Motherland (16 page)

Larry falls silent. He wants to say, Nothing can touch him. He was invulnerable. But as he forms the thought he realises the absurdity of it. The opposite is true. Ed took insane risks. How can he have survived?

‘He hasn’t come back,’ says Kitty again, her voice shivering like glass about to break.

Larry closes his eyes and lets his head lie back on the pillow.

‘A lot of men haven’t come back,’ says Kitty. ‘But at least you have.’

‘Amazing job! First class!’

Admiral Mountbatten paces up and down the room, flexing his upper arms, as if so moved by admiration that only his agitated limbs can express his feelings.

‘I want to hear all about it.’

Larry Cornford is standing, using a walking stick to ease the weight on his right buttock, from which a bullet has been extracted. The only other person in the room with them is Rupert Blundell. Larry has no idea how to tell his supreme commander about the action at Dieppe. Two months and more have passed, but it feels like a hundred years.

‘I don’t really know what to say, sir.’

‘I know, I know,’ cries Mountbatten, turning on him his intent and seductive gaze. ‘That’s what we all say afterwards. When the
Kelly
sank under me, I thought, no one can ever know what this feels like. No one. But then I got talking to Noel, and you know what he’s done? He’s made a film of it! Bloody good film, too. I’ve seen it. It should be showing in a few weeks. Go and see it. I can fix tickets for you if you want.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ says Larry.

‘You were on the beach at Dieppe, were you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good for you. That’s what I want. The real unvarnished PBI view. They say the lessons we’ve learned from Jubilee are priceless. Shorten the war by years, they say. Plus the whole show finally lured the Luftwaffe out of their hidey-holes and let the RAF give them one hell of a spanking. I’ve had Winston patting me on the back, I’ve had Eisenhower like a kid in a candy store. But at the end of the day it’s the Poor Bloody Infantry who did the job.’

Larry can think of nothing to say to this.

‘Pretty bloody for real, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That’s war for you. You heard about Lovat’s outfit? Copybook operation. So the Canadians did us proud, did they?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A hard, savage clash, as Winston says.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall tell your father when I next see him, Larry. You chose to go in the line of fire. You didn’t have to be there. I don’t forget things like that. Your name has been put forward.’

‘No, sir.’ Suddenly Larry becomes agitated. ‘I did nothing, sir. I landed, I was on the beach for two or three hours, and I got away. I don’t deserve to be noticed above the others, sir. Above any of the others.’

Mountbatten continues to eye him keenly.

‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Good man.’

‘If you’re putting names forward, sir, there’s one you should add to the list. Lieutenant Ed Avenell of 40 Royal Marine
Commando. I watched him carrying wounded men to the boats, while under constant fire himself. He must have saved ten lives at least.’

Mountbatten turns to Rupert Blundell.

‘Make a note of that, Rupert.’

‘Another one of ours, sir,’ says Rupert.

Mountbatten turns back to Larry.

‘What’s become of him?’

‘Missing in action, sir,’ says Larry.

‘Got that, Rupert?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And there’s something else to note,’ says Mountbatten, apparently still talking to Blundell, but with a nod towards Larry. ‘Here’s a man who volunteers for the front line, charges into the heart of battle, catches a bullet, and all he’ll tell me is how some other fellow is the true hero. That’s the sort of spirit that Noel understands.’

He turns to Larry and holds out his hand.

‘It’s an honour to have you on my staff.’

Rupert Blundell escorts Larry back down the corridor to the exit.

‘He’s not a complete chump,’ he says. ‘He knows it was an almighty balls-up. He asked me if I thought he should resign.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him it all depended on the nature of his failure. Was it extrinsic or intrinsic? Did he think he could learn from it?’

‘Christ, Rupert, you sound like his father confessor.’

‘It is an odd relationship. But he’s a very unusual man. He’s vain and childish, but at the same time he’s humble and genuinely serious. Of course, Edwina makes an enormous difference. He
depends on her approval more than anything, and she holds him to very high standards.’

‘Edwina Mountbatten?’ says Larry. ‘Isn’t she supposed to be a playgirl?’

‘People are always so much more complicated than one thinks, aren’t they?’

At the door, bidding Larry goodbye, he adds, ‘Did you mean that about Ed Avenell?’

