by Angela Huth
‘What do you mean, I know myself?’ Prue was alert now.
‘All those men you serviced in the war. The ones you told me about. The whole lot of others I don’t know about.’
He was smiling a little, clocking up points against her should they be needed, Prue reckoned. ‘It wasn’t like that! I wasn’t servicing them, as you so crudely call it. I was having a good time here and there. One or two were more than sex. One, I loved.’ She kneaded her fingers, suddenly tense, affronted.
Barry was unmoved by her offence. He waved his cigar in the air, increasing the smoke left from the last wave. ‘Well, whatever you say, sweetheart. Anyway, Bertha declared herself. Said she loved me, all that. She was pathetic, irritating in her efforts to make me feel the same. I avoided her as much as I could, tried to laugh her out of it. Then one evening I came home to find her gone – well, gone from the house. Nothing cooking in the kitchen. I went up to her room, found her sobbing on the bed. When I came in she just stood up, opened her dressing-gown, let it drop to the ground. What could I do? What would any man have done?’ He paused. ‘She’s no Rita Hayworth, never has been, but there was something nice about her—’
‘You can spare me the details,’ said Prue, lightly. Fascinated, she was trying to picture the unlikely scene.
‘All that was a mistake, of course. Next day I said she had a choice. She could either stop pestering me for love, which I was never going to give her, or go. Naturally she stayed. And I have to admit, sweetheart, occasionally I was obliged to give her what she wanted. About once every three months seemed to be all she asked.’
‘Really? And does that arrangement still continue? Has it carried on since we were married?’ Prue was intrigued by the unwavering formality of her own voice.
‘Well, here we go.’ Barry shifted his thighs, crossed one over the other. ‘I always thought it would never come to this . . . There was big trouble, of course, when I told her I’d found a wife. She went haggard overnight. Face completely dropped, changed, hair suddenly screwed up. I told her, “never again” . . . But you know how it is. A man feels sorry for a sad woman, likes to cheer her up. And it has to be said, it’s the plain ones who’re often the most grateful. Don’t get so many chances, do they? Know what I mean?’ He paused, then went on quietly. ‘So, yes, I have to admit, from time to time, there’s been a lapse. Don’t think it meant anything, sweetheart. It was only ever a quick roger to keep her happy.’
‘I see,’ said Prue. She sighed, as a child does at the end of a story. ‘And what’s the plan now?’
‘Well, obviously it’s finished for good. Over. I’ll give her notice tomorrow morning. We can get someone younger, nearer your age, company for you . . .’
‘I don’t think you should sack her,’ Prue heard herself saying. ‘Poor old thing. Nowhere to go. She does all right for us. Spares me all the boring bits. No, don’t sack her.’
Barry was shaking his head. ‘What can that mean?’ he asked. ‘Wife suggests husband keeps his bit on the side. Does that mean you don’t care?’
‘Don’t care? What do you mean?’
‘Does it mean you care for me so little, sweetheart, that my small infidelities mean nothing to you?’
Prue tipped up her chin, working out an answer. ‘Of course I care. I just don’t think the whole Bertha thing is terribly important. You’re like all men. Plenty of qualities, plenty of weaknesses. Women know they’ve got to put up with all that. Thing is, to weigh up whether it’s worth sacking a pathetic woman just because she’s screwed the boss. I don’t think so. Please, Barry, let her stay.’
Barry swerved his damp lips from side to side as he tapped off more ash. ‘Very well,’ he said, after only a second’s hesitation, ‘if it’s all the same to you. Save all the bother of finding someone new. But I promise you—’
‘Fine. I believe you till the next time. And please tell her it meant nothing to me. I wouldn’t want her to think I was put out by the whole business.’
Again, amazement clouded Barry’s half-shut eyes. ‘You’ve taken this very well, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You’re more grown-up than I thought. You’re quite a mature woman. Here.’ He put out a hand. Prue got up, went to him, gave him her wrist. She wondered if he could hear the battering of her heart. ‘Am I forgiven?’
‘Of course.’ She bent down and kissed his temple. It tasted of cigar.
‘What we need, to put the seal on things, is a child.’ He pulled her further down, quite roughly. ‘Perhaps we should go at it a bit harder.’
