by Stuart Evers
‘Gwen was telling us all about your journey,’ Carter says. ‘Sounds like quite an ordeal.’
‘We were lucky,’ Drum says. ‘It could have been much worse.’
‘So I hear.’
Drum tells Carter of the crash and the repair work in the torrential rain, and how lucky they were, but at some point during the retelling Drum understands that Carter is not listening. He shows all the signs of attention – his body leaned in towards Drum, nodding his head at each narrative point, shaking his head in sympathy – but it’s clear Carter is away from the conversation, working deeply on something else.
‘That sounds awful,’ Carter says, just at the right time, just at the correct juncture, but there is contempt to the commiseration, also a sense of finality. What else to say but yes, yes it was awful?
‘Yes,’ Drum says. ‘It was awful. But we’re here now.’
Carter takes a cigarette and lights it, lets the smoke pipe from his nose.
‘Yes,’ Carter says. ‘You’re here now all right.’
15
Annie watches Tommy eat; Tommy watches Annie eat. They are both good eaters, a fact Daphne and Gwen established early this morning, long before Carter put in an appearance. Does Annie eat porridge? Yes, she loves porridge. So does Tommy. I’m so glad he’s not a fussy eater. Annie won’t eat eggs, mind you. How strange. Yes, it is.
So many such conversations of late, it’s hard to remember what Gwen talked about before Annie came along. People see baby and baby is all they see: a plump-cheeked conversation starter. The same for all women, the same conversations in every language, in every corner of the globe; the same conversations stretching back through history. Does he sleep? Does she do that too? Do you think that’s normal? Does your little one eat her vegetables?
Dismal, these conversations, yet so easily reached for, and neither party truly knowing if the other isn’t just simply going through the motions. Daphne is particularly difficult to read in this regard. She appears interested in such topics as good recipes for children, how long naptime should last, and breastfeeding; her face one of utter concentration when listening to Gwen, a sense of almost note-taking. Yet, for all that, there’s a sense that this behaviour has been learned through observation, rather than through natural aptitude. There are moments when Daphne seems to drift, just slightly, like a radio station detuning, then returning stronger than ever.
‘Last one, Tommy,’ Daphne says.
Daphne’s hair is light pine against the dark wood of the kitchen; her sheath dress powder-blue, the club-collared jacket likewise, the ensemble covered by an elegant, translucent housecoat embroidered with lilacs. The kind of fashion Gwen slicks through in magazines when at the hairdressers: perfect for the button-nosed and waifly-hipped, for those with book-balanced deportment and bank accounts.
It is hard to be in such company; hard it seems for both of them. Gwen gets the impression they both see rather less of people than their husbands realize. At first, meeting mothers at the park is solidarity; but later it is routine. Like when the factory is on strike: all the men just waiting for something to finally happen.
‘I thought,’ Daphne says as she wipes Tommy’s face and takes off her housecoat, ‘that after breakfast we could have a little tour of the house, then take a stroll down to the brook. The weather’s supposed to be fine this morning.’
‘Then after that,’ Carter says. ‘Back here for a spot of lunch, then I thought we’d drive into the town and have a wander around the shops. There’s a terrific market.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ Gwen says. And aside from the house tour and the shopping expedition, it does sound something like wonderful. The night-time walk from the car to the door had given her a perverse thrill. Her feet in the suck of mud, she’d suddenly realized how much she missed the muck and mulch, the scent of manure. Here was the promise of stagnant water, perhaps even a rope swing. To show Annie this. To show her the dirt roots of her life in northern England, in its disordered fields and wilding copses.
‘What say you, Drum?’ Carter says.
‘Sorry?’ Drum says. ‘What was that? I was just . . .’
‘Away with the fairies, is what you were,’ Carter says. ‘Well, be careful; they say there’s all kinds of woodland folk around these parts. They might come for you.’
Gwen smiles at Drum and he gives an apologetic smile back. He’s seemed dazed since coming downstairs, as though he’s left crucial pieces of himself in the bedroom. So still when asleep, so peaceful-looking. Could not have woken him. Would have been too cruel. Looking now like he needs more sleep. Another few hours to recharge.
