“And on the bad?” I wanted to keep him talking about himself.
“On the bad days I wallowed in self-pity. I knew I’d never come back; never. Men would be born with nose, eyes, mouth, forehead, and a soul like mine but my thoughts, hopes, dreams, ambitions, would never be repeated. The world could go on for a million trillion years and I would never be seen again. Stupid, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“I felt hell’s sorry for myself. I wanted someone to love me, help me. We couldn’t help each other and no-one else would come. Some of the boys just died quietly, because of that. They had nothing to hold on to. I had you. Let’s get married soon. I don’t want to be alone any more.”
It was the only time he spoke of it and I wanted to cry. Not only for Tim but for the whole of humanity kicking stones behind barbed wire, waiting to be rescued. I sat on my chair by the bed smiling brightly and feeling, other than disgust for the pitted skin, the skeletal hand on the sheet, nothing; nothing at all.
While Tim came slowly back to life I went out with a boy called Edgar. My war had been spent in a village; Tim was its aftermath and I could not face it. The war had nothing to do with Edgar except that it had made him rich. We moved back to town. Our house had been gutted by incendiaries so we took a flat. Edgar had the flat next door. He was very smooth, not bad-looking and always wore a red carnation. He had a car when few people had and no difficulty with petrol. When we met downstairs he’d give me a lift to the hospital to see Tim. One day he waited and took me out to dinner. Steaks, the size of the plate, appeared by magic, lashings of butter; we danced. He wore a gold ring on his little finger and called me Elizabeth. My days were divided between Tim and Edgar. I could bear it in the hospital with its sickening smell and its insularity because downstairs Edgar would be waiting.
Sometimes I worried at my own indifference. They were a pathetic lot in Tim’s ward, bandaged, emaciated, shuffling in dressing-gowns or in bed. I should have loved them all, Tim in particular. I watched the other women, wives, sweethearts, and hated myself for my false smile, brittle laughter, waiting to get back to Edgar.
It took Tim all winter to creep back to health. One freak day in February the temperature climbed to the middle sixties. A warm sun shone on the naked trees. Tim’s bed was empty and his wheel-chair gone. Through the French windows at the end of the ward I could see a gouache of hospital blue on the balcony.
“Looking for Tim?” someone said. “Over there.”
In his ill-fitting blues he was leaning over the balustrade looking out into the gardens. There was nothing much to see except a patch a lawn and some laurel bushes. To Tim I suppose they looked good. He had regained most of his weight and was almost like the Tim of two years ago. It was the first time I had seen him on his feet. I leaned on the rail next to him not sure if he had seen me. He seemed to be miles away. After a while he said, “It will soon be spring.” I knew he meant that he would be free to enjoy it. In the forecourt I could just see Edgar’s car.
It was very warm, almost like summer. I had on a suit and a heavy coat on top. I started to take off the coat and Tim turned to help me.
“I can manage.” I turned away to take my arms out of the sleeves, then back towards him. Perhaps it was the first time I’d really looked at him; perhaps I was off guard, not tense with fear at what I might find in his face. He stood there holding the coat, with its utility label in the lining, smiling a little, and in that moment everything came ricocheting back, love, desire, the lot. I wanted to kiss him, to bury myself in his face.
He put the coat on the coping between us and we looked again at the garden. We didn’t speak for a long while then Tim said: “Bit dicey for a while wasn’t it, Liz?”
I’d tried so hard not to let him know.
“Who’s the type with the Humber and the red carnation?”
I didn’t answer and he said: “I guessed there was someone. Shorty used to give me the gen.”
“His name’s Edgar. I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
I worried. What sort of a love was it that couldn’t face what I’d had to face with Tim? That fled in the face of adversity. I wrote a letter to Edgar and put it through the door of his flat. Tim was moved to a convalescent home in the country. We walked in the burgeoning countryside and it was he who consoled me as if I had suffered.
“It was a shock, Liz. You weren’t prepared.”
“I’d seen pictures.”
“Not of people you loved.”
“Where was my compassion?”
“You were a kid; scared stiff. I watched you.”
“I feel so ashamed.”
“I wasn’t worried. I knew you’d come back.”
“How?”
“Because I love you. I’ve always loved you. Always will. Always.”
Always.
This was the man I was planning to deceive.
After he was demobbed…nothing remaining, externally at any rate, of what he had been through, Tim had to study for his accountancy exams. He had a small income from some money his grandfather had left him, his gratuity and the back pay from the years in captivity. We found a tiny flat and sent out the wedding invitations.
At the ceremony the ‘boys’, those that were left, formed a guard of honour. At the reception they got high and maudlin at their own rendering of Nellie Dean.
We went to Cornwall for our honeymoon. The highlight was waking the first morning with Tim in the same bed. A sensual perfection matched by only one other. The moment after giving birth to Diana without benefit of anaesthetic; an instant when you knew the beauty of the whole world. Honeymoons they say often go wrong. Ours didn’t. We expiated our loneliness in a world where no-one understood us completely. Tim’s degrading years as a prisoner, our youth. We knew the day would never come when we could be in a room together without touching, within sight without feeling the demands of the flesh.
