A Rather English Marriage (26 page)

‘There's two of them here in England,' he explained. ‘Two more in Australia – Vera's two. The ones I've just been to see, I told you about them, that's William Alan and Joseph Roy. Billy's eleven and Joe's nine. They get enough to eat, they don't go hungry, but where they live, Balham, that's south London, it's a bad area for lads with no father. Their Mum's ever so worried they're getting into trouble. The little one isn't, not yet, anyway; but Billy, well, she thinks he's fallen into bad company …'

‘Discipline. That's what they need at their age. A firm hand,' said Reginald, thinking of the flogging he'd got from his father for letting his gun go off accidentally; or prep school, where he'd been beaten for years by masters and prefects, for trivial offences against the school's unwritten code. ‘Did me no harm. Taught me respect.'

He poured himself a stiff drink, then held up the bottle at an angle towards Roy. This'll do my heart no good, thought Roy, but it does warm the cockles. He leaned back and gazed at the garden.

‘They taught us discipline in the Air Force, too, by Jove they did!' Reginald was getting into his stride. ‘Wouldn't have lasted a day without it. Glorious days, those were. Blue English skies and always the chance of seeing a Hun. You didn't stop to think that your country depended on you, everyone was praying for you. No fear! You did it for the excitement of the chase, seeing a Ju.88 or a ME go down in flames, while at the same time knowing there was just as good a chance it might be you. The trip home to base, the final beat-up and victory roll, and then back, for the servicing bods to do their stuff while you had a cup of tea; bit more than that later on … Great days. Great days. I'm not line-shooting. That's the trouble with these lads like yours. They haven't a hope of an experience like that.'

A silver birch stood weeping at the end of the garden, its
pale trunk and drooping leaves so potent an image of grief that Roy was suddenly overwhelmed. He fished out a handkerchief and blew his nose; then buried his face in it. His shoulders heaved. Reginald looked away, embarrassed.

‘I say, old man … Hang on. Drink up.'

‘Did you realize it's been a year last week?' sniffed Roy.

‘What is? Oh, you mean, since they … That. Yes. Yes I did notice the date. Thought it best to say nothing. Rotten show.'

‘Boys today don't know their luck,' said Roy, to give himself a chance to recover his composure. They sipped their drinks and looked out across the darkening lawn. ‘Once,' said Roy, ‘when I was in Germany just after the war, I saw a lad with a dove. Can't have been more than thirteen, fourteen, though it was hard to tell those days, when they none of them got enough to eat. I suppose that's why he didn't have a rabbit. A rabbit've been eaten. You don't eat a little white dove that easy.' He stopped, remembering Grace and the goose.

‘Get on with it, then!' prompted Reggie.

‘There weren't many older lads around by the end of the war. Sixteen- to twenty-year-olds you hardly ever saw. They'd have been called up; dead, probably.'

‘So?' said Reggie. ‘What was special about this chap?'

‘Let's say fifteen.' Roy compromised. ‘He was a magician. Conjuror, more like. Doing tricks, you know. That's what the dove was for. He was good, too. Pulling handkerchiefs out of hats – you couldn't see how it was done. And sometimes the dove. He was standing at the edge of a big square, on the corner of a church, and people gathered round to watch him. We passed by about ten o'clock in the morning, must've been; it was a Sunday, we were off duty, me and my mate Bill, and we stopped for a bit as well, to watch. Suddenly the dove flew away. Didn't do what it was supposed to for the trick, hiding in his pocket or whatever, it flew away. Tiny little bird. Dare say it was hungry. The boy looked ever so upset. You know how, when they do tricks conjurors keep up a bright smile and do all the patter so you get distracted and don't notice what they're doing? All that stopped straightaway, and he ran round
the corner of the church after his bird. A priest stood there, all dressed in white raiment, holding the dove. Must have caught it. He handed it back to the boy who smiled again, but quite a different smile this time – soft and slow, like he was under water. And the dove preened itself on his hand.'

‘Is that all?' asked Reginald crossly. The story wasn't nearly as good as the one about the goose.

