The Facts of Life (6 page)

‘How so?’

‘It made me think. It was ten years ago when I last ate with mine. They’re dead, of course. In the war. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to tell you much of this. I just didn’t feel ready and then, well … We weren’t orthodox Jews or anything. At least, my grandparents were, on my father’s side. We had to go to them for Seder and so on, and there were some fights because they wanted me to go to a different school with other Jews, not the
Gymnasium
with the sons of my parents’ friends. But my parents were totally irreligious. They were intellectuals and socialists, which was probably worse for them; getting them onto two black-lists instead of just the one. They knew what was coming. They couldn’t not, with so many of their colleagues losing their jobs and homes. Actually, I think most people knew; it’s just that they couldn’t bear to admit it. It’s all very easy to say we should pack up and move in such circumstances, quite another thing to do it. Doing it is an admission of fear. They were passionate anglophiles. They had always planned to send me to school in England anyway, or so they said. It simply became an imperative instead of a choice for them, I suppose.’

‘Where did they send you?’

‘Tathams at Barrowcester. Do you know the school?’

‘Do I look as if I would?’

‘It was torture there. Unrelenting torture. I had no idea that small boys could be so cruel. Well, I did, but I had always been immune to it. In the
Gymnasium
in Tübingen, I was one of the strong ones. In Barrowcester, I was suddenly the outsider, the German, the Jew with the comical accent. My name was changed in a hopeless effort to disguise my otherness.’

‘Really?’

‘Eli Pfefferberg to Edward Pepper. But no-one was fooled, of course, from the moment I opened my little mouth, and I kept making matters worse by forgetting to answer when my new name was called.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Too young. Even eighteen would have been too young for such treatment.’

‘Couldn’t you leave?’ She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand, frowning, concerned. Edward shook his head.

‘There was nowhere I could go. I knew enough to know that I couldn’t go home to Germany. There were only distant contacts of my parents in Manchester – which wasn’t too far from Barrowcester – and a second cousin in London, Isaac. He was a lawyer. Unmarried. No sense of humour and an unmarried sister who had even less. Rosa. She could curdle milk with a smile. It was bad enough having to stay with them in the holidays without turning up unannounced mid-term. I learned to become invisible. I copied the others’ accents, picked up their slang and their little aggressions. I learned to bully. And I spent hours hiding away in the music rooms. There was a Jewish music teacher. A Mancunian. We were allies. He saved my life by insisting I took extra lessons and be given time off the rugger. When I got a scholarship to Tompion I could hardly believe it. It was so civilised there, so understanding, so liberal. At least on the surface. Maybe they’re all Jew-haters underneath, but they don’t throw your books in the urinals or beat you up on the playing field. But then the war started and I was interned. Isaac visited me occasionally, and did his best to get me let out, and dear Thomas managed it, of course …’ He broke off, staring across the rumpled bedding to their tangle of discarded clothes.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

He breathed quickly, shallowly. For a moment a thick fist of grief threatened to break through his accustomed control.

If I
cry now
, he thought,
if I let it all out now, I’ll terrify her
.

She reached out to touch his neck and pull him down beside her again, but he held back. He sensed she was on the verge of offering him pity, treating him as a patient just when she had honoured him as a man. He fought back the urge to weep, forcing his mind to focus instead on the extraordinary fact of their new, naked closeness.

‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘It’s nothing. I’m sorry.’ He gently cupped her breasts in his hands, amazed at the rapidity with which he was permitted a gesture so intimate. ‘I shouldn’t have started talking about it. This should have been special for you, for both of us.’

‘Don’t be daft. It was special.’

She laid her hands on his, encouraging him.

‘But I’ve spoilt it all.’

‘No you haven’t. Anyway.’ She slid a hand between his legs and he felt himself stir at her touch. ‘We can do it again.’ She smiled up at him at the sweet simplicity of this truth, her pale face warm in the lamplight across the sheets. Edward lay back on the bank of crushed pillows, and caressed the skin over her ribs with the back of his hand.

