Charles Todd: The red door

I ought to move that, Walter Teller thought, before the damp comes and ruins the lot. But he stood where he was, looking toward the house, his back to the darkness beyond the stream.

"A penny for your thoughts," his brother said.

Walter had forgot that he was there. Peter had taken two of the chairs and brought them together so that he could rest his bad leg, sitting quietly as he often did when he was in grievous pain. Turning, Walter said, "Sorry?"

"You were miles away," Peter commented, lightly tapping his chair's leg with his cane.

"Birthdays remind me that I'm a year older," Walter lied.

"Any of that whisky left? My leg is being attacked by angry devils."

"Yes, I think so." He went to the drinks table, found a clean glass, and poured a measure of whisky into it.

"Thanks." Peter downed half of it in one swallow.

"You ought to be careful of that," Walter said, keeping his voice level, without judgment.

"So they tell me. Which is why I wait until I'm going up to bed. It helps me sleep." He shifted his leg, searching for comfort. "I should have gone back to London tonight, with Edwin. But I couldn't face bouncing about in the motorcar for hours on end. Cowardly of me, wasn't it?" he added wryly.

"Why? This is where the four of us grew up. You. Edwin. Leticia. Myself. It will always be home." But it was in fact Edwin's house. The eldest son's inheritance. He himself lived here because Edwin preferred London. It had been a thorn in his side for ten years, this kindness, but Jenny loved Witch Hazel Farm, and so he had said nothing. It was a small sacrifice to make for her sake.

"Jenny and I are going up to London tomorrow," he went on. "You and Susannah can come with us or stay on here for a few days." Walter considered his brother. The damaged leg was beyond repair. And there was no doubt his pain was real. Still, of late there were times when he had the feeling that Peter's nightly whisky dulled more than the ache of torn muscle and smashed nerves. "All's well between you and Susannah?" he asked lightly.

"Yes, of course it is," Peter answered testily. "Why shouldn't it be?"

"No idea, old man. Except that she was a little quiet this weekend."

Peter shifted under Walter's gaze. "We've been talking about adopting a child. She has. It's complicated."

Walter looked away. "I didn't intend to pry."

"No." Changing the subject, he said, "Is Harry looking forward to school? He doesn't say much about it."

"I expect he is. He knows his mother is against it. For her sake he doesn't dwell on it."

"Jenny's a marvelous mother. Edwin was saying as much the other day." Peter hesitated. "Harry's only just seven, you know. I don't see why you can't wait a year."

Walter turned on him, suddenly angry. In the light of the blue lantern above his head, his expression was almost baleful. "It's what Father wanted. Harry's the only heir, it's what's been arranged since the day he was born. You know that as well as I do."

Peter said gently, "Father has been dead these six years. Why are we still under his thumb?" When Walter didn't answer, he went on, "He got it all wrong, you know. The eldest son to the land-that's Edwin, and he's no farmer. The next son to the Army-that's me. And I hated it. The next son to the church. That's you. And you lasted barely a year in your first living. I think, truth be told, that you found you weren't cut out to convert the heathen savage, either."

It was too close to the mark. Only that morning Walter had received a letter from the Alcock Missionary Society, wanting to know when he would be ready to return to the field. That, and Harry, had haunted him all day.

Jenny called from the house, saving Walter from having to answer his brother.

"Yes, coming," he replied, and then to his brother he said, "I'll just put these candles out. Why don't you go on up to bed? You aren't going to find any peace until you do."

Peter reached for his cane and struggled to his feet. Walter caught one of the chairs he'd been using as it almost tipped over. Peter swore at his own clumsiness. Leaning heavily on his cane, he made his way across the lawn toward the house. And halfway there, he turned and said to his brother, "Things will look better tomorrow."

Walter nodded, then set about reaching into the colorful paper cages and pinching out the flame of each candle. As he came to the last of them, he stopped.

It was too bad, he thought, that life couldn't be snuffed out as easily as a candle flame.

Could a man will himself to die? He'd seen it happen more than once in West Africa but never really believed in it.

Now he wished he could.

His sister, Leticia, would call that arrant nonsense. After all, he didn't suffer in the same way that his brothers did. Not physical pain.

He could have borne that.

It was not knowing what to do that haunted him.

London, Late May, 1920

Before leaving the next morning to give evidence in a court case in Sheffield, Ian Rutledge had taken his sister, Frances, to dine at a new and popular restaurant. There they encountered friends just arriving as well and on the point of being shown to a table. They were invited to join the other party, and as new arrangements were made, Rutledge made certain that his own chair remained at what had become the head of a larger table. His claustrophobia after being buried alive when a shell blew up his salient in 1916 had never faded. Even four years later, he couldn't abide a crowded room or train, and something as ordinary as a chair in a corner, with others-even good friends-between him and the door could leave him shaken. Frances, unaware of her brother's irrational fear, was already enjoying herself, and he watched her flirt with Maryanne Browning's cousin, an attractive man named Geoffrey Blake. She had met him before, and as they caught up on events and old friends, Rutledge heard someone mention Meredith Channing. He himself had called on Mrs. Channing not ten days earlier, to thank her for a recent kindness, only to find that she was away.

Now Blake was saying, "She's in Wales, I think."

And Barbara Westin turned to him, surprised. "Wales? I'd understood she was on her way to Norfolk."

Someone at the other end of the table put in, "Was it Norfolk?"

Frances said, "I don't think I've seen her in a fortnight. Longer…"

"Doesn't she visit her brother-in-law around this time of year?" Ellen Tyler asked.

"Brother-in-law?" Rutledge repeated.

"Yes, he lives in the north, I believe," Ellen replied. "He went back to Inverness at the end of the war. Apparently he was sufficiently recovered to travel."

"A back injury," Alfred Westin put in. "His ship was blown up and he held on to a lifeboat for two days before they were picked up. A brave man and a stubborn one. He was in hospital for seven months. But he's walking again, I heard, albeit with canes now. He was here in the spring, for the memorial concert."

Rutledge remembered: in early spring he'd spotted Meredith Channing trying to hail a cab just as a rainstorm broke, and he'd stopped to offer her a lift. She had said something about a concert. St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

"I'm surprised she hasn't married him," Ellen Tyler went on. "Her brother-in-law, I mean. He's been in love with her for ages."

"Speaking of love, have you seen the announcement of Constance Turner's engagement in the Times? I am so pleased for her. She deserves a little happiness." Barbara smiled. "But wouldn't you know-another flier."

Rutledge had known Constance Turner's husband. Medford Turner had died of severe burns in early 1916, after crashing at the Front. He'd been pulled from his aircraft by a French artillery company that had risked intense flames to get to him. Rutledge and his men had watched that dogfight, before both planes had disappeared down the line. He hadn't known it was Turner at the time, only that the English pilot had shown amazing skill.