What the Heart Keeps (42 page)

He
became aware that Lisa was not taking the route he had expected to follow. “Which way are you going?” he asked her. He remembered her writing in a letter that the first trainload of wounded from France had had to face the further endurance of being in ambulances deliberately detoured by cheering London crowds, who had misguidedly wished to express their feelings. He, although completely unscathed, had no more wish than those poor wounded would have had that the drive should be longer than was absolutely necessary. Not that the apartment could provide him with the healing quietude he greatly needed, for its being adjacent to the cinema would mean instant involvement.

“
I told you,” she said calmly, looking ahead, “I’m taking you home. Really home. We’re on our way to Berkshire.”

He
raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Have you opened Maple House then?”

“
Only for the duration of your leave and just the rooms we’ll be using. Your village caretaker organised an army of helpers at short notice to scrub and polish there.”

He
spoke on a silent laugh of pleasure and sheer relief. “Marvellous!”

“
We’ll have the place entirely to ourselves for a week. Then Maudie will arrive with Harry. He’s looking forward to seeing you so much.”

“
What have I done to deserve you, Lisa?” There was a kind of wonder in his voice as he leaned across to kiss her on the neck. His romantic tribute was observed with interest by passengers in a bus driving alongside. He saw only her.

They
broke their journey to dine at an old coaching inn, and then drove on to Maple House. It was dark when they arrived, but Lisa had arranged that lamps should be lighted at an earlier hour so that the windows gave a glow that reached out to them as they drew up outside. The dusty atmosphere had been completely banished from the house, which smelt of beeswax and freshly laundered curtains and the scent from the vases of many-hued garden flowers that had been placed everywhere. In the hallway they turned to each other.

“
Welcome home, Alan,” she said softly.

He
drew her to him in silent embrace, momentarily beyond words. Somewhere in the trees outside a nightingale was singing.

They
went upstairs together. There was white, hand-embroidered linen from another age on the wide mahogany bed and the lamps were pink silk with beaded fringes. The windows stood open to the moonlight and the stars. For his sake she let nothing intrude on that night. No thoughts of past or future came to her. It was her gift of reconciliation and renewal to the man she had married, the time-honoured tribute of a woman to the returned soldier in a spate of war, and the night was entirely his. On his part, he led her to a release of ecstasy that she had long believed she would never know again. It brought them to a state of such enormous tenderness for each other that the night surpassed even the special one that had brought them close for transient moments not long after their marriage. This time all barriers were down.

The
week passed all too quickly. They walked in the countryside, lazed in the sunshine and the shade, and prepared simple meals together. Their love-making was rich and rewarding. Afterwards there was always a sweet contentment.

When
Harry arrived, the pattern of their time together changed a great deal, but was no less pleasurable. Maudie took over the domestic arrangements leaving the three of them together. They played games of cricket and croquet, dammed the stream for a boating-pool, explored the nearby woods and went for picnics. Lisa and Harry shared the swing and the seesaw that Alan had set up, and every day the sun shone and the nights were still and balmy. Finally it was time to leave. The shutting up of the house was to be left to the village caretaker, who would come in as soon as they had gone. This enabled them to drive away leaving windows and doors open as if they were about to return shortly. It made everything a little easier for them, although the moment of departure was poignant enough.

They
drove to the London apartment. Alan, refreshed and rested physically and mentally by the country sojourn, went immediately into the cinema to greet the staff and discuss certain business matters with Mr. Hardy. Lisa had mentioned the assistant manager’s bouts of depression, for increasingly the man was low in spirits for days at a time, but in answer to Alan’s tactful questioning he announced himself well satisfied with his recent raise in salary and had no complaints about the long hours he worked. It left Alan with no more idea than Lisa as to what the man’s trouble might be.

That
evening Alan took Lisa to the theatre. They saw a lively musical show and afterwards had supper at the Savoy. Their last night together, which was as ardent and passionate as the rest had been, had its own special moments unique to times of parting. He would not let her accompany him to the station this time. To bid her farewell in the company of others would be more than he could bear.

“
Come back soon,” she implored, locked in his embrace.

“
Nothing shall keep me away for as long as before,” he promised her. They kissed and he went from her. And she was engulfed by the wave of emptiness that swept in on her as the door closed behind him.

*

By the middle of the following month, Lisa was wondering what could be amiss with her. At times the smoke of somebody’s cigarette, or even a pleasant aroma from a coffee-shop could make her feel quite nauseous. Another two weeks went by before a sudden bout of morning sickness confirmed what she had stopped hoping for long since. Weak and trembling from the onslaught, she gasped with sheer joy, pressing the flat of her hands to her stomach through the thin silk of her nightgown. She was pregnant at last.

As
soon as the doctor had added medical confirmation, she wrote the news to Alan. According to dates, the baby had been conceived during the first week of his leave, perhaps even on that night of supreme tenderness between them. She would always cling to the belief that it was that night. Her feelings for Alan entered a new phase. It was her hope that he would get back to be with her when the baby was born. He echoed that hope in the letter he wrote upon receiving the good news. In subsequent correspondence they settled on names for a son or a daughter. She wanted the choice to be his.

In
September another Zeppelin got through to London. The casualties were not as high as those suffered in the constant raids on Grimsby and other places on the east coast, but the shock effect of a second raid on the heart of England was considerable. Lisa had no idea that it was to be instrumental in bringing about a change in the organisation of The Fernley. The only forewarning came when she returned one afternoon after fetching Harry from the day-school he was attending, always seizing any chance to be with him. Leaving him in Maudie’s care in the apartment, she went through the connecting door into the cinema to be met by the girl who sold chocolates in the intervals.