‘I know,’ he sighed, astounded, his mouth curling up into a private smile. ‘I know.’

Sally rode her motorbike home through the network of dykes and waterways in a fury. The sun was dazzling but there was a water-cooled wind which stung her face into a grimace. In her anger she had left without her helmet and didn’t care. Occasionally her hair blew across her face and she smacked it savagely out of the way. Gordon Graeme had called her up to his office after her rounds and placidly informed her that the doctor she had replaced had at last returned from serving his country and wanted his old job back.

‘But I thought you said he’d resigned.’

‘Well so I did. But it seems he only felt it was his duty to sign up, as he was still of an age to serve. Now that he wants to return, I can’t very well refuse him.’

‘I hate to sound selfish, but what about me?’

‘My dear Miss Banks.’ Like the nurses, he always called her Miss, never Doctor. ‘You are young and relatively inexperienced. I’m sure you’ll agree that your time here has been valuable. Now you can find something else.’

‘Just like that, I suppose.’

‘I can give you references.’

‘This place is understaffed, though. Surely I could stay on to relieve the burden?’

‘This place, as you so quaintly put it, is also underfunded. We could only afford to keep you on a junior nurse’s salary – which I’m sure you’d be loath to accept.’

‘Of course.’

‘Even setting aside the future of the hospital, which you know is by no means certain now, you must see that we have to give Dr Grismby priority. Quite apart from it having been his job in the first place, quite apart from the debt of patriotism we owe him –’

‘Debt of …?’

Graeme held up a liver-spotted hand.

‘If you would just let me finish?’

‘Of course, Sir. I’m sorry.’

‘Quite apart, as I say, from these considerations, it would be something of a risk to invest too much of the hospital’s funds in training you further. You are not yet thirty, after all. For all we know, you may still want to get married, have children and so on …’

Sally ran his words through her mind again and grunted with irritation as she dismounted. She unlocked the door into the narrow passage at the side of her parents’ house and rammed the bike against the dustbins. A dustbin lid fell off with a clatter. She stooped to replace it, wrinkling her nose at the smell of rotting fish coming from a bloodied newspaper bundle inside. She heard her mother’s low voice from the kitchen window. Clutching her white coat bundled to her chest, Sally leaned against the cold brick wall behind her and waited to calm down. She absorbed the familiar scene about her. The yard, weeds springing up bright between paving stones. The washing line which she and a neighbouring girl used to unhook to skip on, on the rare mornings when it was empty. Her mother’s bicycle, set against the concrete coal bunker, an old black Raleigh, with a thin, red, trim, elegant, curving centre bar and a bell that rang out one clear ‘ping’ instead of the more common, spring-powered jangle. Beyond lay a mean patch of garden, where a gardenless family friend, Ida Totteridge, was allowed to grow vegetables in return for a half-share of the produce. The runner beans were in flower already; the one vegetable which Ida always planted in excess. The far end of the plot was still disfigured by the mud-covered Anderson shelter, which no-one had the strength to dismantle. Ida grew marrows and sweet peas, trailing off its sides and top in gaudy confusion.

Calm again, Sally let herself in at the kitchen door. Her father was in his chair, hidden behind the
Daily Express
. Undeterred, her mother was talking to him, her hair in a protective pink net. On the way home, she had stopped off at her friend Queenie’s to have it done for the weekend; a fortnightly ritual. It was coiled and curled and more thoroughly blonde than it had been at breakfast. The sweet-harsh smell of setting lotion mingled with the room’s customary tobacco clouds.

‘Hello, Mum. Hello, Dad,’ she sighed.

‘Hello, love,’ said her mother, breaking the flow of her address.

‘Hair looks nice,’ Sally added, setting the kettle on the stove and laying out three precious lamb chops in the grill.

‘Thanks love. You should let Queenie fix yours up a bit. It would look nice with a perm. Give it a bit of body.’

‘I told you, I like it natural. Lamb tonight. I did a trade with Alice.’

‘Which is she?’

