Coming Home (114 page)

He said, gently, ‘I suppose not knowing is the worst torment of all.’

‘I'm all right. Usually I'm all right. It's just that this evening I'm not actually feeling very well.’

‘Go to bed.’

‘I'm sorry.’

‘Why should you be sorry?’

‘We never see each other, and then when we do, I've got a wretched cold, and I'm too jittery to listen to the news, and I'm not very good company.’

‘I like you just the way you are. However you are. My only regret is that I have to leave you so early in the morning. We're together, only to be almost instantly torn apart again. But I suppose that's what bloody war is all about.’

‘Never mind. We're together. I was so glad it was you, and not some man I'd never met…one of Diana's favoured few.’

‘I'm glad it was me, too. Now…’ He got to his feet. ‘Your spirits are low, and I'm starving. What we both need is a good hot meal, and perhaps a little incidental music. You get back into bed and I'll take charge of the galley.’ He went to the radiogram and switched on the wireless. Dance music. The distinctive strains of Carroll Gibbons relayed live from the Savoy Hotel. ‘Begin the Beguine’. She imagined the diners leaving their tables, crowding onto the floor.

‘What's on the menu? Steaks?’

‘What else? Cooked in butter. I'm only sorry that there is no champagne. Do you want another drink?’

‘I haven't finished this one yet.’

He held out his hand, and she took it, and he pulled her to her feet. ‘Bed,’ he said, and turned her and propelled her gently in the direction of the bedroom. She went through the door, and heard him go downstairs, running expertly as though he were descending a ship's ladder, but did not instantly get back into bed. Instead, sat at the dressing-table and gazed at her pallid reflection in the mirror, and wondered why he had not remarked on her service haircut, a crisp little bob so different from the long, honey-coloured locks of her youth. Perhaps he hadn't even noticed. Some men didn't notice things like that. She was feeling a bit woozy. Probably the whisky on top of the boiling-hot bath and the aspirins. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. Rather detached. She combed her hair, and put on a bit of lipstick, and some scent, and wished that she had a beautiful frilly bedjacket — the kind that Athena and Diana always wore — that dripped with lace and made one look vulnerable and frail and feminine. The old Shetland sweater was scarcely romantic. But this was Jeremy, so did she want to look romantic? The question caught her unawares, and there didn't seem to be any sensible answer, so she got up from the dressing-table, and plumped and stacked the pillows and got back into bed again, and sat there, sipping whisky and savouring the delicious smells of hot butter and rich steak that were beginning to emanate from downstairs.

‘Begin the Beguine’ was finished. Now, Carroll Gibbons, at his piano, played the melody of an old Irving Berlin number. ‘All the Things You Are…’

You are the promised touch of Springtime…

Presently, she heard footsteps ascending the stairs once more. The next moment Jeremy appeared at the open door. He had taken off his jacket and tied a workmanlike butcher's apron over his dark-blue sweater.

‘How do you like your steak done?’

‘I can't remember. I haven't had one for such ages.’

‘Medium rare?’

‘Sounds good.’

‘How's that drink?’

‘I've finished it.’

‘I'll get you another.’

‘I shall get falling-over drunk.’

‘You can't fall over if you're lying in bed.’ He took her empty glass. ‘I shall bring it up with your dinner, in lieu of champagne.’

‘Jeremy, I don't want to eat my dinner alone.’

‘You won't.’

He produced the meal in a surprisingly short time, carrying the heavy tray upstairs, and setting it down on the bed beside her. Usually, when people brought one meals in bed, like breakfast, they forgot something. The marmalade, or the butter knife, or a teaspoon. But Jeremy didn't appear to have forgotten anything. The steaks, on red-hot plates, were still sizzling, served with potato crisps and tinned peas that he had found in the store cupboard. He had even made gravy. There were knives and forks and salt and pepper, and a pot of fresh mustard, and napkins, except that they weren't proper linen napkins, but two clean tea-towels, which was all he had been able to find. As well, two replenished drinks.

