‘You wouldn’t think such heavy birds would be able to fly so gracefully, would you?’ he said.
‘No, not at all,’ she agreed.
‘You are coming to dinner tonight?’ he asked anxiously.
‘But it’s not Friday,’ she said.
‘I hope you’ll come Friday as well and several other nights too.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I thought you might like a lemon meringue pie. I haven’t made one since before the war. Missus Blackmarsh gave me some eggs from her chickens, so why not use them on something extravagant.’
They walked hand in hand to Ligar Street to collect the eggs, then to Webster Street, where Lilly picked lemons from the tree in Paul’s backyard. She squeezed the juice into curd and whipped egg whites into gentle white clouds while Paul spent an hour taking the boards off the door to Lucy’s room. They came off much faster than they had gone up.
Thirty-Four
Lisbet
Saturday, 8 May 1920, West Coker, England, when Reuben cannot forget Theo.
Reuben had a splinter that was festering deep inside him. It was the loud hum of the plane engines, the explosions of metal and bodies, the rage and sorrow that tore a man apart. The voice of God constantly nagging, reminding him life was finite, and the voice of the Devil asking if he could live with mortal life and its disappointments. God challenging him to make use of what he had and the Devil tempting him to throw life back in God’s face. Or were they the same voice — God and the Devil? The voices and noises crashed in his head, fragmenting into shards like the thinnest glass shattered on the floor. Reuben remembered the cart taking the dying Aussie away from him. The man’s breath had been hot on his face and he must have caught something from him because after he’d touched that man everything changed for him.
It was in the moment of death, when the boy with the cart had finally come back and they had loaded the silent body onto it. As the wheels of the cart had started to roll away over the dirt, the man had opened his eyes and looked at Reuben, trying to tell him something. Reuben had run to the man he knew only as T Hooley and put his ear against the man’s lips, waiting for a whispered secret of life, the secret you only knew too late, in the moment of death. But T Hooley whispered no secrets to Reuben and Reuben stood, disappointed, and the man seemed to take his last breath so Reuben banged the side of the cart to go on. As the cart rolled away Reuben felt something rush from him after the man and the cart. He was sure it was his soul. That night the voices and the nightmares began. He was officially diagnosed with shell shock, and given a few weeks to recuperate. Then he was declared fit for duty once again and was sent back into the circus until the next time, when he could take no more of it. He spent the rest of the war like that, in and out, in and out.
‘I shouldn’t have come back,’ he said to Holmes. They were sitting in his father’s study in Ashgrove House, in the dark. The light from the moon glinted off the whisky bottle but their faces were hidden in shadow. They were drinking his father’s best whisky and smoking his cigars. His father Doran and mother Lisbet had gone to bed.
‘But you did come back,’ said Holmes.
‘What?’
‘You did come back, Reuben,’ said Holmes, and he puffed white smoke into the night.
‘Why, do you suppose?’ asked Reuben, and they leant forward, as if searching the darkness for some deep truth.
‘You came back in one piece, to boot,’ added Holmes, ‘and everything’s going ahead.’
‘I heard things are going to get bad. There could be a civil war, like the French, if there’s not enough work.’ Reuben spoke without any hope for the future, his future. He took the cigar box and offered another to Holmes, then took one for himself and bit off the end. He lit it with his RAF-issue lighter and passed the lighter to Holmes.
‘Rubbish. Where did you hear that nonsense? From an accountant, I’ll bet,’ snapped Holmes, and held his glass out in the moonlight for a refill.
Reuben filled his glass until the whisky slopped over the top and spilt onto Holmes’s fingers.
‘Cheers,’ said Holmes, licking up the spilt whisky.
The war had made life so utterly dreadful for so many people. How could worse possibly be coming? Worse just wasn’t possible, but Reuben knew worse was coming, he could feel it inside him. The voices in his head told him. They told him over and over and never shut up. All the optimism and glory had been shot out of him. His soul had been shot out of him, and this was what was left.
‘My father is at me to find a job. I tell him that I’m leaving a job for some more needy fellow,’ said Reuben.
‘We had the war to end all wars and now it’s time to get in on the action. Buy stocks, property, whatever you like. It’s all booming. Get focused,’ said Holmes. ‘You don’t have to work if you don’t want to, but for God’s sake get yourself a wife, Reuben. There’s plenty to choose from — more of them than us thanks to the war. There must be some piece of skirt out there you haven’t yet seduced that you could settle down with. Look at me, Reuben, I’m married and happier for it.’
Reuben raised a sceptical eyebrow. Holmes had married his family’s choice of bride,
