Authors: Maggie Ford
‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny said as he paused.
‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ he went on. ‘After the divorce I began thinking about you again, wondering if you’d got married. I found out the hospital you’re working in and that you were still single, and I thought there might still be a chance for you and me to, well, perhaps pick up where we’d left off. The war’s over. Things are different now. Settled. I just hoped you might feel, well, perhaps a bit more ready to … well, us to, you know, start going out together again.’
So there had been a method in his coming here.
They had gone some distance when the first tiny droplet of rain made itself felt on the back of her hand. Jenny welcomed it with a stab of utter relief.
‘It’s started to rain. I’d best be getting back,’ she said just a little too enthusiastically. She turned to him. ‘Ronald, there is someone, you see. I’m going out with someone.’
It wasn’t exactly an untruth, was it? She and Matthew. Friends. Not lovers. No proposal. But there was always hope. ‘We’re more or less going steady,’ she said.
Working the rest of the week, there had been no chance to see Matthew. Most of the time, Jenny’s mind was centred on Ronald Whittaker and the heartbreaking disappointment that had showed on his face when she had lied to him. Yes, it had been a lie – Matthew no more wanted her than he’d wanted his divorce. She found herself dreading her next evening off duty when she would have to pop over to see him, imagining his off-handed greeting. But she couldn’t avoid going. They were friends.
She’d been so sorry for Ronald as he walked her back to her gate that she had leaned towards him and given his cheek a brief consoling peck, purely on impulse. He had read its message clear enough. He had taken her by surprise in catching her to him in a gentle hug. Not knowing how to break away and further hurt his feelings, she had stood thus in an embrace, half her mind thinking unkindly that the rain was getting heavier. He must have felt her tense. When he let her go, he smiled at her, such a sad smile.
‘For old times’ sake,’ he’d murmured, then, ‘Be happy, Jenny.’
With that he had walked away, leaving her standing there with tears misting her eyes, beginning to trickle down her cheeks, the spots of rain splashing them away.
She’d felt, still felt, oddly empty after his going. It created a strange sensation knowing he had walked into her life again, briefly, and as quickly walked out of it, leaving behind reawakened memories of that part of her life which felt as though it had never happened. She wondered what his world would be like, what he would do, who he would meet eventually to continue his life with? She would never know.
‘Oh, Jenny, come in. I’m so glad to see you.’
Mrs Ward’s expression was at once relieved and concerned. She had become a different woman lately. Jenny could almost read her mind, an ability few were privileged to possess. It invariably registered optimism whenever Mrs Ward’s eyes fell upon her. It said: My future daughter-in-law, please God, as surely as if spoken aloud. This evening however, concern overrode the pleasure of seeing her as she bade Jenny to come in.
The evening was proving a busy one. For the first time since the war ended, Guy Fawkes Night was being wholeheartedly celebrated, the puny explosion of fireworks no longer conjuring recollections of wartime bombing raids.
Further down the road on a cleared-up bombsite, children had a large bonfire going. The stink of burning wood, rubber and old furniture and the acrid tang of saltpetre hung in the air. But Jenny no longer noted it, the look on Mrs Ward’s face alarming her.
‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked as she was let in.
Mrs Ward lowered her voice, hovering with her in the spacious hallway. ‘It’s Matthew. Perhaps you can do something with him. He’s hardly spoken two words to us and then only to snap at us. Even his father’s becoming angry with him, and his father is normally a mild-mannered, understanding man. Neither of us know what to do with him.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Jenny whispered back in the same conspiratorial undertone.
‘We just don’t know. He won’t tell us. If we ask, he just snaps at us, tells us to mind our own B. business.’ Mrs Ward never swore, not even in quoting. She loathed the mildest epithet in her hearing, much less her home. Jenny smiled to herself. She’d heard some ripe ones from Matthew before now; had heard some even riper ones from soldiers wounded and in pain. Mrs Ward should have been a nurse. That would have broadened her mind.
Jenny’s smile, a tiny one that Mrs Ward hadn’t even noticed though the hallway was brightly lit, vanished as fast as it had come and she turned her thoughts to what she was telling her.
