The Butter
Cross
Alison
James
This book is dedicated to my grandfather, Thomas Hirst Thurman,
who was on the Somme at
and to his friend from that time Theo Rogerson,
who showed him the ropes when he arrived in the trenches,
married Tom’s sister, became my great-uncle and looked after me when I was little
with hands gnarled by wounds sustained forty years earlier, and also never mentioned it.
It is also dedicated,
most humbly,
to those decorated for valour and those terribly wounded,
whose experiences I drew on in writing this story —
&
to all who fought in the Great War;
and all who loved them.
The Butter Cross
Sometimes it’s difficult to remember clearly the first time you saw someone. You just know that you know them, that you met (once) somewhere, vaguely – wherever, whenever it was.
Sometimes, though, you don’t forget a single detail. You couldn’t.
The first time we saw him was like that.
‘Gawd! Look at ’im! Just like a bloody monkey up a stick.’ Ted Watkins’ voice came crowing above the laughter and into the tea-room where we sat. Ted had a cruel streak; his dad beat him witless and he turned it on the world. Now Ted led the jeering: small surprise to anyone who knew him. I craned to see out of the window.
There was a slow handclap from outside, and voices raised: not kind ones. I glanced at my mother’s face. She didn’t like Ted, and she wasn’t having any of it. There was an edge to the laughter. My mother looked up from her half-eaten brandysnap, set down her teacup. I wiped the crumbs from my mouth with the back of my hand, alert now with a child’s keen awareness of something poised to happen.
My mother frowned.
“Gawd! What a larf! Where’s the organ-grinder?” came Ted’s voice again, followed by guffaws and hoots. What could be happening? I tried to see out of the bottle-glass panes; I wanted to see the monkey up the stick. But we were a few tables away from the window, and my view was blocked by sturdy tweed shoulders and the bobbing of close-fitting hats. The ladies of the town, their broad bottoms still firmly planted in their seats, were as one determined to ignore the lads outside in the square having their bit of loutish fun.
There were shouts, and more laughter. The Butter Cross was right outside the window, and to my surprise I thought I glimpsed a face beside it. Distorted by the rounded glass, it looked grayish-white and open-mouthed, as if our familiar Butter Cross had sprouted a new gargoyle. The tea-room was upstairs over the bakery, which was why it was a surprise: one didn’t expect to see anyone directly outside the second-storey window, ten feet off the ground, looking in. But this face wasn’t looking back at us, nor indeed at anything so ordinary as market-day winding-down in our little square. Eyes squeezed shut, it looked inside itself. I thought of a tormented soul in one of those dreadful pictures by that man who painted hell and devils. Clearly, it saw worse things than Ted Watkins.
My mother was up from her seat then, and I knew that I was assured of getting a better view – even at the price of having a mother who didn’t care about behaving properly, and waded into things that were none of her business.
She pulled coins from her purse hastily, leaving the rest of her brandysnap on the plate. We had both been looking forward to the treat, though we really couldn’t afford it. I stuffed the rest of my scone into my mouth, knowing from the sharp pressure of her hand that there was no lingering over it now. “That poor man!” she murmured, and we were off in pursuit of cruelty and unkindness.
What an unlikely pair we were to set the world to rights: myself, leggy as a colt with a gap between my too-large front teeth and a bad slouch fighting the sinking certainty that at eleven I was already too gawky to have any hope of becoming another Anna Pavlova, though I still danced in secret (I had had no lessons, just a dream of grace and delicacy) – and my mother, tall and hopelessly larger than life, her hair forever escaping attempts to confine it, her coat missing some crucial button, untidy, heterodox. My mother — too passionate, too full of spirit to take her place among the self-righteous respectable women of our community, even if they had been able to forgive her my existence – which they weren’t, being smugly decent and preferring to close ranks against her wild and sinful ways. And all in all, perhaps that was for the better, since she would not have fitted-in anyway: she never had.
My mother….
perhaps it was that loneliness that had propelled her into the arms of
the first kindred-spirit she encountered, the music-teacher at the school
outside
I cannot believe my mother would knowingly have seduced a married man: she was too fine a creature for that. To give herself away was another matter; that was freely within her gift, and she poured herself out like wine. But theft, injustice, wrongdoing were anathema to her; she never would have taken what did not belong to her, whether it was money found in a dropped purse or my father, another woman’s husband.
I learned this later, of course; as a child she did not burden me with it –
though being who she was, she never stooped to lies. I soon learned that to ask her of my father
would produce a pleat in her brow and a narrowing of her lips. ‘He’s in
So off we set, a female Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on our errand of mercy. Some well-placed elbows, a few determined ‘excuse me’s’, and we were at the foot of the Cross. It was a charming thing, though somewhat battered now; a relic of another era when the faithful felt a reminder of Holy Church in the middle of Commerce to be a Good in and of itself. No doubt it commemorated some long-dead Bishop or Queen also, like the Chere Reine crosses that punctuated the last journey of Queen Eleanor to her grave, I don’t know; but it had presided over our little Market square and rejoiced in the name of the Butter Cross, weathering frosts and Parliament and the energies of naughty boys, for a good five hundred years.
And indeed, just like a monkey up a pole, right now a man clung to it more than half-way up; the man we had seen from the window. Why, I couldn’t imagine; but he did – and now I could see him trembling, and the white bones of his knuckles, and a lock of hair falling over his tightly-shut eyes; and a graze on his cheek.
My mother nodded and I scrambled up to him. I chose the other side, of course, so as not to startle him any worse. It only took a moment, filled with the thrill of having an excuse to behave with the freedom of a boy. Now, so close, I saw the stubble where he had not shaved, and the pink raw place where he had rubbed the skin off his cheekbone, perhaps knocking it against a broken carving in his headlong flight up here. He was panting like a greyhound, making a small high-pitched sound with each breath. His eyes were still shut tight. The lashes were dark and had livid shadows under them the way a saucer sits under a cup. “It’s all right,” I said cheerfully, in as comforting a tone as I could: “You can come down now. My mother says it’s safe.”
If my mother had not had me with her, she would have climbed up herself, I had no doubt. But that would have made an even greater spectacle, and the man was already as grey as the stone, and gripped it with a desperate force: a child’s overtures would seem less threatening. My ascent brought less noise from the crowd than a grown woman hitching up her skirt to shimmy up the ancient Cross. It seemed to be the noise he hated; he shuddered at each yell and tried to hide inside himself like a tortoise with no shell.
Close-up I could see that his clothes were shabby, but once had been good – not the dress of a working-man. So he must have been an officer, then? – which somehow only made it seem worse.
She must have known instinctively that it would not do to shout at him from down below. The lads were making too much racket to reach him in anything less than a bellow, and his flinching conveyed to us his utter anguish, his inability to cope with any more noise. So she gestured to me, and I reached my hand around the stone to his: “Come on,” I said, “I’ve come to get you. My mother sent me. You’ll be all right, I promise.”
I must have sounded sincere: my words penetrated his terror, and he opened wild eyes in a haggard face. It made me think of the man in the Bible who was possessed by devils. I watched him get a grip on himself, the emotions chasing one another: the struggle, the fear, the slow hard-fought mastery. Blind panic ebbed and an even more terrible vulnerability took its place. I thought of an animal trapped.
My mother had shared with me her disgust for hunting: the hounds baying for the kill, the red-coated gentry flushed from their stirrup-cup and the pleasure of the chase, all to bring some poor creature to a horrible end. He had that look, of the wild thing that has been hunted and treed. The crowd were only mocking, they weren’t going to tear him to pieces – but from the look of him, you would have thought they stood ready to do it with their teeth. Despair crept in then, those grey eyes blinking above hollow cheeks, and I saw that to add to all his other miseries he had wet himself. I didn’t know what to say, so I squeezed his hand.
So there we were, not one monkey up a stick now but two, and my companion wasn’t moving: he seemed to have frozen there, hanging on to the Butter Cross for all he was worth. Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to face that jeering crowd of lads again, either; I was too sensitive for my own good, everyone said so – humiliation was a feeling I knew well. My mother did, too – she saw him look down at that porridge-like mass of upturned faces and wince, close his eyes again.
She had shoved her way to the front of the crowd, not that it was a particularly large group – perhaps ‘mob’ describes them better, just a bunch of lads in search of amusement, with nothing better to do than poke fun at someone less whole than their own lusty selves. It was doubtful any of them was old enough to have seen military service. Summing them up at once for the harmless bullies they were, my mother took charge. She climbed up on the first step and faced them, waving her umbrella. “Come on, lads,” she cried, “you’ve had your laugh – now let him alone. Go on, off with you – shoo! Just go – go on – scat! Push off! All of you. I’ll thank you to listen to me, Joe Cotton: I wiped your bottom when I used to lend your mother a hand, God love her, and don’t you forget it!”
God, she was glorious in her indignation: I can see her still, her strong plain face transfigured by something fiercer than her own kindly self – she was a flaming pillar of justice, of mercy. They grumbled and moved on as a flock of starlings will, all at once, raucous and chattering, leaving the three of us there on the Cross itself under the curious stares of a few older bystanders further back in the square, too polite to come closer but too nosy to turn away.
My mother reached up and laid her hand on his ankle. He was wearing brown boots, tightly-laced; as I was climbing I had seen the holes in the leather soles. His corduroy trousers were patched at the knees. He flinched again.
“Come on,” she said, “it’s all right. They’ve gone. Come on down, my dear.” Her voice was matter-of fact, like tea and bread-and-butter. I knew that tone. If you were hurt she didn’t fuss or croon, or baby you; she just took care of you, briskly, kindly.
He opened his eyes again. I saw him look down and take her in, my mother being herself. A breath left him on a sigh, and his shoulders dropped from round his ears to half-way where they ought to have been. She was just my mother, so I didn’t see her as he must have. I took her for granted, even when she embarrassed me by drawing attention to herself doing things like this. After all, if she hadn’t come to his rescue, the lads would still have been doing the slow hand-clap down there. I think of how she must have looked to him: tawny and full-bosomed as a woodcock or a snipe, a bracken-haired creature more at home in the woods than a bustling market, freckled and strong like the earth itself – and kind as the earth, also. The furled umbrella hung at her side now; her upturned face wore all the gentle patience of St. Francis. “Now, then,” she said to our beleaguered companion, “that’s better, isn’t it. It’s all quiet now — they’ve gone. Here you go – look, put this one foot here on that broken curly bit, and the other one on that saint’s head, I’m sure she won’t mind: down you come.”
The saint in question had had her nose hacked-off by Cromwell’s men, so doubtless she didn’t find his slight weight too much to bear. He was thin, as if he hadn’t been eating. He glanced back at me; I nodded and smiled at him. His eyes glittered. There were white lines by his mouth, as if he held it firmly clamped like that a lot.
“I’ve got you,” said my mother, and he slithered down the last few feet and stood on the top step trembling. I joined them in a swift ungainly scramble. My mother’s eyes met mine and I knew she meant me to be quiet; it was the same look she would give me when we came upon a thrush startled from his anvil, or a barn owl abroad in daylight, or a roe buck with his head raised in alarm, sniffing the wind. For a moment or two his head jerked up between us in the same way, almost in defiance, his jaw saying mutely Here I am, then – now what? Then he folded-up in three like an old overcoat and sat on the steps with his head in his hands. I felt my heart crease in sympathy, wanted to comfort him; knew I had no idea what to say.
And then, with the same care she used to mend my stockings, my mother gave him his dignity back with three soft words: “Good afternoon, captain — er?”
He let his hands fall to his lap and looked up at her, defeated in his attempt to have the ground swallow him up and facing that fact. His face seemed younger seen from above, a child’s waking from nightmare. “G—good afternoon,” he whispered, taking the formulaic refuge she offered him, “Mrs. – er?”
“Pasley,” said my mother, “Winifred Pasley – and it’s Miss. And you would be Captain –– ?”
Her guess was correct – of course: what guessing was needed, with the slaughter
of the
I shrank from her refusing the title of a married woman, though I ought to have been used to it by now. Still, it was as if she had added sotto voce, ‘and this is my illegitimate daughter,’ and her distaste for lies seemed a harsh burden to me then. I don’t think he noticed, though, not then; only that this woman was speaking to him as matter-of-factly as if they had just met at a vicarage tea-party, or over a prize marrow at a show. “I b-beg your p-p-pardon,” he said, the words straining past a lump in his throat as well as his stammer.
“Goodness,” said my mother, “don’t give it another thought! It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anybody… ”
While this might have been stretching the truth a little,
I knew how kindly these words fell upon a smarting soul. She had told me the same thing in the
identical brisk and cheery tone of voice the night my tinsel crown slipped over
my eyes and I tripped over my own camel on the parish hall stage, my gilt
cigar-box of ‘frankincense’ tumbling from my hands to disgorge its cargo of
buttons (meant to rattle importantly) all over the shepherds and the Baby
Jesus. To my misery one rolled all the
way to the very edge of the stage – a black trouser-button, as I recall –
majestically, inexorably, so that my eyes were dragged towards it as were those
of everyone else in the hall, holding our collective breaths as it spun and
then leapt like a tiddlywink into the ample lap of Mrs. Wolvesey, the wife of our Member of Parliament. The Virgin Mary had knelt and scooped-up the
rest in a gesture at once domestic and gracious, returning them to me so I
could have a second chance at making my Offering. Beet-faced and clumsy with shame, I did so to
a chorus of titters. The rest of the
play was a blur to me: all I could think
of as the angels sang and we joined them in a rousing finale of Once In Royal David’s City was my own flight into
The sort of thing that could happen to anybody. Well, perhaps not: but it was a gentle fiction, and served its purpose; he shook his head but did not hide it back in his hands.
My mother didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she had a way with hurt things, a sudden gentleness that might have seemed in opposition to the rest of her forthright nature till you saw that both were rooted in great depth of feeling. I was watching her now, newly aware of her as a person, of these things I had not remarked-upon before, and how they made her different from almost everyone I knew. I felt proud of her magnificence, her understanding, the way she knew the right thing to say — and sorry for Major Oliver, an officer and presumably a gentleman, to find himself so rescued, an object of scorn followed by equally-galling pity.
I quelled the impulse to stare at him, and looked down at my buttoned shoes instead. One button was hanging by a thread – I must have rubbed it loose in clambering over the noseless saints. I must remember to pull it off and put it in my pocket before I lose it, I thought, but didn’t dare do so just now for fear that moving might break the spell my mother had cast, in which this poor man was slowly coming to himself again and pretending to be just like anybody else, instead of a poor nervous wreck that fled up ancient monuments when pursued by jeering youths, and wet himself in terror.
“You look as if you could do with a cup of tea – mm?” She gestured with her head to the tea-shop over the bakery, but he was having none of it.
“I c-couldn’t,” he said, turning a dull red now, “look at me – I’ve p—pissed myself, I can’t g—go anywhere now.” Then he remembered me, and started to apologize again.
My mother shushed him. “I see,” she said, “of course, yes, you’re right. It would be too embarrassing, wouldn’t it, going in there like that. Why don’t you just sit here with Nellie, and I’ll go and fetch us all tea and we’ll drink it out here. Hm?” – and before he could refuse, she had smiled at me and I was her accomplice in this fait accompli.
“I—I’m s—sorry,” he said again.
“Please,” I said, trying to express in that one word all I had no words for: please be all right. Please don’t embarrass yourself any further. Please just sit here and calm down. And, if I were honest with myself, I also meant Please don’t make me think how dreadful it must have been with all the slimy swelling corpses turning green and purple on the barbed wire till they burst – unless the rats came first – or to be drowned, or gassed, or blown to bits, or all the other nightmares I had had since hearing about the front from my classmates’ older brothers. Please let us help you; please don’t run away again. Please.
I didn’t know what else to say.
I felt abandoned and unequal to the task at first, wanting my mother to hurry up and come out of the tea-shop. I wished she had sent me to fetch it, not left me to cope while she absented herself. Then as he brushed that stray lock back from his forehead again with a long shuddering sigh I knew her withdrawal had been a tactical one; she had left him with me on purpose, knowing that to be faced with an adult just then was too much to ask of him. This was time in which he might collect himself and catch his breath. I saw a suitcase a few yards away, half-open and spilling its contents on the cobbles. “Is that yours?” I asked him, pointing to it.
He nodded, with a sigh. “I m—must have – have dropped it,” he murmured, starting to get up and swaying as he did so.
“It’s all right, I’ll get it,” I said, glad of a job. It was a cheap sort, of coated cardboard with skimpy leather corners. There were not many things, and they had tumbled out in disorder. Still, I could see that its sparse contents had been packed very neatly. I scrambled about to put them back, a pair of worn shoes polished to a chestnut shine and two shirts folded military-style; some collars wrapped-up in a handkerchief to keep them clean and tied-off with a shoelace, a pair of thin and threadbare combinations, some braces, a cable-knitted sweater, socks tucked into pairs; a bulky parcel tied with string, the paper much-creased, as if it had been carried around like that for a long time. A shaving-kit had come open and a shaving-brush had rolled a few feet away. I reached to get it: the base said ‘Gieves.’ I thought it might be silver, though the box for the soap was much dented. A battered copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse lay on its face – I smoothed the bent pages gently before closing it. They were that very thin paper my mother called India-paper. He had written his name in the front, on the fly-leaf, and some of the poems bore ink or pencil underlining. It looked as if it had been through the wars, as she would have said – which is of course exactly what had happened to it; or the War, anyway. It seemed to have survived in better condition than its owner, though, since its damp-stains had dried long ago. Lying a couple of feet away was a marbled notebook with writing in it; I put that back too, tucked in-between the knitted jumper and the shirts.
The suitcase had fallen on one corner, which had split open at the seam; I tucked everything carefully back down and closed it gingerly, hoping the clasp would hold. It did, more or less, though I was careful to hold both sides of the suitcase together. Setting it by his feet, I wondered if it would be rude to ask him what happened, and why.
Sometimes the thing you have to talk about is the elephant in the room, my mother used to say. If you don’t acknowledge it, everything else gets overshadowed – you can hardly overlook it. Whenever she said that I could see the silent, baleful, crinkled bulk waiting to be named. She was right: whatever it is, you can’t pretend it’s not there. I addressed it now. Sitting down so I was at the same level as him, and being careful not to look at him directly, I gazed-off into the middle-distance and asked him what I wanted to know: “Why did you climb up there?”
He shook his head. “D-doesn’t m-make much sense, does it,” he said ruefully.
“No, but you must have had a reason,” I said earnestly, wanting to understand.
“Sometimes when I p-panic I don’t remember,” he said. “W-what set me off. L-l-loud noises, usually. I’m not – very good with them. Actually, I c-can’t b—bear them.” His stutter was most painful on words that had some feeling behind them, I noticed.
“Oh,” I said, “I see. I think I heard something. I think it was a van back-firing.”
He ran his hand over his head. His hair was that soft mousey shade that is not quite fair but not dark either.
“That w-would do it,” he said, “on a b-bad day.”
“Is this a bad day?” I asked, sympathetically.
“W-well it is now, w-wouldn’t you say?” he replied, an edge of bitterness in his voice even as he tried to keep it light for me.
“Perhaps,” I said. “I’m sure it was horrible for you, being frightened all the way up there. And everything.” (This was the most tactful way I could find to acknowledge his wet trousers.) “But you found us, and now we’re going to make sure you’re all right.”
“Oh you are, a-are you,” he said with some bleak amusement. I did not see what I had said was funny. I meant it.
“Of course,” I said stoutly. “And by the way, I’m Helen.”
“I thought – didn’t she c-call you – aren’t you otherwise kn—own as Nellie?” he asked, with a furrow in his forehead. I remembered my mother had addressed me before she left us in search of the tea. What was keeping her?
“I prefer Helen,”
I said, not wanting to be unfriendly, but moved by a strong conviction
that I had outgrown my babyish nickname – at least with new acquaintances,
where I had the gift of a fresh start.
Nellie was Nellie Bly, and it rhymed (oh! how tiresomely often I had
heard it) with ‘jelly,’ not to mention
‘belly.’ Helen was the face that
launched a thousand ships, a classical dream of
“S-so do I,” he said, adding to himself, “God –!” and rubbing his eyes roughly. I thought of the contents of the battered suitcase. I did not remember any other trousers in it, unless the brown-paper parcel had included a pair. For his sake I hoped fervently that it did. Having to wear your clothes while they clung wetly to you was one of the most unpleasant sensations I had come across in my young life, and I did not wish it on him. It was bad enough to be the object of overt stares from the remaining bystanders. I glared at them.
“Here we are,”
came my mother’s voice, most welcome to me just then. She bore a tray clinking with a Brown Bess
teapot, a brown milk-jug and sugar-bowl and three cups-and-saucers. “They made
such a fuss about letting me bring it out!
Goodness! It didn’t seem like
much to ask – you’d have thought I’d announced I meant to make off with
it!” She set it down on the top step and
proceeded to pour as if it were an everyday occurrence having tea out on the
steps of the butter-cross. Meeting the
gazes of those people who were still gathered, she tossed them one of her
vaguer smiles. I wouldn’t call it
insincere exactly, but it conveyed meaning beyond the superficial. It had the intended effect; they drifted away, as if something more
interesting had drawn their attention across the square, leaving us to our
peculiar tea-party. I felt a bit like
“Sugar?” asked my mother, her smile this time completely sincere and dazzling, the flash of the sun on a wave. “It’s good for you, you know, if you’ve had a shock — ” Her hair was an aureole escaping from her hat. I loved her hair: I often begged to brush it for her. Loose, it fell in a chestnut tide to her waist, thick and glossy, shot through and through with dark-red and greenish lights. I wanted hair like it, but mine was dark like my father’s. She wore it pinned-up but it always got away, wayward strands of dark amber like the tea twisting from the spout.
“I d—don’t usually,” he protested, “but – yes, I suppose so; yes, thank-thank you.” I could see that to acquiesce was to take the path of least resistance – and he had no strength left to resist anything, let alone a cup of hot sweet tea. My mother stirred it vigorously and then, as he flinched at the bright sudden sound of the spoon in the cup, softly. “Sorry,” she whispered.
He took it from her and thanked her again. I wondered how ingrained his good manners must be, for him to be able to muster them when he had only just been beside himself and was still sunk in shame. No doubt they were automatic, by now: something safe to say. I hoped mine were impressed as deeply – and that I would never need to find out, at least not this way.
“No need to thank me,” she said, “I was ready for a nice cup myself. Shopping is thirsty work! Right, Nellie?”
“Don’t put too many lumps in mine,” I said, “please, mummy.”
“Don’t I know?” she smiled, and passed me my cup-and-saucer.
“Oh,” I said, noticing the toasted teacake on a doilied plate and knowing as I saw it that it represented our supper – at least, the faggots we had been going to pick up at the butcher’s on the way home. It would be plain boiled potatoes tonight, then. And cabbage, if I was lucky; parsnips if I wasn’t. Or worse, beetroot. I shuddered at the thought.
My mother set the plate beside Major Oliver, and pushed it towards him invitingly.
“I’m n–not a tramp,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Nobody said you were,” she said. “Drink up, it’ll do you a power of good.”
He did as he was told.
“I don’t mean to be a bully,” she added, more softly, “but you do look as if you could do with it, you know.”
“I – I suppose so,” he admitted.
“And this,” she said, inching the teacake towards him. It was irresistible, as she had meant it to be. One could turn down a bun or even a jam-tart, but not this. Melted butter glistened in its crevices. It was toasted just perfectly, the edges turned a fragile golden-brown and the currants glazed. I sent him mental messages to eat it quickly, before it got cold and stiff. He must have seen the intensity of my gaze, willing him to pick it up and bite into it. “H—how about sh-sharing it?” he offered.
Honour was satisfied; I ate one half and he ate the other. Once he started he ate it very quickly, as if he were starving, and drank down the rest of his tea in one long series of gulps. I wished I hadn’t eaten my piece.
His empty teacup rattled in its saucer, slightly at first and then loudly. My mother took them from him. “It must be difficult, managing with your nerves not right yet,” she said gently. That ‘yet’ was so dear: it contained the promise of healing, of surcease to these days of anguish and nights of terror. Trust my mother to address the elephant so warmly.
He looked away.
“Have another cup,” she said.
If she had been a fellow-officer instead, an ex-serviceman like himself, doubtless Major Oliver would have been hustled away somewhere and a strong one poured out for him with a liberal hand. But we were Winifred and Nellie Pasley, of modest means and without access to liquor in the middle of the afternoon, and the best we had to offer was this impromptu picnic on the steps and another cup of tea. He did not refuse; how could anyone refuse my mother, when she looked at you like that, strong and kind and sheltering as an oak-tree?
It had got stronger in the pot, turned a rich mahogany-colour. The last of the milk blossomed into it. She stirred it so carefully before she gave it to him, the spoon barely audible against the bottom of the cup. He noticed, and accepted that from her, too – what else could he do? The quietness of her actions was like a little gift, and he blinked in the knowledge of it. “You’re t—too kind,” he whispered.
“Don’t be silly,” said my mother. “You’d do the same, I’m sure. And I’d hope to God if my brother had come back, someone would’ve done as much for him.”
“W—where — ?” he asked her. There was no need to say any more than that.
“He died of wounds,” said my mother, “at Thiepval. His name was Stephen.”
“I was there,” said Major Oliver, softly. He didn’t stutter; looked straight at her for the first time with strained grey eyes. “Bad business,” he added.
“It was all a bad business,” said my mother bitterly. “All of twenty, he was.” That sadness crept back into her face. I remembered my uncle, or scraps of him; tall and wry and full of life, always cracking jokes and making things and throwing me up on his shoulder. His uniform was scratchy and the buttons dug into me; I thought his puttees were the oddest things I had ever seen. He had bright blue eyes and a big nose, and his ears stuck out. I remember how red they were under his cap the January day we waved him off at the station, a hard frost crunching under my boots walking home again; and the painful grip of my mother’s hand. She liked to talk of him as a boy, but didn’t often mention the last year of his life. After he died, his pal Bert from the same platoon stopped by and we’d held his hands as he tried to talk and wept instead. “So anyway,” she finished, brightly, “it’s an honour to be able to help – in some small way… ”
He shook his head. “N—not that s—small,” he managed to get out.
“Well, we’ve not quite done yet,” said my mother. “Where were you going? How are we going to get you into some dry clothes? Do you have anybody here in the village?”
“I have an i—i—nterview,” he said, shaking his head again ruefully, “with one Sir Archibald Jervis. At Rookswood House. At f—f—four. T—to see about c—cataloguing his library.”
“Oh,” said my mother. “Well, it wouldn’t really do to turn up on his doorstep asking for a hot bath, would it! Why don’t you come on home with us first, and then you can borrow my bicycle – you won’t even be late. Hardly.”
“I c—couldn’t,” he said, automatically.
“Well, what’s the alternative?” asked my mother softly.
He got to his feet slowly.
“Nellie,” my mother said, “please take the tray back into the shop.”
I did so.
He looked too frail to carry our basket, but he asked to out of whatever pride he had left to salvage, and for that reason I am sure my mother let him. It looked odd I must say, balanced against the shabby suitcase in his other hand, but he seemed to prefer it. There wasn’t much in it: a cabbage, half-a-dozen eggs in a paper bag with the corners twisted into rabbit-ears; a slender wedge of cheese. Trusting him with eggs seemed foolhardy, but to take them out would have been a fresh insult. We walked home briskly, so as not to waste too much time: it was already almost three o’clock.
We went in single-file when we got to the footpath through the corner of the Great Hundred, the grass almost thigh-high again ready for a second haying: nobody wanted to trample it walking abreast. Before the war this field had been in crops from one year to the next, like so many hereabouts – barley, clover, oats and wheat; but now there weren’t enough men left to work it, and it was let go to hay – and whatever weeds appeared. The wind shivered through the tops of the grass. I watched him watch my mother walking, the no-nonsense length of her stride and the way she carried her head. Her hair glinted red where the sun caught it. I hadn’t thought of her as beautiful before. She was solid, not willowy and certainly not fashionable; but he didn’t take his eyes off the line of her back and the unconscious sway of her bottom. He is drawn to her strength, I thought, to how firm and generous she is. I saw how whole she looked, how sweet, sustaining as an apple-suet-pudding. I couldn’t feel jealous; not after everything else I had witnessed. I felt sad, that I had what he must have been longing-for: that safety, that welcome – my mother’s wide lap to climb into, her arms to come home to. I decided I wouldn’t mind sharing her, as long as he didn’t take too much – or break her heart, by being too broken for her to mend. But I wanted him to let her try. Us – I wanted to be part of it. There was so much hurt and loss in the world; I wanted to help him find himself again.
Then I thought of the way he had looked in the square, up on the cross, half-crucified, and I knew I was being too optimistic. But I wanted it, the way you rush to nurture a baby bird fallen out of its nest, even when you know that all you can do will not save it, but still you try.
Of course there was no time to draw a bath, but we left him with a nice big jug of steaming water for a strip-wash. My mother set it out for him on the wash-stand in her room. She had put out towels and a new cake of soap, and while he washed she pressed the contents of the brown-paper parcel: his uniform, of course. He hadn’t wanted to wear it, we could tell, but he really didn’t have much of a choice. She knocked and opened the door a crack and set it down just inside on the floorboards, brown-leather belts and all. When he came out wearing it my heart turned over, he looked so different. It gave him an air of assurance; he didn’t look in the least pathetic any more. “Goodness!” said my mother, with a smile. He looked away, blinking.
“Oh,” she added, “and Sir Archibald is quite deaf – you’ll have to speak up, when you meet him.”
“Oh, G—god!” stammered Harry Oliver, “that’s all I n—need… I’ll c—c—clam up altogether!”
“No, you won’t,” said my mother, straightening his collar a little and cupping his cheek for the barest moment before withdrawing her hand, “ – you’ll do just fine. And if you can’t get a word out, this will fill the silence.” She touched the small medal-ribbon on his breast. I wondered what they had awarded it for, and whether I would get a chance to ask him; and if I did, whether he would tell me. The white-and-purple of the Military Cross was hard to mistake. “He’s a good man,” she added, “ — though since he lost his two boys he’s been rather gruff. But his bark is worse than his bite.” She put his cap in his hands. “Off you go! Keep to your left, just follow the long brick wall and when you come to the gate with the two lodges, turn in. It’s only a couple of miles. We’ll have a nice hot dinner waiting when you get back.”
He started to protest: he c—couldn’t.
My mother pushed him gently out of the door: “’Course you could! You’ve got to bring me back the bike, haven’t you? You’ll be fair clemmed by then!” She whispered one more thing close by his ear, then tilted her head to one side, watching him go. Her elderly bicycle leaned against the scullery-wall, battered but serviceable. Better to arrive on time on its shabby frame than to walk and be late, even if it was a woman’s machine. He got on it and was soon out of sight down the lane.
“What else did you tell him?” I asked.
“Just reminded him to stand up straight,” she said. “He looks ever so much better when he isn’t all stooped-over and holding himself in, like. Sir Archibald’ll notice that sort of thing.”
She was right; the old man missed nothing of note. When he came to our school and looked at our work, he would point-out a mistake in the arithmetic in somebody’s book, or praise a neat hand; and he could not abide a slouch. Years of service in the Indian sun had left him shriveled and squinting like an old tortoise, his eyes hooded above a fleshless purple beak of a nose – but still he saw more than Miss Dimpsey, our teacher, and succeeded in intimidating us all mightily, even the bullies and the brains. I wished Harry Oliver strength and confidence for his interview in the face of those barks, that appraising glare.
Rookswood House was a glorious place. It had begun as an elegant Regency mansion, graced with a three-storey pillared portico and long rows of tall windows in a creamily stuccoed façade. Whenever we walked up the curving gravel drive my mother pointed-out its beauty: the symmetry, the restraint – and together we wondered what Robert Adam would have thought of it now, cluttered with extra wings that stuck out like superfluous heads and filled as it was (much to my discomfort) with mounted, antlered trophies of various species and proportions. I thought they were grotesque, unworthy of it. On my first few visits there I had been transfixed by all the stuffed dead things. They ran a ghastly gamut, from the artful arrangements of birds staring glass-eyed through dusty domes to the tiger-skin, now motheaten and no longer burning bright, whose horrid snarl greeted the unwary visitor unfortunate enough to stray into the library. I was reminded of the grinning horror of a gamekeeper’s larder, with its flapping crow corpses in varying stages of decay from the fresh sleek feathers of yesterday’s kill to the green-mouldering horror of last month’s, and stiffening stoats crucified along the fence: creatures once quick, frozen in death. Now I wondered what Major Oliver would make of them. Perhaps he had grown-up somewhere like it – though he would hardly be alone and friendless in a small country town looking for work if he had, I reminded myself. Yet something about him had told me he would be more at home in those echoing halls than I was.
That I had trodden those hallowed stone flags at all was a testament to the fresh spirit of Daisy Jervis. The only daughter of the house and blessed with three brothers, all of whom (of course) were at the Front, she had done her bit and seen that all the rest of us did too. My mother had become a particular friend, in the years before Miss Jervis married and later moved away. Daisy Jervis had held all kinds of well-meaning, democratic activities at Rookswood: sock-knitting bees, and blanket drives, and gas-mask-making evenings (god help the poor men! for our flimsy contraptions would not). Miss Jervis made sure to invite all the women of the town as well as the local farmers’ wives. She and my mother cycled through the town putting up posters so no-one could claim ignorance of her next ‘event.’ Come one, come all, they said: help our boys. What woman could resist that? Before the War, most of her intended guests would never have set foot beyond the baize door dividing the kitchen side of the house from the grand side. Now, though, the boldest of them stepped up right to the front, and pulled on the bell-pull; though the more mannerly still knew their place and came through the back door.
It was typical of her to take notice of my mother and greet her as a peer, in spite of the fact that she was a Fallen Woman. She had fallen from the middle class, to be precise, into the ranks of the Unfortunate (or Wicked, depending on your point of view). But Daisy appreciated a lively mind when she met one, not to mention a kind heart and a practical approach to every difficulty. She enjoyed my mother’s company, and never let the unfortunate fact of my existence trouble her. Had she had a mother of her own to remind her of what was proper, she might have been forced to cut the acquaintance, and even therefore cut my mother in the street; but she did not, that lady being deceased. Thus nobody told Miss Jervis what to do, not even her father; and where she took notice, others could hardly continue to snub – at least in public.
Now Miss Jervis was Mrs. Nigel Lascelles, and she had her hands full, not of rolled white bandages any more but with her clumsy husband, who with half his face shot away couldn’t see too well and had to be helped from one room to another. She was so very lucky, she kept telling him in a brittle cheerful voice, to have him home and safe. He wore a patch that covered the place where his nose should have been, in consideration of others’ feelings, though what one imagined lay under it can hardly have been less frightful than the actuality. I had met him earlier, thrown rose-petals at their wedding: a handsome man, a striking one; one might well have used the word ‘dashing.’ Before, of course. Afterwards all the dashing one wanted to do was in the other direction, so as not to have to look at the pity of him. We ran into one another in the black-and-white tiled hallway, one afternoon, when I was trying to make my way unobtrusively to the water-closet and he was coming out of the library. I told myself that if it was dreadful for me it must be a thousand times worse for him, and so I fought back the urge to flee. After all, he must be doing the same thing, I thought. I stood my ground and dropped a tiny curtsey in greeting. I had to swallow the burning bile back down my throat and whisper a ‘hello.’ It came out in a squeak.
“ ’Oo’ a’ternoo’ ” he said from his twisted jaw, what was
left of it. He tried to keep his worse
side turned away. I remembered the
handsome glossy moustache he had had, that I had remarked upon most
particularly all through the wedding-service, wondering if it tickled to be
kissed by it – that and his easy laugh.
Now I wondered if he would laugh again – and if he did, how it would
sound. He gave a little military nod
then, and stood aside for me to pass:
always such lovely manners. Soon
afterwards they moved away to
That left Sir Archibald all alone at Rookswood, except
for the servants, of course, who didn’t count.
His middle son Rupert had survived the War and was at a convalescent
home somewhere; we didn’t quite know
what the matter was, but thought it must be serious, or else he would have come
home to be nursed back to health. Some
said he was stark raving loony, which was unkind; others speculated that he had lost several
limbs, and had to be taught how to walk and feed himself. More optimistic souls said he had just
stayed a while out in
I hoped Harry Oliver’s ribbons would speak for him when his throat squeezed shut. After all, you didn’t need to say much to look at books all day long and make a list of them.
I peeled the potatoes while my mother rummaged in the pantry. “I could’ve sworn I had a tin of pilchards,” she sighed, “ – didn’t we, Nellie?” She didn’t find them, though, so she made for the garden, shaking her head. I worked away, scooping-out eyes and cutting off bad places, of which there were far too many. They were bought potatoes, not home-grown – we were waiting to pull our own for the greatest yield. We had indulged in a few from the garden when they were new, ‘just because’ — it would be a sin not to enjoy them when they were so perfect, my mother had smiled, singing as she forked them over gently and sifted through the earth to pull the tiniest ones for me. ‘And when I tell them… how beautiful you a–a–are… ’
“They’ll never
believe me,” I’d chimed-in, “they’ll
My mother came back with a bouquet of fresh leeks and a couple of onions. Singing softly to herself, she pulled out our big black skillet and the dripping-basin. I watched her lips curve in a smile as she transferred a generous dollop of bacon-grease, scraping the bone-handled knife blade across the edge of the pan. “Here,” she said, “be a pet and wash these too, will you?”
I did, rinsing the earth that clung inside the layers of leek-leaves furled tightly as a green paper scroll. However did it get so deep in there? I wondered, not for the first time nor even the twentieth. Earth was a thing that I could muse on endlessly. It was the humblest thing; yet it was the bed of all life, it seemed. Our vicar’s sermons did not gloss over its role in our own origins and destiny. Our garden was mostly clay and heavy digging, though where we could we had continued my granddad’s work of lightening it with sand and compost. The dirt I was rubbing away with my finger was the colour of pottery and slightly gritty. Our area was famous for its clay, though it made better chimney-pots than vegetable-beds. Still, where you could get the sticky clods to break-up and the blue-streaked yellow marl to crumble, it raised a nice crop. When I would try digging, though, taking the fork from my mother as she straightened her back with a groan to push a wisp of hair from her eyes, our so-called soil just clung to the tines and I had to pull it off by hand. A few miles away were the claypits where they had dug out all the bricks that were fired and used to build the Royal Albert Hall; just round the corner from them were Kiln Road and Green Hollow, and the tall stacks writing their blue scribbles of smoke against the shoulder of the down. Half of London was built of Fareham reds, said my mother proudly, and every chimney-pot in six counties… though this was small consolation when I had been breaking my back trying to turn this stubborn sticky stuff into next year’s pea-patch. It was indeed better suited to construction than gardening, I always thought blackly as I wrestled with it.
Our corner of Hampshire was a pleasant place, especially
for a child. We lived at the top of a
rise that looked out over the ancient
“I thought I’d make a nice big pan of bubble-and-squeak,” said my mother, “what do you say?”
“What do I say?” I echoed for joy, “ – oh, yes!” It might not be elegant, but goodness me, it was delicious the way she made it, boiled-potatoes and cabbage all fried up together with onions and leeks. It would be heartwarming, and smell divine, and Harry Oliver would not be able to resist it. I left her to put the potatoes on to boil and cut up the other vegetables while I took the scraps and peelings down to the compost-heap.
This was my daily job, and I was resigned to it.
