Coming Home (126 page)

‘Where is this place?’

‘Over on the other side of Fort Frederick. On a beach, with perfect swimming. Men are only allowed there if they're the guest of some female or other, so it's never crowded. And it's run by a splendid lady called Mrs Todd-Harper. We call her Toddy. She's a great character.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘No time now. Too long a story. I'll explain on Saturday.’ (If conversation should lag, which it well might, Toddy would provide a talking point.)

‘How do we get there?’

‘We can climb on some naval lorry or truck. They shuttle to and fro all the time, like buses.’

‘Where shall I meet you?’

‘Right here. At the gate, around eleven-thirty.’

‘Perfect.’

She watched him go, setting off at a smart pace up the hill, his white shoes already brown with dust. Shed of him, she sighed, wondering what she had let herself in for, and then turned and went through the gate and the Regulating Office (no letters in her small box) and so on, up the driveway. In the dining-hall of the mess, the Sinhalese stewards were already serving an early supper for the watch-keepers. Judith paused to help herself to a glass of lime juice and drink it down, and then went out onto the terrace, where a couple of girls were entertaining their boy-friends who lay, in unaccustomed comfort, on long cane chairs. From the terrace a concrete pathway led to the far side of the camp, where the sleeping bandas and ablution blocks were grouped, in a pleasant haphazard fashion, beneath trees which had been left for shade when this particular section of jungle was bulldozed by the sappers, and the camp erected.

At this time of day, there were always a good many girls about, and a lot of coming and going. The Wrens who worked ashore finished their day at four o'clock, and so had plenty of time for a game of tennis or a swim. From ablution blocks half-naked figures strolled casually, wearing thong sandals and small bath-towels and nothing else. Others wandered about in bathing-suits, pegged underwear to washing-lines, or had already changed into the khaki slacks and long-sleeved shirts which were regulation evening wear in this area of malarial mosquitoes.

Malaria was not the only hazard. Not long ago there had been a typhoid scare, which had entailed everybody queuing up for painful injections and suffering the subsequent discomfort. As well, there lurked a host of minor ailments, likely, at a moment's notice, to strike any person down. Sunburn and Trinco tummy inevitably laid low any girl newly out from England and not yet accustomed to the sun and the heat. Dengue fever was like the worst sort of 'flu. Being constantly in a state of sweat brought out rashes of prickly heat and tropical impetigo, and the most trivial of mosquito- or ant-bite was apt to turn septic if not instantly doused in a solution of Dettol. Part of every girl's kit was a bottle of Dettol, and the ablution blocks always smelt of it, and carbolic fluid that the night sweepers used when they emptied and scrubbed out the thunder-boxes.

Twelve beds stood on either side of the long banda, not unlike a school dormitory, but a great deal more primitive. Each bed had beside it a chest of drawers and a chair. Wooden pegs did duty as wardrobes. The floor was concrete, and wooden fans, high in the palm-thatch ceiling, stirred the air into some semblance of coolness. Over each bed, like some monstrous bell, hung a white knotted mosquito net.

As always at this hour of the day, a number of separate activities were going on. At the far end of the banda, one girl, wrapped in her bath towel, sat on her bed with a portable typewriter on her bare knees, and tapped out a letter home. Others lay reading books, perusing mail, blancoing shoes, filing their nails. Two sat and gossiped together and giggled over a sheaf of photographs. Another had put a Bing Crosby record on her portable gramophone, and listened to his voice while she wound her wet hair into pin-curls. The record was very old and well-played, grinding and scratching beneath the steel needle.

When the Deep Purple falls

Over sleepy garden walls.

Her own bed; the closest thing to home Judith had known for over a year. She dropped her bag, stripped off her filthy clothes, knotted a bath towel around her waist, and flopped down on the bed, her hands linked beneath her head, to lie and stare up at the revolving paddles of the fan.

It was strange how things happened, a procession of events. Days passed when she didn't even think of Cornwall and Devon, The Dower House and Nancherrow. This was partly because there was little opportunity for brooding, and partly because she had learned that nostalgia was a pretty useless exercise. Old times, old friends, the old life, were all an age away, a lost world. Her demanding job occupied much of her mind, and quiet interludes of introspection were rendered impossible by the fact that she was never alone, but constantly surrounded by other people, not always likeable or sympathetic.

But then, a moment, a chance encounter. Toby Whitaker, bouncing up out of the blue, catching her unawares. Talking about Upper Bickley, and Biddy and Bob, precipitating a flood of recollections that had lain dormant for months. She remembered, exactly, the day when he had turned up to take Bob Somerville away. She and Bob had been for a walk on the moors with Morag, and Bob had still been wearing his old country tweeds and his walking boots…

And now, ‘Deep Purple’ and Bing Crosby. ‘Deep Purple’ was inextricably entwined with those last days of the summer of 1939, because Athena had brought the record down from London, and played it constantly on the radiogram in the drawing room at Nancherrow.

In the still of the night,

Once again I hold you tight.

She thought of the group. The picture that had never been painted, but remained in her imagination like a work accomplished, framed, hung upon some wall.
Before Lunch. Nancherrow. 1939.
The green lawns, the blue sky, the sea, the breeze skittering the fringe of Diana's sun-umbrella, its dark shadow cast upon the grass. And the figures who sat about in deck-chairs, or cross-legged on tartan rugs. Then they had all been together, apparently idle and privileged, but each with his or her own private reservations and fears; painfully aware of the coming war. But had any of them had any idea of how it was going to shatter their lives, blow them apart and disperse them all to the far ends of the earth? Her mind's eye travelled around the little group, counting them off one by one.

