The Return of Captain John Emmett (12 page)

He woke feeling sick and shivery. His eiderdown had slipped off and the sheets had bunched down the bed, leaving the rough blankets irritating his skin. His ears were hot and ringing. The usual formless horrors slipped away from him once he switched on the light and straightened his sheets. He lay back. How could he ever explain all this to Mary or to any woman, he wondered, and despaired.

He knew it was useless to stay in bed; sleep would not return. As he walked into the other room he remembered that he had forgotten to open the second letter. There was the large, even handwriting: perfectly straight across the page as if Charles had internalised the ruled lines of the nursery. It took him three sides to communicate that he had been away for the weekend, that the Alvis was a marvel, that a group of friends Laurence had never heard of were on particularly good form, and that he had something quite rum to tell Laurence. It ended firmly: 'We need dinner, old man. Not the Club. Fancy a bit of a change. How about the Café Royal? At seven on Thursday?'

Although he woke up tired, the following day was clear. He decided to go over to the Bolithos and show William the photograph. It crossed his mind that the implicit bargain in exchange for Eleanor's help with Holmwood, was that he didn't bother her husband, but he promised himself that he would not linger.

Eleanor was out when he arrived. Their charwoman opened the door. He felt a degree of relief. William seemed genuinely pleased to see him. Despite the chill from half-opened windows and a strong smell of paint, the main room had taken on a feel of spring since his last visit.

'Chinese yellow,' William said, 'Eleanor's work.' He looked down ruefully at the floor where a couple of yellow drips had hardened. 'She's a rather impulsive handywoman. But sit down. Ethel will make some tea.'

'Look, I can't stay,' Laurence said, 'and I am awfully sorry to pester you again but I wondered if I might show you a picture? I'm simply trying to identify the men in it.'

William seemed perfectly calm when he took the photograph. Though Eleanor had said he needed to move forward, he showed no sign of distress. If he hadn't known otherwise, Laurence would have thought he was a man glad of company and eager for something to do.

William turned slightly so that natural light fell on the picture. 'Well, that's John, you may have realised that?'

Laurence nodded; it confirmed his guess.

'And the others, well, that's odd—it's the MO, Major Fortune. Good man. A volunteer who never even had to be there. Must have been fifty if he was a day: a perfectly good career as a surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital. And, oh, there's Sergeant Tucker—the man I told you about, looking pleased with himself.'

He held the photograph out to Laurence and pointed at the figure leaning back against a log pile. Tucker was a sinewy, almost feral man. The others looked pretty miserable as they pulled on cigarettes or gazed down at their feet, but Tucker just looked calm.

'I don't know any of the others; at least—no, the one on the end there, I don't know what he's doing here, but he's the man who helped pull John out of the tunnel collapse. The sapper major's servant. I was thinking about him after we spoke last time and I remembered that he could do the most astonishing tricks with numbers. Give him fifty numbers and he could add them, subtract them, whatever you liked, in seconds, or work out sequences: you know, one—three—five and so on, only much harder ones. The lads used to try to catch him out. He was there while Major Whoever-it-was was billeted with us. He was a prodigy, though he and his officer reminded me a bit of a circus ringmaster and a performing elephant. Wonder what happened to him?'

From the hall, they heard someone come in. The front door closed. Laurence could hear Eleanor talking and the voice of a small child. The door to the room opened. A small boy with dark-auburn curls rushed in and climbed on to William's lap. When he saw Laurence, he buried his face in his father's chest. Eleanor followed her son, her expression drawn and irritated.

'Mr Bartram,' she said, tightly, as if she'd caught him out in some peccadillo.

'I'm sorry,' he began.

'
What
a surprise,' she said. 'I'm sorry I wasn't here, although perhaps you'd anticipated that, but as you can see we're quite busy this afternoon. Perhaps you could come back another time? If you let us know beforehand we might arrange an easier day?'

'Eleanor...' William began, while the boy turned to look shyly at Laurence, but his wife ignored his attempt to head her off.

'I'd like to give Nicky his tea now and William is tired.'

She looked fixedly at Laurence and under the intensity of her gaze he finally said 'I'm really very sorry. I shouldn't have come without warning.'

