The Distant Hours (38 page)

‘It’s lonely for them when they get near the end,’ she was saying, ‘especially if they never married. No kids or grand-kids to think about.’

I agreed and smiled and trailed her at a skip along the wide, white corridor. Door after door, the spaces between punctuated by wall-hung vases. Purple flowers, just this side of fresh, poked their heads over the top, and I wondered absently whose job it was to change them. I didn’t ask, though, and we didn’t stop, continuing right down the corridor until we reached a door at the very end. Through its glass panel, I could see that a neat garden lay on the other side. The nurse held open the door and tilted her head, indicating that I should go first, then followed closely on my heel.

‘Theo,’ she said, in a louder-than-normal voice, though to whom she spoke I couldn’t tell. ‘Someone here to see you. I’m sorry – ’ she turned to me – ‘I don’t remember your name.’

‘Edie. Edie Burchill.’

‘Edie Burchill’s here to visit, Theo.’

I saw then an iron bench seat just beyond a low hedge, and an old man standing. It was evident from the way he stooped, the hand holding the back of the seat, that he’d been sitting until the moment we arrived, that he’d clambered to his feet out of habit, a vestige of the old-fashioned manners he’d no doubt been using all his life. He blinked through bottle-thick glasses. ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘Join me, won’t you?’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said the nurse. ‘I’m just inside. Give me a yell if there’s anything you need.’ She bobbed her head, crossed her arms, and disappeared sprucely back along the red-brick path. The door closed behind her and Theo and I were left alone in the garden.

He was tiny, five foot tall if he was lucky, with the sort of portly body you might draw, if you were so inclined, by starting with a rough aubergine shape and strapping a belt across the widest point. He gestured away from me with a tufted head. ‘I’ve been sitting here watching the river. It never stops, you know.’

I liked his voice. Something in its warm timbre reminded me of being a very little child, of sitting cross-legged on a dusty carpet while a blurry-faced grown-up intoned reassuringly and my mind took leave to wander. I was aware suddenly that I had no idea how to begin speaking with this old man. That coming here had been an enormous mistake and I needed to leave immediately. I’d opened my mouth to tell him so when he said, ‘I’ve been stalling. I’m afraid I can’t place you. Forgive me, it’s my memory . . .’

‘It’s quite all right. We haven’t met before.’

‘Oh?’ He was silent and his lips moved slowly around his thoughts. ‘I see . . . well, never mind, you’re here now, and I don’t have a lot of visitors . . . I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already. I know Jean said it, but . . .’

Run
, said my brain. ‘I’m Edie,’ said my mouth. ‘I’ve come about your advertisements.’

‘My . . . ?’ He cupped his ear as if he might have misheard. ‘Advertisements, did you say? I’m sorry, but I think you might’ve confused me with someone else.’

I reached inside my bag and found the printout page from
The Times.
‘I’ve come about Thomas Cavill,’ I said, holding it so he could see.

He wasn’t looking at the paper though. I’d startled him and his whole face changed, confusion swept aside by delight. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said eagerly. ‘Come, sit down, sit down. Who are you with then, the police? The military police?’

The
police
? It was my turn for confusion. I shook my head.

He’d become agitated, clasping his small hands together and speaking very quickly: ‘I knew if I just lasted long enough, someone, someday would show a bit of interest in my brother. Come.’ He waved impatiently. ‘Sit down, please. Tell me – what is it? What have you found?’

I was utterly flummoxed; I had no idea what he meant. I went closer and spoke gently. ‘Mr Cavill, I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. I haven’t found anything and I’m not with the police. Or with the military for that matter. I’ve come because I’m trying to find your brother – to find Thomas – and I thought you might be able to help.’

His head inclined. ‘You thought I might . . . That I could help
you
. . . ?’ Realization drained the colour from his cheeks. He held the back of the seat for support and nodded with a bitter dignity that made me ache, even though I didn’t understand its cause. ‘I see . . .’ A faint smile. ‘I see.’

