Authors: Rosie Thomas

Strangers (45 page)

‘Oh, my love.’

Her face was wet, and she felt the last pain sharper than any she had suffered before. ‘I can’t stay. If I could change anything, if I could change this small, little world of me and …’

He stopped her then, his mouth against hers. ‘Don’t. I know that you can’t stay. I love you for that too, because you’re strong and I can’t be.’ They clung together, helpless, and the sun seemed to have left the sea and the horizon was a dull grey line, suddenly finite and fathomable.

It was Steve who moved at last. He turned away, making a pretence of putting things down on the table, tidying a tidy space. Annie watched him, her heart tearing inside her.

He said, ‘I’ll drive you to the main line station. There are good trains to London.’ That was all.

Annie nodded, and looked blindly away.

Now that the time had come they seized on the mechanics of preparing for travel, as if their busyness would keep it at bay. Steve brought down her suitcase and put it in the car while Annie telephoned the station. Within an hour, they had locked the door of the little blue house and turned away from the expressionless sea.

As they drove past the wide fields Annie commanded herself,
Remember
.

Remember the Martello tower, and the marshes and the skylarks, and the church by the pine woods. Remember the bedroom and the lighthouse beam sliding across the dim ceiling.

That’s all I can do, Tibby. Is that right? What is right, for any of us?

The miles to the station rippled past, as fast as in a dream.

Steve left the car in the forecourt and they walked into the ticket hall. At the glass hatch Annie bought one second-class single ticket to London. She put it into her bag without looking at it, and they went out on to the platform. It was crowded with shoppers going up to London for the day.

Steve jerked his chin impatiently. ‘Let’s walk up to the other end.’

They went, side by side, not quite touching one another. At the far end of the platform was the station buffet. Annie looked in through the glass doors at the hideous red plastic padded benches and steel-legged tables, at the perspex-fronted display cases with their curling doily exhibits, and the smeared chrome of the hot water geyser. The little sign hanging in the double doors said firmly, CLOSED.

When Annie turned she saw the yellow snout of the diesel engine rounding the distant curve of the track.

When the time comes
. The time had come.

Steve put out his hand, tilting her chin so that he could see her face. Their eyes moved, taking each other in, remembering how the darkness had denied them that.

Annie heard the hiss of the train’s brakes, the roar coming up behind them.

‘What will you do?’ she whispered. She didn’t mean
without me
. Her own days were mapped out now, with a clear, lucid appeal that she couldn’t think about yet, and she felt the sharpness of the contrast for Steve.

To her surprise he smiled, a genuine smile with a warmth that touched her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All I do know is that it won’t be the same thing, over and over, like it was before. It changed everything, didn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Annie answered. The bomb had changed everything. The violence that it had detonated had gone, and the passion that had followed would fade too, as all passion did. The bombing was old news, and it left them as it had found them, separate. But yet they had changed everything for one another. It would be impossible, Annie thought wildly, here and now with the train snorting behind them, if she couldn’t believe that it was, at least, change for the better.

Remember
. She wanted to say,
I love you
.

The train rushed into the station, a hissing blur of blue and grey resolving itself into carriages, packed with people. Steve picked up her case and walked with Annie to an open door. She let the other passengers stream past her, her eyes still holding his. The last London-bound shopper scrambled on to the train and the doors began to slam along the platform.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said stupidly.

He took her face between his hands and kissed her. His mouth was very warm.

‘Don’t,’ he told her. ‘Don’t be sorry.’

There was a porter beside them now, holding the door impatiently. Steve lifted her bag into the train and stood back to let her go. Annie went up the steps and the door slammed resonantly behind her. At once the whistle blew and the train began to slide forward. They watched each other still, as long as they could, not waving, as if all the power of the diesel engine couldn’t pull them apart.

And then the train moved faster, too fast, until they couldn’t see each other any more.

Steve stood and watched the train until the oblong tail of it vanished out of his sight.

Remember it, he told himself. And as if by the old telepathy,
Remember it, all of it, and keep it
.

And then he turned and walked very slowly out into the car park where his car stood waiting for him.

