A Woman's War

by S Block

  ‘What did we do?’ Steph repeated a third time, determined to force Stanley to answer her question.

  Stanley looked as confused as his father. ‘You know what we did. I came upon him, camped in the woods. Chased him across the field, ran him down, fought with him on the ground—’

  Stanley’s account stopped the moment he saw his mother slowly shake her head. His confusion deepened.

  ‘We both know that’s not true. Don’t we?’

  Stan turned to his wife. ‘What do you mean it’s not true? What’s not true?’

  ‘Stanley didn’t chase the pilot across the field. Did you, Stanley?’

  Stanley’s confusion transformed into fear. ‘What’s got into you, Ma? Why’re you saying all this?’

  ‘You weren’t truthful in your account to the police, and then in your account to the reporter. I backed you up because I thought it didn’t matter . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stan asked, rising from his chair. Steph now turned to face him.

  ‘Stanley told the police and the reporter that he chased the pilot across the field and brought him down. He didn’t. The pilot chased Stanley across the field, and brought Stanley down.’

  Stan looked at his son. ‘That right?’

  Stanley didn’t understand why any of this mattered.

  ‘Stanley? Is that right?’

  Tears pricked Stanley’s eyes, and he nodded.

  ‘Then why say different?’

  Stanley looked at his parents helplessly, unable to speak.

  ‘A young lad surrounded by the war day and night,’ Steph said. ‘What’s the better story – that he fled for his life from a German pilot, screaming blue bloody murder for his mammy? Or he bravely chased a Nazi with a gun, and ran him down with his bare hands?’

  Tears rolled down the boy’s cheeks.

  ‘Why’d you have to say that?’ he said to his mother. ‘Why’d you have to say it?’

  ‘Because it’s the truth, Stanley. And I can’t carry on pretending it isn’t. I thought it didn’t matter to the police. But you said the same to the reporter, and now you’re going to have to keep saying it every time you’re asked about it. We all are.’

  ‘He changed the story to make himself look better,’ Stan said. ‘No harm done.’

  Steph looked sharply at her husband. ‘He lied, Stan. There’s the harm. I lied too. There’s more harm!’

  The telephone began to ring for a third time.

  ‘And now you’re going to have to lie.’

  ‘You backed him up. Like any mother would. And I’ll do the same, like any father. The bones of what happened doesn’t change. They make you even more heroic. You stopped a Nazi who was chasing your son. An English woman defended her son against a Nazi pilot. That’s what the story is. That’s all they’ll care about.’

  ‘I don’t care about other people. I care about us. All you bloody men talking up the glory, so lads like Stanley don’t know whether they’re coming or going.’

  The telephone stopped ringing.

  ‘But Steph, love,’ Stan pleaded, ‘it makes no difference!’

  ‘It makes a difference to me! That’s why I changed my mind about all this coming out. We’re going to have to go in front of the village and carry on lying, over and over – because people will want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. And in the great scheme of things it mightn’t matter if Stanley was chasing the pilot or the other way around. But it matters to me because we’ve lied to talk it up, and we’ll carry on because we have to, for the lad’s sake. Over and over. You’ll never have to buy a pint again, Stan. Nor you, Stanley, when you’re old enough. Stanley the hero! So much better than Stanley the terrified lad, shitting himself.

  ‘And me? The “courageous hero farmer’s wife”? I shot and killed a boy, Stan! Without warning him. In uniform, maybe. But a lad, nonetheless. Don’t think this isn’t going to follow us, because it is. It’s going to hang over us because the truth will out. Isn’t that why we brought him up the way we did, to tell the truth and have nothing to fear? Or don’t we believe that anymore, Stan? Now it suits us not to?’

  The three of them looked at one another, as the telephone started to ring for a fourth time, the sound increasingly urgent and unbearable.

  Stan could no longer stand it and crossed to the device, tore it out of the wall, and dashed it against the floor. Steph wasn’t finished.

