The Child in Time (26 page)

The assistants, who were all girls, wore uniforms too for which they were personally responsible. Each morning before the store opened they lined up for dress inspection in front of Miss Bart, the elderly head of personnel. She liked to pay special attention to the arrangement of the starched white bows ‘her girls’ tied behind their backs. Girls who were not born to it had to concentrate on saying ‘think’ not ‘fink’ and remembering their aitches and to tighten the muscles round their lips as they spoke. When they were not serving customers they had to remain behind the mahogany counters without slouching or talking to one another unnecessarily; they were required to look alert and friendly, but not ‘forward’ – ‘which meant not looking at a customer until the customer had looked at you. It took a month or two to learn how to do that.’

Claire was twenty-five and still living at home when she began at the store. She was an odd mixture of shyness and independence. ‘I wriggled out of two offers of marriage, but I had to get my mum to do the talking for me.’ Still, family and friends were growing concerned about her age and telling her she only had a year or two left in her. She was pretty in a bright, bird-like way. It was not ambition but nervous energy and dread of criticism which made her work so diligently. Even Miss Bart, whom everyone feared,
came to like her for her punctuality, and said her bows were the cleanest and the most neatly tied. She learned to speak the shop girls’ posh – ‘If modom would care to step this way …’ – and was one of the few assistants to be transferred to a new department every six months, ‘probably because the powers that be were thinking of promoting me’.

It was for this reason she found herself starting in the clock department, having come from haberdashery where the supervisor had been a second mother to her and had made her feel less anxious about not being married. Now her boss was Mr Middlebrook, a tall, thin man who intimidated both underlings and customers with his clipped, sarcastic manner. He had a striking purple birthmark on his forehead and the story among the girls was that ‘if you let your eyes rest on it even for a second you’d be fired on the spot’. Mr Middlebrook was not unreasonable, but he was cool towards the girls and had a knack of making them feel stupid.

Men were not often seen among the customers in the department store. It was a quiet, scented, womanly place. Occasionally, an elderly gent might come, looking well out of his depth as he bought an anniversary present for his wife, and loving it when a girl took him in hand and made respectful suggestions. And there were young couples, married or engaged, ‘furnishing their nests’, and much gossiped about by the assistants during their half-hour lunch break. But a young man alone in the shop, and a handsome man with a black moustache, a man in the cool blue-grey of an RAF uniform, was bound to cause a stir. News of his approach was telegraphed through the ground floor. Girls looked up from their counters, alert and friendly. Followed, not preceded, by a page boy, he strode across the tranquil expanse of plum carpet towards Claire’s department, a cap under one arm, under the other a clock, and demanded to see Mr Middlebrook. While someone went to fetch him from his office, the man set down the clock and
his cap side by side on the glass counter, stood himself at ease, hands behind back, and stared fixedly ahead. He was a strong-looking man with an impressively straight back. He had the bony, flinty handsomeness much in fashion at the time. His wavy black hair was thickly Brylcreemed and his miniature black moustache was waxed right to its tiny tips. The clock was a mantelpiece chimer in a rosewood case. Claire was twelve feet away, dusting, which was the nearest Mr Middlebrook would allow his girls to doing nothing. Trained up to the impropriety of initiating an insubordinate eye-contact, she kept herself busy with the glass faces of the grandfather clocks, every one of which showed a waiting man in uniform. ‘But you know, without turning, I could feel something like a warmth coming off him. A sort of glow.’

It did not help matters off to a good start that Mr Middlebrook was slow in coming, and that even when he did at last appear behind the counter and, presumably, register the presence of a man with a complaint, he first took down a brown envelope, removed a sheet of paper and unfolded it, wrote out a list of numbers, then refolded the sheet and returned it to the envelope and the envelope to its proper position on its shelf. Only then did he mount the barely credible drama of becoming aware of a customer in need of attention. Drawing up to his full height and inclining forwards, with his weight supported by splayed fingers against the glass counter, he said, ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Throughout this the man in uniform had not stirred from his position, nor did his gaze wander until he was spoken to. Then he took half a pace forward, picked up his cap and used it to point to the clock. He said simply, ‘It’s broken. Again.’ Claire’s dusting was taking her nearer the scene.

