The Keeping of Secrets

by Alice Graysharp

  ‘I’ll go and grab us a couple of cheese or bacon sarnies from that stall while we’re waiting,’ indicated Jon. ‘I’ll meet you near that First Aid Post at the side there.’ Smiling my understanding and thanks, I moved towards the tent. A few minutes later the fire engines and ambulances arrived and volunteers swarmed up the scaffolding tower and a few took their places behind the house frontage. The fire chief blew a whistle and firemen with ropes and ambulance men with stretchers swarmed up the scaffolding tower too, the firemen throwing down ropes and ambulance men bandaging and securing volunteers to stretchers. A rope and pulley system was set up and the first of the ‘rescued’ started swinging down. Jon appeared at my shoulder with a bacon roll for me. ‘Sorry, rationed to half a slice of bacon each, not bad, eh?’ and we munched as the volunteers were all brought safely back to earth.

  ‘I’ll get some drinks, that was a bit salty,’ offered Jon. I said, ‘Don’t miss the rest,’ and he said, ‘The queues are down because everyone’s watching and I can see it from a distance if I’m not back in time. You stay here, you’ll have a good view,’ and sped off, ducking and weaving through the crowd behind me.

  After a short interval the fire chief, stepping up again, lit the base of the house front. Within seconds it was ablaze, with firemen swarming in front, setting up hoses and training the water on the fire. Ladders were brought, dramatic rescues of volunteers through windows effected. As one of the volunteers emerged and stepped on to a fireman’s ladder, I felt the heat of the flames even from a distance and my vision of James’ last minutes reared. Turning and stumbling, I fled through the crowd, smelling the burning and in my mind’s eye seeing only his lined, exhausted, precious, so precious face melting in the heat. Towards the back of the crowd I tripped, possibly over an ankle or a bag on the ground, I didn’t see the cause, but I stumbled and would have fallen if a strong arm had not caught mine and the other encircled my waist and held me close.

  ‘Whoa there, lady, you alright?’ I looked up into the face of the officer who had led his Canadian unit at the parade. The cadence was the same though his voice was grittier, the visual likeness to James artificial and as he looked down I could see his eyes were grey, not the deep blue I remembered, but it was enough.

  ‘It’s not often I have a lovely lady falling at my feet,’ he joked to his men crowding round behind him. He turned back to me, still holding me tight. ‘Don’t look so horrified,’ he smiled, ‘I won’t eat you.’

  James enveloping my nipple and aurora with his mouth, raking my nipple with his teeth….

  ‘Hey, lady,’ said the officer, rearing back, his grip loosening, ‘I’m darned if I’m the big bad wolf!’

  ‘Pat, are you all right?’ Looking past the officer I saw Jon shouldering through the milling soldiers. I schooled my expression, turning back to the officer who was now just steadying me with one hand under an elbow.

  ‘Th… thank you for saving me from a nasty fall. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to seem ungracious.’

  ‘Pleased to be of service, ma’am.’

  Jon stepped up beside me, sliding a possessive arm around my waist, the officer removing his hand and nodding once to Jon and once to me. Grasping me with one arm and cradling two opened bottles in the crook of the other elbow, Jon nodded back to the officer, saying,

  ‘Thank you, sir, for your assistance to my young lady. It’s much appreciated. I’d be happy to buy you a beer, sir.’

  ‘No need. Happy to be of service, young man. I guess you’re not long for call up?’

  ‘In the autumn, sir.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Jon, firmly propelling me away.

  We walked silently toward the refreshment tent which was largely empty at that moment. Jon drew up a chair for me at a table and sat down across from me.

  ‘What was that all about?’ he asked. ‘You looked petrified.’

  ‘I was startled, that’s all. I tripped and would have fallen. He assisted me. I wasn’t frightened.’

  Jon looked at me for a long moment. He handed me a bottle of ginger beer.

  ‘Drink up. If there’s nothing else you want to see here I’ll take you to your billet. You looked like someone in shock. Anyone’d think you’d seen a ghost.’

  If you only knew.

