A Woman's War

by S Block

  ‘Come inside, my darling. Before you catch your death.’

  Laura didn’t want to return to the house. She didn’t want to have to talk to anyone, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep now even if she wanted to. She simply wanted to stand out in the cold, alone.

  Everything has changed, and everything will remain changed. My father will remain in the ground for as long as there is ground. There’s no going back to before.

  Nevertheless, to satisfy Erica, Laura allowed her mother to steer her slowly back towards the house, where she received sympathy and condolences with a fixed, sad smile on her face for the remainder of the evening.

  Chapter 6

  ARRIVING HOME AFTER Will’s funeral, Teresa and Nick went upstairs and made love, then lay in bed for a few minutes, savouring the moments before Nick would have to get up to have a bath and get back into his uniform and return to Tabley Wood.

  ‘How many funerals have you been to since the outbreak of the war?’ Teresa asked, looking at him intently.

  ‘One is too many,’ he replied, resting his flushed chin against Teresa’s right shoulder.

  ‘Of course, but in terms of a number?’

  ‘Must we discuss this now, darling?’ he protested. ‘It’s bad enough I have to attend them, without having to quantify how many.’

  Teresa fell silent, not wanting to spoil the mood.

  He gave her a soft kiss on her still-hot cheek. Teresa’s curiosity wasn’t easily silenced.

  ‘Do you get used to them?’

  ‘Darling . . .’ Despite feeling it, Nick tried to keep any hint of genuine irritation from his voice.

  ‘You hardly talk about them so I have to try and guess the effect they have on you. I want to know if I’m guessing correctly, or if you’re constantly thinking what an insensitive cow I am for not appreciating how difficult it is for you.’

  ‘Being sent to boarding school at a young age taught me how to compartmentalise different aspects of my life,’ Nick said. ‘Especially how I felt about different things. It didn’t always pay to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve in the company of so many quite merciless boys rather skilled at exploiting weakness in others. As a consequence, I was often accused of being somewhat aloof during my adolescence. I wasn’t. But I learned to mask what I really felt. It’s never been a more useful ability than now.’

  ‘I’m the same,’ said Teresa, obliquely. ‘I’ve always admired people who aren’t as buttoned up as I am.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘But in my current position at Tabley Wood, it’s expected. I’m no use to anybody if I walk around teetering on the edge of hysteria.’

  ‘So, in answer to my question?’ Teresa persisted.

  ‘I think the more one does of anything the less it’s likely to take you by surprise. That’s how it is when I attend yet another funeral. I don’t get used to the fact that I’m attending the burial of yet another young man who should not, ordinarily, be being buried. But I have, I suppose, become familiar with how it plays out, and am prepared for the worst because I’ve often seen it.’

  Nick got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Teresa sank back into the pillow and her own thoughts.

  Men are so strange when it comes to talking about what they feel. Almost as if they are suspicious of saying what they mean most of the time. It turns every conversation into a game of cat and mouse. As if they’re under interrogation. It’s quite tiresome.

  Nick eventually returned washed and refreshed. He put on his uniform, kissed Teresa goodbye, and left the house for Tabley Wood. He would know within fifteen minutes of arriving whether or not it was likely to be a busy, intensely stressful night, or one that contained no German raids, and would allow him momentary peace of mind that none of his men would be killed or injured over the next few hours.

  Teresa lay in bed, listened to the assured purr of Nick’s car disappear into the chilly night, and felt the customary evening solitude start to creep up on her.

  In the fantasy of married life Teresa had fabricated to persuade herself that marriage to Nick would be, if not a wholly positive experience, then broadly so, she miscalculated they would spend most of their evenings together. It was a vision of married life she had lifted almost entirely from films and magazines. It was a signal failure on her part not to have factored Nick’s job into the equation. Consequently, she had been unable to predict how intensely lonely she would become when he was away. Especially at night. Much of this was the result of having spent every night in Alison Scotlock’s company for the duration of her stay as Alison’s lodger. Alison worked from home, and was always there when Teresa returned from school. They prepared their evening meal together, and ate it together. They washed up afterwards together, and settled together for the duration of the evening until it was time to retire.

  Even in the absence of romantic possibility, Teresa had always preferred the company of women to men. Yet she also craved to be seen by society as ‘normal’, as it brought the anonymity that allowed Teresa to pass without scrutiny. For that, she believed she needed to be attached to a man. In Nick, she had come across the kindest, cleverest and bravest man she had ever known. He provided her with a sense of security she felt unable to achieve any other way.

  It wasn’t as if the conversation was always scintillating. Especially towards the end, when Alison was trying to encourage me to take Nick seriously as a suitor. That became quite repetitious and irritating. Alison was never good at disguising her intentions, however benign she thought they were. But often, it was just cheering to look across the room and see another human being.

  Teresa started to wonder if she should think about getting a dog. She wondered what Nick would think of the idea.

  If I present the company of a dog as a means of making me feel less lonely in his absence, I suspect Nick will be for it. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, simply that I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am going to be lonely most days because I’ve been forced out of teaching, and most nights while the war continues. Which could be, well, who knows how long? It feels a little feeble – is that too harsh a word? Not really. It feels a little feeble to settle for the company of a four-legged substitute for a career and a husband. Nick is wonderful when he’s here, but when he’s not I’m simply wandering around empty rooms, trying to make time pass.

