Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (17 page)

I said the first thing that came into my head: ‘Was he shot down?'

Mrs Bloomfield looked puzzled. ‘Shot down? No, he was involved in a mid-air collision.' Her puzzlement changed to a wry smile. ‘He wasn't old enough to be in the war, you know.'

Oh, no – what a stupid thing I'd said! I blushed and curled up inside with shame at my tactlessness. Of
course
he wasn't killed in the war – if he had been, all that time ago, his widow would have to be pushing fifty by now. Oh, what a fool I'd made of myself!

Mrs Bloomfield had immediately steered away to the subject of the
War Requiem
we were going to hear that evening and was talking about Benjamin Britten and Wilfred Owen, but I sat dumbfounded by my own folly. I'd been so pleased with myself a few moments ago, imagining that because we shared similar backgrounds I was on the way to becoming as sophisticated as she was. What a hope! Longmire End was about all I was good for. My nose began to run and I fumbled in my bag for a piece of scratchy paper, trying to hold it so as to conceal the perforated edge.

But at least that particular problem had a possible solution. When she went to get tea ready, I asked if I could – er, wash my hands. Her bathroom was a bit cramped but wonderfully warm, with thick towels and luxurious-looking bottles and jars. And as I'd hoped, she went in for soft toilet paper. I had a thankful blow, and helped myself to a few extra sheets to take away. I'd have preferred it to be white rather than that give-away apricot shade, but I knew what Mum would have said about beggars.

I cheered up over tea. I'd had a second helping at dinner, just in case tea turned out to be a polite affair of a cake balanced on a saucer, but Mrs Bloomfield had provided super open sandwiches. At home we only have salads in summer, rabbits'grub really, what lettuces they don't eat we do. This was a winter salad on brown bread, a crisp and fruity mixture with what I thought was probably clotted cream, until she said it was cottage cheese. And afterwards real coffee, hot and strong from a percolator, and a cake with walnuts in it. I'd never had such a delicious, exotic meal.

As we ate, she talked encouragingly about university. She'd been to Oxford, and loved it. Obviously that was where she'd acquired her sophistication, and by the time she'd finished telling me about it I knew that I wanted to go there too. ‘Though student life has become a lot more political since my day,' she added. ‘Are you planning to join the militants?'

‘Certainly not,' I said promptly. ‘All I want to do is get a degree.'

I could hear how selfish that sounded. ‘It doesn't mean that I don't feel bad about the Vietnam war and everything,' I explained. ‘And I suppose I may get involved in politics later on. But what I want at the moment is to join the system, not fight it.'

Mrs Bloomfield understood, as I'd hoped she would. ‘I'm sure you're right,' she said. ‘Our parents had to make a lot of sacrifices for the sake of our education. It would be most unfair to yours if you spent your time at university being disruptive. Worse still if you turned hippy and dropped out – but I don't imagine you'll be doing that?'

‘No chance,' I assured her. ‘I don't want to drop out, I've been out all my life. I want to drop in!'

She poured more coffee, and offered me a cigarette from a box of polished wood. I didn't very often get a chance to smoke, but I knew I was practised enough not to cough over it so I accepted, trying to handle the cigarette as elegantly as she did.

‘I haven't forgotten the book you lent me,' I said. ‘I haven't quite finished it.'

‘No hurry. You're enjoying the poems?'

‘Especially John Donne.' I was glad I knew how to pronounce the name.

She twitched an eyebrow. ‘The erotic ones that don't get into school anthologies?'

I blushed. ‘I can see why not. They were – a surprise.' Revelation would have been a more accurate word, but I'd once made someone snigger by confusing the word with ‘relevant'and mispronouncing it as ‘relevation', and I didn't want to risk it.

I inhaled, trying to give myself the confidence to say what was on my mind. I didn't want to be indelicate, particularly with a widow, but I was desperate for some information about sex from someone articulate who'd had the necessary practical experience. Mrs Bloomfield was the one person I'd been honest with, who knew all about me, and this was an opportunity I couldn't afford to miss.

