A few weeks after Stella had returned from Plymouth, Mrs Lawrence fell ill. She struggled for a couple of days with a bad cough and a temperature. Then Mr Lawrence announced one morning at breakfast he had insisted she spend the day in bed.
‘It’ll be the first time for twenty years she’s done any such thing,’ he said, ‘but I told her if she didn’t I’d call the doctor – an even worse threat, in her eyes. One of you will have to take over from her today. Which shall it be?’
Prue’s reluctance was instant. She had an assignation with Barry. She busied herself spreading plum jam on a second piece of bread to avoid meeting her employer’s eye.
Stella, since her official commitment to Philip, had discovered that she had become less indifferent to any duty that was required of her on the farm. Being engaged, it seemed, had altered the frizzy nature of love. Now, knowing she was secure, her thoughts were not, curiously, permanently with Philip. There was no longer a glazing of indifference between herself and whatever the matter in hand. She found herself better able to concentrate on the animals, the fields, and actively enjoy them. Secretly, she was missing Philip less than she imagined possible. Instead, what she now craved was music – a piano, a concert on the wireless. She wondered if there was a need for some kind of craving, at all times, in human nature, and spent many hours contemplating the subject of solace. If the thing you most want is missing, where do you turn for comfort? A line from Keats, vaguely remembered from school, came to her in answer. ‘Glut thy heart on a morning rose …’ Well, she thought, in her job as a land girl she was brutally exposed to Nature: she would try. She began to observe more accurately, find strange pleasures in the smell of earth newly turned by the hoe, the gilt-edged clouds of winter skies, the feeling of awe within a wood. She confessed these new sentiments to Ag, who had understood at once.
‘I’ll have to get you reading Wordsworth,’ Ag said. ‘No one better on the partnership between Man and Nature. He’s pretty well convinced me of the compensations of the earth. Hope he’s right, because if Desmond doesn’t come about it’ll be all I’m left with.’
She had sounded so solemn, envisaging a spinster life with Nature her only lover, Stella wanted to laugh.
‘I’d be happy to do whatever’s needed, Mr Lawrence,’ Stella now offered, ‘though I’m not much of a cook.’
She had been looking forward to a day freeing a gate from a tangle of brambles. Yesterday, she had begun the job armed with thick gloves and powerful secateurs. Surprised by her own skill in disentangling the thorny mass, she was eager to finish. Also, it was a solitary task – one of the occasions on which, without inhibition, she could sing as she worked.
‘I’d positively like a day indoors,’ volunteered Ag. ‘I’ve been watching Mrs Lawrence making bread day after day – I’d like to have a go.’
‘Ag it is, then,’ said Mr Lawrence. ‘Up you go for instructions from Faith, and we’ll be expecting lunch at the usual time, two courses.’ He smiled at her nicely.
‘At least two courses,’ giggled Prue. ‘Canary pudding and syrup, if you can manage it.’
Prue found she needed especially large lunches the days of Barry’s visits, to keep out the cold, and to give her strength for the acrobatics in their bed of leaves under the trees.
When they had all gone, and Ag had cleared and washed up after breakfast, she allowed herself a few moments by the stove, hands resting on the dogs’ heads, to accustom herself to the strangeness of staying indoors. She was by now so used to spending most of each day outside, it seemed very curious, tame, to be left to the world of the housework. But this is what it must be like every day for Mrs Lawrence, she thought: sudden silence, the looming of domestic plans, lists of tasks to be accomplished by nightfall. There was no freedom from the discipline of deadlines: food must be on the table by midday, no matter how much ironing. The pile of socks to be darned must be kept under control; the grading of eggs, in the stone-chill of the scullery, was necessary before sending them off twice a week. For the first time, Ag began to reflect on the life of a housewife, doubly hard if you were married to a farmer. She wondered how it would be, how she would like it, when her time came – if, that was, she was not left entirely to Nature.
Stirring herself with a sigh, Ag went up the dark stairs to the Lawrences’ bedroom – a side of the house she had never visited before. Mrs Lawrence called to her to come in.
Ag took a moment or so to adjust to the duskiness of the light in the bedroom, with its beamed ceiling and small windows. Then a few objects, touched by the grey sky outside, began like just-lit lamps to burn into view – a set of silver-backed brushes on the dressing-table, a framed sepia photograph of a girls’ lacrosse team, a jug of dried thistles. Mrs Lawrence lay propped up on pillows in a high bed made of dark wood. Her hair was bound in a plait that lay over one shoulder; her face was flushed the colour of a bruise. She wore a long-sleeved calico nightdress, folded hands emerging from frilled cuffs and lying on the bedspread, stony as the hands of an effigy. The sight of her was a reminder of mortality: death from illness and old age, not just death from slaughter in the war.
There was a faint smell of cough sweets and honey. Despite a one-bar electric fire, it was very cold. Mrs Lawrence stirred.
‘Do you mind, Ag? So silly, this. But John insisted …’ Her voice was painfully hoarse. Shadows under her eyes scoured the drawn cheeks. Ag wondered whether she was seriously ill, or suffering from exhaustion, or both. What age was she? Probably early fifties, but she looked sixty. Affection for this contained woman, with her silent strengths, swept over Ag with renewed force.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Just tell me what there is to do, then I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
‘Sausages and mash for lunch, stewed apples and custard. Corned beef hash tonight, perhaps – whatever’s there. I’m not thinking very clearly.’
She gave a small, self-despising smile, shut her eyes. Tired eyelids upon tired eyes … Pith-white skin stretched over the deep eyeballs. Open, the lids were crinkled as aged tissue paper. Closed, an illusion of youth clung to Mrs Lawrence’s strong features.
‘I’ll have a go at making some bread,’ said Ag.
‘There’s enough left from yesterday.’
‘I’d like to try.’
‘Very well. Don’t overdo the salt. John doesn’t like much salt.’
Their quiet voices chimed, church-like, in the soft brownness of the room. Then Ag crept away, leaving her employer to sleep.
It was the strangest morning since she had been at Hallows Farm, Ag later told the others. Working in the cold and silent house, her main anxiety was that she would not have done all the normal morning tasks, besides cooking the lunch, by twelve o’clock. Where was the Hoover, the dusters? What should be polished? Was it the day to scrub the stone flags of the kitchen floor? What rewards were there in doing such things every day? Guiltily she realized, as she buffed up the bannister rails in the icy hall, rewards did not come into it: Mrs Lawrence would never think in terms of rewards. Keeping house was merely a job to be done.
