She climaxed in that way of hers – her legs jittering and her belly turning into a small dome and a sound coming out like a person screaming in their sleep – and then closed her thighs sharply, clamping Bettina’s head. Bettina prised herself free and wiped her chin with her sleeve before lying down next to Ivy, looking up at the rigid network of beams overhead.
She’d read a trashy book once about a couple romping in a barn – a broad-chested farmhand and an inhibited lady whose bosom was constantly undulating – and it’d failed to mention the fleas or the spiky flutes of straw that poke at bare flesh. Or lying back, close to climax, very close, and hearing a rustling nearby – a rat, next to your head, its slick black eyes observing proceedings with Zen neutrality.
They’d made love in the woods near the farm, behind a tall hedgerow that ran along Cathcart Lane, and a few times in their shared bedroom, which was actually the riskiest place of all, since girls were constantly barging in without knocking, to ask for face cream or writing paper or the correct spelling of ‘anguish’.
Bettina got out two cigarettes and lit them, passing one to Ivy (she’d recently watched Now, Voyager and this gesture she’d always taken for granted now seemed poignant).
‘Look,’ said Ivy, ‘my leg’s still shaking.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘Twenty minutes, I suppose. Do you want me to …?’
‘No. I started this morning.’ Bettina took her sandwich out of her satchel – wafer-thin cheese with slices of pickled shallots – and a sealed envelope, which she ripped open, careful not to drop her cigarette in the straw. A letter from Tuna.
Tuna’s house was being used by the war effort as an emergency makeshift hospital – soldiers and civilians were brought in for preliminary first aid before being moved on. Her collected art and prized Bloomsbury furniture had been sent to her parents’ house in Surrey and now hospital beds and first-aid stations filled every room and nurses were barging around ‘like bloody Mafia bosses’.
Originally Tuna had felt apathetic about the war, and also safeguarded by her wealth (and age), but then she started hearing about her artist friends being shot at in France and her Jewish friends being ‘quite mistreated’, and she could no longer distract herself with parties and fine food and good wine – there was none. Also, the man who’d procured her opium had ‘buggered off’ somewhere to hide from conscription and she’d endured a week of intense sickness where she’d writhed around in bed, praying for the Luftwaffe to bomb her house and put her out of her misery. ‘But thank God I’m off that stuff, Betts – it alters one’s personality and the constipation is beyond unreasonable.’
In today’s letter, Tuna wrote about a man whose hand she’d held as he died (‘getting quite numb to this sort of thing now’), an incident involving a civilian’s arm being cut off and her sheer hatred of one of the nurses, Sister Mary, who treated her, the lady of the house, like some gin-soaked tramp who’d wandered in from the street. And at the end, this:
‘Bart wrote to me last week. He is safe and well but misses the children. Will be taking his leave soon. I am passing this on to you because I doubt either of you have thawed in the interim between now and your last letter. You may think you hate him, but if he were to die in some horrid way, I am confident this hatred would suddenly melt away. Death cleanses, darling – I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’
‘Oh, mind your own business!’ said Bettina, stuffing the letter back in her bag.
Ivy was eating her sandwich in that fastidious way of hers: crust first, then the rest, in tiny bites, eyes whizzing nervously this way and that. She swallowed, a hand covering her mouth, and said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. No. I’m annoyed.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No. I want to be distracted.’
Ivy put down her remaining sandwich half. Smiled. ‘I know a good way.’
‘I told you, Ivy, I’ve just started my—’
‘I don’t care. If you don’t. Honestly.’ She watched Bettina process this, her eyes fixed and steady.
What a strange woman, thought Bettina, to get in a tizzy about eating food in front of others, yet be perfectly happy to indulge a menstruating woman. ‘It really doesn’t bother you?’
‘No. I’m not a man, am I? Filled with horror at the thought of a perfectly natural biological function. Men are such babies. Get your knickers off, Mrs Dawes!’
They packed their things in the morning – spare clothes, tyre repair kit, water, a packed lunch. Mags had been trying to dissuade them from going on bicycles – it was bloody idiotic, thirty miles of lonely country roads, and if only they’d wait until evening the next day, an apple cart was going up that way. There were stories, she’d heard, about drunk soldiers trying it on with women they encountered, and that was just soldiers – what about civilian men, what about all those spineless defectors hiding out in the woods? Jolly well rape you soon as look at you. Bettina and Ivy would not be swayed. The weather was supposed to be lovely and the winged devils were reported to be busy elsewhere, for the moment.
Mags found them just as they were leaving. She had blood splattered up her trouser leg. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I can see that you’re not going to listen to sense, so I’ve brought you something.’ She took a cloth bundle out of her coat pocket and, looking around to make sure no one was about, unfolded it to reveal a tiny black pistol.