‘He’s in his room. He must have seen you coming up the path. But he hasn’t even come down. I just don’t know what’s wrong with him.’
Jenny followed her into the lounge, returning Mr Ward’s nod of welcome. He sat in an armchair by a low fire lit against the growing autumn damp, though it was not cold enough yet to warrant a larger blaze. He had been reading an evening paper, now folded on his knees. At Jenny’s entrance he half rose then sat back down again. With a regular visitor, there was no call to stand on ceremony. His whole mien held a defeated look about it.
‘Park yourself, Jenny,’ he muttered, his terminology so like his son’s, a breath of fresh air compared with his wife’s self-conscious articulation.
‘Is Matthew coming down?’ Jenny asked as she sat herself on the sofa. It was him she had come to see, not his parents. The room had an odd atmosphere to it without him, almost as though he no longer lived here. She felt uncomfortable, an interloper.
‘Hope so,’ his father returned. ‘Call him, Lilian, say Jenny’s here.’
‘He knows she’s here,’ she snapped.
‘Then tell him again,’ he snapped back.
It was unlike him. Jenny could sense the tension, the anger, the bewilderment that resided here, a tendency to bicker at the slightest provocation, something they’d never have done under normal circumstances. Yes, Matthew since returning home had been hard to deal with, the careless and debonair youth gone for good, in his place an embittered man tormented by evil memories. He was bound to be edgy and perverse. But not like this.
Jenny heard his mother call up but there was no reply. ‘Should I try?’ she said awkwardly as Mrs Ward came back into the room, her face tight with annoyance and embarrassment.
‘You can if you like. Try knocking on his door.’ It was a privilege Mrs Ward allowed no caller; to explore her upper floors was not their business. There was a significance in this acceptance. ‘I think he might talk to you, tell you what the matter is with him.’
The newspaper rustled on Mr Ward’s knees. ‘You being a nurse, Jenny. If you can’t pull him round, who can?’
What could she say? She nodded and got up from the sofa, wishing she was indeed wearing her uniform. It would make this confrontation with him official. Again perhaps not – it might drive him further away with whatever was worrying him. It had to be something dire. She couldn’t think what.
Leaving them in the lounge she mounted the stairs and tapped lightly on the door his mother had indicated. His voice came muffled.
‘It’s open. We don’t have keys to bedrooms in this house.’
Tentatively she pushed the door and came in, taking care to close it behind her, a signal that no one else would be an audience to whatever he said to her.
He was standing at the window gazing out, his back to her. With the light on and the curtains open, neither the lamplit road nor its lurid bonfire further down nor the flash of fireworks penetrated. Yet he seemed mesmerised by what was going on outside. Above that faint infiltration of wood smoke peculiar to Guy Fawkes celebrations, the room smelled slightly of cigarette smoke and she noted a nearly empty packet of cigarettes on the bedside cabinet next to a saucer acting as an ashtray with several butts in it. Jenny doubted whether there were any actual ashtrays in the whole house.
He shouldn’t have been smoking; hadn’t done so at least since his illness; it was detrimental to anyone recently recovered from such a condition. It spoke of rebellion, but what rebellion? She ignored the packet and sat on the foot of his bed looking at him across this rather spacious bedroom. Only the main bedroom in her house was nearly as large as this one. Hers was much smaller and the box room was exactly what it sounded like, a box room.
‘Your mother said I could come up,’ she began.
He didn’t respond. He hadn’t turned round to look at her at all. No use sitting here looking at someone’s back. She might as well get up and go. His back had a very straight look to it. He did look very tall standing there, but not so painfully thin as he had been. He had put on a little weight at last and his shoulders seemed to have broadened again. Seeing them, she felt a thrill of love pass through her. She got up and went across to him.
‘Matthew,’ she whispered. She touched his shoulder, surprised and alarmed to have him shrug the shoulder away from her as though stung.
‘Good God, Matthew, what is the matter?’ The profile of his face in the light from the street lamps seemed chiselled in granite, exactly as his mother’s sometimes appeared when in a dilemma.
There was nothing for it but to force him to turn away from the window where he seemed to be staring out, not at the celebrating children and the lingering parents, but at something entirely disconnected from them. The look he gave her on being turned to face her was no different, as though it were not she but someone else who stood there. Then he blinked, seemed to come back to himself, recognise who it was standing beside him.
