The Return of Captain John Emmett

by Elizabeth Speller

  'I'm sure he understood,' Laurence said. 'I'm sorry, that sounds such a cliché.' However, he was wondering whether John might also have needed distance from his over-protective mother.

  'Yes, but the place was too far away and he was among strangers and I'm not even sure they—the people in charge—were al very nice people. Not very kind.

  And the worst thing of al was that truthfuly it was quite a relief to have him out of the house.'

  Her voice wobbled. Laurence automaticaly put out his hand to comfort her and cursed himself for being a fool as it neither reached her nor was noticed. After a second he withdrew it. There was silence for a minute or two, except for wasps buzzing round the jug of cordial.

  'Do you realy think he was mistreated?'

  'Wel, not actively mistreated, but not always understood. He was complicated.'

  She described what she knew of John's last days, though the story she told was not greatly amplified from her long letter. John had settled into Holmwood, an institution in the market town of Fairford in the Cotswolds. It had long been a hospital specialising in neurasthenia. Before the war it had taken men and women in more or less equal numbers but soon it began to fil with troubled officers.

  'Shel-shock: that's what they cal it now. To give them their due, they got John speaking and he'd put on a bit of weight by the last time I saw him.'

  'Who was actualy in charge?' asked Laurence.

  A Doctor Chilvers was in charge medicaly but his son had a share in ownership, I think; he seemed to have a lot of influence in how things were done. Although Dr Chilvers was quite old, he seemed to be doing his best. His son, George, was thirty-five or so but I didn't get the feeling he'd served in the war. He's a solicitor. I didn't like him. The staff were nervous of him, I thought. And either there's family money or they're doing quite nicely out of Holmwood. Is that unfair? I suppose it is.'

  She rushed on, 'Why shouldn't they do wel? Somebody has to care for these poor men.'

  'Did anyone expect things to turn out so badly?'

  'I would have said suicide was the last thing he'd do. Earlier, maybe. Not then. I saw him about six weeks before he—escaped—and he was a bit restless. But in a way I thought that was good. He hated being cooped up; said he had things he needed to do, which must mean he intended to have time to do them in, surely? He talked a bit. About Suffolk. Lots about our father. He said he had regrets—he didn't say about what but I assumed the war. Yet that last time I thought he was more himself, if anything. In fact, I went back more hopeful than I had for ages. I even suggested Mother went over to see him.'

  She stopped and breathed in deeply. They were both so stil that a sparrow hopped on to the table and pecked at crumbs. As she began to speak again, it flew a few feet away to perch on a chairback.

  'She never did, of course. She never saw him again. That Christmas Day he was taken il in church or pretended he was. A Holmwood attendant folowed him out but John either knocked him out or just pushed him out of his way—it depends which version you believe. And John ran off and ended up dead in a wood. Heaven knows how long he'd been there. He could have lived rough for a while, I suppose. It was an awful, awful shock.

  Anyway, apparently Dr Chilvers told the inquest—we didn't go; my mother would have been terribly distressed and I couldn't face it on my own—there was a blot on John's copybook at Holmwood: he'd "absconded" only weeks earlier. Absconded! When he'd gone to Holmwood voluntarily.'

  She was sitting forward now, her elbows on the table. Sun filtered through the brim of her hat on to her skin. She was beautiful, he thought.

  'After that they'd been keeping him under closer confinement for a bit,' she went on. 'That alone would have driven him mad. No wonder he broke out. But Chilvers' slimy son backed up the doctor and one of the attendants said John was volatile.' She looked upset and paused as if waiting for him to see the injustice of it al.

  As if the rest of their patients were models of composure. They kept referring to what they caled a violent attack on their warder outside the church. Not pointing out it was the only way John could get away.'

  Laurence must have looked puzzled because Mary added, 'Of course, men like John do kil themselves sometimes. I know that. In fact there'd been another death there—right in the house itself—only a few months before John arrived. But on the day John disappeared, they didn't cal the police out for twelve hours while young Mr Chilvers drove around, trying to retrieve their lost patient with minimum fuss. If they'd got others involved they might have found John before he did it.'

