Sunny was unshakeable in her conviction that Day would survive the war, and James had kept quiet about the fact he did not share that view. Bomber Command, the rumour was, had well over a forty per cent death rate. Sunny was good at mathematics, she could easily calculate those odds.
Damn Day and his heroics, thought James. Damn all James’s fellow undergraduates, too, who, though students were exempt from conscription, had downed pen and paper and gone to fight. His own student status was a perfectly legitimate excuse, but it would be a lie to say no one would judge him for using it. This year, the war had been especially grim for the British and their Allies. America had not been the magic weapon everyone had anticipated, and yet another Christmas — that fabled end date to all conflict — was about to go by. I should do my bit, thought James, fear or no. His country needed men like him. Next June he would be twenty — a much more sensible age for fighting than eighteen. That was six months away. James was sure he could decide once and for all by then.
James, still lingering in the hall by his mother’s bedroom door, heard noises from downstairs that told him Sunny, her mother and Virgie were also readying to leave. Most likely they were headed for the farm, where they worked even on freezing days like this. Sunny’s mother had already been out that morning to milk the cows. Her cheeks and hands were chapped a raw-meat red when she’d arrived for breakfast, and she’d had to hold her hands under warm water until they had regained enough feeling for her to be able to use a knife and fork.
The farm had made James think of Lily. She was not in his mind so often these days. Her time as the Potts girl had long gone; none of James’s fellow students would even recognise her. Her big-eyed innocent look was out of date now, replaced by more sophisticated and sexy stars, such as Veronica Lake and Rita Hayworth. Only a month ago, James had seen a very young Rita Hayworth in an old 1930s movie, Dante’s Inferno, with Spencer Tracy. James should have been at a lecture but he’d been plagued by a recurring dream in which he arrived at the lecture hall to find everyone had enlisted except him, even the women, so he had instead cycled to the picture theatre and sat in the dark, watching Spencer Tracy in three of his early and undeniably B-grade films. Rita had played a dancer and must have been no more than sixteen. James had felt his groin stir at the sight of her and had been glad that he was in a dimly lit theatre, with only a few other lost souls who’d chosen to waste a fine weekday on woeful dialogue and hammy acting.
No, Lily was no Rita, James admitted to himself. But the thought of her, perhaps enhanced by James’s feeling roundly rejected by all the other women in his life, brought other, more enticing, thoughts to mind. James was beset by a sudden vision of he and Lily in the hayloft of the Blythes’ barn, she naked beneath him, her hair spread out, gold on the gold of the straw, and her breasts firm and round in his hands.
The ensuing erection was insistent and painful. James decided he had two choices: go up to his room and relieve it in private, or go out for a brisk walk and let the freezing air deal with it like a nurse with a cold spoon.
As he dithered, the silence in the house closed in on him. Bugger this, James thought, and he grabbed his coat and scarf and headed out in the direction of the farm, slamming the front door as hard as he could, though there’d been no one home to hear.
Mrs Blythe and Lily were in the kitchen, which smelled, as it always had, of good cooking and damp wool. Mrs Blythe looked a little harried, but Lily greeted him with a huge smile, a hug and a warm kiss on the cheek that made James feel somewhat better.
Lily was dressed in a pair of baggy corduroy trousers and what looked like an airman’s jersey, knitted from thick dark-blue wool. Her outfit completely concealed her shape, and her hair was tied in a rough ponytail and tucked under a scarf. But her face was as fresh and pretty as ever, so pretty that James began to wonder why he’d ever preferred Rita, who was, he’d had to admit, rather a tramp.
‘I’m just on my way to Ted’s,’ she said.
‘Ted’s?’ James replied. ‘Good Lord, why?’
‘To take him his dinner,’ she said. ‘But really, to check on him. He’s so blind these days that he’s a menace to himself. He’s nearly set the cottage on fire twice. But, of course, the stubborn old coot won’t ask for help.’
