‘Bloody close one, that,’ said Mags.
Sadie’s bike had been hit and one wheel was mangled so she hopped onto Joyce’s handlebars. They all climbed a steep hill with ease, amped up as they were on residual adrenaline, and as they reached the top they saw, many miles ahead, dark, dark smoke pluming out from a just-bombed blip on the horizon – possibly the small, privately owned aircraft hangar one town over. That would make sense. And the pilot, after achieving his objective and turning around to head back over the channel, sees a few civilians plodding up a lane, and thinks, Well, why not? Got a few rounds left.
Just before the farm was a lane on the left and Mags abruptly turned into it, the others following. The lane led to a pub called the Greasy Goose. ‘Think we could all do with a shot for our nerves, what?’ said Mags, standing up in her seat and pumping up the small hill.
The pub was empty except for a trio of old farmers and a group of soldiers sharing a bowl of pork scratchings. The women ordered a shot of rum each. Then another. Ivy had never touched alcohol before and grew tipsy. She started to talk, to actually talk.
‘I thought I was going to die, I thought I was dead meat, and then I thought about what a dull life I’ve led and I remembered this time when I was ten and these other children were all planning on knocking off school to go swimming in the lake – it was a very hot day – and it all sounded so dreadfully fun, and they were saying to me, “Come on, Ivy, it’ll be a lark, don’t be a spoilsport, it’s the end of term,” but I wouldn’t go. I went to school and saw their empty seats and felt this horrid pang. And I remembered all this as I was haring for cover, and I thought, “I should’ve gone. I really should’ve gone.” What a strange thing to think about!’
Her smile was transforming.
‘Well, slap my arse and call me Rosie,’ said Sadie in her gravelly Lancashire drawl. ‘The lady speaks.’
You had to get to know shy people – that’s what everyone said – you had to wait for their wit and character to seep out in little trickles. Bettina had never had the patience to wait. Shy people were absolute bores. But Ivy! What a turnaround. There in the pub, her character did not so much trickle as spew out of her. Actually, she would not shut up. And the drink – she liked the drink.
‘My father would tan my hide if he saw me drinking spirits, but guess what? It’s bloody marvellous and I don’t care. Let’s get another.’
The other women looked at each other, amused.
‘In fact,’ continued Ivy, ‘I can’t help thinking that we’re all going to die soon, so we might as well enjoy ourselves. Does anyone have a cigarette?’
Bettina gave her one and Ivy predictably coughed her guts up.
‘What do you want to try next?’ said Sadie. She aimed a thumb at the soldiers. ‘What about them?’
‘Ooh, I like the one with the ’tache,’ said Joyce.
‘No thanks,’ said Ivy, with nude aversion.
‘You got a fella back home?’ said Sadie.
‘No. And I don’t want one either. Men are rats.’
‘Men are a darn sight harder to kill than rats,’ said Mags, laughing.
‘So have you never had a fella?’ said Sadie.
Ivy shook her head.
‘We have a virgin in our midst,’ cooed Joyce.
Bettina looked at Ivy, at the blotchy blush on her throat. A virgin in the technical sense only. Plain as day. She imagined Ivy naked, on all fours with her labia poking out like grapefruit segments, and felt a searing hot tingle down there. What would she be like? Frenzied. Animalistic. Repressed people were like that, supposedly. All prim and proper until their clothes came off, and then biting and scratching and screaming, a snarl of impulse. A locked safe exploded wide open.
Ivy retched into the toilet bowl. Bettina held her plait aloft and rubbed her shoulders.
‘There, there, get it all out.’
A groan, a horrible gulp and then more retching.
Ivy sat up, wiping her mouth with a cloth. Her face was off-white, her forehead dotted with sweat. She still looked drunk. ‘I’m not queer, you know,’ she said.
‘I didn’t say you—’
‘It’s not queer if you only ever loved the one woman.’
‘Of course not,’ said Bettina. ‘Of course not.’
‘It doesn’t make me—’ She suppressed a burp, her hand on her breastbone. ‘I’m normal. Never mind all your talk of subtext.’
Oh, she was adorable.
Bettina squeezed her arm. ‘I believe you.’
Chapter 29
She climaxed in that way of hers – her legs jittering and her belly turning into a small dome and a sound coming out like a person screaming in their sleep – and then closed her thighs sharply, clamping Bettina’s head. Bettina prised herself free and wiped her chin with her sleeve before lying down next to Ivy, looking up at the rigid network of beams overhead.
She’d read a trashy book once about a couple romping in a barn – a broad-chested farmhand and an inhibited lady whose bosom was constantly undulating – and it’d failed to mention the fleas or the spiky flutes of straw that poke at bare flesh. Or lying back, close to climax, very close, and hearing a rustling nearby – a rat, next to your head, its slick black eyes observing proceedings with Zen neutrality.
They’d made love in the woods near the farm, behind a tall hedgerow that ran along Cathcart Lane, and a few times in their shared bedroom, which was actually the riskiest place of all, since girls were constantly barging in without knocking, to ask for face cream or writing paper or the correct spelling of ‘anguish’.
Bettina got out two cigarettes and lit them, passing one to Ivy (she’d recently watched Now, Voyager and this gesture she’d always taken for granted now seemed poignant).
‘Look,’ said Ivy, ‘my leg’s still shaking.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘Twenty minutes, I suppose. Do you want me to…?’
‘No. I started this morning.’ Bettina took her sandwich out of her satchel – wafer-thin cheese with slices of pickled shallots – and a sealed envelope, which she ripped open, careful not to drop her cigarette in the straw. A letter from Tuna.
Tuna’s house was being used by the war effort as an emergency makeshift hospital – soldiers and civilians were brought in for preliminary first aid before being moved on. Her collected art and prized Bloomsbury furniture had been sent to her parents’ house in Surrey and now hospital beds and first-aid stations filled every room and nurses were barging around ‘like bloody Mafia bosses’.
Originally Tuna had felt apathetic about the war, and also safeguarded by her wealth (and age), but then she started hearing about her artist friends being shot at in France and her Jewish friends being ‘quite mistreated’, and she could no longer distract herself with parties and fine food and good wine – there was none. Also, the man who’d procured her opium had ‘buggered off’ somewhere to hide from conscription and she’d endured a week of intense sickness where she’d writhed around in bed, praying for the Luftwaffe to bomb her house and put her out of her misery. ‘But thank God I’m off that stuff, Betts – it alters one’s personality and the constipation is beyond unreasonable.’
In today’s letter, Tuna wrote about a man whose hand she’d held as he died (‘getting quite numb to this sort of thing now’), an incident involving a civilian’s arm being cut off and her sheer hatred of one of the nurses, Sister Mary, who treated her, the lady of the house, like some gin-soaked tramp who’d wandered in from the street. And at the end, this:
‘Bart wrote to me last week. He is safe and well but misses the children. Will be taking his leave soon. I am passing this on to you because I doubt either of you have thawed in the interim between now and your last letter. You may think you hate him, but if he were to die in some horrid way, I am confident this hatred would suddenly melt away. Death cleanses, darling – I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’