In the wake of his success as a lecturer, Ratty found himself newly impervious to Edith’s unreasonable behaviour. When she claimed it had been his fault the saucepan had flown through the window, and his fault it was lost, he did not offer to go and look for it (knowing quite well in which patch of long grass it lay) or attempt to extract himself from the blame. In silence, he ate fried vegetables and bacon, gleefully aware of Edith’s own distaste for fried food. Give her a few days, he thought, and the saucepan would be back, no explanation.
The girls, he was bound to admit, had grasped the nature of the sport better than he had supposed they would. The floozie swore she had seen a right great bugger of a rat hiding in its own shadow. Here, Ratty felt, was an element of exaggeration – it wasn’t something he often saw himself. He had a feeling she was trying to please, worm her way into his good books. The holy one, he must confess, had not come up to scratch. She reported one tail trail in the grain store – right enough – but tapped a wooden spoon on the side of a pan with such feebleness Ratty could tell her heart was not in it: the pathetic noise wouldn’t have scared a mouse. In a word, though Ratty hated even privately to recognize this, when it came to ratting the holy one was a disappointment.
The Monday after the RAF dance was the fifth day of the hunt. Ratty took it upon himself to lay the lethal bait before dawn: he had no wish to be responsible for the girls doing something silly with the poison. He crept about, torchless in the freckled dark, slipping scraps of food, well marinated in ensearic zinc phosphide, under bales of hay, by piles of grain and hen food, the dung heap – all their favourite places. Now, it was just a matter of waiting. Ratty was a satisfied man: the buggers would come sneaking out today, not knowing what had hit them, begging to be clobbered on the head. He could never relish that part, as he had told the girls. But it had to be done.
At breakfast, Mr Lawrence warned the girls to be on the look-out. Should they come upon a dying rat, he said, they were to call Ratty, Joe or himself to deal with it.
Ag hoped her job for the morning would be spraying the fruit trees, a place far from the rats. But her luck was out: Faith wanted the eggs gathered early so that a collection could be taken into Dorchester, where the WVS distributed them to the old. The other two were assigned to a morning’s hoeing.
Armed with her basket, Ag went first to the barn. She calculated that, as Ratty had laid the bait only a few hours ago, chances were the rats were exercising their habitual caution, and had not yet been tempted. She put a gloved hand nervously into the small holes between piles of loose straw that she had come to know were the bantams’ favourite places for laying. Then, in one of the secret nests, she came across a gristly piece of lamb, just recognizable from a stew some days before. Ag quickly backed away, revolted, to battle with her conscience. Should she continue in her egg hunt in the normal way until she had gathered a dozen or so eggs? Or should she call it a day? The poisoned bait had unnerved her.
Tense and self-despising, she left the barn, walked towards the harness room. It housed an old horse rug that had been left folded on the floor for countless years. Stiff and mildewy underneath, its top had been moulded into a nesting place by some long-ago duck, whose descendants still took the opportunity to lay in this ancestral nesting place. Eggs were to be found there most days.
A few yards from the tack-room, Ag saw Ratty come out, a pleased look on his face. He held up a large dead rat that swung from a hairless tail. In the split second before a blurring of vision came to her rescue, Ag observed a glimmer of obscene tooth and claw. She shouted to Ratty not to bring it near her, then clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.
Ratty, in his own pleasure, was confused. He had imagined she would share his triumph, gloat with him over the monster. He could not understand her incomprehensible cries, nor why she turned away from him and fell into the arms of Joe.
‘Take it away, Ratty,’ said Joe, over Ag’s shoulder. ‘She doesn’t like them.’
Ratty at once turned away and shuffled off fast, reduced from his few moments of uprightness to his old stoop.
When he had gone, Joe gently unclasped his arms and stepped back from Ag.
‘All right?’ he asked her.
Ag pushed back her hair, tossed her head. She was pale, ashamed. ‘Fine, thanks. I didn’t think I’d mind a dead one so much, but the revulsion is just the same.’
‘They’re obscene, dead or alive. Like me to make you a cup of tea?’
‘What, and earn your father’s medal for utter feebleness?’ Ag managed a laugh. ‘No, thanks. I’ll go down to the orchard, help with the fruit spraying.’
‘Right.’
‘And thank you for rescuing me. I felt dizzy for a moment. Where were you? You appeared from nowhere.’
Joe looked at her for some time without answering, his brows drawn into a frown.
‘I was about,’ he said. Then he patted her on the shoulder, and strode off to the barn, own shoulders hunched, preoccupied by some private thought.
He had offended and alarmed the holy one, and regret swung within him heavy as a cast-iron bell. Desolate, Ratty had fallen from the heights of the morning to the murkiest of depths. Pride came before a fall, he muttered to himself. Oh, to have undone the morning: to be given the chance to start again, act with more sensitivity. All the signs of Ag’s aversion to rats had been there to read, and he had ignored them. Ratty spat on the hard ground, cursing himself. Would she ever forgive him? What could he say to her? How could he ever explain his regret for causing her such a fearful moment?
Once he had disposed of the dead rat – and no rat had he ever loathed so much for causing all this trouble – Ratty had little heart to continue his search for others. The joys of rat hunting had vanished. He wandered down to Lower Pasture, leaned over the gate to watch the cows. So often he found their indifference a comfort. But another horrible thought assailed him: Joe and Ag. The holy one in Joe’s arms – Joe, who’d turned up like some bloody magician on cue – sure way to a girl’s heart, being there at the right moment.
