The Girl Next Door (24 page)

‘I remember my Uncle Paul. He died when I was about seven years old. I never stopped being scared of him. His eyes were terrifying – milky white and opaque. They moved constantly – flickering and unseeing. The burns were bad – huge, ugly pink and shiny welts across one side of his face and neck, disappearing into his shirt collar. He had no whiskers. I knew they went all the way down his left side, those horrid marks. His lungs had been burned, too, and he coughed and spluttered and wheezed. You could hear him at night. But his eyes were the worst part. He wasn’t much older than my dad, but he was always an ancient old man to me – hideous and frightening. I can remember my mum trying to get me to talk to him – he sat, always, in the corner of the big kitchen we had, in a rocking chair. He must have sat there for fifteen years, coughing and not seeing and waiting to die. “Show your Uncle Paul your doll,” she’d say, or, “Why don’t you read your book to your Uncle Paul, tell him what the pictures are?” He’d nod his head and put his hands out towards the sound of my voice. But those eyes never stopped still, and I couldn’t go near him.’

Eve looked at Violet, almost eighty years old, sitting across from her, and tried to imagine the little girl, frightened of her invalid uncle.

‘I think his brother Paul was pretty much the only person my dad showed kindess to. At least in front of me. He cared for Paul like he was a child. My dad was gruff and matter‐of‐fact about it but, if you watched him, watched the two of them together, he could be tender, too, with his brother. It was like Paul was all he had left. Even though we were there. If I sound like I feel sorry for him, then that’s what fifty years of reflection will do for you. Believe me, I didn’t always feel that way. For years, I hated him. You’d be amazed at what I found a way to blame on him…’

‘When did he die?’

‘Not until 1976. But I hadn’t seen him for years before that. He sold the farm in the Sixties and went into a nursing home. He had emphysema at the end, I think.’

‘I’m sorry. Did you and he have a falling out?’

Violet snorted. ‘We never fell in.’ She shook her head, as though she realized she’d missed a big chunk of the story, and was rearranging her thoughts. ‘So, at the end of the war, there he was, left with a farm, drunken parents, an invalid brother, and this obsession with having help on the farm. I honestly think that’s the only reason he married my mother. Why she married him, I’ve never understood. He was a good‐looking bugger, I’ll say that for him. Perhaps she had a fatal attraction for tough nuts, or thought she could change him. I don’t know. We never talked about it. You didn’t, then. You just got on with it. Not like today, when we feel compelled to talk about everything, and keep Hunter Stern and his like in red wine.

‘Oh, but he was a mean bastard. I don’t remember him ever giving any of us, my mother included, a cuddle, or a kiss. God knows how three of us were conceived. I never saw one single moment of affection pass between them. I never saw him hold her hand or stroke her hair or even touch her. He never hit her. But he never showed her any love either.’

‘What happened to your mum?’

‘She died when I was about fifteen. Her death certificate said cancer, but I always think of it as death by shrinking. She shrank and shrank, the whole way through my childhood. She got smaller and thinner and paler and weaker, in front of our eyes. Like a plant, you know? She was never tended, and she died. At the end, she was lying in her bed, the bed we’d all been conceived in, born in, where she’d lain beside my father for years and years, and it was like there was a doll tucked under the covers. It may have been cancer that finally did it, but I’m convinced the process had begun years earlier. She died of neglect, and a broken heart.’ Violet’s voice had become small, and she was staring into the grate.

‘And so that’s what you blamed your dad for?’

‘My dad. My sisters. Myself.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault.’

‘I always felt I should have saved her. I loved her like nothing on earth. It wasn’t enough.’

‘That’s a terrible pressure to put on yourself, Violet. Especially as a young girl. She was ill. People get ill. Clearly, from what you say, she wasn’t happy. But that wasn’t down to you. Any more than the cancer was. And that doesn’t kill you.’

Violet shook her head. ‘You’re right, I suppose.’ And then, she was quiet for a moment.

Eve wondered whether Violet had had enough, whether she should say something else – lighten the mood. Or tell her about her own mother, dead at forty‐two. But she wanted Violet to tell her more.

