His parents had changed. It seemed to Lewis that his sister’s desertion, following so soon on his brothers’ deaths, had made his gentle father bitter, while his mother was simply worn down with repeated grief and loss. And he found he had changed, as well. When he met his old mates they jeered at his accent, and their lives were filled with talk of going down the pub and concerns that seemed foreign to him. Most had left school at fourteen, in favor of factory work until they were old enough to enlist, and although he felt an outcast, to his surprise he didn’t envy them.
The days dragged by. He thought several times of William, just across the river, but Greenwich seemed a world away and William had not invited him to visit. On Boxing Day, with guilty relief, he kissed his parents goodbye and caught the train back to Surrey, but his pleasure at returning there had been short-lived.
As he watched Mr. Haliburton at the chalkboard, he thought of the first time he had seen him in Edwina’s drawing room, on New Year’s Day. William and Irene had returned and they’d all gathered in the kitchen, poking spoons and fingers into Cook’s pots while she scolded andflapped at them with her apron. After a few weeks of subsisting mostly on turnips and potatoes, Lewis’s stomach was growling at the thought of the ham Cook had promised for their New Year’s feast, and there was to be a tart as well, made from the preserved gooseberries they’d picked in the autumn. He’d been inching towards the larder with the idea of just having a peek at the sweet when Edwina had come into the kitchen and asked them to join her.
“Maybe we’ll get a glass of sherry for a New Year’s toast,” William whispered, elbowing him as they followed Edwina down the corridor, but Lewis had been more interested in watching Irene. She wore a wool skirt and jumper rather than trousers, her glossy copper hair bounced on her shoulders, and it seemed to him that there was something different about the way she walked. Irene had looked back then and smiled at him, and it had made him feel quite odd.
As they entered the drawing room, Lewis first saw through the window the strange car in the drive, its bonnet glistening with rain. Then he noticed the tall, thin man standing before the fire, smoking, his back to them. He didn’t turn round to greet them and Lewis noticed that the hand holding the cigarette shook.