  Although her hand was trembling slightly her voice remained very calm. She ran her finger down the side of her glass.

  'But it was a stranger who died, you see. He'd left us years ago.'

  Laurence wished he could tel her he had heard from him, wished he could have explained that stranger to her. He wanted to believe he would have made contact if he'd known John was in trouble, but he feared that he wouldn't. He should never have lost his friend in the first place.

  'Look,' he began, unsure what he was about to commit himself to and whether he was complicating a simple, if sad, event. 'I could see if I could find out anything. I mean, I don't know if I would be able to do any more than you have, but I could at least ask around people he and I both knew. At school, mostly, possibly at Oxford. See whether any of them had heard anything from him since the war. I have the time.'

  Even as he said it, he knew he was only setting himself up to disappoint her. So many in their year were gone now and John had had no intimates, anyway.

  'People at school' would simply mean Charles Carfax. But her face brightened irresistibly, so he continued, 'At a pinch I suppose I could talk to the people at Holmwood, see if they come up with anything.' As he said it, he thought how unlikely it was that he would be any match for the professionaly discreet.

  'When John died—afterwards—they sent a trunk with his things,' she said. 'There's not much in it, just clothes and books. Little things.'

  A look of such extreme sadness came over her that he was embarrassed to be faced with her emotion and uneasy remembering his own reactions to Louise's possessions.

  'But there might be something you'd make sense of. There are sketches and writings, a few photographs. You might see something, knowing a different side of John to us.'

  He didn't know how to tel her that he felt he had never realy known her brother at al.

  It was getting cooler. Laurence paid for tea and they walked back to the punt, now alone on its moorings. Light breezes made the return journey faster but chily. Mary sat, eventualy accepting Laurence's offer of his coat, while he made what seemed like interminable progress downstream. After a bit she took over and he surrendered the pole with gratitude. His shoulder muscles were burning with exertion but he was damp with sweat and soon felt cold. They were both weary by the time they were back on land again.

  They walked the short distance to the Emmetts' new house in silence. Laurence, remembering their Suffolk home from years back, was surprised by the dul meagreness of the tal, narrow house they lived in now. The brick was greyish-yelow, the proportions of the windows cramped. Below the railings, ferns and mosses had encroached on the damp basement. What had happened to their leisured existence before the war?

  Chapter Five

  An elderly woman opened the door. Was it the same maid he remembered from long ago, Laurence wondered; she wasn't in uniform but few domestics were now. He smiled encouragingly but she just motioned to them to come in.

  'My aunt, Miss Virginia Peel,' said Mary. He hoped his smile hadn't been patronising.

  Mary took him into a smal drawing room where, despite the warmth outside, Mrs Emmett sat by a fire. To cross the room and shake her hand, he had to squeeze between occasional tables and around a large chiffonier. Every bit of furniture that had looked at home in an affably neglected manor house appeared to have accompanied them to Cambridge. The effect was oppressive, the pieces heavy and grandiose. Weak light filt
ered in through thick lace curtains under a velvet pelmet.

  Even Mary seemed to wilt. Her mother sat on a button-back chair like a relic of another age.

  'Laurence,' she said and held out a soft hand, 'how good to see you again.'

  He would not have recognised Mrs Emmett. She was much smaler than he recaled and a certain excitability, which had amused him when he was a boy, was entirely gone.

  'How good of you to come al this way and see Mary. She doesn't get out nearly enough.' She looked towards her daughter. 'She doesn't see much of her old friends. I don't know why. Everybody used to love Mary.'

  They talked politely, touching on her son for only a second, and then only to locate them al in time.

  'That was before John died, of course,' Mrs Emmett had replied to Laurence's asking when they had moved to Cambridge.

  Mary jumped in at this opportunity. 'I thought it might be nice to let Laurence have one of John's books. You remember we discussed it. As a keepsake.' He could tel that Mrs Emmett actualy remembered nothing of the sort and it crossed his mind that there had never even been a conversation on the subject, but Mrs Emmett smiled again vaguely.

