Motherland (17 page)

‘You were so different, you didn’t like being in your pram at all, I never could work out why,’ she resumes. ‘Sometimes I wonder where they all come from, the ideas you get. I still have no idea why you refused the Reynolds boy, I should have thought he was perfect for you, and he adored you. Of course, he is in the church, and you’re set against that, though I can’t imagine why, you sing so beautifully in the abbey choir, and Robert Reynolds is just the kind to do well, everyone says so. You ask your father.’

‘Mummy, I’m married.’

‘Yes, darling, of course you are.’ Though truth to tell, Mrs Teale has temporarily forgotten this fact. Kitty’s husband has made such a fleeting appearance in their lives, and who knows what new sorrows this terrible war will bring before it’s over? ‘Robert Reynolds hasn’t married yet, as it happens, which many people find very strange, but I always did think he was such a serious boy, not the kind to chop and change once his mind is made up.’

‘I hope you don’t mean his mind is made up to marry me.’

‘No, of course not, though as it happens I’m not perfectly sure he knows that you’re married. After all, the wedding wasn’t really done in the way people might have expected, was it? I mean, not from home and in the Abbey as would have been so natural, and all in such a rush, so that there was no time to tell people, and Harold not there, and Michael so disappointed not to be asked to conduct the service.’

‘Daddy didn’t mind a rap. You know that very well.’

‘He tells you that so as not to hurt your feelings, but of course he minded, it’s only natural.’

Kitty gets up from the table.

‘I’d better go and see to Pammy.’

As usual her mother has managed to put her out of temper. She meets her father in the hall as he comes downstairs, dressed for the day in clerical suit and dog collar. His round pink face lights up as he sees her.

‘Kitty, my dear!’ he says, embracing her. ‘You have no idea how the sight of you lifts my spirits each morning.’

‘You didn’t mind not doing our wedding, did you, Daddy?’

‘Not one bit. Why would I mind? I spend my life doing weddings. It was pure pleasure to have nothing to do but admire you.’

A rustling in the letterbox announces that the paperboy has delivered the morning
Times
. Michael Teale draws it out of the wire basket and points it unopened at Kitty.

‘You give that beautiful child of yours a kiss from her grandpa.’

He goes on into the kitchen. When Kitty is halfway up the stairs she comes to a stop. Her father is speaking to her mother in a cold clear voice.

‘I told you never to tell Kitty I minded about her wedding.’

‘But Michael …’ Her mother’s voice wheedling, placatory.

‘You’re a fool. What are you?’

‘A fool, Michael.’

Kitty continues up the stairs, not wanting to hear, not wanting to feel. Little Pamela senses her coming into the room and is lying awake, big eyes gazing up at her from her cot.

‘Did you have a lovely sleep, sweetheart? Would you like to have a nice clean nappy? Then we’ll go out for a walk by the river and see the swans.’

Mrs Teale, though in many respects a fool, has undeniable skills when it comes to household management in wartime. As soon as she knew of Kitty’s pregnancy she set about preparing for the baby. In this way, when Kitty arrived in the house in Malmesbury, heavily pregnant, she was presented with four cotton baby gowns, four vests, three matinée jackets, three pairs of knitted woollen bootees, and two knitted shawls. Most magnificently of all her mother had tracked down a reconditioned prewar Marmet perambulator, for which her father paid £10.

This is the pram in which Kitty takes her baby out for walks along the River Avon; attracting as she goes admiring and envious glances from other young mothers. There are large concrete blocks all along the river bank to stop tanks, which people say are there to defend the secret factory at Cowbridge. No one knows what goes on at Cowbridge. The rumour is that rich people pay to send their sons there so they can get out of being called up.

Kitty no longer believes in the war. She never says so, that would be defeatism, but all she wants is for it to be over and Ed to come home. It’s gone on too long and she no longer feels
part of it. The world has become tired. She wants to start all over again.

The hardest part is that she’s finding she can’t remember Ed. Their time together was so brief. She remembers the feeling of him, the intense excitement she felt when he was with her; but his face has become hazy, little more than an expression, which is itself little more than a feeling. The way he looked at her, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes. That sense that he was always out of reach. She has his photograph, of course, but she has gazed at it for too long, and her gaze has drained it of life. His photograph no longer looks back at her.