‘Where on earth did you get that from?’ said Ivy.
‘It’s for shooting livestock in the head. It looks small but it packs a good punch. This is the safety – keep it on!’
‘I really don’t think this is necessary,’ said Bettina.
Mags re-wrapped the gun and wedged it into Bettina’s basket. ‘Better a murderer than a rape victim.’ She looked around again. ‘If anyone catches you with it, it didn’t come from me.’ And she began jogging away, backwards. ‘Have a lovely holiday! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Cheerio!’
The biggest threat, actually, came from the sun. Some of the roads were cut into bare fields – no trees, no shade. They each wore a wide-brimmed hat, but no matter how tight they tied the ribbons under their chins, the breeze blew them back.
They stopped under trees to cool off. They ate their pork pies and dried fruits and drank water made warm by the sun. They saw few people. Bettina kept thinking of the gun in her basket. It was wrapped in what looked like a piece of old tablecloth, the design a faded repetition of bluebells. She didn’t even know how to use the stupid thing.
The sun beat down, the air fuggy with heat, and their fit, strong legs pumped and pumped, and butterflies of every colour performed their neurotic sky-ballet.
Longworth hadn’t been requisitioned for the war effort, owing to its proximity both to a munitions factory – once Monty’s munitions factory – and to the shore. The factory was ten minutes’ walk from Longworth and half an hour from Wadley, Bettina’s lost childhood home. She remembered how Bart, when young, used to sit with dangling legs on the stone wall marking the end of his garden, watching the workers walk past, stooped and haggard from their thirteen-hour shifts. ‘I suppose I watch them because I’ve nothing better to do,’ he told Bettina, but, years later, he admitted the truth – he’d thought them beautiful. ‘Not in an artsy way. I wasn’t finding some grubby beauty in their monotonous, grinding existence like those awful writers Tuna admires. They were strong young men and I had my favourites.’
Now the factory was filled with women, just as it had been during the Great War, and according to Venetia, they were ‘very, very annoying’. Venetia’s letters had a comfortably predictable formula: one side of gossip, half a page lamenting the grandchildren’s displacement; linked to this, a paragraph about the Welsh (she distrusted the Welsh – Monty, of course, had been Welsh, and his family were ‘a money-grabbing, nouveau riche cluster of inbreds’); then, finally, a few lines bemoaning those sluts at the munitions factory. All my love, Mother. Her criticisms of these women were vague, prompting Bettina to ask, ‘But what have they actually done to offend you?’
‘Re: the factory sluts: they flick their cigarette butts over the wall. And they wear so much lipstick.’
‘You’ve never been bothered by women wearing lipstick before,’ Bettina wrote back.
‘Re: your comment about lipstick and my historical response to said lipstick: no, I have no quarrel with women wearing lipstick per se, but it’s the fact that these women are wearing all this lipstick while their husbands, fathers and brothers are getting themselves blown up in Europe. Seems jarringly inappropriate, frankly.’
By the time Longworth came into view, the shadows were lengthening and the sun sinking. Bettina and Ivy set their bikes against the fence and knocked on the front door. Ivy touched Bettina’s hand as they waited – one finger coming out and dabbing the knuckle.
‘I’m so thirsty,’ she whispered.
‘The sea air can’t help,’ said Bettina. ‘All that salt. Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Ivy. ‘Only … it’s so grand.’
‘What is?’
‘The house!’
‘This house? You should’ve seen my old house. It was bigger.’
‘Will I have to wear fancy dresses to dinner? And use all sorts of different cutlery? Don’t laugh at me.’
‘No, you won’t. It’s wartime.’
‘Will there be maids wanting to dress me?’
‘No! We’re not lords and ladies.’ She gave the door another knock – harder this time. ‘Besides, all the maids are working in factories or doing what we’re doing.’ She stepped back, looking up at the windows. ‘I don’t think they’re in, you know – let’s go round the back.’
Ivy’s proud, high head moved slowly from side to side as she took in her surroundings: a small stone fountain covered in mildew and empty of water; a large laburnum tree, its dripping yellow blooms already starting to sprout the tiny pods that were supposedly poisonous if eaten (Bart, of course, had once eaten one).
‘There are many better off than me, you know,’ said Bettina. ‘Mine and Bart’s families are small fish compared to others. Newts, actually. We’re newts.’
‘I haven’t got sour grapes, if that’s what you think,’ said Ivy. ‘I had a pleasant upbringing and I didn’t want for anything. We had an indoor toilet quite early on. I don’t resent your money. I’m glad you had it.’ She nodded as if to reassure herself – I am glad, honestly I am.