‘When I said that all I wanted from university was a degree,' I began, ‘I didn't mean that I didn't want to enjoy life too. You know what social life's like in a village, practically non-existent. I'm looking forward to making up for what I've missed.'

‘I know the feeling. And it'll be no problem. You'll find as much social life as you can handle, whichever university you go to.'

‘Yes, well, that was really what I was wondering about. Because of the poems.' I tapped ash from my cigarette, thankful to have something to fiddle with. ‘In the anthology, there are those – er, erotic poems. And then there are the poems about true love, “inter-assured of the mind,” and all that.'

‘Yes.' She didn't seem to see what I was driving at. ‘And there are of course poems that are both,' she added, obviously trying to be helpful.

That hadn't occurred to me. ‘Both?'

‘Of course,' she said lightly. ‘They're not mutually exclusive, are they? Constancy doesn't preclude sexual pleasure.'

I'd honestly thought that it did. That was how I'd got muddled, thinking that it was a question of True Love versus Sex. I ought to have had the sense at that point to shut up and go away and have a re-think, but like the idiot I was I plunged on.

‘But they don't
necessarily
go together, do they? And what I'm not clear about is whether you – I mean one, not you personally – can afford to wait to make sure. If one can't find the ideal, the marriage-of-true-minds bit, does one settle just for pleasure?'

‘No, one most certainly does not!' Mrs Bloomfield spoke so firmly and stubbed out her cigarette so emphatically that I thought for a moment I'd offended her. ‘Never, ever “settle for” anything. If you're doubtful about a relationship, don't let yourself be rushed. You've got your whole life ahead of you – for goodness'sake give yourself time.

‘Talking of which,' she continued, looking at her watch and then offering me a brisk smile, ‘we ought to make a move. It's always difficult to find anywhere in Yarchester to park.'

I stood up clumsily, feeling that I'd been given a verbal rap over the knuckles. The fact that I'd asked for it didn't make me any less sore. Mrs Bloomfield smiled at me again, only this time it was a dazzler. By way of compensation, I suppose.

‘Does he live in your village?' she asked.

I couldn't imagine who she was talking about. ‘Who?' I said.

‘Your boy-friend.'

So
that
was why she'd been so emphatic. I felt myself going red round the ears because she'd misunderstood me. I wanted to tell her the truth, but it was just too difficult. Besides, I was urgently in need of a morale-booster, and she'd reminded me that I had one ready made.

‘Well, yes,' I admitted bashfully. ‘He's a farmer's son, actually. His name's Andrew, and he's half-Polish so he's very interesting –'

I'd never thought that I would live to be thankful for Andy

Crackjaw, but at that moment I was.

As Mrs Bloomfield had anticipated, it was very difficult to find anywhere to park in Yarchester, particularly near the cathedral. The performance of the
War Requiem
was being conducted by the composer, and that had brought in an audience from all over the region. We arrived with less than ten minutes to spare, and I was quite glad because it meant that I didn't have to say much to Mrs Bloomfield's friends.

They'd saved seats for us near the front and she introduced me to them, two couples and an unattached man. They all greeted me in a friendly way, and I was delighted to find myself sitting next to the unattached man until I realized that he really wanted to be next to Mrs Bloomfield. I couldn't blame him for that, but I didn't much like playing gooseberry between them. I began to wonder whether Mrs Bloomfield had invited me just to keep him at a distance.

And then the performance began. It was the first live concert I'd ever been to, and although I knew the Wilfred Owen poems I was afraid that I was going to find the music impossibly obscure. But I needn't have worried. There must have been all kinds of fine points that I couldn't possibly appreciate, but I had no difficulty in getting the message. I was overwhelmed by the music, stunned by the violence and beauty and pity of it all.

After the last note died away down the long nave of the cathedral the silence was complete. I sat with my eyes closed, unable to do anything about the tears that slid down the side of my nose.

I felt a sense of almost personal involvement, remembering my visit yesterday to our church and the Massingham memorials I'd seen there. Miss Massingham's brother had been killed in the same war as Wilfred Owen and I wept for him, and for his son, and for the hundreds of unimaginable thousands killed in war.

