NIGEL

 

 

 

Of course time doesn’t stand still.  The years went by kindly, I felt, more or less, as our little family grew.  As I mentioned, Nigel Lascelles was a part of it from the beginning  – that was a given:  it was almost as if my Uncle Stephen had rejoined us.   It made our picnics so much more enjoyable, because Harry and my mother could wander off hand-in-hand and enjoy their private conversation and long looks to the full, without feeling I was being left-out;  Nigel and I never ran out of things to talk about and laughs to share. 

 

 

 

We all three went to see him right after Harry was let go from police custody.  Harry wanted to meet and thank him, and my mother and I wanted to see how he was now that the sad truth had come out about Daisy.  It was a warm afternoon in the hospital gardens;  we all sat outside together in the shade of a big lime-tree.   Nigel sat back and looked at my mother and Harry together and gave that stiff smile he had, the one where his eye had to do all the work, and did:   it glistened and blinked.

‘Lucky chap,’ he wrote, swiftly, directly – writing left little point in beating around the bush:  ‘I wished I’d married her — and now you’re going to! ! !’

Harry nodded, flushing sharply.  I don’t think he quite believed it himself, yet.  The flaring of his nostrils gave him away.  There was nothing wrong with Nigel’s eyesight in his remaining eye.  He only bumped into furniture with Daisy because she had kept the house so cluttered and half the time he was in such a state he couldn’t see straight.  That was what he had answered when my mother asked him about his sight improving, anyway.   I think that meant he had been blinded by tears half the time, but it wasn’t anything one could ask.  He saw Harry now and the look on his face and looked away.  I could feel the ache in him for what Harry had. 

‘Bloody good thing old man,’ he wrote then, ‘or I’d have beaten you out — thought it too soon to ask her myself.  Poor taste.  So recently widowed.  Missed my chance, I see.’  And he made that breathy sound I knew was laughter, except that it was a bit like a sob, too.

My mother asked Nigel if she could take his arm then, for a stroll along the laurel-walk.  He got up from his chair with the same easy grace he had had when he was whole, extending his arm to her in a gallant fashion.  She took it, excusing them both with a little  smile to us, and they went off together. 

Harry looked at me.  “G-good thing I f-f-f-found her w-when I did, wouldn’t you say?” he asked me with his quick, shy grin, “I’d have a s-serious r–r-r-rival, mm?”

“I don’t think so,” I said gravely.   “She’s head-over-heels about you, Harry.”

“Oh, i-is she!” he said.

“You know she is.  She just likes Nigel.  She thinks he’s very brave.  And he didn’t deserve – this.  That.  You know.”

“G-god, no,” said Harry, “poor chap, he r-really d-didn’t.  And sp-pecially n-not that p-piece of work that was D-daisy.”

“She didn’t use to be like that,” I said, feeling as if I ought to say a word at least in her defence.

“No,” said Harry, “n–none of us did.   Use to b-be like this.  B-but here we are — g-got to m-make the b-best of it.”

I followed his gaze over to the far corner of the walk, where my mother and Nigel were standing out of sight of everyone but us.  She had her arms around him and his cheek was laid on her head.  They stood like that for a long time.  She was holding him close to her with no shame at all, and her hand cupped the back of his head.

I looked at Harry. “Do you mind?” I asked him in a small voice.

“M-mind?  G-good god, no!  N-never!  G-god b-bless your m-m-mother,” said Harry, “th-that’s as c-c-lose as he’ll likely g-get to a woman n-now —!”

I thought of all Harry had had to overcome, to believe himself in the least worthy of my mother’s love.   Now his heart was open to poor Nigel, warming his hands at the same fire just a little.

“Harry,” I said quickly, before I could think better of it, “I love you for not minding.”

He looked at me.

“Well, I do,” I said.  My cheeks were bright flags;  I could feel them. 

“I l-love you too, Helen,” he said, “and — I’m in l-l-love w-with y-your m-mother — if you s-see the d-difference.”

I hung my head.  I did see it, and he was right to remind me of it.  Trust him to do it so gently, so considerate of my feelings.  They must have been written all over my face.   The hospital had a way of doing that to you – you felt stripped, raw, seeing these people who had no masks left and were so helplessly, hopelessly themselves.  I felt both of those things about him, at that time, though my feelings for him were complicated and confusing to me then.  I recognized the rightness of the distinction he was making for himself, and of course anything else would have been quite wrong.  

But I was always a bit in love with him;  still am.

 

My mother just went on holding Nigel Lascelles for a very long time.  A quick hug is one thing, a tender embrace another.  She gave him for that minute the fullness of her warmth and womanhood.  It was too long to be a friendly hug, too tenderly chaste for a tease;  it was intended as something in itself, it seemed, a place for him to return to in imagination when he felt most alone and untouchable.  He didn’t cry this time, as far as I could see;  but he clung to her and took the gift of her nearness.  I wondered what she might be saying to him, or if she was just holding him close in silence.  When she did let him go at last, she stepped-back just a little and took his face in her hands and spoke to him earnestly.  As she did she was smoothing the hair from his brow and stroking his good cheek.  It was too far away to see the look on his face, because reading that was a matter of subtlety these days, but he let her touch him right there on his dreadful wounds and did not break her gaze by looking down as he so often had the habit of doing.

 

When they returned to us she exchanged a glance with Harry.  It was so sad on her part and so tender on his that I almost couldn’t bear it.  It said:  Harry, I had to do that – and his said, Of course you did and I love you for it.

Nigel wrote:  ‘Harry old man you are the luckiest fellow in the entire world, bar none.  Just hope you appreciate that! !’

Harry looked at my mother.  Not a beauty, in any popular obvious way;  not a face you’d see in a fashion-gazette, or on the stage gathering hearts as easily as bouquets – but a gift of such extraordinary loveliness and grace in his life that it outshone anything good that had ever happened to him.  I remembered the first time he came to dinner, the way he had looked at her leaning-forward to serve and then pinning-up her wayward hair, how real she was, how entirely approachable and giving of herself.

“Yes,” he said simply.

None of us thought it odd that Nigel didn’t seem to be mourning Daisy in any overt way.  That grief had begun a long time ago, I thought, and her death now brought both a tragic finality to their failed marriage and with it a release for Nigel from a situation that had become cruel beyond words.

Her suicide-note had implied that, too;  she hadn’t said she was sorry for ending it all to him, only to daddy.  Perhaps she knew that for him anyway she was doing a dreadful kind of favour.

 

I wanted him not to be lonely.  I wanted there to be a nice woman out there somewhere in the wide world who would see past his ruined features to the fine noble heart he had and that brave spirit.  There must be nurses coming-back from the Front who could do that, weren’t there?   We would have to find one.  Could one advertise for such a thing?  Sweetheart wanted, not too fussy as to appearance?

No;  he would be too proud for that.

Bought company?

No;  he would loathe that.  Though he might be desperate enough, if not now, then in a year or two —?

Well if he was then that was nobody else’s business, was it.

 

But he was an officer and a gentleman, and men like him did not behave like that, not even in secret.  They accept what comes to them and make the best of it.

 

Nigel did. 

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

My mother changed.  Not into anyone different, but intensely more herself.  It was almost overwhelming.  I felt sad she had been so unhappy all this time and I’d not suspected it.  It happened after Harry came home to us, almost overnight.  There had been glimpses of her this way before, ever since he first appeared in our lives, but she had still been holding-back.  All at once she came ablaze, as if up till now she had been obscured by a layer of frost or grime and I hadn’t even realized it until Harry rubbed it off and she was suddenly luminous. 

My mother wasn’t someone who by nature held back, I saw that now – but she had, all my life.  Not a cautious person, she had been scalded once already and it had changed her into the Winifred Pasley I knew.  She had let herself catch fire and it had brought her heartbreak – so she denied that side of herself and buried it.  Now she didn’t have to any more.  It was like watching things come back to life in the spring, and bud, and blossom openly.  Ivy’s mum had said, ‘you been lonely, ain’t you, pet,’ and my mother had replied, ‘yes;  yes, I have — ’  Well, she wasn’t any more.  That was before they married even – which they did quietly a couple of months after, without a fuss and only dearest friends present, Sir Archibald and Nigel included.  But the being married wasn’t what did it;  it was Harry coming to stay, taking his place where he belonged, at the heart of our family – and my mother claiming all the rest of herself, loving and beloved.

It wasn’t something you could miss, the change in her;  it was dazzling.  Harry saw it too, of course he did – and you could see him starting to believe in himself more, if his just being with us and loving her with all he had could so transform her.  

 

So did Nigel, who wrote to me once in those early days, ‘my god, your mother looks lit from within today – more than ever.  She’s a sight for sore eyes when she’s happy isn’t she!’  He was tired of talking;  we had been discussing the wedding, and they had asked him if he would stand up, and he had thought a long time and said “uh’ ’ourshe.  Be an honghour.”  We were outside in the garden together, Nigel and me sitting under the apple-tree – and my mother and Harry out of earshot down by the roses, trying not to hold hands and kiss, and failing.  We had had tea outside and the things were still spread on a cloth by our feet. 

“Yes,” I said, “I never knew she could look like that.  I mean – she’s my mother – but I didn’t know that about her.  I never thought she was beautiful.  But she is, isn’t she!”

‘God yes,’ he wrote, ‘though I always thought so.  Saw it the moment you both walked in that wretched place to see me.  You too.  So full of heart the both of you.  But god bless her – and him – each of them was just the ticket, eh? — what the doctor ordered — !’

He was right.  I nodded. 

‘And you — you all right about that?’  he wrote, then, looking at me searchingly.

“Oh, yes,” I cried, “oh my goodness, yes.  I always wanted him to come and live with us – right from the start.  This is what I’ve been praying for!”

‘You are a loyal person, Helen,’ he wrote, ‘god bless you.  And generous – with a very great understanding.  Look here — any time you want to make yourself scarce – just come and see me, all right?  You’ve always got somewhere to come if you feel like a fifth wheel.  You know what I mean.’

I blushed.  He saw a lot, with his one eye.  He had only just moved into the cottage next door, and we had been helping him get it the way he wanted.  “Thanks,”  I said.  “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

‘Think the world of your mother,’ he wrote,  ‘ – and you.  Always will.  Friends can be honest can’t they?’

“Yes,” I said, and hugged him.  For the briefest instant, he squeezed me back.  My mother was soft, to hug, unless you squeezed really hard;  he felt different, hard-chested and satisfyingly bony with strong arms.  It was a warm autumn day and the men had taken-off their jackets after much persuasion.  The sight of them in their shirtsleeves and braces brought back memories of my uncle and granddad, before we were alone.   I missed them, and clung a little longer.  He let me.  A lot had happened in my life very quickly, lately, and I felt a bit lost and upside-down now and then;  he seemed to sense this, and lent me his strength as I had lent him mine.  I liked the way he smelled, and let him go reluctantly before I made too great an exhibition of myself.

‘Are you going to show me that bridesmaid’s frock,’ he wrote then, ‘or do I have to wait till the big day?’

“I think it’s all right,” I said.  “It’s no secret – our house is too small for secrets!”

He glanced at me swiftly, and looked away before it was all too clear we read one another’s thoughts.  I was embarrassed, and also moved that he would even think to consider my feelings and put himself in my place.  Though of course, he too found himself on the outside, just like me, looking-on;  and knew how it felt, no matter how much the people concerned still cared for you too.  I blushed again, more furiously still.  “I meant about our frocks,” I said.

‘Of course you did,’ he wrote.  ‘So what about it then?’

I ran upstairs to change and show him.  We had it almost finished:  it was in a periwinkle-blue, two shades paler than my mother’s blue-violet day-gown she was making.  It just needed to be hemmed;  we had pinned it up the night before.

I came downstairs with it on and he clapped.  ‘Thank god,’ he wrote, ‘ – you are a vision of loveliness!   I was counting on it.  With you looking so gorgeous nobody will spare me a glance.’

I remembered what he had said in the hospital that day, about the difference between himself and Harry;  how he had always enjoyed attention, god help him.

Till now.

But he had accepted their invitation to stand at the altar with them – sort of performing a dual role really, standing-up for Harry because Harry said his closest friends he would have liked to ask were dead, and also to give my mother away, because who else was there to do that?  And it was a measure of the regard in which they held him:  who could have refused that, for something so petty as embarrassment and the wish to hide and not be stared-at?

It must be strange, to go from being a confident person to a shy one overnight.  Bits of the old Nigel were always showing through, and then the new one would impose himself painfully and you could see it happening from moment to moment, him forgetting his face and then remembering it.  He would pause, and swallow, and his voice would be different;  more self-conscious, the words more clearly articulated but not so happy and carefree.   I saw then how nervous he was about the wedding and his role in it, and how he was trying to hide it in joking – but being honest with me too.  And I thought about him standing at the same altar, with Daisy on his arm, before any of this happened and the world was still full of promise and romance for him and he was drop-dead gorgeous and everybody said so, and to be married to this sparkling young woman was no less than he deserved.  How long had it been?   Three years – he wasn’t even thirty yet, I didn’t think.  But a quarter of my life, nonetheless:  as long as I had been without granddad, and my uncle Stephen.  How strangely elastic time was.

“It’s always the bride’s day, isn’t it?” I asked.

‘I hope so,’ he wrote.  ‘Tend to steal the scene, much to my dismay.  Like that bl – pardon me, miserable inquest.  Would far rather not, believe me!  Who’s going to be there?’

I listed a few people, including Bea and Perce, and he nodded.  I stopped feeling sorry for myself because I was too tall for my age and tended to stoop;  instead I determined to stand-up straighter in the future.  Slouching wouldn’t help.  And I had plenty to be grateful for.  “What are you going to wear?” I asked him, “your uniform?”

He nodded again.  ‘I’m getting it out tonight to air,’ he wrote, ‘get rid of the smell of mothballs, I hope!’

“Can I help you polish all the leather straps?  I’m very careful!”  I offered, wanting to be helpful.

‘I have no doubt of that,’ he wrote.  ‘A little bird told me you like Gilbert & Sullivan — why don’t you come over with all your favourite records & we’ll have a party?  I need to christen my new stuff.  Glasses & all the other how-de-do’s.  Make a splendid lemonade-punch – was the toast of my mess.  No brandy in yours I promise.   What about it?’  Deftly, he had turned my offer of help into an evening’s entertainment.

I didn’t know then that to Nigel, offering to polish anything was like shipping coals to Newcastle — though I should have realized, from the immaculate state of his shoes ever since he had started feeling better, even up at the hospital.  So I accepted joyfully, looking-forward to going where I was wanted and not a bit of an encumbrance just now. 

Only on the way over, my best records under my arm, did I see that he had also thereby given Harry and my mother an evening together;  and me, something of my own to share – as well as the gift of his understanding how I felt about the two of them being so incandescent with one another just now.  I brought my bridesmaid’s dress to hem.  He had electric-light, for me to work late by, and after my Gilbert & Sullivan ran out and he was too tired to talk much he put-on rag-times and marches and operetta – so that later, as my hem swirled round my calves, I kept hearing the Merry Widow Waltz and Offenbach’s Barcarolle as if the notes had been sewn into it.  I realized he must have had these all along, and arranged to have them sent here in the wooden crates from the abandoned lodgings in Devon or wherever it was he had been in exile with Daisy.

I also realized that there seemed to be very little wrong with his health, and that if he could come here to live now he could very well have done so all along.  This implied that her reasoning for going so far from home had far more to do with her own feelings than his.  It was hard to mourn her, whenever I thought about how selfishly she had lived and even died.  What would make one person give up just because their own actions had got them in trouble and they couldn’t face the music, and another – like Nigel, say – go on when all seemed lost?  I just felt sad about the whole thing, like a weight on my chest, and knew that there must be a lot more to it than I could imagine.

What else wasn’t as it had seemed?

 

He wasn’t telling.  And the lemonade truly was outstanding.  He had something he mixed-in that turned it cherry-pink and lent it a deeper, familiar flavour;  when I asked him the magic, he opened a walnut drinks-cabinet that seemed quite well-stocked (by our own modest standards, anyway!) and showed me a bottle with a picture of blackcurrants on the label.  They were black and shiny, with a green lobed and serrated currant-leaf behind to help show them off, and just looking at them made my mouth water.  This was French, though, and said ‘Cassis.’  He also showed me the shavings of lemon-rind he’d used, still in the sieve – “mh’akesh i’ nghore in’h’enshe — ” – and the way you keep a vanilla-pod in the caster-sugar.  He had learned it, he said, from a very lovely Frenchwoman not far from Neuve Chapelle;  he cleared his throat after mentioning her, as if this recipe wasn’t all she had been so generous as to share with him –  after all, he hadn’t been married then – and he had (I remembered well) been awfully good-looking.  Somehow I liked it that he said she was lovely, rather than omitting to mention that.

We drank ‘to friends.’  He served little melt-in-the-mouth almond-cakes from a tin marked ‘Fortnum & Mason,’ and drank his lemonade as innocent of liquor as mine, till the last one – to which he added a nightcap of brandy.  “Shometimes ish har’ uh fall ashlee’,” he said, “– hope ’oo’ll huhgive mhee.”

Forgive him?  For what?   For keeping me company, and being honest? 

He lit a lantern and walked me through our two gardens to my back door.   It wasn’t very late, only about nine o’clock, but well past my usual bed-time.  I went home with cheeks as pink as if he’d put the brandy in mine too, from pure pleasure.    It had been a lovely evening.

 

My mother was hemming her  dress, sitting-up in her nightgown and wrapper by gas-light till I got home.  The fabric was of a very soft crepe, that required tiny stitches with a gossamer-thin silk thread, and she had almost finished it.

Harry was asleep, she said.   She had the grace to flush.

I didn’t doubt it.  With the nightmares, his nights were broken more often than not, and it seemed that one of the few things that would leave him lost in sleep for a few hours was the aftermath of love.  It was sort of a giveaway, specially those first few weeks if I came home after school to find their bedroom-door closed, my mother’s finger to her lips and Harry dead to the world in the middle of the afternoon, because otherwise he wasn’t someone who took naps.

 

I knew about it already, because of his diary, of course:  to sleep soundly even for a couple of hours was worthy of note, to him:  ‘6 a.m. — gave in to wild sweet thoughts of Winifred & fell dead asleep after release.  Slept 2 hrs straight… ’

And again,  ‘ …Winifred.

Fell asleep in her bed, drowsed & stunned & overcome ——  ’

I could hardly begrudge it to him now, when it was all I had wanted for him so ardently ever since he came to us.  I remembered those awful days when he was missing, and how badly I’d wanted him to come home then and find himself safe with us:  safe to be himself, safe to fall asleep in my mother’s bed even with the nightmares, even if he wet himself.  But it wasn’t my business, and I never said anything.

 

And Nigel, it seemed, had brandy for that.  I wondered if all ex-servicemen found it hard to sleep.  He could have waited till I left and drunk it alone, but he didn’t.  I liked that, too.

 

 

 

He took his place in our lives, quietly but firmly – and almost without a fuss.  Though there were times he rose to the occasion that I looked back on afterwards and wanted to cry for all they meant.    Some of them were happy times, like the wedding, and some were awkward.   He was equally present either way, always there when most needed.  He didn’t let time go by before repaying my mother the favour of her love and greengages. He hadn’t even left the hospital, then.  He didn’t need to, not for this gift.

Nigel, Nigel.

 

 

 

I’ll never forget it:  poor Harry.   No doubt he would prefer that we all did – forget it – and we very well might have, if he hadn’t managed to burn it into all our memories.  It was the first time he wet the bed, at home with us. 

He’d been so afraid that he would, sooner or later – it was inevitable, and he knew it.  It must have been like a sword of Damocles hanging over his head every time he fell asleep in my mother’s arms:  it wasn’t a case of if, but only when.  Each time he got into it he must have wondered if this was going to be the night it happened.

So – one night, it was. 

Hardly a surprise — but a cruel moment nonetheless.

It was about a fortnight after he came home to us to stay.  I was woken by his shout of ‘Forwaaaard — march!’ at the top of his lungs, and his voice broke on the ‘march!’  Somehow he found it again to shriek for them to put their gas-masks on, though.  Then there were loud, laboured gasps as if he were suffocating, and my mother’s voice calming him;  and then his waking voice, but high and full of dismay:  “oh, Christ, I’m sorry — Win, I’m sorry – I’m sorry!”

— and my mother’s, clear and firm:  “Stop it — Harry, not another word!   Stop that right now!  Come on, we both knew — it’s all right…  ”

 

It was obvious right away what the matter was.  Nothing else would have had him sounding so stricken and filled with remorse.  I had helped her make the bed up, so I knew there were indeed layers of towels under his side and a couple on hers, as well as a rubber sheet underneath them;  my mother wasn’t about to let anything spoil the blessing of their sleeping together after being alone for so long.  We always made beds together, since it went so much easier with two, and she wasn’t one to hide the things she did like that.  After all, I already knew and she knew I knew.  She’d even showed him, so he’d know it would be all right.

But knowing it in the middle of the day and believing it in the middle of the night after it’s happened aren’t the same.

 

There followed a brief bustle of footsteps on the stairs, water running, and my mother’s voice in-between:  come on darling, get out of those wet things — ssshhh,  ssh, sshh, I’m not having any of it.   Look, here’s clean towels —  here’s soap and a flannel — of course the water’s hot, what, am I going to bring you cold water to wash with? — no need to thank me – goodness…!   All right, then?  — just give me a hand, pet, won’t you?  Good – this corner,  now that – there we go, all done – thanks, love — ”

Harry must have been mumbling, because I hardly heard him at all;  only the things my mother said in reply.  She kept her voice low but when you’re awake in a still house you can’t help it.

And then, not so low:  “Harry — Harry —— Harry, don’t!   Don’t go!  Stay — Harry, stay —— oh god Harry, don’t be silly!  Harry please, come back to bed — ?!”

Then he ran down the stairs;  the front-door sounded, and she was crying.

I heard him outside, because our gravel always let you know.  He was standing in pajamas by our gate.  He didn’t run away any further than that — but he had his head back as if he was gasping for air.

Then, after a few minutes,  my mother went outside to bring him back in.  I was watching;  I cared too much to be able to keep myself away from the window.

He cried out:  something like, “It isn’t any bloody use!”

She had a blanket round her and another one for him.  He wouldn’t take it.  He shook her off and moved a step away each time she came close.  After a while he let her put it round his shoulders.  They stood outside a long time, talking.   I saw him shaking his head a lot;  he wouldn’t look at her, and then he did and then he’d pull away again.  I went back to bed and left the two of them there outside at four in the morning or whatever time it was.

I was upset with him for making such a fuss.  After all, the wetting had been a small disruption;  this was a major one.  And if he didn’t want to draw attention to his troubles, well, he could hardly go having hysterics over a little accident, could he?

But then I thought about how he must feel now this had finally happened, the thing he’d dreaded, the last shoe to drop in all his brokennesses.  How was he to recover himself and be a grown man and a lover again after this?  To pee in your pants was one thing – but in the bed you shared with someone else?  And not just anyone, but your sweetheart —!

Running away wouldn’t help, though.  This wasn’t anything he could run from, was it.

 

He came back to bed, after they’d sat up in the kitchen together for a long time over a cup of cocoa – I heard the kettle whistle briefly, before my mother snatched it up, and that special hollow sound the spoon makes in a cup of cocoa.

 

The next morning he looked wretched.  His face was set and wan and so thoroughly miserable, you would have thought him guilty of something.  My mother must have taken his arm;  I was coming down the stairs when I heard her.  “Harry, when are you going to realize it doesn’t matter?” she was asking him.

He shook her off roughly and that was the moment I walked into the kitchen.

Harry walked out.  The back door banged behind him, most uncharacteristically.

“It happened, didn’t it,” I said, since the bucket of sheets already lay soaking under the sink and there was no point in pretending I didn’t know what the matter was.

She nodded.   “He’s being such an idiot about it,” she said, helplessly.

“He isn’t perfect,” I said.

“No,” she said, “no, he’s not.  ’Course he’s not.”

“It’s easier to forgive the wet bed, isn’t it,” I said,  “ — than the being an idiot.”

“Much,” she said with a sad smile.

“Did you need help making it up again?” I asked.

“No, thanks, love,” she said, “I got that done already.  We did – after it happened.  He helped.  I had a spare set of everything all ready – I think he was upset about that, too.  What was I supposed to do, pretend I didn’t expect it?”

“I don’t think you could have done the right thing whatever you did,” I said.

“No,” she said.  “Well, he’ll just have to come back to himself, won’t he.”

It was a school-morning, so I couldn’t do much more than help her turn the mangle before I had to leave. 

I was getting my bicycle from our shed.  Harry was sitting outside under the apple-tree, just staring.  He hadn’t even gone out for a nice long walk.  But I saw him jump to his feet when she came outside to hang the washing up, and take the basket from her and do it himself.  That was how I left him, pegging-out these fresh flags of his shame.  They took the wind and billowed, white and dazzling.  Useless, they said:  unfit.  Broken.  Pitiful.  They were a lot bigger than the little ribbon on the breast of his uniform – and a lot more eye-catching.

 

 

He slept in the spare room, then.  He insisted.  I saw him and my mother glaring at one another, and Harry refusing to see sense and just come to bed.  It was a tiny room, little bigger than a cupboard, and if you sat up in bed too suddenly you’d hit your head on the sloping ceiling, because that was the only wall long enough for a bed.  I knew, because I’d done it myself when my uncle was alive and it used to be my bedroom – and I wasn’t as tall as Harry.  Now I heard it happen, more than once.  He’d thresh around in a nightmare and the next thing there’d be a sharp ‘crack’ and a cry – though it did wake him all the way up, at least, because after that came a muffled ‘bloody hell!’ the first time, and ‘oh, sod!’ the second.  My mother’s wet face-cloths would have been a kinder way to come to himself than a nasty crack on the head, I thought sadly as I heard the mattress-springs complain, him throwing himself back down on the bed again in disgust and anguish. 

After two nights there he wet that, too.

 

It was the first crisis they had together, really.  The business with Daisy had been a misunderstanding, and all the hurt feelings had been from things that weren’t really so. These were so, and they hurt just as much if not more, in a different kind of way.  Not so sharply, obviously, but they weren’t to be resolved with any clearing of the air, any sweet freeing explanations like the ones in his diary.  He had to face the fact that nothing had really changed about his shell-shock, whether or not he was now someone’s darling.  And stop being an idiot about it.

Easier said than done.  This was one of the things that had kept him away in the first place;  now it had dogged him even to the sacred place where my mother took him into her self – where he had found himself Harry the lover and the beloved.  (But still no less Harry the bed-wetter.)  He must have felt as if he had despoiled somewhere holy, not just a silly old bed.  And as if nothing was ever going to get any better.

And as if that made him less loveable, now – or altogether unloveable and unworthy.

 

I wanted to shake him.

 

It was Nigel that did.  Not physically, but he had enough distance and closeness all at once to tell Harry off roundly.  I almost clapped.  It was the first time I really saw Nigel’s character, beyond the man with the dreadful wound. 

It was a happy coincidence that we couldn’t avoid going to see him, those few days later, because if he could have, Harry would have stayed away, I think.  But Nigel was all-but ready to come out of the hospital;  the papers were signed for his discharge, the doctors had agreed that he was perfectly sane and didn’t deserve to be committed, and he was going to come and see about the cottage-next-door that was empty, and move back to Rookswood in the meantime.  So we had to go on up to see about it all.  Sir Archie had even sent his car and driver to take us.  After all, Nigel was his son-in-law.

It was a blustery day, but not too chilly to sit outside;  and it seemed that Nigel loved to be outdoors when he could.  We both had on cardigans, my mother and I, and we sat at one of the iron tables on the terrace and they talked about possible arrangements.

Nigel kept looking at them with his head cocked a bit sideways;  anybody could see that something was the matter, it didn’t take two eyes for that.  Harry wore a strained air and said little beside what was necessary, and my mother’s eyes were sad again even though she was trying to put on a good show for Nigel.  But he saw through that.  He looked at me and raised his one eyebrow, but all I could do was give him a shrug and a little sad smile anyway.

I could see him deciding whether to say something, and then going ahead.  “’at’sh wr’ongh?” he asked, then, quietly, looking at each of them in turn.  “Ish nhot mhee ish it?  Be’aushe if it’sh hoo ’uch hrouble I can ma’ osher arranshemenh’s — ”

“Oh, no!” cried my mother, warmly.  “My dear, of course it isn’t you!”  She didn’t say ‘nothing’s the matter,’ though, just that it wasn’t Nigel.  He didn’t miss that.

“Sho — ?  ’en ’at’sh wr’ongh?” he asked again, “ — mmhh?”

 

They looked at one another.  My mother wasn’t about to betray Harry’s confidence – how could she have?  And it certainly wasn’t my turn to say anything!  So Harry had the choice of ignoring Nigel altogether, or lying and saying ‘nothing,’ – or telling the truth.  He chose the latter, though with difficulty.  He said, mumbling, “I w—w–w-w-w-wet the b-b-bloody b-b-b-bed.”

Nigel looked at him.

He said nothing else.

“Sho wha’?” asked Nigel.

Harry shook his head.  “I h-hate p–p-p-pissing mys-s-self,” he said, “at the b-b-b-best of times!  B-but this w-w-was W—w–w-w-win’s b-b-bed!”

“I realished ’at,” said Nigel, softly.  After all, who else’s bed would it have been?  “’Etter luck ’onight,” he added, even more gently.

My mother gave Harry a long look.  It was perfectly eloquent, without words.

Harry said nothing.

“I’h ’one ’at,” said Nigel, not very clearly. “ — dongh ’at.”  He made a small sound of exasperation and reached for his pad.  ‘A couple of times – after I got out of the hospital – feel pretty loathsome, don’t you.  I would dream I was still in, strapped not to move, and they’d brought me the bottle.  Next thing – all wet & Daisy creating.   Shaking me awake, furious with me.  Poor girl.  So disgusted.  Wasn’t a chronic thing, though, not like yours old chap.   Must be rough.  Still, it was all the excuse she needed to stop sleeping with me.  I can’t imagine — ?’  He raised his eyebrow at my mother, then.   It was perfectly clear that this wasn’t the case here;  he was just giving her the chance to acknowledge it, so Harry could see what a fuss he was making over nothing.

She shook her head.  Nigel had seen through her to her essence, the first day we saw him here.  She had cradled his head to her bosom even as he wept uncontrollably and soaked her blouse in tears and worse — and him almost a stranger.  This was not a woman that was about to be daunted by a damp bed.

“It’s g-g-going to h-h-appen again,” said Harry.  “And if y-you d-don’t m-mind old chap, we can st-stop t-talking about it, now.”

Nigel gave him a long look.  It was kind and uncompromising at the same time.  Harry tilted his chin up under it and took a deep breath.  He was really Nigel’s superior officer, Major to Nigel’s Captain, but here at the table they were just two new friends and old soldiers with so much in common, discussing something awkward – and he didn’t have a leg to stand on, and part of him knew it.

Nigel wrote:  ‘Pardon my saying so, old chap, but aren’t you being rather a complete blithering idiot about it all?  If a stunner like Winifred was begging me to share her bed I hardly think I’d let a little piss get in the way.’  Then he turned the pad round and pushed it right under Harry’s nose.

I bit my lip.  It was what I had been wanting to say to him all week.

Harry said, “You d-don’t understand.”

Nigel took back the pad.  ‘Don’t I.  And what do you think I don’t know about feeling like a leper?’ he wrote.

Harry swallowed.

Nigel let the silence speak for itself.  It was a shockingly painful question – and Harry had no answer for it.  I could hardly believe Nigel had written that.  But he had, because Harry needed to hear it.

If Harry had answered, then, or even said ‘sorry’ to my mother, Nigel would have left well alone.  But Harry didn’t.  He just sat there frozen.  He knew Nigel was right and yet he still hated himself too much to admit it.

It was a long and awkward silence.  I wanted to hug Nigel and tell him, ‘you’re not a leper!  You’re not!’ –  but that wasn’t the point.  It was about what you felt like, not what you were – and about seeing the difference between them.  Or not.

Harry said nothing, but went a dull red.

Nigel sighed.  “Oh, dh’ear,” he said to me, softly, “’Ime fuh uh ar’hillery, eh?”  The little lines at the corner of his good eye somehow seemed to hold all the affection the rest of his stiff face couldn’t.

That hadn’t been the artillery, right there, about being a leper?

 

Apparently not.  My mother looked away.  She was biting her lip, too.  I wasn’t sure if it was to keep from smiling, or crying – or a bit of both.

 

 ‘I am going to be perfectly blunt here, old man,’ wrote Nigel then, ‘because I like you too much to let you get away with this horse-manure.  Because that’s what it is.  Get off it & stop feeling sorry for yrself & count your blessings.  Prima donna doesn’t suit you.  See this woman who is just dying to love you piss & all & you won’t let her.  Beating her off with a stick & keeping your distance just because you peed your miserable self.  As if she gave a rat’s arse about that.  Look at her.  Yours for the asking.  What in god’s name do you have to feel sorry for yrself about?  Bloody fool.  Stupidest thing I ever saw in my life.  Well — after Sir John French & hanging on to that bloody salient.’

And he stood up, and put the pad into Harry’s hands.

Harry didn’t need to read it more than once.  It only told him what he already knew.  “You’re r-r-right,” he said, and took a deep breath.  “God,” he said, then.

 

Nigel cocked his brow again and waited.

“I’ve b-b-been a bloody idiot about it,” Harry said to my mother then, “I s-s-see that. I d-don’t know w-what’s the matter with me, being such a b.f., but p-please a-accept my apology —?”

She took his hand.  “Not for wetting the bed,” she said, “because you couldn’t help that, and I’m not having you say you’re sorry about that.  But yes, you were an idiot about the rest of it — and yes, of course you’re forgiven.  Silly.”

Harry shook his head, as if to clear it of the last of the miasma of self-doubt and hatred he had been suffocating himself in ever since Tuesday.  My mother ruffled his hair affectionately, and he even grinned a bit, though lopsidedly.

“Th-thanks, old man,” he murmured to Nigel.

Nigel nodded.  I saw that what he told Harry had not come without a cost.  In essence, he had said:  I have nobody.  You do.  I’m untouchable.  You’re not.  What more do you want?  Ass!

I took Nigel’s pencil and wrote him a note in my lap, where Harry wouldn’t see it.  It said:  ‘you are A BRICK.  You are the BEST friend anybody could have.   We are SO LUCKY to have found you.  THANK  YOU! ! ! !’

He took the pencil from me.  ‘Well somebody had to say it!’ he wrote, ‘silly ass.  Not that I don’t feel for him.  But god — what I wouldn’t give to be in his situation —— anyway — that’s enough about that.  Put a flea in his ear anyway.  You’d better look out and make sure he doesn’t need another one next time.  There will be a next time.  Poor lad.  Lots, probably.  Come on, race you to the end of the lawn and back.’

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

After he moved-in down the lane from us he wasted no time in changing things to his liking.  He added to the little lean-to greenhouse beside his cottage, so that the whole of the south wall was under glass.  He did most of the work himself, and brought-in a glazier to help him finish it.  It was far more therapeutic than anything the hospital had had to offer him:  he felt useful, skilled, strong;  he was making a future with his hands, one in which there could still be passion for him, even if it was confined to orchids fertilized with a feather so very carefully.  He grew the first ones from scratch, spending hours and hours in there, especially in the winter when the sun’s warmth was kind to his scars that hurt in the cold. 

I was happy to help with the potting-out:  we had, as I have mentioned, more flowerpots than we knew what to do with, and the few hundred we brought to the cause of Lascelles Fine Plants did not even make a dent in the piles we still had left.  I loved the smell of the earth on my hands.  He started with well-rotted leaf-mould from the woods, then mixed it with ground cuttlefish-bones and glittery mineral chips – mica, he said, for texture and the mysterious chemistry that makes a plant want to bloom its head off for you (or withhold itself in a sulk).   Sharp silver sand made it loose and grainy, to drain well.  We had plenty of pot-shards to line the bottoms;  when they were too big we gleefully smashed them with a mallet.  The orchids were exquisite.  He worked all kinds of magic with them and even created a new variety.  It was tall with a generous fall of small deep-gold flowers with orange throats, like a flight of brimstone butterflies.  He brought one to us, and took my mother aside to ask her something privately.  I saw her glance at me and smile:  I learned why a month later, when he brought us the Orchid Society Journal.  It was pictured there, although of course the black-and-white photograph hardly did it justice – but the name underneath made my throat squeeze.  It said simply ‘Helen Pasley.’

“’At’s huh Hree Mengh i’ a ’oat,” he said, “’oo ’ee-dingh — worh’ week o’ nghy lihe.  Heered ’ee uh’.  Angh ’en ’oo sai’ hank-oo uh mhe.”

The worst week of his life:  I had cheered him up.   And then I had said ‘thank you’ to him.

