Keep the Home Fires Burning

by S Block

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Simms, there really is no other way. Except to slip slowly into madness.’

  This didn’t sit well with Bob. He wasn’t used to changing his working pattern for anyone. If Pat had asked the same he would have laughed in her face, and then scowled dismissively. But Joyce wasn’t Pat. And this was Joyce’s house, and Joyce was letting them stay at a reduced rent. Bob was nothing if not flexible if it might save him money. He fixed an ingratiating smile on his face and said, ‘I’m sure we can come to some mutually agreeable arrangement.’

  Bob agreed to limit his typing hours to two shifts. Between 7 and 11 a.m., and 3 to 6 p.m. He tried to compensate for this restriction by working twice as hard through each session. Gone were the intermittent tea and chocolate and cigarette breaks that gave him space and time to think about what he was going to write next. Instead, he thought about what he was going to write a great deal before sitting at the typewriter, and spent the first four hours of every day in a furious assault on the machine; repeating the offensive every afternoon between 3 and 6 p.m. All he asked of Pat was that she bring him a cup of tea on the hour every hour. The rest of the time he demanded to be left alone.

  As the weather turned colder, he lit a fire in the hearth at the start of his morning shift, making sure there was sufficient coal to provide four hours of moderate warmth. He did the same in the afternoon. It wasn’t that Joyce’s house was so large it was difficult to heat. More that, like other cold-blooded creatures, Bob functioned more efficiently in the warm. It was a concession he’d won from Joyce that he be allowed to moderate the front room’s temperature during his working hours. Indeed, Bob’s precision about his working temperature only added to his artistic charisma as far as Joyce was concerned.

  Unknown to Bob, his new writing hours suited Pat much better than his old. It meant she could get on with her Mass Observation reports in their bedroom upstairs secure in the knowledge that Bob would be glued to his chair for the duration, downstairs. Bob was a creature of deeply entrenched habit, especially where his work was concerned. If he discovered a work pattern that was productive, he clung to it like a zealot. And if, for some reason, the typing stopped, Pat would hear it immediately, and hide her own writing beneath the mattress and lie waiting for Bob to resume. All she had to do was remember to serve him his cup of tea on the hour – a routine that was easily maintained by the alarm clock on her bedside table. The remaining fifty-five minutes of each hour were hers, in which to write freely about her life, expressing herself in a way she had never been able to do before. Where once she loathed the sound of Bob’s typewriter she now came to love its downstairs rattle. It meant her own writing time upstairs was secure.

  Pat found writing Mass Observation reports addictive. The anonymity was liberating, as it was intended to be. She could write down her darkest thoughts and feelings without fear of censure or consequence. Often, she would be walking through the village and see something, or overhear someone talking, and make a mental note to write about it. To begin with she felt some guilt at writing down snippets of other people’s conversations, but that swiftly disappeared.

  ‘My husband has already made me a practised liar so why shouldn’t I turn myself into an accomplished thief?’ she wrote.

  Pat wrote about Erica’s emotional breakdown at the committee meeting. How moved she had felt when the other women had gathered round her in a silent show of support at her imminent loss of Will. She wrote that she felt compelled in the moment to join in.

  Pat wrote about the trekkers appearing in ever greater numbers around the village at night, and how some had started venturing into the High Street to buy food, which was scarce in Liverpool. She wrote about telephone conversations between villagers she had overheard during shifts at the telephone exchange. Many expressed fear and concern about the trekkers, often in deeply unpleasant terms.

  Anyone wandering into Great Paxford on any given day would be forgiven for assuming it was an idyllic refuge from the rest of the world. That its residents are smiling, open-hearted and kind. And they would be right, mostly. But some of the telephone conversations I’ve overhead in the last week or so have been shockingly unpleasant. I heard one person suggest that we should have armed nightly patrols to keep black and Chinese trekkers out of the village. Having written this, I have to admit that when I heard the suggestion I did not immediately disagree. I also have an urge to protect the village, and keep out strangers who might do us harm. But when I thought about it on my way home at the end of my shift yesterday, I had to ask what harm are these people doing? None that I know of. And yet I was agreeing with an idea to hold people at the end of a gun for the simple fact they are not like us. By which I mean, not white. Because people making accusations aren’t making them about white folk, and the majority of the trekkers are white. It makes me ashamed that we can be at war with fascist Germany yet exhibit the same base impulse to discriminate against people who simply don’t look like us.

  The alarm clock by the side of the bed started to ring, signalling it was time for Pat to stow her report and make Bob his next cup of tea. She glanced at her fingers and saw that the tips of those that had held her pen were tinged blue. She went into the bathroom to wash her hands clear of any trace of ink that might give away what she had been doing upstairs. If Bob sensed anything unusual he would be on to it like a ferret.

  The typing had stopped for a few moments. As she scrubbed her hands clean she heard the front door open.

  Joyce back from the village. Perfect timing. Two women now revolving around Bob. Keeping out of his way. Accommodating him. How does he do it? Why do we allow it? Oh yes. Because he’s a selfish bastard.

