Chapter 6 –
Wings
August came, and Sláma drove out to see Sarah again and she called on the services of Mrs. Brewster once more, to watch the children for an hour. She’d had an errand come up, she said: no, she didn’t need help with it, just could Mrs. Brewster please watch them, she’d be back right away? Here was a loaf of bread, she’d be so grateful…
Sláma met her at the end of the elm-avenue, and they went on in his car. She’d brought blankets, and they made love in the lee of a haystack in the corner of a field, where the hedge hid everything from view unless you flew overhead. His wrist was better, he said; they’d had him on ground-duties just for a week and then he was flying again because they were too short-handed for him not to. It just hurt sometimes. What’s that word for a long dull hurt that won’t go away? Not sharp like a knife but blunt… yes, it ached. No, it didn’t now; that was a different part of him, god, Sarah, yes of course it ached too, all the time, didn’t she know that…?
The sun was warm on her bare skin and she pulled him to
her again with a hunger that made him laugh and then groan. Little Boy Blue, she sung to him afterwards,
when he’d dozed off in her arms on the blanket for a few sweet minutes: under the haystack fast asleep…
He had to get back by nightfall, so he couldn’t stay to supper, or for more tendernesses after the children had gone to bed: next time, he said, please god…
Sláma brought her flowers the next time, a big bunch of garden-roses he’d bought from a stand by the road – and a paper-bag of new potatoes, with the skins all earthy and peeling in thin tatters, and another one of mushrooms; and brown eggs, and lovely long runner-beans. “They looked good,” he said, “you can cook them, can’t you?”
“God, Franta,” she said, “we can have a feast!” – and they’d
all walked-over to the Watsons’, the children too, to beg a half-dozen gammon
rashers. Bea Watson was generous as
always, insisted they take a dozen: “If
you can’t share a bit with your neighbours, well I reckon Hitler’s half-way
won, my goodness!” Fred Watson shook
hands heartily with Sláma again, nodding in agreement and clapping him on the
shoulder where his badge said ‘
Sarah served supper to everyone together, and the children begged Sláma for more stories until he was exhausted from entertaining them. It seemed forever before they were all bathed and their hair brushed and tucked into bed, and longer still till she could be sure all were sound asleep – though at least this time they could spend on the settee holding hands and more, so that by the time she said she thought it was all-clear he was fit to burst his buttons, just about. Then in tugging frantically to unbutton himself before he lost it altogether, he did just that. The button flew up and landed somewhere under the table and they both giggled so hard she had to hush him…
Afterwards he stood in the kitchen in his shirtsleeves and drawers, and dried and put-away the dishes from supper, so she wouldn’t have to do it all when he’d gone, while she sat at the table and sewed the button back on his trousers.
“I didn’t know you wore spectacles,” he said, “let me see… ”
“Just for the mending,” she said, “and reading fine print – I’ve always been long-sighted. I used to be too proud to wear them, but with the amount of darning the children need, I can’t afford to be so silly.”
“I always have wanted to kiss a pretty woman in spectacles,” he said, “come here… ”
“I just got dressed again,” she murmured.
“It’s all right,” he said, “I’m not going to undress you, look, I’m just going to kiss you till you tell me to stop.”
“That’s the same thing,” she said.
“Then I suppose I should put more wood on the fire?” he smiled, “I don’t want you to be cold… ”
Another time when he arrived without notice for a few stolen hours, she had her period and was feeling rotten and overwhelmed and weepy. He opened tins of corned-beef and baked-beans for the children’s supper, lit the fire and toasted bread; did the clearing-away and the washing-up, got them washed (it wasn’t bath-night) and all settled in bed with stories. Outside afterwards she heard him splitting logs. He came in with his arms loaded, and filled-up the log-basket and the big stack by the chimney-breast. He’d smoked a cigarette or two out there, which wasn’t like him when he was with her; but she understood, could hardly mind. “There, that will keep you, I think,” he said, pouring himself a stiff drink and passing her one too.
“God, you shouldn’t,” she said, “you work so hard and you’re so tired when you come here… ”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said, kissing her on the nose. “Just tell me dìkuji-tì, Franto.”
“What’s that?”
“How can you forget all my lessons? It’s ‘thank you,’ remember? Next you’ll forget how to say Miluji t˘e, and I’ll have to start teaching you all over again!”
“No, I won’t – how could you say that!” she said, and burst into tears.
“Shh,” he said, “What, you are pretending we are married already! You are not on your best behaviour any more – that’s good… see, I still love you even when you are being silly and you are on the rag —!”
She wanted to make-love to him anyway, not send him home unsatisfied, but he told her she was being silly again. “I am a big boy,” he said, “if that’s the worst disappointment I have, it’s nothing. You’re more than that for me – let me show you. So you believe me.” And he rubbed her feet instead, sitting on the other end of the couch and taking her legs on his lap, murmuring scraps of unimportant conversation that didn’t require answers really, till she fell asleep there. He covered her with a rug, left a penciled love-note under it for her to find when she woke.
Between Christmas and New Year’s Day Sláma got two days off, and told everyone at the base he was going up to London again; instead he came with presents for the children, and for Sarah. There had been a dusting of snow, and while it was still light they walked outside and looked at the tracks of all the little creatures that lived in the woods and ran about all over in the night, whose passage was normally invisible. Sarah had knitted him some extra-soft and fluffy socks, of lambswool and angora, for his cold feet inside his flying-boots; he had brought her a tiny bottle of real French perfume. She wore it to make love in, of course, and he wore the socks too to make her smile. They were the best socks in the world, he said. He spent the night, slept in her bed even, a blissful visit. Of course, he had to get up early before the children and pretend he’d been in the guest-bedroom, but it didn’t matter. He was an early riser anyway, always had been; brought Sarah tea in bed.
“Karel doesn’t know, does he,” she asked him.
He winced. This was like a burr under his skin. “No,” he said, “it’s not a thing I can tell him. I thought about it. A lot. I hate this deceiving him. But how can I break his heart like this? He won’t understand, and he won’t be able to get away from me… it will make me feel better if I tell him, but for him it will make him feel much worse.”
“Won’t he guess?”
“I hope not,” said Franta. “When this is all finish and he doesn’t have to live with me, fly with me, trust me with his life… then we can tell him – and that we are sorry.”
They never talked about the missions, the scrambles, the near-misses, the air-attacks, the sorties over France and Belgium to draw the Luftwaffe fighters into combat, the landings with damaged gear and engine spluttering, the bombing-raids on the British airfields. He told her now and then when he had lost a man, under the unspoken agreement she would not ask more than he wanted to say. It was as if this was his oasis, and here he could turn his back on it for an hour or two. He didn’t want her to know about all the dangers, she could see that; he wanted her to greet him without the spectre of death in her eyes, without dread and terror in seeing him off again. He just wanted to be her lover, her sweetheart, and leave all the rest of it off to the side for now. Not pretend it wasn’t there, but not focus on it either. She went along; it seemed the least she could do for him, to be a haven when he wanted one. There was plenty of time to worry and fret when he wasn’t there, after all, god knew.
They exchanged letters in-between, sometimes passionate, sometimes of trivial things too. It made Sláma work extra hard at his English vocabulary, since there were so many things he wanted to tell Sarah that the RAF English-lessons hadn’t covered; and usually he understood what she wrote, but sometimes he had to look words up in the dictionary that she’d used in a way that didn’t make sense. Hers were longer, usually, which was understandable since writing English came naturally to her, after all; his often had something to make her laugh out loud, or shake her head, or share with the children because it was so like him and they loved him, too.
It was March when Sarah was sitting up alone mending, the children in bed, the wind in the east howling in the chimney. When the knocking sounded at the back-door she jumped, stabbed herself with the needle.
It was Fred Watson, wrapped in an old overcoat against the keen wind, lantern in hand. “There was a telephone message for you,” he said. “From a Janet. She said it was important.”
Sarah clutched at the door-frame. Her heart stalled. “What,” she cried, “oh god, come in – please – what did she say?”
“She said your friend the Flight-Lieutenant is in
hospital, over in
He looked at her face more closely. She’d been looking a bit peaked lately, the missus had said – tired, probably, with all them refugees running her ragged and not much help, if you didn’t count that Brewster woman. Mrs. Watson was not especially fond of Mrs. Brewster; they had conducted a feud for some years whose origins were lost to history but had something to do with the church flowers. She looked right peaked now. A nice chappie, he was, the Flight-Lieutenant; whatever was going on wasn’t none of their business, his wife always said, and he was so good with the children too, a lovely man. If that husband of hers didn’t come back, which after all this time it wasn’t looking too good, was it, she could do a lot worse, even if he was a foreigner. They’d only met a couple of times, but Fred Watson had plenty of respect for them Czech fellows what came over here to keep up the fight when poor old Czechoslovakia was sold down the river at Munich, and a lot of bloody good it had done them too, the rest of Europe, selling them out, hadn’t it. He’d said so to the fellow, whatever his name was, Slammer, and been met with a hot and bitter agreement like that dreadful acorn-coffee his wife had tried making one time.
She looked dreadful – though better than when he’d first started talking, before he’d had the sense to say Slammer was still alive. “Not to worry,” he said kindly, “let me put your mind to rest. Sit down, there’s a sensible lass. Of course you’re going to want to get on over there, aren’t you? Bea said to tell you she’ll come over first thing, soon as it’s light, see to the kiddies, like. We got some petrol-coupons, too.”
“Oh god,” she said, “Mr. Watson, thank you – thank you – I don’t know what to say!”
“Don’t say nothing,” he said, “try to get some sleep. It’s a long drive, and it’s set for a frost tonight: it’ll be nasty going, tomorrow.”
He held out his arms then, and gave her a swift embrace as a father might before tipping his cap and taking his leave.
It was a
gruelling drive across the country, unfamiliar roads of course and all the
signposts missing.
She found it after asking three different people, parked the car at an angle and didn’t care; ran across the street and up the steps and up to the front desk.
They couldn’t find him listed, at first; she thought for a minute he’d died. No: they didn’t know how to spell his name, had him down as something else – Salma, out-of-order, on the opposite page. Once that confusion was sorted-out, a nurse pointed up a staircase to a pair of swinging doors. “He’s on ‘B’ ward, she said, “second bed on the left. Might be asleep – he was when I was up there a few minutes ago.”
“I won’t disturb him, if he is,” promised Sarah.
He was. He was almost as pale as the sheets, and had a bandage round his head; his hands on the covers were pale too. His dark hair stuck out over the bandage, the only thing that looked like her Franta. His face was wan, transparent from exhaustion; his lips colourless. His nose looked sharper than ever without any pink in his cheeks; she could see the bone inside it just under the skin, a white gleam. He was unshaven, at least this morning, his beard a blue stubble. He was dressed in blue-and-white striped hospital pyjamas, which only emphasized the pearly-blue tone of his skin. Her darling Franta had always seemed so full of life – warmth and colour, and of course the passion he couldn’t help, as rarely as they saw each other – it had been all too easy to see him as superhuman, somehow. But he wasn’t, he was a man, a frail thing of bone and blood and a beating heart that could be hurt so easily, finished in an instant – yet still he flung himself up there almost every day, thousands of feet in the air, in a little aluminium-and-steel shell with a whirring propeller, in the path of bullets and flak, to keep them all safe. She felt her knees buckle for a moment, got a grip on herself with a fierce effort of will: she couldn’t go making a scene by collapsing, even if she did feel faint and hungry and sick all at once.
Instead she slipped round the side of his bed to where there was an upright wooden chair, and sat in it carefully so as to make no noise.
Things were going-on elsewhere on the ward, of course, patients carrying-on conversations with their neighbours in low tones, a bedpan being brought to someone by a nurse; voices behind one grey-curtained bed.
A nurse came up to her and told her it wasn’t really
visiting-hours; she begged in a whisper to be allowed to stay, said she’d
driven from
The nurse didn’t agree or disagree, just turned and left them alone together.
Sláma mumbled something and moaned, and she took hold of his hand. His fingers squeezed hers with a slight pressure, though not enough to indicate he knew she was there, Sarah – just that someone was holding his hand. He moaned again, a catch in his throat, as if he was uncomfortable. She leaned over him and stroked his cheek. “Franta – Franta, darling, do you need something?” she whispered.
He sighed, didn’t open his eyes.
She thought perhaps his mother-tongue would get through to him: “Sr-jeech-ko,” she said softly, “mi-la-i-chku… ”
Sláma sighed again: her name? It was too faint to be sure, his lips didn’t move.
“Miluyi-chi, Franta,” she said, her voice low and sweet the way he liked it best, when they made love: “miluyi-chi, miluyi-chi, sr-jeech-ko…. ”
There was a soft sound behind her: someone catching their breath? “You should have tell me,” said a trembling voice. “I knew it already inside but you should have been honest. So should he. He is all right? They tell me he is — !”
She turned, knowing already that she would see Karel’s face and that it would hurt.
He was crying, silently. His cheeks were as pink as Sláma’s were pale; he must have come over on the motorcycle. Tears rolled down them, and he was biting his lip.
“Karel, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “He didn’t want to hurt you… ”
“Franto,” he said, his voice cracking, and at the sound of it Sláma opened his eyes.
“Karel,” he croaked.
Karel said something in Czech then, and Sláma’s gaze focused slowly, found Sarah too. “Jezishi Christe,” he murmured, despairingly.
Karel dropped to his knees by the bed and laid his head on it by Sláma’s side and sobbed. Sláma put his hand on the boy’s glossy blond hair, made a sound in his own throat; closed his eyes as if it was all much too much for him. So there they were, the three of them, one of Sláma’s hands in Sarah’s and the other on Karel’s weeping head. “Je mi to líto… odpust’ mi,” he murmured, “Karel – ”
The lad picked himself up then, eyes flashing red and
brimming-over. He said something Sarah
couldn’t understand, and Sláma replied in
“Oh, Franta,” said Sarah, “I’m so sorry —!”
“It had to be,” he whispered, as if he hadn’t the strength to speak any louder. “I tell him I am sorry, ask him to pardon, but – how can I ask?” He shivered, then: “God, I have still cold,” he said, “can I have more blanket, please?”
“Of course,” said Sarah, “I’ll go and ask for you.”
She found a nurse and told her right away that he was cold.
“Yes, he will be,” said the nurse, “we had to raise his body temperature last night when they brought him in – he was chilled, chilled to the bone. It won’t make him any warmer, but if it’ll make him feel better I’ll get another blanket. And a hot-water-bottle, that’ll help.”
“What about his head?” asked Sarah, now she had finally found someone who would talk to her about Franta, “ – why is it bandaged? Why is he so pale?”
“Oh, it’s just a scalp laceration,” said the nurse, “ – a superficial cut,” she added kindly then, seeing Sarah’s concerned look, “not deep. But they bleed a lot, you know, scalp wounds always do, and he did lose a lot of blood. He’ll be all right, though, you’ll see.”
“How long was he out there?”
“Best part of twelve hours, from what I understand,” said
the nurse. “Ditched off the
Sarah thought how close he had come to death, then, a speck floating in that leaden frigid slab of sea with waves sloshing over the sides of his little dinghy and the wind cutting through him.
“Go on,” said the nurse, “look, he wants you. I’ll get that blanket and hot-water-bottle. I’ll try to bring hot blankets, too, they’re always nice.”
Sláma was shivering.
“Hold my hand, Sarah,” he said, “prosím –?”
“Of course,” she said, taking it in both of hers.
“The only good is that he can’t hit me till I’m standing,” said Sláma. “But he’s deva-stated. I’ve betray him.”
“Ssh,” she said, “don’t worry about that now. You’ve got to get better before you worry about anything.”
“Ne,” he murmured, “Sarah, don’t. Bennett he patronizes me. Don’t you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Is all right. Just sit.” His eyelids fluttered. By the time the nurse came back with the blankets, he was out of it again. They tucked them round him anyway.
Karel wasn’t speaking to him, he told her. The boy had told Machaty that he’d seen
Sláma’s car from the air at her house, weeks ago, when Franta had said he was
going to
“It’s my fault,” he said, “if it’s anybody’s. I was the one that could have sayed no.”
“Do you wish you had?” She held her breath. He didn’t know yet: was this going to ruin everything between them? God, he wouldn’t finish it between them, would he, over this? The damage had been done already – Karel had to get over it now, that was all there was to it. His idol Franta was fallible; his beloved hero had feet of clay, was a man, wasn’t perfect. The woman Karel had loved didn’t love him back, not like that; he was a lad and she had been kind, no more.
She loved his friend, and he had introduced them.
Well, there it was. Hardly the first time, for this sorry little story. People took other peoples’ sweethearts all the time. Husbands and wives, even. Well at least she’d made no promises like that to Karel, thank goodness. Young Vojtíšek was just a sweet boy who’d fallen for her, out of his depth. She’d done nothing to encourage him after that first single act of mercy – on the contrary, she’d done everything she could to discourage him.
According to Franta, he was behaving like a wounded bear. He’d grow out of it, one day, if he lived so long and didn’t kill himself with drinking and lack of sleep.
And she’d asked Franta if he wished he’d said no to her – and she was still waiting to hear his answer.
“No,” he said, but he sounded sad. “Ne… no, how I can wish that? Only that I wish it was different, that’s all. Not to hurt Karel.”
“I know,” she said.
“Hold me,” he said, “I want to make you come before I go. Will you let me?” He hadn’t been as ardent himself since the ditching – it had only been six weeks, and he didn’t have his strength back fully yet – but he was no less of a sweetheart in bed. Their usual twice or three times had become one slower, gentler one, these last couple of trysts. She counted herself fortunate he could get away at all; the drive tired him, and she didn’t want to send him back exhausted.
“Is that what you want?” she asked him, softly.
“Is it what you want?” he replied, “srdíèko?”
“Prosím,” she said, “if you’re not too tired… ”
“I’m never too tired for this,” he said, “not to hear you. Always I remember this time in the car that I want first to please you… ” He smiled, reached to touch her breast in the way that always melted her.
They were extraordinarily sensitive now, far more so; he’d noticed it, because he noticed everything, but he hadn’t said anything. He raised his eyebrows, though, and was gentler than ever with his kisses there. She had liked wilder things from him, there especially, and he’d always been happy to oblige – but not since: not for the last few weeks. Lately she’d gasped, whispered, “be gentle – Franta – ”
He brought her there easily, as wide-open to him as she was. His other hand was resting palm-down on her belly as he did so, his face at her breast. Since January it had been much stronger, the clenching fist inside her that began her climax; now he felt it too, something there that went hard like a little rock in her belly for a few seconds. He’d been stroking her breasts and feeling the different heft of them too, lifting them in his hands and bringing his mouth to nipples that had darkened in colour from rose to damson.
He held her while she finished, then he kissed her. “What’s this?” he asked her, softly, in the voice he used with the children sometimes, the one that was very gentle.
“It’s me… ” she said.
“Do you have something to tell me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“When it is?”
“September,” she said.
“So it’s from Christmas, then?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “I haven’t had any tests, but I did see the doctor. A fortnight ago. He confirmed it. I was going to tell you as soon as you were better… next time, perhaps — ”
He breathed out a moment, now it was said. “Proboha,” he said, swallowing. “Are you unhappy?” he asked her then, concern creasing the corners of his eyes.
“God, no!” she said, “oh Franta, no — I couldn’t be happier!”
“I thought it wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “I would have been more careful, Sarah – I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You haven’t,” she said.
“Are you sure? It’s a lot — you know I’ll never let you down, god, but I’m not – not such a good risk, Sarah… ”
“Sh,” she said, “Franta, I’ve never been happier in my life. And I couldn’t ever regret this — ever.”
“Not even if one day I don’t come back?” He had never said that before – but this was a new responsibility, and he was determined to be honest about it, she could see.
“I think… more than ever, then,” she said, even though the thought ripped at her bowels, her spine. “If I didn’t have you, I’d at least have… something — this grace, this blessing, this – miracle – that we’ve made… ”
“Is it for you, a miracle?”
“Yes,” she said.
He made a small sound like a sob in his throat. “Then it is for me too,” he said, “my love.”
She put her hand over his that rested still over the place where the child to be lay curled like a tiny fish inside her.
“Please god you don’t regret,” he said, “this — mùj syn – má dcera…? – my
son, my daughter, that grows inside you?”
“Never,” she
said, “I promise, Franta, never. I
couldn’t regret it. No matter what.”
“I want to marry
you, then,” he said. “But you can’t, can
you?”
“No,” she said,
“it’s not been long enough. I don’t even
know what that is. Missing in action and
missing-believed-killed and killed-in-action – god, Franta… I have no idea.”
“I don’t want
the same thing to happen for you again,” he said.
“Hush,” she said.
“The girls on the base,” he said, “all they talk about is a ring, they want a ring. Then it’s all right, if they sleep with the boys, my boys. You haven’t asked me for that. You haven’t asked me for anything.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Besides, did you forget? I asked you for you.”
“Yes,” he said, “yes, you did. Well, you have me — but what about a ring? Can I get for you now? So this child has a father that loves you and he is proud to say so?”
“Would you like that?”
“Yes,” he said, “I want it a lot. I was wondering, if it was – waiting, for you to tell me. I noticed you’re different last time also. I hear the girls talk, you know they think our English isn’t so good… I know what it means when you’re not how you were before. When you’re tender here, in the tits… ”
“Franta — are you happy?”
He grinned, kissed her between the breasts and on the nose. “Don’t you remember? Always I have wanted children. This is a bit of a shock, now, but — yes, I’m happy. How can I be unhappy?”
“Thank god,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
He went to Janet. She was sitting by Machaty at the piano, of course. Honzi was playing something melancholy. “Can you play A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square?” Sláma asked him, speaking English out of politeness to Janet.
“’Course, old man,” said Machaty, the cigarette drooping from his lips as always in its holder and waggling as he spoke. “Just let me finish this – it’s only a few more bars. You’re not usually the one with requests.”
“Yes, well,” said Sláma, “I am tonight. I’m buying you a round, too. Janet? The same, yes?”
“Well, if you’re buying,” she said, “I’ll have a gin-and-tonic, Franta – do you mind?”
“’Course not,” he said, “that’s why I ask you. Honziku, another scotch?”
Machaty nodded.
Sláma came back with all their drinks. Karel was sitting over the other side, ignoring him with care. He felt a pang for the boy, of course; that was something he lived with, now. Vojtíšek still hadn’t said anything to him in the weeks since he’d found out, beyond ‘Roger, Blue leader,’ and ‘Permission to head back to base, Blue leader, over.’ He’d changed rooms with someone else in the bunkhouse, too. But time would be kind, if nothing else was. And it was a relief not to be hiding it any more.
He sat down beside Janet, passed her her gin-and-tonic. “I got you a double,” he said. “You too, Honzi.”
“Mm,” she said, brightening, “What’s the occasion?”
“You remember this telephone number you are keeping for me, yes? And you know it’s for miláèku, my girl, mm?”
She nodded, her eyes brightening. “I’ve never said anything,” she said, though since his ditching and Karel coming back to base looking like a wet week it wasn’t a secret any more.
“I know,” he said. “You’re a good woman, Janet, that’s why I told it to you at the beginning.”
“Thank you,” she said, going pink with pleasure. Sláma was a sweetie, and a compliment from him meant a lot: he didn’t throw them around like some of the boys. If he said it, she knew he was sincere.
“Honzi,” he said, “Janet, drink to something with me. We’re engaged.”
“Oh my god,” she cried, “Franta, that’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you!’
Honzi nodded enthusiastically, broke into the tune he’d asked for. Janet took the cigarette from his lips and tilted the scotch there instead. She was a dear like that.
“There’s a reason,” said Sláma. “It’s not everybody’s business yet, but it will be I suppose. But for now it’s too much – I have to tell somebody. She’s — we’re going to have — she’s you-know – I’m going to be a father —!”
She kissed him soundly on the cheek, her blue eyes shining. “You sound happy about it, Franta!”
“Well I’m surprised a bit, but yes — I thought she couldn’t, you see, she was married ten years, and she’d told me she couldn’t. But — I always want, so yes, even if it’s – not quite legitimate yet, yes, I’m how-you-say – overjoyed, yes? I mean, surprised also, don’t mistake, I am shocked – but it’s a good shock.”
Machaty put his emotion into the song. It was very sweet and tender.
“I want you to meet her,” Sláma said. “You didn’t meet, did you, at the hospital?”
“No,” said Janet, “she’d gone home by the time we got there. And you haven’t told us much.”
“I will,” said Sláma, “this changes everything. And now Karel knows about it, so – it’s open I suppose, like the two of you.”
She looked sad for a second, and he remembered of course she and Machaty couldn’t be engaged, because of Irma. But they were a couple; she’d never looked at another fellow since Machaty had walked into the base and sat down at the piano.
“Sorry,” he said, “but you know what I mean. Anyway, it’s complicated for us also, because
they have to wait a certain time before they declare him dead, you know, her
husband. His ship went down in the
She put her hand on his. “You deserve to be happy, Franta,” she said.
“Thank you,” he replied, “I don’t know about that – but I am. Anyway, Janet, I am asking you about a ring. I want to get her a ring and I don’t know about these things and I was sure that you do.”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“I think I have to draw money from the bank because they
won’t want to take my cheque, because I’m a pilot as well as foreign,” he
said. “You know. Cash is better. I want
to do it properly, you know, drive to
“I thought you said she couldn’t have any!”
He laughed. “Oh, they’re not hers, they are refugees. She has got five. She takes care of them. She says two might be going back, now it seems the Blitz is finished, but we don’t know how long she keeps them really. Till they can go home. But she can’t just get away from everything and come with me for a ring. And I want her to have it, I don’t want to wait, I want her to have one now, because – in case — you know. Because you never know.”
