At Long Last Love

by Milly Adams

  ‘You’ll be entertained by Cheryl, who is top of the bill when I’m not here. What’s more, we have a new girl starting who will take the other shift, so whatever night you come, you can dance and drink and forget the rest of the world for a while.’

  His uniform was smooth, not prickly like the British uniforms. Everything about the Yanks was smooth, but they’d always take second place in her heart, because the Tommies had stuck it out when no-one else had ‘held’. For her, they were the heroes.

  Her case was too full, and therefore too heavy. She eased her back as she stood in the queue at the exit. The ticket collector checked each ticket as though it could be a coded message and they were spies. In the end she dumped her case down and shoved it along with her foot. She felt a resurgence of the panic that had almost overwhelmed her, as Brucie tore into her about her decision. Even when they climbed the stairs to her flat yesterday evening, he was still raging. ‘We’ve got this scout coming. Well, he’ll just have to make do with Cheryl, who bloody deserves it, because she’s not walking out on me – you silly bitch.’

  She had now reached the ticket collector. He was a grizzled elderly man who frowned, as though his feet were hurting as much as hers. He examined her ticket, his clippers at the ready, but instead tucked it into a tin box with others, saying, ‘Not a return then?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I’m looking after my niece while her mother does some war work. She’s with the FANYs. I’m not quite sure when I’ll be heading home, but in a month at most.’

  Behind her a man sighed and murmured, ‘Can’t we just stop the tea-party chat and get on?’

  Kate turned. ‘Don’t you like me talking to the ticket collector? He’s doing his job, just as you are; just as our soldiers at the front are.’

  The youngish businessman jerked in surprise and flushed. ‘I didn’t say anything. I don’t know what you mean.’

  She stared at him. ‘Oh, I think you do.’ She turned back to the ticket collector. ‘Thank you.’

  He tipped his cap and winked. ‘Where are you heading, miss? There’s a bus due in a few minutes going on past Tintinhull to the west, and another heading north, towards Street.’

  She grinned, wondering how long to spin this out, but decided that mercy was perhaps in order. ‘I’ll hurry for the Tintinhull one. I’m making for Little Worthy.’

  ‘You have a good time while you’re here, miss.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She lugged her case out of the station and looked for the bus stop. Surely it couldn’t be in the same place? It was. The bus hadn’t arrived yet, and there was a queue. Another queue had formed for Street. She felt ill suddenly, and for a moment the ground seemed to lift and fall. She fixed on a point ahead, grounding herself. It was what she had done a lifetime ago, when she and Sarah had travelled on the bus, which had seemed to drive monstrously slowly as it made its way from Little Worthy to this station.

  They had taken a train, and then another heading for Eastbourne, where her father had knowledge of a discreet boarding house into which he had booked them for six months. She could see him now, dusting off his hands and turning back into the house as they left to walk through the village, probably saying to himself, ‘There we go, job done – problem sorted. Off for a round of golf in the morning, with Dr Bates; everything as per usual, just as it should be.’

  She had never seen him again.

  She drew in a deep breath. Pigeons were cooing. Somewhere a dog barked. She reached for her case, but then a voice said, ‘Let me, it looks heavy.’ It was the businessman. He grinned at her, lifting his hat. ‘Sorry, you were right. I was rude. Let me say “mea culpa” and at least carry this to the bus stop, since I doubt you’ll accept a lift.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Where are you going?’

  He said, ‘Towards Sherborne, eking out the firm’s petrol ration.’

  She grinned. ‘To the bus stop would be fine.’

  He lifted the case. ‘Crikey, what have you got in this – the kitchen sink?’

  He led the way to the back of a queue consisting of women tugging their cardigans around them against the breeze.

  Kate said, ‘I packed too much. I forgot I could wash as I went. I don’t know, you get out of the way of travelling.’

  He tipped his hat again. ‘Nice meeting you.’ He paused. ‘I think.’ They both laughed.

  He went on his way and Kate was relieved. She didn’t want to have to talk, not yet. She needed to sit on the bus and brace herself, which is what she did when finally they set off along the well-remembered roads. The sky seemed increasingly large, much as it had when they left London; the countryside seemed similarly huge, and so damned unchanging. Even the bus might well be the same one.

