The One I Was (26 page)

There were sandwiches for lunch, served in the kitchen to save work as there was no longer a full-time cook. Harriet didn’t appear. Probably eating hers in her room while she dressed for her tennis. Benny ate his meal quickly and drank several glasses of water in succession to kill the headache.

He went up to his books. He’d moved back to the bedroom on the first floor he’d relocated to during the diphtheria. There was more room for his desk and books.

‘There’s not much more I can teach you at this stage,’ Dr Dawes had told him when he’d received his Higher School Certificate results. ‘You’ve done very well, Benny. We’ll concentrate on broadening you out for the Oxford scholarship papers. Writing essays is the thing, Benny. And reading, reading, reading.’

So this afternoon he was writing on free will. His own will seemed to be completely enslaved, pulling him away from the lined paper to the sounds coming from outside the house.

Plop, thwat, plop. A hoot of laughter. He looked out of the window. Harriet and a woman friend were out on the tennis court beside the walled garden, levelled off, resewn with grass seed and rollered. Lord Dorner must have seen his wife casting longing looks at it when she came back from flying planes.

Some of her female friends were flying for the commercial air companies, she’d told them. Some of them had even made plans to fly in South Africa or Argentina, imagine that. But the wife of Lord Dorner couldn’t be in paid employment during peacetime, even though she was supposed to be one of the best pilots in the country, male or female.

‘But now she’ll have to get back to organizing charity balls and sitting on hospital boards,’ Rainer had said in a rare visit home.

Benny himself mightn’t have much opportunity to see how she adapted. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with himself during leave from national service and university vacations. Perhaps you weren’t really supposed to return to Fairfleet once you’d left. Perhaps it somehow exceeded the terms of Lord and Lady Dorner’s generosity. Benny wanted to ask Dr Dawes about it but didn’t want to appear too needy. He turned back to watch Harriet Dorner on the tennis court.

She and the friend, Betty someone-or-other, a woman Benny recognized from dinner parties years ago, were laughing at missed shots and bungled serves.
Such
a long time, they told one another, their words rising crisply through the still air to Benny’s window. Harriet’s tennis-shoe soles had perished. Mice, little devils, had nibbled at the wood on her friend’s racket. The whites they’d last worn in 1939 had yellowed and moths had chewed holes in them.

‘I’ll never be able to serve again,’ Betty called. But within twenty minutes they’d found a rhythm, Harriet moving across the court in light dancer’s steps, making it look the easiest thing in the world, hitting forehands that sent up little clouds of dust when they landed, and volleying balls back at Betty with precision. Perhaps she’d teach him to play. But why should she? Why should Harriet Dorner do any more for the refugee boy?

He watched the women playing tennis a few minutes longer until he felt guilty about the unfinished essay and forced his head down towards the exercise book.
Put simply, free will means the power to determine one’s own actions …

The power to stop himself being distracted by Harriet’s strong yet shapely legs in her tennis skirt. This was completely the wrong essay question to attempt. He’d start again. Choose a different topic: this one on guilt. He put the lid on the fountain pen to stop the nib drying out along with his thoughts, and doodled on a scrap of blotting paper with his pencil.
Easier to start this essay off; almost too easy. Keep it objective, he reminded himself. It’s not about you.

Their footsteps on the bare landing floor made him look up. He heard Betty making for the guest bathroom. Lady Dorner’s footsteps passed his open bedroom door.

‘How was tennis?’ he called, casual, friendly. A young man passing the time of day with his guardian’s wife.

‘Wonderful.’ She came inside the room, stretching her neck out as though she wanted to see what he was doing. ‘May I, Benny?’

‘Please do.’

She walked up to the desk and looked over his shoulder. ‘
Does guilt serve any true purpose?
That’s a big subject.’

He thought so too.

‘Guilt is always a correct response; if one feels guilt it is probably the case that one deserves to feel it,’ she read. ‘Somewhat severe, Benny.’

‘It’s what I think.’ He sounded defensive. ‘I know I haven’t written it very elegantly, though. Guilt is a mechanism that alerts us to areas in which we have failed, is what I meant.’

She was straightening pencils on the desk top, arranging them into a straight line.

