Letters to the Lost (8 page)

The bed rocked as he climbed in beside her. Stella lay perfectly still, not daring to look at him in case he read the longing in her eyes and despised her for it. She waited for him to pick up Oscar Wilde but he lay back on the pillows for a moment, then, almost reluctantly, turned and propped himself up on his elbow so that he was looking down into her face.

‘You’ve been very good about all this, darling. I know it hasn’t been easy, but I’m grateful. I wanted you to know that.’

‘I just want you to be happy. I want to be a good wife to you, Charles.’

‘You have been. You are.’

‘But . . . why . . . ?’

He sighed again, and she sensed something in him withdrawing from her. ‘I told you.’

It was true. That night in the kitchen he’d explained, with infinite patience, almost as if he was talking to a small child, that he could no longer align his conscience with a non-active role in the war; that he felt less of a man, as if he was hiding behind his Bible and his dog collar. That phrase, ‘less of a man’, had touched some resounding chord of pity and love deep inside her and made her long to reach out to him, to prove that in her eyes he was every bit a man.

Tentatively she touched his cheek then, growing bolder, raised herself up to brush her lips against his. She felt him stiffen and was about to pull away when he seemed to gather himself, resolve some inner conflict, and begin to kiss her back with sudden fervour.

His lips were hard on hers, and his tongue forced itself between her teeth. Her mind registered shock, revulsion even; there had been no mention of George doing such a thing to Marcia. And yet her body seemed to understand and to respond entirely instinctively. The feelings that had been squashed down swelled and surged. As he pressed her against the pillows her hips rose up to meet his, her fingers sliding through the short hair at the back of his neck, her mouth opening. The flannelette nightie twisted around her legs and she kicked and wriggled upwards, then – frustrated – broke away to pull it over her head.

Naked, she reached for him again, wanting to strip him of his striped pyjamas and feel his skin against hers, but he turned his head, deliberately averting his eyes from her body. He reached over to the lamp on the bedside table and fumbled for the switch. Stella saw the set expression on his face before darkness engulfed them.

Thanks to the blackout, it was total. She was left with only her hands and lips to explore this new territory. This time it was Charles who lay back while she unbuttoned his pyjama top and ran her fingers hesitantly along the pronounced ridges of his ribs, the sharp angle of his hip. Her courage failed when she encountered the top of his pyjama trousers and she lay down beside him again, seeking the reassurance of his mouth against hers.

It was like kissing a marble saint. For a heartbeat he was perfectly still and then he levered himself up and kissed her with the same sudden ferocity of a few moments ago, like he was trying to lose himself. His knee nudged her legs apart while his hands gripped her shoulders, pinning her against the bed. In a tiny part of herself Stella was alarmed, but the greater part of her thrilled at this new Charles, hungry and decisive; at being wanted, devoured by him. After months of drought, the hard crush of his mouth on hers, the push of his knee on her thigh was like water to a parched plant. Instinctively she groped for the cord of his pyjamas and tugged at the knot so she could slide them down his legs. They resisted, as if they were caught on something. Her heart lurched with fear and a sort of primitive thrill when she realized that something was . . .
him
.

Tentatively her fingers closed around the surprising length of it. Above her in the dark he gave a low, guttural moan that was somewhere between pleasure and despair. Flaming spears impaled her. Of their own volition her fingers tightened and she felt him thrust into her grip, his breathing rapid and ragged.

‘Charles, please . . . I want you to . . .’

She lacked the vocabulary to tell him, but her body was an open invitation. A pulse was beating like a second heart between her legs and she arched her hips and guided him towards it.

As his flesh touched hers she heard his sharp inward breath and he jerked away as if she’d burned him. In that split second something changed irrevocably, as if a thread had been cut. He shrank from her – quite literally and alarmingly – the heat and hardness beneath her fingers melting into something soft and damp that made her vividly picture a deflated balloon. In contrast, the rest of his body went rigid. Abruptly he rolled away from her with a muffled moan of anguish.

‘Charles! Charles, darling . . . What is it?’

She wanted to switch the light on but didn’t dare. In the darkness she felt for him, discovering with her hands that he was lying on his stomach with his face buried in the pillow. She slid her arms awkwardly around him and held him, murmuring and crooning senselessly as her mind reeled. Eventually she felt the tension ebb from his frame.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can’t seem to . . .’

