A Book at Bedtime Read online

  ‘Are they for your wife?’

  ‘Good heavens, no, I’m not married.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t you?’

  ‘No. I bought them for you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, we’ve never met.’

  ‘We have now.’

  She looked at him with her head on one side, as if he were a salesman and she was assessing his bona fides; and then she smiled, reached out her hand and took the primroses.

  ‘Why, thank you kindly, sir,’ she said.

  Her name was Evelyn Higgs. Eva. She was twenty-eight, an only child, born and brought up in Bethnal Green.

  ‘You don’t sound like a Cockney,’ he said. ‘I mean you don’t have an accent.’

  ‘Nah, well, went and lawst it, didn’t I, gawd knows where. Ain’t never been able to find it agine.’

  They were in a teashop. Joe Lyons at the top of Whitehall. Loud with clatter. Cutlery, crockery, Bakelite trays. Jack clumsy at the table, nervous of jogging an elbow, kicking a foot, slurping his peas, the woman in blue dismissing him, scarlet lips curled in disgust.

  Salt beef and cabbage, tinned peas and mash: austerity rations, twin meals on identical plates. Two women in paisley pinnies, turbans and curlers sharing the table, hunched over their plates, eating fast, eating for England, as if they were afraid the meal might be snatched away before they had finished.

  ‘How do you mean?’ He watched her face, no longer hidden behind the hat, absorbed every smile, every frown, every lift of her eyebrows, learned it all as she told her story, dismissively, as if her life was of no account or she had a private joke that she didn’t want to share.

  ‘Oh, I won some sort of scholarship thing. Tinpot boarding school out in the sticks. Lor’ lummy, it wasn’t ’alf posh.’ She’d put the primroses into a glass of water and she touched them, as if for reassurance. ‘Hated every minute.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? There was me, Cockney girl in me ’and-me-down uniform dropping me haitches, and the rest of the girls all la-di-dah. They were beastly, and most of the staff.’ She stabbed a pea with her fork. ‘Except Mr Dillinger, he was all right. He did art. He was the only man in the school, poor chap, bit of drip really, the girls gave him a horrible time. I wasn’t much good at painting but he was nice to me and I liked him, that’s why I go to galleries I suppose.’ She put the pea in her mouth and nibbled it delicately with her front teeth. ‘Anyway, I learned to speak proper PDQ, and the joke is, back at home now they think I’ve gone posh. So now I’m ’alf a person, don’t belong nowhere.’ She pulled a face as she swallowed the pea. ‘Ugh, these are disgusting.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Unhappy peas that she didn’t like and that as of now, this minute, neither did he.

  ‘Anyway, why am I telling you all this?’

  ‘Because I asked you.’ He wanted everything, her entire history in the smallest detail: what she was thinking and how she felt, what were her favourite colour and smell; what books she read, what songs she sang; and the beastly girls and the drippy Mr Dillinger, dastardly Dillinger, his hated rival. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘No, your turn. Where did you go to school?’

  ‘Just the elementary. Castlebridge Elementary. There was talk of Sherborne College, but we couldn’t afford it. And anyway, my mother’s a widow, I couldn’t have left her, so I left school and went to work in the shop.’

  ‘Lucky escape, if you ask me.’

  ‘Oh, no, I regret more than anything not having a good education. Bob did his best when I left school but he wasn’t a teacher. He said himself he was a dabbler – a dilettante he called it, so I know a little bit about a lot of things and nothing in depth.’

  ‘Yes, but just think of it, you with your Dorset burr mixing with all those frightful toffs. You’d have hated it, same as me.’

  ‘Perhaps I would. Except that you and I would have something in common.’

  ‘We already have. We both work in a shop, we go to art galleries, and… and we don’t like tinned peas.’

  ‘No, we don’t.’ How gratifying to share her hatred for the humble pea. ‘What else? What else don’t you like?’

