AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What is it, William?” She bit her lip so slightly the movement was almost invisible. “What are you afraid is going to happen?”
That was it…fear of what was going to happen? Now it was either lie to her, or tell her the whole truth. As long as he had known her she had trusted him, even when it seemed impossible that he could be either honest, or completely right about the facts. That trust was perhaps the most precious thing in his life. Certainly it seemed so now. And one lie would break it. Then what would he have left?
“I can’t remember twenty years ago….” Why was he beginning here? She knew that. “It looks as if I could have been in San Francisco in the gold rush, even if only for a short time, a year, or less. Not for gold! As a seaman. I don’t know if I’m imagining the things I hear about, or if I remember them. Just a flash here and there. The way the light hits the water, bright flowers that don’t grow in England, places I’ve seen pictures of, but haven’t been to. Like a harbor crammed with ships, where thousands of people live on them.”
“Is San Francisco like that?” she asked, always practical. Nurses dealt only in the real. First establish with the physical!
“It was twenty years ago,” he answered. “I expect it’s changed a lot now. Even London changes in twenty years.”
“Not much,” she said with a flash of wry humor. “Why does it matter so much?”
“Because I can’t remember…” He had not meant his voice to sound desperate, but it did. They were still standing in the hall, close together. “But I’m afraid that Aaron Clive can…and maybe Fin Gillander, the schooner captain, can as well.”
“Oh…” Her eyes were clouded now. She understood. She had lived through all this dark uncertainty before.
He had still avoided the most dangerous part. He should say it, before somehow he evaded it. “I looked at all my old records that there are, and I still don’t know why McNab hates me so. It’s more than just professional rivalry. I can see it in his face. I can almost smell it on him. And I’m afraid…” There, he had said the word, the weakest, ugliest one. “I’m afraid he knows that I can’t remember why. If he really does know that everything’s gone from my memory before ’56, he’ll use it when it’s worst for me, when it will ruin me.” Had he meant to say so much? He could hear the edge of despair in his voice.
“Then we must find out why,” Hester said gently. “You may learn that it is no more to his credit than to yours. William, you can’t fight without knowing! It would be throwing away all your weapons.”
He looked at her, studying her face in the soft yellow of the gaslight on the wall. Her eyes were steady, shadowed with anxiety, but if she was afraid, he could not see it. She was angry, ready to defend him. She would not have been if she didn’t understand that the threat was real.
“Come and have something to eat,” she said, half-turning to lead the way back to the kitchen.
“I’m not hungry….” he began.
“Of course not,” she agreed, walking away from him. “Hot tea, and a cold roast beef sandwich. You can’t fight on an empty stomach.”
He was so tired his body ached, and he could feel a ridiculous prickle of emotion as his eyes stung. They had faced great voids before, determined to win. But this was the darkness of the past racing forward to engulf them. And he did not know what it was!
She walked on toward the kitchen. She was not beautiful in any traditional sense, too thin for fashion, comfort, the sweetness some men expected from women. But her head was high, and she moved with a grace he had never seen in anyone else on earth.
He followed her, as if she held the light.
The kitchen was warm, and the kettle was simmering on the stove. She made tea and he sipped it while she sliced the bread and carved the beef. Perhaps he was hungry after all.
“So what are you going to do next?” she asked as she put the plate down in front of him. “There must be a whole lot that isn’t in the police records.” She sat down opposite him and poured tea for herself as well. “You wrote them up yourself?”
“Yes…” For a moment he did not grasp her meaning, then he understood. “You mean if there were something I was ashamed of, or embarrassed about, then I wouldn’t have put it in?”
She winced, but she did not look away from meeting his eyes. “Would you?”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “But I was just looking for mention of his name at all. It wasn’t there.”
She thought for a long moment before speaking again, as if she knew that what she was going to say was delicate.
“The only person who has known you all that time, and worked with you, is Runcorn. William, you have to know. It’s too dangerous not to…whatever the truth is. Not knowing won’t change it; it will just give McNab more weapons to hurt you.”
She was right. Of course she was right.
“I know,” he admitted at last. “I’ll ask him. I have avoided all discussion of my past for too long; trying to get away with not confronting it, maybe. Or just hoping that it didn’t matter, that I could actually leave it in the past.”
Hester smiled and put her hand over his. She did not need to say anything.
—
THE NEXT MORNING MONK went early to see Superintendent Runcorn. He was stationed at Blackheath, which was not far away. Monk arrived well before nine o’clock, and found Runcorn sitting in his office with a large cup of tea and a pile of reports on his desk, less neatly stacked than he used to have them. He had relaxed a little at last. Happiness had bound his old demons.
When they had both served, as younger men, in the Metropolitan Police, they had begun as friends, and gradually become enemies. Runcorn had been stiff, an obsessive rule follower, unsure of himself, only feeling safe with orders. Monk had capitalized on it, taunting him, probing his weaknesses.
