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It was a fair question. The Captain was scrutinising my unsmiling face; trying to trace that hostility to its source. He hadn’t come here expecting this. I suppose he’d presumed the manner of my exit from his house hadn’t quite paved the way for plain unfriendliness.
I thought for a moment he might be imagining that I was trying to send him away without talking to the policeman because I was afraid of betraying that I was actually a party to the bald man’s actions. The Captain’s own features were carrying a question. But when his mouth finally moulded itself into speech, it wasn’t to announce his departure or add fuel to my increasing sense of isolation. It merely asked, ‘Are you going to let me in?’
I let him in. I stepped sideways with my hands still gripping that gate so that it swung on its hinges. Then, with one final guarded glance at my face, the Captain stepped past me onto the awkwardly narrow space of the path and on into the hallway of my cousin’s house. With no steps to climb, there was no sign of the faint unevenness in his stride now. I eased the gate shut and followed. I was in time to hear his opening greeting to the policeman. It was astounding after all he had made me swear not to say.
The Captain said coolly, ‘I don’t believe we’ve met. Captain Richard Langton. Has Miss Sutton told you about her encounter with an unusual car today? No? You should know that there is a man in this neighbourhood who has taken to driving about at speed and indulging in near-misses with pedestrians.’
I thought his manner was designed to carry meaning for me, I don’t know why. Well, actually, I did know why; I just didn’t like it. It struck me that this steady release of information was the Captain’s way of exerting control over me and this scene, and the idea was deeply, unreasonably offensive. I didn’t want to be cast in a passive role here. Not even when the act itself might have been intended to assure me that he believed that my nervousness belonged to something more complicated than the guilt of being caught red-handed meeting his burglar. The Captain might have been exposing our secret to the policeman purely to reduce the threat I might pose if he should prove to have been wrong about me. But it was more likely that the Captain thought the threat to me was unmanageable enough that I needed to be sheltered by someone like him; someone like an experienced soldier who would choose for me which decisive action to take. Any minute now and he’d be telling me not to worry again.
I approached as the policeman asked him seriously, ‘Really?’ PC Rathbone drew out his notebook again and licked the tip of his pencil. ‘Can you describe the car?’
The Captain had heard my tread on the step and was gracious enough to step aside slightly to allow me to join them in the gloom of Aunt Edna’s coat-rack. There seemed to be some expectation that I would answer. Both the men fixed their gazes upon me. But when I drew a hesitant breath, the Captain recounted crisply, ‘Black paintwork. A Ford perhaps, but I shouldn’t think it was locally owned since there aren’t many cars of any sort round here and the driver is dressed like a neat little businessman. Aged about forty, sorry, fifty.’ A nod to me. ‘He called at the Manor earlier. Apparently he picked up one of Miss Sutton’s bags and gave her a fright and now he’s just turned up here.’
He was, I noticed, continuing the theme of making light of the loss of my things and I didn’t like that either.
But I didn’t do anything about it. I stood there, hugging myself and mute, in my cousin’s hallway while PC Rathbone swelled complacently. ‘Perhaps this little chap called here to make his apologies and saw my machine outside and took fright himself?’
The policeman’s lower lip was puckering in an enquiring sort of way. I felt compelled to say in a voice made tight and rapid by something that came close to temper, ‘Perhaps. But you should know that the man wasn’t all that little and he really had no reason to take my case.’
It was then that I saw the expression behind the Captain’s eyes quite suddenly. He’d been hiding it before behind his calm assertion of command over these proceedings. I knew now this had simply been his own natural urge to establish order here while he calculated how far my ongoing hostility implied my efforts towards secrecy were indicative of a separate, deeper complication. And his urge to take charge was contradicted by his appreciation for my protection of his father. I added nothing more and watched him read the faint slackening of my lips.
There was the barest flicker of recognition in that hazel gaze. Then the Captain waited as the policeman jotted down a few notes. As the last line was written and the notebook snapped shut, the man from the Manor added, ‘You’ll naturally be adding this house to your round later, won’t you, Constable?’
