Kissed a Sad Goodbye

by Deborah Crombie

  “Another glass?” asked Madeleine, but he shook his head, recalling the unusually incapacitating effect of drinking with Madeleine, especially on an empty stomach.

  “Thank you, but I’d better not,” he said, standing, and Madeleine gracefully uncoiled herself from the sofa and walked him to her door. “It was good to see you, Madeleine. I like to think of you here, sometimes. A calm center.”

  “If you start quoting Yeats at me, I won’t have you back,” she said lightly, her marvelous eyes level with his.

  “Never fear, then. I’m forewarned. And I will come again.” He kissed her cheek and turned away.

  “Duncan.”

  All the amusement had vanished from her voice and he stopped, compelled to look back.

  “Whatever it is that’s happened to you, it won’t go away on its own,” said Madeleine. “Please take care.”

  THE SKY HAD PALED FROM BLUE to violet to cobalt, but Gordon Finch had not stirred to turn on a light. In his lap the dressing gown he had bought for Annabelle, his only tangible connection with her, lay crumpled beneath his fingers.

  Until today, he had not allowed himself to think it out. Until today, he had not had all the pieces—had not been forced to follow events through to their logical conclusion. Had Gemma and her watchful-eyed superintendent taken the same path? If not, how long would it take for them to realize where Annabelle had gone and what she had done?

  All that remained was for him to decide how much loyalty he owed his father … and what vengeance Annabelle demanded.

  CHAPTER 14 For the majority of families whose livelihood depended on river trade activity, the abandonment of the upstream docks was as unexpected and destructive as a natural catastrophe. It was their Great Fire. They could only watch and accept the consequences of a process which they had no part in initiating and little chance of controlling.

  George Nicholson, from Dockland

  “You will not talk when I am speaking to you,” said Mr. Haliburton, his shaking hand raised to the chalkboard, his back still turned to the children, in the too-quiet voice Lewis had learned to recognize as a danger signal.

  It had been Irene, leaning over to whisper something to Lewis, whom Mr. Haliburton had heard while he was lecturing to them on the structure of the Houses of Parliament. Now Lewis gave her a warning look and held his breath, hoping the moment would pass.

  The shaking hand began to move again, and Lewis relaxed as much as was possible while in the same room with their new tutor. Chafing his freezing fingers together under the table, he tried not to think of Mr. Cuddy, tried not to remember the days when the four of them had sat round the schoolroom table arguing excitedly over a book they were reading or a point of history—because all that had changed on that June morning when Mr. Cuddy had gathered them together in the schoolroom as his annual holiday was to begin. As he’d asked them to sit down, Lewis had seen, to his surprise, that his tutor had tears in his eyes.

  “I cannot put this off any longer,” Mr. Cuddy had said then. “You all know that I’m going away, but I’m not going on holiday as I’ve told you, and I’m afraid that I won’t be coming back.”

  Irene recovered first. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Cuddy. Why ever wouldn’t you come back?”

  Mr. Cuddy had turned away from them, a slight, balding, familiar figure in spectacles and moth-eaten jacket, and Lewis had felt the first stirring of fear.

  “I have been torn this last year between what I saw as my duty to you, and what I felt was my duty to my country, and I’m afraid I have let myself be swayed by my desire to stay with you three children. But I have realized that you are not children any longer.” Mr. Cuddy turned back to them, his hands in his pockets, and Lewis knew he would be fingering the old watch he always kept there. “I have told you that I believe the Allies will shortly be invading Italy and the Mediterranean. Translators will be needed—”

  “Are you saying you’ve joined up?” asked William, with an expression of astonishment that was almost comical.

  “They refused me at the beginning of the war, but I speak Greek as well as rudimentary Italian and German, and it seems the army has come to see the advantages of that.” The light glinted from Mr. Cuddy’s spectacles as he nodded. “Yes, I have enlisted. And if this war goes on as it has, you boys will be doing the same before long.”

  “But you’re too old,” blurted Lewis, without thinking.

