JULIA BURST INTO the kitchen. ‘Somebody’s bloody stolen the tyres orff my bike.’
Claire, sitting at the table, drinking tea, said, ‘Well, take mine, then.’
‘Your tyres are gone, too. And Izzy’s. Who would do a thing like that? I’ll kill whoever it was if I get my hands on them,’ said Julia.
‘How are you going to get to the base?’ asked Claire.
‘They’re sending a car. It’s doing the rounds picking people up, apparently a lot of people have had their tyres stolen. There’s been a spate of tyre thefts in the village.’
Claire shrugged. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t need her bike today. She wouldn’t need her bike ever again. Last night, she’d handed in her uniform, shaken hands with Edith, the CO and the adjutant, said goodbye to all her colleagues and cycled back to the cottage. She was no longer a lady pilot. Today, she’d take the train back to London, then a taxi to her house in Hampstead. She was Mrs Alton again.
Last night, for a few tender hours, she’d been Mrs Middleton. She and Simon had eaten in his tiny kitchen. He’d roasted a chicken.
‘A whole chicken, my goodness,’ she’d said. ‘You must have pulled some strings.’
‘I got it from William Brent. I won’t tell you what he charged. You’d faint.’
They drank Chablis.
‘Where on earth did you get it?’ she asked, sipping in wonderment.
‘Two tins of cocoa and a packet of tea in Paris last week.’
She told him it was a bargain.
They hadn’t discussed any rules about how their conversation should go; they hadn’t said that some subjects were taboo. But, both of them knew that talking about the future would be painful. So, they’d avoided it. They reminisced, gossiped, chatted about how lovely an evening it was and that really they should be outside in the fresh air enjoying it. But they’d stayed where they were.
For a while they’d stopped speaking, sat gazing at one another.
‘I want to take in every detail of your face,’ said Claire. ‘I want it here, inside my head, so I’ll always remember it.’
‘The way you are to me will never change,’ he told her. ‘This woman you are tonight is how you’ll always be.’
She smiled. ‘It’s nice to think that there’s somewhere, even if it’s just in your head, that I’ll never age.’
They went to bed, made love. They kept the windows open so they could hear the sound of the river just beyond the cottage garden. She hadn’t wanted to sleep. Her wish was that she should stay awake all night, feeling the closeness of him, listening to him breathe. But, she’d slept.
At five in the morning she woke. Kissed him, got out of bed and dressed. She was at the front door when he caught up with her.
‘You’re going without saying goodbye.’
‘I just didn’t want to say it,’ she said.
She was wearing her ordinary clothes. Today was the day she became a wife and mother again. She had wanted to just slip away.
He told her he didn’t want to say goodbye, either. So they didn’t.
She didn’t want to tell him she loved him. She didn’t need to. He knew. And, somehow, at this moment, it seemed overdramatic to mention it.
Claire did what Mrs Alton would do. She reached out, took Simon’s hand and shook it. ‘It’s been lovely knowing you.’
She’d kissed his cheek, walked down the path and not looked back. If she had, she’d have run to him, held him and asked him to run away with her, to start a new life somewhere they weren’t known. That was not the sort of thing Mrs Alton did.
At ten o’clock she picked up her bag, left the key to the cottage on the table in the hall, shut the door and walked up to the bus stop. Five hours later, she was home.
She stood at the front door, listening to the house. It still had the same creaks and whispers where the draught shifted under the living-room door. It smelled musty.
She hung her coat on the hook by the front door, and set to. Moving from room to room, she peeled the tape from the windows. ‘They’ll need a wash,’ she said. Then she opened them, letting in fresh air. She took the dust covers from the furniture, folded them and stashed them in the cupboard under the stairs. She swept the kitchen floor, dusted, ran the taps till the water was clear. She gathered some flowers from the garden, arranged them in vases that she placed in the hall, the living room and the kitchen. After that, she took her basket and went to the shops to see what food she could buy.
On the way, she met neighbours who waved and smiled. ‘Lovely to see you back, Mrs Alton.’
‘Lovely to be back!’ she called.
Two days later, Richard came home. There had been no word that he was coming, he just turned up. Claire had been in the kitchen, heard the front door opening and had come to see who it was.
