Apple Blossom Time (15 page)

As it was, I couldn’t like them, but I couldn’t dislike them, either.

They were like the figures on weather houses – you know, the sort you could buy at the seaside, the next stage in sophistication from hanging up a piece of seaweed. The little woman comes out with a sunshade when it’s sunny, the little man with an umbrella when it’s rainy. Mr Kenton wore a striped suit and a bowler hat, a stiff collar and carried an umbrella. Mrs Kenton wore a tailored costume, a hat with a spotted eye-veil, a little fox stole, with teeth and glassy eyes, and carried an umbrella. The veil wasn’t thick enough to conceal that she’d been crying. I was taller than either of them.

We shook hands and, mindful of Grandmother’s advice, I gave Mrs Kenton a quick peck on the cheek. It was soft as a cushion, smelling of violet-scented powder, still damp from her tears. She’s a mother who has lost her only son, I thought. I mustn’t forget that.

‘I’m so glad to meet you at last,’ I said and wished I had had the sense to bite back the last two words. They sounded too like an accusation.

‘Things are rather tricky these days. My business keeps me very busy and Mrs Kenton suffers from her nerves,’ Mr Kenton answered stiffly, conscious of the reproach I had never intended.

‘Did you stay in town overnight?’

‘Yes,’ came Mrs Kenton’s reply. ‘We stayed at Brown’s.’

‘Comfortable, I hope.’

‘Oh, yes, yes. Very nice, thank you. An undisturbed night. No raids.’

‘It’s a good day for it,’ Mr Kenton remarked, looking up at the sky.

I wish we’d known each other better, I thought. I wish we’d had time. We could have been such a comfort to each other, instead of standing like strangers in a bus queue, discussing the weather. But my husband and their son had run out of time.

‘Would you like to see the medal?’ I asked.

‘Yes, yes, that would be very nice. Thank you.’

I put it into Mrs Kenton’s hands.

‘It’s very handsome,’ Mr Kenton said, in a tight, small voice, looking over his wife’s shoulder. ‘Most … er … most distinguished.’

She didn’t say anything. She turned it over. On the reverse, the clasp was inscribed
Lt J S E Kenton, RA
and in the centre of the cross
30 June 1942,
the date of the deed which had won him this decoration. James had died three days later. Her hands were shaking so much that Mr Kenton took the medal in case it fell to the ground and put it back into its velvet-lined box.

‘Would you like to keep it?’ I asked. Grandmother would be furious, but it was none of her business. ‘I think that’s what James would have wanted.’

The longing in their eyes was naked, shocking. Well-bred, middle-class English people should never look so voracious.

‘No, my dear,’ he said at last. ‘It’s very good of you, but it’s yours. You didn’t have him very long. We had him all his life.’

For the first time, Mrs Kenton looked straight at me and I couldn’t mistake the bitterness in her voice. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it would have been so different if you’d had children.’

We parted with promises to keep in touch and we all knew that we’d do nothing of the kind. There was nothing to keep us together.

All the way back to Bletchley, I stood in the corridor of a train packed with soldiers going on leave. There were sleeping soldiers in the luggage racks, kitbags everywhere, a card game going on with the cards laid out on knees. The air was blue with swear words and cigarette smoke, almost unbreathable, bluer still after dark, lit only by tiny, blued bulbs. I stood with my back jammed against a door handle and thought about Mrs Kenton’s accusation.

She blamed me for the fact that they would have no grandchildren to console them for their loss. Perhaps she thought I’d been too busy with my own job, too selfish to give it up for a woman’s proper role. Perhaps she thought I’d denied her son something he must have wanted. Thank God, she would never know.

A young woman, too thin, too pale, holding a small child by the hand, tried to get past on her way to the lavatory. The child had a green bubble blowing from one nostril. I flattened myself against the door as far as I could (supposing it opened?) and a couple of the card players stood on their kitbags to try to give her some room to pass. She looked so apologetic, but no-one seemed annoyed at being disturbed – it was just the way things were. The soldiers were like patient beasts of burden: advance, retire, go home, come back, live, die – they just got on with it.

‘No point in trying to get in there, love,’ called one wag as the woman turned the lavatory door handle. ‘They’re standing on each other’s heads in there.’

