The Night Raid Page 13

  At the churchyard spring was massing its forces, a vanguard of primroses and dandelions marching on the grey tombstones. The gate creaked as Zelah pushed through and began to walk along the gravel path that wound around the end of the church. Her eyes caught the names of the dead as she passed: Thomas, Leonora, Albert – beloved sons and mothers, daughters and fathers – everyone belonging to someone else, and belonging here. Sunlight was a wicked glitter on the leaded church panes.

  Zelah walked further on through the graves, to the far end where the old stones jutted at angles in the long grass and the battlemented chestnuts threw volleys of green against the yellow-blue skies. She leant against a tree trunk, liking the solid hardness of it supporting her spine. She thought about Mary and offered up a silent prayer: ‘Please, God, let the birth be swift and simple, let the baby be healthy, let the adoptive parents be kind, give Mary the courage to go through it all alone. Please, God.’

  Zelah had her eyes closed as she prayed and didn’t take any notice of the sound of a car drawing up in Church Lane, or the footfalls on the gravel pathway.

  ‘And please, God, give Mary the strength to cope with this and move on with her life, not have the shame stick and cling like machine grease under fingernails at the end of the shift. Amen.’

  She kept her eyes closed, and let her mind drift.

  When Zelah opened her eyes she saw a man with a trilby, laying flowers by a white marble grave near the church entrance. She would have to walk right past him to leave. She checked her watch. She didn’t want to intrude on his grief, but she should really start walking now to get to the station in time. She pushed herself away from the comfort of the tree trunk and began to walk along the winding path, hearing a solitary magpie rattle-chatter in the treetops.

  She didn’t even look at the man in the hat until he called out. ‘Zelah?’ he said, looking up at her in surprise, scuffling to his feet. And she thought how different his face looked out here in daylight, away from the muggy factory air.

  ‘George – I’m sorry to disturb you.’ He’d put a bunch of crocuses in the urn. Her eyes took in the words on the gravestone: In loving memory of Alexandra Handford and her daughter Dorothy. Together in the loving arms of the Lord.

  He saw her look. ‘I sometimes visit my wife and daughter on my day off,’ he said, following her gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Zelah said. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘We never really got to the stage of talking about family, did we?’

  ‘I wish I’d known,’ she said, stupidly, appalled at herself. ‘I thought—’

  ‘I know what you thought.’

  Guilt and anger swirled in her gut. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You didn’t really give me that chance.’

  Violet was right. He had a wife. But Violet was wrong, too, because he wasn’t an adulterer: he was a widower. He should have told her. She should have let him. Now it was too late. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, turning away from the grave to look at him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He ran a hand over his face in that way he had, and let out a breath. ‘I’m sorry too, Zelah,’ he said, looking back at her. She turned away from his eyes – the look in his eyes when he said it. She took in the glorious spring day: the unrelenting sunshine, the thrashing new leaves, the spinning weather vane. But it was as if someone had smeared the scene with one of the greasy old rags from the shop floor: all ruined.

  ‘I should go,’ she said, the words thick as lard. ‘Otherwise I’ll miss the train. Good afternoon, Mr Handford.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Fitzlord.’

  Walking was all of a sudden effortful, and the sound of her shoes on the path very loud, as if the air itself had coagulated with her regret. She could feel his eyes on her as she pulled the gate open and walked out into the lane. His car was parked on the verge. She turned, then, but he was out of sight, the stone bulk of church crouching between them. She reached out a stealthy fingertip as she passed, touching the car bonnet. It felt warm and smooth and safe, just for a moment. The washing was still flapping like a row of disturbed seagulls on the line in the back garden, but the woman had disappeared inside. Cloud House’s twin gables regarded her archly as she crossed the village street. She heard the chunter of a distant train as she stepped up onto the pavement, and broke into a run.

  She saw the guard’s red flag fall like a careless spark in the distance, heard the shrill whistle, but she was still on the wrong side of the tracks: too late now.

