‘There’s more to Palmer than that –’
He looked at her sharply, a different, harder looking man without his glasses. Frowning he said, ‘He leads his men to almost certain death, and quite cheerfully.’
‘Bravely.’
‘Oh, he was brave, all right. And that excuses everything, doesn’t it? If they’d all stopped being bloody brave …’ He exhaled, hooking his glasses around his ears. ‘Sorry. It’s just that I can’t see the merit in what Morgan does, the way he rubs our noses in the pity of it.’
She was about to get up and clear the table when he said, ‘Do you think Redpath’s brother will come to the rehearsal?’
‘I doubt it.’
He seemed about to say something only to think better of it. She felt bitter suddenly, the vicious urge to make him give himself away irresistible. Keeping her voice light she asked, ‘Do you want me to let you know if he does turn up so you can introduce yourself?’
He held her gaze, a glimmer of contempt in his eyes. At last he said, ‘I don’t think he’d be interested in meeting me.’ He stood up. ‘If you don’t mind I have work to do.’
When he’d gone she sat for a while at the table, remembering how optimistic she had felt when Adam proposed to her, imagining that living as man and wife without any of the complications of romantic love would be easy, comfortable even. Pragmatic and sensible, Adam had called it, and took the plush box from his jacket pocket, opening it to reveal an engagement ring; its chip of diamond winked as it caught the light. He had looked from the ring to her, smiling apologetically and her heart had softened with something like love for this kind, modest man. Now she wondered if he’d been apologising not for the smallness of the diamond but his uselessness as a potential husband.
They married one Saturday in late August and honeymooned in Scarborough. Their hotel room had a view of the sea and the crowded beach, a picture-postcard view complete with fat ladies with sunburnt skin and weedy husbands who rolled their trousers to their death-white knees and dangled toddlers at the sea’s edge. Later, when the families had trailed away and deck chairs flapped their candy-striped canvas wistfully towards the sea, she’d got up from their bed, believing him to be asleep. She stood in the window, wishing herself far away, on one of the slow, grey ships on the distant horizon. The lace of her brand new negligee scratched at her breasts where it clung in a deep, revealing V, and still smelt of the perfume she had chosen with such care. The negligee was cut on the bias, a heavy, pale ivory satin, luminous as fresh water pearls, the most beautiful thing she had ever owned. It made her feel huge and clumsy. She put her hands to its lacy front and imagined tearing it in two.
From the bed Adam had said, ‘I’m sorry.’
His voice had been quiet. He’d sounded young and frightened and despite herself she turned to him. Earlier he had taken off his glasses, folding them on the bedside table as though their removal was a necessary prelude to what he was supposed to do next. His face had looked changed without them, vulnerable, so that she had kissed his cheek. Remembering, she shuddered, turning away from him as a breeze from the open window raised goose pimples on her bare arms.
‘Jane?’
She heard the scrabbling on the glass-topped table as he reached for his spectacles. The bed creaked and she knew that he had got up and was standing stiff and still as she was, working himself up to approaching her. Her skin bristled in appalled anticipation of his touch and she stepped closer to the window, staring down at the pavement where a gull attacked a discarded ice cream cone.
‘Jane, I’m so sorry. I thought …’ He trailed off, only to start again. ‘I thought if I tried …’
He was standing only a step away now and she cringed, aware suddenly that the light from the window would make the ivory satin almost transparent, that she might just as well be naked. She rushed past him. Her coat still lay across the chair where she’d carelessly tossed it earlier and she put it on quickly, wrapping it around her, her arms crossed over her chest. She gazed at him. In his pyjamas he looked foolish, vulnerable even. There was a smudge of her lipstick on his cheek, her silly, pink, humiliating mark.
Trying not to cry she said, ‘What did you mean, when you said you couldn’t …’ She closed her eyes and tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Don’t cry. Oh Christ, Jane … I’m sorry!’
