A Rather English Marriage (20 page)

He landed to find more than thirty holes in the tail, and himself dripping,
drenched
with sweat. He hurried to the flight hut to find out about Harry and the others. Harry had come through it, too. And now look at him.

Reginald looked up to see Roy still fussing over the coffee as though mere seconds had passed. His heart was thudding with the intensity of what he had just relived. Roy, having poked the slumbering fire into brief activity, tried next to rekindle the embers of their conversation.

‘Was
she
happy, your wife?'

‘Mary? No reason not to be. We didn't go in for bickering or shouting. I never would have struck her; never anything like that. No need.'

‘How about - you know, women like … well, flowers, surprises?'

‘I didn't fart around telling her how wonderful she was, if that's what you mean.'

‘Uh-huh,' said Roy.

‘Get used to each other, for Christ's sake. Can't be expected to get a stand like a schoolboy every time you see your wife without her clothes on. Same sort of thing. Eh?'

‘Gracie and me always spoke to each other
kindly
- politely.'

‘Polite? To your wife? Can't keep that up for a lifetime!'

Roy pushed the spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. ‘She used to say, if people are polite to strangers they can be polite to their nearest and dearest. If people are kind to stray dogs and old ladies, they can be kind to their better half. And we was.'

Reginald couldn't be sure if he'd been polite to Mary; on the whole he thought probably not. ‘What time's dinner?', ‘Finished with that paper yet?' or ‘My blue shirt being washed?' had been his normal tone. She hadn't seemed to mind. She usually seemed to be smiling. Her smile rose up now before his eyes. It was a smile of stoicism rather than enjoyment. It indicated that she hoped to please, rather than to be pleased. Above it rose her neatly waved hair, pale blonde at the beginning, pale grey by the end, and below it curved her grandmother's single string of pearls resting on a softly coloured twin set. In between was Mary's smile. So it was, and so it ever shall be … The wind roared higher and harder through the trees.

‘Of course I was
kind
to her!' he said truculently. ‘For God's sake, man, what are you trying to suggest? She was my ruddy
wife
, wasn't she?' Reggie felt under attack, not only from Roy but still, in his imagination, from the Germans whom he had so narrowly evaded over Abbeville. Time to redress the
balance; remember one of the times when
he
had come out on top.

Suppose you spotted some Nazi swine in a 109 squirting one of your pals. You see red. You throttle back, turn up and over. The bastard can't pull up in time. He's in front of you, less than fifty yards ahead. Your thumb's on the tit - gun button - seems to have been there all your life, and bullets are pouring out of you. You can see them smashing all along his fuselage - he's just a few yards ahead of you by this time - piercing the engine, shattering his hood. Thick clouds of black smoke are pouring out. He rolls over, chockful of bullets, and down he goes, vertically, at 400 m.p.h. Do you feel pity? Remorse? Not bloody likely! Tit for tat, eye for an eye. Next minute you could find a couple of them
on your
tail trying to kill you.

Those were the days, Reginald thought, nostalgic for their simplicity. That was the kind of morality I could understand. Wives, marriage - always a mystery. Life and death I could cope with.

As the pause in conversation extended and deepened, Roy broke it. ‘Love is ever such a private thing,' he said.

Reggie lifted his head and looked across at him. ‘No,' he said. ‘That's where you're wrong. Love is such a
public
thing. You parade yourself in front of everybody as a couple, you have to look happy and united for the benefit of her parents, fool your pals, look what I've done, chaps: gone and got myself a wife. It's not “good old Reggie” any more; it's “love from Reggie and Mary” or “Reggie and I would love it if …” Like getting an extra double-barrelled name: “Reggie-an-Mary”, “Mary-an-Reggie”. I never felt the Mary bit was real.'

‘But you miss her?'

‘It would seem more natural if she were sitting there instead of you, granted. Not otherwise. We never talked much. Hardly ever had a conversation as long as this.' Except, he added to himself, when I had a confession to make.

