Keep the Home Fires Burning

by S Block

  Wherever Pat now looked, everything seemed different. It wasn’t that the rain and scudding clouds brought more contrast to the colours and shadows of the world around her. It was her own sensibility, altered in the wake of Marek’s letter, that changed how she perceived the world.

  . . . If you are hoping perhaps that I shall stop writing to you I will repeat what I have written in previous letters. I will not stop until you write back and demand I stop. These letters shall continue, Patricia, until I hear that you do not want them. You are all I have in the world to love. If I fight to stay alive it is to see you again . . .

  It was as if a screen of mist had lifted, and the world had been revealed as a place that once again allowed her to feel happy. In the days since Marek’s departure, Pat had occasionally walked to the edge of the village and stood by the small hole in the earth where the GREAT PAXFORD sign used to stand, before it was removed to disorient invading German forces. Pat would look along the road leading out of the village, and feel its pull, tempting her to start walking and see where it took her.

  Away from Bob. As far as possible.

  As much as she yearned to start walking and submit to the temptation of life without Bob, her feet would remain frozen to the spot, as if her legs became paralysed at the very thought of escape.

  He would come after me. Find me. Punish me. Make my life three times more difficult.

  Like a prisoner convinced there was no viable life beyond the prison wall, Pat would sigh and return to Joyce Cameron’s house . . .

  My cell.

  . . . and Bob.

  My jailer.

  But that was yesterday, and the day before. Today, happiness had flooded back into Pat’s life via Marek’s letter like a long-forgotten tide, and with it, hope. She wanted to take Marek’s letter out of her pocket and reread it one more time before she joined Bob and Joyce for supper, but she was afraid the rain would dissolve Marek’s expressions of love and longing into incoherent inky puddles on the page. No matter. Pat was a quick reader. In the six times she had read the letter since opening it at the exchange, Marek’s most impassioned sentiments had etched themselves in her mind.

  ‘I think of the life we might have together when war ends.’

  ‘I need to be with you, Patricia. I need to know if you feel the same.’

  Odd how Marek uses my full name to express love, but Bob only ever uses it as an admonishment.

  ‘Do you think of me at all?’

  ‘I must know.’

  ‘I must hear in your own words that you no longer have the feelings for me that I have for you.’

  ‘I must . . . I must . . .’

  His need to know her state of mind was overpowering and intoxicating. In many ways, Marek’s questions were reflections of her own unanswered questions to him that she would utter in Bob’s absence under her breath – her way of ‘conversing’ with Marek, asking him questions and then responding with answers he might conceivably offer. Sometimes, she forgot Joyce was in the room with her, and the older woman would overhear this almost inaudible catechism and ask, ‘What was that, my dear?’

  There was now no longer any need to imagine Marek’s responses to her questions. His letter had answered everything, and any new ones she could put to him in writing.

  As Pat stepped onto the front path of Joyce’s house, she was met by the rattle of Bob’s typing emanating from the sitting-room window. She could see Bob’s thin, dark silhouette swaying from side to side at his typewriter, as he did when the work was flowing. The sound of the keys slamming repetitiously onto the typewriter carriage usually made her instantly anxious. Today she gave it little heed. Or Bob, for that matter. Marek’s letter had reduced her fear of her husband, just as Marek’s presence in the village had once reduced it. Knowing he was back in her life made her life – and Bob – more bearable, and she breathed more easily.

  Squinting to focus in the low evening light, Pat could just about make out the shape of Joyce in the armchair, watching Bob’s hands on the keys, as if he were a piano virtuoso giving her a private performance.

  Pat entered the house and closed the front door behind her. The typing stopped. As she hung up her coat and hat the door to the front room opened behind her.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Bob accusingly, closing the door behind him. ‘I’m hungry.’

  Pat turned to look at her husband, and couldn’t help superimposing an image of Marek from her mind’s eye over Bob’s frame. She smiled amiably.

