
“Oh, Lord.” Nathan rubbed his chin. “Let me think. She said, ‘Come for drinks round sevenish?’ A question, rather than a statement, but she didn’t wait for me to answer. And then, ‘See you then. Cheerio,’ and she hung up.”
“And you thought that sounded like someone intending suicide?” Vic’s voice rose to an incredulous squeak.
“Well, I have to admit it sounds a bit absurd now,” said Nathan, exasperated. “But I had indisputable evidence, damnit. She was dead.”
“What did you think about the poem in the typewriter?” asked Vic, plowing on.
“The Rupert Brooke? I supposed she had never quite got over Morgan, and that was her way of saying good-bye to him. It did seem a bit sentimental for Lydia, but when I heard she’d left him everything it seemed a fair assumption.”
“The police thought Lydia wrote it.”
“Did they?” Nathan’s brows lifted in surprise. “Well, they never asked me. I’d have set them straight. But what difference does it make?”
Not yet, she thought. She wasn’t ready to lay her cards out quite yet. And there was still the matter of the poems. “Nathan, did you know about the poems in the book you gave me?”
“The Rupert Brooke? Of course it had poems in it,” he said, looking at her as if not quite sure of her sanity. “It was the first collection of his poems, along with Marsh’s rather sexually biased memoirs, if I remem-”
“No, no, I don’t mean those poems,” Vic protested, laughing. “I meant Lydia’s poems.”
Nathan just looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about, Vic?”
“Did you look in the book before you gave it to me?”
“Just the copyright page, and that marvelous photo on the flyleaf. No wonder Marsh-”
“That’s all right, then,” Vic said on a breath of relief. “No wonder you didn’t see them.” She proceeded to explain about finding the manuscript drafts of Lydia’s poems in the book, and that she thought them among the last of Lydia’s work.
When she’d finished, Nathan said thoughtfully, “Well, no one would know better than you. But how odd. I suppose the logical step would be to ask Ralph if he knows anything about them.”
“Ralph Peregrine? Her publisher?” she asked, while silently blessing Nathan for not questioning her competence.
“A nice chap, and he seems to have had a good working relationship with Lydia. Have you met him?”
Vic nodded. “Briefly. He was very accommodating. He told me as much as he knew about Lydia’s methods of working, and made me copies of his correspondence with her.”
“And there was nothing about these poems?”
“No. She wrote him a series of friendly, chatty letters from abroad over the years, but they seem to have conducted most of their business in person or over the telephone.”
“I suppose that makes sense, in view of the fact that they were both in Cambridge.” Nathan fell silent for a moment, then smiled brightly at her. “You could ask Daphne.”
“That’s exactly what Adam said, only about something else. What-”
“How did your visit go with Adam?” Nathan interrupted, sounding avuncularly pleased with himself.
“He wasn’t at all what I expected,” Vic said, smiling. “He was quite charming, and he gave me very good sherry. It seemed all I needed was your seal of approval.”
“Adam always did have a taste for expensive sherry-it’s probably the one little luxury he allows himself, poor chap. It was he who began the sherry party tradition at college, you know.” As if reminded of his empty glass, Nathan got up and poured himself a bit more whisky. Returning to his chair, he said, “Lydia took it up, but with a bit more flair. I’d forgotten that.”
“Why refer to him as a poor chap?” Vic asked, intrigued. “I’ll admit the rectory is a bit shabby-well, I suppose I’d have to admit that Adam’s a bit shabby himself-but he seemed quite comfortable with his circumstances.”
Nathan grimaced. “You’re quite right. That was bloody condescending of me. That’s what comes of projecting your own ambitions onto someone else.” Frowning, he sipped at his drink. “But you see, all of us-Adam and Darcy and I-came from the same sort of comfortable, middle-class background. Well, mine was a bit less comfortable than Adam’s or Darcy’s, but the point is, we started with the same aspirations, and Darcy and I made a moderate success of it. Adam, though…”
“What?” said Vic, her curiosity further aroused by his hesitation. He looked up at her and for once she found his dark eyes opaque, unreadable.
