by S Block
‘Don’t you think it’s fair to say,’ she began, ‘that if we’re going to arrest and detain these poor unfortunates we at least have a responsibility to keep them in reasonable conditions?’
Nick was in no mood to argue, but could see that Teresa wanted a conversation after being in the house all day by herself.
‘I suppose it depends what you mean by “reasonable conditions”? What may not be reasonable to you might be perfectly reasonable to someone else under the circumstances of war, where resources are scarcer by the day, and no one could be said to be living in the lap of luxury.’
‘It’s bad enough that these perfectly innocent people have been rounded up like potential spies—’
‘How do we know they aren’t spies?’
‘Of course they’re not spies, Nick.’
‘We don’t know that. Isn’t that the issue? We have to scoop them all up because we simply do not know who is or isn’t – or might become – a spy against us. It’s not pretty. It’s crude, but every other country is doing exactly the same thing with their foreign nationals. Yes, it’s cruel, and yes, it’s probably unfair in almost all of the cases. But that’s war, darling.’
Teresa hated it when Nick used the phrase ‘That’s war, darling’ to counter her anger against what she perceived to be unnecessary cruelties of conflict.
When Teresa read aloud the daily statistics of the dead and wounded from the London Blitz, tears falling onto the newspaper, Nick said softly, ‘I’m afraid that’s war, darling. It’s twisted and simple. Whoever kills the most people wins. The quicker they kill us the quicker they break our morale, the quicker we surrender. At least, that’s their theory. It will be ours too, if we get the chance to mount a concerted attack back.’
She was determined not to allow Nick to mollify her about the camp at Huyton. ‘Very well. If you think it’s all right for these poor souls – who have done nothing wrong except speak with a different accent—’
‘Darling,’ Nick countered, hoping to bring what threatened to be an argument to an end before it could really ignite, but Teresa hadn’t finished.
‘If you think it’s all right that they’re kept in sub-standard conditions, do you think it’s right for them to be penned in while the Luftwaffe attacks the city night after night? The trekkers are free to leave each evening to seek safety in the countryside, but these people have to take their chances inside a camp they cannot leave. They’re sitting targets.’
‘But they’re not targets at all, Teresa. Not really. Not in as much as the Germans aren’t targeting them, but the docks.’
‘What if a stray bomb hits the camp?’
‘Well, yes, that would be terrible. But—’
‘That’s war, darling.’
Teresa looked at him defiantly as she threw his expression back at him. Nick narrowed his eyes to get a better focus on precisely what might be going on inside his wife’s head at that moment. He took a long, deep breath, then let it out slowly.
‘This evening one of my boys was hit, Teresa. Not him. The plane. Fuel line was cut. Started a fire—’
‘Nick,’ Teresa said calmly but firmly, ‘it isn’t fair to roll out another terrible incident about one of your boys to shout me down.’
Nick looked at her coldly, as if he momentarily hated everything about her. It sent a small chill down her spine.
‘His fuel line was cut,’ he continued calmly.
Teresa sat back and waited for the story to come. It would be terrible and tragic and she wouldn’t be able to pick up where she left off.
‘A fire started behind the cockpit. He tried to bail out but the canopy wouldn’t slide open. The flames got into the cockpit and we could hear him screaming with terror and pain. I told him to put the plane into a steep dive which might drive the flames back up the plane, away from his position. Which he did. And it worked. Only, he hadn’t noticed that his altimeter had also been shot up, so he had no idea of his altitude. His radio went dead almost immediately.’
Teresa looked at Nick and clenched her jaw with frustration. ‘As I said, I think it’s very unfair the way you tell me these things to shut me up.’
‘I thought you wanted to know what I’m thinking about? So that’s what I was thinking about when you started on about bloody Huyton. I was trying to weigh up whether it was better that I was able to con him into killing himself by smashing into the ground than to let him burn to death?’
They sat in silence for a few moments.
‘You can be quite cruel sometimes,’ she said quietly.
