Mad Joy (15 page)

‘There’s a phone call for you, Burrows.’

I poked my head from the pit underneath my truck the next morning, and was surprised to see Sergeant Ince herself standing in the maintenance shed. ‘Better look sharp – sounds important.’

I swung my legs up, dropped my spanner and cloth and followed her hurriedly, wiping my oily hands on my overalls.

In the office I picked up the receiver with a mixture of dread and excitement. I put it to my ear tentatively, my eyes swinging about the room as if something unexpected might follow this decision.

Sergeant Ince nodded at me to make some noise, so I said, ‘Hello?’

‘Is that you, Joy?’

It was James Buckleigh’s voice. After the initial relief that it wasn’t some hospital with bad news about Gracie, my
thumping
pulse began to thump even faster, as I imagined the possible causes of his personal call. I fancied him asking me on a date, right under Sergeant Ince’s stuck-up nose – a date with a pilot officer – and me still in my overalls.

‘Joy?’

I had never had a telephone call before, so I copied what I’d seen people do in films.

‘Speaking.’ I looked triumphantly at Sergeant Ince and twirled a curl around my finger.

‘Joy! Listen, I’m so sorry to bother you, only I thought you’d want to know …’

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘It’s Philip. I phoned the hospital today to see how he was, and he’s tried to … take his own life.’

‘What?’

‘Last night. He tried to commit suicide.’

‘But … how …?’

‘Overdose. He’s in the drugs wing – stupid place to put him. They’re keeping him in the same room for now, but—’

‘Is he all right? How is he? I mean—’

‘He’ll survive. He’s all right. They said he was sitting up in bed this morning.’

‘Oh, Lord. Oh …’

‘Listen, I’m going over there myself right now, and I was wondering … well, I wondered if you’d like me to call by and give you a lift.’

‘Oh!’ I was taken by surprise at the invitation: so close to my little fantasy, but not quite along the same lines. ‘I’m not sure if I can get the time off. Almost certainly not. I’ll see …’

Sergeant Ince gave me a curious nod, and James continued: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve asked your boss already. She says it’s fine so long as you’re back by four. I’m afraid I pulled rank a bit.’ He laughed then, and I chuckled too – far too vigorously – in order to impress dear Sergeant Ince, who I suddenly pictured in a gymslip with an obscure tassel hanging from her waist and carrying a lacrosse racket.

I washed my hands and face as quickly as I could, and was just in time for the Buckleigh family car, which pulled up discreetly at the end of the lane.

When I saw his one hand on the wheel I wondered how on earth he had been changing gears. ‘You shouldn’t be driving,’ I said.

‘You sound like my father.’

Then he opened his car door and came round to the passenger side where I was standing. ‘You wouldn’t do a great favour, would you? Would you drive?’

I felt hugely complimented, not only because he was
acknowledging
my driving skills, but because he was entrusting me with the family car. After my truck it was like stepping into a work of art. The green door clunked neatly into place, the chrome sparkled, and the floor didn’t smell of mud. I was swept back to the last time I had sat in this car, and was glad to be in the driving seat this time. So long as he didn’t think I owed him anything for this favour. If he tried anything else on I would just stop the car and get out.

By the time I sat next to James Buckleigh I had had time to think about Philip. It seemed suddenly quite obvious that he would make an attempt on his life, and I was cross with myself for not having thought of it before. I should have warned the nursing staff not to keep him on his own. They should have been alert to his depression. I was also irritated that he should so easily try to take the life I had risked my own to save. And these concerns got all jumbled up with the soft pumf sound of the leather seat as we rumbled over the lanes and the smell of polished chrome, and the proximity of James Buckleigh’s knees to my own, and my hand almost touching him as I changed gears.

Philip seemed pleased to see us for a moment or two, and then lapsed into a staring silence. James went to open the window, and after a lot of thumping about, managed to throw it up a little and let in the jabberings of a chaffinch outside.

