Apple Blossom Time (19 page)

He rocked me like a baby and murmured sweet, incoherent words. With one hand, he gently stroked my hair. And I wept at last for James, for all that he might have been, might have had. I wept for the waste and the pity. I wept for myself, for my loneliness and guilt, for all of us. Tears that had been dammed for two years were hard and painful, a storm of grief. My breath came in fierce gulps. And then, at last, I was exhausted.

I sat with my head on Martin’s shoulder and felt an immense calm seep through me. His fingers still stroked my hair, with a light, tentative touch. He bent his head and softly, so softly, kissed my hair.

His voice was husky, as though he scarcely knew how to use it for gentle words. ‘Laura – my love.’

Amazed, scarcely believing, I looked up at him and his mouth came down on mine. Once, twice, he kissed me gently, then he pulled me against him. Thin and hard and fierce, he made a demand and I answered. I opened to him and tasted the secret sweetness of his mouth. He took my breath away and gave me his own in return.

For just a little while, it felt the only thing to do, the right thing to do. I needed his strength to support me. His kiss was all I wanted, had ever wanted. It was Martin, always Martin …

Desire flickered through me, lightning without rain, a summer storm. His body was beautiful, hard and without pity and I burned where he touched. He laid me down on the sunburned grass and his shadow fell over me. I reached out to him, folding my hands behind his head, drawing him down to me. Always, always Martin …

I felt all the untouched, empty places open for him to fill. I wanted … God, I wanted …

Then I began to struggle.

‘No.’ I tried to draw back, but his arms were too strong. ‘Martin, no. It’s not right. Please. Please, no.’

‘Why?’ His lips trailed softly down my neck, down to the hollow at its base, as though he would drink from it. Very slowly, one at a time, he began to unfasten the little pearl buttons down the front of my frock and he kissed each newly naked fragment of skin as it appeared.

‘I can’t – don’t make me…’

‘I’d never make you do anything you didn’t want to do. Don’t you trust me, Laura?’

He was kissing my soul away, he was stealing my mind. I shivered with a burning chill.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Don’t, Martin, please…’

‘Laura, I know you too well.’ And now he held my face between his cupped hands. His eyes looked into mine – who said that only pale eyes are cold? – and he wanted the truth. ‘I could feel what you were feeling. That wasn’t just a kiss between two old friends. You wanted me as much as I want you. You can’t take back what you gave me just now.’

‘I don’t want…’

He took his arms away from me suddenly. I felt as though I had been set adrift.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘I can’t…’ It was too difficult to explain. I turned my head away and looked out over the valley.

I felt guilty. That was what I was trying to say. Even with Martin’s lips on mine, I could still feel a phantom kiss that slid between us. I could hear a voice I hadn’t heard for two years and it was saying,
I love you, Laura.

One man had loved me and I had given him nothing in return. God forbid that I should do the same to another.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts, Laura,’ Martin said as he rose to his feet. He put out his hand to help me up and, when I was standing, let me go again, as though I had bitten him. ‘Neither should you.’

*   *   *

There had been such a long gap that I didn’t recognize the writing. It was tidier, less spidery, as though the writer might be afraid that I would throw the envelope away unopened. I wish I had. I did open it and when I saw what was inside, I fished the envelope back out of the bin again.

There was a photograph of a gravestone. That was all. The print was poor quality, fuzzy, probably very old. I couldn’t read the name on the stone, but, given what the sender had previously written, the implications were clear.

I was looking at a picture of my father’s grave.

I felt sick. It was as though my head had suddenly become a balloon, empty and airy, larger than life, bobbing on rigid shoulders. I was aware that I had hands and feet, because they were so cold, but nothing else registered. There was the balloon head, painted with a mask, a grimace, and there was the photograph.

I tried to think. What sort of malice must the sender be harbouring? How long had it festered? And why now, after all these years, more than twenty-five years after the death of the man at whose nameless grave I was staring?

It was a standard British war grave headstone, pale stone, a narrow oblong with a slightly curved top, in a row that rivalled the Guards Brigade for perfection of line. On either side, between it and the two part stones visible in the frame, grew daffodils, formally planted. There were no other clues. The setting was anonymous. Somewhere along the line of trenches that had marked the Western Front, somewhere between the sea and the Swiss border, this photograph had been taken.

