Peacetime Read Online Free Page A

hoped to examine.
    â€˜You could give him work here,’ she said.
    â€˜I don’t have the authority. Besides, he wasn’t looking for work.’
    â€˜He comes to the houses. Last time he was here he was trying to sell things made out of glass. Bowls and small plates, things for candles. My mother bought one, but the others told him to get lost. They told her it wasn’t a real bowl, that it was old glass he’d made into something. They told her she’d catch things from it.’
    â€˜And what’s your father’s opinion of all this?’ He guessed that this was where her confused resentment originated.
    â€˜My father’s not here. He’s in the Army, and won’t be home until next month.’
    â€˜Home for good?’
    â€˜We don’t know. What is there here for him now, she says. What is there for any of us any more?’ She looked around her as they spoke.
    The news of her father surprised Mercer. He imagined he had seen the man walking with her mother, seen them together amid the others at the houses.
    â€˜And what about you?’ he said, lowering his voice.
    â€˜Living here, you mean?’
    â€˜Is there work?’
    â€˜Not really. And whatever there was, I wouldn’t want it. Farm work that pays nothing and has you out in the fields in all weathers.’
    â€˜Is there nothing in the town?’
    â€˜I suppose.’
    â€˜But no means of getting there and back each day?’
    â€˜I’d live there,’ she said, brightening at the prospect, and then falling silent at her better understanding of the situation. ‘Is that a map?’ she said, indicating the rolled chart he carried.
    He showed her the plans, explaining what he was searching for. He appreciated the effort of her feigned interest.
    â€˜They thought they might make some money by having the workers come to stay here,’ she said.
    â€˜Who did?’
    â€˜My mother. The other women.’
    â€˜Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. They have a construction camp the other side of town.’ An old barracks, surplus to requirements, and being allowed to collapse around the men it now briefly housed. Leaking and unheated, and with the occupants constantly being forced to move from one hut to another as the buildings became uninhabitable. They were employed on a three-month contract. Some time during October, the work would be completed, the men dispersed or sent elsewhere, and the barracks finally abandoned.
    He showed her the course of the new drain he hoped to excavate.
    â€˜There’s already drains everywhere,’ she said. ‘But they all flood.’
    â€˜Hopefully, the work here will prevent that.’
    â€˜It won’t matter if there’s nobody living here, will it?’
    â€˜A minute ago you said you couldn’t wait to leave.’
    â€˜I know.’
    He saw then the trap in which she was caught – the distance between her childhood and the enclosing past, and womanhood and the opening future she had yet to span.
    He indicated that they might continue walking as they spoke.
    â€˜You should have come and introduced yourself yesterday,’ he said. ‘To the Jew.’
    â€˜We’ve been told to stay away from him.’
    â€˜Of course you have.’
    â€˜We watch him sometimes when he comes across the sand or the marsh. He spends hours on the airfield. He’s always looking for things, picking things up, collecting things.’
    â€˜Is he the only Jew you know?’
    â€˜Of course he is. Mrs Armstrong said she thought they’d all been killed. She said that if one bit of good had come out of the war, then that was it.’
    It shocked him to hear her say these things. ‘She sounds very enlightened,’ he said.
    â€˜She wasn’t born here. She came from Birmingham. Her husband died a long time ago. She says the Jews there cheated him out of his business and then threw her out of her