Winter of Discontent

by Jeanne M. Dams

  “What did they die of, your grandparents?”

  “One was killed in an automobile accident before I was born. The others followed the typical pattern: a fall, a broken hip, pneumonia, and that was it. A couple of weeks of distress and then it was over.”

  “That was how my mother died. My father was drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Newlyn. He was eighty-seven and still going out fishing every day. I suspect he’d have lived to a hundred if a storm hadn’t come up. So we both come from good, sturdy stock. I’d say there was every chance of our keeping fit for a good many years yet.”

  “But if we don’t?” I couldn’t rid myself of the nightmare visions.

  “If we don’t,” said Alan, pressing my hand again, “we’ll cope with whatever comes, when it comes. We have enough money, if we’re reasonably prudent, to see us through. We have our house, and we can afford to hire help if we begin not to be able to do all the work ourselves. National Health will see to our physical problems, after a fashion.”

  “Oh, Alan, I know all that, and when I’m rational I know you’re right. But it could all go sour, somehow. We don’t know what will happen. You said it yourself. I can just see us, our minds slipping away …”

  “Love, if your mind slips away, after a while you won’t care. You won’t know.”

  “And what if mine doesn’t, but yours does? And I have to watch you deteriorate?”

  He stood and pulled me to my feet. “My dear woman, anything could happen. We could both be struck by a lorry tomorrow, crossing the High Street. Right now we’re well and happy, and there’s no point in letting what might or might not happen tomorrow poison today. I promise we’ll deal with whatever comes along.” He enfolded me in one of his bear hugs.

  “I’m not sure I’m convinced,” I said when I could speak again, “but I’m glad you’re willing to talk about it. I hate it when people say things like ‘Don’t worry’ or ‘It’ll be all right.’ Because it might not be.”

  “It might not,” he agreed. “But it is not a bridge that needs to be crossed this instant. In fact, what you need to do this instant is decide what your plans are for supper. Because Elizabeth has invited us over to see their Christmas tree and spend the evening. I said I’d ring her back, but it’s my opinion you need the company of the young for a bit.”

  “You’re right about that. If all the people I’ve talked to lately were laid end to end—”

  “ … they’d lead to the Guinness Book of World Records. Or something. Elizabeth said about six, if that’ll do.”

  “Wonderful. It’ll give me a chance to put my feet up.”

  Most days I can nap without difficulty. Today, when I’d risen so early, I expected to be snoring two minutes after my head hit the pillow. But there was too much on my mind. I lay trying not to fret about advancing age, but the more I tried not to think about it, of course the more I thought about it. Have you ever tried strenuously not to think about a large pink rhinoceros?

  The only solution, since my mind refused to relax, was to occupy it with other thoughts, and the ones that immediately popped up all had to do with Bill.

  I’d talked with four people now who had known him well during the war. What, if anything, had I learned?

  From Stanley Rutherford and John Merrifield I’d had slightly different accounts of the accident that had cost Bill his freedom and most of the crew their lives. Stanley was sure it was Merrifield’s fault, but then Stanley didn’t care for officers. Stanley had wanted to brag about his own war. I wondered if I should have let him. I might have learned more from meanderings. Maybe I’d have to go back.

  Merrifield had given me a bit of a picture of what life at the airfield was like. So had the WAAF—what was her name—oh, yes, Price. Barbara Price. She hated Merrifield even more than Stanley did, but that was, I supposed, understandable. Her fiancé had perished in the plane crash, and of course she blamed the pilot. She’d presented the most vivid picture of life at Luftwich, the cold, the segregation by rank, the temptation to talk more than one ought about military secrets. I probably ought to visit her again and just let her ramble.

  And then there was poor old Mr. Tredgold. What a dear he was, but how utterly useless as a source of information. Yes, I’d go and visit him again sometime. I’d take some knitting or a piece of needlepoint and sit and talk about theology, or his work in London, or whatever subject seemed neutral and safe. I wouldn’t ask him about Bill or Luftwich or, in fact, anything at all that happened between 1939 and 1945.

