Jo Baker - A Country Road, a Tree

Suzanne’s eyes widen; her lips part.

“I think the mouldable kind,” he adds, more generally. “They make these sausage things out of them. Charges.”

Suzanne sucks in a long preparatory breath. He slips out into the garden before she can actually explode.

—

Suzanne feels for the pins in her hair, but the other Suzanne, Miss Beamish’s Suzanne, is reaching for them too, and their hands brush together, and Suzanne lets hers drop and leaves the other woman to remove the hairpins for her with her almond fingertips. The deftness is soothing; the pins’ release eases the pressure from the back of her head, like a problem that just disappears. The hair falls in a coil down her back and the other Suzanne teases it loose. She lets a breath go with it and her shoulders soften.

“I hadn’t realized how long it had grown,” she says.

The other Suzanne just smiles and tucks a towel around her collar; she gestures her over to the sink.

Leaning in over the stone basin, the stale smell of unwashed hair around her, she feels the stove-warmed water eased on to her scalp, feels the other woman’s hand guide the wet into her hair and soften it, slowing the water’s fall so that it is not wasted.

“Good?”

“Yes, thank you.”

There is a rummaging as the lid is removed from a pot and a handful of soapflakes scooped out. A shallow palm is cupped low for Suzanne to catch the scent.

“Lavender,” she says at the unexpected pleasure.

“Mm.”

The other Suzanne takes the hand away and shares the flakes between her two palms, and rubs them into foam. She strokes this on to and then massages it into Suzanne’s wet hair.

Bent over the stone basin, tendrils hanging down around her face, she feels the other woman’s fingers tease; they tweak at knots, scrape lightly across the scalp, eliciting both discomfort and pleasure. A tingling exposure at the back of the neck, where a run of water escapes. She thinks of what else these hands will do, these fingertips; where also they will brush and tease. The other’s body is just beside her own, the feel of her breath, her own hip pressing against the other’s thigh, and the other woman’s breast touching, soft, against Suzanne’s shoulder. It occurs to her that the other Suzanne is not wearing a brassiere, and her thoughts slide and become warm.

I am hungry for this, Suzanne thinks, as she is guided upright, her hair gently towelled, as she is brought back to the chair and settled there, vulnerable and tousled as a baby bird. I am just starving.

Through the window comes the hush of the cypresses, and the birds singing, and the other Suzanne moves round her, combing out the tangles, her breath on Suzanne’s ear, on her bare arm, on the washed-thin fabric of her blouse. Suzanne’s head moves with the insistence of the comb, leaning this way and then that. The hair is tugged out straight in a curtain round her. She closes her eyes as the other Suzanne begins to cut.

Against the summer sun her eyelids glow red. There is just the other woman’s breath and warmth, and the snip of blades through the curtaining hair, and the sounds of the trees and birds from outside, and voices further off in the street. Suzanne opens her eyes and sees the halo of her own fallen hair lying on the tiled floor. The other Suzanne moves round in front of her and leans in close; she parts the hair in front of Suzanne’s face and gives her a smile. Three deft strokes of a comb and then, “I think you’ll do,” she says.

Suzanne returns the smile. They are like that for a moment, face to face, smile to smile, the other woman’s lips mushroom-soft, and then she says “Well…” as she turns away and bustles at the dresser, chinking glasses. A little laugh over her shoulder. “I’m afraid we’re just out of setting lotion.”

She pours wine, and Suzanne turns her head from side to side, feeling the coolness and the lightness, brushing the new-cut ends with her fingers, her own body feeling soft and light and warm, and she is, briefly, relaxed and happy. Then Anna comes in from the garden, with those snuffling little dogs around her feet.

“Oh yes,” Anna says. “Very nice.” And she takes a glass of wine from the other Suzanne. “Very nice indeed.”

There is an ease between the two of them, the casual press of hip against hip, of warm soft flesh against warm soft flesh. They fit together, and it makes her ache.

“Thank you,” Suzanne says. “It feels very nice.”

The other Suzanne hands her a tumbler, but her focus is on Anna now, as it should be. Suzanne takes a sip of wine. What she has felt — this warmth, this softening — it is the gratitude of a stray dog for a casual kindness, a knuckling of the ears, a morsel.

What she wants more than anything is just an arm around her. This easy come-and-go. A kiss.

“Well,” she says, and takes a sip of the wine and sets the glass aside. “That was most kind of you.” She gets up to go. “Very kind indeed.”

—

A soft knock at the back door that evening just as they’re thinking about going to bed. He’s up and going to answer it before she can respond. The men are in their working blues and battered tweeds, dressed to go unseen in the twilight. Two more appear out of the darkness, pushing bicycles, which tick along comfortably, then stop.

“Have you got our gear?”

“This way.”

They pick their way down towards the hiding place. The evening is loud with cicadas. He crouches to get inside and hauls out the crate. He dusts his hands, while others move in to lift the load.

“Any news?” he asks.

A shaken head, pursed lips. “Just wait,” someone says. “Listen out. It can’t be long now.”

—

Anna Beamish bunches up by the radio and twists the dial with the concentration of a safe-cracker, squinting with effort; there’s a fug of interference and then a wince-inducing screech.

It is the fag-end of a blazing June day. There are wine bottles standing round the room; cigarette smoke drifts in skeins. He should not be drinking, not really, not now that things are so imminent, but things could go on being imminent indefinitely, and he faces what is coming more with dread than anticipation. Things will have to be done. It’s an uneasy thought. And it is so much easier to drink than not to drink, so his head is already swimming with rough wine when Beethoven’s Fifth throbs through the static and the noise and distortion flung at it by the German transmitters in their attempt to block the signal. He is straining for the music out of hunger for it, through the radio-fuzz and his own furred senses. For the Morse-like patterns of the notes. Da da da dum. It brings a tingle to the back of the neck. That’s V, isn’t it? In Morse code. That’s V.

This is London; the French speaking to the French.

Henri and Josette Hayden listen, heads bent. Suzanne sits in silence too. She had been giving him looks every time his glass was refilled. She wants to go home, but he has been ignoring her because they do not have a radio set at home, and either she has given up on the looks or the more he drinks the better he gets at not noticing.

Before we begin, please listen to some personal messages.

Anna Beamish perches on the arm of a chair; her Suzanne leans in against her, her dark head resting softly on Anna’s flank. Around them, the strange utterances slip and drift, unresolvable and haunting.

It is hot in Suez.

One of the dogs butts her head into his hanging hand, and he runs his palm over her fuzzy round skull and then knuckles at her cheek.

The dice are on the table.

The dog drops to the floor and rolls on her back; he can’t reach her there without moving and he can’t bring himself to move.