Gifts of War

by Mackenzie Ford

  But Rollo took Bryan and me aside at one point and asked us what we thought we were doing.

  “What kind of question is that?” said Bryan. He had grown up on a farm in Shropshire and there was still some loam in his voice. “If they get through the tests, they don’t get thrown out, they have a career, help the war effort.”

  But Rollo was shaking his head. “Wrong, wrong. What do you think is going to happen the minute you two Girl Guides aren’t there to hold their hands? I’ll tell you what will happen—they’ll drop behind all over again. What you are doing is a complete waste of time. In fact, you are actually hampering the war effort by ensuring that incompetents get promoted. These people are stones and you two are trying to get blood out of them.”

  “Nonsense,” I replied, a touch too forcefully. “You’ve been to Germany, Rollo; so has Bryan and so have I. We’re used to talking German fast, and we have learned to think as fast. The others will catch up—they are not stupid, just inexperienced. Most of them, anyway.”

  “And one of them’s quite pretty,” chimed in Bryan.

  Rollo grinned and nodded. “I’ll grant you that. But I still think you’re wasting your time, and hampering the war effort.”

  “Let’s see what happens at the exam,” I said. “It’s not long to wait.”

  “That’s not my point,” insisted Rollo. “Yes, some of them might pass—great for you if they do. But once we go our separate ways they’ll fall by the wayside all over again. And we’ll be worse off. The war effort, I mean.”

  We agreed to differ and Bryan and I went on coaching as we had been doing before Rollo’s broadside. And, not to make too much of it, we had the satisfaction of seeing all but one pass. Moreover, the father of one of the group—the pretty one, at that—turned out to be a wholesale grocer, and she brought Bryan and me some jam as a thank-you for our troubles, plus a kiss on the cheek.

  I don’t know which Rollo was more envious of, the jam or the kiss.

  No thanks to him, all but one of the class moved up a level.

  I have left out one important point. After our return from our picnic by the Irwell River, when we had seen the kingfisher, Sam had allowed me to kiss her again, as we parted. On the cheek. A small thing, yes, but important for me. The trouble with falling for someone when they haven’t fallen for you (as yet, anyway) is that you read their behavior like an archaeologist reads the remains of a site that hasn’t been inhabited for hundreds or thousands of years, trying to construct a scenario based on very thin and often ambiguous evidence.

  I didn’t exactly have a scheme as to how to push our relationship forward—I was not, after all, very experienced. But I did think that our next outing should be without Will. There could be no advance in our intimacy with him there, much as I was coming to like him.

  That, however, was easier said than done.

  Then I had a brain wave. With archaeology on my mind, I suddenly remembered that a few miles away from Middle Hill was the famous Roman road the Fosse Way, amazingly straight—in the Roman manner—for miles on end. Not too far down the Fosse Way was Quinton Villa, a sizable Roman villa that, I knew, had been well excavated. What was interesting—or, more accurately, useful—for my purposes was that the villa was too far away to be reached on foot and the railway went nowhere near it. It could be reached only by bicycle.

  I checked that I could borrow two bikes from the Lamb before broaching the idea of the trip to Sam and she leapt at it. “I can tell all the children about it at school afterward. Hal, what a good idea. Thank you.”

  So, with my idea having a better reception than I’d dared hope, we set off the following Saturday, which turned out fine, weatherwise. We both kissed Will and left him with Katharine. I had been told there was a pub in Quinton village itself, so with luck we could get something to eat and didn’t need to load ourselves down with a picnic.