I thought about Pansy, about Jonathan and how much she loved him. Supposing, just supposing, James and I had … I had to face up to the word, just to think it was painful … supposing we had actually managed to consummate our marriage. I turned my face to the window, but there was nothing to see. Hurried along by the speed of the train, raindrops rolled diagonally across the pane, left to right, streaking the soot, making the weather seem even worse than it was. People would stare at my scarlet face and wonder. Guilty conscience. Impure thoughts.

Supposing …

And I realized that, whatever other regrets I may have had about my marriage – and there were many – my childlessness was no longer one of them.

*   *   *

Three days later, the second letter arrived.

I unfolded the single sheet of paper. There was a picture, cut from the
Daily Telegraph,
of myself after the ceremony at Buckingham Palace, holding James’s Victoria Cross, looking awkward and bulgy in my ill-cut uniform.

Underneath was written, in huge, clumsy letters:

HERO’S WIDOW
COWARD’S DAUGHTER

I felt sick.

Same ill-formed capitals. Same cheap paper, blue-lined, torn from a pad. Same vindictive writer, doing his or her best to hurt and succeeding – oh, succeeding so very well.

*   *   *

Work at BP was arduous and off duty I was lonely. I missed the companionship of life in barracks more than I’d ever have thought possible. In particular, I missed Grace’s rebellious sense of humour and Vee’s bubbly personality. They both wrote regularly – they were splendid correspondents – but their warmth came only second hand. There was little to lighten life in digs with Mrs Granby in Brickfield Cottages.

We never talked about our work, we never gossiped, even over tea and buns in Hut 2, the NAAFI; we just got on with what we had to do. The Park and its staff were growing beyond recognition. Army and ATS, Royal Navy and WRNS, RAF and WAAF, Free French, Americans, Poles – an extraordinary conglomeration of talents – we just got on with our own business and never minded anyone else’s. One hut didn’t know what the next hut did and never asked. This may well have resulted in the wheel being reinvented on a daily basis, but that didn’t matter. Security was paramount.

BP had no aerials, for fear of making it conspicuous from the air, and couldn’t receive wireless traffic, so dispatch riders on motorcycles roared in and out all day and night, carrying signals from outlying listening stations for decoding. Talk of a second front was guarded, but the sense of anticipation began to grow.

Released one morning for a quick cup of tea, I was amazed to find Kate sitting in the NAAFI hut.

‘I don’t believe it,’ I cried. ‘Kate, how wonderful!’

‘Hello, Laura,’ she said, as though we’d seen each other only that morning. ‘I thought I’d bump into you.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Fetching mysterious bits of paper and taking them away again. I’ve been posted to Whaddon Hall as dispatch rider for this place, so you’ll be seeing quite a lot of me.’

She wore clumsy, blue overalls, a leather jerkin and heavy, motorcyclist’s boots. Her bubbly, blond hair looked incongruous on top of a smudged face, with the shape of her goggles outlined in mud round tired eyes, although she’d taken the trouble to reapply her lipstick – Kate couldn’t survive without lipstick! On the table were her helmet and gauntlets. She looked nothing like the little sister in ankle socks that I remembered – illogical, I know, but my memory of Kate seemed to have become stuck some time in 1939 – but when she smiled, she was quite definitely Kate. How marvellous!

‘I’m so glad to see you,’ I said, giving her a hug and a kiss.

Half a dozen WRNS ran past the window clutching bulky, brown paper bags close to their chests.

‘
What
was that?’ Kate exclaimed, looking over my shoulder and through the window.

‘Oh, that,’ I answered, casually. ‘No-one’s allowed to look at secret equipment, so it’s always moved in paper bags at high speed. And at even higher speed if it’s too big for a bag. We just close our eyes and pretend nothing’s happening. Welcome to the madhouse, Kate!’

*   *   *

When we could organize time off together – and that wasn’t easy – we’d have high tea at a drab little tea room in Buckingham. Spam fritters or mashed potatoes with a scrap of cheese, done up to look like sausages (if only!), all with lashings of tea. Compared to Mrs Granby’s sacrificial offerings, it was heaven. There were frequent concerts at the Park. So many talented musicians had been gathered there. There was a choir and several chamber music groups. Maybe we’d go to the pictures, managing to catch the last bus back, or perhaps just go for a walk if we were feeling poor or Mrs Granby had gone off with my gas money again.

