by Betty Burton
More perfect than with Harry?
For her, that thought had come between them. She could not trust herself to enjoy Nick in the way she had enjoyed Harry. Harry had been casual, no consequences, no strings attached. But Nick… ? I love Nick. It’s that… the love… the commitment.
‘It wasn’t “we”, it was me. It’s my fault, I’m stupid with apprehension.’
‘Apprehension? Oh Georgia.’ He put his arms more tightly about her and drew her close.
‘I think that I’m afraid that it won’t be good enough, and that I shall be so anxious that it will turn out to be the same half-cocked thing that it has always been with Hugh. I’m afraid that perhaps it won’t work out because when we were little we were like brother and sister. I’m afraid it would not turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to us – I couldn’t bear that.’
‘Tears, Georgia Honeycombe?’ He had touched them with his tongue. ‘It will be good. Good, good. I promise you. With you and me, it can’t be anything else. It will be like this.’ He caressed her intimately for the first time. He groaned gently as though it was he who had been caressed by her. ‘We were never brother and sister, and so what if we were? So what if we are? I should still touch you like this, caress you like this.’
As he lay close to her she could feel his stomach gradually contract with contained laughter. She undid a button of his shirt and slid her hand inside, catching the hair on his chest with her scarlet nails.
‘Oh Georgia Honeycombe, wonderful, desirable Georgia Honeycombe, with skin like silk and hair like honey… kiss me and tell me that you never did believe that anything to do with me could be half-cocked.’
Then she laughed with him, and he heard the voice of the girl who used to be wild and joyful. The fresh wind was chill through his open shirt, but her lips warm and moist in the dished hollow of his chest. With the sea surging and the red light of the tall mast above them and the moon whitening the Downs, they made love. Their first, long-delayed consummation had been urgently and quickly good, their second soon afterwards in the hotel room was good… good.
She sat back panting.
‘Lovely!’ he said. ‘That was more wonderful than I dreamed of it. Nick Crockford’s dream come true – to be pinned down and forced by Georgia Honeycombe. I love you, Georgia. I always have and always shall.’
She, satiated and alive, looked down and kissed him. A long kiss that occupied her mouth so that she should not commit her feelings to reckless words which, although they might be true, if said aloud would be too binding. And I love you, Nick Crockford.
* * *
That was weeks ago. He had gone back to Liverpool, and the joy of their love-making weekend was dulled by a return to the misconnections, crossed lines, lines engaged and the, ‘Three minutes – your time is up’, interjections of a wartime liaison conducted by telephone.
They had seen one another only once since, when he had come unexpectedly into her office holding Pete by the hand. Pete at six years old was a most attractive child, with his father’s physique and Nancy’s large thickly-fringed eyes and full mouth. Until then, Georgia had never much thought of Nick in the role of father. The sight of him, huge and gentle, holding the hand of the child he had fathered upon Nancy, had plunged her into a strangely erotic mood.
She felt embarrassed and confused in front of the child, by a sudden upsurge of desire which, although he addressed the boy in a neutral voice, was evident in Nick also. He did not flirt or call her Georgia Honeycombe, but he did not appear able to take his eyes from her. Not only desire for each other, but love. If Georgia and Nick had not been in love before, then they were now. The child seemed to be the catalyst.
He was obviously proud of Pete, sitting with him held encircled in his long arms and legs. He had wanted to show him off to her.
‘He’s a super kid, Nick.’
‘Pete’s going to live with his Grandpa now, aren’t you, Pete?’
The boy had looked up at Nick and nodded. ‘Just till Daddy comes back home… you said, didn’t you, Daddy?’
‘That’s right, as soon as the war’s over. Then you will live with both me and Grandpa.’
‘And Mrs Dancer.’
‘Well, Mrs Dancer’s going to help Grandpa out.’
‘With the washing.’
