Maisie Dobbs (5 page)

Celia Davenham paused, as if to summon the fortitude to continue. Maisie waited, then asked,“Tell me what happened to Vincent.”

“It was at Passchendaele.”

“Ah yes. I know. . . .”

“Yes, I think we all know now. So many—”

“—and Vincent?”

“Yes, although some might believe him to be lucky. He came home.”

Celia stopped again, closed her eyes, then continued. “I try, sometimes, to remember his face before. When it was complete. But I can’t. I feel awful, that I can only remember the scars. I try at night to close my eyes and see him, but I can’t. I can see George, of course; his injuries weren’t so bad. But I can’t think of
exactly
how he was before the war either.”

“Yes, it must be very hard.”

“There was something about Vincent, his enthusiasm for life, that turned into something else, as if it had another side. His company came under intense enemy fire. Vincent was hit in the face by shrapnel. It is a miracle he lived. George lost an ear and has scars on the side of his face, which you would think were unbearable but seem light compared to Vincent’s.”

Maisie looked at the woman, whose grip had relaxed as she told Vincent’s story. Celia was exhausted. Maurice had counseled her, in the early days of her apprenticeship, when she was the silent observer as he listened to a story, gently prodding with a question, a comment, a sigh, or a smile, “The story takes up space as a knot in a piece of wood. If the knot is removed, a hole remains. We must ask ourselves, how will this hole that we have opened be filled? The hole, Maisie, is our responsibility.”

“Mrs. Davenham, you must be tired. Shall we meet again another day?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss Blanche, do let’s meet.”

“Perhaps we might walk in Hyde Park, or St. James’s; the lake is so lovely at this time of year.”

The women made arrangements to meet the following week, for tea at the Ritz, then a stroll through Green Park to St. James’s. But before they parted, Maisie suggested,“Mrs. Davenham, you probably have to rush home soon, but I wonder. Liberty has some lovely new fabrics, just arrived from India. Would you come with me to look at them?”

“Why, I’d love to.”

L
ater, when Celia Davenham reflected upon her day, she was surprised. For though she still felt sadness, the memory she reflected upon most was that of huge bolts of fabric being moved around at her behest by willing assistants who could sense in her the interest that led to a purchase. With an enthusiastic flourish, yards of vibrant purples, yellows, pinks, and reds of Indian silk were pulled out, to be rubbed between finger and thumb, and held against her face in front of the mirror. And she thought of the person she knew as Maisie Blanche, who suddenly but quietly had to take her leave, allowing her to indulge her love of texture and color for far longer than she had intended. Thus a day that had seen so many tears ended in the midst of a rainbow.

CHAPTER SIX

Jack Barker greeted Maisie outside Warren Street station, doffed his cap and bid her good evening.

“Miss Dobbs, and a good evenin’ to you. My, you are a sight for sore eyes at the end of the day.”

“Mr. Barker, thank you, although I am sure I’ll be better when I get a cup of tea inside me.”

“You should get that Billy to make you a cuppa. Does too much jawing of a working day, that one. Do you know, I ’ave to tell him sometimes that I’m busy and can’t keep puttin’ the world to rights with ’im.”

Maisie grinned, knowing by now that Jack Barker could talk the hind leg off a donkey, and that the same complaint about Jack was likely to come from Billy Beale.

“Well, Billy’s a good ’un, isn’t he, Mr. Barker?”

“’E is that. Amazing how fast ’e can move with that leg. You should see ’im sometimes, running ’ere and there, ‘dot and carry one’ with that leg. Poor sod. But at least we got ’im back ’ere, didn’t we?”

Maisie agreed.“Indeed, Mr. Barker, at least he came home. I’d best be on my way, so I’ll bid you good evening. Any reason to buy the latest edition before I rush off?”

“All bloomin’ bad if you ask me. Threadneedle Street and the City in a rare two-an’-eight. They’re talking about a slump.”

“I’ll leave it then, Mr. Barker. Goodnight.”

Maisie turned into Warren Street, walking behind two women students from the Slade School of Art, who were making their way back to lodgings nearby. Each carried an artist’s portfolio under one arm, and giggled as the other recounted her part of a story about another woman. They stopped to speak to a group of young men who were just about to enter the Prince of Wales pub, then decided to join them. They pushed past a woman dressed in black, who had been standing outside the pub smoking a cigarette. She shouted at them to look out, but her warning was met with more giggles from the students. She was soon joined by a man, who Maisie suspected already had a wife at home, for he betrayed himself by quickly looking up and down the street before taking the woman by the arm and hurrying her inside the pub.

