The Listening Silence Read online

  In the inky darkness his feet slipped and slithered over the rough ground. When he came to a stile at the top of the lane he stopped and leaned against it, pulling his coat collar up and sinking his chin deep. There was a heavy sensation in the lower part of his abdomen, a physical manifestation of his self-disgust. For a long moment he closed his eyes against the memory of Sally’s young face lifted with such trust to his own as she struggled to read what he was saying. He smelled again the sweet flower scent of her, saw her eyes searching, watching his mouth, her lips raised in unconscious provocation.

  And he had tried to – needed to – ‘Oh Christ!’ The two words were more of a prayer than a blasphemy. He’d got to the state when he no longer knew what he was saying or doing.

  Tomorrow he had to go back to Lincolnshire and the planes lined up on the airfield like great black crows with spread wings. But first he had to go home.

  ‘David? Is that you?’

  He heard his mother call out as he closed the front door. Her voice was coming from the living-room at the back of the house, so she wasn’t in the shelter. At least he was spared that.

  ‘I thought you’d have been in bed by now.’ David smoothed back his already smooth hair and smiled stiffly at the little woman sitting in the corner of the sofa drawn up to the fire.

  Edna Turner, at the age of fifty, had a face as lined as a woman thirty years older. The wrinkles were accentuated by the surprising blue-black of her hair which she wore in a neat roll tucked over a childish ribbon. She was so thin that her bones seemed to move skeleton-like beneath the folds of her dress, and her eyes had a perpetual red-rimmed look as if she had just finished a long bout of weeping.

  She sniffed, a sure sign she was going to say something unpleasant. ‘The sirens went, David. I thought you might have come home, knowing I was all alone.’

  David fought for control. He looked normal – a quick glance in the mirror over the fireplace had reassured him – yet already the grumbling whine of his mother’s voice was sending the blood coursing through his veins. His heart was thudding beneath his ribs. He felt very ill and tired half-way to death.

  ‘I worried about you,’ he lied, then looked away from the pathetic cringing creature on the sofa, ashamed because he had needed to lie. ‘I hope you went in the shelter,’ he said too loudly, then stared into the fire, engrossed in his own private agony.

  ‘I always do go in the shelter.’ Edna sighed a deep sigh which raised and lowered an almost non-existent bosom. ‘If your father knew what was happening to me, he would turn in his grave.’ She gave her son a hard stare. ‘Your father died out there in France in the last war, believing he was making a better world for those he left behind. Instead of that, I bring you up only to see you go away like he did. Why you wanted to fly, I don’t know. You could have gone to the university on your exam results, or even got a reserved job if you’d tried. How do you think I feel when they give out on the wireless about more of our planes going missing? I’m not like that deaf girl’s mother always going out dancing with soldiers. Anyway, Sally Barnes’s deafness is a punishment to her mother for leaving her child in bed with the measles and going off to work in that dress shop. Common as muck Josie Barnes is …’

  For a wild moment David wondered what his mother would do if he slapped her across her mouth to stop its eternal chattering. Or if he blurted out the truth about his desperate loneliness and fear, instead of sitting there calmly pretending to be listening.

  ‘Mother? Help me!’ Suppose he said that? He felt hysteria rise up in a hard lump in the front of his throat. He swallowed hard and stared into the fire again.

  ‘Troise and His Mandoliers were on tonight,’ Edna sniffed. ‘But how could I be expected to listen to them when the sirens went? The guns started up so quickly I didn’t have time to fill my hot-water bottle. Will you do it for me, David? We’d better be getting to bed with you having an early start in the morning. I might as well be talking to myself, anyway.’

  When he came back with the bottle she was going through her normal routine, plumping up cushions, setting the guard round the fire, rolling up her knitting and putting it away in its embroidered bag, her small mouth puckered, the clean parting in her black hair showing like a white painted stripe.

