I stared at him, mute. He thinks I’ve been raped by a Canadian soldier, or at least sexually assaulted, and that I’m reliving an ordeal. I looked into his cornflower blue eyes, brimming with concern, love, affection, understanding, and I thought, I have to tell him the truth and it won’t be what he expects. I could have said no to James and I honestly didn’t think he would have forced me. He was going to first ask me to marry him. It was that kiss I gave him instead, my unwitting ‘Come on’ kiss that was our undoing. And when I was saying ‘Yes, oh yes,’ because I liked what he was doing, he was asking my consent to enter me and he thought I meant ‘Yes, oh yes, go ahead.’ And in a moment of clarity I knew I had heard him ask and all these years I’d been pretending to myself that it was a misunderstanding. Willing and complicit, I had wanted James and I gave him my body. It wasn’t fear or pain or non-consensual sex that had caused me to cry out… And then I had rejected him and he had died because of my rejection.
‘Pat, where’ve you gone? Come back to me.’
I’m plain wicked. I can’t lie and say I was raped by a soldier because he’d not rest until I give him a name and what if I inadvertently choose the name of a real person? The army taught Jon how to kill. I knew him. His pride wouldn’t let him just walk away.
I refocused on Jon. He shifted on his haunches.
‘Canadian soldiers,’ he prompted. He moved his hands down to mine and gripped them. ‘Look, Pat, we’re going to be married. I’m going to be your husband, your closest friend, your partner, your confidant for life. We should have no secrets between us.’
I stared at him. Beyond him, perhaps twenty yards distant, a couple of office workers, probably secretaries, walked by, intrigued by the tableau we presented. Jon saw my line of vision shift and he checked over his shoulder, waiting until they had passed. He stood up, stretching his legs and drawing me up, perhaps to hold me while I confessed all into his shoulder, and said, ‘Tell me your secret, Pat, there’s a good girl, you’ll feel better for telling me, I know you will,’ and I was suddenly very, very angry. I span from his grip and hit the pillar of the Cathedral hard, several times, as if it were his face, hissing through gritted teeth as I struck, ‘Don’t. Talk. To me. About. Secrets.’
I turned back to him, rubbing the heel of my smarting hand with the other. ‘Your mother let the cat out of the bag. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me but you haven’t, you hypocrite. I’m not the only one with a secret and you, you bastard, have never come within a mile of admitting yours.’
Jon, floundering, managed, ‘What, what are you talking about? What has my mother been saying?’
‘It’s not just what she’s said, it’s what she wrote. You remember you were out of touch with everyone the summer before last? Your mother wrote to me that summer asking if I’d heard from you. She followed it up in the September by telling me you’d been home on leave and were especially friendly with someone called Stella who’d come round for tea. She wrote to me again after our October weekend in Doncaster telling me she was pleased you’d come to see me at last because your parents had so enjoyed your company the weekends, plural, in September and October you’d been on leave and on the Friday of that weekend too, and she was sure she was reading far too much into it but you’d taken this Stella out for the day and you’d been meeting her in pubs and she thought I should at least be warned by someone with my welfare at heart.
‘Except,’ I finished bitterly, ‘I’m sure it wasn’t my welfare she had in mind. She’s always thought me too stuck up for you. She’s dropped hints about this Stella since then. She’s said you took her to the cinema. God knows what else you got up to with her when I was supposed to be your girl. Your mother said it’s always good for a man in the forces to have someone to laugh with and not worry about. I know she was talking about you worrying about me…’
My voice trailed off.
Jon stood stock still, his eyes narrowing, calculating, fists clenching. My heart well and truly sank through the ocean floor to the chasm beyond. He’s going to tell me it’s true, that he and Stella….
‘Pat,’ he said so softly I could hardly hear him. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to trust me. Really trust me on this, because I’m bound by the Official Secrets Act. The weekends I was in London and not with you, you weren’t supposed to know about. My chums on the unit and my parents had to have a reason for my trips to London. So I made out to them it was Stella. I told my parents not to tell you about Stella. I shouldn’t have even told you what I’ve just said. I can’t tell you any more because I can’t chance endangering you if it ever came out that I’d told you, quite apart from the trouble I’d be in.’