She said, ‘Why should it be re-plenished? You never say to someone, “Will you plenish me a drink.”’

‘True.’

‘What's for pudding?’

‘Half an orange, or a jam sandwich.’

‘My favourite. The best dinner. Thank you, Jeremy.’

‘Eat the steak before it gets cold.’

It was all quite delicious and immediately restoring. Jeremy had been right. Judith had not realised that she was hungry, and feeling so low in health and spirits, sorely in need of solid sustenance. He had cooked her steak to perfection, blackened and seared on the outside and rosy-pink in the middle. It was so tender that she scarcely had to bite it, and slipped easily down past her painful throat. It was also extremely filling. Perhaps, after months of coping with dull, unappetising food, her stomach had shrunk.

Finally, ‘I can't eat any more,’ she told him. ‘I'm completely stuffed.’ She laid down her knife and fork, and he took away her plate, and she lay back on the pillows in total satisfaction. She said, in cockney, ‘Mikes a luvverly chinge from Spam,’ and he laughed. ‘I haven't got space for pudding, so you have the orange all to yourself. You never cease to surprise me. I didn't know you could cook.’

‘Any man who's ever sailed a small boat can cook, even if it's only to fry a mackerel. If I can find some coffee, would you like a cup? No, perhaps better not. It'll keep you awake. When did you start this cold?’ All at once, he had become professional.

‘This morning, in the train. My throat began to be sore. I think I caught a germ from the girl I share a cabin with. And my head aches.’

‘Have you taken anything?’

‘Aspirin. And I gargled.’

‘How does it feel now?’

‘It's better. Not so bad.’

‘In my suitcase I have a magic pill. I got them in America, brought some back. They look like small bombs, but they usually do the trick. I'll give you one.’

‘I don't want to be knocked out.’

‘It won't knock you out…’

From beyond the open door, the programme of dance music was coming to an end, and Carroll Gibbons and his orchestra were playing their sign-off tune. A second or two of silence, and then the chimes of Big Ben tolled out, slow and sonorous and, by association, laden with doom. ‘This is London. The “Nine O'Clock News”.’ He looked at Judith inquiringly, and she nodded assent. However dire or grave, she must listen, and would be able to cope, simply because Jeremy was there, sitting an arm's length away from her; a man both compassionate and understanding. As well, strong and companionable, his presence creating an extraordinary feeling of security. It was trying to be brave and sensible on one's own that was so wearing. Two people could console each other. Two people could share. Could comfort.

Even so, it was all fairly grim, just about as bad as she'd feared. In the Far East, the Japanese were closing in on the Johore Highway. Singapore City had suffered its second day of bombing…trenches and fortifications being dug…fierce fighting on the Muar River…British aircraft continued to bomb and machine-gun Japanese invasion barges…Australian territory under attack…five thousand Japanese troops on the islands of New Britain and New Ireland…small defending garrison forced to withdraw…

In North Africa, in the Western Desert, the First Armoured Division driven back in the face of General Rommel's advance…a two-pronged attack on Agedabia…an entire Indian division faced encirclement…

Jeremy said, ‘Enough,’ and got up and went through to the sitting-room and switched the wireless off. The cultured, dispassionate voice of the news reader was stilled. Presently, he returned. ‘Doesn't sound too good, does it?’

‘Do you think Singapore's going to fall?’

‘It'll be a disaster if it does. If Singapore goes, then all the Dutch East Indies will go as well.’

‘But surely, if the island is so important, has always been so important, it should be dependable?’

‘The big guns all point south, over the sea. I suppose no one ever expected an attack from the north.’

‘Gus Callender's there. With the Second Gordons.’

‘I know.’

‘Poor Loveday. Poor Gus.’

‘Poor you.’

He leaned down and kissed her cheek, then laid a hand on her forehead. ‘How do you feel?’

She shook her head. ‘I don't know how I feel.’

He smiled. ‘I'll take the tray away, and tidy up the kitchen. Then I'll bring you your pill. You'll be all right in the morning.’

