Apple Blossom Time (32 page)

‘Have you had a little sleep?’

‘I had a lovely snooze, thank you. So restful. Now I really should be getting up. Lots to do and no time to do it in, you know.’

‘There’s no hurry. I think you ought to spoil yourself today.’

And I didn’t want her pottering around, chattering and meddling. How arrogant. It was her house, after all, and her son I was waiting for.

All afternoon I sat in the garden, waiting patiently, hoping. Some time around three, I think I fell asleep. I woke with a jerk, imagining I’d heard the scullery door key turn in its lock. No. I was wrong. Everything was quiet. The vicarage doves went off with a flapping of wings like applause. Some children were playing a skipping game in the lane. Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper. Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper.

No-one else was awake, it seemed, though I knew that couldn’t be true. Michaelmas daisies, dusty blue, yellow-eyed, were just coming into flower below the thatched catslide roof. A peacock butterfly was dipping into them, unrolling and re-rolling its watchspring proboscis. Everything was dusty, hazy, shimmering.

I could wait. I was prepared to wait all day for Martin. If, by evening, he still hadn’t come out … if I couldn’t keep his mother upstairs any longer (there was, after all, a limit to the amount of sleep she needed, a limit to the number of enticing little trays I could carry upstairs) … then I didn’t know what I’d do next. I hadn’t thought beyond one day.

He knew I was there. He knew I was waiting for him. I wasn’t going to knock and shout for him. He’d never liked fuss. And he’d come. Or he wouldn’t come. That was all.

*   *   *

He came out when the shadow of the tall hedge at the bottom of the garden had been thrown right across the grass. I was sitting in the shade, watching the daylight turn blue and the blue of the Michaelmas daisies turn luminous. I’d just about given up.

I heard the rattle of the key, but I didn’t turn round. I let Martin come to me. He dropped heavily into the chair by my side, moving stiffly, seeming older, far older, than he ought.

We sat in the lessening light, silent as an old married couple, as far apart as lonely people can be. Something terrible, something private, had happened to drive Martin into retreat. I didn’t feel I had the right to force him to talk about it. Yet, if I didn’t, who did?

I didn’t even dare to stare. But it’s amazing what you can see without seeming to look. Women are good at that. The spark had gone. His eyes had glazed over. All the vibrancy and humour that made his plain face remarkable had dried up. He was an empty sack in the shape of a man. I could have wept for him.

He’d been in that little room all day, all the night before and all the day before that and – I didn’t know how long. I could, at least, be practical. I could begin to cure the body, if I couldn’t touch his lonely mind. I went back into the kitchen, rummaged around, and discovered three slices of bacon under a muslin canopy. I hesitated – Mrs Buckland would never forgive me if I used it all – what the hell, this was an emergency. The smell of frying made me drool, but I managed to resist it. I made a thick bacon sandwich and carried it, with a bottle of Bass, back to the garden.

He took it with a half-smile of such poignancy that it hurt more than if he’d ignored me, or stormed or sworn. Those I could have dealt with. This withdrawal … I didn’t understand the meaning of it.

His eyes were dry, yet they glittered as though there ought to be tears. Still, no doubt, he looked better when he’d eaten and drunk.

‘Sensible Laura,’ he said, softly. ‘You think that anything can be cured with a sandwich.’

I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what he expected me to say, so I kept quiet.

‘Well, why not?’ he went on. ‘Some things are so dreadful that you either have to curse God and give up living, or decide to get on with it one day at a time. I think I’ve just decided.’

We sat silently. The evening grew darker. Children were called in from their games. Oil lamps were lit in the cottage next door, giving a soft, bloomy light that didn’t reach out beyond the windows. Martin didn’t talk, didn’t move. I wish I could have comforted him. When I’d needed him, he’d been there. He’d given me the physical warmth that I longed for, when words wouldn’t have been enough. I could have done the same for him, if he’d let me.

I ached to touch him. I wanted to put my arms around him and take away the pain. I didn’t need to know what was wrong. I loved him. You don’t ask questions when you love someone. It was enough to know that he needed me. But Martin had put up a barrier between us. I couldn’t reach him.

A bedroom window was closed and the curtains whisked together. A lamp was lit and travelled around the house. I don’t think I really registered what that meant, but Martin did. He leaped out of his chair, knocking it backwards.

Mrs Buckland popped her head through the kitchen window. ‘Laura, I thought I smelt bacon. Whatever are you two doing out there in the dark? Can’t you feel the dew falling? Anyway, it’s nice to know I can have my scullery back at last,’ she scolded cheerfully.