  ‘If they find out we lied about one part of the story who’s to say they won’t start thinking we lied about all of it.’

  ‘How will they find out?’ Stanley asked quietly. ‘You said yourself, Ma – the German was the only other one there, and he’s dead.’

  Steph looked at her son and felt her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘You should’ve let me bury him in the wood and say no more about it. You should’ve let me bury it and let everything stay the same.’

  Stan crossed to his wife and took her face in his large, rough hands, and tilted it upwards so that she had nowhere else to look than into his eyes.

  ‘This is what the war does,’ he said. ‘It buggers everything up. Makes people behave out of themselves. There’s no shame in it.’ He turned to his son standing behind him. ‘There’s no shame in it, son. It carries us all along, one way or another.’

  ‘I shouldn’t’ve shot him, Stan,’ Steph said. ‘He wasn’t trying to kill Stanley. He was just trying to stop him screaming out. His hands weren’t around his throat but over his mouth. To stop the boy from drawing attention.’

  ‘Enough!’ Stan barked loudly, trying to keep his breathing under control as adrenaline started to course through him. ‘You never say that to anyone, ever.’

  Stan realised he had to take control of the situation. This is why Steph had written to him.

  ‘We say the same story with every telling, whoever’s asking. No one suspects anything different. We say the same thing over and over until everyone’s sick of hearing it and stop asking. Because we can’t go back.’

  ‘Pa!’ Stanley said. ‘Ma!’

  Steph and Stan looked over at their son, whose attention had been taken by something outside. They crossed to the window and saw a sleek black Daimler slowly making its way along the small road towards the farmhouse. Steph threaded her arm through Stan’s and gripped onto him tightly.

  ‘Who is it, Pa?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter who it is. We say the same story with every telling. Isn’t that right, Steph?’

  Steph watched the black car approach with deep foreboding.

  ‘That’s right, Stan,’ she said quietly, with heavy resignation. ‘Over and over and over . . .’

  Chapter 21

  ANNIE WAS SITTING up in her hospital bed, her eyebrows raised in mock-indignation at Teresa.

  ‘An order? Nick is in no position to give me orders. He’s RAF, I’m ATA. He has no authority over me.’

  Teresa smiled at the thought of Nick even trying to exert any kind of authority over Annie.

  ‘It’s an expression of how much he’d like you to complete your rehabilitation with us.’

  Annie’s expression turned suddenly serious. ‘Us?’

  ‘Friends,’ Teresa said firmly.

  ‘At your suggestion.’

  Teresa shook her head. ‘It was Nick’s idea,’ she said.

  This was the truth but not the entire truth. The more she considered it afterwards the happier she became that Nick had pipped her to the post – no suspicion would be attached to Teresa for inviting Annie to live with them during her final rehabilitation.

  ‘You don’t think me coming to live with you and Nick represents a risk?’ asked Annie.

  Teresa looked at Annie calmly and shook her head. ‘I don’t see why it should.’

  ‘Don’t be naive, Teresa – it doesn’t suit you. Given the way we feel about one another . . . I mean, must I spell it out?’

  Since she had kissed Annie as she lay in bed in hospital, Teresa had never attempted to repeat it, and had r
eproached herself for giving in to her impulse. She was certain she could be Annie’s friend and nothing more. It really was the best for all involved.

  ‘I thought it would be good for both of us. You would have a comfortable setting in which to recuperate, and I would have company. There are days, Annie, when I don’t speak to another soul from the moment Nick leaves for Tabley Wood at daybreak, to his return in the early hours.’

  ‘You knew what you were getting into before you married.’

  ‘I’m not asking for sympathy. When Nick’s at home it’s wonderful. But it’s not always easy to fill time when it’s just you. I hadn’t anticipated losing my job, and finding myself the domestic equivalent of being confined to barracks.’

  ‘Millions of women live the same way. The vast majority.’