In the sitting-room, a forlorn place in the daylight, Ag turned on the wireless. The jaunty tunes on Music While You Work spurred her to polish the brass fender in time to the music, trying to keep herself warm. Then she listened to the news. It was announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
Ag sat back on her knees, twisting a duster – slash of yellow in the dull light – in her hands. She tried to imagine the distant carnage, the destruction, the horror, the terrible suffering and pointless loss of life. She felt impotent anger, fear. This was followed by feelings of equally impotent guilt at her own lot, which was comparatively safe. There was never a day she could take for granted her luck in being here, a place where the war scarcely touched them, but there was also never a day when she did not wonder if she should not volunteer for some less protected field of action. Should she not join the Red Cross, or drive ambulances in the Blitz, rather than milk cows and feed off Mrs Lawrence’s secure stews? Should her courage not be tested? And yet, while the men were fighting, girls to work on the land were vital: she had chosen the job, she loved it. But when news came of disasters, Ag was racked by the thought she should be helping the wounded rather than sweeping a safe yard or tending to the sheep.
She turned off the news, returned to work. Dully she set about preparing the lunch – at least the kitchen was warm. She was haunted by imaginings. Never having seen a photograph of Pearl Harbor, she had no idea of its scale. Visions came to her of gentle harbours on the East Anglian coast, crowded with pretty sailing boats. She tried to swap the familiar scenes for a more massive place, with destroyers at anchor. The paucity of mental pictures caused tears in her eyes.
When the others came in to eat they found her kneading a large lump of dough at the kitchen table. They wondered at the fierceness of her thumping, but made no comment. Ag’s first loaf, which later rose magnificently in the oven, was filled with the stupidity of mankind, the futility of war, the helplessness of one individual such as herself to enable the world to come to its senses.
Ratty, too, heard the news on the wireless. It was one of his days off from the farm – never a good time, the hours would stick to him like mud, nothing would shake them off – petty chores in the house or woodshed were useless at accelerating the long minutes. What Ratty missed, in this state of semi-retirement, was the discipline of long hours at work in the open air. Alone in the front room, tapping his pipe against the grate, the news increased his restless state.
‘Poor buggers,’ he muttered. ‘More trouble to come.’
He needed to be with someone. Anyone. Even Edith.
The kitchen was unusually welcoming: warm from baking, and filled with the sweet smell of dough. Edith, at the table, was regimenting troops of scones into neat lines on wire racks. Ratty was suddenly, piercingly, hungry.
‘Will you spare me one?’
‘That I won’t.’
Ratty shuffled a little nearer the table, watched his wife’s floury hand whisk among the crinkled edges of the beautiful scones, moving them into pure lines.
‘Japanese buggers have bombed Pearl Harbor,’ he said.
‘Ah.’
Edith, devoid of all imaginings beyond the confines of her own life, was immune to most of the horrors of the war. She could only believe in what she read in the papers – her faith in the printed word had always puzzled Ratty – and then only if there was a photograph to prove the story. Thus it was a picture of Beaverbrook waving an armful of saucepans that had fired her own wartime effort, and she conceded the Blitz took its toll because the photographs ‘said so’. Any wider understanding of the war, particularly ‘abroad’, was beyond her. Of late, Ratty had begun to wonder whether her lack of interest in the state of the world, affecting millions of lives, was some kind of disease. But then it occurred to him that solution was merely a figment of his own vivid imagination, and the real answer was that Edith’s professed ignorance was a defence against intense, private fear.
‘One thing after another. They’re for tea, then, are they?’ Again Ratty looked longingly at the scones.
‘They’re not for tea. They’re for the shop. Got to keep the customers happy. Got to make a living.’
A new tack to deny Ratty the odd luxury, he thought. Usually, her concern was to cause unhappiness among the customers in their fight for her few loaves. Ratty looked at his wife carefully. Sighed.
‘What’s for dinner, then?’
‘Thought I’d boil up a couple of parsnips.’
On such a grey day, so full of bad news, Ratty did not feel like boiled parsnips.
‘Don’t think I want any,’ he said, knowing his rejection would cause a disproportionate measure of offence.
‘Get yourself a sandwich, then. It’s not the Ritz here, you know. I’m not bothered.’
Ratty had expected worse. But Edith’s concentration on her scones, he noticed, was out of the ordinary.
He cut two slices from the loaf of hard, dark bread, and spread it thinly with shrimp paste scraped from a small ribbed jar. He knew better than to ask for butter: Edith had obviously availed herself of his carefully hoarded ration for her scones, and was in no mood to be confronted with her thieving. Yes, said Ratty savagely to himself, he would definitely call it thieving. If the point came he would, in all honesty, have to call his wife a thief.
‘Think I’ll take my dinner out,’ he said. ‘Sky’s clearing.’
‘Up to you if you catch your death,’ said Edith.
Ratty pottered about making himself strong tea which he poured into a thermos. Edith, so preoccupied, failed to notice his stirring in two forbidden spoonfuls of sugar: that was at least one triumph. He wrapped the leaden sandwich in greaseproof paper.
‘Mind you fold it up carefully, bring it back; it can be used again,’ Edith snapped. She had been listening to the crackling of the paper, though she had not bothered to raise her eyes to check how much Ratty had taken.
‘It’s only a scrap, for Lord’s sake.’
‘Every scrap counts in a war.’ When it came to the petty necessities of war, her perverse mind worked well enough. She raised her eyes. ‘I suppose you’re going off to join those girls.’
‘That I’m not.’
‘One of them, anyway.’
‘No.’
‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’
‘What d’you mean, Edith? Whatever are you talking about?’
‘I keep my ear to the ground.’
Guilt seized Ratty’s heart. Despite his innocence, and knowing he had never uttered a word to anyone, or made any kind of untoward gesture, he wondered how his wife could have guessed at the admiration, the secret esteem in which he held the holy one. In a moment of panic, he thought that maybe he had confessed this to Edith, and amnesia had blotted out the occasion. But no, that was mad. Surely … the mere sense of wistfulness – for that is what it was – he felt about Ag, was an absolute secret between Ratty and his God, and would always remain so.
‘You’re being ridiculous, woman,’ he said. ‘You know you are. You know those girls mean nothing to me. We’re just fellow workers.’
‘Huh. And since they’ve come, your working hours are almost back to full time, aren’t they? That’s what everyone’s noticed. That’s what they’re all saying to me.’
There was a long, incredulous silence. Then Edith began to brush flour from the bosom of her apron. It fell in a light dust on the cracked linoleum floor. If her snappish movements indicated a nefarious imagination could be called upon by his wife when necessary, Ratty did not notice.
‘You’re a wicked woman, Edith, that’s what you are,’ he said at last. He picked up his stick from the corner and thrust the thermos into his free pocket. Then he left the kitchen before she could answer, moving faster than he had for several years.
The heavy lunch and a strong cup of tea left Ag feeling calmer. She longed to do the afternoon milk, clean out the pig, anything rather than face the huge pile of ironing, but praise for her cooking had given her heart to face the domestic afternoon, and as soon as the lunch was cleared she went to the laundry room and set up the cumbersome ironing board.