She wheels the pram down the river path, and returns up the High Street. The queue outside Mallards is shorter than usual so she joins it, and smiles as the other women coo over her baby. One woman gives Kitty a shy smile and says, ‘I was told your husband got the VC.’

‘Yes,’ says Kitty.

‘You must be so proud.’

‘Yes, I am.’

It’s almost her turn now. She takes out her ration book and the baby’s ration book.

‘You make sure you get your share,’ says the woman to little Pamela. ‘Your dad’s a hero.’

As Kitty arrives home again her mother is looking out for her.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she says.

Kitty gathers Pamela up from the pram, letting her mother take the shopping and the pram itself, which lives in the shed down the side path.

‘Who is it?’ she says.

‘I didn’t catch his name,’ says Mrs Teale.

Kitty goes on into the house. The visitor is not in the parlour. She goes through to the kitchen, and finds the back door standing open. There’s a man at the far end of the garden.

She goes out into the sunshine, Pamela wriggling in her arms. The visitor is in uniform. He hears her, and turns.

‘Larry!’

A wave of joy passes through her. He too is grinning with delight as he comes towards her. He’s taken his cap off and his curly hair is all golden in the sunlight, like a halo over his cherub face. A freckly cherub with a snub nose and a worried look, like a pug dog.

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

‘Well, I promised I’d come and visit the little stranger, didn’t I?’

He gazes intently at the baby. Unusually for her, Pamela stops wriggling and gazes just as steadily back.

‘Hello,’ he says softly. ‘Aren’t you a beauty.’

‘You can hold her if you want.’

‘Can I?’

She arranges the baby in his careful arms. He clasps her too tightly, like all men with babies, as if afraid she’ll jump out. Then he paces back and forth over the small lawn, swaying slowly from side to side. It makes Kitty laugh to see him.

‘Am I doing it wrong?’

‘No, no. I think she’s a bit surprised.’

Pamela starts to cry. Hastily, Larry gives her back.

‘I’m afraid she does a lot of crying,’ she says.

Once in Kitty’s arms, the baby closes her eyes and goes to sleep.

‘Luckily she does an awful lot of sleeping too,’ Kitty says.

Larry beams at her.

‘It really is good to see you, Kitty. I’d have come sooner. But you know how it is.’

‘How’s your wound?’

‘Oh, that’s all sorted. I get twinges, but as you see, I’m up on my pins. Desk jobs only, of course.’

‘I’m glad.’

Kitty knows her mother will be looking out from the house, consumed with that strange greed for company that afflicts her; but she wants Larry to herself.

‘Let’s stay out here for a bit,’ she says. ‘It’s such a beautiful day. Do you mind?’

They sit side by side on the iron bench by the wild garden and talk about the few short weeks when they were all together in Sussex.

‘It seems like another life, doesn’t it?’ Kitty says. ‘And one day it just ended.’

‘Over three thousand men were killed or captured in that show,’ says Larry. ‘People don’t talk about it much, but it was a pretty bloody mess.’

‘Oh, Larry. Sometimes I think I just can’t bear any more.’

He pulls a thin newspaper out of his satchel.

‘I brought you this.’

It’s a copy of the official publication, the
London Gazette
, that carries the citation for Ed’s award. He’s folded it open to the right page. Kitty reads it, only partly registering what she reads.

Larry says, ‘You have to have at least three witnesses for the VC. Ed had over twenty.’

She gives the
Gazette
back to him.

‘No. It’s for you. And for Pamela.’

Kitty looks at him with tears in her eyes.

‘I know he’s a hero, Larry. Everyone keeps telling me so.’

She wants to ask the question that haunts her: why didn’t he get on that last boat and save himself?

‘He’ll come home,’ says Larry, understanding what she doesn’t say. ‘You’ll have him back.’

‘He’s in a camp near a place called Eichstätt. I looked it up on a map. It’s north of Munich.’

‘It could take another year. But he’ll come home.’

‘Another year,’ she says, looking at her baby asleep in her arms.