  Pat dried her hands and walked onto the landing in time to see Joyce solicitously knock on the door to the front room. She was holding the newspaper and what looked like bills. She heard Bob say, ‘Yes?’ and Joyce went in. Pat continued downstairs. As she reached halfway she could hear Joyce and Bob talking through the door.

  ‘Nothing of any great interest in the newspaper, I fear. Though I’ve only skimmed the front page,’ Joyce said. ‘And another of those letters for Patricia.’

  Pat froze.

  What did she just say?

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Cameron,’ Bob said, trying to suppress his irritation at being interrupted. ‘Could you see if Pat is bringing my tea?’

  Joyce came out of the room and quietly closed the door behind her, and found Pat reaching the bottom of the stairs. The thrum of Bob’s typing had already restarted.

  ‘The great man is ready for his tea, Patricia,’ Joyce said, with no hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Thank you. Would you mind putting the kettle on? I just need a quick word with him.’

  Joyce smiled. ‘Of course . . . ’

  Pat watched Joyce go into the kitchen. She approached the door to the front room and knocked. The typing stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ Bob’s voice sounded irritated by yet another interruption, but as Pat was due to bring him his tea it was one he was expecting. He continued typing.

  Pat opened the door and went inside, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Just put it on the table . . . ’

  Pat hesitated, and then said, ‘Your tea’s being made.’

  Bob stopped typing and turned to face her.

  ‘I thought I made it clear the only interruption I wanted was a cup of tea on the hour. Nothing else. Yes?’

  ‘It’s coming,’ Pat said, looking at him. Her eyes momentarily flicked across his desk, looking for—

  ‘Then why are you here now? Why aren’t you in the kitchen making it?’

  ‘The kettle can boil itself, Bob.’

  Pat hadn’t meant to sound defiant but she felt past caring. Besides, what could he do with Joyce just one room away? Bob looked at her, his expression darkening.

  ‘Then why are you in here, disturbing me, now?’

  Pat felt the customary fear rising as it always did when he spoke to her like this.

  �
�I heard Joyce tell you she picked up a letter for me from the post office.’

  Bob looked up at her from his desk. ‘You shouldn’t eavesdrop, Pat. People who eavesdrop hear things they shouldn’t.’

  ‘I wasn’t “eavesdropping”, Bob. I was coming downstairs to make your tea and happened to overhear Joyce say that another letter—’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ His eyes glanced towards the door.

  ‘What did she mean by “another letter for Patricia”?’ Pat wouldn’t be deflected.

  Bob didn’t answer. She could tell he was choosing which way to handle this. Pat persisted.

  ‘What other letters? From who?’

  Bob looked at her, narrowing his eyes. He took a drag on his dying cigarette and then slowly released the smoke from between his lips.

  ‘I told her they were begging letters from a cousin of yours, trying to screw money out of you on account of my book. I told her she was to bring them straight to me when they came, without troubling you. She did it as a favour to you. As am I by keeping them from you.’

  ‘But I don’t have any cousins,’ Pat said. Her heart was pounding so fast in her chest it felt like it was trying to smash open her ribcage and escape.

  ‘I know that. You know that. Joyce, happily, does not.’

  ‘So who were they from?’

  Bob leaned back in his chair and looked at his wife for several moments in silence, savouring her clear anxiety.

  ‘You know who they’re from.’

  ‘Marek.’

  The word came out before she could stop it. Bob simply looked at her, neither agreeing nor denying.

  ‘Where are they?’ Pat asked, her eyes scanning the room.

  ‘I destroyed them.’

  Pat felt giddy. Marek had been writing to her. The light in which she saw everything had suddenly brightened. Pat could barely control her emotions. She knew that to seem pleased would provoke Bob. She tried to keep her voice measured.

  ‘What did the letters say?’

  ‘You think I read them?’ His tone was incredulous. ‘Do you think I have the slightest interest in reading the slop another man would write to my wife?’

  Pat took a deep breath and looked at Bob. She thought of the night she had stood over him with his own hammer in her hand, the way she was standing over him now.

  I should have done it. Whatever the consequence.

  ‘I did it for your own sake, Pat,’ he said.

  Pat curled her left hand into a ball, as if gripping that hammer’s handle.

  ‘Where’s the letter that came today?’

  Bob smirked.

  ‘Where all the others went.’

  He looked at the fire. It wasn’t roaring now, but simmering. Digesting the last embers. Pat’s mouth opened in shock.

  ‘Nothing good could possibly come of it, you know that, yes? You’re a married woman. Do you believe I would ever let you leave me for him? Embarrass me in front of these rural cretins? I’ll see you dead first. And he’s – what is he really? Nothing but a Slav philanderer, picking my pocket while I was in France. I expect he wrote asking for money. Once he knew he’d hooked a silly woman like you that would be the next logical step. I won’t let him do that to me.’

  Marek would never do that. You know nothing about him.

  Pat looked into the fire, as if one or two of Marek’s words to her might manifest themselves in the glowing ashes, or form within the last wisps of smoke.

  Think now. Hold it back and think. Fear and hatred, yes. Write about this, yes. Bear witness to the bastard actions of my bastard husband, and report it. But what else?

