Family and Friends. Emma Page
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. fat and faded, gone to seed . . . Linda had never clapped eyes on Zena but Emily Bond was as fond of gossip as the rest of her kind while growing yearly less fond of Mrs Yorke with her chronic ill-temper and nagging criticisms. ‘Can’t think why Mr Yorke puts up with her,’ Emily had said, leaning on her mop in Linda Fleming’s kitchen. ‘He’ll up and leave her one of these fine days, mark my words, and no one’d blame him.’ She plunged the mop-head into the soapy water, frowning, pursing her lips. ‘If she doesn’t kill herself first, that is.’
‘Kill herself?’ Linda had turned in the doorway, startled.
‘Digging her grave with her teeth.’ Emily thrust the mop at the red-tiled floor. ‘Eating and drinking all day long. And her with her complaint. Sugar in the water.’ She lifted the mop and squeezed the cotton tufts with aged fierceness. ‘Beats me why that Doctor Gethin don’t make her see sense.’ She slapped the mop into the bucket. ‘Not that I’d have him for my doctor.’
‘Why? Is he no good?’ Gethin was no more than a name to Linda.
Mrs Bond raised her shoulders. ‘Good enough in his day. But he’s past it now. Don’t know why he hangs on, ought to retire. Doesn’t really care any more.’
The thought of Mrs Bond jerked Linda back to the present moment and the recollection of the cleaning still to be done. She got to her feet with a last lingering memory of Owen Yorke and the pressure of his fingers, a little longer, a little stronger than altogether necessary. ‘Only too happy to advise you,’ he’d said, his tone edged with implication. ‘I’ll look in on you when I’m passing.’
The kettle was still some way from boiling; Linda clicked her tongue in momentary irritation at the lowness of the gas-pressure. She went along to the store-room with rapid footsteps. Arnold was contemplating three items he had separated from the others.
‘I like these best,’ he said as she came in. ‘I find it difficult to choose between them. Which do you prefer?’
‘Oh, the dish,’ she said at once, not wishing to prolong the discussion, already regretting her offer of tea, hoping he would say he couldn’t wait any longer, would take himself off with his disturbing presence, allow her to forget that curious moment when she had stood beside him. ‘It has beautiful lines.’
‘Very well then, I’ll take the dish.’ He didn’t pick it up so she was compelled to move forward and reach out for it. There was a long moment in which they stood side by side. ‘There’s a theatre in Milbourne,’ Arnold said suddenly. ‘I don’t know if you’ve been to it yet, it’s supposed to be rather good.’ He had never set foot inside the Milbourne theatre. The last time he had seen any kind of stage performance had been in the dispersal camp at the end of the war.
He had sat in his misery and wretchedness under the glittering stars, islanded by guilt and bitter self-reproach, unable to join in the defiantly cheerful singing, to applaud the antics of a line of half-starved troopers decked out as chorus-girls with simulated bosoms and costumes fashioned from the rags and tatters of survival. He had never, until this moment, felt any desire to enter a theatre again.
‘There’s a comedy thriller on at present.’ He mentioned the name of the play; he had no difficulty in recalling it, he passed the theatre every day. He was almost certain Linda would smile and accept his invitation. He had felt the current flow between them as they looked at the ranks of ornaments. ‘I think it would be easy enough to get seats.’
For an instant he allowed himself to nurse the wild hope that it would be possible one day to lay his head in her lap and tell her the whole story of that searing time. Every last scarring detail, holding nothing back, purging himself totally and finally of the corrosive poison that ate away his peace of mind, prevented him from walking under the wide skies in easy acceptance of life and all that it might bring.
He clenched his fists and slackened them again, letting the mad notion of absolving confession fall from him. Once and only once in the long silent years he had given way to the urge to speak, but that once had been more than enough; he had regretted it bitterly ever since.
It was not very long after he had begun to work for Owen Yorke in the new factory. He had felt for a brief period the shadowy possibility of a fresh start. And he had met Zena again. She had been the beautiful goddess of his boyhood, she had tolerated his youthful worship, allowing him to dance attendance on her till the third year of the war had swept him up and away from Milbourne. Owen Yorke had escaped military service; some minor physical incapacity that hadn’t prevented him from working energetically for Ralph Underwood. Most of the eligible young men vanished from the town but Owen remained. Zena had married him–for what was more natural? Passionately in love with her, indispensable to her father and above all, always there.
By the time Arnold came back to Milbourne after the war she had grown a little bored, more than a little restless. Her cherishing parents were now dead, Owen was absorbed in his schemes for expansion, her brother had been conscripted for National Service. In the running of her home and management of the shop she was hedged about with the frustrating restrictions of austerity; the social life of Milbourne had dwindled almost to extinction.
And Arnold had changed. He had grown into a silent rock of a man with a suggestion of suppressed forces that she found immensely intriguing. It had amused her in those idle autumn days, gusty with spattered rain or melancholy with blue-grey smoke drifting from careful bonfires, to puff a delicate breath into embers that looked greyly dead.
Arnold, struggling to orientate himself in a post-war Milbourne at once reassuringly familiar and alien with bewildering change, like the landscape of home glimpsed in a nightmare, had felt the devouring heat of the flames. He had flung open his arms, his heart, his soul, to Zena, believing for a brief delusive season that he had broken out of the terrifying vacuum that had enveloped him for so long.
He had kept nothing back from her; the savage horrors of that inhuman questioning that had gone on and on, the torrid nights slipping unperceived into scorching days–even now the mere mention of the word interrogation had power to pierce his mind with terror. He had opened his mouth at last and told his captors what they wanted to know. He had no actual memory of the words he’d used; consciousness had come and gone in clouds of pain. But the beatings had ceased abruptly; he had been carried back to the hut and dumped among the others, to recover as best he might.
Two days later word had filtered through the camp, B Company taken by surprise at night, three-quarters of them wiped out. Men he had known, had joked with.
No one had connected the news with himself; there had never been a look, a word of accusation, spoken or unspoken. He had been his own judge and warder, serving ever since his unending sentence of isolation, knowledge, remorse and guilt.
Now he stared straight ahead with a fixed look, not seeing the crowded rails and high-stacked shelves of Linda Fleming’s store-room, remembering with a bitter thrust of emotion how Zena had inclined her head, had listened, had put out her hand and taken his with a gentle touch that had seemed to offer both healing and a promise.
‘I’m not all that fond of thrillers,’ Linda said in a casual tone. She began to wrap the dish, swiftly, neatly. ‘And I don’t get a great deal of spare time at the moment, as I’m sure you’ll understand.’
Arnold made no reply; he didn’t appear to have heard her. The lines of his face were harshly set, his eyes maintained their rigid gaze. A faint ripple of apprehension moved across her consciousness.
‘It’s very kind of you to invite me.’ She hesitated, undecided whether to add a conventionally polite reference to some other evening. Better not, instinct warned her; let things lie. ‘I hope you enjoy the play,’ she added lightly.
Arnold jerked his attention away from his mental picture of Zena. Some mechanism in his brain sprang into action, playing over at once its faithful recording of Linda’s utterance, allowing him to register the fact that she had refused his invitation. He smiled at her without reproach.
‘I quite understand.’ He wasn’t overwhelmingly disappointed, recognizing now with habitual acceptance