‘Jenny … Jenny … I don’t want it to happen to me again. I don’t want to be in love with someone and find they don’t want me.’
So he was frightened of ever falling in love again. A sense of deadness began to grow inside her. He had made up his mind and was letting her down gently. There was a strange expression in his dark eyes, so dark they seemed to have buried themselves in the depths of his skull. There was a look on his face she couldn’t understand. A silent request for her to leave, she guessed. He seemed in pain, his brows drawn together, his lips twisted.
‘So if he’s the one you really want.’
What was he talking about? ‘Who?’ she interrupted weakly.
‘The chap you were out with last week.’
Oh, God, Ronald Whittaker. Matthew had seen them together, must have watched them come back, watched their embrace. It was imperative to explain. She started to but he wasn’t listening, was still talking.
‘I don’t blame you, Jenny. What’ve I got to offer someone like you?’
‘It’s not like that, Matthew,’ she blurted, but he still wasn’t listening.
‘I don’t love you, Jenny, I just felt – watching you … I don’t love you. You don’t have to feel bound to me if there’s someone else. I don’t love you, you know. I really don’t …’
Her heart plummeted in shock and misery. He stopped suddenly, his expression like one of desperation. It confused her. It also dawned on her that he was denying just too vehemently this love he was supposed not to have for her. What was it Shakespeare wrote? ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ Matthew too was protesting too much. He did love her.
From its downward flight, her heart was lifting up, a soaring bird within her breast.
‘Oh, darling, it was someone I knew years ago. He came looking for me. I told him I felt nothing for him. And I don’t. It was over long ago. He’s married.’ The lie tripped easily off her tongue. All she wanted was to hear Matthew translate into words that which was contorting his features. But she must be the one to say it, she knew. She didn’t hesitate a single second.
‘The only person I love is you, Matthew. It’s always been you.’
She saw his brow clear, his eyes become brighter, his lips lose their tightness to quiver and part in a disbelieving, hesitant smile. Seconds later she was in his arms, hearing him whispering fiercely to her.
‘You don’t know how I felt seeing you, down there with someone else. You’ll never know. That feeling of jealousy, like a huge black insect inside me, I wanted to tear it out. That was when …’ A small ragged laugh, hardly a laugh at all but a sound, escaped him. ‘That’s when I knew. For the first time, I really knew.’
He didn’t have to say it. She knew as well. All these years. All these wasted years. They were over. From now on she and Matthew would be able to look forward. There’d be times, of course, when sullenness overwhelmed him, old memories, old regrets maybe, the empty years of want raising their ugly heads in a dream, an unguarded moment. But she would be silent or encouraging, whichever his mood called for. There would also be the happy times, the loving moments, the quiet times.
‘I love you,’ she murmured, for the pair of them.
She felt him nod against her cheek before he kissed her, and knew he felt the same way about her. And it didn’t matter that he did not put it into words.
Beyond the window a firework exploded in a protracted series of crackling – a jumping cracker. Perhaps in a little while she would suggest they take Mattie outside to see the fun. It would be Mattie’s first time. She might be a little scared, but with a packet of hand-held sparklers Mattie could be gently coaxed into holding one to watch their fairy-like corona of sparks darting out like stars. This would soon inure her to the noise and the gleeful shouts as sky rockets whooshed up into the dark heavens.
It was in triumph that she and Matthew came downstairs and into the room where his parents waited in tense vigilance. It felt wonderful to witness their utter delight in seeing the smile on his face, his arm about her.
‘We’re taking Mattie out to see the fireworks,’ he said simply, and for once his mother did not upbraid him for not calling his daughter Matilda.
Matilda sat half asleep in one of the armchairs, a little unnerved by the bangs and cracks outside. Jenny hadn’t noticed her in the fraught moments earlier on, but now she was roused, still sleepy, and had her coat and hat put on her while Jenny made off down to a shop in Mare Street to buy the packet of sparklers. On the way she stopped off to tell her mother her news that Matthew had declared he loved her. Well, declared as much as he dared.