The Distant Hours

my sisters said he came out different to when he went in. He’d laugh in all the same places but there’d be a pause beforehand. Like he was reading lines from a script.’

A child had begun to cry nearby and Theo’s attention flickered in the direction of the river path; he smiled faintly. ‘Ice cream dropped,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be a Saturday in Putney if some poor kid didn’t lose his ice cream on that path.’

I waited for him to continue and when he didn’t, prompted him as gently as I could. ‘And what happened? What did your mother do?’

He was still watching the path, but he tapped his fingers on the back of the seat and said, in a quiet voice, ‘Tom was absent without leave in the middle of a war. The bobby’s hands were tied. He was a good man though, showed some leniency out of respect for Dad; gave Mum twenty-four hours to find Tom and have him report for duty before it all went official.’

‘But she didn’t? She didn’t find him.’

He shook his head. ‘Needle in a haystack. Mum and my sisters went to pieces. They searched everywhere they could think but…’ He shrugged weakly. ‘I was no help, I wasn’t there at the time – I’ve never forgiven myself for that. I was up north, training with my regiment. First I knew was when Mum’s letter arrived. By then it was too late. Tom was on the absconders’ list.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘He’s on it to this day.’ His eyes met mine and I was dismayed to see that they were glassy with tears. He straightened his thick spectacles, hooked the arms over his ears. ‘I’ve checked every year since because they told me once that some old fellows turn up decades later. Front up at the guardroom with their tail between their legs and a string of bad decisions behind them. Throw themselves on the mercy of the officer on duty.’ He lifted a hand and let it fall, helplessly, back to his knee. ‘I only check because I’m desperate. I know in my heart that Tom won’t be showing up at any guardroom.’ He met my concern, searched my eyes and said, ‘Dishonourable bloody discharge.’

There was chatter behind us and I glanced over my shoulder to see a young man helping an elderly woman through the door and into the garden. The woman laughed at something he’d said as they walked together slowly to look at the roses.

Theo had seen them, too, and he lowered his voice. ‘Tom was an honourable man.’ Each word was a struggle and, as he held his lips tight against the quiver of strong emotion, I could see how much he needed me to believe the best of his brother. ‘He never would’ve done what they said, run away like that. Never. I told them so, the military police. No one would listen. It broke my mother’s heart. The shame, the worry, wondering what had really happened to him. Whether he was out there somewhere, lost and alone. Whether he’d come to some harm, forgotten who he was and where he belonged – ’ He broke off, rubbed at his bowed brow as if abashed, and I understood that these were heartbreaking theories for which he’d been castigated in the past. ‘Whatever the case,’ he said, ‘she never got over it. He was her favourite, though she’d never have admitted such a thing. She didn’t have to: he was everybody’s favourite, Tom.’

Silence fell and I watched as two rooks twirled across the sky. The rose couple’s stroll brought them close and I waited for them to reach the riverbank before turning to Theo and saying, ‘Why wouldn’t the police listen? Why were they so sure that Tom had run away?’

‘There was a letter.’ A nerve in his jaw flickered. ‘Early 1942 it arrived, a few months after Tom went missing. Typed and very short, saying only that he’d met someone and run off to get married. That he was lying low, but would make contact later. Once the police saw that, they weren’t interested in Tom or us. There was a war on, didn’t we know? There wasn’t time to be looking for a fellow who’d deserted his nation.’

His hurt was still so raw, fifty years later. I could only imagine what it must have been like at the time. To be missing a loved one and unable to convince anyone else to help in the search. And yet. In Milderhurst village I’d been told that Thomas Cavill failed to show up at the castle because he’d eloped with another woman. Was it only family pride and loyalty that made Theo so certain the elopement was a lie? ‘You don’t believe the letter?’

‘Not for a second.’ His vehemence was a knife. ‘It’s true that he’d met a girl and fallen in love. He told me that himself, wrote long letters about her – how beautiful she was, how she made everything right with the world, how he was going to marry her. But he wasn’t about to elope – he couldn’t wait to introduce her to the family.’

‘You didn’t meet her?’

He shook his head. ‘None of us did. It was something to do with her family and keeping it secret until they’d broken the news to them. I got the feeling her people were rather grand.’

My heart had started to race as Theo’s story overlay so neatly with the cast of my own. ‘Do you remember the girl’s name?’

‘He never told me.’

The frustration winded me.

‘He was adamant that he had to meet her family first. I can’t tell you how it’s plagued me over the years,’ he said. ‘If I’d only known who she was, I might’ve had a place to start searching. What if she went missing too? What if the pair of them were in an accident together? What if her family has information that might help?’

It was on the tip of my tongue then to tell him about Juniper, but I thought better of it at the last. I couldn’t see that there was any point in raising his hopes when the Blythes had no additional information on the whereabouts of Thomas Cavill; when they were as convinced as the police that he’d eloped with another woman. ‘The letter,’ I said suddenly, ‘who do you think sent it, if it wasn’t Tom? And why? Why would somebody else do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll tell you something. Tom didn’t marry anyone. I checked with the Register Office. I checked the death records, too; I still do. Every year or so, just in case. There’s nothing. No record of him after 1941. It’s like he just disappeared into thin air.’

‘But people don’t just disappear.’

‘No,’ he said, with a weary smile. ‘No, they don’t. And I’ve spent my whole life trying to find him. I even hired a fellow some decades ago. Waste of money that was. Thousands of quid just to have some idiot tell me that wartime London was an excellent place for a man who wanted to go missing.’ He sighed roughly. ‘No one seems to care that Tom didn’t want to go missing.’

‘And the advertisements?’ I gestured to the printout, still on the seat between us.

‘I ran those when our little brother Joey took his turn for the worse. I figured it was worth a shot, just in case I’d been wrong all along and Tom was out there somewhere, looking for a reason to come back to us. Joey was simple, poor kid, but he adored Tom. Would’ve meant the world to him to see him one more time.’

‘You didn’t hear anything though.’

‘Nothing but some lads making prank calls.’

The sun had slipped from the sky and early dusk was sheer and pink. A breeze brushed my arms and I realized we were alone again in the garden; remembered that Theo was an old man who ought to be inside contemplating a plate of roast beef and not the sorrows of his past. ‘It’s getting cool,’ I said. ‘Shall we go in?’

He nodded and tried to smile a little, but as we stood I could tell that the wind had left his sails. ‘I’m not stupid, Edie,’ he said as we reached the door. I pulled it open, but he insisted on holding it for me to pass through first. ‘I know I won’t be seeing Tom again. The ads, checking the records each year, the file of family photographs and other odds and sods I keep to show him, just in case – I do all that because it’s habit, and because it helps to fill the absence.’

I knew exactly what he meant.

There was noise coming from the dining room – chairs scraping, cutlery clanging, the mumbles of congenial conversation – but he stopped in the middle of the corridor. A purple flower wilted behind him, a humming came from the fluorescent tube above, and I saw what I hadn’t outside. His cheeks shone with the spill of old tears. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know how it is you chose today to come, Edie, but I’m glad you did. I’ve been blue all day – some are like that – and it’s good to talk about him. I’m the only one left now: my brothers and sisters are in here.’ He pressed a palm against his heart. ‘I miss them all, but there’s no way to describe Tom’s loss. The guilt – ’ his bottom lip quivered and he fought to wrest it back under control – ‘knowing that I failed him. That something terrible happened and no one knows it; the world, history, considers him a traitor because I couldn’t prove them wrong.’

Every atom of my being ached to make things right for him. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t bring news of Tom.’

He shook his head, smiled a little. ‘It’s all right. Hope’s one thing, expectation’s quite another. I’m not a fool.