'But he needed me to identify a photograph,' William interrupted firmly. 'I wasn't much help, but I got a couple of the men, though I've no idea where it was taken.'

Eleanor put her hand out and he gave it to her. She looked at it briefly. 'John Emmett,' she said. 'Of course. He must be getting more attention dead than he ever did alive.' She handed the picture back.

'Eleanor...' William began.

'Well, it's true,' she said, 'when he was alive he was an embarrassment. His moods, his obsessions, his unpredictability: all too difficult. Not a modest hero adding lustre to a county drawing room, but a man who couldn't cope, shut away in some rotten asylum. Now he's dead we can all think about how we wish we could have helped him, or, if we couldn't, how it would have been better if he'd been blown to smithereens with his reputation intact.'

William said less mildly, 'I don't think that's entirely fair.'

Laurence thought again how well she knew John Emmett and wondered whether William noticed or minded her evident loyalty to the dead man. He decided now was not the time to defend Mary.

'No, I'm sorry,' she said. 'Whatever my feelings, I'm being rude. But I really must go and get Nicholas's tea now.'

She hung back and Laurence realised she was expecting him to go first. He tucked the picture in his wallet, said a hasty goodbye to William, who seemed diplomatically unaware of the degree of tension in the room, and he smiled at Nicholas, still on his father's knee. The little boy smiled back. Eleanor led him out and closed the door behind him.

By the front door she stopped, looked up at him and spoke quietly but fiercely. 'Just because William's stuck here and can't get out doesn't mean you can just come and go as if he had no life except to assist you. I helped you as much as I could. William did too but we want to move on. John's dead. We're not. We're very grateful for the money but it doesn't buy you or Miss Emmett a right to our lives.'

***

He got to the Café Royal first that evening. Charles arrived, slightly late, full of apologies and long technical explanations about the Alvis. He seemed quite good-humoured as if having it break down was all part of the fun. When finally they were settled, Laurence regaled Charles with his brief and difficult visit to the Bolithos.

Charles seemed hugely amused.

'Oh Mrs Bolitho, that Bolshevik firebrand. She's famous for it. Not a girl to cross. Jolly clever. Good person to have on your side, though.' He picked up his glass and held it up to a candle so that its garnet-like depths glowed. 'Ask Mr Lenin.'

'Is she really?' Laurence asked. 'A Bolshevik, I mean?'

'Well, she's certainly a fighter. Damn good nurse, I hear, but my mama wouldn't have had her in the house before the war. Suffragette, Fabian, bluestocking: that kind of thing. Not that my mama knew her not to have her, of course. Didn't have her sort in Warwickshire, but Mama read about them in her paper and always said she wouldn't receive anybody who thought females should have the vote.' He sighed. 'Poor Mama. She must be turning in her grave. Still bending Father's ear in paradise and all that. Not paradise for him really. Still, I should think Mrs Bolitho's politics would make even Ramsay MacDonald's hair stand on end.'

'Good Lord.' Laurence found he was full of admiration rather than shocked. 'And William?'

'Heaven knows. Never met him. Not likely to now, really. Suppose he must go along with it if only for a quiet life. But he's probably counting his blessings: Mrs Bolitho was always a bit sought after. Healing hands, that kind of thing. Pretty too. General surprise when she married old Bolitho but then nurses do that: marry their patients and so on, even without legs. There's a child, isn't there? So his wounds haven't stopped him enjoying the benefits.'

He beamed at Laurence. In anyone else such a statement of the obvious would seem prurient but Charles simply seemed happy for his fellow officer.

'Lucky man,' he added.

Laurence was just about to ask him more about the circumstances of the Bolithos' marriage when Charles dropped his own thunderbolt.

'Motored down to Lewes last week and guess who I met there?'

He left a pause for Laurence to go through the motions of guessing.

'Surprise me,' Laurence said, slicing into his turbot.

'Well, I was staying at Frant, you know, Tolly Pitt's house. Third cousin. He married a lovely girl—not really a girl, she must be twenty-eight if she's a day. She was engaged to some cavalry man who got it right at the start, but then she meets Tolly, love at second sight, a year or so back and then she inherits Frant off one of those useful aunts these girls have, and it turns out Tolly loves her too. We had a spot of dinner and a jolly good walk along the coast. You know how these weekends go.'

