by Francis King
‘Heavens! How prosaic you are!’
‘Prosaic?’
‘Unromantic.’
‘It is not good for a prisoner to be too romantic. See what has happened to me.’
Again she felt a sharp twinge of anxiety and guilt. ‘Poor Thomas!’
‘Do you know when I first realised?’
‘Realised what?’
‘That I love you, of course.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Of course.’
She had put the question playfully; now the calm reply had brought her not joy but a foreboding chill.
‘Well, it was the first time I saw you,’ he went on. ‘Do you remember how my face became red and I could say so little?’ Yes, she remembered. In his coarse clothing and cumbersome boots, he had struck her as being himself coarse and cumbersome. ‘I think it was then that I fully realised what it was to be a prisoner. I left the room ashamed of my uniform, my heavy boots, my dirty cap, my – my embarrassment, my English. Everything. You looked so – so clean.’ He laughed, pressing her close against him as he did so. ‘Yes, that’s a funny thing to tell a girl. But nothing at the camp – and no one – ever seems truly clean. Even the guards, the officers … We wash, wash, wash – floors, clothes, toilets, our bodies. But the dirt stays, always stays. A smell. Spots. Stains.’ He broke off, swivelling his body from side to side as he sought in vain for some landmark. ‘Now truly we are lost!’ He peered again into the mist.
‘No, we’re not. Listen. I can hear traffic on the main road. Beyond those fields there.’
‘That’s no traffic.’
‘Don’t be silly! Of course it is. We’ve only to walk across the fields. We can slip through the barbed wire here.’
He looked unconvinced.
‘You don’t believe me?’
He smiled and shook his head.
‘I bet you five bob. Do you take me on?’
‘If you win, I won’t be able to pay you.’ All at once a look of humiliation came over his face. ‘ You’re with a man who can’t pay even his own bus fare.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You keep going on and on about not being able to pay for this or that. Naturally you can’t pay for things. That’s understood. Forget it.’
‘Still …’ He raised his shoulders in resignation. Then he burst out: ‘Perhaps I’m stupid, but I don’t like always eating other person’s food, always spending other people’s money. First it was Michael. Now it’s also you.’
Shouts battered at them through the mist; vague figures emerged only to disappear again. A football materialised in mid-air and thudded to the ground with a whisk of slush. Three boys, with bare, red knees, red faces and cropped hair, collided together as they ran towards it; then they saw Christine and Thomas and skidded to a halt.
Christine approached them. ‘I wonder if you could tell us – is the main road over there?’
‘It is. But you can’t go through this way.’ The tallest of the boys, who must have been ten or eleven, had picked up the football and placed it under his arm. His raw face, saddle-nose covered in freckles, expressed an overweening hostility.
‘Oh, why not?’
‘Because this is private land, that’s why. Didn’t you see the barbed wire? Or the notice? All this land belongs to my father. It’s his farm.’
‘But surely he wouldn’t mind –? You see, we’ve been stupid and got lost. And we’re afraid we might miss our bus if we don’t get to Woodstock soon.’
The boy put his hands on his hips, dropping the ball to the ground. ‘You can’t go through,’ he repeated.
‘But that’s ridiculous. We can’t turn back. We don’t even know the way. It’ll be dark quite soon.’
‘That’s your lookout. Shouldn’t have come through in the first place.’
The other two, smaller boys, their stockings rucked about their ankles and their shorts pinched in at the waists by identical snake belts, had so far only scowled at the intruders. But at this point one of them chimed in, in a shrilly girlish voice: ‘Serves you right for trespassing.’
‘We’re not trespassing,’ Christine snapped back. ‘We’ve done no harm.’
‘Well, you’re jolly well not going a step farther. That’s flat. Otherwise I’ll go and tell my father. He’ll see you off. And damn quick too!’
Thomas, who had so far refrained from joining in the argument, touched Christine’s elbow. ‘We’d better turn back.’
