The house next door could have been at the end of the street, so far apart were we. In fact I knew more of Miss Spiers at the top end and the Campbells at the bottom end than I did of the Patter- sons. But it was of Mrs. Patterson I thought when I wanted someone to stay with Constance.
When I knocked at her door and made my request she did not seem in any way surprised and said, "Yes, of course, Christine, I'll see to the baim. Just let me know when you want to get away."
By asking this favour of her I had broken down the barriers of years, and I think that she was pleased. She took it, anyway, as if it had been a daily occurrence that I should ask her to come into our house.
I told her there might not be any necessity for it. I was expecting a friend and if she didn't turn up then I'd have to go and see her as she might be ill. How easily the stories come when the necessity arises, and you dont think of them as lies. The arrangement was that I was to knock on the wall if I wanted her.
At eight o'clock, my hat and coat already on, I knocked on the wall and Mrs. Patterson came in immediately, and so nice was she that her eyes did not roam around the place to see how it was fixed, but she sat down by the fire with her knitting and said, "Don't hurry, Christine." Even with anxiety rending my body I could spare a thought to think, "She's nice."
I liked her. For over twenty years she had been next door and I dont think I had given her more than a passing thought. And now I knew that of all the women in the street I liked Airs. Patterson. I took my torch and said, "I won't be long, not more than an hour."
I was not used to being out in the black-out and, apart from the blackness which made the roads unfamiliar, I had the men to contend with. When I reached the High Street, time after time a light was flashed into my face and an invitation given to me. The first time it happened I ran, the second time I side-stepped the man. He was in uniform. The third time wasn't so easy. There were three of them abreast and they were laughing, and as I dodged off the pavement they dodged, too, this way and that. And then in desperation I yelled, and as they dispersed I heard one exclaim as if in amazement, "Struth!"
Three times I lost my way, but finally I came to the passage leading to the bar. When at last I pushed open the door and went round the black-out curtains and into the saloon, I stood blinking and dazed for a moment. I could not recognize the room that I had visited a few days ago. All the seats were occupied, people were even standing round the walls, and all the men were in uniform, R.
A.
F.
uniform, and I saw at a glance they were all officers. It did not take more than a second to assure me that Martin was not there, and I told my self I had known he wouldn't be. If he could have got off he would have come to me at the house, perhaps at this very minute he was there.
This thought brought a flurry to my mind. Why had I not told Mrs.
Patterson the truth? Then the bar man squeezed past me. He was the man who had served us the other day, and I touched his arm and asked,
"Have you a minute? Has Flight-Lieutenant Fonyere been in?"
The man screwed up his eyes and said, "Fonyere? I dont seem to know anybody of that name, miss. But just a minute, I'll be back in a tick."
He went into the saloon with a tray, and I walked past the door and stood against the wall, and from where I stood I could see into the bar. It, too, was packed, but there, right at the front of the counter, was Tommy, and the sight of him made me draw farther back along the passage.
When the barman returned he said, "Now, miss, Fonyere you said, that was the name, wasn't it?"
"Yes," I said.
"Flight-Lieutenant Fonyere. We were in the other day.
Perhaps you dont remember. " He looked over his shoulder towards the saloon and said, " Yes, yes I do now. "
"I... I had gin, remember?"
He gave a little laugh.
"I wouldn't remember you by your drink, miss I sell some gins in a day, when we have it but I remember you all right. I think though you're mistaken about the name. That officer's name was Belling. He was Flight- Lieutenant Belling."
"But his name's Fonyere."
"Well it could be double-barrelled, miss."
"Yes, yes perhaps. But has he been in this evening?"
"No, I haven't seen him since he was in with you, miss. He's not a regular here. Why not try The Crown in the High Street? A lot of them go there. I've got to go now."
"Wait. That man," I pointed through to the bar.
"Mr. Tyler. Will you tell him that he's wanted outside for a minute, please?"
