In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  Gloria nudged me gently and we got off on a broad street flanked with even more tall buildings.

  And that was when our search began in earnest. I felt like a small child dragged along by its mother as Gloria took me from building to building. We asked policemen, knocked on doors, asked soldiers, strangers in the street, knocked on even more doors.

  Finally, wet and weary and ready to give up, I rejoiced when Gloria found some sort of minor clerk who took pity on us. I don’t honestly think he knew anything about Matthew or what had happened to him, but he did seem to know a little more about the war in the Far East than anyone else would admit to. And he seemed to take a shine to Gloria.

  He was tidy little man in a pinstripe suit, with grey hair parted at the centre and a neat, trim moustache. He glanced at his watch, pursed his lips and frowned before suggesting he might spare us ten minutes if we cared to accompany him to the tea house on the corner. He had a rather high-pitched, squeaky voice and spoke with a posh, educated accent. At that point I would have cheerfully murdered for a cup of tea. We dragged ourselves inside, bought tea at the counter, and Gloria started to pump the poor fellow for information before we had even had our first sip.

  “What are the chances that Matthew might still be alive?” she asked.

  This clearly wasn’t the sort of question the man, who told us his name was Arthur Winchester, was trained to answer. He ummed and ahed a bit, then measured his words as carefully as the sugar cubes in the bowl were rationed. “I’m afraid I can’t really answer that question,” he said. “As I told you, I have no knowledge of the individual case to which you refer, merely a little general knowledge of the situation in the east.”

  “All right,” Gloria went on, undaunted, “tell me about what happened at Irridaddy, or whatever it is. That’s if it’s not classified.”

  Arthur Winchester sniffed and granted us a little smile. “Irrawaddy. It happened six months ago, so it’s hardly classified,” he said. Then he paused, sipped some more tea and rubbed the bristly bottom of his moustache with the back of his hand. I glanced towards the window and saw the rain slanting down, distorting the shapes of the people passing by on Victoria Street.

  “Burma,” he went on, “as you probably know, stands between India and China, and it would be of inestimable value if our forces could reopen the Burma Road and clear the way to China, which could then be used as a direct base for operations against Japan. This, as I say, is general knowledge.”

  “Not to me it isn’t.” Gloria lit a Craven A. “Go on,” she prompted, blowing out a long plume of smoke.

  Arthur Winchester cleared his throat. “To put things simply, since Burma fell, we have been trying to get it back. One of the offensives with this end in mind was the Chindit operation, launched in February. They began east of the Irrawaddy, a river in central Burma. While they were there, the Japanese launched a major offensive on the Arakan front and the British had to withdraw. Are you following me?”

  We both nodded.

  “Good.” Arthur Winchester finished his tea. “Well, the Chindits were trapped behind the enemy lines, cut off, and they began to filter back in some disarray.” He looked at Gloria. “This, no doubt, is why no one has been able to give you any specific information about your husband. He’s an engineer, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Next? Oh, well the Chindits had suffered severe hardships. Most severe. Not long after, they were ordered to leave Burma.”

  “But we’re still trying to get Burma back?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s of great strategic importance.”

  “So there’s a still a chance?”

  “A chance of what?”

  “That someone might find Matthew. When the British win back Burma.”

  Arthur Winchester glanced out of the window. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, my dear. A long time might pass before that happens.”

  “Were the losses heavy?” I asked.

  Arthur Winchester gazed at me for a moment, but he wasn’t seeing me. “What? Oh, yes. Rather worse than we had hoped for.”

  “How do you know all this?” Gloria asked.

  Arthur Winchester inclined his head modestly. “I don’t know very much, I’m afraid. But before the war, before this government work, I was a history teacher. The Far East has always interested me.”

  “So you don’t really have anything to tell us?” Gloria said. “Well, any excuse to take tea with a pretty lady will do for me, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Gloria got to her feet in a fury and was about to storm out of the place, leaving even me behind, when Arthur Winchester blushed and grabbed hold of her sleeve meekly. “I say, my dear, I’m sorry. Poor taste. I really didn’t mean to offend you. A compliment, that’s all. I meant no hint of any sort of prurient suggestion.”

