Keep the Home Fires Burning

by S Block

  ‘I want . . . to come home.’

  Will stared at Erica with absolute determination, his eyes prominent in their sockets, burning with resolve. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple slowly dropping in his throat before struggling back up to its resting position.

  Erica blinked fast, clearing the moisture from her eyes before it could coalesce into tears. She felt an overwhelming urge to look away, but she continued to look back at Will. His love for her radiated across the space between them, giving her the strength to understand what he was saying, and agree to his request. For the past twenty-four years there hadn’t been a significant decision either had made without consulting the other. Partnership was an insufficient description of their relationship. Their marriage had been a perfect symbiosis.

  ‘I want . . . to come . . . home, Erica.’ He took another slug of oxygen and lowered the mask. ‘To die . . . with you.’

  Erica became unaware of anything or anyone else on the ward. All she could see was Will’s face. All she could think about were the last words he had spoken.

  ‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  The tension holding Will’s frame forward in the wheelchair lifted, and he relaxed back into the seat with relief. His head lolled back on his neck and he closed his eyes. For a moment Erica thought he was in distress, but she saw his chest rise and fall evenly as it sucked in oxygen. She looked at Will’s face.

  His eyes were closed, but beneath the oxygen mask Erica could see an almost imperceptible yet definite smile.

  ‘Home,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Home.’

  Chapter 34

  Frances had decided to grasp the metaphorical bull by its metaphorical horns and speak to Alison. It had been on her mind since their encounter in the air-raid shelter, after Sarah had upbraided her. Alison had come into Frances’s mind again in the committee meeting when Erica had broken down. Like Frances, and as Erica would soon, Alison had also lost a husband. Her experience and wisdom would have helped Erica immeasurably in those moments. Frances had felt her absence.

  With Noah away at boarding school, Frances had a lot of time to think about events at the factory, and whether Alison really had been as solely responsible for its demise as Frances had convinced herself. Was it possible she had rather shamefully laid so much blame at Alison’s door to avoid taking any herself? She had to concede it was possible.

  When Noah had left, Frances thought about him almost constantly. She punished herself with various scenarios, each more terrible than the last. To stop herself from pointless self-flagellation, Frances turned her mind to other matters: the trekker issue, which had been left unresolved following the abrupt conclusion of the committee meeting; and to Alison.

  Frances recalled Alison’s words in the shelter, but focused mainly on her expression. After all, words were easy to assemble into almost any order to say almost anything, and yet give the faithful appearance of utmost sincerity and truth. Frances understood that facial expressions and mannerisms were not so easy to assemble into a convincing performance. She had known Alison over many years, in a range of circumstances. Alison’s absolute honesty held true in all of them. Sarah had agreed one evening over supper.

  ‘The woman is incapable of lying, you know that, Frances. Utterly incapable.’

  Frances knew, but was reluctant to admit it, ashamed to concede she might have done Alison a great injustice.

  ‘That may well be the case as far as the WI is concerned. But the business at the factory was an entirely different order of things,’ she said. ‘Consequently, what happened there may have forced Alison to behave entirely out of character. Under tremendous pressure very many perfectly decent people do some perfectly dreadful things. Look at Chamberlain and the Sudetenland.’

  Sarah had put down her cutlery and looked at Frances despairingly.

  ‘Please, I beg you, Frances. Do not equate Chamberlain’s misjudgement of Hitler’s ambitions with Alison’s “misjudgement” of new suppliers of parachute silk. Even in your overactive imagination that would be a stretch too far. Besides, as she has explained to you, it wasn’t a “misjudgement” on her part to bring the Lyons brothers in as new suppliers. She was pressured into it by the police.’

  Frances had looked stonily at Sarah.

  ‘I don’t know whether or not to believe Alison was being directed by the police.’

  ‘You’ve just acknowledged the woman can’t lie to save her life!’

  ‘No – I agreed she was incapable of lying. But only in the context of what we know of her. But beyond that context, I have no idea how she might behave if she were under tremendous pressure, or if her liberty was at stake.’

