Dying in the Wool (5 page)

‘Yes.’

A minute later: ‘Is there petrol in that there can?’

At which point I pretend not to hear, and have totally forgotten what it was I meant to remember.

In spite of the sunshine, it would be a chilly ride. My motoring coat is a great fleecy swaddler with detachable lining. It saw me through the war and is way out of fashion, but it makes me feel safe, secure and immune to traffic accidents.

I pulled on my tasselled motoring hat and gauntlets.

‘Have you got …’ Mrs Sugden began.

I turned on the petrol tap.

‘If I haven’t got, it doesn’t matter.’ I switched on the ignition. ‘I’m going to Bingley, not the North Pole.’

I turned the choke to rich and pressed the starter button. You will gather from this that my motor is modified for easy use, and I don’t apologise for that so there.

Mrs Sugden waved. ‘Go careful!’

‘I will.’

Rain during the night had dampened the roads so they were not so very dusty. Once out of Leeds, I made good progress, through villages, past farms and mills, keeping an eye on the signposts and milestones.

I thought about the time Tabitha and I last met. It was almost two years ago, June, 1920, at the opening of the Cavendish Club. All through the war, we VAD girls had nowhere in the capital to call our own. Afterwards, that was put right and Tabitha and I were among the supporters of the campaign for a club that women could afford. Since then, the two of us had promised in our Christmas letters and summer postcards to meet up, never doing so until now.

We had arranged to meet in a café on Bingley High Street. Once parked by the side of the road, I shed my antique coat, swapped the tasselled hat for a cloche, and set off to find the café.

Looking over the red and white check curtain that hung across the lower half of the plate glass window, I saw her. With one hand she held a cigarette, with the other she twirled at a strand of her blonde curly hair. She has the quality of a Dresden doll, with neat features, a snub nose and bow lips.

The bell rang as I opened the door. The waitress, taking away Tabitha’s full ashtray and placing a clean one on the table, blocked me from view. Then Tabitha was pushing back her chair, and coming towards me. I was about to
hold out my hand when she gave a beaming smile, grabbed me and pulled us into a clinch. We kissed each other on the cheek.

‘Kate, thank you so much for coming! I’ll order another pot of tea.’

After the preliminaries about my journey and whether I found my way easily, she said, ‘You’re so kind to come at such short notice. I hope you don’t mind my turning to you for help. You were always so capable. Do you remember I couldn’t think straight when that poor chap in St Mary’s died under my care?’

I nodded. ‘You’d become attached to him.’

She sighed. Her fingers played a silent requiem on the tablecloth. She looked much younger than her thirty years, almost like a schoolgirl.

‘You get to the bottom of things, Kate. You tracked down the brother of that Cavendish waitress.’

‘Even though he wished I hadn’t.’ I smiled. ‘But I think people have a right to know the truth – no matter how hard it is.’

You can never tell whether someone will immediately blurt out every single detail of their story, or sidle up to the matter in hand so slowly as to trip over it. Tabitha is a sidler-up and tripper.

Finally, she said, ‘I look for Dad all the time. Just before I came in here, an old chap went shuffling by the ironmonger’s and I thought, is that him? It wasn’t. It never is. But I don’t stop looking you see. Sometimes, if there’s a knock on the door, I think it’s him.’

‘Would he knock on his own door?’

She lit another cigarette. ‘No. But none of it has to make sense. I even dreamed he came back, walking through the fields from the mill, with some other men, saying he’d not been lost at all and we’d only thought him lost. Mind you, it’ll be Easter a week on Sunday. Resurrections and all that.’

‘So you think he’s lost, and not dead?’

‘He’s not dead. I’m sure of that.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I just am. I know in my heart and soul. You know when someone is dead.’

There was logic to that. But just because you knew when a person was dead, that did not mean you could be certain that someone was alive. There seemed to me to be a shade of difference between her declaring him ‘not dead’ and asserting that he was alive. Perhaps he was not dead because she could not bear that.

