by Lilian Harry
‘Yes, it is. I’ve got to talk to someone or I’ll go mad.’ He bit his lip and then said, ‘And that’s the real problem, you see. I think – I think that if I marry May, my mother,’ his voice shook but he took a deep breath and forced it under control, ‘my mother will go mad.’
Alison sat quite still, feeling the shock drain all colour from her face. ‘Going mad’ was an expression a lot of people used lightly, but Ben’s face and the tone of his voice told her that he was using it in its real sense. For a moment or two, she felt sick.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ben groaned. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It sounds dreadful. I should have said she’d have a breakdown – the words Dad used. It doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s what he meant, I know. He really thinks she’s losing her mind, and if I go ahead with this there’ll be nothing anyone can do to help.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ Alison said at last. ‘Why should it upset her so much? She doesn’t even know May. Is it because she’s just an ordinary country girl?’
‘No, it’s nothing like that – I don’t think it can be, anyway. She’d be perfectly happy if it was Jeanie – that’s another problem, you see.’ He explained about Jeanie and Hope. ‘It never occurred to me that Jeanie might have any ideas like that, or that Ma might either. But apparently she’s got it into her head that Jeanie’s like a daughter to her now and the best way to keep her in the family would be for me to marry her. Hearing about May seemed to her like a betrayal, I suppose.’
‘Why is she like this?’ Alison asked. ‘Is it just because of your brother, or has she always suffered from nerves?’
‘No, she’s always been wonderfully calm and strong. She never seemed to lose her temper or get really angry about anything, and we could always go to her with our troubles. So did most of the village.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw how she’s changed. I mean, when Peter died of course she was grief-stricken – we all were – but we expected her to get over it. As much as you ever do,’ he added, glancing at Hughie. ‘I mean, I know losing a child must be the worst thing that can happen to a mother, but so many people do these days and they do seem to get back to themselves after a while. But Ma – it’s as if she’s got stuck and she can’t get out. And when I told her about May, it made her worse, not better. Dad thinks it could tip her right over the edge.’
‘Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry.’ Alison thought for a few moments. ‘So what are you going to do? Are you going to wait?’
‘Well, I’ve got to, haven’t I? I’m not twenty-one yet, so I couldn’t get married anyway without their permission, and Dad won’t give it to me. I can’t really blame him. He’s got to think of Ma. But it’s my life too – and how long am I going to have to wait? How long have I got?’
‘Ben …’
‘Don’t tell me not to talk like that!’ he said savagely. ‘You know as well as I do that I’m only safe while I’m on the ground. I could get killed any night. And we both know there’s something big coming up – the Invasion. It’ll be all hell let loose then, and none of us—’ He caught her expression and stopped abruptly. ‘Oh, God. I shouldn’t be talking like this, should I, especially to you! I’m sorry. Maybe I’d better go.’ He began to get up.
‘No!’ Alison put out a hand to stop him. ‘No, Ben, don’t go. You’re absolutely right. We all know what can happen. We just have to live with it, put it out of our minds.’ At that moment, an aeroplane roared overhead as it came in to land at the airfield less than a quarter of a mile away. ‘As much as we can,’ she added wryly.
Ben gave a rather twisted grin. ‘As you say – as much as we can.’ He sat down again. ‘Sorry, Alison, I just get a bit het up over it all. I want to marry her now, you see – as soon as possible – because we don’t know what’s going to happen next. I tell you what, if I hadn’t needed my parents’ permission I’d have married her first and then told them. Though God knows what that would have done to my mother,’ he ended gloomily. ‘Oh, hell – sorry, Alison – I just don’t know what to do.’
‘What does May say about it?’ Alison asked. ‘I can’t believe she’d want your mother upset.’
