A Time for Courage (56 page)

‘My dearest Hannah,’ Frances said and her voice was gentle. ‘My dearest girl, think carefully about your cousin’s words. Perhaps they are true. Perhaps you cannot forget your mother.’

As Hannah rose, picking up the hessian sacks which contained the puppets and left without a word, tiredness dragged at Frances. She did not like Esther but was glad that she had come. Frances banked up the fire, leaning away from the ash as it floated into the air. She stroked the dog, hoping that Hannah would face up to the fear that Frances now realised was there. If she did not, then a darkness would settle in her and Frances could not bear to think of more anguish for this woman that she loved as her own daughter. Yes, Hannah must face it.

Hannah’s bedroom was cold but she did not mind. She doused the oil lamp and drew back the curtains, looking out over the city which was in darkness leaving only the rivers to guide in the zeppelins and the aircraft though there had been no more raids for a long time now. She liked the nights for she could not see then that the buildings were scarred with shot and bomb damage and that blinds still covered shop windows and paint dulled the glass of lampposts; She leant her head on the cold pane. At night, up here, you could almost believe that there was no war, no pounding guns, no frenzied dancing in shuttered bars, no desperation showing on the faces of the men as they attempted to compress into a few days what should have been years of life. No anguish on the faces of the women who snatched at a moment of love, frightened that there would be no more for the rest of their long lives. Hannah rubbed at the pane. When would Joe come? It was six months since she had seen him and now they had Matthew as well because his mother had died and he was all alone.

She pushed away Esther and thought only of Matthew’s mother and the other women, yellowed and ill from the munitions work which had sucked in so many since the battle at Neuve Chapelle had shown the grim necessity for more shells.

She thought of the women in the classrooms which were now wards, yellow from liver failure and the babies they bore which were the same. She had visited one factory, had seen how the TNT was brought into the factory in powder, then heated and mixed with a nitrate and poured into the shells in liquid form. She had seen how the powder blew about the factory to be breathed in and how the hot liquid fumes had caused her to feel nauseous and giddy. Was it any wonder, she thought as she rubbed at the glass to clear the condensation, that women working there day after day were so ill?

She leant on the sill. Of course objections had been made once it was realised that the TNT attacked the red corpuscles of the blood causing the liver to shrink and death to occur. Masks had been issued but still women died because the masks were not that efficient and there was no other work around here. Hannah sighed. When the women came with their children for the Christmas lunch she would look for the early signs; the lips that went blue-grey, the strained eyes which hid a headache and that way some would be saved.

She felt anger towards Esther again. Did she not realise what was going on out in this dark country? She looked towards Henson Terrace, craning her neck to see, feeling guilt because she still had not managed to obtain even a tiny pension for Maureen’s sister whose fusilier husband had been killed falling off a lorry. She had been refused a pension because he had not been blown apart by a German shell.

And there was Joyce whose husband was back from the front, too disabled to work. Their separation allowance had ceased but no pension had been paid. Hannah had written but the authorities said no arrangements had been made on his discharge, they would just have to wait. Did they live on air in the meantime, Hannah thought, these thousands of families which starved and wept? No, she would not think of Esther. She would think of Albert, not Esther. Albert who used to scrub potatoes here and the leg he had lost at the Somme. He had been awarded twelve shillings a week and told by the authorities to go out and earn the rest.

Hannah looked up into the clouded sky, dark without the moon and stars. Tonight was Christmas Eve and tomorrow morning all the children would have their stockings, but her own four, Naomi, Kate, Annie and now Matthew, would also have a Christmas card drawn by Joe and signed by them both, with all their love. No, she would not think of Esther.

She looked away from the window now, to the bed, big and empty. His letter was still folded and lay on the bedside table. It would stay with her until his next one arrived and only then would it go in the box with the others. She walked to the bed in her thick nightgown, her hair plaited and heavy down her back. She sat on the edge, feeling the letter, knowing the words. Knowing too that life expectancy was three weeks now for the pilots leaving England and that Joe had lived a very long time.

