KENT, 2010
As his eyes danced across the horizon, Jack wondered, as he had a thousand times, what would have happened if, when he came for her sixty years ago, he had never left. How different it could have been; would she have forgiven him when he told her why there had been such secrecy?
Stephen had wanted to drive, but Jack insisted on driving himself, so his nephew sat silently beside him as he steered the black Mercedes through the country roads. He was used to confined lanes, driving regularly from his Cotswold home to London for visits with the family or an appointment with his specialist, but he hadn’t been to Kent in years.
Not since he had tracked her down once before, many, many years ago, and had then got cold feet. Still, he easily relied on his memory to follow directions. He noticed everything; SOE training had given him that, indoctrinating him into registering details, and deepening his powers of observation. He noticed the thrushes on the upper branches of the oak trees they had just passed, the wind-damaged hedgerows outside the priory on their right, and the empty pond that had been contaminated by weeds. He remembered the names of streets he had barely glanced at, and public houses and schools they had travelled by on their journey. He could see how most of the villages showed signs of shrinkage and regrowth, closed primary schools replaced by large private schools, the gentrification of the villages out-pricing the original inhabitants. It was the same all around the greenbelt—London’s overspill, and the villages in his home county of Oxfordshire were no different. In some places they had retained the village post office and the occasional tearoom and pub, but the smaller shops and bakeries had closed as the supermarkets laid claim to selling every product under the sun.
It had been a straightforward journey: the A306 from Richmond, a short hold-up on the A3 but a quick trip across on the M25 and through onto the A21.
Jack glanced over at his nephew, at his bearded chin concertinaed against his shirt collar, neck bent as he peered down at his phone, fiddling around with some new map app he couldn’t get to work.
‘It’s only another two and a half miles,’ Stephen said without looking up.
It’s taken me nearly seventy years to make this journey, Jack thought with a wry smile, fixing his eyes on the road ahead.
Over the Pembury Road roundabout onto the A26; past the vast blue waterway on our right and Tudeley Lane on our left, he thought, recollecting the directions from the map he had double-checked and trying to focus his mind.
But his earlier calm was dissolving, ripples appearing on the steady surface as his disappointment over the lost years reared up. His usual steadiness was faltering, the words he had carefully composed were drifting, tugged by a vindictive wind. And while he drove determinedly, it felt that the nearer he got, the faster he was losing control; with each mile they covered, more of his practised explanations deserted him. It was as if all sense of reason and logic was evaporating, his sound judgement abandoning him.
‘Just past Postern Lane now and it’s straight ahead.’ Stephen’s voice sounded distant.
Jack tried to reply but only a hoarse whisper came. He had lived through a world war, had fought for what he believed in, and yet had spent years regretting that he hadn’t done more for Eleanor; this was his last chance to find her, tell her the truth and put things right. He had brought her paintings too, The Crimson Sun and her precious early artwork, The Factory Worker.
There wasn’t time for him to rehearse his carefully chosen words again, the white lines counting down the final yards until the church roof and spire came into view.
He had known this day might come, after Stephen had found her; that she might come looking for him. And she had, sending her granddaughter, Kathryn, who Stephen had told him about.
And now his nephew had set things in motion, he needed to carry it through and admit what he had done, as he should have more than sixty years ago. He remembered their last days together as clearly as anything: Eleanor inside the Hyde Park pagoda, twisting the ring loosely around her finger, trying to hide her disappointment that it didn’t fit. It was there that she had agreed to become his wife, before the war had kept them apart—as had his own vain morality. He ought to have done just as Aubrey Powell had asked and stayed out of it, let Eleanor carry on as she was, but instead he took her at her word from their last goodbye. It occurs to me that when you are so short of time, you had better not waste it, she had said with utter certainty. It was then that he had taken it upon himself to present The Children in the Attic as his own work before he left, and Powell had discovered it. It was the only reason he could see why she had gone when he came back, and why the committee refused to help him find her; she had been punished when it should have been him.
Was it too little, too late? He hoped not, and now he wanted to put it right—formally acknowledge the paintings that were hers and make her the war artist that she had always wanted to be.
The fields were broadening out around them, the light brightening as they left the built-up areas behind and the road veered sharply to the right.
Stephen suddenly sprang up in the seat. ‘It’s the next left…just here.’
Jack eased the car round the corner and into the narrow lane, slowing to ten miles an hour when he saw the church up ahead. To their left were converted barns set back from the road, well-tended gardens and low wooden fences, and on their right a conspicuous vicarage with a stooped figure clipping abundant roses. On the surface an idyllic sunny afternoon, he thought, as his eyes combed the road ahead, searching beyond the hedges and brick walls for signs of other cars or people.
He was often told that he had aged well, and he had looked after himself, cultivating good habits in later years, but he wasn’t sure he believed strangers, or his doctors, when they said that he could pass for a seventy-year-old. It wasn’t as if his thick grey hair and tailored suit didn’t count for anything—he wanted to look his best—but he knew that it was what he felt and what was still locked inside that mattered most. He had it all worked out: he would take it step by step, month by month, year by year, explaining what had happened. He would tell her about his role with the press corps accompanying the Eighth Army on their Italian assault, and see if she could understand what it had been like for them, why it had been so difficult. Only afterwards would he tell her about his work with the SOE and the deal that he’d needed to make with Aubrey.