Exactly what Ratty did not want to happen between Joe and Ag was not clear in his mind. But the old unease he had felt some days ago, which had died down, now returned. He had not liked seeing the girl fall back spontaneously against the great hulking figure of Joe, and the swift comfort of Joe’s arms. He did not want to see any such thing again. He did not like the ease between them. Besides, the holy one should be protected, be warned: Joe was no bloody good. Not to be trusted, relied upon. Ratty had witnessed many wild couplings in the lad’s youth, seen many a girl with a broken heart whom he had left without reason. The holy one was as innocent and vulnerable-looking a creature as Ratty had ever met, inspiring him with protective feelings that were new, in this his eighth decade, and troubling. His old plan of revenge returned. Any hint of Joe’s selfish intentions towards the girl, and he, Ratty, would step in and rescue her from a far graver situation than the event of the dead rat this morning. He was not sure, yet, what measures he would take, but a pitchfork would probably come in useful. Joe should have learned by now the cruelty of dallying with an innocent girl’s feelings. Besides, there was Janet. Ratty had no great respect for Janet, but she was Joe’s fiancée, and had done nothing to deserve this deceit. So Joe had better mind his Ps and Qs, thought Ratty, and with his new resolve strength returned. He saw on his watch almost an hour had passed in contemplation. He must return to the farm, keep searching for dying rats, before the light faded and he would be forced to go home.
‘I don’t know what a girl’s supposed to do, this clothes rationing,’ grumbled Prue. ‘Sixty coupons a year! One complete outfit. What makes those idiots in the government think we can get by on that? They’re barmy.’
‘You’ve got more clothes than anyone I know,’ said Stella.
‘Luckily, I stocked up before June. I’m all right for now, but what if Barry and me take off? You have to keep a man surprised. Something new for each time you see him. Keep up the interest.’
The girls hoed side by side. Deserted in the weeks the farm had been short of labour, before their arrival, the field was waist-high in thistles, mutton dock and charnock. As usual, they suffered aching backs. They found the long handles of the hoes difficult to manoeuvre. Their work was slow and clumsy. After a couple of hours they had cleared a disappointingly small amount of ground.
‘Don’t know why they don’t just let me plough this all in,’ sighed Prue, straightening up for a pause. ‘God, what I’d do for a fag. Look at my hands. Scratched, purple, fingers swollen. Lucky if anyone ever looks at me again.’
‘You should wear gloves.’
‘Hate gloves. Bloody hoeing. I’m exhausted. How come Ag always gets the orchard?’
‘Spraying the fruit trees isn’t that much fun. The stuff blows back into your face in the slightest breeze.’
‘I’d rather do the pig than hoe. I’ve grown quite fond of Sly, matter of fact. But ploughing’s my best thing. Wouldn’t mind ploughing every day. Joe did finally admit, you know, he was impressed by the straightness of my furrows. Joe, I said, my apprenticeship in hairdressing wasn’t for nothing. I been well practised in giving clients straight partings, haven’t I? Course I can plough a straight furrow.’
Stella laughed. She, too, straightened up, leaned on her hoe.
‘This time tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Where’ll you be?’
‘On the train to Plymouth, any luck.’
‘That’s good.’ Prue took a packet of Woodbines from her pocket, lit one in the cup of her hand. ‘Mrs Lawrence easy about letting you go?’
‘Very understanding. It’s only two nights. I said I’d stay here over Christmas to make up.’
‘I’m going home, Christmas, whatever.’ Prue inhaled deeply. Then she puffed a ribbon of lilac smoke into the cold, clear air. ‘Don’t suppose I’ll ever get used to this silence,’ she said after a while. ‘Ag and you – you seem to find it all less surprising than me – the mud, the dogs, the cold house and everything.’ She wiped a gleam of sweat away from her face, leaving muddied cheeks. ‘Suppose it’s been less of a leap from Surrey than from Manchester.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that with Philip on my mind I don’t care what I do, where I go. When I’m not with him I seem to be indifferent to everything. In fact, I’m enjoying it all more than I expected, despite the hard physical work. But perhaps that’s just because Philip exists.’
‘You really are in love,’ said Prue, in some awe, inhaling again.
‘I am,’ said Stella dreamily.
The sour, pinkish smell of Prue’s cigarette spumed above the deeper smells of earth and weed.
‘Well,’ said Prue, after a while, ‘I just might be on the way to join you. There was something very nice about Barry. Not just a handsome face, I’d say.’ She flung down the butt of her cigarette, stamped it fiercely with her boot. ‘I’ll be ready, Barry, I said, any time you want me.’ Giggling, she angled her hoe towards the root of a large thistle, tapped at it with little effect. ‘I suppose you’re thinking I’m promiscuous.’
‘More, just your way of trying to find the right man,’ said Stella. ‘I do the same. The only difference is I don’t sleep with them. I’m too scared. Instead, I fall in love. Not very deep love. I’m such a hopeless romantic, the very idea of love is almost enough for me, though I know in my heart most of it’s make-believe and I’ll be disillusioned. I nearly always am. Though this time, with Philip, I think it’s different.’
‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ said Prue. ‘I don’t go for all that soppy romance stuff myself. Especially with a war on – no time. Get your knickers off as fast as you can is my belief, before the poor buggers are shot down. Bit of quick fun, then off to the next one. End of the war, when we’re all a bit older and wiser – that’ll be the time to look for a husband. That’s when some unsuspecting millionaire’s going to come in handy. Meantime, I get my fun where I can find it. Not as easy stuck out here as it was at home, of course. But I’m not off to a bad start. Joe’s a good bloke, bit of a dark horse, pretty good lover by my standards. But what was he? Just a challenge. Seduce the farmer’s son was my number one priority, then start searching out the local talent. I think he quite enjoyed it, mind: holding out for all of a week, then shagging me stupid. One morning I actually fell asleep propped up against Marybelle, teat between my fingers … Not practical, me and Joe, really. Besides, Mrs Lawrence was beginning to have her suspicions. I didn’t want to be sent anywhere else, one of those land girl hostels or anything. It’s a good place, here. I wrote to my mum only last night. I said: Mum, we’re lucky. Then I said, I’ve got my hopes pinned to this Barry. I wouldn’t half mind if he came looking for me, I said.’
They returned to their hoeing, their silence. The only sounds for a while were the chinking of tools against stony earth, the distant crunking of rooks and crows restless in the bare trees of the copse. Then, a piercing whistle startled them: the whistle of an experienced shepherd commanding his sheep. Both turned towards the gate, some fifty yards away, expecting to see Ratty or Joe. Instead they saw a young airman on an old bicycle, smiling.
‘Blimey!’ hissed Prue. ‘It’s Barry. Talk of the … Mind if I go? Wonder how much time he’s got. Don’t go back to the yard without me, please. I’ll come and get my hoe.’