“All of a sudden, one day Adam decided that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to contribute something, save his own little corner of the world. And I can’t say he’s made a great success of it-a failed mission, then a decaying church that’s in danger of closure, full of aging and decrepit parishioners.”
“Nathan,” said Vic, taken aback, “you actually sound as if you’re jealous! I’d never have thought it.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then said, “It’s more guilt than jealousy, I’m afraid. At least he made an effort to do something for someone, poor bastard, while the rest of us just grew fat and content and more blind by the day. I used to tell myself that do gooding was just as self-serving, but I’m not sure I can swallow that anymore.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d make a very good cynic.”
“Thanks.” He smiled at her. “Perhaps your good opinion means I have some hope of redemption.”
“What about Daphne? Did she get a case of middle-aged tunnel vision, as well?”
“Daphne?” Nathan tilted his head to one side as he thought. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say, really. I never had much contact with Daphne after college. She’s certainly been outwardly successful, though.”
“But you said-”
“It was Lydia and Daphne who stayed close. And I must say I wondered even then if Daphne only put up with the rest of us for Lydia’s sake. It was Daphne who was most privy to Lydia’s work, especially in the later years.”
“But I interviewed her.” Vic slid her feet to the floor with an outraged thump. “From the way she talked, you’d have thought they’d hardly seen one another since college, a nodding-acquaintances-in-the-street sort of thing. And there’s no record in Lydia’s papers, except for the occasional mention in her letters to her mother-”
“Daphne’s a very private person, as was Lydia. When Lydia died, Daphne asked me to return all the letters she’d written to her over the years. I saw no reason not to.”
After a moment, Vic realized she was gaping and snapped her mouth shut. “But couldn’t you have… But what about-”
“Literary posterity?” Nathan supplied helpfully. “I rather thought that the wishes of the living people involved came first.”
Vic stared at him for a moment, then gave a deflated sigh and rubbed her cheekbones with the tips of her fingers. “You’re right, of course. You couldn’t in good conscience have done anything else.” She shook her head. “What’s happened to me? Am I turning into some sort of dreadful vulture?”
Nathan grinned at her. “Next thing you know you’ll be applying for a job on The Sun.”
“God forbid I should come to that,” Vic said, smiling back in spite of herself. “But, oh, Nathan, I was so ignorant when I took this on. I actually thought that biography was an academic and critical pursuit-can you imagine that? But it’s as much fiction as any novel. How else can you create a whole person out of the bits and pieces we leave behind? And where do you draw a morally defensible line as far as privacy is concerned, for both the living and the dead?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” said Nathan, all trace of levity vanishing. “But I trust your judgment. And I think if you are going to be happy with yourself, you’re going to have to trust your judgment, too. And don’t be afraid to follow your instincts, else you might end up fat and self-satisfied. What was it that Rupert Brooke advocated to his friends? That they should all live together in licentious freedom on an island, then kill themselves when they reached middle age?”
“You’re not fat or self-satisfied.”
“Vic-”
She interrupted him, intent on following her train of thought. “All right, then, what am I missing about Daphne? In Adam, I caught the occasional glimpse of what Lydia must have seen, but I couldn’t imagine Daphne had ever been anything but a middle-aged and very proper headmistress.”
“For starters, Daphne was anything but proper,” said Nathan with a glint of amusement. “And she was gorgeous. They both were, but in different ways. Daphne could have posed for any number of mythical or biblical paintings-you know, Rape of Lucretia sort of thing. She had that timeless, feminine, corn goddess quality, all heavy breasts and flowing copper hair.” He paused, then said more slowly, “While Lydia-there was something more androgynous about Lydia, with her slender body and her triangular, almost feline little face-but she was no less appealing for that. And she certainly made up for any sexual aggressiveness that Daphne lacked,” he added, as if it were an afterthought.
