The Language of the Dead (10 page)

Arthur immediately had taken responsibility for the catastrophe. “I'm sorry,” he'd said. “I've caused you to drop your eggs.”

He was tall, slender, long-legged, fit-looking. He had dark hazel eyes and—yes, her fleeting impression had been right—luxuriant black hair. His skin also was just a shade darker than that of the boys to which she was used, as if, perhaps, he had some Latin in his blood. And she saw that his right arm was missing below the elbow.

He smiled and bent to retrieve the bread and the tea with his lone hand. She wondered if he'd lost the arm in France. He seemed of the right age.

“Thanks—but it's okay, really,” she'd said, even though she'd used up a week's worth of ration cards for the eggs.

“But I've broken your eggs.”

“No—I wasn't looking where I was going.”

“Yes, but your hands were full.”

“I should have brought a sack with me.”

“Are you
sure
you won't let me replace your eggs?”

She tried not to look at his arm. “No, I'm fine, really.”

A look of something like recognition suddenly lit Arthur's eyes. “You're the new girl.”

Vera smiled. “Yes.”

“My name is Arthur Lear,” he said, unselfconsciously offering his hand.

Vera cradled what was left of her groceries in her right arm and shook Arthur's hand with her left. “I'm Vera Lamb.”

“That's a wonderful name—Vera. Like Vera Lynn.”

Vera flushed. “Nothing like that.”

“Only, you're prettier than Vera Lynn.”

“Well, I don't know. But thank you.”

“It's true,” Arthur said. “Are you staying in the billet, then? Behind the shop?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure I can't replace your eggs?”

“No, I'm fine, really.”

She'd taken the groceries back to her billet and prepared herself a bacon sandwich and a pot of tea. She missed the eggs. She had just a bit of cheese, milk, and roast pork left. She found herself thinking of Arthur as she ate. She liked his smile. She would have thought that she would have minded his missing arm. But she didn't. The rest of him obviously was quite fit. And he seemed intelligent and polite.

On the following morning he'd come to her door bearing a dozen fresh eggs from the farm near the village that he ran with his father. His sudden appearance had surprised her and she hadn't quite known what to say, other than thank you.

After that, they'd met a few times for tea and once in the pub at his invitation. She'd decided she liked him well enough. He seemed charming and solicitous. Then he'd surprised her again by showing up at her billet unannounced, this time at twilight, and inviting her out for a walk. She had agreed to go with him with less hesitation than she would have thought she would have shown even a few days earlier. She wasn't sure why she hadn't hesitated, unless it had something to do with the war, the way in which its omnipresence seemed to hurry everything along, forced one to decide things more quickly than did peace, with its false sense of security and everlasting time. Everyone seemed worried about time now; there never seemed to be enough of it. If the British could manage to hold off the German invasion through the beginning of October, then the Germans likely wouldn't invade because the Channel was too rough in the autumn—so the government and the newspapers said. But if the Germans could destroy the RAF quickly, before the summer was done, they almost certainly would come. Either way, no one felt as if they had enough time—to do or say what they must, to devise a plan of action, to face the inevitable.

They'd strolled up Manscome Hill along the well-worn trail by the wood. The night had been warm and dry, the sky clear, the meadows alive with the twilight activities of birds and insects. As they'd walked, Arthur had told Vera about the life he shared with his father, Noel.

Noel had spent twenty years as an English tutor at a public school in Sussex. When Arthur was five, they'd moved to Quimby, where
Noel intended to start life anew as a gentleman farmer. “That was after my mom died,” Arthur had said, neglecting to say
how
his mother had died. But he'd made it clear—he'd lost his mother as a very young boy and this tragedy had set him and his father in motion.

Vera had met Noel Lear once, when she'd run into him and Arthur in the sundries shop one evening not long after Arthur had shown up at her door bearing the eggs. Noel was a slight man who wore glasses, spoke softly, and moved hesitantly. He'd smiled at Vera vacantly and she'd noticed that he'd stayed close to Arthur's elbow, as if his surroundings confused him. The scuttlebutt about the village, which she had picked up here and there, was that he'd never had much success with the little farm.

