Читать книгу The Soldier’s Wife - Margaret Leroy - Страница 23

I walk home through the summer morning, feeling so sad for Angie, thinking how lost she seems, how much she has aged. Wondering what I can do to help her. I’m not really looking around me: I’m in a trance, abstracted, like when I was a child and didn’t come when I was called, and Aunt Aggie would shake her head at me: ‘You’re such a dreamer, Vivienne. You’re always off in cloud cuckoo land. You think too much, you need to live in this world …’

If I hadn’t been so preoccupied, maybe I would have noticed the car in the lane: maybe I would have turned in time, and made for the track through the fields, and come home by the back way. But I’ve almost reached the car before I really take it in. It’s not an army vehicle, but a big black Bentley, drawn up on the verge outside the gate of Les Vinaires. I recognise the car. It used to belong to the Gouberts; they lived at Les Brehauts, an imposing whitewashed house near the church, before they went on the boat. The Germans must have requisitioned the car—which, as Angie says, means stealing.

The bonnet is open. One of the men from Les Vinaires is there, the scarred man I saw in the window, peering under the bonnet. I see him too late. I’d have done anything to avoid him, but I can’t turn back now: I know it would look like cowardice, and I’d hate him to think I was scared. He’s tinkering with the engine, muttering under his breath; then he opens the door, climbs in and tries the ignition—still with the bonnet up. The engine turns once, splutters, dies. He gets out, kicks a tyre, and swears, a rushed volley of German expletives. With a part of my mind, I’m thinking, Good—he may have stolen the car, but at least he can’t make it go … But I’m frightened too, and the prayer that Angie quoted to me slides into my mind. Oh, Lord, help me … I stand there, uncertain, apprehensive. I have to walk past him to reach the gate to my yard. I’m wishing more than ever that I’d thought to come back through the fields.

He turns, sees me. He has a shocked look: he stares, as if I am a ghost or apparition. As though I am the one who is out of place, who shouldn’t be there. The scented wind blows about us; it billows my skirt, then wraps it back against my body and pushes a strand of unruly hair into my mouth. My face feels hot, I know I’ve gone red, and I hate this. My heart stutters. I think he is going to shout at me or threaten me.

‘I apologise,’ he says. His English accent is very good, as good as Captain Richter’s. His face flushes slightly, almost as though he’s ashamed.

I don’t know what to say. I feel stupid, wrong-footed—clumsy, as though I use up too much space, as though my feet and hands are too big for my body.

‘That’s all right, it doesn’t matter,’ I say—the automatic response. Then I feel my hand fly to my mouth, as if to stop myself from talking.

He inclines his head in a little bow, and turns and goes into the house.

There’s a small scolding voice in my head: You’re letting the side down, you handled everything wrong. You shouldn’t have said it didn’t matter—you shouldn’t have spoken at all. Everything matters, nothing’s all right. It comes to me that this will be the shape of it, of our new life under the Occupation: always these troubling, frightening encounters—leaving you feeling that you’ve transgressed, and given something away.

Later, from my bedroom window, I watch as the scarred man comes out with one of the younger men, the one who has the kind of skin that peels in the sun. The young man has a tool box. He mends the car—deftly, with no fuss. The scarred man climbs in and turns the ignition: I hear the car start up. Through the car window, I can see the ironic smile on his face. The thought ripples in me that I know certain things about him. How he loathes machines, feels they oppose him, will never do his will: how this helplessness makes him angry. How he can lose himself in reading a book or a letter—frowning, running a finger absently over his brow. I know the look he has when he thinks that nobody is watching: how he will light a cigarette and leave it lying there, and roll up his shirtsleeves, doing these things unthinkingly, unaware of what he is doing. This knowledge makes me uneasy. It’s as though I am party to a secret that I never asked to be told.

Before the man drives off, he glances up at my bedroom window. Almost as if he knows I am looking, expects me to be looking. My heart thuds. I draw back into my room.