  ‘So sorry, Bob. The shift after mine got irrevocably waylaid.’

  ‘This keeps happening. Don’t you ever say anything?’

  ‘It wasn’t wanton tardiness, Bob, I can assure you. She’s usually extremely punctual.’

  ‘You’re too trusting. That’s why people take advantage of you.’

  ‘Why would she lie?’

  ‘To spend less time at the exchange and more time doing whatever she’d rather be doing.’

  ‘That isn’t how operators behave. We are an extremely diligent group.’

  Bob shook his head in mock pity.

  ‘Honest to God, they must see you coming.’

  Between the exchange and Joyce’s house, Pat had transferred Marek’s letter from her coat to her dress pocket. She held it now in her hand, as Bob looked at her, out of view.

  If you only knew what I have in my hand . . .

  ‘I need something to eat,’ Bob said. ‘I’m in the flow. I need to keep my energy up.’

  Pat was the only person who understood the mechanics that underpinned Bob’s work. The constant need of fuel in varying forms: food, coffee, chocolate, tea, silence, solitude, appreciation.

  ‘Didn’t Joyce make you something?’

  ‘She fell asleep in the armchair. Besides, she cooks like a woman who’s hired cooks all her life.’

  Pat smiled slightly.

  ‘Careful, Bob. You almost complimented me.’

  Bob turned up the corner of his mouth in a half-smile.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. Her food’s dreadful. Yours is passable by comparison.’

  Pat shook her head wearily. On another day she might have said something back to defend herself. But today she found his performance contrived and ineffectual.

  ‘I’m a very good cook, Bob,’ she said patiently, not rising to his bait. ‘We both know it, so why pretend otherwise?’

  He looked at her in silence for a moment, sensing a difference in his wife. He couldn’t put his finger on it but there was something. A form of defiance in the way she was now talking to him, more like a slightly exasperated mother, and less like a dutiful wife.

  ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  A flash of fear shot through her.

  What has he seen? Rein it back, Pat. Don’t be an idiot.

  ‘Giving me cheek.’

  Pat felt a sudden charge of dread ripple outwards from her stomach.

  You’re barely a minute indoors and you’re already giving the game away. Just be the Pat he expects. Nothing more.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ she said meekly. ‘I didn’t mean to answer back.’

  ‘‘‘I’m sorry, Bob, I didn’t mean to answer back,”’ he said, mimicking her voice. ‘Christ, you’re pathetic sometimes.’

  Yes, yes. The bully’s oldest, most villainous trick of blaming the victim for bringing it on herself.

  ‘Sorry, Bob,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Like a blob of jelly wobbling this way and that, however the wind blows. Where’s your bloody backbone?’

  You tore it out when I first tried standing up to you, remember? You wouldn’t have that, so you snapped it.

  ‘No wonder the Czech bastard took you for a ride. Easy pickings.’

  Bob had taken to calling Captain Marek Novotny ‘the Czech bastard’ with a triumphant sneer. Yesterday, the possibility that there might have been a fragment of truth in Bob’s snide remark about Marek might have weighed on Pat’s mind. But not to
day. Not a syllable of Marek’s letter suggested anything but the devotion he had shown Pat during their time together.

  ‘I’ll make your supper,’ Pat said flatly, refusing again to rise to Bob’s bait.

  ‘You do that.’

  Pat turned and walked away from Bob, along the narrow hallway towards the kitchen, slipping her hand back into her pocket. She knew Bob would be watching her, but she didn’t care. The letter she’d been waiting weeks to receive had finally come, and now was nestled in her pocket between her fingers.

  I’ll write this up in a new Mass Obs report in the morning. They want to know what we’re going through. I’ll tell them. The bad and the good.

  The farther from Bob she walked the more she risked smiling to herself. She knew he was still watching her from the end of the hall but her back was to him, so he couldn’t see her expression. After a moment, she heard the door to the front room close as Bob returned to work. Pat stopped and looked back up the hall.