  Mr. Cuddy smiled. “I tried telling myself that. But for this it doesn’t matter. I won’t be fighting at the front, just trying to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes.”

  “But what about us?” Irene was frowning so hard that Lewis guessed she was holding back tears.

  “You will all be perfectly fine without me,” Mr. Cuddy had replied. “William will rebuild his father’s business when the war is over. Lewis, I think you can do anything you set your mind to, once you decide what that is. And Irene—our Irene is going to be prime minister, of course.” He lifted Irene’s chin gently with his forefinger, the first time Lewis remembered him touching any of them, then he had bid them a determined goodbye.

  They’d watched him from the window, tramping down the drive with his rucksack as if he were going on holiday after all, and Lewis had felt as if he’d awakened from a silly sort of bad dream and found it not to be a dream.

  In the autumn, Edwina had enrolled them in the village school, and while they were bored with their schoolwork, life at the Hall had gone on very much as before.

  At first, Lewis wouldn’t talk about Mr. Cuddy when William or Irene brought his name up, and when letters came from Italy, he pretended disinterest and refused to read them. But sometimes in the evenings, when everyone had gone to bed, he would creep into Edwina’s drawing room. There he could pore over the letters alone, by the light of a guttering candle, as many times as he wanted.

  Mr. Cuddy had been posted to General Clark’s 5th Army, which had landed at Salerno, on the shin of Italy, a few days after Montgomery’s 8th Army entered Italy at its toe on the 3rd of September. As the weeks passed and William and Irene speculated about whether Mr. Cuddy would eventually meet up with John Pebbles, Lewis occasionally let slip that he knew more than he admitted. Irene looked at him but said nothing, and somehow this made their friendship closer.

  Raids had been light and infrequent over the past eighteen months, since the Blitz had ended in May of ’41. They were all allowed home for a long holiday at Christmas—William to his family’s home in Greenwich; Irene to Kilburn, where her house had been repaired enough to be at least habitable; and Lewis to his parents’ tiny flat in Millwall.

  As they sat down to tea the first evening in the room that served his family as bedroom, parlor, and kitchen, Lewis had glanced at the three places set on the makeshift table and asked, “Where’s Cath, then?” thinking she must be working an evening shift at her factory.

  The look he’d come to recognize passed between his parents again, then his father stared down at the pile of mashed turnips on his plate and muttered, “Bloody Yanks.”

  Lewis turned to his mother for enlightenment. He’d seen the American soldiers in the street, and the American military police everyone called “snow-drops,” in their white belts and hats, but he didn’t make the immediate connection.

  His mother gave another glance at his da before she said softly, “Your sister’s gone, Lewis. I hadn’t the heart to tell you in a letter. She’s married an American flier who’s been invalided home—” Faltering, she touched his father’s arm, but he shook his head, refusing her comfort. “And she’s going to have a baby,” his mother finished quickly.

  Lewis had heard enough village gossip to guess the order of events, but that didn’t quell his rising anger. “You mean she’s gone off to the States without even saying goodbye?”

  “It was all that quick, in the Registry Office … and your da didn’t want any fuss.” His mum’s eyes filled with tears and she pushed a covered dish towards Lewis. “The greengrocer saved me a sp
ecial treat for your tea—fresh Brussels sprouts.”

  Feeling suddenly nauseated, Lewis pushed back his chair. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m not hungry.”

  The air outside was dense with a freezing fog that seemed to creep inside his clothes and cling to his skin, but Lewis found himself trudging along West Ferry Road in the dark, the thin fabric of his coat pulled up round his chin. There was nothing he could do about the cold nipping at his wrists and ankles. His sleeves were too short, as were his trousers: he’d already outgrown the few items allotted by his ration coupons.

  It seemed there was nothing he could do about people leaving, either, he thought, kicking savagely at an empty tin in the street. A man hurrying in the opposite direction gave him an angry look as he stopped and picked it up. “Don’t you know there’s a salvage drive on, sonny?” the man said roughly, pushing past him.

  Fury washed through Lewis and he turned, fists up, but the man had disappeared into the blackness.

