Mark Mills - Amagansett

Conrad watched him all the way.

Rollo turned as he crested the frontal dune, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Looks fishy to me!’ he yelled.

Conrad waved, and he was gone.

Wednesday was pushing it, but it would force him to dig himself out of the irremediable gloom into which he had sunk. Something needed to change, and fast. He’d taken to muttering to himself as he shuffled around the house like a soul in limbo.

Maybe things would be different once he’d visited her. He felt ready to. That in itself was something. He checked his watch. Still too early. The cemetery would be milling with people paying tribute to their dead.

By midday they should all be gone, driven indoors by the building heat.

He parked on Three Mile Harbor Road and walked the last couple of hundred yards. He was wearing fawn twill pants and the white shirt reserved for special occasions. He had even dug out some lace-up shoes.

He felt foolish in the clothes, and no doubt he looked it too. He knew Lillian would have laughed at him, but somehow he didn’t care. In fact it brought a smile to his lips, picturing the glint of playful mockery in her eyes.

The cemetery was deserted except for a scrappy-looking dog loping about, forlornly nosing the ground as if aware that all those bones were down there but far beyond its reach. Bouquets of fresh flowers laid that morning studded the ground like colorful pins in a green felt board. The sun was high, intense, and it cast his shadow black on the ground at his feet.

Her grave was buried beneath a deep blanket of wreaths and other flowers, and it struck him that even now they were shielded from each other. He clamped his eyes shut in the hope of blotting out the scene. But dim shapes took form in the darkness, coalescing to produce her features, set in repose, a low, gloomy light cutting across them. Her wide-spaced eyes doomed to collapse in on themselves, her lips to draw back into a hideous rictus grin, her tongue to protrude, the flesh of her barely freckled cheeks predestined to blacken, blister then liquefy, consumed from within by the very organisms that had struggled so hard to ensure the body’s survival.

He knew what happened to the body after death, he knew that decay was in fact life for a multitude of other creatures. He knew that the deeper you buried a corpse, the slower the process of decomposition. He knew that in the heat of summer it raced ahead, and in the bitter chill of a mountain winter it ground almost to a halt. He knew all this because he had gone out at night to recover the bodies of his fallen comrades.

They were rarely whole. Often days would have passed before any attempt at recovery could be made, time enough for the scavengers that inhabited the dense Italian macchia to feast away at leisure, to drag off the limbs, or bits of limbs, cleaved away by a mortar blast or a burst of fire from a German 88.

Had his unit not been operating behind enemy lines for so much of the time, there would have been others to perform the grisly task. But the boys from the Grave Registration Service were deemed lacking in the necessary skills to move around undetected in enemy territory, and only one of their number had been assigned to Conrad’s Company. He was a young corporal from southern Illinois by the name of Harold Bunt, although everyone called him the Professor because he’d broken off his studies to go to war.

The Professor’s orders were to co-ordinate the retrieval and dispatch of the dead from the safety of their own lines, assembling the bodies as best he could, then shipping the canvas-wrapped packages back down the mountain on mules. He soon ignored his orders, though, extending his remit to assist in the recovery of the dead. He did this selflessly, aware of the terrible toll it was taking on the soldiers.

To the Professor, those weren’t his buddies out there, they were just KIAs, brave men killed in action who’d earned the right to a decent burial and a small white cross with their name on it. Circumstances permitting, he extended the same respect to the enemy, burying their dead in shallow graves where they’d fallen, to be recovered at some future date by either side, depending on which way the territorial pendulum swung. This courtesy was the cause of some surprise to the fighting men, boiling over into anger on a couple of occasions. But the Professor assured them it was customary practice for the men of the Grave Registration Service and he saw no reason to abandon it now.

He kept to himself, eating alone, wary of forming friendships, conscious that his role made him a figure of some suspicion. As a scout, Conrad came to know him better than most, guiding him over the hostile terrain on nocturnal forays whenever there was a lull in the fighting. Nothing pleased the Professor more than sneaking past an enemy foxhole—hearing the voices, smelling the cigarette smoke—in order to bring a KIA home. It amused him to imagine the look on the Germans’ faces the next morning when they discovered the body was gone.

For Conrad these missions were a welcome change from the normal demands of a night patrol. It was a relief to just slip by in the darkness, no obligation to draw his knife, drop into the hole and silence the enemy’s murmurings.

