In A Dry Season

EIGHT

Vivian Elmsley sat down with her gin and tonic to watch the news that evening. The drinks were becoming more frequent, she had noticed, since her memories had started disturbing her. Though it was the only chink in her iron discipline, and she only allowed herself to indulge at the end of the day, it was a worrying sign nonetheless.

Watching the news had become a sort of grim duty now, a morbid fascination. Tonight, what she saw shook her to the core.

Toward the end of the broadcast, after the major world news and government scandals had been dealt with, the scene shifted to a familiar sight. A young blond woman held the microphone. She stood in Hobb’s End, where crime-scene searchers in their white boilersuits and wellies were still digging up the ruins.

“Today,” the reporter began, “in a further bizarre twist to a story we have been covering in the north of England, police investigating some skeletal remains found by a local schoolboy are almost certain they have established the identity of the victim. Just over an hour ago, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, who is heading the investigation, talked with our northern office.”

The scene shifted to a studio background, and the camera settled on a lean, dark-haired man with intense blue eyes.

“Can you tell us how this discovery was made?” the reporter asked.

“Yes.” Banks looked straight into the camera as he spoke, she noticed, not letting his eyes flick left or right the way so many amateurs did when they appeared on television. He had clearly done it before. “When we discovered the identity of the people living in the cottage during the Second World War,” he began, “we found that one of them, a woman called Gloria Shackleton, hasn’t shown up on any postwar records so far.”

“And that made you suspicious?”

The detective smiled. “Naturally. Of course, there could be a number of reasons for this, and we’re still looking into other possibilities, but one thing we are forced to consider is that she doesn’t show up because she was dead.”

“How long have the woman’s remains been buried?”

“It’s hard to be accurate, but we’re estimating between the early to mid-forties.”

“That’s a long time ago, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Don’t trails go cold, clues go stale?”

“Indeed they do. But I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made so far, and I’m confident we can take this investigation forward. The remains were discovered only last Wednesday, and within less than a week we are reasonably certain we have established the identity of the victim. I’d say that’s pretty good going for this sort of case.”

“And the next step?”

“The identity of the murderer.”

“Even though he or she may be dead?”

“Until we know that one way or the other, we’re still dealing with an open case of murder. As they say in America, there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“Is there any way the public can help?”

“Yes, there is.” Banks shifted in his chair. The next moment, the screen was filled with the head and shoulders of a woman. Surely it couldn’t be? But even though it wasn’t a photographic likeness, there was no mistaking who it was: Gloria.

Vivian gasped and clutched her chest.

Gloria.

After all these years.

It looked like part of a painting. Judging from the odd angle of the head, Vivian guessed that Gloria had been lying down as she posed. Michael Stanhope? It looked like his style. In the background, Banks’s voice went on, “If anyone recognizes this woman, who we think lived in London between 1921 and 1941 and in Hobb’s End after that, if there is any living relative who knows something about her, would they please get in touch with the North Yorkshire Police.” He gave out a phone number. “There’s still a great deal we need to know,” he went on, “and as the events occurred so long ago, that makes it all the more difficult for us.”

Vivian tuned out. All she could see was Gloria’s face: Stanhope’s vision of Gloria’s face, with that cunning blend of naivety and wantonness, that come-hither smile and its promise of secret delights. It both was and wasn’t Gloria.

Then she thought, with a tremor of fear: if they had already discovered Gloria, how long would it take them to discover her?

“It only said he’s missing,” Gloria insisted over two months later, at the height of the summer of 1943. We were standing by one of Mr. Kilnsey’s drystone walls drinking Tizer and looking out over the gold-green hills to the northwest. She thrust the most recent Ministry letter toward me and pointed at the words. “See. ‘Missing during severe fighting east of the Irrawaddy River in Burma.’ Wherever that is. When Mr. Kilnsey’s son was killed at El Alamein it said he was definitely dead, not just missing.”

What had kept us going the most since we heard the news of Matthew’s disappearance was our attempt to get as much information as we possibly could about what had happened to him. First we had written letters, then we had even telephoned the Ministry. But they wouldn’t commit themselves. Missing was all they would tell us, and nobody seemed to know anything about the exact circumstances of his disappearance or where he might be if he was still alive. If they did, they weren’t saying.

The most we could get out of the man on the telephone was that the area in which Matthew had disappeared was now in the hands of the Japanese, so there was no question of going in to search for bodies. Yes, he admitted, an unspecified number of casualties had been confirmed, but Matthew was not among them. While it was still likely he might have been killed, the man concluded, there was also a chance he had been taken prisoner. It was impossible to get anything further out of him. Since the telephone call, Gloria had been brooding over what to do next.

“I think we should go there,” she said, crumpling the letter into a ball.

“Where? Burma?”

“No, silly. London. We should go down there and buttonhole someone. Get some answers.”

“But they won’t talk to us,” I protested. “Besides, I don’t think they’re in London anymore. All the government people have moved out to the country somewhere.”

