Paper Moon

by Marion Husband

  Would you, could you, if you cared . They were the words of a song Jason sang, a nonsense song. And Jason was dead now, along with Nick, and Bobby, in his way. Lying on her bed she moved her hands up to her breasts and cupped them.

  When Joan was a few days old Bobby asked her, ‘Would you marry me?’

  She had smelt boldly of blood and sweat and milk. He was shy of her. When she answered no she had felt triumphant for an hour or two. Would you, could you, if you cared. She remembered Jason’s intensity when he took Bobby’s photograph. Only afterwards, in his darkroom, would he sing, as though through capturing Bobby’s image he had been released.

  She had told Francis Law too much; when she remembered how much she’d told him she felt frightened. Unable to keep still she sat up and placed her feet firmly on the floor. She imagined pacing because this was a busy agitating fear, the type she imagined the condemned felt. Francis Law, who was handsome and kind as the good kings in fairytales, was at this moment travelling on a train to Thorp, his head full of her stories. She stood up. Across the corridor Cathy began to cry. Sinking down on to the bed again she curled on to her side and covered her ears with her hands.

  Jane had drawn the picture of the soldier from memory and only when it was finished had she taken Adam’s bible down from its high shelf and compared her drawing to the photograph hidden between its pages. She’d spent a few moments studying the photo and, despite herself, found she was touched by how young the boy was, hardly older than the boys in her play. Her drawing resembled him only a little. She had remembered him as arrogant as Palmer and just as vapid. Her memories had been coloured by jealousy, of course. She had put the picture back in the bible, feeling ashamed of herself.

  Her drawing was on the kitchen table and she stood looking down at it as Adam came in from the garden. Taking off his muddy Wellington boots he said, ‘I think slugs are immortal. Perhaps slugs are actually gods and we’ve all been looking in the wrong direction for our deities. What do you think?’

  She glanced at him absently before returning to the drawing. Adam came to stand beside her and she smelt the cold of garden soil and his own faint, clean scent. No matter how hard Adam worked he didn’t sweat, he was always dry as kindling. He took off his glasses and polished them swiftly with his handkerchief. Hooking them over his ears again he said, ‘What have we got here?’

  ‘My picture for the cover of the play’s programme.’

  They both stood looking down at it. She hardly dared glance at him, although she knew her copy was nothing like the original. All the same, she felt anxious as he picked the drawing up and studied it more closely.

  ‘Captain Palmer, I presume?’

  ‘Yes. Supposed to be.’

  ‘It’s very good.’ Placing it down again he said, ‘Rehearsals coming along all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that boy. Harris. Did he turn up to offer his advice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She thought of Bobby Harris on the school steps, the firmness of his grip on her elbow as he steadied her. She had imagined he would be frailer but there had seemed to be a wiry strength to him. Lately she had begun to imagine him naked, his body, unmarked by the fire that had ruined his face, lean and hard and muscular.

  His eyes on the drawing, Adam said, ‘Did Harris have anything useful to say?’

  ‘He didn’t stay very long. The boys put on such a good show for him he probably thought there was nothing he could add.’

  She tried to imagine the real reason why he had walked out of the rehearsal so abruptly. She remembered how shocked he had looked, as though what had been performed was particularly disturbing. There seemed to be nothing in the scene that could have caused such distress. Palmer’s speech was about the girl he’d left in England. Perhaps that was it: Bobby Harris missed some girl; it seemed an inadequate explanation for such a display of misery.

  Adam said, ‘I’m going out tonight.’

  She turned away, deliberately ignoring him.

  ‘Jane?’ She glanced at him and he smiled weakly. ‘It’s just a meeting of the school governors. I may be a little late – you know how these things drag on. I’ll take my key, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ She waited. In a moment, if she held her nerve and stayed silent, he would leave her be and go upstairs to bathe.

  In a rush he said, ‘You should go out too, to the pictures, or somewhere –’

  She laughed. ‘Who with?’