The compost-heap and I were old enemies, or at least we had come to an accommodation. While an uneasy truce reigned between us it was loaded with equal parts of respect and loathing. Here everything rotted away: here all earthly things returned to their elements, amid rankness and slime, wrinkling yellowed pea-pods and the strong smell of earth itself. Here before my eyes lay the End of things. Once, when I was very small – three, perhaps, no more – I had come out here down the garden-path on the same errand and found myself overbalancing, trying to empty the tin pan of scraps over the wire fence and instead falling-in headlong. I was shocked, to be upended suddenly among Brussels-sprout-stalks and the coarse-veined purplish cabbage-trimmings, my hair all at once intimate with old eggshells and my legs waving helplessly in the air. At first I was too surprised to cry-out. Then I realized that even if I did my mother would probably not be able to hear me from all the way back in the kitchen, since she rarely answered when I called her from the garden. The compost-heap and I stared one another down, each too proud to admit defeat. It might hold me hostage temporarily, but I would escape, I would — I just had to work out how to get myself the right way up again, and scale its heaping mildewed grass-clippings to where I could once more straddle the enclosing fence. I would have to balance the soles of my shoes on the wire before I jumped to safety, and leap far and wide to be shot of its unstable sway.
I did so: it could not keep me. I had won a victory over the forces of decay and destruction. They had lain in wait and pulled me in, but I had beat-off their horrid scarred-brussels-sprout-stalk grip and freed myself, Greek-hero-like, out of my own strength and skill. I never forgot it.
I remember that I did not tell my mother what had befallen me, out of some mixture of shame and modesty; though she looked at me strangely when I returned, and tut-tutted over some slimy stain left upon my apron by the noisome clutches of the compost-heap.
Today it just looked melancholy, the pathos of a slow summer evening drawing-in to show its contents even more wretched, shabby, mortal. A place where cast-out blemished things found their ultimate redemption. I tipped the potato-peelings on top of the rest, and the tops of the leeks and their furled green outer leaf-casings; banged the tin against the fence-post till it gave up the last clinging bits of onion-bottom and papery skin. I picked up the fork, added two loads of soil from the heap beside it and stirred the top about till the leek-curls disappeared. Doing so, I could not help wondering what Major Oliver had seen of corruption. I imagined the broken husks of men left littering no-man’s-land as casually as these blackening broad-bean pods, and hoped his interview was going well.
His struggle pierced me. He was clearly a grown-up, and a brave one too: they did not hand out Military Crosses for perfect spelling. What had happened? Had he cracked suddenly, or little by little? How dreadful could it have been, to do that to someone? I was young enough to wonder if it would help him to forget what he had seen if my mother took him into her bed, as she did for me when I had had nightmares – and old enough to know that the way he looked at her was not the look of a child seeking a mother’s comfort. But not too old to hope naively that she would. It could be as simple as that, couldn’t it, to give someone you liked what they wanted, if they needed it badly enough and you had it to give? What could be the harm in that? And I could tell just from the way she was that, whatever kind of comfort a woman might have to give, he would feel ever so much better afterwards. If they ever would let themselves find it together.
I narrowed my eyes at the compost-heap, bearing its sad, silent slimy witness to the transience of things, and turned away. On the one hand you had corruption and on the other, the rest of the garden. Life had to have both in it, it seemed. I wanted her to like him enough to give him that. After all, she seemed to like being needed too – it was a favourite saying of hers, ‘to be of service,’ and god alone knew that here was a kindness she could offer-up that would make every other gentle thing she had ever done seem insignificant. If anything on earth could help him, my mother could – if she chose. I felt renewed faith in her power to heal and restore, as I walked back up the garden-path, dodging the clothes-prop and pulling my apron from the thorns of the scarlet roses — at least until I remembered his face as he clung to the Butter Cross, and the break in his voice when he spoke of being unable to bear loud noises; and the helpless failure of his bladder.
I tried the words ‘shell-shocked’ softly in my mouth. They felt sibilant, hissing – something too grim to speak, hidden behind these innocent syllables. They were common counter now. Someone had coined them, and everyone seized on this simple way to explain the wreckage of the men that came home. The familiar phrase covered ‘a multitude of sins’ – an entire circle of Hell: wide strained eyes and sleeplessness, nervous tics; formerly gentle men who lost their tempers and beat their wives. It explained twitches, and went hand-in-hand with long, hard-to-spell words like ‘neurasthenia’ and ‘hysteria’; it trailed tremors and stammers and dreams that left strong men shrieking.
It was a powerful term, not altogether an evil one. It almost held an odd comfort. Wives and mothers sought its shelter so as to forgive: a cheerful son turned savage recluse, the wheezing drunkard come home in place of a hard-working husband. Shell-shocked – a phenomenon that turned brawny ploughmen to mumbling wrecks, unable to look anyone in the eye any more. The worst sufferers could not leave hospital, even – I had heard that they were tied to their beds in case they harmed themselves trying to make it go away, whatever it was. I had frozen unseen behind bolts of cloth at the village shop while women whispered about a man they had heard of from Titchfield that had torn his own eyes out, can you imagine it! In my hiding-place I had tried, and failed.
‘Shell-shock’ — I felt the monstrosity of it, reduced to this term that let you refer to it. It was one of those things like agony where those who had not felt it could only name it. People shook their heads when they said it. Perhaps it was not altogether a new phenomenon. Men had returned from battle damaged in strange ways, soldiers’ wives had shaken their heads and tried to cope, ever since there had been wars. But this was a new realization, born of a new kind of war, that there were limits to what a soul could stand. With this war we had found a new way to break men wholesale.
Shell-shock: apparently for our new friend Harry Oliver, M.C., it meant an ever-present nightmare, a waking terror renewed with every crash, every bang, every chance clatter and boom. It meant panic; flight; sometimes even the shameful, helpless flood of urine. A way of being trapped unendingly in hell. Shell-shock… I hadn’t looked in its face, till now. It had sounded like that nonsense-rhyme children trip their tongues with, She sells sea-shells by the sea-shore… though these shells were hideous and dealt death. Why did they call them that, shells, perverting the name of something so lovely and so harmless? Perhaps he is too broken, then, after all, and there is nothing that will help, I thought. But we have to try.
I wonder if she saw it so clearly, then? After all, it was she that left our bought tea on the table to come to his aid. She couldn’t see a fellow-creature suffer without trying to help.
And what did he think, as she brought him tea and led him home to wash and change, and told him softly to stand-up straight: was he wanting what I wanted for him, even then, so soon?
How could he not?
How, indeed.
I had been brought up with fairy-tales where the magic moment of acceptance redeemed the ugly, the spell-bound. The Frog Prince, the Beast… all you had to do was love them as they were and it undid the evil: they could cast-off their defects to become whole and beautiful. In a little corner of my heart I still hoped it might be that simple.
If I’d thought it would have helped, I would have taken him into my own bed and cuddled him all night till he didn’t look so lost. In an instant, I would have. Because he said he liked ‘Helen’ better than Nellie; because he was proud and brave – and so vulnerable it made my throat ache. Because his eyes were grey and wide and troubled like the sea, and met mine even in his shame. God, yes, I would have.
I finished helping my mother and set the table; then I went outside again and waited for him by the gate.
He pedaled slowly up our hill as dusk fell. His face was shuttered, till he saw me. He raised his eyebrows then, as if surprised to find himself waited-for. I had opened the gate, and he free-wheeled into the garden and braked carefully on the gravel path. When he dismounted and leaned the bike back where it came from against the wall, I flung my arms around him. He hesitated for a second and I felt him tremble. Then he hugged me back, swiftly and hard. He felt like a big bird, a heron or a hawk, all bones. His wool tunic rubbed scratchily against my cheek.
“How was your interview?” I asked him, taking his hand to lead him into the house as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He looked at me, and at the doorway as we crossed inside it, as if he were seeing it the way I willed him to, a place of shelter and comfort, warmth and sustenance, safety and healing. I almost saw a sign above the door that said Take hope, ye who enter here. It seemed to require an effort of will for him to come into all that, to accept it, but I had hold of his hand and he could hardly refuse. In our narrow hallway he took off his cap and hung it on a hook on the hall-stand, beside my mother’s best felt hat. He wiped his feet with care on the mat, like a good guest, not wanting to muddy the brown-and-cream tile. Then he grinned suddenly, the first time I had seen him do so: “I g—got the job,” he said.
I jumped up and down, clapping. My mother came out of the kitchen with floury hands and he repeated the news for her, adding, “He asked me to s—stay for d–dinner, b–but I told him I already h—h—had p–plans.”
“Oh, I’m so pleased,” said my mother, and she looked it, too. “Congratulations!”
“I really n—needed it – the job,” he said. “I d–didn’t even have enough for a return ticket!”
“Where to?” asked my mother, wiping her hands on her pinny.
His face clouded. “G–god, where was I? Nowhere special. Somewhere. B–Barnstaple?”
“Well, you’re here now,” I said stoutly, and led him into the kitchen after my mother. Her hair was falling-down. He stood back against the china-cupboard, where he would be out of the way. Dinner was smelling as wonderful as I had hoped: onions browned in dripping, and the cabbage sizzling and sighing in the pan.
My mother seemed suddenly flustered by the modesty of what we had to offer. “You should have stayed up at the big house,” she said, “we’d have understood. He’d have fed you a proper dinner. Brandy and cigars afterwards, I’ll be bound. Not like this.”
“N–not like this, no,” he agreed, his eyes shining as they swept round our kitchen. But he didn’t mean it the same way she did.
“Well, you’ll have plenty of chances to dine with him, I expect,” she added briskly, the way she did when she was hurt.
“You d–don’t u—understand,” he said. There was a hesitation in his voice beyond the stammer. She heard it and stared at him; understood. Her cheeks flared. She pressed her lips together.
“This is nicer,” he said, softly. “Here. With you and Helen. W–with friends.”
“It’s just bubble-and-squeak,” said my mother, with that
note in her voice that was really saying it’s
all I’ve got.
“I l–love b–bubble-and-squeak,” he said. “I l–like being welcome.”
“Oh,” said my mother, “oh — yes.”
“Yes,” he said, coming to rub his hands at our fire, his cheeks as bright as hers. His trousers and underwear hung on a wooden rack to dry beside it. My mother had washed them out for him while the potatoes were boiling. He saw them there and flinched, then said “Thank you” anyway.
“You’re welcome,” she said, “don’t mention it.”
He looked down. “I h–hate it,” he said. “That you h—had to.”
“It’s not much to do,” said my mother gently, “besides all you’ve done – all you’ve given. Beyond what you had to give, even. It wasn’t any trouble at all.”
He turned his face away then. My mother hesitated for a second, then we both gathered him in our arms. And, miracle of miracles, he let us.
“It’s all right,” she said, “my dear.” And for a few blessed moments, it was. I had my face pressed against his chest, where his little medal-ribbon was. I could feel his heart thump.
Then she had to go and stir the bubble-and-squeak before it burned, and the moment slipped away from us all and I didn’t know how to get it back, though I ached to even as I knew better. I let him go when she did, not wanting to hold on too long, any more than you want to imprison a wild bird that has just flown into your hand to feed. I smiled at him stoutly and pulled out his chair with a flourish, so he would know which place was his. He took it and picked-up the napkin I had placed beside the plate. I had folded it like a swan, as I had learned from my friend Myrtle who sometimes waited up at the big house. He looked at it thoughtfully, noting its shape. “Miss Helen’s handiwork, I think,” he said.
I smiled.
“Are these wings?” he asked me, lifting the folded-down corners gently.
I nodded.
“How beautiful,” he said, “ — how clever of you. I like swans. I like all birds, actually.” He unfolded it with the same care, smoothing it out onto his lap, our poor scrap of blue-and-white checkered table-linen that had seen too many years of service to stay crisp and unblemished.
Like him.
And he didn’t stammer at all, when he spoke to me. Not once. That smile flickered again at the corners of his mouth. There was a shyness to it, as if it was an effort for him to remember how. Out of nowhere I wanted to kiss it. “A young lady of many parts,” he said, and it was my turn to be thoroughly flustered.
My mother leaned over us and set a huge steaming dish down in the middle of the table. Her cheeks were over-flushed and a sheen of sweat glazed her brow. A lock of hair clung damply to her cheek; the rest was a chestnut snarl halfway down her back. I saw her reddened knuckles, and the half-circles of darker cloth under her armpits. Her apron was spotted with grease. At first I was embarrassed, wanting her to look her best, upset that she didn’t. But then I saw his face, and I saw that her having gone to all this trouble was what he was seeing; the dinner was merely the result, and her sweat made her human, like him.
“There,” she said, “I told you, it’s only bubble-and-squeak, but there’s plenty, and I hope it’s tasty.” She put her hands up to her head as she spoke, trying to contain the runaway torrent of her hair. Suddenly she looked like a woman in a painting, the gesture one of swift unconscious grace. He noticed that too: I saw him. His nostrils flared. Then he looked down at his plate. Completely unaware of her effect on him, my mother untied her apron and took her place opposite us. “I’ll serve, shall I?” she asked briskly, and leaned over again to dish him up a big helping, answering her own question when he did not. I think he was trying to say “P—please,” but had got stuck on the ‘p’. Our eyes took her in, the deep swell of her bosom as she leaned and the way her frock fell open a little at the neck, not in a vulgar way but just enough to make a starving man stare for a second before tearing his gaze away. I looked longer; after all, she was my mother and I had every right to. The lace edge of her camisole showed a little, and inside its modest confines the womanly shape of her seemed barely contained, trying to escape in spite of her, just like her hair.
It wasn’t fashionable to be generously made; boyish figures were the rage. But he seemed to like her that way, a lot, from the way he flushed then. The ladies’ magazines might show long slim lines and drop-waists, but men still looked for more than that, it seemed. I wondered if I might ever have such a voluptuous figure, or even the hint of it. As yet my hopes were unfulfilled, my chest as flat as a pancake; my dresses needed no darts. I wondered if breasts would get in the way, once I had them, and whether I would wish just as fervently for them to go away as I now did to possess them.
I had watched other men follow my mother with their eyes, and felt disgust; this was the first time I was pleased that someone noticed. It also occurred to me that where the village louts might leer and ogle, Harry Oliver had seen and then looked away: like a gentleman. Though the telltale flags in his cheeks gave him away.
And then she served me and herself, and we said grace and ate the bubble-and-squeak with chatter in-between an easy chain of silent pauses. We were all hungry.
She had changed from the drab dark skirt and plain waist she was wearing when we went into the village. She must have run upstairs while I was waiting outside. It lent our modest dinner a sense of occasion, for she had put-on a green frock I liked with creamy ovals like cameo brooches all over it. It had a V-neck with a slender collar and jade-green buttons down the front. I thought she looked elegant, now that she had taken off her apron. Pinned up again, her hair caught the lamplight. Tendrils framed her neck. I saw her with his eyes, how beautiful she was. She still looked tired, with laughter-lines by her eyes, but I could see past that tonight to her bright essence. It was an inner glow that illuminated everything she said and did. My mother is real, I thought. What you see is what you get: she does not pretend. I had sometimes wished her more sophisticated, comparing her with the mothers of my friends. I did not think so now. I felt proud of her.
Harry Oliver ate quickly and with purpose, as if he couldn’t get the food into him fast enough, until he realized he was doing so and made himself sit back. “This is g—good,” he said, “I h–haven’t had b—b–bubble and squeak in a l—l— l— ”
Silence.
He drew breath and tried again: “L— l— ” It was no use, the word refused to come. He swallowed and sighed, his eyes fierce with effort and the humiliation of failure. I wanted to finish the word, but I couldn’t. Something in his eyes wouldn’t let me. I hadn’t the right: it wasn’t my sentence to finish. This was his struggle, his locked throat. I tried to look encouraging, in a mild offhand way.
My mother put her hand on top of his.
“L—long time,” he managed in a whisper.
My mother poured out a cup of tea from our old brown pot that had sat brewing by her elbow, sugared and stirred it and pushed it towards him. “Well done,” she said, “ – here, wet your whistle.”
She poured mine and her own next. We always had tea with our dinner. She wasn’t Temperance, but she would never have drunk beer or cider by herself, so we had none in the house. We lived on tea. I gulped some down and went back to my food. Major Oliver blew on his – she had put less milk in than mine – and took what must have been a scalding swallow. It seemed to bring him pleasure, for he repeated it.
My mother smiled with her eyes, and he did the same back over the rim of his mug. Her smiles were infectious: you couldn’t help returning them. She looked about thirteen, when she smiled. “You didn’t stammer before – all of this, did you,” she said straightforwardly.
“N–no,” he said, rubbing the handle of his mug with his thumb. “B—but I d—do now – something d—dreadful, a—at times… ! C–can’t seem to sh–sh–shake it off.”
“That’s all right,” she smiled. “You’re still perfectly understandable. Don’t be so bothered by it — we’re not, are we, Nellie?”
“Of course not,” I said. “Besides, you know, you didn’t stammer at all when you were talking to me just now. About the napkin. Just with me.”
“I—I d–didn’t?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, as if this came as a revelation to him.
“Eat up,” said my mother, “don’t be polite. Have it while it’s hot.”
We did. Bubble-and-squeak may be a lowly meal, or at least have a humble reputation, but I always thought it the food of kings. If I were queen, I thought, I should still want to have it served once in a while. She had shaved the end of a bacon-flitch into it, and been generous with the onion; and she had cooked it a long time, so that it was full of little golden crispy bits. The cabbage was substantial but not overpowering. It was as good as it could be; what better thing can be said of a dish than that? Of course, if we had been more in funds, it would have been nice to have a couple of sausages each to flank it, or even a dish of baked mutton-chops – but the bubble-and-squeak was hearty and tasty enough to stand alone, when from necessity it must. I was not ashamed of serving it to a guest, not the way my mother made it; nor did he seem to find any fault with it. We cleaned our plates.
They were older plates, plain and creamy with chips out of the rim here and there. I put my knife and fork together as I had been taught to when I was finished and pushed my plate away from me a little. “Thank you for a nice dinner, mummy,” I said, as I had also been taught to do.
“Yes indeed,” he said, echoing my words and my movements, “thank you v–very m—much.”
“You’re welcome,” said my mother.
“L–look,” said Harry Oliver, “we l—l—liked i–i–t so m–much, we’ve e—eaten the p–pattern off the p–plates! R–right, Helen?”
It was a modest little joke, but that was beside the point. What mattered was that he had felt at ease enough with us to venture it at all. It came from the days before each word became such a struggle that he stopped saying anything he didn’t have to. I felt as if a deer had come to us and laid its head in our lap.
My mother must have too, for she said nothing, but stood up with over-bright eyes to clear the plates. Harry Oliver was too quick for her, though: he had them stacked and half-way to the sink. He moved with a swift animal grace, when he forgot himself. He tapped the side of the kettle next, and finding it hot, poured its contents into the sink and began to wash the plates as if he were born to the task. My mother moved to stop him, and I put my hand out. ‘Let him,’ I mouthed to her, pointing, and her gaze slid to the drying clothes that she had washed-out for him, flags of his shame, and she saw what I was trying to tell her. Here at the sink, in this menial chore, he might redeem himself a little. Who wants to be passive and needy, when they can contribute instead? It was just washing-up. And it was something he could do with the same natural everyday it’s-nothing manner with which she had rescued his wretched wet things. It felt odd, having a uniformed Army officer standing at our old sink and scrubbing away, and in another way it felt right that he should be there. It made an unusual end to a most unusual day, where strange things became normal.
There was a soft sound – he was whistling to himself as he scrubbed the skillet. It was a gentle, round whistle, not the irritating kind. I strained to catch the tune, recognized my own favourite: ‘And when I tell them… how beautiful you are, they’ll never believe me… ’
My mother and I sat very still, so as not to break the spell. She wore the look she did when she looked at me and thought I did not see her, tender and wistful. Then I realized he was running out of room on the draining-board, and I got up quietly and began to dry the plates to leave space for the big frying-pan in his hands. He looked happy, lips pursed, up to his elbows in soapy water, sleeves turned-back and turning the blackened iron pan over and over to catch every last greasy spot. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my mother usually just wiped it out and left it till next time, so as to keep it seasoned. Neither did she.
His technique was clearly practiced, since he managed to splash his uniform not at all. He set the skillet down to drain, and took the other tea-towel from the handle of the stove; companionably, like co-conspirators, we dried the last of the cutlery together.
What had he done that was so gallant and so dangerous they had given him the Military Cross for it? What suffering lay between then and now, fetching him up here to dry our chipped dishes like a footman? He liked order, I noticed: as he set each fork down it was perfectly straight and aligned with its fellows. Only when the forks were done did he turn to the knives. When the world is chaotic and threatening in unforeseeable ways, order possesses a special beauty. There is goodness in it, and hope. I saw the pattern emerging, and took only the big kitchen knives and wooden spoons on myself so as not to upset his arrangement. When everything was in a line along the dresser, he folded his towel once lengthways and returned it to its place.
“What a treat,” said my mother, “being waited-on. I hate to make more work for you, my dears, but if you wanted pudding you’ll have it all to do over…”
He gave a slight bow. “My p—pleasure,” he said.
“Pudding?” I cried, simultaneously, “we’re having a sweet?”
“Well” said my mother, “it is a special occasion, wouldn’t you say, a guest for dinner? I thought so – at least, enough to warrant stewed rhubarb – and baked apples and custard…”
Both? Stewed rhubarb and baked apples? How had I failed to smell them cooking? How long had I lingered outside, waiting for him to come back? Long enough for my mother to pop the last of our hoard of last-year’s apples in the oven, obviously. And make a jug of custard and set it aside, and stew up a pan of rhubarb too… simple enough things, but still a treat. I was greedy, overjoyed. I flung my arms round her neck and kissed her. My mother smiled her little smile to herself, the one she kept for moments of private triumph. Our hunted deer wore a bright look. “C—custard,” he said, “and f–f–fruit? How w—wonderful!”
My mother put the dishes on the table and we helped ourselves. The custard had a skin on it, just the way I liked it. I cut it in half with my spoon and put the rest on our guest’s dish.
We ate our sweet, with little scraps of unimportant
conversation. They were issued Bird’s
Custard in
I grinned back.
“I f—feel safe here,” said Major Oliver, quietly.
I tasted the sharpness of the rhubarb. In all my life I had never felt anything but safe. I took it for granted, the same way I didn’t consider where my next breath was coming from or whether the ground was solid under my feet. I tried to imagine that knowing gone. And terror in its place, out of nowhere. Unreasoning terror, crippling dread. But I couldn’t, I could only think about it. I couldn’t feel it, even though I tried. I was too safe to be capable of tasting it, even. But the rhubarb was suddenly tart, coating my tongue and teeth.
“Stay,” said my mother.
He flushed.
“They – they’ve given me the l-l-lodge, actually,” he said, “the n-north one — so I c-can’t be too long — I’ve g—got to go meet the housekeeper — ” His voice trailed off. Had she even meant that? I could see him asking himself, when it was too late and he had already answered the invitation as if that was what she had intended.
“Oh, well, never mind,” said my mother softly, “though it would have been nice to have a man about the place again – I would’ve liked a nice quiet lodger… still, you’ll be coming over for tea, won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, ever so quickly, as if she might change her mind if he hesitated, “I — I’d l-like that. A lot. I could h—help you around the g—garden — — your f–fruit trees need a good pruning — ”
“Oh,” said my mother, “I suppose they do… I’ve neglected them, really, since Dad died… ”
“Just n—need a l—little c—care,” he said, “they’ll b-bear twice as well next year if you c–cut them back…”
I was curious: I had taken him for a town lad. “How do you know?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound cheeky.
“We were b–billeted in a f—farm,” he said, “outside Loos — I h–helped… b-before it — ” Silence fell. He looked away. “It was shelled, afterwards,” he added softly. “N—nothing left. T-torn-up roots and w—washing on a line…. The c-clothes-prop stayed upright, god knows — house a pile of rubble, and madame’s sh—sh—shell-pink drawers f—fluttering — she’d have hated that — l—like a f-flag… for an hour or two ——— ”
“Why?” I asked, before I understood, “why would she have cared, when her house was all blown to bits?”
“Because she w–was respectable,” he said, “f—fiercely modest – she w—wouldn’t even hang her s—stockings out to dry when the lads were about…. Only behind the garden-wall… she m—moved the clothesline, you see… b—but the h—house t-took a direct hit, and the w—wall collapsed, and only the p—pigsty was left standing, but she’d gone to her daughter’s by then, thank God, so…. ”
I was biting my lip. “It wasn’t funny, was it,” I said.
“Well, no,” he said, “but it was — in a way — so absurd —— but she would have m—minded terribly, so no — b—but yes…”
My mother had her fingertips over her mouth, the way she did when she was trying not to smile. It didn’t work, though.
“Why didn’t she take them with her,” I asked, “when she went to her daughter’s? If she minded so much?”
“I w—wasn’t there,” he said, “I s—suppose she left in a hurry — ”
I could see them, the way he had described them, poor private banner of surrender, elastic-legged (I thought), with a shiny satin appliqué rose, perhaps…. were they the baggy everyday lambswool jersey-knit ones, the kind that shrink if the water’s too hot? Flaccid on the line, suspended from their pegs, and then filling slowly with the breeze and blushing to be so exposed. Fluttering and wringing their hands (legs) in distress. “Poor things,” I said.
“It was an odd sight,” he said, “while it l—lasted. Hardly the worst. J—just a m–moment of p—pathos. You f—feel like a v-voyeur, seeing something you sh—shouldn’t be seeing … The-the way the side of a house looks all inside-out when the rest of it’s gone and you can see the w-wallpaper and w-where the stairs were — ”
“You’re a good storyteller,” said my mother, more softly still.
“I can see the wallpaper,” I said, “when you said that. Yellow. With flowers on.”
“Blue,” he said, “but you’re r-right about the f—flowers. Small ones. All over. And a big dado, w—with b—blue hydrangeas and c—cabbage roses. Hanging down in strips. And p–part of a b–bedroom set upstairs, in the c—corner where the floor’s still hanging…. The b—basin on the n–nightstand ——— c—curtains at the windows… ” He got up suddenly and walked about in agitation.
“What?” I asked, before my mother could stop me.
“A crib,” he said harshly, “what’s l–left of it… smashed —— on t—top of everything in the cellar… I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“No,” said my mother, “don’t be sorry — ”
He was already half-way out into the hall. “I’ll g—give you n—nightmares,” he said, “I’ve said too much. Sh—shouldn’t s—say those things.”
I hadn’t had a nightmare since I was a small child. He looked as if he had them every night. Behind those haunted eyes fluttered things stranger than I could imagine. Shell-pink bloomers on a line – and an empty cradle? What about all that famous mud? And the mustard-gas? They must lie beyond the visions of the farmer’s wife’s underwear… which might be large, generous even – but surely not substantial enough to hide them.
I knew better than to ask.
He was breathing rapidly, in some distress. His hands opened and closed into fists.
My mother was folding his clothes. They were dry now and nicely aired by the stove. She put them into his hands, and took hold of his arm briefly. “Please come back,” she said, “won’t you? Don’t be a stranger.”
He made a strangled sound in his throat, but no words came out.
“Thursday,” she said, “we always have a jam-tart on Thursday. I pop it in the oven when I’m finished baking the bread. Come at four — you will, won’t you!”
He nodded jerkily.
She let him go.
He disappeared into the evening, his shoulders hunched.
My mother shut the door slowly. I thought of him making his way down the dusky lane. “Do you think he’ll be all right?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but if you mean do I think he’ll find his way, yes, I think he will.”
“Why did he leave like that?” I felt disappointed by his abrupt departure.
My mother didn’t seem troubled, though. “It was time – he’d come far enough out – for now.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling as she stacked the bowls from our pudding.
I felt reassured. My mother was a good judge of such things. She put the spoons carefully in the bowls and walked over to the sink.
“I could see the house,” I said, “with the wallpaper and the place where the stairs used to be.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I think he’s a poet,” I said.
She smiled at me. “Perhaps,” she said. Other mothers would have snorted, or said ‘I doubt it!’ , I thought.
“Drawers,” I said.
“Shell-pink ones,” said my mother, and burst out laughing.
“Did he mean us to laugh?”
“Oh, I think so,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t tell a story like that without a bit of a smile.”
We washed-up the last of the dishes, my mother washing
and me drying. I lined the spoons up
beside his military-style knives and forks, a small parade of silverware on our
dresser. Well, not silverware, that was
a polite turn of phrase: these were
bone-handled,
Did it feel triumphant to him, like my stocking-drawer when I had just tidied it? — or resilient and virtuous as a crisply-made bed? No: it was a stand against the whirlwind – that in some safe corner of the world there could be a small perfect symmetry, composed of biddable, familiar things which let themselves to be picked-up and arranged.
And people tactful enough to say nothing, while you arranged them: that was the other part, wasn’t it. You had to have that, too. People who would look you in the eye as if you were normal.
People who would sit beside you on the ground and stir your tea ever so softly. People who were on your side, who understood.
I knew he would come back, then.
Instead of Harry Oliver, though, on Thursday, came a note
slipped under the door to greet us when we came home from the village, in the
morning, while the loaves were rising. Dear Friends, it said in a quick, spiky
hand, I hate to cry-off something so pleasant as a visit to you, but really I
have no choice. My employer has just now
requested that I work till late this evening.
He is expecting a gentleman from
“Oh,” said my mother, “that’s a pity. What a shame. Never mind.”
I went out in the lane and kicked pebbles till the toes of my shoes were dusty and scraped. I felt hollow with disappointment. I was almost out of earshot when I heard my mother calling me, and went back still dragging my feet. She had punched-down the loaves and set them up to bake, and the kitchen smelt the way I loved it — but I was too cast-down to care. “I thought we’d write a reply,” she said, “would you like to run it over there?”
Out came the pen and ink, and our best stationery, the kind with the little lines all through the paper. If you held it up to the light, it said “Piccadilly Bond.”
“You write,” said my mother.
My writing wasn’t as flowing and lively as his, but I was proud of my penmanship: I had won prizes in my class. I dipped the pen, my steel-nibbed one from school, and made the words carefully. We chose what to say together.
Dear Major Oliver,
Of course we
understand even though we are disappointed. (I almost knew how to spell
that without help. We turned the second
‘s’ into the ‘a’ after my mother said ‘oops’ with a smile.) We are
happy to hear you are making yourself so useful to Sir Archibald. It is good news that he is taking an interest
in his library again. Please come again
as soon as you are able. We are glad to
have a new friend. You do not need an
invitation — just come. Good luck with
all those books! (That was my idea.)
With all best wishes from your friends,
Winifred and Helen Pasley
I was going to lick the envelope all the way shut, but my mother reminded me it wasn’t necessary with a hand-delivered letter, only a posted one — so instead I tucked the flap under and wrote Major H. Oliver, M.C. on the front. I wasn’t sure if he would like the M.C. included, but it was correct form, after all. Miss Dimpsey was very strict about that. I hoped he would understand I had put it in to be correct, not to mock him. Then I thought what a shame it was, that someone with a decoration for gallantry should be so affected by the War that he ended-up like the Major, wetting himself, his nerves all gone – till it seemed unkind to mention the gallantry, as if that had been lost, or belonged to someone else altogether.
On the way I picked a bouquet of queen-anne’s-lace, foxgloves, red and white campion, rose-bay-willow-herb, knapweed, vetch, tall daisies, harebells, pink lady’s-slipper and a prize bee-orchid from a spot in the hedgerow known only to us. I don’t know why I did, but I just wanted to. I felt sure that he would appreciate it. I had noticed him noticing things. I think he noticed everything, like I did. A long brick wall stretched the mile along the road between our lane and the big gate to the estate on the Wickham Road. I walked alongside it on the verge, noticing the ivy crowding over its top here and there – a sight you never would have seen before the War! – and the pleasant green stains of lichen and moss softening the dull old red bricks.
The north lodge came in sight around the next bend, a
tiny canary-coloured octagonal building like a lozenge or a cachou at the gate,
with its companion south lodge opposite.
I knocked at the door, not expecting to find anyone home, and opened it
when I heard no reply. It was a quaint
little place, just a pair of rooms, very much as I remembered, the convenience
of the inhabitant’s daily life clearly being of less importance than the
pleasing shape desired by the architect.
The front door was in the middle, so one room opened off each side of it
from a tiny triangular hall. Both doors
were open – it seemed less cramped that way – and I saw a bed so tightly made
it looked as if it had never been slept in, and the miniature sitting-room with
a stone sink in one of the corners.
There were, of course, more corners than one usually found in a
room. Each of the three end facets had a
small window whose latticed glass distorted the view in an odd, old-fashioned
way. Faded old-gold plush curtains and a
shabby hearth-rug provided the only softness:
the pair of chairs were plain well-used wooden
In its glory days it must have graced the big house: even with its missing pieces and swollen, cracked edges, it was a charming piece. I gazed in enchantment. Birds with long tails faced one another on a swag of foliage inside a checkerboard border. I had never seen it uncovered before. The only other time I had been in here, when the under-housekeeper kindly washed and bound-up my skinned knee, it had worn a frowsty cloak weighed down by a heavy fringe of bobbles. I remembered fingering them when she had sat me up there to tend to me. Now that sage-green slab of ugliness lay discarded (but folded, of course) underneath, revealing the glory it had been hiding. Was it a hundred years old? Probably. I ran my hand over its ruined surface. There was not a speck of dust on it; it smelt of fresh wax. So he liked it too, then –?
I found a chipped enamel jug under the sink, the kind with a white body and black rim. The pump was outside: I filled it with water and then my wild bouquet. The queen-anne’s-lace had already started to droop, but the foxgloves stood tall and straight between the feathery spires of rose-bay-willow-herb, and the vetch trailed charmingly down one side. Oxeye daisies made a cheerful white splotch here and there. I tucked the bee-orchid right in the centre at the front where he would be sure to see it, and the delicate pink spires of the lady’s-slipper on either side with the harebells nodding over them. I found a chipped plate in the sink – was everything here cast-off and damaged? Yes; just like the new tenant. At least he would fit in. I set it under the jug so no drips would further mar the table, and propped our note in front of it.
He had left a small stack of books to one side, the bottom one his marbled note-book and the top two small volumes like Everyman classics — more poetry, perhaps? I liked the idea of him reading poetry, somehow. I didn’t peek at the titles, though; that would have been nosy. I set the jug of flowers so that it balanced with them on the other side. Pleased, I stood back and surveyed the effect. It was unkempt but joyous and welcoming. Like us. In the small room, it was not something he would overlook.
I ran all the way home.
He wrote to thank me. His letter was short and had a drawing of the bee-orchid in the top left-hand corner instead of an address. He said he was not sure if it was the surprise, the beauty or my kindness that moved him the most. He left it on our kitchen-table, just like I did ours to him, and his offering beside it: a feather soft as ash, barred grey and umber, and the fragile ellipse of a blackbird’s egg-shell. It seemed even more special broken; you could see how thin it was, how miraculous that it held that sky-coloured curve. It was as if he spoke a language and I understood it. I read the letter to my mother and she closed her eyes briefly the way she did when she was smelling something nice. Then she nodded. “You could tell he had lovely manners,” she said softly, adding, “ — a gentleman.”
Later, after I went to bed, I came downstairs again for a drink of water. She was stroking the feather against her cheek, and staring at the little piece of shell. She looked up when I tiptoed into the kitchen in my bare feet, and gave an embarrassed smile. “A tawny owl,” she said, “I reckon. Not too common, hereabouts. Special, that.”
“Yes,” I said.
Pensively she smoothed out the raggedy gaps in the feather where the edges had separated, so that they joined again and were seamless. She was always patient and careful with things like that, understanding how they fitted-together so that her mending was invisible. She intuited angles and planes, brought together frayed edges without a trace. That pleased her more than leaving behind a signature on her work. My mother was too modest for that. Her darning was exemplary, her hemming so discreet you didn’t know it was there. Funny really, since in other ways she was untidy and even chaotic, but her fingers spoke of a love for things as they were and as they might be. She was both carefree and careful, sometimes by turns and sometimes all at once. Her hair was untidy, her hands steady and skilled. I wondered about the contradictions of her nature like that sometimes, but always gave-up trying to fathom them. She was my mother.
I dreamed of owl’s-wings, softer than flakes of ash.
* * * * * * *
Later, after the police came asking all those questions, I found out some of the things I had been wondering about. I would much rather have heard from him directly, but the marble-covered notebook had to do. I felt awful reading it, as if I shouldn’t – I knew he would hate it, if he ever found out. But what else was I to do, under the circumstances? I thought it might help explain things. I didn’t want them to see it till I knew what was in it. Though it wasn’t any help, really, not in that way. But I expected that – which was why I hid it, and didn’t tell anybody – not even my mother. That he wouldn’t have been able to bear, I was thinking as I read on, not with the things in it about her. Some of the things he wrote were desperately private, and I had no business reading them, but I was looking for answers.
There weren’t any – not the sort I was looking for.
But he never would have left it behind on purpose, though. That was all anyone needed to know.
It began about a year earlier, a daily list of his symptoms, basically, with the occasional comment. Apparently he had started to keep it on doctor’s orders, since with some kind of record-keeping it might be easier to see a slow trend towards recovery. At first the entries were terse, in a kind of shorthand. ‘Sp very bad’ was without question ‘speech’, since it usually occurred in conjunction with a brief note about some situation requiring it. ‘The usual’ had me baffled; I eventually decided it must be the nightmares. Later these became n.m. – the usual, or n.m. and a subject – so I was right. ‘P self’ began as an almost everyday occurrence; the first time I read it I knew right away, and my heart turned-over for him. ‘P self pajamas’ was not as bad as ‘P self at dinner – chap behind dropped tray.’ That was while he was still in the hospital. ‘P self uniform’ was the sole entry for one day.
Gradually, as the months went by, the entries grew in length and began to include a few longer thoughts. At some point early-on he left the convalescent home, though this entry (when I realized its significance and went back looking for it) read simply ‘Out. Bus to H. What now?’ Often there were no dates, for weeks at a time, just the day of the week. I could only guess what season it was by his occasional observations on ploughing, or swallows gathering, or the temperature. The date, it seemed, was irrelevant – as if time outside didn’t matter. This was the journal of someone isolated, apart. There were few names. Days passed with no mention of his speaking to anybody, unless it was ‘bad’ or ‘v. bad.’ As if lacking anyone else to be comfortable with, he began to write more to himself. The entries had a kind of excruciating honesty, that almost hurt at first till you ended-up admiring its unflinching quality. This was someone with a mind and body that betrayed him at the worst moments, and he wrote about both straightforwardly. How else could he have put it? He seemed under few illusions, either about himself or anybody else.
He asked questions that had no answer: how long? And, another day, Christ, how much longer? In-between were notes about things he had seen that delighted him: ‘Mother with child, in the waiting-room, tousle-headed bairn, wailed till she turned her back in embarrassment to feed it. Got up & left, of course. Felt intensely moved – why? A normal sight – but sweet. Have not been party to such intimacy for ever.’ And: ‘a dog-fox in the early morning, trotting down the lane.’ Another time, it was: ‘Heard carol-singers across the street – Holly & Ivy. Distant, haunting, couldn’t get it out of head afterwards.’ And, the next day, ‘Christmas Eve. Messiah, Durham Cathedral choir. Didn’t know if cd stand it – but went anyway. Kept trying to hear the individual notes that made up the music — refuse to allow it to be a cacophony – I will not let this take music from me too —! Managed first 2 acts. Wept like a baby. Walked back.’
But it was also a chronicle of failures, setbacks, false starts, rejections. ‘Landlady knocked loudly @ 7 am – thrown out.’ ‘Worked 2 dys, paid 10/6d. Sp very bad. Customers impatient, prop. frowning. Not needed today.’ – followed by the next day’s entry, again just two words: ‘Let go.’
Till the day he came to us.
DIARY
Tuesday. Where am
I, anyway?
Third-class carriage, stinks – bad buying ticket, couldn’t get out name of place. Starts with a W, the worst. Queue behind me v. impatient. Christ I hate this. How many jobs does this make? When do I take no for an answer & stop trying? Train journeys are rotten. Staring out of train window last hour, thinking shall I give up & be a tramp? Or just finish it? Can’t do that, not fair to all the chaps who wished they had my ticket. Think about it though. Hard to write – jolting. Head aches.
