Dreaming of the Bones (12 page)

“That’s quite all right.” Adam reached out and refilled her glass without asking. “For a moment, I thought I was at college again. We used to have the most marvelous talks. Sometimes we’d walk all night in the courts and along the river, and we debated things with such passion. We thought that we were revolutionaries, that we would change the world.” He said this without cynicism or bitterness, and just for an instant Vic saw him as he must have been, an innocent beneath the sophisticated trappings of a university undergraduate. Was that what had drawn Lydia to him?

“You came from a village, too, didn’t you? Like Lydia.”

Adam smiled. “Only mine was in Hampshire, and had no literary distinction. I remember Lydia telling me the night I met her that she came from a place quite near Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s house. She was quite fascinated by Virginia Woolf.”

“Do you suppose that was the beginning of her interest in Rupert Brooke?”

“It could have sparked it, certainly. She’d read everything she could get her hands on about Bloomsbury, and would have come across a multitude of references to him, even though he was never officially a member of that group.”

A gust of wind rattled the casements behind the red velvet curtains and Vic took another warming sip of sherry. “Bloomsbury, the Neo-Pagans… Why do you suppose Lydia was so drawn to the idea of an intellectually compatible group?”

Adam shifted and recrossed his long legs, and Vic saw that his black lace-up shoes were scuffed and worn down at the heel. “Her background provides the obvious explanation. A fatherless only child growing up in a small village… If she had any real friends, she never spoke of them, so I suppose from the time she learned to read she longed for that sort of companionship.”

“And her mother? Was Lydia really as dutiful a daughter as she sounds in her letters?”

“They had an odd relationship.” Adam held up a hand as if to stop an expected response. “And I don’t mean in the sense that it was unhealthy, although nowadays any parent-child relationship seems to be suspect. They were more like sisters, or friends, and if Lydia felt she’d been pressured to live out her mother’s dreams, she never showed any obvious resentment.”

“She was a schoolteacher, wasn’t she?” Vic prompted, although she knew all the recorded details of Mary Brooke’s life.

“A very bright girl, apparently, who’d earned a place at Oxford before the war,” said Adam. “But she didn’t take it up. She stayed at home and married her childhood sweetheart, afraid he wouldn’t come back from France—”

“And he didn’t,” Vic finished for him, and sighed. “I wonder if she ever regretted her choice.”

“She’d not have had Lydia,” Adam said reasonably, as if that alternative were unthinkable. “What else would you like to know?” He cast a surreptitious glance at his watch, and Vic suspected he had another appointment but was too tactful to say so.

“The impossible.” Smiling at Adam’s startled expression, Vic said softly, “You see, I want to know what she was
like
. I want to see her through your eyes, hear her through your ears….”

Adam looked past her, and after a moment he said, “That was the first thing one noticed about her—her voice. She was small and quick, with a dancer’s litheness and that wonderful dark, wavy hair cut in a twenties bob—but when she spoke you forgot everything else.” He smiled at an image Vic couldn’t see. “She sounded as though she’d sung in every smoky bar from Casablanca to Soho. It made her seem exotic, and yet beneath the huskiness you could hear the Sussex village.”

“Still endearingly English?”

Adam laughed. “Exactly. But that’s not what you want to know, is it? How she looked, I mean.” Pausing, he refilled his glass and took a small sip. “How can I possibly condense Lydia?”

“Pick an adjective,” suggested Vic. “Just off the top of your head, without thinking about it.”

“Parlor games?” Adam sounded dubious.

“You think that doesn’t sound suitably academic? Think of it as a poet’s game,” Vic challenged him. “After all, you were a poet, too.”

Adam made a rueful grimace. “But not a very good one, I’m afraid. All right, I’ll give it a try.” He frowned and thought for a moment. “Intense. Moody, funny, bright, but most of all, intense. Intense about loves and hates—and especially intense about work.”

Nodding, Vic gathered her courage to venture into painful territory. “You kept up with one another, didn’t you, after her separation from Morgan? I know,” she added carefully, “that it was you who found her, and saved her, that first time. What I don’t know is whether you had any idea what she meant to do.”

