‘On a small, crowded island where forty-five million people live, each man learns to guard his privacy carefully – and is careful not to invade another man’s privacy’
—‘Over There’,
Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain
Spencer 1944
Spencer was Janet Ransom’s lover for six months, but he never felt he knew her. The reserve she displayed in everyday life transmuted into a deep secrecy in the bedroom. There was no lack of physical passion, but it was as though she was speaking in a different language, or that she was feeling him blindfold, interpreting his touch through her own, in ways he could never know or understand. This was as exciting as it was saddening. The desire to break through the invisible barrier, to hear her call his name, or even open her eyes and look at him, drove him wild. Then, when once again these things didn’t happen, no matter how great it had been, he was cast down.
Nor was there any way of saying how he felt about this, or asking her what she thought, because the rest of their relationship continued to all intents and purposes exactly as before. The presence of Davey and Ellen, and less often that of Rosemary, placed constraints on it, but even without these there was little change. He went to the cottage on Sundays, and on one evening during the week if possible. On Sundays there would be afternoon tea; on a weekday something also called tea, and with the teapot in attendance, but served later and consisting of something more substantial. In return Spencer took goodies from the base, and did odd jobs. If they were on their own and likely to be undisturbed, they went up to bed. The signal for this was always the same. She would hold out her hand and say: ‘It’s all right,’ as if comforting a child. And, childlike, he went along. He learned that she never took any risks, was always to be trusted.
Davey was in the room next door, and the baby’s cot was in the same room, behind a folding screen: to begin with he was like a cat on hot bricks in case they woke up. But Janet assured him that the kids could sleep through anything – fighters, bombing raids, it would take more than doing this to disturb them – and eventually he got used to the idea.
When it was over she would kiss his cheek and say softly, ‘Thank you.’ The thanks made him feel uncomfortable, as though this was just one more job that he did around the place. Then after a very few minutes she’d get up and dressed and go downstairs. She never came back up, or called him, and after a while he’d go down as well and there she’d be in the parlour with a tray of tea, and the bourbon if there was some, with a glass for him.
One evening he caught her hand as she was about to get out of bed and said: ‘Honey – don’t thank me.’
‘Why not?’
‘You don’t need to. It’s the two of us here. I’m happy, you’re happy—’ He rocked his head on the pillow.
She looked down at him, her hand lying quietly in his. ‘I know that.’
‘So no more thank yous, huh? For me.’
She’d smiled as if to say yes, but it had made not a blind bit of difference. The thanks were as natural to her as breathing. It made him wonder even more what went on in her head when they were doing it, so quietly and fervently.
Another time they took Ellen out round the village in her ‘push-chair’.This was another activity he’d learned not to be self-conscious about, even though he was sure there were a few looks. Janet said it would be all right, so it was. And it did seem like whatever they might say about him, she had some kind of aura around her that other people noticed, and a natural dignity that they respected.
It was the end of October and they’d walked quite briskly down the high street, and then down the hill to where the little old river trickled along, known as Norton Water. They called it a river, but it wasn’t much more than a ditch, it made Moose Creek look like the Mississippi. Along here it was more sheltered and they slowed down. Ellen had fallen asleep, her shiny red cheeks bulging out of her blue knitted pixie hood. Spencer plucked up the courage to ask about Edward Ransom.
‘Tell me something about your husband.’
‘What do you want to know?’
Everything, he thought. How you met, what he was like, whether you loved him – why you got me into bed the moment you knew he’d died ...
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want to tell me.’
‘Let’s see.’ The way she said that pretty much told him that she wasn’t going to spill any beans worth having. ‘He was very handsome – you’ve seen the photograph of our wedding.’
‘A good-looking guy. You made a great couple.’
She smiled her close-lipped smile. ‘He was a garage mechanic, here, in Deller’s garage. A whizz with an oily rag, like you.’
‘So where did you and he meet?’
‘We’d known each other for years. Not well, but to say hallo to.’
‘And then, what happened? Your eyes met, your hands touched – what?’ ‘Nothing like that. He asked me out.’ ‘You started dating – where’d you go?’ ‘The first time we went to see The Thirty-nine Steps, with Robert Donat.’
Spencer shook his head.‘Can’t say I’ve heard of it.You remember anything of it?’
‘Every word, almost, it was wonderful.’
‘So you went to the movies – to the pictures – and what else? Dancing? Sports?’
‘He was a good dancer.’
They were coming up by the church now, there was only another half a mile till they were back, he’d better cut to the chase.
‘And the two of you fell in love?’
‘That’s where we got married,’ she said, nodding at the church. ‘And Rosie was bridesmaid.’
‘That’s her in the picture?’
‘I made that dress for her. Except for the smocking. Mother did that.’
‘She looked cute.’
Janet shook her head indulgently. ‘She was terribly naughty on the day, up to all sorts. She ran us all ragged!’
Spencer returned to the subject. ‘Janet – you don’t mind me being around?’
‘No.’
He’d been fishing, hoping for self-excuse, a declaration, an explanation, something, but they were not forthcoming.
Back at the base his liaison with Janet was not treated with the respect accorded it by the locals. Everyone seemed to know when it became more than strictly social and they were on to him.
‘Hey, Spence, how’s the merry widow?’
‘Babysitting again, huh?’
‘How many shelves you fix last night, Spence?’
He tried to take it in good part. Most of the guys were sowing a few English oats, it was even rumoured that the Colonel was romancing the daughter of an aristocratic family and might wind up being a lord of the manor if he got through the war and played his cards right. Frank put his finger on what intrigued them all about Spencer and Janet.
‘She’s quite a bit older than you. She has all those children. You do jobs around the house. Spence – you’re not exactly painting the town red with this lady.’
‘No.’
‘So are you in love with her?’
This was something Spencer had asked himself. ‘I don’t know.’
Frank supplied the answer in his dry way. ‘You’re not in love with her. So what goes on? No, don’t tell me, stupid question, I know what goes on. But be careful, Spence, a woman like that might want a whole lot more than you want to part with.’
Though Spencer had the greatest respect for Frank’s opinion, he didn’t believe Janet was after anything more. The slight distance that existed between them even in their most intimate moments convinced him of this. And as to why he kept on coming back, there were two reasons, and only one of them had to do with Janet.
