Lisa lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Is your husband any better?’
‘We’re going back to the specialist.’ This was Lucy’s most recent standard reply. It was suitably vague and shut most of them up. Except Lisa.
‘I know how worried Peter and Martin are about him. They went through so much together. But they didn’t catch bad nerves, did they?’ She made it sound as if Tim had had a particularly long run of chicken pox.
After the match, most of the home team, with their wives or girlfriends, attended Evensong in the tiny church by the green. It was the cricketers’ tradition, Tim had once explained to Lucy who was not a believer. ‘Bad form not to show.’ Before the war, cricket or no cricket, Tim would not have attended either. ‘Lot of tommy-rot,’ she heard him say, as if from the depths of half-forgotten history.
Peter and Sally Davis, Tim and Lucy Groves, Martin and May Latimer sat in the front pew, the men still in their grubby whites, the women in their creased prints, except Sally of course who had found time to drive home and change her immaculate slacks for a smart skirt.
Peter Davis led the singing with his fine tenor, as Mrs Cronin, head down and lips pursed, played a liberal scattering of bum notes on the organ. Her inadequacies, however, didn’t put Peter off his stride.
For thee, O dear, dear country,
Mine eyes their vigils keep;
For very love, beholding
Thy happy name, they weep.
Tim’s lips moved but no sound came out, and Lucy’s contralto was muted. Sally and May contributed thin sopranos and Martin’s bass was largely inaudible. The rest of the congregation boomed lustily, still grateful for the end of the war, realizing that as the Defenders of the Right it was fitting that they should pay homage to their Maker, at least for a while.
Gazing round the small church, Lucy’s sense of isolation increased. I’m hemmed in, she thought, crushed by complacency and sterling common sense. Esher had been fought for. Esher had been won. Now the Festival of Britain was still celebrating victory, flags and bunting were out over every shop and many householders had run up the Union Jack. There was more jingoism now than on VE Day.
Lucy tried to imagine Esher in Nazi hands, but the idea was impossible, unthinkable; all she could produce were unlikely images of Oberleutnants strutting through Woolworth’s, or taking the salute outside the electricity showroom, or checking the 4th Esher Scout Group for signs of circumcision. Perhaps that’s why we won the war, she thought. We couldn’t even imagine an Occupation.
The mention of thy glory,
Is unction to the breast,
And medicine in sickness,
And love and life and rest.
Love and life and rest? Where was Lucy going to get that? Only somewhere far from Shrub Lane, away from the men. They were a cabal. Even now, she realized, Martin and Peter were standing on either side of them, like guardians. Like conquering heroes.
Of course it would be a story to tell their grandchildren if they ever had any. Cut off after Dunkirk on the Havre peninsula, the three men, instead of remaining behind with the wounded to surrender to the Germans, had started walking through Occupied France. Having failed to find a boat at Honfleur, they tramped from house to house, barn to barn, relying on the good will of local people, sometimes staying for a few days, or even just one broken night. Typical of the English, none of the trio had much grasp of the French language. Yet, by sheer tenacity they had muddled through. Except something had happened out there to destroy Tim and no one had told her what it was. Not even Tim.
With jasper glow thy bulwarks,
Thy streets with emeralds blaze;
The sardius and the topaz
Unite in thee their rays.
Lucy had a degree in French and spoke the language fluently. That’s why she admired Tim’s escape so much. It must have been a terrifying ordeal, stuck in a country with none of its language.
Nevertheless, Tim and Martin and Peter had walked and eventually cycled through Vichy France to Franco’s Spain, where they had managed to board a cargo ship bound for London. It had been an amazing feat and, for a while, all three men were feted in the press. There had been talk of a book, but it had come to nothing. Nor had any military decorations been conferred on them, which Lucy found distinctly odd. But the oddness had been swallowed up by Tim’s breakdown.