They started spending more time together, playing chess with a set the Professor had recovered from the rubble of a bombed-out farmhouse. Each time the regiment advanced they split the chess pieces between them so that only half the set would have to be replaced should either man step on a mine or take a direct hit from a mortar or a shell.

For the first few weeks their games were conducted in near silence, each man alone with his thoughts, his strategy. But with time their friendship found a precarious footing, the only kind possible under the circumstances. Experience dictated that to know a man too well was only to store up unnecessary grief for the future. As the fighting increased in ferocity Conrad came to appreciate the true value of their chess games. They permitted him to keep functioning at a certain level of aggression, the right combative pitch. He feared what might happen if he ever allowed himself to come down in between the fire-fights, to think about what he was doing, what he had done. Chess, it seemed, was his way of dealing with things, of keeping going. Others had theirs.

Some talked big and brave and carved notches into their rifle butts. Others retreated into themselves, drawing on resources they never knew they had. Others sought refuge in humor, black as the night at a new moon. You did what you did to get through, that was all. The Professor was no different, turning to science for his crutch, laying his theory on Conrad late one night while they sheltered in a church.

Men died, said the Professor, and when they died the microscopic creatures that inhabited their bodies suddenly turned on them and consumed them. Everyone knew that they came first—the micro-organisms, the protozoa, the bacteria. That’s what all life had once been about. But maybe it still was, maybe the evolution of life was a load of bunk. Life, the life that mattered, was the same as it had always been: microscopic. Only its external appearance had changed, the husk it had molded around itself, the tendrils it had sent out—legs to carry it to better feeding grounds or away from danger, hands to kill on its behalf and nourish it. We were like servants, he went on, laboring under illusions of selfimportance, convinced that they’re the true masters of the house. In truth, we nourish the bugs, and then we die, and then they devour us, their vehicle, before moving on.

Conrad could remember thinking at the time that what the poor fellow needed was a spell of leave, a few days’ furlough in Naples—take in a show or two, flirt with some Red Cross girls. But now he found himself reaching for what the Professor had said that night, trying to see sense in it, draw some kind of solace for what had happened to Lillian, for what was happening to her in that coffin.

It didn’t work.

And he knew then that he would break the pledge he had made to himself, the vow muttered through clenched teeth in the garden of the English hospital, beneath the dying heat of a September sun, the long grass in the orchard littered with fallen fruit.

In that moment, he saw with absolute certainty that he would take another human life.

‘Hello.’

Conrad spun, startled. An elderly woman was standing behind him, frail and stooped, her thinning silver hair as light as goose down.

‘Did you know her?’ she asked.

‘No.’

He saw his lie reflected back at him in her rheumy eyes. How long had he been standing at the grave, adrift on his thoughts? Five minutes? Twenty? More? Hardly the actions of someone with no association.

‘She drowned,’ he said. ‘I found her.’

‘Oh, you’re the fisherman.’

‘One of them. I just came by to pay my respects.’

She seemed satisfied with his response, and turned towards the grave. ‘A tragedy. She was a right beauty.’

The East Hampton Star had run a small piece, along with a picture of Lillian taken at some charity event at the Guild Hall, smiling as always.

‘Kind with it. Always found time to speak to an old lady.’

Conrad cast an eye over the washed-out colors of her dress, the cheap handbag, the swollen feet squeezed into scuffed shoes, and he tried to imagine her moving in Lillian’s circle.

As if reading his thoughts, the old lady turned to him. ‘I used to see her here.’

‘Here?’

‘I come every day, sometimes twice. Hubert likes me to come, you see, even if it’s for a few minutes, just to say hello. Oh, I know it sounds silly, and maybe it is, but I live close, on Osborne Lane, just along from the crossing, so it’s no great hardship, though sometimes my joints protest when the wind’s off the ocean.’

Out of politeness, Conrad allowed her to finish.

‘She used to come here?’ he asked. ‘To the cemetery?’

‘Who?’

He nodded at the grave. ‘Lillian Wallace.’

‘Oh yes, almost every week. To visit someone over there.’

She pointed towards the northeast corner of the cemetery.

‘Almost every week,’ she repeated. ‘Always with flowers.’

‘What kind of flowers?’

‘Just…flowers. I don’t know.’

The directness of the question had unsettled her. Why should he care what variety of flowers Lillian Wallace had brought with her?