‘No, she wouldn’t. And that’s the other problem. You see, I haven’t actually asked her yet. Oh, she knows – I’ve told her I want to spend the rest of my life with her, but I haven’t actually asked her to marry me. Not in so many words. I was going to do it when I came back, with the form filled in to say that I could. Then all I’d have had to do would be to persuade her and her parents. You see, I know they like me but I’m afraid they think that – that she’ll be marrying out of her station. Not that I care tuppence about that!’ he burst out. ‘May’s the best girl I’ve ever met. There’ll never be anyone else for me.’ His shoulders slumped again. ‘But how can I ask her now? I’d have to tell her about my mother. I can’t get married knowing that it would destroy her. And May might even say we’d better forget each other altogether. I couldn’t bear that, Alison. I really couldn’t bear it.’
He leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with both hands. Alison gazed at him, pity welling up in her breast. She could almost feel the turmoil in his mind, the violent swinging of his thoughts from one extreme to the other. The passionate commitment he obviously felt towards May, the overpowering desire to marry her at the first possible moment; all countered by the inescapable obligation towards his own mother. How could he ever live at peace with himself if he knew that his actions had driven her beyond reason?
‘I think you ought to talk to May, all the same,’ she said at last. ‘I know you risk losing her, but at the moment she’s frightened of losing you. I don’t know what you’re going to do about it all – I can’t really see that you can do anything but wait – but you really ought to have things straight between you.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think you’re right.’ He lifted his face from his hands. ‘What do you mean, she’s frightened of losing me? Has she talked to you about it?’
‘Yes,’ Alison said, hoping she wasn’t betraying May’s confidence. ‘I can’t tell you exactly what she said, but she knows there’s something bothering you and she’s afraid you may have changed your mind. That’s really all I can tell you.’
‘Afraid I’ve changed my mind!’ he exclaimed. ‘My God, that’s the last thing I’d do. I tell you, Alison, if I lost May now and never saw her again, I’d never look at another woman. Never!’
Alison saw the expression in his eyes and knew that he meant it. She knew, also, that plenty of other young men – and women – had said just the same, and then some time later found that they could love someone else after all. But this wasn’t the time to tell Ben that. He wouldn’t believe her anyway.
‘Talk to May,’ she said quietly, finishing her coffee. ‘Go and find her, and talk to her. She deserves to know the truth, and if I know May as well as I think I do, she’ll be willing to wait for you. And if not – well, it’s got to be resolved one way or another, hasn’t it? You can’t go on like this for ever.’
‘No, I can’t. And I don’t want her upset either.’ He sighed deeply and rose to his feet, and this time Alison didn’t try to prevent him. ‘She’ll be on her way home now, won’t she? I’ll go to meet her. I don’t have to be back at the airfield until four. We’ve got time for a good talk.’
Alison struggled to her feet. She opened her mouth to speak, then turned her head slightly, sniffing the air. They stared at each other and the same thought struck them both at once.
‘The pasties!’ she exclaimed, and pushed through to the kitchen. ‘Oh, thank goodness – just in time!’ She slid the tray of golden-brown crescents of bulging, savoury-smelling pastry out of the oven. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay and have one?’
Ben grinned. ‘No, thanks. They look marvellous, but I think, on the whole, I’d rather meet May.’ He reached out and touched her awkwardly on the arm. ‘Thanks, Alison. Thanks a lot.’
He squeezed his way pas
t the coats and mackintoshes hung along the passageway and let himself out of the front door. Alison watched it close behind him, then set the tray of pasties on the wire rack she had put ready on the kitchen table.
I hope I gave him the right advice, she thought. I hope I haven’t made things worse.
Chapter Twenty-One
There was no time for Alison to worry too much about Ben, for that afternoon she had another visitor. As she cleared away the lunch dishes and put the rest of the pasties into the meat safe to keep cool, she heard a knock at the door and opened it to find Stefan on the step.
‘Stefan! Come in. You should have come earlier – I made pasties and there were far too many. I suppose you’re not hungry now?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘I had lunch in the mess. Lamb chops.’
‘Oh, far better than you’d have got here! Come and sit down. I was just going to make a cup of tea – you’ll have one, won’t you?’