It's the first time. Roy thought, that
we've
had a
conversation as long as this in nearly five months. He thought of evenings with Grace, how impatiently they'd wait for Vera and Alan to go up to bed so that the two of them could settle down to mull over their day; she at his feet, her head resting on his knee, or curled up on the settee in the crook of his arm. Talk would lead to murmuring and stroking, and as often as not to bed, to love. He'd never dreamed that a man of seventy could still want to make love so badly. To take his mind off it he asked. ‘What about the war? What did she do? Have a hard time of it?'

‘She was a nurse,' Reginald answered. ‘That's how we met. I'd pranged the Spit, got myself grounded for a few days, stuck in a hospital bed. She was a trainee VAD. Always used to say I met her in bed.'

‘Gracie had a bad war,' Roy said. ‘I never knew how bad till afterwards. She told me a story once, about sleeping down the tube station. You know how in the Blitz everyone went down the Underground?'

‘Yes. Seen the drawings,' Reggie replied. He lit another cigarette.

The rain slewed against the windowpanes.

‘Gracie and her Mum were settling down for the night, you had to get there early, you see, to bag the best places, and this woman came down, she was up from the country, visiting, and she'd brought a goose with her. Don't ask me why. Maybe she was going to kill it and give it to her daughter - everyone was going short, what with rationing. Maybe she just didn't want to leave it alone. Don't know. She was a plump, rosy little woman and it was a nice, round white goose - a real breath of the country, Grace said. Anyhow, she pushed it all the way down the steps in a pram, bump bump bump, while the goose sat there, all happy and relaxed, watching all the people with its black beady eyes, not bothered. And all the people looked at it.'

‘Go on,' said Reginald.

‘She pushed the pram along the platform, found herself a place, gave the goose a stroke, and then other people, kids at
first, came up and started stroking it, making a fuss of it, see? Then their Mums crowded round and started stroking it too, feeling it, nice and plump and soft it must have been. Till suddenly one of the women, she had a load of kids with her, took hold of it and wrung its neck, all of a moment. She wrung its neck, and it hadn't got a chance. Must've known the right way to do it.'

‘Good God! And then what happened?' asked Reginald.

‘Then they all fell upon it, Grace said; fell on it like wild animals, ripping and tearing at it. The poor woman was crying and moaning, “Don't do that! Leave her alone!”, trying to protect it, putting her arms around it, but they took no notice. They just screwed it apart, into pieces. Screwed its wings off, but the legs wouldn't come, so they took out penknives and hacked it to pieces. Blood and feathers everywhere, flying about in the air. Tore it to bits.'

‘Bloody hell…'

‘People were hungry, and their nerves were all to pieces, and Grace said it must've been sort of crowd madness. One started, they all went for it. Way she described it, they were like cannibals. Shocking. Horrible … It wasn't cosy, the Blitz, cosy and well-behaved, all pulling together, like they try and make out. It was savage. It was its own kind of war.'

‘Did Grace get a piece of the goose?' Reggie had to know.

‘I never could bring myself to ask. I don't think I wanted to know the answer to that one.'

‘Pity,' said Reginald. ‘Not that it would have made any difference, I don't suppose?'

‘Nothing would have made any difference. And war's a terrible thing. But I didn't want to think of her little hands covered with hot blood and feathers.'

‘Extraordinary story,' said Reggie.

Such an evening increased their intimacy and taught them more about one another, but afterwards Reginald was no more inclined than before to treat Roy as an equal, or even as an individual. He was merely the latest in a long line of
people who had ministered to his wants, of whom Nanny had been the first and most significant, and Mary had lasted longest. His father's ghillie, his own scout at Oxford, any batman or cleaning woman – or Roy - all served the same function: they enabled him to be idle, affable, and bored. Reginald, like most people used to being waited on hand and foot, was profoundly lazy. On the rare occasions when he had to look after himself he was appalled to find how much effort it required. Yet he could not attribute the same degree of effort when others did it for him. His gratitude, like the payment he offered, was the minimum necessary to ensure the continuation of the service.

Reggie's upper-class behaviour, a mixture of condescension and charm, had been drummed into him since childhood. It was often attractive, chiefly when he wanted something done, but any appearance of consideration for others was deceptive. He faithfully observed his parents' precepts. His mother had told him, ‘Don't get too friendly with the servants, darling, it only confuses them.' And his father had said, ‘Give the orders, keep it simple. Reprimand for the first mistake, warn 'em for the second, sack 'em for the third. Never give you any trouble once that's understood.' Reginald believed that it was the mark of a gentleman that he knew how to give orders without being overfamiliar or apologetic. He would no more have thanked the washing machine for spinning his shirts than Mrs Odejayi for ironing them.

