Dreaming of the bones Read online

  Gemma controlled a snicker and went to help Vic. “Here, let me take the cups.”

  When the tea had been poured and handed round, Kincaid said, “Kit’s shown great restraint over the cake, I think.”

  Vic laughed. “Oh, all right, go ahead. Just save some for the rest of us.”

  Kit fell upon the cake with a whoop and slid the two largest slices onto his plate.

  “I swear I don’t know where he puts it,” sighed Vic. “It just disappears. And the cake won’t stop him stuffing himself with sandwiches and scones.” She took a sandwich and bit into it. “I hope you both like cucumber.”

  Gemma took a sandwich for herself and sat back, nibbling and letting the talk eddy round her. Listening to the easy banter between mother and son, she had to keep reminding herself that this slender woman with the pleasant smile was the cold and formidable ex-wife who had callously walked out on Kincaid. For the first time, she wondered if she might have distorted the few comments he’d made about Vic to suit her own ends. What had he actually said?

  Suddenly she wished she knew how Vic had seen things. Why did you leave him? she thought. And why did you leave him that way, without a word? But of course she couldn’t ask. Watching them, she tried to imagine them together, but she couldn’t separate Kincaid from her own experience of him.

  Vic had taken the armchair opposite, with Kit perched on its arm like a tawny-crested bird, while Kincaid sat beside Gemma on the sofa, tea plate balanced on his knee. She was as aware of the warm solidity of his presence as if he’d been touching her, and she wondered what had been more important to Vic than that.

  “Another scone, Gemma?” asked Vic.

  Startled, Gemma thought she had better make an effort to pay attention. “Oh, I couldn’t manage another bite, but thanks. It was all lovely.”

  They’d all reached the wiping-up-the-crumbs stage, Kit having polished off the last piece of cake. Gemma saw Vic glance at Kincaid and sensed the unspoken communication that passed between them before Vic said, “Kit, if you’ve finished-”

  “I know, you want to be rid of me,” he said, vaulting from the sofa arm and landing with a thump. He didn’t sound the least bit unhappy. “Since you’re not using the computer, can I play Dark Legions? Please, please, Mummy?” he wheedled, grinning, already sure of getting his way.

  “Oh, all right.” Vic gave in gracefully. “Just be sure to save my document.”

  Kit leaned down and gave her an unselfconscious kiss on the cheek. “Brilliant cake, Mum,” he said, then bounded from the room before she could change her mind.

  When the door had slammed behind him, Vic said, “I don’t know why I nag him. He knows more about the computer than I do. He’s the one who helps me when I get stuck.”

  “Illusion of power,” said Kincaid, teasing.

  “You’re lucky. He’s a nice kid,” said Gemma, knowing even as she did so how inadequate the word sounded, but Vic gave her a pleased smile.

  “I know. He doesn’t deserve what he’s been through this last year.” Vic glanced at Kincaid, then back at Gemma. “He’s told you about Ian?”

  Gemma nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. At least not for my sake, and I’m beginning to think it may not have been such a bad thing for Kit, either. Ian was so critical… Kit must have felt he could never please him.” For a moment Vic gazed consideringly into her teacup, then looked up at Gemma and said softly, “And you know what’s odd? After so many years together, I’ve never missed him. Not for a day, not for a minute. You’d think that just the familiarity would be enough to make you miss a person a little, no matter what they’d done. Oh, well.” She set her cup on the table and smiled at them. “You didn’t come to talk about that.”

  Kincaid shifted beside Gemma as he reached into the inside breast pocket of the sports jacket he’d worn over his jeans. “I’ve brought you the notes I made from Lydia Brooke’s case file. I thought you might like to see them yourself.” He handed over a folded sheaf of papers that Gemma recognized as torn from his spiral notebook. “You understand that I couldn’t take the file away with me.”

  Vic took them as though they were fragile, then moved across to the other chair so that she could unfold them in the cone of light from the lamp. She read slowly, frowning in concentration, and they waited in silence. Gemma was suddenly aware of the fire hissing, and of the almost imperceptible sound of the light rain against the windowpanes.