“There has to be somebody there,” Gloria argued. “It stands to reason. Even if it’s just a skeleton staff. A government can’t just pack up and leave everything behind. Especially the War Office. Besides, this is London I’m talking about. It’s still the capital of England, you know. If there are answers to be found, you can bet we’ll find them there.”

There was no arguing with Gloria’s passionate rhetoric. “I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start.”

“Whitehall,” she said, nodding. “That’s where we start. Whitehall.”

She sounded so certain that I didn’t know what to reply.

For the rest of that month I tried to talk Gloria out of the London trip, but she was adamant. Once she got like that, I knew there could be no stopping her getting her own way. Even Cynthia and Alice and Michael Stanhope said it would be a waste of time. Mr. Stanhope had no time at all for government bureaucrats and assured us they would tell us nothing.

Gloria insisted that if I didn’t want to come with her, that was fine, she would go by herself. I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I had never been to London, not even in peacetime, and the whole prospect scared me stiff. London seemed about as remote to me as the moon.

It was finally arranged for September. Gloria decided it would be best if we went and returned by night train. That way she would only have to rearrange her one and a half days off for midweek rather than ask Mr. Kilnsey for more time when things were busy. To her surprise, Mr. Kilnsey said she could take longer if she wished. Since he had lost Joseph at El Alamein, he had become a more compassionate and sympathetic man, and he understood her grief. We still decided to stick to the original plan because I didn’t want to leave Mother alone for any longer.

Cynthia Garmen said she would look after Mother and the shop while we were gone. She said Norma Prentice owed her a day’s work at the NAAFI in exchange for baby-sitting the previous week, so it should be no problem. Mother offered to buy the train tickets and gave Gloria some of her clothes coupons to use down there if we had time to visit the big shops. Though she accepted them gratefully, for once clothes were the last thing on Gloria’s mind.

It was about ten o’clock when the road crested the hill and Banks could see Edinburgh spread out in the distance in all its hazy glory: the stepped rows of tenements; the dark Gothic spire of the Sir Walter Scott Monument, like some alien space rocket; the hump of Arthur’s Seat; the castle on its crag; the glimmer of sea beyond.

Apart from one or two brief police-related visits, it was years since Banks had spent any time there, he realized as he coasted down the hill, Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey” on the stereo. When he was a student, he used to drive up to see friends quite often for weekends and holidays. At one time he had a girlfriend, a raven-haired young beauty called Alison, who lived down on St. Stephen Street. But as is the nature of such long-distance relationships, “out of sight, out of mind” beats “absence makes the heart grow fonder” any day of the week, and during one visit she simply turned up at the pub with someone else. Easy come, easy go. By then he had his eye on another woman, called Jo, anyway.

Banks tried to recollect if he had ever taken Jem up to Edinburgh with him, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember even seeing Jem outside his room, though he must have gone out to buy food, records and dope, as well as to sign on the dole. Banks had never even seen him out in the hallway. He saw people come and go from time to time, strangers, sometimes at weird hours of the night, but Jem never mentioned any other friends.

Banks’s Edinburgh days were all pre-Trainspotting and the place didn’t look quite so romantic when he came down off the hill into the built-up streets of dark stone, the roundabouts and traffic lights, shopping centers and zebra crossings. He got through Dalkeith easily enough, but shortly afterward he made one simple mistake and found himself heading toward Glasgow on a dual carriageway for about three miles before he found an exit.

Elizabeth Goodall lived just off Dalkeith Road, not far from the city center. She had given him precise directions on the telephone the previous evening, and after only a couple more wrong turns, he found the narrow street of tall tenements.

Mrs. Goodall lived on the ground floor. She answered Banks’s ring promptly and led him into a high-ceilinged living room which smelled of lavender and peppermint. All the windows were shut fast, and not the slightest breeze stirred the warm, perfumed air. Only a little daylight managed to steal through. The wallpaper was patterned with sprigs of rosemary and thyme. Parsley and sage, too, for all Banks could tell. Mrs. Goodall bade him sit in a sturdy damask armchair. Like all the other chairs in the room, its arms and back were covered by white lace antimacassars.

“So you found your way all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” Banks lied. “Nothing to it.”

“I don’t drive a motorcar myself,” she said, with a trace of her old Yorkshire accent. “I have to rely on buses and trains if I want to go anywhere, which is rare these days.” She rubbed her small, wrinkled hands together. “Well, then, you’re here. Tea?”

“Please.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. Banks surveyed the room. It was a nondescript sort of place: clean and tidy, but not much character. A few framed photographs stood on the sideboard, but none of them showed Hobb’s End. One glass-fronted cabinet held a few knickknacks, including trophies, silverware and crystal. That would be tempting to burglars, Banks thought: old woman in a ground-floor flat with a nice haul of silverware just there for the taking. He hadn’t noticed any signs of a security system.