Reginald soon abandoned even the pretence that Roy would drink with him, or was on any sort of equal terms. Mrs Odejayi was quick to notice. ‘Don't you stand for none of his cheekiness!' she told Roy. ‘I wouldn't let no grown man talk to me like that. Good manners cost nothing.'

‘He doesn't mean anything by it. He doesn't think of it as rude,' Roy soothed. ‘It's the way he was brought up. I came across it enough times in the Army. “It is the duty of the gentleman/To give employment to the working man.” They believe that.'

‘In which case he ain't employing
you
!' she said
triumphantly. ‘He don't pay you nothing, you don't owe him nothing. You could walk out tomorrow, no sins on your conscience, and if you want my opinion, you should.'

‘It gets him down, being on his own. He wouldn't admit it, but he's lonely. He needs me,' said Roy, and added, stating a truth he hadn't hitherto recognized, ‘and I need to be needed.'

On days when Mrs Odejayi didn't come in, Reginald treated Roy like his valet. ‘Fetch me a clean shirt,' he would say, after Roy had brought his early-morning tea and the
Telegraph
, or perhaps, ‘These trousers could do with pressing.' Soon it became, ‘Which tie am I going to wear today?' or at weekends, ‘Which cravat?' Before long Roy had got into the habit of selecting Reginald's clothes, drawing his bath, and even standing beside the bed with a striped towelling dressing gown held ready for him to slip his arms backwards into the sleeves. He did not feel demeaned by these services. He had become used to dressing Grace and, by the end, helping her on to the lavatory or bedpan. Acting as manservant to Reggie helped to pass the time, gave some structure and purpose to his day, leaving fewer patches of solitude in which to brood.

She still came to him at night. Less and less often did he dream of her alive. Instead, he would be in a strange, many-chambered palace which he assumed to be the kingdom of heaven, climbing sheer stone staircases or dwarfed by high-vaulted rooms with scowling statues and gargoyles, pursuing the diaphanous figure of his wife. He swayed and undulated through sometimes subterranean, sometimes underwater, sometimes arid lunar landscapes which grew stranger as she became more elusive. The familiar background to their life together hardly ever reassembled itself. Instead, she drifted through alien territory just out of his reach, beckoning him to hurry. He seldom managed to catch up and it was weeks since he had dreamed about making love to her.

After these nights, Roy would wake early and unsettled at four-thirty, five o'clock – a milkman's hours, a milkman's dark winter mornings - and spend all day oppressed, worrying.
He wondered if she was waiting for him, as the vicar and the Bible and the funeral service promised. He would have liked to share these thoughts with Reginald but, fearing ridicule, he preferred not to risk it. Aggie, with her powerful evangelical faith, was a comfort; but Aggie believed the dead could be reached and talked to with the aid of a medium, and Roy preferred not to risk that, either. He was forced to mourn alone.

He went back to his own house in search of her small and kindly figure and stayed to dust, to collect his post, and spruce up the neglected shrine. He stared at her photographs one by one. She seemed more real to him as a young woman. It was increasingly hard to visualize her at the end of her life, for there had been no pictures taken of her since Vera's wedding, getting on for twenty years ago. That spring Roy would have to buy flowers to place around the shrine, for he visited the allotment less and less often.

When he bumped into Molly Tucker in the library, he started guiltily, but she only said, ‘Well I'm blowed, Roy Southgate, I'd hardly have known you! My, but you're looking better! Anyone'd think you'd had a holiday. Carry my library books home for me, and I'll give you a cup of tea and a nice bit of homemade cake.'

Constance Liddell, the librarian who used to recommend books for Grace to while away the bedridden hours, watched as Roy carefully held the swing door open for Molly. Well, she thought, my mother married again at seventy-three: no reason why those two shouldn't get it together. No reason why I shouldn't, in theory. Hope springs eternal - she smiled wryly - even in Tunbridge Wells.