When someone has gone missing, there is always that edginess, that looking out of the corner of the eye. Even when your head knows that he will never come back, that part of you that hopes beyond all reason just won’t give up. When trying to find out what happened to Gerald, I had spoken to his colonel, pushing him for names, survivors who might have some scrap of information for me. He grew impatient. In the end, he said, ‘My dear madam, please understand that the words “Missing in Action” frequently mean “blown to smithereens. Nothing left to identify”.’

If she saw the shadow cross my eyes, Tabitha thought it was for her.

‘It’s come between me and Hector, my fiancé,’ she confided in a low voice as if the waitress would be listening, ready to spread gossip, which perhaps she would to make up for having to watch everyone else eat egg custards. ‘He practically holds his breath and turns purple if he suspects I’m going to harp on about Dad again. At first he was patient but now …’ She blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘If you can’t find an answer for me, Kate, I’ve got a horrible feeling this wedding will never happen.’

‘Tabitha. I can stay with you until Saturday. The following week I must go to London for my aunt’s birthday dinner. It would be more than my life’s worth to back
out. Then we have the Easter weekend. Let’s see whether I can be of any help. Perhaps by this Friday we shall have a better idea.’

We left the café and strolled around the market town. I told Tabitha I wanted to stretch my legs, which was true. But I also kept an eye open for the Ramshead Arms where I would meet Sykes on Tuesday evening. I suddenly felt absurdly competitive with him. I wanted to find out as much as I could – just to prove that it wasn’t necessary to swagger around male preserves like the Wool Exchange and the local pubs to get to the bottom of a mystery.

Women with shopping baskets hurried by. A furniture van unloaded a desk outside the solicitor’s office. Tabitha steered me on a compulsory visit to the stone church with its fine tower where she and Hector would marry.

‘There’s a lovely set of bells. I do hope you’ll come to the wedding, Kate. I posted a formal invitation this morning. Sorry it’s a bit late.’

She seemed reluctant to walk back to the car. We stood on the packhorse bridge and listened to the water. ‘What arrangement do we come to, Kate? About fees and so on?’

I should have sought advice on this, but I hadn’t. Mental arithmetic is not my strongest point, but if I were to pay Sykes’ wages and expenses, for at least a month, that had to be taken into account.

I played for time. ‘You can pay me on completion. I shall give you a report – verbal or written, as you please, whether I’m successful or not, and send an invoice.’ This waffle allowed me to put off saying an amount. ‘It’s difficult to be precise about costs without knowing how much investigation may be involved but …’ I pulled a figure from the air and said it quickly so that it would not sound made up. ‘… let’s say thirty guineas.’

She sighed and turned her back to the wooden parapet. ‘It would be worth three hundred guineas to me, three
thousand – no, it would be worth all I have to see my dad again.’

The enormity of the task made my knees go weak. Perhaps there had been dust on the road after all. My mouth and throat felt suddenly dry.

‘Tabitha, some people would have applied for presumption of death long ago, to enable a life insurance claim to be made, and access to bank accounts and assets. How have you and your mother managed all these years?’

She took my arm as we walked back past the church and along the main street to the car. ‘We are all on the board of Braithwaites Mill, Mother, Uncle Neville and me. Any two of us can deal with the finances, sign cheques and so on. The company provides our living. Mother and I have our own financial resources. I would give up everything to find Dad.’ She pressed my arm tightly, like a plea.

‘I can’t make any promises, Tabitha. I’ll try, that’s all.’ I folded down the car’s top and opened the door.

Tabitha has a mercurial quality of switching moods in an instant. She pulled off her hat as she slid onto the passenger seat. ‘There’s nothing like the wind in your hair to make you feel free as a bird.’

As I chugged the car forwards, an old lady made a dash for the other side of the road, pretending not to see me. Perhaps she was after compensation. If I ran her down, no doubt I could add it to Tabitha’s bill, along with my legal defence fees.

