‘Oh, mind your own business!’ said Bettina, stuffing the letter back in her bag.
Ivy was eating her sandwich in that fastidious way of hers: crust first, then the rest, in tiny bites, eyes whizzing nervously this way and that. She swallowed, a hand covering her mouth, and said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. No. I’m annoyed.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No. I want to be distracted.’
Ivy put down her remaining sandwich half. Smiled. ‘I know a good way.’
‘I told you, Ivy, I’ve just started my—’
‘I don’t care. If you don’t. Honestly.’ She watched Bettina process this, her eyes fixed and steady.
What a strange woman, thought Bettina, to get in a tizzy about eating food in front of others, yet be perfectly happy to indulge a menstruating woman. ‘It really doesn’t bother you?’
‘No. I’m not a man, am I? Filled with horror at the thought of a perfectly natural biological function. Men are such babies. Get your knickers off, Mrs Dawes!’
They packed their things in the morning – spare clothes, tyre repair kit, water, a packed lunch. Mags had been trying to dissuade them from going on bicycles – it was bloody idiotic, thirty miles of lonely country roads, and if only they’d wait until evening the next day, an apple cart was going up that way. There were stories, she’d heard, about drunk soldiers trying it on with women they encountered, and that was just soldiers – what about civilian men, what about all those spineless defectors hiding out in the woods? Jolly well rape you soon as look at you. Bettina and Ivy would not be swayed. The weather was supposed to be lovely and the winged devils were reported to be busy elsewhere, for the moment.
Mags found them just as they were leaving. She had blood splattered up her trouser leg. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I can see that you’re not going to listen to sense, so I’ve brought you something.’ She took a cloth bundle out of her coat pocket and, looking around to make sure no one was about, unfolded it to reveal a tiny black pistol.
‘Where on earth did you get that from?’ said Ivy.
‘It’s for shooting livestock in the head. It looks small but it packs a good punch. This is the safety – keep it on!’
‘I really don’t think this is necessary,’ said Bettina.
Mags re-wrapped the gun and wedged it into Bettina’s basket. ‘Better a murderer than a rape victim.’ She looked around again. ‘If anyone catches you with it, it didn’t come from me.’ And she began jogging away, backwards. ‘Have a lovely holiday! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Cheerio!’
The biggest threat, actually, came from the sun. Some of the roads were cut into bare fields – no trees, no shade. They each wore a wide-brimmed hat, but no matter how tight they tied the ribbons under their chins, the breeze blew them back.
They stopped under trees to cool off. They ate their pork pies and dried fruits and drank water made warm by the sun. They saw few people. Bettina kept thinking of the gun in her basket. It was wrapped in what looked like a piece of old tablecloth, the design a faded repetition of bluebells. She didn’t even know how to use the stupid thing.
The sun beat down, the air fuggy with heat, and their fit, strong legs pumped and pumped, and butterflies of every colour performed their neurotic sky-ballet.
Longworth hadn’t been requisitioned for the war effort, owing to its proximity both to a munitions factory – once Monty’s munitions factory – and to the shore. The factory was ten minutes’ walk from Longworth and half an hour from Wadley, Bettina’s lost childhood home. She remembered how Bart, when young, used to sit with dangling legs on the stone wall marking the end of his garden, watching the workers walk past, stooped and haggard from their thirteen-hour shifts. ‘I suppose I watch them because I’ve nothing better to do,’ he told Bettina, but, years later, he admitted the truth – he’d thought them beautiful. ‘Not in an artsy way. I wasn’t finding some grubby beauty in their monotonous, grinding existence like those awful writers Tuna admires. They were strong young men and I had my favourites.’
Now the factory was filled with women, just as it had been during the Great War, and according to Venetia, they were ‘very, very annoying’. Venetia’s letters had a comfortably predictable formula: one side of gossip, half a page lamenting the grandchildren’s displacement; linked to this, a paragraph about the Welsh (she distrusted the Welsh – Monty, of course, had been Welsh, and his family were ‘a money-grabbing, nouveau riche cluster of inbreds’); then, finally, a few lines bemoaning those sluts at the munitions factory. All my love, Mother. Her criticisms of these women were vague, prompting Bettina to ask, ‘But what have they actually done to offend you?’
‘Re: the factory sluts: they flick their cigarette butts over the wall. And they wear so much lipstick.’
‘You’ve never been bothered by women wearing lipstick before,’ Bettina wrote back.
‘Re: your comment about lipstick and my historical response to said lipstick: no, I have no quarrel with women wearing lipstick per se, but it’s the fact that these women are wearing all this lipstick while their husbands, fathers and brothers are getting themselves blown up in Europe. Seems jarringly inappropriate, frankly.’
By the time Longworth came into view, the shadows were lengthening and the sun sinking. Bettina and Ivy set their bikes against the fence and knocked on the front door. Ivy touched Bettina’s hand as they waited – one finger coming out and dabbing the knuckle.
‘I’m so thirsty,’ she whispered.
‘The sea air can’t help,’ said Bettina. ‘All that salt. Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Ivy. ‘Only… it’s so grand.’
‘What is?’
‘The house!’
‘This house? You should’ve seen my old house. It was bigger.’
‘Will I have to wear fancy dresses to dinner? And use all sorts of different cutlery? Don’t laugh at me.’
‘No, you won’t. It’s wartime.’
‘Will there be maids wanting to dress me?’
‘No! We’re not lords and ladies.’ She gave the door another knock – harder this time. ‘Besides, all the maids are working in factories or doing what we’re doing.’ She stepped back, looking up at the windows. ‘I don’t think they’re in, you know – let’s go round the back.’
Ivy’s proud, high head moved slowly from side to side as she took in her surroundings: a small stone fountain covered in mildew and empty of water; a large laburnum tree, its dripping yellow blooms already starting to sprout the tiny pods that were supposedly poisonous if eaten (Bart, of course, had once eaten one).
‘There are many better off than me, you know,’ said Bettina. ‘Mine and Bart’s families are small fish compared to others. Newts, actually. We’re newts.’
‘I haven’t got sour grapes, if that’s what you think,’ said Ivy. ‘I had a pleasant upbringing and I didn’t want for anything. We had an indoor toilet quite early on. I don’t resent your money. I’m glad you had it.’ She nodded as if to reassure herself – I am glad, honestly I am.
Bettina put her hand on Ivy’s waist. ‘When the war’s over I’m going to feed you champagne. It’ll spill onto your naked body and I’ll lick it all up, every drop.’
A loud, harsh cough. Bettina spun around, snatching her hand away. Heinous Henry.