Wartime Wife (36 page)

Placing one foot on the chair that held her coat, she hitched up her skirt, shivering as she unfastened a suspender, began peeling it down her leg.

Suddenly, she felt a cold draught, looked up and … froze, though not from cold.

A door had opened. Someone had entered the room and was watching her.

She stared. She had expected Mrs Selwyn, but it wasn’t.

Fingers still on her stocking top, foot balanced on the seat of the chair, her mouth dropped open.

‘Peter!’ Her voice was little above a whisper.

He stared back, gulping down his surprise like a glass of water to a thirsty man. He looked more surprised to see her than she was to see him.

His eyes travelled from her face to her leg, coming to rest on the bare flesh between stocking top and underwear.

Lizzie found her voice. ‘I didn’t know you were on leave.’ Flushing slightly, she rearranged her clothes and dropped her foot back to the floor.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Yes.’

There was something in his expression that didn’t ring true. He didn’t go into immediate explanation as to why she wouldn’t have known, but merely confirmed what she’d suggested.

‘It was a last minute thing,’ he blurted.

To her ears it sounded more like an excuse than a bona fide reason, the sort of excuse that grows from a lie.

His mother appeared behind him, her face turning pale when she saw Lizzie, as surprised as her son, though not merely at finding Lizzie still in her kitchen – not even indignation. There was fear in her eyes and Lizzie wondered why.

If the snow were not so deep, you wouldn’t be so worried about Stanley. That’s what Mary Anne told herself as she surveyed the backyard behind the pawnshop, its grave lines softened by a blanket of blinding whiteness.

Enclosed by brick walls, an ugly square amongst more of the same all along the rank, nothing grew except weeds and a single sapling right in the centre. She judged it to be no more than thirty years old, its brave little seed originally dropped there by some migrating swallow: at least, she hoped it was a swallow. They were her favourite bird, nesting every year in the washhouse in Kent Street, their elegant tails poking out from a recess between the top of the wall and the tiles. She liked the way they swooped and soared, envying their freedom of movement. Every year they nested in the same place, just like her, the difference being that she never got to swoop and soar.

She’d been telling herself that soon she would visit Kent Street and inform her family that she would not be coming back and that Stanley could come and live with her and Michael if he wished. The attic bedroom was free. Michael had been agreeable when she’d suggested it.

‘There is plenty of room here. You have a room, I have a room, and there is the attic room.’

They did indeed both have a room. Sometimes, lying awake at night, she heard him walking around, finally falling into bed after midnight. She imagined him lying there, still awake, alone with his thoughts. Flattening her hand against the wall, she imagined him doing the same the other side; their hands together, divided by only the thinnest of walls.

Last night another chapter of the book that had fallen open so propitiously had come to an inconclusive ending.

‘Goodnight,’ she’d said, loud enough for him to hear.

At first there’d been silence, as though he hadn’t heard.

‘Goodnight,’ he answered. He sounded surprised.

She’d turned over, snuggling against the pillow and closer to the wall. It was good to know he was there with just a thin wall between them, almost as if they were lying together, but not quite yet, not quite yet.

That evening they sat together on the old chaise longue. The room had turned chill so he’d pulled it closer to the fire, making toast and cooking jacket potatoes in the ashes.

Michael was the biggest surprise in her life. Since knowing him she had become more aware of herself and of an awakening in her own body. Telling herself that she feared it to be bloated by the miscarriage, she had eyed her naked body in the mirror and saw the sort of figure seen in the myriad paintings of grand masters.

I want him to see it, she thought to herself. I want him to know me.

Sometimes, when reading or even washing dishes, she felt his eyes on her.

‘I feel I have always been here,’ she said to him on one such instance.

‘I feel this was planned,’ he replied.

She understood. ‘As though our meeting was prearranged.’

He didn’t answer, but she could tell by the look in his eyes
that he was feeling exactly the same unfathomable tingling beneath his heart.