  How could his sister leave them, knowing they would probably never see one another again, and not even send him a letter?

  He walked on, as far as Island Gardens, but the river was invisible in the heavy overcast and he felt it only as an icy void sucking more of the warmth from his body. At last, he turned and trudged back to the flat, but that evening seemed to set the tone for the rest of his holiday.

  His parents had changed. It seemed to Lewis that his sister’s desertion, following so soon on his brothers’ deaths, had made his gentle father bitter, while his mother was simply worn down with repeated grief and loss. And he found he had changed, as well. When he met his old mates they jeered at his accent, and their lives were filled with talk of going down the pub and concerns that seemed foreign to him. Most had left school at fourteen, in favor of factory work until they were old enough to enlist, and although he felt an outcast, to his surprise he didn’t envy them.

  The days dragged by. He thought several times of William, just across the river, but Greenwich seemed a world away and William had not invited him to visit. On Boxing Day, with guilty relief, he kissed his parents goodbye and caught the train back to Surrey, but his pleasure at returning there had been short-lived.

  As he watched Mr. Haliburton at the chalkboard, he thought of the first time he had seen him in Edwina’s drawing room, on New Year’s Day. William and Irene had returned and they’d all gathered in the kitchen, poking spoons and fingers into Cook’s pots while she scolded and flapped at them with her apron. After a few weeks of subsisting mostly on turnips and potatoes, Lewis’s stomach was growling at the thought of the ham Cook had promised for their New Year’s feast, and there was to be a tart as well, made from the preserved gooseberries they’d picked in the autumn. He’d been inching towards the larder with the idea of just having a peek at the sweet when Edwina had come into the kitchen and asked them to join her.

  “Maybe we’ll get a glass of sherry for a New Year’s toast,” William whispered, elbowing him as they followed Edwina down the corridor, but Lewis had been more interested in watching Irene. She wore a wool skirt and jumper rather than trousers, her glossy copper hair bounced on her shoulders, and it seemed to him that there was something different about the way she walked. Irene had looked back then and smiled at him, and it had made him feel quite odd.

  As they entered the drawing room, Lewis first saw through the window the strange car in the drive, its bonnet glistening with rain. Then he noticed the tall, thin man standing before the fire, smoking, his back to them. He didn’t turn round to greet them and Lewis noticed that the hand holding the cigarette shook.

  Edwina glanced at the man and lit a cigarette of her own before she spoke. “This is my cousin, Freddie Haliburton. He’s been invalided out of the RAF and will be staying with us for a while.” She paused, sipping at a glass of the sherry she hadn’t offered them. Lewis had been smirking at William’s disappointment and not paying much attention when she’d continued, “Freddie is going to be your new tutor, so I wanted you to get acquainted right away.”

  This brought Lewis up with a snap, and as the stranger turned round slowly, he heard Irene give a small gasp beside him.

  It took all of Lewis’s effort not to react, though a sidelong glance told him that Irene had raised a hand to her mouth and William had lost his color. The left side of Freddie Haliburton’s face was a shining mass of red scar tissue, closing his eye, dragging the corner of his brow down and the corner of his mouth up in a way that might have looked comical, but did not.

  “It’s Group Captain Haliburton,” the man said, and Lewis knew he’d seen the horror in their eyes. “But since we’re going to be such good friends, you may call me Mister Haliburton.” His light, mocking drawl had a slight rasp to it, as if he had difficulty breathing. Then he smiled. Or at least the right side of his mouth rose in a grotesque parody of a smile that was even more unpleasant than his face in repose, and Lewis had suddenly had a very bad feeling about it all.

  Now, Freddie Haliburton turned from the chalkboard to face them, and while the shock of seeing his face had lessened, Lewis’s dislike of him had not.

  “Mr. Finch,” said Freddie, with the smile Lewis had come to loathe, “shall we see if your ability to think logically about the House of Commons has improved since yesterday? Or could it be that common is as common does?”

