A TIME OF WAR

by MARY HOCKING

  Someone had produced a bottle of gin. Kerren downed a gin and orange just to be sociable and bundled into her greatcoat; the party would soon get out of hand with only Boxer to control things. Jake kissed her again as she made her way to the door; he was at the sentimental stage now, `You’re such a grand kid. Things will work out for you.’

  She was glad to get outside. She clasped the clammy handlebars of her bike and hoisted herself into the saddle; she had had the bike for nearly a year now and still she had not had the saddle lowered. She cycled slowly along the perimeter track. She had thought it would be a relief to be out in the open, but it wasn’t. Mist was beginning to shroud the landscape in a grey pall. The year was old, its energy spent; there was nothing left, nothing. She passed the rows of Nissen huts that housed offices and stores; a sailor looked moodily out of the stores’ window and a Wren in Wellington boots waded towards the P.C.B. which was marooned in a sea of mud. Farther on, by the main gate, two sailors were staggering along, half-carrying a third. She turned into the lane leading to B camp. There was no one in the fields and the farms at the end of the rutted, waterlogged lanes looked desolate as farms do on smoky winter days.

  By the time she reached B camp she longed for the warmth of human companionship. She left her bike outside the mess and went in. The Wren officers were waiting on the Wrens; they were wearing chef’s hats and bright smiles. Kerren saw Naomi, Cath and Marney sitting near the door. There was a spare seat at their table and she joined them.

  `Did you keep this for me? Thank you.’

  Her heart warmed to them; but it turned out that the seat was for Robin who was sick. They had all been to parties and smelt strongly of gin. Dixie was sitting opposite them, looking bored; she had not been invited to the squadron party and this had put her in a bad temper. Cath was telling a joke to Naomi. The joke was not funny, merely crude, and it needed a man to tell it; Cath had coarsened since her association with Derek Mason. The Wren officers began to serve soup.

  `I think this is going to be great fun,’ Cath said.

  `I hope they won’t spill anything,’ Dixie yawned. I can’t bear having food spilt over me.’

  `You’re much too blase.’ Drink made Cath very candid. `It makes people wary of you. That’s why you get left out of things.’

  Dixie gave her a long cool look. The soup was served without misadventure. Cath began to talk about the squadron party.

  `I get bored with service parties,’ Dixie said as the turkey was served. `But then I’ve been to so many.’

  `That’s where I’m lucky,’ Cath answered. `I can’t imagine what it’s like to be bored.’

  There was a pause while Dixie skilfully pared flesh from bone. When the operation was completed, she said:

  `That was a nice picture of Derek Mason’s wife in last week’s Tatler, wasn’t it?’

  Cath’s head was bent over her plate; when she raised it her face was the colour of straw. Dixie began to operate on another bone. Marney was sitting opposite Kerren; her mouth was open and a trickle of gravy ran down her chin. It was the one thing about the whole incident which Kerren found quite intolerable. When Cath had scraped back her chair and walked out of the mess, Marney chuckled:

  `Fancy a nice girl like Cath going out with a married man!’

  Kerren said sharply, `You’ve got gravy all down your chin.’

  `I hope she’s coming back to finish her dinner,’ Naomi said. `No man is worth missing Christmas dinner.’

  But she did not come back and her empty place spoilt the meal more effectively than her presence could have done. When they got back to the cabin Robin was sitting up on her bunk.

  `What on earth have you done with Cath?’ she demanded. `She had some kind of seizure!’

  `What happened?’ Naomi asked.

  `She just stood in the middle of the room with her hands clenched at her sides and shook from head to foot. I thought it was some kind of act at first, so I said, “What’s the matter? Swallowed the wish bone?” She didn’t answer. She just went on shaking. I didn’t know what to do. It was awful.’

  `Where is she now?’

  `I don’t know. She suddenly rushed out. I think she went into the woods, I didn’t hear her go down the track.’ She glared at them. `Am I going to be let into the secret?’

  `Derek Mason is married.

  `Oh, is that all?’ Robin flopped back against the pillow. After a moment she laughed, without much amusement. `So believing in him wasn’t enough, after all!’

  The bitterness in her voice grated on the others, they muttered among themselves and Naomi said that men were selfish swine out for what they could get. Kerren went across to Robin’s bunk.

  `Did you hear from Con?’ she asked.

  `I had a Christmas card.’

  `Did it say . . .?’

  `It didn’t say anything except that he hoped I would have a good Christmas.’

  Kerren looked down at Robin’s chest of drawers. There was a letter lying there, several pages of neat, precise script. Robin said:

  `My faithful swain is on leave.’

  `You’re not going to see him, are you? It will only upset you, after being with Con.’

  `When I want your advice I’ll ask for it.’

