by A. L. Barker
She said, ‘What do you make of it?’
‘Great stuff, better than The Boys’ Own Paper.’
‘Stuff? This is real, this is how it was, death and wanton destruction!’ He nodded. She said bitterly, ‘It must be an occasion for applause when the destroyers turn on the instruments of destruction as in this daylight raid on an airfield: It was entre-nous, so to speak and we were looking forward to a bit of our own back. Our orders were to attack from an ultra-low level. Navigation was easy. After crossing the Channel we followed the railway line inland. As we roared over, passengers on the station platforms dispersed like tealeaves under a jet of water. Shooting up people in the streets is something some of my co-pilots indulge in. I prefer to reserve my bullets for dogfights. With the quarry in my gun-sight and my thumb on the gunbutton a Spitfire is my intended, I go after it like a lover.
‘There was no interception that morning. Halifaxes and Blenheims rested peacefully on the grass, someone’s weekend toy, a little biplane painted in rainbow colours, nestling alongside. I thought they should have put that out of sight. I also spotted a pair of longjohns staked out to dry. Then our bombers emerged from cloud cover and the raid was on. Bombs bounded down the runway, hangars collapsed in a sea of flame which went leaping up to the sky. The ground swarmed with running men. We picked off their machines one by one. A few struggled up, finding spaces between the bombs. I shot down two before they were airborne and sent another in a picture-book spiral into a herd of cows.
‘Have you kept your word?’ she said, snapping the book shut.
‘What word?’
‘You promised not to climb the oak tree.’
‘I promised and I haven’t,’ he said sulkily.
‘That’s somewhat equivocal. Could you please be more precise?’
‘I wouldn’t climb your rotten old tree if it was the last rotten old tree in the world!’
She sighed. ‘These aren’t bedtime stories I’m reading.’
Ernie couldn’t see the connection – if there was any, it was an insult. He said, ‘I’m going home tomorrow,’ as if it was his own decision. In fact, the letter from his parents had come as an unwelcome surprise. Not only did he not want to go home at this juncture, the idea dismayed him. He would have to go sometime, but the time was not yet. He wasn’t finished here.
Miss Pendennis was surprised too. The grey went out of her face: she turned sort of off-white. ‘So soon?’
As Ernie saw it, there were several possible answers to that: like ‘all good things come to an end’, or ‘there’s nothing to keep me here’. He decided it was more important to seem not to care less. ‘My parents will be picking me up around noon.’ He brushed grass seeds off his trousers. ‘Pity about the reading.’
‘There’s one more passage I’d like you to hear.’
This time she did not watch him as she read, kept her head lowered over the page. ‘Based on the Pas de Calais, our orders were to make several sorties a day, to and fro across the Straits of Dover. I took my briefing from the flaxen Gretchen of a boy with dimpled wrists, the blithe spirit of HQ and something of a little god: “Assemble at altitude 18,000, prepare to climb to 30,000 over the English coast.” I said, “That’s the lower limit of the stratosphere.” He laughed in my face. “You’ll need it, they’re waiting for you.” I could have killed him, not from anger, from the longing to feel my hands on his pretty neck.’
‘Damn cold up there, nought centigrade,’ Ernie said. ‘We did the stratosphere at school in General Science.’
‘I presume you asked to go home?’
Miffed, he said, ‘Of course I didn’t,’ and realised, too late, that it was an admission of parental control. ‘I’m not bothered one way or the other.’
If she believed him, she didn’t show it. ‘I don’t expect I’ll see you again.’
‘Reckon I’ll be busy packing tomorrow morning.’
‘Goodbye, Ernie.’ She held out her hand.
He gave her the key of the garden door. ‘You can lock up behind me. But watch out someone else doesn’t climb in through the tree.’
He was halfway across the garden when she said, ‘That’s where he died.’ Ernie turned to find her close behind him. ‘Koenig,’ she said, ‘in that tree.’
‘What?’
‘He was shot down, his parachute caught in the branches. He hung there three days and nights, he couldn’t free himself, both his arms were broken. I think he must have had internal injuries as well, he bled so much. He cried, every time I went to him he cried, pleading, like a child to its mother.’
Ernie couldn’t speak. He told himself, You don’t speak when you’re dreaming, when you have a nightmare your tongue’s tied.
She said, ‘I didn’t tell anybody he was there. The beach was mined and the creek fenced off with barbed wire, so no one came this way. I left him to die. After the atrocities he and his kind committed should I have had pity? I hardened my heart, my heart was like a stone. And then we bombed Dresden, thousands of women and children were slaughtered and that beautiful city was razed to the ground. I thought enough is enough, one more is too much, and I went out to him. It was too late, he had strangled in the cords of his parachute.’
The sun beating down made Ernie feel sick. He couldn’t make it to the shade of the oak tree.
She said, ‘After he was gone, I picked up the diary which had fallen from his pocket. When at last they found him I pretended I hadn’t known he was there. They accepted that. But I don’t want you in that tree ever again.’ With her finger she lifted a bead of sweat from his cheek. ‘The evil those men did lives on in all of us. Even in you, blameless child.’