“Of course,” she said, “Franta, that’s lovely. You’re such a dear! God, I can’t wait to meet her… ”
“She’s beautiful,” he said, “krásný – I’m not
talking about how she looks, only – she is everything I can want — god, Janet,
I didn’t think, I didn’t expect, not in the middle of all this, you know — but
we never know anything, I suppose.”
“Right-oh,” she
said. “So are you asking me how much
rings cost?”
“That’s right,”
he said, “ – just an idea so I know how much money to bring.”
“What do you
want to spend?”
“Enough,” he
said, “enough for a nice one. I have
savings, you know we don’t spend a lot here, and I haven’t really bought
anything after my car, so — enough.
Still I’ll have money left over.”
“A hundred
pounds would buy something nice,” she said.
“Two hundred would be a lot.”
“All right,” he
said, “thank you.”
She looked at
him with tenderness. “You really are in
love, aren’t you,” she said, putting her hand over his for a moment and
squeezing it. “Who would have thought
it?”
“I may be wrong,
I may be right,” Machaty sang, “but I’m perfectly willing to swear... that as
we kissed and said goodnight, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square…!” He finished with a little riffle of notes up
and down with his right hand, drained his scotch with his left. He slapped Sláma on the back, then, and
insisted the next round was on him.
Bennett’s china-blue eyes looked up in surprise. “Well, goodness me, Sláma, you are a dark horse!”
“Sir?”
“A surprise, old man.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you, sir, but I thought – my record – you have next-of-kin, of course we don’t have here, not most of us Czechs, but now I do, so — ”
“Yes, I understand. It’s a bit informal, just a fiancée, but I’ll make sure it’s entered.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And, Sláma — ”
“Sir?”
“Congratulations!”
Sláma looked back at those faded eyes. They were perfectly sharp when they needed to be. They were now. The whites were faintly yellow, the lids red and strained – he supposed his weren’t looking so pretty these days, either. It had been a bloody long god-awful three years, and there no signs of its being over yet. They were all strained. “Let me know when it’s all legal,” said Bennett – “you’ll be inviting Mrs. Bennett and me to the wedding, I hope?”
They had been at enough funerals together, thought Sláma, a wedding would be nice. He had met the Wing Commander’s wife a few times; a pleasant woman, sharp as her husband: you couldn’t put anything over on her. She had faded yellow-grey hair piled up in a bun, and penetrating grey eyes. Her willowy tall figure was still perfect. Must have been quite a looker once, back in the days represented by that photograph on the wall behind Bennett’s head, the Great War-era De Havilland biplane. He wondered what Sarah would look like twenty years from now, and felt his heart melt. There’d be strands of silver in her chestnut locks by then – he hoped she wouldn’t cut them – but her eyes would be the same. And they’d have had a life of one another’s company, at last enough for him not to feel bereft each time they parted. He’d be less on fire then, of course, but he hoped it would still be as sweet making-love with her. Surely it would… like a last-year’s apple, doubly sweet inside the thinned skin.
“I don’t know when there’ll be a wedding, sir,” said Sláma, “but there’s going be a christening. If you think Mrs. Bennett would like to come to that.” There, he’d said it. What did he have to be ashamed of? Nothing. They’d only done what thousands of couples had, not waited till the gold ring was on her finger – but it was what you intended that counted, wasn’t it? And Bennett could hardly fault one of his officers for not waiting till the war was over for a bit of comfort, or they’d be hanging out to dry a bloody long time, and some of them would never get it. Bennett of all people knew that: he went to all the funerals, had to make out all the casualty reports; could spell the names of all the boys they’d lost, too, the Czechs as well, Sláma knew that and respected him for it. If they were going to risk their lives every day to follow his orders, sit in those briefings and then go out and do it, that was the least he could do. And – to his credit – he did say ‘Slah-ma,’ even, not Slammer.
“I see,” said Bennett, softly. “Jumped the gun, did we? Well, that’s none of my business… but congratulations again, then. You’d better hurry up with that wedding, you know, we usually do it the other way round over here.”
Sláma stiffened a little, knowing Bennett couldn’t help sounding patronizing but stung he would even think that he, František Sláma, would get a woman into trouble and not do the right thing by her. “It’s complicated, sir,” he said proudly, “I know what’s the honourable thing to do. And I would do it, believe me. In an instant. Already I would have. But she has a husband missing from the Navy, it’s been almost two years and the chances he’s alive are zero, just about. But she can’t – it’s complicated,” he said again, in ending. He felt his cheeks burning; damn, it was humiliating having to explain about his private business like that, but he was the one who’d mentioned the christening, before he could think better of it, so now the rest of the explaining was his to do as well.
“I see,” said Bennett, softly. “Well, that’s perfectly understandable, then. These are strange times… I’m not about to fault you, when everything’s topsy-turvy. Good luck, Sláma.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sláma, saluting. The piece of paper with Sarah’s address and the telephone number to reach her with a message lay in front of Bennett now, on his desk-blotter, written-out in Sláma’s own neat printing. It would go into his file, and so then Janet wouldn’t have to be the one to ring up.
Nobody would, he told himself, nobody would be ringing-up. And the last name on the paper would read ‘Sláma,’ and it would be formal and official enough even for Wing Commander bloody Bennett.
It was perfect for her, he knew as soon as he saw it in the tray. Others were more showy, but Sarah had an elegant, restrained style that wasn’t about being showy at all. She had class, he thought, and so did the ring. It was a square-cut diamond, which was what made it fit into the setting so well, it was bigger than the round ones that way but not so ostentatious. Till you looked at it closely and then it was exquisite.
Would she like it?
He thought of her eyes, the way they went soft when she looked at him. He thought if he had chosen it for her and bought it and brought it to her and gone down on his knee to give it to her, she could hardly not like it. She wasn’t fussy like that. She knew what really mattered.
She would cry, more likely. She’d been doing more of that, lately. It was understandable, at least that was what he’d heard, because of all the changes in a woman’s body when she’s pregnant – it was like the moodiness of her periods, only more so. Back in his bachelor days he’d have rolled his eyes, he knew. He’d had less patience with Hanicka’s ways, he remembered, though they’d always been glad when her period came because it meant she wasn’t in trouble. That was before the war, though, when everything was different, nothing was urgent, you could put things off and it didn’t matter.
Not any more. The mysteries of another human and their physicality were all too fresh for him now, too poignant to be taken for granted or complained about. He knew he too could be difficult at times, moody as well, short-tempered, hard to please even. When they’d flown for a fortnight straight he’d blow up at the slightest thing, on the ground. He’d even lost his temper with the children here and there, and stood-up right away with an apology on his lips and gone off to walk round the garden till he got it back. So if Sarah was a bit tearful, well, he’d planted the child that was changing her body like this, and he could accept it.
Anyway, sometimes when she cried it got him going and they’d made the tenderest love afterwards; some of his favourite times had had tears in them. The first, for example. You just had to remind yourself it wasn’t always your fault, when a woman cried. That she might be sharing something vulnerable with you, you weren’t to blame. Even if you were, she was showing you she was hurt so you could put it right.
“This one,” he said, “I’ll take this one. How much it is?”
The elderly jeweller nodded. “You’ve got a good eye, sir, I’ll say that. It’s much the best. I’d have put more on it, but the setting’s a little old-fashioned for what they’re wanting nowadays, some of them. This one’s classic, it’ll never go out of style. That’ll be two hundred and fifty guineas, sir.”
Sláma didn’t hesitate. “Yes. That’s the one. It needs to be this size, to fit my little finger… I have tried her – her other ring, and this size for my finger will fit good. Well.”
“Very good, sir,” said the jeweller.
“One thing,” said Sláma. “I have only two hundred pounds.”
Oh, he was going to be cheap about it, was he? Pity, that.
When he’d first come in
“I have also my cheque,” said Sláma, “so you will tell me please what is the difference. I can’t calculate these guineas, they make me all confused. I know it’s more. Is it a problem for you, to accept my cheque also? As well as the two hundred cash? Because if it is, then I can go to bank. Only it will take longer, and really I want to get back. I don’t have much time.”
Ah. That was
different. Altogether different. He wasn’t a cheapskate, not at all. He’d been thoughtful enough to realize about
the cash, even. He just hadn’t expected
to like something that was quite this much.
“Tell you what, sir,” he said. “I read the ticket upside-down. It’s two hundred. Just the extra for the guineas, of course. Another ten pounds. Well — never mind about that, either. I’m glad to do business with you, sir.” Sláma had opened his wallet, was pulling out the crisp notes. “I’ll just write you up a receipt, and then it’ll take me a few minutes, if we need to re-size it – why don’t you try it on, sir, if you’re sure your little finger’s the right size?”
Sláma slipped it over his knuckle. “I hope I can get it off again,” he said, “I think my how-you-say, this bone in the finger, it’s bigger than hers. But this here is good, where it sits.”
“Just twist it a little, sir,” said
“It’s perfect,” said Sláma. “You see, it was meant to be the one for her.”
The old man smiled to himself, taking it back and rubbing it up to its full lustre. The next part was his favourite, old romantic that he was under his businessman’s heart, specially now since there was a war on. Well, after being paid, of course, that went without saying. He reached under the counter and picked one of his better boxes. It was discreet and grey, not showy like some places had, but with his name stamped small in gold underneath and a white trim; real pre-war velvet inside, a black cushion with a small slit in it. He opened it and pressed the ring into the slit, gave the face of the stone a final polish so its sparkle was undiminished by any slightest film of grease from their handling it. The clasp was white-gold, worked into the plain gold band, the classic faces of the baguette-cut stone crisply winking with fire of all colours. If you looked closely.
This officer took it from him and looked closely. He smiled, too; his eyes went a little glittery. These foreigners could get emotional like
that, though.
“Sarah,” said Sláma. Yes, god bless him, there was that huskiness in the throat. This was a keeper, as his wife liked to say. It was she who’d shared it with him, sharpest of saleswomen that she was. “They love to say it,” she said, “and it’s always a clincher. They won’t leave empty-handed, not once you’ve got them talking about her.”
Well, this sale was already made, but he’d asked it anyway because he enjoyed it now, watching these lads come in with their fresh faces and their brass buttons and their difficult, dangerous futures they were investing in anyway, to the tune of a very expensive ring – he had no rubbish in his shop, never had, never would. This one was a bit older, looked as if he’d seen a thing or two; not a boy, like some of them were. And there was that DFC, you couldn’t mistake it, the diagonal stripes on the scrap of ribbon: that said a lot. That stood for something about the man, that did, Czech or no Czech. That was a proper English decoration, just like that was a proper RAF uniform he wore and a proper cap and everything. His accent didn’t matter; he was out there shooting at Jerries on everyone’s behalf.
He was looking forward to telling his wife about him. “Handsome chap,” he’d say, “in a foreign way – big nose on him, almost looks like a Jew except the rest of his face isn’t. Not too tall. Not short, either. Made his mind up right away.”
She’d smile; she liked that sort best, too. The others were more of a challenge to your art, of course, making sure they bought, paid cash, but the easy ones were like catching a big fish and watching it gleam on the end of your rod. And they wanted to be there, it was a transaction of mutual pleasure, that was the best thing of all.
“Well then,”
“Next week,” said Sláma, “I hope. It depends when I can get away, it’s difficult. Soon, though.”
“Yes, it is,” said Sláma, “it’s very good indeed. Thank you.”
He would have to be sure to remember to tell Ivy about those shining dark eyes. Gipsy-like, he’d say, you’d have taken a fancy to him, pet, if I know you…
She’d dig him with her elbow and they’d chuckle. It was true, though, she liked a nice lad in uniform as much as the next one, even now in her sixties – every woman did, at heart. And why not?
Sláma said thank you one more time, and left. The bell tinkled behind him; he’d closed the
door firmly, not left it to shut on its own or not as the case might be. A small thing, but it said a lot. There were some that took care and some that
didn’t, and the world was fairly well divided between them. Being in the trade, of course, it went
without saying that
He watched the blue uniform move down the street: a jaunty walk, a crisp step, the head straight under the proud RAF cap. Sarah, eh?
Lucky girl – luckier than most.
She did cry. He got up from his knee and gave her his handkerchief, helped her slip it on her finger. She moved her wedding-band to the other hand, so his ring would be alone there on that finger. He didn’t ask her to, but it made his throat tight when she did; all it said, all there was no need to say.
“God, Franta,” she said, “it’s beautiful — it must have cost a fortune!”
“No,” he said, “ – yes it’s beautiful, and you also, and no it wasn’t a fortune. It was enough. Good enough for you. You like it, don’t you?”
“God, yes,” she said.
“Kiss me,” he said. “I like how your tears taste. So long as it’s happy tears. Even the others, so long as you will still kiss me.”
“You’re not leaving till later, are you?” she asked, biting her lip.
“Of course not,” he said. “You know how it is. We’ll wait till they’re asleep, and then – I hope —! – but can we go to your bedroom, tonight? I don’t feel like making-love on the sofa. I want to hold you, and it’s not wide enough.”
“Yes,” she said, “as long as we’re quiet… ”
“What are they going to think?” he said. “They know anyway, they know you’re my sweetheart. They know I’m the man that comes whenever he can and your face goes pink. They’re not so naïve, even if they are children.”
“No, it’s just — people do talk, you know, Franta — ”
“They’ll have a lot more to talk about soon, won’t they?” he smiled, putting his hand on the unmistakable curve of her belly. It was starting to show, now. Not from a distance perhaps, but if she stood next to you, you saw it. She’d had to let her skirts out at the waist, stopped wearing the tightest ones; her dresses were more comfortable, the ones with a bit of fullness. She filled them differently, like a fruit swelling inside its husk.
“Of course,” she said, taking him by the hand and leading him upstairs. The ring glittered on her finger. Slowly, garment by garment and with many kisses in-between, he undressed her.
Afterwards they lay holding one another. “You’re crying all the time,” he said, “you cry every time you have climax, these days – what am I going to do about you?”
“I did the first time, too,” she said, “don’t you remember?”
“You think I would forget that? Yes I remember, you darling idiot. But no more cigarettes.”
“No,” she said. “God, I felt so stupid… ”
“But you weren’t,” he smiled, “you only felt it. We all feel stupid when we are – I don’t know what word to use, but it’s like naked, no clothes – don’t we?”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“I felt stupid when the Wing Commander points out to me that usually the way we do it over here is we get married first, old boy.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him the truth. I’m not ashamed, Sarah, that’s how it is. You are my fiancée and one day we will be married. So – it’s a bit complicated — never mind. So’s everything else. So what?”
She sighed. “I love you,” she said. “Franta, you’re so — god, I don’t know — sensitive. Sensible. Both.”
“What is the difference, please?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that. Sensible is like common sense, you know, you do the thing that makes the most sense.”
He groaned. “This sense, it means so many things. All right. And the other?”
She smiled. “Oh, you’re lots more things, too. Sense has so many meanings… you’re sensual, too, Franta, haven’t I told you that?”
“And that is –?”
“Sensitive is when you understand things. You feel them and you know what they mean. Without having to be told. Like the way you make love to me, you read how I am and you’re different with me. If I’m feeling passionate, or weepy, or tender.”
“If you are sensitive,” he said, smiling.
“Yes, exactly. Though there it means if I’m feeling everything a lot. I suppose that’s the same thing, anyway.”
“Close enough,” he said. “I am sensitive to feel if you are sensitive. I have that. I understand it. Yes, it’s true, I know when you are that way. And this other, then, what was that?”
“Sensual?”
“Yes.”
“Mmmm, that one’s exciting,” she said. “It means you’re good in bed.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” he whispered, nuzzling against her.
“Yes,” she said, “in the sense that you bring all your senses to – to what you experience. People can be sensual smelling a rose, too, or eating – it means the kind of person that really is open to it. That isn’t afraid to smell and taste and feel… that enjoys it.”
“I think so,” he said. “I enjoy you, anyway.”
“I know,” she said on a sigh.
“That’s what you saw, isn’t it,” he said. “That first day. I saw it about you, too.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m glad you saw,” he said. “I tried to hide what I am thinking about you, but you saw in my eyes anyway. And so here we are, it’s a year almost, and we are – blessed… with each other. No?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You only think? You don’t know?”
“Oh, love,” she said, “when you say it like this, I think so, with the emphasis on the ‘I,’ then you mean yes I agree. Not I’m not sure. You mean you really do think it’s so.”
“God,” he said, “you will be teaching me proper English the rest of our lives, Sarah...”
“Prosim,” she said: please.
“You learn a little Czech too already, it’s good so,” he said. “Don’t get out of bed to see me off. Stay there. You’re pregnant now, remember? You should rest — go to sleep.”
Chapter 7 –
Icarus
Afterwards it hurt, to think he’d told her that, not even had a proper goodbye. But who knew? Not that they ever said ‘goodbye,’ he was superstitious about that. He always said ‘Soon, then,’ and then right when he was leaving, at the very last moment, ‘I love you, Sarah — miluji t˘e,’ just in case it was the last time. You always had to say that, because you never knew and then you could fly your plane and do all the things you had to do and know you’d for sure said it, that it was the last thing you’d said, and you didn’t have to worry what that was. But he wished he’d asked her to get up and see him out, had a proper tight embrace at the door – well not too tight, because her tits were so tender these days, but close and long — not just what he did: kissing her softly on the cheek as she lay drowsy there under the covers, a cheek still flushed from their lovemaking.
But it was what it was, and he thought she was asleep when he said ‘Miluji t˘e’ to her those few minutes later. She fell asleep quickly, now she was pregnant. There were so many things that were different, and he felt like a husband observing them and loving her for it, each one as he noticed. He’d seen the darker circles that ringed her nipples, now, and the faint dark trace that was making a line down her rounding belly. He’d seen the glossiness of her hair, more than ever: a healthy shine that said her body was doing what it should, and was flourishing and nourishing itself and the child. She was constantly in and out of the lavatory; he smiled, didn’t comment. He’d noticed her need for lots of rest, and done what he could, slipping Mrs. Brewster an extra five pounds here and there to come earlier and stay longer and do more and take the children out sometimes and let her put her feet up. Mrs. Brewster hadn’t missed what was happening; there was a gleam in her eye as she took the money and put it in the pocket of her apron, looked him up and down before she’d thanked him. As if he’d behaved exactly the way she’d expected him to all along. But at least he was taking responsibility for it.
That was before they were engaged. Sarah did tell Mrs. Brewster, and the Watsons. Word got out, of course, in a village like that; afterwards the people were kind, Mrs. Watson especially, popping over in the middle of the day sometimes to see if she needed anything, lending a hand with the endless washing and even (he’d heard) knitting bootees.
What were boo-tees?
Tiny little lacy boots for a baby...
Oh, those.
It was her way of saying she’d noticed, Franta, so I didn’t have to be embarrassed telling her.
Oh, that was very nice.
Yes.
So he wasn’t the only one noticing things, anyway.
And that was why he slipped away and left her there curled-up on her side, not making a big deal about his leaving.
Thinking he’d be back soon, as soon as he could —
God. Pane Boze. Proboha. Panenko Maria.
Thinking he’d be back.
Jezishi Christe. He’d shed a few hot tears even, afterwards, at the worst times in the middle of the night when he couldn’t keep them back, to think about it: all he hadn’t said, that he would have, if he’d known. In some ways that was the least of it, of course. But it was a sharp point to focus on, something very particular he could regret. Behind it lay all the rest that was shapeless, all-pervading; raw hurt and loss and bewilderment.
He’d stopped on the way, at another of those roadside stands. It was late May and the earliest cherries were just starting. He was happy to see it, braked and put the car into reverse and went back the few yards to take a closer look. Wooden punnets were stacked enticingly, the cherries gleaming like rubies. There was a cup beside them, with a hand-lettered sign: 6d./punit. 3 for 1/-
He’d been thinking she ought to have more fruit, he was sure expectant women needed it. Besides the lovely old Christmas carol about it, when the Lord bent down a branch of a cherry-tree for pregnant Mary, he’d felt concerned about Sarah now her body was changing. He knew on his own account that when he’d first come here and been fed these wretched rations of cooked-to-death carrots and white bread, his bowels had suffered. The food still didn’t always agree with him, but eating lots of apples helped and so did forcing down the rest of the unappetizing vegetables they served. It wasn’t something he would have embarrassed her by asking about straight-out, up till now, but this would be a sweet way to offer the subject for consideration and let her know he was concerned for her, even about things like that. After all, she was human just like him. The cherries would tempt her appetite, and go down easily, and be sweet and juicy and do her good.
Sláma fished half a crown out of his pocket, and (after calculating a couple of times on his fingers to be sure he wasn’t cheating them, because god only knew this English money was so peculiar) helped himself to the seven punnets he had due. That way there would be enough for everyone. If he only bought one or two she’d give most of them to the children – you couldn’t walk into a house full of children with a treat like that and not expect them to have any!
So when he pulled up outside the house, there were seven punnets of cherries on the back seat. He’d known that some would escape, hoped not too many had spilled. Hardly the sweetest thing that had gone-on back there, though, nor the only spilling, if they had. Even now, almost a year later, just the memory was enough to make his stomach do a little flip. God, they’d been so desperate for one another! In the car, for heaven’s sake — ! and her boots outside getting soaked, and… Sarah, Sarah. He’d even found himself singing an old song he’d learned in school, as the now-familiar road unspooled itself and drew him there.
Sláma got out of the car with an expectant look on his face, a smile ready to break into a “Hello! Darling, hello!” as soon as he saw her.
Something was wrong. It was in her face. She was behind the hedge, the pretty beech hedge that kept its russet leaves all winter and changed them to a sweet bright green in spring, and she saw him coming and her face froze. Then it filled with a pain he couldn’t understand.
She was walking forward slowly, stiffly, her hands out in front of her for some reason where he couldn’t see them over the top of the hedge.
If she was hurt, why didn’t she come running into his arms?
God, had she lost the baby? But then why wasn’t she saying anything, not even Oh, Franta!
With an icy certainty he saw that she was pretending she didn’t know him. Pretending to who?
To the man in a wheelchair she was pushing along. He emerged from behind the hedge in front of Sarah, her hands on the handles of the chair.
Franta recognized him from his picture on the mantelpiece.
His throat closed-up. His breath stalled. Charles Strickland was looking at him inquiringly. Above his head, where he couldn’t see it, his wife’s expression was stricken, anguished. She shook her head slightly, looking at Sláma as if to say, ‘it’s no use.’ Her lips were pressed together. There was no colour in them – they looked as if a cry would come out, if she parted them.
Strickland held a pipe clamped between his teeth; he took it out of his mouth to ask, pleasantly, “Can I help you, old chap?”
Sláma knew he had to say something. Something, that was, besides, ‘I seem to have knocked up your wife – awfully sorry, old chap – thought you were history… ’
He said, “I – I am sorry, I seem to have – to have lost my way.”
Well, that was true enough. He felt as if he’d never know true North again, or any other direction, let alone which way was up. He’d flown into a cloud and come out upside-down.
“Where are you headed, old boy?” asked Strickland, cheerfully enough. From one man in uniform to another, it was a courtesy; the least that might be offered. Strickland still wore his Naval rig, coat and sweater and navy-blue trousers and his lieutenant’s cap, with its crown and anchor. Sláma’s cap offered its crown and wings to go with them.
Wings were to fly with. An anchor kept you chained to the bottom.
“To – to London,” he said, wondering if Strickland knew yet. He looked too content for a man who’d come home to all that, Sláma thought, even though he couldn’t walk, it seemed. Perhaps she hadn’t said anything yet. Though really it did show.
God, couldn’t she have telephoned to warn him?
It seemed clear to him that Strickland had no idea who he was, or that there might be anything odd about his being there. He wanted to meet Sarah’s eyes again, but he knew he couldn’t. He didn’t dare. This was a minefield.
Her knuckles were white on the tubular handles.
Strickland waved his pipe back the way he’d come. “Easy, old boy. You’ve taken a wrong turning. Go back the way you came, and then instead of that road, turn left. Keep going through the village – and the next one. Then you’ll hit the main road.”
“Thank you,” said Sláma.
Should he ask Sarah if she wanted the chance to speak with him? What did he have to lose? “Should I be careful,” he asked, “and drive slowly? Is the road all right?”
“It’s been mended,” said Sarah in a flat voice. “You don’t need to drive slowly. There are no more pot-holes.”
“Oh” said Sláma, “all right. That’s – that’s good. Thank you. Good-bye, then.”
“’Bye,” called Strickland.
‘Sbohem,’
said Sláma under his breath. It
was the good-bye you say when you are taking leave for good. No more see-you-laters, no more nashledani for them.
No more anything.
As he got back in the car and started to reverse, one of the twins saw him through the window and waved. Sláma looked, to be sure: it was all right, Lt. Strickland was out-of-sight, so he gave a little wave back. It would have been churlish not to.
He’d left too early for the post. Her letter met him on his return.
My
darling Franta,
I
don’t even know how to begin this. I
almost wish I was writing to tell you I was dead instead. It’s Charles.
My husband. He’s not dead. He’s here.
He arrived on Monday. He’s been
hiding in Occupied Norway ever since his ship went down. He couldn’t get out before because of his
injuries. I don’t really know how they
got him out now, but he was smuggled on a fishing-boat that met one of
ours. He can’t walk. The doctors have told him it’s most unlikely
he’ll be able to. A family was taking
care of him but it got too dangerous for them.
God only knows how they managed it all, he’s quite helpless.
Franta
you do see what this means, don’t you. I
am so beside myself I don’t know where to turn.
All I know is that if he had come back a whole man I think I would have
told him I was sorry and asked for a divorce.
But he’s not, Franta. I don’t
know how I can do that with everything the way it is. I can’t be as cruel and selfish as that. Do
you understand? I don’t see what else to
do.
He’ll
have to know about the baby. He doesn’t
yet. I’m going to tell him on
Sunday. I don’t know if he’ll want to
divorce me, then. But I don’t think
so. He doesn’t believe in it. Franta I feel so trapped I am ready to do
something drastic. Don’t worry that I
will. I won’t. I just want to. Oh my god Franta. What can I possibly say? I want to write words of love to you but they
all sound hollow, I can’t bear to say them even. Not now.
