In a Dry Season (23 page)

All through February and March 1942, day after day, I followed the news reports. They were censored and incomplete, of course, but I read about the estimated sixty thousand British taken prisoner at Singapore, and about the fighting near the Sittang River, from where Matthew wrote Gloria another letter, telling her how things were pretty dull and safe really, and not to worry. Clearly, it's not only governments that lie during wartime.

Then, on 8 March, we heard about the fall of Rangoon. Our morale at home was pretty low, too. In April, the Germans gave up all pretence of bombing military and industrial targets and started bombing cities of great architectural beauty such as Bath, Norwich and York, which was getting very close to home.

I remembered when Leeds, only about thirty miles away, had its worst raid of the war, about a month before Gloria arrived. Matthew and I took the train in the next day to see what it looked like. The City Museum, right at the corner of Park Row and Bond Street, had taken a direct hit and all the stuffed lions and tigers we had thrilled over on childhood visits hung in the overhead tram wires like creatures thrown from an out-of-control carousel. I wanted to go and see the damage in York, but Mrs Shipley, our stationmaster, told me York station had been bombed, so no trains were allowed in. At least she was able to assure me that they hadn't destroyed the Minster.

It was a miserable spring, though we had the sunniest April in forty years. There were the usual random shortages. Items simply disappeared from the shelves for weeks on end. One week you couldn't get fish for love nor money; the next it was poultry. In February, soap was rationed to sixteen ounces every four weeks; the civilian petrol ration was cut out completely in March, which meant no more motoring for pleasure. We still managed to retain a small petrol ration, though, because we needed the van to make pick-ups from wholesalers.

I followed the news far more closely than I had before, scouring all the newspapers, from
The Times
and the
News Chronicle
to the
Daily Mirror
, the minute they came in on the first train, cutting out articles and pasting them into a scrapbook, spending hours tracing meandering rivers and crooked coastlines in the atlas. Even so, I never managed to get a true picture of what life was like for Matthew out there. I could imagine it from my reading of Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham, but that was the best I could do.

I wrote to him every day, which was probably more often than Gloria did. She was never much of a letter-writer. Matthew didn't write back that often, but when he did he would always assure us he was well. Mostly, he complained about the monsoons and the humid jungle heat, the insects and the dreadful terrain. He never said anything directly about fighting and killing, so for a long time we didn't even know if he had been in battle. Once, though, he wrote that boredom seemed the greatest enemy: “Long stretches of boredom relieved only by the occasional brief skirmish,” was the way he put it. Somehow, I had the idea that these “brief skirmishes” were a good deal more dangerous and terrifying than the boredom.

As time passed, we got used to Matthew's absence and enjoyed what we could of him through his letters. Gloria would read bits from his to her (no doubt missing out all the embarrassing lovey-dovey stuff) and I would read from his to me. Sometimes, I sensed, she was jealous because he wrote to me more about ideas and books and philosophy and to her mostly about day-to-day things like food and mosquitoes and blisters.

That September,
Pride and Prejudice
, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, finally came to the Lyceum. Gloria had just had a tooth extracted by old Granville after suffering toothache for several days. I told her I thought it was a crime the prices he charged for such poor work, but she countered that Brenchley, in Harkside, a notorious butcher, was even more expensive. As usual, Granville did more damage than good and poor Gloria had been bleeding from the torn gum for more than a day. She was just beginning to feel a little better and I managed to persuade her to come to the pictures with me. As it turned out, she actually admitted to enjoying the film. That shouldn't have surprised me. It wasn't exactly the sharp-witted, ironic Jane Austen I knew from the books; it was far more romantic. Still, it made a nice change from all the silly comedies and musicals she had been dragging me to see lately.

Double summer time made it easy for us to see our way across the fields that night. It was a beautiful autumn evening tinged with smoky green and golden light, the kind of evening when I used to go out and enjoy the stubble-burning just after dark before the war, when you could smell the acrid, sweet smoke drifting in the air over the fields and see the little fires stretched out for miles along the horizon. Sadly, there was no stubble-burning in the war; we didn't want the Germans to know where our empty fields were.

This evening was almost as beautiful, even without the smoke and the little fires. I could see the purple heather darkening on the distant moortops to the west, hear the nightbirds calling, smell clean, hay-scented air and feel the dry grass swish against my bare legs as I walked.

Despite the ravages of war and Matthew's being far away, I felt as deeply content as I had ever been at that moment. Yet as we came down towards the fairy bridge in the gathering darkness, I felt that chilling shudder of apprehension, as if a goose had stepped over my grave, as Mother would have said. Gloria, arm linked in mine, was chatting on and on about how handsome Laurence Olivier was, and she obviously didn't notice, so I let it go by.

As the weeks passed, I tried to dismiss the feeling, but it had a way of creeping back. There was plenty to rejoice about, I told myself: Matthew continued to write regularly and assured us he was doing well; the Red Army seemed to be making gains at Stal-ingrad; and the tide had turned in North Africa.

