Crimson (66 page)

Clare waited for them, alone in her kitchen. Elinor and Buzz were having their afternoon nap on the twin beds in the guest room. Josh had happily scuttled off to a Cubs meeting. David, who had to attend the annual meeting of the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, wasn’t due to arrive until evening.

Clare had told David about Annabel’s horrific assault, and that she had lost her left eye, but the doctor had warned her not to tell the two older women yet-such a shock might well delay her grandmother’s recovery. Although Elinor was still too weak to leave her bed and still spoke in a whisper, she was recovering faster than the doctor had expected; she was responding well to the Parentrovite injections, and her old vitality was returning.

Shortly after three p.m.” the Scimitar slid to a halt in front of Applebank Cottage.

Seeing the weary faces of the occupants, Clare asked no questions as she placed the white tureen of mulligatawny soup on the kitchen table.

Sam fell asleep at the table after the cheese omelette and before Clare could serve her apple tart with apricot glazing.

Miranda yawned and said, “I didn’t get much sleep last night either. Mind if I have a nap on Josh’s bed?” She disappeared.

Clare gently woke Sam and led him upstairs to her bedroom.

At six o’clock, Sam opened his eyes. He could hear faint classical music. The green chintz curtains hadn’t yet been closed, and in the firelight, he could see the snow beating silently from the darkness against the windowpanes.

He stretched out a hand, groped for the bedside light, and knocked a brass alarm clock to the floor. jan upstairs, opened her bedroom door, and the light switch. still a clumsy son of a bitch,” Sam said apologetically. He sat up in bed, rubbing his bruised face and black eye Clare stared at the crisp black curls that covered his big c,host and at the purple bruises inflicted on his arms by Matron Braddock.

Sit down a minute,” Sam said sleepily. He patted the patchwork quilt.

As she perched on the side of the bed, Clare suddenly felt filled with gratitude.

“Sam, I can’t thank you enough. Maybe we could have done it by ourselves, but … you ‘made everything happen so fast. You dealt with that vile nursing home … the lawyer … the accountant … the police … the hospital … You’ve been wonderful.” In the firelight, Sam leaned forward and gently kissed the tip of her nose. He put his arms around her, pulled her against his chest, and started kissing her neck. Softly he “said, “I have to get back to work the day after tomorrow.” Clare gently pulled away from him, feeling anything but gentle. How dare Sam press his advantage and try to seduce her! And yet as she felt indignation rise … at the same time … although her head was telling her what to do, her bodyy was contradicting the message.

Sam leaned forward, kissed the space between her eyebrows, and tightened his arms around her. Slowly Clare stopped resisting. As she inhaled his familiar acrid odour and remembered the first time she had been aware of his pungent eroticism, she felt as irresistibly drawn to Sam as a pin to a magnet. She remembered how secure. she had felt when first encircled by the powerful strength of these muscular, bruised arms. Even as she weakened, she was furious and bewildered. Why didn’t she feel this magnetism between herself and David, who was

so much better a man than Sam, so much more caring? Why was she even speaking to Sam when she knew how hurt David would be if he could see her now?

At this very moment, David was probably collecting Josh from the church hall at Warminster. Tomorrow he was going to help Josh with the work he’d missed, when he was late returning to school after their skiing holiday.

Clare whispered, “I hate you, Sam, you manipulative bastard.”

“Yes, baby,” Sam murmured as he gently kissed her hairline.

“Let me go, you bastard,” Clare hissed, trying to pull away from him.

Sam laughed and kissed her hard on the mouth. Briefly, Clare tried to remind herself of the way Sam had made her suffer during the past three and a half years, but her memories faded as she felt again the dynamism and protective strength that had first attracted her to him. She didn’t want to be independent and sensible; she wanted to lay her head on Sam’s hard, hairy chest and feel his arms around her and know that everything was going to be taken care of by him -just for a few moments.

As her resolve melted and she yielded, somewhere at the back of her head Clare realized that there was a kernel of truth in Elinor’s world of romance.

Later, as Sam slept, Clare lay awake watching the firefight flicker on the ceiling. She felt guilty, treacherous, and miserable.

