The Heaven I Swallowed Read Online Free Page B

your condition. The boys tell stories of their brothers and uncles who have stayed at home for the sake of their expecting wives. They do not seem to be resentful. Sometimes they even appear to be grateful they can give themselves up to the war with the reassurance there is someone at home to continue their line. It is a comfort to me, also, to know if I do not return, I will leave my trace upon the earth. Coming from no family tradition yourself, Gracie, you might not understand how knowing my home will continue in the hands of my son, or daughter, means so much.
    I think of my mother, embarking for London, still in her widow’s weeds with barely a word of farewell, and my brother not even telling me he had enlisted and now lost to me in the skies above France. (When I told the boys here that I have a brother in the air force they looked at me with new respect, although their ­admiration was followed, soon after, by suspicion as to why I had not been able to follow in his footsteps.) My immediate family have given me so little. You have become my family, Gracie, and, on my return, the three of us will make ourselves a haven.
    When you think of me, then, do not imagine me in these foreign places. Remember me sitting in the shade of the jacaranda tree with you, talking of small things, like our plan to plant tubs of geraniums because they are strong and hardy and colourful. Remember a man who always arranged his books ‘just so’, with a pedantry that made you laugh. Remember a man who remains
    Your Fred

2
    On Mary’s first night, she had had to make do with sleeping on the lounge, as the single bed was yet to be delivered. I would be installing it, and Mary, in Fred’s study, a room that should have been the nursery. The bed was due at three o’clock and we returned from our shoe-buying expedition an hour before this.
    When the two deliverymen arrived with the steel frame and wooden bedheads we discovered that, due to the narrowness of the room, the bed met up with the long edge of Fred’s roll-top desk, cutting off any side access to the mattress.
    â€˜She will just have to get into bed at the end,’ I reasoned and the deliverymen eyed me strangely.
    â€˜Didn’t ya think to measure it beforehand?’ one of them muttered.
    â€˜Can’t ya move the desk some place else?’ the other added.
    I could not explain I would not move Fred’s desk an inch, or that I was incapable of seeing the exact size of things. Time and time again it had happened to me. My new electric washing machine, for example, had seemed, from the beautiful sketch in Women’s Weekly , to be the ideal shape for my backyard laundry. It had turned out not to fit through the wooden doorway. Mr Roper had shaken his head at me when he came round to erect a makeshift tarpaulin to protect the machine from the elements, until the company could arrange for its removal. He never approved of my attempts to modernise, or my seeming unwillingness to measure out the ­possible consequences of my actions.
    â€˜It will be fine, thank you,’ I told the men in a voice that held the authority I’d exercised in the schoolyard.
    â€˜Yes, ma’am,’ they replied meekly, filing out past the awestruck Mary.
    â€˜This is your room, Mary.’
    I spread my arms out as much as I was able; admittedly the wardrobe behind the doorway did not leave a great deal of space to display the splendour. Once again, Mary hung back in the corridor. I wanted to grab and shake her into some kind of reaction. I did not, of course, watching as she slowly made her way into the room, edging past me, coming to stand near Fred’s desk. She drew in her nostrils, like she was sniffing the air. The two windows at the end of the room were closed and I could smell lavender, wafting up from the bathroom. Whatever it was she detected, it seemed to make her content, her shoulders relaxed. Unfortunate then, that at that moment,