Sam Bourne - Pantheon

Anyway, she had not asked him. If she had wanted him at her side, she would have asked, and she had done no such thing. It would be humiliating to follow her to Berlin, trotting after her like a devoted little spaniel.

He looked upward, watching the red and yellow of the People’s Olympiad banner come down, replaced by a flag of deepest red, and let himself fill up with the sensations he had felt earlier: the call of liberty, the demand of justice, the imperative that all those who were fit and able fight the good fight, saving the republic from those who would destroy it and much of civilization along with it. The void love had left in his heart would be filled by history.

Oxford, July 8 1940

James slid his key into the lock noiselessly. He always tried to be quiet on these early mornings, so as not to wake the baby. But there was the smell of human warmth in the hallway, suggesting Florence and Harry were already up. He called out, ‘Good morning!’ There was silence.

He wandered into the kitchen, noting that two of the three drawers were still open. Had they had to rush out for something? Had his son been ill while he was on the river? He called out again. ‘Harry? Daddy’s home.’

Once in the bedroom, his concern rose. Clothes were strewn over the floor, a chair from the bathroom dragged in front of his cupboard, whose door was flung wide open. His scrapbook was on the bed, several pictures shaken loose. Now James ran into his study, only to have his worst fears confirmed. The drawers were pulled from the desk, the floor covered with their contents along with dozens of books. There had been a robbery, just now, while he was out.

And yet the most valuable objects in the house, a pair of solid silver candlesticks, worth several years of his fellow’s salary — a wedding gift from her parents — were still sitting, untouched, on the mantelpiece. If they had been robbed, and if Florence had rushed from here to the police station to report it, a screaming Harry in tow, then the culprits must be the stupidest men in Oxford.

As he went back to the bedroom, a new thought began to form. He opened his wife’s cupboard and, while he could not have said exactly which items were missing, he could see that the shelves were unusually bare. A look under the bed confirmed that the suitcase was gone.

Now his head began to throb. He ran into Harry’s bedroom, looking for one thing. He went straight to the bed, pulled away the pillow and then tore off the blankets. No sign of Snowy, the boy’s toy polar bear. His place was always here, in Harry’s bed. If they went anywhere overnight, whether staying at the Walsinghams’ London home in Chelsea, as they had done a couple of times, or at the country house in Norfolk, Snowy always came with them. Harry couldn’t sleep without him. The fact that the bear was missing, even more than the absent suitcase, could mean only one thing.

Instantly and without conscious thought, James ran back into the hall and out of the front door, down the garden path and onto the wide, tree-lined road that was Norham Gardens. He looked left and then right, then left again: nothing, save for a large, heavy black car pulling away at the Banbury Road end of the street. All else was tranquil at this hour, the larger buildings opposite — once among the grandest houses in Oxford, but which were now often satellite buildings for assorted academic departments — were still locked up and empty, their gravel driveways undisturbed.

With no more reflection than before, he ran in the opposite direction, stopping just before Norham Gardens came to a dead-end at Lady Margaret Hall. The college porter, sweeping outside the front gate, lifted an arm in acknowledgement but James ignored him, instead turning hard right down a narrow pathway. This would lead to the University Parks. Would Florence have taken Harry here so early? Perhaps the boy had had a tantrum, perhaps he had developed that child’s version of cabin fever for which the only remedy was fresh air. But then why had the house been turned upside down and why was the suitcase missing?

James vaulted over the gate — officially this entrance was for members of Lady Margaret Hall only — into the wide, flat stretches normally green but now a dry, sun-scorched brown: ahead and to his right was a strip of turf the colour of a digestive biscuit. This was the Oxford University Cricket Club, still and dormant.

A flicker of movement to his left: a matronly woman with a headscarf, walking her dog. He scoped the horizon one more time, left to right and back again. There seemed to be no one else around. And certainly no sign of Florence and Harry.

He walked the short distance back but now it felt like a long trudge. It was becoming impossible to avoid the conclusion that Florence had not left the house for some early-morning exercise, nor because there had been a break-in, but because she had left him.

Back at the house he felt instantly mocked by the outward serenity of the scene: the creeping white roses around the front door, the low wall containing a small, pretty garden with its trim lawn and single chair. He could picture Florence and Harry sitting there, the boy on his mother’s knee, turning the pages of his illustrated edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. With one shove of his right arm, James sent the chair crashing to the ground.

Once inside, he went straight back to his wife’s wardrobe, standing closer this time, so that the scent of her rose from the few remaining clothes. He pulled out a drawer, now empty but for a few forlorn items: an old comb, a broken brooch. Her jewellery box was there. He opened it and saw that all the pieces he had given her — including the bracelet that was a gift to celebrate their reunion — were gone. He picked up the Japanese lacquerware box and, without thinking, hurled it against the far wall. The shattering sound provided a momentary shock of relief.

She had left him. She had left him, just as he had always feared she would. Who was it, he wondered? It could only be a much older man. All those his age or younger were at war. McGregor at the lab, working with her on ‘research’? Or that Fabian smoothie, what was his name? Leonard something.

He started running through all the possibilities, each time inflicting on himself the image of his wife in the arms of another, her mouth on his, her hair touching his shoulders…

Now he began pacing the house. How long had it been going on? How long had she been planning for this moment, never letting on a thing? Smiling at him, chatting away as if there was nothing out of the ordinary, when all the time she was scheming, preparing…

And to take little Harry with her, treating their son as if he were her personal property…

He could feel it returning, the sensation which these past three years had become as familiar to him as an old friend. He could almost hear it, like the first intimation of distant thunder or the tremor of an approaching underground train. It was building inside him, getting stronger with each beat, until it was rushing through his veins, a rage that could not be stopped. He could picture it too, hot and viscous as lava, a physical substance that, once stirred, would swell inside his body, surging forward, searching for escape. The rage controlled him now; it would brook no restraint until it had erupted. He was merely its vessel.

The terrible truth, that he had admitted only once and never to Florence, was that he did not loathe or despise this feeling. Instead, he greeted this molten fury when it came with something close to relief. For weeks on end he had to hold it all in, to speak calmly, to smile at acquaintances, to feign interest in students, to discuss cricket or Herodotus with some fossilized nonagenarian at high table. But when the fury came, it came with elemental force, a force that cared for nothing but his appetites, his fears and his rage. When James was in the grip of this anger, he did not care about the consequences of his actions or what the neighbours would think. He did not think at all. It made him free.