The notebook was put away in a breast pocket. ‘Naturally,’ agreed the policeman. Then he dragged his helmet from under his arm and set it upon his curly crown. He stepped neatly past the Captain and then me and out onto the path. He turned back momentarily on the threshold. ‘By the way,’ he asked. ‘Did this man take anything else from the Manor?’
I felt the Captain’s hesitation behind me like a whisper in my mind. I felt compelled to say, ‘I expect Captain Langton hasn’t had time to look properly yet.’
And then PC Rathbone was passing through my gate and settling himself onto his motorcycle. He wasn’t really interested in any of this anyway. The Captain didn’t leave. And hostility didn’t quite go either. Now that the tricky business of managing the rival impulses of protectiveness and truth to a policeman was over, this other part of my experience at the Manor still wanted something from me, even if it wasn’t a guilty confession. I felt it with the same insistence that had made a strange bald man briefly linger with me on the staircase there. That time the man had abruptly changed his mind and left, clipping my ear with my own suitcase as he went. This man didn’t move. I watched the policeman go and then I carefully avoided acknowledging that the Captain was in turn scrutinising me. Unexpectedly, there was doubt here still and a sense that he was finding the contrast between my withdrawal now and my almost naïve helpfulness on the telephone very hard to read.
It made me deliberately voice what needed to be said. With my eyes still on the now empty trackway, I observed, ‘You told the policeman about our visitor.’
The Captain laughed. Contemplating the same view that captivated me, he said, ‘I’m not a lunatic. I might well have begged you to help me keep my father away from official notice but I was hardly likely to disregard the news that this man has now taken to calling at your house.’
His friendliness was my cue to shut the door and put an end to all that tension and I moved to do it, only to realise it would leave us together in a very intimate setting. Too intimate. I’d expected my unease to go with the policeman only it hadn’t, or at least distrust had changed into a very different kind of nervousness. It was because I suspected that, for him, friendliness was just another way to take charge. Which was a very unkind thing to think but still it most definitely felt too close to be shut up with him in here in this tiny house with its tiny rooms and even smaller kitchen, waiting for him to smoothly lead me towards hearing whatever he’d come here to say. So instead I stood there with my hand on the open door and I told him, ‘No, perhaps you weren’t. But you might have made more of the theft of my baggage.’
‘I was thinking you might yourself.’
This was said more coolly. It drew my gaze at last. His expression was bold, clear. It wasn’t an accusation but he meant me to answer the question that hung over my behaviour. He proved it when he remarked, ‘You stepped in when the policeman asked that last awkward question.’ A deeper intensity of interest that carried the faintest of concessions towards real gratitude. ‘Why did you do that?’
I replied rather coldly, ‘It strikes me that I ought to be asking you to explain what was taken, since I’ve obviously saved you from having to lie to a policeman. Only I don’t want to know. I can state quite firmly that I really don’t. If it is the sort of thing you couldn’t tell the policeman I don’t think I should know either.’
For a moment the Captain was actually disconcerted. It clearly grated to have his integrity questioned. ‘Don’t say it like that. Please. My idea of the seriousness of what I stepped into an hour ago escalated the moment that fellow turned up at your garden gate and I don’t know why I didn’t tell PC Rathbone. It’s in part this damned sense this place gives that one careless word will cause my father a whole deal of fuss. But,’ he added, ‘at least this particular oversight is easily remedied. Thanks to you I will be able to tell the man later.’
I believed him, I didn’t know why. The Captain had been urging concealment from the start but all the same I believed him when he said this place was the sort to fix shackles upon a person. Only in my mind the ties of his sense of duty and the history of this place had more the appearance of a snare. There was still the impulse to shed the lot and be rude by ushering him away to his car.
I felt beneath my fingertips the rough pitting of a scrape in the old oak of the front door. In a voice that was certainly softer if not yet ready to move beyond that to true warmth, I asked, ‘Why did you come to see me? You didn’t know I was set for an interview with the police, did you, so it can’t have been because you wanted to act as a censor upon what I said in my statement? And you can’t have known the burglar was about to knock on my door.’
