The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  45

  Oh, my dear one, what can I do? Not a thing. I mean, I’ve talked till I'm blue, and he just listens the way he does, you know, and then carries on as though I had said nothing. My mother-in-law is in such a state of rage, I cannot tell you. And Alfred, he has tried all he can, even talking to the King’s equerry. You know the man, Major thingummy. No, well, perhaps you don’t, but he is quite a powerful sort of fellow, got the ear of the War Office Papa says. He spoke to Peter who made him agree not to interfere, and was really quite bucked that Peter is so patriotic.’ Judith laughed a little, a tinkling sound that was painfully false. ‘For my part, I have to say it is of course frightfully good that he is such a patriot.’ She looked at Hannah sideways and smiled, but there was a bleakness in her face that made Hannah want to cry.

  She didn’t cry, only put her hand out and took Judith’s and said, ‘I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry.’

  ‘It was such a shock, you see. France! I thought he’d just stay at the War Office. Such a surprise,’ Judith said. ‘No, Charles, my precious lamb, you'll spill your paint if you there! I knew you would. Let me help. There, like that.’

  She fussed a little over Charles and Mary Bee who were both enveloped in blue holland overalls and facing each other over the nursery table, painting books spread in front of them. Hannah watched her mopping the spilled water and scolding Charles lovingly, and then looked at Mary Been, absorbed and silent for once as she spread crimson lake and burnt umber happily, and her mother tried to pretend that nothing had changed in her life and that everything was as it had always been, work and Mary Bee and -

  And Judith and Peter. She wrenched her thoughts away, and looked now at Charles, standing there beside the table with his head bent a little, watching his mother’s deft hands as she tried to repair the damage the water had done to his painting. He had sleek dark hair on a head that looked too large for his slender neck. The curve of the nape of that neck seemed to Hannah suddenly very touching, making her eyes fill with tears. And then she realized it was not just the defenceless small-boy look that had so pierced her, it was his likeness to Peter. He looked up then and caught her eye, and she stared at him, at his wild dark eyes and thin little face, and the way that same lock of hair that Peter had to control so carefully on his own adult head flopped over Charles' childish forehead, and she wanted to get up and turn and run away.

  'Mamma,’ Charles said. ‘Is it true? Is Papa going to be a soldier in France?’ But it was Hannah he stared at as he asked the question.

  Judith’s hand stopped moving and then started again. ‘Yes, darling, I think so.’ Her voice was rather loud. ‘There! Now you can start your picture again.’

  ‘Charles, darling!’ Judith stared at him wide eyed and then at Hannah and she laughed again, that same tinkling false laugh. ‘Such questions these small people do ask! One hardly knows - dearest Charles, do get on with your painting. I'm sure it will be a perfectly beautiful one, and then Papa can put it up on the wall of his study, and be madly proud of you. Hannah, my angel, I must fly, I really must. Bless you for having Charles tonight. Say thank you to Aunt Hannah, my sweet. Nanny will fetch him first ting in the morning. I couldn’t refuse her the night off … ‘ She faltered and swallowed and looked up at Hannah, her eyes very bright and smiling. ‘Dear Nanny! Her fiancé, you see, off to France in the morning. Now, Charles, mind our manners.’ She kissed his cheek and then Mary Bee’s and Hannah’s in a flurry of furs and scent and was gone, leaving the three of them to sit in silence listening to the sound of the engine as her car purred away.

  ‘Will he be killed, Aunt Hannah?’ Charles asked again after a while as though nothing had happened since he had first asked. He was still standing beside the table, his legs thin and bony under his blue holland overall, and his socks crumpled about his ankles. She put her arms out to him and said simply,’ Oh, dear Charles, I don’t know. We none of us know what happens when there’s a war on.’

  But he did not come to her as he usually did. They had always been close, for she loved him as dearly as she did her own Mary Bee, and he was as comfortable curled up on Aunt Hannah’s lap as he was on his mother’s. But not this afternoon. He just looked at her and then climbed back on his chair and picked up his paintbrush again. ‘My picture’s better than yours!’ Mary Bee said shrilly, leaning back to admire the confection of colour that she had created, but Charles, who could usually be trusted to rise to such taunts, said nothing but went on with his painting. Mary Bee, contents to have established, however temporarily, her superiority over him, returned to her painting too. Silence slid into the room.