  How do other women manage? I read, then there is the WI, of course, but only one meeting a month, and a committee meeting every week or so. I could go over to Alison at the cottage, or invite her over here. Yet whenever I do that she develops a look in her eye that suggests I’m not taking married life seriously, and am constantly looking to return to the time when we spent our evenings together, like the two spinsters. God, it’s only been two months and I don’t know how much more of this I can bear.

  Through great effort of will, Teresa tried to stop herself thinking any more thoughts, having suddenly become self-conscious that she was turning into one of those people who talked to themselves more than was healthy.

  For a few moments, she lay staring at the ceiling trying to induce some form of meditative state, or simply sleep. Any time a conscious thought appeared to be in the process of forming she distracted herself by digging her fingernails deep into the flesh of her leg. After she had done this a few times she became curious to see what her leg looked like with these new indentations. It was not a pretty sight. The marks were deep and red. In one of his more attentive moods, Nick would certainly ask how they had come about. Clearly, this was not a productive solution to the problem.

  That lay in admitting what the real problem was.

  Teresa’s sense of isolation was genuine, but it was only part of the story. The other part was knowing that there was a solution that she dare not think about. And the more she dared not think about it, the more she wanted to.

  Teresa got out of bed and crossed to the window. Somewhere in the dark shapes of the night, not in view but behind those forms she could see, lay the cottage hospita
l, within which lay Annie, recovering from her crash injuries.

  I’m here and she’s there. It feels as if she is far away because it’s dark. But she isn’t. Not far at all. A twenty-five-minute ride. Nothing really. Though Nick wouldn’t want me to go out of the house at night like that. He worries about all the military transport haring around at the moment, not to mention the odd stray bomb. If I wasn’t married to him he wouldn’t have any thoughts about what I did at night, and I would have no thoughts about any concerns he might have. So why not – just for the moment – imagine we’re not married, and be free?

  Ever since she had kissed Annie in the hospital ward Teresa had been trying to keep the question, ‘What next?’ at bay. The kiss had felt like crossing the Rubicon. From time to time she could feel the soft warmth of Annie’s lips on her own. They were yielding, responsive but without seeming eager or greedy. In a word, the kiss had been perfect. For the first in a long time Teresa had felt she was in exactly the right place beside exactly the right person.

  Is she thinking the same thing? Annie can’t come to me. She can barely move at the moment. She has to wait to see what I’m going to do. So, what am I going to do? What I usually do? Hide? Wasn’t the kiss a statement of intent of some kind? Or just a moment of weakness? Or betrayal? Nick— Stop thinking. Stop. Thinking.

  But Teresa could not stop thinking. She had grown tired of having to prompt her husband into divulging feelings he kept to himself, like carefully nurtured secrets. Tired of being made to feel that she was prying and intrusive, when all she wanted was the kind of easy, uncomplicated sharing of thought and feeling she found in the company of women.

  Teresa experienced a sharp pang of guilt. Nick was Nick. He had never pretended to be anyone else. It was one of his most attractive qualities. He just wasn’t female, and there came a point when – however much she enjoyed Nick’s company – she yearned for female company. More precisely, she yearned for a woman. To talk to. To hold. To touch. And be touched by. However gentle Nick was, however considerate and intelligent and funny, he could never provide everything Teresa needed. He could never offer her true intimacy.

  She had no secrets from Annie. Annie knew everything about Teresa’s relationship with Nick. The same could not be said about Nick with regard to Teresa’s relationship with Annie. In her imagination, Teresa and Annie would spend time in a variety of ways, and always ended in bed together. Sharing a bed was always the endpoint of her fantasies involving Annie. Not so that she could imagine the sex they would enjoy together, though she did that too, but mostly for the intimacy she imagined they would have, woman to woman, skin on skin.

  Annie’s response to the kiss on the ward presented the possibility that Teresa need not simply imagine herself and Annie spending time together in the future. If she had interpreted Annie’s response correctly, and she was sure she had, the door was open to something more concrete than fantasy. Could Teresa walk through it? Is that what Annie was waiting for? Had Annie made all the running she could make, and now needed Teresa to demonstrate her boldness? The kiss was a beginning, but what would be the end?

  Stop thinking. For God sake, stop thinking. Just stop. Just stop.

  Teresa walked into the bathroom, washed herself, got dressed, went downstairs, put on her coat, opened the front door, pulled her bicycle away from the front wall of the house, blew out her cheeks, and set off into the blackout towards the cottage hospital.

  Chapter 7

  PAT HAD STAYED at the church far longer than she intended. She hadn’t anticipated how much she would enjoy simply being out of Joyce Cameron’s house, away from Bob, even if it was at a funeral. Funerals were social events of a kind, after all, and once feelings of sympathy had been delivered, talk had turned with others to the war and village life. When Erica asked Pat to return to her house for Will’s wake, Pat had seen no reason to decline. It was Bob’s own decision not to accompany her to offer his condolences in person, and his decision alone to return to his work. He was in no position to begrudge Pat spending a couple of hours in the company of her friends at Erica’s house.