I’d upset him and although I’d no idea how, or what the police might have to do with Thomas Cavill, I knew I had to say something to explain my presence. ‘Your brother was my mother’s teacher, back before the war. We were talking the other day, she and I, and she was telling me what an inspiration he was. That she was sorry to have lost contact with him.’ I swallowed, surprised and disturbed in equal measure by how easy it was for me to lie like this. ‘She was wondering what became of him, whether he kept teaching after the war, whether he got married.’

As I spoke, his attention had drifted back towards the river, but I could tell by the glaze of his eyes that he wasn’t seeing anything. Nothing that was there, at any rate; not the people strolling across the bridge, or the small boats bobbing on the distant bank, or the ferry-load of tourists with pointed cameras. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t have any idea what happened to Tom.’

Theo sat down, easing his back against the iron rails and picking up his story. ‘My brother disappeared in 1941. The middle of the war. First we knew was a knock at my mum’s door and the local bobby standing there. Wartime reserve policeman, he was – friend of my dad’s when he was alive, fought alongside him in the Great War. Ah – ’ Theo flapped his hand as if he were swatting a fly, ‘he was embarrassed, poor fellow. Must’ve hated delivering that sort of news.’

‘What sort of news?’

‘Tom hadn’t reported for duty and the bobby’d come to bring him in.’ Theo sighed with the memory. ‘Poor old Mum. What could she do? She told the fellow the truth: that Tom wasn’t there and she had no idea where he was staying, that he’d taken to living alone since he was wounded. Couldn’t settle back into the family home after Dunkirk.’

‘He was evacuated?’

Theo nodded. ‘Almost didn’t make it. He spent weeks in hospital afterwards; his leg mended up all right, but my sisters said he came out different to when he went in. He’d laugh in all the same places but there’d be a pause beforehand. Like he was reading lines from a script.’

A child had begun to cry nearby and Theo’s attention flickered in the direction of the river path; he smiled faintly. ‘Ice cream dropped,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be a Saturday in Putney if some poor kid didn’t lose his ice cream on that path.’

I waited for him to continue and when he didn’t, prompted him as gently as I could. ‘And what happened? What did your mother do?’

He was still watching the path, but he tapped his fingers on the back of the seat and said, in a quiet voice, ‘Tom was absent without leave in the middle of a war. The bobby’s hands were tied. He was a good man though, showed some leniency out of respect for Dad; gave Mum twenty-four hours to find Tom and have him report for duty before it all went official.’

‘But she didn’t? She didn’t find him.’

He shook his head. ‘Needle in a haystack. Mum and my sisters went to pieces. They searched everywhere they could think but . . .’ He shrugged weakly. ‘I was no help, I wasn’t there at the time – I’ve never forgiven myself for that. I was up north, training with my regiment. First I knew was when Mum’s letter arrived. By then it was too late. Tom was on the absconders’ list.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘He’s on it to this day.’ His eyes met mine and I was dismayed to see that they were glassy with tears. He straightened his thick spectacles, hooked the arms over his ears. ‘I’ve checked every year since because they told me once that some old fellows turn up decades later. Front up at the guardroom with their tail between their legs and a string of bad decisions behind them. Throw themselves on the mercy of the officer on duty.’ He lifted a hand and let it fall, helplessly, back to his knee. ‘I only check because I’m desperate. I know in my heart that Tom won’t be showing up at any guardroom.’ He met my concern, searched my eyes and said, ‘Dishonourable bloody discharge.’

There was chatter behind us and I glanced over my shoulder to see a young man helping an elderly woman through the door and into the garden. The woman laughed at something he’d said as they walked together slowly to look at the roses.

