by Isla Dewar
She shook her head. ‘No. Not at the moment. I usually have two. Right now it’s Charles and Jeffrey. Except Jeffrey’s away, too, North Africa, haven’t seen him in months.’
‘Two? Why stop at two. Why not three or four? Why not write to the Coldstream Guards?’
She slipped her arm from his, turned to face him. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
He shrugged. ‘I know.’
They carried on down the hill, side by side, but not touching.
‘In my heyday I had four,’ he said.
‘Not all at the same time, I hope. The bed would have been very crowded.’
‘That would have been too tiring. I went a bit wild after I got back from France. Drinking, fighting, womanising. I was at university at the time. Studying English.’
He’d had nightmares, though they didn’t only come when he was sleeping. Vivid pictures of what he’d been through – walking across no man’s land on a sunny day, getting caught in the barbed wire, faces of men as they fell – would flash in his mind. At such times, and he never had any warning of when these memories would arrive, he’d press himself against a wall, or hold on to the bar in the pub where he was drinking, sweating and shaking.
‘In the end my mother sat me down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. She told me I was going to die anyway.’
‘What did she mean by that?’ asked Julia.
‘She meant, really, that life went on. Things I’d seen happened and I’d have to learn to live with them, knowing that terrible things happen, would always happen. Meantime, it didn’t matter how many women I had, I’d still have to deal with getting hurt, having my heart broken. I was still going to suffer grief and loneliness at some time or other. I was going to die anyway.’
The night filled with a shrill, out-of-tune rendition of ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.
‘Mrs Brent,’ said Julia. ‘She does that every Saturday night.’ She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked pained. ‘I’ve heard about it. But this is the first time I’ve actually heard it.’
‘You have to take your hat off to someone who is truly awful at something, but believes in herself so much she is prepared to do it in public week after week.’
‘Takes courage,’ agreed Julia.
They were briefly united in mutual admiration of the awfulness of Mrs Brent’s singing.
‘Anyway, death,’ said Walter. ‘You’re still going to die. That’s what my mother told me when she found out I was seeing four women and drinking myself stupid. I was in pain and I was angry. I had to shut myself off. Couldn’t suffer any more.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and led her down the hill. ‘Got to get away from that singing.’
She asked if he was afraid of death.
‘Oh, yes. Scared stiff. Not of being dead, but of being aware of death happening.’
‘Me, too,’ said Julia. ‘I’m also terrified of being burned. Being horribly scarred. But that’s not why I have two lovers. There’s no profound reason, I do it because I can.’
At three o’clock in the morning, he woke. He sat up in bed, rubbed the ache in his leg. It was going to rain. He could hear Julia breathing next to him and reached out to touch her, to run his fingers down her back. He kissed her naked shoulder. When this war is over, he thought, people will go home, lock their doors, pull their curtains, sit by their firesides, pretending that all this sex never happened. And he wondered, If she always has two lovers, and I’m one, who would be the other? He hated him already.
Chapter Eighteen
The Dance
CAPTAIN JIMMY PHONED to check Izzy was coming to the dance. A hop, he called it. ‘There will be a band, and all the people from the village down the road come along with food, just what you love most, Pork Chops.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Izzy said. ‘I hate that name.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I do it. Love to make you mad.’
‘So it seems.’
He phoned often. But with calls limited to six minutes, conversations were brief. Izzy would just be beginning to remember things she wanted to say when they’d be cut off. Julia thought this was a good thing. ‘These short calls always leave you longing to be in touch again. They’re awfully good for your love life.’
On Saturday, Claire and Izzy caught the train for York at Blackpool. Izzy eyed the net luggage rack; if Claire hadn’t been with her, she’d have climbed up and settled down for a nap. She found it a relaxing way to travel.
She would have slept, anyway – train travel always made her nod off – but Claire wanted to chat. She asked Izzy what she thought of the new man who’d been brought in to replace Dick Wills.
Izzy shrugged. ‘He seems nice.’
‘Yes,’ said Claire, ‘he does.’ She was taken with him.
Edith had brought him into the mess, clapped her hands to get full attention from everybody. ‘This is Simon Masters, our new pilot.’ Then she’d left.
