‘JEFFREY’S DEAD,’ SAID Julia.
For a moment, Walter thought, Who?
‘His plane burst into flames not long after take-off. Leaking fuel pipe.’ She was sitting on the bed reading a letter from Jeffrey’s mother.
Ah, Jeffrey, Walter remembered, one of the other lovers. A rival. In the months he’d been seeing Julia, he’d put them out of his head. He said he was sorry to hear that.
‘His mother found my name in his address book when his things were sent home. She’s writing to everyone.’
Walter was lying on the bed next to her. In Julia’s flat there wasn’t much else to do. There still was no furniture.
‘Dead,’ said Julia. ‘Just like that. He was only twenty-four, and such fun. A life wiped out. He won’t see the end of this war, come home, marry, have kids.’ She put her hands up to her face. There were tears. ‘I was awfully fond of him.’
Walter listened as Julia talked about Jeffrey. He was beautiful. ‘Not, you know, in looks. But the whole person was beautiful. He was such fun, bubbling with energy. Now he’s gone. A life snuffed out.’
Walter said he’d make a cup of tea. He heaved himself up, and went through to the kitchen. Julia followed, leaned on the sink watching as he filled the kettle. He pulled the blackout curtains, switched on the lights, poured two cups and listened. Julia was full of tales about Jeffrey. The fun they’d had, racing cars down the long drive at his parents’ estate, playing poker all night, the masked ball they’d attended where he had only revealed himself after he’d kissed her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone. Life will never be like that again.’
He sipped his tea, said nothing. Life had never been like that for him. He stroked his chin and said, ‘Awfully fond? I hope you’re not awfully fond of me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because awfully fond is not enough. Not for me, anyway.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘I want passion. Love. Longing. I think about you all the time. I’d like to think you thought about me, too.’
‘I do.’
‘Not in an awfully fond, tepid sort of way, I hope. I hate that. It’s as if I’m not good enough to love.’
He went through to the living room. ‘Look at this flat. Empty. I don’t believe you can’t afford some furniture.’
She followed him through. ‘I can afford furniture. Not that there’s a lot around to buy these days. I just . . .’
‘You just don’t want to buy it because that would be a waste when you might die.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to let yourself love somebody when you might die.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, Julia, I’ve got news for you. You are going to die. We all are at sometime or other. So we live the best we can while we’re alive. So why don’t you get a table and a sofa and fall in love with me and marry me?’
She said, ‘I don’t want to stop flying.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘I don’t want to leave my job. I love my job.’
‘I love my job,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to leave your job. I’m asking you to marry me. Fly and marry me. Fly and have my baby. Fly and learn to cook a meal. Fly and . . .’ He ran out of steam. He waved his arms in the air, searching for words. ‘Live.’
Julia said, ‘All right.’
‘All right, what?’
‘All right, I’ll marry you. I’m not awfully fond of you at all.’
He stared at her. ‘Damn it, woman, say it.’
‘I love you. I think about you all the time. I want to marry you. But, right after the honeymoon, I’m going back to work, flying.’
Love had never occurred to Claire. If she sang a love song, it was because she liked the tune. The emotions expressed meant nothing to her.
Of course, she loved her children. That had startled her. She marvelled at their small faces, laughed when they laughed and wasn’t truly happy when they were away from her. She would have liked them to be safe at home, under the same roof as she was. These days her bitterest regret was that she had never told them how much she adored them. Should’ve mentioned it, she thought. If anything happens to me, if I die, they’ll never know.
But now she knew what all the songs and poems were about. She had a love. It amazed her that one face among all the faces she saw every day could now mean so much to her. She’d kiss his eyes, his cheeks, the side of his mouth – where the smile started – wondering how one set of features could become beloved.
Several times a week, Claire would tell Izzy and Julia she was going for a walk, or to meet someone for a drink, and set off in the direction of the Golden Mallard. Then she’d double back, cross the bridge, heels clicking on the wooden boards, and hurry to the cottage, to Simon and his double bed.
They’d have a glass of whisky, kiss, then make their way to the bedroom. Sometimes they skipped the whisky. Sometimes, Claire would come to him, a coat over her underwear and, once inside the door, would let it slip to the floor as she took him to her. She’d arrived ready for love.
At half past ten, Claire would get up, dress and go back to her cottage. She was sure nobody knew about this. But Diane did. And so did Mrs Brent, who also cleaned for Simon. She recognised the scent on the pillows, and the lipstick traces on the glass Claire used. More than that, Mr Brent had spotted her slipping up the path to Simon’s front door, and reported his interesting sighting to his wife.
‘It’s this war,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s gone crazy. They can’t control themselves. Hanky-panky, slap and tickle, a bit of the other is all they think about. And when it’s over, they’ll pretend it didn’t happen.’
Still, Claire believed her affair was a secret. But it wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d known it wasn’t. She was smitten. Too smitten for guilt. They had a new unspoken rule. They no longer discussed their families. Talk of distant husbands, wives and children killed the passion.
Every time she and Simon got together there was an urgency between them. They couldn’t wait to get their clothes off, to hold one another, to kiss, feel the pleasure of skin on skin. Now Claire had one more reason for not wanting the war to end – she’d be parted from her love.