‘Every word.’

‘I’ll see that it gets looked into.’

*

The army camp in the park of Edenfield Place is now a ghost town. Twelve hundred men left from here to join the assault on Dieppe. A little over five hundred returned. This rump has now departed, to combine with other units of the Canadian forces, in new quarters. The NAAFI shelves have been cleared, the mess huts stripped of their tables and chairs, the Canadian flag struck from the flagpole in the parade ground.

Larry walks slowly up the camp’s main street, limping a little, using his walking stick. He is back in Edenfield to collect his few belongings from his farmhouse billet, and is making this last visit as a kind of homage. Too many men have died.

He turns away from the camp and down the avenue of lime trees to the lake. There is the lake house, where he first set eyes on Kitty. That sunlit day now seems to him to have slipped away into the distant past. He’s been trying not to think of Kitty, because that leads to thoughts of Ed, and the possibility that he was killed on the beach at Dieppe. Thinking this causes such turmoil within him that he shakes his head from side to side, as if by doing so he can drive out the shameful hope that follows.

He makes his way back up the avenue to the big house, wondering if George Holland is at home, when he sees a figure coming towards him.

‘Kitty?’

The figure breaks into a run.

‘Larry!’

She comes to him and hugs him, laughing out loud.

‘I thought it must be you!’

‘Careful! I’m still wobbly.’

‘Oh, Larry! How wonderful to see you!’

Her eyes so bright, her lovely face so filled with happiness.

‘I didn’t think you’d still be here,’ Larry says. ‘Haven’t your mob been posted somewhere else?’

‘I’m out,’ she says. ‘Para eleven.’

One of the few ways of being released from service, and available only to women.

‘Kitty! You’re going to have a baby!’

She nods, smiling.

‘And even better – Ed’s alive! He’s a prisoner of war.’

‘Oh! Thank God!’

He speaks quietly, but he means it. A deep sensation of relief flows through him. It’s as if in loving Kitty, in hoping to benefit from Ed’s death, he has wanted to kill him. But Ed is not dead. As soon as he understands this Larry knows that it’s the right way for things to be. Ed, so gallant, so genuinely courageous, deserves to live. He deserves to be loved by Kitty. He deserves to be the father of her child.

Kitty feels the silent intensity of his relief, and is moved.

‘You really are good friends, aren’t you?’ she says.

‘Ed’s part of my life,’ says Larry.

She slips her arm through his, and they walk back together to the house.

‘I’m glad Ed has you,’ she says. ‘It shows he has good taste in friends.’

‘In wives, too.’

This reminds Kitty of her other news.

‘Guess what? George is going to marry Louisa!’

‘Is he, now?’

‘Are you surprised?’

‘Not entirely. Though I’d like to know how George ever got round to popping the question.’

‘I don’t think he did. I think Louisa did the popping.’

Oddly enough, this news leaves Larry feeling a little sad. Everyone round him is getting married. Life moves so fast in wartime.

‘So where will you go to have the baby?’

‘Back home. Mummy is going to look after me.’

‘In deepest Wiltshire.’

‘Malmesbury’s the oldest borough in England, you know. We’re very proud of that. Also the dullest. So you’ll have to come and visit me.’

‘And it.’

‘Definitely. It must be visited.’

They enter the house through the garden porch.

‘It’s awful here now the Canadians have gone,’ says Kitty. ‘We all miss them frightfully. That whole Dieppe affair was pretty bad, wasn’t it?’

‘The rumour is seventy per cent casualties,’ says Larry.

‘I can’t even imagine that. I know it’s wrong, but all I can think is, Ed’s alive, and you’re alive.’

‘It’s not wrong. It’s how we’re made. There’s only so many people we can care about.’

‘You know what, Larry?’ She clasps his hands and drops her voice, as if she’s imparting a secret that’s almost too precious to be spoken aloud. ‘I shall love my baby so much.’

The first days of June bring rain and sunshine. The cornflowers at the wild end of the garden glow bright blue in the slanting early-morning light. The bedroom has no blackout curtains. In these long summer days there’s no need for lights going to bed.

