The Listening Silence

by Marie Joseph

  Josie squinted through the smoke at her daughter’s face, glowing with love for this unknown Yank who one day would take her away. The blue eyes narrowed. Away from this godforsaken hole where it rained every other day, where even when the war ended life would go on in a dreary monotonous round of work and sleep.

  ‘What do you want me to do? Put a flamin’ flag out?’ she said, hating for a moment the sight of that naked face with the eyes shining with happiness and the mouth pleading for understanding.

  ‘A woman at work knows somebody who might know where there’s a goose going,’ she said at last. Then she turned her head away from the blazing gratitude on Sally’s face.

  ‘I love you, Mum.’ Sally came round the table and kissed Josie’s powdered cheek. ‘I knew you’d manage to come up with something.’

  ‘As the chorus girl said to the bishop,’ Josie said, her eyes hard and unsmiling again.

  *

  They were waiting for him when he came striding up the road from the tram terminal, walking with that rolling movement of the hips, his RAF cap pushed to the back of his corn-yellow hair.

  ‘That’s the doorbell, love.’ Stanley nodded at Sally, put his newspaper aside and stood up, fiddling with the knot of his tie. Josie stared into the fire, trying not to see the way Sally rushed from the room. Christmas was hell for those who had lost somebody, she had already decided, preferring to think of Bill as dead, lying beneath a wooden cross in some foreign field.

  ‘It’s real nice of you to have me visit, sir.’ The American shook hands with Stanley, and immediately Josie saw why Sally was the way she was about him.

  The Yank was the best-looking young man she had seen in a whole month of Sundays. Handsome in a totally masculine way, with his bright gold hair and his flashing white teeth. And his eyes, when he turned and shook her hand, were as blue as a postcard sky, and he was so clean … the cleanliness of him made you blink. Surely his uniform had been tailored in Savile Row! It fitted him like a kid glove, not a wrinkle anywhere. She smiled at him and went on smiling, even when he let go of her hand and sat down next to Sally on the settee. If he was an example of what was coming over, then life might be worth living after all. For a brief moment a glimpse of the old light-hearted Josie was visible in the small powdered face, then the mask came down again as the hardness crept back into her expression.

  ‘You’re stationed near Oxford now?’ Stanley leaned forward, questions at the ready, trying with his usual good manners to set the Yank at his ease. Josie curled her lip. Any minute now and he’d be going on about Anglo-American relations and Lend Lease. Josie got up and excused herself, murmuring something about the dinner, willing Stanley to follow her through into the kitchen and knowing full well he wouldn’t. She crossed the hall, her behind swaying in the too-tight skirt, conscious of the fact that the Yank had stood up as she left the room.

  ‘He knows his manners, anyroad,’ she told herself, and reached into the cupboard for a hoarded tin of plums and another of cream.

  ‘I only got there the other day,’ Lee was telling Stanley, sitting down again when Josie had closed the door behind her. ‘But I’ve done a bit of exploring already, sir.’ He put an arm round Sally’s shoulders and drew her to him. ‘You can’t tell there’s a war on if you don’t spot the odd air-raid shelter. The colleges and the churches look as though they’ve been there for ever and intend to go on being there. Your Oxford has a serenity unlike any of our university towns in the States.’ He grinned. ‘But I guess the results are equally as good. You just take education at a slower pace. Anyway, I was most impressed.’

  ‘So some of our towns and institutions haven’t impressed you, then?’ Stanley fingered his moustache, his thwarted love of argument for argument’s sake getting the better of his judgement. ‘I’d be interested to hear your impressions of us, Lee.’ He winked at Sally, unaware that she was holding her breath and shaking her head at one and the same time. ‘Come on, lad. Let’s hear what you really think about us.’

  Sally fled to the kitchen, and stood picking nervously at a succulent piece of roasted goose, only to have her hand smartly slapped. Mild hysteria shone from Josie’s blue eyes.

  Sally came to stand close. ‘Dad’s in his element. He’s doing his best to get Lee to criticize England, and Lee is falling for it. But what Dad doesn’t and won’t understand is that Lee would laugh off similar comments about his own country. Mum? Are they arguing? Can you hear anything? You’ll have to go through and do something. I’ll die if Dad starts a row.’