‘Perhaps.’ Prue pulled herself away from him, moved to the door. ‘I’m going up for a bath,’ she said.
‘I’ll follow you soon.’ His chuckle froze Prue’s innards. ‘We’ll lie down, rest a while, then I’ll take you out to dinner. Don’t suppose Bertha’ll be up to much haute cuisine tonight.’
Prue climbed the stairs two at a time, heaving herself up with the kind of spring she used to employ to jump on to the back of Noble, the great shire horse at Hallows Farm. Only two thoughts pushed for space in her mind: she must see Stella or Ag as soon as possible, find out what she should do. Meantime a sense of freedom flared through her, so powerful she could have jumped high enough to reach the ceiling. Whatever happens, she thought, I’m free now. Lummy, I’m absolutely free.
Chapter 4
As Prue made her way to bed late, buoyed by her new sense of freedom, she was puzzled that she felt nothing else: no outrage or sense of betrayal, no despising Barry for his treachery, no fury against the pathetic Bertha. Instead, a curious, benign understanding lapped within her. Of course she could see why things had come about between Barry and his housekeeper. And she didn’t care. Married life could carry on, materially provided for. She and Bertha could continue in their mutual ignoring. It was up to Barry whether he continued to pleasure the housekeeper from time old time, ugly old cow, and once she, Prue, was pregnant, sex could be whittled down till it was almost non-existent.
Loveless marriage, with extravagant compensations, was not so bad. Prue had never supposed she would be blessed with the kind of loving union had by Mr and Mrs Lawrence. She had done nothing to deserve that. But she was lucky to be married at all, she thought. There were thousands of young women whose boyfriends had been killed, thousands of young widows. So given that she was married and, now, free, she would avail herself of everything she could get: the security of Barry, the freedom to look around. Somewhere behind these nebulous thoughts lurked a faint melancholy, though she guessed it was nothing to do with tonight’s revelations. It was more a kind of disappointment: she was disappointed in herself. When she was a working land girl, she remembered, when a field of straight furrows was finished or the whole herd of Friesians milked single-handed, she had sometimes experienced a sense of satisfaction that never came to her now. Stella and Ag, she was sure, would have good advice, but it was still some months till their next London reunion, and both lived too far away for a spontaneous visit. Petrol coupons would have to be saved.
Her longing for a reunion with the others was fulfilled surprisingly quickly, well before the annual meeting. Ag sent a telegram to say Mrs Lawrence had died of a sudden heart-attack, and Mr Lawrence very much hoped the girls would be able to get to Yorkshire for the funeral in three days’ time. They could stay in the farmhouse. Prue looked up cross-country trains, and asked Barry’s permission to leave for a few days. He seemed relieved to give it to her. It occurred to Prue that in his fleeting visits to the kitchen he was being berated by the livid Bertha, who now managed to avoid addressing any word at all to her. Since Confession Day, as Prue called it, Barry had had the air of a man deflated: relieved to have confessed his guilt, but caught up in the aspic of confusion as to how, now, he should play his part. Up to him, thought Prue. She didn’t really care.
Barry drove her to the station, gave her money for a first-class ticket. A porter carried her Louis Vuitton case – a birthday present – to an empty carriage and touched his cap when she gave him a shil
ling. Despite the sad reason for this journey, there was something exciting about setting off on her own, leaving the stifling house. She sat by the window, head against the spotless antimacassar, the back of her knees brushed gently by the fuzzy stuff of the seat. A sepia photograph of a Dorset village not far from Hinton Half Moon hung opposite.