I threw my arms round his neck and he hugged me back.  He was tall and strong and he lifted me off the ground a little:  my tummy fluttered.  I had never seen him look so happy.  We had learned to tell;  his face showed emotion like everyone else’s, when you knew the signs.  His eye was shining, now, and there was a nice healthy pink on his unscarred cheekbone under it.  He was proud;  he seemed taller, even.  It must have been the way he stood-up straight to lift me in the air.

 

After he left I stared at the graceful cascade of flowers on their curving stem.  It had never occurred to me that he had been more deeply wounded when we saw him then than in the field hospital, even.  A piece of shrapnel is indifferent, neutral – it strikes at random, and if you are out of luck it will rip your face off, not the fellow’s next to you.  A dreadful injury, yes, but arbitrary in its cruelty.

Only someone you love can rip your heart out, and luck has nothing to do with it.  He had loved Daisy;  he had come home to her a fright.  If that was hard for her to bear, how much more deeply must it have hurt him, to have to ask to be taken-back and to pretend he was still the same husband he had been before?   It wasn’t a question there were any words for – it was a plea made from the soul.  Don’t look at what I have become:  close your eyes and see me for who I still am, inside.

No, was her reply, I can’t.  I won’t.   You can’t expect me to.

No – but he had hoped anyway.

And Daisy had had him locked-up, unable to face his rage and pain when she turned away.

He had shaken her;  unforgivably, she felt.

I would have shaken her, too.

 

I saw us then as we must have looked to him that day at the hospital.  What did he have left?  Not his pride, not his self-respect, not his hope nor his manhood nor any kind of future.  He hadn’t even been eating, the nurse had told us.  Till my mother fed him pieces of greengage from our tree, and I brought a funny book to read to him from because it was all I could think of.  And he was too polite to tell us to go away and leave him alone.

It wasn’t as if the fruit and the book could make any difference – but the fact that we had cared enough to bring them and try:  that did.

 

And now I had joined the likes of Honorine Joubert and Nellie Moser and Queen Mary, Madame Zoutmann and the Empress Josephine, commemorated for ever in beauty.  I liked it that my orchid was cheerful and not too showy.  It didn’t have the extravagant ruffled pinky-purple falls of the most sensuous ones;  it was modest in form, its beauty found in its exuberance and the clarity of its colour.  And he had spent hundreds if not thousands of hours developing it — and named it for a little girl and a moment of grace;  for a gap-toothed smile and an earnest thank-you.

 

 

It was after he named his orchid for me that my mother said it would be all right if I stopped calling him Captain Lascelles and just used his given name.  For a child to address an adult that way was a mark of extraordinary intimacy;  it was very rare.  He asked me to.  He said Captain Lascelles had too many syllables and made him feel as if he ought still to be wearing his uniform.

“Shouldn’t I call you Uncle Nigel?” I asked, thinking of what would be right if I wasn’t to say Captain Lascelles any more.

He was writing – it was one of those days – and he wrote ‘I don’t like that. It’s a polite falsehood.  I call you Helen – you call me Nigel – what’s wrong with that?  Makes it straightforward, don’t you think?’

“I’ll have to ask my mother,” I said, “it wouldn’t be polite.  She likes me to be polite.  If she heard me call you that she’d think I was being rude.”

He nodded. ‘I understand,’ he wrote. ‘Perfectly reasonable.  Let me know.’

 

My mother smiled when I asked her.  I told her I thought he didn’t have too many friends, not now most of them had been killed and the rest lived a long way away and were busy getting on with their lives, and too embarrassed to come and see him – thinking they didn’t know what to say;  that’s what he wrote, anyway, when I asked him – so a friend that did know what to say and did come to see him was not to be kept so distant with a formal ‘Captain Lascelles’ – even a child like me.  It was like the way I wanted to be Helen and not Nellie.

 “I’m glad you care,” she said, “and you’re a good girl to ask.  I’m proud of you.  What do I think?  I think being polite is whatever puts the other person at their ease – haven’t I explained that?”  – and she told me the tale of King Edward VII and the guest who drank from his finger-bowl.  The King immediately picked up his and did the same, before anyone else at the table could snicker.  “That’s the best kind of manners,” she said, “the ones that make people comfortable.  Not the rules.  You can call him whatever he wants you to.”

So I did.

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

He didn’t like to go out in public, though he did when he had to.  At first he wore the face-piece they had made for him right after he was wounded.  He really didn’t care to, but it was better than the gasps and shocked stares his shattered features brought without it.  At least from a distance it was a solid pink, not the angry red of his scars; and it covered the crater that had been half his nose and the hollow place where his eye was gone, that still wept and crusted sometimes.  You could see right away that it was fake, but you didn’t have to look at the damage it covered.  What was left was hard enough to face, for a stranger, and for Nigel to reveal:  the lipless stiff slit that had been his mouth, the twisted chin where they had added a piece of rib to his shattered jaw. 

He told us what they’d been able to do for him one day, briefly, early-on, in explaining why he was sorry he ate so slowly and couldn’t keep up with us.  They hadn’t been able to give him false teeth on the other side, because there weren’t enough sound underlying structures to support them – and because the inside of his mouth was smaller now on that side, and didn’t stretch as well.  Surgeon-Captain Gillies could work wonders, and did, thank god; but not miracles.  The shrapnel had torn out the side of his tongue and they had mended that;  his palate was patched, which made the consonants come hard to him.  These last two things were what made speaking so much work.   His voice was nasal yet lacked its proper resonance.  The vowels sounded without too much difficulty, but he had had to re-learn speech in the hospital now that his mouth was so stiff.  What was so natural for us became a struggle to be overcome from moment to moment, for him.  Half the consonants were missing or mangled and many others substituted, a conscious act – some with whatever he could manage that was close, and others that were now quite impossible with an ‘h’ or a glottal stop.  When he was tired it all fell apart and only those closest to him could understand at all.  

And sometimes, he told us, he just preferred to write because he was sick of the sound of his own voice.  He said he sounded like an imbecile:  it couldn’t be helped, but he heard himself sometimes and wondered why he bothered.  Not much feeling here, he wrote, touching the mended slit where his lips used to be.  His front teeth were jolly good considering, he added, as long as he didn’t expect to be able to bite anybody with them.  Or not enough to do any damage, anyway:  they would get off limping.  (He winked at me when he wrote this last.)  He could chew, though, thank god, he told us cheerfully.  He wanted us to know, to understand his limitations so he would never have to explain or apologize for them again. 

‘Not too good at kissing, though,’ he added ruefully. The ‘k’ had a curly loop:  I could read it even upside-down.

I was stung when he wrote that, and ran to put my arms around his neck and my cheek to his mouth.  For a second I felt his breath there, slight and warm.  He brushed my skin with his mangled lips, just barely, before lifting my arms and turning away. 

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

‘I’m not embarrassed,’ he wrote, ‘it was nice.  Thank you.  But don’t make a habit of it or I will be.  Embarrassed.  You don’t want to make me blush do you?’

This was another joke, because his face was mostly scarred red anyway except where it was seamed with white.

 

 

And so he didn’t wear the piece with us, which made me happy.  But to go out he did.

 

 I remember one of the first times;   we had all been to the solicitor’s together, not long after Nigel left the hospital, while he was still staying with Sir Archibald at Rookswood.  He was planning the move next door to us, and there were some conveyancing details to be arranged.  My mother had had me wait in the tea-shop over the bakery while they finished their business.  Afterwards they joined me and we shared a pot of tea.  Nigel didn’t eat, not that he couldn’t manage perfectly well, but he was too self-conscious and it was awkward with the piece.  He was bloody lucky to be able to do that, he had told us:  there were chaps at the same hospital who hadn’t enough jaw left for the doctors to work with, and they would have to spend the rest of their lives eating through a tube under a nurse’s care.  At least he could be independent.  (He wrote the word in capital letters, with an exclamation-mark.)  He was slow, not surprisingly, and stopped often.  He had to keep a handkerchief or a napkin handy because his mouth was too stiff to close perfectly when he chewed, though he had learned to be very discreet about it.  He would sit with the worst side turned away from you and just hold his hand pressed close with the napkin folded inside and dab from time to time to be sure he wasn’t dribbling.   (I was relieved to see he could;  that first time with the greengages, I realized, he had been too upset and angry to care about that and he had dribbled because it didn’t matter any more:  nothing did.)   Still, he preferred to eat only with friends or alone. 

He could sip a cup of tea, though, without too much fuss – just a little more noise than most people – and did so here with us at the tea-table. 

They had been talking a lot at the solicitor’s, and it was a frosty day – cold outside and too-warm in.  His good eye was watering and he dabbed at it now and then with a spotless handkerchief.  From under the pink leather edge of the mask covering the other side and the missing piece of his nose a rusty trickle started.  He wasn’t aware of it, though, and carried-on as if nothing was the matter.  I glanced unhappily at my mother.  Harry saw it too and his eyes met hers.  We all turned to her, it seemed, to rescue us.  “Nigel, dear,” she said, “let me borrow your hanky –?”

Surprised, Nigel handed it over.  She leaned forward and pressed it with great care to the shiny taut skin of his cobbled-together cheek and jaw.  He saw the problem right away, of course – apparently it was nothing new.  “Oh ’amn,” he said, “ish i’ ooin’ hat againgh?”

“Not to worry,” she said.  “Just take it off, dear, if it’s hurting you —?”

He shook his head sharply and looked down at the floor.  My heart turned-over for him. 

“Nigel, please,” said my mother, taking his hand.

He would not.

Harry looked at him. “It’s y-your c-c-call, old chap,” he said gently, “but honestly, n-nobody here would c-care a t-toot if you w-w-wore it or not –!”

“I woul’, ” said Nigel.  He finished his tea savagely, if it is possible to do something so genteel as drinking a cup of tea thus.  He didn’t seem to care if he was noisy about it, now.  I saw that being quiet when he drank was an effort for him and now he didn’t care about making it, because it didn’t matter any more again and no amount of care could stop him from being a freak and a fright.   The rust turned red and he wiped it away impatiently.  I knew he couldn’t bear any of us looking, not at that, so we didn’t;  we looked anywhere and everywhere else.  Down into our tea;  across at one another;  over to the counter where (it seemed) they were taking forever to bring my lardycake.  “’loody ’hingh,” he said bitterly.

People had been staring;  his cheek under the face-piece was bloodstained now.  He glared round the room with his blue eye blazing.  They couldn’t meet it, of course;  it was easy to stare at the missing face, not to meet its owner’s stare in return. They turned round quickly or looked away, and got on with their own teas. He shook his head.  Pulling his jotting-pad out, he scrawled quickly ‘that’s why I hate coming out.  They still stare.  What am I supposed to do, wear a bag over my head?’

“No,” said my mother, putting her hand over his that held the pencil, “no, Nigel, dear.”

“Oo-at, ’hen?” he asked.  His voice cracked slightly.

She squeezed his wrist.  “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” she quoted softly.

He looked down at his lap and swallowed several times.  Then he lifted the elastic from round his ears – it left a red line behind – and took the hated thing off.  The lining was stained, I saw.  The tissue-thin skin of his scars was raw where it had rubbed.  We were used to the way he looked without it, so we were relieved to see it come off.  He put it in his pocket. 

“H-here, old man,” said Harry, “m-my hanky’s c-c-clean –!”

He took it and held its clean white coolness to the angry red landscape of his face – or what was once his face;  what was left of it.

My lardycake came. The waitress stared stonily ahead of her. He ignored her and looked at it on my plate.  It was warm and fresh and newly split-and-buttered.  The raisins glistened in the thick sugar-glazing.  I started to cut him a piece as he pulled out his pad. ‘Can I have some of that?’ he wrote, with a little stick-man imploring on his knees, and then laughed when he saw I had already offered.

I had cut him the piece with the best caramel-crust. I divided it carefully into triangular morsels so he could just put them in his mouth without having to bite them off.

‘Might as well eat if I’m going to look a fright anyway,’ he wrote;  “’hank-’oo,” he added.

 

I thought about the bloodstains inside the face-piece.  It was hard to swallow my share of the lardycake.   Not that I was disgusted – I mean for pity, for how much it hurt me to think of it chafing his wound and rubbing it raw.  All to keep people from staring – which they did anyway.

This was what Daisy had asked him to wear when he was with her – this instrument of torture.  So she wouldn’t have to look at him without it.

In that moment I hated her;  my heart closed-up and refused to forgive her.

 

 

On the way home, once we were out of the town and alone on the footpath,  Harry asked Nigel if he could see the face-piece.  He wanted to help, of course, to see if anything could be done about it hurting.   Nigel pulled it out of his pocket and held it out as if it he had found a dead rat there.   We stood in a little circle and we all looked at the thing.  It was made of supposedly flesh-pink leather, though it was more like putty than flesh, with some sort of stiffening inside to keep the shape of the nose-part.  It extended at the top to cover his empty eye-socket.  Harry flexed it a little, gently, to see if it would give;  it didn’t.  The inside was suede, but it was unyielding and this was what had irritated his sensitive scars.  After all, a face is a mobile, ever-changing thing;  for all its rigidity, Nigel couldn’t keep his stiff enough not to move inside the piece.

“Can I see?” I asked.

He looked at me for a second.  I could see him deciding if it was all right for me to look at it, hold it.  When he put it in my hands I felt the degree of trust behind the gesture, and I couldn’t see for tears for a moment or two.  It felt as if all my experiences with Harry’s shell-shock, all the patience and gentleness and matter-of-factness I had learned, had brought me to this moment; as if I had a diploma in loving hurt people – so now even outwardly-shattered Nigel Lascelles would let me see all of him too, even to these unhealed inner wounds he was too proud to admit.

I touched the bloodstains, rubbed the surface inside with my fingertip where it rubbed  him.  “Couldn’t they make you a soft one?” I asked, “out of rubber or something?”

“’Oo hlimsy,” he said.

“I could sew a patch,” said my mother, “just a cover, no stiffness to it at all – out of silk?  Or soft flannel – just so you could be more comfortable, going-out?”

He shook his head.  “Noh’ runhsh,” he pointed-out.  His nose ran sometimes.  Fabric would get sopping wet, and stain.  He gave a deep sigh. “Nuhing,” he said, “’sh bettuh – nuhing a’ all.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” said my mother.

He looked away, shaking his head again.  I wanted him not to mind, and he did, he minded terribly, and even after all this time – it had been almost two years now – his feelings were as raw as his face.  He just hid them.

He wasn’t hiding them now.

Then he gave himself a little shake, and straightened up.  “’Oshe uh uh breaksh,” he said.  Those were the breaks.  “’Um on – et’sh gho ho’e.”

We went home.

 

 

 

After he stopped wearing the hated face-piece it was even more difficult for him to go out.  I wondered if he would ever get used to it.  He specially hated to go alone, because his speech was not clear enough for strangers to follow easily.  If he did have some errand that couldn’t wait for one of us to go with him, he would take his pad of paper and pencil.  These worked well where he was known, of course, as he came to be in our small market-town, and at the grocer’s or the ironmonger’s or the baker’s he would be greeted with cheery smiles and a “What’s it to be today, captain?  Lovely morning, eh?  Been a bit nippy lately —!”  

They knew at the barber’s to turn his chair round:  he didn’t need to see how it was coming, or the results either.  He would just say thank you, pay, and leave.   Still it seemed there was always some encounter with someone who didn’t know him that would jar and hurt, no matter how often it happened and how many times he steeled himself not to be offended.

People could be breathtakingly cruel.  For everyone that mumbled in embarrassment when confronted with him, or looked him bravely in the eye and pretended nothing was the matter with him while their forced smile shouted it, there was another who would stare or turn away.   Babies howled from fright;  at least they couldn’t help it.  Grown women who should have known better would sometimes give a little shriek or a gasp.  And then the comments, as if he was deaf too – sometimes they couldn’t even walk away before murmuring to their friend or husband: ‘shouldn’t go out like that – what a bloody shame –ought to stay at home – dreadful sight – horrible – lord that give me a nasty shock – did you see him – him, over there with no face? – sshhh don’t look! – ’  Mothers tugged at their children’s hands and hissed, ‘don’t stare!’

He had great dignity, with children especially.  He didn’t talk much because that would sometimes frighten them, too.  He didn’t mind if they stared, because what else were they supposed to do when confronted with something they had never seen before?   He made a little smile on his face with his forefinger, since he really didn’t have lips to oblige and his mouth was too stiff and twisted.   Sometimes he bent down, but not too close, letting them approach him if they wanted.  The bravest of them smiled back and asked him why he looked like that.  Some words were easier for him to say than others – it all depended on how many consonants there were, and which ones – and the phrase ‘hurt in the war’ came out fairly understandable.  So did ‘not to worry!’ which he always added cheerfully to the ones who had cared enough to ask.

The grown-ups could have learned a thing or two from such candid exchanges, but most of them didn’t, sad to say.  He never let-on that it hurt, of course – he was far too proud and private of a man for that – but I would feel him stiffen in anticipation, and then hold himself very rigid till a stranger passed.  If any of the worst things happened he would say nothing.  Afterwards, though, he would swallow hard and I could see him nerving himself to go on as if nothing were the matter.  I wanted to slap them.

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

Our lives moved along.  We sent-over dinners in a dish covered with a plate, so Nigel could have his privacy and not have to eat with us all the time.  I brought them every afternoon when I came to read to him, and carried-home the clean plate from the day before.  He had an elderly woman called Mrs. Duffin to help with the cleaning and other simple chores;  she cooked for him sometimes, too.  She was blind as a bat, though, so the meals she served were sometimes a little odd.  Still, he said, she had asked him why he spoke so funny the first time she met him, begging his pardon, and then confessed she didn’t see too well these days – she had managed to overlook his pore old face altogether, so she had!  Oh yes, she said, now he came to mention it (squinting) yes, that was just the one eye he had there, wasn’t it.  A nice blue, sir, a lovely honest colour — she was sure she’d suit very well, sir, if he’d just give her a chance.  A good hard worker.

He would have had to hide a smile, he wrote on his pad later in telling us of it, if his smiles hadn’t been so well-concealed anyway – and if she’d been able to spot it, which she wasn’t either, being unable to spot a carthorse at ten paces.  She didn’t read too well, of course, and was quite deaf, so their communication was fairly limited;  but she was a good soul and knew what was wanted:  this way they didn’t interfere with one another too much, after all.

I looked at him when he wrote that, a month or two later.  He had a sly sense of humour sometimes.  He winked his remaining blue eye at me.

 

 

 

He was fiercely independent, though, and could be touchy sometimes.  We didn’t mind, because we could see how hard it was for him to feel that people always did things out of pity.  He was, it turned-out, quite a dab hand in the kitchen, and would by no means have starved if my mother hadn’t sent over dinners;  but she was more elaborate than he and tended to have more ingredients on hand – and he was grateful for her cooking now and then, so long as it wasn’t every day. 

Dinner at Nigel’s on the other nights was likely to be a fairly slapdash and impromptu affair.  He ordered from the grocer and the butcher twice a week and they delivered, the boys whistling cheerfully all the way up our lane with their bicycles – so if Nigel felt like it he could and did cook bangers and mash (a favourite of his and mine) or sit down to a nice slab of cold pork pie with pickle.   Ready-made things with a boiled or baked potato were always a success, too – faggots, or mutton-rissoles:  the butcher always sent Nigel anything like that he had happened to put-up, without even asking.  My mother made the world’s best Lancashire hotpot, redolent with savoury mutton and lots of onions, starred with tender carrots and crowned by golden-brown potato-slices – the sort of thing that took half an hour to put together, and hours to cook slowly;  Nigel did not aspire to such culinary heights – but he could assemble a very respectable plate of hard-boiled-egg sandwiches with the crust trimmed and no grey in the yolks – or a tasty toad-in-the-hole. 

I asked him once where he had learned all this, and he laughed. ‘Would be a pretty poor show if a chap that was in charge of a whole company of soldiers couldn’t put some grub on the table, wouldn’t it?’ he wrote. ‘Seriously – why not?  I don’t do anything fancy – leave that to your mother, bless her.  Sew my own buttons on, too.  If you hadn’t noticed.’ 

I hadn’t;  I just took his self-sufficiency for granted.  ‘Can’t darn worth a d– worth anything, though,’ he added, ‘no patience.’

I wasn’t sure it was true about the patience, because in other ways he was endlessly patient – the orchids, for example.  But darning requires skill, a very particular concentration and a good deal of precision;  if your needle doesn’t go in just right, you will miss the place and ruin the darn – not an easy task with one eye.  I had no love for it myself, but my mother was teaching me, and I decided that it would make my labours go much faster if I could be working on one of Nigel’s socks instead of my own.  I begged some from him for practice; and my pride in returning them almost as good as new must have spoken to him, for he let me after that.   I also learned how to turn shirt-cuffs backwards when they start to fray, and mend a rent in a tweed jacket or a pair of wool trousers invisibly from the inside.  My mother and I would sit together mending companionably, she using her own work to show me something special or difficult – a pile of our own things beside her (including Harry’s of course), and a much smaller stack of Nigel’s in my workbasket.

 

We came to the habit of having a nice tea together, Nigel and I.  I grew to count on finding a little something set-out on his kitchen-table when I came in from school to read and visit.  I would arrive famished, and tuck-in gratefully;  Nigel watched me with amusement.   At first I thought he served us because he was hungry himself, but after a while — it must have been several months —  I noticed that he ate little and seemed to have developed a preference for serving all the things that were my own favourites.  Custard-cream biscuits made a regular appearance, though he didn’t care for hard things – or rather, didn’t attempt them – and so did crusty rolls, which I tucked-into with a wedge of cheese as if I hadn’t eaten in a week while he ate half a soft bap with a little butter just to keep me company.   After I praised his egg-sandwiches they made an appearance about once a fortnight, but with various additions so as not to become tedious:  on a roll or brown-bread; with slices of cucumber; a ruby-ripe sliced tomato from his garden – or (on special occasions when his walks had taken him that way) fresh peppery watercress.  We both liked ham-sandwiches too, and happy times were spent standing next to him in the kitchen with a small production-line going, him slicing the bread and passing it to me for buttering and assembly.  I noticed he ate more if the crusts were trimmed, so I always made sure they were.

In the winter he would serve heartier fare – fried-egg sandwiches, or black-pudding or luncheon-meat ditto;  or another favourite of mine, liver-sausage slices browned in the skillet and popped between slices of buttered bread.  He would do this with an easy nonchalance, as if he had been waiting all the day for the chance to stop pottering with the orchids and stand at the stove instead.   Fridays were buttered-toast or crumpets, with my mother’s jam;  his long-handled telescoping toasting-fork made toasting easy, though I liked to take the job from him because his tissue-thin-skinned scars turned a furious red if he sat too close to the fire.  Harry had taken to keeping a hive or two of bees at the bottom of our garden, and sent-over a jar of his honey now and then:  a special treat, usually reserved (I don’t know why now) for rainy days.  I think it was just the pleasure of creating our own traditions, for no special reason except for their own sake. 

 Some days were writing-days and some days were talking-days and some were a mixture of both.  I learned that if he rubbed his jaw a lot and sighed in spite of himself, then it was time to get out the paper and sharpen all his pencils, and not ask if he was all right.  It was a task I gladly took upon myself:  I loved to watch the shavings fall from the ends.  There seemed to me something endlessly inspiring about a point that could be perpetually renewed even as the pencil itself dwindled to nothing – always serviceable, to its last inch.  He also had a fountain-pen, and I never knew which mood he would be in, pen or pencil – though the notes he made with the pen were always beautiful; the nib skipped over the paper in a series of decisive strokes and small flourishes or endings-in-air, and the dashes seemed extra-eloquent in ink somehow.

I learned that if I dipped my biscuits in my tea it encouraged him to do the same – and then he would eat and enjoy two or three;  otherwise one sat on his plate untouched.  But to say so – to draw attention to his limitations – would produce a glare and then he would go quiet.  Though he would agree happily if I dipped one and said (without reference to him in particular!) how I loved the change in texture:   we once had a whole conversation about the precise timing and tea-temperature required to produce a still-toothsome mouthful with the biscuit softened but not soggy.  It was part art, part science, we agreed.

 I learned that the best way to get hold of his mending was not to ask if I might, but just where he had put it, as if my doing it was already a given.  I also learned that if I presumed too much, though, and in particular if I helped with more than one thing, or made a fuss, he would bristle and ask if I thought he was an invalid or just plain incompetent.  I didn’t mind the times he was stiff with me, because I knew I would have been even more difficult to live with under the circumstances.  I just learned the things he hated, and avoided them.

I learned that he would always give a straight answer to a straight question, and that he didn’t like it if I seemed to be trying to read his mind instead of asking right-out.  I learned he had headaches sometimes, and the best thing for them was luke-warm compresses – if he would let me.  And that he would never ask me to sprinkle lavender-water on them, but that if I did he would sigh more deeply and his stiff shoulders would ease a little.  And that at those times it meant something to sit quietly and change them now and then, and offer my company in long friendly silences and soft inconsequential chatter in-between them that needed no reply.

I learned that he always shined his shoes with ‘vim and elbow-grease’ till they gleamed – and mine, too, if ever I dared to turn up with scuffs.  He always had brown and black Kiwi-brand boot-polish on hand, of course, a tin to use and another for spare – heaven forbid he should run out! – and I teased him that he had to be our cobbler’s best customer.  After I got a dark-red pair one year, a tin of matching polish somehow swiftly made an appearance in his boot-drawer too (with its own brand-new brush, of course).  Whatever the shade of my footwear, if their state was a reproach they would be off my feet in a jiffy, no arguing;  he would stand in the kitchen brushing-away vigorously as if our lives depended on it, a fierce glint in his eye, holding them out sideways and turning them to reflect the light till he was satisfied enough to return them to me.  I think he felt it was a fair exchange for the darning, so I let him without protest, grateful not to have to do it myself.  I loved the polish-smell, though, and he would laugh at me for holding the open tin to my nose and sniffing deeply while he worked.  The day I held my nose too close was one of our never-to-be-forgotten ones – though even as he wheezed hysterically he was making practical suggestions how to get it off without removing the end of my nose with it.   It mostly dissolved in rubbing-alcohol, and he tore-up a soft old towel for me so as not to hurt too much in scrubbing the remnants off.

I learned to enjoy the modern recordings he sent away for, some of them all the way from America, with their odd rhythms and wailing clarinets.  I learned to tell when he was under-the-weather by the colour of his scars;  if they were too red or too pale it meant he was poorly, and if I asked him when or how he had started feeling ill, he would probably tell me — but if I just asked whether he was all right he wouldn’t.  ‘Not so bad – yourself?’ was the worst he would own up to, if asked was he all right, on a scale that went from ‘perfectly wonderful – how about you?’ through ‘fine, thanks – and you?’ — you had to penetrate it with more direct questions to get any real information.  This I think was out of some kind of misplaced pride, that he didn’t want to admit to any further weaknesses – that and the fact that the polite reply to ‘how do you do?’ was not to relate how one did, but a matching ‘how do you do?’  But if you asked specifically, he would not conceal things.

 

I learned that the reason his neck echoed an old stiffness in an east wind was from lying immobile with his arm strapped to his face for the skin-grafts to take, so they could be severed from their origin.  He was reluctant to go into such detail at first, saying it wasn’t pretty to think about, but when I asked in indignation if he thought that was all I was good for he relented and explained.  ‘Thank you for being interested,’ he wrote.  They did it after his first release, he said;  he went back in for reconstruction, to see what Captain Gillies could do now his wounds were healed.  The first took, he said, the second failed;  and after it he said no thank you to a third attempt, since it was merely for appearance’ sake.  They stretched the skin on the inside of the arm first, he showed me, putting expanders underneath it, so that when it was removed there could be a neat little seam where it had come from:  one you almost wouldn’t notice, like a good mend.  I asked him if it hurt a great deal, and he said, “’a’sh a ’ord ’oshes ih’ meangingh… ” — that was a word that lost its meaning.  The first graft was what gave him a functioning mouth, so he was grateful for it;  before the surgery it had been too stiff and scarred to close.  The failed one had been intended to improve his nose, and had included a piece of cartilage also, but its failure had left him with a horror of further interference.  That was how I learned the word ‘necrosis,’ which he wrote with its letters separated and the ‘s’s quick zig-zags.  ‘Why go through all that to be worse-off?’ he wrote.  The various surgeries had left him a patchwork of different colours, which added to the oddness of his features.  ‘They use the word disfigured,’ he said, ‘— why not call it disfaced?’

I thought about how quickly it could happen, in a split second, and how then you had to live with it for the rest of your life, never able to forget it even for the same fraction of a second it had needed to occur in the first place.  And how it must make you wonder what would have happened if you had been standing a foot away instead, or got up or sat down a second earlier or later, or turned  to look behind you.

‘Could drive yourself insane if you let it run on like that,’ he wrote when I asked him.  ‘Every second the whole time you were at the front could have been this, or that, & wasn’t – a shell out of nowhere – or an attack — the anticipation – walking into a hail of machine-gun fire, chaps dropping like flies, why was no bullet meant for you?  Could have been dead a thousand times.  Or legs blown-off – anything.  Instead of sitting here with you pouring a second cup of tea.’  He shrugged.  ‘Lying in bed you learn to control your thoughts,’ he wrote then – ‘I hope to god you never have to, dear girl.  That’s Harry’s trouble – he tries – can’t seem to manage it.  Went too far.  There is a point of no return.  I never reached it – this came first.  Don’t need to tell him I said that.  No point in rubbing it in.  He knows.  Just can’t do it.’  “’Assh nghee ’ore nkh’up,” he added, waving the teapot about ready to pour.

 

Some days he would be in a black mood, and rally himself visibly on my account.  I decided that wasn’t such a bad thing to have to do.  At other times I was the sensitive one, bad-tempered from trying to keep the world and everyone in it on track all by myself, and he would tease me out of it gently with wry comments on the futility of my endeavours – and (when all else failed, he said with a mock sigh) a fresh packet of biscuits – digestive, preferably.  After all, they were By Appointment to Their Majesties, so if they were good enough for Buckingham Palace they were good enough for us, weren’t they?  Surely I had no greater responsibilities than our King and Emperor?

When he poked fun at me like that it hurt my feelings at first, before I saw he did it for my own good, because I needed to be reminded to set-down my burdens now and then and stop taking myself and everyone else so seriously.   Nigel gave a great imitation of someone who took very little seriously.  Seeing things from his perspective was a great gift to me.  Sometimes I wondered what charm was and how it survived hideousness – as it seemed to here.  Why wouldn’t everyone notice what a lovely, insightful, delightful man he was?  Why didn’t he find a nice woman to have tea with, instead of a little girl?

And then we would be out together, and I would feel him say nothing when spoken-to in a pitying tone, but brace himself, blinking – or, sometimes, respond tersely when he was patronized – and realized that for him to reveal himself was an act of faith not to be embarked-upon lightly.

But I thought it was a shame that so vital a soul, so sharp a mind, so warm a heart should hide behind a ruined face, as if it really mattered.

What could I say, though?  It was hardly my place to give him advice.  Not that I didn’t try anyway.  “You know Nigel,” I said one day breezily, out of the blue, before I knew better,  “what you need is a girlfriend.  Somebody nice.  Somebody to take walks with and give orchids to.”

He waved out of the window airily:  “Shtanding in line,” he said, “’ich one shoul’  I pick, Helingh?”

“You’re not trying,” I said.

He stared at me.  I felt very foolish.  “’Oo hink ish ’hat eashy?” he asked me, a bitter tone to his voice.

“Well, isn’t it?”

“Ha’ ’oo evuh ashked a boy ou’?”

“Well no,” I said, “because I’m a girl and boys are supposed to do the asking.  And I’m only twelve.”

He sighed.  “’on’t wan’ ’ity.”

“Why couldn’t someone just like you for you?”

“’Oo sherisoushly ’hink angybody ’an ’ook at ish fash an’ nghot fheel p-hity?” he asked me then:  “’uh hruth, now, Helingh.”

“I don’t,” I said stoutly.  “Nor does my mother.  We just love you.”

“Hank-oo,” he said.  “You angh — who elshe?”

“Harry,” I said,  “he knows you.”

“He’sh no’ a girl, is he?” asked Nigel.  There was sarcasm in his voice, now.

I shook my head.

“Sho ’at leavesh t-hoo womingh — by mhy count.  One shpo’en-for angh the other thwelve yearsh old.  Hmmmm.”

“You’re not trying,” I said.

“Ngho,” he said, “I’m nghot.  Now leave mhee alone abou’ i’ – or I’ll ’hink twishe abou’ ’oo.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said, stung.

He relented:  “ ’o’re righ”,” he said, more gently, “I don’.  Not ’oo, Helingh.  But – ’on’t ashk mhee abou’ angybody elshe...  I’m nghot in’ereshted.  It couldn’ ngho angywhere.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

He took the cap off his fountain-pen and pulled out his little pad. ‘Once bitten twice shy,’ he wrote.  ‘Who would ever want to get up every morning to this? – be realistic!  Have you ever seen anything more hideous?  No, you haven’t.  You think I don’t know how women feel when they see this?   I can see it in their eyes.  The nice ones are sorry for me.  Nurses – married women – mothers.  The rest won’t even look.  I don’t want pity — won’t stand for it!    Wasn’t what happened enough?   After Daisy I think I have learned my lesson, thank you very much.  Please god you’ll never know what or how I feel.  So don’t tell me what I need, Helen.’

“Sometimes,” I said, “I lose all patience with you, Nigel Lascelles.”

Stung, he wrote:  ‘And even you — why do you come every day and read to me?  Don’t tell me you’re not sorry for me because I shan’t believe you.’  His chest heaved and he glared at me.

Mine heaved too, I am sure.  Tears sprung to my eyes.  “Did it ever occur to you that I might just LIKE you?” I cried, in fury.

“Ngho,” he said – honest as always.

“Well, it should!”  I shouted, slamming the door behind me as I left.

 

 

‘My Dear Helen,’ he wrote, in a note he left with a small speckled orchid of an intriguing pale green, ‘Please forgive me for being such an ass and come back – even though I do not deserve a friendship as pure as yours.  You were quite right to shout at me.  I do have a chip on my shoulder and thank god I have you to remind me not to be such a b.f. about it.  I shall attempt to make Welsh Cakes from your mother’s recipe, in case blandishments are required.’

They were not – required – but they were wonderful anyway, split and soaked with melted butter and just enough raisins to make them slightly sweet and salty at the same time.

He didn’t ask me if he was forgiven and I didn’t think it necessary to say so – after all, we were comfortable again and that was all that mattered.  Though I did say that he ought to make them more often, and not just when he had been a complete ass, and he agreed.

 

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 

My mother looked even more herself in pregnancy:  it suited her.  There was a grace and a fullness to her that swept on by like a galleon under a full press of sail, and she made little fuss about it.  It helped, of course, that she was so deeply happy to be bearing Harry’s child that it glowed like a light within her.

 

She still made-love to him after the nightmares, too;  as always, they tried to be quiet, but in the hush of a house after midnight when you have just been woken-up by shrieking there are few sounds more unmistakeable than the soft groans of love.  I didn’t mind;  I liked it.  It helped me to turn-over and get back to sleep, knowing that all was well and that Harry was all right again – for now.  I heard from Ivy that some women went off their husbands when they had a bun in the oven – after all, what was the point in putting up with it? –  but my mother’s love for Harry wasn’t like that.   It was a part of her self and she extended it as naturally as breathing.  I was quite sure that if she was too ungainly and tender to be comfortable doing everything, she would still be as generous in comforting him as she had been in their earliest days as lovers.  His easy glow throughout the pregnancy told me I was right. 

 

I always knew;  Harry was transparent to me, because I loved him – and I had read his diary. That was why I never, ever said anything – but how could I help noticing and knowing?  I couldn’t.

 

There had been a fortnight not too long after they were married when she went off to help Bea and Perce, who were having some sort of crisis at the Seven Seas, and Harry and I stayed behind without her.  It was term-time and she didn’t want me missing school.   The two of us had a lot of fun together, eating when we felt like it, going for long early walks with Nigel;  pouring the milk straight out of the bottle without using a jug,  playing our records at midnight and tackling the laundry, hoisting the sheets onto the clothes-line pretending we were a brace of Long John Silver’s pirates raising sail;  but I saw Harry’s tension mount day by day till her return.  He didn’t want me to help with the nightmares, telling me he could m–m–m-m-m-manage, th-thank you, so I had to listen to him nightly waking alone, struggling to calm himself down and grasp reality again with no-one to help.   They got worse as the days went on, and it took him longer to pull out of them.  The ones where he sobbed wildly and cried no no no please no were almost worse than the shrieking ones.  By the end of the first week I was up making a cup of tea for us both at two in the morning.  He apologized for waking me, and I just told him not to be silly.

 

He grew more clumsy and bad-tempered.  He bumped into things and his stammer got worse.  He told me he was sorry, after raising his voice to me over something trivial (I hadn’t minded a bit), and then said redundantly “I muh-muh-m–m-m-miss h-her.”

“I know,” I said cheerfully, “’Course you do!”

Of course he did.   I had read his diary: I knew just how much, and how, and he knew I knew.  He turned red;  got up and walked away.

“Harry,” I called after him, “I’m still glad you said so.”

“B-b-but it w-was obvious,” he said.

