‘Oh yes,’ said Mother.
‘The vicar wants us to forgive.’ He laid down his knife and fork. ‘Some of us have forgiven them already.’
‘I don’t hold with it,’ Father said. ‘When I think of the sacrifices our Russian comrades made.’
‘There was one bloke in particular … with a long thin face.’
‘It’s their families I feel sorry for,’ said Mother. ‘Worrying … not knowing where the poor lads are.’
‘Don’t talk rot. They write home regularly.’
Madge picked at her food and said nothing.
‘I’d shoot the lot of them,’ said Father. ‘If it was my choice.’
Mother said Madge had been down to the woods all morning, looking for tadpoles.
‘She’ll have a long look,’ said Alan. ‘This time of the year. Doesn’t she have any homework to do?’ He wanted to jump up and shake the truth out of her.
‘Leave her alone,’ flashed Mother. ‘She does her best.’
That evening, Alan confided in Janet Leyland; he had to tell someone. They whispered together in the bicycle shed – he didn’t want Ronnie Baines to hear.
‘Good heavens,’ said Janet. ‘What a worry for you.’
‘I don’t know where to turn,’ he confessed.
‘I’ve seen her in the village once or twice. Dressed in trousers, without shoes.’
‘They’re my cast offs,’ he said. ‘She runs wild.’
‘Don’t her feet get cut?’
‘What am I going to do?’
She thought for a moment. ‘You ought to tell your mum.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I oughtn’t.’
‘Well, you’ll have to catch her red-handed, then.’
‘It’s pitch dark,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where she meets him.’
‘Did she really see Cyril kissing Hilda Fennel?’
‘I’m not concerned about Hilda Fennel,’ he said.
‘Perhaps you should go to the camp, then, and complain.’
‘I can’t be sure,’ he told her, ‘that she’s meeting anyone. You never know with Madge. Sometimes she likes you to think she’s up to something and she’s not doing anything at all.’
Janet seemed disconcerted. In her woolly scarf and her knitted hat she stood a little apart from him. ‘You’ll have to catch her with him, in that case. Then you’ll be sure, won’t you? You ought to tell him she’s under age and things.’
‘In the pitch dark,’ he said again.
‘He might act violent,’ Janet told him. ‘There might be a spot of bother.’ She sounded as if she’d be disappointed if there wasn’t. He thought gloomily that if it came to blows he would take to his heels.
‘What a way to behave,’ said Janet. ‘I think it’s disgusting.’
‘It doesn’t do,’ he said, ‘to jump to conclusions.’ And he walked away from her into the porch, feeling he had been disloyal to Madge. Even if she was meeting a blithering Jerry down on the shore, she was probably only chatting to him about God.
He never enjoyed Evensong as much as Morning Service. There was no dinner to look forward to; the congregation was sparse. Sometimes the mist rolled in from the sea and filled the body of the church; the old ladies shuffled like grey ghosts behind the pews and coughed forlornly. He wouldn’t look at Janet. He felt she had let him down.
Later, when he was backing his bike out of the shed, she approached him and said she was sorry – she hadn’t meant to upset him.
‘I’m not upset,’ he said.
She wanted to help him if she could, for Madge’s sake as much as his own. It bothered her, a young girl like that, getting up to heaven-knows-what mischief.
‘We could go now,’ she said. ‘Down to the shore.’
‘Now?’
‘It’s not late, Alan. It would take a load off your mind.’
She rode on his crossbar as far as the roundabout; the wheel of his bike wobbled under her weight.
‘You’ll have to walk up the hill,’ he said.
She talked to him about her friend Moira and her cat Mitzi. Under the sulphur lamps the pompom of her hat seemed to catch fire.
‘She’s got a lovely sense of humour,’ she said.
‘Mitzi?’ he asked.
‘No, silly. Moira. She’s got a crush on you.’
He had no answer to that.
Janet went to the Isle of Man every summer for her holidays. It was nice there in the summer – her mum and dad and her uncle Arthur.