By the time the train had left the station tears ran jerkily from her eyes. She sniffed, imagining the mess scrawled across her cheeks. But she couldn’t help it. The evocative photograph had brought it all back: most of all Mrs Lawrence, who had become a kind of surrogate mother, with all the strength and wisdom and dignity that her own mother lacked. Prue shut her eyes, remembered. Mrs Lawrence . . . her kindly face, hard of bone but soft round the edges when she smiled: voice either hard and cracked with fatigue or disapproval, or gentle as a mourning dove when she had time to feel her happiness. Mrs Lawrence: her stringy arms, honed from a lifetime of kneading bread, rolling pastry, milking cows, smoothing her men’s shirts with an iron that weighed a ton. Her food, so good it was hard ever to imagine there was a war. Her generosity, her concern always for others, her sudden flare of incomprehensible temper when she came across something that, innocent to others, displeased her. What on earth would Mr Lawrence do without his wife? Much of his huge strength came from her. They communicated more in being than in words, and it had worked so well. They understood each other without ever having to spell things out. Oh, to find such understanding. Once, the night they had gone to some dance, Mrs Lawrence had come up to the attic to help the girls dress. The place was a warm litter of slung-down clothes and scattered makeup, the air thick with the scent of Prue’s Nuits de Paris. Mrs Lawrence’s cheeks had turned pink with vicarious excitement, yet Prue had seen a wistful shadow in her eyes – thinking back to her own youth, perhaps, when she had prepared for just such an evening out. And when the girls rollicked down the stairs, Mrs Lawrence behind them, Prue had seen Mr Lawrence, waiting below to chauffeur them, give his wife an almost invisible nod and smile, acknowledging her feelings.
Mr Lawrence came so sharply to her mind, too: tall and lean and gruff, wise and silent – he’d do anything for anyone, would Mr Lawrence. Only incompetence or laziness made him angry. There was some sadness, obviously, that his son Joe was not fit to fight. But he was proud of him, you could see that. He was proud of the way Joe rose above his own disappointment, put everything into the farm. Joe, Joe . . . Such a good way, he had been, to start life as a land girl. And once their flaming had died down he had remained a good friend, their friendship burnished by the knowledge of lovers. No wonder poor Stella had loved him so much . . .
Prue put up a hand to stop fresh tears. Her cheeks were cold. Her fingers came away smeared with black. Better clean myself up before the station, she thought, and held up a small mirror to assess the damage. She saw that she was wearing the old red spotted bow in her hair, the one that had always brought her good luck with ploughing. Ashamed that she could have been so thoughtless as to wear it on arrival, she pulled it off and stuffed it into her bag. From her coat pocket she drew out a black one and fixed it into her curls. She could, she thought, go without a bow altogether, but that would be out of character. The others would be surprised. A black bow, she reckoned, they would judge as custom rather than frivolity. But why, at this time, was she thinking about bows?
Looking out of the window, Prue saw nothing to cheer her spirits. They passed outskirts of industrial towns where bomb damage had still not been cleared, and weeds tall as ripe wheat sprouted through rubble and broken stone. There were houses that had been cut in half, leaving parts of rooms where paper curled away from cracked walls, and a few pieces of smashed furniture still stubbornly kept their place on the remaining planks of floor. These ruined houses, their private tastes still exposed to all who passed, perhaps never to be rebuilt, filled Prue with renewed gratitude for having spent the war in deep country away from most of the bombing. How lucky they had all been: only one bomb and no one killed but poor old Nancy, the cow.
Once the desolate townscapes gave way to the swoops of Yorkshire hills and dales Prue looked out with a farmer’s interest. But still there was little to cheer her in the landscape. While the fields themselves were in good order – mostly due to her fellow land girls, Prue thought, with a sudden smile – the farmhouses and villages were much in need of repair. A whole row of cottages was deserted, the roofs caved in, slates still scattered over the weeds of front gardens. Plainly, random parts of the country had not escaped attack. Here, as in Dorset, a German on his way home must have chosen to drop his excess bombs.
Prue wondered where she was. The train chuntered slowly, parallel to small roads, but there were no signposts. Perhaps returning them was not a priority for those who had to put things back. The locals knew their way: who cared if strangers were confused? And there didn’t seem to be many people about – the occasional woman on a cumbersome bike, a rare car eking out its petrol ration by driving at twenty miles an hour. In one farmyard, only a few yards from the train, Prue saw an old man backing a cob into the shafts of an ancient cart while in an upstairs window his frail wife was hitching black material to one side of the frame, perhaps too exhausted to replace the years of blackout with the original curtains. Protected by her narrow, privileged married life in Manchester, Prue realized she had not been aware of the slow process of Britain’s recovery. Now, on this journey to Yorkshire, she was aware of a sense of inertia. It was hard to imagine the return to normal, a distant time of incalculable years.
