Kissed a sad goodbye - Deborah Crombie [150]
William went white, then pressed his lips together, refusing to be baited. They all knew his views on civilian bombings. It was a subject he and Lewis had avoided by mutual consent after a few charged discussions.
William had argued that any civilian deaths were unconscionable, whatever the victim’s nationality, and that Lewis should feel the same because of what had happened to his parents—while to Lewis it seemed just the opposite, and he couldn’t understand how William could condone restraint against the Germans after what they had done to London.
“Women, children …,” Freddie clucked sympathetically, and turned on his heel, pacing again. “Of course, there were pilots shot down, too, and that is rather a shame, wouldn’t you agree?” He stopped near his desk and studied William. “Or perhaps you wouldn’t agree with that, dear Will? Perhaps your sympathies lie elsewhere?” Reaching into his desk, he pulled out a twine-wrapped bundle and brought it over, dropping it on the table before them. “I do think you could spend your time in the attic a bit more profitably.”
William reached out a hand as if to snatch the bundle, but Freddie tapped him on the knuckles with the ruler and drawled, “I imagine Lewis and Irene would like to see what you’ve been doing.” He jerked at the twine, and leaflets spilled out across the tabletop.
Lewis stared curiously, then with growing horror as he realized what they were—pacifist tracts, with a crudely drawn cartoon showing a leering RAF pilot deliberately strafing a fleeing German child.
“I … they sent them to me, this group in London,” protested William. “I hadn’t given them out to anyone.” He reached for them again, but once more Freddie interceded, gathering them back into a bundle.
“I’ll keep these for you,” Freddie said kindly. “Just in case Edwina or any of her friends at the War Office should want to see them.”
Eyes on William, Lewis said, “How could you do such a thing?” He stood up, past caring if it made Freddie angry. “I think they’re … they’re disgusting.”
“I didn’t mean—” William began, but Lewis had pushed back his chair and started for the door. “Lewis, wait!” William shouted after him.
Lewis glanced back, once, before slamming the schoolroom door shut behind him, and the expressions on their faces stayed burned into his memory—Irene, her brow furrowed with concern, her lips shaping his name; William, his eyes dark with fright; and Freddie, the good half of his face stretched into a grimace of satisfaction.
HE KNEW HIS FATHER’S HABITS. LEWIS would leave his office midafternoon to check round the building sites—he never trusted anyone else to get things right; that was one of the things that had made working with him impossible. And so Gordon waited near the gunmetal-gray Mercedes in the Heron Quays car park, smoking, watching the sky darken as heavy banks of clouds moved in from the west. The stifling air smelled faintly sulphurous.
Gordon had given up trying to prepare what he would say. His mind was blank, suspended between fragmented thoughts of Annabelle and a recurring memory of his father lifting him from the waves when he was a child. When he saw Lewis come round the end of the building, he ground out his cigarette with the heel of his boot and moved to intercept him.
“Dad.”
Lewis looked up, hand on the Mercedes’s door. “Gordon! What are you doing here?”
“I need to speak to you.”
“We can go back in the office—”
“No, here. I want to know what happened the night Annabelle died. She came to see you, didn’t she?”
“I never knew until that night that there was something between you. I’d not have kept on seeing her—”
“You couldn’t let me have one thing you hadn’t stamped as yours, could you? You