  ‘Chop them carrots,’ Josie said, forking roasted potatoes onto a dish, while keeping an eye on the gravy thickening nicely on the top of the stove. ‘Then go through and tell them to sit down at the table. We don’t want it getting cold.’

  ‘I expect you have food parcels sent over?’ Stanley, carving the goose, looked over the top of his spectacles at Lee. ‘I remember in the last war your lot never seemed to be short of anything.’

  Sally’s eyes slewed quickly to Lee’s face, then relaxed as he winked at her.

  ‘No, sir. Not me. There are a lot of Canadians on my squadron and they get butter and candy and cakes sent over pretty regularly, but I told my folks not to fret. Candies and stuff like that don’t bother me none.’

  ‘Don’t hold back, love.’ Josie passed him the dish of browned potatoes. ‘We don’t mind starving for a week after you’ve gone back.’

  Just for a second, bewilderment passed like a shadow over Lee’s face, then he grinned. ‘I’m just about getting used to the English sense of humour, I guess, but it had me worried at first.’

  ‘Lancashire humour is very down to earth,’ Stanley stated, raising his eyebrows fractionally as Lee refused the gravy and began to cut up his meat with quick movements before transferring his fork to his right hand. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing. This country might seem a bit disorganized compared to yours, but we’re proud of our defects, own up to them and then go on and win. We don’t shout the odds first.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Lee nodded seriously. ‘I grant you that, but don’t you agree that what seems to be lack of initiative in some of the lower ranks could be because they’ve been made to feel second class for too long? Both at home and in the Forces. They sure spend a lot of energy in grumbling.’

  ‘The English have always grumbled!’

  Sally held her breath as her watchful eyes told her that Stanley’s voice was raised. Josie was giving him black looks across the table; the carefully prepared food on their plates was growing cold, and any minute now her parents would launch into one of their bickering insulting exchanges. She glanced quickly at Lee, but his face showed no embarrassment. To him it was merely an interesting discussion, and he was totally unaware of the undercurrents of bitterness crackling in the air like thunder.

  ‘Lee’s father is a farmer, and his grandfather was a Methodist minister.’ Sally’s soft flat voice held a tone of pleading, which turned to desperation as Josie threw a baleful glance in her husband’s direction.

  ‘Methodists? Oh well. You’ve come to the right shop, lad. Sally’s father here was brought up as a Methodist. Anything enjoyable was classed as Sin. No dancing, no drinking, not even a pack of cards in the house.’ She smiled at Lee to pretend to him that what she was saying was teasing. ‘A right funny religion I reckon Methodism to be when a game of rummy sets you on the road to ruin.’

  ‘My wife likes her little joke.’ Stanley winked at Lee who nodded politely, while Sally stared down at her plate, her eyes shadowed with despair.

  But it wasn’t a joke. Josie’s jokes were spiked with bitterness, edged with barbed insults, and Stanley knew it. Any minute now and they’d be at each other’s throats like a pair of fighting cocks, only stopping when one of them drew blood. Sally choked on a mouthful of food. It was Christmas, and Lee was here for such a short time. Soon he would be walking with his crew out to a big black bomber lined up with other big black bombers round the edge of an airfield. He would climb aboard
and the ugly monstrosity would trundle into position like a lumbering great bird before rising into the air on its way to Germany. Flak would come at them, blinding, maiming; Lee would push up his goggles from a face wet with his own blood. The odds against him surviving were so small as to be hardly worth considering. He was brave, so foolishly brave. She knew instinctively that Lee would never crack as David Turner had cracked. But up there in the dark night sky he would be as vulnerable as the most nervous.

  She glanced at her mother’s tight little face beneath the floss of white-gold hair. She looked across the table at her father, trying to hide his hurt behind a barrage of forced sarcasm, and for a moment she hated them both.

  ‘And you’ve never found yourself to be the odd man out?’ Stanley was making an effort. ‘I mean with you being the only American in your particular little lot?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Lee’s blue eyes twinkled. ‘At first there was a kind of veiled antagonism. At the beginning most of the men had come straight from home postings. They resented the power wielded over them by a certain Corporal Whiteley, but I was used to it. You can get used to being called a Yankydoodle after a while.’ He grinned. ‘The worst time was when I left a newspaper cutting from back home lying around. The heading was: “A gallant Texan flies with the RAF”. That took a bit of living down.’