  ‘Then why don’t you check?’

  ‘Check?’

  ‘Contact the police officer who told her to do all these things to help bring the Lyons to justice, and see if he corroborates Alison’s account.’

  Frances looked at her sister and considered the idea.

  ‘I might just do that.’

  After thinking it over in private, Frances had decided she would write to the police officer, only to learn he had been transferred out of the area. She had initially thought this very convenient for Alison. But having asked for her letter to be forwarded to the detective at his new posting, Frances was surprised to receive a letter back within two weeks that corroborated everything Alison had told her. But the detective’s letter went further, praising Alison as ‘a woman of great integrity and courage, who risked more to help the fight against war profiteering than any civilian I’ve come across’.

  Those words played over in her head now, as Frances found herself walking towards Alison’s cottage a week after the committee meeting in which Erica had all but collapsed. She had decided to wear her most businesslike outfit. The one she had worn the night she had first been elected Chair of the WI, to the reading of Peter’s will, at her first meeting with Noah’s grandparents and on her first and last days at the factory. It was a dark tweed jacket and skirt, small pearl earrings and matching necklace. Minimal make-up. An understated yet necessary display of status that enabled Frances to feel she was wearing some form of ‘armour’ in the event that Alison wasn’t interested in reconciliation.

  I want to settle this if possible, but not at any cost. And I certainly don’t wish to look too relaxed or ‘overtly friendly’. If we are to become friends once more it will take time, and it must be from a position of strength, as the injured party. Alison is a bookkeeper. She understands the concept of making sure the right amounts of things are in the right places before a proper accounting can be made.

  As she walked along the High Street, Frances rehearsed her greeting as she imagined Alison opening the door. Her arrival would take Alison by surprise, which was what Frances intended by turning up unannounced. It was a trick she had learned from Peter, to keep a negotiating partner on the back foot.

  Advantage me.

  It was reasonable to anticipate that Alison would be momentarily lost for words upon seeing Frances on her doorstep, which gave Frances a second advantage. In being the first to speak she would set the terms of the conversation that followed.

  ‘Hello, Alison. I thought it was time we talked.’

  Good. Informal yet in control.

  ‘Hello, Alison. I’ve been thinking about what you said in the shelter, and thought it was time we talked.’

  Far weaker. Very little is improved by over-elaboration. Possibly French cuisine. Moorish design. Perhaps jazz . . .

  Her thoughts were interrupted by shouting from one of the shops ahead. It wasn’t a shout of joy, but loud, aggressive, argumentative and female. It was coming from Brindsley’s.

  As she looked towards the butcher shop Frances saw a black man backing out into the street, facing an angry-looking group of Great Paxford women, who came after him, led by Mrs Talbot.

  The woman was one of Frances’s least favourite people, she found offence or slight in almost everything,
living with a belief that the universe was configured to cheat her at every opportunity. At the WI, Mrs Talbot had been one of Joyce’s key supporters. But when Joyce left the village with her husband at the outbreak of the war, Mrs Talbot stepped into the vacated space, becoming the reactionary figurehead behind which Joyce’s rudderless cabal could recongregate.

  As Frances drew closer to the butcher’s shop she heard Mrs Talbot’s voice above all the others.

  ‘How would you like strangers turning up out of the blue where you live, snaffling up your rations?’ Mrs Talbot shouted, her skinny face scrunched into a snarl. ‘Go on! Get out of it!’

  Bryn Brindsley followed close behind, trying to assume control of the situation.

  ‘We haven’t run out yet, Mrs Talbot!’

  ‘Hardly a surprise you don’t object, Bryn – all the extra coppers this lot’re putting in your pocket!’

  The black man faced the small angry crowd of shoppers.

  ‘I’m only trying to feed my family,’ he said.

  ‘Do it in Liverpool! You’re not welcome here!’

  Bryn looked apologetically at the man.

