‘Now, Mother! Don’t be morbid,’ the younger and livelier of the sisters piped up. ‘The worst is over. We have to think of the future, now.’
How could the worst be over? And as for the future – was I about to lose Jack as soon as Fate had brought him back to me? I watched them from the till as they talked and laughed. It was such a different Jack, so lively and happy. I wanted to be part of his family, to be able to touch him and joke with him as they did in their easy way.
When I was clearing the dishes, the mother opened her handbag and discreetly passed a five pound note across to him, but he shook his head and wouldn’t take it. ‘You have to have some money, Jack. However you feel about it, you can’t live on air,’ she said. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the private income and why his mother was giving him money like he was a child. She then tried a pound, and finally a ten shilling note, which he took as if he really didn’t want to and only because his sister pushed it into his pocket, saying, ‘Even a saint like you needs to eat and drink.’ It struck me as a funny thing to say about your brother. None of my brothers were anything like saints, especially Douglas, who was always in some sort of trouble, pinching things and being places he shouldn’t be. Dad had had to take the strap to him more than once. I was surprised, though, when they all got up and said goodbye in quite a happy way. Much too happy, I thought, considering that next week he could be sunk in a convoy or shot down from a burning plane.
Jack’s mother paid the bill and said they had to hurry or they would miss the train to London. Jack ushered them out, and I followed, loitering in the doorway, thinking he might ask for his hat and coat and I could help him on with them, feeling the soft cashmere or the silk lining as I made my own private farewell. It was only when his mother kissed him again and said, ‘Goodbye, darling. And don’t forget to write!’ that I realized they were going without him. And then, when he’d waved them off, he turned back and went past me up the stairs. I could hardly believe it. I slipped behind the counter and checked in the visitors’ book. There on the bottom line, Jack Thompson, Cavendish Square, London, in dark, neat handwriting. Such an English name. And such a posh-sounding address. And how posh all of them had been, his mother and sisters. I must have seemed really stupid to refuse his shilling three years before.
I wanted to make amends for my stupidity, by serving Jack the very best cuts of meat and one of the secret desserts Mr Mullan kept in the cold larder for favoured customers. I’d show Jack how sophisticated I’d got and perhaps, this time, he would tell me something about his real self. From seven o’clock on I had my eyes trained on the dining room entrance, and nearly ran into Mavis three times. ‘What’s the matter, Elsie?’ she said. ‘You’re a real clodhopper tonight!’ But nine o’clock came, the dining room emptied, and Jack hadn’t come.
‘How long is Mr Thompson staying?’ I asked Mr Reeves casually when we were laying up for the next day’s breakfast. Mr Reeves said only the one night, booked from London by telephone he believed, and could I be a dear and take some cocoa up to twenty-one as Mavis was washing up and the new girl had gone home with a sick headache. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask you to do room service, but I know I can rely on you when the chips are down.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Anything to help the war effort, Mr Reeves.’
In fact, I made two cups of cocoa and after taking the first to twenty-one, I knocked on the adjoining door. Jack opened it. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, his arms all golden and smooth. He must have been reading again, as his book was open on the bed. I could see the dent on the coverlet where he’d been lying. ‘Your cocoa, Mr Thompson,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘You’ve made a mistake, I think,’ he said.
‘No, it’s for you. I made it specially. Only you mustn’t let it go cold like you usually do.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
I felt embarrassed now. He clearly didn’t remember and I was near to making a fool of myself. But it was worth one more go.
‘We’ve met before. Three years ago. You gave me a shilling tip and I didn’t want to take it.’
He laughed. ‘Good lord! When I came down for that PPU meeting! I’m so sorry – I didn’t recognize you. You were a lot younger, I think. Well, obviously you were, but I mean – not so elegant and grown-up.’ I blushed, glad I had put my hair up before dinner and dabbed on a little lipstick. He surveyed me as I stood in the doorway, cup in hand, and I wondered whether he was considering if I was now more worthy of his notice. But he only said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any kind of tip this time. I’ve only got a ten shilling note.’
