The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [119]
Garden was hardly the word for the miserable sunless patch that lay behind the tobacconist’s shop. Dad had done his best and dug up the lawn for a few rows of veg and some raspberry canes but, what with his tool shed and the Anderson shelter, there wasn’t room for much. All the same, he spent what time he could out there, trying to coax green treasure out of the exhausted soil.
‘Needs a bag or two of manure from the Manor,’ he said, straightening up as I came out with my cigarette in my mouth like Bette Davis. ‘Couldn’t get your Mr K to drop some off, could you?’
The idea of Mr Keiller loading sacks of manure onto the back seat of his posh car was absurd enough to make me laugh, which was what Dad intended. ‘No horses at the Manor now,’ I said. ‘If Davey was still here, I bet he could wheedle some from the stables where he used to work.’
‘You heard from him yet?’ asked Dad.
He’d sent me a poem, yesterday. A letter the day before that. And his photo, in his new air-crew uniform, lit like a glamour boy off the films: must’ve had it taken special. He’d been gone hardly a fortnight.
‘He’s a bit homesick,’ I said. ‘Scotland’s a long way…’
Dad gave me one of those looks. He never said much, Dad, but he could convey paragraphs in a look. This look said: Careful what you’re doing, girl. He’d heard what I hadn’t said: Scotland’s a long way, but not far enough. I knew I shouldn’t have given Davey encouragement, that night after the Starfish, but I couldn’t bring myself to write and dash his hopes all over again. All I could hope was that he would find himself a nice Scottish girl. I wanted Davey to be happy, but I wasn’t the one to make him that way, and I didn’t know how to tell him so. When he said he’d be looking for a posting south as soon as he was trained, I wrote back telling him that would be lovely, couldn’t wait. Thinking to myself, the real action was along the east coast. That’s where they’d send him, wouldn’t they? And so he might be killed, and wouldn’t it be better for him to die thinking I loved him back?
‘I was lucky with your mother,’ was all Dad said.
Waiting at the bus stop, it started to pour. I’d forgotten my umbrella. While I was struggling to hold my coat over my head, a black car came hushing through the puddles. It stopped twenty or so feet beyond me, and came reversing back.
‘Get in before you drown.’ Mr Keiller leaned across to open the passenger door.
He was in his police uniform. I sank into the leather seat, relishing the smell of cigarettes and hair oil.
‘Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Heartbreaker?’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen you for months.’
‘The hospital keeps me busy, sir.’
‘Not at weekends, surely. Come over to the Manor tomorrow afternoon. I’ve invited some chaps from the convalescent home. Delightful young men, all Scottish, pining for the sight of a pretty face.’ No ‘would you like’ or ‘please’ about it. Mr Keiller always assumed everyone would fall in with his ideas. ‘Put on a nice frock and turn up about half past three. Damn…’
Ahead, a soldier had stepped out into the road and was waving us to stop, to let a convoy of trucks out of the army barracks on the outskirts of town. Mr Keiller slowed the car and took out his battered old cigarette case. He could’ve afforded a brand new solid silver one but he always kept his Russian cigarettes in that old tin with the engraving worn right off. ‘Smoke, Heartbreaker? We’ll be crawling behind them for miles. Tell you what, let’s take the pretty way’ He dropped the case in my lap, swung the wheel into a U-turn and we roared back the way we’d come, then branched off past the sports