Marking Time (39 page)

‘You
walked?
’

‘I took a bus part of the way.’

‘My dear one, you’re incorrigible! I’ve put on the immersion heater. Would a hot bath be the ticket?’

‘A hot cup of tea is what I crave more than anything in the world.’

‘A cup of tea you shall have.’

She followed Sid down the dark little flight of stairs that led to the semi-basement where there was a kitchen, a larder, a pantry, a wine cellar and a WC. Everything was very clean, but there
were great cracks in the kitchen walls, the green paint on them had split and was peeling, and the linoleum was worn through to the flagstones in places. Sid switched on the light, essential in
this room whose heavily barred windows were further barricaded by a black brick wall. It was a Victorian kitchen uneasily adapted to modern life.

Rachel said, ‘I must go to your lav.’

‘The one down here
is
working: I had it mended last week. Do you want any toast or anything like that?’

‘Just tea.’

And then a bath, Sid thought, as she filled the kettle. She thought of Rachel in a bath with the kind of tender anguish that had become so familiar and yet still astonished her. And if
she’d taken a cab we would have had another hour together, she also thought, as she warmed the pot. But considering that they had a whole weekend – until Sunday evening when she would
be on duty again – and Rachel had consented to take the plunge of staying in London with her instead of going back to Sussex . . .

‘Did you find out what was on at the Academy?’

‘
La Femme du Boulanger
.’

‘Oh! Let’s go!’

‘You’re really not too tired?’

‘Heavens, no! This is our treat. We could have supper out.’

‘That would be wise. You know my cooking. Let’s drink this upstairs: it’s more cosy.’

‘I’ll carry the tray.’

‘You will not! You may turn off the light for me.’

They went upstairs to the little sitting room, which was crowded by the old Bechstein grand, and sat in the two armchairs with pieces of old flowered linen on the arms to hide the threadbare
upholstery. Sid poured out the tea and produced Rachel’s favourite brand of Egyptian cigarettes.

‘You are clever! Where did you get them from?’

‘Found them in a shop in Soho.’ She did not mention the exhaustive search this had entailed.

‘Wonderful. I must say I miss them. Passing Clouds are not at all the same.’

They smoked and looked at each other with small, excited smiles, and exchanged desultory pieces of news of a kind that did not interfere with their intense happiness at being together –
and alone. Sid produced a half-bottle of gin and the dregs of a bottle of Dubonnet that had been in the house for years, and they drank. Rachel told Sid about the photograph which of course Sid
immediately wanted to see. She gazed a long time at the ravishing picture of Rachel – her hair piled on top of her head, her white high-necked blouse and neatly belted long dark skirt and
face that looked out with an expression both so innocent and so frank that she had to resort to a kind of levity to conceal how much it moved her.

‘My word, you were a tearing beauty!’ she said.

‘Nonsense!’

‘Of course, still are.’ But this did not go down well either. Rachel’s utter lack of vanity and unselfconsciousness about her appearance became disturbed by any reference to
it. Like her mother, Sid thought, their beauty had to remain silently in the eye of the beholder. Now she had gone faintly pink and was screwing up her eyes with little frowns of disapproval and
embarrassment.

‘Darling, I don’t love you for your appearance,’ she said now, ‘although I might be forgiven if I did.’

Rachel was wrapping up the picture again.

Sid said, ‘I suppose I couldn’t have a copy?’

‘I’m sure the negative is lost. The Brig took so many, and the Duchy cleared out a lot of stuff like that when we moved to London. I got it for poor little Clary. She is so deeply
unhappy about her father.’

‘No news at all?’

‘None. Honestly, Sid, I’ve given up hope. I think even the Duchy has, at last.’

‘But Clary hasn’t?’

‘I don’t think so. She doesn’t talk about him so much, but she never talks about him as though – as though . . .’ Her words trailed away and there was a silence.
Then, her voice high and trembling, she said, ‘It must be happening to so many people! So
much
grief and shock and agonised patience and dying hopes! Sometimes I think we are
mad
! What good will it all do?’