She flung it to the ground, automatically ruffled a hand through her hair, muddy fingers checking the state of the blue satin bow. Then she began to run through the weeds, waving, shouting Barry’s name. Barry dismounted his bike, opened his arms, smiling, blushing – even from so far away Stella could see the sudden ruddiness of his cheeks. When Prue reached him, they kissed frantically, oblivious to the gate between them.
Stella turned away. She wondered if Philip’s welcome tomorrow would be as ecstatic. The nervous anticipation, which she had been trying so hard to conceal, returned. Its force made her feeble. With a great struggle, she returned to her hoeing, knowing that with Prue gone she must do double the work.
* * *
When Prue and Barry’s first embrace, and its encores, finally came to an end, Prue climbed over the gate and took the flight lieutenant’s arm. They quickly reached the entry to the copse, some yards along the lane, and found themselves a comfortable place in the densest part of the wood. Barry sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, having assured himself its fuzzy yellowish moss would not stain his trousers. Prue placed herself in an alluring curve on the ground ivy, positioned so accurately that when the time came she could rest her head on his knee without having to move.
Barry’s scarlet face was smeared with the deeper red imprints of Prue’s lipstick. His shorn gold hair, released from the forage cap folded in his pocket, stood straight up as if in alarm. Prue herself, purring in the knowledge of her own allure, was the epitome of a rural pin-up: a blending of mud and rouge on her cheeks, blonde curls a chaotic nest on which her satin bow clung like a wounded bird. They both trembled. Prue reached for her cigarettes. Barry found a match. He lit her cigarette with great finesse, as if it was a skill he had been practising all his life: cupping his hands round the flame, touching Prue’s wavering fingers for no more than a second. Then he took a cigarette himself, lit it with equal precision. They blew smoke in each other’s faces, then scattered it with floppy hands, laughing. Barry looked at his watch.
‘I wasted a lot of time,’ he said, ‘biking from field to field, looking. Didn’t like to ask up at the farmhouse. An old boy with gaiters eventually said I’d find you down here.’
‘Ratty,’ said Prue.
She wondered if Barry appreciated the faint traces of her own scent beneath the sweet smell of the mingling smoke. Barry looked at his watch.
‘So I can only stay ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to ride like blazes to get back in time. It’s a good seven miles.’
Prue exhaled very slowly. Stupid, it would be, to reveal any show of disappointment.
‘Pity,’ she said.
‘It’s a pity, all right. You’re so gorgeous.’
Prue had never liked the word gorgeous, but it wasn’t Barry’s adjectives she was after. She looked up at him from under her lashes.
‘Moment I saw you,’ she said, ‘in the tea-room, I thought pretty much the same. I thought: he’s the one.’
‘I knew you thought that. It made me quite nervous.’ Barry laughed.
‘Couldn’t let a man like you get away,’ said Prue. ‘That’s why I made them all come to the dance.’
‘I saw through your planning, of course, and I was lost.’ He gave a small, contrite smile, like a schoolboy. ‘I thought: I’m a pushover. I’m going to say yes to whatever she suggests.’
Prue smiled. She put a hand on her battering heart. Barry stretched down and put his hand over hers.
‘My loins are on fire,’ he said, solemnly.
Prue giggled. ‘Oh, Barry,’ she said, ‘you’re the sweetest thing. Well: I’m here for the asking, aren’t I? I’m here for you to take, to do what you like with.’
‘We’ve only got eight minutes now,’ said Barry.
Prue pouted. ‘We could just make a start,’ she said. ‘We’d have longer next time.’
‘But there’s so much I’d like to do to you. It’s been haunting me, all the things … Shall I tell you? I’d like to start kissing you at the top, go round and about, everywhere, very slowly …’ The blush had by now suffused his neck. He grasped the heavy wool of Prue’s jersey, that strained across her breasts, with a hand that was as red as his face. ‘I don’t know if I can wait, sweetheart.’
Prue saw his desperate state. She removed his hand from her jersey.
‘You might have to wait, old cock,’ she said nicely. ‘Six minutes being really too much of a rush, trying to fit in everything you have in mind, as it were. You’d have to exceed the speed limit. We might not get the full benefit, such pressure of time.’
Barry gave an agonized sigh. ‘You’re probably right.’
They both stubbed out their half-finished cigarettes, threw them into a thorn bush.
‘What’s your actual job?’ asked Prue. Take his mind off the matter that was obviously causing him a lot of pressure would be the kindest thing, the best way to calm him down, she thought: though God knows that was some sacrifice, considering the wicked way she fancied him.
‘Mostly night flying.’
‘That’s terribly brave.’
‘I’m not brave. I’m terrified every time we take off. Every time, I think this is it. My number’s up. I could come again Friday,’ he added. ‘Two o’clock, free afternoon. Could you make it?’ Prue nodded. ‘It’s nice here in the woods.’ He looked at her, trying for calm. ‘That land girl uniform does something wicked to me. Christ, those breeches. Come here, sweetheart. I must kiss you again, at least.’
Prue knelt up, startling a nearby blackbird which flew away with a thin hollow sound of wings. Barry’s face, against hers, was hot and damp. This time, kissing, she felt none of the excitement she had felt at the gate. Barry’s urgency was almost apologetic, as if life itself might be running out, chance must be taken. But in their very few moments together this afternoon Prue had worked out that, for all his sweetness, Barry was not to be her Philip. He was too young in his ways for her: he reminded her of a choir boy, the angelic blushing face and golden baby hair. In her post Joe afternoon in the tea-shop, and in her gin-fired dreams at the dance, enthusiasm had caused her to miscalculate. Still, he’d do nicely for a while.
She could sense him raising his watch above his head, glancing at it through her hair.
‘Just under three minutes left,’ he said.
Prue felt a kind of sadness.
‘No time for the actual,’ she told Stella and Ag later that night, ‘but a good beginning. He’s a real charmer, Barry, in his way – brave as anything. He’ll be my fourth pilot.’
