The Return of Captain John Emmett (6 page)

'
Mrs
Lovell, I think.'

Charles raised his eyebrows. 'Just so,' he said.

After the strangely disquieting day in Cambridge and the dinner with Charles, Laurence half expected Louise to come; she so often did when he had drunk a bit. Trying to avoid her, he delayed getting undressed. Eventually he fell into bed around two, thinking briefly about the sun and the river. He must have fallen asleep as the next thing he knew it was morning; he had been woken by a bee buzzing angrily between curtain and windowpane. He flicked it out into the day and lay back. Despite his aching shoulders and back, he felt content, relaxing in the early light, recalling his meeting with Mary, and he pushed away thoughts of her now-dead lover.

He considered the feasibility of actually contacting people who had known John. What questions could he reasonably ask on her behalf? Nothing too wild; there was a limit to how far anybody wanted to look back these days. He simply hoped to give Mary some sense of her brother's war and of what others made of him. He thought of his own sister, as he almost never did, and reflected how very little she would know about him if he should die suddenly. He pulled out his bedside drawer and found the picture he had of them, side by side, just before she left to go on honeymoon and out of his life. He was already taller than her. All these photographs looked so real, yet were as much illusions and ghosts as oil paintings in a gallery. He had left all those he had of Louise in their London house. He thought back to the family portrait of the Emmett children. Who was the baby, he wondered? Had they once had a younger sibling? He felt sorry for Mary, now the lone survivor.

He felt happy in a way he hadn't for years at the thought of simply walking over to the concert hall to check the programme. To satisfy his conscience, he wrote solidly all day. The pages at the end of it suddenly looked remarkably like a proper chapter.

He decided to start following up John Emmett's trail the next morning, although when he woke heavy skies threatened rain, putting him in two minds whether to postpone his day's plans or not. There was, after all, no hurry: John Emmett had been dead for nine months or so.

The postman delivered a letter from Charles. He took out the single, crisp page with a smile. Having inherited and swiftly sold the substantial business built up by four generations of Carfaxes, Charles had time to involve himself in other men's lives. Sometimes Laurence wondered whether, in the absence of war, Charles was bored.

Albany
10 September 1921

Dear Bartram,

Before you turn detective, because any fool can see that's what you've got in mind, and probably a lady behind your transformation into Mr. Holmes, I thought I might help you by tracking down Bolitho. Turns out he's not in a convalescent home and not far away. Lives in a mansion flat in Kensington with his wife. Not doing too badly, I'm told, and quite happy to have visitors. Anyway, he's at 2 Moscow Mansions, South Kensington. I had an aunt who lived in the same block before the war, full of faded gentlefolk. I think the Bolithos must be on the ground floor. You're on your own with the mysterious Mrs Lovell, though.

Charles

The following week, Laurence met Mary off the train at Liverpool Street. He stood right under the clock, excitement turning to nervousness and then to embarrassment as he realised two other men and a single anxious-faced woman were sharing his chosen rendezvous. It was a cliché. He was a cliché. He moved further away. There were a surprising number of people on the platform: a gaggle of girls in plaits with identical navy coats and felt hats pulled down hard on their heads, while they, their trunks and their lacrosse sticks were overseen by two stern-looking ladies; it was obviously the beginning of term.

All these journeys momentarily intersecting here, he thought. All the farewells. A stout older man huffed by, preceded by a porter with a large case. From childhood, Laurence had always been drawn to inventing lives for unknown people. This man was a Harley Street physician, he decided, whom the war had saved from retirement. Now he was off to a difficult but profitable case in the shires. Laurence looked up at the clock; the Cambridge train was already ten minutes late.

Perhaps he and Mary would forever be meeting like this. He still felt uneasy in stations. Memories of three journeys to or from France still haunted him. The first time, nervous but confident, he was ridiculously over-equipped: a Swaine Adeney Brigg catalogue model, his uniform stiff, his badges bright and untested, chatting eagerly to new faces, wanting to make a good impression on the two subalterns travelling out with him. They were all so junior that they had no choice but to sit on wooden benches in the crowded compartments, back-to-back with ordinary soldiers. It was winter and the fug of cheap cigarettes, the range of accents and the stink of stale uniform was overwhelming. He observed the contrast between excitement in some men and grim disengagement in others.

