by Tim Jeal
As they walked the short distance to St James’s Park in the October sunshine, Peter told Andrea her wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses made her look elegantly Gallic. He himself was wearing a baggy flannel suit, its pockets bulging with detonators and copper wire. On all her visits to town, Andrea was touched by his obvious pleasure in seeing her, though it couldn’t make up for the infrequency of their meetings. Soldiers of shattered continental armies – French, Norwegian, Dutch – walked in the park, chatting with office girls, who broke into fits of giggles on finding themselves lusted after.
Tiring, Peter pointed to a couple of unoccupied deck chairs by the lake. He and Andrea reached them just ahead of an elderly civil servant.
‘I’m told the Luftwaffe hit St Giles’s, Cripplegate, last night,’ Peter said, sinking down into one of the chairs. ‘Milton’s statue was blown off its plinth.’
‘The fall of Milton, not the fall of Man,’ she replied smiling, surprised he had preserved this literary plum for her.
Andrea had been upset by Leo’s latest letter and handed the envelope to Peter before unwrapping their sandwiches. Ever since her son’s departure she had longed for his half-term. Now, only days before he was due home, he had written to say he wouldn’t be returning alone. Peter was soon beaming as he read.
‘What did I tell you? He’s settled in marvellously.’
Andrea hated these formulaic letters that gave no sense at all of her living, breathing son. ‘Why can’t he ever write anything remotely personal?’
‘He doesn’t want to worry us by letting on he’s homesick. Of course he is, like everyone else, but that’s just a fact of life one needn’t spell out.’
‘But one does spell out that one’s making a towel rail in carpentry, and that the stupid soccer team beat Half-wit Hall 3–2, and a boy called Cunningham Minor gave one a slice of stupid birthday cake. For Christ’s sake!’
‘Food’s very important in boarding schools. Cunningham’s parents probably saved coupons for months to have enough butter and sugar for that cake. It was a gesture of real friendship to offer Leo some. One has to read between the lines, my sweet.’ Peter suddenly looked up from the letter. ‘This is splendid! He wants to invite a friend to stay with us during half-term. I’m amazed you’re not pleased.’ He read on for a few seconds. ‘Excellent! This boy’s a budding Robinson Crusoe. He’s built a hut in the woods and invites his pals round for grub. No wonder Leo likes him.’
Andrea shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Leo has a good friend and didn’t tell us till now, and we should be pleased?’
Peter reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘It’s a big compliment to us that he wants to bring a friend home.’
‘Sweetheart, I don’t want to share Leo. Not on his first visit home.’
‘Come on, Andrea. You’ve read the letter. His friend’s dad flies fighters – imagine the life he’s leading – and his mother’s in Kenya. This lad may have to stay at school for half-term if we say no.’
Andrea raised her hands. ‘You’re right. It was really nice of Leo. Of course I want this boy to come.’
As golden leaves drifted down around them, they ate their sandwiches. Peter, in his generous way, was simply glad that Leo had found a friend. Impulsively, Andrea kissed her husband. As so often these days, she found herself slipping into her ‘if only’ routine. If only the doctors had never plunged him into despair by saying he wouldn’t walk again; if only she hadn’t felt obliged to visit the Radcliffe Infirmary day after day for months until drained of every atom of emotion. If only Peter hadn’t needed her so much, while simultaneously detesting his dependence.
After throwing a few crusts to the ducks on the lake, they headed for the hotel where Peter chose to live. Being near Victoria Station, a prime target for the Luftwaffe, one wing of the hotel had already been compacted to a massive mound of rubble. The place appealed to Peter because few people wanted to stay there. Along an empty upper corridor, unknown to the Admiralty, the hotel’s manager had let him construct an experimental water tank, in which he carried out tests on a model of his floating road away from the eyes of opinionated experts at the navy’s research laboratory.
Not for the first time, the siren was wailing as Peter and Andrea arrived. As usual, they waited in Peter’s room to see how close the planes came before deciding whether to go down to the basement. Below them in the street people hurried to take shelter.
‘Wouldn’t it be rather fun to make love with a raid going on?’ suggested Peter.
