Lying Together (7 page)

‘That would be: five thirties are one hundred and fifty, plus thirty halfpennies is fifteen pence, equals a hundred and sixty-five pence, which is – divided by twelve –' I paused ‘– thirteen shillings and ninepence.'

He stared at me. ‘Good Lord!'

‘It's not difficult,' I said, blushing a bit. ‘I mean, I have to do it every day, so it's second nature.' Then I felt foolish. What was I doing showing off like a child in front of the teacher, when I wanted to impress him with my grown-up charm?

‘Well,' he said. ‘I'm impressed. Not that we have any bananas to count, these days. My mother says she hasn't seen one in I don't know how long.'

‘We got hold of a few last year. Mr Mullan put them in a trifle to make them go further.'

‘Trifle, eh? You do well for yourselves down here, don't you? Eggs, cream, butter, cakes. My sisters were envious. They can't get much of that in London …'

‘Well, we've got our own chickens out the back. And Mr Mullan deals direct with a couple of farmers for the butter and so on.'

He raised his eyes. ‘Ah. Black market, you mean.'

‘Well, not really. We all have to do what we can, don't we?'

He smiled. ‘All of us have to. In our different ways.' And I felt suddenly tawdry, and I knew Jack would never buy anything on the black market, and would always be straight as a die.

There was another silence. Again, Jack seemed not to mind, but I felt awkward. ‘Where are you off to?' I asked, hoping he'd say he was stationed in the local barracks – somewhere I could meet him when he had leave, where we could go to the pictures together and then have tea in a café and be waited on by somebody else.

‘Oh, somewhere in the country,' he said, vaguely. ‘I'm afraid I've forgotten the name.'

Obviously, he couldn't really have forgotten the name if he was having to get there, so I realized he must be doing something so secret he couldn't even tell me. Careless words cost lives, after all. Perhaps there was a country house somewhere out on Dartmoor where he'd be taught wireless codes and then dropped behind enemy lines. He was so cool and nonchalant, I imagined he would make a good spy, risking his life like Leslie in
Pimpernel Smith
. ‘I suppose it's a bit nerve-racking,' I said. ‘Not knowing what's going to happen to you from now on. Where you'll be sent, I mean.'

‘Oh, I know what's going to happen.' He said it with a kind of sureness, as if he knew what he was in for. ‘It's pretty run of the mill stuff, after all.'

‘I think you're awfully brave.' (They said that on the films:
Awf'ly brave.
)

He frowned. ‘Do you? People don't normally say that.' He looked down at his mangled fingers. ‘Still, it'll be good to get active again. I feel as though my body's atrophied these last eighteen months.'

Atrophied
. I loved the long word, and the fact that he didn't mind using it with me, although I could only guess what it meant. ‘Which Service are you in?' I asked. ‘Or can't you say?'

He stopped, and gave me a long look over the rim of the cup. Then he set it down. Paused. Gave me a rueful smile. ‘I'm afraid, young lady, that you may be under a misapprehension.'

Another complicated word. ‘What do you mean?' I said. ‘What
misapprehension
?'

He paused again, but for such a long time that I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, ‘I'm not in the forces, I'm afraid: quite the opposite.'

‘And what would the opposite be?' I asked, jokingly. ‘Something terribly secret?'

He looked me full in the face. ‘Not secret at all. Open for all to see and despise. I thought you must have guessed – my lack of uniform, I mean. I'm a Conscientious Objector.'

The horrible words seemed to float in the air between us. I thought for a moment that he was joking, but one look at his face told me he wasn't. I felt almost sick. A Conshie, a coward, the lowest of the low. Even my useless dad had tried to join up, although his chest was too bad and they'd sent him to an aeroplane factory in Bristol instead.

‘There,' he said, lightly. ‘I've disappointed you. You thought I was one of Our Brave Boys. Now you think I'm a coward and will want your cocoa back.'

‘No,' I said quickly, embarrassed at the way he'd guessed my thoughts – except for the bit about the cocoa, which I wouldn't have begrudged anyone. ‘I expect you have your reasons.' Although I couldn't imagine what they could be. I didn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to fight. I'd wanted to fight myself when I heard Mr Churchill's speech, saying we would never surrender.

‘Well, I do have my reasons, of course,' he said. ‘Although not everyone appreciates them. Not even my mother, sometimes. In fact my mother and my sisters don't share my embarrassing principles at all.'