‘So. Exit mother stage right. Enter husband stage left.’ Violet laughed. ‘I’m more of a cliché than I’d like to be, I’m afraid. Classic escape strategy. We couldn’t get out fast enough. Daisy was already married by the time mum died, to some dough‐faced boy she’d met at school, who couldn’t go to war because he had a club foot or some such. And Iris went off to be a nurse, down to London, first chance she got. Everyone was after deserting the farm and my father again, which did nothing to improve the lousy mood he’d been in for twenty years. I honestly think he thought they shot the bloody Archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, and that Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, just to mess up his sodding farm and leave him with all the work. One big worldwide conspiracy to keep him up to his neck in barley and beets.’

‘And you? Were you his land girl?’

‘Only until I could get the hell out of there, too.’

‘And how did you do that?’

‘I married a Yank, my darling. I married a Yank. That, lovely girl, is the very, very long‐winded account of how I ended up on the boat that brought me here in 1947.’

‘Wow! You were a war bride.’

‘See. I told you I was a cliché. One hundred thousand‐odd of us from England alone, I think. Thousands more from Australia, all over…’

‘That’s not a cliché. That’s utterly fascinating.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Absolutely. And incredibly romantic.’

‘You’re getting ahead of yourself. Not so sure I’d go that far…’

‘So tell me then. Who was he?’

Violet smiled. It crossed her mind briefly that Eve was just humouring her, but then she watched the girl stretch her legs, and recurl them into a new position, her head comfortable against a pillow. She seemed to really want to know.

‘His name was Gus Campbell. Gus. Could he have sounded more American?’

Eve laughed.

‘He was from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Twenty‐four years old when I met him, twenty‐five when we were married. Six foot two inches, built like a brick out‐house. He had so much hair. American men do, have you noticed? Big thick shocks of hair. Must be the diet. Gus’s was strawberry blond, and his eyebrows were so blond they were practically invisible. He was pale, and freckly. He could get a sunburn on a cloudy day, that man. He always had these extraordinary lines on him, in the summer – angry red meets translucent white. On his neck, his arms. Even where his socks went. Like a human zebra.’

‘How did you two meet?’

‘We all found a way, during the war. It’s true what they say – it was different then. It was actually wonderfully exciting. Not if you were in the thick of it, I don’t suppose, and getting the bombs and all that, but to be truthful, we didn’t have any of that. We had rationing and shortages and GIs. The “overpaid, oversexed and over here” kind. With their big hair, and their big voices and their big country back home, where they weren’t rationed, or sandbagged or bombed. Sounded like bloody Oz to us. You always hear about the silk stockings and the chocolate and things, and that was true – they did have that sort of thing. But what they also had, which was far more exciting than a square of Hersheys or a block of mascara, was this… this attitude. Invincibility. Like all Englishmen were in black and white and these guys burst in in glorious Technicolor, you know? They were gorgeous, and we were pretty shamelessly moths to the flame. And there was this… a kind of… frisson in the air, all the time. I suppose it was the carpe diem stuff. You never knew what was coming. It gave us all a bit of recklessness. A now or never attitude. And after umpteen years of being stuck on that farm, I was more than ripe for a bit of recklessness…’

‘I understand.’ Eve nodded.

‘So they would come into town. To the pub and the teashop and the newsagent. It was funny how people reacted to them. The older ones were pretty much against. Everyone under twenty‐five was wildly excited. Girls in particular, of course.

‘Was it love at first sight?’

‘Oh, my God, Eve – you are a soppy blighter. Not at all. Lust maybe. He was huge. I liked that first of all. Huge and strong. And so blond. Like a big… Viking

… or something!’ She laughed at herself.

Eve joined in. ‘A Viking!’

‘Yeah. Not quite the rape and pillage type. A slap and tickle Viking!’

‘So was it quick?’

‘By standards then, yes. Everything went a bit faster in the war. By today’s, not so much. People seem to get married so quickly now. Before they can even begin to really, really know each other. I think that’s because they know now how easy it is for them to walk away. You don’t need to be sure any more, because nothing is meant to be forever.’

‘But you were sure?’

‘Is anyone ever completely sure?’

‘I think I was. I couldn’t imagine not marrying Ed. Not being with him. He felt like… the person I was meant to be with. On my wedding day, I was definitely sure. I don’t think I could have done it if I wasn’t. It’s such a big thing – a Church wedding. All those people, and the vicar, and… God.’

