Philly
I’m exhausted again after our morning’s sightseeing.
After lunch, I excuse myself and go to have a lie-down on my bed for an hour.
‘Just a little lie-down,’ I say to Kendra, ‘before we do the next instalment.’ To tell the truth, talking about those times so long ago takes it out of me a bit too.
Although I do enjoy thinking about Ben again.
It brings him back to me after all these years on my own.
Perhaps that’s all it is, recalling the stories, reliving the sensations of flying and falling in love – which are, after all, almost identical – but somehow I feel closer to him here on the island.
Is he here? How can I find him? Where do I start to look?
Sometimes the grief is still overwhelming, so to distract myself I try to do the crossword on my iPad, daily copies of The Times being unavailable out here of course.
But the squares swim before my eyes as I begin to doze, drifting on the edge of sleep, and other lost faces from those wartime years float through my mind like clouds across a blue sky.
Amy . . . my brother Teddy . . . Jakub and Janina . . . Antoni . . . Gwido . . . Noor . . . Violette.
And I must have fallen into a proper sleep because I wake with a start and find I’ve been crying, my throat tight with sadness and my cheeks wet with tears.
I lie there for a few moments, trying to calm the gulps of my breath, forcing myself to focus on the peaceful sanctuary of the room with the afternoon light playing through the thin fabric of the drapes.
Once I feel a little steadier, I check my watch, get up and splash my face with cold water, washing away the tear stains.
Then I run a brush through my hair and reapply my lipstick, resolutely stretching my mouth into a smile before going downstairs to the study to find Kendra and continue with my story.
‘Did you manage to sleep?’ she asks. ‘Aren’t naps a wonderful thing?
I had one too.’ Under her summer tan, there are dark shadows beneath her eyes.
‘I haven’t had an unbroken night’s sleep for years,’ she says, without a trace of self-pity, as she reaches for her notebook.
‘Finn was never a good sleeper, even as a baby. Still, I can write at any time of the day or night, which is a blessing.’
I realise she must wake up when Finn does, keeping her son company and watching over him through those dark hours before the dawn when he’s up and about.
‘It’s a lot to cope with,’ I reply, wanting to give her more time to talk about her own situation before I re-embark on my life story.
‘Dan and I have learned to divvy it up between us. I do the nights so that he can do the days.’
‘That’s good. The two of you finding a way to make it work.
’ I let the words hang there, in the beat of silence between us, as she thinks about replying.
Will she brush away my gentle invitation to open up a bit, or can she see I really want to know, to hear how hard things are between them? Her need to talk wins out.
‘It’s caused so much friction between us,’ she says quietly.
‘Some autistic children don’t differentiate between day and night, you see.
The second Finn wakes up, he’s hyper-alert, as if the volume in his brain is immediately turned up to full blast. When he was tiny, I’d walk for miles around the darkened streets, pushing him in his buggy.
Or I’d drive for hours through the darkness with him strapped into his car seat, desperate to try to get him to fall asleep.
Even when he does finally drop off, his brain can still torture him.
It’s not just bad dreams, he has extreme night terrors.
He wakes screaming, inconsolable and unreachable.
Before we discovered the trampolining helps, I’d read him stories for hours on end just to give him a little respite from the fear, and so that Dan and I would have a little respite, too, from our desperation.
When you watch your child biting at his fingers until they bleed, his hands swollen from being hit against things, hurting himself physically as he tries to fight against the terror in the only ways he can find, you’ll do anything to make it stop.
We’ve tried everything ... medication, changing his diet, more stimulation, less stimulation .
.. in the end, adapting our routines to fit in with what works best for him has been the only solution we’ve been able to find.
‘It’s not all bad though,’ she continues, forcing her tone to become a little more cheerful.
I suspect she’s pulling herself up in case I’m feeling sorry for her.
‘I’ve learned to welcome the darkness, to stop fighting against being up and about in the middle of the night because it can be a peaceful time.