“It takes all sorts,” said Maisie in a low voice as she passed, and continued on down Warren Street to her office.

Maisie opened the door that led to the dark stairwell, and as she went to turn on the dim light to see her way up the stairs, the light over the upper stairwell went on and Billy Beale called out.

“’S only me, Miss. See your way up?”

“Billy, you should be knocking off work by now, surely.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got some more news for you. ’Bout that fella you was askin’ about. Weathershaw. Thought I’d ’ang about in case I don’t see you tomorrow.”

“That’s kind, Billy. Let’s put the kettle on.”

Maisie led the way into her office, turned on the light, and went to put the kettle on the small stove.

“And that telephone has been ringing its ’ead off today. What you need is someone to help you out, Miss, to write down messages, like.”

“My telephone was ringing?”

“Well, that’s what it’s there for, innit?”

“Yes, of course. But it doesn’t ring very often. I tend to receive messages via the postman or personal messenger. I wonder who it was?”

“Someone with an ’ead of steam, the way it was ringing. I was working on the boiler, making a fair bit of noise meself, and every now and again, there it went again. I came up a couple of times, t’see if I could answer it for you, but it stopped its nagging just as I got outside the door—I c’n use me master key in an emergency, like. I tell ya, I nearly got me kit and put in a line so that I could answer it downstairs meself.”

“Pardon?”

“Remember, Miss, I was a sapper. Let me tell you, if I could run a line in the pourin’ rain and on me ’ands and knees in the mud—and get the brass talkin’ to each other while the ’un’s trying to knock me block off as I was about it—I can bloomin’ well do a thing or two with your line.”

“Is that so, Billy? I’ll have to remember that. In the meantime, whoever wants to speak to me will find a way. Now then, what do you have to tell me?”

“Well, I was askin’ round some of me old mates, about that Vincent Weathershaw bloke. Turns out one of the fellas knew someone, who knew someone else, you know, who told them that ’e wasn’t quite all there after one of the big shows.”

Billy Beale tapped the side of his forehead, and Maisie inclined her head for him to continue.

“Lost a lot of men, ’e did. Apparently never forgave ’imself. Took it all upon ’is shoulders, as if ’e was the one that killed them. But what I also ’eard was that some funny stuff went on between ’im and the big brass. Now, this is all very shaky, but . . . .”

“Go on, Billy,” Maisie urged.

“Well, Miss, you know, if truth be told, we were all plain scared ’alf the bloomin’ time.”

“Yes, I know, Billy.”

“O’ course you do, Miss. You know, don’t you? Blimey, when I think of what you nurses must’ve seen . . . anyway, if the truth be told, we was all scared. You didn’t know when you were going to get it.

But some of ’em. . . .”

Billy stopped, turned away from Maisie, and took the red kerchief from his neck and wiped his eyes.

“Gawd—sorry, Miss. Don’t know what came over me.”

“Billy. It can wait. Whatever you have to tell me. It can wait. Let me pour that tea.”

Maisie went to the stove, poured boiling water from the kettle onto the tea leaves in the brown earthenware teapot, and allowed it to steep. She took two large tin mugs from the shelf above the stove, stirred the tea in the pot, then poured tea for them both, with plenty of sugar and a splash of milk. Since her time in France, Maisie had preferred an army-issue tin mug for her private teatimes, for the warmth that radiated from the mug to her hands and to the rest of her body.

“There you are, Billy. Now then . . .”

“Well, as you know, Miss, there were a lot of lads ’o enlisted that were too young. Boys tryin’ to be men, and blimey, the rest of us weren’t much more than boys ourselves. And you’d see ’em, white as sheets when that whistle blew to go over the top. Mind you, we was all as white as sheets. I was barely eighteen meself.”

Billy sipped his tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“We’d ’ave to get ’em under the arms, shove ’em over, and ’ope that the push would get ’em through. And sometimes one of ’em didn’t make it over.”

Billy’s eyes misted over again, and he wiped them with the red kerchief.