  ‘Lots of things.’ She’d finished her meal except for the peas. ‘Spiders for a start, and rats and… tapioca. I hate tapioca, we had it every Monday at my horrible school, it was disgusting.’ She pushed the peas with her knife, making a pyramid in the middle of her plate.

  ‘And what happened when you left the horrible school?’

  ‘I wanted to go to college, but Dad wouldn’t have it.’ She flicked a stray pea with her finger into the pyramid as if she was playing a game of marbles. ‘Would have been different if I’d been a boy. But then he was a bully as well. And a liar.’ She mashed the peas into a pulp. ‘I hate people who lie.’

  He watched her hands, strong hands with the scarlet nails, perfect nails, except for the thumb of her left hand that was dented at the cuticle with a pale scar underneath. ‘What did you do instead?’

  ‘What did anyone do? The war came.’

  He looked down at the table. ‘So it did.’

  ‘I was in the Land Army down in Kent – you know, where the hops grow.’ She abandoned the peas and showed him the thumb. ‘That’s how I got this.’

  ‘What, picking hops?’

  ‘No, chopping up wood for the fire.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my fingers were so numb I never felt a thing, not at first, only realised when I saw blood on the snow. It was perishing that first winter of the war, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And anyway, what’s a thumb compared with what you must have been through.’ She looked at him with a troubled frown. Waiting. For his war, his horrors, his blood on the snow.

  ‘I’m fond of hops,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘They remind me of my father.’

  ‘Oh. Why, did he come from Kent?’

  ‘No, he was Dorset, born and bred. He was a drayman, he worked at the brewery in Castlebridge.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Castlebridge, the town where I live.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot.’

  Why should she remember? Why should she be interested in his little life, let alone in his father’s inglorious profession. And yet he persisted, desperate to steer her away from dangerous territory.

  The war, the war.

  A school gymnasium, an undersized chair…

  ‘He had a lovely old horse, a grey.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was still frowning. Not at him now, frowning at her thumb.

  But still he went on, wildly, stupidly. ‘Poor old Nell. I never knew what happened to her after he died, I wish I did.’

  ‘Mm, yes, must have been horrid.’ Reaching for her handbag, getting ready to leave.

  He desperate to stop her. ‘So you were in Kent for the duration?’

  ‘No, only two years.’ Opening the handbag, fishing inside. ‘Had to go home after that to look after me dad.’ Fetching an orange stick out of the bag.

  ‘Why? Was he wounded?’

  ‘No, he didn’t serve. Reserved occupation, down at the docks.’ She leaned her elbows on the table and tidied her cuticles with the orange stick.

  ‘And your mother?’

  A closed look came over her face. ‘Killed in the Blitz in forty-one.’

  ‘How dreadful, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Never mind, it’s a long time ago.’

  ‘So it’s only you and your father now?’

  ‘Nope, just me. He died last year. And don’t say you’re sorry, ’cause I’m bloody well not.’ Loud with anger.

  The pinnied ladies, getting ready to leave, exchanging looks.

  ‘Some wo
men,’ said one, with a kind of sniff of her mouth. ‘Lucky to have such a fine young man.’

  The other one patting his arm. ‘Glad you got through, love. We owe everything to blokes like you.’

  Oh, but you don’t. Not me. Anyone, everyone, except for me.

  Eva watched them go, picking her teeth with the orange stick. And then it came, the inevitable question, the one that everyone asked these days, the one that he dreaded. ‘What did you do in the war, Jack?’

  He considered a lie: France, Italy, Egypt, Burma… What would it matter? To a perfect stranger, a woman who, once she knew the awful truth, would dismiss him and walk away.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact…’

  Imprisoned in Colditz?

  ‘The thing is…’

  Ah, but she hated a liar.

  ‘What happened was…’

  What happened, was a man with a tray and a brown bowler hat.

  ‘This free?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed, by all means.’

  Thank you, kind man, with your brown bowler hat and your lunchtime tray, thank you for choosing this table, thank you for changing the subject.

  ‘Lovely day.’ Jack, all brightness and breeze, willing a conversation to start.