  Here were the fields as they had always been: the copses, the crops, the sheep in the meadows, the cows in the corn. The only thing missing was Little Boy Blue blowing his horn. Just then the bus driver honked and braked as a dog dashed out between trees, or was it a fox? She grinned; how Stan would have laughed at the nursery rhyme come to life.

  She missed them all, with the sharpness of a blow.

  On they went, and as the nursery rhyme continued to rattle around her head, Kate wondered how nature could be so heedless of the life it witnessed every hour of every day. But perhaps, in that relentless rhythmic sameness, there was some sort of healing. She found herself nodding as she became used to the lack of destruction, and to that endless sky.

  She looked back at Yeovil, over which hung barrage balloons, and heard the passengers chatting about the bombing raids, as the Luftwaffe aimed for the Westland Aircraft factory and its airfield. Ah, so everything was not quite as it appeared then, like so many things. ‘But none for a year, Ethel,’ one young woman said, her headscarf tied in a knot under her chin.

  ‘They won’t stop flying over us, though, heading for Bristol or wherever, you mark my words,’ Ethel grumbled. ‘The noise they make is as bad as me bugger’s snoring. ’Spect he’s keeping his mates awake, wherever he is. I reckon he’s somewhere ’ot, since sand fell out of his scribbled note. It did, I tell you. Making ruddy sandcastles on a beach, I reckon.’ The two of them cackled at the thought.

  Kate grinned across at them. They saw her and smiled back.

  ‘Where’d you get your lippy then, lass? D’you know someone we don’t?’ It wasn’t said unkindly, just with that certain weariness that the war was instilling.

  Kate replied, ‘I helped out a lad in London when there was a raid on, so now he turns up from time to time with a present; but from where, I don’t ask.’ She groped in her handbag. ‘Here, why don’t you toss a coin for it, or maybe share: I’ve another.’

  She threw it across as the bus swerved to avoid a pothole, but it jolted in and then out. Ethel dropped the lipstick. It rolled under the seats, and off she went in hot pursuit, catching it as the bus drew up at a stop outside Tintinhull.

  ‘We’ll share, eh, Mabel? We goes out together, you see, lass, if we can get away from the ’vacees, bless ’em. There’s usually a bit of a do at the pub for our bowling night. In the league, we are.’

  Mabel nudged her companion; her basket almost slipped off her lap, but she captured it and resettled her potatoes. ‘Tell her we’re near the top and might get the cup. We’ll put the lippy on then, eh, to celebrate?’

  ‘Tell ’er yourself, Mabel – or you just have, you silly old moo. She’s not deaf, you know.’

  Ethel drew out her cigarettes and offered the pack across the aisle to Kate, who shook her head. There was an etiquette in wartime: never accept someone else’s rationed goods. The two women lit up, blowing the smoke upwards, and began to talk between themselves about the indoor bowling league.

  Kate had forgotten about the bowling alleys that most Somerset pubs had at the rear, not that she and Sarah had been allowed to join in. Her mum had liked to bowl, but it put Kate’s father in a bad mood, because he felt it to be lower-class. Kate often felt that her mum had died soon
after her thirteenth birthday as a way out. Either that or she was just plain tired of Kate’s father. But Kate wished she was still here. Every day since her mum had died she had wished it.

  The two women rose at the next stop and gathered their belongings. They’d been on the train to visit their mum. Ah, sisters, Kate thought. Sisters. Everything tilted again, and she focused on the hedges and distant hills.

  They were very close to Little Worthy now, and in the distance Kate could see the woods where the gypsies had camped every year. She heard the accordion and fiddle-playing, saw the twilight falling, the fire flickering, Andrei and herself dancing, and his mother patting her own chest and saying, ‘Feel it – feel the music, my little bird. Dance with your heart and you will be brave and free.’

  The bus was approaching the top road into Little Worthy. This was her stop. She rescued her case from the luggage area, thanked the driver and staggered down the steps, clutching the handle in both hands. He called, ‘Next time bring some lippy for the missus, then I’ll be the man of the moment and might get an extra spud.’ He laughed, and so did Kate; that was something she had forgotten: country people had ears like bats, and nothing seemed to remain private or a secret.

