The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  Not only that but the church was still standing, which in itself was a miracle, seeing that Bexham was on the south coast and only a relatively few sea miles from France, and Hitler’s army. With this realisation Loopy had pulled herself together, and throwing off any sense of a cold hand being placed on her shoulder had gladly plunged back into the hectic preparations for Walter and Judy’s wedding with a sense of gratitude that was almost tangible. They were about to celebrate two young people falling in love, for heaven’s sake. What could be more life enhancing than that?

  ‘I love everything about the way you love. Your kisses particularly. You kiss just like no one else.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’ Mattie turned on her side to look at him better. ‘Want to know what I love about you? Your mouth.’ She traced the line of her lover’s lips with one finger. ‘You have such a good-humoured, sweet mouth. Not the mouth of a soldier at all, I’d have said. In fact sometimes you don’t seem one bit like a soldier. Like a terribly important general. Someone with the power of life and death over others.’

  ‘That’s what I am, Mattie.’

  ‘That what you always wanted to be?’

  ‘Since you ask, no.’ Michael turned on his back, an arm round Mattie, holding her to him while he stared up at the ceiling in the dark. ‘What I wanted to be was an actor. A movie actor.’ Mattie turned her head towards him in surprise. ‘Sure – I even bunked off to Hollywood with a couple of pals and got myself a screen test. From a guy I was at high school with who was directing movies. Ed Childs. Nothing sensational, but he was making movies just the same, and he got me a test.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I got offered a contract.’

  ‘So why aren’t we looking at you up there with the stars, Michael? Instead of down here on earth?’

  ‘Lots of reasons. My mother fell ill at that exact time, and I had to go home. She got to be seriously ill – and I got to stay at home to look after her. Dad was a soldier as well – a general, just like his father. So I guess it was kind of inevitable I’d end up in the military, rather than on the screen. Take it from me, if my father had even dreamed I’d been to Hollywood, let alone had a screen test, let alone been offered a contract . . .’

  ‘I imagine you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘He’d have court-martialled me, personally.’

  ‘I sort of thought you weren’t just an ordinary soldier,’ Mattie said, resting her head back on his chest. ‘I thought there was something distinctive about you.’

  ‘There’s something distinctive about everyone on this earth, Mattie,’ Michael replied, reaching for his pack of Lucky Strikes. ‘That’s one thing being in the military teaches you. The unaccountability of folk.’

  ‘But what do you really think about killing people, Michael? Does it bother you?’

  ‘Well, of course it bothers me, Mattie. Except I don’t see it as killing people. I see what I have to do – the way I see it my job is to stop people killing people. We didn’t start this damned war. So what the likes of people like me have to do is do their utmost to bring it to its swiftest possible conclusion. And that’s something else I have to talk to you about, sweetheart. So why don’t we get dressed, OK? And I’ll take you dancing.’

  Since Michael had never taken her out anywhere where they could dance, once in his arms Mattie was bowled over. She’d only really been used to dancing with young boys at the local hops in Bexham to which she and Virginia Morrison had sneaked off, and exciting though those adventures had been Mattie had never really known what it was like to dance with a really good partner. Now she did. As the quintet played ‘The Nearness of You’, muted trumpet, clarinet, piano, bass and brushed drums, Mattie felt as though she were floating on air, so perfectly did Michael hold and guide her. He took just enough of her weight with his left arm to make her feel her feet merely brushed the floor as she followed the steps Michael was taking. His left arm was crooked so that they could dance cheek to cheek, and now and then his lips brushed either her hand or her face, while his legs and hips moved with hers almost exactly as they had only an hour or so ago when they had been making love. Yet somehow to Mattie dancing like this seemed more intimate, seemed to say even more about how they felt at that moment – the music, the words of the song now being sung in a soft husky voice by the trumpeter, the presence of other people around them all dancing in like fashion, while outside and barely two blocks away they could hear the bombs dropping, the air raid they had again chosen to ignore rather than break the spell they were in.

  ‘You know I love you, Michael. I shouldn’t – but I do.’

  ‘You know I love you too, Mattie. And I guess I can’t help it either.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Go on loving each other for as long as we may. For just as long as we can.’

  ‘How long is that going to be, Michael?’

  ‘I wish I knew, sweetheart. You see, in one way I want this damned war over like tomorrow if it were possible. To spare any more lives. To stop all this suffering. And the other part of me wants it to go on for ever.’

  Michael looked at her now as they danced. This was the one topic that was never broached, the other life of General Michael Rafferty: his home life, the life of someone completely different from the man holding Mattie in his arms. He had joked earlier in the night, as they had sat at their table drinking shots of whisky, that the only similarity between actors and soldiers was that anything was permissible on tour or at war, but although Mattie had sensed an opportunity to open that particular can of beans, as Michael referred to such matters, she had resisted the temptation and continued with their game of pretence – that there were no responsibilities other than the ones they had to each other, temporary ones, transient ones, unspoken ones: a duty not to hurt each other or deceive each other any more than was inevitable in such circumstances, a need not to intrude too much into each other’s lives, not to let the very real and deep emotion that existed between them jeopardise any previously existing associations.