‘Get out of there!’ he shouted and ran towards the house, but stiffly, like someone whose limbs are not under control.

Mrs Buckland stood very still, with her hand on the scullery door latch. Her other hand rested on her chest, where her heart might have been felt under the sturdy corsetry.

Over her shoulder, I saw shapes, patterns, black holes in white – or white on black, a jumble, shading, stripes, angles. A puzzle. Then I recognized what I was seeing.

*   *   *

Faces looked back at me, terrible faces, scarcely human. No, that was wrong. Once I’d identified the key to the pattern, they were inescapably human. Gaunt faces, sunken pits where eyes ought to be, gashes where you’d expect to find lips. Shaven heads, skull-shapes unsoftened by hair. Everything opposite, turned inside out. Man, woman, child, old, young. No human diversity. Every single face reduced to its basics.

The faces accused me. More shocking than the pits carelessly piled with bodies, the jumble of naked limbs, more horrifying than the chimneys still smoking, the faces that looked through the wire blamed me. I had not done enough. None of us had done enough.

But I didn’t know, I wanted to cry. How could I help you, when I didn’t know?

We tried to tell you, the faces replied, we tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t believe.

*   *   *

Martin stood across the door, a fierce guardian. ‘I told you!’ he shouted. ‘I told you not to go in.’

Beneath my hand, I could feel Mrs Buckland shaking. I took her by the arm and led her away.

‘Martin,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Martin, what have you done?’

*   *   *

‘There will be trials,’ Martin said, dully. ‘There must be trials and the evidence – some of it – is on those walls. I have to go back. No-one could believe…’ He was still shaking. ‘It was a job. I was told to do it and I knew it had to be done. It was right to record what we found at Belsen – wasn’t it? – or the world would never have believed it. We couldn’t – nothing in heaven or hell had prepared us for that.’

‘Martin,’ I whispered. ‘You’re tormenting yourself.’

‘Why shouldn’t I hurt? Why shouldn’t you? Or my mother? Why should we be different? We drove along a narrow road through pinewoods, dark and dense, Hansel and Gretel woods. There was a smell, hideous, a charnel smell, and we looked at each other and wondered where it came from – and yet, you know, I think – maybe – we guessed. Soldiers who’d fought their way from the Channel, hard men, who’d maybe had to pick up the pieces of friends, vomited when they reached the wire and saw what was on the other side. Ten thousand unburied dead, long dead some of them, dissolving … and then the living dead…’

I couldn’t stop him. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears and scream at him to stop, but I couldn’t do it.

‘We were so angry – mad with anger – we did things we shouldn’t have done. I didn’t think British soldiers would behave like that. We made the camp guards bury the dead, made them run backwards and forwards, lugging their victims, and when they dropped with exhaustion, we kicked them back to work, or shot them if they wouldn’t. Kinder, perhaps, than letting the inmates get them … I came round a corner and found two soldiers beating a guard, whacking him with their rifle butts. I should have stopped them. I had three stripes up, it was my job to stop them. But I turned my back. I walked away. There was typhus, no wonder, the place was crawling with lice … people were free and still dying, what a terrible thing, to die just when you are offered life … We moved the sick into the SS barracks and then torched the huts. Even the smoke stank. There were British nurses with us. One of them gave me a container of water and told me to go down the lines of mattresses and give water to all the sick. I held them in my arms – so light, they were, like bundles of sticks, loosely tied together – and trickled the water into their mouths, because they were too weak to take the cup. There was one man – he had no teeth and no hair – he said “bless you, bless you” and then he died. He died in my arms and the water dribbled out of his mouth. His face is there on my wall, look, there. How could anyone believe, without having seen…? Laura, tell me I was right to take those pictures…’ I nodded. ‘But oh, God, Laura,’ Martin went on and his voice was a hoarse whisper, ‘I dream … I dream…’

The early stars still shone. The summer evening air was still soft and warm, but the sweetness had gone from it. Perhaps for Martin, it might never come back. I put my arms around him and he began to weep, a hard, dry sobbing that brought no relief. But then he pushed me aside and wouldn’t let me comfort him. There was nothing I could do.

*   *   *

Now I had time to spare and time to think. I wrote to the headquarters of our county regiment, reasoning that it was a sensible place to start the search for my father. He had been an infantryman, the letters had told me that. And although the collar badges on his uniform had been missing, it would be logical to assume that he had joined the regiment that had its links closest to home.