‘But you wouldn’t know about that,’ he added. ‘You wouldn’t have failed in your conduct.’

She gave a low laugh. ‘You don’t believe that, do you? Everyone fails sometimes.’

‘You’re a war heroine. You made sure the RAF had the planes at the right places.’

She flicked at the pencils and one of them shot off the desk onto the floor. She stooped to pick it up, holding it and looking at it. ‘When a plane hits a hillside it looks like this.’ She snapped the pencil in two. ‘Not quite as neat, of course. There are bits of metal and
fabric and body parts splattered around. It’s seeing the personal effects that is the worst: cigarette cases, scarves, lipstick.’

‘Whose body?’ He realized he’d been a monumental fool, though he wasn't quite sure how.

‘A pilot friend of mine. Jenny Hayes. A girl. Just twenty-two. She looked up to me, Benny, trusted me.’

Harriet dropped the two halves of the pencil onto the desk. ‘I should have said we’d done enough for the day. That the cloud was too bad. They told us not to chance it. But I was impatient. I’d been promised another Spitfire, you see. I just wanted to deliver the Oxfords, old dependable buses of planes, they were. And get back in time for the Spit. If we called it a day, waited till morning, I’d have missed the opportunity. So when she asked whether we should wait, I said no. Let’s do it. We’d be all right. We’d flown those Oxfords in similar conditions across that part of the country before. I saw the cloud before we hit it. I caught sight of Jenny’s face just before everything went invisible.’

She took a breath. ‘She was rigid, paralysed. I knew then she couldn’t do it, but it was too late. The cloud swallowed us. I heard an explosion a few minutes later and I knew. I just knew. When I touched down I made them send out an ambulance. Someone drove me to where I thought she’d gone down, near Devizes it was. I made them take me with them, Benny, I saw the plane. I saw … Jenny. She was … her body … it.’ She put a hand to her mouth. ‘The fuel had caught light, there’d been a fire.’

He could see it as though he were Harriet: the young woman’s blackened body, the smouldering, snapped plane.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘It was. I wanted to fly the Spitfire waiting for me more than anything else. It made me feel more fully alive than anything else.’

He didn’t say anything. The confidence hung between them, thick as the cloud that had brought down her fellow aviatrix.

‘So that’s my guilty secret.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘What’s yours, Benny? Do share.’ From her skirt pocket she pulled out a slender cigarette box and extracted a cigarette, hand shaking. He’d started smoking occasionally and took a matchbox out of the desk, lighting the cigarette for her, pushing the ashtray towards her.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He was still seeing the smashed plane, the broken body of the pilot.

‘I think it does matter, Benny.’ She transferred the cigarette to her left hand and laid her right hand on his shoulder. He felt its warmth through his Aertex shirt. ‘I’ve been away from Fairfleet for too long. I should have spent more time here with you boys. There, you see, another thing to feel guilty about. I was off having fun with my planes while you were all growing up here.’ She inhaled on the Player’s. ‘I just left you to Dr Dawes.’

He’d never thought about it like that. It had always seemed entirely appropriate that this golden creature should be up in the sky, in the air, where she belonged. He hadn’t been used to having women around, in any case. Sometimes one of the other boys would talk about a mother or sister they missed, but not often. He couldn’t think of a way to express this without making it sound as though he wouldn’t have enjoyed her constant presence in the house. Which would have been a lie. He’d thought so many times about how she’d drawn that pink cross on the oak for him.

‘Tell me what’s wrong, Benny?’

‘You’ve been so good to me. Both of you. So kind, taking me in though you didn’t know me.’ He forced himself to look at her.

She made a little moue. ‘We had space enough. None of you were any trouble.’

‘It was more than just giving us bed and board.’ The words sounded harsh. He tried to soften them with a smile. ‘You gave us a home.’ Her hand stayed on his arm.

‘Of course we did! You were all hard-working boys. Conscientious. Dr Dawes used to write and tell me you’d be a credit to this country.’

He hadn’t known this. Why would a creature like Harriet Dorner have been interested in a group of adolescent boys when she had the irresistible planes to fly?

‘Look at all you’ve achieved. Sitting a scholarship for Oxford!’

‘But we were Jewish. That’s why you did it?’

