by Connie Monk
With the pie cooking, she laid the table in the warm room. She gave no thought to what she did; to give coherent thought to anything was beyond her. Den came in from his solitary and private retreat to the winter chill of the garden.
‘Don’t give me anything to eat,’ he said as she brought the golden-crusted dish to the table. ‘I feel as sick as a dog.’
‘We should eat. You’ll feel better with food inside you.’
‘I said, I don’t want it.’ As if to prove his point he belched. Then, drumming his fingers on the mantelpiece above the old kitchen range he turned to look at her as he said, ‘You must see the billeting people in the morning and say that child must be found somewhere else.’
For a moment Kathie was pulled out of zombie mode.
‘I most certainly won’t! Den, however we feel, it’s not right to take it out on Beth. She was Jessie’s friend. You don’t understand; you never saw them together. They loved each other like sisters.’
‘She’s not staying here!’ In his misery he sounded cornered, frightened. ‘That’s my last word.’
‘Good. Because there’s no point in discussing it. This is Beth’s home until her mother wants her back in London.’ They glared at each other, needing to hit out, needing to find something less important than the true reason for their misery. ‘Anyway it’s not for you to say who stays here; what difference can it make to you? You won’t be here.’ Was she trying to hurt him or herself? If only one of them could have reached out to the other, in sharing their anguish they might have found a way through it. Instead, they were as far apart as strangers, each cocooned in misery too achingly deep to find expression. Turning away from her, he went outside leaving her looking at the two plates of untouched food. First hers and then his, she carried them to the waiting bucket and scraped the food onto the bit already there to add to the chickens’ corn in the morning
She washed up; she took Fudge’s bowls, one for food and one for water, and scoured them well before putting them on a high shelf in the kitchen cupboard; she put out the milk bottle. It was after that, she was standing alone in the warm room she had the strangest feeling. Her mind carried her back four months to the day Den had left home and, knowing the days ahead would be hard for the little girl who so adored her father, she had tried to give a shape to the new pattern of their days.
‘We’ve got ’sponsibilities, Mum,’ she seemed to hear the voice she knew so well. ‘Tell you what, Mum, I’ll be the one who lays the table.’ Then, only weeks ago: ‘Me and Beth are just going to take Fudge to the common. All right, Mum?’ How could she never hear that happy, excited voice again? She wouldn’t look ahead, not a day, not an hour. Live each minute, do the things that have to be done . . . And following her newly laid rule she went out to the coalhouse to fill the hod with coke so that she could bank up the range for the night.
Glancing at the clock she was surprised to see it was a quarter to eleven. So leaving the back door unlocked and the light still on, she went up to bed. Not for a second did she consider going outside to look for Dennis, to throw herself into his arms and let them share their anguish. She wanted just to be alone.
But once in bed and lying in the silent darkness, she wished she had stayed up. Now there were no jobs to do, nowhere to hide. The memory flashed into her mind of what Bruce had told her about the time of Elspeth’s accident. ‘I prayed. God, how I prayed . . .’ And had he been wasting his time and emotion? He’d prayed that she would come back to him; well, at least physically his prayer had been answered. And Elspeth was content; surely that was what he had wanted for her? Kathie closed her eyes tightly as if the tighter shut they were, the more ardent her own prayer. But it was no use. She hadn’t prayed for years except for the occasional plea as she went about her daily business; and she’d never asked herself whether they were prayers to a divine Godhead or simply something to boost her confidence when she was faced with a task that hadn’t previously come her way.
Now she found that wanting to pray and actually giving her whole mind to it were two different things. She had never felt so alone as she did lying there gazing into the darkness.
