The Very Thought of You (21 page)

And yet when he half-awoke in the morning he still dreamt that he was holding her and his heart soared with quiet bliss.

He was in despair but it was not true despair, he told himself; that came only with no hope, no meaning, nothing. He could still think about Ruth even if he could not be close to her. He tried to appreciate her from a distance, without any need to have her for himself.
How can you feel the loss of someone you have never possessed?
He wrote this in the margins of a book, trying to reason with himself, to temper his longing.

Sometimes he would indulge in safe fantasies of making love to Ruth, holding her tenderly, stroking her inner thigh, kissing her eyes, his tongue in her furrow – knowing all the while that it was only a dream. But he grew anxious, too, that he was toppling into delusion, a lunatic shadowland more vivid than the facts of his daily life without her.

Day and night he saw her face, and he shook whenever she came near, and he watched to see if she gave any flicker of response, any pity for his distress. But she always seemed distant. Was it shyness? Was it indifference? Could it even be secret love, as he sometimes hoped? He endlessly replayed their conversations in his head, sifting through everything she had ever said, straining to find any innuendo in even the most innocent of remarks.

He wanted above all to look into her eyes, and find an answering longing there. He wanted to reach out and touch her with infinite care. Perhaps it would be possible—

Until the thought came crashing back to him, as it always did, that a young woman like her could never be attracted to a married man of forty in a wheelchair. How could she ever want him? He felt pricked with jealousy by the unknown men in her life. In his darker hours, he imagined her writing loving letters to some imaginary army officer.

But for all that, his hope still refused to die away. He told himself that he must be patient. He had to wait for the spring, and longer days, when he could revive the poetry class, and she might push him there again. With the passage of time, the intimacy they had built up before could be rekindled. Sooner or later, he would know what she felt.

32

There was a night in the spring of 1941 when the bombing in London was so loud and insistent that Roberta could barely sleep. By daybreak she had given up any hope of dozing off again, so she decided to leave her cellar and walk to work early.

She made her way through Olympia and Kensington, unnaturally silent at that hour. Several buildings were turned inside out, their rooms exposed to the curious gaze of the outside world. She saw an iron bath stranded three floors up, held aloft by chaotically twisted pipes. There were staircases leading nowhere, and shreds of rose-print wallpaper flapping in the breeze. Charred joists littered the pavements, and crushed glass was scattered underfoot.

Walking briskly, she reached the empty Bayswater streets leading towards Oxford Circus, where a few burnt-out houses looked like half-finished stage sets – skeletal frames still intimately adorned with photographs and china mementoes of family life. In the trick light of dawn, it was as though she could sense the spirits of the dead flowing round her, or sitting on the broken chairs of abandoned houses – all those people whose lives had been so suddenly cut off, now silently thronging the streets as if nothing had changed. Roberta shuddered and pulled her coat tighter, quickening her pace.

She passed a derelict house where a child’s cot was poised precariously on the fourth floor. For a moment she thought she could hear the phantom cries of a child, high-pitched, helpless, unanswered; her heart turned over as she thought of Anna, and her gap-toothed smile.

She arrived at last at the doors of the BBC. The gallows camaraderie of her colleagues was immediately infectious: every morning was a celebration for surviving another night. Roberta spent that day cataloguing old discs, the sentimental melodies of a dozen different dance bands. She came upon an old Al Bowlly number, ‘The Very Thought of You’, intimately crooned in his sweet lyric tenor. She kept the disc aside, and made a point of adding it to the playlist.

I see your face in every flower,
Your eyes in stars above,
It’s just the thought of you,
The very thought of you, my love...

In Egypt, later that night, Lewis lay on his back in the sand and gazed up at a cloudless night sky humming with stars. A wireless was playing from somewhere in the camp, and he thought of his wife as he listened to the song, wondering when he would see her again.

33

Spring had at last reached Ashton Park. Thomas opened his study window, feeling heady with the new season. There were lambs in the field, and children running around on fresh grass. How could he have lived through so many springs without ever recognizing its simple rapture?

