Small Wars (14 page)

Chapter Seven

Hal left Burroughs’s house and walked back to the Land Rover. He glanced at his watch, thinking he should let Clara know where he was, but then he forgot about her, focusing on what was ahead, not on his wife, who was safe at home with supper and children, and not concerned with any of this.

Clara put the twins to bed. Hal hadn’t come home. Nobody had come to tell her where he was. Adile was finishing downstairs; her presence wasn’t companionship.

Deirdre wasn’t home next door, she couldn’t hear anything from the other houses, just the night-time sounds in the grass and the unseen bushes, little creaks and rustles coming through the open doors.

She came downstairs. She hated the feel of the darkness outside. She knew Adile was watching her as she closed the back of her house and pulled the curtains across.

The room became impossibly stuffy and hot. Clara checked her watch every few moments. Half past seven. Twenty-five to eight. Adile finished the kitchen and opened the low cupboard where she kept her bag and things. Clara looked up quickly. She got to her feet. ‘No! Adile. Stay, please?’

‘Madam?’

‘Please stay.’

Adile nodded, and sat down at the kitchen table with her hands folded in front of her.

Clara stood still where she was. The two women were at either end of the room. ‘I need to go out,’ Clara said suddenly. ‘Out. Stay, please. Watch the girls. Please?’

Adile nodded again, politely not meeting Clara’s eye.

‘Good,’ said Clara. ‘I’m going to the mess. I shan’t be long.’

Clara walked all the way down the hill. She kept her eyes on the three feet of road in front of her that she could see. She wouldn’t stare into the dark, like a frightened animal. She wouldn’t look over her shoulder. Her heels slipped on loose gravel. How pathetic, she thought, how pathetic you are to cry with fear over nothing, nothing at all. They’ve bombed us already. If we’re on our guard, they aren’t going to get at us again, not here – but the picture of terrorists, creeping in darkness, laying hidden bombs in the soft sand, multiplied in her mind, her brain eagerly feeding on it.

She arrived hot and breathless in the brightly lit normality of the bar and her fear drained like sea-water into a dry beach, leaving her dizzy. She wasn’t dressed properly. She must look a fright. She dabbed at her forehead with the backs of her hands. She ought to get to the lavatory and try to tidy herself up –

‘Clara!’

It was Susan MacKay, sitting with Deirdre.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes. Hello.’

They were playing cards. They had White Ladies.

‘Join us,’ said Susan. ‘No Hal?’

The bright lights and noise washed over her. She sat down next to Susan. ‘He isn’t home yet.’

‘Will you play?’

‘No, you go on. I thought he might be here, actually.’

‘We haven’t seen him, have we, Deirdre?’ said Susan.

‘Not lately.’

‘I didn’t dress. I’m afraid I rushed out.’

Deirdre glanced up coldly. ‘Rushed out to look for your husband, Clara? Didn’t leave your girls alone, I hope?’ she said.

‘No, of course not.’

Deirdre twisted her mouth into a smile, and slapped a card down onto the table. ‘I should hope not,’ she said.

Susan smiled too, but a friendly smile. ‘Don’t be silly. Nobody minds,’ she said, ‘but I’ve a comb and compact, if you’re desperate.’

Clara watched Susan and Deirdre play gin rummy. They passed the odd remark about the cards, or people who walked by the table, and Clara let her eye move over the crowd. She couldn’t see Mark anywhere – perhaps he was with Hal, or on the other side of the bar. Blue cigarette smoke hung like a banner over the people’s heads. The gramophone in the corner was playing and the talk was loud above it, so that she couldn’t hear the words.

She didn’t know what had possessed her to try to go to the beach that morning; the horror of what had happened was only now finding its natural scale. The atmosphere in the bar was a little like people sheltering in a pub on moorland or a cliff-top, waiting for the bad weather to pass, a certain heightened welcome. Down the stairs, and across the bar, Clara saw Davis, as he made his slow way through the people. He didn’t speak to anybody, and nobody spoke to him.

He stopped by the door to the terrace, glancing around, searching faces, biting the side of his mouth. What was it? she wondered. What was it he had needed so badly to tell Hal? She followed his eyes as they fixed on somebody. Tony Grieves. Why would Davis be staring at him? Her eyes went back to Davis and he, at the same time, looked over the crowded bar at her. Their eyes met briefly, and instead of acknowledging him, Clara found she looked down to her lap, in shyness.

