Dreaming of the bones Read online

  He followed her into the house and through a sitting room, where he had a fleeting impression of pale gold walls and faded chintzes, and of a grouping of silver-framed portraits on a side table; then she led him out through French doors onto a stone-flagged terrace. The garden sloped away from the house, and beyond the low wall at its end he could see a meadow, then a curving line of trees that looked as though it marked the course of a river.

  “Grantchester gets its name from ‘Granta,’ the old name for the Cam,” Vic said, pointing towards the river.

  “The garden’s lovely.” Dandelions and wild onions sprang up in the shaggy lawn, but there were recent signs of prep work in the beds, and against the low wall stood the garden’s crowning glory-an immense old crab apple tree, covered with bright pink blossoms.

  Vic gave him the sideways glance he remembered as she gestured towards one of the chairs she’d pulled up to an ironwork table. “Here, sit down. That’s a bit generous of you. My friend Nathan says the garden’s a disgrace, but I’m not a real gardener. I just like to come out and dig in the dirt on nice days-it’s my alternative to tranquilizers.”

  “I seem to remember that you couldn’t keep alive a potted plant. Or cook,” he added as he examined the lunch she’d laid out on the table-cheese, cold salads, olives, wholemeal bread, and a bottle of white wine.

  Vic shrugged. “People change. And I still can’t cook,” she said with a flash of a smile, “even if I had the time. But I can shop, and I’ve learned to make the most of that.” She filled their glasses, then raised hers in salute. “Here’s to progress. And old friends.”

  Friends? Kincaid thought. They had been lovers, adversaries, flatmates-but never that. Perhaps it was not too late. He lifted his glass and drank. When he had filled his plate and tasted the potato salad, he ventured, “You haven’t told me anything about yourself, about your life. The photos…” He nodded towards the sitting room doors. The man had been thin and bearded, the boy fair and sturdy. He stole a glance at Vic’s left hand, saw the faint pale mark circling her fourth finger.

  She looked away as she drank some of her wine, then concentrated on a piece of bread as she buttered it. “I’m Victoria McClellan now. Doctor McClellan. I’m a fellow at All Saints’, and I’m a Faculty teaching officer, specializing in twentieth-century poets. That gives me more time to pursue my own work.”

  “Faculty?” Kincaid said a bit vaguely. “Poets?”

  “The University English Faculty. You do remember my Ph.D. thesis on the effect of the Great War on English poetry?” Vic said with the first hint of sharpness he’d heard. “The one I was struggling with when we were married?”

  Kincaid made an effort to redeem himself. “That’s what you wanted, then. I’m glad for you.” Seeing that Vic still looked annoyed, he blundered on. “But I’d have thought two jobs would have meant more work, not less. You’re saying you work for the University and for your college, right? Wouldn’t you be better off to do one or the other?”

  Vic gave him a pitying look. “That’s not the way it works. Being a college fellow is a bit like indentured servitude. They pay your salary and they call the shots-they can stick you with a backbreaking load of supervisions and you have no recourse. But if you’re hired by a University Faculty, well, that gives you some clout-at a certain point you can tell your college to go stuff itself. Politely, of course,” she added with a gleam of returning good humor.

  “And that’s what you’ve done?” Kincaid asked. “Politely, of course.”

  Vic took a sip of her wine and settled back in her chair, looking suddenly tired. “It’s not quite that simple. But yes, I suppose you could say that.”

  When she didn’t pursue the topic further, Kincaid ventured, “And your husband? Is he a lecturer as well?” He kept his voice lightly even, a friendly inquiry one might make to an acquaintance.

  “Ian’s at Trinity. Political science. But he’s away on sabbatical just now, writing a book about the division of the Georgian states.” Vic put down her bread and met Kincaid’s eyes. “I don’t know why I’m beating about the bush. The thing is, he’s writing this book about Russia from the south of France, and he just happened to take one of his graduate students with him. Female. In the note he left me he said he thought he must be having his midlife crisis.” She gave him a tight smile. “He asked me to be patient.”

  At least, Kincaid thought, he left you a note. He said, “I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you.”

