by Jane Bailey
But that day of grief did not end there. There was more to come. There was a visit from James Buckleigh.
38
‘There’s a phone call for you, Burrows.’
I poked my head from the pit underneath my truck the next morning, and was surprised to see Sergeant Ince herself standing in the maintenance shed. ‘Better look sharp – sounds important.’
I swung my legs up, dropped my spanner and cloth and followed her hurriedly, wiping my oily hands on my overalls.
In the office I picked up the receiver with a mixture of dread and excitement. I put it to my ear tentatively, my eyes swinging about the room as if something unexpected might follow this decision.
Sergeant Ince nodded at me to make some noise, so I said, ‘Hello?’
‘Is that you, Joy?’
It was James Buckleigh’s voice. After the initial relief that it wasn’t some hospital with bad news about Gracie, my thumping pulse began to thump even faster, as I imagined the possible causes of his personal call. I fancied him asking me on a date, right under Sergeant Ince’s stuck-up nose – a date with a pilot officer – and me still in my overalls.
‘Joy?’
I had never had a telephone call before, so I copied what I’d seen people do in films.
‘Speaking.’ I looked triumphantly at Sergeant Ince and twirled a curl around my finger.
‘Joy! Listen, I’m so sorry to bother you, only I thought you’d want to know …’
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘It’s Philip. I phoned the hospital today to see how he was, and he’s tried to … take his own life.’
‘What?’
‘Last night. He tried to commit suicide.’
‘But … how …?’
‘Overdose. He’s in the drugs wing – stupid place to put him. They’re keeping him in the same room for now, but—’
‘Is he all right? How is he? I mean—’
‘He’ll survive. He’s all right. They said he was sitting up in bed this morning.’
‘Oh, Lord. Oh …’
‘Listen, I’m going over there myself right now, and I was wondering … well, I wondered if you’d like me to call by and give you a lift.’
‘Oh!’ I was taken by surprise at the invitation: so close to my little fantasy, but not quite along the same lines. ‘I’m not sure if I can get the time off. Almost certainly not. I’ll see …’
Sergeant Ince gave me a curious nod, and James continued: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve asked your boss already. She says it’s fine so long as you’re back by four. I’m afraid I pulled rank a bit.’ He laughed then, and I chuckled too – far too vigorously – in order to impress dear Sergeant Ince, who I suddenly pictured in a gymslip with an obscure tassel hanging from her waist and carrying a lacrosse racket.
I washed my hands and face as quickly as I could, and was just in time for the Buckleigh family car, which pulled up discreetly at the end of the lane.
When I saw his one hand on the wheel I wondered how on earth he had been changing gears. ‘You shouldn’t be driving,’ I said.
‘You sound like my father.’
Then he opened his car door and came round to the passenger side where I was standing. ‘You wouldn’t do a great favour, would you? Would you drive?’
I felt hugely complimented, not only because he was acknowledging my driving skills, but because he was entrusting me with the family car. After my truck it was like stepping into a work of art. The green door clunked neatly into place, the chrome sparkled, and the floor didn’t smell of mud. I was swept back to the last time I had sat in this car, and was glad to be in the driving seat this time. So long as he didn’t think I owed him anything for this favour. If he tried anything else on I would just stop the car and get out.
By the time I sat next to James Buckleigh I had had time to think about Philip. It seemed suddenly quite obvious that he would make an attempt on his life, and I was cross with myself for not having thought of it before. I should have warned the nursing staff not to keep him on his own. They should have been alert to his depression. I was also irritated that he should so easily try to take the life I had risked my own to save. And these concerns got all jumbled up with the soft pumf sound of the leather seat as we rumbled over the lanes and the smell of polished chrome, and the proximity of James Buckleigh’s knees to my own, and my hand almost touching him as I changed gears.
Philip seemed pleased to see us for a moment or two, and then lapsed into a staring silence. James went to open the window, and after a lot of thumping about, managed to throw it up a little and let in the jabberings of a chaffinch outside.
