Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (3 page)

“Meaning a wife?”

“A wife or partner. Anyone who—by this time—might have raised the alarm.”

I pause in the act of buttering toast. My God, I'm a bastard! (And perhaps that's why I've got amnesia: simple self-disgust.) Oh, yes, I've certainly wondered what sort of wife I may have left behind. But up to now I haven't thought there could be someone not so very far away who's maybe feeling desperate; who, apart from having a missing husband, could be seriously unsure of how everything operates in a strange country—could be worried about funds—could be encumbered by a worried child, or even worried children. Oh, Christ! I've been thinking only of myself.

My possible wife, child, children, parents…presumably I have parents, who at some point will need to be notified? All these begin to acquire, not faces, not personalities, but at least some sort of real and suffering existence. No longer simply adjuncts.

I also start to wonder about my father and that girl.

4

At last it's Sunday morning!

And at any minute now I shall be seeing him!

But, heck, I was being
far
too optimistic, hoping to do so yesterday, hoping to contrive
two
Saturdays off in a row.

Quite late into the evening, in fact, I was still busy with my milking after what would have been, in the normal way, a dreary day of weeding and hoeing and muck-raking—dreary, I mean, if I hadn't had this morning to anticipate, plus the bliss of a soak in the Crawfords' own bathtub to wash away not only the grime but the smell: muck-raking is a chore which permeates! (And, shamelessly, I had every intention of ignoring—for once—those regulatory five inches.)

At any rate he'd been easy to contact at Halesworth and very understanding about the necessary change in plan; we must have spoken for over half an hour, which in itself made up a little for the lost day. (He'd rung me back, after the first set of pips.) Though even after half an hour I'd found it difficult to say goodbye. On the other hand, this hadn't prevented my cycling away from the box in the village singing at the top of my voice and speeding down hills—well, slopes!—with my feet off the pedals and my hands off the handlebars.

His voice had sounded just so nice; and his conversation had been so easy and so civilized. We'd even mentioned Shakespeare's birthday, which had fallen on the previous Monday. And there, as Trixie would have said,
there
was culture for you!

Because although I like the people I mix with—they're kind and helpful and I learn from them some fascinating lore—their talk is never what you'd call relaxing, mainly on account of the dialect; and with our German prisoner-of-war it's not merely the dialect, it's the whole wretched language barrier; we smile and nod and mime (and the mime often makes us giggle) but it's not a conversation. Trixie of course is usually full of chat, yet recently she's been thoroughly moody, since she too had planned on having yesterday off and not all her wheedling could accomplish it. (“I'll do a bunk!” she'd said “To hell with them!” But her ‘bunk' didn't take place till nearly nine o'clock last night, when anyway she was perfectly free to go. However, she ran out waving her crimson-painted fingernails—not so much in farewell as to get them dry—and it was the bounciest I'd seen her since the previous Sunday. “Now don't do anything I wouldn't do, Roz!” Followed, naturally, by its inseparable and very boring rider.)

And now I'm feeling pretty bouncy myself, waiting in the lane and savouring the smell arising from the earth, the gossamer on grass and hedges, the stillness which surrounds me: a stillness only deepened by the gentle cry of a ringed plover—or is it perhaps a stone curlew? Savouring, too, the sheer pleasure of my yellow coat.

This, a Christmas present from my mother (the kindest mother imaginable: she must have used up every coupon she could save, swap, steal or scavenge), is fastened with a tie belt and a single button at the neck and has a nice jaunty swing to it. Because I haven't worn it very often it still feels special. With that and my best frock—actually the one I was wearing last weekend, which is a bit of a shame but can't be helped, a print of green leaves on a white background, eye-catching without being gaudy—with those and my leather gloves, classic black shoes, Jacqmar headscarf and carefully painted legs (it was Amy Crawford who drew the line down the back for me, taking a lot more trouble than Trixie ever does), I feel today that Vogue is more my spiritual home than Picture Post. I wonder if this will instantly occur to Matt. Will he draw up, jump down, give a deeply felt whistle and sigh for his disloyal abandonment of Rita Hayworth? Poor Rita Hayworth.