  Kerren turned away. She took off her jacket and skirt and climbed on to her bunk. She supposed she should have gone after Cath, but as she could not think of anything to say it seemed better to leave her alone. Naomi, after brooding for a while, announced that she was going to tell Dixie that she was a bitch. After Naomi had gone it was very quiet. Kerren picked up an old newspaper that was lying on the top of the chest of drawers. The Russians had surrounded Budapest; she wondered whether they had taken it by now. It didn’t seem to matter. She turned over the pages. After a time she went to sleep. It must have been evening when she woke because the black-out was up; her mouth tasted foul and her skin felt dirty. Naomi and Marney were getting ready to go to a party in the P.O.s’ mess. Kerren wondered how she would spend the evening.

  She looked across at Robin who was still lying in her bunk. At first, when Robin came back after her week-end with Con she had cried a lot. She would go to the window in the met. office and stare across the airfield until the tears were under control; at other times she would leave the room hurriedly. She had talked about it to Kerren; she had said that it was worth everything and that she had no regrets. But this soft, accepting mood had changed lately to something dark and violent. It was as though some chemical change within her had produced a desperation which found release in savage words and spiteful acts. It would be no use staying in the cabin alone with Robin, she was no company for a dark, dreary evening.

  Despair was contagious. It drifted in from the damp, misty world outside; it crouched in the shadows of the brightly lit hut. She must escape from this blind alley into which grief had driven her. She got up and took a brush and a comb from her drawer. She was not quite sure why she did this, but Naomi provided a possible answer.

  `Going to a party?’

  She was not going to a party, but the alternative presented itself after a moment.

  `I’m going to the camp dance.’

  She did not trouble about make-up. The important thing was to get out before she lost her nerve. She bundled into her greatcoat and ran down the cinder track. There was a truck waiting outside Wrens’ regulating office. She climbed into it. The girls on either side of her were talking, eagerly anticipating the pleasures of the evening. A new course had arrived on Christmas Eve and this was the first chance to look it over and make one’s choice of a man for the next few weeks. The truck started. Kerren sat with her hands clenched on her knees staring at the smudged fields and hedges. Already she felt her backbone stiffening. `It’s only a dance,’ she told herself. `The worst thing that can happen is that I shall sit out all the evening.’ What, after all, did it matter in the whole vast sum of things if one sat out at a dance? Nevertheless, when they reached the hangar where the dance was held and she heard
the slow lament of a foxtrot, Kerren’s stomach began to react as unpleasantly as though she was crossing the Irish Sea instead of the threshold of a dance floor. She thrust her way forward, determined to get the moment of arrival over as soon as possible.

  There were a few officers near the door. They had come earlier than the rest of the wardroom party and were rather annoyed about it; they formed a small, self-contained group, looking bored, pretending that they had only looked in on their way to a much more interesting engagement. Beyond there were Wrens sitting round the periphery of the dance floor, talking animatedly but not looking directly at one another. The sailors prowled round searching for someone who seemed worth the risk of a snub. Kerren edged her way round the side of the room and sat down.

  Soon there was a Paul Jones. She joined in. When the music stopped a sailor was so close to her that he could not avoid dancing with her. She stumbled around, feeling wretched and glaring over his shoulder. When the dance was over he released her immediately and set off quickly in the opposite direction. There were no vacant chairs by now, so she leant against the wall and watched the couples dancing. The lights came on again. One or two more officers had arrived and the gold braid began to drift into the body of the hall. Another dance. Kerren watched Sue flirting with one of the flying control ratings: Sue was learning quickly. Then, suddenly, there was intense pain as though the fragmented light from the lantern in the centre stabbed at her like a thousand tiny splinters, probing every nerve in her body. The words throbbed out:

  `I’m going to buy myself a paper doll,

  A doll that other fellows cannot steal . . .’

  She jerked forward and looked wildly for an exit door.

  `And all those flirty, flirty guys

  With their flirty, flirty eyes

  Will have to dance with dollies that are real . . .’

  The world cartwheeled. She saw a double image; couples moving slowly round and round and superimposed on this scene was a picture of herself, leaning against a door, laughter and darkness and stars outside as Peter shouldered his way into the room. She pushed past people standing near the main exit. She grabbed a greatcoat, any greatcoat, and had almost made her escape when a hand stayed her. It was Adam.

  `You mustn’t go like that. You really mustn’t.’

  Although he sounded very decisive, she felt that he understood. She said:

  `I must get some air.’

  `For a moment, then.’

  They went outside. She stood beside him, shuddering and snatching for breath.

  `It was that song,’ she said.

  `Did it bring him back to you?’