“You still needed to say it,” I replied.

He let out a breath he had been holding.  “I s-s-s-suppose s-so,” he said.

“I know so,” I said.

 

 

They made love half the night when she got back, as if they couldn’t get enough of one another, and I had to stuff my fingers in my ears and stick my head under the pillow to sleep.  Their bed creaked and creaked, giving them away with its tale-tellings:  of urgency at first, and frantic need; of slow, long-drawn-out tendernesses;  of not one time but several, separated by long intervals of whispers and silences and little moans and then it starting-up again.  At one point in-between he cried.  Hearing them made me feel hot and cold and shivery and full of bubbles with no way out.    So I wasn’t surprised when she told me with a blush soon after that I was going to be having a little brother or sister.

 

 

I read to Nigel every day without fail, sharing my confidences and asking his advice and telling him almost everything that was on my mind.  He received all of this gravely, tenderly, with his own quick wry comments and gentle reminders to me not to take things too much to heart when they seemed all-troubling (such as my lost Latin grammar, or my feud with the caretaker over our class tortoise).  He taught me to laugh at myself, and not try so hard all the time to keep everything going perfectly.  I specially loved helping him with the orchids – the smell of warm soil in there, the many shapes and colours, watching a stem of buds grow from tiny knobs to bursting flowers.  I brought him my first attempts at cake-baking, and fancy multi-layered tea-sandwiches wrapped in a damp dishtowel to keep them fresh,  and knitted him scarves to wrap round his neck in the winter and keep the chill away.  They were rather lumpy but he always wore one.   The bright red one was his favourite, because it was so cheerful, he said, like a robin’s-breast or a holly-berry – it was as good as a bonfire, or so he maintained.

 

 

Sometimes I lay awake thinking about what I knew from Harry’s diary of the ways of men and their feelings, and how much and how constantly they ached for a woman’s love, and how sharp was their desire whether or not they got it – and about Nigel, and Daisy, and how he must feel nowadays.  But when I was with him, reading our chapters daily or potting-out the orchids or rambling all through the country footpaths, his dignity was always so exquisite and his manner so breezy and our times together so happy that I didn’t feel it;  only when I would lie awake and worry about him, afterwards.  If he felt that way he hid it very well.

Unlike Harry, whose nerves were so stretched you just knew what he was feeling all the time, Nigel hadn’t been broken in the same way; and consequently he was a great concealer. 

Both of them were gentlemen, though, and officers, and you would never ever know from anything they did or said that they had feelings.  The men in Ivy’s world leered and slapped women on their backsides, pinched them, molested little girls for their own gratification.  Harry and Nigel wouldn’t have let on for a second that they ever thought anything of the kind, ever undressed a woman with their eyes, ever wished for anything.  Such thoughts were never to be betrayed in any manner:  that much had been bred into them, and they would rather have slit their own throats than give offence.

Somehow that made it all the sweeter when you knew.

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

When I started at the grammar-school that first autumn, they took turns helping me with my homework.  Harry tackled all the literary things and the history, and Nigel the maths and science.  Harry’s French was beautiful;  Nigel’s must have had a strong English accent even before he was injured, and now was completely unintelligible but provided us all with endless hysterical laughter.  My mother was often busy sewing or knitting, more than ever now we had a baby coming,  but when she could she listened-in, especially when Harry was speaking French.  A dreamy look would come over her face and she bit her lip and tilted her head to hear better.   Harry came up to her one evening at the dinner-table after we had been reading Racine together earlier, and nuzzled her neck.  I had my back to them at the sink, washing up the dinner things, but I turned because she gasped.  “P-parle-moi en français, madame,” he said softly.

“Je ne sais quoi dire,” she said. Her accent wasn’t quite as perfect as his, but it was pretty.

“Dis-moi ‘je t’aime,’ ” he said.

“Oh, je t’aime,” she told him, “je t’aime, mon chéri, le papa de mon enfant — ”   She put his hand on her belly.

He melted altogether:   “Cœur de mon cœur, âme d-de mon âme, ma vie, ma f-f-foi,  je t’aime de tout mon cœur,” he told her, “de tout mon esprit, de tout mon corps aussi – c-c-complètement – je suis tout à fait f-fou de toi – depuis le moment que je t’ai encontrée — je t’aime si p-passionément – je t’aimerai comme ça p-pour toujours, ni moins, pour toute ma vie je t’aimerai c-comme ça… mon ange, ma sauveteur... ”  This was unlike him, to be so outspoken – he never would have said all those things in English.  He did now because she liked to hear him, I knew.  Perhaps the French made them easier to say.

She understood – every word.   Heart of my heart, soul of my soul, my life, my faith… I’m crazy about you – from the moment I met you …  I’ll always love you, just as passionately as this – all my life long  — my angel, my rescuer.

“Mon mari,” she said  – my husband.  The dearest endearment she could find.

He moved his hand in a caress, and kissed her with his eyes closed.

Sometimes, when they forgot I was there like that, I didn’t move or make a sound to break the spell.  It happened so rarely that I treasured such moments.  Usually they kept themselves in check in my presence, because adult passions weren’t to be paraded before a child.   They never failed to put me first.  The mundanities of daily life would take up our days, as they do – and then in a moment like this such things would swirl away and reveal the rest of the picture, the depth of devotion.  It wasn’t as if either of them could hide all they felt, but normally it had to reside in looks and blushes and the brush of fingers – they were far too considerate of my feelings to do otherwise.  My days of witnessing adult lovemaking were firmly over – which was probably just as well, though I still felt its undercurrents.  They were both scrupulous, because they loved me – and I had already seen and learned far too much.  No word or action from them would rob me of my innocence again, that much was clear. 

If we had been apart, they always hugged and kissed me first, before one another.  The day she came home from Bea’s, Harry hung-back on the platform till I had greeted her.  She embraced me;  pulled-back to look at me and make sure I was all right, then kissed my forehead and let me go – and only then did she turn to him and see the white line round his mouth, the stiff way he stood as if he were trying so hard not to fall apart right there.   She put down her umbrella and opened her arms and he just came into them and gasped shuddering breaths, and she held him for a long minute, in public even, till he was ready to let her go.   She didn’t say anything;  she didn’t need to.  Neither did he.  What would have been the point in saying, ‘Christ I missed you — ’ when it was written all over him?  Finally he kissed her cheek and said, “W–w-w-welcome b-back, W-win,”  and his voice said Christ I missed you and so did his face and his entire body anyway.

“I missed you,” she said, “my darlings.”  And we went home and Harry made the tea, shakes and all – because he wanted to, to prove he really was all right.  So we let him, to show we knew.

 

I don’t think they had any idea I couldn’t help hearing them at night.  They never started till I had had time to fall asleep – and I never mentioned it.  Clearly, they were trying their utmost to be discreet – why make them self-conscious?   I was glad to give them that much privacy, not wanting them to think of me then instead of one another.  I treasured these few times they let it show.  One day I wanted to be as happily married as that, to have someone so madly in love with me he would come and speak French to me for no reason at all except that it moved me to hear it. 

I swirled the dishcloth silently against the soup-bowl in my hand till they broke apart from their embrace and I heard the clatter of dishes as Harry stacked-up the rest of the plates.  If heaven felt like our kitchen did at that moment, as tender and glowing, I would be perfectly satisfied to find myself there.

 

When I was thirteen, I started my monthlies.  I wasn’t too happy about it, though I had longed for it too – not once I found out what a lot of fuss and mess and bother it was.  Nigel was very, very dear to me about it.  I was late for our daily chapter together, because I had to have a bath, and I told him because I told him everything and I didn’t have any other excuse.  He got up from his easy-chair and took me into the greenhouse and presented me with an orchid – ‘to mark this special occasion,’ he wrote with a flourish, making me feel like a queen instead of a fluttery little half-girl, half-woman with a tummyache.

“But Nigel,” I gasped, “that’s your best one!  Your prize one!  The one for the show!”

‘Am I supposed to give you my second-best one instead?’ he wrote, ‘on one of the most important days in your life?’  I saw myself through his eyes, embarking on the next part of my life, someone cherished, someone treasured:  one day I would be a woman, and the orchid said how magical that was, and how beautiful I would be, and how dear still.

“But what about the show!” I cried.

‘Whyever would you think I care about the show?’ he wrote back.  ‘I just do it for a lark.’

 

 

It was a few months later, when my flow had grown to its full heaviness and I hadn’t yet learned how to cope with the worst days, that I came to him with my tale of woe from that horrid afternoon.  I had been at school, in my school-uniform, whose summer-frock was a fresh-looking blue-and-white stripe.  It wasn’t so fresh-looking with a big scarlet puddle right in the middle, where I sat.  I was mortified.  At first I was too embarrassed to tell him about it, but he could tell I was upset about something and after some gentle coaxing I told him what had happened.

He nodded and squeezed my hand. “I nghow how ’oo feel,” he said.

And I thought about what it was like for him to go out in public at all, ever, and what happened when he tried to hide behind his face-piece, and I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

He reached for the paper, then. ‘Just tell yourself what the heck,’ he wrote, ‘that’s how you are & that’s what happened & everybody has bad times sometimes.  No use crying over spilt milk or anything else – sorry to seem so unsympathetic in that way but it’s really true, Helen, my dearest child.  There isn’t a girl in your class who hasn’t been mortified one time or another – or won’t be, one of these fine days.  We just have to take it in our stride and carry on regardless – right?’

“Oh, you don’t,” I said.  “Seem unsympathetic.  I think that’s really good advice.”

‘Well it does come from experience,’ he wrote, ‘if that means anything.’

I took his hand and played with the fingers.

‘And it’s offered with love & respect,’ he added — ‘always.  My 3 Men In A Boat Girl.’

 

I knew that, of course.  But I liked it written.  I kept the paper.  I had a biscuit-tin full of my favourites.  He didn’t notice me taking them; I stuffed them in my pocket when he wasn’t looking.  That wasn’t too hard because of his blind side.  After a while I had three shoe-boxes full of times and things we had had together that I had specially liked.  I covered the boxes with pretty scraps of wall-paper;  Nigel and Harry had together just redecorated my bedroom, and this was the same rose pattern I had chosen.  Harry helped me with the box now, showing me how to put the glue on with a brush so it didn’t get in the wrong places and spoil your work.  When they were dry he saw me putting the notes back in.  A little while later he gave me another shoe-box and a big furled sheet of very special paper he had picked-up just for me at the bookbinder’s in Winchester, that had marbled paint all over it like the way oil floats on a puddle, drawn into swirls with a feather.  “I th-thought your c-c-collection was only g-going to g-grow,” he said, and made sure I always got nice boxes and beautiful papers after that.

 

 

One little sheaf of papers had a small box all to themselves.  It had been a stocking-box, and before I covered it, it said ‘Aristoc’ with a curling fern.  Now, though, it was dark-blue with silver traces, flat, just the right size for the heartbreaking treasure it held.

We had been chatting about all kinds of things and Nigel had been dabbing at a gash where he had cut himself shaving, that kept opening while he was trying to talk. He had apologized, I remember:  he always apologized, even for the things he couldn’t help.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I had said, “ – keep saying you’re sorry.”

He had turned to me.  He always got up to draw the curtains before dark;  he was doing that now.  “All righ’,” he said, “I’ll ’hry uh shtop.”

“It isn’t dark yet,” I said, “why are you drawing the curtains?  The sunset’s so pretty, look – !”  I came to the window he had not yet covered, and pointed out.  Puffy clouds trailed salmon streaks into the west.

He came to stand behind me.  We had put the light on for me to read.  As the light failed outside, the window had started reflecting the room, too.  That’s how I knew he was there;  I saw him.

To me it was a dear and familiar sight:  it was just Nigel, my friend.

“’A’s uh firsh ti’ I shaw,” he said.  “’Ish.”  And he pointed to his face.

I didn’t understand.

He went to the table and picked up the pencil.

 

‘They wouldn’t give me a mirror,’ he wrote.  ‘That’s how I knew it was bad.  In the hospital.  Covered in bandages for weeks.  Fed me with a tube.  Then straws but I couldn’t suck.  It hurt too much & I didn’t have the strength to.  Could barely swallow let alone suck.   Still didn’t take the bandages off.  A month. Fresh bandages every day.  Hurt like hell.  Took me for more surgeries.  Tried to feel through the bandages.  Didn’t feel right.  Knew my nose was gone.  And my eye.  Chin wasn’t there either.  But under the bandages you couldn’t really tell.  Still hoped it wouldn’t be too bad.  Just bandages.  Then they took them off & I felt.  Felt like this.  Didn’t know what it looked like though.  Lay there and kept feeling & poking.  How many teeth etc.  Nose ran.  Hole did, anyway.  Asked for a mirror & they kept putting me off.  Pretended they had forgotten, promised it next time.  Noticed nurse always drew the curtains while it was still light. Went to the window one night and pulled them back.  Saw this.’

It took three little sheets of paper to tell it.

I kissed his face.  He let me.

‘Helen I have never told this to anyone.  Please keep it to yourself —?’ he added, quickly.

I nodded:  “Never,” I said, “you can trust me, Nigel!”

“I knghow,” he said. 

‘I had to know,’ he wrote then, adding to the story, ‘because they told me Daisy was coming the next day. First time since the bandages came off.’

“What did she say?” I asked, holding my breath.

‘I was standing at the window,’ he wrote.  ‘Didn’t need bed-rest – rest of me was perfectly fine.  Just – this.  Only worse.  Didn’t want to turn round.  Had put on my uniform.  Must have looked the same, from the back.  Was so afraid.’

He stopped writing for a moment and drew breath.

“Tell me,” I said.  I put my hand over his that was steadying the pad to write.  They were a young man’s hands, vigorous, somewhat calloused from work, the nails well-tended and square, the backs of the fingers attractively sprinkled with a few dark hairs. I remember looking at them then while I waited for him to tell me what happened next.

‘She said hello & I wouldn’t turn round,’ he wrote.  ‘Said hello back but you know how I sound now.  Was even worse then.  She said oh my god turn round.  So I did.’

“And — ?” I breathed.

‘She ran away.  I heard her screaming in the corridor.  Then the nurse came & closed the door.’

 

Daisy.  Daisy, too shocked even to shut the door so he wouldn’t have to hear her having hysterics at the sight of him.

But – would it have been any better to have had them in front of him?  At least she had run away.

 

 

 

The first time I saw Nigel after he was wounded, back in the big hall at Rookswood,  I had felt a bit sick — but I had stood my ground and said hello, because that was what my mother had brought me up to do — and what would I have done, anyway, if not that? — how could you do anything else, in all human decency?

 

But then I wasn’t married to him.  I hadn’t made vows to a gorgeous debonair young man that turned heads wherever he went – attentive, with piercing blue eyes, the kind other girls would be jealous of, whose good looks made me seem even more beautiful on his arm.

He took the sheets and screwed them up into a ball and threw them in the waste-basket.  “Le’sh ha’ shum tea, eh?” he said.

 

When he went into the kitchen to make the tea, I took them out again and smoothed them quickly and put them down the front of my dress. They were too sacred for my pocket, somehow.

I read them till I knew them by heart. 

I still do.

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

The Grammar School for Girls that I attended was in the next town, and I had a bus-ride at either end of the day that could be tiring and dreary.  I got off the bus in our square and still had to walk the mile or so home.  If it was a nasty day, I would often find Nigel waiting for me with an umbrella.  He didn’t wait in the square, but he had a spot just past the last street where there was a big oak-tree by the stile, and he would stand there right about four o’clock and take my satchel on his shoulder and walk me home dry and cheered-up.   When I thanked him, he would always say gravely that he had nothing better to do, and then laugh. 

This wasn’t true, because he was actually very busy indeed between the orchids and his various projects he kept himself occupied with, but it seemed that he was always aware of the time, and had half an eye on the weather too;  and that I was in his thoughts.  The line about nothing better to do came from our early days, when I had developed the habit of coming to read to him each day.  It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have read perfectly well for himself, and did – it was just that this was a treasured time of shared stories and ease for him, someone he could be comfortable with, a fixed event in the long unchanging featureless days to look forward to.  We had begun it before the orchids, as soon as he had discharged himself from the hospital and come to live next-door to us, and didn’t want to relinquish it even after he became so busy with all the things he filled the days with later.

As if unwilling to accept the gift of my time, though, and entirely unaware of the gift of his interest and attention in return, he often said to me back then at the beginning that I really shouldn’t go to so much trouble.  Once, then, exasperated with him, I replied tartly that it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do!

He laughed till he almost cried, and never let me forget it.

 

 

Another time quite early on but unforgettable, chased across the water-meadows by some rowdy boys, I tripped and fell face-first into a large fresh cow-pat.  I was also scratched from the gorse-bush beside it, and altogether in a bad way.  My mother would be busy with little Stephen, I knew, and the last thing she needed was more laundry and a tearful big daughter.  But I did so want to be comforted and babied – so I knocked at Nigel’s door.

It was not my usual time, so he was surprised and came to the door in his shirtsleeves with dirt under his fingernails – but one look at me and he dropped his trowel and swept me off to the kitchen-sink.   First he washed my face and hands, and dabbed at the scratches with diluted disinfectant.  When I told him I thought I was going to be sick he had a tin bowl under my chin in one second flat.   He put his arm round my shoulders to steady me while I sat on the draining-board and vomited.   I said I was sorry about the smell – I was so embarrassed, what with first the cowshit and now my puke on top of it – and he said ‘Helingh Hasley!’ in an impatient tone, as if I had said something completely foolish.   Then he emptied the basin down the toilet and drew me a hot bath (he had a proper tub with a geyser).  He gave me a pile of big towels, told me to put my dirty clothes outside the door, and found me instead a shirt of his and a sweater and some old flannel pajama-bottoms he rolled-up and safety-pinned so I wouldn’t trip over them.  They were better than trousers because the string at the waist would keep them up.  Besides, the sweater half-swamped me, leaving little pajama-bottom to show – he was tall and it was quite long.   I felt like the Queen of Sheba by the time I was done.

 

There was something odd about his bathroom, though, and at first I didn’t know what it was.  Then after I was all clean and dry, I wanted to see my scratches – and that was when I realized:  there was no mirror in it.  You didn’t see your face over the sink.   The small wooden medicine-cabinet he had hung there had a plain painted door.  Instead, I found a magnifying shaving-mirror on an expanding metal concertina-stalk screwed to the side, that you could push back out of the way when you had finished.  The round disc folded inward so you didn’t see it at all unless you had pulled it out to use.  His tooth-brush and tooth-powder were on a shelf above it and his shaving-things beside them, a Coronation mug for the lather and a badger-bristle brush with an ivory handle.  The King and Queen looked suitably grand – I thought it was funny to be standing there naked in front of them, not to mention other even more ignominious private matters that might take place in there.  Nigel seemed to do nothing at random;  he was far too purposeful for that.  I thought it was his quirky sense of humour that had chosen Their Majesties to oversee his ablutions.

 

When I came out of the bath all dressed and joined him in the kitchen, he turned my face to the light and looked at my scratches. He had scrubbed the rest of the potting-soil out from his fingernails altogether, I noticed.  It wasn’t as if it mattered, except for the fact that to him it had.   “Hmm,” he said, shaking his head to see how red and deep they were still,  “I hoped ’eshe ’ouldn’t be sho shore… I ’hink we can hel’…  have shum’hing  – ’ump up here… ”  and he sat me up on his kitchen table and went to fetch it, whatever it was.

I dangled my legs to and fro in those ridiculous pajama bottoms, admiring the crisp blue stripes and feeling the flannel soft on my scratched shins.

He returned with a small flat tin rather like a tin of boot-polish.  “Here,” he said, letting me read the lid, “’ish loo’ all ’ight uh ’oo?”

It said:  Dr. Gaselee’s Patent Skin Crème.  Antiseptic, Restorative.  With Cocoa Butter.  Miraculous Healing Powers!   A restrained garland of cocoa-flowers and leaves adorned it round the edge.

He touched his scars.  “I hash uh ushe i’,” he said, “fuh ’eshe.  Ih’s no ngh’iracle,” he added wryly, “bu’ i’ helpsh.”

 

“Thank you,” I said, “yes — yes, please!”

“’Oo on’t want shcars an’ sch’ratches, doo ’oo,” he said, “not on ’at p’hitty fhashe. Here… ”  He tilted my chin up and took a little of the crème on his fingertips and rubbed it into my scratches, very gently.  I liked his fingers on my face.  They were warm and took great care.  The scent was faint but it did smell of cocoa, a bit, as well, as something astringent.  It stung at first, specially in the grazes, but then it felt soothing. 

I also liked his breath on me.  Most people’s breath comes out of the bottom of their nostrils and when they approach and breathe through their noses you don’t feel it.  But he only had one sort-of nostril left, and the other one was just a hole where the rest of his nose ought to have been.  So as he stood close to me and anointed my face I could feel him breathing because the breath came straight out on that side.  It made my tummy flutter.  I thought about those Indian legends that you capture someone’s soul if you breathe their breath.  He had his face much closer to mine than usual, because he was looking carefully what he was doing.  I could see the blueness of his eye, the way the iris quivered between dilating and closing, his dark eyelashes, the smooth texture on his cheekbone below it that was the only good place left on his face.

 

He wasn’t thinking about his own face, he was thinking about mine.  There was nothing but care for me in his look.  I felt the way I did when the vicar put his hand on my head in communion and blessed me, since I was too young to be confirmed and receive the Sacrament – a half-sacred feeling, a moment of pure benediction. 

I wanted to look more, but I didn’t want him to think I was staring.  But if I closed my eyes, then that would be even worse, wouldn’t it?  He kept rubbing my face methodically, tenderly, going from one scratch to the next.  I didn’t want it to stop;  I didn’t want him  to stop.  I would have fallen into the bush again, for this.

He seemed happy doing it, too.  Then I saw him stop forgetting himself.  It was like the sun going in.  It was just a moment, but in it he remembered he was hideous and that his face was inches from mine with its dreadful scars.  Making me look at him, the horror and the pity of him.  I saw his look change, and his eye lose its lustre.  He swallowed.  “Shorry,” he said, “uh make ’oo ’ook at ’ish close-u’.”

“Oh no,” I said, “oh don’t say that!”

“Why nghot? ’sh’true — ”

“I wasn’t thinking that at all,” I said,  “truly I wasn’t!  I was looking at how blue your eye is,” I added, “it’s a really lovely colour.  It makes me think of speedwells.”

“’hank-’oo,” he said softly, “a’sh wha’ all huh girlsh shay.”  And he winked it at me.

Then he blinked a couple of times more, not deliberately this time though with just the one eye closing you had to see the difference in the speed and the glitter, to know which was which.  “’Oo ha’ ’ovely manghers, Helingh,” he said then, not quite so lightly, “’oo alwaysh ’hink of shum’hin hongist an’ shweet uh shay, ’on’t ’oo.”

“I try,” I said, not sure if this was a compliment or if he had seen straight through me – or both.

“I knghow,” he said, “’on’t ever shtop, all righ’? Uh worl’ needsh ’hruth-tellersh.”

He finished tending to my face and was about to let go of my chin. I turned my face into the palm of his hand quickly and kissed it.

 “’Oo ’hlirt,” he said fondly, easily, and rumpled my hair for a brief sweet moment before stepping back and replacing the lid on the crème.

“Oh,” I said earnestly, wondering if that was what I was for doing it, a flirt – “I would never do that!  Or anything I didn’t mean!  I was just thanking you for being so nice to me. And it is  a lovely blue!”

“I h’pose it ’till ish,” he said, as if he had not considered it before.  “’Own ’oo get, ’en!” – and he lifted me off the table and set me down on the floor again. 

I was big enough not to need the help, but I wanted it.  I wanted him not to let me go.  I was always trying to take care of people:  for these few blessed minutes, someone had been taking care of me.  I almost felt like crying again, at the relief of having allowed it, asked for it even.  It was tiring, feeling responsible all the time.

 

 

While I was bathing he had washed-off my shoes and scrubbed every last trace of stinky fresh cow-dung out of the soles and stitching with a toothbrush, then set them to dry with newspaper inside.  My wretched socks and filthy pinafore he rinsed and put to soak in a bucket with laundry-soap and a little bleach.   This was all accomplished while I was still in the bath – he wasted no time about it.  

Now, after a lovely hot sweet cup of tea and a large number of digestive biscuits, most of which (I realized after they were all gone and nothing left on the plate but crumbs) were consumed by me, he gave me a wheelbarrow-ride across the gardens and home again.

 

My skin smelled of him that night:  his soap on my hands and legs and feet, his Patent Restorative Cream on my face.  I lay awake and held my hands close to my face and breathed it in, and thought about the bathroom with no mirror.   

 

For his birthday that year I bought him some more of the same soap with my pocket-money.  It was an expensive kind, a very good brand, not one we had at home.  I liked it, a lot.  He unwrapped it and his glance flashed up at me quickly when he saw it was his kind.  He seemed moved that I had noticed, though all he said was, “’o’re a shwee’hear’ – ’hank-oo, Helingh!”

“So are you,” I said, and he let me kiss his cheek on the better side.  Usually he shied away from such things – but it was his birthday after all, and one hug and kiss a year might be allowed, surely?

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

My mother and Harry asked Nigel to be Stephen’s godfather.  At first he wanted to refuse, saying the child ought to have someone fitter, but they got him to see sense and so he was at the christening and made his promises.  He wore his face-piece, of course, for so public an event.  He didn’t want to be the focus of attention.  There were only a few guests and I hoped it wasn’t too difficult for him – though if it was, you would never have known.  His composure was almost always perfect, specially if it was someone else’s occasion, like this.  Afterwards Stephen started to wail and Nigel hoisted him out of my mother’s arms and walked him all round the churchyard.  He seemed to know how to hold babies, and his walk immediately took-on that little jiggling sway you get.  He must have been a natural at it – or perhaps he had watched my mother closely.  He missed nothing. 

My mother had been going to say, “oh it’s all right, Nigel —!” but Harry laid a finger on her arm:  “ – L-let him go,” he murmured.

After five minutes or so, though, the vicar was asking where the baby was, and I was sent to recover him.  After all, he was the star of the performance.

I came out looking for them, and found Nigel walking up-and-down by the old yews making nonsense-sounds:  a-ngha-ngha-ngha!  Wuh-wuh-wuh!  Oo-oo, oo-oo…    Stephen’s head was cupped in the back of Nigel’s hand, where it fitted like a little orange.  He had red-gold hair, so it really was like that.  He had stopped crying and was listening intently to Nigel’s nonsense.  Nigel looked up sheepishly when he saw me.  He had taken his mask off and put it in his pocket, as glad to get out of there as little Stephen was, I realized. 

“They’re looking for you, Nigel,” I said.  My brother’s christening-gown was a creamy fall of lace all down his chest, with little pink feet sticking-out the bottom.  Nigel held him out to me and he began to squirm and fret – he had been happy in that firm embrace, and wanted no more changes.

“No, you keep him,” I said.

“Ngho,” he said, “’ot uh p’hut ’is ’loody ’hing on againgh.  ’Akesh two handsh uh ’hut i’ on.”  It took two hands to put his face-piece back on.  Only one to tear it off, for a blessed few stolen minutes of comfort.

I took the baby and he turned away.  He didn’t like anyone to see him doing it. When he turned round again he was the Nigel I had seen in the hall at Rookswood, hidden so as not to shock, looking-out anyway with his fierce blue gaze.

It didn’t work very well.  Either way was hideous.  I thought it was a shame that someone so good with babies and children couldn’t have any, now.

Not that there was any reason why not, really, except that he wasn’t about to start courting anybody, that much was obvious – not after the debacle with Daisy.  That had been enough rejection for a lifetime right there.  I still hoped for some nice nurse to come along, or even someone whose sight was poor so that that wouldn’t be the first thing she saw about him.  But he kept himself to himself and didn’t go out looking, so nobody ever did – come along, that is.  The nicest women still pitied him, and he felt that.  You just know, when someone is sorry for you.  It doesn’t make you feel like asking them out;  they might say yes even if they didn’t want to, just so as not to say no.

 

 

 

When I was fourteen, Nigel taught me to dance. He was the most beautiful dancer, lithe and graceful and with a great flair for showing-off his partner while keeping his own movements smooth and unobtrusive.  I remembered how much Daisy had loved to dance, showing-off her handsome fiancé the same way before all of this.  I could still see him the way he was then, that heart-twisting moustache, the sweet rosy lips on him – the easy dash, the confidence, the hearty laugh.  She had been so proud of him, her gorgeous gallant bridegroom – so delighted to hang on his arm and laugh back up into his face.  Then.

He was endlessly patient with me, encouraging me to stand-up to my full height and not stoop – easier with him than the girl-partners I had at school, who I topped by half a head, and also than the boys who shuffled up to us at the Parish Social and mumbled their invitation to join them in shuffling round the floor.  At Nigel’s we pushed-back the big table in his dining-room, the chairs too;  set-up his phonograph, and let loose.  He had a wonderful record-collection.  I had room to twirl, to step-back and come-up, to curtsey afterwards and run laughing back into his light embrace for the next.  He taught me every kind of foxtrot;  slow – slow – quick-quick-slow — or, as he said it, “’shlo, shlo, ’ih-’ih –’shlo….”  We waltzed,  even tangoed.  He knew the room, so there was no danger of bumping into anyone or anything on his blind side.  Sometimes I closed my eyes and just let him guide me.  The sense of trust was breathtaking.  I always came over to see him before going-off to any of these vapid socials, to show him my frock and claim him for the first dance.  He never failed to dress-up too, even though I only stayed for ten  minutes:  it lent a sense of occasion, and I think he enjoyed it as much as I did.  If I had on new shoes or a different bangle he would be sure to comment. 

It took him almost half an hour to shave, carefully, since there was so little skin that was smooth left on his face and neck, but what there was needed a razor;  Harry had helped him at first, till he got used to it and worked half by feel.  If he hurried over all the scars he would cut himself badly.  The better side was mostly what still needed shaving, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see the other side too well in the mirror.

The mirror;  he had to stare in it, to shave.  Thank god for the safety razor, he always said, or it would have been all over with him.

He always was freshly shaved, when I came by to have the first dance.  I could smell it, feel it.  Afterwards the faint scent of him would linger in my nostrils.  Dressed and shaved, an hour’s worth of trouble, to dance in the dining-room with a girl of fifteen.

 

Those dances were always the sweetest of all;  I remembered them long after the rest of the dull little occasions we practiced for had faded into one another and been forgotten altogether.

 

 

 

Every year at the Grammar School we put on a school play and a concert.

Nigel would come late and stand at the back of the hall after the lights were turned-down, and then leave early before the crowd.  But he came, face-piece and all;  he never missed one.  It lent an extra sparkle to my performance, knowing it mattered enough to him to come.  I was Antigone, insisting on burying her dead brother;  I was Portia, holding-forth upon the quality of mercy.  I had the solo verse in ‘Once In Royal David’s City,’ or a few bars on the recorder with the melody before the rest of the orchestra came back in.  I gave it my all, enunciated clearly, stood-up straight, lifted my chin, projected out – because I wanted Nigel to hear clearly where he stood behind everyone else at the back.

Harry used to get up and leave right before the end too, because of the applause.  I imagined them meeting outside and laughing at one another – what else could they do but that?

 

 

When I was sixteen, with my mother’s permission of course, Nigel gave me a slender pearl necklace.  I had been fretting about what to wear to some event that seemed so grand and intimidating to me at the time.  My new dress was cut low, because it was that sort of a do, but then what was I going to fill that space with between my chin and the square opening of the dress, all those naked inches below it?  Not any soft promising swelling, because I didn’t have any.  My mother’s shape was not mine;  I must have my father’s side of the family to thank for my figure, however slim his other contributions might have been. 

Still, with that scooped neckline I felt very grown-up – and now, with the pearls, I felt suitably armed against intimidation, too: as if it were not a necklace but a talisman and breast-piece all in one.  It said I was sophisticated.  It said I was worthy of lovely things.  Without it, I was a gawky girl with not much of anything to lay claim to;  no bosom to speak of, no bought elegant frock (my mother and I made almost all my clothes, this one being no exception) – no well-known name in the county, not much of anything except my too-tall self.  With it, I felt beautiful;  and special.  Special enough to be given this.

It came in a beautiful velvet box, from a well-known London jeweler.  It set-off my wine-red dress and long throat.  He had chosen creamy pearls, not white ones, and they made my skin glow.  I got so many compliments on it that I almost didn’t know what to say – except that I liked telling about Nigel and our friendship, in explaining it to everyone who asked.  It was like taking him with me.  I didn’t mention about his face, though – that would have seemed a cruel way to sum him up.  I just said he was a dear friend of our family, and that he had been badly wounded, and lived next-door.  I always gave his rank, so people would understand it was an ex-officer I was talking about, a person of some importance.  Many of them had heard of him, though, what with the connection with Rookswood and Daisy, and some tut-tutted and shook their heads in pity anyway.  I narrowed my eyes at them and told them how talented he was and how independent, and all about the orchids.  I wasn’t having people feeling sorry for him when they didn’t even know him.

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

By that time he had taken-up painting, as well as the orchids.  He had a great sense of beauty and form, and this was yet another expression of the same thing, it seemed.  Even with his lack of vision on the one side, which made him a little clumsy in judging distances sometimes, his perception of light and shape was unequalled.

First he took some lessons privately from my art-teacher at the grammar school, and then within a few weeks he was ordering big canvases and filling them with colours and forms that resolved when you looked again into some detail you had never noticed before:  the curl of a teasel-sepal, the wing of a moth.  He developed a way of standing at a certain distance from the canvas so that his brush hit it right where he expected it to without lunging and missing, since (he explained) you really need two eyes to get that right every time without even trying.  He had to try, and teach himself a way to make it work.  But he was always good at that, adapting and making things work.

After a few months more, he shyly asked my mother if she would sit for him.  Of course she said yes, and he began a figure-study series of her in which she looked as solid as granite and yet as luminous as the moon with an apricot blush, the way it hovers low in September.  My favourites were the ones where she held my little brothers on her lap, one a toddler and the other an infant, two separate pictures filled with the same joy;  you wanted to be there, to feel those arms round you and smell that firm sweet flesh, the way he painted it.  Her breasts were ripe fruits, her belly softly rounded, her lap a wide fertile valley.  Her freckles were a dusting of gold. You didn’t see her face in any of them; you didn’t need to.  There was a presence there that made you feel safe.  They might have seemed almost naïve at first, till you saw the way he had captured the planes of her flesh and the gradation of tints in it and her hair cascading and the babies’ little fingers and toes and the size of her motherly hands beside them, holding, cupping a little bottom, playing with a small hand.

 

 

Whatever Nigel felt as he gazed at the sturdy glory that was my mother, which was Harry’s and not his to come home to, he didn’t speak of it.

He didn’t have to;  it was in the canvases, five feet high and bathed in light.

 

I knew she would never have modelled nude for anyone else;  just as I knew she would never refuse that to Nigel, of all people.

 

Harry just looked at them and smiled.  After all, they were a poem to what was his.

 

We persuaded Nigel to show them, along with his nature-studies.  They were a wild success.

 

His painting had an odd, multi-dimensional quality to it that lots of people commented on.  He laughed, the first time a critic made a fuss and praised it.  ‘Damn fool,’ he wrote, ‘ – beg pardon Helen, bloody fool – doesn’t he realize I’ve only got one eye?  Don’t perceive depth any more – have to make it up!’

That was just like Nigel, though, to take a challenge and turn it to an advantage.

 

 

He did one other study from life, around that time.  I only saw it once because my mother sent me over early one morning with some fresh-baked rolls and I took the short-cut through our gardens.  It was half-finished, the background missing still, just sketched-in,  and it caught my eye through the French-doors only because of its subject:  himself.  

It was a self-portrait and a figure-study both, the only one of himself I ever knew him to have painted.  In it he was nude and stood by a window.  There was a vase of spring flowers I had brought him on the sill. Light nestled in the glass jar and the window-glass, and drenched the whitewashed wall beside him;  a few brush-strokes delineated the rest of the window-frame.  His body was all creamy hues suffused with rose, kissed by the diffuse light pouring on him through the open window.  I could see the fuzz of hair on his chest, a bluish shadow, and the sharp way he had painted his kneecaps.  His face was a savage chaotic blur of darker tones, by contrast – crimson and violet and burnt-orange brushstrokes, framed in wild dark hair.  So was his sex, that swung unashamed:  a place of hectic intensity between the pale smoothness of his thighs, that drew your eyes all the more because you sought the face first and found it missing.

The mirror he had used to paint it still lay angled against the wall, reflecting the ceiling of the studio and the top of the window.