I sat on the bed, holding his unplastered hand, and James sat on a camp chair beside him.

‘Whatever is it, Bird? Whatever’s made you feel …? Things aren’t as bad as all that, you know …’

Philip Bird flopped his face to the wall, away from both of us.

‘Philip,’ I said, ‘we’re here for you … you can talk to us.’

He sighed, but said nothing. Then the door opened, bringing with it clonking sounds from the corridor and the hospital beyond. A nurse with a starched white headdress announced: ‘Your mother’s here, Flight Sergeant Bird. Shall I send her in?’

Philip flung his head back and forth and began to groan. ‘Tell her to go away. She made me – she made me—’

James got up and went to the door. ‘I’ll go and see to things. Don’t worry, Bird. She won’t be in here unless you want her here. I’ll see to it.’

I felt oddly relieved that James had gone. I don’t know why, because Philip was no picnic party. He stopped rocking his head back and forth and started drumming his fingers on the counterpane. I think I imagined I could draw him out of himself. I thought I, Joy Burrows, could sort out all his problems with a little sensitivity and kindness. The thing was to get him talking.

‘Is it too bright for you?’

He shook his head.

‘Where were you born?’

No answer.

‘Where’s your home?’

He sneered.

‘Has your mother travelled far?’

He turned to look directly at me. ‘She hasn’t come far, and she can go back easily. I want her to go back. She’s seen me already. There’s no need. I’ll be all right, now.’

I nodded.

‘Tell her that.’

‘James is telling her now, don’t worry.’

There was a silence.

‘Buckleigh your boyfriend, is he?’

‘No.’

‘How d’you know him, then?’

‘Um … we lived nearby … I suppose. I knew his sister.’

‘Ah yes! The sister.’

‘Do you know her?’

‘No. Heard about her, though.’ He sighed deeply again. The chaffinch chattered outside and filled the space we left. At first I felt awkward, but then it seemed perfectly natural to sit there, together, saying nothing.

‘I like you,’ he said, at last. ‘I feel everything’s all right when you’re here.’

I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a plea. He let his hand reach out slightly across the bed cover. I was afraid if I let him take mine it might mean something, so I took his and folded a second hand on top, like a friendly nurse.

‘Can’t you tell me what made you so unhappy?’

He gave a sharp puff of a breath through his nostrils. ‘It’s me. It’s just who I am.’

His hand was cool and limp, and his eyes were the most pitifully unhappy ones I had ever seen.

‘Well, tell me about you.’

‘You joking?’ He managed a smile. ‘I’m trying to keep you here, not send you packing.’ I smiled, and he managed one too. ‘Rather hear about you.’

So I told him about the girls I worked with, what sort of work I did, how I knew the Buckleighs, how we used to play inside the house as children. He smiled from time to time, or nodded, but I had the impression that something else in his head kept stealing his attention.

I felt sorry for him, alone all day with his chaffinch for company.

Then, watching him, something swept through me: a wave of grief and nausea that stopped me speaking. His fine eyes
were circled in red and fixed on an invisible point in the air. There was a permanent well of unblinked tears, and the occasional sigh. I had thought myself mad, but this was insanity. Everything about him asked why he had been brought back to the land of the living, why he hadn’t been allowed to die. And seeing him there, so alive and yet so dead, made me think of Ken. I was angry with Philip for not cherishing his life, and I was angry with a world that had brought him to this, and furious that I would never have that dance with Ken, and grief-stricken that his glorious, flirtatious, vital smile had been wiped off the globe for ever.

I found I was sobbing.

Suddenly he squezed my hand hard. ‘You feel it too, don’t you?’

‘What?’

He pinned my wrist to the bed and fixed impatient eyes on mine. ‘The same way I feel about you.’ He tried to pull me towards him.

‘Please … you’re hurting me.’

I wriggled free. I got up and started to run to the door. James was just opening it with three cups of tea on a tray, and it spilt into the saucers as I dived past. I ran into the reception, took one look at Philip Bird’s mother – who raised her eyebrows at me expectantly, then frowned at my state – and ran past her, out through the double doors, down the steps, across the road and into the woods.