There are wonderful moments, too. Like watching a hedgehog snuffling among fallen leaves in the garden, or listening to the questioning hoot of an owl and hearing its partner reply.
Walking on the beach in the moonlight with Finn, the feeling of having the whole world to ourselves.
He gives me that. And he’s taught me a lot about the peace of simplicity, the beautiful clarity of seeing the world without filters, as it truly is.
How often do we really do that?’ She laughs.
‘Of course, honesty isn’t always the easiest option, which I suppose is why we tend to tell hundreds of little white lies to ourselves and others just to get through the day.
“ I’m fine ” probably being the most common one.
That’s something else Finn’s taught me – as the parent of an autistic child, I’ve certainly learned a lot about society’s rules and expectations. ’
She smiles apologetically, as if to ward off more judgement. Or perhaps it’s pity she’s more afraid of. I reach out my hand and place it over hers for a moment, reassuring her that I’m still listening. ‘And what happens to your and Dan’s relationship in all this?’
She shakes her head, shrugs, blinks to hold back the tears I can see pooling in her eyes.
‘Maybe one day we’ll be able to get it back.
For now, we’re like ships that pass in the night.
Or a relay team, I suppose, handing the baton back and forth.
Dan’s the one who’s made the biggest sacrifices really, giving up his career, managing the money and keeping the home front running in order to give me the time to write.
Of course, we were so lucky to have Granny’s legacy, which took a lot of the pressure off us financially, and even more so to be able to buy this house in France, thanks to an old friend of Granny’s called Caroline, who was the previous owner.
She knew how much coming here meant to us as a family, and she kindly sold it to us for a ridiculously low price.
We’d never have been able to afford two homes otherwise.
Being able to come here in the summer helps us give Finn the best environment possible, and it also helps Dan and me just about hang on to what passes for our own sanity. So we’re very thankful for all that.’
She sighs, despite the determined – slightly forced – cheerfulness of her tone.
‘Who knows what the future will bring, how Finn’s autism will develop?
All we can do is hope that, with our support, he’ll grow into a young man who can cope a bit better with the world than he does at the moment.
We can hope things will get easier. And when that happens – if it happens – we can hope there’ll still be enough left of our marriage, for there to still be an Us for me and Dan. ’
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do while I’m here, please let me know.’ My words sound empty to my own ears. I’m just a useless old woman, probably more of a burden than a help.
‘You’re already helping me by telling me about your life, Philly. And I’m very much enjoying immersing myself in your world. It’s not just Finn who benefits from being told stories, you know!’
‘Well, in that case, my dear, let us continue. Ah yes, I believe I was busy falling in love with my Ben ...’
After the evening at the club, Ben and I would meet whenever we had the chance.
Usually, I’d get the train up to London, but if he was on leave and I was still on duty he’d ride his motorbike to White Waltham so that we could spend time together.
Before the night in London, I used to pray for clear skies and good weather so I could go flying.
But now I found myself hoping for fog and rain, so that the day’s schedule would be put on hold and I could snatch a few hours with him.
We’d ride out into the countryside and find a pub where we could shelter from the rain, or huddle on a rug beneath the dripping branches of an oak tree, eating whatever picnic we’d managed to cobble together from our rations.
As spring began to think about turning to summer, though, the better weather meant I was kept busy delivering planes all over the country and he had less and less free time too.
The fighting was hotting up across the Channel.
We both knew what that would mean for him.
I could sense something in him had changed since joining the squadron.
It seemed he had both witnessed and inflicted death now and he was a little quieter, sometimes becoming lost in thoughts of his own on our outings.
He seemed to hold my hand more tightly as we walked through beech-woods where new leaves were beginning to unfurl or skirted wheat-fields where green shoots pushed their way through the earth.
I think I was the only one who saw that occasional flicker of doubt within him.
To the other girls, he was still the confident, debonair fighter pilot who’d helped train us, but I felt he was hiding a deeper fear.
Each time we parted, I sensed how reluctant he was to let go.