‘Is Sunny here?’ he asked. He’d not seen any sign of the three women on the way over.
‘They’re helping with the ploughing,’ Mrs Blythe told him. ‘Even Virgie, bless her. Government’s calling for more and more crops to be planted, so Ellis is ploughing up the grassland down the back as well as the usual fields.’
‘Ploughing for victory,’ Lily said, with a grin. ‘It’s like digging, only with three pairs of horses and a tractor.’
‘Who’s on the tractor?’
‘Who do you think?’
James did not like to imagine what mayhem Sunny was capable of wreaking with a tractor, but he supposed Farmer Blythe had been given little choice.
‘They’ll be in for their dinner soon,’ Mrs Blythe said. ‘You’re most welcome to join us, Master James.’
James was about to accept gratefully, when Lily had tugged at his arm.
‘I know you’ve just trudged here through the horrible slush,’ she said, ‘but please come with me. Ted can be a bit — grumpy.’
Damsels did not always plan their distress for convenient times, James thought, with a sigh. The smells emanating from the stove were making his stomach rumble, and it wasn’t as if there was anyone at home to make him lunch. But fair enough — if anyone qualified as a dragon, it was Old Ted.
‘Hand me the stew pot,’ he said. ‘I can always brain him with the lid if he makes a lunge for the shotgun.’
The path to the cottage skirted the woods, which in the low winter light looked dark and menacing, the trees like twisted and spindly evil spirits right out of an Arthur Rackham illustration, James thought. Shapes and shadows dire.
Beside him, Lily shivered.
‘Cold?’ he asked.
‘Remembering,’ she replied.
‘God, of course.’
James wished he weren’t holding the bloody pot. He craved to put his arms around her. The woods might look forbidding to him, but what must they look like to someone who’d been dragged through them by two malevolent armed men.
‘And I can’t bear to think of Rowan in there,’ she added, lessening James’s desire to hold her by a significant measure.
‘Have you seen him recently?’ It seemed only polite to ask.
Abruptly, Lily had stopped walking. James turned and saw an expression on her face that, like some showy chemical experiment, froze his blood and then sent it boiling again. But it would not have done to let Lily know that.
‘Are you all right?’
He’d hoped to sound neutral but comforting. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted her to confirm what he’d just concluded, but it would be worse to leave and still be wondering.
Lily stood, head bowed, arms wrapped around her chest, hugging the thick jersey. James set the pot on the ground and moved closer, but not so close that it might have spooked her.
‘I can tell you, can’t I, James.’ It was less a question than an assertion. ‘You’ve always been good with secrets.’
‘I do my best.’
‘We did it. Rowan and I,’ she said, baldly, no prevaricating. ‘We had sex.’
‘Did you?’ It was all he could manage.
‘We didn’t mean to, and we knew we shouldn’t, but we did. He’s been so lonely, you see, and I felt so sorry for him — I couldn’t bear it, the idea that he might be alone in the woods forever, and so I kissed him, and then—’ She lifted her eyes long enough to give him an embarrassed look. ‘Well, I’m sure you know all about it, don’t you?’
No, James thought. No, he knew nothing about it. Cambridge had not been full of willing women as Sunny had promised. None that had been willing to do it with him, anyway. He had not asked, that was true, but still — the women there were more lik
e Sunny than Lily, sure and confident and forward, and James had expected that at least one would make a pass at him. He was tall and handsome, and he had money and brains and sporting ability. What the hell more did they want?
Perhaps that was it, James thought, watching Lily hang her head. Perhaps it appeared as if he had everything, and so no one felt sorry for him. If he came across instead as pitiful as Rowan, would the women then come flocking?
‘I feel like a traitor,’ Lily said. ‘Papa would have a fit if he knew.’
‘I won’t tell him,’ James said.
It was the truth. He had no wish to even think about it, let alone broadcast it to the world.
