Kissed a Sad Goodbye

by Deborah Crombie

  To them the war still seemed a distant and imaginary thing. They played “English and Germans” with the other children in the village streets, and in the dark evenings they sat round the kitchen radio with John and Cook, listening to Tommy Handley’s ITMA and “Appointment with Fear,” which made them feel much more frightened than the news broadcasts, and Lewis learned to imitate Lord Haw-Haw so well that he kept Cook in stitches.

  But as the weeks passed, more and more airplanes passed overhead and the radio broadcasts became more dire. France fell and Italy entered the war; John Pebbles joined the Home Guard, drilling on the Downs with an old shotgun borrowed from the Hall’s gun room; Holland fell, then Belgium, and people began to say that on still nights you could hear a distant rumbling, the sound of the guns in France. Lewis got himself up in the small hours on several occasions and went out in the yard to listen, but all he ever heard was the hooting of the owl that lived in the barn and the shuffling noises made by the horses.

  In June, when the evacuations began from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill, now prime minister, pledged over the wireless, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender,” and Lewis tried hard to imagine that there were people fighting, and that his brothers were somewhere among them. Inspired by Mr. Churchill’s valiant words, he and William had long discussions about how they would resist if they were invaded, and in a clearing in the woods they made a makeshift shelter from an old tent of Mr. Cuddy’s and some tinned goods they had begged off Cook.

  Then, one night in late July, Lewis was awakened by the sound of an explosion. Struggling into his clothes in the darkness, he ran down the stairs and out into the stable yard. Sparks floated above the treetops in the direction of the village, winking out as he watched. Then there was another crack of sound, followed by a jet of flame shooting up above the trees, and Lewis heard the sound of shouting.

  “What is it? Did you see?” William came banging out the kitchen door, still tucking his shirttail into his trousers, and after him came Edwina, and then Mr. Cuddy in a dressing gown over trousers and braces, his hair standing on end. John appeared last, jogging down the hill from his cottage, the shotgun in his hand glinting in the faint light.

  “I heard engines before the explosion,” John told them. “There’s a plane down, and the sooner we get there the better. There’s some in the village that might do something daft.”

  A meaningful glance passed between John and Edwina. “Terence Pawley?” she asked.

  John nodded. “Among others.”

  Lewis knew that Mr. Pawley’s son Neville had been reported missing in France last week and that Mr. Pawley had been ranting wildly about getting his hands on Germans.

  “Right.” Edwina sighed. “Come on, you two. You’re old enough to make yourselves useful.”

  “I’ll get the car—it’s quicker,” John said, and ran for the garage.

  Mr. Cuddy tightened the belt on his dressing gown. “I’m coming with you.”

  Edwina turned back to him and said, “No, you’d better stay here, Warren. I need you to organize relief, if it’s needed. The boys can act as runners.”

  Then John brought the Bentley round and the three of them piled into it and they were off down the drive. The sky above the village had begun to glow faintly red, lighting the way, and Lewis thought suddenly of how long the journey from village to house had seemed to him the first night he had come here, when the way was unfamiliar. His stomach clenched with anxiety at the thought of what they might find. He knew Edwina had been tactful as well as practical with Mr. Cuddy. The villagers had learned that the tutor spoke German: with feelings running high, there had been some talk of his being a spy.

  John drove as fast as the blackout would allow, and as they rocketed round the last corner flames sprang from a crater gouged in one side of the village green, and out of the flames rose a bent, black shape: the tail of a plane—no, two planes, charred and twisted together in an obscene embrace.

  As they spilled out of the car and ran towards the gathered onlookers, the smell caught Lewis in the throat—the hot oiliness of burning fuel combined with the sickly sweetness of roasting meat.

  “What’s happened?” he heard Edwina ask.

  “A Wellington bomber,” a man said, and when he turned towards them Lewis saw that his face was streaked with soot and sweat. “Must have collided with the German plane. We couldn’t get anyone out.”