That was the only time I ever saw it.  I wasn’t meant to, and I never mentioned that I had.  It left my cheeks flaming, just to think of it.  One didn’t see men with their clothes off, in the sort of life I led, so it was all I had to go by.  It became part of my imagination, the way things do that have made an impression on you, like something raw and secret that could never be spoken-of, but lay at the heart of things.  I ached for the loneliness in it – and (as I thought I saw too) the anger and self-loathing.  The artist’s eye and brush had brought no gentleness to this wrenching appraisal.  There was beauty here, but it was marred.  What was it worth, beside the ruin?  Most disturbing of all was its challenge to our very notion of self.  The beholder sought features, found none – who was this man?  Where was he to find himself, now?  In his hands, with their long fingers? In the tenderness of belly and belly-button?  In the square-angled shoulders, the hollow beneath the breast-bone?  In the flushed half-soft member, presented here as starkly naked as the ripped-off face?

And I saw that body clad in pajamas, in a hotel-room somewhere long ago, aching and hesitant, its owner ‘so afraid’ – the wreckage of his face, those frantic brush-strokes – and I hated Daisy all over again for what she had done and not done, all those years before, when there was still time for her to have been kind.  When it would have mattered the most:  when it did matter.  When she could have said, ‘you are still Nigel, and I still love you,’ and meant it — before the words stuck in her throat and they both knew them as lies;  before she failed, and in her failing wounded him all freshly.

I stood there outside looking-in, transfixed by its wild raw beauty and the horror and feeling there. 

Nigel was still asleep, his bedroom-curtains drawn.  I left the rolls on the front-door-step.

 

The next day, when I came to read, we shared an orange.  I took the peel to the wastebasket and found the picture already there, cut-up into shreds of canvas so small you’d never know it had been a person.  Only the colours gave it away, because I had already seen them as whole living flesh:  the creams and the dusky bruised-plum and the rose-purples and the coral and the blue-black hair. 

He’d kept the scrap with the jam-jar of wildflowers, though, a ten-inch square of painted canvas;  it was set aside on the window-sill, next to the flowers themselves.  I picked it up and looked at it.  This at least was safe,  innocent.  It asked no questions,  told no agony – just bluebells and windflowers, tender as his belly had been and the pale insides of his arms.  I asked him if I could have it.

‘’Course,’ he wrote (he was tired from our conversation and eating his share of the orange) – ‘have anything you like.  Help yourself.’  He looked at it once more, thinking I am sure of all the rest I wasn’t supposed to know about, and thankfully didn’t – except of course that I did.  But wild horses would not have got me to say so.

“This is a lovely scrap!  What happened to the rest?” I asked, not tactfully I knew but wanting to know what he would say,  “ – you never showed it to me.” (This was entirely true.)

‘Didn’t come out right,’ he wrote. ‘Tried myself.  Not worth keeping.  Cut it up.’

He was not sparing with the truth either, my friend Nigel.  Not as sparing as I was.  I had asked him a question, and so it deserved an answer.    Not worth keeping.  Cut it up.

“That’s a shame,” I said.  “But thank you – there’s just something about this…  I’ll still feel you here anyway, beside the jug.”

‘No,’ he wrote, ‘just take the flowers, old girl.  Prettier.  You brought them to me – this way you get them back!  Just a sketch, really — didn’t finish them — ’

 

I kept it by my bed;  occasionally I would hold it to my chest in the night and think about the rest of it – but that made me too sad.  After a while Harry helped me to frame it.  Nigel was right, it wasn’t finished, so some of the curving bluebell-stems were mere suggestions and the fragile windflowers almost nothing but white gaps in-between.  But he had caught the way the unopened bluebell-buds are darker, and the pale green of their stems magnified in the water.  And I never could see it without thinking of the scraps in the waste-basket.  These flowers were so fresh and innocent:  was the man any less so?

 

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 

One night when Stephen was four and Nigel was almost two and we didn’t have Henry yet, I was in their room soothing them when Stephen pulled at my sleeve.  The bed next-door had begun its rhythmic creaking.  “What’s that noise?” he asked me.

“It’s what grown-ups do,” I whispered back, “it’s mummy and daddy being happy together.  We know they do, but we don’t talk about it.”

“Oh,” he  said.

“Don’t worry about it,”  I said, “go back to sleep, sweetie.”

“I’m not worried,” he said, “I like it.  I just didn’t know what it was.  They do it a lot, don’t they.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why does daddy cry in the night?” he asked me, a little while later when things were still again.  I listened:  they were not quite still, after all.  Stephen was a sensitive child.

“Because he was in the war,” I said, “and he still has bad dreams.  You know what that’s like.”

“Mine aren’t that bad,” he said.

“You weren’t in the war,” I reminded him.

“Oh,” he said, taking this in and thinking about his beloved daddy.  “Did it hurt his feelings?”

Sometimes after the bed finished creaking Harry wept.  He was doing so now:  his sobs were quiet yet harsh, and echoed in the still night.  My mother’s voice was low and soothing.

“Yes,” I said, “yes, lovie, it did.”

“Will he be all right?” Stephen asked then.

“Oh yes,” I said, “he’s all right now he’s got us to love him.”

“I don’t want him to cry,” said Stephen in a wobbly voice.

“No,” I said, “but mummy will kiss it better.”

“All right,” he said.  After a pause he added, “I shouldn’t say that to daddy, should I.”

“No,” I said, “you shouldn’t.  You’re a little love.  Now go back to sleep.”

“All right,” he said.

 

 

I was still a little in love with Harry, after all this time;  it never ceased to hurt, hearing his anguish in these moments where it was still fresh, still had the power to break him all over again.   I thought about our first sight of him, up the Butter Cross, and how even then I had seen all this in his face.  I just hadn’t wanted to imagine it.

But we loved him, so it was ours, now, too.  We hadn’t been there to see what he had, know what he’d known, endure what he’d endured  – perhaps that’s how we were able to bear it with him.  My mother was endlessly patient, even when he was out of all patience with himself – and irritable, and tired, and ashamed.  She let his moods wash over her, ‘like water off a duck’s back,’ as she said when he said sorry afterwards for some sharp remark or for having left the room abruptly, or any of the ways that were harder to live with than the scalding absolution of tears in the night.  Sometimes, when he was being particularly touchy, she’d go and splash cold water on her face or even excuse herself and take a long hot bath.

He would always apologize afterwards.  And she would always tell him that it was all right – and mean it.   That was her gift to him, that calm she had.  The way she kept her sights set on Harry himself, separate from his nerves.  And he would come to her, his whole being taut as a bow-string, and she would find some way to ease it without snapping – with a word, a half-smile, a quick hug;  later, alone together in the kindly dark, with her whole self.  And that was the way we lived, because the War couldn’t ever be left behind, not in the chiseled names, not in the photographs on close to a million mantelpieces;  not in the moments of lost temper with a beloved child, not in the abyss in the middle of the night – so we lived with it, and it with us.

 

And in return, of course, he gave her without any holding-back such passionate devotion as she had (I was quite sure) never imagined would be hers – not after my coming along and all the heartbreak of her first love.  We were everything to Harry now, and she blossomed in the knowledge of it.  This much at least they had built together, out of the anguish of those years and all their devastating legacy.   He was not entirely broken;  he brought himself to each day’s memories and (with her at his side) went on.   In her life as she lived it from day to day she was beautiful;  she was essential;  she was treasured;  she was wanted.   What more can a woman ask for, than that?

 

I didn’t share the vapid dreams on the flickering cinema screen about perfect romance between a man and a woman.  They struck me as naïve, cloying, like something at once syrupy and insubstantial, no more than an empty sugar-coating that would shatter when you touched it.   I had seen real love close-up, and it was all about imperfection.   It promised not happily-ever-after but the startling grace of meeting someone and just knowing that here at last was the one whose imperfections you can live with, that you want to even – and whom you hope and trust to cherish yours.   I had lived with love’s presence every day, all around us, suffusing our lives with its force – which only made me want it more.  I knew it included more than kissing.   Somewhere out there, waiting for me just as Harry had stumbled into our lives, was the young man whose life would meet mine and join it;  whose first hesitant kiss would begin the unending dance of trust and intimacy that made the rest of him mine.  I didn’t need him to be perfect;  I didn’t even want him to, since I was not.  I only wanted him to be the one.  I would know him when I found him, I was sure of that – and we would build a life together, out of small moments of truth and thoughtfulness – and kissing, yes, I did like the idea of that too.

 

Although I had grand plans first, and wasn’t in any hurry to meet him just yet.  I was quite good at school, and shone in examinations;  my teachers urged my mother to consider university.  I wasn’t about to be bounded by the confines of our small town.  I had wings, and wanted to spread them.

I would, soon:  it wouldn’t be long now.

 

 

 

 

For my eighteenth birthday Nigel asked me if I would like him to paint me.  Only if I wanted, he said; he hadn’t attempted a portrait as such and he would like to very much, if I would let him.  He had asked my mother, he added, and she had said it was perfectly all right with her – but of course, it was up to me.

“Oh,” I said, a little taken-aback. I wanted-to, very badly indeed — I wanted to see what he would make of my quirky features and brown hair, after seeing all the green and red lights he had captured in my mother’s.  I felt shy, though, about taking-off my clothes in front of him;  after all, unlike my mother, I had never undressed in front of anyone before, not even the doctor:  not all the way.  Still, I didn’t see why not.  I told him I would think about it and let him know.

It really didn’t take much thinking-about.  After all, as we had always said, if he could stand it, so could I, right?  I would be standing in front of Nigel the artist, not Nigel the man.  Just like the doctor’s, really.  That was what I told my mother, and she just nodded thoughtfully and told me (as he had) that it was up to me.  So I told him yes.  We arranged a time for a formal sitting, and I went over to his studio.

 

That was a grand name for the dining-room, but when he took-up painting he had knocked most of the wall out and put in a big pair of French-windows in place of the little cottage-window it had had.  He had a Japanese rice-paper screen in front of them, though, and they faced into the back-garden where no-one came, so I thought I wouldn’t mind too much standing there with no clothes on.  He was busy with his paints – he had selected a tall canvas, as virgin as I was – and I slipped behind the screen and stepped out of my frock and my underwear.

My heart was thumping, but I tried not to look nervous as I stepped out again.  I just stood there, my hands at my sides, and waited for him to look up and tell me how to stand.  It took him a while and one hand stole nervously to my bosom, where it fluttered in-between my breasts like a moth.  “’eady, ’en?” he asked, still squeezing red paint from a tube by the glistening lines of white and yellow.

“Yes,” I said.  My voice trembled a bit.  That was when he glanced up.

“Good god!” he said.  Actually he said “’Ood ’nghod!” but it came out with such shock that I knew immediately what he meant.

I bit my lip.  What had he expected?  Wasn’t I pretty enough?  Was I too gangly, without any frock to hide my long legs?  Was he disappointed?

“’oo too’ ’ore clo’es off!” he said, helplessly.

“I thought I was supposed to,” I said.

“Chrisht,” he said.  “’Ut them on!”

“I thought you were going to paint me like this,” I said.

“’O’re eigh’eengh!” he said, as if I had done something wrong by being the age I was.

“So what?” I asked.

He stared at me.  He blinked a lot, and swallowed several times.  I could see the artist in him assessing the planes and ins and outs of me, the shadows and the places that caught the light.  I could see the lonely man he was too, hurt and embarrassed and thrilled all at once.  Then he made a small circular motion with his finger for me to turn around.

 

I did, slowly.

“Ha’ to ahk ’or ’nghother aghaingh,” he said slowly.

“No, we already talked about it,” I said.  “I thought this was what you meant – and she just said she thought it would be a beautiful thing to do, if I didn’t mind.  She left it up to me.”

“’id she,” he said.

I nodded.

 

He just stood there and stared.  He never bothered with his mask when we were together, so I could see the tear that welled from where his other eye ought to have been.  He didn’t have any lips to bite, but he was sucking-in his mouth so it was even smaller than usual.  That was because his jaw was trembling.  It wasn’t very strong, being only half-attached on the good side and weakly on the other, and sometimes it gave him away like that.  He wiped the trickle away with the back of his hand and stared some more.  I tried to be patient, though I felt flayed by his look and embarrassed by my mistake.  Of course he was too much of a gentleman to suggest a figure-study;  what had I been thinking of?   He had said a portrait, hadn’t he?  I had just seen those luminous canvases of my mother and presumed.  But the milk was spilled now and there was no taking back what I had just done.

 

He asked me if I wanted to.  He tried to be very matter-of-fact, like any artist with his model.

I forgot I hadn’t a stitch on, and just smiled.  I started to feel natural again.  “’Course I do,” I said, “I’d be honoured.”

“Oh ngho,” he said, “’e onghuh ’ld be all ’ine.”

The honour all his?  I didn’t think so, but I didn’t argue with him.  “How should I stand?” I asked him.

 

“I ’on’t nghow,” he said, “’hmoove.  ’Oo shum’hin.”

Do something?  I knelt-down to pick-up a brush that had fallen from his palette when  he saw me.  It had rolled under a piece of furniture, and I reached to get it and then turned back to hand it to him, still on my knees.

“’ike ’at,” he said, taking it from me.  “’on’t moo’.”  He went to fetch me a cushion to put under my knees, so they wouldn’t get sore from the hard floorboards, and instead of the brush he brought me one of my own orchids in a pot.  “’Yay-tuh,” he said, ‘’on’t ha’ uh hol’ it nghow.”

I understood;  we could do my hands later, with the orchid.  He just wanted to see it beside me, to see if it would work.  I took it from him.  I couldn’t read his face.  He arranged the spray so it fell between my breasts.  It brushed me;  he didn’t.  Then he stepped back and looked at me again, his head tilted. He came back and put two fingers under my chin, and lifted it a little and more to one side.  Then he took a lock of my hair that I had let down and pulled it over my shoulder so it grazed my nipple;  frowned, shook his head and put it back.

“Am I pretty enough?” I said.  I felt awkward, my too-long legs under me and Nigel tilting my face.  Perhaps it was ugly like that and needed a better angle to look all right.

“Ngho,” he said, flatly.

I looked at him, hurt.  It wasn’t like him to be unkind.  I had been looking for reassurance, I saw, not the truth.  He had told me the truth.

“’O’re hoo p’hitty,” he said.  “’Ush hoo p’hitty.  Ut I’m nghoingh ’aint ’oo any-ay.”

I was much too pretty – but he was going to paint me anyway.

No-one had ever told me that before. I didn’t think I was, not with the gap between my teeth and my skinny body.  I had never filled-out like my mother; my bosom was slight and my hip-bones stuck out.

“’Ooh-i-ful,” he said.  “Helingh, ’on’t c’y!  One o’ uh i’ enuh!”   I shouldn’t cry;   one of us was enough.

He told me gently to stop, or he wouldn’t paint me.  I sniffled and wiped my nose with my hand just like he had, and grinned at him.  That’s my old girl, he said.  Now then, remember how my head went —?  Like that — no, up a bit more — yes.

 

Then he narrowed his eye, looked at me one more time, and set aside the palette he had squeezed all the warm colours onto and took up another. He covered it with blues and greens and blacks and the just tiniest dabs of red and yellow — and lots of white.

Then he set it down and put a record on the gramophone.  It was one of the ragtimes he and Harry liked so much, that reminded them of those days when they weren’t at the front and the billets had been all right and they had all laughed together to keep the rest at bay and played records like this.  It was a bit plangent in-between the fast parts, and left me feeling sad as well as entertained.  Still, it took my mind off kneeling there with my head just so, just while we got started.

He worked quickly, not trusting himself I am sure to having me come back another time.  This was to be a one-off, unexpected, bird-in-the-hand opportunity that the artist in him wouldn’t let go.  At some point he came over and gave me the orchid to hold, and then I saw his brush flashing loaded with yellow instead of the blues and whites it had carried before.

I must have knelt there an hour.   Then he saw me trembling, and brought me a blanket and made us both a cup of tea (I think he put something stronger in his) while I sat in the soft chair so as not to get lines on my bottom from the wicker one.  “Can I see?” I asked him.

He waved his hand:  go ahead.

 

 

It was me, only reduced to lines and planes.  And all in shades of blue and creamy-blue and greeny-blue.  Everywhere the light touched me, he had captured;  the curve of both buttocks, the twin dimples above;  my shoulder-blade, the little knobs of my spine; my face, turned back and looking over my shoulder.  I was turning, caught in motion:  my breast a tender profile, with its little nipple stiff from the cold a dot of intense royal-blue like a delphinium-bud.  The orchid was half-hidden by my shoulder, just the pot in my hands and then my breast a triangle above it and the top of the spray showing.  The soles of my feet were blue, too;  even my toes.  My thighs were long and looked like a deer’s haunches, but underwater.  The place where my hip-bone stuck out was a dab of almost-white.  My hair was sea-green and indigo, like a mermaid’s, hanging straight down my back in a waterfall.

He hadn’t been able to paint me the pink I was; not and keep his composure.  So instead of matching the tones of my flesh, pinks and creams and peaches and strawberry here and there, he had transformed me thus.  It was altogether strange, and absolutely haunting.

I told him I thought it was beautiful.

So are you, he said.  Another cup?

 

After we had finished our little break he went back to work.  He had to be quick, because the light was changing.  It had been warm and now looked colder, he said. The brush wanted creams too and the new light asked for white.

 

I could see he wanted to finish it quickly, while it was still fresh and before he was too overcome to go on.  After the light failed he took the potted orchid from my hands and held out his own to help me up.   I was stiff;  I bent-down to rub my poor knees.  They were all red and white.  In the painting, though, my legs were turquoise shading to aquamarine.  I was a bit unsteady on my feet after all that time and he held onto me firmly till I had my balance again.  I was aware of my breasts bobbing and the triangle of dark hair at my pubis which my pose had thankfully not included, visible now.  He was too, and looked away tactfully.  “’Et dresh’ed,” he said, “we’re all dh’ungh.” 

I went behind the screen and climbed back into my knickers and suspender-belt and stockings and camisole and my blue frock.  I felt as if the interlude had been an odd sort of dream, outside time.  Had I really just knelt there for two and a half hours with no clothes on?  Yes, I had;  but it was over now.

The picture told it, though.

 

I heard him pouring himself a drink, a large one by the sounds of him swallowing it  before I emerged from my changing-place.

 

“I’ll hingish i’ homorrow,” he said, “ – it’h almost hingished — ’oo on’t ’eed uh khum ba’.”

“But I’m coming to read to you, though, like I always do, aren’t I?” I asked, stricken for a moment that he meant me to stay away altogether.

He nodded:  if I wanted-to.  But no more modeling;  it wouldn’t be necessary.  Or ‘ngheheshary,’ as it came from his mangled mouth.

 

I stood on tiptoe before I left and kissed his cheek.  It was a swift brush of the lips, but I felt him feel it;  he gasped slightly.  He hid it, though. 

“Nigel, I can’t believe you just did that,” I said.

“’either hing I,” he said.  “Ohf ’oo gho, now!”

 

I was flustered, or I wouldn’t have left my homework behind.  I’d brought it with me to ask him about after we had finished painting, thinking he could just look through my calculations and check them with his quick mind and meticulous attention to detail.  It was the last thing in my thoughts now, though, so I said goodbye and left without it.

I had barely passed the garden-gate into the lane when I remembered that I had come with my hands full and now they were empty.  I needed it for the next day’s lesson, or I wouldn’t have bothered him.  I slipped back again, going round the back so he wouldn’t have to open the front door again.  I planned just to tap on the French-window so he could open it and let me in.

 

When would I learn?

 

He leaned with his back to the wall as if it was all that was keeping him from falling.  He was facing my picture.  The brandy-bottle was out on the table next to him.  His chest was heaving;  I didn’t need to hear him to know he was gasping.  His eye was closed and his mouth was open and his hands clutched at his groin where I had dealt the latest hurt to come to him in an endless string of hurts.  He grasped himself through his trousers, his fingers fumbling with the buttons.

 

I ran away.

 

 

 

When I got home I fled to the granary so I could cry.

 

Harry must have seen me come past.  He was at home with the boys;  my mother had taken the littlest somewhere.  He came out to me and knocked softly.

I let him come in.  I wanted to be alone but I was too upset to refuse comfort just now.

“H-helen, w-w-what o-on earth’s the matter?” he asked, sitting down on the hay-pile beside me and putting his hand on my shoulder. He knew where I had been and what I had been doing;  he must have been heartsick that things had gone wrong and that Nigel had somehow said or done something he shouldn’t have.  It had been a huge leap of trust, to let me go;  had it been betrayed?

“N-nothing,” I said.

“You kn-now th-that c-can’t be t-true,” he said.

“I hurt him,” I wailed.  Oh god, now was I going to have to say how?

“W-w-what happened?” he asked me.

“Nothing, nothing, he was a perfect gentleman,” I cried, “it wasn’t that – it wasn’t that at all – oh Harry — ”

“W-w-what?”

I put my head into the tweed of his shoulder.  It smelt reassuringly of babies and soap, and the sweet tobacco of the occasional pipe he allowed himself.  “I didn’t mean to make him want me,” I whispered.  “Harry, he didn’t say anything, he didn’t do anything, I just know – I know — I hurt his feelings — ”

“Mm,” he said.  All sorts of images must have gone through his head, but he didn’t ask me any more questions, thankfully.   “Well, he-he’s a grown man, Helen, he’ll g-g-get over it.”

“But it was cruel!”

He put his hand on my head.  “That’s h-hardly the c-cruelest thing that’s h-happened to him, sweetheart,” he said.  “Th-these things h-h-happen.  You j-just n-need to let it go.”

I nodded.

“Whatever you d-do,” he said then most earnestly, “the m-main thing of all – if he d-didn’t do anything w-wrong, Helen — ?”

“of course not!”

“ — i-i-i-is not to let it affect your friendship,” he finished.  “That would be c-cruel, Helen.  He th-thinks the w-w-world of you.  He w-w-worships the g-g-ground you walk on. In c-case you didn’t know.”

“I did,” I wailed, “I do know!  I do!”

“Then l-l-let it be,” he said gently, “let it b-be, Helen.  He can’t help his f-feelings and n-neither can you.  Just d-don’t d-do it again.  That would be a t-tease.”  He was so dear in being so honest with me.  He understood what the matter was right away – he was a man, after all – and he wasn’t pretending otherwise.  “I did w-wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “w-when your m-mother told me what you h-had planned — wondered if it w-was altogether w-wise… ”

“He never meant that at all,” I said, sniffling, “he only meant a portrait with my clothes on. But then I’d taken them off and he said good god and then he painted me anyway.”

“I s-s-see,” said Harry softly. “Well – is it a g-good p-painting, at least?  D-did you see?”

“It’s beautiful,” I cried, and burst into a fresh round of sobs.  He rocked me against his shoulder.

“Then it was w-worth it, hm?” he said, when I paused to get my breath.

 

I thought about the picture, about the power of it.  It had a force that cried out to you from the canvas.  It was the untouched, painted by the untouchable.  All his soul was in it, all the torture, all the beauty.  He had painted me not as I was but as I could be, stripped of my awkwardness along with my clothes yet visibly maiden and shy, modest and voluptuous all at once and (apparently) entirely unaware of it.  The young woman in the picture was both sensual and unawakened;   but the artist’s vision betrayed that in seeing both these things he felt them, too.  His own, awakened observation was acutely aware – it could hardly be otherwise.

 

No wonder it had touched him to the quick, painting it and staring at me.

 

I still felt that way the next time I saw it, though Nigel had recovered his equilibrium and we were easy and joking together.

 

When Harry saw it he closed his eyes.

When my mother saw it she wept.

You had to know the story behind it, though, to see all that: if you didn’t it was simply a stunning and deeply-felt study of a young woman.  Which was more than enough.  We called it ‘Blue Helen,’ and the title stuck.

When (with my permission) the local artists’ group put it in the amateur show that went up to a London gallery, Nigel was offered a thousand pounds for it:  but he wouldn’t sell.  He kept it in his studio with a blue cloth over it, and sometimes when I came the cloth was draped differently so I knew it had seen the light of day in-between.

 

I didn’t mind that he had felt what he felt, afterwards.  I understood completely, and forgave him immediately.  It was myself I couldn’t forgive, to have opened him to this pitch of feeling.  I didn’t feel it was wrong, or dirty, or any of those things.  Specially not after reading Harry’s diary, and knowing how it could be for a man.  I felt a sharp grief that Nigel had no-one to turn to, no-one at all;  and that I had flaunted myself under his nose till he couldn’t bear it.

And that there was nothing I could do about it that would not hurt and humiliate him further than I already had.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

My letter came, from Cambridge:  they had accepted me.

Nigel had champagne standing-by already, and everyone toasted me, even the boys.  ‘Of course I knew they would,’ he wrote, ‘you silly girl!  How could you ever have doubted it for a second?  Haven’t I always told you you were set to soar, with your mind?’

 

The orchids were still a pleasure to him, and he was endlessly tinkering with them in-between bursts of painting energy.  It was as if one passion fed the other, alternate periods of fallow and feast. He introduced a couple more new cultivars, and called one ‘Mrs. Oliver’ and the other, with permission, ‘Royal George.’  ‘Mrs. Oliver’ was a single bloom with a pink blush on white with dark-red speckles.  ‘Royal George’ was a gorgeous white thing with a purple throat;  it reminded me of the ribbon on Harry’s Military Cross, which I had finally been allowed to see and hold for a few precious minutes before it was put away again in a battered tin that had once held chocolate sent personally from Queen Mary to all the men serving at the front, with her picture on it.   The plant-business was an extra source of income to Nigel too, to supplement his military pension, and he would occasionally receive dealers and growers and even amateur enthusiasts at his home to see the plants and select their choices in person.

He wrote to them, not by hand as he did with us but on the typewriter he used for the business.  His letters were simple and straightforward.  They said that he did not often leave his home, but that the guest was welcome to visit by arrangement.  He went on to say that the reason he did not go out was that he had sustained a facial wound in the war which made being in company difficult, and that he would be grateful if they would consider this before deciding whether to come.  If they did make an appointment, he added, perhaps they would be so good as to prepare themselves beforehand for a shock on seeing him, since this would save awkwardness on meeting.

This seemed to work well, and he had several regular visitors whose company he enjoyed a great deal.  When talking about the various cross-cultivars he was attempting, or the best sort of potting-mix, he lost his self-consciousness altogether and regained much of his old animation.  They were visiting him not as a patient or a charity-case but as a knowledgeable expert whose company they sought for its own sake, and so it was far easier for him to forget himself with them. 

 

That summer was already on the wing, now that I had been accepted at University.  I would soon be off.  A sense of increasing urgency hung over my daily visits now, knowing that a pattern of years was about to be broken.  I didn’t take them for granted as I had for so long.  It was also not too long after our scalding experience with the blue painting.   We had had lunch together, and I was sitting curled-up in an old armchair by his fire one almost-autumn day, reading out-loud from Emma, when we heard the sound of a motor-car in our lane.

“Oh,” he said,  “’mush be Mishish Khrown – wash exshpecting her yater.”

“Oh, somebody new?” I asked.

He nodded. “’Oo knghow,” he said, “wrote uh ushual — shaid she’d comh engyway – hope ish allrigh’ — ”  he was somewhat nervous, I could tell.  Women still sometimes couldn’t control their own faces when they saw his. 

“I could stay,” I said, “would you like that?  Open the door —?”

He nodded eagerly.  It was easier for him to stand in shadow and then step out when people had had a chance to begin to see him.

The motor pulled-up.  The tires made a very grand sound on his gravel.  Its engine purred and stopped.    A driver got out and came to the door, leaving an upright figure in the back of the motor;  we could just make out a splendid hat.

I opened the door to his knock.  It seemed quite peremptory.

“Captain Lascelles at home, miss?” asked the driver.  He was in a smart livery and the car was a very good one indeed:  a Rolls-Royce.

“Yes, he is,” I said.

The driver jerked his head over his shoulder.  “Expecting a Missis Crown, is he?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Sorry not to have warned you,” said the driver, “but she likes doing it this way.”

“What way?”

“She goes by that name when she’s on her private business,” he said.  “Doesn’t get nobody bothering her, see – no special preparations, no new paint, no ‘side’ – just what she came for, plain and simple.”

Nigel stepped forward. The driver had clearly been apprised of the contents of the warning letter, for he simply saluted and looked Nigel straight in the eye. “Captain Lascelles?” he said.

“’Esh?” said Nigel.

“Her Majesty’s here to see you,” said the driver.

I thought Nigel was going to faint.  He swallowed hard and said nothing;  then he clutched for my hand.  “Nho,” he said, “’hleese, no – a’sh no’ hunny –!”

“No, sir, I’m not being funny with you,” said the driver kindly.  “She’s waiting in the car, sir.  Till you knows who it is, and invites her in.”

“Ghod,” he said, “’od – ’od —!”

“Don’t panic,” said the driver, “she’s very nice, honest to god she is.  A bit stiff, but that’s her way.  Heart of gold.  An’ – she loves ex-servicemen, sir.  Loves ’em.  You bein’ wounded an’ all – right up ’er street.  Won’t turn a hair, I promise you.  Put money on it.”

“Nho,” Nigel said again, looking all around for rescue and finding none.

“Is you goin’ to let her come in, then, sir?”

Nigel looked at me in panic.  “I hash to, ’on’t I?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Wai’ ” he said, “le’ me fingh ’y hace-piesh – f-fash-piesh.”  He fled upstairs and returned with it in place.  I hadn’t seen him in it for so long that I almost thought it looked more grotesque than his scars.  He felt more confident in it, though, so I would have cut my tongue out before I said anything.  He straightened-up.  I tidied the knot of his neck-tie and smoothed-down a lock of hair that the elastic had pulled out of place.  His dark hair was silky;  it felt like feathers under my fingers.  I cupped his good cheek and kissed his brow as he bent down to me.  “It’ll be all right,” I whispered, “just be yourself, Nigel – she already knows — ”

“’Hrisht almigh’y,” was all he had time to say, in a gulp.

The driver had gone outside to open the door for Her Majesty.  Nigel stood in the doorway, his bearing military.  I saw his hands open and close into fists.  She stepped out of the motor-car and came straight to him with her hand out.  “Captain Lascelles,” she said warmly, “ – do pardon my little subterfuge, sir!”

He took the extended fingers and kissed the air an inch above their gloved tips.  She had an umbrella in her other hand, tightly furled, lavender to match her gown and coat:  a favoured colour.  The hat was a complicated affair of stiff violet felt with ostrich-feathers and a net veil.  She was almost as tall as he was, and in her high-heeled buttoned mauve kid shoes she looked him straight in the eye.  She held his gaze without a second’s hesitation, just as the driver had promised that she would, and her beautiful familiar face betrayed not a trace of shock or surprise, let alone horror.  I was grateful for that, anyway. 

Nigel bowed deeply and straightened again.

“So good of you to see me,” she said, “I do so enjoy getting out a little – and indulging my interests without all the fuss!  May I come in?”

He gulped and stepped aside and she swept into the cottage hall as if it were a corridor at the Palace.  “’Elco’ngh– ” he managed.

She turned back as he spoke, a look of kindly inquiry on her face.  “I do beg your pardon?” she said, “my hearing’s not what it was —! ?”

“’Elcuh – ’or Nghayessy — ” he said, trying even harder and the consonants fleeing his scarred tongue.  “’Ay I heshent – Nghiss Helingh Hasley — ”

I stepped forward, my heart in my mouth, curtseying very low indeed.  “Helen Pasley, Your Majesty,” I said, “and he says you’re welcome.”

He turned grateful eyes on me.  “Helingh, hel’,” he begged, “’leesh —?”

“’Course I will,” I said, “just till she gets used to you, Nigel.”

“So good of you,” said Her Majesty to me.  “I’m sure I shall – get used to it soon, but this will help the difficulty for now, won’t it?”   She turned back to Nigel, then.  “A cruel wound, yes, I see.  I do see.  The King and I are so very grateful, sir, for all you’ve sacrificed.  I am speaking personally, as well as on behalf of the country, Captain.  Of course it would affect your speech, wouldn’t it – silly me.  I did understand, when you wrote to me, about – how you might feel.  Hoped you wouldn’t mind if I came, anyway, just like anybody else…  I did so want to see His Majesty’s orchid!”

Nigel was splendid.  From somewhere he pulled-up his officerly self and was crisp and polite and perfectly courteous, while still being himself.   It helped that I could repeat his mangled words clearly, so Her Majesty and he could hold a conversation without him having to struggle.  We sat in his little parlour where he and I had just been reading.  She sat bolt-upright in her chair, as did he, so of course I could do no less.  The driver waited outside in the car, now, his job done and the cottage clearly too small for any extra unnecessary parties. 

She did much of the talking, to start with, to put him at his ease.  She quickly passed from her interest in orchids to her delight upon hearing that Nigel had sought permission to name his new one for His Majesty.  “They know how much I enjoy that sort of thing,” she said, “anything to do with flowers – not to mention ex-servicemen such as yourself  – so of course they passed your letter on to me directly. I mentioned it to the King over breakfast and he was tickled, quite tickled by it, I should say!  Liked the idea of the colours, of course – the imperial purple and the pure white –  after all those medals he’s pinned-on – he said ‘why not, by George!’ – helped himself to the marmalade – asked to see your letter and the photograph – held it in the one hand and his toast in the other, waved it about – called you a dashed clever fellow, Captain, going from the Front to the greenhouse like that!”

  Her ease was infectious.  It was odd, because she never for a moment dropped her regal bearing, but in her speaking there was much warmth and kindness and a true appreciation of his having invited her over all the reasons he might have to remain aloof.  Of course, he hadn’t known it was Her Majesty he was inviting, but his letter in reply to her first inquiry as ‘Mrs. Crown’ had been so forthright, she said, its invitation so straightforward, she had immediately told her lady-in-waiting to mark a day upon her calendar when she could find the time to motor down and see his orchids for herself.  “It’s the only way I ever manage to do or see anything,” she said, “without a big fuss and bother – I do hope you understand — otherwise it’s all new paint – I do so hate the smell! – and people standing on ceremony, and hundreds of introductions, and lord mayors and local dignitaries, never the people I should really like to meet – no time to talk at all – and I do so like to talk – find out – ask questions – like anybody else, really – just-because, you know, not having to be on show  — will you forgive me, Captain?  I do understand in your case it would be a particular surprise – since you don’t go out a great deal — !”

“’at ma’es hoo of us, he’ngh, ’ushn’t i’!” he said.  “Ushually I’m huh one givingh huh shock, ngot hettingh i’!”

She lifted an eyebrow in my direction. “I’m sure I caught most of that,” she said, “but – usually you’re the one giving the shock, not getting it?  I see – yes, of course – you have a delightful sense of humour, sir!  What a vital thing that is!” 

I nodded.  “He said that makes two of you, Your Majesty,” I said.

She laughed, a clear silver laugh.  “Very witty, sir,” she said.  “Giving me a taste of my own medicine!   But – nothing to make such a fuss about, your face, Captain – goodness me, I’ve seen worse, I can tell you – far worse – so let’s be even, shall we, call it a draw in the surprise department, and talk about your orchids?”

He nodded, standing-up again and indicating to Her Majesty which way to go to pass through the cottage to the greenhouses.  “Oh, you lead the way,” she said, “don’t stand on ceremony with me here, for goodness’ sake!  No walking backwards, heavens, no!  Do you know I am always in such trepidation one of those new foreign ambassadors is going to fall over on his – well – you know!”

It was as close as I had ever dreamed a monarch might come to saying ‘bottom’ and I blushed furiously.  Nigel relaxed, as she meant him to, and showed her through the dining-room studio to the back of the cottage where the door led out to the greenhouses along the south wall.  She turned to me in passing:  “My dear,” she said, “it really isn’t necessary to keep on calling me Your Majesty.  Though I appreciate your perfect manners, believe me, and you must tell your mother that she has done a lovely job.  Just ‘ma’am’ will do, now.  Makes things a lot smoother – easier just to chat, that way — mm?”

“Yes – ma’am,” I said.

“Just keep telling me what he says,” she added quietly, “ – without a fuss, so I shan’t have to ask him to repeat it?”

“Yes, of course, ma’am,” I said.  “People usually get used to him in a few minutes.  The way the words come out.  It’s hard for him — ”

“I see that,” she said.  “Brave, very brave.  God bless him.  So very kind of him, to see me — ”

“Oh, he loves to talk about the orchids,” I said.  “Once he gets over being shy, ma’am – which he is already, honestly, I’ve seen him far more tongue-tied than this – you won’t even need me in a minute or two, trust me.  Er – ma’am.”

He was looking back at us, knowing we were talking about him.  Queen Mary went straight up to him.  “Miss Pasley here was telling me I should soon be able to understand every word,” she said, “and I must say I believe I’m doing much better at that already.  Do forgive me, Captain – my hearing isn’t as sharp as it was, I did mention it – you are perfectly clear, sir, and I beg you not to stop telling me about everything!”

He nodded.  There was such dignity in it.  She looked him right in the eye again, as she passed into the fragrant warm air of the greenhouse.  “I was just telling Miss Pasley I think you’re terribly brave,” she said.  “It must be so very difficult.  I shan’t pretend otherwise, Captain, not even to be polite.  That would be to fail to appreciate all you’ve given, sir.  Awkward, I see that.  From your letter, even.  And specially now, with me popping-up on your doorstep like a jack-in-the-box!   It would take anybody aback, let alone someone who feels he needs to warn visitors first!  That’s why I resorted to my little game – I confess.  I was so afraid you wouldn’t want me to come.  And I did so want to meet you.  And now we are going to forget about it altogether and you are going to show me all these beautiful orchids – yes?”

