‘Aren’t you cold?’ She was just in her dress, her thin white arms exposed. It was cooler now; a slight breeze was catching the trees and ruffling the young leaves.
‘I’m fine, got this,’ she said, and held up her cigarette. But he took his jacket off and put it around her shoulders.
‘You’re a gentleman, Arthur Silver, I always said you were.’ How much easier it would be for him if he was a real gentleman. ‘Now are you going to tell me about the service or do I have to make it up myself?’
‘There’s not much to tell—’ He stopped himself. ‘Sorry, it’s just that I never went anywhere interesting. Just Yorkshire and Scotland. They did teach us to turn bed corners. And I know a lot about venereal disease.’
Her face burst open in a cackle of laughter. He smiled, pleased with the effect.
‘Did you meet any girls then?’
‘No,’ he said quickly, but his face felt warm. It was as if she could see into his head and see him, flesh exposed, and the girl, the prostitute, on her back. Muriel narrowed her eyes. His mind flashed with images of the girl with the scar, the dim room, her stockings hanging over the chair. ‘Never got the chance to put my learning into action,’ he said, trying to make a joke of it.
‘Now, Arthur, be honest, are you courting Miss Frost? I saw you with her, sitting out. Don’t she like dancing?’ She was looking up at him with a mock innocence, an almost-smirk at the corners of her mouth.
‘We did dance, at the beginning. I’m not very good, you know. I did tell you.’
‘All Englishmen say they can’t dance. It’s because they don’t try. The Americans are no better but at least they give it a go. What about that Verity then? You always liked her.’
He wondered why she was so keen on finding out.
‘We’re not courting really, just friends. I’ve known her a long time. But you know that.’
He wanted to ask her about Jack. Why was she dancing with him?
‘Pinnicky, that one.’
‘What?’
‘Gets her knickers in a twist. Oh, I don’t mind her, she’s all right. Don’t think she cares much for me.’
‘Oh no—’ he started to say but Muriel dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
‘Too good for the likes of me, she is. Maybe for you too.’ He became aware of her eyes on him. ‘What about you then? Go on. I don’t believe the service was completely dull. You don’t want to tell me, do you?’ She was appraising him, her head slightly to one side, trying to work something out.
‘What is it?’
‘You look different. Older.’
‘Do I?’ He laughed awkwardly. With some relief he heard the door creak open and a blast of bright light and music fell on them both.
He was slow to turn, dulled by the uncomfortable penetration of Muriel’s gaze. He thought she wanted to say more to him but it was too late now.
‘There you are… Oh, hello, Muriel.’ Verity was framed in the doorway, half in obscurity, half in brightness, her face shining.
The three of them stood still, and then all at once they moved and spoke at the same time. Muriel took off the jacket, handed it to Arthur and skipped back; Verity stepped forward and took her place on the step. Arthur was left hovering, holding his jacket.
‘She’s after you, you know,’ said Verity, lighting up a cigarette.
‘What? Muriel?’
‘Yes, you dozy thing, Muriel.’ She ruffled his hair and his scalp prickled. She gave him one of her indulgent smiles. ‘It’s glorious, isn’t it?’ she said, and stubbed out her cigarette with her heel. She took his hand, pulling him down off the porch into the garden. ‘Come with me.’ Her eyes were white in the twilit haze. He glanced back. Watching from the doorway was Muriel. She gave him a little wave and turned towards the ballroom. A figure came towards her from the shadows, but Verity was tugging on his hand and he was forced to look away.
‘Look,’ Verity said. ‘There.’ He saw that her finger was pointing above the bush. In the peach glow of the twilight, hundreds of moths were twirling, criss-crossing each other, their wings flickering light, fluttering like the girls’ dresses inside. The sky above them hung like a swollen parachute waiting to collapse and he detected a faint smell of swimming pool chlorine. They watched the moths as he ran his fingers along the veins in her wrist. He felt Muriel’s gaze tingle on the back of his neck. A faint rumble of thunder came from away towards the coast.
