‘Delicious,’ says Nick, handing him his card.
And, whilst he processes the payment, we all get up, gathering our things, saying nothing further about Tim now we have someone else in earshot.
Nor is it Tim who I mainly think about as we set off across the pub for the exit.
It’s that woman by the fire, with her tea and ploughman’s.
She turns to look up at me as I pass her by, and, as our eyes connect, I feel a jolt, but I don’t know why.
I still don’t recognise her.
I’m sure I don’t.
And yet,
I know this woman, I think.
I have met her before.
Perhaps I should talk to her, like Felix suggested.
Introduce myself. Ask her name.
I don’t, though.
Blake appears at the pub door, clearly impatient for a debrief, so I keep walking towards him, and the car waiting outside, ready to speed us all away.
Tim’s nursing home is on the opposite side of York from Doverley. Nick drives, and although we clear Doverley’s gates without running into any press – they thankfully seem to have had enough of us for the day – the traffic on the York ring road is Friday afternoon heavy, and we only just make it to our appointment on time, pulling into the home’s paved forecourt on the dot of half past two.
Gratefully, I leave the car. The journey, just the three of us, was less fraught than it might have been a week ago, but the atmosphere definitely felt more strained without Emma around to dilute things. Mainly, we debated the identity ofThe Screen’s anonymous source, frustrating each other by getting nowhere (‘Remind me again why we’re wasting our time with this?’ said Felix), and I think we’re all ready for a breather from our collective effort at beingok– even if I have also grown quite nervy now about meeting Tim. My own questions aside, I don’t want to disappoint him. Fail him, by failing to come up to par with Iris.
Drawing a stingingly cold breath, I look around at the home’s low-rise buildings, purpose-built in a Georgian style, and surrounded by ice-crusted lawns that shimmer pink-grey in the diminishing light. There’ll be another frost tonight, without doubt. It’s -3, according to the thermometer in Nick’s car, and I can well believe it.
The temperature doesn’t stop Roger Westin coming out to meet us though. He – a stocky man in slacks and a collared-shirt – emerges from the main building within seconds of us parking. I deduce from his promptness that he’s been looking out for us in the lobby. He flushes as he welcomes us, asking about our drive, commenting on the weather, stumbling over his words in his eagerness to get them out, and I wish – as I’ve wished with so very many strangers over the years – that I could wave a wand for him, dissipate the absurd illusion of our celebrity, enable him to talk to us like he would anyone else.We’re no different, I promise. Possibly just a bit more screwed up.But since I can’t, I give him my biggest smile, and thank him again for having us along. Nick, meanwhile – in the absence of his own wand – apologises for cutting it so fine, whilst Felix cracks a joke about Nick’s driving, and asks what he can smell cooking.
‘Scones and chocolate torte,’ Roger says. ‘I hope you’ve brought an appetite.’
‘I always bring an appetite,’ says Felix, not mentioning the huge portion of sticky toffee pudding we’ve just eaten.
‘Then please –’ Roger holds out his arm in the direction of the home’s sliding door entrance – ‘come this way. Tim’s in good spirits, and eager to meet you.’
Tim’s only recently moved into this home. When Imogen first met him, five years ago now, he was still living in his own house, nearby. He was there alone, but that’s all I know about his past, beyond his service in the war; apparently, he was very closed up with Imogen when it came to his own life.
‘Probably best not to probe,’ Imogen cautioned me on the phone. ‘It might upset him.’
She obviously feels very protective of him. No surprise,given all the time they’ve spent together – and how much their conversations have transformed her life.
That they met was no serendipitous thing. Imogen tracked him down after seeing him interviewed in a 1970s documentary on Bomber Command in which he spoke about his role as a navigator, and, briefly, the disappearance of his crew. At that stage, she was still unpublished, with six rejected manuscripts gathering dust in her metaphorical bottom drawer, and determined, seventh time around, to come up with a premise hooky enough to entice a publisher. It was while she was trawling the internet, looking for inspiration, that she came across the phenomenon of World War Two ghost planes: aircraft which either disappeared without explanation, like Glenn Miller’s, or were found, but with no trace of their crew inside. The most famous of those used to be the B-24D,Lady Be Good, but then Imogen discovered Tim’s interview, wrote him an imploring letter asking him to share more of his memories with her, and now it’sMabel’s Furythat everyone knows about.
‘He called me as soon as he got my letter,’ she’s told me. ‘He said it would be an honour to talk about it all. I had no idea if I’d find a story in his recollections, but then I met him, in a Costa Coffee, atmospherically enough, and within about a minute, started getting excited. All he wanted to talk about was his friends, and Iris and Robbie especially. I think they left him with huge survivor’s guilt. Seventy years must have felt a very long time to carry that.’
I think about those words as Roger shows Nick, Felix and me into the lounge adjoining Tim’s bedroom, and Tim – by the window in an armchair – tremblingly pushes himself to standing, his gaze hungry as he meets first mine, then Nick’s, then mine again, moving across our faces eagerly, like he might discover some trace of his lost comrades in our features.
I’m no longer worrying about how I compare to Iris. I’m too distracted drinking in my first sight of him. He’s changed, of course, from the young man I’ve obsessed over on the novel’s cover, and I can see the scars left byMabel’s Fury’s flames clearly on his cheeks, neck, and lips. But his white hair is still thick, his jaw strong and square, and his intent eyes are unquestionablyhis.
I’d have known them anywhere.
I find them impossible to look away from. Just as with that woman in the pub earlier, they really don’t feel like a stranger’s eyes. They’re dark in colour,deepest brown,much like Robbie’s in the novel, and I wonder, now I see them, if it was Tim who Imogen was subconsciously thinking about when she wrote her descriptions of Robbie. She told me just this week that she has no idea what colour Robbie’s eyes really were. It came up because I mentioned how much Nick’s contacts have been torturing him.
