Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (11 page)

I haven't spoken up till now and I suddenly become aware of it. “How'd you guess?”

“Because you all seem to have that special sort of look. I can always tell. You and him, now. If it wasn't for the differences in clothes and hairstyles and the like…yes, I'm not being daft…the pair of you could almost be related.” (Tom, behind her, raises his arms in a boxer's gesture of victory.) “I'm right, you know. And I can prove it to you. Upstairs I got another photo.”

After a minute she gets up to fetch it. Tom says: “And by some miracle you haven't saved those letters which you mentioned? But no. No one could be that far-sighted!”

On her return she carries a battered-looking album. The three of us stand in the centre of the room, under the main light, Tom and I on either side of her, while she, with a forgivable air of self-importance, turns its pages.

“There,” she says. “That one at the bottom.”

And we all look at the likeness.

It's after midnight and we're in our beds.

“Well,” Tom says, “back to the embassy on Monday. There may be hundreds of Matthew Cassidys living in the States but there can't be too many who hail from New Haven in Connecticut and whose families worked in the meatpacking industry.”

He laughs.

“And, into the bargain, a handful of bonuses—i.e., the dates your father was over here, the bases where he served, even the name of his American fiancée and the fact he'd had an older brother, who died in '42. Good old Trix! What a memory! And good old Herb Kramer, also—none of this should take too long to sort out—you'll soon be shinning up your noble family tree and waving to all those cheering relatives on board the Mayflower!”

Then why don't I feel more optimistic?

Why, in fact, do I have the jitters?

I try, as best I can, to fight them back.

“Tom, tell me something. Do you think I ought to go to that address? The one she wrote her letter from?”

“Yes, why not? If you want to. Though after all this time I don't suppose there'll be anyone there to remember her. To remember your mother,” he amends, as though it's impolite to use the pronoun.

Want to
? No, ‘want to' isn't quite the phrase that
I'
d have picked. “You don't think you're jumping to conclusions?” I ask.

“Why?”

“I just don't get the feeling she's my mother. No flash of recognition like the one I got when I saw that picture of my dad.”

“But that was different. You were recognizing yourself, not him.”

“Even so.” I'm lying on my back, hands clasped behind my head, staring at the branches of a horse chestnut that are still visible in the moonlight—it would be good if they could tap me out a message. “You know what I believe? I believe my father's just died and my mother, knowing about this woman in England, knowing about…Rosalind…sent me here to trace her. It might have been a promise she made him. Or one that I did. Or it might have been the carrying out of something in his will.”

In the semi-darkness I turn my head in Tom's direction with a slow smile.

“In other words, you crazy dick, it's pretty much what you said last Tuesday. But I still don't feel I'd have been carrying around a pinup picture of my own mother…which was definitely
not
one of your better notions, I submit. With respect.”

“Okay. What you say does sound…well, I suppose it does sound feasible. Apart from anything else, I'd think your mother might be a good deal younger than Rosalind. Actually, Rosalind could quite easily be
her
mother. Perhaps it's your granddad whom you look like?”

“But then, can't you see, my objection still applies. Pinup of my grandmother? I don't think it changes things.”

Tom sighs and I interpret this as being a reluctant form of assent.

“In which case,” I say (implying a logic which I'm not certain actually exists), “maybe we
had
better go to Hampstead. Or I had. You're probably right about there not being much point but…”

“Why just you?”

“Because we've found out who I am. More or less. Like you said, it's only a matter of time now. Soon we'll have the name of the hotel where I stayed in London—my identity, my money, my documents. I can't go on forever keeping you from getting on with your work.”

By ‘identity' I suppose I mean merely my given name, or names. Cassidy! That, too, may take a bit of getting used to!

“Yet there's still something that worries me,” says Tom. “How you came to be wandering about a capital city without even a penny piece in your pocket, let alone a credit card.”