His voice cracked. She rushed to reassure him, to spare him the indignity of having to explain further, to spare them both the embarrassment of dwelling on their failure. He was curled up, foetus-like, and she tucked herself around his back, her cheek against his shoulder, her arms looped around his waist, holding him tight as if she could somehow keep him safe from the demons that plagued him.

Later, when she was just slipping beneath the warm waters of sleep, she felt him gently detach himself from her hold. The mattress dipped and cold air fanned her naked skin as the covers were lifted. He crossed the room on soft feet. A moment later the door at the end of the passageway closed quietly.

Alone in her marriage bed Stella wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to banish the spectre of her own inadequacy, and the shameful fizz of thwarted longing deep inside her.

5

2011

Will was woken, as always, by the alarm on his upstairs neighbour’s mobile phone. At 6 a.m. exactly, its electronic musak jingle, set at maximum volume, jerked him violently out of sleep. Unfortunately it didn’t have the same effect on Keely upstairs who, in addition to a laugh that could shatter crystal, was blessed with an ability to sleep like the dead and always took at least fifteen minutes to turn it off. Consequently Will’s day started, as usual, in a rush of adrenaline and impotent fury.

It wasn’t likely to improve much either, he thought, staring up at the brown stain on the ceiling. (The stain looked like spilled coffee, and he often found himself unwillingly imagining scenarios where coffee could be spilled on a ceiling.) At least it was Friday. Not that he had anything to look forward to at the weekend, but the good thing about Friday was that it wasn’t Thursday any more, and it would be almost a whole week before Thursday rolled round again.

As the electro-jingle notched up a level in volume and urgency he thought back to a time when Thursday had been just another day of the week. He could actually remember enjoying Thursdays at one point: in his second year at Oxford, when he’d taken Dr Rose’s course on Nineteenth Century Ireland his weekly supervision had been on a Thursday. She was the only lecturer who never made any reference to the fact that he was the son of Fergus Holt, never made a comparison or a joke, never asked to be remembered to him because they’d once shared a lift at some European conference or other. She listened to Will’s thoughts, challenged them, often exposed the flaws in their logic. Those had been good Thursdays.

In those days if anyone had mentioned the words ‘Bona Vacantia’ he probably would have thought it was some new tapas bar in town. At his interview for the job at Ansell Blake, Mike Ansell had said (in the swaggering, know-it-all way that was his hallmark), ‘So, Bona Vacantia, Will. That’s what we’re all about here,’ and Will had felt the spark of optimism that had been all but snuffed out by the dingy office, the fluorescent strip-lighting and Mike Ansell’s overpowering aftershave, flicker bravely back to life. He’d thought he meant good holidays.

In fact the Bona Vacantia list was the government’s register of unclaimed estates, published weekly. On Thursdays. It recorded the names of people who had died without leaving a will and whose money and assets would go to the Treasury if no living relatives came forward to claim them. Ansell Blake were one of a growing number of firms who circled like sharks, waiting to snatch the largest and juiciest estates, trace heirs and pocket a fat commission by uniting them with cash to which they didn’t know they were entitled from relatives they’d never met.

The work, the scramble for heirs and commission, was keenly competitive, hence the feeding frenzy on Thursdays. That alone Will could have coped with; he actually enjoyed the process of sifting through the records, piecing together information and conjecture to put together a family tree and a picture of someone’s life, but the cruel, combative streak it brought out in Ansell the Arse was harder to bear. It reminded Will uncomfortably of his father.

Upstairs the alarm was suddenly silenced. With a sigh Will levered himself upright and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing a hand through his hair. At least this morning he didn’t have to face The Arse straight away. This morning he had the solid twenty-four-carat, bona fide excuse of going to see Mr Greaves on Greenfields Lane to keep him out of the office and away from Ansell’s blistering sarcasm for an hour or so.

Tonight, he thought. Tonight I’ll go online and have a look to see what else is out there. Who knows, maybe I’ll be dazzled by the world of opportunities available to a twenty-five-year-old History drop-out, whose CV boasts a year’s work in probate research and, before that, six months in a psychiatric unit.