‘The nurse whose Dad has the butcher’s out at Three Holes.’

‘That’s nice. Dad?’ Her mother flapped a hand against her father’s
Express
.

‘What?’ he mumbled, lowering the paper a fraction.

‘Lamb tonight.’

‘That’s good.’ He continued reading.

Her mother took out her powder compact and checked her hair with a critical wrinkling of brows. She powdered her nose for good measure then slipped the compact away.

‘That
bloody
Graeme,’ Sally snapped, rubbing margarine on the chops then replacing the grill pan with a clatter.

‘Sally!’ Her mother stubbed out a cigarette. She took exception to swearing about the house.

‘I’m losing the job.’

Her father’s paper came down at the news.

‘You’ve what?’

‘You heard,’ her mother said, then added, to Sally, ‘What did you do, love?’

‘I didn’t
do
anything. It’s just like you at Mosley’s last year. They’re bringing back the bloke I replaced and doing me out of a job. I thought the danger of that was long past.’

‘Well, love, it was
his
job.’

‘Not any more it wasn’t. Anyway, he had resigned. It seems he’s changed his mind and we aren’t to hold it against him because he’s such a bloody brave soldier and we owe him a “debt of patriotism”. And because he’s a man.’

‘And what do they owe
you
I’d like to know?’

‘Precious little, it seems. I’ve got till August then that’s it. Graeme says he’ll give me references.’

‘There. You see? Something’ll come up. Maybe in Rexbridge.’

Her father stopped listening, sensing a lessening of crisis, and returned to his newspaper.

‘Anyway,’ her mother went on. ‘How are things
viz Edvard
?’ She laughed at her own mimicry.

‘You know he doesn’t have an accent.’ Sally turned back to check the chops. ‘They’re fine,’ she muttered.

‘Has he, er … made his intentions clear, then?’

‘Not exactly, no. That wouldn’t solve anything right now, anyway.’

‘Sorry I spoke.’

‘You think just the way Graeme does. You think marriage is all I live for. I’ve got a career.’

‘Not after August you haven’t. What’s he worth then, anyway, your fine young kike?’

‘Don’t call him that.’

‘Well he is one, isn’t he? It’s a perfectly friendly word. No pork chops when
Edvard
comes around, eh Dad?’ Her mother laughed to herself again. Sally chose to ignore her.

‘He’s probably worth less than me,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t asked. We don’t talk about things like that.’

Her mother lit another cigarette and watched Sally turn the chops.

‘Ida’s left us a potato salad in the meat safe,’ she said. Sally took down the bowl of salad and set it out on the table along with knives, forks and pickle. The kettle came to the boil. She spooned tea into the pot.

‘Hasn’t sold any symphonies yet then?’ her mother asked.

‘No. No, he hasn’t.’ Sally grabbed the kettle, scalded her hand and swore.

‘Temper temper,’ her mother said, coolly. ‘I’ll say one thing for him, though: he’s very good looking. You’ve got taste, girl.
Very
good looking. Nice hands, too.’ She glanced at her husband, slouched, fat and rumpled, in his chair and narrowed her eyes. ‘Very choice.’

The day had been unnaturally quiet. A cold mist at dawn had cleared slowly through the morning to reveal an unseasonal pall of cloud which hung low and heavy. Sightseers stayed away, the locals went, muted, about their business and any sounds there were – birdsong, the arrival and departure of trains, screeching bicycle brakes or the slamming of car doors – carried on the leaden atmosphere with uncomfortable clarity.

Miss Murphy, the bookseller, was already in the shop when Edward arrived. Unpacking two dusty cardboard boxes of Kipling’s complete works and a nearly new sequence of Angela Thirkell’s Trollope sequels, she was fractious. She snapped at him twice, once for over-sugaring her coffee, once for miscataloguing Mrs Gaskell under M. She then apologised, declared herself ‘out of sorts and good for nothing’ and went across to the Sadler Arms for a restorative glass of sherry, excusing herself for the rest of the day.