“He won’t. He’s working on some project in the attic and he told me to sod off, it was none of my business.” She added, “This can be our secret,” as she kissed him again.
Lewis felt he might drown in the pleasure of it, but he didn’t care. With his hands, he felt the curve of her back and the definition of her ribs, then the beginning of the swell of her breasts. So lost was he that it took a moment for the faint cough to register, and before he could react he heard Freddie say, “How sweet. Love amidst the hay.”
Lewis and Irene jumped apart as if shot and whirled towards the door. Freddie stood just inside, his shoulder propped against the jamb, his thumbs hooked through his braces. He stepped forward, smiling and shaking his head. “My, my. It’s a good thing I’m the one volunteered to look for you two, isn’t it? It might have been Edwina, and then where would we be?”
Beside Lewis, Irene drew a swift breath and opened her mouth, then shut it again with a sharp shake of her head.
“Look,” said Lewis, anger overcoming his fear. “You won’t say anything to Edwina.”
Freddie’s smile grew wider, distorting the grotesque mask of his face. “Not unless it suits me,” he said, very softly, and the menace in his words made the hair rise on Lewis’s arms. “But just now she wants you inside, Lewis, and if I were you I’d pop along like a good lad.”
“I’m coming with you to the house,” said Irene as Lewis took a step towards Freddie, and taking Lewis by the elbow, she tugged him from the barn.
“Don’t be stupid,” she hissed as they crossed the yard. “That’s just what he wants.”
“What do you suppose he means to do?” whispered Lewis worriedly.
“Hold us hostage.” Irene gave him a quick glance, then released his arm. “But I don’t care. It’s worth it.”
“Irene—”
“It’ll be all right; we’ll talk later. You’d best go see what Edwina wants.” Then she slipped ahead of him through the kitchen door and went to help Cook with the scones for tea.
In the corridor, Lewis straightened his collar and smoothed his hair before tapping on Edwina’s door. Edwina seldom asked to see him on his own and his pulse gave a moment’s anxious jump, but there was no way she could know about what had just happened in the barn. He took a breath and went in.
Edwina stood before the open window, staring out and smoking, and the first thing Lewis noticed was that the cigarette in her right hand had an inch of ash on its end. As he watched, the ash fell to the carpet and shattered, but she didn’t seem to notice.
It was then that he saw the yellowed slip of paper she held in her left hand, half crumpled in her fist. His first thought was that it was John Pebbles, or Mr. Cuddy, killed in action—but for that she’d certainly have called the others in as well.
Then she raised her head and met his eyes, and he knew.
“I SUPPOSE IT WAS A TERRIBLE irony,” Irene said. “His parents survived so much, then to be killed in the first wave of the V1s. If I remember correctly, they were just coming out of the corner shop, such an ordinary thing, on a June day much like this one.…” She shook her head and lit another Dunhill.
“Lewis refused to let William come to the funeral, or me, but Edwina insisted on going with him. He would never speak about it afterwards, or about his parents. Except once.”
Kincaid waited in silence as she smoked for a bit, and in the clear light he could see the deep creases running from her nose to the corners of her mouth—laugh lines, his mother had always called them, but he thought Irene’s face expressed a multitude of joys and griefs.
“He said if he’d been there, it might not have happened,” she went on at last. “He might have heard the rocket in time.”
“And you blamed yourself for his guilt, because you wanted him to stay,” Kincaid said. He knew about guilt, about the relentless game of what if the mind could play.
“Yes. And I tried to comfort him.” For a moment, Irene seemed lost in the memory, then her blue eyes met his. “But nothing could have prepared us for what happened afterwards. You see, Edwina and Freddie Haliburton, our tutor, were killed in an accident very shortly after Lewis’s parents died.” She ground out her half smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “Edwina’s death … it was just too much grief—for all of us, but particularly for Lewis, who had lost both his brothers early in the war, as well as his parents. He left after Edwina’s funeral. There was nothing I could do to persuade him to stay.”
“It must have been hard for you.”
“I went back to my family in Kilburn, bombs and all, but we made it through the last of the war without incident.”
“And William Hammond?”
“William went home to Greenwich. I had the occasional letter, then they dwindled to Christmas cards.”
“And you never heard from Lewis?”
Irene’s smile was self-mocking. “I had fantasies for years that he would find me again someday. Then in the sixties his name began appearing in the papers, and I did some research. He must have lied about his age, because he did a brief stint in the army at the end of the war. Then when he was demobbed at the end of 1945, he joined a rebuilding crew and worked his way up in the construction business. There were great opportunities after the war for those with the brains and the talent to take advantage, and Lewis Finch had both.”
“But you never contacted him?”
“No. I toyed with the idea, of course, but I’d learned he was married. I’ve never been much of a masochist,” she added with a smile.
Kincaid thought for a moment. “William Hammond’s older daughter told us that he had warned her and