  Vic drank again and picked at a bit of salad. “It’s Kit, really. Most days he’s furious with Ian. Occasionally he’s angry with me, as if it were my fault Ian left. Maybe it is-I don’t know.”

  “Is that why you called me? You need help finding Ian?”

  She gave a startled laugh. “That would be bloody cheek! Is that what you thought?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I’m sorry, Duncan. I never meant to give you that impression. What I wanted to talk to you about has nothing to do with Ian at all.”

  “It’s that damned McClellan woman again,” said Darcy Eliot as he unfolded the damask napkin and laid it carefully across his lap. “As if it weren’t enough to have to put up with her at College and in the Faculty, she came round to my rooms yesterday to pester me with her tedious questions. Gave me the most frightful headache, I can tell you.” He paused while pouring himself a glass of wine, then sipped and rolled it round his mouth with satisfaction. His mother’s Mersault was excellent, almost as good, in fact, as the store All Saints’ set aside for its Senior Fellows. “If I’d had my way, she’d never have been given a Faculty position, but Iris absolutely dotes on her. What can you do with all these bloody-” With his tongue loosened by several glasses of his mother’s equally excellent sherry before their ritual Sunday lunch, he’d been about to say, “With all these bloody women about the place,” but a look at his mother’s raised eyebrow brought him to a full stop. “Never mind,” he amended hastily, burying his nose in his wine again.

  “Darcy, darling,” said Dame Margery Lester as she ladled out the soup Grace had left in a tureen on the table, “I’ve met Victoria McClellan on several occasions and I thought her quite enchanting.” Margery Lester’s voice was as silvery as the hair she swept back in a classic chignon, and although she was well into her seventies, it sometimes seemed to her son that she had condensed rather than aged. The qualities that made Margery uniquely herself-her keen intelligence, her self-assurance, her dedication to her craft-all these seemed to have become more solid as her body inevitably diminished.

  Today she looked even more elemental than usual. The pearls she wore against her pale gray cashmere twinset seemed to give a shimmery luster to her skin, and it occurred to Darcy to wonder if one would find quicksilver in her veins rather than blood.

  “Just what is it exactly that you find objectionable about her?” Margery asked as she served Darcy his soup, adding, “Grace made cream of artichoke in your honor.”

  Darcy took his time tasting the soup, then eased a surreptitious finger into his collar. Perhaps he had been imbibing a bit more than he should lately. His vanity had for many years provided a useful counterbalance to his appetites, but it might be that the flesh was gaining ground. “You know how I feel about the earnest politically correct,” he said as he lifted his spoon to his lips again. “They give me the pip. And there’s nothing I abhor more than the feminist biographer. They take some trivial piece of work and inflate it with Freudian psychobabble and grandiose feminist theory until you wouldn’t recognize it if it bit you.”

  Margery’s left eyebrow arched itself more pronouncedly, and Darcy knew that this time he had indeed gone too far. “Surely you’re not suggesting that Lydia’s work was trivial?” she asked. “And you make Victoria McClellan sound like some sort of unwashed bluestocking. She struck me as being quite sensible and well grounded, certainly not the sort I’d expect to lose track of the work in the process of theorizing about it.”

  Darcy snorted. “Oh, no. Dr. McClellan
is anything but unwashed. Quite the opposite-she could model for an American shampoo advert on the telly, she’s so well washed and groomed. She’s an example of the perfect nineties woman-brilliant academic career, model mother and wife-only, she wasn’t good enough at the wife part to keep her husband from shagging a succession of graduate students.” The image made him smile. Ian McClellan’s only failure had been his lack of discretion.

  “Darcy!” Margery pushed away her empty soup bowl. “That was unkind as well as common.”

  “Oh, Mother, really. What it is is common knowledge. Everyone in the English Faculty knows all the libidinous details. They just take care to whisper them when the fair Victoria is out of earshot. And I don’t see what is so unkind about the bald truth.”

  Margery pressed her lips together, darting a still disapproving glance at him as she uncovered the main course and began serving their plates. Point to me, thought Darcy with satisfaction. Margery was no prude, as the increasingly graphic sexuality of her later novels revealed, and Darcy thought she merely enjoyed playing the shocked matron.

