Питер Ловси: On the Edge

As promised, Antonia was by the bandstand at half past two, conspicuous in a lilac-coloured coat with bishop sleeves and a matching Breton sailor hat tilted back rakishly. She was getting some long looks from the nannies walking their prams.

‘Let’s go that way, towards the Mall.’

‘It’s all the same to me.’

Green Park no longer looked like a war zone. The bulldozers had flattened the barbed wire fences and the searchlight station and filled in the artificial lake in time for the Victory celebrations. Squads of Italian POWs had laid fresh turf. Today Londoners in scores were out enjoying the autumn sun.

Rose gossiped happily about old times, and Antonia chipped in with bits of news she had picked up since. They covered just about everyone of the Kettlesham Heath crowd. Almost an hour passed before Antonia switched back to the present.

‘Where do you and Barry live, then?’

Rose considered what answer she would give. She chose to keep it vague. ‘Out Pimlico way.’

‘A house? One of those sweet little terraced boxes covered in stucco?’ Antonia should have been in intelligence in the war.

‘It was all we could get and now we’ve got to stay until the war damage is put right.’

‘So you were bombed.’

‘The house across the street. A doodlebug. No one was hurt, thank God, but we lost our front door and all the windows and there are cracks you can see daylight through.’

‘Bloody doodlebugs.’

‘It could have been much worse. You have to look on the bright side. We can see right across the river now.’ And I, Rose instantly thought, am incapable of keeping any secrets at all. I didn’t want to tell her all this. She tried clumsily to cover up. ‘But no one can ever find us because we haven’t got a number on the new door.’

‘No number?’

‘No number.’ Rose raised a smile. ‘We don’t do much entertaining.’

‘You might get a visit from me one of these days.’

‘Don’t! I’d die of shame if you turned up.’

‘Did you tell Barry you met me?’

‘No. I didn’t mention it.’

‘Don’t you two have much to say to each other?’

‘The only thing he wants to talk about is that revolting murder in the papers.’

‘Neville Heath. How dull.’

‘Dull? I call it horrible.’

‘He’s a psychopath, of course.’

‘Heath?’

‘Well, I wasn’t referring to Barry, darling.’

There was a moment before Rose spoke again.

‘What’s a psychopath?’

Antonia responded as if to a child. ‘He has a diseased mind, my dear.’

‘Obviously.’

‘So what can be more dull than that? He was incapable of committing an intelligent murder. Darling, are those rain clouds, would you say?’

They took the straightest route back to Piccadilly, where Antonia insisted on tea in the Palm Court at the Ritz. In the pink and gold setting her outfit looked so exquisite that she must have known all the time she would come here. Rose, seated in front of a gilded water nymph on a rock, felt like a refugee in her green tweed coat and woollen headscarf. People at other tables glanced at her and looked away.

‘I shouldn’t have come in.’

‘My dear, nobody’s taking any notice.’

‘I do have better things at home.’

‘Imagine how I felt in the Black and White Milk Bar.’

‘If only I’d known we were coming here.’

‘Relax. We deserve this.’

‘I’m not sure why.’

‘For putting up with our ghastly husbands.’ Rose forgot what she was wearing for a moment. ‘Is yours a problem too?’

‘Hector?’ Antonia tensed suddenly and lowered her voice. ‘Don’t look now, but I think a fellow over there is giving one of us the eye.’

‘Oh, no. Where?’

‘To your left against the window, sitting alone. Grey pinstripe. Clark Gable moustache.’

Rose stole a glance.

‘For pity’s sake, Antonia! He’s sixty if he’s a day.’

‘I swear to God that’s an American tie. Where would he get a tie like that in England? It is Clark Gable. And he’s looking at you.’

‘Dressed like this?’

‘Americans go wild over tweeds. This is your chance, darling. Show him some stocking and let’s see if he comes over.’

Any uncertainty in Rose’s mind was removed. This was a well-tried game of Antonia’s, picking out the most unlikely men and casting them as heart-throbs for her friends. Amusing to everyone but the victim. She was always catching people.

‘Cool down, Ack-Ack, this isn’t the sergeants’ mess.’

‘He’s panting for you.’

‘Panting! He’s hardly breathing. He’s practically asleep. His eyes are closing. Look, he’s closed his eyes.’

‘Imagining things.’

Antonia’s face was so suggestive, and the whole thing so ridiculous that Rose was forced to smile and it started Antonia off. She made sounds like a traction engine picking up steam. Rose snatched a hankie to her mouth.

‘He is definitely asleep.’

‘He’s just pretending.’

‘He’s sliding down his chair. Any minute now he’s going to slip under the table.’

‘Don’t let that fool you. He’s trying to see up your skirt.’

Rose reddened and tugged the hem over her knees.

‘Spoilsport.’

Before they left, a waiter handed a small white cake-box to Antonia. She thanked him and put a coin in his hand. Then she turned to Rose.

‘Isn’t it a bore trying to think of things to feed the cat with? I find cream quite impossible to get in the shops.’

The umbrellas were up when they came out. There wasn’t a taxi in sight, so they stood under the arcade and waited for the shower to stop. Rose didn’t mind. She didn’t want the afternoon to end. It was like old times, only better. Antonia wasn’t performing for an entire hutful of WAAFs. The entertainment was for private delectation. She couldn’t tell what to believe, and she was captivated.

Antonia hadn’t finished, either.

‘You and I will definitely have to do something about our husbands.’

‘Do what?’

‘Get shot of them.’

The only way to cope with Antonia in this mood was to keep a straight face and treat everything she said with total seriousness — until you collapsed laughing.

‘How do you mean — get shot of them?’

Antonia flicked her hand as if she were shaking off the rain.

Rose aped the action. ‘Just like that?’

‘More or less.’

‘Difficult, I should think.’

‘Not at all.’

‘I told you I’m not getting a divorce.’

‘I wasn’t talking about divorce.’

‘All right, cleversticks, what other way is there to get shot of a husband?’

‘I can think of at least a dozen.’

‘Name one, then.’

‘A fatal accident.’

‘Small chance of that!’

‘Chance needn’t come into it, darling. Quick, that taxi’s pulling up.’

The Ritz commissionaire beckoned to them with his white glove. He seemed to know Antonia. He waved away some other people and held a huge brown umbrella over them as they climbed in.

At home she tuned in to the Light Programme, got Merry-Go-Round and started the ironing. Barry’s shirts had to be ready for another week. She couldn’t imagine Antonia at the ironing board these days, though she’d seen her often enough in the billet at Kettlesham Heath pressing her uniform for kit inspections and her civvies for dates with the officers. Things had moved on since then.

Antonia has, at any rate, Rose reflected. As for me, I’ve slipped. Those really were better times. We bleated about the food and the uniforms, but we had some point to our lives. Women had a part to play in fighting the war. We were needed. And they paid us.