by JH Fletcher
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s old. You want something bright, something to cheer you up.’
‘I don’t want Jeth getting ideas …’
It was exactly what she did want, although nerves, now, were having their say.
Beth had the answer to that, too. ‘Stuff Jeth! It’s your first concert. It’s an occasion. You’ve got to be dolled up for that. Got your clothing card, have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s go and see what we can find.’
Aunt Clarrie pointed them in the right direction, a shop she knew within walking distance of the house. It was a magic afternoon, clear but cool, the feeling of spring in the air after weeks of rain. On the other side of South Terrace, a young woman ran with a dog that bounced and hurtled, barking with joy. To Kath they were good omens: the sun-bright day, the dog, the young woman laughing in happiness.
The shop was dark and scented. It even smelt expensive. Kath opened the door, saw what she was getting into, almost did a runner there and then. Beth prevented her. Then she was inside the shop and stuck.
A swoony lady came, long dress swishing. ‘May I help you?’ Vowels to strangle on. Strike a light.
Beth intervened. ‘My aunt recommended we come here. Mrs Westlake?’
See the change. ‘What can I show you?’
‘A dress for my friend.’ Beth’s voice was a clarion call of trumpets. ‘She is going to a concert. At the City Hall. Tonight. And wants something suitable.’ She turned on her heel, staring about her, and delivered a last thrust. ‘If you have anything.’
Suitably demolished, the woman scurried. She returned with dresses, of which Kath, dying with embarrassment, tried a few.
Beth inspected, pulling this, tugging that.
‘No.’
Reinforcements were summoned, in greens and blues. And one red, in a close-knit jersey material, bright as a paintbox, very daring.
‘I am sorry about the fabric,’ the swoony lady said. ‘The war …’ As though they might not have heard of it.
Beth held up the red dress. ‘What about this?’
Kath squinted, surreptitiously, at the price. Horror. ‘Hell, girl, I can’t afford —’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘I’ll be broke.’
‘Who cares?’
Kath struggled into it, looked at herself in the mirror. Had to admit she looked great. Yet …
‘Isn’t it a bit small?’
‘Just right.’
‘But—’
‘What’s the point of having them if you don’t show them?’
‘For a concert?’
And Beth grinned.
Oh God.
Kath had just enough money and her ration card hadn’t been used for ages. She took a breath.
‘All right,’ she said to the lady, who intimidated no longer, ‘I’ll have it.’
Now was antsy time. She had a bath, mooched, watched the clock — five o’clock, six — until even Beth couldn’t bear it.
‘What time’s he coming?’
‘He said seven.’
‘Then stop fussing, for goodness sake. He’ll be here.’
‘Maybe.’ And maybe not. Maybe he’d had second thoughts. As, more and more, Kath was having. I need my head read, she thought. If he ever pitches up, I’ll probably find I can’t stand the sight of him. What do I do, then?
Six-thirty. She got dressed. Stared in the mirror at herself, of which only a little was covered by the dress. He said he wanted to see more of me. I wear this and he will.
Beth arrived in time to catch her climbing out of it.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’ She felt a fool, terrified. She was lost. She stared at her friend. Who came and put her arms around her. ‘You’ll be right.’ Crooning the words softly into her ear. ‘Honestly. You’ll be fine.’
Kath stared, willing to be convinced. ‘And the dress?’
Beth kissed her fingers. ‘Million quid.’
Downstairs, the doorbell rang. Kath stopped, frozen. ‘Shit!’
‘Get your arse into gear. I’ll keep him talking.’ She was in the doorway, running.
‘Beth?’
‘What?’
‘Thanks, eh?’
‘Don’t talk crap.’
And was gone. Kath, not knowing whether she was alive or dead, climbed back into the dress. Too tight, too revealing? She cared no longer. She checked herself for the last time in the mirror, ran a comb through her hair, went downstairs with her heart doing the cancan.
Jeth looked up as she came in. She saw his expression, the dawn of a smile, and felt her own cheeks draw colour from her racing blood.
