by Allie Burns
‘What’s it like, out there on the Front?’ she asked.
‘What’s it like?’ He bared his teeth at that. ‘Not for the ears of girls, that’s what it’s like,’ he snapped. She flattened her back against the chair while he squished his cigarette into his ashtray.
He stood and held out his hand. She hesitated for a moment, her own arms folded.
‘I wonder if they have any spare rooms,’ she said. ‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.’
His hand froze in the air. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
‘They’re fully booked,’ he said firmly. How could he know that? He had no way of being sure, but she couldn’t pay for another room anyway. She was reliant on him being a gentleman and sensing her unease.
‘Come on, Mrs Williams,’ he said. He jolted his outstretched hand back and forth. The barman polished his glass and wouldn’t catch her eye as she tried to catch his.
At the bedroom door, Theo left the key fob to hang in the lock and then he took her face in his hands and kissed her. He was all teeth and brandy fumes. His fingers dug into her jaw bone. She pulled back.
‘Just what are you so worried about?’ he asked.
‘It’s your manner, Theo. We have only just met,’ she said.
‘You didn’t say that when you walked down the aisle.’
No, she hadn’t, but perhaps if she’d been sensible enough to think this far ahead, she might have done. He opened the door and pulled her in behind him. He had the key in his spare hand. He locked them in. Took the key and put it in his pocket.
As he kissed her again, her eyes flicked towards the keyhole. That small peephole on their room was perfect for spying eyes, which was silly because who would be watching them, and wouldn’t there be footsteps in the corridor? His breathing was getting faster, driven by passion, not rage. His grip on her arms was firm, almost too tight. She wasn’t sure she could shake him off if she wanted to, and what would happen if she did? Where would she run to if she did break free?
‘I’m …’ She stretched for something to say, keep him talking. The raspberry-coloured bed covers sat in the room, as brazen as a lady-of-the-night’s lips. ‘I’m just worn out.’ Her mind was blank. It was all she could think to say, but he hadn’t cared when she’d said she was tired before. ‘Would you mind …’
She held her breath. His brandy haze hot on her face as he brought himself back, focused on her.
‘I don’t understand what is wrong with you,’ he said eventually. He relaxed his clamp on her arms. Her lungs emptied. He fastened his braces. ‘But if that’s what you want.’
He whistled as he took off his shoes and socks.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said. She stood by the side of the bed, a safe distance now. Was she being foolish? He seemed quite harmless now.
‘Of course not,’ he said.
She lay on the far side of the double bed, pulled the covers up to her chest and stared into the darkness, willing sleep to suck her in and take her away from all this.
Theo lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. He was beneath his trench coat. He wept, almost silently, but not quite. Her head spun. She’d been too hard on him, had let her imagination run away with her. Should she comfort him? Before she could answer, his muffled sobs faded, his breath lengthened and soon he began to snore.
*
Theo was up from his post on the floor, just at the time that she was stirring and adjusting to the caw of the sea gulls outside and the faint rustle of the waves. She stayed still while he peeled back the curtains to reveal a steel-grey day and rain blowing into the window in gusts. Theo promptly pulled the drapes tight again.
A tremor ran through his hand as it gripped the damask. He started as a door closed down the corridor. His chin bristled with yesterday’s growth, uneven across his face it grew in patches and his hair stuck up all over, and had lost its side parting.
She imagined she was pulling the blankets up to her chin in her bed in Perseverance Place, a day’s purposeful work ahead of her. He pushed his thumbs into his eyes, and in the next movement lifted his hands into the air above his head and let out a large sigh, expelling something more than the sound itself. She pulled the covers tight. Followed his every movement. He turned, focused on her and smiled. Came towards her. She flinched but his touch was as delicate as being tickled by an ear of grass as he traced the line of her jaw with his forefinger.
‘I can’t remember much of last night,’ he said. ‘How much did I have to drink that I ended up on the floor? I suppose that was my idea – insist on doing the gentlemanly thing, did I?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You decided to sleep on the floor.’ It was almost the truth. Best not to remind him of the person he’d been the night before. He couldn’t feel guilty if he didn’t remember, and it was better that he didn’t know that she’d rejected him, or that she couldn’t bear to be kissed by him.
‘Fancy missing out on the chance to sleep in here.’ He gestured to the empty side of the bed.
The memory of last night was being bleached away by the daylight. He was so tender now, as kind as he’d been in his letters, and on their wedding day. They’d both been in a state for different reasons; yes that’s what had happened. She’d made his behaviour into something it wasn’t. The poor thing had cried. But now it was a new day, the first proper day of their honeymoon.
‘I can sleep almost anywhere now,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you should drink again, while we’re here,’ she said, chewing her lip.
‘If that’s what you want,’ he said.
She nodded. She did. She wouldn’t stay if that other Theo came back again. She’d get a train, sleep at the station until the milk train left, anything but stay there. Her arms ached where his fingers had pressed her skin through to her bones. She hadn’t imagined that.
‘What would you like to do today?’ she said. She pushed a cushion up against the brass bedstead railings behind her and slid herself upright. ‘We shouldn’t let the bad weather hold us back.’
