‘A bombing raid,’ I repeated.
‘Some loose ordnance. Luftwaffe happy to risk some flak by dumping its load over London. Doesn’t happen much these days. Unlucky.’
‘Unlucky,’ I said, not sure whether it was me or Max who was unlucky.
‘I brought you back the letter.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I have a car,’ he said.
I looked up from my uncompleted logbook. I was unsure what he meant by that statement. He must have seen my puzzlement for he added: ‘I can take you into London. We could have a drink somewhere. Cheer you up.’
‘Yes. Cheer me up.’
‘Well?’
‘I’ll need a few minutes to fill this in.’
Doug took me to a pub in a narrow lane just off Curzon Street near Green Park. Plush red leather banquettes, huge bar with little on offer, all a bit tattered but what wasn’t in those days. Doug brought over a beer for himself, a gin and tonic for me. I hadn’t said much during the ride over, Doug being kind enough to leave me alone with my thoughts, but now he seemed anxious to talk.
‘I’m divorced,’ he said. ‘I thought you should know.’
I didn’t think I should know at all, my mind being more occupied with my remorse rather than on Doug’s marital status. That didn’t stop him going on.
‘A couple of children. One boy and one girl,’ he added. ‘They’re with their mother, of course. Down in Guildford. I don’t get to see them very often. My work takes me all over the place. Not much time.’ He took a large gulp of beer. ‘Growing up without me. Perhaps not a bad thing. And you?’
I now realised what was going on. I was supposed to participate in a conversation rather than sit there all quiet and reflective, possibly because Doug had no idea how to treat a grieving woman. It had been a long time since I’d been out like this with a man who wasn’t a flying officer or my senior commander. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Tell me about you and Max. Were you close?’
‘We were an item back in my silent film days. It didn’t last too long. Just over a year. He was very intense about everything. Politics, ideas, literature, me. He was a good writer though.’
‘Yes. The Woman Walks Free was excellent, ahead of its time really. Even all these silly Ministry of Information films he wrote for. He always did professional work. So what happened with the two of you?’
‘He was ambitious. We both were. Then, when I could no longer be a vehicle for his ambition, he… buggered off.’
Doug smiled yet he seemed slightly taken aback by my swearing. To be honest, I had surprised myself but it showed me how angry I was with Max. For buggering off in the first place. And now, after all these years, getting himself killed before I had a chance to talk to him.
‘One of the chaps,’ Doug said.
‘Who? Max?’
‘No, you,’ he said. ‘Too much time spent with the troopers.’
‘I can swear if I want to.’
‘I’m sure you can. And you will, no doubt. But why did you want to see him again? If all he did was bugger off the last time.’
‘Unfinished business.’
‘I see.’ Doug moved in closer, stretched his arm along the top of the banquette above me. There was a smell from him that was so familiar. It came as a shock to me when I remembered what it was. Citrus shaving soap. The same as my father used. ‘And are you stepping out with someone now?’ he asked.
I laughed at his remark. Perhaps a little too loudly, for a lonely old codger at the bar turned round, gave me a look for disturbing his solace. ‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’m a middle-aged spinster.’ Oh how I hated that word. Spinster. There I should be, sitting at home, spinning thread, rather than up in the skies putting a Spit through its paces. ‘No, not spinster. Spitster. That’s what I am.’ It must have been the gin talking for I laughed, raised my glass to the skies. ‘To all the great female Spitsters.’
Doug passed me his handkerchief. It was only then that I realised I had been crying.
‘Perhaps we should go,’ he said.
‘Go where?’
Doug took me back to his tiny flat in Shepherd’s Bush. He cooked me a rubbery omelette from dried eggs and I drank too much gin. We made love on damp sheets wrapped around a sagging mattress while sirens wailed outside and I let a middle-aged woman’s memory of one man be replaced by the comfort of – and perhaps hopes for – another.
