Chapter 42
Cora had a sense of things coming to a head when Temperance came round one evening and popped his head around the door.
Cora was scraping carrots in the sink, preparing the dinner.
‘Hullo! I’m looking for Enid, I am,’ he said. ‘Didn’t she come home with you?’
‘No. Now she’s in dets we don’t see her so much.’
‘Ah.’ Temperance rubbed his jaw in agitation. ‘Is Dio in?’
‘Sorry, they’ve gone to chapel for a vestry meeting.’
‘Convenient for her, isn’t it, changing section,’ he said with an edge to his voice. He unbuttoned the starched collar from his shirt and stretched his liberated neck. He looked utterly miserable. ‘She’s usually home to cook the meal.’
Yes, it was convenient for Enid, Cora thought, he was right about that. ‘I’m getting the dinner started,’ she said, turning to him. ‘You can join us if you like.’
‘You’re all right, she’ll be back soon, I expect,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe she’s capable of deceit.’ He looked at Cora, the question bright in his eyes. ‘I don’t want to believe it, anyhow.’
She swallowed her dread. The inevitable was happening.
It had been building up to the point of no return – no hiding Enid’s confidence, her lies, her excitement – because in Les she had found the glamour that had been missing from her life.
As she said, what was the point of behaving properly, Cora thought, peeling the carrots with great concentration, when we could be dead tomorrow?
‘No, flirting, that’s all it is,’ Temperance said, going off on his own trail of thought.
‘Enid always likes to flirt because it means she gets her own way. There’s nothing in it, not really, everyone knows that.
Dio and Idwal warned me before I married her: spoilt she is, too pretty for you, but it was water off a duck’s back. I trust her, Cora.’
Cora thought of the way that Les looked at Enid, and the way Enid looked back at Les, sharing a secret, speaking to each other with their eyes as if the rest of the world had grown invisible around them. Well, it hadn’t.
‘There’s going to be nothing left of that carrot if you keep on like that,’ Temperance advised. He rolled his collar and tucked it in his pocket. ‘I’m going to look for her.’
Alarmed, Cora dropped the knife into the sink with a clatter. ‘Where?’
‘The factory.’ He opened the door and along with the rush of cold air came the roar of singing from the camp and the discordant percussion of spoons on plates amplified momentarily. ‘Listen to that,’ Temperance said to her morosely. ‘They’ve started a band, now.’
It was an assault on the ears and the sleepless nights weren’t doing any of them any good.
She didn’t know how the prisoners survived, singing marching songs all night like that.
And then in the daytime there was no peace either, with the announcements of Allied victories blaring out through the amplifiers.
It was like living in a railway station.
She had a knot of anxiety in her stomach and she put the carrots into cold water and quickly rinsed her hands.
Her anxiety was turning into anger because Enid really should have got home by now, no matter what.
Even if there were – the word ‘shenanigans’ popped into Cora’s head – taking place, surely she was sensible enough to at least act normally for everyone’s sake.
Unless…
Unless Enid really was going to leave him for Les.
In a sudden flurry of panic, Cora grabbed her coat and hat and started running past the camp and along the road.
It was a frosty night and the path was slippery underfoot.
She caught up with Temperance on the main road and they hurried together towards the factory, their rapid footsteps echoing in the night.
An Austin 10 was parked at the side of the road, its windows steamed up, shielding the occupants from view.
Like a madman, Temperance dashed across to it and pulled open the passenger door, bellowing: ‘How could you, Enid!’ Reaching in and grabbing her arm, his own wife’s bare arm, and Enid fighting back furiously, hitting in a flurry of limbs, matching his anger with grunts of effort, hot noise in the darkness.
‘Let me go!’ she screamed.
Les got out of the car, buttoning his trousers and dancing in agitation around the fighting pair. ‘No harm done,’ he was repeating, ‘no harm done!’
‘Get home now!’ Temperance ordered Enid hoarsely.
‘No! Leave me alone! Go away! I’ll come when I’m ready!’ Enid shouted in his face. As Temperance let go of her she shrugged away from him, pulling her cardigan together and sobbing with anger. She ran around the car and turned to Les for comfort.
