Homeland (16 page)

‘No. I’ll see her now.’

‘I’ll put the dinner back in the oven then.’

The study must have been particularly cold because when Stella appeared she was still wearing her coat. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Doctor,’ she said, standing in the shadows by
the door.

‘Not at all, Stella. Come and sit by the fire. Come on! Can I take your coat?’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘No, perhaps not. It’s not terribly warm in here either, is it? One tries not to be at the mercy of every scare, but with all this talk of a coal shortage we’ve been keeping
the fires to a minimum. Would you like a sherry?’

‘No, thank you.’

She sat down stiffly, her back straight, and hugged her arms to her waist.

‘Would you like another coat to put round your shoulders?’

‘No, I’m fine, than you.’ She relaxed her arms selfconsciously.

Bennett settled back in his seat. ‘So, what can I do for you, Stella?’

She began hesitantly, ‘Well . . . I know it’s not strictly . . . But I thought that . . . I thought . . .’ Then, with a gesture of bringing herself to the point, she said
abruptly, ‘It’s about Lyndon.’

Bennett nodded.

‘The thing is . . . well, he’s not taking care of himself, for a start.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not eating properly. Keeping all hours. Drinking too much.’

Bennett prompted lightly: ‘When you say too much . . . ?’

‘Oh, a lot too much.’ She gave him an odd frown. ‘But I thought you realised, that night at Uncle’s house. He’s been drinking heavily ever since he got
back.’

With this statement it seemed to Bennett that the last of her youthful freshness had dropped away, that she had acquired all the weariness of experience.

‘And always away on that motorbike,’ she went on. ‘For hours and hours. I don’t know where – and I don’t ask. I don’t want him to feel I’m
pestering him, not when he’s being pestered on every side. Well, not
pestered
so much as . . . given no peace. Uncle’s always on at him about this job he’s found for him,
and getting caught by the police—’

‘The police? What for?’

‘Having a tankful of petrol. He’s already been stopped twice. They say they’ll prosecute him next time for certain.’

Bennett had no idea how one went about getting illicit petrol and certainly wasn’t about to ask.

Stella’s eyes had strayed to the fire, but now they came back to Bennett’s with an echo of their old spark. ‘I think I might have that sherry after all, if you wouldn’t
mind.’

‘Of course.’ Bennett got rapidly to his feet. ‘Dry or medium?’

She made an irresolute gesture.

‘The medium’s probably better.’

While Bennett poured the drink, Stella said in a bright brittle voice, ‘Sometimes I wish the police would go ahead and take his licence away, just to stop him from killing himself.
It’s a wonder he hasn’t done it already.’ She took the sherry from Bennett with both hands. ‘Thank you.’ Sipping it, she blinked hard as if it were medicine, which for
her it probably was just then. ‘Sometimes he goes off late at night and doesn’t come back till morning. I can hear the bike from our house – I can hear it even when he goes out of
the village the other way – and I worry myself sick when I don’t hear it come back again.’ The next sip of sherry seemed to go down more easily than the first. ‘Uncle jokes
that Lyndon’s making up for lost time – having a bit of fun, meeting up with friends. Getting back into the swing, he calls it. But it’s not like that – Lyndon has no
friends round here. It’s more . . .’ She paused while she tried to pin the thought down. ‘It’s more that he’s frightened of ever stopping and having to face real
life.’

Bennett had not credited her with such perception, and he felt the faint surprise one feels at seeing a new side to an old friend. ‘What’s this job your uncle’s
arranged?’

‘Something at Barton’s.’

‘The auction people?’

‘Yes. On the antiques side. Uncle thought it would tie in with Lyndon’s degree. You know – history, dating things. In fact, Lyndon’s quite interested in art and furniture
and all that, but not on the commercial side. And, you see’ – her voice dropped suddenly – ‘he’d never want to settle round here. That’s what Uncle can’t
understand. This place is too –
small
for Lyndon. Too set in its ways.’

‘He still hasn’t any idea what he wants to do?’