  Hannah tried to relax into familiar comforts. The same old clock ticked loudly with a faint whirr on the high mantelpiece, the battered wooden table in the middle of the room looked as solid and comfortable as it always had, the worn red carpet on the floor was littered as always with Mary Bee’s toys and books and the place, as ever, spelled peace and comfort as no other room in the house could. Yet she could not be comfortable, not now that she knew it was inevitable. He was to go.

  She leaned forwards and put some more coal on the fire. It was still early September but it was getting chilly already, and it was pleasant to have the fire glowing in the nursery these evenings, as the sun slanted its late golden glow across the square. He was to go. He had at last said so, to everyone. The sword that had been hanging over her head these past ten weeks had fallen, and curiously, she felt less badly than she had feared she would - or at least was able to behave as though she did.

  It had been a very painful time, as the heavy summer months dragged past, day succeeding effortful day so slowly that sometimes she felt as though the world had stopped turning on its axis. Every moment of that night at the beginning of June was carved into her memory. She had long since stopped trying not to think about it. She had to think of it; there was nothing else that mattered half so much. So she often sat and remembered, looking back on every detail, from the concert with the strains of Elgar wrapping her round and the laughing blind soldier and the ridiculous way they had reacted to the Zeppelin (ridiculous because that had been so minor a raid, compared with the ones that had come later) to that incredible hour they spent among the bolts of cloth in the factory. She thought sometimes of that cloth, and the uniforms it had gone to make. Had any of the passion that had so filled them both when they had used the cloth as their couch imbued those stiff folds with emotion? Did any of those V A Ds scampering so busily about their wards ever find their spirits stirring at the sight of the men they were caring for, the way hers had that dark night in Artillery Lane? It was a stupid thought, but it somehow gave her peace of mind, for it made the episode seem governed by fate, something over which she had no control at all.

  Though of course she had, and once they had emerged from their hour of madness she had exercised it with adamantine determination. She had refused to allow him to put her in a taxi, insisting on going alone to Bishopsgate station to find a late driver there. She had refused to speak to him on the telephone the next day, the day after that or indeed on any day at all. She had contended herself with writing only one letter to his office, short and crisp, asking him - indeed demanding - that they remain always apart, and that nothing, absolutely nothing, be done to distress Judith.

  She had prevailed. Telephone calls stopped. All her dealings with the Ministry of Supply were taken over by Peter’s deputy, James Chesterton, and Peter was never available to join in on those evenings when she could not refuse Judith’s invitations.

  Judith had seemed unaware of the change in their social life. She exclaimed, of course, over how much busier darling Peter was these days, and how long he had to work at his dismal office, and so often, just as she exclaimed over the fact that Hannah too was overworking, often staying at her factory until almost midnight to get urgent orders out, and going in on Saturdays and Sundays too to cope with all the paper work. More and more now, though, she sat amid the machinists, pushing the heavy fabric under the bounci
ng iron foot as the wheels whirled, losing herself in the drudgery of boring repetitive labour. The worst part had been the loneliness, not just the loneliness that came from not seeing Peter any more, but the loneliness that came from the barrier that she had erected between herself and Judith. She had vowed to herself, with all the fervour of which she was capable, that nothing she ever did would hurt Judith. She poured every scrap of energy she had into being the same as she had always been when they met. The burden of guilt that she bore with her made it difficult, but in a way more satisfying. The harder it was to keep Judith unaware of her own unhappiness the more virtue there was in succeeding.

  And so the weeks went on, as Judith chattered about her fund-raising and bandage rolling and the children and poor dear overworked Peter, and Hannah listened and sympathized and said nothing significant at all, though she began to wonder, painfully, whether all her efforts to keep Judith happy had been wasted after all, for Judith changed, became edgy and nervous and brighter, more the chatterbox than ever. As June gave way to July and the war news became gloomier, she broke down at last and told Hannah of the real cause of her distress, the fact that Peter was determined to join the army in France.