  We rode out along the Loxley Road in the first place, then turned off to Ettingley and Whitfield. There were a few hills and we rested after about an hour at Blackwell quarry. I remember that a wind had got up, which didn’t help, but there could have been a gale blowing for all I registered it that morning. I had fallen for Sam in the back streets of Stratford but, on our bicycle ride that day, I experienced something on top and equally disturbing: sexual longing. Seeing Sam straining at the pedals as we climbed the hill at Oakham, seeing the wind blow her skirt well above her ankles, almost up to her knees, registering the way her shirt clung to the outline of her breasts, the tightness of her skirt stretched over her hips, the elegant way her long fingers curled around the handlebars, I felt a stirring of unprecedented intensity. Riding behind her, downwind, I caught tantalizing snatches of her perfume. On her bicycle she was as sexual from behind as from the front. I wanted her.

  When we reached Quinton Villa it was immediately clear that she knew more about ancient Britain, and ancient Rome, than I did. She pointed out all the salient features—it was a peristylar villa, apparently on two floors, with a colonnade around a courtyard, kitchens and stables, under-floor heating, and a dead canal that had once linked it to the nearby river Stour. After we had explored every facet of the villa itself, she led the way up Bush Hill, at the top of which we sat and looked down at Quinton.

  “That’s the Fosse Way over there.” She pointed.

  We could see cars and a van speeding along, doing fifteen miles an hour at least.

  “Let’s go back that way,” I suggested, “for a short while anyway. You and I seem to specialize in straight things—rivers, roads, canals.”

  She smiled. “Good idea. Okay, time for me to play schoolteacher. How long is the Fosse Way and where does it go to and from?”

  “This is a day out.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “If you want me to buy you lunch, go carefully.”

  She grinned. “Didn’t you do any research about Quinton?”

  “I thought you had pupils to do that. Perk of the job.”

  “Beast.” And she gave me a playful punch.

  “No, I don’t know where it goes from and to.”

  “One hundred and eighty-two miles, from Ilchester in Somerset to Lincoln.”

  “Show off. I know what Fosse means, though.”

  She nodded. “Your ignorance is redeemed. But do you know why Quinton is interesting?”

  “I didn’t know it was particularly interesting, just that it has been well excavated and it’s near Middle Hill.”

  “It’s because it’s interesting that it has been well excavated.” She lay back in the grass, her shirt stretched tight again over her breasts.

  I could have made love to her right there and then.

  “At one point the Fosse Way was the western border of Roman Britain. That’s probably how Fosse, meaning ‘ditch,’ got its name. It started as a ditch that was turned into a road.”

  “And Quinton is to the west of the Fosse—”

  “Correct. So it was probably part of the advance defense system. There’s probably a lot more to discover here.”

  I lay down next to her. Her perfume still wafted over me at intervals. To think that Izzy had once questioned whether I still got aroused.

  We remained on Bush Hill for half an hour. From there you could see the Stour River—a dark strip between the meadows—yet another quarry, and Holberrow Orchard, with its regimented lines of fruit trees undulating down to Bevington Marsh.

  I could have leaned over and kissed Sam at any time on that hillside, but I didn’t. That day by the villa I felt uncertain. I was inexperienced—inexperienced at being in love—and two kisses on the cheek, interspersed by a proper kiss, had me flummoxed as to what to do next.

  Sam lay on the grass, looking up at the sky, tugging at clumps. Her blouse was open at the neck and it fitted her tightly. She was as three-dimensional as ever. She must have noticed my eyes raking over her body, registering its increasingly familiar contours. I saw her swallow heavily once or twice.

  Just after one
o’clock I stood up and held out my hand, to help her to her feet. That was our only bodily contact.

  We walked back to our bicycles and rode on into Quinton proper. I had been told there was a pub in the village and there was, the Royal Oak. There was very little in the way of food—cheese, cheese, or cheese, in fact—but there were benches outside in the warm air.

  After I had brought the drinks and the cheese and bread, we sat for a moment enjoying the almost accidental beauty of Quinton village. I say “accidental” because, like many English villages, it did not appear to have been designed but had just grown haphazardly, and in doing so it had acquired its character and beauty.

  I stepped across to my bicycle and took from the basket on the handlebars a package. I handed it to Sam.

  “I wondered what you had,” she said. “Is this a gift?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  She looked at me, puzzled, and began opening the wrapping paper.

