But to give up. To change her mind and step off the path. To make all that hurt for nothing. Her reason behind that would need to be very sound indeed.
‘Why?’ April said. ‘Why do you want this so badly?’
‘Because when I see a life give up and die before its time, a bit of me dies with it. Because I want for you what I want for myself. I want us both to have as much as this life will give us, and for as long as it lasts. I want us both to be able to swim and run and eat our fill and feel the cool of the woods and the warmth of the sun.’
He reached out, touched one finger only to her cheek.
‘And because I’m selfish,’ he said. ‘I’m not ashamed to admit it. I want us to lie together, love together. I want us to be with each other in the moment, until the light fails and the leaves die and our time together draws to its natural close.’
CHAPTER 30
early August
‘I’ve done a bad thing.’
April surfaced from her own thoughts and looked across at Oran. They had both been working quietly that morning; April had put that down to preoccupation on her part and a Monday morning hangover on Oran’s. He was sitting with his back against the edge of the staircase, holding his mug of tea but not drinking. His shoulders were hunched, April took the time now to observe, in that way of his she knew signalled bottled-up unhappiness. April was not sure she had the energy or inclination to find out the source of Oran’s misery, but even if she did not ask, he would tell her.
‘What kind of thing?’ she said. ‘And don’t say “bad”.’
‘I broke my vow.’
She knew exactly what he meant, and the strength of her reaction surprised her. She was furious at him, she realised. Furious at him for giving in and — more gallingly — for enjoying what she had that very morning determined she never could. The last two nights it had been a different matter. For two nights she had lain awake and battled with her fears and her desires and her conscience. Last night her sense of regret for what had been lost had almost, so very nearly, made her give in. But this morning her resolve had returned and, until right this minute, she’d welcomed it.
‘With the cutesy little folk singer?’ she said.
Oran’s eyes widened. ‘No, but — how did you know about …?’
‘Sunny.’
‘Course! Begob, for a minute there, I thought it had been broadcast on Access Radio.’
His relief was short-lived, as he realised his problem was still very much present.
‘No, it was not Amy. But it was she who invited me to the gathering, the celebration of Lughnasa — you know, the Irish festival? For the harvest?’
‘Not really.’
‘On Saturday night, being the thirty-first of July, there was a gathering and we climbed the hill and there was dancing and storytelling and singing, and, of course, the sacrifice of the corn god.’
‘Of course.’
‘And there might have been drinking, too,’ said Oran. ‘And also possibly matchmaking.’
‘Matchmaking? As in — for marriage?’
‘Well, not a real marriage,’ said Oran. ‘More of a pairing off. In the old days, it was a trial, for a year and a day, and if you weren’t happy, you could go your separate ways, no questions asked.’
‘Convenient.’
Oran’s shoulders hunched up even further, making him look like a reddish-feathered vulture.
‘I have no memory of it,’ he said. ‘I was in my cups, completely. But when I woke up, there she was, under the blanket with me, and she kissed me, so …’
‘So you assumed.’
‘She also had her hand on my—’
‘Evidence seems overwhelming, doesn’t it?’
‘But then I had to throw up,’ said Oran. ‘Which sort of broke the mood.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Her name was Lorelei.’
Oran stared down into his tea as if he could see right through the teak-coloured liquid and read the answer to his problem in the leaves.
‘Like the Siren?’
‘Is that what she was?’ Hope flared in his eyes and died again. ‘No, I remember now. Her real name was Cheryl. I heard her friends calling for her.’
‘Well, there you go.’
April knew she was angrier with Oran than she should be. But for God’s sake, he was a grown man and the sole author of his own downfall, and it was about time he recognised it.
Oran was gazing at her, eyes helpless and dewy as a deer’s. April had a most satisfying, if momentary, vision of firing an arrow straight into his chest.
‘What should I do?’ he pleaded.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Oran, I don’t know!’ April banged her mug of undrinkable tea on the floor and stood. ‘How about twenty push-ups and three bloody Hail Marys?’
