Capital Union, A Read Online Free PDF Page B

survive.’
    ‘And did he?’
    ‘Well, Mrs MacDougall says he’s a bit glaikit now, and he lost his leg. He is only nineteen.’
    ‘Poor sod.’ Jeff’s eyes went back to the papers in his hand. ‘Well, he shouldn’t have signed up.’
    ‘Jeff, everyone is signing up.’
    ‘Exactly. That is why we are in this mess.’
    ‘How can you say that?’
    ‘Well, if they didn’t dance to the tune of some jumped-up motorcycle courier called Adolf, or a load of English generals on this side of the Channel, there wouldn’t be a war, would there?’
    ‘I don’t understand you.’
    ‘You don’t understand much, Agnes.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘Nothing. Now, do you want to hear this speech?’ He corrected a word with his pencil.
    ‘No, not now. I’m not in the mood.’ I got up to close the blinds. I heard the scuff of his slippers on the carpet and he pulled a curl loose at the nape of my neck. ‘Don’t be cross, Pip,’ and I felt his breath as he nuzzled into the top of my collarbone and pulled my ear lobe with his teeth. ‘You are a very beautiful and brilliant girl, far too beautiful to need brains at all.’
    He wound my hair round his finger and pulled my hips back against his. His hand ran down my thigh. It was dizzying, and I let him carry me through to the bedroom with the wind still beating in the trees.

    I was lying with my head pillowed on Jeff’s arm when I heard the floorboards creak upstairs in the Professor’s flat, and a short, scraping sound like a match being struck. It was so unexpected that I stared at the ceiling and held my breath, but it didn’t happen again. I began to doubt I had heard it at all when I heard the Professor’s front door shut, and then the tap of feet on the stone steps. They stopped at Mrs MacDougall’s flat. Her door opened and clicked shut and then it was all quiet again. Jeff opened his eyes and gazed at me. ‘I love you, Pip,’ he said.
    We kissed. ‘Why would Mrs MacDougall be in Professor Schramml’s flat at this time of night?’ I asked.
    He leant back and looked at me. ‘Don’t mention Mrs MacDougall.’ He dropped his voice to a baritone. ‘It kills my ardour.’
    When I didn’t laugh and sat up instead, pushing his arms off, he suggested, ‘Maybe she left a window open? She likes to keep everything ship-shape. The war will be over one day and I expect he will come back. She always had a soft spot for him, used to call him “that poor German widower” and take him bowls of soup. She was as pleased as punch when he left a key with her.’
    ‘I thought I heard more footsteps upstairs just now. Listen.’
    He walked his fingers along my arm without answering.
    The last drops of the storm ran down the windowpane. The sky was dark. ‘I don’t like the war,’ I said.
    ‘I know, Pip. No one does.’ And he held me close. He rubbed my tummy and said, ‘Maybe this time we’ll be lucky and you’ll have a new life to think of.’
    But I didn’t want to bring a bairn into this war. I felt like the marching feet in the newsreel were bringing death closer, and I tried not to imagine the Nazis on Morningside Road, carrying their swastikas to the castle.

7
    I was very nervous about meeting Jeff’s colleagues for the first time, although he claimed they would be very nice to me as the wife of the speaker. He thought it was time I went out and made friends, instead of worrying about pernickety, old Mrs MacDougall. I spent a long time washing my hair and rinsed it with the last of Jeff’s beer to make it shine. He had dug out an old dress of his mother’s from the wardrobe and laid it on the bed. It was white satin, cut on the bias, and looked a bit 1930s to me. He said a corsage from the garden would bring it right up to date and I could wear his mother’s Arctic fox stole. It was the most expensive kind, caught in its white winter coat. He said she had worn it with a blue ribbon when the National Party and the Scottish Party joined