Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (12 page)

I tell him that Trix and I have had drinks there a couple of times.

In fact I might have been scared to go back with her. I remember her, on that last occasion, queening it at the bar and adopting an ultra-refined accent in which to order pink champagne. She hadn't made herself very popular. “Someday,” she'd said, “I'm going to run a little place like this. Waitresses and porters and chambermaids all at my beck and call. Yes, someday! You'll see.”

But I don't mention this and he completes what he was saying. “Well, the desk clerk may be getting his forty winks but I guess if I make it worth his while he won't mind losing two or three.”

“Oh, you Yanks. You think mere money can accomplish anything.”

“No. If I thought that, I'd book for tomorrow night, as well.”

But suddenly he has to brake, to avoid something which dashes out in front of us. We think it was a fox.

“No,” I say, “I'm
sure
it was a fox. It had to be.”

“Why?”

“Like calling out to like. It heard the voice of its brother.”

15

“Where did Trixie say he came from?”

“New Haven.”

“No, over here,” I say. “Which U.S. base?”

“Oh. Halesworth.”

“Yes, Halesworth. Would it be much off our route?”

He looks it up in the guidebook. “Airfield built in 1942—43, intended as a bomber station,” he reads. “Only eight miles from Suffolk coast. Ideally placed for escort fighter operations.”

“Why?”

“Range, I suppose.”

As we approach Holton, the village near which the base was built (two miles out of Halesworth), I find it a moving experience to be driving through this flat East-Anglian countryside where so many of my compatriots served during the war. I think of all those young men who flew up into the skies nearly half a century ago, so many of them never to return.

“But please don't imagine you're going to absorb the flavour of an airfield,” warns Tom. “I gather that most of the land has gone back to agriculture, that a good portion's now given over to turkey farming.”

We discover there's one small omission in the guidebook. Part of the perimeter has provided the council with a special course for novice lorry drivers.

And, yes, of course it's sentimental, but there's somehow a sadness in seeing the destruction of any place where life's been lived intensely. It's possibly worse when you can still distinguish outlines. An employee of the turkey farm, a stocky and grizzled man with bow legs, leads us to those spots where the main runway would have been and the control tower and the hangars.

“Two thousand yards long,” he says, pointing to the runway—you can just make out the traces. “And then, of course, the Nissen huts…funny to remember there was accommodation here for some three thousand.”

He's made quite a study of it, points out where the T2 hangars would have been. “Did you know Glen Miller came to Halesworth? 6
^th
August 1944. A Sunday. But a busy day for Major Miller: Boxted before he came on here.”

We're standing maybe at the very point where he'd played. It isn't hard, for a moment, to hear ‘Moonlight Serenade' or ‘String of Pearls' flooding that main hangar, drifting out across the airfield.

But then you remember that you're now on a turkey farm and that facing you is a pool of evil-smelling effluent.

We leave the hangar site and start walking towards what was once the Admin block—though, frankly, I've lost interest. The sooner we return to London the better. I make a last attempt to feel my way into my father's shoes…this stranger's shoes; to experience one fleeting second of what he himself may have experienced. I close my eyes and try to will something to come to me out of the past. But no. Nothing. I open them and find I've walked on some wallflowers. Wild—incongruous—defiant: even in competition with the effluent they give off a warm and spicy smell. I meet Tom's amused, inquiring glance and shrug self-mockingly. “Okay, you're right. I should have had more sense. But I bet you anything he brought her here at some point. And probably to hear Glen Miller.” Unexpectedly, the notion gives me pleasure.

At some point as we're driving back to London I think about the half-brother I have never met. I wonder which side of the Atlantic he may now be roaming.