‘Take it anyway,’ I said, holding out the cocoa. ‘Or I’ll have to pour it down the sink, and that would be a waste of rations.’
‘Well, we can’t have that.’ He took the cup, then paused. ‘Are you allowed to come in while I drink it? I could do with some company. Or is that against the rules?’
My heart thudded in my chest. ‘I’m off duty now,’ I lied. ‘So I can do as I please.’
‘Will you come in then?’
And so I found myself stepping into Jack’s bedroom with Jack there in his shirt sleeves and his book on the bed, and the bedside lamp glowing just as dimly as the one on the corner table three years before. I didn’t care if Mr Reeves saw me. I didn’t care if I got the sack. I was alone with Jack. It was like the night before battle when men and women do all kinds of foolish things.
‘Do sit down.’ He removed his jacket from the back of the rickety bedroom chair, moved his book onto the chest of drawers and sat on the edge of the bed. He lifted the cup to his lips. I didn’t look at his fingers, just concentrated on the burnished shine of his forearms in the lamplight. I could feel myself trembling. I had no idea what was going to happen.
We sat in silence for a bit while he drank. He didn’t seem to mind the silence but I felt so wound up that I had to speak. ‘What is it you’re reading?’ I said, nodding at the book. I almost bit back the words as I said them, because I hated it when people said the same thing to me. Mr Reeves and Mavis were always asking me that question, though they had no interest whatsoever in the answer.
He hesitated, and I could see he didn’t want to seem too highbrow. But he just said, ‘Bertrand Russell.’
I’d heard the name, but I’d never seen his books in the lending library. ‘What sort of thing does he write?’
‘Philosophy, mainly.’
‘Really?’ I couldn’t help grinning. I really had been right in that old guess of mine.
‘And mathematics too. But I don’t understand a lot of that.’ He smiled, and I knew he was trying to make me feel better about being uneducated. That was the sort of gentleman he was.
But I put him right. ‘Oh, I’m pretty good at figures. I’m responsible for the till and have to do the balance at the end of the day. Mr Reeves hates it if we’re a farthing out – not that we are usually, but Mavis forgets things sometimes.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Arithmetic. Rather you than me. I could never do all those calculations – you know, the ones involving thirty pounds of bananas at fivepence halfpenny a pound.’ He laughed.
‘That would be: five thirties are one hundred and fifty, plus thirty halfpennies is fifteen pence, equals a hundred and sixty-five pence, which is – divided by twelve –’ I paused ‘– thirteen shillings and ninepence.’
He stared at me. ‘Good Lord!’
‘It’s not difficult,’ I said, blushing a bit. ‘I mean, I have to do it every day, so it’s second nature.’ Then I felt foolish. What was I doing showing off like a child in front of the teacher, when I wanted to impress him with my grown-up charm?
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed. Not that we have any bananas to count, these days. My mother says she hasn’t seen one in I don’t know how long.’
‘We got hold of a few last year. Mr Mullan put them in a trifle to make them go further.’
‘Trifle, eh? You do well for yourselves down here, don’t y
ou? Eggs, cream, butter, cakes. My sisters were envious. They can’t get much of that in London …’
‘Well, we’ve got our own chickens out the back. And Mr Mullan deals direct with a couple of farmers for the butter and so on.’
He raised his eyes. ‘Ah. Black market, you mean.’
‘Well, not really. We all have to do what we can, don’t we?’
He smiled. ‘All of us have to. In our different ways.’ And I felt suddenly tawdry, and I knew Jack would never buy anything on the black market, and would always be straight as a die.
There was another silence. Again, Jack seemed not to mind, but I felt awkward. ‘Where are you off to?’ I asked, hoping he’d say he was stationed in the local barracks – somewhere I could meet him when he had leave, where we could go to the pictures together and then have tea in a café and be waited on by somebody else.
‘Oh, somewhere in the country,’ he said, vaguely. ‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name.’