  Finally, Vic settled the pages back in their original order, and looked up at them. “Nathan found her?” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own words. “Nathan never told me he found her.”

  The strong lamplight lit her face and Gemma saw for the first time the tiny creases round her eyes and the lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth.

  “Should he have done?” asked Kincaid.

  Vic colored and looked away. “It’s just that… I thought… we were friends.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to distress you,” suggested Gemma, wishing now that she’d read the notes herself and not been satisfied with Kincaid’s quick summary. “Or he found it too difficult to talk about.”

  “Surely there was some other record,” said Kincaid.

  “Such as? There were two brief mentions in the local paper, the first stating that Lydia Brooke had been found dead in her Cambridge home; the second that she had died from an overdose of her own heart medication, and that her death had been ruled a suicide by the coroner’s office. Full stop.”

  “What about academic gossip?”

  “For once, the gossip mill proved strangely unproductive,” Vic said disgustedly. “You’d think that a door had slammed shut when Lydia died-after that, no speculation, no reminiscences, nothing.” Then, as if she could contain her frustration no longer, she stood and began pacing before the hearth. “I wasn’t prepared for this. And it’s not as if I see myself as Quentin Bell writing about Virginia Woolf, either. Lydia wasn’t a major literary figure. Nor was she particularly well connected in literary circles, so I knew I couldn’t hope for scads of revealing letters turning up among other people’s correspondence. But I never expected this… this… possessiveness about her, as if no one who knew her can stand to let anything go. Her ex-husband was actually abusive when I tried to talk to him.

  “And this”-she waved the sheaf of papers she still held-“this is all wrong.”

  “What do you mean, wrong?” Kincaid asked, and in spite of his casual tone Gemma sensed his interest.

  Coming back to sit on the edge of the armchair, Vic leaned towards them. “Nathan, for one thing. Why did Lydia call Nathan and tell him she wanted to see him?”

  “I imagine they assumed she wanted him to find her rather than the cleaning lady or some unfortunate neighbor,” Kincaid offered.

  “She would never have done that, don’t you see? Not to Nathan. They were very old friends, and he’d just lost his wife a few months earlier after a long battle with cancer. She wouldn’t have deliberately subjected him to such distress.”

  “Sometimes when people are depressed they do un-”

  Vic was shaking her head adamantly. “And what about her clothes? Lydia had style, damnit-you can’t possibly think she’d have set such an elaborate scene, then killed herself in old, grubby things?”

  “I have to admit it seemed a bit queer to me,” Kincaid said cautiously. “But sometimes-”

  “And the business about the poem is absurd,” Vic went on, unheeding. She started rifling through the pages. “Let me just-”

  “Why?” The sharpness in his voice made Vic look up, hands stilled for a moment on the pages. “Why is it absurd?” he repeated.

  “Because she didn’t write it,” Vic said flatly. “It’s an excerpt from a Rupert Brooke poem called ‘Choriambics.’”

  “Could I see it?” asked Gemma. She took the page from Vic’s outstretched hand, and when she found they were both watching her, she began to read aloud slowly.

&n
bsp; In the silence of death; then may I see dimly, and

  know, a space,

  Bending over me, last light in the dark, once, as of

  old, your face.

  Gemma looked up. “It does seem fitting, especially if she’d lost a great love.”

  “And if she was obsessed with Rupert Brooke, what could have been more appropriate than to use one of his poems as her final message?” said Kincaid.

  “Rather than her own voice?” Vic shook her head and took a breath, a calming effort. “Lydia was a poet first. That’s what made her who she was. That’s why I wanted to write about her. Women need those kinds of models-we need to hear the stories of women who have lived out their dreams, regardless of the cost. That way maybe we can get there, too, and without so much suffering along the way.”

  “Then why would she have had an excerpt from a Brooke poem in her typewriter if it wasn’t meant for a suicide note?” Kincaid asked, raising a skeptical brow.

