A World of Other People (7 page)

Yes, the cold is good. The dark is good. And she glances over his shoulder at the dark wall in front of her, the dark sky above. The whole of the dark night all around. So mysterious. Another world. Their bodies move together, one shadowy form in the lane. They’ve arrived at her place. And after a few minutes she slowly turns him round and says: ‘This is it. C’mon, we can’t stay out here all night.’

In the dark, he can barely make anything out. A door. Upstairs windows. It’s not until he’s inside and the lights are on that he gazes about and takes in the comforts of something he hasn’t seen for a long time. A home. And he is suddenly distracted by sensations he hasn’t felt for a long time. It looks
and feels like a home, this flat. Not just a place to dump your kit and a bunk to collapse onto. A home. Cushions, for God’s sake. And armchairs. Prints on the wall. He runs his fingers over the arms of a chair. Strokes the surface of a wooden table, as though the feel of it is releasing a store of memories, of rooms and houses before the war, when everything was … what? Normal. And constant. So normal you took it for granted. So constant, you took its continuance as given. He wasn’t expecting this. For the sight of these few ordinary household objects — table, chairs, cushions and prints; objects that he would never have given a second thought once — he now finds, well … moving.

This, he knows, is precisely what he shouldn’t be doing. Looking back. For it won’t come back. That world. The one that existed before what it is fashionable in some circles to call ‘the business’. Makes the whole war sound like some sort of troublesome dispute. It’s one of those phrases that insists upon not making a fuss, one of those phrases that says the sooner we get through this the better. And part of the whole business of not making a fuss is not looking back. But after an eternity of bare Nissen huts, sometimes not
even so much as a bunk or a chair, it is impossible to resist just one backward glance.

She watches him, knowing exactly what’s going on. Noting, once again, not just his presence, but the
rightness
of his presence. This is it. She knows. She doesn’t have to ask anybody. Not now. BOOM. And as she stands there she can see the doors, the massive, heavy gilded doors that lead into the many rooms of the secret society of love, opening before her. And she watches as he strokes the surface of the table, aware of him and the table itself and everything around her as she never has been until now. Everything is alive. Chairs, tables, vases,
them
. Everything.

As she leads him up the narrow wooden steps she has the sudden, faintly amusing feeling of having brought a lost dog home. For he’s got that look. But mostly she feels his eyes — on her, on the flat, on everything. Just as they were in the pub. Eyes that are as intense as she always knew they would be. But eyes that have acquired a new-found sparkle.

Then they are standing in one large room with a curtain across the middle, dividing it in two.

‘That’s Pip’s room. Well, not really a room. Her … space.’

Pip, he later learns, being Philippa. Her flatmate. And he stares at the curtain, a look of sudden concern on his face.

‘Don’t worry. She’s not here.’

But he says nothing. Once again he’s noting the half-remembered, half-lost normality of it all. A rug, richly coloured in one of those ancient patterns in which rugs are always woven. A bed, a quilt. And cushions again. And there, standing on the rug, the girl in the ARP coat. And he knows why you can’t look back, for he knows that he could never return to it now. Return to the war. Return to ‘the business’. Knows, beyond doubt, that he could never climb into the hatch and up into a bomber again. Sit in the pilot’s seat, put on his mask and fly off into the night telling himself to concentrate on the job and not think. Because he would be thinking the wrong thoughts. How many times had they done that, ‘F’ for Freddie, all of them? But he knows now, back in this half-remembered normality, that as much as the war may go on he could not go to it any more.

‘Are you all right?’

That voice. The park. The summer sky. I come from that world of other people you left behind, and I
will lead you back into it. And so she has. Odd, how we know these things. Decisively. There is no irony in the way she asks him. She asks with the same concern as she first did. Does she fear he will disappear into himself, go wherever it is he goes, and become a statue again?

‘Yes. I am. You’ll have to forgive me. I’d quite forgotten what it’s like.’

