Izzy's War

by Isla Dewar

  When he came back down again, Izzy was shouting that she didn’t need a shave. The midwife was saying firmly that nobody was going to shave her cheeks, ‘Why would we do that? No, lass, we’re going to shave you down there. Make sure everything’s clean for baby when he arrives.’

  As he left, he heard Izzy shout, ‘Oh, God!’ His heart went out to her.

  Jacob took the bike out to the base, waited by Gerald Harper’s MG, till, at half past five, the man arrived. Jacob asked when he was next flying across to Europe.

  ‘Got a flight to Berlin tomorrow,’ said Gerald.

  ‘Just you?’

  ‘Just me in the Anson with a couple of crates of oranges.’

  ‘Take me,’ said Jacob. ‘Twenty-five pounds now. Twenty-five when we get there.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that. You’ll get repatriated. Go see the people in London.’

  ‘How long will that take? Applications, visas, papers, hanging about waiting for someone to rubber-stamp this and rubber-stamp that. I want to go now. I have a wife I haven’t seen for years.’

  Gerald shrugged. ‘You get into that plane early. Before anyone else arrives. And when we get to Berlin, you’re on your own.’

  Jacob said, ‘Fair enough.’

  He rode back to the village. He sat in the pub till closing time, waiting for the village to sleep.

  It was late when he parked Izzy’s motorbike outside the Brents’ cottage. The ride back from the village had been precarious. His load was cumbersome. Inside, he stood, sniffing the air, feeling the atmosphere. He could hear Mr Brent’s thunderous snoring coming from upstairs, and a fainter higher-pitched snore accompanying it. The old couple were sleeping. The midwife was gone. The air smelled antiseptic. The chaos of birth was over.

  He took the Brents’ large suitcase from their downstairs cupboard and, with difficulty, stuffed the night’s takings into it. He brought his own case down from his bedroom, put them both outside. Then, he tapped on the door of Izzy’s room, went in to say goodbye.

  Izzy was awake. The bed light was on, she was leaning over, staring into the crib. She smiled when he came in.

  ‘I thought you’d be sleeping,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t sleep,’ said Izzy. She pointed into the crib. ‘It’s a boy.’

  Jacob said, ‘My favourite kind of baby.’

  ‘What’s wrong with girls?’

  ‘They’re good, too.’ Jacob peered down at the child. ‘He looks a bit like you.’

  ‘He’s got my hair. I thought babies were bald. Look, perfect fingers.’ She reached over, loosened the tight swaddling, lifted out the baby’s hand. ‘Amazing fingers. Nails and everything.’

  Jacob pulled his St Christopher medal from round his neck. ‘For the baby, from Anna and me.’

  ‘I can’t take that. It’s too precious.’

  ‘It’s not up to you to accept or refuse it. It’s the baby’s. And it’s bad luck to meet someone who is new in the world without giving them a gift. What’s his name, by the way?’

  ‘Haven’t thought of one yet,’ said Izzy. ‘Mrs Brent is nagging me about that. She thinks it’s a disgrace – a baby with no name.’

  ‘So it is,’ said Jacob.

  Izzy said that it was late. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Just out, had a bit of business to take care of. I’ve come to say goodbye. I’m going home tomorrow.’

  ‘To Poland?’

  ‘To Berlin, then I’ll make my way to Poland.’

  Izzy asked how he was going to get to Berlin. He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Don’t ask. Better that you don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll never see you again,’ said Izzy. There had been times when Izzy would have thought this a good thing. This man was a thief. But tonight it saddened her.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll come back one day. I’ll bring you chocolate-covered plums. I’ll cook you meatballs with dumplings.’

  Izzy said she’d look forward to it.

  He told her she looked tired. ‘I think giving birth must take it out of you.’

  ‘It does. But I feel happy.’

  He kissed her, told her he had to go.

  ‘I have to give you something,’ said Izzy. ‘It’s bad luck to say goodbye without a parting gift.’ She reached under the pillow, brought out a blue heart-shaped stone. ‘It’s lucky. It kept me safe. Now it’ll work for you.’