  Week after week it had gone on, Hannah having to listen to Judith talking about the arguments that were going on in every Lammeck and Damont household in London in anxious attempts to convince Peter that his sacrifice was unnecessary. It was not entirely selfishness on the part of the family either, as Judith was at pains to point out. Peter was doing a valuable job, as well as spending much of what little spare time he had in family affairs. With only Marcus to run the complexities of Lammeck Alley, Peter was a vital cog in the family wheel, but just as vital in Whitehall. Hannah listened and said nothing, for she knew all too well that she had no right to say anything. The last thing Peter had said to her was, ‘II shall be joining the army, Hannah. I have to go. But don’t think, please, that this evening has anything to do with it.’ Of course she was immediately convinced that it had. He had been talking of joining but would he have done so if she hadn’t behaved as she had? Of course not, she told herself, listening to Judith. Of course not. Now, because of my treachery, our treachery, he feels he has to go. She hated herself with a dreary misery that made the days creep by even more slowly.

  And today it was a fait accompli. Judith had discovered this morning that he had been going to training sessions on weekends when she thought he was working in Whitehall. He was to go to France next Thursday.

  Next Thursday. That evening as she helped Florrie put the children to bed she thought about it. The next day as she supervised their breakfast and settled the day’s household tasks she thought about it. All that day and the next as she busied herself at the factory she thought about it, and on Thursday afternoon, she could contain herself no longer. She had to see him go, not speak to him, but just see him. She had to.

  Victoria Station was a wash of khaki and steam and noise. She stood just inside the great concourse staring into the hubbub and her heart slipped in her chest and she thought, I can’t. But then a girl near her asked one of the harassed station staff where the embarkation trains were going from and he waved her towards the thickest part of the crowd, and almost without volition Hannah followed her as she went plunging into the meleé' The feeling of the place was extraordinary. It seemed almost as though they were going on cheerful holidays, these khaki clad men with great packs on their backs, shouting and laughing and roaring their jokes at each other as if the whole expedition was some great lark. But that was only the surface of the layered scene. Just below the level of joking men there were women smiling and nodding and chattering, but they stood with their shoulders very closely hunched as though a cold wind were blowing through the station; it was fear, not cold, that lifted the muscles into that tension and tightened the smiles on their faces. And then there were children, some carried on their solder father’s backs. Hannah saw small face after small face as she pushed her way along the edge of the crowd toward platform seven, and none of them were smiling. They looked peaky and solemn, their eyes wide and somehow blank.

  Here and there she could see the glimpses of the bottom layer of all, people in tears of fear and horror and foreknowledge. A middle aged woman, wearing a very smart hat over a sable coat, was clutching a brown paper bag full of fruit. As someone pushed past her the bag broke and apples went tumbling about the platform and she stood there making no effort to pick them up, letting tears of acute distress run down her cheeks. Hannah stared at her and the young man standing helpless and embarrassed beside her in the clean and polished uniform of the very new officer, and she felt a stab of the same pain the woman was feeling. They were all so helpless in the face of the madness which had overtaken their world, the madness that was turning France into a pandemonium of bloody mud, that all they could do was weep at the tragedy of the fallen apples. The crowd behind her pushed her onwards, and she began to panic, afraid suddenly that they would see her, Judith and Peter. She didn’t want to be seen by him, and she certainly did not want to observe their parting. She had been mad to come, and couldn’t think why she had. She turned against the pushing tide behind her and began to battle her way back.

  As she pushed her way at last out of the thickest part of the crowd, coming out by Smith’s bookstall at the front of the concourse, she heard Judith’s voice high and clear above the hubbub, and so determinedly bright it had the quality of polished glass. It might have shattered at a touch.

  ‘Darling Hannah I knew you would come! I just knew you could not let him go without being here. Peter, my angel, here she is, come to scold you for being so wilful as to go, and to wish you well. Aren’t you Hannah?’