Midnight — V. strange day indeed. Went from bad to worse in town square after getting off train, v. bad panic episode. P self again. Total helplessness & humiliation. Rescued by mother & child. Cleaned-up & sent on my way to interview, managed to make a good enough impression to get the job, god knows how. Can’t sleep though. Not the usual ——— my rescuer has copper hair & thighs like a goddess. Tried not to stare at her bosom. She blushed when I failed. 2 a.m. — Still can’t sleep. 4 a.m. Christ, haven’t let a woman affect me in how long? Can’t stop thinking about taking off her clothes. Shame on me. A fine way to repay a kindness. They are so easy together. I am so starved for that. Don’t think I will ever feel easy. Have forgotten what it felt like even. The child is dear. Under her wide-eyed stare I almost feel human. 5 a.m. — out of my mind with arousal, crawling skin, trembling. What happened to keeping that at bay? A little kindness & I am wide-open to every feeling again. Jesus Christ. 6.30 a.m. Back from walk. Baby rabbits in the dew, grass grey, green where I walked. Shoes wet. Less jumpy today, I hope. Pheasant rocketed yards away & I didn’t piss self. Shook for 10 mins, though. Walk helped curb feelings — till I see her again.
Wednesday. Getting better. A calm day, can feel all the books like a hand on my chest, ‘steady on old chap.’ Sir A. cross-grained, heartbroken underneath it without a doubt. Sp manageable with him. No great sense of urgency in that tall clock-ticking room. Words come out, more or less. Motheaten tiger-skin rug on floor, glass eyes watching. They could use a polish. Christ I want to see her again. Don’t trust self though. Books hopelessly out-of-order, probably from years of spring-cleaning. Many upside-down. A bound catalogue useless till they are sorted — cards? I like this place. Lodge tiny, manageable. & Winifred ——— Christ, what does one say, even? That must be why I have never done it — be honest, not even before I broke down — never did know what on earth to say — stammer or not! Even before the War. I can see it now — Winifred, voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Slap (deserved). 2 a.m. — somewhat sleepless. The ghoulies are back. Cup of tea? Yes. They have left me a pitcher of milk with a lace cover to keep out flies, like grandmama’s. Ought to use it. 3.45 a.m. — still see it. God when will I ever just sleep? Feel as if I am back in the hospital sometimes — except for the tea. 6 a.m. — gave in to wild sweet thoughts of Winifred & fell dead asleep after release. Slept 2 hrs straight. Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame… a helpless lust. But less alone with a face, a person. A little. Still the most god-awful loneliest self-loathing — & to be the object of such is hardly what she deserves.
Thursday. Wanted to see W very badly but Sir A. had other plans. Helen left a pretty posy on my table. All sorts, common & rare — lady’s-slipper, harebells, vetch — loosestrife – yellow dead-nettle – campion, red & wh – foxgloves, those spots! – beaut. orchids, 2 kinds – fireweed – I imagine that’s growing all over there, now, being the first to come back where the ground is disturbed? Or is it poisoned for all time? Blasted like a landscape from hell – how will it ever recover!!? Can there be farmers there again one day, & crops, & children? Dragon’s-teeth! There must be tons of unexploded ordinance — and all the bones — ! Horses — men — friends – enemies – all jumbled together. A dreadful ossuary. What will they think, when they dig it up a thousand years from now? That we were mad ——— ! Wrote Helen a thank-you note with a sketch of the bee-orchid. Will take it tomorrow. Tired. Sleep tonight? Perhaps ——————
Friday. Apparently have upset the under-cook in the lodge opposite. The usual. She was sorry to complain, she said, but it couldn’t be stood, it was so horrible. Well, yes, it is. I wouldn’t shriek if it wasn’t. What do men do that have families? Who share houses, even their wife’s bed? Pour cold water? Were banshees just poor old soldiers all the time? Or their ghosts — ! Can still keep things here, but need to look for somewhere else to sleep — or try to. God I hate this. Hate it hate it hate it. So bloody ashamed. Crying like a child. Feel like one — first thought on waking in terror, have I wet the bed? Pliny today, & on to the Greeks. Found an owl’s feather & a blackbird’s egg-shell – second brood, must be – & brought them for Helen, left on the table like she did the posy. Nobody locks their doors hereabouts. Lingered in the kitchen just to be there again. Sanctuary ——— ! not just a medieval notion. Found an old folly up on some heath-land, enough shelter to sleep. Or try to. Let us say to spend the night. Romantickally remote – no neighbours but spiders & nightjars — shouldn’t bother anybody.
Saturday. Too cold for lust — shivered all night. Still prefer hard earth to a mattress – feels safer. Why? Ground rocky, though — black-and-blue this morning. Get bracken? Blundered into W and Helen while out in the village. Completely tongue-tied, certain every impure thought from the other night was written all over my face. She asked me to tea again. Nodded assent, gulping for air. Why? Why not? Why not now? So — went home with them. Easy? Yes, & also the hardest thing I have asked myself to do lately – to be under anyone’s eyes. If they are sympathetic, somehow that makes it worse. I want to hide. Still find company hard – feel so bloody exposed. As if they will find out I am only pretending to be whole. But — they already know, so where’s the secret? Christ don’t let it be out of pity, though. A bad startle in the woods – puked afterwards. Discreetly, I hope. Helen told me where to find the bee-orchis growing — must remember to look for it. She liked the blue eggshell. She likes owls. Still could barely speak but we looked at a thrush’s anvil together, the three of us. Why write just W when her name is so sweet? Winifred — Winifred — Winifred — how very Anglo-saxon. I can see her in one of those gowns from the Bayeux Tapestry, red or green, the line of her breasts and thighs under the plain woolen stuff. Oh, stop it! A good walk into town, tired afterwards. Dinner w/ Sir A. — a gloomy affair.
Sunday. Invited to church — refused. Perhaps it gives offence, but could not go through with it today. Feels too great a hypocrisy to stand there and pretend to pray with nothing but hatred for God in my heart – that is, if he exists. How!!? Sorry, grandfather. How did you keep that certainty? Must have helped to have died before this mess, I suppose. Folly really quite charming — 18th c., probably, mixture of brick inside and rough stone out, a small tower in one corner. Bit tumbledown but safe I hope. Crows, wallflowers, a bramble-bush half-way up. Must have grown from a seed. My little lodge very handy the rest of the time, have borrowed a washtub & iron from the big house. They were surprised I wished to do my own laundry. Not that half the town doesn’t know by now anyway — some stares and a guffaw behind my back yesterday afternoon. What’s all the fuss, haven’t they seen a grown man piss himself before? Not half-way up their bloody stone cross they haven’t. Really made a b.f. of self that day. Christ. Don’t know why I say that — if I don’t believe — has some force left, I suppose — a supplication? A curse? May go to church next week. If I can stand to see her there —! But also because that is exactly what I hope for. I think the worst is the loss of one’s self-respect. Am in dread of being pathetic — yet that is what I am.
Monday. 6 a.m. NB: ask for another blanket. Weather looks as if it is warming-up, though. But cloudy — needed to switch on the electric-light in the middle of the afternoon. Folly remote enough to disturb nobody but the foxes & badgers. Passed an old silver badger boar in the heather on my way up here last night. Stared at one another – he snuffled & grunted & went on. Must be a set close by. Heard a she-fox in the middle of the night, then a dog-fox answer. Easy for them!
Tuesday — Weds. Nothing new. Have almost been forgetting to keep account of symptoms: what wd Dr K say? Out of sight, out of mind? Must be an improvement of sorts… not so self-conscious, anyway. Forgot for hours at a time —— S improved, except in presence of women. Pretty housemaid brought it back. Saucy, not at all my style, but pert and she knew it, so — wretchedly awkward under her stare. Enough to make her sorry for me, I daresay. Which is worse — to be pitied by a housemaid, or by the object of one’s desire? 3 hrs sleep w/o interruption last night. Must bring Helen to see the badgers’ sett one day, before dawn? Weather sultry. Moon rose at 8.15 pm, a quarter-full. Long trembling fit last night. Got another blanket, still couldn’t stop. The regular, green slime on a corpse-face, slowly recognize my features through it. Green teeth through the rotted cheeks. A variation on the skull ones, I suppose. Prefer the skulls. But better than the gas. At least corpses are past their agony.
Thursday. Left a note for Helen asking if she wd like to come with me to see the baby badgers play? Absorbed in Herodotus, missed lunch. Had it late in the kitchen, cook by turns apologetic & reproachful. Bacon and eggs – preferable to oxtail-soup w/ Sir A., actually. Weather sultry again all day. Off for a stroll – discovered some water-meadows a mile away to the N.
Friday. Early. Sleepless. A long walk?
Bloody hell — Christ — damn it — am I ever to be better? Weather broke, of course, a proper thunderstorm. Helen came looking for me — thinking of my phobia, no doubt. A kind impulse, but who wd want to be found curled-up whimpering under the table? She crawled underneath it with me. ‘Are you all right?’ Oh, perfectly —— !! This is quite normal, let me assure you —— what did it look like!? Do chaps that are all right hide under tables and have hysterics? When I didn’t respond she took me in her skinny arms. Felt like a total b.f. Waited out the storm together, me shaking like a leaf — then she made us a pot of tea, told me I ought to laugh at self, & went home as if nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened. Bless her. Wonder what she told her mother?! Best not to think — it’s painful enough as it is. Useless.
She is just like her mother, though. Thank God it was not Winifred that came — think if she had cuddled me like that I shd have pulled her blouse open and hid my face there and sobbed like a bairn. When I am like that I have no self-control at all.
And she wd have let me. God what a thought. Which is why I can’t, mustn’t let it happen.
Oh, yes. P self.
Saturday. Heavy rain all night — wretched.
Sunday. Went to church, mostly in hopes of seeing her. Winifred. Not disappointed. Same green dress — her best, then? & she put it on for me, that day —— An old straw bonnet, hair won’t stay put under it. Like trying to pin-up a river. Picked-up a hair-pin in her wake. Couldn’t decide whether to return it or pocket it. Wd she mind getting it back? Was that the equivalent of telling a lady she is dishevelled? Returned it with a small bow. She flushed & confided that they never would stay in. Told her I wasn’t surprised. She lifted her arms to attempt replacement & her breasts rose with the same motion, right under my nose. Unselfconscious as a deer. A sudden whiff of violets, faint, & her own scent. God. Again that vision of falling to my knees & clutching at them, one in each hand, holding-on for dear life, burying my face in all that sweetness. Wd it keep the stink at bay? Could it? Yes, if anything can, for a while, I know it wd. The second hymn: Guide me, O thou great redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land ——— with that grand old refrain, Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more— very apposite. Afterwards I thought Never a truer word spoken. But not in the next world, what I am starved for. A woman with hair like a peat stream in spate & a sweet soul. & a rich contralto — they were 3 pews behind me & I heard her voice clearly. Well — a diagnosis? Straightforward: I am lost. In the middle of cataloguing books I find myself staring & thinking of her bottom — how it sways & she doesn’t know it. She is glorious. Why isn’t she spoken-for? Was she so hurt, by Helen’s father? Surely there must have been others willing to look past that —? Her thighs are long & carry her with a particular grace — I want to part them in one rough motion & thrust myself frantically in-between till I am all the way there— safe— home free — dear God, did I really write that? Well, it’s the truth. I ought to tear this out and burn it — I will. I have not the faintest idea how one goes about it, but she makes it seem easy. Still wd doubtless make a b.f. of self, though. & I do NOT want to be pitied. God that wd be worse than anything — worse than nothing. I’ve been used to nothing for so long I feel like a bloody monk. Or did. Definitely not feeling like one now, though. Or do they burn like this? Poor bastards, if they do —!
Sunday. Best week yet. Did not p self once. Even the crow-scarers all right, as long as I don’t get too close. Sp quite fluent. Trembling still when close to W, but that’s an improvement of sorts – doesn’t feel the same as the clammy panicky sort. This kind I am in control of. More or less. Brought H out to see the badgers – a great success. She knows about the folly – we sheltered there from a brief shower & she noticed my blankets folded in a corner. Felt odd confessing to a child but she nodded & said Of course. Just said my nightmares disturbed others, no need to describe the god-awful rest of it. Like her mother in that way, that feeling one can tell them anything. She is a sweetheart. Likes G&S — knows all the choruses. God, I wonder who her father was? And what happened —? None of my damn business. But W. does not seem ‘easy.’ There is a dignity there ——
Weds. An extraordinary find, today. Hidden & altogether forgotten, no doubt about it – but likely worth all the rest of the collection put together – the house, too? Shd send for Greaves’ Catalogue? Investigate further — but definitely something.
Sunday. Almost enjoyed church. Had forgotten how much pleasure there is in the familiar. Am invited to tea.
Monday. Sp bad at tea, mostly because I cd not help being utterly aware of her at every moment. Her physical proximity. It’s better when she is in the kitchen setting the tray & singing softly to herself. When she is close by I cannot help becoming aroused. God forbid she shd come to know that. I wd not give offence for anything. Specially not in repayment of her kindness. She thinks I am safe, probably, too broken to behave badly. Dug over a good patch of their garden after tea, ready for a new crop of salad-greens & radishes.
AND — Tuesday – a new kind of dream, kinder — instead of sexual connexion w/ the girl-faced-soldier-that-turns-out-to-be-a-stinking-corpse, or the raddled whore with the death’s-head, I have now had two n.e. quite simply in her imagined embrace — w/ no nasty surprises – unless one counts waking-up. God to experience a climax w/o horror even like this is something so unusual —— or has been ——— am I getting better? Perhaps there is hope yet.
Weds. Went into town, to pick-up the Greaves catalogue at the P.O. Ran into W & H. Christ it is sweet to see a friendly face. Have been a stranger for how long? She put her hand on my arm. Electric.
Thurs. Looks more
& more like it – and the Canaletto, possibly, too? Identify the finished painting – where?
Sunday. Have finished the classics in the original L & Gk — now on to the histories. Sir A. bad with gout this week, barely poked his nose round the door. Seems pleased w/ the progress, though. Pinched fingers in the ladder again. Bloody thing. Kedgeree for b/f Friday — cook making extra efforts? Haven’t had kedgeree in god knows how long. School? God! Seems forever ago. Was. First XI – ha!
W. & H. both sunburned this week. A hot spell – the first time I have seen her looking limp & vulnerable. Took a picnic to the water-meadows — skylarks — meadowsweet. Found shade for W. under a willow. She kept on her hat. Roots all entwined in the bank, hanging-over the water. Watched it trailing, trailed her fingers. She seemed tired — but brightened when I was telling them about my find. After lunch, H went off to gather bulrushes — I stayed behind with W. Talked about art for a while. She lay back in the angle of the bank & then slumped altogether & fell asleep on the rug. Watched her sleeping for ½-hr, till H came back, arms filled. W was flustered, wanted to apologize. Would have said (truthfully) it was the loveliest sight I ever saw, her lying there like that asleep, but thought better of it. Told her she’d just dozed-off for a few minutes. Why did I lie? Because she didn’t want to feel vulnerable, I cd see. God knows I know how that feels. Watched her face, the tiny golden hairs, her bosom’s slow rise & fall dragging my cock with it. But pleasurably, not unbearably – though my balls ached, afterwards. How long since I have spent half a day in dreamy arousal? Less sharp than a schoolboy’s – more patient, now, I suppose. Don’t ever remember being so comfortable with it. ‘At ease’ — ! Wd not have changed places w/anyone for the world. Will I ever be whole enough to ask? — to offer her anything worth having, not this useless quivering pissing shell of a man? God I want not to be pathetic.
Time will tell, I suppose. It sometimes feels suspended, here.
*****************
HELEN
There was one day in particular. Afterwards, reading – following what happened through his eyes – I kept wondering what he would say about it. It had meant all the world to me — but would he even mention it?
In-between all those shards of longing for my mother, he did mention me often. We had forged our own friendship; I had come to treasure it — and him. Of course, back then, all I knew of what lay behind and within him was what I saw. And there were times when I did see, much more than he meant me to, no question there. It’s the price of not being a stranger: that people get to see you, really see you as you are. For better or worse.
I think he knew that, and chose to pay it anyway.
The day of the thunderstorm was like a small earthquake for both of us. What could it have been like for him, to be so cruelly and completely exposed? I know that parts of me crumbled: assumptions, illusions, things I’d thought, things I’d felt – and other things rose up from hidden depths to take their place. It changed our friendship. At the time, it hurt – but afterwards, I felt it had been another painful part of the healing. What do doctors call it, when a wound starts to scab but it’s pulling inside and hurts worse than ever – adhesions? Like that. They can’t be avoided, not if the flesh is to close one day.
I remember watching the black clouds piling-up, and worrying from minute to minute if he was going to be all right. All I could think of was how he would hate the thunder: hate it — hate it. He was so close to breaking, all the time. We all knew it, including him. And he knew we knew it, which was both sweet with trust and piercing at the same time. I had seen him flinch at the least sudden noise, out in the woods – even the snap when one of us trod on a dry twig. We all pretended not to notice.
That was how it was, with him – we let him be, his stutter, his flinching, his odd ways. He knew best, we thought, and he didn’t need us bothering him about it.
He had come to tea again, in-between. I watched my mother watch his face as he thought himself unobserved, drinking his tea and putting the cup back in the saucer deliberately, expending a painful effort of will to keep it from clattering with his shake. We had boiled brown eggs and he ate his with great care. His yolk did not run over the edge once. I dipped toast-fingers in mine, even though they made it overflow all down the shell and over the curved side of the egg-cup onto its blue-and-white pedestal, a sticky gold runnel dotted with toast-crumbs. I saw the mess differently though, as if I had borrowed his eyes. There was something disturbing about it I had never noticed before. It bothered me. I liked his clean, contained one better.
Afterwards we ate toast-and-honey, and then we went outside together ‘for a breath of fresh air,’ as my mother put it. We came across a thrush’s anvil and counted the snail-shells round it – almost two dozen. They were the stripy kind, some still glistening with dried slime, and I asked him if he had actually seen any Frenchmen eating them. I felt a bit sorry for the shattered snails, even though I had no love for their forays in our lettuce. Well, yes, he said, with the glimmer of a smile visiting his thin face: not this kind but bigger and fatter, of course – they were really n-not bad, with buh—buh—butter and a little g—garlic…. I grimaced, and my mother attempted not to laugh. I think she held it in at first on my account, because when our eyes met and she saw the revulsion in mine she let it escape in a gurgling peal. She never would have laughed at him. There was something magical about the moment it happened, because we had both been treading on eggshells with him: the more he stammered, the more careful we were not to pay any attention to it — and suddenly she just let go and was easy again, and so was he.
I wondered if I would ever be able to ask him about the War, and why he had come home like this. More truthfully perhaps, I did want to know and also I didn’t – I thought that if it could do this much damage, perhaps just hearing about it might be too ghastly. But I fretted about it, endlessly. I had never seen anyone close-up before in so much suffering. I kept trying to put myself in his place. The only way I could bear to witness it was by reaching to understand the things I saw. I had heard it wasn’t a single shock that drove a fellow over the edge, though, but everything, the way it went on and on and you couldn’t get away from it. Still, he was far away from the Front, now, and it was all over — why wasn’t he getting better? Surely with some rest here, and a steady job, and my mother’s caring — all these would help – wouldn’t they?
We went out the back garden-gate and into the woods, that afternoon, and picked-up oak-galls, and ragged-robins, and the curled fronds of bracken. Then a crow flew up with a sudden loud ‘cark!’, and our new friend jumped out of his skin with a harsh cry that was almost an echo of the crow’s. Even before it had flapped away he was bent double, his hands over his ears, as if his guts and his head both hurt. I could see him trying to master himself, then, get back control of his breathing; find something to say. When he got it out it was just ‘excuse me,’ before he stumbled away.
I wanted to help, but my mother put a hand on my arm. We let him lurch off behind a tree, and I remember my mother’s look as we heard him vomiting. Her eyes were squeezed together, but not in disgust. She blinked away a tear. I just felt sad. I specially hoped it hadn’t made him lose his self-control again the way he had been in the square that day. How he must hate it, I thought. We take it all for granted: walking, talking, getting through the day without a second thought. He couldn’t, now – his nerves kept letting him down. Nerves – whatever they were. You had them, which was a good thing – but then you had a case of them, and that was bad. His were very bad. What made it worse was that it was not even in a respectable straightforward wounded-in-battle way a man might be proud of, a pinned-up sleeve or a dignified limp, or a disfigurement he could wear like a medal; but rather this sneaky humiliating infirmity. I could see it destroying his self-respect each time after he had built it back up so painfully, just like the eagle tearing at the liver of Prometheus.
When he emerged, cockle-burs on his knees and dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief, I was relieved to see his trousers still dry. This was a good sign for the future, wasn’t it? We walked home together as if nothing had happened. My tummy ached in sympathy.
He had sent me another note, afterwards, this time via the gardener’s boy, inviting me to come and see a very fine badger’s set he had discovered while out walking at dusk. My mother said I could go, but that we ought to wait a day or two till the weather turned nicer. A warm spell would be much better for sitting about outside half the night all still and stiff, she said, and she’d pack us a bite to eat at midnight if we liked.
I felt especially touched that he seemed to value my friendship too, to the extent that he would invite me out on this thrilling after-dark adventure. Clearly it was not just my mother’s company that kept him coming back. That meant a great deal to me. When his note came inviting me my mother said he was very kind. I almost wondered out loud why he didn’t write to her instead of me, but I thought perhaps he was too shy. With me he could be a co-conspirator in nature-adventures, and his motives in issuing the invitation were clearly above reproach.
But the thunderstorm came first.
As soon as the sky turned that sickly yellow-green and every leaf seemed extra-distinct, turning pale and belly-up in the sudden shivering gusts, I set off down our lane toward the big house to comfort him. I didn’t stop to think about how he might feel, being comforted by a child; only that he might need it. My mother wasn’t home, so it was me or no-one. I knew the thunder would be hard for him; I didn’t hesitate.
It was still distant, at first. It sounded like the rumble of the guns, when
the wind was blowing from
The first big drops began to fall as I hurried down our lane. The lightning arrived soon after, wicked bold flashes trailing long growling grumbles in their wake. I didn’t mind thunder at all; in fact, I found it strangely exhilarating. It made me feel tingly and on-edge, and puny in an awe-inspiring way. My mother and I always watched storms from the safety of our attic-window; I had never been afraid. I loved the way lightning scribbled across the sky and burned itself for a brief trace on your eyeballs; I relished the building electricity fingering my bones in long shivering trails of pure thrill.
But I knew that for Harry Oliver, M.C., this could be nothing but torment. The thunder came closer: I started to run.
I didn’t see him at first – I thought he would still be up at the big house. I was prepared to go on up the gravel drive and ring the bell, and find him at work in the library and sit with him while it lasted, just so he wouldn’t have to bear it alone. First, though, to be sure I didn’t miss him here, I knocked on the door of the little yellow lodge. In the odd light it was a brilliant primrose. I felt my hair clinging to my face and my skirt to my legs, and under the rain’s lash I waited a rudely short second or two before letting myself in just to check that he wasn’t there. There was no sign of him, though, and no lamps lit, so I was almost out of the door again when a fresh tremendous peal startled even me. Its accompanying flash filled the little sitting-room with a momentary glare; and at the same there came a muffled shriek from across the room. I turned and saw him huddled under the table. He was holding his head in both hands, kneeling; his body was hunched-over and jerking.
The next crack came fast on the heels of the last one and he screamed again. It was like a rabbit in a snare, high-pitched and awful. I ran and got under the table with him. His hair was damp, his shirtsleeves patched at the elbow. He had taken-off his shirt-collar and unfastened the top button – his neck inside looked naked and exposed. He knew I was there and he tried to stop the sounds from coming out, but he couldn’t. I had never seen an adult in such a state. I held him and his breath came in great shuddering gasps like sobs. With each heave of his breast came a cry. My arms were too small to go around him on the floor like that, but I held tightly onto what I could, his thin shoulders, his wet head close to mine. As long as the thunder lasted, he was rigid. At last, as it rolled away and became fainter, so did the groans.
I asked him if he was all right, but he choked on the answer, so I hushed him and didn’t ask again. When I used to cry, as a small child (we called it ‘greeting’) – my mother would make soft little sounds in her throat to soothe me: mm — mmm... I did the same thing now, and stroked his wet hair. More of his shirt buttons had come undone: his chest was as smooth as mine, I saw, except for a little tuft of dark hair right in the middle in the lowest point of the ‘v’. I wanted to rub it to help his gasping, but felt I shouldn’t.
My knees hurt on the hard bare floorboards. My heart was in my throat too, or at least a great lump was that wouldn’t let me speak — little sounds were all I could manage, too, till it was past. He slumped then, and I couldn’t hold him up off the floor; I wasn’t strong enough. He lay there in a defeated heap. I knelt next to him. Outside the window the rain fell in sheets, an audible hiss.
I put my hand on his shoulder. He was still trembling.
“I w—wish you hadn’t s—seen that,” he said, after a silence filled with the rain. His voice was hoarse.
“I wish you hadn’t seen all the things you’ve seen, that bother you so much,” I said stoutly.
He shook his head the way a fighter does when he’s down. “It’s not so m-much the seeing,” he croaked.
“Is it too much like the guns?” I asked him then, trying as always to understand. I wouldn’t have asked him, but he had spoken first and I was dying to know.
He thought for a few moments before replying. “No,” he said slowly, “it’s like n–not having any skin.”
“Poor you,” I whispered.
“No,” he said, more loudly, struggling to sit up. “No, don’t s-say that. For god’s sake.”
“Sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say and feeling worse. I needed something to do. My pity wounded him all over again, I saw that. But how could anyone not feel it, when they saw his suffering? That was what ate away at his pride: that it was a normal, decent human response to feel sorry for him. And galling, bitterly so, the more it happened. “Let me make some tea!” I offered, starting to crawl out from under the table. My knees hurt from the floor when I stood up. The birds on the table-top looked at each other. Its pretty inlay seemed too gay for the scene it had just witnessed – but its solid legs offered safety.
“I know you m–meant it kindly,” he said then, “I d–didn’t m—mean to bite your head off.”
My eyes had filled with tears.
“Oh, Helen,” he said. “Come here — p-please?”
I returned. He sat bent-over under the table, holding his knees. He reached out for me and I returned his hug. My arms went round his knees and his head and shoulders all at once. He felt all bones.
“Thank you,” he said, “ — for coming.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “You’re a d–dear.”
I sniffled.
“How about th–that tea?” he asked.
There was a small gas-ring by the fire. The kettle had water in already. I found a tin of typhoo tea and spooned it into an old teapot. I made it strong, the way he liked it, and was very careful with the spoon when stirring.
He gave a shaky smile. I must have returned a questioning look, for he said, “You’re so l-like your m-mother,” in explanation.
“You do mean that nicely?” I asked, unsure of myself now.
“Absolutely,” he said, his grey eyes shining. “You’re — like the answer to a p–prayer. One I w-wouldn’t admit I’d m—made. I – I stopped praying a long time ago.. ” It came out simply, with the pure ring of truth. I think he was surprised he had actually said it.
If I didn’t love him before, I did then. “Drink your tea up,” I said, to cover it.
“You’re right,” he said, doing so, “ – a p-panacea.”
“What’s that?”
“A c—cure-all.”
I grinned. “There’s nothing a cup of tea won’t help, my mother says.”
“I b—bet she does.” The cup clattered so loudly in the saucer that he put it down on the floor and just picked up the cup by itself. He was trying to get back to normal, but the trembling gave him away and he knew it did and he hated it: I could tell, just from the way he stopped the cup from rattling. I thought that when he married my mother and came to live with us – which he had to do, sooner or later, didn’t he? – that we should have only mugs and no saucers. That way his shaking wouldn’t bother him so – it would be one less giveaway. He would like that. Surely there were all kinds of accommodations that could be made, along the same lines? You just had to think of them.
I had an idea: “You know,” I said slowly, “I bet it wouldn’t be half so bad if you could just laugh at yourself.”
He looked up slowly.
I was afraid of putting my foot in my mouth, but I had to go on once I had started. “I don’t mean it wasn’t beastly,” I said, searching for the logic behind what I was saying. “I mean — I wasn’t there, so I don’t know, but — how bad can this be compared with that? This isn’t the worst that could happen, is it? You’ve seen that – and this isn’t it. So — why is it so terrible if you’re a bit jumpy?”
“A b-bit jumpy,” he repeated, with a wry look. “Remember the f-first time we met?”
“They said you looked like a monkey up a stick,” I said. “And you know what? — you did!”
“God,” he said.
“And now,” I went on, rushing in where angels no doubt positively dreaded to tread, “if you could see yourself – you could be playing housey under there —!”
He looked up at the edge of the table just above his head. “Housey… ” he said, unsteadily.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said earnestly. “Anybody who thinks it does is just silly. I don’t mean you’re silly, ’course I don’t — you’re upset because you can’t help it and you think you should. I mean, anybody else. It’s none of their business if you feel like you haven’t got any skin, sometimes — is it?”
He leaned his head back and laughed. It was one of those wheezing laughs with a harsh edge to it, like a sob almost. Tears ran down his cheeks and he wiped them away with the heel of his hand. I think he was still a bit light-headed from the fright. I know I always got the giggles more readily when I had had a shock – a sort of defence mechanism, to let off steam. “P—playing housey —!” he groaned, “H-helen, did you really say that? Oh, lord, playing housey?”
“Well, you do,” I said.
He crawled out on hands and knees, and sat with his back to the table-leg instead, leaning his head all the way back against the chequerboard edge. He kept his knees up, though, concealing his lap. “Is there any more tea?” he asked.
I poured him another cup. It was the end of the pot, and tea-leaves ran out freely with the amber swirl of tea. It was the last of the milk, too. I stirred it all together and he drank it anyway, tea-leaves and all.
I felt as if I ought to explain that I wasn’t laughing at him. “My mother says when you fret about something it just magnifies it,” I said.
“Does she,” he murmured.
“Sorry about all the tea-leaves,” I said.
“Your m—mother,” he said, “is a very w–wise w-woman. And s–so are you.”
“I’m not,” I protested, “I just think a lot about what I see.”
“Mm,” he said. “Do you? I bet you do. W-well — ? W-w-what else do you s–see, Nurse Helen?”
I looked him up and down. In his shirtsleeves he was even more vulnerable-looking; you could see how slight he was. His hair was all ruffled the wrong way, from when he had been clutching his head in his hands. I felt silly for having said it; I couldn’t explain what I meant. I just knew, that was all. Little bits, here and there, about how people felt and the things they said and what they really meant. And then there was all the rest, that he kept hidden.
“I don’t know,” I told him honestly, “there are so many different parts to you. You’re a mystery.”
He smiled. “You’re not.”
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure whether to be offended. Was I so transparent? Could he tell that I loved him? After all, he tried to hide his feelings for my mother, but I hadn’t missed them, and nor (I was sure) had she. Had I been just as bad at concealment?
“You,” he said, “ — and your m-mother — I c-could see everything that mattered about you, all I needed to know r-r-right there, that f-first time — that you were k-kind, and ge-e-enerous, and b-brave — and strong-minded, and b-b-beautiful — ”
“I’m not all those things,” I protested.
“That’s w-what you think,” he said, shaking his head.
I stared at him.
He stared back. His look was intense, the colour of the sea in a storm. “Do you r-remember what you said to me?”
“No, what?”
“You said, ‘it’s all right’.”
I didn’t see what was so special about that. Wasn’t it what anyone would have said? I said so: “That’s nothing – I mean, it was obvious – and anyway, you had your eyes shut!”
“And then y-you said, ‘you can come d-down now. My mother says it’s safe.’ And I l—looked down, and there she was, and there were you, a—a-a-and — it w-was. Safe.”
He said ‘safe’ as if it were a prayer. My heart almost stopped; I didn’t breathe.
“L—let me tell you something,” he said, in a rush. “I have night-ma-ma-mares. B-bad ones. I mean, really b–bad. Aaa-and I lie there and I try to w-wake up and c–catch my breath, and I can’t – and I have to tell myself out loud, it’s all right, it’s all right old chap, it’s all right —— ”
I took his hand.
“… all right,” he finished softly.
I squeezed his fingers and he squeezed back.
“What are they about?” I asked, still holding my breath.
“You d-don’t w-want to know,” he said.
“But it is all right,” I said, “ — isn’t it…? Now? ”
He echoed the words slowly, as if trying to divine their
meaning. “All right. All right?
Yes, it’s all right, I suppose —— ”
I looked at him, a bit sharply perhaps. Was he being bitter? Or mocking? Did he mean it?
“Why me?” he asked me, then, out of nowhere, in answer to my look. “Why m—me live, and not them? And why m-me with these stupid jangled n-nerves, g-g-good for nothing —? — I c-couldn’t b-bear it any more — l-l-lots of fellows stuck it out — they’re all right now – leastways, not this bad — b-but I’m n-not — not all right — ” He wasn’t asking me, really; I was just there, listening, as he asked aloud.
He squeezed my hand so hard it hurt, then realized it and let go.
“L—look — this was just — between you and me. All right? N-no need to t-tell your m-mother that — about the n-nightmares – you know — w-what we just s-said — ?” His eyes held a red-rimmed entreaty.
“You like her a lot, don’t you,” I said.
He looked away. “Enough that I’d l-like her not to think any worse of me, y-yes,” he admitted.
“She thinks a lot of you too,” I whispered in his ear, before I stood up. If he was supposed to come and live with us, it wouldn’t hurt to help move things along a bit. His eyes followed me as I got ready to leave.
“It’s s-still r-raining,” he said.
“That’s all right,” I answered, “ – it’s slacking-off now, can’t you hear?”
He nodded.
“’Bye, then,” I said.
I should have left then and not looked back – but you don’t know what you shouldn’t have done, till you do it. I looked back one time when I was half-way out of the door, before I shut it altogether. He had tilted his head back again, and was just sitting there on the floor, his legs now stretched-out. A telltale stain darkened his trousers. His eyes were shut. His mouth was open as if crying-out, only no sound came. I wondered what on earth it could be like, to be in love with someone – and feel you had to ask that person’s daughter not to tell her you had nightmares, and had peed in your trousers again.
But for all my intuition, I couldn’t imagine it.
The cataloguing was going extremely well. Sir Archibald Jervis was (apparently) delighted with the progress made to date, so much so that he complimented our friend on his diligence. For a tough old bird like Sir Archibald, this was the equivalent of handing-out a medal. His praise was extremely hard-won; rare and straightforward when it came. Harry Oliver told us very shyly what Sir Archie had said, “b–because you g-got me the job,” he added, as if he needed to explain why he was telling us, even, “so it’s really y-your doing, ladies — ” Heaven forbid he should just share his little piece of good news, if it involved saying something good about himself. I felt so proud of him, keeping this job and doing well at it in spite of all he had to overcome in private.
We had run into him in the town square. My mother bit her lip, her eyes shining. Briefly, she put her hand on his arm. It was an unconscious gesture, drawing him in, claiming him; I would bet she didn’t know she had done it. I did, though – and so did he. In public, even. He flashed a look down at her fingers resting on his sleeve, as if he couldn’t believe she was touching him. “I knew you’d do well at that,” she said warmly, “I could tell from the start. The way you talked about it, all practical, about the cards and such, and what he had there, all those old books all neglected – and you putting them in order – I knew it was the job for you!”
He blushed.
I thought ahead to when all the books would be catalogued — what then? I felt a bit sick. He would stay, wouldn’t he? And do what? Surely Sir Archibald would see that here was a man who deserved a position – ! What if he ran out of books to catalogue before he was ready to dare think about marrying my mother?
We walked home together, as far as our lane, the three of
us, when we parted ways and he continued up to the big house. He had a brown
paper parcel under his arm – a catalogue, he said, from one of the big
He came to church, even, that Sunday. He wore his uniform, not (I thought) because he was especially proud of it, but as a kind of defence in case anything happened. As if everyone wouldn’t have been able to tell anyway, just from looking at him, that he was an ex-serviceman — but still. It gave him the confidence to come, which was all that mattered.
At last, after some hint-dropping on my part, our promised night vigil at the badgers’ set came to pass. The weather turned warm and the moon was half-full and with my mother’s encouragement we seized the opportunity. Not that I needed any encouragement – except perhaps not to nag him about it every time I saw him. The subject came up again casually, my mother raising it with a mild inquiry if he had seen any more badgers lately, and he asked if that night would be all right — ?
We set out as it grew dusk – which was late, since it was roundabout midsummer or only a little after. We didn’t talk much, not wanting to disturb them, but when we did exchange whispers it felt easy-going and straightforward. My mother had packed us sandwiches and home-made ginger-beer, and we ate bread-and-jam by moonlight. The badgers came out on cue and he was so pleased I couldn’t tell him I was happier to see his quick, shy smile than to see the badgers. It grew gusty after midnight, and clouds began to blot out the stars; while we were getting ready to go on home a shower began.
“Not to worry,” he said, “I think it’ll b-blow over. D-don’t you? Shall we just w-wait it out?” We had passed the old folly on the way to the corner of heath where the badgers lived, so now we hurried back there, picking our way down the path by the light of a lantern he’d brought.
I had explored all the grounds of the big house since I could remember, and this was a place I was fond of even though I did not often come up here. When the blackberries started to ripen, it was home to some of the wildest and juiciest bushes anywhere around. The idea that someone might build a ruin on purpose, to make a pretty view, had always amused me. When it was first built doubtless it had indeed formed a wild-looking crenellated romantic silhouette on the top of the heath, but in the intervening years a whole plantation of conifers had grown-up between it and the big house, so you could only see the top of its little tower from the attic-windows. I knew, because in the days when we visited Daisy Jervis, she had taken me upstairs to show me.
He seemed very familiar with it, though, and as the rain got colder and began to sting our cheeks we arrived in its shelter and ducked through the doorway like regular visitors. If there had ever been a door there, it was missing now; but part of the ground floor still had a roof over it, and round a corner it was sheltered from both the wind and the rain. ‘Folly’ was a good name for it: an odd, useless thing, whose purpose had never been anything functional. Unlike an abandoned shepherd’s croft, or a tumbledown windmill, it had no other excuse for its existence. It was all the more charming for that, though. When I had been here in the past, it had stunk on occasion as if someone had urinated in one of the corners, which doubtless they had – but now behind the damp old-stone scent it smelt clean, with a faint edge of lavender and sage and something peppery. We played games with the lantern, making shadows on the walls. He knew a lot of shapes I didn’t. I realized, adding the bed of bracken on the floor (that was where the fragrance came from, no doubt) to the folded blankets tucked away deep in a corner, that he came here often. When I asked him about it he shrugged, not bothering to deny it: those nightmares, he said, remember? They – bothered other people, and — well ——
And he slept out here!? I was outraged. What was wrong with the snug little lodge?
He disturbed the under-cook, he said, in the lodge opposite, across the gate: it wasn’t her fault. She deserved a good night’s rest, and he was a liability. There was nothing he could do about it but come out here, where no-one would hear him.
Oh, when he said that, how I wanted to come out here with the lantern in the middle of the night and hold him, and tell him all right, old chap, it’s all right….
It was better that way, he said, alone and not worrying about bothering anybody.
We wouldn’t be bothered, I said stoutly, he ought to come and stay with us — we’d help.
No, he said.
We changed the subject.
I would have held him – but it wasn’t my arms he wanted. Who wants to be consoled by a child? And the ones he did – my mother’s, with her wide smile and deep warm bosom and lap – those he wasn’t about to let himself ask for.
I wouldn’t either, if I’d been him – not then, not yet.
We sang songs to entertain ourselves while we waited, mostly Gilbert and Sullivan – the Mikado and HMS Pinafore being my favorites. He knew all the words, as did I, and our rendition of ‘Tit Willow’ would have broken hearts at the Palladium (he said). We were never never sick at sea, of course: what, never? No, nevah! What, never? Well, hardly evah – we’re hardly ever sick at sea…!! We gave three cheers and one cheer more for the gallant Captain of the Pinafore, our voices raised with the freedom of no-one within a mile to hear. When we got back, at two in the morning, my mother had waited-up for us, and made hot cocoa for us all before shooing me off to bed. He was so cheerful and unselfconscious, he hardly stammered at all in telling her what we saw and did.
