Apple Blossom Time (16 page)

All the same, it was difficult not to smile. How like her! I had a feeling that Kate’s sex life was flourishing in a way that mine never had. She had that look about her – you know – complete, finished off properly. Well, good luck to her!

‘Don’t worry, Kate, I won’t throw a fit of hysterics and I won’t hit you, either. Just let me be. I’m quite all right the way I am.’

‘Rubbish! You’re turning into a fusty old hermit. Come dancing with me. There’s an all-ranks do at RAF Cublington next Friday. They’re running a bus. Come with me and we’ll really show them how! Please, Laura,’ she appealed. ‘We’d have such fun together.’

‘I’m sorry – no, really I am – but I’m on evenings that week.’

‘And if you weren’t, you’d swap with someone just to make sure that you were. OK, I’ll let you off this time, but I’m not beaten yet!’

*   *   *

I wanted to share my secret with Kate. I needed to talk to somebody. I had destroyed the two anonymous letters, but that didn’t mean that I’d forgotten them. I was becoming obsessed by them, by the secret at which they hinted, shameful and dark. The intense concentration demanded by my work kept my brain occupied throughout every moment I spent on shift, but even I couldn’t work all the time. In the morning after night shift while I tried to sleep, in the evening polishing buttons and shoes, mending my stockings, washing my underwear, drying my hair, every moment, I thought about them.

I could close my eyes and reproduce the illiterate hand. I had searched through stationery counters until in Woolworth’s I had discovered paper that matched the letter in every way: rough, wartime quality that made the ink leach, blurring the letters; sixpence a pad, frustratingly ordinary; hundreds, probably, sold every week. I had held the second letter up to the light – fingermarks, blotchy and indistinguishable. I had sniffed it – tobacco and … and … what? Something familiar. I just couldn’t quite recall. It would come to me. The postmarks had told me nothing. I’d thrown the first envelope away too hastily and the second was blurred.

And then, as I’d done with the first, I had burned those hurtful pieces of paper, letter and envelope, holding them cautiously between finger and thumb, poking them into the gas flame, watching the paper catch, flare and die, neatly sweeping up the ashes from the hearth. Quite gone. Nothing left.

Only they hadn’t gone. They were still with me. They never left me.

I needed someone to talk to. I had tried at home, but no-one was willing to talk to me. Mother? Tom? Grandmother? Edwin Ansty’s wife, his best friend and his mother, a dumb triumvirate. Who could break their silence? Wherever I turned, I met resistance. They weren’t going to give me any answers.

What did they think I was going to ask? What were they afraid of? Why shouldn’t I know about my own father? Why was he never mentioned? Why had he vanished from my life as though he had never existed? I knew his name, but nothing else. No photograph, no letters, no memories, no name on the war memorial. I might have been the product of an immaculate conception.

Perhaps I could have talked to Kate. She, at least, would have listened. She wouldn’t have fobbed me off, as though I were just an inquisitive child demanding to know where babies come from. But Kate and I did not share the same father. Why should she care? The man described as a coward was no relative of hers. How could I explain to her? Would I say ‘Kate, I think our mother is hiding something from me?’ Kate’s loyalty would have to be to our shared mother, of course. If even
she
wouldn’t answer my questions, why should anyone else? Kate would say ‘Pay no attention. There are plenty of head cases about. The war brings them all out of the woodwork.’

That was a comforting, if convenient, thought. A disturbed person. Someone grieving, perhaps, or jealous, or lonely. All I had to do was keep that idea firmly in my mind. Yes, but who? And why? Why me?

Someone must know.

*   *   *

Suddenly summer had arrived and suddenly, too, aerials sprouted on the edge of the woods behind ‘D’ block. We speculated, though guardedly, that something very important must be happening to override the earlier decision that BP should not be too noticeable from the air. The speed with which coded messages were received, decrypted into plain German, translated, recrypted back into our own code of the day and passed on to commanders could already be down to as little as thirty minutes. If that time now had to be shortened still further, something was obviously up. There was a renewed feeling of urgency in the air that reminded me slightly of the flap in Cairo – everyone seemed to be on their toes, tense and excited – but this time we weren’t waiting for the enemy to come to us. We were taking the war to him – all the way.