  ‘I should imagine it did.’ Stanley pointed his knife at Lee. ‘We don’t talk that kind of language in England.’

  ‘You sure don’t,’ Lee said, completely unrattled. ‘It took me a while to figure out that “bloody wizard” or “good show” meant very good etcetera. And I had a few problems with “shooting a line” and “putting up a black”, but we understand each other pretty well now.’

  Sally, trying hard to follow the unsatisfactory conversation, her eyes darting from one impassive face to another, caught Josie’s triumphant nod.

  ‘That’s telling you!’ it told her husband.

  Immediately Stanley stood up, pushing back his chair, throwing his paper napkin down on the table. Then to Sally’s horror he walked swiftly from the room. She felt misery tighten like a hard knot inside her. Surely, surely, Stanley wasn’t making one of his dignified exits like he always did when his wife’s taunts and black looks got too much for him to take? She put out a hand and felt it immediately gripped in Lee’s firm grasp.

  ‘It’s only the doorbell, honey,’ he said, and she closed her eyes in relief.

  ‘It’s a funny time for anybody to call, at dinner time,’ Josie said. ‘It’s not the milk because we got extra for the holiday, and I paid him then.’ She widened her eyes at Lee. ‘Is it right that you don’t have your milk delivered in the States? That you have to drive to a shop for it?’

  Lee nodded. ‘That’s right, ma’am. But being on a farm, that don’t signify. We get our milk as easy as turning on a faucet.’

  ‘Faucet?’ Josie was flirting now. ‘He’s a long time.’ She glanced at her husband’s plate. ‘Well, at least he’d finished. I’ll fetch the pudding in. Just pass me your plates, it won’t take a minute.’

  She was standing with the plates in her hand when Stanley came back into the room. He stopped on the threshold, his whole body curved into a line of misery. Sally’s heart skipped a beat as she saw the telegram held loosely in his hand. She sat upright in her chair, her eyes wide in a face suddenly drained of all its fresh colour.

  ‘Dad?’ Her voice cracked. ‘What is it? What’s wrong? Are you all right?’ But she knew. She knew what was in the telegram before Stanley spoke. Her mind screamed in terror. ‘Oh, no! Please God, no! Let it not be that …’

  Stanley limped over to the table, putting his hand on Josie’s shoulder, pulling her up to hold her still. Sally’s eyes searched his mouth, her heart thumping now with a racing fear.

  ‘It’s John. He’s been killed. In Libya. On a commando raid. He’s been killed in action.’

  ‘But he wasn’t a commando!’ Josie’s voice rose in a scream. ‘He was in bomb disposal! Not the commandos. It’s a mistake! He wouldn’t go in the commandos, not without telling us.’ Her eyes hardened as she pushed herself away from Stanley’s arms. ‘It’s that girl! That Christine Duckworth! He must have joined when she wrote to tell him she was getting married. It’s her fault! The bloody snobbish bitch! My son wasn’t good enough for her, and now she’s killed him!’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘An’ she won’t even care! She won’t give a damn! Not her!’

  ‘Oh, love …’ Stanley stretched out his arms again, but Josie knocked his hands away with a fierce swiping motion. ‘Don’t you tell me I’m wrong! He loved that girl from the moment he first set eyes on her.’ She began to back away from the table towards the door. ‘The last time I spoke to John on the phone he told me he was going to marry her. An’ she threw him over because he hadn’t got no pips on his shoulder. She broke his heart.’ Her eyes flashed scorn. ‘When she wrote to him he decided to get himself killed! I know! I know!’

  When she rushed from the room Stanley turned pain-dazed eyes onto Sally. ‘Let her go, love.’ His voice was flat but firm. ‘She’s wrong, but it might help her. She has to blame someone. That’s the only way she can bear it.’

  Sally trembled as the horror of it rose inside her. Her mother was speaking what could so easily be the truth. She felt Lee’s arms come round her. John might have been killed even if he had never set eyes on Christine Duckworth, but Josie would never believe that.

  ‘Oh, Lee … Oh, Dad …’ She twisted round and getting up from her chair, tears blinding her, groped her way into her father’s arms. He stared at her blankly, wrapped in his own pain.

