In A Dry Season

“Well,” said Annie, smiling. “I didn’t say I had to go just yet, did I? You don’t have to get me drunk to get me in bed, you know.” Then she stood up, crossed her arms in front of her and pulled her T-shirt slowly up over her head. She stood holding it in her hand, head tilted to one side, then smiled, held her hand out and said, “Come to Mama.”

There are giant redwood trees in California, they say, that can grow another layer around the dead and blackened wood if they ever burn in a forest fire. Matthew’s disappearance burned out my core like that and while, over time, I did grow another skin over it, a harder skin, there was part of me inside that was always black and dead. There still is, though over the years the new skin has grown so thick that most people take it for the real thing. I suppose, in a way, it is real, but it is not the original.

Of course, life went on. It always does. In time, we laughed and smiled again, stood on the fairy bridge and discussed the Italian campaign, lamented the shortages and complained about Lord Woolton Pie and the National Wholemeal Loaf.

Gloria threw herself into her work at the farm, making it clear that she was indispensable because the government was putting even more pressure on women to work in the aircraft and munitions factories, the idea of which terrified her. Rumor had it that there were spies from the Labour Exchange all over the place just looking for idle women. If there were, they left me alone, too, as I had enough work on my hands looking after an invalid mother and running the shop, as well as fire-watching and helping with the WVS, taking out pies and snacks to the field workers in the area.

In October, Gloria had her hair done like Veronica Lake, with a side parting, curling inward over her shoulders. I had the new, short Liberty Cut because it was easy to manage and my hair just wouldn’t do the things Gloria’s did, even if I put sugar water on it.

That month also, Gone With the Wind finally came to Harkside, and Gloria and Mr. Stanhope practically dragged me to see it. As it turned out, I enjoyed the film, and found it was made even more poignant by the death of Leslie Howard, whose airplane had been shot down by Nazi fighters in June. Mr. Stanhope, battered hat on his head, tapping with his snake-head handled cane as we walked back, was enthusiastic about the use of color and Gloria, needless to say, was potty about Clark Gable.

Autumn mists came to our shallow valley, often making it impossible for the airplanes to land or take off for days. In September we heard that the Rowan Woods Aerodrome had been closed and the RAF had gone somewhere else. It was hard to get a clear answer to any questions in those days, but one of the ground crew told me that the two-engined bombers they had been flying were old and were being phased out of operation. The runways at Rowan Woods had to be converted to be able to handle four-engined bombers. He didn’t know whether his squadron would be back or not; things were so uncertain, people coming and going at a moment’s notice.

Whatever the reason, the RAF moved out and a crew of laborers, mostly Irish, came in. Over the next couple of months, they brought in tons of cement, gravel and Tarmac to bring the runways up to standard. They also put up more Nissen huts.

Of course, the character of village life changed a little during this period: we had a few fights between the Irish and the soldiers at the Shoulder of Mutton, and we got used to the whiff of tar that would drift through the woods when the wind was blowing the right way.

Early in December the laborers finished their work and shortly before Christmas, Rowan Woods became the new home to the United States Eighth Air Force’s 448th Bomber Group.

Just like that.

The Yanks had arrived.

Alone after Annie had left, Banks couldn’t sleep, despite the lovemaking and the long day’s drive. He lay in the dark for a while, his mind racing, images of the old days in Edinburgh, of Alison and Jo, keeping him awake. And Jem. And Annie. And Sandra. And Brian. The first night Banks had spent in the cottage, a bat flew in the open window and it took him half an hour to coax it out again. That was how his mind felt now, like a misshapen black rag flapping about wildly inside him. He felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety, not about anything specific, to such an extent that he began to sweat and his heart beat fast.

He put on his jeans and went downstairs to pour himself a small whiskey. Ever since he had become worried about his drinking in the dark months after Sandra’s departure, he had got into the habit of totting up his daily intake, as he did with cigarettes. A pint at lunchtime in Edinburgh, two pints with Annie at the Dog and Gun, and now one finger of Laphroaig close to midnight. Not bad. He had only smoked seven cigarettes, too, and he was especially proud of that.

He took the drink out to the wall and sat with his legs dangling over the dried-up falls. It was a warm night, but a slight breeze rustled through the leaves and cooled the sweat on his forehead a little. A small animal rustled through the undergrowth, probably a squirrel or a rabbit. Banks looked into the dark woods and remembered Robert Frost’s words, which he had read recently in his anthology. “And miles to go before I sleep.” It was the repetition of that line that made it so memorable, he thought, that sent that tingle up your spine. He didn’t profess to understand it – at least he couldn’t have stood up in class and described what it was about – but he got something from it.

He remembered what he had said to Annie earlier about caring and how he couldn’t tell her it was partly because of Jem. Banks had found Jem’s body himself on the bare dusty floor of the bed-sit, the needle still in his arm, which was oddly discolored here and there where the mice had nibbled.

He was sick, the same way he had been when Phil Simpkins spiraled slowly and inevitably down onto the spiked railings. But people had cared about Phil’s accident; they even had a minute’s silence in assembly and a morning off school for the funeral. Nobody had cared about Jem, though, the way no one seemed to have cared about Gloria’s disappearance.

Over the years, Banks became inured to seeing corpses, like any other detective who investigates a fair number of murders. He developed a protective shell; he could crack jokes at the scene with someone’s entrails spilling over his feet or brain matter sticking to the soles of his shoes. But no matter how hard his carapace, Banks had always felt something, no matter how low on the food chain the victim was. He always felt some connection with what had once been a living person.

After Jem’s death, Banks had felt driven to find out more about him: who he was, where he came from, why no one seemed to care. He realized how little he knew, even though Jem had been his first and closest friend in a new and overpowering city. He was so innocent, he hadn’t even suspected that Jem was a heroin addict. They had smoked hash and grass together on occasion, but that was all.

The police themselves hadn’t been impressive, hardly an advertisement for recruitment. They interviewed Banks, who described the man he had seen entering Jem’s flat the previous evening, but they didn’t seem interested. One of them, DC Carter, Banks remembered, played the concerned-parent role, feigning sadness at Jem’s death, lecturing Banks on the drug subculture, while the other, DS Fallon, pockmarked face, a cynical smile on his thin, cruel lips, rifled through Banks’s drawers and cupboards, looking for drugs.

Later, Banks found out that three junkies had died in Nothing Hill that week because a shipment of unusually pure heroin hadn’t been adequately cut. No arrests were made.

Disenchanted with both business and sixties navel-gazing, Banks joined the police force to change the system from within, despite Jem’s advice, and when he found he couldn’t do that, he settled for the adrenaline buzz of the investigation, the chase, the revelation, the strange bond with the murder victim, who couldn’t speak for herself. And this bond was true no less in the case of Gloria Shackleton’s cracked and filthy bones than it was with a corpse so fresh you could still see the flush on its cheek.

Finally, tired with remembering, Banks put out his cigarette, finished the whisky and went back inside. His bed still smelled of Annie, and he was grateful for that much, at least, as he tossed and turned and tried to get to sleep.

Ever since she had seen Gloria’s image and heard her name on television, Vivian Elmsley had been expecting the police to come knocking at her door. It wasn’t as if she had taken any great steps to cover her tracks. She had never consciously sought to hide her past and her identity, although she had certainly glossed over it. Perhaps, also, the life she had lived hinted at a certain amount of conscious escape. At every stage, she had had to reinvent herself: the selfless carer; the diplomat’s wife; the ever-so-slightly “with-it” young widow with the red sports car;