Mad Joy (25 page)

Late that November I had a letter that made me cry. I cried so much that Andrew ran over to me and started stroking my hair.

‘What is it, Mummy? What’s the matter?’

‘Daddy’s coming home!’

I squeezed him very tight, but he backed off and looked at me earnestly. ‘Never mind, Mummy,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry. If we don’t like him, we can always send him back.’

But Daddy didn’t come home. Not straight away, at least. It would take six weeks for his voyage from India, and then there would be some disembarkation leave before being posted to Aston Down to await release from the RAF. Those six weeks passed slowly. I went to his wardrobe and took out his old clothes, opened his old stamp books, smelt inside his shoes. But nothing smelt of him, and I couldn’t conjure him up.

I made myself a new dress and new outfits for the children. I went to the hairdresser’s in town and bought myself lipstick and a pair of shoes with little heels. I sat in front of the mirror at my dressing table and held my hair in different shapes, inspecting my skin, my smile, my eyebrows, wondering if he would find me different to the woman he had fallen in love with. I didn’t like my nose. I inspected it in profile in the
three-way
mirror. There it was, that image I so rarely looked at because it confused me so much: Joy into infinity.

At first I couldn’t think how he would fit in. We had our routines now, our patterns. The children had become children without him: he wasn’t a part of anything they did or thought. I had my things to do each day. There just wasn’t a place for him. Before I’d had vague imaginings of him taking me to town in the cart, of me ironing his shirts while he smoked a pipe, or chatting to him as I knitted by the fire in the evenings. But it was Howard who took me to town in the cart, I liked to listen to the children play whilst I ironed, and I chatted with Gracie or Mrs Bubb by the fire in the evenings.

‘It’s always hard at first,’ said Mrs Bubb, helpfully. ‘My friend Pam’s daughter took one look at her husband when he came back and told him to clear off. Told him he wasn’t the man she married he was so changed.’

‘Did they work it out?’

‘Hang! No! She’s seeing the postman now. Then there was Mrs Alma – you know Mrs Alma with the ears? – her husband came back to find she’d put a smile on the face of every man this side of Gloucester. So
he
walked out. Then there’s Mrs Davies – you know, with the blue door – and
she
had her husband come back with bits missing, so that can’t be easy. Well, I suppose it depends
which
bits. I wouldn’t mind the odd leg off, but there’s bits I
would
mind, I don’t mind saying.’

In the second week of January I was in the garden on the far side of the house pruning some fruit bushes. Andrew and Jill were helping me make a big heap of twigs for a bonfire, and kept getting distracted by interesting-looking cuttings that turned into swords or walking sticks or cigarettes with real smoke as we sent coils of dragon breath into the jagged cold of the air. Suddenly something leapt from behind a bush and scampered
up the greengage tree. It was Tigger, son of Digger, sleek and beautiful, trying to enjoy our company, trying to show me something, perhaps.

‘Look!’ yelped Jill, as if she had never seen our cat before. ‘He’s right up high.’

‘He’s amazing,’ I said.

‘No,’ Jill frowned. ‘He’s a cat.’

I smiled, noticing how simply the little furrow between her brows disappeared when she settled on an idea.

‘You don’t get mazings round here.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Where do they live, then?’

‘In the jungle.’ Then she bubbled over with laughter as Tigger made a branch wobble up and down. Her head went back and out it came: long, uncontrollable chuckling, and her eyes disappeared in the wideness of her smile. I held on to the loveliness of it, and the moment opened like a parachute, billowing and floating and holding me gently in the air.

Suddenly I heard Andrew’s voice near the front of the house speaking in unexpectedly stern tones.

‘No, I’m afraid you can’t,’ he said.

Looking up, I could see him standing, arms akimbo, and addressing someone out of view around the corner of the house. Then I heard a male voice, and then Andrew planted his feet firmly apart and said: ‘She doesn’t speak to strangers and neither do I!’