On the train next morning, cold in her third-class carriage, Stella thought about Prue. She pondered her gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may approach to men, and wondered at its benefits. She could not imagine herself flitting from one state of intense carnality to another, in Prue’s light-hearted way; she could not imagine the swift cutting off from one man, apparently no untidy trails left, followed so quickly by a new and untarnished keenness for another. Prue suffered no disillusions because she had no illusions in the first place. Her short-term goals were sex and fun. Conquering was the stimulus. Endings were of no consequence. She acted with the confidence of one who knows the ruling power of her own heart. Her heart would not be touched until it was convenient – until, when the war was over, it was the right time for the millionaire to provide marriage and security.
Stella could not but admire Prue’s philosophy, even though the thought of quite so many casual men disturbed the depths of her puritanical psyche in a way she would never admit. She wondered if Prue ever missed the vicissitudes of other ways: the highs and lows of constantly being in love, the anticipation, the excitement of waiting for letters, for declarations, the general shimmering of daily life that love of a man can bring about. In her brief experience, if she had to be honest with herself – a difficult process Stella rather enjoyed – most of her own ‘loves’ were figments of an optimistic imagination. Her feelings, so eager to bestow themselves upon someone, were often – for lack of choice – bestowed randomly. She would stamp upon the love object the required attributes so clear in her mind. The reality behind the resulting picture, when it burst through, caused many a downward spiral in her heart. But she was not one to succumb to melancholy for long. She would never blame a man for letting her down. Rather, she would admit her choice had been mistaken. There would be others, she felt. And somehow there always were. To those who believe there is little point in being alive without being in love – Stella’s creed – there is no shortage of objects upon whom the cloak of fantasy can be flung.
In her short acquaintance with Philip, Stella had had more rewards than usual. His heart-breaking handsomeness combined with a lack of vanity, his sense of fun balanced by a serious side of his nature, his prowess at dancing, his way of making her believe his declarations of love – all these things were new and wondrous to Stella, a spur to the idea that life ever after, with him, was a strong possibility. And perhaps his letters would improve. Their love was crystallized by the uncertainties of an insecure world: fear of an unknown future, an unknown amount of time, possible death that would snatch away their chances – such things were common to so many wartime lovers, Stella knew. All the same, she was convinced this was very different from the majority of desperate, unstudied wartime affairs. This had a lasting quality … didn’t it?
Stella turned to look out of the window. Through the strands of rain, looped and pearled across the glass, she saw small hills of reddish earth. Devon, she thought it must be: names of stations were no longer displayed, just as signposts had been taken down. England had become a mystery place in which you had to find clues, guess where you were. But apart from that, here, as in Dorset, the only evidence of war was the sight of women working in the fields. She caught a glimpse of a row of land girls bent over hoes in a mangold field, and smiled.
The guard who came to check her ticket said they were half an hour from Plymouth. Stella’s heart constricted. She thought for the thousandth time of Philip waiting for her on the platform, of his dear face breaking into a smile as she ran towards him. Except the face in her imagination was suddenly a blank. It had gone.
In her panic, another picture came to mind, horribly clear – Mr Lawrence’s. His face, as he turned in the Wolseley to say goodbye to her, she would remember for ever. His look had been a mixture of anguish, sympathy, regret. He had briefly patted her knee, wished her well, assured her he would be there to pick her up on her return. He had opened the passenger door, handed her the suitcase and said goodbye at the ticket office, his face so stricken Stella had been tempted to ask what troubled him. He was an odd one, Mr Lawrence, she thought, but she liked him. She then remembered that he had mentioned at breakfast his brother, terminally ill in Yorkshire, was worse. No wonder he had looked so unhappy, and the power of his unhappiness had touched her own high spirits.
Stella took out her wallet, searched for the small Polyfoto of Philip. At the sight of the familiar features, her moment of amnesia was forgotten. Relief and rising excitement made her heart beat crisply, as if it was a razor-edged organ thumping with peculiar precision in her chest, hurting the parts nearby. She took out her silver compact – a legacy from her grandmother – and dabbed at her nose with a piece of swansdown fluff. No point in lipstick, she judged, and smiled to herself at the thought of the cosmetic preparations Prue would have been making in the circumstances.
The rhythmic grunting of the train began to slow. Stella closed her bag, folded her hands on her knees. She studied the sepia photograph of St Ives, Cornwall, framed above the opposite seat. Maybe she and Philip would go there for a holiday one day. It looked an unspoiled place. Maybe she and Philip would travel the world. Then come back to a suburban house (they shared a love of suburbia) with spotted laurels, two cats, room for a piano so that she could give lessons … three, no, four, children.
The train bucked, throwing her forward. There was a screech of steam. Through the rain-blurred window, a misted view of the large station, dozens of troops crowding the platform.
Plymouth. Philip.
Stella, trembling, stood up.
Meeting can be like drowning. In the moments leading up to the encounter, a whole life can flash by. As Stella jostled her way through the army greatcoats, the stamping boots, the cloudy breaths gathered like small parachutes in the air, she realized she had only ever seen Philip at night. This would be her first view of him in daylight. Their three previous meetings (was it really only three?) had all been at parties: low lights, drink, dancing, the pitch dark of the old nursery. Any moment now she would see him in the cruelty of this grey light.
His head was suddenly there in the distance, the familiar photograph coming alive, cracking into a semi-smile, the dark blue of his uniform handsome against the crush of khaki. They pushed towards each other, fell into each other’s arms like dozens of couples in wartime movies. Stella could taste rain on his cold lips, smell the damp of his hair, and the brown musky wood scent of his skin, peculiar to him, that she had forgotten.
Outside the timeless cavern of their kiss, she heard the train pulling out and hundreds of cheers and calls of encouragement – envious laughter. Extracting herself from Philip to see what was happening, she realized that they were the objects of derision. Philip took a moment longer to realize this. His reaction was to laugh. But Stella saw his rain-smudged face had turned a raw red, and knew her own cheeks were the same colour.
‘Jealous bastards,’ he said, and waved back at the troops leaning from the train windows, a merry-faced lot who had latched on to an unknown couple’s moment of joy to hide whatever they themselves were feeling.
Suddenly, the train gone, the station was quiet. Philip picked up Stella’s case from the damp platform.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Food. You must be famished.’
