Homeland (17 page)

He walked up the hill into the main street and looked into a crowded tea room, then an ironmonger’s next door and a couple of shops opposite, before returning to the market place by the
other road. He stood near the pens and scanned the crowd again, but it was no good – she must have left.

He wandered towards a second-hand-clothes stall with the vague idea of buying himself a cloth cap, then suddenly she was there in front of him, the child at her side.

He halted abruptly.

She gave a broad smile. ‘Morning.’

‘Morning.’

Her shining hair was partially hidden by a French beret worn at an angle over her forehead. With her tightly belted coat, her intense colouring, she might have been an exotic creature from
another land. With an effort he shifted his gaze to the child. ‘Hello there.’

The child tucked her chin in and stared at him wordlessly.

Annie coaxed, ‘Say hello, sweetheart.’

The child mumbled a shy greeting, and Annie looked up with an apologetic smile.

‘What’ve you got there?’ he asked, indicating her basket, which was clearly full of fruit and vegetables crowned by a pineapple.

‘Don’t even ask what the pineapple cost,’ she said. ‘It’s the first one I’ve seen since I don’t know when. But the rhubarb was dirt cheap.’ She
added dubiously, ‘Oh, and I found some whale meat.’

‘Bit slimy, isn’t it?’

‘I thought I’d fry it up with pepper and onions.’

‘A waste of pepper and onions, if you ask me. Why don’t I bring you a rabbit instead?’

‘But you’ve brought me enough rabbits already, Billy.’

‘I’ve brought you two.’

‘All right –
two
.’ She laughed. ‘But I wouldn’t want Stan to feel I was leaving him short.’

‘Plenty more where they came from. But if you’d rather have some mallard, I’ll be shooting on the moor later.’

‘Well . . .’ She rounded her eyes at the child. ‘Don’t think we could say no to roast duck, could we? Not if you have one to spare.’ Reaching into a corner of her
basket, she took out a small paper bag and held it out to him. ‘Fancy a chestnut? Careful, though – they’re scorching hot.’

Taking one, he made a play of passing the chestnut rapidly from hand to hand, and had the satisfaction of seeing Annie smile. He couldn’t get over the way she looked. Whenever he imagined
seeing her again he half hoped she would seem plain or dull or less attractive, or he would spot some glaring defect that would relegate her to the realms of ordinary women; but each time he saw
her, her impact on him was just the same.

He offered the chestnut to the child. ‘Here, would you like it? Shall I peel it for you?’ The child didn’t answer so he peeled it anyway and gave it to her. He did the same for
Annie before taking one for himself. ‘Where’re you headed?’

‘We were going to look at the Punch and Judy show.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

Billy fell into step beside her, the child trailing reluctantly. It might have been his imagination but people seemed to look at them admiringly as they passed. A nice little family. He let the
fantasy play over his mind for a couple of moments before pushing it firmly away. He wasn’t going to get caught until he was well and truly ready, and ready to his thinking was plenty of
money.

When they reached the Punch and Judy booth, the stage was curtained off and a sign announced the next show was at ten thirty, so they went and watched the monkey instead. While the music jangled
out, the creature leapt frantically between the organ-grinder’s shoulder and the top of the barrel organ, jumping almost but not quite to the limit of its collar chain. When the organ-grinder
brought his cap around, the monkey crouched low on the man’s left shoulder, its little moon-face and currant eyes darting warily from side to side. As the organ-grinder approached them, Annie
pulled out her purse and opened it. She was still delving for a coin when the child reached out to touch the dangling tail.

In rapid succession Billy caught Beth’s wrist, the monkey bared its teeth and shrieked aggressively, the child shrank against her mother’s arm, and Annie pulled her back with a
gasp.

‘Best not,’ Billy said in a kindly voice intended to reassure Annie as much as the child.

Annie held the child’s head close against her side. ‘Yes, it might’ve bitten you, sweetheart. It might’ve hurt you.’

As they moved away, she breathed to Billy, ‘Nasty beast.’

‘Can’t really blame it though, can you?’

‘What do you mean? Why not?’

‘Tethered like that. Having to jump about all day. Baited and pestered by people.’

‘But fed. Looked after.’

‘Food and shelter’s not everything though, is it?’

