When he did that Lil would laugh back at him and gather him up in her arms with a quick, sure movement, and shake her own dark hair from eyes bright with pleasure. John would think, ‘That’s how she used to look, and that’s how I want her to be all the time.’
Lil came back to her father’s side and leaned her elbows on the counter again. It felt good to have her near him like that. She said, suddenly:
“It seems odd to see Miss Daphne in at this time, doesn’t it, Dad?”
John looked across again at the party in the corner. The Gurneys’ daughter wasn’t ‘Miss Daphne’ any more, but because they had always called her that, the name would stick. She’d married a foreigner with a difficult name. A Pole, they said, in the R.A.F., who’d got killed a month after the baby was born.
John felt, once more, the bitterness in his throat. Daphne Gurney’s bloke had married her. She’d come back from the factory where she worked and had a slap-up do in London. But it seemed mighty soon she was home again to have the baby. Well, he supposed, it all depended on your luck, and, come to that, Lil’s Tommy was a smashing kid and looked a deal healthier than Miss Daphne’s dark-skinned little fellow up at the Manor.
John looked at the girl by his side to see if she was thinking like he was. She often seemed to pick up his thoughts uncannily, but this time he could read nothing in her pale, set face. The voice of his son, Dick, floated across to the counter. Arguing the point, no doubt, like he always did these days. John thought, ‘It’s a rum world; things might have been the other way about.’
Round the table in the corner they were reminiscencing the war and arguing the peace, for what it was worth, content because they were together and the drink was good.
To Angela Worthing they were strangers and she wondered what it was that made her feel the companionship of the group so strongly. And then, as their characters began to develop more clearly through the things they said, she knew what it was that linked them together: they were all ex-service. All, that was, except herself and the girl called Daphne. Angela quickly dismissed Daphne; the girl was good-looking, but she lacked warmth and personality; she was affected without being an individual.
The boy, Dick, she had seen at Little Copse. He was an instructor in carpentry, but she had not actually spoken to him before. He had wide eyes and a nervous habit of thrusting one hand inside the top of his open shirt and rubbing the palm against his flesh. She noticed the scar running from his left temple into his crisply curling fair hair. She noticed, too, the way Brian Gurney would stop talking to listen to what Dick had to say, as though this attention would give the boy confidence.
Peter Gurney was drunk, but he got drunk so often and so nicely that no one seemed to mind. Angela had an impression that the confusion of his drunken moments and the inconsequence of his sober ones might be indistinguishable. But she thought, ‘he and Brian have all the charm that the sister, Daphne, lacks.’
The bar began to crowd up and tobacco smoke floated, friendly and blue, above their heads. Angela felt rested and alive. She thought, suddenly, how well people can size one another up in a pub. It was something in the atmosphere that made everyone more affable so that their defences were lowered and you could glimpse characters and emotions in a way that was impossible at other times. The voices all around were soothing like a caress. She heard the tail end of Peter’s voice saying: “And so I probably know as much about them as any of you. I’ve seen them in the docks and aboard ship. I’ve talked to them in pubs and cafés, all over the world. I’ve lived with them and fought with them. All they want is to be home again, in the home as it used to be. Back to their old jobs and a bit of quiet. They don’t want to change anything.” He spoke in soft, uneven sentences.
“You’re wrong there, Commander.” Dick Cobb rubbed his chest nervously. “Maybe that’s what they thought they wanted when they were a long way away, but they’ve changed their ideas pretty quick since they’ve been back and found out what’s been going on all this time.”
“Not all of them, surely?” Laura Watson interrupted quickly, “Not the ones with wives and children.”
Angela thought, “She’s typical—the war’s taken such important years out of her life that she wants to build them back into everyone else’s.”
“Wives and children?” Dick snorted. “Take Bill here”—Bill was a dark man with hot eyes, wearing a Sid Field overcoat in spite of the mild evening—“what did he come back and find after five years overseas? That he hadn’t got a wife he could call his own, but he’d got a new toddler some two years old! Didn’t you, Bill?”