  ‘I can’t take this.’

  ‘Yes you can. My friend Elspeth gave it to me. She said that when I’d used up my share of its luck, I had to pass it on to someone who’d need it. That’s the lucky thing to do.’ She said this with such conviction that she almost believed it herself. ‘I definitely have run out of luck.’ She smiled. ‘It started when that plane went on fire. I should have known then that my days of fortune were over. I am no longer blessed. I fell out with my family. I lost the one I love. I fell from grace.’ She jerked her head at the baby. ‘Not that I don’t love him. But the stone’s telling me it’s time for us to part. That’s the rule with lucky things. Or so Elspeth said. I had my luck – I flew Spitfires, I fell in love. I had such thrills. Now you take it, you’ll need all the luck you can get.’

  He put it in his pocket, thanked her and kissed her again. ‘I wish I’d got to know you better. We should have been friends.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Izzy. ‘But you’re a rogue, you steal things.’

  ‘Only when I’m here. Soon as I cross the border into Poland, I’ll be a good boy again.’ He slipped out the door.

  Outside the sky was turning pale, streaks of gold on the horizon. It would be morning soon. He piled his cases onto the back of Izzy’s bike. Strapped them tight so they wouldn’t fall off. He wheeled the bike onto the road, then started it. Riding to the base, his heart lifted. He’d been waiting for this moment for years. The air was cold, the breeze pressing on his chest and face. He was smiling. God, Izzy was lovely. He wished he hadn’t stolen her money. He was awfully glad he hadn’t taken it all.

  By four o’clock the next day, he had stolen a bike and was slowly cycling east out of Berlin. He had discarded his uniform, wore a shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar open. He looked like a farm hand, he looked ordinary, nobody on the road paid any attention to him.

  In the case, strapped to the pannier on the back of his bike he had his bartering goods – pots of Mrs Brent’s honey, packets of tea, biscuits, tins of corned beef and, stolen from the good people of Skimpton, twenty bicycle tyres. He had Izzy’s lucky stone in his pocket. He knew he’d make it home.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Mrs Alton

  JULIA BURST INTO the kitchen. ‘Somebody’s bloody stolen the tyres orff my bike.’

  Claire, sitting at the table, drinking tea, said, ‘Well, take mine, then.’

  ‘Your tyres are gone, too. And Izzy’s. Who would do a thing like that? I’ll kill whoever it was if I get my hands on them,’ said Julia.

  ‘How are you going to get to the base?’ asked Claire.

  ‘They’re sending a car. It’s doing the rounds picking people up, apparently a lot of people have had their tyres stolen. There’s been a spate of tyre thefts in the village.’

  Claire shrugged. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t need her bike today. She wouldn’t need her bike ever again. Last night, she’d handed in her uniform, shaken hands with Edith, the CO and the adjutant, said goodbye to all her colleagues and cycled back to the cottage. She was no longer a lady pilot. Today, she’d take the train back to London, then a taxi to her house in Hampstead. She was Mrs Alton again.

  Last night, for a few tender hours, she’d been Mrs Middleton. She and Simon had eaten in his tiny kitchen. He’d roasted a chicken.

  ‘A whole chicken, my goodness,’ she’d said. ‘You must have pulled some strings.’

  ‘I got it from William Brent. I won’t tell you what he charged. You’d faint.’

  They drank Chablis.

  ‘Where on earth did you get it?’ she asked, sipping in wonderment.

 
‘Two tins of cocoa and a packet of tea in Paris last week.’

  She told him it was a bargain.

  They hadn’t discussed any rules about how their conversation should go; they hadn’t said that some subjects were taboo. But, both of them knew that talking about the future would be painful. So, they’d avoided it. They reminisced, gossiped, chatted about how lovely an evening it was and that really they should be outside in the fresh air enjoying it. But they’d stayed where they were.

  For a while they’d stopped speaking, sat gazing at one another.

  ‘I want to take in every detail of your face,’ said Claire. ‘I want it here, inside my head, so I’ll always remember it.’

  ‘The way you are to me will never change,’ he told her. ‘This woman you are tonight is how you’ll always be.’