She looked at the hessian bags which she had carried from the sitting-room, they were full of the stockings, bright and colourful and full of promise. She thought of the flecks of hessian clinging to the rich brown velvet.

Get out, she shrieked inside her head, but it was no use and now she was forced to listen as tiredness allowed the words past the images of war, of want. She listened again and again and again, flinching as the layers within her head were lifted and the words pried at forgotten feelings, memories, and dug at the darkness and at last she knew that Esther had spoken a truth out of spite and Hannah should be grateful. As though it were the calm after high screaming winds she saw the fear which she had not allowed herself, Mrs Hannah Arness, to recognise or even seek, but which had ruled her life for ever and ever and ever.

Now she sat in the darkness and let it come and cover her. She remembered the days when her mother had breathed in the foul air, and the cradle had been removed, empty. When her father had set his face against the failure and her mother had wept and grown thin and ill; how she had died too young, too defeated. The cold clung to Hannah as she sat on the bed and frost lined the windows but she only saw the pear tree, felt the bark under her fingers, smelt lavender all around and then she reached for the folded letter. It was firm and smooth and had been held by Joe. His words of love were written by hands that had stroked and loved her, held her and held the children and she knew now that he would never let her die, or her babies, and she wept because too much time had passed and she did not know when she would see him again. But she would because she loved him more than any woman had ever loved any man and no God could be cruel enough to take him from her.

Joe came when Christmas was over and the New Year of 1918 was pounding into being. It was cold on the day he walked in through the front door and Hannah held his shivering body close to her, breathing in the chill which still clung to his damp coat, his skin, his hair.

‘I love you, I love you,’ she whispered and kissed his lips, his cheeks, his hands and then the children came and caught at him, pulling his coat and laughing, dragging him through into the room where Hannah had been reading to the class. Joe nodded to Hannah, his eyes tired but full of love, and as she read he sat back against the wall as he had done each time and made the transition from machine to human being.

Matthew had grown, he thought as the boy moved from the group and came towards him, his brown hair hanging across his forehead, his eyes questioning. Joe raised his hand, beckoned, and Matthew came to him then, leaning first against his leg and then climbing up and on to his knee. Joe held him close, his face pressed deep into the boy’s hair, breathing in the smell of chalk and youth and innocence.

‘I’m glad you’re home, Dad,’ Matthew whispered.

‘I’m glad too, Matthew. I’ve missed you all, so much.’ So much, so much, his mind echoed as they clung to one another and Joe hoped that Matthew would not notice the shaking of his hands, the eyelid that quivered and drooped.

The room was rich with paintings and colour and Hannah. Her presence was everywhere, in the lavender and rose-leaves which lay in bowls on table-tops, in the square wooden pit which stood in the corner and held Penbrin sand, in the kites which hung from the ceiling. He listened as she told the children of the robin who wanted a yellow breast, of the fish who wanted legs and he watched the faces, heard the laughter and slowly, in the midst of such life and light he left the noise, the guns, the death.

That night they lay in the light from the cold white moon and Hannah held his hands which could not stop shaking and kissed and held them to her breasts, kissing his mouth, his eyes, every inch of his skin because by covering him with her love, she would make him inviolate.

‘I want a child, Joe,’ she said as he stroked her body and he drew her closer then.

‘We have four, my darling.’

She could feel his breath on her hair, his strength against her.

‘I want one that is half you and half me.’

She could not feel the shaking of his hard, gentle hands as they held her face.

‘Are you sure, Hannah? What about your mother, your fear?’ His eyes were dark and shadowed in the half-light, his eyelid quivered, his lips were full.

She kissed him and clung close because all this time he had known, though she had not and had waited and she couldn’t bear the thought of such love leaving her in just a few more days.

‘Don’t go back,’ she cried and tears were wet on her cheeks and in her mouth and they were salty but as he kissed her and the moonlight touched his red-gold hair she felt the strength of his body against her and wanted him too much to wait any longer.

