Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [142]
“I wanted to tell Gabriel the truth, Mary. Those two days he spent with us in Paris. He was talking about his parents one evening, telling me how difficult he found it at times to talk freely with them, how he sometimes felt almost as if they spoke another language from his, and I ached to tell him the reason for that. I couldn’t, of course. They were both still alive, and he was Sarah’s whole life. Henry, too, but to drive a wedge between the boy and Sarah would have devastated her. And in actual fact, I was an aunt to the boy. It wasn’t I who raised him and fretted over his childhood illnesses and oversaw his schooling and shaped him into the man he was. But he was so extraordinarily beautiful as a human being, I selfishly wanted to be more in his eyes than just a distant uncle’s estranged wife. I couldn’t tell him, but I wish to God that I had! He might, just possibly, have used that knowledge in the last days. Might have reached out to ask for the help of a mother as he couldn’t do to a scarcely known aunt.”
There was no real reply to that. Nor was there for any of the other painful questions she came out with over the course of the next hours, as she unburdened herself as she had never been able to do before, to anyone. All I could say was, she gave her son a good, loving life, and she had taken the opportunity to lay the foundations of a relationship during his Paris leave. The awareness of Iris as a friend had infused Gabriel’s final weeks with a sense of future, at a time when the world was proclaiming there was no future. Faint reassurance, but gratefully received. She went to her new rooms at two in the morning. By later account, she slept better than I.
The next day we spent walking the decks and talking, about matters that often had nothing to do with Gabriel. We discovered that we had been sailing through the edges of a storm since leaving England, and although the rain was now clearing, the ship continued to heave beneath our feet. I told her about my childhood in Sussex and California, she told me about the growing community of artists and writers in Paris—easy conversation, of the sort that takes place at the beginning of any friendship, but which also allowed us to draw breath and permit our real concerns to simmer in the backs of our minds.
I did send a telegram, through Mycroft lest the village postmistress in Arley Holt prove indiscreet:
WHOM DID GABRIEL ADDRESS AS QUOTE UNCLE QUERY.
The answer came within a message received the next day.
UNCLES MARSH SIDNEY LIONEL ALISTAIR PHILIP RALPH JAMES IVO AND THREE NEIGHBOURS STOP ALL WELL HERE STOP CLERK ARRESTED ADMITS NOTHING STOP HAIG NO MEMORY OF LETTER OR GABRIEL STOP HUNT CONTINUES COMMA GOOD SAILING END.
Philip, I recalled, was the name of Gabriel’s grandfather’s brother, hence the boy’s great-uncle, who moved to South Africa and was never seen again; I thought it doubtful that Gabriel had ever actually met him, although he could have remained an “uncle” for reference purposes, and his sons, if any, might also qualify for the title. Ralph-pronounced-Rafe was Alistair’s brother, who had gone to Australia at the age of nineteen and perhaps died at Gallipoli. Gabriel would have been nine or so when Ralph disappeared, so could have retained an active memory of the man. James, I knew, was the husband of Alistair’s sister, Rose, father of the farming nephew who would eventually take over Badger Old Place. All of which made it conclusive that for Gabriel, “uncle” was a broadly applied honourific. I shouldn’t have been surprised had he used it for close friends of his parents, as well.
The huge passenger liner ploughed its luxurious path through the waves and against the headwinds, putting in at New York late on Tuesday. Although we both had friends in the city, we went to our hotel unannounced, and passed out of the city the following day without getting into touch with any of them. Neither of us felt much inclined for light social banter.
The journey north was tedious to the extreme, and I cursed