She flicked the tears away impatiently. ‘What did you mean? Couldn’t tonight? Couldn’t here? Couldn’t with me?’
Helplessly he said, ‘Perhaps if you come back to bed –’
‘So you can try again?’
He slumped on the bed and covered his face with his hands. After a while he let them drop and hunched forward, his long fingers dangling between his knees. Dully he said, ‘I thought that because I love you … because I love you it would be different. But it doesn’t work like that – I suppose I knew, deep down. But I still love you. I respect you.’
‘But you don’t want to …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it, just stood with her coat pulled around her, the ludicrous night-dress hanging limply below its hem. Unable to say or do anything, she went on standing, waiting for him to do or say something that would make it all right.
At last he said, ‘Perhaps if we give it time.’
Outside a gull screeched and he took off his glasses again and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Let’s get dressed,’ he said. ‘We can have a drink in the bar.’
Jane cleared the table and washed and dried the supper pots. Placing the knives and forks back in their drawer she wondered when she had stopped imagining that they were still giving it time, that there might still be a chance of their marriage being consummated. She supposed it was the day they had moved into this house, a few weeks after their wedding. Upstairs she’d found he’d set up a single bed in the spare bedroom along with his desk and his books and an armchair from the house he’d lived in as a bachelor. There had been no discussion; neither of them had mentioned that they had slept in separate rooms when they met at breakfast the next morning. Neither of them had mentioned it since.
She sighed, closing the cutlery drawer softly. She had work to do, too, a programme to design for Theory of Angels. There should be a picture of a soldier on the front cover, a beautiful boy in an officer’s cap, his eyes dead, his lips parted a little as though about to speak. She smiled to herself bitterly. Adam knew this picture intimately – they both did, although he thought he kept it hidden in his family bible, a nice, ironic touch. On the back of the photograph of this beautiful boy a round, childish hand had written To Adam, with my dearest love forever. One day she would take the boy’s picture from between the pages of Luke’s gospel and place it in a frame on Adam’s desk. Their separate beds would have to be discussed then.
Taking out her pencils and sketchpad, she sat down and began to draw until, in quick, fluid lines, the boy soldier appeared on the paper.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HUGH HAD BEEN IN bed for some days, becoming more bored as he recovered. Aware of his boredom, Bobby had offered to play chess with him. Downstairs, Nina had begun to prepare supper and after a while the smell of frying onion drifted up the stairs to Hugh’s bedroom. He was about to move his knight, his fingers loose around the horse’s head, when he put it down and fell back against his pillows. ‘I can’t be bothered, Bob.’
‘Do you want to sleep?’
‘No. I don’t think I want to do anything. I don’t think it’s ’flu. I think it’s bloody exhaustion. War sickness.’ He smiled at him wearily. ‘Or peace sickness, maybe.’
‘You miss being told what to do.’
‘Exactly!’ He began to cough and Bobby helped him to sit up, plumping the pillows behind him. As he lay down again he said, ‘I was sure of myself in the navy. Now …’ He laughed, coughing at the same time. ‘Now I don’t seem to know my arse from my elbow. I mean – a bank! Can you see me working in a bloody bank?’
Bobby thought how exhausted he looked. He’d been afraid the cough was
something else and he’d called the doctor again. ‘Pneumonia?’ Doctor Maynard had been dismissive. ‘No. A bad cold – burning the candle at both ends, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t call me again for God’s sake. How are you, anyway? Settling in all right?’ Bobby had nodded and the doctor had looked relieved. ‘Good show.’ Patting his arm he’d added, ‘Well done, anyway.’
Bobby smiled at the memory; he still wondered what he’d done well.
Hugh said cautiously, ‘I suppose you miss flying, Bob?’
‘Sometimes. All the time.’
‘Could you, still, do you think? Fly, I mean?’