Ag was an unpractised, unskilled ironer. It took her a long time to negotiate the difficult points of collars and spaces between buttons: compared with them, the stretches of sheets and tablecloths were easy, though the ancient iron was heavy. Within an hour her arm ached and her feet were icy on the stone floor. She began to recite to herself every long narrative poem she could remember, and was pleased to find there were few blanks. By the end of Lycidas, there was a pile of neatly folded clothes on the table – very professional-looking, she thought, and could not decide which gave her more satisfaction: remembering the long poem, or finishing the first basket of laundry.
The window of the laundry room was misted with condensation, but she could see the vague figures of Prue and Stella in the yard, driving the cows back to the field. She could hear the beasts’ lowing – a different, deeper sound of relief, once they had been milked – and the squelching of dozens of hoofs in mud. Ag looked at her watch. Amazingly, two hours had passed. She finished the last of Mr Lawrence’s shirts, allowed herself a brief image of ironing shirts for Desmond in some eternal future, then decided to pause for a while. Here she was, mind on ironing, when Pearl Harbor had been bombed …
She put a tray of tea beside Mrs Lawrence, who was sleeping, then went downstairs to sit at the kitchen table. Clasping cold hands round a mug of tea on the bare stretch of oilcloth, she listened to the muggy silence of mid-afternoon. Suddenly the quietness was split by the screech of a plane overhead. Within seconds the alarming sound had withered back to nothing, and Ag could hear the dripping of a tap again, and the beating of her own heart. She looked up to see Joe, in gumboots – not allowed in the kitchen when his mother was there – standing at the door.
‘Hasn’t been one like that for a long time,’ he said.
‘Come to shake us out of our complacency, perhaps. Pearl Harbor—’
‘I know, I heard. How’s Ma?’
‘Asleep. I took her some tea.’
‘How are you managing?’
‘Fine I think.’
‘I’ve got to walk down to River Meadow, look at a sheep. Like to come?’
Joe poured himself a mug of tea from the pot. Ag took her time, weighing things up.
‘There’s the bread to come out, the rest of the ironing.’
‘I said would you like to come.’
Ag smiled. She carried the tea things to the sink, moving with the kind of languor that assails those who have been indoors for many hours and now face the prospect of a walk in the cold.
‘I’ll get my boots,’ she said.
The fronds of a plan, so indeterminate she could not be sure of its meaning, began to pulse in her mind. She felt suddenly courageous. Or was it reckless? As she followed Joe through the back door, Ag could not be sure: nor did she care.
‘The wicked, wicked woman,’ Ratty muttered to himself. He stomped down the lane, slashing at the verges with his stick. Sometimes he spat ahead of himself, a hard ball of sputum that sizzled out and died by the time he strode past it. His anguish was twofold: Pearl Harbor, poor buggers, and himself: deprived of a single scone by a wife who also – with no scrap of evidence – accused him … of what? And how was it she managed to undermine his innocence? What made her suspect there was more respect in his heart for the land girls – yes, even the floozie, a gallant little worker for all her silliness – than there had ever been for her?
The winter sky was heavy on Ratty’s head. His temples throbbed, his arthritic hip ached. He needed shade, shelter from the cruel glare of the heavens. He turned into Long Wood that ran half a mile beside fields, then straggled on up the hill. In the path between the trees he found some relief. The purplish light that clings to winter branches, and the myriad shadows scattered finely as broken glass, confused his eyes in an agreeable way. He was in no mood to see things clearly. The muffling of his own footsteps was a blessing, too. Here, the only sound was an occasional soft snapping of twigs, mushy from rain, breaking underfoot. No birds sang.
Then the aeroplane, from nowhere. Ripped from the bowels of silence, it screamed invisibly overhead. Interrupted in their winter husbandry, birds rattled out of the undergrowth calling in alarm, and fled to high branches that trembled in the wake of the monster. Ratty peered up. Was it ours? Theirs? It had gone too fast for him to see. Knees trembling, he moved off again more slowly. After a while the wood returned to its old quiet and he came to a clearing, a junction of paths.
Ratty had intended to walk to the top of the hill – thus keep safely out of the house for a couple of hours. But, shaken by the plane and the mess of anxieties in his head, he took the wrong path. He progressed some fifty yards before realizing this, but decided to carry on. Then, rounding a bend, he saw the distant figures of Joe and Ag coming towards him. A thumping and boiling of blood in his temples told him this was the last straw … Joe and the holy one … Such anger scorched his being he came to a halt, stood helpless in the path. They waved, waved: the cheek of it, thinking they could deceive him, no doubt. They smiled, smiled: how dare they! Ratty stood glowering back at them, his look signalling their time had come. By the time they were just a few yards from him, Ratty had made up his mind. Pity he hadn’t got his pitchfork, but his stick was solid enough. He would thrash the life out of Joe: teach him to stop mucking about with the feelings of innocent girls.
With a gesture that might have been less fierce than he intended, Ratty raised his stick in the air, shook it threateningly. Even as he did so, he felt his free hand automatically touch his cap.
‘Ratty!’ The bugger Joe was smiling. The girl, too, happy as a lark. ‘About to show Ag a nice bit of foot rot,’ Joe said. ‘We must keep on before the light goes.’
‘’Bye, Ratty,’ said the holy one.
They passed each side of him like a tide that divides effortlessly round a rock in its path. If only he’d been quicker, silly old fool. Now he’d missed his chance – and Joe would have his way with the holy one, like he had with all the rest. Though in truth, and here Ratty began to potter on, even more slowly, Joe did seem bent on his mission with a sheep. Didn’t look as if he was up to any funny business, but you never could tell. The art of deceiving, as Ratty well knew, is to wear a look of innocence with such ease that suspicion is never ignited, never has reason to flame.
The sheep were gathered together in the far corner of the field – probably suffering from shock of the plane, Joe said. Sheep panicked more easily than cows, he explained: nervous, silly creatures – but, all the same, he would be sorry to see them go, next spring, after lambing.
‘But, like everyone else, we have to turn most of our acreage over to plough,’ he said to Ag. ‘Price of living in a country that produces a third of its food. Come a war and animals must be sacrificed. We’ll probably have to reduce the cows, too: just keep one or two for house milk.’ His eyes travelled over distant fields. ‘It’s odd to think that in 1939 there were eighteen million acres of grassland, twelve million of plough. The rate things are going, in a couple of years that’ll be reversed. But I don’t suppose we’ll be here to see the complete changeover at Hallows. We may have to move to Yorkshire.’
‘Yorkshire?’
In the fast-fading light, they walked slowly towards the flock.