“She certainly didn’t threaten suicide, if that’s what you mean. Didn’t even hint at it. But…”

Vic felt her heartbeat quicken. “But her behavior wasn’t normal, was it? How was she different?”

“Calm,” said Adam. “Much too calm, in a dazed sort of way, but I didn’t realize then. She’d forget what she was saying in the midst of a sentence, and then she’d smile.” He shook his head. “I should have known—”

“How could you?” Vic protested. “Unless you’d had some experience dealing with depression.”

Adam shook his head. “Oh, I see it so often now that I recognize the earliest symptoms. But common sense should have been enough, even then.” His hands moved restlessly over his knees. “If I had been thinking of Lydia, rather than myself…”

“What do you mean?” Vic asked, puzzled.

“I had another agenda, you see,” he said, not meeting Vic’s eyes.

“I don’t understand.”

“It all sounds ludicrous … too ridiculous. But what harm can it do now, other than make me look as big a fool as I did then?” He
pinched his lips together in a self-deprecating grimace. “I was
glad
when Morgan left her. I thought she would get over him soon enough, and then perhaps we could go back to the way things were in the beginning.”

“In the beginning? You and Lydia?” Vic heard the surprise in her voice and silently cursed herself. She couldn’t afford to alienate him now. “Of course,” she added quickly, “what could have been more natural? And when she didn’t seem to be terribly unhappy, you thought—”

“Well, it was all a long time ago, and hopefully I’ve grown less foolish in my dotage.” He set his empty sherry glass down on the butler’s table in a deliberate way that suggested he’d had enough of talking as well.

He was the same age as Nathan, Vic thought, and yet she had the sudden impression that he felt life had defeated him.

“Adam,” she said, before he could politely terminate their interview. “What about the second time Lydia tried to kill herself? Did she have the same symptoms of depression or disassociation? Surely there must have been some indication—”

“I wouldn’t know,” he interrupted her. Then, as if afraid he’d been too sharp, added, “I was gone by that time. Kenya. Teaching in a mission school.” Standing up, he went to the bookcase behind the love seat and took something from the shelf. “One of my students made this for me.” He held out a small pottery vase for her inspection. It was clear glazed, the color of sunburnt skin, and black-etched antelope ran endlessly round its circumference.

“It’s lovely.” Taking it from him, Vic closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the surface as if she were reading braille. “It reminds me of a poem of Lydia’s, the one called ‘Grass.’ I always wondered where the images came from. Did you write to her?”

Adam shrugged. “Occasionally. The evenings could be very long. I suppose she didn’t save the letters?”

“If she did, I’ve not seen them among her papers,” Vic said, not sure whether that would please or hurt him, but she felt a spark of hope on her own behalf. “Did she write to you, by any chance?”

“Yes, but we had a fire in the mission not long before I came back to England. I lost most of my personal belongings, such as they
were, and Lydia’s letters were among them. I’m sorry,” he added, and Vic knew her disappointment must have shown.

“Never mind,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m sure it was a much greater loss for you than it is for me. But I wonder…” She hesitated to push him, but on the other hand she’d best make the most of her opportunity. “Do you remember anything odd about her letters before—”

“She ran her car into a tree?” For the first time, Adam sounded angry. “What a bloody stupid thing to do. I heard afterwards that she said she just lost control, but I never believed it for a minute. She was a good driver, very focused, as she was on most things she undertook to do well.”

“But the letters—”

“I wasn’t privy to anything but the most innocuous gossip,” Adam said, and stood up abruptly. “If you want to know about her state of mind, you had better ask Daphne.”

CHAPTER
6

In the silence of death; then may I see dimly, and

know, a space,

Bending over me, last light in the dark, once, as of

old, your face.

R
UPERT
B
ROOKE
,
from “Choriambics-I”

Newnham
20 June 1962
Darling Mummy
,

There’s so much to tell you that I don’t know where to begin. I haven’t been to bed since night before last, but I’m still too wound up for sleep and so thought I’d try to describe May Week to you before the lovely details fade
.