  ‘It’s simply not something I ever anticipated for myself.’

  ‘You just said it was wonderful when Nick was home.’

  ‘It is. We get on very well. I imagine that as marriages go ours is wonderful. We like each other immensely—’

  ‘Well, you are streets ahead of most married couples I know. My parents loathe each other with a perverse form of passion – you’d never leave a loaded shotgun in the house for fear of what might happen.’

  Teresa wanted to end this conversation about her own marriage, and redirect it back to the matter in hand.

  ‘We’re both very fond of you, Annie. We want to help you get better as soon as possible. You and I barely know one another. I thought it could be an opportunity to properly remedy that. Become close friends.’

  Annie looked at Teresa for several moments, trying to gauge her real intention. ‘Close friends?’ She made the words sound like a joke. ‘Two weeks ago, you kissed me in this very bed. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘Of course not. But—’

  ‘You visit me nearly every day—’

  ‘Because I enjoy your company.’ Teresa felt a need to get a grip on the conversation. ‘I couldn’t betray Nick’s trust,’ she said firmly. ‘I suspect you feel the same.’

  Annie smiled for the first time in the conversation. ‘Don’t be too certain about that. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that my moral compass is distinctly erratic.’

  ‘And how do you respond to the people who say that about you?’

  ‘I tell them they’re wrong. I have a very highly developed sense of morality. If “problems” do arise it’s because that’s overruled by my passions.’

  Teresa looked hard at Annie. ‘If you came to stay with us, nothing . . . untoward . . . would happen. I simply can’t allow it.’

  ‘You sound like a schoolteacher.’

  ‘I sound like a wife.’

  ‘But you’d be tempted.’ Annie looked at Teresa and smiled. ‘I know I would be.’

  Teresa hesitated for two seconds. ‘It’s the only way it could work,’ she said.

  Though Teresa could be as tempted as the next woman to imagine something illicit and secret, she wasn’t prepared to jeopardise the respectability she had sacrificed so much for. In the cold light of day – and Teresa had many cold days, and much cold light in which to consider her situation – she realised that Annie could only come on fixed, and mutually understood terms of friendship.

  ‘I think we could become the most wonderful friends if you came to stay,’ Teresa said, underlining the point once more. ‘But of course, you may have other plans.’

  Annie did not. Once she knew she would soon be leaving hospital Annie thought she would take a guest room above a pub near Tabley Wood – a popular watering hole for pilots at the base. She thought it would do her good to be near other aviators. She subsequently realised that if she were to be told by her surgeon she could never fly again, a distinct possibility, it would in fact be agony to be in such proximity to active flyers. The only alternative to the pub was to go back to her parents’ home in Surrey, but the prospect of recuperating amid their ongoing and deeply entrenched acrimony left her in a state of dread.

  Annie accepted Teresa’s invitation on the terms offered. The calculation hadn’t taken long to make. In addition to being attracted to Teresa, she liked her enormously. Sexual gratification could be found elsewhere, if a girl knew where to look, which Annie did.

  *

  Teresa left the hospital immensely pleased with the arrangements, but the closer Annie’s arrival came, the more enthusiastic Nick was about having his old friend stay at the house while the more nervous Teresa became. Nick relished setting up the front room as a makeshift bedroom for her, moving furniture so it could be converted from a living room into a bedroom within minutes, and vice versa.

  Watching him merrily prepare for Annie’s arrival filled Teresa with a sense of foreboding.

  Why did I ask her? Why hadn’t I sat on the stupid idea until I’d come to my senses? If only I hadn’t felt so damned isolated stuck out here. If only I still had my job. If only, if only, if only. If only I was someone else entirely.

  It wasn’t that Teresa didn’t trust Annie or herself to keep to their agreement. It was the fear – no, the conviction – that Nick might eventually notice something passing between the two women that he couldn’t quite explain; a look, a gesture made unconsciously that nevertheless belied a strength of feeling that didn’t quite tally with his understanding of their relationship.