‘I’m not of the Catholic persuasion,’ he said. ‘My father was, but he and my mother wanted me to make my own choice about which religion I’d adopt.’
The man’s capacity for self-delusion, thought April, was truly boggling.
‘Oran, your parents abandoned you. I can’t imagine either of them gave a flying fuck whether you became Catholic, Shinto or bloody Baha’i.’
He flinched, but instead of protesting he hunched up even further, cradling his mug. He’s like a beggar in the gutter, April thought, too cowed even to look up at the passers-by.
‘If you get so rat-arsed you can’t remember who you slept with, that’s no one’s fault but your own,’ she said. ‘I bet it wasn’t the first time, either. So, tell me, when are you going to wake up and admit it? When are going to admit that your marriage is not just over but smashed to pieces, and has been for bloody years? When are you going to stop being so weak!’
April did not wait to hear his response, had no patience for anything he might have to say. She walked straight back to the cottage to fetch her car keys and, without a second glance at Empyrean, got into the Volvo and drove off, gravel spraying from under spinning wheels.
She had no destination in mind, and found herself weaving through the hills and up onto the ridge. On the brow of the hill there was a parking area and April pulled in and braked, switched off the engine. She wound down the window and the sounds from outside seeped in — birds in the roadside trees, the bawl of a distant cow, the hum of traffic on the encircling motorways.
From her seat, April had a sweeping pastoral view, patchworks of fields dotted with copses and spires. Even in full summer, the light was soft, the view smudged at the edges like a pastel sketch. April could make a frame with her hands and, no matter where she placed it, capture a perfectly composed landscape.
The English countryside always looked so settled, she thought. Like a favourite jersey or armchair that over time comfortably adapted itself to your shape so that it wrapped around you like a hug.
If only the land could wrap around her, she thought, let her sink into it and lie there peacefully forever. No more doubts or fears or regrets. No more incessant internal debates about right and wrong.
Was there anyone ever in history, she wondered, who’d been able to tread their chosen path completely untroubled by diffidence or uncertainty? Anyone who wasn’t a fanatic or bonkers, that is. And when did you call time, make the decision that the path was wrong? How could you tell whether you’d simply hit a slough of despond or whether the signs were correct and you truly were on a road to nowhere, with no reward at the end at all? How could you tell when it would be braver and stronger to change course than to stubbornly push on? When was it right to give up?
A memory came — searching for her mother’s drawings, the ones Margaret Turner had given her over all those years. April remembered rifling through drawers, tipping out boxes, until Ben’s father had eventually confessed that he couldn’t bear to let her destroy them. They were too good, so he was going to keep them safe, keep them for her, even if she never wanted them again. He had no right, she’d said. She’d sounded calm and been near hysteria. They were the last t
hing, the last reminders of love, and they had to be got rid of. But he’d refused. So many huge, momentous demands he’d acquiesced to but not this. On this, Dan hadn’t budged.
Dan. Not short for Daniel. His parents were atheists and hadn’t wanted a name from the Bible. So he was just Dan.
They’d met at a costume party during their last year of university. Guests had been asked to dress as something that started with the letter C. April had gone as a spoon, thinking ‘cutlery’ a fine joke that no one would ever get, and when Dan had turned up as a fork, she had experienced that instant thrill of recognition that is not quite lust and not yet love, but the foretelling of the potential for both. Dan’s first words were that he hoped no one else turned up as a knife, because he wasn’t adventurous enough for a threesome. When someone arrived as a pair of chopsticks, they’d made a run for it, giggling like loons. When you’re young and falling in love, April thought, silly and sublime are interchangeable.
She’d thought him beautiful, and it was true that he had the perfect classical face, like a Michelangelo. Trouble was it was above really quite a skinny body and beneath hair that looked like the wool of an unshorn sheep — same colour, same texture, curls in all direction. April had never seen anything like it. When her mother had first met him, she’d been convinced it was a fright wig and insisted on pulling it. Then she’d insisted on drawing him. Dan loved that drawing and had it framed, even though her mother had sketched it on a piece of cardboard ripped from a cereal box.