  I may be a busybody, but I do draw the line at torturing harmless old priests.

  Then there was the last contact that Jane had mentioned. Somebody’s widow, whose husband had been a friend of Bill’s and stationed at Luftwich. She didn’t sound very likely, but she might be able to tell me something about Bill. I resolved, this time, to be collecting anecdotes for a book about the war. That way I didn’t have to ask direct questions. If I simply let her tell what she remembered, there might be some wheat among the chaff

  There might be. More likely there wouldn’t be. More likely I was chasing wild geese. I began to watch them as they flew overhead in formation, one in front, then two by two, hard to count because they kept changing position …

  “It’s after five, love. Did you want to change clothes before we go?”

  I’d slept a little, after all.

  The evening was pleasant. We admired the tree Elizabeth and her family had decorated, had a little light supper, and when the teenagers had retired to the den to watch television, we sat and talked about nothing in particular.

  “I suppose you’re mixed up in this business in the Town Hall, Dad,” Elizabeth said eventually.

  “And why do you suppose your poor old dad would be getting himself involved in crime at my age, poppet?”

  “First, because you always were intrigued by anything the least bit out of the ordinary, and second, because you married someone exactly like you!” She smiled broadly across the room at me, and I felt a sudden stab of gratitude for my adopted family. Elizabeth didn’t treat me like her stepmother; she treated me like a trusted friend. Idiotically, my eyes were wet. I faked a sneeze to give me an excuse to blow my nose.

  If my worst fears were realized, it might not be so terrible to have to live with Elizabeth and her family.

  Sunday morning dawned foggy and chilly, as predicted. Even the sound of the church bells nearly overhead was muffled. I had no desire whatsoever to get out of bed, but I felt I needed the consolation that church might provide. So I pulled myself out from under the covers, showered and dressed, and had time for a quick cup of coffee.

  Alan, who had been up early, had waited for me, and together we rushed across the Close, too late for the early Eucharist, but almost on time for Matins.

  I brooded through the service. The beauty of the words usually drew me in, but this time I muttered the General Confession without really paying attention to what I was saying. The lessons weren’t inspiring, I hated the ultra-modern choral setting for the Te Deum, and I didn’t even hear the sermon.

  I made an effort to pull myself together after the service. Our young friends Nigel and Inga Evans were there, with their new baby, a tiny mite not even a month old who had slept peacefully through prayers, music, and all. After we had exchanged comments about Jane’s wonderful gingerbread, I duly praised young Nigel Peter to his adoring parents and grandparents, though really I don’t think babies are very interesting until they get a bit older and start to turn into people. Maybe it’s just as well I never had any.

  Margaret Allenby, the dean’s wife, caught up with Alan and me as we were about to leave the Cathedral.

  “Morning, you two. Looking a bit gloomy today, Dorothy. Has poor Walter taken a turn for the worse?”

  Margaret always knows everything, including most of what upsets me. I’ve come to accept and welcome her insight, but today she was missing the point. “No, I believe he’s doing quite well. I hope to be able to visit h
im in a day or two. It’s the rest of the problem that’s getting me down.”

  “Not getting anywhere?”

  “Not an inch. I think I must be taking the wrong tack. I was so sure that Bill’s war experiences were somehow at the bottom of all that’s happened, but I’ve talked with several people who knew him back then, and nobody seems to think there was anything out of the ordinary going on with him. Of course, I don’t know what happened in Colditz, and I probably never will. I suspect that information died with Bill, and just as well, maybe.”

  “I suppose you’ve talked to poor Mr. Tredgold.” Margaret smiled sadly.

  “Tried to. Of course I didn’t make any headway at all. How long has he been that way, Margaret?”

  “Oh, for as long as I’ve known him. He talks quite rationally about everything except the war, but that subject is absolutely forbidden.”