Les patted Enid’s shoulder as gingerly as if she were a hot coal.
Temperance was bent double under the weight of his agony, making small sounds of desperation, ah me, ah me.
Cora couldn’t bear to see him so distressed. ‘Come on. Let’s go back,’ she said to him.
‘Aye,’ he agreed.
Cora took his arm as if he was an old man, and as they walked, she matched her steps to his.
Her mind was jangling with the awfulness of it.
She had no words to comfort him. Not for a second had she thought Enid would be in that car.
She’d thought Temperance had lost his mind until the scuffling and the fury.
They were halfway home when he stopped unexpectedly. In the distance, Island Farm Camp’s relentless merrymaking continued.
‘What am I going to do, Cora?’ he asked her.
She had no idea. It seemed as if their marriage must be irrevocably broken and there was no going back, but despite that, she said vaguely, ‘It will be all right, I expect.’
‘Will it?’ he asked her, and just then they heard the staccato clip-clop of stilettos coming up behind them and turned to see Enid’s slender figure hurrying towards them.
They waited for her and when she reached them she waved them away and said, ‘Don’t! I can’t talk about it just now.’
The three of them carried on walking in silence, their wild thoughts raging in their heads.
But she was at least going home with him, Cora told herself, and that was the main thing.
When Cora got back to the house, it looked strange, as if they’d been away a long time. She remembered the carrots cut up in the pan of water. Instead of going home, Temperance and Enid followed her inside into the No Man’s Land of Jane’s kitchen.
Enid sat at the table with her coat on, her elbows on the table, her hands on her cheeks, her face puffy from crying. Tendrils of auburn hair had come unpinned. She wasn’t wearing her hat. It was probably still in Les’s car.
Temperance leaned over her. ‘Why, Enid?’ he asked her dully, shaking his head to settle his feelings into place.
‘I don’t know why.’ She bit her lower lip, seeing the pain in his face. ‘I don’t know why,’ she repeated. ‘Everything’s different, isn’t it? Everything except for you. You’ve stayed the same.’
Temperance looked back at her helplessly, because he couldn’t avoid being who he was.
‘I don’t know how to change, Enid,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know who you want me to change into. I can never be him. I can never be Les.’
‘No,’ she agreed sadly.
His gaze roamed the kitchen as if it was a lost kingdom, and then, dazed, he settled his attention on her again. ‘I suppose he sweet-talked you into it, did he?’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Not really. I can’t blame him for my faults. I thought it would be—’ Her face screwed up as if she was in pain. ‘Can you understand?’ she pleaded, looking up at him.
Temperance scratched his forehead. ‘And if I try to, then what? You’ll carry on working there, seeing him every day?’
‘If I promise…’ Enid began, and then she tailed off. She had no faith in her own intentions. ‘But I can’t, you see?’
Cora heard her parents’ voices and she’d never been more relieved to see them than when they walked through the back door. They were in a good mood and were completely taken aback to see Temperance at their table clutching his head, and Enid in tears.
‘What happened to the dinner?’ Jane asked, looking at the carrots in the pan in dismay. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Enid’s upset,’ Temperance said. ‘It’s Les, it is, Les Pugh. Do you know him?’
‘Of course I do,’ Jane said, ‘he goes to Salem chapel. Good singing voice. Tenor. His wife’s nice, too,’ she added, glaring at Enid.
‘Excuse me.’ Cora kissed her mother’s cheek and went upstairs because she couldn’t bear the tension any more.
She didn’t want to hear the words that got them nowhere.
She wished they’d go home. She was exhausted from the night’s upset, and she lay on her bed and tried unsuccessfully to imagine their marriage going back to normal again.
She tried to imagine what the alternative to normal looked like – she imagined Enid going to live with Les. The war would finish, the factory would close, they would patch up their lives as best they could, grow old.
‘Please help Temperance cope with it,’ she prayed into the darkness with her eyes wide open.
Downstairs, she heard the door open and then beneath her window, Temperance talking to Enid in the dark.
The energetic, patriotic singing blared from the camp and muffled again as they slammed the door shut.