Amazingly, he doesn't. He jumps down from the jeep all right but forgets to give that whistle. And although he tells me I look nice, he adds far too soon for someone genuinely dumbfounded that he hopes he hasn't kept me waiting.

“No, you're extremely punctual. You had no trouble finding us?” It's been a journey of some twenty miles.

He shakes his head…a bit absently? (Certainly he doesn't appear to be dumbfounded; but is it merely wishful thinking that makes me see a look that might be construed—very loosely—as appreciative?) “All I had to do was follow your excellent instructions.”

“And your still more excellent Ordnance Survey?”

He grins. “Well, that helped a bit.”

“I hear they're talking about starting to replace the signposts.”

“Oh, where's their spirit of adventure?”

I observe drily that I'd better call him Marco Polo; or Dr Livingstone if he'd prefer. He glances at the sky. Pulls up the collar of his raincoat.

“Better call me Scott of the Antarctic! What happened to all that warmth we had a week ago?”

“And just now you sounded so courageous. Don't let me think that, after all, they breed them lily-livered in Connecticut! Oh, but talking of which…”

We are going to spend the day in Cambridge—yet I'm wondering if, before that, he'd be interested to see Groton. John Winthrop, the man who became an early governor of Connecticut, was born in Groton.

“I've been doing my homework for you.” And, yes, it's almost as if I'm getting ready for some test. “John Winthrop sailed for North America in 1630, on board the Arabella, along with seven hundred Puritans, two hundred cows and sixty horses. However, by the time the ship reached Massachusetts Bay, two hundred of the immigrants had died at sea—well, either at sea or shortly after landing. Then another hundred decided to return to England.”

We are still standing in the lane—a lane that's twisting and leafy, full of cowpats and tractor ruts.

“Those, I'd say, were definitely the lily-livered ones!” He nods, decisively.

“You think so? After the voyage out I'm not so sure they mightn't have been called the braver element…no matter how base. And, by the way, seventy of the animals had died as well.”

“Thank you for doing your homework. And you're right, I'd sure be glad to see where it began. In New London County there's a town called Groton that was named for Winthrop's birthplace. But I didn't realize he came from round here.” He adds after a moment: “Come to think of it, how did you?”

I tell him that when he'd spoken of Connecticut last Saturday, something had stirred at the back of my mind. But I hadn't been able to pinpoint it.

“Gee, I'm impressed.”

“Gee, I'm pleased that you're impressed. Actually I'm quite impressed too. Well, let's face it: it is impressive.”

Yet first, even before Groton, I want to show him Polstead.

So we get in the jeep, which is fun, I've never ridden in a jeep before (although later it will prove a little cold) and off we drive to Polstead. There I show him the pond where witches used to undergo their trial by ordeal and into which somebody, allegedly spellbound, once drove a coach and four horses. The site must have been a bit jinxed: by the early nineteenth century there were so many ghosts roaming about it that an exorcism came to be thought desirable. But poor Reverend Whitmore could have been a forbear of Will Hay: after death he was himself seen driving a horse and trap along the lane to the rectory—and presumably not a man to be outdone by anyone, it was claimed that he was headless.

“Headless?” cries Matt. “My God! But why?”

“Obviously an arch-bungler.”

“Then how was he identified? Was his head sitting there on the seat beside him? Wasn't there a danger it might roll off?”

“I think you have a gruesome streak.”

“What tosh!” (More British than the British but I don't at this point comment.)

“And if you have”—I give a kindly smile—“in Polstead we can pander to it.”

“That's nice.” He asks if I believe in ghosts.

We have left the jeep at the bottom of the hill and are now walking up a pleasant footpath to the top of it, from where I want him to see what must be one of the prettiest village greens in England.

“I don't know. I certainly believe in an afterlife—in the survival of the spirit—if that's of any help.”

He says it isn't much, but as I feel that way and as it's Sunday, oughtn't I to be in church?

“Well, it doesn't follow; though I'd be happy to go, if you would.”

“Yes,” he replies, slowly and rather unexpectedly. “Actually, I think I'd like it.”

But since the morning service isn't due to start for half an hour we wander around the green.

Facing the green is the Cock, with its attractive inn sign.

“Will it be open when the service ends?”

“Straight out of church and into the pub—tch, tch, Lieutenant Cassidy! Do I approve?”