Obviously, he couldn’t really have forgotten the name if he was having to get there, so I realized he must be doing something so secret he couldn’t even tell me. Careless words cost lives, after all. Perhaps there was a country house somewhere out on Dartmoor where he’d be taught wireless codes and then dropped behind enemy lines. He was so cool and nonchalant, I imagined he would make a good spy, risking his life like Leslie in Pimpernel Smith. ‘I suppose it’s a bit nerve-racking,’ I said. ‘Not knowing what’s going to happen to you from now on. Where you’ll be sent, I mean.’
‘Oh, I know what’s going to happen.’ He said it with a kind of sureness, as if he knew what he was in for. ‘It’s pretty run of the mill stuff, after all.’
‘I think you’re awfully brave.’ (They said that on the films: Awf’ly brave.)
He frowned. ‘Do you? People don’t normally say that.’ He looked down at his mangled fingers. ‘Still, it’ll be good to get active again. I feel as though my body’s atrophied these last eighteen months.’
Atrophied. I loved the long word, and the fact that he didn’t mind using it with me, although I could only guess what it meant. ‘Which Service are you in?’ I asked. ‘Or can’t you say?’
He stopped, and gave me a long look over the rim of the cup. Then he set it down. Paused. Gave me a rueful smile. ‘I’m afraid, young lady, that you may be under a misapprehension.’
Another complicated word. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘What misapprehension?’
He paused again, but for such a long time that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, ‘I’m not in the forces, I’m afraid: quite the opposite.’
‘And what would the opposite be?’ I asked, jokingly. ‘Something terribly secret?’
He looked me full in the face. ‘Not secret at all. Open for all to see and despise. I thought you must have guessed – my lack of uniform, I mean. I’m a Conscientious Objector.’
The horrible words seemed to float in the air between us. I thought for a moment that he was joking, but one look at his face told me he wasn’t. I felt almost sick. A Conshie, a coward, the lowest of the low. Even my useless dad had tried to join up, although his chest was too bad and they’d sent him to an aeroplane factory in Bristol instead.
‘There,’ he said, lightly. ‘I’ve disappointed you. You thought I was one of Our Brave Boys. Now you think I’m a coward and will want your cocoa back.’
‘No,’ I said quickly, embarrassed at the way he’d guessed my thoughts – except for the bit about the cocoa, which I wouldn’t have begrudged anyone. ‘I expect you have your reasons.’ Although I couldn’t imagine what they could be. I didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to fight. I’d wanted to fight myself when I heard Mr Churchill’s speech, saying we would never surrender.
‘Well, I do have my reasons, of course,’ he said. ‘Although not everyone appreciates them. Not even my mother, sometimes. In fact my mother and my sisters don’t share my embarrassing principles at all.’
‘So why are you a Conshie – entious objector?’ I asked, thinking as I said the words that it was not my place to question him, a guest at the hotel. Mr Reeves would have sacked me on the spot. ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ I added, quickly.
He sighed, as if tired of explaining it. ‘I happen to believe that war is fundamentally wrong,’ he said. ‘That we human beings can settle our differences another way. Haven’t we learnt from our mistakes? Take the War to End All Wars? Well, it didn’t, did it? We have to forge a different understanding if we are to survive; if we are to change the way we live. I won’t have other people’s blood on my hands.’
‘But don’t you love your country?’ I asked. I’d imagined myself making a last stand on the promenade, alongside Mr Reeves and Mavis, kitchen knife in hand.
‘My country?’ he said. ‘Well, I’m not sure about that. I mean, I love the individuals in it and I’m not scared of dying for them – at least not more than any other man. But I would never say “My country right or wrong.” Because my country is often wrong. Most ordinary people on both sides don’t want war and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be bullied into it.’ He spoke quickly, quietly, seemed so sure of himself that I could tell he’d said the words before, probably many times. ‘Look,’ he said, as if passing on a really important thing, ‘the fact that a bomb might one day kill my sister in London – and God knows I’d be half-crazy if it did – it doesn’t justify me flying off and bombing someone else’s grandmother in Berlin. And it’s equally wrong that the person whose grandmother was killed should come and bomb, say, your uncle in Taunton. Don’t you see how cruel and illogical it is?’