Frowning, Vic said, “But I thought… that it was always you and Daphne. And Adam and Lydia. I mean…”
“Are you trying to be tactful, Vic?” Nathan asked, the veiled amusement evolving into a wicked grin. “I’d never have thought it of you.”
She felt herself blushing and said defiantly, “All right, then. Are you telling me that you slept with them both?”
“You must remember that this was, after all, the early sixties, and that we thought we had invented it all.” His tone was still teasing, but the laughter had gone from his eyes. “It all seemed so daring and liberated, and we were so smug with it.”
“You don’t sound as if you enjoyed it much.”
“I was… what? Nineteen? Twenty? I’m not sure enjoyment is the operative word with males at that age. It’s a bit more basic than that.”
Vic tried to imagine Nathan as he had been then, but his presence now was too real, too strong. She found the thought of him making love to Daphne and Lydia surprisingly arousing, and found also that it gave her an odd sense of connection to the two women. She would have to see Daphne again. And she would certainly have to revise her picture of Lydia’s university days, which up until now had been gleaned mostly from Lydia’s early poems and the oh-so-innocent letters to her mother. “Nathan,” she said as she slid from her chair and positioned herself at his feet, her chin resting on his knee, “tell me what it was really like.”
He stroked her hair. “Maybe when you’re older.”
“No, seriously.” She looked up at him. “I need to know.”
“Seriously,” he countered, “I will. But not tonight. It’s getting late and I’m afraid you’re going to turn into a pumpkin.”
“Not until you’ve taken off my glass slippers,” Vic said, and smiled.
Newnham
29 April 1963
Dear Mummy,
Oh, glorious, glorious red-letter day. Now I truly understand the expression for the first time.
Flying back from afternoon lectures with the sun shining and the east wind nipping my face, there was the post in my box in the JCR. Sorting the letters as I climbed my staircase, I saw the familiar envelope at the bottom of the stack.
There is a necessary ritual for these things. The sanctuary of my room, and the putting away of books, and the making of a cup of tea, and then the paper knife. I saved the magazine’s envelope till last-Ialways save them till last-and opened it with only half my attention. I was thinking of the paper I’m writing on some obscure eighteenth-century poets, and doing a fairly good job of ignoring the knot that always forms in my stomach, more dread than hope. But finally, I slit the envelope with razor neatness, unfolded the very ordinary letter, and carefully smoothed out the creases, and had no further excuse for delay.
“What an odd rejection,” I thought as I read, then had to read it over twice more before the words penetrated.
I’ve sold not just one poem, but three! And to Granta, no less. ‘The Huntsman,’ and ‘The Last Supper,’ and ‘Solstice.’ And they like the English myth series (’Huntsman,’ ‘Solstice’) so much that they want to see the rest.
How is it possible to feel numb and ecstatic at the same time? Haven’t told anyone yet, not even Daphne, as I wanted you to be the first to know.
I realize you’ve been concerned for me these last few months, but I seem to have got over the sticky patch, and the sale of the poems confirms to me that I have been going in the right direction all along. I have to admit I had doubts this last winter, wondering whether I had the courage and the stamina to succeed as a poet, and the truly awful thing about it was not being able to imagine doing anything else.
But it seems that I have made a beginning, and now I must live up to it.
Your loving
Lydia
The front door creaked and Vic looked up from her desk, listening. She glanced at the clock. It must have been the wind, she thought-she had half an hour yet before Kit should be home from school.
When the second supervision of her Monday afternoon schedule had canceled due to flu, she’d taken advantage of the opportunity to come home early and put in an extra hour’s work. She’d cleared a space on her desk and laid Lydia’s manuscript pages out like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, shuffling and reshuffling the order of the poems.
That they were good she had no doubt-brilliant, even-a final step in the evolution of Lydia’s work. The poems reached back, integrating elements from her early, mythically themed poetry with the later confessional style, and in doing so achieved a new balance. And when these missing poems were added to the ones published in her last volume, the book gained a wholeness, a sort of unity not evident in her work before.