‘So why
are
you a Conshie – entious objector?' I asked, thinking as I said the words that it was not my place to question him, a guest at the hotel. Mr Reeves would have sacked me on the spot. ‘If you don't mind my asking,' I added, quickly.

He sighed, as if tired of explaining it. ‘I happen to believe that war is fundamentally wrong,' he said. ‘That we human beings can settle our differences another way. Haven't we learnt from our mistakes? Take the War to End All Wars? Well, it didn't, did it? We have to forge a different understanding if we are to survive; if we are to change the way we live. I won't have other people's blood on my hands.'

‘But don't you love your country?' I asked. I'd imagined myself making a last stand on the promenade, alongside Mr Reeves and Mavis, kitchen knife in hand.

‘My country?' he said. ‘Well, I'm not sure about that. I mean, I love the individuals in it and I'm not scared of dying for them – at least not more than any other man. But I would never say “My country right or wrong.” Because my country is often wrong. Most ordinary people on both sides don't want war and we shouldn't allow ourselves to be bullied into it.' He spoke quickly, quietly, seemed so sure of himself that I could tell he'd said the words before, probably many times. ‘Look,' he said, as if passing on a really important thing, ‘the fact that a bomb might one day kill my sister in London – and God knows I'd be half-crazy if it did – it doesn't justify me flying off and bombing someone else's grandmother in Berlin. And it's equally wrong that the person whose grandmother was killed should come and bomb, say, your uncle in Taunton. Don't you see how cruel and illogical it is?'

What he said made sense in a sort of way, but I couldn't see Hitler taking any notice of the logic. I was surprised that Jack even thought he might. I didn't know what to say, so I stayed quiet. He was quiet too. He probably thought I was too stupid to understand. ‘So what are you doing down here, if you're not joining up?' I asked at last. ‘I mean, you live in London, don't you? It said Cavendish Square in the book.'

‘What?' That old absent-minded look. ‘Oh, yes, I do have a flat there. Or, at least, I did. My mother has it now and I just perch there from time to time. I didn't have much use for it before the war with all the travelling I did.'

‘Travelling?' I thought of my midnight ships and tropical islands, and thought of Jack in a white suit, leaning over the rail. ‘Abroad?' I said.

He laughed. ‘Good Lord, no. Just lots of train journeys to obscure places. Lots of strong tea and stale buns. And lots of high-minded talk. We thought we'd get our way, in those days. I had a very successful Peace Pledge meeting here in this town – that's why I was here, you know, that day I gave you the shilling. I didn't think I'd be coming back as a prisoner eighteen months later.'

He said the word ‘prisoner' lightly but I still got a shock. ‘You were in prison?' I said. It made sense suddenly – the skin and the nails, and the way his clothes didn't fit. But it didn't seem the right sort of place for him.

He nodded. ‘Well, you know what they do to us Conshies. We mustn't contaminate the general population. But why they sent me
here
of all places I don't know. It was difficult for Mother and the girls to visit. Another subtle punishment, I suppose.'

‘Was it very bad?' I'd heard the Conshies were half-starved. Mrs Willacott's nephew worked in the prison kitchens and said they were poor little specimens who didn't eat meat and were probably too weedy to fight even if they wanted to. I hadn't taken much notice at the time; I'd thought Conshies deserved all they got.

Jack gave a funny kind of smile. ‘I wouldn't exactly recommend prison life. I had nothing to read for six months. I think that was the worst thing of all; I think that might have broken my spirit if anything would. And then of course I got to know the size and shape of mailbags more intimately than I cared for. That black waxed thread was the very devil.' Jack turned his hand, showed me his stained and mangled fingers. I cast down my eyes, unable to look. ‘But it gives you time to think, to see if you can stand up for what you believe, in practice.'

‘But you're out for good, now?' I said. ‘They've let you out?'

‘Yes, they let me out. The Government and I have come to an understanding. I shall be working on the land. After all, I have no conscientious objection to people being fed.'

I couldn't help being relieved. I didn't care if Jack had funny ideas. He wouldn't be going to the Far East or Africa. He wouldn't be manning a convoy in the North Atlantic or battling in the skies above our heads. He would be safe on a farm. Even if I never saw him again, I'd know he was alive.