But after the victory at El Alamein that November, when I lay on my bed and listened to the church bells ring for the first time in years, all I could do was cry because Matthew had had no bells at his wedding.

“First off,” Annie told Banks over the phone later that day, “I can find no official record of Gloria Shackleton at all after the wedding notice in
1941
. There's no missing-persons report in our files and no death notice anywhere. The
Harkside Chronicle
, by the way, suspended publication between
1942
and
1946
because of paper shortages, so that's no use
as a source. There's always the
Yorkshire Post
, of course, if they took any interest in the Harkside area. Anyway, it looks as if she disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“Did you check with immigration?” Banks asked.

“Yes. Nothing.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“Well, I was able to dig up a bit more about her life at Hobb's End, most of it pieced together from the parish magazine. She's first mentioned in the May
1941
issue, welcomed to the parish as a member of the Women's Land Army, assigned to work at a place called Top Hill Farm, just outside the village.”

“Top Hill Farm? Did you find out who owned the place?”

“I did. It was a Mr Frederick Kilnsey and his wife, Edith. They had one son called Joseph, who was called up. That's why they got Gloria. Apparently, it wasn't a very big farm, just a few cows, poultry, sheep and a few acres of land. Anyway, Joseph didn't come back. Killed at El Alamein. By then, Gloria was living at Bridge Cottage.”

“Still working for the Kilnseys?”

“Yes. I suppose it was a mutually convenient arrangement. They needed her, especially with Joseph dead, and she could live at Bridge Cottage and stay close to what family she had in Hobb's End.”

“All this from the parish magazine?”

“Well, I'm embroidering just a little. But it's remarkably informative, don't you think? I mean, it's easy enough to joke about how petty the news items they publish are at the time—you know, like ‘Farmer Jones loses sheep in winter storm'—but when you're looking back into something like this, it's a real treasure trove. Unfortunately, they
also stopped publication early in
1942
. Paper shortage again.”

“Pity. Go on.”

“That's about it, really. Gloria married the Shackletons' eldest child, Matthew. He was twenty-one and she was nineteen. He had a younger sister called Gwynneth. I assume she was the same one who witnessed the marriage.”

“What became of her?”

“She was still around in the last issue, March
1942
, as far as I know. Wrote a little piece on growing your own onions, in fact.”

“How fascinating. What about Matthew?”

“The last time he was mentioned he was shipping overseas.”

“Where?”

“Didn't say. Secret, I suppose.”

“Any idea where any of these people moved to when they cleared out of Hobb's End?”

“No. But I did ring Ruby Kettering. She knows two people still living who lived in Hobb's End during the war. There's Betty Goodall, who lives in Edinburgh, and Alice Poole in Scarborough. She thinks they'd be thrilled to talk to us.”

“Okay. Look, I've decided to send
DS
Hatchley to London tomorrow. Which do you fancy: Edinburgh or Scarborough?”

“Doesn't matter to me. Anything's better than checking births and deaths.”

“I'll toss for it. Heads or tails?”

“How can I trust you over the telephone?”

“Trust me. Heads or tails?”

“This is crazy. Heads.”

Annie paused a moment and heard a sound like a coin clinking on a metal desk. She smiled to herself. Insane. Banks came back on. “It was heads. Your choice.”

“I told you, it doesn't really matter. I'll take Scarborough, though, if you insist. I like the seaside there, and it's not as far to drive.”

“Okay. If I get an early enough start I can be up to Edinburgh and back by early evening. Plenty of time for us to compare notes. I'd like to get something on tonight's news, first.”

“Like what?”

“I want to put Gloria's name out there, see if anything comes back. I know we might be jumping the gun, but you never know. We've got no idea what happened to the Shackletons, and Gloria may have had family in London who are still alive. They might know what happened to her. Or, if we're wrong about it all, she might drop by the station herself and let us know she's still alive.”

Annie laughed. “Right.”

“Anyway, I'll try local television. That way I can get them to show the postcard.”

“What? Nudity on the local news?”

“They can crop it.”

“Let me know what time you'll be on.”

“Why?”

“So I can set my
VCR
. Bye.”

“So Jimmy Riddle thinks he's dropped you in the shit with this one, then?” said
DS
Hatchley, after swallowing his first bite of toasted teacake.

“To put it succinctly, yes,” said Banks. “I think he was
also pretty sure this case wouldn't involve race relations or any of his rich and influential friends from the Lodge.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Hatchley said. “I'd imagine quite a few of them have got skeletons in their cupboards.”

“Ouch.”

They were sitting in the Golden Grill, just across the street from Eastvale Divisional
HQ
. Outside, Market Street was packed with tourists, jackets or cardigans slung over their shoulders, cameras around their necks. Like sheep up on the unfenced moorland roads, they strayed all over the narrow street. The local delivery vans had to inch through, horns blaring.

Most of the tables had already been taken when they went in, but they had managed to find one near the back. Once the two of them had sat down and given their orders to the bustling waitress, Banks told Hatchley about the skeleton. By the time he had finished, their order arrived.