  She watched the bus leave, its exhaust smoking, then walked into Little Worthy, hoping that she was wrong, because some things must never be told, or known. Oh, how she had learned that before she left.

  She caught her high heel on a clod of earth, and her ankle went over. She straightened; there was no way she was going to be seen hobbling. The pain eased as she came into the High Street. There was little in the window of Martin’s, the butcher’s, and it had shut for today. The haberdashery was open, though. She loved that shop, which was where her mother had bought her wool. She remembered the ache as she sat for ages with the hank around hands held wide apart, as her mother wound the wool into balls. The wool was so rough that the carefully knitted cardigans made her itch.

  She thought of Tim Oliver’s uniform; so smooth. He had said his father was in show business and that he’d tell him of Kate. ‘He’ll want to hear your pretty little voice.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so kind,’ she’d said, ‘I’d like that.’ Knowing that no such father existed, but what did it matter, if it gave the lad a feeling of importance in this little island far from home?

  She peered in the haberdashery window. Inside, the tailor’s dummy was where it had always stood. There was Mrs Woolton behind the counter. She looked up from the drawer she was tidying, and then back down. There had been no recognition. Well, it had been a while.

  Heading along, Kate passed the baker’s, where she recognised Mrs Williams queuing, looking older, but somehow the same. Off to the right three children rushed out from the lane, throwing a ball to one another. ‘Oi, my turn, Angie. Come on, gal, give it over.’ A woman with the children, her hair tucked under a headscarf knotted at the front of her head, called, ‘Angie, you throw it to ’er, or I’ll tan yer arse.’

  Kate laughed. If that wasn’t a Poplar accent, she’d give away another lippy. So, there were evacuees here. It was as well her father was dead, or he’d die of apoplexy. Next she passed the vet’s surgery. She supposed most of the dogs had been put down in the war panic, but there would be enough work on the dairy farms for Mr Sheldon, if he still practised. Across the road was the Little Worthy doctor’s surgery. She didn’t look but hurried on, even though Dr Bates had gone.

  She reached the old stone church of St Thomas’s, with its square tower. The clock still showed nine o’clock, so it really was time Reverend Hastings had someone in to mend it, though it wasn’t a priority in wartime, she supposed.

  She approached the lychgate. Someone out of sight was mowing at the rear of the church, but no-one had mown the front churchyard. Her father would have called the new verger a slacker.

  She left her suitcase just inside the lychgate, taking off her shoes, sighing with relief as she felt the soft coolness of the unkempt verge at the side of the gravel path. She strolled left, through the long grass and wild flowers, amongst which bees buzzed. She kept on towards the huge yew growing on a line with the chancel, passing rows of tilting headstones with lettering too ancient and smooth to decipher. The yew cast such a shadow that nothing grew beneath it. She skirted it and headed for the eleventh row of headstones. Once she reached it, she turned right, examining each headstone, unsure suddenly which was her mother’s. She stopped. ‘Here you are, darling Mummy.’

  In loving memory of Lydia, beloved wife of Reginald Watson, mother of Sarah and Katherine. Sorely missed.

  ‘You are, Mummy, every single day.’ There was a jam jar with faded wild flowers perched on the plinth, and a new inscription beneath her mother’s:

  And Reginald Watson, beloved father of Sarah, grandfather of Elizabeth.

  She absorbed the words and wondered why the pain was so extraordinarily sharp that, yet again today, the ground lurched.

  She bunched her hands into fists and focused on the flowers in the jam jar: scabious, agrimony, wild basil and cornflower, clearly picked from the churchyard. The water was tinged green; it would be the heat. She lifted her head and made herself look again at the inscription in memory of her father.

  ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘You bloody bastard. How could you not believe me, when I never lie? Andrei would never have done what you said, but you wouldn’t listen when I told you who would.’

  She searched around and found what she was looking for. She carried the large stones back to the grave and then hurled them at his inscription. One chipped the ‘e’ of his name. It wasn’t much, but it showed she had been here. ‘Poor Mum, stuck with you for an eternity.’