Mrs. Goodall walked back into the room slowly, carrying a China tea set on a silver tray. She set it down on a doily on the low table in front of the sofa, then sat down, knees together, and smoothed her skirt.

She was a short, stout woman, dressed in a gray tweed skirt, white blouse and a navy-blue cardigan, despite the heat. Her recently permed hair was almost white, and its waves looked frozen, razor-sharp to the touch, Margaret Thatcher style. Her forehead was high, and her glaucous, watery eyes pink-rimmed. She had a prissy slit of a mouth that seemed painted on with red lipstick.

“We’ll just let it mash a few minutes, shall we?” she said. “Then we’ll pour.”

“Fine,” said Banks, banishing the image of the two of them holding the thin teapot handle and pouring.

“Now,” she said, hands clasped on her lap, “let us begin. You mentioned Hobb’s End on the telephone, but that was all you saw fit to tell me. What do you wish to know?”

Banks leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. A number of general questions came to mind, but he needed something more specific, something to take her memory right back, if possible. “Do you remember Gloria Shackleton?” he asked. “She lived in Bridge Cottage during the war.”

Mrs. Goodall looked as if she had just swallowed a mouthful of vinegar. “Of course I remember her,” she said. “Dreadful girl.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Chief Inspector, the girl was a brazen hussy. It was perfectly obvious. The flirtatious manner, the tilt of her head, the lascivious smile. I knew it the first moment I set eyes on her.”

“Where was that?”

“Where? Why, in church, of course. My father was the verger at Saint Bartholomew’s. Though how such a… a painted strumpet would dare to show herself like that in the sight of the Lord is beyond me.”

“So you first met her in church?”

“I didn’t say I met her, just that I saw her there first. She was still called Gloria Stringer then.”

“Was she religious?”

“No true Christian woman would go about flaunting herself the way she did.”

“Why did she go to church, then?”

“Because the Shackletons went, of course. She had her feet firmly under their kitchen table.”

“She was from London originally, wasn’t she?”

“So she said.”

“Did she ever say anything about her background, about her family?”

“Not to me, though I vaguely remember someone told me her parents were killed in the Blitz.”

“She’d come to Hobb’s End with the Women’s Land Army, hadn’t she?”

“Yes. A land girl. Tea?”

“Please.”

Mrs. Goodall sat up, back erect, and poured. The teacups – with matching saucers – were tiny, fragile bone-china things with pink roses painted inside and out, a gold rim and a handle he couldn’t possibly get a finger through. Not a drop stained the white lace doily. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Just as it comes, thanks very much.”

She frowned, as if she didn’t approve of that. Anything other than milk and two sugars was probably unpatriotic in her book. “Of course,” she went on. “One hoped that over time she would make attempts to fit in, to alter her manner and appearance according to the standards of village society, but-”

“She made no attempt?”

“She did not. None at all.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Chief Inspector, does she sound like the kind of person whose company I would cultivate?”

“It was a small village. You must have been about the same age.”

“I was one year older.”

“Even so.”

“Alice – that’s Alice Poole – used to spend quite a bit of time with her. Against my advice, I might add. But then Alice always was a bit too free and easy.”

“Did you have any dealings with Gloria at all?”

Mrs. Goodall paused, as if to bring to mind an unpleasant memory. Then she nodded. “Indeed I did. It fell to me to advise her that her behavior was unacceptable, as was the way she looked.”

“Looked?”

“Yes. The sort of clothes she wore, the way she sashayed about, the way she wore her hair, like some sort of cheap American film star. It was not ladylike. Not in the least. As if that weren’t bad enough, she smoked in the street.”

“You say it fell to you? On what authority? Was there strong general feeling against her?”

“In my capacity as a member of the Church of England.”

“I see. Was everyone else in Hobb’s End ladylike?”

She pursed her lips again and let him know with a quick dagger glance that she hadn’t missed the insolence in his tone. “I’m not saying that there weren’t lower elements in the village, Chief Inspector. Don’t get me wrong. Of course, there were. As there are in every village society. But even the lowly of birth can aspire to at least a certain level of good manners and decent behavior. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“How did Gloria react when you rebuked her?”

Mrs. Goodall flushed at the memory. “She laughed. I pointed out that it might do her much good, morally and socially, were she to become active in the Women’s Institute and the Missionary Society.”

“What was her response to this?”

“She called me an interfering busybody and indicated that there was only one missionary position she was interested in, and it was not the Church’s. Can you believe it? And she used such language as I would not expect from the mouth of the lowest mill girl. Despite her put-on speech, I think she showed her true colors then.”

“How did she speak?”

“Oh, she had her airs and graces. She spoke like someone on the wireless. Not the way they do these days, of course, but as they did back then, when people spoke properly on the wireless. But you could tell it was put on. She had clearly been practicing the arts of imitation and deception.”

“She married Matthew Shackleton, didn’t she?”