  KINCAID SLEPT FITFULLY ON THE NARROW bed, waking with the duvet kicked onto the floor, a dull headache, and an image of Annabelle Hammond that had somehow become entwined with a vivid dream of Vic.

  But the day that greeted him when he stepped from his room in the farmhouse’s converted stable block was fresh and clear enough to revive his spirits. When he’d breakfasted and thanked his hosts, he set out in the Rover with Madeleine’s directions on the seat beside him.

  His route wound up into the hills, and the occasional gap in the thick woodlands gave a superb view of the Surrey Weald. He thought of walking in these woods with Gemma the previous autumn, when they’d climbed Leith Hill together, and the moment’s reminiscing caused him to bypass the turning for the hotel.

  After carefully backing up in the narrow road, he entered the drive and bumped slowly along it. As he rounded a curve, the building came into view—massive, redbrick, late Victorian Gothic, and although it was most impressive, he could see why the structure was no longer used as a private house.

  Behind the hotel and to the right, the land dropped away down the hillside; to the left the elevation rose slightly, and among the trees he caught a glimpse of a chimney and a red-tiled roof that he assumed must belong to the cottage Madeleine had mentioned.

  He left the Rover in the car park in front of the house and walked up the small, graveled lane that led into the woods. As he neared the cottage, he heard voices—no, it was only one voice, he decided as he came closer, rising and falling, then pausing before beginning again.

  Another few yards brought him to a clearing in which stood a redbrick cottage surrounded by a low-walled garden. On a sunny patch of lawn he saw a woman, her back to him, pacing and speaking to herself. She wore trousers and a pale blue cotton shirt, and her slender figure was almost boyish, an impression furthered by the short cropping of her auburn hair. She reached the end of her circuit and turned, then came to a surprised halt as she looked up and saw him standing at the bottom of her garden. As her face came into the sunlight, he saw that she was considerably older than he’d first thought, well past middle age, perhaps.

  “Hullo,” he called. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m looking for someone called Burne-Jones.”

  Coming forward, she rested her hands on the rusting, wrought-iron gate and examined him. “My name is Burne-Jones. What can I do for you?” Her face was pleasant and open, and her eyes, although on close inspection surrounded by a network of fine lines, were a bright and inquisitive blue.

  Kincaid slipped his warrant card from his jacket and presented it. “My name’s Kincaid, with Scotland Yard. I’ve some questions abo
ut the house”—he gestured back towards the way he had come—“and the people who stayed here during the war.”

  “The war?” She frowned and took the card from his hand, scanning it carefully before handing it back. “What could you possibly—” Pausing, she looked back at the cottage, then seemed to come to a decision. “Right. Come in, Superintendent. I was about to make coffee.

  “It’s just that I’ve a deadline,” she explained, looking back over her shoulder as he followed her into the house. “When I’m a bit stuck on something, I work it out in the garden.”

  As they entered the front room of the cottage, he saw that the worktable set against the front window held a computer monitor and keyboard, and that a good portion of the pleasant room was filled with well-stuffed bookcases. “Are you a writer, Miss Burne-Jones?” he asked, taking in the comfort of the room, with its squashy, chintz furniture, worn Aubusson carpet, and robin’s-egg-blue walls. A large, new television and VCR were positioned to one side of the fireplace.

  “A freelance political journalist. And you can dispense with the awkwardness—I’m Irene. Just have a seat and I’ll be back in a moment,” she added as she disappeared through a door he thought must lead to the kitchen. But instead of sitting, he had a look at the bookcases.

  Irene Burne-Jones’s taste in reading matter was wide-ranging, with a concentration in British history and political biography, and he gathered from the number of volumes on him that she had a particular fondness for Winston Churchill.

  He had removed William Manchester’s The Last Lion and was thumbing through it when Irene reentered with a tray. “Sorry,” she said as she pushed a stack of obviously unread newspapers aside to make room for the tray on the coffee table. “Things tend to accumulate when I’m finishing up an article. Do you like books, Mr. Kincaid?” She glanced at him as she poured coffee into mugs.