by Lorna Gray
Richard’s voice brought my gaze firmly back to his face. By contrast to me, he was utterly at ease and, it seemed, just passing the time while he wrote his letter. ‘Humour me,’ he said.
I found I’d folded my arms defensively across my chest and made myself slide my hands into trouser pockets instead. This was only the truth, after all.
I confessed, ‘I thought I might find a job as an assistant, or something. Or perhaps find work as a mannequin if that’s not setting too much store on what amounts to a very ordinary figure.’
I smiled in a tight-lipped sort of way to show I didn’t require him to deliver instant compliments upon my figure and reclined against my own pillar with my hands still thrust into deep trouser pockets in an attempt to find my own degree of ease. He didn’t compliment me. He only asked, ‘You like clothes?’
My answer was a question for him. ‘Do you know that during the early days of the war they tried to dress everyone in uniform? We all needed something that would plug the gap in the clothing shortages and they thought it would give the women and the men in non-fighting roles a sense of their importance. Then they realised that it would be terrible for morale because it was steadily turning all the streets of London into a vision of utilitarian hell. It was, in its own small way, I think, a close-run thing, like the war itself. They nearly smothered the very idea of British colour that people like you were fighting for. But just in the nick of time they lurched into the other direction and started dressing women in bright, garish prints instead. Clothes fascinate me.’ My eyes were narrowed against the glare that was being cast from the windscreens in the car park.
‘That explains why you were so upset when your suitcase was taken from you.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed before adding dryly, ‘and also the fact that it left me without the power to even change my petticoat.’
‘Where would you have worked?’
His question was rather precise. A wasp drifted near my nose and I steered it away with a lazy hand.
‘Emily …?’ The prompt was made on a cautionary note.
I gave in. This point clearly mattered. I conceded, ‘Very well, although why I should have to say it when I’m pretty certain you’ve guessed already. I wanted to work abroad. In Paris, in fact, where the fashion houses are, even though I know the city itself is still recovering after the Occupation and I knew it was beyond me to go there alone. So, in a way, I was relieved when Dad started ranting and my mother mentioned Phyllis. Dad latched upon aged spinsters and improving trips to the country and I thought, why not? I had the idea that I might be able to persuade Phyllis to take me along on her next trip, now that the embargo on foreign travel has been lifted. That’s what my savings were going to be for – to pay my way. Pathetic, isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’ He was surveying me beneath the brim of his hat. Then he added, ‘And I notice you said there that you were going rather than are. You were going to pay your way. But we’ll talk about why that should be later. For now I could bear to hear more about this man of yours.’
This, suddenly, was rather too close to the conversation with Duckett. The doubt must have shown on my face or in the sharp movement of my body. He only tilted his head so that his face was cast into shade as he carefully read through what he had written, considered it for a moment and then added a few extra words. He lifted his eyes to mine. ‘I mean, this man your father is convinced you’re running away from.’
I laughed in a nervous sort of away and turned my head aside again. ‘You do pay rather too much attention for comfort, don’t you?’
He waited for me to brave meeting his gaze once more. It took me a while. My arms were wrapped about me again, but this time less defensively and more for comfort. I told him, ‘He’s that friend of my brother’s with the Sunbeam; the one who taught me to drive. He was in the RAF so liked to live life to the full, naturally. I was barely seventeen and he was only a few years older. He was charismatic and had been plucked from his quiet life in Hereford to face terrors that belonged to another world. You know how the RAF boys lived. The pressure of it all. He told me how unprepared he was and inexperienced and utterly, bewilderingly petrified, but he was determined to do his duty anyway.’
‘Was?’ It was said quickly. A sharpening of concentration, as if I’d finally explained every single one of my oddities.
‘No,’ I corrected him hastily. ‘No, I mean after four weeks of dancing and gentle courting, I caught him spinning the same tale of woe to the girl who lived two doors down from my aunt’s house. She was more immediately expressive with her sympathy than I was willing to be.’