“And when that ’appened, when a boy was paralyzed with fear, like, ’e could be reported for cowardice. If ’e’d been seen afterwards, not ’avin’ gone over with the rest of his mates, the brass didn’t ask too many questions, did they? No, the poor sod’s on a charge and that’s it! So we ’ad to look out for each other, didn’t we?”

Drawing the red cloth across his brow, the young man continued his story for Maisie.

“Court-martialed, they were. And you know what ’appened to a lot of ’em, don’t you? Shot. Even if some of ’em weren’t quite so innocent, villains getting up to no good when they should’ve been on the line, it ain’t the way to go, is it? Not shot by their own. Bloody marvelous, ain’t it? You pray your ’ead off that the Kaiser’s boys don’t get you, then it’s your own that do!”

Maisie allowed silence to envelop them and held the steaming mug to her lips. This was no new story. Only the storyteller was new to her. Happy-go-lucky Billy Beale.

“Well, this Vincent Weathershaw, as far as the brass were concerned, was a soft one with ’is men. Said it was enough with the trenches and shells killing ’em without their own ’avin’ it in for ’em. Apparently they wanted to ’arden this Weathershaw up a bit. I don’t know the ’ole story, nowhere near, but from what I’ve been told, ’e was commanded to do a few things ’e didn’t want to. Refused. There was talk of strip-pin’ ’im of ’is commission. The word is that no one quite knows what ’appened, but apparently, it was after these rumors went about, that ’e sort of lost ’is ’ead and started to do all that daft business, walkin’ around without the ’elmet on in front of the other lot. Then, o’ course, they got ’im—at Wipers—Passchendaele. Not far from where I copped it, really, but it seemed like ’undreds of miles at the time.”

Maisie smiled, but it was a sad, reflective smile as she remembered how men made easy work of pronouncing “Ypres,” referring to it as “Wipers.”

“Mind you, they didn’t get me coming out of a trench and over the top. No, it was all that business at Messines, not knowing whether the other lot were in the trench next door, or below us, and not knowin’ whether the buggers—pardon me language, Miss—but not knowin’ where they’d laid mines. Us sappers ’ad our work cut out for us there.”

Billy lowered his head, swirled dregs of tea to soak up sugar at the bottom of his mug, and closed his eyes as memories pushed through into the present.

Maisie and Billy Beale sat in silence. Maisie, as she so often did nowadays, remembered Maurice and his teaching:

“Never follow a story with a question, Maisie, not immediately. And remember to acknowledge the storyteller, for in some way even the messenger is affected by the story he brings.”

She waited a few more minutes, watching Billy sip his tea, lost in his memories as he looked out over the rooftops.

“Billy, thank you for finding this out for me. You must have worked hard to track the details down.”

Billy lifted the mug of tea to his lips.

“Like I said, Miss—you need anything doing, Billy Beale’s your man.”

Maisie allowed more time to pass, and even wrote some notes in her file, in front of Billy, to underline the importance of his report.

“Well, Billy,” said Maisie, closing the file and placing it back on the desk, “I hope you don’t mind me changing the subject, but there is one thing. No rush, in your own time.”

“You name it, Miss.”

“Billy, I really need to have this room painted or wallpapered. It’s as drab as yesterday’s black pudding and needs a bit of cheering up. I noticed that on the ground floor you did such a nice job with Miss Finch’s room—the door was open as I came through one day and I looked in—it was so bright and cheerful. What do you think?”

“I’ll jump right to it, Miss. I’ll put my mind to the colors on the way ’ome, and tomorrow I’ll go by me mate’s place—painter and decorator, ’e is—and see what ’e’s got in the way of paints.”

“That’ll be lovely, Billy. And, Billy—thank you very much.”

And so another storyteller fell asleep that night thinking not of the telling of the story but of the possibilities inherent in color and texture. But for Maisie, there was a different end to the day. She made notes in her file, simply named “Vincent,” and started to sketch a diagram, with names and places linked.

Maisie Dobbs was even more convinced that her instinct had not betrayed her, that Vincent’s death was simply one thread in an intricate web that led to no good. She knew that it would not be long before she discovered what connected the bright thread that was Vincent to the other boys who were buried with only one name at Nether Green Cemetery. And it was her intention that the next meeting with Celia Davenham would reveal how Vincent had spent the time since the war, and his exact location at his death.

More important, Maisie wanted an explanation as to why he was simply “Vincent.”