‘I know,’ Nick said. ‘I didn’t used to be.’
Teresa felt the fight go out of her.
What the Hell. Just ask him. No preamble, he’s not in the mood. Frankly, neither am I.
‘I’ve been thinking about Annie,’ Teresa said, as matter-of-factly as she could.
‘What about her?’
‘She’s due to be released shortly and is dreading having to return home to continue her convalescence with her family.’
‘I understand they’re fairly appalling. Which explains her predilection for flying hither and yon as much as she can. What about asking her to come here?’
Teresa looked at him. ‘What?’
‘To convalesce here,’ he said. ‘Among friends.’
Teresa looked at Nick for a moment, her brow furrowed as she processed his proposition.
‘Unless you think it might be a burden for you? I rather thought you might enjoy some company. What were you thinking about her?’
Teresa felt her heart jump a little for joy.
‘On similar lines. Not quite what you were suggesting. I mean, I hadn’t arrived at a conclusion like you have,’ she lied, ‘but on reflection I think I might very well enjoy the company.’
‘Annie can be pretty full-on when she gets the wind in her sails. And I’ve no idea how good a patient she is. But it would only be for a few weeks. If it didn’t work out for whatever reason we can revisit the idea and think again.’
Once Nick had said the words out loud Teresa felt a little lightheaded with fear that her own feelings on the matter would be utterly transparent. She pretended to consider the proposition for a few moments.
‘Getting Annie back on her feet would be a little project for me – for us both, I suppose,’ she finally said.
‘Well, if you’re game, and she is, I think it could be terrific for both of you,’ Nick said. ‘I’m being a somewhat shitty husband at the moment. You could do with some decent company. And if she’s recovering she can’t get up to too much mischief!’
Teresa sometimes wished Nick was not the decent, reasonable man he was. Had he been difficult and bad-tempered she would undoubtedly feel less guilt about the way she occasionally thought and behaved.
But if he was not the man he was I would never have married him.
‘When might you ask Annie?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to visit her tomorrow. As usual.’
‘Excellent, ask her then,’ Nick said, like a Wing Commander agreeing a decisive plan of action. ‘If she hesitates, tell her it was my idea.’
‘Are you sure?’ Teresa asked. ‘It won’t irritate you having someone else in the house?’
‘Annie is like you – bursting with life. I can’t have too much of that around me. Tell her she has to come and recuperate here. Tell her it’s an order, from me!’
Teresa smiled, as Nick would have expected her to, and as she wanted to.
Bringing Annie into the house, into her daily life with her husband, excited and terrified her in equal measure.
Chapter 18
PAT LAY IN bed and watched Bob undress and put on his pyjamas. She tried to gauge his mood. She hoped he’d want to get under the blankets, turn his back to her, and go to sleep – though it hadn’t always been that way recently. She had become convinced the success of his novel had an uplifting effect on his libido, which he then inflicted on her. When they had first moved into Joyce’s house, Pat
had hoped their landlady would be a light sleeper, as this might curb Bob’s activities. On the first occasion Bob tried to have sex with Pat in Joyce’s cottage, Pat had urgently whispered, ‘Joyce might hear!’ at the first loud creak of a bedspring, and Bob had reluctantly rolled off, lay in the dark bemoaning Joyce for ten minutes, and fell asleep.
It wasn’t to last. They soon discovered Joyce slept like the dead after a significant nightcap, which she poured herself every night. When the mood took him, Bob waited until they could hear Joyce snoring heavily through the adjoining wall to her bedroom, and then rolled on top of his wife to exercise his ‘conjugal rights’. However, being mindful of waking Joyce with his exertions had forced Bob into becoming a quieter, subtler lover who had to take his time before climaxing. This meant he spent more time looking down at Pat, and she sometimes wondered if he wasn’t looking upon her beneath him with some semblance of actual tenderness – as if he were recalling their earlier life together, when they were keenly attracted to one another.
