The Undertow (24 page)

She tots up the last of the columns. The figure doesn’t look quite right. She scans back through the records and can’t see where she’s gone wrong.

She goes through the numbers again, from scratch, writing them out on a slip of scrap paper and totting them up again, and spots her
mistake—a machinist’s overtime she’d missed—the kind of mistake you make when you’re tired and preoccupied. She completes the task just as she hears Mr. Jack getting up from his desk.

She fishes her mirror out of the drawer. Checks her face. During the day, though reapplied carefully, the lipstick has bled into the fine lines around her lips. She colours in her lips again. Rolls them together as she’s seen Madam do. She lets out a long breath. It is important to maintain composure. She drops her mirror and the lipstick into her bag, snaps it shut.

Amelia takes a deep breath and lets it go, ruffles the yellow slips into a pile, traps them in a bulldog clip. She twists round in her seat to look back into the inner office. Beyond the rippled glass, Mr. Jack puts on his coat.

She gets up and straightens her clothes. She moves towards the main office door.

“Ah, Mrs. Hastings,” he says, and taps his hat onto his head. “I’m meeting friends at the club, and I’ve left things rather late. Can you just sort out a few invoices for me?”

She folds her hands together. Her lips feel greasy and uncomfortable. “Of course.”

“They’re just on my desk,” he says. “You are a pet.”

And he is gone, leaving a whiff of lavender hair oil.

Amelia is left there, in the dusty, quiet office, with Mr. Sanderson sweeping below, and bumping into the workbench legs, leaving little bruises on the wood.

RUBY PUTS THE KETTLE ON
. There are four crackers left in the bottom of the biscuit barrel and she lifts them out and lays them on a plate. She scans the shelves for tins—sardines perhaps, ham; something she can just serve. She’s starving. But there’s nothing you could just lever out of a tin onto a plate. Which leaves the garden.

She plunges outside, into the cool air. A blackbird’s singing, and Mr. and Mrs. Graves are talking next door, low voices, soft and companionable, as he trims the privet hedge. Little clips of leaf and sprays of twig fly across the top of the hedge as he works, like green confetti for a summer wedding.

She makes her way along the rows of vegetables—grassy leeks, the purple blooms of broccoli, twining beanstalks dotted with red flowers. At the end of the garden, behind glass, where they’ll catch most of the day’s sun, are the tomatoes, the fruit hanging hard and orange and the smell of them dusky and rich and sharp. She leans down to cup one in her hand; it’s firm and warm from the sun. It’s not really ripe; it’s not really the right moment to pick it, but sometimes you just can’t wait for the right moment to come along. There’s a dull ache at the back of the mouth. She nips the stem with her fingernails, and hopes the sap won’t stain.

Amelia closes the door carefully, letting the latch drop gently into place.

Her throat aches as if she’s coming down with something. She peels off her gloves and folds them into her handbag, hangs it up, then slips off her old summer jacket and hangs it behind the door. As she eases off her shoes, she listens to Madam clattering about in the kitchen. What is she up to, what will she spoil, what will she break, what will she chip?

But it is not Amelia’s kitchen. Not her things. She climbs the treads up to the bathroom and scrubs at her red-stained lips with a soapy flannel. She sets the lipstick down on the floor and gives it a nudge, so that it rolls a little way into the dusty undershadow of the bath, where Ruby can find it later.

In her room, she kneels down at the suitcase, lays it flat, and clicks it open. She lifts the picture book out onto the rug. She opens it, and looks through the cards. The picture of a camel, a fishing boat, a mountain. She turns to the end and unhooks the last postcard from its moorings. Beyond it are blank pages, with empty slots for cards that he never got the chance to send.

She holds the postcard, looking at the view that he had gazed at, thinking of her. She turns the card over. It is getting softened with wear. She doesn’t need to read the words. She touches the slight smudge of William’s name.

I am a fool.

I am a stupid fool.

I am a stupid old fool.

And there’s no worse fool than an old fool.

Ruby clatters on the lid and stretches across the table to place the teapot on its trivet. Amelia comes in. She looks a little flushed, a little puffy around the eyes and her mouth is raw looking. Ruby wipes her hands on a cloth.