But it didn’t work out that way. We didn’t see too much of each other after that interlude. He was busy making propaganda films all over the country for the Ministry of Information while I was ferrying planes daily for the ATA. If luck had it and his break in filming coincided with a few days leave for me, then we might manage to see each other. But an affair that started out with a lot of initial passion soon died away through lack of care and attention. Wartime might have been a benign background for desperate lovers but not for long-term relationships. So that was the end of Doug. At least for the time being.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Absent Fathers
Working on Georgie’s early memoirs had put Laura in a nostalgic mood, sending her on a guilt-ridden trip down to visit her father in Eastbourne. The day was warm with only a light sea-breeze so his care nurse had placed him outside in a wheelchair, lined up alongside other naval veterans on the gravel path fronting the cream Regency-style building that faced southwards to the Channel. Nurse Donovan was a young Irish woman with a plain, round oatcake of a face who gave Laura a little dip of a curtsey as she approached as if she were welcoming royalty itself to her parish.
‘That’s your daughter Laura here to see you,’ Nurse Donovan said bending down close to her father. ‘Remember Laura? The famous film star. Of course you do.’ And then to Laura herself. ‘I’ll just leave you with the Captain then.’
The rank was not some kind of patronising honorific. Her father had indeed been a captain, commanding ocean liners out of Southampton until he retired. Laura always remembered him as a gentle mast of a man, tall and straight-backed, red-cheeked like a drinker although he was more of a connoisseur than a hardened sot, his face forever tilted slightly upwards as if he were constantly checking the direction of the wind. Hidden behind his back in large hands cuffed with lines of gold braid there would always be some exotic gift – a handmade doll from Peru, a coral necklace from Hawaii, a child’s dress made from Shanghai silkworms – items she still treasured as compensation for the time with him she never had. Now here he was with all the time in the world for her and he had no idea who she was.
She pulled up a rickety metal chair rusted in places from the salty air and sat down beside him. She waited until she felt he was aware of her presence. Good eye contact, plenty of touching, the simplest of language, that was what she had been told. It was her turn to give him a gift. She took out the small aluminium tube from her handbag, unscrewed the top and tipped out the cigar, placed it within her father’s fingers, then guided his hand so he could run the parejo under his nose.
‘Smells,’ Nurse Donovan had told her. ‘Smells is always something that can bring them back.’ As the brown leathery wrapped-up leaves passed beneath his nostrils, she was irritated to see a patch of grey stubble just above his upper lip where the nurse’s razor had missed a stroke, a lack of precision so unbecoming in a man who prided himself on smooth-cheeked perfection. She would ‘have a word’ – as her mother would put it – with the carer later, although her mother barely came to see the Captain these days, off as she was on her own ocean voyages, possibly as revenge for the loss of precious time in her marriage to this seafaring man.
‘Chocolate,’ her father said, although Laura wasn’t sure if he was referring to the aroma from the cigar or if he actually wanted some chocolate.
‘Yes, chocolate,’ she echoed. She would have liked to have lit up the cigar for him but smoking was forbidden on the premises even out here in the grounds. She retrieved the parejo from the clutch of his fingers, returned it to its tube,
slid it into his top pocket. She then delved back into her handbag for the print-outs she’d run off from her computer.
‘Football,’ Nurse Donovan had also told her. ‘They don’t remember nothing but they can tell you about a goal scored fifty years ago. See if you can talk to your father about football. That way you might feel you’ve had some meaningful conversation.’
Laura didn’t know the first thing about the sport although she did know the Captain had supported Southampton. An obvious choice really, her father managing to sneak in a home game whenever his ship was docked in the city’s harbour. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, she was able to locate a website that contained all kinds of memories of famous games at the club’s ground, The Dell as it was called in her father’s day, even she knew that now.
‘Here’s a game for you, Daddy,’ she said. ‘March sixteenth, nineteen eighty four. Southampton versus Liverpool. Two-nil for Southampton. Both goals scored by Daniel Wallace. One of them an overhead kick. It was the first ever televised match from The Dell. Were you there?’