She nods as she unbuttons her coat and pulls him onto the bed, that sensation of having brought home a lost dog once more upon her. It is a small bed. And so, crammed and close, they lie there and simply take in the reality of each other: warmth, cigarettes, perfume, beer. BOOM. That, and everything else. Neither, they will later discover, knows much of love. He has, as he has said, ‘done it’ a couple of times; she, a fling or two at university. But nothing more. She does not mention the young man called Frank, who gave her a ring to keep and which, she supposes, she took out of duty. Not yet. There will be time to tell him that later. Not now.

And though neither of them knows much of love, they know enough to agree, however silently, that they will not rush this night. That they will lie
together, still and not still. They will talk and they will be silent. They will kiss, and they will simply be content to look at each other. They will stay clothed, and they will undress. And they will draw the quilt over them, seal the cold out and shivering together enter that separate peace of touch and smell, that mingling of bodies, of cigarettes and perfume, of sweat and sex and sleep. And it will all occur slowly during the night. For, as little as they may know, they know enough not to rush.

At some stage during the night, in that mythical zone known as the middle of the night, or it may even be getting towards dawn (it’s impossible to tell with the blacked-out windows), they are lying in bed staring into the darkness and she is talking about fire-watching, being careful not to mention anything about flaming bombers because he won’t want to know. No, she keeps it light. And she has just told him, almost in the manner of an afterthought, with whom, until recently (for Mr Eliot spends more time in the country now and lately she has begun to watch for firecrackers from the rooftop at the Treasury with Pip), she watched.

‘Eliot?’

She doesn’t need to see the incredulity on his face; she can hear it in his voice.

‘Yes.’

‘
The
Mr Eliot?’

‘Always Mr Eliot to me. Tom to the others. But I can’t call him that.’

She explains about the church and how it all came about, and when she’s finished there’s a long silence, a thinking silence, and she can almost predict the next question when he finally asks it.

‘What’s it like?’

‘To meet him?’

‘Yes.’

And once again the room descends into dark silence, not because she is gathering her thoughts, but because she is creating the appropriate dramatic pause before replying.

‘It’s like having the
Queen Mary
coming straight at you — very slowly.’

‘
You
didn’t say that.’

She smiles in the dark.

‘No, a poet friend did. Eliot rejected his poems, but invited him into the office. He told him he liked what he saw, and would like to see what he did in
the future. To keep him in mind, for heaven’s sake. It’s like saying, “Not tonight, dearie. But you’re on a promise.” We were all very impressed. I didn’t let on about the church and already meeting him in a churchy way. Bit embarrassed about the church thing, actually. So I sort of played along when everyone asked, “What’s it like, meeting Eliot?” And that was when he paused — as if he were thinking long and hard when you could tell that he
knew
we’d ask this and that he’d prepared his answer and that he wasn’t thinking long and hard at all — and said, “It was like having the
Queen Mary
…” And it is, it really is. That nose, it’s like the prow of a great ship. And those eyes, my God, they look straight through you. Spooky, if you must know, that’s what it’s like.’

She stops, taking his hand in the dark, and this time she really is gathering her thoughts.

‘You meet him, and you talk to him, and you walk away wondering who on earth he is. And this happens every time. Every time you walk away wondering the same thing. You get this voice, the voice you hear on the records. That sort of utterly-above-it-all voice that you imagine nobody could possibly use, not in everyday life, not with their hair down … but he does.
And I wonder if he ever lets his hair down. Or if it’s always parted just so. And all the time those eyes are looking at you as if he’s getting on with the job of thinking something else altogether. As if somewhere behind all the talk, the real thinking is going on. And you’ll never know what it is. And I wonder if anybody ever has. Spooky, that’s what it’s like.’

Again she pauses, yawns, and just when he thinks she’s finished, she adds sleepily: ‘Sometimes I think he’s the loneliest man I’ve ever met. That he’d dearly love to drop the whole game, but can’t now. And you wonder if he ever will. If he will ever just
be
. Just babble, without thinking. Find someone who will just babble back. Pack in the poetry, and discover babble. But I think it would take someone extraordinary to make that happen. A sort of magician.’

That is when he shakes her hand gently. ‘Magicians exist. And they don’t always say abracadabra.’