‘Come on,’ he said, picking up the pot. ‘Ted will be even grumpier if the food’s cold.’
Lily gave him a wan smile.
‘God, I do love you, James Potts,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you for being you, from the bottom of my heart.’
Now, in his own home, in an empty kitchen with no food on the stove, James ate the last of his bread and butter sandwich and rejected the idea of making a cup of tea. He had no idea where the tea was kept and no patience to take the lid off every likely canister. It was nearly six o’clock and no one was home. More bread and butter for dinner tonight, he thought.
But then he heard the front door open, and the sound of women filled the air, loud as the sudden burst of cackling that erupts from a henhouse when a fox has just crept in.
‘Are we having custard?’ Virgie was saying, as she and Sunny bustled into the kitchen.
‘Yes, but only Bird’s,’ Sunny replied. ‘But we are having mashed potatoes. Bugger Lord Woolton’s feelings about peelings.’
‘You shouldn’t say bugger,’ said Virgie.
I may as well be invisible, thought James. Neither of them had acknowledged him at all.
‘Did you know,’ Sunny said, ‘that the cornstarch in custard powder can explode when it mixes with air? And that every pound of cooked bones makes enough fat for four ounces of nitro-glycerine?’
‘You should join the ATS,’ said James. ‘They need cooks.’
Sunny glanced at him at last.
‘Bugger that,’ she said. ‘Let’s get cracking, Virgie. Time to boil up some weapons.’
CHAPTER 32
mid-August
Oran had been gone for over a week now. The house had been silent, literally and in April’s mind, as if it were giving her the cold shoulder. April felt guilty for driving Oran away and worried for his safety. Most of all, which surprised her, she felt the hole created by his absence. She missed him and she wanted him to come back but she did not know enough about his life to have a clue how to find him. It was time, April decided, to confess to Edward.
Irene was, as usual, at her desk, sitting upright and typing steadily, the click-click of the keys contrapunto to a sizzling swirl of violin music that was playing really very loudly behind Edward’s office door.
‘Is he busy?’ said April.
Irene poised her fingers swan-like above the typewriter keys.
‘Busy, yes,’ she replied. ‘Engaged in work for clients who pay? No.’
‘Should I go in?’ said April.
‘That depends,’ said Irene, ‘on how you feel about Nigel Kennedy. Personally, my pleasure in Vivaldi is ruined by a persistent vision of a Mockney-accented grotesquery with ragged cuffs and spiked hair. If this din continues, I intend to take the afternoon off. Or cleave his record player in two with a hatchet.’
April knocked once and pushed open Edward’s door.
‘Mind your step!’
Edward’s warning froze her. At her feet was a paint pot, half filled with white paint. Edward was up a ladder, with tray and roller, applying said paint to a wall, which had been stripped of its ugly wallpaper. The desk, chairs, bookshelves, sideboard and sofa had been shoved into the centre of the carpet, and covered in drop cloths. The heavy curtains had been taken down. Newspaper had been taped over the mahogany mantelpiece. Edward was in a T-shirt and jeans, and remarkably unspattered.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Perfect timing. One must always break for elevenses between the “Danza pastorale” and the “Allegro non molto”. Union rules.’
‘What brought this on?’ said April, as he stepped off the ladder, and hit a button to kill the English Chamber Orchestra. April fancied she could hear Irene sliding the hatchet back into her desk drawer.
Edward slotted his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back slowly on his heels.
‘What brought it on? My finally admitting that Sunny is right,’ he said. ‘I can’t float around in no man’s land forever, if you’ll pardon the double entendre. I came to this place because I wanted to escape, and I suppose a part of me always saw that as a temporary move. But temporary by definition is of limited duration, and I’ve been letting it drag on and on, with no end in sight. It was time to make a decision: stay or go. And so I made one.’
‘Is Irene a fan of Scandinavian minimalism?’ said April.
