Homeland (18 page)

‘Or agitator?’

‘Ah. Now that sounds more like you.’

‘I might be an agitator already, for all you know.’

She grinned. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you.’

His mood lifted. He said in a burst of confidence, ‘I’ll tell you something. You wonder why I felt aggrieved when I left Crick Farm. You wonder why I felt no duty to help out. Well,
I’ll tell you why. Because Stan never paid me my money. Because when I agreed to stay on he promised me a proper wage and never paid it. Because he strung me along. Used every excuse under
the sun. It was’ – Billy put on an approximation of Stan’s accent – ‘“Things are a bit tight just now – I’ll try to find something next month.”
Or, “There’ll be a good bit waiting for you come Eastertime.” But Easter-time came and went, and there was always some reason he couldn’t find the money – low prices,
the cost of the stripping machine, the cost of coal. Right at the end, when I was going out the door, he gave me ten pounds, and then grudgingly. Said it was all he could spare. When I walked away,
you know how much I had to show for all that work? The grand sum of twenty pounds, six and thruppence. And most of that from what I’d managed to save.’

Annie frowned at him without answering, and the defensiveness raced back into his heart. He added coldly, ‘Unless you reckon that’s fair, of course.’

‘Times were very bad then, of course.’

‘Not that bad.’

‘But if he didn’t have the money?’

‘He had enough to buy a brand-new stripping machine.’

She gave a troubled sigh. ‘Perhaps he was just trying to keep you from leaving.’

‘Well, he had a strange way of going about it.’

‘Or maybe he was—’ She broke off abruptly. ‘No . . . Doesn’t matter what he thought, does it? It happened, and it shouldn’t have, and that’s all there
is to it.’

She had come down on his side, and he felt a new warmth towards her.

When they got outside, it was raining, ponderous drops that splattered over the pavement and rattled against the ironmonger’s dustbins and pails. Heads down, they hurried down the road to
join the queue for the bus. When it arrived, they found a bench seat near the back and squeezed in, the child in the middle.

As the bus moved off, Billy made an effort to talk to the child. Not sure where to start, he tried school, which lessons she liked, which teachers. Getting the barest of answers, he scraped
around for another topic and could think of nothing until he remembered a barn owl he’d spotted swooping across the orchard at dusk. He told her how he’d tracked it to its roost on a
high beam at the far end of the withy shed, how in the daytime it hid itself so well you wouldn’t know it was there. The child answered with a solemn gaze that wavered and fell away.
Recalling that children were meant to like people looking idiotic, he offered as a last throw the rest of the story, how in trying to catch sight of the owl high in the rafters he’d tripped
and almost fallen over a broom. Annie glanced round from the window and smiled, but the child dropped her head and gazed at her lap.

‘So, tell me – what is it you find funny?’ Billy asked dryly. ‘What makes you laugh?’

The child looked to her mother for help.

‘What about that time with the dog?’ Annie said.

The child grinned a little, and after much prompting finally recounted amid bursts of giggles seeing a man trip over a dog and fall into a watery ditch. Having begun to giggle, the child seemed
unable to stop. Alternately bouncing up and down in her seat and throwing herself across her mother’s lap, she rolled and writhed with laughter. Recoiling from this sudden frenzy, Billy
waited for Annie to tell the child off, and was confused when, far from shushing her, she laughed proudly and pulled the wriggling child into her arms. Watching the two of them, he felt a familiar
sense of looking in on a world that he didn’t understand.

Billy studied Annie’s profile as she resumed her scrutiny of the countryside beyond the window. A strand of hair clung damply to her cheek, and a spot of colour glowed low on her neck
where the collar of her coat had chafed it. She was motionless, apparently lost in thought, but he felt certain she was aware of him. It was this awareness that had brought them together in the
first place, and it seemed to him that nothing had changed, that it was impossible for them to be within touch or sight of each other without feeling the strong pull of attraction.

The bus ground to a halt to let some people off. Glancing out, Billy realised where they were, realised that beyond a house with a neat garden he could make out the corner of a walled orchard
where late in that long-ago summer he and Annie had once made love. The coincidence of thought and memory made him want to laugh, and he searched Annie’s face to see if she too was
remembering, but just then she lowered her head to talk to the child. Her movements were smooth, her expression untroubled, her mouth tilted by a smile, yet it seemed to Billy that her very
calmness gave her away, that she was talking to the child to avoid acknowledging that she had seen the orchard, that she too was remembering.

