Peter Robinson - In A Dry Season

Early the next day I went to Bridge Cottage, found Matthew still in bed, “found” the note and proceeded to tell everyone we knew, including Mother, that Gloria had run away during the night because she couldn’t bear her life with Matthew anymore. She said she loved him, and she always would, but she couldn’t be responsible for her actions if she stayed. Then I showed them the note, which said exactly that. She ended by saying that we shouldn’t go looking for her because we would never be able to find her.

There was no reason to call in the police. Everyone believed the note without question. Hadn’t Gloria already told me she had heard people predicting that she would run off with a Yank at the first opportunity? Of course, she hadn’t gone off with a Yank, and Brad, for one, would know that, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

I gave up Bridge Cottage, sold the contents, including the radiogram and the records Gloria loved so much, and brought Matthew back to live with us above the shop.

One evening when Mother was at Joyce Maddingley’s, I took Matthew’s blood-stained clothes and Gloria’s dresses and burned them in the grate. I cried as I watched all those beautiful dresses catch fire. The black-red-and-white-checked Dorville dress she had bought in London; the black velvet V-neck dress with the puff sleeves, wide, padded shoulders and red felt rose that she had worn to our first dance with the Americans at Rowan Woods; her fine underwear. I watched it all flare and twist, then collapse into ashes. I disposed of her trinkets in Leeds the next time I went there on shop business. I just stood on Leeds Bridge at the bottom of Briggate and dropped them one by one into the river Aire.

As I had expected, it was Brad who gave me the most trouble. On his last day at Rowan Woods, he came to the shop and pestered me with questions. He just couldn’t believe that Gloria had simply left. If she wanted to go, he argued, then why didn’t she go with him? He had asked her often enough. I told him I thought she wanted to escape from everyone; she needed a completely new start. He said she could have had that in California. Again, I argued that living with him in Los Angeles would always have felt tainted to her because of the circumstances in which it came about. No matter what, she would still have been Matthew’s wife.

It hurt him deeply, which I hated to do, but he had to accept what I said in the end. After all, she had told him she didn’t want to see him anymore after VE-Day. Absolutely no one suspected anything like the truth. The 448th Bomber Group moved out of Rowan Woods and I heard nothing more from Brad. It was all over.

Michael Stanhope expressed sorrow that such a beautiful spirit had left the community. He said something about Hobb’s End having glimmered briefly, then turned dark again. He was free to sell the nude now, not that I ever saw or heard anything of it again. Perhaps it wasn’t as good as he thought it was.

As for Matthew, he never really showed any sign that anything was different. He was a little more withdrawn, perhaps, but he went on with the same drinking and staring into space as before. I had to stop the visits to Dr. Jennings, of course. Who knew what narcosynthesis might draw out of Matthew, should it work? Though the doctor protested, I think he was quite relieved. Doctors don’t like failures and Dr. Jennings had been getting nowhere with Matthew.

Soon, we were hearing rumors that the village was to be sold as a reservoir site, and when I looked around, it didn’t surprise me.

Hobb’s End had turned into a ghost village.

I hadn’t noticed it happening because of other matters, but hardly anyone lived there anymore. Those who had come back from the war had a taste of more interesting locales or had been trained for jobs they could only get in the cities. Even the women, who had perhaps gained the most in terms of employment, were heading off for factory jobs in Leeds and Bradford. The mill closed. Buildings fell into disrepair. Old people died. Finally, there was nobody left.

A strange incident occurred before we left for Leeds, though Gloria had, in a way, predicted it. One day, a man in a brown demob suit came into the shop with a little boy of about eight or nine and asked to see Gloria. I knew immediately who they were, though I didn’t want to admit it to them.

“Are you a relative?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “Nothing like that. Just an old friend, that’s all. I was passing this way, so I thought I’d look her up.” He sounded rather sad, and I noticed he had a Cockney accent, just as Gloria did when she let her guard slip. And, of course, nobody just passes Hobb’s End way.

I asked him more questions, to show interest and politeness, but I could get nothing more out of him. Most of all, I wanted him to be satisfied by my explanation of Gloria’s disappearance; I certainly didn’t want him to come back and pester Matthew and me.

I needn’t have worried. When he left, he just said, “If you do see her again, tell her George called, will you?” He looked down at the boy. “Tell her George and little Frankie dropped by and send their love.”

I assured him I would. The little boy had said nothing at all, but I felt him staring at me the whole time, as if he were etching my features onto the tissue of his memory. On impulse, I gave him a quarter ounce of gumdrops, quite a rarity, as sweets were still rationed. He thanked me solemnly and then they left.

The following week, Matthew, Mother and I moved to Leeds and Hobb’s End ceased to exist. Our life in Leeds was not without incident, but that’s another story.

“If we go to the CPS with Vivian Elmsley’s story,” Banks said to Annie, “they’ll laugh us out of the office.”

It was Sunday morning, and they were both lounging about Banks’s cottage rereading Vivian Elmsley’s manuscript and drinking coffee. It had been against Annie’s better judgment to take up Banks’s suggestion of spending the weekend together. What she had meant to do after getting in her car at York was drive straight home and spend the rest of the weekend in blissful, idle solitude. But next Friday, she was taking two weeks holiday and was planning to go down to stay with her father at the colony. Best enjoy some time together now, she thought. She would have plenty of time for long, lonely coast walks when she got to St. Ives.

So, on Sunday morning, she was lying back in Banks’s front room, barefoot, wearing shorts, her feet dangling over the arm of the settee, reading about Gwen Shackleton’s war.

“Why would they laugh?” she said. “It’s a confession of sorts, isn’t it? She does admit to interfering with the body. That makes her an accessory.”

“I very much doubt that any judge would admit the manuscript as evidence. All she has to do is say it’s fiction. The Crown knows that. It’s a load of bollocks, Annie. Just as well the woman writes fiction and doesn’t have to solve real crimes.”

“But she uses real names.”

“Doesn’t matter. Any decent lawyer would make mincemeat of it as a confession to aiding and abetting. Look at what we’ve got. We’ve got a woman in her seventies who presented us with a manuscript she wrote nearly thirty years ago hinting that she covered up a murder she thinks her brother committed over twenty years before that in a village that no longer exists. Add to that she makes her living writing detective fiction.” He ran his hand across his head. “Believe me, the CPS have enough of a backlog already. They can’t even keep up with today’s crimes, let alone put staff on prosecuting yesterday’s on evidence so flimsy a puff of wind would blow it away.”

“So that’s it? We go no further? She goes scot-free?”