‘Hi …’
He came to her, very quietly and naturally, and kissed her cheek, while Beth watched with evident fascination.
Kath didn’t fancy being part of a circus. ‘We’ll have to walk,’ she said. ‘We’d better get moving.’
Beth’s fingers touched her own, wishing her luck, as they went out into the chilly evening. They crossed the jungle stretches of the garden. The wrought-iron gates creaked shut behind them.
The streets were almost empty. They walked briskly, to keep warm, heels echoing on the pavement. Even now, Kath found it difficult to believe that it was happening. ‘I warn you,’ she told him, ‘I don’t know the first thing about music. I probably won’t even have heard of the composers.’
The foyer of the hall was crowded, warm after the night air in the street. Jeth bought a programme and they went into the auditorium, already half full and murmurous with voices.
They found their seats and settled in. Jeth opened the programme and shared it with her, their heads almost touching as they bent over it.
‘Beethoven,’ Kath said. ‘At least I’ve heard of him. Surprised they’re playing his music, though, with the war on.’
‘Thank God they are. It means there’s still hope for the world.’
The other composers she did not know.
‘Ravel,’ Jeth explained. ‘He’s French. And Shostakovich.’
‘Who?’
‘Shostakovich. A Russian.’
‘That explains it.’
She had been sure she wouldn’t enjoy herself but, when the music started, she found it wasn’t so bad. The Beethoven, sonorous, with a bit of a tune she could pick out between the sombre chords. Something by the French bloke, the same thing over and over, going on it seemed forever, yet somehow mesmerising, painting pictures of emptiness.
‘Reminds me of the Outback,’ she said through the applause when it finished.
Then came the piece she had been privately dreading, by the Russian whose name she had forgotten. At first she thought it was going to be even worse than she had feared. She couldn’t make sense of it, a dissonance of notes that made her teeth wince. Then, while she was still wondering how she was going to bear it, something happened. The sinews of the music emerged through the discords, like the shape of a tree through mist. She forced herself to try and make sense of what she was hearing.
The orchestra wove pictures, very softly, in her mind. She sat, motionless, her attention snagged by the music’s shrill and ululating embrace. It was like listening to something crying in the night. There was a piano building slabs of sound, a succession of percussion-like notes forming a wall against which the pizzicato combination of strings drifted like smoke — a fantasy of life and hope and energy weaving against the piano’s sturdy assurance.
At the end, the notes eviscerated her, leaving her empty, with tears in her soul to match the ones upon her cheeks.
Jeth turned to her. ‘Like it?’
She could not speak, but looked at him, and her look said everything.
The haunting notes accompanied her down the street. She tried to say how it had moved her, but could not. ‘Like something I didn’t know was there…’ Not much, but the best she could do.
They found a restaurant that was still open, we
nt in, unsure what they would get. What they got was a small room, painted white, with views of Paris on the walls and a wood fire blazing in the grate. What they got was the mouth-watering smell of good cooking, a woman, well-fleshed, in black dress and spotless white apron, who led them to a table with a blue and white jug of yellow daisies upon it. What they got was each other, smiling warmly while they tucked into a steaming dish of fish stew, rich and spicy, followed by a piece of beef, underdone, dressed in a pastry crust.
‘Miracles…’ They even had wine.
Afterwards, Kath’s brain spinning with more than wine, they went out into the chilly night. And walked. Eventually, beneath a blaze of stars, they found their way back to the park near Aunt Clarrie’s house.
Now, pacing between the neat and empty flowerbeds, under naked trees whose branches they could just make out against the sky, they talked of the music they had heard earlier.
‘I guess it’s always been a tradition in my family,’ Jeth said. ‘I couldn’t imagine life without it.’
‘That Russian bloke. I never heard anything like it before.’
‘I warn you,’ he said. ‘Once you’re hooked, you’re hooked for life.’ On more things than music, perhaps.