Since arriving home, Den had spent most of his time sitting alone on the upturned oil drum in the garden, smoking one cigarette after another, frightened to let himself open his heart to Jess. Angry at the world, he needed someone to vent his spite on – and who better than Kathie who had been so remote from him through the last hours. How could she want to cook supper as if their lives hadn’t been torn apart? Or perhaps hers hadn’t been, not as his was. He pictured the golden crust of the pie and the very thought of it made him retch emptily. Since breakfast all he had eaten was a bowl of soup. He heard the clock on the stables at the Hall strike eleven. He must go in. Kathie would be asleep by now, she wouldn’t want to talk about . . . about Jess, about the moment they had been told. Imagine the relief of losing himself in sleep. But sleep comes from a contented mind – either that or physical exhaustion. Standing up he felt dizzy.
Why Jess? Why not that other kid? If she went, no one’s life would be wrecked. Or why not him? Jess had been the future, now there was nothing, nothing except the prospect of going to fight some poor devil probably with a wife and kids. Don’t think about it.
If Kathie was asleep he’d wake her up. All his emotions were heightened on that January night and the desires of his body responded. He couldn’t analyse why it was he felt as he did, he didn’t even try.
When Kathie heard him coming up the stairs she turned on her side pretending to be asleep. Could it be less than twenty-four hours ago that he had come unexpectedly into their room? It was like looking back at another life, at two different people. The images in her memory only made her feel more isolated.
She heard him stripping off his clothes and waited expecting him to reach in the dark for his pyjamas. Instead he climbed naked into bed. She didn’t move; he lay on his back moving his head restlessly. With a sudden movement he sat up, then pulled her to lie on her back, climbing above her. He’d never been a man with a high sex drive, so what he was doing drove the wedge further between them,
‘No, Den! You can’t want that! Not tonight, not with—’ But she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t say Jessie’s name. Her sentence hung between them, unfinished.
‘I must. Can’t you see, I must.’ He was pushing her legs apart with uncharacteristic roughness; another second and he would have forced himself into her. It was the only way to reach the exhaustion that would let him escape into sleep. ‘You’ve got to let me.’
‘No, damn you! Get away from me!’ With more strength than she knew she possessed, taking his full weight she wrenched him off her then, as he lay breathless at her side, turned her back on him.
In the stillness of the room she heard the quickening of his panting, and lying perfectly still she could feel the jerky movement from his side of the bed. Never in all the years they had been together had she felt about him as she did in those moments. That he could have come expecting them to find pleasure in sex disgusted her. But this was even worse. He must have known she could hear and recognize what he was doing, it was almost as if he was glorying in it. What a moment for half remembered words to come to her, come from where? Perhaps heard on one of the rare occasions she and her mother had gone to church? ‘Could you not watch with me one brief hour?’ Tonight belonged to Jess, to Jess who was part of them and yet was wholly herself, her precious, glorious self. His movement grew faster, his breathing a series of grunts as he brought himself to a climax. She felt he wanted her to hear and to know that he managed well without her. Normally she could never have harboured such thoughts; no matter how tired she had been, at the slightest hint that he wanted them to make love she had always been wide awake and ready to respond. Now he was still, it was all over and she knew from experience that he would immediately lose himself in sleep. But what was that? Burrowing his head into the pillow in an attempt to muffle the sound, he sobbed.
Why was it
she couldn’t reach out to him? What had happened to them that they couldn’t share their despair? Then another sound, surely it was real or was it just in her imagination? Clearly she heard Jess laugh. ‘You know what, Mum? I’ve got Fudge with me. Mum, keep on loving Beth. She doesn’t want the war ever to end cos she likes it with us and never wants to go back to that London place.’ By then Kathie knew she heard it in her imagination, but even so she nodded, mouthing the words, ‘I promise you, Jess.’
Her suffering was like a heavy weight, sapping her of energy and even of interest. She heard Den’s muffled crying but felt isolated from his pain. This is Den, she told herself, he is your life, and you love him – so why can’t you turn round and hold him close? There was no answer or, if there was, she hadn’t the energy to look for it. The thought of lying where she was through the long hours of the night was unbearable. Trying to move without disturbing the covers, she got her feet on the cold linoleum floor covering. Her dressing gown was in the wardrobe, so she’d have to manage without. Once she got down to the ‘warm room’ she’d sit close to the fire. But she didn’t get even as far as the head of the steep, narrow stairs for escaping from the sound of Dennis’s crying she heard Jess’s. ‘Keep on loving Beth.’ There was no sound of that familiar voice but as clearly as if the words had been spoken, Kathie felt the nearness of Jessie’s spirit. ‘Loving Beth . . . loving you . . .’ she answered silently. Standing in the dark passage just for a moment she was held by a feeling of peace. ‘As long as I have her to love, I shall still have you.’ It made no sense and the moment passed as she crept into the bedroom.