The bus grumbled up the ridge road and deposited them at the far side of the village. Having eased off, the rain now threatened a fresh shower, and they walked briskly, reaching Spring Cottage
just as the sporadic droplets began to sharpen.

Billy carried Annie’s shopping through the cottage into the kitchen. It was the first time he had been inside the place; normally she kept him at the door. The kitchen was a lean-to and
had the chill of thin walls and draughty windows, but there were bright red curtains and children’s drawings stuck to the walls. Through the open door to the sitting room he could see a gypsy
shawl arranged over the back of an easy chair, dried flowers in painted pots, and a framed photograph of a man in uniform: husband, father, brother, he couldn’t tell.

After seeing to the child, Annie came in and said, ‘Thanks.’ Then, with a short smile, ‘Well . . . I should get started on the dinner now.’ It was an invitation for him
to leave, and to underline it she moved towards the door.

‘Annie?’

She paused.

He came up to her and leant a shoulder against the door frame. ‘There’s a dance in North Curry tonight. How about giving it a go?’

‘I couldn’t—’

‘Come on,’ he said cajolingly. ‘A night out, a few hops round the dance floor, a bit of a laugh. I’m a devil at the jive, though being North Curry we might have to settle
for the foxtrot.’

She shook her head.

‘What, you don’t like dancing?’

Her eyes gave a dark glint. ‘Sometimes,’ she said.

‘But not tonight.’

‘No.’

‘Am I allowed a reason?’

‘Well, there’s Beth for a start.’

‘Can’t she stay with a friend?’

‘No.’ Her tone was pleasant but firm.

He knew what was riling her. He had been half expecting something like this ever since meeting up with her again. He recalled the words he had rehearsed for just such an occasion.

‘It was a spur of the moment thing, you know.’

She frowned at him. ‘What was?’

‘Me leaving. Me walking out. I had a big row with Stan and I just sort of picked up my things and went. I didn’t mean to go without seeing you.’

‘And you think that’s why I won’t go dancing with you?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No, Billy, it isn’t.’

Not convinced, he said, ‘I always felt bad – that I didn’t explain. That I didn’t write.’

She gave a tiny shrug, a lift of one shoulder. ‘Doesn’t matter how it happened, does it? Not now. Fact is, you left.’

‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time.’

‘Right for
you
.’

He accepted this with a suitably penitent expression.

‘And right for me too, as it turned out,’ she declared unhesitatingly. ‘You did me a big favour. Got me thinking about moving away and getting war work, and if I
hadn’t’ve moved away I’d never have met Alan. I can’t pretend I was thankful at the time of course. Thought you were a proper sod. But afterwards – well, I was
grateful. More than grateful – Alan was the best thing that ever came my way. I wouldn’t have missed our time together, not for the world.’

He thought: Well, what else did I expect? Her words struck at him all the same, and a strange shiver passed through his shoulders. He decided to make a poor joke of it. ‘And there I was,
thinking you’d missed me.’

‘Oh no. Once I got to Plymouth I can honestly say I never gave you another thought.’

He didn’t believe her. Her words were too glib, and it was inconceivable that she hadn’t thought about him now and again, if only to hate him. Feeling he had caught her out in an
untruth, knowing she had done it out of pride, his confidence flooded back.

‘We could pretend to arrive separately,’ he said as he followed her to the front door.

She turned on him, ready for anger.

‘If you were worried about the gossip, I mean.’ He threw it down like a challenge, and she rose to it instantly.

‘That’ll be the day,’ she retorted with a roll of her eyes. ‘When you’re a widow they talk anyway. They can’t believe you’re not on the
lookout.’

‘So being seen with me wouldn’t blacken your name any more than it is already?’

He said it to make her smile, and, despite herself, she almost did.

He said, ‘So . . . if I paid for someone to mind the child.’

‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘I’m a born optimist. And I like dancing.’

She was softening, but she wasn’t there yet.

‘And I haven’t got anyone else to ask, have I?’

Now she laughed outright. ‘Well, you’re honest, I’ll give you that.’

Billy made a humorous gesture of entreaty, a turn of the hand, a lift of the shoulders.