“I think you've got the emphasis wrong, Miss Farr. What you mean is: oh, boy, do I approve! I saw you knocking back your Adnam's the other night. And the word, my dear, is Lootenant.”

I tell him he's in England now: land of village greens and fine old pubs and men who answer to Leftenant. Land of Maria Marten and the Red Barn.

He stares at me in some perplexity. Just as he was meant to.

“Come. I shall lead you now down Marten Lane for the terrifying climax to this fleeting interlude of Grand Guignol. Not for the faint-hearted.”

I take him by the hand. It seems so natural that I'm almost unaware of having done so. His own hand closes around mine; and from then on continues to hold it. Firmly.

It needs only a few minutes to reach the thatched cottage where Maria Marten used to live. The red barn is there no longer, having been destroyed by fire.

“Maria was a mole-catcher's daughter,” I tell him, “William Corder a rich farmer's son. One night he lured her to the barn with promises; and indeed wrote to her father announcing they were married—married and very happy. But Maria's mother kept having dreams about the barn… Finally she persuaded her husband to go out and excavate. And then, of course, Maria's body came to light. Are you bearing up manfully?”

“Gee, I don't know, it's tough.”

“Well, anyway, Corder was discovered near London, in a place called Brentford, where—thanks to an advertisement—he had found himself a rich wife. And guess what: they were running a seminary for young ladies! But in August 1828 he was hanged at Bury St Edmunds, in front of a crowd of ten thousand. The hangman sold the gallows rope at a guinea an inch and a book about the trial was bound in Corder's skin, which the prison doctor had farsightedly removed for that very purpose. What do you have to say to that, Lootenant?”

“Enterprising. Though I guess it was a fairly limited edition.”

“Just one copy; still on display in Bury Museum. Like to go and see it?”

“Any chance we'd be allowed to fondle it?”

“Oh, don't!”

We begin to retrace our steps. But something impels me to stop again and look back at the cottage. “Actually we make light of it, we turn it into melodrama, we pull out all the stops. But this is a real person we're talking about: silly perhaps but probably kindhearted and hopeful and trusting. Poor soul. At the end she must have felt terrified. We ought to say a prayer for her when we're in church.”

“Wouldn't some interpret that as being a little late?” He smiles at me, then adds: “The idiots!”

“That's right. What idiots.”

“After all,” he says, “how much do any of us really know about the complexities of time?”

I regard him suspiciously. But his expression appears guileless.

“And in any case,” he continues, “supposing that time
is
just linear. God himself is outside time—presumably, then, he'd have had knowledge, even on the night she died, of the prayer you'll say this morning for Maria Marten. And so, if you believe in prayer, you must also believe it may have eased the pain for her, it may have helped her die less fearfully.”

He pauses.

“I'm saying all this as though you weren't already perfectly aware of it. Forgive me.”

“No, it's good to hear it put in words.”

So we make our intercessions for the murdered girl; and I throw in one for William Corder also, on the principle of judge not, lest ye be judged…

The service, which began at eleven, is only sparsely attended. The church is Norman, primitive and simple. In the nave arcades, the arches are of brick; the clerestory also. Since the Normans are not supposed to have used brick, as we are later informed by the vicar, these are thought to be the earliest bricks made in England since Roman times; earlier than Coggeshall. The vicar is clearly proud of his church; he's a gaunt old man with snowy white hair, a shuffling gait, a soft voice, and some difficulty in hearing. His sermon is gentle, not very inspiring. But at least the hymns are mostly ones I like and played in a comfortable key.

At the end of the service he's of course standing by the door and as there are so few for him to say goodbye to, Matt and I talk to him about the church and the weather and the redecoration of the church hall (we have been invited to it for a cup of coffee and a biscuit but have made excuses; I already know that neither Camp Coffee nor Bev is what Matt most appreciates about England—and, anyhow, by now the Cock will probably be open). But the vicar has just asked where Matt's home is. And when at last the old man hears the answer he suddenly exclaims that some twenty-five years ago he himself spent time in New Haven, with a family called the Taylors, who lived in…he struggles to remember the name of the district, or the road, and Matt, equally pleased and almost equally frustrated, struggles to assist his recollection. Professor Taylor taught History at Dartmouth College…