My mother, I thought, that’s who she reminded me of!  My mother!  Addressing the issue head-on and then going forward from there. 

The greenhouses smelled of earth and damp, moss and the various scents of the orchids.  Some of them could be vaguely unpleasant, but Nigel didn’t care for those and bred very few of them.  A flower ought not to offend, he said, for all its beauty.  I loved the smell:  it reminded me of all things alive and fertile, and of so many happy hours spent here with Nigel.  It was humid, though, and quite hot, and Her Majesty turned a shade of pink at odds with her lilac costume.  I’m sure I did, too.  He showed her the lines of pots where his experiments were coming-along, and the two orchids he had cross-bred to get Royal George, and they finished-up at the rack along one wall where his own cultivars lined the shelves.  She leaned forward and read the names.  When she saw mine she smiled.  “Goodness,” she said, turning to me, “and you have one named for you?  What an honour!”

“Yes,” I said.

“’Y hirsht,” said Nigel.  “Helingh’sh beengh a hpeshial frien’ hor a long hime.”

“His first,” I told her, “he said – he said I’ve been a special friend for a long time.”  I was choking on the words.

“I got that,” she said, “loud and clear, Captain.  Now tell me – how long have you been doing this?  Do you have help?”

He explained, and I added that he had built the greenhouses himself.  “Sorry,” I added, looking at him, “I’m just so proud of you –!”

“’Shaw righ’, ” he murmured.

We passed along the shelves and he invited her to pick-out one of the Royal Georges to take back to the Palace.  This one had the most buds, he pointed-out, and a second stem coming – but that one was further along, and the rest of its buds would bloom sooner – plus it already had one fully-open blossom, so it would look like more to bring back.  The mask was chafing him as he spoke and in the humid air it was making that rusty trickle again.  I didn’t know what to do.  I hated it – I hated the fact he was too shy not to wear it. 

What would my mother do?

I put my hand on his arm.  “Nigel,” I said, “darling – it’s doing it again.  Your mask.  Rubbing you.  You know how it does.  I’m sure Her Majesty won’t mind if you take it off —?”

He put his hand to his face and turned away.  Yes, he turned his back on the Queen.  His shoulders went up and down in a big shuddering sigh.  “I ’an’t do ’is,” he said.  He was choking, just as I had been.

“’Course you can,” I whispered, trying not to turn my back on her too.

He was breathing hard, embarrassed now and trying to decide what to do.  She was concerned, of course;  it was clear something was wrong.  Nobody turns their back on the Queen – ever. 

Ever. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked me, quietly.

I told her.  She would have seen any second, anyway, when the trickle turned bloody as it always did.  “It chafes him,” I said.  “He only put it on to face you, ma’am.  So you wouldn’t have to see.”

He had pulled out his handkerchief and was dabbing at his cheek.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he must have been feeling.  He turned again, facing her.  “I ’eg your ’ardingh,” he said, with great dignity.  His voice shook.

She put a hand on his arm, just as my mother would have done.  “Captain Lascelles,” she said, “please take that wretched thing off and do me the favour of being comfortable?”

Well, it was one thing to take it off in our little local tea-shop, and another to give Her Majesty a full view of his dreadful wound.  But she had asked him to, and he could hardly refuse.  He turned away again to remove it, and the elastic pulled his hair up in a little coxcomb.  I smoothed it down and he faced her once more with the hanky pressed to his cheek.  Discreetly I took the discarded mask out of his other hand and put it in my own pocket, so he could forget about it altogether for now.

“Oh, that’s better,” she said.  Her eyes were almost as blue as his, though a little paler;  more of a china-blue, like my dolls.  They were very bright, just now.  “Thank you so much, Captain.  I do appreciate your trusting me.  And you look fine, if I may say so: perfectly fine.  I feel honoured.  Now what was it you were telling me?  This one will have the most blooms, over here?”

And so the visit went on.   They talked about the best kind of feather for pollination, and how you had to keep the bloom in a paper-bag so it wouldn’t take-up the wrong sort of pollen in-between – “just like my dogs!” she said with a mischievous smile.

He asked her if she would care for a cup of tea before leaving, since it was such a long drive back up to London yet, and she said How very kind of him to ask!  Actually she was only going as far as Romsey, but still, she would absolutely love one, my goodness, yes!  And perhaps, if it was possible for Abercrombie to have a cup, too?

Of course, I said, skipping to the kitchen to make it.  Nigel’s cottage was even smaller than ours, so that wasn’t very far at all.  She was altogether used to the way he spoke by then, and didn’t need me to repeat any more.   The Royal George she had picked-out sat on the table beside her, its sprays nodding.  They were talking about painting, since she had had to pass through his studio to get to the greenhouses on the other side of the house, and she was asking him to show her some of his canvases, if he would be so very kind and not mind her prying –!?

I found them in the studio when I came back with the tea-tray. She was standing before the Teasel, with its beautiful curly spikes, the teasel-head a huge honeycomb extending beyond the canvas on the left with its gradation of tiny purple flowers blooming out of the green cone, and beyond it a steep shoulder of down dotted with sheep and another one meeting it, and the sky with clouds, and if you looked carefully a white horse carved in chalk on a distant hill in-between the near downs that folded together like a bosom.  They all seemed to float together in layers, almost like the reflection in a mirror or a puddle.

“How very lovely,” she said.  It was in all sincerity.  “I do like that one.  Like it a great deal.  We have a lot of pictures, of course, up at the Palace, but – there’s something about this one – one could stare at it all day and see beyond – I don’t suppose —— ”

Good lord!  She was asking him to give it to her!

He cleared his throat.  Was she really wanting it?  She had a reputation for going home with things she liked;  was that to include ‘Teasel’?

She turned, smiling, and drew the blue cloth off Blue Helen.  A corner had been showing, and the colours must have intrigued her.  One had to allow she was not shy.

“Goodness,” she murmured.  “How – er – unusual.  Yes.  Most unusual.  Must say I prefer the landscape — well, for hanging, you know — ”  She gave a self-deprecating little shrug.  I was blushing furiously.  After all, in less than an hour she had now seen both of us at our most naked;  neither Nigel nor I had anywhere to hide from her eagle eye.  She swept on majestically, leaving my unclothed self looking-up from the blue canvas with the pot of orchids in my hand.   Nigel picked-up the blue cloth from the chair-back where she had left it and covered me again.  I loved him for doing that:  it was as if he had given me back my clothes.

This was also the first time I thought perhaps it was a good thing he hadn’t kept the self-portrait after all…  though I would have liked to have seen her face had she unveiled it.

Not his, though;  not his.  He had been flayed enough, today.

 It was another hour before she left.  We were exhausted from the effort of entertaining her.  She liked to talk, it seemed, and ask questions;  and she appreciated an audience.  It couldn’t have been an act, for politeness would have removed her in half the time.  I could only conclude that she stayed because she was enjoying herself.  Nigel wrapped ‘Teasel’ for her in brown-paper, and tied it off with string.  I held it for him to cut and Her Majesty put her kid-gloved finger on the knot.  “So kind,” she murmured, “what a lovely gift!  I shall enjoy this – believe me, Captain.”

Abercrombie bore it triumphantly to the car, where it fitted in the capacious boot with space to spare.  It seemed that he was used to such happenings.  At last, when we were altogether drained and spent and only Her Majesty’s example kept us upright in our chairs, she stood and brushed down her skirts.  “So kind,” she said again.  “I have enjoyed myself no end, Captain – I do thank you so very much for inviting me.”   She reached out her hand and shook his firmly.  Nodding  in answer to my curtsey, she sailed out of the front-door and into her car like a grand old-fashioned clipper-ship.  Abercrombie brought up the rear with her Royal George, and set it down carefully next to him on the front seat.

The car pulled away, its engine purring again, and Nigel leaned back against the wall and closed his eye.  “’Od,” he said.

I went to him and leaned my head on his chest and put my arms round him.  He was not exactly trembling but his body held a quiver all through it.  He leaned his head on mine and let himself breathe easily little by little.  His arms went round me, firm and light at the same time;  I could have broken-away at any moment, but I didn’t want to.  I wanted to hold him, and he let me.

“Shtrangis’ hing evah happing uh mhee,” he said, shaking his head so that it brushed mine.

Yes it was indeed – and the strangest thing that had ever happened to me, too.  I was not quite sure if it had been a dream, except that ‘Teasel’ was gone from its customary spot on the East wall of the studio.

“She was quite nosey, wasn’t she?” I said, blushing to think about how she had unveiled me.

“’Ot wha' she desherved," he said, “’ight?”

I giggled.

“’Oo’ll ha’ her hinking you’re mhy mhishtresh,” he said then, as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world.  “Mahing mhee haint you wih’ no c’ohes on – an’ hen ’oo callingh mhee dharling —!”

So I had. When his poor dear face was bleeding.  What must have been one of the most excruciating moments of his life, and he hadn’t forgotten a word I’d said, apparently.

Not that one.  We used it freely, at home.  And he was, wasn’t he?  Yes, most darling indeed;  my dearest friend, a very special sweetheart.  “Well, you are,” I said.  “I don’t care if she knows I think so.  In fact – I don’t care if she thinks so!  Even that.  I’d be – I’d be flattered, Nigel.”

“Hank-’oo,” he said.  My face was still resting on his shoulder, and I felt him tremble. “’oo don’t meangh i’ bu’ ish a shweet hing uh shay.”  His speech was badly slurred, from fatigue.  I understood it, though, because I always did.

“I do mean it,” I said.  “I’d like her to think it.”

“’Oo shweet,” he said, trembling, “shweet uh shay sho. Bu’ ’oo goh a rehutashion uh hink o’, Helingh!  E’sh not h’rget ’at, mm?  Hum on, e’sh gho ’ell ’em nghesht dhoor!”

Yes, I had a reputation to think of.  I think I might have thrown it away that afternoon, if he had asked me.

But of course he didn’t;  he wouldn’t.  He wouldn’t even have considered it, not for one ten-thousandth of a second.  It was beyond thinking.

For him.

 

Not for me.  I thought about it.

Often.

I was all of eighteen. 

He was thirty-four – all of thirty-four.  Only thirty-four.

 

But to offer it, even – would have been an insult.  He bristled at pity from a stranger:  how much more unbearable would mine be, to him?   And how would we have remained friends, afterwards?   So I thought about it, wanted to – but said and did nothing.

 

We went to tell them next door.

They didn’t want to believe us at first, but who could or would make up something like that?  Nigel was tired of talking by then and his face ached, as it did when he had been in company for a long time, so he wrote his little notes.  When he wrote that he had had to take off his bloody face-piece again, Queen or no Queen, my mother got up and went over to him and he just leaned his head sideways against her and she stroked his hair.  He closed his eye and they stayed like that for a long time.

I couldn’t have done that for him, not then, not in front of everybody and not privately either – he wouldn’t have let me.  So I was glad she did, even though I ached for it to be my slight bosom where his cheek rested.  I wanted to feel his hair again too, like feathers under my hand.  But I was going away, very soon, and it would have been even more unkind to start anything like that when I didn’t know where it could go.

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

I went away to University.  My mother was so proud of me, Harry and Nigel too;  I had won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge.  Caught up in the whirlwind of my first weeks, I didn’t write to Nigel as often as I had promised.

He never failed me, though.  I had asked him to, worrying about him and knowing I would miss him and sure that he would miss me even more. He had said he would write every other day, and he did.  Nigel always kept his word.

His letters were like him, funny and filled with quirky observations.  He didn’t often wax philosophical, but he was capable of it and did on occasion so you knew there was more than just light-heartedness being offered.  He was quite spontaneous and would take two pages to talk about an idea he had for a painting – and then mention the fact that he’d been in bed with the flu just in passing.  After the great Influenza this could strike fear into the heart of anyone hearing it, of course, and I sent a postcard every day till I heard he was up and about again.

 

The Queen still sent him a note from time to time, too, so I heard.

 

Three years went by, changing and full as the river Cam – or the dear old Meon, down by us.  There were lectures, supervisions, new friends;  essays to finish even if you had to stay up till dawn;  croquet and punting and intense moral discussions —  a world of intellect I had only glimpsed from my home and school, touching it here and there in conversations with my mother and Harry and Nigel and the books we read together, but now become the atmosphere in which I lived.  It was hard not to let it go to my head.  It was rarefied and intoxicating.

There were lads who were so intense I could see mathematical formulae churning through their heads even out on a lazy afternoon on the water – and others who liked to get drunk and burn boats on their college lawns at two in the morning.  There were madrigals and May Balls.  There were eagle-eyed women who had devoted a lifetime to one subject, and knew more about it than I could ever imagine let alone hope to, and snipped off pieces of their knowledge to pass to me as if it were bright shavings from the Holy Grail.

I tried to share these things in my letters home, though I often felt I failed.

I started to write poetry, not necessarily very good – but the things I had inside wanted saying.  I always made a clean copy and included it with that week’s letter to Nigel.  I didn’t explain them, I just sent them.  He would understand.

I wanted to write, that much I knew, but in the meantime there was the question of what to do with my life.  I determined on teaching;  at least that way I would have access to books and the life of the mind.  It seemed preferable to a life spent selling things, even nice things like books, though that would have been all right too.  I explained all this in my letters home, and they wrote back how eminently sensible and cheered me on.

 

So I was granted my degree, and when everyone came to the ceremony I was overjoyed to see Nigel too.  They had driven all the way together in our neighbour’s motor-car, Harry and my brothers squashed in the back seat together, with Nigel at the wheel.  He was a very good driver, said my mother;  it wasn’t a skill you lost, he said, deprecatingly.  Though these days there was a bloody sight more traffic, and coming through London had been a bit of a challenge.  Still, they had crossed the Thames most thrillingly at Tower Bridge, and its towers and steel wires were still in my brothers’ eyes.  Once in Cambridgeshire, Harry had delighted in pointing-out the yellow bricks, the low smudges that were the Gog-Magog hills – and at last, almost there, the spiky points of King’s College Chapel and the tall tower of St. Mary’s, the University Church. 

I was sorry I hadn’t been in the car with them for all this excitement – but there wouldn’t have been any room for me:  there hadn’t been any as it was!

My brother Henry had been car-sick right in his daddy’s lap, and so poor Harry had had to change his trousers on someone else’s account.  That was all right, he said, it made a p-pleasant ch-ch-change.  They looked happy though, even if little Henry was still a bit pale, and we posed for snaps with Stephen’s new camera while I was still wearing my gown and cap – with everyone but Nigel, of course, who took them.

 

Nigel wore a new face-piece.  It was more lifelike than the other one, and (my mother mentioned quietly) not quite so uncomfortable. He could bear it for several hours at a time;  and it had meant enough to him to be invited to see me receive my degree that he had been up to London on the train six weeks earlier with Harry to a leading prosthetist’s studio to see about it.

The thought of the two of them on the London train just about finished me off, Harry with his shell-shock still jumping at loud noises even now, and Nigel flinching every time a stranger got in the carriage.  Giving each other moral support.

To help Nigel appear in public – to see me.

 

I told him he looked wonderful, and thanked him for coming with tears in my eyes.  He said his hands hurt from clapping.   That was all he said.  Oh, and later, right before they left to go home again, that he was so proud of me;  so very proud – he’d always known I was going far, with my mind.

 

After I received my degree, I went-on to take my Dip. Ed.  and was offered a place as the under-English mistress at an exclusive private boarding-school in Kent.  That felt more than far enough, for now – I had applied to other places closer to home, but this was all that turned-up.  Our old pattern was all set to continue:  I’d write and Nigel would reply;  he’d write again, and I’d send a postcard.  Nobody I met at University or at school ever seemed as interesting, or as thoughtful.  There were boyfriends, admirers – I told him their names and what I thought of them.  ‘Selfish pig,’ I wrote of one of them, ‘only after one thing and I wasn’t about to give it to him.’  (I felt like Ivy.)  And, of another, ‘so immature – has no conversation to speak of.’  A third was ‘desperately good-looking – and knows it.  Yeuch!’ 

Actually I found them arrogant, conceited, cocky – and far too open with their ardour.  Where was the charm in having something that could be had so easily?  The first man I had ever been in love with was Harry, and it was his diffidence that pierced me to the quick.  He had wooed us with eggshells and small confidences, moments of trust and pain shared.  He had told my mother he loved her not with a smacking kiss and a grope, but a gramophone and a piece of music.  These experiences had touched my soul; it was everything that a man felt and  didn’t  show you that I wanted.  I was drawn, it seemed, to men who played hard-to-get, not because it was a game but because that was all they could do, all they knew how to do – until you made it safe for them to love you.  But no-one I met fit the bill.  The ones who were playing hard-to-get here just weren’t interested, it seemed.  The last thing they wanted was a tall intellectual young woman with a passionate manner and fierce opinions.  The ones who did like my ardent soul seemed to want to attach their ardent bodies to it with all possible haste.

So I left University with some experience of the opposite gender, but little that impressed me.  Wherever my knight in shining armour was, Cambridge hadn’t contained him.  It hadn’t even offered me anyone I felt like opening my blouse for, whether my friends did that sort of thing or not.

 

I packed-up my things, spent a couple of weeks at home, took long walks with Nigel, helped my brothers with their homework, cooked everyone’s favourite dishes that I knew how to make, asked my mother to show me some more, chose the books I thought I couldn’t live without, and set-off for my first job.

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

That first year went by in a flash.  I was so busy with my classes and marking and coaching the second hockey eleven (which I hated but I had to) and chaperoning the Lower Sixth to Paris for three weeks in the summer that I barely had time to think.  I often had headaches.  I always tried to make time to write to Nigel, though, even if it was short and half of that an apology for the length.

Once home again, the rest of my summer holiday went far too quickly.  There were clothes to be made, errands to Winchester and Southampton, books to go over for next year and come up with plans for lessons and homework essay-questions.  Nigel didn’t complain – he was just happy to see me when I could find the time to spend with him.  We fished together one day, he gallantly baiting my hooks with meal-worms although I didn’t mind doing it myself, and fly-fishing himself, something I had never mastered;  we rode bicycles round the back-lanes looking for rare wildflowers another.  He even came out to Winchester with me once on the train, wearing his face-piece – for company, he said, ‘because you’re not here long — !’  He didn’t say which of us was keeping the other company, though.  He was building some new shelving for the greenhouse, and I helped to sand it and did all the varnishing for him (the fumes irritated his eye).

School the following term settled-down into a predictable pattern and I wrote about the pupils, my feelings about my fellow-teachers, the lovely grounds of the school, the glorious copper-beeches and how Nigel would like to paint them I was sure if he could see them.  He wrote back with stories of my brothers, and work he was doing, encouraging me in my difficulties and suggesting so very gently when I might need to change my attitude about something else I struggled with, since the thing itself was not about to alter in any way.

But his letters grew shorter, that autumn.  Bonfire Night came and went and I didn’t hear a word about the village or my brothers, only that Harry had been ill with the noise but was better now, dear old fellow.

 

Then he stopped writing.

 

I didn’t hear from him in a fortnight.

This was so unlike him that I began to worry, and then worry deeply;  finally I was half out of my mind with concern.  My mother had written that he was well, though he seemed a little low, and had had a cold.  I asked her to ask him to reply to my letters, so I could stop worrying.

He didn’t.

She wrote that she had given him my message, and he had said to tell me he was sorry but didn’t feel like writing.

 

I think I was afraid he had given-up.  I kept seeing him all alone in that cottage, perhaps with no new inspirations for painting,  no energy to dust his plants for thrips and mealybugs and mildew, just staring-off the way he did sometimes.

Then my mother wrote that Mrs. Duffin had been under the weather and that a couple of times she had popped over to see Nigel and found him sitting without a fire, in his pajamas and overcoat, with no lamps lit.

That was all she needed to say.  I was on the next train.

 

I got home at six o’clock in the evening.   I had telephoned ahead and asked Harry to meet me at the station.  I had also asked them not to tell Nigel that I was coming.  I can’t explain why, but I wanted to see him freshly, without his having time to prepare for me and put a brave face on things (as it were).  Harry obliged, and with a motor-car-ride from our other neighbour too, so we rode home together in style.  There was even a tartan rug for my knees.

On the way he asked me how the teaching job was going, and told me of various scrapes my naughty little brothers had been in, in-between being angels of course, and asked me mildly when I was going to b-bring home a nice young m-m-man for them to meet.

“Oh, they’re all stupid,” I said impatiently.

“Mm,” he said.

I gripped his hand, then.  I had been afraid to ask, but I couldn’t bear not knowing either.  “I don’t care about that,” I said, “Harry — how’s Nigel?”

He looked at me.  There was that gentle, quizzical look to him, a slight raise of the eyebrows, the look I had fallen in love with twelve years earlier and never quite got over;  it could still make my heart turn-over.  It was clear he had been waiting for me to ask.  “The t-truth?” he asked, softly.

“Of course the truth!” I cried.

“He m-misses you,” said Harry, more softly still.

I stared at him in anguish. “What can I do?  I have to make my way, Harry, you know I do – and this teaching post is the best I was offered – I come home every holiday —!”

“Mm,” he said.

“What can I do!” I repeated.

He shrugged.  “You asked me,” he said, “ s-so I t-told you.”

I put my head in my hands.

 

When I got home I barely put my valise down.  I hugged my mother and my brothers and went out the back door and straight to Nigel’s. 

 

It was some time before he answered my knock.  I think he must have been getting dressed.  I felt heartsick. If Nigel wasn’t all right, then nothing else was – or could be.  At last he came to the door.  He looked the same as always – a little thinner, perhaps.  But there was something about the way he held himself that seemed held-in, shambling, as he had not been before.  He had always stood up straight, to his full guardsman’s height, and squared his shoulders, face or no face.  Not now, though.  When he saw it was me he turned away.

“Nigel,” I cried, “aren’t you going to ask me in?”

“Shish w’en ha’ ’oo nhedidh ashkingh?”  he said.  “’Oo alwaysh he’p ’orshelfh engywayh.”

“If you really want me to go away then I will,” I said, stung, “but I came here from school in term-time just to see you!”

“’Eng ngho away,” he said.  His words seemed even more slurred than usual.  I realized he wasn’t entirely sober.

“Nigel, you’ve been drinking, haven’t you!”

“’Esh,” he said, “ang I ’on’t wan’ ’oo shee mhee ’like ’ish.  So ngho ’way!”

“Please,” I said, on the verge of tears, “please let me come in.”

“’On’t hoo engy goo’, ” he said:  it wouldn’t do any good.

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“’Esh I hoo,” he replied.

“Nigel, “ I said, “I didn’t mean it just now when I said I’d go away.  I lied.  I’m sorry.  I’m asking you now, for the love of God, let me come in and talk to you.”

“Ngho,” he said, standing his ground and even starting to close the door a little.

I stared at him, completely distraught.  “All right then,” I said, “in the name of any love you’ve ever felt for me, let me come in.”

He stared at me.  His eye flashed angry in the electric-light he’d switched-on over the porch when he heard someone at the door.  He looked me up and down.  It rolled a bit and the white showed, like a cornered animal.  Then he stepped aside.

I went into the dining-room and sat at the table and held out my hands across the wood.  There was a film of dust on it.  I saw rings where he had set something down.  This shocked me;  he never, ever let things get dirty.  Mrs. Duffin hadn’t been well, though, my mother had already written.  Still, I would have expected Nigel to dust, at least.  Like Harry, he hated disorder.

He sat down and did not take my hands.  “Shay wha’ ’oo ha’ uh shay,” he said.

“I came to find out what’s the matter with you,” I said.

He bowed his head.  “Nghu’hingh,” he said.

“You’re lying,” I said.  “Stop it.”

“’On’h fheel li’ ’alkingh,” he said.  “Hashe hur’s.”

I believed him.  I knew his face did ache sometimes.  I had once caught myself calling one of my brothers face-ache, as my school-friends did, and then stopped myself. A face-ache wasn’t funny.  It was always an effort for Nigel to speak clearly.  He would often just give up and pull out his pad instead.  I waited for him to do so now.

He didn’t;  he just sat there.

“Then write,” I said, “please?”

“Ngho,” he said.

I was stunned.  Where had this Nigel come from?  He had never failed to be polite before, never failed to communicate.  I stood-up and walked over to the desk where he kept his things.  There was a big foolscap writing-tablet there, with a shopping-list on the top sheet in his writing.  In all his letters to me, his hand had been neat;  in all his notes to us through the years, even the hastiest in a fast conversation, it had had a quick flair.   This was just a scrawl.  It said ‘bread – eggs – wool socks 3 pr – soap – jeyes tissue – Prussian blue (crossed out angrily)  – what the fuck for? – all right forget the bloody P. blue – booze.  Tea.’

I tore it off neatly and brought him the blank pad, along with a pencil.

He wrote: ‘I said NO.’  The pencil-point broke half-way through the O.

I got up and found the sharpener and sharpened it.  The little curly shavings fell into the waste-bin.  It had an empty brandy-bottle in it, and lots of crumpled sheets.  They looked just like his letters to me.  I saw my name on one – they were; written, but not posted.

I set the sharpened pencil down by the pad. “Now tell me what’s wrong,” I said.

‘I’m sick of it,’ he wrote.

“What?”

‘Having no bloody face,’ he wrote.

“Yes you do,” I said, “I’m looking at it!”

‘Doesn’t count,’ he wrote.

“Of course it does!” I cried.

‘Daisy didn’t think so,’ he wrote.

“Blast Daisy,” I said, “she was a selfish little bitch who never deserved you.”

‘Thank you anyway,’ he wrote.

“Nigel,” I said, “did something happen?”

He sat still.

“Tell me,” I urged him.

‘Why?’ he wrote.

“Because I care!” I cried.

‘That’s not enough,’ he wrote.  ‘It’s my business not yours.  You caring doesn’t change that, my dear girl.’

“You’ve always told me everything,” I said, “just like me to you – all your letters – you’ve never kept anything back!  Why start now?  Tell me what happened!”

‘That’s not true,’ he wrote. ‘Never told everything.  Nobody does. Have some sense.’

“I  did!” I cried.

‘Yes,’ he wrote, ‘so you did.’

“So you tell me, now!  I’m not leaving till you do!”

He stared at me.  I think it was clear to him that I meant it. 

He took back the pad from where he had turned it for me to see his last sentence, and  began to write.  He wrote quickly, sloppily, as if once he had started he couldn’t stop or else he wouldn’t be able to continue.  He wrote for five minutes.  I stared round the room.  It was a mess.  The curtains weren’t even drawn.  I would have got up and started to tidy it, but I was afraid that if I didn’t watch over him he would stop writing.  He breathed hard as he wrote;  raggedly, through his nose.  The pencil-point went through the paper a couple of times.   When he had finished he sat back and pushed it across to me.   He didn’t watch me read it;  he got up and poured himself a stiff drink and stood staring out of the window into the dark.   This what he wrote:

 

‘I just wanted to see a bloody picture.  Charlie Chaplin. Had a cold.  Nose ran too much to wear my piece.  Took lots of clean handkerchiefs.  Waited till after dark.  Stood in the Q.  Tried not to bother anybody.  Looked down at ground till was my turn to buy ticket.  Put money on counter, didn’t speak.  Was a new girl.  Gasped but gave me ticket.  Sat down inside.  Was dark.  2 women sat in front.  Young women.  Were behind me in Q.  1 said Did you see that dreadful fright outside?  2 said Yes, god what a sight.  Ought to stay home.  1 said Can you imagine kissing anything like that?  2 squealed and said Oooh you’re awful!  1 said Makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it.  2 said I nearly did, I swear to god.  1 said I’d sooner kiss a haddock.  Compared their sooners for a while.  Sooner eat horseshit.  Sooner be raped by a normal chap.  Escalated.  1 said Sooner jump off a bridge.  2 said Ain’t that the truth.  I couldn’t stand it.  Just wanted to see the picture.  Stood up to leave.  They turned round & saw me.  Said sorry.  I said well next time you might look.  Said they didn’t mean it.  I said yes you did, you meant every bloody word and you know it.  And if you feel sick looking at me then think how I feel looking like this & hearing you say that.  Not deaf.   Said I didn’t ask to kiss you & I didn’t ask to look like this & I can’t help it.  You can.  Help it – being so damn ignorant.  Said next time you look in the mirror, think about this and thank god it’s not your face & think about keeping your bloody mouth shut next time.  All the things I have thought all these bloody years & never said.  Made a scene – everyone looking.  Left.  But it was the truth.  Even Daisy.  Rather kill herself than put up with me.  Am 39 yrs old.  Haven’t asked anybody for anything since Daisy.  All this time.  Do you know how bloody lonely that gets?  Can you even imagine?  They didn’t shoot my balls off you know, just my face.  Should have.  I have feelings.  Keep them to myself.  Didn’t ask for anything.  Haven’t even been to a prostitute.  Not in all this time.  Don’t want to be told what I look like.  Don’t need to – I know.  Didn’t ask to be insulted.  Don’t want you to write to me any more.  Tired of pretending.  Can’t do it.  Now go away.’

“Oh my god,” I said, choking, “Nigel…!”

He showed me the door.

“I’m not leaving yet,” I said.

‘Yes you are,’ he wrote.

“Nigel, that’s not why Daisy killed herself!”

‘How would you know?’ he wrote. ‘Couldn’t bear to be seen with me.  Wouldn’t go out in public with me at all.  Made excuses.  Asked her please not to smoke in front of me because it made my eye water.  So she avoided me.  Couldn’t stand me privately either.  Begged her on my knees.  Came to her with the light off & she still puked.  Locked me up.  My fault she’s dead.  Shouldn’t have asked.  Not supposed to have feelings.’

“Yes you are!” I cried passionately, “of course you are!”

‘For what?’ he wrote.  ‘Daisy used to like dancing – and kissing.  Said I was best kisser.  Could always get her to say yes with a smooch.  No bloody good afterwards.  Course it was my fault.  Expecting her to face this.  Too much to ask of anybody.  Now go away and leave me alone.’

“But you haven’t said why you stopped writing!”

His shoulders slumped.  He stabbed the pad with his forefinger;  underlined the words  Don’t want you to write to me any more.  Tired of pretending.  Can’t do it. 

“I don’t want you to pretend!” I said, “Nigel, I’ve never wanted you to pretend!”

‘Of course you have,’ he wrote.  ‘Have enjoyed our friendship – don’t mean to be rude – liked getting your letters – just ran out of things to say.’

“You’ve never run out of things to say!”

‘Well I have now,’ he wrote.

I thought about Harry’s words to me in the car:  ‘He misses you.’  I had asked Harry to tell me the truth – and he had.  It was short and simple.  I saw how cruel it was to offer this little part of myself, a letter here and there, tales of my doings out in the big world, my friendships, my boyfriends, my failed romances, my job, my pupils, my thoughts on literature, the weather, all the things I had delighted in writing about – to this man who was so much more than just a friend.

“Your letters – ” I said, grasping for words, “Nigel, they’re not just letters – they mean everything, everything – I don’t care if the sun shines or the girls are horrid if you’ve written to me – and when you don’t I die inside!”  I grabbed his hand then, and kissed the knuckles.  He let me, then took it back with a small shake of his head.

Then he took back the pad and wrote slowly.  A tear trickled down his nose and he wiped it away angrily.  When he pushed it across to me he looked away, so as not to see me reading it.  It said:

 

‘My dearest Beauty,

You have seen the Beast in your little jewel and come home to see why he is lying on the floor.  But your kiss does not transform him.  There is no prince here.  The beast is still the beast.  The truth is still the truth.  Nothing you do or say in all your pity and sorrow can change that.  Now be kind and leave him alone.’

“No, I won’t,” I said.  “Not till we finish this.”

He looked at me.  He was so angry and so hurt, that and the drink in him winning-out over his politeness, his reticence, the self-imposed silence of the years.  “I nghiss you!” he cried, his voice cracking, “I nghiss you!  I ’hink about’ ’oo angh I shus’ wan’ huh dhie!”

“Nigel,” I said.

He was shaking.

“What could you think about that would make you want to die?” I asked.

He wrote: ‘Use your imagination.’

“No,” I said, “tell me.  Tell me the truth.  You owe it to me, Nigel, after all these years.”

‘No,’ he wrote, ‘you don’t want to know.’

“Yes, I do!” I cried.

‘No you don’t,’ he wrote.

“Tell me!” I said, half on a sob.  “Nigel, tell me.”

He shook his head.

“I’m not leaving till you tell me,” I said.

‘You said that before.  I’ve told you enough,’ he wrote.

“No you haven’t,” I said.  “And I’m not going till you do.”

He looked at me for a long time, blinking, as if he were trying to make his mind up.  Then he wrote:  ‘All right.  If I tell you, then will you promise to go away and leave me alone?’

“No,” I said.

‘Then why should I?’

“Because that’s what friends do.  Tell the truth.  No matter how much it hurts.”

‘Some things shouldn’t be said,’ he wrote.

“Not this,” I said.

‘You’re wrong,’ he wrote.

“Show me and we’ll see,” I said.

He took the pad back.  He wrote quickly but neatly, this time.  This is what he said:

‘All right then.  But you’ll be sorry you asked.  I told you, I do have feelings.  They should have left me a eunuch, it would have been kinder.  You used to be a little girl to me & I loved you for that.  You’re not a little girl any more, you’re a beautiful young woman & you have your life ahead of you.  Go & live it.  Stop asking me to be your friend.  I’m not your friend.  I’m in love with you.  Tried to hide it – didn’t want to bother you.  Can’t.  It hurts.  There’s nothing left to write to you about.  If you think it’s so sweet writing to me, hearing from me, let me tell you what it’s like.  Really like.  I think about you.  I miss you.  I ache for you.   I want you so much I can’t see straight.  I think about you with those boyfriends & I wish I was dead.   It mounts till I can’t stand it any more & I get drunk & put on a record we used to dance to & then I think about you with your clothes off & I wank till it hurts & then I don’t write to you for a week because I’m so bloody ashamed & then I pretend again, because you write & ask me how I am & what I’ve been up to lately.  Well I can’t go on like that.  Don’t ask me to.  Be kind Helen & leave me alone.  For God’s sake.’

I put my hand to my mouth.  Not because he felt those things – I’d known it, or some of it – but because he was saying them to me.  And because I saw how heartless I’d been in expecting him to stay within the bounds I’d drawn, of being my dear friend and confidant, always waiting at home for me to come back when I could;  always just a friendly letter away. 

 

I stared at his writing, at the hurtful words.   All those boyfriends – what had I been looking for?  For someone with whom I’d feel half as happy as I did when I was with Nigel.  For someone who danced well enough that I enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t the floating and the flying I’d known with Nigel.  For someone whose touch and kiss would move me the way Harry and my mother felt together, all those nights when I couldn’t help overhearing them making-love, and I had wondered how it might be to hold someone and let him come so near, come in.   And I hadn’t been able to see myself,  not at all – not parting my legs for any of them, the boyfriends —  only with Nigel, whom I thought about almost every night, lying there alone, just as he was in his painting, and wishing I could give him that without offending him.

Where was he, this imaginary lover I’d sought?  Who was he?  I hadn’t found anyone yet that fit the bill, that much was obvious.  No-one ever came close, even.  I already knew what love was, and friendship, and intimacy, and honesty;  none of my new acquaintances were ready for such levels of trust or giving – and nor was I with them.  I’d been looking for a future – measuring it against all the dear past that was already mine.  I’d been seeking someone to give myself to that I could trust to see me, and love all they saw;  someone who would know my faults and love me for them;  someone to be myself with.  Someone who wouldn’t be disgusted if I was human, if I was sick or coughing my guts up or had cramps or leaked through my napkin – or be repelled, if I was too honest.  Someone I’d never need to pretend with.  Someone who would treasure all I gave and be faithful in return;  someone worthy of my trust, who wouldn’t use me up and cast me aside, as my father had my mother.  Someone who would take me seriously.  Someone to come home to that I couldn’t wait to see. 

Someone even half so precious as Nigel.

Nigel Lascelles, whose love I had taken for granted because for twelve years now I had never been without it.

Half my life…

And I thought of a future without his letters in it, without him — without the sweet anticipation of coming-home and running right over to see him, without our long rambles and our happy potting-sessions – and without the way I felt when I was with him.

Blissful – easy – beautiful.  Cherished.  Special.

I couldn’t imagine it.  Not a future without all that.  I’d been waiting for some handsome prince to come along and make me feel the way Nigel already did.  And to make me want him more than I already wanted Nigel.

It wasn’t going to happen.  I wasn’t interested in them, the boys who’d tried.  I was just going through the motions.  My heart was already taken:  it had been for years.

What had I been doing?  Running onwards, away from everything that mattered;  taking it for granted.  And he had pushed me.

My world had been an illusion.  Now, at last, it had been shaken-up as it should have been and all the pieces fit together properly.

 

He was writing something else.

‘Now you’ve made me tell you,’ he wrote, ‘all the bitter end of it.  So give me back a shred of dignity & don’t say anything.  Just go home.’

