Authors: Laura Wilson
‘Dad?’ Stratton jumped. The singing had ended and Monica was bending over him. ‘Nodded off,’ he lied. ‘Sorry, love.’ Seeing the lavish-looking box of chocolates in her hand, he added, ‘Where did those come from?’
‘A present.’
‘Got a boyfriend, Monica?’ Pete looked up from poking the fire. ‘Took your time about it, didn’t you?’
‘No, but Madeleine has – as you very well know,’ said Monica, speaking with exaggerated patience. ‘He gave them to her.’
‘You want to get yourself a boyfriend, too.’ Pete put the poker back on the stand, then getting to his feet, added with studied casualness, ‘Or perhaps you don’t.’
Seeing Monica’s face flush, and feeling that if anyone was going to interrogate
his
daughter about having admirers it would be
him
, and in private if at all, Stratton said, ‘Leave her alone, Pete. It’s none of your business.’ Monica shot him a look of gratitude. She’d had a boyfriend some time back, Stratton remembered, but he didn’t think it had lasted very long. He had no idea why it had ended – Monica hadn’t been forthcoming and he hadn’t wanted to pry – but as far as he could recall, she hadn’t seemed particularly upset by it. Or maybe she had been, because that was evidently what Pete was alluding to.
He stopped listening and considered his son. Pete was, he thought, already bigger, stronger and fitter-looking than when he’d left. Unlike Monica, who’d been straight up and down like a boy until she was at least sixteen, Pete had looked adult early on and, compared to him, other National Servicemen Stratton had seen seemed puny and not fully formed. Pete’s build was just like his own, although he was – Stratton felt a flicker of surprise that he’d
never really noticed this before – considerably better-looking; handsome, in fact, with thick, conker-brown hair and pale skin that was just like Jenny’s. He was cruder than before, though, with an undercurrent of belligerence that showed itself in an abruptness of manner, a tendency – as just now, with Monica – to talk out of turn, and the generally rough way he moved about the place. The latter, of course, could be because he was still growing – Stratton had painful memories of his own clumsiness at seventeen and eighteen. The crudeness, he supposed, was hardly surprising, as he must be billeted with a lot of young chaps wanking and boasting about girls, with all the talk ritualised into mocking, joking and one-upmanship as they probed for one another’s weaknesses. It was all too easy to imagine the fetid atmosphere of the barracks, farts and arse-scratching and sweaty armpits and meaningless obscenities … He suddenly realised that he had no idea whether or not Pete was still a virgin. Not that he particularly wanted this information, but it was another indication of the boy moving even further away from him, and more especially because he himself had never served in the forces. He wondered if Pete might hold this omission against him. Donald hadn’t fought, either. Only Reg, the family buffoon, had; the trenches in the Great War and then – if you could count it, which Stratton supposed you had to – the Home Guard.
Later, when the women went to prepare a supper of ham and salad and the men were left alone, the conversation turned – or rather, Reg turned it – to army life. After they’d listened to a lot of guff, so familiar that Stratton knew the phrases off by heart, about shaping an efficient fighting force and a fine body of men and all the rest of it, Donald asked, in a suspiciously neutral tone, ‘So what do you think, Pete, about the
modern
army?’
‘It’s all right, I suppose, except there’s no bloody privacy, unless you’re asleep. And even then the bloke next to me keeps having nightmares and shouting. The sergeant told him he was going to
be shot for some breach of regulations and the stupid berk actually believed him – he’s a bit simple, you see. The sergeant even had him dictating a last letter to his mum, and he was bawling his eyes out.’ To Stratton’s horror, Pete laughed. ‘It’s about the only fun we’ve had. If you’re not exhausted, you’re bored stupid. We do all these war exercises – outside for hours, freezing your arse off, and then they tap you on the shoulder and tell you you’re dead. Still, as long as I don’t get shipped out to Korea …’
Reg, his voice quivering under the weight of betrayed courage and despairing patriotism, said, ‘Don’t you want to fight for your country—’
‘It wouldn’t be for my country,’ said Pete, mildly. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting stuck in, if I thought there was something to fight
for
.’
‘You’d be fighting against Communism,’ said Reg.
Pete shrugged.
‘You won’t get very far with that attitude. What about the Selection Board?’