  “Roasted,” said Terence Pawley beside him, with what sounded almost like glee. “The lot of them. Serves them right, bloody Huns.”

  “Shut up, Terence.” The sooty-faced man turned towards him angrily. “There’s our boys dying in there as well.”

  Lewis thought he heard a faint sound, an echo of a scream, and the smell threatened to rise up in his throat and choke him. He was able to make it to the edge of the green before he threw up his supper. And then he realized that he was crying, and that William was beside him, white-faced with distress.

  “They must have known they were going to die, trapped like animals,” William said, but Lewis only straightened up mutely and wiped a shaking hand across his mouth.

  They watched from a distance until the flames died and the wreckage took shape in the slow-spreading dawn. The German plane was revealed as a Junkers 88, and there were bits of both planes scattered all over the village. “A miracle,” everyone murmured, that none of the houses had been hit. As the day wore on, it became evident that the debris was not strictly mechanical—the postmistress fainted dead away upon finding a severed leg in her garden, and other grisly bits of human remains continued to turn up for days afterwards. The younger children hunted for souvenirs with great enthusiasm, but for Lewis and William the war had abruptly ceased to be a game.

  As the hot days of August wore on, the raids into London became more frequent. And although life went on much as before, Lewis woke often in the night from dreams of fire that left him heartsick with fear.

  On Saturday, the 7th of September, a few minutes before four o’clock in the afternoon, the boys were bicycling up Holmbury Hill when they heard the drone of engines overhead. Both stopped and glanced up—checking almost automatically now to see whether they were fighters or bombers—to find the sky filled with German planes. Hundreds of them—heavy, pregnant bombers surrounded by squads of smaller fighters—swept in majestic, inexorable order across the sky towards London.

  When the last plane had disappeared into the distance, they turned and cycled back to the Hall as if the winds of hell were behind them. They found everyone, even Edwina, gathered round the kitchen wireless, and there they waited for news. The reports were garbled, inconclusive, but as the hours passed, Lewis’s dread grew into a terrible sense of certainty.

  Towards evening, Cook brewed them another pot of tea, and making up some bread to go with it, she insisted that they must eat something. But that week the cat had got into the ration of butter, reducing them to putting drippings on their bread, and for Lewis what had been meant as a comfort was an unbearably sharp reminder of home. Pushing his plate aside, he ran blindly out of the kitchen.

  He sought refuge in the barn. Over the months he had come to find the sounds and scents of the animals comforting, and eventually he settled down on one of the bales of hay near Zeus’s stall and drifted into an exhausted sleep.

  He woke in darkness, disoriented, to the sound of William’s voice and a hand on his shoulder, shaking him.

  “Lewis, wake up. It’s the East End. They’ve said on the wireless. The Germans have bombed the Docks.”

  “What?” He sat up, his mouth dry.

  “John’s been up Leith Hill. You can see it from there, now it’s dark.”

  “See what?” Lewis said again, stupidly, his brain refusing to take in the words.

  “The fires. The East End is on fire, Lewis. London’s burning.”

  CHAPTER 12 The Docks we
re easily identifiable from the air and were attacked more than any other civilian target. Nearly 1,000 high explosive bombs and thousands of incendiaries were dropped.… At the same time large areas of residential Dockland were devastated. During the whole of the blitz, 30,000 people were killed. Slightly more than half of these casualties were in London and a high proportion of these were in Dockland.

  Paul Calvocoressi, from Dockland

  “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Teresa Robbins asked as she moved to the table set up against the back wall of her office. The long trestle had been placed under the windows, and held cups, teapot, and electric kettle, as well as the bowls and tins Gemma had begun to associate with the paraphernalia of tea-tasting. “I’ll just make us a cuppa, shall I?” she added, glancing at Gemma over her shoulder.

  “Just a few routine questions,” Gemma answered, nodding assent to the tea. She watched Teresa fill the kettle from a bottle of spring water; it seemed to her that the woman’s fingers trembled slightly, belying the composure of her face.