I stopped. This was even more embarrassing than I’d thought.
‘Oh?’ Relief made him laugh. And then he said it again, rather more soberly, when he realised what I meant. ‘Oh, I see. You mean it was a line?’
‘It’s not quite the tragic history I ought to have, is it,’ I confirmed wryly, ‘given the fuss I make about grieving for the war? I was too young to serve; I abandoned the only material act of heroism I ever had to make because I didn’t care for lessons when they proved to be nothing more than a daily study of the ways and means of providing a distraction to the younger children whenever the sirens went off. I didn’t lose a family member to either the Blitz or the fighting; and finally the man I courted was merely a little overly keen to proceed to bed …’
He didn’t reply and after a moment I returned my gaze to the tiny stone I was turning beneath my toe. Feeling a certain amount of bemusement at the ease with which this was slipping out, I told him, ‘The truth is, the worst that happened to me is that I had a brush with that easy tale about needing to snatch happiness today because the world might be gone tomorrow. And the poor man did actually have to fly and every single thing he said was absolutely true, and given the average lifespan of the RAF boys I can see why there was a sense of urgency for him and serious courting wasn’t really part of his plan. But anyway,’ I suddenly grew bold. I lifted my head. ‘The point where Dad decided that I needed a bit of a stern lesson on maturity was this: apparently my brother’s friend’s plan does now incorporate scope for serious courting and I’m supposed to be devastated that she isn’t me. Dad, of course, doesn’t entirely know that marriage wasn’t the man’s intention before – he just thinks it fizzled out because I was too young, with the net result that Dad remains steadfast in his complacent hope that this visit here will give me a swift reminder that it’s time I gave up mooning over a childish love and knuckled down to the real nitty-gritty of life as a grown woman.’
Exasperation was making me smile. Richard was watching me with his hand poised in the midst of putting away his pencil. ‘To be honest,’ I told him plainly, ‘The only part I’m devastated about is the part where everyone thinks that a man’s marriage is why I wanted to come away. I’m glad that he’s getting married. He was young before and at war. It’s right that everything should be different for him now. Why does it need to have anything to do with me?’
Richard wasn’t sharing my amusement. Suddenly this conversation wasn’t cringingly embarrassing. It was too excruciatingly probing to be borne. I’d never have told anyone else this. Because I’d never have really wanted them to know. They’d have only contradicted me and told me that I’ll see my way out of this tangle of irritation and sympathetic understanding once I’d learned a little more about the ways of the world. But I knew all about the ways of the world. I might not have fought or lost or had great sacrifices snatched from me by the life-altering horrors of the war, but I had watched while all that awfulness dropped from the skies overhead and crawled insidiously through the rubble beneath. I knew precisely what war was. I turned away at random.
And caught the sudden sharp blur as the person at the end of the row pitched away their cigarette and moved to light another one. It wasn’t a nurse and it made a mockery of the watch I’d been keeping on the road. It was Duckett and he was scowling at me from barely three yards away.
I span o
n my heel back to Richard to find my heart beating high in my chest and that my movement had brought me very close to him. My eyes were already straying back over my shoulder at that figure at the end of the row when I framed my fright around a whisper of Richard’s name. His proper name, that is. The one he wanted me to use.
But he was already speaking over me. I thought, in fact, that he was oblivious. He was absorbed by the task of carefully folding his note into a very neat square. With his eyes and hands thoroughly occupied, he asked, ‘Do you want to know what I think? I think I know now what you meant when you said earlier that you always seem to get things so wrong. I think your father and this man and various other people have taught you that. They’ve somehow got the absurd idea that you need to be told you are this fragile, impressionable young thing ready to be swayed by every fresh, impulsive bit of nonsense unless someone more experienced directs you onto a firmer path. And yet you don’t really believe it, do you? Your personality is fully formed. You keep giving me glimpses of the real determination that lies within. This is the discovery I mentioned just now. You give the impression of being in the habit of finding compromise wherever your wishes run the risk of directly offending someone else’s. But I’ve also noticed that you’ll only compromise so far. Your decisions about leaving school, coming here and the lunch you made yesterday are perfect cases in point.’