  This was what she told herself after she finally left Erica’s, and made her way back to Joyce Cameron’s cottage. Joyce had decided to stay a little while longer, sensing an opportunity to play Great Paxford’s ‘mourner-in-chief’ before anyone from the rest of the village could assume the mantle.

  As she approached the cottage, Pat expected to hear the familiar, jarring fusillade of Bob’s fingers hammering away at his typewriter keys. But there was no sound at all coming through the windows. It was nearly half-past nine in the evening, so Pat supposed Bob must have taken himself to bed. She quietly entered the cottage, and silently removed her hat and coat and placed them beside Bob’s on the coat rack. She was so intent on not making any noise that might disturb her husband upstairs that she nearly jumped out of her skin when Bob pulled open the door to the living room and hissed, ‘Where the hell have you been?!’

  Pat was used to being ambushed by Bob, though each time took her by surprise in its own unique way.

  ‘You scared the life out of me!’ she cried, catching her breath.

  ‘Answer my question!’ he demanded.

  ‘You know where I’ve been,’ she said, trying to sound utterly reasonable in the face of Bob’s unreasonable question. ‘You saw me walk over to Erica at the church. I then went back to her house, for the wake.’

  ‘You should’ve told me,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours. I had to make my own supper.’

  Pat looked at Bob piteously. It was at times like this that she felt more hostility towards herself for being married to such a creature than towards Bob.

  ‘I would have thought it was fairly obvious that if I didn’t come straight back from church I would’ve gone back to the Campbell house with everyone else.’

  She maintained her tone of matter-of-factness, forcing Bob to choose between backing down in the face of her reasonable manner, or continue to feel slighted by her failure to show him due deference by returning for his permission to go to the wake.

  Bob gripped her wrist tightly and pulled her towards him. His face was inches from hers now, and she could smell the familiar smell of beer on his breath, confirming her suspicions that he had been drinking.

  ‘What should have been obvious to you, Patricia, is that you don’t stay out all night as if you don’t have a husband waiting for you at home.’

  His grip on her wrist tightened and Pat could feel the muscle beneath her skin crushed against the bones of her forearm. She winced with pain but continued to stare at him with defiance.

  ‘I didn’t stay out all night. Only for a few hours. You decided not to come over and offer your condolences directly. I assumed you had come back to work and that I was a free agent for the night.’

  ‘As long as you’re married to me, you are never a free agent,’ he said, spittle flying into her face. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand that no one will ever speak of you, Bob, as I heard everyone at Erica’s house speak of Will.’

  She could see in his eyes that her words were taking longer to process in his brain than if he hadn’t been drinking all evening. His grip on her wrist was like a vice, as each word registered, one after the other.

  ‘What did you say when people asked where I was?’ he demanded.

  ‘I said nothing, Bob. Because nobody asked.’

  The pain in her wrist was now excruciating. Through bitter experience, Pat knew not to try to pull away. It would trigger a rapid escalation in violence towards her. Instead, she tried to distract herself from the pain by whispering a single word to herself, over and over.

  ‘Coward. Coward. Coward . . .’

  Bob couldn’t hear what Pat was saying, but he could see her lips moving.

  ‘What? What are you saying?’

  Pat looked at him with disdain.

  ‘You wouldn’t behave like this if Joyce were here,’ she said. ‘That mak
es you a coward, Bob.’

  She could see his breathing become more laboured as he tried to work himself into a fury against the restraining force of the alcohol coursing around his system.

  ‘But she will be any moment. I could see her making the rounds outside the village hall, saying goodbye, as I left the house.’

  Bob glared at his wife for several long moments and then threw her arm back into her face with such force that her hand slammed against her nose. A few seconds later, Pat felt a dull trickle of blood from her left nostril. At that moment they both heard the sound of Joyce’s footsteps coming up the garden path towards the front door.

  ‘Sort yourself out, woman,’ he snapped. ‘Make yourself decent.’

  Pat knew this meant she was to make sure that no trace of his aggression towards her should be visible to anyone else.

  ‘Then make a pot of tea. And put some biscuits out.’

  Pat nodded passively.

  Bob looked at her coldly for several more moments before returning into the front room and slamming the door behind him. Pat slowly wiped the blood that had been accumulating above her upper lip with the back of hand and looked at the red smear.

  Bob draws my blood. Marek only ever draws my love.

  She straightened herself out, calmed herself, and hurried through to the kitchen just seconds before Joyce came into the gloomy hall.

  Chapter 8

  IN THE DAYS following Will’s funeral, his wife and daughters drifted slowly from room to room, unable to settle in any of them. It was as if in Will’s absence Laura, Kate, and Erica didn’t know how to pick up the threads of their lives. In the past, when Will might have been away at a medical conference, or visiting his parents in the south of England, he was always expected back. No routines need be disrupted. Even during Will’s last days when his presence in the world diminished hour by hour, the timetable of the house was built around him. Now Will was dead and buried the Campbell women struggled to process his permanent absence.