First a drop came, then another, until soon rain was falling, splashing gently onto the patio at the side of the house, darkening the stone, and onto the leaves of the trees and the glass bulbs, sending up haloes of light against the sudden dusk. Girls holding little jewelled bags above their heads ran shrieking, ahead of their stumbling partners, for the house.
‘This way,’ said Verity, grabbing his hand. He caught a spark of her wide, white eyes.
She led him back towards the drive, to a maze of trees. As he was pulled along, the entire scene was lit up by lightning, caught in a neon, motionless flash. Instinctively, he looked back. There, standing in the doorway where Muriel had been a few moments before, was Jack. He was wearing a sly smile.
Arthur held on tight to Verity's hand. When they stopped running he heard her shallow breathing and felt it hot on his neck. They were standing in some kind of arboretum, trees twined above them, a bower of dripping green. It formed a cocoon, a verdant cave where they could hide, unseen, from the drive or the house. Jack surely couldn’t see them in here. Above them now, a low, deep rumble of thunder. They were soaked, their clothes stuck to them, but her face was radiant with laughter. The rain dropped off the trees pitter-patter onto the leaves above them, and the sweet smell of earth suffused the arbour. She smelt faintly of something dark, less of the perfume now. She’d been drinking. He kissed her mouth and it tasted of whisky. She submitted to the kisses. It felt as if she returned them. He touched his lips along the line of her jaw and then down her beautiful, long neck and along her collarbone, damp with the heat and then the rain.
She put something cold into his hand. It was Peter’s hip flask.
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Stole it,’ she said. ‘Peter’s too busy chattering away to Americans to notice. Go on, have some.’
He swallowed some of the whisky, let it slide down his throat and vibrate through his head. On the side of the flask it said, etched into the silver:
Peter John Frost
17th February 1951
‘Peter’s twenty-first,’ Arthur said. He had a memory of Verity against the bark of a tree in her dark, moonless garden – kissing her cold mouth in the gloom, the smell of wet oak trees, the figures from the party silhouetted in the downstairs windows of the house. Peter’s birthday party had been only a few months before Mrs Frost was found on a deserted stretch of beach by the bottom field, in nightclothes.
‘Arthur,’ Verity said, and he was immediately alert. Her voice was breathy and fevered, not arch and brittle as usual. It seemed to be a sign of a change; an end to the tortuous dance between childhood friendship and adult sex. What that actually meant beyond tonight and the immediate future he didn’t care. She was not too good for him, like Muriel said.
In the distance he heard something humming. At first he thought it was the thunder echoing from far away and ignored it. But as his fingers fumbled with the back clasps of her dress, he realised she was not moving. She was concentrating, listening. He listened too, his fingers hovering. It was hard to tell if the rain had stopped as the bushes were still dripping with water. It wasn’t thunder. It was an engine. The hum grew louder until there was no other sound, drowning out the drip drip of the raindrops. Then it stuttered and stopped.
Dappled light lay on Verity’s hair and collarbone, like jewels. He stroked the nape of her neck but she twitched.
‘What is it?’ he whispered and he felt her shake her head.
He kissed her again and willed the silence to continue. Surely the intruders would go inside. Ag
ainst his mouth her veins pulsed.
‘Arthur! Come out from where you’ve hidden yourself!’ It was Peter’s voice, booming through the stillness, followed by another male voice, distinctly American.
‘Hey, Art, I got something to show you!’
Jack. He didn’t move.
‘They’re calling for you,’ she whispered.
‘Ignore them. They can’t find me,’ he said, and kissed her shoulder. She shuddered and sighed. Her hand rested on his head and came down to his face. He took it, held it tight and reached for her mouth. All was quiet. The men must have gone into the house.
But as they kissed, a voice – Jack’s – called out, ‘Art!’ and she pulled her mouth away. He held onto her hand, reluctant to allow the air to come between them.
‘I can’t. Not with them there. I can’t.’
‘Ignore them,’ he whispered, close to her face.
‘Where the hell are you, Art?’ The sound reverberated through the trees.
‘We can’t,’ she said, and that was final. ‘You should go.’
