Keep the Home Fires Burning

by S Block

  Someone else would know. There would be nothing they could do about what they read, but they would read what I was living through. My secret would be out. And I would write the reports with more truth and cogency than Bob writes his pulp drivel. I have no need to ginger up anything. Merely the truth, pure and simple as I see it. Not Bob. Me. Every word I set down will be an act of rebellion.

  Pat would have to work out the best times to write so Bob wouldn’t know. She would also need to find a hiding place for the pens and paper she would use so Bob would never find them (a typewriter was clearly out of the question because of the noise and bulk). She wouldn’t tell anyone else in case Bob was inadvertently told. It would be a completely secret part of her life. It would make living with Bob easier knowing she would have another mental compartment into which she could climb, to think about which of her thoughts she wanted to write down. And to think and write about Marek – how she felt about being unable to see him ever again, and reflect about their brief time together. She could explore those feelings on the page, and it would help her come to some form of acceptance that what she’d once had was precious in and of itself.

  Pat allowed the thrill of this new project to sit with her for a few moments. She looked across at Claire. The young woman’s eyes were open wide in concert with her mouth, as she read yet more of Bob’s disingenuously reimagined account of his time in France. Claire, sensing she was being watched, looked up and saw Pat smiling.

  ‘What’re you smiling at?’ she asked.

  ‘I was thinking about a fun competition we could stage at the next WI meeting, just something to help us all relax, to help take our minds off our missing loved ones.’ Pat dissembled quite easily. She had learned the hard way.

  Claire looked immediately excited.

  ‘I love competitions!’ she squealed. ‘What is it?’

  ‘How many objects can you fit in a matchbox?’

  ‘Oh, gosh!’ Claire’s eyes widened at the thought of the task. ‘How big do they have to be? The objects, not the matchbox.’

  ‘There would have to be some rules, like no ants or grains of sand, or anything silly. And only one of each item.’

  ‘Yes, that would do it!’

  Claire considered it for a moment, nodding to herself as she thought of some of the objects she might include, before being drawn back to Bob’s purple prose. Pat looked at the young woman for a moment before returning to her own thoughts about the Mass Observation project.

  I will only write the truth, as it appears to me. Without embellishment. All my hatred of Bob. All my love for Marek. Every truthful sentence I put down will be an antidote to every specious one he types. This will be my voice. Unadulterated and unafraid.

  Pat thought about the day Marek had been shipped out of the area, and she had stood drenched in rain and sweat as she stared at the devastation caused by the fallen Spitfire, steeped in her own loss.

  Where are you, my love? Are you safe? Are you warm? Do you think of me at all as I think of you?

  She adjusted the helmet on her head and decided to try a Mass Observation piece of writing. She smiled at the prospect and wondered if this was what it felt like to join a resistance movement, and operate behind enemy lines. She looked at her watch and then out of the window, wondering how long before the wardens would sound the all-clear.

  Chapter 28

  Will had markedly deteriorated since Erica and Laura’s previous visit. His breathing was becoming even more laboured as he slept, and when he did eventually emerge from sleep into drowsy consciousness he simply stared at those around him for several seconds, his brown eyes moving slowly between Erica and Laura as his mind grasped for recognition. It did come, eventually. Will’s eyes widened and he blurted out, ‘Erica!’ as if he’d been holding his breath until her name returned to him. Laura gripped her father’s hand tightly, fearing loosening her grip would cause him to be sucked into the pillow and down into the folds of the bed, and away from them for ever. He would then look around the clean, white ward, trying to remember why he was here. Erica had no problem prompting him.

  ‘The Spitfire,’ she said.

  It was all it took, and Will nodded sagely. He lifted his hand and held it out, then let it fall onto the sheet covering his lap, illustrating the last moments of flight of the stricken fighter plane.

  ‘And you were underneath.’

  Will nodded and pointed at Erica, who nodded.

  ‘But you bore the brunt.’

  Laura lifted her father’s hand and gently kissed the back of it.