A courteous reply told me that there was no trace of Edwin Ansty in the regimental records. Damn, damn, damn –
another
blank. I crumpled the letter in frustration and then smoothed it out again, alarmed by my own fury. I was becoming obsessed and I didn’t like what it was doing to me.

Anyone would think that Edwin Ansty was an elaborate myth. There was the uniform. There were the letters. But of the man there was no trace. He had left no shadow. Whichever way I looked, there was only empty space. He was nobody.

And then there was me. I existed. But if I wasn’t Edwin Ansty’s daughter – then who was I?

*   *   *

When Kate was demobbed, she didn’t dither, like me. She knew exactly what she was going to do. She arrived home with a set of new leather luggage. Inside were silk lingerie, shoes, stockings, hats … my teeth ached with envy.

‘Who’ve you got involved with now, Kate? Aladdin?’

‘Someone rather like that,’ she admitted. ‘His name’s Geoffrey. He’s … he’s a businessman.’

‘Sounds good. And what does he do?’

‘Oh, this and that, here and there,’ she answered airily. ‘There are so many opportunities after a war, you know, for a clever man.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘Someone has to put things back together again,’ she answered, but her tone was defensive.

‘And?’

‘I’m sick of Utility this and Utility that.’

‘And?’

‘He’s very fond of me.’

‘And?’

‘He’s a bit older than me.’

‘How much?’

She looked straight at me with that defiant stare I remembered so well from our childhood. ‘Thirty-seven years, actually.’

‘Kate! You’re joking! That makes him … sixty-one. He’s an old man!’

Older than Mother. Older than Tom. As old, almost, as Grandmother. It was indecent.

‘Rubbish. He’s very … very virile…’

‘… for his age,’ I finished for her. ‘So whatever happened to what’s-his-name, the first lieutenant, the one you were so mad about?’

‘He was married. Aren’t they all?’ She gave a little laugh that was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. ‘Senior Service Satisfies. All lonely, all misunderstood…’

‘And all very firmly hooked.’

‘His wife was having a baby. And he said that they weren’t … that he didn’t any more … “Darling, it wasn’t supposed to happen,”’ she mimicked bitterly, ‘“but I can’t leave her now, not with the baby and everything, you do see, don’t you…” Oh yes, I saw all right. Bloody liar.’

‘Oh, Kate, I’m sorry.’

‘So what? I’m tired of young men, anyway. All they want is one thing and I’m fed up with
that.
It’s highly overrated. All that heavy breathing and pawing in back seats and watching the clock and the calendar and cricks in your neck and grass in your knickers and a quick thrill at the end of it –
if
you’re lucky. No, I’m perfectly happy to be cherished. In fact, I love it. Here—’ She rummaged in her suitcase and pulled out a nightdress, champagne-coloured satin, barely there, slithery and incredibly sexy. It was new. The label still swung from it.
And
the price tag! ‘That’s for you. I bought it the other day and when I got home – silly me – I found I’d already got one exactly like it. Go on. Take it.’

‘I’m not sure…’

Such generosity. Such careless, thoughtless,
easy
generosity.

‘Oh, don’t be so stuffy. Darling Laura. Someone has to profit from Geoffrey’s ill-gotten gains. So why not you and me?’

She thrust it into my hands. It felt gorgeous. It had to be wrong to enjoy it.

‘And where do these ill-gotten gains come from?’ I asked, primly.

‘Well, at the moment – between you and me – he’s buying up bombed sites in London.’

‘Bombed sites?’

‘Silly! They won’t
always
be bombed sites, you know.’

*   *   *

Much to my surprise, Geoffrey and my grandmother got on together like a house on fire. They were two of a kind, I suppose. Charming. Ruthless.

When Kate announced, rather defiantly, that Geoffrey was ‘just passing through’ – as though anyone just passed through Ansty Parva! – and might call in, I found that I was bursting with curiosity. My expectations were embarrassingly predictable. At least, I gave Kate the credit for having the good taste not to bring home a barrow boy – wide tie and Max Miller moustache and smutty jokes. But he’d be rather florid, I imagined, probably overweight, a paisley cravat and a belted camel-hair overcoat and driving gloves and – yes, definitely – suede shoes, crêpe-soled. And he’d drive a car that was all chrome and white-walled tyres and that gobbled up black market petrol. Such a little snob, Laura!