‘That's all that happened,' Roy admitted. ‘The dove flew away, and the priest caught it and gave it back. We passed the same spot again, hours later – that evening, must've been, because it had got dark, and the boy was still there, still doing his tricks, with only a couple of people watching by then. I understood properly for the first time that the boy was starving, the dove was starving, all these people were starving. He stood there all day, twelve, thirteen hours at least, doing his tricks. The dove was all he had to keep alive with. In those days we had British Forces money to use in the Naafi, and the Germans weren't allowed that. So I couldn't give him anything. My mate had a packet of cigarettes left but I only had one or two – in the war, the RE, everyone smoked, me as well. Anyway I could only give him this couple of fags, but my mate Bill gave him a nearly full packet, and the way that lad smiled, well, it was like he'd got his bird back again.'

‘No good feeling sorry for ‘em,' said Reginald. ‘I never did. They all voted for Hitler, didn't they? He'd have been with the Hitler Youth, sieg heiling with the rest. I never felt sorry when I shot one down. That boy did all right, don't you worry. He'd have sold your fags on the black market, lived for a week on what he made.'

It had become almost dark as they talked. Roy felt better. The Squadron Leader had not expressed a word of sympathy, offered no advice; but he had listened, one human being to another, and this alone, this companionable ear, had been a comfort. He stood up.

‘If you wouldn't mind something simple, sir – sardines on toast, maybe, or scrambled egg and bacon – I could cook that up in a minute. Unless you'd rather go to the Broker's Arms.'

‘I'm out for dinner tomorrow. Simple meal will do me fine. You cook whatever suits. I'll sit here and have a last Scotch. That'd better be my lot'.

Roy walked down the stairs, descending into the deep, dark well of the kitchen. What am I to do, he thought, about June and Alan and their boys, about Vera, and hers? What am I to do?
Talk
to me, Gracie, wherever you are!
O for the touch of a vanish'd hand/And the sound of a voice that is still!
The elegiac words brought him less and less solace. A man needs a wife, thought Roy Southgate; it's as simple as that.

Reginald sat on the terrace looking into the warm, sweet-smelling darkness. He lit a cigarette. The war flooded back through memory: potent, exhilarating and manly. Evenings after a successful scrap, with the boys in the mess. Plate-throwing and glass-breaking. You'd wait till someone was unprepared, and then, catching him off guard, chuck a plate across the room, at the same time shouting ‘Catch!' at the top of your voice. Chap would spin round, usually too late, plate would crash to the ground in splinters. Good laugh. Then he'd bide his time and do the same to you. Kept you on your toes, ready for the unexpected. Or we'd play the rougher mess games – High Cockalorum and the other one, rum names they had, Cardinal Puff or mess rugger. These rowdy games got rid of the tension of real fighting: 28,000 feet up, when an unseen Messerschmitt would suddenly materialize out of an empty sky and red flame would spurt along the wings as cannon and machine-guns opened up, then tracer slashing viciously past the wing-tips and bang! you might be dead, spiralling downwards, waiting to hit the ground and disintegrate with your aircraft in a smashed mess of splinters, metal and bone. Hence the plate-throwing. It was childish, but it broke the tension, gave you a laugh, something to yell about.

There'd be calmer evenings with the radiogram, everyone calling for his favourite record, and games of poker. Trophies on the wall a fragment bearing the Nazi swastika – or propped up on the mantelpiece beside a pin-up of Rita Hay-worth or Dorothy Lamour; chaps sprawled over tables playing
cards or chess; the newly married writing to their wives; maps, glasses,
Strand, Men Only
, Player's in round tins of fifty, ashtrays pinched from the Ritz or the Café de Paris – that's the way, thought Reginald, the only way for young men to live! He stubbed his cigarette hard against the square silver ashtray. It was engraved ‘To Reginald Conynghame-Jervis, on his promotion to Squadron Leader, 19 September 1944, from the Boys'.

Liz was in the shop first thing every morning, in high spirits. Business had been so good for the first couple of days after her return from Italy that she had started opening at eight-thirty, on the off chance of attracting the young secretaries and shop assistants on their way to work, and had made several small sales as a result. The Italian accessories were doing so well that she was contemplating a return trip. Maybe she would consent, after all, to an assignation with Jerry's attractive friend Marco, who was surely not gay, judging from the blatant way he'd watched her breasts shift beneath her T-shirt…

This fantasy continued undisturbed by the automatic noises of approbation in which she enveloped her customers; but the telephone stopped it in its tracks.