The emotion was collective. There was no applause and no one spoke. It seemed that everyone was deliberately not looking at everyone else. Mrs Bloomfield and I shuffled with the crowd towards the exit, shoulder to shoulder but carefully avoiding contact.

As we progressed, I noticed an overweight, bespectacled middle-aged man and woman just ahead of us. There was nothing remarkable about them, but I happened to be watching just at a moment when their hands reached blindly, met and clasped.

Ordinarily I'd have thought it comic if not rather disgusting to see such an unprepossessing pair holding hands in public like that. Now, though, I saw them as enviable. Constancy, that was it. Perhaps some pleasure too, even at their age. But what moved me was the simplicity of the gesture, the tenderness. I realized the importance of having a hand to hold, and I felt desperately alone.

Understandably, Mrs Bloomfield's eyes were glistening too. But the unattached man was just behind her, obviously longing to offer her his support. I had no one to turn to, I felt an outsider, conspicuous. I had to get away.

I leaned towards her ear and croaked, ‘I'll have to rush for my bus. Thank you, it's been a marvellous evening.'

‘Oh, don't go now, Janet,' she protested. ‘We're all going to have coffee at the Duke's Head, and then I'll drive you back to Byland. I said I would, remember?'

‘I know, and thank you. But Mum's expecting me on the last bus.'

I dodged away without a glance at her friends, escaped through the dimly lit cloisters, and ran as hard as I could out of the cathedral close, up past the castle and on towards the bus station. There were two or four people I knew, at least by sight, waiting there for the bus to Saintsbury via Breckham Market and all the villages between. I suppose they'd been having an evening out in Yarchester. They were all in couples, naturally.

I lurked in the damp ladies' room until the bus arrived, and repaired my eyes with the help of Mrs Bloomfield's apricot-coloured loo paper before I felt able to brave the local faces. Sitting alone on the bus as we jolted on the long journey home I tried to appear cheerful, but really I felt wretched, cold and hard inside, an unwilling listener to the giggling, scuffling couples in the back seats.

There was nothing else to think about, except that I'd made a fool of myself at Mrs Bloomfield's. But then I remembered how wonderful the rest of the evening had been, with music soaring round the high stone tracery of the cathedral roof. With an experience like that to recall, who needs human contact?

I was kidding myself, of course. But when you're lonely you have to.

The letter was waiting for me when I got home from school one evening, muddy and snarling because I'd fallen off my bike in the pitch-dark lane.

‘What a mess you've made of that skirt!' said Mum. ‘You're worse now than when you were a kid. Give it here.' She hustled me out of it and hung it over the clothes-horse to dry in front of the fire. ‘Oh, there's a letter for you from Oxford.'

‘What's it say?'

‘How do I know?' She was quite indignant but I wouldn't put it past her to have steamed it open, she'd had plenty of time during the day. I would have done if I'd been her.

I was excited but I tried to appear nonchalant as I read it, standing there in my school blouse and cardigan and laddered tights. ‘The college wants to interview me,' I said, handing her the letter. She read it slowly, between the lines as well.

‘It says you've got to stay the night.'

‘That's to see if I snore. They won't take you if you do.'

Mum stared at me suspiciously. ‘Go on with you,' she said. ‘And make yourself decent, do, before your father gets home.'

Dad was so thrilled when he heard the news that I felt obliged to dampen his enthusiasm. ‘It doesn't mean I'll be accepted,' I pointed out. ‘They interview no end of people but they only take a few.'

‘No reason why you shouldn't be one of them,' said Dad proudly. ‘At any rate, you'll go there wearing your new boots.'

‘Haven't saved enough money yet.'

‘I'll make it up.'

I could have hugged him, but we didn't do that kind of thing in our family.

‘And I've thought of something an'all,' said Mum. ‘It's time you had a frock to wear, I'm sick of seeing you in skirts and jeans. How about this?' she plonked her magazine in front of me. That week's cut-out-and-ready-to-sew offer was a dress in the latest style and a super choice of colours.

‘That'd suit you a treat, our Janet,' said Dad. ‘I'd have it in the geranium if I was you.'