“That name rings a bell,” said Kincaid, frowning. “Why does everyone refer to him as ‘poor’ Henry?”
“It’s unconscious, I suppose,” said Margery with a sigh. “But it does seem as though poor Henry-see, I’ve done it again.” She smiled and deliberately corrected herself. “It seems as though Henry Whitecliff had to bear more than his share of tragedy, and he was such a lovely, kind man that he seemed even less deserving of it than most.”
Ralph returned to his position at the edge of his desk. “Henry’s only daughter disappeared just before her sixteenth birthday. I remember her vaguely-we were near the same age, though not at the same school.”
“She was a beautiful girl, Verity, very bright and loving, but a bit headstrong-just the sort to be tempted by the idea of running away to swinging London when she’d had a row with her parents. Henry and Betty were devastated, of course, and for years they followed every possible lead, hoping against hope that she would come home. Then Betty developed cancer.” Margery came to a halt, clasping the stem of the sherry glass with both hands. Her hands were still beautiful, Kincaid noticed, with slender, tapering fingers, but the blue veins stood close to the surface and her knuckles were slightly enlarged, as if she suffered with arthritis.
After casting a concerned glance at Margery, Ralph took up the story. “After Betty died, Henry retired as Head of the English Faculty and began his book, a thorough and detailed literary history of Cambridge. He meant to dedicate it to Verity, and I think that thought kept him going for years. Then one night last summer he went to bed and didn’t wake up the next morning.” He shrugged. “A blessing, people always say when that happens, but it seems a bit unfair to me. No chance to tie up loose ends, or to say good-bye.”
Would it be any better, Kincaid thought, if he’d had a chance to tell Vic good-bye? To say all the things he might have said? He dragged his attention back to Margery.
“… so Ralph and I thought we should see the book finished, and published,” said Margery. “A labor of love, if you will.”
Ralph patted a thick stack of manuscript pages near the center of his desk. “We’ll have bound copies by June, in time for the anniversary of Henry’s death. Sounds a bit morbid, but I think he would have appreciated it.” He stared at the manuscript a moment, then looked up at Kincaid and frowned. “Those poems you were asking me about-I’d like to see them. I’m not as well versed-excuse the pun-in Lydia’s work as Dr. McClellan, but I might be able to tell if the poems belonged in the manuscript. I don’t like the idea that anyone’s manuscript pages might have gone walkabout from my office.” Turning to Margery, he added in explanation, “They say that Dr. McClellan found some poems she thought should have been included in Lydia’s book.”
“I’d be glad to let you see them if I had them,” said Kincaid. “But we didn’t find them among Dr. McClellan’s papers. They’ve disappeared.”
“How very odd,” said Margery, musing, her gaze still resting on Henry Whitecliff’s manuscript. “There’s another unfinished book now-Victoria McClellan’s. I know how dedicated she was to this project-it would be a shame to let it all go to waste.”
“Margery, don’t even think it,” said Ralph, sounding horrified. “You’ve too much to do as it is, and the doctor’s cautioned-”
“As if he knows anything about it, the desiccated old stick,” said Margery in disgust. “He’d have me mummified in no time if I listened to him.” She smiled at Ralph, forgiving him. “I appreciate your concern, darling, but you know it’s work that keeps me going, and if I should end the same way as Henry, then so be it.”
“Dame Margery,” said Kincaid, “I’d suggest you leave this particular project on the shelf for a while. I’m concerned for your health in a more concrete way-working on Vic McClellan’s manuscript might prove very dangerous indeed.”
Cambridge
27 March 1969
Dearest Mummy,
You know ginger biscuits cheer me like nothing else, and I will nibble at them when I can’t bear the thought of real food. I’ve put the tin in the middle of the kitchen table, so that I can have them with my tea while I watch the chaffinches in the garden.
It’s a comfort to know you’re thinking of me. It has been a long winter, but I think I’m reconciled to things now. Morgan has a lover, I saw them in the marketplace. He looked white with misery, and I’m sure he thinks I wish him ill, but I don’t. I feel too empty for that, light and unanchored as an abandoned husk, and I think only when the divorce decree becomes final will I gain substance again. Writing comes slowly, if at all, and that I miss more than anything.
Old friends have rallied round-Adam with pots of nourishing soup and ministerial good cheer, and I’m grateful enough for his company to ignore the hopeful undercurrents. No one is worth what I’ve been through these last few months, years, really.
Every so often Darcy pops round for cocktails and shares all the academic gossip, and I daresay his acerbity is easier to take than outright sympathy. Nathan Winter and his wife, Jean, have just had their first baby, a girl called Alison, and I’m to be godmother. I managed my shopping for her christening gift (a silver cup with her name and birthdate engraved) with some fortitude, and treated myself to dinner at Brown’s afterwards.
Daphne’s been a rock, of course, but she had finally to make a decision about the teaching position in Bedford, and I could only encourage her to take it. It’s a well-known public school, and will do her career prospects good. Bedford is only an hour’s drive, and we’ll still manage to see one another at weekends, so I’m consoling myself with that thought.
I heard a rumor yesterday at the greengrocer’s that the Beatles are breaking up, and I found myself crying quite ridiculously among the cabbages and the carrots. It was utterly nonsensical-I thought to myself that they each had their own separate lives and families, that it was time for them to move on-but I felt an overwhelming sense of loss. It’s as if they symbolized our hopes and our innocence, and I felt suddenly that I’d lived through the passing of a generation.
I can see your lips curve in that knowing smile even as I write these words. When you were my age, you had lived through the war, been widowed, borne a child, and for you the loss of a generation was counted in hundreds of thousands of lives.
If only we could absorb one another’s experiences, altering our emotional as well as our intellectual perceptions, then we might prevent so much suffering, such sorrow.
But then I realize that we can do this, at least in a small way, through fiction, and poetry, so perhaps my battlefield has some merit, after all.
Love, Lydia
Kincaid had Gemma ring Laura Miller at home, asking where they might find Darcy Eliot on a Saturday afternoon, and she’d sent them to All Saints’ College. “He’s had the same rooms for aeons,” said Laura. “I’ve always envied the male dons living in college-drinking college wine, eating at High Table, being waited on hand and foot. I think that’s why Darcy’s never married-he couldn’t bear to give it up,” she added, laughing, and rang off.
They stopped at the Porter’s Lodge and were directed towards the back of the college. Gemma walked slowly, conscious of Kincaid’s impatience but ignoring it. She glanced down at the folded brochure she’d taken from the porter, then up again at the buildings forming the four sides of the quad they’d entered from the Porter’s Lodge. “This is the main court,” she said. “And that must be the entrance to the chapel on the left. We go through here”-she pointed to the building straight ahead-“and come out the other side.”