Bobby began gathering the chess pieces into their box. Each had its own plush nest shaped to fit the piece exactly. The set was Victorian, the same set his grandfather had taught him to play on, setting up the ivory pieces on their board on the kitchen table. George would tell him how well his father played, how he invariably won. Bobby invariably lost, and felt he disappointed his grandfather in not having Paul’s aptitude for the game. He knew he didn’t have his father’s brains or charm just from the stories his grandfather told. He had his looks, that was all, a peculiarly mixed blessing that anyway had gone up in flames one bright morning in 1944.
Sensing Hugh waiting for an answer, Bobby said, ‘I wonder what Nina’s cooking.’
‘Is she a good cook?’
‘If I say yes will it have an impact on any future decision?’
Hugh laughed. ‘Probably.’
‘Nina is a good cook. The nuns taught her, she told me. Perfect mashed potato on pain of a beating from Sister Mary.’ He looked up at Hugh as he pressed the last chess piece into place. ‘She does a particularly good Irish stew.’
‘What more could a man want?’ After a moment he said, ‘Listen, Bob – if you still love her – if you think there’s still a chance the two of you, well, you know … I’ll bugger off out of your way.’
Bobby folded the chessboard and placed it on top of the pieces. He thought how easy it had been to become friends with Hugh again, that he was as uncomplicated as he had ever been. Over the last few days he had begun to understand how much he’d missed him. Hugh belonged to a time before Vickers, before Jason and his pictures. When he was with him none of that might have happened. All the same, when he thought of Hugh and Nina together he felt sick with jealousy. Hugh was too much like Nick and from the moment he’d introduced her to that easy, good-looking man he’d regretted it, couldn’t believe what a fool he’d been. He had wanted a sweet, ordinary girl who didn’t know about his past, a girl his fellow officers would accept as the right sort. Knowing Nina put him even further outside their charmed circle. But from the moment he saw Nick lead Nina on to the dance floor all his reasons for wanting to let her go had suddenly seemed idiotic, snobbish and vile. It hadn’t even worked – the others still thought he was an oddity.
Hugh said gently, ‘Bob?’
Bobby looked at him. Dully he said, ‘Nina’s not interested in me. She loved Nick, her husband.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Yes.’ He remembered the first time he saw Nick unfolding himself from the cockpit of a Spitfire, how when he’d jumped down he’d caught his eye and held up his hand in a casual salute. ‘Hi – it’s Harris, isn’t it? You weren’t in the mess last night when I arrived – the others told me all about you.’
He remembered a sinking feeling in his guts as he’d wondered what his fellow officers had said about him.
Hugh said, ‘What was Nick like?’
Bobby exhaled sharply, remembering Nick’s voice over his radio, its terror as he realised he’d been hit. Aware of Hugh looking at him, he said, ‘He was good-looking, kind. Good company. The best pilot I knew. I liked him.’ After a moment he said, ‘His plane was shot down over the Channel. Because I knew Nina they asked me to break the news to her.’
He remembered how Nina had stared at him in disbelief. Her pregnancy had just started to show and she’d spread her hands over the small bump as though to protect it. ‘This is your fault,’ she told him. ‘All of this is your fault.’
Bobby stood up, too agitated by jealousy to keep still. ‘I should let you rest.’
As Bobby reached the door Hugh said, ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance, Bob.’
‘Try and sleep. Perhaps later you’ll feel like eating.’
In the kitchen Nina said, ‘How is he?’
‘He’s all right. He needs to rest, that’s all.’ He sat down and watched as she rolled out pastry. Flour was spread over the table and there was a dusting of it on her cheek. From the gas ring came a rich smell of braising meat. Beside her sat a spring cabbage, its dark green leaves splattered with mud as though it had just been picked from the garden. She caught him looking at it and grinned.
‘I was passing those allotments behind the cemetery. I called out good morning to a man digging and he gave me that cabbage! Wasn’t that kind of him?’
‘Very. And all you said was good morning?’ He raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, we chatted a little.’
‘I bet you did. I bet he couldn’t believe his luck.’
