He laughed, impatiently swatting tears from his eyes. ‘I’m all right, really.’
‘It wasn’t my fault, was it?’
‘No! Of course not.’ He thought of Joan. When he had sung all he could remember of Paper Moon she would say, ‘Daddy sing again.’ Sometimes he wouldn’t, sometimes he was tired and had had enough. He closed his eyes again, he forced himself to be brightly chatty. ‘So, how is Jason? Did you go and see him in the end?’
‘Yes. He sends his love.’ Carefully she said, ‘I remembered you to Hugh Morgan.’
He swallowed hard to suppress his tears. At last he managed, ‘Did you?’
‘You were right – he was angry.’
Bobby leaned against the wall. Since answering the phone the evening had grown darker and he shivered, cold suddenly. At his back the stairs ascended into the gloom; at his feet the dim light from the porch cast the long shadow of the hatstand across the floor, its almost-human shape folding into the corner. It seemed all Parkwood’s ghosts had gathered to watch him: the whole, nearly extinct Harris tribe. Without thinking he said quickly, ‘Nina, I miss you so much.’
‘And I miss you too –’
‘Do you? Shall I come home?’
When she hesitated he laughed, a shaming, defeated noise. ‘Home! Where’s that anyway? I thought it was here.’
‘And isn’t it?’
He couldn’t answer; his throat was constricting with the effort of not crying. Gently Nina said, ‘Bobby, is there anyone there with you?’
He laughed brokenly. ‘I’ve scared them all away.’
‘Oh Bobby, don’t say that.’
There was a note of impatience in her voice and he remembered how much she hated him – any man – to show weakness, to be too hotly dramatic. After a moment he managed to sit up straight and ask the ultimate cool question. ‘So, tell me what happened with Hugh.’
‘Nothing much.’ After a moment’s hesitation she said, ‘You should have told me you’d fallen out with him so badly.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘You must have really hurt him.’
‘Of course! Because that’s what I do, isn’t it? Go around hurting people I care for.’
‘You should have told me. He was so angry.’
‘But I told you he would be, my darling.’ He could hear the campness in his voice and despised himself for it. Making an effort to be calmer he said, ‘Nina – didn’t it occur to you that he was just jealous? I don’t know why you wanted to mention me –’
‘Because I thought it would be nice for you to hear from an old friend! Is that so bad?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘It’s not so bad.’
She must have heard the resignation in his voice because she said, ‘I won’t see him again.’
‘No?’
‘He has no imagination.’
Bobby laughed, remembering how Hugh would enter into the spirit of the games he invented only when he had satisfied himself that they were proper boys’ games. If he had to dress as a cowboy or an Indian or a redcoat soldier there had to be enough hunting and killing. Knives had to be stolen from the kitchen, along with matches for bonfires and broom handles for makeshift bayonets. Hugh would camouflage his face with mud, even allow him to smudge Indian war-paint stripes across his cheeks, although he drew the line at feathered headdresses. Hugh was fastidious, even as a small child.
Curious suddenly Bobby asked, ‘Is he handsome?’
‘Cartoon handsome.’
‘Did he ask after me?’
‘I told you, he was angry.’
‘But did he …’ He trailed off, not knowing how to form the question without giving himself away. At last he said, ‘He doesn’t have very much to be angry about.’
‘No, probably not.’ Her tone had changed and he knew she was ready to wind down the conversation and to hang up, duty done.
Too quickly he said, ‘How’s work? How’s Irene and Cathy?’
‘Fine.’ She laughed bleakly. ‘Irene envies you, your escape from London, it’s so depressing here. Everyone you see looks so sick and tired –’
‘You could escape, too, if you wanted.’
‘Could I? How?’
He forced a smile although his heart was hammering and his hand tightened around the phone. ‘You could come here. For a visit.’
He hadn’t meant to ask her; if he’d thought about it he knew he would never have summoned the courage. Listening to her silence he thought about pretending he was joking, that of course she wouldn’t want to travel two hundred miles north just to see him. Instead, to his surprise, he remained silent too, realising how much he wanted to see her.
