The Listening Silence

by Marie Joseph

  Pushing himself up on his elbows, Bill reached out and took a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table, lit it and blew a cloud of smoke straight up to the rather dirty ceiling of the little guesthouse.

  Okay, okay, so he’d wangled a weekend together for them. Okay, so his wife need never find out. Okay, so Josie’s old man thought she was spending her time with Olive Marsden from the shop. It was merely what his mates would have called a dirty weekend. In his book too. Bill dragged deeply on the cigarette, drawing the smoke into his lungs, then coughed.

  Immediately, as he had feared she would, Josie woke up and within seconds her arms were round his waist, holding him tightly. Her voice, soft with sleep, had a dreamlike, childish quality in it.

  ‘Bill … Oh, Bill, did you ever dream it could be like that?’ she purred, snuggling against him like a kitten. ‘I ought to feel guilty, but I don’t. I feel happier than I’ve ever felt in my life. Bill? Loving somebody like I love you can’t be wicked, can it?’

  She tried to pull him down beside her in the bed, but he held her off, deliberately puffing hard at the dwindling cigarette. ‘Men wouldn’t even think of it as being wicked,’ he told her, holding her wandering hand in a firm grasp. ‘But then, men are different, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘I know they’re different.’ Josie’s hand freed itself, making him cry out before he leaned across to stub out the cigarette.

  ‘Only one more day,’ she whispered, when it was over. ‘I can’t go back, Bill. You’ve no idea what it’s like.’

  With trembling hands he reached out for another cigarette. ‘A fine PT instructor I’ll make next week. I doubt if I could blow a fly off a rice pudding at the moment! What’ve you been doing, lass? Saving all that up till you met me?’

  Too late he realized his mistake.

  ‘Yes.’ Josie sat up and asked for a cigarette. ‘I should never have married him, Bill.’ As he flicked his lighter he saw how her eyes were ringed with smudged mascara and the sight somehow sickened him. All the times they’d spent dancing together, even from his new posting to Lancaster Barracks, he had thought how marvellous it would be to take this crazy bottle-blonde away for a passionate weekend. Their own Room 504. Just a bit of the old that there, a lot of fun and no harm done. Now she was playing it all wrong. He narrowed his eyes against the up-curl of smoke.

  ‘Look, lassie.’ He balanced a round glass ash-tray on the sheet between them. ‘I’m a married man with two kids. You’ve always known that. I may not be God’s gift as a husband, but I’m not exactly a Casanova either. I don’t make a habit of this. It’s the war. It splits families up and makes us do things we wouldn’t dream of doing normally. When it’s all over we’ll just go back to the way we were before. I’d almost finished my stint in the army anyway, and once we’ve got old Hitler licked I’ll be mowing the lawn of a Sunday and taking the kids fishing. This is just a dream, a ruddy marvellous dream, but a dream just the same.’

  ‘Not for me it isn’t!’ Josie’s voice was choked with sobs. ‘We love each other, Bill. You said I was like your other half, but that’s not true. I’m more than that. I am you, and without you I have nothing.’ She began to cry, ugly tearing sobs that wrenched her face out of shape. ‘If the war ending means I’m going to lose you then I hope it goes on for ever! I’ll get away to see you again – nothing can stop me! The only time I’m really alive is when I’m with you. You’re my sort. You don’t mind hurting people if hurting them gets you what you want. You haven’t told me much about your wife, but I know her. Oh, yes, I know her, Bill, because I’ve got a partner like her at home. Too bloody good to live. An’ I won’t spend the rest of my life pretending that everything’s okay. I can’t!’

  To his dismay her voice rose hysterically. ‘Do you know what I call him? “Once a fortnight”, that’s my private name for my husband. And when the day comes round he asks me! We can be sitting round the fire and he’ll look at me and say: “All right tonight, love?” Then when it happens it’s over, quick as a flash, an’ he thinks he’s …’

  ‘Stop it!’ Almost without volition Bill shot out a tattooed right arm, snatched the cigarette from her and ground it out along with his own in the glass ash-tray. ‘You know what you’re doing, you stupid woman? You’re making me feel sorry for him, not sorry for you! That sort of talk makes me sick to my stomach. So put a bloody sock in it, will you?’

