Kissed a sad goodbye - Deborah Crombie [148]
Then she raised her head and met his eyes, and he knew.
“I SUPPOSE IT WAS A TERRIBLE irony,” Irene said. “His parents survived so much, then to be killed in the first wave of the V1s. If I remember correctly, they were just coming out of the corner shop, such an ordinary thing, on a June day much like this one.…” She shook her head and lit another Dunhill.
“Lewis refused to let William come to the funeral, or me, but Edwina insisted on going with him. He would never speak about it afterwards, or about his parents. Except once.”
Kincaid waited in silence as she smoked for a bit, and in the clear light he could see the deep creases running from her nose to the corners of her mouth—laugh lines, his mother had always called them, but he thought Irene’s face expressed a multitude of joys and griefs.
“He said if he’d been there, it might not have happened,” she went on at last. “He might have heard the rocket in time.”
“And you blamed yourself for his guilt, because you wanted him to stay,” Kincaid said. He knew about guilt, about the relentless game of what if the mind could play.
“Yes. And I tried to comfort him.” For a moment, Irene seemed lost in the memory, then her blue eyes met his. “But nothing could have prepared us for what happened afterwards. You see, Edwina and Freddie Haliburton, our tutor, were killed in an accident very shortly after Lewis’s parents died.” She ground out her half smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “Edwina’s death … it was just too much grief—for all of us, but particularly for Lewis, who had lost both his brothers early in the war, as well as his parents. He left after Edwina’s funeral. There was nothing I could do to persuade him to stay.”
“It must have been hard for you.”
“I went back to my family in Kilburn, bombs and all, but we made it through the last of the war without incident.”
“And William Hammond?”
“William went home to Greenwich. I had the occasional letter, then they dwindled to Christmas cards.”
“And you never heard from Lewis?”
Irene’s smile was self-mocking. “I had fantasies for years that he would find me again someday. Then in the sixties his name began appearing in the papers, and I did some research. He must have lied about his age, because he did a brief stint in the army at the end of the war. Then when he was demobbed at the end of 1945, he joined a rebuilding crew and worked his way up in the construction business. There were great opportunities after the war for those with the brains and the talent to take advantage, and Lewis Finch had both.”
“But you never contacted him?”
“No. I toyed with the idea, of course, but I’d learned he was married. I’ve never been much of a masochist,” she added with a smile.
Kincaid thought for a moment. “William Hammond’s older daughter told us that he had warned her and Annabelle against Lewis Finch. Have you any idea why?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Irene, but Kincaid thought he detected a note of doubt in her voice. She rose, and going to her desk, she idly straightened the papers on its surface. “Although I suppose there was some tension between them that summer.”
“Was William jealous of you and Lewis?”
Irene frowned. “I’m not sure William even noticed what was happening between Lewis and me. He had concerns of his own.” Kincaid waited for her to continue. Softly, she said, “I promised myself I’d never become one of those old biddies who drone on about their youth. But we led an idyllic life in the year and a half we had together, William and Lewis and I, in spite of the hardships of the war. Then Freddie Haliburton came, and everything changed.” Turning, she met Kincaid’s eyes again. “He had a talent for digging out weaknesses and making lives miserable that I’ve seldom seen since.”
“You said he died?” Kincaid asked.
“Yes. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed when his fighter crashed in the war, if he flew with the same