Kissed a Sad Goodbye

by Deborah Crombie

  Teresa smiled. “Apparently, he hasn’t told me half as much as he’s told you. I can’t help you.” She rose. “I’ve the data to prepare for the financial reports, and it looks as though I’ll be putting together the marketing reports as well, since Reg has made himself scarce.”

  Knowing she’d get no further at the moment, Gemma took a card from her handbag and placed it on Teresa’s desk. “You ring me if you want to talk, or if you think of anything you haven’t told me. Anytime, day or night, all right?”

  When Teresa nodded, Gemma took her leave, but stood for a moment on the catwalk, looking down at the main floor of the warehouse. She thought about the relationships among the people who had come together in this building, bound by a web of concealments and half-truths that had just become exponentially more complicated. Because she knew something now she hadn’t known half an hour ago.

  If her instincts served her right, Teresa Robbins was in love with Reg Mortimer, and Reg had taken full advantage of the fact. But to what purpose?

  • • •

  AS REG TIED HIS TIE IN his dressing table mirror, he thought of Annabelle, of how he had liked to watch her when she was getting ready to go out. She had made up her face with such concentration, like an artist putting the finishing touches on a painting, but the end result had been almost invisible—she had simply been more beautiful.

  She had been as self-absorbed as a grooming cat, and at the time he had found it amusing. But that detachment had carried over into other aspects of their relationship, and he wondered now how he had found it acceptable. Even in bed she had always seemed somehow removed from him, as if there were some part of her he could never reach. Had she been that way with the others, too?

  The thought made him feel physically ill, and the sweat broke out again on his forehead. This morning when he left Teresa’s, he’d meant to go straight into work after coming home to shower and dress. But by the time he reached his building, he’d felt so unwell he collapsed on the sofa until the spasms in his stomach had subsided.

  Everything in his life seemed to be crumbling beneath him, and it was all he could do to keep panic at bay. He couldn’t ask his parents for help—his father had bailed him out of difficulties once too often, and last year had cut him off altogether, making it clear he wouldn’t soften his position.

  But if he could only find some way to hold off his creditors for a while longer … and if he could convince William to support his nomination as managing director to the members of the board, he might have some hope of survival.

  And then there was Teresa. She at least believed in him, and he wondered how he could have failed to appreciate the virtues of such steady loyalty until now.

  His phone rang, startling him. He crossed to the bedside table and picked it up.

  It was Fiona, the Hammond’s receptionist, telling him that Miss Robbins had asked her to inform him that Mr. Hammond had called a meeting of the board for ten o’clock tomorrow morning. When, his heart sinking, he asked why Teresa hadn’t rung him herself, Fiona replied awkwardly, “I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” and rang off.

  Reg let the phone fall back into the cradle. Whatever the bloody hell had happened now, he wasn’t sure he had the bottle to face it.

  I N THE AFTERNOON OF THE SECOND day of the bombings, Edwina found Lewis in his room in the barn, packing his bits of belongings into the old, battered suitcase. He straightened and faced her defiantly, expecting to be chastised for his disobedience, because when he’d begged permission that morning to go to London, she’d refused him.

  But instead she sat down gracefully on the room’s only chair, looking at him with such understanding that he was forced to turn away and stare out the window at the sparrows nesting under the eaves in the barn.

  “Lewis, you must not do this,” she said quietly. “I know how desperately worried you are, but the only thing you can do for your family is to stay where they can reach you.”

  “But—what if … I can’t bear not knowing—”

  “We don’t know how long the bombing will go on, and this is why they sent you away, to keep you safe. How would your mother feel if you went to London and were hurt or killed, and all this year had been for nought?”

  He shook his head wordlessly, but found some unexpected comfort in the thought of his mother’s anger.

  “The East End is in chaos,” Edwina continued. “You know that—you’ve been listening to the reports on the wireless. And William’s parents confirmed what we’ve heard—they managed to ring through from Greenwich to tell us that the Hammond’s warehouse was not badly damaged. It’s quite possible that your family has been relocated, and in that case you’d not be able to find them. The only sensible thing to do is wait. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.” He heard the chair legs creak as Edwina stood, then felt the light touch of her hand on his shoulder. “Promise me you won’t do anything rash.”

