The Lines We Leave Behind

by Graham, Eliza

  ‘I might go to university.’ She’d given it a little thought. Her qualifications weren’t wonderful but there might be more opportunities now.

  ‘Why not?’ They’d reached the midpoint of the bridge now. London lay around them: brown, slumbering like an old, exhausted beast. ‘Remember Cairo?’

  How could he imagine she wouldn’t? ‘This couldn’t be more different.’ She said the words with a passion that surprised her. ‘I miss—’ she turned to make sure nobody could overhear ‘—Egypt.’ Being Amber, that more vital version of herself. ‘And I miss . . .’ She couldn’t tell him she had pined for him.

  ‘You miss all of it?’ He held her arm more tightly. ‘All the training?’

  ‘Not the endless sessions in Rustum Buildings. Or the PT classes with the instructors shouting at us. But the sense of things mattering so much, of being part of something big and important. Nothing seems to matter as much any more.’

  ‘Darling, you sound so sad. You need more fun in your life.’

  His soft tone had become more brittle. She tried to smile; Robert mustn’t think she had become a bore. ‘I need to move back to London before I become a bumpkin, don’t I?’

  ‘I think that’s a splendid plan.’

  Presumably if she came to London she could see him. She waited for him to suggest this. The solid stone bridge, this bridge built by all those women, seemed to sway beneath her. Perhaps it was the brandy. Surely if it – the something that surely still existed between her and Robert –were going to happen, it would happen now? But he made no move towards her, leading her gently back to the north side of the bridge. ‘Some of those women must have had calloused hands by the time they’d finished building this,’ he said.

  ‘My hands survived pretty well.’ She stretched them out. ‘My mother still complains about the state of my fingernails, she—’ Fingers. Fingertips.

  ‘What about your fingernails?’

  ‘There’s something we haven’t talked about, something that had slipped my mind until now.’ She flushed. ‘That doesn’t sound very professional.’

  He tilted his head.

  ‘We saw a man near the village where Naomi died,’ she said. ‘I mentioned him in that first signal I sent when I returned from the Slovenian border. A large man. I noticed that because it was so rare to see anyone who wasn’t thin over there. He had a missing fingertip. A local said the Partisans had cut if off as a warning to him.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘There was something about him.’ She shook her head. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t important, but you remember how you told me to trust my intuition? I mentioned him in my signal, do you remember? We thought he was possibly British or American.’

  ‘There was so much going on at that time that I was hard pushed,’ Robert said. ‘Getting that Lysander over to you to collect Stimmer was the priority, but your signal would have been passed on to intelligence. Wonder what they did with it?’ He didn’t sound very interested.

  He looked up and down the road.

  ‘I’ll find a taxi for you,’ he said. ‘It’s late.’ There was a weariness in his tone.

  She opened her mouth but couldn’t decide what it was she wanted to say. He’d already told her he was living in what he called a bachelor pad off Piccadilly. Could the same taxi not drop him off there and continue with her to North Kensington? A cab stopped and Robert gave it directions, opening the door for her.

  ‘Thank you for dinner.’ She sounded like a polite schoolgirl.

  ‘Our pleasure. Oh, I nearly forgot.’ He opened the briefcase and pulled out something round and red. ‘I remember how much you used to like these.’

  He passed her a pomegranate. She wondered where he’d been to get it, but knew he wouldn’t tell her.

  ‘The service owes you, Maud. You may need to forget about us now, but our gratitude to you remains.’

  So that was all tonight had meant: a pat on the head from the organisation? She sat back in the taxi, pomegranate in lap, trying to work out what the feelings churning inside her meant. Anger? Yes, she was angry. How dare he switch into this kindly managerial role? Did he think she’d forgotten those nights in Cairo? She felt sorrow, too. She’d hoped Robert could resume where they’d left off. He’d given her that silver lighter before she’d flown out, more valuable and special than the one he’d given Naomi. He’d cared for her. But examining her feelings, she couldn’t be sure there wasn’t the slightest relief at being by herself again. Had she imagined a change of tone in Robert’s parting words? Why had he felt it necessary to tell her to forget about the service?