They were both only twenty-four when April had fallen pregnant. It was an accident. At the time, of course, they could not recognise the irony.
Dan. Her man. She should have been called Pearl, he used to joke, so that she could be his girl. As it was, he’d remarried a woman called Anne, so he’d got his rhyme in the end. In his letter to her — he always wrote when he had news he felt she ought to know — he’d almost apologised for remarrying so quickly. But a life without love was so unthinkable for Dan, it bordered on being classified as inhumane.
April fingered the chain around her neck. Dan had given her a necklace when Ben was born. It had been given away with all her other loved possessions, but she could picture it as if it were still around her neck. A fine gold chain, with a little gold heart pendant inset with three tiny diamonds for the three of them …
Dan’s new little boy — he would be two by now. Perhaps Dan was so happy that he could forgive her if she changed her mind?
A dragonfly, opalescent and startling, stitched the air outside the car window and darted off. April tried to keep track of it but it was gone in an instant, lost against the lucid blue of the sky.
When did you call time?
First things first, April decided. She should not have said those things to Oran. The accusations may not have been unfair but the delivery had most certainly been unkind. She was a hypocrite, asking for leniency for herself but unprepared to give it. She must apologise. She wanted to apologise.
But though it was not yet two o’clock, his van was not in the driveway, and when she opened Empyrean’s front door, the entranceway was empty of everything but her roller and tray of white paint, and a mug that, when she picked it up, left a damp brown ring on the dusty floor.
CHAPTER 31
December, 1942
This Christmas would be as merry as a hanging trial, thought James. Everyone around him seemed to be either enraged or in tears, and, even more irritating, no one was home to provide food. He’d finally found the breadbin in the pantry, and made his own bread and butter sandwich, which he was now eating resentfully in the kitchen, the one place he’d be left in peace as no one else had any intention, obviously, of coming near it.
His father had gone up to London. James had been woken early that morning by his father shouting at the telephone, or rather at whoever the unfortunate person was on the other end. Out of bed and at the top of the stairs, James had overheard only a snatch of conversation between his father and mother before his father grabbed his coat and hat and headed out the door. Seemed the factory workers had organised a strike, and Lewis Potts was intent on breaking it.
Muzzy with sleep, James had given no more thought to what that meant and had gone back to bed for another hour. At breakfast — scrambled eggs and toast practically hurled onto his plate by Sunny — he’d learned more.
‘He cut their wages,’ Sunny’s mother had been saying to his own. ‘And not just a little, but drastically, and before Christmas, too. Those workers are mostly women, who have children to support and husbands away at war. How on earth should they react? Just because it’s wartime, they should lie down and take it? Don’t forget, they’re not only fighting for their own rights — they’re fighting so that their menfolk can come home to decent, safe conditions and wages that will keep their families from penury. Which is the least they deserve after risking their lives for the rest of us, don’t you think?’
James’s mother had admitted the truth of this with a small nod, but her face remained drawn and unhappy.
‘He has these men,’ she said. ‘They’ll go there, to the picket line …’
Sunny’s mother uttered a curse word that made even Sunny raise her eyebrows.
‘And they won’t care at all that the strikers are women,’ said Sunny’s mother. ‘They’re the type who relish that sort of thing, and would do it even if they weren’t being paid. Too cowardly for war, but eager enough when their opponents are weaker and unarmed.’
‘Your mother was exaggerating as usual, wasn’t she?’ James said to Sunny, as she and Virgie washed the breakfast dishes. ‘No one’s going to set upon a bunch of women with coshes.’
‘Even the police baton-charged the strikers in 1926,’ Sunny said. ‘And they bashed women and children regardless.’
‘Oh, and how do you know that?’ said James, irked. ‘You were three years old! Is that what your bloody Bolshevik mother told you?’