Kitty is woken early, as she is every morning, by the baby’s sudden cry. For some reason the little thing is incapable of waking gently. She comes out of sleep with a sharp call of alarm, as if frightened to find herself alone in her cot. Kitty is out of bed at once, and has her baby in her arms.

‘There, darling. Don’t cry, darling. Mummy’s here.’

She settles down in the high-backed armchair in the bay window, and opens up her nightdress. The baby’s eager searching mouth finds the breast, and settles down to contented sucking. Kitty holds her close, stroking her fine hair, feeling the heat of her tiny body against hers. Her baby is not quite four weeks old.

It’s just after five and the house is still, and the town is still. The baby makes regular snuffling noises as she sucks, and Kitty holds her close and loves her more than she ever knew it was humanly possible to love.

‘You’re my baby, my baby, my only baby. Mummy’ll love you for ever and ever.’

These early mornings have become precious to her. She knows the two of them will never be as close again. This is their time of utter absorption in each other, when she is everything to her child, food and drink, warmth and love and protection. In return this tiny creature takes up her every waking moment, and half of her dreams.

Her name is Pamela, after Kitty’s grandmother. When it came time to fix on a name her mother said to her, ‘What are the girls’ names in Ed’s family?’, and Kitty realised she didn’t know. There’s so much she doesn’t know.

‘Daddy’ll come home to us one day, darling. And won’t you be his princess? Won’t he just love you more than anyone in all the world?’

Little Pamela finishes feeding at last, and slips back into sleep. Kitty watches her sleeping in her arms, her eyelids blue-shadowed, her cheeks radiant as the morning, her perfect little lips twitching as she dreams. She kisses her, knowing it won’t wake her, and lowers her back into her cot.

Hungry herself now she pads barefoot down to the kitchen, and draws back the heavy blackout curtains. Brilliant light streams into the familiar room, making the white tiles on the walls glitter, throwing a stripe of gold over the scrubbed-wood kitchen table. She gets the iron hook and lifts the plug out of the Rayburn hotplate, and shakes a handful of coke into the furnace. Then she opens up the air vent below to get a good heat going, and puts the kettle on to boil.

She explores the larder, before the war always so crowded with good things to eat, now given over to jars of pickled cabbage
and apple chutney and potatoes still clotted with the earth from which they were dug. Her mother has become a grower of vegetables. ‘Life would not be bearable without onions.’ At such a time before the war Kitty would cut herself a slice of leftover veal pie, or feast on some of her mother’s famously moist and chewy gingerbread. Now there is a thin end of a loaf left, and no butter until the new week’s ration is fetched.

She puts a small pan of porridge on the hob, wishing she’d remembered to set the oats to soak last night. The kettle boils. She scoops a spoon of tea leaves into the pot, and adds the steaming hot water. There’s milk in the cold safe in the larder, put aside for her exclusive consumption, because she’s a nursing mother.

By the time the porridge is cooked, and she’s eating it sweetened with a precious spoonful of pre-war home-made blackberry jam, she can hear her mother rising in her bedroom overhead. The water pipes gurgle as she runs the taps. Soon now she’ll be down, and Kitty’s time of quiet will be over.

Kitty misses her life in the service. She misses driving. She would almost say she misses the war, since here in this ancient little town nothing seems to have changed, except for the food shortages. The main roads still pass to the east or west of the town, and the canals and railways miss it altogether.

It’s not been easy being home again. Once her pregnancy was confirmed, and the news came through that Ed was a prisoner of war, she understood that her life was to change. Her job now is to raise little Pamela, and wait for the end of the war to bring Ed home. Then they can have their own house together, the three of them, and she won’t have to be grateful to her mother any more.

A little later Mrs Teale comes down and joins her in the kitchen, and the stream of well-meaning anxious chatter begins.

‘How are you this morning, darling? I heard Pamela grizzling in the night and I almost got up to tell you to make sure to lie her on her tummy or she won’t sleep. I see you’ve not had the last of the bread which I left specially for you. It’ll be good for nobody by tomorrow. Such a beautiful morning, really you could almost put Pamela outside in the pram now, fresh air makes such a difference when they’re tiny. Harold used to love it so, he cried when I brought him back inside.’

There’s been no word of Harold for several weeks now. This awareness floats briefly past Mrs Teale’s eyes, causing her to look to one side and wince as if stung.