The Very Thought of You (12 page)

The auspices for their marriage had never been favourable, Thomas reflected. But as he turned out the lights and wheeled himself to their bedroom, he refused to lose hope, and accept that they had lost each other for good. Perhaps, with their work here together now, they might find each other again – over time.

Reaching their bedroom, he was relieved to find Elizabeth already asleep. He would try to reach out to her again in the morning.

15

In November there was a proper freeze at Ashton, and before any of the staff could forbid it, the more fearless children slid across the lake’s thick ice on wicker chairs. They had one day’s grace before the frozen lake was declared out of bounds.

Outside lessons, the evacuees spent hours wandering through the park, getting their shoes muddy. Anna enjoyed kicking through the leaves, but she did wonder how much longer she would be stranded in this place.

At one end of the games field stood a sombre oak tree struck by lighting, whose charred branches reached out towards the sky as if in prayer. The children often played tag there, but something about the tree’s stark shape always tugged at Anna, and made her quiet – until she could feel a pulse of homesickness inside.

Her next letter home was more subdued than usual.

When she read it, Roberta wondered whether she shouldn’t bring her daughter back home after all, while London was still safe. Every night she scanned the sky for bombers, and waited for apocalyptic air raids, but none came. The milk arrived, she went off to work, the BBC played music, and yet – London was a city on guard.

“The bombs
will
come,” warned the papers. Roberta reminded herself that her daughter’s letters were not actually
unhappy
; better perhaps to leave her where she was, she decided, as she ironed her blouse for the morning.

She missed her daughter every day. But she was, too, just beginning to enjoy the surprise taste of a different life. All of them were standing at their own crossroads now, and she felt the possible arrival of something new every time she walked down the street. Roberta was Galway-Irish by birth, and sometimes wondered if those shifting West-Coast skies hadn’t given her a clairvoyant streak, for she could sense things – pick up other people’s minds and moods. She could make rapid connections with strangers, just by divining what they were thinking, what they were feeling. She could persuade her friends to dance down the street, so vivid was she, so vital.

She had first arrived in Fulham as a child, after her widowed mother Iris found work nearby as a maid in alarge Chelsea house. Iris took care to teach her daughter poise and cheerfulness, and Roberta would sometimes join her to polish the parquet floors of the Wyndham family house in the Boltons.

She loved going there. The large sash windows opened onto half an acre of lawns and roses, and the airy reception rooms had the varnished glow of old paintings and antique furniture. a taste for fine things filtered through to Roberta. She always kept her fingernails clean, and her
hair neat, and her shoes polished. If she ever met guests, they looked at her in approval, she noticed. Because she had natural manners.

At twenty-two, she found work with a small family-run firm of furniture restorers in Fulham Broadway. She was good with her hands, and her experience at her mother’s side in the Boltons had given her a sure appreciation of antiques. The owner soon recognized her special social skills, and Roberta was quickly groomed to deal with customers. She would go to large houses and assess the job. Where work could be done on site, she would be dispatched to replace pieces of veneer or leather on old desks and tables, working alone in high-ceilinged rooms with fragile, priceless antiques.

From her first week at work, Roberta caught the eye of her boss’s son, Lewis. He was attracted by the way she believed in her own life; she had style and zest, and a passion for dancing. He took her to as many dances as she wanted, and danced as late as she wished. She looked into his eyes and saw his determined devotion: he was romantic enough to risk her rejection.

His emotional certainty won her over. She married him, and their child – Anna– arrived soon after. Roberta haemorrhaged badly at delivery and was advised that further pregnancies would be risky. But both parents were delighted with their daughter.

They moved into a small terraced house in Fulham, and Iris gave them a much-loved old piano as a present. Anna became the focus of Roberta’s hopes. She wanted to pass on to her daughter her spirit and verve. She taught her the piano, and danced down the street with her. More, she taught her joy. That was Roberta’s talent.

But now, with Anna and Lewis gone, Roberta’s talent for
happiness had no audience. Her working life continued, but felt like a spurious activity. What was the point of restoring furniture in houses which might soon be blasted to bits by German bombs?