“
I told Mr. Hardy I must have fresh supplies before the matinee,” she reported indignantly, “and he went out without giving them to me.”

“
Gone out? That’s not possible. Mr. Hardy is always on the premises when I’m absent and vice-versa.”

“
Well, he’s not here. One of the usherettes saw him in his hat and coat.”

Lisa
was most annoyed. Mr. Hardy’s behaviour had reached its limits this time. She would have to speak severely to him upon his return. “I’ll get the chocolates for you,” she said. “Follow me.”

Lisa
went into Mr. Hardy’s office where the stores were kept in a side-room. She took what was needed from a cupboard and gave it to the girl, who hurried away into the auditorium. Lisa relocked the cupboard and was returning through the office when she noticed something on his desk that made her stop in her tracks. It was a white feather. Symbol of cowardice. She reached out slowly to pick it up and found that more than one lay there. Spreading them out on the blotter she saw that there were seven in all. Now she understood what had caused the sensitive man such fits of depression from time to time. The door opened and she looked up, the feathers still spread out before her. Mr. Hardy had come into the office, his pale face tautening at the evidence she had discovered.

“
I’ve joined up, Mrs. Fernley. I’m sorry to leave you single-handed but I can’t take any more insults to my patriotism and my integrity.”

“
Who gave you these feathers?”

“
Mostly women patrons after a performance was over. The last straw came today on the bus to work when a woman handed me one for everybody to see just as she was about to alight, shouting out that any man prepared to let Zeppelins bomb London without fighting back deserved hanging.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me what was happening? I’ve realised that something was wrong.”

“
I couldn’t bring myself to tell you of my humiliation.” She sighed deeply. He could not be leaving her at a worse time. “Are you going into the Army?”

“
Yes. They want me right away. I report this evening.”

She
left him to finish off such clerical work as he had in hand. When he was ready to leave he shook hands with everybody on the staff and came to her for the most important words of farewell. “It’s been a privilege to work for you, Mrs. Fernley. May I ask to be considered for my old job here again when this war is over?”

“
Yes, indeed. Good luck and a safe return.”

When
he had gone she went into her office and sat down to take stock of her situation. There was nothing to stop her running the cinema entirely on her own as she had wanted to do originally when she learned that Alan would be going to war, except that now she was pregnant and must have a deputy she could trust to leave in charge when the time came for her confinement. Fortunately there was someone of her own sex on the premises who had had office experience before taking over the pay-box. Moreover, she liked the idea of having a woman assistant, for it meant the two of them would be carrying on an enterprise normally shouldered by men. The war was bringing women to the fore, after centuries of domestic enslavement, to handle machinery, the wheels of transport, and administrative positions of authority previously supposed to be entirely beyond their ken. It was exciting to be part of that evolvement.

The
discovery that she was pregnant had made Lisa look to the future with renewed energy, and she was resolved not to let the war create a stalemate of the Fernley enterprise, particularly since its present role was of vital importance in giving people the relaxation they needed in these difficult times. Alan had had to shelve his expansion plans for the duration of hostilities, but there was no reason why she should not give the matter her attention.

“
Would you like to be my assistant manageress?” she asked Billy’s wife after explaining the work to her in detail.

“
Yes, I would.” Ethel Morris’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction in her round red-cheeked face that was framed by greying hair. “And I suggest that Miss Unwin, the usherette, take my place as cashier. She’s a good, honest young woman.”

Not
only did Ethel Morris prove to be as efficient in her new post as she had been in the pay-box, but having borne children herself she was considerate and helpful towards Lisa in her pregnancy. They worked well together.

It
was a source of disquiet to Lisa, among all else of concern, that in spite of having drawn close to Alan in a way that once she could never have believed possible, memories of Peter still slipped at unguarded moments into her heart and into her mind. It always happened whenever she read in the newspapers that yet another neutral Norwegian merchant ship had been sunk by German submarines, for any vessel carrying on normal trade in supplies to Britain had to run the gauntlet of enemy torpedoes. Then she would picture again the West Coast of the United States and wonder where Peter was now, knowing how this abuse of his old country’s shipping, and the loss of the seamen’s lives, would anger and distress him.

Sometimes
at night when frustrated yearnings assailed her, she would sigh with despair that it was Peter whom she thought about and not her husband. There were even occasions when he came into her dreams, and always they were of the beginning of their relationship in those far-off Toronto days. She could interpret the meaning as a subconscious desire to turn the clock back for a second chance, and she railed against herself for it. Vain regrets about the past were useless, and it was what she did with the present and the future that was vitally important. Her pregnancy was her all-consuming joy. As it advanced, so did her new plans that she was putting steadily into action.

*

The war swept on ferociously. In France one evening in early April, Alan returned mud-caked with his Sappers from tunnelling under No Man’s Land to lay mines before an attack and found some delayed mail awaiting him. He read in Lisa’s neat hand that she had been safely delivered of a daughter, Catherine, who was strong and healthy and quite beautiful. They were both doing well.

His
leave to England was long overdue. Twice it had been cancelled when an urgent need for highly skilled engineers had outweighed all else. It was almost a year since he had seen Lisa and then, when his allotted leave did come, the dates were put forward by two weeks and he knew the reason for that, too. A great battle was in the offing. He could not be spared when it started and was wanted back in time to take over special duties.