  ‘Betty Ryan? You used to go out with her – the two of you had some pleasant evenings together.’

  Betty, the school secretary, had become engaged at the end of the war. He had forgotten, just as he forgot most things she told him, that Betty wanted to spend every waking hour with Bill, her fiancée, that Betty believed too much time had been stolen from them already. She wished she could have been scornful of Betty’s excuse not to see her rather than understanding it quite so much.

  Adam said, ‘Perhaps you and I could go out, later in the week. Henry V is showing at the cinema, I heard.’

  ‘If you want.’

  He sighed. ‘I’ll go and get changed.’

  When Adam had left for his meeting Jane took out the bar of Fry’s Chocolate Cream she’d hidden behind the bread bin and lay down on the sofa with a library copy of Jane Eyre. The gas fire spluttered companionably. Rain began, splattering heavily on the tar roof of the bay. She hoped Adam would be soaked and she glanced towards the window, which rattled in the wind. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the school, if that was where he was truly going. When he had come to say goodbye she’d noticed how carefully he’d dressed and shaved and combed his hair. He’d used cologne, the expensive, sandalwood scent he bought and concealed in his sock drawer. She wondered who he thought it was that put his socks away. The sock fairy. She smiled grimly, turning a page, the story so familiar it didn’t matter that she’d lost concentration.

  She unwrapped the chocolate, exposing only the first section, intending as usual to eat it slowly. Each bite would melt in her mouth in its own time even as she wondered how it would feel to strip the entire wrapper away and gobble the bar down in a few seconds. There was no one to stop her, no one to share with or to be shocked by her uninhibited greed. She knew that, unwrapped, the chocolate would look decadent; as it was the chocolate became a furtive pleasure and such furtiveness seemed fitting.

  She became absorbed in her book, so calmed and comforted by the sweetness of the chocolate and the satisfying ending the novel was leading to that at first she mistook the knock on the door for the wind’s rattling. When the knock came again she looked up, frowning, holding herself still to listen more intently. The knock was repeated, the same patient rat-a-tat-tat.

  Jane stood up, ashamed of the way her heart had begun to beat too quickly. She had become timid as an old lady, all callers a potential threat. Hesitantly she went to the window and lifted aside the curtain. A muffled figure stood at the door, a man. He stepped back and looked up at the house. She watched as the man glanced back towards the road as if about to give up. Following his gaze she saw the car parked opposite the gate and at once she realised who her caller was. She almost ran to the door.

  She swung the door open too quickly so that he stepped back as though startled by her sudden appearance. Jane’s hand went to her throat and she smiled broadly, hating the absurd breathlessness in her voice as she said, ‘Mr Harris. Hello again – this is a surprise.’

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you –’

  She cut in at once. ‘No! No, of course.’ Holding the door open even wider she stepped aside. ‘Come in. Out of the rain. Come in.’

  He thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ He thought of Hugh, who would smirk if he knew, and of Nina who would only be puzzled and certainly not jealous. Nina would have only been jealous if his face was still intact. He sighed and fumbled in his pockets for his cigarettes.

  Jane had scurried away into the kitchen, insisting on making him tea. He must have a hot
drink to warm him, although he’d only been caught in the rain for the time it took for him to walk up her path from the car. She had taken her time answering his knock. He had seen the curtain twitch and he realised that unexpected callers were rare enough to cause alarm. Her husband was out. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

  Lighting a cigarette he glanced around the room for an ashtray. There wasn’t one, and he edged along the sofa, ready to flick the ash into the fire. He noticed a book lying open on the rug and picked it up. Jane Eyre. He smiled and put it down again, careful to make it look as though it hadn’t been disturbed. A chocolate wrapper lay beside it, the kind of dark, sickly stuff he often craved. He picked the empty wrapper up and held it to his nose, inhaling greedily, only to drop it as Jane bumped the door open with her hip, both hands holding a tray set with tea and biscuits. He got up, going quickly to hold the door.

