Homeland (5 page)

The ration books were in the kitchen, propped behind the Golden Jubilee tea caddy on the mantelshelf. Extracting them, he knocked the caddy off-centre and took a moment to realign it in the
correct position. He found no coupons for coal, however, just for petrol and food, only one or two unused. In London it was commonly believed that country people were living in clover, that,
unconcerned for city dwellers, the farmers were bypassing the rationing system and keeping all the best produce for themselves. If so, there was precious little evidence of it in the larder. He
counted two eggs, a scrag end of lamb, some bacon and cheese, and a few onions and potatoes, while on a side shelf were a couple of tins of Spam, some dried milk, and a small bag of flour.

There was no sign of Stan. Putting his head outside, Billy finally spotted him by the chicken shed, bent over the open lid of the nesting boxes. It was as good an opportunity as any to see Flor,
though as Billy climbed the stairs and knocked on the door his stomach squirmed with dread.

The room smelt of lavender and carbolic, the radio was belting out ‘Begin the Beguine’, and the light from the window shone straight on her head, propped high against the pillows.
Her bright eyes fixed on him and she tried to smile in a strange lopsided pull of one cheek, a creasing up of one eye. The effect was of an exaggerated wink.

He said, ‘Bit of a laugh, eh? Me turning up like a bad penny.’ He turned off the music and, pulling up a chair, sat at the side of the bed. She reached out and grasped his hand. Her
skin was dry and papery and surprisingly hot.

‘But I’m not staying long,’ he said. ‘I’m only here for the day.’

Because he couldn’t think of what else to talk about he told her about his war, or rather the high points – the landing in France, the ride through Belgium and Holland, the civilians
who’d showered them with hoarded treats, the contrast when they reached Germany, the sight of Hamburg virtually flattened – and all the time he was aware of her eyes fastened intently
on his face and the pressure of the hot papery hand in his. Once or twice he tried to slide his hand away, but her fingers tightened instantly and drew him back.

‘Before I forget,’ he said at last, ‘I need my mum’s things. The stuff in the shoebox.’

Letting go of his hand at last, Flor reached across to the side table for a pad and pencil. She wrote left-handed, very slowly, with the occasional letter in block capitals. Following her
directions, Billy found the shoe-box in the back of the wardrobe drawer.

‘Thanks,’ he said, holding it up to her. Then, because she was attempting another smile, he added hastily, ‘Anything you want? Anything I can get you?’

She wrote laboriously on the pad:
Is house clean?

He laughed aloud. ‘Don’t you worry – I’ll make sure it’s up to scratch.’

She began to write again, a longer message, and Billy sat down again so as not to look impatient. When she finally passed him the message, there was nothing in it to make him laugh. Instead, he
got to his feet and said sharply, ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Then, moderating his voice, ‘Do you want your music back on?’

Without waiting for an answer he turned the radio up and with a brisk goodbye hurried from the room. What in hell did she want to go and tell him that for?
Money behind wardrobe in satchel. I
want you to have some.
She might as well have dangled a wad of money in front of his nose and snatched it away again. He could just imagine what would happen if he was stupid enough to accept
it. He’d get accused of taking advantage of Flor when she was soft in the head, or of cheating the son and daughter out of their inheritance, most likely both.

Money was all right while you didn’t have to think about it, while you had no choice but to grub around for every shilling like the rest of the common herd. The trouble came with easy
money. Easy money got you thinking. Already he was wondering how much was sitting behind the wardrobe, whether it was enough to buy a suit, a car, the deposit on a garage premises . . . Easy money
caused ructions with your mates. In Germany Ernie had found some jewellery in the basement of a ruined house. The rule was finders keepers, and trust no one but your mates. But someone must have
talked, because during a three-day halt the booty vanished from Ernie’s kit. Easy money created suspicion, and suspicion was the last thing he needed just at the moment.