When she died she left the house in trust to Ernie. He did not change the name; he rather fancied ‘Bayview’, but ‘Bellechasse’ was classier for a hotel.
*
Elissa said she’d asked her neighbours to tea.
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
Owen shrugged. He had mixed reactions: for a man in his position the mixture was unethical. When Elissa said, ‘I’d like to know her better,’ he was tempted to ask why again. She said, ‘Shall I make a chocolate fudge cake for the boy?’
Seeing her and Angela Hartop in close proximity with each other was disorientating. Angela had dressed for an occasion, though, as Elissa remarked later, it was scarcely a teatime one. She wore a black dress with chunky gold jewellery at neck and wrists. Her hair, pulled up through a bandeau, spilled over in fiery ringlets. Elissa, as familiar to him as his own self, lost her place in his world. It was temporary, but for an unappreciable time he seemed not to have a world at all. It took several cups of tea to restore it.
‘Where’s James?’ said Elissa.
‘Watching television.’
‘I made a cake for him.’
‘I never could cook. Greville used to say my custard was a killer.’
‘Shall I cut you a piece? Then you might like to take the rest of it back to James.’
‘How kind you are.’ She ate her cake with enjoyment, accepted another slice and pinched up the crumbs. ‘Isn’t it really weird – this will turn into me but the rest will turn into James.’
‘Does he mind being left?’ was the nearest Elissa could get to a reprimand.
‘He doesn’t take after his father.’ Angela seemed to think that was answer enough. ‘I loved my husband.’ Owen thought he detected a note of challenge. ‘We were so happy, the three of us. Greville was always bringing presents for James and me, it was his delight to surprise us. James has a cupboard full of toys his father bought him. I can’t bear to see him playing with them, I’ve locked them away. Greville brought me jewellery. I remember how he loved to deck me in it. I can’t wear any of it now. I buried it.’
‘But you dug it up again?’ said Elissa.
‘This is costume stuff.’ Angela fingered her necklace. ‘Greville gave me real gold and diamonds.’
Owen said ‘Ah’, which was safe, even with feeling. The f
eeling was real, but what was it a feeling of?
‘Him dying was so sudden. I thought he was asleep. He looked lovely, so peaceful, I didn’t like to disturb him. I covered him with a rug and went to bed. In the morning he was stone cold.’
Owen thought, Is this right? Should she share the saddest moments of her life with virtual strangers?
Elissa said afterwards it wasn’t what she’d heard. ‘By all accounts it was a far from happy marriage. They fought like cat and dog, went at it something dreadful.’
‘Judging by the terminology,’ Owen said, ‘the accounts are Mrs Latimer’s.’
Elissa gathered up the tea things. ‘She forgot to take James’s cake.’
*
Owen had formed a habit of walking to the village shop after breakfast to buy a newspaper. Along the lane he came upon James sitting cross-legged in the road.
‘What’s this? What are you doing?’
‘Sitting.’
‘I can see that. Why?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Don’t you know it’s risky sitting in the middle of the road?’
‘I have to go to the police station.’
‘For Pete’s sake!’
‘Who’s Pete?’
‘Why are you going to the police station?’
‘The policeman thinks you drowned me.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘She said I said so. She was angry.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Did I? I didn’t mean to. I have to stop him coming to arrest you.’
Owen laughed. ‘Nobody’s going to arrest me. We’re in the clear, you and I.’
‘Is Pete your son?’
Owen took one look at his darkening face and lifted him to his feet. ‘Tell you what, let’s go to the shop and buy sweets for you and a newspaper for me.’
‘Is he?’ Tight-lipped, James pulled at Owen’s hand.
Owen ruffled his hair. ‘I have no son, old son.’
James’s face cleared. He touched his cheek on Owen’s hand and ran ahead along the lane.
The woman in the village store – a collateral, surely, of Mrs Latimer – spoke in breathy whispers while James was choosing his sweets. She obviously believed he could not hear her. ‘Him and his father were real pals. They used to come and buy chocolate and Coke, sherbet and liquorice allsorts, he didn’t need to look twice at anything he fancied. But once the father was gone, the poor lamb was never let near. She said he was losing his teeth through too much sweet stuff. I told her, they’re milk teeth, he’s going to lose them anyway. This is the first I’ve seen him since Mr Hartop went. He loved to come here, laughing and larking with the boy. I said to my husband I’ve seen that man lose himself in the one bit of happiness he’s likely to have—’
‘What are milk teeth?’ James had come to the counter.
‘My, my!’ Halted in full flood, the woman leaned over to look at him. ‘Little pitchers have big ears. I was talking to this gentleman about things you couldn’t understand.’
‘I understand everything!’
‘My, my.’ She winked at Owen. ‘Little Master Knowall! We should put him on the telly—’
‘Why don’t you bloody shut up!’ Glaring, James tore open a packet and shook out the contents. Red, green and yellow sweets bounced and rolled across the floor. He trod on them as he made for the door. The shopkeeper cried out. Owen said, ‘Oh lord! I’m sorry – I’ll come back and settle with you,’ and ran after James.