‘So what does this Stella have to say about any of this?’
‘Stella’s a friend of my cousin Margery and we were just being friendly and spending a bit of time together while I was home on leave. She told me she didn’t want a commitment. I haven’t seen her for months, not since last summer.’ He hesitated as if weighing his words. ‘I used Stella as a cover for something top secret to do with the war effort.’
I was incredulous.
‘I’ve never heard such a load of twaddle in my life! What could you possibly have been doing with searchlights that was top secret?’
Jon struck the wall himself, suddenly, with his fist.
‘Searchlights! Do you really think it was fucking searchlights?’
Twice before had I unwittingly goaded a man into using that word in my presence.
‘You have no idea of the danger you were in last summer with the letters you wrote to me about the buzz bombs. I had to break all the rules by destroying the first letter; the second the censors caught and passed to my CO. You and your family were watched. You were that close,’ he held finger and thumb close together, ‘to arrest. And by association that could have completely scuppered the work I was doing, trying to save thousands of people. And we did save them, and it doesn’t matter that we won’t get the credit, but it does matter to me what happens to us. And all you think I did at the School of Electric Lighting was mess about with searchlights?’
I realised that if a fraction of what he said was true I was putting him in real danger of incriminating himself. Struggling against the tide of emotion in danger of sweeping our relationship out to sea, I drew a shaky breath.
‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ I began, and Jon groaned and grasped me, pulling me tight to him, oblivious to the two workmen who, approaching and seeing us in a clinch, stopped and, perching on a low, uneven wall across the way, lit cigarettes, watching the silent movie unfolding before them.
‘I swear on the lives of our unborn children that what I have told you is true,’ Jon said low into my ear. ‘Pat, please, please, please believe me. I would tell you it all if only I could. God knows how guilty I feel that you and your parents were in such danger last summer and despite our efforts we didn’t stop them all coming through.’
By now I was both puzzled and alarmed. I guessed he meant the buzz bombs. How was he involved in efforts to stop them? Afraid he might say something further that would put us in jeopardy, I stopped his words by pulling his head down and kissing him hard, passionately, possessively.
Hearing the workmen’s cheer behind us Jon surfaced and, glancing round, grinned wryly.
‘Time to move.’
Time for me to trust him. To learn what trust really means. My life a series of broken trust. My father failing to protect me from the monster of a bullying grandfather, my mother failing to heal my childhood traumas, exacerbating them with childish behaviour of her own, my grandmother moving away. Throughout my life constantly moving from one form of accommodation to another, both with my family and evacuation. Losing the close friendship of my lifelong companion to the creeping serpent of jealousy and losing my other best friend to the vagaries of family demands. Then Jon helping me face my demons, teaching me how to trust again. So, now it was time for me to trust his explanation. And now was the time to trust him with my ultimate truth.
As we meandered south and east, arms unashamedly around each other, Jon added, ‘Pat, I promise that in thirty years’ time I will tell you everything. By then, none of this will matter. Will you do the same for me?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘because I’m going to tell you my secret now. I don’t want you thinking, speculating, worrying. You can’t tell me yours now because you’re right, whatever you were doing in Bury is still in the here-and-now and I presume you signed up to it and for you to say any more will put you and maybe others in danger.’ I hesitated. Do it. Tell him. Everything.
I stopped and drew him to the low wall of a ruined building where we perched after checking that no one was nearby. I drew his hand up and kissed his grazed knuckles. ‘You’re right, I am jumpy about anything Canadian. I’ll tell you why.’
I opened my mouth to continue. And knew with absolute certainty that I couldn’t tell him. Ever.
And suddenly I knew what to say. I know how to keep secrets. Stick as close to the truth as you can to avoid being tripped up later. And it was the truth.