In his bedroom he opened the shoebox and went through the contents with an eye to their resale value. It didn’t look good. The green brooch that had sparkled so brilliantly in his memories
of his mother was dull and chipped, no more than cheap glass, while the fancy watch she’d kept for best had a tarnished metal strap and water marks on the face. There were two gold rings,
though, and a small oval photo frame that had every appearance of silver. He packed the valuables in his knapsack and left the tat in the shoebox along with the bundles of photographs and
souvenirs. He glanced briefly at the photograph he’d removed from the oval frame: a portrait of his mother, who’d died when he was nine. The picture wasn’t as flattering as he
remembered; in fact it made her look rather plain and severe. And that was before she’d married his father, when she took to glaring at any camera that dared to point her way.

Now that his business was done he ran downstairs with a sense of relief, even of generosity. He might find time to split some logs and sort out the woodshed before getting away on the afternoon
train.

Striding into the kitchen, he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the woman standing by the table. The light from the window had the effect of bleaching the colour from her face and for an
instant it seemed to Billy that she was both flesh and illusion. She was motionless and her skin was smooth as stone. Only her eyes were indisputably alive, and they stared at him unwaveringly.

‘I heard you were back,’ Annie Drinkwater said.

Billy forced his expression into something approaching impassivity. ‘Not for long,’ he said.

‘I heard that too.’

Billy felt an unnerving sense of dislocation. She seemed just the same yet quite different, her features unchanged yet drawn with an almost photographic intensity, like a film star’s in a
poster, all eyes and lips and hair, splashed dramatically across the landscape of white skin.

Aware that he was staring openly, he put on a long lazy grin, only to find that she had turned away to unload a basket of vegetables.

‘I was wondering how they managed for veg,’ he said, looking past the leeks and cabbages to her ring finger and seeing the gold band there.

‘Oh, people have plenty to spare. You know how it is.’

‘And you fetch it down for them?’

‘It’s not far.’ She shot him a quick smile that managed to be friendly and impersonal at the same time, and again he was struck by the clarity of her features. She was wearing
lipstick which accentuated the pallor of her skin and the darkness of her hair, and her eyebrows were fine-drawn and arched. The overall effect was one of sophistication; though perhaps it was just
the fashion; perhaps he was just out of touch.

‘Good of you to do it, though.’

Shrugging this off lightly, she picked up a bundle of leeks and took them to the sink.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be Mrs Bentham, by any chance?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’d no idea it was you.’

She ran the tap at full blast. ‘Well, you’ve been away, haven’t you?’

‘You can say that again.’

He waited expectantly for the question about his war, but it never came.

‘Been firing a few rounds at the Jerries,’ he said, and winced inwardly, it sounded so crass.

Shutting off the tap, barely turning her head, she gave a short nod, polite but distant. This gesture, like everything else about her, made him feel uncomfortably off-balance. He took a slow
breath and relaxed his voice. ‘The doctor was talking about you.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Well, not so much
about
you. More, what you were doing for Stan and Flor. He said you were sorting things out for them. Like the coal.’

Drying her hands on a towel, she turned to look at him, her head tilted slightly to one side. The appraisal was thoughtful, unhurried, unselfconscious, as if she were making up her mind to ask
him something. Her self-possession astonished him. There was no flicker of memory in her face, no acknowledgement of the strong attraction that had brought them together, no shadow of resentment at
the way things had ended; in fact no sign that anything had passed between them. Well, he thought combatively, we’ll soon see about that. He gave her a foxy lopsided grin and began to shake
his head, as if to tick her off for this little charade, only to see her gaze drop distractedly to the floor. For a second or two he might not have been there at all.

‘The coal,’ he repeated sharply.

‘The coal? Oh yes. It was the agricultural permit – Stan forgot to apply for it. And he flatly refused to pay domestic prices. So for a while there was a bit of a stalemate.’
Her tone was bright, informative. ‘But the permit finally came through yesterday. The order’s gone in. The delivery should come tomorrow.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘thanks for all the trouble.’

Her eyes glittered suddenly. ‘The only thanks I need are from Stan and Flor.’

So, it’s still there, he thought triumphantly. The attraction or the anger, or both. He grinned. ‘Thanks on their behalf, then.’

