“We know,” said Crocker quietly, “he had a stroke.”
“Mrs. Fenn knew nothing of it, nor did his wife. Last Wednesday he had another stroke and that killed him. I think - I’m afraid - that it was seeing me and guessing what I was that really killed him. His wife didn’t understand the words he spoke to her before he died. She thought he was wandering in his mind. She told me what they were. ‘I held her too tight. I thought of my Bridget.’”
“But what the hell are you going to do? You can’t charge a dead man.”
“That’s in Griswold’s hands,” said Wexford. “Some noncommittal paragraph for the press, I suppose. The Swans have been told and Swan’s uncle, Group Captain what’s-his-name. Not that he’ll need to pay up. We shan’t be arresting anyone.”
The doctor looked thoughtful. “You haven’t said a word about John Lawrence.”
“Because I haven’t a word to say,” said Wexford.
Their hotel had no rear entrance, so it was necessary to come at last out of the hinterland on to Eastover’s little esplanade. Burden had been hoping with all his heart that by now, in the dusk, the beach would be empty of children, but the pair who had brought tears to Gemma’s eyes were still there, the child that ran up and down at the water’s edge and the woman who walked with him, trailing from one hand a long ribbon of seaweed. But for the slight limp, Burden wouldn’t have recognised her, in her trousers and hooded coat, as the woman he had seen before, or indeed as a woman at all, Inanely, he tried to direct Gemma’s gaze inland towards a cottage she had seen a dozen times before.
She obeyed him - she was always acquiescent, anxious to please - but no sooner had she looked than she turned again to face the sea. Her arm was touching his and he felt her shiver.
“Stop the car,” she said.
“But there’s nothing to see . . .”
“Stop the car!”
She never commanded. He had never heard her speak like that before. “What, here?” he said. “Let’s get back. You’ll only get cold.”
“Please stop the car, Mike.”
He couldn’t blind her, shelter her, for ever. He parked the car behind a red Jaguar that was the only other vehicle on the sea front. Before he had switched off the ignition she had got the door open, slammed it behind her and was off down the steps.
It was absurd to remember what she had said about the sea, about a quick death, but he remembered it. He jumped from the car and followed her, striding at first, then running. Her bright hair, sunset red, streamed behind her. Their footsteps made a hard slapping sound on the sand and the woman turned to face them, standing stock still, the streamer of seaweed in her hand whirling suddenly in the wind like a dancer’s scarf.
“Gemma! Gemma!” Burden called, but the wind took his words or else she was determined not to hear them. She seemed bent only on reaching the sea which curled and creamed at the child’s feet. And now the child, who had been splashing in shallow foam to the top of his boots, also turned to stare, as children will when adults behave alarmingly.
She was going to throw herself into the sea. Ignoring the woman, Burden pounded after her and then he stopped suddenly, as if, unseeing, he had flung himself against a solid wall. He was no more than ten feet from her. Wide-eyed, the child approached her. Without seeming to slacken her speed at all, without hesitation, she ran into the water and, in the water, fell on to her knees.
The little waves flowed over her feet, her legs, her dress. He saw it seep up, drenching her to the waist. He heard her cry out - miles away, he thought, that cry could have been heard - but he could not tell whether it brought him happiness or grief.
“John, John, my John!”
She threw out her arms and the child went into them. Still kneeling in the water, she held him in a close embrace, her mouth pressed hard against his bright golden hair.
Burden and the woman looked at each other without speaking. He knew at once who she was. That face had looked at him before from his daughter’s scrap book. But it was very ravaged now and very aged, the black hair under the hood chopped off raggedly as if, with the ruin of her career, she had submitted to and accelerated the ruin of her looks.
Her hands were tiny. It seemed that she collected specimens, botanical and marine, but now she dropped the ribbon of weed. Close to, Burden thought, no one could mistake her for a man - but at a distance? It occurred to him that from far away even a middle-aged woman might look like a youth if she were slight and had the litheness of a dancer.
What more natural than that she should want John, the child of her old lover who had never been able to give her a child? And she had been ill, mentally ill, he remembered. John would have gone with her, quite willingly, no doubt, recalling her as his father’s friend, persuaded perhaps that his mother had temporarily committed him to her care. And to the seaside. What child doesn’t want to go to the seaside?
But something would happen now. As soon as she got over her first joy, Gemma would tear this woman to pieces. It wasn’t as if this was the first outrage Leonie West had committed against her. Hadn’t she, when Gemma was only a few months married, virtually stolen her husband from her? And now, a more monstrous iniquity, she had stolen her child.
He watched her rise slowly out of the water and, still keeping hold of John’s hand, begin to cross the strip of sand that separated her from Leonie West.
The dancer stood her ground, but she lifted her head with a kind of pathetic boldness and clenched the little hands Mrs. Mitchell had seen picking leaves. Burden took a step forward and found his lost voice.
“Now listen, Gemma. The best thing is . . .”
What had he meant to say? That the best thing was for them all to keep calm, to discuss it rationally? He stared. Never would he have believed - had he ever really known her? - that she would do this, the best thing of all, the thing that, in his estimation, almost made a saint of her.
Her dress was soaked. Oddly, Burden thought of a picture he had once seen, an artist’s impression of the sea giving up its dead. With a soft, tender glance at the boy, she dropped his hand and lifted Leonie West’s instead. Speechless, the other woman looked at her, and then Gemma, hesitating only for a moment, took her into her arms.
Chapter 23
“It would never have worked, Mike. You know that as well as I do. I’m not conventional enough for you, not respectable, not good enough if you like.”
“I think you are too good for me,” said Burden.
“I did say once that John - if John was ever found I wouldn’t marry you. I don’t think you quite understood. It will be better for both of us if I do what we’re planning and go and live with Leonie. She’s so lonely, Mike, and I’m so dreadfully sorry for her. That way I can have London and my friends and she can have a share in John.”
They were sitting in the lounge of the hotel where they had stayed together. Burden thought she had never been so beautiful, her white skin glowing from her inner joy, her hair mantling her shoulders. And never so alien in the golden dress Leonie West had lent her because her own was ruined by salt water. Her face was sweeter and gentler than ever.