‘That was war.’
‘I was there for two years and there are those who would argue it was genocide. However. It rather sounds as if you already believe it happened here.’
‘I don’t know what I think. And I don’t know what Simon is thinking of, bringing this sort of stuff into the house. We could be arrested for possession.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Left it in the holdall and pushed it under his bed.’
‘You’d never make a secret agent, Jimmy.’
‘It’s upset me, I can tell you. I mean, what do you think, Willie? Is it propaganda? You hear that young people are targeted at university but I didn’t take it seriously. Has Simon been targeted?’
‘I take it you haven’t discussed it with him yet?’
‘I found them yesterday and haven’t had the chance since. And I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, this is a bit more serious than being caught with a copy of Picturegoer.’
‘You’ll have to talk to him about it, for everybody’s sake. For a start, they need hiding in a better place than under the bed. And there’s something else you’ll have to consider.’
‘What?’
‘How you will feel if it did happen here? If it is still happening here?’
Simon Humphrey and Brian Ogilvy were in a field next to the Farmer’s Arms, polishing the livery of two shire horses that would pull carts in the procession. Simon had worked at the same dairy farm as Brian for the last month and both of them had deep tans from being outdoors.
Children shouted and laughed closer to the pub where the carts were receiving final decorations. The first would carry the queen-designate and her attendants, the second the retiring queen and her entourage. Other youngsters would parade along in fancy dress, led by a brass band brought in from Knutsford. A troop of majorettes and motorised floats would follow.
‘When do you go back?’ said Brian.
‘Wednesday.’
‘Looking forward to it?’
‘In one sense, I am. But I’ll miss Ruth.’
‘One of these days, you’ll have to make up your mind.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve been going off to school ever since you were 11 and coming home in the holidays and picking up where you left off with my sister. One day soon, you’ll have to decide if you want to make it permanent with Ruth. If you don’t, you’ll come home and find she’s met someone else. At least, I hope that’s the way it will be.’
‘I thought you were a friend?’
‘What I mean is, I’d rather you got hurt than Ruth. Don’t hurt her, Simon.’
‘I won’t.’ He sighed, stopped rubbing and gave the harness a final glance. ‘It’s just so bloody awkward. I mean, I like Ruth a lot. A hell of a lot, but I’ve got another year at university. What am I supposed to do?’
Brian also stopped working on the brass and leather.
‘You said you liked her. You didn’t say you loved her. That’s the difference between you and Ruth and me and Helen. We love each other.’
‘Your position is as bad as mine, if not worse. You’ve got Archie bloody Roberts to contend with.’
‘We’ll manage. We’ve talked about it. And don’t think we’re going to do anything stupid, like elope. I might be thick but I know Helen has a brain.’
‘She can’t have. She likes you.’
Brian stroked the neck of the giant and gentle horse and refused to be riled.
‘Helen takes her A levels next year and, once she’s got those, we’ll think seriously about what to do. If she goes to university, I can go and get a job nearby. We could even get married. We’ve worked it out. We wouldn’t have a family or anything until she’d got her degree. We don’t care if we have to wait. We have the rest of our lives together. You see, we know that’s how it’s going to be.’
Simon gave him a crooked smile and didn’t tell him that love really was blind. If the romance could be sustained through another year of subterfuge, it would change when she went to university and met a whole new crowd of people. He feared Brian would be the one to get hurt. Simon wondered if he would get hurt, too?
The holiday in France with Hilary hadn’t been a success. He’d missed Ruth and been worried who she might see while he was away. The last four weeks had been a wonderful interlude but in a few days it would be over. Hilary would be available when he got back to Durham and ‘available’ was a commodity to cherish, but what about Ruth? Did he love her? How did you know when you were in love?
‘Has Ruth said anything to you about me?’ Simon asked.
‘No.’
‘I mean about the way she feels?’
‘I haven’t seen her pining or reading poetry books, if that’s what you mean, or crying a lot when she’s ticking the days off the calendar until Wednesday.’
‘She’s not been ticking the days off, has she?’