Andrea wanted to agree; this was exactly the kind of remark the old Peter would have made before his illness, if a war had been in progress. But with all her senses attuned to noises off, Andrea knew she would have none to spare for her own body, let alone his. Fear of pain and extinction apart, she would be constantly aware that if they died together Leo would be an orphan.
That afternoon no bombs fell closer than the City, so they talked while the raid lasted, and then, in the early evening, after the ‘All Clear’ had sounded, they left the curtains open, and Andrea peeled off her stockings by the glow of burning offices and churches. Thirteen years after their marriage, Peter watched as if witnessing one of the loveliest sights in the world. Because lovemaking still meant so much to him, Andrea often forgot his physical awkwardness, though never the distance between them. For almost a year he had kept from her his terror that she would leave him, and for much of that time had subjected her to anger she had found inexplicable and hurtful.
After Peter had eased himself off her body, she stared up at the ceiling. Even now, if they could be together more often, perhaps they could be happy again. But how could she expect to get more time? Women friends thought her lucky to see Peter as often as she did. Their husbands were in the army, or at sea, or even in one case in a German prison camp. ‘One has to expect one’s man to be elsewhere,’ the bursar’s wife had told her firmly. ‘You Americans were hardly in the First War, so you don’t understand what’s involved.’ This woman’s husband was in a destroyer escorting Atlantic convoys. Yet Andrea had been unabashed. Because her good-natured, optimistic husband had been changed forever by a cruel illness, he and she deserved a second chance, some special opportunity. Wanting to love him again, she refused to accept that they wouldn’t get one.
*
Andrea planned to collect Leo and his friend from King’s Cross Station and then take them to the hotel to meet Peter. The boys would spend the day in London with her and Peter, and then leave for Oxford with her alone in order to spend the rest of the four-day holiday there.
Andrea felt great sympathy for this boy whose mother was abroad, and whose father was a pilot; but she still feared he might monopolise Leo, and felt guilty over this.
Before joining the other mothers near the barrier, Andrea went into the ladies to check her lipstick and powder – not that she expected Leo to notice her appearance. Outside, she exchanged small talk with a woman whose hair was permed into absurd rows of tight little curls. The only question bothering Andrea was whether she would hug and kiss her son in the station, or feel obliged to ape the reticent British, and wait till they were safely inside a taxi.
When Leo came towards her with his friend beside him, one hand thrust deeply in a pocket and the other carrying his case, the kiss she had meant to give him ended as a brush of her cheek against his.
‘Mum, this is Justin Matherson.’
‘Hello there, Justin.’
‘How do you do, Mrs Pauling.’ He held out a formal hand for her to shake, reinforcing her impression of him as a small adult. His eyes were dark, almost violet blue with long black lashes, and they held Andrea’s for several seconds before flicking away. His face was narrow, with a proud, firm mouth.
Andrea smiled tightly. ‘Okay, boys, we’re going to get ourselves a cab to Pimlico.’
In the taxi both boys were enthralled by the bomb damage, and pointed to each rubble-filled gap where a house had been, and each boarded-up shopfront concealing a blacke
ned interior. The smell of damp plaster dust and burned bricks filled Andrea’s nostrils. On every visit to London from unscathed Oxford, she shuddered to see how fragile all buildings were.
‘A pity we can’t stop for a better look,’ remarked Justin, staring straight at Andrea, as if willing her to tell the driver to pull over. He and Leo were craning their necks to look back at an exposed inner wall, from which a flight of stairs projected crazily over an empty space. A washbasin also hung above a void, suspended only by its pipes.
‘Imagine you’d been washing, then BAAM!’ cried Leo, pulling a grotesque face.
Dismayed by their excitement, Andrea said quietly, ‘Let’s hope everyone was sheltering.’
Ahead, there was a notice in the centre of the road which read: WARNING UNEXPLODED BOMB, with an arrow diverting the traffic through several side-streets. Before their taxi driver could return to the main road again, he pulled up at traffic lights right beside a hole in the road.
Justin wound down the window and looked up and down the street. ‘No warning here,’ he announced.