Rosemary was around less often, she was lodging with a friend’s family in town near her work.When she did come by, she’d changed. She was a working girl now with cash in her pocket and a bit of independence. Singing in the choir was a thing of the past, though she said she did the odd number with the Debonnaires, a band made up of workers at the stocking factory. Her attitude to Spencer had altered as well, it had lost its flirtatious edge. She treated him casually, like part of the furniture, but gave nothing away. He sensed, though she had never said anything, that she knew about him and her sister. Sometimes she went to dances and shows at the base, but she had no regular boyfriend and that didn’t seem to bother her. Spencer reckoned most guys were scared of her. There could be no other explanation because she looked sensational, like a young Katharine Hepburn. The sassy natural wit had been brought under control. She had perfected an expression which said she could cream you with a word, but would let you off this time.
Only once the carapace of new sophistication cracked. They went for a cycle ride with Davey, and she and the boy began fooling around, taking their feet off the pedals and sticking their legs out, yelling things like ‘Scramble!’ and ‘Gerry at four o’clock!’ On the way back as it got dark they dismounted, panting, to push their bikes up the gentle hill into the village. Davey recovered first and went on ahead. That was when she asked: ‘Are you having a thing with Janet?’
The question was so simple, direct and unexpected that he answered simply, too: ‘Yes,’ and then qualified it: ‘Sort of.’
‘What’s a “sort of” thing when it’s at home?’ It was typical of her not to comment on what he’d said, but to pick him up on his choice of words. He was suddenly keenly aware of how carefully he must select the next ones.
‘I mean, I think a whole lot of her, I try to make her happy, but it’s not so long since she lost her husband.’
‘Oh!’ Rosemary gave a small disparaging laugh. ‘Him.’
‘It’s pretty obvious they loved each other.’
She was silent for a moment, breathing steadily as she pushed. ‘But now that he’s gone she makes do with you.’
‘If you want to put it that way.’
‘Spencer—’ She stopped. ‘What do you see in her?’
Shocked and discomfited, he laughed. ‘What kind of question is that?’
For a moment she just looked at him. It was getting darker by the second, all he could see now was the outline of her curly hair, the gleam of her eyes, a glint of mouth with smoking breath, like a small cute dragon, sizing him up.
Then she said, ‘You’re right, a stupid one.’ And climbed back on her bike.
If he lived to be a hundred, Spencer thought, he would never understand her. But the less he understood, the more he fell under her spell.
October ’44, everything went quiet. There was a combat drought while the Luftwaffe lay low, licking its wounds. It was eerie as they flew mission after mission almost untroubled by EAs, sometimes strafing isolated, half-empty airfields unopposed, just for the hell of it. The presumption was that heavy losses over the previous couple of months had sent the Luftwaffe away to regroup, re-eqiup and retrain.
The skies lowered, the nights drew in. Still there was nothing doing. On Thanksgiving the brass-hats laid on the usual celebrations – turkey with all the trimmings, pumpkin pie, plenty of booze – it was an overpoweringly sentimental time when the Americans pined for home. To make them feel better the enemy returned to the fray with a vengeance, swarming into the skies above the northern European coast in their hundreds, new planes flown by boy pilots with a minimum of training and a near-suicidal desire to shoot the crap out of the Yankees. Spencer’s flight was involved in three missions escorting B–17s on strategic bombing missions against synthetic oil refineries in central Germany. On each occasion they were set upon by hundreds of FWs and MEs as if by killer bees. There was a kind of desperation in these attacks, no guile or tutored skill, just an all-out feeding frenzy. It made a nonsense of their training in cool decision-making; these encounters were about gut reaction, dog eat dog, the survival of the maddest.The Mustangs were fighting for their lives, and there was a heavy reckoning.
In the epicentre of one of these, with the fire criss-crossing the sky like a spider’s web of shooting lights, Spencer saw Enrol Lovic of Blue Flight exploded from his cockpit. He knew it was Lovic because of Good Time Girl on the fuselage, winking lasciviously over her Manhattan. It had been a moment only, less than a moment, but he could remember the detail. The endless instant when Lovic seemed to hang in the air amongst the debris, turning slowly, his arms and legs waving like an infant in the womb, and then suddenly plunged like a stone down a well, with Good Time Girl living up to her name, hurtling on without him, shedding pieces like confetti as she described her own long, leaning arc to destruction. In his dreams for a while after that he swooped and spun at terrifying speed amid blades of broken metal and long daggers of glass, the smell of burning fuel in his nostrils until he’d awake with a shocking, silent impact, his body rigid, eyes staring into the darkness, thinking for one fearful moment that he was already dead.
Winter deepened, and with it came some of the worst weather that even the oldest of the locals could remember. Flying conditions were atrocious, with snow, freezing fog, and dark, sleety storms that howled across the airfield, closing them down. It was the dark that most affected Spencer. Church Norton might not be half as cold as Moose Draw, Wyoming, but it was twice as bleak. He missed the hard, bright glitter of winters at home, the shining expanses of wind-whipped snow, the distant edges of the frozen mountain peaks like flint axeheads against a sky thin and pure as blue glass. In England, whole weeks went by when the sun seemed never to break through at all.
Any trouble with the heating, and the cockpit of Crazy Horse became bitterly cold. He got a cold that was so heavy he had to plug his nose when he was flying, and it developed into an ear infection which gave him some pain and discharge and made him partially deaf. With numbers down there was no chance of any but the seriously sick being rested, so they knew to shout at him over the pilots’ frequency. But the deafness still gave a kind of unreality to events beyond Crazy Horse. It affected his spatial awareness and his judgement of speed – the deadening of sound meant that an enemy fighter could be a dot one second, a hurtling behemoth the next. And like thunder and lightning there seemed to be a minute, dislocating interval between sound and vision, so that the heavy, reaching boom of a hit pressed painfully on his eardrums just after the splintering sunburst of explosive light had dazzled him. In a dive, the pressure in his ears was such agony that they bled and he almost blacked out. The juddering airflame and flapping wings of the stressed plane were like extensions of his own body, about to fall to pieces. Every sortie felt like a series of near-misses, so that he returned shaking and bathed in sweat, his nerves shot.