  Then, because he couldn’t bear the sound of her sobbing, he put his arms round her, staring blindly over her shoulder, feeling disturbed, disgruntled and illogically betrayed.

  The next afternoon Sally and Lee rode their bicycles out into the country, and just as she had promised when they came to the woods by the sides of the river they could smell the heady crushed scent of the first bluebells. A rather reluctant sun was warm on their faces, and when they propped the bicycles against a hedge and sat side by side on a fallen log Lee decided that this part of England was the part he would always want to remember. In his mind he was already composing his next letter back home describing the fields like parklands where sheep grazed, the stone cottages set behind neat gardens, and the winding lanes where hedgerows grew greenly on either side.

  The long vigil he had kept in Sally’s room the night before had left him with a strange floating tiredness, so that when they sat down on a low stile and he lifted his eyes to where the trees made a jig-saw pattern against the blue sky he experienced a sensation of dizziness. Amazingly, because he hadn’t known her long enough to realize the extent of her deafness, the noise of the bombers had failed to penetrate the layers of her deep sleeping. So he had let her sleep. He had sat bolt upright in the chair by her bed, watching her face on the pillow, hearing the guns with their staccato bark, and the crunch of bombs not quite far enough away to be reassuring.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said, and he turned and smiled at her. ‘I suppose it was sleeping in a strange bed,’ she said wisely. ‘It’s always the same the first time. Mum’s always saying she’ll get a new mattress for John’s bed, but he won’t let her. He says it fits his body after all these years.’ Her eyes clouded. ‘I wonder how long it will be before we hear from him? Dad says Crete will be the next to go. He’s sure John is out there somewhere.’

  ‘This war …’ Lee took her hand in his and ran his thumb slowly over and round the pulse at her wrist. In her green jumper and thin skirt her figure was as rounded and firm as an apple. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her tight against him, keep her safe, and promise to cherish her for ever. Instead he said: ‘I shouldn’t be away all that long. Will you write to me and be here when I come back? Will you be my girl, Sally, honey?’

  ‘You can kiss me,’ she said. ‘Like you did last night, then I might consider it. It was lovely … And so was that,’ she added, when the long, tender kiss was over.

  Her beautiful eyes were sparkling with happiness, not slumberous with desire. When they mounted their bicycles again she began to freewheel down the hill, her skirt riding up, showing for a tantalizing moment a strip of flesh between the top of her stocking and the lace frill of her knickers. ‘Try and catch me!’ Her voice floated back as the road dipped then wound its way upwards again. ‘Yes, I will!’ she called. ‘I’ll be your girl if you want me.’

  If he wanted her! Holy Joe! She was teasing him, and the goddamned thing was she didn’t know it. She was as naïve as a child, as soft and sweet-smelling as the bluebells. This was England, fighting for its life, and somehow he had found himself an English girl as untouched and innocent as a new-born babe. Where the hell had she been all her life? Lee pedalled after her, letting her win, his heart swelling with an emotion he wasn’t ready to place. Not yet.

  ‘Have you never been away from home?’ They sat outside a tiny eighteenth-century inn, their drinks on a rough-hewn oak table in front of them. ‘Never been to college?’

  Sally wrinkled her nose at him above the glass tankard. ‘No. You know something? I’ve never even had a holiday away from my parents.’
She looked away from him. ‘They worry about me being … about not hearing. A doctor wanted me to go to a special school once, but they wouldn’t let me go. The only extra thing I had was lip-reading lessons, then my father fought to have me accepted at the local grammar school.’ Her chin lifted. ‘I passed my scholarship when I was ten, Lee Willis, that’s a year early, and I was half-way through the oral examination at the Education Office before the three examiners realized.’ Suddenly her eyes flashed. ‘I’m deaf, not daft!’

  ‘Oh, Sally …’ He put an arm round her, drawing her close. ‘Why do I have to go away, right now?’

  His throat tightened with an almost unbearable sadness. At twenty-three, and surely worldly-wise, Lee was experiencing the acute pain of his first real love, painfully serious and tenderly solemn. ‘If anyone ever tries to hurt you, I’ll kill them,’ he whispered. When she raised her head and asked him to repeat what he’d just said, he shook his head and said it didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t until they were on their way home that Sally remembered the bluebells.