  ‘I’m sorry. Maybe come back later?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Mrs Talbot. ‘There’s nothing for you here. Go back where you came from.’

  The group of ten women behind Mrs Talbot nodded in unison.

  When Frances heard this remark she couldn’t be sure if Mrs Talbot meant Liverpool or the Caribbean. Either way, she was shocked by the woman’s vehement tone, and by the level of support she was clearly receiving from the women behind her.

  What a revolting thing to say. It’s one thing to object to strangers coming into the area unbidden, causing people anxiety. But to racialise the situation like this is repugnant. Beyond the pale and fundamentally dishonest.

  The man hurried away from Brindsley’s, towards Frances.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked as he approached.

  He hurried past her without speaking, towards the village outskirts.

  Mrs Talbot and her caucus stood in the road. They were still muttering about the receding figure as Frances approached.

  ‘Was that entirely necessary?’ Frances asked.

  Mrs Talbot eyed Frances suspiciously. Like most bullies she made astute calculations about who to take on and who to leave alone. Known in Great Paxford for her stern intelligence and tart tongue when nettled, Frances fell into the latter category.

  ‘These people are cowards, Mrs Barden. Cutting and running into the countryside isn’t the British way.’

  ‘Isn’t it human nature to try and stay alive by whatever means necessary?’

  ‘They’ve shelters in Liverpool.’

  ‘They have some. Bursting at the seams by all accounts. And none that can survive a direct hit. Should they just stay put and get blown to pieces? Would you?’

  Frances directed the question at Mrs Talbot but then looked at the ten women sheltering behind her. There was a moment of silence as they waited for Mrs Talbot to respond on their behalf, hopefully with a stinging retort.

  ‘We’re at war, Mrs Barden.’

  Frances found this entirely predictable.

  Ah, yes. The lazy excuse for appalling behaviour. I heard it all during the last war.

  ‘I’m well aware of that, Mrs Talbot. But we’re at war with the Germans, not with our own people.’

  ‘He’s not our people, though, is he?’

  Frances felt a surge of anger, as she always did when faced with bigots and thugs, male or – as in this case – female. Mrs Talbot wasn’t finished.

  ‘He’s not from the village, and we have a right to defend what’s ours from anyone who tries to take it.’

  The women behind Mrs Talbot felt she was gaining the upper hand and nodded approvingly. They hadn’t the wit to take Frances on, but they admired any woman who would try.

  ‘But he wasn’t trying to take anything,’ said Frances. ‘From what I could see he was happy to pay for it, like any of you.’

  ‘Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Let one of them buy meat from Brindsley’s and there’ll be a stampede to buy up everything, before the people who live here get a look-in.’

  ‘Not a very Christian attitude, Mrs Talbot.’

  ‘On the contrary, Mrs Barden. As it says in the Bible – God helps those who help themselves. Well, we’re helping ourselves by driving them out of our village before they gain a foothold. They’ve got their own butchers.’

  ‘Their city is being bombed flat. I’ve no reason to believe butcher shops have been made exempt from German bombs. But perhaps you have information I’m not privy to?’

  Mrs Talbot had no response to Frances’s sarcasm, and fell back on a bald statement of fact masquerading as a definitive argument.

  ‘Well, that’s where they chose to live. I chose to live here.’

  Mrs Talbot looked at Frances with manufactured contempt.

  ‘Anyway. Whose side are you on, Mrs Barden?’

  ‘Must there be sides, Mrs Talbot?’

  ‘Don’t be so naive. Not now. It’s what gets people killed. Dog eat dog – that’s what war is. That’s what my husband says. Any who don’t understand that are likely to get eaten by bigger dogs.’

  Mrs Talbot gave Frances a farewell sneer and walked away, followed by her clucking friends, who looked over their shoulders at Frances disparagingly. Frances watched them, readying to blast them with her response.

  Why do people like her always seem to know exactly the right buttons to push, without ever needing to justify their behaviour? It’s a talent of sorts, I suppose. A rather repellent talent, but perhaps being rather repellent is a useful survival mechanism in times like these. Well, as long as there’s breath in my body, she—

  ‘Mrs Barden!’