  We made our way slowly to Mrs Brindley’s, Jon’s arm firmly about me. Mrs Brindley was out, at the Fair. While I disappeared to the toilet, Jon busied himself in the kitchen making a pot of tea. Emerging and placing the tray on the table, he steered me to the settee, sitting down beside me.

  ‘Pat, why were you running when you tripped?’ He’d seen it all.

  Thinking rapidly. ‘Seeing that display reminded me of all those blitzed buildings in London and the people who died in them,’ I lied.

  Nodding understandingly, swinging his arm up and round me, Jon smiled, ‘You’re a sensitive soul, and I love you for it.’

  His first declaration of love. Prompted by my lie. Guilt washed over me.

  I must tell him now. I can’t let us build our love on a lie. But the fear of rejection at such a tender moment, a new stage in our relationship, was overwhelming. Remaining silent, I let him reach across and turn my head and he kissed me carefully, tenderly, lovingly.

  I wept, assuring him I was weeping for joy, telling him I loved him, that I understood he might have said I was his young lady just to get me away from the soldiers and I wouldn’t hold him to it if he didn’t want it.

  ‘Oh, I want it very much,’ he said. ‘More than anything else in the world. Pat, please will you be my girl?’

  He kissed me tenderly again and I thought, even his kissing is perfect, and I didn’t want him to stop, my breasts rising, my crotch dampening, my arms embracing, his arm encircling, his body pressing, my lips opening, his tongue exploring, his hand cupping my breast, his fingers kneading my nipple, my hands stealing up to the back of his head, my fingers furrowing, a memory flashing.

  Knocking his hand from my breast, I pushed him away hard and scrambled to the end of the settee, as he floundered, astonishment and puzzlement in his lowered brows.

  ‘No further,’ I gasped, averting my eyes from his trousers. ‘I’ll kiss you and hug you but no further. We mustn’t go any further.’

  With a huge effort Jon brought his laboured breathing under control, standing and moving to the mantelpiece, his back to me. After a moment he straightened, turning and smiling apologetically.

  ‘I’m sorry, Pat, I shouldn’t have gone as far as I did. I promise I won’t do that again. It was quite uncalled for. A chap can get a little carried away and I admire you for bringing me back to an even keel. You’re a good girl, Pat, with high morals and I don’t want to spoil that in you. I’ll only ever do what you’ll allow. If it’s just kisses and hugs we’ll enjoy them and I’ll respect your boundaries.’

  I was afraid to kiss him again in case I couldn’t stop this time but, steeling myself I stood and let him kiss me again, chastely and affectionately. He embraced me with one arm, placing his other hand round the back of my head and drawing me in close, resting my head on his shoulder. We stood thus for some time and I heard a distant clock strike four.

  I lifted my head to look into his eyes. ‘Yes, I want to be your girl,’ I said. ‘More than anything else in the world.’

  ‘I’ll tell Bill,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not Bill’s girl and I never have been. I turned him down. There’s no need. I can write to him.’

  ‘You’re such a little innocent.’ Jon’s tone was indulgent. ‘It’s obvious he still holds out hope and hope can make a chap irrational. I’m his friend too and I owe him that at least. Promise you’ll say nothing to anyone until I’ve told him. If he’s back from Reading by next weekend I’ll see him then.’

  The following weekend Jon found Bill out when he called on his way over to me for the day and so left me early evening, saying, ‘I’ll see if Bill’s there on my way back.’

  About an hour
later an urgent banging on the front door disturbed our supper and I ran to the window, espying the top of Bill’s wayward dark brown hair. He stood back and looked up impatiently, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on his face. He beckoned, and, grabbing my bag with my keys, I dashed down the stairs, telling my parents it was Bill and I’d just be a few minutes. Ushering Mrs Haywood back, I slipped out of the front door and walked past Bill, turning right and making for the common land at the end of the road, Bill gasping hoarsely behind me,

  ‘Liar, liar, you lied to me.’ Puffing and panting in my ear as I sped up, half running. ‘I believed you and you bloody lied to me. You’ve been carrying on for months, a year. Jon lied to me too, telling me bloody lies this evening about it only being last week you got together. You’ve stitched me up between you. Telling me you were just friends. Telling me you didn’t want to be anyone’s girl. You lied, you fucking bitch.’