Bill agreed, with simplicity, and added:
“Some overpaid dodger what could have had the pick of the skirts in this country, but he had to go and take my wife.”
Angela noticed the quick contraction of Helen Townsend’s hands and thought how unwell she looked. Thin and strained and singularly helpless. It was strange how getting out of uniform altered women, particularly if you’d only known them in uniform.
Dick was talking again:
“And what about me? I know I got my ticket back in ’44 on account of my leg and all, but what happened when I went job hunting? And I’m not the only one, mind you. I’ve heard the same tale from others since.”
“Tell them what happened, Dick,” Brian said gently. Dick looked round the table and the strain in his eyes made them appear wider than ever. He went on:
“I went to three firms back in ’44, when they was calling for a quarter of a million more men for the army and talking about conscripting women to go overseas, when they should have been pleased to get a man who’d got his ticket and wasn’t on the run. They said, ‘Have you got a pension?’ So I said, ‘Yes—80 per cent, but I’m fit to do a job. The doctors have said I’m okie-doke.’ So they say, ‘Oh, we’re not worrying about that, but if you’ve got a pension we can’t offer you employment. We keep our jobs for non-pensioned men.’” Dick stopped suddenly on a high note, as though listening for something.
“I know that’s true,” Brian said, quietly.
“But you know what it really was?” Dick asked, vehemently again. “They’d got chaps in those firms who’d been having a cushy time dodging the column for years, and when the ex-servicemen came back—lads who’d been on the pay-roll before they were called up and who thought they’d get their jobs back—what happened? They got their jobs back all right, for a few months, till things were made so uncomfortable for them that it was a case of leaving or getting the sack. They saw it coming all right. And the dodgers who’d been having a cushy holiday on their savings all went back to the jobs again. Re-instatement, they call it. Trouble is nobody’s made it clear yet whose re-instatement they mean. But we know, don’t we, Bill.”
“That’s right, Dick. We know.”
Peter said:
“I gave all the chaps on my ship my address and told them to get in touch with me if they couldn’t get a job. I can give them all the introductions they want.”
Angela thought, ‘You pathetic fool, your introductions won’t help anyone, least of all yourself; life isn’t going to be like that again.’
Brian said:
“What about starting with me, Peter? Greater love hath no man than this. . . .” But he was looking at Helen. Dick interrupted:
“Not you, Captain. You’re with us. With Bill and me and all the chaps sweating over at Little Copse learning to be carpenters and cabinet makers. Poor suckers like us. By the time the Government’s finished training a few thousand cabinet makers you’ll find it’s also bought all the cabinets it needs from the Yanks or someone. And the poor muggers’ll be right back where they started from—only they’ll have spent their dough by then. Smashing planning, ain’t it?”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Michael Cross asked, softly.
“Do about it?” Dick’s glance held theirs defiantly, and then, quite suddenly, he seemed to crumple; his whisper was bitter and helpless, “Do about it? I wish to God t
here was someone to tell us.”
Silence held them, isolated, like a vacuum, draining them of power. Then Brian laughed, mockingly.
“I tell you what we’ll do, old chap,” he said. “You and I are going to start a fund for Duped Servicemen. We’ll register it as an official peace charity and wrap it in blue prints. There are plenty of ways of collecting money for it. I’ll go round with a little tin and Mary’s dog, Belinda, who has puppies on the slightest provocation—that always appeals to the family man. I’ll sit outside the War Office before lunch and when the Chief of Staff comes out I’ll say, ‘Spare a copper for the Duped Soldiers, sir, spare a—’”
“Don’t be a fool, Brian,” Helen said, fiercely, but he ignored her as he went on.
“And when the Secretary of State hurries home at four p.m. I’ll waggle my little tin in front of his nose and Belinda will waggle her tail and we’ll ask him for a contribution for all the ex-servicemen who’ve been duped by white papers, duped by post-war promises, duped by the Treasury and duped by their women at home.”