  If Gloria didn’t know what prurient meant, she never let on. She merely sat down again, slowly, a hard, suspicious look in her eyes, and said, “Can you tell us anything at all, Mr Winchester?”

  “All I can tell you, my dear,” he went on gravely, “is that during the retreat, many of the wounded had to be left behind enemy lines. They simply couldn’t be transported. They were left with a little money and a weapon, of course, but what became of them, I can’t say.”

  Gloria had turned pale. I found myself twisting the fabric of my dress in my fist over my lap until my knuckles turned white. “Are you saying this is what happened to Matthew?” she asked, her voice no louder than a whisper.

  “I’m saying it may be what happened, if he is simply being described as missing, presumed dead.”

  “And what if that was the case?”

  Arthur Winchester paused and brushed an imaginary piece of lint from his lapel. “Well,” he said, “the Japanese don’t like taking wounded prisoners. It would depend how badly wounded he was, of course, whether he could work, that sort of thing.”

  “So you’re saying they might have simply murdered him as he lay there wounded and defenceless?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible. Or . . . ”

  “Or what?”

  He looked away. “As I said, the wounded were left behind with a weapon.”

  It took a second or two for what he was getting at to sink in. I think it was me who responded first. “You mean Matthew might have committed suicide?”

  “If capture was inevitable, and if he was badly hurt, then I’d say, yes, it’s a possibility.” His tone brightened a little. “But this is all pure conjecture, you understand. I know nothing at all of the circumstances. Maybe he was simply captured by the enemy, and he’s going to while away the rest of the war in the relative safety of a prison camp. I mean, you’ve seen how well we take care of our Germans and Italians here, haven’t you?”

  It was true. The Italians in Yorkshire even worked on the farms at planting and harvest times. Gloria and I had talked to them on occasion and they seemed cheerful enough, for prisoners of war. They liked to sing opera while they worked, and some of them had beautiful voices.

  “But you said the Japanese don’t like taking prisoners.”

  “It’s true they despise the weak and the defeated. But if they capture fit men, they can put them to work on railways and bridges and such like. They’re not fools. You did say your husband was an engineer, so he could be useful to them.”

  “If he co-operated.”

  “Yes. The main problem is that we don’t know a lot about the Japanese, and our lines of communication are very poor, almost to the point of not existing at all. Even the Red Cross has great difficulties getting its parcels delivered and getting information out of them. The Japanese are notoriously difficult to deal with.”

  “So he may be a prisoner of war and nobody has bothered to let anyone know? Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “That is a distinct possibility. Yes. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of others in that same position, too.”<
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  “But you said you’re a teacher. You know about the Japanese, don’t you?”

  Arthur Winchester laughed nervously. “I know a little about their geography and history, but the Japanese have always been very insular. Comes from living on an island, perhaps.”

  “We live on an island, too,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, well, I mean insular more in that they’ve screened themselves off from the rest of the world, actively resisted contact with the west. We knew practically nothing at all about them until the turn of the century—their customs, beliefs—and even now we don’t know a lot.”

  “What do you know? What can you tell us?” Gloria asked.

  He paused again. “Well,” he said. “I don’t want to upset you, but you asked me to be honest with you. I’d say it’s best to hope he’s dead. It’s best that way.” He paused. “Look. It’s wartime. Things are very different. You have to let go of the past. Your husband is probably dead. Or if he isn’t, he might as well be. Nothing will be the same when it’s done. All over the city people are living as if there’s no tomorrow. How long are you staying in London?”

  Gloria looked at him suspiciously. “Until tonight. Why?”

  “I know a place. Very nice. Very discreet. Perhaps I could—”

  Gloria got to her feet so fast she bumped the table with her thighs and the remains of her tea spilled onto Arthur Winchester’s lap. But he didn’t stop around to mop it up. Instead, he bolted for the door saying, “Good Lord, is that the time? I must dash.”

