The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [161]
‘Lost your job, if you’d done anything. Or lost me mine.’ I put a hand on his arm. ‘Leave them grasses alone. They done you no harm.’
He shook my hand off. His face was knotted and bright red.
‘You do believe me?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘I went with him willing, the first time, but you do understand why?’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t know if I understand anything ‘bout you any more, Fran.’ There was defeat in his voice. He wouldn’t look at me. I’d been too truthful.
‘Dear Christ, I’d do anything for it not to have happened. I wish a bloody bomb had landed on us. If I’d been stronger, I’d have fought him off and killed him with my bare hands. Why don’t he fall out of the sky, when so many good lads are never coming back?’ The baby gave two feeble kicks, like it was knocking shyly to come out. A lark was twittering high above. Davey slowly tortured a grass head. ‘You think I asked for it, don’t you?’
‘You should’ve stayed at Nell’s.’
‘The air raid didn’t start till after I’d left.’ I was angry with him now, too, for blaming me. ‘I wasn’t looking for a poke, Davey I was trying to get back to the hospital for fire watch.’
‘Poke’s a vulgar word.’
‘Well, what word’m I supposed to use, then?’
He looked at his watch. ‘Time I took you to see your mam. Visiting hours’ll be over if we don’t get a move on.’
And that was that. We walked in silence across the hillside back to the top of the track where we’d left the Baby Austin, me thinking maybe I had asked for it, maybe it was all my fault. Then I’d think, no, it wasn’t, and who was Davey to judge? I could’ve wished him in a place where he’d understand how powerless a woman is when a man wants his way. But that kind of thinking in’t no good. You only get it back yourself, threefold, like they say.
Outside the cottage hospital, I’d climbed out of the Austin and was almost at the entrance when I heard behind me the squeak of the car window being wound down.
‘Fran?’
I stopped and looked back. Yards of forecourt between us, as well as the concealed peapod of my belly.
‘Give me time, OK?’ he said. ‘It’s…not easy to understand, you know?’ There were tears in his eyes. ‘Feels like you’ve taken everything away. There never was any hope for me, was there? That night we were together wun’t no more than pity, was it?’
‘Gratitude,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’ Then wished it unsaid: it made what we’d done sound like a ten-bob note pushed into a beggar’s hand.
His jaw tightened. ‘I’d still do anything for you, Fran. But I can’t think about what you did without getting angry.’
‘Be angry with him,’ I said. ‘Not me.’ I turned my back and pushed through the double doors.
Mam was frailer than ever, more yellow, skin like old newspaper with dark bruises along the veins of her arm.
‘What they doing to you, Mam?’ I asked, trying to keep the cheerfulness from leaking out of my voice.
‘Always sticking needles in me,’ she said. ‘I tell ‘em, it won’t do no good.’ How defeated she sounded.
‘Davey’s outside,’ I said, and felt a wrench as relief lit up her face. ‘He’ll…do the right thing.’ Didn’t know what I meant by that, but it was a lie to comfort myself as much as her.
‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘I can go easy now.’
‘Don’t talk about going anywhere,’ I said. But she was drifting to sleep already, poor tired thing. I sat by her, stroking her hand, seeing a smile ease the corners of her mouth when I did so, but she didn’t open her eyes. After a while her breathing deepened and I knew she was no longer aware of me. I stood up, wondering how long I should stay. I went to the window to wave to Davey, to tell him I was ready to leave, but the Baby Austin was gone.
Mam died less than a week later. The telephone call came while I was on fire watch. Dad didn’t have a phone at the shop; he was calling from his neighbour’s. I could hear the clink of cups in the background, the meaningless chatter that begins when someone dies and never stops for weeks and weeks. I thought I made out someone saying, ‘A blessed release.’ Dad could hardly speak: