In A Dry Season

and ate them all.

After the excitement of the Normandy landing, we soon got back to reality: the summer of the doodlebugs. We only experienced one V-1 rocket in Hobb’s End, one which had badly lost its way.

I was standing on the fairy bridge chatting with Cynthia Garmen. It was a typical July day: muggy, with dark, leaden clouds and the threat of storm. We were talking about the Japanese defeat at Imphal, wishing Matthew could have been there to experience it, when we heard the awful sound in the sky, like a motorcycle without a silencer. All of a sudden it spluttered to a stop. Then there was a dreadful silence. We could see it by then, a dark, pointed shape beginning the silent arc of its descent.

Fortunately, it fell in one of the fields between Hobb’s End and Harkside without exploding, and by the time we had rushed down to see what was going on, the local ARP people already had the area cordoned off and were waiting for the UXB team to arrive.

The advance continued, and slowly things began to improve. The blackout was replaced by the “dim-out” in September, but most of us left the curtains up anyway and didn’t get around to taking them down until the following year. If by autumn, then, we were feeling flush with the possibility of victory, we had little idea of the grim winter to come.

By ten o’clock that night Annie was feeling so restless that even a large glass of wine didn’t help settle her down.

She knew what part of the problem was: Banks. When he told her he was going out boozing with a mate instead of going to dinner with her, she did feel pissed off with him. She felt disappointed that he would rather go drinking with someone else than be with her, especially at such an early and delicate stage in their relationship. True, it was she who had suggested they limit their time together to weekends, but it was also she who had broken the rule the other night. Why couldn’t he do the same tonight?

But at least she hadn’t wasted her time that evening.

The long trail that had started on Wednesday, over the telephone, was beginning to bear fruit.

At first, she had come to the conclusion that it was easier finding a fully dressed woman in The Sunday Sport than getting information out of the American Embassy. People were polite – insufferably so – but she was shunted from one minion to another for the best part of an hour and came out with nothing but an earache and a growing distaste for condescending and suspicious American men who called her “ma’am.”

By the end of the day, she had managed to discover that the personnel at Rowan Woods in late 1943 would have been members of the United States Eighth Air Force, and it was very unlikely that there would be any local records of who they were. One of the more helpful employees suggested that she try contacting the USAFE base in Ramstein and gave her the number.

When she got back from the Leeds council estate, even though it was early evening, she phoned Ramstein, where she discovered that all air force personnel records were kept at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. She checked the time difference and found that St. Louis was six hours behind Harkside. Which meant it would be afternoon there.

After a little more shunting around and a few abrupt requests to “please hold,” she was put through to a woman called Mattie, who just “adored” her accent. They chatted about the differences in weather – it was raining hard in St. Louis – and about other things for a short while, then Annie plucked up the courage to ask for what she wanted.

Expecting some sort of military smoke screen, she was pleasantly surprised when Mattie told her that there was no problem; the records were generally available to the public, and she would see what she could do. When Annie mentioned the initials “PX,” Mattie laughed and said that was the man who looked after the store. She also warned Annie that some of their records had been burned in a fire a few years ago, but if she still had Rowan Woods, she’d set the fax to send it out during the night. Annie should get it the next morning. Annie thanked her profusely and went home feeling absurdly pleased with herself.

But it didn’t last.

Sometimes when she felt irritable and restless like this, she would go for a drive, and that was exactly what she did. Without making a conscious decision, she took the road west out of Harkside, and when she reached the turnoff for Thornfield Reservoir, she turned right.

By then she had realized that Banks wasn’t the problem; she was. She was pissed off at herself for letting him get to her. She was behaving like some sort of silly love-struck schoolgirl. Vulnerable. Hurt. Let’s face it, Annie, she told herself, life has been pretty simple, pretty much regimented for some time now. No real highs; no real lows. Only herself to think of. Manageable, but diminished.

She had been hiding from life in a remote corner of Yorkshire, protecting her emotions from the harsh world she had experienced “out there.” Sometimes when you open yourself up to that life again, it can be confusing and painful, like when you open your eyes to bright light. Your emotions are tender and raw, more than usually sensitive to all its nuances, its little hurts and humiliations. So that was what was happening. Well, at least she knew that much. So much for cool, Annie, so much for detachment.

A misshapen harvest moon hung low in the western sky, bloated and flattened into a red sausage shape by the gathering haze. Otherwise the road was unlit, surrounded on both sides by tall dark trees. Her headlights caught dozens of rabbits.

She pulled into the car park and turned off the engine. Silence. As she got out and stood in the warm night air, she started to feel at peace. Her problems seemed to slip away; one way or another, she knew they would sort themselves out.

Annie loved being alone deep in the countryside at night, where you might hear only the very distant progress of a car, the rustles of small animals, see only the dark shapes of the trees and hills, perhaps a few pinpricks of light from farmhouses on distant hillsides. She loved the sea at night even more – the relentless rhythm of the waves, the hiss and suck, and the way the reflected moonlight sways and bends with the water’s swell and catches the crests of the waves. But the sea was fifty miles away. She would have to make do with the woods for now. The appeal was still to the deep, primitive part of her.

She took the narrow footpath toward Hobb’s End, walking carefully because of the gnarled tree roots that crossed it in places and the stones that thrust up out of the dirt. Hardly any moonlight penetrated the tree cover, but here and there she caught a slat or two of reddish-silver light between branches. She could smell the loamy, earthy smell of trees and shrubs. The slightest breeze butterfly-kissed the upper leaves.

When Annie reached the slope, she paused and looked down on the ruins of Hobb’s End. It was easy to make out the dark, skeletal shape, the spine and ribs, but somehow tonight, with the slight curve of the High Street and the dry riverbed, the ruins looked more like the decayed stubs of teeth in a sneering mouth.

Annie skipped down the slope and walked toward the fairy bridge. From there, she looked along the river and saw the blood-red moonlight reflected in the few little puddles of water that remained on its muddy bed. She walked on past the outbuilding where Gloria’s skeleton had been found, and the ruins of Bridge Cottage next to it. The ground around had all been dug up and was now taped off for safety. The SOCOs from headquarters had brought their own crime-scene tape. She headed down what was once the High Street.

As she went, Annie tried to visualize the scene from Michael Stanhope’s painting: children laughing and splashing in the river shallows; knots of local women gossiping outside a shop; the butcher’s boy in his blood- stained apron riding like the wind; the tall young woman arranging newspapers in a rack. Gwynneth Shackleton. That was who it was. Why hadn’t she realized it before? Somehow, the revelation that Stanhope had also painted Gwen Shackleton into his scene thrilled her.

She looked at the ruins to her right and saw where once was a detached cottage with a little garden, once a row of terrace houses opening directly onto the pavement. This was where the ginnel led off to the tanner’s yard; here was the Shackletons’ newsagent’s shop, here the butcher’s, and a little farther down stood the Shoulder of Mutton, where the sign had swayed and creaked in the wind.

So real did it all seem as she walked toward the flax mill that she began to fancy she could even hear long- silent voices whispering secrets. She passed the street that led to the old church and stood at the western end of the village, on that stretch of empty ground where the houses ended and the land rose toward the mill.

As she stood and breathed in the air deeply, she realized how much she wanted to know what had happened here, every bit as much as Banks did. Without her wishing for it, or asking for it, Hobb’s End and its history had imposed themselves on her, thrust themselves into her consciousness and become part of her life. It had happened