But the top brass weren’t stupid. When in early December he asked for a thirty-six-hour pass he got it. He secured the use of an old black Austin – it was hired out by a guy on the base on a cheap rate, user’s-risk basis – and intended to drive down to Kinnerton, near Oxford, to look up his mother’s family place. He’d asked Janet if she wanted to go with him but was glad in a way when she said no. He wanted to take things at his own speed in his own way, to get an angle that was entirely his own.
‘You want to go to the local church,’ she said, ‘they’re bound to have all sorts of records there. And the town hall, and the local paper.’
He was holding Ellen on his knee, helping her put a coat on a doll. ‘You know a lot about this kind of thing.’
‘No, no,’ she’d said, blushing almost as if he’d caught her out at something, ‘I don’t. But you pick these things up.’
‘Anyhow, what I want to do most of all is find the house, number fourteen Waverley Road, if it’s still there.’
‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ she said.
The journey from Church Norton to Oxford that Saturday took four hours. Spencer almost wished he hadn’t declined all other offers of company – Frank had offered to come along, and pool gas coupons, but he’d held out. He didn’t want to have to accommodate anyone else. But the old car was touchy, with a sharp clutch and a tendency to stall in a low gear. Also, the day was bitterly cold with a whining wind off the tundra, it felt like, full of small gritty flakes like ground glass, too minute to settle but enough to form a rime on the windscreen, and penetrate the ill-fitting doors. By the time he reached Oxford his hands and feet were frozen, and he was damn’ near hallucinating about one of the Diamond Diner’s hamburgers, the soft fragrant bun and the sizzling hot meat, inches thick with everything on it, oozing fried onions, ketchup, mayo, prime beef gherkins . . .
The pallid corned beef sandwich he actually had was no substitute but he smothered it in mustard, and the pint with it was good. He was getting to like the blood-temperature English ale with its colour like stewed tea and its hoppy, nourishing flavour, more like soup than beer.
He went into a newsagent’s, not to buy anything but to sound out the storekeeper who he guessed, from his own experience of the Mercantile, would be a mine of local information. The man was more than helpful, and gave him detailed instructions which he wrote down.
In a spirit of camaraderie, Spencer said: ‘My mother’s family used to come from there.’
‘That right?’ asked the man. ‘My wife too. Whereabouts, do you know?’
‘Waverley Road.’
‘Yes, yes, Waverley Road,’ said the man, as though the name conjured up a host of happy memories for him. ‘It used to be nice along there.’
It wasn’t nice now, Spencer discovered. Kinnerton was no longer the pleasant treelined suburb of his mother’s memory because that part of town had become a great sprawl of factories – aircraft parts, car tyres, service boots, tinned foods – a big ugly snapshot of wartime life in Britain.
Because it formed the western perimeter of a two-mile-square complex of similar roads, Waverley must many years ago, as his mother had described, been the nicest of them. Now it was the least attractive, because what had once been the meadow that its gardens backed on to was a works sports ground, studded with desolate tattered football nets and a single rickety stand, with a storage depot at one end and the brutish blind brick walls and narrow chimneys of the factory beyond. At the southern end of the road, where Caroline had described picking bluebells with her friend in a wood, there was at least a small gritty park, grandiosely named Victory Gardens. Spencer left the car by the park gates, and began his pilgrimage by taking a turn round its cinder paths. On this bitter afternoon he was the only one there except for a uniformed park keeper raking leaves and twigs.
Spencer was looking for clues, something that would link this cheerless space with his mother’s childhood memories. There were few features: an expanse of tussocky grass broken by round, banked-up flowerbeds which looked at this time of year like giant molehills; a pond full of circling goldfish; a wooden shelter with seats, of the kind found on station platforms; a kind of arch over the path, pointed at the top like a church window; and a monkey puzzle tree.
There being no chance of bluebells in December he crossed the grass to the edge of the park and studied the trees. Apart from the distorted black limbs of the monkey puzzle it was possible that some of these were original inhabitants, granted a stay of execution to provide shade and shelter for the users of the park. He’d identified oak, ash and larch when he heard a shout and turned to see the park keeper prodding the rake in his direction.
‘Oy!’
‘Excuse me?’
Now the rake prodded a small sign at the edge of the grass. ‘Can’t you read?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t see that.’
‘It says, “Keep Off the Grass”.’
‘Okay.’
He returned to the path, the park keeper watching him every step of the way as if he might at any moment break into a wild ran up, kicking tip divots and scattering flowerbeds. It seemed a further flouting of the past that this paltry patch of green should be so meanly proscribed, but he was in uniform, and if he’d been in the wrong he’d better be civil.
‘My apologies, must have missed it.’
The park keeper made a sound that indicated they all said that, but close up Spencer could see that he was elderly and frail-looking, with tears of cold running from the outer corners of his eyes.
‘Do you know much about this park?’ Spencer asked. ‘I mean, how long it’s been here?’
‘Just after the first war.’ The man jerked his head. ‘Date’s on the gate.’
‘Something else I missed.’ Spencer smiled but got no response. ‘The reason I ask is that my mother was raised down this road – she can remember picking bluebells in a wood here.’ ‘That’s right.’ The park keeper’s expression did not change but his voice unbent a little. ‘Barton Wood.’
‘It must have been pretty here in the spring.’
‘Park looks nice, too, right time of year.’
‘I bet it does.’
The old man linked his hands, in fingerless mittens, on the handle of his rake. ‘Where’s your mother now?’ ‘In America.’ ‘Married a Yank?’ There was no point in details. ‘Yes.’
‘Good job you’re over here.’ Whether this was a comment on Spencer’s personal errand or the American war effort was hard to say.
‘What’s the arch made of?’ he asked. ‘Is that some kind of timber?’ ‘Go and take a look,’ replied the park keeper with a hint of pride. ‘There’s a plaque tells you all about it.’
Conscious of being watched, Spencer walked round the path. The arch might have been twenty feet high at its tallest point, and was planted in the grass at a distance of some three feet to either side of the cinders. On the inside of the left upright was an engraved metal plaque.
