“Forget the war,” Woodend told her. “How much time have we spent together since I got demobbed?”
“Not a great deal,” Joan admitted, “but your work takes you away from London a lot.”
“Aye, that’s the point,” Woodend agreed. “Neither of us are gettin’ any younger—”
“It’d be a miracle if we were,” Joan interrupted. “But you’re still a fine figure of a man, Charlie Woodend, an’ even though I’m a bit heavier than I used to be, I can manage to turn the occasional head on the street.”
Woodend grinned. “I’ve no doubt about that. But the fact is, I’ve been wonderin’ whether I might take the same advice I gave Bob, an’ get a job that will keep me in town.”
Joan frowned. “Is that what you want?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’m sure what I want,” Joan said. “Or should I say, I’m sure of what I don’t want.”
“You are?”
“Most definitely. What I don’t want is to have a great lollopin’ brute like you hangin’ around the house all the time, forever gettin’ under feet when I’m tryin’ to do the housework.”
“You don’t?”
“I do not. The reason this marriage of ours has lasted so long, Charlie Woodend, is that we spend just enough time apart for us to be able to appreciate each other when we get the chance.”
“Are you sayin’ that I should stick to the job I’ve got?”
Joan stood up again. “Indeed I am. An’ now we’ve got that sorted out, I’ll go an’ make you that food I promised you.”
Woodend’s stomach rumbled just at the thought of it. He could murder a fry-up, he decided. As he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, he felt a great sense of relief surge through him, and realised that even the prospect of a desk job had weighed on him like a prison sentence.
He lit up a Capstan Full Strength and inhaled deeply. Capstans were such a bloody lovely smoke. And to think that just the day before he’d actually been contemplating switching to his sergeant’s cork-tipped. He must have gone temporarily insane.
Joan, her back to him as she melted the lard over the stove, finally allowed herself the luxury of the amused smile she’d been holding back for the previous couple of minutes. Men! she thought affectionately. Most of the time they were nothin’ but big soft kids.
The telephone rang in the hallway. Woodend sighed theatrically and rose to his feet.
“I’ll get it,” he said. “At this time of night it could only be the Super, tellin’ me to pack my bags an’ ship out to some Godforsaken hole in the middle of nowhere as soon as possible.”
But he did not seem displeased at the prospect, Joan noted.
When Woodend returned to the kitchen a couple of minutes later, there was a broad smile on his face. “That wasn’t the Super after all,” he said. “It was that sergeant of mine.”
Joan looked up from her cooking. “What’s Bob doin’ ringin’ at this time of night? I’d have thought that after the last few days, you’d both be sick of the sound of each other’s voices.”
“An’ so we are,” Woodend agreed. “But he’s just had a bit of good news, an’ he wanted us to be the first ones to hear about it.”
Death of a Cave Dweller Page 23