  When she left him alone, slipping through the door hugging the hot-water bottle to her flat chest, David pushed the fireguard to one side. He sat down and buried his face in his hands, holding his fingers tightly against his closed eyelids. He had the feeling that if he just sat there quite still, then maybe the fear inside him would dissolve. There would be no more war, no more terrifying flights across the Channel. He could forget the eager faces of his crew, the ones who had died and the ones whose turn would come next. He could forget the face of the girl down the road, eyes and mouth wide with disgust before she ran away from him.

  He pressed harder with his fingers. It was soothingly dark behind his closed eyelids, yet he knew that nothing had gone away. Not the war, not his return to base, not the way he had behaved … nothing.

  Sally knew she would have to go downstairs. She stared at her tripled reflection in her dressing-table mirrors and frowned. There was a tiny blood blister on her lip, and a button hanging loose on her coat where David Turner had thrust a hand inside, squeezing her breast. Her eyes stretched wide as she remembered the terrifying hardness of him when he opened her coat and ground himself against her.

  She had been kissed before, at office parties and at Christmas. Sally saw her cheeks turn scarlet. But never, never before like that.

  She got up quickly, shrugged herself out of her coat, ran her fingers through her hair, smoothed her skirt down over her hips, tucked the knitted jumper into the waistband, and went downstairs.

  In the large, bay-windowed room at the back of the house a small man wearing Home Guard battle-dress crouched on the rug by the fireplace, raking out the ashes for the night.

  Stanley Barnes stood up as Sally came into the room, pleasure at the sight of her lifting the whippet-thin lines of his face into a boyish smile. She was so bonny, this young lass of his, so loving, so bright, in spite of her deafness. Sometimes he felt he could burst with pride just looking at her.

  ‘Good picture, love?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He fancied he heard a slight tremor in her voice as she turned away, but he touched her gently on her wrist, their own private signal that he was going to speak.

  ‘Was there anything interesting on the newsreel?’

  He knew that would make her smile, and it did.

  ‘Oh, Dad! You and your news!’ Sally wrinkled her nose. ‘Let me think. Well, they showed a German raider brought down off the Norfolk coast on its way back from bombing London. There was a lot of cheering and clapping at that. Then there was a bit about the war in the Middle East. Oh, and a scene outside Buckingham Palace after the bomb last week. The King was there in his Air Force uniform walking with the Queen among the rubble. The sirens went right in the middle of …’

  Her voice tailed off, as, following Stanley’s gaze, she saw her mother framed in the doorway laughing at them, unbuttoning her coat and throwing it over the back of a chair before coming over to the fire. As always happened after a long evening spent dancing, Josie looked young and excited, the coral rouge on her cheeks accentuating the vivid blue of her eyes.

  ‘I’ll go and make a cup of tea.’ Sally walked quickly through into the kitchen, unwilling to meet her mother’s eyes. If Josie suspected anything was wrong then she wouldn’t mince her words, and an inquisition was the last thing she could cope with at the moment.

  ‘What did you do when the sirens went?’ Stanley looked away from the yellow brightness of his wife’s hair framing her vivacious face. The thought came to him suddenly that she resembled exactly a china doll in a box. He could feel the excitement emanating from her and for a moment, without knowing why, it sickened him.

  Josie held out her hands to the blaze. ‘We went in the shelter in Cross
Street, Olive and me, though not many bothered. They were still dancing when we got back.’

  Stanley jerked his head in the direction of the door. ‘There’s something upset her. She went straight upstairs when she came in, and if I’d had to stay on at the Post she would have come in to an empty house.’ He frowned. ‘I think one of us should be in when the sirens go. I wouldn’t like to think of her being alone.’

  To his surprise Josie’s small face hardened. ‘She’s not a child! We can’t watch over her every minute. If she wasn’t as she is she’d be joining one of the Services. If you want my opinion that would be the best thing that could happen to her. She’s my daughter and I love her, but she’s … she’s unfinished. One of these days some boy is going to make a pass at her, because God knows she’s pretty enough, and if it was David Turner from down the road then I’d be glad. Because believe you me, she could do a lot worse.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ Stanley’s eyes narrowed. ‘Sometimes the stuff you come out with appals me.’

  ‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it, you with your Methody narrow-mindedness!’