Nick had smiled and nodded, obviously touched by the boy, loving him more than he had ever let on, more than Georgia ever guessed. ‘And nobody’s going to hurt you in Grandpa’s house, are they, son?’
The boy had looked at his boots and shaken his head. Georgia frowned questioningly, and Nick nodded.
‘Been having a bad time of it lately has our Pete. Nancy’s signalman has been heavy-handing him. I went there on the off-chance to see Pete and when I saw the state of him, I just brought him away, didn’t I, Pete?’ He ruffled the boy’s hair.
‘But you’ve no legal claim. Won’t they…?’
‘Let them try! But they won’t. He knows I’d go through every court in the land, and he won’t have any stomach for that. In any case, he just don’t want Pete there now they’ve got kids of their own – that’s the trouble. Six-year-olds want a lot of time and attention.’ He pulled the boy to him. ‘But Daddy and Grandpa want you all right, Pete, don’t we?’
‘And what about Nancy?’ Georgia asked.
‘She’s got her hands full with the other ones, and she’s relieved that Pete’s out of reach of the signalman. Nancy won’t make any trouble for me.’
Georgia had wanted to ask, Did you have Pete at home when you asked me to marry you? But she thought that she knew him better than that. He would have told her about Pete straight off and been honest about it. Even so, she had not been one hundred per cent sure – he obviously loved Pete and it would be only natural to think of his welfare first, of somebody more permanent than old Mrs Dancer.
Since then they had spoken a few times by telephone, having only the standard three minutes. Nick was still in Liverpool, but had applied for a transfer back to the south. Within weeks of their wonderful days together on the Isle of Wight, their honeymoon love seemed to have soured.
So that was why her pulse raced when she saw the Vincent parked outside her house. The one thing that Harry Partridge was not was serious.
Inside the house, he gave her a long hard kiss and an appreciative caress. ‘Ah, Georgia, lovely, scrumptious Georgia, I could eat you. I’ve only got a couple of days. Are you free to be eaten?’
‘As air,’ she said gaily.
‘Come on then, get those gJad-rags off and put on your hot red pants and we’ll be away. Do you fancy Brighton and a little bit of ’ows your father?’
She laughed, loving the uncomplicated feelings that his spontaneity bubbled up in her. ‘September’s a bit late in the year for any seaside larks, isn’t it?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of the beach… more of The Metropole, say?’ He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
‘The Metropole! Goodness, how grand.’
‘Why not?’ Lighting two cigarettes and handing one to her, he was challenging her with directness.
‘Absolutely, Harry – why not?’
As she was putting a dress and toiletries into an overnight bag, she caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright and a smile raised the corners of her mouth, and she recognized the features of happiness. Harry Partridge. His intentions were as unambiguous as her own. An occasional lover with no ties, no complications, no guilt. No one but herself to consider.
She smiled at the happy woman.
Georgia Honeycombe, you are a free woman.
Fifty Years On
1989
17th September
Georgia Giacopazzi, whose now famous name had come to her in 1945 by way of a pencil stabbed at a newspaper, descended the narrow stairs of Markham’s foremost hotel. Compared to the unstarred, luxurious and exclusive places she was booked into by her publishers, The Coach House was far down market:
here the rooms were inconvenient and small, and the smells of tobacco, beer and cooking seeped and wafted and grew stale in the low-beamed narrow passageways. Today, dull and humid after the long, hot summer, the place seemed smaller and darker than she remembered it. But then it was a long time ago.
It was to The Coach House that Hugh had brought her on her first date with him. It was in those days the only licensed premises where middle-class Markhambrians might gather without brushing shoulders with hoi polloi darts players. Its original use had still been discernible then in its yard and stables, which were now all conversions with white clapboard, white-painted tables.
The receptionist, aware of the kudos of so famous a guest as the novelist Giacopazzi, leaned eagerly across the desk-flap. ‘Good morning, ma’am, is everything satisfactory?’