  The family flat was less musty than she had feared it would be. The workmen had made some progress: already repairing the sitting room ceiling and plastering the walls for painting. Her own bedroom was to be next. Mama was looking forward to choosing paint and wallpaper, if these could be obtained.

  Maud switched on the lights. What a relief not to need to worry about blackouts. She found a bowl for the pomegranate, poured herself a glass of water and went to clean her teeth, cursing herself for having forgotten to bring down the cold cream for her face. The cistern shuddered and squealed into life as the water ran from the taps. She stared at it: water. At any hour. Sometimes during the Blitz the mains had blown, but you’d always been able to get water from somewhere. They drove round with emergency supplies, if necessary. You didn’t have to take a bucket and find a spring.

  She filled the tooth mug and rinsed her mouth. The water here didn’t taste the same as the water of the karst. Her father would have liked a discussion on the subject of mineralisation, but she couldn’t ever tell him that she’d been back to Yugoslavia; she’d signed the Official Secrets Act. She’d like to talk to him about trekking through the karst, to have told him about Naomi being murdered, and about the strange mixture of feelings Stimmer had aroused in her. Dad would listen quietly, nodding. He probably wouldn’t have said much at all, but she would have felt his sympathy.

  Her isolation seemed even greater following tonight’s dinner. Seeing Robert, having those moments of open communication with him and feeling that he understood, underlined how she felt the rest of the time. In a city of millions, she might have been the last person left on the planet.

  When she switched on the lights in her old bedroom, Robert was lying on her bed. Maud’s hand went for the Ballester-Molina pistol she no longer carried. ‘How did you do it?’ She was proud of her ability to sound so cool.

  ‘Told your taxi driver to take you the long way round. I already had a service driver booked. He knew a faster route.’ He patted the candlewick quilt beside him. ‘I can get into almost any building with the help of various bits of equipment. You’ll remember the training.’

  She perched on the edge of the bed. ‘But why not just—?’ She broke off. What was the point in arguing with Robert? He’d always have an answer. And her pulse was racing now, just at the sight of him on her old childhood bed. Could this be happening?

  ‘So this was where little Maud spent her childhood nights.’ He looked around the room, which had been stripped of pictures, ornaments and books when her family had moved to Shropshire at the start of the war.

  ‘I wasn’t that little when we lived here, I grew up in Serbia, remember?’ She sounded harsh. Good. ‘And there’s not much of me left in this room.’

  ‘But enough for me to imagine you lining up your books by size and colour on that bookcase. Laying out your shoes underneath the chest of drawers. Lining up your hairbrush perpendicular with the looking glass.’

  How had he known all these things? She felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘A somewhat eccentric girl, but gifted. Truly unique.’ His tone was what it had been in the restaurant: low, confiding. ‘Won’t you lie down, Maud? You look so awkward, sweetheart.’

  She lay down beside him, his arm round her shoulders. All the little hairs along the side of her body touching his seemed to stand on end. Her blood seemed to flow round her veins in surges of ho
t and cold. Why were things between them still so stilted? It was like it had been in Cairo at the beginning.

  Minutes passed. Was it some kind of test? ‘Oh, darling,’ he whispered, ‘you’re making it so hard for me.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘Is it a test?’ he said. ‘This coolness? Are you angry with me for being out of touch? You know how our work goes.’

  It was all her fault. Robert had found her standoffish this evening, although she’d worried that her feelings for him were emblazoned all over her features. She turned her face towards his so he could see her. He moved so quickly that for a second she imagined herself back in Yugoslavia, on her back in the dirt. Her muscles contracted. But he was stronger than she was. And he wasn’t an Ustaše officer, he was Robert. Within a second her body had downgraded its response from repelling an attack to welcoming an advance. But a minute later when he pulled her dress up she froze again. Would her body let her down? If it hurt . . . ? She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she flinched away from Robert, darling Robert.