Simon had strolled over to the table Claire and Dick had used when they’d played backgammon, and sat down. He’d nodded and said hello to people around him and started to read The Times. Since he was sitting at the scene of many enjoyable games, most of which she’d lost, Claire had leaned over and asked if he played backgammon.
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ he’d said. ‘Though not awfully well, I’m a beginner.’
Good, Claire had thought. I may just beat him. Winning a game would be something new.
Next day had been a washout, so Claire and Simon had played backgammon quietly for three hours, waiting for Edith to tell everyone to go home. They’d chatted, laughed a little, gently mocked one another’s moves. When, finally, just after one o’clock, Edith had come into the mess and said there would be no flying today, Simon had pushed back his chair, yawned and stretched. He thought he’d have lunch at the Golden Mallard where he was staying till he could find a cottage to rent, and would she join him? Claire had said that would be lovely.
At a table overlooking the gardens, they’d eaten and talked about how things had been for each of them before the war. He’d been a vet in Cumbria.
‘You saw a lot of sheep.’
‘And cows and horses, dogs, cats, everything. My partner runs the practice now I’m doing this.’
‘I was a housewife, I suppose. I hosted a lot of dinner parties and tea parties. A bit boring now I think about it.’
He’d patted her hand and said she was never that. The hand pat had a strange effect on Claire. Something happened. A tremor trilled through her. She looked at him, moved her hand away. But she thought he had felt it, too.
He said he was dreading the end of the war. ‘Everything has changed. My wife runs the home, tells the children what to do, pays the bills. I feel at a loss when I’m there. Not needed any more.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, ‘Fact is, I prefer working, flying, to being at home.’ He was ashamed of that.
Claire agreed. ‘One day all my family and I will be home. I sometimes think we’ll hardly recognise one another. None of us will be the person we were before the war. After the big reunion we’ll have to start getting to know each other again. I fear there will be rows, silences and, from the children, tantrums. I’m not the same. I’m not sure I can just stop flying and go back to socialising again.’
He’d taken her hand, squeezed it. This time she did not try to take it away, instead she kept it there. ‘I’m dreading it,’ she said.
A week later, Simon had moved into a small cottage across the river from the one Claire shared with Julia and Izzy. ‘Two rooms,’ he told her. ‘A matchbox, really.’ He invited her to view it.
She thought it cute. The bedroom was at the front and had a view of the river, the living room was tiny – a sofa, an armchair and a pine dresser. It took three steps to get from one side to the other, not in a straight line. That wasn’t possible, the furniture had to be avoided. The kitchen and bathroom were in an add-on extension made of corrugated iron. ‘It’ll do,
’ he said. ‘Home for the meantime.’
He’d poured them both a glass of whisky, and they drank, standing too close because the room was so small. Kissing was inevitable. Neither of them initiated it. They’d just moved into one another’s arms.
At ten o’clock she pushed aside the blankets of his bed. ‘I have to go.’
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘I want you here beside me all night. I want to you to be the first thing I see when I wake.’
She shook her head. ‘This has to be our secret. Everyone at the base knows my husband is a POW; there would be rumblings of disapproval. Someone might write and tell him.’
He supposed that to be true. ‘But you will come again.’
She stopped pulling on her stockings, leaned over and kissed him. ‘Just try and stop me.’
Now, sitting on the train, Claire was regretting this trip. She didn’t want to go her parents’ home, hated it there. She longed to be with Simon, in his cottage, in his bed. She thought she might be in love. And this was new to her.
Claire’s father, Derek, picked them up at York. ‘Brought the Morris. The Bentley bloody guzzles petrol,’ he said, crushing Izzy’s hand. ‘Good to meet you.’
The house was thirty minutes’ drive from the station, at the end of a wide, rolling drive, swathes of lawn on either side. Izzy had been expecting a big house, a mansion, even. This was a palace. Vast, ornate, turreted – wide steps led up to the front door, statues poised at the foot of them, more statues set into carefully clipped niches in hedging that surrounded the courtyard. A thousand windows, Izzy thought. Her mother would weep for whoever had to clean them.
