“From outside?” Zepernick suggested. “As they carried her up the cliffpath?”
It was Ned’s turn to shake his head.
“This isn’t grass,” he said. “This is straw. From a farm or a stable, perhaps. Had she been riding that day?” He looked at Lentsch.
“Not that I am aware of,” he said.
The three gunners who had found her, Kanoniers Rupp, Bauer, and Laurer, were country boys all, with country boy’s hands and country boy’s complexions. They had seen nothing, heard nothing. They had manned their gun like honest soldiers. That was all they understood, the rest was hopeful bewilderment. Unlike the officers their grasp of English was slight. They looked at their boots, watching each other out of the corner of their eyes for signs of betrayal. Clustering round the little table like young birds in a crowded nest, opening their mouths in an anxious chorus of demanding innocence, it was impossible to hear their story straight, and Ned was sure that that was what it was, a story, but even when sent out of the room and brought back one by one, standing before the two men who could banish them to the Russian front, they managed to maintain their faltering innocence. But there was a tale they were not telling, this fearful little group, something which had taken place within this cramped and claustrophobic room, with its folded blankets and polished boots. He could catch it in the inadvertent looks to the absent Lieutenant’s low bunk, as if they expected the black field phone on the wall near his pillow to spring into accusatory life; he could follow it by the uneasy order that informed their rest room, the stubby chess pieces sitting neatly in their squares, the uncluttered, half-used mantelpiece, the bare space under each set of bunks. All barrack rooms display a certain scrubbed solitude, Ned knew from his own experience, but there was a degree of latitude allowed in such quarters which had not been prevailed upon here. It had been sterilized, wiped clean. Something had gone on here, though Ned was sure it was nothing to do with Isobel. But their fear, their theatrical outrage at her intrusion, puzzled him. It was as if her presence threatened to shed an unwelcome light on some other activity. Perhaps the iron air filter doubled up as an illegal still. Perhaps they’d uncovered a coven of pederasts. Perhaps the missing Schade, lying in a drunken stupor in the Soldatenheim, could enlighten them.
Before driving to van Dielen’s house, Ned asked to be taken back home. He wanted to tell Mum the news before Albert arrived with it tucked under his arm. She hadn’t gone to bed. She was in the kitchen counting out the food stores, checking them off in the little pocketbook she kept in her apron. She did it every morning, and most afternoons too. She heard him come in but barely turned from the pantry door.
“Only an ounce of butter left,” she fretted. “And no more coming till next week. And that tea your uncle brought round. It’s half gone already. It’s too much, really it is.”
Ned led her out of the pantry door and standing by the porcelain sink told her as best he could. He hardly knew what to say. His mother had never met Isobel. She had never even talked about her. When he had been seeing her, he had been doing something that was not simply on his own but outside his mother’s understanding. They had seen his mother once, him and Isobel, walking up past Isobel’s house, taking Dad his tea when he was working overtime on some renovation work for the museum. She had been clothed as she was now, in an old shirt and a long faded blue skirt with sagging pockets at the front, her bare arms swinging her thick calico shopping bag, her large and ruddy face set to the task ahead. Her footsteps were solid, like her shoes, her strength harnessed to the necessity of work, so different from the demeanour of the young woman beside him. It was not simply a matter of age. The distinction between them would remain whatever their times in life, even if it were his mother who had been the girl and Isobel the older woman. Suddenly he had not wanted to belong to his mother or any of her kind. He wanted to lay claim only to Isobel and all the other Isobels of the world, young or old. He wanted to inherit their muscle, their skin, their light unsullied timbre. He stepped back behind a bush and pulled Isobel after him.
“Shh,” he warned.
“Someone you know?” she teased, and breaking out of his grip she stuck her head through the leaves. Ned pulled her back again, this time more sharply.
“No one special,” he said, planting the lie on her warmth of her throat, and dragging her back against him. She stuck her feet out willingly as he hauled her back to the clearing. “An old busybody, that’s all,” he scoffed and laying her on the ground had stirred her stomach with his foot.
“I know all about busybodies,” she grinned. “There’s my aunt for a start. God, my aunt. Tries to run my life.” She scrambled up on her hands and knees and, crawling over the grass, called out, “Ahoy there, Mrs Whoever-you-are! Someone here says you’re an old…”
Ned covered her giggling mouth and turned her over.
“Be quiet now,” he said, pinning her loose arms high above her head. “It’s my mother. All right?”
“I know,” she boasted. She bounced her hips against him. “I’d like to meet her.”
“Not now,” he said, untying the belt of her jacket, conscious of their desire.
“Later, then.”
“Why? I’ve got your father to steer clear of. Now you’ve my mother. We’re evens.”
“Not really,” she told him, looking down at his insistent hands. “You couldn’t charm my father however hard you tried. But I could charm your mother as easy as pie.”
Her jacket and blouse lay open. He was barely listening.
“You could?”
“Yes. Don’t you know? I can charm anybody I want to.”
Now when he tried to form her name in front of his mother and place it alongside the other word filling his mouth, death, it was as if he were acknowledging for the first time the strength of his failed affection, the bitter ground that he had trodden upon.
“Isobel. It’s Isobel, Mum. She’s dead,” he said, stumbling over her Christian name as if he had no right to use it. “Killed.” He felt himself blushing. It was almost as if he were admitting to the deed himself.
“Isobel! Dead!” she said, echoing her son’s own exclamation. “But how!”
“That’s what they want me to find out,” he replied, walking out into the front room, indicating the Major, who stood awkwardly in the light of the doorway. He turned and lowered his voice. “I just came back to let you know I’m all right. I’ll have a quick wash while I’m here. There’s no telling how long they’ll keep me.”
Ned went upstairs. The Major, conscious of the silence and the requirements of his upbringing, took off his cap and advanced. Ned’s mother stepped into the room and faced him. In the kitchen the dog growled, and as she looked back, ready to draw attention to him as a means of conversation, she noticed the half ring of dirt on the flagstone. Ned had failed to put the basket back in its proper place. The circle of dust proclaimed their duplicity like the cheap sparkle on a brass wedding ring.
“Stop that nonsense,” she scolded quickly and shut the door. “He still hasn’t got over this morning,” she explained, adding, “You gave us all a proper fright.”
The Major bowed his stiff apology. “I did not mean to alarm you at such an hour.”
Ned’s mother sniffed. It was not the time that mattered.
“We’re all early risers here,” she told him, in a tone one might tell a stranger the nature of one’s religion.
“He has told you the news?”
“Yes. Dreadful.”
“I need his help, Mrs Luscombe.”
“I can see that.”
“I must take him away again.”