When the men had arrived back in England in 1942, after a reconciliation with their wives and a suitable rest, Peter and Martin had rejoined their regiment and were based in Bournemouth in various administrative capacities. Tim, however, went from one shell-shock clinic to another. They seemed to make him worse.
Lucy regularly visited him in army requisitioned country houses with still smooth lawns and fountains. Tables with umbrellas were grouped under spreading chestnut trees and men in wheelchairs and dressing gowns closed drugged minds against brightly discreet relatives. Tim was usually the only man who was ambulant. He slept a lot, often through Lucy’s visits, and she was forcibly reminded of the dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
Having endured him being posted missing for close on three months, having almost given Tim up for dead, Lucy found him ‘missing’ again. There had only been traces of the man she had known so intimately, had loved so deeply. The rest of him was no more than a hollow shell, as if someone had scraped the real Tim out.
The clinics and their psychiatrists had been able to do little for him, and gradually the tag ‘shell shock’ became blanket coverage for everything and anything that was the matter with him. Meanwhile, Tim was refusing to attend the clinics any longer.
Recently, Vera Lynn’s voice had beat hollowly in Lucy’s ears, dozens of times a day.
We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.
Would she ever meet the old Tim again, or had the war taken him away for ever?
When he was discharged from the last clinic, spat out like a gnawed bone, Tim had moped around the house. He was barely capable of taking a decision about paying a bill, posting a letter, turning on the wireless, taking her out in the Riley, even cleaning his teeth. He would look at his toothbrush for a long, long time. Then he would put it away.
Tim sat and worried, getting his concerns out of all possible proportion. Did his demob suit fit? Were they eating too much? Paying exorbitant amounts for food? Had the drains been inspected recently? Was the bathroom damp? Could he smell gas? Was the milkman overcharging? Should they stop the newspaper delivery? Should he sell some shares? He was also obsessed with the post, always tense before its arrival, inevitably going out to meet the postman halfway up the garden path, taking the letters and using the same phrase every day, recited for some obscure reason in a mock Welsh accent. ‘Thank you, Postie.’ The daily repetition got Lucy down. She reckoned it got the postman down too.
When Lucy had got Tim the job at her cousin’s estate agency he was immediately over-anxious. Was he too slow? Did they think him careless? He was sure he had bad breath. People were shrinking away from him. Had he been rude? Too familiar? Were his clothes wrong? What about his shoes?
Of course, Tim, like Peter and Martin, would never talk about the war and what had actually happened to them. He had always claimed he couldn’t say any more for ‘security’ reasons. But of one thing Lucy was sure: something had happened, something so momentous that it had broken him. The doctor had tried to arrange for more psychiatric help, but Tim had refused. ‘No more trick cyclists,’ he pronounced. ‘I’m feeling better every day.’
In fact, he was getting worse, and whatever had happened in France held him in a vice.
Although May was sympathetic in her plodding way, Lucy had never wanted to confide in her again. Sally chose to ignore the problem and Martin rarely mentioned Tim’s ‘condition’. He and Peter just watched over him. Carefully.
‘Don’t disturb Tim for the moment,’ he had said as she ushered him into the lounge. ‘I just wanted a word.’
In the intervening year before they moved into Shrub Lane, the Davises had rented a flat in Teddington and the Latimers had lived with Martin’s parents in Cobham. It’s as if the Men had both been waiting in the wings, waiting for their opportunity. It had been unfortunate, Lucy thought, that so many houses in Shrub Lane had been up for sale at the end of the war. The enemy had easily been able to take up positions.
Yet surely the three men were just friends, bound together by their survival. Lucy had tried to rationalise the problem time and again. It was natural they wanted to be together after all they had suffered, although some might have thought they would have preferred to be apart, to start afresh.
Peter had settled in the big armchair with his back to the window and Tim, intent on his mowing, still hadn’t seen him. Or if he had, thought Lucy, he wasn’t letting on. She enjoyed his occasional evasions, which seemed to have all the artfulness of a naughty schoolboy. Evasion was healthy – in the circumstances.