Without a word she slipped into the bed and drew the trembling little figure into her arms.
‘Won’t never see her no more,’ Beth sobbed. ‘She liked being alive – more than anyone she liked it – made everything sort of warm and good and exciting.’
‘I know, sweetheart. Don’t know how we’re going to bear it.’
She felt the thin little arms come round her neck and one leg hook itself across her body. Was that the moment her own floodgates opened or had she been crying when she’d come into the bedroom?
‘What about Jess’s dad? Didn’t you ought to be in there with him?’
‘I think he needs to be on his own.’
‘Do you want to be on your o—’ The last word was lost in a sob she couldn’t control.
‘No. Just for tonight, Beth, can I stay in here with you?’
She felt the movement of Beth’s head against her shoulder as she nodded. ‘Bet Jess’d like that. Wish we could speak to her, Auntie Kathie, tell her things – things like that.’
‘Tell her with your heart, your spirit, and she’ll know.’ Probably beyond a six-year-old’s understanding. Or was it? Somehow Kathie believed that what Beth was too young to understand, she would take on trust.
‘Then she’ll know about Fudge and where me and Mr Meredith made his grave. He made doing it sort of important; didn’t say about Fudge, “just a dog” nor noffing like that. He’s a nice man. You like him, Auntie Kathie?’
‘Of course.’
‘But really, I mean?’ Beth was quieter now, her small body not trembling and she wasn’t going to be fobbed off with just ‘of course’ for an answer as if she was too young to be taken seriously.
‘I’ve only met him a few times – yet I feel I know him well. And, yes, Beth, I do like him.’
‘So do I. He sort of understands things without being told.’
‘You weren’t in bed when I woke up in the night?’ By which Dennis actually meant ‘Where were you?’
‘I was with Beth.’ There was unexpected comfort in remembering.
‘You told her she was to be found a new billet?’
‘Oh, Den don’t start that again. She was – is – Jess’s dearest friend. This is the first time she has known a proper, happy home. You don’t really want to break faith with Jess and send her away, you know you don’t.’
‘To be honest I don’t care about anything. What’s the point? Another three weeks, and a bullet might get me.’
‘Then you just be sure you keep out of the way of the bullets.’ Kathie managed to instil more warmth in her tone that she was capable of feeling. The emotion of the night had left her drained and numb. He must feel much the same, and poor little Beth too. What a lonely little figure she had looked as she went off to school.
‘We have things to do, Den. If you want to work outside, do you want me to go to Warbeck and Giles?’ She named the Deremouth undertakers. ‘Not sure what we have to do, but they’ll tell me.’
‘You’ll stay here. It’s my place to make the arrangements.’ Just for a second he looked at her directly, his misery not hidden in his words but clear to be seen in his eyes. ‘The last thing I can do for her. Why? Why? Why her?’
‘Not the last thing. People don’t just drop out of your life like that. Here, or wherever they send you, and later when you come home and it’s all over, Den, we haven’t lost her, we must never lose her.’
‘Emotional claptrap, that’s all that is. Her life was snuffed out – and all for that bloody dog you ought never to have taken on.’
Pulling on her wellingtons, then reaching for the old coat she kept on the back of the kitchen door, Kathie didn’t answer. Why did he have to talk like that? Was he frightened that he’d call out to Jess and she wouldn’t answer.
‘Her body might have lost its life, but Den, listen with your heart. We haven’t lost her, we must never lose her.’
There was bewilderment in his expression. He looked at her as though she were a stranger, someone who spoke a foreign language.