‘Honestly, what’s that woman
doing
with your rations? Running a restaurant on the sly?’

‘Just burning them, I think, by the smell in the kitchen. Blames it on having given her best pots and pans to salvage. Every time an aeroplane goes over, she looks up and says “There goes half my bleeding kitchen!” Still, look on the bright side. The local pig club must be doing pretty well for swill.’

Kate dragged me, much against my will, to see
Desert Victory.

‘You were there, Laura. You helped to
make
that victory, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Hardly.’

‘Don’t be so modest. How many people in the audience will be able to say that, d’you think? You ought to stand on your chair at the end and tell everyone what it was really like.’

‘And get thrown out on my ear, most likely.’

Everything about it was so familiar and yet as distant as though I’d come back from the moon. Flickering along the long, blue beam from the projection box, swirling with cigarette smoke, came pictures more real than any I had watched in Shafto’s Shufties in Cairo. I hated it and yet was fascinated by it. I wanted to close my eyes and yet I couldn’t tear my gaze from the screen. It was a triumph – of military daring or of propaganda, depending on how you viewed it.

There was a long, long silence, building up to the demonic artillery barrage that launched the battle of El Alamein. The audience roared to rival the guns. I had too much to think about to join them. I remembered the way Martin had condemned mockups. But this was real. Three photographers died taking the footage of battle that was greeted with a cheer in British cinemas.

‘You ought to move in with me,’ Kate suggested one evening, as we treated ourselves to a rare fish supper. We’d been to see
Now, Voyager
– a real weepie – I could have cheered when Bette Davis finally stood up to her frightful mother. ‘I’ve got a lovely landlady, a real sweetie, and I’m sure she could squeeze in an extra bed.’

It was very tempting. It would have been marvellous to move in with Kate and to enjoy her bright and breezy company. But I had to remind myself that Kate was young and free and that I was a widow. She’d want to go to dances, have boyfriends, have some fun. She deserved it, she worked so hard. I didn’t want to get in the way of any social life she might have. Who wants an older sister hanging around like a wet blanket?

‘I’d love to, but it’s too far away for night shifts. I’m on nights every third week.’ I sprinkled extra vinegar on my chips. ‘Mmm. Gorgeous.’

The fish shop was blessedly warm. Even the smell was enough to satisfy hunger. I could’ve stayed there all night. I licked my fingers and smiled and tried not to show how much I longed to move in with Kate.

‘You’re not looking well, Laura.’

‘Just tiredness, I expect. I’m not very good at shift work. We do one week of days, one week until midnight and one week from midnight to 8 a.m., so you never get enough time to get used to a working pattern. Still, we’re all in it together. Mustn’t grumble.’

‘I’d’ve thought there’s more to it than that. Mother said…’

‘So you’ve been talking about me,’ I snapped.

‘Nothing we can’t say to your face. Look, Laura darling—’ She laid her hand on top of mine. ‘You’ve had a rough time, but – now hit me if you feel like it, I shan’t mind a bit, well, not much, anyway – James has been gone for nearly two years and you only knew him for – what? – nine months? ten months? You only spent one night together, for heaven’s sake. Oh, God, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What a thing to say. Forgive me?’

She looked at me anxiously as though she expected me to behave like Bette Davis, to lean over and slap her or burst into hysterical laughter or generally show far too much emotion. As if I would. I had learned to keep my feelings as closely under wraps as the secret equipment at BP. I kept my heart in a brown paper bag.

‘Nothing to forgive,’ I said, quietly, and meant it.

‘But don’t you think James might have wanted you to pick up your life again? I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your days grieving for a marriage that ended almost as soon as it began. That wasn’t his fault, but it wasn’t yours, either, so why should you have to pay for it? It’s terribly sad, but it’s war. It’s the way things happen. It’s not normal for someone of your age to live the way you do.’

What platitudes! Any minute now she’d say that I had a duty to my dead husband, who’d died for my freedom, to live life to the full again. I’d read an answer like that to some poor little girl in an agony column. What sort of advice was that? What do these people know about loss? How do they know what a dead man might or might not want? All James ever wanted was not to die. And if Kate had told me to buck up like that, I think I might really have slapped her.