  'Oh yes, lovely. What a good idea. Certainly he should have something. Do you like poetry? John was very keen on poetry, you know.'

  Laurence had worried that they would have to sit and have a second, awkward, tea, but Mary's mother seemed unconcerned with such social niceties and after a few minutes they were able to back out of the room.

  John's things had been put in one of two smal rooms under the eaves. As they climbed the three flights of stairs, Mary said over her shoulder, 'You don't have to take anything. I simply wanted an excuse to show you John's things without having to explain.'

  Their feet clattered up a last uncarpeted flight into a smal, peaceful room with a casement window. It held an iron bed, a wooden chair and a washstand. On the bed lay a trunk and a box. It reminded him a bit of school.

  'We never used to come up here,' Mary said, as if the room stil surprised her. 'But my aunt needed John's old room, and now this is al that's left of him ... It's hard.'

  She opened the wooden box first. A battered hip flask lay on top of a yelow and black striped scarf. Mary picked it up and held to her face, smeling it.

  'A school house scarf,' she said. 'Not a Marlborough scarf and not his, though I like to think that a friend gave it to him to keep out the cold. He had it with him until the end.'

  Laurence took the scarf from her. He didn't say that it had probably belonged to a dead man. He picked up the corner and saw what he expected: embroidered initials and a school number next to it. He wondered what the schoolboy MS142C had been like and what had happened to him. What sporting boys in what house in what school had worn these colours? School with its numbered individuals was just like the army, he thought.

  Mary was rifling through the box. 'Holmwood sent it back to us. Most of what was with him, on his body, was burned,' she said hurriedly, turning her face away. 'But there should have been a watch. It had been my grandfather's and my father bought a new chain for it when John went up to Oxford. Though I suppose it could have been damaged.'

  The corner of her mouth twitched so minutely that if he hadn't been watching her closely, he might have missed it.

  'These were returned to us.' She turned round, holding out an oilskin tobacco pouch, a crumpled handkerchief and a worn woman's hair ornament. She then lifted up a lined sheet of paper with writing on it and a photograph. 'The contents of his pockets. Pathetic, realy. The note and photograph were in the empty pouch.'

  He took the photograph from her. A deep crease ran across it and the corners were dog-eared. It was a picture of soldiers, taken from a short distance away.

  The image was poor quality and overexposed along one edge. Nor had they posed for it; in fact, the group seemed unaware of the photographer. They were mostly young and unsmiling. Some were smoking in a huddle. The closest was more of a boy than a man, noticeably slighter and shorter than the rest. Standing alone, leaning back against a pile of logs, his eyes half shut but looking more relaxed than the others, was a sergeant. Close by were two officers; one was considerably older, in his late forties, Laurence guessed. The younger had turned half away from the camera. Could it be John? Mary didn't comment. In the background was a cobbled farmyard. A single bare branch overhung open stals with a covering of what looked like light snow.

  He turned the picture over. In the corner was a fairly formal monogram in purple ink—the developer perhaps? He looked briefly at the sheet of paper; across the top was the word 'Coburg' underlined, and below it 'Byers' and then 'Darling' in older, penciled writing. Next to it in different ink was written 'B. Combe Bisset and then Tucker/Florence St?'

  Who had taken the photograph, and why had John got it with him at his death? Impossible to know. Were Byers and Darling men in the picture? Was Tucker a street or a person? Combe Bisset was presumably a British location and Coburg a German one. But then he thought of al the nicknames they gave to trenches in France, a stagnant pit caled Piccadily and a sand-bagged Dover Way. As he thought, he was fiddling with the metal comb, a smal, cheap, gilt trinket. A unicorn's head surmounted its bent spikes, with what might be letters or simply decoration.

  Mary set aside a battered tin of geometry instruments and lifted out a book on birds. He opened it at the bookmark. John had written down the margin:

  'Wonderful golden orioles singing at La Comte. April '17.' The page showed a plump, bright-yelow bird with the caption 'Oriolus oriolus'.