  He breathed a sigh of contentment as Margery set his plate before him. Cold poached salmon with dill sauce; hot buttered new potatoes; fresh young asparagus, crisply cooked before chilling-he would rue the day if he ever lost his ability to charm Grace. “And don’t tell me”-he put a hand to his breast as if overcome-“a lemon tart for afters?”

  Still unrelenting, his mother attacked her fish in silence. Darcy concentrated on his food, content to wait her out. He took small bites to prolong the pleasure, and gazed out into the garden as he chewed. He’d brought Lydia here once, years ago, to his family’s Jacobean house on the outskirts of the village of Madingley. His father had been alive then, tweedy and self-effacing, his mother sleek in her success. It had been a spring day much like this one, and Margery and Lydia had walked together arm in arm in the garden, admiring the daffodils and laughing. He’d felt an oaf, a lout, excluded by their delicacy and by their aura of feminine conspiracy. That night he’d lain awake wondering what secrets they’d confided.

  He remembered Lydia’s profile in the car on the way from Cambridge, pinched with nervousness at the thought of meeting Margery Lester, remembered her too prim dress and neatly combed hair-for once the rebellious young poet had become every inch the small-town schoolteacher’s daughter. It had made him laugh, but he supposed in the end the joke had been-

  “Darcy. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

  He smiled at his mother. He’d known her pique would pale against the appalling social prospect of a silent meal. “Sorry, Mummy. I was meandering among the daffodils.”

  “I said, What did Dr. McClellan want to know about Lydia today?” Margery’s voice still held a trace of exasperation.

  “Oh, the usual tiresome things. Did Lydia show any signs of depression in the weeks before her death? Had she communicated any particular concerns, become involved in any new relationships? Etc., etc., etc. Of course I said I had no idea, nor would I have told her if I had, as none of that nonsense has any relevance to Lydia’s work.” Darcy wiped his mouth with his napkin and finished the wine in his glass. “Perhaps this time I made myself quite clear.” A shadow fell across the garden as a cloud obscured the sun. “Look, the rain’s coming on, after all. Why do the bloody weather boffins always have to be right?”

  “You know, darling,” Margery said reflectively, “I’ve always thought your position on biography a bit extreme for someone who loves a good gossip as much as any old woman I know. Whatever will you do if a publisher offers you an obscene amount of money to write mine?”

  Nathan Winter wiped his perspiring brow and looked up at the clouds scudding across the sky from the northwest. He’d hoped to finish setting out the plants he’d bought that morning at Audley End’s garden center before the weather turned, but he’d got rather a late start. It had been well worth the drive down to Suffolk, though, for the nursery at the Jacobean manor house stocked some old-fashioned medicinal herbs he’d not found elsewhere. And once there, of course, he’d been unable to resist the temptation to wander in the grounds and gardens, had even had a cup of tea and a sandwich in the restaurant.

  Jean had loved Audley End, and they’d spent many a Sunday tramping up and down the staircases, admiring Lord Braybrooke’s specimen collection, even giggling as they fantasized about making love on the round divan in what Jean always called “the posh library.” He’d brought her one last time, in a wheelchair on a fine summer day, but the house had been impossible for her and they’d had to content themselves with a slow perambulation round the herb gardens.

  Now that he thought about it, he supposed Audley End must have first given him the idea of planting a traditional medicinal garden, but they’d lived in Cambridge then, in a house with a postage stamp-sized back garden, and Jean had wanted every inch given over to flowers.

  Nathan sat back on his heels and surveyed his handiwork. This was his first major project for the cottage garden, and he’d spent the winter months studying Victorian herbalists and garden design, adapting them, then meticulously drawing his own plans. Mullein, tansy, Saint-John’s-wort, juniper, mugwort, myrtle, lovage-he stopped at that one, grinning. People always thought it sounded so romantic, and he supposed it did make an excellent cordial for a cold winter’s night, but it was also a powerful diuretic.