‘My uncle, Dad’s brother, isn’t going to recover. His farm’s the Lawrence family home. My aunt and cousin can’t manage it on their own. They’re struggling, even with the help of two land girls. When Jack dies, Dad’ll have to take over. He’d rather be here than there, but he hasn’t much choice. He feels he can’t sell a place that’s belonged to the family for a couple of hundred years. Rotten time to try to sell Hallows, middle of a war. And after all he’s put into this place. But it can’t be helped.’
‘I didn’t know any of that,’ said Ag quietly.
‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell the others. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Of course.’
‘There’s the one I’m after.’
Joe pointed to a dejected-looking ewe. When the rest of the flock swerved away and began to run, she hobbled so badly she was soon left behind.
Ag held the animal’s shoulders while Joe examined the rotten hoof. The great black head worried about, bleating pathetically. Ag spoke soothing words, trying to calm her, but not succeeding.
‘Treatment first thing in the morning,’ said Joe at last, lowering the painful hoof to the ground. ‘Off you go, old girl.’
They watched the ewe limp to join the rest of the sheep, who showed no recognition of her plight.
‘You can become fond of them, somehow,’ said Joe, eyes anxiously following the animal’s progress, ‘especially if you’ve known them from birth. I never forget the circumstances of a single birth, don’t know why. Maybe you’ll see what I mean, come the spring. We’d better hurry back, or you’ll not have tea on the table in time.’ He smiled.
‘I don’t much want to hurry,’ said Ag.
For twenty-four years Ratty had been walking the woods on Mr Lawrence’s land. He could find his way about them on the darkest night, learned – folly of a distant youth – by snaring the odd rabbit or pheasant, when he and Edith had found it hard to make ends meet. But today, in the gathering dusk, at the end of so disagreeable a day, he was confused. He turned down a small path that he thought would eventually lead back to the lane. He then realized he was again mistaken, and knew it would take him deeper into the wood. Ah well, he thought, he’d keep ambling aimlessly about: anything better than going home.
By now it was almost dark. It was hard to see where grass and brambles met roots of trees. The millions of individual bare branches had turned into solid, dense shapes. A tawny owl cried. Then there was the sound of a human cry, followed by laughter.
Ratty paused, listening intently. The laughter came again, from behind a holly bush. Ratty knew the holly well. Years ago, there had been a badger sett beneath it. He had taken Joe there, one night, to see the badgers play. Joe, at seven or eight, was a real one for wildlife. Ratty had often thought he might become a naturalist …
There it was again – the human cry clashing with the lugubrious note of the owl. Ratty took small side steps closer to the bush. He peered round. He saw a pile of something on the ground – a collapsed tent, perhaps. Trespassers? Poachers? Maybe, worst of all, picnickers?
He narrowed his eyes, forcing them to focus through the gloom, and saw that it was no tent but a pile of clothes. He could just make out the bluish jacket of an RAF uniform, forage cap tucked neatly into the pocket. Then he saw, slightly to one side of the general pile, a pair of corduroy breeches. He caught his breath, edged closer still to the place from which wild shouts and laughter were now coming.
What Ratty focused upon then caused him for a moment to think that he was hallucinating: two spectral melons rising and falling with beautiful rhythm in the darkness. As he watched, entranced, the ghostly fruits turned into the human flesh of buttocks. These buttocks, pale as moonstone, flew up and down so fast that Ratty, following them with incredulous eyes, soon found himself dizzy. He dug his stick deeper into the ground for support. A small hand had slithered up on to the buttocks, and was frenzying about in excited patterns, the fingers fluttering, fast. The air was suddenly filled with cries of abandon that, like the plane, frightened hidden birds. They flew up into the darkness, wings stirring the air near Ratty’s face.
He could bear no more. He stepped backwards. Blindly, he moved down the path, tapping the roots of trees. The noises grew fainter behind him. An early moon, he saw through a gap in the trees, had just slit the sky, forcing a strand of light down through the branches that enabled Ratty to see he had arrived back at the main clearing.
There, he sat down on an old tree stump, a place where for many years he had paused in his walks. He could hear no more sound from the lovers … lovers doing it on the earth, rutting like rabbits under the trees – a dream so deeply secreted away that only the sight could have brought it back. The floozie and her airman: God forbid, the floozie and her airman were experiencing something he, through decades in the marital bed, had never known, would now never know. Oh Lord, he envied them.
For their pleasure, and for so many things he himself had never known, Ratty wept in the darkness.
‘Can we go round the long way?’ asked Ag. ‘It’ll be dark in the woods.’
With matching long strides, they moved across the field to the path by the hedge that divided the grassland from the wood. They walked in easy silence for fifty yards, then Joe came to a halt.
‘Listen,’ he said.
From somewhere distant in the trees came a thin trill of laughter, familiar in its running cadences.
Ag smiled. ‘Wood spirits,’ she said. ‘They must be terribly cold.’
‘Hope one of the spirits remembered to sterilize the bottles this time,’ said Joe, with good humour. ‘On Monday she was in such a hurry she forgot. I had my work cut out trying to cover for her.’
They began to walk again.
If Ratty comes upon them,’ said Ag, ‘he’ll have a seizure.’
‘Poor old Ratty. He’s ageing fast. Gets pretty confused these days – waving his stick at us like that, as if we were poachers.’
‘Prue says he unnerves her, his silence. Stella and I are his fans.’
‘How was Stella’s weekend in Plymouth?’ asked Joe after a while. ‘I never heard.’
Ag took some time before answering. ‘I suspect something happened,’ she said at last, ‘but I’m not sure what. She said it was all wonderful and she’s pleased to be actually engaged. But I don’t know. I privately think there was some kind of … disappointment.’
‘She’s not quite her old exuberant self. She seems to have come down from the clouds.’
‘She does. That’s just it. She concentrates more on the matter in hand now. Her dreamy look is gone. She talks in practical terms about marriage, houses, children, life after the war. It’s almost as if spurred by just three meetings with Philip, before she came here, her imagination superseded the reality. She’s always saying she has to be in love, Stella. She can’t live without being in love. So there she was, in love with this almost imaginary figure, goes off to meet him and, well … But I’m only guessing.’
They had reached the gate that led to the lane. Joe leaned on its top bar. He seemed in no hurry to open it, or climb it. Ag imitated him, fingers of one hand drumming the damp wood. By now a dew was falling. The darkness, characteristic of a late winter afternoon, seemed to cascade inefficiently over what was left of the daylight, so that the struggle between impending night and departing day was visible. In an hour or so, the transparent quality of the ensuing gloom would have thickened, become dense. A skeletal moon was stamped on the sky, the most fragile of seals, which gave no light.
Joe turned to Ag. ‘And you, Ag,’ he said, ‘do you have a secret, imaginary love, too?’
‘As I think I told you, there was this research graduate at Cambridge.’
‘Was?’
