The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  Mr Grant works down in London these days and stays there much of most months. When he’s away, it’s the coast that he misses, Muriel tells me. The streets of London have nothing to compare with the light on the water. That’s why they bought the house in the first place, so that they might have a spot on the water and a place to watch the sky. Muriel shows me his photograph on the living-room wall. He looks like her, I think, has her gangliness and her interested eyes, but he has a seriousness, too. He looks like a man who might need to walk beside the sea once in a while.

  After the war, I will bring Stanley here to meet him, I think. And Mrs Grant and Muriel, too. We will sit together in these rooms, talk about pigs and poetry and listen for the comfortable sound of the sea.

  6

  THE END OF AUGUST AND IT CAN’T BE HIM, BUT I’M already running. No one knocks at my door in the evening, and if it is another air raid, I’d have heard the whistles. No feet in the street either, no scratch of a chair, just that gentle tapping on my door and my feet already running down the hallway. I’ve been sitting in the kitchen with another weak cup of tea and a book, not even thinking about him but I know. I just know.

  The key is stiff in the lock. My fingers won’t work properly. I need two hands to turn it like a child and it just can’t be him but finally, finally the door opens and Stanley is home.

  ‘Did you send word?’ I ask, my arms already around him, already pulling him into the house. ‘I didn’t know. I thought leave was still weeks away. I …’

  ‘Hush, lovely, and let me in.’ He speaks softly, and he is already beside me, closing the door.

  ‘You are here.’

  ‘Yes,’ he answers, laughing quietly. ‘I am, aren’t I?’

  ‘Oh, but you’re cold. It must be windy outside. And the last bus was ages ago. How did you …’

  There is a strange look on his face, a faltering, I think, but it could be just the light in the hallway because he shrugs and smiles, slipping his arms out of his coat and hanging it on the doorknob.

  ‘I had to walk. All the way from Haddington after the train. Thought about going across the fields, but I was worried I’d lose my way, so I followed the rail tracks out to Longniddry then the road after that.’

  ‘Goodness, it must have taken ages.’

  ‘A couple of hours. Nothing at all. It’s beautiful tonight. Clear and quiet. There was such a cloud of bats on the wing at the Cottyburn Siding. I could have caught you one in my hat. You could have cooked it for tea. Are rations bad now? Are you starving? You don’t feel quite like you’re starving.’

  ‘You were lucky it was quiet. We’ve had such a lot of noise here, all the planes overhead.’

  ‘Should hear it down south, love. Piccadilly Circus every night. But look, I brought tea and fags. A fresh packet of each, too. We could have a veritable picnic, couldn’t we? Tuck in bed and be cosy together?’

  I suggest a bath first to warm him up but how can we wait? The water would need to boil and the bath brought through to the fire with the curtains and the blackout blinds all closed securely and then the lamps lit. We manage the blinds and no further. The sheets are cold against bare skin, and him warm, him so close, hard, strong, tender. I keep opening my eyes, not wanting to miss a single look and if they were closed it could all be imaginary no matter how good and real. So I open my eyes and everything is open.

  It is later I notice that he hasn’t got his duffel bag with him, that he didn’t have anything at all in his hands as he came through the door.

  In the dark, he speaks, lying on his back beside me.

  ‘It’s only for a day or two. Well, a few days now that I’m here. Don’t get used to it. I can’t stay.’

  ‘Of course not. But you’re here now.’

  ‘Am I? It’s hard to believe. I could be anywhere.’ He rolls towards me and runs his hand down my side. We might have fallen asleep, easily. It’s even likely, but we don’t. We just lie there together in the dark. I want to feel easy. I want to feel that the world is whole again. It is so dark that I can’t see the ceiling or the paleness of the sheets. I can’t see anything at all. For a long time, we are simply together.

  Later, we get up, slip on clothing, sit in the kitchen where my cup of tea is still on the table. I take the cheese from the shelf and unwrap the creased greaseproof paper. It is getting almost too hard to slice. The Ministry of Food pamphlet suggested letting it harden as it would stretch further grated. Unpleasantness stretches, perhaps. I slice the bread and grate a little cheese onto each slice, folding them in half, but the hard bread crumbles and I have to pass it to Stanley on a plate.