Bettina put her hand on Ivy’s waist. ‘When the war’s over I’m going to feed you champagne. It’ll spill onto your naked body and I’ll lick it all up, every drop.’
A loud, harsh cough. Bettina spun around, snatching her hand away. Heinous Henry.
‘Mrs Dawes,’ he said, his face almost unreadable – almost, because no matter how well he affixed his mask, there were always the eyes peeping out, and they could only hide so much. He was wearing his usual black trousers but no jacket or tie – just a white shirt. She could see his vest underneath and the saggy flesh of his man-breasts. His nose seemed to have grown in the last few years, especially the nostrils, and where his hair had once been, there now grew only a few long grey wisps, which anyone possessing a mirror and half a shred of sense would’ve plucked out long ago. He looked very old now, but nowhere close to feeble or doddering, and his posture was immaculate. ‘You weren’t expected,’ he said. ‘Your mother and Mrs Dawes are out in the garden.’ He stepped to the side and signalled with his hand for them to pass him.
Lucille and Venetia were hanging out sheets on the line, pegs clipped onto their collars. Black socks and nylon stockings were draped over every croquet hoop on the lawn. The birdsong in Lucille’s aviary mingled with the notes of a Puccini aria playing from the conservatory’s gramophone. Venetia shielded her eyes with her hand, squinting against the glare of the sun.
‘Bettina?’ She was wearing a cream housedress with a tan leather belt. She looked thin. Lucille was also thinner, except for her backside, which was genetically designed, it seemed, to withstand the barest of winters. She had a red scarf tied up in her greying hair, the bunny ears flopping down over her wrinkled forehead, and she was wearing blue dungarees – clearly she’d wanted to dress the part for the manual work. Her ears and wrists were still crowded with jewellery.
‘What are you doing hanging up sheets?’ said Bettina.
‘The cleaning woman went and had a stroke last week.’
‘What a bother for you.’
‘Well, it is actually.’ Venetia gave her a kiss on each cheek.
‘This is Ivy Turner. She works with me on the farm and we’re both on leave – I hope you don’t mind if she stays, I’ve been telling her all about the lovely beaches and she’s very excited. Aren’t you, Ivy?’
Venetia gave Ivy a shrewd up-and-down appraisal before putting out her hand for shaking. Ivy looked strong and serene, controlled – it was a look Bettina recognised from their very first meeting at Hathaway Farm. She knew now, of course, that it hid terrible nerves.
Lucille was standing back a little, lighting a cigarette, also appraising Ivy. She had that look in her eye, like she knew what was what. Of course she did.
‘You’re looking well,’ Venetia said to Bettina.
‘The outdoors agrees with me.’
‘Rationing too, by the looks of things.’ She poked Bettina’s belly. ‘You were getting tubby.’
‘As were you.’
‘Well, we’ve no staff, dear, except good old Henry, and he can’t very well do everything himself. I’ve had to sweep the floors this week! Can you imagine?’ She chuckled, looking over at Lucille. ‘Wasn’t I a sight?’
Lucille nodded, smiling.
‘And her, beating the rug,’ said Venetia.
‘I imagined it was Goebbels,’ said Lucille, her eyes deadpan but her lipsticked mouth twisting like jelly worms to keep the laughter in. ‘I did a bloody good job of it.’
‘You must be thirsty,’ said Venetia. ‘Henry! Oh, where’s he got to? Henry!’
Bettina adjusted a wonky peg on the line.
‘Well, well, well,’ came a man’s voice. ‘My wife, doing housework.’
Bart. Standing at the conservatory doors in white linen trousers and a blue shirt, holding a glass and a cigarette. Appearing the way his mother always seemed to appear at doorways – lazily, casually. Cat-like. He was thin, almost as thin as he’d been for his role as Edward Crabbe. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, showing brown arms, and his face too was brown, except for the squint-creases around his eyes. He had a folded-up beach blanket draped over one arm.
‘Bart.’ She said it carefully, as if testing out the word.
‘Bettina. You look well.’ He saw Ivy, who was staring at him, goldfish-mouthed, all her poise gone.
‘This is Ivy, my friend and colleague. Ivy, this is my husband, Bart.’
He tipped an imaginary hat to her. She regained her equilibrium – good for her – and merely nodded, her eyes giving out nothing.
‘I’ll get out of your hair,’ said Bart. ‘You won’t see me much. Have fun with your friend.’ A slight emphasis on that last word. He strolled past them and went down the garden, towards the path that led to the beach.
Venetia and Lucille had been watching all this. A pair of thirsty old sponges. Venetia looked upset – she hadn’t known quite how bad things were. Lucille, clearly, had.
‘Henry!’ shrieked Venetia, the sound like a starter pistol. Bettina snatched up her basket and they rushed into the house.