16

In the garden and just outside our window there's a pink-blossomed horse chestnut. I lie in bed on Monday morning and gaze into its branches and at the sky beyond…and think why can't the sky be gloomy. The time's just after six and Matt is still asleep and looking peaceful. It's a pity to wake him but selfishly I want to. I trace his brow with my forefinger. Yet he only stirs and smiles and turns over and I haven't the heart to persevere. I'm not sure what I do have the heart for: certainly not the drive back to Halesworth, the chaos at the railway station, the journey home with Trixie, the greetings, questions, commiserations. I don't know how I'm going to get through any of that. Not the next few hours, nor even the next few days. (Or weeks. But returning to the farm will undoubtedly be the worst: the place where Matt brought me back after Cambridge, just a fortnight ago, and where I felt so close to him and proud. The place where he and Walt collected us last Tuesday and where both Trixie and I sang as we got ready. The place where only the day before yesterday they'd come to pick us up for the dance and where I'd last seen all those familiar surroundings—seen them in
his
presence. Yes. Returning to the farm will be the hardest.)

But I had been wretched, of course, when they had picked us up for the dance—would it help to remember that?

And at least—from the time I had wept onto his shirt and my whole situation had so miraculously altered—I think I had made the most of every moment. Every precious moment.

That is, until the previous evening. At dinner. When the truth had suddenly hit me.

In fourteen hours he will be gone.

True, we still had the night ahead. But I wanted a whole lifetime of nights ahead, of days and nights ahead, and I wanted it now. Suppose that anything should happen to him? After six years of war one was attuned to the possibility of accidents, of people never coming back. Suppose
Matt
should become one of those buried statistics in some government file, or a name in the local press, or an inscription on a war memorial—how deeply, when it really came down to it, how deeply had I truly cared about Baker, Blogg and Bolton? Or even about their loved ones? Their families?

I knew last night that Matt felt just as miserable as me but at least for him there are all the distractions of homecoming to lessen the misery. I almost wish there weren't. In my heart I want him to feel every bit as lost as I do.

Scarcely a noble sentiment…and in fact I only admit to it as I gaze blindly into the branches of the horse chestnut and look mournfully at the squat brown radiator below the window. Yesterday Matt had spread out our washing along this as though he were mounting an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert. He several times sought my views—
and
my compliments—on the matchless skill of his presentation.

Then I really do wake him. We ought to be out of bed in half an hour.

Breakfast isn't a lot of fun. Indeed it's pretty awful. Will I ever again, I wonder, be able to come back here when I'm on my own or with anyone but him?

(Perhaps it's just as well, I tell myself severely, I am
obliged
—and by the law of the land!—to
return to the farm.)

Anyway, this could be the last time I shall ever see The Red Lion. My days in Suffolk must surely be coming to an end.

But we've hardly driven twenty yards when vague splutters occur and I think I shall be seeing it again quite shortly: apparently Matt's forgotten to give the engine any water. We don't go back to the hotel, however; there's a charlady who's been polishing a shop window and it's easier to ask her for some. Afterwards Matt returns the empty jug, punctiliously deciding against leaving it on the doorstep when the door itself is open—although it certainly isn't yet opening time. But on his way out he pauses. And then, presumably at some inquiry he's just made, the woman must have gone to fetch her boss, because an elderly man now emerges from the back and smilingly unlocks the glass top of a table. Evidently a showcase. In spite of my depression I wonder what I may be missing and hastily get down from the jeep.

“Go away,” says Matt. “You're spoiling the surprise.”

“Ah, then? Is this the young lady in question?”

Cadaverous, stooped and sparsely ginger-haired, the owner doesn't seem to know me, despite my having been here with Trix on maybe five or six occasions. It's a fascinating place, full of secondhand trinkets and pictures and family photographs; books, cutlery, gramophone records, ewers, basins, wireless sets; all sorts of things from threepence to ten pounds. It's this incredible price range which makes you feel that potentially you could unearth huge bargains.

All you have to do is scavenge.

For Matt, though, there hasn't been time. And since he's shooing me away so peremptorily I still can't see what's drawn his attention.

But then he says, “Oh well, since you
are
here, you may as well help. This gentleman has been kind enough to interrupt his breakfast…” And he reveals to me the object he's been looking at.