‘What-ho, the major,’ said Susan, and Clara twisted round to see Hal coming in.

He didn’t notice her; he looked exhausted. He had lain rigidly in bed next to her the night before, silent, the air ringing with tension around him. Clara got up and went over to him. ‘Darling, where have you been?’ she said.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘You look tired.’

He was scanning the room. ‘Long day.’

‘Oh – telling off soldiers?’

‘Yes, look, would you mind awfully going home? I need to do something – I’d rather you weren’t here.’

He still hadn’t looked at her, but then he glanced down, as if to say,
Still here?

‘Oh…I’ll –’

‘Kirby can take you up. He’s outside. Tell him to come back here afterwards.’

Clara’s voice was quiet; she was hoping only he would hear, wanting him to listen very badly. ‘I was rather nervous at home,’ she said. ‘Frightened.’

‘There’s nothing to be nervous about.’

‘That’s what everybody said about the beach!’

One or two people turned their heads. Clara was aware of Deirdre and Susan watching them. Hal faced her squarely, and dropped his chin an inch to look into her eyes. ‘Clara, come along. It isn’t the right time to talk about this. I’m still working. Shall I see you later?’

Clara felt her cheeks get hot. ‘I can
be
here, can’t I?’

He, low, ‘I’d rather not,’ but then, ‘All right, if you want.’ And he turned sharply away from her.

Clara didn’t wait. She passed him, heading towards the ladies’ room, the one place she could walk to legitimately. She paused at Susan and Deirdre’s table. ‘I think I will borrow that compact, if you don’t mind.’

Susan handed Clara her evening bag, without comment, and, taking it, she saw Deirdre’s eyes narrow in amusement.

Clara washed her hands. She felt slightly sick. She splashed her face with water, and powdered, and when she came out, she saw Hal, with Grieves, walking out of the bar again. Nobody had stopped to observe their leaving, but she felt it had some significance of which she was ignorant. Then, walking back to the table, she saw Davis, again across the crowded bar. He was watching Hal and Grieves leave, too.

She put Susan’s bag down, and went towards him. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pushing past men who were drinking and hadn’t seen her, ‘Excuse me, I’m so sorry,’ and she had entered the more crowded part of the bar, the part the ladies didn’t normally go to, but waited on soft chairs to have their drinks brought to them. Davis’s eyebrows went up, seeing her coming.

‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ she asked him, and felt some satisfaction in his embarrassment.

‘I don’t follow.’ He glanced at her.

‘What was this urgent meeting with Hal?’

‘Oh.’ He was uncomfortable. ‘Hasn’t he said?’

‘I haven’t seen him all day. You see more of him than I do, I should think. Now he’s disappeared off with Tony Grieves.’

‘Not disappeared with. Arrested.’

‘He’s arresting an officer?’ She was shocked. ‘What could be so bad?’

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No. I should like to know what’s going on. Hal has sent me home.’

‘Sent you?’

‘Yes.’

He touched her bare upper arm with his fingers to guide her towards the wall a little. She shivered and he bent down towards her ear. ‘I don’t know if he’s a friend of yours, but he’s a –’ He stumbled. ‘He’s disgusting.’ The way he said it was so final, so English, the tone of it –
disgusting
. ‘And now they’ll deal with him.’

For a moment Clara thought of Deirdre and Grieves, on the dirty asphalt, and that, yes, he was disgusting. She had the mad idea they were arresting him for having sex with Deirdre and wanted to giggle.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. What did he do?’

‘I’d rather not say to a woman.’

Clara, despite his pomposity, felt a chill of horror. What could have been so bad?

‘Are you leaving?’ he said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘I’ll walk you out.’

They left together, and Clara stopped to say goodbye to Deirdre and Susan. Deirdre stood up. ‘I saw Hal,’ she said. ‘He’s with Tony.’

‘Yes. I know,’ said Clara, and left.

On the driveway there was no sign of Hal, or Grieves, either. She looked around for Kirby who, seeing her, turned on the lights and eased the car towards her.

‘Is that your man?’

‘Corporal Kirby, yes.’ She would be alone with her little children in the house.

Davis stood quietly next to her and she said quickly, ‘I know that soldiers – you, Hal – face things all the time that are actually dangerous, and you don’t seem to be scared.’

