Keep the Home Fires Burning

by S Block

  In due course, the Lyons brothers began supplying substandard parachute silk, the cheaper, lower-grade silk had resulted in numerous injuries to trainee airmen around the country, which prompted an immediate investigation by the Ministry of War. The factory was rapidly identified as the guilty source, and shut down in short order. The factory manager and the Lyons brothers were arrested and charged. Frances was arrested but exonerated. In her fury and disappointment, she had blamed Alison for the whole debacle. Alison had tried to defend herself, but Frances had been in no mood to listen. Instead she had taken Alison’s revelation about colluding with the police as further evidence that her one-time close friend and ally had been treacherously disloyal, and eventually blamed her for everything that had happened.

  In her mind, Alison had only ever tried to help Frances, so to be cast as the ‘villain’ cut her to her core.

  How long has Frances known me? How can she suddenly behave as if I’ve deliberately betrayed her? I’ve made mistakes. More than one. But she asked me to help at the factory because she couldn’t trust anyone there, and I did my utmost to do that. What happened subsequently was entirely out of my hands—

  ‘No Boris?’ Teresa, who had managed to settle the children and sat beside her friend, halted Alison’s train of thought.

  Alison turned to Teresa and smiled thinly.

  ‘There’s as much chance of a bomb landing on him here as at home. Better he sleeps through raids in the comfort of his own basket than be needlessly dragged back and forth.’

  ‘I suspect many here feel the same. I know I—’

  With one eye still on Frances and Sarah, Alison cut Teresa off.

  ‘Would you excuse me for a moment . . . ?’

  Without waiting for Teresa’s answer, Alison stood and started to cross the cellar towards Frances.

  Sarah noticed Alison approaching before Frances, and alerted her sister with a nudge to her ribs. Frances turned and watched Alison make her way slowly towards them and braced herself, feeling every muscle tighten with anticipation. She decided to take control of a situation that could easily spiral out of hand in such an enclosed public space, before most of the village.

  ‘I thought I’d made it very clear I had nothing left to say to you,’ Frances warned in a low voice as Alison drew close. ‘Then, now, and in the future.’

  Alison looked at Frances with the expression of someone with little left to lose.

  ‘You did. But I have something to say to you.’

  ‘Alison—’

  ‘Perhaps you ought to hear her out,’ counselled Sarah, under her breath.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t interfere,’ replied Frances, under hers.

  ‘I’ve decided to resign from the WI. Not merely my position as treasurer. I’ve decided to leave the branch completely.’

  The news took both Frances and Sarah by surprise. Women like Alison were the bedrock of the Women’s Institute. Alison had been a member of Great Paxford’s WI long before Frances had moved into the village from London with Peter twenty years ago, or Sarah from Oxford with Adam eight years ago.

  Sarah was the first to speak.

  ‘Why would you give up something so central to your life?’

  ‘Whatever you may think about what happened at the factory, I acted in good faith. That you won’t see or accept that, and refuse to even try to understand the reasons behind my actions, pains me deeply given our friendship over the years. Now you have returned to chair the branch I realise I can no longer bear—’

  ‘Alison . . . ’ Sarah felt compelled to intervene.

  ‘Please allow me to finish, Sarah.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry.’

  Sarah took a deep breath and sat back against the wall. She glanced at Frances, who was sitting bolt upright, her attention focused entirely on Alison’s face.

  This is all so unnecessary.

  ‘I understand how hard you have been struck by Peter’s death,’ Alison continued, ‘and by everything you’ve since learned about his life.’

  Frances glanced round, not wanting anyone to overhear this. Alison continued.

  ‘I have also lost a husband and well remember how bitter I felt towards the world and everyone in it for a long time afterwards. I can only assume that has informed your thinking towards me in some way in the aftermath of Peter’s death – as if I had become yet another person conspiring against you in secret. All I can say is . . . I was not. And never would.’

  Frances stared at Alison, feeling there was much she wanted to say. But Alison’s startlingly blue eyes glistened with sorrow. A small lump of regret rose in Frances’s throat.

  ‘I have only ever wished you well . . . ’ Alison concluded, ‘and still do.’

  With that, Alison turned and walked slowly back to her seat beside where Teresa would have been had she not been called away to intervene in a dispute between two seven-year-olds in her class.

  Frances and Sarah looked across the cellar at Alison, who sat down and looked at the floor.

  ‘Well?’ Sarah asked her sister.

  ‘Well what?’ Frances replied.

  ‘Oh . . . I think you can do better than that.’

  Frances absolutely hated it when her younger sister chastised her, mainly because she knew that Sarah only dared to do so when she felt she was absolutely in the right.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ Frances asked brusquely, wanting to get off the spot Sarah was trying to pin her to as quickly as possible.

  ‘I’ve learned from Adam that taking sides in a dispute is the easiest thing one can do, and often the least helpful towards finding a resolution.’

  Frances folded her arms tightly, and stated firmly, ‘In this instance there is nothing to resolve. I’ve said my piece. And now Alison, after some deliberation, has come to a decision and said hers.’

