Deborah Crombie - Dreaming of the bones

“I don’t know,” Margery said slowly. “But one always seems to leave things unsaid. It’s as inevitable as dying.”

Adam shivered in his heaterless car and wrapped the scarf more tightly round his throat. Why had he not spoken up at Dame Margery’s table and said that he had known Vic? And that he, too, had liked her? He felt a stabbing of guilt, as if he had personally betrayed her by his silence.

“Don’t be a silly bugger,” he said aloud. “You hardly knew the woman.” But it didn’t help, and tears smarted behind his eyelids. She had been so lovely, sitting on the moth-eaten velvet chair in his parlor, drinking the sherry he’d poured her. In his mind’s eye he saw the smooth swing of her fair hair as she turned her head and laughed at something he’d said.

There had been a delicacy about her, a waifish quality, that had reminded him somehow of Lydia. But she’d had Lydia’s determination as well, he had sensed that, sensed that she wouldn’t be satisfied with easy answers, and yet he hadn’t been capable of giving her more.

He’d failed Lydia, too, in the end, as he’d failed everyone who mattered to him.

Suddenly the thought of going home alone to the vicarage seemed unbearable, and at the Queens’ Road roundabout he kept to the right, along the Backs towards Grantchester. He would go and see Nathan-Nathan had known her, too. They could talk about her, and perhaps that would ease the dreadful emptiness inside him.

Newnham

4 July 1963

Dear Mummy ,

I understand your distress at my news, but it simply can’t be helped. I have too much work over the Long Vac to come home even for a few days. And as much as I would love to see you, it’s probably not a good idea for you to visit me .

Please, please, don’t worry about me. I’m quite all right, it’s just that the pressures of work are a bit much right now, and I can’t see anything for it but to keep my nose to the grindstone .

And there’s the writing, too. Having gained some momentum, I feel I must keep it up, degree or no degree, because after all, that’s the object of all this, isn’t it? Everything has been to further my success as a poet, and if I lose sight of that now it’s all for naught .

Love, Lydia

Adam pounded on the door of the darkened cottage, more out of reluctance to go home than in hopes that Nathan would answer. But just as he gave one last rap and turned away, he heard footsteps, and the door swung back.

He knew at first glance that his friend was very drunk, for Nathan held on to the doorknob like a man drowning, and his eyes absorbed the light like bottomless wells.

“Nathan?”

Nathan blinked, then opened his mouth and closed it again, as if his brain couldn’t quite make the connection with his tongue. He tried once more. “Adam, it’s you,” he said, enunciating with care. Owlishly, he blinked again. “Of course it’s you. You know it’s you. Silly of me. I s’pose you’d better come in.” Turning away, he walked off down the dim corridor, leaving Adam to shut the door and follow.

Adam fumbled after him, unsure of his footing in the dark and unfamiliar passage. He reached the door at the far end, and once through it he stopped to let his eyes adjust to the room’s illumination. A faint light came from the decorative tubes installed under the kitchen cabinets, and from a few embers glowing in the hearth. Nathan sat in the chair nearest the fire, and on the table beside him a bottle glinted in the firelight.

Adam picked his way across the rug and lowered himself into the chair opposite. He had seen Nathan drink like this only a few times since they’d left University, and then only under great stress, and he feared he knew what had prompted it.

“Nathan, you’ve heard, haven’t you? About Vic McClellan?”

“In College,” said Nathan, reaching an unsteady hand for the whisky bottle. “Dinner… High Table. Round like wildfire. Had to… ‘pologize to the Provost.” His enunciation was failing.

“You left in the middle of dinner?” asked Adam, picking the sense out of what he’d said.

Nodding, Nathan said, “Had to. Didn’t b’lieve it, you see. Went there. House all dark, locked, no one at home.” He raised his right hand and Adam saw a makeshift bandage wrapped round it, stained with dark blotches. “Canna play piano now” The hand fell to his lap again, as if a puppeteer had dropped the strings. “Neighbors came, said it’s true, all true.”

“Nathan, are you saying you tried to break down her door? And the neighbors came?”

Nathan smiled at him as if he’d made a brilliant deduction. “That’s it. Must’ve been shouting. Can’t ‘member.”

“Did someone look at your hand? You should see a doctor.”

“Doesn’ matter,” Nathan mumbled, then he pulled himself up in his chair a little and seemed to try to focus on Adam’s face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said carefully. “Nothing matters now.”

Oh, dear Lord, thought Adam, he’d been a fool, a blind fool, not to have seen it. Nathan’s veiled hints about someone in his life, his air of nervous excitement. And the expression on Vic McClellan’s face when he’d mentioned Nathan’s name.

“I’m so sorry, Nathan. I didn’t know.”

Nathan sat forwards suddenly in his chair, knocking his glass from the side table. It hit the rug and rolled against the edge of the hearth with a soft clink. “I need to see her,” he said clearly, as if his anguish had burned momentarily through the haze of alcohol. “Do you see? I need to hold her, touch her, so I’ll know it’s true. I held Jean until she wasn’t Jean anymore. That’s how I knew.” He frowned at Adam and reached for his tumbler again, then stared in puzzlement at the vacant spot on the table.

Adam got up and retrieved the glass, and as he returned it to the table he saw that the bottle was almost empty. How full had it been in the beginning, he wondered, and need he worry about alcohol poisoning?

“Let me help you to bed, Nathan,” he said gently.

Nathan poured the last bit of whisky into his glass and swallowed it. “Don’ wanna sleep. Hafta wake up then, see?” He leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “Go home, Adam. Nothing to do.” After a moment he repeated, as if to himself, “Nothing to do.”

Adam sat on, watching him until his breathing changed. Whether Nathan had fallen asleep or passed out, he couldn’t tell, but his breaths were deep and regular, and he didn’t respond when Adam softly said his name.

Carefully, Adam knelt by the hearth and banked up the fire, then fixed the screen in front of it. He took the lap rug that had been folded over the back of his chair and spread it over Nathan’s still form, and then, not knowing what else he could do, he let himself out.

It was only when he woke in the cold hour before dawn, in his bed in the vicarage, that he realized what he’d seen in the sudden blaze as he’d made up the fire: Nathan’s father’s old shotgun, propped in the shadows by the back door.

As he turned the corner into Carlingford Road, Kincaid saw Gemma in the halo of light cast by the streetlamp. She wore jeans and the old navy pea coat she used for knocking about on weekends, and she sat on the steps of his building with her arms wrapped round her knees as if she were cold.

First he felt a flooding of relief, just knowing that she was alive and well, not snatched away from him, too-and then, mixed with the relief, the sort of senseless anger one feels towards a child who has narrowly escaped mishap.

He pulled the Rover into an empty spot at the right-hand curb, got out, and walked across to her. “Why didn’t you let yourself into the flat?” he said. “Look at you-you’re freezing.”