by S Block
The children acquitted themselves with admirable restraint when it came to the food. Despite the abundance, they seemed to have an innate comprehension of how much they could personally eat before they overdid it and threw it all up. However, all attempts at moderation went out of the window when it came to ice cream.
‘Watch this . . .’ Teresa whispered to Laura as the children began to make in-roads into the scoops of ice cream in their bowls. ‘Watch the boys.’
‘What do you mean?’ whispered Laura.
While the girls took small sips at ice cream on their spoons, in less than a minute one boy after another succumbed to the mind-numbing pain between the eyes that the too-rapid ingestion of ice-cold food induced. One by one they dropped their spoons and clasped palms to their foreheads and screwed up their eyes in temporary – though nonetheless real – pain, and emitted low moans of torment.
‘However much you tell them to go slowly,’ Teresa whispered to Laura as they watched the boys’ parents mock-scold their offspring for failing to learn from the past, ‘they can’t! They have no self-restraint whatsoever. The girls, however, have learned from experience. It always makes me smile.’
Once the food had been eaten, and the ice-cream casualties tended to and reassured, it was time for all the children to eagerly sit before Teresa – as they had done daily when she had been their teacher – and listen to a story. While Teresa was an excellent reader, what marked her out from other teachers was her unique ability to make up a story on the spot, from an assortment of components she encouraged the children to call out. From fragments of character and incident, Teresa was able to weave magnificent tales that held the children’s attention from start to finish, wrapping up with a moral flourish that left them in no doubt how life would be better with just a little application, and consideration for others.
Annie listened as attentive as any of the children as Teresa took suggestions that she tell a story about a girl who wanted to be a pilot but no one would let her, so she built her own aeroplane out of things she found around the house, in a nearby wood, and various things washed up on a nearby beach, and taught herself to fly. Teresa incorporated Annie’s recent crash, and turned it into a discreet parable about success coming through failure, and the importance of never giving up nor letting a setback stop you from later success.
‘Grit, children,’ Teresa said softly to her rapt audience of shiny eyes, ‘grit is the most important attribute. The ability to get up and try again. And again. And again. That’s what’s going to get us all through this war, mark my words.’ And each child did mark them.
By the end of the story, the young heroine was airborne once more, and flew higher than ever in her new plane, high above the clouds, where she saw other girls in their own makeshift aircraft, performing the most amazing acrobatics in perfect formation.
As Teresa brought her story to its conclusion, Laura was ushering Brian Bennett into the hall for what she hoped would be the pièce de résistance of the children’s afternoon. Brian had brought a large canvas bag with him, and waited patiently, if a little nervously, at the back of the hall, and watched the children and parents alike give Teresa a rousing round of applause as she ended her tale. Annie had tears in her eyes.
‘Whatever that woman was doing,’ Brian whispered to Laura, ‘I don’t think I can follow it.’
‘You will not only follow it, Mr Bennett,’ assured Laura with quiet certainty, ‘you will beat it hands down.’
Brian didn’t look so sure as Laura rose to gather the children for the finale of their afternoon. It was dark and cold outside. Laura asked them to put on their coats and gloves and line up by the front door. Some thought it was time to go home, and when they were told it wasn’t they became very excited and jumped up and down.
Laura and Teresa eventually calmed the children, and Laura asked Brian to come and join them, and show the children the content of his canvas bag. Despite being tired, the children’s eyes widened in expectation as Brian untied the bag’s fastenings and pulled out his beloved telescope. The children were mesmerised.
‘Now,’ said Brian, ‘we all know when Father Christmas is at his most busy, don’t we?’
Every small hand shot up. Brian surveyed the bright, eager faces and picked Noah to give the answer.
‘Christmas Eve!’ Noah declared.
‘That’s right. But what very few people know is that in the weeks before Christmas Eve, Father Christmas and his reindeer start to practise flying across the sky. After all, it’s nearly a year since they were last out, and they have to cover such great distances, so quickly, that they have to get back up to speed and sharpen their navigational skills in the days before Christmas Eve to make sure they can give all the children their presents.’
Brian looked from face to face, each was focused on him intently, as if they were being given top-secret information they had to memorise. ‘Very few people know about this. But . . . I do.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Do you know how?’
The children shook their heads in silent wonderment.
‘Because . . . I’ve seen him,’ Brian tapped his telescope gently, ‘with this.’
As one, the children’s eyes widened even more. Some gasped.
‘And today . . . you are going to see him, too.’
This time the children let out a collective gasp. Laura looked across at their parents and grinned. She knew Brian would enthral the children, as he had always kept her entertained during their long shifts together at the Observation Post. Here he was, coming up trumps, and bringing the children’s party to a wonderful conclusion.
Brian led the children out of the village hall like the Pied Piper. The snowy sky from earlier had blown through, leaving a pin-sharp clear night sky. The children watched as Brian swiftly set up the instrument on its tripod, then pointed it at the bright moon. All the parents had come out to watch, as eager as their children to find out what Brian was about to do.
‘How do you know where to look?’ asked Noah.