Derek apologised. ‘Rack and ruin,’ he said. ‘The place is falling apart. No staff, they’ve all been called up.’ He sighed. ‘The rose garden, croquet lawn and tennis courts are all turned over to vegetables. And we dine at the ungodly hour of six o’clock. I have to be on duty at seven.’ He was captain of the Home Guard.
Inside the house was bleak, forbidding – oak panelling, an oak staircase, portraits in ornate gold frames, busts on plinths. Izzy hated it. The only things that made the grandeur bearable were the pile of muddy boots by the door and the two old black Labradors panting quietly beside it.
The room she would be staying in was on the first floor, overlooking what had once been the tennis courts, and was now rows and rows of potatoes, cabbages, onions and peas. The room was huge, draughty. In winter, it would be icy. There was a four-poster bed, a dresser and a wardrobe, on one wall a vast oil painting of a hunting scene. By the time she got there, someone had already brought her bag up and unpacked it. Izzy was horrified. Some unknown person had seen her absurd packing. The tangle of clothes she’d hurriedly shoved into her bag. They’d hung things up and put her knickers and bra neatly folded into a drawer. If she’d known this was going to happen, she’d have brought her best underwear.
Price, the butler, had shown her to her room. He told her that should she need to freshen up, the lavatory was at the end of the hall. Izzy put her head round the door. It was an awfully long corridor. She thought these people must have sturdy digestive systems having to hike so far to the loo. She went to the window. A small woman with thick trousers tucked into wellington boots and a patterned silk headscarf was fervently hoeing a row of onions. She looked up, saw Izzy and waved. ‘Jolly good.’
It was the heartiness, the brusque confidence of these people that made Izzy uneasy. She felt a deeper shyness than her usual reticence. Here, there would be small social rituals she knew nothing about – the correct way to take tea in the afternoon, the proper time to appear for breakfast, an array of cutlery to master at dinner. Should she have tipped the butler? She didn’t know. She was bound to make a gaffe or three.
Downstairs, Claire offered to show Izzy round. ‘We’ll avoid the gardens in case we run into Ma. She’d rope us in to do some digging.’
Izzy thought she might have already had a wave from Ma.
The stables and garage, once whitewashed, were now covered with camouflage netting. Behind them was a huge, run-down barn. Claire said, ‘Come and look at this. You’ll love it.’ Inside was a yellow Tiger Moth just visible under a tarpaulin.
‘You have a plane,’ said Izzy.
Claire nodded.
‘Is that how you learned to fly? In your own plane?’
Claire nodded. ‘It’s Pa’s. We used to fly up to our house in Scotland every year for the grouse shoot. He used to fly it everywhere, even when he was just dropping in on friends.’
She had been thirteen when her father first arrived home with his new acquisition. She’d been sitting on the steps outside, reading a book when he’d come buzzing overhead, calling, ‘Hello, below!’ She had looked round, looking up hadn’t occurred to her. ‘Ahoy, the ground.’ At that point she’d raised her eyes skywards. Her father was skimming past, wearing flying jacket and leather helmet, waving and pointing to the drive. ‘Coming in to land.’ After that, he’d flown whenever he could, and had to be dissuaded from taking the plane to the village five miles away to collect his copy of The Times.
The flights to Scotland had usually taken three or four hours. While the rest of the family travelled by train, taking with them the dogs, the cat, all of Claire’s mother’s wardrobe and most of Claire’s – a pile of trunks that took up most of the guard’s van – she and her father would take the plane and arrive red of face, stiff with cold and exhilarated. They always celebrated their safe journey with a large whisky. To this day Claire always associated her first hours in their Scottish house with being drunk. ‘Happy days,’ said Claire. She looked at her watch. ‘Oh goody, time for tea.’
Tea, at this time of year, was served on the veranda outside the drawing room. Claire’s parents were already there. Margaret, her mother, had removed the boots but not the headscarf. Derek had changed into his uniform. They waved, though Izzy and Claire were only yards away. Izzy waved back, and doubted herself. Perhaps one shouldn’t do that. It seemed absurdly familiar, since she hardly knew them.