  Turning sharply, before I could stop myself I slapped him hard across his left check.

  ‘How dare you use such language to me. How dare you call me that. I didn’t lie to you. You’re behaving as if I’m two-timing you, as if I owed you anything more than friendship. I don’t.’

  Suddenly afraid of what I had done and what he might do to me, I ran away from him and onto the allotment land, Bill catching me up as I drew level with the beech tree. He grabbed my arm and span me round. I yanked my arm free and backed up to the tree’s trunk.

  ‘You owe me nothing now,’ he spat, his face contorted, ‘because you don’t even owe me friendship anymore.’

  We stood in the shade of the beech tree where he kissed me two and a half years ago and I heaved dry sobs as the import of his words sank in, the ground quicksand suctioning in the schoolboy I had loved as a brother and spewing out a monster, a stranger, swearing at me, grabbing me roughly, destroying my cherished memories.

  ‘I got my call up papers yesterday. I spent today out with my parents and I was going to come round and tell you tomorrow. I have to report to some assessment unit in Colchester on Monday. God knows where I’ll be sent after that. And this is the send-off I get. A visit from Jon,’ he spat the name out, ‘and the best bloody news I could have hoped for,’ his voice rising, ‘I don’t think.’

  Bill moved towards me and I shrank back, afraid, but he stopped just short of me, growling into my face, ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t told him about your precious Canadian. I wouldn’t give Jon the pleasure of knowing you’ve turned down two offers before him.’

  He shouldered past me and kept walking and it was only the lightness of the traffic that saved him as he walked straight across the road without looking, and I watched him go and when he was out of sight I sank, sobbing, to the ground beneath the tree where my father found me and led me home.

  I grieved that summer for my loss. Bill, my companion, my mentor, my brother, my dear, dear friend. Snippets of memories, of excruciating jokes, of his head thrown back in laughter, of his boyhood pranks, of his comforting arm when I fell and grazed a knee. I grieved as I cuddled and petted Booty and was grateful in a strange way that Bill had left something from himself for me to cherish.

  By the autumn, after my three letters to Bill were returned by him unopened, and I took the train to Doncaster to start at my evacuated college, I was beginning to accept that the breach would not be healed. I was also beginning to focus on Jon’s call up which could be any time after late September. His call up papers eventually arrived, he wrote, on his father’s birthday in early November. At Christmas after four months of agonisingly painful separation we met for as much of Jon’s leave as we could.

  ‘I just finished the assessment period,’ Jon said, ‘and they’ve assigned me to REME.’

  ‘REME?’

  ‘Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.’

  ‘I know what it stands for, what I mean is, why REME? I thought you were expecting to go into an infantry battalion?’

  ‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ said Jon mysteriously.

  ‘What does that mean? Is the reason top secret?’

  ‘No,’ laughed Jon. ‘It means that breaking my foot on the last day of our cadet exercises in France in 1938 was the reason I wasn’t passed medically fit for the infantry and so they’ve had to find somewhere else for my talents. The CO said if I wasn’t allowed to walk to the battlefield I might as well drive there and learn how to maintain the vehicle I’m driving at the same time.’

  I shivered. ‘I don’t know how you can joke about it. I know we have to keep smiling through and all that but it scares me to think that one day you’ll be sent out to fight, especially after El Alamain. Now there’s hope, but that means invading Europe one day.’

  ‘It’s no coincidence,’ said Jon seriously, ‘that the very day my call up papers are sent out we win our first and glorious victory of the war. The tide has turned.’

  ‘And all because of the call up of one insignificant young man from Kennington,’ I smiled. I sobered. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t bear to think of you facing the enemy and maybe never coming back.’ It’s happened before. Please God, don’t let it happen again.

  ‘Well, don’t think about it. Live for the moment. We don’t know what lies ahead. But what I do know is that I love you and nothing’s going to change that.’

  ***

  The dreams about James began in the summer of 1943. Perhaps it was the long evenings, light until nearly eleven o’clock, reminding me of the summer of the Beaver Club dance. Perhaps it was missing Jon desperately, having not seen him since his Christmas leave. Perhaps it was my brain, having no physical memories of Jon beyond kissing and cuddling, playing tricks on me in my sleep.

