by MARY HOCKING
The Commander was the first to leave. As he went past Jessie she heard him say to Number One, `We really must get rid of the padre. The man’s insane!’
Jessie sat at the back while the room cleared and the silence gradually came back. The padre knelt before the altar, so still that Jessie was scarcely conscious of his presence. She looked absently at the seats in front, nicely polished by the Wrens’ neat behinds but dusty along the rims of the back-rests. She felt rather frightened for some reason. It was not the funny bits, like singing `Blessed are the pure in heart’ that troubled her: Beatie would have enjoyed that! What troubled her was that the gleam of mischief had died with Beatie. Sitting facing the altar, the bright flowers in shadow now, the cross glowing more darkly, Jessie felt guilty about thinking how Beatie would have laughed over `Blessed are the pure in heart’. In fact, the more she tried to think about Beatie, the real Beatie, the more guilty she felt.
One other person had stayed behind. He sat on the far side of the room, a tall angular young man with the set, hostile expression often adopted by people who are ill-at-ease in their surroundings. He had been watching Jessie for some time. Now he rose and came slowly towards her.
`Why, hello, Frank!’ she said, recognizing the rating with whom Beatie had often danced. She rubbed her fist across her eyes. `I’m making a fool of myself.’ Not that it mattered, a fellow who had known Beatie’s favours wasn’t likely to look twice at Jessie Buck.
He sat beside her, his hands dangling between his knees, his head thrust down.
`What did you think of the service?’ she asked him.
`Pompous old idiot, reeling off all that mumbo-jumbo!’
`If he wanted to say something nice, there was plenty I could’ve told him. She’d do anything for you, Beatie would – lend you clothes, advise you about make-up, anything like that. And she never said unkind things about people, never! Not like some of the cats who thought they were so much better than she was. People like Daphne Palmer and Dixie. What did they come for? They didn’t like Beatie.’
`Maybe they don’t get much excitement in their little lives.’ This judgement, spoken with some severity, greatly impressed Jessie.
They sat for a while in silence while the light grew thin and grey and the last colour drained from the flowers on the altar table; only the cross shone in the darkness. The padre got stiffly to his feet, bowed, and went out, bent and dark as an old crow. `Daughter of Christ’, he had said. Beatie! Jessie had a fleeting vision of Beatie, riotously blasphemous in nun’s habit. The feeling of uneasiness grew stronger; a feeling of guilt and despair too deep for Jessie’s simple mind to analyse. She only knew that Beatie was dead and that it was the padre and not the bomber that had killed her. She pushed her chair back so that it clattered over.
`Let’s get out of here, Frank,’ she said. `It gives me the creeps now the light’s going.’
He walked back to B camp with her, pushing her bicycle. It was nearly dark now and a slight wind stirred the hedges and brought a smell of the farmyard, straw and manure and cooling earth. In the distance they could see one of the farmhouses and the crack of light at the side of a blacked-out window. Jessie felt suddenly as she had as a child, staring in at the lighted windows in the parts of the town where the men had jobs and the families ate well. But the feeling of desolation which suddenly gripped her was worse than it had ever been then when, however miserable things might be. Mum and Dad would be waiting for her at home. It was more than desolation, it was panic, gripping her like a cramp in the stomach. She began to cry, not sad, sentimental tears shed for a lost friend, but bitter rending sobs torn out of her body for some pain in which Jessie Buck was incomprehensibly involved. Frank, impressed by such depth of feeling, said:
`You must have liked her a lot. None of the other girls in her cabin came, did they? I didn’t see Cath or any of the air mechanics there.’
They had not come because they had said it would be just like any other camp social, only more bitchy. Jessie knew that she ought to tell Frank this; but she did not want to spoil the good impression her faithfulness had created, so she did not say anything. He kicked a stone out of the way. He had a very dark skin with a blue chin and his hair was so dark it was blue-black. They must have made a grand contrast, him and Beatie, Jessie thought.
`You went out with her quite a bit, didn’t you, Frank?’ she said.
`I took her to the flicks once or twice.’
`You’ll miss her.’
`Yes.’
He walked to the entrance to the Wrens’ camp with her. She looked up at him, his face silver and black in the moonlight; his hair came to a peak in the middle of his forehead, she could see it below the line of his cap; his eyebrows were strong inverted v’s and his upper lip was an inverted w. His face, in fact, was all strong angles. Jessie was fascinated. She whispered:
`I’ll see you again, maybe? An’ we can talk about Beatie.’
He did not answer. She watched him walk away, very tall and erect. Some of his mates laughed at him because he took life too seriously. Jessie wondered how seriously he had taken Beatie; he looked the kind who could break but not bend. She wished he would let her help him.
She turned and walked slowly up the cinder track, pushing her bicycle wearily in front of her. She had loved coming back to the cabin in the evening when Beatie was there preparing for a date. Beatie liked to be watched and she played up to you and made it fun for you, too. She gave you a share in all the pleasure she was about to have, made you feel warm and a part of things. When she was going to meet her lovers she would put on `a dab of powder and very little else’. Jessie felt guilty again, as though she was thinking wrong thoughts; Beatie’s image, which for a moment had been bright, wavered and receded.