I didn’t feel so sick any more. But now I was afraid.

*   *   *

I pushed Button A in as far as it would go and heard the pennies rattle into the box.

‘Martin? It’s Laura.’

‘Laura? Where are you?’

‘I need to talk to you. Urgently. Can we meet?’ A three-minute time limit made calls admirably brief. No beating about the bush. Is your call really necessary? ‘I’m off duty at eight in the morning every day this week.’

‘Then I’ll come up to London. Can you get there? Day after tomorrow? No, sorry, I can’t make it sooner and I can only manage an hour or two, then. I’ve got a picture assignment in Southam – somewhere on the south coast. What train will you be on? I’ll meet you at the barrier.’

*   *   *

I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find him. There was such a scrum at Euston. Amongst all that khaki and navy and air force blue, how would I be able to spot one man? The only easily recognized figures were the military police in red caps and blancoed belts, patrolling in pairs up and down the platform, on the lookout for deserters. There were American MPs too, ‘snowdrops’ they called them, in white helmets, belts and gaiters, with dangerous-looking white truncheons. Everyone who possibly could, seemed to wear initials on an armband, a way of looking important, perhaps. MP; RP; MTO; RTO; FSP; CD; ARP. It was bewildering, like walking Scrabble.

As the train slowed down, servicemen flung open doors and jumped out. There’s no time to waste if you’re going on leave, no time to worry that you might hit someone on the platform with your carelessly opened door. Life’s too short to waste hanging around, being thoughtful.

Doors thumped. Whistles blew. Passengers struggling to get out met passengers struggling to get in, under a curved roof that trapped smoke and steam beneath blacked-out glass panels. I was so worried about missing Martin that I tried to walk more slowly, but the crowd caught me and spun me and hustled me along, making me run, whether I wanted to or not.

Then the stream pushed me off its flood into a backwater, so I stood there for a while, watching. My eyes were scratchy from lack of sleep and railway grime. I could feel my hair slipping out of its tidy knot. Behind me, a toothy skull adorned with a pink hat grinned from an anti-VD poster.
Hello boy friend, coming MY way?
asked the skull. I moved on quickly. I couldn’t stand under that poster, like death’s sister.

Then I thought I saw him ahead, a tall sergeant, dark-haired, walking the wrong way, walking away from me. ‘Martin,’ I called and waved my hand. ‘Martin, I’m here.’

‘I know you are,’ said a voice from behind, and Martin took my arm. He bent forward as though he were going to give me a quick kiss of welcome, but drew back again sharply.

It was so good to see him. Amongst the hellos and goodbyes, amongst all the embracing couples, we stood formally apart, a respectable distance between us. But when Martin smiled, I found a great, big, answering smile on my own face and couldn’t understand how it got there.

We went out through Euston’s great Doric arch and into a drizzly, wind-scoured street. It felt more like March than May. The taxi queue snaked away for several hundred yards, so we just kept on walking.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Does it matter? Let’s walk towards the park.’

There was just enough rain to slick the pavements over with dirt. I could feel the backs of my stockings being spattered with every step. I’d left BP straight after my shift had finished, without waiting for breakfast. It seemed a very long time since I’d even seen my bed. Martin’s strides were long. I half-trotted to keep up with him.

The streets were like mouths attacked by a manic dentist. There were gaps, rotten stumps, smashed remains. A sound terrace might have a void in the centre where someone’s home had been plucked out, or a solitary house might be all that remained habitable in a square. Scarcely a building that I saw was undamaged. There were shored-up gables and cracked façades, boarded-up windows and sagging roofs. The streets were cratered.

People went about their business paying no attention to the damage. Their faces had a grim, tough, surviving look. They had no option but to get on with things so they got on. The alternative was unthinkable. A shopkeeper in a long brown overall stepped out to hang an
OPEN
notice on the door, but there was no door, so she pinned it to the door frame instead.