‘The sun shines when it r-ains,’ he sang in a thin wobbly voice to the tune of ‘Tipperary’. ‘When you’re by my side.’
He stopped singing to soak up her applause. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘honeymooners aren’t supposed to go outside, are they?’
The bellboy saved her from having to answer that. He brought them breakfast: toast on a rack smothered in marmalade, Earl Grey tea, all on a silver tray.
‘Perhaps we should stay inside then, like you say?’ She patted the bed. The poor man had spent his wedding night on the floor. Drunk. Weeping. She smiled but her lips twitched, betraying the memory she couldn’t shift of last night. He’d said he wouldn’t drink though and he deserved another chance.
He sat on the end of the bed. She didn’t flinch as he ran his hand through her hair, but she’d wanted to. He leant forwards and kissed her, firmly on the mouth. Much more tenderly than he had in the corridor last night. Less of the urgency. It had been the drink that had done that to him. She didn’t pull away this time; she sank into his embrace.
It was just as she’d remembered from their wedding day. Last night was forgotten – a bad start that was all. These were difficult times and they had to muddle through. A match light sparked and glowed within her. Her breath caught. She pulled herself to sit upright from the pillow. What would happen next? Was this it?
His hands gently strayed down from her shoulders to her chest. She was braced to push him away, defend herself from the forceful Theo who’d invaded her space the night before, but it was definitely the drink that had done that to him. Her cheeks burnt and then just as quickly the heat subsided. Energy surged through her veins.
He seemed to have grown an extra pair of hands; no sooner was he stroking her face than he smoothed her hair across her shoulders, straying lower, to her breasts, and then, he shifted his weight and took up the empty space beside her on the bed. Faster, but still not forceful, more like the
man she’d met under the clock. He was under the bedcovers, his hand journeying up the soft inside of her thigh. The sensation made her giggle. She closed her eyes and tried to swallow her laughter.
*
After he’d exhaled, he rolled onto the bed beside her and lit a cigarette. She took one too. They lay together, covers up to their armpits, hand in hand. There was so much she wanted to say, only where should she begin? The questions spun through her mind while she quietly contemplated the ceiling.
Chapter Sixteen
May 1917
Dear Emily,
Memories of our brief time together in Bournemouth keep me strong. I’m fuelled by patriotism and honour, and when I do battle, I do so with the thought of protecting you.
I will write more soon.
Fondest love and kisses
Theo
xxx
Dearest Emily,
I am sure you are very busy with your war work, but I wonder when we might see you in London. I’d like to know how your mother is getting along, and your uncle still refuses my calls. Have you heard from her? Is she well and settled and content with her decision to stay with him?
King regards
Your Grandmother
Mother still hardly wrote back to her, and whilst this was probably a good sign that she was too busy to think of her daughter, Emily decided she would act on her grandmother’s suggestion and she proposed afternoon tea.
Mother responded straight away. ‘If you only have one day off a week, you mustn’t waste it traipsing up to London.’ And that had been the end of it. It was so unlike Mother, but nothing surprised her any more. Wilfred was taking care of her, and that was all Mother had ever really wanted. She wasn’t meant for widowhood, she needed to be in capable hands, and she’d found them.
Men in bowler hats and suits, holding notebooks, appeared on the farm, mud crusting up the sides of their shoes.
Everyone around the farm paused, leant on their tools, and waited for Emily to explain why there were men huddled around talking in hushed voices, but she was as much in the dark as the rest of them.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked. They appraised her with a quick up and down, but before they could dismiss her as a rank and file land army girl she added, ‘My family owns this estate. Did my mother send you?’ But she could answer the question herself: Mother would never initiate anything like this. ‘Or my Uncle Wilfred, perhaps?’
‘I’m afraid we can only speak directly with the client who engaged us.’
‘The client … engaged?’
But the men had shuffled away from her, notebooks secreted in their pockets.
‘If you can’t identify yourselves, perhaps we ought to ask you to leave,’ she called after them, but they took no notice.
They stopped beside the Fordson. The tractor had been in the same place in the farmyard since Otto had driven it back from the field. When Mr Tipton went to market on Wednesdays, Otto had secretly been giving her lessons. The hard metal seat was so high up, the tractor’s slender nose so long, the wheels so huge, but before long she hadn’t noticed, and drove out of the farmyard, and up to the field where she ploughed a shaky half-moon.
‘Did you hear me?’ she called after the men. ‘You can’t just come on to my family’s land and start measuring it up.’
She would write to Mother to ask if Uncle Wilfred had sent the men on her behalf.
‘Perhaps they’re something to do with the army hospital,’ Mrs Tipton said, which made no sense at all because the army had only taken over HopBine and had no business on the farm. Two of the men had asked where they might find the old paper mill, by the river. It had once been used to produce handmade paper, but the building was nothing but a ruin now. What interest could that be to anyone?
A couple of the girls had stopped work, curious about the fuss, so she made a show of waving the men farewell and then trudged to the other side of the yard, to inspect the Fordson’s engine.
*
There was so much to do that the men’s visit was soon forgotten. The War Agriculture Committee was asking more and more of them. Another poor harvest, sustained losses of imports from ships and submarines had led to the food production programme. They had to clear more of the hop gardens and small fruit orchards to urgently cultivate the soil for more cereals and potatoes.