‘I couldn’t tell you.’ You manipulating bitch. I can’t believe you’re doing this. But I was. ‘I was afraid to tell you because of the Official Secrets Act.’
Jon was taken aback. ‘What? What’s that got to do with it? Why would an assault of that nature, or the Canadian soldier involved, invoke the Official Secrets Act?’
‘I know it’s stupid of me not to have told you before and and it’s stupid because it happened nearly five years ago. I want you to know that I was not attacked or harmed by a Canadian soldier in any way. I was very scared by a whole bunch of them on Esher Common on my sixteenth birthday through no fault of theirs.’
Speaking low, I told him about my birthday picnic, leaving nothing out, not even the desperate trips made by the girls to the rear of the oak tree, at which point his lips quivered and I caught his twinkle and by the time I finished we were both holding our sides, eyes blurring with tears of laughter, whooping and gasping as we slowly recovered.
‘Oh, Pat, you’re so brave,’ said Jon. No I’m not, I’m a bloody liar. I’ve told you A truth but it’s not THE truth. There was no going back. I would never tell him now. ‘It would’ve been jolly frightening having soldiers firing around you. I expect they were blanks, but you weren’t to know that.’
‘Was the officer right? About the Official Secrets Act? I’ve been so afraid someone will talk and next thing I know there’s a knock on the door. There were nine of us. That’s a lot of girls to keep a secret. They took our details.’
Jon put his arm around me, wiping his eye with his other hand.
‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘there was a sense of hysteria after Dunkirk. We might say with hindsight that Hitler wasn’t going to invade the next day, but he did have a jolly good try with his air force only a few weeks later, and, of course, our army needed to have fresh troops and parachutists out on exercises anticipating invasion in order to practice dealing with it if it happened. With much of Europe now recovered by the Allies and it being just a matter of months, maybe even just weeks, before the war’s over, it’s easy to forget how desperately alone and in danger we were then. Obviously, you didn’t actually sign up to the Official Secrets Act itself, so in that sense you weren’t bound by it. Yes, the officer was right to read you the riot act then, secrecy about army manoeuvres was important. But now? It still wouldn’t be wise for you to talk to anyone else about this, and I promise you my lips are sealed, but if it comes out, it really isn’t anything you need to worry about, now the purpose for the secrecy of the practice manoeuvres has passed.’
I made myself relax against him.
‘So,’ he concluded, ‘d’you think you can face our Canadian cousins with equanimity in future?’
I smiled up at him. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re near the Monument. If it’s open I’ll race you up the stairs and after that we’ll go and find ourselves a nice hot cup of tea.’
‘It won’t be open,’ I said. ‘There’s a war on.’
But it was open, an elderly balding custodian, muffled up with scarf and heavy topcoat, at the entrance, grumbling when I expressed my surprise to him, ‘It’s hall these Ha-mericans comin’ back hon leave. The City Council fort ter make a bob or two chargin’ ’em but they’re not hinterested. When you gets up top hall yer sees is ruins. ’Oo wants to look at ruins, I asks yer. I ’ardly sees anyone all day. Good job the wevver’s bin mild, that’s all I can say. No,’ he waved us up, ‘I’m not chargin’ our own folks. Up yer goes.’
Casting an amused glance at each other we thanked him, and ascended all three hundred and eleven steps and emerged from gloom into the blinding light. I squinted through the metal cage a little to get my bearings and found the view as breathtaking as I remembered from childhood. I stopped a moment by the doorway as Jon moved forward and on round the corner and out of sight.
This is the nearest I’ve ever been to flying, I thought.
Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, James was there beside me. When this awful war’s over I’ll take you up and fly you so high even the clouds will look like dollshouses. I stood, tears welling, eyes half closed, forgive me, James, hovering on my lips, a calm settling within me as his voice continued, The person we find hardest to forgive is ourselves. I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. For eternity if needs be. Go and live your life and be happy.
Forgive myself. I will not forget you but, yes, I will forgive myself and I will live my life. Thank you. So long, James. Goodbye.