Vic would see that the book was published as it should have been, a testament to Lydia’s talent.
But there was something more, she thought as she swapped two of the poems again, a feeling that there was a sequence, a pattern to them that kept shifting just out of her mind’s reach. Perhaps if she read them once more, in a slightly different order-
The door slammed, Kit’s signature, and a moment later she heard the thud of his backpack hitting the floor outside her study. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, not looking up. “How was school?”
No answer. She turned and saw Kit standing in the doorway, face set in a sullen scowl. Although he suffered from the occasional preadolescent mood, he was normally a good-natured child, and particularly boisterous when let out of school for the day. “What’s the matter, love?” Vic asked, concerned. “Are you all right?”
He shrugged and didn’t speak.
All right, thought Vic, try another tactic. She took off her glasses and stretched. “Bad day?” she asked mildly.
Another shrug. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Me, too,” she said as if he’d answered. “Maybe we’d both feel better if we took a walk. What do you say?”
This time she thought the shrug looked a bit more positive.
“Want a snack first?” she asked, and received a sharp, negative head shake. A bad sign-he was usually ravenous after school. “Then let me get my coat.”
She heard him stomp through the kitchen as she stopped in the loo, then the back door slammed. Oh, Lord, she thought, leaning against the sink for a moment. One was never prepared for these things, and she had had a particularly bad day already. Lost lecture notes this morning, then an hysterical student, and to top it off, a furious row with Darcy after lunch.
The argument had started, of all the silly things, over whose turn it was to use the photocopier.
Vic had taken a stack of books into the photocopier room, intending to make handouts of some selected poems for her lecture on the Romantics, then had to run back to her office to retrieve a volume left on her desk.
When she’d returned to the photocopier a few moments later, she’d found her books moved and Darcy firmly in position over the humming machine.
“Oh, so sorry. Were those yours?” he’d said. “One should really be more careful about leaving one’s property untended. So much petty theft these days, even the hallowed halls of the English Faculty might not be sacrosanct.”
“You knew perfectly well that they were mine,” she said, exasperated. “And no one in their right mind would steal secondhand copies of Keats and Shelley.” She eyed the stack of papers in the machine’s In tray with dismay. “Couldn’t you let me run these few things, Darcy? I need them for tomorrow morning’s lecture, and I’ve got a supervision in ten minutes. After all, I was here first.”
His presence seemed suffocatingly large in the small room, and she could smell the beer on his breath, no doubt the result of a rather liquid pub lunch. He still wore his gown, and as he leaned against the photocopier with his arms folded, he looked like a dissipated King Lear. Or Olivier playing Lear might be more like it, she thought. There was always something a bit overly theatrical about Darcy.
Smiling, he said, “Perhaps if one were better prepared one wouldn’t be in such a panic.”
The fury that seared through her caught her completely by surprise, and she found herself suddenly shouting at him, “Don’t you dare criticize me, Darcy. You’ve no right. And you had no right to undermine me to Adam Lamb. You knew how important it was to me to see him.”
“My dear Victoria.” Darcy raised his brows and looked down his rather fleshy nose at her. “I have a perfect right to express my professional opinion to my friends, and I am not responsible for the success or failure of your little projects.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she hissed back, making a belated effort to keep her voice down. “Of course you’re not responsible for my work, but you’ve no right to deliberately sabotage it just because it doesn’t fit into your archaic little definition of academic respectability. Did you say the same sort of things about me to Daphne Morris that you said to Adam?”
Oooh,” said Darcy with pursed lips, mocking her. “On a first-name basis with Adam now, are we? How chummy for you.” Coldly, he added, “For your information, I haven’t seen Daphne since Lydia’s funeral, and I have no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future. I quite despise the woman. I’d have thought the two of you would have got on quite well.”