But she’s asleep. How can that be? Talking away one minute, and dead to the world the next. He carefully lets her hand go and hears it flop faintly onto the bed. The infinite darkness enfolds them. He can’t see the walls and he can’t see the ceiling. He wouldn’t be surprised to find stars above and around him. The
only sound is the deep, steady breathing beside him. The rest is silence, inside the room and without. And he’s not used to that, for there’s always something going on at the base: voices, engines, footsteps in the dark. But he can’t hear a thing out there. And he can’t sleep. Without thinking he reaches for his cigarettes and his lighter on the chair beside him in the dark. The lighter flares, the room is cast in shadowy light for a second or two, and he snaps the lighter shut and drops it onto the floor. He doesn’t know how long he’s been lying there when he hears it. Distant, then nearer and nearer. Engines. Up there in the sky. Theirs or ours. He can’t tell. And he can’t decide if there’s any point in waking her. He concludes he can’t, or shouldn’t. That her sleep is so deep she needs it. Besides, the engines are closer and he now recognises that sound. How could he not? Wellingtons. Somewhere up there a pilot is peering out into the night, the navigator is plotting a course to a runway that will stay lit up for them while the rest of the crew are quiet for the last leg. The bomber light from having dumped its load, and now it’s home for bacon and eggs to round the night off. Where have they been? Wherever it is, whatever the target, he’s been there too, and he could never
go back. Not now. He’s lost the knack. That knack of switching off. Of stepping outside himself and looking on. That knack of saying it’s not me doing this, it’s
him
, and believing it for the time it takes to get you there and back. He’s lost it. And couldn’t get it back even if he wanted to. Not now.

And so he lies awake in the dark and listens to the engines fade into the night until all becomes silent again. It all fades like another life. Was that him? Was that them — ‘F’ for Freddie? And just as he could when he walked back to the base a few weeks before, he can hear them and see them. He closes his eyes and wishes he couldn’t. There is a country field. A full moon. A voice is calling out in his ear telling him it’s going to go up any minute. All of it. Then everything explodes and the world turns black.

He hears a bird, opens his eyes and the room is light. At first he doesn’t know where he is and he is numbering the rooms of his life, wondering which one he’s in. And then he sees her. She is wrapped in a blanket and has just flung the window open. She is grinning, eyeing him and looking up from the window at the bird, then back to him.

‘It’s a shame to be sleeping. We can sleep later. But not through this. You can’t sleep through this. It’s not allowed.’

The ARP coat is hanging from the bedroom chair. Their things are either on the chair or the floor. The pillow is soft; there is a faint, flowery scent in the air. The bird sings. It is like music on a Saturday morning. And for a moment he is both here and transported back to his home, to those Saturday mornings past, when the light was always bright — football weather — and the music that was playing was Saturday morning music. Then he remembers it’s Sunday, that he must return to his base soon. His face darkens and she drops the blanket and is suddenly beside him.

‘No dark faces,’ she grins. ‘They’re not allowed either.’

But, she adds, they’re the only rules — because rules also aren’t allowed. Not here. They can do and say what they like in the domain of this room. They are both naked. Here the whole room is lit with a bright autumn sun. Nothing to hide. Everything — birthmark, moles, hair, forbidden frowns — clear as day. So this is it, that secret society she’s never gained admission to. This is it: two naked people in a sunlit
room. She reaches out and strokes him, he staring at her, eyes lingering here and there on her body, she studying his like some young art student in a life-drawing class, seeing a naked man for the first time. No words. No desire for words. No need of words. She strokes him, and at the same moment his fingers slip easily into her and she closes her eyes. And just then, quite suddenly, in the no-rules, clear light of the room, just when she’s banished words from the moment, words well up in her. Delicious, forbidden words. Three of them. And she silently mouths them as his fingers push further into her, three delicious, forbidden words: cunt, cock, fuck. She silently hums them, again and again. A forbidden mantra. Almost a game. On and on. Three words. Basic, like bread. Almost like reciting Chaucer. So this is the secret society of love. So this is it. No wonder nobody ever explained it to her, because to explain it, to
really
explain it, they’d have to speak of two naked people in a bright clear room, and they’d have to use words like cunt, cock and fuck. And nobody does. And nobody has. Not until now.