‘The jawbone of a large blue whale, caught in the southern ocean by Thomas Adolphus Peake, 21 April 1900, and kindly donated to these gardens by his widow Lucilla on her husband’s death, 7 June 1928. “O hear us when we cry to thee. For those in peril on the sea”.’
‘Incredible . . .’ Spencer walked around the arch, awed by the thought of a creature big enough to have a jaw this size. He looked across at the park keeper. ‘It’s incredible!’
‘Big enough for you?’ replied the old man. ‘Got anything like that in America?’
‘No, sir!’
Number fourteen was exactly like every other three-storey, semi-detached house in the street – narrow red brick, with a bit of garden at the front, a bay window on the ground floor and the number in black lead on the fanlight over the door. Except that it also had a name, ‘Charlmont’, and a sign propped in the window between the net curtain and the glass, with the word ‘VACANCIES’.
So it was a rooming house these days. He stood on the pavement staring, absorbing this fact. As he did so the door opened and an elderly woman appeared.
‘Can I help?’
‘No, thank you, ma’am. I was just looking. My mother lived in this house a long time ago.’
‘Really? Would you like to come in and have a look?’
It was cold and the woman, unlike the park keeper, was friendly and welcoming.
‘If you’re sure it’s no trouble?’
‘No trouble at all.’
She ushered him into a dark, high-ceilinged hall, and told him to put his coat, cap and scarf on a chair. There was a long mirror next to the chair. Its glass was slightly flawed, so that as he checked his reflection he seemed to waver and distort like a ghost.
She introduced herself as Mrs Brock, and when he returned the compliment, asked: ‘Where are you from, Lieutenant? I mean, where are you stationed?’ When he told her, she commented: ‘That’s a chilly part of the world, you must miss the sunshine.’
He decided against telling her about the annual five months of snow in Moose Draw, the way every little hair on your body froze when you went outdoors, including the ones in your nose so you could hardly breathe.
‘It’s kind of bleak,’ he agreed. ‘But airfields are pretty bleak places, whichever way you look at it.’
‘My son’s in the Merchant Navy,’ she said with a note of pride in her voice. ‘Those boys are out in all weathers.’
Spencer detected the usual very slight inter-service edge, sharpened by his being a Yank. ‘They do a great job.’
‘Well.’ She took off her apron. ‘Shall I give you the guided tour? The house won’t have changed since your mother was here.’
The rooms were comfortable and homely, furnished with inexpensive, well-cared for things, and full of ornaments. Each wall had a picture or a mirror as a centrepiece, and the windows at the front of the house were all covered by immaculately laundered nets. The kitchen had a grey metal range and there was a comforting smell of gravy, and hot cloth.
‘I do tea at five-thirty,’ she said, partly explaining the smell and partly he suspected from the long ingrained habit of showing lodgers round.
‘How many guests do you have?’ he asked politely as she led the way up the stairs.
‘Two at present. We can take three, so there’s a spare at the moment.’
‘I suppose there’s no shortage of takers in a university town?’
‘No, but we have mainly business people, single people, you know. I’ll show you Mr Hebditch’s room, it’s the nicest. He’s neat as a pin, he won’t mind.’
Spencer felt slightly embarrassed at having this stranger’s home displayed to him, but the room’s spartan bareness gave nothing away. Only a hairbrush on the chest of drawers, a whiskery brown robe on the back of the door and the twin heels of plaid slippers protruding from under the bedside table betrayed Mr Hebditch’s occupancy. A faded rose-red eiderdown provided the sole splash of colour. The window overlooked the back garden with its obligatory rows of winter ‘veg’ (rather more flourishing. Spencer noticed, than Janet’s) and beyond that the sports field, where a group of men were now kicking a ball around.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Brock as though he’d asked something, ‘this used to be our son’s room, and the other two on this floor are to let as well. I’ll show you the vacancy.’
He gazed politely round another, smaller room, even more monastic than the last. He seemed to be seeing a house from which every trace of individuality and atmosphere had been assiduously drained. He mumbled something about her running a nice place.
‘We do our best, and it’s a few more pennies.’
‘What does your husband do?’
‘He’s in public works at the Town Hall.’ This was an answer which might have been in a foreign language for all the sense it made to Spencer, and she must have noticed, because she added: ‘Drains and sewage and highways, and all those things that make the world go round. And he’s the local ARP warden as well.’
‘Sounds like the town would fall apart without him,’ said Spencer and was rewarded with a laugh. She was a nice woman, slightly on her mettle.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised! This is the ablutions . . .’ She opened a door on a surprisingly large black and white bathroom with an anaconda-like convolution of pipes just beneath the ceiling, a gas geyser, and a cork bathmat propped against the bath. ‘This isn’t quite what your mother would remember, and we’ve made the toilet separate as well.’
‘Great.’ He thought, This is a waste of time for both of us, none of this means anything to me. And felt a little claustrophobic. Mrs Brock clearly wished to fill her vacancy.
‘We’re up on the top floor these days, I’ll show you, it’s even less changed now I come to think of it.’
‘Thanks, I’d like that. Then I should be hitting the road . . .’
‘You’re never going back tonight?’
‘That’s the general idea. It’s not my car for one thing, and there are some friends I’d kind of like to see.’ It sounded lame, but he wanted to get away.
‘Good heavens,’ she declared, ‘you shouldn’t do that, it’s miles. You could spend the night here.’ She started up the stairs ahead of him. This flight was steeper than the previous one and she made heavy weather of it, trudging, leading with the right foot each time and catching up with the left, one hand on her thigh. She couldn’t be much older than his own mother, but had crossed the invisible line into stiff, sexless old age – then again, it was two years since he’d seen Caroline. Strange to think that while he was in the place where his mother had lived as a child, back in Moose Draw she might by now have become an old lady too.
The moment they reached the second floor, he was aware of a difference. The ceilings up here were low, and sloped away to the left, and the wood floor was not dark-stained. Probably because this was the one part of the house that the Brocks had to themselves, it had a less scrubbed-up air. The rugs on the floor were threadbare, their fringing wispy, and the parchment shade on the overhead bulb had a crack in it so that when Mrs Brock switched it on it shed an uneven light as if there were an invisible window somewhere.