  “It’s a book. But it’s a library book, a book I found in the Stratford library, that I thought you would like to read but… well, I have to return it in two weeks. So you can’t keep it. Sorry about that.”

  She had the paper unwrapped and was turning the book over so that she could read the title.

  “Kosmos… ?”

  “It’s actually only part of a book. It’s by a German explorer—but it’s an English translation,” I hurried to add. “He wasn’t the first person to discover the Orinoco but he did travel along it farther than anyone else, and there’s a whole chapter on his observations. I thought… in view of what you said last time… I thought you might like to read—”

  “But yes! I know about this. Wilhelm mentioned it. Yes—Alexander von Humboldt, the great German explorer. Oh, Hal. You are so kind, so thoughtful. What a wonderful thing to have done. Don’t worry, I’ll read it in no time.” She leaned across the table and kissed my cheek.

  On the way back, the wind was behind us, which made riding considerably easier. There was little other traffic and we could pedal side by side and talk. I asked Sam what I’d meant to ask her the week before, how she fitted in with her sisters.

  “Well, I’m not sure I do really. Because I’ve been to college and they haven’t, they call me names, like ‘Egghead’ and ‘Professor.’ And ‘Head Girl,’ that’s what Lottie likes. But I’m not a head girl, am I?” She turned her face to me. “I’m nowhere near as bossy as Ruth.”

  “Are they jealous?”

  This clearly flummoxed her. “I’ve never thought of that. Why would they be jealous?”

  “Because you’ve been to college.”

  “But only teacher training college, not a real university.”

  “Even so, you’ve had an education. But they only tease you, yes? Nothing more serious?”

  “Oh no. We’re quite close.”

  “Have they been supportive—over the baby, I mean?”

  She didn’t answer straightaway. We were freewheeling down a hill just then and she pedaled on, ahead of me. I let her go.

  When we got to the bottom of the hill and she let me catch up with her, she was more composed. “Do you mind if I don’t answer that, not just yet anyway. It’s not exactly easy for me, and I haven’t known you very long. Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry for prying.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not prying. It’s a natural question. But easier to ask than to answer. My sisters are … there are good and less good things about sisters, beastly things sometimes.”

  We came to the bridge over the canal, near where Sam’s cottage was. We stopped and dismounted. I took her bicycle from her. I had to return it to the Lamb.

  She came round the bicycles and stood close to me, clutching the library book and offering her cheek to be kissed.

  I kissed it, smelling her smell, reveling in it, aroused all over again.

  “I enjoyed today, Hal. Thank you. I loved it, all of it. Will doesn’t know it yet but he is going to bed very early tonight. Then I can get started on the Orinoco.”

  At the Ag, on the course, the class I was in was gradually beginning to coalesce. We had more or less given up on the canteen, so dreadful was the food, and at lunchtime we walked over to the Crown, for a sandwich and a beer. In this way I got to be on nodding terms with Maude, the waitress Sam had introduced me to. After lunch, a few of us usually took a quick walk by the river and sometimes watched makeshift cricket games in the field next to the water meadow. We were leaning on a five-bar gate one day when one of the women in the course, a brunette in her late thirties and called Blanche, said, “What would a wicket be in German?”

  “Do you mean the stumps or the grass between them?” said Bryan Amery.

  “Either,” said Blanche. “Both.”

  “A stump would presumably be Stumpf,” replied Bryan.

  Rollo shook his head. “Too literal. They use the word Tor.”

  “But,” I said, “doesn’t that mean ‘gate’? Don’t they use it for ‘goal’ in football?”

  Rollo nodded. “Yes, it’s a general-purpose word, but that’s what they say. And the grass between the wickets is Spielbahn.”

  “So what is LBW?” asked Blanche.

  “What?”

  “LBW—you know, leg before wicket.”