It’s something on the radio that’s got to him, she realizes. She can see it in the jokingly concerned looks between Carter and Drum, the stuff about woodland folk some kind of cover. Cuba again, most likely. If it had been the strike, he’d have shushed the room, asked to turn up the bulletin. Gwen watches her husband, the pallid smile he forces out.
‘I’ll keep on my guard,’ Drum says and puts his hand on hers.
16
After stacking the breakfast things in the sink, they are given the tour. Gwen makes all the right noises, and Drum tries to do the same, but he sounds like a busted echo. And this is the library. Oh, lovely. And this is the drawing room. Ah, lovely. And this the dining room. Oh, how lovely. On and on. So many rooms and no more words for the rooms, just beamed smiles and appreciative nods.
Carter keeps himself to the outside of the four, someone always between him and Drum, no matter how Drum positions himself. He carries Tommy, too; a little boy amulet warding Drum off. It is strange; as though they should not be seen together for fear a scandal will be exposed.
They are shown another bedroom, the blue room. Carter fusses with a blue ashtray on a blue-stained dresser. Drum slips the other side of Gwen and pretends to inspect a seascape in a gilt frame. Seamlessly, Carter sets down the ashtray and put his arms around his wife’s blue-clad waist.
‘With that dress on I thought you’d disappeared,’ Carter says. ‘I just wanted to check you were still here.’
She takes his hands from her waist.
‘For now, yes,’ she says, ushering them all out to the landing.
‘Now,’ she says, opening the next door. ‘This is Thomas’s room.’
Carter has miscalculated his position and Drum is now beside him. Drum taps him on the shoulder and Carter turns sharply, anxious-eyed, with a long finger to his lips. He nods down and Tommy is in his arms, asleep. Curse the child, the morning nap, the protector. He thinks of Patty for a moment; a strange face from the recent past. The way she must have felt; to be cast off, to be an embarrassment perhaps. A reminder of more primal times.
‘He mostly sleeps through the night now,’ Carter says to Gwen in a whisper, his back to Drum. ‘But for a few months it was hell.’
‘It was, yes,’ Daphne says. ‘It’s slightly better now.’
They take the staircase down to the hallway. It looks like the kitchen has been tidied in their absence, but Drum does not recall anyone doing this. Perhaps there are staff they have not been told about, secret servants tidying in the shadows.
‘You have such a beautiful house,’ Gwen says. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘I’m so glad you like it,’ Daphne says. ‘And I’m so glad you’re the first to see it all finished.’
Carter looks at the clock on the wall. He looks at the watch on his wrist.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘let’s get this one in the pram and we can walk down to the brook. Did you bring wellingtons?’
‘We brought everything,’ Drum replies.
‘Of course, you did,’ Carter says. ‘Always prepared, isn’t that right, Moore?’
16
Over tea and cake, their daughters playing on the sitting-room rug, Gwen’s friend Bridget often tells stories of back home; half-remembered gossip about the Lagos of her childhood. Gwen likes to reciprocate, telling Bridget all the tales she knows from Mi
llom. When they talk of back home, they talk of different streets but the same cast of blowhards, tricksters, devil women, low-lives and love rats. It always makes her feel blessed her family is closer than Bridget’s, though she has seen them no more often that Bridget has seen hers. My people, Bridget often says.
Standing beside the brook, in the shade of a birdwatcher’s hide, Gwen is shamed by Drum helping Annie throw sticks towards the brook; shamed by Carter’s encouragement; shamed by the small talk she is making to a rigidly cold Daphne.
Where are her people? They are not so far north of here: her father, her brother, her nephew. Her people, the ones she does not think about enough. Her people, the ones who are yet to meet Annie. Her people who do not even know how close she is to them.
To come all this way and not stop by, to not make the effort. Shaming that. And yet, would they come to see her, all things being equal? Unlikely. John and Barbara have their hands full with the pub, with Jack and with Da. Families move on, move away; it happens and there is no remorse or recrimination. When people leave the town, they stay left until they return. Everyone knows that. It’s like they’ve never been there in the first place.