Jessie wished that there was someone she could speak to about things; but when she got back to the cabin the only person who was there was Kerren, preparing for night duty. Kerren had only just returned from her week-end honeymoon and she did not seem a part of things any more. When Jessie told her about the memorial service, she said:
`Oh how dreadful! It must have been awful for you.’
But she was not really listening. She picked up her sling bag and put on her cap; she took the letter which was lying on her bunk and said:
`Would you post this for me, Jess? My husband will think I’ve deserted him already if he doesn’t get a letter from me.’
She didn’t mean it, she just wanted to say `my husband’; she had said it about twenty times since she came back. Jessie said:
`You don’t care about Beatie.’
`Jess, that’s not true! But Beatie wouldn’t want us to sit around brooding. She wasn’t the type.’
Kerren went out. She cycled down the cinder track, where cycling was forbidden, freewheeled past the Wrens’ regulating office and turned into the lane. It was dark; the air was warm and dry and there were a few pale stars above. She saw the same farm that Jessie had passed. She noticed the crack of light at the side of the window, but it did not make her feel excluded because she was one with the people inside. The thought of them sitting together, close in their family world, gave her a glow of pleasure. She was also one with the fields, the hedges, the moon and the stars. She had inherited the earth. She noticed the pale gleam of a slate roof, the dark shadow of a tree moving on the wall, the ripple of silver made by the breeze as it bowed the fields of barley. These were not things she had noticed when she first came to Holly Green, wrapped in her own magic; but now the visible world was more sharply defined, the contrast of light and shadow had intensified. She was aware of the softness of the wind on her cheek and it made her want to cry with joy. How could she think of death in a world so vibrantly alive? Death was absurd. When she reached the met. office, she did the obs., tidied the room and then, in the first quiet spell, she wrote to Dorothy.
`Of course, there are hideous things happening, I know that. But it doesn’t stop me enjoying life enormously. It’s best to be honest, don’t
you think? I suppose war is one of those paradoxical things, horror and beauty, ecstasy and agony all inextricably mixed together. When I think of Beatie, I realize how terrible it is; but all the time I am wondering when Peter will get his next leave and I know that I shall never be happier than this in the whole of my life.’ It was a busy night and she did not finish the letter until a few days later. By this time, `Robin is on sick leave. It was a great shock to her, actually seeing Beatie like that. I wonder whether I should write to her; it might help her to have something to think about other than death. I’m very fond of her and I do want to share my happiness with her. I mean this most sincerely, but when I spoke to Adam about it his reaction was distinctly chilly. He said, “She’s coming back next week; it can wait until then, can’t it?”
`Adam is hard to please lately. Con Hilliard did the most surprising thing. He went to see Beatie’s parents, using part of the precious leave that he has been saving for a climbing expedition in the Lake District. As he was one of the last people to see Beatie alive he felt he ought to get in touch with her parents. Adam was not impressed with this gesture and said that no doubt it was easier to comfort Beatie’s parents, who wouldn’t make any demands on him, than Robin, who would. But I think it was very good of Con, and he did send flowers to Robin.
`For some reason, Adam doesn’t like Con; but I find myself more in sympathy with him lately. He knows what he wants from life and he means to get it. And why not? Life isn’t for ever, so you have to be ruthless. When you are offered happiness you can’t question it because it isn’t the right time to be happy. You have to grasp it while it’s there and forget everything else. And oh, Dorothy, I am so happy! I didn’t know there could be such happiness for a contrary creature like me, I know that people are dying and that others are mourning, but it doesn’t make any difference and I’m not ashamed.
`My honeymoon with Peter was like a dream; when we danced together we didn’t touch the ground, and if there were other people around we didn’t see them. The first night we went to a dance in Plymouth and there was an air raid. When we came out of the dance hall we could see the shells bursting in the sky and the tiny silver planes caught in the searchlights’ beams and it was quite fantastically beautiful. We stood and watched, laughing in the street, while wardens called out to us and a policeman got angry. But we knew that nothing could touch us. Later we went to a café and had fish and chips and we could hear the guns banging away and the shrapnel pattering on the roof; once a bomb came down so near that the whole building swayed and I put out my hand to steady the wall! Much later, after the all-clear had gone, we walked through the streets. The sky was red and the air was full of dust, but it was very quiet. We walked up to the Hoe and watched the dawn come up. If I live to be a hundred I shall never be happier than I was that night.’
Chapter Thirteen
Beatie was replaced in Cabin 8 by a wardroom steward named Marney and Kerren moved into a top bunk. Marney was a sharp little creature with a pale foxy face. She had been a coder for a time and had worked underground at Portsmouth; this had left her with a hard, dry cough which was particularly irritating at night. Apart from the cough, she made no immediate impression on her cabinmates.
