Marking Time (71 page)

On duty that night, Angela, among her other tasks, spent her shift reading the hourly news bulletins from which more and more information about the Pearl Harbor attack emerged.
Five battleships seriously damaged, over two thousand dead, two hundred aircraft destroyed. There had also been attacks upon the American base in the Philippines and two islands in the Pacific.
Japan had declared war upon the United States and Britain. It seemed very odd to sit alone in the tiny room with the heavy glass panel separating her from the JPEs so that they could not speak to
one another, and to read aloud these violent and distant events in much the same calm and professional manner that she would have used to announce an increase in the price of potatoes. In between,
when she was not logging the records played or announcing them – when, in fact, there was a concert running that gave her some free time – she made lists of all kinds of things.
Qualities that she thought most important in men: ‘honesty,’ she put; ‘kindness. Straightforwardness,’ (but that was like honesty). ‘Loving,’ she put. Then she
made a list of what she wanted most in her life. ‘A more interesting job. Travelling. Someone to love.’ Then she got stuck. She thought of a list of what she wanted for Christmas, but
nearly everything was unavailable; things she wanted to happen next year. ‘The war to be over.’ Fat chance of that: it was simply getting to be a bigger and bigger war; it would be all
over China and Africa and India soon – like a plague. Perhaps people whom she might love and who might love her, whom she had never known, were being killed at this minute. Everything she
thought of – even different kinds of lists – always seemed to come back to the same thing. It’s all I want, she thought sadly. I don’t want anything else.

Christopher lay on his narrow camp bed in the attic with Oliver using up most of the space. If he tried to move, Oliver gave a deep sigh and shifted his bulk as though he was
giving way to Christopher, but he always ended up by taking more of the bed. Tonight, however, Christopher wasn’t noticing Oliver as much as usual. The news had appalled him. The behaviour of
the Japanese had not only shocked him, it had brought up new and distinctly alarming questions of conscience. How would
he
feel, as an American, if this had happened? People who could
attack in that way were capable of anything. So, if he was an American, would he not feel that he should rush to defend his country from more of the same thing? More than that: did he need to be an
American to feel that? He had been against war because he didn’t want anyone to kill anyone else, but the fact was that that was what they were doing. Perhaps one could not adopt a superior
attitude to nearly everyone else while at least a number of them, who also disapproved, were mucking in and doing the dirty work. In all his conflicts and misery during the last year or so it had
never once occurred to him that he might be wrong – not wrong in an intellectual sense, but wrong to separate himself from his own species. He thought now of his father’s jibes; at the
way the other youths levelling the runway where he had been for so many weary months had scoffed, and argued with him and eventually left him alone, so that sometimes days passed when nobody spoke
to him except his sour-faced landlady with some complaint. She had cheated about his rations, taking his book and giving him bread and marge for breakfast, so that practically all of what he earned
went on sandwiches in the only pub within reach of work. Through all that he had sustained himself with being
right
– which, of course, had meant that practically
all
the
others were wrong. But now, as he thought of all those sailors who had not been fighting but had simply been suddenly bombed to death, he began to feel that even if he
had
been right, it
was wrong to be right in that kind of way. It implied a kind of moral superiority that he secretly knew now did not belong to his nature. Look at how he had fought Teddy years ago when Teddy had
wanted to join the camp he had made in the wood. And if he was no better than anyone else, he had no business behaving as though he was.

After the really bad time – when that landlady had turned him out of the house without warning because she claimed to have been told he was a nancy boy, and he had said it was nonsense
because it was, she’d said, ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ and he felt he had to say yes. That had been
it
. She’d summoned her husband out and he’d sort of
elbowed him out and down the steps into the street. He hadn’t even fetched his things. It had been very cold and it must have been Friday because he had money. He’d gone to a pub and
drunk two whiskies to stop him shaking. Then he’d walked – he had a vague notion of catching a train and he must have caught one but he couldn’t remember anything more at all
– until two men in uniform, wearing armbands, were shaking him on a bench by the sea, and asking him a whole lot of questions he simply couldn’t answer, and each time they asked a
question, he went on finding out more things that he didn’t know. He knew he was alive because he was frightened of the men, and something else that lurked just out of the reach of his mind.
They kept asking very strange things about regiments and leave and stations, and also much less strange things like what was his name, but he didn’t seem to have one, or at least he
couldn’t remember it then. They took him off and shut him in a very small room. Someone brought him a cup of tea – the first kind thing that happened, it seemed to him, in this new life
where he wasn’t anyone. He’d started to cry and then he couldn’t stop. He didn’t
want
to be anybody at all; he wanted just to pass out, stop, not feel anything.
Then he was in a hospital, and they told him who he was, and it was no better knowing. His parents came and the fear that had seemed out of reach was suddenly all around him. They’d given him
the electric shock treatments. The first time hadn’t been so bad, because he hadn’t known what they were going to do when they strapped him down on the high table. He’d come round
after the first time with a splitting headache, but also a great sense of relief. But he had begun to dread the shocks. In between them, lying on his bed, he’d still felt anonymous and
utterly alone – and once the line from a song came into his mind: ‘I care for nobody, no, not I, and nobody cares for me.’ How could anyone
sing
that? It must mean that
they didn’t know what it felt like.