Light rain fell on new leaves; he could hear the soft patter as he worked at his desk. For so many years he had been wasting in his own private desert – but here was rain, sweet rain, washing into his roots and rousing his hope.

A new air filled his lungs as he looked out of the window and rejoiced in ordinary sights: the greenness of grass, the glow of buttercups, the light of the sky – it was a shining world again because of Ruth.

And yet, all this joy still hung on the hope that he might one day look into her face and find answering eyes. That thought took his breath away – the first consummation of eyes.

But what if he declared himself only to find her laughing at him, or looking puzzled, or piteous, or just detached?

The usual loop of hope and fear played through him as he sat in his study with a pile of unmarked homework. Elizabeth came in to fetch some writing paper, and noticed his reverie.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said. Thomas glanced up at the beautiful cold face he knew so well, and felt a twinge of guilt.

“I was just wondering how the Nortons are faring at their new embassy—”

He wheeled himself away from her gaze and started fiddling around at the bookcase.
Stay away from me, Elizabeth
, he thought.

And then he felt ashamed; he did not want to be unkind, or even think unkindly, about anyone.

After all, he had only two lessons to teach before he would have the joy of seeing Ruth at lunch. A friendship of sorts was developing between them again. And with the change of season, they would soon begin their poetry classes once more.

* * *

The longer, lighter spring days were a relief to Anna too. Instead of knocking about the house with the others, she could go out on her own, wandering down to the river, or off to the aspen grove. Without anyone even noticing she was alone.

One Saturday, Katy Todd asked her on a trip with her gang.

“We’re going down to Saw Mill Bridge,” she said, “to catch frogs.”

“Sorry,” said Anna, “I can’t come.”

“Why not?” asked Katy, curling her lip. Anna had no answer, she just didn’t want to go.

“Because I’m meeting people at the lightning tree,” she came up with.

“Who?”

“It’s secret,” mumbled Anna, but her face gave her away. Katy moved on in disgust.

Ashamed at her lame fib, Anna felt suddenly defeated. She watched the gang of girls heading off towards the river, and realized with a pang that it was too late to join them now.
But I didn’t want to be with them anyway. What do I care?
she told herself defiantly as she swung through the woods, a birch switch in her hands thrashing through the undergrowth. It was a familiar walk which took her to an overgrown clearing in the woods, where the old tennis court and pavilion lay disused and neglected. The mouldering court was infested with tall weeds which seemed to thrive in the cracked red-clay surface.

Anna walked into the palm-house pavilion. The door was slightly warped, and the frame shivered when she pulled it open. There was a stone floor, and a smell of musty old geraniums. The place was deserted. Just an iron watering can, paint-spattered, and an abandoned stepladder. There was an
old wrought-iron bench too, whose decorative pattern was fretted with rust and cobwebs.

She wandered over to the other side of the pavilion, and glanced through the misted windows. The air of neglect was completed by an overgrown lawn beyond, with a small fountain at its centre – a cherub on tiptoe – which was empty save for a residue of rotting leaves. To one side stood a stark monkey puzzle tree, angular and charmless in its gaze over this abandoned place.

Anna retreated to the bench inside the palm house, swinging her legs slightly. She imagined the plash of the fountain behind her, and out in front she watched a phantom game of tennis – Mr Ashton as a young man dashing across the court, and stretching to return a ball.

But she could not imagine Mrs Ashton there. Women who always wore high heels didn’t come to the tennis court, surely? Anna no longer liked her. Mrs Ashton was beautiful, but frightening – she could be sharp. And she was not always nice to her husband: Anna remembered suddenly the strange night when she had overheard her shouting at him in their bedroom.

She sat there for a while in the silence, and a gloom began to settle on her. It slowed her breathing, as if something was dragging on her heart. Until the shrill call of a blackbird jolted her to her feet, rousing her to walk away from the empty pavilion.

She went back to the house and took out a novel by Rider Haggard from the library, and sat with it in the garden, letting the story enthral her. Anything to avoid Katy Todd and her gang.