His hand fell away from Verity’s dress and he straightened up. ‘I’ll see you later then.’
She nodded, but she wasn’t looking at him.
He wanted to kiss her again but he couldn’t bring himself to.
‘Sorry,’ she said, into the dark green of the trees.
He left her in the hidden grove and, immune to the wet leaves brushing his face, burning with rage at his so-called friends who had interrupted him and at her for letting them, he came out to the driveway.
‘Just grabbing some air,’ he said, trying to slow down his breathing.
‘Taking you for a spin, old chap,’ said Jack, grinning at him as if he knew exactly what Arthur had been doing.
The motorcycle gleamed wet from rain and the lights on the driveway. A knot of onlookers had gathered at the door and on the gravel drive, admiring, as if at some spectacular show. Peter was in the shadow of the bike but Arthur caught his expression as Jack revved the engine. He looked wounded, as if he’d received a punch to the guts.
*
Alone in the trees, the memory of Arthur’s mouth still on her lips, her tongue and her skin, Verity heard the roar of the engine fade into the night. She stayed where she was until she was sure the motorcyclists had disappeared and Peter had gone back inside.
She’d not been aware of the drop in temperature until now. Goosebumps covered her bare arms and her hair was hanging wet about her face. She found her sodden shawl under a bush, shook it out and pulled it, shivering, around her. It was strange to need clothes after so many long weeks of them clinging to her body, wet with perspiration, or flung off and left abandoned and crumpled. She must go back to the dance. The other girls might notice she had gone. Light had drained from the garden, leaving dark shapes and rain dripping off the glass bulbs that draped from the trees, and the sky was deepening into pink and grey streaks. A strong smell of earth rose with steam from the rain-soaked garden. The driveway was deserted, the gravel shining and a fine drizzle lit up sparkling in the hazy glow from the string of lights along it. It was black at the end of the drive. They were out there somewhere, Arthur and Jack, on the motorcycle. There was a kind of thrill at the thought of them roaring through the night, and a thrill at the thought of her hidden in the trees with Arthur’s mouth on hers – but a fear too.
Returning to the ballroom, she felt on show at first, as if everyone must know where she had been, then she realised that no one had noticed her absence and she could watch them instead. For a few long minutes she stood shivering in a corner surveying the dancing. They were all there, the local girls and boys, the shiny pastels of the girls’ dresses swirling round the boys’ clumsy legs. Farmers and fishermen scrubbed up for the night. The uniforms of the Americans were a dashing navy, but none of them, she noted, as interesting as Jack. She felt far removed even from the girls she knew from her school days. For all their talk they were not the kind of girls to do anything. They would wait. And maybe one of the smarter boys, a vicar’s son or something, would court them, or even one of the more educated Americans, but it would be the usual dull courtship, ending in the usual dull marriage.
Verity couldn’t help but smile at her secrets. Yet she squirmed. Standing shivering in the dripping trees as the engine revved and faded, she recalled Jack catching sight of her, lit by the rectangle of golden yellow fallen across the drive from the open door. How long had he been there? Had Jack seen them together, her and Arthur? His face told her he had, that he’d seen right through the trees and caught her being kissed by Arthur. It gave her a terrible sense of nakedness as if he must know what she really was. But at the same time, maybe she wanted him to know; maybe she wanted to be known. She felt as if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff. About to fly or fall.
*
A muffled cry came from in front. Clutching onto Jack’s back, Arthur couldn’t make it out.
‘What?’
Jack turned. Arthur caught the words ‘Miss Frost’, but the rest was lost in the roar of the wind rushing past his ears, the throb of the engine like a miniature aeroplane and the pounding of his own blood. His insides felt like they were flying out behind him and the cold air snapped on his face as they hurtled along deserted country lanes. Arthur had been on a motorbike before in basic training, but not like this. Not at this speed, on these roads. Jack took them out on the coast road towards Cromer, through the tiny villages of Stiffkey and Cley. In one of them, a man walked out of the pub and had to step back into the doorway as they sped past. ‘Terribly sorry, sir!’ Jack called.
