Chapter Fourteen #4
Spent, he rests his head back against his chair and, as his laboured breathing fills the room, I feel regret course through me – not because we haven’t yet spoken of the lone item on my agenda, but because he’s so frail, and has seen, and lost, and suffered so much, and really can’t have much longer left, but has put himself through all this anyway.
He’s done it because he’s afraid of us doing his lost friends a disservice by romanticising their history – that’s clear – and although I hope that we won’t, it suddenly feels like an unforgivable imposition that we’re shooting this movie at all.
I try to say that to him.
But he cuts me off, insisting that he’s glad we’re doing this, he doesn’t want any of them to be forgotten, and this way they never will be.
‘She wanted me to share their story,’ he says.
‘Imogen?’ I say, assuming that’s who he means.
‘What’s that?’
‘You were just telling us Imogen wanted you to share their story,’ says Roger.
‘Oh yes.’ Tim nods. ‘Such a lovely lady. Such an … imagination.’
I could probably ask him about her ending now.
It feels a good opportunity to bring it up.
But I don’t.
Neither Nick nor Felix jump in to do it either.
Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to weave into conversation, said Felix earlier in the pub. Hey, Tim, have you been lying about how your friends all died?
I was never going to actually phrase it like that, obviously. But I think we’ve all realised that none of us can phrase it any way, certainly not without upsetting Tim more.
If anyone’s going to mention Mabel’s Fury’s final flight, it has to be him.
I don’t expect him to do it, though.
I absolutely don’t.
It astounds me when, first letting go a long rasping sigh, he does.
‘I’m afraid she got confused about some of the things I told her,’ he says.
‘She mixed up where they happened.’ He pauses, and I wonder if he’s thinking about Iris and Robbie’s reunion, and all the different venues he gave Imogen for it.
Honestly, I had Iris and Robbie bumping into one another everywhere.
But then he talks on, more to himself, I feel, than any of us, saying, ‘We weren’t over the North Sea when Rob radioed Iris.
We’d never have been able to get through from there. Rob had us back over land already.’
I stare.
Dimly, I’m aware of Nick and Felix doing the same.
And how still the three of us have turned.
I’m not sure we breathe.
Felix is the first one to break the silence.
‘Did you tell Imogen that?’ he asks.
‘What’s that?’ says Tim.
‘Did you tell Imogen?’ Felix repeats.
‘Tell her what?’
‘That you were already over land when you radioed Iris,’ Nick says, rediscovering his voice too.
‘Were we?’ Tim frowns. ‘When?’
‘The last time you flew in Mabel’s Fury,’ I say, my heart pounding in my throat.
Slowly, Tim shakes his head. ‘I don’t remember anything about that.’
‘But you just said Robbie would never have been able to establish radio contact from the distance of the sea … ’
‘Oh yes.’ He nods. ‘That would have been difficult. Very difficult … ’
‘But do you remember him doing it?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Radioing Iris?’ says Nick, sitting forward, his hands clasped before him.
‘When?’ says Tim.
And I honestly can’t tell if he’s genuinely struggling to keep track with what we’re talking about, or regrets having raised it so is now taking evasive action, but his sudden vagueness makes me think of the way he dodged my question before, when I asked him about that woman who showed him up to Iris’s room.
Was he pretending then, after all?
I suspect he might have been.
I can’t just let this drop too.
‘We’re wondering if you remember anything about Robbie speaking to Iris on your last flight,’ I say to him. ‘You seemed to be saying just now that you might recall it.’
‘No, that can’t be right. I was unconscious.
We’d got hit. That never happened to us, but it happened that night.
’ He closes his eyes. ‘It took me weeks to come back to my senses. By the time I did, the squadron had moved south for D-Day. I lost touch with them.’ His voice cracks, heavy with grief.
‘I lost them all … ’ He breathes, too quickly.
‘Here we are,’ says Roger, helping him with his mask. ‘Nice and deep now. Best not to get upset. It was all such a long time ago.’
‘No,’ says Tim, through the mask, ‘not long. It’s always happening. Always.’
‘Only in your memory.’
Tim doesn’t reply.
He closes his eyes, retreating into himself, and within seconds his breaths start to deepen, they lengthen, and it becomes clear that he has, quite abruptly, fallen asleep.
Our meeting, I realise, is at an end.
We’re all deflated as we leave, thanking Roger for having us, and repeating how delicious the food was.
As we walk out to the car, puffing clouds of white into the darkening afternoon, Nick and Felix concede that I was right all along, Tim clearly does know more than he’s let on, but their agreement gives me zero satisfaction.
Because what does it matter what Tim knows, if he keeps on keeping it to himself?
‘It’s like Emma said,’ I say, shrugging on my coat. ‘Why would he suddenly open up now?’
‘But he did open up,’ says Felix. ‘He told us they all made it back to England.’
‘I don’t think he intended to do that,’ says Nick.
‘He definitely didn’t,’ I agree.
‘But he still did,’ says Felix. ‘So maybe he wanted to, subconsciously … ’
‘What, like a Freudian slip?’ I say, and still thinking of Emma – remembering the debrief I promised to message her – reach for my phone.
‘Exactly,’ says Felix.
‘Shit,’ I say, realising my jacket pocket’s empty. I give myself another pat down. ‘I don’t have my phone. I must have dropped it down the settee.’
‘Did you do it deliberately, Juniper Jones?’ asks Nick.