  Mattie had known that Michael must be married from the moment she first saw him, yet she had chosen to pretend that he might not be since self-deceit was the only way she could allow herself to become his mistress. As long as she pretended Michael was single and free, they could be lovers. The moment that the question was asked and answered fully and truthfully she knew their affair would be over. So she did not ask the question. She had not even hinted at it – not, that is, until that evening.

  She had regretted her question even before she had asked it.

  How long is that going to be, Michael? she had heard herself saying, as if she was somewhere miles away, down the end of a long, dark and echoing tunnel. How long is that going to be?

  And when he had answered her, inevitably, all she could hear was an echo in return.

  As they danced on her thoughts continued.

  Perhaps he wants to tell me. Perhaps he’s terribly unhappy – wants a divorce, wants to be with me for ever, because that’s what he means, surely? Maybe all I have to do is ask him – and the whole thing will become clear. The burden will be lifted, he’ll be free to do and say as he wants.

  She so nearly asked him. The question was ready there, waiting to be asked. All she had to do was put it to him. And she so nearly did – so very nearly, before something pulled her back. At first she thought it was her conscience, until she became aware of the voices, mostly a man’s voice, scolding.

  I cannot imagine what you think you’re playing at. A married man indeed. What sort of person are you? Is this the way you were brought up? To behave like this? To have an affair with someone else’s husband? You must have taken complete leave of your senses – I cannot for the life of me imagine what you thought you were doing.

  Mattie looked round the dance floor and there they were – there were her father and mother dancing alongside, her father holding her mother rigidly with his left arm outstretched and his right hand held high on her back. Her mother wa
s looking away, as if too ashamed to set eyes on her adulterous daughter, while her father glared at her from under his oddly twisted and waxed eyebrows.

  ‘I didn’t know he was married!’

  ‘What was that, Mattie?’ Michael had stopped dancing and was holding her slightly away from him, staring at her. ‘What was that you just said?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Mattie replied, alarmed, looking round the tiny dance floor for the spectre of her parents. ‘Someone said something to me – but I didn’t see – I mean I didn’t see who it was.’

  ‘What did they say?’ Michael persisted. ‘I thought I heard you say something?’

  ‘Only that I love this tune.’

  ‘No, I definitely heard you say something about marriage.’

  ‘Why should I say anything like that?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps because it’s on your mind?’

  To escape from the intensity of the moment, Mattie said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, Michael, I feel a little dizzy, could we sit down?’

  He led her by the arm back to their table, stopping on the way to ask a waiter to bring them some iced water. Mattie sat down gratefully, putting her head in her hands, trying to pull herself together. Perhaps she was tired or something, but she could have sworn that her parents had passed them on the dance floor, so close that she could smell the French scent her mother always used; that was how close they had seemed to be to her.

  While Michael fussed over her, pouring her glasses of water to sip, and anxiously patting her on the hand, Mattie stared at the floor, slowly regaining her sense of reality. Of course she had not passed her father and mother on the dance floor, so if she had not, it must be that her conscience had. If her mother and father had actually been in the ballroom they would have been right to upbraid her so publicly, for the truth was that she had not been brought up to do what she was doing. Having an affair with a married man was against everything in which she had been brought up to believe. And there was Peter – her Peter – back there in that place called Bexham, a place that, ever since she had left it, she thought of every day, and every night before she fell asleep, even when she was with Michael. If her parents would be shocked, what would Peter think? She turned away from the thought. Ever since she had come to London, Peter and Bexham – her whole former life – had seemed less than real; it had seemed imaginary in its honesty and simplicity. The person she had been at Bexham would be shocked at the person she was now. More than that, she thought the old Mattie would not even like the present Mattie now.

  Yet, at that moment, it seemed to her that she loved Michael so deeply, she simply could not imagine her life without him. In fact the more she was with him, the less she found herself able to survive without him. It was unfair on Michael, and it was wrong in the eyes of everyone righteous. But, at that moment, it seemed to her that she couldn’t live without him. More than that, she wouldn’t live without him.

  Not that she would ever dare ask him the question. She would just let things be. Let them remain precisely how they were. While the war still raged and Michael was still with her in Britain, they had each other, and that, Mattie knew, had to be good enough. She would never ask him about his wife or family, if he did indeed have one, which she shrewdly imagined that he must. She would only ever talk about such matters if, and only if, Michael brought the subject up himself. Otherwise she would just take each and every moment as it came, treasuring them as if they were the last, and if she was killed in a bombing raid and found herself in hell, it would surely have been worth it?

  ‘You sure you’re OK now, sweetheart?’ he was asking her, taking both her hands in his. ‘You look awful pale.’

  ‘I think it’s just because this place is so smoky – and so crowded. I just had a funny turn. Stupid. I am sorry.’

  He took her outside, leaving the warm, thickly smoky nightclub to hurry back across a darkened and almost deserted city. Their cab had just reached the wrong end of Oxford Street when the air raid siren sounded.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, guv,’ the cabbie shouted over his shoulder, ‘I’d rather not chance it!’

