‘Do you think they’ll let us go home?’ I said, watching her loop her finger daintily into the handle of her cup and lift it to her lips like a lady. ‘If we go home, it might give Mrs Archam some comfort.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Vi. What does it matter? We’ve all got new lives now.’
I went quiet, not quite believing that she could let go of the place so easily. ‘You have David, I suppose,’ I murmured.
She looked up from her cup, puzzled. ‘And you have Pete.’
I held up my left hand and waved it at her, bare and ringless. ‘Really?’ I smiled.
She broke into a grin. ‘Just you wait, Vi. He’ll be down on one knee before you can say boo to a goose.’
‘There’s no second-guessing him.’ I sighed, placing my empty cup back on its saucer with a clink. ‘He’ll do as he pleases.’
By the time I saw Annie again, May was nearly over and summer was almost upon us. The sun muscled into the mornings and lingered later into the evenings; the days opened and closed their lids in time with ours. The longer days meant that I could make the trip to Devizes on my day off and catch up with Annie every couple of weeks. It was easy to forget the war when we were together. The air seemed designed for holidaying and harvesting, not fighting. It was harder, somehow, to keep in mind what we were sending the troops to do.
My mother was asleep in bed one evening when I heard the letterbox lift. It was far too late for the postman to be doing his rounds. Still, I ran to the door and found an envelope on the mat. There were footsteps on the street so I hurried outside and saw Sam walking away from the house back down Russell Street towards the Pembroke Inn. The evening was so balmy that he had not brought his jacket. He seemed in no rush.
‘Wait!’ I called, my voice halting him in his tracks.
He turned and, with a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the inn, he retraced his steps towards me. ‘Violet,’ he began, in a mumbling tone that I had never heard him use before, ‘would you be so kind as to pass my letter on to your mom? I won’t be bothering you again.’
I nodded. And he flinched, as if in a quandary about whether to stay or go. Then, making a decision, he turned and resumed his walk without a goodbye. I said nothing more, only dropping my eyes from the silhouette of his back once he had rounded the corner of the road.
Inside the cottage, I examined the letter as thoroughly as I could without opening it, unsure whether my mother would let me read it with her as Sam had implied. I held it up to the light in the kitchen but could only make out the word ‘away’ and my mother’s name at the top of the page. His handwriting was as bold and uncontrolled as his gestures. From what I could see, there was only a single sheet of paper inside the envelope. And there was no address, only ‘Martha’ written on the front. I ran upstairs and woke my mother, passing her the letter as she rubbed her eyes.
‘This came for you. Sam brought it.’
My mother took it from me with a frown. ‘At this hour?’ she murmured, her voice still cracked with sleep.
‘Go on, open it.’
She pushed her thumb underneath the back of the envelope and slid it along the seal. It always frustrated me how she insisted on opening letters so neatly; it wasn’t as if she could reuse the envelopes. Once the single sheet had been extracted, she held it close to her chest and ran her eyes across each short sentence.
‘Mama, do please let me read it too.’
‘Patience, Violet,’ she hissed, her eyes not leaving the page. When she had finished, her arms dropped onto the bed, one hand still holding the letter. I sat down on the mattress and looked at her. A sense of reprieve flooded her face. ‘He’s leaving … for good, it seems.’ She lowered her head onto my shoulder, all the muscles in her neck unknotting at once. I took the letter from her limp fingers.
You will be relieved, and perhaps a little saddened, to hear that my infantry will be on the move in a matter of days. I can’t say what for or where to. But it is unlikely that we will ever cross paths again. I cared for you a great deal, Martha, and for Violet. I will miss you both – more, I think, than you will miss me. Rest assured that I will carry your friendship with me until my end – whether it is brought on by the war or by the years that I hope will succeed it.
Take care and may God bless you both,
Samson
He left no address by which to contact him. I was glad of that. I sensed the word ‘friendship’ had been chosen with care – however tattered its definition had become. Had he been certain that Mama would keep the letter to herself, he might have been freer with his words – if, indeed, something freer had ever existed between them; I was not brave enough to know for sure.
I walked up to Fugglestone the following morning to find the American barracks almost empty. The cook informed me that they had left on a designated military train in the early hours, bound for London. It was not until a week later that we knew the reason for their departure: the Allies had launched an assault – our biggest yet – on the Normandy beaches.
‘Do you think he’s involved in the attacks?’ she asked me, as soon as we heard, her complexion blank as flour.
‘He’ll pull through, Mama, I’m sure of it,’ I replied. I wasn’t sure. Not at all. But we were beyond wanting to find out.
CHAPTER 22
I picked up Mum’s parcel from the post office in Delhi on the same morning that I told James about Marc. The events merged like two converging roads, equally potholed and perilous. I could have kept the kiss to myself; the parcel could have been left, unopened, in Delhi.
His anger was deeper than I had predicted. And the heat – the closeness of it – seemed to make everything worse. I had not been able to eat for three days. James said it was dysentery – the fact that I couldn’t keep anything down. But the address I had written in Marc’s notebook, and the seconds that had followed it, left a stain in my stomach, perfidious, irrevocable, forcing everything else out.