‘Now that, is a very good question, young man,’ replied Brian. ‘Over the years, I’ve discovered that Father Christmas likes to practise for Christmas Eve by going around and round the moon. I’ve tried to work out why, and I think it’s because it’s not too far away, and it’s bright, so he can always see where he’s going and will always end up where he started without ever needing a map.’
The adults grinned. The children nodded with utter certainty. To them, Brian’s explanation not only made perfect sense, it was the only possible explanation.
‘That’s why – if you look hard enough in the weeks before Christmas – you’ll see what almost no other human beings on Earth get to see. Father Christmas and his sleigh going around and round the moon. But of course, you won’t see him as you would if he was standing in front of you now. The moon is close to the Earth compared to the sun and the stars. But it’s still a long way away. Even with a telescope, you can only see Father Christmas as a tiny, tiny dot passing across the moon’s face. You have to look very hard. Be very patient. But eventually, all your hard work will be rewarded.’
Brian looked at the children who stared back at him as if they had just been told the most magical thing imaginable. Not one of them felt the cold, despite standing still in an almost sub-zero temperature.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘who would like to try first?’
Adult or child, every hand shot up.
And so, one by one, each child put an eye to the telescope’s eyepiece, and looked as hard as they could possibly look to see if they could make out the tiny, tiny dot passing across the face of the moon that Brian had encouraged them to seek out. And one by one, every single child claimed that they had seen Father Christmas driving his sleigh across the moon in practice for Christmas Eve!
‘That was the most brilliant thing I have ever seen,’ Annie whispered to Teresa.
Teresa agreed. ‘I’ve taught children for years. But what you just did . . . what is it you jus
t did, Mr Bennett?’
Brian smiled. ‘I didn’t do anything. The children did it all, up here,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘Think about it,’ Brian said with a sly smile. ‘Who wants to be the kid who didn’t see Father Christmas fly across the face of the moon when all your friends did?’
As parents ushered their children back into the hall, the band struck up their version of ‘Over the Rainbow’ and for one night the people of Great Paxford sank back into an almost forgotten pre-war mood of singing and dancing and sharing time and space with loved ones, friends and neighbours.
The only person unable to leave the war outside the hall for the evening was Sarah Collingborne, who had received her first letter from Adam that morning via the Red Cross since his capture at Dunkirk. It was short but very, very sweet, informing Sarah that he was well considering, and keeping his spirits up as he counted the minutes and hours until they would be reunited. He asked Sarah to tell his congregation that he was thinking of them too, and wished he could be there with them as they endured the war.
Sarah hadn’t shown the letter to anyone – not even to her sister, Frances. Savouring every stroke of Adam’s pen, she wanted to keep the feelings it generated to herself for as long as she felt it reasonable to do so.
As she sat along the wall of the hall and watched the village let its hair down, and sipped at a glass of beer, Sarah knew everyone present would be overjoyed to hear that their vicar was alive and well, albeit under German lock and key.
Yet for the moment, he was her husband, and his words were exclusively, exquisitely hers.
Chapter 25
KNOWING HOW TO be a perfect houseguest and a good patient meant Annie settled quickly into Teresa and Nick’s domestic routine. As a patient, Annie never complained about her injuries or the privations they enforced, and embraced all the advice Teresa had been given by the hospital to help Annie towards completing her recovery. Now, as a guest, Annie expressed endless gratitude for Teresa and Nick’s hospitality. Despite having limited capacity to move around, she offered to help out wherever she was able, and by the end of Annie’s first week it felt to Teresa and Nick that the house was indeed a livelier, more interesting place as a ménage a trois than when it had been just the two of them. Not that the house wasn’t lively and interesting with just her and Nick, but, as Teresa explained to Alison while they waited in line at Brindsley’s to place their Christmas orders, Annie had ‘a particular gift for bringing out the best in people’.
‘She’s very good company. She’s very inquisitive about what I might be doing, and why. And always has something interesting to say about it.’
Teresa explained that Annie made sure she never got in Teresa’s way.
‘She’s able to help prepare meals by sitting at the kitchen table in her wheelchair, and showed me some French skills she’d picked up from her time at boarding school. I’ve been able to make food that’s at least on a par with what Nick can find at the canteen at Tabley Wood. Which means he comes home more often for dinner, and we spend more time together than before.’
Teresa told Alison that Annie had also proved invaluable when Nick returned from the station late one night, following a raid. Previously, when it had only been Teresa and Nick, Teresa did her very best to stay up to talk to him about the night’s events. She often found it a struggle. Not because she didn’t care about what had happened, but because she often found it difficult to get past Nick’s suspicion that she was only asking from a sense of obligation, not because she was genuinely interested in what had happened.
In reality, while Teresa was concerned about Nick’s wellbeing in relation to his work, she did struggle with the repetitious nature of the reports he’d bring home. She simply lacked sufficient understanding to see each of them as subtly distinct to another.
As a fellow pilot, however, Annie had a direct connection to operational activity, shared many friends at Tabley Wood, and would question Nick at length about what had happened that night. They would then pore over details and silently raise a glass to pilot friends who hadn’t returned.
