Their Finest Hour and a Half (41 page)

Parfitt checked his watch, then sank his second pint in a couple of swallows, swiped a hand across his mouth and stood up. ‘Got to get home to Dilly,' he said, and made for the stairs, head lowered bullishly. As he disappeared behind the heavy curtain that covered the door, there was a distant crump, a faint shiver of the cellar walls.

‘They'll be after Battersea,' said Buckley. He took his drink more slowly, sucking the suds through his teeth.

‘Who's Dilly?' asked Catrin. She thought of a tabby cat, nose pressed to the window.

‘Parfitt's wife.'

‘Parfitt's
married
?'

‘Thirty-odd years.'

‘Have you ever met her?'

‘No, she doesn't go out. She's an invalid. Her sister looks after her until Parfitt gets home, but he and the sister can't stand the sight of each other, so when he gets there he gives six knocks on the front door, and the sister leaves through the back. They haven't spoken since 1926.'

‘Why not?'

‘They had an argument about the General Strike. She said they should shoot the lot and Parfitt's a communist.'

‘Is he?'

‘And a pacifist. You know, he was a conchie in the last war. Served four years in the Scrubs.' He grinned, pleased as usual to have shocked her, and she thought of Parfitt with his marbled complexion and sparse conversation, Parfitt whom she'd come to regard as not so much a person as a rusty-hinged box containing no more than a scattering of punchlines and a little peppery dust.

‘Hotting up outside,' said Buckley, as the floor shuddered again. His grin had faded, but he was still looking at Catrin, smoke climbing from the cigarette between his fingers. ‘What are you doing next?' he asked, abruptly.

‘Going home on the tube,' she said.

‘Next after you finish on the film, I meant.'

‘Oh. Back to the Ministry of Information, I suppose.'

‘You're staying on in London, then? All by yourself?'

‘Yes.' Although she couldn't remember actually having arrived at the decision; it seemed to have slid into place when she wasn't looking. ‘Yes, I am.'

Buckley was silent for what seemed a very long time. ‘So, do you want to hear about the new commission?' he said, at last.

‘What new commission?'

‘MoI have asked Baker's for a sixty-minute supporting feature about air-raid wardens, full cooperation from civil defence, a star name or two if we can get them. Do you want to write for it?'

‘Me?'

‘No, Uncle Joe Stalin. Yes, you.'

‘Of course I do. Is there slop in it, then?'

‘Might be. They want a dash of comedy, but I daresay they'll go for some glamour as well. Glynis Johns in a tin hat making cow-eyes at a fireman. Besides . . .'

‘What?'

‘It's possible that at a pinch you might just about be able to come up with an adequate line or two of non-slop.'

‘Oh . . .' She found herself smiling; she had never been offered a compliment that she valued more. ‘Thank you very much.'

‘Good,' said Buckley. ‘I'll square it with the ministry.
Yacky dar
.'

‘
Iechyd Da
.' She took a couple of gulps of beer, trying to swallow without tasting its sour soapiness. ‘Do I get a proper desk this time?'

‘You stick with your card-table and be grateful. Another toast—' He raised his glass, ‘Hitler's haemorrhoids, may they blossom and flourish.'

‘Hitler's haemorrhoids!'

‘My round this time,' he said, and was on his feet before she could protest. She was beginning to feel rather tight. He was back within seconds, it seemed, with too many glasses.

‘I shouldn't have any more,' she said.

‘Another toast won't do any harm. Your turn.' He looked at her expectantly.

‘All right then, last one.' She lifted her own glass. ‘To the success of
Just an Ordinary Wednesday
.'

Buckley shook his head. ‘Distributors want to change the title.'

‘They don't!'

‘They do.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Because nothing's ever allowed to be ordinary in America. It'll have to be a whoop-de-do yee-hah astounding Wednesday that's more than twice the size and three times as shiny as the Wednesdays we have in England, and never mind the irony in the original title. No – don't drink to that,' he added, shooting a hand across the table and trapping her glass. ‘Don't drink to that, drink to something better. Drink to the new Baker's writing team – you, me and Parfitt.'

‘All right, then.'

She tugged at the glass, but he held fast, his fingers pinning her own.

‘No, scrub that.' He paused, and took a sharp breath. ‘Just drink to you and me,' he said, so quickly that she barely heard him.