‘We don’t come here enough.’ Daphne says and smiles, frigid with cold, a scarf coiled just up to her lips. Tommy has woken and is sitting up in the pram, sleepy eyed and running nose. ‘I don’t make enough of an effort.’
It is the closest to a confession either of them has made; the closest it seems to hearing a true voice on Daphne’s lips. It is chastising, it is bitter. As though a lack of effort worse than any other sin. Daphne smiles, but it is an attempt to catch back those words, to rebuild the facade.
‘I’m the same,’ Gwen says. ‘We have a park five minutes up the road and I don’t go nearly enough.’
Untrue this, but met with a thankful nod of the head. To the park most days, in most weathers, there to meet with Bridget and her Susan. But to have this? This on the doorstep? Gwen imagines it for a second, running through the fields, scampering through the brook. Throwing sticks, cracking ice in the winter.
‘Oh, look,’ Daphne says, pointing to Carter and Drum. ‘It’s got competitive. What a surprise.’
Drum and Carter have left Annie with a stick while they skim stones on the brook. On the third attempt, Drum manages five bounces on the dimpled water; on the fourth, Carter manages six. Daphne slow claps, as does Gwen, until she looks down to Annie, the stick by her side.
‘Hey, Annie, don’t do that, my love,’ she says.
Annie has a handful of silt and pebbles and is smearing it around her mouth. Gwen takes a handkerchief and wipes Annie’s mouth, Annie smiling, gritted lips and cheeks. A rush of love at that moment. A rush of it, endorphins surging like they have been charged and let go. Her people.
17
Dried-out and warmed by the fire, Daphne and Gwen head upstairs to put down the children for their long naps; the two mothers delighted that Tommy and Annie have the same sleeping patterns.
‘I’m going to lie down with him,’ Daphne says.
‘You should do the same,’ Drum says to Gwen. ‘You were up with the larks.’
Gwen gives him the ice eyes, the wide eyes, but Annie is crying and he knows Gwen usually naps in the day, though she says she doesn’t. Can tell from the way the bed is remade, the corners not so neat.
‘We’ll be fine on our own,’ Carter says. ‘Don’t you worry about us.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Daphne says. ‘But if you insist on going to the pub, no more than three, okay? I don’t want you crashing into any trees again.’
‘On my honour,’ Carter says and salutes to her already-turning shoulders. Drum kisses Annie goodnight, Gwen goodnight.
‘You be careful,’ Gwen says.
He watches the four of them vacate the room, Tommy now howling, Daphne shushing. Clever Carter. The evasions of the morning, the stilted conversations over breakfast, during the house tour, down by the brook, the quickly shutting down of talk over Cuba – not now, Drum, not now! – he should have seen there was reason to it. All about timing. The kids having a nap. The mothers too. The perfect time for a further tour. No, not a tour, but an inspection. An inspection of the bunker and a briefing as to the latest intelligence from Cuba. A glass of whisky in the sanctuary, Carter opening doors onto toilets and billets, showing him the space, the specifics of it.
‘Okay,’ Carter says and claps Drum on the back. ‘Let’s get going.’
Drum has been trying to work out where the entrance to the bunker is situated. He assumes it is in the cellar, probably somewhere below the pantry. They walk through the kitchen, quickly over the flags, past the pantry, then through the side entrance and out to where the cars are parked. Carter opens the door of the Jaguar, gets inside and opens the passenger-side door.
‘Come on,’ he shouts. ‘We’ve got an hour before the Wolf stops serving.’
Carter reverses the car with the passenger door still wide open.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Look lively. This’ll be the only chance we get to go to the pub.’
Drum gets into the car. The leather of the seats is the same colour as Carter’s hair. He does not want to think that the car purrs, but it does purr, it’s the only noise he can compare it to, and like a purring cat it is distraction enough. The burr walnut of the dash is distraction, the smoothness of the gear change distraction too. But not enough. Not nearly enough.
‘The latest is good,’ Carter says, pulling away. ‘From Cuba, I mean.’
‘On the news it sounded worse,’ Drum says. ‘Reports of a plane being shot down?’