I gawped like a tourist in hell. Until then, although I knew about the Blitz, I had not really appreciated what Britain had suffered while I was sunning myself in Cairo. I’d had an easy war. It made me feel ashamed.

‘Are you hungry?’ Martin asked, suddenly stopping outside a café on the edge of Regent’s Park.

‘I thought you’d never ask!’

Martin ordered tea and toast. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I can run to at the moment,’ he said in apology. ‘Pay day’s tomorrow.’

Embarrassment made me brisk. ‘Come on, Martin,’ I answered. ‘This is the army, remember – share and share alike. But I’m afraid that I’m no better off than you are.’

The tea was hot and strong and a gritty National loaf had never tasted better. There was pale margarine, pure grease, and we were offered a choice between marmalade that was mostly carrot and raspberry jam that was all parsnip and wood chips. We both wolfed it down.

Martin let me finish the first cup in peace, before he said, ‘Well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m here. What next?’

The windows of the café were steamed up, hiding the bombed desolation opposite. On the counter, an urn was hissing. Everything was so ordinary – thick, chipped china, clumsy knives, someone’s initials scratched on the table. It made me feel warm and safe. It made my suspicions absurd.

‘Martin, how much do you know about my father?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But you must…’

‘Why must I? I can only have been – what? – two or three years old when he died.’

‘I mean … Surely you’ve heard people talking – your parents, perhaps – or gossip or rumour. Something.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. And if I had, I wouldn’t listen and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘Stupid of me. I’m sorry. I hoped … I knew you wouldn’t keep secrets from me, you wouldn’t fob me off with lies. It’s just that no-one else will tell me anything. I know nothing,
nothing
at all.’

‘And it’s important to you.’

‘More and more. I want to know. I
have
to know.’

He spread the last piece of toast with the last scrape of marmalade, halved it and popped one half on to my plate, then leaned forward with his elbows on the table. ‘Tell me about it.’

Someone was willing to listen to me. Someone wanted to hear what I had to say.

And so I told him everything – almost everything. I told him about the three letters and the accusations they made. I told him about the way everyone in my family seemed to evade my questions. I told him that my father seemed to have had no existence outside the fact of my own physical presence. Without that, no-one would suspect that there had ever been such a man as Edwin Ansty.

Then I showed him the photograph.

‘I don’t mind admitting, it … it shook me up for a bit,’ I said in as calm a tone as I could muster. ‘You see, I don’t know
why,
or why now, and that worries me.’

He looked at it for a long time, holding it at arm’s length, as though it was something distasteful, between the forefinger and thumb of each hand. After a while, he laid it on the table between us.

‘And have you brought the other letters?’ Martin asked.

‘I burned them. Yes, I know—’ he’d made a little, tutting noise of disappointment ‘—it was stupid of me. But they were so awful, so vindictive. They made me feel sick. I thought if I got rid of them, I’d get rid of the feeling – but I didn’t.’

‘Did you check the postmarks?’

‘One I burned, one was smudged and the last one was simply London. No use at all, I’m afraid.’

‘Paper?’

‘Woolworth’s.’

‘Ink?’

‘Blue washable.’

‘Handwriting?’

‘Illiterate – or meant to look that way.’

‘And there’s absolutely nothing individual, nothing worth noticing about them? Think hard.’

‘Do you think I haven’t?’ I snapped. ‘Do you think I haven’t pored over the damned things until my eyes have gone crossed?’

‘I wish you hadn’t burned them.’

‘So do I. But I did and that’s that. I don’t need you to tell me it was stupid.’

‘All right. What do you need me for?’

Coming from almost any other man, that would have been a leading question. I would have had a smart answer handy – the sort of services backchat that keeps a girl out of trouble. I looked at him quickly to make sure that it wasn’t necessary, but this was Martin and it wasn’t.

‘I need to talk to someone.’

‘And I’m handy – I’m not sure that I find that particularly flattering.’

‘Martin, help me – please.’ He put out his hand and stroked one finger down my cheek. I gave a little shiver. ‘Let’s go through the possibilities,’ I said, quickly enough to disguise my reaction. I ticked them off on my fingers as we went. ‘Some disturbed person?’