We settled to life in our little flat. Tim studying, me working part-time, cooking, housekeeping, both of us willing at any time to stop what we were doing to make love. One night Tim woke me up screaming obscenities and beating his pillow. I put on the light, frightened, and called to him but he didn’t seem to hear, I touched him but he flailed at me with his arms. Tim, I kept calling, Tim. Suddenly, with no warning he quietened down and turning over on his side went to sleep.
In the morning he said he didn’t remember dreaming, certainly not attacking anyone. I was afraid, thinking the pillow might one night be me. The attacks became a regular occurrence, happening once or twice a month. Sometimes he spoke coherently about bailing out and the kite being on fire and bloody Nips and filthy bastards. In the morning he never remembered. I talked about it to a doctor who said the war didn’t end when it stopped and advised me to get single beds. I didn’t take his advice. Gradually the incidents became less frequent. There was never any warning of when they would come and they never failed to terrify me. When I asked him what it was like in the camp he said boring mostly but a guarded look would come into his eyes and I could see that he was remembering, reliving things, things he would never forget, of which I would never have any part.
The double bed helped us over our first quarrel. I can’t remember what it was about other than it was not a major issue; they rarely are. Most likely it was a wrong word said at an inopportune moment and touching a raw nerve. I don’t know. If the first act was hazy the last stuck in my mind. Perhaps because I used physical violence; I was young enough for that.
It started I believe in our kitchen, which was no bigger than a cupboard, just as we were going to bed. In no time at all the scene had shifted to the bedroom where we undressed coldly hurling insults at each other.
Tim belittled my mother, I retaliated with his Uncle Alfred of whom he thought the world. I called him brutal. He said I was immature. I sniffed ‘where there’s no sense there’s no feeling’. He thought it was time I grew up. I said I should never have married him. He
buttoned his pyjama jacket and said nobody else had asked me. It was true and I saw red. I called him a liar, there had been all kinds of people while he was away. He challenged me to name them. I was hopping mad. He said I was jolly lucky he’d asked me. I picked up my slipper and let go. It had a wedge heel and nicked his shoulder and shattered the mirror behind him. You might have killed me, he said and climbed with dignity into bed. I will next time. He turned over. Don’t wake me up. In the bathroom I looked with pity at my tear-streaked face, dishevelled hair, wondered if I could get a divorce for cruelty, what my mother would say when she saw me on her doorstep with my case.
I climbed into bed carefully keeping to my own side, making sure I didn’t come into contact with Tim. Never sleep on a quarrel had been a nursery maxim. Neither would we if Tim would apologise. He was breathing steadily.
“You might at least say sorry.”
No reply. I was sure he wasn’t really asleep.
“Tim, did you hear me?”
“I did and I think you’ve a bloody nerve. You might have killed me with that thing.”
“Well I didn’t.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway look at the things you said about my mother.”
“To pay you back for Uncle Alfred.”
“That was before.”
“It wasn’t it was after.”
“You said…”
“You said…”
“You started the whole thing.”
“Idid? I like that. You said…and Isaid…”
I don’t remember the outcome of round two. Only that it was after midnight and we were both exhausted and muddled with reiteration and hardly able to recall what it had all been about ourselves. There was an oasis of silence after we’d said a chilly ‘good night then’ and agreed to go to sleep. We both had to work in the morning. In single beds most likely it would have ended there. In the one we shared it was Tim’s toe, my leg, his arm, my shoulder, his thigh and mine, our bodies indistinguishable, confused, fused one with the other protesting our love.
There were quarrels after, not of the same calibre. I never again resorted to physical violence, had to explain away a broken mirror. I suppose we both grew more tolerant, diplomatic, rubbed down the first uneven edges of our marriage. Looking back to the little flat, the smithereens of glass lying like glittering object lessons on the floor, it seemed fun, the turbulence to which we could be stirred. Perhaps we had lost something.
We’d gained stability. The end of that first hectic period came when I passed out queuing for chocolate biscuits (postcript to a war which had ended five years before) in the Home & Colonial and we knew Diana was on the way.
After that things moved fast. Tim qualified and we put the money down for our house in the village. In the first months of pregnancy I felt myself an object of the utmost interest, and it was a time, apart from the minor discomforts, of great contentment. Diana was born after a cold, wet, lonely and miserable night in the labour ward, at six o’clock in the morning. After the single moment of intense joy which followed her birth and my happiness with Tim when suddenly we were three there was no peace. I was busy with meals and beds and drinks and feeds when all I craved was sleep. The horrid memories of that birth stayed with me for two years and I booked to have Robin in a private nursing home where funnily enough the patient was important. I settled at the end for oblivion and forewent my crest of achievement.
It took time to adjust to the new pattern. Instead of just Tim I had Diana too; at six in the morning and at ten at night; often in between in the small hours, in which I never got used to leaving my bed. When Tim wanted to make love I was submissive; sometimes, despite myself, not even that. There was no-one to tell us that after a birth it was normal. We recaptured the old days on a Mediterranean holiday, Diana with Grandma, then we started again with Robin and it was as if we had always been four.