Izzy’s romance was relaxed, an easy-going affair, a mix of sex and long rambling conversations. Voices spilling into the dark. He spoke about Montana, winters so cold that the icy air burned your lungs and you thought your very breath would freeze and hang for a second, a crystalline lump, before it crashed to the ground. Huge skies, mountains bluing into more mountains. The ranch was so vast that his father used a small plane to fly over it, looking for stray cattle. He told her of ranch hands with calloused hands and leathery faces who turned up, worked for a year or a few months, then moved on. Others had been with them all their lives, lived in houses his father had helped them build.
He talked longingly about his mother’s kitchen, her food – meatloaves, burgers, cookies and milk laid out for him when he came home from school. He had a horse, Jericho. He could ride for days and still be on his father’s land. His homesickness was infectious. It made Izzy pine for a country she’d never been to.
She told him about her father – his red-hot sermons, his sweet tooth, his love of driving fast, the disobedient dog, Treacle, the endless stream of people who brought him their problems, the comfort he gave them. She didn’t tell him that she was beginning to find her father rigid in his opinions, and she didn’t say she no longer sharing his religion. She didn’t mention that her father didn’t know she was a pilot. Instead she spoke about the village that smelled in the evenings of cooking fat and coal fires. Everyone knew her name. ‘Sometimes my face aches from all the smiling and saying hello that I have to do.’
Her mother made thick Scotch broth and glistening apple dumplings swathed in custard. In autumn the family picked brambles that were made into sweet jelly, which she spread on freshly baked bread. Eating this left her with a sticky purple coating on her lips and cheeks.
She was going home for her annual fortnight’s leave. ‘I’ll have to. They’d never forgive me if I didn’t.’
He asked if he could come along. ‘I’d like to meet your folks. And I’ve never been to Scotland. I’d like to taste haggis.’
‘OK. That’d be wonderful. I could show you around. I suppose my mother could get hold of a haggis. I don’t know what the haggis situation is like what with rationing and all.’ Then, after a long pause, she said, ‘They don’t know about us. I mean, you know, that we sleep together. We’d have separate rooms. They don’t approve of sex outside marriage.’
He said he just bet they didn’t, pulled her to him and kissed her neck, ready for some more pleasure that would make her mother and father tut and scowl and wag their fingers.
On her days off, she visited him. She felt guilty about this because she’d promised Elspeth she’d save up her leave and travel north to be with her. But love and lust got the better of her.
She would rattle for miles over neglected, bumpy roads on her motorbike and arrive stiff, cold and aching, arms throbbing from the vibrations of the struggling engine and from holding the handlebars for an hour or so. Her face would be red and numb from the rush of wind.
When he visited her, he’d use his car. He’d be relaxed as he walked up the path to the cottage, she’d run to him and he would lift her up, swing her round and kiss her before he put her down again. He was over six foot tall; she wasn’t much over five foot. He still called her Pork Chops, but she had stopped caring about that. In fact, he said it so affectionately, she had come to like it.
When Izzy went to him, she stayed at a small bed and breakfast not far from his base. He didn’t think it proper for her to sleep in his bed there, and he liked his comforts. ‘I don’t want to hang about condom alley.’
This was the passage between the Nissan huts where soldiers and airmen, patients at the hospital, courted local girls on dance nights. Evidence of their passion was littered on the ground for all to see on Sunday mornings.
‘This country is too cold for love in the open air,’ Jim told Izzy.
So, they’d found Mrs Barton’s small and comfortable guest-house. She called them her Lady Pilot and her American Doctor, and was rather proud of them. If she disapproved of their not being married, she never mentioned it. She said, ‘That’s the way of things, these days. People rushing at life, afraid it might end soon.’
Once, when Izzy was sitting in the tiny dining room eating breakfast – toast, tea and porridge – Mrs Barton asked Izzy if she and Jim were thinking of tying the knot. Izzy said she didn’t know, they hadn’t discussed it. But secretly, she’d thought about it. She wanted to marry Jim. She loved his long lean body, his cropped hair that softly tickled the flat of her palm when she touched it, the deep cleft in his chin. She loved him, she was sure. But she never mentioned it. He hadn’t told her he loved her. Izzy thought if she told him, she’d break the spell. Better to keep it to herself, lest he thought her pushy or silly and left her. She wasn’t one to take risks in the air, why take one here on the ground?
Elspeth forgave Tyler. What else could she do? He was always there.
‘I’m wooing you,’ he said.
‘Well, stop it,’ she said. ‘It’s annoying.’
He followed her everywhere, shovelled dung for her, brought her flowers he’d picked. In the end her heart melted; they became lovers again. On walks through the forest he told her about the lives of trees. ‘They’re the same top and bottom. Their roots spread out under the ground in the exact same way their branches spread into the air.’ She said she hadn’t known that.
She thought him handsome, funny, generous, big-hearted, really rather wonderful. But when he asked her to marry him – and he did most days – she’d say, ‘The war will end; everything will change. Maybe we’ll change. Let’s just enjoy this time together. Marriage can wait.’ She didn’t want to admit that she was temted by the offer.
‘But I love you,’ he’d say. ‘Don’t you love me?’
‘Let’s not talk about love,’ she’d say. ‘It complicates things. Let’s make love and grab a little happiness instead.’
Love? She was too busy hoping the war would end and planning what she’d do when that happened to think about love. Love made a person do silly things, think silly thoughts and make silly decisions. She wanted nothing to do with it.