He told me plainly, ‘It was the fact you took the trouble to make up a plate of bread and salad stuff for me on your way out. Is that a terrible thing to say?’
My expression made him laugh. ‘Obviously it is,’ he remarked, still smiling a little. ‘Well, the long and the short of it is, I’d had a terrible night followed by an even stranger morning and in the midst of it all, the young woman who seemed to be the principal cause of my unplanned arrival here took the time to leave some lunch for me. It was,’ he added more seriously, ‘a reminder of a simple bit of humanity and, I might say, a sobering experience.’
As olive branches went, it was a good one. It was utterly disarming. It made me willing to smile at last myself. It shook away the expectation I’d had that he was only here to assure himself that I was keeping my promise of silence. It proved that he hadn’t come to bully me a little more. Unfortunately, his apology also had the effect of removing my control over this scene once and for all.
It gave me room to fully experience that other, less willingly acknowledged fear that resided beside the one that belonged to the visitation of that other man in the black Ford.
That car had carried the usual dread that I was going to be made to confront some of the darker aspects of this world. This other fear belonged solely to this Captain. It began with the realisation that I’d bristled right up to the moment that I’d shown that I cared to help him manage the toll this burglary would take on his father, and at that moment I’d let him glimpse what nervousness really lay beneath. There was a very faint trace of that protectiveness in his manner still and this time it was directed at me rather than his father. It was disconcertingly unexpected. It was made all the more confusing because I thought it was an instinctive part of his nature rather than a conscious decision to be kind. It was like being wrapped in a tender touch. Except that this was again an encounter with the decisive habits of a soldier. He knew I had been frightened and now I had to deal with the familiar expectation that I was set to receive soothing platitudes and the supposedly reassuring news that he hadn’t come here to force me to hear what he wanted me to do for him next. Because, to a man like this, I had never been judged capable of doing anything of any use at all.
Very deliberately I focused on the simple social nicety that was probably all he really wanted from me anyway. ‘Tea?’ I asked, and walked ahead of him into the kitchen.
We took our tea outside. I’d mistakenly directed him out there with the idea that there were some folding chairs beneath the window, but there weren’t. Luckily he didn’t seem to object to me sitting on the warm stone of the front step while he leaned against the doorframe and we both turned our faces to the sun and sipped our tea.
After a while, memory suddenly prodded me into asking, ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to find somewhere to sit inside? On account of your sprained ankle, I mean.’
I glanced up at him to catch the brief shake of his head. He told me, ‘I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind.’
I didn’t mind. I was sitting with legs stretched out and idly crossed at the feet and revelling in the blazing scents of an English vegetable garden at the height of its summer glory. This was what the Manor lacked.
‘I lied to you earlier.’ He waited until I lifted my gaze to him again. ‘When I said it was a sprain. The truth is, I was a little taken aback that you’d noticed. It’s the usual sorry story of an old injury that flares up if it takes a sudden knock. Unfortunately, in my case, an old injury that won’t quite resolve itself is the sort of thing that ends a career and I’m working very hard to keep mine. So please don’t let on that you know.’
‘Why are you telling me at all?’
‘I’m trying to say I’m sorry. For being rude to you again.’
I returned my gaze to the gravel by my step. I had been rolling it and ordering each grain in that abstract way people have when they are really thinking deeply about something else. Such as how confidently he wore his citified clothes – not with the sort of confidence that makes a person swagger, but the sort where they firmly believe they are fit to meet anything, wherever they are. Whereas I was pretty sure I was looking very much out of my element, and wearing my only remaining frock in the whole wide world, and a tired one at that.
I deliberately made my hand mess up the little lines of stones and told him easily, ‘You don’t need to apologise to me. You weren’t to know I wasn’t … well, whatever it is you suspect me of.’
‘Suspected, Emily. I wondered if you were from a newspaper. Or at least tied to one – hence all the questions about your family.’