They talked of the magic meal. ‘Where did she get the daisies?’ Kath wondered. ‘At this time of year?’
‘Where did she get any of it?’
Miracles, indeed.
Finally, inevitably, they talked of Kath. And her husband.
‘Why?’
So often had she asked herself the same question. ‘The war does things to people. They behave differently from how they would in peacetime. So when he asked…’ She paused, remembering. ‘I said no, first off. But he talked me round.’
‘When you knew what he wanted was your land.’
‘Like I told you, that’s how things work.’ His comment had sounded suspiciously like criticism, and she didn’t like it. To punish him, she added, ‘Didn’t mean it was all he wanted. He made that plain enough, later on.’
Was at once sorry she had said it, but if she had hurt him, he gave no sign.
‘And Walter?’
‘He hadn’t happened then.’ Another pause. ‘Nothing had happened.’
Such a conversation, she thought. Soon I shall have no secrets left. It should have appalled her, but did not. Was, if anything, a relief that she could lay the burden of her secrets upon this man. For whom, she knew it more clearly with every slow yard of their stroll along the park’s dark and tree-lined path, she was coming to care quite dangerously.
‘What made you change your mind? About marrying him, I mean?’
‘I thought it was the right thing to do.’ She attempted a light laugh, as though none of this mattered in the least. ‘No-one tried to force me; I came to it all by myself.’
‘You thought it was right? To marry someone you didn’t love?’
‘Like I said, it was the war. With Hedley going away … That was his sacrifice. And he wanted so much that we should get married before he left.’ Again she laughed, with mounting desperation. ‘My contribution to the war effort, if you like.’
That’ll shut him up, she thought. Idiocy like that’s enough to shut anyone up. She tried to patch what could become a rent in their relationship. ‘You probably think I was a fool. But we didn’t know what was going to happen…’ She lapsed into silence, hopelessly.
‘I don’t think you were a fool. In the same situation I might have done the same.’
‘But you’re not married, are you?’
He laughed. ‘Never even close.’
It was a relief, although she had never doubted. Discovered that, married or not, it would have made no difference. As, increasingly, it made no difference that she herself was married.
There was a park bench. They sat, Kath feeling as though the bones had been drawn from her legs. She tried to focus on the important things: herself, a married woman; her son; her parents. Everyone she knew, who would see everything and forgive nothing. Her husband, prisoner of the Japanese. He would come back after the war, he would discover … what there was to discover.
None of it mattered, none of it.
She felt cold. Perhaps that was why she was shaking, teeth loose as stones in her head. ‘If it hadn’t been for the war, I probably wouldn’t have married him. But that doesn’t make him a bad bloke. He’s a typical farmer; the land’s everything to him.’ Again the frantic, unquiet laugh. ‘He spoke to my Dad before we got married, made sure I’d inherit.’
It sounded so callous, yet at the time she had thought nothing of it. The land was more important than blood, than life itself. Hedley would have been a fool if he hadn’t sorted things out before the wedding.
‘So you’re an heiress.’
‘Eight hundred acres? Hardly that.’
‘A tradable commodity, then.’ His voice was angry. It sounded hateful, the way he said it.
‘It’s how things work in the country.’ She, too, was angry that he should be so judgmental. ‘I’ll bet things aren’t so different in Gainsborough, South Carolina.’
Which did not console him. ‘Does that make it right?’
‘I hate this war,’ she cried. ‘All the killing, the waste, the stupidity. I can’t wait for it to be over. But …’
And sat, his arm warm about her. He took her other hand. The touch of his fingers struck fire through her body, once again melting the bones within her.
He prompted her, voice warm, breath warm. ‘But?’
‘I can see every day of my life,’ she said. ‘As clearly as if I’d lived it already. In a way I suppose I have. Things don’t change much in my part of the country. We’re secure, which is good. We live with all this space around us, so why, why, do I feel so shut in?’
‘We decide what we want to do,’ he said carefully. ‘That’s what life is, making choices. After we’ve done that, I guess we’re stuck with them.’