*   *   *

It was my turn for a 72-hour pass and I was cautiously warned that I ought to make the most of it. It would be the last for some time. No-one would be having leave that summer of 1944. Rumours of the opening of a second front were stronger than they’d ever been. No-one could be spared when the moment finally arrived. And who in their right mind would want to miss it? Certainly not I.

I travelled home almost reluctantly. There was too much going on and I didn’t want to be left out. Yet, after a beast of a journey cross country, the train having been shunted into every siding between Waterloo and Salisbury, the prim cottages of Ansty Parva were a welcome sight. The sky was still bright, gold streaked with lilac, but the earth was dark as I trudged up the drive of Ansty House, noticing the unwelcome changes.

Everything looked very run down. The gravel of the drive was thick with weeds. The shrubbery was overgrown, laced with brambles, unkempt as an old man’s beard. The chickens, already cooped up for the night, occupied a wire mesh run beside the dry fountain. Most of the lawns had been dug up and those that were left had pigs rooting on them. Pigs! Grandmother’s latest obsession. Pigs meant bacon, sausages, hams, pork, crackling, sage and onion stuffing, apple sauce – my mouth watered. Not such a bad idea, after all.

I stood quietly in the open doorway of the gardener’s cottage. Nothing seemed to have changed here. The same shabby-elegant furniture, too much for the room, was shoved all anyhow around the walls. A tiny fire of apple tree prunings, just enough to take the chill off the early summer evening, burned in the black chasm of the fireplace, its spicy smoke scenting the room. The blackout curtains had not been drawn and the light had not been lit. The window was open, so that the fragrance of stock and mignonette drifted in and mingled with the smoke.

Mother was playing the piano, one of Bach’s complicated rhythmic patterns. It sounded as sunlight might sound, shining through tall trees, dappling the grass gold and green. It was a comforting sound. As a child, I’d lain in bed so often, listening to Mother play, falling asleep to sweet, barely recognized tunes. Some things never change. I hadn’t wanted to come home, but it was wonderful to have arrived.

With a discordant jangle, fierce and shocking, Mother broke into the soothing rhythm. She pounded the keys three times with clenched fists. Her spine and shoulders were rigid with rage. The beauty, the peace of the scene were smashed. It was as though someone had taken a hammer to a perfect statue.

I felt as though I were trespassing. I turned to tiptoe away, to enter the house again with more noise, more warning, but she was too quick for me.

‘Laura?’ When I turned to look at my mother, the remains of her fury still blazed from her eyes, but as I watched, she won the battle. ‘Laura, darling. Where did you spring from? Are you on leave? How marvellous. You should have warned us. We’d have met you at the station.’

‘It was all rather sudden. I scarcely knew myself. Mother – are you all right?’

‘Never better.’ She put her arms around me and kissed me. I could feel her bones, puny as a bird’s. They poked me, even through the sturdy serge of my uniform. The hair that I remembered as soft as a kitten’s was dragged back and wound under a woollen turban. She wore tweed slacks and an old shirt of Tom’s. ‘I’m afraid it’ll be pot luck for supper tonight, but we’ll see what Grandmother can produce tomorrow. It’ll be so cosy, just the two of us.’

‘Aren’t we waiting for Tom?’

‘Tom won’t be home for supper, I don’t think. Anyway, he wouldn’t want to keep you waiting. You must be starving after your journey. Was it awful?’

We sat down together to the reheated remains of vegetable pudding – a mixture of vegetables barely moistened by gravy and encased in potato pastry. It was rather dull fare, even first time round. On its second appearance, it was not improved.

‘Oh, dear.’ Mother gave a resigned sigh. ‘It’s rather like trying to chew a hole in an army kitbag. Pastry has never been my strong point.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ I lied, blatantly. ‘If Mrs Granby gave me this, I’d be in seventh heaven.’

‘Do you mind if I turn on the wireless while we eat? I always like to have the sound, even if I don’t really listen.’ She switched on the set. ‘I always used to like J. B. Priestley at this time on a Sunday night. He has such a comfortable voice, I always think, rather like a Christmas pudding smoking a pipe. Such a pity Mr Churchill had him taken off.’

We chatted lightly about who was doing what in the village, but all the time I was aware that my mother was ill at ease. She seemed to be giving me only half her attention. Above the murmur of our voices, she was listening for something and I knew that it was for the sound of Tom’s returning footsteps.