James asked me to draw one last picture of the city before we began the journey home. He only suggested it to take my mind off the sickness but I became obsessed with the detail: every stone and brick had to be right. At dawn, we made our way to the Sheesh Gumbad. The rest of the park was empty. I put pencil to paper but, instead of drawing, thought of lips meeting, of how astonishingly reckless I had been. The shapes that emerged were not my usual solid forms; they did not describe the dome in front of me. Instead I drew bewildered circles: closed, coded, from which there was no way out.
‘It might be safer if you saw a doctor,’ said James, picking up the drawing and reading it like a diagnosis.
‘I’m all right,’ I said quietly. The grass in the Lodi Gardens was still cool from the dew – there was dampness beneath my thighs and heat above. He put an arm around me and pulled me in close. ‘I’m worried about you.’
I stiffened, wanting to relent but instead withdrawing.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gently.
‘Nothing.’
‘If something’s bothering you, you can tell me. You know that?’
I frowned and drew my knees up to my chest.
‘Alice …’
Nausea swelled inside me, drawing a haze across everything – all the sections of our journey fizzed suddenly into a surge of regret. ‘It’s Marc.’
James frowned. I dropped my stare to my knees. ‘James, I’m so sorry.’ The tears, hotter than the air, burnt my cheeks. ‘He kissed me … we kissed. I stopped it. But not as quickly as I should have … I’m so sorry.’
He got up and walked some distance away. The horror of what I had done – the knowledge of what I might lose – inv
aded the pit of my stomach. I followed him quickly along the path but he seemed to sense my steps behind him. He picked up his pace without turning to look at me. I trailed off, unsure for the first time of where I should go.
I no longer had a route to follow. There was no plan. Just a city, sprawling in every direction. I took myself to the post office to see if Mum had written again. With James gone, I found myself craving her certainty, the relentlessness with which she refused to let me go. When I saw that she had sent me a parcel, I carried it back with me to the hotel grounds. James’s things were still in his tent: his shirts, his bundle of postcards, his rucksack – nothing had been moved. If I waited here for long enough, perhaps he would come back.
Inside the parcel was an old Church’s shoebox. I had seen it once before – at the back of Mum’s wardrobe when I was fishing around for a pair of sandals to borrow. Seeing there were no shoes inside, I had shut it and thought no more of it. Opening it again in the tent, I found letters – twenty or thirty of them – sent from my dad to my mum. Most of them had been written when they were children. Silly, meandering things that you’d find in a storybook, with poetry copied out and endless anecdotes about the harvests in Imber. But there was one letter set apart from the rest, in a newer envelope with a neater hand. Mum had laid this one on top of the others. I was about to open it when the tent flap was pulled back and James stepped inside.
He glanced down at the box of letters and saw the envelope in my hand.
‘It’s from my mum … letters between her and my father. I haven’t read this one.’ I tried to stay composed, lifting the envelope vaguely.
He didn’t say anything.
‘James –’
‘I’m only here to collect my things.’ He handed me a booklet. ‘And to give you this.’ I put down the letter and took it from him. It was a ticket for a flight: Delhi to London.
‘You’re not coming?’
‘I can’t, Alice, not after – I’m going down south. To clear my head.’
‘But where?’
‘I don’t know. Kovalam, maybe …’
‘James, I know I – It’s impossible to take back what I did.’ He turned as I spoke and began to fill his holdall and rucksack. ‘But if you can bring yourself – I don’t deserve it – but if you ever feel able to forgive me …’ I trailed off.
‘How could you have let it happen?’ he asked. The question hung, stagnant in the tent. It was me now, not Mum, who couldn’t give an answer.
‘It was stupid … a moment of complete stupidity …’ I sounded pathetic.
‘There must have been a reason.’
‘I don’t know. I was being petulant. It was frightening … the idea that you might love me. The thought that one day you might not.’
‘It’s ridiculous even to say it.’ He sighed through gritted teeth. ‘After everything. But it hurts like hell what you’ve done.’ He pressed his hands down into the holdall as if to suffocate the clothes inside. ‘And the worst part is that I can’t stop … If only it were that easy.’
I picked out the absent words from his stutter and held onto them as tightly as I could.
‘There’s a sleeper train heading south. I have a ticket and it’s leaving in four hours,’ he began. ‘I’m getting on it but I need some time to think. Meet me at the station. Either I go or … I’d like at least to say goodbye. Just meet me there.’
He gathered up his things, pulled the zip on his bag and left.
I didn’t read the letter from the shoebox until I arrived at Delhi railway station. I was alone on the platform, waiting for James. I couldn’t think about what would happen if he decided to leave me so I took the letter from my pocket and removed it from the envelope as a way of keeping myself occupied. For the briefest of moments, there were no crowds, no trains. The emptiness felt eerie and scripted, intended for the opening of a letter like mine. The paper was tinted with the faintest of yellows, like a waning summer. I read it once. And read it again. A train came. And still I could not tear my eyes from the letter. The platform filled with bags and families and men with huge urns of steaming tea.