  For a moment they glared at each other, then Stanley moved towards the door, limping slightly. ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said, leaving his wife staring after him, half regretting her last words.

  ‘Enjoy your night out at the pictures, love?’

  In the kitchen overlooking the back garden Josie snatched the kettle from the gas stove just in time to prevent it spluttering over.

  ‘Charlie Chaplin. Quite good.’

  Sally wished with all her heart that she didn’t have to watch her mother’s face so carefully. She knew they had been quarrelling again. Without hearing raised voices she knew exactly what had been going on in the room across the hall.

  ‘You should have seen me doing the tango!’

  Josie took a few steps across the oilcloth, her body giving off a wave of April Violets scent. She swivelled her head sharply sideways.

  ‘Jealousy. T’was all over my jealousy …’

  ‘Oh, Mum …’ Sally laughed out loud. Two minutes ago she had felt the thickness of tears in her throat, but now the tears were of laughter. Josie looked so funny with her little rounded behind sticking out, her feet in their size three shoes twinkling in the intricate steps. She felt the rhythm tingling in her own toes. ‘I think you’re enjoying this war, aren’t you?’

  ‘What a thing to say!’ Josie picked up the two mugs of tea. ‘Come on, love. The fire’s nearly out, but if I give it a bit of a tiddle with the poker we might be able to toast our bits and pieces round it before we go up to bed.’

  She dragged two fireside chairs up close to the hearth, hitching up the skirt of her flowered dress to display small bony knees. ‘What a day at the shop! We sold three evening gowns this afternoon, Olive and me. I was up and down the stairs to the fitting-room like a flamin’ yo-yo.’ She stared at the flames, then turned round. ‘Did you go down the road to see David Turner’s mother after the pictures? The old sourpuss,’ she added without malice.

  ‘No. I came straight in.’

  Josie reached out for a box of kirby-grips from the mantelpiece, then started to twist her hair into little snails, anchoring each one firmly to her scalp. ‘You could dance, you know, love. You don’t have to hear the music. It’s the rhythm what counts.’

  Sally put the mug of tea down on the tiled surround. ‘I’m tired, Mum. I think I’ll go up to bed.’

  Josie shrugged. Being deaf wasn’t without the odd advantage. Find the conversation not to your liking and just walk away. Or go to bed. She cupped her hands round her mug of tea and nodded the skull cap of kirby-grips up and down twice.

  Walk away … that was what she should do. Now, before she found it impossible. ‘Oh, Bill,’ she whispered. ‘Why do I have to feel like this? Why, when I thought I would never feel like this again?’

  David Turner saw Sally just as the train began to slide out of the station. As he leaned out of the window in the first-class compartment he saw her picking her way through the maze of kitbags, her eyes searching, a woolly scarlet cap on her head a splash of colour against the drabness of khaki uniforms and the wide stretch of grey platform.

  Abandoning his natural reserve, he shouted her name. ‘Sally!’ Then again in desperation. ‘Sally! I’m here!’

  But with every single window filled with waving arms it was hopeless. He sat down in the corner seat and closed his eyes. The compartment was full, but not as full as at the other end of the train where ordinary ranks had fought with workers for seats. The disappointment had started him trembling again, and opening his eyes David saw the man opposite stare at him before disappearing behind his newspaper. He saw the eyes of a Merchant Navy officer widen in surprise, and he saw a pretty Wren in the far corner half stretch out a hand before she turned in confusion to stare at the grey morning slipping by.

  The tears trickling slowly down David’s cheeks were of no consequence to him. He just let them fall, making no attempt to lift a hand to wipe them away. The shaking inside him was getting worse, but if he sat quite still it would go.

  So he sat quite still, his profile averted, like the head on a coin.

  Lee Grant Willis, formerly of the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps before the fall of France, now on a week’s leave from an RAF training wing in Cornwall, sauntered down the slope away from the platform to the station forecourt.

  With both hands thrust deep into his pockets and his cap pushed to the back of his head he looked a typical Yank in spite of the British uniform. In front of him was a girl in a scarlet cap swinging a brown leather purse. Lee studied her legs, okaying them in spite of the utility stockings washed to a sickly shade of fawn. He quickened his steps.