  He touched her softly between the legs, carefully, movements that were like someone stroking a small scared creature. ‘Tell me if you want me to stop and I will.’ With his other hand he tilted her chin so she was looking at him. ‘You’re in control.’

  She murmured something in assent and he continued the stroking. It wasn’t the same, the scents, the feel of him were different from that other man. He stopped stroking and looked at her. She nodded and waited for a stab of pain, like there had been before, but there was only a brief discomfort, gone before she could express it, and then she was somewhere else and Croatia was forgotten and he was murmuring words of affection, of love, into her ears.

  ‘What a siren you are,’ he said when they were lying together afterwards, clothes piled on the rug by the bed. ‘Luring me back here.’

  Her eyes widened.

  He put a finger on her lips. ‘I must go before your neighbours are up and about and spot me leaving.’

  ‘Shall I see you again?’ How could she possibly know what he wanted?

  He was doing up his shirt buttons and blinked. ‘I would hope so, Maud. Unless you make a habit of bringing men home for the night without plans for anything more serious?’

  She flushed, remembering those years of the Blitz when she had done just that. Perhaps all the tenderness last night was a show. He might despise her now that she’d been tainted by the enemy. In France they’d shaved women’s heads. She hadn’t been a willing party in the encounter with the Ustaše, but he might still feel contempt.

  He walked over to take her by the shoulders. ‘Darling, I’m very serious about you, you must know that. I love you and I want to marry you.’

  ‘What?’ She propelled herself forward off the pillows and stared up at him. Never once had she imagined marriage to Robert as her destiny. If she’d had any hopes for the future, it had been as his mistress, carrying on an extension of their time together in Cairo.

  ‘Isn’t it the most natural conclusion to our time together?’

  ‘It seems . . . sudden.’

  She examined his face for clues as to his seriousness. It presented the same contours as it always did. His eyes twinkled but the mouth was set in a serious line. ‘Darling?’

  He released her and picked up his tie. ‘Perhaps I misjudged things. You have me confused. I just never know how you’re going to be, Maud.’ He sounded so flat. Her heart would break.

  ‘No, you didn’t misjudge me.’ He must have felt her longing for him on Waterloo Bridge. ‘And I do want to marry you.’ As she said the words she felt the truth of the statement. ‘Of course I do. I just, I didn’t expect . . .’

  He straightened his tie. ‘So we’re official.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘But I don’t even have a ring for you. I’ll have to remedy that today. You’re not going back until this evening, are you? Why don’t I meet you at Euston?’

  ‘I could come with you to choose the ring,’ she suggested. ‘We’d have more time together that way.’

  ‘Darling, you’d be depriving me of the romance of presenting it to you on the platform. I’m thinking of Anna Karenina, or what’s that film with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard?’

  Romantic encounters, passion and longing, something she’d barely dared imagine for herself. He told her where to meet him, seeming to know the time her train would leave Euston, even though she hadn’t told him. When he let himself out of the flat she lay back on the pillows, staring up at the ceiling with its cracks and light-brown stains where water must have leaked in. She found her cigarettes and lit one with the silver lighter, lying back against the pillows, eyes half closed, letting the stains and the cracks form themselves into a relief map of an imaginary country. She traversed the landscape, picking the lee of the hills to shelter in, planning forays to streams to fetch water. Robert loves me. I love Robert. We’re going to be married. This was what happened to people when they fell in love and the war was over and they could be together; it wasn’t out of the ordinary.

  She got up and went into the kitchen. The pomegranate sat in its bowl. She found a knife and sliced it in half, removing seeds one by one and letting the taste of them, so unlike anything grown in England, fill her mouth.

  15

  June 1947

  ‘I had a dream,’ I tell Dr Rosenstein when I see her the following week. ‘I mean, a dream I can actually remember. I wrote it down. It’s not very interesting, though.’ Her face expresses its usual gentle, yet keen, interest. ‘It was about an apple. At least I think it’s an apple.’

