Sam Bourne - Pantheon

Finally, the car slowed. They were on a narrow lane, where a break in the hedge indicated a path leading to a house. James paid the driver and stared for a second, taking two long, deep breaths. He was bracing himself for a terror that surpassed anything war had thrown at him. What if the fear that had tortured him just now was about to be realized? What if there was something worse? What if they were not there?

He feared his legs might collapse beneath him as he took first one step and then another. In front of him was a beautiful farmhouse, the white clapboard glowing in the dipping evening sunshine. It was flanked on all sides by apple and pear trees, scenting the air with a sticky fragrance. It was, James understood, just the kind of place Florence loved.

Girding himself, he knocked on the door and waited. Silence at first and then the sound of footsteps on wooden floorboards, a woman’s. He knew instinctively it was not Florence: too heavy, too slow. The door opened to reveal a black woman wearing a maid’s uniform.

James said his name, though all that emerged was a croak. At that moment, he wondered if he would ever have the strength to speak again.

And then he heard the sound of wheels turning on the wooden floor, toy wheels, small and rattling. He looked behind the maid and saw it inch into view, emerging from a side corridor, a wooden truck pushed along by an infant hand. And then a face — the round face of a little boy, the hair the colour of English chestnuts, the eyes wide and deep.

‘Harry?’

The boy looked up, his brow furrowed for a second in confusion.

‘Harry, it’s Daddy!’

The two moved towards each other at such speed they nearly collided. James took his son in his arms, lifting him and enfolding him in a single motion, closing his eyes as he felt Harry’s hair tickling his skin, savouring the smell of him, the warmth of his solid little body. And when he felt a dampness on his cheeks, he held the boy apart from him so that he could stop the child’s tears. Only then did he realize that it was he, not his son, who was crying.

He kept his eyes closed, his head bent over Harry’s. How long he stood like this, he did not know. Then, as if in a dream, he heard someone say his name.

Just one word, but it flooded through him. Raising his head, he opened his eyes to see her there, in the centre of the hallway, as tall and proud as he had remembered her. Her skin was browner, her eyes older, but it was her.

Florence.

She looked as if a bomb had gone off, her face stunned and frozen. James moved towards her, with Harry in his arms. ‘Florence,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’

Florence did not come to him, but hesitated. She moved slowly, as if she were approaching a dangerous animal. James wondered if it was the way he looked, if the beating on the train, along with the pain of the last month, had turned him into an object of terror to his wife. She glanced to her side, ‘You can go home now, Ethel,’ she told the maid.

The woman collected her things, passed him, mumbling a goodbye — and still Florence stood there, watching him warily.

With Harry in the crook of his arm, James stepped forward and slid his free arm around her. Her body was stiff, uncertain. Still, he drank in long draughts of the smell of her, the scent taking him back in an instant to Norham Gardens, to the college gardens, to Madrid, to Barcelona, to every moment they had ever known together. He could feel them both, Harry and Florence, alive and in his arms.

And then, what seemed an eternity later, he felt her tremble, her body quaking quietly and gently. Her head buried in his chest, she was sobbing. Florence, who never cried. He moved to stroke her hair — but she sprung back from him.

‘When I heard the motor car outside, I thought it was him. I thought he had come back. I thought you were him.’ Her eyes were bright with fear. ‘But then you knocked. And why would he knock on the door of his own house?’

‘Florence. It’s all right.’ Suddenly he noticed a suitcase in the hall, the same one his wife had taken three weeks ago.

She saw him looking at it. ‘We were about to get away. Ethel was going to help me.’

‘You wanted to escape?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you weren’t here because-’ James put Harry down. ‘You weren’t here because you were… with him?’

She recoiled. ‘No, of course not. James, I could never-’

‘Because it’s taken me so long to find you, Florence. It’s been so hard to find you.’

‘But you never wrote to me. Not one letter. All the other mothers-’

‘He had my letters blocked. I wrote to you every day, sometimes three times a day. I wrote to you on the ship coming over here. He blocked them, Florence.’

Now she took Harry from him. ‘I thought you had decided to forget us, that you didn’t forgive me for leaving you like that. What else was I to think?’

James stepped forward, getting closer to his wife. ‘Why are you in this house, Florence? Why are you in his house?’

She blinked, a gesture of disbelief that her husband was actually there in front of her, that they were in the same room, hearing each other’s voices, no longer thousands of miles apart. ‘The day they allocated us to foster families, they said we would be rooming with the Dean’s elderly mother, at the official residence.’

‘On St Ronan Street?’

‘How do you…’ She regarded him curiously, then shook her head, dismissing the question, for now, at least. ‘But the mother never appeared.’

‘So you lived there with him?’

‘It wasn’t like that. The residence is enormous. There were staff living there. We had our own quarters; he respected our privacy. He bought a swing for Harry. As a temporary solution, I thought it would be all right.’

‘And when did you move here? Don’t tell me: I bet it was Monday.’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact. It was. How do-?’

‘Because that’s when I turned up at McAndrew’s office looking for you. Surely you suspected something, Florence?’

‘It was nearly August. Yale was almost deserted. It didn’t seem odd that the Dean would want to move to his summer-house. And I thought it would be good for Harry to be in the countryside.’

‘And were you together, the three of you? Like a little family?’

Florence looked at James, then lowered the child. ‘Harry, why don’t you show Snowy his favourite cherry tree?’ The boy turned to give his father a smile, then skipped off towards the garden.

She spoke quietly. ‘Preston started… taking an interest. Asking me about my research, having Ethel prepare dinner for us after Harry was in bed.’

‘Dinner? What, just the two of you?’

‘Yes. When he heard that I’d had no letters from you-’

‘“Heard”! I like that. He bloody arranged — ’

‘I didn’t know that then. He came over so sympathetic. He started telling me that if he had a wife as “intelligent” and “radiant” as me, he would never let her out of his grasp.’

‘The bastard…’

‘Just listen. He told me he had never married because he had never found the right mate. That was the word he kept using. Mate.’

James knew where this was heading. His hatred of this man was growing harder and colder.

Florence went on. ‘Then something strange happened. He asked if I ever drank. I told him that I had the occasional glass of wine. He told me to stop. He said alcohol was disastrous, that it ruined the eggs of a woman and the sperm of a man.’

James suddenly had an image of the Dean in his study, pouring those full glasses of warming, amber whisky. He had been happy enough to drink then… Except now James could see it: McAndrew regularly raising the glass to his lips, but never actually drinking from it. He was keeping himself in impeccable condition, just waiting for the right ‘mate’.