‘Never was, really. Still is, in a way. I still cling to the idea of him, though I knew him even less well than Stella knew Philip. Just saw him in the distance a few times. Had one tea in a café with him and a few friends. Listened to him. You’ll think this mad, but if, that evening, he’d asked me to go anywhere in the world with him, I would have gone without further thought.’
‘Highly romantic. Good thing he didn’t give you the chance to be so unwise.’
Ag smiled. ‘I wouldn’t expect anyone to understand,’ she said, ‘but I felt a kind of certainty. I felt such certainty, such conviction, that here was my other half, or whatever the silly phrase is, that in some strange way my life changed absolutely from that day on. From June the sixth, 1941, I’ve been borne along by the indescribable sensation that … everything I do is significant only in that it’s a step nearer to the inevitable outcome …’ She sounded solemn, shy.
‘And what’s that outcome?’ There was a trace of sceptical laughter in Joe’s voice.
‘Him and me. Together in some form.’
‘Ah.’
‘I suppose you think all that’s ridiculous?’
‘No. Most people need their fantasies. I rather envy you such a dream. What happens if it doesn’t work out?’
‘It will,’ said Ag, ‘but if it doesn’t I’ll be all right – just lesser, somehow.’
She glanced sideways at Joe, could just see a smile twitching the corners of his mouth. Suddenly she felt the warm rush of an unfamiliar feeling: skittishness, she thought it was. Confidence, ease. And the vague shapes of the plan that had come to her earlier in the afternoon returned, beating faster.
‘But if it’s all a disaster, doesn’t happen, I never see him again, then I’m quite prepared to live a solitary life.’
‘For a clever graduate with a face which won’t go unnoticed, you’re talking a lot of nonsense,’ Joe laughed. ‘Aren’t you cold? Shouldn’t we be getting back?’
Scarcely aware of what she was doing, Ag, inspired by some peculiar boldness, stepped on to the gate and sat on the top bar. She faced Joe.
‘Here’s some more nonsense,’ she said. ‘If it does go right, and we meet again one day, I want to go to him experienced …’ Her face blazed in the darkness. Wondering at her own recklessness, she went on. ‘I don’t want him to think I’d been pathetically keeping myself for him.’ She paused. ‘I’m quite keen to be shot of my virginity … There: I’ve said it.’
In the silence that followed, Ag realized the extent of her impropriety. But, still fired by her inchoate aims, she went further in her madness, and rested her arms on Joe’s shoulders. He did not protest, or move, but kept his silence.
‘I knew I’d go too far eventually,’ Ag murmured at last. ‘I’ve made a complete fool of myself. Please don’t tell the others.’
She removed her arms, climbed back off the gate to the other side. Joe followed her.
‘I think I could probably oblige,’ he said.
‘What? I didn’t really mean you, Joe …’ His reaction caused her such confusion she turned from him, began to walk.
‘I think you did.’
‘I’ve been in a terrible muddle. Waiting, waiting: it’s a sort of canker. It does things to you.’
Joe caught up with her. He took her hand.
‘I can imagine that,’ he said.
They walked in silence up the dark lane, so fast that the cold that had bitten into them was replaced by an almost feverish heat beneath their thick clothes. As they turned the corner to the farmyard gate, Joe released Ag’s hand. She felt briefly deprived of warmth, comfort, understanding. The expectation that his offer had provided was a calm, sweet thing: no desire attached, just curiosity.
‘Soon,’ said Joe.
Two days later, Mrs Lawrence, recovered but weak, was up and resuming her usual duties. The first evening of her return to normal life, she stirred the Christmas pudding in a huge bowl.
‘It’ll be a thinnish pudding, this year,’ she said to Stella, who was chopping vegetables at the other end of the kitchen table. ‘Rich only in sixpences. I’ve been saving as much dried fruit as I can, and John’s let me have a bottle of brandy from the cellar. But it won’t be like the old days.’
Stella smiled. In her pocket was an unopened letter from Philip – the first since Plymouth. Curiously, her impatience to read it was manageable. The idea of keeping it till she was in bed throbbed no more fervently than the idea of a minor luxury. Her chief feeling was one of a childlike excitement about Christmas. Earlier in the day Mr Lawrence had brought in a Christmas tree, and set it in the sitting-room. Mrs Lawrence had brought down a box of decorations from the attic, and given them to Prue. As the experienced window-dresser of a leading Manchester hairdresser, Prue had said, she was the most qualified to dress the tree. No one had quarrelled with this. She burst into the kitchen now, twigs in her hair – there were twigs in her hair most days, Stella quietly observed – starfish lashes blinking wildly.
‘It’s done, it’s beautiful! No one’s allowed to go in and see it till after supper. Only thing that’s missing, Mrs Lawrence, are small candles. I’ll get some in Blandford tomorrow. You coming, Stella? It’ll be good fun. We could get Christmas cards and presents and things, and go back to the tea-room. Then we could see what’s on at the picture house, have a drink somewhere, catch the last bus … couldn’t we, Mrs Lawrence?’
Mrs Lawrence nodded. She passed the spoon to Prue. Prue stirred the uncooked pudding.
‘Shouldn’t I be making a wish?’ she asked. She shut her eyes for a moment. ‘I know what I’m wishing.’
Stella thought she had a pretty good idea of Prue’s wish, too: she wondered what her own should be. For a return of the old impetus, perhaps.
‘I always wish the same, every year,’ said Mrs Lawrence, taking back the spoon. What could that be? Stella wondered.
‘You just keep on,’ giggled Prue. ‘You just need enough faith, and anything’ll come true.’
‘I hope so,’ said Mrs Lawrence. ‘Come on, Stella, your turn. Where’s Ag?’
Ag, her three days of intense domestic duties over, had returned with some relief to her tasks outside. She was pleased to be reunited with the bantams and hens. Collecting eggs, feeding and cleaning their houses, had become one of her regular jobs. She had come to learn the birds’ various moods, their stubborn ways, their flights of stupidity, their sense of detachment. While the others stirred the pudding in the kitchen, Ag searched the barn for two missing bantams: the rest were shut up in their houses for the night.
She held a hand over her torch, released a few bars of almost useless light. But she knew her way about well by now: knew their favourite corners, far from the tractor – they had separate places for sleeping and laying. As Ag felt among the sacks she could hear the familiar churring of pigeons high in the rafters. Then, from a place near her, the higher, tremulous clucking of bantams. She uncovered the face of the torch, swept its dim beam over a cluster of nesting places. In a comfortable dip in the hay, croodled the two lost birds.
‘Come on,’ she chivvied. ‘You’re late.’
In an obedient mood, the bantams flopped to the ground, squawking and flapping. They ran towards the farmyard, heads jabbing furiously. Ag switched off her torch. Turning to follow them, she saw the dark silhouette of Joe. Her heart quickened. The arranged seduction, whenever that was to be, was not going to take place here in the barn, copy of Prue’s experience. Of that, Ag was determined.
