by S Block
Though Annie had been sceptical about Teresa’s motives for getting married to Nick, she realised Teresa didn’t feel as absolute about her sexuality as she did. Teresa apologised neither for the feelings she had for Nick nor for those she admitted having for Annie.
Annie asked Teresa to describe how she managed such conflicting feelings
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ Teresa said. ‘I don’t see them as “conflicting”. My feelings for each of you don’t cancel out my feelings for the other. The strength may vary from day to day. They ebb and flow to varying degrees, but both are present at the same time. I suppose it feels sort of fluid. But I never feel as if I’m switching between you.’
‘Like a movable feast?’ asked Annie. ‘Depending on what you fancy from one day to the next.’
Teresa shook her head.
‘I can’t control it. It’s simply as if I carry both feelings with me simultaneously, and each satisfies a different aspect of me.’
*
At the WI committee meeting later that afternoon in Frances’s dining room, Teresa struggled to keep up with the discussion. Like an engine with a faulty clutch, her mind kept slipping between the business at hand and her earlier conversation with Annie at the hospital. The latter was making concentrating on the former almost impossible.
Noah, Frances’s soon-to-be adopted son, was living permanently at the house and attending the village school. The boy was the product of a ten-year, secret relationship between Frances’s husband, Peter, and his company accountant, Helen, both of whom died in a car accident. In spite of his beginnings, with Noah Frances appeared more content and vibrant than her friends had seen since the time before Peter’s death.
Having solemnly iterated the committee’s condolences to Erica Campbell for the benefit of the minutes, Frances briskly moved through her analysis of the soup kitchen at St Mark’s, and the beds they’d set up in the village hall to serve the trekkers from Liverpool and Crewe seeking safety from nightly bombing before trudging back to work the next day. On average, the project was managing to feed between one hundred and one hundred and thirty men, women and children each night, and the village hall could accommodate almost as many.
‘And we shall continue the operation for as long as it’s needed, ladies!’ said Frances with her old gusto. ‘The feared rise in crime from the trekkers has failed to appear and the naysayers have fallen silent in the face of the programme’s clear success,’ she reported with relish.
Teresa had undertaken more shifts at the soup kitchen than most. With Nick remaining at the station each night until the fate of all his pilots had been established, Teresa had found it increasingly difficult to fill the long evening hours by herself. Pouring soup and cutting bread for grateful strangers offered welcome relief from loneliness. She usually chose shifts with Alison, and watched with pleasure as her former, introverted landlady quietly blossomed under the attention of the trekker, John Smith, who – rather tellingly from Teresa’s perspective – also made a point of making it into Great Paxford when Alison was on shift. It made Teresa’s heart leap a little with joy to see Alison become the focus of a man who so clearly admired her.
Also, helping at the soup kitchen afforded Teresa an opportunity to interrogate trekkers for the latest news about her home city.
Liverpool had been under heavy bombardment by the Luftwaffe from the moment German High Command shelved its plan to invade Great Britain in favour of neutralising it at arm’s length. The explosive assault on its food supply, energy resources, infrastructure and population was relentless. The city’s docks were ablaze most nights, and the city itself, a great mouth on the west coast of Britain gulping in valuable resources from the Atlantic, offered itself as a major and easy target for German bombs.
Teresa sometimes felt intense spasms of guilt that she had made her life in the rural community of Great Paxford while her fellow Liverpudlians suffered and died beneath the German blitzkrieg. At the WI meeting, as she contemplated the latest information she’d received about her home city suffering a particularly heavy raid that lasted over ten hours, Teresa suddenly became aware of Frances speaking about yet another new initiative she hoped the members might implement. Teresa re-tuned her internal wireless to Frances’s wavelength and turned to face the branch Chair.