For the moment, there were only false alarms. No planes, no raids, nothing but sandbags and empty streets and airraid drills. Blackout curtains and loneliness. Roberta lay on her bed and wrapped her legs around the sheets. She thought of her husband, with his neatly cut hair and his cautious gestures. She felt tenderness for him, and loyalty, and familial love. But little ardour. Her body was in full bloom now, and she couldn’t help longing for somebody new to enter her life – a passionate man, more spontaneous than Lewis.

In the morning she set off to Regent’s Park, to restore a table in one of the mansions there. She arrived at the colonnades of the Outer Circle, where the houses glowed with an eerie ivory sheen under an overcast sky.

She pulled the doorbell, and a housekeeper with remote eyes showed her to the drawing room. There was the table – walnut with inlaid brass. Years of sunlight through the long windows had warped the wood a little, and the brass detailing was sticking out of its grooves. There were a few edges of veneer missing too. Roberta set to work with her box of tools, her pliers, her glue and her wood pieces in many colours and sizes.

This vast house was so empty. Without any sound but a ticking clock and the occasional passing car. Roberta looked out onto Regent’s Park, the bandstand, the empty lawns, the unappreciated trees. The looking-glass lake, so still and passionless. She felt a pang of distance, as if everything was away, apart – her husband, her daughter, her own life.

I’m alone too much
, she told herself. She finished her job as soon as she could, eager to leave the silent house. Emerging onto the street, she avoided the park because it looked too melancholy without children, and headed instead down Park Crescent, towards Oxford Circus.

“Roberta!”

She turned to see Martha Cox, someone she had known back in her courting years at the local dance hall.

“I work just around the corner, at the BBC
–
the building that looks like an ocean liner,” Martha told her.

“What do you do there?”

“Sort the archives – their shelves are overflowing with recordings. But why don’t you join us? Another girl just left us for the Wrens.”

As she chattered on, Roberta’s heart leapt at the chance of doing something different, something somehow linked – however tenuously – to the war effort. Restoring tables in empty houses seemed altogether less valuable than sorting dance records for a deprived and grateful nation.

The women walked off, arm in arm, to the reception desk where Roberta was fixed up with an interview.

She hoped her father-in-law would understand; their firm had fewer and fewer job requests, after all. She had her own needs too, barely admitted even to herself.A part of her was longing for new excitement, and now this opportunity had arrived. Increasingly, she tingled with formless romantic hope. She found it hard not to look into the face of any man she met, in case she found a return. She did not want to threaten her marriage or home – but nevertheless, if she caught the glance of an interesting new stranger, she could never quite resist the thought of fresh eyes, fresh love.

16

When Anna next received a letter from her mother, she learnt that she had started war work now, a busy job at the BBC. “
So I’m afraid I won’t be able to visit you quite yet. But I was so glad to read your last letter, my darling. you are clearly so happy at Ashton Park…
”

Anna felt defated. She was longing to see her mother, yet now she could see nothing ahead of her but school for ever.

Perhaps it was this upset which made her reckless that weekend, because she joined up with Billy and euan, the boys who were always in trouble. They persuaded her to go stair-sliding with them. First they sneaked into the kitchen to find some tin trays, and then took them right to the top of the art-room stairs, which were lined with a tattered green carpet.

Billy was the first tray slider. Anna watched him hurtle downstairs – banging against the wall, then thrown off his tray at the bottom.

“It’s flun,” he cried, and raced upstairs again for another go.

“My turn—” said Anna, bracing herself and closing her eyes. Her ride was fast, bumpy, scary – and she lurched at the bottom. But she landed well, and the boys clapped when she stood up.

The three of them took it in turns, sliding faster each time. Euan, who never usually said much, took to whooping on his rides, and it was his cries which drew Miss Harrison to the staircase.

“
Will
you stop that at once—” She was furious, her face clenched and her eyes even more twitchy than usual. She stormed and spluttered at them about the danger, the broken legs and necks, then she marched them off to be punished.