I didn’t stop running until I was out of breath. Then I collapsed against a tree, exhausted, and screamed and screamed and screamed until I thought my head would burst and all the songbirds stopped their singing.

After a while I heard him, like a distant rook, calling my name. I looked about for somewhere to hide, but felt too hot and heavy to move. I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve, but my temples were wet with sweat, and my hair stuck to my head like mud. The woods were perspiring with me, oozing little pockets of dampness underneath their leaves, and my precious lisle
stockings
were stuck to my legs, wringing wet, as though years of poison were seeping out through my skin. My blouse and jacket seemed made of hedgehog, and hot sharp spikes prickled my chest and back at every movement.

A nightingale gave a soft alarm call, and I waited for its song: ‘diu diu diu diu-doo-it’, but it didn’t come.

‘Joy! Joy! … Where are you?’

I crawled over to some ferns, and crouched under them, sticking to the gritty earth like a spat-out toffee.

I could hear him rustling along the path, coming closer.

‘Joy! … Talk to me.’

I was still as a stone. I’d had years of practice. I knew how to breathe so the leaves didn’t move, how to hold a shape which wouldn’t send a bird away batting its wings.

He was closing in. The rustling came closer. Twigs cracked.

‘Joy! Come on … we can drive back …’

I could hear his boots close to my ears, hear him sigh. A hand on my shoulder reaching through the ferns. ‘Joy! Whatever is the matter? I’ve been looking everywhere …’

I remained curled up and said nothing. He bent down and tried to find my face, but I couldn’t let him see it. I pressed it hard into my knees and covered the sides with my arms. Then he started to stroke me, and said nothing. I coiled up harder into my knot, and he suddenly stopped.

I still hadn’t looked at him. Everything fell silent again, except for the fluting of a blackbird above me, and the deep woodwind of two distant wood pigeons. I knew he was still there. I could feel his presence like his hand upon me. Then there was a breath drawn in, and every now and then the sound of his hand brushing the material of his uniform, the occasional creak of a boot.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It seemed a long, long time, but I was so uncomfortable it may only have been ten minutes. Even so, when I looked up there were bluetits flipping leaves over for insects, the blackbird had gone but, sitting cross-legged two yards away from me, he was still there.

I sighed. James said nothing.

‘I want to go home,’ I said.

He got up and stretched his legs. ‘You mean Woodside?’

‘No – the barracks.’

‘Why not come back to our house? You look as if you could do with a break – come and have tea or something.’

I had risen to my feet by now and every inch of me ached. I knew I was a mess. I leant my head against a tree and closed my eyes, like a child who thinks they can’t be seen if they can’t see out. ‘No – please. No.’

Then suddenly his free arm was leaning on the tree too, arching above me. ‘You can’t go back in this state.’

‘Oh God! Don’t look at me!’

I turned my head away, aware what ‘state’ I must be in.

‘I don’t mean that … I mean, you can’t go back while you’re so …’ I slapped my hands over my face. ‘Okay, I’ll close my eyes,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to look at you …’ He was right up against me now, and I could feel his thigh against mine. ‘I love the smell of you!’

Diu diu diu diu diu diu-doo-it.

The shock of lust I felt when he said this terrified me. My emotions had been jolted too much and I began to run. I ran back to the hospital, calling at him over my shoulder to leave me alone.

I walked the three miles back to the barracks, and he didn’t follow me.

Sergeant Ince gave me a bollocking.

‘The agreement was Pilot Officer Buckleigh would bring you back by four.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

‘Where have you been, looking like something the cat’s brought in?’

‘With Pilot Officer Buckleigh at the hospital, ma’am.’

‘Then why has he telephoned twice to see if you’ve got back safely?’