The insinuation was so unexpected that it made me laugh. I thought he was almost smiling himself as he added, ‘The thought had crossed my mind that your sudden arrival and interest in prowling about the attics of my father’s house might well have been because you were a woman with a nose for a good story. I’ve even wondered if you were the sort who would be prepared to create a bigger one if the connection forged by Bertie’s assault between my father and Matthew Croft proved too tenuous.’
There was something mildly flattering about the idea he had been accusing me – idly at the very least – of actually orchestrating something on the grand scale of a scheme like that. My voice was suddenly itself again. Friendly and cheerful. ‘Good heavens. Has that happened before?’
‘Not directly like that, no. But if you discount the part of the unknown female, not dissimilar. And the consequences were, shall we say, dangerous for the health of all concerned.’
That shut off my mirth like a switch. I twisted so quickly to look at him that my tea slopped. He didn’t, it must be said, look like a man who was confessing to the use of his hands for the purpose of silencing a journalist. The injury was probably more personal than that. Presumably his father again. ‘Heavens,’ I said again, more sincerely. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ A glimmer of a smile before I turned away once more. ‘Or at least if you must feel sympathy, keep it for people like you who’ve had the misfortune of touching an old wound. I think for once I have been worrying about this more than my father does. The problem has its origins in the period before my brother drew all eyes to him, so at least I can’t blame him for all this, and I am finally learning now to understand our value to the newspapers and how to keep it from preying on my sense of proportion. Or, at least, I thought I had but, as you say, my behaviour today proves the contrary, perhaps.’
A wry twist had entered his voice. He knew I hadn’t said that at all. His willingness to confide a small hint of the old habits that had influenced his recent behaviour was like a deliberate defiance of the distrust that had lurked between us since his arrival here. A peculiar pause slipped in afterwards like a shy beginning of better ease only, from the way he spoke next, it seemed more probable that he was securing the careful rebalancing of peace before the next distress worked its way in. I had a sudden sharp suspicion that he was steering me towards something. Then he only said gently, ‘I didn’t mean to treat you like a child, you know. How old are you?’
With deliberate tartness I told him, ‘Twenty-one. Just. How old are you?’
He was unfazed. ‘A considerably more experienced twenty-nine.’ He was teasing me. Beside me, I saw one trousered leg move to cross over the other as he relaxed in his turn and leaned back more comfortably against the wall. I heard the clink as he reset his teacup upon its saucer and set the pair of them down somewhere to one side. Then he said, ‘Were you serious when you said that you don’t want to know what else the man took besides your case?’
It was done so smoothly that I might have believed he was only making idle conversation. Only that suspicion lurked there waiting to return me to tension. From the tone of his voice I could imagine that he had his head back against the warm brickwork and his eyes closed against the heat of the sun. I didn’t turn to check. I said rather too firmly, ‘I was. Not unless it explains why he should have come to find me now.’ Clearly it didn’t since the Captain remained silent. Now I turned my head. ‘You know, I really don’t know who he is. I don’t know why he came to your house. I swear it isn’t me who brought him to this place. I can’t see how it has turned out to be anything to do with me at all.’
An eye opened against the glare and rolled down to me. He wasn’t accusing me of anything at all. He asked, ‘Did he follow you to this cottage, do you think?’ He was being very matter-of-fact. I liked him for it. It made it easier to relax. Until it dawned upon me in almost the same moment precisely who he was.
I was sitting here on the front step to my cousin’s modest little cottage while the squire’s son drank tea and listened as I talked as though we were equals. It was a mistake born of that wonderful glimpse of the familiar that the ringing telephone had given me yesterday. The truth was that in town our paths would quite frankly have never even crossed. Here they had and purely because he was – to borrow a phrase from Mrs Abbey – the new young master of these parts. I realised belatedly that this must simply be the Manor’s equivalent of a pastoral visit to a needy cottager – he didn’t want anything from me at all – and I was making a terrible faux pas.
First I answered his question hastily, ‘No, I’m absolutely certain he didn’t follow me. It took too long for him to get here. I think he must have gone through my bag at last and found the letter from my cousin. I can’t see how else he thought to come here.’ I added by way of an explanation, ‘She’d written the directions to her house in it.’