The Brocks’ bedroom was the same shape as the landing, with two small windows, one overlooking the sports ground, the other – a low dormer window – facing south along the line of the terrace. There was a frilly nightdress cover on the pillow of the double bed, books on the bedside tables – a wireless on one of them – a dressing table with a surprising number of bottles and jars and a triptych mirror which showed the two of them as they entered, flanked by queasily transposed and foreshortened views of the room.
‘This was probably the maid’s room when your mother was here,’ said Mrs Brock, going over to the larger window, tweaking and smoothing the curtains in an absent-minded, houseproud way. ‘Even ordinary houses like this had a maid before the last war.’
‘She never mentioned it,’ said Spencer. And then realised that, of course, she had. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘she used to come up here sometimes, I think it wasn’t allowed.’
‘Ooh, no, mixing with the servants? That would never have done!’ Mrs Brock’s tone implied that she was of a much more democratic turn of mind.
‘I think they were good friends. She said the – the other girl used to talk about her home in the country.’
‘So you’ll have to go and see that as well.’
He smiled wryly. ‘Next trip maybe.’
She went to the smaller window. ‘There’s still a bit of a view from here.’ She stood aside for him to look.
Surprisingly, Mrs Brock was right. Number fourteen was sufficiently higher than its neighbour that you could see across the rooftops to the park. Only you couldn’t see the park itself, just the tops of the trees like black wrought iron against the reddening afternoon sky, and beyond them a glint of flat silver water. In that instant, Spencer felt that he was looking into the past, was inside the head of that little girl who became his mother and her friend Cissy, the maid, the homesick country girl, who gazed out with her over the rooftops, the woods and the water . . . not so very wide, but still an unbridgeable space between this drab world and another.
He turned to Mrs Brock. ‘What’s the water that we can see from here?’
‘Water?’ She leaned her head alongside his, peering. ‘I don’t believe there is any now.’
‘Surely . . .’ He turned back, ready to make his point, but she was right. There was no water, only a glimpse of road shining in the setting sun. ‘Son of a gun . . . my mistake.’
‘Funny you should say that, though,’ said Mrs Brock. ‘Because I believe there used to be a big natural dewpond there, in the wood, when it was a wood. But of course when they began to build around here they filled it in. They had a real problem as I understand it draining that bit for the road.’
The sun went down moments after that, he watched it sink below the trees, and the soft cold darkness seep up like water over the roofs of Waverley Road. Mrs Brock caught his mood, touched his hand gently and said: ‘You come on down when you’re ready.’
When he went back downstairs she was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes.
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘since you have the vacancy . . . Maybe I could stay the night?’
She nodded. ‘I think that would be a very good idea.’ She had a comforting natural tact. ‘Bed’s all made up.’
‘You don’t need to feed me, Mrs Brock, I’ll go out.’
‘Tea’s always for three,’ she said, ‘so it makes no difference.’
‘Then thank you.’
At five-thirty Spencer sat in the dining room with Mr Hebditch – the other guest Miss Mawes was away – and ate a mutton stew that contained very little meat, and a pink cornflour mould scattered with coloured granules. Afterwards he went out to the movies and saw Gary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in ‘Bringing Up Baby’. Mrs Brock had given him a key, but he was back well before her ten o’clock curfew, and went straight up to bed.
He and his toothbrush scarcely filled the vacancy. But he was glad to be spending the night in this house where his mother had lived. It was like a rite, a sacrament. The clean, cold emptiness of the room was calming. Once he’d turned the light out he threw back the curtains and the black outs, and lay between the chilly, fiercely laundered sheets watching his breath smoke slightly, and looking out at the night sky through the window opposite. Round about midnight the wind got up again, stirring the branches of the trees with a sound like water, surging round the walls.
Next day he left early, before breakfast, pleading a long drive and uncertain weather. As she saw him off, Mrs Brock asked: ‘What was your mother’s family name?’
‘She was Caroline Wells.’
‘It doesn’t mean anything to me, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.’
In the event the day was bright and clear, but there was black ice on the roads and he had to drive slowly. Once he was out of town he pulled up and consulted the map. It was only about ten miles to the village where Cissy had lived – crazy to be down in this neighbourhood and not take a look.
But he struck an obstacle in the form of a huge British Army training depot, even bigger than the base at Church Norton. Quonsett huts littered the fields on both sides of the road, and there was a barrier across it at which he had to present his identity and pass cards to the MP on duty.
‘Where are you trying to go?’
He pointed to Fort Mayden on the map. ‘Here?’
The MP shook his head and pointed back the way he’d come. ‘Can’t get through this way at the moment. You need to get back up where you were, head towards town, then come out along the south road.’
‘Forget it, it was kind of a snap decision anyway.’
‘Sorry, chum.’
He drove back to the main road and turned for home. In the distance to his left he could make out some sort of strange white markings on the side of a hill. He guessed they must be something to do with the depot, or perhaps an orientation point for fliers. Funny, because as the road curved round and he got a better view, the markings were like the outline of a huge animal leaping across the ground.
That evening in the Ramrod Club he joined Frank and Si at the bar. Frank asked him: ‘So how was it? Did you find the family seat of the McColls?’
‘The Wells – my mother’s side. It’s a rooming house these days. I spent the night there.’
‘A la recherche du temps perdu . . .’
‘If you say so.’
‘And was it as your mother described?’
‘Pretty much. It’s nothing special – old, kinda dark, the same as all the other houses on the street. But there was a view from one of the windows, on the top floor, that my mother told me about – that was the same.’ ‘So you slept there as a salute to the past?’ This time Frank had put his finger on it. ‘That’s right.’ Si pulled a face. ‘What a way to spend a thirty-six – sleeping alone in some half-assed boarding house.’
‘It was the object of the exercise. And it was kind of interesting.’
‘I’ll take your word for it!’
‘I did see one thing you don’t see every day.’
Si whistled. ‘Amaze us,’ said Frank.
‘There was a little park at the end of the road, where there used to be a wood. There was a whale’s jawbone over one of the paths.’
