AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Pamela smiled, bleakly at first, but then with a sudden warming in the eyes. “Yes. Poor Winifred lost her father, both her brothers, and a cousin—at least one. I don’t think that she can get over that.” She stopped, uncertain whether to go on. Her face was full of pity, searching for a way to understand it.
“Is Roger helping her?” he asked.
She spent a moment or two hunting for a way to put her thoughts into words. “He lost people in the war, too,” she began. “Not as much family as she did, but people he knew, and cared about. Men who served with him. He was a pretty good officer, you know…”
Her face was almost unreadable. Almost, not quite. He saw in it the one reason she could not understand him. She was used to circling around the subject. Was she going to break twenty years of hurt now? He would not blame her.
“I know,” he replied. “And perhaps it’s easier for him because he feels he is doing something about it.”
“What?” She frowned, still trying to understand.
He must choose his words carefully. “Cultural attaché? I thought he was working pretty hard for understanding between Britain and Germany, the new leadership. They had one war with us; they don’t want another war, not with anyone.”
She smiled and her shoulders relaxed. “Yes. That’s pretty much what she said. And it is a great comfort to her, as much as anything can be. He’ll do pretty well anything to prevent there ever being another war…in our lifetime.”
He knew she was telling the truth. It was what he had feared. He smiled back at her and said nothing.
CHAPTER
9
This time when Lucas met Peter Howard it was not in the woods, much as they both enjoyed the peace and the beauty of them. If you wanted to keep secrets, habits were dangerous. There was a walk in the fields that Toby liked just as much. In fact, any situation at all was perfect to him if he could be talked to, fussed over, then conveniently ignored to wander off on his own after any wonderful smell. He never went very far. He was Lucas’s dog, and he liked to know where Lucas was. It was his job to look after him.
So, when Lucas received a telephone call just two days after their previous meeting, he put on his jacket and told Toby to fetch his lead, something he never had to be told twice.
“Just going to take the dog for a walk,” Lucas called to Josephine, who was busy writing letters. She was a good correspondent. She kept in touch with many of the women she had worked with during the war. Some of these relationships had been friendships of forced circumstances, and after the war those were packed up, like other hardships of the time, and forgotten. Others lasted, in some cases because the women had victories and losses they could share with no one else. For many it had been the least lonely time in their lives, when the usual barriers of background did not matter. They had belonged in a way that seldom happened in peacetime.
Josephine had begun to explain this to Lucas one day, and then seen from his face that he already knew. She did not question his friendship with Howard, and Lucas had no idea whether she knew that they still kept the old relationship by meeting up. It was something he could not share and she had never asked him to, or pushed for an explanation of exactly what he did during those dark and hectic days. She had her own secrets to keep and respected his. He loved her the more for it.
As he parked the car at the field entrance, he thought again how much he admired his wife. Despite the length of their marriage she still managed to surprise him, not so much with new ideas as with interpretations of old ones that he had never perceived. She was so often completely original. He knew that it was her unusual imagination that had caused her to be chosen for her position, and he was proud of that.
It puzzled him how she could possibly have given birth to a man like Charles, who seemed to be so desperately orthodox in everything. Was it the times he lived in? The need for conformity to preserve the old, with its values and its memories of safety? Or had the diplomatic service and the war done that to him? He had risen rapidly to a high position. He had married a perfect wife. Katherine was intelligent, charming, always elegant, and, above all, intensely loyal. Margot had taken after her in that. She also had the same flair for style and originality that Katherine had.
Lucas opened the field gate and went in, closing it carefully behind him. He let Toby off the lead and watched him run joyously after a scent, nose to the ground, tail in the air.
Lucas could understand why Charles, like uncountable others—for instance, Roger Cordell—had sworn that they would never fight another war, no matter what Hitler did. Mike had been Charles’s only son, and Lucas’s only grandson. But more than that, he had been a unique and beloved person. Lucas could still hear Mike’s voice in his mind, his laughter, his ridiculous jokes, his endless optimism. He had been so very young, on the brink of life.
Katherine had seldom spoken of the death of her son, but it had numbed her, too, as it would any mother.
Little wonder Margot went wild now and then, or that she had one romance after another. Lucas did not know how far she took them, nor did he want to know. But she never settled for anyone. Who could match Paul? He had not lived long enough to be anything other than perfect. Did she feel it would be a betrayal to marry someone else? He could understand that, too, irrational as it was.
Elena had always been the one he understood best. He had missed her when she moved into her own flat in London. Her mind was so quick, so tireless. She understood him yet she was in other ways totally different from him, all emotion and imagination, her mind full of pictures.
He had not liked the little he knew of Aiden Strother, but he would have forgiven him anything if he had made Elena happy. But he had betrayed her, as he had betrayed his country. Somehow the personal hurt more!
She would get over it. Of course she would. Most people were hurt in love, sometime or other. Maybe she would find herself in her photography? She might discover her real talent at last. She was so often trying to experiment with light and shadow, with showing something in a different way from usual, so you saw a new dimension to it.
She should be home from Amalfi soon. At the thought, his heart lifted.
Toby had stopped and was barking. Then suddenly he recognized whoever or whatever it was he had seen and set off at a gallop. Please heaven it was not a cow or a sheep loose!
Lucas strode forward up the gentle slope, limping slightly with his bad ankle, and at the top he saw that it was Peter Howard, who must have come in at the far side of the field. Lucas saw him kneel down as Toby charged up and threw himself at him, all but knocking him over.
Lucas reached him just as he regained his balance. Howard spoke first to Toby, then smiled at Lucas, a bleak, very measured gesture, looking over the dog’s head. He moved quietly, stroking the animal’s ears, his attention still on the comfort of its affection.
“You should get a dog,” Lucas said quickly. An animal would offer Peter companionship, an outlet for unspoken affection, perhaps a trust he would find nowhere else. Dogs did not need explanations, only feeding, exercise, to be talked to, and loved, endlessly loved. They never criticized.
Howard did not look up. “Pamela doesn’t like animals,” he said quietly.