‘What?'

‘To you and me.' He tightened his grip, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Catrin . . .' he said, and he was on his feet and leaning across the table towards her, smelling of brilliantine and beer. He was going to kiss her on the lips, she realized, and she reached out her other hand towards his chest and gave him a good-humoured shove.

‘Don't,' she said. He sat back on the stool with a thump, his grip jerking the glass towards him so that a sheet of beer hit him in the face, and Catrin heard herself starting to laugh – an involuntary noise, feathery with nerves – and Buckley looked away, his sallow skin slowly darkening, a fringe of droplets hanging from his moustache.

‘That'll teach me,' he said.

‘Do you want a hanky?'

He took it from her and slowly wiped his face. ‘You think I'm an old fool,' he said.

‘No, I don't.' Other drinkers were staring.

‘I'm just a bloody old fool to you.'

‘No. Honestly. Let's forget it ever happened. It doesn't matter, really it doesn't.'

‘It matters to me,' said Buckley. ‘It matters like hell to me.' He looked at her for a moment, and then down at the sodden handkerchief, his expression heavy, the usual wolfishness gone, and Catrin suddenly understood. A drunken lunge, she'd thought – a drunken lunge, quickly dealt with and then back to the usual cross-talk, intrusive but ephemeral, that striped their days. But though
she
was drunk, Buckley was sober, or as near as dammit, and this hadn't been his usual bottom-pinching, chase-around-the-desk brand of shallow flirtation, but something from the depths, a kraken with a rose in its beak.

‘Oh dear,' she said, and then wanted to cross the words out again, to run a pencil through the whole bloody scene, but they'd shot it now, it was in the can.

*

‘All ready?' asked Arthur, door-key in hand. The question was redundant, since Edith was standing just beside him in the hall, headscarf tied, gas-mask over her shoulder, handbag in the crook of her elbow, but the asking of the question had become part of their routine, as had the reply.

‘All ready,' said Edith, knowing precisely what would come next.

‘I'll just double-check that the gas is off,' said Arthur. She watched him open the door of the cupboard under the stairs, disappear briefly from view and then re-emerge. ‘Yes, it's off. All set then?'

This time she nodded, and Arthur opened the door for her, paused on the step in order to clean his spectacles, and then looked up at the sky; it was clear, and as blue as a harebell. ‘It might be a mistake, though, not to bring the umbrella,' he said, reflectively. ‘What do you think?'

‘Oh, I think we could risk it,' said Edith.

He pulled the door shut, and it closed with a solid click and a little after-snap from the letter-box, and then it was five steps up the path, and the rattle of the gate latch and out on to the pavement of Cressy Avenue. ‘We're in good time,' said Arthur, checking his watch. ‘Off we go. Edith.'

He still tended to enunciate her name, she thought, as if it were a code-word that had to be inserted into an otherwise ordinary sentence. ‘I used to be called “Edie” at school,' she said, as they turned left along Agincourt Road. ‘I quite liked it. Did you ever have a nickname at school?'

‘A nickname?' The long list sagged in his memory: Farty-Artie, Gig-lamps, Four Eyes, Sissy-boy, Specky, Bottle-tops, Milksop, Goggles, Nursey – Nursey had been coined by the one boy in whom he'd confided about his duties at home, and it was Nursey that had stuck. Nursey Frith. ‘. . . no, not really. Nothing to speak of,' said Arthur.

They crossed into Cherry Grove; two houses were missing along the row, one site recent and raw, clay lumped on splintered rafters, the other softened by a haze of green. There were boarded windows and chipped bricks and missing slates on other houses along their route and, in addition to the war damage, Edith had noticed since her return an encroaching shabbiness – neglected paths whiskery with weeds, hedges topped by a frill of unchecked growth, peeling paint on gates and doors – evidence of absent husbands and fathers, of families who had fled London for the duration. Those who had stayed were more concerned with growing onions than pulling dandelions. A cockerel crowed from a back garden somewhere.

‘I'd rather like to keep hens,' said Edith.

‘Hmm?' He was checking his watch. Arthur always checked his watch at the end of Cherry Grove. He would check it again, Edith knew, just as they arrived at the station, and again as the train was announced, looking up at her with a smile and saying, ‘That should do it,' or ‘Plenty of time, still.'

