“The news is not very good,” she said, biting her lip. “Apparently someone has been arrested bringing a vast number of guns into Ireland. As if we hadn’t enough trouble there already.”
He shook his head. “I heard. It’s insane! The last thing we need is more turmoil in Ireland! They can’t win, we can’t afford to let them! It’ll just mean more bloodshed.” He glanced around at the peaceful, almost deserted street, the tension gone, the people dispersed. A little brown dog scampered along the footpath. Two young girls stood absorbed in conversation. An old man sat in the seat near the duck pond, chewing on the stem of his pipe. The wind gusted, but it was warm to the skin.
“There’s so much bad news at the moment,” he added. “I sometimes wonder if we are all insane. Or perhaps I’ll wake up and discover it’s still 1914, and all this never happened. It’s me that’s wrong, not the rest of the world.”
“I’d like that,” she said quietly, startled by how passionately she meant it, too. “I would give anything I can think of to go back to the way it used to be. It was so . . .”
“Sane,” he said with a smile, his eyes bright and soft.
“Do you think it will ever be like that again, when the war is over?” She wanted him to say it would, even if he could not know or dared not believe.
“Yes, of course it will.” He did not hesitate and his voice was full of warmth. “We’ll make it. It may take a little time, and there’ll be so many people to look after. But we haven’t changed inside. We still believe the same things, love the same things. We’ll heal. As with any illness, the fever breaks, then we begin to get our strength back.” He gave her a quick, bright glance. “Maybe it will give us an immunity?”
She smiled; it was such a commonplace idea it made sense. “Like getting the measles, or chicken pox?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Exactly. We’ll have had a dose so strong we’ll never do it again. If you get burned badly enough, you don’t ever go near the fire in the future.”
“I like that!” she said quickly. “Then perhaps in a hideous way it would even be worth it. We would crown our folly with something so awful that future generations would learn from it. Then our price would have bought something worth having. Thank you. . . .”
He looked at her with a softness in his eyes so undisguised she was suddenly embarrassed. For the first time it was impossible for her to mistake his thoughts.
The moment broke with a shriek of outrage twenty yards up the street and Hannah was so startled she froze, the blood hot in her face.
Ben jerked around and stared.
Mrs. Oundle, a very large lady in a green dress, was standing outside the butcher’s shop clutching a torn piece of paper, and the brown dog was racing across the road with a brace of lamb chops in his mouth.
The old man on the bench stood up and reached out to stop the dog, who veered sideways, splashing through the water and soaking the man. Mrs. Oundle was still shrieking.
The butcher came out to see what the trouble was and she rounded on him furiously. Two little boys hopped up and down in glee, then, when Mrs. Oundle saw them, turned and fled, boots clattering on the pavement.
Hannah tried to stifle her laughter and totally failed.
The dog dropped the chops in the water and started to bark.
Ben doubled over, tears of delight running down his cheeks.
Mrs. Oundle and the butcher both got angrier and angrier, but it was no use at all, Hannah was incapable of stopping laughing, either. All the fear and misery exploded inside her in a glorious release of hilarity, and in the sheer joy of sharing it with someone else who saw the divine absurdity of it in exactly the same way as she did. There was no point in even trying to apologize to Mrs. Oundle. For a start, she was not sorry, and everyone could see that. On the contrary, she was supremely grateful for the sane absurdity of it.
She took Ben’s arm and they turned away, still laughing.
The brown dog was ducky-diving in the pond to find his chops and Mrs. Oundle and the butcher were sizing each other up to decide who was to blame, when Ben left Hannah at her gate where Joseph was pulling weeds, one-handed, in the garden.
He spoke briefly to Ben, then followed Hannah inside to the kitchen.
“Tea?” she asked, still smiling. “Thank you for doing the weeding.” She filled the kettle under the tap.
“It’s my garden,” Joseph replied.
She froze. It was an extraordinary remark. She turned around slowly to face him. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, his sleeve was rolled up, his good arm slightly scratched and stained with mud and the green sap of grasses.
“Why did you say that?” she asked. “I know perfectly well that this is your house. When the war is over, and you come back here, I shall return to Portsmouth, or wherever Archie . . . if he is still alive . . . is posted. Or are you saying that you are going to stay here, and you want it back now?”
He blushed. “No, of course I’m not. I meant it’s fair that I do something of the work to keep it up, while I’m here. And even if I do stay, it’s still your home for as long as you want it to be.”
“But you might stay?” she asked eagerly, ignoring the fact that something had obviously angered him.
“I don’t know.” His expression was deeply unhappy.
“You don’t have to decide today,” she tried to comfort him. “It will be another three or four weeks before your arm is completely better.”
“I know.” None of the misery left his face.
“Why are you so angry?” she asked. “Is it the Irish news? Do you really think there’ll be war there, too?”
“No, it’s not the Irish news,” he replied. “Hannah, that young man is falling in love with you, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. That would be unworthy of you.”
She felt the blood scald up her face. Yesterday she could have denied it, but today it was impossible. She felt intruded upon. Joseph had no right to enter that part of her life. It was not only embarrassment that burned in her but anger.
“I didn’t deny it!” she snapped at him. “How dare you accuse me like that, of something I haven’t done. I said nothing to you about it because it is none of your business.”
He did not flinch, as if he had expected her to react exactly as she had. It added insult to the turmoil of feelings inside her.
“Is that as honest as you can be, Hannah?” he asked. “You are afraid something will happen to Archie, so you are allowing yourself to care for someone safe, and letting him care for you. I understand fear, and loss, but that doesn’t make it right.”
Her temper snapped. All the loneliness, tension, and fear, the sense of exclusion tumbled out of the tight repression in which she had kept it.
“No, you don’t!” she said savagely. “You don’t understand the waiting, the being shut out. You don’t understand having to pretend it doesn’t hurt all the time so you protect your children. You don’t understand being a family for a few days, and then being on your own, then having a family again, and then wondering if it’s for the last time. When it goes one way or the other, you can begin to recover from it, but this never lets you get used to anything!” She drew in a shivering breath, still glaring at him. “I hate all the changes! I don’t want women bank managers, women police, women taxi drivers, and I don’t want to be able to vote for members of Parliament. I want to do what women have always done, be a wife to my husband and a mother to my children! I hate uncertainty, anger, fighting, destroying everything we used to value.”
“I know.” His face was bleak and very pale. “I don’t like it much myself. I think a lot of people who make the best of it do so because they have no choice. You can be dragged into the future, kicking like a child, or you can walk in upright and with some dignity. That’s almost all the choice you’ve got.”
“You sound pompous, Joseph. This is just about Ben Morven being a little in love with me,” she responded. She knew Joseph despised pomposity. She ached for the warmth and the brightness of being cared for, that softness in Ben Morven’s eyes when he looked at her. It gave her hope that even if Archie were killed, there was still someone who could love her. She had put words to it at last—if Archie were killed. It was like a miniature death just to think it.
Joseph leaned back a little against the kitchen table, easing the weight from his damaged leg. “Is that how you would explain it to Tom?” he asked.
“That is horribly unfair! Tom is fourteen!” she protested. “He has no idea. . . .” She stopped. Joseph was standing there with his eyes wide, his dark eyebrows raised a little. She felt her face burn.
