by Alan Hardy
Paula had presumably been following her while she had been following Turnbill, so, even if the trio weren’t in cahoots, Paula would tell Turnbill, and he could tell Matthew.
So, it was inevitable that Matthew would find out that she, Fiona, knew about his connections with Turnbill. Maybe he already knew. They’d had time to catch up with each other, and explain, while she was stupidly going in the opposite direction.
She wasn’t good at this type of thing. Sleuthing, it was called, wasn’t it? And the calculating reasoning which went with it. She was a bit too nervous and unsure of herself for it. You needed a cool head.
It would seem strange that she hadn’t rushed up to Matthew there and then in the park, and demanded to know what was going on, wouldn’t it? That’s what a totally innocent person would have done, wouldn’t they? She should have tapped Matthew on the shoulder, and shouted, “What the hell is going on, you gorgeous, gorgeous, handsome, handsome man?”
But she just couldn’t think straight when it came to Flight Lieutenant Matthew Manfred.
She was walking aimlessly round and round the park, up and down paths, retracing her steps back to the lake more than once, getting side-tracked up tiny trails leading nowhere but round and round the bushes. She was getting out of herself, feeling hot and bothered, and becoming more and more frustrated. In particular, she sensed inside her a surge of extreme annoyance, if not downright anger, directed towards young Matthew Manfred. He was the cause of all her present anxieties. He was the cause of her shoes getting dustier and dustier, and her body getting sweaty and itchy. And she was dying for a wee.
Why hadn’t she confronted him straightaway? What an idiot!
Just as she was trying to figure out her next move—whether to wait for her birthday party, or seek him out now at his base at Hornchurch—she saw him standing casually by the lake, near a small copse which bordered the lake in that corner. He was smoking a cigarette.
She drew in her breath, brushed down her black coat, and kicked her shoes together haphazardly to remove a smidgen or two of dust. She licked her lips to restore her lipstick’s lost glossiness.
She looked down at her body as she approached him. Her coat was one of those quite fashionable ones where the two sides of the coat didn’t quite reach other when done up—held tight and close by the clips connecting them—which permitted a strip of whiteness from her frock to seem to run up the centre of her body. Fiona had always considered it quite a daring buy. Well, for her, at least. Her sisters, Miriam and Julia, had said she looked quite fetching in it when she had asked their opinion. And they normally thought their elder sister a bit of an unadventurous frump in matters of fashion.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to spot me,” commented Matthew wryly, without turning around. “This is your third time back to the lake since I’ve been standing here.”
He turned around to face her with a wan smile.
“Well, young man…”
She had wanted to put him down, admonish him with a contemptuous tone of voice, but the words had choked in her throat.’
His sweet, delicate face, that cheeky glimmer in his eyes, and that alluring, slim body wrapped in the blue of his RAF uniform—matching those unforgettable eyes—made her feel powerless.
She stumbled on the hard ground as her shoe hit against a bump in the path.
“You all right?” he said, moving towards her.
“Of course I am,” she snapped back, retreating from him.
He stood still, staring at her.
“You were looking for me, weren’t you?” he asked.
“I think it’s for me to ask the questions at the moment, isn’t it?”
“Fire away, Fiona.”
“Mrs MacIntosh to you.”
He nodded obediently.
He looked pale, she suddenly noticed. A little sad. Was there even a touch of redness about the inside of his lower lip?
“Are you all right, Matthew?”
“All right?”
“I mean, are you well? Has something happened?”
“No… Well, I did get a bit shot up yesterday, when we were on a sortie over Northern France. Nothing too serious. But it shakes you up. As you know, I’m no nerves-of-steel hero.”
“But you weren’t hurt?” she asked, showing obvious concern, and motioning to her own lower lip.
“No, no…” he murmured, laughing slightly. “That was me. I always bite my lower lip when I’m tensed up.”
“In the combat yesterday?”
“Or maybe I did it just now, waiting for you to spot me…”
He gave her a pointed stare, and something similar to a pain hit her in her lower torso, but it wasn’t a pain, it was too pleasurable for that. Something like a pain.
“I thought you said things were much quieter now, Matthew?”
“Well, they were,” he explained. “The Germans aren’t coming over much at all during the day, but we’re starting to mount more and more sorties over France. It’s getting a bit hectic again.”
“How do the losses compare with 1940, Matthew?”
He remained silent.
“I suppose tactics are different too when you’re fighting over enemy territory, compared to last year when you were defending your own land?” she continued, far too breathlessly.
“I suppose so…”
“Are you escorting bombers over, or are you—”
“I shouldn’t really answer such questions, you know, Mrs MacIntosh,” he said, looking round. “You never know who’s listening, do you? Like in the posters, remember?”
He motioned to her as he moved off along the pathway to the nearby copse, where they could be more isolated. In fact, as she followed him, she turned around and noticed quite a few people were gathering by the lake.