She found him easy to talk to. There was an openness to his look, as if saying, ‘Come on in. Tell me all.’

He was a good listener, patient as she tried to explain, seeming to share her emotions whether it was pain, fear, love or hope.

‘I’ve made some big mistakes in my life,’ she said. ‘The biggest one was burying
me
beneath other people’s lives. I pawned my identity in life, telling myself I was content to live for my children, to live
through
them.’

‘Would you do things differently if you lived your life again?’ he asked, his features a patchwork of light and dark made golden by the glow of the fire. ‘I do not think you would.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘We all have obsessions in life. For you it was – and perhaps still is – your children.’

‘And for you?’

At first he seemed reluctant to answer. Dark lashes brushed his cheeks as he blinked into the brandy glass cupped by both hands. He’d poured them both a measure of brandy. The liquid had hit the back of her throat with a burning tingle, and although she hadn’t liked it at first, it became more pleasant the more sips she’d taken.

He looked at her sidelong, as though assessing whether he should say any more.

‘I liked uniforms.’

She cupped the brandy glass as though the liquid within warmed her hands. Her hair hung loose down her back. ‘What sort of uniforms?’

He shrugged, took in the look of her with just one glance, and answered softly, ‘Any. At first it was the Boy Scouts. I desperately wanted to join them and learn to blow a bugle.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘My stepfather did not approve. He was a Lutheran minister. He did not approve of any kind of uniform. Even the Boy Scouts, and he did not like me mixing with the local boys. He thought it best that I stay in the company of him and my mother.’

‘Did you have any friends?’

‘There were some, but they did not understand why I was not allowed to do the things they did. I desperately wanted to, but my stepfather would not allow it and so I hated him.’

‘You must have been lonely.’

‘I was, but as I got older I did what many young men did – I rebelled. Eventually, I left home.’

‘And joined the army?’

There was something in the sharp way he jerked his head round that made her think he was hiding something. The open look disappeared, replaced by a more veiled expression.

‘As I said, I loved uniforms. More brandy?’ he asked, reaching for a cut glass decanter with a silver top.

‘A lovely thing,’ she said, nodding at the decanter. ‘And very good brandy,’ she added, raising the glass and taking another sip even though she thought it very likely that she’d had enough already. She was feeling too relaxed, too comfortable in front of the fire and in this man’s company. Michael was like Edward in that he’d rekindled physical responses she’d thought were dead and buried. The thought sent a thrill through her body, the sort of thrill she hadn’t felt in years.

Her hand travelled to her throat, felt its heat then fell away. What was she doing here? Her hand trembled slightly.

‘Are you all right?’

His hand covered hers. It was the lightest of touches, and yet it felt as though lightning had shot through them both, binding them together.

‘Yes!’ she said breathlessly, raising her eyes to meet his.

They looked at each other. She chose to believe that he was as surprised as her that this had come about, and yet, deep down, she knew the seed had been sown that first day he’d come to complain about her business when she’d threatened to brain him with a spade.

He dropped his hand first, self-consciously dropping his gaze and rubbing his palms together.

Clutching the brandy glass more tightly, she gulped another mouthful and tried to forget that the memory of his touch tingled on her skin. His fingers were sensitive, she thought. Had someone once told her that sensitive hands betrayed a sensitive heart?

Wondering about its source was obliterated by her confusion; a euphoric tingling that raised goosebumps and made her forget that she was married, a mother and older than him.

It’s the brandy, she thought, it’s making me act strangely.

‘I am going to need a lot of courage,’ she said, her hair falling like a curtain around her face.

‘The courage to go or the courage to stay?’

He’d worded the question oddly, but she understood what he was saying. She’d had to be brave to live with Henry and had done so for the sake of the children. She also had to be brave to stay with Michael – if that indeed was what he was asking her – to stay openly, in total disregard of what people might say, including her own family.

She gazed into the amber liquid as though it were a crystal ball that might tell her the future.

She did not notice that her hair was almost the same colour as the brandy – but he did.