Mrs. Goodall sucked in her breath with an audible hiss. “Yes. I was at their wedding. And I must say that, al though Matthew was only a shopkeeper’s son, he married well beneath himself when he married the Stringer girl. Matthew was an exceptional boy. I expected far better of him than that.”

“Do you know anything about their relationship?”

“It wasn’t long after they were married he was sent abroad. He went missing in action, poor Matthew. Missing, presumed dead.”

Banks frowned. “When was this?”

“When he went missing?”

“Yes.”

“Sometime in 1943. He was in the Far East. Captured by the Japanese.” She gave a little shudder.

“What happened to him?”

“I have no idea. I presume he was dead.”

“You lost touch?”

She fiddled with her wedding ring. “Yes. My husband, William, was engaged in top-secret work for the home front, and he was assigned to Scotland early in 1944. I accompanied him. My parents came to live with us, and we didn’t have anything more to do with Hobb’s End. I still keep in touch with Ruby Kettering and Alice Poole, but they are my only connections. It was all so long ago. We women don’t dwell on the war the way the men do, with their legions and their regimental reunions.”

“Do you know if Gloria had affairs with anyone other than Matthew?”

Mrs. Goodall sniffed. “Almost certainly.”

“Who with?”

She paused a moment, as if to let him know that she shouldn’t be telling him this, then she uttered just one word. “Soldiers.”

“What soldiers?”

“This was wartime, Chief Inspector. Contrary to what you might imagine, not every man in the armed forces was over fighting the Hun or the Nip. Unfortunately. There were soldiers everywhere. Not all of them British, either.”

“What soldiers were these?”

For the first time in their conversation, Mrs. Goodall let a small smile slip. It endeared her to Banks tremendously. “Oversexed,” she said, “overpaid and over here.”

“Americans?”

“Yes. The RAF handed Rowan Woods over to the American Air Force.”

“Did you see much of these Americans?”

“Oh, yes. They often used to come and drink in the village pubs, or attend our occasional dances at the church hall. Some even came to the Sunday services. They had their own on the base, of course, but Saint Bartholomew’s was a beautiful old church. Such a pity it had to be knocked down.”

“Did Gloria have American boyfriends, then?”

“Several. And I needn’t tell you about the opportunities for immorality and indiscretion that a wide area of wooded land like Rowan Woods has to offer, need I?”

Banks wondered if she would take a positive answer as an indication of personal experience. He decided not to risk it. “Was there anyone in particular?” he asked.

“I have no first-hand knowledge. I kept my distance from them. According to Cynthia Garmen, she had more than one. Not that Cynthia was one to talk. No better than she ought to be, that one.”

“Why?”

“She married one of them, didn’t she? Went off to live in Pennsylvania or some such place.”

“So there was no one serious for Gloria?”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt her liaisons were every bit as serious as a woman such as Gloria Shackleton was capable of. A married woman.”

“But you said she thought her husband was dead.”

“Missing presumed dead. It’s not quite the same. Besides, that’s no excuse.” Mrs. Goodall remained silent for a few moments, then said, “May I ask you a question, Chief Inspector?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why are you asking me about the Shackleton girl after all these years?”

“Don’t you watch the news?”

“I prefer to read historical biography.”

“Newspapers?”

“On occasion. But only the obituaries. What are you hinting at, Chief Inspector? Am I missing something?”

Banks told her about the reservoir drying up and the discovery of the body they believed to be Gloria’s. Mrs. Goodall paled and clutched at the silver crucifix around her neck. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” she muttered. “You should have told me sooner.”

“Would that have changed what you said?”

She paused a moment, then sighed and said, “Probably not. I have always considered telling the truth to be an important virtue. All I can tell you, though, is that Gloria Shackleton was alive and well when William and I left Hobb’s End in May 1944.”

“Thank you,” said Banks. “That helps us narrow things down a bit. Do you know if she had any enemies?”

“Not what you’d call enemies. Nobody who would do what you have just described. Many people, like myself, disapproved of her. But that’s quite a different thing. One would hardly murder a person for not joining the Women’s Institute. Might I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

“Given Gloria’s wayward nature, don’t you think you should be looking at this as a crime passionel?”

“Perhaps.” Banks shifted in his chair and crossed his legs the other way. Mrs. Goodall poured more tea. It was lukewarm. “What about Michael Stanhope?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “There’s another one.”

“Another what?”

“Debauched, perverted. I could go on. Birds of a feather, him and Gloria Shackleton. Have you seen any of his so-called paintings?”

Banks nodded. “One of them seems to be a nude of Gloria. I wonder if you knew anything about that?”

“I can hardly say it surprises me, but no. Believe me, if such a painting exists, it was not public knowledge in Hobb’s End. At least not while I was there.”

“Do you think Gloria might have had an affair with Michael Stanhope?”

“I can’t say. Given that the two of them shared similar natures and views, I wouldn’t rule it out. They did spend a lot of time together. Drinking. As I recollect, though, even Gloria’s tastes weren’t quite so exotic as to extend as far as a tortured, drunken, depraved artist.”

