‘Of course I do,’ said Banks. ‘I would never have wanted to hold her back, to stand in her way. I just wish things...’ He felt his eyes prickling and swigged more wine. ‘Oh, never mind.’
‘Wish things had been different?’ Julie paused. ‘Let me ask you a question. Where would you have gone from there? If things had been different. If she had told you at the time. If you had persuaded her against having the abortion. If you had got married. Where would you have gone from there?’
‘I don’t know. I tried to imagine it just now, our life together, but I couldn’t.’
‘Whatever it would have been, Alan, the moment’s gone. You had your time, you and Emily.’ She got up and walked over to the bar, took something out of a drawer. ‘And don’t forget it was a good time. She wanted me to give you this to remind you.’
It was a photograph. Banks held it by the candlelight. He and Emily in the early seventies. He was wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, and bell bottoms, and his hair was much longer than it was now. Emily was wearing the embroidered white cheesecloth top she had favoured so much, along with her jeans, also bell bottoms. Banks had his arm around her and her head rested on his shoulder, her long blond hair hanging over his chest, that little sleepy satisfied smile on her face. Banks felt a lump in his throat.
‘Turn it over,’ Julie said.
Banks turned it over. Written on the other side, in shaky handwriting, were the words, ‘Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad.’
‘Christina Rossetti again,’ Banks said.
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ Julie whispered. ‘Forget and smile.’
Chapter 12
‘I love that line, “with magic in my eyes”,’ said Banks, sitting in the Low Moor Inn with Linda Palmer on Sunday lunchtime. They both had the traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding lunch before them, but while Linda sipped at a glass of red wine and tucked in with gusto, Banks stuck to copious amounts of water and picked at his food.
The Low Moor Inn, which Banks had discovered by accident a couple of years ago, was one of those old sturdy and badly lit Dales pubs high on the moors, well off the beaten track. Its enormous fireplace blazed like a smithy’s forge, quickly erasing memories of the damp and chill weather outside. Prints and framed paintings of the local hunt and sheep-shearing scenes hung here and there on the rough stone walls. Some were for sale and had price tags stuck below them. Bottles of spirits stood on shelves behind the polished bar and reflected in the long mirror behind them. A brass footrest ran along the bottom. The legs of the old wooden chairs scraped on the flagstone floor when anyone moved.
Banks had woken early, disoriented and hung-over in Filey, to the squealing of seagulls and the smell of bacon and eggs. Marcel, of course, had provided a hearty full English breakfast, including black pudding and baked beans. At first Banks hadn’t thought he would be able to manage it all, but he found himself staring at an empty plate when he was on his second cup of coffee. He thanked Marcel, gave Julie a quick peck on the cheek and left. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ Julie had called out after him. But he didn’t think he would be back there again, no matter how good the food.
‘It is magnificent, isn’t it? Magic,’ said Linda. They were talking about Hardy’s Poems of 1912–1913, which Banks had read over the new year, before his meeting with Dr Glendenning in the Unicorn, though the quotation that appealed so much to Banks came from a musical setting of an earlier Hardy poem, ‘When I Set Out for Lyonnesse’, by Gerald Finzi. Banks was feeling a little better after his long drive, but he was still finding it difficult to concentrate. The things Julie had told him the night before kept running through his head. Emily. A baby. Abortion. But Emily was dead now, and she had wanted his forgiveness. Thinking back to the first flush of love with Emily made Banks think of Sandra, whom he had married a few years after the split. Sandra. His ex-wife. Mother of Tracy and Brian. Now remarried to Sean, and a mother again. He tried hard to remember the early days, when they were poor but happy, living in Kennington, but the details eluded him. Their break-up had been acrimonious, and relations were still strained between them, so much so that they rarely met unless it was an important event involving Brian or Tracy.
Hardy captured that sense of first love so well, Banks thought, yet his relationship with Emma Gifford had been troublesome, and the couple had grown more distant over the years. Only when she died could he resurrect the magic of those early days, the places they had been and emotions connected with them. That was the thread that ran through the sequence. The poems were a true marriage of place and memory, Linda had said, and Banks had to agree, though he found Hardy’s syntax and diction rather awkward sometimes, as if he were willing to twist the English language into any shape just for the sake of a rhyme or a rhythm. Not like the relaxed conversational flow of Larkin, for example, whom they had discussed at their last meeting, where Banks hardly even noticed the rhymes and meter.
‘You seem a bit distracted today, Alan,’ said Linda. ‘Is it the hangover or the case you’re working on?’
‘Sorry,’ said Banks. ‘Bit of both. Is it so obvious? I am having difficulty concentrating. Other things. The poems... I mean, I’ve just lost someone and... I mean, it ended very abruptly, without explanation. A long time ago. I hadn’t seen her in over forty years, and she died last December. It’s not the same situation as Hardy and Emma at all, but the feelings. Somehow they seem similar. I’m remembering things we used to do, the way she looked, her clothes, places we used to go.’
Linda closed her book and put it down on the table. ‘In some ways Hardy felt he hadn’t seen Emma for forty years, either,’ she said. ‘They were hardly talking by the time she died. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.’
‘I know,’ said Banks. ‘This isn’t a therapy session. Poetry isn’t therapy. That’s what you told me the first time we talked like this.’
‘This person you lost. It was serious, at the time?’
‘Yes. First girl I ever loved, as the song goes.’
‘And the case you’re working on?’ Linda asked.
‘No connection. Except I think it reaches back into the past, too. For different reasons, with different intentions.’ Banks gulped down some water. ‘In fact, I’ve been thinking that it might be something you can help me with.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. If you don’t mind thinking back.’
Linda narrowed her eyes and gave him that ‘don’t treat me with kid gloves’ look.
Banks held up his hands in surrender. He knew that he sometimes avoided certain topics with her because she had been raped by a well-respected TV celebrity at the age of fourteen. But he also knew that she had not let it ruin her life. She had even written up her recollection of events for him in a journal during the case they had met through. ‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘I know you told me not to pussyfoot around the past. It’s just that in my job I come across some of the worst things people do to each other.’
‘I know that. How do you manage it?’
‘You should know. You visit the dark side often enough. I’ve read your poetry.’
‘I’ve been there,’ said Linda, ‘but it’s different.’