At last Nina said, ‘Would you really want me to?’
‘Why not?’ He made his voice light. ‘It would be fun, wouldn’t it? I could show you all Thorp’s interesting sights.’
‘Does it have many?’
‘No.’ When she laughed he said, ‘There’s not so much of the war about up here, not so many memories. Will you come?’
He pictured her expression, the one she used when she wanted to let him down gently, one that was all too familiar since he was burnt. As he was about to give up hope she said, ‘I suppose I’m owed a few days holiday.’
He closed his eyes in relief. ‘Come this weekend. I’ll send you the money for a first-class ticket.’
CHAPTER NINE
AS SHE STOOD ON the platform at King’s Cross Nina thought about Cathy and wished she had kissed her goodbye. But the baby had been crying most of the night, she’d heard her through the wall, and she knew that she would be exhausted. When she’d gone to say goodbye to Irene she’d only stood over Cathy’s cot, watching her sleep for a while. Laid on her back, her hands were clenched in fists above her head, her left cheek shiny and red so that Nina knew it would be hot and tight as a drum. Joan had suffered with teething, too.
Bobby had said, ‘She’s beautiful. Like you.’
It was a few days after Joan’s birth, and he stood at the foot of her hospital bed, cradling Joan in his arms, the white cellular blanket like a cloud against the blue of his uniform. He looked up from studying her baby’s face. ‘You know I’ll take care of you both, don’t you?’
She’d struggled to sit up, still sore and aching from her long labour. Her once small breasts were hard and so tender she dreaded the greedy clamp of her daughter’s gums. Even now milk leaked from her, staining through the complicated seams and fastening of her maternity bra and sensible nightdress. Her hair hung in greasy rat-tails; she stank of blood and milk. As usual, Bobby looked immaculate and smelt as if he intended to make love to someone that afternoon. She remembered holding out her arms for her daughter, angry with him suddenly. She’d hardly heard what he’d said, hardly understood, too taken up with the anger she felt towards him in those days. A few months earlier he had held her hands as he told her that her husband was dead. He had seen his Spitfire shot down. He was convinced he hadn’t suffered. He had held her as she’d wept and his body had been stiff and awkward because her marriage had made them strangers for a while.
Her train pulled into the station and she walked along the platform, looking into carriages until she found one with a vacant seat. On board, she stowed her bag away and sat down. Opposite, a woman cradled a toddler on her knee, a protective hand shielding his head as he slept. Nina smiled at her, wishing she’d chosen another carriage.
As the train began to pull away, there was a commotion on the platform as a man sprinted through the crowds. He called out to the porter, only to push past him and pull open the door of Nina’s carriage. Inside, he slammed it shut with a noise that woke the sleeping child. The child’s mother glared at him.
‘Sorry.’ He was panting, his chest heaving. ‘Nearly missed it …’
Nina longed for a newspaper to hide behind. As Hugh Morgan finally sat down next to the woman and crying child, she looked out of the window quickly, buying time to compose herself. All the same, she felt his eyes
on her and could sense his astonishment.
After a few moments he said, ‘Hello.’ She turned to face him and he smiled awkwardly. ‘Small world.’
The child’s crying stopped. He seemed to sleep again and with her free hand his mother took a book from her handbag on the seat beside her and began to read. Hugh glanced at the woman, then sat forward, closing the gap separating him from Nina.
‘I almost missed the train,’ he said conversationally.
Nina sat further back in her seat.
‘I slept in. Can you believe it? I’ve never over-slept in my life. Henry asked me only the other day if I needed an alarm clock, I said no. Never needed one until now.’
He was dishevelled; it was obvious he’d dressed quickly and hadn’t had time to shave. He would suit a beard, she thought, and immediately reprimanded herself. Hugh Morgan could grow a beard long enough to strangle himself with for all she cared.