‘So how’s motherhood? You look well on it, I must say.’

‘It’s like nothing else in the world,’ says Kitty. ‘It’s utterly, utterly different. I keep on bursting into tears for no reason. My heart wants to explode with happiness. I feel like I’m a thousand years old. I want to scream with boredom. I long to be young and silly again. But if I lost her I’d die. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Very simple,’ says Larry.

‘Darling Larry. I’m so glad you came. How long can you stay?’

‘I’ll head back after lunch. I hitched a ride with a chap in MI who’s visiting some facility near here.’

Kitty’s face falls.

‘So little time. Let’s not talk about the war.’

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘I finally got round to reading that book you gave me.
The Warden
.’

‘How was it?’

‘I wasn’t all that gripped by it, to be honest. I think maybe I see enough of clergymen in ordinary life.’

‘It’s a bit plodding, I grant you. It’s a sort of moral thriller, really. Everything hinges on the power of a good but weak man to find the courage to do the right thing.’

‘Yes, I do see that,’ says Kitty. ‘I did read faster towards the end. But poor Mr Harding is so fearfully drippy, isn’t he? And I do think Trollope could have done more in the way of punishing the archdeacon. I wanted to have him be publicly humiliated.’

‘Ah, you’re a harder judge than I am. I can find it in my heart to pity the archdeacon, with his secret drawer and his secret copy of Rabelais.’

‘I do want to believe that goodness wins in the end,’ says Kitty. ‘But you have to admit, in real life it doesn’t always seem that way.’

‘That’s why it’s our duty to make it be that way,’ says Larry.

‘Oh, Larry.’ She takes his hand with her free hand. ‘I am so glad you came.’

Larry joins them for a simple lunch. Kitty’s father returns
from the abbey promptly at one. He too is all smiles to see that they have a guest, and better still, a male guest.

‘What do you make of the bombing of Pantelleria, eh? I’ve been saying for weeks the invasion will begin in the Med. Sicily is the open door.’

Kitty shows her father the
London Gazette
with Ed’s citation. Both he and her mother read it, taking in every word.

‘If ever a man deserved a VC, that’s the man,’ says her father.

‘Larry was there,’ says Kitty. ‘He saw him.’

‘Oh, my Lord!’ exclaims her father. ‘The tales you must have to tell! And here I am, worrying myself to death over the repairs to the abbey.’

‘The war will be over one day,’ says Larry, ‘and when it’s over we’ll still want to see the grand old churches, and the cornflowers in bloom.’

‘Larry is such a romantic,’ says Kitty, smiling across the table at him. ‘He’s an artist, really.’

‘An artist!’ exclaims her mother.

‘I like to paint,’ says Larry.

‘You should paint Kitty,’ says Mr Teale. ‘I’m always telling her we should have her portrait done.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t dare attempt portraits,’ says Larry. ‘That requires skills I have yet to acquire.’

‘Larry paints like Cézanne,’ says Kitty. ‘All blotchy and wrong colours.’

‘A very accurate description,’ says Larry.

When it’s time for him to leave Kitty walks with him to the road junction, leaving Pamela in her mother’s care.

‘You know I’m not really so silly about your painting, Larry. I’m only teasing.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Thank you for being so sweet to Daddy.’

Larry glances at her as they walk.

‘You find it hard, don’t you?’ he says. ‘Ed being away.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Oh, Larry. I’m so afraid I’m forgetting him.’

She feels she’s about to cry and knows she mustn’t. But then he puts his arms round her and it’s so good to be held in a man’s arms that she does cry, just a little.

‘This time will pass,’ he says.

‘I know. I know it will. I have to be strong, for Pamela.’

He kisses her gently on the cheek.

‘That’s from Ed,’ he says. ‘He’s thinking of you right now. He loves you so much.’

‘Darling Larry,’ she says. ‘Can I kiss him back?’

She kisses Larry on the cheek, as he kissed her. They stand still for a moment, saying nothing. Then they part, and walk on to the junction.

Larry’s friend is waiting in his car. As he climbs in the back Kitty says to him, ‘I heard from Louisa the other day. She’s turned into a lady of the manor. She’s practically taking soup to villagers.’