There was a look in her face that told me if he ever dared to declare himself, he would not find his reception unkind. I tried to imagine him down on one knee. One didn’t have to do that nowadays, did one? He could just ask, and she would say yes… wouldn’t she?
He left with a jaunty step, you could see the spring in it even by moonlight. I couldn’t sleep, at least not almost till morning. I hoped that he did, up there on the heath on his bed of spicy pungent bracken, worn-out from our adventures and with the happy choruses still ringing in his ears to keep the horrors at bay.
Things moved along after that. We made plans for a picnic, and spent a perfect afternoon down by the water-meadows. I left them alone together for a long time. My mother seemed droopy, which was unlike her, and when I came back she was sleeping and he was just sitting there and looking at her. There was something so naked about his face, filled with loneliness and longing, and about hers fast asleep, I almost couldn’t stand it. His voice was hoarse as he reassured her she hadn’t been asleep long at all, just now dozed off – although there was a red mark on her cheek, from leaning in one position against his folded jacket, that suggested otherwise. She didn’t quite believe him, but I think she was unsure of herself and upset that she might have been rude. She only had to look at his face to see how much he minded, how ‘rude’ he had thought it of her to lie there under his gaze for as long as he wanted, to look his fill; but she didn’t, she jumped up and started folding-up the cloth and smoothing the creases out of her skirt, and he just smiled faintly to himself.
That was the day he told us more about his find in the
library, and his suspicions about it.
Tucked away between two large folio volumes, undisturbed for a good many
years, he had discovered an old scrapbook.
This was the reason he had sent-away to the
“What?” asked my mother, all excitement.
Well, they were in the style — and one of the faces just struck him as so Tudor — a younger Edward VI? – and another was very like another drawing he was known to have made — possibly, he said, just p—p—possibly, you understand, no way to know yet. But they looked so much like his hand — and the highlights so sure, so subtle –
Whose?
He nodded.
“My god,” said my mother, “ — Holbein?”
He nodded again.
She looked at him with such pride and joy in her face, it must have half-blinded him. Please, he asked us, don’t mention it yet — he wanted to be far more certain, before telling Sir Archibald – he had just mentioned to the old man that the scrapbook seemed to have some good pieces, and he was trying to identify them.
Of course, said my mother, we won’t tell a soul, will we, Nellie?
He looked across the picnic-rug at me. “Helen w-would n—never tell anything I asked her not to — right, Helen? She k-keeps all my secrets.”
Was he laughing at himself, with that statement? I think so.
It was my turn to flush, then.
They talked for a while about what it could mean. I didn’t know anything about the world of international art dealers, and museums, and Old Masters, so I just listened. He was so excited that the words poured out of him as freely as water. My mother had tucked her legs under her sideways, and she had slid down the bank on the small rug we had brought till she was sitting next to his feet. He did not move, and neither did she. The river slid by, its slabs of moss-green dimpled here and there. I could feel the contact between them. They were just talking, not about that, but it ran under the conversation the way the current ran under the water’s surface a few feet away. I was happy for him, and for her too. He talked about things she was interested in, and she (it seemed) was content to listen to him. When she had something to say in turn, he would lean slightly forward, head tilted, to be sure he caught every word. He seemed to find her thoughts both helpful and illuminating. It mostly went over my head, though I caught the names of famous painters here and there.
We had a couple of art books at home, among the sets and general works of reference and literature; the kind with pictures stuck-in on top of the page. We sometimes looked at them together. She handled them with such care, I knew they were precious. One was a general history of art, which was where I had come across Bosch and his nightmare devils – not to mention the strangely foreshortened knight that began a revolution in Renaissance perspective (said my mother) – and the swirly mustard-coloured mists of Turner’s seascapes. I liked the Dutch painters the best, with their piles of fruit and brilliant insects, interiors cheerful with chequered floors and exteriors awash by contrast with the grey marshy light and the piled-up clouds. Now they were talking about some of the artists I knew. While the still-lifes pleased her, she loved (she said) most of all the extraordinary sense of life arrested in Vermeer’s canvases. There was a clarity there, a moment, something permanent —
Yes, yes, he said, absolutely yes! And then, more pensively, he added, I was in
a lot of those places.
Yes, said my mother. Her hand found his.
I walked away to make a daisy-chain. I put buttercups in-between, and then scarlet pimpernel from the ruts in the lane, though their square stems weren’t as resilient as the daisies and buttercups. My mother and he talked with great animation; I could see their heads bobbing and sometimes their hands moving to illustrate something – a curve, a faraway horizon. They didn’t seem to notice my absence.
DIARY (cont’d.)
Tuesday. Almost certain it is from the hand of H.H. Wd be an extraordinary find, if so. Still in a daze from the other day – a sort of erotic glow of feeling. Slept most of last 2 nights — aching with longing but untroubled by the usual n.m. They’re not gone, though – just waiting, I can feel them.
What does she feel for me?
If I knew, would I be bolder?
Between eros and agape, is there room for something else? I am altogether aroused by her & she finds some pleasure in my company – but out of charity? It wd not be fair to either of them, Helen no less than W., to find out the hard way that there is not.
Or to me. That wd really hurt — be honest. To try, and find that there was nothing after all but lust & pity.
What am I thinking! This wreck —?
But she seems not to find me so entirely pitiful — can she be so blind? Fond is blind. But blind won’t cut it, here. She wd have to know all the limitations. I shudder to think abt explaining.
But — have not p. self in over a week – a fortnight? The thunderstorm, was the last time — has it gone this long, before? No – definitely less agitated, here. Chalk that up.
Well — that’s for another day. Meanwhile, was paid today – in specie, hip hip hurrah boys. So — next free day this week – take the bus to Petersfield — will they like it? Hope so. Can’t think they won’t. Must remember G&S for H.
Wednesday.
God. God — god — sweet Jesus
Christ, Mary and all the saints, what now?
What does she think? — feel? What did it mean? What was I supposed to have done? She was so dear, & god I was so utterly
flustered – that hair of hers all
tangled-up in the brambles, sitting there trying to untangle it herself, all
scratched & weary, so glad to see me ——
ankle all swollen, it must have been an awkward tumble right into the
clump — & there am I standing in the
ditch unwinding each copper strand from the blackberry-runners, her face inches
from my groin, god help me, the smell of blackberry-juice and her in the warm
sun — god knows I couldn’t help it, how cd any man standing over a woman so
close, every sense shrieking with her nearness till he is beside himself? Felt a complete ass, knowing she had to know,
pretending it wasn’t so —! Not knowing
what to say, said I was sorry —— for what?
she asks. For my state, so
impossible to overlook, forced upon her by the situation — how do you say that? Mumbled something about not wishing to insult
her for anything — And then – god her cheek pressed against my
trousers, for those few seconds, right against my shameless flagpole — what was
it she said? Damn, I thought I’d
remember every word — hand shaking too
much to write, almost! ‘This, an
insult? — hardly! Specially not when I asked you for help —— you didn’t ask for this — ’ — No,
I bloody well didn’t. How she thought my
hands were going to be any use after that I don’t know. But she didn’t tease, or lead me on, after
that — just tilted her head back slightly, to give me room, till I got her hair
untangled at last — long last. —— so
she was just being kind, then. Wasn’t
she? But to be so forward —! I have never met a woman who would even
mention such a thing — Did she want me
to kiss her, when she was free? I fled
instead. Left her to limp home. Not trusting myself to offer an arm
even. Never felt so flayed in my
life. Rattled, yes, but not deeply,
personally, intimately embarrassed. I
have nothing left to pretend about now, I suppose, for good or bad. But then perhaps she’s known all along. Can still hear her calling after me, ‘thank
youuuu ———’ Winifred, you are welcome. Next time, for god’s sake say nothing —or
take me in altogether ————— then what?
Thursday. Well after yesterday I have nothing to lose, now – do I? My hand is tipped, there is no more pretending I don’t feel as I feel.
Or – everything, I have everything to lose, all the progress so far —— ?
Don’t think that way. It’s just a gift. Doesn’t have to mean anything, anything at all.
I am going this afternoon, I have decided. Nothing out there I can’t face – it’s just a
bus-ride. To a small friendly town –
right? A minor errand. A small trip, just around
* * * * * * * * * *
HELEN —— CONT’D.
He knocked on our door in the late afternoon with a request to borrow my mother’s bicycle. Of course, she said, any time —
He would be off, then, but he was coming back soon — we weren’t leaving, were we?
No, she said, we had just come back actually — from our neighbour’s down the lane. His favourite gun-dog bitch had whelped, and my friend his daughter was back from service over the hill, so we had spent a happy day away. My mother was ready for a nice cup of tea at home now, and to fall into a chair and take off her shoes.
He smiled. “Helen,” he said, “p-please h-hide her shoes, so she won’t change her mind and go out till I get b-back?”
I promised that I should; and my mother promised that she wouldn’t.
He set off down our lane on the bicycle as if he were
bent on some urgent errand – I could see him in
We waited.
It could be a lonely life, the one we led together, since
in the town I was neither chalk nor cheese.
By understanding and upbringing I was middle-class, which is to say that
my mother cared that I spoke properly,
and had taken great pains to teach me manners and all sorts of other things
that mattered to her a great deal. But
at school it was very clear that those of that class regarded me as very much
not one of themselves. Yet I wasn’t a
servant’s child, either; my speech and clothing marked me out as not belonging
to that cheerful, rough-and-ready, no-pretensions crowd. I had few friends, therefore, and even fewer
intimates. Those I did like tended like
me to be different in some way.
And then there was Ivy, my friend close-by, the one we had just been to see. Her father was Sir Archibald’s under-gamekeeper, her mother the former head-house-maid. Since this union had subsequently filled their small tied-cottage with eleven babbies (some twins), of whom nine survived, and poor Ivy being among the oldest, she had found herself sent-off at the age of twelve to earn her keep and make room in the bed for her brothers and sisters who had outgrown their cribs. That was this spring, and I had missed her. We had always spent most of our summers together, though often with one or more of her siblings in tow, pushing the perambulator down the footpath along the river, and so on under the railway-viaduct and down through the bluebell-woods to the church and into town. It was the long way round, rather than the short-cut my mother and I usually took, but it passed through a chalk-cutting where different flowers grew, and their attendant butterflies, and we were never in a hurry to get there — the going was the point.
Sometimes, if she was unencumbered, we would ramble as
far afield as the grounds of Knowle. One
ran the risk of coming-across a mumbling figure or two, inside the high walls
and fences (we knew where the gaps were) – but they were harmless, poor souls. Not so long ago, within living memory even,
it been little more than a crossroads and a farm or two – a harmless place, its
name as ordinary as any other, with nothing of fear and pity in it. All that changed with the erection of the
grim Victorian brick-pile that was the lunatic asylum. Now it was its own self-contained village
with its own blacksmith’s-shop, chapel, sloping lawns and bosky coppices; its
own cricket-ground, gardens, even cemetery.
It had become
Originally farmland, it still boasted two great glories. The first was a meadow that was not cut till midsummer, where wild oats and blue-green barley grew tall among the waving grass and every breath of wind ruffled it like the sea — I could stare at it for hours, and did. The second was a patch of ancient cow-pasture, still grazed by the hospital dairy-herd, where the sweetest mushrooms grew. They could be found all over the area, of course, to those who knew where to go looking; but here they often went unpicked. We gathered-up aprons-ful regularly and then ran all the way home, three miles and more, with the moaning of the strait-jacketed patients on the locked wards (real or imagined?) in our ears.
It was Ivy that had just come back on a week’s holiday, after six months with Lady Devers ten miles off. I listened sympathetically as she rubbed salve into her sore hands and described getting-up before dawn to light the fires and start work in the kitchen. Before the War, they had had a full staff of twenty or so – but now you couldn’t get good servants, nor were the funds there, apparently, so Ivy and a desperately diminished staff of Cook and a housekeeper, one chambermaid and a senile butler-cum-footman had to do duty for all. She was the only parlourmaid, she told me, and the on’y person helping Cook an’ all – it was terrible hard.
I had listened sympathetically, wondering what my own
future held. Our means were slim, and
the line keeping me from Ivy’s fate seemed tenuous. We sat cross-legged on the stone-flagged
floor out in the back-scullery, where her father kept his shotgun-shells and
his
Holding the puppies, my friend had buried her face in their glossy coats and sniffled. The mother whined and the puppies squeaked. They were a speckled pointer-mix, their dam not an elegant dog but the best after a bird these twenty miles around. Their father, like mine, was nameless – but looked (by the extended length of their little snouts and backs, not to mention the shortened legs) to have some dachshund in him, plucky little fellow. In the kitchen next door, our mothers exchanged news in-between cleaning babies’ bottoms and feeding them (with the inevitable result, I thought, only an hour or two hence – !) Ivy’s mother had always given mine a warm welcome, and vice-versa. Their kitchen was at once chaotic and warm, a friendly place to be as Ivy and I wandered in and out, catching snatches of their conversation.
Once we disappeared, though, it often took a more interesting turn. My mother had few confidantes, but Gladys Nesbitt had a kind heart and a cheerful spirit, and sometimes they would natter together and put the world to rights, touching on all sorts of subjects that might make a young girl’s ears burn — but she would have to know sooner or later, wouldn’t she? – about birthing, and pregnancy, and nursing, and napkin-rash, varicose-veins, and other such grown-up things. It was from these conversations some time earlier that I had learned my mother never had had to do with another man after my father; and that when she found out whatever it was she found out, she had wished she was dead. For a few days, she had added briskly, bravely, of course, just till she felt herself again and started thinking how she was going to manage.
Their talk this afternoon began as usual with the children. The youngest had had croup, it seemed, and my mother had brought by some friar’s-balsam last week — had it helped? Ooh yes, lots, she could see for herself, he was ever so much better!
Oh, what a relief.
And what about, you know, him?
(Low murmurs, and then laughter, followed by an affectionate ‘aahh’ from Ivy’s mum.)
What? He did what? Oh, the poor dear lad. Well, they couldn’t help it, could they? Oh, but that was absolutely the right thing, no matter how close things got. No, no, it didn’t do to make the first move, not with men being so funny as they were.
(My ears were truly straining, here – and red, too – but I deserved to know, I thought. After all, he was my friend too. My mother might want to protect me from all she felt, but I would have to know sooner or later. Ivy was smiling to herself and shaking her head wisely, which irritated me. What could she know? She’d been away, I hadn’t even told her more than a sentence or two about Harry Oliver!)
The voices rose and fell merrily. — But what if they were what? Turble shy? Well, she didn’t have no experience with that, my dear (giggles following). Nesbitt wasn’t backwards in coming forwards, if you took her meaning, that much ought to be obvious —! Gawd, she’d thank the lord for a bit of a rest —! No, but you been lonely, ain’t you, Winnie, she said, more softly.
Yes, said my mother, yes, I have.
Don’t rush him, though — not even the walking-wounded wanted to think it wasn’t their idea, now, did they? Men were men, after all. Ever so touchy, about things like that.
I’m not sure he will, though, said my mother. He holds himself in so —
You wait, said Ivy’s mum. They’re all the same. He will. He’s just talking his sweet time about it. Sit tight and don’t scare him orf, was her opinion. And if it came to it, well, a bit o’ comfort wouldn’t hurt, now, would it — if it came to that? No harm done there…
I suppose — said my mother. I hadn’t thought — you’re right. I should have thought of that…
Y’er an all-or nothing gal, that’s why, said Ivy’s mum affectionately. But you got to take care o’ yerself, too.
I almost — said my mother. Then they giggled together; something about blackberries. — I felt so helpless, said my mother. I mean, I wanted to – you know – but he didn’t say anything, even when I did – I mean, he wouldn’t – and I just felt helpless!
Not ’arf as much as ’e did, poor love! came the gurgled reply. An’ that was yestiddy?
Apparently it was. My mother hadn’t said anything to me about seeing him — usually she would. Though she had limped a bit, yesterday evening, bringing in the washing down the garden. When I asked her, she said she’d been out picking blackberries and twisted her ankle, while I was bringing-back my library-books.
Ivy and I looked at one another. Ivy mouthed: do you like him?
I mouthed back: yes.
She rolled her eyes. She gave a little jerk of her head, then, to show I should come outside. I wanted to hear more, but their talk had turned to Mr. Nesbitt’s chilblains by then, and so I slipped out after Ivy.
We squeezed under the currant-bushes and sat where no-one would hear or find us. Ivy crammed currants into her mouth, without any sugar even. “Gawd,” she said, “I bin homesick.”
“I bet,” I said.
“You don’t mind your mum and this geezer?” she asked, her eyes bulging. Being out in service had made her talk more common, I noticed: it was like a flag, that said I’m in service and proud of it, and none of your toff humbug for me.
“No,” I said, “he’s nice. Really he is.”
“Men,” she said, sounding like her mother, “they’re all the same.”
Before she went away, we had shared a childish disdain for having such conversations ourselves. We listened to them, and rolled our eyes; we did not express such sentiments ourselves, for we had no experience on which to base any such conjectures. Now, it seemed, a few months away from home and Ivy had grown-up; at twelve she had become an expert. I wasn’t sure I wanted hear how, but it was clear she was determined to tell me.
“They all want the one thing,” she whispered hoarsely.
Well, I knew that. Sort of. I mean, I had a vague idea. It was a bit rude and a bit scandalous and definitely extremely private. One day, when it was time for me to know, my mother would tell me more. Unless I found out elsewhere first, of course. I didn’t think it worth mentioning that every human being alive wanted a bit of a cuddle when all was said and done, but Ivy had determined on sharing more with me, since (she felt) my tranquil household was now under threat – and of a kind whose nature I ought to know more than I evidently did.
“My dad,” she hissed, “’E won’t let my mum alone. I seen ’em, even.”
“Oh,” I said, not wanting to hear any more. “Stuff it, Ivy, that’s enough.”
“’E pushes ’er down an’ then ’e gets on top of ’er an’ gives it to ’er like an ol’ stallion.”
This seemed more violent and brutal than I had imagined, and I didn’t like the image one bit. I couldn’t see Harry pushing my mother down anywhere, somehow.
“They even done it down the orchard,” she said, grimly, shaking her head. “When ’e thinks nobody’s lookin’. Right on the ground. Wrigglin’ like a bloody ole black-beetle, in-between ’er legs.”
“Oh,” I said. Yes, I could imagine that. Would it smell of apples? Would he be very desperate, to do it on the ground?
“My mum tries to push ’im orf, but ’e won’t take no fer an answer,” she confided.
Harry stood before me in my imagination. He wouldn’t take yes for an answer. It was standing right there in front of him, or sitting, anyway – my mother in all her glory taking his hand and holding it as he spoke of Flanders; her eyes alight looking into his, and her cheeks burning.
Somehow I felt sure she wouldn’t push him away, when the time came. It was not an image I liked. It made me feel sad, to think of a man and his wife at cross-purposes like that.
I didn’t want my mother to be the sort of person that would push her lover away. I didn’t want him to be the sort of man who would make a pass at a woman that wasn’t interested, and rough his way past her pushing to get what he wanted in spite of her. They weren’t, were they? Players in so sordid a drama as Ivy was describing? Either of them — surely not….
“She says gerrof, you ole bugger, an’ he says, come on, Gladys, be nice — ! Don’t be a cow!”
“Stop it! Stop telling me! You shouldn’t be listening!”
“Can’ ’elp it, can I?” she said, shrugging. “On’y the one bedroom in ’ere, an’ that ole curtain, you can hear evvyfink.”
I thought about her father. A darkly handsome man, though his features were rather coarsened now with a liking for drink; swarthy, with an almost gypsy air and a luxuriant dark moustache. Too old for service, and the father of so many children, he had not seen action – though he had drilled with the Territorials. He was always brusquely kind to me, in an off-hand way. A bit of a swagger characterized his manner with women: he was gallant to my mother, and talked to her of women things, to be polite – or what he thought of as such. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him doing and saying everything Ivy said – in fact, it was only too easy. He had been a bit of a lad before he settled down, by all accounts — some said (especially when away on shows and shooting weekends) that he still was. He had dark hairs curling out of the neck of his shirt and dark hairy arms. I thought it would be like being the bride of a gorilla, and shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about this any more, Ivy,” I said.
“Thought you ought ter know,” she said, “sorr-ee!”
“I do know,” I fibbed, “and besides, he’s not like that. He just isn’t. He wouldn’t be all rough, I know he wouldn’t.” And my mother wants him to, I added to myself. Whatever surrender a woman gives to her lover, whose details were thankfully still a little unclear to me, though I knew which parts were involved and got butterflies in my tummy thinking about it, I just knew she wouldn’t say no — when and if he finally asked her. When I was badly hurt or upset, she would take me on her lap and cuddle me. Her arms held me tightly and her body was solid and warm around me. That’s what she would do for him, I was sure of it, only in that special intimate way that lovers do. And if (by some chance) they should ‘do it’ somewhere as unorthodox as on the ground, in an orchard, out of urgency perhaps or lack of other opportunity, there would still be such grace to it that it would not be an ugly thing. It would be like a fawn running to its mother and ducking to find nourishment there, jostling her with impatience but made welcome with tender nuzzling and bunts of the nose.
That picture pleased me more than the one Ivy had painted, and I determined to stick with it, even though my mother’s feelings for him might be not quite maternal. But the naturalness of it would, I imagined, trying to put this picture between myself and the brutish one Ivy had just painted for me — that, and the immediate acceptance, and the sweet wellbeing and safety that surround a doe with her fawn — those things would be there.
It seemed odd; though nobody can help the things they think. Why didn’t I feel more jealous of my mother? I mean, I loved him too. But I knew that my love for him was a child’s love, something innocent and tender, and – while infinitely precious – it was not what he needed most. That was something only she could give him. And I loved him so much I wanted him to have it – now. My time for all that sort of thing lay years into the future. One day someone would touch my heart, someone my own age, and we would be old enough to be sweethearts. I wanted someone to look at me the way Harry Oliver looked at my mother. I wanted someone to make me feel buzzy and breathless, the way I did when I thought about him finding her at last. I wanted someone to take my clothes off (when the time came) with the same kind of awe and reverence I saw in his eyes. I wouldn’t mind if that someone fumbled the buttons, as long as he was grateful. And didn’t say ‘Come on, Nellie, don’t be a cow,’ to me.
“If ’e’d lay orf,” she said, “we wouldn’t ’ave no more babbies. An’ that’d be a treat.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Things were hard for her here and harder still away – and it was men and their ways that had pushed her out of the house, really, wasn’t it? Too many mouths to feed, too many feet needing shoes, backs wanting clothes; no more room in the bed.
I froze. What about that? My mother had given herself away once, and look where it had got her — me. Now she seemed all set to do it again. What if he was married? (Impossible!) What if he didn’t stick by her? (But he would, there was not a dishonourable bone in his body.) What if — but no. They would get married, and all would be well. And if babies came, I would help to look after them. Just one or two, though.
And he would get better. Slowly, perhaps, but he would. One day, he would be all better. We would make him so. In our home, in the circle of our love, he would find himself whole again.
“You ain’t bin listening, is you?”
“Oh — er — sorry, no,” I said. “What?”
“Never mind. Y’er too young, anyway.”
I frowned at her. Since when had we been different ages? She was a year older than me, it was true, but it didn’t count, because I could read and write better.
She relented. “They’re starting,” she said. “Me tits.” She pulled up her blouse before I could say anything. Through her grubby camisole two little fat points stuck out. “I lets Mr. Douglass rub ’em,” she said, “An’ ’e gives me sweets.”
I was shocked. “Who’s he?” I asked, in horror.
“The dirty ole man wot’s our butler. ’E’s past bein’ any ’arm to a girl, leastways that’s wot Peg says – she’s our other maid. But you sits on ’is lap an’ ’e jiggles you an’ then ’e rubs ’em an’ then ’e goes all quiet an’ then ’e gives you jujubes – or mint imperials.”
“Don’t,” I said, urgently. “Don’t let him.”
“Why not?”
I fumbled for words. There weren’t any tactful ones. “It’s wrong,” I said. “It isn’t right, Ivy, you know it isn’t!”
“No ’arm in gettin’ sweeties,” she said defensively.
How far my friend had gone away from me – much further than the ten miles which separated us as the crow flew. She had crossed a divide over which there was no going back. She had never been as innocent as I – but she had not been a participant, till now. “Ivy,” I said urgently, “it’ll come to no good!”
“Fooey,” she said, cramming another handful of currants in her mouth till the red juice ran down her chin. She looked such a child, then, and I felt like the adult.
“I’ll race you to the bottom of the garden,” I cried, and off we ran. My legs were longer, and I beat her easily. She was tired, too. But she took her defeat with characteristic good humour. “Get you next time,” she said, shaking her fist at me and making a cut-throat sign.
If only Harry Oliver could do that to each fresh defeat. And laugh it off, as I had told him to – like Ivy did.
But somehow, now I wanted him to be the kind of person who would take things to heart; who wouldn’t laugh them off.
The kind who wouldn’t think a hard red-and-white peppermint swirl fit reward for a naughty fumble. Who wouldn’t ask a woman to bed by telling her not to be a cow.
There were worse things than taking yourself seriously, then – such as throwing yourself away?
He was trying to keep all the pieces of himself together, so that he would have something to give.
I had said very little, all the way home, which was not like me. When asked why, I told my mother with some degree of truth that I had a bellyache. That it was more from anxiety than anything I’d eaten was neither here nor there. I remembered the way Harry had bent-over, when he was startled, and then (out of sight behind a tree) thrown up – did his belly knot, then, too, the way mine did when I thought about Ivy and the dirty old man?
So it was a pleasant relief when he came along later that afternoon and asked to borrow the bicycle. It gave me something else to think about – which was just as well. I didn’t want to keep seeing Ivy on that jiggling lap — but for a while I couldn’t stop. I began to understand a bit better about how you don’t want to see something in your head, but it won’t go away.
The same way he did.
* * * * * ** *
He took for ever to return — at least half an hour. The tea had gone gold in the pot, even under our knitted cosy. Never mind, said my mother, we could make a fresh pot whenever he got back. No hurry.
I was in a hurry, though. I didn’t want to dwell on all the things I had heard from Ivy. One moment she had been a girl, like me, and now she was witness and even agent in the forbidden world of adult passions. I wanted Harry to come back and take my mind off my friend and her unhappy discoveries. Not that they seemed to bother her, half as much as they did me. I wondered if that meant that I was naïve – a word I had learned recently. Probably so. Oh, well.
Then there he was, knocking at the front-door. He had been coming to the back lately, not that they were very far apart; but there was a difference in degree and formality, and the back one led straight into our kitchen where we always sat to eat together. When I jumped-up to let him in, he was standing there with a giant wooden packing-crate in his arms. He must have pushed the bicycle all the way here with it balanced on top. His face was red and streaked with sweat. It bore an expression of pure pleasure, though, pleasure and triumph.
It was not a look I had seen him wear before. I was more used the one of defeat struggling to take over, and some bitter hard-won scrap of spirit refusing to yield to it; or at best those fleeting little smiles of his, like the sun all watery in-between clouds.
I stepped aside quickly so he could stagger in with it.
“What!” cried my mother.
“Now don’t s-say anything,” he said, “p-please.” He set it down on the little table where we put our hats and bags when we walked in by the front way. You wouldn’t exactly call the room in question a parlour, since we didn’t keep it for best, but it was a separate sitting-room where a couple of old chairs held sway — literally, since they sagged like elderly ponies. Unlike the kitchen, whose old-fashioned fireplace was of rosy soot-stained brick, this room boasted an elegant green-tiled hearth with pewter fire-dogs and a high mantelpiece. This my mother was very proud of, dusting its glossy tiles regularly, as she also dusted (with a strained, tender look) the photograph of my uncle in his uniform. It was in a silver frame and held pride of place up there beside the clock. When I was old enough to help dust, I was always careful to put her little brother back exactly in the spot where I had picked him up from. He looked young and jaunty, looking over your shoulder into the future with crinkling eyes.
Unfortunately I was not so careful with the key to the clock, which I had managed to dust right off the mantelpiece without noticing and into the grate, whence (presumably) it had been thrown-out with the ashes, and at any rate was seen no more. The clock, therefore, had been silent recently. I missed its steady formal tick-and-tocking, which had marked my life for as long as I remembered, and I particularly mourned its reverberating chime on the quarter-hours, which I felt sure had been the beginning of my ability to count all the way to four. We often sat here in winter evenings especially, since the gas-lamp had a double-mantle and was thus bright enough for my mother to read to me by. She read David Copperfield’s Boyhood, and A Tale of Two Cities, and Three Men In A Boat, and Little Women. I was plenty old enough to read them to myself, and did, frequently, in-between-times, but the shared reading out loud was a ritual neither of us wished to relinquish.
It was not an especially big room, though, and the crate almost dwarfed it. “D-don’t worry,” said Harry, “it’s not so b-big as all that, what’s inside.”
I hung back in the doorway, letting my mother look first. What could it be? It was approximately cubic, and there was a dark glossy label turned towards her where I could not see it. “Oh!” she cried then, “oh, Harry, no! You never did! You mustn’t! Oh, my dear — !”
What on earth could it be, to bring such a torrent of you-shouldn’t-haves from her? Not the Crown Jewels, they would have fitted in a smaller box – though you would have thought it, from the sudden emotion in her voice.
“W—w-why not?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse.
“Because – it’s far too extravagant – you shouldn’t – I mean, this ought to be for you, we could come and visit, and listen to it there – not here! Not for us!”
Listen? Oh, goodness and glory. I had crept closer, so I could make it out plainly now. That glossy label held a familiar image, one that anybody and everybody would recognize. It was both a moment captured, and a promise: atop an elegant mahogany case a horn lifted its gleaming brass throat into the air, thereby captivating the terrier with the sound of His Master’s Voice. ‘Nipper’ listened intently, with cocked head, so faithfully rendered you could almost feel his brown ears and white coat all aquiver.
Harry Oliver reached into his pocket (he had not been an officer for nothing) and pulled-out a small jemmy. This he slid under the lid of the crate, whose nails squealed their complaint. Going round all four sides so as to raise it evenly without breaking anything, he lifted it off.
“Oh,” said my mother again. “Where — how — ?”
“P-petersfield,” he said. “I t-took the bus. This morning.”
Petersfield! But that was twenty miles away, an hour away at least, noisy and jolting with every bend in the road – of which there were many. For anyone else, it might have been a jaunt; for him, it was a sortie requiring all his courage.
He reached inside and pulled-out the horn. It was wrapped in a sort of little quilt made of cheap cotton. “Here,” he said, holding it out to me, “you unwr-r-rap it, Helen?”
I did so.
It was not plain, like the brass horn in the picture. That had been painted nigh-on twenty years ago, and the machines had changed since then. This was more beautiful still: an elegant, extravagant, creamy horn – a fluted swirling horn, a sinuous petal-edged horn like the furled flower of a huge convolvulus. In its angles it was brushed with sepia, to accentuate the shadows. I had seen such a thing, of course, but we had never owned one. We had had a battered old gramophone years before whose box amplified the sound from within through wooden flanges like a louvered window, but it came out muffled and unsatisfying and my uncle (apparently) had broken the spring when winding it for a birthday-party entertainment (mine?) — so long ago that I barely remembered it. It wasn’t like us to throw away something broken, though, not when it could be mended, so it must have been well and truly busted.
It wasn’t like this, ever. Not even when it worked, after its fashion.
He reached inside again and with great care lifted the machine itself out of the crate. It was wrapped in coarse muslin, and inside that, dark-yellow oilcloth. My mother quickly moved the crate out of the way so he could set his burden down again and unwrap its layers. She seemed to have forgotten how to talk – at any rate, she said nothing, nothing at all, as he folded the cloth out of the way and gave the case a little rub with his sleeve. Finally it was revealed in all its glory. It was even more exquisite than the one on the label. It was (of course) bigger. It was also, if that was possible, glossier, grander, more new-looking; its metal lustrous, its wood glowing, altogether the most stunning man-made object ever to enter our modest house.
“Oh,” said my mother again, faintly. She was overwhelmed, I could tell. This was not something that happened very
often, but when it did she lost all powers of speech for a few minutes. This was just as well, for it prevented her
from protesting while he set it up, swung-out the handle from its clever little
pocket, wound the spring, took the horn from my arms and lifted it into
place; opened a drawer at the base of
the cabinet whose existence I had not noticed till he pulled at its neat black
knob, and took-out a shiny new record from a dull blue cover like sugar-paper. I saw the name ‘Haendel’ through the
cut-out in the middle, and underneath, ‘
He set the record on the turntable then, and picked-up the shiny steel box of needles that nestled in its own little slot in the green-baize top. He made an attempt to open it, but realized my hands were both smaller and steadier than his, and let me do it. He showed me where the needle went and I screwed the little finger-nut tight, its milled edge feeling like a tiny sixpence.
My mother was holding both hands over her mouth.
“You shouldn’t,” she said faintly, “really — we don’t deserve this – it’s not right — ”
He looked at her, the chrome-plated playing arm in his hand. Clearly, this was a moment he had imagined, planned, and waited-for. I saw it in his eyes, before he spoke; a leaping-off, an act of daring, of truthfulness. “Th—th—this is you,” he said, “this is w—w—what you’ve been to me –—— w-w—what you are.” He set it down quickly, before his tremor could start.
It started to play.
The music poured out of that morning-glory horn into the room like a tide on the flood. It was stately, sweet, a simple melody unfolding at the pace of a slow walk. It moved from chord to chord as if there were nowhere else for it to go, so fresh, so inevitable it filled my throat and choked me. It reminded me of some of the slow parts of the Messiah, except that it wasn’t any piece I knew.
My mother knew it, though. I could tell she did, from the way she was listening to it – the way one recognizes an old and dear friend. Her hands slipped from her face down to her shoulders, so that she was holding herself while the music played — almost as if she was afraid to uncross them, as if beneath her folded arms she was hiding her naked bosom.
The music spread till it filled every corner; swelled till our ears throbbed with it. It wasn’t merely wide: it was illimitable, like the sea.
And this was what he had just told her she was to him: all of this.
He watched her listening. His nostrils flared; other than that, he was motionless. He might just as well have declared ‘I love you’ — and she knew it, she couldn’t fail to. No-one could.
I breathed in little shallow breaths while it played. If she said ‘yes’ to the gramophone, then she was inviting him to stay. If she insisted on refusing it, then she was telling him she wasn’t ready for anything so overwhelming as this; as him. Which would it be? Would it speak for him? Would she hear it?
It was a melody that felt familiar even though it wasn’t
– had I heard her humming it, perhaps?
An expansive air indeed, wide in the way the sky is wide.
By the time the music ended, my mother’s cheeks were wet. With it he had told her that she was a sea of peace — that she was sweetness itself, and yet strong, too, and noble. He had told her she was harmony and surcease, seeking and finding, departing and returning; the dear familiar road, the pilgrimage, the way home; that she, Winifred Pasley, unwed mother and shabby-genteel woman on the verge of middle-age, was beautiful beyond words. And that the beauty he saw in her was not something ephemeral, that might pass or be lost, but timeless: fresh like the piece itself, perpetually renewed.
The phonograph made its swish-swish-swish sound, the background hiss audible now that the music had ebbed away and left us. He picked-up the arm and replaced it in its cradle.
“W—well?” he asked.
“It’s too much,” my mother began.
He went pale. His eyes didn’t leave hers.
“How can I refuse?” she said then, on a little sob.
“Then d-don’t,” he said.
She turned to me. “Nellie, did you ever — ” she began, helplessly.
“He went all the way to Petersfield to get it, mummy,” I reminded her. It was a plea for us to keep it, and she knew it. Her shoulders slumped.
“It’s too much — ” she said again, more faintly this time, clearly wanting to be contradicted.
I obliged. “When somebody gives you something, you should just say thank you,” I reminded her. It was one of her own sayings.
“It’s wonderful,” she said then, “I never heard one half so true — it’s a treat, a real treat — thank you —— I don’t know what to say —!”
His eyes shone. “You’re w-w-welcome,” he murmured.
“It must have cost a fortune…” she murmured, looking unhappy.
“Not compared with what y-you’ve g-given me,” he replied.
Meanwhile, I had turned over the record we had just heard, wondering what they might have paired with the piece called Largo. From Semele, it said, Aria: Where’er You Walk. Another Haendel piece, not surprisingly: but this one I knew. “Oh, mummy,” I cried, “it’s your song, the one you sang at the concert!”
Harry Oliver raised his eyebrows. This seemed too good to be true; though whoever had picked the pieces to go together must have been moved in a similar way.
“Play it,” I pleaded, “ – and you sing too?”
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“Yes you could,” I insisted, “Major Oliver’s never heard you sing.” This was not quite true, since she had been breaking into snatches of this and that tune and folk-song for the past several weeks now, ever since his arrival in our lives; but she had not sung for him on purpose.
“Who’s singing?” she asked.
He read from the round blue label in the middle of the record I held-out. “Eva Gauthier — with members of the London Symphony Orchestra.”
“They played the
“Yes.”
My mother slowly let her hands fall to her sides. Recognizing surrender, I quickly replaced the record on the turntable, flicked off the catch as I had just seen him do, and set the playing-arm on its revolving surface.
Again, the room filled with something from another time and place. The opening measures led us into the aria. My mother lifted her head, and began:
‘Where’er you walk,
Cool gales shall fan the glade —
Trees where you sit Shall bow down into shade — ’ Her deep contralto underpinned the performer’s on the recording, so that they blended like a violin and viola. She was self-conscious for a bar or two just at the beginning, but then put back her head and closed her eyes and just sang.
He blinked all the way through. Near the end he bit his lip. I saw his hands tremble at his sides. Oh
Harry, I thought, Harry Oliver, it
really is going to be all right – and you know it.
He had not forgotten me, in his shopping. There was another recording, in the cabinet-bottom, this one with a cherry-red label, befittingly: favourites from D’oyly Carte’s production of HMS Pinafore, with Poor Little Buttercup on one side and My Gallant Crew (Nevah nevah sick at sea) on the other. We played them in due course, and (of course) joined-in too — what a r- romp, he said, oh lord!
When I went up to bed they were still talking about music, and my mother was singing bits of arias, sometimes whole verses…
In the night I woke-up. Someone was screaming, a blood-curdling sound. Then I heard my mother’s voice, low and calm, and the shrieks subsiding to noisy groans, the kind you make when you can’t get enough breath, and finally to a kind of hiccupping sobbing. This grew wild and then muffled. All through it I could hear my mother: hush, hush, Harry, hush — it’s just a dream – Harry, you’re safe, look – it’s all right. Sweetheart, sweetheart, hush, it’s all right —— till there was silence. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop – but how could I help overhearing, after his screams woke me?
A little while later there were other cries, softer, and again she was telling him sshhh – sshhh – sshhh. Finally I heard her say, almost in surprise, “Harry – ? Of course – of course — Oh, sweetheart… ” – but not at all in a bad way. Then she cried, too, but softly. I had never heard my mother cry before. She must have needed it, after all this time trying to be strong on her own.
I turned over and made myself go back to sleep.
In the morning she sang all through making our porridge. She seemed softer, as if she had blurred at the edges in the night. Her cheeks were pink flags. There was no sign of Harry Oliver, though this did not surprise me; I half-remembered hearing our front-door closing some time in the grey early morning, and the soft crunch of footsteps walking away down our gravel path.
It was the happiest morning of my life.
And of his, I suspect.
* * * * * * * *
DIARY – cont’d.
Friday.
God, Winifred.