I need some books, Ag,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve finished everything. If I take you all in to Blandford tomorrow afternoon, would you help me choose some?’
Ag was glad of the darkness. Glad he could not see her blush. Glad it was only books he wanted.
‘Of course.’
‘Then,’ said Joe, ‘we could go out to tea.’
‘Fine. Anything. I must make sure the bantams have gone back, shut them up.’ She hurried past him.
‘Hurry in and stir the pudding,’ Joe shouted after her, ‘and wish us luck.’
Five minutes later, it was Ag’s turn with the spoon. Screwing up her eyes, she saw a picture of Desmond’s face, and wished to do the right thing. When she opened them, she found Joe looking at her. This unnerved her. She had been strangely calm since their conversation two days ago at the gate. Now, her usual composure left her.
‘I think we all need a drink,’ said Mrs Lawrence. ‘Joe, there’s a bottle of whisky in the cupboard.’
Joe fetched glasses and the bottle. Stella and Ag exchanged looks. Apart from the ginger wine on the first night, it was the first time an alcoholic drink had appeared since they had arrived. Ag drank hers, neat, in one gulp. It would steady her, she thought. She needed something to dissipate troubling thoughts of Janet. Her own conscience was not loud enough to halt the planned deed, but planned betrayal, she was finding, is full of noisy rebuke.
‘Joe,’ Mrs Lawrence was saying, ‘Janet rang earlier. She says she can get off midday on Christmas Eve, be here by supper time.’
Ag took a quick look at Joe’s face. The neat whisky had had its impact already: his features spun like a Catherine wheel. Indeed the whole room, all faces, trembled with uncertainty. Joe had no time to answer his mother before Prue dashed in singing I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. She wore garlands of tinsel round her neck. Silver balls hung from her ears and gold paper stars were wedged in her hair. Everyone laughed: Joe poured her a drink. Ag, to her own amazement, found herself moving right up to Prue and putting her hands on her shoulders – the same gesture she had so curiously made to Joe by the gate.
‘Prue,’ she said, ‘you look marvellous. You should be on top of the tree.’ The words, like the glittering vision before her, were a little unsteady.
‘Good heavens, Ag,’ said Prue, ‘whatever’s got into you?’
There was more laughter.
Joe answered for Ag. ‘The Christmas spirit,’ he said.
My dearest darling Stella, Stella read in bed later that night. Well, at least he’s upped the tempo a little, she thought. A good start.
That was a lovely weekend. I keep thinking of so many bits of it, and it’s a good feeling knowing you’re as sure as I am about getting married. It’s frustrating not being able to make any plans because of the war. We must just hope it’s over soon and then we can make arrangements very quickly. We’re escorting a convoy to Liverpool tomorrow which will make a slight change. Hope you’re happy back with the others and the animals. Forgive brief note.
In great haste.
With all my love, Philip.
PS My friend Michael and I are planning a day trip to London in the New Year. Perhaps you might be able to come and join us?
Stella folded the letter, returned it to its envelope, put the envelope by the photograph, still in its same place. She sighed, turned out the light.
‘Letter from Philip?’ Prue’s whisper came out of the darkness. She never missed a thing, Prue.
‘Yes.’
‘Anything the matter?’
‘No. I’d just hoped it would be a bit longer. A bit—’
‘Don’t worry. Practically nobody in the world can write a good letter.’
‘True,’ Ag joined in, from her end of the room. She had been wondering, now the spinning of her head had calmed down, whether or not she should buy a Christmas card for Desmond in Blandford tomorrow. She turned this way and that, making the bed creak. Yes, she decided. She would.
‘Stella?’ It was Prue again.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you coming, tomorrow?’
‘If you like …’
‘Ag? How about you? Do our shopping, have some fun?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Ag, ‘Joe mentioned that on condition I helped him choose his books he’d give us all a lift.’
Prue giggled. ‘Blimey! You mind out. Choosing books is as good a way as any.’ There was a brief silence. ‘Shall I tell you something? Barry says he’s not sure how much longer he can keep up all this cycling.’ Prue giggled again. ‘So, obviously, I’ve got to be on the lookout for a replacement, for when he’s finally exhausted. We could go to the pictures, Stella, couldn’t we? Always a chance, there. Will you come, too, Ag?’
‘Think I’ll come back earlier, if Joe will give me a lift,’ Ag answered carefully. ‘I’ve got letters to write, Christmas cards.’
‘Anything you say.’ Prue gave a final giggle. ‘Tell you what, I recommend the barn. One of those stacks up on the right – very comfortable.’
‘Don’t be silly, Prue,’ said Ag. ‘You know there’s Desmond.’
‘Well, there isn’t, exactly. Desmond, I mean. Is there?’
There was another long silence. Ag thought the other two had gone to sleep. Then Prue had the last word.
‘Ag, you awake? Because let me tell you something. What you’re going to be shocked by, this time, is yourself. I bet you.’
Ag put her head beneath the bedclothes. She had no wish to hear any more truths from Prue. She had no wish to think further about the extraordinary resolve to behave badly that seemed to have overwhelmed her.
While the others went off for their Christmas shopping, tea, and the hunt in the cinema for a Barry replacement, Joe and Ag spent a long time searching the shelves of a small bookshop. Joe was keen to buy the entire works of Gissing. Ag persuaded him that to start Balzac would be more rewarding: the compromise was Eugénie Grandet and Born in Exile. Joe began to enjoy himself. He randomly chose a disparate selection of Penguins: Can You Forgive Her?, Chekhov short stories, Hardy’s poems (Ag’s strongest recommendation), various books that had slipped through the net of his reading, as he put it. It took over an hour to fill the large shopping basket Ag had brought.
They then went to a grocer, where Joe bought a bag of ginger biscuits, two anaemic iced buns and half a bottle of red wine. Ag, curious, but determined to ask no questions, helped him carry the purchases to the car.
It was three o’clock when they drove out of the town. The light had not yet begun to fade.
‘Poor Stella,’ said Ag, ‘I bet she would have liked a lift home with us.’
‘Probably,’ said Joe, ‘but Stella wasn’t part of my plan.’
His plan, he explained eventually, as they drove into deep country of small wintry hills, was for tea in Robert’s cottage. Robert was his oldest friend, unable, like Joe, to be called up, because of weak lungs.
‘Before you all arrived,’ Joe said, ‘we used to meet most nights in The Bells. Have a drink or two, talk about anything except the war and farming. It was something to look forward to at the end of the day. But since you’ve all been here … I don’t know. I’ve grown used to Prue’s mindless chatter, your serious little head bent over a book, Stella’s dreamy look while she keeps up polite conversation. There’s more to the evenings, now, somehow.’ He smiled. ‘When I rang him last night, he reminded me we hadn’t spoken for a week. Some friend, he said. What Robert needs is a woman, a girl. He’s lonely. I was rather thinking—’
‘I know exactly what you’re thinking.’ Ag laughed.