  ‘It’s all right! I can manage.’ Her smile was as bright and embarrassed as her voice. ‘Do take off your coat. You mustn’t sit around in a wet coat.’

  He did as he was told and she took it from him, having set the tray down on a side table. Draping it over the back of a chair she said, ‘Rain was forecast. They get it right, sometimes.’

  She was wearing dark slacks and a pale green blouse buttoned to the throat, a cardigan in the same green draped around her shoulders. Her feet were bare, her toes short and snub. He had never seen an otherwise clothed woman with bare feet. No woman he had met had ever been so casual with him. Disconcerted, he glanced away from her.

  ‘Oh – you need an ashtray!’ She had been about to sit down in the chair on the other side of the fire but she leapt up and went to the sideboard. Rummaging inside she finally produced a scallop shell, its pale pink interior painted with Greetings from Scarborough. She smiled. ‘I’m afraid it’s the only suitable thing I have. We don’t smoke, you see.’

  ‘I’m sorry – would you like me to put it out?’

  ‘No, please don’t. I don’t mind, really.’

  He balanced the shell in one hand and as she poured the tea he glanced around, taking in the boxy, red moquette three piece suite and plain, utility sideboard. Above the beige tile fireplace was a print of Constable’s Hay Wain. There were no framed photographs, no ornaments. Apart from the book on the floor the room was unnaturally tidy.

  ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’

  ‘Just milk, please.’

  ‘Have a biscuit.’ She held out a plate of custard creams but he shook his head. ‘No? I suppose it is rather a lot to juggle – why don’t you put the shell down? Here.’ Once again she got up and placed the smallest of a nest of tables beside him and put his cup of tea on it. The cup and saucer were pink as the inside of the shell and almost translucently fine. He noticed how delicate the cup’s handle was and knew his fingers couldn’t grasp it safely. The tea would have to be ignored to avoid embarrassment.

  The photographs were in his jacket pocket, still in the envelope addressed to his grandfather. He had glanced at them only when Hugh had taken them out in the pub. He knew they were all more or less the same, that they would hardly be of any use. They were his excuse for calling on her; she would guess that and wonder what to make of him but he had decided to risk appearing foolish. All day, since dropping Hugh off at the station, he had thought about Jane Mason. When he’d caught her arm on the school steps he had recognised the look in her eyes; it was the look women used to give him before he was disfigured.

  He took the photographs from his pocket and held them out to her. ‘I found these. I don’t think they’ll be much use but I thought you might like to see them.’

  ‘Oh, yes – of course! How interesting.’ Taking the photographs from him she began to shift through them. After a moment she held one out to him.

  As he took it she said, ‘That’s you – in the centre of the group as Captain Palmer?’ She hesitated then said, ‘You don’t look like him – my idea of him, that is.’ She put the photographs back in their envelope. ‘Thank you for letting me see them.’

  He felt as though he was being dismissed. He was still holding the photograph she’d handed to him and he looked down at it. She was right – he didn’t look like a man as bold and sure of himself as Palmer was written to be. He looked like a self-conscious boy. She handed back the envelope and he slipped the photograph inside.

  She sipped her tea and he remembered his own tea cooling beside him. Deciding to be straight with her he said, ‘I’m afraid I might break your cup. My hands are clumsy.’

  ‘Of course, how thoughtless of me. I’ll fetch you another one.’ About to get up she said, ‘Unless you’d like a drink? We have some whisky left over from Christmas.’

  ‘Tea is fine, thank you.’

  She left the room, reappearing a few moments later with a thick, brown mug. Decanting his tea into she said, ‘It’s hardly wet its sides! Should I top it up with some hot from the pot?’ She laughed self-consciously. ‘I’m fussing aren’t I? My husband says I’m inclined to flap.’

  She coloured a little, as though mentioning her husband was breaking a taboo. She busied herself with pouring more tea into the mug but her blush spread to her neck and chest. When she sat down she said shyly, ‘Adam – my husband – has gone to a school governors’ meeting. You only just missed him, actually.’