  She smiled. ‘It’s nice to think that there’s somewhere, even if it’s just in your head, that I’ll never age.’

  They went to bed, made love. They kept the windows open so they could hear the sound of the river just beyond the cottage garden. She hadn’t wanted to sleep. Her wish was that she should stay awake all night, feeling the closeness of him, listening to him breathe. But, she’d slept.

  At five in the morning she woke. Kissed him, got out of bed and dressed. She was at the front door when he caught up with her.

  ‘You’re going without saying goodbye.’

  ‘I just didn’t want to say it,’ she said.

  She was wearing her ordinary clothes. Today was the day she became a wife and mother again. She had wanted to just slip away.

  He told her he didn’t want to say goodbye, either. So they didn’t.

  She didn’t want to tell him she loved him. She didn’t need to. He knew. And, somehow, at this moment, it seemed overdramatic to mention it.

  Claire did what Mrs Alton would do. She reached out, took Simon’s hand and shook it. ‘It’s been lovely knowing you.’

  She’d kissed his cheek, walked down the path and not looked back. If she had, she’d have run to him, held him and asked him to run away with her, to start a new life somewhere they weren’t known. That was not the sort of thing Mrs Alton did.

  At ten o’clock she picked up her bag, left the key to the cottage on the table in the hall, shut the door and walked up to the bus stop. Five hours later, she was home.

  She stood at the front door, listening to the house. It still had the same creaks and whispers where the draught shifted under the living-room door. It smelled musty.

  She hung her coat on the hook by the front door, and set to. Moving from room to room, she peeled the tape from the windows. ‘They’ll need a wash,’ she said. Then she opened them, letting in fresh air. She took the dust covers from the furniture, folded them and stashed them in the cupboard under the stairs. She swept the kitchen floor, dusted, ran the taps till the water was clear. She gathered some flowers from the garden, arranged them in vases that she placed in the hall, the living room and the kitchen. After that, she took her basket and went to the shops to see what food she could buy.

  On the way, she met neighbours who waved and smiled. ‘Lovely to see you back, Mrs Alton.’

  ‘Lovely to be back!’ she called.

  Two days later, Richard came home. There had been no word that he was coming, he just turned up. Claire had been in the kitchen, heard the front door opening and had come to see who it was.

  There was a tiny slice of a moment when she didn’t recognise him. He was thin, emaciated. His clothes hung loose, his face was gaunt, yellowed, tense. He said hello.

  ‘Richard,’ she said. She rushed to hold him. He leaned into her, head against her. Said he was home.

  She led him into the living room, sat him by the fire. Stood holding his hand. She wanted to ask how he was, but, really, that seemed stupid. She could see he wasn’t well.

  ‘Was it awful?’ she said.

  ‘Not too bad,’ which meant it was truly awful. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Missing you,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  But he held on to her hand. ‘Not just yet. I want to look at you.’

  He asked what she’d been up to.

  ‘Flying,’ she said. ‘I got a job delivering planes from the factories to the airbases.’

  She thought he’d be appalled. He hated women working.

  But he said, ‘Doing your bit, eh? Good girl.’

  Then he got up, put his arm round her and suggested they put the kettle on together.

  They went to bed early. Lay side by side in the dark, hardly moving. ‘We’ve gone all shy with one another,’ she said. She reached out, took his hand and kissed it. When they made love, it was tenderly quiet. They fumbled. It reminded Claire of how it had been years ago when they were newly-weds. Afterwards, they barely spoke.

  The arguments started two days later. He had been following Claire around the house, standing silently watching her as she prepared supper or dusted the dresser. When he followed her to the loo, she gently put her hand on his chest and said, ‘Please, there are some things I prefer to do alone.’ He nodded. But when she emerged, he was at the door waiting for her.

  She tried to be cheery. Kept smiling, put a lilt into her voice. He told her she was being bossy. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you, but you’re taking charge of everything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘You’re acting like this is your house and I’m some sort of invalid guest.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You bloody are.’

  She walked from the room.