  ‘We forgot to pick them,’ she said. ‘I wanted us to ride back with huge bunches tied to our handlebars, with the long stalks all pale and juicy and the flowers as blue …’ she hesitated ‘… as blue as your eyes. Is that a soppy thing to say to a man?’

  ‘Not the way you say it.’

  ‘It’s been a lovely day, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Wizard.’

  She laughed out loud. ‘You sound like an Englishman when you say that. David talks like that sometimes. Wizard. Good show. Bloody good show.’

  ‘David? The guy from down the street?’ Lee felt a dark fear run over him. ‘Will you be seeing him while I’m away?’

  ‘I don’t expect so.’ Sally shrugged her shoulders. ‘When will you be back? Can you say?’

  ‘About four months, I guess.’

  ‘When the leaves turn brown.’

  ‘When the leaves turn brown, in the fall, honey lamb.’

  He allowed her to walk with him down to the tram stop when the time came to go, but shook his head firmly when she wanted to go all the way to the station. He had the strangest feeling as he kissed her goodbye and swung himself onto the boarding platform. It was a feeling compounded of the surety of joy. He knew that he would return to find her waiting for him. He would have his wings, and a commission, God willing. He would come back to this little blacked-out island and she would be there. It was as simple and inevitable as that.

  Sometimes the trams came with long waiting distances in between, with queue-conditioned Britishers standing patiently in line, but that Sunday evening, for no particular reason, two trams trundled almost empty to the terminus together.

  Sally, walking slowly in a dreamlike trance, turned round at the brow of the hill, a hundred yards from home, to see Josie coming up behind her. Her mother was carrying a suitcase, letting it bang listlessly against her legs as if it was weighed down with books and not merely a change of clothing and a black chiffon nightdress.

  Smiling, Sally took the case from her, laughing and swinging it free. ‘You look tired, Mum. Did you have a lovely time? Oh, weren’t you lucky with the weather? Tell me first what you did and then I’ve got something to tell you!’

  ‘Your father’s back.’ Josie nodded at the front door, opened into the vestibule, with its inner door still devoid of its ruby red panes of glass. ‘I thought he said it would be midnight before he got back. They must have knocked off half-way through the flamin’ battle.’

  She was so pale, so obviously depressed, that Sally’s happiness evaporated into thin air. Suddenly an inexplicable sense of dread filled her, the lovely golden day fading as a small grey cloud covered the dying rays of the sun. Following her mother through the hall and into the living-room beyond she could feel her heart racing with an uneasy premonition of trouble to come.

  ‘So you’re back!’ Stanley, his normally pale face burned brick red by the sun, stood by the fireplace, his heavy pack and his forage cap on the settee behind him, his rifle propped up against its side. ‘Did you have a good time at Morecambe?’ he asked, with a twisted smile. ‘Did Olive enjoy it as well?’

  ‘It was lovely.’ Josie took off her hat and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘A nice change. Just what the doctor ordered.’

  ‘And Olive’s gone home now?’ Stanley’s voice was ominously quiet, but Sally read him as easily as if he had shouted the question at the top of his voice.

  ‘Yes. Olive’s gone home. I left her down at the station.’ Josie picked up her case and plonked her hat back on her head, tilting it over her eyes and winking at Sally. ‘The last I saw of her was her backside as she barged onto a tram.’

  Sally’s eyes swivelled sharply to her father’s face, hoping to see the smile his wife’s clowning always induced. But there was no smile, not even the faintest gleam of amusement in his eyes.

  ‘Stop where you are!’ He put up an arm. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘Yes sir!’ Josie sketched a cheeky salute.

  ‘Go up to your room, Sally.’ Stanley spoke through set lips, and suddenly the sense of fear was there again, a tight sensation in Sally’s throat.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not a child. I’d rather stay.’

  Stanley nodded. ‘Right. Then stay. Stay and listen. Listen well.’ He tilted his small head so that she saw the working of his prominent Adam’s apple. ‘There was a raid last night. A bad one, and down the town a stick of bombs fell on a row of shops. Two of them got a direct hit, and one of them, madam, was yours!’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Josie’s face crumpled, and beneath the tiny hat perched comically over her eyebrows her face paled, leaving the round spots of rouge on her cheeks standing out in startling contrast.