  `No!’ A torrent of words was released into the night air. `He doesn’t come back. He hasn’t ever come back, not for one moment! People talk about the comfort of knowing that they are not alone; they say that our loved ones don’t die, that they are with us always. And I’ve waited and waited and waited. But it doesn’t happen. People just tell themselves that sort of thing because they can’t face being abandoned. But that doesn’t satisfy me. I want Peter. Not some comfortable little ghost of my own making. I can’t go on living just for that!’

  He was silent. Afterwards she was grateful to him for not offering easy comfort. She drew breath, a long cold breath and some of the tension went from her. She felt as though there was something out there, hidden in the mist, something that she had struck at and perhaps wounded.

  Adam, sensing that she was calmer now, said:

  `Do come back and dance with me. Otherwise, what am I to do all the evening? The wardroom is quite unbearable.’

  `You could dance with that Wren officer who has her eye on you – the fraightfully aesthetic one.’

  `Would you really condemn me to that?’

  `Perhaps not. But there are a lot of other Wrens.’

  `Indeed there are. But I would prefer to be with you, if I’m allowed a preference.’

  She was touched and rather pleased by this appeal. Perhaps the evening would not end so badly after all. The band was playing a slow waltz as they entered the hall. `About my tempo,’ Adam said. Although she knew him so well, it was the first time he had ever put his arm round her. As she danced and felt him close to her, she thought, `Adam at least is real!’ It was a tremendous relief to have established a link with reality. They danced together for the rest of the evening and after that he took her out occasionally.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Cath took the news about Derek Mason badly. For a week she did not go out in the evening. She remained in the cabin, but she did not sit quietly, or lie on her bunk crying, which would have been understandable. She worked. She spent one entire evening sorting out the luggage room, she cleaned the Elsan closet, and then she started on the cabin itself, scrubbing and polishing until her hands were raw. Robin, who also spent a lot of time in the cabin, became more short-tempered than ever.

  `She’s mentally sick, I tell you!’ she stormed one evening when Cath had departed for the ablution block. `I’ve watched her. If she’s quiet for five minutes she works herself into a blind panic; and then up she gets and starts beating hell out of the furniture.’

  `I can’t understand her,’ Naomi sounded injured, `I would have thought that Cath of all people would have behaved with more dignity.’

  `Why should she behave with dignity?’ Kerren said. `She’s a flesh and blood human being, not a character out of a Victorian novel.’

  But although she would not admit it, Kerren was also puzzled; it was her experience that when you came to the end of something you were drained, but Cath behaved as though she was in the middle of a battle. It was a battle that finished abruptly. At the end of the week Cath began to go out with Derek Mason again. `He needs me,’ she told her cabinmates. In fact, of course, she needed him; her body was stronger than her puritan conscience. She was guilty and wretched, but she had to have him; and now that she had lost her self-respect, she could no longer put up any defence against him. They became lovers. He was neither gentle nor considerate, but his brutality excited her and she was more powerless than ever to break with him.

  Kerren was shaken. She had always thought of Cath as being particularly well-balanced. She felt as though all the certainties were gradually being stripped away.

  `I thought I could rely on her, at least,’ she said to Adam as they walked back to the camp late one afternoon.

  `No doubt you can, in some respects.’

  `Completely, though. She was one person I thought I could rely on completely.’

  `Reliability is like most other things,’ he answered. `A question of degree. You can rely on one person as far, shall we say, as D; on another as far as K. A few people, I suppose, might endure into the second half of the alphabet; but I don’t imagine even the saints would go farther than T.’

  It was a longish speech and rather abstract if related to Cath. Kerren had a feeling he was telling her not to rely on him. There were times when she sensed that he was wary of her, even a little afraid. Why this should be she had no idea.

  To add to the sense of disintegration, Naomi was drafted to Machrihanish. She hated change of any kind and was in despair. The others tried to console her.

  `Machrihanish is bound to be more comfortable than this,’ Kerren said as they sat shivering round the smoking stove. `The Scottish stations are very substantially built.’

  Naomi, however, was not to be comforted. `I knew a fellow who said that all the Tiger Moths took off in a gale at Machrihanish.’

  `Tiger Moths!’ Cath exclaimed. `What do you expect?’

  `If a Tiger Moth could take off, I wouldn’t stand much chance.’

  `We’ll write to you,’ Kerren promised. `And when you have leave you can come down here and we’ll have a wild party.’

  `You only get overseas leave there, it’s so isolated; the nearest big town is Belfast!’ Naomi said drearily. `I shall feel so lost, I can’t imagine being anywhere but Guillemot. I’m going to miss you girls dreadfully.’ She got up
and walked across to her chest of drawers; she took out an address book and said to Kerren, `I haven’t got your home address. I’d like to have it in case we lose touch for a while.’