‘What evil may it avert?’

‘Oh,
Sid
! I find that hard to believe. That it could all possibly be much worse!’

‘I know you do. It’s easier for me to believe that.’

‘Why is it?’

Sid said steadily, ‘I don’t have anything to lose.
You
will not have to go to war. So. I don’t have anything to lose.’

But she realised that Rachel did not, or did not want to, understand her and dropped the subject.

They drove, in Sid’s dirty old Morris, to Oxford Street and saw their film and then dined at McWhirter’s, a basement restaurant of a block of flats in Abbey Road – tomato soup
and poached cod – and Sid told Rachel about the ambulance station (she was now a driver). Rachel, an excellent listener, loved hearing about the people who worked there: ‘. . . an
ex-chiropodist – well, I suppose everyone is ex really, excepting our taxi driver with flat feet. He’s invaluable, but of course he hardly has to use his “knowledge”, as he
calls it, because we only operate in one district. Then there’s a gym teacher who terrifies the nurses she drives because she so enjoys going through red lights and driving on the wrong side
of the road—’

‘How do you know he has flat feet?’

‘He tells everybody. He wanted to join up and they wouldn’t have him. He never stops complaining about it. Then we have a pacifist who gets drunk, God knows what on, and tells us all
the ghastly things he’d like to do to “warmongers” which, we feel, includes all of us. This is during the interminable evenings when we all drink tea – well, all of us
excepting him.’

‘It all sounds rather fun,’ Rachel said; there was an element of wistfulness in her voice. She had never learned to drive or had a real job.

‘Most of the time it is extremely boring. Nothing happens. Of course, we do have the odd case of appendicitis or strokes or heart attacks, but the regular lot see to most of that.
We’re sort of emergency extra, and so far, there hasn’t been an emergency.’

‘Thank God.’

‘I know. Shall we go home? I can make a much better coffee than they’ll give us here.’

As she pushed in her latchkey to open the front door, she thought this was how it ought always to be. She and Rachel going home together. When they had shut the door, she felt for the light
switch, then changed her mind, and put her arms round Rachel, who returned her embrace. They kissed. Rachel said, ‘It was a lovely evening.’

‘
Wasn’t
it! Exactly the right kind of film. I wonder why films as touching and funny and charming as that are always French?’

‘I always enjoy everything I do with you.’

A little nugget to store away, Sid thought, as she turned on the light.

She made the coffee and they drank it sitting on the battered chairs in front of the ancient gas fire that Sid lit. Then she remembered that there was a little cherry brandy left, which had been
given to Evie as a present, but it had not agreed with her, ‘So we may finish it with impunity.’

They had said all that needed to be said about Evie earlier on: she was away, working for a pianist of international renown and seemed to enjoy her position. It was wonderful, Sid said, not to
have to worry about her. Much later, and having finished the cherry brandy (there was more there than Sid had thought), they began their favourite conversation about what they would do after the
war: a long holiday – but where? Sid was in favour of Italy, if it was practicable; Rachel inclined towards Scotland where she had never been. It was midnight before they retired.