  ‘Protecting Mim’s baby,’ she said.

  Will managed a small smile. Erica could tell he was tired already and glanced at Laura.

  ‘So soon?’ Laura asked, sotto voce.

  ‘Concentrating on us is a strain at the moment,’ Erica replied quietly. ‘I don’t want him to expend more energy or effort because we’re here.’

  Erica stood and leaned forward towards Will.

  ‘We’re going to leave you now, my darling.’ His face looked a little pained. ‘To rest, Will. You need – above all – to rest.’

  Will seemed reluctant to accept this.

  ‘I have . . . one . . . doctor. I do not . . . need . . . a . . . nother.’

  ‘Whether you need one or not, you’ve got one. At least until you’re out of the woods.’

  Laura looked at him. ‘Make that two more. Three, when Kate comes home to visit.’ She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Dad.’

  Will nodded, and solemnly watched them walk out of the ward. When the door closed behind them he leant his head back on the pillow, shut his eyes, and let out a sigh that allowed the strain of paying attention to flow out of his body.

  Laura’s face appeared in the window of the door to the ward as she looked at her father. ‘He’s already asleep . . . ’, she whispered quietly as she turned to leave.

  Dr Mitchell intercepted them on their way out of the hospital, and took them to one side. He removed his round, wire-framed glasses and slowly pushed a lock of grey hair off his forehead. He looked from Erica to Laura before saying what he needed to say.

  ‘Will is fighting as hard as he can. That’s his nature. He has a remarkable will to live. But the contaminants ingested during the crash have exacerbated his cancer, and his lung capacity is diminishing daily. I think he knows what I have suspected for some time,’ he said calmly. ‘This isn’t a fight he can win.’

  ‘None of us will,’ said Laura, ‘in the long run.’ She refused to cry and make the ordeal any worse for Erica.

  Dr Mitchell smiled softly and nodded.

  ‘That is very true.’

  Despite Laura’s mature stoicism, Dr Mitchell’s description nevertheless sounded like dominoes of hope falling inexorably onto one another until the last one collapsed, and her father would be dead.

  Erica blinked back tears and tried to remain focused on what did remain of Will instead of what did not.

  ‘When he woke up just before it seemed to take him a few moments to recognise us. Is that the sedatives?’ As a pharmacist, Erica was well aware how well they could dull and confuse the senses. ‘Because it seemed like something more profound than a drug-induced fug.’

  Dr Mitchell cleaned his glasses on the hem of his white coat and put them back on, returning the owlish quality to his round, friendly face. He cleared his throat, choosing his next words very carefully.

  ‘We believe the cancer has spread.’

  He looked at Erica and Laura and waited for this information to sink in and prompt the inevitable question, which came within seconds.

  ‘Where to?’ Laura asked.

  Before Dr Mitchell could reply, Erica spoke.

  ‘His brain.’ She looked at Dr Mitchell. ‘It’s in his brain now, isn’t it?’

  Dr Mitchell looked at Erica and Laura with practised yet sincere melancholy, and nodded.

  ‘We think it’s affecting his eyesight and—’

  ‘His memory.’ Eric
a already knew what was happening to Will. Why wouldn’t she? She knew him better than anyone, and was attuned to the slightest changes in his capacities. She had worked out the cancer had spread to Will’s brain during the hours and hours she sat with him, watching him struggle to remember who she was.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Mitchell. ‘It’s in his brain for the moment.’

  ‘For the moment?’ Laura was confused.

  Erica wrapped her arm slowly around Laura’s shoulders.

  ‘You know his condition isn’t going to improve.’

  Laura nodded. ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Neither is it going to plateau, Laura.’

  Dr Mitchell’s voice sounded more clinical now, driving through to the end of what he had come to report.