‘Alice!’ I couldn’t trace his voice on the teeming platform ‘Alice!’
Finally I saw him, weaving through passengers and luggage. He stopped hesitantly in front of me but I clutched his shirt and brought my forehead to rest on his chest. He took the letter from my shaking fingers.
‘Is this true?’ he breathed, as he finished reading the page. He didn’t need a reply. Instead, he gathered me up and held me still until the platform was empty again.
CHAPTER 23
‘Not far to go, Vi,’ Pete called back to me. I followed him through a thin copse up to a stile, which he crossed in three swift movements.
‘Tell me where you’re taking me.’ I swung my right foot clumsily over the fence to join the left and thudded off the plank to meet him in the field.
‘It’s a surprise.’ He grinned, reaching for my hand. He had grown older-looking of late. His chin had gained rough stubble and the hair on his arms had thickened into wire. His voice had deepened as well, imbuing everything he said with a new air of purposefulness. I liked it. The lower voice and the textured face made me feel as if he were moving towards something. Yet I was also fearful – afraid he might leave me behind, trapped in my girlhood. Ever since moving to Wilton, I had stuck stubbornly to my factory uniform, even donning it on days off to avoid the skirts and stockings that I saw Mama slipping into.
Without Freda leading the way, I did not know how to wear the months I had gained since Imber. The petticoats, and the curlers on my mother’s dressing-table, had symbolized nothing to me but another outing with Sam.
Yet since Sam’s departure, I had examined my appearance with fresh interest; like a stork pecking at its reflection in a pond, I perceived my own gawkiness and was frightened into flight. I was a woman now: with legs and hips to match my breasts. I wondered what Pete saw when he looked at me and, out of curiosity, decided to give him something to dwell on. I picked up an old pair of high-heeled shoes in a second-hand shop a day before we were due to meet and slipped them on in the factory locker room.
‘You can’t walk back to the farm in those!’ He laughed, looking down at my feet at the factory gate with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops. I liked the feel of his eyes on my legs, though; he let his gaze linger longer than usual. Annie sent some of her old makeup to me in the post; a half-empty pot of powder, which was a few shades too light, and a lipstick. I loved watching how the red paste puffed up my mouth into an exotic berry that bounced off the colour of my coat, dress or cardigan. It was like glue for Pete: he barely looked me in the eye any more. Instead, he talked to my lips, listened to them, his expression constantly locked on them as if they were about to cough up treasure. Things between us were much improved since Sam’s departure; he seemed pleased that my time was entirely his again. It had never occurred to me that he might have been envious of the evenings I had spent with Mama and Sam. I thought he had better things to do – prettier girls to be going about with.
I tried to ignore all Annie’s talk of engagements: it seemed there wasn’t a girl in Devizes who hadn’t become attached to somebody or other. That the same trend was occurring in Wilton had completely escaped me. Soon enough, I was searching the fingers of the factory girls and starting to feel left out. It seemed the war had made everybody panic.
When Pete mentioned that he had a surprise for me and asked if I could keep Saturday afternoon free, I became nervous. Annie said she was sure that this was it; it was the lipstick that had done it and I had her to thank. She lent me her best day dress and I invested in my second-hand shoes.
‘He’s probably going to take you to that spot, you know, the one you always go to. On the Downs by Coombe. Oh, it’s perfect, Vi! I knew he’d come round – didn’t I tell you?’
‘If he makes me sit on a bomb again, I’ll refuse him.’ I laughed.
Annie beamed warmly at me across the table, as if to congratulate me on becoming part of the club. ‘And how wonderful that you’re in love,’ she exclaimed. ‘It will make the engagement so much more enjoyable.’
When Pete had set off on a different route from the one Annie had predicted, I was thrown. He wouldn’t answer my questions about where we were going. After crossing two sets of fields, I followed him into a wood that carried a dense smell of resin slipping through the veins of trees. The light here fell in isolated pools, crisping patches of leaves while others disintegrated in the damp. A feast of bluebells had been and gone, leaving their yellowed remains to droop and sink into an unkempt carpet underfoot. I scoured the wood floor for a late-coming flower but there were none to be seen. So immersed was I in the town that their bloom had passed without me knowing. In Imber, I awaited the bluebell season eagerly and, come May, I went and lay among them with Freda, leaving two sister-shaped imprints in the middle of the purple sea. I gathered hordes of them in bunches to take back to Mama. Freda said they would never survive outside the cool of the wood; I was determined to prove her wrong. How could something so perfectly formed live only for a day? When, eventually, their bruised heads bowed into a kiss with the side of the vase, I would scurry, undeterred, back to the woods for a fresh bunch. I used to think that, if I could die anywhere, it would be there amid the bluebells, like Ophelia floating in her river. I would lie on my back, stare at the canopy above and picture the sky descending until I dissolved into its hue. Sometimes I imagined the scent becoming so heavy that it sent me into a thick sleep. It took a war to teach me that death was more than a scented evaporation: it arrived with a jolt – a clenched fist that could never again be opened. It was to be feared, not revered or craved or girlishly re-imagined in the depths of a wood.
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