Read Homeland for Free Online Page B

was you.’
    She ran the tap at full blast. ‘Well, you’ve been away, haven’t you?’
    ‘You can say that again.’
    He waited expectantly for the question about his war, but it never came.
    ‘Been firing a few rounds at the Jerries,’ he said, and winced inwardly, it sounded so crass.
    Shutting off the tap, barely turning her head, she gave a short nod, polite but distant. This gesture, like everything else about her, made him feel uncomfortably off-balance. He took a slow
breath and relaxed his voice. ‘The doctor was talking about you.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    ‘Well, not so much about you. More, what you were doing for Stan and Flor. He said you were sorting things out for them. Like the coal.’
    Drying her hands on a towel, she turned to look at him, her head tilted slightly to one side. The appraisal was thoughtful, unhurried, unselfconscious, as if she were making up her mind to ask
him something. Her self-possession astonished him. There was no flicker of memory in her face, no acknowledgement of the strong attraction that had brought them together, no shadow of resentment at
the way things had ended; in fact no sign that anything had passed between them. Well, he thought combatively, we’ll soon see about that. He gave her a foxy lopsided grin and began to shake
his head, as if to tick her off for this little charade, only to see her gaze drop distractedly to the floor. For a second or two he might not have been there at all.
    ‘The coal,’ he repeated sharply.
    ‘The coal? Oh yes. It was the agricultural permit – Stan forgot to apply for it. And he flatly refused to pay domestic prices. So for a while there was a bit of a stalemate.’
Her tone was bright, informative. ‘But the permit finally came through yesterday. The order’s gone in. The delivery should come tomorrow.’
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘thanks for all the trouble.’
    Her eyes glittered suddenly. ‘The only thanks I need are from Stan and Flor.’
    So, it’s still there, he thought triumphantly. The attraction or the anger, or both. He grinned. ‘Thanks on their behalf, then.’
    She accepted this with a minute nod before reverting to a friendly but neutral tone. ‘So this is just a quick visit, is it?’
    ‘Afraid so. Got a job waiting in London. Buying and selling cars. Repair work. That sort of thing.’
    ‘ Are there any cars? With all the petrol rationing, I mean.’
    ‘Oh, plenty. The garage where I’ll be working, it deals in Jags. And people with Jags – well, they don’t go and let rationing cramp their style.’
    ‘It’s all different in London, then.’
    ‘You can say that again.’
    ‘Is the bomb damage very bad?’ She might have been making conversation at a vicar’s tea party.
    ‘Bad enough. Though not half as bad as in Germany. We were first into Hamburg and the bloomin’ place was flat as a pancake.’ Once again, Annie didn’t pick up on this. Her
lack of interest began to irritate him. ‘But in London,’ he went on smoothly, ‘you don’t really notice all the holes. Too busy making the most of what’s left, if you
know what I mean. Too busy having a good time.’
    The mention of good times provoked nothing but a faint smile and a drift of her gaze towards the floor. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if any country deserves a good time it’s this
one, isn’t it?’
    Feeling he was getting a grip on the conversation at last, he lent nonchalantly against the table and crossed his arms. ‘So how about you?’
    ‘Me?’ she said lightly.
    ‘You living nearby?’
    ‘At Spring Cottage.’
    A vision of the back garden, of waiting for her in the darkness, flickered across his mind. ‘Oh yes? With your mum?’
    ‘No. She died – oh, four years ago now.’
    ‘I didn’t know. Sorry.’
    ‘Flor didn’t write and tell you?’
    He made a show of searching his memory. ‘No, I would have remembered. But then a whole bunch of Flor’s letters never reached me when I was in the thick of it.’ Now, her