Wendy Maitland - Rambles on the Edge

SURVIVED EPIC ACROSS SAHARA ARRIVE BLIGHTY 2 WEEKS MUST SEE YOU DAVID.

I showed it to Muz, who was hovering anxiously. Telegrams arriving unexpectedly were alarm bells for anyone who had been through the war. ‘Who’s David?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Why is it so important for him to see you?’

‘He and his wife were friends of ours in Nakuru and David in particular helped a great deal with our move, helping me pack up, and looking after Elizabeth. No doubt he has news of her and other things to tell me about.’ But I knew the invitation held more than casual interest, especially if he was on his own. I went upstairs with the telegram in my hand and stood at the open window again, looking out until I was shivering both with the cold air and unexpected anticipation. David had told me about a plan to drive across the Sahara with army friends when he was posted back to re-join his regiment, but there had been no expectation that I might be in England myself when he arrived.

On fine days when Muz wasn’t working, we often went on picnics and the children’s favourite place was the end of the runway at Gatwick airport where they could watch planes landing and taking off. What they watched out for most eagerly was a Cessna that looked like Grandpa’s plane, keeping alive the hope that any Cessna arriving might be his. Gatwick airport in 1970 was hardly more than a runway with sheds at one end where passengers assembled in an atmosphere of no great formality. A nursing friend who had trained with me at the Royal Free Hospital, now lived nearby under the flight path in a rambling house where she had settled in bohemian disorder, absentmindedly gathering babies and children around her. Four of these were her own, and three were stepchildren who came with someone else’s husband whom she had collected along the way. On visits to her, my own three were absorbed into this blithe household, running wild in the paradise of their tangled garden abandoned to the incessant roar of planes overhead. For a family of plane spotters like ourselves this was nothing but joy, and I loved the old house that had evolved during three distinct architectural periods. Its centrepiece was a modest but exquisite Tudor house crowned with a fanciful crenelated roof, standing between a Georgian wing on one side and a Victorian wing on the other. Each section had its own staircase where all ten children (when we were there) raced up and down, swinging from the banisters like lemurs.

It was into this tumult of family life that David arrived, unshaven, sunburnt and dog-tired, hours after driving off the Dover ferry, having arranged to meet us there. This was to spare Muz the dilemma (had he appeared at Forest Lodge) of deciding where he fitted on her moral spectrum of suitable friends for me to be associating with. There were no scruples in the minds of the children who were so pleased to see David that they all wanted to sit on his lap at the same time. Louise perched herself there proprietorially, reaching up to rub the bristles on his face while being flirtatious in a way that looked overly impudent at her age. If anyone was going to flirt with him it would be me, I thought peevishly, not my six-year-old daughter. Several days followed in a carefree state of unstructured time as clocks and watches were ignored and mealtimes occurred randomly. A great many bottles of wine were emptied as we sat around the enormous kitchen table, chatting and idling until tugged by the children to go and look at something they had built or knocked over during mad games. Too soon David had to leave, to go and visit his mother in Somerset, and we returned to Forest Lodge knowing time was short before tickets back home had to be booked.

Muz was scandalised at the state of the children’s clothes waiting for her twin-tub when we returned. ‘Whatever can you have been doing to accumulate so much dirt, and all these grass stains? Your friend must have let the children run riot by the look of them,’ she grumbled, while allowing the precious machine to be wheeled out on a day that wasn’t washday. We were sorting through the grubby pile of clothes when the phone rang and Muz went to answer it. ‘It’s for you,’ she called from the hall where the phone lived on a small table next to the front door. ‘It’s a man. He didn’t say who he was.’ That will be David, I thought. But it wasn’t. Incredibly it was Lanner, his voice unmistakable as he said, ‘I heard you were over here, visiting your mother.’

‘Yes,’ I managed to reply after a moment of stunned hesitation.

‘I’m on leave, staying with my parents, not too far from where you are. I thought of driving over one day,’ he suggested casually. My voice seemed to have dried up with the shock of hearing him instead of David, and I needed to collect myself. ‘What about your wife?’ I asked after a pause.

‘She’s not here. I came on my own with the children.’

There was silence as I took this in. What was he saying? Had he and his wife split up? Why did he want to see me?

‘Are you still there?’ He sounded surprised.

‘Yes. But you can’t come over, I’m just about to leave. I’m living in Rhodesia now,’ I added lamely as if whole continents stretched between us instead of a few miles of English countryside.

‘It would be a pity to miss a chance to meet again since last time was so awkward and offered no opportunity for any meaningful conversation. Especially with no shortage of subjects for discussion,’ he added enigmatically.

‘It’s just not a good time,’ I answered quickly, feeling trapped, and annoyed with Lanner for thinking he could walk back into my life so abruptly after the years of anguish he had caused me.

‘I would like to see you again,’ he persisted.

‘Why?’

‘In case there have been past misunderstandings.’

‘We are both in different places now, looking ahead, not looking back.’ ‘Sometimes looking back offers perspective, and can be a good thing, helping to understand the past.’

‘Looking back is what people do when they’re lost,’ I said, directing the remark at him, and noticing a slight sadness in his voice as he replied. ‘I can see you will not be persuaded, but I hope, one day, fate will look upon us more kindly and provide another opportunity for speaking.’

‘Yes, possibly,’ I said, feeling relieved that we could end on good terms. ‘It does seem as if fate conspires to engineer some strange encounters for us.’ He laughed in the chuckling way which was familiar and dangerously engaging, so that I had to hold onto myself to say goodbye and put the phone down. I was shaking as I did so, but glad to have avoided the complications that any meeting inevitably would have caused.

Muz wanted to know who it was, and when I told her and how the conversation had ended, she was irritated. ‘You could easily have let him come here. It would not have been disloyal to Adam. In any case I would have liked to see Lanner again. He was in love with you, you know.’

‘No, he wasn’t,’ I said fiercely. ‘He cut me off with no explanation or the slightest twinge of conscience, just like Tom did with Elaine.’

‘Elaine is still friendly with Tom. She doesn’t hold it against him, even though he married someone else. It’s the Christian thing to do.’

‘Not all of us in this family are very good at doing the Christian thing,’ I reminded her, thinking of Fa, but not saying so.

Muz switched the subject to Ros. ‘I hope Ros is going to be all right with her new friend, sharing a flat with him and that other couple at Earl’s Court.’ I knew what she was thinking: that she hoped they all had their own bedrooms and there was nothing improper going on. When Ros had been on a caravan holiday with a previous boyfriend, Muz had fretted about the lack of privacy in such cramped quarters. ‘Where will Ros get dressed?’ she fussed. ‘There isn’t even a normal bathroom in the caravan for her to get changed, or put on her nightdress at night.’ I thought it best to avoid enlightening her that Ros was unlikely to be wearing a nightdress while she and her boyfriend occupied the one and only caravan bed each night.