by Nina Bawden
It was very still and quiet. Even the sound of the traffic seemed muted and far away. I walked round the garden, where we had played after the bombing, before Caroline’s death, before Brigid and Venetia had gone away to the country. There were still things that I remembered; there was a broken stone statue, lying on its side in the middle of what had been the lawn. It was a naked nymph with a stupid expression. I remembered that we had tried to stand it up on its base again, but it had been too heavy, and in the end we had left it where it had fallen. It was still in the same place, a good deal dirtier than it had been, and covered with bird droppings.
The summer house was still in the corner of the garden. It was a round, wooden affair, the kind that is supposed to turn round to catch the sun. No one could ever have done that, because it was set up at the right angle of the high wall. The wooden door had rotted off its hinges, and the ivy had grown up round it, so it looked as if the door was still in position.
We had played in the summer house all that summer, after Venetia had come out of hospital. It had been Venetia’s house, and mine, but the others had played there too, and, magnanimously, we had let Caroline keep her collection of little stone animals in one corner, because her mother would not let her have them in the house. There must have been hundreds of them in the garden, rabbits and gnomes and birds, because she was always finding fresh ones. She would scrabble at the piles of rubble with unbelievable patience; she was a pertinacious child.
No one had ever questioned our right to play in the garden; the owner of the house had been an old, old woman who had been killed when the bomb fell. At first we had been told that we mustn’t play there because the house was dangerous, but we never took any notice of that, and after a while no one else bothered about it either.
I sat on a pile of stone, and looked at the summer house. The sun was quite warm, and I lit a cigarette and thought about Venetia, limping across the rubbish in the corded slacks she wore to hide the wooden leg, and how she could climb over the stones with the rest of us, so that you would never have guessed about the leg. I remembered the time that she had slipped and fallen when we had climbed up to the room on the first storey, and Caroline had cried out because she lay so still. I remembered scrambling down to her with my heart sick inside me, Caroline behind me, bawling at the top of her voice. Venetia had got to her feet and slapped Caroline very hard across the face, and then she went into the summer house. When I followed her, she was lying on the flagged floor with her face hidden in her arms. She wasn’t crying, and when she looked up, there was hatred in her face. Then, when she saw it was me, it all melted away, and when I kissed her she looked, suddenly, unbelievably lovely. I remembered that day because it was the beginning of the time when I knew that I loved her.
Then I remembered the night that Caroline died. I felt suddenly cold, and I got up from the stones and went over to the summer house. The door was jammed fast with the ivy, but when I jerked it hard, the ivy broke away, and the door swung uselessly open. Inside, it was empty. There was nothing there except dirt and dead leaves and a smell of decay. I walked across the tiny floor, and stood in the middle on the flag stone that rocked when you stood on it, and everything came back with a rush. I felt as I had felt that night, horror and fear and pride all mixed up together so that I could never again feel any one of those emotions alone. I remembered the cool wind of the summer night, and Venetia’s face, and her hot hands, and her soft hair against my face. And the high, clear moon, shining through the half-open door of the summer house and the desperate trembling of my body, which was something I had not felt before. And the wild excitement of my love for her.
Everything outside had been dead and still under the moon, and the sharp scuffle of stones had seemed unbelievably loud. Venetia went stiff in my arms, and very still, with her head turned away from me towards the door and her fingers biting into the fleshy part of my arm. The sweat went cold on my skin, and I felt sick with shame and fear.
Then I heard the child’s voice, calling with a frightened break in it. She was calling Venetia, softly, as though she was afraid someone might hear. I think I said, “Don’t move, she’ll go away,” but Venetia was already nearly at the door. I watched her go, blocking out the moonlight for a moment, and I stayed, crouching on the canvas cushions. I felt ashamed and dirty. Because there was no one to see me, I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes like the blind and deaf monkey, and after a moment I felt less afraid, and I stood up and went to the door.
When I looked out I couldn’t see anyone. The piles of stone were light grey in the moonlight, and the derelict house looked unreal and somehow terrible.
Someone screamed in a high, cut-off way. I thought it came from the back of the house, and I started to run. Round the back, there was a high pile of masonry that we used as a kind of stairway to the first floor of the house. Caroline was lying on her face at the base of the pile, her arms crumpled beneath her, and her little thin legs sticking out from the white nightdress.
Venetia turned to face me. The moon lit up the bones of her face, making her hair look silver, leaving the dark shadows of her eyes and mouth without expression. I don’t remember what her voice sounded like, but I know she said, “Paul, I think she’s dead.”
I don’t know whether I said anything. I know that I knelt down and felt the back of her head and that my hand came away sticky and dark. There was blood on the stones around her.
Venetia said, “She fell. She climbed up, and she fell.” She spoke loudly and impersonally. I turned the child over on the rubble, and laid her on her back. Her eyes were open, and her face was dirty, but there was no blood on it. She was limp and warm, but she wasn’t breathing. Touching her made me feel as if I were going to be sick, so I left her lying on her back, and stood up. I looked at Venetia. She was shaking all over. She said, “She climbed up to the top. I think she was sleep-walking. Then she fell.”