While Vic struggled to think of a suitably stinging retort, Darcy had scooped up his papers from the photocopier’s trays and turned towards the door. “Take all the time you want,” he said sweetly, over his shoulder. “I shan’t need my copies until next week’s lectures.”
Just thinking about it made Vic flush painfully. Darcy Eliot could be quite charming-she’d even seen him behave considerately to other staff members on occasion-so why did she let the man reduce her to such childish behavior? She had meant to talk to him about Adam, meant to do it in a civilized, rational way, in a place and time of her own choosing. But somehow she and Darcy always seemed to be at cross-purposes with one another, and their constant infighting did her reputation no good in the department. In future, she’d have to make more effort to find some sort of common ground, difficult as it might be.
With a sigh, she splashed some cold water on her face, ran a brush through her hair, and went out to meet Kit in the garden.
She found him at the gate, scuffing his feet in the pile of last year’s leaves she’d been meaning to rake up. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, but when she said, “The river path?” he nodded.
Once through the gate, they automatically turned left, towards Cambridge. Vic put her mind in neutral as they swung along in silence, trusting that the exercise and companionship would eventually loosen Kit’s tongue. Now she found herself glad of the excuse to be out, for it was her favorite sort of day-soft, still, and damp, the world a comforting and uniform gray. She had no objection to sunshine; in fact, she liked it as well as the next person after a long wet spell, but clear days didn’t exhilarate her in the same way. Gloomy, her mother had disapprovingly called her as a child, but Vic didn’t see how she could help something as innate as a love of rainy weather.
The moisture in the air intensified odors, and as she breathed in, the rich, earthy spring scent came to her so strongly that she thought she must actually be smelling things growing. Glancing at Kit, she saw that his scowl had softened, and he was looking about with almost his usual interest. Judging her moment, she said casually, “Do you want to tell me what happened at school today?”
He glanced at her and shrugged, but after a moment he said grudgingly, “I heard Miss Pope talking to the new PE teacher.”
“Miss Pope? Your English teacher?”
Kit gave her the disdainful glance she deserved for such an asinine comment. She knew Miss Pope perfectly well. Thirtyish and single, Elizabeth Pope had been obviously smitten with Ian, and had requested regular and unnecessary parent-teacher conferences. Whether or not Ian had taken his advantage, Vic had not known, nor had she particularly cared, except for Kit’s sake.
“And what did Miss Pope say?”
“They were in the lunch queue, and I went back for a fork,” he began circuitously. “They didn’t see me. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Vic said encouragingly, but he hunched his shoulders, turtlelike, and looked down at his trainers. She thought fleetingly and irrelevantly that he had outgrown his shoes again, and wondered when he would begin to catch up to his feet. “Were they talking about me?” she asked, when he didn’t speak.
Nodding, Kit kicked hard at a stone in the path, then spit out the words with the same violence. “Miss Pope said you worked all the time, and that Dad wouldn’t have left if you’d paid more attention to him. She said you weren’t a proper wife.”
Bitch, thought Vic, holding her breath and counting to ten. She’d have a few choice words to say to the nosy Miss Pope, but she would not take her anger out on Kit. And where had Elizabeth Pope got her nasty ideas, anyway? Pillow talk?
“Darling,” she said when she thought she could control her voice, “it was very wrong of Miss Pope to be talking about things that are none of her business. You do know that, don’t you?”
Kit made a slight movement with his shoulders, but kept his head down.
Vic sighed. How could she explain to him what she didn’t understand herself? “In the first place, no one can ever really know what goes on between two people except the people themselves. And things are never as simple in a relationship as Miss Pope made it sound.” She couldn’t blame Ian-tempting as it was, she knew that trying to enlist Kit on her side could damage him even further. “Sometimes people just grow in different directions, develop different needs and interests, and one day they wake up and discover there’s no reason to be together anymore.”
“Except me,” said Kit, taking her generalization personally. “Wasn’t I a good enough reason?”