  ‘No matter, my love,’ he whispers.

  ‘We don’t have to be silent. We won’t wake anyone. Miss Baxter’s gone away for a few nights. There is no one to hear.’

  ‘The whole country is emptying, isn’t it? That’s what I was thinking as I walked along the tracks tonight. There’s nothing and no one left.’

  ‘You won’t feel that way in the morning. You’ll see. East Lothian is heaving with military. Haddington is quite inflated, and even in Gullane, there are uniforms everywhere. Not as quiet in the country as we expected.’

  ‘But you’re safe? Yes? You feel safe? You’re not scared?’

  ‘No, I’m fine …’ and I stop because his leg is shaking, jumping up and down like a piston under the table. ‘Stanley, what is it?’

  ‘I’m … I’m not on leave. I just left.’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Yes. I walked. I didn’t seek permission or tell anyone at all. I just walked away.’

  ‘But that’s desertion.’

  ‘Is it? Is it? I don’t know. Fuck, my love, I don’t know anything any more.’

  I lace my fingers around the Cunard teacup, bone-cold and silent. He holds his head in his hands for balance. I could touch him, but I don’t. Then he stands, an awful lurch to his feet, and I stand, too, but he grips my stiff shoulders and shoves me back into my chair. My breath stops. He moves through to the hallway and the door to the street closes. Again, he is gone.

  The dark is final. Moonless and it owns the earth. It fills the kitchen, my lungs, my heart. I sit at the table, certain the invasion will come soon. It has to. There will be landings here, up and down the coast, despite all the defences. The south will fall. London. All the fields. Dunkirk will be remembered as the first stage rather than the glorious withdrawal, the heroic stand. All the heartening stories are just whistling in the dark. The private yachts and the fishermen. The two sisters who pulled fifty men from the beach and brought them home safe to Blighty. I thought they were heroines, shining saints of the sea. God was with them and with us, shaping the nation’s beautiful story. But they will fall, too, the saints and the sisters, the mothers at home, Mrs Scott, Muriel, and all these other women we watch. And who watches us and from what distance?

  Because if he returns to the army, they will kill him. Isn’t that what they do to deserters? It was in the last war, and isn’t that the irony of courage? If it flags and you turn away, blind or suddenly seeing, they will gun you down. Methodical murder and none of this for heaven’s sake.

  Day comes, grey and with a gentle rain. I stand and will myself thoughtless. Drink water and do not bite the glass to taste the shards, the blood alone warm in my mouth. I will not. I cannot move past this moment, though the hours pass and it becomes a vigil. I will sit; I will not retreat. No stumble, no vicious light. Perhaps I only wait for the returning dark.

  Footsteps outside, perhaps midday, and Muriel’s whistle with a Hollywood song and dance up the walk, all lipstick and Izaak’s blond hair in the dark of the double bill. I can’t speak, can’t tell her anything or ask her what to do. Her gentle knock on the door, once and then again. She calls my name and, a hundred feet below the tide, I can’t answer. Only lie anchored while somewhere above, the gulls and gannets shriek and dive for pale fish.

  When it is dark again, he opens the door and shuffles into the hallway. I meet him there,
but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t meet my eye and we don’t touch. Back in the kitchen, I sit, still empty.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  He sits opposite me and places his hands on the table. ‘Out to Jovey’s Neuk. I like it there. No one saw me.’

  ‘It isn’t safe. The army are building concrete blocks along the shore to keep the Germans from landing their tanks.’

  ‘I saw them. Ugly things.’

  ‘They say that they will be mining the sands, too.’

  ‘I thought the ironstone was gone. More or less.’

  ‘No, love. I think they meant explosives.’

  ‘Oh.’ He stretches out his hand towards me and I take it between my palms. He feels cold again, damp, and he looks emptied. ‘It rained in the afternoon. For a long time, I sat in the dunes. I shouldn’t have come here. It isn’t fair on you.’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything? You came home. I … I want to ask why.’