The man looked at me it was like a sly dig and if I had been capable of thinking of anything but seeing Martin at that moment my thoughts would have made me blush. Muttering "Thank you," I went out into the street and along to the bar door, my torch all ready to shine on it when it opened.
It was evident from Tommy's face that the request for his presence outside had caused him some surprise, but as soon as I spoke he said,
"Why, Christine, what are you doing up here?"
"I just wanted a word with you, Tommy."
"Well, come on in and have a drink instead of standing out here in the dark."
"No, thanks. Tommy, if you dont mind I won't come in. I just want to ask you something. You remember the other morning when you were talking to that officer?"
He did not answer, and I went on, "I just wondered if you had seen him the day?"
Still he made no reply, and I said quickly, "Don't you think me awful.
Tommy. We are friends . we were friends before the war. We had lost sight of each other until . until that minute when I saw him talking to you. "
I heard Tommy clear his throat, and then he said quietly, "Come on in and have a drink. Not in the bar. We'll go in the other room."
"No, thanks."
*I think you'd better. "
There was something in his tone that meant much more than the words he spoke, and when his hand came on my arm I allowed him to lead me a few steps down the street and through the door and into the Commercial Room. This room, too, I saw was full, but here they were not all officers, but a mixture of civilians and uniformed men and women. And Tommy, pushing his way through to a corner where there were a couple of spare seats near the wall, said, "What do you drink?"
"Gin," I said.
"Gin it is." I watched him make his way to a narrow counter, which I guessed divided this room from the main bar. And when he came and placed the drink before me, he said, "I didn't expect to be able to get a gin but your luck's in." As I held the glass in my hands he said,
"Chin up."
I did not drink politely but finished it at one go, every drop, and when I placed the glass on the table. Tommy, looking straight at me, said, "I dont know anything about your business, lass, or what was between you and him, but I've got some bad news for you."
My fingers were tight round the tubby little glass and his hand came out and, taking it from me, he moved it across the table. Then, putting his hand over mine, he said, "He got his packet Wednesday afternoon."
I saw the people in the room quite clearly. There were several groups all talking and laughing, and one fellow in the far corner was singing.
He was imitating a popular crooner and the girl with him was covering her face and laughing.
"Now look. Look, pull yourself together, this is happening every day."
All the voices in the room seemed very faint. Then above them I heard Tommy saying, "And somebody else will be missing him the night. You shouldn't forget that, lass."
I was looking at him and he was looking at the table, and I heard my voice repeating, "Somebody else? There was nobody else. He had nobody but me."
"Aye, well, it's nice for you to think that, all lasses do, and go on thinking it if it's any comfort to you, but, nevertheless, he had a wife and a couple of hairns."
"You're lying." My words were slow and my voice was heavy, deep and accusing, and I knew that I hated this man who was sitting looking away
from me more than I did Don Dowling.
"I'm not lying, Christine. The Flight-Looey was married. His wife is living in Littleborough with her father. She's got quite a name in the W.V.S. in these parts. The hairns are evacuated some place, so I understand. Her family's well known, she's Colonel Findlay's daughter."
"No! no!" I smacked away his hand as it came to comfort me again. It was the same action that Constance would use when in a tantrum and wanting her own way. Again I said, "No, it's not true. I dont believe you."
Although I had not moved from the seat I knew I was backing away from him, backing away from the room, backing away from all he had told me, all the terrible reality of the moment, reality and truth. For in a section of my mind I was seeing it all now, the whole jig-saw. But I wasn't controlled by that section, I was controlled by my feelings.
This agony, this love and despair, and the knowledge of the torturous years ahead, the empty years into which I would be unable to bring any man to fill the gap Martin had left. The section was saying, "You must have known this, you must have known there could be nothing between you and him, not really, other than a kept woman." And I cried at it, "No, I didn't," but it said, "You did. And it's a fact anyway, so face it.
He never wanted to come up to the house, and when he did he wasn't for staying, it was you."