Taking out his cigarettes he offered her the open packet. When she shook her head he shrugged, lighting one himself. Shaking out the match he sat back in his seat again and exhaled a long plume of smoke down his nose. It was obvious he was trying to think of something else to say. Looking up from her book, the woman next to him met Nina’s eye and smiled archly before lowering her gaze back to the page.
Nina stared out of the window her hands folded in her lap, her feet primly together. She was thankful she’d worn her green two piece; its skirt was the longest she had, the tweed material thick and concealing. Her cream blouse was buttoned to her throat, and she’d put her hair up beneath the suit’s matching felt hat with its single, dull feather.
From the corner of her eye she saw Hugh rest his head back and close his eyes. She hoped he would sleep, or at least pretend to, easing the embarrassment between them that was causing such an atmosphere in the carriage. She looked at him furtively, remembering his mouth on hers. Although everything else about his technique had been quick and hard and frantic, surprisingly his kisses had been long and luxurious, as though he savoured the taste of her. His kisses had taken her back to her adolescence, the sweet, heavy petting in the back row of the Roxy picture house in the days before Bobby. Bobby had introduced her to more sophisticated pleasures; with Bobby there had always been beds, unless he had invented reasons to do without them.
Hugh Morgan began to snore quietly. Relieved, Nina gazed out of the window, watching the narrow back gardens and red brick houses of the suburbs speed past. Much of the city was one huge bombsite, filthy with the brick dust and debris from collapsing buildings. Everywhere boards had gone up around craters in the earth where shops or homes or offices had stood. Yesterday she’d seen a street closed, Danger, Unexploded Bomb signs being unloaded from the back of an army truck. It would be easy to imagine the war wasn’t over, that the world was even bleaker now than it had been in 1939. As the train picked up speed she began to relax a little, glad to be leaving London behind.
Hugh woke with a start. Disorientated, he grasped the edge of his seat to stop himself falling, realising that it was only the jolt of waking, that he wasn’t plunging into a black, freezing sea. He glanced around the carriage. Nina still sat diagonally opposite him, still watching the countryside recede; all the other passengers had gone. He rested his head back, his heart still pounding, and allowed himself to look at her, careful to keep his eyes half-closed so that she might think he was still sleeping.
Earlier, when he’d settled himself in his seat and saw her sitting there, he’d felt the kind of excitement he could only remember from being a child at Christmas, a kind of joyousness rising from the pit of his stomach. He’d given himself away of course; his foolish smile must have stretched from one ear to the other. She had only gazed at him coldly, losing none of her perfect composure.
The train jolted over points and Hugh opened his eyes fully, no longer caring if Nina noticed that he was awake or not. He wanted her to speak; even ordinary, empty small talk would be better than this pointed, painful silence. He sighed, remembering again what an arse he’d made of himself last time they were together.
‘You keep sighing, Hugh.’
He looked at her sharply. Flustered, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’
‘Pretend we’re strangers.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You can tell strangers on trains all your worries and then get off at your station and never have to face them again.’
‘Face what – the stranger or the worry?’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think I have any worries, not real ones, anyway.’
‘Lucky you.’
She returned her gaze to the window, giving him the feeling that he’d inadvertently snubbed her, although her expression was so maddeningly inscrutable he had an idea she might be laughing at him. He sighed again, only to catch himself, and Nina smiled at her reflection in the grubby glass.
Too stiffly he said, ‘Do you have any worries?’
She looked at him. ‘Only one, at the moment.’
‘Shall I pretend to be your stranger?’
For a while she held his gaze, only to look down at her hands. He noticed for the first time there was a wedding ring on her finger, she twisted it around before looking up at him again. ‘Are you going to Thorp?’
‘Yes. Are you?’
‘Bobby’s invited me to stay with him.’
‘Oh.’
Lightly she said, ‘It’s a holiday. He’s going to show me around –’
Hugh laughed. ‘That won’t take long. There’s not much to Thorp.’
‘So why are you going back?’