She put out her hand, and I took it. I saw there were tiny spatters of blood on the front of her thin blouse. Venetia must have known what I was thinking, because she gave me a look of desperate appeal.
She said, “She must have had a nightmare, Paul. She was always having nightmares.”
She put her hands on my chest and looked into my face. She looked incomparably lovely, like every dream I’d ever had. And I knew that I belonged to her till death did us part.
They found Caroline in the morning, and then the questions started, and the lies. Everyone was very kind; I don’t think that anyone, except Walker, thought that anything was wrong.
I walked out of the summer house and found the sun had gone, and it was cold again. I turned up the collar of my coat and went to the gap in the fencing. As I walked, I saw someone move on the other side of the fence, and when I scrambled out on to the road, a man was walking slowly along the street, looking at the numbers. He had left three cigarette ends, one of them still smouldering, by the gap in the weather boarding.
I passed him, and saw that he was an undistinguished little fellow and that he looked very cold. I was cold myself, so I walked briskly back to the bus stop. I thought it would do us both good. It didn’t seem to help him, however, because later, when I had tea in a Lyons, I saw him at a table near to the door, and he still looked blue round the mouth. I decided that his job must have affected his circulation permanently.
Chapter Seventeen
The train clattered west through quiet country. There was a silly woman in my carriage, a middle-aged woman with too much make-up, and over-eager eyes. She bumbled on about the daffodils and the funny little cows, darting from window to window with shrieks of delight. The man with her took no notice; he sat in a corner seat and stared out of the window. From time to time she gave me an arch, come-hither look, and by the time we got to Birmingham, I would gladly have strangled her. But when she got out and took her silent husband with her, the carriage was so quiet and empty that I almost wished her back again.
It was the silence of being alon
e that was the worst thing. I missed the small sounds that other people made … striking matches and rustling papers … so much better than the quiet that left you alone with yourself.
After a bit, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and when the dining-car attendant came along the corridor, I left my seat and went to get some lunch. I wasn’t really hungry, it was too early, but even the half-empty dining-car was better than the carriage. The soup was cold and the fish tasted as if it had been boiled in brackish water, but I stayed as long as I could, and drank a great deal of coffee until the waiter asked me to leave so that they could lay the table for the second lunch.
I walked back through the train, wondering why all the other carriages seemed so full, and whether I should move into another compartment. But when I got back to my own, it wasn’t empty any longer. There was a man in the seat opposite my own, I had left my paper on the seat and he had picked it up and was reading it. As I sat down, he lowered the paper, and said, “Good afternoon. I hope you didn’t mind.” And he folded the paper neatly, and handed it back to me.
I suppose I must have taken it, though I wasn’t conscious of doing so. I was very angry. I said, “Look here, have you been following me?”
There was an expression of almost comical distress on his face. He said, “Of course not. Why should you think that?” And he took off his hat and placed it on his knees, staring straight at me with bright, unwinking eyes.
I tried to laugh, but I expect it sounded pretty feeble. I said, “You might have wanted to keep an eye on me. You’ve been doing so for the last month, haven’t you? God knows why!”
The corners of his mouth twitched a little, whether from nervousness or laughter, I didn’t know. “Whatever gave you that idea?” he said. There was a look of patient enquiry on his face.
I said, “You know quite well. There’s no need to pretend.” I thought of the streams of ordinary-looking men who had followed me into pubs and restaurants and waited outside my flat. They had looked very much like each other, and like everyone else in their raincoats and tired, trilby hats.
Walker said, “You really think that? I think you must be making a mistake.” His voice sounded troubled. He went on, “You’re sure you haven’t been imagining it?” He looked so genuinely puzzled, that my heart gave a sick little thump. I must have looked rather queer, because Walker leant forward in his seat with concern on his face.
He said, “Are you all right?”
I tried to pull myself together, not to look at him. I felt for my cigarette case and snapped it open. It was empty, and then I remembered that I hadn’t filled it recently because it never seemed to hold enough cigarettes, and I had started to carry my supply in packets. Walker offered me his own case, and then a light. I drew in the smoke, and felt much better.
I said, “Of course I’m all right.”
He said, “I’m sorry. I thought you didn’t look very well. It’s hot in these trains now. Not like during the war. It upsets some people. They never do things by halves, do they?”
He spoke soothingly, as though I were a tired child, and he my nurse. It struck me, suddenly, as being rather funny, and I started to laugh. It was surprisingly difficult to stop and I wondered for a moment whether I was having hysterics and what Walker would do about it. But then I sobered down quite quickly, and he was sitting in his corner looking at me in a worried way. I began to feel well disposed towards him; he looked such an ordinary little man.
I said, “You know, you’re quite right. I’m not feeling very well. I haven’t been sleeping, lately.”
He said, earnestly, “Have you seen a doctor? You should, you know.”
I said, “No, I haven’t. They never give you anything worth while.” And then, partly because I couldn’t resist a dig at him, and partly because I felt so absurdly light-headed, “Perhaps if you called off your bloodhounds I might find it a bit easier to get to sleep.”