‘I—’

‘Your last leave was cut short, wasn’t it? Getting this injured pilot back to hospital? Perhaps we should see if you can’t have a bit more leave shortly.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. But I’m all right.’

She looked me up and down, said it was not for me to decide, and dismissed me.

Dismissed, of course, is an interesting concept. To put something out of our mind. To pretend it isn’t there. To give it none of your attention so that, to all intents and purposes, it seems not to exist. I had been dismissing things all my life, but now there seemed so many things to keep in my mind I hardly knew how to cope.

Betty tried to persuade me to go out to the dance anyway, said it might cheer me up. ‘No point sticking around this dump on our own,’ she said. ‘S’not disrespectful or nothing. All Ken’s mates are going, look.’

But I refused. I sat on my camp bed and listened until the last whoop and giggle were just shrill far-off birdsong. Then I pulled the suitcase out from under my bed and lifted out the dress Gracie had made me, the dress I would have worn for Ken. Slowly, I slipped it on over my head and buttoned up the side. There was no full-length mirror so I stood on tiptoes by the mirror over the basin. I stroked my hands over the silk. A pretty lozenge-shape formed the bodice, and it had been
top-stitched
to within a hair’s breadth of the edge. The bust was gathered into the top two edges, descending from the point. The buttonholes were tiny and hand-stitched and as neat as factory-made ones. The collar was lined and top-stitched, the short sleeves ever so gently puffed and edged with a matching button, and inside the back of the collar my name was embroidered in dark red Sylko. My eyes welled as I thought how little I had thanked Gracie for this labour of love.

Exhausted, I was wondering where to go with this train of thought when Betty burst in.

‘Quick, quick! Get your things, you’ve got to come now!’

‘What …?’

‘There’s a man at the end of the lane asking for you – a real
dish
. My God, Joy, if you don’t come now, you’ll regret it. He’s a Flying Officer or Pilot Officer or something.’

‘Oh Christ! It’s James Buckleigh.’

‘James who? Jesus, you’re a dark horse! How d’you know him?’

I waved a hand lethargically.

‘Bloody hell, Joy! If you don’t come right this second I’m having him myself!’

I don’t know if it was Betty’s obvious attraction to him – for I
hadn’t really seen him through anyone else’s eyes – or the sudden memory of my last encounter but I decided to follow her. And I didn’t want him going to Sergeant Ince and making some official meeting with me I couldn’t back out of.

Because the girls were planning on going to the pub before the dance, it was still only quarter to seven, and the lane was dappled in sunshine. Betty walked her bicycle, and I walked myself, awkwardly folding my arms as if I weren’t planning on going anywhere.

The top of the lane marked the boundary to our camp, and there he stood, half in the shadow of an old beech tree and mottled in sunlight. He had an anxious, questioning
expression
, as if he weren’t sure how he’d find me.

I waited until Betty had ridden off – and she certainly took her time, smirking and winking and fiddling with her dress – before I looked him full in the face. I gave a half-smile and looked away at a leafy twig that was sprouting from the smooth trunk of the beech.

‘I’m sorry.’ He looked down. ‘It was stupid of me to come this evening. I should’ve known you’d all be going out.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘It’s just … you’re wearing a lovely … outfit.’

In a desperate bid to make it clear I hadn’t put it on for his benefit, I said stupidly, ‘I
was
going out, but my date had the bad manners to get himself killed.’

‘Oh, I’m … oh! … That’s terrible. I’m so sorry!’

I sighed deeply, perhaps giving the impression I didn’t care, or perhaps that I cared so much he couldn’t possibly understand. Then I instantly felt this was unfair. I watched his awkwardness from my occasional glances at him, and saw that I was being unkind. The truth was I’d felt more sorrow just now over Gracie’s dress than I had over Ken. About Ken I felt
empty. It would be months, years even, before the true sadness of him hit me. And then it would be a sort of collective sorrow for the waste, so many hopeful young men humming ‘Walking my baby back home’, on the brink of tenderness that never happened. I suddenly felt sorry for James, standing there earnestly in his sling.