  ‘Marek still loves me,’ she said under her breath. ‘Say what you like, Bob. But “the Czech bastard” still loves me . . .’

  She then turned into the kitchen to prepare Bob’s supper.

  Chapter 50

  Over the course of their career, a teacher will teach many hundreds of children. A succession of faces that will inevitably turn into an indistinct blur over time. Yet each child will be taught by just a few teachers, and each will leave a deep and lasting impression on their pupils for the length of their lives.

  When Teresa Lucas (née Fenchurch) walked into a classroom her pupils immediately stopped talking, sat upright, and waited with breath bated. For boys and girls alike, Mrs Lucas was their teacher, their leader, taking them to the foothills of Knowledge, and beyond. They looked up to and idolised her. Teresa rewarded their loyalty with kindness, fairness and patience. She was never cross without reason, and was never, ever unjust. Her overriding philosophy in the classroom was to lead by example.

  Though she never played up to it or took it for granted, Teresa implicitly understood her importance in the lives of her pupils. Which is why she set aside time every year to write each child in her class a personal message in a Christmas card, congratulating her or him for their achievements, and gently encouraging him or her to achieve more the following year. For those who were not academically able, Teresa would find a personal attribute or quality to highlight and praise – a talent for friendship, perhaps, generosity towards other children, good humour, or some kind of sporting prowess. No child went unheralded.

  With over thirty cards to write, Teresa usually began to put pen to paper in mid-November to ensure she would be finished in time for the end of the Christmas term. Before she could write each card she had to make each card, and it was this she was starting to do one evening at the kitchen table, when she heard a polite knock on the front door.

  Teresa wasn’t expecting anyone to call. She glanced at her watch. It was five past eight, surely beyond the time for a spontaneous social call. Since Annie had kissed her unexpectedly in the kitchen, Teresa had tried – with variable degrees of success – to put the ATA pilot out of her mind. It was in neither of their interests to continue to play the game they had been playing since their first meeting. Flirting was enjoyable when harmless. When it threatened to jeopardise Teresa’s marriage it had to stop. She had said as much to Annie as she walked her to Nick’s car when the lunch party came to an end.

  ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you in any way,’ Annie had said. ‘I thought you felt similarly.’

  ‘Marriage to Nick isn’t a game, Annie. I thought I made that clear some time ago.’

  ‘But one’s true feelings are one’s true feelings. They must be expressed.’

  ‘Or superseded by other feelings.’

  ‘One’s true nature, Teresa—’

  ‘Yours is to embrace risk. Mine is to avoid it. You have a fearlessness that I admire greatly, Annie. It’s apparent in your flying, and in the way you live your life. I don’t have that. I wish I did, but I don’t.’

  ‘And would you say your caution has worked out for you? Driving you into married life.’

  ‘Married life offers more than just sexual fulfilment, Annie. It also offers companionship, the possibility of a family—’

  ‘But couldn’t you have both? Wouldn’t it be better with both?’

  ‘Attraction is all very well—’

  ‘You say it as if that’s all there is between us, but it isn’t. We have a shared history of growing up differently to other girls. We share the same sense of humour. Intelligence. The same independent spirit. The same dream to one day find someone— ’

  ‘I don’t have that dream anymore, Annie. I’ve found someone.’

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Of course Nick.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’

  ‘Perhaps not—’

  ‘You and I have more in common than you will ever have with Nick – even if you live to be one hundred together. Think about that, Mrs Lucas—’

  Their conversation had been brought to a close at that point, as Nick ran out of the house to take Annie back to Tabley Wood. It was the last time they had spoken.

  Teresa couldn’t think why Annie would be knocking at this hour, but she couldn’t preclude the possibility. Nor could she ignore the upswell of excitement she felt at the prospect.

  The knock on the front door was repeated. Teresa stood up, put the scissors on the small stack of card waiting to be cut out, and walked out of the kitchen. As she crossed the hall she hesitated as a word flashed into her mind: refugees.

