Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

Once out of bed he felt slightly awkward, although Mary seemed completely at home, both with him and with the acceleration of their relationship. He'd intended to make breakfast but by the time he had washed and shaved she had already puled the bed together, gathered up their discarded clothes off the floor, cooked scrambled eggs on toast and made a pot of tea. She was walking around in his dressing gown. He picked up a piece of hot bacon between his fingers. They had eaten nothing the evening before and he was famished.

'This is a good thing that's come out of al this unhappiness,' she said, her knife and fork clattering on the plate. 'One realy good thing. Us finding each other.'

He looked at her but didn't speak. He was happier than he could remember being in ten years but despite it al he felt an underlying disquiet.

When he returned from seeing her off at the station, the flat seemed quiet without her, yet it stil held echoes of her presence. He felt calm and hopeful. He was able to settle to work for most of the day. For the first time he could see that he might write his book and return to teaching. Al the while he deliberately left the washing-up, the two plates, two teacups, two knives and teaspoons, on the side.

Chapter Thirty-four

Charles's disappointment at finding that Laurence had dealt with Chilvers by himself was palpable. As a result, he insisted on accompanying him around during his next day's errands. Despite Laurence's half-hearted protestations that it would be too cold and too boring for Charles to drive him to the Bolithos', he was glad to have him as a chauffeur. Charles could even take him on to see Mrs Lovel, leave him there and stil have time to see his tailor as he'd apparently planned, while Laurence could go on to Fleet Street by bus. He had woken up determined to catch Brabourne at the paper at the end of the day.

First, however, he wanted to show the photograph to the Bolithos and Mrs Lovel. Even if they didn't recognise Edmund Hart, that would at least clearly exclude him from certain places and events. Tomorrow he intended to show it to Major Calogreedy, although he hoped to avoid Leonard Byers. Dr Chilvers could wait a week or so.

Before Charles started the car, Laurence handed the photograph to his friend without speaking.

'And this is?'

'You don't know?'

'Presumably it's Hart?' He shot a look at Laurence. 'Poor bugger. But no, I didn't know him, I'm glad to say.'

They reached the Bolithos' house at three. As he hadn't warned them he was coming, Laurence went in alone, leaving Charles in the car. For once Eleanor seemed as pleased to see him as Wiliam was. She took him into the sitting room, and there, playing with a toy car, was Nicholas, who looked up curiously as Laurence came in. He stood up, knocking over a line of painted toy soldiers as he did so. One roled under a chair; another was clasped in his smal hand. The boy's sturdy legs emerged from corduroy shorts, his socks had falen down and he wore a blue cardigan that emphasised the colour of his eyes. Laurence bent and picked up the car.

'Aha, an Alvis. Now, if you look out of the window you'l see a big one.'

Nicholas ran to the window. Eleanor lifted him on to a chair where he could gaze out at Charles's car parked in the street. Laurence watched him for a few seconds. He had the shape of John's brow and chin, yet his eyes were unquestionably Eleanor's. But above al, Nicholas Bolitho was simply himself, pointing and chattering away excitedly.

While Eleanor held Nicholas up to see the Alvis, Laurence spoke to Wiliam.

'I'm sorry to rush in and out,' he said, 'but I simply wanted to see if you recognised a photograph. A man caled Edmund Hart.'

He saw that Eleanor had her eyes on them, even as she was responding to her son. Wiliam nodded, took the picture, looked at it in silence and finaly shook his head.

'I don't think so. I'm pretty certain not, but of course there were so many faces. And because of the blanket you can't see what regiment he is in here.'

'He wasn't there when the trench colapsed?'

'No. Not that I saw.'

Eleanor came over, leaving Nicholas with his face pressed to the windowpane. Laurence scanned her face closely as she took the picture from her husband, but she gave no indication that she recognised the man in the photograph, though she took longer than Wiliam to shake her head.

'I was wondering if I'd nursed him,' she said. 'For a minute I thought it was a boy I'd cared for in France. But there were so many who looked like this.

Schoolboys.' She tipped it to the light. 'Sorry. No. Anyway, I would have remembered the name—when I was at Cambridge just before the war I toiled for hours over King Lear. I'd remember an Edmund.' She looked up at Laurence. 'Is he the one?'

'I'm afraid so.'

Eleanor's first reaction was to look over at her son, stil kneeling on a chair, staring into the street, one smal hand stil clutching a solitary red guardsman. When she turned back she had tears in her eyes.

He felt embarrassed at marching in and then leaving so abruptly, and he would have liked a chance to see more of Nicholas, but he didn't want to arrive at Gwen Lovel's house too late or miss Brabourne at his office. He wished he'd taken Brabourne's home address.

When he left, Eleanor brought Nicholas down to see Charles's car. Charles shook her hand in greeting and then swung the little boy into the passenger seat.

Although Nicholas's lower lip wobbled for a moment, he was smiling within seconds as Charles flicked switches on and off. Eleanor looked chily; she wrapped her arms around herself and took her eyes off her son only briefly.

'Laurie,' she said, in a low voice, leaning towards him. 'It was one thing to tel you a secret of my own after I'd judged you could keep it but there's something else I ought to tel you if you want to understand John. Because it's someone else's secret, I hope you can give me your word, even though it involves someone you know, that it wil go no further?'

Laurence could only nod agreement to her solemn entreaty. Her glance flickered to her son and Charles, tactfuly engrossed in the dashboard.

'John loved his father very much—you may have gathered. But when he was stil a boy—thirteen or fourteen—he discovered a letter from his grandfather to his mother in his father's gunroom, of al places. It was hidden; he was young and curious. I don't know the exact contents but it made it clear that Mrs Emmett had had an affair in which she conceived her daughter. The father of Mrs Emmett's child was John's grandfather, Mr Emmett Senior.'

Laurence was stunned for a minute. 'But I gathered the older Emmetts were against the marriage?' he said.

'Wel, unsurprisingly, if Emmett Senior was in love with his prospective daughter-in-law he didn't want his son marrying her. But there was no living grandmother. John's mother had been a housekeeper to his widowed grandfather and probably rather more.'

'Good God.'

'She married, impulsively, her family thought, then had a child who died in infancy. Born prematurely, John said, but it makes you wonder who its father was.

Then she had John, unequivocaly his father's son, the letter confirmed...'

Laurence was glad of that, remembering the bond between the two.

'And then at some point soon after that the marriage evidently cooled and the relationship with John's grandfather resumed. She bore him a daughter—Mary.

John's father was not Mary's father.'

'How dreadful for John finding out, though. Did he tel his father he knew?'

'No. Impossible. But it was a terrible burden for a young boy to bear. It ruined his relationship with his mother.'

And his sister, Laurence thought. The living evidence of what had gone wrong with their family. He was certain Mary did not know. Did the maternal grandparents know or suspect? Was that why al their money had been left to John?