insistence of a disconnection tone and I was so utterly frustrated that I couldn’t help but stamp my foot like a spoiled Victorian child. Miss Yeats was kind enough to ignore the tantrum, reminding me gently to convert the area code to 071 in line with the recent changes, then hovering very closely as I dialled the number. Under scrutiny I grew clumsy and had to try a second time, but finally – success!
I gave the receiver a quick tap to signal that the number had begun to ring; touched Miss Yeats’s shoulder excitedly when the line picked up. It was answered by a kindly lady who told me, when I asked for Theo, that she’d bought the house from an elderly man by that name the year before. ‘Theodore Cavill,’ she said, ‘that’s who you’re after, isn’t it?’
I could barely contain myself. Theodore
Beneath my nose, Miss Yeats clapped the heels of her hands like a seal.
‘He went to live in a nursing home in Putney,’ said the lady on the phone, ‘right by the river. He was very happy about that, I remember. Said he used to teach at a school across the way.’
I went to visit him. I went that very evening.
There were five nursing homes in Putney, only one of which was on the river, and I found it easily. The drizzle had blown away and the evening was warm and clear; I stood at the front like someone in a dream, comparing the address of the plain brick building before me to that in my notepad.
As soon as I set foot inside the foyer, I was accosted by the nurse on duty, a young woman with a pixie haircut and a way of smiling so that one side of her mouth rose higher than the other. I told her who I’d come to see and she grinned.
‘Oh, how lovely! He’s one of our sweetest is Theo.’
I felt my first pang of doubt then and returned her smile a little queasily. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, beneath the stark fluorescent light of the hallway we were fast approaching, I wasn’t so sure. There was something not terribly likeable about a person prepared to impose upon an unsuspecting old gentleman, one of the nursing home’s sweetest. An arrant stranger with designs on the fellow’s family history. I considered backing out, but my guide was surprisingly invested in my visit and had already railroaded me through the foyer with breathtaking efficiency.
‘It’s lonely for them when they get near the end,’ she was saying, ‘especially if they never married. No kids or grand-kids to think about.’
I agreed and smiled and trailed her at a skip along the wide, white corridor. Door after door, the spaces between punctuated by wall-hung vases. Purple flowers, just this side of fresh, poked their heads over the top, and I wondered absently whose job it was to change them. I didn’t ask, though, and we didn’t stop, continuing right down the corridor until we reached a door at the very end. Through its glass panel, I could see that a neat garden lay on the other side. The nurse held open the door and tilted her head, indicating that I should go first, then followed closely on my heel.
‘Theo,’ she said, in a louder-than-normal voice, though to whom she spoke I couldn’t tell. ‘Someone here to see you. I’m sorry – ’ she turned to me – ‘I don’t remember your name.’
‘Edie. Edie Burchill.’
‘Edie Burchill’s here to visit, Theo.’
I saw then an iron bench seat just beyond a low hedge, and an old man standing. It was evident from the way he stooped, the hand holding the back of the seat, that he’d been sitting until the moment we arrived, that he’d clambered to his feet out of habit, a vestige of the old-fashioned manners he’d no doubt been using all his life. He blinked through bottle-thick glasses. ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘Join me, won’t you?’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said the nurse. ‘I’m just inside. Give me a yell if there’s anything you need.’ She bobbed her head, crossed her arms, and disappeared sprucely back along the red-brick path. The door closed behind her and Theo and I were left alone in the garden.
He was tiny, five foot tall if he was lucky, with the sort of portly body you might draw, if you were so inclined, by starting with a rough aubergine shape and strapping a belt across the widest point. He gestured away from me with a tufted head. ‘I’ve been sitting here watching the river. It never stops, you know.’
I liked his voice. Something in its warm timbre reminded me of being a very little child, of sitting cross-legged on a dusty carpet while a blurry-faced grown-up intoned reassuringly and my mind took leave to wander. I was aware suddenly that I had no idea how to begin speaking with this old man. That coming here had been an enormous mistake and I needed to leave immediately. I’d opened my mouth to tell him so when he said, ‘I’ve been stalling. I’m afraid I can’t place you. Forgive me, it’s my memory…’
‘It’s quite all right. We haven’t met before.’
‘Oh?’ He was silent and his lips moved slowly around his thoughts. ‘I see… well, never mind, you’re here now, and I don’t have a lot of visitors… I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already. I know Jean said it, but…’
‘My…?’ He cupped his ear as if he might have misheard. ‘Advertisements, did you say? I’m sorry, but I think you might’ve confused me with someone else.’
I reached inside my bag and found the printout page from
He wasn’t looking at the paper though. I’d startled him and his whole face changed, confusion swept aside by delight. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said eagerly. ‘Come, sit down, sit down. Who are you with then, the police? The military police?’
The
He’d become agitated, clasping his small hands together and speaking very quickly: ‘I knew if I just lasted long enough, someone, someday would show a bit of interest in my brother. Come.’ He waved impatiently. ‘Sit down, please. Tell me – what is it? What have you found?’
I was utterly flummoxed; I had no idea what he meant. I went closer and spoke gently. ‘Mr Cavill, I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. I haven’t found anything and I’m not with the police. Or with the military for that matter. I’ve come because I’m trying to find your brother – to find Thomas – and I thought you might be able to help.’
His head inclined. ‘You thought I might… That I could help
I’d upset him and although I’d no idea how, or what the police might have to do with Thomas Cavill, I knew I had to say something to explain my presence. ‘Your brother was my mother’s teacher, back before the war. We were talking the other day, she and I, and she was telling me what an inspiration he was. That she was sorry to have lost contact with him.’ I swallowed, surprised and disturbed in equal measure by how easy it was for me to lie like this. ‘She was wondering what became of him, whether he kept teaching after the war, whether he got married.’
As I spoke, his attention had drifted back towards the river, but I could tell by the glaze of his eyes that he wasn’t seeing anything. Nothing that was there, at any rate; not the people strolling across the bridge, or the small boats bobbing on the distant bank, or the ferry-load of tourists with pointed cameras. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t have any idea what happened to Tom.’
Theo sat down, easing his back against the iron rails and picking up his story. ‘My brother disappeared in 1941. The middle of the war. First we knew was a knock at my mum’s door and the local bobby standing there. Wartime reserve policeman, he was – friend of my dad’s when he was alive, fought alongside him in the Great War. Ah – ’ Theo flapped his hand as if he were swatting a fly, ‘he was embarrassed, poor fellow. Must’ve hated delivering that sort of news.’
‘What sort of news?’
‘Tom hadn’t reported for duty and the bobby’d come to bring him in.’ Theo sighed with the memory. ‘Poor old Mum. What could she do? She told the fellow the truth: that Tom wasn’t there and she had no idea where he was staying, that he’d taken to living alone since he was wounded. Couldn’t settle back into the family home after Dunkirk.’
‘He was evacuated?’
Theo nodded. ‘Almost didn’t make it. He spent weeks in hospital afterwards; his leg mended up all right, but