There was a tiny slice of a moment when she didn’t recognise him. He was thin, emaciated. His clothes hung loose, his face was gaunt, yellowed, tense. He said hello.
‘Richard,’ she said. She rushed to hold him. He leaned into her, head against her. Said he was home.
She led him into the living room, sat him by the fire. Stood holding his hand. She wanted to ask how he was, but, really, that seemed stupid. She could see he wasn’t well.
‘Was it awful?’ she said.
‘Not too bad,’ which meant it was truly awful. ‘How have you been?’
‘Missing you,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
But he held on to her hand. ‘Not just yet. I want to look at you.’
He asked what she’d been up to.
‘Flying,’ she said. ‘I got a job delivering planes from the factories to the airbases.’
She thought he’d be appalled. He hated women working.
But he said, ‘Doing your bit, eh? Good girl.’
Then he got up, put his arm round her and suggested they put the kettle on together.
They went to bed early. Lay side by side in the dark, hardly moving. ‘We’ve gone all shy with one another,’ she said. She reached out, took his hand and kissed it. When they made love, it was tenderly quiet. They fumbled. It reminded Claire of how it had been years ago when they were newly-weds. Afterwards, they barely spoke.
The arguments started two days later. He had been following Claire around the house, standing silently watching her as she prepared supper or dusted the dresser. When he followed her to the loo, she gently put her hand on his chest and said, ‘Please, there are some things I prefer to do alone.’ He nodded. But when she emerged, he was at the door waiting for her.
She tried to be cheery. Kept smiling, put a lilt into her voice. He told her she was being bossy. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you, but you’re taking charge of everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘You’re acting like this is your house and I’m some sort of invalid guest.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You bloody are.’
She walked from the room.
Later, when a light bulb needed replacing, she fetched a new one from the cupboard. He snatched it from her, said he could do it. But, he’d forgotten how hot the dead bulb could be and dropped it, shouting in pain. She led him to the kitchen and put the burned hand under the cold tap. ‘I’m not a child. I don’t need mothering,’ he said. Claire silently picked up a dustpan and brush and went to sweep up the broken glass.
He spotted her in the garden, mowing the lawn and stormed out. ‘That’s my job. I can do that.’ She handed over the mower. He worked for ten minutes before sitting down on the garden seat, panting and mopping his brow on his sleeve. ‘The grass is too damp for cutting.’ But she took over. He shouted at her to leave it. ‘I am perfectly capable of cutting the grass without help.’ She left him to it.
Two hours later he limped into the kitchen, drenched with sweat. ‘Told you I could do it.’
They argued about the food she cooked. ‘You know I hate liver.’
‘It’s all I could get. Besides it’s good for you. It’ll build you up.’
‘I don’t need building up. And I’ve told you before, I don’t need mothering.’
They argued about where she put his shirts once they’d been ironed. ‘I like them hung up, not folded and put in a drawer.’
He told her to stop singing as she washed the dishes. ‘It’s annoying me.’ He drank too much whisky. He hoarded food.
‘You don’t need to do that any more,’ she said after she found a lump of cheese under his pillow. ‘You don’t need to save it to barter with the guards. There are no guards.’
He told her to shut up. ‘You don’t know what it was like.’
‘Well, how can I know? You won’t talk about it.’
‘Bugger off,’ he said.
And still they made quietly tender love in bed most nights.
One night, as they lay waiting for sleep, he took her hand. ‘We made it,’ he said. ‘We had a whole day without yelling at one another.’
‘So we did,’ she said.
He told her he thought they were going to be fine.
In two weeks, Claire would go to Southampton to meet the boat that two people had boarded in South Africa. Nell and Oliver had been children when they left. They were on their way to being grown up now. Claire knew she’d be confronted by a young woman and a young man she hardly knew. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t take to their new life. There would be tantrums, fights, comparisons with their life in South Africa. They’d hate the food. They’d hate the weather.
She wondered how long it would take before they became a family again. Sometimes she thought months, sometimes she thought years. Sometimes she thought that it might never happen. When she thought that, she’d shake her head and scold herself for being so pessimistic. After all, she was Mrs Alton, and if there was one thing that Mrs Alton could do, it was cope.