Whenever Nick got time off, he came to Markham. And whenever she protested that really she shouldn’t keep going out with him like this, he persuaded her.
‘Admit it, Georgia Honeycombe, we always have a good time when we’re together.’
‘But we shouldn’t be together.’
‘It’s innocent enough. Bugger it, Georgia, it has to be – you don’t let anything decadent happen.’
Long ago, when the two of them were about fourteen and had truanted for a week, her mother had foretold: ‘That Nick Crockford takes after his father, he’s got an air of degeneracy about him – if you don’t watch out, Georgia, he’ll get you into something more than just naughtiness.’ The trouble was, it was that air her mother called degeneracy which aroused Georgia. Admitting it to herself, when they were together, she was more careful to keep control, both of herself and the situation. Kept to the straight and narrow by feeling guilty.
If the nuns oppressed little Catholic girls with threats of Hell and damnation, then Anglican teachers did as good a job on theirs by the use of conscience and guilt – and the Anglicans do not even provide the relief of the confessional and penance.
But Georgia was first and foremost a woman in full bloom, and only second a product of the C of E school. It was not easy for her during the time when Nick came to Markham and Hugh did not.
Sometimes he called to take her to the pictures or to a dance in Southampton or Portsmouth, but not in Markham. And she did enjoy his company greatly. They spoke the same language, were never awkward or tongue-tied, could argue fiercely without malice and laugh at small shared jokes. She liked his rambling conversation, ranging from the countryside, about which he would talk with great knowledge, to politics, about which he would talk with great passion, to books and history. She liked his attention to her, listening to her opinions, laughing at her jokes, behaving as though she mattered.
She liked him, because he was her sort. They knew one another to their depths, so that when she talked to him seriously about how bad she felt about deceiving Hugh, Nick said, ‘All right, I understand. I won’t try anything till you ask me.’ And he meant it. ‘You will ask me. You’ll drop into my hands like a ripe medlar.’ And he was convinced that she would. She never mentioned her suspicion – almost certainty – that Hugh was interested in the Wren officer, Angela, knowing that Nick would have no compunction about using this as a lever to prise her loose from Hugh.
On that July afternoon, as she entered a final total in a final column, there was a quiet knock at the back door of her office. Suddenly there was Nick’s tall, broad body filling the tiny room.
‘Nick! What are you doing here?’
‘It’s all right, nobody saw me sneak in – I was careful.’
‘Fool, I didn’t mean…’
He sat down upon the only other chair, elbows on knees in the relaxed position that was typical of him. She sensed that he had something on his mind or he would not have come to her office, but all he said was, ‘I’ve got Sunday off, I thought we could take our bikes out in the country.’
‘Lovely. I’ll meet you along the road.’
‘Right.’
‘You didn’t come just to tell me that.’
‘No, you’re right. I wasn’t going to say anything till we’d had our day out. It’s well… I’ve been transferred to a Liverpool brigade.’
Suddenly she was engulfed in confused emotions. She knew what it was like in Liverpool. As with all the great cities in Britain, Liverpool had been a prime target for the Luftwaffe: people went underground every night, and when they came up next morning there were pretty good odds that their home had been reduced to a hole in the ground. Liverpool was perhaps no more dangerous than Southampton, but it was at the other end of the country. ‘You’re a free agent, Nick.’
‘They need firemen there.’
‘If you want to go I can’t stop you.’
‘It’s not a question of want.’
‘And it’s nothing to do with me anyway, is it?’
‘What’s up, Georgia? You’re sounding like a niggly wife!’
‘How would you know what a wife sounded like? You haven’t seen yours in months.’
His cheeks became suffused, but his voice remained calm. ‘You know that I haven’t got a wife! Anyway, I thought you’d prefer it if I didn’t see her.’
She knew that he had stopped going to see Pete, saying that it was confusing to him now that Nancy was set up with another man. But there were times when she knew that he longed to see his little boy. She concentrated on making pencil lines between wormholes on her desk top. ‘It’s none of my business.’
‘Isn’t it, Georgia, isn’t it?’
She was silent.
‘I said I would leave things until you wanted to change them. You know what I want.’
‘I know.’
‘Well?’
‘How can I change them? I’m married to Hugh.’
‘So what do we do? Shall I just go to Liverpool and that’s that?’
Scraping the chair back, she stood up and turned away from him. ‘I don’t know, Nick. I don’t know!’