‘Selection Board? I’m not
officer
material, Uncle Reg. That’s for the public school types. They only let blokes like me make up the numbers in wartime.’ Pete wasn’t aware of it, but this was so entirely the reason that Reg had been made a captain in the Home Guard that Stratton almost choked trying to turn a laugh into a cough. ‘Look,’ Pete continued, ‘I don’t mind the drill and all that, and most of the chaps are OK, but they never let you think for yourself.’
Stratton was about to point out that this was pretty much true of any job when Reg declared, in a professorial tone, ‘
I
think that you haven’t understood the fundamental aim of a fighting force. A good soldier must accept rules and regulations. Discipline’ – here, the pipe stem did its stuff – ‘is vital on a battlefield.’
Stratton felt that this was a bit rich coming from someone whose son, turned down for active service during the war on health grounds, had such a lack of regard for rules and regulations that he’d narrowly
avoided Borstal. Johnny having left straight after their meal, Stratton thought of mentioning him, but was prevented by a warning grimace from Donald. It wouldn’t be fair – Lilian had been very upset by her son’s abrupt departure. In any case, Stratton thought sourly as Reg carried on pontificating, he knew perfectly well what Johnny was doing: working for a very dodgy car dealer in Warren Street. Having had to deal in an official capacity with his nephew before, he frequently and fervently hoped that next time Johnny got into trouble, some other poor sod would get there first.
He had resisted the temptation to say anything, but was fairly sure that Pete, who was beginning to look irritated, might not. Seeing that this could be the beginning of a row – Pete calling Reg a warmonger and Reg calling him a Communist – Stratton decided it was high time he left the room.
He could do with a breath of fresh air. He went down the passage and let himself out of the back door. It was bloody cold – although, thought Stratton, it wasn’t a patch on the winter of forty-six, when the pipes froze again and again and your breath was visible even inside the house and no matter how many clothes you wore, in bed or out of it, you never seemed to get warm. Peering into the almost darkness, he could make out the shapes of Donald’s apple and plum trees at the bottom of the garden. He stamped his feet a few times, trying to keep warm. He didn’t want to go back inside with the others – at least, until there was a good chance of any row having blown over. He’d had enough of Reg anyway, and, if he was honest, he wasn’t really sure what to say to Pete.
This was partly, he supposed guiltily, because – aside from what he could glean by observing – he actually had very little idea about the sort of man his son was becoming. A callous one, judging by what he’d said to Monica and his reaction to the poor simple sod who’d been so tormented by the sergeant – or maybe that was the effect of the army, with its brutal ideas about toughening people up. But either way, at that precise moment, he wasn’t even sure he
liked
his son very much.
He found himself wondering about the boy’s taciturn reaction to Jenny’s death – he’d assumed it was grief and that the lad had simply found the subject too painful to talk about. Stratton had been six when his own mother had died, but that was expected – tuberculosis – and he couldn’t remember ever discussing it with his father or his brothers. He’d assumed that, even though the circumstances were entirely different, Pete must have had similar feelings to his own about losing his mother, but now he wondered if that were the case. Perhaps Pete simply hadn’t cared all that much. Or perhaps Jenny’s death had begun an inexorable hardening process within him.
Jenny’d once told him that she’d like Pete to have an office job, although he couldn’t remember if she’d said what sort. Maybe she’d meant an accountant or something like that – something that involved wearing a suit, anyway. The other thing she’d said, which he
did
remember clearly, was that she didn’t mind what the children ended up doing as long as they were happy. Pete’s papers had come through soon after he’d left school, where he’d done surprisingly well, especially in science and mathematics. Perhaps some sort of conversation about his future was in order – although of course any future would have to be postponed until he’d done his National Service – but Stratton felt that this would need, if not actual preparation, then certainly a bit of thought.