Georgia smiled and nodded. ‘Is there a member of staff on duty to show my guests where to go when they arrive?’
‘All arranged, ma’am.’
Georgia went to the small reception room she had reserved and looked out across Markham’s town square. On the face of it, the square was very little different from fifty years ago. None of the buildings she used to pass on her way to work all through the war was much changed, though many of them had changed use. The old Post Office depot was a new estate agents’, the old estate agents were still there, the air-raid shelters-cum-toilets under the Town Hall were entirely gone, the greengrocer–fishmonger’s had become yet another estate agents’ and a pet supplies shop. The Congregational Church, the banks and chemists were there, but what had been the bus waiting-room was now an olde shoppe with olde windows. Where do sweethearts go these days?
Lord Palmerston was back in his place of dominance. Beyond the statue, Georgia could see the beautifully restored Georgian cottage that used to be her office, and the archway leading to Mrs Farr’s old house and the Town Restaurant.
Forty-five years to the day since Harry Partridge, with hundreds of other parachuted men, had jumped to defeat in battle from an aeroplane above Arnhem. Of all the men in her life, Harry had been the most fun. Good-time Harry. She had often wondered whether, that weekend at the Metropole in Brighton, he had known that his regiment was preparing for that impossible battle. He had been the perfect carefree partner for a day and the perfect lover for a night.
1944
September
Harry Partridge breathed softly close to Georgia’s ear. ‘Georgia, are you awake?’
She turned lazily towards him and linked her arms around his neck, her eyes still closed, smiling. ‘No. But don’t let that stop you.’
Smoothing back her tousled hair, he looked at her in the clear coastal light. ‘It’s been great, Georgia. The dinner, the dancing, wandering down The Lanes like there was no tomorrow; but the greatest thing has been you. Not just last night, not only the way you give yourself up to love-making, but it’s great knowing you.’
She raised herself on one elbow and looked at him. His weathered, handsome face with its uncontrollable cowlick lock of hair that fell forward, his clever eyes and small nose that was like Dolly’s, and teeth so fine that when her tongue had moved over them she had imagined shining bone china. ‘You talk as though we won’t do this again.’
‘Oh we will. Of course we will. But I wanted you to know that you are important to me.’ He tilted back her head so that she had to open her eyes and see that he was sincere. ‘Remember the day on the beach when we talked about what it would be like for people like us after the war, there being a social upheaval and there being a class-less society?’ Georgia nodded. ‘Shall I ever forget!’
‘That’s when I started to think about coming here with you… not just for a twenty-four-hour pass quickie fling, but about us coming here together. I imagined after the war things being different so that we would sometimes come to places like this… you know… spontaneously, any old time, as the fancy took us.’
‘Mm – that would be nice.’
‘I was doing a jump, and for a second or two I thought my ’chute wasn’t going to open, and it flashed through my mind, Bugger all, Harry Partridge, you missed your chance… you shouldn’t have waited. Then the harness buckle unjammed and she opened and I landed like thistledown.’ He chuckled. ‘That taught me a lesson better than all my Dad’s lectures ever did… Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.’
‘Harry! Don’t joke about it. How awful, that’s the most petrifying thing I can imagine.’
‘Not half as petrifying as being a thousand feet above Salisbury Plain, dropping like a stone, and knowing that there was a beautiful woman you had put off till tomorrow that you could have done today.’
‘Harry!’
‘So, Prude, I made up my mind that I would not wait until after the war for things to change, but I would make some changes of my own. And I’d always imagined coming here with somebody elegant and intelligent and beautiful.’
‘Sergeant Partridge, you are a man who knows how to make a woman feel wonderful.’
He trailed an appreciative hand down the curves of her body. ‘Not difficult with material like this to work on.’
‘I remember, that day on the beach, you said that we were two of a kind. Somebody else once said the same thing to me. I really didn’t know what to think about that… to be of a kind with Harry Partridge with his reputation – Harry Partridge, the free spirit, Good-time Harry?’
