by Francis King
All the couples in their gondolas remained eerily still and silent. Slumped, many of them with their arms round each other, they might have been dummies. Christine stared down at the moon faces staring up. Strangely she felt no fear. Then she looked at Thomas. Their gazes interlocked for a second, until he turned his head aside and downwards. His eyes were now fixed on the faces below. His own face, clammy and white, lips drawn back in an extraordinary rictus, expressed only terror. She grasped his hand and squeezed it tighter and tighter. ‘ It’s all right. Perfectly all right. They’ll have it mended any moment now. Don’t worry.’
Again the North Country voice reverberated over the crackling static. ‘ Be patient, ladies and gents. No problem. No problem at all. You’ll soon be travelling down.’
‘Look at Tom Tower!’ Christine pointed. ‘ Doesn’t it look wonderful in the setting sun? What a view!’ She was not merely trying to distract him from his panic; the beauty of it all genuinely overwhelmed her. She wriggled in the narrow seat in an attempt to look behind her. As the gondola shuddered at her sudden movement, his hand shot out to clutch the strut beside him. ‘And one can see all the camp. I’d never realised how huge it is. Look!’ But he did not look. His eyes were squeezed shut.
When he opened his eyes, he asked in the voice of a fretful, frightened child: ‘Why are we not moving?’
‘We will. Soon.’
Minutes passed and gradually she sensed the panic ebbing from him. His body, previously so taut against hers, began to relax. His face was no longer ashen and glistening.
‘Okay, ladies and gents! That seems to be fixed. Hold on tight!’
Thomas let out a small groan as the gondola shuddered, swayed from side to side, and began to jerk upwards, as though with tremendous effort. He again gripped Christine’s hand. At last it reached the summit and then, slowly and smoothly, began its descent. He gave a delighted laugh. ‘Everything is all right.’
‘It always was. Silly!’
Arm in arm, they trudged in silence up Harcourt Hill. Then suddenly he said: ‘Like swimming.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re like two swimmers – one strong, one weak. The sea is dangerous. The weak swimmer will drown. But the strong swimmer is always there to rescue him and bring him back to shore. You’re the strong swimmer. I am the weak one.’
‘Anyone can have a bad head for heights.’
‘Those boys ahead of us – after the first shock they were calm.’
‘So what? Perhaps heights don’t bother them.’
He pulled her closer to him. ‘You’re a strong swimmer, very strong. You will never drown.’
‘And neither will you.’
‘Only if you are with me.’
Without their realising it, they had reached a decision.
1950
Chapter Twenty Three
As Michael rapped on the door of the cottage, a fine shower of snow, detaching itself from the overhanging thatch, stung his face. Had another winter similar to that ghastly one of three years back gripped this remote area, while in Oxford there was sunshine? All at once, having so much looked forward to the visit, he now felt tired and dispirited. From inside he could hear the baby beginning to cry. That only intensified his gloom.
‘Michael! Come in!’ Her joy at seeing him was clearly genuine. ‘That walk across the fields is hell in this weather. You must have got soaked.’
‘Do you remember how during that last winter of yours at Oxford everyone was constantly asking everyone else ‘‘Is this winter never going to end?” It certainly looks as if it still hasn’t done so here.’
‘It’s awful for poor Thomas, working outdoors. As it was awful for him then.’
‘Well, at least you now have a warm house – and are living with each other.’
The door opened into what once had been the constricted, overcrowded parlour, rarely used except for christenings, birthdays, marriages and funerals; but now, with its honey-coloured utility furniture, its two Dürer prints in passepartout frames and the plain beige carpet that he himself had bought them, it seemed unfamiliar and bare. A cot stood in one corner, from which the baby bawled in furious desolation. Christine hurried across to it.
‘Do sit down. Oh, throw your things anywhere for the moment. The important thing is that you should get dry.’
But Michael knew that at that moment the only really important thing for her was the child. In that realisation he experienced what he acknowledged to be a ludicrous sense of exclusion.