And, in spite of everything, I laugh. Juniper Jones is the name of a spy I once played; there was a scene where I left my phone – a Motorola – beneath my target’s bed, just for the excuse to return and find it. I can’t believe Nick’s remembered it. I haven’t thought about it for years.
‘I did not do it deliberately,’ I say.
‘No?’ He raises a cynical brow.
‘No.’
‘A likely story.’
‘It’s the truth.’ I turn on my heel, heading back inside. ‘Warm the car up for me, please.’
‘Or I can go and find your phone?’ proffers Felix.
‘Or I will,’ says Nick.
‘No, I’ll do it,’ I say, and although I really didn’t drop it on purpose, I’ll admit I’m pretty happy to be heading back in to see Tim.
At the very least, I’d like a chance to say a proper goodbye.
But he’s still sleeping when I reach his room.
I’ve come alone. Roger – busy talking with another resident when I returned to the lobby – told me I should.
‘A nurse will be along to help Tim to bed in a minute,’ he said.
‘I’ll only be a second,’ I told him.
‘Was that Marian Maudsley?’ the resident asked him as I went.
‘It was, Gwen,’ he said. ‘But mum’s the word, ok? We don’t want it getting out.’
It doesn’t take me much more than a second to locate my phone; it’s lying on the carpet directly beneath where I was sitting, half-hidden under the settee’s skirt.
Scooping it up, I scan my messages – there’s one from Phil, just checking in, and Mum too, doing the same, xxx – then I turn to Tim.
He doesn’t look comfortable, sleeping with his head against the side of his armchair, and I almost go to move him, but stop myself, remembering that we’re practically strangers, and it’s not my place.
His eyelids flicker in a dream.
I wonder what he’s dreaming about.
The war?
My eyes move to the side table, and the framed original of the novel’s cover photograph that I’ve been stealing glances at ever since I spotted it earlier. It’s different in real life. Larger. More authentic, somehow.
Sadder.
Going to it, I pick it up, touching my finger to the side of Robbie’s face.
I stare at him, with a focus that makes my eyes blur, and in yet another dizzying, lunatic moment, my vision flickers, and it’s as though I can see him, truly see him, alive and breathing; wind blowing his hair, his smile growing, his lips moving in the formation of a word …
‘Look after that boy, won’t you?’ says Tim, startling me by being suddenly awake.
Very nearly dropping the photo, I spin around to face him.
He hasn’t moved his head from its position against the armchair, and still looks half asleep: his eyes, heavy; his blinks, slow.
‘Which boy?’ I ask, shaky to my own ears.
Anxiously, I look back down at Robbie, and he smiles up at me, entirely static. Frozen by the camera.
Locked in the past.
‘Phillip,’ says Tim.
‘Phillip?’
‘Yes, that one who’s playing me.’
‘Felix?’
‘Felix.’ He nods. ‘He loves you so.’
‘Oh, no.’ I glance again at Robbie. Did I really just see him move? What had he been about to say? ‘We’re very old friends.’
Tim doesn’t press it.
He’s also looking at the photograph in my hands.
‘Jacob didn’t want that to be taken,’ he says. ‘He thought it was tempting fate.’
‘Really?’ The revelation, so unexpected, makes my pummelling heart heavy. I look at him now, too, his head bowed towards Piper.
Poor Jacob.
Poor, poor Jacob.
‘Maybe it was tempting fate,’ I say, and my throat feels strangled.
I don’t know what’s come over me.
‘This photograph didn’t change anything,’ says Tim, softly. ‘A photograph could never do that.’
It’s almost like he’s consoling me.
Slowly, I look back up at him, certain, suddenly, that he’s said these words before; that he once consoled the photographer too.
‘Who took this, Tim?’ I say, raising the frame.
He closes his eyes.
‘Was it … Iris?’ I ask, and only just stop myself from saying, me. ‘I think it must have been Iris. Did you see her, after the crash?’
Silence.
‘Tim … ?’
‘She said you’d come. She told me … ’
He’s trying to change the subject, I think: distract me by talking about Imogen again. She must have telephoned him, mentioned my plan to visit.
I don’t ask him about that though.
I can’t let him change the subject.
‘Was it Iris?’ I repeat.
‘Your eyes,’ he says, reopening his, ‘they’re the same.’ He holds my gaze, and a smile pulls at his scarred lips. ‘Windows to your soul.’
It’s my turn to be silent.
I don’t know what to say.
I feel nauseatingly lightheaded.
My hands shake.
My entire body does.
‘It was Jacob’s camera,’ he says, his words slurring. ‘We all clubbed together, gave it to him for his birthday.’ His voice fades to nothing.
His eyes once again droop shut.
They don’t reopen.
He’s dreaming again, but this time, I don’t wonder what he’s dreaming about.
He’s with his friends, I’m certain, back in the spring of 1943, jitterbugging in Bettys Bar for Jacob’s twenty-third birthday, making the most of a scarce night off from fighting the Battle of the Ruhr.
I draw a breath, fighting to get my tremoring under control, and, in the space of that breath, the gas fire crackles, very warm, the room swims, my vision flickers again, shifting, morphing, and I find myself inside Tim’s dream, standing in that packed, pulsing bar, which I somehow recognise: my ears roaring with music I’m certain I’ve heard before, my skin slick with sweat.
A hand closes around mine.
I feel it.
I feel it.
It belongs to a man who would never actually use the expression the cat’s pyjamas, but who’d also never pause before agreeing with anyone that I am.
It belongs to a man I love, very, very much.
A man who stops me shaking.
A man whose touch is warm.
A man who I’m deeply afraid to ever let go.