There it was, thought Vic, the crux of the matter, and she had no excuses to offer for Ian. And the truth, even if it were possible to tell Kit, would still not suffice. Haltingly, she said, “Sometimes grownups decide they’re not ready to be grown-ups, and they do things without thinking about other people’s feelings. It may not be right, but it happens, and we just have to make the best of it.” She couldn’t bring herself to reassure Kit that Ian loved him, for she was not at all sure that he did, and she knew Kit would sense any falsity on her part.
They had walked almost to the outskirts of Cambridge. She could see the goalposts of Pembroke’s Sports Grounds in the distance, a thin, black vertical frame against the poplars. The daylight was fading by imperceptible degrees, for the heavy cloud cover hid any hint of sunset, and a chill little wind had sprung up in the dusk. Putting her arm lightly round Kit’s shoulders, she said, “Come on, love. Let’s turn back. It’s getting cold.”
They turned their backs to the wind and started homeward. Glancing at her son’s still averted face, Vic sensed that she hadn’t yet reached the heart of his distress. What mattered to him so much that he couldn’t say it?
Slowly, she asked, “Did Miss Pope make you angry because you feel I’m not paying you enough attention?”
Kit jerked his head in a nod. His lips were pinched so tightly together that they’d turned white, an effort, Vic guessed, to keep them from trembling. Damn Miss Pope, she thought, and damn Ian, damn them all. But she knew she was shifting blame, that Kit’s security was her responsibility alone, and she had fallen down on the job.
She’d been a fool to get involved with Nathan. Aware of Kit’s vulnerability, she’d still put her own needs first, and now she wasn’t sure she could bear the thought of giving Nathan up.
And Lydia? Was her obsession with Lydia Brooke worth hurting Kit more than Ian had hurt him already? Perhaps Duncan had been right, and she should let it go, but she knew that was impossible even as she thought it. But she would have to tread more carefully, making sure it no longer took first place in her life.
“I’m sorry, Kit,” she said, giving his shoulders a squeeze. “I’ll just have to do better, won’t I?”
He nodded and gave her a swift upwards glance before his face relaxed into a ghost of a smile.
Vic hugged him again. “What do you say we start with a fire, and some hot chocolate, and a serious game of Monopoly?”
Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;
Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;
Love has no habitation but the heart.
Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,
Cling, and are borne into the night apart.
The laugh dies with the lips, “Love” with the lover.
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Mutability”
The hall clock chimed six as Margery Lester fastened the pearl stud in her ear. Her dress was new and rather successful, she thought, silver with the faintest hint of green, a high collar, and a row of tiny pearl buttons down the back. She’d had to ask Grace to do up the buttons-that was one disadvantage to having outlived one’s husbands; they were occasionally useful.
Yes, the dress would do, she thought as she gave it one last survey in her dressing table mirror. She avoided pinks and blues and lavenders-old-lady colors, she called them, although she certainly couldn’t deny that she had crossed the threshold of that category. But there were still occasions when she caught a fleeting and unexpected glimpse of herself in a mirror and thought, Who is that old woman? Surely not little Margery!
Margery was lithe and brown from tennis in the summer sun, Margery drove open cars a bit too fast, Margery laughed and took lovers… But the boundaries between life and fiction had blurred with the years, and she wondered now if she had ever been that girl, or if she had constructed her in memory as she would a character in a book.
She heard Grace’s heavy footsteps in the hall, then a moment later her face appeared, reflected in the dressing table mirror.
“Madam, the guests will be arriving any time now and you should be down to greet them,” fretted Grace as she crossed the room to flick imaginary particles of dust from Margery’s shoulders. A frown added extra creases to her already furrowed face.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” sighed Margery. “You’re such a tyrant, Grace,” she added, and gave the hand on her shoulder an affectionate pat. “I promise I’ll be down before the bell rings.” She’d given up years ago trying to stop Grace from calling her Madam, for Grace was getting on as well, and seemed more determined with each passing year to turn herself into a parody of an old English family retainer.
