Free Somewhere Over England by Margaret Graham Page A

his jacket and she fell across the chair, and for a moment there was silence until Helen turned awkwardly, pushing herself up, aware that the grunting noises she heard came from her. That she was crying like an animal, that her mouth was open and mucus from her nose and eyes were running into it and past it. That she tasted blood in her mouth. She pushed him from her as he came to her, his face shocked.
    ‘I love you, Heine.’ Her voice was strange, she could not find the breath to end her words. ‘I love you but I wonder whether you love me.’
    Heine came towards her again, his arms outstretched, his own eyes full. ‘I do love you. I love our son. I’m sorry, so sorry.’
    ‘Don’t touch me,’ Helen said and backed towards the hall. He mustn’t touch her until she had finished. She did not want hands on her, pushing her into cupboards, gripping her in anger. She was tired of it. No, she was not a child or a fragment but a person.
    ‘I insist on becoming a partner. I produce more work than you. I earn more than you. I want it to be offered under my own name.’ It was important to her now that she had something of her own, something that would keep her son safe for she could not trust her husband to do so. Somehow she feared that she could not trust him at all any more and it broke her heart because of the loneliness that the thought brought.
    He came to her then, holding her, soothing her, stroking her hair which was damp with sweat. ‘My love, my love. Forgive me. I love you, love you. Believe me, I love you.’
    Helen nodded in his arms, wanting to be soothed, wanting their lives to go back to the sun-filled days when it was simple. But those times had gone, for now at least, and so she said again, ‘I must be a partner. I can only rely on myself.’

CHAPTER 4
    Helen watched Heine as he turned over the second page of his father’s letter. It was a colourless November day in 1938 and her husband looked older, and very tired, but then they both did. His eyes met hers and he reached across for her hand which was already stretching to meet his. The new flat was smaller, the kitchen had damp walls but it had not known their bad years, the pain of a life too full for them to reach out and touch one another as they did so frequently now. It had not heard the blows of that night, the grunting despair of a woman she could not recognise as herself. It had only known Heine as a man who loved his wife and child, who held them as though they must never leave him. A man who had said as he had looked at his wife, sweating, bleeding on that dark night, that life was too short to wait for a time for themselves, that time must be carved out, no matter what else needed doing. That he had been a fool. That he would prove to her that she could trust him.
    That night when her lip had split and blood had flowed on to the carpet he had held her, but she had fought. He had soothed her but she had shouted. He had promised her that it was over, that he would make room for her, for his son. That they would be loved as they should be loved but she had not believed him, seeing only the loneliness of the life she had led with her mother and then again with him. Each day, after that night, she had watched and listened as he spoke to her and Christoph. Each day she held herself upright, and had merely nodded when he brought the partnership papers to be signed. Each day throughout 1937 and into 1938 she had watched and waited until, with the coming of spring she had allowed herself to love again and be loved. To trust in this man.
    Helen watched now as Heine put the letter on to the smallpine table they had brought from the other flat. They had moved from Alton Mews after Chamberlain landed at Heston Airport in September, two months before, waving his piece of paper, calling to the waiting press and photographers, ‘Peace for our time’. Heine had taken no photographs but had driven without stopping, back to London.
    He had rushed up the