‘A what?’ Si’s face was already creasing with incredulous laughter.
‘The jawbone of a blue whale. Given to the park by the man who killed it.’
‘Well!’ They were both laughing now. ‘I bet the locals were just tickled to death.’
‘The sheer size – it’s astonishing.’
Si leaned towards him. ‘This rooming house . . . run by a lonely lady of a certain age with a soft spot for Yanks?’ Spencer smiled good-naturedly. ‘Married lady, with a son in the Merchant Navy.’ ‘Only we know you’re one hell of a dog with those older women . . .’ Frank pushed his glass over. ‘Leave the man alone, Si, and go get the next round.’
* * * * *
They were put on stand-by for the following day, but as was so often the case after a clear cold night the whole of southern England woke to a morning closed down by thick, dank fog which lasted into the afternoon. To the pilots sitting round in the ready room with greyness pressing on the windows and the lights on, it was as though dawn simply hadn’t happened; the only event that broke the tedium and marked the time of day was lunch.
Morale remained fragile, too. A second winter away from home, the feeling that following the big push in June the war should be over and wasn’t, the inevitable attrition of losses, all, told on the nerves. Some people – Frank was one – had always seemed to be slightly outside the herd and therefore less subject to communal changes of mood. Others, Spencer among them, coped by means of a sort of mental hibernation, withdrawing into themselves, consciously lowering their emotional temperature and husbanding their resources. A mercurial few, those with more energy than judgement, the ones you wanted on your side in the air, became big trouble.
Si Santucci was typical of this group. During that long, dingy morning he got gradually more jumpy. He started up conversations with the express intention of needling the other guy, he whistled and fidgeted and swore, and bounced his ball on the ground until he was told to stop, when he immediately began rocking his chair on one leg, twisting back and forth so the leg made a rubbery sound on the lino. It was bad enough for the pilots but Ajax couldn’t stand the sound either. It seemed to hurt his ears and he started to whine and howl, driving them all crazy.
When it got to three o’clock the sun finally broke through and the fog began rapidly to burn away in tatters like train smoke. But by that time it was clear there would be no mission that day. Si and a couple of the other rowdies ran outside like kids let out of school. Ajax came out from under Frank’s chair and stood in front of him, grinning hopefully, tail wagging.
‘You want a walk? All right, you got it.’ Frank rose to his feet, and looked down at Spencer. ‘Spence, you want to stretch your legs?’
There was nothing else to do, so they set off round the perimeter, the dog trotting along next to them with his jaunty, rolling gait. They were on the south side, a little below the level of the hardstands, when they heard the ragged roar of an engine revving for take-off. It was Si’s Fast ’n’ Loose. They could see the hourglass red-head spilling out of her little waitress outfit on the nose.
‘Oh, no . . .’ Frank shook his head. ‘Idiot! What does he think he’s doing?’
‘He’s been building up a head of steam all day.’
‘Yes, but taking her up for a joyride? He’ll get a roasting for this.’ They watched as Fast ’n’ Loose thundered along the runway and rose over the trees and the church tower into the pale blue winter sky. ‘Doesn’t he know a fellow can get killed pulling those stunts?’
The plane circled wide, banked to the north over Church Norton, executed a slow arrogant spiral and climbed higher before screaming down into a half roll and buzzing the main runway. There was no doubt that Si now had what he wanted: an audience. Men on buildings maintenance, and ground crew around the dispersals and hardstands, were gazing up at the impromptu aerobatics, and there were others outside the control tower, the mess huts and ready rooms doing the same thing. The last traces of fog were still hanging around the shallow depressions to north and south, glowing pink as the sun got low. It turned the base into a picturesque backdrop for whatever stunt Si intended to pull.
There were a couple of men, the two guys Si had gone outside with, capering around on the grass in the middle of the runways. From the air this area looked a little like a baseball diamond, and the men were throwing a ball around. One of them had a catcher’s mitt. Suddenly Spencer knew what Si was going to do, right now while everyone was watching after the long boredom of the abortive stand-to.
Frank said it for him. ‘He’s going to try and catch the damn’ thing again.’
Fast ’n’ Loose was momentarily out of sight, they could just make out the engine noise somewhere beyond the mist, gathering itself. The two men in the centre were turning, looking up, shielding their eyes, waiting for the big entrance. Then suddenly there he was, coming down from the north, in over the church tower so low he almost clipped the flag, air ducts howling. The man wearing the mitt rocked back, took aim, pitched. The plane was coming straight for him, the thin winter grass streamed flat as it drew closer, and swallowed the ball as both men fell to the ground beneath it – it was that or be decapitated. Up to then it was as near perfect as such a thing could be – clean, controlled, and taken at such speed it made the hair rise on your neck. No matter how damn-fool you thought it was, you had to admire the sheer ballsy skill of the thing.
But something happened. The onlookers could feel it more than see it, especially the fliers. He’d gone just a touch too low, too steep, didn’t pull back soon or hard enough. Spencer could feel his own muscles tighten in sympathy with the effort of controlling all that plunging, screaming power, and then feel the sweat on his face and palms as it didn’t quite happen – there was another split second when it might have gone either way, you could sense the plane heaving against its own trajectory, the frame trembling with conflicting forces. It half-rolled, but the moment was already past, the wing-tip hit the ground, scoring the tarmac with a stench of burning, and then it rolled over, suddenly huge and cumbersome and ugly, a smoking broken engine of death instead of the swooping bird it had been seconds before.
There was a moment of stunned, deafened silence, through which not a car, not a bird, not a voice could be heard. They stared, transfixed, as the black smoke poured upward and shimmering shock waves of heat radiated out from the wreck.
There were two things that Spencer would always remember about the vicious waste of Si Santucci’s death. One was that minute, post-impact pocket of silence. The other was seeing for the first time tears on a man’s face, as Frank began to weep.
Then, pandemonium.
He wrote Caroline and Mack, and Trudel, about his visit to Oxford, but did not mention Si’s death. He could not himself have said why this self-inflicted accident seemed more brutal than death in combat, but that’s how it was. That, he told himself, was why Frank took it so hard.