‘Well,’ he looked at her, ‘one just has to get on with it.’

‘I’m scared here,’ she said.

‘Well, after Monday –’

‘No. All the time.’

Kirby got out and opened the door for her, ‘Evening, Mrs T.’

‘Hello, Kirby.’

He went back around the car, slowly easing his body through the warm night. Clara turned away from the open door and the black inside of the car. ‘It’s silly,’ she said. ‘Hal’s the one out in the villages, or driving along those cut-off roads miles from anywhere. Here I am, safe as houses –’

Davis pushed his hands into his pockets and rocked on his feet, hunching up his shoulders. He smiled. ‘Funny old expression, safe as houses. Particularly after the war. You’d think it would have died out.’

‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘Safe as Morrison shelters, perhaps.’

He spoke in an undertone, but Kirby couldn’t have heard over the idling motor: ‘When my enlistment notice arrived, I went into a blue funk too. Visions of an inglorious death in battle. Turns out I’m not in battle, and if I were – well, as you say, I’m not frightened. Not in the way I thought I would be.’

‘There you are. Perhaps men are just braver.’

‘I brought a sort of charm with me, used to carry it everywhere.’

‘What was it?’

‘A rather lesser Ancient Greek deity – the goddess Iris. She’s supposed to be good luck.’

‘Not so obvious as a St Christopher.’

‘No. It was just a bit of Victorian tat I saw in a junk shop in Cambridge, but it did make me feel better at the beginning.’

‘Yes. I can imagine it might.’

‘I’d never left England until last year.’

‘It’s not being
away
. It’s being here.’ There was silence for a moment. She knew she ought to go. ‘I don’t even have a cross,’ she said.

There was a pause, in which Kirby cleared his smoker’s throat carefully.

‘Well, I should go,’ she said.

She got into the car.

‘Good night, Lawrence,’ she said, not meeting his eye.

‘Good night – oh! Thank you for making me talk to your –’ he seemed to stumble over the name ‘– Major Treherne,’ he said. ‘It was the right thing to do.’ He grinned.

Kirby let out the clutch, and the car pulled away from him.

Hal still wasn’t home, and Clara was in her nightdress, drying her face, when there was a knock at the door. She jumped, and went to the top of the stairs. Looking down to the ground floor, she could see that something had been pushed under the door. It looked like a piece of paper, folded. She padded down, hearing a car driving away.

She bent to retrieve the paper, which had a damp, often-folded softness. Unwrapping it, she found a small cameo, such as would have hung on a thin chain. Its edges, of cheap gold, were bent. She took it to the light. The background was blue, and the cameo itself a clumsy relief of a winged goddess, carrying an urn.

Clara touched the little piece of jewellery with her finger. She seemed to sense comfort, as if it were pleasantly haunted. She thought of Lawrence Davis driving out to her house and pushing it under her door. I hope he won’t think there’s anything between us if I keep it, she thought, and then, How kind of him. She refolded the paper, with the cameo inside, and went upstairs. She would find somewhere discreet to keep it.

Davis drove away from Clara’s house. He was glad he hadn’t mentioned that the goddess Iris was the messenger of Aphrodite, as well as a good-luck charm. He thought if he had brought the word ‘love’ into it, she might feel inhibited, and he wanted her to have his present, and to keep it. He turned off the road towards the barracks. He wouldn’t go back to the mess. He felt some relief that Major Treherne and the Military Police were the ones directly involved in the wretched business of arresting Grieves, not himself. Soon people would know about it, and connect him with the whole sordid mess; he didn’t like to face them. He would rather be alone.

Hal had taken Grieves to the side of the building, out of sight, to make the arrest, delivering him into the custody of the RMPs and, once they had gone, he stood on his own, just resting in the peaceful dark.

Grieves wasn’t to be put in the guardroom with the other ranks; he would be at home, with Lieutenant Cross guarding. His disgrace was to be kept separate, with neither the condemnation nor the camaraderie of other men’s company.

Grieves had been propping up the bar, as usual, when Hal got to him. ‘Hello, Hal,’ he’d said, and taken a gulp of his drink.

‘Listen, Grieves –’

Then Deirdre Innes had appeared, insinuating herself between them, and looking up at him over the rim of her glass. ‘I see your game,’ she said, teasingly, ‘waiting for Clara to go home so you can have some fun.’

‘Would you excuse us for a moment, Deirdre?’