‘ … don’t know how in God’s name he managed to get to a telephone out there, but he did.’
‘He has a staff job, for heaven’s sake, Bill. Of course he can get to a telephone.’
‘He’s devastated, Helen. Absolutely devastated. He asked me to tell you that, to begin with.’
‘He’ll get over it,’ said Helen.
Her voice was cold.
‘But, why, Helen? Just answer me that – why?’
‘Look Bill, you know I’m very fond of you and I don’t want us to have a row. But – he was killing me?’
‘What, was he beating you?’
‘No. Of course, not.’
‘Well what then? What was it?’
‘I can’t explain it in a way you’d understand.’
Bill’s voice was suddenly steely.
‘Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to – that is, if you want me to go away. Because here’s the way I see it. You had a lovely home, plenty of money, a husband that loved you and that was always faithful to you. If that wasn’t enough, he’s off in France risking his life for you —’
‘Oh spare me, Bill. He’s not risking his life’.
‘— Risking his life for you. And it still wasn’t enough for you. I have to say that sounds pretty selfish to me. Selfish – or crazy. Most women would love to have been in the situation you are in.
And he’s prepared to take you back. He asked me to tell you this. He’s prepared to overlook your whole … this whole thing and just carry on with life as it was. He loves you, Helen. That was what he said to me on the phone. “Please make it clear to her that I love her”.’
‘He doesn’t love me, Bill. He loves an image of me that he wants me to become.’
‘Oh, come off it, Helen. What does that mean anyhow? To be honest, that’s just a lot of clap-trap.’
‘It’s not clap-trap. It’s my marriage, Bill – or, at least, was. You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like – how suffocating it was.’
‘You should see some of the people I come across in the course of my work. If you did, you’d see how bloody lucky you were.’
‘Look, he doesn’t own me, Bill. He may have been my husband but he doesn’t own me. I just want to get my own life back. To go back to being me. I’ve been doing that since I came down here. I’ve had some of the happiest weeks of my life since I got here.’
‘What – with that “lodger” of yours?’
Bill said the word with a sneer in his voice. For a second Helen said nothing. Then Lewis heard her say,’ How dare you? How dare you?’ And this time the ‘dare’ was said in disbelief. ‘How dare you accuse me of something like that?’
Lewis heard a chair slide across the floor as if someone was getting up.
‘Bit too close to the mark, eh Helen?’
‘Get out of my house now,’ Lewis heard Helen say.
There was fury in her voice. Lewis pulled away from the window and hurried silently down towards the rear hedge. Next moment he heard the back door open and first, Bill and then Helen were there.
‘Please Helen,’ Bill was saying. ‘I hadn’t meant for us to quarrel but you’re making a terrible mistake. One that you’ll regret for the rest of your life.’
Lewis began to walk up towards them.
‘Why don’t we let me be the judge of that,’ said Helen, with icy fury.
Then she slammed the back door and disappeared inside. Bill looked at Lewis for several moments and seemed to be about to say something. But then he just turned towards the front gate and was gone.
34
Lewis came back into the house. Helen was at the sink, hands on the front edge of it, facing the window. Her head was bowed and she was shaking. She was crying. Lewis went to her, putting an arm around her.
‘Here, come and sit down.’
She looked at him. Her face was red and sodden with tears and she looked bewildered, as though she didn’t recognise him. She reeled a little and Lewis thought she was going to fall. He turned her, guided her to the chair and she half-fell, was half-pushed into it. He knelt beside her.
‘How did he find you? I thought you said you posted the letter in Plymouth?’
‘I did. That wasn’t how he did it. He didn’t need the postmark.’
‘Then how?’
‘He’s a policeman,’ she said with annoyance in her voice.
Lewis still look puzzled and Helen flared into anger.
‘Think about it. Because he’s a policeman he was able to check my bank account and find out where I was withdrawing money. Once he’d tracked me down to Fowey, a photograph and a few questions did the rest.’
She sat slumped in the chair. Lewis took her hand.
‘But it’s over now. He’s gone. You told him you weren’t going back.’
He paused and then hurriedly added, ‘Didn’t you?’
She looked at him and he thought, for a moment, she was going to explode into anger but she just said, ‘That won’t be the end of it.’
‘But what can he do? He may be a policeman but he can’t force you to go back. It’s a free country. You can do as you choose.’
‘Oh, it’s been stupid this game we’ve been playing here. Playing house just like a couple of children.’
‘We haven’t been playing. It hasn’t been a game. This is real life.’
But she was shaking her head.
‘No, it’s not. No, it’s not,’ and now she was angry again. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She pulled her hand away and spoke very slowly, deliberately.
‘Real life is me married to Robert. This has been – oh, I don’t know what it’s been. A holiday romance without the romance. An interlude? A piece of madness?’
‘It —’
‘Look,’ she said, her face turning bright red. ‘Will you shut up and listen to me?’
She had never spoken to him like this before. She had never told him to shut up. He did as he was told.
‘I was crazy to do this. Mad. It was pure madness.’