‘It’s wizard,’ she said. ‘You’d love it. We go on excursions and things. I don’t half miss her, though—’
‘Moira?’ he said.
‘Me cat, you clot,’ she cried, striding up the hill, her hands in her pockets. She had a robust laugh, like a boy’s; he thought her a little bossier than when he first knew her.
From the top of the hill the sky showed pale against the black line of the woods. The night was stormy; the trees rocked against the station fence – even the lighted windows of the scattered houses seemed to flicker like candles. Few people lived this side of the railway track. The land was given over to the sea. A few cows might graze in an exceptional summer, or a horse be put out to pasture, but mostly the earth lay swollen with rainwater. It was the reason for Madge’s cough, Mother said – the everlasting dampness and mist rolling in from the shore.
When they swooped down the hill he kept his hands clenched about the brakes; Janet screeched in the face of the wind. Beyond the barn used by the Scout troop, the lane narrowed between the waterlogged fields, the ditch ran underground. The street lamps ended. They turned the corner into darkness. He slowed down.
‘I can’t see anything,’ she said. She was whispering.
‘Wait on,’ he told her. ‘After a bit it gets lighter. Look up at the sky.’
The clouds raced above the arched lattice of the elms.
‘Is that the sea?’ she asked, listening to the murmur of the pines pulled by the wind.
He laid his bicycle behind the wall of the cemetery and led her down the path between the graves. Through the iron railings a light shone in the porch of the vicarage; the church had been derelict for as long as he could remember. Janet clung to his arm. She stumbled over the roots of ivy and gave little chortles of laughter as if someone was squeezing her in the darkness. He trampled the brambles underfoot and pushed open the wicket gate. Their feet sank into the pile of wreaths left rotting by the fence.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said, stopping stock-still.
He was filled with protectiveness towards her. She was so foolish, so clumsy.
‘Haven’t you been here before?’ he asked.
She thought it was a criticism. She said defensively: ‘In the summer. In daylight.’
He took her hand; in its woollen mitten it lay in his like the paw of some animal. He guided her down the avenue of pines. The north side of the woods grew on a ridge of high ground above a shallow valley of sand and star grass. Frogs bred in the pools of rainwater, beneath the alder bushes and eucalyptus. Beyond the valley the sand dunes stretched to the edge of the shore. To the east the trees covered the land for two miles, from the dunes to the golf course, dense and hardly penetrable.
‘My mum and dad,’ said Janet, ‘would never let me out in the dark. Are yours daft or something?’
He couldn’t see her. All that joined them were her fingers and her side pressed to his as they jolted through the trees.
‘You don’t know Madge,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell her anything.’
He had almost forgotten they were looking for his sister. They were climbing the ridge now; the pine mulch underfoot gave way to wet sand. They were out of the trees and on to the rise, overlooking the valley.
‘Oooh,’ she wailed, spun in a circle by the unleashed wind.
She wanted at once to retreat into the shelter of the woods; she was frightened to go alone. He was elated by the wild agitation of the bushes below, the gale tearing through the topmost branche
s of the pines. Far out, he heard the faint muffled boom of the buoy at sea. He hadn’t been there for years; he could understand now why Madge felt compelled to go out every night.
‘Isn’t it grand?’ he shouted, clothes flapping, arms spread wide as though he might fly.
Janet whined and complained at his back. She was cold. She couldn’t bear it. Reluctantly he went into the woods. Away from the winds, his cheeks smarted; he had ear ache. He huddled on the ground and Janet wound her scarf selflessly round his head. She fussed over him and scolded.
‘I’m all right,’ he protested, dragging the scarf away and leaning against a tree.
She sat beside him, an arm about his shoulder. He didn’t think it was affection so much as fear of being in the dark.
‘We’ll never find your Madge,’ she said.
‘I’m not bothered. I don’t think she’s up to anything. You see, it’s very cramped at home, very confined—’
‘Cramped?’ she said.
‘There’s not much space. All cooped up in a little kitchen. It can get on your nerves.’
‘Haven’t you got a lounge, then?’ she asked.