She put her glass down on the side table and leant forward. ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about, Doctor,’ she said. ‘You see, he’s talking about going back to
the East. To Burma. But why on earth would he want to go back there? That’s what I can’t understand. Of all places.’

‘Burma’s meant to be a beautiful country.’

She looked at him in puzzlement, as if he had entirely missed the point. ‘But the war,’ she argued.

‘What reason does Lyndon give?’

‘He says he can’t explain it. He says he doesn’t really understand it himself. But I think he does, you see. I think something’s troubling him from his time there,
something bad, and he can’t bring himself to talk about it.’

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised. It was a horrible war out there, by all accounts.’

‘But to go back – how is that going to help?’

‘Only he can answer that.’

She gave a slow nod to show she was giving his views full weight. ‘But he won’t even discuss it, you see. He won’t even talk about it.’

Bennett had the uncomfortable suspicion that he knew where the conversation was leading. ‘There aren’t many men who can, Stella.’

‘Oh, but me and Lyndon – we could always tell each other everything.
Everything.
That was what brought us so close. We never had secrets. Never! And we always swore we never
would. Whatever happened. All through our lives.’

The innocence and other-worldiness of the idea momentarily left Bennett at a loss.

‘So, you see,’ Stella rushed on, ‘there can only be one reason for him not telling me. Because he doesn’t want to burden me with it. Because he thinks it might upset
me.’

Now Bennett was in no doubt as to what was coming. ‘You might well be right,’ he murmured.

Stella shifted to the very edge of her seat and, resting her forearms on her knees, pressed her palms together in entreaty. ‘I was wondering if you would speak to him, Doctor. If you would
ask him about it. I know he’ll talk to you. I know he’ll value your opinion.’

‘Stella, I wish I could help, but I can’t. I’m sorry.’

She looked taken aback. ‘Why not?’

‘Because it would be inappropriate. Intrusive. He would have to come to me. I couldn’t just ask him what was the matter.’

‘I see . . .’ She laced her fingers tightly together and took a series of small breaths. ‘I see . . .’

‘And he’s not going to confide in me if the conversation isn’t his own idea.’

‘No, of course not,’ she said immediately. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. No . . .’ She stood up hastily. ‘I must go. I’m keeping you from your
dinner.’

The mention of dinner brought a hollowness to Bennett’s stomach and a rush of saliva to his mouth, but half rising from his chair he held out a staying hand at her. ‘Please
don’t go yet, Stella. Finish your sherry. Please!’ He sat down again, and smiled encouragingly as she slowly returned to her seat.

‘What about Lyndon’s comrades from the war?’ he said. ‘Does he get to see them at all?’

She rested her shoulder despondently against the wing of the chair and gazed into the poor glow of the fire. ‘He said something about meeting up with an army friend in London. David
Murray, I think his name was.’

‘Well, that might be the best thing for him. Spending some time with comrades who’ve been through the same experiences.’

‘I don’t think David Murray’s the kind he can talk to.’

‘Well, you never know.’

‘There was Jim, his best friend at university. They joined up together. But he was killed in Burma. Apart from that . . .’ She shook her head distractedly.

With the air of wanting to get his facts right, Bennett asked, ‘How long was Lyndon away at the war altogether?’

‘Four years – just under. We last saw each other in December ’42.’ The memory had brought her alive again. She said with a shudder, ‘He phoned from London on his
last leave, but I couldn’t get anyone in the factory to cover for me, not till the next day. And then my train was more than three hours late. Oh!’ She winced at the memory and pressed
a hand against her mouth.

‘This was the aircraft factory?’

‘What?’ Her mind was still on the train journey. ‘Oh yes. I was on night shift.’

‘Night shift? I thought you did clerical work.’

‘Oh no. I was on the production line.’

‘Goodness!’ Bennett exclaimed in astonishment. ‘I never realised that. What exactly did you do?’

‘Machine-tool operator.’