Now she moved the hand. ‘What do you mean? That we didn’t really come to be fond of you, it was all just charity?’

Someone came out of the guest bathroom onto the landing. ‘Shall I go downstairs and wait for you, Harriet?’

‘On my way,’ she called back to her friend.

He pulled himself together. ‘No, I didn’t mean that you were just doing it to be charitable. But it doesn’t matter.’

‘It does.’ She slid off the desk, the tennis skirt brushing a half-inch up her thighs as she moved. An encouraging smile curled her lips. Poor boy, she’d be thinking. Working too hard, the stress has been too much. That cycling tour can’t come a day too soon.

‘Perhaps I just need a break from the books.’ He stood, too. He’d take a walk round the lake.

She was still studying him intently. ‘Do you feel guilty, Benny?’

He gave a start.

‘Guilty because you survived and all those others didn’t?’

He said nothing.

‘Who do you think your guilt will benefit? If you feel that badly, do something to help. Find a refugee organization and work for them during the summer before you go off to the army. Or help out at a scout troop in a bomb-damaged city centre.’

He was watching her intently now.

‘Don’t just moulder away. Be the best you can. That’s all any of us can do.’ She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on his desk and came a little closer. The cells in his body remembered Mona’s body pressed against his own and pulsed greedily. Mona was back in London now, but before she’d returned, there’d been a few more encounters in the dappled shade underneath the trees. Benny knew more about women now.

He knew he must be flushing. Harriet could only be in her early thirties, far younger than her husband. She’d looked after herself, even during the war years. Her lips were very close to his now, just as Mona’s had been.

He moved his mouth a half-inch nearer to Harriet’s. He must be making a huge mistake. She’d be appalled, tell her husband one of the boys they’d taken in had assaulted her, abused their generosity.

Still she didn’t move.

They’d throw him out; his university plans would be wrecked.
The refugee who took advantage.

He found himself moving nearer, nearer. And then their mouths were almost touching; he could still feel air between them. She pressed more firmly, just for a second, before releasing her lips.

‘I’ve been wondering what it would feel like,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Benny.’

‘I’m not.’

As he said it her eyes seemed to darken. Her tongue flickered out from between her pink lips and touched his own, just for a second. Someone was pouring molten treacle down
his pelvis. He closed his eyes. Then there was only coolness. Air where her body had been just a second ago. He opened his eyes, letting the feeling engulf him, feeling the guilt melt away. She was picking up the tennis racket from the floor.

‘Forget what just happened, Benny.’ Her smile was a silver stab under his ribs.

‘I’m not sure I can.’

The pupils of her eyes became small black full stops. ‘It was wrong of me.’

‘Then … why?’

She plucked a string on the racket as though it were a guitar. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps life is just a little too sensible these days. All my life I’ve been told to do the right thing, think of Fairfleet. Every now and then I just feel the need to take a risk.’ She strummed her painted fingernails over the racket face. ‘I took advantage of you, Benny. It will never happen again and I can only apologize.’

‘I didn’t mind.’ Understatement of the century.

She almost smiled. ‘Sidney wants to go to America. Perhaps we should go sooner than we planned.’

Was he, Benny, the refugee youth, really that dangerous?

‘Markets are opening up again,’ she said, flushing a little. ‘He needs to be over there. Shopping in New York, just think. No rationing over there. I might even persuade him to take me out somewhere I can do some more flying. And you, you’ll be off to Oxford, won’t you, as soon as you’ve done your bit for king and country?’

Benny looked at the uncompleted essay.

‘You will get that scholarship, Benny, I know you will.’

Then she was gone, leaving the scent of her perfume in his room.

31

‘You kissed my grandmother?’ Even now, in the depths of winter, I thought I could smell some of the past: the flowers in the garden, the rubber of Granny’s tennis shoes, the pencil shavings on Benny’s desk. The kiss they’d exchanged seemed part of the sweetness I could imagine. She hadn’t been married to my grandfather, Peter, at that time. She’d been married to Lord Dorner. But a single kiss? Was that really what was on Benny’s mind? I couldn’t believe that was all there was to it. I wanted to smile, thinking of it. The half-century and more that had passed had surely robbed it of any iniquity.