For an instant it ran through his mind that she was mad. She was almost unrecognisable from the Helen he knew.
‘This isn’t how life works – you try a marriage and if you don’t like it, you leave it like a bad meal in a restaurant. Marriage is for life. Robert and I are for life.’
She paused and then said, ‘I’ve made my bed, Lewis. I’ll have to lie in it.’
Lewis was at a loss for words.
‘And you know,’ she said. ‘Maybe it wasn’t so bad anyway.’
Lewis stood up slowly and took a step away from her.
‘He loves me.’
Now, it was as though she was talking to herself.
‘He does. In his own way. He just finds it hard to show it. And why wouldn’t he with the childhood he had? Anyway, when he comes home from the War, it’ll be different. He’ll be different.’
Lewis didn’t know what to do. Argue with her and risk even more anger or just agree with her and hope she would calm down.
‘What do you think?’ she suddenly said, looking up at him.
‘Whatever’s going to make you happy.’
It was the first thing that ran into his head and he thought it sounded limp, unhelpful. But, as the words hung there, he realised how true they were. That was all he wanted. He would have loved it if that had included him, but ultimately he just wanted her to be happy. She had a huge capacity for getting pleasure out of simple things – food, music, the sun and the beach and the sea. He just wanted to see her smiling and laughing all the time.
‘Go back to him,’ she said, definitely. ‘Yes, that’s what I’ll do.’
‘And you’ll be happy to spend the rest of your days like that?’ Lewis asked. ‘Those would be happy days?’
Helen got up and went back to the sink, looking out the window towards the sea. She snuffled and found a handkerchief in her pocket and blew her nose. Her back was to him.
‘We can’t always pick what we want, can
we?’ she said. ‘You of all people should know that, shouldn’t you?’
‘I should?’
‘With the War, silly.’
She turned to face him and the way she had called him ‘silly’ sounded a bit like the old, affectionate Helen.
‘You hardly want to go off to war, but you have to. It’s your duty. Well, this is my duty.’
She faltered.
‘This is my duty,’ she said again, and as she did the tears began to flow again.
‘This is my duty,’ she said once more, but now the words were mangled in the tears.
He went to her and took her in his arms and held her. She sobbed and sobbed while he made soothing noises and stroked her hair. He could feel his shoulder getting wet where the tears were falling. After a long time her crying abated and she eased away from him.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And sorry for being so horrible to you a while ago.’
He shook his head.
‘It was nothing,’ he tried to say but the words came out as a whisper.
Then, knowing that he risked the whole thing flaring up again, he said, ‘I’m sure Robert isn’t a bad person. But he’s bad for you. You know you won’t ever be happy with him. You’ve found happiness here. You’ve done the hardest bit. Don’t throw it all away. Hold onto what you’ve got. You need to go to a solicitor. Find one today. Get your divorce going and then you’ll be safe.’
‘I thought he was out of my life – Robert, I mean. I felt light, pure, somehow whole again. Bill coming here has sort of tainted all of that. Made it seem dirty.’
‘You mean that thing he said about me being your lodger?’
‘You were listening, weren’t you?’
‘Of course I was listening. I didn’t know who he was. He was a big man, I wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt you.’
‘Oh Lewis, you’re such a darling. If I was twenty years younger. Come here to me.’
She went to him and then said, ‘Your shoulder’s all wet.’
‘You did that,’ he said.
She put her arms around him and held him tight and they both began to laugh.
35
Over the days that followed her brother-in-law’s visit, Helen made no attempt to go to Fowey to find a solicitor. Several times he was going to say it to her. In bed at night he would rehearse different ways of saying it, trying to find a tactful way. Maybe he should phrase it like a reminder – acting as though she had forgotten. Or perhaps he should offer to go with her. When he was down the town he looked around and found a couple of names on brass plates. But, in the end, he said nothing. Better to keep the peace. Was that what his mother had done with his father? Gradually though, the tension eased as there was no reappearance from Bill Goddard. August turned into September.
As the leaves began to take on their first autumn colours, they gave up swimming and instead spent much of their time walking the lanes and pathways and cliffs. The ground, which had been iron-hard all summer, began to show signs of dampness. Dews were heavy and some days began with mist, though it pretty much always burned off by lunchtime.
Several nights, Lewis heard muffled sobbing coming from Helen’s room. He would ask her about it – obliquely – the next morning. Had she slept well? Did she have any dreams? But the answer was always the same – that she had slept really well. He ceased to ask.
For Lewis, September marked the end of the seemingly endless book of summer. The world was starting to intervene again. There was so sign of the War ending so now it looked to be inevitable that he would go to France. And what of Helen? Once he left what would she do? Would she stay here or was it best to leave now, given that her husband knew where she was? Lewis had no sense of it and was edgy about asking.
And what of he and Helen? And what was ‘he and Helen’ anyway? The mother he hadn’t known? A woman that he had offered to support when he was in France? He wanted to be her lover. There were times when he lay in his bed and ached to go to the room across the landing – or for her to come to him. Unless he was too tired and fell asleep straight away, these were always his last thoughts every night.