I felt his presence within me retreat and grow dimmer and fade and I was left with the whistling of the cool high breeze and the damp of tears drying on my face.
‘Pat?’ Jon reappeared to my left, having completed the circuit. ‘Come and see the rest. Are you all right?’ This last peering a little anxiously at me.
I wiped the last of my tears away, and, diving into my bag for a clean hanky to hurriedly dab at my make up, I smiled. ‘I’m fine. The breeze just caught me as I came out and made my eyes water. It’s colder up here than on the ground.’
‘Ah, there’s a reason for that,’ said Jon the scientist, and he led me around the top of the Monument gesturing to the view while explaining thermals and heat and cold air rushing in and as we reached the doorway again I pulled him back and kissed him hard and passionately, and, wrapping my arms around him and pressing against him, held him tight, smiling up at his startled yet pleased expression, and I led him down the steps and out into the warmer air below and on into the future that was waiting for us.
Epilogue
‘She’s been asking for someone called James,’ the short, greying-haired, uniformed manager Maureen said, bustling along beside Emily as they made their way along the corridor leading to Pat’s room. ‘She was very agitated earlier, demanding to see him.’
Emily frowned, vertical tramlines between her brows deepening below a layered creation of dyed autumnal hair. ‘James? I don’t know anyone called James. I’ll have to go through her address list. I did her Christmas cards for her only a month ago and I don’t remember anyone with that name. It wasn’t my father’s name.’
‘I wondered whether James might be a relative who has died? Perhaps some years ago? As their memories die backwards in time a lot of people with her condition tend to remember the distant past and not the more recent.’
‘I know what you mean. On my last few visits she’s thought my father’s abroad in the army, which was before they got married, and that my grandfather’s at work and my grandmother’s out shopping. Maybe her memory’s deteriorated further. She doesn’t have a clue about me.’
They reached the threshold of the room and paused. Maureen said, ‘I’ll leave you with her, though you have my number to ring me if there’s any help she needs. I’ll be in my office or not far from there. And there’s always the emergency cord if it’s really needed.’
‘Thank you,’ said Emily, turning into the room and ge
ntly closing the door. Shrugging off her enveloping black overcoat, her curvaceous, dark-suited figure emerged. Hanging the coat behind the door, she moved to her mother’s bedside. Pat lay in the bed, thin wisps of white hair like dissipating vapour trails merging with the pale pink pillowcase, parchment skin stretching over high cheekbones and curving nose, her breathing harsh and laboured. Emily sat down in the upright chair beside her and took one hand into her own. She’s cold, I’ll tuck her under the covers, she thought. The movement brought a stirring and Pat’s eyes half-opened. She muttered and Emily leaned forward, catching, she thought,
‘Is he back safe?’
‘Who, Mummy?’ she asked. ‘Who’s coming back?’
‘The sortie. Back safe?’ Struggling to raise herself a little, looking around but not focusing, adding in a low, gruff tone, ‘Bloody Eyeties.’ She turned her head towards Emily. ‘Didn’t get him after all? Back safe?’
‘The sort of what? Eyes what?’
Pat fell back, exhausted by the effort.
Emily’s phone rang. She grabbed her bag from the floor and pressed to answer, moving into the bathroom as she saw who the caller was.
‘Emily, what’s the score?’
‘Oh, Alistair, thank God you’ve called back. Why didn’t you pick up earlier? They think she hasn’t got long, maybe just hours.’
‘What? For God’s sake, I’m at a bloody conference. It’ll take me at least four hours from here. And I’m supposed to be speaking next.’
‘Where’s here?’
‘Manchester.’
‘For heaven’s sakes, I wish you’d mentioned it when I spoke to you on Sunday. Alistair, this may be your last chance to see her alive. Come straight down.’
‘I’ve only just bloody got here after a long drive up. I’ll say my bit and then I’ll come. Might get there around eight.’
Emily looked at her phone. Thirteen fifty-two. Would eight be in time? She put the phone back to her ear.
The Keeping of Secrets Page 31