It was useless trying to explain that the lounge was kept for visitors.
‘Can you see any normal man,’ he said, ‘Jerry or otherwise, meeting our Madge on a night like this? She wears ankle socks.’
‘It must be cramped for him,’ she said. ‘Confined behind barbed wire. And beggars can’t be choosers.’
Such perception made him uncomfortable – just as he was beginning to dismiss the whole business from his mind.
Janet rubbed his ears with her gloved hands. He thought he’d like to kiss her. She almost lost her balance; they stayed a long while in an awkward position, mouth to mouth. The trees sighed all around them. She broke away from him and searched the ground.
‘My hat’s come off,’ she said. ‘My dad bought it for me.’
‘Here,’ he said, feeling the wool under his hand, spiked with pine needles.
‘What does your dad do for a living? He’s on the train at funny hours.’
‘He’s in commerce,’ he said.
‘What’s commerce, then?’
‘Dealing and things,’ he said. ‘He’s a socialist too.’
‘He ought to be ashamed,’ she said, snuggling closer to him. ‘My granddad was a liberal. He used to live with us before he died. Is your granddad living?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Does he live with you? Is that why it’s so cramped?’
‘No,’ he said. When the blitz was at its height, Mr and Mrs Drummond had come to stay with them. It was supposed to be for the duration, but after two days Father got into a paddy about lumps in the porridge and his grandparents left. Then Father said Aunt Nora should have a chance of survival and she stayed a week. When she went she said she preferred the bombs to the continual bickering.
‘Is your grandmother alive too?’ she asked.
He wished she would stop talking and let him concentrate. He was touching the front of her coat, trying to push his hand between the buttons. For warmth. The coat wouldn’t allow it. He found her knee and shoved his hand under the thick material; she wore so many clothes. At her waist, beneath her jumper, she was wearing a satin underslip. Below that was a vest – he could feel it with his finger and thumb. He almost gave up. He couldn’t put his hand under her skirt. It was too rude. He wanted to, but he couldn’t be sure of her reaction. Partly it was the darkness, not being able to see her face. She wasn’t saying anything; perversely she had fallen silent. He was on his own, heaving her about under the slender trees, trying to get comfortable, clutching her by one bulbous knee.
She said: ‘Don’t … please don’t.’
He was irritated. He hadn’t done anything. Ronnie hadn’t either, or Peter Jeffries. Ronnie had been smiled at by a land-girl a year ago, but it hadn’t come to anything.
‘Mother would be cross,’ Janet said.
Her mother, whom he had seen in the village and at church, was apple-cheeked and big-hipped. She wore a little straw hat with faded curls pushed underneath.
‘Beg pardon,’ he said, taking his hand away. He strained his eyes, looking through the pines towards the ridge, wondering what the time was.
‘My uncle Arthur did that,’ she said. ‘I’ve never told anyone before.’
He was astonished by her. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t hold with that kind of talk.
She was kneeling now, struggling with her clothes, stretching her arms up and wriggling. When she sat back she felt for his hand and held it tight. He understood she wanted him to kiss her again. He leaned forward, searching for her mouth, but she was lifting his hand and guiding it to her chest. She’d unbuttoned her coat and her jumper was rolled up to the armpits. She shuddered at his touch.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Your fingers are freezing.’
She wore a boned brassiere with little bits of frilly lace. He dug for her skin and was amazed at the warmth of her.
‘Don’t pinch,’ she said sharply.
He didn’t know what it was leading to, this fumbling in the darkness. He tried to remember the verses about the WAAF and the sailor, but they all dealt with bottoms and knickers and he wasn’t allowed there. He thought of a jumble of things he had learned at school, fertilisation, rabbits, crossbreeding – it had nothing to do with the way he felt now, the bursting in his head, the congestion lower down. She was like a rubber ball; he couldn’t get a grip. Her breasts bounced away from him. Blow this, he thought, taking his hand away and putting it in his pocket. She was upset, he could tell, but she didn’t say anything. He wanted to tell her it would be all right in the summer when it was warm and fragrant and her clothes weren’t so bulky. It was the thickness of her vest, the sensible stockings, her hat and gloves, that put him off. She was more like a female relative than a sweetheart.