  The man grunted, fetched a newspaper from his pocket, took a pencil from behind his ear and leaned over the table, studying form, chomping his food.

  ‘Well?’ Eva, still waiting.

  ‘Yes, well…’ Jack picked up a reluctant knife. ‘Well, the fact is…’ He pushed breadcrumbs into a pile. ‘The fact is…’ muttering low, ‘I didn’t serve.’

  ‘Sorry, what? I didn’t quite hear you.’

  Converting breadcrumbs into a square, muttering louder, between the clench of his teeth. ‘I didn’t serve.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Reserved occupation, you mean, same as my dad?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that, it was…’

  It was a school gymnasium and an undersized chair.

  A Medical Officer with a sneer on his face.

  ‘So you want to be a soldier?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Serve your king and country?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Beat the buggery out of the Boche?’

  ‘Well, sir, I…’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Oh, good grief…’ Eva, horrified. ‘Don’t tell me you were a conchie?’

  A conchie.

  The word rang out in the sort of inexplicable silence that can suddenly fall when, on a whim of the fates, or perhaps by their malign design, everyone in a crowded room stops talking at the same time.

  A conchie.

  A nippie, collecting their empty plates, stopped and stared. The man with the brown bowler hat looked up and glared, mouth open, pencil in hand, half-eaten sausage impaled on his fork.

  A conchie.

  A coward.

  A moment later, the chatter went on. The nippie moving away with a contemptuous sniff. The man with the brown bowler hat putting sausage to mouth, chewing belligerently, pencil and fork in either hand, swallowing noisily, leaning forward, sending a waft of heat and sweat over the table.

  ‘I got out too.’ A rasping voice, confidential, brother to brother. Pointing his fork at his chest. ‘Dicky heart.’ Winking. ‘Bloody good job if you ask me.’

  Jack thumping the table, making the plates and cutlery jump. ‘But I didn’t get out! I…’

  ‘All right, mate, keep you hair on.’ Mr Confidentiality, Mr Sleaze. ‘Take a tip from me: Silver Delight. Redcar, three-thirty.’ Tapping his nose, tucking his pencil behind his ear, picking up paper, jamming brown bowler hat to head, sauntering off with swaggering step, leaving the smell of his sweat behind him.

  And that word, that terrible word, left hanging in the air.

  Conchie.

  She watched him go, her face like thunder, and Jack knew now that he had to tell her the truth ‘I’m not what you think, I’m not like him…’

  ‘That frightful man? I should think not.’ She fished a compact out of her bag, jerked it open and glared into the mirror.

  ‘Blasted coward.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what happened…’

  ‘No, don’t.’ She powdered her nose ferociously. ‘I should never have asked.’

  ‘Eva, please… listen to me, let me explain…’

  ‘No.’ She reached across the table, put her fingers over his mouth to stop him talking. ‘I don’t know what happened, I don’t want to. All I know is that whatever it was you went through, it must have been hell.’

  ‘Well, yes…’ The school gymnasium, the undersized chair… ‘But…’

  ‘And I promise you, I will never, ever speak of it again.’

  *

  And she never did.

  No matter how angry she was later on, how often she derided and tried to diminish him, however much she grew to hate him, she never ever mentioned it again. And neither did he.

  But they should have done. Because although he hadn’t actually told her a lie, neither had he told her the truth. And that was the start of a long habit of evasion that festered between them for the rest of their lives.

  castlebridge

  Sunday, 3rd December, 2006

  One of Jack’s pleasures on a Sunday is to potter about in his pyjamas and dressing gown. Sometimes he doesn’t bother to dress at all, or to wash and shave, nor even occasionally to clean his teeth, a small dereliction of duty that would have made his mother weep. He seldom uses the bathroom upstairs because it once was the room where his mother slept and he fancies it still smells of her piety. He even imagines, as he passes the door, that she’s calling his name; that if he goes in, he’ll find her kneeling at prayer by the side of the bath that stands in the place where her bed used to be; that she’ll turn her head and gaze at him with her hurt, accusing eyes, her mouth drawn down into lines of pain. ‘Oh, Jack, Jack…’ So he goes downstairs to the kitchen instead, where he combines his washing and dressing with making the breakfast, enjoying the economical use of space and time. He stirs the porridge while cleaning his teeth, minds the toast as he shaves his chin, scrambles some eggs as he combs his hair. And he whistles each morning, a gay little tune between his teeth, in the way that his father used to do as he washed and shaved and got ready for work.

