On the morning following Georgia Kennedy’s husband’s last day in Civvy Street, it suddenly came to her what freedom this coming war would bring.
For the last ten minutes, as her mind roamed lazily, she had kept glancing at Hugh’s best working suit. Then the reality of its precisely-folded emptiness sank in.
I’m free again.
Hugh has gone!
Free of Hugh-centred routine.
Hugh, too eager to await the call-up, had resigned his Territorial Army commission, packed the khaki canvas bag and gone to Aldershot to join the regulars, all tickety-boo, polished, shiny and humming tumty-tumty-tum.
From the bed, she saw also his folded breeches and country-jacket of prickly lovat tweed and heard Hugh’s grammar-school accent.
‘The jackets and breeches must be dry-cleaned, Georgia, I won’t be able to find the time; and put some naphtha in the pockets, it could be years…’
‘But Hugh, you’ll get leave.’
‘Well yes, but you know… Don’t make difficulties, Georgia.’
Looking now at his civvies – still not at the dry-cleaners as instructed and Hugh gone a whole twenty-four hours – Georgia imagined that the tweed was as much impregnated with Hugh’s self-important voice as with the flour it gathered when he walked past the grain mills to his little white-dusted lab-office… used to walk.
She raised one arm above her head, allowing the shoulder-socket to lock so that the arm almost held itself aloft. Doing nothing except idle in bed and think about domestic freedom.
I’ll be Georgia again.
Not Mrs Kennedy, not Hugh Kennedy’s doubles partner, not the girl who married her boss, not Hugh Kennedy’s wife… My Wife… The Wife… Housewife. She was free to be Georgia. She gazed up at Georgia’s firm and slender arm, eight months since the 1938 Tennis Club tournaments, and still honey-brown.
Almost the last question he had asked yesterday, before he was caught up in the excitement, was about that very arm. ‘Why on earth do you do that, Georgia?’ Niggly. ‘Is that supposed to be arm exercise? If so, then it’s a waste of time, unless you use weights.’ Niggly in spite of his elation at the prospect of Aldershot. She knew why: Hugh didn’t like her to watch as he dressed. But unless he withdrew into the bathroom or the tiny spare bedroom, he had no option – either move would have been a statement of something. Of the state of their relationship perhaps.
Is he embarrassed in the open showers at the Sports Club, or the communal rugby tubs, or out on manoeuvres? Perhaps he isn’t as well equipped as other men. How would I know? The last naked male I saw was Nick, and he was still only seventeen. The only naked male! Certainly from what she could observe of the lounging in bathers around the club pool, Hugh appeared to be no less well endowed.
Nick Crockford at seventeen was six foot tall and still growing, almost unembarrassed and nonchalantly proud of his body, diving and beckoning Georgia into the chilly clear green water of the lake that hot July after a day when they had been fruit-picking till their backs were broken. Sunburned dark brown except for where his body had been covered by shorts and singlet. Even then his hair had shown some streaks that, by the time he was twenty, would have spread until he was prematurely grey.
Yesterday had been a bit hectic, seeing Hugh off, then typing up the letters he had left, and his various reports for the Sports Club. Today she could take more slowly; she thought again of her new state of freedom and life without Hugh.
Two years of marriage, of sharing four foot by six foot of springs and flock, of sharing boiled, blued, starched and ironed white cotton sheets, woollen blankets and padded art-silk eiderdown, two years of Hugh watching his next-of-kin raise her shaven-armpitted arms one at a time for a few minutes each morning – and always wondering but never commenting until the morning he left. Was that only yesterday!
‘I like to stretch and look at my arms. They are the only parts of me that bear any resemblance to a ballet-dancer. It must be wonderful to be trained in ballet, don’t you think, Hugh? As soon as I get up, they change shape and become a housewife’s arms. They shovel coal, roll pastry and iron sheets. Nothing very wonderful about a housewife’s arms. Eh? Is there, Hugh? Nothing exotic, not at all erotic.’
He had halted momentarily in pulling on his socks, those khaki fine-woollen socks that Gieves and Hawkes supplied not only to time-serving army officers but to Territorials, part-timers such as Hugh had been for years. He had reddened slightly, but had not looked up, had not wagged his head at her nonsense, had not smiled at her and said, as any man who wasn’t Hugh would have said, ‘You do say some daft things, Georgia.’
Yesterday, he had not heard much because of the clamour of his own thoughts of Aldershot, had been too deafened by the prospect of war and the prospect of permanent khaki to hear much at all except the zips and fasteners of his grip and hussif and toiletry roll, and the clink of the buckle of his Sam Browne belt.
And I do say some daft things. I do, because he never does.
