Gifts of War (45 page)

“Good. Thank you. Now I have other things to discuss with the brigadier, if you will excuse us.”

I was shown out into the street.

One evening after I had begun work on the moral costs of the war, Sam and I went to a concert at the Wigmore Hall. The singer was, I remember, an up-and-coming soprano—from Bristol, of all places— and one of the songs she sang was the aria from Handel’s opera
Rinaldo,
“Let Me Weep.” It was just as haunting, just as sad, in its clear, slow notes, as it had been during the Christmas truce.

It brought back a lot, of course. Not just the voice of the young
man who had sung for us in the trenches and the sound of the mouth organ, but it brought back the smell of ammunition, the snow crystals on the dead trees, the sounds of the dying men crying out in no-man’s-land, the shrill squeaking of the rats gorging on the dead, the ragged crosses we had built of wood as we buried men that Christmas Day. And, of course, it brought back my meeting with Wilhelm.

There was still a campaign running in the newspapers not to allow German music to be played at concert halls and Handel divided people more than most. Yes, he was born a German, but eighteenth-century Germany was not the Kaiser’s country and, in any case, Handel had spent years in Britain, in London, where he had composed a lot of his music and found real fame. There was a case for saying that Handel was as much an English composer as a German.

At the end of the concert, we braved the placards being brandished outside the hall and tried not to listen as the demonstrators called us “traitors.”

“That was the song you told me about, right?” said Sam as we left the demonstrators behind. “The song the young man sang, the night of the Christmas truce?”

I nodded.

“Did it bring everything flooding back?”

“Not everything,” I said, mindful of the conversation I’d overheard some nights before. “Even the most vivid memories fade. You can remember too much.”

She squeezed my arm. “You were part of something extraordinary, Hal. You shouldn’t allow it to be forgotten. You should write it down and keep it. Will might like to read it someday. It would let him see that the English and Germans can be friends.”

“How long do you think it will take, once the war is over, for the British and the Germans to … to get back on civilized terms?”

“Do we have to talk about it? Let’s talk about Handel and his
lovely music. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Will inherited my mother’s voice.”

“No, Sam, hear me out. I’ve been thinking. The war won’t go on forever. We’re in the last phase. When it does end, when it’s safe, would you … would you like to go to America?”

“Oh Hal! Do you mean it? What a lovely idea—as a holiday, do you mean?”

“Well, I thought we might try a holiday there in the first place, but while we were there we could see what we thought of it, consider whether we could live there …”

She said nothing.

“It would take you away from your sisters, of course. But in the long run, and given that there will be anti-German feeling in this country for … well, for quite some time, it might be easier for Will. It might be easier for you.”

She put her arm in mine. “You are a good man, Hal, to think about us, Will and me, thinking
for
us. America!”

She didn’t remind me, then or later, that Wilhelm and she had once thought of emigrating, and I didn’t mention it either. But I could see she was excited by my idea and left it at that.

When we got home I paid the babysitter, and Sam went through to check that Will was sleeping and then on into the dining room to pour us our whisky nightcaps, as usual. I went into the living room to check that the fire was safe—and there, in front of the fireplace, was a jumble of papers and photographs,
including Wilhelm’s
. What was going on? The entire contents of my briefcase had been tipped out. The briefcase itself was lying there, open and empty, by the coal scuttle.

I could hear the chink of glass on glass as Sam poured the nightcaps. Will was obviously sleeping soundly and she hadn’t lingered in his bedroom. She would be through to the living room in a matter of seconds.

I stooped, grabbed Wilhelm’s photo, and quickly slid it back into the briefcase.

Even though I only had time to glance at the photograph, Wilhelm’s face and uniform belied what I had told Sam—they brought back the Front and the Christmas truce vividly: the rabbits, the mudflats, the smell of no-man’s-land. What a world away that seemed now. If Wilhelm was still alive, how had he aged? I didn’t wish him dead, exactly, even now, or so I told myself. But with Sam’s feelings about me beginning at last to … change … how convenient, how much easier all round it would be if he was.

As I started on the papers, the door opened and Sam, whisky glasses in hand, appeared. “Good grief! What happened?”

“Will’s been doing a little spying, breaking the Official Secrets Act.” I tried to make light of it, but I was sweating. Would Sam notice? “He’s been going through my papers.” I smiled. “He’ll get me shot.”

“Let me help,” she said, putting the glasses on the mantelpiece and kneeling down.

“No, no, don’t worry. I can manage.”

But she started shuffling the papers and handed them to me.

“I blame myself,” I said. “Lottie knew not to let Will play with my briefcase. I never explained to the new babysitter.”

“She should have known not to allow it. Common sense.”

I put the papers back in the briefcase and snapped it shut. I was still kneeling on the carpet in front of the fire. Sam handed me my whisky and stooped down next to me. We sipped our nightcaps.

“You’re very imaginative, Hal. America, what a lovely idea.” She took back my whisky glass and set both of them down on the floor. Then she kissed me. Both our lips were wet and smelled and tasted of Scotch. “But I’m imaginative, too. Why don’t we make love, right here, in front of the fire.”

“I like her, Hal. Why didn’t you bring her down before?” The bossiness of my bossy-boots sister had finally worked and I was making a visit to my parents in Edgewater. It was early March and I had finally thought it time to take Sam, who was currently off with my father, looking at his books. But we had decided to leave Will behind; there would be fewer awkward questions without him around. We had found a new babysitter, or Sam had. She had been unhappy that the previous one had let Will ransack my briefcase and I was in full agreement with that. It meant there was one less person around the flat who had seen Wilhelm’s photograph. As it was, Will might refer to it at any time. The new babysitter was the daughter of the local vicar at the church in Old Church Street. Wilhelm’s photo was now safely under lock and key in my desk in the office. I couldn’t quite bring myself to destroy it.