‘Always the cup of tea,’ he said. ‘Yes, please. But let me make it. You sit down and rest. And how is this little man today, hm?’ He rubbed Hughie’s fair hair.
‘Have you come to build a castle?’ Hughie asked, and the Pole laughed.
‘Yes, I will build castle with you. Now, you make your mother sit down. She needs rest. Put up her feet.’ He guided them gently into the front room where Alison sank gratefully on to the sofa, then went out to the kitchen.
‘I like Uncle Stefan,’ Hughie observed, getting out his box of coloured wooden bricks. ‘He builds good castles. And he plays nice music, too.’
‘He does.’ Alison leaned her head back and closed her eyes, listening to the small sounds Stefan made as he moved about the kitchen, putting on the kettle, getting cups and saucers out of the cupboard, opening the back door to fetch the milk. He knows where everything is, she thought with a small shock, realising that this showed how often he had come to see her in the past few months. He seemed as much at home in the house as Andrew himself. More so, sometimes, during those late winter afternoons when he sat at the piano and played as the sky grew dark and the room was lit only by the firelight.
He came into the room bearing a tray with the teapot, a small jug of milk and the cups and saucers. He had brought Hughie’s own mug as well, and had remembered the bowl of sugar-lumps. He set it all down on the low table by the sofa.
‘Thank you,’ Alison said, opening her eyes. ‘What a treat, to be waited on.’
‘Doesn’t Andrew wait on you?’
‘Oh yes, of course he does, when he’s at home. But you know how busy he is – and then when he’s here, he’s tired. And I like to do things for him. It’s my job!’ She smiled at the tall Polish pilot. ‘Do sit down, Stefan. You make me feel uncomfortable, having to look up at you.’
He lowered his long body into the armchair and leaned down to pick up one of Hughie’s bricks. Every time he came, he built a different castle, and each one had its own story. Alison was never sure whether they were stories he had heard or whether he made them up, but they fascinated her almost as much as Hughie. They were true fairy tales – stories of many-turreted castles, with beautiful princesses who sat at casements brushing their long, golden hair and watching for a prince to come galloping on a white horse. Often, there was a black horse first, bearing a wicked king who would demand the princess’s hand in marriage, and the prince would have his work cut out to save her. Or perhaps the story would be about the young prince himself, little and lorn, the last of the family with no lands to rule over, sent out into the world to make his own fortune. Or maybe there was really just one story, told from every different angle, so that you understood that each person in it had his own point of view, his own story to be told. Like in life, she thought. Like Ben and his parents, and May and hers. Like me and Andrew. And Stefan …
Perhaps everyone was like the princess, waiting for her prince to arrive; or like the prince, searching the world for his fortune and for love.
‘How are you, Stefan?’ she asked, thinking of all that he had left behind in his land of fairy-tale castles, where his family had spent their summers in a cottage beside a blue lake, with forests and mountains beyond.
‘I’m well.’ His silver-grey eyes smiled at her. ‘And you? You look like a flower, Alison.’
She laughed. ‘What sort of flower? An overblown chrysanthemum? But it’s nice of you to say so, Stefan.’
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful – like a rose, breaking from its bud. Being pregnant makes all women look beautiful.’
Alison blushed. ‘I don’t feel very beautiful,’ she confessed. ‘I feel fat and ugly and cumbersome. I feel as if I’ve got old all of a sudden.’
He came out of his chair and knelt before her, clasping her hands in his. ‘Alison, you must never feel like that! Fat? No – it’s simply the child you carry, the precious life you’re keeping safe until it can live and breathe for itself. Ugly – not in the least. Beautiful, I tell you! And cumbersome – well, that will pass soon enough. It is just the way Nature has of telling you to rest, to save your energy for the child to grow strong.’
Alison felt her blush deepen. She looked down at their hands, clasped upon her knees beneath the swell of her belly. His fingers were long and slender, the hands of a musician. She remembered what he had told her about his violinist father and how he had taught them all to play an instrument. Stefan’s had been the piano.