I ran around to the front of the house, expecting to see James. But the person standing there was indeed a stranger. His face was gaunt with sunken, hooded eyes and his skin was so brown that the whites of his eyes seemed luminous. I stood, startled, a few yards away from him, and put my arms automatically around Andrew’s shoulders.

‘It’s all right, Mummy. I’ve told him to clear off.’

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. At this last comment his gleaming, sunken eyes welled up and he looked at Andrew in
disbelief. He looked back at me and smiled: a tentative, apologetic smile that didn’t seem to know where it was going. Seeing my recognition, it grew and covered his whole face, the teeth glowing brightly against the tanned skin.

I ran towards him and embraced him. But even in that moment of elation I felt the strange bones in the lean body, and he seemed so frail and unfamiliar I didn’t know how hard to hold him against me, and I wondered if we would ever truly fit together again.

The feast laid out in the dining room seemed ridiculous: Victory Jelly with flags in it. A monstrosity.

The Mustoes were there with George and their youngest Emily (Robert, Mo and Tilly weren’t demobbed until later in 1946), Mr Rollins and his family and Mrs Bubb. I could only think that I didn’t know my lines. I felt nervous, unhinged, and a little stupid. It was easy enough to step back from things with all the noise and laughter and congratulations. It wasn’t until they had all gone home, when the children were put to bed, that James and I had to confront who we had become.

I found him standing outside the orangery, looking up at the stars. The realization that he would not slot into place either, that he too was adrift, gave me an unexpected jolt. I stood next to him and he held my hand. We said nothing for a long time.

‘This must all seem very trivial to you‚’ I said at last.

There was a long silence, and when he turned his face to mine I could see his eyes glistening. ‘This is what we were fighting for. This is what it was all for: you, the children. I’ve missed so much of it – their childhood, I mean. I didn’t want to miss it.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I squeezed his hand, not expecting his tears.
‘There were times I wished I was fighting,’ I said hopelessly. ‘It’s been such a long, long war just waiting.’

He put his arm around me and rested his head on mine. I could hear him sniff and swallow. ‘I’ve done things … I’ve done things I’m not proud of in this war.’ His voice faltered at the end, and I didn’t know how to react to this new version of James.

‘You’re home now. It’s over now.’

‘Who knows how many other women and children, waiting for the war to end … innocent people just caught up … just in the wrong place …? We … I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to forget what we did.’

I burst into tears.

‘I’ve upset you – I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, darling.’

He took me in his arms and we buried our heads in each other’s necks, but I felt treacherous. I wasn’t crying for those other women and children, I was crying for myself, crying because my saviour was just another human being racked with guilt, surprised not to find what he thought he’d find, and all at sea.

As the days went by we tried to draw closer together, remembering what we had been before so much stuff got in between us. I brought him breakfasts on trays, posies of flowers, drawings by the children. He made me sketches of birds, took me and the children on walks, and I would pass through kissing gates bordered with holly berries and through bright fields of sheep with buzzards flying overhead under windswept clouds and see nothing. The children would laugh about something he said or did and I wouldn’t notice. Sometimes I watched him from our bedroom window walk to the end of the garden, and would see him stretch out like a cartwheel, whispering to the moon or listening to the
trees. I was struck with the awful possibility that he didn’t feel the same about me either.

At night we couldn’t touch because Andrew would come and sleep between us. Neither of us took him back to his room, because we knew there was something else in the way, something huge and growing: an incubus that wouldn’t go away.

On the fifth morning of his leave I was awoken by the wireless on loud downstairs. There was no one else in the bed, so I put on my dressing gown and went down to the kitchen. The wireless was not on. No one was about, but the music was very loud and clear. I followed it to the orangery and there, with his back to me, was James playing his cello. The sunlight made the tips of his ears glow, and I watched the dear point where his hair reached his tanned neck. His right shoulder moved slightly under an old cotton shirt, and I could see the fingers of his left hand making confident, magical movements on the strings.

