In a Dry Season (40 page)

But at least she hadn't wasted
her
time that evening. The long trail that had started on Wednesday, over the telephone, was beginning to bear fruit.

At first, she had come to the conclusion that it was easier finding a fully dressed woman in
The Sunday Sport
than getting information out of the American Embassy. People were polite—insufferably so—but she was shunted from one minion to another for the best part of an hour and came out with nothing but an earache and a growing distaste for condescending and suspicious American men who called her “ma'am.”

By the end of the day, she had managed to discover that the personnel at Rowan Woods in late
1943
would have been members of the
US 8
th Air Force, and it was very unlikely that there would be any local records of who they were. One of the more helpful employees suggested that she try contacting the
USAFE
base in Ramstein and gave her the number.

When she got back from the Leeds council estate, even
though it was early evening, she phoned Ramstein, where she discovered that all air force personnel records were kept at the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis, Missouri. She checked the time difference and found that St Louis was six hours behind Harkside. Which meant it would be afternoon there.

After a little more shunting around and a few abrupt “please holds” she was put through to a woman called Mattie, who just “adored” her accent. They chatted about the differences in weather—it was raining hard in St Louis—and about other things for a short while, then Annie plucked up the courage to ask for what she wanted.

Expecting some sort of military smokescreen, she was pleasantly surprised when Mattie told her that there was no problem; the records were generally available to the public, and she would see what she could do. When Annie mentioned the initials “
PX
,” Mattie laughed and said that was the man who looked after the store. She also warned Annie that some of their records had been burned in a fire a few years ago, but if she still had Rowan Woods, she'd set the fax to send it out during the night. Annie should get it the next morning. Annie thanked her profusely and went home feeling absurdly pleased with herself.

But it didn't last.

Sometimes when she felt irritable and restless like this,
she
would go for a drive, and that was exactly what she did. Without making a conscious decision, she took the road west out of Harkside, and when she reached the turn-off for Thornfield Reservoir, she turned right.

By then she had realized that Banks wasn't the problem;
she
was. She was pissed off at herself for letting him get to her. She was behaving like some sort of silly, lovestruck
schoolgirl. Vulnerable. Hurt. Let's face it, Annie, she told herself, life has been pretty simple, pretty much regimented for some time now. No real highs; no real lows. Only herself to think of. Manageable, but diminished.

She had been hiding from life in a remote corner of Yorkshire, protecting her emotions from the harsh world she had experienced “out there.” Sometimes when you open yourself up to that life again, it can be confusing and painful, like when you open your eyes to bright light. Your emotions are tender and raw, more than usually sensitive to all its nuances, its little hurts and humiliations. So that was what was happening. Well, at least she knew that much. So much for cool, Annie, so much for detachment.

A misshapen harvest moon hung low in the western sky, bloated and flattened into a red sausage shape by the gathering haze. Otherwise, the road was unlit, surrounded on both sides by tall, dark trees. Her headlights caught dozens of rabbits.

She pulled into the car park and turned off the engine. Silence. As she got out and stood in the warm night air, she started to feel at peace. Her problems seemed to slip away; one way or another, she knew they would sort themselves out.

Annie loved being alone deep in the countryside at night, where you might hear only the very distant progress of a car, the rustles of small animals, see only the dark shapes of the trees and hills, perhaps a few pinpricks of light from farmhouses on distant hillsides. She loved the sea at night even more, the relentless rhythm of the waves, the hiss and suck, and the way the reflected moonlight sways and bends with the water's swell and catches the crests of the waves. But the sea was fifty miles away. She
would have to make do with the woods for now. The appeal was still to the deep, primitive part of her.

She took the narrow footpath towards Hobb's End, walking carefully because of the gnarled tree roots that crossed it in places and the stones that thrust up out of the dirt. Hardly any moonlight penetrated the tree cover, but here and there she caught a slat or two of reddish silver light between branches. She could smell the loamy, earthy smell of trees and shrubs. The slightest breeze butterfly-kissed the upper leaves.

When Annie reached the slope, she paused and looked down on the ruins of Hobb's End. It was easy to make out the dark, skeletal shape, the spine and ribs, but somehow tonight, with the slight curve of the High Street and the dry riverbed, the ruins looked more like the decayed stubs of teeth in a sneering mouth.

Annie skipped down the slope and walked towards the fairy bridge. From there, she looked along the river and saw the blood-red moonlight reflected in the few little puddles of water that remained on its muddy bed. She walked on past the outbuilding where Gloria's skeleton had been found, and the ruins of Bridge Cottage next to it. The ground around had all been dug up and was now taped off for safety. The
SOCOS
from headquarters had brought their own crime-scene tape. She headed down what was once the High Street.

As she went, Annie tried to visualize the scene from Michael Stanhope's painting: children laughing and splashing in the river shallows; knots of local women gossiping outside a shop; the butcher's boy in his bloodstained apron riding like the wind; the tall young woman arranging newspapers in a rack.
Gwynneth Shackleton
.

That was who it was. Why hadn't she realized it before? Somehow, the revelation that Stanhope had also painted Gwen Shackleton into his scene thrilled her.

She looked at the ruins to her right and saw where once was a detached cottage with a little garden, once a row of terrace houses opening directly onto the pavement. This was where the ginnel led off to the tanner's yard; here was the Shackletons' newsagent's shop, here the butcher's, and a little farther down stood the Shoulder of Mutton, where the sign had swayed and creaked in the wind.