When Sid had installed Rachel in Evie’s room, which was actually far the nicest of the two bedrooms, and had left her to unpack and bath, she went down to make her a hot-water bottle. She
was aware of a faint tension that had sprung up between them – almost occurring on the climb upstairs. She knew why
she
felt tense: she had stayed many times now at Home Place, and
occasionally even in Rachel’s room – in separate beds – if the house was full, and they had fallen into the habit of her lying in bed with Rachel for a short, sweet, and usually
agonising time, when, with Rachel settled in the crook of her arm, she was unable not to imagine further intimate delight. But this was the first time that they had spent a night in a house alone
together, where they need not think of other people. This should have made for greater ease, but did not: it simply highlighted the disparity of feeling between them. To Sid, it somehow implied a
dishonesty in Rachel; if, in the other circumstances, Rachel had always worried about other people and what they might feel or think, what could she say now, when there were no people? But, of
course, she also knew that that was not the point at all. Rachel had (unwittingly) made it painfully clear that any kind of sexual intimacy revolted her. It is I who am dishonest, she thought; how
often, how many thousands of times had she told herself that she had conquered those feelings, that they were useless and possibly worse, since if divulged they would almost certainly drive Rachel
away, and then she would have nothing? But tonight, the first opportunity that had ever arisen in their lives together, she knew that she had not overcome anything at all. When Rachel was absent,
she could simply long for her presence; when she was present, she longed for her responsive body.

She struggled with this hopeless dilemma as she went upstairs again, but when she arrived at Rachel’s room, could not resist saying: ‘As you will not have your love to keep you warm,
here is a hot-water bottle.’

‘Sid!’ She had undressed and stood in her petticoat, sponge bag in hand. ‘
Sid!
What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing at all. Let me get you a dressing gown – you’ll be cold.’

‘That would be angelic: there wasn’t room in this case for mine.’ She followed Sid to her far smaller bedroom and received the old plaid man’s dressing gown, thrust
tenderly round her shoulders. The bath was running and thin clouds of steam had reached the passage.

Rachel said, ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to come and talk to me in bed?’

‘You have your bath. Of course I am.’

Rachel fell asleep quite soon after her bath, relaxed, her head upon Sid’s shoulder.

‘. . . wouldn’t it, my darling?’ Sid was saying, and then, looking down, she saw that there would be no reply. She lay, hopelessly awake until the luminous dial on
Rachel’s travelling clock said half past two, and then, knowing that if she had no sleep she would spoil the next day, she gently disentangled herself and went to her own bed where sleep
continued to elude her.

On the Saturday afternoon there was to be a tennis tournament in which all the children, down to Neville and Lydia, were allowed to take part. It had been organised by Edward
and Hugh. Lots had been drawn for partners and each match was the best of three games. They had been playing since two o’clock, beginning with a children’s match. ‘The little
beggars just get stoked up by food,’ Edward had said, and Neville, playing with Simon, had been beaten by Clary and Polly. ‘I loathe tennis, anyway,’ he had said, scarlet with
distress, ‘and if I hadn’t had to play with Simon who kept hitting all the balls out, I would probably have won.’

‘You would not,’ Simon said, whose disappointment was if anything more intense. ‘You didn’t hit the balls at all. You simply missed them. I can’t think why you
entered the tournament.’

‘You must learn to lose politely,’ Clary scolded Neville.

‘Why should I? I’m not going to spend my life losing things. Either I shall win everything I go in for, or I shan’t do the thing.’

‘
Someone
has to lose, Neville,’ Lydia said maddeningly.

‘There are lots of people to do that. I’m just not going to be one of them.’

‘Well, you two can be ball boys.’

‘Oh, thanks
very much
.’

‘That will do, Simon,’ Villy said sharply.

‘In any case, all teams are to get two chances,’ Edward said. ‘It was pretty bad luck on Simon drawing Neville,’ he added to Villy.

‘Anyway, nobody is to spoil a lovely afternoon,’ somebody else said, and the next match began.

It was an exceptionally beautiful afternoon: mellow, balmy and sunlit, the sky above a pale but piercing blue, the sun just hot enough for the spectators to watch in comfort, but not too hot for
the players. Zoë brought Juliet in her pram, and Hugh had Wills struggling off and on his knee. The Duchy came and went with her trugful of dead heads; only the Brig was absent, working in his
study with Miss Milliment. Jessica, who was a poor player, was teamed with Christopher: they lost their first match. By four o’clock everyone was very thirsty, and the Duchy had tea brought
out to the terrace above the tennis court.