Jill and Andrew were sitting on the floor beside him, dipping bits of toast into boiled eggs.

‘Have you had enough?’ he asked Jill, stopping his playing when she reached up with eggy hands.

‘I’ve had a little nuff,’ she said, her head on one side, ‘but not a very big one.’

James threw his head back and laughed. I caught the moment just there, and it opened like a falcon’s wings, spreading his laughter through the air, wider and wider until it soared.

He saw me and smiled.

‘Our daughter needs a bigger nuff!’ And I saw him again, for an instant, the same man who’d gone away.

‘One more nuff coming up, then.’ I went back into the kitchen and Andrew followed me.

‘Daddy’s going to get me a go in a Spitfire. Only I need to sleep in my own bed because fighter pilots aren’t allowed to
sleep with their mummies. Do you mind? I’ll still look after you.’

‘That’s fine. How exciting! A ride in a Spitfire!’

‘I know. I’m going to … Mummy … why are you smelling inside Daddy’s slippers?’

Despite the confusion of his presence, when James went back to Aston Down I missed him.

The following weekend I walked the grounds wondering if he would make it back for a visit. When I reached the beech tree at the far end of the paddock I stopped suddenly, startled by a stream of smoke rising from the chimney of the empty cottage. At first I thought it was on fire: it had been derelict for years. But it was definitely coming from the little chimney stack and, now that I studied it, the roof seemed in unusually good shape for a wreck.

Something brushed my shoulders and I looked round. There was nothing there. My hair seemed caught on something, and I swept it aside. I felt uneasy. There was a presence somewhere near.

Suddenly my hair was caught up in a hand and lifted on to the top of my head. I gasped.

‘You have remarkably beautiful shoulders.’ I looked up to where the voice was coming from and saw James lolling from a branch. ‘I’ve never looked at you from this angle before.’

‘You scared me half to death.’

I made to climb up as well. He reached out an arm and pulled me up. As soon as I was beside him he looked at me intently, and stroked the side of my face.

‘There’s someone in the cottage‚’ I said awkwardly.

‘I know.’

He lay back on the branch and fiddled with a twig.

‘Who?’

‘Gracie and Howard.’

I let out a disbelieving snort before catching his eye and seeing that he wasn’t joking.

He looked out towards the cottage and said, ‘They’ve been doing it up for years. Always planned to live there when I came back.’

I stared at him, but his eyes were still fixed on the horizon. I gave an embarrassed little laugh. ‘I think Gracie would’ve told me.’

Now he turned and looked directly at me. ‘Perhaps you just didn’t notice. Perhaps she didn’t want you to know.’

I felt a quiver of shock and disbelief. But his face was serious.

‘Why not?’

He frowned a little. ‘An instinctive thing, maybe.’

I was beginning to panic. There had been a plan, and everyone had known about it. Even James, thousands of miles away. But I had been left out.

‘Well, from what Dad said in his letters, you hadn’t really picked up on it, and she didn’t want to seem happier than you were. She couldn’t bear to see you sad. She wanted to wait for your happiness before she announced her own.’

My throat was beginning to swell.

‘How long …?’ I whispered. ‘How long has it been going on?’

‘Since they first set eyes on each other, I think.’ He smiled at me and continued to fiddle with the twig.

I closed my eyes at what I had caused: all the love I had stifled.

‘I would’ve been so happy for them! I can’t believe they’ve held back because of me.’

He reached out and took my hand. ‘I don’t think they held back that much‚’ he winked.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure. You mustn’t worry about it. She wanted you to be happy. The important thing is that you are loved. She did it out of love.’

Somehow I felt the thought of it like a burden, another wrong I was responsible for. My face ached, every feature straining against an expression of pain.

