Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

He didn't know how to respond. He didn't want to tel her she had no idea. That he, at least, couldn't put the past into words, not that he wouldn't. His heart was beating erraticaly.

'So do you have secrets tucked away? Do all you men have secrets?' she asked almost angrily.

He wanted to say, 'Do you?' but instead he said, 'Yes, of course I do.' Then he found himself blurring his truth. 'Everybody has secret bits of their life, I suppose.' He tried to stop it sounding too much like an accusation.

She nodded almost imperceptibly, suddenly calmer. 'Was it al realy, realy awful? Out there?'

'No. Some of it was boring. Some of it was funny. Living in a cottage with two other subalterns and a French family: the mother giving birth noisily upstairs while we ate sausages and lentils. Some of it was plain ludicrous. There were two men in my platoon, and every time we seemed settled for more than a week, they'd start growing vegetables. And rhubarb. A year or so later we passed through the vilage again and the rhubarb was thriving—the only thing that was, amid the ruins. Nearly al of it was uncomfortable. Some people enjoyed bits of it, especialy at first. My friend Charles; he was a natural. He was good at it. His men respected him. He liked his men. I liked mine. Most of them. But we both had an easy war compared with some.'

He had a sudden image of a soldier beaming at him. It was Polock, the fat man, khaki uniform straining. There never was such a man for belching. He could do it to 'God Save the King'. The men counted on his last lucky belch each time they went over the top.

She sat quietly for a while, gazing at the closed pamphlet. Eventualy she said, 'I'm glad in a way we have that list of bird-watching. That's a long time after the worst of it. So at least I know that he didn't always feel as wretched and raging as he was when he came back. This,' she picked up the list, 'is a John I recognise. Look, he can even joke about not throwing himself in the river. He's simply glad to be alive. I think he is, at last, I realy do.'

'Yes.' Strangely, his own reaction to glimpsing this hour of pleasure was sadness.

'But come the winter, it al goes wrong.'

He couldn't decide whether to tel her of his faint disquiet about John's death. What he and Charles might have found plausible after a good dinner was too far-fetched to be presented as real speculation, although it didn't realy seem to make much difference. Mary had stil lost her only brother. Unless you were a policeman, the need to reveal and avenge murder was reduced almost to a philosophical enquiry after the losses of the last years.

Chapter Twenty-one

While Laurence was muling over Tucker's intentions and paying the bil, Mary's mood seemed to shift. She took his arm as they walked into the street.

'Have you ever gone to the films? I suppose you have, living in London?'

Laurence shook his head. 'Not recently,' he said. The only films he'd seen were flickering newsreels at HQ. 'Would you like to, next time, perhaps?'

'I'd love that,' said Mary. 'I saw Lilian Gish a while back, in The Greatest Thing in Life, and she was beautiful and funny. Or we could go to a play?

Heartbreak House might be more your thing. More serious.'

Laurence relaxed into Mary's easy assumption that she knew what he'd like. He clamped his arm down a little so that her hand was caught between his upper arm and his ribs. He looked sideways at her, half hidden under the rim of her dark-red hat. She returned his gaze, apparently amused.

When they arrived at the station, there was an unexpectedly large crowd by the platform. Laurence pushed himself to the front to speak to the stationmaster.

'No train,' he said when he'd fought his way back to her. 'There's been a landslip. Nothing until tomorrow. Do you want me to arrange for you to be put up at a hotel? Or can you go to your cousin?'

'My cousin's about to produce her fourth baby,' said Mary. 'I realy don't think I could pitch up unannounced.'

To Laurence's relief she didn't look particularly bothered.

'Isn't your mother going to be worried?'

'No. She and Aunt Virginia are in Buxton. They're taking the waters in the hope it might help my mother's rheumatism.'

They had turned away from the platform. After a long silence, Mary said hurriedly, 'Look, would it be possible, say if it wouldn't, if I came back with you?' She looked slightly embarrassed.

'Yes. Of course. I just thought you wouldn't realy want to. It's not terribly comfortable.' He was worrying that it might not be terribly clean, either.

'No, that's fine. More than fine. Anyway I'd love to see where you live. There's a limit to the appeal of teashops.'

He was about to tel her that she would have to sleep in his bed, and that he was quite happy to sleep in an armchair, but didn't want her to think his mind had raced ahead to the sleeping arrangements.

They stopped and bought roasted chestnuts on a street corner; the man who huddled over the glowing coals was wearing his campaign medals on his coat.

Cradling the smal, warm bags in their hands, they caught a bus that took them right up to Bloomsbury. Mary insisted she didn't want anything else to eat.

The house was in darkness but, as they climbed the first flight of stairs, the door to his neighbour's flat opened. Laurence stopped dead, placing his hand on Mary's forearm.

'Good evening,' said his neighbour, his unkempt bulk filing the doorway. He looked Mary up and down.

'Ah ... this is a friend of mine: Miss Emmett.'

'Yes. I see.'

'Was there anything?' Laurence began.

'No. I was just going out.' His neighbour stayed watching them as they climbed up to the next floor.

'Sorry,' Laurence said as soon as they were in his flat and he had lit the fire. 'Perfectly harmless. But something a bit odd about him.'

Mary looked amused. 'It's al right. He was just awkward in the way men are who live by themselves for years.'

She slapped her hand across her mouth.

'There I go again, piling on one insult after another. I hope you know I don't mean you.'

'One of your droopy widowers who, having the misfortune to be living a single life, has falen into unsavoury habits?'

'You know I don't think that and I certainly don't mean you.' She lightly batted her fists on his chest.

He looked at her. Her eyes were only a little lower in level than his, grey-green and clear. Her smile faded a little and her lips parted almost imperceptibly. He held her gently by the upper arms, locking her gaze for what seemed like a minute but was probably no time at al, and then let her go. She looked away, apparently confused.

Laurence went through to his bedroom, leaving Mary to warm herself by the fire.

'May I play the piano?' she asked.

'You can try,' he caled through, 'but it's probably unplayable. It hasn't been tuned since ... for ages.'

He knelt down by his bedroom wardrobe to see whether he had any spare linen at the bottom. He heard her open the piano lid and pul the stool closer. Then the stool lid opened and there was silence. He rocked back on his heels to peer through the doorway. She was standing, leafing through some sheet music, staring at it intently with her head bobbing. Then he realised she was hearing the music in her mind. She looked up, saw him gazing at her and laughed.

'Sorry, just trying to work out what I won't disgrace myself with.' She paused and indicated the front sheet. '"Louise Scudamore". Scudamore? Was that your wife? Was she good? At the piano?'

'She practised a lot,' said Laurence, remembering her playing rather heavily, leaning forward with a look of fraught concentration on her face and her nose screwed up. 'Her biggest trouble was that she needed spectacles.'