  ‘What is now happening to Will is what we mean when we say a patient is entering their final days. His body has tried to fight this disease with everything it has – assisted by additional weaponry from medical science. But there was always a limit to how much he would be able to fight, and for how long. However strong he has been – and Will is one of the strongest patients I have ever treated – he was always going to eventually reach that limit. He knew that. Well . . . it would seem he’s now reached it. The cancer is spreading too quickly to be held in check.’

  Erica and Laura left the hospital in a fug of their own. Dr Mitchell had torn down any remaining threads of hope connecting them to the vaguest possibility that Will might make some form of recovery. They walked through the hospital doors and along the front driveway arm in arm, in silence. They had each anticipated this moment, but not how empty it would leave them feeling. Will would soon be absent from the world, and nothing they or anyone else could do would ever bring him back. It was a feeling beyond hopelessness.

  Evening swallows zigzagged in the air around them, as if vying for their attention. Neither Erica nor Laura noticed them. The low winter sun sank slowly below the treeline, pulling the last of its rays down after it. Neither Erica nor Laura noticed darkness extend from daytime shadows, consuming all in its path. Despite their numbering between twenty and thirty, dressed in suits and ties, jackets and overalls, fresh from their work in Liverpool and Crewe, Erica and Laura barely noticed the city folk huddled in the surrounding fields around tents and small campfires, exhausted yet relieved to be out of the line of aerial bombardment for another night.

  Deep in their own thoughts, Erica and Laura walked along the dark lanes towards their new home on the village outskirts, seeing nothing and no one but Will in his hospital bed, struggling for life.

  After half an hour they arrived and went inside. Erica took off her hat and coat and hung them on the peg. Everything felt utterly unfamiliar in the gloom. Neither woman wanted to go any further into the house; the doors to other rooms seemed superfluous when they had no desire to make food in the kitchen, or turn on the wireless in the front room. Neither reached to turn on the light. Laura sat on the bottom tread of the stairs and stared straight ahead, allowing the tears to flow down her cheeks. Erica stood in the hall, looking at her.

  For the first time in her life I don’t know what to say to my daughter to ease her sadness. I have absolutely no idea.

  Laura’s sister, Kate, had lost her young husband in a training crash on the airfield at Tabley Wood. And though they had all mourned his death, they were quietly conscious they were mostly mourning the loss of a young man they had barely got to know.

  Losing Jack was dreadful for Kate. But she had only known him months before he was taken. Losing Will is a different order of magnitude. Losing Will is vast. Losing Will is a catastrophe that is almost too big for the girls to grasp. But I have to grasp it for their sake. This is happening. We’re losing Will. In a matter of days or weeks he will be gone. After twenty-four years of marriage together he will no longer exist in my life, except in my thoughts and memory. I must steer them through this.

  The thought made Erica’s legs suddenly buckle beneath her. She held on to the banister and waited for the moment to pass.

  The only man I’ve ever wanted. The kindest, cleverest man I’ve ever known. The sweetest kisser by miles . . .

  Erica smiled as this verdict from her younger self bubbled to the surface. She recalled the first time they’d met, at the 1916 Christmas lecture at the Royal Institute. She had been nineteen, he was twenty-three. The talk was entitled The Human Machine Which All Must Work. Erica and Will had separately taken younger siblings and cousins, and found themselves on the same row in the lecture hall. As the talk progressed they found themselves taking more interest in one another than in the subject matter. At the end of the afternoon, Will had slipped past Erica and asked how she’d found the talk. She had replied, ‘Interesting.’ He had then asked what she thought about the idea of going for a walk with him one afternoon in Regent’s Park, without children in tow. Erica had looked at his young, handsome, clever face, smiled a little, and replied, ‘More interesting.’

  Laura wiped her face on the sleeve of her coat and looked at her mother standing in the dark.

  ‘We’ll have to tell Kate,’ she said.

  Erica sat beside Laura on the bottom tread, wrapped her youngest daughter tightly in her arms, and looked at the front door. A car passed the house outside and disappeared into silence.