‘Think she’d do? Save her a lot of scouring the streets and cinemas of Blandford.’
‘I don’t know Robert. How can I judge?’
‘He’s a good man. Funny. He’ll make an uxorious husband one day.’
‘Rich?’
‘Far from it.’
‘Temporary measure only, then. Prue’s set on her gold taps. But you could try.’
They turned off the lane into a muddy, uneven track between high hedges, and reached a grey stone cottage. Its moss-clad thatched roof, in danger of slipping off, was only held in place by the frailest netting. Paintwork was peeling. Windows were thick with cobwebs and grime.
Joe took an old iron key from the lintel above the front door. He led the way into a dark, damp room. It smelt of past cats and rotten fruit. There was little furniture, but for an old sofa in front of an empty grate. Dozens of books were piled on the floor, some of their covers smeared with mildew.
‘He doesn’t have much chance to be domestic,’ Joe said. ‘You go and boil a kettle while I organize a fire.’
Ag took some time to find her way round the unpleasant kitchen. She had to wash dirty tin mugs under the single cold tap, and she could only find one plate. By the time she returned to the sitting-room with tea things on a rusty tray, Joe’s fire had brightened the place a little.
‘So when’s he arriving, Robert?’ Ag asked.
‘Don’t be silly. He’s not.’
‘I see.’
‘Biscuit? Bun?’
‘I’m suddenly not hungry.’ Ag sat at the far end of the sofa.
‘We needn’t go through with this if you’ve changed your mind,’ said Joe, gently.
‘Last night I was awake for hours, thinking I was mad, immoral, wicked, a ridiculous fool. I was going to say I had changed my mind. But now I’m here …’
Joe took two cloudy glasses from a shelf and a corkscrew from his pocket. His pre-planning was exemplary, Ag thought. He opened the bottle of red wine. ‘This’ll take the edge off things for you.’ He handed her a glass.
‘Thanks.’
Ag took a sip. It was cold, bitter. She forced herself to keep drinking, treating it as medicine. A flicker of warmth came from the fire. She began to feel better. The outrageousness of her behaviour seemed slightly less outrageous. By the time she had finished the wine, there was only one real worry left.
‘I fear you may not find me very attractive,’ she said. It came out sounding prim as a governess. To obliterate the taste of the wine, she tried the nasty tea. She could not meet Joe’s eyes. ‘So if … it doesn’t work, I’ll quite understand.’
Joe touched her hot cheek. ‘In a few years’ time, when this roundness has fined down a little, you’ll be more striking, more original-looking, more arresting than either Prue or Stella.’
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘I do. Prue’s prettiness, her kitten looks, won’t last. Stella can look beautiful – that night at the dance she was stunning – but she doesn’t take enough trouble. But you’ve got the bones. Somewhere. Waiting to emerge.’ They both laughed. ‘I said to Robert how lucky we were. Imagine the three land girls we might have been sent, I said.’
‘We’re the ones who’ve been lucky. We might have been landed in one of those hostels – not much fun, I hear. Or with some tyrannical farmer. Hallows Farm, the kindness of your parents – no land girl could ask for more.’
‘It was Ma’s idea.’
They finished the wine. The second glass Ag found less difficult. It had, as Joe predicted, taken the edge off things. The bleakness of the room, the apprehension of the act they were about to commit, lay more gently on her spirits. Joe stood up, took Ag’s hand.
‘I think we should go up.’
Ag stood, too. She was as tall as Joe. Their eyes met on the level. He kissed her on the forehead.
‘Just one more thing,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Janet.’
‘What about her?’
‘Isn’t all this very immoral? What about your conscience – and mine, for that matter?’
Joe sighed, impatient. ‘It’s not the time to discuss Janet, is it? You should have said something about her before if she troubled you. I can’t tell you why, but for some reason she’s not on my conscience. I’ve given her my word: I’m going to marry her. Until that time I feel free to do what I like. All right?’
Ag nodded.
Joe led her out of the door and up the narrow wooden stairs. Ag wondered how many other times he had made use of his friend’s house: how many other girls had followed him up those stairs, and into the little cold bedroom with its sloping black wood floor and crooked window. Joe drew the scant cotton curtains. Dead moths fluttered to the ground. Then he pulled down the bed cover. Two blankets lay folded on an ancient mattress. Stained pillows were slumped, caseless. He switched on an exiguous bedroom light. The low-watt bulb smeared the walls with a dun light, increasing the gloom. Ag stood by the window, taking in the scene of her impending seduction.
‘Not exactly a honeymoon suite, I’m afraid,’ said Joe, ‘but I don’t think we should use Robert’s room, which isn’t much more cheerful anyway.’ He sat heavily on the bed. The springs yelped. ‘Why don’t you get undressed?’ He bent down to untie his own laces.
Ag wanted to say that she had imagined a lover would help with this process. But then she remembered Joe wasn’t a proper lover, just a friend about to oblige her in her irrational request. So, in silence, she slipped off jersey, skirt, shoes, let them slide to a heap on the floor. She paused before raising her petticoat above her head. There would be something either comic or distasteful, she felt, in the sight of her knickers, suspenders and brassiere. But Joe must be used to such things. The glance he gave her did not indicate surprise.
‘You’ve the body of a ballet dancer,’ he said. ‘Degas would have liked to have painted you – the blue lights on your skin.’
Ag smiled politely, rolled off her stockings. A moment later she was completely naked. This time Joe’s look was appraising. She stood to attention, knees touching, a blade of light between her thighs. Her cold fingers curled about in small whirls over her thumbs. She told herself this would probably be the only time in her life any man would sit looking at her body, taking in the thinness of her legs, the smallness of her breasts.
But even as Ag enjoyed Joe’s silent approbation, a worrying thought came to her. What if she became pregnant? It would be a dreadful irony, that – to conceive a child in a single sexual experience designed (in a fit of madness, she now thought) to impress the stranger of her fantasies, Desmond, with her past ‘experience’. In some alarm, still not moving, she tried to remember what Prue had said. One night, just before Stella had gone to Plymouth, Prue had volunteered to advise them on the matter of birth control. Something about making quite sure the man either used a french letter or – a bit riskier – ‘unplugged’, as Prue called it, before the vital moment. But what was the vital moment? Ag hadn’t liked to ask Prue, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask Joe, displaying even further her pathetic naïvety. She remembered, too, Prue declaring that sometimes, at safe times of the month, she couldn’t be bothered with any of the whole boring palaver, and, touch wood, she’d been lucky so far.