Just half an hour earlier, after they had made love, she had whispered to Sam, “Why do you really want me back? Tell me the truth.” Sam had hugged her hard against his big chest; his crisp, curly hair had tickled her nose as he murmured, “Because I love you.” re knew that the real reasons were not quite so e Sam missed his son, his wife, and family lif n he had ever expected. As a dog becomes accustomod to its basket, Sam had grown used to having Clare around; she made him laugh, she ran his home and his .SOCO life, she entertained his clients and took care of all Wious; background trivialities of life; this left Sam free .jo concentrate on the work he loved.

sighed. Just now Sam had really tried his best. But A-had felt as if he was trying. At one point, he had whis- .peted, “What more do I have to do? I’ve been hanging on the chandeliers trying to please you.”

And Clare had whispered back, “That’s exactly why it It going to work, Sam. Because I know you’re trying, “,jmd so am I. But David and I don’t need to try.”

“What the hell does he do that I don’tT Hesitantly Clare had tried to explain, without hurting Sam.

“David accepts me the way I am the way my body and my mind work. David accepts my feelings, so I don’t ‘have to twist them to suit his prejudices: he may feel differ but he isn’t going to insist that I agree.”

“You mean he’s better than me in the sack.”

“That just shows you haven’t been listening!” Clare felt her indignation grow.

“I left you because you didn’t listen to me, Sam, and you never took me seriously! When I talked to you about something that was important to me, you made the appropriate comments but I knew you weren’t really hearing me, because you carried on reading the paper or whatever. That told me that reading the paper was more important than what I had to say!” She sat up in bed.

“I felt you weren’t really there, that you had removed yourself to where I couldn’t bother you.”

“Are you telling me you walked out on me because I didn’t listen to

you?” in the firelight, Clare lifted her hands in a hopeless gesture.

“Sam, you have a conveniently short memory. I left you because I found you in bed with a girl again.”

“Sam started to lose his temper. What was the point of bringing up all that again? And if Clare felt so strongly about it how come they were in bed together? He snapped, “You didn’t miss anything. I gave you your orgasms, didn’t I? Could one quick fuck in the wrong cunt change so much between us?” Clare snapped back, “Promiscuity devalues the coinage of love.” She was adamant. She had learned the hard way that a dishonest sexual relationship could alter a woman’s entire life for the worse, because one couldn’t separate sex from the rest of reality.

Suddenly Clare knew without a doubt which man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Certainly her conscience still told her to take Josh back to his father and let Sam have another chance to prove himself a good husband. But she had already confronted the agonies of conscience over depriving Josh of a father. Why should she endure that again?

And why should she risk going back to Sam? Why should she risk this new, happy life she had, struggled so hard to build up in the hope that he would keep his promise, when he had broken so many promises before? “I didn’t mean that.” Sam groped for the words that would reach Clare.

“Honey, I’m sorry.” Gently she shook his arm off. She had made her decision, and nothing was going to alter it. Sam was still basically selfish, and David was still basically the unselfish man who had encouraged her to develop her own personality. David was kind and gentle, compassionate and thoughtful. He was a considerate person, and Sam was an inconsiderate person, which is why Sam was a bad lover. Clare remembered that it was this quality in David that had quieted her sexual anxiety. And David’s gentle consideration had also within her that had made it difficult std on her own feet and solve her own s she watched Sam sleep, Clare hoped to God a gist: David would be gentle, compassionate, and under-stonding when she told him that she had just been to bed WO Sam. If 4U .. am o’clock that evening, Miranda heard Buzz, in the ,ib9s only bathroom, singing tunelessly, “All the nice Iftis love a sailor…” She made a tray of tea and took it up to the guest room.

Elinor was sitting in bed pouring Scrabble letters back into bag.

won!” she said triumphantly, then looked anxious. “You don’t think Buzz would cheat to let me win?” “Never,” lied Miranda as she poured the tea. She handed a cup to Elinor and said softly, “I have something very important to ask you, Gran. Who is Patricia Kettle?” With a trembling hand, Elinor slowly put down her cup…. she had some secretarial job at the War Office.” She was clearly making an effort to sound casual.

“She was killed in an air raid sometime in 1943, I think.”

“I need to know more than that, darling.” Miranda’s voice was gentle but determined. She pulled the crumpled birth certificate and Joe Grant’s letter from her pocket and handed both to Elinor.

