“Lewis, you must not do this,” she said quietly. “I know how desperately worried you are, but the only thing you can do for your family is to stay where they can reach you.”
“But—what if … I can’t bear not knowing—”
“We don’t know how long the bombing will go on, and this is why they sent you away, to keep you safe. How would your mother feel if you went to London and were hurt or killed, and all this year had been for nought?”
He shook his head wordlessly, but found some unexpected comfort in the thought of his mother’s anger.
“The East End is in chaos,” Edwina continued. “You know that—you’ve been listening to the reports on the wireless. And William’s parents confirmed what we’ve heard—they managed to ring through from Greenwich to tell us that the Hammond’s warehouse was not badly damaged. It’s quite possible that your family has been relocated, and in that case you’d not be able to find them. The only sensible thing to do is wait. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.” He heard the chair legs creak as Edwina stood, then felt the light touch of her hand on his shoulder. “Promise me you won’t do anything rash.”
After a moment, he managed to nod and say, “All right,” but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
“You’re a sensible boy, Lewis,” Edwina said, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze. “I knew I could count on you.”
Lewis heard her go down the stairs, her booted steps as quick and precise as she was in everything, but he didn’t feel sensible at all. In his heart he knew he’d failed his family, left them to an unknown fate that he should have suffered with them, and that his safe and sensible retreat marked him as an outsider and a coward.
THE HOUSE ON STEBONDALE STREET WAS was hit by an incendiary bomb on the third night of the Blitz, but this Lewis didn’t learn until almost a week later, when he received a note in the post. The paper was much blotched and stained, but the neatly looped, convent-school handwriting was instantly recognizable as his mother’s.Dear Lewis,The house is gone but we are all right. The third night the bombers came a fire bomb hit right on top of the house but we had gone round to the McNeills in Chapel House Street and went down their Anderson shelter when the alarm sounded. So it was lucky for us wasn’t it? They have given us a flat in Islington for now with two other families; it’s not very clean but at least we have a place to lay our heads. I will write more soon remember I love you.Your loving mother
Lewis had gone every day to wait for the post at the bottom of the drive, and now he stood, staring at the tattered paper, until the tears blurred his vision and splashed onto the page. He knew that William and Edwina and Mr. Cuddy and even Cook were watching him anxiously from the house, as they had every day, but he couldn’t seem to move.
After a bit, William came down to him, but Lewis found he couldn’t speak, either. He was forced to hand William the letter to read for himself.
William read, squinting at the unfamiliar script, his lips moving silently. Then he looked up, a grin spreading across his face, and whooped and pounded Lewis on the back, shouting, “Hooray! Bloody hooray!” and after that it was all right.
IT WAS MIDMORNING BEFORE KINCAID STARTED for Cambridge, after having made a stop at the Yard. He concentrated on negotiating London traffic until he reached the M11, then he popped a jazz piano tape Gemma had given him into the Rover’s tape deck and settled into the right-hand lane, determined to make good time.
The music was improvisational, the drifting notes of the piano sometimes as ethereal as wind in the grass, or as liquid as running water. After a bit, in the sort of free association often brought on by long-distance driving, the music seemed to combine his thoughts of Kit with memories of the long days of his own boyhood.
He’d spent his summer hols running wild with all the freedom of a child growing up in the country, packing his lunch in the mornings and setting out to roam, on foot or on his bike. Sometimes he’d gone with friends, and sometimes alone, if he could manage to ditch his little sister. He’d climbed trees and swum in the canals and taught himself to fish with absorbed and infinite patience.
Of course, there must have been wet days, and boring days; in retrospect, however, they were all idyllic, filled with the heady tonic of adventure. But what had made his confidence possible, he realized now, was the knowledge that when he returned home in the evenings, his mum and dad would be home from the shop, supper would be cooking, and Miranda would be wanting him to play Monopoly or catch.
His foundation had seemed unshakable; it had never occurred to him that it could collapse as easily as a house of cards.
It was almost lunchtime when he pulled into the Millers’ drive and stopped the engine. Laura Miller had been Vic’s secretary at the university English Faculty, and a good friend as well. Her son, Colin, had been at school with Kit, although the Millers lived in Comberton, a hamlet a few miles from Grantchester. Laura’s willingness to take Kit in for the past few months had provided the boy a haven of familiarity while the school term lasted.
To Kincaid’s surprise, Laura answered his ring herself. “I thought you’d be at work,” he said, kissing her cheek.
“It’s summer hols for me, too,” she said as she let him in. She wore white shorts with a bright madras cotton blouse, and her fair skin was faintly flushed from the heat. “Come back to the kitchen. It’s cooler there.”
The house was a comfortable, suburban semidetached, filled with the trail of discarded shoes and sports equipment that marked habitation by boys. “Colin’s gone quite football-mad this summer—I don’t know what’s got into him,” Laura said as she cleared a kitchen chair of a ball and a pair of dirty socks. “Sit down and I’ll get you something cold to drink. Ginger cordial?”
When he nodded assent, she went on, “I’ve been trying to ring you this morning.” Handing him a glass filled with milky liquid and a few ice cubes, she sat down at the table. “What’s going on, Duncan? Kit came back from London doing a perfect impersonation of the sphinx—and then yesterday Ian McClellan showed up here and said he’s back in Cambridge for good. It was just this morning I finally got Kit to tell me that Ian intends to take him back to the Grantchester cottage.”
“Ian’s seen Kit, then?”
“He didn’t stay long. That’s all Kit’s been willing to say about it, he won’t talk about you at all, and he refuses to leave the house. I’m really quite worried about him.”
“I told Kit I was his dad,” Kincaid confessed reluctantly. “The night before Ian rang me up in London.”
“Oh, dear.” Laura looked aghast. “No wonder he came back in a royal funk.”
“I knew it might take a bit of getting used to, but I rather thought he liked me.… I suppose I’d even hoped he might be pleased.”
Laura shook her head. “You were Kit’s escape from his old life, someone unconnected except for those last few weeks, a friend.”
“But a father, surely—”
“I don’t think you understand, Duncan. To Kit, parents are the last people you can count on. They run away and leave you. Or die. I don’t think anything could have frightened him more.”
Kincaid stared at her, wondering how he could not have seen it. “Oh, Christ. I didn’t realize … How can I possibly sort things out with him after this?”