He caught up with him in the lane, spoke with more mildness than he felt. ‘That wasn’t nice. Where did you learn such language –’ James responded with a look between pride and cunning – ‘it’s not clever, it’s not smart.’ Owen lengthened his stride, put distance between the boy and himself. He heard hurrying feet: James was at his heels, whimpering and clinging to the hem of his jacket. Owen rounded on him. ‘I don’t care where you heard it or who from, it’s bad language, and coming from someone your age it’s disgusting.’
‘Are you angry? Please don’t be angry with me—’
‘Promise you’ll never use such words again.’ A tall order to be carried into manhood.
James cried, ‘I promise – cross my heart and hope to die!’
Owen told Angela, ‘I found him sitting in the middle of the road.’
She was opening a box of cornflakes and did not look up. ‘He was probably waiting for you.’
‘I think you should know.’
‘Of course.’
‘He’s out there now, swinging on the gate.’ Owen said sharply, ‘I’m fond of him and he seems to like being with me, but he can’t always be.’
‘I didn’t know he’d gone out. It shan’t happen again.’
‘Can you guarantee it? I’d hate to feel in any way to blame if something happened.’
She looked up. ‘Will you come back later – this evening, after he’s in bed? I must talk to you.’
She was holding the box of cornflakes in her arms – ‘A great British Breakfast, fortified with 9 added vitamins’.
Owen resisted the urge to touch her hair.
*
‘Talk? What about?’ said Elissa.
‘James, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Do you want to get involved?’
‘I think she’s having trouble with him.’
‘Nothing, surely, that can’t be sorted out at school.’
‘I asked why he doesn’t go to school.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She didn’t.’ An equivocation, Owen knew: he had asked the boy, not his mother.
‘Mrs Latimer says they wouldn’t accept him for play-school because he vandalised the toy cupboard.’
‘It figures.’ Owen grinned. ‘He’s knocked the stuffing out of his woolly rabbit.’
‘He would, wouldn’t he – she’s kept him from the toys his father bought him. The trouble,’ Elissa said crisply, ‘will be of her making.’
She had taken against Angela Hartop, thanks to the invidious Mrs Latimer. ‘A woman either loves or hates, there is no middle course’. Horace probably said that.
*
Angela was at the window, watching. Owen didn’t altogether relish being watched for.
‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come.’
It seemed that the answer to Elissa’s question was that he was already involved. ‘Is James in bed?’
‘Yes, but he’s being tiresome and won’t settle. Let’s go where he can’t hear us.’
Owen followed her into a small room stocked rather than furnished with an over-large suite, a break-front cabinet and a pottery Alsatian. There was a disused air, like that of the front parlours of his youth.
‘Do sit down. It’s called “The Tree of Heaven”.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The design.’ She patted the settee beside her.
‘What did you want to talk about?’
‘I want you to know the truth.’
‘About James?’
‘It’s more than that’ – she was impatient – ‘much more—’
He held out his hand: she took it, came to her knees at his side. This time he did not resist: he touched her hair, threaded it through his fingers, as soft and silken as he had known it would be. But when she turned his hand and kissed his palm, he stood up, pulling her to her feet. Confused by his own feelings, he was unprepared for hers. She put her arms round his waist and folded against him. He didn’t believe it was happening, but didn’t Horace say ‘the story is about you’?
It was the child who reminded him that he was about to commit adultery: James, in his pyjamas, holding the rabbit-thing by its remaining ear. ‘He can’t sleep.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he can’t shut his eyes!’
‘Poor fellow,’ said Owen.
‘Come and read to me.’
Angela said, ‘Back to bed with you at once!’
Owen glimpsed James’s expression of open malice, fleeting and not un
natural in a child reproved.
‘Tell you what, we’ll read till you drop off. I know what it’s like when you can’t sleep.’ He whispered to Angela, ‘I’ll be back.’
When James was in bed, there was the question of what to read.
Owen suggested Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast. James pushed the rabbit-thing under the bedclothes. ‘We don’t like baby stuff.’
‘What do you like?’
James hooted.
*
Owen told Angela, ‘I suppose it was fuddy-duddy suggesting the old fairy-tales, but I think modern kids miss something.’
‘Did he go to sleep?’
‘Sound. You know – I ought to be going. Elissa frets.’
‘Please – stay – hear me out. I haven’t been able to tell anyone, but I want you to know. I lied about Greville. He isn’t dead.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t take any more …’ She was breathless, wanting him to know.
Owen said, ‘Start at the beginning. Why did you lie?’
‘Because – it’s not an easy story to tell. Greville’s older than me, a lot older. Marrying late in life – we were happy at first, he enjoyed spoiling me, he said it would always be just the two of us, we didn’t need anyone else. He didn’t want a child, but when James was born he didn’t want anything else. He was bewitched by the baby, idolised it, fussed and panicked, fought me over every detail of its care. I felt like an enemy – of my own child.’
‘Very distressing.’
‘It was ludicrous. As James grew older, Greville tried to grow younger. He tries to play with James – boisterous games – he puts on an old fur coat and pretends to be a bear, chases James all over the house. James doesn’t like it.’