ONE
All the same furniture was there. It was as if they hadn’t moved at all. She was still in that flat, that night, that crying. The new three-piece suite with grey fabric and wooden edging, the circular side-table, the Persian rug with its scrawls of yellow and red. Leonard loved those things. But one of the boxy armchairs was next to the window, the wireless was across the other side of the room and a stream of sunlight fell onto an empty pool of floorboards in the middle of nothing. She stepped around the sunlight. Not one thing was in the right place. The memories built up over the last two years like layers of varnish were all scraped away now, and there was just a new room. She slid the palm of her hand across the cold blue wall. Leonard was in the hospital finding new things, meeting new people and she was left here. But she didn’t plan to be there long. The large windows looked out onto the road to the hospital drive and she knew he was somewhere hidden behind those pine trees, almost smelt him like that sharp itch of vinegar. He hadn’t even stopped to look up at the new house, neat as on oversized doll’s house. She crossed the room towards the French windows and opened them to let in the smell of the garden. Apple trees and rose bushes dotted around small patches of lawn, no space to move, strangled by vines. Leonard said there was a tennis court in the hospital grounds, and she used to love tennis, even if she was no Helen Wills Moody. She and Tommy used to play all summer long. Cords and muscles etched into her legs, but not anymore. Every day she struggled to keep her Raylon stockings from wrinkling and her skirts from slipping. She ran her hand down the length of her side. Blonde hair and red nails couldn’t hide that. She put her fingers out against the glass and it was hot from the sunlight. Nothing was as it should be.
Lillian sat down in the armchair, felt the familiar curve of the horsehair back and pushed her little finger into the worn threads on the right armrest. The tapestry fabric had been gnawed away by tiny baby teeth and Lillian ran the tip of her finger over every bite. Her white underclothes were like a sunspot on the fabric. The pulse of the train was still running through her. If she closed her eyes she could see the long stream of green trees and brown earth speeding by. But when she looked up there was the room staring back at her. When she’d stood on the platform there were so many trains, so many destinations, she felt lost, and so she took her seat with Leonard and Freddie. Freddie who looked so much like Tommy that sometimes it made her stare.
Leonard wouldn’t be home for hours and there was no nephew to fuss over. She just wanted something to do but she didn’t know where to start, kicking her heels into the polished floor wasn’t helping. She wondered if she was hungry, there was an angry bubbling in her stomach, she only had one barley sugar on the train. It was a long time since she felt hungry and may be there was something to be said for the sea air. She followed the coloured trail of her clothes back to the kitchen, a jacket on the table, a skirt in the hallway, her shoes on the stone floor by the range. Leonard called it her lilac suit but really it was a dark purple, almost black in the shade. Colours didn’t mean much to Leonard in his white scrubbed medical world. When they were first married he used to laugh at her need to shed her clothes as soon as she came into the flat, they would laugh together. She ran her hands over her hollow stomach, it felt as if that vast hole was sinking down inside her and she really couldn’t think of a better idea of how to fill it than with food.
The kitchen didn’t look like it belonged to anyone. They didn’t bring any kitchen furniture with them, only their wedding dining set and Magnet appliances. Dark spaces lurked underneath everything. Like stepping back in time there was an old iron range and burners, not at all like St John’s Wood with its enamel-coated cooker and refrigerator. More like one of Leonard’s operating theatres than a family kitchen. Lillian wondered if the housekeeper did meals, and how much a part of their lives she would need to be. She wasn’t sure she could stand another pair of eyes examining. There wasn’t any food in the icebox and she replaced the lid. At first Leonard ate everything she cooked but they soon settled into a routine of sandwiches and cold cuts, it was better that way. She found an old packet of tea, a box of water crackers and nothing else, not even dust in the blue painted cupboards. But when she found her way to the dinning room the table was set for three.
Cold ham with jellied edges, a slither of tongue, green lettuce leaves and a sliced tomato still damp with condensation. Lillian took a seat in the middle and ate her plate clean with two rolls on the side spread thick with butter. Even the tongue tasted good, meaty and peppery. She worked her way around the table and ate the other suppers that were laid out too; there wasn’t anything else to do. And it was the first time in months that she could actually taste the food, her tongue bubbled and her lips were wet. She wanted a gin and tonic but settled for the three glasses of milk, pouring the heavy jug dripping from its place in a bowl of ice water. She used every clean item on the table until it really did look like there were three people to supper. A family meal. But she left one glass of milk untouched.
She felt heavy like a water filled balloon and hot from the effort of eating like those last weeks of confinement the skin stretched tight across her body. She put her feet up on a chair and looked out into the garden. The dining room opened onto a veranda that wrapped its way around the whole house, and the sprouting moss on the glass roof blended with the lawn. The hills behind cast a creeping shadow over the garden that made everything look wet, dripping with green. And the more she stared the more she could ignore that glass of milk. The clouds were trimmed with pink like the curtains inside, red sky at night shepherds delight. She laughed and the sharp jolt made her stomach ache. Upstairs there was a book of nursery rhymes, probably still packed in a dusty tea chest, that weren’t really rhymes at all but sayings as old as any wife. Thirty-one wasn’t supposed to be old but sometimes it felt as if every bone in her body creaked and whined when she woke each morning. Her knees gave a crack as she eased herself up and looked out into the garden. It was like looking into an upturned bowl at the clouds and sky that surrounded her on all sides. She had a goldfish once that swam around and around the bowl, never getting anywhere until one day it simply floated to the surface. Only those hills stood in her way, the rest of the Isle of Wight was dammed up behind them, and there wasn’t a tree to be seen, nothing but blasted grass and yellow gorse. She turned away from the hills and walked along the veranda into the sitting room. She thought about tuning in the wireless but NevilleChamberlain stared back at her from Leonard’s newspaper on the side-board. His pinched face smiling as he stood at Heston aerodrome. She doubted anyone had ever been as thankful for the existence of Croydon as she was at that moment. The second picture showed the Prime Minister again waving the paper agreement in his hand as he stood outside 10 Downing Street, and as she read it a second time she knew it had to be true. Peace in our time. There wasn’t going to be another war. Tommy was right to wait and now it was the perfect time to start again and she would store that date, the thirtieth of September 1938. A new beginning.