I stopped worrying about Duckett for a moment and blinked a shade doubtfully. ‘The lunch I made for you yesterday?’
‘Absolutely. After I’d demanded silence from you and all but joined the ranks of the people who will persist in goading you into a sense of guilt when you haven’t actually done anything wrong, you would have been fully within your rights to have been appallingly rude to me. In fact, if you’d told anyone about it, I have absolutely no doubt that they would have given you a lecture on standing up for yourself more. But why should you and what would it have achieved anyway? Personally, as one of those people who has seen quite enough strutting and posturing for the sake of pride on the stage of war and in that particular instance truly, truly appreciated the simple kindness of an easy lunch …’ He lifted his hand to add today’s sandwich wrapper to the list. ‘I cannot comprehend why anyone would wish to teach you that empathy is the weakness of a malleable mind and you’ll only be improved once you’ve been hardened into our rather more jaded worldliness.’
I was gaping at him.
‘And,’ he added on a rougher note, quite as if this debate angered him, ‘to return to the point at hand, you couldn’t love a man like your brother’s friend anyway, because whilst his actions were perfectly comprehensible, they weren’t exactly right, were they? And coming from you that’s about as severe a judgement as they come because I think you’re willing to do anything for pretty much everyone, just so long as they’re nice.’
The shock of discovering that Duckett was barely yards away became almost nothing while my mind shattered and reformed on a nonsensical irritation at the sudden compliment. Particularly when it came at the end of an intensive study of the balance of strength and weakness concealed within my character. Strain and helplessness, and perhaps an underlying sense of how the threat of that other man was still making me crowd against Richard, made me rush to contradict.
I snapped crossly, ‘I don’t love everyone. I think I might love you. And what’s your story, anyway?’ Then, before it had even really dawned on me how I’d jumbled his words in my head and what I’d accidentally confessed, the presence of Duckett reasserted itself and I straightened and shook my head hastily. ‘No, sorry, don’t answer that. Richard—’
I was instinctively craving the security of contact again. My right shoulder was brushing against the warmth of him while my head turned, seeking Duckett once more. I was distracted from my search by the shock of finding that Richard’s hand – his right hand – had lifted to find mine and closed upon it. I hadn’t realised that my fingers were gripping his suit. His touch drew my unsteady gaze because his hand was gently but firmly detaching mine from the safe anchorage of his lapel.
While he did so, his voice told me with quiet simplicity, ‘I’ve mentioned my story before. And like your RAF man’s tale of woe, it doesn’t really deserve your sympathy either. I met Lady Sarah at a London parade and about six months later the affair naturally progressed to an engagement. Then I was suddenly injured in a maddeningly unnecessary little spat on the Strand. It was a brush with a crooked youth who’d decided he didn’t like the questions I’d been asking his employer and confronted me about it five miles or so later across town. I suppose the drama of it made me more interesting; heaven knows, I appreciated the idea of her support at that time. But then the fever passed and, as it turned out, our idea of what we wanted from each other didn’t survive the treatment either. For reasons I’ll tell you about some other time, I think she got carried away by the idea of playing the elegant socialite tending to the wounded veteran. She might have found the act easier if I had been more willing to retain a limp.’
I was spellbound by the grip he still had on my hand. I also wasn’t sure I liked very much to be told he’d been set to marry a titled heiress. Daughters of retiring antiques dealers didn’t tend to compare. And I didn’t know either why he should get to retain certain parts of himself when I’d been required to share my whole embarrassment and have it cripplingly dissected. I found I was gnawing on my lower lip. I forced myself to release it and discovered that the subject had already been dismissed and he was moving on to the next question at hand.