Winifred, Winifred – once for each time — god what a total shock — told me earnestly she wasn’t a tease – & then of course, almost as soon as she touched me – helpless ejaculatn, didn’t take more than that to open the floodgates – she didn’t seem to mind – she was sure it must have been a long time — how do you ask if never is a long time?
Oh god what wd it be like to be in her? I am grateful for this beyond words – but long to penetrate her ——
Winifred.
Fell asleep in her bed, drowsed & stunned & overcome —— not even a thought to the usual n.m. —— they came, of course – but not alone, this time – so different! To be woken from them, & held afterwards – & then comforted again —
& she was so vulnerable, in her loving, at last — as naked as I was, as easily hurt, but let me touch & kiss her — dear God I can’t write any more, hand shaking too much by far.
Calmed down. Just want to record enough to remember by — crumbs for the dry days – in case this is the only time, ever — though NOT likely to forget!
Later – still can’t stop thinking abt it –! Hardly surprising — Never expected this, instead of all or nothing —— certainly never ever expected all! Still don’t –– she is not at risk this way, after all she has been let down before – ! And I must walk before I can run — she is not ready for marriage and neither am I, god knows – but to have this much ——
She knew what she was doing – I shdn’t be shocked, I know there was someone before me, oh Christ her caress —
Still hardly know what to think —!
Can’t get over the 2nd time – blessedly somewhat longer than the 1st! — the way she held my gaze all through – god, her face – the look on it – perfectly luminous – was it because I had told her I was new to this? ? – me staring back – still in utter disbelief, must have looked as if I had just been struck by lightning I am sure — & the way she said my name Harry oh Harry oh my dear —! Never heard it quite like that, ever —
& then afterwards — on waking from the n.m., hadn’t wet the bed thank god – forgot this but it needs to go with the rest – of course I apologized for it after I had calmed down – all the helpless bloody shrieking & weeping – & she told me off ! ! – said she never wanted to hear that from me ever – was quite fierce about it! – said this was the least I deserved & I ought to have much more —— don’t know abt that – the deserving part – but god knows I want it! Want it want it want it – want her – more than ever now. ‘So near & yet so far,’ as they say — ! !
What she did – why isn’t there a better word for it? I hate ‘wanking’! It felt as holy as dawn w/ the skylarks overhead in our slit of sky. It must be whatever you make it I suppose.
No question I cd have had as much from chaps any number of times, but didn’t – not sure why – too shy perhaps? – & thinking if it started, where wd it end? In shame & buggery & disgrace ? ? ? – no doubt about the looks I got at times – Dick in particular – might even have liked it – god knows almost everyone felt it – the electricity – & envy – prudery – shame – helpless desire – any of which could have won, & did – it was a cruel, unnatural place god knows — young men with all the force of young men’s feelings thrown together in a pressure-cooker, what did they expect? Disgrace – an odd word — it wd have been a grace, as much as this was, I see that now.
Poor old Dick. This was all he wanted & I wouldn’t give it to him. I wasn’t in love; he was. Sorry I didn’t, now. Wouldn’t have hurt. He deserved to have had this much joy before he copped it.
Well – that’s regrets I suppose – once started, where do they end? Sorry, Dick. Forgive me, please, for being so untouchable back then. Regrets always the strongest for the things we didn’t do, aren’t they? Lying there inches from him – rigid – knowing from his breathing he was comforting himself – & me pretending to be asleep. Not from tact but confusion. Knowing he was dying for something from me, anything. What harm wd it have done to have kissed him and finished it for him? But I did not dare to be as generous as Win — & so I was not.
Though – now — it was preferable to look Win in the eye & tell her honestly I had never had anything of the kind, & not be thinking ‘except with half-a-dozen chaps but that doesn’t count.’ It does count, doesn’t it. It always counts. Love is always love. There is no mistaking it. & — I don’t have to fight it off any more.
At last.
I am still shaking.
And — what? Why such shock? Je me sens complètement bouleversé – how wd you even say that in English? turned upside-down. & inside-out too. Wd it have felt this way with Dick? Probably. Perhaps one always does, the first time. One must. How could one not? So it was just as well, then. Rest in peace, Dick old chap. Did you ever —? I hope so, I hope to god you did, with someone.
Poor lad. If this was how he felt about me, the way I do for Win — ! Those hours of pure longing, that swoon inside —? Glad now more than ever that I had the grace to hold him after Bapaume & Gerald’s death when he broke down & wept. God, to let myself be held —! I have seen it in her eyes all along — that promise of kindness ——
A complete jumble of thoughts & feelings —— god all those times when I was so sure I wd never know this, sure I shd go to my grave untouched. Wish I cd have known. It wd have made it so much more bearable — just to know all that frantic need & loneliness wd one day be assuaged — but we can’t ever know can we?
No, Win, you are not a tease, my darling. Anything but.
And so now what? ? ?
Wd she marry me, if I asked her?
Oh come on man, what prospects? Not even a steady position, & little expectation of obtaining one – drifting from job to job & breaking-down in-between, that’s a nice thing for a man to offer — marry me Winifred, so you can take care of me like this for ever —— no. No no no.
Not to mention the n.m. & bed-wetting – w/ no end in sight.
But something —! A
ring, when I go up to
But why wd she consent to an engagement if I am unfit to marry her? That wd be a dog-in-the-manger, selfish of me.
Don’t get ahead of self.
Please god don’t let this be the only time she is generous —?
Need to go to
No hurry.
Do I visit her again tonight?
& there is Helen to think of –
Perhaps I shouldn’t —! Mustn’t presume… but how cd any man not hope for it again?! Cd have been just the one time, because of everything – & she was sorry for me?
Wd be selfish. And not right for Helen, at all. But how to say it without making it seem I take last night for granted, and expect it now? So — let her offer again, then, or not — don’t ask!
Oh Christ how I want her to touch me again —! ! ! ! Bottom falling out of my stomach just thinking about it —
Made self stay away.
Ached for her all night.
HELEN cont’d
I never meant to spy on them.
I wouldn’t have, I truly didn’t intend it.
They were trying to avoid me, and I was trying to avoid them, and by the same thought process we all ended-up in the same place, and there was nothing I could do about it without mortifying both of them and myself into the bargain. I didn’t look, though – not really. Almost not. (‘What, never? Well, hardly ever —!’) When I was trapped there, and it was too late, I only turned to take a glimpse a couple of times, hoping I could make my getaway — not wanting to see more than that, except (in all honesty) just a bit, just enough to know….
And then it wasn’t at all what I thought, it was so strange – I felt let-down, that I had thought there was more to it than there was. I wanted them to be real lovers, not like this. But I suppose that was what they wanted.
I had no idea, then, that he stayed away for my sake. That he would have given anything to spend the nights in my mother’s arms, as he had that one time, to face his demons with her beside him – but that he thought it wouldn’t be right for me. So they trysted, when they thought I wouldn’t know. As if I wouldn’t have stood there and clapped —! But they wanted to protect me…
Our granary stood on four ancient staddle-stones at the bottom of our garden, past our little orchard of one greengage, one quince and two apple-trees. To step up inside it you trod on an old mill-stone. I used to trace its grooves with my finger sometimes and think about all the grains of wheat it had ground, through all the years, before the farmers all sent their grain to the big new mill in Fareham, and our old domesday-book mill fell down and the stone fetched-up here in our garden. How many millstones had worn-out, since 1068? What was our village like, back then? Was there a house where ours now stood?
It wasn’t as if our little house needed a granary. It was part of the buildings left-over when they divided the big house next door into lots. But my grandfather had used it to store things in, and we let our farmer neighbour keep extra hay in there when he had a bumper year. It was a dim, dusty place, shot through with shafts of light from the cracks in the wooden walls. It had a loft at one end (which was my undoing) – which was also where all my grandfather’s things ended-up: an old horse-collar and odds and ends of harness, his tools, crates of dusty bottles with glass balls in the neck for stoppers, from when my uncle made his own ginger-beer on a regular basis… all in all, a perfect place to get away. No-one would think to look for you there.
Unless they were also wanting to disappear…
At first, after the night of the gramophone and his staying and ending-up in my mother’s bed, a couple of days went by and we didn’t see Harry Oliver. I was surprised – and I think she was, too. But then he came back, around tea-time as he liked to do, dropping-in and finding himself welcome. The arc lights that flashed between my mother’s eyes and his were quite extraordinary. He leaned on the bottom half of our back door, that opened on the top stable-style, and asked, “M-mind if I come in?”
“Silly,” she said, with a look that said ‘darling,’ — and he did, setting a battered satchel down and wiping his feet carefully on the bristly mat. He was a stickler about things like that. She watched him as if it were the most fascinating and dear sight in all the world, a man wiping his feet. We had just finished topping and tailing a mountain of gooseberries for jam. They lay in a green-and-amber jewelled sea in the big copper, ready to start as soon as we added the sugar. Hoping that he might appear, my mother had also thrown together a quick ball of pastry and popped it into the oven for a gooseberry-tart, and the result of this happy thought was cooling in the middle of the kitchen-table. It had distracted us briefly from the jam, but all to the good. I had twisted the strands of leftover pastry into decorations for the top, making a cart-wheel of golden strips over the bubbling fruit beneath.
“It’s about time,” said my mother, soft and sharp all at once, “we were beginning to think you’d forgotten where we lived!”
“I d-didn’t want to impose — ” he said.
“That’s the daftest thing I ever heard,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Don’t leave it so long, next time,” she said, more softly, her look a message in code that might be intercepted, but only understood by its intended recipient. It was a look that left him suddenly breathless.
“No, I w—won’t,” he answered.
“Any news about the scrapbook?” She was weighing the sugar out, frowning down at the tray of the scale. She let me pile up the weights, which I loved to do. Three pounds, plus two and one in a pyramid – not worth bothering with the little ones, they’d only make the sum more complicated – we needed whole pounds here, not fractions.
Six pounds. She dumped it on top of the gooseberries and set them on the back burner to come to a boil.
“I h–had an idea about that,” he said, having waited till
she was finished to speak. “I really
n-need to go up to
She looked up sharply.
He knew what the look meant, and a little of the starch seemed to go out of him. “I know,” he said, “but — I thought – m-maybe you’d help, the t-two of you?”
“Of course we will,” she said warmly, going to him with her floury hands and laying them on his lapels. She had seen that slump, too.
He put his hands over hers. “I th-thought we’d have a dry run,” he explained, “ — take the train up to W-w-w—Winchester, say – just to see if I can st—stand it — ”
“I think that’s a splendid idea,” she said quickly. “And then
“That’s — the idea,” he said. Their hands rested on his chest. He didn’t want them to move, and neither did
she. They exchanged another look, that
wasn’t about going to
My mother broke away, wiping her hands on her apron. “Sorry,” she said, “look, I’ve made you all floury — ” and she dabbed at his jacket with the corner of her pinny.
“It’s all right,” he said. She had touched him — crossed that gulf between them and laid her hands on him again — of course it was all right!
I was starting to feel as if I shouldn’t be there. I really hadn’t felt that way with them before. The time I left them alone together at the picnic, it was in the hopes that something like this might come of it. Now it had, and I was already de trop.
It was a bit hurtful, even though I knew better than
that. I set about making us all tea and
laying the table, so they could exchange all the looks they wanted and not
bother about me. Apparently we were
going to go to
W-w-w-wonderful, he said, absolutely r-r-ripping.
“You can see the trout,” I told him, “in the middle of the river, right there from the path, on top of the gravel, all in-between the strips of weed… ”
“ – ‘for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim’,” he chimed back.
“What?” I said.
“It’s from a p-poem,” he said. “By a Jesuit. Just r–read it a few weeks ago — an extraordinary chap. Wrote years ago, but he’s only just now been p-published. Odd sort of fellow.”
“I liked that,” said my mother.
“God, he’s marvellous,” said Harry, “he s-s-sees things like an angel — that’s from one called P-pied Beauty – it’s about s–spotted things.”
A whole poem, about spotted things? That was either the strangest thing I had ever heard of, or the most inspired. I thought about it for a second: didn’t I have strong feelings about speckles and dots, when I saw them, on eggshells and foxgloves and turk’s-head lilies and plaice and granite? “Oh,” I said, wondering.
“I’ll b–bring it for you,” he said, “I have the b-book.”
“I’d like that,” said my mother, “I love poetry. Good poetry, anyway.”
“Well, he’s a b-bit of a queer bird,” said Harry, “s–sort of an acquired taste, here and there, b-but some of them are s-simply charming — ”
The kettle began to whistle.
The tart was wonderful, though he seemed to have less appetite than usual. I think he was nervous. It was understandable, really, even though she had given him every signal that he was welcome back, short of kissing him right under my nose. I really should have announced where I was going. If I’d just said, “well, I think I’ll go and polish up grandad’s harness —” or “I’m going out, then – off for a walk – won’t be back for an hour – see you later!”
But I didn’t.
Partly it was out of excitement at seeing the scrapbook at last. We had drunk our tea – I remembered to give him a mug, no tattle-tale cup-and-saucer – and eaten our wedges of gooseberry-tart. The copper of jam was happily cooking away in the kitchen, needing little attention now that it had come to a full rolling boil. He had stirred it for a while, seeing my mother’s red face and stepping-in to take over the spoon from her, and we were just settling down with our tea after that when he said, “I f-forgot — !”
“What?” asked my mother.
“I’ve b-brought it to show you,” he said.
“What?”
“The c-c-commonplace b—book!”
“Oh, my goodness!” said my mother. “What, here? Now?”
“Y—yes,” he said, unfolding himself from the chair and returning to the kitchen for his satchel. None of us had paid it any attention, down there on the floor by the doormat, leaning against the back door. He was unbuckling the straps as he came back into the room. He pulled-out a shabby old book – it didn’t look like much. Loose pages crowded out of the binding, which was no more than two scratched boards covered in brick-coloured paper, held together with a cloth spine and creased, grubby tapes.
He knelt by my mother’s chair, set the satchel on the floor, and untied the tapes. Then he set it in her lap for her to open.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, “ – you do it!”
“’Course you could!” he said. “Just l-lift the c-cover – go on!”
She did. I stood behind her, so I could see.
It was a complete hodge-podge. The book itself was about fourteen inches by
twelve, and some of its pages had things glued to them, others just slipped
in-between. There were even pages with
bits of old dried seaweed stuck-down.
She leafed slowly through ladies in crinolines, coloured lithographs of
the
Then followed several brand-new sheets of clean creamy blotting-paper, of the best quality. “I put those in,” he said, “to p-protect them — now then — there you are.”
A Venetian scene in dry pencil filled with buildings and bridges and spires and roofs came first. It was meticulous enough to have been done with a magnifying-glass, I thought. “The Canaletto,” he said, “ — at least, what I th–think is the Canaletto. The original hasn’t b-been seen since the B-bolsheviks took St. Petersburg – b-but I found a picture of it — looks just like that — b-but which came first? I m-mean, w-was this a sketch made after the p-painting was d-done? C-could be… ”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” said my mother. “Either way, really. Though this is awfully
detailed, for just somebody’s impression of a painting – and if the original’s
been in
“Th-that’s w-what I thought,” he said, “b-but I’m k-keeping an open mind. G—go on…. ”
My mother turned the page again, and there were three exquisite small drawings under a folded sheet of tracing-paper that kept them from rubbing against one another. Even through it you could see their lines and shapes. He reached in and lifted it out of the way. My mother gasped.
You could tell right away that these were of a different quality altogether. They were by the hand of a genius, no question about it.
To begin with, they weren’t slavishly complete in the way the possible Canaletto was. They were just perfect in their economy of line. Two were in charcoal, a boy and a young woman, delicately smudged and shaded to bring the draperies alive on bosom and sleeve. A line became a coif; a flat plane rounded into a cheekbone, a shadow captured the set of a mouth. The boy had delicate features; the young woman a slight double-chin. He looked unsure of himself; she had a coyness to her. They shared a page, mounted side-by-side.
The third was in coloured chalks, cream and tan and shades of umber so lifelike you could almost feel him: a middle-aged man with a strained look. His eyes gazed off to the side from an angle, grey like Harry’s own; his chin bore a slight stubble. The nose was prominent and its irregularity captured with great finesse. There was experience in his face, and sadness; sharp intelligence too, and enormous sensibility. He wore a black cap. His mouth was a stern line, but vulnerable where it curved slightly in the middle. The artist hadn’t bothered with his clothing, beyond suggesting a white shirt and something with fur.
“They f-fit,” said Harry quietly. “W-with the rest of his work – the period, the st-style — everything — his d-drapery, just like the extant p-portrait-sketches of Anne Boleyn and K-k-katherine Seymour —— and the b-boy has a Tudor face…”
“Who’s the man?” I asked. He didn’t look like a king – he didn’t hold himself like one, and the artist had shown him pensive, not arrogant. There was no swagger to him at all; he looked entirely aware of his mortality.
“Thomas M-more,” said Harry. “N-no doubt about it. There’s another Holbein sketch, d-done from the opposite angle — a w-well-known one — here he’s turned the other w-way — s-same face… older – the likeness — same d-degree of rendering — the air, the technique — all the s-s-ame. If this is a c-copy, it was done by a m-master’s h-hand.”
“They’re beautiful,” whispered my mother, “Harry, I can’t believe I’m holding this on my lap! How old would they be – what – fifteen-thirty-six, the dissolution of the monasteries?”
“That’d be about right,” he said, “give or t-take a decade or two!”
“They look as fresh as the day they were done,” she murmured. “Here, put them away — safely — take them back to Sir Archibald!”
I wanted to see them a bit longer, and said so. Harry smiled at me. “I f-felt that way,” he said. “W-when I f-found them — I just c-couldn’t stop staring at them… ”
We all gazed for a minute or two more. Then, gently, he took the book back out of my mother’s hands and re-tied the tapes. It went back into his old satchel and was swallowed again, as invisible as if it had never been found.
They started to talk about dealers, then, and finding an
expert at the
He was still kneeling by my mother’s chair, looking up into her face. He had shaved just before coming-out, it seemed – there was a tiny fleck of dried lather behind his ear. His shirt, I noticed, was crisply ironed.
They didn’t need me. I slipped away without saying anything – which was the mistake. I was trying not to be heavy-handed about it. As they say about good intentions…
So there I was, a short while later, having slipped to a favourite retreat of mine, sitting with my back to the wooden wall of the granary and watching a pair of swallows dart in under the door and fly up without hesitation through the dimness to their nest under the eaves above me. If I tried that I’d come a-cropper – how could they adjust their vision instantaneously from the brilliant daylight to this shadowy space?
I was rubbing a piece of harness with a rag, not because it was any use but because I just liked bringing it back to a shine from the dry dullness. Which was when I heard them, when it was already too late.
“Here,” said my mother’s voice, “this is where I meant, she won’t stumble on us here — she’ll just come home again and think we’ve gone out — ”
“I ought to b-be able to w-wait,” he said, “b-but — ”
“No, no you shouldn’t,” she said, “I can’t! not after all this time – I don’t want to – Harry, oh Harry, come here —!”
The door opened. Daylight flooded in, motes of dust turning in it. If they’d looked up, they could have seen me tucked away back in there – but they didn’t. It didn’t occur to them. They had other things uppermost in their minds, evidently. They didn’t look up because Harry had his hands on my mother’s shoulders and he was pushing her backwards and kissing her as if he was starving, and she was kissing him back. It all happened very quickly after that. I didn’t mean to be there, but I had no choice.
If it had been anybody else, or a pair of strangers, I should have felt very differently about it all, I am sure. But this was Harry, whom I had yearned to see comforted – and my mother, who (I saw) had aspects to her that I had not yet learned to appreciate. I was on their side, I wanted this for them. And now I wasn’t going to be wondering about it much longer…
The door creaked shut on rusty hinges. He was gasping. “Touch me,” he groaned, “I can’t l-last, Win, n-not when you d-do th—that!”
Do what? Heavens, my mother was drawing his head close with one hand and kissing him, while the other rubbed him through his clothing – not just anywhere, but right there.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “yes, of course —!”
“T-touch me –!” he said again, more urgently still. He pulled her down onto the big pile of sweet hay and she started unfastening his trousers. “Win,” he said, “God, Win — !”
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said, “I thought I’d frightened you off —!”
“God, no,” he groaned, “I d-didn’t — know h—h-how to ask you —— ahhhh —!”
“Silly,” she said, “no need to ask, is there?”
“No,” he gasped, “no —!”
“How’s this?” she said softly, taking him out of his clothes down there. That was when I shut my eyes tight. I was glad it was dark again with the door shut: I didn’t want to see this.
He was sighing as if she was hurting him, except it was very clear that she wasn’t. I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. I would never in a thousand years have got myself into this situation voluntarily. I respected their privacy – I didn’t want to spy. I felt awful. And also electric, in my chest and between my legs and where I would have breasts one day, if they ever grew. And that feeling was the opposite of awful: it was a sweet rush, tingly and melting, like before you sneeze only slower, much slower. And the sounds he was making were broken, but in a way that pierced me. After so much torture he had found a little joy in the world, and I did not, could not grudge it to him.
Well, I didn’t have to look. And it would be my secret, for ever — I would never, ever, ever let-on that I was here.
I kept my word to myself about not looking till my mother said “Harry, ohmygod Harry!” in a different voice. She didn’t sound like herself; she sounded vulnerable, dear.
He had unfastened her blouse as she leaned over him. Wasn’t it time for him to climb on top of her, like Ivy had described in such dire detail? Apparently not. She was still stroking his thing, I could see the movement of her hand pale across the dim space between us, and he was holding her bosoms and cramming his mouth there just like Ivy and the redcurrants, greedily, desperately.
There was no doubt she liked it when he did that. It unleashed a flood of endearments from her, breathless and fervent: oh darling, Harry, oh sweetheart – I never thought I’d let anyone, ever again – oh god that’s sweet – Harry, Harry, darling!
“Win,” he said in that same urgent tone, “I’m there – I’m g-going to splash you – ah, Win – Win!”
“Sweetheart,” she said again. His voice grew muffled, but sharp at the same time, as if he had his face pressed into her; a few deep groans. And then it was quiet, so still and quiet I stopped breathing almost. Their murmurs after that didn’t carry up to me, for which I was grateful. I opened my eyes slowly. She was dabbing at him with a corner of his shirt. There was a glowing tenderness to the gesture. He had his hand still on her breast, a pale half-globe spilling through his fingers as they caressed it. Ch-christ, Win, you’re b-beautiful, he said out loud.
What, with all these freckles? Don’t be silly!
I l-love your freckles, he told her, I even …
Their voices faded, then grew more distinct again. She was telling him she was sorry for something, that he deserved more than that, but she just couldn’t, not yet —
“I’m n-not asking,” he said.
“That’s why,” she said, “ because you’re not asking. Because you’ve never asked –!”
“I’ll w-wait,” he said.
They stood up then, buttoning their clothes in-between kisses. They were only feet from me there, standing in front of the hay-pile, so I heard every word. “God, Win,” he said, “you d-don’t know — w-what it means — !”
“Perhaps not,” she said, a smile in her voice, “I’m not a man — but I’m also not a tease, I told you.”
“God, no,” he said, “y-you’re n-not that!”
“Stay tonight,” she said then quickly, “let me help you through the night again?”
“N-no, I t-told you — s-sometimes I w-wet the bed,” he said.
“I wouldn’t mind,” said my mother, softly.
“I–I would,” he said.
She kissed him. I wouldn’t have known what to answer, either. Of course he would mind — he would mind desperately – anybody would. No amount of matter-of-factness and extra towels under and a rubber sheet could take away how much he’d mind. But one day – perhaps he would accept them, and stay? And if we had sheets on the line every day, I would be glad because it meant he was here where he belonged, with us. “Please,” she said, smoothing his hair, “Harry, stay.”
“No,” he said, “no, I c-can’t, not if I’m g-going to w-wake up screaming. Not w-with Helen. It’s not right.”
“She won’t mind, either,” said my mother.
“It’s not g-good for her,” he said, with conviction. “She’ll know. And p-people would talk – n-nothing’s ever j-just one’s own business —! I won’t treat you l-like that, Win!”
“You’re a love,” she said, cupping his face in her hand.
“Am I?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “that you are.” She kissed him one more time, her mouth lingering on his. I heard him make a soft moan. And then I didn’t hear anything more after that, because they stepped outside again into the sunshine and the door creaked, and I was alone again with all these feelings I had no idea what to do with.
I cried a bit, hot tears, not of betrayal or jealousy but just more emotion than I could hold. Then I went outside and picked a big bunch of wild flowers from all over, to bring home and make it clear I had been far, far away through all of that; that I knew nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing, had no idea whatever about anything that had gone on this afternoon.
He was helping my mother with the jam when I got back. They had the hot jam-jars set-up all over the kitchen-table and he was holding the big copper tilted while she dipped a jug into it to fill the jars. They looked comfortable together, an easy domesticity. My mother looked up when I came in: “Oh,” she said, “Nellie, how beautiful! Where did you get all those?”
“Out,” I said vaguely, “you know — down the lane and into
“What a treat,” she said. “Be a love and put them in water for me, will you? I’ve got my hands full — ”
She did indeed. So I did as she asked, in a tall plain glass jar, nothing fancy to take away from their delicate beauty, and set them in the windowsill.
They both had red faces – but it was hot in the kitchen, what with the jam and everything, so it didn’t matter.
I still didn’t understand what had just happened, though. But then it was none of my business, anyway. And they both looked happy – which was all that mattered.
DIARY cont’d
Saturday. So it isn’t to be the one time, then.
Heaven.
Win — Win — !!!!! — my darling.
NB: Must read her Glory
Be To God For Dappled Things.
Also – we made jam – felt like a husband. & showed them the scrapbook. Explained about the dress-rehearsal.
Thursday — H & W came with me to
Meanwhile all her generosity is making me want to have her properly – more than ever —! Understand, though. Can’t ask her for that. Not after wh happened to her before. Cd ruin her life. God I wd shoot myself before I hurt her. But if I ever get over being such a damned liability then I WILL ask her to marry me.
Be patient — and thankful ——— trying to imagine a time when this may be so near & dear that I lose track of as many times as it’s been — and not just this but all the way — cd one ever take it for granted & not carry every detail carved in one’s flesh????
Didn’t do it today, though. Just the trip, like a real family.
That’s all right. The train journey was enough excitement for 1 day.
Friday – where to start? She has brought me a bicycle. Said she borrowed it – so proud of herself, bless her. Belonged to the blacksmith’s son, d. of wounds at Loos. Brought it to me at the lodge, in the evening. Alone. Yes. Dear God how to stand it? We stole quarter of an hour together – first time that bed has seen any use since the day after my arrival –! Have wanted so much to touch her there & this time she let me – moaned when my fingers found their way inside – slippery as seaweed. Makes my heart thump all over again to write it. How sweet it would be to claim it —— Tried to be gentle – but shook uncontrollably. So did she. Stroked her bush & kissed her breasts. Then she invited me to take everything I have been yearning for — her voice cracked. Christ what it cost me to refuse her. Had no protection – will NOT risk her harm. Besides, she already had m. love to me — & I cd not have managed it again so soon — not w/ Helen waiting at home for her. So —— next time?
God — where to buy protection, even? Can’t ask here, everyone knows me – & we have been seen together – tongues wd wag.
Saturday. Cleaned & oiled bicycle, greased chain, etc. Looks almost like new. Typed 100 more cards, to make up for Thursday. Making headway. Every now & then I get out the Holbein dwgs – or what I think are the Holbein – & simply stare at them.
Sunday – now over a fortnight since the first time —— today makes 3x more we have been together since then. Shd I mark a W on those days, to distinguish them? Red-letter days, a rubric at least! They are illuminated in my memory though. Sweet stolen times, since I am not willing to compromise her — the 3rd, today out-of-doors at Wheely Down – almost overwhelmingly sharp. Such haste, w/Helen all the way at the bottom of the hill, the darling child ran down the steep slope crying-out wheeee, whoooo – leaving us alone at the top… Win just smiled at me & said ‘let’s not waste this’ — a dove cooing somewhere & wild thyme crushed under us. Hadn’t had the opportunity to get anything yet, so of course it was as before, but no less thrilling for that. Chalk-blue & orange brimstone butterflies — one even landed on her hand, as she held me afterwards – I love the way she doesn’t take her hand away, as if I am just as precious soft again ——— Bicycled to a public house afterwards, parched. Brought Helen ginger-beer in the garden. Brought up the rear all the way home, almost five miles – H in front & Win in the middle – gazed at her bottom to my heart’s content. Beautiful strong thighs. A blessed day.
Friday – it was an Adonis. The chalk-blue or chalk-hill blue is paler & speckled brown. This a deep sky-blue, wings edged w/white outlined in black – can see it on her knuckles still — Drew one on a postcard today & posted it to her. No message but she will understand. She always does.
Still see the rest of it in my mind’s eye, perched there, my sex cradled gently & her fingertips resting on my belly ——
The distant dove reminded me of that billet – was it outside
outside Poelcapelle? –vroo COO coo coo coooo, all day long, in-between the
barrage. But these chalk downs are
unravaged. Ploughed they are milky like
café-au-lait. Is this why we were
there? To stop them before they overran
Chalk flora – altogether singular. Turf short & springy, long pastel views
across steep-sided valleys w/ sudden dark yew-hangars – or stands of
beech.
Saturday – took the bike into
One day.
God but it was the hardest purchase I have ever attempted. What did I expect? Of course it was fraught w/ difficulty – kindly elderly pharmacist, white smock, white hair, waited while I couldn’t get a word out to save my life — standing beet-faced and struggling on the ‘I’ — eventually he took pity on me & put me out of my misery — places a packet discreetly under his hand on the counter and murmurs, ‘would this be what you were after, sir?’
Nodded – was all I could do – him hiding a smile – must have had ‘I have never done this’ written all over my forehead. Just the thought of what this purchase means makes me tremble – my aching self at last enfolded within her, no more tender substitutes but the real thing – feel hollow with longing – Christ cannot write this without a sharp pang there – I want this so much – that can’t be wrong can it? I do respect her – dearly — & it was she that asked me — so now she will be safe — & this brings a consummation closer —— so close, ah God Win do you have any idea what it means to a man in love to be granted everything, every thing? ! ! ! —? ?
You must, or else you wouldn’t have asked. Please God Win ask me again —? Now I’m prepared —? ? But I shd wait to be asked.
Invited, rather.
So moved at the thought even – hardly know wh to do w/ self, how to stand it. I am desperate for it. Reminds me of the men talking late at nights — the ones who’d done it telling the ones who hadn’t — a trench full of straining cocks and yearning faces. But better than thinking about dying. Married men quiet, virgins pretending they weren’t. Letting them talk, since it cheered them – & learning plenty myself. Wondering if I wd ever live long enough to find out for self. Quite sure I wd not.
Better go splash water on face – am due to meet them in ½ hr. for day out.
Later — Spent rest of today brass-rubbing. Helen asked me abt shell-shock. Wondered how long it wd take her curiosity to overcome her diplomacy. She is a dear. Such a straightforward manner – impossible to take offence. Was a relief to talk about it, actually.
Later —— 5 a.m., can’t sleep — no surprise! — she got my postcard — Win – on getting home, on the doormat – & dear heavens – came all the way out at the folly to find me after Helen had gone to bed. Just enough daylight left to see the path. I thought it was an invitation, she said – wasn’t it? It was whatever you wanted it to be, I said, that’s why I didn’t write anything. Then it was me she wanted, she said. A wretched hard bed – but we were not disposed to be fussy.
A debacle, of course. Shd like to write Came Home – but cd not unroll the bloody thing – how one uses them is beyond me – fumbling & desperate, felt a complete fool. She said Let me help you, & I blurted Did she have any more experience than me, then? No, she said, none – had to laugh. Think I wanted it too badly. Let her try – desperately close to the edge – just her efforts to put the damn thing on me finished me off. Win v. dear & understanding. Me – completely humiliated. It’s so easy in all the books dammit ——— & the men all joke about it – my sergeant called it Taking the Plunge in a Wellie – what kind of a husband wd I make if I can’t even do this?
Oh how I wanted it. Was so cast-down. Pulled self together & caressed her till she shivered & clung to me tightly. Said she was not disappointed. Perhaps – but I bloody am.
She stayed till after the first n.m. Shook me awake. Choking — calling out for the men to put on gas-masks. Stiff again, naturally, in her arms, once I had calmed-down – but of course she had stayed out far too late already.
There’ll be another time, she says.
God I hope so.
* * * * * * * *
HELEN
When I think about those days there is always a meadowlark singing, or crickets trilling, or a distant train-whistle. Something to mark them as special – as if they were illuminated with sound.
I wanted them to last for ever. I saw no reason why they shouldn’t. We were just like a family already — Harry Oliver dropping-in, picnics on weekends, my mother singing because she felt like it. I think she was waiting for him to notice he was getting better — and he was. But her instincts were too fine to chase him and make him see it – she was just letting time go by, and our easy closeness work its magic, till he realized that he belonged here; that the running-away was over. You don’t chase someone who feels hunted. You sit, endlessly patient, and earn the trust you seek in tiny increments. And you never, ever snatch your hand closed around them.
That is the only way they will come to you.
Our trip to
The shriek of the whistle punctuated our journey, what with the level-crossings and stations, and he held on like a limpet. In-between, when we were back to just the rhythmic puffing of the engine, he apologized sheepishly. “I r-really do kn—kn-now,” he explained earnestly, “that th-th-there’s no d-danger — only I t-tell myself to get over it — and s-s-something won’t l—let me – it’s not a ch—choice — ”
“I know,” said my mother, “ – we understand perfectly, don’t we, Nellie?” I nodded fervently and gave his hand another squeeze. “It isn’t about reason at all, is it?” she went on, thoughtfully. “Some things don’t have a reason — specially not the most extreme ones — they just happen to us, don’t they?”
He nodded. His mouth had a white line round it, like the day we met him. It only disappeared after we left the station and got into the gardens in the city centre with the river Itchen running through them between low grey stone banks. We sat on a bench and fed stale bread to the ducks while he got his colour back.
The trout were there, with their beautiful iridescent spots shading to amber and brown, just as we’d talked about. We pointed them out to one another, camouflaged as they were against the pebbled light-and-dark-shot riverbed.
“R—remind me,” he said, “about that p-poem. To b-bring it.”
“I’d love to hear it,” said my mother.
It was altogether a triumphant day.
I thought of a fawn in the woods; of waiting, perfectly still, and there among the dappled green comes something dappled itself, streaked and spotted, with delicate spindly legs and wide ears. You hold your breath and it comes closer; sees you; freezes. If you don’t move at all, it might even cross the path right in front of you, stopping half-way to stare back.
That was what I thought of when he came, a day or two later, with the poem. As if all our patience was being rewarded, now.
“I’ve k-kept my p-promise,” he said, pulling it out of
his pocket with a quick grin. He’d met
us on the way home from town and carried our groceries. He didn’t make a big thing about it, he just
opened it to a page he’d bookmarked with the railway-ticket from our trip to
My mother was in the kitchen scouring the table where something had left a ring. She stopped when he started to read, her scrubbing-brush arrested in mid-circle.
Glory be to God for dappled things, he read,
For skies of
couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all
in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal
chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted
and pieced — fold, fallow and plough;
And all trades,
their gear, tackle and trim.
My mother wiped her hands on her apron, and then stood still as a statue while he finished:
All things counter,
original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle,
freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth
whose beauty is without change:
Praise him.
He didn’t stammer or stutter throughout; he just read it calmly, letting us add the feeling for ourselves as we found it.
“That’s the strangest thing I ever heard,” said my mother. “But — may I see it?”
He put the book in her hand, his touch lingering a second longer than it needed to. She read the first three lines again out loud, half to herself and half to us.
I didn’t understand it, but I thought it was beautiful — and that the writer saw things somehow the same way I did, except that he could write down how he felt as well as what he saw. For me the feelings just stayed inside like a fizz.
She folded the book slowly closed against her bosom and held it there. I remembered what he had said to her in the granary, about her freckles.
So (I am sure) did she.
He shrugged.
“Thank you,” she said, “thank you ever so much for that.”
“You’re quite welcome,” he said. And they were still talking about the poem, and how strange and beautiful it was, and yet they were also talking about my mother’s freckles and what he thought of them.
I smiled to myself and turned my back on them to finish the table. The scouring-brush lay where she had left it. Its bristles were so worn down that they almost were bald all the way to the wood. Some of the holes were empty of bristles altogether. It was cracked and bleached silver from years of scouring. I felt a rush of affection for it. I didn’t want it to give up the ghost and be replaced by a new one. Its edges were speckled, like in the poem, and its dark holes made a bolder pattern still. It was humble, workaday, like the things the poet loved: ‘all trades, their gear, tackle and trim.’ I saw it with his eyes. Slowly, rhythmically, with a hypnotic circular motion, I picked up where my mother had left-off.
We moved through a kind of sacred dream, those short weeks, as if we were dancing ever more closely together within a charmed circle. It was a balletic figure of trust and respect unfolding. We knew we had to be patient, and we were; Harry knew that if he dared, there was acceptance for him here, and the beginning of healing. But to claim that, he had to let us see.
To see — how hard that must have been for him. He was so proud, he hated his symptoms and what they left him. But baring it was the equivalent of getting past the dragon at the gate; you couldn’t claim the prize unless you did. It was clear to each of us that if he was to let us care for him, it must be for the man he truly was: not the one he wished or hoped to be one day when he was better, but this one now. Through his hesitant steps I saw so clearly the risks we take when we lay ourselves open. He was my mirror, because he couldn’t play the usual games and go along with the show. Most of us keep a face specially for in-public, and another one for the mirror. We find it perfectly normal. To do anything else would be like going out in our underwear. But shell-shock is a cruel robber of appearances, as Harry knew only too well. It doesn’t leave you any, not even a shred. Small surprise, then, that he had withdrawn from human contact since it started.
Until now, when he let us see him; love him.
I didn’t ask him about it all, not for a long time. I was dying to understand better, but I tried to be content with what I saw and the little pieces he gave away. I knew that when I did ask, he would give me an honest answer – so I had to be sure that it wouldn’t hurt him more, to do so. My better understanding could not come at his expense.
The world was so big to make sense of, and people were so complicated. How did you cope with it all, and stay true to yourself like my mother said you should? He would know, because he been through it and come out the other side.
I could be patient, though. I was.
Little by little he revealed himself. It was up on Wheely Down that we learned he
had been born in
“Hindi!” I repeated.
“Yes, from my n-nurse,” he smiled.
“Do you still remember any?”
“Su prabhat,” he said – “g-good morning.”
“More!”
“Oh – g-goodness – idhar aao – come here. And if you w-want to say I’m hungry – it’s m-m-mein bukha hun.”
I repeated it.
“Very g-good, pyari,” he said absently.
“What’s that?”
“Oh,” he said, “It’s – er – darling. My ayah called me that.”
And you are, I thought, but didn’t say so. He was blushing enough already.
What did he like to do when he was my age?
He used to bicycle all over, he told us, in search of good brasses – the fen country had wonderful churches, paid for with sheep money from the days when there were twenty sheep to every man, woman and child – which was why the Chancellor sat on a Woolsack, he added, the ancient wealth of England. You could make rubbings, he explained, it came through just like pencilling over a penny, under a piece of paper – but the results were best if you used plain linen. Oh, I’d love to do that! I exclaimed.
I’ll b-buy some heelball, he said, and we’ll do it.
“Oh,” said my mother, “I have a pair of shoes to mend, anyway – Nellie and I can get it.”
“Black,” he said, “works best. And f-five yards of plain unb-b-b-bleached linen.”
“Got it,” said my mother, “ – that was unbleached you said, right?”
“The w-white’s t-too b-blinding, yes,” he said.
“Right,” said my mother.
“We’ll n-need tape, too,” he added as an afterthought, “the b-best kind is s-surgical – but I’ll g-get that.”