Theo had seen them, too, and he lowered his voice. ‘Tom was an
honourable
man.’ Each word was a struggle and, as he held his lips tight against the quiver of strong emotion, I could see how much he needed me to believe the best of his brother. ‘He never would’ve done what they said, run away like that. Never. I told them so, the military police. No one would listen. It broke my mother’s heart. The shame, the worry, wondering what had really happened to him. Whether he was out there somewhere, lost and alone. Whether he’d come to some harm, forgotten who he was and where he belonged – ’ He broke off, rubbed at his bowed brow as if abashed, and I understood that these were heartbreaking theories for which he’d been castigated in the past. ‘Whatever the case,’ he said, ‘she never got over it. He was her favourite, though she’d never have admitted such a thing. She didn’t have to: he was everybody’s favourite, Tom.’

Silence fell and I watched as two rooks twirled across the sky. The rose couple’s stroll brought them close and I waited for them to reach the riverbank before turning to Theo and saying, ‘Why wouldn’t the police listen? Why were they so sure that Tom had run away?’

‘There was a letter.’ A nerve in his jaw flickered. ‘Early 1942 it arrived, a few months after Tom went missing. Typed and very short, saying only that he’d met someone and run off to get married. That he was lying low, but would make contact later. Once the police saw that, they weren’t interested in Tom or us. There was a war on, didn’t we know? There wasn’t time to be looking for a fellow who’d deserted his nation.’

His hurt was still so raw, fifty years later. I could only imagine what it must have been like at the time. To be missing a loved one and unable to convince anyone else to help in the search. And yet. In Milderhurst village I’d been told that Thomas Cavill failed to show up at the castle because he’d eloped with another woman. Was it only family pride and loyalty that made Theo so certain the elopement was a lie? ‘You don’t believe the letter?’

‘Not for a second.’ His vehemence was a knife. ‘It’s true that he’d met a girl and fallen in love. He told me that himself, wrote long letters about her – how beautiful she was, how she made everything right with the world, how he was going to marry her. But he wasn’t about to elope – he couldn’t wait to introduce her to the family.’

‘You didn’t meet her?’

He shook his head. ‘None of us did. It was something to do with her family and keeping it secret until they’d broken the news to them. I got the feeling her people were rather grand.’

My heart had started to race as Theo’s story overlay so neatly with the cast of my own. ‘Do you remember the girl’s name?’

‘He never told me.’

The frustration winded me.

‘He was adamant that he had to meet her family first. I can’t tell you how it’s plagued me over the years,’ he said. ‘If I’d only known who she was, I might’ve had a place to start searching. What if she went missing too? What if the pair of them were in an accident together? What if her family has information that might help?’

It was on the tip of my tongue then to tell him about Juniper, but I thought better of it at the last. I couldn’t see that there was any point in raising his hopes when the Blythes had no additional information on the whereabouts of Thomas Cavill; when they were as convinced as the police that he’d eloped with another woman. ‘The letter,’ I said suddenly, ‘who do you think sent it, if it wasn’t Tom? And why? Why would somebody else do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll tell you something. Tom didn’t marry anyone. I checked with the Register Office. I checked the death records, too; I still do. Every year or so, just in case. There’s nothing. No record of him after 1941. It’s like he just disappeared into thin air.’

‘But people don’t just disappear.’

‘No,’ he said, with a weary smile. ‘No, they don’t. And I’ve spent my whole life trying to find him. I even hired a fellow some decades ago. Waste of money that was. Thousands of quid just to have some idiot tell me that wartime London was an excellent place for a man who wanted to go missing.’ He sighed roughly. ‘No one seems to care that Tom
didn’t
want to go missing.’

‘And the advertisements?’ I gestured to the printout, still on the seat between us.

‘I ran those when our little brother Joey took his turn for the worse. I figured it was worth a shot, just in case I’d been wrong all along and Tom was out there somewhere, looking for a reason to come back to us. Joey was simple, poor kid, but he adored Tom. Would’ve meant the world to him to see him one more time.’

‘You didn’t hear anything though.’

‘Nothing but some lads making prank calls.’

The sun had slipped from the sky and early dusk was sheer and pink. A breeze brushed my arms and I realized we were alone again in the garden; remembered that Theo was an old man who ought to be inside contemplating a plate of roast beef and not the sorrows of his past. ‘It’s getting cool,’ I said. ‘Shall we go in?’