“No,” I said.  I took his face in my hands.  He looked away.  His love for me had changed only because I had;   and I had simply not seen how – in my growing-up – so had mine for him, too.  I had looked out at everything else, and failed to remark upon that most crucial of quiet inner transformations.  Or – had I always been in love with him, and just not named it? 

I thought of the way I had felt the day of the cow-pat, when he anointed my face and I’d kept my hands by my nose half the night afterwards to smell his soap on them.

I thought of that scrap of canvas left from the painting of himself nude, and how I had taken it to bed with me and thought of the rest that he had cut-up and thrown-away;  feeling thrilled and scared by it – and most of all, aching to hold that Nigel too.

How blind could I be?

“I am so sorry,” I said, “for taking you for granted.  I can’t believe I have.  Been so stupid, so short-sighted.  Please forgive me – for all this fresh hurt I’ve caused you —!”

“’O’re h’orgih’n,” he said.  “’Oo didun’ hngnow.  I didun’ ’ell ’oo.  Nghow  I  have, sho – ere’sh nuhing ’o horgive.”  He wrote it too, to be sure I understood:  ‘  – nothing to forgive, my darling girl.  If you will forgive me for not being the friend I meant to be.  I didn’t tell you – couldn’t bear to – should have been more honest.  Thought I could keep it to myself.  If there’s any hurt it’s my fault for being so foolish.  And now it’s time for you to go home.’

He didn’t understand what I was trying to tell him, at all.

“ Nigel, no,” I said.

“’Esh,” he said, his voice catching.  He added:  ‘Left nothing to the imagination now, though.  Even yours.  Been plenty honest.  Far too honest.  As you see.  Be gentle.  I just wanted you to understand.  I’ll get over it.’

“Oh, I understand,” I said, “I understand perfectly –!  I just can’t believe I didn’t before.”

He shrugged.

 

I was upset with myself.  How could I of all people could have failed to know my own heart?  The girl who read everyone like a book, who thought all the time about what others felt and didn’t say – how had I so mis-read my self?  How had I come to take this priceless man for granted, and look right past him into a future that meant nothing without him in it?

 

It was my fault – and his, too. He had had a vision for me, and so powerful was his faith in it that I had shared it without thinking:  a life of acclaim and achievement, ‘going far’ – and, waiting for me somewhere in it, some young unblemished perfect lover worthy of me as he was not.

Only now, when he had shattered it with these truths that hurt too much to conceal any more – sharp truths that tore right through it  – was this vision exposed as the empty sham it was.  It did not hold anything that really mattered, nor the one thing we truly deserved and wanted:  each other.

I had believed his own beliefs, I saw that now, thinking about his behaviour all these years.  Never had he presented himself as a would-be lover;  never had he made any overture, let his hand linger on mine, shown by a glance or a word what his feelings were.  He had kept them so completely to himself that I had accepted that it had to be that way.  Oh, I knew about them – but in a secret, sad way as if they were too private to mention.  He had not kept treating me like the little girl I’d been – but nor had he crossed the line to claim the dear intimacy he so longed for with the woman I now was.  He had kept me at arm’s length – and I had colluded, allowed myself to stay as distant as he set me.  I had joined him in this bitter illusion that love was not for him.  He had not tried to enter the running – why, when there was no point?

 

No:  that was all wrong.  The truth was Why, when the race was already won and it was his, always had been?

 

Now all I had to do was convince him of that.  I could, couldn’t I?

 

 

I touched his hair, where it curled softly over his ear.  “Nigel, marry me,” I said.

He pulled back, the way a horse shies. “’O’n’ ’e shilly,” he said.

“I’m not being silly,” I said, “I mean it!”

He wrote, breaking the pencil again:  ‘You’re just sorry for me right now.  You mean well.  But that’s not enough, Helen.’

“No, Nigel,” I said, “I mean it.  I really mean it.  There’s never been anyone remotely like you.  I’ve never loved anybody else half as much!”

‘I know you do,’ he wrote, impatient with the broken pencil and pressing hard so there would be some mark.  ‘ — mean it.  You are a sweet woman and you have a heart as big as your mother’s.  But don’t say things you’ll regret.  I don’t want your pity.  I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself.  Just let me be.  I’ll manage.’  The pencil hardly wrote any more.   He threw it into a corner in frustration.   I picked it up and sharpened it for him and set it down by his hand;   but he threw it away again and turned away from me.

“No,” I said, “Nigel, look at me, please — I really do! – love you!  With all of me — in all the ways you want!  I’ve just been too caught-up in everything else to see it.  I can’t think of not seeing you – not being with you!  I couldn’t bear to lose you!  You’re the one, Nigel… ”

He shook his head. “Ngho I’ nghot,” he protested.  “Nghon’t fhool yourhel’.  ’Oo’d bhe shorry… ”

 

“No, Nigel – I was fooling myself before !  I’m not, now – listen, oh please listen!  Everything you’ve thought I wanted – I didn’t!  I never wanted it!  You wanted it for me, Nigel – I never did!  I believed you – I believed you when you thought I was going far, and that you weren’t the one!  But Nigel, you are, you are, you are —!  All I ever wanted was you —!”

The red colour was draining from his face.  I had not often seen him pale, and rarely from emotion.  It looked odd, odder than the angry rose and crimson and shiny pink of his scars.  “I ’on’t helieve ’oo,” he said.  “’O’re jush’ upshet nhow be’aushe I wash harsh.  I shouldn’ ha’ ’hrown uh penshil.  Or shaid half wha’ I shaid!  ’O’re shorry huh mhee!  ’On’t be, Helingh – ’hlease, not ’at!”

I despaired.  What could I possibly say or do to dispel these beliefs he had lived by?  How could you show a man with no face left that you weren’t sorry for him?

Perhaps words weren’t what was needed.  Perhaps he wouldn’t believe me if I told him – but what if I showed him?   Words lied, sometimes;  people deluded themselves.  He had just told me I was fooling myself.  But bodies don’t know about lying.  That’s why we cover them up, because they say too much.

Perhaps mine could tell him in a language his could understand.  If I dared.

 

Leaving him at the table, I walked over to the gramophone.  I selected one of our slow dance-records and put it on.  Then I went back to him and pulled him out of his chair and made him dance with me.  He was reluctant to, but I insisted. 

He was past refusing;  he had said so much too much that nothing else could matter.   I could see it in the glitter in his eye.  All his bridges were burned and now I wanted to dance with him, to be kind, not seeing even now how much that would hurt him — so he would take it, anyway:  some bitter loser’s prize. 

We danced.  His wounded, angry notes lay on the table behind us, an agonising confession:  merciless truths intended to push me away.   I could feel them even as we moved together, the sharp pencilled words telling all he felt, what such dances meant to him now:  a cruel tease, a memory to torment himself with, a frantic solitary comfort – self-hating, temporary – from the unbearable pitch of feeling he could not escape.  His light embrace mocked all the things he had told me:  how it was only his face that wasn’t whole;  the rest of him was, like anyone else – they hadn’t shot that off.  And he missed me;  was in love with me, hopelessly so — and it hurt.  He ached for me, wanted me so much he couldn’t see straight.  And he couldn’t pretend any more:   so much hurt I wondered how the paper could carry it.

In return, I had asked him to marry me – he had heard the words – but (I could see it, feel it) to him this could only be a delusion on my part, out of pity, because he had said too much and made me sorry for him.  And in an act of breathtaking cruelty, excused only by its heedlessness and kind intentions, I had now got him to dance with me again.

It was the most poignant dance we ever danced.  I felt him quiver in my arms.  His self-control was extraordinary:  I was not quivering, but out-and-out trembling.   We danced till the record finished.  It was a slow sweet dance and now that I had let myself feel all I felt for him I was almost giddy by the time it was over.  I was aware of his height and the sensual, natural grace with which he moved – even when (as now) he was restraining other feelings.  I thought about all the times I had been close to him and felt this half-swoon from his nearness – so few times, so carefully limited:  so precious.   It was hard to believe I could have been so foolish as not to see it – not to know it for what it was.  Now I did I was almost bowled-over by it:  by the sheer force of all I felt for him — and always had.  It was like a chorus in my head:  Helen, you took this precious man for granted —!  You almost lost him…  You could have, if he hadn’t loved you enough to tell you the truth!  How blind could you be? 

I stopped swaying as the music faded, and put my hands on his shoulders.  He wouldn’t look at me.

“This is  what I want,” I told him softly, “what I’ve always wanted.  To be in your arms…  you;  you, Nigel.”

He pulled back from me, as he had whenever we finished dancing, as he always did:  before it could turn from a dance into the embrace it was crying to be.  I saw us, the moves we’d stepped all through the years, so careful of one another.  A tall, tender man had taught a little girl to dance;  in his arms, in his look she had seen herself turn from girl to woman.  Every grace and twirl she had, she owed to him;  every light step he had shown her, every giddy rush was his.  Dancing in his arms, she thought of nothing but flying.  Dancing with anyone else, she thought of him.  Lying alone in bed, she thought of dancing with him – and loving him;  and cried herself to sleep, sometimes, knowing she couldn’t offer and nor would he accept – and to do so would only hurt him.

That is — if she did it because she was sorry for him.  He would hate it:  she could never, never offer such a thing.

Only dream of it, long for it, ache for him.

But what if she was in love — and always had been?

No – that was unthinkable.   She had been a sacred trust to him, a child that loved him wholeheartedly.  He would have stepped in front of a train before he betrayed such a trust.   He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her;  he wouldn’t have hurt a hair of her head.  She was meant to fly, and it was his gift in life to watch her, wave her off.

He hadn’t intended any of it:  all he had ever done was love her in return, and give her everything she asked of him.  His time, his care, his biscuits, his company, his orchids, his umbrella, his cooking;   his headaches, his patient help with her homework, his mending, his boot-polish, his concern, his history, his honest answers to all her questions, always;  his letters, his skills, his interest, his heart – everything he had to give.

Except himself;  because she deserved better than that.

The only part of it that wasn’t true;  the cruelest.

So here we were, the two of us, our passion for one another contained all this time:  the man whose devotion was as whole as his face was not – and the girl-turned-woman who had always loved him, and taken it and him for granted.

So all I had to do now was nail the lie — wasn’t it?  — about what he deserved, what we ought each of us to have.  He had stepped back from me;  went to lift the needle from the record.   I followed him.  The gramophone was in a corner and he stood in front of it.   He set the playing-arm down carefully in its cradle.  “I’m not sorry for you,” I said, “I’m not!  That’s what’s stopped me all this time – that you’d think I was!”

He shook his head.

I moved towards him and he backed all the way to the wall.  I took him in my arms and stood close against him, belly to belly with my head on his breast, so that his wanting could not be hidden.  He had kept it from me all this time – I could have cried, thinking how thoroughly he had done so – and how I had let him.  It felt so precious there now, pressed up against me because at last I had come too near to let him pretend any more:  pretend that he didn’t feel as he felt, didn’t want all he wanted, didn’t need what he needed. 

He didn’t see it that way.  He would have let the wall swallow him if he could. Failing that, he pulled back;  but I had left him no room.  He gripped me by the shoulders and pushed me away, so there was once more space between us.  Heaven forbid I should feel for myself all he felt for me.  “’Shtop i’!” he cried, “shtop i’!  shtop i’!”

I didn’t know what to say, so I took his hand and put it directly on my breast.  He left it there in spite of himself.  It was the sweetest thing I had ever felt.  I wanted him to caress it, but he didn’t.  His fingers closed slightly, though, so instead of just touching my breast he was holding it.  God, how was I ever to make him believe me?   He was sure even now that this was just because I was sorry for him.  It was in the jerk of his head away from my kiss, the reluctance still to take what I was trying so desperately to give him.  

I thought of something.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was the truth – and only the truth was going to get through to him, here. Not sincere protestations of love, but something he could believe for himself.  I stood on tiptoe, and whispered in his ear:  “Nigel – of all the men I’ve danced with – you’re the only one that left me with damp knickers.”

It was true;  as true as it was direct.  That was how I had even found out about such things.  Ivy had put me straight.  I didn’t tell her it was Nigel that left me melted.  I was only sixteen and I’d thought I felt that way because he was a man and the others were boys. 

He took a shuddering breath.  I couldn’t believe I’d said it – and neither could he.  “Ngho,” he groaned, disbelieving, “ngho, Helingh…”

“It’s true,” I whispered.  “How could I make up something like that?”

I felt him give in.  Oh, not to the idea that I might love him, but at least just to this physical contact.  His every nerve was screaming for it – how could he have refused?  It was as if something inside him just said damn the consequences and take this now.

He pulled me close and squeezed my bottom.  His right hand was on my breast, like in the Song of Songs.  He allowed himself a small caress.  I gasped.   This time he let me kiss him on the mouth and seek his tongue softly.  He let me do the looking.  When I found it I felt him quiver again.  He let me, for a couple of seconds, then pulled his face away and hid it in my neck.  I felt him trying to recover himself.

“’Ish ish ’laying wi’ f’hire,” he said, his voice trembling, “Helingh, ’hleashe —  ’ere are a hungrid reashons nhot uh ’o ’ish.”   He looked at me then, his eye over-bright, and searched my face sadly for all that could never be, that he ached for so.   He brought his hands up to cup my face:  his thumbs grazed my jaw on either side.  “Have shenshe, shweethear’ — we shoul’ ’eave ’hings uh way ’ey are.  ’Efore we shpoil ev’er’hing.  Ih’sh never wi’she uh geh’ ngharried away by huh momen’ — ”

“And there are a hundred more reasons to  do it,” I whispered.  “And ninety-eight of them are you having to see I’m not sorry for you –!   And I don’t want to leave things the way they are –  I want to hold you!  – I’ve always wanted to!  I hate things the way they are —!  We both deserve better, Nigel – ”

I had advanced bold fingertips lightly over his trousers, below the waist.  “Shto’p ’a’!” he added.  It was a plea, though, more than a command.

“I don’t want to stop it,” I said, though I did stop for the moment because of the panic in his voice.  “Nigel, this is truly what I want – I always have, I just didn’t see it – I do now – please — you have to believe me!  You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about this… and not known how to ask you, in case I only hurt you again –!”

He shook his head.  It was too much to expect of him, to have everything turned upside-down in a few minutes like this.  He was completely bewildered – and so stripped in his vulnerability I wanted to cry.  He had always conducted himself with consummate dignity, with me – till now, when the truth and I had joined in ripping it away.  What was left to him, without it?  Who was the man now so uncovered?   Would he dare to find out?

It had been a dozen years since he had laid himself open so;  fourteen or more, since it had been happy and carefree.  The Nigel with the shattered face had never been loved just as he was now.  He had begged, even, once upon a time – it was there on the table – begged, he wrote, on his knees – for acceptance from the woman who ought to have loved him more than ever – and met revulsion.  He had expressed all he felt, then, anyway – anger, hurt, despair — and been put away for it, on a locked ward.  No wonder he had locked-up the feelings that brought him to that.  Did he even know how to be a lover any more?  Would he let himself have that, be that?  How?  Where was he to find that long-buried self?

Nowhere, if not in my arms:  I knew that.  Perhaps not at all — but here, of all places, if there was anywhere on earth for him to be wholly himself again and beloved for it.  Here;  now.  Out of despair, and the gift of the unvarnished truth of him. 

Would he let himself?

I was moving just my fingertips gently across his chest. I couldn’t bear to stop touching him altogether.   I could feel the fine cool cotton lawn of his pale-blue shirt and under it the edges of his undershirt, and his warmth through it too.  He wasn’t wearing a tie:   I had surprised him at home.  He looked so dear, in shirtsleeves and braces.  He would sometimes take his jacket off in the greenhouse, and I had always loved the way he looked then.  Easy;  boyish. 

But he wasn’t easy now.  His breathing was ragged;  his adam’s-apple jerked up and down in his throat.  “’Ish ish ridi’huloush,” he said.

Ridiculous, that anyone should love him and want him.

“Tell you what,” I said, knowing that if I didn’t keep pressing my advantage I would lose it to his self-loathing.  “Just listen – all right?  We’ve got nothing to lose — not now you’ve been so honest with me.  And you’re dying for it too – look at you, Nigel, you know you are!   – and so am I.  Why don’t we just let it happen and see — can’t we?   Just try?  Just be sweet together, just once?   Like real sweethearts —?  Kiss and touch and feel what we feel…  and stop pretending we don’t feel it?   You know we both want to — we have done for years — look at us, being so careful and all the time we each wanted this — wanted each other — wanted to be more than friends!  And if it’s everything we hope for – we can talk about the future.  And if it’s not – we can kiss and agree to be friends, still, can’t we?  But we have to give it a chance, Nigel, please —?”

“Ngho,” he said, “’Ouldn’t!  No’ ’oo, Helingh!”  He said it – not you, Helen! – as if I were too sacred to be approached by anything so raw as his true feelings for me.

“Me of all people!” I cried.  “Look at me!  I’ve always loved you, Nigel!  I want to touch you — I told you, I want to kiss you — I want to feel all of you in my arms!  I want to feel all the ways you make me feel when you’re close to me — dizzy and thrilled and scared and even damp…  like I always do when I dance with you — when I think about you, even! — Not because I’m sorry for you — but because I’m crazy about you…  because you’re all I ever wanted a man to be…  because ever since the day you rubbed that cream into my face I’ve been dying for you to touch me again —!  And all the dances we ever had just made me ache for you…  Won’t you let me?  Nigel, please, for gods’ sake… please!” 

His hand trembled, the one that held my breast like a flower.

“I wo’ ’ngho all the way,” he said, his voice breaking, “I love ’oo hoo mush fuh ’at!”

“All right,” I said, knowing as he said it that it was his surrender.  In what he said he would not do he was giving me all the rest of him. 

 

We kissed again.  His mouth was stiff;  I kissed his cheek, his neck, the place where his shirt opened:  his good eyelid, his brow.  His hand moved in the slightest, most tentative of caresses.  It was the sweetest thing I had ever felt.  The fingers that had held the brush to paint Blue Helen finally held Helen herself.  I put my own hand over it and squeezed.  He sighed and shivered.  I felt how close he was to being overwhelmed altogether.  I took his hand and without words we went up to his bedroom.  It was an L-shaped room, under the angle of the eaves, and his narrow single bed looked as if it would barely hold the two of us. I left the light on outside on the landing and closed the door almost all the way so there was just enough light to see by, but not so much he would think about his face too much.  I wanted him to forget that, just for now.  Was that so much to expect, for him to be able to make love for five minutes without thinking about it?  How often had he been able to forget it, between then and now?

There was a fire laid in the fireplace and he stooped on one knee and lit it.  I was grateful for that, because the day had been warm but there was a chill now.  I wondered how many days the fire had been laid there unlit.  From before the dust on the table, probably?  It caught, though, and soon was a pleasant glow of coal with blue or yellow flickers now and then as a pocket of coal-gas sighed.

Even in this extremity of feeling he was practical, thought of my comfort.  Because his secret was out now, once and for all.  He loved me enough to stop and light the fire;  he worshipped the ground I walked on, and had told me so.  We were here to find out whether I felt the same way – or was just sorry for him.  I knew the truth;  he couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it.  I could see it in his look.  He was going to show me in the most painful way possible that it wouldn’t work between us – so I would leave him alone and stop asking, stop meaning-well.  If it meant exposing himself fully in the process, body and soul, because that was what it would take to convince me, then so be it.

But heaven forbid I should catch a chill in learning that heartbreaking lesson.

I watched the ease with which he kneeled, the economical beauty of all his movements;  the curve of his spine and the changing angle of his shoulders as he leaned in from the side to blow on it.   I felt the same hunger with which I had observed the grace and skill of everything he did, always.  He was quick and deft and used just the right amount of force in striking;  the match flared at once for him.  I wasn’t good with matches, I distrusted them.  They sulked or broke for me.  Not for him.  And when he touched me, too, for those few swift seconds I burned.  The way the flames took quickly made me think of himself, then, catching fire as helplessly each time but letting me do it to him over and over again.

I felt the warmth spread through the room.

He blew on it one more time, dusted his hands together and got to his feet.  Turning to me he stood there, chin lifted, hands dropped at his sides palms-out as if to say:  well — ?!

It was my move. 

I stood in front of him and started to unbutton the rest of my buttons down the front of my frock.  I felt nervous, never having done this before for anybody – and exultant, because now I was and he was letting me.  I was glad it was cut that way:  what a happy choice I’d made this morning, without thinking.  Unless it was just another never-to-be repeated tease, like Blue Helen —?  I saw it in his head-shake, that it was.

I stopped then and put his hands there instead, and he finished the buttons slowly, like a man in a dream.  The careful deliberation of his fingers made my throat ache.  I had dressed quite casually for the journey, to be comfortable;  I didn’t have enough bosom to need a tight brassiere, and no-one would be able to tell the difference anyway.  Only my cammie lay between his hands and me.  He unbuttoned that too.  I don’t think I breathed while he did so.  The buttons were much smaller, mother-of-pearl;  but he was deft as always, for all his trembling.  We both almost buckled at the knees when he slipped his palms inside and caressed what he found there.

I touched him in return, through his trousers. I had never done this before either, though a couple of too-eager lads had had a good try at pulling my hand down thataways, and I was shocked and thrilled all at once to find out all I had been missing.  I had no idea a man could get as hard as that.   The thought of taking anything so substantial into my narrow little self was a bit terrifying, and I knew it would have to hurt the first few times – god, it was going to be a stretch! – but then I thought about how he would feel, and I just melted. 

Not now, though, he had told me:  he loved me too much for that.  I knew him too well to suppose he would break his word, or take advantage of my feelings.  I would have to be patient.  I ached to be his altogether;  but for now, all I could do was touch him.  It would have to be enough.  I prayed that it would be.

I could see in his look and the way he stood that he was convinced still I was sorry for him, and this was what it would take for me to see that, too.  He just couldn’t refuse it.  After all, he had already said so many things there was no going back from – one more painful thing between us could hardly make any difference.  And he was so desperate for this that he was prepared to bear the humiliation, even, so starved for my touch was he.  For any touch at all.

His knees gave way altogether when I touched him there, and he sat down suddenly on the bed.  I stood in front of him, and pulled my frock off and my waist-slip and my cambric bust and my matching knickers too.  He helped, still with those trembling hands.  “Look,” I whispered, “I told you – they’re damp, Nigel.” 

He took them from me and pressed them to his face. 

I suppose he couldn’t believe it.  But things like that don’t lie, not even well-meaning white lies.  What he felt and smelled was the truth.  Perhaps it wasn’t very romantic – but then again, perhaps it was.  I thought it was, because it was real and he needed to know that.

“ ’nghod, Helingh —!” he groaned.  I think he was starting to believe me.  At least, enough for him to pull me down beside him;  take my hand and draw it back to his groin, where the scent of me had brought him a sharper ache even than before – sharp enough for him to ask for this, now, that he could find no words for.  I had been bold:  he must have presumed I knew what I was doing.

‘I think about you with those boyfriends & I wish I was dead… ’

Nigel, oh, Nigel — !  Just for once, letting himself have as much from me, now.  Not even suspecting it was more than I’d ever given-away before — or he wouldn’t have dreamed of allowing this, of that I felt quite sure.  I’d sounded so forward and knowing;  I heard myself telling him how I longed to touch and kiss him – and giving him my knickers! – what a seductress.  I was behaving like a complete hussy with him.  How was he to know I’d never said or meant such a thing before in my life?  How was he to imagine himself the only man I’d wanted?

He slumped back slantwise across the bed, propped-up on the pillows.  I unbuttoned his trousers.  I couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like to him to have me doing that, after all this time.  His sex leapt under my touch.  I pulled his clothing aside and held him.  I had never seen a man close-up, and his painting had not been this detailed.  I was stunned to find there was a shape to him inside his skin, not just a featureless round end as I had always imagined. My brothers’ little soft acorns had left me unprepared for this.  “God, Nigel,” I said, “you’re beautiful!  Just – your shape – and so silky – oh my god!”

I ran my fingertips up and down the cleft of him, slipped that satin hood back a little further to see.  He gasped.  I wanted to know the rest of him, and slid my hand down deeper inside his trousers.  His balls were as furry as his shaft was smooth.  It was hard;  they were soft.  The contrast moved me, somehow, and I couldn’t help a little sob.

He said my name, more brokenly than ever but I knew its syllables too well not to recognize it.

“ – beautiful, Nigel,” I repeated helplessly, “I had no idea – I didn’t know – look at you – my god, just look at you – the way you’re made – I never saw anything so exquisite – I’ve never touched anyone like this before — I never imagined – ”

I watched his face as he realized he was my first and only sweetheart.  I knew how to read emotion in-between the scars:  I had been doing it for twelve years now.  His pupil widened till it was all black.  His jaw trembled.  We looked at one another;  both of us had tears in our eyes.  I closed my fingers round him a little.  Then he couldn’t help himself:  he lifted himself off the bed so that he moved in my hand.  A groan escaped him then, and another as I repeated the motion for myself.

“Like this?” I said, “is this right?”  I had thought he couldn’t possibly get any stiffer, but I found I was mistaken.

He sighed deeply, and lifted my hand away.  Oh, I didn’t want to let go of him!  Then he pulled me close and snuggled his head to my breasts and licked them softly till I was whimpering.  “But I want to touch you!” I cried, “Nigel, let me –!”

“Yay-tuh,” he gasped.  “Wai’ —!”

Later.  He was a few sweet seconds away from the relief his body shrieked for, and he was asking me to wait – !  His fingers slipped between my legs.  He caressed me there till I melted and I realized that he knew exactly what he was doing.  He made-love as beautifully as he danced – of course he did, of course!   Why wouldn’t he?  This was Nigel Lascelles:  lover, husband, athlete, dancer, officer — and consummate gentleman.  I clutched his head, nuzzled at last against my bosom where I had longed for it to be.  He was kissing and licking me – licking for tenderness’ sake, because his poor kisses were so limited and unfeeling – all with infinite gentle finesse.  His hair was soft as feathers.  I stroked it and he stroked me and I felt myself burst inside.  All the bubbles I had ever felt, all the times I fizzed because Harry was doing it with my mother;  all the times I’d been kissed and felt light-headed, all the times I had twirled dancing into his arms – they all just came up in one shocking rush and swept through me.  I gasped his name.  He had slipped two fingers into me, so very carefully, as if he understood all the angles of my body inside as well as out, and besides the burning of that I felt myself squeezing them involuntarily in a little trail of jolts.  It felt electric that any part of him was there for my insides to squeeze on, even if it wasn’t the part we both longed-for.

He made a sound between a sob and a groan, when he felt me and heard my gasps.  That couldn’t be just kindness, either:  he knew what I felt, what he had wanted me to feel.  “Th’nghere,” he said, his voice cracking:  “th’nghere, Helingh, – ’at’sh fuh’ ’oo – fuh’ all huh ’imes I’ve ’nghought o’ i’!    —  Leash I canh ’e uh your firsh for ’at!”

“You can be my first for this, too,”  I said, close to tears myself now, breathless and overwhelmed by what he had just given me.  I undressed him the rest of the way;  and he let me finish what I had started.

It didn’t take long – how could it have?   I felt so grateful for that secret glimpse in the granary long ago, and for the aching candour of Harry’s diaries, now that at last my own sweetheart was here in my arms and thanks to all of that I knew what to do for him – my own beautiful darling whose body was mine to love at last.  I closed my hand around him.  He drew breath sharply at my touch, my name forming on his lips.  I made just a few of those sweet, frank up-and-down caresses that made the ridge of him flare and his back arch and a deep groan break from him.  It was so easy, I almost cried.  I was still on fire from his touch. 

I told him I loved him;  I said it twice. 

I saw him believe it.  “Helingh!” he cried-out.  Then he was gasping and spurting everywhere:  the bed, the wall, me, himself. 

I had no idea there would be so much, or that it would jet out so forcefully.  No wonder Harry had tried to warn my mother he was about to splash her – and no wonder she had had to dry him with his shirt!

But Harry hadn’t cried.  Not that time, anyway.

 

Nigel did;  of course he did.  After everything that had happened, what else could he have done?  It had been twelve long, aching years since he wept on my mother’s breast in the hospital:  and that long-ago day he had done so, with everything lost to him, himself included,  he had been only three years older than I was now!   It was all one tide of feeling.  He just choked and groaned in his ejaculating, and then his groans became great clotted sobs like gouts of blood torn from his throat and he hid his face in my breast and wept and wept, unable to hold it back any more.  There was so much to feel, now that he had let himself:  everything he had been keeping inside, since Daisy even – and I held him close and rocked him, and told him again over and over that I loved him;  that I always had, and always would.

His tears and the run from his nose joined his seed till I was all wet and my breasts all slippery – but I didn’t let go.  I saw Blue Helen, instead, and held him even closer.  I didn’t mind at all, not even if I was bathed in his seed and everything else.  I thought of the delphinium-blue he had painted my nipple, and that it had needed this sweet watering to flower.  It was flowering now.

 

I just said his name and kept stroking his beautiful soft hair and feeling myself trembling.  Nigel, who had given so much and asked for so little.  Asked it of Daisy, who had refused – and since then, asked for nothing:  nothing.  He had not even asked for this – I had.  I’d had to beg it from him.

Oh, how I wanted him to love me all the rest of the way.  I could still feel where he had slipped his fingers inside me.  I wanted to bring him there again and hold him while he gasped – but this time where he belonged, his seed not spilled but treasured and contained in the chalice of my body. 

But he wouldn’t have;  not for anything.   Not now – not yet.  He was on his honour:  to ask it of him would have been an insult.  To have had this much of him had been a miracle.  I just had to trust that now he would see there was nothing else for us to do but claim one another.

I thought the flow of tears would help to clear his sight, once they were all shed.  God, there were so many.

I didn’t mind.  How long ought it to have taken, after all he had endured?  If he had wept for a month it wouldn’t have begun to address all the pain.

At last he was spent, and could murmur my name in reply when I said his.

“You’ll have to marry me now,” I whispered,  kissing his brow, “ – because next time I won’t be able to stop there.”

“’Oo shoul’ ’hink long an’ har’,” he said, his voice hoarse from weeping.  “’On’t rush into shumhing ’oo migh’ regre’, Helingh!”

“My only regret is that it took me so long, Nigel,” I said,  “ – to ask you for this!”

“I wa’ ’hrying huh show ’oo i’ ’ouldn’ hee engy goo’,” he said, helplessly – he’d been trying to show me it wouldn’t be any good.  He’d thought it would be hopeless and sad and bittersweet — and instead it had been nothing but sweet — sweet — sweet.  Expecting pity, he had been met instead with a passion to match his own.  The tremor in my voice when I told him he was beautiful could not have been anything but sincere.   I had been neither kind nor condescending, but incandescently charged with joy and wonder.  He had found himself a lover once again,  in spite of himself;   found his darling not sorry for him but begging for his touch, his kiss:  moved and then molten with his loving, when he dared at last to give it as he knew to do, with his dancer’s grace — and trusting himself enough to offer it – and me, to want and welcome it from him.

Our actions had spoken things that words never could – about both of us. Beyond belief he found me wet and eager, responsive and welcoming  – and himself most dearly wanted, just as he was.  The unawakened girl shown in Blue Helen had caught fire for the first time at his hands.  That he was beloved there could be no doubt – not now, not any more.  Not after that.  Feelings don’t lie, or pretend to be kind:  they just are.

 “Well, that was a failure, then, wasn’t it!” I said.  “Sorry, Nigel darling – it looks as if you’ll have to think again… ”

“I wash callingh ’ore blu’h!”

“Calling my bluff – ?”

“I ’hought ’oo’d ’hange ’ore mingh… ”

“Change my mind?  Nigel, look at you, look at me – look at what happened!  We were frantic for this, both of us!”

“I wa’ uh ’hrantic  one,” he said, “’oo were shus’ shwee’ – angh virginghal.  Whi’ you din’ ’ell me — ’oo minghx!  Le’in’ mhee ’hink ’oo’d done ’ish ’efore! ”

“You’d never have said yes otherwise,”  I murmured,  “ – and please god my virgin days are over… soon, Nigel, before either of us gets any older!”

“’A’sh anuher ’hing,” he said, “I’ngh ’oo ol’ fuh ’oo.”  – he was too old for me.

“Emma,”  I said, “ – and Mr. Knightley… !   Gorgeous, perfect, passionate, ardent, heavenly Mr. Knightley…!”

“’ister Roches’er, ’ore like,” he said, laughing at himself.

“Captain Lascelles,” I said, warmly.  “I don’t want any other hero, or any other happy ending.”

“Beasht,” he said.  “Mhy inconshievable beau’h’y… ”

“No,” I said, “no!”

“ ’Uh we ’eally goingh huh ’oo ’ish?” he asked, putting his face by mine on the pillow and looking me straight in the eye.  His hand strayed in spite of himself to cup my breast in-between us.

“If you’re going to behave like that, then what choice do we have?” I whispered. “I’ve got a reputation to think of!  You told me how important that is – remember?  The day the Queen dropped in?”

“I wan’ ’oo uh ’ee ha’phy,” he said.  “’Ouldn’t ’ear i’ if ’oo weren’gh.”  He wanted me to be happy.

“I couldn’t bear it any more the way it was,” I said.  “I missed you – missed you – missed you.  This is what’s right for us, Nigel.”

He gave a shuddering sigh.  “’nghisshed ’oo,” he said.

“Oh, I know,” I said.  “I asked Harry what the matter was, and that’s what he said.  If I wanted to know the truth.”

“’Ouldn’h hide i’ engy mhore,” he said.

“Thank god,” I said, “Nigel, thank god you couldn’t!  Or else it might have taken me another year to come to my senses!  – if you’d just kept writing – and pretending – !”

“Didunh’ w-ant ’o pr’eten’, ” he said.  He sounded so weary, so relieved.

“That’s all done with now,” I said, “isn’t it?  All the pretending.  That we don’t feel what we do?  All of it?  Please, Nigel, say it is?”

He sighed and put his mouth to my breast and brushed it with what was left of his face and licked it again.  I cuddled him.  His gentle nuzzling turned me inside-out.  “Don’t stop,” I gasped when he paused.  I could have held him like that all night.  When we were married I prayed that I would – that he would.  Greatly daring, and encouraged by the shake in my voice, he opened his stiff mouth then and took my nipple into it and suckled.  It was noisy, the way he drank tea – he couldn’t help it, there were no soft lips to close around it.  Just his dear shattered, patched and mended mouth, the inside, his tongue that still had feeling, and (so gently) what teeth he had.

I heard myself cry-out and pulled him closer.

He made love to me again, with his mouth this time.  He made me come again.  And it was me that cried.  I didn’t even know that word for it;  he gave me that, too.  “Lo’s of ’ords,” he said, when I asked him:  “ – shum shwee’er ’an o’hers.  ’Oo knghow ’em.  C’imaxh – or in F’ensh ish ’a ph’tite hmor’e.  I like ’h’um.  ’H’um ish ny’sh.  K-hum.  Fuh a womangh hoo.  Ny’sh way uh shay i’.  Shimple…   I alwaysh wanhe’d ma’e ’oo h’um.  Ever shinsh uh day ’oo too’ ’ore c’o’hes off…  A’sh wha’ I ushed ’hink abou’. ”

Oh, Nigel.  That was what he used to think about – making me come?  Ever since the day I took my clothes off:   giving pleasure, not taking it?

I said so.

“ ’Lu’ ’oo,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh god, Nigel,” I said, “I know.  You do.  More than I deserve.”

“Ngho,” he said, “’oo dheser’e be’er ’n nhgis.  ’N mhee.”

“I deserve better than this?” I asked softly, “ – better than you?  Nigel Lascelles, you stop that right now and don’t you ever, ever say that to me again.  Ever.  Ever.  Do you hear me?”

“’Esh,” he said.  He was still shaking.

I held him till he fell asleep.   I barely moved all night, so as not to disturb him in the narrow bed.  I’m not sure he even dreamed, he slept so deeply – like someone who has been poleaxed.   The fire went out, but we lay skin to skin under the blankets and I didn’t feel cold at all.  All I could think of was how stupid I had been not to see how essential he was to me – to keep thinking all this time that there might be anybody else.  Each time I woke I felt him beside me and reached to hold him again:  my irreplaceable, incomparable lover, so undemanding and faithful in his love, so selfless, wanting only the best for me and perfectly sure that whatever that was, it could not possibly include himself.

 

 

 

I thought that when I didn’t come home again, it would fairly have to tip the wink to my mother and Harry.  I wondered what they would think, and if they would mind.  Surely of all people they would understand, wouldn’t they?

 

In the morning we cuddled and murmured;  then Nigel got out of bed and brought the fire back to life, and carried-up hot water.  I would have made love to him again, but he gently told me no;  not now.  Not yet.  Not now we knew, and there was nothing for us to prove.  It wouldn’t be right, he said;  he’d only let me because he didn’t think I’d go through with it – and then he was too far beside himself to stop.  Soon, though, please god, he said, Helen darling:  soon?  And properly, yes ——  but first we would have to have a long talk. 