  After a moment, he managed to nod and say, “All right,” but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  “You’re a sensible boy, Lewis,” Edwina said, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze. “I knew I could count on you.”

  Lewis heard her go down the stairs, her booted steps as quick and precise as she was in everything, but he didn’t feel sensible at all. In his heart he knew he’d failed his family, left them to an unknown fate that he should have suffered with them, and that his safe and sensible retreat marked him as an outsider and a coward.

  T HE HOUSE ON S TEBONDALE S TREET WAS was hit by an incendiary bomb on the third night of the Blitz, but this Lewis didn’t learn until almost a week later, when he received a note in the post. The paper was much blotched and stained, but the neatly looped, convent-school handwriting was instantly recognizable as his mother’s.Dear Lewis,The house is gone but we are all right. The third night the bombers came a fire bomb hit right on top of the house but we had gone round to the McNeills in Chapel House Street and went down their Anderson shelter when the alarm sounded. So it was lucky for us wasn’t it? They have given us a flat in Islington for now with two other families; it’s not very clean but at least we have a place to lay our heads. I will write more soon remember I love you.Your loving mother

  Lewis had gone every day to wait for the post at the bottom of the drive, and now he stood, staring at the tattered paper, until the tears blurred his vision and splashed onto the page. He knew that William and Edwina and Mr. Cuddy and even Cook were watching him anxiously from the house, as they had every day, but he couldn’t seem to move.

  After a bit, William came down to him, but Lewis found he couldn’t speak, either. He was forced to hand William the letter to read for himself.

  William read, squinting at the unfamiliar script, his lips moving silently. Then he looked up, a grin spreading across his face, and whooped and pounded Lewis on the back, shouting, “Hooray! Bloody hooray!” and after that it was all right.

  IT WAS MIDMORNING BEFORE KINCAID STARTED for Cambridge, after having made a stop at the Yard. He concentrated on negotiating London traffic until he reached the M11, then he popped a jazz piano tape Gemma had given him into the Rover’s tape deck and settled into the right-hand lane, determined to make good time.

  The music was improvisational, the drifting notes of the piano sometimes as ethereal as wind in the grass, or as liquid as running water. After a bit, in the sort of free association often brought on by long-distance driving, the music seemed to combine his thoughts of Kit with memories of the long days of his own boyhood.

  He’d spent his summer hols running wild with all the freedom of a child growing up in the country, packing his lunch in the mornings and setting out to roam, on foot or on his bike. Sometimes he’d gone with friends, and sometimes alone, if he could manage to ditch his little sister. He’d climbed trees and swum in the canals and taught himself to fish with absorbed and infinite patience.

  Of course, there must have been wet days, and boring days; in retrospect, however, they were all idyl
lic, filled with the heady tonic of adventure. But what had made his confidence possible, he realized now, was the knowledge that when he returned home in the evenings, his mum and dad would be home from the shop, supper would be cooking, and Miranda would be wanting him to play Monopoly or catch.

  His foundation had seemed unshakable; it had never occurred to him that it could collapse as easily as a house of cards.

  It was almost lunchtime when he pulled into the Millers’ drive and stopped the engine. Laura Miller had been Vic’s secretary at the university English Faculty, and a good friend as well. Her son, Colin, had been at school with Kit, although the Millers lived in Comberton, a hamlet a few miles from Grantchester. Laura’s willingness to take Kit in for the past few months had provided the boy a haven of familiarity while the school term lasted.

  To Kincaid’s surprise, Laura answered his ring herself. “I thought you’d be at work,” he said, kissing her cheek.

  “It’s summer hols for me, too,” she said as she let him in. She wore white shorts with a bright madras cotton blouse, and her fair skin was faintly flushed from the heat. “Come back to the kitchen. It’s cooler there.”