He drained his cup. ‘That was very welcome. Even if I got it on false pretences.'

I shrugged. ‘I thought you might need it. You didn't come down for dinner.'

‘Oh.' That old absent-minded look again. ‘I forgot, I'm afraid.'

‘Weren't you hungry?' I was famished if I missed a meal, but there was always something to pick at in the kitchen as long as Mr Mullan didn't see.

‘I'm used to being hungry. You're hungry all the time in prison. And anyway, I had a good tea. An extremely good tea, as it happens.'

‘And you were reading, too.' I nodded towards the book.

‘Yes, Bertrand Russell kept me busy. You should try him some time.'

I wasn't sure I could read hard books like that but I said I might try. He held out the finished cup and I stretched out my hand to take it. As I did so, my cuff slid back and a flaky red patch of skin slipped into view. He frowned. ‘Oh dear, have you scalded yourself?' He put down the cup, and bent forward, taking my hand in his, examining my wrist in a probing way, like a doctor.

I felt myself go scarlet. All evening I'd kept imagining how it would feel if he touched me, but not in this pitying way because of my wretched scabs. ‘No, it's a skin disease,' I said quickly, pushing down my sleeve and pulling my hand away from his. ‘Don't worry, it's not catching.'

‘I'm not worried. And don't be ashamed. There's nothing to be ashamed of.' His voice was very gentle.

‘But it's ugly, horrible. People don't want to see it. It makes them sick.' I couldn't let myself speak any more, I was so afraid I would cry.

‘People are fools.
I
don't mind looking at it.' He delicately lifted the edge of my cuff. ‘May I?'

‘But it's really awful,' I said. ‘And it's all over me. Except my face. I don't get it on my face.'

I was gabbling with nerves, but he seemed not to notice as he edged my sleeve further up my arm, revealing the horrible red mess around my elbow, all the shiny scales and flakes fluttering onto his trousers. ‘People pay too much attention to the surface of things,' he said, letting his fingers caress my skin in a dreamlike way. ‘It's what's inside that counts.'

‘Yes.' I closed my eyes. His fingers were calloused, but they felt like gossamer to me, just as I had always imagined. I couldn't stop trembling. I wanted him to slide his hand further and further, right up to my armpit. I wanted him to unbutton my blouse and touch my breasts. I wanted him to touch me all over, even where my skin was at its worst. He was very close, now, his face near mine, his hair brushing my cheek. I could hear his breathing; I was sure he could hear mine. I closed my eyes, ready for him to ravish me.

But instead I felt him pull my sleeve back down, and I slowly opened my eyes. He was watching me, a strange look on his face. Then he patted my hand. ‘I'm sorry,' he said gently. ‘I shouldn't have done that. I've overstepped the mark.'

‘I don't mind,' I said. ‘It felt nice. You've got nice hands.'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hardly. But it's getting late. I don't want to get you into trouble.' And he got up and handed me the empty cup. And I got up and took it. And he opened the door. And we both said goodnight in a fumbled sort of way. And I went downstairs with my heart pounding and the stupid cup in my hand.

He didn't come down to breakfast so I asked Mr Reeves if I should take a tray up. He said there would be no need for that as Mr Thompson had already gone on the early train to Taunton. I nearly dropped the coffee jug, and had to put it down quickly. ‘Gone?'

‘Yes,
gone
, Elsie. People come and go, you know. In a hotel.'

‘Didn't he leave a message?'

‘Message? Why should he leave a message?' he said sharply.

I thought quickly. ‘I mean, Mr Thompson owed for a cup of cocoa. Last night.'

‘Well, that's gone west then,' he said crossly. ‘There was nothing on the spike.'

‘Sorry, Mr Reeves,' I said. ‘I must have forgot.'

‘We can't afford “forgetting” – now there's a war on. I'm surprised at you, Elsie.'

‘It won't happen again, Mr Reeves.' I was so heart-stricken, I thought I might break down and cry in front of him, but I managed to turn away and take a big breath. Miss Jennings was right. I could never mean anything to a man like Jack. He'd been kind, but nothing had happened between us in spite of the low light and the soft, inviting bed. He'd drunk his cocoa and answered my questions and showed a kind interest in my skin condition. That's how he'd been brought up. But he'd probably forgotten me the minute he went back to his book, as soon as the taste of cocoa had faded from his tongue.