“But you’re all right, anyway, Matthew. That’s the important thing,” she commented, as they walked side by side along the path, now surrounded by bushes and trees, such that at times they had to bend down to avoid overhanging branches and out-sticking brambles. This caused them to sidle into each other now and then, murmur soft apologies, and then soon afterwards bump into one another once more. After a while, they didn’t bother with the apologies. Their bodies became closer and closer, their faces almost touching, their breathing like one body breathing.
“Was it a German plane, or flak?” she asked, turning towards him, and her lips no more than inches from his. Her eyes directly looking into his. “When you got hit, Matthew?”
“I can’t really answer, Mrs MacIntosh… Not too sure if I know, anyway…”
He leant forward, and kissed her, as before, this time moving his left arm behind her to rest his hand on her back. She pressed back with her lips ever so slightly on his.
Though thrilled by his lips’ soft pressure on hers, she pushed him back, ever so slightly.
His eyes, ablaze with naughty cheekiness, and so close, bore into hers.
“Didn’t you have some questions for me, Mrs MacIntosh?” he asked, his eyes like sparkling stars.
Was he toying with her? Was he mocking her?
“This is hardly the place,” she murmured, discomforted, looking around at the surrounding foliage at their little bend in the pathway, their little alcove, their refuge. “It’s not the place for…”
“An interrogation?”
“Interrogation?” she echoed stupidly.
“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” he said bluntly, still smiling. “You could always make a citizen’s arrest and cart me off to the police-station, and interrogate me there, if you want.”
“Police-station? Why should I do that?”
“I’m only joking, Fiona,” he said, laughing. “You don’t really have a sense of humour, do you? A bit of a dry, old stick at times, aren’t you?”
He was laughing at her, wasn’t he?
“This is all a joke for you, isn’t it?” she snapped back, moving away from him.
“No, it isn’t,” he replied
, assuming a more serious, chastened look and demeanour.
He stepped back, straightening himself up. He was clearly making fun of her, but not in a cruel way. Just being silly, and so young.
“All right, Mrs MacIntosh, I’m ready. Fire away,” he said. “I promise I’m not laughing at you.”
Fiona was confused, angry, perturbed, and not a little excited. She felt out of her depth, but she would give it a go.
“Well,” she began nervously, “can you explain what you were doing meeting up with Flight Lieutenant Turnbill just now?”
“Why should I have to explain that?” he answered, almost contemptuously. “After all, we are ex-brothers-in-arms.”
“Do you deny he was reporting back to you after the meeting I had with him?”
“Reporting back?” he echoed. “Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic? I can see you must be a lover of Hollywood films.”
She was getting angrier and angrier, and, as she did so, and faced with Matthew’s inconsiderate lack of responsiveness, she felt a growing resolve to defend her corner.
“He claims he was the one who wrote me those letters.”
“Does he now?”
“But you know that, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“You coached him on what to say to me, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“He repeated the sort of phrases you used, almost word for word…”
“Like what, Mrs MacIntosh?”
“Matthew, you can either call me Fiona, or Mrs MacIntosh,” she said harshly, “but I won’t have you slipping from one to another depending on how you consider I should be treated. I’m not a child to be given a sweetie when a good girl, nor reprimanded when I’m behaving badly.”
“Understood, Fiona,” said Matthew, looking respectfully at her for a moment, before his eyes sparkled like the rays of the sun bursting out from behind a cloud. “And do you often do that?”
“What?”
“Behave badly?”
She didn’t answer, pursing her lips.
If he carried on like this, she would definitely give him a slap.
He looked down at her hands.
She looked down too.
She was doing that thing again. Rubbing her left wrist with her right hand. Rubbing and rubbing.
Her left eye welled up with a tear or two. She instinctively flicked them away with her left hand, like scratching at the skin below her eye.
He stared at that nervous tic too, fascinated.
He was starting to know her so well. She understood that. She had to be careful.
She lowered her hand, wiping it on her black coat.
He followed her movements and gestures like a dog following its master’s every move.
Her hand strayed towards the opening between the two sides of her coat, and lingered near the tiny, white streak which ran up her whole body.
His eager, blue eyes seemed transfixed. He swallowed harshly. Fiona felt energized. She spun away from him, plonking herself more in the centre of the path, away from the brambles and branches.
“Now, as I was saying, Matthew,” said a newly confident Fiona, “are you going to admit you coached him on what to say?”
“And what did he say?” snapped Matthew rather testily.
“Oh, that maybe Freddie and I were not really suited…that Freddie could be difficult…and…was typical of his class… All marriages are fifty-fifty… All the sort of things you yourself said to me.”
“Fairly standard stuff, I would say,” he murmured dismissively. “Plus the fact that I and Turnbill both knew Freddie relatively well… I don’t see—”
“Did you or did you not pretend to be my husband, and did you write me those letters?”
Fiona was breathing hard, bitterly aware of her trembling left hand wiping away real or imagined tears from her eye, or her right hand fiddling manically with her wrist, and not really able to stop herself doing either.
Matthew didn’t answer. He stood there, motionless, neither too diffident nor too belligerent, just enigmatically staring at her and her nervous movements.