Oh god bless you my darling for ever. I will let you know when it’s born, I
promise. I am so so so very sorry. Look after yourself Franta —— always, Sarah.
The envelope was fat. There was another, small strong envelope inside with something wrapped in tissue-paper. It was his ring.
He sat on his bunk and read it over and over. It didn’t make any more sense the fifth time than it had the first, except that it was over between them. It was everything else that didn’t make any sense. How could the fellow come back now? And in this condition?
Well, he had and there was an end of it.
And she was too honourable to abandon him.
Sláma wanted to bang his head against the wall, or howl — or both. Otakar came in, though, the new bunkmate who’d changed places with Vojtíšek, so he couldn’t even do that. He got up and stumbled out into the daylight. A bit later he found himself in the officers’ lounge with no recollection of how he’d got there.
Outside, the Spits made a row of similar diminishing shapes down the concrete. He stared at them, as if there might be some answer to be found there if he just traced the pattern of them with his eyes enough times.
It was Janet who came to him. The others had seen his face and not known what to say or do.
“Hello, Franta,” she said behind him.
“Oh, Janet,” he said, “it’s you? Hello.”
“What’s happened?” she asked, so softly he could hardly hear her.
“Do you like cherries?” he asked her.
“Why?”
“I don’t need them — ” he said, “ – not any more — ha – haaa — –h –h.”
He closed his mouth so it wouldn’t make that noise. He wouldn’t turn around, so she put her arms round him from behind and then Machaty came over too and put his hand on Sláma’s shoulder. He was too proud to let them see his face. He said, “Her husband’s come back. So I’m out of the picture.”
“What, just like that?” asked Janet, in shock. She’d thought it was something with the baby.
“She hasn’t got a choice,” said Sláma flatly. “He’s a cripple. I wouldn’t believe it but I didn’t know and I was over there today. I saw him. It’s all true.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Janet, “ – Franta, Franta.”
He pulled away from her. “Thank you,” he said, “but I don’t want anyone to be nice to me right now. I don’t need it. I don’t need anything.”
They watched him go. He walked straight across the airfield till he was a small dot in the distance.
Later he brought the cherries to the WAAF building and left them for Janet to share with her friends.
He went to Bennett. It was important to get it straight, before he went up in the air again. You didn’t leave details like this unattended-to.
Sláma looked straight ahead. “Sir,” he said, “I ask that you make a change to my record. I am not engaged any more. So please change it how it was. There is no next-of-kin.”
He knew Bennett was looking at him oddly. The Wing Commander’s voice was gentle: “Awfully sorry, old chap. May I ask —?”
“She is not free,” he said, “not any more. And I prefer not to talk about it. Sir.”
“Yes, of course,” said Bennett, “perfectly understandable. Shame it didn’t work out for you. I’ll make sure your file’s updated.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sláma.
“Do you want a day’s leave?” asked Bennett.
“No, thank you, sir,” he said, “I want to continue as before.”
Bennett nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Thank you, Sláma.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sláma, and left.
The ring was still in his pocket. He found a sheet of paper, and took out his pen, and wrote:
Dear
Sarah,
I
understand. God it’s not what we
expected, is it. I hope you are all
right. In your eyes you did not look
it. Your letter also you didn’t. This is very hard thing for you, I think. Me also.
And your husband, I think will be hard for him, a lot. May God give you strength for this.
Here he paused. He had to say he understood, or she’d only fret more. And then what about the ring?
He thought about the child for a few seconds, about its not being a baby for ever; about it being an adult one day, walking around not knowing anything about him. He blinked, imagining this future now that was hers and his. There was no part in it for him, naturally. He began writing again, moving the pen across the paper somehow.
I
will miss you but I see you can’t do other than what you are doing. You are a good person Sarah. I would not hurt you for anything and I am
sorry because I see I have hurt you a lot.
And you are in a bad situation because of me. It’s bad all around. It can’t be helped, is how you say it,
right?
I
think the ring is for you to keep.
Because it’s no good for me. It’s
worth money if you need. If you don’t need then one day if it is a girl you can
give to her. To have something from me.
Or if it’s too personal you can sell and buy instead necklace or
something. If it’s a boy you can also
choose him something, a good pen, a watch, I don’t know. To have.
Don’t have to tell why. I don’t expect that. Not to tell about me. Have your family now with your husband that
you want always. I know you will be
wonderful mother as I told you before.
But yes please do let me know, I want to know what it is and if you are
all right. For god’s sake let me know
that, won’t you?
Here he breathed hard a few times before going on. It was so numbing to imagine hearing about it that way, instead of with joy. Ever since she’d told him, he’d dreamed of the moment of holding this child that was theirs and looking into its little face for the first time, knowing himself the father. What man wouldn’t?
But he had to finish this thing. It was important to reassure her that he wouldn’t interfere – that he accepted this. He didn’t, of course, not for a second, in any way except because he must, but there was no point in writing that.
I
send you this to Mr. and Mrs. Watson for be private between us. I will not make your life more difficult with
more letters. I understand you can’t see
me more now, that it will be only worse if we try. So don’t be afraid I will come to bother you
or trouble you. You won’t hear more from
me. You know where I am. God Sarah forgive me please that I have got
you so much trouble. Only ever I have
cared for you, not wanted to do anything wrong for you. Only give you what you needed from me. I thought.
There. He had said just about everything, hadn’t he? Mother of god, what else was there, what could there possibly be, to say?
The picture came to him of the Sarah he had met; that strained face, those grey eyes like the sea with fathomless unplumbed depths, that natural unawakened sensuality. And of a beautiful woman humbling herself to come and see him and beg him for something she had seen in his eyes, in response – and later, in the car, afterwards, how she’d sobbed from all those years of hurt and loneliness…
This was going to be doubly an agony for her now, having known something else with him, wasn’t it? As if the rest of it wasn’t agony enough, there was this too. All she was, and wouldn’t be any more. In giving him up, she was also surrendering who she was with him: – the creature of fire and joy and warmth and natural passion. He could see it so clearly, this loss – of herself as well as him. He didn’t think Charles Strickland was going to change that much. So she’d have nothing, then, except…
But you couldn’t write about that sort of thing, could you?
Yes you could, you could make yourself if it needed to be said. Hadn’t she told him she loved how he talked about everything? Even things like that?
Yes: it was that moment he’d laughed and confessed to her about writing her name on his sheets. She’d loved that. Lovers could say these things, couldn’t they?
He let out a bitter little breath. He wasn’t her lover, not any more. But if he didn’t say it, who would? He never had said anything of the kind to her, because he’d thought if something happened to him she would still be capable of being that woman with someone else, now she knew who was in there inside her.
But he’d never imagined her back in that marriage she’d had. God, it would be like going back into prison, wouldn’t it? So he stared and blinked some more, and from somewhere he pulled more words for her. Even in this language that wasn’t his.
There
is one thing I need say to you. It’s not
my business any more but I want to tell it to you because I don’t have other
chance. The way it was for you before we
met, don’t live like that. Do for
yourself if he will not. Like men
do. It’s natural, don’t be ashamed. It hurts more not to do — this I know, for
myself. You deserve. Don’t starve yourself, Sarah.
There – there was no need to say more than that. He had addressed it, that was enough. He hoped it didn’t offend her – but he couldn’t leave it unsaid, not after imagining the way things were going to be for her again now.
So he could finish, then. There really wasn’t anything else to say, was there. Not now.
Nothing… really nothing. There was everything not to say, of course, wounding things the paper itself would cry and curl up and refuse to carry, but he wouldn’t write any of those. There was no point. She’d feel them anyway, in everything he had said and not said, every line, every word. And it wasn’t her fault, any more than it was his.
He finished:
Forgive
all what I have done. Let us think kind
for each other, yes? Prosím. Please.
Goodbye then Sarah. Always — Franta.
He started to read it through once, but didn’t get far. Writing it had cost enough; he didn’t want to see his own words again. Usually when he wrote to her he’d check it through for correct English and to see if the words had said what he’d intended – but this was different. Those letters were easy, and re-reading them before he sent them made him smile. This one had taken all he had to write; there was nothing left to add to it with. Surely he didn’t need to twist the knife any more inside him? He hoped it was dignified enough and had nothing in it to hurt her worse than they already had been. There were loose ends that needed tying-up and he had tried to do that. His English wasn’t so good when he was upset, but it would be good enough: she would understand. It wasn’t a letter to put off writing. And it wasn’t in him to do it again, if it wasn’t good enough the first time.
He’d always kissed them after they were folded, before putting them in the envelope.
Slowly he folded this one and kissed it too: why stop now? Of all the kisses he’d ever sent her, this one cried out for it, didn’t it?
He stared off for a while longer before putting it into the strong brown envelope he’d found to protect the ring. He put that in too. Then he licked the flap and sealed it. He had to telephone the Watsons then, not knowing what address to put on it. Mrs. Watson answered the phone – she already knew, of course.
“Oh, dear,” she said, as soon as she heard his voice, “oh dear, oh dear! I’m ever so sorry, love. Yes of course, anything I can do, you know that!”
“It will be hard for her,” he said, “Her husband – he needs – needs a lot. And now she will have two to take care of! Can – can I send you money please, to help her?”
“No, my goodness,” she said, “don’t you go insulting us with money, my dear! We’ll make sure she’s all right!”
“Please do,” he said, his voice cracking. “Thank you. And I need to send one time a letter. To your house. Can I do that, please?”
“Of course you can, my dear,” she said. She sounded genuinely sorry. He had liked her, and she him, he thought: Mr. Watson too, he’d been very nice when they’d met.
“I need to know your address,” he said.
She gave it to him.
“Thank you,” he said. “You are good woman, Mrs. Watson, and I thank you also that you don’t say – bad things to me for what I have done. I hope you don’t think. For Sarah even more. Please.”
“No, dear,” she said, “Whyever would I do that? You didn’t think you was doing anything wrong, the pair of you, did you! You meant to stand by her, I knew that! So – it’s just a shame, that’s all. A crying shame. No point in judging anybody, is there!”
“You are kind to see it so,” he said. “She will need such a friend, God knows. Please be good to her. Now I must say goodbye and thank you.”
“All right, dear,” she said. “Look after yourself, then.”
“Yes,” he said, knowing it wasn’t what you said but unable to remember the right thing to say. There was a ‘click’ at the other end of the line. It felt like the last connection he had with Sarah, and he stood numbly holding the receiver for a while before putting it down in its cradle.
Sláma waited for a fortnight or so hoping against hope to get another letter that Lt. Strickland couldn’t live with his wife’s condition, and wanted a divorce – but nothing came for him. He knew it was next to impossible, but he just had to wait till the time went by anyway and it was clear she wasn’t going to write anything of the kind; like someone who has bought a lottery-ticket and can’t quite believe he has lost yet. After about a month he couldn’t stand it any more, not knowing if she was all right even, or what had happened when the lieutenant found out. He had a few too many beers one evening and telephoned the Watsons. He wasn’t so drunk as to sound it, only to decide against his better judgement to place the call.
Mrs. Watson was kind, called him ‘dear’ again; told him it was all right, of course he’d had to ring, she understood.
“I don’t trouble you any more,” he said, “please understand, only that I have to know if she is all right, now that he must know — is she in trouble?”
She wouldn’t say that exactly, though as he could imagine it had been very difficult — dear, oh, dear. Not that it was any of her business, and she had no idea what had been said, but things were very strained for a while. She’d had the impression he was one of those sort of chaps where it wasn’t anything he said, necessarily, but everything he made it quite clear he wasn’t saying, that was so hard to take. If Franta knew what she meant. Then he’d taken it into his head that they ought to move, get a fresh start somewhere, so they could be a proper family and not have any fingers pointed, save his pride, like.
It made sense that he would, though all Sláma could think of was Sarah, his poor darling Sarah, now having to pack up everything and leave her home too, and her garden, and move to a strange place where she knew nobody. Because that was the idea, not to be known; and with a cripple on her hands to care for as well as a baby on the way… He asked, was he – excuse, he didn’t know other word – sorry to say it so, did he have control of his bowels and bladder at least?
Well there was an awful lot of washing, Mrs. Watson said…
Sláma banged his head against the wall by the telephone.
Shall I give her any message? she asked, kindly.
No, said Sláma, no, thank you. It’s better not. Don’t tell her I have rung, please. Don’t tell her anything. Don’t say my name. Don’t talk about me. Pretend I never was there, pretend we never met and you don’t know about me at all. Please. For her. Even after she’s gone, moved away, please be kind and don’t make gossip what has happened. It’s too big a shame and she doesn’t deserve to be talked about like that. She has made a mistake and now she goes on.
Well as for the gossip, of course! No need to ask, was there! – she wasn’t one to talk out of turn, specially about someone as nice as Mrs. Strickland. It was just a shame, that was all, like she’d said. And as for not mentioning him to her, even – well, that would feel a bit odd, after all, but if he said so...
Yes, he was saying it. Asking it. Please — thank you. Thank you very much. And so goodnight, then, Mrs. Watson, and it was kind of her to speak, and goodbye…
Chapter 8 –
Flapping
Sysel died. He was shot in the gut and taken off to hospital and he didn’t come out. Machaty stayed up all night making an arrangement of his favourite Moravian folk-song for the band to play at his funeral. When they carried his coffin Sláma was at the front on the right and Karel on the left and Karel wouldn’t meet his eyes even then.
Sláma went on doing what he had to. What else was there to do but that?
When it came close to the time, his friends knew and were patient when he was edgy and difficult. He lost his temper altogether at trivial things, more than once, and upset their orderly no end because he was a sensitive fellow and took harsh words to heart, didn’t understand it wasn’t about him at all. A couple of times good old Honzi had to take Sláma aside altogether and calm him down.
“Do you think she’s decided not to tell me?” he asked, one of those times, when they had gone outside for some fresh air and smoked cigarettes together.
“No,” said Honzi, “I think she hasn’t had it yet. Be patient, Franta.”
“Not my strong suit,” said Sláma bitterly.
“You haven’t got a choice, have you?” Machaty pointed-out, his eyes twinkling in affection. There was compassion there too, but he tried to cover that because Sláma wouldn’t have any of it.
Sláma threw away his cigarette, stalked off.
There was always something, when you flew. Today his Spit seemed to be having some sort of hydraulic problem. The gauges fluctuated and he nursed it back towards home wondering if he was going to make it. He’d taken several bursts up there; he wondered what was severed or leaking, and how bad it was. The day he’d ditched in the North Sea off the Wash, his radio had been shot-up. He’d been losing height that day, calling-out his position before he ditched, “Wizard, this is Blue Leader, over — ” — till he’d realized why there was no reply, and jumped while he still could into a heaving grey sea with no-one coming to look for him.
Well, they’d still found him. He’d always been a lucky one, that way. Please god that would last a bit longer.
Sláma got his crate back on the ground, pulled-back the top and let-down the side-panel. His head buzzed inside his leather helmet. Impatiently he pulled at the straps and yanked the whole thing off, wanting a cigarette. He’d been smoking more heavily since everything went wrong. The crew came running up then, and he was weary enough to take an arm to jump down. The red scarf round his neck came loose; he saw the ends fluttering in the wind out of the corner of his eye, up past his ear somewhere.
A plump WAAF came up then, as soon as he was on the ground, not pushing her bicycle but actually riding it. She braked and got off carefully, her bottom drawing appreciative glances from the ground crew. Sláma enjoyed it, though it meant no more to him than that. “Flight Lieutenant Sláma?” she asked, politely.
He thought he knew most of the regular girls. This one must be new. “Yes,” he said.
“Franta Sláma, is that right?”
“Yes, why? What?”
“I took a message for you today, sir,” she said. “Earlier on, not long after you boys went up, sir.”
He froze. “What kind of message?”
“A woman, sir. She said it was personal. She asked me to find you and tell you myself.”
“Tell me what?” he asked, his chest squeezing tight.
She looked at the crew. Sláma understood and jerked his head towards the blister-hangars. She followed him there, running to keep up with his stride. Once he was far enough away to be private, he stopped and tried to breathe like a normal person. “Tell me,” he said, not caring if he sounded harsh.
She looked at him with soft blue eyes: a sad look, a pitying one. He snapped at her because she didn’t say anything fast enough: “For the love of god, what?”
“She didn’t leave a name, sir. I did ask her. She just said to tell you a little girl. At six o’clock this morning, sir.”
He swallowed. “What – that’s all?”
She took a small sheet from a message-pad from her pocket. “I wrote it down for you, sir, the rest. There’s not much, only a bit.” She held it out to him.
He pulled off his gloves, took it from her. It said: 6lbs 2oz. Frances Emily.
He closed his eyes for a second, opened them again. “Did she say where she was calling from?”
“No, sir. But, sir — when they were putting the call through – it was a trunk call, sir – and I answered it, and they said, hold the line, please, you have a party ringing from Blackbrook Maternity Home, in Abingdon, sir. I wrote that down too, on the back, afterwards. In case it was important.”
He turned it over: so she had. “You’re a good girl,” he said, “thank you.”
She looked at him again with that odd look. “Is that it, sir?”
He gave her the same odd look back. “That’s it,” he said.
“All right, then, sir? I promised I’d come to find you myself, when you landed.”
“Thank you. Er – what’s your name?”
“Dickinson, sir, Naomi Dickinson.”
“Naomi, did you – have you been talking about this with anyone?”
“No, sir. She asked me not to, sir; she said it was a private message for you, sir.”
He sighed, caught her eye again. He looked strained, as if he was keeping a lot in. “Can I ask you not to, still? I don’t want all the girls talking — please? And the chaps too, god knows. This place runs on gossip, not aviation fuel. I don’t want people talking. I would be grateful, Naomi — ?”
She saw the hurt in his face that he was trying to hide. That and the pride, the I-can-manage-this-by-myself look. Flt/Lt. Sláma had a reputation for being hard on his boys in the section, but only to keep them in line and safe. Not a bad chap. His mouth was clamped shut right now and his eyes looked flinty. This wasn’t the only baby to have come of their all being there; the WAAF she’d replaced had left rather suddenly for that reason. But something was wrong, here – she’d known it from the woman’s voice. It hadn’t been accusing, or angry; it had been husky with tears and pushing past exhaustion to speak up enough into the phone. There was something here beyond the ordinary. And the way he’d asked her not to talk, that wasn’t normal – but it didn’t look as if it was from shame.
“Where is Abingdon, do you know?”
“It’s just outside Oxford, sir.”
“Thank you,” he said, “it will be on the map, then? It’s big enough?”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
The paper was in his hand. He was staring at it. At it and through it. It wasn’t as if there was a lot on it to stare at.
Frances… Franta… she’d wondered about that. It had made her smile, when she wrote it down – she’d been looking forward to delivering the message. Till she had; now she wasn’t enjoying it any more. There was a rawness here that she could feel. She was a sensitive girl, didn’t like to think of people being upset, not even when it wasn’t her fault. Still, even if she wasn’t enjoying it exactly, she was still glad it had been her that took the call. It felt as if she was at the vortex of something enormous, all focused on that scrap of paper with her neat printing on it – enormous and silent, like the clear-air turbulence they talked about.
“Thank you,” he said again, and she realized he was asking her to leave him alone now.
She wondered if he was going to cry. He had that look about him.
“You’re welcome, sir,” she said, getting back on her bike and pedaling off quickly, leaving him between the blister-hangers so he could have a bit of room.
She looked behind her once, a quick glance over her shoulder. It really wasn’t any of her business, and she shouldn’t be staring, but she just wanted to know if he was all right.
He ran one hand over his head, then rubbed his face with it. The scrap of paper was a little white flash in his other hand. He’d dropped his gloves and his flight-helmet; didn’t seem aware that he had, was making no effort to pick them up. Perhaps later she’d come back this way and make sure he hadn’t forgotten them there on the ground. There was a solitude to him now that wasn’t one you’d go back and impose on.
He’d asked for the morning, and been given it. He hadn’t said why; Bennett hadn’t asked. It wasn’t too hard to find it, the place where she was. Sláma had no intention of seeing her – he just wanted to bring the flowers himself. Somehow that meant something. He didn’t know what, but it did.
They were her favourites – she grew them. The summer before, he’d admired them, asked her about them – that heavenly scent they had. They climbed in a riot all over the hedge, in a certain sunny spot near the terrace where you could smell them as you sat.
But she’d moved away, so she wouldn’t have them to enjoy any more now.
Perhaps she’d plant some for herself again next year?
No; she’d be too busy…
He’d seen them again in the flower-shop in the village a month earlier, when he’d gone to the garage for something with his car. He’d recognized them straight away, of course. “Do you still have these in September?” he’d asked the girl, seeing Sarah’s face as she held a specially lovely stem up to him to smell it properly.
“What, the sweet peas?” she asked.
“Yes, these,” he said, “sweet peas, yes.”
“Oh, I expect so,” she said. “We have a fellow what grows them, locally – them and the chrysanths. Depends on the weather, really. We have chrysanths till November, though.”
He looked where she pointed. The chrysanths were showy, big flame and yellow and lavender pom-pom heads. “I don’t like them,” he said. “I like these.”
“How late in September?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll just have to see.”
He went back; they did.
“Please make me a big bunch out of all these little ones,” he said. “Nothing else. Don’t put that stuff in.” It was the same girl and she’d gone to pick asparagus-fern, to fill it out a bit. He bent and picked them all out of the bucket. The water dripped on his shoes.
He stared at the buckets of roses. They had yellow ones, red ones. But that was for the man who owned the woman, wasn’t it? Or was trying to, anyway. There was something possessive about a bunch of roses, specially red ones. He’d brought her garden-roses, that summer before, from one of those roadside stands, all different colours and shapes, and she’d buried her nose in them. These were florist’s roses, though, and she wouldn’t want them. She’d like the sweet peas. The colours were so wonderful together, pale-lavender and brilliant rose, deep purple-black and soft blue and bright red. They both appreciated such things, though she had words for them and he didn’t, not even in Czech sometimes. He thought about the time she had told him what ‘sensual’ meant.
“Tie it with a ribbon,” he said, “make it nice, please. It’s to bring, you understand? – to give.”
“Oh, lovely,” she said, “what for?”
“She likes them, this kind,” he said shortly.
“Do you want a little card?”
“No,” he said.
“What colour ribbon?”
In France he’d heard they used blue for a girl, because that was the colour of the Virgin’s robe. But over here it was like at home, wasn’t it, pink? Better make sure; it would be silly to bring the wrong one, as if he didn’t know or care which it was, a boy or a girl. “For a girl, it’s pink, yes?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said, smiling at him. All the assumptions in the smile were fresh hurts that he deflected, like water running-off a duck’s feathers.
“Thank you, then pink,” he said.
It was a good distance to Abingdon, but not as far as it was to where she’d lived before. He found the place after asking someone for directions. Everyone was always helpful when you had an RAF uniform and an accent: they appreciated their wartime-guest flyers, the Poles and the Czechs. Not that they could tell them apart, but they thought it was jolly good of them to come over and do their bit. So the old woman that pointed the way with her walking-stick wore a broad smile, just for him.
Some babies were still born at home, like in Czechoslovakia, but not all; here in England it seemed they had these special maternity-homes where women went to have their babies and rest a week before going back home. Specially ones with a lot of responsibilities at home, and no-one to help take care of them.
Like Sarah.
It was a nice place, set in its own grounds. He liked the way they did that here, using old houses for something else. They’d done their flight-training at a place like that, only bigger. Not that they’d needed to learn to fly, god help the English, his boys could fly better than any of their RAF recruits; they were trained pilots already, for goodness’ sake, itching to get up and at the enemy while there was still time, before it was too late and it was lost. But they’d had to learn English, and practice proper radio-communications, till they wouldn’t be a liability up in the air. No cowboys, going up alone; they needed to be a section, under discipline, following orders. Flying was the least of it. So they’d pedaled round the grounds of the elegant old place that was so like this one, on those bloody bicycles, getting sweated-up in flight-rig and helmets and ear-pieces and mouth-pieces for the radios, calling-out their positions, sightings of the enemy (the other boys coming out to surprise them) – bandits, twelve o’clock, three o’clock, roger, over, come in please, tally-ho…
It seemed so long ago, now: another life altogether. When they’d clashed, the worse that happened was broken wings on the front of the handlebars and perhaps a bent wheel. They’d been so impatient to get up there and shoot at a real enemy… and be shot back at, of course.
To-to-Toto, with his stammer that went away when he was scared shitless; Myrtvy, who’d lasted a bit longer but not much. Sysel. His boys, his section. He said a quick prayer for them, just God rest their souls, because he’d been brought up to do that and he always did it when he thought of them.
So here was another grand old house, not quite so large but big enough, beyond a long rosy brick wall covered in some sort of creeper that was starting to turn red; lots of windows, a grand porch with pillars and a fan-light over the door. A brass plate by the entrance said Blackbrook Maternity Home. Someone kept it bright and polished. There might be a war on but you had to have standards. The garden had been dug-up into vegetable-plots, like Sarah’s only bigger ones: cabbages coming now, and broad-beans finishing, looking tired and slumping; lettuces, tomato-plants tied to stakes, feathery carrot-tops, onions too. He was glad to see them growing there. The new mothers ate well, then. Good: she’d be sore, she’d need to eat plenty of vegetables or she’d be even worse-off. He thought about the cherries then, of course, that day, and put the memory aside before it hurt too much.
He parked the car next to a couple of others along the drive-way, and got out. The bouquet was still fresh; it had been hard, riding with the smell of it and all it brought back, he’d been glad when his nose got used to it. Now when he picked them up from the passenger-seat it wafted over him freshly and he had to swallow. Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought them, after all.