Angela saw Helen go white in the face, and, in a flash, she understood the bitterness behind Brian’s fooling. Those two were in love—or had been. He was hurt, painfully angry about something.
Michael Cross said:
“Let me know when all this is going to happen, Brian. I’d like the exclusive story for my paper!”
“There’s going to be nothing exclusive about this, is there Dick?”
But Dick was not listening. He sat twisting an empty tankard between his hands, and his face looked smoothed out and young again, as though someone else being vehement on his behalf was all he asked.
Laura said:
“Dick, Mrs. Cobb is trying to make signs at you from the other side of the counter.”
Dick looked up.
“That’ll be Elsie come to fetch me away,” he said. “Come on, Bill. Can’t keep a lady waiting, you know.”
“Good night, all. See you tomorrow?” He was pathetically eager that they should say yes.
Michael spoke for them.
“Sure thing. Same time. Cheero.”
They watched him limp across the room. Angela asked:
“Where did he get that?”
Brian said:
“Italy. They’d just made him an officer. His head wound’s more serious. He got his captaincy and an M.C. at the same time. It’s all very confused to him now and he’s sore as hell because he can’t remember. He doesn’t remember going to O.C.T.U. or anything. That’s why he’s got such an inferiority complex; he feels he’s never been a real officer and yet he’s as proud as a peacock when you introduce him as captain. Poor devil.”
Daphne said:
“Brian, dear, we ought to be getting home. I promised to say good night to Ian before supper.”
Brian laughed:
“All right, fuss-budget, we’re quite aware that your promises to your son transcend all else.”
“Well, they do,” she agreed, simply. “Can you make Peter move, he’s half asleep.” She prodded her elder brother, gently.
“What’s that?” Peter asked, jerkily.
“Your sister,” Brian explained, “is the lucky one of our family. Her future career is assured. She has full time employment as a mother, guaranteed for at least sixteen years to come. Which is more than we can say, old fellow. Come on.” His glance went back to Helen. “Shall I see you home, Helen?”
To Angela it sounded like a plea.
“No, it’s all right, Brian. I’ll walk back with Laura. We go the same way.”
“Oh well, good night then. It’s been nice seeing you again.” His hurt was thinly disguised.
* * * *
I asked Brian not to come, but he has.
I am afraid when I see him walk into the room. Not of him, but of Emily who has just opened the door for him, of Lady Gurney who will have asked him where he was going, of Laura whose cottage he has passed on the way here. And of all the eyes and ears in the village waiting to transmit to avid tongues everything they see and hear.
This isn’t like the army. In the army to put on a uniform was to put a barrier between your personal life and the world. You can find more privacy in a uniformed crowd than anywhere else.
In Kirton, in my own home, I am naked. I am Dr. Townsend’s wife and, next week, my husband will be home. Everybody knows that and everybody, every busybody, is rejoicing on my behalf.
Brian is near me and I am caught up by his presence. I can’t help it. It has been like that for two years now.
“Why did you have to come back here?” I ask, stupidly.
He laughs.
“Darling, where else can a bloke come back to if not to his own home?”
“Unfortunately it’s my home too.”
“Yes,” he says, very gently, “your home and my home. But not our home. Helen, we’ve got to talk about this. We’ve got to decide something. We’ve so little time left.”
Outside the sun is going down, irrevocably. Because its rays are level with the window, shining on the mullioned panes, I cannot see the garden outside, with its blaze of dahlias. Instead I see Brian outlined sharply against a golden haze and I derive intense physical pleasure from the sight. With equal intensity, I despise myself.
“Brian, there’s nothing to talk about,” I say. “I wrote to you.”
“Your letter, darling?” He is smiling as we stand facing each other. “Your letter was the silliest I have ever read. It didn’t make sense.”
I hadn’t thought it would when I wrote it. That’s the drawback of arguing something you don’t altogether believe in. Brian is right. We’ve got to talk this over.