A dove cooed in the spinney behind us, the whole time we were talking. It was a lazy, lulling sound. Below us the steep side of the Down fell away to the bottom of the valley. Here at the top, beech-trees bent grey limbs down almost to the ground, where I could sit on them and bounce up and down. An ancient earthwork ringed the hill further down, sort of a ditch-and-rise, hiding the top from below. We sat above it looking out over the pieced and quilted fields that stretched away all the way to Southampton Water.
“Y-you know,” he said absently, “p-people at home t-talk
about the m-mud — as if that was all there was.
I m-mean — n-nobody here w-wants to th-think of it b-being like
this. L-like
“Really – just like this?” I exclaimed.
“Of c-course,” he said.
“It’s the s-same s-strata, you know, Northern F-france and B-belgium is
j-just a c-continuation of S-s-southern
He waved a hand airily, looked out with us over the lovely view. Hampshire rolled away under his gesture, punctuated with spinneys and the spires of distant village churches. “I’d m-make a quick sk-sketch,” he said, “l-looking over a p-piece of land l-like this, and you’d see a spot to b-bring up the artillery, or a r-ridge you’d got to d-dig in on, to k-keep the advantage — or a w-wood… r-ready f-for a m-machine-gun-emp-placement… ”
A landscape that looked so innocent, and was not. A country tainted, blighted, sown with munitions and men enough for a thousand years’ harvest. I had never thought that when he did begin to talk about it, it would be as casual, as oblique as this. And yet – in what he did not say lay all the rest.
“ …th-they go on about the p-poppies,” he said, “b-but there were celandines, and p-primroses, and b-bluebells — and v-v-vetch, and s-scabious, and h-honeysuckle, and old-m-man’s-beard, and marsh-m-marigolds, and j-jack-in-the-pulpit, and f-flag iris, and b-brandy-bottle w-waterlilies in the l-lagoons, and d-daisies — ”
I saw it with his eyes.
Hovering over this
And the stench of death. At every country crossroads, a graveyard – for the fortunate dead. They would have a permanent marker with their name on it and a Christian burial, not like the unlucky dead unclaimed between the lines (said my friends’ brothers) to be blown-up into smaller and smaller bits of stinking flesh with every crump.
These lay waiting whenever he lay down and closed his eyes.
He had changed the subject while I was lost in this alternate vision; was talking fondly of Haddenham again, and the Ouse, and catching eels. I waited for him to talk about the War more personally, the things he had done, not just the places that looked so like his own and mine. But he didn’t. After all, what was there to say? Too much, if one ever started. He just skipped right over it to the present, and was explaining in answer to my mother’s mild inquiries that he had resigned his commission, but that he had not yet heard of its formal acceptance. In the meantime, therefore, he remained in a sort of administrative limbo ever since leaving hospital, finding himself neither on active service nor with the army ready to relinquish him altogether. Apparently it didn’t know what to do with him at all, a twice-decorated officer with his nerves all to ribbons and now of no use to them whatsoever. There were more officers needing desk-jobs than there were desks, by far — or perhaps, he said, they had simply lost track of him. Money was a problem; there was some mix-up with his entitlements. He shrugged. My mother laid a hand briefly on his knee. “I’m sure it’ll all work out for the best,” she said, her tone as warm as the sun on our backs.
What he really needs is a cuddle, I thought.
She would have given him one, if I wasn’t here; it was in her eyes, her voice. So I made myself scarce, announcing that I was going to run all the way to the bottom and look for flint arrowheads in the wheatfield below. Nobody could climb that steep slope again in any kind of hurry. I trusted them to make the most of this opportunity however they pleased – I hoped at least she would waste no time in kissing that look away.
He saw us home, of course, as he always did, and my mother asked him to wait a bit. She came downstairs again with something small, which she put into his hand: a letter, in an envelope. “You asked about our Stephen,” she said, “a while ago — remember?”
Of course he remembered.
He had stood by the mantelpiece one night, after he’d brought-over a
boxed set of selections from Tchaikowsky, including favourites from The
Nutcracker and
My mother had looked up, glowing. “You sound just like Stephen,” she said, “You’d have got on ever so well! – had so much to talk about — ”
That was the moment he had walked over to the mantelpiece and gazed into that bright young face with the prominent ears. “How old d-did you say he w-was?” he asked, softly.
“Twenty, just,” said my mother, with a tinge of bitterness: “ – no more than a lad.”
He looked at her. “Oh, I w-wouldn’t say that,” he said, “r-really, Win. I’d say he w-was a man. At the very least.”
My mother had looked away, blinking fiercely. “You’re right,” she said, “you’re absolutely right. He was my little brother, so that’s how I think of him, but — he doesn’t deserve that. I should stop calling him a lad.”
He nodded at the face in the picture.
Now she had brought Harry the dearest thing she possessed on earth, besides me: his company commander’s letter. She handed it to him and he recognized immediately what it was, took it from the envelope with the greatest reverence.
It wasn’t very long, so it took only a few seconds for
him to read it. ‘ – regret to
confirm — no doubt of his death — splendid fellow – served under my
command for seven months — excellent soldier and a brave and willing soul — of great assistance to me on numerous
occasions — showed outstanding promise — intended to put him forward for
consideration as an officer candidate — eager and showed the utmost devotion to
his duty — well-loved by his comrades — shall miss him very much indeed
for he was a splendid example to my men —
Even in your sorrow you have every reason for pride — died of
wounds at the field hospital — was too severely wounded to regain consciousness
— almost certainly did not suffer — grateful thanks and respect —’
Harry’s expression betrayed nothing beyond a slight tightening of his mouth.
My mother waited for him to speak.
“A v-very nice letter,” he said. “You c-can be very p-proud. The g-good things he’s said here — s-s-sincere, no question about it. You don’t ch-choose adjectives like that unless you m-mean them. There are p-plenty of k-kind things to say without singing p-praises like this – they were d-deserved, I’m completely sure of that.” He looked unsure if he had said the right thing, though, till my mother’s glow of pride told him that he had.
“Oh, yes,” she said warmly, “he was a bright one, was Stephen.”
“I c-can see,” said Harry.
“He thought the world of his officers,” said my mother in a soft voice. “Hero-worshipped them, I think. Every letter home, it was lieutenant this and captain that — ”
Harry nodded. All the pictures in the magazines and the Gazette made them look so glamorous and dashing in their slim-fitting tunics and tight boots, those twenty-year-olds leading their men like lambs to the slaughter. He was blinking hard. I could see them all in his eyes, his fellow-officers and all their men: a parade of faces, the men who’d trusted him, done anything he asked them to: strung wire, dug latrines, bound up one another’s feet, walked straight into machine-gun fire, died because he asked them to. “O-o-one t-tried to deserve it,” he murmured.
“You must have written a lot of those,” my mother said.
His adam’s-apple bobbed up and down. “My share, yes,” he said. “T-too many, that’s f-for sure.”
“How many?” I asked, trying to imagine so many young men like my uncle who would never come home.
He looked across at me. His eyes were rain-grey puddles. “T-too many to c-count,” he said, shaking his head.
“So you always said something kind?” My mother really wanted to know, now – and he could hardly avoid answering.
He chose his words with care. “W-well, yes — b-but you could always f-find something truthful to say,” he said. “L-let them know their b-boy was known and s-s-seen for who he was. S-some quality they’d r-recognize. Even the d-dullest – were hardworking, or a chap that always c-cut-up w-was lively — energetic – cheerful – s-something about them t-to show you knew them, who they’d b-been, that it w-wasn’t just a formality.”
“What about the worst,” I asked, “ – what if they were completely useless? Or the cowards, or the ones with two left feet?”
“They were all b-brave,” he said, “and they d-did their duty. Some were b-braver than others. They w-were there, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” I said, seeing that. “But – what about the bad ones? The troublemakers?”
“Oh, they were the b-best,” he said. “The ones who’d no r-respect for authority — you wanted th-those. They were f-fearless. D-do anything you asked them to, for a b-bit of a lark.”
My mother looked at him. “That bit about not suffering,” she said.
He closed his eyes.
“He suffered, didn’t he.”
Harry nodded.
“Why would they say that – that he didn’t, when he did?’
“Because nobody w-wants to think of their b-boy in agony,” said Harry, hoarsely.
“I would, if it was the truth,” said my mother.
“You’re one in a m-million, Win,” he said. His eyes held hers. “What if he w-was your son that you’d suckled,” he asked, “ – your little b-bright-eyed boy, your b-baby?”
“I’d still want to know,” she said. Her voice shook.
“M-me too,” said Harry. “P-prefer the unvarnished t-truth. But you’re the rare one, I told you — mostly you try to be k-kind. L-let them know you knew who he w-was, like I said.”
“And did you — always know them?”
“Of c-course,” he said, surprised that she would ask.
“I thought – so many replacements — ”
“Y-you always know,” he said, definitively. “D-doesn’t take long. C-couldn’t hide what you’re m-made of, out there.”
“A letter like this — ” said my mother, “ – it is a kind thing – very kind – all the ones you wrote – it brings a lot of comfort — when it’s all you have.”
“I-I know,” he said. “That’s w-why you’d t-take such c-care over them — choose the w-words so carefully, in tribute – it was the l-least you could do — ” He folded the letter and slipped it back inside the envelope. “Th-thank you,” he said, “f-for showing me.”
“You are so very welcome,” she said, “please – thank you for looking — and specially, Harry – ”
“What?”
“Thank you for telling me the truth. What it really meant.”
“I h-hope I’d n-never do anything else,” he said.
We toasted my Uncle Stephen in mugs of tea, for a fine intelligent young man.
Starting that night, and working off and on all that week till she was finished, my mother sat and took-up the sleeves and hems of my Uncle Stephen’s better shirts and trousers. He had been taller than Harry, a raw-boned lad not yet done growing. His clothes hung still in the closet in her room. She had moved them out of mine, but not out of the house; one oughtn’t to throw away perfectly useful articles. He hadn’t had much of a gentleman’s wardrobe, being a hard-working fellow with an ambition to make Chief Engineer down at the Dockyard, but he had a few good things with plenty of wear in them yet. She took particular care over a wool herringbone jacket of his, somewhat out-of-style now but clean and solid, with horn buttons and a little half-belt at the back. She had to hem the lining back into the sleeves so you couldn’t tell they’d had three inches cut-off. She did a lovely job. I changed the records on the gramophone, and when we had listened to all of them I read out-loud to her from David Copperfield’s Boyhood – till that made us both sniffle, and I had to change to A Jungle Book and the Just So Stories. She had to sit under the brightest light, and rubbed her eyes a lot when she had finished, but there was a nice tidy pile for Harry next time we saw him. If that wasn’t an offering of love, then I don’t know what was.
He was all set to refuse it, since charity was anathema to him, but she put her hand on his arm. “Please,” she said, “don’t make such a fuss. It’s not about wanting to give you things. It’s about wanting to see Stephen’s clothes get out and about again. Since he didn’t have the chance to wear them out himself – it’s a shame, letting them go to waste like that.”
If it was a shame about his good clothes, then what about him, I thought. A shame beyond words, that. There wasn’t any way to say what a pity that was.
Harry saw that, and took them, and thanked her. He wore them, too, to let her know he was giving Stephen’s things an airing – a bit of life, again. They looked fine on him. And heaven knew he needed them. He must have been pleased to put his uniform away again except for best, and not to have to worry if he had a spare pair of trousers dry and pressed.
The next Saturday we set-off in search of mediaeval monumental brasses, my school satchel on Harry’s back stuffed with linen and heelball to make our rubbings. There were some particularly splendid ones in Southwick, he said, according to a guidebook he had had before the war, and he had been excited to see how close that was. Now that we all had bicycles, why, it was less than an hour away!
While I liked old churches, I had always somewhat taken them for granted; after all, every village had one, it was where people went on Sundays and sang hymns, arranged home-grown flowers, baptized babies and got married and buried, passing between the graves in the churchyard without a second thought — yes, of course, said Harry, b-but they’re a p-p-priceless w-witness, too — to history, to p-permanence, just to have s-stood there so long, tombs, tablets, brasses, f-f-fonts and all.
My mother smiled at him.
She was sitting on a pew watching us work, the calm smell of old stone
and the cool dim light of the church surrounding us with a feeling like a hand
on the brow: calm down. Breathe. Be.
She had long ago made sure I had the basics, such as knowing a
A-a-actually I was, he said. H-h-history. Just for a term, though — before the War.
Oh! Where?
The choir school, he said, K-k-king’s college, C-c-cambridge.
He had never mentioned it — perhaps it seemed so far away and irrelevant, after all that came afterwards. “Why didn’t you go back?” I asked, thinking it was strange that he had fetched up here drifting between odd jobs when he had a perfectly good way to earn a living already.
“I d—d-d-did,” he said, flushing. “F-for two d-days. B-but — I c-couldn’t d-do it. N-not with my n-nerves like this. It was a sh-sh-shambles.”
My mother reached forward, laid a hand on his arm.
“You could try again,” I said hopefully, “Your stammer’s getting better all the time!”
He turned to me. Truth and pride struggled in his face. “N-no,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked. Oh, how I wished I could have taken the question back, after he answered it.
He did, slowly, not looking at either of us. “One of them b-banged his d-d-desk l-lid,” he said, “b-by accident, or c-c-carelessness – and I j-jumped — you kn-now how I d-do — and then they all st-st-started to d-drop them – the whole c-class — over and over – and I st-stood there — it was so l-loud – I t-told them to st-stop it, but they wouldn’t — and I c-couldn’t b-b-bear it – and I p —— I-I-I w-wet myself,” he said.
He had been rubbing away as he told this, the knight with chain-mail and a curly-haired dog under his crossed feet emerging as the story did. I had done the middle, and now he was taking extra care at the edges, where a careless stroke would fly beyond the border of the brass and spoil it.
“The little bastards —!” cried my mother. “I don’t believe it! How could they be so cruel?” It was unlike her to use such strong language
– even Harry looked up in surprise.
“I’d have given them what-for!” she said vehemently, “my God! To have a decorated hero for a teacher, a man
who’d been to
“They were j-just b-b-boys,” he said. “I h-had no b-business being there, and they kn-knew it.”
“Still,” she said, burning with indignation, “ – they’d have got a piece of my mind, boys or no boys – there’s no excuse for rudeness!”
“I b-bet they w-would,” he said, “knowing you — b-but I’d still have had to w-w-walk in there and f-face them the next day. Look, he’s almost d-done – w-watch out for the t-tape, there.”
I smelled the clean, waxy smell of the heelball, like the cobbler’s-shop it came from; Sir Roger de Wytte looked every inch the heroic Crusader as Harry rounded the flanks of the spaniel. Oddly enough, his hands were perfectly steady when he was brass-rubbing. And yes, he did know her – he knew her very well, the loving Fury that had come to his aid on the steps of the Butter Cross. Still I could not get past the picture he had conjured, of himself standing there shamed and white-faced. I was livid on his behalf. I wanted to take each one of those boys and shake him till his teeth rattled and scream at him.
I said so.
“S-spilled milk,” he said. “L-let’s n-not d-discuss it, all right?”
“Of course,” said my mother.
Not so fast, I wanted to say. Why? Was it going to get better? Where did this sheer terror come from, anyway? When did he stop being able to get a grip on himself, the way the rest of us do when we are afraid? How was it that a bunch of loutish lads could have reduced him to that? When we first knew him, we had been too tactful to even think about asking – but were we never going to?
He gave me a little smile and an apologetic shrug, and in that moment I decided to ask anyway. I couldn’t think that there would be a better time than now, when we had just been speaking of it so naturally. I drew breath and launched before I could think better and back-out. “Harry,” I said, “I know what happens to you — but I don’t understand why.”
My mother frowned at me. “Nellie!” she said, “ – you know he’s shell-shocked – that’s enough! I’m surprised at you!”
“No,” he said slowly, “it’s a g-good question. I m-mean — I l-live with it every day, and I’m still — you know – the d-doctors think, but nobody r-really knows — !”
“What do they think?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I had one I l-liked a l—lot – who th-thought it all h-h-h–had to do w-with — with how we tell wh-what’s real.”
I could see that.
“Go on,” said my mother.
“You g-go out there,” he said, “and it’s just – hell on earth — b-but in a strange w-way it’s n-normal now — n-nothing’s the s-same as it w-was — s-suddenly you could d-die any s-second — you see it h-happen — b-but you get used to it. I m-mean you h-have to, or you wouldn’t l-last a d-day, even. So it b-becomes your r-reality — it’s your w-world.”
“I see that,” I said slowly. “But then what? Why does it change? Why is there a last straw for some and not for others?”
“Nellie,” said my mother reproachfully. Had I implied he was one of the weak ones? I hadn’t meant to. I thought the ones who stood it till they broke were the bravest of all.
“I know you’re brave,” I said, “I really do.”
He leaned back against the lectern and drew up his knees and hugged them. “Th-think about w-wearing a pair of orange sp-spectacles,” he said, “like w-when you have something wr-wrong with your eyes.”
I did.
“W–when do you stop noticing that everything’s all y-yellow?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“B-but you do.”
“Yes.”
“You l-live on your nerves,” he said. “Up to the f-front – b-back down the line – up to the front again – it’s j-just how it is. It’s a b-big pretend. That you’re n-not in danger when you know you are. That you’re n-not afraid when you know you are. Th-that you d-don’t want to h-hide from every shell. You f-f-fool yourself – in the end – you h-have to — to stay — ! And it’s all this –” he waved a hand round the still, silent church – “this, that isn’t r-real any more. P-people back home h-have no idea — they couldn’t, or they’d s-stop it — and so you just k-keep l-living the lie.”
I was hardly breathing.
“Then if you’re l-lucky,” he says, “you get a blighty one and g-go home b-before you f-find out wh-what it t-takes to b-break you down.”
“And if you’re not?”
He turned up his hands. “K-killed — ” he said, matter-of-factly, “maimed – you’ve seen them – or else like me — s-s-suddenly your b-body’s screaming it knows you’re in d-d-danger — you told it you knew b-best but you didn’t and now it w-won’t listen to your brain any more, won’t obey you – you c-cringe with every whizbang, every c-crump, you’re crouching by the p-parados, your l-legs won’t m-move, your m-men are looking at you — you m-make yourself get up and g-go on — make yourself, m-make yourself, m-m-make yourself — and then one day you just c-can’t. Make yourself. Any m-more. And it c-can’t tell any more. Your b-body. Your b-brain. W-w-what’s a real d-danger and w-what isn’t. So everything b-becomes one — y-you j-j-jump — m-mouth goes dry — h-hands shake — I t-told you, you f-feel as if you h-haven’t any s-s-s-skin — it w-won’t l-listen to r-reason — there isn’t any r-reason left, you used it all up in the l-l-lie —— ”
His chest was labouring like a horse’s going uphill.
“Th-that’s w—what m-my d-doctor th-thought,” he said in conclusion. “W-we t-talked about it a l-lot.”
“Harry,” said my mother softly, reaching for his hand.
“’S all r-right,” he said. “P-people have to kn-n-know. I h-have to f-f-f-face it. She had every r-right to ask. And she’s old enough to u-understand – aren’t you, H-h-h-helen?”
I nodded, my throat squeezed too tight to speak.
I thought that was enough for him to have told, for one day. I didn’t ask how long it would take for him to get better. We rolled-up our rubbing and I whispered “thank you” to him before we left the church.
In reply he dropped a kiss on top of my head.
Riding home, I remembered how he had looked in the square that time, sitting defeated at the foot of the Butter Cross – and then how different once he had put on his uniform, the little scrap of ribbon sewn on the breast with its tiny silver rosette. One day, I would understand a world where he could be both of those things at once.
The Parish fête had a more subdued tone this year, what with the War and all the liveliest lads not being there, but we could still hear it down the lane on the sloping field behind Bowyers’ Farm. I went late in the afternoon with my friend Marion, and we drank warm lemonade and shared a stick of candy-floss and rode the steam merry-go-round even though we were not little children any more. I rode the green sea-horse and she picked the rooster. Afterwards I spent the last of my pennies on the coconut-shy. I prided myself on being somewhat of a dead shot, and in the past I had won meagre prizes that represented far more to me than their tatty selves.
I hurled my first ball, and it hit the coconut bang-on. It ought to have knocked it off, but it didn’t. “Missed,” said the man, “try again!’
“I didn’t miss,” I said hotly. “You heard it hit fair and square! You’ve got those glued-on!”
“Three balls a penny, miss,” he said, “you pays yer money and you takes yer choice. Next one!”
I was so angry I missed the second. The third, however, was another direct hit. It won me nothing, though. As before, the coconut stayed firmly in its cup.
I parted company with
“How was it?” asked my mother, “did you have a good time, pet?”
“No,” I said, scowling, and explained about the coconut-shy.
“Rotten egg!” exclaimed Harry. “That’s n-n-not on!”
“Well, they all do it, though,” my mother said.
“Yes, but she’s a child. If she hit it fair and square, he ought to have given it to her!”
“That’s what I think,” I growled.
“Come on,” he said, “Let’s g-go and tell the chap w-what’s what, shall we? How Englishmen p-play the game, and all that?”
My mother looked at him. It was noisy down there, and crowded.
“Oh,” he said, “n-not to worry – it’s b-benign, isn’t
it? And I sh-shall have time to n-nerve
myself first, it won’t be a s-surprise. Be g-good practice for
“Let me get my hat,” said my mother, “I wouldn’t miss this!”
He murmured a question to her, and she told him it was all right, it was easing-up a bit. Oh, I thought, she’s got her you-knows. I hoped mine wouldn’t start for years and years and years.
We set-off down the lane.
Harry waited till the man at the coconut-shy had finished with his last two customers, and then brought me forward.
“I – I – I-I-I understand she s-s-s-scored a h-hit, and you w-wouldn’t give her a p-prize,” he said quietly.
The man shook his head. “Nuh-nuh-nuh-no, sir,” he said, “she didn’t win nothink. Cuh-cuh-cuh-coconut’s got to fall off, see? It says right there.”
He hadn’t stammered when he spoke to me; he was mocking Harry.
“I s-see,” said Harry. Suddenly he was all Major again. I had never seen his eyes look so hard. “W-well, you w-won’t m-mind if I t-try, then,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“A penny gets you three g-g-g-goes, sir, just like everybody else!”
Harry fished in his pocket, paid, and got his three wooden balls. “Toes behind the line, sir,” called-out the man.
Harry looked at him in scorn. His feet were fully six inches back. He eyed the distance, took a breath or two, pulled back his arm and let go.
The ball whacked the left-hand coconut hard. The stand wobbled back-and-forth, but didn’t fall.
Harry’s eyes narrowed.
“Got to ’it the ground,” grinned the man, “sorr-ee!”
“N-n-not a p-problem,” said Harry. “Stand back.” He motioned to me and my mother to give him room. The ball shot through the air with projectile force, as if his arm had been a howitzer. It hit the middle stand at its thinnest point, just beneath the cup that held the coconut, and smashed it. The hairy coconut tumbled to the ground, cup still attached.
“All right, all right,” said the man hurriedly.
“I h-have one l-left,” said Harry, “w-which I’ve p-paid for.”
He repeated the manoeuvre with the right-hand coconut.
I jumped up and down and clapped. My mother looked surprised and pleased. Behind us the steam-organ of the merry-go-round started up, and Harry moved a few feet away.
“Choose your p-prize, Helen,” he said, over the cheerful blaring tune. “In fact, you should p-pick two – right?”
“Right!” I cried.
I chose a grimy dolly dressed as a VAD in a blue nurse’s cap with a red cross on her apron; and – surveying the rest of the choices, which were rather limited – a catapult. Harry raised his eyebrows at the catapult, and I hastily promised not to use it anywhere in the vicinity of the house. “I sh-should h-hope not,” he said, “d-don’t go getting me into t-trouble with your m-mother!”
We walked home again together down the lane. “How did you do that!” I asked him, in admiration.
“Oh, that was n-nothing,” he said. “Second B-bowler on the First Eleven, that’s all. That w-was like taking s-sweets from a baby. W-wouldn’t even have shown-off, but I w-was livid about him ch-cheating you. You w-want to t-talk about aim ——? I h-had a sergeant on my p-platoon, a real devil of a l-lad, c-could h-hit anything. P-poacher’s son. He’d p-pull the p-pin and w-w-wait, till the r-rest of us were quite sure he’d b-blow us all up, and then at the last m-moment he’d lob it. P-perfect timing. T-too late to throw back. P-perfect aim. Even on the run. Always. B-best m-man at taking-out m-machine-g-gun-p-posts we ever h-had.”
I was so shocked to hear him tell something personal from his service that I almost froze, but didn’t. I kept on walking so as not to give away that he’d just done something unheard-of.
“What was his name?” asked my mother, softly.
“Nicholls,” he said, “G-gordon. After the General. L-little fellow, b-bow legs. B-braver than a lion. Fearless. H-had him for almost three y-years.”
I didn’t dare ask what happened.
“L-lost him at B-bapaume,” he added, thoughtfully. “S-splendid chap. Missed him. Well – anyway – that’s enough ab-bout that. Let’s s-see your t-tawdry winnings!”
“She is, a bit,” I said, handing-over the grubby VAD. He seemed eager to change the subject; I helped him. “What was it you told us about that word?” I asked.
“Oh, that it w-was f-from St. Audrey’s fair, r-remember? B-became a b-byword for fairground tat,” he said. “Like this. N-nice thought, though. G-god bless the n-nurses.”
My mother put her arm in his and we walked slowly the rest of the way back to the house.
* * * * *
That was the last day of our idyll. We didn’t know we had been in
Who wrote ‘When the gods wish to punish us, they
answer our prayers’ ?
Looking back, I felt I should have recognized it – I
mean, when everything started to change. But Eve didn’t, in
And no-one warned her.
Perhaps there was no malice in
Later, I could see that we were already half-way hurtling to disaster – we just didn’t know it. We thought we were going somewhere else. You’d have thought we would have felt something, pricked up our ears, noticed the days rushing in on themselves in a vortex from which there was to be no safe exit; but we had no idea. I suppose you don’t notice the earth spinning under you, either. But back then I looked at the clouds gathering themselves up into great cauliflower-piles in the summer sky, and saw no threat in them. And I thought that hope and trust and faith and love were enough.
Still, when everything fell apart, I blamed myself. I knew things, I saw things, and I didn’t tell the people I ought to have when they needed to know. I kept it all inside, trying to protect them. It was too much for me, all these grown-ups with their secrets and private shame.
They didn’t deserve what happened, though – none of them did.
Who ever does?
DIARY – cont’d.
Got a little justice for Helen from a shyster. Won a tawdry dollie & a catapult. Please god she doesn’t go breaking windows now. Win out-of-sorts & quiet, but dear. Sat with her & she rested her head on my shoulder. Felt like a husband again — please let it be so one day.
Happened to mention poor old Nicholls. Last seen alive sliding down a shell-hole with both legs blown-off. He deserved better than that, poor sod. Wonder if he drowned before he bled to death? — & then losing McKnight trying to recover his body so his poor old mother would have somewhere to lay a wreath one day. But McK wanted to go. We all liked the little bleeder. Is it still Greater Love, if your friend’s already copped it and you’re thinking about his old mother?
Big fuss up at the House today. Return of the daughter of the household, now Mrs. Nigel Lascelles, but without Captain the Hon. Nigel – apparently badly wounded & now completely off his rocker, poor fellow.
First – a large motor-car pulling into the drive, bonnet a mile long. Travels in style, does The Hon. Mrs. L. Saw it out of the library window. Steps out looking as neat as a band-box. Suppose if one is going to have one’s husband put away one ought to do it in style. Pats her little hat, straightens veil, dabs at nose w/ tiny piece of lace, and composes self to tell Daddy what she has done.
Well that is cruel – I only know what I saw, after all. But a long interview w/ Sir A. behind closed doors – & then her old room made up, & the servants full of whispers.
A head-wound, I am told by Mrs. Etherington later. Half his face shot off. Now going blind & deaf & having violent turns. Dare say I shd do too, in his place. Poor bugger.
Interesting – wrote ‘poor bugger’ & meant it – but not so much in pity as pure fellow-feeling – felt for the wretched sod, far beyond being sorry for him – not so facile an emotion. Is this compassion I have been mistaking for pity?
Poor bastard.
Introduced later. Vivacious, a touch melodramatic – pale, takes my hand sincerely. Too much lipstick – & a bright blood-red shade to boot. Felt the urge to take my handkerchief & spit in it & give it to her to scrub it off. Looked at me twice when Sir A. mentioned I was an ex-officer. Not hard to guess, surely? Age – stammer – tremor – says it all.
I hear they’ve got him up at Knowle. The local loony-bin. A locked ward. At dinner there were bruises visible on her arms – the marks of fingers & thumb. Felt sick, didn’t want to look at them. Cd I be such a beast, if I lost my temper & was in despair?? Please god not.
Bet he’s sorry now, though.
Surely he cdn’t help it? Refuse to believe there is any maliciousness to it — just blind rage & horror I imagine.
Think I may have run across him, in ’16. Handsome fellow back then. Staff officer. Seem to recall the name. Wd he be better off dead?
N.m. very bad tonight. All of them one after the other – gas rats buried legs shot off stuck in shell-hole with shrieking man can’t do a thing for him no face no nose no mouth red wet hole drowning more gas machine-gun-fire going over the top stuck in the wire blinded & choking Dick’s brains splattering me looking chaps in the eye right before I shoot them
Tuesday.
Rain. The new G&S recording
for Helen arrived – more Pinafore:
Polished Up the Handle on the Big Front Door. What a grin she has. Whole face ablaze. The gap between her teeth reminds me of the
All invited to supper tomorrow, here at Rookswood.
Wednesday. God save me from Mrs. L. She wants me for a confidant. This I do not wish to be, have not asked to be, am in no way fitted to be. But she seems the type that must have a man hanging-about in admiration – & since the War has left us with a shortage, apparently it is my new job. Wd be more sorry for her if she were not already so sorry for herself. What about the Hon Nigel? Who’s bothering to be sorry for him?
Shd not be so quick to judge I suppose. But she irritates me endlessly. Expects attention & keeps finding excuses to come & disturb me at my work to get it.
Winifred expects nothing – & cried the first time I tried to make love back to her.
Thursday. Supper last night v. odd. Daisy L. out-dressed everyone – why? Good meal though. Sp difficult in company but persevered. Vicar asked me re. gongs. Demurred politely. Why? He meant well. Am I ashamed of them? Ended-up performing Debussy, from an excess of gentlemanly feeling – one rescue deserves another – then got H & finally Win to sing. Walked them home.
Later – couldn’t sleep. Forgot to mention I played the rag. The sheet-music from the house in Hoogstraten where we messed – cd see it still, left behind on the piano. Gerald & Dick laughing. & Arthur — poor sod. How long has it been — 3 years? Every note came back…
Friday. Got almost nothing done today. The L. woman again – floods of tears. Regrets – remorse – thinks I will understand.
She doesn’t understand all I want to do is shake her. Christ what I want is Winifred again – am starving for the comfort of her. Such sweetness. And natural as water. Don’t know when there will be another time —— she has been busy of late it seems. Haunted by thoughts of her, body & soul. Soul mostly in the daytime – in the night, body. Physical longing inseparable from depth of finer feeling – in fact, concomitant.
Am I still a virgin?
Desperate to go the rest of the way with her.
Spoil a perfectly good friendship, like as not.
Self-loathing is a crippling thing, no doubt about that. Plus — can’t really spend that sort of time w/Win right under her friend’s nose — not & keep it private between us. D.L. seems to want to know where I am every minute of the day. Don’t see what business it is of hers – but she finds pretexts to come to see me in the lodge even after dinner. Hate it when she smokes in here. Can’t ask her not to. ‘Darling, do you mind?’ she asks. Can’t say Don’t call me that, either – but hope to convey it by my look & terse replies. Insincere endearments trouble me. Finally excused myself, work etc. Do not think I am mistaken — the woman is as good as throwing herself at me. How do I tell her to walk the plank? I need this job – can NOT leave. Everything is at stake. Wish she wd leave me alone.
My handkerchief has powder & lipstick on it. Washed it out. Ached for the scent of Win on my fingers instead – real – the first time I touched her – such a mystery – secular & sacred – earthy & salty & sweet like the sea. Lay w/hand pressed to face all night. Still faint scent in the morning. God was that only 3 weeks ago?
Late – back from W’s. Ouch. She was cool & brusque – v. unlike her. Sp immediately went to hell. Altogether tongue-tied – like before I met her. Left w/out a proper goodbye, even. ? ? ?
Perhaps it’s her monthlies still? Aren’t women supposed to be touchy at these times? Or is she frightened-off now & doesn’t know how to tell me she doesn’t want to go through with it? Give her a few days – then if it’s still awkward, ask —?
Some sleep, is wh I need. Will seem better in the a.m.
I hope.
Thursday. Quiet this week – though have seen little of H & W. Managed to avoid D.L. thank God. Kept my head down in library – & she makes herself scarce abt the place. Understand she is friends w/ Win. Good – if anyone needs a friend it is Daisy L. Not a mutual proposition, though? Win probably has her hands full. How many lame dogs can she juggle? A peculiar mixed metaphor, there. Wouldn’t get away with it in that household! Ran into H. on the heath w/ a small basin of bilberries. Helped her fill it. Takes a lot of bilberries to make any difference! My darling W wasted no time in visiting poor L. up at Knowle, god love her. Could that be what upset her?
Am planning on
Friday. Arrived late yesterday to go to bed @ folly – place had been disturbed. My blankets used & refolded in a mess. Smelt of perfume & cigarettes – vile. Slept on floor without blankets. Furious.
Saturday. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Don’t understand — at all. Went over early to the watercress-fields, bought 2 bunches for a treat. Brought them to Winifred’s. Still persona non grata it seems. She didn’t even invite me in. Refused the wcress. I am at a loss.
Was too sweet to last, I suppose. Tired of me? Why did I fail to see this coming? Have lived through a lot of painful things but this one is different. Reeling.
I felt safe here – for a while.
Took a long walk along railway. Wouldn’t have cared if train had hit me. Puerile thought, written-down. True, though.
W. busy w/Daisy I daresay – shd. stop being so thin-skinned. Step back & let her have room. Can’t expect to be the centre of her life!!
Or perhaps it’s over —— ?
Christ let it not be over
Win ————
Shd write to her. No harm in asking – is there?
Win – Win – Jesus Christ Win I never thought anything could hurt this much ever again. Going round the bend trying to guess – getting nowhere. Think of all I have done & wonder if it was selfish – or inconsiderate of her, of what she needed, what she deserves ? ? But how — what? Feel hollow – spent.
Write, then. Just ask.
HELEN
Daisy came to visit almost right away. We hadn’t seen her in a couple of years; she was thinner, and there were lines of strain across her forehead and round her mouth that had been no more than faint traces the last time. We already knew: the news had come ahead of its subject, through Gladys Nesbitt who (of course) knew the housekeeper very well. What a terrible thing to have to do, said my mother privately to me. I thought she might be thinking about Harry, and how close he had seemed to just such a breakdown when first we met him. Daisy sat at our kitchen-table looking miserable, and my mother took her hand and held it.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she murmured. “He was so — so — unmanageable —!”
“Mm,” said my mother, catching my eye at the same time with an apologetic look I knew all too well.
Daisy took a long-stemmed tortoiseshell cigarette holder out of her little beaded bag, opened a slim silver case, and put an equally slender cigarette into the holder with a practiced air. She lit it with a small mother-of-pearl lighter and took a long first inhalation. Then she blew the smoke out again, upwards in a sophisticated way. My mother watched, saying nothing. Daisy’s lipsticked mouth made a red ‘O’: it matched her fingernails. Her dress was a dropped-waist cobweb of elegant shantung, with a shimmer to it. Her stockings were sheer and impeccable. I felt sorry for her anyway. None of this feminine armour had protected her from the thing she feared the most, had it?
I caught another look from my mother, and made myself scarce – though not (I admit) too scarce. Actually I went as far as our little sitting-room in the front, where our gramophone now resided, and curled-up in one of the chairs reading. I was in the middle of Five Children & It, by E. Nesbit, one of my favourite authors, and it served to occupy me. I was interested in what had happened – who wouldn’t be? – and while I couldn’t hear everything they said, snatches and changes in tone-of-voice came clearly through the not-quite-closed door. It wasn’t as if she had sent me away, after all. The look had said merely: be tactful, Nellie.
“I haven’t had a wink of sleep in months,” came Daisy’s voice, “literally I haven’t.”
I wondered if my mother would point-out to her, as she would have to me, that the use of the word ‘literally’ when applied to a gross exaggeration is hardly expressive of anything. But she didn’t; she made some sympathetic sound instead.
I read more of my chapter. Daisy’s perfume drifted round the door, something expensive, and the smoke of her cigarette clung to its petticoats. I thought of how beautiful she had looked on her wedding-day, her scalloped veil stretching all the way to the floor behind her, and the organ thundering the Trumpet Voluntary afterwards. With Nigel off to the Front again, this possibility had attended the wedding too, like an uninvited wraith. And now the guest had come to stay.
“And can you believe he wets himself!” she wailed.
I imagined my mother could believe it very well, actually.
Daisy made some further complaint whose exact nature I didn’t catch, then finished in a low sharp voice that carried like a knife-thrust: “I tried... but it made me sick to my stomach, Winifred. I mean, how could anyone —? And he won’t wear his face-piece even, he hasn’t in months – he says it’s uncomfortable – doesn’t he see he’s got to? He won’t wear it in public or for me! So inconsiderate — how could he treat me like that? What he needed was a nurse! How could he expect me to — I mean, could you – with that!? –– It just used to make me cry — I tried, I really did! And then the rages started, and he would hit me – I couldn’t stand for that. You understand, don’t you? It was the last straw — ”
“Oh, Daisy!” said my mother.
There were muffled sobs, as if Daisy had her hand over her mouth. Just a few of them, subsiding to silence while another cigarette (presumably) was lit. The conversation started-up again. Daisy asked something, I didn’t hear what.
“Oh, goodness, my worst?” said my mother, clearly taken-aback by the question. “I suppose – well, leaving aside my brother Stephen – you know, the day the telegram came — but you didn’t mean that, did you? Well — then it would be the day I found out he was married.”
“Who?”
I didn’t need to be in the kitchen to know that my mother’s shoulders would have drooped, at that moment. “Helen’s father,” she said – there had not been anyone else.
“You never did tell me his name,” said Daisy. It was as if she wanted to measure her own
sorrow up against my mother’s, to feel better about it. Stop it, I remember thinking, you shouldn’t
put her on the spot! Friends don’t pry
like that —! But I also wanted to hear
it, desperately. I had suspected for a
while now, from an old programme I had found in a box in the granary, along
with her diplomas and a straw-hat with school-colours on the ribbon, that it
was one Goronwy Rees. He was listed as
the music master, as well as the conductor of the concert. And someone had underlined it. There was a small out-of-focus
photograph, the one where he looked like
Lloyd George. My mother’s name was there
as a soloist – she had sung Giuseppe Giordani’s Caro Mio Ben, apparently. It
was not a piece I had ever heard from her lips. And it would fit – who else sounded as if he
might have come from and returned to
“It doesn’t matter,” said my mother. “Not then… not now.” She sounded flat and held-in. I heard the kettle being put back on the stove, and a spoon stirring. “Here you are, dear —— it’s only Camp, but it’s not bad… Daisy — is that a bruise on your arm?”
“He didn’t mean it,” said Daisy. “He just gets so frustrated with himself, and then — well, that’s why ——— I mean, I couldn’t — I just couldn’t go on — ”
“I see,” said my mother, or something like that – sadly, softly.
“No-one could,” cried Daisy.
“No,” said my mother. After all, she had never stood at the altar and vowed to love someone for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, so long as they both should live. Who was she to judge Daisy?
I turned my eyes back to the adventures of the children and the Psammead, wishing that something so strange and wonderful might come to pass in my own humdrum existence, and not just all these grown-ups sitting around in kitchens and talking about the hurt of their various failed or failing relationships, the impossible demands placed upon them, the mysteries of adult life.