  Where are you, Jon? I need you. Letters from Jon had been few. They came from South Wales, telling me lightly of a Methodist church choir he joined in Swansea and the few trips he made into the city centre on leave; at some stage he was moved to Cardiff and he wrote about a Blitz damaged cathedral he visited in an area called Llandaff. Nothing of his REME training or army exercises, of course, in case the letters fell into the wrong hands. After May the letters stopped coming.

  News broke of the allied assault on Sicily in July and I thought of James. Maybe he’d have provided air cover for the invasion if he’d still been alive. That night I dreamt I was standing in the living room at Idmiston Road and the door opened and in walked James as I had first met him, uniformed, confident, tall, slim yet well-muscled, bright-eyed and smiling, the crow’s feet crinkling. Proclaiming, ‘I’m back, I told you I’d be back!’ Sweeping me into his arms, kissing me, and I felt the imprint of his mouth on mine and a melting low down in my body.

  I awoke suddenly, my hand pressing my mouth, my heart thudding, my lower parts wet and throbbing.

  For a moment I so wanted to believe in the dream. The enormity of reality was too much to bear and I wept, stuffing the pillow into my mouth, fresh waves of grief sweeping over me.

  It’s only a dream, I told myself, you were thinking about him last night before you went to sleep, that’s all. It’s not real. You sent him to his death nearly three years ago after he betrayed your trust, he’s never coming back, stop thinking about him, it’s not real.

  In the darkness the image of James remained vivid and I groped for my torch. Rising, grabbing my cotton dressing gown and wrapping it around me, I padded down to the kitchen. Pausing at the front door I peered past the blackout blind and saw the faint tinges of dawn in the sky. Taking a glass of water back to my room, I sat on the edge of the bed and sipped, but that only served to remind me of a large, firm hand encircling mine in the Beaver Club basement entrance. Carefully placing the glass on the bedside table, I curled up in bed and lay awake for a while feeling empty and lost until eventually sleep stole back over me.

  A few nights later I dreamt of James again. This time he was the battle worn and weary James of our last meeting. Reaching out with both hands around his face and drawing his head to my breast, finding no strangeness in our mutual nakedness,
stroking his head while he nuzzled and suckled, I shot upright, startled into wakefulness, finding to my shock the nipple of the same breast painfully hard and urgent.

  Dreams of James haunted my nights and their memory haunted my days. We danced together as we had that night of the dance, the floor beneath me turning to the grey-green of the sea and, plunging into its watery depths, James disappeared and I was floundering, suddenly waking to a tumble of sheets and the awful inner tearing of loss and grief.

  Another particular recurring dream was of him above me, entering me, his cigarette laden breath on my cheek, my body responding, deep spasms awakening me.

  Why him? Why now? Why not Jon whom I love, not a man who was a passing ship that anchored but briefly?

  By the end of August, studying frantically in Doncaster through the summer to ensure I was on track to complete the college course within the allotted time, dreading sleep with the familiar dreams only an eyelid away, I was desperate for news of Jon. Although I was writing every week, there were still no letters from him in return. Doubts and fears crowded. Has he met someone else and can’t be bothered to tell me it’s all over? Has he been killed by accident in army training exercises and no one’s told me? Dismissing the latter thought on receiving a letter from his mother asking me if I had any news of him, for she hadn’t heard from him either. If he was dead surely at least his mother would know.

  One afternoon in early September I arrived back after my college day to find a letter in his familiar handwriting. Standing in the hall, heart thudding, I tore it open eagerly.

  Darling Pat,

  I am sorry not to have been in touch with you for a while. This is to let you know I’ve recently been transferred to an army camp near Bury. It’s been a busy summer and I am sorry I haven’t had time to write. I hope you are keeping well. Your letters through the summer have just caught up with me. Thank you for writing so assiduously. I have enjoyed reading them. Nothing much to report here I’m afraid. We are kept on our toes and not much chance of a social life. You can write to me at Hut 20, Lowercroft Camp, Walshaw, near Bury, Lancs.