Oh, well, it was too late now. There was a lot more to cry over than these, anyhow. At least they would tell her he still cared, that he knew, that he was thanking her for letting him know.
He rang the doorbell, waited on the curving marble step. He could see his reflection in the front-door, a bit distorted, the peaked cap and the crisp contrast of shirt and tie, the wings over his breast and the slim row of medal-ribbons, the wings on his cap too. He stared at that man that was him, looking so smart and brave and invulnerable.
It shivered and rippled, swung away as the door opened. A nurse in a striped uniform stood there, smiling up at him. “Ooh, lovely,” she said, “my goodness! Who’s the lucky mum, then?”
“Strickland,” he said, surprised it came out at all, “Mrs. Strickland. She had a baby yesterday, a little girl.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Come on in, then. It’s not really visiting-time, but you can just pop on through and give them to her – Sister won’t mind.” She twinkled at him: they all loved the lads in uniform. Who didn’t? Who deserved the happiness of a new baby more than they did?
“No,” he said, “no — you take them to her, please.”
“No, really,” she said, stepping aside and making a gesture with her other arm for him to come inside the black-and-white flagged hall, “it’s all right. We know how it is when you’re on duty. A few minutes won’t do anybody any harm, as long as you’re quiet! For the others, who are resting… ”
He held them out to her, mutely. She took them from him, her face creasing in inquiry.
“No,” he said, his voice harsh because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t come out at all. “No, I can’t. I won’t. I’m not coming in. Just, please – you heard me say, yes? Mrs. Strickland. Give her… ”
“Who shall I say —?”
“Just say a man in RAF. It doesn’t need a name.” He thought of this information being imparted, and added: “Please just – be sure there’s nobody there. If her husband’s visiting then wait — ” God, that was hard to say but he didn’t want to make things any harder for her.
He saw comprehension dawn in her eyes, and with it sadness. “Yes,” she said, “I know who you mean.”
The fellow in the wheelchair, he could see her thinking. More story, more drama than that, too.
“Just tell me,” he said quickly, needing to know, to hear it, “She is all right, yes? It was not too hard? How long — ? It’s her first and she’s not so young, so – it was all right, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said kindly, reassuringly, “perfectly all right. She’s doing very well. I wasn’t on duty last night, but she’d not been in too long when I went off – and when I got back she’d just had the baby. So – about fourteen hours… a bit of a long time, but nothing to worry about. And yes, everything’s fine – fine!”
He saw her looking at his dark hair under his cap as she spoke. Well, it was too late now for him not to have come. He cleared his throat, thanked her.
“Would you like to see the baby?” she asked, gently. “I can’t let you in the nursery, or course, but I can hold her up to the window, you could look from round the back here, there’s a terrace… ”
It didn’t take a lot to put two and two together. She’d wondered, when she saw them, the new mother and her lovely little girl, and the look on Mrs. Strickland’s face when she took the baby to hold and feed. She’d thought the look was about the wheelchair, the husband with a grim expression. But then she’d wondered, the first time she’d seen them all together, how the two of them could have come up with the little lass: he was so fair, the daddy, and she was a chestnut; how’d little Frances Emily get all that silky black hair?
Oh, dear, oh deary dear, she thought. This was how. He was lovely, too, this one. A nice face, a charming accent, dimples in his cheeks – bit of a big nose, but handsome in that quirky way that men are when they’re not handsome exactly but they stand up straight, hold themselves easily, look you in the eye, have clean fingernails and pressed clothes and nicely-shaved chins.
And a sweet head of dark curls.
She didn’t approve of shenanigans, but there was something in his eyes that wasn’t the gleam of a roving man – nor a cheeky one. He was standing here out of something else. And trying to make sure the flowers didn’t cause his love any embarrassment, by being presented at the wrong time with this cryptic information and no name.
It was always about love, nobody turned-up here with flowers for any other reason. It wouldn’t do any harm, to show him the baby, would it? It would be a nice thing to do, she felt sure of it. His eyes flashed when she’d said it, wide and then hungry.
He swallowed, painfully it seemed. Her heart went out to him. “Yes,” he said, “yes, please — if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No,” she said, “it’s no trouble at all. We do it all the time, for the other relatives, you know, the brothers and sisters and such. When they can’t come in and hold it.”
He nodded. “Where do I go?”
“Just round the side, look, see that path? It goes past the corner there and round the back. There’s a little terrace. Used to be the ballroom, you know – now it’s the nursery. Nice big windows, lots of sunshine for the babies. You can’t miss it. You go on round and wait there, and I’ll just put these down and meet you at the window.”
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s all right? What if she is sleeping? I don’t want to disturb… ”
“It’s all right,” she told him again. “Off you go.”
She closed the door after him, watched him through the beveled glass pane. He walked down the path slowly, like someone walking in a dream. He took off his cap and wiped his face with a handkerchief, then, and disappeared round the corner.
She set the lovely bunch down on a side-table. They’d do all right for another few minutes; she’d come back for them in a bit. No need to keep him waiting out there. The floor gleamed, her shoes squeaked as she went down the corridor to the nursery. He was already there at the window, looking in. They were tall windows and went almost down to the ground, a semi-circle of them, seeming to embrace the sunny terrace and bring it half into the room. The blackout-curtains were looped back to let the sunshine in. There was little Miss Frances Emily Strickland, with her lovely dark silky head like embroidery-floss. Some of them were altogether bald, and others came out as spiky as lavatory-brushes, but this sweet moppet was as pretty as a picture. She was asleep on her tummy, a trickle of milk on her cheek. “Up you come then, my pet,” she whispered, “there’s someone here to see you.”
The baby sighed as she picked her up, the little bundle wrapped in a creamy blanket. She squirmed a little and the nurse held her close for reassurance. They were so newly out of the womb, these little pilgrims, so freshly come into this big wide world with all its yawning spaces. They liked to be wrapped and tight and close and safe. Well – don’t we all, when it comes down to it, she thought.
She brought her to the window. With a practiced grip she turned the bundle so he could see the little face. The baby’s hands were wrapped in mitts to keep her from scratching herself; she pulled at the ribbon gently, drew one off so he could see the tiny fingers all curled-up. It was a nice sunny day, so there was no draught by the window; she stood close, so he could really see. Bless him. Why not?
He had taken off his cap, not consciously she thought but because it was a thing you did automatically when you came into church or saw Royalty. He was gripping it in front of his chest with both hands. They really were gorgeous curls he had, crisp and dark, no brilliantine holding them down. He stared.
The baby moved restlessly and she gave it a jiggle, just a little dandle up and down. The dark-blue slaty eyes opened, unfocused and wide. She stood so he could see that.
He was crying; there were tears in his eyes. He wasn’t making any noise about it but he couldn’t help them and they were just running down his face.
So she’d been right, then.
What a shame. She wondered whether to tell Mrs. Strickland about him seeing the baby and standing there like that just crying without sobs. What you called a crying shame, really, wasn’t it. She was glad she’d offered, though, if it meant so much.
His uniform had said czechoslovakia on the shoulder; she’d noticed it when he turned on the from door-step to walk round the back. Not an English face. Not an English thing to do, either, stand there and just cry. An Englishman would blow his nose and pretend he wasn’t, pull himself together and then leave if he couldn’t stand it. This one was wearing the DFC, though, so you knew he was no sissy. They were just emotional like that, foreigners, weren’t they. Unashamed to do things like cry; uninhibited.
The baby’s gaze was fixed out of the window on the face just inches away outside. He had bent to see more closely, as close as he could through the glass. She moved the little bundle, so the baby’s face wouldn’t be caught by her watch that was pinned to her bosom. It was old glass, as old as the house probably; the panes taped up and down them for safety, a bit distorted but clear enough if you came close and looked right through, as he was doing.
What a little drama. Poor dear. And this little lass, she wasn’t going to know who her father was, was she, now? Most likely this was going to be the last time they laid eyes on one another. She felt patient, stood there a full couple of minutes till the baby started to fret in earnest. It was nearly feeding-time; now she was awake, little madam was hungry. If she pulled the knitted bonnet off, he’d see the rest of that spun-silk hair, wouldn’t he? She did, lifted its fine flyaway strands with gentle fingers to show him how long it was on top. The baby was waving her arm about, the one she’d freed from her wrappings for him to see: the slender bracelet of twisted gauze and sticking-plaster read Strickland in Sister’s tidy printing. His lips parted a little more; she saw him swallow.
She looked over her shoulder to be sure Sister wasn’t coming, then went right up to the window and took that tiny hand and put it up against the glass. He put a fingertip there and stood like that, his face such a picture of aching longing she couldn’t bear to look at it. So they touched, through the pane, anyway, Frances and her daddy.
Was he? There couldn’t be much doubt about it, not with those tears of his. That was why she’d done it, for him to see the perfect fingers like tender little stems, the crinkles and creases of the tissue-thin skin, so miniature, so miraculous. She’d worked with newborn babies for ten years now, but you never got over the wonder of them. She wanted him to see it for himself, how beautiful she was, this little lassie of his. After all, there were plenty born here that had been planted without much thought, and some with no daddies at all to love them. He ought to see this, if he had cared enough to come in spite of everything.
Matron’s heels sounded in the corridor: clack-clack, clack-clack. She stepped away from the window and so did he, sensing apparently that he mustn’t get her into trouble, god bless him. She shifted the baby up against her, close the way you were supposed to, not the open-armed hold with which she’d shown her off; moved easily back towards her crib as if she’d just now lifted her out.
He was standing a few steps back on the terrace, his cap back on his head now, turned to one side, wiping his face with the palms of both hands. She turned to say Good Morning to Matron, and when she turned back he had gone.
Mrs. Strickland was sitting-up in bed when she brought the baby in. She wore a pretty bed-jacket of lacy lambs-wool: a gift from a woman-friend, she’d said when Nurse had admired it, a neighbour from back home where they’d lived before. She was hoping they’d get over to visit, she said, they’d been so kind… she knew Mrs. Watson would want to see the baby, now. She was a wonderful knitter, she added, lifting the lid of her little valise to show Nurse the bootees, the featherweight matinee-coat, the shawl like gossamer.
“Goodness, she’s been busy, hasn’t she!” exclaimed Nurse in admiration. “Lovely sort of friend to have, eh?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Strickland, and looked as if she was about to cry. Well, they all got emotional, didn’t they, the new mums. She’d thought nothing more of it, at the time. Nor the husband either, being helped out of the front passenger-seat of the taxi into his wheelchair and wheeling himself in. They’d put Mrs. Strickland on the ground floor, brought her husband through the back where there were no stairs. Lucky to have the baby, then, weren’t they, she’d thought: Life was kind like that sometimes. Looked as if he’d managed a bit of leave before whatever it was had happened to him, the lieutenant.
Well, she knew better now, didn’t she. Not that she was going to say anything beyond what she’d been asked to.
“There you are, dear,” she said, handing her over to mum. “She’s hungry, aren’t you, my little pet?”
Mrs. Strickland took her with sparkling eyes.
“I’ll be back in a minute to see how you’re getting on,” said Nurse cheerily, “just got to bring the other mothers theirs!”
Most of them shared a room, but they’d left the other bed empty here to make room for the husband’s wheelchair when he came. Matron had said it was all right; they weren’t crowded. Not like before the war. There wouldn’t have been room at visiting-time, otherwise, not for him and another husband in the room from the other bed too. She thought it was a bit of a shame the new mother didn’t have company, though, because they enjoyed that, someone to chatter with and share and compare and admire. She was a quiet one, though, not much for chatter, so perhaps it was all right after all. It took some of them that way, a bit overwhelmed at first.
She came back with the sweet-peas in a creamy vase. They really were a treat – and such a huge bunch of them. “Look what someone’s brought you,” she said.
Mrs. Strickland turned an extraordinary look on her. It would have been even more extraordinary if she hadn’t known what it was all about.
“He brought them himself,” she added softly. “Lovely manners. Wouldn’t leave a name, but he said I could tell you he was an RAF laddie.”
“Oh… ” said Mrs. Strickland. “Did he – is he still here?” Her cheeks had flushed sharply, immediately.
“No, love,” said Nurse, plumping up the pillows behind her. “No, he wouldn’t stay. I did ask, told him we’d bend the rules for visiting, just for a few minutes – but he said no.”
“Oh… ” said Mrs. Strickland again. It wasn’t loud at all, but there was a world of yearning in it, and disappointment.
Nurse leaned over close, so she could talk quietly. “I showed him the baby,” she said. “Brought him round the back, you know, outside, to the nursery-window, and held her up. Just so he could see her, like.”
“Oh, god… ” whispered the new mother.
“I shan’t say anything to anybody,” added Nurse. “I know when things are nobody’s business. But the look on his face, I just thought he’d like to see her.”
Mrs. Strickland looked up. Her eyes were grey and brimming. She heard the kindness in Nurse’s voice, that and the discretion. “Thank you… ” she murmured. “What – what did he do? He did see her, then?”
“He looked and looked,” said Nurse, “like it was going out of style and he’d better make the most of it.” She wondered whether to say the next bit, and decided Why not? “He cried,” she added. “Not any noise or anything, but just tears. Rolling down his face. Didn’t stop looking or nothing, just stood there like that. For a long time, bless him.”
Mrs. Strickland made a hiccupping sound. The baby was happily suckling away, wearing that blissful look they had, little fists closing and opening inside the mittens. Nurse saw the look on her face, sat on the other side of the bed and put her arm round her. “Go on,” she said softly, “Let it out. It’ll do you good to have a good old cry… ”
Slowly at first and then with gathering force Sarah Strickland sobbed, till her body shook and the baby began to cry too. Nurse took the baby in one arm and held onto the mother with the other, drawing her head down to her broad shoulder. “Oh god,” she was weeping, “oh god – oh god – oh god! Franta! Franta! Fra-a-a-an-ta-a-a!”
Nurse didn’t say shush. Sometimes that wasn’t the right thing to say. Where else could she cry about it, if not here and now where it was safe and she could be held a bit by someone who had no ax to grind?
“There, there,” she said, “that’s right. Let it out... ”
Sarah buried her face in that white-aproned shoulder and howled fit to burst.
Nobody would think anything of it, though, Nurse thought. She’d closed the door, and these new mums did cry sometimes.
Not like this, though; not like this.
I’d cry, if I’d given up that, she thought, seeing again that darkly rugged face, those lovely square shoulders, the naked devotion in those velvet-brown eyes. Goodness yes, that was something to cry over.
The sweet peas filled the room with their light fragrance. Sarah Strickland wept as if her heart was breaking.
Poor lamb, perhaps it was.
Trusting to Air
Part II
Chapter 9 –
Pinioned
Sláma set it aside. You had to, or you’d be dead in thirty seconds flat. There wasn’t room up there for broken hearts, or even aching ones: you needed every shred of thought and feeling for the task in hand. He’d flown for half his life, could do it almost by instinct – which left the rest of him free to out-think or out-manoeuvre or out-fly the enemy from split-second to split-second.
He left his pain on the ground, where it waited for him.
Sarah coped. She didn’t know how; she felt like a puppet whose acts she directed by sheer force of will from day to day. Sometimes it half-killed her to think of how she hadn’t known, that last time with him – that it would be the last, that it mattered, that it was going to mean so much, count for so much; and how instead she’d drifted to sleep, felt his kiss on her cheek as if in another world, not found speech to answer when he’d whispered his “Miluji t˘e” and slipped away.
His letter in reply to hers she knew by heart. It reminded her of the shards of chandelier in his hair: something sparkling, broken, that would cut you to the bone.
The Watsons were very kind. It was Fred Watson who had come to the door that day, to say there’d been a telephone call for her. She’d seen from his face that something wasn’t as it should be: a particular kindness creased his red cheeks, a sad compassion played in his eyes.
Poor girl, he’d thought when she opened it, what he’d give not to be the bearer of his news that was going to upset her apple-cart so cruelly.
He’d put on his old tweed jacket to come over, sensing perhaps a sort of formality about his errand. He thought he’d never forget the way it went, the ordinary few moments it takes to shatter someone’s world.
“They’ve rung for you, dear,” he said.
She blanched, of course; swallowed. Her eyes beseeched him not to say that her lover was lost.
“No, don’t start with that again, your Franta’s not been killed.” He had to begin there, didn’t he? Couldn’t just say the rest right out; had to give her a second to catch-on….
She shook her head: “What, then? Is he hurt? God — what’s the matter?”
“It wasn’t the Air Force that rang,” he said, “ – it was the Navy, pet.”
Still she didn’t understand. How would she? “Oh my god, have they found Charles’s body —? Is it official? What did they say?”
“Not exactly,” he said, feeling his heart wrung afresh for each of the players in this little drama now, as it had been ever since his wife had answered the phone and turned stricken eyes on him: “no, not that… but – well, yes, they have, in a manner of speaking, like… they have found him, yes: you see, pet – he’s alive.”
She’d said nothing for a minute. Sláma’s ring was on her hand; her wedding-ring had moved over to the right one. Not gone altogether – but another man’s diamond graced her left ring-finger; his child, her womb. She looked down at the ground, then out of the window, then over his shoulder, as if from somewhere out there she might see some rescue on the horizon: the Mounties, perhaps, or the dissolving of this moment into the knowledge of a nightmare from which she was just now waking.
He stood patiently, not wanting to run away.
“I — I see,” she said in that low, husky voice of hers, the same one she’d used when Sláma was hurt.
Her eyes reminded him of a deer’s; that startle, the frozen second before it tries to escape the hunter.
Wasn’t no escaping this, was there. Would she tell poor old Charles Strickland Sorry, old chap, then?
He thought she would have — till they found out he was crippled, now.
His wife threw her apron over her head when they heard about that, and sat at the kitchen-table with her elbows in the pastry-flour and her head in her hands and cried, “Oh! dearie, dearie, dearie, that poor lass… oh it’s not fair, that it isn’t — can’t any of them have their bit of happiness, then, in this perishing war? Eh, Fred? Answer me that!”
But he hadn’t been able to, except to say, “ – seems not, dear… ”
Fred Watson brought her Sláma’s letter, made sure he slipped it to her when she was alone. She put it in her apron-pocket. Then she took it out again and asked him please, oh please, could he just —
Yes, dear, he’d keep an eye out, he said.
She turned away from him, walked a few steps further, and read it.
Her shoulders shook. A small sound escaped from her, then nothing after that. “Thank you,” she whispered, “thank you for bringing it – for talking to him… ”
“Oops,” said Fred, “There you are, lieutenant! Was just wondering where you’d got to! Wheel yourself around in that thing like an old hand, now then, don’t you, eh?”
Sometimes it
seemed to Sarah, in those early days after her husband’s return, as if she had
somehow found her way onto the pages of a French novel. Dancing there at first, beguiled and luminous
like Emma Bovary or one of Ouida’s heroines, she’d been passionate: a creature of air and fire and earth and
water – and then in an instant the book had slammed shut without warning,
trapping her; suffocating her; crushing the life out of her. The same cruel pages now made a mockery of
all she’d thought she was, all she had.
Charles Strickland felt like a shell, body and soul. He had no choice but to accept the situation, since it was too late to do anything about it but that — still, he almost couldn’t think of Sarah without imagining her in the arms of this lover whose name she would not tell him. “I don’t think it will do any good, Charles,” she said. “It’s over, it’s in the past — it was a huge mistake, but I just don’t see how dwelling on it is going to help anything. I’ve told you I’m sorry. There really isn’t anything else to say — is there?”
Sometimes he wondered about the fellow who’d turned up on their doorstep that first week, right after he’d come home. He’d still been in blissful ignorance then, so he hadn’t thought anything of it. Only afterwards he’d realized it had been a bit odd, their house being so far off the beaten track, as it were – and the encounter had had an awkwardness he hadn’t been able to put his finger on at the time, only felt it the way a dog feels its hackles rise.
He’d put forward the plan to move, over dinner one night. The shock of her news was still fresh between them. After she’d first told him he’d said very little for several days; what on earth could he say? How could you? Why? Did you think I was dead? Did you care? One didn’t ask questions like that. The only possible answers weren’t ones that anyone would want to hear. It was better not to know.
He wanted to know if that was the fellow, though. He waited to ask, afraid to be told it was, knowing on another level in his gut without needing to ask. It chafed him unbearably to be so helpless, so damned dependent on her. He wasn’t incontinent enough to wear nappies all the time, but sometimes he couldn’t get to the toilet fast enough and had accidents. He could get in and out of his wheelchair with his arms’ strength and sheer effort of will, dragging his bloody useless legs a yard or two wherever he needed to go before collapsing. The idea of coming home to his wife not whole had consumed him, all this time: now he was here and it was even worse than he had imagined.
One night he woke and found her gone from the bed. They’d moved it downstairs, to the former dining-room; ate in the kitchen, these days. The house was empty: they’d sent the evacuees home, since the Nazis seemed to have stopped the bombing and she had her hands full with him now. He couldn’t get out of bed without her help. He lay in the dark and listened. Somewhere else in the house, upstairs where he couldn’t go, behind several closed doors that she had put between herself and him, she was weeping. He could hear the howls, stifled and muffled as if she’d stuffed blankets in her mouth and was screaming through them.
He called out for her, once and then twice and three times. She returned, but not in time to get him to the commode.
“Sorry,” she kept saying, “Charles, I’m so sorry. Not to worry, I know you couldn’t help it — here, just let me get up this corner of the sheet – it won’t take a minute — ” Her voice was husky, trembling. She was pretending it was all right, that it didn’t matter if you soiled the bed because your wife was off in another room howling her head off over her lost lover, the father of her child to be.
He pretended too.
When she looked at Strickland now, what she saw was someone who didn’t deserve what had happened – none of them did; what she felt was guilt. She knew he must be as devastated as she was, if not more so — was there any hope for them? She kept seeing his face in the moment she had told him. It filled first with shock and then misery, a dreadful rising misery that wiped-out every other expression. His hands turned to fists, shook in his lap. He didn’t speak for a while. When he did, he didn’t look at her. “God!” he said bitterly, “that’s a fine old welcome-home… ” Those words kept playing in her head afterwards like a record one is sick of, their accusation and disappointment fresh from day to day. She kept telling herself she had only herself to blame…
Then he had decided to be reasonable about it. This consisted of long sighs, and head-shakes; mutterings of “Well, it’s understandable, really, when you think about it – eh?”
How she was supposed to agree with this she was not sure. It was, or it had been – but when put like that she felt she was supposed to disagree – that, or be meekly grateful. Since Sarah herself was far too shredded to be feeling like calling anything reasonable, she nodded.
“Better make the best of it, I suppose… ” Why did he say one thing, and mean something completely different? If she could have spoken with him about how much it hurt, for all of them, it might have been better — but he was determined Not to Blame Her, which meant of course that he did, and would not admit to it.
Perhaps she should have made a better job of telling him? She heard herself endlessly, starting in a tight voice, Charles, there’s something we have to talk about. Something very difficult.
He’d had no idea.
He Forgave Her, which was not the same as forgiving her.
For herself, Sarah knew that if it had been Franta that was missing, she would have waited ———
Charles Strickland had to know if it was that RAF type. Would she lie? One evening outside, when she came to tuck a rug over his lap, he took her wrist. Not with force, but just to keep her there while he found the words. It was a grey-and-blue tartan rug, with a fat fringe; they’d got it in Scotland years earlier, and it had always been the traveling-blanket or the lap-rug when there was a draught.
It was summer, hardly a time for rugs, but he felt the cool evenings now he wasn’t so active. Under his fingers he felt one of those burrs that cling; the kind that have tiny spines all over, and you bring them back from a walk or a picnic and have to pick them off one by one.
He pulled it off and held it up. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know – let me see.” She took it from him. “Oh, it’s a cockle-burr – you know.”
“How did it get there?”
“Goodness, I don’t know — we must have had a picnic, or something… I was always taking them out, the children – they had so much energy. Too much to stay cooped-up indoors.”
He had seen her lying on the rug on the ground with no clothes on with her lover, outside somewhere; imagined the fellow he’d seen, arse in the air between her cool slender thighs, rogering her: enjoying his wife. That look she wore then, at such times, of calm tolerance. But he couldn’t ask. So he asked the other thing, instead. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “That day, right after I got home: the fellow who came, the RAF chappie – he wasn’t lost, was he. It was him.”
She didn’t answer right away, so he knew.
“Wasn’t it,” he asked her again.
“Yes,” she said.
“Have you seen him since?”
“No,” she said.
“What was his name?”
“Why does it matter, what his name was?”
Strickland sighed. Perhaps it was enough for now, that she’d said Yes it was him. She wasn’t going to tell any more, and that was that. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted her to. He already knew it was Franter, or something like that. One of the children had said it, before they all got packed-up and sent home. They’d been chattering between themselves, and one of the twins started to say she’d miss having bacon-and-egg for breakfast. The other chimed back And crumpets for tea, and so it went: the cows, the pretty birds at the feeder – fetching the eggs from the hen-house – the swing – picking blackberries – tea with Franter – Franter’s stories —
The older boy had shot them a look, then, as if to say Shut up… and they had exchanged bewildered glances, not knowing what they had said wrong. Charles puffed on his pipe and re-folded the paper nonchalantly so it would appear he hadn’t noticed. The boy whispered: ‘Don’t talk about Franter. Not now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because.’ He must have rolled an eye in Charles’s direction: they said “Oh.. ” as if they understood, even though they probably didn’t.
But he had. Even the boy did.
That was when he started to think it was the fellow he’d seen, when he was first trying to get a grasp of what had happened in his absence, all the time he’d been thinking she was sitting here alone waiting for him, worrying about him, missing him. This Franter had been making himself quite at home, apparently. Not a faraway tryst, but right here.
They’d have to move, of course. If they were going to put all this behind them and get on with their lives like any other family, it wouldn’t do to have the neighbours all gossiping behind their backs for the next twenty years. He wasn’t an unkind man, nor an unreasonable one. It was just beyond bearing, the thought that everyone would know. Any chap would feel the same way, wouldn’t he?