He took her hand. The high tap of Stella’s shoes made small unsynchronized chords with the deeper sound of Philip’s boots. They made their way to the ticket barrier, and the city beyond.
They sat in a small café, a place with none of the refinements of the tea-shop in Blandford. There was cracked oilcloth on the tables, covers of Picture Post stuck randomly on the walls to disguise a web of dirty marks. The place was empty, but for a slack-mouthed, greasy-haired waitress whose weariness, almost tangible, seemed to be smeared thickly over her like lard, hindering her movements. Philip ate scrambled dried eggs, so gritty and gristly-looking Stella wondered how he could swallow them. She herself, not hungry, toyed with two slices of bread and marge. They both drank strong cups of tea, which they sipped with great concentration, each waiting for the other one to choose a beginning.
‘We’re booked into quite a decent room,’ said Philip, at last.
Stella smiled. She saw the hotel lobby of her dreams: chandelier, the ruby carpets soughing up the swirling staircase leading to their suite. And, somehow, a gramophone.
‘We’re asked to check in at five,’ he added.
This was puzzling. But Stella imagined there were war-time rules in hotels. Regulations about which she knew nothing.
‘That’s fine. I’d like to look round Plymouth.’
‘We’ll go down to the harbour, take a look at the ship. Journey all right?’
Stella nodded. The days of waiting for this moment, the agony of anticipation, had turned, like all past pain, to dust. She wondered if Philip had been through any of the same agonizing moods of impatience, and wondered whether she dared to ask.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ she ventured at last. ‘I thought I’d go mad, waiting, sometimes.’
‘It’s good to see you, too,’ said Philip, after some thought. ‘Very good.’ But he went no further, gave no clues as to how the wait had been for him.
They ordered another pot of tea. Philip decided to try the jam roll. The single nicety of the café was a small china jug, patterned with morning glory, for the custard. While Philip struggled to hold back the skin with a fork, and encourage the thick flow of custard beneath with a spoon, he asked Stella to marry him.
Stella stared hard at the jug, the delicate pattern of flowers engraving itself on her memory for the rest of her life. Such havoc of thought skittered through her mind she wondered if she had heard right, if she was imagining the question. This was so far from the picture of where and how the proposal would take place, she found herself in a silent, desperate struggle to appear composed.
‘I thought,’ said Philip, eventually alerted to Stella’s confusion, ‘if we made it clear marriage was on the books, things would be easier tonight …’
‘How do you mean?’ Tears skinned Stella’s eyes.
‘I didn’t want you to feel any guilt, any apprehension … any nervousness that I might be one of those chaps who makes love to a girl then leaves her.’
‘Nothing like that had entered my mind.’
‘No, well. We don’t know each other terribly well, do we? I wanted you to feel sure. Anyhow, what’s the answer to be?’ He sounded almost impatient.
Stella put down her cup, blinked back the tears. She had only a few seconds in which to straighten out the surge of feeling that had rendered her physically useless. She looked down at her own shocked hands lying dead on the oilcloth, the nails painted a pale pink by the insistent Prue last night. She tried to sort out the muddle in her brain. The main factor was one of relief, an out-of-focus sort of joy that what she had been planning, hoping for, had happened so fast, so easily. But clambering about this main sensation were small, worrying shoots: the profound sense of bathos, the disappointment that Philip had not engineered so important a moment with more skill.
‘You look surprised,’ he said. ‘Surely it’s no surprise. I thought …’
Stella braced herself, managed a small laugh. ‘I’m only surprised by the time, the place,’ she said. ‘Being a hopeless romantic I somehow thought the proposal was bound to happen with champagne and music.’
‘On bended knees, I dare say. You’ve seen too many films. I’m sorry, I don’t work like that.’
Philip took one of Stella’s hands. The electric shock between them revived her. The familiar love that had so consumed her while hoeing fields, milking cows, spreading dung, returned. Ashamed at her sense of disappointment, she gripped Philip’s hands tightly, leaned towards him. The moment of her humility was accompanied by the sickly smell of suet and hot jam sauce.
‘Am I to be turned down?’ Suddenly anxious, Philip’s voice.
‘Of course not. Of course I’ll marry you. I love you.’
‘I love you too. That’s all right, then.’
Philip extracted his hand from Stella’s, pushed away the plate of unfinished pudding. He signalled to the waitress for the bill, pulled a handful of change from his pocket with which he made three small towers of sixpences.
‘When I’m back at sea it’ll be good to know there’s a future wife waiting at home. Sometimes, on the night watch, especially, staring out at those miles of sea, you begin to think nothing else in the world exists. You think you’re the only ship on the only sea. Your mind plays all sorts of funny tricks.’
‘Hope the idea of a wife will make that better.’
‘I think it will. Let’s go.’
Down at the harbour a thin sun was breaking through a taut, colourless sky. Gulls shrilled overhead, their indignant cries dying away into low, tattered, affronted notes. Small groups of sailors trailed back and forth with no apparent purpose. There was a smell of salt and tar, a suspicion of fishy depths to the wind.
Stella and her sub-lieutenant stood looking up at the massive sides of HMS Apollo, a powerful ship built with the sharp sleek lines of an attacker. For some reason she reminded Stella of a pointer she had once seen at work when her father was out shooting – nose to the ground, cutting through a field of long grass. She could imagine the Apollo scything through the endless waves with the same sleek determination as a hunting dog – but that was a silly thought, not worth putting to Philip. She linked her arm through his, looked up at him, so handsome in his cap, the gold braid gently fired by the sun. His head was back, eyes on the White Ensign fluttering at the mainmast.
‘So lucky I got a destroyer,’ he said. ‘A lot of my friends were appointed to drifters and trawlers. I wouldn’t have wanted that.’
‘You’ll be a captain one day,’ said Stella. ‘Perhaps even a rear-admiral.’
Philip transferred his look of devotion from the White Ensign to Stella. He gave her the friendliest smile since she had arrived.
‘The future wife of the sub-lieutenant speaks,’ he said. ‘Look at those.’ He pointed up to a row of wickedly snouted guns – menace in waiting.