  Frances turned in the direction of the caller and saw Claire cycling towards her at full pelt from over three hundred yards away, her housemaid’s uniform flapping around her legs. Claire’s face was flushed red, and wet with sweat. She was panting hard, having raced all the way from the house. Frances was overcome with dread, her mind reaching back to the day of Peter’s accident, and the voices shouting to keep her back from the wreckage where Peter and his lover of ten years lay dead – he, slumped at the steering wheel, she, face down in a cornfield, having been thrown through the windscreen.

  Frances tried to control her fear as Claire braked hard and drew level.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  From the moment she had hung up the receiver in the hall, Claire had been pedalling hard to tell Frances the news. But having cycled so far, so fast, the poor girl now hung over the handlebars of her bicycle, doubled over with a stitch.

  ‘Claire, please . . . ’

  Claire took a huge breath, and sat upright to face Frances.

  ‘Noah’s school just telephoned . . . ’

  As soon as she heard the word ‘school’ Frances froze, Mrs Talbot completely forgotten. Claire fought hard to bring her breathing under enough control to voice the final two words of her message.

  ‘Noah’s disappeared . . . ’

  Chapter 35

  For the first few weeks of their stay in her home, Joyce had been thrilled to host Bob and Pat. ‘Great Paxford’s very own man and wife of letters’, as she called them both inside the house, and around the village. She had initially enjoyed the privilege of being allowed to sit in the same room as ‘the great man’ while he worked, and equally appreciated the help Pat was able to give her in lieu of a portion of their rent. While Joyce was additionally eager for the company they offered, she received much kudos around the village for taking the Simms into her own home when she herself was recovering from the same crash that had rendered the Simms’s house uninhabitable. This helped dispel any lingering sense that the Joyce Cameron who had fled the village at the outbreak of war was the same Joyce Cameron who had returned a month later. ‘Old’ Joyce seemed to have been replaced by a new version who was more humble, c
haritable and generous. And this was true. Up to a point.

  Joyce had imagined Bob to be a seasoned, thoroughbred writer from whose fingertips words flowed in a ceaseless, melodic rush. Before she heard it for the first time, she felt sure his typewriter would play a smooth tune as he assembled sentences and paragraphs and pages – its keys chattering out an ode to creativity that would pleasantly fill her house.

  Instead, Joyce discovered that creativity doesn’t come in smooth, seamlessly interlinked bars, but in jarring, percussive bursts, with recurrent interludes of dark silence punctured by blunt epithets from a man frustrated by his inability to translate thoughts to paper. What had started as fun and self-aggrandising for Joyce soon became disruptive and intrusive; and finally, quite painful. Joyce began to get bad headaches as the sound of Bob’s furious typing drilled into her head, much as it had been drilling into Pat’s for years.

  ‘How on earth do you put up with it, Patricia?’ she asked Pat on one particularly bad day, when Bob was having difficulty expressing himself.

  ‘You get used to it,’ Pat lied.

  You never do. You shut it out any way possible. You talk to yourself. Read. Leave the house for stretches at a time. Sleep. I sleep a lot, haven’t you noticed?

  ‘You learn to ignore it.’

  Joyce shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘At least Mr Simms has the benefit of seeing his work appear on paper. At least he knows what all this noise means. For you and me it’s just, well . . . ’

  ‘A dissonant, jarring racket?’

  ‘Quite.’

  Bob ensured that he kept his poor treatment of Pat away from Joyce, but he could hardly do the same with his work. For her part, Joyce recognised that Bob needed to work, but was also forced to admit that she didn’t want – couldn’t have – every waking hour inside her house shattered by the sound of Bob’s hands incessantly thrashing his typewriter. She braced herself and asked him to limit his work to specific hours of the day. During those hours she would visit friends, or run errands, or work in the garden. Outside of those hours, Bob would have to stop.