‘Thomas says that I oughtn’t to pick the poor darling up when he cries. But I can’t bear listening to him … Oh, he’s wet himself again. Did mother’s little darling wet himself then? Did he? Did he?’ She went off into baby talk of a kind that usually filled him with exasperation and embarrassment; but on this occasion, the pang of jealousy having turned out to be no more than a momentary acid reflux, he only thought how loveable she looked, as she gazed down at the baby. Fuller, plainer, its skin shiny for lack of makeup, her face expressed a tenderness that in the past he had rarely seen there. As she rolled up her sleeves, he noticed how robust her once delicate arms had become.
‘I see you’ve settled in very comfortably.’
‘Thanks to you. I don’t have to say how grateful we are. You know that already.’
‘If you’re so grateful, why didn’t you cash my last cheque?’
‘It was sweet of you to send it. But really – we can’t accept so much. The allowance is all we need. Honestly.’
‘Oh, I think that sort of pride so silly. I hoped you both would have more sense.’
‘I was afraid you would be cross.’
‘Yes, I am cross. I can so easily spare the money. I don’t know what to do with all that I have. It seems wrong – when I did nothing to earn it. And if it helps you to have a few things that otherwise you couldn’t afford, well, what’s wrong in that? In any case,’ – he smiled – ‘you forget that I have a special interest in that little blighter. After all, he is my godson.’
‘You can hold him for a moment.’
Gingerly, Michael took the baby and, frowning with concentration, rocked him in his arms. Christine burst into laughter.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You look so funny.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Nervous. Somehow embarrassed.’
‘Do you think I’ve never held a baby before?’
‘Here – give him back to me.’
‘Oh, very well. You mothers are always so possessive. If I can handle a valuable Meissen vase – as I was doing in the Ashmolean this morning – then I can certainly handle a baby.’ He placed the burden in Christine’s arms, with a sigh. ‘How’s Thomas?’
‘Working awfully hard. He still feels whacked at the end of the day.’
‘But he likes it here?’
‘Oh, of course. Better than the camp, far better. It was sweet of you to fix it up. I hope – I hope we shan’t let you down.’
‘Why should you?’
‘Oh, I don’t know? As she bent over the baby, a safety pin in one corner of her mouth, she all at once look harassed and sad; but Michael, who had suddenly thought of Klaus, as he so often did at totally unexpected moments, did not notice the change. ‘Thomas doesn’t get in till after five. We have a high tea then. Do you mind that?’
‘What? A high tea?’ He turned an abstracted gaze on her, then once more peered into the heart of the bright, sizzling logs.
‘Do you mind?’ she repeated.
‘No. No, of course not. One must always obey the customs of the country – and of one’s host and hostess.’
Perversely, she continued to needle him. ‘I don’t imagine that you often find yourself eating high tea.’
‘Oh, during the war I ate far worse things than that.’
‘There!’ She put the baby back in his cot. ‘I suppose I’d better see about it. Thomas hates to wait.’
‘Can I lend a hand?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, no! Really. Thank you.’ She was thinking: potatoes to be peeled, carrots to be sliced, meat to be minced, biscuits to be mixed, bottle to be scalded. Worse, she was once again in pain. Ever since the birth of the baby, she had had an intermittent backache, for which the doctor had prescribed one course of pills and then another, and rest, rest, rest. She could swallow the pills but how could she rest? She tapped Michael on the shoulder. ‘ Can you look after yourself?’ He merely nodded. Then he crossed to the upright piano and raised its lid.
‘Out of tune, I’m, afraid. This cottage is so damp.’
‘Has Thomas written anything since you got here?’
‘Only settings of two poems by Stefan George, when he had some sick leave. He has so little time. He gets so tired by the end of the day.’
Michael had now seated himself at the piano. He hasn’t listened to a word, she thought. The most generous people were often the most self-centred. She went across to him and leant over, a hand on his shoulder. He played a fumbled arpeggio, then another, firmer one.
‘Can you keep an eye on the fire? That wood burns quickly. Which explains why we have to spend so much time sawing it. Can you do that? Can I trust you?’
Having now embarked on ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, from a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern left by the previous tenants, Michael merely nodded vigorously.
‘And see that Tim doesn’t get up to any mischief.’