Annie shot him a curious look. ‘Well, I’d never have put you down as soft hearted.’

‘I’m not. But I could see the animal hated us, and so far as I’m concerned it had every right. Can’t blame it for hating. Why shouldn’t it?’

‘Well, I can’t say I’d ever thought about it that way,’ she said. ‘But, yes . . . I take your point.’

Feeling that he had taken a step up in her estimation, Billy touched her elbow to guide her forward, and smiled down at the child for good measure. They strolled along the line of stalls,
stopping to examine some pots and pans and an old willow-pattern teapot, before returning to the Punch and Judy booth in time for the show. The action began with a fight between Punch and the
policeman, and continued at the same frenzied pace. Billy didn’t find it funny and, judging by the people around him, nor did anyone else. Instead, the audience seemed to be held by a
reluctant tension, an uneasy curiosity as to the timing and ferocity of the next fight. To Billy’s mind the whole exercise – the endless screaming and bludgeoning, the puppets
collapsing over the edge of the platform only to be sucked down into a yawning darkness – had less to do with entertainment than people’s underlying fascination with violence.

He stole an occasional glance at Annie. Her expression was solemn, her lips set. After a particularly savage cosh fight, she shook her head a little and looked down at the child’s face,
then up at Billy’s with a questioning frown that spoke of wanting to leave. He gave an answering nod and her expression lifted. The child made no complaint when they moved away, and they left
the sound of thwacking coshes and jabbering voices behind with a sense of relief.

‘How about a cup of tea and a cream bun?’ Billy suggested. Then to the child: ‘Or do you like cake best?’

‘Cake,’ she said.

‘Cake it is, then.’

The tea room was busy and they had to wait for a table. The standing area was cramped, everyone bunched up. Taking the opportunity to examine Annie at close quarters, Billy finally found a
blemish. On the smooth white forehead, towards the end of one arched eyebrow, was a tiny scar barely a quarter of an inch long and fine as a thread. Far from being a flaw, however, it only went to
emphasise the perfection of the whole. She was by far the best-looking woman in the room. It was a miracle she hadn’t been snapped up. Even as he thought this, it occurred to him that he
couldn’t be absolutely sure of that. She’d been widowed at least three years. In that time dozens of men must have asked her out. He’d assumed she had no boyfriend, but the more
he thought about it the more unlikely it seemed. She might well be angling for some man she hadn’t quite caught, or waiting for a serviceman she’d met on leave who wasn’t yet home
from the war. As this idea took a firmer grip, he felt a twinge of animosity towards her. She was hiding things from him, she wasn’t playing fair.

When they finally sat down and ordered, he said, ‘This is on me. I sold fifty bundles of withies yesterday.’

‘That’s wonderful, Billy.’

‘Oh, it was the easy stuff from the withy shed. Already cut and dried. But I got a good price.’

‘I bet you did. How about the Polish worker? Any more news?’

‘Two to three days, so they say. But there’s some sort of permit needed before he’s allowed to start, so I’ll believe it when I see it.’

‘And the job in London? Have you heard? Are they holding it for you?’

He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘If it’s still there, it’s there. If not . . . well, I’ll just have to find something else, won’t I?’

‘But what did your friend say? Couldn’t he help?’

‘Never wrote in the end. Wasn’t worth the bother. Wasn’t that much he could have done anyway.’

‘Oh.’ She searched his face for a moment. ‘Well, I hope it turns out all right.’

‘I blame the stripping machine myself.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Never could resist a bit of machinery, especially when it’s in need of care and attention. Worse than women for me, machinery. Much worse.’

She took the remark lightly and gave a short laugh.

Billy added, ‘With the bonus that you pretty much know where you are.’

‘Ah.’ Her smile faded. ‘Which you don’t with women, is that it?’

He said dryly, ‘Far be it from me . . .’

‘Perhaps it depends on the kind of woman. Perhaps they need to be chosen with care.’ He searched for a gleam of promise in her eyes, a tease in her voice, and found none. Instead,
her tone was light, practical, calm; she might have been dispensing advice to a friend.

The waitress arrived with the tea and a selection of cakes. The child chose a fairy cake with a thin dribble of pink icing on top, Annie a fairy cake with a dab of white icing, and Billy took a
slice of sponge sandwich that was thin on the jam and not too generous on the sponge either. It tasted all right though. Real butter and eggs. Nothing like the stuff you got in London that tasted
of cardboard or worse.