There was a lull in the fighting. Leave was restored and the admin, staff at Lee justified their existence with some drastic drafting. The squadron left at short notice. First Officer W.R.N.S. was despatched to the Orkneys and Naomi was called for an overseas board. Naomi was upset. `They’ll send me to one of those places with impossible temperatures and I shall have the change of life before I know where I am.’ She spent several days working out how to fail the board.
`I’m not very strong,’ she grumbled.
`You’ll never convince them of that,’ Kerren told her. `You look tough as old wire and you never go near sick bay.’
`The best thing you can do is to give the impression you’re a man hater,’ Cath advised. `Tell them you don’t drink and you hate parties. Be the type who likes solitary walks and reads herself to sleep each night.’
Naomi said she would never be able to convince anyone she was that type. Marney suggested that there were other ways; she was never very explicit but managed in most of her pronouncements to hint at a deep knowledge of depravity. Naomi said that she was not that type, either.
Robin offered no advice. She had become very sharp-tongued and querulous and the others kept out of her way. In the met. office she made mistakes and it took her longer than usual to plot a chart. She woke Adam late when they were on night duty together. Her face was drawn and bloodless. He had noticed that she had a bad time during her monthly periods and he usually refrained from comment, but on this occasion he said:
`Feeling all right?’
`So, so. Life gets tedious sometimes.’
`Any particular trouble?’
She sat looking down at the chart, her fingers gripping the pen tightly.
`I had a bad leave. Mother tried to be sympathetic, but she resented having to tear her thoughts away from my captive brother. And Clyde – the faithful swain, you remember? – was on leave. He saw what was going on and tried to make up for it by being even more solicitous than usual. I was a bitch to him.’
`It’s not being a bitch to Clyde that’s worrying you, surely?’
Her lips compressed and the muscles in her neck were taut; he didn’t like the look of her at all. The room was stiflingly hot, he wished they could get the black-out down and open a window. She said in a tight, high-pitched voice:
`I can’t get Beatie out of my mind. At least, not Beatie . . . I’ve forgotten her. I just keep seeing. . . .’ She pressed her fist against her mouth and bit her knuckles.
`It would be odd if you could get it out of your mind so soon afterwards.’
`I never shall. Never!’
`Have you talked to anyone but me about it?’
`No, I couldn’t.’
`You will, though. Now that you have talked to me you will talk to other people. And one day you will realize that the incident is beginning to have a certain dramatic value. It will be over then.’
`I suppose so.’
`Time is a great healer.’
Although she usually enjoyed a good cliché, she did not respond on this occasion.
`It should have been me who was killed, not Beatie.’
`That’s morbid nonsense.’
`Beatie believed in life. I’ve always felt, deep inside me, that it was pretty bloody.’
`You’ll grow out of that. Youth isn’t nearly such a hopeful phase as some folk would have us believe.’
She looked at him and there was no youth at all in her eyes. He turned away and pretended to read the reports that were coming through on the teleprinter.
Later at breakfast in the wardroom, he said to Hunter:
`I think it might be an idea if P.O. took Egan off night duty for a while.’
Hunter started and slopped tea in his saucer.
`She’s not going queer, is she?’
`Of course not.’
`I can’t have any more of the Wrens going queer.’
Adam took a slice of toast and spread margarine thinly over it. Hunter watched him with anxious eyes.
`It couldn’t be much worse, you know. That new girl who replaced Maggie Reaves is hopeless, whenever she’s not sure of anything she just reports “chaotic sky”. P.O. is so short-sighted I sometimes wonder whether she can even see the sky and Nolan, Shaw that is, sees nothing at all these days. Nothing at all . . .’ His lips trembled. He looked down at the table and muttered, `I know she’s just married, I know, I know . . . I can remember myself . . . I was in an insurance office at the time and I got the figures wrong on one of the policies . . .’ He shook his head as though trying to pull himself free of his memories.
Adam said, `I really don’t think you need worry about the Wrens. They keep each other up to scratch quite ruthlessly.’
Hunter said, `How will it end?’
`I beg your
pardon?’
`Nolan and that man.’
`I don’t quite follow. . . .’
Hunter darted one of his furtive looks at Adam. `He’s going to pieces. He was going to pieces before he left here.’
Adam sighed and stirred his tea. To create a diversion he asked: `Who is on duty this morning?’
`Corder. And I’m not at all happy about him. He actually argued with me over the forecast yesterday.’
`Perhaps he’s going to pieces, too.’
`Corder is the last person to go to pieces.’ Hunter’s voice was bitter. `He hasn’t the imagination.’
Imagination. Hunter shot a quick glance at Adam Grieve to see if he was smiling. Grieve’s face was blank, but Hunter was sure that he was thinking that Corder was not the only one who lacked imagination. Grieve, of course, was concerned with creative imagination, the kind that produces music, art and literature and more often than not disturbs the balance of the mind. Well, he was welcome to that! Hunter preferred his kind of imagination, the kind that helps the mind to survive. He was about to say this out loud, thinking that a conversation on the subject had taken place, when he realized that Grieve had gone and the Wren steward was waiting to clear the table. He went out of the mess and walked down the path that led to the senior officers’ quarters.