who can’t manage on their own.’ She lay back in her chair
and closed her eyes. It had been an exhausting day, filled
with irritating tasks that never seemed to get done properly.
She had been sent on several errands, delivering messages to
people who weren’t there, meeting others who didn’t arrive,
searching for documents that had mysteriously disappeared
and answering innumerable questions from Portsmouth
residents who had trekked complainingly out to the Royal Beach only to find that the Council office they needed was
in a different building, as often as not one that they’d passed on their way. Polly could understand their frustration but
wished they could in turn understand the difficulties the
Corporation had faced in finding and setting up new
premises after the bombing of the Guildhall. We had to start
from scratch, she thought, and we still haven’t got it all
organised, but they just won’t accept that.
‘There’s a letter here for you,’ Cissie said, handing her an
envelope. ‘Looks like it’s from your friend Mr Turner.’
Polly took it and turned it over. Joe had written a few
times and she’d written back, but their letters had been no
more than the letters of friends - brief descriptions of their
lives, mention of more important events, a joke or two.
They were pleasant to receive, but didn’t seem to be going
anywhere and once or twice lately Polly had wondered if
they were worth going on with. Yet she knew that she would
miss having him in her life, however tenuously. So long as
he was there, she had a small hope that one day things might
change.
She opened the letter and gave an exclamation. Cissie and
Dick both looked at her, and Alice popped her head round
the scullery door. ‘What’s going on? What’s our Poll
squeaking about?’
‘It’s that Joe Turner,’ Dick said. He still harboured a
strange disapproval of the man his sister-in-law had met,
and there was a grumbling note in his voice whenever he
mentioned him. ‘Been writing to her again.’
‘Oh.’ Alice came right into the room, wiping her hands
on her pinny, and they all gazed expectantly at Polly. She
looked up and met their eyes.
‘Well, I don’t know what you lot think you’re staring at!
I’ve had letters from Joe before.’
‘Yes, but you haven’t looked like that before,’ Alice said
shrewdly. ‘Come on, what’s he say?’
‘Like what? I don’t know what you mean,’ Polly said, blushing.
‘Like a young girl who’s just come in from her first date,’
Cissie laughed. ‘Come on, Polly, out with it!’
She gave them a look of exasperation. ‘There’s no privacy
in this family, none at all. Everyone wants to know everyone
else’s business. Well, if you must know, he’s coming down
to Pompey again and wants to take me out to tea, and that’s
all. Nothing out of the ordinary in that, is there? Nothing to
make a song and dance about?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have said so,’ Alice said, ‘but it’s not me
who’s looking ten years younger all of a sudden. More’s the
pity,’ she added, touching her grey hair.
Polly laughed and shook her head. ‘You’re awful, all of
you. Look, Joe and me, we’re just friends, that’s all. I can be pleased a friend’s coming to see me, can’t I, without you
turning it into something more than what it is?’
‘Well, maybe we are and maybe we’re not,’ Cissie said.
‘Time will tell. So when’s he coming, Poll?’
‘Next Tuesday,’ she said, looking at the letter again. ‘He’s
coming down on the afternoon train and staying overnight.’
‘Where?’ Dick broke in. ‘I hope he’s not expecting us to
put him up here. I hope you’ve told him we haven’t got
room, Poll.’
‘Of course he’s not expecting to stay here. He’s been here,
hasn’t he? He knows what the house is like. I don’t know
where he’s staying, he doesn’t say. He just says he’d like to
take me out to tea and maybe to the pictures or for a walk or
something.’ She raised her eyes again. ‘There’s no harm in
that, is there? You don’t think you ought to come too, Dick,
just to make sure he doesn’t take advantage of me?’
‘There’s no need to talk like that,’ he began, his colour
rising, and Cissie intervened hastily.
‘Now, don’t you two start getting all aeriated. Dick’s just
concerned about you, Polly, you know that. He doesn’t
mean anything by it.’
‘Well, he doesn’t have to be concerned,’ Polly said resentfully. ‘I’m not a young girl and he’s not my father.
I’ve been a married woman—’
‘And now you’re a widow,’ Dick said. ‘And I’ve got a
responsibility towards you, Polly. You’re living in my house.’
he caught Alice’s sharp movement and amended his words
hastily ‘— all right, it’s not my house now, but you were
living in my house till we got bombed out, and that gives me
a responsibility. I took it on when Johnny died and I’m not
taking it lightly.’
There was a silence. Then Polly said in a tight voice,
‘You don’t have to remind me I’m a widow, Dick. I
remember it every day of my life. And you don’t have to
take responsibility for me, either. I’m not a child, I’m thirty six years old, I’m doing responsible work and I can take
responsibility for myself, thank you very much. And if you
don’t like it,’ she rose to her feet and looked down at him
with a glint of challenge in her eye, ‘maybe it’s time for me
to find somewhere else to live!’
She marched out of the room and they heard her feet
going up the stairs. For a moment or two there was
complete silence and then Cissie turned on Dick, her eyes
filled with angry tears.
‘There!’ she said furiously. ”Now see what you’ve done!
And you needn’t start coughing and sneezing neither,
because you’ve brought it on yourself and just for once I’m
not sorry for you. Not a bit sorry!’
Judy was walking home from the big house where the
refugee families were living, having spent the afternoon
preparing vegetables and making pastry for their evening
meal of meat and vegetable pie (more vegetable than meat),
when she paused on the hill above the railway cutting, and
sat down in the shade of an oak tree.
