All Shall Be Well

woman.'

Kincaid noted with amusement that the Major's passion for things vegetable didn't extend to the edible-most of his watercress and cucumber garnish lay limply abandoned on the side of his plate. 'What about Thursday night? Did you see anyone visit then?'

'Not in. Never in on a Thursday. Choir.'

'You sing?' Kincaid asked. He pushed his empty plate away and leaned forward, elbows on the table.

'Since I was a boy. Won prizes as a tenor, before my voice changed.'

Kincaid thought the Major's complexion looked even more florid than usual. So that was the other sustaining passion. 'I wouldn't have guessed. Where do you sing?'

The Major finished his beer and patted his mustache with his napkin. 'St. John's. Sunday services. Wednesday Evensong. Practice on Thursdays.'

'Were you back late on Thursday?'

'No. Tenish, if I remember.'

'And you didn't see or hear anything unusual?'

Kincaid didn't hold his breath in expectation. It was the kind of question he had to ask, but fate was not usually generous in replying. If people saw something really unusual they spoke up right away, minor discrepancies would come back to them only when something jogged their memories.

The Major shook his head. ' 'Fraid not.'

The waitress whisked away Kincaid's empty plate and returned a moment later with their checks. The noise level in the cafe had risen steadily. Kincaid looked around and saw every table full and prospective customers standing in the doorway-fine weather combining with Saturday night to bring out the crowds. He drained the last of his pint reluctantly. 'I guess we'd better make way for the mob.'

As they reached the turning into Pilgrims Lane, the shadow of Hampstead Police Station loomed over them. Kincaid found it rather ironic that he had chosen to live a few short blocks from that most evocative of buildings, designed by J. Dixon Butler, the architect who collaborated with Norman Shaw on New Scotland Yard. In Kincaid's imagination fog always swirled around its Queen Anne gables, and Victorian bobbies marched briskly to the rescue.

When they reached Carlingford Road the Major spoke, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. 'And what about the wee moggie? Have you made provision for it?'

'Moggie?' Kincaid said blankly. 'Oh, the cat. No. No, I haven't. I don't suppose you'd-'

The Major was already shaking his head. 'Canna abide the beasts in the house. Make me sneeze. And wouldn't have it digging in my flower beds.' His mustache bristled in distaste. 'But somethin' should be done.'

Kincaid sighed. 'I know. I'll see to it. Goodnight, Major.'

'Mr. Kincaid.' The words stopped Kincaid as he mounted the steps to the front door. 'I think you'll do more harm than good digging into this business. Some things are best left alone.'

Kincaid paced restlessly around the sitting room of his flat. It was still early, not yet nine o'clock, and he felt tired but edgy, unable to settle to anything. He flipped through the channels on the telly, then switched it off in disgust. None of his usual tapes or CD's appealed to him, nor any of the books he hadn't found time to read.

When he found himself studying the photographs on his walls, he turned and faced the brown cardboard box on his coffee table squarely. Classic avoidance, refusal to face a disagreeable task. Or to be more honest, he thought, he was afraid that Jasmine would jump out of the pages of her journals, fresh and painfully real.

Kincaid allowed himself one more small delay-time enough to make a cup of coffee. Carrying the mug back to the sitting room, he settled himself on the sofa in the pool of light cast by the reading lamp. He pulled the cardboard box a little nearer and ran his fingers across the neat blue spines of the composition books. They came away streaked with a fine, dry dust.

If he must do it, then he would start chronologically- in the earlier books the Jasmine he knew would be less immediate, and he'd already glanced briefly through the last book and found nothing immediately useful. He pulled the most faded book from the back of the box and opened it. The pages were yellow and crackly and smelled a bit musty. Kincaid stifled a sneeze.

The entries began in 1951. Jasmine's ten-year-old handwriting was small and carefully looped, the entries trite and equally self-conscious: Theo's accomplishments (the proprietary interest already evident), prizes won at school, a tennis lesson, a ride on a neighbor's horse.

Kincaid flipped easily through the pages of one book, a second, a third. As the years flowed by the writing changed, developing into Jasmine's recognizable idiosyncratic script. Sometimes entries skipped weeks, sometimes months, and although they became more natural, they remained emotionally unrevealing. He'd started the fourth book when an entry dated in March, 1956, brought him up short. He went back to the beginning and began to read more carefully.

March 9

Theo's tenth birthday. The usual celebration. Same as last year and all the years before. The three of us round the dining table in our best clothes, stifling with the shutters closed, no one speaking at all. Cook made his idea of an English birthday cake. Awful (it's always awful), but Father just sat there looking like doom and Theo didn't even snicker. I could've screamed.

Father gave Theo a model airplane kit which, of course, Theo doesn't care about at all. I'll end up helping him put it together, can't hurt Father's feelings. Exercised Mrs. bloody Savarkar's horse for a month to earn enough to buy Theo a new tennis racket. Not that I minded the horse, but Mrs. S. is a bitch, always lording it over us just because we're 'poor English'.

Do I really remember the night Theo was born, or have I just heard the ayah's stories so many times I can't tell where her stories leave off and my memories begin. I remember shouting and smoke and the smell of burning, but I think that this all happened later and is somehow confused in my mind with the doctor pounding on the door and my mother's screams.

May 22

Mr. Patel pinched my arm again in class. He walks up and down the rows, making a dry-leaf rustly noise, looking over our shoulders while we're working. I can feel him coming up behind me, the back of my neck gets hot.

Today he grabbed my arm just below the shoulder and dug his fingers in, squeezing until I bit my lip to keep from crying out. He said I hadn't done my assignment properly, but it's just an excuse to keep me after and everyone knows it. I could hear the other girls sniggering behind my back.

'Jasssmine,' he said when he'd let everyone else go, hissing the 's' in my name until my skin crawls. 'Do you remember your English mother, Jasmine? You need someone to teach you things, Jasmine.' He moved around his desk and I backed up against the doorframe, holding my books against my chest so he couldn't look there. 'You know you shouldn't go out in the sun, don't you? It makes you look like a native girl.' He smiled at me then. He looked like a bald tortoise, with his stringy neck quivering and his eyes blinking. I ran before he could touch me again, ran all the way home and threw up. I wish I could kill him.

The finger marks on my arm turned purple by the time I got home. I changed into a long-sleeved blouse before Theo or Father could see. No point in telling Father. I tried once before. He just got that vague look of his like he wishes he were somewhere else, and said my imagination was running away with me.

I know why Mr. Patel asked me about Mummy. They think I'm half-caste, because of my coloring, and that Mummy wasn't English at all.

I remember my mother. I remember the slippery feel of her dresses and the way she smelled of roses. I remember the dolls she had sent to me from England and the stories we made up about them. 'Grow up to be a proper English girl, Jasmine,' she'd say, 'so you'll know how things are done when we go home.' That was all she talked about, going home. She must have hated it here. Is it possible for someone to die of homesickness?