She accepted this with a minute nod before reverting to a friendly but neutral tone. ‘So this is just a quick visit, is it?’

‘Afraid so. Got a job waiting in London. Buying and selling cars. Repair work. That sort of thing.’

‘
Are
there any cars? With all the petrol rationing, I mean.’

‘Oh, plenty. The garage where I’ll be working, it deals in Jags. And people with Jags – well, they don’t go and let rationing cramp their style.’

‘It’s all different in London, then.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Is the bomb damage very bad?’ She might have been making conversation at a vicar’s tea party.

‘Bad enough. Though not half as bad as in Germany. We were first into Hamburg and the bloomin’ place was flat as a pancake.’ Once again, Annie didn’t pick up on this. Her
lack of interest began to irritate him. ‘But in London,’ he went on smoothly, ‘you don’t really notice all the holes. Too busy making the most of what’s left, if you
know what I mean. Too busy having a good time.’

The mention of good times provoked nothing but a faint smile and a drift of her gaze towards the floor. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if any country deserves a good time it’s this
one, isn’t it?’

Feeling he was getting a grip on the conversation at last, he lent nonchalantly against the table and crossed his arms. ‘So how about you?’

‘Me?’ she said lightly.

‘You living nearby?’

‘At Spring Cottage.’

A vision of the back garden, of waiting for her in the darkness, flickered across his mind. ‘Oh yes? With your mum?’

‘No. She died – oh, four years ago now.’

‘I didn’t know. Sorry.’

‘Flor didn’t write and tell you?’

He made a show of searching his memory. ‘No, I would have remembered. But then a whole bunch of Flor’s letters never reached me when I was in the thick of it.’ Now, her lack of
interest in his soldiering could only be deliberate. He asked, ‘So how long you been back?’

She paused to work it out. From this angle her hair seemed richer and darker than he remembered, though it might have been the way she wore it, smooth and silky, with a side parting and soft
waves over the shoulder. Her skirt and jumper were simple but well fitting. Her poise terrified him.

‘Just over sixteen months,’ she said.

‘And before that?’

‘Plymouth. I had a job there till the end of the war.’

No mention of the husband, he noticed. No ‘we’ plural living at Spring Cottage. He began to wonder if she was like some of the women he’d met in London who in the cold light of
peace had got to think better of their wartime marriages. Then she added, ‘I lost my husband in the war. It seemed best to come back.’

He said immediately, ‘Sorry to hear that,’ and he was; though the part of him that was still attracted to her felt the unmistakable itch of sexual opportunity. ‘On active
service, was it?’

She moved towards him and for a moment he wasn’t at all sure what she was going to do, tell him to mind his own business or go to hell, or both. As it was, she gave a small nod before
scooping up the basket from the table and taking it through into the larder. As she swept past him he caught a waft of perfume that took him straight back to Belgium and a couple of girls he and
Ernie had met in a bar. The memory, like the smell, excited him.

‘It was a shock to see Flor,’ he called through to her. ‘Wish someone had told me.’

‘Would it have made any difference?’

‘To what?’

She came out of the larder and closed the door. ‘To how long you were going to stay.’

He stared at her, then shrugged because he had no answer.

‘They could do with some help, you know.’

‘Well, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’ he said, bristling suddenly. ‘The place is a right bloody mess.’

‘You couldn’t give them a couple of weeks?’ she said. ‘Just to get them started.’

‘What, and lose this job? They’re doing me a favour as it is, holding it for me till I get back. There’s a dozen blokes who’d grab it off me as soon as look at
me.’

‘I hadn’t realised.’

Something in her gaze drove him to add, ‘Two weeks isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference anyway. It’ll take a lot more than that.’

‘I see.’

‘Besides, there’s all these Polish refugees he can have. The doctor was telling me he only has to ask.’

‘He’s not too keen on the idea.’

‘No, he wouldn’t be, would he? That’s Stan all over. Nothing’s ever going to be right.’

‘He’s frightened, I think.’

Billy laughed. ‘Him? Frightened?’

‘Of strangers.’

‘Of people who aren’t prepared to put up with his nonsense, more like.’