“Every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose,” he said, with some irony he couldn’t keep from his voice.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sarah replied. She seemed to say that a lot. It always surprised him, when she did: wasn’t it bloody obvious? Did you have to spell everything out? Couldn’t she see what he meant?
“Having a family,” he said, carefully lighting his pipe so as not to have to look at her. It took a while, a blessed thing to be able to do: you had to stuff the shreds of tobacco down just so, not too loose, not too tightly; put the tobacco away again, get out the matches, strike one; draw it, draw it some more, not too hard, not too tentative… “You always wanted that. Well – we did. Bloody odd way to get one, but – spilt milk, eh?”
“Did you?” she asked.
He hadn’t thought about it. Didn’t everyone? Of course they did. “Doesn’t everyone?” he said.
“I suppose so,” she said. God, it was hard to get a word out of her, these days. He wasn’t much better.
And that was how he’d left it. No point in rubbing things in.
He wanted to call the baby Beatrice, after his mother, if it was a girl – and Charles if it was a boy. Didn’t seem like much to ask, under the circumstances, did it?
Sarah stared.
Perhaps not, then.
Well, what bloody business of his was it, anyway? What he wanted didn’t count for anything, did it. “You choose, then,” he said.
So she went and called her Frances.
God. But it was too late to say ‘I know his name,’ then, wasn’t it?
* * * * * * * *
* * * *
The war dragged on. Now that the Americans were in, things had changed in some ways: not in others. Sláma’s squadron flew deep into Germany, in support of Bomber Command. In the summer of 1941, standing alone against the Luftwaffe, the summer he’d fallen in love with Sarah, the RAF had lost almost two hundred pilots in just three months. The losses now weren’t quite so heavy; but still each time they took off, none of them knew who’d be coming back.
Now and then another one didn’t.
Sláma knotted his red scarf round his neck, climbed into the cockpit of his Spitfire, wiggled his toes inside his flying-boots, hoped he’d get back before they froze; tried not to remember the Christmas Sarah had knitted him the socks he wore on the inside.
Sarah coped some more. The baby was a blessed distraction; in caring for her she could find an outlet for all the tenderness and outpouring she felt. It hadn’t had an object, all these months; not one to which she was tied with a physical, instinctual bond as she had been with Franta. Caring for Charles had not the same quality at all; it was a task, something she separated herself from even while she did it. Now, nursing, rocking, singing – moving through her days in a kind of waking dream, below the surface almost and not wanting to come up for air – she let herself drown in a tide of bodily necessities asked and answered.
One night, unable to sleep, she sat at the kitchen-table and rubbed its surface with her fingertips, seeing it spread for tea and Franta sitting there with one of the twins on his lap. She missed him with a hollowness that still took her breath away, left her bereft and empty. It hurt to remember him; it hurt more not to. She saw his face, wearing one of those gentle smiles he had for the children. Then she saw him tender, regretful, as he had been the day he’d first said no to her: that day she’d driven to the base looking for him, all shame and pride set aside in the immediacy of her longing for him. It was the only time she’d seen him in flight rig, the short battledress-blouse instead of the longer tunic of the uniform he wore when he wasn’t flying.
Flying.
All the rest of his life, when she wasn’t with him: his profession, his passion, the thing that took him into the jaws of death every day.
Flying…
She’d never seen him fly, but it wasn’t hard to imagine. She’d asked him, over and over; it fascinated her. He loved to talk about it, so they were passionate conversations. One time he drew the inside of the cockpit for her, and told her what all the dials and gauges were, what controlled what, the rudder, the ailerons… What was that?
That was how you fired the gun.
Oh, god.
Well it’s a good thing it’s there, he said, because they are firing at me —!
Yes, she said, that was what I meant…
Another time, he’d mentioned stalling-speed, and she’d asked him to explain how it was that planes stayed up in the air at all. She’d never really understood it, not in any way one could believe in. One observed it, knew it must be real, and yet how could something heavier than air stay up in it?
Well, birds did, he said, smiling, look, they’ve
been doingthey have done it for a lot longer
than we have!
Yes, but how?
Air pressure, he said.
But wasn’t that fifteen pounds per square inch pressing down?
His dimple appeared.
“So you are at least something of a scientist, srdíèko,” he’d smiled. “If you know so
much, then it’s not hard to understand the rest. Do you want me to explain?”
“Oh, please!”
she’d cried, “please do, Franta! I’d
love that!’
“I am flight
instructor, you know,” he said, kissing her on the nose, “so here we start with
the theory, and then after the war we’ll get you up in a trainer with me and
you’ll fly for real... ”
“I already
have,” she said, kissing him back, “every time you’re here… ”
“That doesn’t
count,” he said.
“Oh, yes, it
does,” she said.
“All right then,
it does,” – he gave in, and that sparkle
came into his eyes that he had when he really allowed all he was to her.
“Look,” he went
on, drawing the shape of a bird’s wing in cross-section on the page, an old
exercise-book she’d found the first time he’d asked for paper – it was filled
with sketches of planes now, some he’d done for the children and some for
her. “See here, how it’s curved,
yes? And how the curve of the top is
greater than the curve on the bottom, there it’s flatter…?”
“I see that,”
she said.
“Also I like the
curve of your bottom,” he said,
“but I am not going to put in book.
Because of the children, we draw here together. My boys, they draw women
in their English-books, when we are learning.
They can’t help it, they are boys.
Made the teacher give a bad look…
Now see – I mean, look. What you
must remember it’s that all the time, the air is pressing at your fifteen
pounds per square inch – or whatever it is, where you are – it’s pressing the
same all over. Like this.” He drew little arrows from all directions,
pressing evenly on the wing, on the figure of a little man next to it – and on
a woman, which he added with a smile at her.
(They had their clothes on.) “You
don’t feel it but it’s there. You can
see it if you pull up a glass from under the water when you are washing the
dishes – yes? Upside-down… the water
stays in the glass, the air is pressing down on the water in the sink all
around and pushing it up inside the glass still, and you haven’t enough weight
of water to fall out.”
“I think I see,”
she said.
“The mercury
stands in the barometer the same. That’s
the barometric pressure. The air makes
it stay up in there, the tube, it doesn’t fall out either. Then it goes up and how high it goes before
it falls little-bit at the top, it’s air pressure. To measure.”
“Go on,” she
said, hoping this would make more sense if he did.
‘Now, what you
need here is speed,” he said. “You have
to make the air move over this wing. Because if it stands still, like this, it
is pressing all over the same. But as soon as you start to move it through the
air, like this – look!” He drew another
one. “Here is the aerofoil again. That’s what we call this wing shape that has
the big curve and the little one. Yes?”
“Yes — ”
“Watch what
happens now, when the air has to travel here, over the wing and under the
wing. How far is this? It’s further. And how far is this? It’s shorter.
So here the air must go faster, to meet again. Do you see?”
“I think so.”
“This is the
good part,” he said. “It’s called the
principle of Bernoulli. You say that,
principle, yes?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Here over the
top the air it’s traveling faster. Like
we said. So it’s thinner. And here underneath it’s not so fast, so it’s
thicker. It’s pressing up harder. The air on top is not pressing down so
hard. It can’t, it’s too thin. There is more space between the molecules…
Like up a mountain, thin air, less pressure.
Yes?”
“My god,” she
said, “I think I understand… ”
“That makes the
lift,” he said. “Look… ” And he drew a third wing, and in place of the
streams of air moving over it of the second wing, and the little arrows
pressing all over it from every direction of the first, this one had a row of
little arrows underneath it, holding it up.
He gestured up with his hands. “It has to go up,” he said, “it doesn’t have
a choice. Because this pressure is
pushing it up. And on top, it’s
pulling. The differential, yes?”
“Oh…” she said.
“So it’s all in
the speed, here. If this air is moving
fast, there is enough difference that it forces the wing up – up. If it's a fat wing, there’s big difference —
it can go slow, still there's lift. If it's thin, like my Spit, it's more
aerodynamic, yes? It turns tight, it's
fast in the sky. But then it must go
more fast, to stay in the air... You
slow down, you lose difference, and – no more lift. Not enough to keep the plane in the sky.”
She shivered.
“So that is
stalling speed,” he said, “ – and
that also is how we fly.”
He leaned over
the table, to kiss away the frown between her eyes. “Believe,” he told her, “ — it works…. Oh, and the propeller – yes? It was another wing, really, and it went
round so fast it pushed the plane through the sky, or pulled it, or both, if
she liked…
Sláma smiled,
twirling his finger. I like to think
it’s both, she said, you seem safer then.
She thought
about it afterwards, often, wondering if he was suspended in air at that
moment, and if somehow her believing it or not could make a difference to
whether he would fall out of it, like Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. She made herself believe in it fiercely, that
it was possible even though on the face of it, it didn’t make sense. Only if you don’t understand, he said, then
it looks not-sense. But when you see the
laws of physics, it has to be…
She still had
the notebook. It was put away safely
with his letters, wrapped in a red-and-white scarf: one of his
flying-scarves. That was another
treasure. He’d had it in his pocket, got
it out to mop-up a grazed knee one day.
It goes here, he’d explained, round the neck, it’s more comfortable.
Always I wear to fly. On top we wear
sweater, it’s wool, it’s warm but not soft for the skin.
She’d washed it
out for him; the next time he came found
her wearing it. It had felt so precious
to wear something he had worn – a kind of talisman, specially since he wore it to
fly.
“It looks good,”
he said, “it suits you. You should keep
it.”
“Oh, may I?” she
asked, thrilled as a child.
“Of course,”
he’d said, “what is this ‘may I?’ You’re
my darling, aren’t you? Don’t you think
I’d like to think that you are wearing it, when I’m not here?”
It was too
recognizable for what it was to wear it now, in this life she had that was hers
to live without him; but she took it out
sometimes and held it to her face.
She got up from
the table and went to get them now, wanting to see his letters and drawings again
and touch the scarf. She didn’t want to
go back to bed, didn’t miss the sleep – there was balm in the middle of the
night; there was quiet, and solitude.
She didn’t keep
them anywhere so obvious as a drawer;
that would have been too easy, not private enough. They sat safely somewhere Charles never
went: the bottom of her
sewing-basket. Under all the spools of
thread, the bobbins, the tins of buttons, the packets of needles, the skeins of
floss, the gold embroidery-scissors like a long-beaked bird, the pincushion,
the chalk, the darning-egg, the big fat darning-needles…
Unwrapping it
slowly, she took out his letters.
The pages looked
up at her; she saw through them,
remembering the Franta who had written them, signed them Always, and how
they had been together. It was an
agony; it pierced her; it was a fierce joy, even now, to relive
it. She thought about the way he spoke
of things, because if you didn’t then how could you share them? He tried so hard, with his English… every letter here was an extension of his
fierce desire to connect with her. Not
just sexually, though that was there; it
was the least of it, though – but as human beings. When they couldn’t be together, he’d reached
out with his words to embrace her and keep what was between them alive, vital,
tended. Their physical love-making was
just the expression in flesh of all they felt, all they were in every other
way.
Sarah hadn’t
written any poetry since University, which she had left without graduating to
marry her sailor. Women didn’t need a
degree, not married ones, Charles had said.
Her parents had agreed; why
didn’t she settle down, now that she’d had a nice offer? And yet it always lived in her, that drive to
express what she saw and felt. She
hadn’t known what to do with it, till she met Franta, who also lived
intensely. They were mates because they
both saw and felt things. They were
mates because they had found each other and held nothing back.
What was left,
now? Who was she, even?
Slowly, she
reached for a pencil and started to write in the back of the notebook.
Some hours later, she could not have said how many but it was past first light, she set the pencil down again. Several pages were covered with crossings-out, scraps of lines coming-together, words put in and taken-out again, till she had it saying what she wanted, what she felt. She had taken that and written-it out again fair on the facing page.
Flight, she wrote at the top of the page, and underlined it.
Flight
My love is hurtling from me faster than I can bear
But it must bear him, this speed of his:
The Bernoulli principle must maintain lift
I dare not doubt it
Lest he fall Icarus-like from flight
Whose neat ink arrow-lifted curves he drew for me
With careful hands, before I fell from grace.
You see, it must, he said.
A clip-winged flapping in the chest
Insists it’s possible to fly, it is —!
Yes: in his
remembered arms I owned
Swans’ oneness with air, their elemental ease –
We countered, merged: ours was the sweep
And rhythm of beating wings,
Their soughing sighs
Enacting giddy with grace
That timeless choreography.
What we call love I know
As swans do, by instinct.
Once mated, now forever
– even when pinioned, earthbound –
We can’t forget such fateful pairing,
The momentous act
Of trusting to air.
Frances started to walk; had a birthday.
And another…
The tide of the war turned, after D-Day.
Frances started to talk.
Germany fell.
Chapter 10
– Sighs
The telephone rang. Charles was outside, enjoying his pipe and crossword-puzzle in the August evening, so Sarah answered it: “Burford double-four double-three?”
“Hello,” a woman’s voice said, “Is this Sarah?”
“Yes,” said Sarah, wondering who would be asking for her by her first name.
It couldn’t be the call she had dreaded all this time, because the war was over – at least in Europe. Wherever Franta Sláma was, he was safe.
“I got your number from the Watsons,” said the woman. “I hope you don’t mind. I thought you’d want to know. This is Janet.”
Sarah froze. “Janet – oh my god! — is he all right?”
“Oh, yes,” said Janet kindly, “sorry, I didn’t mean to give you a scare like that. No, I’m ringing you because they’re leaving. Next week. The whole squadron. They’re going back to Czechoslovakia. The Czech government has bought the planes, and they’re taking them back. I thought you ought to know.”
“Are you still – he’s still at Fowlmere, then?”
“We had a spell up in Scotland, and another month or two in Italy, but we’re back here now. They’ve been winding things up.”
“Is Honza going back?” Sarah wanted to know because she wanted to think of Franta having a friend to travel with, keep him company on their homecoming.
“Yes,” said Janet.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Sarah, “I didn’t think… ”
“That’s why I rang,” said Janet. “Because you won’t have another chance. He’ll be gone.”
Her heart thumped, attempted some sort of wild escape through her ribcage. “Does he ever talk about — ” she asked.
“Not much,” said Janet. “Almost never. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about you – both of you. You can see he is.”
“Oh, god,” she said.
“You’ve never sent him a picture of the baby, have you?”
“No — no, I thought it would be cruel… just make it worse… ”
“I don’t think anybody forgets something like that just because he’s not reminded,” said Janet. “Would you?”
“No,” whispered Sarah.
“You’ve still got time to send him one,” said Janet. “He’s never said anything, but… I think he’d like it. Honzi says Franta’s still got something of yours, he doesn’t show it to anybody, but he keeps it with his medals. I don’t know what. But he hasn’t forgotten. Look, it’s none of my business, but I thought you’d want to know. He ought to know what she looks like, don’t you think? Doesn’t he deserve that?”
Sarah wondered if she could bear to see him again and not want to go home and kill herself. Was that being a bit melodramatic?
No: it was how she felt.
She wouldn’t, because of Frances, and god knew that was enough and had to be, and whatever joy life held was there in that sweet little face and those laughing eyes… but if it hadn’t been for that, she would have done it already.
“Is he — is he all right?” she asked.
“More or less,” said Janet. “He really did take it hard, you know. Inside. Honzi’s known him for years, so – we could tell. He loved you… if you didn’t know.”
“I knew,” said Sarah, through layers of grief, “I know… ”
“Karel was killed,” said Janet, “in the spring of ’43. He never did say he’d forgiven him. Franta took that hard, too… ”
“Oh, Franta –!” said Sarah.
“Well – I won’t keep you,” said Janet. “It’s up to you. I just didn’t want you to regret it, if you heard afterwards that they’d gone… ”
“Thank you,” Sarah heard herself saying, “god, you’ve been a good friend – thank you.”
“I hope so,” said Janet. “Bye-bye, then.”
“Bye-bye… ” said Sarah.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
They might have won the war, but the food was still lousy. Sláma wondered if it would be any better back home. He’d tried to get letters through to his brothers and sisters and matka at their old addresses, but nothing had come back. Perhaps they’d moved; perhaps the post was bollixed-up. Europe was in chaos; millions of people were displaced, millions more murdered. Perhaps matka hadn’t lasted through the war… The idea that he mightn’t see his mother again grieved him in a dull way like toothache. It had been in her eyes when they’d embraced before he left in 1939: she wasn’t one for pretending, not Eva Sláma. They’d shone anyway: go, then, Franta, she’d said, I know you have to, son. Don’t tell me you are sorry, because I don’t want a sorry son. Make me proud, eh? That’s better, not sorry…
“Ani, matko,” he had said.
Well, soon he would know.
And in the meantime, here was another plateful of those bloody carrots… some sort of meat, whose origin it didn’t do to enquire into too closely; potatoes that tasted of soap. He ate little, pushed it away. Something from the bar in the Officer’s Lounge would be better… even a handful of ginger-biscuits or whatever he could scrounge later.
There were perhaps half the usual people in the mess-hall; a couple of dozen. He’d left it till late, to eat. The chatter ebbed and flowed, the clatter of knives and forks on plates, the crash of trays from the kitchen.
Hadek was finishing some long and rather boring tale about an argument he’d had with Machaty, and Sláma was listening as politely as he could while letting his mind wander, when he noticed that it had gone quiet – and that people were looking at him.
He put down his mug of tea. Someone raised eyebrows, looked behind Sláma over his shoulder. Several people stood up, as if they had suddenly decided they’d had enough and this was a good time to leave. He frowned at Hadek: what’s going on?
“I think – Franto, I think you should turn round,” said Hadek. His pockmarked cheeks had gone a dull red.
Sláma turned round.
Proboha…
“Hello – hello, Sarah,” he said.
“Look,” said Sarah, “look, Frances, there’s Franta – see? Let’s go to see Franta....”
“Tanta?” said the moppet with his hair, his eyes, his chin, her mother’s rosy cheeks: “Tanta…!”
He swallowed. “Are you Frances?” he said, in the soft voice he had for children, “yes? Hello, Frances… look, what a big girl you are! Yes, I see that you have grown very big – soon you are going to be three years old, yes? – and your shoes are red. Can I have them, your shoes? Will they fit me? They are very nice shoes… ”
She laughed, came across the floor to him.
People slipped to the side of the room and out of the back door.
He opened his arms a little, not to make a big hug but just the way you do for come here, then. She came there. “Tanta?” she said.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, not understanding how he could speak at all but grateful for it, “yes, I am Franta. Fr-anta. And did you come to see me?”
“We drived,” she said, “in the car.”
“I see,” he said. “You have come a long way, then.”
“I sleeped,” said Frances. “They’re my shoes… ”
“Oh, of course,” he said, “I know that! They are your shoes and they fit your feet. My feet are too big, mm? I couldn’t wear them – only on my fingers, I think!” He made his fingers walk towards her a little.
She laughed again. “You’re silly!”
“It’s true,” he said.
“I brunged my baby,” she told him, holding it out for inspection. She had many of the same difficulties with irregular verbs that he’d had; it made him smile.
He took the baby. “It’s a very nice baby,” he said, “look, she has got a dirty face! Shall we wash her? We can get some water, look… ”
His eyes met Sarah’s over the silky dark head with its blue hair-ribbons.
“Hello,” she said.
He blinked. It was too much, having her just walk in like this. Not that he wished her away, god no, but just – couldn’t he have had a little warning? He felt hollow, numb — and beneath that, all churned-up again, as he hadn’t allowed himself to be in a long time, or he’d have been dead by now from inattention.
“Hello,” he said again. “You – you heard we are leaving, then?”
“Janet rang me,” she said.
“I – I see,” he said, feeling like a fool. It was easier to talk to Frances. “Look,” he continued, pointing to them in his daughter’s arms, “your dolly has blue ribbons like you.”
“She’s not a dolly,” said Frances, “she’s my baby.”
“Of course,” he said, “pardon me, I am so stupid. I didn’t think – yes, she is your baby, I see that. What is her name?”
“Patsy,” said Frances. “She fell – she fell in a puddle!”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Sláma, “poor baby! Let me see – look, I have a hanky, here – will you let me make her better?”
Frances pushed the baby into his hands. She was a sturdy little girl, not plump but
healthy-looking and bright-faced. She
wore a cherry-red corduroy pinafore and leggings, a blue blouse and matching
blue ribbons. She looked to be dressed
in her Sunday best, although it wasn’t Sunday.
Her face was so like his little sister’s as a child that Sláma kept
blinking. Má dcera…
my daughter… “Krásný,” he said to Sarah, his voice
not quite steady, “krásný – you remember what that is?”
She nodded, biting her lip. It seemed as difficult for her to see him as it felt for him. Her eyes were over-bright. Yet there was joy in them, too. “Of course,” she said, “how could I forget? I remember everything… ”
“Me also,” he said, with a lopsided smile. “Ah, look, Patsy, give me your arm – you are a good baby – see, I will clean you from the puddle – give you back to your little mama and you will be all clean again like a good baby should be — Sarah, how are you? How is it? Is it well with you?” His English was tripping his tongue when he talked to her, even though with Frances it was easier.
“Her leg’s dirty,” said Frances.
“Oh, I missed it – I am sorry — there, I will rub your leg, Patsy… ”
“Yes,” said Sarah, “yes, I’m well – I’ve been all right… thank God you’ve made it through, Franta, to go home safe… ”
“Yes,” he said. “Karel didn’t.”
“I heard.” Her voice was sad: “Janet told me. Oh, Franta, I’m so sorry… ”
“Yes,” he said. “Did she tell you what has happened?”
“No,” said Sarah.
The last of the diners had slipped away from the mess-hall, leaving them alone. Sláma didn’t talk about his business, and his friends didn’t gossip, but word gets around in a place like that and there wasn’t much doubt what was up. He was well-liked; the WAAF girls appreciated his manners and (most of them) the fact that he didn’t try to seduce them, and the men had been so close these past years that he could have asked them to stand on their heads and they would all have done so. To give him a little space now and not stay to gawp seemed the least they could do for him.
“Here,” said Sláma, “you can sit on my knee, if you want – you don’t have to. But then you can hold your baby while I make her clean, it’s better, yes?”
“All right,” said Frances, coming into his arms and onto his lap.
Sarah had come closer, was standing a foot or two away. Sláma motioned to the empty chairs: “Sit,” he said, “you’re not leaving so soon, are you?”
“No,” she said with a shaky smile, “We’ve got all afternoon… as long as you have, really — ”
“Oh,” he said, “that’s very nice — then perhaps we can go for a walk? Yes, see, I have Patsy, look, and we are going to take off her hat. Can you help me?”
“We’ve got a dog, too” said Frances.
“Oh, do you?” said Sláma. “I had a dog… her name was Barcha. What’s your dog’s name?”
“Rex,” she said. “He knocks me over… ” Sarah hid a smile. It was Charles’s dog, really, a boisterous springer spaniel that was almost too much to handle but he’d wanted it. In fact, he’d told her that if she could have a baby, it seemed only fair that he could have a dog. Of course, she had to walk it.
“Oh, dear. And does he say wuff, wuff?” asked Sláma.
“Yes!” Laughter pealed from Frances’ throat. “Do that again!”
He obliged. “Is she always so happy?” he asked Sarah, his eyes sparkling with pleasure as well as other things not so easy to feel.
“God, yes,” she said. “She always has been. She was such a good baby – so good-tempered and cheerful – always took things in her stride – just like her daddy. She hardly ever cried… ”
Somehow that stung, that she would think him so cheerful all the time. “You think I haven’t cried?” he asked, before he could stop the question from coming out. “I’m sorry, he added, “you don’t need to answer. So tell me, when she was born, was it difficult? Did it hurt a lot? Were you all right?”
“The labour was awful, but they gave me something and I was out of it half the time,” she said. “Then I got your flowers,” she added – “and I cried my head off...”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, “I shouldn’t have said that, Sarah. Forgive me, please. I know. It was worse for you, a million times, of course it was. I just didn’t want you to think – ” He stopped speaking. He didn’t need to say the rest, that he hadn’t let her go so easily, that it mattered – that he hadn’t been laughing all this time without a thought for her and the child; she would know that without being told.
“I know,” she said.
“I know you know,” he replied.
“Say wuff wuff again!” said Frances.
He did, and touched her nose. She giggled and he did it again. He was very gentle, not overwhelming her all at once but offering his attention playfully, so it was easy to take, equally easy to ignore if Frances didn’t want it. “Yes, you can rub my nose if you want,” he said. “ouch – you are very strong!”
Sarah watched her daughter open like a flower. “What happened with Karel?” she asked softly.
“I ditched – again, “ said Sláma. “That means to go down in the water, you know... I was close to the sea – we were low, and then my engine just cut out. Karel was behind me. He saw me bail out, and he saw my dinghy got away from me and I lost it and it burst. They do that… so he came back over and he gave me his… you understand, his dinghy from inside his cockpit. He opened, to inflate and give me… ” tears stood in his eyes. “But he came too close, it’s impossible at that speed, so low – he tried it, though, for me – he caught a wave with his wing, the sea was rough… so he crashed then. In the sea, at 200 miles per hour… half a mile away — there was nothing I could do.. ”
“Take her frock off too,” said Frances hopefully, “make it clean!”
“Oh, Franta,” said Sarah.
“He saved my life,” said Sláma, “do you see? His dinghy –
I couldn’t have lived, without it… no,
sweetheart, srdíèko, this is the RAF here and it’s not allowed,
to take off the clothes. Specially not
the frock. Not to see the belly-button,
it’s not nice. The commanding officer will be upset if he sees a naked baby. Nobody without clothes on his base. She must keep it on. Till your mama can wash it. — He never told me it was all right,” he
finished, “never. He did not accept my
apology – about you. He is still not
speaking to me when he is dead. When he
died.”