‘Well, that’s one difference. I didn’t have to be sure in front of a congregation. I only had to be sure in front of two witnesses. And I don’t believe God was there. Not then, not now, and never in between either. I was sure of something – that he was my ticket out. I was sure of that. Did I love him? I wanted to. I loved what he stood for. I think I thought I loved him. I fancied him, for sure. He was the first boy I ever properly kissed – you know, the knee‐trembling kind of kiss. He was older than me, and he knew a little more what he was doing. I still remember the smell of him. He smelt… different – clean, and … something else. He smelt… prosperous.’

‘Was he rich?’

‘Lord, no. It may have seemed that way to me then. He was better off than my family, and most of the people I’d grown up knowing. I don’t mean that. His family ran a small building company in New Jersey. They were okay.’

‘How quickly did you get married?’

‘I met him in 1944, outside the cinema in Norwich. We’d been to see Cary Grant in
Arsenic and Old Lace
– the Sunday matinee. He had his uniform on. I always had a bit of a thing for a uniform. Still do, frankly. Watch me walk past a fire station sometime. My friend Joan had met his friend John before – they got talking, and so we did, too. We were big on foursomes. I liked his accent. I guess he saw something in me that he liked – I wasn’t a bad‐looking broad, in those days.’

You could see that. Even approaching eighty years old, Violet was a handsome woman. She must have been really good‐looking when she was younger.

‘It went from there. You made a date. You met up. Always the four of us, Joan and John, Gus and me. That was about it, in those days. It wasn’t as if you got to see a huge amount of each other. He was on the base. I was on the farm, and that was bloody hard work, I tell you. We weren’t playing at it like Marie Antoinette. We wrote to each other. Nothing worth reading, I don’t think.’

‘No long, poetic love letters?’

Violet smiled. ‘Not at all. More like notes that should have been conversations. You know – the basics about each other. Getting to know you stuff.’

‘Did your dad like him?’

‘Who knows? Gus wrote to him, early on, asking permission to write to me, I think, but I don’t think Dad ever bothered to reply to that. And he came out to the farm only once. They didn’t talk much. I remember Gus saying he wasn’t going to bother to ask him for his blessing on the two of us marrying – he said he didn’t think it would honestly help much. I loved him for that.’

‘Wasn’t your father at your wedding?’

‘No. He kept on working. Neither of us had anyone from our families there. That was how we wanted it. I didn’t want my old life butting in on my new one. My friend Joan stood up for me. He had John. It was 1946. They were shipping out. We had to fix it up fast. Raid everyone’s clothing coupons to get a decent suit to wear. We didn’t have a cake, or anything like that. Just a nice tea, in the fanciest hotel in Norwich, the four of us.

‘I think Gus would have preferred to marry at his home, in New Jersey, and I know his mother was always sad she hadn’t been there, but they wouldn’t let you go, you know, unless you were actually married. No fiancées allowed. In case the blokes changed their minds, I suppose. John did. He said he was going home to fix things up for Joan – back to Sacramento. We had such plans, Joan and I. We had no idea, really, how far Sacramento, California was from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Who knew, then, how big this country was? Six months at the most, he swore. He promised to come back from California for Joan, but he never did. Poor Joan. She ended up marrying a milkman called Colin, in Coronation year. Not sure she ever got over it.

‘But not me. I was married by then. Mrs Gus Campbell. I was on my way. But hearts and flowers – not exactly. You’d be amazed how institutionalized the whole process was. I suppose it had to be, there were so many of us.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Organized. The men were mostly gone, by the time we got to go. We couldn’t go privately. You couldn’t fly, of course, in those days, and there were no ships. Except ships the government ran. Just to move us. The
Queen Mary
, the
SS Argentina
… I went on the
Queen Elizabeth
. It was a major palaver. Gus’s family had to vouch for me – say they’d look after me, and all that. You had to have all your papers in order – birth certificate, marriage certificate. A ring and a prayer wasn’t enough. You had to prove you were kosher, and that there was a real man waiting for you in New York. I had to go to London – I took the train on my own from Norwich – I’d never done such a thing before – to the US embassy, to fill in all the forms and things. I’d only been once before – with my mother. She took us down for King George’s coronation – me and my sisters. My dad was furious, but she said it was important. In my memory it was a colourful place – spick and span – and glamorous. It was really shocking to be there in 1946. It seemed like everything was grey and broken and ruined.