While Teresa could make a decent fist of going through the motions of that, she couldn’t bring the same authenticity.
Also, being from the same world, Annie could joke with Nick about things at work in a way Teresa never could; offering him a valuable opportunity to let off steam. Nick and Annie shared a similar black humour about flying and flyers, and Annie knew just how far she could push him. Teresa was never sure.
Teresa had worried that Annie would watch her carry out her domestic responsibilities with a certain degree of disparagement, but this hadn’t been the case at all. Having been shipped off to boarding school by parents who employed servants to wash and clean up after them, Annie was deeply impressed by Teresa’s diligence and attention to detail when it came to the upkeep of the house. She had initially believed this was an attempt to please Nick. But Teresa put her right on that score.
‘My mother would kill me if she came here and saw a speck of dust. It’s been drummed into me from birth.’
Attraction was a constant energy between them. Yet Teresa found herself able to pull back before anything untoward happened. They had agreed nothing of a sexual nature could happen, and each had behaved accordingly, diverting their energies into developing their friendship. They each wanted to see if they could become genuine friends, and not merely exist ‘on friendly terms’ due to their mutual association with Nick.
‘Are you all right?’ Annie would ask a minute or two later.
‘Yes,’ Teresa would reply. ‘You?’
Annie would nod, and normality would be restored.
They spent long evenings discussing their respective backgrounds, and previous lives: Teresa, growing up in urban Liverpool where being attracted to other women was a social curse; Annie, growing up in rural Sussex with fields and horses, and then at school in Dorset, where having discreet relationships with other girls passed without comment.
Where Teresa’s family life had been close and loving, Annie’s had been drained of parental love, her childhood enveloped in a cloud of bitterness between her mother and father, prompting Annie to become emotionally self-reliant at an early age.
The conscious suppression of their mutual attraction was additionally aided by the fact that Annie was still recovering from serious injuries, and required a great deal of looking after. The sense that it would be entirely inappropriate for anything beyond a form of medical care hung over them. Annie would tire easily, requesting Teresa read to her from whichever book she had on the go when she could no longer keep her own eyes upon the page. Teresa was happy to oblige, as it reminded her of her happiest times at school, when she would animatedly read to her rapt class.
If there was shopping to be done, Annie would ask Teresa to push her into the village in her wheelchair.
Taken together, Teresa estimated that Annie’s presence in the house nearly doubled her workload, which left her too tired to think errant thoughts. In truth, she always loved to be kept busy, and she loved the company she had been missing since becoming married. Furthermore, she could discern Annie’s recovery by the day, and felt a genuine friendship developing between them. It all left her with a re-discovered sense of accomplishment she had lost when forced out of her post at the village school.
I can do this. I can be in control of myself. I can see temptation for the destructive force it is, and turn a different face to it. I can be a good friend to Annie and a good wife to Nick. The two don’t have to be irreconcilable.
Over supper one evening, Teresa looked up at Annie and said, ‘I like this friendship lark, don’t you?’
Annie laughed and nodded. ‘Very much.’
Teresa lifted her glass of wine in a mock-toast. ‘To friendship,’ she solemnly declared.
Annie followed suit. ‘To friendship. Long may it last. In all its forms.’
Teresa smiled broadly and watched Annie continue to eat. Behind her smile she wonder
ed what Annie had meant by ‘in all its forms’. She resisted the temptation to ask for clarification, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie. She silently patted herself on the back for the way everything had worked out between them, and by association, with Nick.
It is possible to be around someone one is attracted to without acting on those feelings. I’m not a slave to my emotions, or my libido. I can simply be ‘a friend’, and nothing more.
Teresa ate on, feeling for perhaps the first time in a long, long while that she had everything under control.
Chapter 26
WHENEVER BOB PREVIOUSLY expressed a desire to improve his behaviour towards Pat, she applied a single measure of his apparent sincerity: how long would it last?
Invariably, the answer was ‘not very long at all’. His resolve almost always broke within a few days or weeks when a new slight struck him, or anxieties bubbled up from within. A rejection letter from a publishing house or newspaper always darkened his mood. A sudden attack of writer’s block condemned him to hours of self-destructive recrimination. An attack of insecurity about the quality of his work, or the lack of respect he received from Pat triggered an outburst towards his wife.
When it happened – whatever it happened to be – Bob’s capacity to maintain his conviction that he wanted to treat Pat better crumbled, and his dormant resentment would flare up once more. As a consequence, Pat was as mistrustful of his declarations of reform as the wife of a career alcoholic.
Yet, Pat had never seen Bob break down and actually cry real tears of apparent remorse before, and she wondered if this act represented a deeper, more meaningful feeling. Could it mean this outbreak of repentance would last longer than previously? Or even, for good? It was almost certainly too much to hope for.
Rather than wait for time to reveal that Bob would be unable to sustain his new state of kindness towards her, she decided to take control of the situation and confront Bob head on about what had taken place in their bedroom. She chose her moment carefully, while Joyce was out visiting a friend. With her absent, there would be no reason for Bob to hold back. Pat wouldn’t enjoy the experience, but it would at least give her greater clarity on where she currently stood.