Theoretically I was out for a walk with my mother, but her emphysema was now so bad that it was all she could do to walk around the garden. We were sitting on a bench with Einstein in front of us, his tongue flopping out and his tail thumping the lawn. He had expected a proper walk—so what was
this?

“Well, we have been living together since … since I left Stratford, but we aren’t married.”

She looked at me. “Hal, you know that sort of thing doesn’t bother me overmuch, not if you are genuinely fond of each other. But do you mind me asking why not?”

I shrugged. “She has a young son, whom we didn’t bring, by a man who went off to the war and hasn’t been heard of since.” No lies there, I told myself. “So—”

“Hmm,” said my mother. “Not ideal, is it? You
pretend
to be married, in London?”

“Yes, most of the time. Her sisters know the truth, of course.”

“Do you love each other?”

“I think so.”

“You
think
so! What kind of answer is that? Do you or don’t you?”

“Well,
I
love
her
. She’s … I think she’s coming round to me.”

“I’ll try to understand,” she cut in. “You are a family at the moment, but the father may reappear at any time. Is that it?”

“Sort of.”

“So she doesn’t love you, not the way you love her?”

My mother was always brutally honest and to the point.

“She didn’t love me to begin with, no. I knew that. She was very much in love with the man who went to the war. But I think she’s learning to love me. And with the boy, of course, it’s different. I am the only father he has known.”

“Dear Hal.” My mother was suddenly very tender. “We thought you would be lonely in London, solitary anyway, your father and I. But you’re not lonely, are you? Does your predicament make it better or worse, I wonder?”

“Ma, it’s not a predicament! What a horrible word.” I blushed inwardly. I had used that word myself.

She didn’t reply, not immediately. And when she did she changed the subject.

“Bring the boy next time. He’ll love this house and this garden. Do you have a dog in London?”

“Yes, a—”

“There you
are!
He’ll
adore
Einstein.”

She looked up as my father and Sam came out of the house, into the garden, but they turned away to inspect the roses.

She coughed, an alarming rumble in her chest.

“I didn’t love your father, you know, when we were married.”

Why was she telling me all this?

“I was in love with someone else but, well, to be honest, he was unsuitable in all sorts of ways.” She threw Einstein’s stick, so he would retrieve it and get some exercise. Even that seemed to tax her. “Women are practical, you know. Much more so than men. Your father offered more—and, I must say, he has given me far more—than … my other lover could ever have done. And yes, slowly, I learned to love your father. But in any case, I think that what counts in life is for women to be loved and men to love. It works better that way round.”

Einstein brought back the stick and stood in front of us, panting and wagging his tail. He was so adorable and so stupid.

What my mother said was a surprise but heartening nevertheless. She had learned to love my father and their relationship still worked beautifully.

Now it was my turn to change the subject. “I received a letter from Izzy, Ma, about the wife of her doctor friend, Alan, killing herself. She—the wife—said she loved Alan, her husband, more than her children. Did you love Father more than Izzy and me? Is that still the way you feel?”

My mother took off her spectacles and cleaned them using her skirt.

“Don’t get trapped in the words, Hal. We only have this one word—‘love’—which we use for all sorts of things. People say they love fishing or the theater, and I’m sure they do, in their way.” She patted my knee. “Parents love their children, of course they do. But not in the way they love each other. When you’ve made love with someone … when you have discovered true intimacy, when you have trusted someone in the way that you have to trust them when you are making love … you discover that no other love matches that. Look at a parent’s love for a child. It is not based on intimacy so much as protection. That must be true because children don’t love their parents in the same way. That’s quite natural because children will have to make
their own path in life someday; that’s the way we are made, so parents love their children more than children love them back. I feel sorry for parents who never realize that, because they are bound to be disappointed, bound for sorrow.”

“But what about—?”

“I’m coming to that. I can understand that woman in Scotland, the wife of Izzy’s doctor lover. She felt a failure, unbearably lonely, rejected, unloved. If a child fails in life, a parent may feel some of the blame but never all of it. If a child turns on a parent, or leaves the family, there is a hole, yes, but intimacy remains between the parents. Two people together are much stronger than two individuals separately. That’s what you must tell yourself, that’s what you must build on. Two individuals together are a whole world—no one can touch you. When you fall in love immediately, that whole world is conferred on you. When you fall in love gradually you have to build it. It’s not the same, but it can be as wonderful.”

“Did Father fall for you—I mean, immediately?”

“Oh yes. He’d had quite a few girlfriends before he met me but he had no doubt once he saw me.”

“So what did you do?”

“I played hard to get for a bit, just to test him.”

“And the other man?”

“He emigrated, to America.”

“Brokenhearted?”

“Let’s just say he worked hard in America, made a small fortune, and, three years later, came back for me.”

“And?”

“I told you, women are practical, unromantic. I had a son by then—you—and Izzy was on the way. I was happy, your father and I had a splendid life. Harold—that was the other man’s name—didn’t try very hard to win me back. I think part of him just wanted to show
me he had got over me and that his life had turned out well. He returned to America and I never saw him again.”

“Did Father know any of this?”

“No. Your father is like you, very self-contained. He doesn’t need to be loved and is much better at loving. He’s been wonderful to me. He still is.”