Marking Time (60 page)

She had seen him once in the two months – getting into a taxi outside the building. He had not seen her, and she stood and watched him be driven away. She noticed that her heart was aching
but it wasn’t until the sight of him gave her a little lilt to her spirits, which relapsed as soon as the cab was out of sight, that she realised that it had been aching all the time.

By now she had shown her pass in the hall, taken a lift, which had carried her four floors down, and was walking along the stuffy, soundproofed corridors to her studio. It was good manners to
arrive on shift a bit early, so that the other announcer could leave on time. She arrived in the middle of a recorded concert. ‘I’ve logged the records,’ her predecessor said.
‘Phew! I’m glad to be going home. Our boiler broke down yesterday, and Martin’s got flu, I think, and the roof’s been leaking ever since the bomb fell in the next
street.’ Her name was Daphne Middleton and she was married to a producer who worked in Broadcasting House. They did not really know each other, as Daphne’s shift had only recently been
moved to the one before Angela’s. As Daphne gathered up her things, she said, ‘By the way, you don’t happen to know anyone who wants a room, do you? My lodger’s suddenly
given notice. Martin’s miserable – she was rather a glamour puss, and I’m relieved, but we do need the money.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Oh, well. Have to ask everyone. She’s not going for a month. She’s got a week’s leave and guess who she’s spending it with! That producer Brian Prentice.
He’s married, you know. Aren’t some men the end! God – I must fly. You’ll have to kick those JPEs awake – they’re very slow off the mark.’

Coincidence. She supposed all coincidences must seem extraordinary to their victims, but although for a second she had wondered if it had been malice – if Daphne had known about her and
Brian – she knew that it wasn’t. She had never spent a week with him, she had told nobody, and she knew that he would not. Until then she had thought that she could not be more unhappy,
but the job, continuous, demanding – she must never let there be more than fifteen seconds of dead air in case the Germans picked it up and used it – saved her. By six thirty the
following morning, when she came off shift, she felt bitterness and rage, but she was out of love. It was still a desert, but she was free in it. She discovered that she was desperately hungry, and
went to the canteen where she had a dried egg omelette, some tomatoes and a piece of bacon.

‘Mrs Cripps made you this.’ She put the steaming mug down on the small table beside the sofa. He looked up at her; he had been staring at his hands placed on the rug
in front of him.

‘Christopher,’ she said gently. ‘It’s Polly. It’s me.’

‘I know.’ Tears began to course down his face. He often cried like this, making no sound, for what seemed like hours. When he was not crying, his eyes had a hunted expression; he
looked haunted, very scared of something, but nobody knew what. To begin with she had thought that the best thing was to take no notice, to be gently cheerful and to talk to him as though he was
the old Christopher, but she found this very hard since his unreachable despair, or whatever it was, made her want to cry too. Then she had tried to encourage him to cry more – to cry out
whatever was locking him up. But nothing made any difference.

He had been picked up by Military Police in Felixstowe: they had thought he was a young deserter, a soldier who had gone AWOL. But then they had discovered that he did not seem to know where he
was – did not even remember his name. They had gone through his clothes and found his surname on a Cash’s name tape on his vest so, in time, his identity had been discovered. Raymond
and Jessica had travelled together to the hospital where he was and it was clear that he recognised his father since he made an effort to get out of bed and escape, but he was so weak that he
collapsed on the floor of the ward. They had had to give their permission for him to have electric shock treatment, and after a month in the hospital, he had been sent to Home Place to convalesce.
The Duchy was extremely fond of him, and Jessica, who now came down every weekend, was grateful to have him out of London in a place that she knew he loved.

But he didn’t seem to love it much, Polly thought sadly. He did not love anything. He sat on the lawn, on fine days, heavily wrapped up in front of a bird table that the Duchy had had
moved there for him. He
did
watch them feeding sometimes, and once, when a robin chased the others away, he smiled. But most of the time he cried. Dr Carr came, but he was frightened of Dr
Carr.

‘I think it’s doctors he’s afraid of,’ Aunt Rach said.

‘I think it’s men,’ Aunt Villy had answered, and Polly, who had heard this, was beginning to agree with her.

When it was too cold for him to be out, which it now usually was, they put him in the drawing room. The Duchy, who did not generally allow the drawing-room fire to be lit until an hour before
dinner, had it lit in the morning for his benefit, as she said it would give people the excuse to keep popping in to make it up, but it was still cold. He wore a polo-necked jersey that had
belonged to Rupert – a kind of indigo blue that sadly matched the deep circles under his eyes. Villy shaved him every other day. Sometimes, in the afternoon, Clary and Polly took him for
short walks round the garden. He went obediently with them and they talked to each other, trying to make conversations that he might feel constrained to join, but his contributions were mainly a
nervous agreement. He tried to eat some of whatever was put before him. Then, one weekend Hugh brought down a dog – a large black and white mongrel with a good deal of Border Collie in him,
middle-aged, that had been found waiting and dazed outside a completely bombed house near the wharf. ‘See what that does,’ he said to Polly. ‘You know he always loved
animals.’

‘Oh, Dad, that is a good idea!’ She and Clary gave the dog a bath, which improved his appearance a lot, and then took him in to Christopher.

‘This dog has been terribly frightened by the Blitz,’ Polly said; she somehow knew that this would get his attention. He looked at the dog standing stock still a few yards away, and
the dog looked back at him. Then it walked slowly up to him and sat, leaning heavily against his legs. Somebody slammed a door and the dog began to shiver. Christopher put out his hand and laid it
on the dog’s head and the dog gazed at him and slowly stopped shivering.

‘What a lovely dog!’ Lydia exclaimed the next morning. ‘What’s he called?’

‘Oliver,’ Christopher said.