‘Yes, madam. Certainly, madam.’
Some forty minutes later, long since bored with his playing of once familiar hymns, he ambled into the kitchen to find her at the shallow, long stone sink, washing up some plates.
‘Can’t I help you with that?’
She shook her head. ‘I wish you hadn’t found me washing up the breakfast things. I’m an awful slut, I’m afraid. No method, no efficiency,’ She sighed. ‘No energy. Oxford taught me how to make only one thing. Coffee. And not all that well, at that. Thomas is always patient with me. But I think the poor dear must often wonder what sort of wife he has married. Or not married – if we must be truthful.’
‘Nonsense. Any man would be proud of you.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Certainly I mean it. Here, let me dry.’ He pulled a cloth off a chair in front of the Essen.
‘Not that! That’s one of Tim’s nappies.’
‘Is it? Oh, lord!’
They both laughed.
When Christine had finished the washing, there was still a large pile of crockery and cutlery that, finicky and clumsy from lack of practice, he had not yet dried. She began to scrub the sink. ‘This soda makes my hands sting. It gets into all the cracks. She held out a hand.
For the first time he noticed the red, roughened skin. ‘Poor Christine!’
‘Oh, please don’t keep calling me poor! It makes me feel myself to be an object of pity. She sighed. ‘I’m afraid I’m totally incompetent as a housewife. I’ve no natural gift for servitude, that’s the problem.’
A door slammed and Thomas came in, cap and the shoulders of his greatcoat white with snow. He had grown a beard, black prematurely threaded with grey, on which the flakes soon began to melt in the warmth of the kitchen. ‘Hello, Michael!’ He pulled off a khaki mitten to shake hands and then walked across to Christine and kissed her on the lips with a fervour that made Michael jerk his head away in embarrassment.
‘Sorry I’m so late. More of this bloody snow. And that cow is still on her side. I’ll have to go out again.’
‘Thomas! Your English is now almost the real thing.’
‘Do you really think so? Well, I never talk German here. And I’ve promised Christine I’m not going to talk German to you now. Some people even tell me that I’ve acquired a Shropshire accent.’
‘I haven’t noticed that. But if you have, you must get rid of it.’
‘Yes, I’m now almost an Englishman. Soon I hope to be Thomas Holliday, if I can cut through all the red tape. Deed poll. That way no one will guess our dreadful secret. Christine doesn’t care. But I want to be respectable.’ He laughed. ‘What do you think of Tim?’
‘I can only say what I always say on these occasions when that sort of question is put to me – ‘‘Now that’s what I really call a baby!” By the way, I’ve brought him a delayed Christmas present.’
‘We have far too many presents from you.’ Thomas laid an affectionate hand on Michael’s shoulder; then he looked down and exclaimed: ‘Look what you’ve done. You have splashed water on to your beautiful forty-guinea suit.’
‘Fifty guineas. Prices have gone up.’
‘Christine should have given you an apron – or you should have asked for one.’ He reached for a cloth and began to wipe down the suit. As he knelt at the task, Michael realised that he, no less than Christine, had undergone a physical transformation. His fingers had become wider, blunter, almost coarse. Under the constriction of his check shirt the muscles of his now broad back shifted visibly at each move. For the first time Michael found him sexually attractive. ‘There you are! Now I’ll just take a glance at our little Tim.’ Yes, Michael thought ruefully, there was certainly the trace of a Shropshire accent.
Almost at once Thomas returned, angrily kicking the door open. ‘Really, Christine! You’ve let that fire go out. How many times have I told you that wood burns quickly? Any kindling?’ He peered into a basket in a corner. ‘No, there wouldn’t be. Now I’ll have to go out to the shed. Bloody hell!’ He began to pull on his boots.
‘I’m sorry, darling. I was thinking of other things.’ Loyalty prevented Christine from putting the blame on to Michael; but she was indignant that he did not himself own up to his neglect. ‘I’ll go. You’ve had a busy day. Let me go. You sit down.’
‘No. You get on with the tea.’ He wrenched the door open and slammed it behind him as he disappeared into the dark and falling snow.
‘That was your fault,’ Christine could not restrain herself from saying.