She leaned
forward and put her hand on his arm.
Sláma looked at
her. There was hurt in his face and he
let it be there. Their eyes held one
another’s. It was as if the past three
years had been a bad dream; the
understanding was no less present between them.
She realized that Charles had been avoiding looking at her, really
looking.
Looking like
this, just seeing whatever was there to see — realized also, all over again,
that Charles really hadn’t done so even before, not during the first ten years
of their marriage either, when he had nothing to reproach her with. There’d be a quick glance, and then the nod
or the smile or the comment to break it off.
Nothing too intimate, too revealing.
Sláma’s eyes
didn’t break their gaze. He blinked away
the over-brightness in them.
Frances was
smoothing down her baby’s hair. “I’m
thirsty,” she announced.
“Oh,” said
Sláma, smiling at her, lifting her chin with his finger and tilting his own
head to show her the same open regard he had just given her mother: “of course you are. You have come a long way. What am I thinking of, not to offer you? Let me see, what do we have here? Not so much, Frances, I’m afraid! What do you like to drink?”
“Milk,” she
said. “Orange-squash.”
“Let me see,” he
said, “what we can find for you. Do you
want to come with me to the kitchen, and we will ask the nice ladies who cook,
what they have for you?”
She nodded.
“Take my hand,
then,” said Sláma, and she did so gravely.
Frances looked
up at him, then threw a glance back over her shoulder: “Mummy, you hold Patsy!” she instructed, and
held out her baby for Sarah to take.
So Sarah knew
she wasn’t invited on this expedition;
Frances wanted to go to the kitchen with Tanta by herself. The magnetism, the sweetness of him had
charmed her just as it had her mother, charmed and drawn her like a bird from
its nest and into Franta’s outstretched hand.
She had wondered
what he would think of her, how it would be for him to see Frances. She hadn’t imagined this simplicity between
them. I should have, she thought.
Charles was a
kind and well-meaning father, off-hand and relentlessly jolly – except when he
was in one of his moods. He had no idea
about babies, he said cheerfully, and it was true: he spoke to Frances as if she were an adult
or a small idiot alternately. Kindly, of
course, since he was basically a kind man – but as if one day she would be
worth talking-to, and in the meantime he would indulge her prattle
absent-mindedly, still reading his paper.
Sarah watched
the two of them walk slowly to the kitchen-doors. They went slowly, because Frances had noticed
the painted lines on the floor and was balancing along one of them. She looked up once at Sláma and he smiled
down at her: “Ah, you have found the
blue line,” he said, “it’s – what’s the
word – it’s magic, yes? It’s very
important to follow it… that’s right, look, here we are — ”
Sarah held Patsy
to her chest, her eyes blurring.
They came back
with a cup of milk. “Do you need me to
help you hold it?” asked Sláma, “is it too heavy for you? Oops!
Here, let’s just put my hanky under your chin, then it won’t matter if
you spill a little bit… ” He did so.
“Karel said to me on the radio, he said “Franto, I have you. That’s the
last what he said. At least he called me
Franto. Not Sláma.”
“Frant-oh?”
“Yes, you know
when you speak to somebody in Czech you change the ending, it’s just what we
do, how we say it. You speak to me, you
say Franto.”
“You never told
me that!”
“It didn’t
matter, you were speaking English. In
English I’m just Franta.”
“Tanta,” said
Frances.
“Yes, that’s
right, Franta,” he said with a crack in his voice, “it’s very nice that you
know my name. Thank you, Frances, that
you say it to me.”
“Mummy told me,”
she said.
“Thank you, to
mummy then,” he said.
Sarah bit her lip. “Miluyi-chi, Franto,” she said. “That hasn’t changed… I don’t think it ever will. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” she added, seeing the pain flash in his face when she did.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” he said, “but — you did. And — I think — I wanted to know that you still did. Even though I want you to be happy. But I wanted to know it counted for something, what we had. What we were. That it was more than an affair… wasn’t it?”
“You know it was,” she said. “But you — you ought to go on with your life — you have, haven’t you? You must have a girlfriend, Franta!”
“I could,” he said, “if I wanted. There are lots of nice girls here at the base. Some of them like me a lot. But now I’m waiting till I get back to Czechoslovakia. That’s where my future is, now. And I don’t want to take someone else to bed and leave her. I’m not that sort of a man, really. Anyway, I hope not. What’s that? You want some more? You finished it? You are a good girl! We’ll go in a minute and ask for more... Sarah, god, it’s too easy to use people — and then what are you? You become what you despise in others… it’s not good. I don’t want to use women like that. Like an old handkerchief and then you throw away and get new clean. What, you want more? You are thirsty girl today? Come, then, Frances, let’s go to see Mrs. Pollock again. Can you say ‘Mrs. Pollock please can I have some more milk?’”
“Mrs.-Pollock-please-can-I have-some-more milk —!” said Frances, grinning.
“Come,” he said, and she did.
Her hand in his was light and warm and small. Sláma had imagined all his life being a father. He barely remembered his own; he’d been six when Josef Sláma was killed in the Great War, but Tata hadn’t been home since mobilization in 1914 and when you are only just five years old you have a certain picture of your Tata that’s more of a feeling than a solid flesh-and-blood man. He remembered someone thin with an easy laugh who flung his children up on his shoulders. Franta was the middle child of the five, with the older and younger ones like bookend pairs on either side of him. His older brothers had become a bit bossy, but in a kind way; his little sisters looked up to him, because their other brothers were too old and too remote to take so much interest in them. Their adoration had been sweet to him: he tried to deserve it. Sometimes he would be impatient, and not want to play with them because he had more important things to be doing, boy’s things, and then he would see the lip quiver and the tears come in the eyes, and he’d say, “Look, Magdalena, see, I’m just going off for the afternoon. I’ll help you with your dolly when I get home. We’ll melt some lead together, you and me, and make her a medal, like Nurse Cavell, all right?”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” he said.
He kept his promises.
Men should do that, shouldn’t they? Well, everybody should, but to girls you always had to be extra-kind, because like matka they needed your help too. They weren’t so strong, didn’t have the big muscles. So when matka took in other people’s clothes to wash, you helped to turn the handle of the mangle for her, and when she sat back in that slumped way you fetched her a beaker of cool water from the pump, because she didn’t have Tata to do it for her.
Tatas loved their children and took them on their shoulders and told them stories… Tatas had time to play. If you were lucky enough to have one. Tatas didn’t say, ‘Not now, Franto, I’m sorry my honeybird — !’ – they said, ‘what, fishing? That’s a great idea! Let’s go!’
So when he had a child he was going to be sure to have time to tell stories and play. Because children didn’t stay children very long, and that was all the time you had to influence them in who they were going to become, to show them from the way that you were and not just tell them sternly with a wagging finger what was really important, how we have good manners to people and treat them with respect, how we do the hard things without complaining, tell the truth, work hard, remember to laugh. Actions spoke louder than words, and if you were going to have an effect on somebody else, you didn’t do it by telling them anything.
He’d tried to do that with his boys, as well as teaching them to fly. How to be an officer, a friend, a colleague, things that you could only show.
Even when you were human, imperfect – as he had been with Karel.
Same thing with children, then, you had to be yourself and just love them, didn’t you? Love them and do what was best, make the hard choices they were too little to make and let them make their own mistakes about the small ones.
Like spilling the milk a little, you didn’t say, ‘now look what you’ve done, you’ve spilled it! I told you so, you can’t do it by yourself –!’ No, you said ‘Look, let me tuck this hanky here, yes? Then if you spill a little it won’t matter… ‘ Because children believed about themselves whatever their parents believed. If they were bad, or reckless, or not very bright… or if they were capable, responsible, clever. Matka was proud of all her children, and even now he could feel that: that he was in some essential way a man to be proud of, with things to live up to that mattered. He’d had friends whose matkas told them they were bad boys, too wild, oh my god my poor heart, you’re going to break it, Bedrich –! Jiri, how can you be so thoughtless? You never think of anyone but yourself, ay, ay, what a hooligan… you’ll come to a bad end! And Bedrich and Jiri had lived up to what was expected of them… which made them exciting lads to hang around with, but he was always having to talk them out of doing stupid things, or walking away if they insisted. He wondered what had become of them now.
They had reached the kitchen. The door was propped open with a wedge and the tall red-elbowed Cook was standing with her hands on her hips, staring. Not in a bad way, of course, but intimidating to a child. He squeezed her small hand reassuringly.
Frances tugged back, looked up at him with round dark eyes. “I forgot,” she whispered.
He crouched down. “It’s all right,” he whispered back, “I’ll tell you again. It’s ‘Mrs. Pollock please can I have some more milk?’”
She looked up, took a deep breath, said it quickly before she forgot again.
Hilda Pollock looked down. The two faces turned up toward her side-by-side – god, what a sight. Flt/Lt. Sláma, with his funny quirky smile, and his little girl, the spitting image, holding out her cup. He’d got down to her level, her hand in his confidingly, and he was raising his eyebrows up at herself: to be kind, please, to take another moment from her duties to get the milk out again when she’d only just put it away.
“’Course you can, my lover!” she said, more kindly than she had spoken to anyone at Fowlmere in the last five years, just about. It wasn’t easy, cooking and serving a couple of hundred hungry people on what they gave her. No, it wasn’t: and there were plenty of complaints and not a lot of compliments. Her hard work wasn’t appreciated, not when it turned-out the same old dinners every day. They complained about the lumps in the porridge, as if she had time to strain ten gallons every morning. Lucky to get it at all, they were… But when faced with this little moppet with the big brown eyes just like her daddy, who was also looking up at her and asking her with those same eyes not to say anything unkind or nosey-parkering but just to be kind and say Of course you can, she melted.
My, my, but there was nowt so queer as folk, though, as her granny had liked to say. Who would have thought it, a little illegitimate daughter for such a nice man? Well, the war made people behave in ways they didn’t in peace-time, and these Czech boys could be a bit of a handful. Though she wouldn’t have thought it of this one.
“Say ‘thank you’ to this kind lady,” said Sláma gently when she handed-over the refilled cup.
The little girl bit her lip, suddenly shy.
“‘Thank you Mrs. Pollock, yes?” he prompted her. “You are a big girl now, you have nice manners, and that is what we say, when somebody is kind and they do something for us. You know that, don’t you… it’s easy: ‘Thank you, Mrs. Pollock… ‘ ”
“Thank-you-Mrs.-Pollock,” she said, and turned to him. Her chin quivered a little. “Tanta, I want my mummy… ”
“Yes, of course you do,” he said, “let’s go to find her, shall we? She is just right there, look, she is waiting for us… ”
Hilda Pollock wiped away an uncharacteristic tear with the corner of her apron. There hadn’t been too many thankyous, not around here. She was going soft in her old age – must be the Change!
Sláma and Frances went back to the table where Sarah sat. “Did you say you can stay a little?” he asked, “ – because if you can, can’t we go for a walk, or something? It’s too much, here, Sarah — there’s too much to talk about and there’s nothing interesting for Frances... ”
She looked at him gratefully. “I’d like that,” she said.
He smiled his old Franta smile. “Me too,” he said. “Shall I carry her? Can she walk far? We can take your car and go down into the village, and so then we can have tea afterwards at the tea-shop, yes?”
“I’ve got the push-chair,” she said, “in the car. So we just need a good place to walk.”
“The tow-path,” he said, “by the canal – it’s nice and flat, and you can push this thing, push-chair, I think, easily.. . ”
“That sounds perfect,” she said.
He grinned. “Good – there is so much to talk about! I want to know everything about how you are, and about Miss Frances here, what she likes, what you do together, about your life — ”
“I want to hear about yours,” she said, “I want to know how you are, too. Really how you are. And everything that’s happened, all this time… ”
“Yes,” he said, “We’ll do that. It will be good, to catch-up properly and not rush. Now that you are here. Let me just get my things from my room – ? Also I should let the Wing-Commander know I am going off the base for a couple of hours. He won’t mind, things are quite informal around here now we are almost leaving, but still I must ask him.”
Sarah nodded. It had taken three years, but yes: now that she was here, they had a lot of catching-up to do, before he left for ever, didn’t they. So much had been left unsaid between them; and now so much had happened since, that they’d each worried about, fretted-over, wondered, not-knowing…
How did you catch-up on three years and the love of your life, in a couple of hours? But they could try, anyway. She’d been afraid she shouldn’t have come, but he was making it easy for her even though she could see in his eyes that it wasn’t. “Of course. Franta, thank you… Frances, let’s go to the toilet before we go out, shall we? Do you need to go?”
Frances shook her head.
“Let’s both try anyway… it’s better, if you do. So we won’t have to worry… ”
Sláma was pointing, smiling: “It’s over there, through that door, look, the one with a picture of a WAAF on it.”
“What are you smiling about?”
“I am thinking about the air-raid,” he said, “I should have said that to you before we left the room, Do you need to go? It’s better if you try now… but I suppose we were in too big hurry, weren’t we.”
The memory was as sharp as it was sweet. “God, Franta,” she said. “Those two days… it was — !” Words failed her.
“Yes,” he said, “it was. I remember very well.”
“Me too,” she said.
“Now let me go, then,” he said, “I’ll be right back. Frances, look, don’t forget Patsy! She is on the floor, poor baby… here, I’ll put her on the table, it will be more comfortable for her. And please take the cup to Mrs. Pollock, when you are finished? She is getting ready to do the washing-up now… ”
Sláma had picked the perfect place for their walk. Sarah thought about how he knew things like
that. She had told him he was sensible –
he considered the details and the limitations and then came up with something
that would work. He still did. The tow-path was wide enough to walk
side-by-side, smooth enough for the push-chair. It was also quiet and very pretty, with no
cars as a lane might have had, and the loveliness of the water to walk
beside. The twenty-third psalm came to
her, and she said it softly: He
leadeth me to walk beside the still waters…
“Yes,” said Sláma, “like this, a little bit? But in the bible it doesn’t say to bring bread for the ducks, yes? We have, though. I don’t mean to tease. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… ” he added quietly, in case she would think he didn’t take it seriously too.
“Feed the ducks? Oh, yes – Frances will love that,” she said, “how clever of you!”
He patted his pocket. “I asked Mrs. Pollock when you were in the ladies,” he said. “She has a kind heart under her stiff apron. You just have to be nice to her. There are always ducks down here, by the bridge. I come here sometimes. Alone,” he added, in case she thought he was bringing her to the same places he’d tryst with a girlfriend and be hurt by that, when it wouldn’t be true. It would be all too easy to think it, though.
“Franta, I want you to have someone,” she said. “I wouldn’t be happy, thinking of you alone. You deserve somebody nice.”
“Well, there’s plenty of time for that, isn’t there,” he said, “now the war is finished. I shall go back to Konice and see if Hanicka has married Kanka, and if she has then I’ll start looking… ”
She had told him to, but still the thought hurt her. “Let’s not talk about it,” he said, seeing the look on her face, that she couldn’t help when thinking about him with anyone else, no matter what she said. “Tell me about your life, where you live, how it’s with Charles – do you have a garden?”
They walked and talked. In-between the things they said were all the things they didn’t say, that hung there and ached, and each knew they were there and felt them, didn’t hurt the other by dwelling on them; but didn’t pretend they weren’t, either. Frances punctuated the conversation, of course, walking at first holding Sláma’s hand till she got tired and then pushing the pushchair herself with his help, and finally submitting to ride in it and walk alternately. He found all kinds of things to point-out to her, or pick to show her: a frog “look, his legs are so long to jump!”; hawthorn-haws in the hedge “for the birds to eat in the winter, yes?”, a jack-in-the-pulpit with its bright red berries “ – but these you mustn’t touch, they are very bad,” he said, “they have poison inside, do you know what is that? It gives you a tummyache, makes you very ill. So those we look and we say, oh that’s so pretty, and we keep our hands right here in our pockets – !”
“What’s that?”
“What? Oh goodness, you have sharp eyes! It’s a dead bird – that’s sad, isn’t it? But beautiful, look, the colours of the feathers... do you want to see? Let me, I’ll turn it over for you with a stick. We don’t touch, but we can look. Like the red berries. Look! — it has such a long — what’s the word?”
“Bill,” said Sarah. “It’s a snipe, I think.”
“See, how it has beautiful long thin bill, to eat in the water? And these long legs also? And the colours, look here in the wings, it’s orange, yes? And on the breast, cream… all the spots… and this long neck, the little head – it’s graceful, yes?”
“It’s sleeping?” said Frances, hopefully.
“No, it’s dead,” he said, “ – that’s a pity. It’s hard to understand. But when things are dead then they don’t come alive any more. They don’t wake up. They are very still. And then they go back to the earth. That’s good, it makes new things grow. But it’s sad for the bird.”
“Can I have it?”
“No, sweetheart. It belongs to the earth. Look, we will put it here under the hedge, on the grass, away from the path, and cover it with leaves. Yes, like that. That’s good… ”
Sarah thought her heart was going to break all over again, watching them together. It didn’t, though, it was healing in an odd sort of way, to see how natural he was, how much it meant to him to have this little time to be himself with this precious child they had made together. Now and then he’d look at her over Frances’s head and his eyes said ‘thank you’ to her, for bringing her now before he had to go back, in spite of how much it hurt.
They fed the ducks, and a dazzling swan that came paddling over when the bread appeared. Its feathers caught the fitful sunlight like white fire; beads of water gleamed in its neck. “Look,” said Sláma, “Frances, look who has come to see us! It’s very beautiful – krásný! But we don’t get too close, because a swan it has a bad temper. Can you say ‘swan?’” He pronounced it swohn. So did Frances. Sarah thought of her poem. God.
She ached for him; it was excruciating, being with him and knowing she was never going to hold him again now. He was as beautiful as ever to her eyes; only more so, as out-of-reach and ached-for as he was. She hadn’t thought she was taking him for granted, while they’d been lovers; she’d thought herself alive to every word, every look, every touch, every sigh, every smile, every groan of his. And she had been — but only when they weren’t hers any more did she feel to the depths of her being all they had meant. While they were hers to enjoy, she’d felt them in the moment and caught fire. Ever since, though, in memory, they’d become more precious, as if they had crystallized to diamond. Weren’t diamonds formed of common carbon – like coal – under unbearable heat and pressure? Yes, well, then, what could she have expected but that?
She wanted to tell him that, but it wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t make him hers again. She said: “Franta… it hurt so much, on top of everything else, not even saying goodbye —!”
“Yes,” he said, ”yes, it did. God – !”
“I think that’s why I had to come, today,” she said, “to try to do it properly… do you mind?”
“Mind?” he asked, incredulous, “you bring our daughter to me so I can know her and remember her and you ask if I mind?”
“I was afraid it would hurt too much,” she said.
“That, of course,” he said, “but we are adults, aren’t we? We expect to be hurt. Of course it hurts. That doesn’t mean we should run away from it! God, what it means, that you are here, that you are giving me this time — it means everything, Sarah —!”
“I just had to ask,” she said.
“Don’t cry, mummy,” said Frances.
“That’s right, don’t cry,” said Sláma. “Look, here is some bread. Throw it to that little one over there, he’s not getting any.”
They walked on a bit further when the bread was finished, and Frances climbed back in. It clouded-over, so Sláma unfolded the rug from the handle of the push-chair and put it tenderly over her. “I remember this rug,” he said. “What was it, you sang something: Blue boy?”
“Little boy blue, come blow up your horn,” she sang, “the sheep’s in the pasture, the cow’s in the corn – where is the boy who looks after the sheep? He’s under a haystack fast asleep!” She choked, by the end of it, but finished it anyway.
Frances laughed. “Sing it again, mummy!” she said.
Somehow Sarah did.
“Sing dilly-dilly,” urged Frances.
“Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green; when I am king dilly-dilly you shall be queen.” Her voice shook.
“Sing blackbirds!”
“I can’t sing any more,” said Sarah, “darling, I’m sorry. Mummy’s got a frog in her throat.”
“Here,” said Sláma, “if you like I will sing for you. But it’s song from my country, that’s not English, you won’t understand it. Not song you know from your mummy. Would you like?”
“She doesn’t understand,” said Sarah, “she thinks everybody speaks English.”
“Of course,” he said, “I just wanted to tell her anyway.”
“Sing a song, Tanta,” said Frances.
He did. It was a
lullaby: sleep, baby sleep… his mother was always singing it to one or
the other of his little sisters, or both:
“Spi děťátko, spi,
zavři očka svý, já tě budu kolébati a ty budeš usínati, spi
děťátko, spi… ”
His voice was clear and sweet, the melody a simple old-fashioned one that haunted after it was finished. The words had a beauty in his mouth, the sibilant consonants, the pure vowels; she hadn’t heard him speak so much Czech before. How much else of him had she missed, that now she would never know?
“That’s a sad song,” said Frances. “You made Mummy cry again.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, “I’m sorry. Mummy, Frances doesn’t want you to cry. That’s better.”
“Tanta, sing Jack and Jill!”
“I don’t know the same songs you know. I’m sorry, I can’t sing you what you know.”
“That’s all right,” she reassured him gravely, “you can’t help it.”
His eyes met Sarah’s again, amused and brimming. “She’s – precious,” he said, “I couldn’t imagine – I didn’t dream.. . ” He pronounced it im-agine, of course, the way he often did, the accent on the first syllable like his own tongue, the way she’d always melted to hear.
“Yes, isn’t she,” said Sarah. “I wanted you to see… Janet said I ought to send you a photograph, but I wanted you to have more than that, before you went back…”
“That was kind,” he said, “this is hard for you I know. But generous – always you are generous, Sarah, you give even what’s hard to give and it hurts, but you do, you are brave — ”
She didn’t know what to reply, said nothing.
“I am grateful,” he said, “god, you don’t know — thank
you, djikuji ti, zlatíèko, Sarah – thank you. For this.”
“You are
welcome,” she said, “Franta. Frant-o.”
He shook his
head, wondered why he had never told her before to call him Frant-o – specially
when they made love. God, it would have
been sweet – more intimate still, if that were possible…
They walked
on. A little wind blew up, and she
shivered. Frances was snug under the
blanket and nodding-off, but Sarah had brought only a cardigan. He saw, took off his battledress-blouse
immediately and put it over her shoulders without asking.
“No,” she said,
“you need that!”
“No,” he said,
“look, I have my flying-rig on, my warm jumper, I don’t need it. Take it, please. Wear it for now. I won’t be happy if you are cold.”
She turned
anguished eyes on him; let them
drop. His care for her still made the
bottom fall out of her stomach as it always had, only a hundred times more
poignantly now it wasn’t hers to enjoy any more. It had been almost unbearable watching his
hands – tending to the dolly, holding the cup of milk, unfolding his
handkerchief and tucking it under Frances’s chin, tearing the bread into scraps
and throwing it – and all the time thinking of the way they had felt touching
her; unbearable, too, watching his mouth
move, talking and smiling and shrugging, and remembering the days when she
could look at him speaking and smiling all evening long, her own sweetheart
with his sweet rosy mouth — and known its kisses were hers.
To die for, she
thought, his kisses. He was a good
kisser; no, he was sublime. He offered them with his own enjoyment so
plain, so many different kinds and moods and intentions, from tenderness to
out-and-out passion; from nuzzling to whispering against her skin, to suckling,
to gasping out his love against her mouth.
Not now,
though. That Franta was already lost to
her; soon the rest of him would be, too.
She shivered
again, just at the thought of it. His
jacket smelt of him.
“So now she is
sleeping,” he said, “tell me about Charles.
Your marriage. How is that? It must be difficult… ”
She found
herself telling him more than she’d meant to. She’d intended to put a brave
face on it, so he wouldn’t worry. But
now she was here she knew he’d see through that in a second anyway, so why
bother? Besides, what use would
pretending serve? If there had been a
grace to their love in particular, it had been that – of being honest with each
other. Not hiding anything, not
pretending to be other than they were, other than they felt. So she told him haltingly about the unruffled
surface, the day-to-day routine they had constructed of being careful and
keeping everything on an even keel – and of the unhappiness beneath, that
neither spoke of.
He looked sad
for her.
‘Well, it’s the
only way,” she said, “At least we can get through the days together, like
that... ”
“I wanted more
for you than that,” he said, “just to get through the day – I hoped… “
“Well, it’s
better than it might have been,” she said, “he never said much about how awful
it was, either.”
“It would have
been better if he had,” said Sláma, “don’t you think?”
“Yes,” she
agreed sadly, knowing he was right. “But
he doesn’t do that, he won’t make a fuss, he just suffers things, puts up with
them, endures them… so that’s what he did with me, with all of this –!”
“I can’t bear to
think of you being ‘endured,’” said Sláma, “don’t you know you are too
beautiful and too precious to be put up with?
– proboha – god!”
“There’s nothing
I can do about it,” she said, “so please, Franta, don’t – don’t talk like
that.”
“I am sorry,” he
said. “It just is sad, that’s all — ”
“Yes,” she said,
a little sharply, “life is sad, hadn’t you noticed?”
”Yes, I had
noticed,” he said gently, without rising to her sharpness, so that she felt
worse than ever. “What is with him for his injury? Can he walk?”
“No,” she said,
“though now he is getting about a little bit on crutches. But it’s very hard for him, he falls over and
he needs me to help him get up.”
“That must be
difficult,” he said, “you have not one child but two — ”
“Yes,” she said,
“yes, it is.”
“I was afraid
for that,” he said.
They walked
further, till it was time to turn round and start to come back again, and that
hurt more than anything yet, because now the visit was running out and every
step they took was a step closer to saying goodbye. Sláma was pushing the push-chair: he gave her a little smile when she put her
hand over his on the handle. They walked
along like a couple, out with their little daughter for a nice afternoon stroll.