‘It’s all right about yesterday,’ I said. ‘I’m not angry or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Well, I was, actually. It was unforgivable. I don’t know what came over me. I’m really very sorry.’

‘S’okay.’

‘Look, there’s something else. I wanted to … Shall we walk?’

He seemed to be thinking of the direction of the pub. But I started in the opposite direction, which took us along the road between fields. I didn’t want Betty or any of that crowd eavesdropping on anything. I found a stile and started to cross it into a field which was so steeply sloping it had escaped the plough. He followed me, and we drifted for a while in a beautiful sunlit scrubland. The limestone had carpeted the ground with wild thyme and trefoil, eyebright and squinancy wort. He walked with a modest gap between us, and I began to imagine him saying what he had said the day before, and it seemed unthinkable. So ridiculous did it seem that James Buckleigh should have pinned me to a tree and told me that he loved the smell of me, that I almost willed it to happen again. And yet now he was chatting about this and that with such an anxious look on his face, it was not even a remote possibility. Perhaps I had imagined it. My nerves were unstable. A lot had happened in the last
twenty-four
hours.

‘You’ve had a pretty rough time, haven’t you?’ He said it in a serious tone, as if he were about to broach something. I said nothing, and shrugged. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear that Philip is
out of danger now. He’s back at our house and being pampered by Dad and Mrs Bubb.’

I stopped and stared at him.

‘It’s just for a few days. They’re giving him a desk job next week …’ I continued walking, kicking at some knapweed as we came closer to the edge of the field.

‘He’d like to see you … Do you think that’s … a possibility?’

I kicked at the ground again, sending up bittersweet wafts from the grasses. I was so irritated and so utterly unable to tell him why that I tried to change the subject.

‘Listen! Have you noticed there’s hardly any birds singing? Not yet mid-July and already the birds have stopped their territorial stuff because their fledglings have grown.’

‘Yes,’ he said helplessly. ‘I had noticed.’

‘Only, listen! D’you hear that?’ One bird kept up a lethargic little twitter, as if he could only just be bothered.

‘Yellowhammer,’ he said.

‘Oh yes. I forgot your interest in birds. A yellowhammer and …’ I put my head on one side, showing off, ‘a corn bunting.’

‘I know about you and Philip.’

‘What?’

‘I heard it all. I was there.’

‘But—’

‘I’m sorry, Joy. That’s what I came to tell you. I meant to tell you yesterday, but … look, I didn’t mean to overhear, it’s just that I opened the door with the tea, and he’d just started speaking, and you know how we wanted to get him to talk, and then I knew if I went back out the door would squeak again, and I was afraid it might put him off, so I just stood there stock still and … I heard it all. I’m afraid I told him to back off and told Sergeant Ince you needed some leave.’

I must have looked horrified.

‘I only told Sergeant Ince,’ he said. ‘I half explained it to her because I thought you needed some time off.’

‘Oh God!’

‘And Father because—’

‘Oh, for God’s …! And Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all! Oh, God Almighty! Who asked you to …? Can’t you just …?’

We had come to a stile at the bottom of the field, which led into some woods. I leant on the old oak bar and held my head in my hands. I felt angry and exposed. He leant on the stile too, and apologized again. Then he said nothing, just waiting for me to unravel.

I was aware of his closeness and, like the day before, I sensed he would wait a long time for me. I was too wrung out for a repeat performance, so I lifted my head and narrowed my eyes at him.

‘That’s so … so typical of your sort, isn’t it? You just barge in there, firing on all cylinders, and to hell with other people’s feelings!’

‘My sort?’

‘You just … you just …
play
with people! It’s all one big game to you – everything!’ I couldn’t tell if he looked fierce or hurt, there was such a sombre frown on him. ‘How
dare
you interfere in my private life! How
dare
you! How
dare
you!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Now he looked so forlorn and contrite I wanted to slap him. Even this seemed like a game. Why didn’t he fight back?

