Dryden let the silence lengthen, sensing Broderick’s acute discomfort.
The major stood abruptly. ‘I’ll take a walk,’ he said, heading for the doors.
Dryden joined him uninvited, the rain covering his face in a refreshing layer of cool water almost instantly. The 1930s design of the hospital included a covered walkway which skirted the building at ground level. Broderick took refuge there, and Dryden followed, matching the immediate brisk pace.
‘So…’ he said.
‘I visited,’ said Broderick.
Dryden had lost the thread. ‘Sorry?’
‘I didn’t live in Jude’s Ferry. I visited. Although, as I have said, it is none of your business. I was brought up near Stamford, my mother’s house. She runs a garden centre, flowers again – it was what they had in common; as it turns out about the only thing they had in common. My parents were separated. I was in the TA at university – Cambridge – and as I said we dealt with the transport for the evacuation. But that was in Ely. Father left home when I was three and moved, took half the business with him, and again in ’90, but he’d really lost interest by then – he couldn’t do the heavy work at all and he didn’t really like relying on other people. He spent a lot of his time in a wheelchair. He died in ’96. I inherited the business, diversified, merged it with Mum’s. We don’t grow ourselves any more.’
They stopped where the building came to an end, with a view out over a soaking field of carrot tops across which tiptoed a black cat with a tail like a question mark.
‘He must have missed you, when you were away. I’ve spoken to a few of the villagers and they said he liked having… you know… a boy around.’
It wasn’t very subtle and Dryden had the good grace to blush. Broderick laughed. ‘Village gossip, Dryden. Father’s weaknesses were far more conventional – which is why my mother threw him out. She threw him out several times in fact, and each time it was over a different woman. So your thinly veiled aspersion is wide of the mark.
‘He liked having young people around – although I can’t say that was ever that obvious when his only son visited.’
Broderick looked away, embarrassed by the sudden intimacy.
‘My visits were pretty stilted affairs, I’m afraid. I tried to make him happy.’ Broderick’s hand wandered to the sharp edge of the military cap. ‘He seemed to find happiness in other people. It’s as simple as that, sometimes life is, although people like you might find it hard to believe.’
Dryden didn’t bite, he’d been equally judgemental about soldiers.
‘And Jason Imber? What did you have in common?’ He looked up at the curving facade of the unit. ‘What do you have in common?’
‘Father knew the Imbers. They had the big house – Orchard House. It was what passed for a social set in Jude’s Ferry; that, the doctor and her husband, and a couple of old biddies out on the Whittlesea Road, and that was polite society. Jane Austen would have struggled.’
They laughed, walking round the end of the old hospital block and into the lee side out of the rain. Through the plate glass window they looked into one of the lounges set aside for patients. Several sat reading, but few turned any pages.
‘You’ve kept in touch?’ prompted Dryden.
‘Yes. When I did go to Jude’s Ferry it was often university vacation and Jason would be at home too, and that last year he was teaching in Whittlesea, up the road. We hung out together a bit. Jason’s funny – that’s why he writes comedy so well. The village wasn’t a very welcoming place for us, well, for anyone who hadn’t been born there. Being the son of a retired colonel and a Cambridge undergraduate didn’t seem to help – odd, eh?’
Dryden smiled, wondering how bitter he really was.
‘So Jason and I had that in common: being newcomers. We’d stick together, go down the inn, see if they could ignore us all night. Things were better that last summer because Jason was teaching at the college, so he did know some of them, even if it was just to shout at them. He said the place was pretty rough, real blackboard jungle. Loved it for some reason,’ he added, shaking his head.
Broderick looked up at the clouds. ‘We lost contact in the nineties, but I saw his name often enough: in those lists at the end of comedy shows, the writers. Then I got an invite to the wedding, so we’ve kept in touch since. He moved out to Upwell, I live at Guyhirn, so by Fen standards we’re neighbours.’
‘And the wife – Elizabeth?’
‘Yes. I’ve met her a few times, wedding obviously, and she came to the regimental fundraiser with Jason. Yeah – the wives got on, she was a nice woman, smart too.’
‘Why’d you think he chucked himself off a bridge then?’
Broderick couldn’t stop a hand wandering towards his throat. ‘God knows.’
‘Ever go back to the old house, your father’s?’
‘Occasionally. The exercises utilize all the pro -perties.’
It was an oddly cold remark, Dryden thought.
‘What about the last night?’
Broderick looked through him. ‘I visited in the morning, I think, then got back to Ely. I was on the transport, like I said – a big job.’
They had their backs to the windows and they both turned as the wind, picking up suddenly, rustled the pines ahead of them and threw rain in their faces. They found themselves looking in on a long room. At one end there was a TV showing horse racing, and at a table four men played cards. In one corner there was a patient in a wheelchair. It was Jason Imber, the neatly cut hair framing the handsome face and the well-bred jawline. Laura Dryden was in her wheelchair too, holding his hand, watching tears run freely over the expensively tanned
