. . .”
“What about my father’s belongings?” Matthew said abruptly. “His case, whatever was in his pockets?”
Joseph glared at him in surprise. It was a distasteful request, as if possessions could matter now. Then he remembered the document Matthew had mentioned. He looked at the sergeant.
“Yes, sir, o’ course,” the sergeant agreed. “You can see them now, if you really want, before we . . . clean them.” That was almost a question. He was trying to save them hurt and he did not know how to do it without seeming intrusive.
“There’s a paper,” Matthew explained. “It’s important.”
“Oh! Yes, sir.” The sergeant’s face was bleak. “In that case, if you’ll come with me?” He glanced at Joseph.
Joseph nodded and followed them out of the room and along the hot, silent corridor, their footsteps self- consciously loud. He wanted to see what this damnable document could possibly be. His first vague thoughts were that it might have something to do with the recent mutiny of British army officers in the Curragh. There was always trouble in Ireland, but this looked uglier than usual—in fact, various politicians had warned it could lead to the worst crisis in over two hundred years. Joseph knew most of the facts, as the newspapers reported them, but at the moment his thoughts were too chaotic to make sense of anything.
The sergeant led them to another small room, where he unlocked one of the several cupboards and pulled out a drawer. He carefully extracted a battered leather attache case with the initials j.r.r. stamped just below the lock, and then a woman’s smart, dark brown leather handbag heavily smeared with blood. No one had yet attempted to clean it.
Joseph felt sick. It did not matter now, but he knew the blood was his mother’s. She was dead and beyond pain, but it mattered to him. He was a minister of the Church; he should know to value the spirit above the body. The flesh was temporary, only a tabernacle for the soul, and yet it was absurdly precious. It was powerful, fragile, and intensely real. It was always an inextricable part of someone you loved.
Matthew was opening the attache case and looking through the papers inside, his fingers moving delicately. There was something to do with insurance, a couple of letters, a bank statement.
Matthew frowned and tipped the case upside down. Another paper slithered out, but it was only a receipt for a pair of shoes—12/6d. He ran his hands down inside the main compartment, then the side pockets, but there was nothing more. He looked across at Joseph and, with fingers trembling, put down the case and reached for the handbag. He was very careful not to touch the blood. At first he just looked inside, as if a paper would be easy to see. Then when he found nothing, he began carefully moving around the contents.
Joseph could see two handkerchiefs, a comb . . . He thought of his mother’s soft hair with its gentle, natural curl, and the way it lay on her neck when she had it coiled up. He had to close his eyes to prevent the tears, and there was an ache in his throat so fierce he could not swallow.
When he mastered himself and looked down at the handbag again, Matthew was staring at it in confusion.
“Perhaps it was in his pocket?” Joseph suggested, his voice hoarse, jolting the silence.
Matthew looked across at him, then turned to the sergeant.
The sergeant hesitated.
Joseph looked around. It was bare except for the cupboards, more a storeroom than an office. A simple window faced a delivery yard, and then rooftops beyond.
Reluctantly the sergeant opened another drawer and took out a pile of clothes resting on an oilskin sheet. They were drenched with blood, dark and already stiffening. He did his best to conceal it, handing Matthew only the man’s jacket.
His face blanched even whiter, Matthew took it and, with fingers clumsy now, searched through one pocket after another. He found a handkerchief, a penknife, two pipe cleaners, an odd button, and some loose change. There was no paper at all. He looked up at Joseph, a frown between his brows.
“Maybe it’s in the car?” Joseph suggested.
“It must be.” Matthew stood still for a moment. As if he had spoken it, Joseph knew what he was thinking: Regrettably, he would have to examine the rest of the clothes—just in case. He was startled by how fiercely he did not want to intrude into the intimate, the familiar smell. Death was not real yet, the pain of it only just beginning, but he knew its path; it was like the loss of Eleanor all over again. But they must look. Otherwise they would have to come back and do it later if the document was not in the car.
But of course it was in the car. It had to be. In the glove compartment, or one of the pockets at the side. But how odd not to have put it in the briefcase along with the other papers. Isn’t that what anyone would do, automatically?
The sergeant was waiting. He too did not want to inflict that distress.
Matthew blinked several times. “May we have the others, please?” he requested.
The clothes were inspected, as both brothers tried to distance their minds from what their hands were doing. There were no papers except for one small receipt in their father’s trouser pocket, soaked with blood and illegible, but there was no way in which it could be called a document. It was barely two or three inches square.
They folded the clothes again and set them in a pile on top of the oilskin. It was an awkward moment. Joseph did not know what to do with them. The sight and touch of the garments knotted up his stomach with grief. He wished he had never had to see them at all. He certainly did not want to keep these clothes. Neither did he want to pass them over to strangers as if they did not matter.
“May we take them?” he asked haltingly.
Matthew jerked his hand up. Then the surprise died out of his face as if he understood.
“Yes, sir, o’ course,” the sergeant replied. “I’ll just wrap ’em up for you.”
“If we could see the car, please?” Matthew asked.
But it was still on the way back from Hauxton, and they had to wait another half hour. Two more cups of tea later they were taken to the garage where the familiar yellow Lanchester sat gashed and crumpled. The whole of the engine was twisted sideways and half jammed into the front of the passenger area. All four tires were ripped. No human being could have remained alive inside it.
Matthew stood still, struggling to keep his balance.
Joseph reached out to him, glad to break the physical aloneness.
Matthew righted himself and walked over toward the far side of the car, where the driver’s door was hanging open. He took his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
Joseph went to the windowless frame of the passenger door, keeping his eyes averted from the blood on the seat, and banged the glove compartment to make it open.
There was nothing inside except a small tin of barley sugar and an extra pair of driving gloves. He looked across and saw Matthew’s face, wide-eyed and confused. There was no document in the side pocket. Joseph held the road atlas and riffled the pages, but nothing fell out.
They searched the rest of the car as well as they could, forcing themselves to ignore the blood, the torn leather, the twisted metal, and the shards of glass, but there was no document of any sort. Joseph stepped back at last, elbows and shoulders bruised where he had caught himself on the jutting pieces of what had been seats and the misshapen frames of the doors. He had skinned his knuckles and broken a fingernail trying to pry up a piece of metal.
He looked across at Matthew. “There’s nothing here,” he said.
“No . . .” Matthew frowned. His right sleeve was torn and his face dirty and smeared with blood.
A few years earlier Joseph might have asked his sibling if he was certain of his facts, but Matthew was beyond such brotherly condescension now. The seven years between them were closing fast.
“Where else could it be?” he said instead.
Matthew hesitated, breathing in and out slowly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He looked beaten, his eyes hollow and his face shadowed with fatigue from battling the inner shock and grief, trying to keep it from overwhelming him. Perhaps this document was something to cling to, something over which he could have some control.
Joseph understood how it mattered to him. John Reavley had wanted one of his sons to enter the medical profession. He had believed passionately that it was the noblest of callings. Joseph had started medical studies to please his father, and then found himself drowned by his inability to affect all but the smallest part of the suffering