It was a nice smile, albeit diffident, at one with a manner that seemed unfailingly equable and polite. Edith had been Mrs Frith for over two weeks now, and she had encountered no unpleasant surprises, no locked room à la Bluebeard, no flashes of temper or temperament. There had been no surprises at all, in fact, unpleasant or otherwise, and each day served only to reinforce the routine into which they'd quickly fallen, and Edith (though she could hardly bear to admit it to herself) was beginning to feel awfully flat. It wasn't that she'd imagined a life of wild, free spontaneity, it's just that she hadn't thought that there would be so very little to discover about marriage, about her husband. It was like jumping into an opaque pond and finding it ankle-deep.

It might have helped if they'd seen rather less of each other – a daily separation of some kind, so that they had news to exchange, experiences to recount – but not only did they travel to the studio together, but once there, Arthur stuck to her like a piece of lint on a cardigan, which in one way was flattering and extraordinary and wonderful (for who would have thought that she, Edith Frith née Beadmore, would ever meet a man who didn't want to let her out of his sight), but in all other ways was completely maddening, for she was enjoying the work enormously, but it was work that took concentration and care, and since she couldn't actually ignore the fixed presence of a husband at her elbow, she found her attention constantly split. And she could hardly ask him to
go away
, could she, since in only four weeks' time he'd be doing exactly that . . .

‘I said that I rather fancied keeping hens,' repeated Edith. ‘It would be lovely to have eggs more often.'

‘Yes it would,' said Arthur. ‘I like an omelette.' It had been such a long time since he'd made one. He thought with sudden yearning of the hiss of the butter, the plateful of airy gold that emerged like a conjuring trick from the pan. ‘And they're awfully nutritious,' he added. ‘At Waring's we used to serve an egg savoury twice a week.'

A salvage truck passed them, bins rattling in the back, and then the road was empty again and they crossed into Willow Walk and Edith glanced at Number 40, wondering if she'd see her old landlady Mrs Bailey, or Mrs Bailey's daughter Pamela, but as usual the door was shut, the windows blank.

‘I wonder if they've moved away,' she said, and saw, as she spoke, a couple standing in the middle of the pavement twenty yards ahead, the man with one arm extended, bracing himself against a cherry tree, and the other wrapped around his girl, lifting her so that only the toes of her shoes were touching the pavement, leaning her over backward so that his face was above hers, his mouth pressed on her mouth, and Edith saw with no particular surprise that the girl was Pamela, her early promise fulfilled, school hat halfway down the back of her head, eyes closed in apparent ecstasy as she kissed a Polish airman. And kissed him. And kissed him. There was no sign of an end to the embrace.

‘Perhaps we should cross over,' said Edith to Arthur.

‘Yes.'

And that was the other thing, of course. She couldn't ignore it or pretend that it wasn't happening – or, rather, that it
was
happening. Her wedding-night migraine had lasted for twenty-four hours, and as usual she had felt like a chewed string for a day or two afterwards, and Arthur had been kindness itself, and had continued to sleep in his old room, just in case (as he'd said) his snoring disturbed her. And then, just as she'd begun to feel better, her monthly had started, so that yet again, the eau de Nil satin slip with parchment piping had stayed in the drawer and Arthur, on being informed of her condition, had disappeared downstairs for ten minutes before returning with a filled hot-water-bottle for her cramps, which was a thoughtful gesture, and one that made her feel like an elderly maiden aunt, lumpen and chaste in tartan dressing-gown and sanitary belt. After which he had gone back to his own room again.

More than a week had passed since then. Each evening, Arthur would formally kiss her goodnight, one hand on her shoulder, his body at least six inches from hers, and they would retire to their separate rooms. It was as if they'd somehow skipped forty years of marriage, leap-frogging early fervency and arriving directly at Darby and Joan, all passion spent, and Edith hadn't yet summoned up the – the what? the courage? the vocabulary? – needed to raise the subject. I'm a modern woman, she wanted to say. I took life-drawing classes at art college, I am fully au fait with the anatomy of the masculine form, I will not be shocked, I shall not be a shrinking virgin. But the trouble was that she had always assumed that if the time ever came, then she wouldn't be the one taking the lead. And now it seemed that there were two of them jostling for second place.