Stella shivered. ‘I can’t really imagine a battle at sea,’ she said. ‘A destroyer of this size snapped in two like a toy, burning, sinking. What I’d like’ – a sudden boldness gripped her – ‘is to know exactly what your life is like … I want to know your daily routine, all the details, so that when I’m back at the farm I can imagine you accurately. Up to now, I’ve just been guessing.’
‘I wouldn’t be very good at describing all that,’ Philip said.
They moved away from the shadow of the Apollo, walked hand in hand further down the harbour. Several ships were at anchor, unmoving on the flat water.
‘Awesome things, they seem, to someone not in the navy,’ said Stella. She thought that by making any observation, quickly enough, she would not have time to reflect on Philip’s lack of cooperation. ‘Whole, strange worlds.’
‘By the time we get to Hamilton Road,’ said Philip, looking at his watch, ‘it’ll be five o’clock.’
Mrs Elliot, the widow who ran The Guest House in Hamilton Road, was a woman of such deep suspicions that she was not ideal material for a landlady. Her pessimistic imaginings were fired at the very sight of strangers walking up the concrete path, and lingered long after they had gone. Her mind, filled with the possible activities of past guests, was thus always ready to come up with some point of reference. When Philip had come round to book the room, Mrs Elliot was able to inform him that not only had she had many lads from the forces staying under her roof but also, of particular coincidence, a sub-lieutenant from the Apollo had once stayed two nights. Her veneer of friendliness was calculated to make the new incumbent forthcoming with the sort of information she could pass on to the guests of the future.
As Stella and Philip walked in uneasy silence up the street of identical semidetached houses, Stella struggled to put aside her picture of a uniformed doorman ushering her through huge glass portals into a hotel lobby of rococo magnificence. Approaching Mrs Elliot’s establishment up the sterile little path, she had her misgivings – but then put them quickly to one side, because nothing, she told herself, now mattered except that she was here with Philip at last. While they waited for the door to open, Stella studied the grey stucco walls of the house, the windows veiled with thick net curtains, the highly polished brass knocker on the nasty green paint of the front door. She was aware that a kaleidoscope of material images was collecting in her mind where they would retain a significance for the rest of her life, simply because they were part of the weekend when, as Prue would say, she finally Did It.
The door opened. Mrs Elliot, from her superior position in the hall, was able to look down on Philip and Stella on the path. Her glance told them she was well appraised in all tricks of human nature – there was no point in any pretence. Stella was curious to know how Philip would deal with her censoriousness: silly old bat, she thought – what we are has nothing to do with her. The woman’s silent, instant disapprobation was intrusion into a privacy that meant much to Stella. She felt sudden anger, but said nothing.
Inside, they were greeted by smells that had never escaped the tightly closed windows: years of soup, cabbage, gravy, tea, had combined to thicken the airless atmosphere like invisible cornflour. The place was spotless, immaculate: the front room was crowded with a three-piece suite covered in rust rep, a material Stella’s mother had always sworn she would never resort to, no matter how long the war lasted. Starched white lace antimacassars hung over the back of the chairs and sofas indicating their owner was a connoisseur of such refinements, and woe betide any brazen member of the forces who dared lean his head against them. Despite the warm, claustrophobic air, Stella shivered. What on earth would they do, all evening, she and Philip, in this dead room?
Mrs Elliot was studying an appointments diary. ‘Sub-Lieutenant Wharton, that’s right, isn’t it? The two nights.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And …?’
Stella saw Philip turn pale. She saw his hands shake.
‘I’ll soon be Mrs Wharton,’ said Stella.
‘Soon as the war’s over,’ added Philip.
‘That’s what they all say.’ Mrs Elliot snapped shut the diary, waved a grey-skinned hand towards the window ledge. ‘You may be interested in my collection of corn dollies,’ she offered; ‘most of my guests are. You’ll have the opportunity to study them before the evening meal.’ She took them upstairs and delivered a little speech concerning house rules – blackout, locking-up time, essential economy of bath water, and absolutely no alcohol on the premises. Finally, in consideration of others, she would ask that they refrain from undue noise. This last rule, calculated further to inhibit young seamen bent on nefarious activities with a future ‘wife’, was accompanied by a bang on the bedroom wall: the dull echo of plasterboard proved its thinness. Perhaps to counteract such fierce warnings, Mrs Elliot pointed out that their window, thickly clouded with netting, overlooked the ‘front’.
When she had gone, leaving them with a knowing smile, Stella went over to the window, pulled back the net curtain. The view was of houses on the other side of Hamilton Road, identical to Mrs Elliot’s.
‘So where’s the promised front?’ she asked.
‘I think she meant the front of the house rather than the sea.’
Stella turned back to Philip who was sitting on the bed. She began to undo her coat. Smiled.
‘Nothing matters,’ she said. ‘Absolutely nothing matters except that we’re here at last.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Philip. He rose and came over to Stella, helped her off with her coat. ‘We’ll eat here tonight, but tomorrow night we’ll go to some big hotel.’
‘That would be lovely.’ Chandeliers began to retwinkle on some faint horizon: the possibility of champagne. Philip looked at his watch.
‘We’ve exactly an hour till Mrs Elliot’s gourmet feast at eighteen hundred hours. And what we’ve got to remember is no noise …’
They both laughed. Philip tipped Stella’s head back into the gathering of net curtains so that it rested against the window pane. He began to kiss her with an eagerness which Stella would have shared had she not been anxious about cracking the glass behind her.
Exactly an hour later they sat at a table in a back room eating corned beef salad and – speciality of the house, Mrs Elliot had assured them – baked potatoes.
The silence was stifling. Fatigue, readjustment and a sudden dread of things to come had deprived Stella of all ideas to entertain the blank-looking Philip. Joined only in mutual hunger, they ate their etiolated salads fast, and spread extravagant amounts of salad cream on their potatoes to counteract the tiny wafers of marge Mrs Elliot had laid on a small saucer. In the quietness, Stella contemplated for a long time the inspiration behind the salt and pepper pots – crude china mushrooms painted with identical spots. Whose idea had it been to create such objects? What pottery had agreed they would catch the discerning landlady’s eye, and set about their manufacture? Stella always enjoyed asking herself such unanswerable questions, and added the mushrooms to her list of memorable things in this unforgettable weekend. She smiled.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I was thinking about the salt and pepper pots.’