Bob turned off the light and climbed into bed beside Pat. To try and discourage him from doing anything but sleep, Pat had already rolled onto her side, facing away from him, and pretended to be unconscious. If she actually had been unconscious she wouldn’t have heard Bob lean over and whisper her name. The fact that she wasn’t made it more annoying that Bob didn’t seem to care either way. If she had been awake she would have to answer; if she had been asleep, he would almost certainly wake her up to answer.
‘I’m tired, Bob,’ Pat said, laying on how sleepy she was with a trowel.
‘I wondered if you might like to . . . you know . . .’
Pat opened her eyes, on the alert. And puzzled. Bob hadn’t asked if she would be interested in having sex for years. He simply imposed himself on and inside her, with almost no consultation.
‘I thought if we were quiet . . . you know . . .’
Pat reached out and turned on the small light on the table beside the bed, then turned and looked at her husband. He squinted in the sudden illumination, raising a hand against the light.
Pat looked at him in the gloom, wondering what he was up to. ‘What’re you doing, Bob?’ she asked. ‘You never ask me if I want to have sex. You always presume consent.’
‘Because we’re married.’
‘That’s not what being married means. You don’t even ask if I’m in the mood.’
‘Because you never are.’
‘Well, I’m not tonight. But why ask? Why are you pretending to be considerate?’
‘Why do you think I’m pretending?’
‘Because I know you.’
Bob looked at Pat for several moments. ‘Perhaps you knew me. But perhaps I’ve changed.’
Pat considered this for a moment. Bob doesn’t change. Don’t listen to this. Bob does not change.
‘I’m not only talking about tonight, Bob. I’m talking about breakfast in bed. I’m talking about lunch. Making me tea in the afternoon when I come back from a shift at the exchange. Little compliments about my cooking now, even though I’ve been making the same food for years in exactly the same way. The remark you made yesterday about my hair.’
‘I like your hair.’
‘You never comment on my hair.’
Bob looked at Pat in the semi-darkness. ‘There are a lot of things I haven’t done that I should have. I want to change that.’
Pat’s mind raced. In the past, Bob had often adopted a milder tone with her in the days following a particularly nasty outburst. It was standard practice on his part, and what contributed to her view of him as a profound coward. ‘Hit me if you have to,’ she once told him defiantly, ‘but don’t be so spineless as to pretend to be sorry afterwards.’ This was a different, softer tone to any she had previously heard from him.
Before she had time to respond, he continued. ‘I can’t expect you to believe me. I know that. But I don’t want to carry on the way we have. I see the way other men are with their wives – I used to watch how Doc Campbell was with Erica – and I wished we could have something similar.’
‘I think it’s called “love”, Bob. You killed it, remember, with the back of your hand. Then your open palm. On more than one occasion, your fist.’
Bob looked down and said nothing. Pat imagined his anger must be boiling over, and braced herself for what she thought would be an inevitable onslaught in one form or another. Muted perhaps, because of Joyce next door. But Bob could be just as effective at low volume.
But Bob didn’t move. Instead, he lifted his eyes and looked at her. She couldn’t be sure in the low light of the bedside lamp but . . .
Are his eyes wet? No. They can’t be . . .
‘I want to try and find it again, Patricia. I know how badly I’ve treated you in the past,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper.
‘The past and the near past,’ she corrected him softly, not allowing him to consign his dreadful behaviour to ancient history. He nodded, accepting her qualification.
‘I can’t erase that. I know that. I can’t ask you to trust me. I know that too. I have to earn it back.’ He hesitated. ‘I want to try. That’s all I can say to you.’
Pat’s eyes were now properly accustomed to the low light in the room. She saw the glint in his eye.
Is that—? Is that a tear?
‘What’s brought this on, Bob? Why are you doing this now?’