  She heard someone call, ‘I might have known it was you, Katherine Watson. Your sister said you were coming back, with your tail between your legs, no doubt. And here you are, behaving like a hooligan, as always.’

  It was the vicar’s housekeeper, Mrs Bartholomew, scurrying along with flowers in her arms. It was Sunday tomorrow, so it must be her turn on the rota to do the church flowers. Suddenly all the anger drained from Kate. She laughed. ‘My tail is perky and still wagging, Mrs B, don’t you worry about that.’

  She stalked away, knowing she’d behaved badly, but she’d do the same thing again. The middle-aged woman called, ‘“Mrs Bartholomew” to you, young lady.’

  As she skirted the yew, heading for the lychgate, Kate realised the lawnmower was much closer. A young man was mowing around the headstones on the other side of the gravel path. She finally reached her shoes by the gate. He looked up, completed his run towards the church and then turned, heading down again and calling across, ‘Ah, the suitcase is yours, is it?’

  She put her weight on the balls of her feet and tottered towards him across the path. The gravel would tear her leather heels and she wasn’t having that, and they’d stick into the grass, and that wasn’t a good idea, either. ‘Yes, I’m back for a month. You’re making a good job of it. My father, once he retired from his accountancy practice, was the verger before you and liked it to resemble a lawn, or perhaps a putting green. It’s good that you’ve left the grass uncut, though, and given the wild flowers a chance to grow. The bees prefer it.’

  He laughed. ‘Purely accidental. I just haven’t got round to it, but now you say that, I take your point. I might well leave that side alone. It’s a really good excuse, apart from anything else.’

  ‘You’d better be careful or that dried-up old stick, the Reverend Hastings, will have something to say, though he must be so doddery now he probably doesn’t notice. Anyway, I must get going. I’m late as it is – the train and the bus took much longer than expected to get me to Little Worthy, and I’ve been dawdling.’

  He had been staring ahead as they had been talking, but now he put back his shoulders and turned towards her, and she felt the shock. He wore a black eye-patch and the left side of his face was terribly burnt, the corners of his mouth pulled out of shape. She found words. ‘Oh my, where’s your parrot?’<
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  For a moment there was total silence, and she could have burrowed into the ground in regret, but then he burst out laughing. ‘I thought I’d keep him in his cage until I have a peg-leg too, or at least find a dozen pieces of eight.’

  She grinned. ‘You’ll do very well,’ she said.

  ‘Why, thank you. Where exactly are you off to?’

  ‘Ah, so you didn’t know my father, the upright—’ She stopped, and started again. ‘You didn’t know the verger, Mr Reginald Watson, from Melbury Cottage. Sarah, my sister, is leaving for a month’s training with the FANYs. She’s lost her nanny, so I’m filling in until another can be found.’

  ‘Training for the FANYs, for a month? I hadn’t heard.’ He looked at the grass and then the mower. ‘It’s no good – the grass won’t cut itself, so I’d best get on. Nice to meet you, daughter of Reginald Watson and sister of Sarah; we’ll meet again tomorrow at the Sunday service.’

  She looked at the church. ‘Probably not. God and I aren’t on good terms, on the whole. Anyway, it was very nice to meet you. My orders were to arrive on time and, as I said, I’m very late, so I must get on. Good mowing.’

  She tiptoed to the gate, picked up her case and headed off, and only then did she realise she hadn’t asked his name.

  The Reverend Thomas Rees watched her go and felt a lightness for the first time in many months – a parrot indeed. He left his lawnmower and walked amongst the headstones, looking for Reginald Watson. One day he’d know where all these people were bedded down, but he’d only been here six months and hadn’t really had a moment to settle in. Off to the right of the yew tree he found what he was looking for. He read Lydia Watson’s inscription. ‘Ah, Katherine Watson, I see now who you are.’

  He read on down, and then reread it, astonished and disturbed. There was no Katherine mentioned beneath her father’s inscription. Was it a mistake or …? He pictured her energy and beauty, her blonde hair, the laugh in her blue eyes, but the wariness too. Oh, Miss Katherine Watson, he wondered, what has happened in your life, and where have you been up to now?