She told him her main fear. ‘The neighbours will call me a scarlet woman and that my place is at home with my husband.’

‘It is not for them to say. You must be true to yourself.’

‘I have to think of my children.’

‘And forget yourself as you have done all these years?’

He said it almost accusingly, she thought, and it annoyed her.

‘And is that so wrong?’

He raised his eyebrows in an offhand way, as though it was of no consequence to him, and yet, if she could read his thoughts, she would see that it was.

‘Steering them through their lives? Protecting them by sacrificing yourself?’

‘Is that so bad?’ Her tone was sharp.

‘You have answered both my questions with questions. “Is that so wrong?” “Is that so bad?”’

‘Things could have been so different.’

‘So you said.’

‘I could have sung “One Fine Day” for Edward with all the emotion it requires. He was my Lieutenant Pinkerton who
did
promise to return. I could never have sung it for Henry.’

Her heart fluttered. He couldn’t have moved closer, and yet she felt the warmth of his body more intently than she had before. She felt his eyes on her.

‘Could you sing it for me?’

Slowly, she came out from behind the curtain of hair and looked into his eyes.

You are so much older than him
.
What are you thinking of?

The naked truth, tell him the naked truth. ‘Yes,’ she said, badly wanting to raise her hand and trace the lines on his face. ‘I could.’

Gently, like the fleeting touch of a bird’s wing, he wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She did not protest when he went on to trace the faint lines radiating from the corners of her lips.

His breath was warm upon her neck and, although there were still inches between them, she felt the warmth of his body reaching for her.

Throwing back her head, she closed her eyes.

‘You shouldn’t be doing that.’ Her voice sounded far away. Was it her voice? She thought it might not be, that it could be the old Mary Anne who had existed before the other war and Henry and the resultant children of that liaison.

‘Do you like it?’

She didn’t answer, mostly because she had got out of the habit of liking intimacy, but this was not sex with Henry. This was the kind of intimacy that opens the floodgate to the liberties only taken by those totally immersed in passion.

She started to open her eyes.

‘No,’ he said, touching them shut with his fingertips and then his lips. ‘Keep them closed. If you can’t bear to see yourself living, at least feel your passion, but make believe it is another woman enjoying it, perhaps the other woman you used to be.’

Had he read her thoughts? Or was it possible that two people could be that much in tune with each other?

More tears squeezed out from the corners of her closed eyelids. It’s the brandy, she decided. Or perhaps not. Perhaps a door had been opened. How long had it been since she’d felt like this?

Softly, he traced the line of her jaw, the fullness of her lips, the slight dent in her chin. Even though her eyes were still shut, she could see those fingers – purely by feeling them.

She felt the cool air on her breasts as he unbuttoned her blouse.

‘No!’

He stopped. ‘No?’

‘A feeling … just a feeling …’

She could explain it no further. It was just an exclamation of surprise for what she was feeling. She did not attempt to stop him. Neither did she stop him when his fingers slid beneath her underwear and the coolness of his palm cupped her breast.

They lay full stretch before the fire, relishing the warmth on their bodies, exploring, caressing and kissing, hugging each other and whispering delight in each other’s ear.

Not until the act of love had run its course did she open her eyes and see the tears pouring from his, wetting his cheeks and running into his mouth. He was like a child.

‘I have to tell you,’ he said haltingly. ‘You have to listen … to know … it is so terrible …’

‘I know,’ she said softly, not having the slightest idea of what he was about to say, but smoothing his hair back from his brow, just as she did Stanley, just as she would any child.

He told her about Berlin and her blood turned to ice.

‘Off to see that delicious redhead again?’ asked Brunner, a recent recruit from a small village outside Potsdam.

Michael smiled. ‘Where else?’

‘Give her one for me.’ Brunner smirked, adding a lewd gesture and leaving Michael in no doubt of his meaning.

‘I will.’ He grinned broadly and ruffled Brunner’s hair. ‘Don’t wait up for me, Mother!’