‘And I’ve made mine. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
And was appalled. Seated on the bench in the chilly dark, Jeth’s arm about her, Kath stared at a future like a jail sentence. ‘I wish I hadn’t. I wish I was still free.’
There. She had said it. It was appalling, but the truth. She would not have taken it back if she could. She looked at him, appeal naked in her eyes. I am here. I am open. Do not hurt me.
‘But you’re not free, are you?’ The anger was back in his voice.
Why are you angry? Knowing that it was because her lack of freedom was as painful to him as it was to her. His pain, which might have been a solace, lacerated. He thinks it’s my fault, she thought. I suppose it is.
‘Hedley is my husband, in the prison camp. Walter is my son. And I am not free, no.’ She looked at him and, for the second time that evening, her heart’s drum filled her. ‘Unless I choose to be.’
His eyes sought hers. There was an awakening in them that she had not seen before, yet Jethrow Douglas was a man who believed in having things spelt out. ‘And do you choose?’
She got up, stretching out her hand to take his. She was conscious of power, serene yet fragile, of herself surrendering not to his will but her own, of leading them both gladly.
‘Come …’
The summerhouse was silent. At the last, she was scared it might be locked, but it was not. They went inside, into utter darkness. And stillness, waiting.
Clutching Jeth’s hand, she felt her way to the sofa, big and sprawling. She caught again the scent of dead flowers. They sank into the cushions. He kissed her, cautiously, then not so cautiously. His hand touched. Fire spread.
At the last, a pause. She could just make out his face, staring down at her. ‘You sure?’
Hedley, proposing to her, had asked the same question, but silently. She thought of all the reasons for saying no. Hedley. Walter. Her safe, predictable world. Beth, at that moment sleeping in the house on the other side of the garden.
If you love him, go for it. Her arms reac
hed out, cradling her lover to her breast, naked now in the darkness.
‘Yes. I’m sure. Yes. Oh yes.’
After she had come back, had become once again aware of her slowing heart and breath, the grateful lassitude of body and mind, she lay silently. Wanted to say, What do we do now? But could not, could not put into words the question that must be asked. Doubt closed its fist upon her. She wanted Beth, with whom she could talk, in place of this stranger, to whom she could say nothing.
He, sighing, burrowing close beside her on the warm and tangled cushions. Oblivious.
Two possibilities. He would want to marry her, would be full of suggestions as to how she could break the prison of her present life in order to acquire another one in a place and life of which she knew nothing, where she did not want to go.
Gainsborough, South Carolina. The dark side of the moon would have seemed less improbable.
Or he might run for the hills, as soon as he woke up. ‘I’ve really enjoyed this evening…’ She could hear him, see the look that said, Let me out of here.
She wasn’t sure which prospect appalled her more. She could not speak to him but could, perhaps, speak to herself in his presence. Which might also help to soothe, to clarify.
‘What do we do?’ she said softly, while the man slept beside her. ‘We do nothing. We shall be peaceful and friendly together, and part good friends.’
At the words she felt a pang, blade-sharp, but suppressed it ruthlessly, determined to do what must be done. I will be strong, she told herself. I will tell myself it must be so and, in time, may come to believe I was right. But in that Kath had little faith. When I got married, she thought, I imagined I was doing my bit for the war. Now I know that this is the true sacrifice.
‘We shall say goodbye,’ she informed the air. Her words rent her, so conscious was she of Jeth’s sleeping form beside her. ‘I shall make myself believe that we were lonely, that none of this meant more than that, that my commitments are stronger than anything either of us can bring against them. Which is the truth; if I deny them and leave this place, it will be like killing myself. So you see, there is no choice. I am sorry I misled us both, but that is the way of it. I thought my life offered nothing but an endless repetition of days, a future without surprises, without fun. I forgot that I am a married woman. Fun has no place. I am here. I want to be nowhere else. A future, with you, would offer nothing. Even if you want a future.’