  Having seen Kincaid off on his way to Cambridge at Limehouse Police Station, Gemma had arrived at Hammond’s shortly after opening time, intent on interviewing Teresa again.

  Unlike Mortimer’s, the office Teresa and Annabelle had shared was large enough to accommodate two desks facing one another yet still leave a comfortable aisle down the center of the room. Nor did it suffer from the executive pretensions that gave Reg’s office such an odd air of incongruity. The desks were of workmanlike oak and looked both comfortable and well-used—except that Annabelle’s had been cleared of everything except blotter and generic office accouterments.

  Wooden tea chests stamped in either red or black ink were stacked about, and a simple bookcase held a collection of novelty teapots. The room smelled of tea and, beneath that, an elusive fragrance that Gemma couldn’t quite identify.

  Seating herself in the chair nearest Teresa’s desk, Gemma studied her as she poured boiling water into a simple white pot, stirred it once, then set a small timer. “I didn’t realize it was so scientific,” Gemma said, nodding at the timer.

  “What?” Teresa looked blank. “Oh, the timer.” She turned and leaned against the table while she waited for the tea to steep. “That’s one of the first things you learn, especially in tasting. If the brewing time isn’t consistent, you can’t compare the strengths of the teas. William insists on five minutes, but you can almost stand your spoon up in it. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a wimp, so I stick at four and a half.”

  “What are we having?” Gemma had not seen a label on the bag from which Teresa had spooned the tea.

  “An English breakfast blend, mostly Assam—that’s a strong, black, Indian tea,” Teresa explained. “I usually switch to the Ceylons in the afternoon. They’re a bit lighter, more flowery.” The timer beeped and she poured a little milk into the two teacups she’d warmed with water from the kettle, then poured tea into the cups through a fine mesh strainer. She brought Gemma one cup, along with a spoon and sugar bowl, and sat down at her desk with her own. “It’s a habit I learned from Annabelle, and Annabelle from William.” The glance she gave Annabelle’s vacant desk seemed almost involuntary, and she hastily gazed back at her cup.

  “Are you the one who cleared Annabelle’s desk?” asked Gemma, tasting her tea. It had a malty richness to it, and she thought it better than any she had ever drunk.

  “I’ve shoveled everything into the drawers for now,” Teresa admitted. “It’s just that I couldn’t bear looking at her things. Silly of me, I suppose. It’s not as if I don’t think about her every minute anyway.” She looked up and her pale blue eyes met Gemma’s. “I know you’ll think I’m daft, but sometimes I can almost feel her in the room. And I keep thinking I can smell her perfume.”

  Gemma remembered the barely perceptible odor she had noticed a moment ago. “A sort of woodsy, citrusy scent?”

  “You can smell it, too? She had it specially made. It had bergamot in it—that’s what’s used in Earl Grey blends. She always said it was more suited to perfumes than tea.”

  “I doubt we’re dealing with a ghost here,” Gemma assured her. “Strong scents tend to linger on things—it’s just that in other circumstances you’d probably not notice.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Teresa agreed, but she didn’t sound convinced. She looked almost pretty today, in a soft blue summer dress, her fair hair pulled back with a matching blue hair slide. But she would always have paled in comparison with Annabelle, no matter the effort she made. Gemma wondered how much she had minded.

  Gemma drank more of her tea, making a vow to buy some of it at the first opportunity. “Is Reg Mortimer not in this morning?” she asked.

  Teresa flushed. “No, he wasn’t feeling well. This has all been dreadful for him.… Reg was devoted to Annabelle.”

  “But was Annabelle devoted to him?”

  “What … what do you mean? Of course she was—”

  “Then why was she unfaithful to her fiancé on more than one occasion?”

  Teresa’s hand froze on the delicate handle of her teacup. “What?”

  “Didn’t she confide in you? I thought she might have.”

  “Confide what? What are you talking about?”

  “Did you know that Annabelle had an affair with Martin Lowell? That’s what broke up his marriage to Jo. Reg only learned about it the night Annabelle died.”

