I thought about the summer-house that evening when I was meant to be learning a verse of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and writing a composition, ‘The Worst Nightmare I Ever Had’. I imagined Betty and Colin Gregg walking hand in hand through the overgrown garden and then slipping into the summer-house when it became dusky. A summer’s evening it was, with pink in the sky, and the garden was scented with the blossoms of its shrubs. I imagined them sitting on the two dining-chairs at the table, Colin telling her about the war while he smoked his cigarettes, and Betty crying because he would be gone in twelve hours’ time and Colin comforting her, and both of them lying down on the rugs so that they could be close enough to put their arms around each other.
In the kitchen while I tried to record the details of a nightmare all I could think about was the much pleasanter subject of my sister’s romance. She was in the kitchen also. She’d changed from her farm-working clothes into a navy-blue skirt and a matching jersey. I thought she was more beautiful than usual. She and my mother were sitting on either side of the range, both of them knitting, my mother reading a book by A.J. Cronin at the same time, my sister occasionally becoming lost in a reverie. I knew what she was thinking about. She was wondering if Colin Gregg was still alive.
Months went by and neither he nor Dick came back. There were letters, but there were also periods when no letters arrived and you could feel the worry, for one of them or the other. The war was going to be longer than everyone had thought. People looked gloomy sometimes, and when I caught their gloom I imagined bodies lying unburied and men in aeroplanes, with goggles on, the aeroplanes on fire and the men in goggles burning to death. Ages ago France had been beaten, and I remembered that in a casual moment in a Scripture class the Reverend Throataway had said that that could never happen, that the French would never give in. We would never give in either, Winston Churchill said, but I imagined the Germans marching on the lanes and the roads and through the fields, not like the cheerful Italians. The Germans were cruel in their helmets and their grey steeliness. They never smiled. They knew you hated them.
Belle Frye would have thought I was mad if I’d told her any of that, just like she’d have thought I was mad if I’d mentioned about praying and keeping my father vivid in my mind. She was the first friend I’d ever had, but the declining of our friendship seemed almost natural now. We still sat next to one another in class, but we didn’t always walk home together. Doing that had always meant that one of us had to go the long way round and avoiding this extra journey now became an excuse. Not having had Dick and Betty to walk home with for so long, I’d enjoyed Belle Frye’s company, but now I found myself pretending to be in a hurry or just slipping away when she wasn’t looking. She didn’t seem to mind, and we still spent days together, at the weekends or in the holidays. We’d have tea in each other’s kitchens, formally invited by our mothers, who didn’t realize that we weren’t such friends. And that was still quite nice.
Sometimes in the evenings my mother used to go to see a woman called Mrs Latham because Mrs Latham was all alone in the Burrow Farm, three miles away. On these occasions I always hoped Betty would talk to me about Colin Gregg, that she’d even mention the summer-house. But she never did. She’d sit there knitting, or else writing a letter to him. She’d hear me say any homework I had to learn by heart, a theorem or poetry or spelling. She’d make me go to bed, just like my mother did, and then she’d turn on the wireless and listen to Monday Night at Eight or Waterlogged Spa or Itma. She’d become very quiet, less impatient with me than she’d been when we were younger, more grown-up, I suppose. I often used to think about her on those nights when my mother was out, when she was left alone in the kitchen listening to the wireless. I used to feel sorry for her.
And then, in that familiar sudden way, Colin Gregg came back on leave.
That was the beginning of everything. The evening after he came back was a Saturday, an evening in May. I’d been at the Fryes’ all afternoon and when we’d finished tea we played cards for an hour or so and then Mrs Frye said it was time for me to go home. Belle wanted to walk with me, even though we’d probably have walked in silence. I was glad when her father said no. It was too late and in any case he had to go out himself, to set his rabbit snares: he’d walk with me back to our farm. I said goodbye, remembering to thank Mrs Frye, and with his remaining arm Mr Frye pushed his bicycle on the road beside me. He didn’t talk at all. He was completely different from my father, never making jokes or teasing. I was quite afraid of him because of his severity.
The sheepdogs barked as I ran across our yard and into the kitchen. My mother had said earlier that she intended to go over to see Mrs Latham that evening. By eight o’clock Betty and Colin Gregg were to be back from the half past four show at the pictures, so that I wouldn’t be in the house alone. It was twenty past eight now, and they weren’t there.
I ran back into the yard, wanting to tell Mr Frye, but already he’d cycled out of sight. I didn’t at all like the idea of going to bed in the empty house.
I played with the dogs for a while and then I went to look at the hens, and then I decided that I’d walk along the road to meet Betty and Colin Gregg. I kept listening because at night you could always hear the voices of people cycling in the lanes. I kept saying to myself that my mother wouldn’t want me to go to bed when there was no one in the farmhouse. It was very still, with bits of red in the sky. I took the short-cut through the garden of Challacombe Manor and I wasn’t even thinking about Betty and Colin Gregg when I saw two bicycles in the shrubbery at the back of the summer-house. I didn’t notice them at first because they were almost entirely hidden by rhododendron bushes. They reminded me of the rugs half hidden beneath the tennis net.
Colin Gregg was going away again on Monday. He was being sent somewhere dangerous, he didn’t know where, but I’d heard Betty saying to my mother that she could feel in her bones it was dangerous. When my mother had revealed that she intended to visit Mrs Latham that evening I’d said to myself that she’d arranged the visit so that Colin Gregg and Betty could spend the evening on their own in our kitchen. But on the way back from the pictures they’d gone into the summer-house, their special place.
Even now I can’t think why I behaved like Belle Frye, unable to resist something. It was silly curiosity, and yet at the time I think it may have seemed more than just that. In some vague way I wanted to have something nice to think about, not just my imagining the war, and my prayers for Dick’s safety and my concern with people’s eternal lives. I wanted to see Betty and Colin Gregg together. I wanted to feel their happiness, and to see it.
It was then, while I was actually thinking that, that I realized something was the matter. I realized I’d been stupid to assume they could take the short-cut through the garden: you couldn’t take the short-cut if you were coming from the town on a bicycle because you had to go through fields. You’d come by the lanes, and if you wanted to go to the summer-house you’d have to turn back and go there specially. It seemed all wrong that they should do that when they were meant to be back in the farmhouse by eight o’clock.
I should have turned and gone away. In the evening light I was unable to see the bicycles clearly, but even so I was aware that neither of them was Betty’s. They passed out of my sight as I approached one of the summer-house’s two small windows.
I could see nothing. Voices murmured in the summer-house, not saying anything, just quietly making sounds. Then a man’s voice spoke more loudly, but I still couldn’t hear what was being said. A match was struck and in a sudden vividness I saw a man’s hand and a packet of Gold Flake cigarettes on the table, and then I saw my mother’s face. Her reddish hair was untidy and she was smiling. The hand that had been on the table put a cigarette between her lips and another hand held the match to it. I had never in my life seen my mother smoking a cigarette before.