‘We shan’t forget her, if that’s what you’re trying to say. Anything else is rubbish and you’ll have to face up to it,’ he told her.
Slamming the door behind her, she left him.
Work was a help as the days of his leave went by. On the Monday after the accident, at half past eleven in the morning, Jess’s small, white coffin was lowered into the ground in the village churchyard. Beth had gone to school as usual. As the single bell tolled, Kathie knew she would be listening. It might have been kinder to bring her, but Dennis wouldn’t hear of it. What neither of them had expected was that the church would be so full. All these people hadn’t known Jess, so why were they there? Perhaps it stemmed from the feeling of community brought about by the war. She didn’t know and wasn’t interested enough in them to give the question any intelligent thought. The one person she was glad to see as she and Dennis followed the coffin from the church was Bruce. He was sitting in the back pew amongst villagers neither of them knew.
Somehow the days were passing. In their raw misery they hadn’t been able to reach out to each other, but there is nothing like work to help habit overcome emotion, and there was certainly more than enough work to keep them occupied. On the Friday of Den’s second week the two one-time lads – Stanley Stone and Bert Delbridge, both on embarkation leave just as Dennis was – came to Westways at the beginning of the afternoon and within ten minutes had joined the workforce as if they’d never been away.
‘What do you think of them, Sal?’ Sarah whispered to her friend as they carefully washed carrots and tied them in bundles. ‘The tall one, that’s Stan, his dad comes to the pub and he says he’s buying a ring for his girl before he goes back. Don’t know who she is, but Dad looked a bit sniffy about it. He reckons because of the war – romance, drama, the sort of emotion he turns his nose up at and calls Hollywood rubbish – he reckons that because of all that, people are too keen to get tied up. Stan looks a nice chap, doesn’t he? Well, they both do. It’d be all right if after the war all of us could work here together. Wish this war would buck up and get finished.’
‘Don’t want it to finish yet, not the way it’s going. Reckon it’ll take another year or two before we can get them beaten. But, like you say they’re nice chaps. Awful having to go off, never knowing if you’re going to get home again.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Don’t
need to go to war for that though. Jess only went to school.’
The thought sobered them and they finished the carrots in silence.
Having the lads working alongside him it was almost possible for Dennis to imagine things were like they used to be. But the afternoon was soon over and the solitary child coming slowly up the lane wasn’t Jess. If he closed his eyes he could almost hear the familiar sound of the homecomings as they used to be: Jess’s feet pounding on the rough ground as she raced up the lane. He wasn’t even conscious of the unwelcoming expression on his face as Beth, seeing where Kathie was busy digging parsnips, ran straight to her. It was Friday afternoon; school was finished for the week. Last Saturday Mr Meredith had invited her to the Hall and she and Ollie had made a wooden sign to put on Fudge’s grave. She would like to have gone there again this Saturday but no one had suggested it. Ollie was going to the house in the village where his mother had come to live. She hoped he wouldn’t want to go there every week. Beth didn’t like the picture she’d built in her imagination of Ollie’s mother, but that was partly because he kept saying how pretty she was, how much fun she was, how clever she was. Was he meaning that he hadn’t really thought it was wonderful here at Westways, just him, Jess, Fudge and her? She didn’t want to think about it, just thinking gave her a nasty tight feeling in her throat and made her eyes sting. Well, tomorrow she would have to see if the girls could give her a job. The time would pass, he would soon be gone – and perhaps after a while Ollie would want to come back. His rotten Mum couldn’t be as much fun as they had here.
Soon tiring of watching grown-ups working and not being given a job to do, she went off to feed the chickens and collect the eggs. But the responsibility she and Jess had enjoyed didn’t hold excitement on her own like it had when they had been together vying to pick up the most eggs. Everything would be better once he was gone. Friday would soon be over and he was leaving on Tuesday so there were only three whole days. Was it wicked of her to want him gone? She told herself that Jess had loved him so he must really be all right; but when he looked at her she knew he was thinking horrid things about her and wanting her not to be there.