  The house was a comfortable, suburban semidetached, filled with the trail of discarded shoes and sports equipment that marked habitation by boys. “Colin’s gone quite football-mad this summer—I don’t know what’s got into him,” Laura said as she cleared a kitchen chair of a ball and a pair of dirty socks. “Sit down and I’ll get you something cold to drink. Ginger cordial?”

  When he nodded assent, she went on, “I’ve been trying to ring you this morning.” Handing him a glass filled with milky liquid and a few ice cubes, she sat down at the table. “What’s going on, Duncan? Kit came back from London doing a perfect impersonation of the sphinx—and then yesterday Ian McClellan showed up here and said he’s back in Cambridge for good. It was just this morning I finally got Kit to tell me that Ian intends to take him back to the Grantchester cottage.”

  “Ian’s seen Kit, then?”

  “He didn’t stay long. That’s all Kit’s been willing to say about it, he won’t talk about you at all, and he refuses to leave the house. I’m really quite worried about him.”

  “I told Kit I was his dad,” Kincaid confessed reluctantly. “The night before Ian rang me up in London.”

  “Oh, dear.” Laura looked aghast. “No wonder he came back in a royal funk.”

  “I knew it might take a bit of getting used to, but I rather thought he liked me.… I suppose I’d even hoped he might be pleased.”

  Laura shook her head. “You were Kit’s escape from his old life, someone unconnected except for those last few weeks, a friend.”

  “But a father, surely—”

  “I don’t think you understand, Duncan. To Kit, parents are the last people you can count on. They run away and leave you. Or die. I don’t think anything could have frightened him more.”

  Kincaid stared at her, wondering how he could not have seen it. “Oh, Christ. I didn’t realize … How can I possibly sort things out with him after this?”

  Frowning, Laura said, “I don’t know. I suppose you can try to reassure him that things between you won’t change.” She nodded towards the patio door. “He’s at the bottom of the garden.”

  ABANDONED GARDENING TOOLS AND A SCATTERING of empty plastic pots near the house told him that Laura had been working in the perennial beds, which got full sun before several old oaks turned the bottom of the garden into a shady retreat. He whistled for Tess, who came up to greet him, tail wagging, but he didn’t see Kit until he’d rounded the first tree.

  Kit sat with his back to the trunk, arms wrapped round his knees, regarding Kincaid with an expression of sullen wariness.

  “Hullo, sport.” Kincaid squatted and scratched Tess behind the ears. “Where’s Colin?”

  For a long moment Kit didn’t answer, then he said grudgingly, “Next door. He went to borrow some nails.”

  In the grass, Kincaid saw what looked like the beginnings of a rudimentary platform at the end of a series of small trestles made with logs. “What’s it for?” he asked, nodding at the platform.

  “Tess.” At the sound of her name, the dog left Kincaid and sat expectantly at Kit’s knee.

  Kincaid squinted at the pieces of plywood. “Okay. But what’s it for?”

  “It’s an obstacle course,” Kit said impatiently. “There’s supposed to be a ramp, and a dispenser for tennis balls, but we can’t figure out how to make the dispenser work.”

  “I could probably come up with something,” Kincaid offered.

  Kit shook his head. “It’s our project, Colin’s and mine. And besides, you haven’t the time.”

  Kincaid ignored the dig. “I thought maybe we could get some sandwiches in Cambridge, take out a punt.”

  “Punting’s stupid,” Kit said, looking away. “And Laura’s making beefburgers. I don’t want to go out.”

  “Okay.” Kincaid sat down in the grass. “Maybe we could just talk, then.”

  “I don’t want to talk, either.” Kit pressed his lips together and wrapped his arms tighter round his knees.

  “How about if I talk, and you listen?” Kincaid suggested. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  When Kit didn’t answer, he went on, picking his words carefully. “I’m sorry about what I said the other night. But it doesn’t change anything between us. It’s just a fact, like having blue eyes, or blonde hair. It doesn’t mean I’m not your friend, or that I’d have done anything differently if there weren’t that connection between us. It’s just extra, like icing on the cake.” When he paused, Kit blinked, but still didn’t look at him.