It began by changing his hold on me. It had felt for a moment like rejection again, but now it adjusted to become something rather more certain. My hand was laid palm to palm in his grip and quite naturally turned to rest with its back against his chest. It meant I was very close to him. Then he bent his head towards my ear and said in quite a different tone of voice, ‘Now, what do you say – shall we do what we came here for and try our hand at springing your cousin? If you can begin the arduous process of enacting her rescue, I’ll go and fetch the car. Can you hold your own for about ten minutes?’
His manner was easier now, brisk, as though some brutal pitfall had proved to be shallower than he had thought and had been overcome. Whereas the one set by Duckett was yawning wide before me. I was about to give an urgent shake of my head, only suddenly I had the surprise of realising a coarse edge of something crisp had long been pressed between our hands and now its presence was being compounded by the crush as his fingers closed mine over it. It checked me. I couldn’t open my hand to see because he still held me, but beneath the steadiness of his grip, my skin was able to deduce the texture was of stiff, folded paper. At the moment that I lifted my head to convey a query with a look, his free arm closed very briefly about me to draw me tighter against him.
The shock of his sudden gift of reassurance stilled my heart. Then he said clearly, ‘Give this note to Duckett for me, would you? I think he’s danced about behind that pillar eavesdropping on a gentle summary of our credentials for long enough.’
Then he let me go. He left me. I twisted tottering, abandoned, desolate and bewildered to meet Duckett as he raced forwards to take Richard’s place.
I let the smaller man snatch the note from my unresisting fingers.
Duckett read the note for a moment, red-rimmed eyes scanning a few short lines and then again as he had to check he’d understood their meaning. He was sweating. A clammy sheen greased his neck and his forehead. His gaze snapped to my face. ‘I suppose you thought it clever to let me think you were on your own. He was there at the waterside, was he, listening? And where does Abbey fit in to all this, eh?’
I saw the pallor set in as he worked it out for himself. A spasm passed across his face. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’
I put frozen, trembling fingers up to my mouth. I found I was laughing through my hand when it finally dawned on me what Richard had done.
This was because my distress in the car earlier had been a prod
uct of my hardest past. I’d lived through the time when unilateral decisions really had been made for me and people like me for the sake of managing a danger that ran far beyond the scope of my usual misunderstandings. Powerlessness had been one of the most fundamental symptoms of war and Richard’s attempt to put me on the train had felt like that. But this wasn’t the same. Here, his quiet insistence as he’d led me into talking about myself; the careful drawing of my gaze perpetually away from that threatening presence; the gentle use of my feelings for him to break down my reserve enough to let me speak. These were all the weapons he had needed to nudge me carefully, methodically into demolishing every single falsehood Duckett had formed about me. Richard must have seen me as I’d passed the prison wall on my way to the docks. He must have followed me and overheard our scene by the liveried vehicles, and later he must have engineered the opportunity to intercept me. This was a rescue without pride, without wading in like an avenging warrior. I’d fretted about drawing him into interceding, as if there would be a danger of falling into an excess of aggression, but there had never been any danger to either of us here. It wasn’t in his nature to stand aside when he might act, but he had tried very hard to give me room to save myself. It was peace and it was a mark of kindness, and, perhaps, a mark of what he thought of me too.
I was still laughing when Duckett barged past in a fury and stormed away.
Chapter 21
Phyllis looked dreadful. Her right wrist was clad in plaster of Paris, she had a crutch under her left arm because her ankle was unbearably swollen and she’d apparently had to use her chin as a brake on the surface of the lane. She would never have been able to cope at home on her own, but her gratitude for our rescue did not remotely lead her to overlook the fact she was being cast as my sensible chaperone again so that we could spend the night at the Manor. Nor did it prevent her from remarking fussily that whilst she had expected me to help myself to the contents of her garden during the two days of my stay, she hadn’t quite expected me to deplete her future harvest quite so much.