  “I haven’t a clue. All I can tell you is that she would never have used someone else’s words.” Vic rubbed at her face, then said through splayed fingers, “Oh, how can I make you understand? Words were everything to her-her joy, her sorrow, her comfort. She would not have abandoned them in the final extreme. It would have been a betrayal beyond measure.”

  The fire popped, and in the silence that followed, Gemma said, “I do. Understand, I mean. I think I understand what you’re saying.”

  “You don’t think I’m daft?”

  “No. Even if I don’t know much about poetry, I understand about not giving up who you are.”

  Vic turned to Kincaid. “And have I convinced you?”

  After a long moment he said a bit grudgingly, “Yes, I suppose so. But I still don’t see how-”

  “There’s more,” Vic said. “Since I saw you last. Last week Nathan gave me a book he found among Lydia’s things, Edward Marsh’s memoir of Rupert Brooke. It was published in 1919, and included the first posthumous collection of Brooke’s poems. It was one of Lydia’s treasures-she found it in a secondhand bookshop her first year at Cambridge.

  “I put it in the stack on my bedside table”-she flashed a smile at Kincaid, and Gemma wondered if Vic’s habit of taking books to bed had been a point of contention between them-“but it wasn’t until last night that I settled down to have a good look at it. You can’t imagine how I felt when I leafed through it and the manuscript pages fell out.” Vic smiled as if even the memory were delicious.

  “What manuscript?” asked Kincaid, sounding thoroughly confused. “What did you say the author’s name was?”

  “Edward Marsh,” Gemma said helpfully, but Vic was shaking her head.

  “No, no, it was poems, drafts of Lydia’s poems. Let me show you.” She went quickly from the room, returning a moment later with some folded papers and wearing her tortoiseshell glasses. Sitting across from them again, she held the pages up for their inspection. “Lydia still used a typewriter rather than a computer. She was stubborn about it-she said she needed to feel some sort of physical connection between herself and the words and the paper. Sometimes she wrote first drafts in longhand, but when she typed she always made carbons.”

  Gemma could see that the paper was tissue-thin copy paper, and the typescript had the smudgy look of carbon ink.

  “Some of these poems were published in her last book,” Vic said, folding the pages in half again and smoothing them across her knees. “But there are others I’ve never even seen drafts of before.”

  “Student poems she didn’t think worth saving?” suggested Kincaid. “If she’d had the book since she was at college.”

  “No. These are better than her best-polished and mature. And they explore the same themes as many of the poems in her last book.” Vic paused as if weighing her words, then she said deliberately, patting the sheets on her knees, “These were meant to be read with the ones in the book, I’m sure of it.”

  Kincaid glanced at Gemma before he said, “Maybe she was dissatisfied with them.”

  “No. Lydia was unfailingly honest with herself about her writing. She recognized crap, and she knew when she’d done good work.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  Palms up in a helpless gesture, Vic shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Could she have decided not to publish them for some other reason?” Gemma asked.

  “I don’t know what it could have been,” Vic said, then added thoughtfully, “One of the things I admired most about Lydia was her utter disregard for whether or not she offended people.”

  Kincaid reached for the teapot and poured a little cold tea into his cup. “Would these”-he nodded at the sheets in Vic’s lap-“have offended anyone?”

  “Some men. In a series of metaphors, she equates sex with death. It’s couched in symbolic terms, but there are men who are incapable of dealing with ideas about gender roles except in a personal way.”

  “God forbid I should be one of them,” Kincaid said in mock horror.

  Vic rolled her eyes at Gemma. “Is he as liberated as he thinks he is?”

  “Not half.” Gemma smiled at her and a spark of understanding passed between them.

  “If you ladies have finished amusing yourselves at my expense… perhaps we could get on with things.” Kincaid sipped at his cold tea and grimaced. “Vic-”

  “Let me make another pot,” Vic said, reaching for the teapot, but he glanced at his watch and shook his head.

