Execution Dock - Anne Perry [43]
He was glad Durban had known only the man he had become, and not the original.
What lay in the spaces around his mental construction of Durban that Monk did not know? Was the compulsion to catch Jericho Phillips going to force him to intrude into the areas of Durban's life that Durban had chosen to keep private, perhaps because there was pain there, failure, old wounds he needed to forget?
“I can remember his voice,” he said aloud, meeting her steady eyes. “His face, the way he walked, what made him laugh, what he liked to eat. He loved to see dawn on the river and watch the early ferries start out across the water. He used to walk alone and watch the play of light and shadow, the mist evaporating like silk gauze. He liked to see the forest of spars when we had a lot of tall ships in the Pool. He liked the sound and smells of the wharves, especially when the spice ships were unloading. He liked to listen to the cry of gulls, and men talking all the different foreign languages, as if the whole earth with its wealth and variety had come here to London. He never said so, but I think he was proud to be a Londoner.”
He stopped, his emotion too strong for the moment. Then he drew in a deep breath.
“I didn't want to talk about my past, and I didn't care about his. For any of us, it's who you are today that matters.”
Hester smiled, looked away, then back again at him. “Durban was a real person, William,” she said gently. “Good and bad, wise and stupid. Picking out bits to like isn't really liking at all. It isn't friendship, it's comfort for you. You're better than that, whether he was or not. Are your dreams, or Durban's memory, worth more than the lives of other boys like Fig?” She bit her lip. “Or Scuff?”
He winced. He had been lulled into forgetting how honest she could be, even if her words were harsh.
“I know it's intrusive to examine the whole man,” she said. “Even indecent, when he's dead and cannot defend himself, or explain, or even repent. But the alternative is to let it go, and isn't that worse?”
It was a bitter choice, but if Durban had been careless, or even dishonest, that had to be faced. “Yes,” he conceded. “Pass me the papers. We'll sort them into those we understand, those we don't, and those I expect we never will. I'll get that bastard Phillips, however long or hard the trail. I made the mistake, and I'll undo it.”
“We did,” she corrected him, her face pinched a little. “I let Oliver paint me as an overemotional woman whose childlessness led her to hysterical and ill-thought-out judgments.”
He saw the pain in her face, the self-mockery, and for that he would not forgive Rathbone until he had paid the last ounce, and maybe not even then. That was something else she had lost, the real and precious friendship with Rathbone. Like Monk, she had no close, loving family left. She had lost a brother in the Crimea, her father to suicide, and her mother to a broken heart. Her one surviving brother was a stiff and distant man, not really a friend. One day, when he had time, Monk must go and visit the sister he barely remembered. He did not think they had been close, even when his memory had been whole, and that was probably his fault.
He put the papers down and leaned over, touching Hester gently, then drawing her closer to him and kissing her, then closer again. “There's tomorrow,” he whispered. “Let it be—for now.”
Monk rose early and went to buy the newspapers. He considered not taking them home so Hester would not see how bad they were, and then discarded the idea. She did not need his protection, and probably would not wish for it. It would not mean tenderness