“Perhaps I'm naturally extravagant and this time I'd simply gone out for a stroll, determined not to part with so much as a nickel. Not so much as one red cent.”

“Perhaps.” But, again, he doesn't seem convinced. Any more than I do. I'm sure that to both of us my theory comes across as being enormously far-fetched. Not to mention (unless I make a habit of behaving so bizarrely) enormously coincidental.

In the morning we find a message from Trixie that's been pushed beneath our door. It's folded around an enclosure.

“I told some fibs last night. I loved Roz but I was jealous. It just didn't seem fair. I told you how she got pregnant. I didn't say how she'd already had the baby by the time I stopped hearing and how full of it she was. That's why I pretended I couldn't find this second letter—not even sure now why I kept it. It was me who didn't stay in touch. You see, I never answered her, not either of her letters, just couldn't face the thought of it. And also, what was really mean, I never told her that I had that picture of her boyfriend, perhaps she never knew I'd taken it. But I didn't for one second think he'd gone and ditched her—not like she did—knowing old Roz it was probably just some silly hiccup, not that blinking Marjorie she always talked about, and nothing like my own case where I knew I didn't stand a chance. Anyhow I thought I'd got over all this long before last night. But I can't pretend as how I got much sleep…”

Her message finishes by saying she won't be at work today, or tomorrow, because she's off to Yorkshire for a short break. She asks us to give Roz all her love when we finally find her.

“
When
?” I say. “I guess she means
if
.”

I'm pretty certain Tom will contradict me. But he doesn't. He remains silent.

“Should we leave Trixie some flowers?” I ask. “Or wine? Or chocolates? I mean, as well as a bit of cash, naturally.” I feel happier now about suggesting further outlay.

Anyway, Tom would soon have come up with the same suggestion. “Yes, we'll definitely find her something.” He means alongside the originals of my father's snapshot and the letters, all of which he wants to get photocopied.

I'm surprised.

“Photocopying on a Sunday?”

“No, but I was wondering. If the room isn't taken, why don't we stay over until Monday? That would mean we could enjoy a nice relaxed Sunday by the sea, yet still get back to London in plenty of time to see Herb Kramer…” But here his voice tails off; his attention elsewhere. He has now opened Rosalind Farr's second letter—which, to some extent, I seem to have been fighting shy of.

“This one,” he says, “is dated March 5
^th
, 1946.”

As Trixie had implied (but I'd forgotten) it's a happy letter. Yet the penultimate sentence possesses a poignancy that leaves us silent for a moment.

“‘It will be wonderful to see you and we'll have tremendous fun, just make it soon.'”

I've been standing at the window, staring again into the branches of the horse chestnut. “Oh, hell,” I say.

“Well, it wasn't your doing.”

“No. Then why do I feel as though it were?”

“Because you've got a name like Cassidy. Which probably means you're a Catholic. Which probably means you have a Catholic conscience.”

He puts his hand round my shoulder.

“Which probably means, in short, that all of it—absolutely all of it—is your doing!”

14

I wish I could have stunned him with a new dress, preferably something long. (But at least he's never seen my cobalt blue, which I wore to the Troc in 1939.)

I wish I could have had my hair done.

I wish I could have stupefied him with my jitterbug. (Or anyway, I mean, have had the fun of being able to fantasize a little.)

No, forget all the rest of it. I wish that as soon as we'd got there we could simply have enjoyed ourselves.

Because everything's laid on for our enjoyment.

The dancing takes place in the main hangar, which is festooned with crepe paper. Balloons are hung at the entrance to the base and Chinese lanterns brighten several pathways. The refreshments are extraordinary, not just the profusion but the variety. Naturally I exclaim as much as anyone and hope that once I've tasted them I may even start to feel hungry.

Fat chance.

I'm not the only one without an appetite. You see them everywhere: the couples who are either clinging in barely concealed unhappiness or else putting on an act. I, too, am putting on an act.

I hate it.