Amelia takes in the arrangement of tea plates, teapot, cups and saucers on the tabletop. A fan of those crackers Madam’s so fond of, a small jug of blue watery milk. Their two unmatched saucers—hers blue, Ruby’s cream with a green stripe—that contain their butter rations. And two under-ripe tomatoes, sliced in half and grilled. They would have been better left to ripen fully on the vine. Amelia glances up at her daughter-in-law. The girl’s face is pale and tired; there are real hollows under her eyes. She’s heard the rumours then. There has been no official news.

“I thought you’d be tired,” Ruby says, “after work.”

“Thank you,” Amelia says. She sits down. The tomatoes leach juice out onto the plate, translucent, faintly granular, like water poured from a rusty can. They give off a green-smelling musk. They will have sweetened with cooking, at least.

“How was the concert?” Amelia asks.

Last night seems weeks ago; a lifetime, another world. Ruby draws out the other chair, sits down. “I’m not sure I’d bother going again.”

Amelia scans the table again; frowning. “But you love your concerts.”

“Such a trouble though, getting there and back.”

“You must have been late in.”

Then she realises what’s missing: Amelia shunts back her chair, gets up and darts over to the counter, lifts the tea cosy where Ruby had left it lying like a shed skin, still retaining something of the shape of the pot. Amelia slides it into place, stretching the crocheted wool over handle and spout to cover the hot round belly of the pot.

“Now,” she says, satisfied. She smiles at Ruby. Ruby pulls her lips back in a smile too. She watches Amelia’s pale spoon-fingers lift a cracker from the plate, watches a knife dip into the tiny square of butter.

“This is nice,” Amelia says.

“You don’t mind me picking the tomatoes?”

“Not at all. This is all very good of you. Very kind.”

Amelia bites her cracker.

“Did you hear the news?” Ruby asks. “I mean, the gossip? Nothing certain.”

Amelia nods, swallows.

“I heard this morning,” Amelia says. “I mean, as you say, just gossip.”

A whole day knowing, or not knowing—suspecting, worrying, working. The both of them.

Ruby’s lips fold inward in a kind of smile. She reaches out across the table, between the saucers and plates and knives, and rests her hand on Amelia’s. The back of the older woman’s hand feels cool and fragile and bony.

Amelia looks up at Ruby. The younger woman’s face is white, almost innocent of makeup. Amelia blinks. Her eyes are betraying her, welling now. And the girl too—Ruby presses her eyes—one and then the other—with the flank of her left hand.

“Shall I put the radio on?” Ruby asks.

“Why don’t you?” Amelia says.

Ruby gets up, takes her hand off Amelia’s. She goes through into the sitting room.

I can’t be you
, Ruby thinks.
I can’t become you
.

BILLY LIES ON HIS BACK
. The deck tilts and shifts beneath him. The tarp ripples and flaps, low over his face. He can’t sleep. The footfalls of the watch approach. He can feel his own heartbeat, thudding in the cavity of his chest, the thrum of the diesel engine in his ribcage.

This is the last night.

The footfalls pass, and are gone.

Billy flips onto his front, crawls backwards on his elbows. Standing up, he swings the groundsheet round his body as a cape, grabs his helmet. The wind buffets him, fresh and damp on his face. He staggers with the ship’s pitch, heading for the prow. The clouds chase each other across the moon; it’s almost bright as day—too bright. All around the ships putter along, peak and dip over the waves. Any minute he expects it: a burst of flame, the shock of impact, the thrum of a distant German plane. But there has been nothing yet; and every moment that passes is another lived through, a moment closer to getting out the other side.

He makes his way to the prow. The wind snatches at the groundsheet. The deck pitches underfoot. He climbs the rigid metal steps to stand inside the gun turret. He stares out into the distance, towards France.

There is what you can live with, and what you can’t. There’s the price you’re prepared to pay for something. It all becomes quite simple, when you think of it like that.

He can see land now. The darker streak ahead of them—the whole dark continent stretching out from there, thousands and thousands of miles, the sky-reflecting rivers, the fields and forests, the cities, the mudbanks and the ditches. Every inch of it.

H-Hour is fixed for 7:25. He knows that he is scared. He just doesn’t really feel it any more.