Brian gave him a flat look.
‘That was a joke. She doesn’t have a calendar.’
‘Ah. Right. It’s just that I don’t know what I feel about Ruth. I mean, I’m going back to Durham. How can I make promises?’
‘I wouldn’t worry. Ruth won’t be lonely when you’ve gone. Gareth Jones will be back sniffing round. Have you seen his car? Open-topped MG, wire wheels, the lot. That’s what you get when your dad owns a garage.’
Which was not what Simon wanted to hear. Why couldn’t falling in love exclude jealousies, problems and education? Why couldn’t it be simple?
Love was simple for Bob Harvey. He was chatting to Frank Beevers on the doorstep of the doctor’s home and surgery. They stood with their backs to the ivy-covered walls and watched the swelling crowd on the village green. Sally came downstairs to join them, bouncing with energy and happiness. The night before they had become engaged and she sported a modest solitaire diamond ring on her finger.
‘How are my two favourite men?’ she said.
‘Waiting for you, as usual,’ said her father. ‘You’ll have to get used to this, Bob. She’s always late.’
But Harvey wasn’t listening.
‘You look wonderful,’ he said, holding out his hands to her. She took them and kissed his cheek. She smiled because she knew she looked good. Her feminine but athletic build suited the tennis plimsolls, white socks, white shorts and white blouse. A whistle hung round her neck on a red ribbon. The two teachers were in charge of the children’s races.
‘You okay, dad?’
‘I’m fine. And don’t worry, I won’t be having a drink. I don’t need one. I’m still intoxicated from the news that I’ll be getting rid of you, at last.’ She kissed him, too. ‘Now you’d better get off and report to Mrs Humphrey. She doesn’t like you to be late.’
‘See you later, dad.’
‘Of course.’
‘See you across there,’ Bob Harvey said to him.
‘You will indeed.’ He sighed. ‘For my sins.’
He was on duty and would be taking his medical bag to the first aid tent manned by the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. It would be an afternoon of grazed knees and stinging nettles and definitely no drinking.
The Colonel and Willie sat on their bench, and Paddy the Labrador slept beneath it. They nursed their pints and surveyed the fete. Booths had been erected for coconut shies, games with ping-pong balls and bowls of water, darts which were to be thrown at playing cards, hoop-la and lobbing wet sponges at various volunteers. Tents for first aid, officialdom and readings by the Astral Pauline were arrayed in a line, two men were preparing the pig roast, stalls were set out for tombola and white elephants, and two girls in jodhpurs waited by the scoreboard with their ponies to offer children rides to the pavilion and back at thruppence a go. Ropes cordoned off the central playing area of the ground and the stretch of grass in front of the pavilion had been marked out for races.
On the other side of the field, the retiring 12-year-old monarch was passing on her crown to an 11-year-old on a throne that sat upon a
raised dais. Around them jostled courtiers and before them on the grass crowded their juvenile subjects of cowboys and Indians, Britannia, pirates with cardboard swords, Wee Willie Winkie, a tramp, chimney sweep, Lord Snooty, characters whose costumes were too obtuse to identify, and a massed throng of parents and onlookers. As usual, the microphone didn’t work.
‘Project, dear,’ prompted Mrs Humphrey, in a voice that carried across the field, as the retiring monarch attempted a speech without amplification.
‘She does damn well, you know,’ said Willie.
‘Who?’
‘Marjorie, putting on this show. It can’t be easy creating order out of all this chaos.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that without her, there might be no chaos? I say. Here come Sheila and Eliza.’
Willie had been expecting them and half hoping they wouldn’t turn up. He hated scenes and public occasions like this sometimes brought out the worst in his wife. He was relieved to see she was smiling. Joe, their gardener, pushed her along the path in the wheelchair. Eliza and Mary, their housekeeper, walked alongside.
‘You two boys look to be having fun,’ Sheila said. ‘Haven’t you entered any of the races?’
‘Only to the bar and back,’ said the Colonel, getting to his feet. ‘How are you, Sheila, my dear.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘You’re looking well.’