Planes raided London, and Grandmother wrote to say she’d had to spend the night with the mice on an underground platform. Voluntary rations had been introduced, but bread and potatoes had still doubled in price. They had to forgo their daily cheese with bread for lunch, and fuel themselves with margarine on their loaves instead.
While Cecil was trapped in a tiny cell with no human contact, and only the walls to listen to his principles, Emily worked with a sense of purpose that propelled her out of bed in the morning and kept her working after everyone else had gone home, and the pain became impossible to ignore. She often slept in her boots.
Around the farm the hedgerows were untrimmed – efforts were focused on the foods most needed. There were potato boxes everywhere.
Now the Board of Trade was extending its recruitment beyond educated women, to all levels of society.
Across the country, the land army grew in strength, but even Emily who loved to be outdoors whatever the weather, could understand how the better wages of the munitions factories, or the excitement of working as a dispatch driver, could be more alluring than farm work and so she appreciated why they still didn’t have the manpower to cultivate the extra land.
One particular night, Mr Tipton had his head in his hands and was asking Tiger, his tomcat, how they were going to manage. She said she had a surprise for him outside.
‘If one of us learnt to drive that tractor,’ she said, ‘it would reduce our ploughing time by two-thirds at least.’
‘She’s right.’ Mrs Tipton’s eyes danced with laughter. Mr Tipton had insisted that they keep the tractor, but he was on the one hand seduced by its potential to make his life easier, and on the other he was scared of the machine and too afraid to master it.
‘I’m sure it can’t be difficult,’ she said, with a wink to Mrs Tipton.
‘I’ll not allow it,’ he said. Mrs Tipton shook her head at her husband. But Mr Tipton wasn’t finished. ‘What would your father say if he knew I was allowing his precious daughter loose on the fields with that beast on the rampage? It takes weeks for a man to master it. You’re not strong enough. You’ll be flipping the machine over and crushing yourself to death.’
Mrs Tipton was laughing at him now. ‘Oh dear,’ she said to her husband. ‘You won’t learn, will you? This here’s a girl that sees talk like that as a challenge.’
She patted Emily on the back as she marched out into the dark to the farmyard.
‘I said no, and I mean no.’ Mr Tipton took the last word, and she let him have it. She fought to keep a straight face as she strode across the yard, bent double before the radiator grill and began to crank up the engine. The peaceful night was pierced with the alien hum of the motor. Emily hopped on board while the chickens clucked and the cows stirred.
By now she could hardly hide her amusement. Why hadn’t Mr Tipton thought to ask the Germans if they knew how to drive the tractor? She put the tractor into gear and with the machine chugging away beneath her she pulled out of the farmyard, into the darkness, navigating the lane she could walk in her sleep, with Mr Tipton chasing behind her.
Dearest Emily,
I am sorry that I haven’t written to you sooner. We have been terribly busy with this and that.
Where did Gerald get his posting. Did he make it to Mesopotamia? You must be proud to see your brother off to war. I’ll pray he stays safe and warm …
Fondest wishes
Theo
Emily lay in bed staring at the crack in the ceiling. The sinister black damp grew a little more every day, spreading like a new continent.
Her stomach rumbled. She had left her dinner uneaten last night. Flo, the
ir woman from the village, had now worked her way through Thirty-six Ways to Prepare a Potato at least three times over. But usually Emily was so hungry she could eat a potato prepared the same way for a week and not mind.
Rolling onto one side, she lifted Theo’s letter from the box she kept beneath her bed. It had been the first in a while, and she couldn’t make sense of it. Who was Gerald? She didn’t even know anyone by that name. Perhaps Theo needed to take some leave and catch up on his sleep, have a rest from it all.
She imagined being propped up in her own broad, comfy bed in her room in HopBine House: the linen sheets, the satin quilt, a never-ending supply of fresh flowers on the dressing table. She pictured a neat breakfast tray with fragrant coffee steaming in a delicate china cup with rose-pink edges and a freshly baked roll that would melt in her mouth. That was all a long time ago. Now, a strange soldier would be sleeping in her room, recuperating after his treatment at the Finch Hall army hospital.
Martha bashed into the wall downstairs while she was tidying. Emily reached out of the side of her bed towards the wooden chair and pulled her dressing gown under the covers and rolled about to put it on. Then she slipped on some warm socks, and slid back the covers, safely shielded from the cold. In front of the full-length looking glass she hesitated. There she stood in her dressing gown, billowing out in pleats from her chest and obscuring her ankles. When had she last even worn a dress? John’s memorial. A lifetime ago.
She grabbed the excess material and bunched it together in a fist that she nestled in the small of her back. She pulled it taut around her hips and waist, and then she assessed the snaking meanders of her body’s topography. Snatching the material tighter still, she held her breath, pulled in her waist and without intending it, her chin lifted, her small chest thrust forwards, her bottom pushing away. She remained rigid in her invisible stays for a few moments, and then she grew hungry for a breath and let the dressing gown fall, her posture slumping. She began to breathe again.