  ‘I knew you would. I’m not sure.’

  ‘I wondered where you’d gone.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I … I didn’t know. Maybe walking. I wasn’t always sure you’d been here at all. Maybe I’d made it up. A fever dream or something. Or I thought I might be …’

  ‘You don’t need to say it. I’ve wondered, too. Sane people don’t walk away.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they do.’

  Later he tells me that, after the rain, he went down into the ironstone mine. ‘There were these wide white breakers out to sea and the wind grew cold. I wanted a sheltered place. Knew there was an entrance somewhere in the bluff behind Jova’s cottage. Took me a while to find it, actually. The grass has grown up and there’s been a rock-fall since I was a teenager. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but I did manage to get in. Used to be easier. I’ve made a right mess of my knees. Once you crawl through the entrance, it widens out and there’s room enough to stand. It starts with a broad chamber that you can circle pretty well if you keep your hand on the wall, and then there are all these alleyways and arteries that lead away into the hill. I remember it gets pretty windy down there sometimes, so there must be ventilation. There used to be bats, too, that made an awful flappy noise in the dark up above our heads. Me and Andrew from over by Drem. We’d gather driftwood from the beach and get a fire going in the mine despite the drafts. Maybe they helped. Made us smell like kippers, too, but nae bother there. And we’d go exploring, looking for smugglers’ loot. We never expected gold or silver. Nothing extravagant. But opals, possibly. They’re found sometimes where there’s ironstone. Opals would be grand, and we had candles and shining sand from the beach to dribble out in long lines down the tunnels, so there was always a pale gleaming trail to lead back to safety.’

  ‘Stanley, you can’t hide underground for the rest of the war.’

  ‘No? Perhaps not. Perhaps.’

  He sleeps, his wet clothes bunched on a chair. I check the blinds, the curtains, the key in the lock, pad back to bed and light the lamp. Stanley does not move. He lies naked on the sheets, stretched out like a drowned bird on the strand. He is thin with ribs and ligaments, the meticulous structure of bones, hollow weight and length. In sleep, I cannot see his wide-horizon gaze, his inconceivable ability to fly.

  Sometime in the night, I wonder if I might cut my life in two. Walk away. Or more sensibly take a bus. Leave, anyway. Maybe to London. I could find work, a room. I could just cut and run. Leave no explanation, just a tidied house behind. But that is the trouble, of course. That was what Stanley had done and now what? I can’t leave him. I can’t send him back. I lie beside him as he sleeps; the darkness of the room curls over us both, his breath soft and even.

  If I could cut my life in two like an apple, you might see the seeds. You might see where all this is going. But nothing can be quarried to its core and keep its weight. Light will change everything, and these days need to be lived in darkness. Maybe I should hide away, too. Would Stanley’s mine be big enough for two? That might be the answer when the time comes. But it isn’t here yet.

  The wind whistles down the chimney and he stretches in his sleep, rolling onto his back, then back towards me again. I turn out the light, the skies still silent above us. I can’t see him, but I don’t need to. He is here and that is enough. For now, night is a cover.

  I sleep and wake, aware of him as of a twin. The other half of the apple. Sliced across, you find a star. Straight down, a heart. My mother showed me that when she first taught me to use a knife. She let me decide.

  ‘Stanley?’

  He wakes slowly, his hands holding the sheets.

  ‘Stanley? You need to go.’

  ‘I can’t. A little longer.’

  ‘It will be dawn soon. People will be waking.’ I touch his face, his tired skin.

  ‘All right, okay … might be awake now. I was dreaming I was awake, but I woke up …’

  ‘And,’ I say, picking up the threads of his silly quotation, ‘found myself asleep.’

  ‘Now that’s Hardy funny, my girl.’ He reaches over for me, but I sit up straight because there are things he needs to know.

  ‘I’ve put a few things together for you. To take to the mine.’ An apple. A few slices of crumbling bread. Cigarettes. A jar of water. ‘There will be more later. I’ll manage. But you need to stay hidden. You will. You know the lie of the land.’

