Deborah Crombie - Dreaming of the bones

“They had an odd relationship.” Adam held up a hand as if to stop an expected response. “And I don’t mean in the sense that it was unhealthy, although nowadays any parent-child relationship seems to be suspect. They were more like sisters, or friends, and if Lydia felt she’d been pressured to live out her mother’s dreams, she never showed any obvious resentment.”

“She was a schoolteacher, wasn’t she?” Vic prompted, although she knew all the recorded details of Mary Brooke’s life.

“A very bright girl, apparently, who’d earned a place at Oxford before the war,” said Adam. “But she didn’t take it up. She stayed at home and married her childhood sweetheart, afraid he wouldn’t come back from France-”

“And he didn’t,” Vic finished for him, and sighed. “I wonder if she ever regretted her choice.”

“She’d not have had Lydia,” Adam said reasonably, as if that alternative were unthinkable. “What else would you like to know?” He cast a surreptitious glance at his watch, and Vic suspected he had another appointment but was too tactful to say so.

“The impossible.” Smiling at Adam’s startled expression, Vic said softly, “You see, I want to know what she was like . I want to see her through your eyes, hear her through your ears…”

Adam looked past her, and after a moment he said, “That was the first thing one noticed about her-her voice. She was small and quick, with a dancer’s litheness and that wonderful dark, wavy hair cut in a twenties bob-but when she spoke you forgot everything else.” He smiled at an image Vic couldn’t see. “She sounded as though she’d sung in every smoky bar from Casablanca to Soho. It made her seem exotic, and yet beneath the huskiness you could hear the Sussex village.”

“Still endearingly English?”

Adam laughed. “Exactly. But that’s not what you want to know, is it? How she looked, I mean.” Pausing, he refilled his glass and took a small sip. “How can I possibly condense Lydia?”

“Pick an adjective,” suggested Vic. “Just off the top of your head, without thinking about it.”

“Parlor games?” Adam sounded dubious.

“You think that doesn’t sound suitably academic? Think of it as a poet’s game,” Vic challenged him. “After all, you were a poet, too.”

Adam made a rueful grimace. “But not a very good one, I’m afraid. All right, I’ll give it a try.” He frowned and thought for a moment. “Intense. Moody, funny, bright, but most of all, intense. Intense about loves and hates-and especially intense about work.”

Nodding, Vic gathered her courage to venture into painful territory. “You kept up with one another, didn’t you, after her separation from Morgan? I know,” she added carefully, “that it was you who found her, and saved her, that first time. What I don’t know is whether you had any idea what she meant to do.”

“She certainly didn’t threaten suicide, if that’s what you mean. Didn’t even hint at it. But…”

Vic felt her heartbeat quicken. “But her behavior wasn’t normal, was it? How was she different?”

“Calm,” said Adam. “Much too calm, in a dazed sort of way, but I didn’t realize then. She’d forget what she was saying in the midst of a sentence, and then she’d smile.” He shook his head. “I should have known-”

“How could you?” Vic protested. “Unless you’d had some experience dealing with depression.”

Adam shook his head. “Oh, I see it so often now that I recognize the earliest symptoms. But common sense should have been enough, even then.” His hands moved restlessly over his knees. “If I had been thinking of Lydia, rather than myself…”

“What do you mean?” Vic asked, puzzled.

“I had another agenda, you see,” he said, not meeting Vic’s eyes.

“I don’t understand.”

“It all sounds ludicrous… too ridiculous. But what harm can it do now, other than make me look as big a fool as I did then?” He pinched his lips together in a self-deprecating grimace. “I was glad when Morgan left her. I thought she would get over him soon enough, and then perhaps we could go back to the way things were in the beginning.”

“In the beginning? You and Lydia?” Vic heard the surprise in her voice and silently cursed herself. She couldn’t afford to alienate him now. “Of course,” she added quickly, “what could have been more natural? And when she didn’t seem to be terribly unhappy, you thought-”

“Well, it was all a long time ago, and hopefully I’ve grown less foolish in my dotage.” He set his empty sherry glass down on the butler’s table in a deliberate way that suggested he’d had enough of talking as well.

He was the same age as Nathan, Vic thought, and yet she had the sudden impression that he felt life had defeated him.

“Adam,” she said, before he could politely terminate their interview. “What about the second time Lydia tried to kill herself? Did she have the same symptoms of depression or disassociation? Surely there must have been some indication-”

“I wouldn’t know,” he interrupted her. Then, as if afraid he’d been too sharp, added, “I was gone by that time. Kenya. Teaching in a mission school.” Standing up, he went to the bookcase behind the love seat and took something from the shelf. “One of my students made this for me.” He held out a small pottery vase for her inspection. It was clear glazed, the color of sunburnt skin, and black-etched antelope ran endlessly round its circumference.

“It’s lovely.” Taking it from him, Vic closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the surface as if she were reading braille. “It reminds me of a poem of Lydia’s, the one called ‘Grass.’ I always wondered where the images came from. Did you write to her?”

Adam shrugged. “Occasionally. The evenings could be very long. I suppose she didn’t save the letters?”

“If she did, I’ve not seen them among her papers,” Vic said, not sure whether that would please or hurt him, but she felt a spark of hope on her own behalf. “Did she write to you, by any chance?”

“Yes, but we had a fire in the mission not long before I came back to England. I lost most of my personal belongings, such as they were, and Lydia’s letters were among them. I’m sorry,” he added, and Vic knew her disappointment must have shown.

“Never mind,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m sure it was a much greater loss for you than it is for me. But I wonder…” She hesitated to push him, but on the other hand she’d best make the most of her opportunity. “Do you remember anything odd about her letters before-”

“She ran her car into a tree?” For the first time, Adam sounded angry. “What a bloody stupid thing to do. I heard afterwards that she said she just lost control, but I never believed it for a minute. She was a good driver, very focused, as she was on most things she undertook to do well.”

“But the letters-”

“I wasn’t privy to anything but the most innocuous gossip,” Adam said, and stood up abruptly. “If you want to know about her state of mind, you had better ask Daphne.”

Newnham

20 June 1962

Darling Mummy ,

There’s so much to tell you that I don’t know where to begin. I haven’t been to bed since night before last, but I’m still too wound up for sleep and so thought I’d try to describe May Week to you before the lovely details fade .