  ‘It took a great deal of courage to come over and speak to you like that, here.’

  ‘If only she had demonstrated as much courage by standing up to the police when they asked her to allow the Lyons brothers to run amok with the factory.’

  ‘Not “asked”, Frances. They told her to invite the Lyons in. She had no choice and no idea what the outcome was likely to be. Even the police seemed to be in the dark as to what course of action the Ministry were likely to take.’

  ‘She should never have got involved in any of it.’

  ‘One might say the same about you taking on a business you didn’t know how to run.’

  ‘I would have learned, with time. She rendered that impossible.’

  Sarah started to lose her temper with her sister.

  ‘Do you really not understand how this came about? The poor woman had no choice! You followed her advice. You didn’t have to. But you chose to.’

  ‘Because I trusted her.’

  ‘Why? She’s a bookkeeper, not a business person. That was your mistake, so take some responsibility for it and stop blaming everyone else.’

  ‘Always such a bleeding heart, Sarah. But it really won’t do. Alison betrayed me in the most grotesque manner in which one friend can betray another.’

  ‘The world isn’t black-and-white, Frances. In between there is rather a lot of grey. It’s mostly grey, in fact. I’d go further and advocate for a world of grey if it meant losing the extremes at either end of that particular spectrum.’

  ‘You sound like one of Adam’s sermons.’

  Sarah leaned close to her sister, and hissed, ‘If I sound like anyone I sound like a woman who’s coming very close to losing her temper with you completely. Have you learned nothing from Peter’s death? Has it taught you nothing about how complex life can be?’

  ‘It taught me a great deal about loyalty. Because of her the factory is gone.’

  ‘You still own the buildings and the land. You could reopen under a different name.’

  ‘I had a name. She ruined it.’

  Sarah sat back and looked at Frances. She had plenty more to say but suddenly realised Frances was being d
eliberately unreceptive to anything that was coming out of her mouth. Sarah knew it was eminently possible her sister had heard, understood and even agreed with her feelings regarding Alison. How could she not have seen how hurt and upset the woman had been? But Frances was wilfully blinding herself to it.

  Sarah was tired of arguing with Frances. Since he had been captured at Dunkirk, most of her time had been consumed by trying to find out where Adam was being held in Germany, and under what conditions. The lack of information was emotionally draining, leaving little appetite for going toe-to-toe with Frances over her treatment of Alison. Nevertheless, she couldn’t allow the conversation to end on this point. She had known Alison too long, and liked her too much.

  ‘You may switch off your friendship with Alison if you choose, Frances. I will not.’

  Frances looked at her sister out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘It’s a free country,’ she said. ‘For the moment.’

  Frances turned away and glanced at Alison, who was still looking miserably at the floor. For the briefest of moments, Frances wished she had sold the factory as soon as she had inherited it.

  Damned Luftwaffe. Get on with it and blow us all to kingdom come – or go home and let me out of this damned cellar, away from these people . . .

  Chapter 27

  Pat and Claire sat in the telephone exchange, each reading The Times, Pat with an old army helmet strapped to her head, and a gas mask in its box on the desk in front of them. The exchange needed to be operational during air raids to allow military personnel across the region to maintain contact. While the rest of the village sought shelter, Pat and her fellow telephone operators were to remain in their post. None of the female operators were compelled to stay during an air raid, but such was their determination to do whatever they could to assist the war effort, none opted out.

  The helmet was heavy on Pat’s head, and made her scalp itch with sweat, but she thought she had better keep it on just in case. Claire didn’t like wearing hers, and kept it on the desk in front of her, ready to don if needed. Pat assumed Claire’s reticence was the vanity of a young woman who didn’t want her hair messed up unless it was a matter of life or death. Had she been ten years younger she might have felt the same.

  It doesn’t matter to me now. Bob doesn’t care what I look like, and Marek is . . . Marek is somewhere else. But where? In England somewhere, training for a mission? Or is he already on the Continent, working behind enemy lines? Is he well, or injured? Or dead? Stop thinking like this. There’s no point to it. There are a million possibilities, but until you know for sure you must only think positively about his well-being. He’s no hothead. He fought his way out of Czechoslovakia and across Europe to the west coast of France. He can look after himself. It’s why he’s so revered by his men. He’s kept them safe, and he can’t do that without keeping himself safe. I can’t fall apart each time some tidbit about the war comes out. He can’t be everywhere, can he? He’s just one man.

  To distract herself Pat looked at Claire, who was engrossed in the first serialised instalment of Bob’s new novel. With little help from that direction, Pat started to read back over the article about the Mass Observation reports.

  After a moment, Claire looked up from the newspaper and turned to Pat.

  ‘Is this true?’ she asked sternly.

  ‘Is what true?’ Pat murmured, reading.

  ‘Everything Mr Simms writes about in his book.’

  Pat knew there was a glib answer to Claire’s question, in which she would state that yes, Bob had accurately captured what had happened to him at Dunkirk. But she knew Bob was both a lazy writer who considered fact-checking a bore, and an egotist who couldn’t resist giving his main character extraordinary feats of bravery to execute regardless of whether they had actually happened, on the understanding that his reading public would assume his main character was a veiled portrait of himself.