She'd found their walk around Manscome Hill lovely and peaceful. She was certain that Arthur liked her—and that he perfectly well understood what lay beneath the shapeless, bland masculinity of her Home Guard coveralls. A pair of goldfinches had flashed across the path in front of them, two bright yellow birds, new to the world, against a dusky blue-green meadow crowded with obscure, watching, primeval spirits.

Two evenings later, they'd walked up the hill again. As they'd neared the crest, Arthur had sat in the opulent grass and Vera had sat beside him. As they'd gazed down onto the village and its quiet, shrouded corners, Arthur had told her the two defining stories of his life—of his mother's death and the loss of his arm.

He'd cried when his mother had died of breast cancer, though he admitted that he didn't remember much of it. He recalled seeing her body lying on his father's bed, the pain of her disease still etched on her face, and knew then that he'd never see her again. Now, his grief for her assailed him in “patches,” he told Vera. He added, “She was beautiful.”

He'd lost his arm when he was ten. His father had been trying to repair their old Ford tractor, which had broken down yet again, and had not noticed that Arthur was round the other side, tinkering with the gears and belts, believing he was helping. When his father had suddenly started the engine, Arthur's left arm had been sucked into
the whirring machine. His father had carried him into the village, where a doctor had bandaged him and driven him to the hospital in Winchester. His father had held him in his lap the entire drive. In Winchester, the doctors had removed his ravaged lower arm. He smiled at Vera—a smile that pierced her. “Funny, but I still sometimes forget that I haven't got it any longer. I'll reach for something and realize… .” He looked at the grass and said no more.

“I'm sorry,” Vera said, though those words hardly described what she felt as she glimpsed the ache in Arthur's eyes.

He had smiled again and said, “It's all right. I still have my dad.” Arthur's gaze was raw and tender at once.

“What is wrong with your father?” she asked.

He shook his head despairingly. “I don't know. He seems to be losing his memory; he forgets things. He used to have such a sharp mind. He speaks Italian and French and used to read everything. Now, he can't keep his mind on a book long enough to read even a few pages. I worry that he'd be lost without me.”

Vera touched his cheek; she couldn't help herself. He put his hand against hers and held it against his face for a few seconds; then he moved his mouth to the palm of her hand and held his lips against it. Vera felt an emotion begin to rise within her—an emotion she'd felt often and believed she understood, though only in an abstract way, as if she'd only observed the feeling from afar and noted it. She'd daydreamed of what it would be like to make love to a man, though her fantasies had not counted on someone like Arthur Lear.

Arthur kissed the palm of her hand; she felt the tip of his tongue move across her skin, sending a jolt of pleasure through her. Then he'd looked directly at her with his dark, sad, searching eyes and said, “I like you, Vera; I like you very much. You mean so much to me.” He moved around to face her and she found herself moving to meet him, fending off a feeling of caution. They drew closer and Arthur put his lips against hers and kissed her gently. She closed her eyes and accepted his kiss, parting her lips slightly, the bloom of doubt within her withering. When the kiss was finished, Arthur stayed very close
to her, his cheek against hers; she could smell him quite distinctly, a red-brown odor of youthful male virility. She felt as if she was no longer merely observing that feeling that so often had stirred within her. Arthur had teased it to the surface of her consciousness and caused it to take shape. The feeling was one of frank sexual desire tinged with pity, a product of her deepest fantasies and confidential desires.

Arthur kissed her again, and this time Vera opened herself to Arthur and to her ardor. She leaned toward him, probing him with her tongue, hoping to fire him. She felt as if she hardly knew what she was doing—yet her actions came to her naturally. She felt as if all the knowledge she needed was already contained within her heart and limbs and in the secret places from which she'd imprisoned the rising emotion. And she could feel Arthur swelling, his blood rising.