‘As successful as the soup kitchen has been,’ Frances said, ‘we must not pat ourselves on the back and merely tread water. Our women are capable of great things, but they must be pushed – just as our menfolk are being pushed beyond what they think possible in north Africa. Lord Beaverbrook has urged the nation in every sphere to achieve maximum capacity and maximum output. When I heard him on the wireless I didn’t only hear him speaking to our factory workers making products for the war. I heard him speaking to women like us, and I asked myself, “What else can we do?”
‘An answer came to me the next day as I was walking back from my sister’s house with Noah. We were passing a field and watched a farmer’s wife picking her way across the sodden earth towards her husband and workers with wrapped sandwiches for their lunch. By bringing them their food she ensured they could eat on the land and not lose time by tramping back and forth to the farmhouse. Noah and I watched to see how far she would have to go, and I must admit she went so far that we lost track of her. And it occurred to me that not only was making all those sandwiches using that woman’s time that might be better spent on farming, but so was the daily hike backwards and forwards to deliver them.’
Teresa saw Alison watching Frances with a sober eye. When she had been lodging with Alison, Teresa had regularly burst out laughing at Alison’s colourful descriptions of some of Frances’s more vaunting ambitions for the WI.
‘Sometimes I think she genuinely sees us as a battalion of social warriors rather than a group of women who like to meet once a month mostly to have fun and do useful – and sometimes not so useful – things. Lord knows, there is only so much we can do.’
She knew Frances agreed with that in principle, but sometimes allowed ideas to run away with her. At which point ‘there’s only so much we can do’ became ‘there’s only so much you can do, but with me cracking my whip you’ll do so much more than you ever wanted, or dreamt of doing!’
Though they laughed at Frances from time to time, it was always with great affection. Both Teresa and Alison knew the value of her leadership, and that without her the branch would either be closed, or a shadow of what it currently was.
Teresa tried to keep a grip on what Frances was now saying. Something about a farmer’s wife and sandwiches?
It sounded as if she was proposing the branch should organise some sort of vehicle to be driven from farm to farm at lunchtime, distributing beer and vittles to farm workers, and thereby release all farmers’ wives to more productive labour on the land.
Before she could speak up, Sarah said what she was thinking, ‘We couldn’t possibly obtain enough petrol to make the idea viable, Frances.’
As she generally did where her ideas were concerned, Frances had already second-guessed the most obvious objections, suggesting that instead of using a car or a van, the branch could send its members out on bicycles.
Teresa frowned at the prospect.
‘Who’s going to organise that, day after day? What if someone falls sick and can’t do their round? What happens to the farmers’ lunch under those circumstances? And how many lunches can any woman realistically transport around by bicycle?’
As Frances launched into a rearguard argument of what was to prove an insufficiently supported venture, Teresa’s mind once again drifted back to her most recent visit to the cottage hospital. Meanwhile, the meeting moved on to a resolution tabled by Sarah that the WI should go out of its way to ensure the women of Great Paxford had as enjoyable a 1940 Christmas as was possible with so many men away.
‘And for the children,’ Teresa said, her attention brought back to the dining room by the word Christmas, ‘a family time.’
The oth
er committee members turned to her.
‘If I was still teaching at school I would use this Christmas to remind my children of the values we’re fighting to preserve. The same values, and way of life, Hitler’s trying to destroy.’
Alison looked fondly at her former lodger and smiled. Never stops thinking of the children.
‘Isn’t that a bit difficult?’ Frances asked. ‘It is all rather dark, after all. Dunkirk. The Blitz. Mass bombing. Invasion. I look at Noah racing around pretending to shoot everything and I don’t know where to start to talk to him about it all.’
‘There are ways of doing it nicely,’ Teresa said. ‘I’d ask them if they were looking forward to Christmas. And I’d talk to them about how it’s going to be very different to previous Christmases, because they won’t be able to see some people who matter to them very much. But I would explain it’s important to make Christmas as cheery as possible because if we are all miserable and down then the Nazis have started to win. We mustn’t let the children think that could be a possibility, as it would start to affect them quite badly.’
Teresa looked around the room. Everyone at the table nodded in agreement.