  They were standing side by side at the bookstall, where Judith had just brought a sheaf of magazines for him. He looked at her and nodded, his face quite still. ‘Hello, Hannah. Thank you for coming.’

  Judith moved away to the chocolate stall to buy the most expensive boxes they had and Hannah looked at her briefly and said, ‘I didn’t mean to come. I don’t why I did. I shouldn’t have. Let me go, now. I wish you well, and - oh, God, I must go.’ 'No,’ He put out one hand and held onto her. ‘You can’t. Judith would be bitterly hurt. She needs you. Stay.’

  She looked at him, at the way the peak of his felt khaki cap sat so neatly on his forehead, at his shining buttons and the polished Sam Brownie and the neat luggage at his side and could not see him at all, somehow. He was like every other solider in this maelstrom of officers and men; just another chess piece in khaki, like the embarrassed youth with the mother who was weeping over her apples, like the nearby corporal in boots so bright they could mirror the face of the child he had perched on his shoulders, like very single one of them. She stared at him, her forehead creased. Who was he? Why was she here?

  Judith came back and began to cram the magazines and chocolate into Peter’s side pack. He said nothing, letting her do it, and then as she stood up he said gently, ‘It will be all right, my love. It will be all right. Whatever happens. We'll be all right. She looked at him, her eyes wide and sparkling. She was as beautiful as ever, as elegantly dressed as ever, as perfectly head-turning as ever, and very line of her body spoke of the misery that was in her. Hannah stepped back, feeling sick with shame. This girl was her friend and she had used her so badly, and she wanted to blurt it all out wanted to tell her what had happened that night in June in Artillery Lane, anything to shift the guilt from her own back, to let someone else suffer it. She bit her tongue so hard that she tasted salt blood.

  ‘Remember what I told you,’ Peter was saying softly, but so clearly that even above all the noise around them Hannah heard every word. Whatever happens, we two will be all right.’

  He turned then looked at Hannah and smiled. For a moment it was the Peter of the Monday concerts again, the Peter who had been her beloved friend these past five years, the Peter she loved and needed so much.

  ‘Take care of her, Hannah. And of Charles. And they'l
l take care of you.’ He bent and picked up his bags and his side pack and looked again at Judith, who was standing very still and straight. He bobbed his head and then turned and went, pushing his way into the crowd and disappearing into the sea of khaki. Judith and Hannah stood side by side and watched him go, and went on watching the crowd long after they knew his train had steamed out of the vast station, leaving wreaths of grey smoke tendrils to float about the iron tracery of the roof far over their heads.

  46

  If I can bear it for three weeks, it will be all right, Hannah would tell herself. Just for three weeks. And then would feel sick at the reason for feeling so.

  It had been Cissie who had put the notion into her head, Cissie all unknowing and cheerfully chattering to the finishers as they worked late over a batch of uniforms due to be shipped out to Etaples on the midnight train to the coast.

  ‘Three weeks,’ Cissie had said. ‘That’s what they say, you know, three weeks is all anyone lasts out on the Front now. Wounded or worse they are, inside o' three weeks.’

  Hannah, who had been sitting in her office with the door open, checking delivery notes, felt her throat tighten so that she almost retched. She got up and pushed the door closed and then tried to concentrate on the delivery notes again: seventy-five yard bolts of blue serge, width forty-eight inches, quantity fifteen; hundred yard bolts blue striped white calico width thirty-six inches, quantity thirty-five; fifty yard bolts scarlet flannel width forty-eight inches, quantity fifteen, dammit, that meant they’d be short of red flannel for the capes, and she’d have to spend another hour on the phone. Three weeks? She’d read that too, somewhere, but had managed to forget it till now. Thee weeks was the life expectancy of men at the front now that the battle of Loos had begun. Three weeks, if they were lucky. Three weeks before they were sprawled in the mud or hanging over the barbed wire staring blank-eyed at the squalor of no-man’s-land, or weeping with pain in the casualty clearing station behind the lines, waiting to be shipped home, if they survived long enough, to be patched up ready to be sent back to start all over again.