  And with that, he was out of the door before Gloria could even pick up something to throw at him. She glared after him for a moment, then touched up her curls and sat down again. The serving-girl frowned at us, then turned away. I thought we were lucky not to get thrown out.

  We dawdled over our tea, Gloria calming down, smoking another cigarette and gazing out through the steamed-up window at the phantoms drifting by outside. In the café, soldiers came and went with their girls. I could smell the rain on their uniforms.

  “What did he mean, it’s best that way?” Gloria asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose he meant to say that the Japanese don’t treat their prisoners as well as we do.”

  “What do they do? Torture them? Beat them? Starve them?”

  “I don’t know, Gloria,” I said, putting my hand over hers. “I just don’t know. All I can say is that it sounded to me as if he was saying Matthew would be better off dead.”

  Nine

  Annie parked in one of the hilly streets around St Mary’s, at the back of the castle, and went looking for Alice Poole’s cottage. The sky was bright blue, with only a few wisps of white cloud borne on the sea breeze. Pity she had to work. She could have brought her bucket and spade. As a child she had spent hours amusing herself on the beach. Some of her only memories of her mother took place on the beach in St Ives: building sandcastles together, burying one another in the sand so that only a head showed, or maybe a head and feet, running into the big waves and getting knocked over. In Annie’s memory, her mother was a bright, mercurial figure, mischievous, devil-may-care, always laughing. Though her father, on the surface, was easy-going, bright, funny and caring, there was a darkness in his art that Annie felt excluded her; she didn’t know where it came from or how he reconciled it with the rest of his life. Did he suffer terribly in private and simply put on a public face, even for his own daughter? She hardly knew him at all.

  She found the cottage easily enough, according to directions she had received over the telephone. It was in a high, quiet part of town, away from the pubs and shopping centres crowded with holiday-makers from Leeds and Bradford. From the garden she could see a wedge of the North Sea far below, beyond Marine Drive, steely grey-blue today, dotted with small boats. Flocks of gulls gathered, squealing, above a shoal of fish.

  The woman who answered the door was tall, with thin, wispy hair like candy floss. She was wearing a long, loose purple dress with gold embroidery around the neck, hem and sleeves, and gold earrings of linked hoops that dangled almost as far as her shoulders. It reminded Annie of the sort of thing hippies used to wear. A pair of black horn-rimmed glasses hung on a chain around her neck.

  “Come in, love.” She led the way into a bright, cluttered room. Dust motes spun in the rays of sunlight that lanced through the panes of the mullioned window. “Can I offer you anything?” she asked, having settled Annie in an armchair so soft and deep she wondered how she’d ever get out of it. “Only, I usually have elevenses around this time. Coffee and a Kit Kat. Instant coffee, mind you.”

  Annie smiled. “That’ll be fine, thanks, Mrs Poole.”

  “Alice. Call me Alice. And why don’t you have a look through this while I see to things in the kitchen. Your call got me thinking about the old days and I realized I hadn’t had it out in years.”

  She handed Annie a thick, leather-bound photograph album and headed for the kitchen. Most of the deckle-edged black-and-white photographs were family groups, what Annie took to be Alice and her parents, aunts, brothers and sisters, but several were village scenes: women stopping to chat in the street, baskets over their arms, scarves knotted on their heads; children fishing from the riverbanks. There were also a couple of pictures of the church, which was smaller and prettier than she had imagined from Stanhope’s painting, with a squat, square tower, and of the dark, brooding flax mill, like a skull perched on its promontory.

  Alice Poole came back holding a mug of coffee in each hand and a Kit Kat, still in its wrapper, between her teeth. When she had freed her hands, she took the chocolate bar from her mouth and put it on a small coffee-table beside her chair. “A little indulgence of mine,” she said. “Would you like one? I should have asked.”

  “No,” said Annie. “No, that’s fine.” She accepted her coffee. It was milky and sweet, just the way she liked it.

  “What do you think of the photos?”

  “Very interesting.”

  “You’ve come about poor Gloria, then?”

  “You’ve heard?”