‘Play something for me,’ she said softly. ‘Play something quiet that will remind me of peace.’
He went over to the piano and lifted the lid. As he always did, he let his fingers drift over the keys, as one might stroke a cat or caress a dog’s head in greeting. Then he sat down and began to play.
The notes were clear and quiet and Alison leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, letting the music flow across her mind, raising pictures of tranquillity – the primroses along the banks, the blossom on the trees, the call of the first cuckoo which she had heard only a day or two ago in the woods near Denham Bridge. She wondered what pictures it raised in Stefan’s mind as he played – similar scenes, of lakes and rivers and mountains at peace, the countryside where he had spent those summer holidays he had described? And when he played the fiercer music, when the chords crashed together in stormy passion, what was he seeing then? She shivered.
At last he got up, stretching his long legs, and said that he must go.
‘Come again soon,’ Alison said, looking up at him. ‘I like having you here, Stefan. And so does Hughie.’ The little boy was already protesting that Uncle Stefan should help him build another castle, tell him a new story, play some more music – anything to keep him there a few minutes longer – and she felt rather like doing the same. She smiled at him, feeling suddenly shy, and he looked down into her eyes.
‘I like coming here. I feel at peace with you, Alison. It’s as if our minds meet. It’s a rare thing to find, and a very precious one.’ He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. ‘But for now, I must go. Don’t get up. Stay there and rest.’
He ruffled Hughie’s hair and bade him look after his mother. Then he moved softly to the door and was gone. They heard the front door close and the sound of his footsteps outside.
Alison got up from her chair. She put the hand that he had kissed against her cheek and looked into the mirror, trying to see what he had seen.
Trying to see why he had called her beautiful.
Ben walked slowly along the lane. The banks were studded with primroses the size of half-crowns, with patches of purple violets like dark splashes of wine between them. He picked a bunch, arranging them in his hands and pressing their soft petals against his face so that he could inhale their scent.
Overhead, a pair of squirrels chased each other through the fresh, bright green of new beech leaves. Across the parkland of the big house where May worked three mornings a week, he could see a dozen or so deer grazing. At that moment, the airfield was unusually silent, and with no roar of engines it s
eemed as peaceful as if there were no war at all. If only it were all over, he thought. Until now, he had been driven by the need to serve his country, to fight an enemy whose wickedness still probably wasn’t wholly understood, to protect his land from the evil that had been stalking it for the past five years or more. But now, feeling himself a part of this tranquil landscape, he wanted it to be over. He wanted to settle down to a normal life with the girl he loved.
As he stood gazing over the bank at the deer, he heard footsteps coming along the lane and turned quickly, his heart thumping. In another moment, she was in sight – May, as pretty as her name, wearing a faded blue dress with white polka dots scattered over it, her arms, left bare by the short, puffed sleeves, round and smooth and already lightly tanned, her dark curls springing from her head. She saw him and stopped, her face flushing with delight, and he held out the flowers, unable for a moment to speak.
‘Ben! Whatever be you doing here?’
‘I came to meet you,’ he said, finding his voice. ‘I couldn’t wait any longer. May, we have to talk. There are things I have to tell you.’
‘Oh.’ The pleasure faded from her face and she looked wary. Her glance fell to the flowers in his hand. ‘You look as if you’m on the way to the churchyard.’
‘They’re for you.’ He held them out and she took them a little reluctantly. ‘May, what is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Don’t know yet, do I? Depends what you want to talk about.’ He could feel her withdrawal and his heart sank. I’ve made a mistake, he thought. She doesn’t feel the same after all. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to let it go any further.
‘I want to talk about us.’ He took her hand and tucked it into his arm, drawing her close, but when he bent his head towards her she turned her face aside so that his kiss fell on her cheek. ‘May, whatever’s wrong? Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
‘I’m always pleased to see you, Ben, you know that,’ she admitted. ‘But things haven’t been the same between us just lately, have they? Ever since you went home.’