by Jane Bailey
‘Stop it!’
‘That’s it! You were trying to force her into some pyjamas you’d just knitted her. “Stop it,” she said, clear as day.’
And so on, until Lil asked us if we’d had our children young as well, and my clenched giggles began to hiss from the sides of my mouth and James had to claim I’d been drinking already.
The night was wonderful. There was a bathroom at the end of our corridor, and I took a long warm soak in it, even if the water was only a few inches deep.
James had opened the windows in our room on to the sunset, and we sat on the windowsill together, our toes touching, looking out on the still, dusky hills and the cloud of gnats jittering about in the shade of the garden. He took me like a gypsy takes an animal: sure of its approval, but slowly, stealthily, mesmerizing it with ever decreasing circles into complete surrender.
We trod water in the cool expanse of cotton sheets. Then we swam. The lightest of touches was heaven. If it was clumsy, I don’t remember it that way. I remember the vastness of the bed, a huge blank canvas for us, the cotton like an extra skin stroking ours, and the utter, unchallengeable joy of it all.
We didn’t sight land until the curtains turned pale with sunlight, and the scufflings of a bird clattered in the eaves.
I sat at breakfast waiting for James to finish shaving in the bathroom. I felt so transformed by our night together, I wondered if it showed in some way. I wondered if the landlady could see that I had crossed into a new phase of my life: did it show in my face? Did she have the slightest idea that I had been happier than I’d ever been in my life in her ‘pink room’ with the rose wallpaper and the tiny patch of mould above the curtains?
Breakfast was in one of the rooms off the main pub, but with the same wooden pub tables and chairs. Lil appeared with a large pot of tea and asked if I’d like to wait for my husband. When I nodded she hung around and tried to get chatting.
‘You here for a special occasion, then?’
‘Just … my husband has some leave.’
‘Oh!’ She gave me a look which spelt a wink. ‘Must be nice to get away.’
‘Yes.’
Her child planted herself in the doorway and smiled. She was looking directly at me, and I felt such a violent pang of emotion that I flinched. ‘Oh … she’s so … you must love her so much.’
‘Susan?’ She looked over at her daughter, and grinned. ‘’Course I do, dun’ I’ poppet?’
Susan was tapping a small wooden pig around the door-jambs, shooting us coy smiles from under her curls.
‘What’s it like being married then?’ she asked me suddenly.
‘Oh … It’s wonderful. Like … nothing changes, only everything’s more … certain, more secure … it makes you feel …’ I drew a sharp breath, for suddenly James was in the doorway, carrying a tray of huge slabs of bread and home-made strawberry jam.
‘It makes you feel like a big breakfast,’ he said grinning.
I didn’t know how long he’d been there – whether or not he’d heard my exultant views on marriage – but he seemed genuinely radiant.
Lil got up to go and potter in the kitchen somewhere off the corridor, and we two tucked into our breakfast, locking eyes and entwining fingers. Suddenly there was a whimper, and we looked over to the far table to see Susan – who had been crawling underneath it – stand up and look around in panic. I watched her dear little face as it crumpled, as the bottom lip grew swollen and trembled, as tears brimmed in her eyes and furrows tried to find a place in her spongy brow. It had slowly dawned on her that Lil had left. She didn’t know why, and in that silly moment she didn’t know if it was for ever or for five minutes, if it was to fetch tea or to abandon her. I could see, with an empty, sick feeling in my stomach, that all the little girl had registered was this: her mother had left her.
I felt the full horror of it seeping over me, a blot of blood spreading from a hopeless wound. I was leaking despair. If I empathized with little Susan, I did not reach out and comfort her. Instead I found my face had succumbed to my thoughts, and James was reaching over to me anxiously: ‘Joy?’
Lil came in with a fresh pot of tea, and then gathered Susan up in her arms. To all the world Susan looked merely relieved. But I knew where she had been these past few moments, and how much more it had been than a simple wail.