Her father just stared out to sea, his once vibrant brown eyes faded to a kind of dull yellow. She thought again of Georgie’s photographs, how she had managed to capture the essence of her elderly subjects yet now when she observed her own father she could locate nothing of the person she once knew. If only Georgie had been around to photograph her father while his own essence still remained, she would have treasured it forever. A breeze came up and she shivered. She lifted up a fold of the blanket on her father’s lap so that it covered his chest. She tried again:
‘Southampton defeated Manchester United one goal to nil to win the FA Cup Final in 1976. Do you remember that game, Daddy?’ She looked across at him but again no response. She was just about to search for another stand-out piece of information from her print-outs when her father said:
‘Turner.’
‘Turner? Who’s Turner?
‘Turner, Rodrigues, Peach, Holmes, Blyth, Steele, Gilchrist, Channon, Osgood, McCalliog, Stokes.’
‘Who are they, Daddy?’
He shook his head.
‘Were they your friends? Your crew?’
Her father jabbed a finger at the paper in her hand. She looked down the sheet. He had just recited the names of every player in that Southampton Cup-winning team of 1976. ‘Oh, Daddy,’ she cried.
She sat quietly with him after that, watching his face in its scan of the sea, listening to his hoarse breathing. She really didn’t know this man at all, off as he had been on his long haul seafaring stints that took him away from home three or four weeks at a time. She remembered the excitement of awaiting his return on shore leave, the anticipation of the presents that would be the envy of her young classmates, but beyond that she hardly recalled his visits. What did he do during his time at home? She had no memory of him together with her mother or of him taking her anywhere. He had no interest in the garden or the pub. He walked a lot, she remembered that. Across Hampstead Heath, over Parliament Hill and on down to Camden where he would follow the towpath on the Regent’s Canal for miles. He never took her with him, too far for a young girl he’d say, she guessed he just wanted to be alone, close to the barges and to the water. She thought back to Georgie and the loss of her father in the war. Perhaps that is why both she and Georgie had become actresses, seeking the attention they never had from absent fathers, trying hard not to feel alone.
‘I’m doing a one-woman play about the life of Georgie Hepburn,’ she told him. ‘Do you know who she is?’
Her father just looked at her, then his eyes wavered to focus on what was behind her. The beach and the sea.
Nurse Donovan returned with her usual patronising manner that so irritated Laura but which she stopped herself from criticising as the nurse really was an excellent carer. Apart from the sloppy shaving which she had decided to forgive.
‘Did he behave himself then?’ Nurse Donovan asked.
‘Good as gold.’
‘He’s such a gentleman he is, aren’t you, Captain?’
‘Has my mother been down recently?’
‘Oh yes, she was here only last week. Must have been… let me see…Wednesday was it? No, Thursday. Yes, Thursday. She looked so well. All tanned and healthy. Didn’t she, Captain? All nice and tanned and healthy. Your wife. Been on holiday.’
Her father just continued to stare out to sea.
‘She brought you a nice gift, didn’t she?’ Nurse Donovan went on. ‘She’s always bringing you presents.’
‘What did she give him?’ Laura asked.
‘Oh, a nice honey cake all the way from Madeira. And a straw hat. I forgot about that. I could have had him wearing it today. Just the right weather for a hat, don’t you think? Smart. For such a gentleman.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Hepburn Archives
Extract from an unpublished memoir
8th May 1945 was a public holiday to celebrate victory over the Germans. I remember it well. How could anyone forget? The war in Europe was over but for me, another war had began. The battle with my mother. My Aunt Ginny had called me.
‘The police found her,’ she told me. ‘Wandering round the fields in a neighbouring village. How she got there I do not know. She was in her nightdress, wearing wellington boots. I can’t stay with her, Georgie. I need to go back to the farm. You have to come down.’