She linked her arms tightly about him, inviting him closer, enjoying the luxury of the surroundings and a voluptuous feeling of liberty. ‘I think you knew me better than I knew myself. But now – I know myself very well. I know that my basic nature is joyful. I think that’s what makes you and me two of a kind. Joyfulness. It’s a word that loses its meaning as soon as we are old enough to know its definition.’
‘And what about the other one? Does he – it’s got to be a he? – does he make three of a kind?’
‘I suppose, yes. The two of you have a lot of ideas in common – free love, free hospitals, free lawyers and all those other freedoms.’
‘And have you done this with him?’
She didn’t respond.
‘It’s all right. I’m not the jealous type. When I say free love, I mean equality.’
‘Except that women aren’t quite as free as men. The woman always takes the rap if there is one.’
‘I’d never do that to a woman. I always, always take precautions.’
‘So do I, but there are accidents. I’ve often thought that I am one.’
‘I don’t believe in them, it’s either carelessness or intention. Your parents had you because they intended to give life to a beautiful creature called Georgia.’
He hugged her.
She laughed and tousled him.
‘I’ll tell you what you are, Georgia, you are a natural-born nonconformist. However briefly, I’m glad that we’re inhabiting the same world at the same time… imagine, supposing one of us had been born fifty years before the other, or I was a Martian…’
Drawing back the covers, she flirted her hand down the length of his body. ‘Too terrible to contemplate, to be on a world where there’s no Harry Partridge.’
As though they feared to think it, they made their final hours of love-making last a long time.
1989
17th September
Yesterday, when it had been gusting and showery, Georgia Giacopazzi had put on mackintosh, walking shoes and tied a scarf round her head and, unrecognizable as the Giacopazzi of a million dust-jackets, had gone to search the town to see if her memory had played her any tricks.
What she had not expected was the way Markham had become ‘Yaah’d’ as the young ones at home would have called it – meaning, that instead of Yes or the rural Oh-ah, Yaah was the affirmative ‘in’ word of the moment, and of the dominating class of present-day Markham. By the end of the war, there had not been more than a handful of cars about the place, now they were everywhere, side-lighted Volvos, BMWs, Mercedes, G-registration Sierras, and �
�limited edition’ shopping cars by the score. The traffic of an affluent community which parked on double yellow lines and took the ticket rather than carry a box of vegetables.
Station Avenue was now pedestrianized and heavily draped with restless frizia trees. What had been the boys’ school, facing the terrace which had included the Kennedys’ and the Wiltshires’ houses, was now the core of an IBM and media-person enclave which, having discovered the simple unspoiled country town, changed its simple nature by living in it.
Monty’s house was the local office of a computer software manufacturer. She had glimpsed the Capability Brown park and outwardly unchanged Oaklands estate from a bridge over the river. Its days as a hospital long over, the mansion was now part of the brown, signposted tourist trail. Also unchanged was Markham’s other estate, where Dolly, Marie, Pammy and Trix had lived.
She did not go to see what had happened to the site of The Cedars.
One of the terrible consequences of wars was what happened to families like the Partridges and the Hardys… not that the two families had ever had much in common – except that in 1939 they had been intact.
Mrs Giacopazzi’s mind drifted as it often did when she was engaged in writing. By that last Christmas of the war, there wasn’t one of the women who had not had their heart broken. Only Ursula was not touched directly – her anguish was in seeing what had become of the women who had come and gone through the Town Restaurant kitchens.
1944
Markham, at the still centre of the storm of war, was not blitzed or fire-bombed, or shelled or rocketed, but the very stillness of the place seemed, after five years of ills being done to them at a distance, to create the ideal environment for moths and wood-beetles to chew away at the old self-satisfied society.
After the Normandy landing in the spring, the whole country thought that by the autumn the war would be over, but as the summer ground on, there were times when it looked as though there would never be a conclusion to it.