‘We ought to go,’ he said. ‘Your parents will wonder where you are.’
‘They won’t,’ she muttered. ‘They’ll think I’m at the youth club.’
‘Well, mine will. My dad gets annoyed.’
She stood then, leaning against him for support, brushing the needles from her legs.
‘You’re an odd family,’ she said, settling her hat more firmly over her ears.
He thought that was a bit much, considering what she had told him about Uncle Arthur.
She was silent along Brows Lane. She was petulant by the Grapes Hotel. At her front gate she hung her head and seemed about to cry.
‘I’m off,’ he said, losing patience with her, and he rode away, whistling under the street lamps, despising her. It wasn’t fair, blaming him for not knowing what to do. If he had known and he’d tried to do it, she wouldn’t have let him.
Madge was sitting on her own in the kitchen. Mother and Father had gone to the Bay Horse for a drink.
‘Did you go out?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve got pine needles in your hair. You want to be rid of those.’
He flushed, but he went on to the back path to rub his head. He felt peculiar; he had a pain in the pit of his belly. He wandered down the garden to beyond the greenhouse and sat in the damp grass facing the poplars. In the past, when he had been in disgrace with the family, he used to go into the front garden and lean against the sycamore tree for comfort. Then Mother built a rockery around the base and painted the stones with white emulsion; he was forbidden to step on the plants. So many things were forbidden – he wondered if Janet Leyland would speak to him again. She was probably at her friend Moira’s at this very moment, telling her every detail.
He tugged in misery at the grass and something moved under his wrist. It was a carrier bag half-buried beside the holly tree. He pulled it free and felt inside, touching something made of rope or string. There was a torch in the greenhouse and he took the bag and tipped its contents on to the bench Father used for his tomato cuttings – he counted five pairs of sand shoes, rope-
soled with red canvas tops. Across the toecaps were serial numbers stamped with indelible ink.
He went indoors and called Madge into the scullery.
‘Leave them alone,’ she cried. ‘I hid them.’
‘What do you have to hide shoes for?’ He couldn’t think why she was making such a fuss.
‘They’re not shoes. They’re slippers.’
He looked at the numbers on the toecaps. ‘And what’s that in aid of?’
‘They’re made out of army mail bags,’ she said. ‘They stamp everything … so it doesn’t get pinched.’
He stared at her. ‘Why on earth do you want them?’
‘I don’t want them. I’m selling them for a friend.’ She heard footsteps coming up the path. She rammed the slippers into the potato bag under the sink. Mother and Father were back.
They’d met Captain Sydney at the Bay Horse. Wasn’t that strange? He’d paid Mother a lot of attention.
‘He’s rather nice,’ she said. ‘Pompous, but rather nice.’
‘He looked barmy to me,’ said Madge.
‘He commented on my hat,’ said Mother, pleased.
Father acted proud. In another kind of mood he might have taken offence. He looked at Mother in admiration – she wore her chic little hat tipped forward over one eye.
‘I’d say he was quite dazzled,’ he said. ‘No two ways about it.’
Mother had been dazzling, once before, to a business colleague of his. Father caught him pecking at Mother’s cheek in the back of the car – he saw them in the front mirror. He stopped the car on the main road just outside Ince Bludell and pushed the man into the ditch. He lost his agent’s commission but he said he didn’t give a dicky bird. ‘Come in pet,’ he called to Madge, who was hovering in the scullery. ‘You’ll catch your death.’ They sat for a little while drinking tea by the fire; they were a happy family.
Father promised to take Mother into town during the week and buy her some sort of bracelet. ‘What’s the occasion?’ she cried, eyes sparkling from her gin and lime.
He said he just felt generous. He’d give Madge ten shillings while he was about it. After all, Alan had his new suit.
Mother went upstairs and ran the bath water. She bathed every day, while Father managed it once a fortnight.
A Quiet Life Page 7