“Did Gloria and Matthew have any children?”

“Not that I ever knew of.”

“And you would have known?”

“I think so. It’s hard to hide such things in a small village. Why do you ask?”

“There were certain indications in the postmortem, that’s all.” Banks scratched the tiny scar beside his right eye. “But nobody seems to know anything about it.”

“She could have had a child after we left in 1944.”

“It’s possible. Or perhaps she gave birth before she arrived in Hobb’s End and married Matthew Shackleton. After all, she was nineteen when she came to the village. Perhaps she abandoned the baby and its father in London.”

“But… but that means…”

“Means what, Mrs. Goodall?”

“Well, I never assumed that Matthew was her first conquest, not a woman like her. But a child…? Surely that would indicate she was already married, and that her marriage to Matthew was bigamous?”

“Just one more sin to add to her list,” said Banks. “But it wasn’t necessarily so. I imagine even back then, in the good old days, the odd child was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

Mrs. Goodall’s lips tightened to a single red line for a moment, then she said, “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Chief Inspector, or your coarseness. Things were better back then. Simpler. Clearer. Ordered. And the wartime spirit brought people together. People of all classes. Say what you will.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Goodall. I don’t mean to be sarcastic, really, but I’m trying to get to the bottom of a particularly nasty murder here, one that I probably have hardly any chance of solving because it was committed so long ago. I believe the victim deserves my best efforts, no matter what you may think of her.”

“Of course she does. I stand corrected. Gloria Shackleton could not possibly have deserved what you say happened to her. But I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you any further.”

“Did you know Matthew’s sister, Gwynneth?”

“Gwen? Oh, yes. Gwen was always rather the quiet one, head buried in a book. I imagined her becoming a teacher or something like that. Perhaps even a university professor. But she worked in the shop throughout the war, besides taking care of her mother and doing fire-watching at night. She was no shirker, wasn’t Gwen.”

“Do you know what became of her? Is she still alive?”

“I’m afraid we lost touch when William and I went to Scotland. We weren’t especially close, though she was a regular churchgoer and wrote for the parish magazine.”

“Were she and Gloria close?”

“Well, they had to be, to some extent, being family. But they were different as chalk and cheese. There was some talk about Gloria leading Gwen astray. They were always off to dances together in Harkside, or to the pictures. Gwen had generally avoided social intercourse until Gloria arrived on the scene, preferring her own company, or that of books. Gwen was always a rather impressionable girl. Though she took Gloria under her wing at first, so to speak, it was soon quite clear who exactly was under whose wing.”

“What was their age difference?”

“Gwen was two or three years younger, perhaps. Believe me, though, it makes a vast difference at that age.”

“What did she look like?”

“Gwen? She was rather a plain girl, apart from her eyes. Remarkable eyes, almost oriental the way they slanted. And she was tall. Tall and awkward. A gangly sort of girl.”

“What about Matthew?”

“A dashing, handsome fellow. Very mature. Gifted with wisdom beyond his years.” Again, she allowed a little smile to flit across her hard-set features. “If I hadn’t met my William and the Stringer girl hadn’t arrived on the scene, well… who knows? Anyway, she got her hands on him, and that was that.”

Banks let the silence stretch. He could hear a clock ticking in the background.

“If you’ll excuse me, Chief Inspector,” she said after a few moments, “I’m extremely tired. All those memories.”

Banks stood up. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time.”

“Not at all. It seems you’ve come a long way for nothing, or very little.”

Banks shrugged. “Part of the job. Besides, you’ve been a great help.”

“If there’s anything else I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to telephone.”

“Thank you.” Banks looked at his watch. Going on for one. Time for a spot of lunch before the long drive home.

We took the night train from Leeds, where the platform was crowded with young soldiers. The train clanked and steamed into the station only an hour late, and we felt ourselves jostled and pushed along by the crowd like corks in a fast-flowing river. I was terrified that we were going to fall between the carriages and be run over by the huge iron wheels, but we clung on to each other for dear life amid all the shoving and heaving and hissing steam, and we finally managed to get ourselves more or less pushed onto seats in a cramped compartment that soon grew even more cramped.

Another hour passed before the engine groaned and shuddered out of the station.

I had loved train journeys ever since I was a little girl, loved the gentle rocking motion, the hypnotic clickety-click of the wheels on the lines and the way the landscape drifts by like images from a dream.

Not that time.

A lot of trains had been damaged and most of the railway workshops were being used for munitions production. As a result, many of the engines in use would have been good for nothing but scrap iron if it hadn’t been for the war. The motion was jerky and we never really got going fast enough for a rhythmic clickety-click. Everyone was crushed far too closely together to make sleep possible. At least for me. I couldn’t even read. The blinds were drawn tight and the whole compartment was lit by one ghostly blue pinpoint of light, so dim you could hardly make out the features of the person sitting opposite you. There wasn’t even a restaurant car.

