Miss Carter's War Read online

  The mime was the first indication that either of them were aware of Marguerite’s presence, so she said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I may look old, but I know all about drugs and fucking. Now, my dear, do you think you could possibly spare a moment to give me a ticket for a swim?’ The silence was palpable as Marguerite marched through the barrier.

  She decided to have a sauna to sweat out some of the poison of grief. A man was already sitting in the room, pouring with perspiration. His eyes flicked in her direction as she entered, but he did not acknowledge her. Indeed, after that cursory first glance, she seemed to disappear off his radar. She didn’t exist for him. How else to explain his uninhibited groping and scratching of his genitals? She did not flatter herself that he was being sexual. Surely it would have been a more appealing gesture if so? No, he had deemed her not worth noticing. Even when she coughed, he continued ministering to his crotch.

  She could think of nothing to say. ‘Will you stop that?’ could well make him angry, or worse, surprised and embarrassed that there was actually someone there, who had feelings, was once a woman, a category into which, to him, she no longer fitted. So she held her tongue, whilst he held his balls. With as much dignity as she could muster from her shattered ego, she left the room, showered and dived into the pool.

  As she glided through the water, she tried to imagine it was washing through her body. There was no one else in the pool, so she could close her eyes, sigh and groan, as her body stretched and relaxed in turn. She was actually beginning to enjoy the feeling, when her reverie was disturbed by a noisy splash and large waves raised by the man from the steam room, who was throwing his sweaty body into the water, ignoring the notices requesting people to shower first.

  Marguerite tried to continue her sedate breaststroke, despite the turbulence caused by his ungainly crawl. Her training in the Scottish lochs for the SOE had made her an elegant swimmer. She had not had much practice other than occasional forays to the pool with Tony, but she found a rhythm that despite her age propelled her smoothly forward. She was conscious of the man accelerating his speed. Some of the old aggression stirred in Marguerite and she changed to her stylish crawl, easily gaining half a length on him. Splashing and coughing, Thatcher’s competitive child desperately tried to catch her up, but she pulled out all the stops, and, using every ounce of her strength, did a few strokes of dazzling butterfly, leaving him standing in the shallow end, trying to look nonchalant. Marguerite leapt out of the pool and stood, panting, legs astride, hands on hips, staring down, willing him to meet her gaze. And he did. For the first time. With something akin to awe. Marguerite glowed.

  ‘Hello,’ she said and waited expectantly, until eventually he muttered a confused, ‘Hello.’ He stood gawping, his errant hands now scratching his head, as she turned on her heel and strode triumphantly into the changing room.

  She walked back to Myddelton Square with a new spring in her step, despite having exhausted herself at the pool. She felt as if she had won a major victory, not only over the itchy man – he was irrelevant – but over herself. Her old fighting spirit was seeping back. Half-Full Lizzie Dripping was still in there somewhere. As she went down Pentonville Road she saw several people standing outside a newsagent’s reading papers and talking to one another. The headline read, ‘Maggie Resigns’.

  Back home, she opened a tin of baked beans, toasted the stale bread, brewed a cup of tea and settled in front of the television. She watched Margaret Thatcher leaving 10 Downing Street, having seemingly been stabbed in the back by her own party. After her smooth smiling speech of farewell, the camera peered into the car as it drove off, revealing an unsettling image of the Iron Lady, red-eyed and tearful. ‘Good bloody riddance,’ she said on Tony’s behalf, but could not help remembering, with something like affection, the dowdy young woman with blazing blue eyes standing next to Anthony Eden at Dartford football ground. Marguerite’s early admiration of the woman had gradually disintegrated, egged on of course by Tony, starting with her disquiet at Thatcher’s chilling intransigence in the face of the deaths of ten young IRA hunger strikers. This relentless hard determination to do what she considered right continued, no matter what the cost, making the country a meaner and more selfish place, but as the television repeatedly showed the devastated, ousted woman, Marguerite wondered why things always seemed to end sadly.