The sky was cloudless and the air stirred by only the
faintest of breezes. Below, deep in the cutting, the railway
lines shimmered in the heat. The grass had grown long and in the fields the corn was a deep gold, almost ready to
harvest. Bees hovered over the mauve and cream globes of
clover, and Judy watched them wistfully, knowing that the
air must be filled with their humming. I wish I could hear
them, she thought. I wish so much that I could hear
them …
A movement caught her eye and she saw a train pull in at
the station. The ancient station master came out of his office
and someone in the guard’s van threw a few parcels on to
the platform. Two or three passengers alighted: a man in a
suit, a woman with several shopping bags, and a tall young
man in RAF uniform.
Judy watched.” She saw the woman drop one of the
parcels and the young airman stoop to pick it up. He handed
it back to her, then took two of the bags to carry. They
walked out of the station and along the lane, talking
animatedly.
I wonder who he is, Judy thought. For a moment, as he
had first alighted, he had reminded her sharply of Chris
Barrett, and her heart had skipped a beat. Surely not …
But as she saw him walking along with the woman, carrying
her bags, she dismissed the thought. It must be someone
from the village, come home on leave. Her heart sank a little
and she shrugged away the brief disappointment. I don’t
want it to be him anyway, she told herself sharply. I don’t
want it to be anyone I know.
The two had disappeared between the hedges that
bordered the lane. Now they appeared again, directly below
her, and she could see their faces clearly. The woman was a
spinster who lived at the other end of the village with her ,
elderly mother. And the young man ‘Chris!’
she breathed, and her whole body turned cold and then flushed with warmth. ‘Chris …’
‘I didn’t know if you’d want to see me,’ he said. He’d looked
up and seen Judy at the same moment, almost thrusting the bags back at the spinster in his haste to come racing up the
hill. He saw the incomprehension in her face and repeated
slowly, enunciating his words. ‘I — didn’t — know — if — you’d - want - to see - me.’
‘So why did you come?’ He’d caught her hands, his whole
face glowing with delight, and she withdrew them quickly.
She felt a turmoil of strange emotions — pleasure at seeing
him, wonder that he should have bothered to come, dismay
and embarrassment at her own condition. I didn’t want him
to see me like this, she thought, and then came anger that he
had caught her unawares and she hadn’t had time to hide.
‘Why didn’t you let me know?’
‘And what would you have done?’ he asked simply, and
then said more slowly. ‘You would not have seen me. You
would have hidden away. Like you did before. Wouldn’t
you?’ He looked at her accusingly.
Judy understood. She met his eyes and said, ‘Yes.’
‘But why?’ His frustration showed in the crease of his
brows, the brightness of his eyes. ‘Why don’t you want to
see me, Judy? What have I done?’
‘It’s not you. It’s me. I’m deaf Chris. I can’t hear you. I
can’t hear anyone - or anything.’ She waved her hand at the
trees, the hedges, the railway. ‘There could be al), sorts of
sounds - trains coming, birds singing, cows and sheep,
people in the lane - but I can’t hear a thing. It’s just a sort of mushy sound all the time. It’s horrible.’ She paused and
stared at him. ‘It’s horrible for everyone else too. Having to
speak slowly, having to make sure I can see them. Even
then, most of the time I can’t understand them. Some
people don’t open their lips much, they don’t make any
shape at all with their words - I shall never understand
people like that. And they have to write it down for me, and
then I can’t read their writing or they can’t spell the words
and then they’re even more embarrassed. You don’t know
what it’s like, Chris. Nobody knows what it’s like.’
‘Isn’t there a sort of sign language?’ he asked doubtfully.
‘I’m sure I’ve heard of something.’ Once again, forgetting
already, he had spoken too quickly and Judy looked at him
in exasperation.
‘You see? You see how difficult it is?’
Chris bit his lip and repeated his words, determined to be
understood, and Judy shrugged.
‘Yes, I think so. But I don’t see what use it is. It’s no use
just me learning it, is it? Everyone else would have to know
it too.’
‘I’d learn it,’ he said quickly, and Judy shook her head.
‘It’s no use, Chris. I don’t know why you bothered to
come. You’d better go back.’
‘No!’ He was angry now. ‘I came because I wanted to see
you. We had a date, remember? We were going to go out
together - have a walk, talk to each other, get to know each
other.’ Once again, he saw her look of incomprehension, and
was forced to speak more slowly. ‘We had a date, Judy. I’ve
come for my date.’
Judy’s eyes met his and the penny dropped. ‘You said
more than that,’ she said dully. ‘This is another thing that
happens. People can’t be bothered to talk properly to me.
They just talk in a sort of shorthand. It’s not like proper
talking at all.’
Chris stared at her. Then he caught both her hands in his
again and shook them. ‘Judy! You’ve got to stop feeling
sorry for yourself!’ Her eyes flicked up at him again,
shocked by the fierceness of his grip and the anger in his
face. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself he enunciated, watching
her eyes to make sure that she understood. ‘Deafness isn’t
the end of the world. You’re young - you’re pretty - / think
you’re beautiful - and there’s nothing else wrong with you.
Being deaf isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you.’ He
waved at the countryside about them, then put his hands to
his eyes. ‘Suppose you were blind. Suppose you couldn’t see
all this? Suppose you couldn’t walk anywhere without someone to guide you?’
Judy understood his meaning. She looked down at their
hands, then around at the banks. They were thick with
ragged robin and campions, guelder roses and a froth of wild
parsley. Queen Anne’s Lace, Mrs Sutton called it. She
looked at the ash trees just breaking into leaf, later than all the other trees, and caught a glimpse of a thrush sitting on a
branch, its beak open and its throat swelling as it sang the
song she knew she would never hear again.
‘It would be awful,’ she agreed quietly, ‘but it’s not as
awful as being deaf. People take trouble with a blind person.
They look after them and talk to them, and they tell them
things they can’t see. When you’re deaf, people only care for
a while, and after that you’re left alone. You can’t take part
in any conversations. You can’t listen to the wireless and
laugh when they laugh. You can’t be part of the family any