Tabitha ignored our near miss. ‘Drive straight along, past the corn merchant’s. It’ll be a right turn by the Cooperative Store.’

We left the town behind. I felt alarmingly satisfied so far, having found out a little from Tabitha about the Braithwaites’ financial background, and, just as importantly, having located the Ramshead Arms where I would rendezvous with Sykes.

Hawthorn bushes edged a country lane. Daffodils still
held tall. This was far from the dark satanic mills I had pictured.

As the road made a bend, I caught a glimpse of horse-drawn barges on the canal.

She was twisting her hair again, making a ringlet around her index finger. ‘We’ve a way to go yet. The road runs between the canal and woods. No one ever comes to Bridgestead. We’re a bit remote from modern life really. Seems strange, after all of you-know-what.’

I did know what. The what that came to seem ‘normal’ during our time as VADs had probably sent us slightly mad.

She punched my arm, a little too hard. ‘Do you remember the time when there were too many of us trying to get a billet in London for just one night …?’

‘Yes. And we ended up piling into my aunt’s house and Betty Turnbull sneaked down in the night and made a midnight feast of our breakfast.’

‘Betty Turnbull! Then she came back upstairs and snored fit to shake the roof …’

We started to laugh. A rabbit dashed from the hedge and dared me to run it down. Another second and I would have had the makings of a fur muff but I swerved, barely avoiding the ditch.

I restarted the car and chugged along sedately, enjoying the fresh air until we passed a farm where the workers were busy muck-spreading.

‘It makes such a difference when the sun shines! You live in a lovely area, Tabitha. I’d imagined it much more cobbles, chimneys and clogs.’

‘Oh we do that too. But we’ve some pretty spots nearby. Do you ride?’

‘Rarely. It wouldn’t be fair of me to keep a horse.’

‘We all ride. Mother’s a keen horsewoman.’

Something in her voice hinted at a possible obstacle to our investigations.

‘Does your mother know I’m coming to stay, Tabitha?’

‘Y-e-s. Only, to be truthful, she doesn’t know why. I thought once she got to know you, I’d sort of raise the matter of finding Father in a day or so, when I mention what you do.’

‘I can’t work like that, Tabitha. I must have straight dealings. And if I’m to investigate properly, I’d need to talk to people. Naturally I’ll be discreet.’

She reached out and touched the windscreen with her fingertips as if to deflect a shock. Her voice rose. ‘Other people?’

‘Yes. The local constable, and whoever else was involved. I’ll need a list.’

The tips of her gloved fingers left tiny imprints on the now dusty windscreen. Her arms fell helplessly to her sides. ‘I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of that.’

It struck me that she hadn’t thought of very much.

‘Time is of the essence. If you really want me to try and help, I must start straight away. I’ll need you to give me a photograph and a description of what your father was wearing, where he was last seen and by whom. What was his state of mind when he went missing, whether he had transport, what his possible destinations may have been. The more you can tell me about his interests, friends, acquaintances, business associates, the better.’

‘Yes I suppose so,’ she said flatly. ‘Mother won’t like it. Uncle Neville won’t like it. We can’t involve the business. He’d hate that. You don’t know what mill people are like, Kate. They play everything so close to the chest, never wash dirty woollies in public.’

I thought perhaps I did have a notion of what they may be like given that it had taken Tabitha this long to confide in me and that she seemed daunted by the thought of how much information I would need.

‘Look, you don’t have to go on with this. I’ll come in, say hello to your mother, we can talk over old times and I’ll drive home in the morning.’

She sighed deeply. ‘Can I talk now? Can you listen and drive?’

‘Yes.’

‘That little lane over there takes us on a byway and off the beaten track so that we come to Bridgestead the long way round. You drive. I’ll talk.’

I was not entirely sure my supply of petrol would run to a detour. I pulled in by a five-barred gate. In the field beyond, a horse and foal grazed, the foal looking up at us.