We talked for a while with two young soldiers, who offered us Woodbine after Woodbine. I think that was when I started to smoke, out of sheer boredom. Even when the first few puffs made me feel sick and dizzy, I persevered. It was something to do.

The soldiers sympathized and wished us luck when Gloria told them about Matthew. Then people started to fall silent, each drifting into his own world. For me it was a matter of gritting my teeth and enduring the long journey, the constant, unexplained delays, the jerking stops and starts.

Gloria managed to doze off after a while and her head slid slowly sideways until she was resting her cheek on my shoulder and I could feel her warm breath against my throat. I still couldn’t sleep. I was left with nothing but my own gloomy thoughts and rasping snores from the soldiers. We stopped in the middle of nowhere for nearly two hours at one point. No explanation.

Because of the double summer time, it didn’t get light as early as it used to, but even so we weren’t more than six or seven hours into the journey before we were able to open the blinds on muted early-morning sunlight slanting across the fields. People had put odd objects like old mangles and broken cars on some of the empty meadows to make obstacles for any enemy planes that might try to land there.

One field was scattered with country signposts stuck in the ground at strange angles. The signposts had been taken down at the start of the war, along with all the station nameplates, to confuse the enemy in case of invasion, but I was still surprised to see where some of them had ended up.

All in all, the journey took ten hours, and the last hour or two seemed to take us through the endless London suburbs. It was here that I caught my first sight of street after street of bombed-out terraces, shattered lampposts, powdered plaster, twisted girders and jagged walls. Rosebay willow herb and Oxford ragwort grew from the rubble, pushing between the cracks in the bombed masonry and brickwork.

Packs of children roved through the streets, playing among the derelict houses. One ingenious group had rigged up a rope from a lamppost that seemed to be leaning at a precarious angle, like the Tower of Pisa, and they were proceeding to take it in turns to swing back and forth, playing at Tarzan the Ape Man.

Some houses were only half-destroyed, split open like a cross section. You could see wallpaper, framed paintings and photographs on the walls, a bed half hanging over the jagged remains of the floor. Here and there, people had moved damaged items of furniture into the street: a doorless wardrobe, a cracked sideboard and a pram with buckled wheels. I felt like a voyeur at a disaster site, which is what I was, I suppose, but I couldn’t stop looking. I’m not sure that I had any real grasp of the full extent of the war’s devastation until then, despite seeing Leeds after that air raid.

It seemed that on every area of spare ground not taken up by allotments, a barrage balloon station had been set up to deter low-flying enemy planes. The fat silver balloons glinted in the sun and looked like whales trying to fly. In some of the green areas, rows of antiaircraft guns pointed at the sky like steel arrows.

Of course, there were also plenty of buildings left standing and some of these were surrounded by sandbags, often to a height of about ten feet or more. I also noticed a lot of posters, on just about every available hoarding; they told us to grow our own food, save coal, buy war bonds, walk when we can and Lord knows what else.

I was so lost in the sights that I hardly noticed the time pass until King’s Cross. It was after ten o’clock in the morning when we arrived at the station and I was starving. Gloria wanted to head straight for Whitehall, but I persuaded her to stop and we found a Lyons, where we managed to get a rasher of bacon and an egg.

After breakfast, we walked back into the street and I was at last able to take in where I was. My first sensation was of being a very small, tiny, insignificant little creature lost in an immense and sprawling city. People pressed in on me from all directions; tall buildings towered over me.

The whole place had a shabby, worn and slightly defeated air about it. Everybody looked pinched and pale, the kind of look you get after years of rationing, bombing and uncertainty. Even so, for a Yorkshire country girl, it might as well have been another planet. I had never been anywhere bigger than Leeds before and I’m sure London would have overwhelmed me even in peacetime.

It had started to drizzle, though the air was still warm, and the damp sandbags gave off a musky smell. There were so many people rushing about, most of them in uniform, that I began to feel quite panicky and dizzy. I clutched at Gloria’s arm as she led me purposefully toward a bus stop. Often people smiled or said hello as we passed. I saw my first wounded soldiers, sad-looking men with bandaged heads, missing limbs, eye patches, some on crutches or with their arms in slings. All of them lucky ones; they were still alive.

Gloria was in her element. After only a few moments of disorientation at first, something seemed to click, as if the city actually made sense to her, which it certainly didn’t to me. She seemed to have only the slightest doubt over which bus to catch, and a quick word with the clippie, who was trying to look like Joan Crawford, soon set her right on that. We went upstairs, where you could smoke, and then we were off.

It was a whirlwind journey and more than once I feared the bus would tip over turning a corner. In the east, I fancied I could see the immense dome of St. Paul’s in the gray light through the dirty, rain-streaked window. I was overwhelmed by the size of the buildings all around me. White and gray stone darkened by rain; curving Georgian or Edwardian facades five or six stories high, with pediments, gargoyles and pointed gables. Huge Ionic columns. Surely, I thought, this must be a city built by giants.