‘Is he your dog?’

‘Yes. He is now.’

‘Darling, you are a brilliant man!’ Sybil said. ‘We none of us thought of that.’

‘Well, he sort of fell into view, poor creature. He’s terribly nervous: can’t stand aeroplanes or loud noises. I just thought they might do each other good.’ If only I
could give
you
a dog, and you would get well, he thought looking at her yellowing face, her swollen belly and ankles as she lay on the bed.

‘Shall I bring you a spot of lunch up here?’ he said. ‘I could bring mine too, have it with you.’

‘Oh, no, darling, I’m just being lazy.’ And he had to watch her hoist herself off the bed and wander to the dressing table where she struggled to put up her hair.

‘Sybil! Darling!’ He took a deep breath and was ready to plunge into the deep end of truth.

She turned nervously to face him. ‘What?’ She sounded so defensive, that he lost courage.

’I was wondering,’ he said, ‘what you would look like if you cut your hair off. It might make an exciting change.’

‘I thought you always liked it long.’

‘Well, I did, but I can change my mind, can’t I?’

It would be less tiring for her, he thought. So Villy carefully cut it off which was a great relief to Sybil. She made him stay to decide how short it was to be, and the ground became thick with
the long tresses before Villy did the trimming.

Thinking himself unseen, he sneaked a lock from the floor and concealed it, but they both saw him, Villy with compassion, and Sybil with fear, but since she could not stand him knowing, she
determined that he did not.

Polly knew, though. Since nobody talked about it, she bore her knowledge alone. She was afraid to talk of it, and every week that passed seemed to make this more difficult. She would not talk to
her father for fear of burdening him with more misery – anxiety about how
she
was feeling. She could not talk to her mother, because she felt it would betray him. She did not talk to
Clary, because she felt Clary had enough to bear as it was. Everybody else preserved such a bland and consistently cheerful air that she did not know how to approach them. She distracted herself by
trying to look after Christopher, who did seem to be slowly on the mend. Since Oliver had appeared, he had begun to stop crying, and Oliver never left his side. Indeed, this was what started
Christopher going for walks unattended: Oliver needed exercise, he said. He could be seen wandering round the big meadow, throwing an old tennis ball for Oliver, who was tireless in his enjoyment
of this. So, in a way, he did not need her so much. She struggled through each day of getting up in the freezing cold, having breakfast, doing lessons, spending some time with Christopher and her
mother, doing her homework, ironing and mending her clothes or minding Wills and Roly for Ellen. The present seemed grey; the future black. She lived in a haze of dread.

One bleak November afternoon Miss Milliment, going to the schoolroom to fetch the Greek primer to set homework for Clary, came in, switched on the light, and discovered Polly seated at the
table. She leapt to her feet.

‘I haven’t done the blackout,’ she said, and Miss Milliment could tell from her voice that she had been crying. She turned off the light, and waited while Polly pulled down the
blinds. The small paraffin stove had either been turned off or gone out: it was bitterly cold.

‘Isn’t this rather a cold place to spend the afternoon?’ she asked. Polly had gone back to the table and muttered something about not noticing it.

Miss Milliment said, ‘I feel something is worrying you very much,’ and she sat down at the table opposite Polly.

There was a silence, during which Polly looked at her and she looked back steadily. Then she burst out, ‘I’m sick of being treated like a child! I’m absolutely
sick
of
it!’

‘Yes, I think it must be very tiresome. Particularly at a time when you are ceasing to be one. People always say,’ she went on, after a pause, ‘how wonderful it must be to be
young, but I fear that most of them have forgotten what it was like. I found it quite dreadful myself.’

‘Did you, Miss Milliment?’

‘Fortunately, whether people like it or not, they grow older. And you will do that. You will get past this tiresome, interim stage and they will have to acknowledge that you are grown
up.’

She waited, and then offered gently, ‘It will pass. Nothing lasts for ever.’

But Polly, looking away from her, said, ‘One thing does. It lasts for ever and ever. Death.’

Her quiet and certain despair exposed a depth of misery that both moved and shocked Miss Milliment. She said, half hoping that it might be so, ‘Are you thinking of your uncle?’

‘You know I am not.’

‘Yes, my dear Polly, I do. Forgive me.’

‘It isn’t—’ her voice trembled, ‘it isn’t just that they don’t talk to
me
about it. They don’t talk to each other. They go on pretending
to each other that it isn’t happening! It makes everything they say a kind of lie. And it must be especially hard for my mother when she feels so rotten all the time – and getting
– getting
worse
. It is my father’s fault! He ought to start it, so that she can really say what she is feeling. At least, if
I
was dying – that’s what I
would want.’ Tears were streaming down her face now, but she ignored them. ‘I think it’s wicked and wrong.’

‘I agree with you about what you would want if you were dying. I think it is what I would want too.’ (For an ignoble moment the thought flashed through Miss Milliment’s mind
that when that time came for her there would be no one either to lie to her or to discuss the truth.) ‘But you see,’ she said, ‘we are not either of
them
. However much we
care for other people, we cannot become them. People can only do as much as they are. It may be more than we could do, it may be less, but very often it will be different. Sometimes that is very
hard to bear, as I know you know.’

‘But
I
have to pretend with them too!’

‘Then you will know how hard it must be for your father.’

Then she added: ‘When a person is dying, it must be their choice how they do it. Didn’t we agree on that, just now? You are not pretending to yourself, and when you remember that,
remember that they are not pretending either. To themselves. What they are doing with
each other
is only and entirely their business.’

Polly looked at the small grey eyes that were watching her with such perceptive kindness and felt
known
– a warm, light feeling. ‘What you are saying is,’ she said
slowly, ‘that I mustn’t judge other people by my standards – by how
I
am.’