“I wish you’d sit down,” I say.
“I don’t want to, thanks.”
“Then I will. There is a chair I have always liked. It is wing-backed and when you sit in it you can feel it fitting safely all round you.”
“You look very small out of uniform,” Brian says casually.
“I feel rather small. The cigarettes are in that box on the mantelpiece.”
“Thanks.” But he doesn’t take one.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink. There’s absolutely nothing in the house.”
“What a place.” And now he is fingering his own cigarette case, opening and shutting it by sliding it and letting the spring force back his relaxed fingers before he snaps it shut again. He repeats this with great concentration and the stillness of the room is punctuated by metallic clicks. I think I am going to scream. Instead I say:
“I’d like a cigarette, please.”
He lights two cigarettes and hands me one. Then he goes on snapping the case.
“Please, Brian, don’t do that!”
“Sorry.” He walks up and down in front of the window. I can’t help watching him and I feel awful because, inside me, is the restless tingle of pleasure that his proximity arouses. I like the way he holds himself and the outline of his figure against the light. My senses respond to the clearness of his skin and the tautness of his body. It is no good pretending to myself that I am not attracted. I may be stupid, but I do know myself. I understand my feelings only too well.
“Helen”—he pauses with his back towards me—“Helen, you’ve got to come away before Gyp gets back.”
“I won’t. You know I can’t. I’ve told you why already.”
“But you don’t love him.” It is the beginning and end of all our arguments. “You love me.”
“Brian, I don’t know . . .” What an admission—and yet it’s true. To be so conscious of attraction and so uncertain of love. I must see Gyp again, here in our old home, before I can know. I am quite certain of that, and quite sane about it. To be in love with one man and to love another is nonsensical and muddle-hearted; it’s wanton and unethical; but it’s not madness. After everything which has happened since 1939, it’s almost inevitable. Of course I want to make excuses now. I know that. Not to Brian or Gyp but to myself. And I want to be fair. I don
’t think it would be right to go away before Gyp comes back. He knows nothing about Brian. If he is to know, I want to tell him myself. I owe that to Gyp—and to Brian. If I were to go away now with Brian I should never be comfortable again. Besides, I want to see Gyp.
“You’ll make yourself ill.” He is looking at me and I feel a moment of panic that he has read my thoughts.
“You don’t make it any easier,” I say.
“Easier? I suppose you think it’s awfully easy for me to come back here and find you installed in Gyp’s house, waiting to welcome him back, playing at being the faithful wife, building up an atmosphere of home and sanctity. And I suppose you think it will be easy for Gyp to find you again as he’s always pictured you, only to discover that you don’t love him after all.”
When I get angry I get a lump in my throat and my eyes fill with tears. It is happening now and I can’t stop it.
“But I do love him.” The words sound muffled and childish.
“I’m sorry, Helen.” He is near me and he has put an arm round my shoulders. What disturbing comfort that gives.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t really think you’re playing at anything. You’re just being you, I suppose. You can’t help it any more than I can stop myself saying stupid things.” He gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
I am staring straight into the browny tweed of the jacket he is wearing, somewhere below the lapel, and the furry surface of the material is magnified and blurred. The lump in my throat is not from anger now.
“For God’s sake blow your nose,” he says. I comply with the most sensible suggestion he has yet made, .and suddenly we are smiling at each other. It’s always that way with Brian. Maybe that’s why we like each other so much. We have always laughed at the same things. Until I came out of the A.T.S. we never thought about anything seriously for long. We smiled, ridiculed, and were gay, secure in the laughter of our love. We are laughing now.
“Darling, now we’re being sensible again.” He lights us another cigarette each, and then stands looking down at me. If only we hadn’t got to talk any more. But he goes on: “I accept your decision, even though I think you’re mad. You shall stay here and Gyp will come back and you will then make up your mind what you’re going to do. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Wine of Honour Page 4