  ‘Very well!’ Michael shouted back. ‘Head for the nearest subway.’

  The cabbie decanted them outside Goodge Street tube station, whose entrance was already crowded with people seeking refuge from the imminent attack. Without even bothering about his fare, the driver disappeared as fast as he could below ground, leaving Mattie and Michael standing in the darkened street jostled by the local residents pushing and shoving their way into the station.

  ‘Don’t let’s,’ Mattie said to Michael, gripping his arm tightly and trying to turn him away from the stream of people, many of whom were in nightclothes under their topcoats. ‘Please?’

  ‘You’ll be a lot safer down there, Mattie.’

  ‘I know, but I get terrible claustrophobia in crowds, really I do.’ She paused for a second as hundreds of people, panicked, and oblivious of anything except their own safety, pushed by them. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. I’ll pass out completely if I go down there. I am sorry, Michael. You go.’

  ‘No, Mattie. Without you? Absolutely not.’

  Michael took her arm and started to push against the tide of people streaming past them, and back towards the emptying streets.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Mattie said, turning. ‘You can take shelter if you’d rather.’

  ‘Now you’re being funny. Think I’d leave you wandering the streets alone in an air raid? While I sat all safe and sound down there? You’re an even bigger nut than I realised.’

  Once the sirens had finished wailing and silence had fallen back over the city there was no one else to be seen. In this way they found themselves wandering into Oxford Street. Behind them somewhere a dog howled, abandoned by its owners while they sought refuge from the raid, and just as they started to hurry towards some other form of shelter a cat fight broke out, sounding painfully loud in the eerie silence before gradually, so gradually, inexorably the heavy drone of bombers approached. Now they could hear the clatter of the ack-ack guns, but nothing stopped the persistent advance of the enemy. Michael pulled Mattie into a doorway, putting both his arms round her, sheltering her as closely and tightly as he could at the very back of the entrance.

  ‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into this – I am meant to be a sane person,’ he murmured against Mattie’s hair.

  ‘You didn’t have to come with me.’

  ‘Oh sure. I could have just turned tail and gone underground cosy as can be, leaving you to roam the streets in the middle of an air raid. I always knew you were nutty. But now I know how totally nutty you really are.’

  ‘Sorry. But I just couldn’t have stood it. Being bunkered up with hundreds of strangers.’

  ‘Like I said, nutcase. We could be killed, you know, as in d for dead.’

  ‘I don’t mind. At least we’d die together.’

  ‘So that is what this is all about!’

  Michael was joking, but he could not make out the expression on Mattie’s face. Instead he tried in vain to stare at the skies above them, as if to search for what could be the harbingers of their fate, but from where they stood sheltering it was impossible to see the night sky. Still he stared because he did not know what else to do or to say. He knew what Mattie meant because that was exactly the way he felt as well. He knew – they both knew really – that one way or the other, what they were feeling for each other at that moment had a hell of an end date stamped right across it.

  Logically, either Michael would be killed in the war, or else when it was over and victory won he would have to leave Mattie to return to America and his wife and three young children, who were all waiting, hoping against hope, for his safe return. He could never leave his wife, could never hurt her in that way, any more than he could bear the thought of not seeing his son and daughters again.

  He was just about to suggest moving from the doorway and making a run for it back to the tube st
ation when the first bombs of that night began to fall. The next thing they both knew was darkness as they were picked up and hurled into the air, blasted out of their shelter by the explosions. Miraculously they were thrown clear of the falling masonry, the nearest bomb having dropped on a building the other side of the alleyway that ran behind the shop in whose doorway they had been sheltering. But the blasts were sufficient to knock half the roof off the building above them, as well as blow out several of its windows and loosen much of its brickwork. Michael was so stunned by the impact that he had no idea what was happening or indeed even where he was. Deafened by the explosions and all but blinded by the dust and debris, he found himself staggering into the middle of the street while the world seemed to be quite literally falling around him. Water was gushing up from somewhere in the ground nearby and there was an overpowering smell of gas from a fractured main. Fully conscious now, Michael realised Mattie was nowhere near him. He yelled her name above the now distant noise of yet another stick of bombs exploding and the rumble and thunder of tumbling masonry.

  ‘Mattie!’ he yelled. ‘Mattie, where are you? Mattie! Mattie, answer me! I’m right here! Mattie!’

  With a sudden ominous thump the fractured gas main exploded into fire, pitching Michael forward on to his knees but at the same time lighting up the vicinity in a dull red glow.

  At first all he could see was rubble, brickwork and concrete blown from nearby buildings, display goods and debris from broken shop windows, and rubbish and litter already lifting in the winds caused by the explosions. Then he saw a pile of bodies lying in the street, their clothes torn from their backs, their broken limbs twisted at all angles and sticking up in the air.

  Chapter Eleven

  As Judy walked down the aisle on her father’s arm to the sound of the old church organ, with all the flowers set about the transept in perfect order, Loopy could hardly believe that they had actually made it. It simply did not seem possible that she had her three sons, and Hugh, all present and correct, and that everything needed for the reception was ready and waiting for them back at the Meltons’ house in Old Bexham.