Companionably, by my side, the charlady sounds wistful. “Never saw another which was half so nice!”

It's a ring I'm being shown, one that's studded with pearls and turquoise, and is certainly attractive. “I think it dates from about 1875,” the man tells us.

But then Matt says: “Rosalind, here's what actually caught my eye.” And now he picks up another ring, again Victorian, also gold but this time far from delicate: black-enamelled, with a heart-shape at the front that has a flower and leaves etched on it, the leaf motif extending round the band. Well-defined gold tracery lightens the effect of the black.

“Oh, sweetheart, this one!” Brazen hussy; no question of Matt-oh-but-you-shouldn't-you-can't-possibly-afford-it. “This one—please!”

“You're sure? Try them both on. Don't be swayed by the prices.”

The enamelled ring is cheaper—although, naturally, far closer to ten pounds than to threepence.

It has engraving on the inside. If there had been any doubt before, this would instantly have dispelled it. ‘Always. Emily and Robert. May 1, 1840.' I swiftly form a picture of Emily and Robert—and who cares a jot if it's impossibly idealized? What matters is the sense of strong connection with the past. The date, the passion, the commitment.
Always
.

The owner of the shop stays neutral. His charlady can't manage it.

“Oh, it's dismal—would fast bring on the willies! You take the other one, my pet.” She tucks a wisp of greying hair back under her beige rayon scarf, as if scared too much exposure to Emily and Robert may start to turn it white.

“Is it dismal?” asks Matt, gently—not specifically of her. “Why should a mourning ring be more dismal or more spooky than any other that's antique? Obviously, when any ring is that old, whoever wore it first must now be dead.”

Stupidly, it hadn't even occurred to me that it's a mourning ring.

“And, pet, it's much too big for you. It's really supposed to be worn by a gent.”

But Robert must have been slim-fingered. It
is
too big, admittedly, but it doesn't look ridiculous. A clip will hold it firm.

I try on the turquoise ring as well. “Ah…,” says the charlady, on a sustained and dreamy note.

I smile at her.

“It's no good. I'm sorry. You're right, this is exquisite. But it's the other one I want.”

“I hoped it would be,” says Matt.

I reach up and kiss him on the cheek.

“Well anyhow, my pet, we really wish you joy of it. And it's nice to know it's being rescued by a couple like you. I sometimes feel it's awful how these ever so personal bits and pieces…what you'd think by rights ought to be seen as proper heirlooms…”

We all agree with her. “I promise you,” I say. “One day
this
will become a proper heirloom!”

There's a fairly sober pause in which it seems likely we're all thinking back a hundred and five years; or else thinking forward another fifty or sixty. “And now,” says the owner, “I wonder if there's anywhere I can lay my hands on some little box…?”

Matt says: “I don't suppose you'd have one of those clip things my…my fiancée mentioned just a while ago?” It's the first time he's ever used that word, in connection with myself.

I wish there was something I could get
him
. A candlestick? Warming pan? If he and I weren't about the only two adults in this world who don't smoke I could have bought him a cigarette case—I can see an attractive one. But unfortunately the rings they have here for men (other than mine, other than mine!) are disappointingly ordinary. Even the signet rings.

Actually I'd thought about buying him something before, a thank-you gift for all his generosity, but I'd been too worried about putting him under any kind of obligation—what I mean is, making him
feel
he was under one.

It's not an omission, though, that spoils my enjoyment of the moment. (Incredible that
enjoyment could inform
any
moment so close to his departure!) And I shall mail him something, do so at my leisure and choose the really perfect gift. In the meantime he can have my exquisitely coloured and patterned pebble, truly gemlike, joyfully salvaged from the stream in which we paddled yesterday whilst eating our sardine sandwiches.

Mr Wilton doesn't have a clip. But in any case he recommends me not to bother. He says that a clip could easily cost three bob—and fairly soon wear out—when at a proper jeweller's, and for roughly the same price, I could get the ring cut down and expertly soldered. I say I'll act on his advice.