With Verity listening in the shadows there, he felt he couldn’t refuse getting on the bike. He felt bad for Peter – he clearly idolised Jack. But Peter was vulnerable.
As they drove back through Wells and out the other side, he forgot about his friend and remembered why people loved motorbiking. He’d taken a few rides on one of the other recruits’ bikes back on the service. It was the freedom. So much more electrifying than his old pushbike. This was what flying felt like. He remembered the old game of pilots he had played with Peter and that one sickening, exhilarating trip on the plane in training – the smell of petrol mixed with his own sweat. Jack, of course, knew all about real flying. It seemed oddly fitting that the usurping American had all this experience, but he, an Englishman who had the misfortune not to be born into the right class, did not. Behind them, the sun had long since sunk into the Wash. It was that strange time on a Midsummer night when it should have been dark but wasn’t. Grey rainclouds moved across a pale, cold sky and the flints of the buildings they flew past sparked golden in the leftover light.
Jack turned and winked at him. For God’s sake, man, face front, stop showing off. Was he drunk? He bloody hoped not.
At Salthouse, the road opened to the sky, and to the left of them the marsh grasses swayed in the wind, rippling down to the sea. Arthur felt a surge of dizzying euphoria edged with fear.
*
A young American was asking Verity to dance. He was pimply and gauche, and the others were gone – she wanted to say no. But there was nothing for it, all the other girls she knew were dancing, she might as well warm up. The band was playing all the big band American favourites, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, that sort of thing. No more jiving.
After her second dance, she looked up at the clock. It was almost midnight. The band had switched to a slow beat and the shadowy dancers slumped onto each other, the lucky ones’ arms entwined, the unlucky ones seeking solace in each other’s company, determined not to show their disappointment. She no longer wanted to dance.
Arthur and Jack weren’t back yet. They must still be messing about outside with the stupid motorbike. It made her nervous, the thought of them on the machine together. The excitement she’d felt earlier lingered but it was souring. She slipped off to the powder room and inspected her reflection in the glass. She smoothed her hair and wiped a few dots of black from under her eyes where the rain had stre
aked her mascara and reapplied her lipstick. In the mirror she saw that her hand was shaking. They would surely be back by midnight. What was she so het up about? It was Jack’s eyes when he looked right through the arbour to where she stood. In his eyes a challenge – but a challenge to what? Maybe she was imagining it. It had been half dark and she’d drunk too much. But she couldn’t get it out of her head, that he was taunting her, daring her to respond. And now Arthur was out in the darkness with this madman. And she couldn’t help but feel that she’d brought it all about herself.
*
Jack swerved, braked suddenly and veered right, inland. The lanes curled along the edges of fields, deeper into the countryside. Arthur was tired. He thought of Verity back in the garden of the Hall, her face damp with rain, droplets in her hair. He imagined her dancing, the blue dress creating an arc around her, another man touching her bare arms.
Jack turned his head to say something. With a high hedge blocking the wind, Arthur caught the words, ‘You keen on Verity Frost?’
He clenched his jaw. ‘No!’ he shouted, without thinking.
Jack seemed to nod, then turned back with the flash of a grin. He revved the engine and though the road was even more twisty than along the coast, he sped up, faster and faster, cutting corners, low to the ground, almost skimming the tarmac. As they swung round each bend, with each lurch Arthur questioned what on earth Jack was doing. It was as if he was trying to throw them both off, trying to scare him. Trying to scare him off Verity. He didn’t want to show his fear, but he couldn’t help gripping Jack’s back harder. They passed so close against the hedges, drops of water cascaded onto his knuckles. Birds flapped up from the trees in a rush of alarm. The light at the front of the bike swept out ahead of them, like a lighthouse beam in a rough sea. Back inland, hidden from the coast, darkness began to seep into the domain, fields merging with the sky. Arthur’s hair was pushed back from his forehead by the force of the wind. His face was wet with fine mizzle. His arms ached with the effort of holding on. Each corner and jolt of the bike churned his stomach and made him tense for the impact of a fall.
The Night of the Flood Page 7