He smoked a few
cigarettes, while they were walking, since it was outside and the smoke
wouldn’t bother her; he hadn’t smoked
that much, before. He asked each time if
she minded, and she insisted he should go ahead. “Excuse me,” he said, “but it’s been a long
war and my nerves aren’t same what they were.
It’s a bad habit: I’ll try to
smoke less, when I get back.”
She thought of
all the sorties, the dangers he had faced – the men he’d lost from his section,
and the personal hurt, too. They all did it, the servicemen. It was something
to have in a crazy world where you didn’t know from one minute to the next what
you could count on – even if you’d still be alive. A lot of women were the same
way, nowadays, too; even smoking in public, a taboo before the war. “Of course,” she said, “ – if I’d started
sooner I’m sure I’d be joining you!”
He smiled then,
and they relived the memory without needing to speak of it.
“I saw the king
again,” he said, to make conversation, “and he remembered me!”
“What?”
“Oh, for the
bar,” he said, “to my DFC, so I am standing there and His Majesty says, well
look who’s here! Flt/Lt Hay! I am
thinking Hay, straw, it’s close enough, same thing unless you are a farmer. Though it’s different word in Czech too, it’s
seno, not sláma. But he
remembers Slammer, he is pleased that he speaks Czech now. Something to do with dry stuff in big heaps,
you know, that farmers have in the barn.
So of course I don’t correct him. I say Your Majesty, I am very touched
that you remember for so long ago – it’s been two years, and he says, never
forget a face, Slammer – I remember all of you… God bless you. He is a good man – God bless him. And his wife.
He is so shy, you know, it’s hard for him, but he does it. He stammers — same as TomTom, one of my boys
– it was TomTom that was always making the pictures in his English-book, he
liked to draw… Karel gave him a picture, to do the tits better — ” He shook his head, smiling at the thought. “They were brave boys. I don’t think TomTom ever saw any. Real ones.
Tits. Only the photograph..
. he was not yet even twenty-one. Makes me feel old —!”
It was true, he
was older. So was she. The wings of his hair had drawn back a little
more at the temples and the strain of the past three years was in his
face. But he hadn’t changed in any
essential way; he was still Franta, and
the sight of him still made her breathless and melt and want to cry.
The village was
out of sight still, beyond the next bend.
In front of them the dark yews of the churchyard swayed in the gusts of
wind that had blown up. The square grey church tower presided over them and
over the churchyard and the leaning gravestones, here where the river and the
canal ran close together. There was a
lane of about half a mile into the village itself, sunk between deep
banks: an old lane, as old as the church
itself – Saxon probably before it was Norman, even.
It started to
rain.
“It’s good it
didn’t rain sooner,” he said, “ – now we can wait in the church, don’t you
think? It’ll blow over soon, but I don’t
want the baby to get wet, rained-on –!”
“Yes, that was
lucky! Quick, let’s get inside before it
comes down heavier,” she said, “here, let me hold the gate open.” They passed under the lych-gate with its
gold-lichen-starred timbers, and in-between the headstones. Sarah had always liked churchyards; to her they were not representative of death,
but of the passage of life and its constant renewal from one generation to the
next. She pushed open the heavy door for
Sláma to wheel the push-chair inside, and they entered the church just as the
shower grew sharper.
“Just in time,”
he said, “here – this is a good place to put her, she won’t be in the way
and I can show you my favourite
things. I come here, sometimes.”
She looked up
and around her. It was a simple building, almost stark, its high ceiling
whitewashed and held up with ancient beams like a cruck barn raising its
peak. The altar was draped in a white
cloth with a green hem, and the candlesticks still held the candles from
Sunday’s service half-burned-down. It
had that indefinable smell of old stone and drying flowers and faint
candle-smoke from days earlier. The hymn
numbers stood in the wooden rack on the pillar by the pulpit, the pews each had
a hymn-book and an embroidered kneeler.
“It’s beautiful,
this place,” he whispered, crossing himself, “I like to come. It’s very peaceful.”
“Yes,” she
said. They parked Frances asleep in a
back corner and together they walked round, standing in front of the one
stained-glass window between the others that were plain with only pale green
and blue panes. It commemorated the dead
from the Great War. A knight in armour
held his sword down, its point resting on the ground before his mailed
feet: St. George. Behind, the dragon lay slain. Now they’d had to do it again; and they had not failed in their courage or
in the task this time, either.
“My father is
killed in this war,” he whispered, “you remember? 1915.
I was young – I don’t remember a lot about him. He was kind, I remember that, and I liked to
go on his shoulders. After Frances wakes up again I will take her on my
shoulders, perhaps – if you don’t mind?”
“Of course not,”
said Sarah, thinking of it and wanting to cry.
They walked on,
reading the inscriptions and the tablets.
“Always the dead children make me sad,” he said, “so many, they died so
young then. Look at this one… ” A family had lost five children, all under
the age of six. The last one had been the death of its mother in childbirth,
also, it seemed, from the dates. She had
been thirty-six: Sarah’s age. Sláma crossed himself again, murmured “God rest
them.” She always looked at the same
thing herself, felt the same way. She’d
pointed it out to Charles, once; he’d
called her gloomy. No need to upset
yourself, he said, getting sentimental over a lot of old graves, now, is
there? They’re long gone now…
A side-door led
to the vestry. It was open; the
choir-robes hung on the wall, and the church register sat on the desk. Someone had thrown a red-and-white liturgical
garment over a piece of furniture in the far corner. Sarah thought of how Sláma had wanted to
marry her.
They came to the
front of the church, past the pulpit. “Here,” he said, “it’s been a good
walk. Sit down — ?” He sat himself, on
the foremost pew where they could stretch out their legs; patted the oak bench beside him. She sat and he put his arm around her and she
leaned her head against him. It was a
chaste embrace; for comfort’s sake, for
the tenderness that was still between them, the caring that could never be over
as long as either of them still breathed.
In front of them was the altar-rail, the shallow steps up to the
sanctuary. A worn blue drugget covered
them; she thought of the brides who had
knelt there. I wouldn’t have asked for a
white dress, she thought, if I could have been one of them – I wouldn’t have
asked for anything, anything at all, if I could just have had Franta…
“It is so kind
that you came,” he said, “you don’t know — I can’t tell you… ”
“Oh, Franta,” she
said, “I wanted to see you again… I’ve been afraid to, I thought it would be
too difficult for you.”
“Me too,” he
said, “I wanted to see you even if it was too difficult… Jezishi Christe,
I’ve missed you. We never even said
goodbye, like you said, that was the worst – ”
“We can say it
now,” she said.
“Yes,” he said,
“I know. But my throat hurts. It doesn’t want to say the word.”
“Well, later,”
she said, “there’s still time, we
haven’t even had tea yet.”
“Right,” he
said, “we haven’t.”
They sat awhile
like that, hearing the rain on the roof.
Frances was sound asleep; they
had tired her out altogether. He’d left
her pushchair out of the way in case anyone came in, at the back by the table
with the extra hymnals. The
stone-flagged floor was worn, uneven, patina’d with the years like shiny
silk. It was quiet, and very
peaceful. She could hear his heart
beating through his woolly jumper. It
wasn’t as calm as the church. Well, she
was quite sure hers wasn’t, either. They
sat still, though, her head on his shoulder, afraid to move, to break the
spell. There seemed no need for words
between them. Some things couldn’t be
said, anyway. Not because they hurt too
much, even – they’d done a good job of saying those, hadn’t they, today? – but
because there just weren’t words. Not in
Czech or English; none at all.
Sláma sighed,
kissed her hair. “I should see if she is all right – still warm enough,” he
said, getting up to look at his sleeping daughter. He didn’t come back; he was transfixed by her
face as she slept, her head a little sideways, her eyes closed so you could see
the delicate tracery of tiny purple veins on them, like petals.
“Krásný … ” he said. His voice broke.
Sarah opened her
arms and he hesitated, came into them. They stood in front of their child and
embraced. She held him close, pulling
him to her, standing up against him and pressing herself there, specially below
the waist. Oh god how she had missed him,
missed all of this... he still felt something, it seemed, in spite of all the
hurt today: and dear god, it felt as
precious as ever.
“I’m sorry,” he
murmured, “don’t – it’s not intended – I can’t help, you know that — Sarah, not
now.”
“Oh please just
let me hold you and feel you,” she said, “Franta, just that? Please?”
“How can I say
no?” he whispered – and sighed, his shoulders slumping a little as if in
surrender.
She put her hand
behind his head, the way she used to when he was hers. His hair was silky and his neck was warm. The
back of his head fitted in her hand as it always had. He trembled.
“No, Sarah,” he said, “not now — not any more… ”
She cried,
silently.
He held her
tightly then, as he wouldn’t let himself when all she wanted to do was feel
him. He turned her face up to his and dried her tears with his handkerchief; more came.
He wiped them away too, and blotted the end of her nose. “Blow,” he whispered. She blew.
The tears wouldn’t stop coming, though.
She bit her lip. He took her face
in his hands then and bent his head a little and kissed it.
He’d meant to
kiss her once, to comfort her, because she was crying over him.
How could anyone
have done just that?
They kissed for
the goodbye they hadn’t been able to have, instead; and then for how much it
had hurt to part, and then for how it felt now to be in one another’s arms
again after all this time – and then because they couldn’t bear it; and then because they couldn’t bear to stop.
Sláma broke away
first. “No — no!” he gasped, “Sarah, this is going only to
more hurt —! We can’t do this… ”
“We never had a
last time,” she said, “Franta, Franta… ”
He looked down
at his sleeping child; took Sarah’s hand
and led her away so they could talk and not wake her.
“Sarah, no, zlatíèko,
je to beznadìjné — it’s hopeless,
it’s finished for us, it’s over,” he said when they had got down the side
half-way and his words would not disturb Frances’ nap. She had been upset before, when her mother
had cried: he didn’t want it to be worse,
this time. Yet he knew that Sarah would
cry, and that she needed to. If he
didn’t hold her now, then she would only cry alone some other time – the
thought of that hurt him more.
He took her in
his arms again, drew her head down to his chest. “Come, Sarah, it makes me want to cry also,
but you know it’s no good — !”
“She ought to be
yours… ” hiccupped Sarah.
“She is mine,
god, you can see it — !”
“I mean, you
ought to be her daddy… you’re wonderful with her – you know how to talk to her,
you talk to her as if you love her… !”
He held her more
tightly. “Why, doesn’t he?”
She shook her
head. “He tries,” she said, “but it’s
not the same. He hasn’t got a clue…
” His chest was warm and a bit prickly
from the coarse wool of his sweater. She
buried her face in it, wanting it to hurt her, wanting to feel it because it
was him.
“Sakra – do
prdele,” he said, “damn — ! Excuse me…” She felt him sigh. “The whole situation,
it’s intolerable… ” He pronounced it: in-tolerable. He was upset now, thinking of how unbearable
it was that they lived with Charles, who had no idea how to love either of
these precious creatures. “And you, what
about you, remember what I wrote to you in my letter? You at least love yourself if he won’t do it,
don’t you?”
She shook her
head again.
“Sarah, you must
– how can you live without that?”
“I don’t know,”
she whispered, “but I tried, and it just — made me cry — because it wasn’t you,
Franta... it wasn’t you – you – it wasn’t you!”
“There,” he
said, “sshh, there, Sarah, srdíèko… ”
They clung to
one another. “Please,” she said,
“Franta, let’s make love one more time — here — so we can know it was the last
time, and not be cheated of that, too?”
“God, no,” he
said, “Sarah, don’t ask me!”
“You want to,”
she said, “and so do I… we both do, look at us!”
“Leave him,” he
said. “Come to me. We’ll manage.
We won’t have much money because we’ll have to pay for him to have a
nurse instead of you, but it doesn’t matter, we’ll live. I’ll just take back the squadron and get them
settled and then instead of accept my commission back at home I’ll come for
you, we’ll be together —— ”
She shook.
“I mean it,” he
said, kissing her hair now and stroking her back, her waist, “come to me. When I return.”
“I can’t wait
that long… ” she said. “I’m dying for
you, Franta.. ”
“And me for you
also,” he said, “but come, it’s just a month or two more… ”
“What if you
don’t come back?”
“I’ll come
back,” he said fiercely, “ – if it’s for you then pane bozhe! They could not stop me... what? What, you still must cry? Ssshhh… Sarah, sshh, you’ll wake her —!”
She couldn’t
stop herself now. All the anguish of the
past three years rose up in her throat and tried to come out at once. And the
next three, and the next…. She stuffed
her knuckles in her mouth, bit down on them to keep herself from wailing aloud.
He drew her into
the vestry, pushed the door to; not
quite shut altogether but almost. “Come,
cry,” he said, “I’ve got you: cry… don’t
be too noisy still, but you can cry in here, look…”
“I can’t,” she
sobbed.
“I’ll do
anything for you,” he said, “if you tell me stay I’ll stay, and if you tell me
go, then I’ll go… what else can I do for you but that? ”
“Love me,” she
said, “now, here – while we can… ”
“No-o-o!” His
voice was husky, its downward cadence irrevocably sad. “What are you
thinking? We can’t! Not here!”
“Then touch me —
kiss me… Franta, please? I’m never going to have this again, never –
not as long as he’s alive — I can’t leave him, you know I can’t — Franta for
god’s sake, please… ”
“Jezishi
Christe,” he said, “I will give you
that – how can I refuse you? Before you
cry because it’s not me and now you cry because it is… ” He kissed her through her tears. “But we can’t make love,” he said, “not all
the way — you know we can’t… I’m not
the sort of man that carries a rubber in his pocket –! I’ve got you into trouble once already, do
you think I will hurt you again so? Only
I will make you come, because I love you and for this goodbye that you want,
this proper goodbye when you will really know it’s the last time and so will
I.”
“God,” she said,
trembling.
“Yes, God,
Sarah. God and Jesus Christ and his
mother Mary also, if we do this – they will all weep to see it, how we can’t
help it, to be so imperfect – to want one another so much —! And also we had better pray that He will
forgive us for loving each other here in His church …! And now come here, then, if that is what you
want.”
She turned to
flame at his hands.
“I love you,” he said between kisses, “and it’s really goodbye this time, Sarah – feel it. Unless you tell me to stay. But otherwise then this is the last time. Truly the last. So hold me — tell me Miluji t˘e, Franto… because me also I am knowing it’s the last time. Sbohem — goodbye — sbohem, not nashledanou, not I’ll see you again, but goodbye –! Say it, say Miluji t˘e, Franto – say it!”
She said it. He shuddered each time – but when she stopped, he said only, “say it again —!”
God, what had she asked for? Something to break his heart?
Perhaps.
When they couldn’t stand up any more they fell to their
knees on the worn old carpet and kissed and touched and wept there. Then Sarah saw that under the red-and-white robe in the corner was a sagging old couch. She pointed to it. “Look,” she said, “they’ve given us that –
God and all the saints – left it there, for us to make love. Because they’re sorry, too.”
He picked-up the
books and papers that were on it, and the gown, and set them on the desk
instead. His face was wet with
tears; his nose ran, and he wiped it
angrily on his sleeve. He sat on the
couch, then, in the sway-backed middle of it, and opened his arms to her.
They had already
pulled-off her knickers. Now she knelt
and opened his trousers.
“No,” he
whispered, “Sarah, for Christ’s sake, what are you doing… ”
“I want you to
feel me,” she said, “like we used to… ”
“No,” he said,
“I won’t do that… ”
“We don’t have
to finish that way,” she said, “you can come out and I’ll kiss you all the way
there… but just for now, Franta… ” —
and then there was no more arguing, he didn’t have it in him to say No any
more, what did she want from him? He was
only human, and he was beside himself, and he let her do as she wished because
it was the last time after all.
Their kisses
tasted of tears. It wasn’t difficult to
bring her there, any more than it had been the first time he had, also
somewhere very awkward, because they needed to so much, so very dearly. When she came and he felt her, he thought
that he was either going to burst into tears himself or else come too. He tried
to make it be the first, but she clutched at him and in her throat in little
cries she said “Franta, Franta, oh Frantoh, come for me – come for me!” and
that finished him off, because it always did.
“God,” he said,
when he could say anything, “Sarah, what have you done — I was not going to do
that — why did you say that? You know
what it does to me, Jezishi Christe,
I’m not a machine that makes love on command, I’m just only Franta and
I’m not perfect —!”
“You are to me,”
she said, “you’re Franta and you’re my sr-jeech-ko and you’re all I’ve ever
wanted. Miluyi-chi, Franto… I’m sorry
–!”
“You know I
spill when you say it like that, I always did… ”
“I wanted you
to,” she said.
“Yes,” he said,
“I see that. But you have made me break
my word… ”
“I’m sorry,” she
said, helplessly, hopelessly, “Franta, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all
right,” he said, “Do you think I didn’t want it with every part of me except
that? God…!”
“I couldn’t help
it,” she said, “Franta, I just couldn’t — ”
“It’s all right,” he said, “you see, neither could I… Miluji t˘e, Sarah.” His voice broke. He laid his head on her breasts and held tightly to her as if he was once more ditched in the sea and there was no lifesaver in sight, no safety, no salvation, only the two of them drowning together.
She held him too.
They collected themselves for perhaps a minute without speaking. It was too bittersweet for words, between them.
“We should do up our buttons,” he said flatly, sadly, “before somebody comes – or before she wakes up.”
“Let me?” she said. She slipped from his lap, knelt by him on the floor. It had been one of their small shared delights, to unfasten and fasten one another’s clothing. It had started the first time, when she shook too much to be able to do up her own buttons afterwards, and had been a tender thing between them after that.
“Stop; let me do for myself – I don’t think I can bear it,” he said, “ – already this was more than I can bear, Sarah.”
She looked away.
“God,” he said, “I didn’t say that to be unkind – or to make you cry… ”
“No,” she said, “you said it because it was the truth. I’ve hurt you all over again, haven’t I?”
“Not again,” he said, “but yes, it hurts – doesn’t it? – to say goodbye like that? Almost so much as not saying it…!”
She didn’t answer. He saw her hands trembling. “Come here,” he said, “what am I going to do with you? Let me button up your frock… ”
He did so. She wept, silently.
“I wanted to be more than your lover,” he said, “you know
that, don’t you? That was the least of
it, what I wanted with you, drahoushku. But I see now, that’s all that’s left that I could be for you, today at
least. But if you are going to change
your mind, don’t leave it too long — I can’t wait for ever.”
“I can’t,” she
said, “ – I won’t, you know I won’t. Change my mind.”
“Yes, but I just
had to say it one last time,” he said, “in case… ”
“I love you,
Franta,” she said – “Frant-oh.”
“I know that
too.”
His eyes were
steady, hurt. She saw more clearly than
ever how their love-making that she had missed so desperately, ached for,
asked-for, had been not simply itself; but had stood for everything else that
was between them. It always had done,
even the first time – alone, without all the rest of their belonging, it was no
more than any other bodily act. Really
it had stood for the gift of self to one another without holding-back: the gift they ached to and could no longer
make. But she had asked him for that,
and so he had given it to her one last time – even though the rest was hurtling
from them too fast to clutch at it, only this….
There came a wail from out in the church. “Mummeeee… where are you, mummee?”
“Go to her,” he said, “I can manage. Almost I’m decent already.”
When he followed her out, having replaced the books and papers and the robe, she had unfastened the harness and lifted Frances out of the pushchair. The child was looking all around, wide-eyed. “Church, mummy?”
“Yes, darling, we’re in a church. We came here to shelter from the rain.”
“Tanta,” said Frances, looking over her shoulder and smiling, “there’s Tanta!”
Sláma came to her. “There,” he said, kneeling so his face was at the same level as hers, “did you have a nice nap? Look, your hair is all sticking-up, your ribbon is creased… will you let me smooth it for you?”
She nodded. “Thank you, Tanta,” she said softly when he did.
“I like it that you say my name,” he said. “Actually it’s like yours. How do you say Frances?”
“Fwanses,” she said.
“Good. Then say Fr-anta, the same. Frr-ran-ta.”
“Fwanta?”
“Perfect. Now come along – do you want some tea? It’s not raining now, so we can go, I think. I know a place where they have cakes, and toast, and jam, and teacakes, and buns, and biscuits, and little sandwiches with egg, or fish-paste, and even jelly you eat with a spoon – do you like any of those things?”
“Jelly’s silly,” she said, “it’s all wobbly!”
“Yes,” he said, “you can push it with your finger – ssh, we won’t tell your mother!”
“I don’t like fish-paste,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he smiled, “I like better the egg-sandwiches, or the ham. And they cut off the crusts in this place I am thinking of, so they are very tender and delicate to eat. Not too hard.”
“Crusts make your hair curl,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “but look, mine is curly already – and so is yours! So today it doesn’t matter if we eat sandwiches with no crusts, I think.”
“I want jelly,” she said. “Red jelly.”
“Me too,” he said, “come, shall we go?”
Inside the tea-room Sarah gave Franta back his blue short tunic. He draped it over the back of his chair. She was wearing the same red cardigan she’d been wearing the first time he met her. Women liked to have new clothes, he thought, especially for an occasion like this, but with the War on there hadn’t been too many of them.
He looked more closely: no, it wasn’t the same. It was a similar colour, but her old one had been quite plain. This one had a pretty fan-stitch all up the front, on either side; it moulded lightly to her slender bosom. It was lacy there, you could see her pale-pink blouse through it. Very pretty.
“Shall I be mother?” she asked, when the tea came.
He smiled. It was an expression he liked, it was so English. They’d used it back at the base, when it was just the men together and he’d say it to make the boys laugh and cut the tension of waiting – waiting – for the scramble that was going to come but perhaps not for hours, perhaps in ten seconds. His section had a big chipped old brown teapot and the WAAFS would come by and fill it from their urn. Then Sláma would pour, fix it up the way each of them liked – Sysel wanted three sugars and when he couldn’t have it he still wanted the saccharine, to be extra-sweet; Machaty preferred no sugar and no milk; TomTom liked it extra milky, because really he was still wet behind the ears, and Karel drank his the same way as Franta, because he did everything the same way Franta did whenever he could.
“Yes, please… ” he said, a faraway look in his face. “I’m sorry,” he added, seeing her raised eyebrows, “I was thinking of Karel... ”
“Do you think about him a lot, still?”
“Of course,” he said, “I feel responsible for everything that happened… it was all my fault. There was one time after I got back in the air, when he’d just found out about you and me, and I thought he’d fired on me — god, I can’t believe it now, but I was sure, certain — I got out of my plane and I ran after him to knock him down… Bennett showed me the film from the camera, that it wasn’t him, there was a Messerschmidt I didn’t see even, and Karel fired on it to protect me — Karel, that wasn’t speaking to me, but he couldn’t help saving me anyway — what? Yes, sweetheart, I think it’s good if you come to sit on my lap, if your mummy doesn’t mind. It’s better than the chair, you are falling off that cushion, I see. Come, I will hold you just a bit like this, not too tight, just so you don’t fall down — and we put here your plate, yes? Good… ”
“Want my tea,” said Frances.
“Yes, look, your mummy is pouring it for you now. She has put in a lot of milk to make it nice for you, yes?”
“Drink it myself.”
“Yes, you can do that,” he said. “Mummy, please don’t make Frances’ tea too full, because she is going to hold this cup all by herself.”
“God! What happened then?”
“I went to him in front of everybody to apologize. For what I have said, what I’d thought. No, darling, I don’t have clean hanky any more. I’ve been blowing my nose there, it’s not nice now. Here, look, let’s put this scarf there instead. That’s good, yes?” He unwound his red flying-scarf from his neck, shook it out and tucked it under her chin.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“Yes it is,” he said, “because I was wearing it. Do you mind?”
“It’s nice,” she said. “Mummy’s got one, too. She doesn’t wear it.”
“Does she?” he said. “Well, perhaps it came from the same place. We wear these scarves to fly.”
“In the sky?”
“Yes, in the sky.”
She looked at him as if he was a creature from another order of existence altogether – an angel, a magician.
“Oh, I meant in a plane,” he said, “an aeroplane. I’m just a man, I can’t fly by myself.”
She giggled. “Silly!” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I am very silly. I can’t help it.” His eyes met Sarah’s over the tea-table. There was not reproach in them, but there was a brilliance he blinked away; about his being so far from the perfect man he wanted to be, tried to be. “Here,” he said, “look, all what they have brought us! Four different kinds of sandwiches! What do you like?”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “let’s open them up and see. It’s not nice manners but then we can see what we like, that’s more important. We don’t want to take a bite and spit it out, that’s worse manners still, isn’t it!”
“I like cheese. Euwww, tomato.”
“Then we will remove the tomato, like this. Out you come, you bad boy, Frances doesn’t want you in there. Be gone! There – now it’s only cheese… you can eat it.”
Sarah was biting the inside of her lip.
“Come,” said Sláma, “you too, srdíèko, zlatíèko, drahoushku, Sarah my kolibøík, you must eat your sandwiches. It’s a long drive back home.”
She ate her
sandwich. It stuck to the back of her
throat and she had to wash it down with tea.
“What was the last one?” she said, “I don’t remember that.”
He smiled. “My mother called it to me,” he said, “when I
was so big as our little girl here. It
was kolibøík, that is colibri, how you say, it’s a bird that’s sweet, it
goes coo, coo, like honeybird… ”
“Collee-br-zh-eek?”
“That’s very
good. Yes. Sarah, I don’t have any more hanky, and my
scarf now it’s in use also. You can’t,
it’s not nice to blow your nose on the napkin, or wipe it on your sleeve, so
you will have to stop that, srdíèko. You
can do it. ”
“Sorry,” she
said. She drank the rest of her tea. It
was almost scalding but not quite; the
pain it brought her throat was welcome, it soothed the ache of the tears he was
telling her she couldn’t shed, not here anyway.
They finished
their tea, Sláma gazing at everything Frances did, his voice becoming softer as
the end of their time together drew nearer and nearer. Sarah watched his hands: the way they cut, stirred, picked-up the
little bowl of quivering jelly, shook it to make Frances giggle.
