Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

starting a war? She composed her features to cautious concern. He’d been sent to London for the day to collect some things from the London house, and there’d been a rumour (gleaned from
Eileen waiting at breakfast) that he’d been invited to bring
her
and the child back down with him, but he hadn’t or he wouldn’t be sitting here now.
    She fell back on one of his favourite statements. ‘It’s my belief, Mr Tonbridge, that you can’t trust politicians.’
    ‘Now there I agree with you.’ He moved his cup a fraction nearer to her, and she at once rinsed the tea-leaves out of it into the slop bowl and poured him another one.
    ‘And half the time, they don’t know what they’re doing.’
    ‘They do not, Mrs Cripps, and that’s a fact. They don’t tell us the half of it either, if you ask me.’ She pushed the plate of tarts towards him and his hand reached out
for one, but he paid no attention to it and therefore did not have to thank her. ‘But when, as they say, the balloon goes up, Mrs Cripps, who pays the tune?’
    She flashed him a smile so that he could see her gold stopping, which, like other things about her seldom seen or not seen at all, he found definitely attractive.
    ‘You tell me,’ she said as she leaned towards him and her bust shifted slightly under her overall.
    A fine figure of a woman, he thought – not for the first time either. ‘You have a remarkable mind. For a woman. And I tell no lie,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to tell
you
. You know it all. It’s a real pleasure to converse with you. Unlike some.’
    This glancing, but gratifyingly uncomplimentary allusion to Mrs Tonbridge was the nearest she came to appeasing her curiosity, but from it she guessed that there
had
been a visit, and
that it had not turned out well. And if there was a war, which naturally she wasn’t in favour of in
itself
, it would mean that the family would stay down here, which in turn would
mean more work, but would also mean that Frank (as she privately called him) would be about. So it would be worth having a perm to her hair, she thought later, as she eased her aching legs between
the sheets – her veins were really bad at the end of the day with all the standing she did at work.
    But Tonbridge, after he had hung his uniform carefully on the back of the chair in his dark little bedroom next to the gun room, unstrapped his leather gaiters, and unlaced his boots, found
himself standing in his vest and drawers by the small casement window after he had shut it for the night, frozen with the terrible memories of his day. Naturally, he’d done his work first,
hadn’t got to Gosport Street till well after two. The house had seemed very quiet, and he’d noticed that the curtains upstairs were drawn: it had struck him with sudden hope that she
might be away visiting her mother. He’d let himself in, but after he slammed the door behind him, he heard sounds from above. He’d started to go upstairs but the bedroom door opened and
there she was – not dressed – just pulling her dressing gown round her, her mules clacking on the lino. ‘It’s
you
!’ she said. ‘And what do
you
want?’ He’d told her straight of Madam’s kind offer for her and the kid, and she had launched into her sarcastic ‘Oh, thank you so very bloody much for condescending to
consider
me
’ type of thing and stood barring his way on the stairs. ‘What’s going on?’ he had said – not wanting to know but he had to say something.
    She had folded her arms across her bony chest and begun to laugh. Then she’d called, ‘George! You’ll never guess who’s here!’ The bedroom door opened again and out
came one of the largest men he’d ever seen in his life. Well over six foot he was – he had to stoop coming out of the bedroom – with curly ginger hair and a moustache. He wore a
sleeveless singlet and was buttoning his flies over a beer belly, but his arms were like two legs of mutton with tattoos all over