Si’s death wasn’t the only bombshell to hit Spencer in those days running up to Christmas ’44. On 20 December Rosemary came home. He’d been helping out at a kids’ party organised by the base at the village hall. Mo was Santa Claus, but they had to stop the older kids, like Davey, giving the game away. One or two guys who were members of the Stars ’n’ Stripes big band at the Ramrod Club came along and played music for the games, and while the kids ate their tea. A few of the mothers, Janet included, were there in a crowd-control capacity, something the airmen did not take for granted.
At the end, as the children were collected and left with their balloons and candy. Mo sat in the kitchen with his Santa whiskers pushed down so that they hung beneath his chin like a great fluffy bib. There was snow falling outside, but his face was nearly as red as his robe and covered in a sheen of sweat which he dabbed at with a handkerchief. Ellen ran in and out of the hall, peek-a-booing him, but he was all out of the festive spirit. Janet, who was doing the dishes with a nice, churchy woman called Mrs Cornforth, handed him a cup of tea.
‘Freshly made for Father Christmas.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. You don’t by any chance have a cold beer?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘In that case . . .’ He took a noisy mouthful of tea, the steam making larger drops of condensation on his nose and brow. ‘Not bad . . . not bad at all. Tell you sump’n – I’d rather face the whole damn’ Hitler airforce than a bunch of kids.’ As the women laughed and went back to their washing up, he leaned confidentially towards Spencer, eyes sliding in Janet’s direction, ‘Nice lady, Spence. She’s real pretty. Classy. You done good there.’
‘Hey!’ Spencer scooped up Ellen, preventing any further comment, and hung her upside down so that her face turned red and she cackled with laughter. ‘Leave Santa alone, he’s had a hard day.’
Davey came in, his hair and shoulders dusted with snow. ‘Spence and Mo, driver said to tell you jeep’s going.’ Like all the kids, especially the boys who hung around the base every free moment, he’d picked up American ways of saying things but they sounded quaint in his English country accent.
‘Boy, is that music to my ears!’ Mo put his empty cup on the draining board. ‘Thank you again, ladies, terrific cuppa. Spence, you comin’?’
‘Tell them carry on, I’ll help the ladies finish up here and walk back.’
Mo made a get-you face, then slapped his hand on Davey’s shoulder. ‘Say, you wanna ride up in the jeep instead?’
‘Can I? Yes! Mum, can I ride in the jeep?’
Janet turned, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Is it all right if he does that, Sergeant?’
‘I asked him, didn’t I?’
‘But you’ll walk straight home when you get there, Davey?’
‘Yes!’
‘All right then.’
They watched them leave, hands reaching out to help Davey jump up, and Mo with his hood up and whiskers in place against the cold, hoisting his robe to follow suit, breaking into a run amid rowdy laughter as the jeep pulled away.
‘That’s something you don’t see every day . . .’ observed Mrs Cornforth. ‘Lieutenant, you’ve all given the children a really wonderful time – a party to remember. Thank you so much.’
‘It’s been our pleasure.’
‘Well now.’ Mrs Cornforth looked at them with the perfect, noncommittal politeness Spencer had come to associate with certain kinds of English lady. ‘Are we ready to lock up?’
They did so and walked together to the end of the path, where they parted company. Spencer crouched down and let Ellen climb on for a piggy-back. It was bitterly cold, the snow powder-fine, the tiniest stardust-flakes in the blackness.
‘You know,’ said Janet, ‘I shall miss the dark when the lights go up again. Even the few we’ve got here. Once you’re used to it, it’s friendly. It’s only when you push it away that it seems frightening.’
‘I guess so . . . in the country. But towns and cities should be lit up. London must be pretty dazzling when the lights are on.’
‘Yes, I’ll look forward to seeing that. And to hearing the bells ring.’ They walked for a couple of minutes in silence and were in sight of the cottage when she said: ‘You must be homesick at this time of year.’
‘We all are. But I’m lucky, I have compensations.’ Ellen’s head was flopping with sleep on his shoulder. He held out his hand to Janet, but she did a little trick of hers of just passing her fingers quickly over his palm, not giving up her hand to his. He couldn’t see her expression but he could imagine it – a little close-lipped smile, eyes downcast or averted: an evasive Mona Lisa.
When they got back she drew the curtains and then he carried Ellen upstairs and they got her into bed without waking her. Then to his surprise, standing right next to Ellen’s cot, she took his hand, and said: ‘Spencer.’
‘We can’t. Davey will be back.’
‘Not for ages if he’s gone up there in the jeep, he’ll have to walk home.’
‘And I should go.’
‘In a minute.’
She led him to the bed. It was odd that she always both invited and yet seemed passive. She chose the time, then as it were made herself available. He could never tell where the balance of their relationship lay, who set the pace, what was going on, and this strange formlessness was part of its magic.
Now they took their clothes off and lay together, their two bodies stretched out, face to face, toe to toe, her arms beneath his. They were the same height, and he gazed at her face, trying to read it. Her eyes were closed, she seemed warm and present in his arms, and yet she had withdrawn into that other place in her head, behind her eyelids. He could almost feel her private thoughts swimming softly between the two of them like fish in a darkened tank. He kissed her on the mouth, and wondered, as her lips parted, who she was thinking of. Her secrecy as always excited him, she fuelled his desire by retreating from him, it was Spencer now who whispered, ‘Please . . . please . . .’ But she never made a sound.
At the moment of no return, he heard the front door, and voices. Forever after, the memory of sex with Janet would be linked to the shock of that moment. And for the first time her eyes flew open, staring wide and direct into his, and her hand was placed over his mouth.
From downstairs, like an alarm bell ‘Mum!’
She uttered a single word, in a fierce whisper: ‘No!’
Then she was out of bed, wrapping herself in her robe, pulling at her hair in the mirror. He could hear her breathing shallow and fast, punctuated by little whimpers of anxiety.
‘Janet?’ It was Rosemary’s voice. And then with quick understanding: ‘Don’t disturb her, she must be having a lie down after the party, David!’
Davey’s footsteps on the stairs, Janet whisking the door open, then closed, but not quickly enough to prevent the boy from seeing him, or to protect Spencer from the expression of confusion and surprise on his face.