‘I can’t complain. If I do, no one listens.’ She said it lightly, a joke without innuendo.
The Colonel also kissed Eliza on the cheek and Willie followed the same formalities.
‘Joe, Mary,’ the Colonel said.
Willie nodded to the couple and said, ‘Lovely day for it.’
Eliza said, ‘If anyone says that again, I shall hit them.’
‘We’re English, Eliza,’ said the Colonel. ‘We’re programmed to talk about the weather.’
The microphone suddenly started to work and 12-year-old Joanna projected loud and clear. ‘I now crown thee Queen Elizabeth. God save the Queen.’ And, at the prompt of Mrs Humphrey, the courtiers repeated the words in a chant, ‘God save the Queen,’ and the children and adults out front burst into applause.
Willie smiled.
‘Queen Elizabeth,’ he said to the Colonel. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was exiled in Canada. ‘I wonder what Archie Roberts will think of that?’
Archie Roberts, in cavalry twill trousers, tweed jacket and shirt and tie, had, as usual, made a sartorial effort to fit into village life. His son, Ronald, fresh from cadet manoeuvres in Germany and the inspirational visit to Nuremberg, wore his dress uniform of fine quality and well cut khaki shirt and jodhpurs and black knee-high boots. On his breast were pinned two rows of badges that testified to efficiency, skills, attendance and good discipline. They displayed raised fists, lightning flashes, skulls and two swastikas. While Archie Roberts attempted to stroll and mingle, his son strutted.
‘I almost feel sorry for him,’ said Willie.
‘For whom?’ said Eliza.
‘For Archie. The man’s a total prat but even a total prat doesn’t deserve a son like that.’
They were standing back while the Colonel and Sheila threw sponges at the Vicar who had his head in makeshift stocks.
‘Sympathy and Nazis are incompatible,’ she said. ‘Besides, he’s sowing what he reaped.’
Willie thought of his own son. Was he sowing what he had reaped? Had his son left because of ambition or because of the distance that had grown between Sheila and himself? A distance in which emotions were lost unless they were shouted.
‘Ah, Willie, Mrs Sanders.’ Roberts strode towards them, his son, thumbs in his belt loops, shoulders erect, walked behind. ‘Let me introduce you. Ronald, this is William Ashford, Ashford Agricultural.’
Ronald, who was as tall as his father but carried none of the excess weight, was blonde and had blue eyes that seemed to be focussed on the horizon where his destiny might be waiting. He did not remove his thumbs from the belt loops but stood even more erect, clicked his heels and inclined his head.
‘Ronald,’ Willie said, nodding his head in return.
‘Mrs Sanders is Willie’s sister-in-law.’ Ronald honoured her with a click of heels and a brief nod. ‘Her husband died in the Russian War,’ Roberts said, as if to legitimise her.
‘A noble cause,’ Ronald said. ‘A noble death.’
Willie sensed Eliza was on the brink of a response that might not be appropriate.
‘Home for long, Ronald?’ he said.
‘I return tomorrow.’
‘Looking forward to it?’
‘I can’t wait.’ He glanced around at the crowd, which moved past at a distance, as if he came with a buffer zone. ‘I’m not happy with frivolity.’
‘Frivolity?’ Willie smiled. ‘What a splendid word for it. But you don’t disapprove, surely? It’s tradition. Besides, your father so kindly supplied the pig.’
‘I don’t disapprove. It’s simply not for me, Mr Ashford. I prefer the military life. It’s uncomplicated and essential. Without the military, you wouldn’t be able to have traditions.’
‘Quite.’
Behind them, Sheila and the Colonel were making a commotion and the Vicar shouted, ‘That’s not fair.’ They turned to see Sheila soaking a sponge in a bucket as the Colonel braced himself behind the wheelchair.
‘Of course it is,’ she shouted. ‘I can’t throw properly in this thing. Charge, Jimmy.’
The Colonel, puffing and red-faced but obviously enjoying himself, pushed her forward in the wheelchair at speed. ‘Tally-ho,’ he cried. He stopped directly in front of the Vicar and Sheila pushed the sponge into the cleric’s face. ‘Howzat?’ she shouted.