“What made you think you had the right to do that?” she almost shouted. “What gave you the right to pretend to be my husband and discuss intimate matters with me? Matters only a husband and wife should know about? Was that the behaviour of a gentleman?”
He said nothing.
“Why don’t you answer? Why are you so heartless?”
“Fiona,” he murmured, moving towards her, his hand outstretched, “I can’t answer your questions.”
She backed away, exaggeratedly, as if he were someone to fear.
“Why not?”
“I can’t say… I can’t say… I’m sorry…”
He seemed genuinely contrite, but Fiona felt furious. He was like a stubborn child who refused to speak.
What in God’s name did it all mean?
He moved towards her again. She didn’t back off.
“If you kiss me again, Flight Lieutenant Manfred, I’ll slap you across your face!”
She stood there unsteadily, but determined to stand up for herself. She couldn’t let all men treat her like this.
He was right in front of her, his hands holding her, his eyes as bright as ever, his heart beating fast in the vibration she felt passing from his hands into her body, his chest’s sharp rise and fall bringing a pain to her own chest. He leant forward, and kissed her gently, quickly, no more than a peck, no more than a second’s stab of eternity. He let his arms drop, and stepped back.
Without any hesitation, she drew back her right hand, and walloped him across his cheek.
He gave a surprised little grunt, and for a moment stumbled. His eyes were smarting, and yet were painfully respectful.
Then anger flared up in him and he grabbed her with both hands, and lunged forward. She threw back her head, wriggling and wriggling out of his reach.
“No, Matthew! No! I’ll scream! And then what?”
He kept trying to kiss her, holding her arms more and more savagely, furious she kept twisting her head away from him.
Pinioned as she was, powerless to resist, she sucked in her saliva, and spat at him.
He immediately let go of her, dumbfounded, his eyes dilating in shock.
She could hardly breathe, and raised her hand again to strike him, but stopped. As he moved further back, she kicked out at him, connecting with his shin.
He didn’t react.
Her spitting had not been well executed. A globule of saliva hung down from her lower lip, elongating its way slowly down her chin. She hurriedly wiped it away, with a sniff.
“There’s no need to get hysterical,” he said.
He looked worried. Fearful she might go berserk.
“You’re a disgrace to the uniform you wear, Flight Lieutenant!” she spat out triumphantly. “How dare you behave like that to me! You write me obscene letters, and then think you can treat me like this, you’re—”
“I didn’t write you obscene letters. What are you saying?”
He looked genuinely offended.
“But you wrote those letters, didn’t you?” she asked, still gasping for breath, but the fury abating.
The fascination with him was returning.
“I can’t answer.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
He didn’t reply.
He stood there, breathing as heavily as Fiona, still looking at her with a mix of shock and dewy-eyed amazement.
“You’re just like Freddie, aren’t you?” she threw out brutally.
“Am I?”
“Yes, you treat women disrespectfully, roughly, you think only your degenerate urges matter and we—”
“Did Freddie really make such outrageous demands on you?” he snapped back, equally viciously. “Aren’t you exaggerating?”
“And what would you know of such demands unless you were the writer of those letters where we discussed all that?”
He
was flummoxed for a moment, and then smiled.
“Who says he didn’t speak about such things to me? And the others?”
“He spoke to other members of the squadron about our private things?” she asked, her triumphant expression rapidly subsiding into irritation again.
“He could have… Anyway, maybe it was your reaction to him which was wrong. Maybe it was too harsh. You and Freddie weren’t suited, of course, but maybe you are too quick to condemn, you are not at your ease in…”
“How dare you speak to me like that!” she threw back. “He was a despicable man in such matters! Unless, of course, you’re the sort of man who goes with whores too…”
She stared at him, dying to smack him in the face again, and, irritatingly, dying for that pee.
“Who knows?” he answered quietly and slowly. “In ten years, if I haven’t met the right woman, or if I get hitched to the wrong woman…”
He looked pointedly at her, and her hand rubbing her wrist as if her life depended on it.
“So, you’re saying I drove him to it? Is that it?” she countered, out of herself. “What do you know of such things? You’re barely more than a boy.”
That hurt him. She saw that. His body shrank momentarily. He was humbled. Hurt. She instantly regretted saying it, but it was too late.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he said, looking tired, his face wan and so sad. “Just that he wasn’t the man for you, and you weren’t the woman for him…and then things happen…”
She wanted to hit him, and love him, she wanted to smack him, and cradle him in her arms, she wanted to hurt him with words, and she wanted to take back those words straight away.
“Anyway, it’s not my place, as you said, to talk about…”
His voice trailed off, and he turned to look down the pathway, making ready to go.
“Please, Matthew!” she called out. “Tell me the truth! Tell me what’s going on. Why did Flight Lieutenant Turnbill—”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Did you write those letters? I know you did.”
“I…”
“I know you did.”
He turned away, moving off down the path.
She wanted to stop him leaving, but didn’t know how.