‘Certainly not! And let these little creatures boss us around? Come on. Don’t take any notice of them.’ Thomas hesitated, looking from her to the boys and then back again. ‘Come on!’
‘We don’t want any trouble. While I’m wearing these clothes,’ he added in a low voice, ‘ and I’m more than five miles from the camp, outside the zone allowed.’
‘What trouble can we get into?’ His caution maddened her.
She had said this loud enough for the boys to hear. ‘You’ll soon see,’ the oldest threatened. The three of them had tightened into a close, menacing group.
Christine strode forward and Thomas, after a second or two, followed. As she moved, the boy sprang out to bar her path, but she pushed him aside. He raised a hand to strike at her, but then thought better of it. ‘ I’ll tell my father,’ he shouted. ‘You attacked me!’
‘Oh, go to hell!’ Thomas called out over his shoulder.
‘Go to hell yourself!’ one of the two younger boys screamed, and the other then added: ‘Bloody foreigner!’
As Christine and Thomas hurried over the mist-blanketed field, they could hear the boys behind them, jabbering excitedly among themselves or raising a voice to shout an occasional insult. Something splashed a short distance away from them. ‘ What was that?’ Christine asked. Again there was a splash as a snowball exploded at her feet, drenching her shoes and stockings. ‘That’ll teach you!’ an invisible voice jeered.
Looking over her shoulder Christine had a glimpse of a barbarically triumphant face before the hat borrowed from Michael was knocked off Thomas’s head. As he picked it up, attempting to brush away the granules of coffee-coloured ice with the sleeve of his coat, he swore in German under his breath. Then he said: ‘Wait for me. I’m going back to them.’
‘What can you do? What’s the good? I suppose we’re in the wrong. In any case we don’t want a row. Oh, come on!’
Again and again snowballs hit them. Their clothes were soaked; the muddy slush stung their faces and melted on their shoulders. At last they saw the roadway glimmering ahead. ‘ The beasts! The filthy little beasts!’ Christine gasped. At the rim of the field Thomas held the barbed wire up for her as she attempted to squeeze through; but such were her exasperation and haste that the hem of her dress got caught, she tugged and a large rent appeared. At the same moment more slush spattered outwards from the hard surface of the road.
As they hurried off, they heard behind them: ‘Go on! Get out of it! Beat it!’
‘Oh, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas!’ Now that they had turned the corner of the road and could no longer hear their persecutors, Christine clung to him, sobbing with hatred and humiliation. His own face was pinched and grey, as he gasped again and again for breath. ‘ How cruel, how needlessly cruel! And my legs are drenched!’
‘I wish you’d let me go back.’
‘To do what?’
‘To punish them.’
‘Oh, what would have been the good? It would probably have ended in the police court, and you, being a prisoner, in civilian clothes … Oh, how unjust it all is!’
‘Michael’s suit will have to be cleaned. How can I explain to him?’
‘Tell him what happened. He’ll understand.’ He shook his head. ‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ He paused. ‘ No, I’ll tell him something else.’
‘But why? Why?’
‘I feel – beschämt – ashamed. That those three – three children …’
‘Ashamed?’
‘Yes, yes!’ he repeated in a s
udden access of fury. ‘See what they do to you. And I? I do nothing, nothing at all. We run away.’
‘But what else could we do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then what’s the point of talking about it?’ she demanded, all at once exasperated.
‘No.’ He drew away from her, the arm that had been around her shoulder falling limply to his side. ‘You haven’t understood me.’
They trudged on in silence until they came to the bus stop, and there, still in silence, hunched deep in their soaking clothes, they waited until they saw the blurred lights of the bus moving slowly down from the crest of the hill.
‘Oh, how I wish I’d been with you!’ Michael exclaimed. He had clearly been amused, not shocked or angered, by Christine’s narration, even though in the course of it he had from time to time made some such interjection as ‘Oh, you poor things!’ or ‘Oh, what brutes!’
‘I can assure you, you wouldn’t have enjoyed it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Tell me more about these little savages.’