  ‘He was my son too.’ His eyes slewed ceilingwards. ‘But she won’t see that. At a time like this she still has no time for me.’

  ‘Dad!’ Sally stared at her father, seeing, even through her anguish and her tears, the weakness and selfish demeanour of the broken man standing in front of her. Her fingers tightened on his arms. ‘Don’t you think you ought to go upstairs?’ She turned to Lee. ‘Don’t you think he ought to go up and see to her?’

  ‘Sally’s right, sir.’ Lee spoke with a firm decisiveness. ‘I guess she needs you right now.’ He looked round at the remains of the Christmas meal on the table. ‘I figure I ought not to be here, sir. Not right now.’ He picked up the dish with the carcass of the goose congealing in a layer of fat. ‘I’ll take Sally into the kitchen and we’ll tidy up some. Then if there’s anything you want me to do – any messages – just say so.’ He put out a hand to Sally. ‘Come on, honey. You come with me. Okay?’

  In the kitchen, folded close in Lee’s arms, the tears flowed down Sally’s cheeks. She could taste their saltiness as they ran past her open mouth.

  ‘He was so full of life and fun,’ she sobbed. ‘Always laughing.’ She raised an anguished face. ‘He used to put a record on the gramophone and dance with my mother, twirling her round till she went dizzy. He was so clever with his hands.’ She nodded towards a row of cupboards high on the kitchen wall. ‘He put those up because he knew my father can’t even knock a nail in straight. Everybody liked him, Lee. Everybody.’

  ‘Sh … sh …’ Lee smoothed the curly fringe back from Sally’s forehead, one half of his mind on what Sally was saying and the other half trying to concentrate on what was happening upstairs.

  ‘Let me in!’ Stanley’s voice rose higher as he pounded on a door. ‘Josie? Open the door! Unlock the door! Josie? Do you hear me? The panic in his voice spiralled downstairs.

  ‘This will kill my mother,’ Sally whispered. ‘John was the apple of her eye. She adored him. Oh, God, this awful war! She’ll never lift her head up after this.’

  When Stanley came into the kitchen he seemed to have aged twenty years. Limping over to the table he sat down, burying his face in his hands.

  ‘She’s locked herself in the bathroom,’ he whimpered into spread fingers. ‘Won’t even answer me.’ He lifted his head and looked straight at Lee. ‘It’s no use, lad. I know my wife, and she won�
�t come out of there till it suits her. She’s crawled into a hole, gone into a corner away from us. We’ll just have to let her be.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Sally came round the table and forcibly pulled her father’s fingers away from his face. ‘Dad? I can’t hear you! What’s wrong with Mum? Tell me!’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her that we can put right.’ Stanley lifted a ravaged face. ‘She doesn’t want you, and she doesn’t want me. The only one she wants at this moment is John, and nobody can fetch him back.’ Tears filled Stanley’s dark eyes. ‘We just have to let her be.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  Lee marvelled at the patience in Sally’s voice. Young she might be, his little English sweetheart, but in this moment of crisis her strength was twice that of the defeated man slumped at the table.

  ‘What is she doing, Dad?’ Sally gripped Stanley’s bowed shoulder. ‘In her room?’

  Wearily Stanley shook his head. ‘No, not in her room. She’s shut herself in the bathroom and shot the bolt on the door. She won’t speak to me. She doesn’t want me, lass. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Lee?’ Whirling round, Sally held out a hand. ‘Come upstairs with me! We’ve got to get in to her! If we have to break the door down we have to get in!’

  She ran out into the hall, pulling herself by the bannister rail, her feet scarcely touching the stairs. Grasping the handle of the bathroom door she rattled it gently at first, then with increasing panic.

  ‘Mum?’ Her eyes were wide in the terrified pallor of her round face.

  ‘Mum? It’s me, Sally. Open the door. Please!’

  She turned to Lee. ‘Is she answering?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Is she moving about? Can you hear anything? Anything at all?’

  Putting his head close to the solid door, a door built in the twenties and made to last, Lee held his breath for a second. ‘I’m not sure, but I think I can hear water running.’ He stepped back. ‘Move away, honey. This won’t take a minute.’