What he said made sense in a sort of way, but I couldn’t see Hitler taking any notice of the logic. I was surprised that Jack even thought he might. I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed quiet. He was quiet too. He probably thought I was too stupid to understand. ‘So what are you doing down here, if you’re not joining up?’ I asked at last. ‘I mean, you live in London, don’t you? It said Cavendish Square in the book.’
‘What?’ That old absent-minded look. ‘Oh, yes, I do have a flat there. Or, at least, I did. My mother has it now and I just perch there from time to time. I didn’t have much use for it before the war with all the travelling I did.’
‘Travelling?’ I thought of my midnight ships and tropical islands, and thought of Jack in a white suit, leaning over the rail. ‘Abroad?’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Good Lord, no. Just lots of train journeys to obscure places. Lots of strong tea and stale buns. And lots of high-minded talk. We thought we’d get our way, in those days. I had a very successful Peace Pledge meeting here in this town – that’s why I was here, you know, that day I gave you the shilling. I didn’t think I’d be coming back as a prisoner eighteen months later.’
He said the word ‘prisoner’ lightly but I still got a shock. ‘You were in prison?’ I said. It made sense suddenly – the skin and the nails, and the way his clothes didn’t fit. But it didn’t seem the right sort of place for him.
He nodded. ‘Well, you know what they do to us Conshies. We mustn’t contaminate the general population. But why they sent me here of all places I don’t know. It was difficult for Mother and the girls to visit. Another subtle punishment, I suppose.’
‘Was it very bad?’ I’d heard the Conshies were half-starved. Mrs Willacott’s nephew worked in the prison kitchens and said they were poor little specimens who didn’t eat meat and were probably too weedy to fight even if they wanted to. I hadn’t taken much notice at the time; I’d thought Conshies deserved all they got.
Jack gave a funny kind of smile. ‘I wouldn’t exactly recommend prison life. I had nothing to read for six months. I think that was the worst thing of all; I think that might have broken my spirit if anything would. And then of course I got to know the size and shape of mailbags more intimately than I cared for. That black waxed thread was the very devil.’ Jack turned his hand, showed me his stained and mangled fingers. I cast down my eyes, un
able to look. ‘But it gives you time to think, to see if you can stand up for what you believe, in practice.’
‘But you’re out for good, now?’ I said. ‘They’ve let you out?’
‘Yes, they let me out. The Government and I have come to an understanding. I shall be working on the land. After all, I have no conscientious objection to people being fed.’
I couldn’t help being relieved. I didn’t care if Jack had funny ideas. He wouldn’t be going to the Far East or Africa. He wouldn’t be manning a convoy in the North Atlantic or battling in the skies above our heads. He would be safe on a farm. Even if I never saw him again, I’d know he was alive.
He drained his cup. ‘That was very welcome. Even if I got it on false pretences.’
I shrugged. ‘I thought you might need it. You didn’t come down for dinner.’
‘Oh.’ That old absent-minded look again. ‘I forgot, I’m afraid.’
‘Weren’t you hungry?’ I was famished if I missed a meal, but there was always something to pick at in the kitchen as long as Mr Mullan didn’t see.
‘I’m used to being hungry. You’re hungry all the time in prison. And anyway, I had a good tea. An extremely good tea, as it happens.’
‘And you were reading, too.’ I nodded towards the book.
‘Yes, Bertrand Russell kept me busy. You should try him some time.’
I wasn’t sure I could read hard books like that but I said I might try. He held out the finished cup and I stretched out my hand to take it. As I did so, my cuff slid back and a flaky red patch of skin slipped into view. He frowned. ‘Oh dear, have you scalded yourself?’ He put down the cup, and bent forward, taking my hand in his, examining my wrist in a probing way, like a doctor.
I felt myself go scarlet. All evening I’d kept imagining how it would feel if he touched me, but not in this pitying way because of my wretched scabs. ‘No, it’s a skin disease,’ I said quickly, pushing down my sleeve and pulling my hand away from his. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not catching.’
Lying Together Page 6
