Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett

Laurence turned as Bolitho reached out to shake him by the hand. It was a strong grip that matched the strength of character in the man's face. Bolitho had caught the direction of Laurence's gaze.

'It's Braque,' he said. 'Wel, not a Braque, obviously, but a copy.' Then he went on, 'It's very good to meet you.'

Laurence sat down in a deep chair opposite Wiliam. They talked for a while about nothing particularly significant, although Laurence was trying to gauge the man and suspected Wiliam was doing much the same with him, until Eleanor suggested they move through for luncheon. He tried not to look shocked when she removed a blanket, revealing one of Wiliam's legs apparently ending at the knee, the trouser neatly pinned up, and no sign of the other limb at al. She helped Wiliam into a wheelchair, bracing it with her foot, while he swung himself over.

'Can I help?' Laurence asked, although it was obviously a practised routine.

'No, no it's fine,' said Wiliam. 'Most chaps in my situation sit in the wheelchair most of the day but I get damn bored. I prefer to move about.'

Eleanor pushed the chair through double doors to the smal dining room where a table was laid near the window.

Any fear he'd had that the meeting would be gloomy and difficult was dispersed over a simple meal of cold meats, boiled potatoes, sweet pickled beetroot and a blackcurrant fool. The Bolithos were excelent hosts and the affection between them was tangible. Wiliam had been an architect before the war, he told Laurence, and stil hoped that he might find a job that would alow him to work again. Laurence glanced at his wife whose face was one of determined good cheer as her husband spoke.

'I was trained in Glasgow and studied in Vienna. There's so much I'd like to be part of—so much happening in architecture that's exciting, innovative...' His face lit up with enthusiasm. 'It's difficult, of course, but with al the new building in London I'm keeping my ears open. I write letters, I keep up with my reading and so on.'

He indicated a pile of journals on a table. 'Eleanor says it can be only a matter of time.'

'Sadly,' she said, 'they're as short of young architects now as they are of so many other professional men.'

Apparently ignoring her earnestness, Wiliam looked over his shoulder, his waving fork indicating the room and the painting behind them.

Alternatively, I do feel I might have a good future in forging Braques,' he said. 'Cubism seems to invite it, realy.'

An hour or more went by without Laurence realy noticing time pass but it was long enough for him to realise, as he had with Mary, that he was quite useless in controling the direction of a conversation. He let it find its own level. Eleanor held forth on the prospect of the Independent Labour Party ever winning an election. Her enthusiasm and inteligence were infectious and Wiliam, who must have heard it al before, looked on with evident pleasure. Laurence found himself teling them about his teaching and his reservations about the book he was writing.

'But obviously you want to talk about John Emmett's wil?' Wiliam said eventualy, with no embarrassment. 'Wel, one of the things we were able to do with his bequest was to buy a gramophone.' He looked towards the corner. 'Tidy, isn't it?' As Laurence folowed his glance, Wiliam added, 'I expect you're wondering where the horn is. You see, it's got a pleated diaphragm instead, it's the latest thing. I first saw it out in France, as we had one in the mess at HQ. A friend has just sent me Beethoven's complete works. They've just been recorded.' He picked up a couple of crimson-centred records and carefuly slipped them out of their brown-paper covers. 'Beautiful. And Bach as wel. There's much more interest in him these days. About time too.' He looked completely happy, Laurence thought. 'Frankly, Emmett's bequest changed our lives. The sum he left us surprised us both.'

'It was being able to move here, you see,' said Eleanor. Just fleetingly she sounded defensive. 'It wasn't al about luxuries, however welcome.' She smiled at her husband and then turned to Laurence. 'We realy wanted more room; with the wheelchair you need more space to manoeuvre—you can imagine. We were in Bayswater, but it was smal and Wiliam was a prisoner if he was on his own, and then there was Nicholas.' Laurence must have looked puzzled because she went on,

'Our son. He's nearly three now.'

Laurence tried not to let his surprise show on his face. Eleanor laughed.

'The flat seems a lot smaler with him around; he's never stil for a minute. Today he's at my sister-in-law's near by with his little cousins.'

She got up to carry the plates through to the kitchen and caled back, 'Moving here, living near her, has made a huge difference to us al. She's a widow—my brother Max was kiled at Cambrai. Now we can al start again.'

Laurence looked at Wiliam and saw a handsome man with thick, light-brown hair, which was just beginning to turn grey around his ears; the first lines of middle age only gave his face more expression. Any pity Laurence had felt for him on arrival had long subsided.

After they'd finished lunch, and Eleanor had left to fetch their son, the two men settled back in the drawing room. Wiliam took out his pipe and held it in his hand without lighting it.

'You were a close friend of John Emmett's, then?'

'Wel, the thing is, I wasn't a particular friend of his,' Laurence began. 'I was while we were at school, I suppose, but I'd hardly heard from him since; in fact I didn't even know he'd died until his sister—Mary—contacted me. It's just that his family were very kind to me when I was young and so I thought I might help them a bit by trying to find out more about his state of mind.'

'No letter, I gather? Or so the solicitor told us.'

Laurence shook his head.

'Hard. I'm unlikely to add to what you probably know already but I can tel you it was damned odd hearing about the bequest and, of course, hearing it with the news of his suicide.'

'But you saved his life, didn't you?' said Laurence. He wondered how Wiliam felt now that the life he saved had been thrown away.

'Not realy. In fact, not at al. I just happened to be there. Anyone would have done the same. They did, in fact.'

Laurence recognised English diffidence. No doubt he would have explained it like that too.

'It was in the run-up to the Somme. He was in a covered trench just outside Albert. It was an old one that had been blown in a while back and was being redug. They knew their stuff, those sappers. Though the chap in charge of the sector had come across from HQ at the time because there was some question of whether the earthworks were viable at al. Rightly, as it turned out.

'Emmett had gone down there with a corporal and two other men who were stringing up some cables. It was probably rotten wood that did it. We'd run out of decent material for revetment by then and we were reusing timbers that had been waterlogged. It had been hot and dry for weeks and I suspect the wood had simply dried out too quickly, even underground. You know what it was like.'

Laurence nodded.

'Anyway,' Wiliam went on, 'I was just standing there in the sunshine, glad it was al quiet. I can remember it exactly because one of the men had just brought me a flint arrowhead. The whole river valey was ful of Iron Age remains. Every time we dug, these things were turning up—stone axes sometimes. Everyone knew I colected them so if they found any odd-looking bits they brought them over. I've stil got some.' He waved at a cabinet against the far wal. 'This one was tiny but a beauty; you could see where it had been chipped around the edge as if it had been done yesterday. Perfect. When, bang, there's this God-awful crack and a few seconds of dul rumbling under the feet, and the tunnel's gone. A great puff of dirt comes back out of it, smeling of damp and worse things, to be honest. That damn awful smel.