I sat on the bed, holding his unplastered hand, and James sat on a camp chair beside him.
‘Whatever is it, Bird? Whatever’s made you feel …? Things aren’t as bad as all that, you know …’
Philip Bird flopped his face to the wall, away from both of us.
‘Philip,’ I said, ‘we’re here for you … you can talk to us.’
He sighed, but said nothing. Then the door opened, bringing with it clonking sounds from the corridor and the hospital beyond. A nurse with a starched white headdress announced: ‘Your mother’s here, Flight Sergeant Bird. Shall I send her in?’
Philip flung his head back and forth and began to groan. ‘Tell her to go away. She made me – she made me—’
James got up and went to the door. ‘I’ll go and see to things. Don’t worry, Bird. She won’t be in here unless you want her here. I’ll see to it.’
I felt oddly relieved that James had gone. I don’t know why, because Philip was no picnic party. He stopped rocking his head back and forth and started drumming his fingers on the counterpane. I think I imagined I could draw him out of himself. I thought I, Joy Burrows, could sort out all his problems with a little sensitivity and kindness. The thing was to get him talking.
‘Is it too bright for you?’
He shook his head.
‘Where were you born?’
No answer.
‘Where’s your home?’
He sneered.
‘Has your mother travelled far?’
He turned to look directly at me. ‘She hasn’t come far, and she can go back easily. I want her to go back. She’s seen me already. There’s no need. I’ll be all right, now.’
I nodded.
‘Tell her that.’
‘James is telling her now, don’t worry.’
There was a silence.
‘Buckleigh your boyfriend, is he?’
‘No.’
‘How d’you know him, then?’
‘Um … we lived nearby … I suppose. I knew his sister.’
‘Ah yes! The sister.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘No. Heard about her, though.’ He sighed deeply again. The chaffinch chattered outside and filled the space we left. At first I felt awkward, but then it seemed perfectly natural to sit there, together, saying nothing.
‘I like you,’ he said, at last. ‘I feel everything’s all right when you’re here.’
I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a plea. He let his hand reach out slightly across the bed cover. I was afraid if I let him take mine it might mean something, so I took his and folded a second hand on top, like a friendly nurse.
‘Can’t you tell me what made you so unhappy?’
He gave a sharp puff of a breath through his nostrils. ‘It’s me. It’s just who I am.’
His hand was cool and limp, and his eyes were the most pitifully unhappy ones I had ever seen.
‘Well, tell me about you.’
‘You joking?’ He managed a smile. ‘I’m trying to keep you here, not send you packing.’ I smiled, and he managed one too. ‘Rather hear about you.’
So I told him about the girls I worked with, what sort of work I did, how I knew the Buckleighs, how we used to play inside the house as children. He smiled from time to time, or nodded, but I had the impression that something else in his head
kept stealing his attention.
I felt sorry for him, alone all day with his chaffinch for company.
Then, watching him, something swept through me: a wave of grief and nausea that stopped me speaking. His fine eyes were circled in red and fixed on an invisible point in the air. There was a permanent well of unblinked tears, and the occasional sigh. I had thought myself mad, but this was insanity. Everything about him asked why he had been brought back to the land of the living, why he hadn’t been allowed to die. And seeing him there, so alive and yet so dead, made me think of Ken. I was angry with Philip for not cherishing his life, and I was angry with a world that had brought him to this, and furious that I would never have that dance with Ken, and grief-stricken that his glorious, flirtatious, vital smile had been wiped off the globe for ever.
I found I was sobbing.
Suddenly he squezed my hand hard. ‘You feel it too, don’t you?’
‘What?’
He pinned my wrist to the bed and fixed impatient eyes on mine. ‘The same way I feel about you.’ He tried to pull me towards him.
‘Please … you’re hurting me.’