  'He and my father loved birds,' Mary said, as she handed him three more volumes. 'Heads in the air—birds and stars—both of them.'

  On top was a wel-worn copy of The Iliad. Laurence remembered struggling through it at school. He put the other books on the bed and opened the Homer.

  Sure enough, it was inscribed: John Christopher Rawlston Emmett, College House. He reached for a smal anthology with a cover in pristine khaki. He thought every soldier had been given a copy on embarkation to France. It was titled Spirit of War, a colection of stirring works for impressionable young men. He exchanged it briefly for Browning's The Ring and the Book. Mary handed him a book in a brown slipcover. Taking it from her, he read the cover: Karl Marx, Das Kapital. He prised apart the curled-up page corners and stared at the mystery of dense Gothic script.

  Mary had puled some notebooks from under the remaining contents. The first was a mixture of sketches, poems and bits of prose. Here and there a cutting had been stuck in. She tipped a page towards him: it was a charcoal drawing of the old Suffolk house. The second book was smaler and the writing in it more cramped; folowing round the bottom margins of pages and up the sides.

  Mary stood close to him and turned the pages slowly. There were sketches of infantrymen in a camp lying propped up with mugs of tea, and then one of a young soldier enveloped in a waterproof cape and huddled behind sandbags. They were awfuly good, Laurence thought; the sense of relentless rain was invoked with a few pencil strokes. The whole of the next page was a half-finished portrait of a nurse sitting by an oil lamp, its light accentuating her bone structure. Mary handed the open book to him. He turned the page again. On the left was a studio photograph: French undoubtedly—he had seen hundreds like it—of a solid young woman, posed naked but for her hat and boots. Her hands were clasped behind her neck, the hair under her arms and between her legs was as dark and thick as that under her hat.

  Laurence looked up sharply but Mary was absorbed in the earlier notebook.

  There were two poems on the folowing page. They both had the same title, 'A Lament'. The first, a sonnet, had the initials JCRE underneath. He remembered John's poem he'd read in the newspaper. This one was better, he thought. The second poem, although also handwritten, had been pasted in; the writing was quite different. It was signed 'Sisyphus'. It was long, with no real structure and incomplete sentences, yet its words painted a picture that brought the combined sensations and sounds of warfare back to Lau
rence so strongly that he found himself gripping the book tightly. The strange fragments summoned up the inescapable proximity to others and the simultaneous loneliness of life near the front line, of profound bonds between men dependent on each other, yet having perhaps to pass by the same men lying dead in some muddy defile.

  Laurence wondered why John had stuck the poems in together. John's poem was highly competent, moving even, but diminished by the extraordinary quality of the unknown Sisyphus's work.

  As Mary unlatched the trunk it emanated a faint and disconcerting stale male scent: sweat, tobacco, hair oil and mothbals. The contents were somehow depressing: towels, a worn tartan blanket, some cheap blank writing paper and envelopes. A pair of indoor shoes in need of a polish and lovat bedroom slippers lay over a couple of folded newspapers, presumably there to protect the clothes from the shoes. He picked up the top paper; it was dated the previous November. The front page had a grainy picture of the train bearing the Unknown Warrior arriving at Victoria Station. Under the slightly damp newspapers was a layer of clothing: much-washed vests, long johns and a box of colars. An army greatcoat lay under a thick navy comforter of the sort Laurence remembered wel, knitted by mothers, aunts and wives who had always believed that a chil on the chest was the most formidable enemy of al.

  There were four unframed photographs tucked between layers of clothes. The first was of John's father standing outside Colston House with his dog and a shotgun. The next was a studio portrait of a very young John, and Mary younger stil, posed in a big chair. Some glue and a torn bit of dark paper remained on the reverse, so it had presumably been taken from an album. The third surprised him; he recognised himself, Lionel, Rupert and Charles in stiff colars and dark jackets, posing for the shot. The fourth was smal: a little boy in a sailor suit with dark hair and eyes who he guessed was John. He was disconcerted to find John had held such attachments to the past and felt a momentary discomfort at revealing the inner life of such a private man.