  When she was younger she, and certainly Tony, would have seen Thatcher’s demise as a golden opportunity to prepare to rid the country of the Tories at the next election, but Marguerite had lost all interest in politics. The days of passionate meetings in football grounds were over; it was all carefully orchestrated televised spectaculars, with obligatory standing ovations, pop groups, and a new breed called ‘celebrities’. She did not fit in any more. The same was true of her work for the Open University. She continued to do some tutoring, but the object was now preparing people for jobs rather than encouraging learning for the sheer love of it and her supervisor subtly made her aware that her emotional approach to literature was out of step with the current postmodernist thinking. Miss Fryer’s phrase ‘I am no longer relevant’ kept crawling, uninvited, into her brain.

  Chapter 46

  As various aspects of her life closed down, Marguerite was hideously aware of time. Whereas in the past she was always rushing about, trying to do several things at once, now the days were limitless deserts. Over the interminable weeks that stretched into endless months, she drifted around trying to find a reason for existing. She forced herself to go to galleries, concerts and the theatre but could not master the art of enjoying things for herself. She ached to share everything with Tony, to discuss a new film into the small hours, to relish Donald’s rapturous reaction to a picture, a performance, a soufflé, a flower, to help a pupil open their heart to a poem. Encountering beauty, her first reaction had always been: Must show Tony, or Donald, or Class 3; she realised she was only fully alive through and for other people. It was a fatal flaw when age or circumstance left one alone.

  She tried to make friends with the yuppie couple that had bought Tony’s flat, but the only communication they managed was her banging on the ceiling with a broom when their thumping music and squawking voices went on way after midnight, and she heard herself referred to, through the open windows, as ‘that miserable old cow downstairs’.

  She realised her isolation was not unique when, treating herself one day to tea in Fortnum and Mason’s, she became fascinated by an elderly woman, wearing a heavy brown tweed cloak, a head-hugging cloche hat and pearl earrings, and with crimson lipstick bleeding into the lines around her mouth, sitting majestically erect, one hand clutching a silver-topped walking stick. She picked up her bill, and squinted at it through a pair of pince-nez on a gold chain round her neck. She repeatedly tried to get the attention of the waiter with fluttering waves of her gloved hand. He obsequiously continued to attend to everyone but her, so she vigorously struck the sugar bowl, and sent it crashing to the floor. For one glorious moment, she commanded everyone’s attention. It mattered not that her audience were disapproving, because for the two minutes it took to pay the bill and sweep out the world was aware of her existence. Something of the woman she once was coloured her exit. Marguerite wanted to applaud. As the woman wove her way out of sight through the shop, Marguerite saw her shoulders drop, and her pace hesitate, as she shrank back into her wizened shell.

  The waiter ignored Marguerite too. He, in fact, treated her with disdain bordering on disgust. Walking down Piccadilly she caught sight of herself reflected in Hatchard’s shop window, and felt some sympathy for him. She looked a freak. There was no reason of person or occasion for her to dress up, so she habitually chose comfort over elegance. This involved a pair of well-worn trainers, tracksuit bottoms for their comfy, loose waist, and either a voluminous Sloppy Joe jumper that had belonged to Tony or, if it was very cold, her smelly thirty-year-old Afghan coat. She dragged her grey curls back with an elastic band and didn’t bother with make-up. She was no
t a pretty sight. She didn’t give a damn.

  After the night in each other’s arms on the earth floor of the borie, she strips off and washes under the waterfall. Marcel watches as she puts on her crumpled, grubby frock and wooden shoes. He places a wild rose in her tangled hair. ‘Comme tu es belle,’ he says.

  People edged away from her as she continued her walk down Piccadilly, chuckling to herself, wondering whether to alarm them further by following the example of Tony in his cruising days, by asking someone for a light, even though she no longer smoked. She could use it to set on fire the sleazy cinema showing dirty films that defiled the hitherto pleasant street. She lingered, as she always did, at Piccadilly Circus, dreading seeing Elsie there, although she longed to know how she had fared since she last saw her over a decade ago. Occasionally she went to the Bull Ring. This was now packed full of homeless people. It had been dubbed Cardboard City. Not many people ventured in but Marguerite wandered among the tragic outcasts in a futile quest for information. She had almost accepted that Elsie was probably dead yet clung to the faint hope that she was, as she had said at their last meeting, a survivor. Looking down Shaftesbury Avenue towards Soho she wondered too about Jimmy. She had never rid herself of the regret that she could not help him out of the morass into which he had sunk. She thought how pleased Tony would be to know that her Messiah complex was a thing of the past. She had no lame ducks or great causes in her life now, and pace Tony, she felt lost without them.