Deep down in the earth, men were labouring to repair fractured gas pipes. Before Andrea could stop him, Justin had jumped out of the cab. She darted after him and caught him by the arm as he peered at the men, working almost up to their waists in muddy water. One shouted up, ‘Are you daft, mate? Just shove off!’
Back in the taxi, Justin was unrepentant. ‘I hope there’ll be a raid before we leave,’ he declared, fixing Andrea with another searing look.
‘Gosh, yes,’ echoed Leo.
‘You can’t want that. People may die,’ objected Andrea.
Justin said sharply, ‘Who cares what I want? People conk out anyway, all over the place, worse luck.’ And again he fixed her with his fierce eyes.
Guessing the cause of his anger, Andrea remained silent. Leo seemed cowed, too, plainly in awe of his unpredictable friend. Andrea smiled encouragingly at her son. ‘Dad’s built a kind of tank at the hotel.’
Leo perked up. ‘A Crusader tank?’
‘A water tank.’
‘Oh Gawd.’
‘It’s for a model of his floating road,’ Andrea said brightly, immediately suspecting that she’d spoken out of turn. ‘Leo’s dad makes wonderful models,’ she added, hoping to reduce Justin’s interest in Peter’s work by making it sound like a boyish hobby.
‘You should see the fantastic plane Justin’s making in the craft room,’ gushed Leo.
‘It’s good, not fantastic,’ corrected Justin.
Reminding herself that Justin was twelve, Andrea smiled at him and said she was sure he was being too modest. But Justin soon put her right. One boy at school made aircraft that really were fantastic.
‘I guess if you enjoy making things, that’s what matters,’ suggested Andrea.
‘If you’re spastic at it, you shouldn’t bother,’ said Justin, as the taxi drew up at the hotel.
After Peter had given the boys lunch in the cavernous cream-painted dining room, Leo asked his father to show them his water tank.
Peter said edgily, ‘I suppose your mother told you?’
‘You told me about your bridge ages ago, so don’t get cross with mum.’
Peter leaned closer to Leo. ‘I’m only cross with her because she knew I broke every rule in the book when I built my tank here. She was incredibly indiscreet.’ He smiled reassuringly at Leo. ‘I had to set up my own model to get away from interfering technicians in the lab. Don’t worry. No one will find out.’
‘So we can’t see it.’ Leo sounded terribly disappointed.
‘I didn’t say that, Leo. In fact I think you’ll be less likely to blab if I trust you both.’
To Andrea’s immense relief, Peter suddenly relaxed. After making Leo and Justin promise to say nothing to their friends at school, he led them all up the disused backstairs.
On an upper landing, beneath a cracked skylight, Peter paused to unlock a metal fire door. Beyond it, stretching down the passage, was a narrow trough of water supported on columns of bricks. Made from linoleum, the ‘tank’ was almost fifty feet long. How Peter had set it up, Andrea didn’t dare imagine. On the water floated a thin roadway constructed from miniature palings wired together and laid crosswise under a canvas covering. The whole construction was anchored at opposite ends by cables secured to hanging weights.
‘Amazing,’ whispered Leo.
Peter placed a model truck on the roadway, and even Justin came closer. The vehicle was powered by a battery motor, and, as it moved forwards, the hinged curbs of the road rose up like the sides of a boat on each side of it, dropping down into their former position the moment the weight of the truck had passed.
Justin was frowning. ‘It’d be good on a river, but what if it’s on the sea and there are waves?’
Peter smiled at him. ‘You mean ship-to-shore. Good question.’
‘Would it be swamped?’ asked Leo anxiously.
As Peter flicked down a switch, paddles under the water started to make waves. Andrea expected the roadway to sink at the point where it was weighed down by the truck, but the raised sides moved along with it and protected the vehicle like a mobile boat. Leo clapped and Andrea joined in.
‘That’s jolly clever,’ conceded Justin. ‘What happens if a truck breaks down?’
‘Another good question,’ chuckled Peter. ‘Well, if the sea’s flat, the truck stays afloat just like when it’s moving. If it’s rough, that part of the road gets waterlogged, but we get time to tow away the broken-down vehicle.’