If only he had just said, ‘Georgia Kennedy, I shall never make you out’, and had come across to the bed and given her a playful kiss… or an intimate squeeze, suggestive caress… as he did in the fictions that went on in her head. If he had only said, ‘I don’t care if your arms are not exotic, but I know they are erotic, so move over and make room for me.’ If only he had got back into bed and pressed down upon her wearing his uniform or… oh yes, wearing prickly thorn-proof lovat.
Desire sprang from the fantasy and made her wonder, how she would feel if Hugh was away for long stretches of time. Hugh wasn’t very good in bed, but at least he was there… used to be there.
Leaning on one elbow she drank the remaining half-inch of the lemon and honey she had brought with her last night – not their usual cocoa, but lemon and honey with – and for God’s sake why not! – a large gurgle from the sherry bottle. It had not tasted very good last night, and was not improved with standing – but it had a faint flavour of decadence. Stale but exotic. Boozing in bed. A little bit of freedom from the male she had made promises to.
She ran her hands up her legs and felt her armpits. Perhaps… she smiled, remembering the time when she still lived at home… a customer, a White Russian woman refugee with lovely glossy black hair everywhere, used to come disturbingly sleeveless into the pub, always with a different good-looking man, and unwittingly be the focus of furtive attention from the regulars. Did Russian women not shave their armpits, or was she having her little bit of freedom now that she had escaped whatever it was she had? Perhaps I will let mine grow… but it would be reddish and insignificant compared to the Russian lady’s.
Aloud, ‘Get up!’
Her eye caught sight of a pile of papers Hugh had left for her to stow in a document folder he had provided – it had strings and looked as though it ought to contain something more legal or important than radio licences, car documents and the like. With these papers was his War Office marching orders envelope.
When it had arrived, he had turned the manila envelope over several times, smiling at it in a way that Georgia had once fondly imagined he smiled over her love letters to him. That was a fantasy, as she had soon learned: he had never set much store by letters.
‘For Christ’s sake, open it if you are going to, Hugh.’
‘Keep your socks on, Old Girl, it’s probably my Marching Orders.’
He was about to rip open the envelope with his thumb as always, when he stopped. ‘Where’s the paper-knife, Georgia?’
‘I don’t know, did we ever have one?’
Using his butter-knife he had carefully slit open the envelope. ‘You want to get a box to keep them. Not many people realize it yet, but things like this will be like gold before many months are gone.’ Having removed its contents, he smoothed the envelope and anchored it securely to the breakfast table by means of the knife.
‘Hugh, it’s only an ordinary envelope, I can’t see how going to war will affect the production of envelopes – what do you think we shall do, press them into hard balls and throw them at the Germans?’
Normally, Hugh would have looked long-sufferingly at her facetious attempt at feigned ignorance. Being Silly. ‘You’re being silly now, Georgia.’ That day he had smiled, smoothing back the longer side of his Brylcreemed hair with thumb and cupped hand. Some mornings she had counted him do that seventeen or eighteen times as he read his Telegraph.
‘Put sticky labels on the list. Get a boxful. This Show’s not going to be over by Christmas, I don’t care what your captive oracle or anybody else says.’
‘She’s the librarian. And her brother is in the army and he is a sergeant. I should have thought he’d know a bit more about it than a playtime soldier.’
Sheer absolute bitchiness calling him that.
I have been bitchy. That time when she had referred to him as an office worker. Being in charge of the lab is so important to Hugh… used to be. Now he will not have to bring conversation around to the point where he can establish his status: he will have a peaked cap and insignia on his shoulders.
I once asked him to make love to me without taking off his lovely rough lovats. ‘Hugh, why won’t you ever let yourself go? Why is it that you’ll never make love with your Tweeds on – and never with your pyjamas off?’
He looked at me as though I had made a lewd suggestion.
Jim-jams, he calls them. Jim-jams – man of his age!
The abbey clock struck seven. Outside the small forty-year-old single-bay terraced house, the spring morning had been going for hours. The earth had turned quite a few degrees since dawn so that now sunshine came directly into the room and turned the red and white Regency stripes to gold and tan.
Charlie Partridge, the postman, on the last leg of his morning round, loosens his tie and tips back his peaked cap. He’s a good-looking young man in his solid way, resembling his mother. It is hot for the time of year, he has forecast a long hot summer – open-air type, he’s always been quite good at knowing the weather.
He slows down and swings his empty sack round to the back. There are only a few letters left. Reading the envelopes he sees two for Kennedy further along the avenue and is reminded that Hugh Kennedy has joined up leaving Markham Town Cricket Club without a captain. Charlie Partridge plays but knows that he stands no chance of getting elected captain – born the wrong side of the tracks. And wonders, yet again, whether he should do the same and join up. He hasn’t much time for Churchill, but Charlie has to agree with him in spite of him being a toe-rag. There will be a war and we’d better prepare for it. If I go it will be the RAF. He had not said a word to Marie, or to anyone for that matter.