Mr Middlebrook was brisk. ‘Then there’s no problem at all, sir. The guarantee still has seven months to run.’ His hand was resting on the clock, and he was about to gather it up
for processing. But the man put out his own hand and set it firmly on top of Mr Middlebrook’s, trapping it there while he spoke. Claire noticed the stubby fingers of this second hand, and the black, matted hair along the knuckles. The physical contact violated all the unspoken rules governing confrontations with customers. Mr Middlebrook had gone rigid. To struggle would have intensified the contact, so he had no choice but to listen to the man’s short speech. ‘I loved his way of talking. Straight to the point. Not rough, or rude, but not lah-di-dah either.’

The man said, ‘You told me it was a reliable clock. Worth paying the extra money for. Either you were lying, or you were mistaken. That’s not for me to judge. I want my money back now.’

Here, at least, Mr Middlebrook knew himself to be on familiar ground. ‘I’m afraid we cannot authorise refunds on goods purchased five months ago.’

Reassured by a statement of company policy, Mr Middlebrook attempted to pull his hand clear. But the man’s larger hand encircled his wrist and the grip was tightening.

He spoke again as if for the first time. ‘I want my money back now.’ And then came the surprise. The man turned to Claire. ‘And what’s your opinion? This is the third time it’s broken down.’

‘Until he asked me, I didn’t
have
an opinion. I was just watching to see what was going to happen. But before I could stop myself, I was saying, bold as you like, “I think you should have your money back, sir.”’

The man nodded at the till and kept a good hold of Mr Middlebrook. ‘Come on then, girl. Seven pounds thirteen and six.’ Claire opened the till, thus initiating a lifetime of domestic obedience. Mr Middlebrook made no attempt to prevent her. He was, after all, being extricated from a most unpleasant situation without having to back down. Douglas Lewis took the money, turned on his heel and walked smartly away, leaving the broken clock behind him on the counter.

‘I’ll always remember the hands stood at a quarter to three.’

Claire was sacked at lunchtime, not by Mr Middlebrook, who was at the doctor’s having his wrist bandaged, but by the disapproving Miss Bart. The girl was surprised to find her man waiting for her as she stepped out on to the pavement. He bought her a slap-up lunch at the George Hotel.

‘There was no question,’ said Mrs Lewis as she extended her cup and saucer for a refill. ‘He was a catch. When he came to tea he did all the right things. Arrived in his best uniform, and brought flowers, said nice things about the garden to my dad, thrilled my mum by eating three helpings of cake. After that, everyone started treating me with respect.’

Three months later, when news came through of Douglas’s posting to North Germany, the couple were engaged. Claire had been just a little disappointed when she discovered during their lunch at the George that he was not a fighter pilot. He had never even been in an airplane. He was on the admin side, a filing clerk in charge of all the other filing clerks. Now she was greatly relieved that he would be doing nothing more dangerous in Germany than collecting the squadron’s wages from the bank each week. She went to Harwich to wave his ship goodbye, and sobbed in the train on the way home. They wrote regularly, sometimes every day for weeks on end. Though Douglas found it easier to describe bomb craters in ruined towns and food queues than his tenderest feelings, he was able to take a lead from his fiancée, and between them they managed a growing intimacy by post. When he came home on leave at Christmas, they were a little shame-faced, shy of holding hands even, for the postal affair with its extravagant declarations had run on ahead of them. But by Boxing Day they had caught up, and travelling in the train to Worthing to his parents, Douglas made a short murmured speech, almost lost to the iron clatter of wheels, in which he told Claire how in love he was with her.

Conditions in Germany were still far too unsettled for wives to be permitted to accompany serving men, so they agreed not to get married until Douglas was posted back to the UK. He was not home again on leave until spring, and then only for a long weekend. The weather was warm and since there was nowhere they could be alone indoors they passed the days walking on the North Downs, making their plans. They strolled carefree along the very path used by Chaucer’s pilgrims. The tranquil Weald was spread out before them, there were wildflowers, larks, and abundant solitude. They were deliriously happy, it was a delirious weekend, and by the repetition of the word Stephen took his mother to be absolving them of a degree of carelessness. Sure enough, when Douglas returned on more extended leave in July, Claire had momentous news for him. She decided to choose her moment, to wait until they were back up on the hills among the wildflowers with the easy, joyful intimacy re-established.