  After the funeral, she had kept in touch with Tony’s mother for a while, until, her link with Ethel being mainly because of Tony, she let it go. When she received a phone call from the carer who had come to London telling her that Ethel had been moved to a hospital, she felt duty bound, for Tony’s sake, to go up and visit her.

  At the main reception of the huge hospital they looked up the name and directed her across the concourse to ‘our new wing, we are very proud of it’. She had to ring the front doorbell and when, eventually, somebody unlocked the door and let her in, she could hear screaming in what sounded like terror. The nurse said, ‘Take no notice. It’s only Keith.’ A woman passed by, walking unnaturally slowly, looking straight ahead with no acknowledgement of Marguerite and the nurse, who ignored her and said, ‘We are the most state of the art dementia ward in Britain. Isn’t it lovely? Let me show you around.’

  As they went down the wide corridor Marguerite could not but agree. Big ensuite rooms, pot plants, paintings, and pleasant relaxed staff but, oh God, the patients. Did they notice the brightly coloured curtains, the sunny yellow walls? One lay on the floor, howling like a wolf, lashing out at any kindly hand that reached towards him. He had a beard and wore a cardigan. An academic like her perhaps? Reduced to writhing rage at his disappearing mind?

  In another room, a woman sat ashen-faced, frightened eyes looking at the television screen. Every now and then, her face crumpled into a grimace of tears, like a tiny child, and just as quickly it reverted to fearful staring.

  ‘Julie likes Elvis Presley, don’t you, darling?’ said the nurse.

  And the sunken frame rose and momentarily gyrated as she cackled, ‘ “You’re nothing but a hound dog,” ’ then the Greek mask of grief returned and she fell back into her seat. To and fro her mind careered at terrifying speed, taking her on a nightmare ghost train.

  When they eventually came across Ethel she was sitting in her cheerful room, staring blankly out of the window. Her feet were bare and her usual tight perm had grown out, leaving wisps of white hair on a pink scalp.

  ‘Do you know me, Ethel?’

  ‘Why, of course. You’re . . .’

  ‘I’m Marguerite.’

  ‘Yes, how did . . . I’m sorry . . . What was I? She’s a lovely . . .’

  Ethel would start a sentence quite normally then trail off, bewildered. Since their last meeting her mind had completely fractured. She muttered meaningless fragments that Marguerite could make no sense of. It was impossible to converse with her. All communication had broken down. Marguerite resorted to a monologue about Bert and Tony. Suddenly Ethel stood up and started pacing round the room gabbling to herself, then shouting, snarling, fists clenched, face contorted with some elemental fury. Then, abruptly she stood dead still, whimpering.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear. She’s having a bad day,’ said the nurse cheerily.

  On the train back to London, Marguerite was appalled that Ethel’s life should end this way. It frightened her. She was grateful that her body was still healthy, but what about her mind? How long before she got like that? She was already a bit odd; the talking to herself, the bizarre clothes. Maybe it stemmed from not having to bother what other people thought? She must communicate more. That’s what animals, especially humans, do. She must reach out. Exercise her brain. Why hadn’t she spoken to that woman in Fortnum’s, for instance? She must make an effort. She looked around the compartment.

  A man was typing on one of the new fangled portable computers.

  ‘You look busy,’ she said.

  He seemed alarmed.

  ‘Yes, I am – very,’ fingers flying over the keys.

  She tried again.

  ‘Not long ago only women typed and it was considered a rather lowly occupation. Now men do it on their wonderful new gadgets and it’s considered very smart. Interesting that, isn’t it?’

  The man sighed.

  ‘Madam, I am afraid I am too busy to engage in a debate about feminism at the moment.’

  ‘No, no, that wasn’t meant as a criticism. It’s rather wonderful that—’

  ‘Please, madam, I have to finish this report before we get to London.’ And he twisted his body sideways to present his back to Marguerite.