  What happened next happened so swiftly his reaction was purely instinctive. With the girl a step or two in front of him, he came out of the station onto a wide pavement, just as a Post Office van turned at speed out of a side entrance. The van’s exhaust was making a hell of a noise, but without even turning her head the girl stepped out into the road.

  The horror on the van driver’s face registered in Lee’s mind in the same split second as he threw himself forward, grabbing the girl, dragging her back and holding her tight up against him.

  ‘You daft bugger!’ The driver leaned out shaking a fist. ‘Next time you decide to commit suicide try a bloody rope, will you?’

  As the van roared away Lee looked into a pair of startled grey eyes. ‘You okay, honey?’

  Sally stared into a brown face with the skin stretched smooth beneath eyes of a bright periwinkle blue. The eyes were full of compassion, but as she stepped back a pace she saw the compassion change to anger.

  ‘You could hear that goddamned van coming a mile off! What were you doing stepping off the sidewalk like that? Are you deaf or something?’

  He was gripping her arm so tightly that she winced. The shock of her narrow escape sharpened her own voice to an anger matching his own.

  ‘Yes, I am deaf,’ she said clearly. ‘I am usually extra careful crossing roads. I have to be, but I was thinking about something. I’m sorry.’

  For a moment blue eyes stared into grey, then Lee pursed his lips in a slow whistle. Pushing his cap even further back he scratched his head. ‘Well, what d’you know? It’s me should be saying I’m sorry, I reckon, bawling you out like that. Here, hold it right there a minute, honey.’

  Bending down he gathered the contents of Sally’s handbag together, then handed it to her with a flourish. ‘There’s a place across the street – quick eats by the look of it – I’m going to buy you a cup of tea. Okay?’ He grinned. ‘You lip-reading me, honey?’

  Sally nodded. She wondered if he was a Canadian. One of the girls at the office was dating a Canadian airman, a dark reserved boy totally different from this happy-go-lucky boy now escorting her with old-world gallantry across the street.

  ‘Are you American?’ She waited until they were seated opposite to each other across a
table still marked with the rings of yesterday’s spills. ‘You talk like somebody out of a cowboy film.’

  Lee laughed out loud. What a sweetie this young English girl was turning out to be. No hiding behind her appalling disability, no rushing away from him; not flirting with him, just sitting there smiling at him with an easy acceptance across that goddamned filthy table.

  To tell the truth, Lee Grant Willis was lonely. Since landing in Liverpool the previous October to the sound of anti-aircraft guns chattering, right through his acceptance at Adastral House in London as a candidate for pilot training in the RAF, he had found himself being forced into an unwilling and unnatural role as a loner. One or two highly critical and tactless criticisms of the English way of life had less than endeared him to his English buddies.

  ‘Sure,’ he had told them. ‘Back home an unskilled workman can and does own a car. Sure, a telephone is an accepted part of the furniture, and okay, so who in his right mind would drink water or beer that wasn’t ice-cold?’

  He had been merely stating the facts, but what when the facts were construed as offensive showing off?

  ‘Sure I’m an American,’ he told Sally. ‘And it could just be that I talk like a cowboy on account of most of my ancestors being no-good horse thieves.’ He took a sip of the hot tea placed in front of them by a surly middle-aged woman in a green turban. ‘I am also unique, honey, coming over here to fight in a war that’s none of our business. There were more waiters than passengers on the boat I came over on, originally, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Are you reading me okay, honey?’ he added with such a worried expression that now it was Sally’s turn to laugh out loud.

  ‘Every word,’ she assured him. ‘It must be the slow way you talk.’

  ‘Plus my big mouth and graveyard teeth.’ He bared them in a comical leer that caused the green turban behind the counter to bob up and down in a frenzy of excitement.

  ‘Just like Gary Cooper,’ she was to tell her husband untruthfully. ‘He had that girl mesmerized, I can tell you. She never took her eyes off his face.’