  Dr Rosenstein’s expression changes to one of mild puzzlement. ‘Anyway, someone keeps trying to take it from me.’

  ‘Robert?’

  I shake my head. ‘A woman.’ I look Dr Rosenstein in the eye. ‘Do you believe that dreams are so very important?’ I’ve read some of the theories of Freud and Jung. Jim tells me that Dr Rosenstein is not supposed to be a particularly strong devotee of their schools, but she looks at me thoughtfully.

  ‘Sometimes I think they’re just bits and pieces of life that the brain hasn’t stored away properly,’ she says. ‘Other times they appear more important. If an individual believes their dreams are worthy of examination, I am interested. That’s why I ask you if you remember them.’

  I’m thinking again about the woman in the dream who took my apple from me. I can almost name her. Who is she?

  I must have said the name aloud. ‘A friend?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’ I put a hand to my brow. ‘Am I regretting the fact that someone stole my Eden from me? Or that I destroyed it myself?’

  Her eyes twinkle. I’m taking this dream-business too seriously. She lets us sit for a moment in silence. During the war we were warned that there might sometimes be radio silences imposed to prevent the enemy knowing where we were. Dr Rosenstein’s silence is working in the opposite way: allowing my recollections to float up into my consciousness.

  Robert is not here in this room. He cannot intrude himself between Dr Rosenstein and me. I am safe.

  ‘I never knew how he would be, day to day.’ I tell Dr Rosenstein. ‘But I loved him and he understood me. Nobody else did. Even before the war I wasn’t an easy person, not as a child or a schoolgirl. Robert seemed able to peer into all the dark places inside me and tell me what was there.’ Dr Rosenstein makes a note. ‘Can you do that, too?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She puts down the pen.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I’m impatient now, with all of it. The polite lunches, the blunt knives at meals.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I don’t think you’re schizophrenic. Or psychotic. You’ve had a bad depression. And, of course, there was trauma from your wartime experiences. Those things put together can cause memory loss.’

  ‘I want to remember. All of it.’ I hear the anger in my voice.

  She looks down. ‘Let’s continue. You had no idea what Robert had been doing in that last year of the war and just afterwards, before he made contact an
d took you out to dinner?’

  ‘He was always vague. I didn’t press him, I’d been trained not to ask questions.’

  ‘When you say “trained”, it’s almost as though you’re implying your husband had trained you for marriage as well as for your wartime work.’

  My impatience grows. I would now like this session to end, for all the sessions to end. Dr Rosenstein fixes me with her half-serious, half-humorous brown-eyed stare. ‘Come on. You were showing healthy impatience just a few minutes ago, Maud. You don’t really want to run away now, do you?’ I have never heard her talk so bluntly to me. ‘To sit in that room of yours, gazing out of the window, whiling away another day. Wasting your prime. Day after day passing, year after year, until you’re middle aged and your parents grow old and die. And then who’ll be left to even remember you?’

  A sound like a choke comes out of my mouth.

  ‘Or would you like to keep going?’

  I think of the solace of the syringe, how it brings sleep and forgetting. Would Dr Rosenstein give me an injection if I begged her? When we were being trained they’d keep us out on the Scottish hilltops in the cold and wet, struggling against ourselves. I am struggling against myself again now.

  ‘I want to carry on,’ someone says in a voice I can barely recognise as mine because it’s so fragile.

  ‘Tell me about the lead-up to your marriage and the wedding itself. What was the time of year?’

  I give her a sharp look. She’s obviously trying to catch me out. ‘Autumn of 1945. We married in October, and in the six weeks or so beforehand, Mama kept taking me shopping. I tried to settle into being what they all wanted, but I kept jumping at things, seeing danger everywhere. That was new. I’d had occasional . . . episodes in Shropshire, feeling, I don’t know, adrenaline flood me. But the farm work kept it at bay. In London, I saw menace in places there was none.’

  London, August 1945

  Maud picked up a roll of the fern-patterned fabric and tried to look as though she found it the most interesting object she had ever seen.