  “Martin Lowell? That can’t be true—there must be some mistake,” Teresa breathed.

  “No mistake. Harry Lowell brought it up at Jo’s dinner party. Reg was livid. He’s admitted it now, but not until we played ring-around-the-roses a few times.”

  “It can’t be true,” Teresa said again, her eyes enormous in her pinched face. “Why would Annabelle do such a thing?”

  “I thought perhaps you could tell me.”

  “She did take her mother’s death very hard,” Teresa said slowly. “Or it seemed so to me, but I’d only worked for her a few months and didn’t know her very well.” Bitterly, she added, “Although it seems I didn’t know her much better after five years, did I? Annabelle always made it such a point to stress honesty in business dealings—but it seems that didn’t apply to her personal life.” She looked up from her teacup. “You said there was someone else?”

  “Plural. It seems that Annabelle had a relationship with a man called Lewis Finch, and with his son, Gordon.”

  “Lewis Finch? The Lewis Finch?” Teresa repeated. “Are you sure?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No, I … Only by reputation,” said Teresa, but she sounded uncertain.

  “Were you aware that William Hammond disliked Finch?”

  “But everyone admires Lewis Finch,” protested Teresa. “He’s done so much for the Island—I know Annabelle thought he was brilliant.”

  “Did Annabelle talk about him to you?”

  “Not in a personal way, but I knew she’d met him.”

  “And his son, Gordon? Did she ever talk about him?”

  “No, never. I didn’t even know Lewis Finch had a son.”

  Gemma wondered if Annabelle had kept her own counsel out of necessity or if she’d enjoyed having secrets. She said, “Annabelle spoke to Gordon Finch the night she died—he was the busker Reg Mortimer saw in the tunnel. This was just after she’d told Reg she was in love with someone else, and after they’d had a huge row over her affair with Martin Lowell. You can see this puts things in rather a bad light for Reg.”

  Teresa started to rise, then closed her eyes and sat down again, looking quite white and ill. “I’ve been a bloody fool.”

  “Why? What’s happened?” Gemma asked quickly.

  Teresa opened her eyes and stared at Gemma as if realizing what she’d said. “It’s personal.… Reg never said—it’s nothing to do with your investigation.”

  “Teresa, if this has something to do with Reg, you’re better off telling us now. You could make yourself an accessory if you’re
protecting him out of some mistaken sense of loyalty.”

  “No, I don’t know anything, honestly. It’s just …” She hesitated, then said in a rush, “Have you ever done something so stupid that you think you must have taken leave of your senses?”

  Involuntarily, Gemma thought of dancing with Gordon Finch in the park. Had Teresa been as susceptible to Reg? “Why don’t you tell me about it?” she said gently.

  “No, I …”

  Teresa jumped as the phone rang, and after a glance at Gemma fumbled it off the hook. She listened, murmuring an occasional reply, then gently returned the phone to its cradle.

  “That was Mr. Hammond. He’s requesting a meeting of the board tomorrow morning, at Martin Lowell’s insistence.”

  “And this means—”

  “They’ll decide who’s going to take over Annabelle’s job as managing director.”

  “Is it between you and Reg, then?” asked Gemma.

  “Unless William decides to take over again himself. Or they could bring someone in from outside.” Teresa reached for a stack of papers, put them back, and looked about distractedly. “I’ve the financial reports to prepare.…”

  Gemma leaned forward. “Teresa, you need to tell me what’s happened between you and Reg. You can’t judge what bearing it has on our investigation.”

  Teresa shook her head firmly, but Gemma saw that the fair skin on her throat had suffused with color. “No, I can’t. I won’t. I’ve just been a silly cow, because I wanted to think I could offer some comfort—” She swallowed and her hands moved over the papers again. “But it wasn’t comfort he wanted. He wanted to get back at Annabelle, make it even, because he found out what she’d done. And I just happened to be convenient.”

  “Teresa, did you sleep with Reg? Is that what you’re saying? If he confided in you—”