He blinked at me in an owlishly solemn way, and then he stood up as if he were restless, and stood, looking out of the window with his back towards me. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he spoke, slowly and uneasily.
“I think you really have been making a mistake. There’s been no one following you. No one at all. Have you talked about this to anyone?”
I said, “Of course I haven’t. You don’t usually tell people that you think you’re being shadowed by the police.”
He didn’t say anything, and when he turned round and sat down, he didn’t look at me. He seemed absorbed in something else, and then, as though I were a perfect stranger, he said, “Do you know what time we’re due in?”
I told him, and then we stopped at a halt, and a young woman got in with two children. They stayed with us, putting toffee all over the seats and drawing on the windows, until we got into Shrewsbury.
The train stopped with a jolt and we were all thrown against each other as we scrambled for our suitcases and mackintoshes. The young woman with the children seemed to have an extraordinary number of parcels, mostly bulging and badly tied together. Walker and I helped her out on to the platform. She didn’t thank us, she just eyed us in a tired and flustered way, and trailed off into the crowd. I heaved my suitcase down from the rack, and wondered whether Walker was going to stick to me. But when I finally got on to the platform, he was gone.
I gave up my ticket at the barrier, and looked about for Brigid. She had said she would meet the train, but the station was full, and the sunlight, dancing through the dust motes, was so unexpectedly strong after the dimness of the train, that she was at my elbow before I noticed her.
She said, “Hallo, Paul,” and smiled shyly. She looked brown and well and countrified in her tweeds and heavy shoes, and I thought she had put on weight. I kissed her, and her cheek felt rough as though she had been out in the wind a good deal. She said, “I haven’t got the car, Paul. I booked a room for you in a pub. It isn’t far from the station, and it didn’t seem worth bringing the car. I booked the room because I thought it would be better than coming in every day.”
“Are you staying here, too?” I asked, and she shook her head. “Not to-night. There’s a lot to arrange at the house. I shall come here tomorrow, and stay in town for the trial.” She spoke naturally and calmly as if she were planning for a social event. She took my small dispatch case from me, and I saw that her hands were capable and hard, as though she had been working on the farm. She walked with long strides, in a country way. She looked confident and poised, not worried and unhappy as I had expected to find her.
We went up the hill in the bright sun, and I said, “How is Henry?” She answered almost casually, as if I had asked a routine question, and he was not in prison awaiting his trial, “He’s all right … not ill or anything. I haven’t seen as much of him as I would have liked because there’s been so much to see to … on the farm, you know. When I’ve seen him we’ve mostly talked about that. He’s quite cheerful. People have been so kind, and I think he feels that everything is going to be all right.”
“The waiting must be the worst part,” I said. I could only see the curve of her cheek and one tweedy shoulder, and it seemed, suddenly, that she was a stranger to me. I had no idea what was going on in her mind. I don’t quite know what I had expected, but it had not been this. Not this unemotional tranquillity. It was as if the month I had spent in London had cut me off from Henry and Brigid and what they were thinking and feeling as completely as if we had been placed in different worlds.
When we had reached the hotel and been shown to my room, Brigid said, “Paul, you don’t look well. You should really take more care of yourself.”
The sun was slanting through the window on to the faded wallpaper and the honey gold of old walnut. We were high up above the rooftops of the town and the sky seemed very near and blue.
I looked at her clear, healthy face. I said, “I’ve been worrying about this business. Haven’t you?”
She blushed, as though I had shown her a defect in herself. She sat
down on the bed and looked at me with hurt eyes.
“Do I sound as if I hadn’t been worried?” she said. “I suppose it’s been different … easier … being on the spot the whole time. It was dreadful at first, of course, but then everyone was so reassuring and said there was nothing to worry about. It was partly that. And also that you can’t go on being tragic the whole time. It shrivels up inside you. You can even get to accept things like Henry being in prison. Now it seems almost as if the trial isn’t anything very awful … more as if it is the time when they will let him come home.”
“You think he will get off?” I said.
Her face coloured turkey red and she sat bolt upright on the bed. A little muscle started to twitch at the corner of her eye. She said angrily, “Paul, why must you say things like that? Of course they will find him not guilty. They haven’t a shred of evidence that will count for anything. And if they had … though of course they couldn’t, he will still get off, because he didn’t do it. You believe that, don’t you, Paul?”
I thought she was going to cry. I said hurriedly, “I’m sorry, Brigid. It was a stupid thing to say. Only this month I haven’t had the advantage of optimistic friends.”
She gulped furiously, and her face softened. She came over to where I was standing at the window. She said, “It must have been dreadful for you, being so far away. Writing letters isn’t the same thing. I know that.” She looked shyly into my face. “You know, I didn’t know you cared so much about Henry. I am so very glad I was wrong.” Her mouth was half open, and she looked sentimental and silly. I opened my mouth to tell her that she was taking an awful lot for granted, but I knew that I hadn’t the energy to want to hurt her. So I grinned and squeezed her shoulder, and muttered something fatuous about needing to dislike someone very much before you wanted to see him hanged, and we went out to tea in an atmosphere of great goodwill.