‘You and Celia, you’re just the same! You dangle people on bits of string and laugh at them!’

‘No!’

‘Is that what they teach you at your posh schools? Or is it bred into you? I’ve seen it! I see it every day – Sergeant Ince, all the officers – all jolly this and jolly that and just naturally leading the rest of us, because that’s what you lot do, isn’t it? Do they give you lessons in belittling? Do they beat you so hard and with so much enjoyment that you just have to do the same to everyone else? … Tell me!’

I was ferocious. I was well out of order. I could feel a trickle of sweat run down between my breasts, and I knew it would flower into a dark patch on the silk wherever it came to rest.

‘Actually, I left my “posh” school and went to grammar school. I kept running away, so Father took me out of it.’

I was still breathing heavily from my rant, and I couldn’t back down. ‘Well then, it must be
bred
into you!’

‘What must?’

I had lost my way a bit, so I lashed out with what really annoyed me about him. ‘You know very well what I’m talking about. You think you can just
toy
with the likes of me, don’t you? People like me, we’re just playthings for the likes of you and Celia. You can build us up to make us feel special and then you can just
push
us away, just humiliate us in front of everyone with one little …
push
!’

‘Oh …’ He looked mortified.

‘Yes … “Oh!”…’

I stopped because I was practically snorting with rage. He had listened and said little, nodding from time to time, holding me with his eyes and the strangest, most tender of looks.

I climbed the stile, because I could feel tears coming again. He followed behind, watching my bare leg closely as I swung it over. Once again an urgent lust took me by surprise. I wanted to lead him further into the woods. I wanted to clear the ground of emotion, and found myself longing for him to show that secret side to himself that had shocked me so much before.

We rustled through patches of milkwort and white bedstraw. There was the occasional whiff of badger as the sun began to fade. We came across a stretch of wild strawberries, and I plucked off the little red droplets and put them in my mouth. I willed him to put one in mine, but he did not.

We didn’t speak, but the shuffling of leaves, the cracking of twigs, and the low steady croon of a turtle dove all spoke to us in the heavy, scent-filled air. He seemed quite comfortable with
the stillness, and I remembered how he had once carried me across town without so much as a word.

The gap between us grew less, and soon we were walking so close that our clothes brushed. It could have been accidental. Then we came to a log over a stream, and he held my hand to help me over. There was no need. He knew it, of course. I had grown up in woods. I should have been helping him.

He held back branches for me, and I noticed that now he was leading. When we reached another stile he stopped, and said, ‘Will you help me off with my jacket?’

‘Are you warm?’ I folded his jacket back and peeled it gently away from his good arm.

‘No, I think you’re getting chilly.’

He put his jacket around my shoulders. It was a small gesture, but it had an electric effect on me. That part of his clothing that covered his whole upper body – his arms, his chest, his heart – was wrapping itself around me, and it was still warm. As I pulled it close, a little waft of him came out of the fabric like a spell. I was transported back to the room in Celia’s house, the mysterious room of wagtails and coins and feathers, the smell of leather and wood and the insides of his shoes, the deep disturbing smell of him.

I put my foot on the stile and he stopped it with a hand on my knee. Every part of me tingled.

‘I’m sorry about the trap,’ he said.

I looked around, confused, a little pang of fear starting inside me. ‘What trap?’

Then, he slid his hand down inside my naked leg, and said, ‘This one.’

I looked down at his hand, and I could see my naked knee was shaking. He leant in very close to my face, and repeated gently, ‘This one. The one I found you in.’

He was stroking the scar at my ankle. A hawk moth fluttered between us and landed on the bark of an ash. My voice did not work, and I found only a whisper:

‘
You
!’

He lifted my knee down and came to join me on my side of the stile. His hand went up to the small of my back and he pushed himself hard against me, sandwiching me between himself and the stile. ‘I’m sorry, but I
do
love the smell of you. I love everything about you, Joy Burrows … and I always have …’