  I can be as vigilant as I like, but how can I guard against things I’m unaware of? It’s impossible.

  On the day of Annie’s arrival, Teresa was unable to relax. She tried to sit in every chair in the house, but found none allowed her to become calm. Finally, Teresa found herself standing helplessly in the front room, waiting for Nick to fetch Annie from the hospital, hands clasped in front of her to stop them trembling. She tried reassuring herself she had nothing to fear, that she and Annie would behave as agreed, and that Nick would be, in turn, too busy and too exhausted to notice any small slips that might occur.

  It will be all right. It has to be . . .

  Chapter 22

  I wonder what you’ll make of this, dear reader, because try as I might, I can’t make head nor tail of it. I’ve now been writing to you, whoever you are, for several months, so you should have a vivid impression of my marriage by now. And of my husband, admittedly as I see him (I have tried to be truthful). You know almost everything about me, because I’ve held nothing back. What would be the point? The purpose of these reports is to provide an honest portrait of life during wartime. I recognise that being honest about the way I perceive my marriage may not be the same as being accurate about it. And I suppose the point of this is that you get my perspective, my story, and that is always going to be biased in favour of the scribe.

  But I am asking you to make a judgement now, so it is important you feel able to do that. I have written previously about my affair – no – I no longer wish to call it that. An ‘affair’ reduces what it is to a sideshow, something taking place in the shadows to add a little spice to life but never directly threatening the main event. My relationship with the Czech soldier is no longer a sideshow. It is the most important relationship in my life now and in the future. We recently met and re-confirmed our commitment to be together if we each survive the war. That is possible if the Nazis don’t kill him, and if my husband – in a rage against whatever perceived slight so moves him – doesn’t manage to finish me off. If we are both still standing at the end of all this I shall leave my husband. I said it to my love, and I say the same to you. It is our stated aim. My husband knows nothing of this. He knows – as I have previously written – that I have had an ‘affair’ but assumes he has managed to stop it by intercepting any correspondence I might receive from my soldier. He hasn’t.

  This is what I want your view on. My husband has started to be pleasant towards me with what you might call ‘small acts of kindness’. Things he has never done before, or so long ago I cannot recall them. He has made me lunch. He has made me breakfast in bed. He has started to speak to me in a
calm, solicitous voice, and no longer seems to bark at me. Sometimes I glance up and find him looking at me, and he smiles warmly, like he used to when we first met. This morning he even brought me some winter flowers he had picked from the banks of the local canal. Instead of me constantly bringing him endless cups of tea to keep him going while he works, he has started to bring me tea in the morning and in the evening. He washes up the dishes after supper – something he has never done at any time during our marriage. He has even tried to ‘make love’ to me. Before, it never felt like love at all. It was a physical act of pleasure for him only. I hated it. Now, he is showing signs of consideration. I still view it as violation. The fear hasn’t gone away – it is important for you to understand this. I still fear him, because previous experience tells me this is a game of some kind, and that it will build to a horrible climax and we will return to how things were before. Why do I think this? Because this is what has always happened. Through bitter experience I have grown to believe he is incapable of change.

  But. Dear reader. But. What if he is?

  Is it possible for a man like this to change? My history with him says not. Yet, we change physically, so why not psychologically, over time? I have changed upon meeting my soldier. Is it not possible the discovery and apparent ending of that relationship has changed my husband in some way? Now he firmly believes he has me to himself once more, could he have realised how close he was to losing something he valued? I’m not even talking about ‘love’. I mean the things I do for him. He’d miss them terribly if I were not here. Has he made a calculation that to keep me he must treat me better? If not with real respect, then at least the pretence of it? Or else eventually lose me to another man.

  Or am I reading too much into the situation? Being ludicrously optimistic because my mind leaps upon any small reduction in the perpetual war of attrition he has been waging against me. Interpreting his behaviour in a way I want to see, not because that is how it is.