  “It’s such a shame. He seems like a sweet old man. And then there’s John Merrifield, his mind sound, but his body deteriorating. And Stanley Rutherford—he’s a Nonconformist, I expect, do you know him?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. A stalwart Baptist, but he comes to jumble sales and that sort of thing here from time to time, especially when they’re in aid of war veterans or their families. It doesn’t seem to matter which war, so long as he has a chance to buttonhole people and tell them about his war.” She laughed gently.

  I chuckled, too, but then I remembered how miserable Stanley seemed to be, living with his granddaughter. It wasn’t really very funny, was it? “He’s lonely. So is Miss Price. So are they all, lonely and weary and unhappy. It’s pathetic. I tell you, Margaret, I’m terrified of getting old. Really old, I mean, outliving my usefulness and all my contemporaries and having to live in some sort of ghastly home. I get really angry at God, just thinking about it. Why doesn’t he let people die when they’re ready, instead of making them hang on and on until they’re fed up with life, and everybody else is fed up with them?”

  Alan put his arm around my shoulders and started to say something, but Margaret forestalled him. “I rather think that’s a question for my husband—and here he is. Kenneth, my dear, Dorothy wants to know why God permits the ravages of old age.”

  Some clergymen might have dodged the awkward question, but the dean was no coward. “Do you know, I’ve often thought about that very point, particularly as my own age advances and my aches and pains multiply. One can never know for certain why God does anything, of course, but I wonder if perhaps he allows aging as a way of easing us from this world? We don’t belong here, you know, not permanently. He’s made us for his world, for Paradise, but we become attached to our lives here and loath to give them up. I will never believe that God causes any distress of any kind, but he obviously permits a great deal of suffering. I’ve toyed with the idea that he uses it, as he can use any evil in the cause of good, to make us a little less sorry to leave our earthly home.”

  He smiled. “Just my own idea, you know. Don’t try to find Scripture to prove it. And I quite realize it’s of very little help when one is coping with the agony of watching a parent or friend or spouse slip into the mists of senility. But perhaps the notion might make one’s own aging a little more tolerable.”

  One of the canons demanded his attention then, and he shook our hands and bustled away, leaving me with something new to think about.

  The weather that dreary afternoon grew colder and colder. The fog and rain began to freeze, loading the trees with a heavy coat of ice. The Sunday afternoon quiet was punctuated with explosive cracks as overburdened limbs broke under the weight. Some lovely old trees were going to die in this storm, I thought, and once again pondered the mysteries of aging.

  NINETEEN

  ALAN GOT A CALL FROM DEREK AS WE WERE SITTING IN FRONT OF the fire that evening, trying to ignore the storm outside. He took the call in his office, but came padding back into the parlor with the phone. “Derek wonders if I could run over to the museum tomorrow. They’re ready to begin sorting out the storeroom and would like my help. Will that upset any of your plans?”

  “Not a bit, since I have no plans. And I’m dying to know what you find, besides. Still no chance I could help, I suppose?”

  He shook his head, as I’d expected he would, and told Derek he’d meet him at nine o’clock.

  “What will you be looking for?” I asked when he’d snapped off the phone.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. First we’ll have to figure out what Bill’s system was, assuming he had one.”

  “Oh, I know a little about that. Walter told me. Bill was sorting things by families, and within families by date. There are other piles for big-deal events, local and national, and of course those overlap with the family ones. It’s all fairly complicated and needs to be catalogued and cross-referenced, and as far as I could tell when I worked up there that one day, Bill hadn’t got around to doing much of that for the newer stuff.”

  Alan groaned. “I was never meant for a librarian.”

  “That’s why you need me. I’m good at that kind of thing.”

  “Well, you needn’t be smug about it, my dear. Much as I’d appreciate your help, it can’t be allowed, and that’s that. So you can get on with Christmas preparations. There isn’t a mince pie in the house,” he added reproachfully.