Annie walked down the length of the train, her eyes stinging with her uncried tears. She found a seat at last, opposite a large family wedged in with sandwiches and Thermos flasks. As the big yellow fields slid backwards past her she sat and listened to the children talking and squabbling and crowing with laughter, and the net of familiarity began to close around her once again. She felt the sweetness of it, and the warmth, like gentle fingers. And then, with sudden gratitude, she thought,
Home. I’m going home
. The thundering engine seemed too slow, and the distance that separated her from them too great ever to cover again.

But at last, in the afternoon sun that had turned hot, Annie rounded the corner into the old street. Her arms ached from the weight of her suitcase, but she walked quickly past the red-brick houses that seemed to glow with satisfaction in the sunlight. A handful of children were roller-skating on the pavement at the far end. Annie passed the garden gates, counting the numbers. The old man who lived next door but one to Martin and Annie was leaning over his gate, watching her. As she drew level he took his pipe out of his mouth and nodded at her suitcase.

‘What did you do, run away from home?’

‘Something like that,’ Annie smiled at him.

She went up her own path, with the gate giving its perfectly-remembered creak behind her. As she found her key and put it into the lock she noticed that the front garden needed weeding. It was a job that she always enjoyed, tidying up the little square patch and raking the gravel into lines.
Home
.

The front door swung open.

Annie stood in the hallway, looking around her. The same, the same as always, and infinitely precious.

Then the silence grew heavy and she turned her head sharply. She dropped her bag at her feet and the thud was unnaturally loud. The house was empty.

Annie ran to the living room door and pushed it open. There was no one there, although the cushions were flattened and the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were spread on the table. She whirled around and ran into the kitchen, seeing the scatter of bread-crumbs on the worktop, the milk bottle standing on the draining board. In the irrationality of her fear, the signs told her nothing.

They had gone, she thought. She had come home too late, and they were gone. Desperation gripped her.

Into the stillness she shouted, ‘
Martin!’

Then, through the window of the kitchen, she saw the three of them. Martin must have been sitting working in the garden, with the boys playing nearby, but now they had heard her. They stood close together, their faces alike, uncertain. Annie saw that they didn’t know what to expect from her.

She fumbled with the door handle, turning it the wrong way in her haste. The door banged behind her and she ran over the grass, almost stumbling. She heard Thomas’s shout.

‘Mum’s home. Oh look, Mum’s home.’

But it was only Martin that she could look at now.

Let me ask you just one more thing. After so many. Let me come back
.

Martin’s eyes fixed on Annie’s face. Even though the tears were running down her cheeks he saw the look in it, and he knew that it was over at last. He held out his arms to her.

‘Annie.’

With her head bent, against his shoulder, she asked him, ‘Can I come home?’

He put his hands to her cheeks, turning her face up to his. ‘We’re here. We’ve been waiting for you.’

He kissed the corner of her mouth, and with his thumb he wiped the tears from her cheeks, just as Annie would do to Benjy or Tom. Annie saw her husband then, his face as familiar to her as it had always been, but sharpened with differences and now, suddenly, with the knowledge of happiness.

I don’t deserve so much
. She knew it, and she knew that she would remember it.
Remember
, Annie told herself, for the last time.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘I love you.’

He smiled at her, then. ‘I love you too.’

The boys’ shrieks broke through to her and she knelt on the grass to look at them, drawing Martin down with her. Benjy’s fists caught at her clothes and she hugged him against her, reaching out an arm for Thomas too.

‘Don’t go away again,’ Thomas shouted at her. ‘Don’t go away again ever.’

She held them closer, so that they wouldn’t see her tears.

‘I won’t go away again,’ she promised him. ‘Never, never.’

The words closed round the four of them, and they made an unbreakable, invisible circle on the grass.

It’s over, Annie thought.

She listened, straining her ears, but there was nothing. The last echoes of the bomb’s terrible roar had died away into the stillness of the garden.

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About the Author

Rosie Thomas is the author of a number of celebrated novels, including the bestselling
The Kashmir Shawl
. A keen adventurer, she has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas, competed in the Peking to Paris car rally, trekked in the footsteps of Shackleton in South Georgia, and travelled in Ladakh and Kashmir. She lives in London.

Also by Rosie Thomas

Celebration

Follies

Sunrise

The White Dove

Strangers

Bad Girls, Good Women

A Woman of Our Times

All My Sins Remembered

Other People’s Marriages

A Simple Life

Every Woman Knows a Secret