My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (16 page)

She told him she was at the Chelsea, a nursing VAD now, yes, paid – only half what a trained nurse gets, but there’s more respect, and the work is more, um,
direct
, actually with the boys; her father and mother were well, Noel was training recruits in Suffolk, he was well, doing his bit. Yes, conscripted last year, but asthmatic, so . . .

‘And do you hear from our friend?’ the old man asked.

‘He is very grateful,’ she began.

‘And so are we,’ he said. For a moment she sensed the presence of something, a conversation that might be going to be had . . . but it passed. Just as she wanted to reach out for it, it had slipped away and she couldn’t get it back – he took it away. Nobody wanted to talk to her about him.

They talked instead of the difficulties in laying your hands on paint and canvas these days – hence the small panel he was painting, which was not a perfect Pre-Raphaelite hero, but –
oh, might as well be –
the Angel of Mons, gleaming and perfect in medieval armour, as if it were 1912. He seemed to recognise her reaction, and said, ‘It does all leave one feeling rather useless.’

‘Does art feel useless?’ she said.

‘At the moment, yes,’ he said. ‘They need the canvas for tents and the chemicals for weapons and the factories and the labour . . . I’m wondering how we can ever come back from war, after so much has been turned over to it . . . That’s not something I can paint, though. I don’t know what people want. I’ve always painted what they want, lovely things . . . and I am old, and the young are suffering, and I can do nothing for them.’

So she kissed him on the cheek, and said, ‘For what it’s worth, you’ve cheered me up.’

‘Have I? How?’

‘By noticing that we need it,’ she said.

Later, when she was leaving, somewhere between ‘oh dear, it’s getting late’ in the studio and ‘please come again, please do’ in the hall, Sir Alfred stopped on the stairs and said suddenly: ‘Before the war, I was going to go on a grand tour of Europe. There were all sorts of pictures I wanted to look at again . . . in the Netherlands and Paris and Florence and Rome. I was going to take Riley with me. I read somewhere that one shouldn’t take servants to Egypt because they lacked the education which would enable them to appreciate the recompenses for the inconveniences . . . And I thought, Riley is the most appreciative boy I ever knew. Such a passion . . . the way he would swallow books whole . . . He constantly revived me. I cannot tell you how much I miss him, Nadine. Such a clever, passionate boy, and that solid, silent pride he had, and that quicksilver way. Very like you, in some ways. Such a pair, you two, when you were little: like a pair of little curly-haired creatures, always huddled up together, with your secrets and your plans . . .’

‘Were we?’ she said, blinking. She knew they were. But to have it declared so openly, by an adult, made it real because it had been witnessed. She felt as if a great shaft of sunlight had burst through heavy cloud, picking her out, illuminating her, blessing her.

‘A pair of strange lovely little creatures . . .’ he said. ‘So – yes, I’ve decided. I will extend my tour and go to Egypt. I will do it. Whatever happens. And I hope he will want to come with me.’ His eyes were bright with intent. He made her smile.

I’m coming too
, she thought, and then quickly ran through in her head again the words he had used, storing them, saving them for later sustenance.
Clever. Passionate. Appreciative. Quicksilver. Silent, solid pride. Such a pair, you two, always huddled together. Lovely.

She was late back, and Matron said Jean and Esther were both down with gastric flu now, ‘so get to it, girl,’ but she didn’t mind because inside she was bathed in light, singing
appreciative
quicksilver, lovely, clever, strange, you two, such a pair . . .

*

The telegram said Tuesday midday. She sat at Victoria station from eleven, propped up, kind of perched on the barrier, the heels of her boots tucked behind the rail, with her skirt sticking out and her cap disrespectfully back. Many of the uniformed men passing up the platforms said things like: ‘Darlin’! You made it!’ or ‘Tell me you’re waiting for me – please!’ and one said cautiously, ‘Edith?’ and she had to shake her head quickly, apologetically.

He came straight to her, following an arrow line through the crowd. She saw him coming and the lurch inside nearly cast her off her rail. His case fell to the floor as he snaked his arm round her waist and there was a tiny perfect pause before he kissed and kissed and kissed her.

People around stopped and noticed them. Little smiles of patriotic indulgence, disapproving tuts, piercings of envy, eye-narrowings of vicarious lust, stirrings in trousers.