"It wasn't," I yelled back, 'he did want to stay. He loved me, I know he loved me. "
"If he had a wife he must have also loved her," the voice insisted.
"Shut up! shut up! shut your big mouth. Go to hell, you ...!" God God. That wasn't me, I never even thought swear words. Oh, dont make me sick. Come alive. Listen to what Tommy's saying. "I can't, God Almighty, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, dont let it be true."
"Look, lass, take a pull at yourself. I'll get you another drink."
"Shut up! shut up!" I was saying it, yelling it. The people in the room were still clear, so clear that their outlines were sharply defined as if in light. But I wasn't concerned with them. I was concerned with Tommy and his lies.
"It isn't true, it isn't true. Shut up! shut up!"
Everybody was looking at me now, and my voice alone was filling the room, it was packing every corner. I made some effort to stop it, but when a woman took hold of my arm I screamed at her, and when Tommy's arms came about me I struck out with both my feet and my hands, and then the scream lifted me straight off the ground and I floated in the air. For a moment of time, so small a second would have been long in comparison, I felt the return of the ecstatic feeling I used to have as a child when I jumped in the air, and I screamed at it to "Go away!
go away! " and then there was nothing.,..
I knew I was waking up, and as always when I had something unpleasant to face in the day I tried to hang on to sleep. But this was a different hanging on, a different sleep. It was deeper, and I was willing myself to die in it, yet not really aware of the reason why I wanted to die; but when, with the sureness of an incoming wave, awareness gradually forced itself to the surface of my mind I groaned,
"Oh God! Oh God!" My eyelids lifted and there was Dad sitting looking at me. It was daylight and I was in a strange room. I put out my hands and gripped his as I cried, "Oh, Dad!"
"Now, lass, take it easy, you're all right."
"Oh, Dad! What am I going to do?" I was asking him this question and he did not know what I was talking about. So he stroked back my hair and said, "Now take it easy, take it easy."
I pulled myself up in the bed and looked round the room and asked,
"Where am I ?"
"Now, you're all right." He was patting my shoulder.
"You remember Mollie, you know Mollie?" He was smiling and talking to me as if I was a child who had to be reminded of something ordinary to pacify her.
"Yes. Yes, of course I know Mollie."
"You took bad and she happened to come along at the time and took you home. Then she sent a note up to the house and I got it when I came in."
My mind was strangely numb. Although it told me that Martin was dead and he had a wife and two children, it did not seem to be real, not real enough to cause me pain, for after the moment of waking and realization, I had an odd, strange feeling of being shut off from myself. I was two people, one of me held my head and the other my heart, and the part with my heart had no feeling. I had an urge to use the part with my head, so I got up, pulling the eiderdown around me.
Then gently pushing Dad to one side, I said, "I must go home. There's the child."
"She's all right. She's in with Aunt Phyllis."
Aunt Phyllis meant Don.
"Where's my clothes?"
"Now look, there's no hurry. I'm going in the other room. Mollie will be back in a minute, she's just slipped out to get something. There's your things there." He pointed to a chair.
"Now take it easy." He patted my shoulder and went out, and I grabbed my things and pulled off my nightie, but as I did so, I realized it was not my nightie. I never had a nightie like this, this was silky and soft and frail, but much too short for me. I threw it on the bed, and within a few minutes I was dressed. As I picked up my coat and hat the door opened and Mollie came in.
"Feeling better?" She spoke as if there were no years between, no years when we had not been close friends.
"Yes... yes, thanks Mollie, I'm better."
"Look, there's no hurry."
"I've got to get home, there's the child. But but thanks, Mollie."
Ignoring the thanks, Mollie said, "Well if you're bent on goin' I'll get somebody to take you, but come and have a wash and a bite of breakfast."
"No, thanks. No, thanks. I'll have a wash, that's all."
"You'll have a cup of tea. Come on."