In his fantasy there was usually a thunderstorm, crashing loud and with lightning. His room would be dark but from time to time, sheets of lightning would blaze, lighting up the room like flares. Suddenly the door knob would rattle slightly and turn and she would be there in her long white nightgown. She would say something about being scared or cold and he would fold back the bedclothes, inviting her to climb in. Soon they would be wonderfully warm together, arms around each other, legs intertwined. They would kiss and they would gradually undress each other and then they would make love.
It wasn’t just at bedtime that he had fantasies like this. He often thought about her when he was walking out from town or out running or any time he had a few idle moments. He often found that when he was reading, he was seeing the words but he wasn’t taking them in. Instead she filled his thoughts.
The last day of September came. The sun was westering and Helen had gone into Fowey. The evening looked like giving way to a cold night, the first really cold one they had had. Lewis was outside chopping wood and loading up the log basket. They would keep the range hot for as long as possible because once the fire died, the house would get very cold and probably a bit damp. Lewis wondered whether Helen would survive a winter here if she did stay.
He finished filling up the log basket and carried it into the kitchen where he emptied it into a bigger basket which stood by the range. One more load. He carried the smaller basket back outside and was standing at the door for a moment, watching the setting sun which had started to paint the western sky orange, when he heard the sound of footsteps in the lane. He thought at first it must be Helen wheeling the bike back up the hill, but there was no sound of the bike and the footsteps seemed heavier, and of someone who was almost marching rather than pushing a bike. Curious, Lewis came round to the corner of the cottage from where he could see the gate. The hedge was over six foot high and so concealed whoever it was. A few moments later though, he saw a figure appear at the gate. The man was tall – over six foot – and wore an officer’s cap and an unbuttoned greatcoat. He looked at the cottage for a moment, then bent and opened the gate. He stepped in, turned and bending a second time, shut it carefully behind him.
When he straightened up and turned round, Lewis caught a glimpse of an Army uniform and leather beneath the greatcoat. The man wore immaculately polished cavalry boots. With the coat hanging open he reminded Lewis of a khaki rook. Lewis knew who he was.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘can I help you?’
‘Ah, hello, yes, I’m looking for Helen Hope,’ said the figure.
There was a faint hint of the North or Midlands about the accent but Lewis thought that it was overlaid with a more posh accent, as though the man were trying to hide the original one.
‘She’s not here.’
If this was meant to deter the man, it had no effect whatsoever. He came towards Lewis and removed his cap. He had black hair flecked with grey and a black moustache. His eyes were hooded and his face was gaunt, almost cadaverous in appearance.
‘Major Robert Goddard. And you must be Mister Friday.’
He extended his hand. There was something about the way he said ‘Mister Friday’ – as though Lewis were masquerading in some way. An actor.
Lewis had known this moment would come. He had often thought about it and in his head, it had always ended the same way, with him sending Helen’s husband packing with a flea in his ear. Lewis would say a few cool, carefully chosen phrases and the man would leave, never to return. Lewis had never been quite sure what the things he would say were and now that the moment had arrived, he realised it was too late to try to work them out. He was lost for words, and weakly took Robert’s hand. The handshake was firm, the skin dry and papery.
‘When you say she’s not here, she’s left? Gone some place else?’
The voice was authoritarian with a hint of imp
atience. An officer addressing an enlisted man. Helen’s husband was playing with him. Lewis didn’t know whether or not to tell the truth. He opted for saying as little as possible.
‘No.’
‘No? No, she’s not left. So she’ll be back soon then?’
They stood looking at each other. Goddard spoke next filling the gap.
‘My brother mentioned you. You met my brother, didn’t you?’
Lewis nodded, almost involuntarily.
‘So you’re my wife’s lodger.’
The words hung there like an accusation. Lewis was astonished to see the man actually look him up and down.
‘You should leave,’ blurted out Lewis. ‘She doesn’t want to see you. She told your brother that.’
‘Ah, so she is here and she will be coming back.’
‘Why don’t you just leave now,’ Lewis said. ‘Leave her alone. She doesn’t want to see you any more. She’s finished with you.’
‘How old are you anyway?’ asked Goddard.
‘Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen on November. I’ll be going into the Army then.’
‘Can’t be soon enough. We can use every man we can get. It’s been damned hard going out there on the Somme.’
The words were conciliatory, spoken warmly, almost as if between a father and a son. Lewis remembered what Helen had said about Goddard having a staff job. There was another long silence. Goddard reached inside his coat and extracted a cigarette case. He clicked it open and offered one to Lewis.
‘No thanks,’ said Lewis.
‘Mind if I do?’ he said, but he was already lighting the cigarette anyway. He blew the smoke off to the side. Goddard looked around.
‘Must be pretty bleak here in winter,’ he said.
‘It’s a beautiful part of the country at any time of year,’ said Lewis defensively.
‘I’m sure you’re right. Will she be back soon?’
Lewis hesitated again.
‘My wife. Will she be back soon?’
Starlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 1) Page 18
