Peacetime Read Online Free Page B

home.’
    â€˜Jacob is from Holland. Perhaps it was one of his relatives who did it.’
    She laughed at this. ‘I don’t believe everything she says,’ she said. ‘She lies about most other things, gives herself airs and graces.’
    â€˜I’m pleased to hear it.’
    â€˜Ya-cob,’ she said. ‘Ya-cob.’
    â€˜Careful. Don’t let the others hear you speaking a foreign language. They might turn against you, too.’
    â€˜I daresay I never met more than twenty outsiders in my entire life before the war started,’ she said. ‘Never even heard a foreign accent until the Americans arrived at the airfield.’
    â€˜Were you born here?’
    â€˜In the town. Lived here ever since, though.’
    They continued across the workings. At one point, he stood on a slab of loose concrete and it rocked beneath him, prompting her to reach out her arm to steady him. He dropped the coiled measuring tape he was carrying into the space beneath the slab. Waiting until he was back on solid ground and the concrete had settled back into place, she slid down to retrieve this for him.
    â€˜Be careful,’ he told her.
    Only her legs protruded from the hole. He heard her amplified breathing. She crawled into the space, and for a moment she was lost to him. He was about to peer into the cavity and insist that she come back out when her head reappeared, followed by her arms. She held the tape out to him and he took it. He watched anxiously as she pushed herself back out over the rim of the hole. He knelt and held her upper arms, pulling her as she kicked herself back to the surface. There was dirt and crumbled concrete on her dress, arms and legs.
    â€˜Thank you,’ he said.
    â€˜We go in and out of places like that all the time,’ she said.
    He was about to warn her against this, but saw how ungrateful this would sound.
    â€˜I ought to reward you,’ he said.
    â€˜With what?’ she said immediately.
    â€˜I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ve got that you might possibly want.’
    â€˜I could come to the tower and have a look,’ she said, and the remark made him smile.
    â€˜I suppose you could. There must be something.’
    But his reluctance had offended her and she again regarded him coldly.
    â€˜You were the one who offered,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do it because there was a reward.’
    He saw what the gift – however small it might prove to be – now meant to her. He imagined her presenting it to her mother; he imagined her recounting the story of how it had been earned.
    â€˜I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
    â€˜You could give me some cigarettes,’ she said.
    â€˜For your mother, presumably.’
    â€˜Presumably.’ She looked hard at the outline of the pack in his shirt pocket. He took it out. It was half-empty.
    â€˜I couldn’t give you these,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t be much of a reward. Besides, she might think you’d smoked those already gone.’
    â€˜Presumably,’ she repeated.
    â€˜I meant it,’ he said. ‘Come to the tower when I’m there. I’ll find something more appropriate.’
    â€˜I’ll choose something.’ She brushed the last of the powder from her dress.
    They arrived at the site of the new drain. He showed her where it would be dug and what purpose it would serve, and again she feigned interest.
    They stood together above one of the sunken, mudfilled channels which emptied into the sea. It was difficult to tell whether the channel was a natural one, or one that had been excavated and left undredged. It ran true enough, but its lip was overgrown and cushioned with turf. Filled with silt, it carried little water, and had grown useless with neglect. Hesearched his chart for an indication of its origin.
    â€˜They lost a small boy in this,’ she said. She dropped stones into the water beneath