And with that cheering thought he went into the kitchen to make coffee.

*

Albert Greaves was a desiccated scrap of a man, his body dwarfed by the armchair in which he sat, his head dwarfed by his large spectacles and a pair of ears like jug handles. ‘I don’t sleep, you know,’ he told Will, in aggrieved tones. ‘Hardly a wink. Back in the war I was on Atlantic convoys and we went for days without closing our eyes. Dropping with exhaustion we was; we’d have given our last farthing for five minutes’ kip. Now I got nothing to do but sleep and I can’t seem to drop off. Don’t seem right, does it?’

As he spoke his right hand tapped emphatically on the chair’s threadbare arm, while his left lay inert at his side. A stroke, he’d explained when the carer first showed Will in. ‘Like being struck by bleeding lightning.’

‘Of course, the quack’s given me pills for it,’ he went on now, his glasses reflecting the square of light from the front window. ‘“You take these, Mr Greaves”, ’e says, “you’ll get a good night then”, but I ain’t daft. I might be old, but I’m not stupid. Once they start shovelling their pills into you, that’s it. Done for, you are, sure as eggs. That’s what happened to Nancy when she went into that home.’ He gave a knowing laugh. ‘Well, they call it a home but it ain’t nothing like. Oneway doors in them places. She only went in because she broke her hip. They was going to look after her until it was better, but look what happened. Never came out, did she?’

During this speech he’d been infused with energy, but when it was over he sank further into the depths of the armchair and into his own thoughts. Will waited a moment, and took a sip of his tea. It was cooling and had white flecks of milk on the surface. Setting it down he prompted gently: ‘Were you close to Miss Price, Mr Greaves?’

‘Mmm?’ The old man turned his head, as if for a moment he’d forgotten Will was there. ‘Who’s that? Nancy, you mean? Oh yes, we was close all right, as much as anyone could be close to Nancy. Law unto herself, she was. Like a cat I had when I was a boy. It would come and sit on your knee and purr like a Spitfire when it was in the right mood, but if you tried to pick it up—’ His right hand shot out, imitating the swipe of a cat’s paw, and he chuckled. ‘That was Nancy. I’ll admit I got scratched like that a couple of times, but it was worth it. She was a smashing girl.’

Will smiled. Albert Greaves must be pushing ninety and Nancy Price had reached the ripe old age of eighty-seven when she died. But in his eyes she was, and always would be, a smashing girl. For some reason, Will found that encouraging.

‘Was she married?’

‘Not as I know of.’

‘Any children?’

‘Like I said – wasn’t married, was she?’

Will wrote it down, not wanting to offend the old man by pointing out that the two things didn’t necessarily go together.

‘When did she move into number four?’

With some effort Albert Greaves raised himself up and picked up his teacup from the table beside him. The room was small and dark, and crammed with a lifetime of clutter. It reminded Will of the antique shop in the Cotswold village where his parents now lived, the one his mother called ‘that funny little junk shop’. Greenfields Lane was a fantastic location though, and the house had tons of character. He tried to imagine how it would look without the violently patterned carpet and the pine cladding over the fireplace, and the ornaments and brasses and bad paintings, then felt ashamed.

‘Another thing about that cat . . .’ Albert Greaves was saying now in a far-off voice, ‘I used to say it was mine, but it never was really. My mother said it was a stray, she didn’t want it in the house at first – dirty, flea-ridden thing, she called it. But I don’t think it was no stray. It had lots of homes, that cat. It used to come and go between them. One time it disappeared for nearly three weeks. I was heartbroken. But then it turned up again, just like it had never been away.’

Will cleared his throat, and was wondering how to steer the conversation back to the subject of Nancy Price when Mr Greaves said, ‘It was the same with Nancy. Sometimes she was here, sometimes she weren’t. My wife and I bought this place in ’48, from an old boy who’d lived here during the war. Nancy was in the house on the end then.’ He chuckled again, and the sound seemed remarkably deep and rich coming from such a brittle and dried-up source. ‘A right stunner she was. My Dorothy didn’t take to ’er at all. Back in them days everything was all drab and worn out and broken, but there she was with ’er blonde hair and ’er red lipstick and high-heeled shoes . . .’