Philip showed no flicker of understanding her train of thought.
‘I was thinking we ought to get out of this place for a drink somewhere. We can’t just sit in that room waiting to go to bed.’
‘No.’ Stella finished her glass of water.
‘There’s a pub just down the road.’
‘There is,’ said Mrs Elliot, coming in from the kitchen, ‘but locking-up time is nine thirty and I’ll not tolerate any incidents of drunken behaviour. They’ve been known to happen in the past, especially able seamen.’ She knew how to fling an insult: watched Philip stiffen. ‘There’s butterscotch shape to follow. They’ve quite a reputation, my shapes. I’ve not had a guest yet who’s not complimented me, that I can tell you.’
Philip and Stella, still hungry, could only accept her challenge. Mrs Elliot fastened the blackout across the small window, and switched on a dim central light. Scene set for triumphant entry of pudding, she brought in a beige mound on a cut-glass plate.
‘You’ll like that,’ she said, ‘or I’ll be blowed.’
When Mrs Elliot left the room, Stella gently moved the plate. The shape wobbled very slightly. They both laughed.
‘Come on,’ said Philip, ‘out of here as soon as possible.’
They smeared a little of the butterscotch stuff on the bottom of their pudding plates, spooned the rest into the two unused paper napkins, and stuffed the squashy package into Stella’s handbag.
Ten minutes later they were back at the harbour. In the winter dusk they threw the pudding ceremoniously into the black water, joined in laughter, relief, sudden new excitement. From now on, Stella knew all would be well. She took her future husband’s arm, rested her head against his shoulder as they walked. A full moon lighted their way to the pub.
It was warm, light, crowded with seamen and their girls. Too noisy for conversation, Philip and Stella had their drinks at the bar. They leaned against each other, the thrill of proximity piercing through their coats. Stella, on Prue’s advice, drank gin and lime. Unused to alcohol, she felt delightfully out of focus after two glasses. Philip chose neat whisky. But even in their alcoholic state of careless rapture, Mrs Elliot’s threats hung over them with a penetrating chill. They left at nine fifteen.
Stella’s steps were a little unsure. Philip supported her with a firm arm the short distance along the street. Back in the house, they braced themselves for a silent passage up the narrow stairs, determined Mrs Elliot – surely awake and listening out for the slightest sign of trouble – would be thwarted. In their stark little room they found the blackout had been drawn, and the vicious lilac walls were muted by the low-watt light.
Stella was grateful for Prue’s advice. The gin had done much to improve the setting for her seduction. She sat on the bed and longed for music, candles, dancing. But, thanks to the gin, the hideous carpet and curtains and the designed meanness of the room could not really touch her. These were merely another cause for laughter, should they dare laugh …
Philip left the room carrying a sponge bag and dressing-gown. Stella took advantage of his absence to undress quickly and put on her dressing-gown. In her slightly inebriated state the regular nightly duties of brushing teeth and hair did not occur to her. She climbed into the small hard bed with its scant blankets and firm pillows, and waited.
After what seemed a very long time, Philip returned. He slapped his jowls, a watery sound in the quiet.
‘Thought I’d better shave,’ he said. He hung his uniform neatly in the upturned coffin of a cupboard, and placed his shoes by the door in a strict to-attention pose, as if his feet were in them for the national anthem. Then he flung himself on the bed, smelling of toothpaste, aftershave and whisky. They drew quickly towards each other, wool dressing-gowns pulled open by the roughness of the blankets.
‘Remember,’ said Philip, ‘no noise, no cries, no laughing. We’ll have to save all that for the rest of our lives.’
Stella, in her eagerness to get on with the event in hand, would have sworn eternal silence.
‘Think we’d better put out the light,’ she whispered smudgily. ‘If I see you, I might cry out in wonder.’
In the absolute dark, they giggled nervously. As their hands hesitated over each other’s bodies, and their lips met and parted, met and parted, Stella was aware that the quality of their desire had shifted since the night in her old nursery. It was as if a premature familiarity, an unwanted sign of how it would be for untold future years, had emerged unbidden. A little afraid, but wanting more (more what? she kept asking herself), she lay wide-legged in the blackness, waiting for the moment in her life she had been taught was so important and must not be given lightly. She was glad Philip could not see her, glad she could not see him. The confusion in her mind was between the imaginings of how it might have been and how it actually was. This.
Here he was, very sudden, unexpectedly heavy. There was a moment’s pain. A burning in the depths of her. Then there was nothing. Just the emptiness of darkness.
It was over. She knew this because Philip rolled off her, panting. Now, not even their hands touched.
‘The first time, always …’ Philip murmured eventually.
‘I know.’
‘I didn’t hurt you?’
‘No.’
‘She won’t have heard a thing, bloody woman.’
Stella, puzzled by the extent of Philip’s concern about their landlady, heard him turn away, shift himself comfortably. He slept very quickly. She herself remained on her back. There was much she would have to ask Prue, she thought. There was also much she would have to keep from Prue, for fear of her laughter.
They were woken by a tapping at their door next morning: Mrs Elliot called out that breakfast was on the table.
‘Silly old cow,’ murmured Philip. ‘Her only pleasure in life must be spoiling others’ fun.’
Stella studied his sleepy face, less familiar than the photograph she looked at every morning. He drew her towards him, kissed her on the forehead.
‘Don’t let’s give her any satisfaction,’ he said. ‘Let’s get up.’ Ten minutes later they faced a scant breakfast. Philip seemed in much better spirits than the day before. He dabbed a knife in the minuscule ration of marmalade.
‘There are some economies not worth making,’ he said, ‘and this place is one of them. I’ve decided: we’re moving. We’re going to book in to your glamorous hotel. My godmother sent me ten pounds for my birthday. We’re going to spend every penny …’
‘The two nights we agreed, they’ll have to be paid for.’ Mrs Elliot, who had been listening behind the door, strode over to the table and picked up the empty metal toast rack with a vicious flick of her wrist. ‘I’ll not be replenishing the toast,’ she said, ‘neither.’