  George

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ she said, not looking at him and carrying on walking.

  ‘But it will be, what, another hour until the next train?’ He had the window wound down, idling the car along beside her as she walked.

  ‘I can wait.’

  ‘You’re working tonight, aren’t you? Will you be able to make it back in time?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  The Austin bumped across the level crossing. Zelah was about to turn, onto the Nottingham-bound platform. ‘I can drop you anywhere,’ he called through the open window. ‘You won’t have to be seen in the car with me.’

  There was a sudden splatter of drops against the windshield and the sunshine was blotted out. It was just a squall, but he saw her hesitate. ‘It’s unprofessional,’ she said.

  Droplets flecked his cheek as he leant further out. ‘See, here, Zelah, I’d offer a lift to any of my workers that were stranded in a rainstorm. It’s not a question of professionalism, just common courtesy.’

  She took a step towards the car, then, looked down at him through the open window. He pulled on the handbrake and put the car into neutral.

  ‘Was that why you picked up Violet Smith?’ she said.

  Violet Smith? The pouring rain, the hitchhiker in his wavering headlights, the awkward drive through the Meadows, dropping her off at the factory steps. ‘The night Dame Laura arrived?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I didn’t honestly make the connection. It was dark, and we didn’t chat, much. I had no idea she was your co-worker.’

  ‘My room-mate, too.’

  He tried to remember. They hadn’t really talked. ‘It was hammering it down, and she’d have been late clocking on if I hadn’t stopped. I did nothing wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t say you did.’

  He couldn’t work out her expression. Her eyes squinted, blinking against the rain, and her mouth was set, hardening her features. She’d come out bare-headed and the rain was flattening her hair against the side of her face. Cold, damp and spiky – not at all like the woman at the hop. ‘Please get in, Zelah, if only to stay dry whilst you wait for the train.’

  She gave a small nod and walked round the bonnet to the passenger door, her dark red coat like spilled paint against the watery backdrop. He wound up his window as she got in the car beside him, slamming the door and smoothing her skirt down over her knees.

  ‘Violet saw your wedding ring when you gave her a lift,’ she said, looking out through the teary glass windscreen.

  ‘And jumped to the conclusion that I was nothing more than an adulterous philanderer. What did she tell you?’

  ‘Only that you picked her up in your car, that you were wearing a wedding ring, and then you took it off and put it in your pocket.’

  ‘Well, of course I did. One can’t wear jewellery in the factory. It’s a safety risk, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married?’

  ‘I don’t care to discuss my private life with work colleagues.’

  ‘Colleagues.’ She repeated it dully.

  The windscreen was a blurry mess. He turned on the windscreen wipers: tick-swoosh, clearing the rain-muddled view – the low, white village hall and the triangle of green grass with the lime tree jerking in the wind. Clarity, that’s what was needed.

  ‘I didn’t mean that you’re just a colleague. What I meant was that I would, of course, have told you a
ll about myself, but we never got to that stage, did we? You stood me up, that night at the Ritz, remember? And in any case, why didn’t you come to me when your chum Violet started gossiping? Why on earth did you choose to believe her tittle-tattle instead of asking me yourself?’

  She sighed. ‘You’re angry. I should go. Thank you for your kind offer of a lift, Mr Handford, but I think it’s better if I get the train.’ She carried on talking as she reached for the catch. ‘I was only here to visit Mary McLaughlin at the Home for Unmarried Mothers. Remember, the one I’m covering for?’ She caught his eye and he nodded. ‘Apparently, the baby’s due any day, so she’ll be back at work in a few weeks and I can go back to my day job, keep out of your hair. We can just forget all about this – this misunderstanding, and everything can go back to normal.’