  ‘Your friend Olive was fire-watching.’ Stanley clenched his hands into fists, raised them, then lowered them slowly to his sides. ‘By a miracle she wasn’t killed, not quite. But when they dug her out they left one of her legs behind, so you seeing her running for a tram was a bloody miracle, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You cruel bugger! You cruel, heartless bugger!’ Josie rushed at him, only to have her wrists grasped. She stared in horror into Stanley’s face. ‘You trapped me! An awful thing like that happens and all you think about is catching me out!’ She tried to jerk free but he held her from him, his whole expression clouded with a terrible disgust.

  ‘It might have been me!’ Josie screamed at the top of her voice. ‘All right then, so I didn’t go away with Olive, but what you don’t know is that she stood in for me. It should have been me on fire-watching last night, but she did it for me! And I’ll tell you something for nothing. I wish it had been me! I wish that bomb had finished me off proper so I would be out of this flamin’ war, and I wish I’d stopped away because there’s nowt for me here. There never has been and from now on there never will be!’

  They were swaying together, one struggling to hold and the other to break away. Their mouths were opening wide as they shouted furiously at each other.

  When Stanley let go suddenly, thrusting her from him in disgust, Josie staggered for a moment, lost her balance and fell, striking her head hard against the jutting edge of the sideboard. Then as she got to her knees, blood seeping from a cut on her forehead, Sally saw her grope wildly for the rifle, close her hands round it and lift it, pointing the muzzle straight at Stanley.

  ‘Mum!’ With a strangled cry Sally threw herself in front of her father. ‘No! Please! Stop it! Both of you. Stop!’ She was shaking violently.

  Stepping forward, pinioning both her arms, Stanley swung her round to face him. She saw the bitter anguish in his eyes. ‘It’s not loaded, chuck.’ He shook her gently. ‘Now will you do as I asked before and go upstairs?’ His face was grey. ‘This is between me and your mother. Right?’

  As she stumbled past her mother, Sally saw a face with all the laughter wiped from it. A middle-aged face with blood running down a cheek, past a mouth with the purple lipstick smeared and ch
ewed.

  For how long Sally sat on the edge of her bed she had no clear recollection. There was no way she could creep out on the landing to listen, to reassure herself that the shouting and the violence was finished. Instead she sat there, small and defeated, cocooned in her own web of total silence, numb with pain, rocking herself backwards and forwards.

  When her door burst open and she saw Josie standing there, she got up slowly from the bed.

  ‘Mum?’ She took a step forward, but Josie backed away.

  ‘There’s been somebody sleeping in John’s bed. Somebody who left this behind.’ Holding out her hand she dropped a cigarette lighter onto the carpet. ‘Seems I’m not the only whore in this house, in spite of what your father says.’ Her whole body slumped. ‘We only need to find out that your father’s got Miss Shawfield at the office preggy and we would make a right trio, wouldn’t we?’

  Then, the crude joke over, she went out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  And Sally knew that the sweetness of her bluebell day had vanished as if it had never been.

  Four

  STANLEY BARNES PUT HIS head back, closed his eyes, and stretched out his legs over the fluffy rug in front of the glowing fire. For that first week in August it had rained almost every day, but here in the cosy flat at the top of an old Victorian house he felt a creeping sense of peace.

  The Russians were more than holding their own against the Germans. Their scorched earth policy was the admiration of every Britisher, and the ‘V for Victory’ sign was everywhere, a comforting indication to Stanley that his beloved country was a long way from defeat.

  ‘London is simply amazing. I can’t describe the feeling one gets when one sees St Paul’s great dome rising from the ruins. We went to see Disney’s Fantasia one evening and the music was glorious. When it comes up here you must see it, Stanley.’

  He opened his eyes and smiled at the woman curled up on the rug with her back against the chair opposite to his own. Barbara Shawfield, a Clerical Officer in his department at Telephone House, had a quiet serenity about her, plus an almost antiseptic cleanliness, accentuated by the white collars she often wore tacked into the necklines of her dresses. It was the first time Stanley had been to her flat, but lately, at the office, they had gravitated together whenever possible, sharing the same table in the canteen and walking together through the streets to the tram stop.