fleeting eye around the room, the walls needed more pictures and the dried flower arrangement held a latticework of cobwebs. A minute spider was suspended on invisible thread. A tiny abseiler, his destination the ring-stained wood of a pine shelf. She closed her eyes and wished she could go home, only therein laid her dilemma.
The officer perched on the chair opposite, his colleague stood rigidly by the door. In order to prevent her escape or to facilitate his, she wasn’t sure. Poppy could hear the blood pulsing in her ears with a drumlike beat. Her hands felt cold and clammy, they had finally found their tremor.
She exhaled loudly and deeply like an athlete preparing to perform, flexing her fingers and nodding, her gestures screamed, go on then, tell me now!
‘Are you alone, Mrs Cricket?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was a cracked whisper, strained, the voice she sometimes had when speaking for the first time after a deep sleep.
The major nodded. He was a plain, flat-faced man, made all the more unattractive by his confident stance. There was the hint of a north-east accent that he tried desperately hard to erase, concentrating on delivering neutral vowels and the right pitch. Anthony Helm was a good soldier, respected by those who served under him and relied upon by those he reported to. His reputation was for straight talking, a man that tenaciously did it by the book and did it well. Ironically, the traits that enabled him to climb the ranks with ease did not necessarily equip him for a carefree existence in the civilian world. The vagaries of modern life were hard for a practical man like Anthony Helm to negotiate; when the structure and rules of his regime were removed, he was somewhat adrift.
She smiled nervously at the sergeant and bit her tongue. Her smile was fixed and unnatural. She could feel an inane statement wanting to escape from her mouth, ‘Sergeant, is that better than private, but not as good as colonel? Mart has tried to teach me, but I can never remember the order…’ She didn’t know why she wanted to say this – to ease the tension, fill the silent void? Or was it simply manners, shouldn’t she be making conversation?
Poppy didn’t warm to the major. Her ability to read people told her that whilst he was doing his duty, he would rather have been anywhere else. Mr Gisby smiled back at her, as if reading her thoughts. He had sincere eyes that crumpled at the edges. She was glad that he was there.
Then Helm began, just as she had known he would, with the phrase she had dreaded every day and night since her beloved husband had stepped into that bloody recruiting office. The words that she had considered with trepidation from the first time he came home with his letter telling him to report to the training department at Bassingbourn and bizarrely a cheque, which Martin had been delighted with, but she had seen as a bribe, the modern day Queen’s Shilling. What was it he had said as he waved the piece of paper in front of her? ‘You knew what joining the army meant, Poppy! None of this is a surprise. I know I should have told you first about joining up, but when I did, you knew that this would be my job. And don’t tell me you won’t like it when we get the house with a garden and the extra pay, or the chance to live abroad. You won’t be moaning then, will you!’
Poppy couldn’t believe his words; she was stunned that he had fallen back on a shallow argument. He knew she couldn’t care less about houses and possessions. She wasn’t made that way. It made no sense to her; he was choosing to go away, to leave her alone for months, if not years, and had reached this decision without discussion or consultation. Martin had been a maximum of an hour away from her since she was a little girl and the idea of him being out of reach horrified her. The thought of him being in a different city was something she couldn’t comprehend, let alone a different country. Poppy never bought the supper without asking for his preference, yet he had done this thing alone, furtive, duplicitous. She felt excluded and betrayed.
‘Mrs Cricket?’ for the second time the officer used his tone to anchor her in the present.
Poppy nodded to show that he had succeeded, he had her