Justin said, ‘A bomb would make the whole thing sink.’
‘You’re quite a pessimist,’ laughed Peter.
Looking at her son’s admiring face and Justin’s frown of concentration, Andrea felt immensely proud of Peter. He switched off the waves with God-like authority. ‘Another advantage is it can be rolled up, and taken anywhere.’
‘Like a gigantic swiss roll,’ said Leo. ‘You should call it Swiss Roll, dad.’
Peter clapped him on the back. ‘Perhaps I will.’
After wave experiments with three model lorries nose-to-tail on the bridge, they went downstairs to sample the best tea the hotel could provide. Shortly before they left for Paddington, Justin went to the gents. Peter hugged his son.
‘A bit of advice, Leo. Don’t be too impressed with Justin because his dad’s a pilot. It may sound big-headed, but scientists win wars, not heroes.’
‘I don’t care about his dad. Justin’s more daring than anyone.’
‘What does he do?’ asked Andrea, uneasily.
‘I can’t say. I’m really sorry, mum. But he stuck up for me in a fight, and we both got our heads shoved in the whitewash bucket.’
‘By other boys?’ gulped Andrea.
‘Of course.’
‘I bet you looked a fright,’ chortled Peter, suddenly aware of Andrea’s confusion. ‘They mark the football pitch with whitewash. Just horseplay, darling.’
Peter came down with the boys in the hotel’s only working lift. Standing by her husband, Andrea noticed Leo slip his hand into his father’s without Justin seeing. Instead of embracing his son again and causing him embarrassment, Peter ruffled his hair as they parted.
In the cab on the way to Paddington, Leo murmured, ‘I love the leathery smell of taxis.’ After that, neither boy spoke for a long time. Andrea suspected that, if Peter were in her place now, he would know exactly what to say to them. After a few moments of panic, she asked whether they could remember exactly how they met. A howl of laughter greeted her question.
‘We were on “big stairs”, waiting for Spud to give us the whacks,’ explained Leo.
‘What had you done, sweetheart?’ She had a fluttery feeling in her chest.
‘Talking after lights out. Anyway Justin told me to wait for him afterwards because he knew a way to stop your bum hurting.’
‘I got him jumping up and down on the beds in Drake dorm – the way the Masai do, really high.’
‘They’
re a tribe in Kenya, mum.’
‘Didn’t you hate being hit?’
‘We loved it, Mrs Pauling,’ said Justin. ‘Spud goes puce and grunts as if it’s killing him. It’s a laugh!’
Leo said sympathetically to his mother, ‘He’s joking. We don’t really love it. We have to shake his hand when he’s finished. No one likes that.’
‘Dead right,’ agreed Justin. ‘But unlike some squits, we don’t snivel.’
The thought of Leo being hit by a red-faced, grunting man made Andrea feel sick. Suddenly, the boys became gloomy, as if her reaction had opened their eyes to the truth of their situation. To lighten their mood, Andrea asked them about their teachers’ nicknames. This had them laughing again, and Justin asked her whether the girls she taught called her Mrs Appauling.
‘Of course they do,’ she admitted. ‘Do boys call Leo “Appauling”?’
‘They don’t use long words.’
‘At all?’ she asked, with deliberate seriousness.
‘I meant they don’t use long words for nicknames,’ Justin replied patiently, as if she could not help being stupid.
As their train gathered speed, the howl of a distant siren reached them in their blacked-out compartment, soon followed by the drone of bombers. Both boys groaned their disappointment at having missed a raid. But the next time Andrea looked at Justin, his face was fretful. Was he imagining his father swooping down from the clouds to intercept?
Outside the sky would be dark, with searchlights flickering. Leo also seemed sad; but just then he turned to Justin and asked him what he thought Spud (their headmaster?) had been doing during half-term. At once they were giggling again.
*
Three months later, during the Christmas holidays, Peter read in the papers that Justin’s father had been killed. When he told Leo his son was obviously shocked, but he did not say much. Expecting him to return to the subject later, Peter would be surprised to find he never did.