At last he had got her to admit that their situation was not static, that they were not just good friends and dancing partners – company for one another, each with their partners gone.
He rose and came round to her side of the desk. She breathed in the familiar warm scent that was unique to him – harsh red soap, Erasmic shaving soap, and Nick’s own wholesome sweat, skin and hair. The male scent that had enveloped her many times when they had sat close in the pictures, danced, and when he had sometimes suddenly, urgently gathered her to him and kissed her as though it was his last moment upon earth.
‘I said I won’t press you again to go to bed with me, Georgia, and I won’t; but I never promised that I wouldn’t tell you that I want to.’ He held her face and ruffled her hair with his fingers. ‘That I desire you, need you.’ When he drew her to him, she did not pull back. ‘I didn’t say that I wouldn’t kiss you. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t tell you that I love you.’ He kissed her, lightly but fully on the mouth. ‘I love you, Georgia Honeycombe.’
She still had her arms about him when there was a quiet tap on the door. It opened immediately and Eve Hardy’s head appeared. She was at once flustered. ‘Oh! I’m awfully sorry, Georgia. I just wondered if you had… Never mind. I’m sorry.’
Nick, unperturbed, released Georgia and said, ‘It’s all right, I was just going.’
‘No, no. I’m sorry, but I was going to put the van away and I only came to ask if you would like a lift home, Georgia.’
In a moment, Nick had gone.
Eve said, ‘How awful of me. I’m frightfully sorry, Georgia. I keep saying I’m sorry, don’t I? That’s because I’m embarrassed.’
Georgia smiled to cover her own embarrassment. ‘It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t be entertaining men in my office, should I?’ Suddenly there was a lump in her throat and so many tears gathered that she could not blink them away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Then gave a laugh. ‘How many times are we going to say sorry to each other?’
Eve came to Georgia and put arms about her. ‘Would you like to talk about it? I’m a very good listener.’
Georgia was surprised at the mature tone of Eve Hardy’s voice, which was usually cheerful and too girlish for her age.
‘Yes,’ said Georgia. ‘Yes, I should like to.’
It was necessary for Eve to allow her shy look to roam a little before she let it meet Georgia’s eyes. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to do the same for me some time.’
In Eve Hardy’s eyes, Georgia saw there was the same anguish and hurt as in her own.
That was the first of many nights that Eve was to spend in the beautifully done-up spare-room which Georgia had decorated and refurbished herself.
On the Sunday morning, Georgia and Nick met on the road outside the town. It was warm, with breeze enough to make cycling seem the most pleasant pastime in the world. At lunch-time, they sat outside The Cricketers, which had sometimes been their resting place on other occasions like this.
He carried the shandies from the pub to the meadow where she was sitting beside the stream. They sat quietly, eating cheese biscuits and drinking. He studied her. The overhead July sun made her hair glow like marigolds and illuminated her lithe body in its striped dress. He traced one of the stripes from her shoulder to her waist. Her proportions were so much the reverse of those of Nancy, who had small neat breasts and broad hips.
How did I ever come to let her get away from me? he thought. Because I was young, and he had a posh accent and manager’s job and his own house. Because Georgia was young and dazzled by his attention and I thought I wasn’t good enough.
It was only looking at it from the distance of time and maturity that he could see how little it had taken for two country kids like himself and Georgia to be taken in. Hugh Kennedy was nothing, nobody. Captain of Markham cricket team and loud-mouth of the tennis court. Looking at it from here, Nick Crockford knew – I shall make ten of Hugh Kennedy.
He had recently received a letter from Nancy saying that she was going to get married, and asking him whether he minded if they adopted Pete. For a week he had prevaricated: not that he minded the marriage, but he did not want Peter to have the red-haired signalman’s name. He knew that he was not being fair. To all intents and purposes, the other man was Peter’s father now. He would have all the bother of bringing him up. Again he put it from his mind and turned again to thinking about Hugh Kennedy.
The trouble was, he had not known at the time that he was worth ten of Hugh Kennedy. Instead he had, unconsciously, made his life as different as he could from Hugh’s by giving up his college place and going on the Council road gang, joining the AFS when Hugh joined the Territorial Army, going about with Nancy Miles because she was faintly sluttish, was good fun, wasn’t afraid of, enjoying sex and didn’t mind that there was no marriage ceremony. He hadn’t bargained for the complication of Pete, yet had found a lot of joy in watching him develop over the months.
‘I really love this place, Nick. Look, look, ducklings.’ Neither of them had mentioned the scene of last Friday.