Grace met her eyes in the mirror. “You know these parties are too much, you’ll be exhausted tomorrow. Did you remember to take your tablets?”
“Oh, don’t fuss so, Grace,” said Margery, splashing a bit of scent on her throat and wrists. “I’ll be perfectly fine.” In truth, it was Grace who would be exhausted tomorrow, even though Margery had insisted she get help with the cooking and serving. But Margery had had a little weak spell recently, and Grace had been hovering like a mother hen ever since. Margery stood and gave herself a final once-over in the three-way glass, then followed Grace obediently down the stairs.
Her dinner parties, and Grace’s cooking, were renowned, but although she would never admit it to Grace, she was beginning to find them a bit wearing. Perhaps it was just people in general-it took more and more effort to leave her writing long enough to keep up the most basic of social connections. Fictional characters, after all, usually behaved in the ways one intended, though there were no guarantees even there.
Or perhaps it wasn’t people at all, but only that she was growing more jealous of her time-she sensed the grains speeding through the hourglass, and she had so much still to say.
The doorbell chimed as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “See, I told you so,” she said to Grace with a smile.
It was Darcy, early as always, so that he could help with the coats and the drinks. “Mother, dear,” he paused to kiss her, “you look divine.”
“Flatterer,” she said, laughing, and reached up to touch his cheek. “You’re frozen, darling. Come in by the fire, and pour yourself something before the hordes arrive.”
“A bloody puncture, can you believe it?” he said as he made himself a gin and tonic, then went to stand with his back to the fire. “And on the Madingley Road, in traffic so heavy you’d have sworn it was Friday rather than Tuesday. I’m damp as an old dog, and will soon fill your sitting room with the aroma of steaming fur. But at least I’ll be warm on the inside.” He smiled at her and knocked back half his drink. “Who’s coming, then? Can one have a singular horde?”
“It’s a minimal horde tonight, I’m afraid,” said Margery as she poured herself a small sherry. “Just Ralph and Christine, and Iris. Enid canceled out at the last minute, a bad case of the grippe, Iris said. Oh, and I almost forgot, Adam Lamb.”
Darcy laughed. “Where on earth did you dig up old Adam?”
“In the food hall at Marks and Sparks, actually. I bumped into him in the frozen foods, frowning over two dinners as if he might take all day debating their relative merits. He looked as though he hadn’t had a decent meal in months, and I took pity on him.”
“I’m sure he groveled accordingly.”
“Darcy, that’s neither fair nor kind, and you know it. He was polite, and he seemed pleased to be asked, and I see nothing wrong with that.”
“You’ll forgive him anything just because you were at school with his mother,” said Darcy, teasing. “Next thing I know, you’ll be calling him a ‘nice boy’”
The bell chimed again, and Margery said as she rose from the sofa, “I can say anything I like. But you, my dear boy, had better behave yourself.”
Enid’s absence had actually suited very nicely, thought Margery as she surveyed the guests assembled round her table. For one thing, it made them an even number, and for another, she always found Enid’s fluttering rather tiring.
She’d put Adam beside Iris, as they weren’t well acquainted, and Darcy next to Christine, and that left her to make comfortable conversation with Ralph.
Adam had turned himself out quite well. The elbows of his suit jacket might be a bit shiny, but he wore a crisply starched shirt, and he appeared to have got himself freshly barbered for the occasion.
Darcy was right, of course; she did have rather a soft spot for Adam because his mother, Helen, had been an old school friend. His parents had held such hopes for him-they’d been sure he would take a distinguished degree in history, then read law, and after that, of course, follow his father into politics. Margery, though, even then had doubted the wisdom of investing oneself in one’s children, and had watched their disappointment helplessly.
It was ironic that she, who had not cared so desperately, had no cause for complaint, for Darcy had done quite well for himself. She supposed that Iris would be forced to retire soon, and that Darcy would succeed her as Head of Department. The position would allow him to exercise both his taste for power and his unfailing charm.