Back to the turret wall, he slides down, feeling the cold steel through his greatcoat and groundsheet. He lifts off his helmet, unpicks the picture from inside. He tips the helmet back onto his head. Unwraps her, holds her in his left hand. He can see her in the moonlight: the curves of her face, the dark blots of her eyes and lips. Her beauty. It conjures the scent of her; of cigarettes and perfume and skin. Silky white legs cool around his. Last leave. In their narrow bed. Oh God, she’s good to him. He unbuttons his trousers; his cock nudges out into the cool rain. He holds Ruby in his left hand, grips his cock in the right.

Afterwards, he stands up with his waistband bunched in his right hand, the spill of semen cupped in his left. He lets it drip off over the side, down into the water as it churns away from the prow. He watches it drift for a moment, and then sink away, like an offering to the Fates. He wipes his hand down the cold wet outside of the gun tower, wiping off the sticky drying film of it, anointing the boat. Though the gunner and the gunner’s mate might not look on it like that, if they notice it in the morning.

But, he tells himself, they won’t notice. They’ll have other things on their minds.

Another swell hits the landing craft and flings spray over the side. The diesel engines throb. Billy wipes the water off his cold, salt-raw face. His right hand, gripped round the handlebar of his bike, is numb and white at the knuckles. HMS
Roberts
fires again, a colossal boom from behind them. A second later and the shell screams overhead, tearing a wound in the air. Everyone ducks. The vacuum of the shell’s flight sucks the water up into a blunt wall for a moment, then it drops back into the roiling waves.

Smoke billows past them. Billy can’t see the shore.

“It’s like they’re firing fucking jeeps—” Gossum shouts over the noise.

Barker crouches by the side of the craft, heaving up fried eggs and rum.

“I don’t want to do this,” Alfie yells to Billy.

“Funnily enough,” Billy yells back, “me neither.”

And then
Roberts
lets loose another shell, and as one they flinch
down, hands still gripped onto their bikes, and the shell screams right over them, sucking the air from their lungs, sucking the hair up from their heads, making their eardrums pop.

They straighten up again, tentatively, still half-hunched. Now he can see the shore—the beach—a stretch of tan sand, darting figures, moving vehicles, smoke and fog. Billy swallows down the acid in the back of his mouth. Okay. If he can just get through this.

Then Alfie laughs.

“What?”

Alfie just gives him a look, shakes his head, then turns his gaze back to the shore.

“No, tell me, what?”

Alfie turns back to him, shouts: “You owe me a quid.”

“What?”

“I bet you, remember?”

“What?”

“One day you’d ride for Britain?”

“Shithead,” Billy says.

“Yes sir.”

Billy looks at him. The two-day stubble and the raw eyes, and the water droplets glistening. The tender skin at his temple, creased across with lines as he squints into the spray. He wants to say something, but he can’t find the words.

He turns back to the beach. They are close to landing now. Billy can pick out their route across the beach. The sappers have pegged it out across the churned sand; little flags and ropes marking the way through the minefield. It looks oddly like the start of a road race. He’s never rated road-racing: bunch of meatheads, road-racers; all muscle and dumb suffering.

Off to the right one of the minesweeper tanks, the Hobart’s Funnies, flails for mines, and then one goes off and boom, sand flying up into the sky, and the tank lurches back like it’s startled. Then there’s a boom boom boom from up high, behind the beach, and Billy realises with a cold ripple of fear that an enemy gun emplacement is still active. All those shells from the
Roberts
and they still haven’t smashed it up. The Germans tend to dig in good and deep: they should have learned this from the last war. They dig in deep and they make themselves comfortable and they wait you out and when you think you’ve wiped ’em out they pop up and massacre you. He holds the sweaty handgrip in his
palm. The craft lurches up onto a sandbank, halts. They stagger. Billy shifts his grip on the bike. His palm is sweaty despite the cold. The ramp creaks open, dropping down towards the shallow water.

“See you on the other side,” Alfie says.

Billy nods.

Don’t look beyond the next ten yards, he thinks. Don’t look beyond the next ten yards.

HE IS CYCLING
between flat fields dotted with cows, a wide expanse of green and a pale blue open sky. There’s a farmhouse in the distance, but soon it’s not so far off, and then it’s just a few yards, and cushioned round with apple trees, and there are hens scratching in the gravel, and there’s a woman who comes out to the gate, dipped over to one side with the weight of a milk pail. She stops, and stares at him a moment, then sets her pail down on the path and waves, both arms up, crossing above her head, flagging him down.