  A gust of wind lifted his empty plastic containers and rattled them along the ground. Nathan took another look at the dark shelf of cloud building to the west and set hurriedly to planting the last of his seedlings. He tamped the soil carefully around them, collected his tools and his rubbish, then pushed himself up from the damp ground. His knees protested, as they often did these days when the weather changed, and he remembered ruefully the days when he’d been able to spend hours kneeling without feeling the least bit stiff. Maybe he’d better have a good long soak in a lavender and arnica bath before dinner-dinner! How could he possibly have forgotten that he’d invited Adam Lamb for drinks and an early supper? And the man was a devout vegetarian, which meant Nathan would have to come up with something suitable or risk offending him. He made a mental inventory of the contents of the fridge. Eggs, a few mushrooms-he could whip up omelettes, a green salad… there was half a loaf of granary bread from the bakery in Cambridge… a meager supper, but it would have to do. And for pudding he could use the trifle he’d bought at Tesco’s, though he’d hoped to save it for more festive circumstances.

  What on earth had possessed him to ask Adam round? Guilt, more than likely, he admitted with a grimace of disgust as he started for the house. He’d always felt a bit sorry for Adam, for reasons he found hard to articulate. Maybe it was that Adam seemed to try too hard at life, but his dedication to any number of good causes never produced much visible result. And the ironic thing, Nathan thought as he held on to the doorjamb and struggled out of his wellies, was that yesterday when Adam had rung him, he’d had the distinct impression that Adam was feeling sorry for him.

  Adam Lamb nursed his old Mini out the Grantchester Road, past the University Rugby Grounds, coasting downhill when he could to save petrol. Although he didn’t believe in owning automobiles, his parish work rendered some form of transport a necessity, so he salved his conscience by driving a car that passed its MOT each year only by the grace of God. His rationing of petrol had an economic as well as a moral impetus-a few carefully consolidated trips a week were all his meager budget would allow.

  A gust of wind rattled the car and Adam looked back at the overtaking bank of clouds. He should have walked tonight-it was less than two miles, after all, along the river path, and they’d done it without thinking when they were students-but the threat of rain had combined with a nagging cold to dampen his enthusiasm. He felt old, suddenly, and tired.

  Adam slowed almost to a walking pace as he came into the outskirts of Grantchester. As near as it was to Cambridge, he hadn’t been here in years. He’d certainly never expected Nathan to come back, at least no
t alone. When he’d heard through mutual friends that Nathan had inherited his parents’ house and meant to live in it, he’d felt a little frisson of unease.

  The Grantchester Road became Broadway, and as Adam inched round the last curve before the High Street junction, he blinked in surprise. Surely this couldn’t be it? The cottage of his memories had been shabby, with crumbling stucco, brambles in the garden, and sparrows nesting in the thatch. But a look at the houses either side assured him that he had indeed found the house, for they fit his dim recollection of the neighbors. He stopped the car against the left-hand curb and got out just as the first fine drops of rain began to fall, forgetting the parking brake in his bemusement. He stood, gaping at the cottage’s new bricked drive and circular walkway, putting green lawn and immaculate perennial borders, pristine whitewash and thatch-someone had worked a miracle.

  The front door opened and Nathan came out, grinning. “Leaves you speechless, doesn’t it?” he said as he met Adam and shook his hand. “Good to see you.” He gestured back at the house. “I know it’s embarrassingly quaint, but I have to admit I’m enjoying it. Come in.”

  Nathan looked surprisingly well. His hair had gone completely white since Jean’s death, but it suited him, setting off his dark eyes and naturally rosy complexion. Adam remembered how they’d teased Nathan when he started to gray in his twenties, but Nathan had met Jean by then and hadn’t cared a fig for what any of them thought, not even Lydia.

  Shying away from the thought of her, Adam made an effort to collect himself. “But how did you… I mean, it must have… surely your parents didn’t…” A big drop of rain splattered on his spectacles, momentarily blinding him.

  Nathan put a hand on his shoulder and propelled him towards the door. “I’ll fix you a drink and tell you all about it, if you like.” Once inside, he shut the door against the rain and took Adam’s anorak, hanging it neatly from a pegged rack. “Whisky suit you?”