‘I tried for a job in Taunton yesterday,’ Annie remarked. ‘Didn’t get it though.’

She had taken him by surprise, both because she hadn’t mentioned it before and because it seemed a strange sort of thing for her to be doing. He asked, ‘What kind of a
job?’

‘Bookkeeping. Same as I did in Plymouth.’

‘But why?’

‘
Why?
’ She threw it back at him with a flash of her eyes and an admonitory snort. ‘Same reason as anyone else.’

‘You need the work?’

‘I could do with the money all right. But it’s more than that. It’s the work itself. I enjoy it. I only stopped last time because they forced me to. Said the job was wanted for
a man.’ She pinched her lips together in silent comment. ‘Oh, I know men need the work, course I do,’ she added. ‘But all the same. I was good at my job, as good as anyone
else. And I miss it. The wages were bad of course, only half what they’d paid before, but it was useful money. And I had my mum-in-law to look after Beth. But this firm yesterday, they turned
me down flat when I told them I had a child. Didn’t matter that I could have done the job standing on my head. Didn’t matter that I had Joan Penny all lined up to keep Beth after
school. They got on their high horse. Made it plain they didn’t approve of a widow trying for work when other people needed it more.’

‘You were paid only half rate before?’ Billy asked incredulously.

She nodded. ‘I took a peek in the wages ledger.’

‘That’s a bloody outrage.’

At the swear word the child looked up from her cake and stared at Billy with interest.

‘It was the war, Billy. It was that or nothing.’

‘I’d rather’ve starved.’

‘You’re a man. You’d have had more choice.’

‘But wages like that – it’s exploitation. It’s the bosses paying what they can get away with.’

‘Back then I had my share of Alan’s army pay, remember. They knew that. They said they weren’t about to pay me twice.’

She rarely mentioned the late husband by name but when she did her face showed nothing of her feelings for him.

‘But that’s not the point, is it?’ Billy argued. ‘If you do the work, you should get the wage for the job. Anything else is daylight bloody robbery.’

At the repeat of the swear word Annie threw him a half-hearted glance of rebuke and, with an air of going through the motions, briefly covered the child’s ears with her hands. ‘The
way I saw it,’ she said, ‘I was lucky to get the job at all. Arithmetic was the only thing I was any good at.’

‘All the more reason not to sell yourself short.’

‘But I never got school cert, Billy. I never got anything.’

‘Nor did I. But I didn’t let it get in my way. And I’m not about to start now.’

‘You went to grammar school, though,’ she said. ‘You were a clever clogs.’

‘But I didn’t stay, did I?’ he retorted, amazed that she should have forgotten the most significant fact of all.

‘I thought you were there for a while.’

‘Less than a year,’ he said stiffly.

‘Ah.’ Annie sipped her tea and regarded him calmly over the rim of the cup. ‘That was when you fell out with the funny old aunt, was it?’

Startled by how little she had understood of his life, smarting from the sting of old resentments, he glared at her, unable to speak.

‘I thought . . .’ She made a gesture of uncertainty. ‘Weren’t you living with the aunt in Bridgwater then? The keen chapel goer?’

A basket bumped against Annie’s shoulder and she glanced up to exchange apologies with a woman squeezing past the table. When she turned back, the child was pulling at her sleeve,
demanding attention. By the time she looked at Billy again she seemed oblivious to the storm she had stirred up in his mind, her expression friendly, open, unconcerned. The part of Billy that could
not bear to be misjudged itched to put her straight, to demolish the half-baked ideas she had picked up about him. But he feared explanations almost as much as he feared disbelief, and the fear
won.

‘This job you were trying for,’ he said at last. ‘What sort of a wage were they offering?’

‘They didn’t say.’

‘You should have asked before you went.’

‘I don’t suppose they’d have told me.’

‘Well, you should find out next time. You don’t want them thinking they’re doing you a favour. You don’t want them to get the upper hand.’

‘Billy.’ Laughing silently, she shook her head. ‘You sound like one of those trade union people. One of those . . . what are they?’

‘Activists?’

‘That’s it.’