Had he, after all, been so different to Pete at eighteen? He pictured himself, slimmer and fresher faced, marching down the endless corridors of the police training school – shiny green and cream paint – and remembered the smell of disinfectant, sometimes so strong that it seemed to permeate the food. The army was probably quite like that, he thought. Unlike Pete, the training school was the first time he’d been away from home, and for a long time he’d missed his family and the sights, smells and sounds of the Devon farm where he’d spent his childhood. Somehow, he doubted that Pete had been very homesick. After all, he’d been evacuated, and he seemed too self-contained, too assured …
Perhaps Pete’s confidence was a bluff, too. Stratton had never
tried very hard to find out. The truth was that he’d been afraid of being rebuffed, and was still afraid. Jenny wouldn’t have been. He suddenly remembered their honeymoon, walking hand in hand across sand dunes covered in scrubby grass and rabbit holes, and the hotel – the first time either had stayed in one – their awkwardness in the big, echoing dining room with its stiff napery and even stiffer waiters, and their giggly relief afterwards, finding themselves alone in the bedroom. How her beautiful green eyes had shone as she turned her face up to his for a kiss …
Hearing a tapping noise, he swung round and, seeing the same eyes looking out at him from behind the glass panel in the back door, he thought, for a split second, that—
‘Dad! Tea’s ready!’ Monica opened the door. ‘What are you doing out here? You’ll catch your death.’
To his absolute horror, Stratton felt tears pricking at his eyelids and he turned away from her, squeezing his eyes shut. For God’s sake, he told himself, get a grip. Monica stepped out and put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Were you thinking about Mum again?’ she asked.
‘Yes, love. Stupid, really …’
‘No, it’s not. It’s normal.’
Stratton put his arm round her and they stood for a moment in silence. Then she said, ‘I meant to tell you before, but I forgot.’
‘What’s that?’
‘About Mrs Calthrop. I bumped into her again – well, she was walking past the Make-up Department … Anyway, we had a chat. I was telling her about Mum, and she was ever so nice, and then—’
‘Do you often tell people about Mum?’
‘No, but … I don’t know why I told her, really.’ Monica sounded embarrassed. ‘Anyway, she told me that she and her husband are … well, they’re divorcing. I wasn’t being nosy or anything, but she just said it, and … It was an odd conversation all round, really.’
‘Must have been,’ said Stratton. ‘I suppose that’s why she’s working at the studio.’
He wasn’t sure that he wanted to continue this conversation. Hearing about Diana Calthrop, especially from Monica, made him distinctly uncomfortable. An image of Diana as he’d first seen her came into his mind: the slender, glacial beauty, the gorgeous long legs, the expensive perfume … she’d exuded an air of exclusivity so strong that she might as well have had a label attached to her reading ‘Not for the likes of you …’ Although, of course, that was quite out of the question, him being married, and—
Oh, to hell with it. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said. ‘No sense in both of us freezing.’
‘Mrs Garland’ll be here in a minute,’ said Monica, as she bent down to bolt the back door behind them. To stop me running away, Stratton thought, with an inward shudder. Mrs Garland was the latest in the line of war widows who were very much, according to his sisters-in-law,
for
the likes of him, and was obviously about to be paraded before him as a potential wife. Unnervingly small, with kittenish blue eyes, her main tactic was, he remembered, to get him to talk about his work and pretend to be fascinated while he did so. It was a sort of game, he supposed, but not one that he felt like playing, especially with Doris and Lilian monitoring every word. He had hoped – obviously foolishly – that on Christmas Day he’d be safe from that sort of thing.
Monica straightened up. ‘Auntie Doris invited her for tea. Don’t look like that, Dad. She’s quite nice, really.’
‘I’m sure she’s delightful,’ said Stratton, who wasn’t sure of any such thing. ‘It’s the
reason
your aunt invited her that I’m not so keen on.’ Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous, he thought.
‘You should look on the bright side, Dad.’ Monica giggled. ‘It could be Miss Trew.’
‘Oh, very funny.’ Miss Trew was a tough old bird with iron hair and a kippered face who’d been in charge of the local Girl Guides for as long as anyone could remember. ‘Come on then, let’s get it over with …’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Monica rubbed her hands vigorously, trying to dry them on the thin towel that hung on the back of the scullery door. The fabric had barely any nap left to absorb moisture. All the towels in the house were like that. Unlike hard things, she didn’t categorise them as good or bad, friendly or unfriendly – they were simply worn out. The previous week, she’d gone into the dressing room of a visiting American star, who must have brought her own towels because they were thicker and fleecier than any she’d ever seen. She’d been sent in there to fetch something, but she’d lingered, touching them and marvelling at how luxurious they were – much more so than the ones they used in Make-up, which were scarcely better than the ones at home.