Margaret said, ‘Jolly good.’ Patted a seat next to her and told Claire to sit down and give her all the news. ‘How’s Richard, any news?’
‘He’s bearing up,’ said Claire. ‘I get letters, but they’re heavily censored.’
‘He’ll be terribly upset to be stuck away in that camp,’ said Derek. ‘He’s missing all the fun.’
Claire agreed. ‘He does seem a bit down. Ah, tea at last.’
A maid, carrying a tray, appeared. She laid out a teapot, a pot of hot water, milk, a small bowl of sugar, cups, saucers and a plate of scones, nodded and went away.
‘Susan,’ said Margaret, ‘along with cook and Price, are all the staff we have left. Of course, we have a couple of land gels from the village to help with the gardens. We’re selling quite a bit to the American base these days. And Bernie helps in the stable, but he’s over seventy now.’ She sighed. ‘Things just aren’t the same.’
‘Bloody chap from the government came and had a look round. Said we didn’t need a chauffeur or a pastry chef, or anybody, come to that. Off they all went to the army or whatever. Damned chaps at the top have decided we can’t get a decent slice of fruit cake.’
Margaret poured the tea, handed out the cups. ‘Can’t get anything these days. Were just about down to the last case of claret. And you can’t make a proper martini for love nor money. This war is so inconvenient.’ She turned to Izzy. ‘And what is it you do?’
‘The same as Claire. I fly.’
‘But before that?’
‘I flew with a flying circus.’
‘Ah. You’re a Macleod, I believe.’
‘Yes.’
Margaret turned to Derek. ‘Do we know any Macleods in Scotland?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
She turned back to Izzy. ‘And who exactly is your father?’
‘He’s a minister. The parish is a village not far from Perth.’
‘Church of Scotland, then?’
Izzy said, ‘Yes.’
Margaret said, ‘Ah. A bit dour. We prefer something with a bit of show. I think our chaps have brighter robes.’ She smiled and said she had a delivery of potatoes for the base tomorrow morning.
‘This war will be the end of us,’ said Derek. He swigged his tea and helped himself to a scone.
‘Oh, I don’t think it’ll be the end of us,’ said Izzy. ‘We’ll win. I’m sure of that.’
Derek said he didn’t doubt for one moment that they would give the Hun a sound thrashing. ‘But I meant it will be the end of us. Our kind of people. The aristocracy, the landed gentry, the privileged landowners or whatever these socialist types call us.’ He glared at her. ‘You’re not one, are you? A bloody red.’
Izzy blushed, said, of course she wasn’t. And hated herself, because, of course, she was. Elspeth had been passionate about the iniquities of upper-class privilege, and she believed everything Elspeth told her. ‘But you’re quite posh, yourself,’ Izzy had said.
‘That’s only by birth, not by belief. I have forsaken my posh beginnings and now consider myself to be working class.’
‘We are the backbone of this country, and we’re doomed,’ said Derek. ‘When all this is over, the staff won’t come back. They’ll all be taking factory jobs. Life in service will have no appeal. No, we are a dying species. And these damned scones are like rubber.’
‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ said Margaret. ‘Can’t help the scones. It’s the flour and the powdered egg.’ Then before her husband could embark on a political rant, she shot Derek a silencing glare and said, ‘The broad beans are doing awfully well this year. More tea, Izzy?’
Derek sighed and sat back, rummaged about his mouth with his tongue to looking for stray bits of scone, and stared out over his tattered daisy-infested lawns.
Izzy said, ‘Yes, please.’ She held out her cup to be refilled, and vowed to say as little as possible for the rest of her stay.
She was still holding her tongue halfway through the dance. Captain Jimmy had collected her and Claire. In fact, Izzy didn’t much like dances. She preferred to watch the action rather than join in. Still, it was an enjoyable show. A noisy spangled affair – young girls from the village nearby tricked out in their best summer frocks, airmen in pressed uniforms and shiny shoes, older folks sitting waiting for the slow numbers to be played, all this jitterbugging and jiving wasn’t for them. A long table against the far wall was heavy with cakes, buns, sandwiches, all contributed by the villagers, and Coca-Cola, the American contribution.