‘My fault? How my fault?’
His surprised protest of innocence intensified her annoyance. But she merely said: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’
Tea over, it was still snowing, large flakes drifting past the window from which Michael had raised the old blackout blind in order to peer out. ‘I’ll have to leave soon.’ Michael was staying with friends up at the big house.
‘I’d better take you on the back of my motorbike,’ Thomas volunteered.
‘No, no! Certainly not! It’s no distance across the fields.’
‘Why don’t you stay?’ Christine suggested.
‘Stay?’
‘The night. Here. Why not? Thomas can walk up to the farmhouse and phone from there to tell them. Stay in comfort and you can walk back to the manor in the morning. Much better.’
‘Oh, it’ll be far too much bother for you.’ Michael was thinking of his guestroom at the manor, with its four-poster bed, central heating and large bathroom.
‘Bother? What bother? No bother at all. Is it, Thomas?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Very well then,’ he agreed, trying not to betray his reluctance. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
Thomas followed Christine out into the kitchen, when she went there to fetch a glass of water for which Michael, thirsty from her over-salted shepherd’s pie, had asked. ‘What did you want to do that for?’
‘We couldn’t let him walk across the fields in this weather. Haven’t you noticed his shoes?’
‘Now you’ll have all the trouble of airing sheets and making up the bed. You’ve got enough to do without all that sort of thing.’
‘Sh! He’ll hear you.’
‘Well, let him hear me. It’s so inconsiderate. Can’t he see you’re worked to the bone, as it is? I must say I liked the calm way he accepted –’
‘That’s not fair. At first he made a protest. Anyway he’d have done the same for us in the same circumstances. You know that.’
‘Yes, but he would have been able
to ask a college servant to make up a bed and put out some towels.’
‘Oh, do leave it! I don’t mind. He’s helped us so much. It’s the least we can do.’
‘I hate all his help! I’m sorry, it’s wrong of me, but I have to say it.’ He was now tipping coal from the hod into the Essen. In his vehemence he sent a surplus cascading to the floor. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ He picked up the loose pieces in his fingers and flung them into the stove.
‘I’d better get back to him. He’ll be wondering what we’re up to.’
As Christine returned, the glass of water in her hand, Michael held out an envelope to her. ‘ Tim’s belated Christmas present. I keep forgetting about it.’
‘Oh, thank you so much. But really …’
Even before she had torn open the envelope and found the three newly minted ten-pound notes, her expression was one of dismay, however hard she tried to control it.
Chapter Twenty Four
They had gone to bed but still Michael could not sleep. Turning from side to side in sheets that were still damp despite a hanging above the Essen, he felt an area of cold extending slowly, tremor by tremor, from the pit of his stomach to his chest, from his chest to his jaws, and then, in remorseless sequence, downwards and outwards to each of his limbs. He got up, pulled on his vest and shirt over the flannel pyjamas lent to him by Thomas, and laid his over-coat across the bed. But it was useless. His teeth continued to chatter; he was shaking in every joint. How extraordinary that the room should have no means of heating at all. Perhaps they never used it except as a repository for the junk now scattered about it.
Hours later, as it seemed, he looked at the illuminated hands of his watch. Only 12.45. Oh, he must sleep, he must sleep! His craving for sleep now resembled the thirst that he had quenched only by the drinking of three glasses of water. By a conscious effort of will he tried to master the tremors. But they were like some external force, no more to be controlled than an earthquake or a rough sea. Eventually he made a decision. He would go and sit by the fire in the living room and try somehow to warm himself. Pulling the blanket off the bed and draping it over his shoulders, he tiptoed down. But, once there, he found that the grate now contained only ashes and a few embers smouldering to extinction. In dejected incredulity he stared downwards, until a sound made him swing round to face the other door, at the far end of the room. Two voices came from it, attenuated yet clear to his overwrought hearing. He tiptoed to it, soundless footstep by footstep, and stood beside it. Then he bent forward, and pressed an ear against it. For a long time he stayed there, an unseen, unsuspected partner in all that was happening. Strangely, he felt none of the shame that he knew he ought to be feeling.