And having brushed off that concern just as quickly as I could, I added rather more formally, ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to sit somewhere more comfortable? I probably shouldn’t be keeping you anyway, having already ruined your day by dragging you out of London in the first place.’ I made to get up, but as I lifted my hand with its teacup – to keep it clear of my knees while I rose – I felt the tug on the delicate china as his hand moved to intercept.
He said, ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry, so please don’t do this. Don’t run away.’ And he took the teacup from me to set it down beside his own on the broad windowsill to his left. Across the faint rattle as china met brick, he told me with rather too much perception about the real cause of my discomfort, ‘I’m not trying to frighten you about this man. And you don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to, or justify yourself to me either. I’m not accusing you of anything any more, or trying to wade in where I’m not needed. This isn’t my home, you know. I’ve no intention of stepping into my brother’s shoes and acting the part of the new master about this place. And that means I can freely make a promise to leave off undermining the tranquillity of a certain young woman whose only mistake was to expend an absurd amount of energy sorting out a few homely comforts for my father.’
It was there again; the question that I thought we’d left behind. It was the urge to ask me why I’d done it at all. And the uncomfortably exacting suggestion that it wasn’t enough to simply answer that he’d asked me to.
As it was, he didn’t ask that. Instead, and a shade too promptly for it to escape feeling like a fresh accusation, he asked, ‘Why are you here? And don’t tell me it’s to holiday with your cousin because Hannis has already told me that she’s in hospital.’
He must have caught my raised eyebrows as I settled back into my place on the front step, for all that I thought I had turned my head away. I heard him assure me wryly, ‘This isn’t a test, you know. I really am only trying to make conversation.’
My attention snapped back round to him. ‘Are you?’ I asked. Then I relented. I didn’t want to distrust him any more and this was the price. I told him, ‘This is a holiday. I didn’t even know Phyllis was in hospital until I arrived here yesterday and was met by Danny’s note. And anyway, what else do you call a trip that was supposed to be a change of scene, a brief get-away from the old life in town?’
‘You don’t intend to go back, though, do you?’ He was quick, this man.
‘How can you tell?’ I asked. I knew why.
‘I remember your decisive remark earlier about having no occupation. You don’t intend to go back to – what was it? – a chemist’s shop in Knightsbridge?’
I was sitting with my weight propped upon my straightened arms now and my hands laid palm down on either side of me upon the stone front step. The stone, the sky, everything, was ablaze and tension eased with a simple exhale of breath. The Captain wasn’t going to presume that I was taking a last solo holiday before preparing for a marriage because there was clearly no ring, so instead, since he had obviously committed to memory everything I’d said, he was going to ask the next inevitable question in the line for a single woman of my age, which was whether I was set to take over the reins of my father’s business now that the old man was hoping to retire. And I’d give my reply as a parody of the Captain’s own remark about being unwilling to step into his brother’s shoes and tell him that I felt the same about antiques. Only that wasn’t strictly true.
I’d ruled out that career for myself when I’d insisted on leaving school at fourteen. Even then, the routine of running my father’s shop would have been the most respectable choice and back then I might have been meek enough to have accepted it, but my father had been slow to offer it. He’d thought a few years of hard work in the real world would do me some good, rather than rewarding the abandonment of my education by letting me laze within the cosseted life of the family business. He’d also been wary of introducing a young daughter into a shop front and restoration workshop fundamentally occupied by men. My father knew it was the sort of path that led to an unwise marriage at a painfully young age. Which, I thought, made it all the more ironic that my father was now in the position of being ready to give almost anything if I would only choose the nice safe route of staffing his shop and thereby put myself in the way of a nice tame future with his favourite apprentice.
Today, in this pleasant sunshine, the man beside me, with the very different kind of presence, followed the predictable path. He asked that expected question about my future in the antiques trade. Only then I surprised myself by answering completely differently. Perhaps it was his easy self-assurance that made me brave enough to tell him, ‘I could go back, actually. I could manage the shop once I’ve finished indulging in improving stays with long-overlooked cousins. It’s what I’m supposed to do. But Dad doesn’t really need me there. He never did. One of the apprentices has survived his national service and has come back primed and ready to run the whole lot. I’d rather not get in his way.’
