“You’ve been very helpful.”
“Well, it’s nice of you to say so, dearie. I must admit, I’ve enjoyed having a good chin-wag. It’s been years since I thought about all that stuff. Hobb’s End. Gloria. Gwen. Matthew. The war. I hope you find out who did this to her. Even if he’s dead, I’d like to know he died as slow and painful a death as he deserved.”
We left the café saddened and dazed, with hours to kill before our train home. To tell the truth, I don’t think either of us at that time had much hope that Matthew was still alive. I asked Gloria if she would take me to where she used to live, but she refused. That would have been simply too much for her to bear, she said, and I felt cruel for asking.
It stopped raining and the sun was trying to pierce its way through the ragged clouds. We walked through St. James’s Park, past the barrage-balloon station and the antiaircraft guns, toward Oxford Street. Though our hearts weren’t in it, we did some shopping. At least it took our minds off Matthew for a short while. On Charing Cross Road, I bought Graham Greene’s new “entertainment,” The Ministry of Fear, as well as the last two issues of Penguin New Writing, the latest Horizon and some secondhand World’s Classics copies of Trollope and Dickens for the lending library.
Gloria bought a black-red-and-white-checked Dorville dress at John Lewis’s. It cost her three pounds fifteen shillings and eleven coupons. She persuaded me into buying a Utility design by Norman Hartnell in a shop nearby for only three pounds and nine coupons.
After fish and chips at a British Restaurant, we went to the Carlton on Haymarket to see Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was one of the first films I ever saw in Technicolor, color films not having made a real impact in Harkside by then. I hadn’t read the Hemingway novel, so I couldn’t judge how faithful the film version was.
It was getting dark when we walked out onto Haymarket, and Gloria suggested we catch the underground back to King’s Cross.
It is hard to describe the London blackout, especially on a broad, busy street like Haymarket. As it is never fully silent anywhere, so it is never fully dark, either. You can see the sharp edges and cornices of the buildings etched against the night sky in varying shades of darkness. If the half-moon slips out from behind the clouds, everything shimmers in its pale light for a few moments and then disappears again.
What I noticed most of all was the noise, the way blind people develop a more acute sense of hearing. Distant shouts and whistles, engines, laughter and singing from a public house, perhaps a dog howling in the distance or a cat meowing down a ginnel – all these sounds seem to carry farther and echo longer in the darkness of the blackout. They all sound more sinister, too.
“Unnatural” is the word that comes to mind. But what could be more natural than darkness? Perhaps it is a matter of context. In the city, especially such a sprawling, busy city as London, darkness is unnatural.
In Piccadilly Circus, I could just make out the statue of Eros buttressed by sandbags. There was music coming from somewhere, too, a tune I later learned was Glenn Miller’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.” There were soldiers all over the place, many of them drunk, and on more than one occasion men approached us and grabbed us or offered us money for sexual favors.
At one point, I heard some sounds down an alley and could just make out the silhouettes of a man grunting as he thrust himself toward a woman, her back against a wall. It made me think of that icy Christmas of 1941, when I had seen Gloria and the Canadian airman, Mark, in exactly the same position.
The underground platforms, where people came to shelter during the air raids, were crowded, and I fancied I could smell sweat, unwashed clothes and urine mixed in with the sooty smell the trains made. Everything was grimy and run-down. The train soon came and we had to stand all the way. No one stood up to offer us seats.
I was glad our train for home left on time, and though I knew I would dream about the trip for weeks to come, I can’t say I was sorry when, after a boring and uneventful journey of some seven hours, we caught the morning train from Leeds to Harrogate, thence to hook up with our little branch line back to Hobb’s End.
It was after seven o’clock by the time Banks and Annie met up that evening. On his way back from Edinburgh, Banks got stuck in the mid-afternoon traffic around Newcastle, then he had to call in at the station to see if there had been any developments during his absence.
He had found about twenty telephone messages waiting for him in response to Monday evening’s television news appearance. He spent an hour or so returning calls, but all he found out was that someone thought the Shackletons had moved to Leeds after VE day, and someone else remembered drinking with Matthew Shackleton in Hobb’s End near the end of the war. Most people, though, simply wanted to relive wartime memories and had no useful information whatsoever.
There was also a message from John Webb, who said he had cleaned up the button Adam Kelly had taken from the skeleton. It was made of brass, probably, about half an inch in diameter, and had a raised pattern on the front, possibly reminiscent of wings. The expert who had examined it suggested it might be some sort of bird. Clearly, he added, given the time period under consideration, the armed forces came to mind, perhaps the RAF.
When Banks had finished at the station, he phoned Annie and asked if she would mind coming up to Gratly, as he had been on the road most of the day. She said she didn’t mind at all. Then he went home, took a long shower and tidied the place up. It didn’t take long. Next he tried phoning Brian in Wimbledon again. Still no luck. What the hell was he supposed to do? It was nearly a week since their argument. He could go down there, he supposed, but not until the case was over. Anyway, he decided to try again the next day.
He thought of cooking something for Annie, then decided against it. Learning to cook might be his next project after fixing up the cottage, but he still had a long way to go. Besides, there was nothing in the fridge except a couple of cans of lager, half a tomato and a piece of moldy Cheddar. He would take her out to the Dog and Gun in Helmthorpe for dinner and hope to God there was something vegetarian on the menu.
When Annie arrived, she first showed him the photograph of Gloria and her friends with the American airmen. Then, after a lightning tour of the house, which she described as “very bijou,” she agreed it was a perfect evening for a stroll. They left their cars parked in Banks’s gravel laneway and headed for Helmthorpe in the hazy evening light, sharing the information each had learned that day as they walked.
Sheep grazed on the lynchets that descended toward the dried-up beck. Some of them had even managed to get through the gate at the back of the churchyard, where they grazed among the lichen-dappled tombstones.
“Have time for a walk on the prom in Scarborough?” Banks asked.
“Of course. Had to eat, didn’t I? I can tell you, though, there’s not much choice for a vegetarian in Scarborough. I ended up buying some chips – cooked in vegetable oil, or so the woman said – and sat on a bench by the harbor to eat them, watching a man painting his fishing boat. He tried to chat me up.”
“Oh?”
“He didn’t get very far. I’m used to being chatted up by fishermen. It takes more than heroic tales of landing haddock or halibut to get into my knickers, I can tell you.”
Banks laughed. “Saint Ives?”
“Right. Heard it all before. Got the T-shirt. Anyway, after that I went for a quick look at Anne Brontë’s grave, then I came back to the station to write up the interview.”
“Do you like Anne Brontë’s books?”
“I haven’t read any. It’s just the sort of thing you do, isn’t it, when you’re nearby. Go and see where famous people are buried. I saw The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on TV. It’s all right if you like that sort of thing.”