‘Chic to Chic!' she trilled.
‘Buon giorno!
Hello?'

It was Whittington, her bank manager. Ah, she thought. Careful, Liz.

‘Good morning, Mr Whittington!' she said vivaciously. ‘How-?'

He cut her short.

The news was bad. She had been spending money
abroad
, he complained in his nasal voice. Italian
lire
, he added, making it sound like the Devil's currency. Why had she not informed him of her trip? As a result, she had gone above her loan limit, above the overdraft limit arranged only last month. From now on no more cheques were to be written, at least until the overdraft was back under control. If written, they would be returned to the drawer unpaid. No exceptions.

‘Look,' she said, trying to combine a confidential whisper
with her most winning voice, ‘Mr Whittington, I know I've been a
very bad girl
, but I can honestly explain. I'm in the middle of the shop at this moment. Can I come and see you? … How soon? … Yes, any time tomorrow will suit me. You say. Nine o'clock? Ten? Can I give you lunch?… No, probably better not lunch.'

She scowled down the telephone, making exasperated faces at her customer in the intervals, and finally agreed: tomorrow at ten-forty-five. Blast it! she thought. Slap bang in the middle of the morning. Does he think I lie about all day painting my nails? Now I shall have to pay someone to come in for a whole half day.

‘Annie!' she cooed. ‘It looks
divine
on you! Absolutely divine! Is it for Ascot? My dear, you'll slay 'em in the aisles. Smarter than Princess Diana you'll be in that…'

Annie DeYong decided, in the end,
not
to buy the multicoloured crazy-paving-print two-piece for Ascot (and if she won't, thought Liz, who the hell
will?)
, and, as the final straw, the girl who usually minded the shop was on holiday. By the time Reginald rang to confirm their dinner date, her early-morning optimism had abated. In consequence, she was warm and girlish on the telephone (‘Sweetheart! I feel as if I haven't seen you for
months
instead of just weeks!') rather than, as she had planned, being standoffish to dampen his hopes.

By seven o'clock she was at home with a stiff drink, contemplating the transformation that would change her from a financially harassed businesswoman into Reggie's winsome companion. She had brought two outfits home from the shop and was trying to decide between them when the telephone rang. She ignored it. Minutes later it rang again. She poured scented oil into her bath and turned on the hot tap before picking up the receiver beside her bed.

‘Yes?' she said shortly.

‘Ma? Knew you were there! Hi. It's Lissa.'

‘Alicia! Sweetheart! I'm so glad you phoned. I've been away, and I never know what number to get you on.'

‘You can't. I haven't got one. I'm in a public call-box. Can you ring me back?'

She spelled out the number. Liz dialled it with sinking heart.

‘Ma. Hi. Look, I've got to see you. You going to be up in London any time soon?'

‘I don't plan to be. Why?'

‘I'm not going to tell you down the phone. Will you send me my train fare to T. Wells?'

‘Send
it? Darling,
must
I? Can't you pay it and I'll pay you back?'

‘No. I haven't got it. Send me twenty quid, Ma, first post tomorrow, and if I get it on Saturday I'll come down over the weekend.'

‘Darling, you are hopeless! Why are you always so broke?' (Like mother, like daughter, she thought to herself.) ‘Help! The bath'll be running over. Quick, let me scribble down your address – or is it still the Turnpike Lane one?'

‘Moved since then. I'm in Leytonstone now.'

‘Where the hell is …? Never mind. Give it to me.' Alicia dictated. ‘Got it. I'll send the letter express, first thing tomorrow. Why twenty? It's only about seven quid for a day return.'

‘Don't be
boring
, Ma – you know, taxis, and all that. What if I want to bring you some flowers?'

‘OK, OK: twenty. See you soon, my pet. Sure you're all right?'

‘Course I'm not
all right,'
said Alicia. ‘I wouldn't be coming down if I was all right, would I? OK? See you Ma! Cheers!'

‘Take care of yourself. Bye, darling,' said Liz forlornly.

Black to show off the tan, she'd decided hurriedly, rather than white. White was too obviously bridal. Reggie looked smart in his best summer suit, a blue silk handkerchief with red spots spilling out of its top pocket. He was disarmingly nervous. It crossed Liz's mind for the first time that he might actually love her; and this thought endeared him more than anything else could have done.