Her briskness drew me into the other room, which I saw was a sitting-room, and through it to the kitchen where there was a modem sink with hot and cold water. There I washed my face and hands, and when I came back into the room she handed me a cup of tea, and another to Dad, saying, "By the time you've drunk that I'll have a jeep at the door." She had hardly finished speaking before she went out, and it would seem that she was as good as her word for a few minutes later she came back saying, "He'll be here in a minute, it's a friend of mine.
He'll run you home."
When I heard the car pull up outside the house I got quickly to my feet, and Dad, taking me by the arm as one did a patient just coming out of hospital, led me on to the landing and down the stairs and into the street, Mollie, coming behind us, nodded towards the driver and said, "This is Joe."
The man nodded and smiled, then helped me up into the front of the jeep, and Dad, going round the other side, sat beside me and took my unresisting hand in his. I dont remember thanking Mollie, or the man who drove us, and in a few minutes I was home and in our kitchen again, and it looked quite different. I stood in the middle of it as if I had never seen it before, and Dad, helping me off with my coat, said softly, "What is it, lass? What's happened? What's come over you?"
Like a child again I turned to him and, flinging myself into his arms, I cried, cried until I nearly choked, cried until he begged and implored me to stop, cried whilst Sam, having come in, held my head, cried while Aunt Phyllis said, "This's got to stop. Get a doctor,"
cried while Don, trying to thrust Sam away, grabbed my shoulder and yelled at me, "Stop it! stop it! Tell us what's happened," cried until the doctor came. From then on I went into a sort of sleep in which there were patterns, great patterns of colour, beautiful colours, and, like a thread weaving in and out and separating one colour from another, there were strings of words, and some said, "We must talk, Christine," and others, "I love you.... You're like a star that's fallen on a dung heap," and others, "I'll want you as jlong as I breathe."
"If I can get away I'll be here by seven."
I was in bed a week and had no desire to get up. It was Mollie who stung me into life again. She had come to see me nearly every day.
Sometimes she could only stay five minutes for, as she blankly
put it, between men, cordite and coupons, she hadn't time to say, "Whoa!
there. " She had been sitting on the foot of my bed talking about what she meant to do when the war was over, and she could leave the munition factory, when she stopped and, leaning towards me, said, " And it will be over you know, Christine, everything will be over. Life doesn't stop. "
I turned my head sideways on the pillow away from her eyes, and she remarked, "Aye, that's what you're doing, looking sideways at life, and it won't do, you know. You've got to get back into the stream."
She hitched herself nearer to me, "Look, Christine, you've had a dirty trick played on you, but you're not the only one, no, by God! not by a long chalk. You've got to remember that."
My face was as stiff as my voice when, looking at her, I demanded,
"What do you know about it?"
"More than you think."
"You know nothing, you're only guessing."
"Tommy Tyler is a pal of Joe's and Joe's a pal of mine. Joe and me just stopped into the bar that night you were raisin' Cain, and what's more natural than Tommy should tell us after I got you round to my place. Look, Christine ..." She dropped her hand on mine where it was gripping a fistful of the coverlet, and then said, "Them type are all alike. Why, I could tell you things that would lift the skin off your scalp."
I pulled my hand away from her touch, and she straightened herself and said, "Well, have it your own way, but I kept you this." She opened her bag and took out a single sheet of newspaper saying, "That's the front page of last Saturday's Review. Take a good dekko at it, and if that doesn't shake you nothing will." She dropped it on the bed, then, getting to her feet, her tone changed and she said softly, Tl| be in the morrow, so long. "
I did not speak, and even after the door had closed on her I did not grab up the paper, but lay looking at it, willing it to hold other than I knew it held, willing it not to tell me anything about him that would lessen my love for him. He was dead and I wanted to cherish his memory. That was all that was left to me, the memory of him. Slowly I drew the paper towards me and there was his face looking at me his long, pale face with the dark eyes. He was in uniform, and next to him, also in uniform, was the woman I had seen in the hall of Colonel Findlay's house. Under the picture it said:
Fenwick Houses Page 20