Later Joe held her, watched her steady sleeping breath but would not sleep himself. He must not because his screams might wake her and she must never know the man he had become. He would think of Penbrin, his workshop, his soft, smooth, warm wood. He would think of the school that he and Hannah would run, the children they would teach, the child which might already be stirring in her body.

What had happened, he wondered, to make her suddenly put aside the thoughts of her mother which he had always known dragged at her and blocked all thoughts of pregnancy? But then he paused. Did it matter as long as she was free now of the past and they could go forward? Please God, let him live so that they could go forward. He felt the shaking begin in his hands again and so he made himself think again of Penbrin, the wind, the moors, the cry of the gulls. He would take the children to the hill and fly the kite. But no, he would not think of a kite, not a bloody kite. Not something that flew then plunged.

Joe looked around the room, fixing his eyes on the chair, the print on the wall. Hannah’s clothes, flung impatiently across the chair, his own next to hers; dishevelled, normal, not like those he wore where the air was thick with noise and fear. But no, he must try not to think of the fear or let the war inside this room, and so he held Hannah close and she murmured and turned her face into his shoulder.

But it was not enough, he knew it would not be, for the war never left anyone in peace, and he could feel it dragging him back, like a greedy lover but he must not close his eyes, he told himself. As long as he did not close his eyes it was he who would dictate the path his memory took through the sounds and sights and feel of the war.

He stared out at the sky. While he was with Hannah he would think of routine; ordinary, manageable. He would think of patterns and then the nightmares would not be able to take hold, this insatiable lover would not drag him to the depths again, so he pictured the dawn on the air-station, so fresh and clean and his walk across mist-covered ground to the dressing hut; checking the wind strength and direction, evaluating the humidity and cloud type. Could he ever fly a kite again, he wondered, ever walk in the open air without humidity, cloud, wind strength ticking themselves off inside his head?

The hut would be dark and cold, the silk underwear cool and light at first, the looser woollen underwear making him warmer, the cellular vest and the silk undershirt warmer still. Then the khaki shirt, one and then two pullovers. He would be hot now but there was still the gaberdine Sidcot suit lined with lambswool, the musk-rat-lined gauntlets with silk inners, fur-lined goggles with triplex glass, thigh boots, also fur-lined. Silk scarf to stop the air getting into the flying suit. Must not allow that. No, too cold, too cold. Then the whale oil smeared into every pore on the face, the balaclava helmet, the dog skin of wolverine-fur face mask to further protect the skin but what for the lips? Nothing worked, they always cracked.

Then there would be the walk to the CO’s hut over frost-starched ground, stumbling, cursing. The filling of the boxes with all he held dear. The form, black on yellow. I swear on my honour that I do not have on my person or my machine any letters or papers of use to the enemy. His signature, jagged, shaky. The walk out across the grass again, the cold catching in the throat, warm skin beneath the layers. Riggers and armourers near each machine. Morning, Sir, they would say to him. He would hold the Very pistol in his hand and fire the flare; the signal which means ‘Into machines’. Up now on to the petrol tank, the fuel that explodes and burns and kills. But don’t think of that. Just climb forward, into the cockpit, slide into seat, ducking head below upper wing. Don’t think of the fear. Mustn’t think of the fear.

Think of the cushion on the wicker seat, slide feet under hoops of rubber. He couldn’t breathe. He looked at Hannah but she couldn’t drag him back, nothing could now, the greedy lover had come again. But try, he must try to think of routine, of patterns, not fear, not flames.

Think of the safety harness, the four separate straps for the shoulder and thighs, each one twelve inches wide and a quarter of an inch thick which come together over a large diameter central conical pin held down by a spring clip so that you can’t get out now. They have pinned you into their web. But no, don’t think of that. Think of the checks.

Rudder, bar, control column, throttle, instruments. All fine, damn it, all bloody fine. Look round now for the raised arms indicating readiness. Poor young fools.