  “We’d better be getting back. Toby will have worn out his welcome at Gemma’s parents’, I’m afraid.”

  Vic sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, like a child awaiting bad news.

  Kincaid cleared his throat. “Vic, I’ll agree with you that there are things about Lydia Brooke’s death that seem odd, but I simply don’t know what we can do about it at this point. It’s all supposition, and the police won’t even consider reopening the case without some sort of hard evidence.”

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “One of the things I’ve learned over the years in police work is that sometimes we just can’t know all the answers-life doesn’t always tidy itself into neat little compartments. It’s frustrating and infuriating, but if you don’t learn when to let go, you can’t stay in the job.”

  “Is that what you’re saying I should do? Let it go?”

  He nodded. “Write a good book about Lydia and about her work. It’s the story that counts, not how it ends.” Shrugging apologetically, he added, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t know what else to suggest.”

  Vic sat quite still, her face blank with disbelief. After a moment she seemed to collect herself. “I don’t know what I expected,” she said, and gave him a brittle smile. “It was kind of you to listen to me, and to take as much trouble as you have.”

  “Vic-”

  “Don’t worry, Duncan. I know you mean well. You’ve been a great help, really. Not to mention the fact that your visit to the Faculty will fuel the office gossip for months. I’m sure they’ve all paid up their outstanding parking tickets, just in case you come back.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding a bit injured. “I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you.”

  “I should be used to difficult by now. I can’t imagine the days when I thought academia would provide a peaceful life. Do you mind if I keep your notes?”

  “Not at all.”

  She scooped the pages from his notebook off the lamp table and added them to the neat stack in her lap. “Will you get in trouble with your mates if I use this information in the book?”

  “I’m not going to worry about it.” Kincaid’s smile held a hint of acid. “Besides, you know policemen don’t read.”

  “Too right,” Vic said, making a visible effort to parry the thrust lightly. “Well, if you must go, I’ll see you out.”

  In the hall, she stopped and called out to Kit.

  “Just a sec,” he yelled back, and a moment later app
eared from the office. “I had to pause it,” he explained. “I made it all the way to the seventh level.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Gemma.

  “It means I’m lean and mean and one cool dude.” Kit swaggered. “And I toasted a whole platoon of aliens.”

  “Kit!” Vic tousled his hair. “You sound like some character in a bad American film. I think we’ll have to cut back on the videos.”

  Ignoring this for the empty threat it undoubtedly was, Kit caught up to Kincaid at the door. “Can I look at your car? Mum says it’s awful, so it must be pretty cool.”

  “Sure. You can even start it.” They went out and walked across the graveled drive to the Midget.

  Gemma and Vic stood on the porch, watching them. The rain had stopped, and a few gaps in the western clouds hinted at a glorious sunset. “Is Toby your son?” asked Vic.

  “He’s three. And he already loves cars. Must be genetic.”

  “I know. And to think I used to believe all that stuff about raising your children free of gender stereotypes.” She laid light fingers on Gemma’s arm. “I’m glad you came.”

  The Midget’s engine sputtered to life. Kit jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran across to them. “It’s really neat, Mum. Can we get one like it? Our car is so boring.”

  Vic laughed. “I like boring.”

  Kincaid had followed Kit and now shook his hand. “I’ll sell it to you when you’re sixteen.” He pecked Vic on the cheek, then took Gemma by the elbow. “’Bye, thanks for the tea.”

  There was something in Vic’s stance, thought Gemma, looking back as they pulled away, that could be read as easily as words on a page-an invisible angle of determination. Liking the pattern the words made in her mind, she repeated them to herself, and she felt an odd quickening inside her, as if something stirred in its sleep.

  By the time they reached the motorway the fissures in the clouds had widened, revealing the sunset in full hue. Kincaid always thought of sunsets as feminine, and this one was particularly voluptuous, with rosy-gold billows of cloud forming shapes reminiscent of reclining Rubenesque nudes. He smiled at his metaphor and glanced at Gemma, wondering if she’d accuse him of sexism if he shared it with her.