The moment soon passed, and James and I went walking. I had never seen him as relaxed and good-humoured as he was during our time at The Mill. And I wondered if my own persistent elation at being with him was heightened by a sense of impending doom. I wished James were a farm labourer or a munitions worker or a train driver – anything but a pilot. There was too much in the balance.
On day three, as we were driving back, I took the ring off my finger. He told me to keep it, and we returned to Woodside engaged.
I asked him to drop me in the village, while he went to see his father and Philip. If I’m honest, I just wanted to show off my uniform and although I couldn’t tell anyone before Gracie, I wanted the world to see me in this new state: I wanted to walk through Woodside in love.
It was hot and quiet, and the odd clink of cutlery suggested that most people were indoors having their dinners, or outdoors with their sandwiches in the shade. I saw Spit Palmer with a new baby, pushing it in a pram across the road to the post office. She didn’t see me. She didn’t take her eyes off the baby, cooing and smiling so much she could easily have been knocked down by a bus. I saw Mr Bearpark in the distance, walking his bike uphill, and the elder Miss Wallock – now utterly doolally – with her pram of lambs. She had two, and they were really lambs no more: quite hefty things, with fat woolly faces and the smug look of preschoolers who really ought to be walking. They had that permanent smile that sheep have, and the pair of them looked about from their vehicle like two kings in a carriage. ‘We’ll just pop in the post office for a stamp, shall we?’ she was crooning to them as she passed. ‘Close your eyes by the butcher’s.’
What drove a woman to such hideous lengths? What desperate needs had been flouted that she should pretend these fat lambs were her children? Was it a sense of incompleteness? A driving force? A need to be loved? A need to give love? There was a lightness to my step at the pleasure of this last thought: a love so great and bubbling it needed to be let out. The sun was on everything – even the road was warm through my shoes. Perhaps it was no more than completing the circle: a need to pass on the love that was given by your own mother. Then I thought about Celia’s mothering: Celia’s smothering. How simple it was to abuse that easily earned power. And I tried not to think about that other mother: the one whose mothering I could not conjure up.
The world seemed full of mothers. Even Digger, when I reached home, was slumped in a box by the front door, sunning herself in sheer contentment with four kittens at her teats. I crouched down to admire her brood. ‘How do you know how to do it?’ I whispered. She just wriggled on to her back and stretched out lethargically, while her kittens scrambled to get into a new sucking position.
She opened one eye and looked at me, and then closed it again, as if it were a daft question.
Gracie knew I was coming, because I’d written two days earlier, and of course the house smelt of baking. She greeted me in her apron, covered in flour, and squeezed me tight.
‘Joy, my sweetheart! It’s so good to see you! I’m sorry about the cakes – I did them for twenty minutes, but I think the oven’s playing up …’
She took me into the kitchen to indicate some very brown fairy cakes, and looked so apologetic I had to hug her all over again. I hardly had my coat off before I told her: ‘Gracie, you’ll never guess! I’m engaged!’
‘Lord above! Whatever next?’ But she was smiling from ear to ear, and clapped her hands together as if she were already designing my dress in her head and planning the booties for the grandchildren.
‘Oh! I hope he doesn’t live up north or something. Don’t let him take you to the other end of the country—’ She could ha
rdly get her breath.
‘He’s local.’
‘Local?’ She was radiant.
‘Yes. He lives in Woodside. You’ll never guess who …’
‘Go on, then …’
‘James Buckleigh!’
The blood drained from her face. She gripped the back of a chair and stared at me cheerlessly for a few moments, then she looked away into the middle distance, and slumped into the chair.
‘What is it? Gracie … whatever’s the matter?’
She swallowed, and cast me such a chill glance that I sat down too. ‘You can’t marry James Buckleigh. There’s something you ought to know.’
43
I still had my coat on, and little pins and needles of sweat were spiking me under the thick wool of it.
‘James Buckleigh isn’t Howard’s real son.’