Ag put a hand on the chest of drawers. When was the safe time? Anxiety clouded her swift calculations. She wished she had listened to Prue – whose advice was chiefly aimed at Stella – more carefully. But she’d fallen asleep, probably missing important details. There was nothing for it, now, but to take a risk. If this was to be her one and only sexual encounter, possibly ever, then it should not be complicated with technicalities. It should be as uninhibited and enjoyable as possible in the peculiar circumstances. Screw your courage to the sticking place, Ag told herself, privately relishing the aptness of the self-advice, and get through the whole business with as much dignity as possible. She gave the faintest smile of encouragement.
Joe rose from the bed, came towards her. The fact that he had taken off only his shoes seemed to Ag unfair. She was curious to see his body, too. The nearest she had come to the study of a naked man’s body was her study of Michelangelo’s David. She had judged that Joe, with his height, his broad shoulders, narrow hips and firm thighs, would be something like that. She wanted to see the private parts. She was curious to learn what happened when stone turned to flesh. But this she was to be denied.
Joe picked her up. In a concave position, slung over his arms, she knew he was studying the flatness of her stomach, the hands modestly placed over the Mons Venus. He laid her on the bed. It smelt of cat, like the sofa downstairs.
‘I’m going to put out the light,’ he said, ‘and we can pretend we’re somewhere better.’
A murky dusk clogged the room. Joe, his face a clutch of indistinct shadows, bent over Ag. He rested on stiff arms placed each side of her shoulders.
‘Are you sure …?’
Ag nodded. Joe moved to lean on a bent elbow. With one hand he began to unbutton his shirt. With the other he traced a gentle path from her neck to breast, to stomach, to thigh. Ag closed her eyes.
Later, lying stiff and cold in his arms, the experience reminded Ag of a visit to the doctor. It had been efficient, clinical, easy, swift. It had not hurt. Neither pleasure nor displeasure had been present: all Ag could think about, feeling the bulk of Joe upon her, was this is happening. It did not differ from the imaginings, because she had never been able to imagine exactly what it would be like. How it felt, in the end, was not very exciting. Perhaps, with someone you loved, it would be different. The only really curious thing about it all, she thought, was her lack of concern about what she called her wickedness. Thoughts of betraying Janet – for which she had berated Prue – existed no longer. Perhaps, it occurred to her, such callousness is a sign of maturity.
In a matter of moments Joe was swinging his legs off the bed, sitting up. He switched on the lamp, glanced at his watch.
‘We’ll be back in time for supper, complete innocence. You all right?’
Joe patted her leg with an uninterested hand. ‘There,’ he said. There, she had heard him say, so many times, at the end of a task: milking, muck-spreading, parking the tractor. There, he would say, meaning a good job done, and now it’s time to eat.
He stood up and reached for his clothes, his back to Ag. Gone was her last chance to view the sight she had craved for so many years.
‘Hope it wasn’t too disappointing.’
‘No. Thank you.’ Ag shook her head. It wasn’t disappointing: it wasn’t anything. So she could not bring herself to say the deflowering had been either satisfactory or happy. It had been merely interesting. He had efficiently performed a function she wanted, needed, for her own esteem. And the best thing about it was that it was now over. The small web of deliquescence that had netted Ag as she lay in his arms, due more to fatigue than fulfilment, now broke. She leapt up and scurried to her pile of clothes, dressing with her back to Joe.
Ten minutes later they were in the Wolseley, on the way home.
‘Now that’s over,’ said Joe, ‘we can spend our time with more important things, like books.’
Ag smiled. Really, he had been – was being – very kind about the whole thing. Her only concern now was that her new status would not be observed.
Joe carried the basket of books into the kitchen. Mrs Lawrence was pouring soup into bowls, inspiring Ag with unusual hunger.
‘Very literary afternoon,’ Joe said, ‘advised by my tutor, here.’
He gave Ag an open smile.
Ratty spent the evening in the front room, smoking his pipe by an unlit fire. He wanted to listen to the news, imagine the war. Edith did not. She darned peacefully – it had been a strangely peaceful evening, not a single argument – at the kitchen table.
At ten o’clock, she opened the door, stood looking at Ratty slumped in his chair. She always liked to keep bad news till late, to ensure Ratty would have something to trouble him in bed.
‘There’s a stomach upset going round the village,’ she said. ‘Seven or eight down with it.’
‘Ah. Hope it won’t clobber us.’
‘Don’t suppose it will.’ Edith sounded oddly definite.
She went on standing there, not moving, arms folded defiantly under the bolster of her bosom.
‘I forgot to tell you,’ she said at last, ‘my batch of scones went like greased lightning, everyone wanted more. Fighting over them like cats and dogs, they were.’
They returned to silence. Ratty could think of no appropriate answer. He could hear the tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. Its rhythm set something off in his brain: a thought so vile he must quickly speak – say anything – to block its progress.
‘How many customers did you have, in the end, then?’ He tried to give the question lightness.
‘Seven or eight in all,’ said Edith, without hesitation. She moved away.
Fear spread over Ratty like a cold dew. From now on, for survival, he knew he must keep a close watch on Edith. Driven by some cankerous demon, there was no knowing how far she would go in her bitter hatred of mankind.
Ag went up to bed early. She was almost asleep when Stella and Prue returned from the late bus, string bags full of Christmas presents. Prue, flinging herself on her bed, chattered excitedly about the outing. She hadn’t a penny left, she said, but had bought all the presents she needed. No: they hadn’t found a Barry replacement in the tea-shop or in the pub, but a friendly old farmer had bought them two gin and limes and told them there was to be a New Year’s Eve party in the town hall to raise money for the Red Cross.
‘So there’s hope there.’ She giggled. ‘Barry’ll do till then.’
She lay on her back on the bed, lifted her legs, admiring the rayon stockings and dove-grey suede shoes, with their neat little pattern of holes, and thick platform soles.
‘So let’s hear about your news, then, Ag. What were you and Joe up to?’
‘We bought a lot of books, we had tea,’ said Ag.
‘Come on. You don’t expect Stella and me to believe that, do you? Not with two hours on your hands, Joe plainly keen for you.’
‘It’s the truth.’
Prue sighed, mock impatient. ‘We don’t want details, do we, Stella? We just want to know how it was. What it was like.’
Ag imitated the mock sigh. ‘Don’t go on, Prue. I’m almost asleep. I tell you, it was shopping and books. If you don’t believe me, I can’t help it.’
Prue screeched with laughter, squirming on the bed, clutching her knees to her chest. ‘I can see by the look on your face. Okay, you go to sleep. But we’ll get it out of you one day, see if we don’t.’ She winked at Stella.
It wasn’t till 1947, their second lunch after the war, that Ag confessed. By then the activities of the afternoon had turned to such fine dust in her memory that secrecy was no longer of any importance.