Philip produced a crumpled ten-shilling note from his pocket and slammed it on the table.
‘Keep the change,’ he said.
Mrs Elliot could not help gasping. ‘I dare say I could do another slice if you want one,’ she said.
Her offer was firmly declined.
They sat in the sun lounge of the Grand Hotel in wicker chairs, a tray with coffee laid on a wicker table between them. Outside, destroyers lay motionless on a sun-petalled sea: the cry of gulls was dulled by the domed glass roof, the palm trees in pots, the condensed warmth of the place. No one else was there. The hotel was so short of visitors that when Philip had asked for a double room and bath, the receptionist offered a suite for the same price.
In the lobby, Stella had found her chandeliers, her ruby carpet and swirling staircase. There was a wireless in their sitting-room, a vase of dried honesty, comfortable chairs, and a view of the harbour. Stella took so long to examine every detail of her dream that Philip had to urge her to hurry if she wanted coffee before lunch.
In the sun lounge, he asked her to marry him again.
‘But I said yes yesterday. Did you doubt me? What makes you think I might have changed my mind?’
‘I just want to be absolutely sure.’
‘You can be.’
Philip frowned, but still seemed to be in high spirits. ‘Then I have a confession to make.’ He was silent for a while. Stella waited, curious. ‘Those girls I mentioned when we first met – those girls in the past …’
‘Not that many of them, as far as I remember.’
‘Two. Two especially. The thing being … I may have exaggerated. Whatever I may have indicated, I was boasting. I didn’t actually … with either of them.’
‘Well?’
‘So … last night was the first time for me, too.’ He looked down.
‘Does that matter?’
‘I thought it might. I hadn’t the courage to tell you. I rather fancied the idea of your thinking of me as an experienced hand … I was ashamed of being such an amateur. I mean, I’m twenty-three. Most men, by then …’
Stella’s love, which had waned a little in the darkness of her lonely night, returned – a small poignant gust in her chest. She reached for his hand.
‘You don’t mind?’ Philip asked.
‘Of course not. I’m rather pleased.’
‘Rather?’
‘Very.’
‘It’ll get better. It probably wasn’t any good for you. It’ll get better and better, I promise. And also, I love you. I love the way you don’t mind about that awful café yesterday, the dreadful guest house. I don’t know why we didn’t come straight here. Mustn’t give into her dream too soon, I thought. Silly confused thoughts, something to do with showing who’s boss.’
Stella smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have minded where we’d gone, what we’d done. Though I confess this place is … the sort of thing I was rather hoping for.’
‘Good. Let’s give that bored waiter something to do. Let’s have sandwiches in our room for lunch. Let’s turn on that wireless—’
‘– and dance,’ said Stella.
‘Don’t imagine there’ll be much time for dancing.’ Philip grinned.
They spent the afternoon in the large double bed, a bright winter sun lighting their bodies, hours flying in the concentration of each other. They bathed together in the deep cast-iron bath, revelling in six inches of very hot water and Stella’s lavender soap. They dined, along with only two other couples, in the silent cavernous dining-room crowded with ghost tables of white napery. The underemployed waiters made much of trundling the meat trolleys to their table, pulling back the silver-domed lids with a grand flourish, and serving two minuscule cutlets with the kind of solemnity that must have applied to vast joints of pre-war beef. With a pudding of jelly, given status by a frill of imitation cream, they drank half a bottle of champagne. Stella made Philip laugh with stories of Hallows Farm.
Aware of the shortness of time left to them, they climbed back up the red stairs at nine thirty. Blackout in their rooms was concealed behind thick curtains: pink lamps had been lit, the bed turned down. They heard on the news that the Allied Armies had invaded French North Africa. But their concern was the few hours left: their last chance for God knows how many months. They hurried back into the bed, leaving on the lights. They spent the kind of night that would have shaken Mrs Elliot and her prim Guest House to their foundations.
‘I knew very early on,’ said Philip the following afternoon, at the station, ‘that I loved you – or at least that I thought I loved you: you were the sort of girl I’d always had in mind. But – I don’t know how to put this: I don’t think I felt the kind of love you’re meant to feel when you ask a girl to marry you. I think what I felt was the urgency of war, the need for firm plans.’
‘I expect a lot of couples feel the same: such an unreal, unsure time.’
They sat on a bench on an empty platform. The train was due in two minutes.
‘I have to admit I’m not really sure I loved you properly even when I first proposed, the day before yesterday.’ Philip spoke rapidly, wanting to say so much before the departure. ‘But now I do. I do. Believe me?’
Stella nodded.
‘Since the nights, I suppose. That’s why I proposed twice: once, semi-sure, once absolutely sure.’
Stella smiled. Philip glanced at his watch.
‘Hope I’ve not spoiled anything, confessing. It was just terribly important you should know the truth. Will you tell me just once more? Will you tell me you’ll marry me as convincingly as you can?’
‘I will, yes.’
‘Whatever happens?’
‘Whatever happens.’
‘Thank God for that. That means the weeks apart, however long, don’t matter so much. I mean, being sure.’
‘No.’
‘I love you, I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’
They kissed. They hugged, tears in their eyes. Then the train, horribly punctual, came roaring up to stop their shorthand promises, and remind them it was now time to brace themselves, as Churchill had urged, to their duties.
* * *
Stella slept on the journey. She had never known such tiredness. She wondered how she would manage to stay awake through supper, fend off Prue’s curiosity. She dreaded the dawn rising tomorrow, milking the cows in the freezing darkness. Sleepily, it occurred to her that, for all her stories of Hallows Farm, she had not told Philip the place was beginning to feel like a second home.
At the station she found light snow. A few flakes were falling from the dark sky, but they quickly melted on the windscreen of the Wolseley.
It was very cold in the car. Mr Lawrence had brought a scarf and thick jacket for Stella to put over her coat. She was touched by his thoughtfulness.
‘All went well, I hope,’ he said, after a few miles of silence.
‘Philip asked me to marry him. I said yes.’
She could hear Mr Lawrence grinding his teeth.
‘Good,’ he said eventually. ‘If he’s the right one, you won’t regret it.’