She gave in with a wry shake of her head. ‘All right. I’ll arrange something for Beth.’

He walked into the lane and turned to wave, but she had already gone.

He’d washed and shaved and put on his demob suit. He hated everything about the suit, the cut, the cheapness of the cloth, the way it bagged and bunched, but the only
suits he’d fancied in London were displayed in the posher windows of the West End at upwards of ten pounds a throw. As a consolation he’d discarded the demob-issue shirt with its ugly,
unfashionable button-down collar and equally hideous tie for a fine cotton shirt and maroon silk tie purchased from a gents’ outfitter’s near Piccadilly. For the same price he could
have bought three shirts from a sweatshop in the East End, but he hadn’t come back from the war to subscribe to the national mania for thrift.

When he was satisfied with his appearance he went down to the kitchen for a jar of cider. As he took his first swig he heard the tap of Flor’s stick on the ceiling above, her signal that
she needed someone to go up to her. Stan was nowhere about, so after another couple of gulps he went instead.

Flor had slipped so low and crooked in the bed that from the door he could barely see her face over the hill of her body. ‘What’s happened to you then?’ he said, lifting her
up. ‘Got in a tangle, have you?’ He puffed up the pillows, and laughed at himself for poncing around like a nurse. ‘What were you trying to do – go gallivanting?’

Then he saw what she’d been after: her pencil, which had fallen off the bed onto the floor. He put it back beside her hand, next to her pad.

‘So, was it just the pencil you wanted? Or was it the wireless? Battery all right, is it?’ He checked the connections between the wireless and the accumulator on the floor beneath,
then flicked on the switch to a burst of sound. ‘Plenty of juice there, eh? Do you want it left on?’

She shook her head and gestured him to sit down.

‘Sorry, old girl. Can’t stop tonight,’ he said firmly. ‘Look at me – I’m going out, aren’t I?’

He had learnt to read the half-collapsed features: the twist of the lopsided mouth, the pull of the cheek, the gleam in the eyes; he could see that she was twinkling at him now, she was offering
her funny crooked smile.

‘All right – five minutes,’ he said with a sharp sigh as if she had been pressing him to stay. ‘But no more. Just five minutes and then I’ll have to be
going.’

His offer wasn’t entirely selfless; giving up five minutes now might let him off an hour of tedium another evening. Three times Flor had roped him into writing letters to her son and
daughter, and he didn’t want to be caught again. It wasn’t so bad when the two of them went in for a sort of reverse dictation, he suggesting what she might like to say and she
signalling yes or no. That way at least they got to have a few laughs. ‘Billy might be shoving off at last,’ he threw in, which caused her to give a pantomime frown. Or: ‘Pigs
stage mass escape from market,’ which made her giggle. Or her favourite: ‘Lady Godiva spotted riding through North Curry.’ There was nothing to amuse him when she drafted the
letter herself in her bedraggled left-handed scrawl and he was faced with the tedium of deciphering and copying out the news on her health, Stan’s health, the weather, and the latest radio
serial.

He pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Well,’ he announced cheerfully, ‘I’ve got nothing to report. Went to the market. Found nothing I wanted to buy. Came back. Sharpened
some tools, oiled the stripping machine, thought of going down onto the moor for some duck. Saw the rain and decided against it. That’s it. No such thing as news round here.’

It was the kind of news Flor loved, though. In the old days no detail had been too small for her, no piece of information too insignificant that she hadn’t chewed it over at length with
Stan in the evenings. Billy couldn’t begin to count the hours he had spent at mealtimes or trying to read a book to the fretful cadence of Flor’s voice as she went over and over the
price of withies or the state of the floods or the rot in the potatoes.

She wrote laboriously on her pad:
When are you leaving?

‘I told you, not till this Polack arrives. In a couple of days, maybe more.’

She wrote:
Bring satchel.

This time he didn’t argue with her. If she was going to give him money, then no one could say he hadn’t earned it. He found the satchel jammed tight between the back of the wardrobe
and the wall. It was a child’s satchel made of battered leather with worn straps and pitted chrome buckles. He laid it flat on the bed and opened it for her. She reached inside and pulled out
a bundle of five-pound notes folded twice over and held by an elastic band. He tried not to notice how much was there, but it couldn’t have been less than two hundred pounds. Using her one
good hand, she fumbled with the elastic band.