So real did it all seem as she walked towards the flax mill that she began to fancy she could even hear long-silent voices whispering secrets. She passed the street that led to the old church and stood at the western end of the village, on that stretch of empty ground where the houses ended and the land rose towards the mill.

As she stood and breathed in the air deeply, she realized how much she wanted to know what had happened here every bit as much as Banks did. Without her wishing for it, or asking for it, Hobb's End and its history had imposed themselves on her, thrust themselves into her consciousness and become part of her life. It had happened at the same time that Banks had become part of her life, too. She knew that, whatever became of them, the two events would be united in her mind forever.

When she had challenged him on
his
obsession with it the other night, she hadn't even attempted to explain hers. It wasn't because of the war, but because she identified with Gloria. This was a woman who had struggled and dared to be a little different in a time that didn't tolerate such behaviour. She had lost her parents, then had either abandoned or been cast out by the father of her child, come to
a remote place, taken on a hard job and fallen in love. Then she had lost her husband in the war, or so she must have believed. If Gloria were still alive when Matthew came back, then she would have had to face a stranger, most likely. Whatever else happened, someone strangled her, stabbed her nearly twenty times and buried her under an outbuilding. And nobody had tried to find out what happened to her.

Suddenly, Annie noticed a movement and saw a figure scuttle across the fairy bridge towards the car parks. Her blood froze. At that moment, she became a little girl frightened of the dark, and she could believe that witches, demons and hobgoblins haunted Hobb's End. She was the whole length of the village away, so what she saw was nothing more than a fleeting silhouette.

Finding her voice, she called out. No answer came. The figure disappeared up the slope into the woods. Annie set off in pursuit. With every stride, the policewoman in her started to overcome the scared, superstitious girl.

Just when she had got back up the slope and was heading for the woods, she heard a car start ahead of her. There were two small car parks, separated by a high hedge, and whoever this was must have been parked in the other one, or Annie would have seen the car earlier.

She put on an extra burst of speed but could only get to the road in time to see the tail-lights disappearing. Even in the moonlight, all she could tell was that the car was dark in colour. She stood there leaning forward, hands resting on her knees, getting her breath back and wondering who the hell could be in such a hurry to escape discovery.

Twelve

“H
e asked me to marry him,” Gloria repeated.

“I still don't believe you,” I said.

“Well, you can ask him yourself. It's true.”

It was early in the new year, 1945, and I had dropped by Bridge Cottage one evening to see how Gloria was coping. She had had a terrible cold over Christmas—had even missed Alice Poole's farewell party—and the doctor said she had almost caught pneumonia. Though she was weak and pale, and she had lost some weight, she seemed to be on the mend.

“You should have seen my nose when he asked me. It was red raw.”

I laughed. It was good to laugh at something. Christmas that year had been a miserable affair not only because it was the coldest one I could remember, but because the advance that had seemed to be going so well earlier had bogged down in the Ardennes. It was all right for Alice. Her Eric had been wounded there and shipped home. But how long was this bloody war going to drag on? Couldn't everyone see we had all had enough? Sometimes I felt that I had never even known life during peacetime.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told him I'd think about it, but he'd have to wait until the war was over, until we could find out for certain about Matt.”

“Do you love him?”

“In a way. Not . . . Oh, I mean I don't really think I could ever love anyone like I loved Matt, but Brad and I get on well enough, in and out of bed. I like his company. And he's good to me. When the war's over, he wants to take me back to Hollywood with him.”

“It'll be a new lease of life, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“And I'll have someone I can visit out there.”

“You will.”

“But?”

“What do you mean?”

“I still sense a ‘but.' You only told him you'd think about it.”

“Oh, I don't know, Gwen. You know I can't even consider getting married again until the war's over, for a start. But I
will
think about it. Oh, look what
PX
brought me when I was ill. Isn't he sweet?”

It was a box of chocolates. A bloody
box
of chocolates! I hadn't even seen a single chocolate in years. Gloria held out the box. “Please, take one. Take them all, in fact. They'll only make me fat.”

“What about me?” I asked, picking out the caramel.

“You could do with a bit of meat on your bones.”

I threw the screwed-up wrapper at her. “Cheeky.”

“Well, you could. What about Charlie?”

“Oh, he's still depressed about Glenn Miller disappearing.”

“That's not what I mean, and you know it. Has he asked you yet?”

I'm sure I blushed. “No,” I said. “We haven't talked about marriage.”

“Books, that's all you two ever talk about.”

“It's not.”

She smiled. “I'm teasing, Gwen. I'm glad you're happy.

Honest I am.”

“We still haven't talked about marriage.”

“Well, there's no hurry, I suppose. But you could do a lot worse. A lawyer! He'll be rich, just you wait and see.”

“Money isn't everything.”

“It certainly helps. Anyway, you can go to America, too, and be a rich lawyer's wife. We can see each other all the time. Have lunch together.”

“Gloria, Boston is miles away from Los Angeles.”

“Is it? Well, at least we'll be in the same country.”

And so we chatted on about love and marriage and what the future might offer us. Gloria soon recovered her health, and the round of dances, films and pub nights started all over again. February brought the prospect of victory closer and I actually began to believe that we were entering the last spring of the war.

Everything changed one grey afternoon in March, when a tall, gaunt stranger walked down the High Street towards me, struggling against the wind.