At one point my heart jumped into my throat. I saw broken glass and rubble on the pavement and, strewn among it all, human body parts: a head, a leg, a torso. But when I looked more closely, I could see no blood, and the limbs all had a hard, unnatural look about them. I realized that a bomb must have hit a dress shop and blown all the mannequins into the street.

We passed Trafalgar Square, where Nelson’s Column stood, much taller in reality than it had been even in my imagination. You could hardly see poor Lord Nelson up at the top. The base of the column was covered with hoardings asking us to buy National War Savings Bonds. Across the square, near the Insurance Office and the Canadian Pacific Building, was a huge billboard advertising Famel cough mixture.

There were a lot of soldiers milling about. I didn’t recognize all the caps and uniforms, in just about every color you could imagine, from black to bright blue and cherry-red. I also saw my first-ever Negro from that bus in Trafalgar Square. I knew they existed, of course – I had read about them – but I had never actually seen a black man before. I remember being rather disappointed that, apart from being black, he didn’t look all that much different from anyone else.

Gloria nudged me gently and we got off on a broad street flanked with even more tall buildings.

And that was when our search began in earnest. I felt like a small child dragged along by its mother as Gloria took me from building to building. We asked policemen, knocked on doors, asked soldiers, strangers in the street, knocked on even more doors.

Finally, wet and weary and ready to give up, I rejoiced when Gloria found some sort of minor clerk who took pity on us. I don’t honestly think he knew anything about Matthew or what had happened to him, but he did seem to know a little more about the war in the Far East than anyone else would admit to. And he seemed to take a shine to Gloria.

He was a tidy little man in a pinstripe suit, with gray hair parted at the center and a neat, trim mustache. He glanced at his watch, pursed his lips and frowned before suggesting he might spare us ten minutes if we cared to accompany him to the tea house on the corner. He had a rather high-pitched, squeaky voice and spoke with a posh, educated accent. At that point I would have cheerfully murdered for a cup of tea. We dragged ourselves inside, bought tea at the counter, and Gloria started to pump the poor fellow for information before we had even had our first sip.

“What are the chances that Matthew might still be alive?” she asked.

This clearly wasn’t the sort of question the man, who told us his name was Arthur Winchester, was trained to answer. He hemmed and hawed a bit, then measured his words as carefully as the sugar cubes in the bowl were rationed. “I’m afraid I can’t really answer that question,” he said. “As I told you, I have no knowledge of the individual case to which you refer, merely a little general knowledge of the situation in the East.”

“All right,” Gloria went on, undaunted, “tell me about what happened at Irridaddy, or whatever it is. That’s if it’s not classified.”

Arthur Winchester sniffed and granted us a little smile. “Irrawaddy. It happened six months ago, so it’s hardly classified,” he said. Then he paused, sipped some more tea and rubbed the bristly bottom of his mustache with the back of his hand. I glanced toward the window and saw the rain slanting down, distorting the shapes of the people passing by on Victoria Street.

“Burma,” he went on, “as you probably know, stands between India and China, and it would be of inestimable value if our forces could reopen the Burma Road and clear the way to China, which could then be used as a direct base for operations against Japan. This, as I say, is general knowledge.”

“Not to me it isn’t.” Gloria lit a Craven A. “Go on,” she prompted, blowing out a long plume of smoke.

Arthur Winchester cleared his throat. “To put things simply, since Burma fell, we have been trying to get it back. One of the offensives with this end in mind was the Chindit Operation, launched in February. They began east of the Irrawaddy, a river in central Burma. While they were there, the Japanese launched a major offensive on the Arakan Front and the British had to withdraw. Are you following me?”

We both nodded.

“Good.” Arthur Winchester finished his tea. “Well, the Chindits were trapped behind the enemy lines, cut off, and they began to filter back in some disarray.” He looked at Gloria. “This, no doubt, is why no one has been able to give you any specific information about your husband. He’s an engineer, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“What happened next?”

“Next? Oh, well the Chindits had suffered severe hardships. Most severe. Not long after, they were ordered to leave Burma.”

“But we’re still trying to get Burma back?”

“Oh, yes. It’s of great strategic importance.”

“So there’s still a chance?”

“A chance of what?”

“That someone might find Matthew. When the British win back Burma.”

Arthur Winchester glanced out of the window. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, my dear. A long time might pass before that happens.”

“Were the losses heavy?” I asked.

Arthur Winchester gazed at me for a moment, but he wasn’t seeing me. “What? Oh, yes. Rather worse than we had hoped for.”

“How do you know all this?” Gloria asked.

Arthur Winchester inclined his head modestly. “I don’t know very much, I’m afraid. But before the war, before this Government work, I was a history teacher. The Far East has always interested me.”

“So you don’t really have anything to tell us?” Gloria said.

