Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

He had it with him in France.

He looked again at her letter. Why had they lost touch? He supposed they had rapidly become different men on leaving school but the truth was that John had probably grown up more quickly than he had. Laurence remembered being surprised to hear that Emmett had joined as a volunteer at the beginning of the war. John was the last person to be swayed by popular excitement and at Oxford he liked to speak of himself as a European. The only jingoist in the Emmett family had been John's father, who toasted the King every evening and mistrusted the French, Germans and Londoners. Laurence thought, uncomfortably, of his own, discreditable motives for volunteering and hoped his friends would be equaly surprised if they knew that truth.

For a moment he felt a surprisingly intense sadness, the sort of emotion he could remember once feeling quite often. Now that odd, passionate schoolboy was gone, and, judging by the address on Mary's letter, so was the lovingly neglected house. John had been different when so many of them were so ordinary. Laurence counted himself among the ordinary sort. If the war hadn't come, they would al have become stout solicitors and brewers, doctors and cattle-breeders, with tolerant wives and children, most of them living in the same vilages, towns and counties they came from.

For much of the war Laurence had hung on to the idea that he would go back to the smal world he had been so eager to leave. Only when the end of the war seemed a possibility did life suddenly become precious and death a terrifying reality. Both he and John had returned, but now he knew that death had caught up with John and, moreover, by his own choice.

Laurence's second reaction as he read Mary Emmett's letter was a sinking feeling. He couldn't bring John back, nor could he tel her anything she wanted to hear, and he hadn't—as far as he knew—served near him in France. The truth was that he had heard nothing directly from his old school friend since they'd left Oxford.

At university they had effectively parted ways. John had gone into a different colege; his circle were clever men: writers, debaters, thinkers. Laurence had falen in with an easier set, who held parties and played games, thinking of little outside their own lives. Laurence had migrated to London, surrendered to the coffee trade and married Louise. John had apparently gone abroad to Switzerland, then Germany. Laurence had read his occasional reports in the London newspapers. They were usualy cameo pieces: Bavarian farmers struggling to make ends meet, the chocolate-smeling girls in a Berne factory or a veteran who had been Bismarck's footman. As tensions rose in Europe, he supposed John's smal contributions had slipped out of favour. During the war one of his poems had been published in a newspaper but apart from that his work had disappeared from view.

Laurence had nothing new to give Mary. He told himself that a visit to Cambridge would simply raise her hopes, and probably her mother's too. If she came to London he couldn't think where he could take her. But he couldn't forget the kindnesses shown by al the Emmetts when he was a lonely boy without any real family of his own.

Dressing for dinner with Charles, he took out his cufflinks and there nestling beside them was the little ivory-handled penknife. That decided him. He was deluding himself that any kind of book was taking shape and a few days away from stifling London could do no harm. But as he walked through the London streets to dinner, it was Mary's conspiratorial and almost forgotten smile which occupied his mind.

'But why the hel didn't you tel me?' he asked Charles later, as they sat back in deep armchairs, nursing their port.

Charles coughed, loud enough to make two men sitting across the room look up. His stil-boyish face flushed with embarrassment. 'Unforgivable. I was in Scotland when I heard. My cousin Jack's place. Damn cold. Then I forgot.'

'Why did he do it?' Laurence asked himself as much as Charles.

'Usual thing, I suppose. France? Seems to have taken some men like that. Mind you,' Charles reflected, 'he was home when the West Kents realy took a pounding. Back in England—smashed leg, something like that. Must have avoided the whole scrap. Perhaps he felt he didn't deserve the luck.'

Charles seemed to have regarded his military service as a bit of a lark. He'd embraced war as an escape from destiny in the form of the successful family leather factories and he flourished in the infantry. He had escaped death, serious injury or ilness for three grueling years and had been mentioned in despatches twice by the time the war ended.

They both fel quiet. Laurence gazed at the flare of copper chrysanthemums in the fireplace. Eventualy Charles broke the silence.

'Look, I'm sorry I didn't fil you in about Emmett. I know he was a joly close friend at school but then the Harcourts didn't make it either, nor did Sorely and that odd chap Greaves you liked so much, and that Scot—what was he caled—with the terrible temper. The one who joined the RFC? It's not as if we'd al been in touch and I rather thought you'd had enough of talking about that kind of thing. You know, with Louise and everything. No-go area and al that.' He reddened again.

'Lachlan. It was Lachlan Ramsay who had the temper,' said Laurence quickly. 'But yes, I did admire John. His odd courage; his independence. What may have happened after the war doesn't alter that. It's a shame.' He paused. 'Quite honestly, I wish I could say he was my friend, but he wasn't, not realy. Friendly, while we were at school, but not a friend. Hardly even that at Oxford. A few words if we'd met in the street, no more.'

As he spoke, one of the two older men who had sat across the room from them got up to leave. His companion rose to folow him. Charles, who had been glancing in their direction for the last half-hour, jumped up from his chair and went over to shake the first man's hand, and was then introduced to the other. The slightly younger man had a distinguished and inteligent face, the older one a slightly stiff military bearing.

As Charles sat down again he looked pleased. 'You know who they were, of course?'

Laurence never knew who anybody was, however eagerly Charles assumed that figures who loomed large in his own life were as significant in anyone else's.

'Gerald Somers,' Charles said triumphantly, and then when Laurence failed to respond quickly enough: 'Major general. Zulu wars. Boer scrap. Mafeking.

Enough medals for a jubilee. A real hero, not just medals for other men's courage. Of course you know who he is, Laurence. Mind you, he's not so popular with the powers that be now. Got some very unfashionable views on military discipline.'

Simply to be left in peace Laurence nodded. 'Of course.' These ageing generals loved their hanging and flogging, he thought wearily.

'Wel, they can't say much. Not to his face. Career like that and gave both his sons to his country. The other man was Philip Morrel. Used to be an MP. I'm surprised you didn't recognise him, Laurence. Though he's a Liberal, of course. His wife is Lady Ottoline, sister of the Duke of Portland. You know. Bohemians.

Absolutely terrifying.'

Laurence had at least heard of the Morrels and their circle, so felt able to nod. 'Absolutely. But why would Mary write to me?' he added.

Although even as he said it, he realised Charles was right—attrition had been high among their school friends. In the aftermath of the last few years, her choice was limited.

***

When he got in, Laurence sat down to write to Mary Emmett. He kept it brief, just his condolences and a gentle warning that he doubted he could throw any light on anything, but would visit as soon as she wanted. Then, with a sense of urgency—her letter had taken eight weeks to find him—he went out into the dark to post it.