Now that she was home, Daisy invited us to Rookswood, of course. It was almost like the old days, and I confess I was shaking at the prospect of seeing Sir Archibald again. Harry Oliver had spoken of him with respect and almost affection, while leaving little doubt that advancing old age had only sharpened his eyes and tongue (while dulling his ears). Still, it would make a change, and I was excited to think of seeing the interior of the house again in all its cluttered grandeur. She asked us over for ‘a little supper.’ Her scrawled note must have arrived on its own legs, unless the spotted feather and nosegay of wild roses accompanying it came from the hand of a messenger (which I suspected). We were off at the library again and came home to find all these things in the middle of the kitchen-table, which was where Harry always left his offerings – but the writing on the envelope was loopier than his.
“Oh,” said my mother. “ ‘A little supper?’ What do you suppose that means?”
“I think that’s her way of telling us we shouldn’t dress for dinner,” I said.
“Just as well,” said my mother. The petals were already dropping from the briar-roses; they made a little pale-pink puddle on the table.
“You look lovely in your green frock,” I said encouragingly, seeing that look of uncertainty creep into her face.
“Mm. Do I really?”
“You know you do,” I said.
“Well, I suppose I look my best, if that’s the same thing,” she said.
“I know someone who’d agree with me,” I said, “Mrs. Haendel’s
She looked away – and had the grace to blush. I was thinking of that time in the granary when he had held her pale bosom in his hands, freckles and all, and told her Christ, Win, you’re beautiful –! Not that that had had anything to do with her green frock; more the lack of it at that moment – but I could hardly say exactly what I meant.
I picked up the feather. “He’ll be there, I’m sure,” I said, smiling and running it across my fingertips. It looked like a woodpecker’s to me. Its spots were now not just themselves, crisply white on a long black shaft, but part of a special language we shared.
“Yes, I suppose he will,” said my mother, in a casual tone that deceived neither me nor herself. She looked like a schoolgirl for a moment. “Well — they always did set a lovely table, there — do you remember those little bits of toast with savoury thingybobs on top?”
I did, perfectly clearly, from a long-ago luncheon – and the asparagus I wasn’t quite sure how to eat politely, and the consommé that was as clear as wine. “And the whole salmon,” I reminded her.
“Oh, my, yes,” she said. ‘Well, that would hardly be for a little supper, would it.”
“No – that would be a sprat,” I said, hoping to make her laugh.
I succeeded.
In fact there was turbot with a creamy sauce, curled around delicate little shrimp like a strange nest; and my mother wore not the green frock, which she must have thought had had too many airings lately, but a soft dull-blue one that looked altogether full and modest, yet clung to her a little when she walked.
Daisy wore something very simple in a flame colour my mother would never have dared to attempt, and it suited her. It was (of course) short and elegant and up-to-the-minute, unlike my mother’s frock, and I could see my mother admiring it. She said so, pleating the skirts of her own in a nervous gesture quite unlike her, and with perfect sincerity – Daisy really did look quite stunning. (Before we had left the house to come, she had hesitated; asked me if I didn’t think her blue was perhaps a bit dull —? I had never seen my mother give a second thought to her clothing before. I reassured her in her own words that Wedgwood-blue was far prettier than anything too bright and obvious.)
She need not have worried; Harry Oliver struggled to keep his eyes off her bottom for fully half the evening – my mother’s, that is. We took a little tour of the house, and whenever my mother passed or preceded him they flickered there before returning with an effort to a safer object. There were plenty of things to look at, as I had mentioned earlier: there seemed (if that was possible) to be even more glass cases filled with dead things. Perhaps my memory had simply been unable to accommodate them all. The other guests being first-time visitors, we stopped in some of the most historic rooms, Daisy graciously trailing us all in her wake.
In the library we were shown all Harry’s hard work: whole drawers full of cards already, all neatly typed, and stacks of notebooks filled with jottings, each with a different tile: Nat’l Hist – Gk, Orig & Transl. – Eng. Lit. – etc. You could see how far he had come; the shelves where he had been working were indefinably neater. Elsewhere piles of books were stacked on desk, table and floor – but not higgledy-piggledy fashion; they made tidy rows, each with a slip of paper on top. Daisy stepped back into one of them and knocked it over. She was already slightly unsteady on her feet, which made me suspect her evening had begun its round of fortifying libations well before our arrival. Harry, by now dull beet-red from our even penetrating his sanctum and looking at his work, knelt down to stack them again. So did my mother, at the same time, and they almost bumped heads. Their hands met on a small pamphlet, and my mother let her fingers linger on his for a second before letting it go. I heard her breathe, “it’s all right,” to him.
Once we were safely sat down to supper, and the distraction of my mother’s movements was not right under his nose, Harry settled-down nicely and lost a bit more of his stammer. It was still painfully marked, though, compared with how easy he had become alone with us. I had not really seen him in other company up till now, and my heart ached seeing how hard it was for him.
I sat demurely, knowing I was the recipient of a very great honour to have been invited at all. The rest were all adults, the other couple being our vicar and his wife. Half-way through the meal, it occurred to me that perhaps it was my presence which turned it into ‘a little supper.’ The thought made me choke on my turbot. We were seated at one end of a table clearly made for larger parties, men and women alternating so that I sat between the reverend and Sir Archibald. That put Mrs. Vicar beyond her host, then Harry, and finally Daisy on that side of the table; she had put my mother as far from Harry as possible, namely opposite, next to the vicar – so that no-one who belonged together was actually sitting next to the person they had come with. I felt very alone in there. Harry Oliver caught my eye, though, with his hovering half-smile, to let me know he saw my predicament and sympathized entirely. He was in his uniform – I suppose he felt he didn’t have anything else sufficiently formal. The tiny medal-ribbon was the only touch of colour on the khaki breast – or anywhere on him at all, really, with his pale face and grey eyes and nondescript not-really-dark, not-really-light hair. When no-one was looking, he winked at me.
I had not spent a great many evenings in the company of mixed adults, but I thought I knew something about intelligent conversation. My mother was proud of bringing me up to be more than just a pretty face – which was just as well, for I was not at all sure I could be that. But for all the important people here, I thought our chats with Harry back at home far more interesting. When the three of us were together it was as if we were all attuned – one would grasp where the other was going, and our thoughts often seemed in harmony. There was give-and-take, an easy flight of subject and of turns to listen and speak.
Here, though, it was as if none of them read the others’ cues. They just went on blundering and waffling and all the things you don’t do when you are truly interested in what the person is saying that you are talking to. The vicar put Harry on the spot about his ribbon and Harry froze, then mumbled. Was that indeed a bar to his Military Cross? Harry nodded curtly. I had seen the tiny silver rosette in the middle of the ribbon before, and thought it meant something extra special – but wasn’t a bar like being given it twice? The vicar meant to be polite, I am sure, and there are heroes who enjoy admiration – who crave it, even – but Harry wasn’t one of them; he didn’t like to talk about those times at all, we knew that. I suppose it served him right for wearing his uniform. He’d met His Majesty, then, had he? Harry nodded again. Heard he was quite short, in person – eh? N-n-not really, said Harry – about my height — it was a b-bit of a blur, really. S-s-orry. Um – the thing about d-decorations, sir, is that – o-o-one was always aware of those who d-deserved them more — !
The vicar grew tired of pushing this stone uphill and let it go, for which Harry seemed profoundly thankful, though I didn’t understand why. Wasn’t he proud of what he had done? I would have been —
I caught his eye and winked back at him. He gave me a faint little smile just for me, with a great deal of sadness in it that he couldn’t help. Oh, I thought, was it the breakdown afterwards? Was he ashamed of what he’d become? The contrast between the soldier he’d been and the present reality was too great. Which of them was true? Look at the evidence: only a few short weeks ago he was the man who had made an exhibition of himself treed up the butter cross pissing his pants. So the decorations were a cruel reminder of what he had been, might have been — and was not: they had to be.
Unless I was wrong altogether, of course – which was also possible. It was not as if he ever spoke about it, so I couldn’t know.
He made a brave sally though, asking the vicar about the chantry-chapel in our church, that had such a charming Tudor family carved on the tablet, and a very fine brass — what was its history? The vicar was happy to talk about that; the strain slowly left Harry’s face as he forgot himself again in a discussion of something close to his heart.
The vicar’s wife was condescending to my mother and Sir
Archibald had become deafer than ever, which made it very hard to hold a
conversation with him without bringing the rest of the room to a dead hush just
as you were shouting something desperately trivial for the third time. I knew, because I was telling him about our
trip to
“No, trout,” I said loudly, “trout – trout! Speckled trout. In the stream.”
“Pickled trout? Odd! Good lord! Never tried ’em!”
I tried again. “They had spots on,” I said, very distinctly, “ – spots. Speckled.”
“Ah,” he said in satisfaction, hearing me at last. “Yes. ’Course they do. They’re trout, aren’t they? Trout always have spots, young lady.”
As for Daisy, she was the only one smoking, and she did it with a nervous intensity that reminded you of a caged animal. She lit-up after every course, and sometimes in-between, too. Everyone but me drank rather a lot, even my mother who was among friends, supposedly. I thought she must be more nervous than she let on. I think she would have appreciated one of Harry’s winks, but he was too shy to do it to her in this company. She loved crème brûlée, but didn’t finish hers. I would have, but we were sitting too far apart for me to do so discreetly.
Daisy looked bored; she rose, her chair scraping. I saw Harry wince. No-one else would have noticed; I only did because I was looking at him anyway. The rest of the gentlemen rose too, as if on a cue, to see us off; we women left the dining-room and my mother’s unfinished dessert on its gold-rimmed plate, and withdrew to the drawing-room. It was even more difficult chatting with just the four of us – the men were definitely missed. It seemed an old-fashioned custom and I was sorry they hadn’t joined us right away. Still, I supposed Sir Archibald enjoyed an opportunity to share his brandy and cigars. They didn’t linger long, thank heavens, since we had just about run out of things to talk about beside the vicar’s wife’s polite inquiries about my studies and domestic skills – always so important, to be able to turn a nice hem and make a neat darn, wasn’t it?
I excused myself to go to the w.c. I remembered it from the time I had been here before, and run into the freshly-wounded Captain Lascelles in the hall. The thought brought back a flood of sadness, like bile. It was such a pretty toilet, though. Using it was a treat. The bowl was blue-willow-pattern, far too exquisite really for so humble a purpose, but you could enjoy looking at it when you lifted the square mahogany lid. The chain to pull for the flush was brass, and the cistern over your head was encased in mahogany too with brass fittings, like something in a ship. I reminded myself to mention it to my mother, who loved willow-pattern. The Peerless, it said proudly around the white rim, in dark-blue to match the rest.
I greeted it like an old friend and used it with an extra glow of familiarity, since it introduced itself so boldly. The flush was swift and rushing. It was a temple of hygiene, or intended to be such, with the sink right next-door to wash one’s hands, a fresh amber cake of Pears’ soap in a matching dish, and a snowy towel; the only jarring note was an ashtray with Daisy’s cigarette-ends. She had left them the way she had stubbed them out, with their tips in the air, tinged pink like daisy-petals. Well, at least that fit, I thought – a pretty image for an ugly thing. Apparently when not in public she didn’t bother with the tortoiseshell holder.
Things grew more lively once the men were back. Even though Harry was getting more and more tongue-tied, he was trying to make up for it by being a good listener – which he was. I sat back and watched them all weave their social web. At the end of the evening, Daisy went over to the piano and pulled back the cloth melodramatically. “Winifred darling, you simply must give us a song or two before you go,” she cried.
“Oh – no, really, please…” said my mother.
“Don’t let us down,” said Daisy archly, “not as long as we’ve known each other! Really, darling, you won’t, will you?”
“I — ” said my mother, looking very unhappy indeed.
Harry Oliver saw her look and stepped over to the piano. “L–let me p–play something,” he said, “j–just to entertain you – won’t s-sing for my s—supper, you’d all throw things, but — I can play a little —— b-be glad to.”
For someone that loathed to be the centre of attention, it was a very dear thing indeed for him to have done. He only did it to rescue my mother, because he loved her, and he looked as if he had thought better of it before he sat down — but it was too late, then.
“Music?” asked Daisy.
“No, I’m not a s-sight reader,” said Harry, “Not n-now, anyway – only can p-play things I kn-n-now —— ”
Sir Archibald was unaware that he was going to play, so he kept on talking loudly to the vicar about poachers; but Harry began anyway.
“Ought to send ’em down to County assizes,” grumbled Sir Archibald, “hang the local magistrate – soft-hearted bunch — what? Manners? No, no manners, none of ’em — taking my trout – what? Oh, piano, playing the piano? Oh yes – I see — beg pardon – harrumph — ”
Harry chose a very simple-sounding piece. I didn’t know it then, though I do now, of course; Debussy’s Clair de Lune. I thought it was the most shivery, mysterious, silver-dark melody I had ever heard. I had had no idea he could play, even – how full of surprises he was, like a Chinese box! I watched his fingers on the keys. They were hesitant at first, but careful, and the piece was slow enough that he could find the right chords. It stole over us like the wash of moonlight that it was. My mother looked as surprised as I was – and as he seemed, too, to find himself doing that. She watched his hands too, her feelings for him naked in her face, till she realized it and looked away.
At the end I clapped loudly. No-one else did, so I felt silly; but Harry stood-up and made a deep bow to me, and they remembered their manners and thanked him politely. Daisy applauded then, when it was too late, having had to set her drink down first, and cried, “encore!” in a high tinkly voice.
My mother had been watching Daisy all evening with sadness in her eyes. Her friend had become a caricature of herself. She was like a piece of bone china that still looks so exquisite, so fine – till you pick it up to admire it and see that it is crazed all over with tiny fine cracks, every inch of it. And then you realize how fragile it is, despite its hard shiny surface, and put it back far more carefully than you picked it up.
What had happened to the brave, spirited, optimistic Daisy of old? Her vivacity had become over-bright now, and her eyes had something desperate in them. They didn’t fit with the calm mask of her face. My mother had already told me that people who needed approval were likely to be disappointed: it doesn’t come from out there, she said, it can’t, there’s never enough. Her perceptions seemed to fit, here. Like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, she would smile, shaking her head, a need like that – it’s bottomless and endless – best not to go in search of it. To thine own self be true, she’d add, with a bit of an apologetic shrug for preaching.
The old Daisy would have agreed whole-heartedly. Now, though, she held herself in and watched you for your reaction. Then she’d change what she was saying, to get what she wanted back from you. It felt very odd and disjointed, like someone moving the signposts in the middle of the conversation. She sat behind her eyes and pulled the strings with her mouth and her gestures, little movements of the head so her bobbed hair swung, a careful re-crossing of the feet so you saw how dainty they were and how shiny and slender her knees and ankles – all the while you were talking with her.
It was as if she was saying ‘look at me – I’m here!’ all the time – but we never had thought she wasn’t, till she protested it — and then we saw that she really wasn’t, at all.
She had blinked fiercely throughout Harry’s playing and smoked her cigarette as if it were the last one on earth.
We all requested an encore then, most of us with complete sincerity. Everyone looked expectant, and nobody started-up their conversation again, so Harry was trapped. He gave-in – I saw him thinking what to play, and then breaking into a swift grin. He sat differently, not so straight, and launched into something so infectious you couldn’t help wanting to tap your foot. His body relaxed and his hands moved over the keys with an easy grace as if they were dancing. “Oh,” cried Daisy, “a rag-time! You are so clever!”
He shrugged and kept playing. It ran all over the keyboard, first low and then high, skipping along. He moved his shoulders in a jaunty way as he played, and I glimpsed for an aching moment the easy-going young man he had been before all this — and yet at the end his eyes glistened. When he finished, everyone clapped right away. “More!” cried the vicar heartily.
So he was still not done yet? This was surely more attention than he had
bargained for when stepping-in to rescue my mother. Good Lord, I could see him thinking. He turned on the bench then, and caught my
eye. His eyebrows raised in a
question. I was not so shy as my mother
– not if Harry Oliver was playing. “Tit
He nodded and began a few bars of introduction. I stepped forward, turned to face everyone, and gave it my all. I must say that my rendition was extremely well-received: Sir Archibald (a kind soul at heart) going so far as to cry “bravo!”
Finally, Harry looked at my mother. It was a long look, that said, If I can do this, then surely — ?
She drew breath and let it out.
“Where’er?” he asked her, softly.
“Don’t you need the music?”
“No,” he said, “m-mostly I p-play by ear. Unless I’ve l–learned it, like the Debussy. I can p-put it in any key you want… well, almost. W–what d’you say, Win?”
Daisy was staring. “Go on, do,” she said with a too-bright smile.
“Start on the G,” said my mother.
He did.
By the time she was done, the vicar’s wife was dabbing her eyes and Daisy was biting her lip.
“W–well done,” I heard him whisper to my mother, before closing the lid.
This time it was Daisy who clapped too loudly, but unlike my clapping it did not seem to be from an excess of enthusiasm. It was an example of the old saying about being careful what you asked for; her applause signalled that the musical interlude was now at an end, thank you very much indeed – now that my mother had cut through all superficiality and artifice with her low, sweet voice and left us all choked-up with feeling.
Harry walked us home. He didn’t stay, though. I looked out of my bedroom window and saw them kissing goodnight at our gate. He had his hands wrapped in her hair and was taking his time about it. There was enough moonlight to make-out her expression; it was blissful, trusting, her eyes closed. His too. They both looked so young.
The cracks had started, but I didn’t know it. I thought everything was as sound and whole as that kiss they shared.
I went to bed.
Now that he had the bicycle, it was the easiest thing in the world for Harry to pop on up to us. He did it when he had a present for us, like the records he always seemed to be ordering; or to bring an interesting find from between the pages of a book – an old dance-card complete with silk string and slender pencil, a scrap of lace, a pressed butterfly. Sometimes he only stayed a few minutes, but they were like a sunny interval on a cloudy day. At least, up till that week when the Lascelles came home.
My mother took me over to
I did not know what to expect, and felt a bit fluttery. We cycled over there together, toiling up the hill. She held onto my hand tightly as we stood in the front entrance and rang the bell.
The top step had a severe black-and-white marble tile pattern, which was repeated all down the expanse of hall inside the front door. Inside everything was painted cream and dark-green. I could see it through the glass pane in the door, which had a deep bevel all round it that distorted things if you looked through it just so.
A uniformed nurse opened the door and asked us frostily
if she could help us. Visitors were not
so common in the insane asylum as they were in the
“Captain Lascelles,” said my mother firmly – “he’s just arrived.”
“Ah,” she said. “Any idea which ward, madam?”
“No,” said my mother. Evidently this was not a piece of information Daisy had thought it necessary to convey. “Could you check, perhaps –? If you’d be so kind? You must have a list, surely…?”
I heard the words of the Mikado, sadly twisted out-of-context. Yes, they had a list, though not a little one; and the people on it would not – for the most part – be missed, alas for them. That they were here was a matter for profound relief to most relatives. A tragedy, yes, but this was its resolution. There was nowhere else for them to go.
The nurse walked to a desk and consulted a large register. It reminded me of Harry’s notebooks in the library, except that here the entries line by line were not dusty volumes in a library but human beings. Like a hotel register, there were dates and admissions: she ran back a half a page and found what we were looking for. She looked us up and down; evidently some slight sympathy was evoked by this examination. I hoped my stockings were unwrinkled and my shoes not scuffed, but it was too late to check now. Surreptitiously I rubbed my toes on the backs of my legs one at a time.
The nurse consulted her watch, pinned to her breast. “He’s on ward four-A,” she said, “over in the East Wing. You go out of here and past the clock tower and turn left — the next building is the East Wing. I don’t know how he’s settled down, though – the note here says he was quite agitated when they brought him in – you may find they won’t let him have visitors. Besides, it’s almost lunch-time over there – they serve it early.” (It was ten o’clock in the morning.) “The family, are you?”
“No,” said my mother, “ – friends.”
“Ah,” said the nurse, that frosty tone creeping into her voice again. She seemed to starch it, like her cap, according to what was required in the nature of her communications. It could express approbation or disapproval in equal measure. “Well,” she said, “you won’t want to miss him, then, will you?”
This was our dismissal. We obeyed it.
The East Wing had a big entrance like the main one we had just been to, but this one was unlocked with three separate keys. It took the nurse a while to open the door to us. He was a burly man in a green coat. Immediately the door was opened it let out a strong wave of carbolic and other, less sanitary things. I shuddered. We explained our mission, and he let us in. There was a single long wooden bench along one wall; we sat and waited while he locked the door again and went to see if we could visit today. The bench was hard and very shiny.
“We’re locked in,” I whispered to my mother.
“Not to worry,” she said.
Someone was sobbing upstairs – a man. It reminded me of when Harry Oliver wept, under the table in the thunderstorm, except that this was wilder and went on and on.
“Oh, dear,” said my mother, “poor soul.”
They came back for us, a white-coated doctor and the same nurse. “You’ll be the first visitors he’s had,” said the doctor, “Mrs. – er – ?”
“Pasley,” said my mother. She did not add, “and it’s Miss” this time, for which I was profoundly grateful.
“So I have no idea what the story will be,” he went on. “Are you prepared for an emotional outburst? Perrins here will make sure you’re unharmed, but there might be some upset – and he’s already quite a shocking sight, but you knew that, presumably –? Perhaps the little girl ought to wait – ? Normally we don’t allow children under fourteen…”
“I’d prefer she stayed where I can keep an eye on her,” said my mother, “if it’s all right with you.”
“Suit yourself,” said the doctor wearily.
We went on up.
The captain was sitting by himself in a wicker chair at the end of a corridor. Behind him was a tall window looking-out over the countryside – a lovely view. The window had bars on it, though since they were painted white you didn’t notice them at first. Perhaps they had put him there for the visit – I don’t know. The green-coated nurse went and stood against the wall with his arms folded. He nodded to us: go on.
I was nervous that I would flinch despite my mother’s firm instructions to the contrary. If he could bear it, she had told me, then I could, and that was that. I steeled myself.
“Captain Lascelles,” said my mother in a warm, calm voice, “I don’t know if you remember us – we were neighbours, over at Rookswood – Winifred Pasley, and here is my daughter Nellie – ”
“Helen,” I hissed.
“ – and we’ve brought you some greengages … ”
He looked up. He wasn’t wearing the patch on his nose, so you could see the insides. His gaze held more anguish than I could bear to see; but my mother’s held it. She stepped forward and reached out her hands; grasped his between both of hers when he raised it slightly.
“’
“Not at all,” said my mother, “it was the least we could do!”
“’ore than ’um,” he articulated with difficulty. “s–shome. ’ore than shome.”
This was true; she could hardly deny it. She knelt beside his chair. “I do hope the rest here will improve things for you,” she said.
He gave a sort of faint snort. “’est – yesh. Oo on’t know – ot it’sh like — ”
She bit her lips. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “I don’t know what it’s like, no. I’m sure it must be so very hard. I do wish you strength.”
A tear ran down his ruined nose; it seemed to ooze from somewhere close to where his other eye ought to have been. “ ’esh,” he said, “’ank ’oo.”
“Would you like a greengage?” she asked him. “They’re from our own tree…”
He nodded.
“Is it all right?” she asked the nurse.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “He’s been off his food since he came – probably starving. By all means, give it a try!”
I passed the bag to her and she took one out.
She realized there was no knife to cut it, and that he would not be able to manage the stone. Carefully she pulled it apart into two halves, not worrying about the juice dripping on her skirt, and took out the stone.
She was going to put it in his hand, but he kept both in his lap like dead fish and tilted his chin up instead. There was something at once savage and pleading about the gesture. He could feed himself, I thought, but he doesn’t want to. His one blue eye looked fiercely into hers. “I ’ow ’oo,” he said, adding with difficulty, “kn—ow.”
“’Course you do,” she smiled. “That’s why we came over to see you – now that we’re almost neighbours again.”
He opened his mouth. Half of it had teeth in. My mother tore a small piece from the flesh of the greengage and put it gently on his tongue.
He chewed it very slowly. Some juice and spit ran down his chin and he wiped that off with the back of his hand. It glistened on his knuckles. He chewed it some more and swallowed carefully. “Awh’ully – ’ood of ’oo,” he said.
“You’re so welcome,” said my mother. “Here – another?”
He held his mouth open again, even more eagerly this time, some monstrous baby bird to be fed.
One by one he ate the whole bag of greengages. It took an awfully long time. I shifted from foot to foot, not wanting to make a disruption; the nurse gave me a sympathetic look. My mother chatted in-between, about the weather, and Major Oliver being over at Rookswood, thinking he might have come across him – Harry Oliver, of the Royal Norfolk Regiment?”
“’esh,” he said, “’et him. In ’osital. Shtayed out ’ee daysh i’ oh – an’sh – ’and.”
“Three days?” said my mother.
“’Ending ’oonded,” he said.
Tending wounded. In no-man’s-land. God, Harry.
“Ga’ hi’ the Hmili’ry Nghross for i.’ Or – wash i’ uh barh? Hink i’ was barh. Had nghrosh alre-i. ”
“Oh,” said my mother, her hand to her mouth. “Dear god. I never knew what it was for — but he hates to talk about it – Nellie, we can’t ask him, can we?”
“No,” I said firmly, “we can’t.”
“’hink ’shame f’hellow,” he said. “Went nhgack uh f’ront. Quh’ick, g’rey eyesh?
Yes, said my mother.
A good ’un, said Nigel Lascelles. Actually he said “A ’ood ’uh,” but I was already getting used to his severely limited consonants. He could hardly be expected to get his mouth round them when half of it wasn’t there, could he? They had blown his jaw off too, on that side, so the repairs had left it very stiff and rigid – except for the soft opening where you could see he had once had lips.
“I ’it ’er,” he said. “ ’Aishy. ’S why I’m here. ’sh true. Shorry —— …”
“Of course you are,” said my mother.
He fixed her with his eye. Rage and pain glittered in it.
“’Oo ’uch,” he said, pointing to himself.
“You’re not too much,” she said quickly, taking his hand again, “it’s just that — well, everybody needs a rest sometimes, don’t they? You do too, I’m sure!”
He pulled her shoulders down closer. The nurse sprang up, but he waved him away and so did my mother. “’O ’arm,” he cried, “’ust talk in ’rivate _!”
No harm, he meant no harm, he said. He didn’t know why he hit her. (I thought I did, though.) Shouldn’t have – god help him, he shouldn’t have. Just saw red and – boom! His fist flew up in demonstration.
Then he wept.
My mother put her arms round him and drew his shattered head to her shoulder. Our eyes met over his shoulders, shaking in their bottle-green hospital dressing-gown. He had been a tall man – still was, when he stood. There but for the grace of god, said her look. I saw my Uncle Stephen in it – or Harry.
His sobs were bitter, defeated. They had a harshness – harsh as his fate. His hand found her breast under her soft blouse, holding-on to it as he wept. I could see it shake: he was gripping quite hard. My mother let him. I thought about Daisy’s slim form inside the flame sheath of her dress – not much to hold on to there, even if she would allow it. If she had a bosom, it was tightly bandaged not to show. There had been something untouchable about her, the other night; something held-back, unavailable. Behind her forced gaiety was a remoteness nothing could penetrate. She had had enough; she had put him here. To Daisy, she was the one in need of comfort and consolation.
My mother clearly thought otherwise – not that Daisy didn’t deserve it, but she wasn’t the only one. Nigel Lascelles deserved not to be forgotten. Actions speak louder than words, as she liked to say. We hadn’t known what to bring, besides ourselves – the fruit and the book were just a pretext for coming. But my mother herself was what this man needed – just her presence – and she saw it, gave it freely. Someone who cared enough to come, just for him. He clutched at her breast and cried like a baby. She even put her own hand over his.
I stared out of the window. Clouds were moving slowly across the sky like sheep; you could see their shadows on the ground. She held him and stroked his hair till he was done.
He pulled away, angry at himself. “’Ade ’oo ’ooet,’ he said. “sh-shorry —”
There was indeed a big dark slobbery patch on her navy sailor-style crepe blouse. It had slimy trails in it like snails’ tracks, that caught the light from the tall window behind him. “Not to worry,” said my mother, shaking-out her handkerchief and putting it in his hand, “it’ll wash. It’s nothing. It’s an honour – really.”
He wiped his face – if you could use that word of it – and looked over at me. “I ’ememer ’oo,” he said.
I smiled nervously. “I brought you a book,” I said. “Would you like me to read to you?”
He put his head back in the chair and made a strange hooting sound. I realized he was laughing, painfully. Just like Harry, the day of the storm – first sobs, and then helpless laughter.
“’Esh,” he said. “’oo ’um all ’ish way – ’ead ’o ’e? ’Od ’lesh ’oo!”
“God bless you too, my dear,” said my mother. “Go on, Nellie.”
I opened my book. It was Three Men In A Boat. Who wouldn’t like that, I had thought, in bringing it. My mother had seen my choice and nodded with a broad smile.
I didn’t start at the beginning, though; that was one of the glories of the book. You could begin anywhere because everyone knew the characters, so you could just enjoy the way Jerome K. Jerome told the story. I liked the episodes of hilarity far better than the prosy set-pieces in-between – didn’t everyone? So I went straight to the interlude with the tin of pineapples.
They wanted it; they were encamped along the river-bank; they had (they discovered) not brought an opener with them. They beat it flat – they beat it square – they beat it every shape known to man. They beat it into so horrid an expression of evil that they grew frightened and threw it away for a while. Finally they brought the mast down on it, … (This was my favourite moment.) “It was George’s straw hat that saved his life that day,” I intoned solemnly.
His laughter sounded a lot like his weeping. I supposed everyone’s did, too, at that extreme of emotion.
The doctor returned then. “Come back,” he said, after talking in a low voice with the nurse, “ – you’ve done him the world of good.”
“Oh, we shall,” promised my mother, “ – if you’d like that, captain?”
For god’s sake, he said, yesh. ’Ome back. Pleash – leash ——.
“Oh, we will,” I told him. “There’s lots more good bits, too!”
“Do you like strawberries?” asked my mother, “they’re just coming back again… ”
“’oeshn’t ’atter,” he said, “any-hing — k-k-kome – shust k-kome — ’on’t ’eave ’e o rot — ” he grabbed her hand.
“We won’t leave you to rot,” said my mother, “of course not. I promise.”
He let her go, then, and waved at me.
She took back her sopping handkerchief from his limp fingers and put it in her pocket; picked-up her bag of fruit-stones.
“Thank you for seeing us,” she said.
“Good-bye,” I said quickly, remembering my manners, “ – thank you for having us.”
He shook his head.
We didn’t talk, on the way back, except for my mother’s asking me if I was all right. Usually we would have chattered like a pair of magpies, riding side-by-side – but not today. I didn’t feel like talking and neither did she.
When we got home she threw away the paper bag and washed her sticky hands at the kitchen-sink. She was about to go upstairs to change, when we heard the crunch of another bike on our gravel. Harry’s whistle sounded outside, and then his knock.
She opened the door to him. “Oh, Harry,” she said, and put her head on his shoulder.
His arms went round her at once, even in front of me.
“We went to see the captain,” I told him, wanting to explain her uncharacteristic need for comfort – “you know, Daisy’s husband. Captain Lascelles.”
“Ah,” he said, holding her even more tightly. “G-god, poor chap.”
She clung to him for a few seconds like that, right in the doorway, pressing her face into my uncle’s jacket she had given him. That must have been a double comfort, I thought. Then she breathed a big sigh and opened her eyes and cupped his face with her hand.
Her expression changed.
I watched it – it was like watching something freeze and curl up and die. He didn’t see it; not at first. Then he did, because she had gone all stiff. She took a step back and he let her go at once.
“W—w—w—what’s w—w—wrong?” he asked, stuttering painfully. There was pure bewilderment in his eyes.
“Nothing,” she said in a tight little voice, “nothing at all. I’m just upset, that’s all.”
“I’ll make the tea,” I offered gaily.
My mother recoiled. “No,” she said, “Not now, Nellie. I have a headache. I’m going to lie down.”
“H—h—h-h-h-have I d—d—d— ” he attempted, failing to finish his question. She stepped backwards into the front-parlour, almost stumbling on the corner of the rug. He tried again. The words stuck in his throat. It was awful, like seeing something struggle for its life, a fly in a spider’s-web. With a great effort he got it out: had he d—d—done s—s—s-s-something to of—f—f—f-f-f-f-fend h—h—her?
“No,” she said, “ – no, just — I’m not in the mood for visitors right now, I’m sorry.”
But he wasn’t a visitor – he was Harry!
“I s—s—s—s-s-see,” he said, hoarsely.
“If you’ll excuse me, then,” she said, and came past me and went up the stairs. I heard her bedroom door close. He was left standing there trying to say g—g—g—g-g-good buh-buh-buh-b—b—bye.
He looked at me in consternation. I looked back similarly. My mother never behaved like that, never. ‘Fickle’ and she did not inhabit the same universe: she was dependable, always. I had no idea what was the matter. So I hugged him — and then I knew.
His jacket smelt of something familiar, but not him. He usually smelt of shaving-soap and rubbing-spirits. This was more flowery and feminine. I remembered where I had smelt it before: on Daisy Lascelles – and, more damningly still, there was a small smudge of carmine by his ear.
I didn’t tell him what I saw. I didn’t know how to say it. I was only eleven, and I too felt betrayed – although unlike my mother I immediately started to make-up all sorts of reasons and excuses for him why it might be there.
What was I to have said? What on earth could I have said?
I said nothing.
He waited for some signal from my mother that he was welcome again, but she didn’t send one; so we saw nothing of him for a few days. My heart ached. My mother was very quiet, except when she lost her temper over things that normally would not have upset her in the least, like something dropped or spilled. I was counting the days till school started again. Earlier, I had looked forward to them because I thought it would give my mother and Harry time alone together without worrying about me, which I thought they needed. Now it was to get away and have somewhere neutral and distracting to be.
I thought things were rotten all of a sudden, and didn’t know how to make them better. They would improve, wouldn’t they?
But they didn’t; they went from bad to worse, very quickly.
I set-out one morning with a bucket to pick bilberries. I headed for the heath, since that was where they grew in greatest profusion – the soil must have been just right for them up there. The night we watched the badgers, Harry had told me how heath plants like acidic soil, so they are often found together in the same places, bare of the usual lush things that grow elsewhere. I picked my way through the heather and scrub, skirting an adder sunning itself on a rock a few feet away, and spotted a promising patch.
Harry hailed me from down by the folly. On his long legs he was soon up to me. The bilberries grew low to the ground among the bell-heather and ling, and my back hurt from stooping to pick them.
“Mmm,” he said, peering into my bucket, “l–looks as if you could d-do with a h-hand!”
I accepted his help; it was true.
“H—how’s your m—m–m-m-mother?” he asked, trying to sound casual but betrayed by his speech.
“She’s all right,” I said non-committally.
“Helen,” he said firmly, directly, “p-please t-tell me w–what’s the matter?”
I looked him in the eye and shrugged. “If you don’t know, then I don’t,” I answered, which was the basic truth (if unhelpful).
Why didn’t I just tell him what I had seen – and my mother, too?
Because I didn’t know how to.
“H-how w-would I know?” he asked, genuinely puzzled still. “I d-don’t h-have a clue –!” His grey eyes were troubled, but somehow clear at the same time.
Oh, Harry. How could you go kissing Daisy Lascelles and not have a clue? How could you let us down, by not being the man we thought you were? My mother was not all tough – she could be hurt, under that self-sufficient exterior, once it was pierced. He seemed to be doing a very good job of it. If there was something to explain, for god’s sake why didn’t he say it?
He took my bucket and picked bilberries till it was almost full. It wasn’t easy; it took patience and hard work. I chatted a bit, not to seem unfriendly or ungrateful; I told him a bit about our visit to Nigel Lascelles, and how he had liked the chapter of Three Men In A Boat. And I told him how my mother hadn’t brought a knife, so she had had to feed him the greengages with her hands. He smiled sadly. “N—never at a loss, your m-mother,” he said.
“Right,” I agreed.
“T-tell her I s-said hello,” he asked me, giving me back the bucket.
I did thank him, before hurrying away down the hill. It wasn’t my quarrel, after all. In fact, he didn’t even know he was having one, apparently. How could he be so naïve, so cavalier? I wondered when he would realize it, and why.
I passed his message on to my mother. She had everything set up in the kitchen to make bilberry-jam: the glass jam-jars, the lids, the sugar, the big copper, her longest wooden spoon.
“Oh,” she said.
“He picked most of these, actually,” I told her, thinking it was only fair to give credit where credit was due.
She gave them away to Gladys Nesbitt.
And even that wasn’t the worst.
Well, pride aside, we really did want our bilberry-jam. It was a treat; we only ever made a few pounds, and they were welcome Christmas-presents. Almost everyone made marmalade, and strawberry jam, and blackcurrant jam, and bramble-jelly, but only the most devoted jam-makers troubled to go out after bilberries. If you didn’t know exactly where to look, you’d come home again empty-handed. I think my mother regretted cutting off her nose to spite her face regarding the bucket of bilberries, and we set off one lunchtime a couple of days later for more. “It’ll go quicker with two,” she said.
There weren’t too many places to go looking, of course, so we found ourselves over by the folly again. I pointed-out the place where I had seen the adder, and the main entrance to the badgers’-set, as well as trying hard to keep up my end of the picking. The heather had a drowsy sweet fragrance and bees circled round it in their ambling way. I could smell thyme, and a trace of acrid burning weeds from a far-off fire, and shreds of steam and coal-smoke from the railway-tracks half a mile away. The bilberries left a fruity stain on my hands. Every now and then I thought I smelt something that didn’t belong – a cigarette? I put it out of my mind.
We came down the slope.
Sounds drifted to us, indistinct at first and then all too clear as we
got closer. They were coming from the
folly: two voices mingled, a man’s and a
woman’s. But they weren’t talking. The sounds came in an urgent rhythm,
forcefully repeated. Hers was a
high-pitched yipping, and his a guttural grunt.
If my mother was Handel’s ‘
My mother went white. Then she took my hand in a grip of iron and pulled me away. We walked over the heath at a furious pace, me trying to keep-up, my fingers in her clutch still. Her breathing was ragged. She looked down at the ground, and so did I, for sheer self-preservation; at the speed she was going, one of us would sprain an ankle if we didn’t look-out.
When we got home, twenty hard minutes later, she looked at me for a short moment. “You shouldn’t have had to hear that,” she said. “It was wrong, you hearing that.” She was so angry with him in that moment that she’d even give away the fact that there was no doubt what it was we had heard.
“I’ll make tea – ” I offered, not knowing what else I could do for her. That was my fall-back, the thing I could always do no matter how great the trouble. The hurt in her face this time was sharp enough that I could have touched it.
“No,” she said. “I — ”
Then she ran out of the back door, leaving it to slam behind her, my unflappable mother.
I heard her in the granary, crying noisily – and harshly, long and hard.
He didn’t make things any better by coming-round the next morning early with a gift of watercress. Actually that just made it worse. It looked like an apology. If he had stayed away altogether, she wouldn’t have had to refuse it to his face. But he turned-up early, before the dew was even burned-off the grass, looking strained but determined. I answered the door.
He had come to the front. He just stood there, he didn’t come in. His face was tight, his nerves so stretched you could feel them quivering like strings ready to snap.
My mother came downstairs behind me. She was still in her dressing-gown. It made a poignant contrast to the chilly formality with which she spoke.
“I th-th-thought you m-might l-l-like — ” he began, holding it out. That white line was round his mouth again, like on the train.
“No,” she said, “No, thank you.”
He tried to say her name, I could see it taking shape on his mouth, Win – but W’s were always among the hardest for him, and nothing came out.
She saw it, too.
“Goodbye, then,” she said.
So it was back to pretending again, for him – that nothing was the matter when everything was.