The station, cloudy with smoke and steam through which very weak lights made a pathetic attempt to brighten the place, was crowded with people in shabby clothes of uniform dullness. With a strange feeling of impatience, Prue wondered how long it would take before there was brightness on the streets and in public places again. And when clothes rationing came to an end, would people want brightness after so many years of dreary dressing? Would beautiful colours start to appear in the shops?
Prue took a taxi from the station to the Lawrences’ farm, a half-hour ride through unfamiliar country: wide views, no hedged-in narrow lanes, villages scattered beside the Dales. The house itself was much smaller than Hallows Farm, its cracked face a little lopsided, its window small and lustreless. The farmyard was to one side, and a small barn housing a Fordson tractor. No sign of any animals: no pigsty for Sly’s grandchildren, no stable for a replacement Noble.
Prue walked up the narrow front path squeezed between a painted fence plainly not homemade. This made her smile. The idea of a fenced front path at Hallows Farm would have been risible. Mr Lawrence’s brother, from whom this house was inherited, must have had very different ideas from Faith and Tom, whose aim was always practicality rather than neatness. In the patch of garden opposite the farmyard, a washing-line had been slung between two trees. Mrs Lawrence’s sage-coloured cotton dress, which she must have worn a thousand times, was pegged to it. Puffed up by the breeze, it blew about, only star of the washing-line. How on earth could that old dress still exist? thought Prue. None of her own clothes had more than a few months of life. At the thought of Mrs Lawrence’s parsimony, and seeing the thin cotton in its last dance, she felt tears pressing again. Quickly she turned away.
Prue had never knocked on the Lawrences’ door and decided not to do so now. Inside, she saw an open door off the dark passage. She made her way there, wondering whom she should find, where everybody was. She looked through the door, went no further.
Mr Lawrence was sitting at the table – the old table, the old chairs, but how clumsy they looked in this strange, much smaller kitchen. He had an open newspaper before him but he was not reading. The toll on him of his wife’s death was rampant in his face. The ravines that ran from his nose to his chin had become deep enough to sharpen a knife. The whites of his eyes were confused with red veins, and the lids, previously so taut in their hollows, were now swollen. He moved his hands together in the shape of a spire, the rough fingers quivering. The familiarity
of those hands – seen so often helping with an udder, showing how to hold a chopper or skin a rabbit – made Prue want to cry out loud this time, but she controlled herself. ‘Mr Lawrence,’ she said quietly.
He raised his head. ‘Oh, Prue.’ He stood up. ‘I’m mighty glad you’ve come, all of you.’
Briefly, they embraced. He smelt the same: hay, root vegetables, sharp tobacco.
‘I’m so sorry. I wish I could say something to let you know how sorry I am.’ For all her effort, her voice had cracked.
‘It was very quick, thank the Lord. She had a good last day. No notion of what was to come, I don’t think . . . Heart-attack in the night. Didn’t even wake me.’
‘Always so considerate,’ Prue dared say, and it worked. Mr Lawrence gave the faintest smile.
‘Best way to go. Though she was getting used to this place. We never stopped missing Hallows, but we were carrying on with life.’ He gave a brief wave, a wooden gesture, to indicate the newness of the place that was still not home. ‘The others arrived a couple of hours ago. They’re up in the attic – not quite the old attic, but all right for a night or two.’
‘And Joe?’
Mr Lawrence gave her a look she knew well. She cursed herself for having asked the question.
‘Joe’s on his way. Janet’s not long till she gives birth again. Shall I take your bag?’ Prue shook her head. ‘Very well. I’ll put the kettle on. Up the stairs, left turn and up the next flight.’
While climbing the steep and narrow stairs, Prue heard the girls’ voices: muted, familiar. What is it about familiarity, after a spell of absence, that is so affecting? She pushed open the low door and there they were, Stella and Ag, sitting on low beds, shoes kicked off, knees together, shins splayed, their old end-of-the-day positions. Ag’s shoulders were hunched against a small casement window, Stella’s chin was cupped in her hands. At first, in the poor light of the room, Prue could only make out shapes, no detail.