And I resent Matt for appearing so very much as normal.

We walk out of the hangar into fresh air. From somewhere comes the unmistakable scent of wallflowers. Can someone on the base have made a little garden?

He's not aware of it, he says, but that isn't to say it hasn't happened. “You're not cold, are you?”

I shake my head.

“Yet after that great heat in there…” He offers me his jacket. “Wiser not to risk a chill.”

Who cares about a chill, I want to ask. Who cares about being wise? He puts the jacket round my shoulders. I don't trust myself to thank him. The last thing I want right now is kindness.

We stroll a short way in silence. Not holding hands. Not linking arms. Nothing.

“Rosalind?” he says. “I am going to see you again, aren't I?”

“On Monday, you mean, when your train leaves? Oh, yes, I'm pretty sure they'll let me get away. And if not…I'll come anyhow.” But the smile I give doesn't in the least negate my briskness.

“You know that isn't what I meant.”

“What, then?”

“I don't know.” He shrugs, and suddenly I see that, after all, he too has been pretending. “I've got to try to work things out.”

“Why? What is there to work out? You don't owe me anything. You're engaged to a nice girl back in Connecticut and I knew that all along. It's been fun, I'm glad to have known you, Matt. We'll have to write to one another and, who knows, someday you and your family may come to London or I and mine may come to New York and—”

“Sweetie. Please don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Listen. Just answer me one thing. Will you miss me when I'm gone?”

“Oh, Matt.” My voice quavers, treacherously.

“No, but what I mean is—how much will you miss me?”

“Darling, this is pointless. Let's go back and dance.”

“No, it isn't pointless… Because… Well, you see…”

I give up every effort to be bright and brittle and to hold him at a distance.

“You know how much I'm going to miss you. But do you really want to make me spell it out and have myself in tears? That would be a fine way to finish, on a night so obviously intended to produce only pleasure and high spirits. You almost have to laugh: the band playing ‘The sun has got his hat on' while nearly everywhere you look…”

“I love you, Rosalind.”

“There! Now see what you've done.” I fumble for my hanky.

He doesn't let me—pushes my evening purse aside. I mumble that his shoulder will get wet; he doesn't seem to care. Eventually I have to pull away. It would hardly be romantic to wipe my nose against his shirt.

“But, Matt, do be sure that what you decide is what you really want. We've known each other for three short weeks. Heightened atmosphere of wartime, of wartime coming to an end. It's two years since you've seen Marjorie. Maybe one can forget a bit in two years but the minute you set eyes on her again—”

“Now you make it sound—what we feel for one another—” (because I had finally let on, a second or two before my nose began to run), “now you make it sound like some starlight-on-the-ocean holiday romance.”

“I only want to be sensible. I only want to be fair.” But how fair is it to come out with what I now come out with? “I shall love you, Matt Cassidy, until the day I die—and beyond that, too, if I have any say in the matter, but—”

I don't get any further. Suddenly he lifts me off my feet and whirls me round. “No! No buts! That's all I wanted to hear. Don't say another word.” He kisses me, ecstatically. “And
now
let's go in and dance!”

What's more, I perform one or two pretty nifty pieces of jitterbug in the shortish time remaining. I'm only surprised the other dancers don't give up and stand in an admiring circle—allow us room to show off our agility. They always do in films.

“Oh, you'll love America!”

We're on our own again and once more riding in a jeep. I can't think how he's pulled it off, considering the number of men there are at Halesworth.

“You might also get to care for Britain,” I remind him.

“I already do. Though I still can't say a whole lot for your coffee.” There's hardly any alteration in his tone. “You spoke earlier about a fine way to finish off things—wasn't that the way you put it?—on a night so obviously intended to produce only pleasure and high spirits.”

I look at him and start to smile.

At that, he takes my hand and lifts it to his lips. He has avoided touching me till now; is evidently much fairer than I am. “Have you ever been to The Red Lion? In Southwold?”