The second time—when a period of leave in May, spent with Louise and some friends in Oxfordshire, had cruelly reminded him of all he had to leave behind and that the gap between normality and hell was only a day's travel—had been hideous. He had sat on the train taking him back to the front almost unable to speak. That time he had recognised the silences he had met on his first embarkation.

Much later, he had returned to England on a hospital train. Although he had travelled in reasonable comfort on this journey, when he got off it was to a sea of stretchers bearing casualties, some in blood-stained bandages, others apparently blind or minus limbs. The sight of them was more shocking, lying on a familiar London platform, than amid the chaos of injury and mutilation he'd encountered in the trenches. He remembered an orderly and a nurse leaning over one man. She pulled his grey blanket over his head as she signalled to two soldiers to carry him away. Contemplating the horror of the man's long journey, the pain and disruption of coming home, just to die next to the buffers, Laurence had turned his head away.

He jerked back to the present. The landscape of khaki and grey faded away. The Cambridge train was pulling in with a last exhalation of steam. He watched various individuals pass but he could not see Mary.

She had almost reached his end of the platform before he recognised her. With her hair covered by a deep-crimson hat and wearing a coat, she looked different: more sophisticated and more in control. Everything about her declared her a modern woman, he thought as she drew closer, yet her eyes were less confident as she searched the crowd and she clutched her bag tightly to her. He was grinning like an idiot; he could feel his cheek muscles aching. He waved, although it was quite redundant; she was near enough to have seen him already and then she was in front of him. Quite on the spur of the moment he kissed her on the cheek. She smelled of Lily of the Valley.

'Laurence,' she said, with her amused, crooked smile, 'it's so good to be here.' She looked round almost excitedly and took a deep breath of anticipation.

'We need to get a cab,' he said, gently ushering her through the crowds, his hand in the small of her back. 'We've got plenty of time so we could have tea before the concert. If you'd like that, that is? Talk a bit and so on?'

'Talk a bit,' she said teasingly but then laughed. 'Oh Laurence, I love just being here. Getting away.' Her voice became more serious. 'We'll have a bit of time afterwards though, I hope?' He was very conscious of her body even through the small area under his palm and through a wool coat. She broke away only as a cab drew up.

Within a quarter of an hour they were sitting over tea in Durrants Hotel.

'I struck lucky with Captain Bolitho,' he told her happily. 'Nice wife too. It all seems quite straightforward.'

His confidence that evening, the uncomplicated nature of the story he had to tell, was something Laurence would remember long afterwards.

Laurence had been surprised to get a letter by return of post from William Bolitho, suggesting he come to lunch the following day. He had taken a bus and then, following Charles's very precise directions, walked through the streets to Moscow Mansions.

Mrs Bolitho had opened the door. She was slim and of middling height with curly auburn hair and an intelligent face. Bolitho sat by a window in the sitting room with a blanket over his lap. The shutters were folded back and light poured into a slightly shabby but pleasing room. Some draughtsman's drawings, mostly of big but unfamiliar houses, hung on the largest wall, and on the wooden floor lay a rose and indigo Persian rug faded by the sun. One wall was lined with books; the other was dominated by an abstract picture of strong ochre and black squares and curves, with odd glued and painted newspaper scraps. Laurence had no idea what it meant, but he liked it.

Laurence turned as Bolitho reached out to shake him by the hand. It was a strong grip that matched the strength of character in the man's face. Bolitho had caught the direction of Laurence's gaze.

'It's Braque,' he said. 'Well, not
a
Braque, obviously, but a copy.' Then he went on, 'It's very good to meet you.'