I wriggled free. I got up and started to run to the door. James was just opening it with three cups of tea on a tray, and it spilt into the saucers as I dived past. I ran into the reception, took one look at Philip Bird’s mother – who raised her eyebrows at me expectantly, then frowned at my state – and ran past her, out through the double doors, down the steps, across the road and into the woods.
I didn’t stop running until I was out of breath. Then I collapsed against a tree, exhausted, and screamed and screamed and screamed until I thought my head would burst and all the songbirds stopped their singing.
39
After a while I heard him, like a distant rook, calling my name. I looked about for somewhere to hide, but felt too hot and heavy to move. I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve, but my temples were wet with sweat, and my hair stuck to my head like mud. The woods were perspiring with me, oozing little pockets of dampness underneath their leaves, and my precious lisle stockings were stuck to my legs, wringing wet, as though years of poison were seeping out through my skin. My blouse and jacket seemed made of hedgehog, and hot sharp spikes prickled my chest and back at every movement.
A nightingale gave a soft alarm call, and I waited for its song: ‘diu diu diu diu-doo-it’, but it didn’t come.
‘Joy! Joy! … Where are you?’
I crawled over to some ferns, and crouched under them, sticking to the gritty earth like a spat-out toffee.
I could hear him rustling along the path, coming closer.
‘Joy! … Talk to me.’
I was still as a stone. I’d had years of practice. I knew how to breathe so the leaves didn’t move, how to hold a shape which wouldn’t send a bird away batting its wings.
He was closing in. The rustling came closer. Twigs cracked.
‘Joy! Come on … we can drive back …’
I could hear his boots close to my ears, hear him sigh. A hand on my shoulder reaching through the ferns. ‘Joy! Whatever is the matter? I’ve been looking everywhere …’
I remained curled up and said nothing. He bent down and tried to find my face, but I couldn’t let him see it. I pressed it hard into my knees and covered the sides with my arms. Then he started to stroke me, and said nothing. I coiled up harder into my knot, and he suddenly stopped.
I still hadn’t looked at him. Everything fell silent again, except for the fluting of a blackbird above me, and the deep woodwind of two distant wood pigeons. I knew he was still there. I could feel his presence like his hand upon me. Then there was a breath drawn in, and every now and then the sound of his hand brushing the material of his uniform, the occasional creak of a boot.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It seemed a long, long time, but I was so uncomfortable it may only have been ten minutes. Even so, when I looked up there were bluetits flipping leaves over for insects, the blackbird had gone but, sitting cross-legged two yards away from me, he was still there.
I sighed. James said nothing.
‘I want to go home,’ I said.
He got up and stretched his legs. ‘You mean Woodside?’
‘No – the barracks.’
‘Why not come back to our house? You look as if you could do with a break – come and have tea or something.’
I had risen to my feet by now and every inch of me ached. I knew I was a mess. I leant my head against a tree and closed my eyes, like a child who thinks they can’t be seen if they can’t see out. ‘No – please. No.’
Then suddenly his free arm was leaning on the tree too, arching above me. ‘You can’t go back in this state.’
‘Oh God! Don’t look at me!’
I turned my head away, aware what ‘state’ I must be in.
‘I don’t mean that … I mean, you can’t go back while you’re so …’ I slapped my hands over my face. ‘Okay, I’ll close my eyes,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to look at you …’ He was right up against me now, and I could feel his thigh against mine. ‘I love the smell of you!’
Diu diu diu diu diu diu-doo-it.
The shock of lust I felt when he said this terrified me. My emotions had been jolted too much and I began to run. I ran back to the hospital, calling at him over my shoulder to leave me alone.
I walked the three miles back to the barracks, and he didn’t follow me.
40
Sergeant Ince gave me a bollocking.
‘The agreement was Pilot Officer Buckleigh would bring you back by four.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’
‘Where have you been, looking like something the cat’s brought in?’
‘With Pilot Officer Buckleigh at the hospital, ma’am.’
‘Then why has he telephoned twice to see if you’ve got back safely?’