  Jack and Eva have lived in the flat over the shop for more than sixty years and he refuses to admit how inconvenient it is, in spite of Margaret’s constant complaints. ‘All those stairs, and you with your knee. It’s an accident waiting to happen, Mr C.’

  The ceilings are high for so old a building, the doorways low, and although Jack has lost some of his youthful height, he still dips his head on entry and exit. The floorboards slope away at the walls so that the furniture lists in unexpected directions as if craning to hear each other’s whispered conversations. There were only three rooms in the flat when he first moved in: living room at the front, running the width of the shop with two sash windows overlooking the street; Bob’s bedroom behind it, looking out to the yard; a second bedroom, long and narrow, on the other side of the passage. No kitchen, that was downstairs, part of the storeroom at the back of the shop; no bathroom either, only the covered bath in the storeroom and cracked sink in the scullery beyond, with the lavatory tacked on at the end, like an afterthought.

  He doesn’t often think any more of the way things were, except that Bob Pride still seems to lurk in the flat, the shadow of Bob. His heavy, Victorian furniture: his sideboard, his table, his puritan bed, his favourite chair, carved in oak like a bishop’s throne. Eva had hated it all, got rid of it in the end after his mother had died, consigned the lot to the cellar, refurnished in the modern style, everything light and bright with hope. They’d had the new bathroom and cloakroom installed, and the little room at the end opposite theirs that was meant for
the… meant for the…

  Oh, well, never mind. Tea’s the thing. Tea, kettle. Kettle, tea.

  Once upon a time, Jack used to go down to the kitchen to make early morning tea, but latterly Margaret has kitted out the sideboard in the living room with tea caddy, a jar of inferior instant coffee, lemonade, squashes and a selection of snacks. ‘You never know, Mr C, you might fancy a little something in the middle of the night, and you don’t want to be trailing up and downstairs, what with you and your knee.’ She’s even provided a microwave oven which Jack doesn’t understand but pretends to use to keep her happy, twiddling the knobs, leaving a scatter of crumbs on the turntable, or a carefully placed globule of porridge.

  He potters about now, choosing his favourite mug and Eva’s beaker, sniffing the milk to check that it’s fresh, and waits for the kettle to boil.

  He goes to the window, draws the curtains back and peers out as if in anticipation of a visitor’s arrival.

  A distant chime sounds from the clock tower of St Michael’s Church.

  A foggy moon, not quite full, hangs over the rooftops to the west of the town. Eva used to love the moon, used to sit at the window, gazing out as she brushed her hair, while Jack gazed at her unfathomable back.

  ‘Look, do you see her? The woman in the moon?’

  He never could and he can’t now. All he can see is the melancholy man with his down-turned eyes and crooked mouth, but he never loses the hope of finding her. He studies the pale disc for the umpteenth time as it sails through the clouds. The street lamp across the way glimmers mistily, its image reflected in the darkened window of the art gallery behind. And sure enough, he sees a lamp turning the corner from the High Street, a bicycle lamp bouncing over the cobblestones, coming to an uneasy halt. The rider dismounts, leans his heavy machine against the lamppost, rests one foot on the chain stay and stoops to adjust his bicycle clip. He’s an elderly fellow, baggy-trousered, wearing an ill-fitting jacket and a trilby hat. Jack hasn’t seen him for years, but he knows him at once and, with a sudden lift of his spirits, wonders if he has come to call. But the Great Man has no such intention: he spots Jack at the window, lifts his hat in cheery salutation, gets back on his bicycle, and wobbles away towards Market Square.