  ‘We’ll have to tell everyone . . . ’

  Chapter 29

  Teresa lay beneath Nick as he made love to her on their bed and supper cooked slowly downstairs. She’d previously had sex with only two other men, and had enjoyed neither experience. One had been with a young, skinny youth, with sharp features, and thin, bony hands. The other had been with an older, flabby man, with a terrifying amount of body hair. She had found both men painfully grabby and over-eager to simply prise open her legs, like burglars breaking into a downstairs window. Fortunately, Nick was nothing like them. He was gentle and considerate. He kissed her all over and told Teresa how much he adored her, and how beautiful she was, and how lucky he was to have her as his wife, and she would respond that she was the lucky one, which she felt genuinely. Nick didn’t rush things in bed, and took his lead from her, yet directed proceedings too without ever seeming controlling. He seemed to want Teresa to enjoy herself every bit as he was enjoying himself. And it was good. Unlike with the other two men she had been with, Nick’s lovemaking wasn’t painful or without pleasure. But . . . put simply . . . and it was hardly Nick’s fault . . . if making love with women was the equivalent of fine dining for Teresa, making love with Nick was the equivalent of an enjoyable cottage pie, with nice veg; lovely in its own way, but not the haute cuisine she was used to. She so wanted cottage pie to be enough.

  I love this man. I want him to be all I need to feel happy and loved and safe.

  Annie—

  The name of the ATA pilot flashed into her mind.

  Oh God – thinking of her while making love with Nick is an appalling betrayal. So stop thinking about her. Just stop thinking about her in any – by which I mean every – way.

  As much as she tried to move past any variant of thinking about Annie, and tried instead to focus entirely on what was taking place in that moment in her marital bed with Nick, the more Annie’s face took shape in Teresa’s mind’s eye.

  I need to overwhelm my senses with Nick . . .

  Teresa opened her eyes wide and looked into Nick’s eyes with an intensity that caused him to ask if she was all right. She nodded.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she pleaded, wanting him to overwhelm her, and stop her mind from thinking of anyone else but him.

  Teresa gripped Nick’s face in her hands and kissed him. Even after a day at the RAF station he still smelled fresh and wonderful.

  ‘Just lie back and think of England,’ Alison had once told her. ‘It’s what most women do most of the time. At least . . . in England they do.’

  Teresa lay back and tried to think of England, and Nick, but only managed to think more about Annie.

  It isn’t fair – I’m not trying to
be unfaithful and I don’t want to be! Why have I gone to all this trouble to prevent people gossiping about my status if I fall at the very first hurdle? Am I really so feeble?

  She tried again to think of something other than Annie’s face, but it only left her thinking more about Annie’s face, and then the rest of her. This left her more excited, which had the side effect of exciting Nick even more. Teresa was left feeling fraudulent and frustrated.

  Lying in post-coital exhaustion in Nick’s arms, his warm breath on her neck, Teresa struggled to contain her emotions. She had found a wonderful man. She so wanted their marriage to work, and make each of them happy.

  How she would negotiate regular sex with Nick had preoccupied Teresa before they were married. She thought she had come to terms with it in principle. Sex with a man once in a blue moon was fine. She could tolerate that – more than tolerate it, if he knew his way around a woman, and was prepared to be guided in areas with which he was less familiar. But once or twice a week? Or more? Teresa wasn’t sure her acting prowess could sustain that level of attention.

  ‘Just fulfil your duty,’ Alison had counselled, ‘and everything will be fine. Nick is a very attractive man.’

  ‘What if he wants me to fulfil it every day? I have friends who tell me their husbands expect them to fulfil their duty every day.’

  ‘Then do that.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to?’

  ‘Then find a happy medium.’

  This sounded like a sensible answer, but it failed to take into consideration the true nature of Teresa’s problem. For Teresa, the happy medium for having sex with a man would be to instead have sex with a woman. But that wasn’t now possible.

  It seemed to Teresa that the only solution was to stop resisting the situation and give in to it. In other words, have relations with Nick but fantasise – if she couldn’t stop herself – about having them with Annie when those thoughts arose.