‘I know.’
‘But he’s a gypsy.’
‘He’s adopted. James told me about it.’
‘He’s told you? Then … Why are you marrying him?’
I pulled a face. ‘Surely you don’t think I should refuse him because of that? Gracie … you can’t possibly hold that against him.’
‘Of course not. I was just thinking … When you first came to me – you might remember this – Howard came to see me. He said this gypsy woman he’d looked after, she’d asked him to keep a lookout for her girl. And I swear, Joy, it sounded just like you – just like you – in fact, I’m certain it was you. Only, of course I denied it. I knew they could look after you much better up at the house and I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on so I said … well, you know what I said.’
‘It was me. I was the girl Alice meant.’
She looked at me, newly aghast. ‘But Howard adopted a gypsy boy – I reckon he was hers too. That makes you James’s sister!’
I let out a relieved burst of breath and rescued her quickly, and she was so grateful for the deliverance that she ate one of her own cakes. When I mentioned Mrs Buckleigh’s estrangement from her husband she ate another one.
‘James wants me to go up to the house later.’ I said.
‘I could come with you … if you like,’ suggested Gracie, ‘if that would help …’
There was something of an appeal in her suggestion, and I caught an unguarded girlishness in her as she touched her hair.
So, after much preparation, we decided to go to Buckleigh House. Just before we left I grabbed one of her cakes.
‘You’ll have to clean your teeth now,’ she said, nervously putting on lipstick in the hall mirror. ‘But they’re so burned – I’m sorry they’re dreadful.’
‘They’re lovely.’ I glanced at her disbelieving face as she adjusted her hat for the umpteenth time. ‘They may not be perfect, but they’re warm. That’s what matters.’
She smiled, and glanced in the mirror again. ‘Oh, what do I look like?’ And she changed her hat twice more before we set off.
As long as I live I shall remember that moment when Gracie and Howard locked eyes in the entrance hall of Buckleigh House. He popped his head out coyly from behind a pillar. James and I exchanged eager smiles, because it had been almost four hours since we’d touched, and there was a magic all over again. Because we were diagonally opposite, as were Howard and Gracie, our looks formed a cross, a giant kiss in the air between us in the hallway.
Gracie had turned completely pink, and giggled like a child when the grandfather clock chimed loudly next to her. Howard, who looked like a man in a desert who’d seen water, seized on the opportunity to laugh as well. He promptly forgot how to speak English. ‘Well … er … this is a surp … let me … um …’ He backed into a large room. ‘Do come this way … I …’ and he tripped over a huge potted plant stationed by the door. He fell, got up again, and dusted himself down. There was something flamingo-like about him as he stood with one long leg bent and his head hung low. ‘Potted plants … seem to move around all over the place!’
James whisked me away to another part of the house, and I felt so excited for them both that I wasn’t prepared to be left alone with Philip.
‘I was just off to see the vicar,’ said James. ‘The banns have to be read a few weeks before we get married.’
It was thrilling to see him so resolute about marrying me, but I couldn’t for the life of me see what the hurry was all about. ‘Do you have to do it right now?’
‘Yes, I do. I know I shouldn’t have been so irresponsible with you, Joy, but the thing is … the thing is … you could be … you know … with child.’
‘I suppose …’
‘And if you are, I don’t want you or any child of mine being left without a penny.’
‘But you can marry me any time, can’t you?’
James had a way of putting his elbow up over his forehead and scratching the back of his neck. I noticed he tended to do this when he was nervous, or didn’t know what to say. He did it now, and the penny suddenly dropped. Until then I had simply seen it as a mild neurosis on my own part: a woman thing. These foolish women who will worry so about their men, when they simply should remain stoical and cheer them on in battle. But wait: he was worried too. So worried he thought he might not survive the next few weeks. He finished scratching, and I threw myself at him pathetically. He held me very close and said, ‘I want you to be Mrs Buckleigh, sooner rather than later, that’s all.’
