Deborah Crombie - Dreaming of the bones

When approached, he’d been helpful enough in supplying Lydia’s materials, but he had not offered any reminiscences. It was only when she’d mentioned living in Grantchester by chance one day that he’d responded in a more personal way, and since Ian’s disappearance they had spent more and more time together.

“Listen.” Nathan put a finger to his lips. “Do you hear that?”

Vic held her breath, listening. She heard the blood in her ears, then on the threshold of sound, a shriek. “What is it?” she whispered.

“A barn owl. It takes some perseverance to hear them these days; they’re becoming quite rare. Reminds me of my childhood, that and the sound of the tree frogs. I loved the river then. Sometimes I would imagine it moving in my blood.”

“Kit feels that, too, I think. I envy you both a bit. I appreciate this”-she gestured round her-“but it’s in an objective way. What you and Kit have seems to be almost organic. He can stay down here for hours at a time, watching bugs in the grass.” She smiled.

“A naturalist in the making,” Nathan said thoughtfully. “I’d like to know him better. Does he read? He doesn’t look bookish, and I suppose I’d thought of him as a rugger and football sort of boy.”

“Oh, he’s capable enough at games, and he does what’s necessary to fit in at school, but his heart’s not really in it. And it’s odd, because he’s always been ferociously competitive about his schoolwork-even more so since Ian left. The other day I found him crying over an exam score, and then he was furious with me for catching him at it. He didn’t speak to me for two days.” Vic hadn’t told anyone this, and now she didn’t know if she felt relieved, or guilty for betraying Kit’s confidence. These were the sort of things meant to be shared by parents, she thought, but she wouldn’t have told Ian even had he been round to tell. He’d have gone all pompous and preachy about it, and he’d somehow, as always, manage to miss the point.

“Poor kid,” Nathan said, his jacket rustling as he moved in the dark. “Perhaps you could encourage him to love the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, separate from the carrot system of education.”

Vic heard a soft plop from the direction of the river. A frog? Or a fish jumping? Did fish sleep? she wondered. She thought of asking Nathan, then dismissed it as being too humiliatingly ridiculous. How ignorant she was of anything outside her own little area of expertise. Tonight the river seemed merely a dark void in the landscape-she had never thought of it being full of life as complicated and messy as her own.

Now she found that if she stared long enough at the water she could see light and movement, the reflection of starlight filtering through the chestnut branches. “So how do I go about it, teaching Kit to love knowledge for itself?”

“Look at yourself,” said Nathan softly. “Have you forgotten why you do what you do? That’s a start. And I’ve some books he might like. Why don’t you come up to the cottage with me?” he added, cupping a hand round her elbow. “I’ve something for you, as well.”

Vic found that her odd, new awareness had spread from the perception of outward phenomena to her body. She felt the heat from Nathan’s hand through the bulky sleeve of her cardigan and the sensation left her suddenly ripe, aching, weak-kneed with desire. Oh, Lord, she had forgotten this, the strength of it, and she was not prepared. She thought of Nathan’s hand on her breast and stumbled, gasping.

“Are you all right?” He tightened his grip on her arm.

“Fine,” she said, a bit breathlessly, fighting laughter, trying hard to stamp down the singing joy rising in her. “Just fine.”

“Fancy a drink?” Nathan asked. “Wine or-”

“Whisky,” Vic interrupted decisively. She stood before the fire in his kitchen-dining area as if she were cold, but her cheeks were stained with pink.

Watching her while he filled two tumblers from the bottle he kept in the kitchen cabinet, Nathan wondered if she might be coming down with something. Come to think of it, she’d been behaving very oddly these past few minutes. She’d not often touched him, yet tonight when he’d let go her arm on reaching the level path, fearing he’d overstepped his bounds, she’d walked so close beside him that their shoulders bumped.

Nathan delivered her glass and raised his. “Cheers.”

Vic took what on anyone less delicate looking he would have labeled a swig, then coughed and sputtered. When he patted her solicitously on the back, she shivered.

“Honestly, Vic, I think you’re not well. Let me-”

“No, I’m fine, Nathan, really,” she said, her eyes still watering. “I just got a bit carried away with this stuff” She took a much smaller sip. “See? I’m quite all right. Now, tell me about those books for Kit.”

He went to one of the bookcases that lined the wall opposite the garden windows, and she came to stand beside him. “Gerald Durrell,” he said, running his finger along the shelves as he scanned, then stopping on some slender spines. “Has he read these? They’re marvelous, all about his childhood on Corfu with every kind of insect and animal imaginable. And what about Laurens Van der Post? He made me want to see Africa, follow in the tracks of the Bushmen. Or Konrad Lorenz, the grandfather of animal behavior?” Stop it, he told himself, pulling books from the shelves. You’re chattering like a bloody adolescent on a first date. And to make it worse, he was probably imagining that her nearness was deliberate.

When Vic took the proffered books and retreated to the chair beside the fire, he excused himself. “Idiot,” he said aloud as he stepped into the darkness of the hall, then took a deep breath before going up to his study. When he returned, he found her leafing idly through a book, but her gaze was focused on the fire, and he suspected she hadn’t the least idea which volume she held.

“I found this the other day,” he said, sitting opposite her. “There were still a few boxes from the Cambridge house in the loft. I thought you might like to have it.” She blinked and smiled a bit vaguely as she took the book from his hand, then her breath caught as she took in what it was.

She touched the cover. “Oh, Nathan, it’s lovely.” Opening it, she lifted the tissue-paper flyleaf with care, then smiled as she looked down into Rupert Brooke’s eyes. “And what a wonderful photograph. I’ve never seen this one.” She went back to the cover, then looked at the back of the title page. “It’s a first printing of Edward Marsh’s Rupert Brooke: A Memoir,” she said unnecessarily, as if Nathan didn’t know perfectly well what it was. “Nineteen nineteen. Where ever did you get it?”

“It was Lydia’s.”

She looked up. “But… are you sure you should… are you sure you want to-”

“I can do whatever I please with Lydia’s things, and I think it only fitting that you should have it.”

“Surely it must be valuable.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Vic laid the book in her lap and spread her long, slender fingers over the cover, and he took it as acquiescence. “Nathan, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.” She paused and took another sip of her almost empty drink. “Lately, I’ve wondered if this biography was jinxed from the start. When I began, I’d never have imagined that two of the people who could help me the most were the two I’d feel the least comfortable asking. Does that make sense?” she added, tilting her head to one side and frowning. “Anyway, you can imagine how difficult it is to talk to Darcy…” She rolled her eyes and Nathan laughed. “He’s insufferable enough without further instigation.”