‘There will be some people who will want nothing to do with Christmas at the moment,’ said Frances, ‘and we need to respect that. I am thinking mainly of our members who may have lost men at Dunkirk or in the RAF.’
‘Or relatives in Liverpool,’ said Alison.
‘How is your Liverpool friend?’ Sarah enquired.
Alison looked at Sarah sharply. ‘Liverpool friend?’
Sarah nodded. ‘I’ve not seen him in the village for a while.’
‘He came last week,’ Alison said, clearly ruffled to be talking about the friendship which had been developing since they’d first met at Frances’s house, when John had brought Noah back to Great Paxford after he had run away from boarding school.
‘So, he’s all right,’ Sarah said. ‘That’s good.’
‘He is,’ said Alison, ‘but there’s a tremendous amount of suffering. Tremendous. The hammering the city takes each night, it’s a wonder anyone’s still there.’
Everyone around the table fell silent as they thought of all the people killed nightly and horribly during the German raids.
‘We can’t do more for them than we are doing currently,’ said Frances, ‘and we don’t want to appear more interested in the welfare of outsiders than of our fellow villagers. So, perhaps we can do more to support our own people and what they might be going through, by holding a party of some kind in the village hall that all our families – in whatever order they may currently be – could attend?’
‘Might a party seem a little too frivolous to some?’ asked Sarah.
‘Nonsense!’ said Frances. ‘I can’t think of a better way of thumbing our nose at that ghastly little man and his ridiculous little moustache than by British people having fun under the flight path of his horrific bombers!’
It was agreed, almost by royal decree. Frances was as close to someone with royal bearing as the village could offer – and though not actually royal, she could muster imperiousness as well as any with true blue blood. The WI would put on a Christmas party in the village hall for all the families of Great Paxford with the only requirement being that everyone should have fun.
*
As she cycled slowly home after the meeting, Teresa wondered what to make for supper. She had yet to hear from Nick about whether he was likely to be home in time, or would be eating at the station. As had become one of many new habits, Teresa would prepare something that could be warmed up at short notice. Nick came home for his evening meal more than he had during the first few weeks of their marriage, when Teresa was finding her feet as a cook. He now generally finished what she put in front of him with accompanying agreeable noises. Teresa’s early suspicion that he was putting it on for her self-esteem had ebbed away. She narrowed her focus to food she knew he liked, and cooked those seven dishes for him on rotation; so far, without complaint. In the meantime, she was teaching herself a few other recipes for when Nick grew tired of the predictability of her current menu.
The discussion at the committee meeting about doing what they could for people close to home had given Teresa an idea. She wondered if it wasn’t time for Annie to leave hospital and free up her bed for someone else. She sensed the medical staff were unlikely to hasten their favourite patient from the ward, and considered whether she might take on the task of seeing Annie through her rehabilitation. It was entirely possible that Annie might prefer to return to the south and recuperate with her family. Teresa had no idea, as she had neither broached the subject of Annie leaving hospital, nor Annie’s family situation. Under the right conditions, it might be that Annie would prefer to stay in Cheshire, near her colleagues at Tabley Wood. Staying in Teresa and Nick’s house. Looked after by Teresa.
It’s just a thought. Nothing more. An idea. A suggestion. After all, I now have the time at my disposal to look after someone as much as the nurses at the hospital. It would be a little project. Company for me, too. Would Nick object? Difficult to say. Annie has known him far longer than he’s known me. I don’t think he would. In fact, I’m sure he would think it’s an excellent idea all round.
Teresa pedalled home with a renewed sense of purpose. She now had two conversations to plan. All in all, she felt the committee meeting had proved very productive.