All right, I said, because I knew it was going to be.  It couldn’t be anything but, not now.

I watched him washing and getting dressed.  It was everything I had ever dreamed it would be, gazing my fill on his sweet male body with all its mysteries revealed.  He wasn’t even forty yet – he was fit and comely.  I just stared at him now, open-mouthed at the beauty of him.  All the times I had imagined him in my arms with no clothes on just like his painting, back when I longed to give him this and thought it couldn’t ever be because he would think I was sorry for him and I, too, was afraid that I was, I had known he would be – from the muscles of his arms to the long lean thighs of him and his sex bobbing dearly in-between them as he moved about the room.  It was indeed coloured more like his face than the rest of him, I saw now in the light:  his painting hadn’t lied, only exaggerated the hues they shared.  I liked the twist of dark hair at its root, and the way the same hair extended up his belly and spread in small curls in-between his small rosy nipples, a few thrilling wisps to rub my cheek against with a lot of bare skin in-between.  I wanted to kiss and lick him there;  to think that I could, that I would, made me almost swoon.  I saw the tidy scar on one side half-way down, remembering how they took his rib to patch his jaw;  I wanted to kiss that, too.  His feet and toes moved me,  all bony and well-shaped.  I liked the twin pale globes of his buttocks, with the long curve of his back rising out of them like a stem.  I liked the shape of his calves and the dark fuzz that adorned them.   I liked the long tuft of hair under his arms;  I had rubbed my face in it before he got up out of bed, even.  “Wha’ are you ’oing!” he cried, when I did:  “’a’ ’icklesh!” 

“Marking your scent on me,” I smiled, “like an animal.  You’re mine. Your soap, your sweat – all mine, Nigel.”

He closed his eye and for a moment I thought he was going to cry again – then he laughed, though with a sob in it too.  I had done it spontaneously, but I saw what it meant.  A girl who was sorry for him wouldn’t dream of doing that.  Only a woman who was in love with him would want to. 

He really might believe me after all.

I liked his hands, his long careful fingers.  When I kissed them in the morning, before he got up to wash, I could taste where he had slipped two inside me, hours before.

When he was all dressed, he sat back on the bed and held his knees and watched me do the same.  He had revived the fire to a blaze, brought more coal and fresh hot-water upstairs for me, so I wouldn’t have to go down to the chilly bathroom.  He leaned his head sideways on his arms, the worst side of his shattered face down, and then just let himself gaze.

I felt a bit shy, but then I remembered the time I had teased him with Blue Helen and the way I had bent down in front of him then, while he was holding my hand to help me up, and rubbed my knees without thinking so my breasts jiggled right in his face.  And what it had done to him then.  The thought made me blush, and he exclaimed in delight when he saw how far the blush spread.

“’old ’oo ’oo wuh har ’oo p’hitty,” he said.

“Nothing and nobody could be too pretty,” I said, “not for you.”  I stood right in front of him now to put my clothes on and let the jiggling happen again as I bent over to draw on my stockings and then pull them up, knowing that this time it was nothing but sweet, sweet – because it wasn’t a tease any more, it was a promise.  And he didn’t have to look away.  Too pretty was what he couldn’t have.  So it couldn’t be too pretty now it was going to be his, whenever he wanted.

Just pretty enough.

I couldn’t find my knickers, though, so just my slip had to do.

“’Od,” he said softly, “’nghod!”  He was stiff again, I could see through his trousers, and for the first time ever he didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t.  And there would be more joys to come, soon, instead of aching, for this proud and private man who had never asked anyone for anything in all these years.

I finished dressing, and bent over and kissed the top of his head.

Hand in hand, we went downstairs.

 

He turned to me then and patted his face.  “’y jaw’h tired,” he said, “ca’ I write?  ’Oo min’?”

“Of course not,” I said, “darling.”  His jaw was never particularly strong, and I saw that his ardent love-making I had so enjoyed was a special gift of his limited abilities.

The writing-pad still bore the painful tales of the night before.  He tore them off with a disbelieving look at me, and started a fresh sheet.  He wrote:  ‘Are you quite sure about this?  It’s not too late to change your mind.  This was the most miraculous thing that ever happened to me.  And I will love you for it for ever.  But you don’t have to go through with it.’

He turned the pad around and pushed it towards me, but I had been reading as he wrote.  I pushed it away and frowned at him.

‘Take a long hard look in the light of day,’ he wrote, and tilted his head so the worst of the damage was in the full light from the windows.

“Nigel,” I said, “I only ever saw you once the way you used to be.  The day you married Daisy.  Just enough to remember that handsome face.  This is the only you I’ve ever known.”

‘Wherever you go with me, people will stare,’ he wrote.

“I don’t care!” I cried, “how could you think I’d care about that!”

‘Daisy did,’ he wrote.

“Daisy was a cow,” I declared.

He chuckled.  ‘They’ll still stare,’ he wrote. ‘You think you’ll get used to it, but you don’t.  I know.’

“I’ll stare back,” I said hotly, and he laughed out loud at that.  Then he shook his head. 

‘Still don’t believe it,’ he wrote.  ‘Feels like being blown-up all over again.’

“But nicely, I hope?” I asked.

He nodded and drew a huge Cheshire-cat grin on the paper.  ‘Shall we go and tell them?’ he added.

“Let’s have tea first, can we?” I asked, not wanting to break this spell yet and not at all sure what my mother was going to say about me spending the night with a man – even this one.  She would have something to say, that was for sure.  I didn’t know if I had behaved badly in her eyes, or whether the circumstances counted as exigent enough.  But she would have to be happy for us, wouldn’t she?  That at least wasn’t in any doubt.

He got up at once to put the kettle on.   While it boiled we sat and held hands and stared into each others’ faces.

He had told me fiercely that he was a fright.  In a way he was – superficially, as if that mattered.  He had pleaded with me not to be sorry for him – and I wasn’t.  I felt no regrets at all;  only the profoundest sense of relief that I had come to my senses at last, before it was too late, and seen how precious, how essential he was in every way.  Thinking of being with him made the bottom drop out of my stomach in the sweet thrill you feel at the top of a swing’s parabola.

The kettle whistled loudly.  He got up and scalded the pot, scooped the tea-leaves into it, poured the rest of the boiling water on and set it down on the table to brew under a frivolous tea-cosy.  It wasn’t just any cosy;  it was the one I had knitted for him when I was twelve.  There were exuberant crocheted fruit and flowers on the top, a whole colourful bunch.  I had knitted the body out of black wool so it wouldn’t show any stains.  It had been a good choice – for all the wear it had had, it still looked as silly as the day I gave it to him.

He motioned for me to pour.  I did.  I liked sugar in mine:  he didn’t.  I stirred it, thinking of Harry and those first days when he had been staggering under his shell-shock and then burst into the fresh explosion that was my mother and all the rawness and force of his feelings for her.

And how content they were together, now – even though the shell-shock had still never really gone away, any more than Nigel’s facial wound would.  But it didn’t matter.  It was just there and they dealt with it.

“Drink your tea, love,” I said.

He rubbed his jaw a little, and brought his mouth together the way he needed-to to fit round the lip of the cup.  It slurped more noisily than usual.

“Shorry,” he said, and I gave him another glare.  Then I touched his scarred face where it ached.  The thought of his tongue sweeping over me made me shiver.

“When we’re married,” I said, “we’ll save that for special occasions.  What you did.  Once we’re really lovers all the way.”

“We’ll shee ’bout ’at,” he said, with the ghost of a smile.  You could see it in the lines at the corner of his eye:  they were filled with tenderness, now.

“I want you,” I said softly.

“Shoon,” he said, catching his breath on the word.

 

We finished our tea and I felt almost ready to face my family.  I wondered if they would be disappointed in me for resigning my teaching job.  Surely I’d be able to find something local?   I felt sure they’d be happy to have me so close to home, anyway – and they would have to understand about Nigel, wouldn’t they?  How priceless he was to me?  How I couldn’t stay away any longer?

And what would  they say about my staying out all night?  I was about to find out.  It was not going to go unremarked, that much I was sure of.  They weren’t the kind of parents to ignore a thing like that out of tact.

 

 

 

Harry was sitting at the kitchen-table in his shirtsleeves and braces, no collar on his shirt yet.  My mother was frying eggs in a pan.  I could smell the bacon keeping warm in the oven.

He looked-up in greeting as we appeared at the back door.  “Good,” he said, “I h-hoped you’d show-up b-before b-breakfast got cold!”

“Is there enough for Nigel?” I asked.

My mother snorted.  “You thought I was going to leave him out?”

So they had been expecting us, then.

“I’ve – we’ve got something to tell you,” I began.

Harry looked up.  That smile danced in his eyes.  He looked at Nigel, the way he was standing, hesitant to come in.  After all, he had just kept their daughter out all night.  I saw the table was laid for the four of us.   My brothers would be off at school already — it was past eight o’clock.  Harry patted the table.  “It’ll w-wait,” he said, “w-won’t it?  We’ve b-been up a while…  Your m-mother’s been grilling tomatoes and f-frying bread and all sorts of things – shouldn’t let it all g-get cold!”

Outside the window the sheets were already on the line.  Harry still couldn’t help it, sometimes, but he wouldn’t let my mother wash them.  That explained the shirtsleeves;  otherwise he would have been dressed properly, the way he always was.  He flushed very slightly when he saw me notice.

“I was going to bring a tray over,” said my mother, smiling, “but I thought that wouldn’t be tactful.  But then we heard your kettle whistling across the garden, so I thought it was safe to start the eggs.”

She served us, generous helpings of bacon as well as sausages almost-burnt at the ends the way we liked them; triangles of fried bread, half a tomato all bubbling and golden from the grill, tender baby mushrooms, and a perfect fried egg each.

We only ate like this on special occasions:  Sundays and holidays.  This was Wednesday.

  She saw me staring at the feast on my plate, and said, “Well, you telephoned to say you were coming home, pet —!”

“Aren’t you going to ask?” I said.

“Ask w-what?” said Harry, tucking-in to his bacon happily.  The way my mother cooked it, with the edges all crisp and fragile and the middle tender and sweet, it really deserved all one’s attention.

“What was there to ask?” said my mother.  “You said you were coming home to see about Nigel, and you have.  Haven’t you?”

Nigel had been cutting his breakfast into small pieces and letting the crispy bits go soft again in the egg-yolk and the juice from the tomato.  They were easier to chew that way.  If you didn’t look he was less self-conscious, so I didn’t even though I could hardly bear to take my eyes off him.

He patted his pocket and then shook his head.  “’orgot nghy hanky,” he said, “’leesh ’un I bhorrow a nghapkingh?”

“Of course,” said my mother, passing one to him, “Sorry, I meant to set them.”

He got over having had to ask, and ate his breakfast.  We all did.  My mother had outdone herself.  When we were all finished Nigel wiped his chin carefully and put the napkin down.  His hand shook and he put the other one on top of it.  I put mine on top of both of them, to leave no doubt as to what we had come about, and so we held hands there on the table-top.

“Win,” Nigel said, “Harry — I ’on’t nghow how uh ashk ’oo ’is —!”

“Well, I don’t think there’s anything to ask, is there?” said my mother, softly.

“Well – woul’ ’oo mingh?”

“Mind?  Would we m-mind?” said Harry. “You’re r-really asking us if we m-m-mind, old ch-chap?”

Nigel nodded.

My mother had been taking plates to the sink.  She bent down behind him and kissed the top of his head.  “Shall I tell you what I minded, Nigel Lascelles?” she said.  “I minded you being too proud and too blind to say anything to her – and then pining away when she didn’t come home.  I minded you pushing her off and waiting for her to break your heart with another lad, when you were all she wanted and it was as plain to see as the nose on your face!”

“Bu’ I ha’n’t got a ’nghosh on my fash,” he said, and we all fell into hysterical laughter.

I stared at them.  “How long have you known?” I asked.

My mother looked at me.  “The day he painted Blue Helen,” she said.  “That’s why I cried when I saw it.  Because of everything it said, that he wouldn’t.  And everything he saw in you.  And what it must have cost him, to do it.  And I hoped to god you’d see, one day.”

“You’ve never said —!” I cried.

“Come on,” said my mother, “when can anybody ever tell anyone anything?  Most of all something like that!  – specially not from a parent to a child!   You had to find it out for yourself – or not.  But we’ve been waiting — to see if you would — realize what you had, here — the kind of love that was already yours — so you could stop going out looking for it!”

I had thought they would be surprised.  Pleased, I expected them to be pleased, since they loved both of us dearly, but I had had no idea that I was the last to know all of this.  To know to the full just how dearly and hopelessly Nigel loved me – or how I’d loved him and didn’t even know it.

Nigel cleared his throat.  “I ’idn’t dhishongour her,” he said, looking my mother in the eye, “las’ ni’ –!  At leash’ – don’ ’hink I didh!”

She melted:  “Then you’ve got more self-restraint than I would have, Nigel Lascelles,” she said. 

Harry smiled down into his tea, and then up at us.  “I still th-think y-y-you ought to m-make an honest w-woman of her, old chap,” he said.  “J-just f-for form’s sake, you kn-know!  And — s-so you can.  You know.  A-all of that.   The r-r-rest of it.   And n-not b-bother ab-bout d-dishonouring her and all th-that.”

“Thank god you had the common-sense to come,” said my mother to me, sitting back down beside Harry and moving her chair closer to him so that their thighs touched under the table.   He took her hand under there, too;  you could see from the way their arms came together.   She shook her head at me.  “I’ve been worried sick – that you wouldn’t see you needed to – that you’d stay off at that school and he’d never ask you to come back —!”

School.  I still needed to complete my obligation – at least till term ended in four weeks.  Four weeks was enough to publish the banns, wasn’t it?

“Mummy,” I said, “Can you make me a wedding-dress by the end of term?”

“Shteady on,” said Nigel, “I shtill ha’ to ashk – ’emember?”

“I thought it was settled!” I cried, “Nigel —!”

“Ngho,” he said, “’oo as’ed mhee.  Lasht nigh’.  Angh I ha’n’t ash’d your family yet.  Tho’ ’hey sheem uh ’hink ish a fait-accomphleeh.  Angh I ha’n’t as’d ’oo yet, ei’her.”

Harry took my hand and my mother took Nigel’s, across the table.  “Consider it asked and answered,” said my mother.

 

Nigel moved out of his chair with the grace of the dancer he was, and dropped to one knee in front of me.  “I’m as’ing ’oo now,” he said.  “Helingh – mharry mhee?  ’Leesh.  Alwaysh ought uh shay ’leesh wheng ’oo ashk hum’hing, righ’ ?”

When I said ‘yes’ he fell onto both knees and put his head in my lap.

 

 

 

I had to take the train back to school that day;  I had told them I wouldn’t be gone more than a couple of days.   Nigel came to the station with me, to see me off.  He stood there on the platform with his new face-piece on and in front of everybody he let me kiss him on the mouth.  Since his lips were gone he couldn’t feel it the way I did, I knew, so I passed my tongue over the tip of his just for a second to let him know I knew it.  I had his head in my hands and I caressed his ear-lobe and he shivered.  I smiled to myself.  You could always find ways to manage, whatever wasn’t perfect.  I wondered how he would feel if I kissed that instead, and thought he would like it a very great deal.  I almost couldn’t wait – but we were standing on the platform and it would have been too intimate.

Then I thought about those women in the cinema, talking about kissing him, or him kissing them, not that he had asked them to or in any way suggested that he might, and how stunningly cruel they had been.  It wrung my heart for a second or two, and I held him more closely still, till I realized I had them to thank for this.  That was the episode that had pushed him over into despair.  The hurt of that night was what stared him in the face when he shaved, and weighed on him till he couldn’t go on any more as he had been.

Thank god.

 

We had been to the jeweler’s first, for a ring.  I chose one that was simple and elegant.  Nigel asked me if I wouldn’t like something bigger, and told me quietly he could well afford it.  No, I said, turning the one I liked this way and that, this was perfect.  It was a square-cut diamond, unusual, in-between two narrower ones in a plain gold setting.  Platinum was all the rage these days but it felt like a fad to me.  This was going to grace my finger for the rest of my life, and I didn’t want anything that was going to go out of style as fast as it had come in.

The jeweler smiled at us.  “Remember when you come in ’ere for that necklace for the young lady, sir?” he asked.  “Didn’t have nothing nice enough for you then – but we got you sorted-out today, haven’t we!”

Nigel nodded.  He didn’t keep his head down.  His hand found mine on the counter.

“May I say, sir,” added the jeweler – it was a family business and he had owned the little bow-fronted shop just uphill from the Butter Cross ever since I could remember — “may I just say, Captain Lascelles, sir, that there’s a lot of people around this town that are going to be delighted for you, sir.  Over the moon.  After everything you’ve been through, sir.  They don’t say much – nobody wants to offend you – but you’ve a lot of friends hereabouts, sir.”

Nigel drew breath.  I think he still thought of himself as the Beast, and me as Beauty, and that people would be disgusted to think of my stooping to such depths as to want to call him mine.

“Oh, yes, sir,” said the jeweler, more kindly still, “you better believe it.  And as for you, Miss Pasley, may I offer my heartiest congratulations, miss!  You got a good ’un here, all right.  The best.”

“I know,” I said, “thank you – I know!”

He touched Nigel’s arm.  “You mustn’t mind if they stare a bit today, sir,” he said.  “They’ll be happy for you, trust me.”

Nigel let out a long breath.  If people stared at his face, it still hurt.  But if they stared because Helen Pasley was on his arm, and they wished us both well, then that was different, wasn’t it?

 

 

Queen Mary sent a silver tea-pot, with a hand-written note.  It said, ‘So pleased to read of your engagement.  I shall never forget my visit.  I wondered when Miss Pasley was going to see that she was as much in love with you as you were with her.  I did so hope she would.  It was so obvious.  That was why I stayed, to watch the two of you a little longer.  Heartwarming, after seeing so much sacrifice everywhere I went.  Captain Lascelles, I have your painting hung in my private study at Windsor.  I have thought of you often since then.  Please accept my warmest felicitations.  Mary R.’

I could hardly believe that she had remembered who we were, let alone read the notice Harry had insisted on placing in The Times.  But her attention to detail and interest in people was legendary – and who could forget Nigel?

 

It was difficult apologizing to my headmistress for letting her down.  I doubted she would forgive me for putting my private life ahead of my career.  She was a severe, ambitious woman who had risen to the top of her profession with great single-mindedness and dedication;  I had failed that test, I knew.   She stared at the ring on my finger. “I see you have found other priorities, Miss Pasley,” she said sternly.  “I do think you might have waited till the end of the school-year.”

I said I was sorry, and then I told her who Nigel was.  “He was terribly wounded,” I said, “and he’s been alone for twelve years now.  And I just couldn’t bear to wait seven more months.  Not after all that waiting already.  I do see I’ve left you in an awkward situation, and I do regret that.”

She turned a ring on her own finger, the one she always wore with the small diamond flanked by two emeralds.  She was about Nigel’s age, or a little older, perhaps:  not more than forty-five.  Then she opened a drawer in her desk, and took-out a small silver frame.  She passed it to me in silence.  The young man in it was as debonair as Nigel had been, with a dimple in his chin.  “If he’d come back,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here either.  His name was Reginald…  Reginald Barnes.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“Gassed,” she said,  “ – at Ypres.  He died at the casualty clearing-station.  Do you know that dreadful poem by Wilfred Owen?  I never can get it out of my head... ”

 I did: ‘ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.’

I nodded, a sob in my throat.  “But there’s the other one,” I said, humbly, “ – to hold on to, too:  ‘ –  the pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;  their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.’  ”

“Yes,” she said, taking his picture back from me.  “So there is.  Though I’m hardly a girl any more.  And – I do wish you every happiness.  On behalf of us all here at the school – and all of us old maids.”

 

They sent me off with a set of silver tea-spoons and a tablecloth and napkins embroidered by the girls of my own class, the lower fifth.

 

My mother wrote:  ‘We published the banns for the first time as you know in church this Sunday.  I wish you could have heard the gasp as your names were heard – and then the chorus of ‘oh’s’ and ‘ah’s,’ all of them so very fond and so delighted for you both.  Nigel came of course since this was your day my darlings and afterwards he could not get away, everyone wanted to shake his hand and wish you well.  He stood it marvelously and thanked everyone till it was too much for him and I had to say it for him because all he could do was croak – you know how he gets.  But he didn’t run away.’

 

Nigel wrote to me every day, in-between.  Long, passionate, funny letters – so brimming with joy and good humour I wept over them.  He wrote, ‘I still can hardly believe it my darling even though you left your knickers here – did you know that?  I am thinking of you sitting at that breakfast-table with no knickers on.’

I replied, ‘so you were the culprit, were you?  I might have known!  Did you hide them on purpose?’

‘No,’ he wrote back, ‘they fell down behind the bed.  I am not a fetishist my dearest love.  Though let me take that back and say the way I have been behaving I could be, so you had better get back here soon and replace them with your sweet self.’

I wrote, ‘I can’t wait.’

He replied, ‘you wrote that you couldn’t wait.  You have no idea how I felt on reading that.  What have I ever done that you should love me so in spite of all this?  P.S. — neither can I.  P.P.S. – I am going to, though – wait – because I love you too much for any shenanigans.  So you will have to wait, too.’

I replied:  ‘Nigel my darling, I don’t love you in spite of it and I don’t love you because of it.  I just love you because you are who you are.’

His reply had a little stick-figure of himself lying on the floor holding my letter with birds and stars circling over his head.  There was a bubble coming from his thoughts:  it had the grin he couldn’t wear on his face.  Don’t wake me, it said, ever.

 

Sir Archibald Jervis sent a telegram from Australia with his heartiest best wishes and followed it with a cheque for five hundred pounds.  Under the circumstances I thought this magnanimous in the extreme, as did Nigel. The accompanying note said, in crabbed wavering writing, ‘Nigel old fellow, hope you know I never blamed you.  Awfully sorry.  So pleased to hear you have found what you deserve.  Wishing you a long life together & every happiness, your old father-in-law, Archie Jervis.’

 

Another letter came from Queen Mary, in response to my thank-you note. It was typed this time, having been dictated.  It read:  ‘Dear Miss Pasley, Her Majesty has asked me to reply to your nice note.  She wishes you to know that it was entirely Her pleasure to present you with a little gift on so joyous an occasion, and that She regrets only that the short notice made it unlikely that you would wish to change your plans to be married in the Royal Chapel here at Windsor, where She would very much have liked to see you wed in person.  However, Her Majesty has asked me to extend to you Their Majesties’ invitation to advise them when your first child is expected, so that you may consider holding the Christening here to oblige Her Majesty in Her wish to see you and Captain Lascelles again despite Her pressing schedule.’

 

Her Majesty still couldn’t resist interfering, though.  Apparently her visit all those years ago had piqued her interest, which was a formidable thing when turned on one.  In maimed, disfigured, brave, indomitable Nigel she had found a shred of hope for our shattered country, and had never ceased to wish him especially well.  I had given-away the date to her in my reply, which was more than enough, it seemed.  She sent a van-load of flowers all the way down from the hot-houses at Sandringham, with all best wishes to a fortunate couple, Mary R.:  there weren’t enough vases in the church and we had to go home for more – and as if that wasn’t enough, she had got in touch (we learned as they clattered up) with the colonel of Nigel’s old regiment and arranged to send down half-a-dozen Guards in their full-dress uniform to stand with drawn swords over our heads as we emerged from the church. 

So much for Nigel’s hopes for a quiet wedding.

The last time I had seen him in his full-dress scarlet was his wedding-day here in 1915.   Now here we were again sixteen years later, and I wasn’t a child any more but the bride at the altar.  My mother had worked wonders with my dress;  she had found a pattern in Winchester and used frocks I’d left at home for the size.  It was oyster-coloured watered-silk, three-quarter-length, with a handkerchief hem floating round my slim ankles and her mother’s fifty-year-old ivory Brussels lace wedding-veil cascading down my back.  I looked radiant, everybody said so – and triumphant, too, which was no surprise at all since it was how I felt.

Nigel spoke up loud and clear at the altar.  His consonants were still slurred, of course, he couldn’t help that, but he was not going to mumble when speaking these precious vows.  I do not think there was a dry eye in the church by the time he finished.

It was a brilliant January day.  We came outside into bright sunshine and tiny flakes of ice coming from nowhere in a clear blue sky, like the tenderest confetti.  Beyond the flashing steel arch of the Guards’ drawn swords, the churchyard was full of people we barely knew, wishing us well.  They cheered and clapped and whooped and poor Nigel gasped, clutching at me.

“They’re not here to stare at you, darling,” I said, “they’re here to cheer for you.”

He straightened and waved, looking around from side to side to thank them for coming – my shy husband who didn’t want anyone to look at him.  My Captain, who knew what duty was.  My love, who was learning to recognize love when he saw it.

 

Then the bells began to peal behind us, and poor Harry went a bit pale, and my mother had to calm him with her hand on his chest the way she did when he started to gasp, and tell him it was all right to put his hands over his ears and walk away.  He was in his uniform, too, to give me away.  The crowd parted to let him through, and quite a few of them patted him on the back sympathetically, too;  god love you, Major, they said, not to worry, look, there was a nice seat over there under that tree!  Easy does it, that was the ticket…  bloody racket them bells made, eh?

 

 

I had been away when the invitations were sent-out, of course, and had thanked my mother very much for taking care of it.  I had sent her a very short list indeed of the friends I wanted to be there and felt Nigel could manage, and she had sent me her list of the family:  Bea and Perce, of course, and a cousin from Bridgend who had kept in touch through the years and really shouldn’t be left out.  Nigel for his part had supplied an even shorter list of Lascelleses and related Honourables.  This included an uncle and aunt who had never failed to write to him, and a sister I had never met who apparently had found it too painful to see him as he was, but wrote to ask him now if she might not make amends and see him happy.  His mother and stepfather had been in Rhodesia for twenty years, and that’s where they stayed.  I can’t say I missed them.

 

So there we were in the little Parish Hall, with our small wedding-breakfast laid-out and not above a couple of dozen people there – which was plenty for my self-conscious bridegroom to have to face.  And at the back of the hall, just as I had noticed at the back of the church also, hovered a tall frail man I didn’t recognize, leaning on the arm of a sturdy-looking daughter.

My mother came up to us with Harry, and they both kissed us.  “I hope you know,” she said to me, “that if you’d spent that night with anybody else you’d have had a piece of my mind!  – throwing yourself away like that!  I ought to know – which is why I’d have about died, if it hadn’t been Nigel.  But I knew you were safe with him.  Because he thought the world of you – I knew he’d never do anything to hurt you.”  I was happy to hear it, since I had been waiting for the other shoe to drop about my behaviour ever since I had slept at Nigel’s that one night, but I wondered why she had waited till now to tell me.  She put her hand to my face then, and cupped my cheek.   There were tears in her eyes as she continued:  “But – there’s someone here who wanted to see you wed, Nellie.”    She clutched for Harry’s hand with her other one, and he patted it.

“It’s all r-r-right, Win,” he said, “S-s-steady-on.  C-c-alm down, love.”

“Can you guess?” she asked me.  “I didn’t have the heart to tell you – I couldn’t find the words.  I tried to write to you, but – you left the invitations up to me, and I sent one to a very old address… ”

Dear God, I thought, he’s my father.

 

She went up to him and drew him towards us. He was stooped and had that transparent look men have who have been gassed.   He coughed their rattling cough and wiped his mouth and stood up straight.

“Helin,” he said.

My mother tried to say his name and couldn’t, so Harry had to do it for her.  “Helen, s-s-weetheart,” he said, “th-this is G-g-goronwy Rees.  Your f-father. He’s c-come all the way from Cardiff to see you h-happy today.”

I looked into the face of my father. 

What had I expected?  Not this – and yet yes, exactly this; only younger and heartstoppingly handsome, instead of this transparent, distinguished-looking sixty-year-old man who, it seemed, would blow away if I so much as puffed out a dandelion-clock in his direction. 

He looked back, taking me in now that we stood just feet from one another.  His eyes were dark-brown and set in his skull like semi-precious stones, or dark pebbles in a stream.  His hair was more grey than black now but I could see it had once been a glorious ebony mane, just like in the picture on that concert programme I had found.  His daughter – my half-sister, I realized with a jolt – held her hand out shyly.  “Da’s been quite ill,” she said, “what with the pneumonia and everything, but he wanted to come, didn’t you, da?  I’m Myfanwy Rees,” she added, “and I’m very pleased to meet you, Helen.”  Her cheeks were deep red, like a peony:  this was difficult for her, but she loved her da and this was his daughter, her own flesh and blood.  When she smiled I saw that she had a slight gap between her front teeth, just like me.

I felt a bit overcome.  I hadn’t expected this.  My father stepped forward then, and kissed my hand, the one with the wedding-ring newly on it.  “My very best wishes,” he said, and pressed a heavy, lumpy envelope into my hand.  “I’ve no right to call you daughter,” he said, his Welsh voice lilting to break my heart, “but I’ve never forgotten that you existed – or stopped thinking about you.  I knew your name – you’ve been in my prayers, the both of you.  You too, Winifred.  I only hope you know how sorry I am – for everything.”

Nigel put his arm round my waist. He wasn’t about to have anybody apologizing for my existence – I could feel him bristle.  “I’m nhot shorry,” he said. “’Ish is uh ghirl at sh’aved nghy life.  ’Oo shoul’ be ’hroud of huh.”

“Oh, god, I am,” said my father.  “I’m only sorry for all the pain I brought her mother, with my selfishness.  I shouldn’t have – but it’s all done, now.”

“Yes,” said my mother with great dignity, “and I wish you well, Goronwy.  I heard you’d joined-up.  I was glad of that, anyway.”

“Did the right thing at last, eh?” he said, knowing what she meant and saying it.  “The only honourable thing to do, wasn’t it?”

The three soldiers looked at one another.  They had done the only honourable thing, each of them, and paid for it dearly.  They knew what it had been like. We could never know what they shared, that had left each of them altered forever.

“Let’s let bygones be bygones,” said my mother.  “I invited you, didn’t I?  Nellie, love, will you forgive me for surprising you?”

“Of course,” I said, and I let my father embrace me in my wedding-dress, as a father should.  He was all bones and he trembled.

So was Harry, just about, though he was not as fragile as Goronwy Rees.  He trembled too, though, when I turned to him and held him tightly and tried not to cry.  He was the only father I had, or wanted;  and the love in his wide grey eyes held no guilt in it, or regret, or shame – because all he had ever done was love me unreservedly, and put me and my mother first, always.  “I love you, Harry,” I whispered, “I always have.  From the second I saw you – you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

All three of my brothers stood next to him staring, like peas in a pod with their red-gold hair, grey-green gazes and freckles:   Stephen solemn, Nigel fidgeting, and Henry folding his brand-new handkerchief into some complicated three-dimensional shape.  I hugged each of them in turn, and they said “We love you, Nellie!” and nudged one another till Henry remembered and gave me another envelope.

I moved down the line of people who were waiting to congratulate us, then, and we sat down to our wedding-breakfast.

 

Nigel had already explained to me that he would prefer to keep his mask on, even if it meant not eating till later when we were alone.  ‘I care what it looks like,’ he wrote – it had been the end of a very long day, the day before, and he had talked himself out –  ‘I want to look my best for you – please don’t argue with me, Helen.’

“Only if it doesn’t hurt you,” I said.

‘No, this one’s much better,’ he wrote.  ‘Not my favourite thing in the world, but can absolutely stand it.  Want to wear it.  Won’t go through with this unless you say yes.’

“You don’t mean that,” I said.

‘No,’ he wrote, ‘but it would make me feel better.’

“That’s all that matters,” I said.

So he wore it, and didn’t eat anything except blancmange.

 

 

It was the night before, and we were sitting quietly at our kitchen-table after my mother and Harry had gone to bed, to give us a bit of privacy.  I had said it was a shame he wouldn’t be able to eat anything.

I kept the rest of what he wrote in that conversation.  After he kissed me and went home for the last time alone I put the pale-yellow pages in the blue box with the dearest ones ever – the story of his seeing himself for the first time afterwards, and the heartbreaking sheets he had written the night we finally overcame our stupidity and made love instead. 

I read them through sitting on my bed in my wedding-dress, before I came to the church.   I thought about them all through the wedding-breakfast, and my heart turned-over each time.

I had them in writing to treasure because he had asked me if I minded having a written conversation, since his face ached and he wanted to save his strength and speech for our wedding-day the next day.

“Of course,” I said, “darling.  I’m just sorry you won’t be able to eat, that’s all.  I wish you could do both.”

He wrote:  ‘Wouldn’t be able to anyway.  No appetite.  Too nervous.’

I said, “Nervous?  Why?”

He wrote:  ‘use your imagination my darling.’

I said, “But Nigel, it’s not as if you hadn’t done this before – think about me! I haven’t, at all – and I’m still going to be hungry!”

He wrote, ‘I haven’t, actually.’

I told him I didn’t understand.

He wrote: ‘Terrified I am going to hurt you.  Never deflowered anybody before.’

I raised my eyebrows.

He wrote: ‘Only ever done it with 3 other women my darling.  First was an actress in London.  Had a crush on her – so did all the chaps.  Went round to her dressing-room with big bouquet after performance hoping for a kiss.  Got more than I bargained-for.  Gave me a proper send-off, because I was in uniform & shipping-out to the Front & she wanted to do her bit, I imagine.  Was hoping for something of the kind but not that much.  Quite a shock – though not as much as you.  Only time with her – but was the first for me, so quite memorable.  Not for her I wd say, oh no.  Neither the first nor particularly memorable.  But a kind gesture nonetheless & much appreciated I might add.  Then there was a charming widow in Albert, right at the start of it all – lovely woman – taught me everything I know.  Always be grateful.  Hope you will be too.  Then of course there was Daisy.’

“And you weren’t her first?”  I was shocked.  But then I knew she had been a fast sort of woman, and went her own way.

‘No,’ he wrote, ‘I knew that.  Could hardly expect it, could I?  That wd be a double-standard, wouldn’t it!  I wasn’t either, so how cd I be upset if she wasn’t?  Never liked hypocrisy.  Actually she had been the girlfriend of a friend of mine.  He passed her on to me.  We hit it off.  Made things a lot easier actually.  Didn’t feel half so nervous as I do now.  Course I didn’t look like this then either.’

I put my hand over his.

‘Only time I felt this nervous,’ he wrote, ‘was when I got out of hospital and she took me back to the hotel.  Hoping it was going to be all right.’  He made a tiny sound in his throat in spite of himself at the memory, and closed his eye briefly. ‘So anyway,’ he wrote, ‘I have absolutely no experience whatever in being gentle & understanding with virgins.  But I will try my darling.  My absolute best, god help me.  And you must tell me if I am hurting you & I will try even harder to be more gentle – if I can.’

I thought about the sheets of paper already in my midnight-blue box, and about the bandages, and the surgeries, and Daisy having hysterics in the corridor;  I thought about that first night in the hotel afterwards and what he hadn’t said about it, hadn’t needed to.  I thought about the day with the cow-pat, and the day he had painted Blue Helen, and the day the Queen came and he turned his back on her and said I can’t do this, and the day I saw him with his face mask at Rookswood on my way to the w.c. and said hello because I didn’t know what else to say, and how he had said Good afternoon back to me.  I thought about the day at Knowle when we had brought him the greengages and he had been thinking about suicide and  I had read to him about the tin of pineapple.

And I determined that whatever I did, and however much it might hurt to go from bride to wife, I was not going to flinch.

 

At the wedding-party we danced half the evening in one another’s arms.  Neither of us wanted to go away on honeymoon – that would have been a fresh ordeal for my darling husband, which was the last thing I wanted.  So we rode home instead in a dark-blue Bentley, courtesy of the town garage-owner, who had tied ribbons to the bonnet and sent it with his compliments, and Nigel picked me up in my wedding-dress as if I were a featherweight and carried me over the doorstep, and then we put on some more records and danced alone cheek-to-cheek till we couldn’t bear it another second, and led one another upstairs to where Nigel had had the sense to order-in a larger bed, thank heavens.  And in it, on new sheets fragrant with lavender, somewhere around nine or ten o’clock that night, he made me his wife.

 

He took his time – his sweet, patient time.  How he could do so, feeling as he did, I didn’t know then, and still don’t.  First, with his sweet broken mouth whose limited strength he had been saving for this of all things, he gave me to myself.  And only then when I was crying-out for him in piercing tones did he give himself to me, too.  His broken self, breaching my tender maidenhead and by some miraculous alchemy both of us made more whole with each broken word of love from his shattered lips.

And at last it was my turn for the bed to creak and the harsh groans to sound loud in the gentle night – and the beloved to come all the way home, flung like a piece of jetsam on the tide, dazed and spent in my arms.

 

The next morning, as tender and smarting as I was blissful, I sat at the dining-room-cum-studio table in my new creamy satin dressing-gown, and opened the envelopes people had sent and given to us.  To be precise, I sat gingerly on a soft cushion procured for me with melting looks of half-ashamed, half-ecstatic responsibility from Nigel.   He kept saying, “oh Helingh, I’m shorry – I nghried uh ’e gentle – Helingh – I ’old you I hang’n’t had angy practish – ’arling… ”  until I told him to stop it, because if he’d been any gentler we’d still be nowhere, which was the last thing either of us wanted.