Sunny brandished the dish brush like a hammer and shook it at him. ‘Better a Bolshevik for a mother than an evil bully for a father!’
Then she noticed Virgie, backed into a corner by the Aga, hands clamped over her ears and trembling.
‘Look what you’ve done!’ Sunny accused James fiercely. ‘She hates it when people get angry around her!’
James left her to hug and console Virgie, and went to seek out his mother. Though he was nineteen now, a grown man, he still found her quiet presence reassuring. She was like Rowan in that regard, someone who had the ability to make you feel better just by being there. Someone who could let you into a world that felt as if it were made for only the two of you.
But his mother was readying to go out.
‘I’m due down at the hall to show the committee my costume designs,’ she said, buttoning her coat.
‘Costumes?’
‘For the play. Christmas is so hard for the children who are apart from their families, so we decided to occupy them with some amateur dramatics. We’re doing Macbeth.’
‘Macbeth? Isn’t that a bit … gloomy?’
‘We did consider a nativity play, but they do rather require the children to be solemn and quiet. Macbeth has murder, blood, daggers, witches and ghosts,’ his mother had said with a smile. ‘What better outlet for pent-up emotion could they have?’
James was about to ask whether any set painting was needed for the play when he’d noticed the brooch on his mother’s coat lapel. It was the enamelled one from her box of secrets, blue with the bright orange pomegranate.
How many other things had she released from the box? Did she even have the box at all now? The idea struck him as a borderline betrayal. That box had been their secret — his and hers. If she had got rid of it, then it meant she had no more need for it, no more need to share a special time with her son.
What would she get rid of next, then? Him?
‘I must apologise in advance for being so busy,’ his mother said. ‘Assuming the committee likes my designs, I have only a week to make
them all. First dress rehearsal is on the twenty-eighth.’
She went without giving him the usual quick, soft peck on the cheek, and without inviting him to come with her and help out. James would have said no, he had study obligations, but it would have been nice, he thought, to be asked. After all, no one in the vicinity could draw as well as he could. He could just imagine a set painted by the children themselves. Yes, why not emphasise the ‘dunce’ in Dunsinane?
Left alone, James had lingered in the hall outside his mother’s bedroom, pondering what to do next. He could go into the woods and leave a message for Rowan. But while Sunny and Lily’s idea of a leaf under a rock on the ledge above the falls had been all well and good over summer, in winter leaves were scarce, and the back way up to the ledge was slippery and treacherous. James had no wish to be plunged fully clothed into a pool of ice-cold water. He’d be back home at Easter, when the weather would be better. He could see Rowan then. It’s not as if Rowan would be going anywhere in the meantime.
Sunny had told him that she and Lily were still bringing Rowan food. The pair planned to sacrifice half their own portions of Christmas dinner, pudding, custard and all, and take it to him the next day. James had felt obliged to offer some of his own dinner, and hoped his mother’s economising wouldn’t mean a less generous spread than previous years.
Sunny had also told him about Day, who was writing to her now as a pilot in RAF Bomber Command. Apparently, Day had been assessed and, much to his surprise, recommended for a commission. He’d had his head shaved, and been restrained in a dark room, a collar around his neck securing him to a chair, and forced to identify objects that appeared randomly and for a split second only on a screen. He’d put his success at this down to the practice he’d received keeping an eye on Virgie, Liza, Mary, Ern and Fred, who, when released in any given area, scattered to the four corners like quail.
At age nineteen, by rights a year before a less able man should have qualified, Day had been put in charge of a crew who were bigger than Virgie, Liza, Mary, Ern and Fred but no less his responsibility. Their average age was twenty. As of February that year, Bomber Command had gained new Lancasters, GEE navigation and Bomber Harris, and since May had been pounding Germany with bombs. His crew, Day had written, had also done a spot of gardening, which apparently meant flying low over the North Sea and dropping — ‘sowing’ as Day called it — mines to catch the more unlucky German warships.
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