  ‘How are we going to tell the children about all this, Jane?’

  ‘Don’t. We’ll say goodbye later. If we need to.’

  7

  FOR A FEW DAYS, HE COMES AND GOES LIKE THE TIDE, and landscapes change each time. He is bright or quiet. He can meet my eye. I trace the lines around his mouth and his gentle hands quiver. I don’t know if this is love or tenderness. He tells me about the rooks coming down from the sky, walking the old wall-lines at Jovey’s cottage, their pale-beaked faces bright-eyed and curious.

  ‘I gave them some of my bread. Just a little, to be friendly. At first, they scattered, but slowly, they started pecking up the crumbs, hopping back and forth and always sure to keep a sharp eye on me. Then later, one flew back with a blue mussel shell in his beak and dropped it in the grass, quite close to me. Like a gift. Made me feel like Elijah in the wilderness, it did.’

  * * *

  Every night, we find each other. Everything is familiar: the rain outside, salt on the lips, the tongue, hands holding on, the quilt on our bed.

  ‘If I could find a boat, I’d go down to the islands,’ he says. ‘Just down the coast towards North Berwick. Used to be hermits out there on the Bass and Fidra, too, I think. I’d fit in.’

  ‘You stay put where it’s safe. I can’t even think about you on the sea.’

  ‘Can’t fathom it, can you?’ he says, and I can smile. ‘But I wonder if I could get a boat. Think I could sneak by without being spotted? I think I could make it. The rooks could bring me one: a very large mussel shell. What do you think?’

  He tumbles me on my back and traces my face with a finger, telling me that the Bass was named from the Gaelic root for forehead.

  ‘And Fidra?’

  ‘Norse for feather.’

  ‘It all comes together.’

  ‘Yes.’

  In the morning, the sky is clear again and I hang up laundry in the garden. Miss Baxter comes home and pops round to tell me about noises she heard in the night.

  ‘Ghosts,’ I tell her. ‘Must be.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I think so,’ I say, trying to sound convincing. ‘I’ll listen tonight, too, and then we can confer in the morning.’

  ‘Yes. Let’s.’ She draws her cardigan close with one hand and smiles quietly, holding out a glass jar towards me. ‘I brought you jam from my sister. It’s blackcurrant. Only made with honey, I’m afraid, so it is a bit syrupy, but the flavour is good.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘That’s lovely.’ I take the jar and hope there’s nothing in the hallway behind me that might be
tray Stanley. Just in case, I won’t invite her in. I tell her it’s good to see her, that I would like to hear her news, but perhaps later? This might make it sound like she’s caught me at a busy moment. I stand with crossed arms at the door.

  In the afternoon, I walk along the road to Gullane to buy bread, cheese, eggs if I can find them and a newspaper. News of more raids over London and reports of courage and cheerfulness, too. Most children are sleeping through the night. It is still comparatively easy to secure accommodation in country hotels. Everything will be all right. That is the message. Repetition of the experience tends to diminish rather than increase its effect. I will put the paper away before Stanley comes. Maybe use it to start a fire. The evenings are growing chilly.

  It is odd that there is no mention in the paper of raids on Scotland, too. It isn’t just London or even the south. With all the airfields up here and Grangemouth, too, there are plenty of targets. When I went into town to visit my family in the middle of the month, Mum mentioned bombs in Marchmont, her lips pursed as she told me, as if no one should think of such a thing. But they fell anyway, regardless of what the Edinburgh folk might have to say. Five in one evening along Argyll Crescent, all unexploded, mercifully. And no mention in the paper. It must be the policy these days, keeping hush about specifics, though I wonder how they decide. Which bombs count? Which ones are worth knowing about?

  When Stanley comes late in the evening, I make a pot of tea in the dim kitchen, and stir a spoonful of Miss Baxter’s jam into his mug for sweetness. Black bits float to the surface, giving it a scummy look. He lifts them off with the bowl of his spoon.