There began to be problems. They had to do with being tired at the end of the day, a toddler and meals and a biggish house, help once a week then, the irksomeness of contraceptive devices and a baby. Sometimes I felt like making love in the middle of the day; after lunch when the children were resting, only of course Tim wasn’t there. He was very patient.
There were bad patches, then as the children grew, peace. Out of the chaos a pattern emerged. I suspected it prevailed in the village. Sometimes I discussed it with Martha. It was a swinging graft with moments of despair and others of content during which you imagined the old spontaneity hadn’t quite gone. Tim said I was prettier than all the girls on the Italian beaches. He meant it too, faithful and loving I knew, yet he looked at them wondering what he was missing, bored with the old routine. There were too many factors, hair-do’s and what you had to do next day and the children might come in, they threw a pall of reserve giving birth to the village neuroses of which I too was victim. In our dreams we were wild, wicked, abandoned. We wanted lovers; we had husbands. I wanted both. Dobbie too. Anyone. It didn’t matter.
Five
It was half-past three when they brought her back. Doctor Macintosh came with her.
“No damage done,” he said. “A night’s sleep and she’ll be hopping around like a two-year-old.” He laid a freckled hand on the old lady’s knotted one for a moment, young enough to be her grandson. It was Christ healing the lepers, making the dumb man speak. You could see he didn’t mind, however old, however dirty. Only the insincere would bother him, the malingerers, the poseurs. His expression was distant when he turned to me. “Keep an eye on her for twenty-four hours,” he said and was gone. Sister who was with him stayed to help her up and with her coat, fastening it for her like a child.
The crowd in the casualty room had thinned. The man with the grubby handkerchief had gone. I felt as if I had been there all day. Outside the rain had stopped, leaving great puddles in the forecourt. Mrs Potter looked about.
“I wonder where we are,” she said. “I can get a seventy-four from Marble Arch.” She looked at her watch, held it to her ear, shook it. “Oh dear, it’s stopped. I hope it’s not broken.”
She seemed more anxious about it than she was about her fall. It was a cheap little watch on a black ribbon.
“You probably knocked it as you fell. They’ll be able to repair it. If we can get a taxi to where I’ve left my car I’ll take you home.”
“It’s very kind of you but please don’t worry about me. If you can just tell me where we are I can get on a bus.”
A taxi swung into the yard and a young man in a bowler hat, holding a bunch of red roses awkwardly got out.
I took her arm. “We’ll take this.”
“If you’d like to drop me off at the bus then.”
I helped her in and told the driver to take us to the car park.
“Have you the time?”
I looked at my watch, oblong-faced on a gold bracelet, an anniversary present from Tim. “It’s nearly four. Look, if you don’t mind I’ll take you home with me first because the children will be in. We could have a cup of tea then I’ll run you home afterwards.”
“I really don’t want to put you to any trouble. I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m Mrs Westbury.”
“Mine’s Potter. Ellen Potter.”
“Who’s Jean?”
“Jean?”
“You were talking about her. You thought I was her.”
“She was a little like you, tall and slim. My husband was very tall.”
“Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s dead. A growth. Two years ago.”
“The only one?”
“Only girl. I had two boys. I lost one as a baby with enteritis and the other boy at Arnhem. He was a paratrooper. We went to see his grave. My husband died last year. He had lung trouble ever since the First World War.”
She was peering out of the window. “Are we anywhere near the Edgware Road?”
“Look, please don’t worry. I�
�ll see that you get home.”
She shook her watch and held it to her ear.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Quite thank you. I suppose I fell on it.” She was still worried about the watch.
“It’s probably quite a minor thing. I shouldn’t worry.”
I tapped on the driver’s glass window. “Thank you. You can drop us here.”
I looked quickly round the two brick-walled sides of the bomb-site, stupidly, for Dobbie. I hadn’t really expected him to wait two hours; it seemed more like ten.
There was a note, sopping wet on the windscreen, beneath the wiper. I opened it but the ink had run into great blue tears. I couldn’t read a single word. I blinked, frustrated, in an attempt to get them into focus but of course it was useless. I pictured Dobbie writing it, “Darling, I love you, what happened?” “Darling Liz I waited all the afternoon.” It was only blotches of washable blue like Rorschach’s test for assessing your personality.
“Is anything wrong?” Ellen said.
I had forgotten about her.
“No, nothing.”
I found my keys and unlocked the car. She sat very neatly next to me.
“It’s the first time I’ve been in a car.”
It had never occurred to me that there were people who had never been in a car.
“It’s a lovely car. George was keen on cars. He had a motor-bike.”
“George was the paratrooper?”
“Yes. I like walking. I do a lot of walking. Will they be waiting for their tea?”
“Who?”
“Your children?”
“No. We’ll be in time. Robin has the key anyway but I like to be there.”
“Cook their own do they?”
“Cook? No. They help themselves to biscuits and milk or raid the fridge for leftovers. We have dinner fairly early.”
“How old are they?”
“Robin’s ten and Diana twelve.”
“You look very young. I wish I hadn’t broken my watch.”
We were out of the traffic now and into the suburbs. Stupidly I had palpitations wondering if Dobbie was waiting for me at home.
The Commonplace Day Page 16