He looked away, catching sight of the pale ghost of his own reflection in the window. At sea he would sometimes dream of Thorp, that his ship had sailed right up the Tees to that point where the river broadened accommodatingly behind Thorp High Street. Anchor dropped, gangplank lowered, he would shoulder his kit bag and disembark on home ground like a rescued Robinson Crusoe. His ship would disappear. Awake, he could never decide if the dream was good or bad.
Nina said gently, ‘Hugh?’ He glanced at her and she smiled as though concerned. ‘You go miles away, sometimes.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s all right, I understand.’
He smiled, politely accepting her belief – the belief of most civilians – that she had any understanding at all. He thought of Bob Harris, wondering if she claimed the same understanding of his sudden, spiritual absences, and a hot prickle of jealousy made him look away. He felt his smile curdle and he took out his cigarettes, self-consciously aware of her watching him.
He offered her the open packet and she leaned forward to accept the cigarette he’d pulled out a little. He caught the scent of her perfume and remembered that he had tasted its bitter, chemical sting on the skin between her breasts, that it failed to mask the real, sweat-and-honey smell of her. Remembering, he found himself becoming aroused, hating his body’s unruly, schoolboy responsiveness. He turned back to the window and saw that his mouth had set into a hard, angry line.
From the corner of his eye he saw Nina take a small book from the handbag on her knee. He recognised the bold black lettering on its dull khaki cover and knew that the book was Dawn Song. He glanced at her and she caught his eye and smiled almost apologetically.
‘It fits in my bag easily.’
‘Light verse?’
She laughed, looking down at the open book and smoothing her fingers across the pages. He couldn’t bear the thought that she was about to start reading the poems in his presence and he reached out and took the book from her.
He said, ‘You know them by heart, don’t you?’
‘Some of them.’ She met his gaze coolly, as though he was an unpredictable child she needed to assess before taking action. ‘ Homecoming is the most memorable, the way the lines scan –’
‘He tells people he wrote it for me. He didn’t. He just likes everyone to think he’s a good, family man.’ He looked down at the book, hating the smooth dry feel of it, the ostentatious
arrogance of the embossed title. Placing it on the seat beside him he said, ‘I don’t recognise anyone in his poems, not me, not my mother, no one.’
She exhaled smoke down her nose and turned to look out of the window. After a moment she said, ‘Bobby hates his poetry, too.’
Jealousy made his voice harsh as he said, ‘You know – that only makes me like him less. Odd, that, don’t you think?’
She picked a stray strand of tobacco from her tongue, a delicate, sexy gesture. ‘It’s not so odd, really. Most men dislike Bobby.’ She held his gaze, reinforcing his idea that she only mentioned Bobby to provoke him. Evenly she said, ‘Women adore him, of course. I’ve seen all kinds of women make terrible fools of themselves over Flight Lieutenant Bobby Harris.’
She stressed his name and rank as though it was a joke and the bitterness in her voice seemed to sting the close, over-used air of the carriage. He watched her draw on the cigarette and exhale a long-held breath of smoke. Unable to help himself he said, ‘You sound as though you hate him, too.’
‘Hate? I didn’t mention hate. No one hates Bobby. He doesn’t allow them to get close enough.’ She seemed to consider, then, ‘Unless you hate him?’
He looked down at the book beside him. Picking it up he held it out to her. ‘Here. Read if you want to.’ She ignored the book. At last, feeling foolish, he put it down.
The train raced along tracks cut between fields that sprouted green with shoots of plants he couldn’t name, or were grazed by black and white cows, the same utilitarian animal repeated over and over. He wished he could sleep again but the atmosphere was too charged for that now; he shifted uncomfortably, wanting to break the silence but unable to think of a single thing to say that was safe and ordinary and didn’t involve bloody Bobby Harris.
He saw her turn the wedding ring on her finger and blurted, ‘I didn’t know you’d been married.’
‘Why should you?’ She looked up from her hands. ‘He was a fighter pilot, he was killed in 1940.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She folded her hands in her lap; he noticed that she kept her feet together on the floor, her back ramrod straight. After a moment she said, ‘We had a baby, Joan, but he didn’t live to see her. She died, too, of measles. She was three.’
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