She turned and went back upstairs. He stood on the doorstep blinking and swallowing and looking as if a shell had gone off right by his ear and he wasn’t supposed to flinch.
“I’m sorry — ” I said, quickly, before shutting the door.
He stood there a few more seconds composing himself before he turned and walked away. I knew, because I was waiting on the other side of the door for him to knock again – or for the sound of his footsteps. Neither came. Then there was a sharp crunch, as he turned on his heel, and off he went.
Why didn’t I tell him?
What good would it have done? What excuses could he have possibly made? What could he ever have said, to explain to my mother why the gift of her love had meant so little to him after all, and how he had used it and moved on?
A few days passed. They were horrid. Harry’s betrayal had turned everything to ashes. It would have been better for us if we had never found him, never brought him home. I was so troubled by it that I kept coming back to it, no matter how much I wanted to lose myself in distractions and put it away with the other older hurts like not knowing who my father was, and losing granddad and my uncle. Yet it wouldn’t lie down; it haunted me.
How had we so mis-read him? Were we really so naïve, my mother and I? Was the world full of men who charmed you and then let you down?
I kept going back to the Harry Oliver I thought I knew in my mind, the one who volunteered to play the piano to save my mother from an unwanted performance, the one who had taken all these weeks to open like a flower.
Gradually, I found it more and more disturbing – and less and less comprehensible.
It didn’t fit. It wasn’t like him.
I didn’t want to think about any of the things I had seen and overheard when I shouldn’t, but they kept coming back to me too. I didn’t want to hear him in my memory making-love with my mother, but I couldn’t blot it out. That was part of the mystery, right there – how he could have sounded so sincere, and then done this to us.
I started to take it all apart, and put it back together again. As if they had been captured in grooves on a shiny black record, instead of memories burned into my brain, I went over and over what I had heard.
The sounds coming from the folly had been ugly. Frantic, impersonal, no names, no words, just the sounds of copulation in all its rawness. I named it to myself, thinking of Ivy’s words: fragging, fugging, knocking, banging, getting laid. Crude, terse words for a crude, terse thing.
Then I kept wondering why he hadn’t sounded like that at all, in the granary that time when they were together, my mother and Harry. Was it because they hadn’t done ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ was? Gone all the way, the thing Ivy had described like the black-beetle wriggling, in-between her legs?
But they had sounded for all the world like lovers to me – ! Not that I was any expert. I recalled him begging her to touch him, and the moans that broke from his throat when she did, sweet then sharp, broken by sighs. In-between, from moment to moment, he had told her in gasps how he felt, what he thought: that when she did that he couldn’t last; that she was beautiful.
The incident on the heath hadn’t been like that at all. The man then had sounded like an express-train going downhill towards the station – and (I reminded myself) there had been no words.
There was no doubt that it had been Daisy, though; and in Harry’s own sleeping-place, his retreat! It had to be Harry – who else could it be? Harry had had her nasty lipstick on his neck – his neck! – not even his clothes, not even his shirt, but his neck! He was guilty; he was damned.
Wasn’t he?
I had not taken him for a cad; I had thought he was in love with my mother, had been so from the very first. It didn’t make sense — none of it did.
Was it her fault, then, because she hadn’t given him everything he deserved? Clearly Daisy had felt no such compunctions – though there had been something still brittle and aloof about her yelps that day at the folly. She had sounded sharp as a vixen. I thought my mother’s vulnerable ‘ohmygod Harry’ so much sweeter — and – damn it, damn it, she had as good as TOLD him she loved him! She HAD told him, outright! What was the matter with him?
Was Ivy right, then, and all men truly did only care about one thing?
Dipping their wick, she called it.
Damn them. Damn him.
I cried too, from bitterness and betrayal.
I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it and going over it. I imagined my mother, sleepless in the next bedroom, thinking the same things, hearing the same sounds; Harry’s groans with her, as she gave him something but not everything – and his grunting satisfaction in the arms of Daisy.
I went back over every time we had ever spent together, the things we had done, the things we had said, the expressions on his face and my mother’s, the way their eyes met.
It didn’t sit right with me. Something was wrong here, and not just with the thought of Harry Oliver and Daisy Lascelles banging-away like animals in the folly. Or – that was exactly what was wrong, actually. There was the evidence of our eyes and ears – and then there was Harry himself.
It wasn’t possible.
Either he wasn’t the man I knew, or the man I knew didn’t do it.
We didn’t see him, in the meantime, and he didn’t come looking for us. He had that much pride. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that it was all a misunderstanding. We had put the pieces of the puzzle together – but we had done it wrong. The pattern didn’t line-up, a piece had been forced somewhere. Now nothing else fit right, either. Only when you left the original wrong piece in place did you keep having these difficulties. As soon as you lifted it out, well – everything fitted again, into its right pattern. Sometimes pieces seem designed to confuse you. The little bit of tree that you are sure goes in the top left, and you put it there, and all the time it was Robin Hood’s shoe –
It wasn’t Harry. It couldn’t have been. If he wasn’t still more in love than ever with my mother then I had no eyes and no ears and no heart. Which I did, undoubtedly, and they were all in working order. She was blinded by her hurt – understandably so. She was ready to believe it because Daisy Lascelles was brilliant and sophisticated, coiffed and soignée, dressed to kill and in pain, looking for something to prove that she was still alive and attractive. She was ready to believe it because she herself was not beautiful, nor fashionable; because in the hurt of her past experience she had kept herself back this time from doing the thing that makes babies; because she was too-tall and her type of figure wasn’t the rage these days and she had freckles all over.
And I was NOT ready to believe it, because he had cupped her breast as if it were the Holy Grail itself, and then read her Glory Be To God For Dappled Things.
Very well, then.
There was no point in asking him point-blank. A denial is only worth the paper it’s written on, right?
He was toiling away in the library every day with his stacks of books, his cards and notebooks, his research, his typewriter, his pens and pencils.
Daisy was using his hideaway – with someone. And I had to find out who. It didn’t matter who, of course, not who it WAS – only who it wasn’t. It wasn’t Harry.
I had a few qualms, but none I couldn’t dismiss immediately. It seemed I was turning into a spy. Well, this was going to be the first time it was on purpose. I packed two books, Jane Eyre and an old favourite – Little Women – and some fruit and a piece of cheese and an old rug to sit on. It might be a long day’s wait – or two. I was prepared to wait as long as it took. I knew they wouldn’t come there at night, because that was when Harry slept out there – and they had to know that, they would have come across his things in the folly. Probably even used them. (Poor Harry!)
So all I had to do was wait.
I didn’t stop to think about what I would do then.
My mother didn’t even ask me where I was off to. I just said vaguely that I had plans to be out till tea-time, and something about my library-book, and she let me go with some words about not going too far. It was about ten in the morning when I set out.
There was no cover anywhere around for me to hide, the heath being so open and windswept, so that left me no choice but to go up inside the folly itself. It had a small round tower in the one corner. No-one went up there, because the stairs had fallen-in; they consisted now of broken stumps hanging out over space, with a nasty sharp drop onto the stony ground below if your foot slipped. Once you did achieve it, though, you found it even had a floor to it, of sorts. There were big gaps here and there, but if you sat with your back to the wall it would be all right. I knew this from my previous explorations – there was nowhere in our area I didn’t know inside and out. It was my home, after all.
I clambered up the chipped-off steps. I had to use my hands as well as my feet – it reminded me of the day I shimmied up the Butter Cross to rescue Harry Oliver. Now here I was again, bent on the same errand. I disturbed a mourning-dove: she rocketed out of there, making even me jump, and flew away on squeaky wings.
Spreading out my rug, folding it in two for extra padding, I set-up methodically. I propped my bottle of lemonade against the wall where it would not roll; got my books and satchel and everything I needed within reach; and sat down to begin my vigil.
It quickly grew tedious. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Nellie Pasley, I told myself, coming here to spy. Haven’t you seen and heard enough bonking to last till you’re twenty-one already? But I had to catch them at it – and to announce my presence would be humiliating for everyone, so I was going to have to sit up here and put my hands over my ears, if it came to it.
It was Nesbitt, of course. I should have known. I could have kicked myself. Who else would be so easily summoned with the toss of a head and the crossing and uncrossing of a silk-stockinged leg? Besides, they already knew one another – they wouldn’t even had had to get acquainted, the way my mother and Harry did. Daisy would have known him for a bit of a wild ’un; he would undoubtedly have been forward enough to speak to her when they saw one another again.
I had had to put away Jane Eyre after the incident where she was locked in the red room as just too frightening to read alone. I had turned to Little Women, and was happily engrossed in the part where Beth catches scarlet-fever from the immigrant family when they came sauntering in. Their voices had been audible even before they came in sight – they must have thought this was so barren a place that with Harry out of the way at his work there was no-one else to disturb them within several miles.
And they were right: I didn’t intend to disturb them. I put my book down and leaned my head back against the crumbly stones and waited for it to be over, so I could go home and tell my mother she could trust Harry Oliver again.
It was they who disturbed me.
It was perfectly awful.
To begin with it seemed entirely loveless, a transaction of greed and lust. Not that I should have been old enough to judge – but I knew love when I heard it, and tenderness, and respect – and there was none of that here. It was as urgent as my mother and Harry trysting in the granary, but balder somehow: not merely breathless but feral. This pair got right down to it. I had been wrong in thinking they didn’t speak to one another, though, in my extrapolations from what I had heard before.
“You get them knickers down afore I rips ’em off,” he said, half-laughing, half-threatening.
“My, my,” she announced in a strange coquettish voice that didn’t sound like her, “what a brute you are!”
“Yeah, an’ you likes it that way, don’t you?” he growled. I could see his shot-gun propped against the wall, and his black hairy arms moving as he undid the belt holding-up his trousers. That was the last thing I saw before I squeezed my eyes closed. “You little slut,” he added, by way of endearment.
“That’s not nice,” Daisy complained, rather archly.
“Sluts don’t like it nice, do they? They likes it rough-and-ready – like this! Uh!”
She squealed. His grunts told me he had wasted no time in finding his black-beetle way between her legs. I was disgusted.
“Fuckin’ cunt,” he growled – “say yer likes it!”
“I do – like it – ” she cried, as if she were trying to convince herself that she did. Her cries sounded on-edge to me, too-shrill.
“Bitch,” he grunted. “Come ’ere – I’m not done wiv yer yet! Nah then – gi’ us at them scrawny little titties o’ yours!”
She gave a little scream. “You bit me!”
“’Course I did,” he grinned, “thass what they be for, innit? Come ’ere! You skinny bint!”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” she whined again.
“’course it is,” he said. “Likes ’em small, dunn’I? Like a little girl. My Glad’s knockers is gone all soft – nothink ter get hard for there, at all at all!”
Like a little girl’s? I thought of my friend Ivy, and shuddered. What did he see when he looked at her, this father?
“Come ’ere, you whoar,” he said, “turn over – let me give it you in the arse an’ all.”
“But – wait – ”
“I said turn over, damn you,” he said.
With a whimper she did, apparently. I tried to block off my ears.
It seemed that he started and stopped the beetle thing at his whim. I hadn’t known it went in and out – I thought you just put it there and that was that. But it explained the repeated grunts I had heard. I wondered why on earth she would allow anything so brutal, and thought it must have something to do with feeling guilty for putting her husband away – as if she ought to be punished for it. Well, there she might be right – but not like this. Or was this a Daisy who needed to be shocked into feeling alive? What could she be trying to prove, with this? The same rough imperative sounds came up to me again, and I hoped and prayed it would be over soon before I threw-up.
It was. He finished his pleasure with a self-satisfied roar like an old boar. Almost immediately he was demanding to know if she would be here termorrer an’ all.
“Can’t I let you know?” she asked, a petulant tone to her voice now she was no longer whimpering.
“Busy man, ain’t I?” he asked. “Not a bleedin’ lady of leisure a-cheatin’ on ’er ’usband.”
There was the sound of a slap. “What about your wife?”
“Didn’t say I wasn’t no better,” he said. “Jus’ said I was a busy man.”
“Busy with what?”
“Things,” he said mysteriously, just to be cruel. I happened to know he was expected home for his dinner, because I had been friends with the family for ever – and dinner was at one o-clock sharp at his own insistence, come hell or high water, and that was that. But Daisy didn’t know that – nor was he about to tell her. Not that his wife had been cooking up a meal for him all the time he had been knocking Daisy, and now he was off home to eat it – it didn’t sound half as slick as ‘things,’ did it?
“You’re a bastard, Jack Nesbitt.”
“Yeah,” he said.
I had to agree with Daisy, there.
He picked-up his gun and a brace of dead rabbits and strode off down the slope towards the coppice.
Daisy stayed behind to light a cigarette. I wanted her to leave. Hadn’t she desecrated this place enough yet? I ought to have felt sorry for her, but then I thought about that lipstick she left everywhere, on her cigarette-ends and on poor Harry’s neck behind his ear – acquired, I was sure now, in all innocence on his part – or else he would have felt guilty enough to check for it and rub it off, wouldn’t he? Daisy, it seemed, stained everything she touched.
After a while she left.
I ate my cheese and fruit, not so much because I was hungry but because I wanted to get the taste of the two of them out of my mouth and nose and replace it with something wholesome like lunch. She was a snake in the grass, that one.
And Nesbitt was exactly what she deserved, and she him.
And my mother deserved to be happy with Harry Oliver, who had done nothing wrong – and was now deeply hurt.
God, how was I to put all this to rights?
I thought about telling her. “Mummy, I saw Daisy Lascelles and Jack Nesbitt bonking in the folly. So you can let Harry off the hook – it wasn’t him.”
Hmm. Hard to see myself actually saying anything of the kind.
I tried it another way: “Harry, my mother thinks you’ve been bonking Daisy Lascelles. That’s why she won’t talk to you.” Better, a bit — but what a thing to have to tell him! That was quite a disadvantage he would begin from, having to explain his way out of a crime he hadn’t committed – and to someone who already thought he had used and insulted her!
This was going to be more difficult than I had anticipated.
Well, just tell the truth – right?
But to whom?
My mother had tried at every turn to protect me, I reasoned. She didn’t want my innocence spoiled – she told me I shouldn’t have heard it, with great bitterness. She and Harry had forgone much bliss that could have been theirs for my sake, limiting themselves to stolen moments when they wouldn’t be rubbing it in my face, whatever ‘it’ might be. I wasn’t supposed to know about any of this. The thought that I had actually witnessed Daisy and her lover would upset my mother dreadfully. (I had already determined I would go to my grave before she learned that I had seen her and Harry making-love, if that was what you called it – what else was it, if not that? – in the granary.)
But if that was so and she wanted to shield me from things a child shouldn’t see, then why had she taken me to see the fright that was Capt. The Hon. Nigel Lascelles?
Because that was different; because, unlike adult passions and perfidy, duplicity and selfishness, his disfigurement was necessary – a sacrifice he had made on our behalves. Because we owed it him, to keep him within the circle of our concern; because if he could bear it, we could.
No, it was unfaithfulness she didn’t want me hurt by – and a too-premature exposure to what belonged between adults only. I could see that. It even made some sort of sense, if you looked at it from her point of view.
Perhaps Harry could explain his way out of it, if he knew? That way she would never have to know I knew everything, had seen everything; he could leave me out of it. She would prefer that: my intimate involvement in this sordid little story would be really hard for her to take. I didn’t want her feeling she had failed as a mother, or that I had seen through her – let alone dwelling on what else I had seen.
I saw later, when it was too late, that there were other choices I could have made. Harry really didn’t have to know about what we had thought of him – I could just have told her I had seen Daisy and Jack Nesbitt going into the folly together; surely that would have been enough? And then she would have forgiven Harry, and taken him back, and all would have been well. I don’t know why I didn’t see that, then. I think what I had witnessed between Daisy and Nesbitt had upset me too much to be able to think straight. I couldn’t get it out of my head, it had burned itself into me like lightning on the retina of the eye. In my shock it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t have to tell all about it, only some.
Perhaps if I’d had time to think it all through, I would have come up with a better plan…? But I was a child – and their force had buffeted me, like a huge wave in the face. I was overwhelmed, floundering out of my depth, bowled off my feet by these primeval passions I was swept up in. They had snatched my innocence, the way a wave takes all your breath. I was reeling from it all, and trying not to go under.
I wanted to protect her.
I would start with him, then.
I ran home. My mother was out – she had left me a note propped-up by the clock, where we always left notes for one another. ‘Gone over to Gladys’s,’ it said, ‘back soon.’ I put my things down in the kitchen and washed-out my lemonade-bottle. I was just thinking about what to do next when there was a sound outside: my mother coming home?
No: it was Harry Oliver.
His bike stood against the scullery-wall. He was just stooping by the step, leaving something – a bunch of cornflowers and a letter in an envelope. At that moment he appeared to me heaven-sent. Now I could start to untangle this dreadful mess.
“H—Helen,” he said when he saw me, unsure of himself and taken-aback but polite as always.
I felt a flood of affection for him. He had no idea why she had turned cold – she had sent him away twice — and yet he had had the dignity to write to her, not just leave it hanging and raw like that. Harry, Harry. His heart must have been aching – what could he have been thinking, with his conscience as clear as dew? Oh, how hurt and bewildered he must have been.
“We have to have a talk,” I said urgently. “Now, Harry. It’s important.”
“I – yes, of c-course,” he said.
I was about to take him by the hand and lead him into our sitting-room. Then I thought better of that: what if my mother came home before I had managed to explain?
“Let’s go out,” I said. “On our bikes. Down the lane a bit. Where we can be private.”
“A–all r-right,” he said, more puzzled than ever.
We set off. I turned my bicycle off the lane and into the woods where a broad path ran down towards the railway-line at the bottom. It took a couple of twists and got you out of sight of the lane within a few dozen yards. Harry followed me. We rounded the first bend, dismounted and leaned our bikes against a tree. Tactlessly, hastily, not even sitting-down, I began: “Harry, I know what the matter is.”
He had gone pale. Clearly, he was preparing himself for the worst. “W—w-what?”
I felt for him, being so afraid to hear it and asking anyway.
“It’s Daisy,” I said. “My mother’s got it into her head that you — that she — that you’re doing it together. ”
His look of consternation was replaced by one of complete bewilderment. “W-w-w-whyever w-would she think that?” he said.
“It really looked like it,” I said, “ – you wouldn’t understand — ”
“You’re r-right,” he said, his puzzled air slowly changing to one of shock now as my words sank in, “I w-wouldn’t.” I thought about it from his point-of-view. In all innocence he was hearing that his sweetheart believed him capable of something truly disgusting. In explaining one kind of hurt, I had dealt another.
“I can explain — ” I faltered. “But – ”
“No n-need to explain,” he said. His voice was squeezed, just like my mother’s had been when she dismissed him. So proud – so wounded.
“No, really,” I said, “listen — ”
I would have said more, but I never got the chance. From somewhere close-by came a shattering roar. We both jumped. After it there was a moment of silence, during which Harry and I stared at one another and he began to shake like a leaf – then the screaming started, all the worse somehow for being a man’s.
Harry had turned white — but he was already breaking into a run.
We arrived there together. I looked away – I had to. I had seen enough for one morning, and this was frightful. Jack Nesbitt was hanging over the barbed-wire fence with his foot blown off. I mean, his leg ended in a red pulp with the bone sticking out and he was shrieking. His shotgun was still caught in the fence, pointing downward.
Harry didn’t hesitate. “His c-cap,” he shouted to me, lifting Jack off the wire, “f-fetch his cap!”
I picked it up from where it had flown off his head and rolled into the ditch a few feet away. His bloody boot lay beside it, the foot still inside.
Harry had Nesbitt laid down on the ground and was already unfastening his own braces, his jacket inside-out beside him. There was blood everywhere. It was spraying in the air and all over from the pulpy mess that was Nesbitt’s leg.
“Now c-come here,” he said tersely to me. “P-press it against the w-wound — n-now. Now!”
I did as I was told. I pressed it onto that awful wound, down against the ground, hard down into the grass and bracken. The blood stopped spurting. I turned my head and threw-up, but I didn’t stop pressing.
“G-good girl,” he said. “Now l-let me in there – but d-don’t stop p-pressing – p-put it up on my knee, look – good — k-keep it up, all right? We’ll g-get you taken care of, old man, it’s all right. All right. Everything’s g-going to be all right.”
Nesbitt had stopped screaming; now he moaned. It was an appalling sound. Harry wrapped his braces round the stump of the leg and tied them off hard.
“Try l-letting go,” he said.
I did.
The spurts of blood had slowed to a pulsing ooze.
“I n-need that s-stick over there,” – he motioned with his head.
I fetched it and he twisted it through the knot he had just tied to make a proper tourniquet, which he tightened. Nesbitt groaned again.
Harry Oliver looked up at me. “Now r-run like hell,” he said.
I did.
The rest of the day was chaos. I jumped back on my bike and pedalled like the wind past the lane to the Nesbitts’ house, where he had obviously been going – and in too great of a hurry to be as careful as he knew he should. Well, he would pay for it now, wouldn’t he. No point in going there first – they had neither a car nor a telephone. Bowyers’ Farm had both, half-a-mile on. I ran screaming into the farmhouse and Mr. Bowyer sprang into action, shouting at his wife to telephone for an ambulance as he made for their van. Someone was on the party-line, and there was a moment of awful farce where she was shouting into the mouthpiece, “get off the line – get off the line!” without telling them why. I made sure she communicated the details once she had the operator on, and left to go and break the news to Gladys Nesbitt.
I must have been a shocking sight, stumbling out-of-breath and covered in gore and my own vomit into their kitchen. I didn’t think about it. I had pedalled hard all the way up the hill and could hardly speak. “Accident,” I gasped, “accident, there’s been an accident –!”
“What! What kind?” they cried together, my mother and Ivy’s, both standing-up from their cosy chat and horror-struck. The rest of the family had already eaten, and the table was neatly re-laid for Nesbitt’s dinner; I smelt hotpot. I remember how incongruous it seemed, that I would notice that, but I did.
I told them what and where and when, bluntly, apologizing – for some reason I felt responsible – and Gladys Nesbitt made a gurgling sound.
“I’ll take care of the children” said my mother instantly, “ — run!”
Gladys grabbed at the table.
My mother reached on top of the broom-cupboard and pulled-down a bottle of spirits and put it in Glady’s Nesbitt’s hand. “Go,” she said.
“I’ll take care of them, mummy,” I said, “you should go with her – please?”
“No you won’t,” said my mother, protective of me now, “look at you! You’re in no fit shape to take care of anybody or anything, my girl!”
I looked down. My clothes were caked with blood. I felt faint then, as I had not earlier when Harry was doing what he had to; I too held onto the table.
Gladys had left, grabbing her shawl from by the door and slamming it behind her in her haste. My mother came and sat by me. She took my hand and held it. “It’s all right,” she said, in the same kindly tone she had used to Harry when he was screaming for stretcher-bearers in the night. “Lovey, it’s all all right.”
I burst into tears.
Everything seemed to happen very fast after that. I had thought I was in control of things, but I wasn’t. My mother brought me home when she could leave the Nesbitts’, and dosed me with hot buttered rum-and-water and put me to bed. I had the shakes; they wouldn’t stop. For the first time, I began to know what it was like for Harry when your body lets you down. I had hardly slept for the past several nights, and I was drained now and in shock as well as exhausted. She sat with me till I went under.
I woke in the night seeing Mr. Nesbitt’s foot in his boot, not attached to his leg any more. Then when I couldn’t sleep I turned the rest over in my mind endlessly. I should have told her right there and then – but the more I thought about it, the sicker I felt. First, I wasn’t supposed to know what the matter was. Second, I wasn’t supposed to have seen or heard anything between her and Harry. Third, she had told me in no uncertain terms already not to meddle in anybody’s business. Fourth, Daisy Lascelles’s affairs were not my secret to give away, and I had come by my first-hand knowldege sneakily. How could I tell my mother I had sat up there in wait for Daisy and her stud? That I had seen them, heard them? From the pressure of her hand when she had pulled me away from the sounds of fornication, I knew that to her I was a child that she protected from all these things – not the other way round.
But she had to know – she had to! I couldn’t let her go on thinking it was Harry.
I saw that, now. I would talk to her in the morning – I would. I promised myself.
She was already out when I got up. I made myself some toast and burned it. Going to scrape it, I found Harry’s letter in the rubbish. I had forgotten about it.
Even without picking it out, the words were legible right where it lay. She had screwed it up, but it had sprung open again the way a crisp sheet of paper will do. There was a grease-stain on it, but that didn’t blot out his writing. How could I not read it?
Anyway, I thought, it was all going to be different now, wasn’t it? It was going to be all right.
The letter was very short – just staring at it was enough, whether I really ought to or meant to or not.
Dearest Winifred, it said.
— I
am at a loss to understand what is the matter.
All I can think is that perhaps recently things between us have happened
too fast, and gone too far, and you are anxious & have second
thoughts? If so, I blame myself.
Winifred, tell me — I am not one to place
demands upon you – & I wouldn’t hurt you for anything. As far as what has been, I can only thank you
— please trust it will remain a treasure to me always. Let us not lose a friendship over it
too? Or – if not — at least can we not
be civil, for Helen’s sake?
I should appreciate some sort of reply, Win,
in all honesty, no matter how unwelcome the news – Still I remain
Most sincerely
your respectful friend
Harry Oliver
It was as restrained and truthful and simple and dignified as he was. My heart went out to him. He had even mentioned me.
It was not a good sign that she had thrown it away, though.
Still I thought, in that moment, that it could all be salvaged. A few awkward explanations, some humbling apologies, and things would be all right again — wouldn’t they? I would see to it that they were. They had to be, for all our sakes.
I had reckoned without my mother’s fierce maternal instincts. Harm had come too close to me, and she was determined to protect me from it now at all costs. She returned soon after I had had my breakfast, with her going-to-town hat on. “It’s all settled, Nellie love,” she announced, “I’ve been on the telephone with Bea. They’ll have you for a fortnight. Just till school starts up again.”
“What!” I spluttered, “I never asked to go to Bea’s!”
“I didn’t ask you,” she said, in a tone far firmer than she usually employed with me. She looked sad and tired. I doubted she had had any more sleep than I had, since everything started going wrong. She also looked as if she felt responsible – which I supposed is what mothers do. “Trust me to know what’s best, Nellie.”
Bea’s! Oh, no. My mother’s cousin Bea and her husband Percy ran a fish-and-chip shop in Southsea, not far from Clarence Pier. On occasion I had had a week with them – once by myself when there was an epidemic of measles at my school, and another time when Perce hurt his back and Bea needed a hand with the chips and we both went, my mother and I. They lived over the shop, so the general fragrance of their furniture, beds, clothes, hair, etc. can be imagined.
“Mummy, no,” I said, “I can’t go, not now. Harry needs — ”
“That’s another thing,” she said, wincing at the sound of his name. “Things have been very – upside-down around here. But it’s all going to be back to normal, from now on. And I’ll thank you not to mention him just at the moment – it’s bad enough as it is.”
“Mummy, listen!” I insisted. “There’s been a mistake — you don’t understand.”
She crossed the room to stand right in front of me. Her face was strained, her eyes reddened and fierce now. “Nellie,” she said crossly, “ – no. It’s you that doesn’t understand, my girl. Some things are none of your business. I haven’t always treated you like the child you are, and I’m sorry for that – but we can’t go looking back. Now you’ve had a nasty shock, on top of everything else, and it’s not good for you to be in the middle of all this – this mess. Now run along and get packed – it’s all arranged, we’re catching the eleven-thirty train.”
I panicked. I shouldn’t have said what I did, but I could see everything collapsing like a house of cards, and Harry and my mother needlessly heartbroken over one another. What if he left!? Someone had to defend him, before it was totally hopeless and she drove him away. “Mummy,” I blurted, “he’s not doing it with Daisy Lascelles! He’s not!”
I didn’t even see it coming – her slap. It was as sharp as it was swift. My cheek smarted.
I was not going to be stopped, not even by that. “But mummy, you’ve got to believe me! He never — ”
She bent down. There were tears in her eyes. I could not remember ever seeing her so beside herself. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing! Do you want another one?”
My mother had never hit me. Oh, a quick open hand on the backside, perhaps, when I was insufferable and untamed at three or four – but since we had had a real dialogue, never. She was slow to lose her temper, and she didn’t believe in violence. But this morning she was past her breaking-point, clearly. It wasn’t her any more – she had turned into an avenging angel. She was going to save me from her foolishness, from the betrayal of her trust, from the mess she had made.
“Mummy, you’ve got to listen,” I pleaded.
“No – you listen,” she said. “There’s going to be no more Harry. I made a mistake. I don’t want to hear any more about it – or him. He’s got no business talking with you, or sending messages. I’ve let things go far enough already — further than I should. This is IT. Is that understood?”
I felt as if my life was turning into a nightmare before my eyes. Was this Harry’s experience, every day, the waking nightmare? That is, until we rescued him from it – only to throw him back. I was going to protest, but another glance at my mother’s face told me not to try. She was shaking and on the verge of tears – and she was also very angry. This was not a promising combination. It wasn’t fair to Harry – but I would get nowhere protesting that. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I saw it all twisted, the way it appeared to her. In trying to help, I was adding fuel to the fire. I had had my chance, and I had said it all wrong. I had made it sound as if he had sent me to tell her that. She already had him pictured as a heartless cad, a man who could play quite casually with a woman’s feelings and then move on whenever it suited him – wherever the grass was greener. He was not to be trusted: he had hurt us, a lot. Now, with his case furthered through my lips, he was also a user of little girls to work his selfish manipulations. She was going to protect me from that even if it meant slapping me again till I saw sense.
I saw sense, all right. It just wasn’t the same sense she saw. But then, she hadn’t seen Daisy Lascelles and Jack Nesbitt going at it hammer-and-tongs, had she. No – only Daisy’s mark on the man she thought was her own sweetheart. Hurt had blinded her to everything but that.
I gave up for the time being, and went to pack my bag. I was going to have to find a different way to come at this.
We didn’t speak much all the way to Bea’s. I wanted to carry my own bag but she wouldn’t
let me. We waited in silence for the
train; we sat in silence as it chuffed
through the fields and cuttings and over the viaducts. We had to change at
Doors slammed up and down the train. My mother reached into the overhead bin with its hanging net and pulled down my case. “Here we are, then,” she said, redundantly. I could see a pair of familiar figures waving – they had spotted us through the window and were even now shouldering their way to greet us. I stepped after her, out of the carriage and onto the platform, where I was enveloped in a suffocating fishy hug from Bea and a bony fishy hug from Perce. “Here you are, then!” they cried, as if we hadn’t realized it ourselves yet, “ – here you are!”
I extricated myself with dignity. “Hello, Auntie Bea. Hello, Uncle Perce.”
“Hello, love,” cried Bea cheerily. “Your mum tells us you’ve had a bit of a rough time lately – but we’re going to feed you up and put some colour back in those cheeks, right, Perce?”
“Righty-ho,” he said. It was one of Perce’s sterling qualities that he always agreed with whatever Bea said whenever she asked him, which instant and unquestioning loyalty he was able to prove on a very regular basis – at least once every few minutes.
I looked at my mother. What on earth had she told them? I wasn’t the one who was upset – she was! My rough time consisted of helping Harry Oliver perform first-aid on Jack Nesbitt’s hideous injury, which I could have got over at home.
My mother smiled brightly, cheerfully. “So good of you to come and meet us,” she said. There was a lump in her throat, though, and the words came out hoarse – which made the smile seem rather less cheerful.
“We shut up shop at one sharp,” said Bea proudly, “just in time, eh, Perce?”
“— lovely to have you to count on, Bea, Perce,” she told
them, and by then we were half-way out of the station. Bea held my hand. We caught a tram outside and skirted the seafront
round to Southsea and
There is little point in telling much of what happened in Southsea. It was a desperately irrelevant interlude, through which I fretted and chafed. My mother kissed me and hugged me very tightly before she left. “I’m sorry, Nellie,” she whispered, “it was all I could do.”
We ate fish and chips morning noon and night, our diet varied only by watery pink sausages, mushy peas, collops (large slices of potato battered and friend to resemble fish for those who could not afford the real thing), Bea’s own jellied eels, and of course the choice between cod, halibut, plaice or whelks-and-winkles.
I wouldn’t touch jellied eels. I didn’t like whelks. Or winkles.
I missed Harry Oliver.
Of course, I wasted no time in writing to him. I begged a stamp off Bea. I felt some small comfort in knowing he would get it the next day and know I had not abandoned him.
Dear Harry,
You have to tell her, you’ve got to. I can’t.
I tried but it was no use. She
has sent me off here to get over seeing Mr. Nesbitts leg blown off and she
wouldn’t let me talk to her about you at all.
I will swear on the bible I know you didn’t do it with Daisy Leacelles
again as soon as I see her I promise. I
have Proof. But you have to try to talk
to her, her mind is getting more made up by the minute.
I hate it here, it smells of frying all the time. I miss you.
A lot. I really like you
Harry. If you went I would miss you
dreadfully. Don’t go all right?
What is happening with the Holbine drawings? Have you been to
Harry it is going to be all right, I know it is. You are a good person and she is going to see
that, I know she will. You just have to
tell her.
I do miss you.
Please write back. I am c/o Bea’s
Seven Seas Fish & Chip Shop on
With much love from Helen.
He answered immediately.
Dear Helen,
I was very
pleased to hear from you – you are a dear to write to me so soon. I miss you, too. I have not yet had a chance to speak with
your mother and sort things out, though I have tried. We will have to trust that they will be
resolved.
Jack Nesbitt is still in the hospital of course. They took him to
I have got my hands on two recordings from the Pirates
of
Thank you for asking about the drawings and for your
kind reassurances. I am planning to take
them up to
Helen, don’t ever lose your straightforwardness and
your kind heart. They are a rare gift to
your friends, amongst whom I hope I may still count myself
Very sincerely indeed,
Harry Oliver.
Tuesday – the day of my return. He had screwed up his courage to go to
So there was nothing to do but wait, then.
I was itching to get home again. The days crawled, smelling of frying at lunch
and tea- and dinner-time, and at night the eels steaming away in Bea’s big
copper. I walked along the sea-front,
kicking at the shingle till my boots were all scuffed, picking-up bits of
seaweed and slipper-shells and dark-blue mussels and watching the departure and
return of the Isle-of-Wight ferry. The
island shimmered across the
He hadn’t had to: they still echoed, every time he opened his mouth.
Bea and Perce couldn’t leave the business in the middle
of the morning to put me back on the train at a reasonable hour, so my mother
came the night before and then we got up early so they could see us off. We caught the milk-train back to
It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning when we pulled into our station.
Oh, how badly I wanted to see Harry off. I had hoped all the way that we would run
into him. Today was the day for his
much-anticipated interview; if the Great
Western Railway would oblige me with its timetables, I might still have the
chance to wish him good luck. He
shouldn’t have to go alone and uncared-for, out of the safety of our Hampshire
chalk into the overwhelming no-man’s-land of noise and chaos that was a trip to
My prayers were answered.
As we drew to a stop and the steam cleared I saw him in his uniform
waiting for the
So did my mother.
Her face froze.
Oh, dear. I had asked her, of course, innocently, half-way home: “Have you spoken to Harry at all?” – and been greeted with a frown and an expression of hurt.
“Don’t start, Nellie,” was all she said.
Well, here he was. She was going to say hello, wasn’t she?
I waved vigorously.
He waved back at me, far more discreetly, not much more
than a lift of his hand to show me he had seen me. He looked thin. The diagonal leather strap across his breast
gleamed – he must have been polishing it.
He had the same battered case with him.
Who would ever have thought it might contain a national treasure? I thought about the time we went to
The train we had just left pulled out, leaving the lines open and the signal set safe to cross. We headed over the creosotey wooden planks to the opposite platform and the exit; in doing so, we had to go right past him. If we weren’t to stand there all day, we couldn’t avoid it. My mother had hold of my hand and she wasn’t going to stop.
“G-good morning,” he said as we passed.
She nodded briefly, just enough to be polite.
I saw his eyes flicker closed a moment. Oh, yes, it hurt.
“Good luck, Harry!” I said quickly, before we had got too far away.
“Th—th—th—th-th-th-thank you,” he said, not getting the word out till we were too far past to hear it.
I would like to say that I had a sense of foreboding then, but I didn’t. The knot in my stomach wasn’t about the future at all, not yet, but the immediate pain of the present – of which there was plenty.
DIARY
Monday — 2 godawful things today.
1. Ghastly accident. Fellow shot himself in the leg. Blew his foot clean off. Poor Helen – she should not have had to see it. Will give her nightmares I am sure.
2. Win — have found out what the matter is. But it’s ridiculous – a complete farce. Learned from Helen that apparently she thinks I’ve taken up with Daisy.
Hence the frosty looks, the dismissals.
But whyever wd she think that? How could she even start to believe that I wd ever do such a thing?
Stunned by this. Baffled — yes & hurt, won’t pretend otherwise.
Why didn’t she just ask me?
Too proud I suppose. But — after everything we have been to one another, to think I would just casually — it doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Can think of nothing else though, of course.
Dammit, she knew there was never anyone but her – never had been – told her directly – that she was the first & only one ever, the first time she m. l. to me — told her all it meant to me —
Christ almighty how could she think it! ? ? ? !
She must be feeling even more wretched than I am.
Will try to put it right. Hope Helen can help.
Shocked, though.
Tuesday — no reply to my letter. Wrote it before I heard from Helen – now what? Write another & bring it up? Dearest Winifred, I understand you think I’ve been knocking the living daylights out of Daisy Lascelles. Allow me to assure you that this is not the case. Huffily yours, H.O.
Or — My darling Winifred, what on earth gave you the idea that there was anyone but you? Haven’t I been so painfully transparent in all my fumbling awkwardness? How can you not trust me enough to come to me even and ask?
Or — Winifred my beloved and hurt sweetheart, Come off it and stop being so silly! Me and Daisy? I’d sooner face a machine-gun-post than get into bed with that woman. It would be the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of, if it wasn’t so insulting. I have no idea what it is that I am supposed to explain, since I have done nothing at all TO be explained, but won’t you please agree to see me so I can try —
Or — For your information, Winifred, my entire life’s sexual experience with any party other than myself has been at your hands, as it were — as it was, most happily, I might add – what makes you think there is any woman in the world whose legs I would rather get between than yours? Which I am still dying to do, by the way, god help me. I thought you knew me better than to take me for that sort of chap —!
Seriously though —
Win, Win, Win. No wonder you looked so reproachful.
I am not going to write about this any more. It is too stupid to deserve mention.
Weds — have got an appointment with Sir Fellowes Vickery, Dir. NPG a week from Tuesday. Haven’t told him much. Good of him to agree to see me.
Probably ought to wear unfm. Polish boots.
Thurs — the brush-off from Win. Coldest note I ever saw. Try again? Have to be more direct – mention a misunderstanding this time? Christ. Find self savage, bitter.
n.m. dreadful. Mostly buried alive. Woke couldn’t breathe at all – suffocating. Vomited. Bring brandy over for such times? Better not.
Friday — god is there no end to the trouble that bloody woman is going to cause? She is a damned liability. Pity Nigel L. more than ever. Have no idea what the matter is but she is flitting round the house looking distraught & weeping all over my stacks in the library. At this rate half the household is going to think she’s got it in for me. Cannot avoid her whatever I do.
Saturday – well the matter is that she is pregnant —
& of course not by poor old Nigel.
Wanted to know if I knew anybody up in
Sunday – avoided church – no point in upsetting Winifred.
Christ is she ever going to be mine again? Not at this rate —
n.m. bad again. Dick’s face when there was no more top to his head, Zillebeeke, Zonnebeeke, that young German officer with the blue eyes. This whole business has been a setback.
Tuesday a.m. Here
it is, then – the big day. Stand-to
& over the top. But they’re not
shooting people in
When will this business with W not make me feel sick?