Read Online Somewhere Over England by Margaret Graham - Free Book Online Page B

scream that she already knew how his friends felt, hadn’t she listened to them and cried with them, cooked and washed for them, soothed their nightmares and not resented one moment? No, it was not that she resented but she said nothing, just turned fromhim and bathed her face in cold water and then slept that night with her back turned to his still body.
    The next day she took Marian and her daughter Emily and Christoph on the train to Eastbourne for Bank Holiday Monday. The sun was hot and soaked deep into her skin, reddening her arms and her legs where she had pulled up her skirts. The deckchair dug into the backs of her thighs but she watched Christoph hold his face to the sun and forgot the ache in her cheek. But the sun could not warm the coldness she felt deep inside.
    They ate sandwiches curled at the edges and ice-creams which a man in a red and white-striped apron and cardboard top hat dug out of a round tin container with a scoop which he dipped into a jug of water first. Christoph smeared his across his face and up into his hair as well as his mouth but Emily licked hers carefully and her dress was not marked either. Helen took photographs of them both and of Marian and Marian took one of Christoph and Helen together and as the sun at last lost its heat they straggled back to the station.
    They took an Underground train from the station and Helen waved goodbye to Marian before climbing the stairs to the flat. No one was there and in Christoph’s room his small bed had gone and there were two camp beds. For a moment she felt as though the air had gushed from her body but then something deeper than rage gripped her, mobilised her.
    She turned and walked through to her own bedroom and there was the small bed jammed tight next to theirs with his toys on top. She laid her child on their double bed and washed his face and hands, gently soaking his hair while he was asleep. She eased his loose limbs into his pyjamas, then draped the sheets and the two blankets around him, kissing him, smelling the sun still on his skin. And then she left the room.
    She walked to the small bedroom and picked up the camp beds, the blankets folded on top, and threw them across the sitting-room, not looking where they fell, not hearing the crash of the vase they hit. She moved then to the darkroom, not able to spare the time to shout the anger that she felt, the outrage, the hurt.
    She heaved at the hinged board which Heine had left on one end beneath the sealed window, saying that they had no need of it. But oh God, they had need of it now. Yes, they damn wellhad need of it now. She dragged it into the bathroom, sweeping Christoph’s rubber duck on to the floor, wedging the board on top of the bath. She moved the developer into the bathroom, came back for the enlarger, the chemicals, everything she needed. Finally she dragged the cabinet across the frayed carpet, across the cracked lino in the passage-way into the bathroom too.
    She took the chisel, hammer and nails from the cupboard under the sink and wrenched the hardboard from the darkroom windows, going back for the saw when she saw that it was too big for those in the bathroom. Leaning on the hinged top, she sawed the boards to the correct size, then, holding the nails in her mouth, she stood on the edge of the bath and hammered them in. Heine came in then. He stood in the doorway and said, ‘What in God’s name are you doing, Helen?’
    She did not turn but said, ‘Get out. Get out before I kill you.’ She leaned her head on the wall. It was cold. ‘Get out and only come back when I have finished.’ There were others there. She could hear them and so he left because she knew he would not care to be embarrassed.
    She had to keep the electrical equipment away from the water so she used an extension lead which could be plugged into the hall socket when power was needed. She hung a heavy opaque curtain from a rail above the doorframe. There was already a louvred vent above the