Tigger bounded into the tree and James glanced skyward to the thick mesh of branches. ‘Look at that. We’re so busy watching the leaves falling off we don’t see these buds – they’re already starting – look. Growing already.’ I looked up, but all I could make out were a few dogged yellow leaves hanging on by a thread. ‘You know, for the last few years, I’ve been horrified by what people can do to each other. On the boat on the way back there were a load of children picked up from a Japanese camp.’ His voice faltered a little. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it. They were so thin, so alone.’ He reached a hand up and tapped an overhanging branch. ‘And I’ve been dwelling on that: a human being’s capacity for cruelty. It’s terrifying. It really is terrifying.’

His eyes were glistening with tears and I was beginning to feel panic-stricken again. Just when I’d hoped for some solace, it seemed he was heading for the abyss and he would take me with him.

‘But then I’ve been sitting here and thinking.’ He propped himself up on an elbow suddenly and looked out across at the cottage again. ‘I’ve been thinking about a human being’s capacity for love. Look at it. It’s even more amazing, isn’t it?’

I knew he meant Gracie. I knew he meant that I didn’t know how lucky I was, and he was trying to make me see it. And it was quite true: I had been so wrapped up in what one woman seemed
not
to have felt for me, that I had failed to enjoy all the
love I had. I knew this was right, I knew I was ungrateful and I knew my perspective was all wrong, but that one thing kept pulling me under like a giant weight attached to my ankle.

‘I know I have so much to be grateful for.’ Tears sprang from nowhere and dribbled down my cheeks. ‘I just feel so … trapped. Not by you. Not by anyone. Just by thoughts in my head that won’t go away.’

He pulled me towards him and the branch swayed a little as I lay down on his chest.

‘Well, I think that’s my job, isn’t it; getting you out of traps?’

‘I don’t think there’s a way out of this one.’

‘Look at me.’ He lifted my chin gently, and I repositioned my head. His green eyes were gazing so deep into mine that I felt like one of his hypnotized rabbits. ‘Don’t forget the gypsy soul in me.’

He continued to gaze at me.

‘You know, when animals are trapped, you sometimes have to mesmerize them before you can set them free. Otherwise they get frightened and pull away so hard they can take a leg off.’

He ran his hand down between my shoulder blades to the small of my back, and rested it there. He was very quiet and still, but did not take his eyes off me. After some time like this he said, ‘Come with me to the house.’

I felt a rush of longing for him. He slipped down from the tree and let me slide down into his arms, and every part of me wanted him. But he was wrong if he thought this would solve things. It was a lovely idea, very animal, very
instinctive
, it appealed to the feral girl inside me. Even so I knew then that no amount of lovemaking would rid me of this demon. The cat, black and white like his mother, bounded on ahead of us.

‘I may be wrong,’ he said, as if he read my mind, ‘but I don’t think so. I’m going with my instincts on this one.’ He slipped
his hand around my waist and hung it on my hip as we walked. ‘Do you trust me?’

I nodded, feeling suddenly heavy with desire. I longed so much to believe in the magic he had conjured up that I let myself believe, I let myself follow him like someone under a spell.

When we entered the hallway he looked about furtively.

‘Wait here.’

He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard him say
something
to Mrs Bubb.

‘Come on‚’ he said, when he reappeared, and he led me up the stairs.

On the first landing he stopped and faced me, taking my waist in his two large hands, as if it were a child’s.

‘Be still, and let things come to you.’ He took a stray strand of my hair and pushed it gently behind my ear. ‘Try to trust me on this.’ Then he led me further up the stairs and said, ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’

I followed him up to the next landing, torn between disappointment and intrigue. He pushed open Jill’s bedroom door, and I heard a low murmuring. The cat went in ahead of us.

There, slumped on the bed, was a man in his early thirties. Jill’s arms were draped about his neck, and Andrew lay curled on his chest. He stopped singing ‘For the moon shines bright on Charlie Chap …’ and looked at me, his tiny head cocked to one side, and he gave a shy, apologetic smile. Both children were fast asleep.