Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

He looked back at her and her gaze didn't waver. She walked on into the tiny sculery and ran herself a glass of water. He loved watching her take his rooms for granted.

'It was the war,' she said as she came back through the door, 'and it was like nothing else. It complicated things. Not just for soldiers.'

He sensed she was pondering whether to continue.

'I wasn't honest with you,' she said finaly. 'Sins of omission and al that.'

His heart sank. He wasn't sure whether, after al this time, he wanted to know any secrets she'd been holding back.

'There was somebody.'

Laurence felt a terrible sadness, then simultaneously—and, he knew, demeaningly—a hope that the past tense meant just that.

'He was married,' she said, sitting down next to him on the floor, her back against a chair. 'It was a very unhappy marriage. Among other things, his wife found she couldn't have children. Very sad for them both. Although she found someone else, they were Catholic; hers was a very old recusant family so the world turned a blind eye. Richard found himself sort of in limbo. He loved the estate—just two farms and a beautiful Tudor house, though a very dilapidated, very cold house.'

She smiled, apparently in recolection, and Laurence's heart sank again.

'My father was dead. My mother, wel, you've seen her. She seldom thinks of anyone or anything outside the effort of just living her life. So there was nobody to inveigh against my unsuitable relationship.'

She looked straight at Laurence but he found it hard not to avoid her eyes, hoping she didn't mistake jealousy for disapproval.

'Nobody to tel me that my reputation would be besmirched or that I'd never find a decent husband. Of course we didn't know there'd be a war, but if we had, we'd probably just have seized the day.'

Although the grin she gave him was partly bravado, he thought, it made her look like a schoolgirl.

'Anyway, Richard was as much a husband as I can imagine any man being. Not at first, not for a long time—I was quite young, of course, and he was dreadfuly anxious about protecting me from scandal, whereas I didn't realy give a fig myself—but, in the end.'

Laurence desperately wanted to swalow but she was looking at him too closely. She seemed to be testing his response despite her apparent certainties.

'Anyway he stayed in the country in Sussex, in the old, cold house overlooking the Downs. He'd been born in that house. His wife, Blanche, lived in their flat in London. He was lonely but he loved the countryside. The cloud shadows over the hils, the foam of hawthorn in spring: he used to say the whole landscape echoed the sea. His house was a bit like an old ship, stranded inland. It was al faded reds and silver wood, overhanging upper storeys, barley-sugar chimneys.

'We met at the house of mutual friends one weekend. I think we each sensed loneliness in the other. We took to meeting just to walk and talk. Over the next months and years we must have explored the whole county in every season and every kind of weather. He liked the crumbling cliffs, the sea mists and the rattle of the sea on the shingle; he tried to go into the navy when he saw the way things were going, but it was quicker'—she grimaced—'and easier to get a commission in the army.

My own favourite place was the Long Man of Wilmington—a huge chalk figure with a stave in each hand—and a little medieval priory or something near by. A place of ancient peace. I often go back there now.'

Laurence felt the tiny satisfaction of incorporating another bit of her life into his understanding of her. This was the scandal Charles had spoken of and also why he had bumped into her in Sussex. He wanted to ask the identity of the man she had met but not introduced him to at the Wigmore Hal, but it stil wasn't the right moment.

'I expect people talked,' she said. 'But it was a long, long time until he asked me if I would consider being his. He was such an extraordinarily decent man. He told me he could never offer me marriage. Never bring me to his house as its chatelaine. Not in his wife's lifetime. That people might despise us and we would have to be terribly careful not to have a child. But he loved me. He loved me and I loved him, so it was an easy decision. And I was never happier.' She stopped. 'Do you think the less of me?' she said almost triumphantly.

'Of course not,' he said. His chest hurt with it.

'Wel, it's different now. Since the war. These times we live in. But it was a bigger thing then. My mother wouldn't speak to me when the penny dropped. Not for about three weeks. Which is ages in her book.' Her lips twitched and a smal dimple showed that she was trying not to smile.

'What happened to him?' asked Laurence. 'Was he lost in the war?'

'Yes.' Her animated face seemed to freeze.

Then, seeming to think this inadequate information, she added, At Vimy Ridge. Just a tiny piece of shrapnel. A lethal sliver of hot metal burning its way through his brain. He wasn't touched otherwise.' She seemed momentarily lost. 'He was very ... beautiful,' she said.

Her head was resting on his shoulder. He stroked her hair with his right hand and absent-mindedly tucked a strand behind her ear. She turned her face towards him just as his arm gave way and they both fel to the floor. He was more or less on his back, rubbing his arm to restore circulation. She pushed herself up to a half-sitting position, leaning over him. For a second she just looked at him. The fire popped. Then she reached out and dragged a cushion off the chair, putting it behind his head. The top of her own was framed by the window and the light of the sinking sun iluminated individual hairs like fine copper wires. He puled her towards him and kissed her. It was clumsy, the adjustment of unfamiliar bodies. Her mouth was little and controled at first and then became softer as he kissed her. His hand curved round the back of her neck and he moved it downwards, feeling the depressions of her colarbone, sliding under the neckline of her dress with his fingertips.

She puled away slightly but stil lay with the top of her body over his. Her eyes were grey and solemn, her eyelashes surprisingly dark. He noticed she had tiny freckles on her nose, so faint he had never seen them before. He watched himself touch her. She had looked so boyish, yet felt al curves and pliancy in his arms. This time she kissed him.

'This isn't about Richard,' she said after a long time. 'It isn't even about John. It's certainly not about Louise or the war or either of us feeling sorry for the other one. It's just about you and me.'

She traced his lips with her fingers. She was smiling.

Many hours later he woke in bed feeling cold. It was just light and at some point in the night they'd moved from the floor to his bed. Mary was nestled, fast asleep, between him and the wal, with his arm under her neck and her back curved into him, but the blanket had barely covered them both and his naked shoulders were cold.

He propped himself up awkwardly on one elbow and looked down at her. His fingers hovered over her ear; although he longed to touch her, he didn't want to wake her up. Her curls lay flat against her cheek. He felt a charge of happiness. It was as if the intensity of his gaze reached her because suddenly she gave a sigh, turning over and nearly knocking him out of bed. He held on to her and her eyes opened. She blinked a couple of times.

'Ooh, you're cold. You'd better kiss me.'

'Such self-sacrifice,' he said, puling her towards him.

She smeled warm and musky. His hand folowed the contours of her neck and shoulder. Moving to her breast he was filed with joy as wel as desire when he felt her nipple harden again beneath his fingers.

It was nearly lunchtime when they finaly got up. As she sat on the edge of the bed she picked up his copy of The Jungle Book. He was about to justify it being there when she said, 'I love these stories. I've stil got mine. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was my favourite. That's why I kept a ferret; it was the nearest I could get to a mongoose in Suffolk.'