  ‘That kettle must be boiled by now,’ said Bob, turning back to his typewriter and beginning to type again as if they had been discussing what sort of biscuit he might like with his tea.

  Pat watched for a few moments, scarcely able to believe his nonchalant cruelty.

  What was in the letters? Was Marek writing to confirm closure of the time we’d had together? Or the opposite – to ask me to wait for him? Surely . . . if he was writing to end our relationship why would he write more than once?

  Pat left the room, closing the door behind her. She felt her chest rise and fall in a steady, controlled rhythm as she stood against the closed door, the typewriter keys hammering away.

  She blinked back the tears welling in her eyes, lest Joyce or Bob see. But these were not tears of misery, as she had so often spilled since Marek had gone. Or of desolation, in moments Pat wondered where on earth Marek might be, believing she would never see him again. These were tears of unalloyed joy.

  She smiled, and put her hand over her mouth to hide it. But beneath her hand her smile broadened as every particle of her vibrated with happiness. She wanted to say it out loud, but she knew she couldn’t. She would write the words later in her next report:

  Marek’s out there, somewhere, and he’s trying to find me . . .

  Chapter 36

  Having called an emergency general meeting of the WI to discuss the impact of nightly trekkers on their community, on the given evening Frances wanted only to remain at home, within earshot of the telephone and possible news about Noah. Since he had run away a day and a half earlier from the boarding school, nothing had been seen or heard of the child.

  As soon as Claire had run into the village and told Frances of Noah’s disappearance, Frances had abandoned her plan to resurrect her friendship with Alison, and had run home to immediately telephone the school’s headmaster.

  ‘The first thing I want to say to you, Mrs Barden,’ Dr Nelms intoned, in a manner designed to calm the fears of any mother anxious about their son in his care, ‘is that there is no cause for alarm.’

  ‘I really find it difficult to understand how you can say that, Dr Nelms,’ Frances replied, astonished by his cavalier attitude in the face of what appeared to her to be a grave crisis.

  ‘I can assure you, boys abscond quite regularly.’

  ‘Odd how you didn’t mention it when Noah and I came to look at your school prior to his enrolment.’

  ‘Boys running away is a common occurrence in all boarding schools. While most absconders are new boys, it isn’t unknown for more established boys to return to school after a particularly successful summer or Christmas break with parents, find school life difficult by comparison and try and make their way back home.’

  ‘So you think Noah is on his way home.’

  ‘It’s quite likely. Though more likely that—’

  Frances cut him off.

  ‘May I remind you, Headmaster, we are talking about a child of eight years old. How on earth can you speak so blithely of an eight-year-old finding his way across country during war, with bombs falling nightly, and – if we are to believe even a tenth of the propaganda the government would have us believe – a landscape positively teeming with German spies?’

  ‘I strongly believe you have no cause for alarm. I am reminded of a particularly ingenious boy who managed to run away from school on his second day, would you believe. He made his way to Switzerland, where he knew his parents had gone on holiday. The boy had no idea which part of Switzerland his parents were visiting, and was caught by a platform guard as he tried to sneak aboard a train at Zurich’s central station.’

  Frances was in no mood to be eased from her current state of extreme anxiety by supposedly reassuring stories that attempted to turn Noah’s running away from a cause for concern into a common, almost whimsical occurrence she need not worry about.

  ‘With the greatest respect, Dr Nelms, every minute you’re wasting trying to reassure me that Noah’s disappearance fits an established, harmless pattern is another minute in which we have no idea where he might be, or when he might come to light.’

  ‘Mrs Barden, I can assure you— ’

  ‘No, Headmaster. I have little or no interest in your assurances. They count for nothing. You gave me every assurance he was fitting in very well. Assurances that now seem utterly baseless. A child who shouldn’t
be, is now missing. All I am seeking is reassurance that everything is being done to find him at the earliest opportunity.’

  The headmaster of a respectable but middle-ranking boarding school stood little chance against Frances Barden in full flight. Few did.

  ‘I expected you to take great care of my— of Noah. I entrusted him to you. And he is gone.’

  Frances had nearly described Noah as her ‘son’ but corrected herself before the word left her mouth. She didn’t want Dr Nelms to undermine her connection to Noah by correcting her description of him as her own child. Yet, to all intents and purposes, with both his parents deceased, Frances had started to consider herself to be Noah’s de facto parent.

  ‘Have you contacted the police?’ Frances asked curtly.

  ‘I really don’t think that’s necessary at this stage, Mrs Barden.’

  ‘At what stage might you think it necessary? After Noah’s been found? Assuming he is.’

  Dr Nelms embarked on one final attempt to regain control of the situation.

  ‘Mrs Barden, in our experience, when a boy absconds— ’

  ‘Would you please stop using that word – he’s not a prisoner of war, he’s a schoolboy, a small child in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar people doing unfamiliar things. Contrary to what you told me, he has evidently found it all too much. Otherwise he would remain with you, rushing between classroom and playing field with the other boys.’

  ‘In our experience, runaways are either found very quickly, or return to school of their own accord within hours, more often than not with their tails between their legs.’

  ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t even been looking for him? Noah hasn’t returned within the four hours it’s been since he was reported missing.’