  Later, when a light bulb needed replacing, she fetched a new one from the cupboard. He snatched it from her, said he could do it. But, he’d forgotten how hot the dead bulb could be and dropped it, shouting in pain. She led him to the kitchen and put the burned hand under the cold tap. ‘I’m not a child. I don’t need mothering,’ he said. Claire silently picked up a dustpan and brush and went to sweep up the broken glass.

  He spotted her in the garden, mowing the lawn and stormed out. ‘That’s my job. I can do that.’ She handed over the mower. He worked for ten minutes before sitting down on the garden seat, panting and mopping his brow on his sleeve. ‘The grass is too damp for cutting.’ But she took over. He shouted at her to leave it. ‘I am perfectly capable of cutting the grass without help.’ She left him to it.

  Two hours later he limped into the kitchen, drenched with sweat. ‘Told you I could do it.’

  They argued about the food she cooked. ‘You know I hate liver.’

  ‘It’s all I could get. Besides it’s good for you. It’ll build you up.’

  ‘I don’t need building up. And I’ve told you before, I don’t need mothering.’

  They argued about where she put his shirts once they’d been ironed. ‘I like them hung up, not folded and put in a drawer.’

  He told her to stop singing as she washed the dishes. ‘It’s annoying me.’ He drank too much whisky. He hoarded food.

  ‘You don’t need to do that any more,’ she said after she found a lump of cheese under his pillow. ‘You don’t need to save it to barter with the guards. There are no guards.’

  He told her to shut up. ‘You don’t know what it was like.’

  ‘Well, how can I know? You won’t talk about it.’

  ‘Bugger off,’ he said.

  And still they made quietly tender love in bed most nights.

  One night, as they lay waiting for sleep, he took her hand. ‘We made it,’ he said. ‘We had a whole day without yelling at one another.’

  ‘So we did,’ she said.

  He told her he thought they were going to be fine.

  In two weeks, Claire would go to Southampton to meet the boat that two people had boarded in South Africa. Nell and Oliver had been children when they left. They were on their way to being grown up now. Claire knew she’d be confronted by a young woman and a young man she hardly knew. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t take to their new life. There wou
ld be tantrums, fights, comparisons with their life in South Africa. They’d hate the food. They’d hate the weather.

  She wondered how long it would take before they became a family again. Sometimes she thought months, sometimes she thought years. Sometimes she thought that it might never happen. When she thought that, she’d shake her head and scold herself for being so pessimistic. After all, she was Mrs Alton, and if there was one thing that Mrs Alton could do, it was cope.

  Chapter Forty-five

  To Think, We Used to Be Beautiful

  THE STILLNESS DISTURBED Julia. The cottage had become silent. Izzy was living at Mrs Brent’s and Claire had gone back to London. There was nobody around when Julia got up in the morning, nobody around when she got home at night. All that, and there was never anything to eat.

  Thinking Julia went out every night, and very anxious to get home to see Izzy’s baby, Mrs Brent never left any food. Julia ate at the Golden Mallard, sitting on her own at a table by the window, a book open beside her plate. She liked to give the impression that she’d chosen not to have a companion. Of course, she hadn’t.

  The war was barely over, but already things had changed. People had moved on. They’d left the area, got postings elsewhere, or they’d been demobbed and gone home, back to their old lives. The base was quiet now. A lot of the pilots had left. The mess was half-empty in the morning. Face it, Julia said to herself, it’s not the same any more.

  Lying in bed at night, Julia considered her situation. Soon, Izzy would be back living here. And, though she didn’t really mind babies, she didn’t feel enthused about living with one. In the world she came from, babies were removed from society. They might be brought into the drawing room for visitors to examine, coo over, delight at, but they’d be taken away before they disgraced themselves by being sick or doing something even more disgusting.

  Here in the cottage, the baby would be omnipresent. It would cry, there would be baby things lying about the place, it would keep her awake at night – and she was a person who liked her beauty sleep. There would be nappies drying in the kitchen, bibs and mushy food, toys. And there it would be, a baby, reminding her every time she saw it that she didn’t have a child, and would never be able to have one with the man she had loved. It was time to go back to London.