Chapter 10
PAT AND JOYCE strolled back from the WI committee meeting debating what to have for lunch, only to find Bob in the kitchen making pilchards, boiled potatoes, and carrots. It would be an understatement to say they were taken by surprise. In Pat and Bob’s time as lodgers in her house, Joyce couldn’t recall ever actually seeing Bob in her kitchen. As for Pat, the last time she could recall Bob ever preparing food for her was when they lived in Manchester; before they moved to Great Paxford fifteen years ago so Bob could pursue what he called ‘the writer’s life’ of quiet, rural contemplation interspersed with bursts of intense creativity. In their early Manchester days Bob frequently cooked for Pat. His speciality was adventurous dishes designed to show off his skills. The desire to impress Pat waned significantly after they were married, and disappeared completely within ten years.
‘What’s brought this on?’ asked Pat, looking at the bubbling pans on the stove, trying to suppress any tone of incredulity in her voice.
‘Can’t a man make lunch for his wife and landlady?’ Bob replied with a warm smile.
‘Please don’t call me that, Mr Simms,’ said Joyce. ‘You know very well I don’t see our association in that light at all. You are my very welcome guests.’
I don’t like this. Something’s afoot. Bob never cooks.
‘I’m not objecting to you making lunch for me – us – Bob. But you must admit it’s unusual.’
‘Let’s not go overboard, Patricia. It’s only pilchards, boiled potatoes, and carrots. I thought it high time to demonstrate a little appreciation for the two women who look after me.’
Pilchards, boiled potatoes, and carrots?
Pat suddenly remembered that the last time she had made that same meal the pilchards had been on the turn and caused Bob terrible food poisoning. He’d wolfed down the fish without noticing they were tainted, and collapsed shortly afterwards. Almost the first words he uttered upon his return from hospital were to accuse Pat of trying to kill him.
There are days I wish I had been trying to kill him – I might have done it with more conviction and finished the job.
Now, as she waited in the front room with Joyce, Pat silently interrogated what kind of ‘message’ Bob might be trying to send by making the same meal for her.
Assuming he is sending me a message. Of course, he’s sending a message! Bob never does anything without a reason. Everything is calculated to bring him some kind of advantage. So why would he decide to do this now? This of all meals. Pilchards. Potatoes. And carrots. What’s he up to? What has he done? What does Bob want?
&
nbsp; In her heart, Pat knew not to trust Bob when he treated her with respect. Even if he seemed to mean it at the time, it seldom lasted – either because something would come along to darken Bob’s mood, or because he was simply unable to sustain pleasantness for more than a few days on end. Pat watched as Joyce poured them each a small sherry ‘to celebrate the special occasion’. For Joyce, this was clearly an event to savour.
‘Who would imagine a writer of Mr Simms’s stature would be making me luncheon?’ she said, in an arch attempt to cast herself as utterly undeserving of a meal as sumptuous as a prosaic plate of pilchards, potatoes, and carrots. ‘I shall be dining out on this for years to come.’
Pat knew Joyce was not a stupid woman, and yet she also knew Joyce had read Bob’s ‘Dunkirk’ novel and had genuinely enjoyed it.
‘Not because it possesses any great literary merit,’ she had confided to Pat. ‘But because it’s an easy, thrilling read. To be able to turn such a vast, terrible event as the evacuation from Dunkirk into an engrossing thriller is no mean feat, Patricia. No mean feat at all. Great skill is clearly involved. Of the highest order.’
What Joyce described as ‘no mean feat’ Pat considered to be rather disgusting, considering so many casualties of the evacuation were fresh in the ground or lying at the bottom of the English Channel. But whether Pat liked it or not, Bob was an accomplished writer of breathless plot that was almost entirely devoid of credible characters or insight. Bob had struck lucky with his first book – also a semi-fictionalised account of his experience of war: in the trenches of Flanders. What luck he’d had had been short-lived. Bob’s attempt to rise to the challenge of surpassing his first novel came to nothing, and Pat found herself stuck with that most wretched of all creatures: a once-published writer of modest and dwindling ability.
Finally, lunch was ready, and Bob invited his wife and Joyce to seat themselves at the table while he fetched in the meal. Pat was on her guard from the off, scrutinising Bob’s every gesture for some nuance that would give away his true intent.