Peter had gazed at Lucy, his dark eyes holding hers, level, honest, pulling no punches. The kind of chap she should trust. But she didn’t. ‘Tim’s rough, isn’t he?’
‘His nerves,’ Lucy had replied. ‘They don’t get any better. In fact I think he’s worse than ever.’
‘He had a terrible ordeal.’ Peter’s voice had been steady, blunt, condescendingly attempting to share.
‘I appreciate how awful it must have been.’ Lucy had been determined to try and make the most of his visit. ‘But I’ve never known what really happened.’
Peter had shaken his curly head brusquely. ‘He was a fine soldier. But wasn’t he – always the nervous type?’
Lucy had been immediately indignant. Peter had not only ignored her question but had also been quietly patronizing.
She had first met Tim on a trip she and her father had taken to Austria. He had been climbing with a friend while they had been hiking. Towards the end of the holiday, they all spent a day together, striding up a valley on to a path that wound its way to the top of a mountain. She could still recall the startling radiancy of Tim’s youth that had bathed her in a new vitality. She had never been confident, always thought things out too carefully for comfort. Tim made her realize that, as he often said then, ‘Life is for living’. Now he was merely passing the time.
The climb had made Lucy hot and thirsty and rather lightheaded, but the sense of elation she had experienced on reaching the summit had always remained with her. ‘Going the extra mile.’ The cliché hovered on her lips as she gazed back at Peter’s stolid features. That’s what Tim had shown her.
‘He was only the nervous type after the war,’ she had retorted.
Peter had nodded acquiescently, as if humouring her. ‘Obviously I’m very concerned about Tim, but the trick cyclists didn’t do him much good. You’re supplying more than adequate support. The cricket helps, of course. Tim loves his cricket.’ Peter had leant forward, candid now with his confidences. ‘If I can do anything, you’ll give me a shout, won’t you?’
Lucy had nodded acquiescence, knowing she was under orders.
Then Peter had risen to tap on the glass of the French windows. His broad, sports-jacketed back had cut off her view of Tim, but she imagined him turning from the noisy mower and saluting.
With a leaden feeling, Lucy returned to the pious dirge.
Upon the Rock of Ages
They raise thy holy tower;
Thine is the victor’s laurel,
And thine the golden dower.
Lucy’s thoughts turned to her father, who had been her own rock of ages. A furniture maker, he had had a small workshop in the nearby village of Claygate where he had lovingly crafted the regular commissions that had come to him from all over the country. Gerald Newton had been an artist in wood, a lifetime conscientious objector, and a Fabian. Lucy knew how deeply he had valued her, his only child, and she had always confided in him. She had loved him to distraction, dreaded any illness, couldn’t bear to imagine life without him.
Lucy’s mother had died a few days after she had been born and she and her father had become so close that they knew each other’s every thought without causing irritation. Now he was dead and she was alone. More than that, she had lost part of herself.
‘Tim should see another specialist,’ her father had told her. ‘He’s not going to get better on his own.’
‘Do you think they were captured in France? Or tortured?’ she had asked her father for the millionth time.
Gerald had shrugged. ‘I don’t know, and Peter and Martin aren’t going to tell you either,’ he had replied as he always did. ‘They come from the stiff upper lip brigade and believe in putting the war behind them, not blubbing to the ladies.’
‘Can’t you ask Tim what happened?’ she had pleaded. ‘He might talk to another man.’
‘Me? A Conchie?’ He had laughed. ‘I’m no better than a communist to them.’
‘They respect your views,’ she had begun.
‘They’re polite. Discreet. You’re Tim’s wife. They won’t want to rock the boat. But they won’t tell me anything. Why – I don’t even play cricket! I’m a pariah.’