‘This counts as an improving stay?’
He’d caught my slip about the truth behind this visit. I wasn’t in the habit of lying, as such, but I will admit that I tended to find it hard to stay true to my purpose if there was a choice between saying what I thought and hurting someone I cared about, or saying what they wanted to hear and, through that, picking the route that was quietest. It was cowardice, I supposed. So it was perhaps lucky for me that this man wanted to hear what I thought I ought to say. And there wasn’t really any danger that I would hurt him with this.
‘Very well,’ I conceded. ‘The truth is, my parents are pursuing the much-exercised route of giving me the chance to experience a few hard knocks in the wider world before it’s too late and I’m out in it with no chance of return.’
He was quick with his reply. ‘I should have thought,’ he remarked dryly, ‘you’d experienced quite enough of the wider world as it was, growing up through the past few years in London. Haven’t your parents left it a bit late to take fright and evacuate their daughter to the country?’
I grinned. ‘You think I’m here like a forlorn child with my name on a tag about my neck, waiting for an aged relative to claim me? Not a bit of it. My father isn’t really an overbearing sort of parent, you know. It’s me that is torturing him. I gave him a fright by first telling him that I was going to leave school and aim for adulthood at the age of fourteen; and then again as soon as I reached sixteen and I took to filling the gaps left in the dance halls as well since the older women were stumbling into hasty marriages with their brave RAF men in between bombing runs. Now I’m a grown woman and confusing him all over again by giving up the job I had to argue my way into taking in the first place and, actually, this visit to see my cousin wasn’t his idea. It was my mother’s. And besides all that, it was my choice to come here too.’
If he noticed my defensiveness about the course of the decision-making, he didn’t show it. I cast him a shy glance. ‘Did your …?’ I began then flushed. ‘No, sorry, never mind. Ignore that.’
My companion prompted calmly, ‘Did my what?’ When I only shook my head mutely, he added, ‘Do you mean to ask if my father is similarly dictating my choice of career? No. The Langton name has been put to many different enterprises, good and bad, but when it came to joining the army I found – how shall I put it? – well, without going into the details, it was easy to find this was one aspect that was purely me. I had the expectation from an early age that I would follow in Father’s footsteps and by the time I was about your age I was already there.’
I remarked carefully, ‘When you were my age you must have been getting ready to fight.’
He confirmed, ‘I was in my first command at the outbreak of conflict.’
I’d been right; he did find honesty easier than I did. There was not even sadness there, nor regret for the state of war. There was assurance and a sense that the military life was a vital part of this man’s idea of self-worth.
I stirred restlessly. Suddenly a whisper of that old distress crept close again. I knew I’d asked but there had been a reference to his brother in there somewhere. And perhaps the shadow of something else that was too deep for the cautious gossip recounted by my cousin’s letters. It seemed to me that even if he didn’t find it sad, to me there was something awful about a man being brought up to believe that a hard, destructive career such as his was the counterbalance that restored his value. Unfortunately, I think the Captain noticed my flinch. I could feel his gaze on me as he observed, ‘You do try very hard for peacefulness, don’t you? You don’t want to talk about our little balding friend any more than you have to. And you really didn’t lie when you said you won’t hear the gossip about my brother …’
He had noticed that I’d shied from his reference to the weight that rested on the Langton family name. He must have noticed that I’d shied from his mention of war too. It struck me that he really did make a habit of considering all the subtleties of everything that was said. All along he’d been working to solve the puzzle of who I was and lead me into explaining the cause of my unwillingness to discuss the darker aspects of what had happened at the Manor. I suppose he was afraid it meant something more serious was afoot. So he’d given himself time to study me and this was the result. Well, he must know I was a harmless fool by now.