‘Tom was fined last month for growing gooseberries instead of carrots. He’s frightfully upset.’

‘No wonder. Fined? For growing one thing instead of another?’

‘Root vegetables give a better yield per square yard of cultivation, I’m told. So market gardeners are expected to produce a certain yield off their acreage. But Tom doesn’t quite see things the same way.’

‘But how does anyone know what he’s growing?’ I asked.

‘Oh, that’s easy. Tom blames the
Gauleiter
of Ansty Parva!’ Mother giggled. ‘Mr Treadwell. He knows everything. If there ever is an invasion, we all know which side he’ll be on.’

‘Good Lord! I thought we were fighting to keep that type out of Britain. We seem to have quite enough home-grown Nazis.’

‘I’m so glad you’ve come today,’ Mother said as we cleared away the few dishes. ‘I’ve got a treat for pudding. Such good timing.’ She took a single banana from a blue-and-white Chinese bowl and laid it on a wafer-thin Spode plate in front of me. ‘There you are. I won it in a WI raffle. Isn’t that tremendous luck?’

She stood by my chair, a little, triumphant grin on her face, her hands behind her back, like a child giving the apple to the teacher. I looked from Mother to the banana, freckled black on its yellow skin, and back to my mother again.

‘I can’t eat this,’ I said. ‘It’s too precious.’

‘But darling, you must. Someone has to. I can’t stuff it and mount it on the wall like a trophy. It’s for you.’

‘The army feeds me so well,’ I lied. Well, the army did, but Mrs Granby certainly didn’t. I’d have loved that banana. My teeth ached for it. ‘And you’re getting…’ No, I couldn’t say it. ‘You’ve lost a bit too much weight. You have it.’

‘Oh, no. I couldn’t. I’m absolutely full.’

‘And what about Tom? He’d love it, I’m sure. Where is Tom?’

‘He’s busy,’ she said, quickly. ‘And the banana will be black by tomorrow. It’d be a sin to waste it.’

I took another plate, garlands of roses and forget-me-nots, and put it on the table in front of Mother. Both plates were cracked, but they had been as long as I could remember. All our plates were cracked and our cups chipped. Then I sliced the banana and put an equal number of slices on each plate. I laid a pearl-handled fruit knife and fork beside each.

‘There you are,’ I said, laughing. ‘You can’t argue now. Pretend you’ve just reached the end of a four-course dinner. Pretend you’re just toying with dessert.’

Mother laughed too, put a slice in her mouth and gagged. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I just don’t think I can manage it.’

‘Mother, where
is
Tom?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she whispered.

‘The Green Dragon?’ I guessed.

‘Probably. That’s where he was last night. But the night before that he went over to Middlehampton and … Laura, where are you going?’

‘To the Green Dragon.’

‘You can’t…’

‘Watch me.’

‘Laura, don’t…’ I heard her call as I went out the door, but I was in no mood to listen.

I marched out with my uniform cap set at an aggressive angle. The short cut to the village was through the walled garden, where a low green door led into the churchyard. It was just as well that the route was as familiar to me as the way to bed. My torch with its two enveloping layers of tissue paper barely lit up my shoelaces. My sensible, flat shoes crunched on the gravel as I strode through the garden.

God, I was angry. I was angry enough to pull Tom out of the Green Dragon by the scruff of his neck. Did my mother really think I hadn’t heard her pound the piano in rage and frustration? Did she think I hadn’t seen how worn and thin she had become? Throughout my childhood, we had tiptoed around, warned by Mother – Tom’s not feeling too bright, don’t disturb Tom, don’t upset Tom, he gets nervous, he had a bad time in the war. Well, this was another war and we were all damn well having a bad time. Why should he be especially protected against it? He said he loved my mother, he said he adored the ground she walked on. Couldn’t he see how ill she looked? Couldn’t he see what was right under his nose? It was a funny kind of love that never even noticed the loved one.

There was a light in the potting shed, a tiny, unblacked-out pinpoint of light. I wasn’t going to have to walk as far as the Green Dragon, after all. A thread of sound reached me from the shed, wavering and uncertain, wandering around the tune and coming back to it again.

‘“If you want to find the old battalion,

I know where they are, I know where they are,

I know where they are.

If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are

They’re hanging on the old barbed wire…”’