‘Well, well!’ Bennett was from a generation where the idea of young women doing heavy work was still a source of wonder. ‘What made you choose that? Didn’t you want to
teach?’

‘Oh, there were more than enough teachers around, older women coming out of retirement. And I couldn’t bear to stick with an easy job. I wanted to do something for the war effort,
and to see another side of life while I was about it.’ She gave a pale smile. ‘Didn’t see much of anything, of course, working long shifts. But I made some good friends. And I saw
what Bristol was going through with the bombing.’

‘The work must have been very tough.’

‘The night shifts were hard – I never got used to them. But the rest – well, I was glad to be doing something useful at last. My first idea was to join the WAAF, but they were
looking for typing skills. Then I applied for driving lessons so I could train for the ambulances, but they were flooded with volunteers. So I was glad of the chance of aircraft work. None of us
minded the hours and the noise and the hard work, not when we knew that the plane we were building would be in the air in just a couple of weeks, when we knew our boys would be flying them through
every kind of danger. How could we mind?’

‘Well, well,’ Bennett murmured in open admiration.

‘I only stayed six months, though. Until Mum got poorly and needed me back at home. When the teaching post came up at the school I thought I’d better take it.’

A last fragment of coal shifted in the grate. The fire was almost out.

Stella shivered a little.

‘You’re cold.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I was just remembering that awful train journey.’

‘You got to London in the end?’

‘For all of half an hour. That was all the time Lyndon had left. We went to the Great Western Hotel for tea but they had no tables free, so we had to sit in the hall. But I didn’t
mind. It was enough to be together.’

‘And you didn’t see him again until recently?’

‘Oh, we wrote to each other all through the war. His letters were wonderful. He writes so beautifully, you know. He would describe things in such a way – the places he’d seen
and the people he’d met and the books he was reading. Yes, in a beautiful way. The censor used to block out quite a bit, of course,’ she declared with an odd pride. ‘But I knew
what he was saying under all that black ink. I knew he was speaking his mind about the war. Things they couldn’t allow him to say. And he always expressed himself with such power, you know. I
feel sure he could be a writer, if only he put his mind to it. He has such a way with words. Yes . . . they were wonderful letters.’

But were they letters of love or friendship? Bennett found himself wondering. Were the letters eloquent, descriptive, affectionate, but ultimately unrevealing, or did they contain the teasings
and anxieties and reproaches of love? For some reason he couldn’t immediately identify Bennett had the feeling that Lyndon’s affection for Stella was more brotherly than anything
else.

Stella looked at her unfinished sherry, then at her watch, and got to her feet again. ‘Now I really must go.’

In the porch she gave him a ragged smile. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, Doctor.’

‘I’m only sorry I couldn’t have been more help, Stella.’

Watching the beam of her torch strike out into the darkness, catching her figure briefly silhouetted against the pool of light, Bennett found himself wishing he could shield her from the
setbacks ahead. But it was a conceit to imagine that one could protect the young from anything, let alone something as inevitable as disappointment.

B
ILLY ARRIVED
to find the market in full swing and some early comers already drifting away. Dealers thronged the cattle pens, while bargain hunters
moved along the line of vegetable and second-hand-goods stalls. Above the bellows of the cattle rose the chants of the livestock auctioneers, and from somewhere beyond the pens came the tinkle of a
barrel organ.

Billy made a quick circuit of the stalls before cutting through the middle of the pens. With growing anxiety he began a slower round of the stalls, searching the shifting crowd for the shining
hair, the vivid features he had come to find. A few families stood watching a Punch and Judy show, others were bunched around the barrel organ, the children laughing at a leaping monkey. But there
was no sign of Annie or the child. His anxiety gave way to sharp self-reproach. He should never have left it so late. He’d purposely avoided the early bus because he knew she would be on it
and he hadn’t fancied sitting apart from her like a stranger or talking to her under the nosy gaze of the other passengers. Now he saw that his caution had been a trap, that it had driven him
into wasting a perfectly good opportunity.