She was careful to eliminate any trace of suspicion from her voice. Not because he appeared to be tearful. Bob had cried crocodile tears in the past, and they counted for nothing soon after. Pat didn’t want to sound sceptical because she wanted to draw as much of this – whatever it proved to be – out of Bob as she could while he was willing to speak, if only to protect herself with as much information – or misinformation – as possible.
‘It was at the funeral. I was watching Erica crying over Will, and it struck me that if it had been my funeral you’d have had to pretend to cry over me. Or not cry at all. I’m right, aren’t I?’
Pat felt her heart thumping softly. She hadn’t expected this accurate assessment. She felt a throb of emotion rise in her throat, before forcing it back down.
Don’t be fooled. It’s a ruse. It’s always a ruse with Bob. Always. Because it’s always the same Bob underneath. You know this. Don’t be taken in. See how far he’s prepared to go with this, but do not for one moment be taken in by it.
‘Do you want me to lie, Bob?’ Pat asked, pushing to see how much honesty he was willing to take. He shook his head.
‘I know what you think of me,’ he said.
‘Have I not earned the right to think it?’
‘I’m not the man I used to be, Patricia. I’m not the man you married. I’m a better writer, but not, I think, a better man . . .’
Bob’s voice trailed off. Pat had no idea what to do. She had never seen or heard him like this – solemn, repentant.
That’s all it is, Pat. An act. He knows you want him to change. He’s reeling you in for – you don’t know. But that’s what he’s doing. Do not be fooled by this for a second.
‘Would you have gone with the Czech if I had been a better husband to you?’
Is this what this is about? Is he trying to get back at Marek somehow?
‘What’s he got to do with this?’
‘I know you. I drove you towards him. It happened to be him. It could have been anyone.’
Pat couldn’t deny the large element of truth in what Bob was saying. She was not unfaithful by nature. If she had been happy with Bob she may have been flattered by Marek’s attention when it came, but she would not have encouraged it, or taken it seriously. Within a minute or two she would have made it crystal clear she was a married woman and that would have been that.
And I would never have known the greatest joy, or pleasure, of my life.
Pat looked at Bob facing her somewhat sheepishly on the bed.
Our marital bed. When exactly did it become the deathbed o
f our marriage? The first time he took me against my will? The hundredth?
‘I don’t want to tonight, Bob. If that’s what this is all about. I’m just too tired.’
‘What?’
‘If you’ve got bored of me just lying beneath you counting the seconds until you’ve finished. If you’re trying to have me participate in some semblance of love-making . . .’
‘Is that what you think?’ Bob sounded quietly aghast.
Pat hesitated, but she was too committed to backtrack.
‘I can’t think what else,’ she said blankly. ‘I really can’t.’
For the second time in their conversation, Pat anticipated an outburst and stiffened her body against an assault she felt was certain to follow. Instead, Bob covered his eyes with his hand, and lowered his head. Then, softly at first, then louder, came the sound of a rising howl of anguish.
‘Bob?’ she asked quietly. ‘Are you crying?’
There was a moment’s silence before he managed to speak. ‘What must you think of me . . .?’ His voice was barely audible.
Pat’s mind turned to the Mass Observation reports she had been writing for weeks. All she thought of Bob was described on those pages in exhaustive detail. Even though the brief for Mass Observation report writers was wide open for them to write about any aspect of their lives during the war, she wouldn’t know how to write about this.
Pat looked at him. If it had been any other human being in front of her like this, and if she believed the pain they were trying to express was real and not put on to try to trick her, Pat would have held them in a tight, calming embrace. As she had held Erica at Will’s funeral. As she had held Frances at Peter’s. As she had held Sarah when the news came through of Adam’s capture at Dunkirk. As she had held Marek on the one occasion he had broken down in her company – at the thought he might be killed in action and never see Pat again.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ Bob whispered a little pathetically, unable to look at her. ‘Forgive me . . .’
Bob sat with his head down as one, then two tears fell from his cheeks onto the bed linen. Pat stared at him. At the tears now freely flowing down his cheeks and silently dripping onto the bed.