Laurence sat down in a deep chair opposite William. They talked for a while about nothing particularly significant, although Laurence was trying to gauge the man and suspected William was doing much the same with him, until Eleanor suggested they move through for luncheon. He tried not to look shocked when she removed a blanket, revealing one of William's legs apparently ending at the knee, the trouser neatly pinned up, and no sign of the other limb at all. She helped William into a wheelchair, bracing it with her foot, while he swung himself over.

'Can I help?' Laurence asked, although it was obviously a practised routine.

'No, no it's fine,' said William. 'Most chaps in my situation sit in the wheelchair most of the day but I get damn bored. I prefer to move about.'

Eleanor pushed the chair through double doors to the small dining room where a table was laid near the window.

Any fear he'd had that the meeting would be gloomy and difficult was dispersed over a simple meal of cold meats, boiled potatoes, sweet pickled beetroot and a blackcurrant fool. The Bolithos were excellent hosts and the affection between them was tangible. William had been an architect before the war, he told Laurence, and still hoped that he might find a job that would allow him to work again. Laurence glanced at his wife whose face was one of determined good cheer as her husband spoke.

'I was trained in Glasgow and studied in Vienna. There's so much I'd like to be part of—so much happening in architecture that's exciting, innovative...' His face lit up with enthusiasm. 'It's difficult, of course, but with all the new building in London I'm keeping my ears open. I write letters, I keep up with my reading and so on.' He indicated a pile of journals on a table. 'Eleanor says it can be only a matter of time.'

'Sadly,' she said, 'they're as short of young architects now as they are of so many other professional men.'

Apparently ignoring her earnestness, William looked over his shoulder, his waving fork indicating the room and the painting behind them.

Alternatively, I do feel I might have a good future in forging Braques,' he said. 'Cubism seems to invite it, really.'

An hour or more went by without Laurence really noticing time pass but it was long enough for him to realise, as he had with Mary, that he was quite useless in controlling the direction of a conversation. He let it find its own level. Eleanor held forth on the prospect of the Independent Labour Party ever winning an election. Her enthusiasm and intelligence were infectious and William, who must have heard it all before, looked on with evident pleasure. Laurence found himself telling them about his teaching and his reservations about the book he was writing.

'But obviously you want to talk about John Emmett's will?' William said eventually, with no embarrassment. 'Well, one of the things we were able to do with his bequest was to buy a gramophone.' He looked towards the corner. 'Tidy, isn't it?' As Laurence followed his glance, William added, 'I expect you're wondering where the horn is. You see, it's got a pleated diaphragm instead, it's the latest thing. I first saw it out in France, as we had one in the mess at HQ. A friend has just sent me Beethoven's complete works. They've just been recorded.' He picked up a couple of crimson-centred records and carefully slipped them out of their brown-paper covers. 'Beautiful. And Bach as well. There's much more interest in him these days. About time too.' He looked completely happy, Laurence thought. 'Frankly, Emmett's bequest changed our lives. The sum he left us surprised us both.'

'It was being able to move here, you see,' said Eleanor. Just fleetingly she sounded defensive. 'It wasn't all about luxuries, however welcome.' She smiled at her husband and then turned to Laurence. 'We really wanted more room; with the wheelchair you need more space to manoeuvre—you can imagine. We were in Bayswater, but it was small and William was a prisoner if he was on his own, and then there was Nicholas.' Laurence must have looked puzzled because she went on, 'Our son. He's nearly three now.'

Laurence tried not to let his surprise show on his face. Eleanor laughed.

'The flat seems a lot smaller with him around; he's never still for a minute. Today he's at my sister-in-law's near by with his little cousins.'

She got up to carry the plates through to the kitchen and called back, 'Moving here, living near her, has made a huge difference to us all. She's a widow—my brother Max was killed at Cambrai. Now we can all start again.'

Laurence looked at William and saw a handsome man with thick, light-brown hair, which was just beginning to turn grey around his ears; the first lines of middle age only gave his face more expression. Any pity Laurence had felt for him on arrival had long subsided.

After they'd finished lunch, and Eleanor had left to fetch their son, the two men settled back in the drawing room. William took out his pipe and held it in his hand without lighting it.