He put his lone arm around her and pulled her closer yet, surprising her with his strength. They kissed for what seemed to Vera like a very long time; and when Arthur finally had withdrawn his mouth from hers, she'd felt herself dangling on a kind of precipice, her lips warm. Arthur began to ease her onto her back and they lay in the grass facing each other, Vera on her right side, and he kissed her again, annihilating the last barriers lying between them.

Since, they'd made love a half dozen times and on each occasion Vera had found herself longing for and dreading the experience. Everything that had come before Arthur Lear now seemed to have occurred in a separate lifetime. She understood that she'd allowed Arthur to seduce her, though he'd done so more quickly than her virginal self had imagined would have been possible. She enjoyed their lovemaking—she couldn't deny that. And yet the way in which she'd allowed Arthur to gain a kind of control of her life soon had begun to worry her. Now that worry had become like a thorn in her shoe that she could not dislodge; it pricked her consistently, wherever she went, whatever she did.

Three nights earlier she'd awakened to find Arthur sitting at the small round table near the gas ring in her billet, fully dressed. When she'd gone to him, he'd raised his head to look at her and said,
gloomily, “I know you don't love me. You can't, not with my arm like this.” She'd assured him that she didn't care that his arm was gone. But she understood in the moment, too, with a clarity she hadn't known before that, indeed, she
didn't
love Arthur and wouldn't.

Then, two nights later—last night—Vera had noticed a kind of clinging desperation in Arthur's lovemaking that had not been present before. When they'd finished, he'd rolled off and, inexplicably, begun to cry. When she'd asked him what was wrong, he'd abruptly risen from the bed and dressed quickly. “You know very well,” was all he'd said. The look in his eyes was one of animosity, she thought, and wondered what she might have done or said to make Arthur angry. When she'd asked him why he was crying, he'd said again that she knew very well why he was crying. Before she could protest that she didn't know, Arthur told her that he must go home to his father and hurriedly left.

Now she considered bringing her affair with Arthur to an end. Something in his character gradually had begun to reveal itself to her, a kind of unpredictable peevishness and a penchant for self-pity. She didn't want to hurt him, but there was something else besides. She also didn't want to make him angry. She realized that at least a part of her feared Arthur—that her newfound pleasure in their lovemaking had blinded her to something within him that he'd managed, at least at first, to keep hidden. In allowing him to seduce her, she'd made a mistake. She hoped that they could remain friends. But they had moved too quickly and she had allowed herself to succumb too easily. It all seemed so clear to her now that she wondered why she hadn't seen it sooner.

She looked at the clock on the wall above her desk. The time was noon. She called Southampton and Portsmouth. All was well.

She was allowed a thirty-minute break daily, during which she normally ate her lunch in the little room. Today, though, she felt the need to escape her post and clear her head. She left the cramped room and stepped into the sunshine. She moved onto the High Street and turned left, away from the center of the village, in the opposite direction from the Lear farm.

She soon found herself among the few stone cottages that stood at the east end of the village. She cut through an open meadow through which a narrow sheep path ascended Manscome Hill a half mile or so east of the main path that crossed Mills Run, which lay to her right. To her left was a wood that marked the boundary between the hill and the estate of Lord Jeffrey Pembroke.

She climbed the path for ten minutes, walking in the sun, reinvigorating her spirits, before turning around. She decided that, come what may, she was finished with Arthur—finished in
that
way, at least. As she turned to head back down the hill, she saw a tall, gangly, sandy-haired boy standing in the meadow, fifty yards below. The sight of him startled her. She had never before seen the boy. He stood in the meadow looking up at her, a leather satchel over his shoulder. He was dressed in a light cotton shirt and pants and leather sandals and had golden hair almost to his shoulders. Despite the distance separating them, she sensed his skittishness. He seemed poised to run, like a rabbit. When she took a tentative step in his direction, he flinched. Despite his size, he seemed very much like a child. She raised her hand and said “Hello.”

He raised his hand to her but did not wave it; the motion reminded her of the one the Indians made in the American cowboy movies when they greeted the white men.