  Pat hadn’t been thinking about Bob for the last hour and wanted to get off the subject as quickly as possible so she could return to the small article she had been reading.

  ‘I assume it’s all true, Claire, yes,’ Pat lied. ‘I think he made up some of the characters, but I think the events he describes all happened.’

  Claire smiled with delight. It was exactly what she wanted to hear.

  ‘He really captures the horror of war, doesn’t he?’ Claire said, trying to sound as if she was someone who could tell the difference between a writer who could really capture the horror of war and one who could only make a rough approximation of capturing it.

  If you really want to know the ‘horror of war’ you should try living with him. It’s a war of attrition. A daily battle to survive each moment without setting off an explosive display of temper, until nightfall, when you can lay your head on your pillow and fall asleep.

  ‘Yes,’ Pat said dryly, ‘he’s very talented.’ She looked up sharply, but needn’t have worried; Claire had failed to pick up her ironic tone, and was continuing to read Bob’s serialisation.

  Pat had to admit there was a certain degree of deviant talent involved in the control with which Bob administered her life. It was evident in the way he kept her on the edge of her nerves from morning to night as a matter of habit that he didn’t have to give conscious thought to. Pat’s tormentor was one aspect of who he was, inseparable from the others. Bob managed it whilst giving nothing away to Joyce about the true, parlous state of their marriage. In fact, in the month he and Pat had been living with Joyce, Bob and Joyce had formed quite an admiration society. It was the kind of admiration Bob liked – one-way, from her to him. Pat watched it from the shadows. It made her stomach turn to see Joyce fall for the charm Bob could switch on and off like a light bulb; illuminating a room one moment, plunging it into darkness the next. He would review Pat’s behaviour over the course of each day every night, in bed. He scolded her for any perceived misstep she had made, though he might occasionally praise her for something she’d done that had pleased him – a good supper, a witty remark, a clever mend of his trousers. These were constant reflections on Pat’s ‘performance’ as his happily married wife, for an audience of one: Joyce.

  ‘Until we find somewhere else we’ve got a cushy number here,’ he instructed Pat at least once a week. ‘Don’t mess it up.’

  The exchange switchboard suddenly lit up and buzzed as it registered an incoming call, causing Claire to jump in her chair.

  ‘I’ll get it!’

  Pat nodded and returned to the brief article she had been considering for the past forty-five minutes. She’d seen a similar article before, describing something called the ‘Mass Observation organisation’, which invited ordinary members of the public to write down a daily account of their ‘ordinary’ lives, and send it anonymously to an office in Manchester. It was a form of diary. No special instructions were given. The unknown diarists could write about whatever interested them, at whatever length, with the aim of recording everyday life in wartime Britain. The idea was intriguing. Here was a way to give voice to her most private thoughts and feelings about her life. And about Marek. She could perhaps write a letter to him one day, as a report. Instead of going round in endless circles of worry about his safety, and his intentions towards her, Pat could explore her fears on the page, in complete privacy, and then send them away to be read by someone she didn’t know and who had no idea who she was, and then be filed – perhaps on a high shelf, never to be disturbed. Pat liked the idea of sending her innermost concerns away. It made her feel that she might escape from Bob one thought at a time.

  That would be wonderful!

  But as ever with Pat, the moment of positivity was swiftly undercut by self-doubt.

  You’d have to be out of your mind to want to read an account of my life. And I’d have to be inordinately arrogant to assume other people might be remotely interested in it. It’s a stupid idea.

  Nevertheless, the secretive nature of writing Mass Observation reports appealed immensely. Pat had
become adept at secrecy while conducting her affair with Marek. Or so she’d believed, until Bob had revealed he had discovered their illicit communications and had been monitoring their covert meetings for several weeks.

  This would be different. I’d learn from past mistakes. Keep everything from Bob. He wouldn’t have an inkling what I was doing. What I was writing.

  The more time she gave the idea, the more it started to excite her.

  I’d write about him. Not the man Claire and Joyce and all the others round here think he is. Who he really is. I could document how he is in great detail and send it off for them to read so that someone else would understand what he’s truly like. Would know what it’s like to live with a man like Bob, day in, day out, month after damned month.

  Though it was only a question of putting pen to paper, the secrecy and anonymity of the exercise made Pat feel as though she would be committing daily acts of revenge for everything Bob had done to her – and would continue to do. Where Bob had reported from the war in France, Pat would report from the front line of her marriage in Great Paxford. If Bob put her down, or dismissed her, or shut her up, or struck her, Pat would record how this left her feeling, and could send that to be read and understood by others, elsewhere. Whoever read her account would have to accept it, unmediated by Bob’s deceitful intervention. The entire process was anonymous, so what would she have to gain by lying? In effect, she would be bearing witness to her own life, and no one could gainsay her. She felt a thrill of excitement. She no longer needed to suffer in complete silence.