Elinor looked at them sadly.

“After all these years .. she said.

“I suppose … you’d better be told what happen cd She looked down at her cup of cooling tea, but what she saw was the front room of her home in Earls Court Square, on Christmas Eve, 1941.

Elinor, wearing the dark green uniform of the Women’s Voluntary

Service, switched off the wireless. Cheerful news, for a change. in Washington, Churchill was deciding policy with Roosevelt, for after the Japanese surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, the United States had entered the war.

In London, still under threat of German invasion, life seemed to consist either of devastating air raids or of clearing up after them. Like everyone else, Elinor did not get enough sleep, rarely ate a proper meal, and often worked seven days a week, from dawn to long after dark, for the unpaid WVS did any dirty work that seemed to be nobody else’s job: they had cared for the exhausted troops evacuated from Dunkirk; they supervised evacuees; they housed and fed the bombed-out; they dislocated their own lives to smooth those of other people.

The O’Dares now lived, ate, and slept in the living room, which arrangement minimized housework, and there was coal only for one fire. On the right of the fireplace opposite the door stood the Morrison shelter a table-height, fourposter double bed made of iron with metal mesh sides. Inside this shelter slept Clare, nearly three years old, and Annabel, who was a year younger. Elinor also slept in the Morrison, and when there was a raid, Billy left his camp bed to join them.

Objects tended to accumulate along the deep, flat top of the Morrison: Elinor’s sewing machine, the notes for her next home-nursing class, a pile of mending, and, tonight, a small Christmas tree that Billy had bought for an exorbitant sum in a pub, and a battered cardboard box.

As Elinor lifted the lid of the box, she smiled with disbelief. Carefully she picked up the golden-haired china angel, with wings of real feathers.

“Billy, look! Nothing seems to be broken!” The fragile gold and silver balls, the folded, crinkly multicoloured paper bells, the brightly coloured concertina paper chains, lay waiting to be used again on the Christmas tree.

with Christmas decorations this year?” Billy .4he worn orange-flowered, armchair by the qte babies wont understand what Christmas is all’ bout I’m not sure that I do. Can’t think why you huo .9 up those stockings.” He jerked his head to the two “Other stockings that dangled from the end of the Morrison. stop being an old bear,” Elinor said cheerfully.

You’re going to play Santa Claus tonight, just as you’ve always done added winningly, “And you’re the best-looking aa in London.” 11 always feel a complete fool,” Billy grumbled, but he aniled at Elinor and added, “I must admit, girl, you don’t look too bad yourself, all things considered. After all, Marjorie is the same age as you, but her skin looks like the Nile Delta.”

Although she was past forty, Elinor’s looks had worn -well and her colouring had not faded. Her creamy skin was her pink cheeks looked as if she still lived in the ‘country-her blue eyes sparkled; and her hair still waved, 11oney gold. Of course, her figure had thickened: wartime meals were based on bread and potatoes.

The doorbell rang. Automatically both adults looked to the window, but the blackout curtains were drawn no chink of light was ho wing So it couldn’t be an air-raid warden, about to complain.

Elinor kicked away the sandbag kept at the bottom of the door to cut out draughts. Shivering in the bitter chill of the hall passage shegropedherwayto the front door. “Who isiff “I’m a friend of Billy’s,” said a woman’s voice: it was too dark to see her.

“Come in quickly, out of the cold.” After shutting the door, Elinor switched on the hall light and looked at her visitor, who cradled a baby, wrapped in a blanket, in one arm, and carried a small, battered suitcase with the other.

I Astonished, Elinor said, “I remember you! Once I saw you speak to my husband in a pub in Whitehall.”

It had been on that day Annabel was born. Elinor remembered the distraught face of this girl and her slim-as-abullrush, brown-coated figure. She remembered the girl’s almost visible aura of depression, her pleading face, and the stooped shoulders that seemed to signal dejection. She remembered that the girl had laid her head on Billy’s sleeve. He had roughly shaken her off.

“Who’s that Billy, clutching the Daily Telegraph, opened the front-room door.

“Pat! What the hell are you doing he re?” Billy backed into the room; the woman followed him. To Elinor, he seemed at once startled, truculent, and nervous.