‘I—’
‘Your last leave was cut short, wasn’t it? Getting this injured pilot back to hospital? Perhaps we should see if you can’t have a bit more leave shortly.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. But I’m all right.’
She looked me up and down, said it was not for me to decide, and dismissed me.
Dismissed, of course, is an interesting concept. To put something out of our mind. To pretend it isn’t there. To give it none of your attention so that, to all intents and purposes, it seems not to exist. I had been dismissing things all my life, but now there seemed so many things to keep in my mind I hardly knew how to cope.
Betty tried to persuade me to go out to the dance anyway, said it might cheer me up. ‘No point sticking around this dump on our own,’ she said. ‘S’not disrespectful or nothing. All Ken’s mates are going, look.’
But I refused. I sat on my camp bed and listened until the last whoop and giggle were just shrill far-off birdsong. Then I pulled the suitcase out from under my bed and lifted out the dress Gracie had made me, the dress I would have worn for Ken. Slowly, I slipped it on over my head and buttoned up the side. There was no full-length mirror so I stood on tiptoes by the mirror over the basin. I stroked my hands over the silk. A pretty lozenge-shape formed the bodice, and it had been top-stitched to within a hair’s breadth of the edge. The bust was gathered into the top two edges, descending from the point. The buttonholes were tiny and hand-stitched and as neat as factory-made ones. The collar was lined and top-stitched, the short sleeves ever so gently puffed and edged with a matching button, and inside the back of the collar my name was embroidered in dark red Sylko. My eyes welled as I thought how little I had thanked Gracie for this labour of love.
Exhausted, I was wondering where to go with this train of thought when Betty burst in.
‘Quick, quick! Get your things, you’ve got to come now!’
‘What …?’
‘There’s a man at the end of the lane asking for you – a real dish. My God, Joy, if you don’t come now, you’ll regret it. He’s a Flying Officer or Pilot Officer or something.’
; ‘Oh Christ! It’s James Buckleigh.’
‘James who? Jesus, you’re a dark horse! How d’you know him?’
I waved a hand lethargically.
‘Bloody hell, Joy! If you don’t come right this second I’m having him myself!’
I don’t know if it was Betty’s obvious attraction to him – for I hadn’t really seen him through anyone else’s eyes – or the sudden memory of my last encounter but I decided to follow her. And I didn’t want him going to Sergeant Ince and making some official meeting with me I couldn’t back out of.
Because the girls were planning on going to the pub before the dance, it was still only quarter to seven, and the lane was dappled in sunshine. Betty walked her bicycle, and I walked myself, awkwardly folding my arms as if I weren’t planning on going anywhere.
The top of the lane marked the boundary to our camp, and there he stood, half in the shadow of an old beech tree and mottled in sunlight. He had an anxious, questioning expression, as if he weren’t sure how he’d find me.
I waited until Betty had ridden off – and she certainly took her time, smirking and winking and fiddling with her dress – before I looked him full in the face. I gave a half-smile and looked away at a leafy twig that was sprouting from the smooth trunk of the beech.
‘I’m sorry.’ He looked down. ‘It was stupid of me to come this evening. I should’ve known you’d all be going out.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s just … you’re wearing a lovely … outfit.’
In a desperate bid to make it clear I hadn’t put it on for his benefit, I said stupidly, ‘I was going out, but my date had the bad manners to get himself killed.’
‘Oh, I’m … oh! … That’s terrible. I’m so sorry!’
I sighed deeply, perhaps giving the impression I didn’t care, or perhaps that I cared so much he couldn’t possibly understand. Then I instantly felt this was unfair. I watched his awkwardness from my occasional glances at him, and saw that I was being unkind. The truth was I’d felt more sorrow just now over Gracie’s dress than I had over Ken. About Ken I felt empty. It would be months, years even, before the true sadness of him hit me. And then it would be a sort of collective sorrow for the waste, so many hopeful young men humming ‘Walking my baby back home’, on the brink of tenderness that never happened. I suddenly felt sorry for James, standing there earnestly in his sling.