He went, and Judith was left alone, supine in the warm, downy bed, surrounded by Diana Carey-Lewis's own, carefully chosen luxury: filmy draperies, rose-patterned chintz, the soft light of lamps. It was strangely quiet. The only sound, the falling rain beyond the drawn curtains, and then the rattle of a pane in the first gust of the rising wind. She thought of the wind as though it had an entity, blowing in from the west, covering square miles of empty country before it hit the darkened city. And she lay still, staring at the ceiling, thinking about London and about being in the middle of it, at this moment, on this night, a single human being in a metropolis of hundreds of thousands. Bombed, burnt, and battered, and yet still pulsing with a vitality that sprang from the people who inhabited its streets and buildings. The East End and the dockyards had been nigh destroyed by the German bombers, but she knew that still there stood small terraces of houses, and in them families gathered in snug front-rooms, to drink tea and knit, and read newspapers, and talk and laugh and listen to the wireless. Just as others congregated each evening on the platforms of the Underground, there to sleep as the trains roared to and fro, because it was a bit of company, a bit of a party, and certainly more fun than being on one's own.

And there were the people out of doors on this bitter January night. Anti-aircraft gunners, and fire-watchers on roof-tops, and ARP wardens sitting by telephones in draughty, makeshift huts, smoking fags and reading
Picture Post
to pass the long hours of duty. There were servicemen on leave walking the dark pavements in twos and threes, looking for diversion, finally plunging through the curtained doorway of some likely pub. She thought of the prostitutes in Soho standing in doorways, out of the rain, and shining torches down on their fish-net legs and stilt-heeled shoes. And, at the other end of the scale, young officers, up in town from remote airfields and Army bases, dining their girl-friends at the Savoy, and going on to dance the night away at The Mirabelle or The Bagatelle or The Coconut Grove.

And then, quite suddenly, without volition, without meaning to, she started to think about her mother. Not as she was now. Not at this very instant, half a world away, in hazard from every sort of mortal danger, panicking, probably terrified and certainly confused. But as she
had
been. As Judith remembered her last, at Riverview.

Six years. But so much had changed. So much had happened. Joining up had happened, and The Dower House, and before that, the dark winter that Judith had spent with Biddy at Upper Bickley. The war had happened, and the golden years of Nancherrow, which she had always imagined would continue forever.

Riverview. Part and parcel of the end of childhood, and so, deeply nostalgic. Riverview. Temporary, maybe; rented, and never their own, but for those four years, it had been home. She remembered the slumbering garden on summer evenings, when the blue waters of a flood-tide slipped in from the open sea to drown the mud-flats of the estuary. And how the little train, all through the day, clattered along its shore, shuttling to and fro from Porthkerris. She remembered getting off that train after school, and climbing the steep, tree-shaded path up to the house, bursting in through the front door, calling
Mummy!
And she was always there. In her sitting-room, with tea ready on the table, surrounded by her pretty bits and pieces, and everything smelling of sweet peas. And she saw her mother sitting at her dressing-table, changing for dinner, combing her hair and dusting scented powder across her insignificant nose. And heard her voice, reading a book to Jess before bedtime.

Uneventful years, with scarcely ever a man in the house. Only sometimes Uncle Bob, come with Biddy and maybe Ned, to spend a few days during the summer. The Somervilles' visits had been high spots of their tranquil life, along with the Christmas pantomime performed by the Porthkerris Arts Club, and Easter picnics on Veglos Hill at primrose-picking time. Otherwise, day had slipped into day, and season into season, without anything of much excitement ever taking place. But nothing bad had ever happened either.

But there was, of course, the other side of the coin; the other truth. Molly Dunbar, sweet and pliant, had been an ineffectual mother. Nervous about driving her little car, disinclined to sit on damp beaches in the cold north wind, shy of making new friends, and incapable of coming to any sort of a decision. Prospect of change had always alarmed her. (Judith recalled her hysterical behaviour on learning that she was returning, not to Colombo, which was familiar, but to Singapore, which was not.) As well, she had little stamina, tiring easily, and retiring to her bed on the smallest excuse.