Joseph said nothing. The tag end of an idea pulled at his mind, but he was too exhausted to grasp it.
“What is it?” Matthew said roughly. “What are you thinking?”
“Could it be obvious?” Joseph frowned. “I mean, something we are seeing but not recognizing?”
Matthew looked round the room. “Like what? For God’s sake, Joe! A conspiracy of this magnitude! The document is not going to be hung up on the wall along with the pictures!” He put the papers in the drawer, climbed to his feet, and carried it back to the desk. He replaced it in its slots and pushed it closed. “And before you bother, I’ve taken the backs off all the drawers and looked.”
“Well, there are two possibilities.” Joseph was driven to the last conclusion. “Either there is such a document or there isn’t.”
“You have a genius for the obvious!” Matthew said bitterly. “I had worked that out for myself.”
“And you concluded that there is? On what basis?”
“No!” Matthew snapped. “I just spent the evening ransacking the house because I have nothing better to do!”
“You
“All right!” Matthew cut in. “I’m sorry.” Again he pushed the thick fair hair off his face. “But honestly, he sounded so certain of it! His voice was charged with emotion, not a bit dry and humorous as it usually is.” His mouth pulled a little crooked, and when he spoke again his voice cracked. “I know what it must have cost him to call me on something like that. He hated all the secret services. He wouldn’t have said anything if he hadn’t been certain.”
“Then he put it somewhere we haven’t thought of yet,” Joseph concluded. He stood up also. “Go to bed now. It’s nearly two, and there’s a lot we have to do later.”
“There was a telegram from Hannah. She’s coming on the two-fifteen. Will you go and meet her?” Matthew was rubbing his forehead sore. “She’s going to find this pretty hard.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll meet her. Albert will drive me. Can I take your car?”
“Of course.” Matthew shook his head. “I wonder why he didn’t drive Father yesterday.”
“Or why Mother went,” Joseph added. “It’s all odd. I’ll ask Albert on the way to the station.”
The next day was filled with small, unhappy duties. The formal arrangements had to be made for the funeral. Joseph went to see Hallam Kerr, the vicar, and sat in the tidy, rather stiff vicarage parlor watching him trying to think of something to say that would be of spiritual comfort and finding nothing. Instead they spoke of the practicalities: the day, the hour, who should say what, the hymns. It was a timeless ritual that had been conducted in the old church for every death in the village. The very familiarity of it was comfortable, a reassurance that even if one individual journey was ended, life itself was the same and always would be. There was a kind of certainty in it that gave its own peace.
Just before lunch Mr. Pettigrew came from the solicitors’ office, small and pale and very neat. He offered his condolences and assured them that everything legal was in order—and that he had been given no papers to keep recently. In fact, not anything this year. A couple of bonds in August of 1913 were the last things. He did not yet mention the will, but they knew it would have to be dealt with in time.
The bank manager, the doctor, and other neighbors called in or left flowers and cards. Nobody knew what to say, but it was done in kindness. Judith offered them tea, and sometimes it was accepted and awkward conversations followed.
In the early afternoon Albert Appleton drove Joseph to the railway station at Cambridge to meet Hannah’s train from London. Joseph sat beside him in the front of Matthew’s Sunbeam Talbot as they followed the lanes between the late wild roses and the ripening fields of corn already dappled here and there with the scarlet of poppies.
Albert kept his eyes studiously on the road. He looked tired, his skin papery under its dark sunburn, and he had missed a little gray stubble on his cheek when he had shaved this morning. He was not a man to give words to grief, but he had come to St. Giles at eighteen and served John Reavley all his adult life. For him this was the ending of an age.
“Do you know why Father drove himself yesterday?” Joseph asked as they passed into the shade under an avenue of elms.
“No, Mr. Joseph,” Albert replied. It would be a long time before he called Joseph “Mr. Reavley,” if he ever did. “Except there’s a branch on the old plum tree in the orchard hanging low, an’ tossled in the grass. He wanted me to see if Oi could save it. Oi propped it up, but that don’t always work. Get a bit o’ wind an’ it goes anyway, but it tears it off rough. Leaves a gash in the trunk, an’ kill the whole thing. Get a bit parky an’ the frost’ll have it anyway.”
“I see. Can you save it?”
“Best to take it off.”
“Do you know why Mother went with him?”
“Jus’ liked to go with him, mebbe.” He stared fixedly ahead.
Joseph did not speak again until they reached the station. Albert had always been someone with whom it was possible to sit in amicable silence, ever since Joseph had been a boy nursing his dreams in the garden or the orchard.
Albert parked the car outside the station and Joseph went in and onto the platform to wait. There were half a dozen other people there, but he studiously avoided meeting anyone’s eye in case he encountered someone he knew. The last thing he wanted was conversation.
The train was on time, belching steam and grinding to a halt at the platform. The doors clanged open. People shouted greetings and fumbled with baggage. He saw Hannah almost immediately. The few other women were in bright summer colors or delicate pastels. Hannah was in a slim traveling suit of unrelieved black. The tapered hem at her ankles was smudged with dust, and her neat hat was decorated with black feathers. Her face was pale, and with her wide brown eyes and soft features she looked so like Alys that for a moment Joseph felt his emotions lurch out of control and grief engulf him unbearably. He stood motionless as people pushed past him, unable to think or even focus his vision.
Then she was in front of him, portmanteau clutched in her hand and tears spilling down her cheeks. She dropped the bag on the platform and waited for him.
He put his arms around her and held her as close to him as he could. He felt her shivering. He had already tried to work out what to say to her, but now it all slipped away, sounding hollow and predictable. He was a minister, the one of all of them who was supposed to have the faith that answered death and overcame the hollow pain that consumed everything from the inside. But he knew what bereavement was, sharply and recently, and no words had touched more than the surface for him.
Please God, he must find something to say to Hannah! What use was he if, of all people, he could not?
He let go of her at last and picked up her bag, carrying it out to where Albert was waiting with the car.
She stopped, staring at the unfamiliar vehicle, as if she had expected the yellow Lanchester. Then, with a gasp that caught in her throat, she realized why it was not there.
Joseph took her by the elbow and helped her into the backseat, straightening the slender black skirt around her ankles before closing the door and going around to the other side to get in next to her.
Albert got back in and started the engine.
Hannah said nothing. It was up to Joseph to speak before the silence became too difficult. He had already decided not to mention the document. It was an unneeded concern for her.
“Judith will be glad to see you,” he started.
She looked at him with slight surprise, and he knew immediately that her thoughts had been inward, absorbed in her own loss. As if she read his perception, she smiled slightly, an admission of guilt.
He put out his hand, palm upward, and she slid hers across and gripped his fingers. For several minutes she was silent, blinking back the tears.
“If you can see sense in it,” she said at last, “please don’t tell me now. I don’t think I could bear it. I don’t want to know a God who could do this. Above all I don’t want to be told I should love Him. I don’t!”