It was easier said than done. As soon as war was officially declared over, the citizens of London had burst into spontaneous celebration, masses of them rushing to converge around Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. Everything and everywhere was festooned with red, white and blue ribbons, the church bells were ringing, the river craft were hooting their horns, people were singing and dancing in the streets. I was on the top deck of a bus which was trying to plough its way through all of this just as dusk was falling. What I remember most were the windows, the lights coming on behind the glass, the black-out blinds all taken down, a city blinking awake from its war-weary slumber. Who would have thought my soul could receive such a boost from these storeys of unobstructed glass? Such a symbol of hope those windows were, of optimism, of the future. I got off the bus, walked the rest of the way to Victoria Station, pushing against the crowd.
I hadn’t seen my mother for two years. The difference in her appearance over that time was horrific. When I had left she was a healthy, robust woman actively engaged in a social whirl of village fêtes, garden parties, community meetings and church affairs. I returned to find her shrunk, skinny and ashen-faced, sitting stiff-backed and expressionless in her favourite armchair. The worst of all was the terrified look in her eyes.
‘You finally came to visit, Georgie,’ she said as I pecked her sparsely powdered cheek.
‘Yes, I am here.’
Aunt Ginny hugged me, shepherded me away into another room.
‘You have to be very patient with her,’ she said.
‘What exactly is wrong?’
‘She’s losing her memory.’
‘She seemed to remember my lack of visits.’
‘She has quite lucid periods when it seems she is just fine. But the doctor says these lucid periods will become shorter and shorter over time.’
‘Over how much time?’
‘That he doesn’t know. Now remember, try to be patient. I can say this as your aunt but it is not one of your better qualities.’ She hugged me again. ‘You must come over to see us. You’ve become very lax in your duties as a god-parent.’
‘Now that this damn war is over. And once things settle down here.’
‘I hope so. Susan is a very lovely young woman. And she has your independent streak.’
Things started off as usual. My mother worked away in her garden most of the day, her friends came to visit, I shopped for groceries in the village, cooked the meals, we listened to the radio after dinner, my mother had some brandy with her tea and biscuits, then she went off to bed. We didn’t talk much, and if we did, it was about innocuous subject
s, village gossip, the radio programmes, how various plants were progressing in her garden, she seemed calm. She still made the occasional undermining comment about me – my lack of a husband and family, a proper career, the failure of my filial duties as a daughter. But I felt I was in carer mode rather than in resentful daughter mode, and these barbed remarks passed over me without much reaction on my part. Sometimes she would forget or become confused about the simplest detail – the wrong day for someone she had invited for tea, whether or not she had just watered the flowers, losing her knitting and accusing me of hiding it – but generally I felt she was coping. Four nights into my stay, her screaming woke me. I rushed into her room. The bed was stripped and she lay naked in the centre of it, balled up into a foetal position, her body shaking from her sobs.
‘I want to die,’ she kept saying, over and over again. ‘I want to die.’
I went over to the edge of the bed, I didn’t know what to do. I had never seen my mother naked before and in such a terrified and vulnerable state. This pale shrivelled up, shivering creature with her sagging flesh webbed with bruised-blue veins. I tried to prise a hand away from her face but she shook me away. ‘I can’t stand it any more,’ she wailed.
‘What can’t you stand?’
‘Can’t you see it? Can’t you smell it?’
I didn’t think I could see or smell anything special. Until I realised that what I had mistaken for a shadow across the mattress was in fact a large stain. My mother was lying in the damp of her own urine.
‘We need to clean you up,’ I said.
She moved her head slightly from the crook of her arms, so that there was this one dark brown eye looking up at me, like the terrified glance of a beached whale. ‘Nothing left,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The cupboard.’
It was more than a cupboard, rather a small shelved room for linen, space enough for an adult to stand in and sort the folding of the laundry. As a child, it was my favourite place in which to hide away from a hostile world. I opened the door. Instead of the usual neat rows of stacked towels, blankets and bed linen, there was a mound of stinking sheets topped off with several discarded nightgowns. I went back over to the bed, gently took my mother’s hand. She responded by gripping me tightly.
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