Home Place, which he had thought of with faint interest, had seemed no good at first. People were kind, but kindness made him cry. Then Oliver. Oliver accepted him without caring who the hell he
was or what he’d done or not done. Oliver had been through a bad time; he whimpered in his sleep and sometimes growled, but he trusted Christopher from the first moment they met. He put out
his fingers now to stroke him, and Oliver twisted his head and thrust a long, cold nose into his hand. Polly would look after him if I joined up, he thought, as the awfulness of having to leave
Oliver started in his mind. I suppose everyone has to leave someone they love in a war. I shall be just the same as everyone else.

Hugh made love to Sybil that evening – something they hadn’t done for a very long time. They had a long, tender, gentle time of it, and afterwards, lying in his
arms, she said, ‘My darling Hugh. I’m so happy loving you so much. Aren’t we lucky?’

And almost before he had time to say, yes, they were, she had slipped into sleep.

‘I think he only kissed mine out of politeness, because he’d kissed yours.’

‘No, Poll, he thought you were beautiful. Besides, you’ve got the right kind of hands for kissing; mine must be one of those hazards that I suppose Frenchmen have to face.’ She
held out her rough, nail-bitten hand critically. ‘I should think I’d better not marry a Frenchman.’

‘If you marry one, they’d kiss you in other places, silly. It’s only strangers’ hands they kiss, instead of shaking them.’

They were in the bathroom at Home Place, cleaning their teeth and washing before repairing to the squash court. Clary, sitting on the side of the bath, said, ‘I’ve got a
headache.’

‘It’s the excitement. Have an aspirin. I won’t tell the Duchy.’ She looked in the bathroom cupboard but there weren’t any. ‘I’ll get one from
Mummy’s room.’

But she came back a minute or two later and said, ‘Sorry, Clary. The light’s out and there’s not a sound. They must have gone to sleep.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I expect the cold air will make me better. Anyway, I don’t mind. I don’t mind anything.’ She put her hand in her jacket pocket, and Polly knew
she was touching the piece of paper.

‘Clary, I want to tell you something. I didn’t want to talk about it before, because you were so worried. I didn’t want to make it worse.’

‘What?’

‘Well, in the autumn, and quite a bit of this winter, I thought Mum was dying—’

‘Poll! Did you? Why did you think that?’

‘Well, I sort of overheard Dad and Aunt Villy, and that’s what it sounded like. It was so awful! You see, Dad didn’t know what I’d heard, and he didn’t tell
me
. People
ought
to tell you really important things like that, oughtn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Clary said slowly, ‘they always should. As a matter of fact, I got pretty worried about her too. I didn’t
hear
anything,’ she added hastily,
‘it was just that she seemed so awfully ill, and getting worse, not better. But she has now.’

‘Yes, thank goodness.’

‘You should have told me, Poll. After all, I’m your best friend. Aren’t
I
?’

‘Of course you are, but you didn’t tell me.’

‘I see what you mean. There’s a sort of trap, isn’t there? You don’t tell people things out of love. But actually, I think, the more you love people, the more you should
tell them – even the difficult things. I think it is the best sign of love to tell them.’ She put her arms round Polly. ‘You’re never to bear things by yourself.
Promise!’

‘OK. You promise as well,’ said Polly.

‘I do. Any not telling is a sign of not love.’

And Polly answered in the Duchy’s voice ‘I
do
agree, my dear.’