“I am concerned
for you,” he said quietly, “now that we’ve done what we have… ”
“Don’t be,” she
said, “it wasn’t close to the middle of the month like it was that
Christmas. I’m only just over – you
know. It’ll be all right.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes,” she said,
meaning it, or if not then not caring if it was as sure a thing as she was
telling him. For herself, Charles or no
Charles, she would like nothing more dearly in the world than for it not to
have been safe. Because there are some
gifts that almost kill you with their sharpness, but you long for them anyway.
“I want you to
write to me,” he said, “I want you to send me photographs of Frances as she
grows. I will send my address in
Czechoslovakia to Mrs. Watson, if she will let me, and you will send, yes? Please… prosím, Sarah, I ask this of you, it’s all I ask… ”
“Of course,” she
said. “She’s still been so dear – even
now, they come down sometimes and take Charles out for a spell, or Frances –
she knitted this for me. She unravelled my old one, and washed the wool, and
knitted it up again like this, all pretty… she won’t mind.”
“I am not asking
for correspondence,” he said, “that will be too much. This is sbohem, goodbye, and
you know it – I am going back. Unless
you telephone, or write and tell me you have changed your mind. But you must tell me, if this — if from today — I must
know, if — do you understand? And then
every year one time a picture. Is that
too much to ask you?”
She shook her
head. “No, it’s not,” she said.
“Thank you,” he
said. “And now I think we have to go, look, it’s already four o’clock — I have
told Wing Commander Bennett I will be back, really I’m on duty but I told him –
why I want to take off the afternoon – and he has let me go, but still I have
responsibilities… ”
“Yes, of
course,” said Sarah.
“Fwanta, don’t
cry,” said Frances.
“Of course,” said Sláma, “Excuse me, I am sorry. It was silly of me. I know better. Look, I am all right again, don’t worry about me. We will play game, yes?” He bounced her up and down on his knee, at first a little and then more: “Takhle jedou dámy, takhle jedou páni, takhle jedou vojáci a takhle jedou sedláci — ” he sang softly, so as not to disturb the other customers, “ — this is way that ride the ladies, this is way that ride the gentlemen… and boom! Boom! This is way that rides the farmer!”
Frances giggled. “Again!”
Sláma obliged. “Now, do you need to make a wee-wee, before we go back to the car — ?”
In the car, back
at the base, Sarah turned to Sláma.
“God, Franta, how do we do this?”
“We just do it,”
he said. “I tell you goodbye, my darlings, and perhaps you will each give me a
kiss. Then I will get out of the car,
and you will wave, and off you go… back to Burford, back to your home, your
life. And I will continue with mine.
That’s all we can do, Sarah, we just have to do it.”
They did it.
Bennett watched
from his window. Sláma got out of the
car, then leaned in again to get the child settled in the back seat, arranging
a rug over her in case she fell asleep on the way home, as children do. Then he straightened and shut the door
carefully.
Sláma’s lover
and his child drove away. He stood
watching long after the car was out of sight.
Bennett wondered when he would move, even.
A shame, a damn
shame. They were a good bunch, and Sláma
was about the best of them. It had been
a long five years, for those who’d survived;
a little peace and contentment seemed the least they deserved now. Sláma’s face had been wooden as he’d asked
permission to leave the base. Bennett
had raised his eyebrows, so Sláma had cleared his throat and told him why. That sorry business again. Yes, the same, of course the same, sir, of
the note I had you put in my file and take out again. They have come to see me off… I haven’t seen the child since she was born —
will it be all right, sir?
God, yes, old
man, of course: take all the time you
want —
Eventually Sláma
passed his hand over his head, turned on his heel, walked slowly back towards
the buildings. It wasn’t close enough to
see his face this time, but Bennett decided perhaps that was just as well. He didn’t need to.
When they got
back, Charles was in a foul mood. She’d
left him at home, but with a neighbour to pop in on him every hour to see what
he wanted, and he hated that. He didn’t like her to be away for any
reason. “You took a bloody long time,” he said, “ – where did
you go, anyway? You’re never gone this
long.”
Sarah looked him
in the eye. “I took Frances to see her
father,” she said. “He’s leaving in two
days, to go back to Czechoslovakia for good.
I wanted him to see her.”
“Christ,” he
said, “you couldn’t have asked me if I minded?”
“Why?” she
said. “If I’d asked you and you’d said
no I still would have gone. So at least
this way I can be honest about it.”
“I see,” he
said. “God, Sarah, you’re a cool one,
I’ll say that for you.”
“I thought it
was only right,” she said.
“Did you,” he
said.
“Yes,” she said
quietly.
“And what about
me?”
“I’m here,
aren’t I?” she said.
He turned his
wheelchair angrily, pushed himself out of the room. Frances followed him. “Daddy,“ she cried, “daddy, pick me up!”
“Not now,
Frances,” he called over his shoulder, “stay with your mother. Don’t be a pest.”
Frances turned a
bewildered face to her mother. “See
Fwanta?” she said, her lip wobbling.
“Ride up high – ride!”
“Yes, darling,”
said Sarah, wondering where her voice was coming from, “yes, you did that,
didn’t you? You rode on Franta’s
shoulders. All the way to the tea-shop! Did you like it?”
“He’s funny,”
said Frances. “Said don’t see Patsy’s
belly-button!” She giggled.
“Yes, he did,”
said Sarah sadly.
“It was dead,”
said Frances, her tone echoing her mother’s.
“What?”
“The bird. We put leaves on it. It won’t come back alive again. Will it?”
“No, darling,”
said Sarah, “no, it won’t.”
After supper, when
Frances was in bed, Charles lit his pipe.
“Well at least you had the child with you,” he said, “so you couldn’t
have got up to anything – right?”
Sarah didn’t
answer.
“Could you?” he
said, more harshly.
“Don’t ask
unless you really want to know,” she said.
So then he
didn’t have to.
At first she
didn’t believe it. She thought she had miscalculated, got the weeks wrong. It
couldn’t be anything so miraculous as what she hoped for — could it? Though if it was, dear God it was going to be
even more barbed in its wonder than last time.
Pushing Sarah on
the swing, she felt the tenderness in her breasts. They were never this heavy, not before her
period even. They’d only ever felt like
this once before.
She saw Sláma’s
mouth there, gasping, because he was trying to please her and it was too much
for him; and then, years earlier when
everything was still all right, how gently he’d stroked them and asked her, “Do
you have something to tell me?”
Yes, Franta, she
thought. Yes, I have something to tell
you. God gave us more than each other,
in that holy place. He was generous in
His gifts. We must have been blessed; He can’t have minded, not too much, or He
wouldn’t have granted this prayer. He
made us the way we are, and let us have one another again to say goodbye, and
now there is another miracle come of it.
She waited till
she was sure, to tell Charles.
He rolled his
eyes.
“Still, please…
talk to me about it,” she said.
“Charles, I know this must be awful for you — I’m sorry, I ought to be a
better wife to you than this, but – he’s gone and it’s never going to happen
again. Ever. I’m sorry.
We can get a divorce, if you want.”
“Why?” he asked,
bitterly. “Didn’t you always want
two? Now you’ve got them —! Hardly the point, what I think, is it?”
“Yes,” she said,
“Charles, it is the point. We have to be honest with each other.”
“You’ve got what
you wanted,” he said. “Now let me make
the best of it. We’re still married,
anyway, so people will think it’s mine, at least.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I didn’t think
you missed it that much,” he said, filling his pipe. “You never seemed to enjoy it particularly
before, when we could, you know.
Remember?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Just thought
you weren’t that sort of woman,” he said.
“I’m not,” she
said. “It wasn’t about that. We were
saying goodbye, that’s all. It got –
carried-away.”
He puffed on his
pipe. “Because I wouldn’t want to think
—— ”
“No,” she said,
“it wasn’t like that.”
“May I ask what
you did with Frances?”
“She was
asleep,” said Sarah. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t go there with that intention. It just did.
I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re
not,” he said. He stared at her, his
frigid wife. Pathetic, really, that she
would go chasing all over the country like that making an exhibition of
herself. She must have been trying to
prove something. She’d never been
sexually responsive, so it couldn’t be that.
Must be about power, and risk, then.
Unless the other fellow —— well,
god, it didn’t do to think along those lines, did it, though he was a foreigner, which made a big
difference. It was so far from the Sarah
he knew that he just couldn’t see it.
Still, what a
bloody to-do all over again. He did so
hate it when things weren’t tidy and smooth.
How could she go rocking the boat again like this?
“I’m not asking
you to forgive me, Charles,” she said in a low voice, “you’ll either come to
that or you won’t. I’m not even asking
you to understand. But we just — have to
cope with it. Because I’m not going to
do anything about it. I’m not going to
get rid of it. Please don’t ask me to.”
“Yes,” he said,
puffing on his pipe, “yes, I see that.
Well – spilled milk, eh?”
The irony of
this phrase didn’t seem to strike him. He wasn’t one to give words more than
their immediate meaning.
“Yes,” said
Sarah, seeing the rest of it too, and how she had wanted that and made Franta
give it to her. And how he had forgiven her, afterwards, even though it had
hurt him to break his word.
Chapter 11
– Air
Sláma sent his
address in Czechoslovakia, in care of the Watsons, with just a note: Sarah my beloved – this is for now only but
they will send on. It’s my little
sister’s. When I left she was not
married – now she has three children!
And my poor matka she is dead, I visit her grave. Sarah, look after yourself. Send me every year, won’t you? And if there is anything else I should
know. Kiss Frances for me, every night. Always, Franta.
She wrote back
to him: Franta darling,
Thank you for
your note. I’m so sorry about your
mother. She must have been very proud of
you. I wish you could have seen her
again.
Franta, I don’t
know if you can bear this, but I promised I would let you know. If I tell you
first that it is the answer to my prayers, will you know what I mean?
Yes, love. It’s expected in the spring, of course. I will write again then and tell you if we
have a son or another daughter.
You have been
the greatest gift in my life that I ever could have imagined. And now this is
more of one, Franta thank you. I know
what it cost you to give it. Thank you
my darling, thank you for ever, for this.
Here is a picture of Frances taken on her third birthday. She has made the kiss on the back for
you. She still says your name. If you send me one of you then we’ll talk
about you sometimes and she’ll remember you better. Can you do that? If you want —
Just write and
let me know you’re all right. I’m not
asking for any more than that.
Thank you my
darling. Don’t be upset. This is what I
wanted, all I’ve ever wanted since my body let go of Frances after I’d carried
her those nine precious months, the last part of you I had left. I promise I don’t regret it, and I won’t.
I’ll always love
you, Franta. Go on and make your life
now. Have children you can play with,
sing to, be such a wonderful Tata as you already are. That’s all I want for you, to be happy. I am.
Truly I am. Always, Sarah.
She never got a
reply.
When the baby
was born she was perfectly content to name him Charles. It seemed the least she could give her
husband, and then she also thought of Karel who had brought the two of them
together, Sláma and Sarah, the parents of this child. He had been so sweet; loved her and Franta both so dearly, to his
own pain. Karel – a precious young
man. Almost a son to Franta, a son and a
friend too.
Now Franta had a
son of his own – even if he would never see him.
She wrote with
the news.
He didn’t write
back.
It wasn’t like
him. But she had heard that the country was in uproar, so she wrote again.
He never did
reply. Perhaps it was just too painful –
though she would have thought the Franta she knew would acknowledge something
so momentous as this. But she had no way
of getting in touch with him, not unless he wrote again to the Watsons, so she
suckled their child and called him her little koh-yennek, her nursling, a word
Franta had used once in tenderness when he did the same thing and said, I feel
like – what is it? Baby… here, to drink
– we say kojenec, it’s special
word for that.
— and she
dandled the baby, their son together, and stroked his little dark head and held
back the tears; called him sr-jeech-ko,
and mi-la-i-chku… and all those other
names love gives to the beloved.
Frances called
him Charlie, her bwother. ‘R’s were hard
for her, she had to practice them a lot before she could manage them with
another consonant too. She still called
herself Fwances, almost till she was four.
Charles liked
having a son. He said so, a lot. It was as if he valued this about the baby,
his gender – as if somehow it reflected on him in a positive way even though he
hadn’t engendered the child himself. But
now he was the father of a son – something to prize. He still didn’t know how to talk to the ‘little
fellow’, as he called him, but he was endlessly delighted with him. Sarah realized that in giving the baby his
name, she had healed something without even knowing it. He wasn’t bitter any more; when people admired his son, he glowed with
pride. He’d always wanted this, she saw
now;
Now he had his
son at last. To carry on the name, at
least. He could send him to his own old
school, mould him into another self – send his values and his dreams out into
the future even as they were lost to him now with his useless legs.
Sarah bought
records by Dvorak and Smetana and played them to the children: rippling melodic Vlatava, the excitement and
passionate rhythms of the Slavonic Dances –
the New World Symphony, with its old Czech folk-tune, simple and
haunting as the one Sláma had sung for
They had Mozart
and Beethoven too, of course; but when
she put on the Czech composers and
She sent her
love to Sláma, wherever he was.
She wrote two
more poems in her note-book, that first year after Sláma went back:
Sticky Buds
This week I watched the sticky buds I’d brought into
the house unfurl,
Burst from each brown carapace, swelling in their
shawls of silk:
The tenderness of new leaves spread like fingers
round beaded spires.
Gathering them, my breasts swung heavily,
My awkward body moved with a strange clumsy grace.
Who is it you have planted there, budding within me,
Still hidden, guessed-at?
I with my passion for chestnut-candles carry this
flower of flowers:
Our child.
Soon I will know if it bears
Your eyes, my smile, or loves the Spring best of all
seasons, as you did;
Laughs even at death like you, seeking the air and
sky –
Oh, will it have your hair, move with your
gentleness, your care,
The remembered shape of your hands?
Wishes
Wishing you well
As I do, wanting your good, for you not to lie alone
and aching in the empty night,
How is it that when I think of you
Kissed and kissing, belly to belly and thigh to
thigh,
Received and spilling your love within another warm
and tender body, not mine,
Not mine – oh why must I feel my sweetness curdled
and all my best intentions
Drop still-born and shrivelled by the pain that it’s
not me?
And would it be any less bitter, if I knew you were
wishing that it was?
God, no, it would be worse; don’t miss me as I miss you, please
Don’t feel what I feel. Please, god, whoever she is,
Bless her to love you well;
Let her not hurt you, as we have hurt each other –
Let her be sweet,
Let your tears that were mine be your last.
I’ll keep them:
you move on, love,
Leave them behind, forget how they felt.
Live a round, rich life;
Bring her your smile.
* * * * * * * *
* * * *
For some years
Charles Strickland seemed to be quite well-adjusted to his limitations — at
least his doctors thought so. He wasn’t
a man to sit in the surgery and complain of feeling sad – or overwhelmed. He was a cripple, that was that, what was the
point in talking about it? He’d forgiven
his wife, long ago, for those indiscretions that had given him the children he
loved and was so proud of – hadn’t he?
He was sure of it; after all, he
never felt any need to bring it up, reproach her for it any further. She’d paid the price for her behaviour and
the least a decent chap could do was shut up about it, not go harping on.
Harping on never mended anything.
Now if they
could have done something about his legs, that would have been another
story. THAT could have done some good,
restored him to a fuller sense of himself. He often felt as if he’d left
himself behind floating in those freezing seas on that life-raft, before the Icelandic
fishing-smack found him, hauled him aboard, tended him as best they could and
dropped him off on a night of no moon up-fjord from Alesund. They were sorry, they couldn’t get him all
the way to
For two long
bloody years, he did: dependent on the
kindness of strangers, wondering if the day would ever come when he could go
home again and at least be dependent on his own damn wife, instead. And then without warning, the Resistance came
knocking, one night – they had a British agent they had to get off safely, and
they’d come for him too: it was too
dangerous for the family to hide him any more, someone had heard English being
spoken. God, they couldn’t have expected
him to learn Norwegian at his age, could they?
They all spoke English anyway, they’d learned it in school. He’d never been any good at languages. So they bundled him unceremoniously aboard
another fishing-vessel, a trawler this time, and they made their rendezvous…
hoisted him across in a canvas sling smelling of fish, aboard a Navy
minesweeper and back to Rosyth… what was left of him.
So – to make a
long story short, as he liked to say, though he never said this next bit, not
out loud – the Charles Strickland he had been hadn’t come out alive. Someone else had, this lesser man, this shell
of all he’d been before. What was he
supposed to do with his life now? What
meaning did it hold?
He’d suck on his
pipe and wonder about it. What it was
all for; why go to the trouble. The
children would come bothering him and he’d brush them off – couldn’t they see
he was busy with his paper? Bed-time was
for reading to them: patriotic poems by
Kipling. Not the Just-So Stories, that
was tomfoolery. He liked the books he’d
read as a boy, stirring tales of the Foreign Legion or James Fenimore
Cooper; that was the sort of thing they
ought to be hearing. Ten minutes a
night, every night, without fail, even when
he was in a bleak mood; he made
sure to rouse himself. So now, at the
breakfast-table, didn’t he deserve a little time to himself, to enjoy his
paper?
He always read
The Times from cover to cover, and then did the crossword-puzzle in under five
minutes.
What now, the
Symphony Orchestra – and Mrs. Watson would come over to stay with the
children? Why on earth would he want to
go to the Symphony? He hadn’t before,
did she think now that he wasn’t good for anything except sitting and
listening? Besides, they always took you
in the back way like a piece of bloody luggage… it was demeaning, humiliating,
he wouldn’t stand for it.
What? He’d liked the Beethoven? They’d gone on their honeymoon…?
Yes, well he
didn’t like it any more. Bloody Jerry.
An iron band
settled around his shoulders and refused to let him go. It was relentless as a terrier, ferocious as
a lion. It kept him down in the chair
and stopped him even from turning his head properly. He’d bang with his cane and they’d bring him
whatever he asked for, but nothing helped.
He was a bully,
a wasted pathetic thing, he could see that clearly. There was nothing more for him to do but
suffer. Best thing really was to take
himself out of the way – wasn’t it?
His wife had
been crying again. She tried to hide it,
but her eyes were puffy. He’d thought
she’d got past that years ago. There’d
been a small headline on one of the inside pages of The Times, under the
foreign news: RAF Czech Flyers Get Rough Treatment At Home Under New Regime.
Not much anybody could do about it, though, was there,
even if they wanted? After all, it was
an independent country, wherever it was:
the pilots had given-up anything they might have expected from
He tapped out his pipe, said something of the sort to Sarah.
Czech scandal – RAF pilots jailed without trial. Questions asked in the Commons.
Oh, dear, oh dear. Trust foreigners to run their country so oddly. Not much either House of Parliament could do about it, was there? They should just wash their hands of them… he didn’t say that, though, not to Sarah; just about them being foreign, and not knowing how to run a country.
King ‘angry’ at treatment of RAF heroes.
Well, so he should be. It was a bloody shame. Sarah had been behaving like a crazed woman; every day down to the library, and then up all hours of the night: he heard her typewriter, tapping-out letters to anyone and everyone. First the stacks of examination-papers she marked now, to help with expenses, and now this too. She was making a bit of a fool of herself over it. It was past time to let the matter drop. Didn’t she know it was a lost cause?
Apparently not.
Government ‘unable to help’ Czech flyers. King ‘disappointed.’
That one he left out folded to the page, on the breakfast-table, so she’d see it and stop wearing herself into the ground trying to do something.
Didn’t work, though.
Letters came for her, with all sorts of Government
envelopes. God, she was writing to the
Home Office, the Foreign Office, The Prime Minister, the Air Ministry, the
Ministry of Defence, even
She made a point of having supper on the table no matter what – one would hope so. The rest was a wild-goose-chase, and nothing he said would divert her from it. Kept her busy, though. He almost wished he had something that he could pursue so single-mindedly. He’d used to like fly-fishing, before, but you could hardly do that from the middle of a river in a bloody wheelchair, could you?
Damn the fellow, taking advantage of her like that. He’d heard it all along, these bloody foreigners, the Czechs and the Poles and the Free bloody French, all of them complete cads — everyone said so – you couldn’t trust them with women, not for a second. She’d been generous enough to show her betrayer his child, and in return he’d used her all over again, stolen his own gratification one more time at her expense. Strickland could see it now: the shit he was, turning the situation to his own advantage, putting her on the spot, pressing her till she gave in. What else could you expect of a chap that wasn’t even a gentleman? She wouldn’t have been able to say no to him, any more than she had before when she’d thought her husband dead and he’d come sniffing around with his arrogant selfish seductive ways… damn him! Opportunist unfeeling bastard – did he have no sense of decency? No: he’d had to show them all that he could still twist her round his little finger, no sense of honour, nor of decency, nor gratitude, nor self-restraint, no care at all for Sarah, in her vulnerability – only for himself, for what was in his trousers.
Bloody foreigner. Typical. Absolutely bloody typical. Not giving a damn. Leaving Sarah to pick up the pieces – again. And himself, cuckolded – deliberately, this time. No excuse for it.
Couldn’t be helped – and what good would it do to blame Sarah, for not being stronger? If he blamed her, it would only be harder to live with her.
So he blamed her lover instead.
The pain grew worse. Sometimes the ‘black dog’ came and settled on him and didn’t leave for weeks. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered to get out of bed.
Sometimes he didn’t bother.
It came to him one morning that he didn’t have to put up with it any more.
He turned the idea over in his mind for several weeks. Ought he to talk to the doctor?
Why? There’d be nothing the chap could do, and they’d just try and stop him. Then he’d have lost the last independence he had.
They’d be better off without him, they really would. He’d been thinking it for a while; now he knew it. The children flinched when he raised his voice… nothing was going to get any better. Besides, he had a good insurance-policy, he’d taken it out years earlier and he’d just looked in his files, checked on the suicide-clause: after ten years it was no longer applicable. The money would do them all a lot more good, really.
It would be slap in the face to Sarah, though. Chap offs himself, everybody blames the wife. No need to be any more selfish about it, was there? It was in the end a bloody selfish thing to do, he knew that already, and the least he could do was to make it clear that it wasn’t anybody’s fault but his own.
I have decided to end my life, he wrote. It should be perfectly clear that this is
the result of rational thought on my part and that nobody is to blame. In particular I should like my wife to know
that she is not in any way responsible for this decision. She has been a good wife to me. I just don’t wish to continue as a cripple. There is no point. I trust my Naval pension will continue to be
paid to my survivors as this is a direct result of injuries sustained in
the war.
He signed it, kept it in his breast-pocket for a week or two, as a reassurance that he didn’t have to put up with it any more if he didn’t want to.
It took him a while to work-out the problems of height, weight and drop, but being a Naval officer he was used to rigging things that worked. He used a stout bough of the big apple-tree in the back-garden, to throw the webbing strap over, one Sunday when Sarah and the children were out visiting the Watsons. He’d been invited, but said he’d prefer to stop at home, thanks.
It wasn’t too hard, to hoist himself up the step-ladder using his arms and kick away the chair, then the ladder. It went as planned; he was an efficient planner.
Sarah found him, after he hadn’t answered their greetings coming into the house. It was hours too late, of course. He’d planned it too well to leave any possibility otherwise.
Mrs. Watson came down and stayed; Mr. Watson came every weekend too, to help with the kiddies. At first Sarah Strickland was distraught, as any widow would be, specially under the dreadful circumstances. She brought the children to the funeral, which some of the neighbours thought a little odd, at their ages, but she said she wanted them to be able to remember being there when they were old enough for it to mean something more to them.
She had an appointment with
Yes, thank you; they missed their father and talked about him, that was all that could be done.
Didn’t she think it better not to remind them by such conversations? Wouldn’t it only upset the children more?
She disagreed, she said, she felt they deserved to remember him, and he to be remembered. They were young, Charles especially, but she didn’t believe in shielding children from things like death. The harsh details, that was different: but the fact of it, the missing person, how you felt – absolutely.
The family doctor offered to prescribe sleeping-pills for her, but she said No, thank you, she’d manage.
She turned-up again in his office few weeks later, with the oddest question he had heard in a very long time. She’d been to see her solicitor, she said, and apparently if she could prove something he would never in his wildest dreams have imagined a married woman would want to prove, then legal changes could be made on birth certificates —?
Good god. Why on earth… even if were true, and even if it could be categorically stated that Charles Strickland’s medical history and blood type on file left little to no doubt that he was not the father of either child – good lord, the date of conception also? He’d been unaware of that… the law was kinder, said it was automatically the husband’s if it was born in wedlock, didn’t she know that? Even if it were true, though – why? What good could it possibly do now? Why not let sleeping dogs lie?
She started to tell him some wild story about RAF flyers,
now held political prisoners in
So she was determined, then?
Absolutely, she said.
But… this sort of thing likely wouldn’t go unnoticed, if word got out…
She had thought about that, she said, and was prepared for it.
What about the children? After all, this would matter far beyond the present situation, wouldn’t it, successful or not. There could be no going back, if she was unsuccessful with their real father’s release, and then it would be there anyway. They would grow up, and see their birth certificates sooner or later….
I think one day they ought to know, she said, now that Charles is dead. If he hadn’t – died… it would have been different. But now – they should know. When the time came. Now that it’s not a case of sparing his feelings any more.
But what about theirs?
The truth, she said, in the end, wasn’t that preferable to falsehood and pretence? It became something one could live with, count on, at least…
Wouldn’t they be ashamed, when they found out?
She hoped not. She wasn’t. Their father, she said, a tremor in her low voice but a firmness too, their father is a man to be proud of… a decorated officer, a man of integrity. He had intended to marry her, she added; he would have, if Charles hadn’t returned —
Goodness, he said; goodness gracious.
Yes, she said. She was pale but quite firm about it.
He would see what he could do, he said.
She thanked him.