Deborah Crombie - Dreaming of the bones

She sat silently beside him, watching the sky, not even complaining, for once, about his car. He thought about asking her what she was thinking, but just then a passing lorry spattered sludge on the windscreen, and fighting its back draft while momentarily blinded required all his attention. When he could see again, he put a piano cassette in the tape player and concentrated on his driving.

They found the lights switched on in Gemma’s flat and a vase of daffodils on the table. Beside it lay a note from Hazel, a pot of beans, and a loaf of homemade bread. “Have a good feed,” the note read. “Gourmet beans on toast.”

“I see your fairy godmother’s been,” said Kincaid, dipping a finger into the still warm beans for a taste. “If she weren’t already taken, I’d snatch her in a minute.”

“She wouldn’t have you,” Gemma said equably. “Just count yourself lucky to get some of the fringe benefits.”

When Toby had been fed and put to bed, and they’d finished up the last of their toast and tea, Kincaid rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I’ll do the washing up,” he offered, “if I can have a glass of wine. I could swim in the tea I’ve drunk today.”

“Red or white?” Gemma stood on tiptoe as she reached for the glasses in the cupboard.

He admired the elongated line of her body as she stretched, and the curves hinted at beneath the bulk of her jumper. Stepping up behind her, he laid his hands lightly on her waist. “Mmmm, red, I think.”

Gemma slipped out of his grasp with an abstracted smile. When she’d poured them both a glass of burgundy, she cleared the dishes from the half-moon table while he ran hot water and squirted soap in the basin.

“Sit,” he ordered her as he began the soaping and rinsing. “There’s not room for us both in here-or there is, but it’s quite distracting.” When this mildly flirtatious comment received no response, he looked round as much as his dripping hands would allow. She sat in one of the slatted chairs at the table, booted feet stretched out before her, staring into the wineglass cradled in her lap. He started to speak, then thought better of it, slotting the last of the plates into the drying rack before he wiped his hands and turned to her.

“Gemma, what is it?” he asked, taking the other chair so that he could look directly into her face. “You’ve hardly said a word since we left Cambridge.”

“Oh.” She looked at him as if surprised to find him there. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”

“So I gathered. Care to elaborate?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to put it into words.”

With some trepidation, he asked, “Is this about Vic?” He’d thought taking Gemma with him the best way to allay her fears, but perhaps it had been a mistake.

To his surprise, the corners of Gemma’s mouth turned up in a smile. “I didn’t expect to like her, you know, but I did. Even though there’s still a connection between the two of you, I found I didn’t mind. I don’t know why I was so frightened of it, or why I expected to be so intimidated by her.”

“Intimidated by Vic? Why?”

Hesitating, Gemma looked away from him, then said slowly, “You know I did my A levels, but then I decided on the Academy rather than University. I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk to her-that we wouldn’t have a thing in common. Or worse, that she’d talk down to me, be all smug about her education and her career.”

“Why on earth should she-”

“No, wait, let me finish.” Gemma gave him a quelling look, her brows drawn together again. “It didn’t turn out that way at all. The things she said made sense to me, and the funny thing is, I think I understood something you didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, thoroughly puzzled now.

“You told her that the end of her book about Lydia didn’t matter. You didn’t see that it’s the end that gives the book its truth.” He must have looked blank, because she shook her head in frustration. “Look at it this way. Vic’s right about women needing stories about other women’s accomplishments. Do you know how much it would have meant to me when I started out in the Met if I’d had another woman’s experience to guide me?

“There were less than a handful of female DCIs then, and they were playing by men’s rules. But I wanted something different. I thought that I could be a good police officer-maybe even a better police officer- because I’m a woman, not in spite of it, and there were times, especially in the beginning, that I almost gave up. There was nobody to reassure me that I had something special to offer, that I wasn’t crazy, that it could be done.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, taken aback by her intensity. “I didn’t know that’s how you felt. You’ve never said.”

“Those aren’t things that are considered appropriate to say.” Her smile held little humor. “And that makes other women’s stories even more important, including Lydia’s. But if Lydia killed herself, it changes her story. I’m not saying that it makes it invalid, but it does make it a different story.”

“I don’t understand. Surely she would still have accomplished the same things?”

“But they wouldn’t matter in the same way. Suicide is an admission of defeat. It tells us that she couldn’t put all the pieces of her dream together, and if she couldn’t, maybe we can’t, either.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t have told Vic to leave it alone?”

Gemma took a belated sip of her wine. “Not exactly. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what you said, because Vic needs Lydia not to have committed suicide, and she can’t let it go. And you didn’t see that.”

“What else could I have done?” he said defensively, feeling as though he’d been tried and found wanting. “You were the one who thought I shouldn’t bother with it at all.”

Shrugging, Gemma said, “I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”

Newnham

30 January 1963

Dearest Mummy ,

Sometimes I think this poetry is a curse, not a gift. The words haunt me when I should be sleeping, haunt me when I should be working, and they’re black, cold beasts I can’t tame into acceptable shapes. Six rejections just this week, without even a hint of encouragement. Why can’t I give it up, concentrate on my studies?

Last term’s workload was difficult-this term’s may be insurmountable. If I had been better prepared I might not be floundering so now, trying to make up for the lack of depth and breadth in my reading. And what shall I do with this degree, if I somehow manage to earn one of any distinction? Teach sixth-form girls in some dreary comprehensive, in the hopes that one of them will possess the gift I lacked?

Do you know how many women manage to publish poetry? And of the few that do, most have their work reviled by the critics for being too pretty, too feminine, but if they write anything else it’s said to be unsuitable. If I’d had any sense. I’d have taken that clerk’s job in the Brighton Woolworth’s. I’d be taking the bus home in the rain, warm and dry on the upper deck, not cycling everywhere through slush and sludge, rain cape and boots perpetually soaked. I’d have met some nice fellow and I’d go to the cinema with him on Fridays, and if he were persistent enough I might bring him home for tea. Marriage and babies would lurk in the offing, and these spiky thoughts would not jostle so in my head .

Oh, poor Mummy, forgive me this outpouring of misery. I feel small and mean, burdening you with it, but I simply couldn’t go on without the hope of comfort. Tell me these feelings will pass, that the rain will stop, that my dreadful cold will go away, that someone, somewhere, will publish one of my poems .