‘It wasn’t like that! He was old – seventy at least. He was very sweet.’ She began to ladle the meat into a pie dish. ‘He said he knew you. Knew of you. He said how sorry everyone was about your grandfather and everything.’
He snorted. ‘And everything.’
Ignoring him Nina said, ‘He knew your father. Said what a lovely man he was, apparently they used to swap gardening tips.’ She glanced at him slyly. ‘He said what a terrible tragedy it had all been. Of course, I had to pretend to know what he was talking about, since I’d told him you and I were such good friends.’
Bobby lit a cigarette. Standing up to fetch an ashtray he caught a glimpse of his father’s photograph on the mantelpiece. He picked it up and held it out to her. ‘That’s him. He killed himself when I was two. He was shell-shocked during the first war and never got over it. That was my grandfather’s excuse, anyway.’
She looked from the photograph to him. ‘Excuse?’
‘He left his wife and baby alone and near penniless. Granddad had to give him a good reason to do such a thing – saints have to have bloody good reasons for being selfish.’
‘Not selfish, surely? He couldn’t have been in his right mind –’
‘All the same – he had a responsibility. I could never have done what he did, no matter what.’
She set the photograph down gently. ‘You look like him.’
‘I did.’ He remembered how he had looked even more like him in Captain Palmer’s uniform and inevitably the memory led to Henry Vickers. He made an effort not to remember but the shame and humiliation was suddenly as fresh as it had been that night. Unable to keep still he paced the room, wanting to kick out at something. He turned on Nina, his impotent rage fuelled by jealousy.
‘How could you have brought Morgan here? How could you do that? Do you have any idea what it felt like to hear him screwing you in the next room, to have to face you both the next morning? Did you have to rub my fucking nose in it like that?’
Her face paled. Her hand went to her throat and this familiar expression of vulnerability almost made him relent but his anger was too fierce. He felt consumed by pain and frustration and he reached across the table and grasped her wrist. ‘Do you imagine Morgan cares about you? Someone who would fuck him as soon as look at him? Why do you have to behave so cheaply?’
She pulled away from his grasp. Coldly she said, ‘You know why. We’re both cheap! Cheap and nasty and used. It doesn’t matter who we fuck.’
She gazed at him with the same hatred in her eyes he’d seen the day he told her of Nick’s death. He felt all his anger drain away, leaving him empty of any feeling other than shame.
She laid the pastry on top of the meat and began to crimp its edges between her thumb and forefinger. After a while she said, ‘It’s steak and kidney. I thought it might tempt Hugh. It might even tempt you.’
He sat down. He knew she was used to his sudden flashes of temper, his vile tongue, he knew she made allowances for him. She had told him once that she would forgive him anything because of what he’d suffered. But that had been in the early days of his recovery when they both believed they had a future together. She might have said anything to him then, her pity was so great. Now she hardly said much at all, and she almost certainly wouldn’t forgive such an outburst.
Still avoiding her eye he said, ‘I’m sorry Nina.’
‘It’s all right. We don’t have to say sorry to each other, do we?’ Her voice was curt; he knew she wouldn’t discuss it any more.
Awkwardly he said, ‘The pie smells good.’
‘Well, it’s our combined meat ration, so it should. We’ll have to live on cabbage soup for the rest of the week.’
He watched her as she opened the oven door, letting a blast of heat escape that he instinctively drew back from. A strand of her hair fell down and she hooked it back behind her ear with quick impatience. Her face was still pale, her expression still angry and closed against him. Without make-up or lipstick, with the dusting of flour on her cheek, she still looked extraordinarily beautiful. He remembered how Jason used to light her face from below so that her cheekbones looked even more sculptured, her lips even fuller: swollen ready for sex, Jason had said once. Jason had been studying her freshly developed photograph, and it was a throwaway remark made without his usual sly glance to see if Bobby had risen to his goading. By then there had been many pictures of Nina. He was used to seeing her through the camera’s distorted eye. He was used to everything Jason did or asked them to do, was immune to how cheap he had become.
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