‘Has something happened to Pa?’ I had to ask Queenie again.

‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you come straight back?’ Her terrified eyes demanded the more urgent answer.

‘Lost my mind a little,’ I said.

‘How d’you mean? Did you lose your memory?’

‘Yes. Something like that.’

‘Where were you?’

‘On the south coast.’

‘In England?’

‘Brighton.’

‘Brighton!’ She screamed this. ‘Blinking heck. Brighton! What were you doing in ruddy Brighton?’

‘You haven’t said about Pa. Has something happened?’

‘I want an answer first, Bernard. I’ve a right to know. I’m your wife. I thought you were dead. It’s been years. And you just turn up and say, “Brighton!” Were you having a blinking holiday with a bucket and spade? Why Brighton?’

She’d changed the sideboard in the parlour. This one used to be in a room upstairs. Ma had it taken out. Quite rightly thought it far too big for this room. Pa’s chair was no longer by the fire.

‘Queenie, please, tell me if there is something to tell.’

She sat down again, wringing her hands. The noise of dry skin rubbing pricked up the hairs on the back of my neck. ‘Your father’s dead,’ she said, a little too promptly.

I’d known, of course. Soon as I walked into the house. I could feel him gone.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Oh. Is that all you can say? Oh?’

That’s what war had done to me. Made death a reasonable thing. But she was quite hysterical.

‘Don’t you want to know how he died? Haven’t you got any questions? He was shot you know. Here – through the jaw. His head looked like butcher’s meat.’ A crueller man might have told her to get a grip. To come to her senses. To shut up, even. ‘Shot by Yanks. A Yank shot him. But it was all hushed away. No one was even asked why they did it. No trial. Nothing. His brain all over the pavement. And they just cleaned it up, gave me the pieces and carried on as if nothing had happened.’

The bones in her neck were standing out like scaffolding. She was screeching at me. Then there was a loud knocking on the door. I thought the person would break it down. I answered it to find a black man standing there. He looked straight past me, calling, ‘Queenie, Queenie, you all right?’Then the cheeky blighter looked at me and said, ‘Who are you?’

‘“Who are you?” is more the question,’ I told him firmly.

He took no notice. ‘Queenie,’ he called again, before attempting to push me from his way. I blocked the door. Tried to close it. But he held it open.

‘Who the bloody hell are you? This is my house,’ I said.

‘Don’t get me vex, man,’ he said. ‘I mus’ see Queenie is all right.’

Queenie soon popped up behind me. More composed. ‘It’s all right, Gilbert,’ she said to this darkie.

‘Who is this man?’ I asked her.

‘A lodger,’ she told me.

‘Used to coming in, is he?’ I said, while this black man babbled on.

‘Who are you? What’s all the commotion?’

‘This is my husband, Gilbert. It’s Bernard.’

That shut him up. Eyes popping out of his head like a golliwog’s. Stared me up and down. Stepped back to get a better look. Scratched his head, saying, ‘Well, well . . .’ Then the cheeky blighter put his hand out for me to shake.

I just shut the bloody door on him.

Forty-seven

Queenie

Of course I had to ask Bernard if he was staying. He needn’t have looked at me like that. A balloon deflating, slowly sagging on the wall after a party. I wasn’t throwing him out. How could I? It was his house. I hadn’t forgotten that. Blinking place yawned in my face every morning.

‘I’ll make you up a bed in the spare room . . . in Arthur’s old room,’ I told him.

Every day in the paper there were stories of the dead’s return. Loved ones who’d already been mourned turning up on the doorstep after years. Not so loved, most of them, by the time they’d found their way home.

‘I was rather hoping to sleep in our bed,’ he said.

And I said, ‘All right.’

He smiled at me then. Took another sip of his tea. The cup trembled as he put it to his lips.

‘I’ll sleep in Arthur’s room. You take your old bed,’ I told him.

‘Queenie . . .’ he started, urgent. But I was out of the door to fetch sheets for me and a towel for him from the cupboard.

My dressing-table mirror soon caught me. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified Queenies. Scared stiff every one of them. Shrieking silently, what the bloody hell happens now? He came in behind me.

‘Is there something wrong?’ I said.

‘I was just wondering . . .’

‘Yes, what . . . what? What is it, Bernard?’ I was trying not to shout.

‘. . . if I can be of any help. With the bed?’

‘No, I’ll just be minute. Go and finish your tea.’

Wounded dogs walked with more joy. And my eye caught them again – the Queenies, all wondering now whether Bernard didn’t deserve a better homecoming than this. A kiss and a cuddle like Gable and Leigh. ‘Hop it,’ I told them. None of their blinking business.

With every awkward silence I’d offered him tea. And he’d taken it. How many cups did we have? Twenty, thirty, or near as. I was out of milk and preciously low on sugar. He was just as finicky as before he left. Lifting the sugar into the tea like it was gold. Stirring enough to wear a hole in the bottom of the cup. Tapping the spoon to dislodge the stray drops like a clanger on a bell. And then, of course, blowing on the tea before he drank it. I thought he’d take it hot like a man after being in the RAF for so long. But he slurped, the noise going through me like a fork scratching on a plate.

His hair was grey at the temples. Thinning. And, hard to imagine, he was skinnier, the hollows in his cheeks outlining the skull underneath. He still did that queer thing with his nose, twisting it like a rabbit before ramming his white hankie up one nostril then the other. And the crumbs from his biscuit powdered his lips for far too long before he licked them off.

He stared for hours at the newspaper cuttings of Arthur’s death. Reading them one by one. Running his finger along the words. I said nothing as I sat watching him. He pointed at the one with the dreadful picture of me. A mad woman desperate for someone to throttle. ‘I was very upset. It was the most terrible thing ever happened,’ I told him.

‘Indeed,’ he said.

I waited. He’ll be wanting to ask me questions, I thought. Was there a funeral? Where was he buried? Did he say anything before he died? Was he happy, was he sad? But Bernard said nothing. Just carefully went through the clippings with that vein on the side of his head pulsing like he was chewing.

‘He’s buried up in Mansfield,’ I told him.

He nodded.

He should have asked, ‘Why the bloody hell Mansfield? Why not the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea?’ but he didn’t. Didn’t even ask what we were doing up at the Buxton farm.

‘I managed to get a stone,’ I said.

He nodded again.

And I thought, Time for more tea, Queenie.

I’d had the grandfather clock put in Arthur’s old room. First thing you saw when you opened the door. Looked like a phantom in the dark. I hadn’t been in the room for a long time. Just flitted round with a duster on a sunny day when I thought I ought. It was musty with damp. I went to open the window, but the sash had warped and wouldn’t budge. Next thing I know, Bernard’s behind me again. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a knack.’

‘I know,’ I told him. He gave it three thumps then pulled it down. The air ran round the room, sharp as lemon. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Are you sure you’ll be all right in here?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. Really. You take the other bed. I’ll be fine.’

He went over to the grandfather clock next. Looked at his watch then back to the clock face. ‘It hasn’t been wound . . . not since,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t. Blow me, if he didn’t open the case and start winding it up. Fussing with this and that. ‘There’s no need,’ I said quickly. But it was too late. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Thought he was doing me a favour, I know he did.