  ‘Is he a teacher too?’

  ‘Headmaster. You’ll meet him, if you come along to see the play.’ Carefully she said, ‘Will you come and see the finished production?’

  He stubbed his cigarette out, not wanting to meet her gaze and feel compelled to answer. He placed the makeshift ashtray down and it rocked a little, the cigarette ash drifting into the grooves the lettering had made in the shiny, pearl-like interior. Mick Morgan had taken him and Hugh to Scarborough once. In PeaseholmePark he had pushed the poet’s wheelchair along by the lake while Hugh and his mother had trailed behind eating ice cream. He had felt proud of the companionable silence there was between Morgan and himself. But then Morgan always did have the ability to make him feel more grown up than he actually was.

  She said, ‘Mr Harris? Might you come and see Mark in the play – I know he would really like you to …’

  ‘I’m sure he would.’ After a moment he said, ‘Please – call me Bob.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’

  An embarrassed silence hung between them. Bobby shifted uncomfortably, wishing he’d stayed at home. But since Hugh had left the house seemed even emptier than when he’d first arrived; he imagined he might go mad if he didn’t go out. And he’d thought a lot about Jane Mason, her no-nonsense kindness. She was attractive, too, in a way that intrigued him – not obviously pretty, but undeniably sexy.

  Trying to think of a way to break the uneasy silence he remembered what Hugh had said about a teacher called Mason. Needing to know if her husband was the same man Hugh had disliked so much he said, ‘Was your husband an English teacher at Thorp Grammar before he became headmaster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has he been there a long time?’

  ‘A very long time, yes. Why?’

  ‘A friend mentioned that a Mr Mason taught him. I wondered if it was the same man.’

  ‘I should think so. It’s not such a common name.’

  Her manner had become colder. After a while she said brusquely, ‘Thank you for bringing the photographs to show me, Mr Harris, and for the interest you’ve shown in the play.’

  This time he knew that he had been dismissed. Surprised at the disappointment he felt, he stood up. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more help. I hope the rehearsals continue to go well.’

  She stood up too and picked up his coat from the chair, only to put it down again. Without looking at him she said, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t go yet.’ She glanced at him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’

  ‘A whisky and soda would be nice.’

  She smiled as though relieved. ‘I keep it in the pantry. Come through into the kitchen.’
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  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SITTING IN THE BAR of the Grand Hotel, Francis Law took out the postcard he had bought that evening at Thorp Station and laid it on the table next to his gin and tonic. The picture was sepia but the corporation geraniums that grew in the flowerbeds around the war memorial had been touched up with a bright, unnatural red, matching the wreath of poppies at the memorial’s base.

  Tossing the postcard down on the table Francis sipped his gin. The good-looking boy behind the bar had been generous with the measure even as he regretted the lack of ice and sliced lemons, although Francis had told him that really it didn’t matter. The boy had smiled at him so sweetly he thought his heart might break.

  He picked up the postcard again and looked at it more closely. His spectacles were in their case in his pocket but he didn’t want to put them on, not yet. Instead he squinted, as though that might help him read the indistinguishable names carved into the memorial’s obelisk. He would know some of the boys whose names were immortalised, only one or two, of course; he had been born in Thorp but had never really lived here for more than a few months at a time. Adam knew many more of them. These names, now listed according to rank and in alphabetical order, had been those of Adam’s school friends and neighbours. One or two of them Adam had mourned deeply, sometimes asking him too casually if he had ever come across this boy or that, as though Flanders was a gigantic social club.

  Turning the postcard over he took out his pen. He’d addressed the card in his room, but a message had evaded him. What could he say except that he was here, and that truly he wished he were not alone, that after all he needed the support he had decided so foolishly to do without. His gaze lingered on the name and address he had written so carefully, afraid that the card might go astray in the post. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he wrote swiftly, Arrived safely. I’m shocked by the cold and the greyness – just as you said I would be. I miss you, of course.