  Go back to normal? Normal was the night after night in the factory, going home to his empty house, the note from the housekeeper, next-door’s cat miaowing on the doorstep. Normal was the occasional day off, sailing on the Trent, alone in the sun and the wind, and uneasy male chat in the clubhouse afterwards. Normal was visiting the grave of a girl he’d loved half a lifetime ago and whose face he could barely recall. Normal was the fading clench of grief and the guilt at the long-dead flowers in the urn. That was normal.

  He lifted his left hand from the steering wheel and rested it lightly on her arm. ‘Is that really what you want, Zelah? To go back to normal?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you want?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can.’ He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her arm through the damp wool of her coat, smell the musky scent of her, so close. The windscreen brimmed. Out with it. Spit it out, man. ‘It’s twenty years since I lost Lexi and the baby. You’re the first woman I’ve felt anything for in twenty years, Zelah. I’m not angry. I’m scared.’ There, it was done.

  His hand was still on her sleeve. Her fingers were on the door catch. He heard her suck in a breath. And he expected her to shove him off, fling the car door open and run off into the rain. It didn’t matter. At least he was free of the stoppered up feelings and the swallowed words. For a frozen moment they were still. There was just the sound of the rain and the wipers and the feel of her next to him. He let his eyes stray across and saw that she’d let go of the door catch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I reacted so badly when Violet said about your wedding ring.’

  ‘Ruddy woman. I wish you’d just come and asked me, then.’

  ‘I wish I had, too.’ The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, the air acid-yellow in the eager sunshine. The wipers pulled and scratched across the dry glass. He flicked the switch and they stilled. He felt her hand, over his. ‘I’m scared, too. That night of the raid drill, there wasn’t really a reamer left on.’ He turned the key off in the ignition.

  ‘You know I arrived in Nottingham during the Blitz. I didn’t just leave Plymouth because of the free train tickets. On that first night raid in Plymouth, I’d just met someone. It sounds silly, it’s nothing compared to your loss – but I honestly thought he was, I don’t know, special.’ He turned to look at her, then, as she swallowed and carried on. ‘We had been out and the raid started so we had to just run to the nearest public shelter, but as we got there I stopped, because I noticed a stray dog on the shelter steps and I wanted to bring it inside. And then . . .’ She was pulling her lips together, shaking her head, as if her face didn’t want to let the words out. But out they came, in a rush: ‘A direct hit, they said. But because I was just outside, I was blown free. And afterwards, there was nothing. There was just nothing left. They said I was lucky. They said it was a miracle.’ She bit her lip. ‘But that’s why I couldn’t bring myself to go down into the factory shelter the other night – couldn’t bear to be crushed inside with all those people, like sitting ducks.’

  ‘And you came to Nottingham, to get away from the memory of that night?’

  She nodded. ‘There was nothing left for me there. And this factory was exactly the right place for me, because . . .’ Her voice petered out.

  He recalled how, after Lexi’s death, he’d thrown himself into work, seeking refuge in the night shift. ‘Because inside the factory you’re just a part of the production line, as anonymous as any other piece of equipment, and the noise and exhaustion cancel out any possibility of . . .’

  ‘Love?’ It was her turn to interrupt.

  ‘Human contact, I was going to say.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’ She shrugged, dislodging his hand. He brought it up to his face and ran his thumb and forefinger along his jawline. He cleared his throat.

  Had she really just intimated what he thought? He pushed his foot down on the clutch and reached out to twist the key in the ignition. The car growled to life. He put the car into gear, and began to lift his foot from the clutch. Did she feel the same way as he did? He lowered his right foot onto the accelerator.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Zelah

  The sun was beginning to drift down behind them, beyond the River Trent, glazing the fields and houses with a barley-sugar shimmer. He cleared his throat as if he were about to speak, but instead just clicked the indicator on, turning right. ‘But this isn’t the way to the hostel,’ Zelah said.

  ‘It’s a bit of a detour, admittedly.’

  She looked at his hands on the steering wheel as the car turned: strong, dextrous fingers. ‘Kidnap?’

  ‘Something like that. Don’t worry, I’ll get you to work on time.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried, just curious.’