Now he was a pariah no longer. Just in a coffin under a mound of raw earth in the parish graveyard. She had yet to commission a headstone and was still toying with ideas for the inscription.
If only we could move, thought Lucy. If only I could adopt a baby. If only I could heal Tim.
She took his hand as the hymn continued and found that it was no longer moist but dry and strong. Tim smelt of crushed grass; the inexplicable rank smell had gone.
As the pious chorus died untidily away, the vicar slowly mounted the pulpit. There was coughing and an air of curiosity. Would he mention what everyone had been talking about? From the rigid set of his pink-and-white old-man’s face and from his downcast, distrusting eyes, Lucy knew the Reverend Watson-Byte would do just that.
He had been rector for many years, since well before the war, and was responsible for the parish church just off the High Street as well as this tiny place of worship by the cricket field which served the small West End community, largely comprising a market garden and its tied cottages. Italian prisoners had worked the land during the war and some had married local girls and stayed. Because the Catholic church was some miles away, the families were sitting at the back, at a respectful distance from the indigenous population.
The rector was a theologian, an academic who had always seemed surprised and rather daunted to find himself in charge of a parish, despite his many years of incumbency. Lucy had liked him ever since she had met him at a cocktail party and found him watching the more up-market inhabitants of Esher as if they were specimens of an alien society that he didn’t want to relate to.
He was married to a thin, angular woman named Teresa who ran the Guides with grating enthusiasm and whose only other interest was archaeology. She left the parish for months at a time for foreign digs and was the subject of much disapproval from the Parochial Church Council, whose female members tried, unsuccessfully, to fuss round the rector. But he was determined to live off sardines and soup rather than the little messes his devoted parishioners brought him, retreating to his study to write a treatise on Norman ecclesiastical architecture. His sermons were normally theological, so much so that they induced a torpor in his flock which often turned to a deep sleep. Lucy sometimes wondered if this was his way of exacting revenge. In his quiet way, the Reverend Watson-Byte was a rebel and Lucy respected his tactics.
‘My dear friends.’ The rector gazed at the congregation quizzically, unused to so much attention, his voice so soft that they had to strain to h
ear him. ‘I was going to speak about the Sermon on the Mount, but I’ve now decided to mention one of our Lord’s commandments. Thou shalt not kill.’ He paused, waiting for the buzz of interest to die down. Lucy glanced round at the back pew and saw the Italians whispering. She suddenly realized they might come under suspicion. ‘Eyeties’, in Esher’s opinion, ‘needed watching.’ Especially ex-prisoners of war.
‘Many of you will have heard of the tragic death of a young man at our beauty spot, the Clump, yesterday. It is normally not my place or function to impart such grim news from the pulpit but, as some of you may be aware, this was not an ordinary death. Someone had taken the life of Graham Baverstock who was a local gardener.’
There was a ripple of shock from the few who had not as yet heard the news and a child began to cry at the back of the church.
‘I realize how upsetting this will be to you all, but I felt it my duty to warn you that the police have informed me that, so far, no one has been apprehended for this dreadful act. Therefore I must ask you to be vigilant and to lock your doors tonight. I have no doubt in my mind that the young man’s assailant was a marauding stranger who came from outside Esher, perhaps even from outside Surrey. But we must take precautions. I’ve spoken to the Chief Constable, and he assures me that the police are doing their utmost and he is confident that an arrest will be made soon.’ The rector’s voice took on a more comforting, less jarring note. ‘Extra officers are being drafted into the area and the Chief Constable joins me in requesting you to take every precaution. And now, let us consider our Lord’s commandment –’
The congregation settled back in their pews to consider – or even to relish – the situation. The war had come and gone, and peacetime had been uneventful. Too uneventful.
Lucy gazed around the congregation to see if she could spot the Chief Constable. Maggie Bretherton was in her usual place, but her husband was nowhere to be seen. She realized that the local population would no doubt have greater faith if he was seen to be ‘on the job’.
The Men Page 3