  Rollo didn’t reply straightaway, so I said, “Literally, it would be Bein davor Tor… BDT—”

  “But,” interrupted Rollo, “the Germans would probably use the English expression—LBW. Hal’s right about Tor meaning gate and it being used for ‘goal’ in football, but they use the English word a lot too—‘goal,’ I mean. And ‘run,’ in cricket, is run”.’

  “So ‘wicketkeeper’ would be … ?” Blanche wouldn’t give up.

  “Torwächter” said Rollo.

  “Umpire?”

  “Schiedsrichter.”

  “Silly mid on—?”

  “No!” cried Bryan. “Spare us, please.”

  “Shut up, Blanche,” said someone else. “Come on, let’s get back.”

  We walked two abreast along the bank of the river and I found myself next to Rollo. “How come the Germans have all these terms for cricket, when they don’t play the game?”

  “But you’re wrong, Hal. Cricket’s been played in Germany since the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly in Berlin. A German cricket federation was set up a couple of years ago.”

  “I can’t imagine it’s very popular now.”

  “You can say that again.”

  We walked on. Germany never failed to surprise me. Cricket in Berlin! Hadn’t Wilhelm mentioned the game at the Front? I couldn’t recall his exact words.

  We were just coming into Stratford when I felt a tug at my sleeve. I looked round, and there was Blanche. “Hal, can I have a word, please.”

  We stood and let the others walk on.

  “Yes, Blanche, what is it?”

  “I can’t pay you back the pound I owe you. Not this week, anyway.”

  “I thought—”

  “Yes, I know, I said I would. But I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I had lent Blanche money two or three times. She had a sister in the hospital in Worcester and didn’t always have the cash available for the train fare to visit her. She had always paid me back before.

  As gently as I could, I said, “When do you think you can pay me back?”

  She looked at me and I could see there were tears in her eyes. “That’s just it, I don’t know.”

  I gave her my handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, hard.

  I thought for a moment. “What are you doing on Saturday night?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head. “Nothing special, anyway. Why?”

  “I may need a babysitter, for about three hours. If you could… it would pay off what you owe me.”

  She brightened. “Oh, Hal, I’d love to do that. And would it really pay off my debt?”

  I nodded and smiled.

  She stood on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “Thank you.
You’ve made me feel much better. I thought you were going to be angry.” She held up my handkerchief, in a ball in her fist. “I’ll wash this and iron it and you can have it back tomorrow.”

  The fact that Blanche was free to babysit was a godsend for me. The cycling trip to the Roman villa with Sam had been a great success, but I knew that Sam wouldn’t be easy to pry away from Will again, not for a cycling trip anyway. I had noticed, however, that in Stratford, on the following Saturday night, there was to be a performance of King Lear.

  “Don’t be silly,” she had said when I had first raised the subject. “I can’t get away, not with Will needing to be looked after.”

  “I’ve spoken to Maude, your friend at the Crown,” I replied. “There are two rooms free on Saturday, and a woman from my course has agreed to babysit. Come on, we can have a proper night out: theater, dinner, no rush to get home. A proper hotel breakfast the next day. Some people might call that civilized.”

  I could see she was tempted.

  “How long is it since you have been to the theater? King Lear—a tragedy, with daughters. It couldn’t be closer to home.”

  We were walking by the canal in Middle Hill when the subject came up.

  She paused, obviously turning things over in her mind.

  “What would the sleeping arrangements be?”

  I shrugged. “Two rooms. Will and you in one, me in the other. We’d share a bathroom. Think you can risk it?”

  She ignored the last bit. “And who is this babysitter? I can’t leave Will with just anyone.”

  “Blanche Brodie. She’s in her thirties. I lent her some money—not much—so she could visit her sick sister in the hospital and she’s having a problem repaying me. I’m doing her a favor and she’s doing me one in return.”

  We walked on.

  “If this woman, Blanche someone, doesn’t babysit, what happens to her debt?”

  “I don’t know She will still owe me, I suppose.”