  “I know, I know. I like them, too. But we still have over a week. I might make a batch of cookies tomorrow. They’re easier than mince pies and all that fiddling around with tart pans. But then I think I’ll ask Jane if we can talk to one more person about Bill. There’s some woman, a widow of one of Bill’s friends from way back when. She might just know something.”

  “You never know,” was Alan’s tepid comment as he got up to poke the fire and add another log.

  Privately I was of the same opinion. In fact, I had decided that if I didn’t learn something of importance, some hint that I was looking in the right direction, I was going to give up the whole thing. Maybe Bill’s death had been the purest accident. Maybe he’d gone down in the cellar to deal with the rats. Maybe Walter was attacked by some kid in search of drug money, who trashed the museum out of pique when he didn’t find what he needed.

  So it was in no very hopeful mood that I plodded across the back lawn on Monday morning. I was bringing a package of freshly baked butter cookies to share with Jane over coffee, but I nearly dropped them several times. The back garden was a bumpy, irregular mass of ice, almost impossible to walk on, and made worse by the twigs and small branches that littered the ground. I looked around and then decided not to. The place was a mess, and cleanup would take forever, but there was nothing to be done until the ice melted, and I might as well ignore what couldn’t be fixed right then.

  Jane’s dogs greeted me eagerly as I walked through her back doorway.

  “All right, kids, be good, now. These cookies aren’t for you.”

  “Isn’t the cookies,” Jane said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. “Haven’t had their w-a-l-k today.”

  The dogs recognized that particular word, even spelled out. Their whines and tail waggings became even more frantic.

  “Not today,” said Jane firmly. “You’ve been out. That’s enough. SIT!”

  Reluctantly, every sense a-quiver, they sat, reproach writ large in their eyes. I followed Jane into the kitchen and shut the door behind me. “I wouldn’t think even they could keep their equilibrium on that ice,” I said, sitting down at her kitchen table.

  “They can’t. Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  “Legs splayed out like newborn colts,” she went on, chuckling. “Could barely stand up long enough to do what they went out for.”

  “I’m not sure I can stand up long enough to do what I intended today, either. I’d thought about going to see that last woman on your list, the widow?”

  “Leigh Burton. Yes.” Jane considered. “Bit of an iceberg, but she’ll talk, if you can get her going”

  “Another Stanley?”

  “No. He wants
to talk about himself. She wants to talk about George.”

  “That’d be her late husband.”

  “And Bill’s best friend at Luftwich, though they had little enough in common. George’s parents were well off, had a country estate, all that. But the estate was near here. Suppose there were common roots, something of that sort.”

  “Was Leigh from around here?”

  “No. George met Leigh at Hurstpierpoint.”

  “Hurstpierpoint? Isn’t that the public school near here? I thought it was a boys’ school.”

  “Is. Always was. Leigh lived in the village, worked at her father’s tobacconists’ shop. Pretty girl.”

  Jane said no more, but her tone of voice said it all. I could see Leigh Burton, or whatever her name had been before she married. A sweet, pretty girl, working where the boys would come for sweets and the occasional forbidden cigarette. Chocolate-box prettiness, probably, all pink and white complexion and blond curls, irresistible to an impressionable young man just beginning to appreciate the charms of the opposite sex.

  I wondered what would have happened if their marriage had lasted beyond George’s youth.

  “Was George—um—of an intellectual bent?”

  “Smarter than she was, do you mean? Don’t need to pussyfoot with me, you know. Yes, he was. Wanted to go in for engineering. One reason he became a pilot. Got into the war earlier than Bill, talked him into asking for assignment to Luftwich.”

  “They stayed close, then?”

  “Like brothers.”

  “Did they get in touch with each other after the war? After Bill came back home, I mean?”

  “George never came back. Plane shot down during Normandy invasion. No survivors.”

  I closed my eyes, reminded once more of how horrifically England had suffered in what was, to me, mostly a history lesson. “Bill must have been devastated when he found out.”