‘I do try for peacefulness.’ I mimicked his phrasing a shade bitterly. ‘If you must know, my decision to pay this visit came just after I made the mistake of mentioning to my parents that, amongst other things, I think I’m a pacifist. Or a conscientious objector, or something like that. At least, I would be if I were a man and required to do something about it. It’s not a particularly socially acceptable thing to confess at the moment, is it? So much so my father took it as a sign I was concealing something else. I’d abandoned the nice safe prospect of a future in his shop and left a perfectly respectable job at the chemists, and according to him, it’s not like me to do that without having the nice logical prop of marriage or retirement to make the decision for me. He became convinced that a severe emotional loss must have slipped in somewhere along the way and he just hadn’t noticed before now. And since I’d just been ranting about seeking peaceful solutions, I could hardly stand and argue the point, could I?’
I knew it sounded feeble. It made me finish on a lame note of excuse, ‘The truth is I can’t even see my mother’s cat with a mouse without wishing to intervene.’
I turned my head. He saw my defiance – I knew this would be seen as a challenge to a man who made war his business. He also saw that I was ready to be humbled. He didn’t do it. Perhaps it was the mark of a soldier that he didn’t make a stand on a point that was already won.
Instead he took that same note of practical calm as he remarked, ‘Forgive me, but haven’t you got something the wrong way round there? I had understood that the basic principle of avoiding conflict meant that you didn’t intervene. Unless your philosophy is based solely on the premise that you possess sufficiently superior strength to render all opposition futile. What would you do if the cat were the size of a tiger and you couldn’t just pick him up?’
It was a fair point. He would naturally think along the lines of irrepressible nature, both within the cat and its victim, and of solutions being dependent on superior force so that all sides might be cowed into perfect peace. And perhaps he was right and I wasn’t a true pacifist. Something certainly cut too close to a nerve that had already been set on edge by the bizarre contradiction of wishing this man would go away, changing my mind and then reverting again just as soon as he began to talk about his career, only to find myself at the same time really, really treasuring the experience of talking seriously like this.
It made me say with a better attempt at honesty than before, ‘Tell me that peace means days and nights spent hiding in holes while the danger that is raging outside switches between the fury of a foreign power trying to reduce an entire city to embers and our own people who are cheerfully picking through the smouldering rubble.’
‘You mean looters?’ My slur had startled him. His manner had suddenly grown harder to match. Perhaps he felt I’d meant the point as a personal barb. I supposed people like him tended to be kept safely anaesthetised from that particularly commendable of aspect of our resilience to the Blitz. It wouldn’t do for a soldier to realise that the people for whom he was laying down his life were utterly, entirely, ordinary and flawed, and therefore potentially undeserving of the sacrifice.
It cooled my readiness to be defensive. It curbed whatever I had intended to say next. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I was simply trying to explain the rest. I added with a wry smile, ‘It really is quite unfortunate, don’t you think, that I’ve come here to establish a little calm, to shake the dust of a ruined city from my boots, so to speak, and within the first twenty-four hours I’ve received absolute proof that the war might end and the world might change, but absolutely nothing alters human nature.’
After a moment, the Captain observed mildly, ‘Bertie’s attack and the little invasion at the Manor really have frightened you, haven’t they?’
The sudden steadiness in the Captain’s voice after its momentary roughness made me jump. Now I realised with a peculiar little shock that his protectiveness was there again in a faint whisper, and sympathy without ridicule.
‘Actually, no,’ I told him with an odd little shiver. It had jolted my mind more than it ought to hear the attack on Mr Winstone grouped with the loss of my bag. It’s shameful to admit but I’d almost forgotten about yesterday in the effort of tiptoeing around talking about today. ‘Or, at least, the truth is I’m not really upset about them. It isn’t really about those people and what they’ve done. It’s about me and the fact that I’m desperately hoping everything will be different now – now the war is over, I mean – only I’m afraid nothing is going to be very different at all. Days like yesterday prove it. At least, I think they do.’ A hapless smile. ‘I know this feeling begins with the knowledge that war made people like you give up something profoundly personal for the sake of a mass of people you’d never even met and—’
‘And now you’re afraid it’s your turn? Because you know we fought for ourselves too.’