‘There’s nothing more to tell. Let’s drop the subject. It was a thoroughly nasty experience but, now, thank God, it’s all over.’
‘Yes, but what did they look like?’
Reluctantly Christine described them as best she could, while he exclaimed: ‘ Yes! Oh, of course, of course!’ Then, when she had finished: ‘Yes, I can just see them … The football, the grey flannel shirts, the snake-belts … It’s all just right. Perfect in every detail. But tell me about their accents?’
‘Their accents?’
‘Well, were they proles? Or were they, as they say, out of the handkerchief drawer?’
Christine had had enough. I don’t know.’
Thomas had been glancing at his watch. ‘Michael, I think I must go.’ Instead of at once getting into his uniform, he had been sitting before the fire, feet bare, in the flannel pyjamas and dressing gown that Michael had insisted that he put on, telling him ‘ We don’t want you to catch a chill.’
When Thomas now went into the bedroom, Michael jumped up and followed him. Christine all but followed too; then she retreated back to the chair in which she had been sitting. That she too had been drenched had caused Michael little concern. ‘If you sit by the fire – next to Thomas – you’ll dry out more quickly he had told her. He had then produced a towel. That was all.
All at once she was consumed with the desire to know precisely what it was that was passing between them. She went out into the hall and stood there, straining to listen. There was a laugh from Michael, followed by an odd word or phrase here and there from one or the other. Nothing more. The thickness of the college walls frustrated any effective eavesdropping.
Ashamed of her failed attempt, she returned to the sitting room. There, she reached out for the book lying face downwards on the table beside her. Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber. Was there any subject to which Michael did not extend his omnivorous – or should it be dilettante – interest.
Now she felt not merely exasperation but also anger at their prolonged absence. Could it be that she resented their obvious affection for each other? She had always despised possessive women – those who wished to open every door and ransack every cupboard in the lives of their men folk. Was she herself now becoming such a woman.’
‘So you poor things had rather a miserable afternoon?’
She started at the voice. Michael had returned, by himself.
‘Well, that incident wasn’t all that pleasant. But otherwise – I really enjoyed it. I love Blenheim in winter. No people, that superb architecture seen through a mist, those beautiful, bare trees.’
Michael sat down at the farther of two desks, picked up a letter and began to read it. She had a strange feeling that she must on no account watch him and turned her head aside.
Then he put down the letter and she heard: ‘He’s a nice chap. Isn’t he?’ He might have been referring to anyone, even the writer of the letter, but she knew that he was referring to Thomas.
‘I like him. We get on well. We have the music in common.’
‘Yes, of course. There’s that.’ Abruptly he jumped to his feet. ‘You know – you’re both somehow – somehow changed.’
‘Changed? I don’t get you. In what way?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to puzzle out for myself. Unless, of course, you tell me.’
‘Tell you? Tell you what?’
‘Oh, never mind!’
‘I wish I knew what you were driving at.’ But she thought that she could guess. She laughed. ‘ Sometimes you can be really maddening, you know.’
He shrugged. ‘Forget it.’
At that moment Thomas returned. For some reason, he had parted his long, dark hair in the middle. Christine decided that it did not suit him that way and almost said so.
‘You know, Thomas, I almost think you look better in that grubby uniform of yours than in my civvies. What do you think, Christine?’
‘I prefer civilian clothes. I’ve never found uniforms in the least exciting. I always hated it when Ben wore his.’
‘I thought a woman could never resist a uniform.’ He jumped up. ‘ Thomas, I must tell you, your English has so much improved. Even Ludwig must be impressed by how much better your accent is.’
‘Well …’ Thomas smiled across at Christine. ‘ Now I have practice with Christine. Often she corrects me. She can be severe, you know.’
‘It’s wonderful you’ve found such a good mistress.’
To Christine that last word administered a sudden, unnerving jolt. Surely most people would have said ‘such a good teacher’? Had he used ‘mistress’ as a snide indication of what he imagined now to be the nature of their relationship with each other?
