In a Dry Season (13 page)

But with Matthew it was the real thing. From that first April meeting, events progressed quickly between them. That very afternoon, Matthew showed her around the village, what little there was to see. A few days later they went to the pictures in Harkside and then to the May Day dance at the Mechanics Institute there. I was helping out behind the refreshments counter, and I could see the way they danced so close together, the way they looked at one another.

I wasn't at all surprised when Matthew announced that he had invited Gloria to tea one Sunday. It was 11 May, and Mother was in one of her states, so the preparation all fell to me. I'm sure I could have got away with a plate of sandwiches, but I was a good cook and, more important, I was good at making the best of what little was available, and I suppose I wanted to show off my skills.

All day we had been hearing disturbing rumours of a terrible air raid on London. Some people claimed that the House of Commons and Westminster Abbey had been completely destroyed and that thousands had been killed. I had already learned to take these things with a pinch of salt. After all, one of the first casualties of war is truth, to paraphrase Hiram Johnson.

I was listening to “The Brains Trust” after putting the rabbit stew on to simmer. Joad and Huxley were arguing about why you can tickle other people but not yourself, when Gloria popped her head around the door, Matthew right behind her. They were a bit early and Mother was still titivating herself in her bedroom.

Gloria's golden hair, parted on the left, tumbled in long wreaths of sausage-curls over her shoulders. She wore very little make-up, just a dab of face powder and a trace of lipstick. She was wearing a blue blouse with padded shoulders and puffed sleeves tucked into a simple black skirt with silver buttons down the side. I must admit that I was surprised at her restraint; I would have expected something far more garish from her. Even so, I felt dowdy in my plain old pinafore dress.

“Look what Gloria's brought for us,” Matthew said, holding out a pint of milk and half a dozen eggs. I took them and thanked her. As soon as Mother saw the eggs, I knew her eyes would light up. She would put them in water-glass, the way she always did. Suspended in the clear jelly, they would last for months. Seeing them like that always made me uneasy; they looked sinister floating there in the transparent space, like wombs forever on the verge of giving birth, but never quite managing it, trapped there instead, frozen forever in stillborn becoming.

Sinister or not, though, the water-glass meant we always had fresh eggs as well as the powdered stuff, which was only good for scrambling.

“Hello, Gwen,” Gloria said, “I should have known you'd be a ‘Brains Trust' fan. Tell me, who's your favourite? Joad or Campbell? Surely not Huxley?”

“Joad.”

“Why?”

“He's the most intelligent, the best read, the most eloquent.” “Hmm. Probably,” said Gloria, sitting down on the sofa, carefully arranging her skirt as she crossed her legs. Matthew sat next to her looking like the proud new owner of . . . well, of
something
. “I like Campbell myself,” she said. “I think he's far more entertaining.”

“I wouldn't have thought you even listened to something like that,” I said, regretting my rudeness almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth. After all, this was the woman my beloved brother clearly adored.

Gloria just shrugged. “I've heard it once or twice.” Then her eyes lit up in that way they had. “But you're right. If I had a wireless, I'd listen to nothing but music all day long.”

“You don't have a wireless?” I couldn't believe it. We might have been short of food, but surely everyone had a wireless?

“Mr Kilnsey won't have one in the house. He's rather a strict sort of Methodist, you know. Thinks they're the devil's loudspeaker.”

I put my hand to my mouth and giggled, then blushed. “Oh, dear. I am sorry.”

“It is rather funny, isn't it? Anyway, I don't mind that much. All I do is work and sleep there. It's sad for Mrs Kilnsey, though. I don't think she'd mind a bit of music now and then to cheer her up, but, of course, if the wireless is the devil's loudspeaker, then music is his voice at its most seductive.”

“Oh, good heavens,” said Matthew, shaking his head. Gloria nudged him. “It's true! He really talks like that.”

“I must go see to the food,” I said.

First I put the kettle on to make us all some tea, then I peeled a few potatoes and prepared the carrots and parsnips. If I say so myself, it was a good meal I put together that Sunday. Matthew had caught the rabbit in Rowan Woods on one of his weekend Home Guard exercises, and there was plenty of meat on it to feed the four of us. We also had some onions from the garden, and some rhubarb for a pie. Talk about
Dig for Victory!

The kettle boiled. I made tea and carried it through, along with a plate of biscuits. With rationing, you had to be sparing, and the tea was a lot weaker than we were used to. With sugar rationed at only a pound a fortnight, and most of that in the rhubarb pie, the three of us had all stopped taking it. I didn't know about Gloria, so I offered her some.

“I gave it up,” she said. “Actually, I've got a far better use for my sugar ration.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yes.” She shook her curls. “If you mix it with warm water you can use it as a setting lotion.”

That was something I had never thought about, my rather fine and mousy hair being short, in the page-boy style, at the time. “It must make your head feel terribly sticky,” I said.

She laughed. “Well, sometimes it's hard to get my hat off, I can tell you. But that can be quite a blessing in the wind we get up at the farm some days.”

At that moment, Mother made her grand entrance. She walked slowly because of her arthritis and her stick tapped against the bare floorboards, so you could hear her coming long before you saw her. She was wearing one of her old flower-patterned frocks, and had taken the trouble to curl her hair, though I doubt she had used sugar and warm water. Mother never wore make-up. She was a small, rather frail-looking figure, a little stooped, with a round, ruddy, pleasant face. It was a kind face, and she was a kind woman. Like me, though, she had a sharp way with words sometimes. Whatever the arthritis had done to the rest of her body, it hadn't progressed as far as her tongue. I expected fireworks when she met Gloria for the first time, but then I had been wrong about a lot of things lately.

“What a lovely blouse, my dear,” Mother said after the introductions. “Did you make it yourself?”

