Deep Water Read Free Page B

her firmly. ‘You Americans were hardly in the First War, so you don’t understand what’s involved.’ This woman’s husband was in a destroyer escorting Atlantic convoys . Yet Andrea had been unabashed. Because her good-natured, optimistic husband had been changed forever by a cruel illness, he and she deserved a second chance, some special opportunity. Wanting to love him again, she refused to accept that they wouldn’t get one.
    *
    Andrea planned to collect Leo and his friend fromKing’s Cross Station and then take them to the hotel to meet Peter. The boys would spend the day in London with her and Peter, and then leave for Oxford with her alone in order to spend the rest of the four-day holiday there.
    Andrea felt great sympathy for this boy whose mother was abroad, and whose father was a pilot; but she still feared he might monopolise Leo, and felt guilty over this.
    Before joining the other mothers near the barrier, Andrea went into the ladies to check her lipstick and powder – not that she expected Leo to notice her appearance. Outside, she exchanged small talk with a woman whose hair was permed into absurd rows of tight little curls. The only question bothering Andrea was whether she would hug and kiss her son in the station, or feel obliged to ape the reticent British, and wait till they were safely inside a taxi.
    When Leo came towards her with his friend beside him, one hand thrust deeply in a pocket and the other carrying his case, the kiss she had meant to give him ended as a brush of her cheek against his.
    ‘Mum, this is Justin Matherson.’
    ‘Hello there, Justin.’
    ‘How do you do, Mrs Pauling.’ He held out a formal hand for her to shake, reinforcing her impression of him as a small adult. His eyes were dark, almost violet blue with long black lashes, and they held Andrea’s for several seconds before flicking away. His face was narrow, with a proud, firm mouth.
    Andrea smiled tightly. ‘Okay, boys, we’re going to get ourselves a cab to Pimlico.’
    In the taxi both boys were enthralled by the bomb damage, and pointed to each rubble-filled gap where a house had been, and each boarded-up shopfront concealing a blackened interior. The smell of damp plaster dust and burned bricks filled Andrea’s nostrils. On every visit to London from unscathed Oxford, she shuddered to see how fragile all buildings were.
    ‘A pity we can’t stop for a better look,’ remarked Justin, staring straight at Andrea, as if willing her to tell the driver to pull over. He and Leo were craning their necks to look back at an exposed inner wall, from which a flight of stairs projected crazily over an empty space. A washbasin also hung above a void, suspended only by its pipes.
    ‘Imagine you’d been washing, then BAAM !’ cried Leo, pulling a grotesque face.
    Dismayed by their excitement, Andrea said quietly, ‘Let’s hope everyone was sheltering.’
    Ahead, there was a notice in the centre of the road which read: WARNING UNEXPLODED BOMB, with an arrow diverting the traffic through several side-streets. Before their taxi driver could return to the main road again, he pulled up at traffic lights right beside a hole in the road.
    Justin wound down the window and looked up and down the street. ‘No warning here,’ he announced.
    Deep down in the earth, men were labouring to repair fractured gas pipes. Before Andrea could stop him, Justin had jumped out of the cab. She darted after him and caught him by the arm as he peered at the men, working almost up to their waists inmuddy water. One shouted up, ‘Are you daft, mate? Just shove off!’
    Back in the taxi, Justin was unrepentant. ‘I hope there’ll be a raid before we leave,’ he declared, fixing Andrea with another searing look.
    ‘Gosh, yes,’ echoed Leo.
    ‘You can’t want that. People may die,’ objected Andrea.
    Justin said sharply, ‘Who cares what I want? People conk out anyway, all over the place, worse luck.’ And again he fixed her with his