Anna and the boys followed her in silence, dreading what was to come. But they were lucky: it was Mr Stewart’s day off, and so they were led to Mr Ashton’s study instead.

When they entered his room, he was behind his desk. He wheeled forwards to address them, looking at them carefully while they stood there in silence. His quietness put them all on edge: Annacould not tell how angry he was.

“I understand you have been playing a game – but a very dangerous game.”

“Yes, sir, we’re sorry,” said Billy, shouldering the blame.

Mr Ashton paused for A moment.

“It sounds inventive, so I can’t blame you for that,” he said, glancing away – but then he faced them directly, each of them in turn, and fixed them with his eyes. “But I would so hate any of you to injure yourselves. you
must
learn to take better care – you could have knocked yourselves out. Now you must promise me not to do anything like this again, for your own sakes.”

Annafelt herself relaxing: he wasn’t angry, just worried.

“We promise, sir,” she blurted out. He nodded at her.

“Is that what happened to you, sir?” euan’s question sprang out so suddenly, Anna could hardly believe what he had said. “I mean, was it… an accident, sir?” he went on, scrabbling for words, gesturing at the wheelchair.

“No. No, I didn’t have an accident as such,” said Thomas, slightly taken aback. “I fell ill on aholiday. Just bad luck. that happens too, I’m afraid,” he added, with the shadow of a smile.

Silence.

“Off you go then, but please be careful from now on,” said Thomas, and the children turned to go.

Closing the door behind them, Anna was relieved to be released, and yet stricken by Mr Ashton’s words. a holiday illness?

17

Thomas was shaken by the boy’s question.

“One of the boys asked about my wheelchair today,” he volunteered to Elizabeth at dinner.

“that was bold. Was he rude?”

“No, just curious.”

“What did you tell him?”

He paused.

“I just said that I had fallen ill on holiday.”

Elizabeth felt her eyes welling, and she touched Thomas’s hand.

“Don’t worry, my darling,” he said to her, and for Amoment they were gentle with each other.

It was some time since either of them had mentioned Thomas’s disability. But their holiday to Bruges in the summer of 1931 still remained vividly present in their minds.

It had begun as asimple treat for Elizabeth. Thomas had been working too hard at the office, and wanted to spoil his wife with ashort trip abroad.

They had arrived in Bruges in the last week of August, when the town was torrid with heat. The picturesque streets were narrow, close, cobbled, with astonishing spires stretching upwards from hidden alleys. Through tall heavy doors they had entered the famous churches, marvelling at the expanse of space within buildings that appeared so compact from the outside. The high stone interiors were vaulted and bright, with white northern light falling onto the carved pillars and polished floors. All sound was muffed, and they felt solemn, heightened.

“How beautiful she is,” Thomas kept telling himself as he watched Elizabeth in the fltered church light. The auburn glow of her hair was enhanced, and he saw in her face the delicate ivory of medieval art.

Afterwards they walked out into the close, muggy streets, which were teeming now with summer visitors. a threat hung in the air, of storms to come, of menacing pressure.

They took a boat ride to cool themselves, but the canals were stagnant and fy-blown, and brought no relief. It was as Thomas trailed his fingers through the water that he first noticed an irritation in his throat – just ascratch.

On their second day they sought refluge from the heat in art galleries. They spent hours looking into the exquisite blue vistas of hans Memlinc’s paintings, serene Madonnas with feudal felds glimpsed behind. The pictures were so detailed, so crystalline, that they took on a dreamlike air. The strange blue views seemed to wash over Thomas, and his mind started to detach itself, drifting into asubaqueous world of vibrant colour and line and texture. He thought he could feel the silken folds of the Madonna’s cloak. Walking on the cool stone floor of the gallery, his footsteps rang out like distant bells in his head.

“Is everything all right?” Elizabeth asked him.

“Just acold coming on,” he said, clearing his throat.

By the evening, his throat was sorely infamed, and in the early hours of the morning he lay semi-delirious with fever. adoctor was called to their hotel room, and his expression soon became grave.