The charm was in evidence now, as he bent close to Christine Peregrine’s sleek blonde head, telling some ribald story. It was a good thing that he and Ralph had known each other a long time, and that Ralph was not easily ruffled.
“Darcy’s in fine form tonight,” said Ralph as he reached for the decanter and refilled her wineglass.
“Just what I was thinking,” said Margery “And that Christine is looking especially lovely.”
Ralph smiled. “Just what I was thinking. I’m not getting much opportunity to appreciate her from either side of the table these days-she’s been on a lecture tour.” An eminent mathematician, Christine Peregrine looked on her husband’s passion for books with the same fond incomprehension he felt for her maths.
What an attractive man Ralph was, thought Margery, glancing at him in the candlelight. Thin and dark, with that certain indefinable air of bookishness that she had always found appealing-though she had to admit his dark hair had thinned in the years she’d known him. They’d met at some literary soiree given in her honor, he with a fresh degree in classics and a dream he had no money to implement, and she’d been captivated. She had helped him, although few people even now were aware of it, and today the familiar Peregrine Press logo was synonymous with the leading edge in fiction and poetry.
At the other end of the table Iris gave a bark of laughter at something Adam said. She’d held the floor long enough for Adam to polish off a large serving of Grace’s veal osso buco, and now he seemed to be proving he could hold his own against Iris’s rather domineering conversational style.
Adam’s job would have given him considerable experience, thought Margery, in dealing with formidable older women, and she imagined he would listen attentively while suspecting the little weaknesses Iris’s manner concealed. Iris, the terror of both staff and students, was madly devoted to her Persian cat, and could not sleep at night without a cup of Horlicks and a hot water bottle.
Margery brought her attention back to Ralph, who had begun telling her about a new talent he’d discovered, and as she listened to his voice interspersed with the soft, rhythmic clinks of silver and crystal, she found herself glad of having made tonight’s effort.
They’d finished the veal and started on Grace’s chocolate mousse when Margery heard the distant ringing of the telephone.
“Dame Margery, this pudding is absolutely heavenly,” said Adam. “If you’ll forgive me the rather inappropriate adjective,” he added with a self-deprecating chuckle.
“Surely your boss would allow you the slight impertinence, given the exquisite nature of Grace’s mousse?” said Darcy.
“Or you could substitute ambrosial” suggested Ralph, “which is both inoffensive and true.”
The door to the kitchen opened, and as Grace came in, Darcy said, “How do you do it, Grace? Do tell us your secret.”
“Yes,” said Christine, “do tell, please. It’s so amazingly light-”
“I’m sorry,” said Grace, interrupting the flow of compliments, “but there’s a phone call for Miss Iris. It’s Miss Enid, and she sounds dreadfully upset.”
Iris paled, and her spoon clattered into her dish. “Oh, God. It’s Orlando, something’s happened to Orlando.” She rose, knocking the table, and turned to Grace.
“You can take it in the sitting room, Miss Iris,” said Grace, and led her out.
“Who is Orlando?” asked Adam, understandably puzzled.
“Her cat,” explained Margery. “She dotes on him. He’s named after Virginia Woolf’s character.”
“Rather suitably, don’t you think?” said Darcy. “Since the poor emasculated beast is neither one thing nor the other.”
This comment brought a few guilty smiles, but the silence round the table grew uneasy as they waited for Iris to return. What on earth would they say to her, thought Margery, if something had indeed happened to the poor cat?
But when Iris came back into the dining room a few moments later, she showed no sign of incipient hysterics. She walked slowly to her chair and stood behind it, grasping its back with her hands. How odd, thought Margery, who prided herself on her powers of observation, that she had not noticed her friend’s enlarged knuckles, white now with the strength of her grip on the chair.
“I’m sorry, Margery-all of you-to spoil such a lovely party, but I’m afraid I have some very distressing news. Vic McClellan died this afternoon.”