He showed me into a sunny room at the back of the house where Philip was reading a newspaper, and then he disappeared to make his visit to the vicar. Philip looked up and smiled: the first genuine smile I had seen on him. He was very different. He was able to stand up – which he did, to greet me – and walk around. There was a half-finished game of backgammon on a small table, which I guessed he’d been playing with Howard.
‘I’m really glad you’ve come.’ It seemed he could hardly stop smiling, and I sank down in a chair opposite him with some relief.
‘You seem much better,’ I said. ‘Really – so much better.’
‘Yes. They’re putting me on a desk job next week. I’m quite looking forward to it actually. Although …’
‘What?’
He chewed the inside of his cheek and indicated the newspaper he’d cast aside. ‘It seems like a terrible cop-out, somehow. All these pilots going down.’
‘Which pilots?’
He looked at me questioningly. ‘Haven’t you …?’
‘I’ve been on leave for a few days – what’s happened?’
‘Just … all starting to happen. I ought to be up there with them.’
I didn’t want him to start feeling guilty again, so I said, ‘Flying isn’t the only way to help win the war. They could do with people like you on the ground – who know what it’s like up there.’
He smiled again. ‘I hear congratulations are in order.’
44
The wedding was a low key affair and took place on the first Thursday of August. Mr Mustoe gave me away. I wore the same silk dress I had worn on my first date, and Howard had paid for some cream shoes to go with it. There were no official guests, apart from Gracie and Mrs Mustoe, but in the event Mo got some leave to attend, and George came with Emily (the baby Mustoe grown up), Spit Palmer thought it would be too romantic to miss, Miss Wallock offered to play the organ, Mrs Rollins thought she might just pop in and see the dress and Mrs Bubb was a sucker for weddings. Mrs Emery said you couldn’t miss a toff’s wedding, and Mrs Tribbit said she would keep her company, and Miss Prosser thought it would be discourteous not to go, and soon there was a ragbag of assorted Woodsiders filling every available pew.
The only photograph which remains shows us looking surprised more than anything. There I am in my lovingly made silk dress, and he in his uniform. We might almost have just walked home from the cinema that evening long ago, only to find that we were, to our astonishment, man and wife.
* * *
August and September were a living hell at the airfield. Planes went missing almost every day, friends died, people’s lives
shattered overnight, and in late summer German planes started attacking the air bases. Up until then I’d always believed that life was like a path, and you were either happy, or sad, or on an even keel. I didn’t imagine you could be so very happy in love, whilst another strand of your life was such a nightmare. I didn’t think you could feel sick and tearful and shocked all through the day, but filled with delight and anticipation all through the night. And also, up until then, I had always thought of happiness as some sort of joyous rapture, whereas in fact, for most of the time, happiness was just preserving what you had; it was stasis, a solid base, security. Happiness was no change.
The truck of men I drove in late August didn’t contain a single pilot I’d driven in June. Some were on leave, but most had simply flown south or east and not come back. In a direct hit to our airfield in September we lost four Hurricanes, the laundry and Betty (who was collecting our newly washed shirts).
The confident women in my barracks that I had found so alien began to cry like mere mortals, and I found I loved them just as I loved Dot and Reeny. Ken, whose death had seemed a monumental tragedy in the early summer, was now just a speck in an ocean of brave men and women with their lives unlived.
I hadn’t realized until then how close we were all becoming. I never in my life felt such a strong sense of belonging. It was terrible and it was wonderful. There were things in that war I never want to witness again, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
In late September Dot lost her little sister, Pat, in an air raid on the Midlands. She broke down saying Pat was fourteen and she’d only just started her periods. There were eight of us red-eyed around Dot, and no one had any supper that night although we were all as hungry as dogs.
I felt very sick: sicker than usual. I actually threw up in the lav. Not long after that I was discharged under paragraph eleven for being three months pregnant. I was devastated.