  “Oh, yes. Your boss was on telly last night. I don’t see very well, but there’s nothing wrong with my ears. I don’t watch a lot of television, but not much local news slips by me. Especially something like that. How horrible. Have you got any suspects yet?”

  “Not really,” said Annie. “We’re still trying to find out as much as we can about Gloria. It’s very difficult, what with it all being so long ago.”

  “You don’t say. I was seventy-five last birthday. Can you believe it?”

  “Quite honestly, Mrs—sorry, Alice—I can’t.” She really did seem remarkably spry for a woman of that age. Apart from a few liver spots on her hands and wrinkles on her face, the only real indication of the ravages of age was her sparse and lifeless hair, which Annie was now coming to believe had probably fallen victim to chemotherapy and not yet grown back properly.

  “Look,” Alice pointed out. “This is Gloria.” She turned to a photograph of four girls standing beside a Jeep and pointed to the petite blonde with the long curls, the narrow waist and the provocative smile. Without a doubt it was the same girl from Stanhope’s painting. Underneath, in tiny white letters, was written, July 1944. “This one’s Gwen, her sister-in-law.” Gwen was the tallest of them all. She wasn’t smiling and had half turned away from the camera, as if shy about her looks. “And this one here is Cynthia Garmen. The Four Musketeers, we were. Oh, that one’s me.” Alice had been a svelte blonde, by the look of her. Also in the photograph, standing in the Jeep behind the girls, were four young men in uniform.

  “Who are they?” Annie asked.

  “Americans. That one’s Charlie, and that’s Brad. We saw quite a lot of them. I don’t remember the names of the other two. They just happened to be there.”

  “I’d like to make a copy of that photo, if you don’t mind. We’ll send it back to you.”

  “Not at all.” Alice detached the photograph from its corners. “Please take care
of it, though.”

  “I promise.” Annie slipped it in her briefcase. “You knew Gloria well?” she went on.

  “Quite well. She married Matthew Shackleton, as you probably know, and while he was away at war, Gloria and Gwen, Matthew’s sister, became inseparable. But quite often the gang of us would do something together. Anyway, I wouldn’t say we were the best of friends, but I did know her. And I liked her.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Gloria?” Alice unwrapped her Kit Kat and took a bite. When she had swallowed it, she said, “Well, I’d say she was a good sort. Cheerful. Fun to be with. Kind. Generous. She’d give you the shirt off her back. Or make one for you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Magic fingers. Gloria was such an expert sewer you could give her rags and she’d turn out a ball gown. Well, I might be exaggerating a little, but I’m sure you get my point. It was a skill in much demand back then, I can tell you. There wasn’t a heck of a lot in the shops, and your clothing coupons didn’t go very far.”

  “She worked at Top Hill Farm, didn’t she?

  “Yes. For Kilnsey. The lecherous old sod.”

  “Do you think there was anything funny going on up there between him and Gloria?”

  Alice laughed. “Kilnsey and Gloria? In his wildest fantasies, maybe. Nellie, his wife, would have had his guts for garters if he’d so much as looked twice at another woman. And Gloria . . . well, she might have been generous in some ways, but she wasn’t that generous. Old Kilnsey? No. You’re barking up the wrong tree there, love. He was one of them serious religious types that always look like perverts to me. Probably need more religion than the rest of us just to keep their unnatural urges down.”

  Annie made a note of the name. In her experience, that repressed type was more likely to lose control and kill than most. “What kind of things did you do together?”

  “The usual. Gloria was impulsive. She’d suggest a spur-of-the-moment picnic on Harksmere bank. Or a film at the Lyceum in Harkside. It’s been converted to the KwikSave last time I saw it, but back then it was a popular place for lads and lasses to meet. Or walking in the fields at night during the blackout. And swimming.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “Believe it or not, dearie, we once went swimming without costumes in Harksmere Reservoir after dark. What a time we had of it! That was Gloria’s idea, too. Spontaneous. She didn’t like everything all planned out for her, but she always liked to have something to do or to look forward to doing.”