When she anticipated that moment she could almost hear a film score and see the midsummer sun illuminate the scene – Douglas struck dumb with pride, his features softened by reverence, and admiration, and a new kind of tenderness. ‘But it didn’t occur to me that it would be cold and windy.’ Even worse, Douglas seemed different. He was edgy, abstracted, difficult to get close to. Sometimes he seemed bored. Whenever Claire asked him if there was anything the matter he would take her hand and squeeze ferociously. If she asked him too frequently he became irritable.

At the end of his previous visit, they had decided to buy bicycles in order to free themselves from the erratic local buses, and since this was to be their first joint purchase, the first acquisitions for the little empire they were about to build, it seemed appropriate to buy new ones. They had already made their choice and a down payment and now, on the third day of Douglas’s July leave, they set out with
a picnic already packed to collect their bikes and brave the weather. Claire had made up her mind to tell her news that day, even though it was raining and Douglas was more silent than ever. He cheered up once they were on their bikes, however, and began to sing, which was something he had never done in her presence before. So Claire seized her opportunity and blurted out her secret as they wobbled down the busy High Street.

It was difficult to talk. Not until they were on a country lane and had dismounted to push their heavy machines over a level crossing and up a steep hill were they able to discuss the matter. It was raining steadily now and they were struggling into a head-wind. It was all so very different from Claire’s imagined scene, and quite unfair, for it had not seemed so improbable that the spirit of their delirious weekend should continue into the summer. Douglas was looking troubled. How long had she known? How did she know? How could she be so sure?

‘But aren’t you excited?’ said Claire, whose tears were lost to the rain. ‘Aren’t you happy?’

‘Of course I am,’ Douglas said quickly. ‘I’m just trying to set things straight. That’s all I’m trying to do.’

At the top of the hill where the rain eased off a little and the wind dropped quite suddenly, Douglas mopped his face with a handkerchief. ‘This is all a bit sudden, you know.’

Claire nodded. She felt she owed an apology, but she was too choked up.

‘And it’ll mean changing all our plans.’

She had taken that for granted. And the minor scandal of a child born, say, six months after they were married would be nothing against their happiness. She nodded grimly.

The road swept down invitingly towards the woods, but it did not seem right to get back on their bikes and coast at such a serious time, so they walked them down the hill in silence with their hands on the brakes. During the
descent, Claire began to feel she was about to confront something quite unspeakable, something it had not occurred to her to take into account. ‘It was his silence. It was as if I could taste it, taste the things he was not saying. I began to feel sick. You know how bad smells affect you when you’re pregnant.’

They did in fact stop while Claire retched into the hedgerow. Douglas held her bike. When they continued she felt she had already heard the arguments and had suffered a miserable defeat; Douglas was bored, he regretted the commitment, he had another woman in Germany. Whatever it was, he did not want the child. That was what was on his mind. It was abortion – ‘and the word in those days had a very different, very nasty ring to it’ – it was abortion, the difficulty of raising the subject, which was forcing his reticence.

Anger was clearing her mind. Now she felt lucid. If he did not want it, nor did she. The baby inside her was not yet an entity, not something to be defended at all costs. It was still an abstraction, one aspect of their love; if that was finished, then so was the baby. She would not submit to a lifetime’s ignominy of unmarried motherhood. If Douglas was no more than a passing episode, she did not want to be reminded of him for ever. She must be free, she must be rid of this idiot who had wasted her time. She must start again.

They entered the wood where the light was a watery green and giant beeches dripped calmly on to the unfurled leaves of the abundant ferns. She was furious. She squeezed her brakes in her fury and had to push all the harder. She wanted it ended now, by the roadside, on the ground, in the dirt, under this tree, now and quickly. The pain would mean nothing, it would purify her, justify her. Then she would be on her bike, pedalling swiftly. The wind and rain would cool her face, freshen and heal her. She would not dismount for the uphill stretches. She would push on, leave
far behind this weak man whose silence smelled and made her nauseous.