“Bu’ ’oo shoul’ ha’ ’old mhee,” he murmured, and then (rubbing his darling jaw that ached because of me) he wrote:  ‘Helen if you’d told me I was hurting you so, I would have stopped, I swear to god I would!’

– to which I replied, “that’s why I didn’t tell you, silly!  Do you think I wanted you to stop?”

He dropped his head and said, “ngho – ang I ’ouldn’t have… hongishly – not uh firsh ’ime, angyway – was jush’ shaying ’at – I ’ouldn’ have, Helingh!  But – uh shecon’ ’ime – wash your faul’!”

“I am going to ignore your foolish protestations,” I said, “and have a hot bath.  Because I have no intention of letting something so silly as a sore bottom stop me from enjoying my husband.  Who has promised to worship me with his body, and I am jolly well going to hold him to it, every word.  Because I am going to get used to this, and I am going to love it even more than I already do, and the only way to do that is to keep doing it till it doesn’t hurt any more.  And in the meantime I can only tell you I’d rather be hurt this way than eat oysters or even crumpets and go to Paris and drink champagne and all the things people seem to think are the best things in life.  And if you even think about telling me you won’t oblige me, I’m going to dig-out the time you told me about your bandages coming-off.  Which I have cried over more times than I can tell you.  And make you read it.”

He wrote:  ‘you kept that?’

“Of course I did!” I said.

“Wha’ elshe di’ ’oo ’eep?” he asked.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked.

‘Of course I do,’ he wrote, rubbing his jaw pensively, abstractly.

“Wait here,” I said.

 

I walked through our gardens in my dressing-gown.  It was nine o’clock in the morning.  There was frost on the grass and I had my new pretty slippers on and I didn’t care.  I let myself into the kitchen, where Harry was washing sheets (the pealing church-bells and the strain of the whole day really had been hard for him to bear, and the price he paid as always came sneakily, unkindly, in the middle of the night).  My mother was at the stove;  she looked up anxiously.  “Everything all right, pet?” she asked me.

“Oh, god, yes,” I said, “yes — yes — yes!!”

“Oh,” said Harry, “th-that’s all r-r-right, then!  Had me w-worried for a s-second, there, p-pyari.”

“No,” I said, “I’ve just come to get something.  To show Nigel.  He has no idea I’ve kept them.” 

Harry nodded with a smile, up to his arms in suds.  He knew at once what I was talking about.  It was a bit of a rueful, self-conscious smile, because he really did still mind about the sheets, specially since this made twice in six weeks he’d had to strip the bed, but nothing was going to spoil our happiness today;  certainly not an old foolish humiliation.  He pulled them out of the wash-tub and started to put them through the mangle.

 

I went up to my old room and came back down with my arms full.  My mother put a warm shawl round my shoulders, which she’d fetched while I was upstairs, and I went back home to my husband.

Nigel looked bewildered when I set all the boxes down on the table, with their elegant covers.  Each one was different from the rest.  Most of them had a year or two calligraphed on a lozenge-shaped paper label on the lid.

I opened one and took out a folded scrap from a little velvet pocket I had made inside the lid.  It read:  ‘you’re the first person who’s ever said thank you to me.’

“Mhy nghod,” he said.

I opened the rest of the boxes.

 

All his dearest best notes to me, all those days, all those years.  All the most heartbreaking stories, the bits of advice, the little stick-drawings.  His letters to me at University.  Faded paper-thin wildflowers we had picked together and I had dried in a press that he had made for me with my name carved in the top.  The story of the day he looked in the darkened window and saw himself for the first time.  The card he had given me on the occasion of my first monthlies, with his best (not second-best!) prize orchid.  The note he had written about just saying the heck with it and not being embarrassed because everyone was mortified sometimes. 

The ones from just six weeks ago – was it possible? – where the rawness of his longing and despair almost choked you just to look at them.  His letters to me at school in the intervening weeks,  bursting with joy.  The story of his own awakening, wanting to have no secrets from me, with its fond reference to the widow in Albert in whose debt I would forever be for showing him things I knew nothing of.

A table-top filled with love.  Love for a little girl;  love for a dear friend;  love for a sweetheart;  love for an unattainable beloved;  love – inconceivably, shatteringly – for a fiancée.

“See, Nigel,” I whispered, “I told you — I always loved you.  Always.”

He put his head in his hands and his shoulders jerked up and down.  I came to stand behind him and he turned, buried his head in the satin valley between my breasts.

“Always,” I repeated, stroking the silky feathers of his hair with their few silver strands just now starting, “ – always, Nigel, always.”

The little scrap in his hand told it too, because I had treasured it ever since, the one from the hospital:  ‘you’re the first person who’s ever said thank you to me.’

“Now do you believe me?” I asked him, surrounded as we were by all the evidence of how dearly he’d been cherished all this time, how simply and how deeply prized, even as he had loved me.

He looked at the scrap.  “I ’emember ’iving ’oo ’ish,” he said in an incredulous tone.

“So do I,” I said.

“’Oo kep’ i’ all ’is ti’?”

“Of course I kept it all this time,” I said.  “I kept everything.  You never seemed to notice.”

‘I noticed,’ he wrote, too overcome to speak.  ‘Just now and then.  Not all this ! ! !  I just thought you read them a time or two more.  I had no idea you kept them all – going back so far — all the way — ! ! !’

“So now do you believe me?” I asked him again, softly.

He wrote:  ‘If you’d shown me all this, you wouldn’t have had to seduce me, Mrs. Lascelles.’

“Oh,” I said, “then it’s a good thing I’m only just showing you now, then, isn’t it!”

“Oh, y’esh!” he said, and pulled at the satin strings of my nightgown. 

I wondered if I would ever be able to hear him drink tea again without feeling it here, where the same sounds meant pure heaven.

 

 

Later we finished reading the letters and cards we had been given.  I needed two cushions, then, although the hot bath had helped a little.  Still, I kept reminding myself of the man with the bandaged face, trying to feel his future – and was proud that I had only pulled him to me harder instead of flinching, so that the spear of pain pierced me all the way to my heart and not just where I opened.  Nigel made us a pot of tea and we ate boiled-eggs and buttered toast and looked at all the kind wishes and silver horseshoes, little blue ribbons and folded five-pound-notes.

 

Ivy’s card said  ‘Told you so!  I new you was sweet on him ten years ago, my girl. Wen you never stoped going on about him.  It was Nigel this & Nigel that & I should of put money on it – I’d of been a rich wooman!  Fonndest love, Ivy.’

 

My brothers had made a card together.  It had a nest on it with two bluebirds.  These were fanciful, with long curling tails, but someone (Stephen?) had made sure their rosy breasts shaded perfectly into their blue backs and added elegant wing-bars, so that they bore more than a passing resemblance to a pair of dyed and gussied-up chaffinches.  The card said:  Dear Sister Helen (Nellie) and Nigel, We wish you Every Happiness together.  Hope you like the Butterdish.  We went in together on it from our pocket money so it would be more special.   It’s only Plate but we thought you’d Like it.  With love from Your Brothers.  They had all signed it underneath, even little six-year-old Henry with his printed HENRY OLIVER (in case we weren’t sure which Henry, presumably).

There was a typed letter, posted here to Nigel’s cottage with his name mis-spelled, from no-one we knew.  Nigel opened it, shrugging his shoulders.  It read:  Dear Captain Lasels,  I manage the Wickham Picture Palace.  I am new to the town and I did not know where to reach you till now.  I would like to appologize for the dreadful time you had here at my establishment a few weeks ago.  I heard about it from my usher but you had already left.  I threw those young women out and told them not to come back.  I am ashamed you could not have been made welcome.  I was at Mons, sir, till I got a blighty one and from one old soldier to another I would be honoured if you would come early next time you’d like to see a picture and come straight to my office and knock.  Tell the girl you’re expected and give my name.  I’ll make sure you’re seated comfortably.  Please give us another chance, sir.  And may I congratulate you on your wedding, sir, with every good wish to you and your bride.  As a wedding present please accept a lifetime free admission for you and your lady.  I would be insulted to take your money.  Faithfully yours, Albert Jones (Cpl, Royal Glosters).

“Hmm,” said Nigel.  “Nghot a bloody chari’y cashe…”

I frowned at him, leaned over and lifted his chin and kissed him. 

He sighed and patted his chest, to show his heart fluttering.  I raised my eyebrows and he wrote: ‘How do you know to do that?  Kiss me that way with that little sweep of your tongue on mine so I can feel it?  You knew it even before we made love.  Do you have any idea what it does to me?’

“You told us years ago,” you said, “about having no feeling here – ” and I touched the place that once had been his sweet sensitive lips.  “Don’t you remember?  I kissed you.”

‘No,’ he wrote, ‘as I recall you put your cheek there and made me kiss you.’

“So you do remember,” I said.

‘But I never said anything about my tongue,’ he wrote, ‘I wouldn’t have.’

“No,” I said, “I worked that out for myself.  I used to think about it all the time.  Kissing you.  How to.  So you’d like it.”

He wrote:  ‘god what have I done to deserve you?’

I said, “Just wait till I get started on your ears… ”

He wrote: ‘I hope you are good at sewing-on trouser buttons my sweet.’

 

I left my father’s envelope till last.  I didn’t know what to think, what to feel.  Nigel squeezed my hand before he put it into my palm.  It was heavy, as I said, and clearly contained more than just a letter.  Money, perhaps?  It almost felt like heavy gold sovereigns…

My father’s letter read:   Dearest Helen,  I have not known you and I do not presume to ask you for anything  now except to accept with forgiveness the love and warmest good wishes of the man who is all undeservingly your natural father.  I am not proud of myself in treating your mother as I did, and I ask for your pardon and understanding.  I have tried to do better since. They tell me I don’t have long, with these lungs.  I don’t mind, now that I have seen you happy. I hope you will write to me and Myfanwy now and then & tell us how you do. She is a dear girl and has little other family now that my wife has passed.  I am enclosing as the only thing worthy of you the one thing I am proud of, which I hope will speak for itself.

In a folded sheet of blank paper he had included his four medals:  Pip, Squeak and Wilfred (as they called the campaign medals awarded afterwards to all who had served in the Great War, more officially but almost never known as the Mons Star, British War Medal and the Victory Medal).  There was one more, won not simply by being there and surviving but for an act of extraordinary valour, the enlisted man’s equivalent of the Military Cross.  This last hung from a dark-blue, red and white ribbon, a heavy silver circle with the King’s face on it – the Military Medal.  He had added a printed scrap with the citation, which was short and to-the-point;  after every one of their officers was killed Corporal Rees had rallied and led the surviving men of his platoon into the face of withering machine-gun fire to attain their objective;  they had held it in spite of heavy casualties till relieved.

He signed it:  humbly, Goronwy Huw Llewelyn Rees.

 

Huw – Llewelyn – it did not seem very far from there to Helen, did it.  My mother never loved half-heartedly, it seemed, no matter the heartbreak that might come of it (and often did).

 

I prayed that all of Nigel’s was behind him, now.  It was, if I had anything to do with it;  far, far behind – and all the joys he so deserved and had waited so long to taste just now beginning.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 

“Nigel,” I said dreamily one day after we had made-love, “I have to tell you something.  It’s not very nice – but I’ve been struggling with it.”

We had gone to bed in the middle of the afternoon, just because we felt like it, in that blissful way that new lovers do when they are fortunate enough to be able to. 

“Ashk away, nghy shweet,” he said.

“It’s about Daisy,” I said.

I felt him stiffen.

“No, it’s me,” I said.  “The way I feel. It’s eating me up.  I used to find it dreadfully hard to forgive her, for what she did to you – but I always thought well I wasn’t married to you, so I couldn’t know.  But now I am — and I do know — and now I can’t forgive her at all.  I mean, not a shred of pity in my heart for her.  I hate her worse than ever.”

“’oh, ’ear!” he said. “’Oor Daishy – ’oeshn’t ’eserve ’at, Helingh.  She wash jush humangh.”

“No,” I said, “but how could she say no to you!  I mean – what does it take to lie there and open your legs, for god’s sake?  And then instead she locked you up!”

“Oh, she didngh’,” he said. “Shay no.  Never mean’ ’oo to ’hink she did.  Washn’t ’at shimple.”

“Tell me,” I said.

He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.  “Ha’ uh ’ite i’,” he said.  “’Oo mush uh tell…. ”

“Do you mind?   I do so want to understand…”

“No shecretsh f’om ’oo,’ he said, sitting-up in bed and reaching for the note-book on the bedside table.  He sat up on pillows and I snuggled my head on his shoulder and held the paper while he wrote.

‘Never meant to give you the impression it was a flat refusal,’ he began. ‘Sorry if I did.  Would be an over-simplification.   But the end result was the same, so perhaps that was what you heard in the scraps I let-on.  She tried, she did.  Was dreadful at first.  See, she didn’t want to admit how afraid she was.  So she made excuses about not tearing my stitches and stuff.  Then I begged her, out-and-out begged her.  Just to let us try.  Was on floor, on my knees, I grabbed hers.   She backed away – or tried to – I held on.  Shouldn’t have.  Was clinging for life I think.  So she fell over on top of me.  Jarred my face, Christ it hurt worse than ever.  I mean, frantic hard-on & nothing else left to live for & having to beg & then an elbow in my jaw – you can imagine.  So she said yes, if it means so much to you – and that was how I found there is one thing worse than not making love when you are desperate to.’

“What?” I asked, softly.

‘Having someone say yes when they don’t mean it,’ he wrote.  ‘Oh she let me but I could feel the revulsion.  She just wasn’t ready for me to be this man she didn’t know.  This beast that still wanted to pretend I was the old smooth charming Nigel.’

“Oh, love,” I said.  “She couldn’t have loved you, then — never!  She must just have been infatuated with your good looks, all along!”

He chuckled and wrote:  ‘well at least I don’t have to worry about that with you, do I, my darling!’

“No, but really,” I said, “it wasn’t love, then, Nigel – perhaps that’s why I can’t forgive her!”

‘I wasn’t the same Nigel,’ he wrote.

“Love is  not love which alters when it alteration finds,” I said.

He wrote: ‘Easy to say.  You never knew me before. You came to love me this way, as I am now.  Thank god.  She didn’t have that chance.  Couldn’t see me – was in pain at losing who I was.  In mourning really.  Getting me back like this – not what I would have been – should have been — ’

“Not just a pretty face?” I whispered, stroking his chest in a way that always made him shiver.

‘ – definitely not that,’ he wrote.

“I still hate her,” I said.

‘I used to,’ he wrote. ‘When she first had me put away.  Was so ashamed of losing my temper.  Had never thought I was the sort of chap to lay hands on a woman.   Still don’t.  But she — god!  – still, not making excuses.  Shouldn’t have seen red.  Pushed her once – didn’t mean to push her down, just away from me – & shook her another time. God I just wanted her to listen to me and she’d say write it write it I can’t understand you – & I’d try so hard to speak clearly ——  she couldn’t stand the way I spoke, she didn’t want to understand – I shook her god help me – screamed in her face – that was when she had me locked up.  Served me right.  Hated self even worse.’

“Love,” I breathed.

‘So she killed herself,’ he wrote, ‘& that really was my fault – but it’s spilled milk, now.  I would have given her a divorce.  I didn’t want to be anywhere I wasn’t wanted.  Too proud for that.  Didn’t try to go to bed with her any more – same reason.  Too proud to beg & then feel her stiffen & gag.  Don’t know why she felt that way – tried to be same considerate chap I was on honeymoon – tried so hard not to be clumsy, even though I was desperate – tried to hold back not to be a beast but she just wanted me to get it over with.   Never felt so naked before – wanting so much to be whole in this way at least – but it wasn’t any good, she couldn’t do it.  Let me be whole with her.    Made me feel more useless than ever.  And of course I was — useless — wasn’t the same chap was I.  No smooches, no flirting, no long evenings dancing at night clubs — none of that gazing into one anothers’ eyes business any more.  Just a liability.  A burden.  One she didn’t want & couldn’t carry.  When she looked at me she saw herself failing.  Came to hate me – I was a reproach to her.  Didn’t mean to be – couldn’t help it – was just trying to get better — I expected too much of her — but god it was awful though, I wished I hadn’t married I can tell you — then wished I’d died — used to stare at my service revolver — ’

He paused, visibly upset.  I snuggled into his shoulder and kissed it, saying nothing; let him collect himself and get his breath back.

‘Then you came along — & you were the only person I trusted to see me – could be myself with — because you seemed to love me as I was – you always knew what to say – never pretended or turned away – god help me I didn’t mean to fall in love with you – needed you too much as a friend – but I had no armour, I’d taken it off for you – to bask in the warmth of your love – had let my guard down altogether with you – none left – never had any guard up at all where you were concerned – couldn’t help it.’

“Thank god,” I whispered, kissing his shoulder again.

‘Never should have let you stand there with no clothes on,’ he added, ‘ — was much more difficult after that.  Was so ashamed of lusting for you — my little girl friend — ’

“But I wasn’t a little girl,” I murmured.

‘no, you weren’t,’ he wrote and made a grin next to it.  ‘Thought I could do it – paint you and not stab myself in the groin – but I couldn’t.  Confronting the reality of you was altogether too much for me.  Told self steady on old boy – but couldn’t ignore all you were any more ——  these last few years were so much harder than the first — in every way ! ! ! !   –  wanting more from you than I had any right to ask —— ’

“Idiot,” I said, “you of all people…”

‘How could I ask you to take this on?’ he wrote.

“How could you think I wouldn’t want to?” I replied.

‘Never thought,’ he wrote.  ‘Never occurred to me to ask you.  Just out of the picture.  You were meant for better things.  Had you pegged for that anyway — ’

I drew my fingertips up his chest and neck to his ear.  “So why did you fold like a house of cards as soon as I made love to you?”

He laughed.  ‘May be half-blind,’ he wrote, ‘ – and with little faith in self – but I’m not totally stupid.  Give me credit for a modicum of intelligence.  A man who has just been struck by lightning is in no position to deny its existence, is he?  If you hit me over the head with something there’s a chance I’ll catch on.  Please don’t stop doing that by the way.’

I didn’t stop, and there was a pause in our conversation for a while.  It was especially sweet to draw him to me knowing more of what had happened with Daisy – not that I could make up for it, but that I could at least show him now how dearly he was wanted.

 

 

He lay back satiated, neither of us wanting to move, a cuckoo calling somewhere outside to make the afternoon perfect.  It had rained while we made love the second time, and through the window he had thrown open in-between our throes of passion a butterfly had come drifting into the room.  It was a fritillary, and we watched it alight on the bottom post of the bed and the lamp on the night-stand before settling on the back of the chair with our clothes on.  “Shmells of rainh,” he said, turning to me.  “I ’ike making ’ove in uh rain. ’On’t knghow why.  ’Oo ’oo min’?"

“Mind?” I said, “Nigel Lascelles, I wouldn’t mind if it was a hurricane as long as you were here.  Oh, there’s even a poem – it’s so beautiful – just a fragment, I came across it at University – Blou, westerne wind, the small rain down can rain – Christ, that my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again!”

“’ike ’at,” he said.  “Ushe uh fheel ’at way abou’ ’oo — ’hink of ’oo all uh time — !”

I thought of the times I had wanted just to hold him, and thought he would never let me.  “While we’re confessing things,” I said, “then — Nigel — you who have no secrets from me, and nor do I want you to have any, I should add  — let me come clean. I’ve been keeping one from you.”

“Wha’?” he asked, taking my nose in his fingers and tweaking it gently.

“I did see it.  That painting, the one you did of yourself that time. The one I still have the scrap of – with the bluebells.  I saw the rest of it, too.”

“Goo’ nghod!” he said.  “’Oo di’?  Shweet jeshush!”

“Oh, I thought it was beautiful,” I said.  “It tore my heart out.”

“Bu’ –  ’oo were wha’ – fih’heen?”

“Maybe,” I said, “or fourteen, I don’t remember.  I’d already seen it through the window that morning, before you cut it up.”

“’Oo minxsh!” he said, “ — it wash raw!  Ash well ash shtark naked —!  Wha’ coul’ ’oo ’hosshibly have made of it at four’heenh!?   Shoul’ I blush now?”

“No,” I said, “and not then either.  I mean – oh, it shook me a bit – I’d never seen a man with no clothes on – and I was a bit frightened by it – by all the feeling in it – but then I liked it that it was you, the first I’d seen, through your own eyes even — ”

“Eye,” he said, “nghy ow’n eye my darlingh… ”

“Yes,” I said, “sorry – your own eye – which was all part of it – the way you’d used the same colours for your face and your – you know – !”

“’Oo ha’ a namhe fuh i’ now, ’on’t you?” he teased me.

“Yes, but I didn’t then,” I said, “not any polite ones – and it was unmentionable, but then so was your face in a strange way, and nobody was supposed to look at it – not those parts and not your face either – but they were the whole focus of the painting, weren’t they? – those intense colours and wild brush-strokes… ”

He picked up his pencil again.  This was more precious suddenly than a silly chat, and he wanted to be articulate.  ‘That was no cursory glance you took then, was it, my dearest?’ he wrote.

“No,” I said. “I stared.”

‘Oh, did you.  And may I ask what else you felt, besides shocked?’

“I felt so sad,” I said. “And – it made me want to cuddle you.  And kiss all the sweet bits. The ones that weren’t angry or rude.’ 

‘Good god,’ he wrote, ‘you weren’t repelled?’

“Of course not!” I said.  “And – I just wanted you to know – I’ve been expanding my definition of your sweet bits… ”

‘Oh have you now,’ he wrote.

“Yes,” I said.  “There aren’t any parts of you that aren’t.  Sweet to me.  Not even those.   In fact, most especially those…  And – the bluebells – remember I told you I’d see you beside them?”

“’Esh…?”

“I took that scrap to bed with me and cuddled it,” I said.  “Every day for a month, before I framed it.  I just held it to my flat chest and ached and ached for you.  To hold you like that.  If only you’d let me, but you wouldn’t.  You wouldn’t even let me kiss you above once a year or so.  Do you remember?”

‘Of course,’ he wrote.

“Why was that?”

‘I saw myself clinging to Daisy’s knees,’ he wrote.  ‘And I thought if I let you hold me I might grip you so hard I’d never let you go – frighten you away –  you, the only love in my life, the sweetest thing that ever happened to me — wasn’t about to ruin it just to get a kiss!   My heart always turned-over every time you did —’

“Is that why you cried, when we – when I — ?”

‘ – of course it was,’ he wrote, ‘I thought I’d never be touched again — as long as I lived — and then for it to be you of all people, Helen — after everything I’d felt and never said — it was too much.  Told you, it was like being struck by lightning!’

“That’s funny,” I said, not thinking, “that’s just what Harry said… about my mother, when the same thing happened —!”

‘I’m perfectly sure he did,’ he wrote, ‘now that I have also been in that situation —  being loved out of the blue by a Pasley woman – but how would you know a thing like that?’

“Oh,” I said, shame-faced, “I shouldn’t have said that.  I wasn’t thinking.  Um – you see – when I found Daisy dead and Harry was missing, I took his diary. Before the police could get it.  And when he didn’t come back and he didn’t come back, I finally read it.  So I knew – everything he’d been thinking and feeling – all that time… ”

Nigel looked at me. ‘God,’ he wrote, ‘I always wondered how you knew.  So much.  Had so much compassion & understanding. For a chap, like me — a little girl like you.  Inside information, eh?’

I nodded. “He forgave me,” I said, “but it was really, really private.  What he wrote.”

‘Like my picture,’ he wrote. ‘You have a way, don’t you.  Of getting to the heart of things – the things people don’t think anyone else knows. But you do, you find them out –’

I hung my head.  He tilted it up.  “’on’t ’e ashhame’ ” he said.  “’Oo shee ’hingsh. Wi’ the eyesh of lo’.  Angh uh people ’oo shee are lucky – angh ’ey knghow it.”  He kissed me with his twisted mouth, and brushed his hair against my face to make me shiver.  Then he wrote:  ‘That’s why I loved you.  That first day even.  At the hospital.  Remembered you from Rookswood!  Swear to god I do – did.  After I was wounded.  In the hall.  You said hello.  Remembered you because you looked and didn’t look away.  Your seeing is a gift my darling.  You have no idea — none.’  He brought my knuckles to his mouth and brushed them with the tip of his tongue.  ‘And now,’ he wrote, ‘I am going to put this bloody note-pad away and make love to my wife.  IF you don’t mind.  Can’t do both at once!’

“But I already — ”  I said.

‘Why, are you in a hurry?’ he wrote.

 

 I melted, of course.  God, who wouldn’t, at that?

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 

Our son Nicholas Stephen Lascelles was christened at Windsor – one does not disobey a Royal request! – and is the proud owner of a two-handled silver Christening-cup engraved  To a blessed child from Mary R.

His brother Felix Michael Lascelles also was splashed and howled his head off in the same august surroundings, with a doting Queen nodding in the most grandmotherly fashion and looking perfectly delighted.  He was afterwards presented with a solid silver rattle, also with her cipher of course, which stopped his crying till he hit himself on the head with it.

Rose Emily Lascelles was born not long after the Abdication crisis in 1936, and consequently the widowed Queen did not feel able to extend her customary invitation.  She wrote though, most touchingly and with a particularly poignant tone under the circumstances, with the King’s abdication speech ringing in all our ears, that she was overjoyed to hear that we had been so blessed once again, and that a happy family life was indeed the greatest blessing that G-d could bestow upon anybody.  She sent a gold spoon with a scene from This Little Piggy Went To Market engraved most beautifully into the bowl, and R. E. L. From Mary R. on the back.  The Princesses had each had one like it, she wrote, and they were firm favourites at the Royal nursery breakfast-table.

 

 

Unlike Harry, whose nerves had been so shattered by the War that he was always just a short distance from tears, I didn’t see Nigel cry again – ever.  So there were just the two times, then, in all those years, twelve years apart, that he let it overcome him and surrendered to all he felt.  And each time the loving arms of a Pasley woman were about him, and his head on our bosoms, first mother and then daughter.  Which made a sweet sort of circle, when I thought about it.

But of course, unlike Harry, he wore his wound on the outside for everyone to see.  It was interesting, watching their friendship, these two so deeply affected by the War that they carried it with them without respite, each in their own way, every waking moment and even in sleep.

 

Nigel painted me endlessly – when we weren’t stopping to make love, sometimes fiercely on the studio-floor and sometimes with stunning tenderness upstairs in bed.  To any woman longing for passion, I would say Don’t choose a perfect young man who is full of himself, because there is likely little left-over worth having to give you.  Instead, find someone who thought he never would be loved again – and then don’t ever let him down.  Your reward will turn you inside-out and take everything you have – which is what we are made for, isn’t it?

The paintings from that time were glowing, sharp, mysterious, provocative, magical – but never again showed me with a blue bottom.  Because I was his, and he could bear to paint me the colours he saw, all the colours I really was.

Blue Helen is on loan to the Tate Gallery.  His studies of me and the children were shown a few years ago in a special exhibition; they were widely compared to the similarly lyrical and tender work of Mary Cassatt, the American-Parisian painter of domesticity.  Nigel’s are not so innocent – there are shadows in them, and areas of haunting ambiguity – but every bit as luminous.

 

The orchids were always an absorbing hobby, and he did not abandon them altogether;  but after our marriage the painting became his passion, as if at last it was safe to express all he felt.  We built-on a new studio, and two more bedrooms dormered-out under the roof for the children as they came, and the years passed in a bubble of bliss even as the clouds gathered beyond it.

 

 

Queen Mary never came to visit again, thank heavens – but she did invite Nigel and me to a small private dinner at Windsor, to meet the new King and Queen, soon after Their Majestys’ coronation, when war loomed again and the King’s duties seemed so crushing.  ‘I do so hope you will be able to join us,’ she wrote, ‘for my son the King and his wife have so much to bear & there is a great deal you have to offer them, Captain, by example, of grace and courage in adversity, and inner strength – if you will be so good as to come with your wife?’

Dinner – for Nigel, who never ate under anyone’s gaze, only alone or with us?

Yes.  Of course.  Because the King needed to see another man face the hardest thing of all, and know that he was not alone.

And because Queen Mary had heard Nigel say, ‘I can’t do this,’ and then watched him do it anyway.  Had the new King said as much?   I felt sure that he had, and that that was the moment in which she thought of Nigel Lascelles.

 

My darling left his face-piece at home, since he couldn’t eat in it, and wore his uniform (as did the King).  Queen Mary, ever-considerate, sent her own car down to whisk us up there, and arranged for a guest-room at the Castle that night so that we could stay late and talk.  Abercrombie was still her chauffeur:  he winked at us and said what a treat it was to see the Captain again, and so nicely set-up with a pretty wife, sir, which he deserved if anyone did, god bless.  Nigel thanked him, trembling.

Once we were shown into the royal presence, in a thankfully small private dining-room and with (we realized) no other guests, Nigel bowed deeply, introduced me, and went straight to the point while he could still get the words out. He explained apologetically to Their Majesties about the practical limitations left by his injuries, shaking all the while and holding my hand as if in a vise – and begged their pardon for the napkin which he must keep pressed to his cheek, and asked to be seated with that side away from everybody;  and then we said grace and ate dinner together.

They altered their pace to his, I noticed, so as not to discomfit him.  A small thing, but a speaking one.

They thanked us for coming.  The Princesses were introduced briefly after dinner, and then withdrew.  Queen Elizabeth’s blue eyes were as warm as my mother’s brown ones, and Nigel blossomed under their tender twinkle.  She did not stare at him, but nor did she look away– she was marvellously natural, sympathetic without appearing in the least pitying.  She could convey admiration with an expression and a sparkle of her eyes.  She had nursed the wounded at Glamis in the War, she reminded us, her eyes glowing at the memory:  a privilege beyond anything she had ever known.  No wonder the country was entirely in love with her, I thought.  Thank God he had her, this never-wanted-to-be King.

The King stammered worse than Harry, even.  He asked Nigel lots of questions, about his service and in particular about his experiences after being wounded, and listened intently to the answers, nodding often. I could almost see him drawing strength from Nigel’s quiet courage:  it was of his own kind, the sort people can overlook but is there underneath anyway.  When the King spoke of the present situation with Nazi Germany and our shared fear of a new wave of aggression engulfing Europe, he often froze altogether, so painful was it to him. 

Queen Mary listened, grim-faced, and said little – unusually for her.  His wife put her hand on his arm, just like my mother did to Harry, and he stopped and drew breath and began again — because it still needed to be faced.

Which it always does – and that is all any of us can do, really, isn’t it?

 

 

 

When the war came, Nigel was tireless in travelling up and down the country to meet men who had been newly injured as cruelly as he had.  He always tried to get there before their bandages came off, so they could see him before they had to face themselves — because that was the worst of all, he said, the very hardest moment.  There were a couple of hospitals that specialized in these most de-humanising of cases, and he was a familiar figure there and on the station-platforms up and down.  All the railway-porters knew him.  He carried a portfolio of his art (though not I am glad to say my nudes), and photographs of me and our children, speaking with great honesty about the self-loathing, and how love had come to him in spite of it all;  and showed them his face with and without his better face-piece;  and held their hands when they cried aloud, and spoon-fed them tenderly (if inaccurately, for his depth-perception was poor, but it gave them something to laugh about) – and talked frankly about what it would be like for them now, and how despair was not the answer.  Oddly, the man who had once not wished to be seen in public now could not do enough to publicize their shared fate, these new lads who had paid the same price all freshly and agonizingly that he thought he had paid to stop it once and forever.  He gave interviews and appeared in person wherever he was invited, and wrote to many of them, the burned aircrew especially, for the rest of their lives.

We never missed any of their weddings.

 

 

The King died only those few years later, in 1952, a young man still, worn-out from his cares and duties.  Queen Mary buried him – and sent a few weeks later for Nigel, and sat and talked to him for three hours of her son.  She asked him not to wear his mask, because she wanted to see his face, she said, the face of an old friend.

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

We have five grandchildren, and they kiss their granddad right on his terrible scars with their little fluttering eyelashes and soft wet mouths – and he lets them, laughing because it tickles.

And I have more shoeboxes still, for the most precious notes of every year from my darling and incomparable husband and lover.  Please god I will have many more before I’m done.

 

 

 

Author’s Note on Geography

 

 

 

Those readers unfamiliar with Hampshire and its towns, villages and countryside may well take this story’s setting verbatim.  There is not a single detail told-of here that does not exist in actuality.

However, for those readers who do know of what I write, and may have raised an eyebrow or two at the liberties I have taken for the sake of my story, I must humbly confess the following, all or some of which you have possibly found me out in —

 

Most shamelessly of all, I plucked-up the medieval Butter Cross and appending Tudor buildings including the upstairs Tea-room and ground-floor Bakery wholesale from their centuries of untroubled and unquestioning residence in Winchester High Street, and set them down closer to home — because that was where I needed them.

Where ‘home’ is may well be another mystery, or at least a further confabulation, but it bears more resemblance to Wickham and its Square than anywhere else – though it incorporates aspects of Fareham also, in particular its larger size and the details of the Police Station.  Fareham Reds did indeed build the Albert Hall, and Fareham chimney-pots adorn roofs up and down the country.  There were claypits in Green Hollow, and kilns in Kiln Road.  There is a small house with a long old wall, hundreds of flowerpots and a dusty old granary on staddle-stones in the garden at Woodend, not far from Wickham;  I know because my parents live in it. 

Just down the road from Woodend, behind brick walls and set-about with attendant lodges, there is indeed a Big House that (when I was a child at least) boasted a tumbledown folly up on the heath where blackberries and bilberries grew in profusion.  Its true name is Rookesbury Hall.  Not having been inside it, I borrowed its peculiar interior filled with stuffed dead things from photographs of this period showing the interior of Cams Hall, another local mansion.  For showing me these I am grateful to Mrs. Alice James, my second mother and dedicated local historian.

Bee Orchids grow here and there in the hedgerows of the tiny old lanes that climb the side of Beacon Hill, if you know where to look for them, just a few miles up the Meon Valley from Wickham.  The view from Beacon Hill, with its ancient beech trees – and my own experience of stumbling upon a gamekeeper’s larder – I borrowed for ‘Wheely Down,’ which is actually somewhere else;  and for good measure, the more being the merrier, I added one of the ancient hill-fort rings to girdle it that actually grace the crowns of Old Winchester Hill and St. Catherine’s Hill locally, to name but two of many.  You can glimpse the Isle of Wight across the Solent from many of them.

I have also borrowed certain members of the Royal Family, for which I hereby apologize if apology is due;  but should like to mention in my own defence that Queen Mary was well-known for her interest in people, and for admiring things of which she wished to be made a present.

 

 

Without any material alteration at all, I confirm that —

 

— there are chalk slopes with their special flora and fauna, café-au-lait fields, flint and brick cottages, foxgloves, bluebell-woods and (no doubt) compost-heaps still to be found all around the Meon Valley.  Water-meadows are aplenty there, too, though I should say that those I re-created here were drawn directly from the ridged and furrowed meadows by the lower reaches of the River Wallington a few miles off, where I grew up – being just as well-endowed with overhanging trees, gorse-bushes (and indeed cowpats of every vintage from dry to fresh) as I have described them.

There are also still commercial watercress-beds in the River Meon, and especially fine brasses in the Norman church in Southwick.  Wickham Parish Church contains a screen built by the owners of Rookesbury in thanksgiving for the safe return of their sons from the Great War.  The village of East Meon boasts another glorious old church, this one containing a splendid carved medieval font from Cambrai.  Knowle Hospital, the former Victorian Lunatic Asylum, sits by itself on a rise just outside Wickham exactly as I have described it. Great Fontley Farm just below it was mentioned in the Domesday Book. 

I borrowed Rookesbury’s most splendid Willow Pattern w.c. from one that greeted me one evening when visiting a friend’s lodgings in Cambridge.  Holbein did draw Sir Thomas More, just as I have described, although there has never been any mystery about the sketch.

The train no longer comes through Wickham, thanks to Dr. Beeching, but it did then;  there was indeed just such a murder-suicide tragedy at the Old Vine as I mentioned in passing;  and the River Itchen runs today as it always has through the centre of Winchester graced with public gardens on either side and bejewelled with brilliant green ribbons of weed and ‘rose-moles stippled upon trout that swim,’ much to the delectation of this little girl.

 

Every English town and village, every church and Cathedral, every railway-station and every school from that period still display – for those who would stop and give a moment’s thought to them – carved memorials, gilt-painted boards or calligraphed parchment Rolls or Books of Honour giving the names of all from that place who gave their lives in the Great War.  I grew up with them.  Often there are two, three or even four with the same surname. 

They seem almost countless – one can almost not bear to know them missed and counted, once, one by one.

There are so very, very many. 

 

 

It is to them, with the deepest humility and gratitude, that I dedicate whatever slight unworthy grace may be found in this story.