Frank’s bag was sitting in his room, ready for him to join the war. He was waiting for instructions from ATA headquarters in White Waltham, waiting to be told what to do, where to go. Waiting. It seemed that was what they were all doing, waiting for the war to start in earnest. So far it was the most mysterious war. Mysterious because no one knew what was happening. A scarcity of news on the wireless, no cheering crowds, no drafts leaving Victoria, no indication if they were to send an army abroad.
Frank sat in the library drinking his tea, thinking of the war, knowing he would lose his home, at least temporarily. He saw a double-decker bus filled with children driving through the village two days ago. Where would they take them, these lost and timid children? The countryside? Would that be safe? He imagined hordes of them taking over Wentworth House, a small band of matrons to keep them in order. And where would he be? Hiding in his room?
An air raid in Dagenham over the Ford Motor Works, the first true sign of war. Rumours of a plane brought down in flames. Traffic queues, too, as they’d been told to pull over to the side of the road should an alarm sound. Everyone angry that they hadn’t done anything yet, hadn’t wreaked havoc on Berlin as expected. The only thing was tons of leaflets dropped on north Germany. Cartoonists were having a field day depicting Hitler on his knees, begging them to rain famine, bombs, even gas on Germany, but not the truth. Perhaps the new mode of warfare was persuasion.
The theatres were closed, his old schoolmate Stephen Cochrane, a director, suddenly out of a job after ten years, now driving a delivery van. The television station closed, so, too, the cinema. The entire country appeared to have come to a halt.
He, too, had come to a halt. Rescued by his aunt upon her return from London. What had she said to rouse him from his bed? Don’t be like your father. What did she mean by that? Any comparison a shock, but it did get him out of bed, did get him dressed and down for tea and to the chiding of his aunt. “This war will come,” she’d told him. “It will come in ways you will not expect.”
And then she talked about love.
“Our lives will now be marked by extremes,” she told him. “Everything that you experience—pain, fear, triumph, even love will be felt with such intensity you’ll think it will break you. If you become broken by it, then you’ll know your heart is still beating. None of this will feel comfortable, and none of it is sustainable, but for the time we must live in the extremes because the alternative is to live in the shallows, and that is not a place we can survive.”
Peter. Where is he now?
He’d been gone almost two weeks, those last few days a blur Frank had been trying to piece together since the night of Audrey’s birthday. The sparkling afternoon by the river, dissolved when Peter arrived. Frank’s pulse quickening as he watched Peter walk down the hill to join them. He’d come. This thought like an affirmation of love in Frank’s mind. Then the news. Crushed. Miriam looking haunted, lost. The champagne had made them happy so Frank wanted more of it, as if it might erase this news, the splendid awkwardness of this moment. Then Peter at his arm as they trudged up the hill. He’d felt cogent, questioning Peter on his decision to join the RAF as if they were discussing it over tea (there would be no choice in the end, Peter had argued), and yet dreamlike, as if all the words they spoke disappeared into the night air the moment they were uttered, leaving only impressions of Peter next to him, his arm guiding him back to the house.
In the hallway, the day’s light bringing long shadows, and it felt like a moment of departure, as if they were at a platform, but this one private—no departure could have offered the freedom they had in this moment. There was a vague attempt at making plans, for when it was over—we could go away, New Zealand, Canada, the Hebrides—but standing in the fading light, their faces drifting closer, the smell of booze, cologne, the fresh summer air a tonic that drew them closer until Frank’s lips brushed against Peter’s cheek, an embrace that fell into a kiss. Frank reliving that moment in the days since, polishing it like sea-washed glass, so that he could carry it with him, the weight like that of his heart.
The kiss, he remembers.
He imagined what might have happened if Michael hadn’t come back at that moment, and he fantasized the possibilities hinted at, those that took him to some point in the future, when this chaos that had just begun was over and done with.
But that was looking too far ahead when he could only see the now of his tea, and his bag that sat waiting in the corner.