  The air was sticky-warm in the car now the sun was out again. The seats smelled of saddle soap. She imagined him cleaning the car on his day off: sudsy water and rolled up sleeves, stretching out to work the smooth soap deep into the leather. What else did he do on his days off? Zelah wondered. She wound down the window a little, and smoothed her skirt over her knees.

  He slowed to let a Barton bus pull out in front of them. They were driving through the village of Chilwell now: scattered cottages with blossom in the orchards between, a boxy village hall, a woman with a blue hat pushing a pram, the sound of a dog howling in a back garden – snatches of other people’s lives filtering in through the passenger window. Ordinary lives: mothers and fathers and children and roast dinners and washing the car on a Saturday afternoon ready for the Sunday outing. It was the kind of life she would have wanted, if things had worked out differently. Was it too late to hope for a life like that? She stole a glance at George Handford, but his eyes were on the road ahead. Cool air slid in through the open window, grazing her cheek.

  Next to some playing fields she noticed a trio of schoolgirls getting into a waiting car, and she let her mind take her back, ten years or more, to her own schooldays:

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t let them score!’ The team captain’s words echo in Zelah’s ears as she shifts her weight from foot to foot, seeing the players jostle and shove, the hockey ball scudding across the damp grass between them. She watches and waits, the stick firm and safe in her hands. Safe-hands-Fitzlord: the only reason she made the first team – her quick reactions; her skill in stopping the ball before it reaches the net.

  Her gymslip tickles the goosebumped flesh of her thighs. The air smells of bonfires, and clouds scrawl across the smoke-grey skies. The angry game wears on: shouts and the dull clash of wood against wood. Men and women in hats and furs watch from the sidelines, waving cigarettes and calling out, ‘Well played!’ It is the final match of the season and they are a goal ahead and she can still hear team captain Janey Houseman’s voice: ‘Whatever you do, don’t let them score!’

  Zelah looks across at the clock on the pavilion. It is nearly half past. It will be over at any moment. The girls in their black gymslips look like a flock of quarrelling crows: flapping and cawing and jabbing at each other out there in the middle of the pitch. Her gaze moves back to the onlookers. A man in a long coat is lighting his pipe. Someone’s father, she thinks. What wo
uld it be like if she had a father to watch her play in the first team, in the final match of the season? If he’d been alive, instead of sunken deep in the mud of some Flanders Field; would he be here? Would he be the kind of father to smoke a pipe and read the newspaper and bring home a puppy for her birthday?

  ‘Fitzlord!’ A ball is hurtling towards her. She reacts without thought. There is a juddering impact, up the hockey stick, into her bones. She looks down and the ball lies still on the muddy ground at her feet. There are cheers and clapping and then the shrill shriek of the final whistle. ‘Good show, Fitzlord!’ Janey Houseman wraps her in a sweaty embrace, then pulls away. ‘What’s the matter, Fitzlord? You don’t seem very happy about it.’

  ‘We won; of course I’m happy,’ Zelah says. But she finds it hard to draw the corners of her mouth into a smile, as she sees the other girls run across the pitch to the open arms of their waiting parents.

  Zelah clasped her hands in her lap. The bus in front of them pulled into a stop at the end of a row of terraced houses where a stout woman with a shopping basket was waiting. George indicated to pull out past it, moving down a gear so that the engine revved. Zelah shifted in her seat. They were driving faster now they’d left the bus behind. People, bicycles, houses and shop fronts streaked past in a muddle of colour. They turned left up a hill, and then right, through an avenue of tall trees.

  ‘Wollaton Hall, over there.’ He nodded to their left, but all she could see from the window was a flash of green.

  ‘Are you taking me on a sightseeing trip?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I am, in a manner of speaking.’

  Trees gave way to houses, as the road went over a canal, and railway lines. She glanced again at his profile, and he turned to catch her eye at the same time. ‘Hope you’ve got enough petrol coupons,’ she said.