‘Mrs Eyre informs me that there are rays of light amongst the dark. She says they’re beginning to realize how high the stakes really are. That plane being shot down is nothing to worry about.’
‘And Mrs Eyre is . . .?’
‘My mole,’ he says with a smile. ‘My father’s old secretary, but disgustingly well informed.’
‘And she says there’s nothing to worry about?’ Drum says.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘It rather sounds like it is to me.’
Carter swings onto the road and puts down his foot, flooring the accelerator and hurtling the asphalt. Drum tries not to look concerned, though the road is still slick from the previous day’s rain and Carter does not slow when the next bend comes, but leans himself into the turn like a rally driver. The needle hits eighty, then ninety. Drum closes his eyes. Another ironic death. St Peter now saying, ‘Welcome back, Drummond. Now, where’s the family?’
*
The Wolf is a large stone cottage with a harried appearance, as though the effort of keeping its bricks in its foundations is almost insurmountable. Carter has talked often of the Wolf, its landlord Bobby with the small hands; but Drum could have gone a lifetime without seeing it. Now seeing it, he is disappointed. He expected a thatched roof, for some reason; something more country village than farmhand boozer.
Carter cuts the engine but does not get out of the car. He turns to Drum but Drum is looking at the flinty exterior of the pub, the huff of smoke from its chimney.
‘You’re angry with me?’ Carter says. ‘Is that what this is? You come to my house and I take you in without batting an eyelid and you’re angry with me?’
Yes. Angry, exactly that. Livid with it, in fact.
‘I never said I’m angry with you,’ Drum says. ‘When did I say that?’
‘You don’t need to say it, Drum, I can smell it on you like camphor and shit.’
‘I just thought—’
‘What did you just think?’
‘I just thought,’ Drum says, ‘you’d show me the bunker, not take me to the bloody pub.’
Carter’s face lightens, his brow uncreases. He laughs that laugh and takes out cigarettes, lights one and does not crack the window.
‘You’re a proper comedian, Drum,’ he says. ‘Honestly, you should get yourself on the stage.’
He laughs and smoke gutters from his mouth.
‘Only you would want to spend the last hours before an atomic war touring a nuclear bunker.’
And Drum laughs at that, laughs at the absurdity of it, at the anger that’s stilling but has not yet been quelled. They laugh and there is smoke, and there is someone coming out of the Wolf, blowing on his hands. Drum can briefly see inside the pub. It looks cosy in there, warm and comforting.
‘Come on,’ Carter says. ‘Let’s get a pint in.’
*
Carter is right: Bobby does have very small hands. They are dainty, made odder still by the addition of a large sovereign ring. Bobby serves them pints and chasers with a gap-toothed smile, gives off a waft of beef dripping. The bar is bigger than expected, almost too warm inside, dogs sleeping under the feet of their masters, the room smoked by cigarettes and pipes and the fire in the grate. They walk to a table at the far end of the bar, past a man who nods at Carter but without any kind of warmth, more as in warning.
‘I’m loved by all,’ Carter says. ‘You can tell, can’t you?’
The long, low smile and they clink glasses, same as they have done in so many pubs. A last supper of beer and whisky. A last go around. Better to be here than underground. Carter always right on these kinds of things.
At the bar, Bobby bursts into a snatch of song, doesn’t seem to notice he is doing it.
‘I’ve been coming here a lot,’ Carter says. ‘After work, on the way home, I’ve been stopping in. It’s calming, you know? Just look at these old skates. There’s not a care in the world between them. I asked that one there –’ Carter points to a man with a pint of stout and a pipe – ‘what he thought of Cuba and he starts talking about cigars. Clueless, the lot of them. And I envy that. I envy that so bloody much.’
Carter shuffles the Scotch in front of him.
‘You come in here and it doesn’t seem possible, does it? Take this pint glass. The history within it. The invention of glass. The invention of beer. Yes, but what else? The invention of measurements, the invention of social conventions and codes. All human history in a pint glass. You think about that and you can’t conceive of it coming to an end. Thousands of years of human endeavour over as quick as throwing a pint to the floor. You just can’t imagine it.’