His interjection rather derailed what I had been meaning to say. Probably for the best. So instead I agreed and conceded an easier truth, ‘Perhaps. But yesterday, Mr Winstone was a stranger to me. When I found him on his path and the fellow who’d dropped him there slid away, I don’t know what I’d have done if that man had come back.’
‘Screamed the place down, probably,’ the Captain remarked in the same lighter tone, ‘until someone came to help. Or else discovered just how much physical force you’re truly capable of exerting under extreme pressure. And I should say that it fully explains why you should have been left feeling quite so unsettled, since neither of them are remotely appealing prospects. Not when the one implies unbeatable odds, and the other is an introduction to a part of oneself that doesn’t bear contemplation on a quiet summer’s day in the country.’
He’d surprised me. I’d expected him to either assure me that there had been no danger at all or to smile and contradict my attempt to measure the assistance I had given to an old man against his own experience as a soldier. I hadn’t expected understanding like this.
‘Quite,’ I agreed. I found myself smiling suddenly. ‘I know I have my limitations, but I honestly don’t know how capable I am of rising to the defence of a stranger in the way that has been routinely demanded of people like you. I’ve never even had to learn how far I would go to save someone I truly cared about, and quite honestly, my hope for a different kind of life ahead really, really depends on never being required to find out. So there you have the truth of my pacifism. The cowardly confession of a woman who managed to get all the way through a war without being called on to do anything useful and who is desperate to keep it that way now that she’s an adult and she’s got no more excuses.’
An uncomfortable pause while my gaze returned to its steady examination of the contents of my cousin’s garden and then, abruptly, I lurched into answering the question he’d really been asking all along. ‘And that is in part why I didn’t tell PC Rathbone everything about my lost suitcase just now – it wasn’t purely because I can appreciate your wish to protect your father. At least not fully. It’s because I can’t bear to feel indebted for something I won’t ever repay, not even when it’s the person’s job. If I’d told the policeman about all this, he’d have been obliged to take steps for my safety and fuss and worry and then I’d have to admit this was more serious than I want it to be. I’d never be able to get things onto a normal track.’
This time when he spoke, it was in a very odd voice. ‘You really do mean that, don’t you?’
‘Probably,’ I replied. I shook it all away with a decisive little squaring of my shoulders. I had my hands clasped about my knees now. I turned my head over my shoulder to look up at him. ‘And,’ I added with a wry grin and an easier slide into truthfulness, ‘I’ve unexpectedly explained my motives far better to you than I ever managed for my parents, so if I still haven’t managed to explain myself coherently I’m afraid you’ll just have to make up the rest for yourself.’
‘I understand you.’ The confirmation was given in a manner that suited the sudden shift in mine, but there was something in his steadiness that told me I’d revealed more about myself in those last few lines than all our past words together. His expression wasn’t really betraying any of the reactions I might have expected, but I thought I’d suddenly crossed over from the girl he couldn’t comprehend into the woman he understood only too well.
Then he straightened from his lean against the wall. His manner was suddenly decisive. I saw his glance at his watch. He was about to go and suddenly I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t want to be left alone with the worry about deciding between keeping watch from behind a locked front door or making a dash through quiet lanes for the shop where I might telephone for a car to carry me down to Gloucester. And, of course, I knew I would never be able to escape the one real worry, which was that I was destined now to spend the rest of the day re-running what I’d just laid bare to this man, and finding far too many reasons to feel ashamed.
The Captain was asking me crisply, ‘What do you plan to do now since you can’t stay here? Will you catch a train home?’
‘Go home? No.’ My initial surprise and then the twist of amusement that formed my negative made my cheeks burn. I thought that had given away rather too much of my feelings too. I always had felt that I’d never been particularly hard to read. This was proof of it.
‘Well then, Emily, this is going to sound more than a little ridiculous after all but turning you out of the house earlier, but actually I’d like your help. And don’t look at me like that. It’s true.’ There was a brief hint of a reassuring smile. ‘Have you eaten, by the way?’