It was nearing eight o’clock when she made her way back though the French windows which led into the saloon. After the silence of the garden, the closing of the doors gave an
unnatural clatter. She stepped quickly towards the library to return her book.

“Hello.”

Anna’s heart stopped. Mr Ashton was sitting at one of the library tables, surrounded by books.

“Shouldn’t you be upstairs in your dormitory?” he asked, but he did not appear to be angry.

“Yes, sir, I’m very sorry.”

“It’s all right. But where have you been?”

“Just reading. I couldn’t stop—”

“Ah! A true lover of books knows no time. What are you reading?”

Anna stepped forwards with her book.

“
The World’s Desire
, it’s called. It’s about Odysseus’s last voyage, when he goes to Egypt and meets Helen of Troy who’s become a High Priestess—”

“Perhaps they marry?” he teased.

“I’ve come to bring it back,” said Anna apologetically.

“But you must keep it and finish it – I insist. I’m delighted that somebody is using this place.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Come again soon. But while you’re here, let me show you the secret stairway to the gallery, so you can fetch me a book—”

He gestured to a small case of dummy book spines, and pointed out the secret brass catch which his grandfather had installed. The door swung open with a click and Anna bounded up the steep stair ladder to the gallery above. From below, Mr Ashton directed her to an atlas on a far shelf.

She was just proudly bringing the book down the stair ladder when she heard a distinctive clack-clack of footsteps and the library doors swung open. She froze behind the bookcase door.

It was Mrs Ashton.

“Still working?” she quizzed her husband.

“Just a few pages more,” he answered in a quiet voice. Anna held her breath. Mrs Ashton would be furious if she found her, so the girl cowered behind the door, dreading the lash of her angry eyes.

Elizabeth walked over to Thomas’s table, a slow swing of high heels on wood.

Thomas stopped tidying up his papers and looked up.

“I’ve come to tell you that I’m not happy,” Elizabeth announced, in a voice both deadpan and direct. He tried to read her eyes, to see if she had been drinking.

“I said, I’m not happy.”

“I heard,” he said.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

Thomas paused; all he could think about was the child hiding behind the gallery door. Elizabeth drew a breath and raised herself to her full height. She spoke with deliberate precision to curb any slurring in her voice.

“I’m unhappy because of you. You’re my husband and you’re a stranger to me.”

Thomas did not know how to reply: he just shifted in his chair, painfully aware of Anna, only a few feet away. It was too late, now, to reveal her.

“Have you nothing to say to me?” Elizabeth’s voice was terse, bitter, beginning to break.

“Not here, please – in the bedroom, later.
Please.
”

Her face was puckering with tears.

“You – statue. You cripple. You bloody cripple.”

“Please—” He reached out to her.

“Don’t touch me!”

Her voice was low, stifled. She held her hands over her face, shaking with tears.

“You won’t even come to sit with me in the other room. I need
intimacy
—”

“Of course I’ll come with you.”

“Now?”

“Of course.”

“No more books?”

“No more books.”

He wheeled forwards and touched his wife’s elbow, eager to dispel her anger. He held out his handkerchief to her and she wiped her face. Together they left the room.

Anna stayed rooted where she was, terrified of moving. She felt mortified that Mr Ashton knew what she had heard.

She waited until the way seemed clear, then crept through the gallery door and carefully placed the atlas on Mr Ashton’s pile of books – then ran, fast, up the stairs to her dormitory, barely catching her breath in an effort to get past the matrons unseen.

“Where have you been?” asked the other girls in her dormitory.

“We’ve been covering for you,” said Suzy.

“Said you were stuck in the lavatory—”

Within moments Anna was in her nightdress, and when Miss Harrison appeared there was a full complement of girls in their beds. The lights were turned out.

“We caught a whole stack of frogs by the river,” said Katy Todd.

“You missed such a trip!” said another.

“We put them all back again.”

“You would have enjoyed it,” said Katy, “but we didn’t know where you went.”

“Thanks,” said Anna, secretly consoled, “but I got tied up with my book.”