I almost choked.

“Yes,” said Gloria. “I managed to scrounge a bit of parachute silk, then I dyed it. I'm glad you like it. I can make one for you, if you like? I've got a bit more put away up at the farm.”

Mother put her hand to her chest. “Good heavens, my dear, you don't want to waste your time making fancy clothes for an old, crippled woman like me. No, what I've got will do to see me out.” Typical Mother that, the world-weary tone, as if we might well “see her out” in the next few minutes.

“The Brains Trust” ended and a special about Jerome Kern came on. Gloria liked that better, all the songs she had heard in her beloved Hollywood musicals. She hummed along with “A Fine Romance,” “You Couldn't Be Cuter” and “The Way You Look Tonight.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mother and Gloria got talking about how they both loved Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in
Swing Time
. It was time to serve tea and I was feeling really sick by then.

Jerome Kern finished and we turned the wireless off while we ate. “So, my dear,” said Mother when the stew was served, “tell us all about yourself.”

“There's not much to tell, really,” Gloria said.

“Oh, come, come. Where are you from?”

“London.”

“Oh, you poor girl. What about your parents?”

“They were both killed in the bombing.”

“Oh, dear, I'm so sorry.”

“A lot of people have died.”

“When was this?”

“Last year. September. I'm all alone now.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” said Mother. “You've got us.”

I almost choked on my rabbit. “It's not as if we're adopting her or anything, Mother,” I managed.

“Don't be so rude, Gwen. It's wartime, in case you hadn't noticed. People have to pull together.”

“Anyway,” Matthew said, “Gloria's away from all that now, aren't you, darling?”

She looked at him with those big, beautiful eyes of hers, adoration just dripping out of them like treacle. “Yes,” she said. “I am. And no matter what happens, I'm never going back.”

“Is there no one left?”

“No one. I was out visiting a friend a few streets away when the air raid came. We had no warning. My friends had an Anderson shelter in their back garden, so we went down there. I wasn't even worried. I thought my family would go to the underground or church on the corner like we always did in air raids, but they didn't make it in time. Our house went up and the ones on either side along with it. My grandparents lived next door, so they were killed, too.”

We were all silent for a few moments digesting the matter-of-fact horror of what Gloria had just told us. Somehow, it made us and our little rationing problems seem insignificant.

“What made you decide on a Godforsaken place like Hobb's End?” Mother asked.

“It wasn't my choice. That's where they sent me, the Land Army. I did my training at Askham Bryan, which isn't far away. Mr Kilnsey needs a lot of help since his boy joined up, and he's not getting any younger. I was just glad to get away to the countryside. You don't see much of it in London, of course, but I've always loved the country, and I just couldn't stand the idea of working in a dirty, smelly munitions factory.”

“Still,” said Mother, “farming's not an easy life.”

Gloria laughed. “You can say that again. It's dirty and smelly, too. But I can cope. I've never minded hard work. Actually, I quite enjoy it.” She shot me a sidelong glance. “This stew is delicious, Gwen. I really mean it. It's the tastiest meal I've had in a long time. Thank you very much.”

I felt absurdly pleased and struggled to stop myself from blushing, but you can't do it, like you can't tickle yourself. I blushed. “My pleasure,” I said.

After the rhubarb pie, which Gloria once again was kind enough to remark upon, Matthew made more tea and we put the wireless on again for “The Happidrome.” I just caught the end of a news bulletin which confirmed that Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and the Houses of Parliament had been bombed, but only damaged, not destroyed. Still, you never knew whether to believe newsreaders or not, even though they had to say their names before each bulletin now, so we'd know the Germans hadn't taken over the
BBC
. After all, the Germans could listen to the broadcasts, too, and we didn't want them to think we were badly hurt or demoralized in any way. We had enough with Lord Haw-Haw doing that for us. Just the previous week he had actually said something about the Germans bombing the flax mill in Hobb's End, which nearly gave our
ARP

man apoplexy.

Over a cup of tea, Matthew and Gloria lit cigarettes. I knew Mother didn't approve of women smoking, but she said nothing. Then Matthew cleared his throat and said, “Mother, I invited Gloria here tonight for a specific reason, because, well, we have something to tell you.”

Mother raised her eyebrows; my heart started to thump against my ribcage.

“We want to get married.”

I gaped at Matthew: tall, dashing, handsome, that charming lock of dark-brown hair always slipping over his eye, the dimples at each side of his mouth when he smiled, the clear eyes and strong chin. And then I looked at Gloria, saw her radiance.

Somehow, it was all so inevitable.

At that moment, I hated her.

“Ah,” said Mother, after a calming sip of tea. “You do, do you?” “Yes.”

“And you, young lady?”

“Very much,” said Gloria, leaning over and taking

Matthew's hand. “I know it's not been long that we've known one another, but it's wartime and—”

Mother waved her down. “Yes, yes, my dear, I know all about that. Have you thought, though, that Matthew might be going far away soon?”

“We've thought about that, Mother,” he said. “Even though I passed the medical, I'll still have my military training to do after the degree, and there's a good chance I'll be able to come home every weekend until after Christmas, probably, at least.”

“And the rest of the week?”

“I'll be working at the farm, as usual,” Gloria said, “and

Matt will be at university in Leeds until July, then he'll go wherever they send him for training. I know it's not perfect. We'd love nothing more than to be together all the time.” They held hands and she gazed at him. “But we know that's not realistic. Not yet, anyway.”

I couldn't believe it; she called him
Matt
. How could she? He had always been Matthew to Mother and me.

“What about your studies?” Mother asked him.

“I'll be working just as hard as usual.”

“Hmph. A lot of couples are waiting to marry,” she said.

“Until times are less uncertain.”