  “I’m not going to stop being your friend, no matter what. You can still visit me in London, just like before, if it’s all right with Ian—”

  “I’m not going back there! Not to the cottage.” Kit jumped up and turned his back on Kincaid, then kicked at the tree, but not before Kincaid had seen his eyes fill with tears. “You can’t make me!”

  “Kit, I didn’t come here to make you do anything. But you can talk to me about it. Tell me why you don’t want to go back.”

  Kit shook his head, but this time the gesture seemed anguished rather than stubborn.

  “Is it because of your mum?” Kincaid asked very gently, praying that for once he had said the right thing.

  “I can’t—” Kit’s voice broke and Kincaid could see the effort he was making to continue. “She’s not—”

  When he didn’t go on, Kincaid thought furiously for a moment, then said, “Kit, do you remember when you ran away from your grandparents, and I found you at the cottage? You were asleep in your bedroom, you and Tess. And you felt safe there, didn’t you?”

  After what seemed a very long while, Kit nodded.

  “It wasn’t such a bad feeling, was it?” Slowly, knowing he was treading on very unsure ground, Kincaid added, “It might be a good thing, even, to remember some of the times with your mum—”

  “I want to stay here, with Laura,” Kit said, turning to face him. For the first time, this seemed a plea rather than a refusal to consider alternatives.

  But it was a desire Kincaid had no power to grant. He temporized, carefully. “Well, perhaps you could just go over for a visit, have a look round, see how things feel. Have you seen Nathan lately?”

  “No.” Kit dug the toe of his trainer into the grass. “Not since I finished the fish project I was doing for school last month.”

  “You could pay Nathan a visit. I’ll bet he’d like to see Tess.”

  Kit shrugged, frowning, but didn’t reject the idea.

  “I could even take you, if you like,” Kincaid offered, looking away, trying to impart an impression of nonchalance.

  Kit shook his head, but slowly, as if he might be thinking about what to do. “I suppose I could ride my bike.” He looked up and met Kincaid’s eyes for the first time. “Would he be there … my dad?”

  Kincaid sat down on the old
garden chair the boys had been using as a carpenter’s bench. “I don’t know. How did you leave things with him?”

  “He said he had a lot of things to do this week at the college, and getting the house ready, but he’d come this weekend and move my stuff—” Kit’s voice rose at the last and he clenched his hands, looking round as if the thought made him want to bolt in panic.

  “Whoa. That’s ages from now,” Kincaid said soothingly. “You can only do things one day at a time, sport. Sometimes life is so bloody that’s the only way you can get through it. But the good bit about living one day at a time is that when nice things happen, you enjoy them more than people who are always thinking about the past or the future.”

  Kit frowned at him, looking unconvinced, but to Kincaid’s relief, his hands and shoulders had relaxed.

  The odor of grilling meat reached them, and from the kitchen Kincaid heard the murmur of voices. Knowing his time was running out, he said, “What if you go over on your own this afternoon, just for a bit of a recce, then you give me ring and we’ll talk about it. What do you say?”

  The kitchen door opened and Colin came out to the edge of the patio and waved. “Mum says will you stay and have beefburgers?” he called out.

  Kincaid cupped his hands and yelled, “Wouldn’t miss it!” then turned back to Kit. “Is it a deal, then?” He held out his hand, palm up, an invitation for their customary high five.

  Kit looked towards the patio, where Colin was making a face and a hurry-up gesture, then at Kincaid. He shrugged. “Okay,” he said at last. “I suppose it can’t hurt just to have a look.” With a slap of his palm against Kincaid’s, he turned and darted off towards the house, followed by a furiously barking Tess.

  Kincaid watched them go, his relief at making a bit of progress marred by the awareness that he’d just done his best to give his son into the care of a man he neither liked nor trusted.

  AFTER RETURNING FROM HAMMOND’S, GEMMA SPENT the remainder of the morning at Limehouse, sifting through the accumulated reports and the logs of telephone and house-to-house inquiries. When Janice returned at lunchtime, they called out for some sandwiches and coffee, clearing a space to eat on one of the desks in the incident room so that they could compare notes.