The heat of midday blended the pungent waterside herbiage, the dank rivery smell and the new-mown grass that lay in swathes about them. They sat on the bank and fed crumbs to the ducks, then lay back under the blue, cloudless sky slowly, unaware that this was all part of allowing themselves to sink deeper and deeper in love. At that time, in that meadow, the world was, for a moment, Eden.
The past was over as far as he was concerned. He had told her that he loved her – now it was up to her.
‘Look, Nick! Up there. Look!’ Georgia pointed immediately above their heads.
He squinted into the bright summer sky. ‘I see it! Christ, there are dozens – I didn’t hear any air-raid warning.’
So high that they would have been invisible had it not been for the sun gleaming off their surfaces, a shoal of whitebait in formation, the bombers moved slowly across the sky.
‘Dorniers!’
‘Junkers.’
‘They could be. Listen.’
Behind them, the bombers trailed the lum-lum beat of precision engineering and drone of propellers.
‘Dorniers.’
Suddenly, silently, all around the bombers appeared white puffs. Like balls of pulled cotton-wool, the shells of distant big guns burst; seconds later, each explosion, as it reached the meadow by the pub, sounded like the soft pop of a baked potato bursting its skin.
‘My God, Georgia, if you didn’t know, you’d say that was really beautiful, the way the silver shines against the blue, and the white puffs – there’s something very artistic about it. Do you know what I mean?’
‘It’s like it is happening somewhere else. They seem so remote… you can’t imagine that there are men there.’
The guns stopped firing, and the shoal, presumably temporarily out of range, swam steadily on.
Suddenly there was chaos amongst the shoal of bombers as it was attacked on all sides by fighter planes. Suddenly the silver fish in the blue sky stopped being beautiful. Suddenly the battle stopped being remote.
Vapour trails began to criss-cross the sky as Spitfires climbed and dived in attack. The sound of machine-gunning sounded like nothing except what it was – aggressive and bloody. Georgia and Nick found themselves standing. Georgia gripped Nick’s hand. A black streamer tinged with red and white appeared and ran down towards earth. ‘They’ve got one!’
‘Two!’ Then a chrysanthemum of fire appeared and was smeared across the sky. Then the whine of the first hit and the explosion of the second reached the meadow by the pub. Within seconds the whine became a scream, followed by a ball of fire at ground level a mile or so distant. Then a series of other explosions as the bombs unloaded from the stricken German planes plunged into the woods and farmlands of rural England. Within seconds ripening fields of corn were afire.
It was not until someone said, ‘The sods! That field was nearly ready for harvesting’, that Nick and Georgia realized that other people had come out of the pub and that they too were standing along the edge of the stream to get a view of the air-battle. A stick of bombs, probably from a crippled plane lightening its load in an attempt to escape the Spitfires, landed in a field quite close by and something substantial began to burn.
One of the dinner-time drinkers, a man in working corduroys, shouted, ‘That’s the farmhouse! Come on, I got the tractor.’ Men and youths leaped into the trailer.
Nick picked up his jacket. ‘I’ll come.’
‘Nick…’
‘I’ll see what I can do over there. Wait here if you like.’
‘I’m coming too.’ The tractor roared, Nick leaped on the trailer and held out a hand to pull her on.
They were at the farm within a few minutes, already some land-girls and labourers were dipping pails in the stream and rushing to where the corner of a barn and an outside rick were burning. Somebody shouted excitedly.
‘An engine come down on it. It was a burning engine from one of the Jerry planes, and it come down over there.’
Nick ran to the group of people who were dipping milking-pails and buckets into a large cattle trough and rushing back and forth. ‘Form a chain, pass them hand to hand.’
Soon there were enough helpers to form two chains from the trough to the barn, but the trough was fast emptying so he shouted orders to re-form from the pump, telling the helpers to take turn and turn about at the exhausting pumping. Soon there was a rhythm to the passing of buckets, leaving Nick free to go to the head of the chain and direct the water where it would be most effective. The barn was old and dry and well creosoted.
Suddenly there was a roar as something inside the barn fired, blowing outwards at the fire-fighters. He felt the fierce heat and heard a frightening rush of air. ‘Your hair, your hair,’ he shouted to Georgia, and dashed water at her. ‘Here, can I have this?’ A land-girl, with her felt hat rammed down over her eyes, nodded as Nick ripped off her green neckerchief and plunged it in water. ‘Tie this round your head,’ he told Georgia. ‘See if you can find something to cover your arms and tell the others.’ To the tractor driver he shouted, ‘What’s in there?’