‘I did consider that. But I decided I should be true to my own tastes.’ He glanced around. ‘I can buy a Marimekko cushion, I suppose, if it ends up reminding people too much of a dental surgery.’
He smiled at her. ‘Anyway, I doubt you came here for a guided tour of my psyche. Shall we brave infant and oversize buggy hour at Costa, and talk over a weak latte?’
As Edward queued, April saw several of the young mothers give him more than a passing look. Fruitless but fair enough, she thought. Edward was not as bonelessly slender as his usual, more formal clothes made him appear. The slim-fitting T-shirt revealed muscular forearms, biceps and chest. The sun had tanned his face, which made his eyes look almost as blue as Sunny’s, and brightened his mouse-coloured hair with streaks of blond.
‘Your fan base by the toy box thinks you’re looking very Calvin Klein today,’ said April, when he rejoined her, cups in hand.
‘Is that rugged and outdoorsy?’
‘No, I think that’s more the Marlboro Man.’
‘Pity,’ said Edward. ‘I’ve always fancied rugged and outdoorsy men. That’s why I lived in London for so long. Why take an unnecessary risk of meeting someone who will break your heart?’
‘That’s what happened, though, didn’t it?’ said April.
‘Of course it did. Fate objects strongly to being tempted.’
The look he gave her next was his interrogative one. ‘Which lends us a rather clumsy segue into the topic of our permanently heartbroken Oran. I assume his vanishing act is why you sought me out?’
‘I was hoping you’d know where he is,’ said April.
‘I don’t, I’m afraid. The van has gone. I tracked down the folk singer (who is very pretty, by the way), but she knows nothing and neither, it seems, does anyone else.’
‘Has he gone to see her, do you think?’
Edward shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Cee-Cee Feares only emerges when she wants something from him. At all other times, she stays well out of his reach.’
April felt ill. The fug of artificial vanilla and hot milk did not help, nor did the shrieks of the two tots fighting over some plastic toy.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she said. ‘I was horrible to him.’
‘He’s a grown man, April. It’s his choice whether or not he reacts like one.’
That was too close for comfort to the mutterings that had originally provoked her.
‘Yes, but I was really horrible — vile. I’m not sure I can forgive myself.’
‘Well, that’s your choice. And now I’ll present you with another: do you wish to keep working on the house? I’ll understand if you don’t.’
April had not given it a thought. Each day since Oran had left, she’d worked there on her own, expecting that day to be the one when he’d show up.
‘I’ve finally finished painting the entranceway,’ was the best answer she could give. ‘And Oran had already pretty much completed the staircase restoration …’
‘Then that
’s the entranceway, drawing room, kitchen and dining room completed.’ Edward sat up. ‘That’s more than enough, I’d say. No need for you to do more. But don’t worry about money — I’ll advance you some to tide you over, and deduct it from the final settlement. Which, I suspect,’ he added, with a smile, ‘might not be too far off now. Since I put it on the market, we’ve had only tyre-kickers, but now I think we may have a serious bidder. Early days still, hence my question about working on the house, but definite grounds for optimism.’
April had the oddest sense that she’d left her body and was staring down at the two of them from the ceiling of the café. She knew the house had been on the market because she’d instructed Edward to put it there. She knew when a reasonable offer was made that she would accept it. And she knew that when the house was sold, she would leave. Because that had always been the plan.
But until now, the plan had been just that — a plan, a list of actions to be taken at some future time, when the stars aligned. Now, Edward was telling her that the stars had been moving all along and were very nearly in formation. Though it had been coming for months, she did not feel in the least prepared.
‘So … when will you know for sure?’
‘As I say, these things can drag on. With luck, though, it will be only a week or so before we’ll know if they’ll make an offer.’
Edward peered down at the last of his latte and made a face that signalled he would not be drinking it. Then he turned his clear gaze back on her.
‘A decision pending for you, too,’ he said. ‘Go or stay. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But then, as we know from Hamlet, the big questions in life always do.’
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