  Not to be defeated, Marguerite addressed a young man seated on the opposite side, wearing earphones, his head nodding in rhythm to the ‘tsk-tsk’ sound that came from them.

  ‘What are you listening to?’

  He ignored her.

  She tried again, this time waving to attract his attention.

  ‘Is it good?’

  Seeing her hand the man lifted one earphone from his ear.

  ‘Er?’ he said.

  ‘It must be lovely to take your music with you wherever you go. I’m thinking of getting one of those things. What are they called?’

  ‘Sony Walkman.’

  He looked her up and down fearfully, picked up his bag, and moved swiftly to sit several seats away, as though fleeing the plague.

  It was not an encouraging start, machines being preferable to her conversation, but she resolved to make further efforts to make new friends and perhaps seek out some from the past. To keep herself sane.

  Chapter 47

  As Marguerite was leafing unenthusiastically through Time Out, an event caught her attention: the Queen Mother was to unveil a statue of Sir Arthur Harris, chief of Bomber Command, to which Jimmy had belonged. It seemed possible that he would attend – if he was still alive – and Marguerite could maybe catch a glimpse of him and even, after all this time, when the blood had cooled, have a conversation as friends.

  Out of respect for an occasion to be attended by the Queen Mother, Marguerite made more of an effort with her toilette, donning one of her old schoolmistress frocks that hung loosely over her diminished frame. She put her hair up with combs and essayed some lipstick, but wiped it off again, remembering the incongruity of the woman in Fortnum’s. She carefully wrapped a gift, on the off chance that Jimmy would be there.

  Marguerite had visited St Clement Danes before, on one of the long walks she sometimes took to pass the time. Lapsed Catholic that she was, she enjoyed sitting in the quiet of these ancient places of worship, savouring their calm amidst the turmoil of the city. This one was particularly affecting, marooned as it was on an island in the middle of the Strand, encircled by the distant roar of traffic. She relished the bitter irony of this new statue. Built by Christopher Wren, the church was almost completely burnt down in the Blitz, and then was restored by the RAF to be a m
emorial to the dead, and now it was to be home to a statue of the man whose strategy of mass bombing had caused decimating firestorms that laid waste to much of Germany.

  By the time Marguerite arrived, a crowd of protesters had gathered on the pavement opposite the church where dignitaries and ex-RAF personnel were attending a service. One home-made placard proclaimed, ‘Bomber Harris is a war criminal and a mass-murderer.’ Another, held aloft by a child, said, ‘War is not healthy for children and other living things.’ Supporting their large wooden model of a dove, standing peacefully behind the barriers in the warm sunshine, were several grey-haired people, and Marguerite wished she were one of them. Had she not met Jimmy, paradoxically on a CND peace march, and heard his story, she might have been.

  The service over, Marguerite searched the faces of the small congregation in their best clothes emerging from the church. Jimmy would doubtless have changed, as had she, in twenty-odd years, but she was sure she would recognise him. Especially if he were smiling. Her eye fell upon one distinguished bald-headed man who seemed to be looking for someone. It took her some time to realise it was Stan, no longer shambolic and humble but exuding an aura of success. Marguerite watched as the neatly dressed woman with him, sharply tapped his arm to stop him peering round and pointed to the Queen Mother, plump and pretty, wearing a pale blue floral dress and wide straw hat, her white-gloved hand resting on the arm of a medal-and-gold-braid-bedecked RAF officer.

  Her gracious smile froze as the crowd round Marguerite started to boo and throw eggs. The demonstrators were some distance away so their missiles landed in the road, but a policeman in shirtsleeves sauntered over to the most vociferous group and said mildly, ‘Now now, ladies and gentlemen. I think that’s enough, don’t you? You’ve made your point.’ A young man with a beard, wearing jeans, shouted, ‘OK, people, let’s be silent and remember all those who died. On both sides.’ Heads were bowed, and over the traffic could be heard the Queen Mother’s piping voice as she remembered with ‘pride and gratitude the men in Bomber Command’ adding loudly, glancing across the road at the egg throwers, ‘Let us remember, too, those of every nation and background, who suffered as victims of the Second World War.’ This was greeted with a smattering of polite applause.