‘I best be going.’ She shuffled off, casting a suspicious glance over her shoulder as she went. Conrad waited till she was lost to sight on Cooper Lane before making for the northeast corner of the cemetery.

Apart from the names, there was little to distinguish the headstones from one another—a scattering of rough-hewn granite blocks with polished faces. The resting place of the poor. Poor but not forgotten. Flowers adorned many of the graves.

Which one had drawn her here? And why? Who amongst this silent gathering of the dead had she known or cared about enough to warrant her making regular visits?

It didn’t make sense, not unless it was something to do with a member of the household staff. The maid, Rosa, perhaps. They were close, very close, he knew that. Could Rosa have lost a son, a daughter? No, Lillian would have said something to him. He would have known.

He silently hoped that he didn’t stumble upon an innocent explanation. He wanted the reason for her visits to have a bearing on her death. More than that, he needed it.

He had dredged the memories of their times together for clues, but had turned up nothing. The father she feared, the ambitious brother, the sister who had always belittled her, the fiancé who had left her for another woman. Hardly a happy life, but commonplace stories nonetheless, unremarkable. All he had to go on was a faint impression of disquiet in her last weeks, a remoteness that would settle on her face like a veil when she was off her guard. If she hadn’t been more eager than ever to spend time with him, he might have assumed she was having misgivings about their relationship. He certainly now wished that he’d pushed her a lot harder on the matter.

He glanced around, reading off names at random—familiar names, names still carried by the living—but the answer didn’t present itself. There were just too many to choose from.

He fought the frustration building inside him and cleared his head. Think. If she’d left flowers around the time of her death, they would have to be over a week old, well past their prime, dead even. That excluded most of the graves. In fact, it left only a handful of candidates.

He moved slowly between them, dismissing them in turn: a woman some twenty years dead, Edna White’s stillborn daughter, Orville Hatch who had lost both legs to poor circulation before the end. No obvious connection there.

The name on the next headstone stopped him dead in his tracks.

Being a long-lived flower, the lilies had stood up pretty well, though a scattering of petals lay around the rusted metal vase. He approached slowly, crouching down.

One lily for every year of the short life memorialized in the cold granite. Lilies, a symbol of purity and innocence. He knew that from the somber print that used to hang on the landing of their house, the one his stepmother had brought with her when she moved in with them, the one entitled The Annunciation—the Virgin Mary on her knees before the angel, clutching a single lily.

He could sense Lillian’s mind at work, her hand at play. More than that, though, he had a dim recollection of a conversation, an idle question, or so it had seemed at the time: Lillian asking him if he had known Lizzie Jencks.

Yes, had been his reply, but not well. His father had fished with her father once, setting gill nets off the ocean beach.

Young Lizzie, hair the color of copper wire, always so ready to spring a smile on you, her cheery disposition snuffed out late one night on a lonely lane, victim of a hit-and-run driver.

Fourteen

Hollis had never had cause to visit the Maidstone Club before, and the appearance of a police officer was clearly something of a novelty for the members as well. Four of them gathered on the green abutting the parking lot broke off from their golf game and stared as he pulled the patrol car to a halt. Words were exchanged, and a ripple of laughter passed between the men.

The interior of the clubhouse was cool, dark and strangely dank, the moist air heavy with the odor of wood polish. The desk clerk peered over the top of his spectacles as Hollis approached. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said coolly.

‘I’m looking for Anthony Cordwell.’

‘I wouldn’t know if he was here. Members aren’t required to sign in.’

‘And I suppose you can’t leave the front desk to check.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ came the reply, heavy with false regret.

‘Then I guess I’ll just have to take a look around myself.’

He was a few steps shy of the doors leading to the back terrace when his path was blocked by the desk clerk.

‘I’ll see what I can do. If you’d be so good as to wait over there.’ He indicated some club chairs before disappearing.

Hollis lingered at the doors, curious to get a glimpse of the wealthy at play. From its vantage point at the top of the steep grassy slope, the clubhouse offered a wide vista over the swimming-pool complex with its sandy sunning areas, restaurant, bar and dining patio. Beyond, two long runs of cabanas arced through the broken dunes towards the beach like arms reaching out to embrace the ocean. All around, people were gathered beneath striped umbrellas, finishing lunch or sleeping it off. Only a handful of youngsters were braving the sun, frolicking in the pool, diving for hoops.