Edward first, of course. The golden charmer, loved by all. Dead. Shot out of the sky during the Battle of Britain. Edward would never return to Nancherrow, would never again laze on the lawn in the Sunday sunshine.

Athena; diligently constructing a daisy chain. Shining blonde head, bare arms the colour of dark honey. Then not even engaged to Rupert Rycroft. Now she was twenty-eight, and Clementina was five years old, and Clementina had scarcely ever seen her father.

Rupert, supine in a deck-chair, bony knees jutting. The archetypal Guards officer, tall, leathery, drawling-voiced; marvellously confident and entirely without guile. Because he had survived the North African Campaign, and fought his way through Sicily, one somehow imagined that he had been blessed with a charmed life, only to hear the shattering tidings that he had been nigh-mortally wounded in Germany, soon after the Allied Forces crossed the Rhine, and had finished up in a military hospital, somewhere in England, where the doctors had amputated his right leg. This news had been conveyed to Judith in a letter from Diana who, though clearly much dismayed, could scarcely conceal her relief that her son-in-law had not actually lost his life.

Gus Callender. The dark, reserved young Scot, and Edward's friend. The engineering student, the artist, the soldier, who had slipped so briefly into all their lives, only to disappear, snuffed out in the mayhem of the fighting during the defence of Singapore.
He is dead,
Loveday had insisted, and because she was carrying Walter Mudge's child, her family had gone along with her conviction, because if any person knew that Gus had survived, then it would be Loveday. As well,
her
happiness and well-being were paramount, and Diana and Edgar wanted to keep her with them forever. So Gus was dead. Only Judith, it seemed, remained unconvinced. She stayed unconvinced until Loveday's wedding, and after that there didn't seem much point in keeping the flame of hope burning. The die had been cast. Loveday was married. And now a Cornish farmer's wife, and the mother of Nathaniel, who had to be the largest, toughest, and most vociferous baby boy Judith had ever encountered. Gus's name was no longer mentioned. He was gone.

And finally, the last. Jeremy Wells.

News of him, too, had filtered out to Judith via letters from home. He had come through the Battle of the Atlantic, and had been posted to the Mediterranean, but that was all she knew. Since the night she had spent with him in Diana's house in London, she had received no word; no message, no letter. She told herself that he had taken himself out of her life, but sometimes, like right now, she yearned to see his homely face again, to be in his reassuring presence, to talk. Perhaps one day he would turn up out of the blue, in Trincomalee, Surgeon Commander of some cruiser or battleship. And yet, if this happened, and he sought her out, what would they have to say to each other, after all the years of non-communication? There could only be restraint and awkwardness. Time had healed the hurt that he had inflicted, but the wound had left her wary. Once bitten, twice shy. And what was the point of recrimination, and the opening up of old scars?

‘Is Judith Dunbar in here?’

The voice, raised, dispelled her thoughts. She stirred, and realised that it was now dark, the abrupt sunset had fallen, and beyond the open palm-thatch shutters, the night was deepening into a dark, jewel-like blue. One of the other Wrens was making her way down the banda towards Judith's bed. She had short dark hair and horn-rimmed spectacles, and was dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. Judith recognised her. A Leading Wren called Anne Dawkins, who worked in the Pay Office, and boasted a cheerful cockney accent you could cut with a knife.

‘Yes, I'm here…’ She sat up, not bothering to draw the bath-towel up over her naked breasts.

‘Ever so sorry to burst in, but I've just looked through my mail and I've got one of your letters by mistake. Must have picked it up with mine. Thought I'd better bring it straight over…’

She handed it over, an envelope fat and bulky. Judith looked at the address and saw Loveday's writing, and experienced a spooky nudge of coincidence. Toby Whitaker, then Deep Purple, and now a letter from Loveday. Really strange. Loveday scarcely ever wrote letters, and Judith hadn't had one from her in months. She hoped that nothing was wrong.

Anne Dawkins hovered, still apologetic. ‘…foolish of me…don't know what I was thinking of.’

‘It doesn't matter. Honestly. Thanks for bringing it.’

She took herself off. Judith watched her go, and then plumped up her pillows and leaned back against them, slitting the envelope with her thumb-nail. From it she withdrew the wodge of folded sheets of airmail paper. Eye-flies were hovering around her face. She set the knot of her mosquito net swinging to chase them away, opened the letter and began to read.

Lidgey,

Rosemullion.

22nd July 1945.

Darling Judith, don't have a fit, getting a letter from me. I'm sure you think something must be terribly wrong, but have no fear, no bad news. Just that Nat and I have just been for tea with them all at The Dower House, and it seemed so funny without you there, and I missed you so much that I thought I would write a letter. Nat, thank God, is asleep and Walter's gone to the pub to have a jar with his mates. Nat isn't in his bed but on the sofa, right here in the kitchen. If you put him to bed, he yowls and gets out of it again, so I usually let him do this, and them hump him through to his cot. He weighs a ton. He's two and a half now, and the biggest thing you've ever seen, with black hair and nearly black eyes and endless energy and a terrible temper. He never wants to be indoors, even when it's raining stair-rods, and all he wants is to be out on the farm and preferably driving the tractor with his father. He sits between Walter's knees and quite often goes to sleep, and Walter takes no notice of him and just goes on with what he's meant to be doing. The only time he behaves himself is when he's at Nancherrow, because he's a bit scared of Pops and certainly of Mary Millyway, who doesn't let him get away with a single thing.