  The talk about the refugees had left most inhabitants of Great Paxford on edge. Not because the refugees had done anything except venture into their community; but the fact they were strangers who came at night seemed enough to generate a degree of anxiety in most people. As much as she considered herself above such a knee-jerk response to outsiders in their midst, Teresa was unable to deny that their presence made her slightly more, not less, anxious; if only for the conflict they threatened to spawn. Her irrationality angered her, especially as a fellow Liverpudlian, and member of the WI Trekker Accommodation Subcommittee, but there was little she could do about it. There was also a rational side to the general fear of strangers at this time. Though the immediate threat of a German invasion had dissipated over the summer, the fear of spies being parachuted onto British soil in the dead of night was stoked by the government and the newspapers in a bid to keep the population vigilant. Where better for German spies to hide and gather information than among crowds of refugees roaming the English countryside?

  ‘Who is it?’ Teresa called out.

  ‘Teresa, it’s Sarah Collingborne and Joyce Cameron,’ came the reply.

  Teresa sighed with relief and opened the front door. Sarah and Joyce’s faces were illuminated by the light from inside, and they each looked at Teresa warmly, like two saleswomen who wanted to convey sincerity and a certain amount of seriousness of purpose.

  ‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ Teresa said, smiling. She meant it. Married life had removed the constant companionship Teresa had grown used to living with Alison, and with Nick staying late at Tabley Wood most nights, she spent many evenings by herself.

  Joyce exchanged a glance with Sarah and looked back at Teresa.

  ‘May we come in, dear?’

  Teresa was suddenly overwhelmed with dread that something must have happened to Nick. Such was its instant grip, she was unable to reason that if that was the case then it wouldn’t be Sarah and Joyce dispatched to break the news, but a senior officer from Tabley Wood.

  ‘Is something the matter, ladies?’ she asked.

  Sarah and Joyce looked at Teresa for a moment, neither wanting to begin the conversation that would end in what they suspected would be a crushing disappointment for their very good friend.

  In that pause Teresa’s intuition supplied one answer, followed swiftly by another, and finally the reason for the
visit. For though Teresa had seen Joyce and Sarah many times at the WI and elsewhere, in the company of many other women, she remembered that there had been only one other occasion when she had seen them side by side like this: when she had come to Great Paxford to be interviewed for the position at the village school. As school governors, Sarah and Joyce had interviewed Teresa for the job, alongside the male teacher she was replacing, who was leaving to join the army. Teresa suddenly felt sick, as if the ground had shifted beneath her feet, leaving her disoriented and nauseous.

  I’m about to lose my job and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

  ‘May we come in?’ repeated Joyce.

  Teresa took a deep breath, smiled and opened the door wide for Sarah and Joyce.

  Neither was able to look Teresa in the eye as they passed, thereby confirming her deduction about the visit.

  ‘Of course. Come in. Go through to the front room.’

  She closed the front door, followed them in and offered them tea, which each declined, and something to eat, which they also declined.

  As she sat before them, Teresa was again reminded of the original interview for the position at the school. Only now it was Sarah and Joyce who were nervous, and Teresa who seemed calm and composed.

  ‘I’ve lost my job, haven’t I?’ she said, with a matter-of-factness that took both Sarah and Joyce by surprise. They each looked at her and saw Teresa smile bravely.

  It’s not their fault. There’s no need to make this worse for them than I can see it already is. The education authority will have forced this upon them.

  ‘The local education authority has now instructed all schools to enforce the marriage bar.’

  ‘They have a teacher to take my place?’

  Joyce nodded.

  ‘A man, or a single woman?’

  ‘A single woman,’ said Sarah solemnly, the sadness all too apparent in her voice.

  ‘Had you remained single yourself—’ Joyce began.

  ‘Yes,’ said Teresa. ‘But I was told our LEA had relaxed the bar – or at the very least, was not zealous in enforcing it.’