Unaware of any possible nuance between the one word and its alternative, Thomas glanced from Christine to Michael, bewildered by an animosity that he sensed but could not define. ‘ I think I must go.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m late already. I’ll probably have to find a way through the barbed wire.’
‘Oh, I hope no one will see you,’ Christine said.
He smiled. ‘I did it many times.’
‘I’ve done it many times,’ she corrected. ‘Do remember that.’ She was constantly telling him that he must not muddle his tenses.
‘I’ve done it many times.’
Michael patted him on the boulder. ‘ Bravo, old chap! You’re getting the hang of it.’ He turned to Christine. ‘You mustn’t worry too much about your pupil.’
Christine walked part of the way to the camp with Thomas, through narrow, unlit streets and alleys where there was less chance of anyone noticing his prisoner’s uniform so late in the evening. They moved swiftly and did not talk to each other. As though in celebration of the end of the blackout, many of the curtains on the windows of the houses that they passed still remained undrawn, to provide momentary glimpses of a table laid for supper, a head bowed over needlework or a newspaper, two people in conversation before a fire or leaning forward to listen to a wireless set on a table between them: things that now seemed oddly remote, oddly unfamiliar to Christine.
Thomas had halted. ‘Here we must say goodbye.’
‘Oh, but I’ll come a little further with you.’
‘It’s better not. I must take the short way across fields, not to be late. It’ll be difficult for you to find your way back. And, besides, it’s very rough. You’ve got wet once already today.’
She drew him into the unfit doorway of a small house that, to judge from its state of advanced dilapidation, must be uninhabited, perhaps even condemned. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him towards her. She held him tight, thrillingly aware of his growing erection.
Eventually, he broke off their kiss with an abrupt jerk of his head. ‘Goodbye,’ he muttered. But he was still reluctant to let her go, pressing still hard against her.
‘When shall I see you again? Can’t you possibly come during the week?’
‘Impossibl
e. Sorry. I’m working now. Have you forgotten? No more Brussels sprouts. Tomorrow, I must help to dig the new road.’
‘Then it’ll have to be Saturday. Oh, dear!’
‘No, not Saturday. Sorry. I have Michael on Saturday. But perhaps you can also come –?’
‘Does Michael matter all that much?’
He gazed out over her shoulder into the distance. Then he looked down at her and smiled. ‘ Okay! I come to you on Saturday.’
‘I’ll come to you on Saturday,’ she corrected, suddenly remembering that rebarbative phrase ‘a good mistress’. ‘Oh, it seems such a long, long time. But – never mind.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, goodbye, sweetie.’
‘Goodbye.’
Again they kissed, even more ardently than before, and again she felt his erection hardening against her. Then he was moving off at a slow trot, like an exhausted runner completing a marathon, into the dark and cold. Motionless, gloved hands clasped before her, she peered down the alley with its gleaming cobbles, its dustbins and its smells of cats and urine, until he vanished round a corner. Then she looked around her, in vain, for someone to ask for the nearest bus stop.
Saturday. He would come on Saturday. He would come to her and not to Michael. To her, to her. Her victory filled her with a crude sense of triumph.
Chapter Twelve
As soon as they had embraced, Christine stood back and stared.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Nothing’s the matter. What do you mean?’
She shook her head. ‘ Oh, I don’t know.’ But she did know, even if she would have been at a loss to explain how she did. Their relationship had altered as decisively as it had during their visit to Blenheim. ‘You – you look so worried.’
‘Maybe I’m tired.’ He slouched, shoulders hunched, over to the door and hung his cap on one of its hooks. He moved to the sofa, peered down at it, and perched himself on its edge. She had an impulse to put out a hand and push him back into a more comfortable position.
‘Have you been working hard?’
‘Oh, yes. Very hard.’
‘Put your feet up. That cover’s so shabby and grubby that it doesn’t matter. Here. Let me help you.’ She stooped to lift up one of his clumsy army boots, but he pulled the leg away.