‘What’s Spencer doing?’
‘Having a rest.’
‘Spencer!’
‘He’ll be down in a minute. Hallo, Rosie, why don’t you get the kettle on? Go on, darling . . .’
She came back in, wouldn’t look at him, got dressed as if he wasn’t there, left the room and pattered briskly down the stairs. He felt paralysed by his own guilt and hers, could not even get out of bed when every movement, every line of her body, so absolutely rejected him.
When she’d gone and he was putting his uniform on he thought grimly of Mo’s remark and reflected that he, too, would rather face the Luftwaffe than what awaited him downstairs.
The women were in the kitchen at the back. Davey sat at the table, drawing. He looked up as Spencer came in.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi, Davey. Good ride?’
‘Yes, but they wouldn’t let me walk back.’
‘So, what – you got a ride back as well?’
‘Some of the way. Auntie Rosie was getting off at the bus stop so they dropped me off there.’
Throughout this short everyday exchange the boy’s eyes were on Spencer’s face, and he looked exactly like his mother. Spencer could sense those confused, uncomfortable thoughts, the half-formed questions that might not be answered for months, perhaps years, yet. But eventually they would find answers, and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. Terrifying, that one second could turn a tide and change a life.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well, better be going.’
‘Okay.’ Davey leaned over his drawing again.
Spencer went into the kitchen. Janet was slicing bread. Rosemary was beating up a single precious egg with milk in a bowl, to make French toast – what they called gypsy bread.
‘Hallo there,’ said Rosemary, ‘staying for tea?’ Like Davey her voice said one thing and her eyes another, but with her there was no confusion.
‘No, I’m late, I have to go.’
‘Davey said it was a good party.’
‘They seemed to enjoy it. ’Bye, Janet.’
‘ ’Bye.’ She turned her head a little in his direction, but her eyes didn’t meet his.
‘Be seeing you.’
‘I expect so.’
‘Night, Rosie.’
‘I’ll see you out.’
‘Night, champ.’ He ruffled Davey’s hair and was shaken off. Both gestures were a habit with them, but this time he thought he could feel a difference.
Rosie came to the gate and stood there with her arms folded against the cold.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’ll be all right.’
He seemed to breathe properly for the first time in half an hour. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘But Davey . . . his father . . . I feel terrible.’
‘I’ll look after him.’ She shrugged, wounded and wordless, and the shrug reminded him of how young she herself was. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
‘No.’ He kissed her cheek, which was warm, touched her arm, that was cold. ‘Thank you for being so understanding, Rosie.’
Her eyes were unusually bright as she said, quietly: ‘I don’t understand. That’s the trouble. But I wish I did.’
He fled.
That was the end of it, of course, by mutual consent. But there was a postscript. On Christmas Eve he took down some presents and found Janet on her own, dressing their little tree.
‘Rosie took them into town on the bus,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d have this done by the time they get back.’
‘Can I help?’
‘There’s no need, I’m nearly finished.’
He sat awkwardly as she put the finishing touches. The tree was wedged with stones into a galvanised iron bucket covered in Christmas paper. It looked secure enough but it wasn’t quite straight – he could picture the two women doing this on their own, the sort of job that only a few days ago they’d have asked him to do. Some of the decorations were proper ones – coloured glass balls and icicle-drops and tinsel – others were homemade, perhaps by Davey, from silver cigarette papers and coloured cardboard with string or cotton threaded through. On the top was an angel made out of a big clothes peg, with bright yellow wool hair and scarlet crayon lips.
‘There . . .’ She sat back on her heels.
‘It’s pretty. I brought a couple of things to go underneath.’
‘You shouldn’t have done.’
‘Least I could do.’ He put his offerings round the tree-bucket and then quickly laid his hand on hers. ‘Janet—’
‘Don’t.’ She removed her hand and did something unnecessary to her hair. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Is Davey all right?’
‘He’s fine. We haven’t talked about it.’ She perhaps meant this to be soothing, but Spencer found it the opposite.
‘And Rosemary . . . I know she’s your sister, it’s not the same, but she’s still young. I feel bad about this.’
Janet didn’t answer. She rose, dusted her skirt, adjusted the brassy angel with her long, elegant fingers. When she turned to him he was reminded of that first time, after the death of her husband – a moment of truth, but of truth known only to her.
‘Spencer, I want to tell you something.’
He nodded, feeling that even the sound of his voice might scare her off.
‘You’ll be the only living person I have told.’
‘Are you sure you want to?’
‘Yes, you ought to know. It might help to explain.’
She didn’t say what it might help to explain, and he didn’t ask. He waited.
‘Rosie’s not my sister. She’s my daughter.’
Of course, was what he thought. Of course. That was it: the strangeness, the secrecy, the thing he had never been able to fathom or understand.
‘Does she know?’
Janet shook her head. ‘Like I said you’re the only living person who does.’
‘But your husband – Edward?’
‘Yes. When we married he took Rosie on, she’d been living with my parents. She called my mother Mum.’
‘Will you ever tell her?’
‘What would be the point?’
‘And her own father – where’s he?’
‘Gone. He never even knew. It was only the once . . . and I didn’t want it.’
Those last few words, so typically restrained, horrified him. He put his arms round her and she stood still in his embrace, not responding except to lean her forehead on his shoulder. He thought she might be crying, but when he released her, her face was waxwork-calm.
‘So now you know.’
‘I shan’t tell a soul.’
She nodded. He was awed by her trust. But he was to be middle-aged and married himself before he saw how in this English family, the secrets, lies and loyalties of his own childhood had been repeated.
The week after Christmas Jenny the chuck-wagon girl, arriving early on her rounds, found Ajax sitting outside a latrine hut, whining. Inside in one of the cubicles was Frank’s body. He had cut his wrists and then leaned forward into the toilet bowl, so there was no mess.
Suicide was in itself un-American, and as little was made of it as possible. No one speculated as to why Frank had done it. War was a bitch. If one or two of them had their suspicions they kept them to themselves, and Spencer did the same with the contents of the letter that was left for him in Frank’s locker.
Some things were best left undisturbed.