‘Not much except a few drums of tractor fuel and that.’
‘What else?’
‘A dozen or so gallons of petrol.’
‘Christ all bloody mighty! Get everybody back.’
‘Let him burn hisself out,’ said the farmer.
‘And take your house and dairy with it? Whereabouts is the fuel?’
The owner pointed out where the store lay hidden: the fire was still well away.
‘I’m going in, if somebody will back up the trailer.’
‘Nick, no!’
It was as though Georgia had not spoken, and in a minute one of the men had mounted the tractor, backed the trailer through the end door and, in a few minutes more, was driving out again with the drums Nick had loaded.
‘Now start pumping again.’
Like the others, Georgia pulled over her head a potato sack with slits hastily made in it and joined in pumping and passing buckets, bowls and milk-pails.
It was not an easy fire to quench, for scattered everywhere was bone-dry straw and hay. ‘Get shovels and spades to beat out the sparks,’ Nick shouted. ‘Find some rakes and get that bloody lot away from here.’ Automatically people obeyed him. It was a struggle. As soon as the flames seemed to be under control, something in the barn would pop or explode and feed the flames. Soon the flames had licked away one entire corner of the barn. Nick appeared to have an almost personal antagonism towards the flames: he attacked as though they were an enemy, not hearing the others shouting at one another, or their swearing and cursing as somebody slipped in the mud or stood on a charred timber – there was only the roar of burning.
He went closer and closer in towards the fire, hurling the water high so that it could cascade more effectively down the clapboard walls. Slowly, slowly the fire retreated. Then it was out, but Nick would not let the coming buckets stop until there was not a wisp of smoke. ‘I think he’s out,’ said the tractor-driver, and there was a united sigh.
‘It’s out all right,’ said Nick.
The shouting and noise faded and there was a peculiar silence, almost as though no one dared to breathe for fear of fanning a spark.
The farmer, black-faced and blistered, came forward and shook Nick’s hand. ‘I never gave it a thought, lad… you know, the tractor fuel and that.’
‘You aren’t the only silly bugger hoarding petrol,’ Nick said, almost genially.
The farm-wife said to Nick. ‘You done well, lad. I reckon you done that before today.’
‘Not with buckets I haven’t.’
‘Well, you got in some pretty good practice today.’
The pub landlady and some other women came up to the farm with jugs of beer. The land-girls and the men had dropped exhausted and shaken to sit on anything handy.
‘Here, gel,’ the landlady gave Georgia a tankard. ‘Give this to that man of yourn.’
‘I can do with that.’ As Nick put the tankard to his mouth he hissed through his teeth from unexpected pain. ‘Aah… my lips!’ He raised his fingers gingerly to feel; his hands too were covered with blisters and raw areas where others had burst. ‘Am I a sight?’
He too was black-faced and blistered from the searing heat. His shirt, and a flowery scarf bound around his head, were spotted with brown burn-rings, not much of his eyebrows or lashes remained, and that part of his hair which had been left exposed was singed.
‘Your face is burnt. And your hair.’
‘It’s not much.’
Someone brought out a bucket of salt and water for washing blistered skin.
Nick looked around him. The rickyard was a pungent, black mess, the farm labourers in singed and dirty shirts, soaked working trousers with yorks tied beneath the knees. The land-girls in khaki dungarees, soaked to brown with sweat and water, the farm-wife in old, drab, field clothes. Georgia, her summer dress grubby from the potato-sack and strappy sandals ruined, her face smeared with ash. For a moment, he wondered how these strangers saw her. It suddenly seemed an unreasonably important fact that she was a country girl. To anyone else, she probably looked as though she had never hiked a country lane or milked a goat in her life – he had a foolish urge to announce to them that she was not a town girl and that he loved her.
‘How does that feel?’ Georgia asked. The initial relief of having dipped his hands and soaked his face in saline solution was wearing off.
He flexed his rag-bound fingers and winced. ‘I’ll survive.’ He grinned at her and felt the soda-solution on his face crack and flake off.
As they walked away from the farmyard, the woman ran up to him and patted Nick’s arm. ‘Good luck, lad. Come and see us one day in your fireman’s uniform.’ To Georgia she said, ‘He tells us he’s off to Liverpool. If you asks me, we ought to thank God there’s men like him.’
Georgia nodded, a faint polite smile. ‘We do.’