“Well, any excuse to take tea with a pretty lady will do for me, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Gloria got to her feet in a fury and was about to storm out of the place, leaving even me behind, when Arthur Winchester blushed and grabbed hold of her sleeve meekly. “I say, my dear, I’m sorry. Poor taste. I really didn’t mean to offend you. A compliment, that’s all. I meant no hint of any sort of prurient suggestion.”

If Gloria didn’t know what prurient meant, she never let on. She merely sat down again, slowly, a hard, suspicious look in her eyes, and said, “Can you tell us anything at all, Mr. Winchester?”

“All I can tell you, my dear,” he went on gravely, “is that during the retreat, many of the wounded had to be left behind enemy lines. They simply couldn’t be transported. They were left with a little money and a weapon, of course, but what became of them, I can’t say.”

Gloria had turned pale. I found myself twisting the fabric of my dress in my fist over my lap until my knuckles turned white. “Are you saying this is what happened to Matthew?” she asked, her voice no louder than a whisper.

“I’m saying it may be what happened, if he is simply being described as missing, presumed dead.”

“And what if that was the case?”

Arthur Winchester paused and brushed an imaginary piece of lint from his lapel. “Well,” he said, “the Japanese don’t like taking wounded prisoners. It would depend how badly wounded he was, of course, whether he could work, that sort of thing.”

“So you’re saying they might have simply murdered him as he lay there wounded and defenseless?”

“I’m saying it’s possible. Or…”

“Or what?”

He looked away. “As I said, the wounded were left behind with a weapon.”

It took a second or two for what he was getting at to sink in. I think it was me who responded first. “You mean Matthew might have committed suicide?”

“If capture was inevitable, and if he was badly hurt, then I’d say, yes, it’s a possibility.” His tone brightened a little. “But this is all pure conjecture, you understand. I know nothing at all of the circumstances. Maybe he was simply captured by the enemy, and he’s going to while away the rest of the war in the relative safety of a prison camp. I mean, you’ve seen how well we take care of our Germans and Italians here, haven’t you?”

It was true. The Italians in Yorkshire even worked on the farms at planting and harvest times. Gloria and I had talked to them on occasion and they seemed cheerful enough, for prisoners of war. They liked to sing opera while they worked, and some of them had beautiful voices.

“But you said the Japanese don’t like taking prisoners.”

“It’s true they despise the weak and the defeated. But if they capture fit men, they can put them to work on railways and bridges and suchlike. They’re not fools. You did say your husband was an engineer, so he could be useful to them.”

“If he cooperated.”

“Yes. The main problem is that we don’t know a lot about the Japanese, and our lines of communication are very poor, almost to the point of not existing at all. Even the Red Cross has great difficulties getting its parcels delivered and getting information out of them. The Japanese are notoriously difficult to deal with.”

“So he may be a prisoner of war and nobody has bothered to let anyone know? Is that what you’re telling us?”

“That is a distinct possibility. Yes. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of others in that same position, too.”

“But you said you’re a teacher. You know about the Japanese, don’t you?”

Arthur Winchester laughed nervously. “I know a little about their geography and history, but the Japanese have always been very insular. Comes from living on an island, perhaps.”

“We live on an island, too,” I reminded him.

“Yes, well, I mean insular more in that they’ve screened themselves off from the rest of the world, actively resisted contact with the West. We knew practically nothing at all about them until the turn of the century – their customs, beliefs – and even now we don’t know a lot.”

“What do you know? What can you tell us?” Gloria asked.

He paused again. “Well,” he said. “I don’t want to upset you, but you asked me to be honest with you. I’d say it’s best to hope he’s dead. It’s best that way.” He paused. “Look. It’s wartime. Things are very different. You have to let go of the past. Your husband is probably dead. Or, if he isn’t, he might as well be. Nothing will be the same when it’s done. All over the city people are living as if there’s no tomorrow. How long are you staying in London?”

Gloria looked at him suspiciously. “Until tonight. Why?”

“I know a place. Very nice. Very discreet. Perhaps I could-”

Gloria got to her feet so fast she bumped the table with her thighs and the remains of her tea spilled onto Arthur Winchester’s lap. But he didn’t stop around to mop it up. Instead, he bolted for the door saying, “Good Lord, is that the time? I must dash.”

And with that, he was out of the door before Gloria could even pick up something to throw at him. She glared after him for a moment, then touched up her curls and sat down again. The serving girl frowned at us, then turned away. I thought we were lucky not to get thrown out.

We dawdled over our tea, Gloria calming down, smoking another cigarette and gazing out through the steamed-up window at the phantoms drifting by outside. In the café, soldiers came and went with their girls. I could smell the rain on their uniforms.

“What did he mean, it’s best that way?” Gloria asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose he meant to say that the Japanese don’t treat their prisoners as well as we do.”

“What do they do? Torture them? Beat them? Starve them?”

“I don’t know, Gloria,” I said, putting my hand over hers. “I just don’t know. All I can say is that it sounded to me as if he was saying Matthew would be better off dead.”