As soon as I finished my exams (in a haze of exhaustion), the parties began, and a good thing, too, otherwise I think I would have felt quite ill while waiting for the results to be posted. It’s all a bit hysterical, as everyone is feeling the same sort of relief and trepidation, and most are muddle-headed as well from end-of-term all-night swotting. Daphne and I trooped bravely from college to college and staircase to staircase, determined not to miss out on a single invitation. Some of the do’s were quite elegant, while others were last-minute affairs dependent upon potato crisps and bottled beer, and often those were the jolliest
.

Even the posh parties were very relaxed and informal, with lots of drinking and talking and dancing and people wandering about. If anything
marred our fun, it’s that I seem to have acquired a persistent suitor, through no fault of my own. He’s a dark, brooding Welsh boy named Morgan Ashby, an arts student who has a knack for turning up wherever I make an appearance. He then looks soulfully at me from across the room, which is quite off-putting. Finally, he mustered the courage to ask me to his May Ball, but I have no desire to play Cathy to his Heathcliff, and refused. Besides, I’d accepted Adam’s invitation months ago and wouldn’t have stood up dear, sweet Adam for the world
.

We made a foursome, Adam and I, Nathan and Daphne, and the heavens conspired to make it perfect for us—the end of our first year at Cambridge, and our first May Ball. Moon full, stars shining, an almost tropical night (truly a gift of the gods, it was so warm we could wear our gowns outside the marquee without
wraps). In the garden, they’d
strung fairy lights in the trees, making it look quite enchanted, and we danced on the lawn. Daphne and I both wore gossamer white, and pretended we were naiads (or is it dryads?) floating diaphanously about
.

We can now count ourselves among the Survivors. We stayed up through the wee hours, and at dawn we punted to Grantchester for breakfast, a bit bedraggled but still game. There we met up with Adam’s friend Darcy Eliot and his date, an insipid blond girl from Girton who hadn’t a sensible word to say about anything. It was too bad, really, because I think Darcy is destined to be
one of us.
Not only is he smashingly good-looking and charming and a promising poet, but his mother is Margery Lester, the novelist. Talk about icing on the cake! You know how much I love her books—you’re the one who introduced me to them. I daren’t allow myself to hope that I might meet her one day, and if I did I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to think of a thing to say
.

Picture me, curled up in my window niche in my nightdress, scribbling away to you. The morning light has gone all soft and shadowless, and if I close my eyes I think I can smell the faintest hint of rain through the open window. My ball gown lies discarded across the chair, a bit tawdry, perhaps, in daylight, and for a moment I feel bereft, Cinderella the morning after. This time won’t come again, and I wonder if I can bear to let it go
.

Needs must, though, as Nan would say, and my eyelids feel heavy as the best parlor curtains, thick and velvety, with the scratch of old dust. One more thing to tell you, though, the best last. When we finally straggled
back to Cambridge, my exam results had been posted on the boards outside the Senate House. It was a good thing I had Adam to hold me up. My knees went all jelly and I had to close my eyes while he read them to me, because I couldn’t bear to look myself. But it was all right. I did better than I expected, in fact, I really did quite shockingly well
.

But nicest of all, darling Mother, is that we’ll have all the Long Vacation to be together. I’ll have to study, of course, for they don’t expect me to be idle, and it will take me another week or so here to organize all the books and things I’ll need over the summer. Then the counties will click by outside the train windows, and you’ll be waiting at the station with the old Morris. And maybe Nan will come, too, and you’ll bring Shelley, who will pant and tail-wag in doggy anticipation, and then I will be home
.

Lydia

Gemma regretted her decision more with every passing mile. After their disagreement last Sunday over his visit to his ex-wife
(You
started a row, she reminded herself), she and Duncan had spent the workweek avoiding one another. It wasn’t that they made a habit of spending every minute together, but he usually came round to her flat several evenings during the week, and when circumstances permitted she went to his. By Friday, having found herself missing him dreadfully, she faced up to the fact that
she
was going to have to apologize.