Charles was momentarily diverted by his pheasant, but after another mouthful he went on.

'Anyway, this Octavia is a lot of fun but keen on church, that kind of thing. So we were off for luncheon in Tunbridge Wells with someone Tolly knew from the regiment when Octavia decided we should all go to church there rather than in the village. To cut a long story short, halfway through the service Octavia obviously sees someone she knows across the way: lots of looks, little smiles, fingertip wiggling—delight, surprise: that thing they do—and she whispers to me during the interminable sermon that it was a girl she'd known from driving some sort of canteen lorry for returning soldiers at Victoria Station in the war. Steaming tea, fragrant English girls—welcome back warrior—you know. When we're all peeling out, rather relieved to be swapping the chilly sea of faith for a good roast, she's chatting away to her, obviously trying to persuade her to join us or come over the next day.

'"I'm afraid I can't," says our new chum, just as we come within earshot, "I'm staying with a friend. He's not well enough to travel." Then Octavia sees me and Tolly's sister coming over together and introduces us: "This is Mary Emmett. Charles, I think you must have been at Marlborough with her brother, John?"'

Laurence had been following his own train of thought while Charles's story slowly circled its way to a conclusion, but Charles's words jerked him back into the conversation.

'Aha,' said Charles triumphantly, spearing a parsnip, 'thought that'd make you sit up. So I said, of course I did and I was sorry to hear the news, terrible thing, etcetera etcetera, and I can see why you're so keen to scout about for her—nice-looking girl, though a bit of fresh air needed to put a blush in those cheeks—and I said all the things you'd expect. So then I said, "And I think you know my great friend Laurence Bartram," and she was completely thrown. The look that crossed her face was not of fondness and grateful admiration at your very name, but nearer to horror, to be honest. Anyway, after that, I regret to say, old chap, she couldn't get away fast enough. Though Octavia had extracted a promise from her to come round—hard person to refuse, Octavia—the next time she was in the area, and got her address in Cambridge, she didn't even stay to meet Tolly and nobody could be intimidated by old Tolly. But then later I thought Miss Emmett didn't want my friend Laurence to know she was in Tunbridge. But why on earth shouldn't she be? And why should he care?'

'Where did she go?'

'Heaven knows. I wasn't going to
follow
her. She was quite on her own and she just trotted off down the Pantiles. Almost as if she were scared we'd follow her. Octavia thought she was embarrassed about her brother: suicide, scandal and so on. In fact, I got the distinct impression that Octavia rather thought I was de trop for mentioning it, though it was she who brought up the subject of John in the first place, but I think Miss Emmett was fine with all that. It was me knowing you, I'm certain, that caused all the consternation.'

Finally he stopped, looking expectantly across the table. As Laurence tried to appear indifferent to what he'd just heard, the silence lengthened until Charles couldn't resist adding, 'What do you think?'

Laurence longed to check whether Charles was certain that Mary had said she was staying with a man, but to do so would be to make himself look a fool. He hadn't been concentrating at the crucial point in the rambling story. Wasn't it her mother who was supposed to be needing her care? He felt irritated by Charles's speculations and, above all, he felt angry with himself.

Eventually, and it must have been obvious to both men that it was an effort, he said lamely, 'Yes, I seem to remember she had friends down there.' Then to move away from a gratuitous lie to one of his oldest friends, he added, 'Did she look well?'

Charles looked at him closely for a second. 'Well, as I said, I thought she looked a bit tired.' Of course he'd said that, Laurence thought, and stopped himself from asking any more questions.

Are you all right?' Charles raised an eyebrow. 'Your fish is getting cold.'

Charles's plate was empty but for a couple of game chips, which he transferred so quickly from plate to mouth with his fingers that the action was almost imperceptible. He wiped his hands and moustache with his napkin.

'Do you know, I think you're a bit keen on the mysterious Miss Emmett, Laurence. Who could blame you? She's a handsome girl and since Louise died you've turned yourself into some kind of recluse, so personally I'm delighted to see an old friend back in play, but, for what it's worth, whatever she was doing last Sunday, it didn't look as if it was making her particularly happy.'