‘Ah yes,’ said Willie. ‘The military. Have you met Colonel Humphrey?’
Night came quickly and carried a chill. The stalls, kiosks and the tents housing first aid and Astral Pauline had been taken down, but Mrs Humphrey’s tent remained standing and wouldn’t be removed until the morning.
Simon and Ruth wore sweaters and sat by the remnants of the pig roast fire, baking potatoes in the embers, and talking about the pomposity shown by Archie Roberts in announcing the fancy dress winners, the defeat of the Black Bull by the Farmer’s Arms in the annual tug-of-war, and how summer had cooled and would soon be over. Everything, in fact, except what was really on their minds.
Music from the record-hop in the church hall drifted to them on the clear, still air. One song kept being played more than the others, Love Me Do by a new band called The Beatles.
‘It’s loud enough to keep Miss Agnes and Miss Doris awake,’ he said.
‘They’re game old girls. Rose Cottage will be rocking. They’ll be having a party all of their own.’
‘I wonder why they never married?’
He wondered why he had posed the question.
‘The Great War,’ said Ruth. He looked at her, not making the connection, and she continued. ‘They were probably in their teens in 1914. Perhaps they were courting. Perhaps their young men went to war and never came back. Look at the war memorial. There’s an awful lot of names for a village this size.’
‘And afterwards, there would be a shortage of men,’ he said, following the reasoning.
‘Exactly. And stuck here, in the back of beyond, they wouldn’t have had much of a chance of meeting anybody else.’
‘That’s sad,’ he said.
‘It’s speculation. I don’t know if that’s what happened. Perhaps they were prostitutes in Manchester and retired here when they hit old age at 20.’
‘I prefer the story of lost love.’ He poked the fire with a stick and turned the potatoes. ‘Old age at 20?’ he said.
‘A joke.’
He looked at her and admired her face in the glow of the fire.
‘You’ll never get old,’ he said. ‘Not to me.’
She smiled and said, ‘You mean I’ll always be that snotty nosed 10-year-old you always wanted to wrestle?’
‘You never had a snotty nose.’
> ‘What about the wrestling?’
He chuckled. ‘That’s true. I did always want to wrestle you. I didn’t know why, at the time.’
‘Neither did I. For years, I thought you kept a bottle in your pocket. As I recall, it was a very prominent bottle, considering you were 12.’
‘Still got it, as it happens.’
‘Careful, Simon. Let’s not be smutty.’
‘Sorry.’
He felt ashamed, as if he had been making an immoral suggestion.
‘Another joke, stupid. God, but you’re serious tonight.’
‘I can’t help it. I go back on Wednesday.’
‘I know.’
‘And Gareth Jones will be round in his open-topped MG with wire wheels.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Brian told me. You’ll probably marry him. Can’t blame you.’
‘All for an MG?’ she said.
‘With wire wheels.’ She laughed and pushed against him with her shoulder and he put his arm around her and they kissed. ‘I don’t want to go back to Durham,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to give Gareth Jones the chance.’
Ruth put a hand on his chest as if to restrain any more declarations.
‘You do have to go back to Durham and Gareth Jones has no chance. I love you, Simon. No one else. Always have, always will.’
It was the first time she had said it and it was as if her words kicked down barriers he had built inside himself, and let in the stars and the moon and reveal the truth that had been waiting for release.
‘I love you, Ruth,’ he said. He had never been so certain about anything in his life before. They stared at each other, and he wondered if she was as scared as he was for actually saying it. ‘I do. I love you. Always have, always will.’
Brian Ogilvy and Helen Roberts had made themselves a nest on folded blankets in Mrs Humphrey’s tent and lay close together. They shared a cigarette.
'We could run away to Tahiti,’ Helen said.
‘Can’t do that,’ said Brian. ‘They don’t do A-levels in Tahiti.’
‘They might. Advanced Coconut Chemistry and Beachcombing.’
The Heydrich Sanction Page 6