‘Where are we going?’ he said, smiling, travel-stained, crop-haired, young, beautiful.

She couldn’t speak.

‘Cup of tea,’ he said. ‘I could do with a cup of tea.’

So once again they sat in front of cups of tea, and the clattering world around them fell away. The terror and repression and wrongness lifted like mist, and disappeared. They were completely happy. They couldn’t stop smiling at each other, beaming like fools till their cheeks ached and he started laughing. They were laughing when they left the café and got on a bus, and then on a train, and then they walked out of town, and climbed a fence, and climbed a hill, and lay on his coat on a hillside among cowslips and cow parsley and tiny blue cats’ eyes.

She didn’t say, ‘Not here.’ Here in the sun in the shelter of the hill and the warmth of the tiny world inside his collar, inside his lining, seemed perfect. ‘I won’t – don’t worry – I won’t,’ he was muttering. He only blanched a little when she produced Jean’s little packet.

‘Where the . . .?’ he asked.

‘Jean,’ she whispered, unsure if it was all right. ‘Is it all right?’

‘If you’re sure . . .’

She was sure. She revelled in the battling desires on his face, the intoxication of how much he wanted her and the beauty of his concern for her virtue. She was innocent enough to be horribly afraid the concern might win.

She did say, a little later, entranced and appalled, as he lay shipwrecked on her thighs, ‘Is that it?’

To which he replied, gasping, ‘No, not at all. That’s just the beginning. Sorry. There’s much more. Much, much more . . .’

‘You said you wouldn’t,’ she murmured, in his arms.

‘For God’s sake, woman, how could I not?’ he replied. ‘It wouldn’t be human,’ and she laughed, and they did it again, better.

Evening crept up on them, and the chill of the dark earth through the wool. A room in town, they thought, though it seemed worse, somehow, than what they had just done. She couldn’t believe she had done it.
I’ve done it! We have done it!
She felt like a different woman. Something was singing under her skin, and her limbs seemed to fit on her differently. Better. Right.

She turned her ring round on her third finger so it looked like a wedding ring, but the lady at the little hotel looked askance at their youth and the one army-issue bag.

‘There’s no rooms,’ she said, not meeting their eyes, and Riley leant in and said to her kindly, ‘Never mind. We’ll be all right,’ and nothing could blight them. They took the milk train back to London, and walked through the dawn, ending up in a dingy room on Victoria Street near the station where they paid in advance, and once they had each other’s clothes off, breeches and petticoat, braces and camisole in piles on the floor, they didn’t come out for three days.

Nadine woke with his body curled round her, his face in the back of her neck, his breath on her skin, his arm flung across her, and the momentousness of what they were doing filled her with a great unspeakable joy.
Now I know
, she thought.
Now I know and I am part of it all and part of myself and of him.

They talked, of love, and food, and their shared memories, their lost world, as if it were a real thing. Occasionally they broached their future – Sir Alfred’s grand tour, the adventures to come, the motorcycle and the dog – as if it were perfectly likely. Nadine found herself saying, ‘When we . . .’ and for a moment stopped herself, knowing that the correct word had to be ‘If . . .’ and unable to bear saying it. ‘If ’ was a cruel word, ‘when’ a deluded one. She wanted to say ‘When . . .’ anyway. She fell silent. He kissed her, and got up, and went out, and came back with pork pies and a bottle of champagne and a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley from the stall in the station, wet from the rain.

They did not talk about the larger present, so circumscribed, so uncontrollable.Their little present was two bodies and a bed, and that was the entirety of time and place: them, there, in the little room, awkward, laughing, happy, warm, tentative, surrendering, overwhelmed, alarmed, astounded, shivering, subsiding, asleep, awake, getting the hang of it, learning, loving, redeemed. Happy.

Chapter Fourteen

London, May 1917

Peter said, in his letters, that he hoped everybody was fine.

Mrs Orris said, in her letters, that Julia was foolish to want to travel during the winter weather; selfish to want to use up the petrol, foolhardy to think of coming by train alone, ridiculous to imagine anyone was available to accompany her, thoughtless in trying to disrupt the routines of the household at Froxfield, ungrateful for the sacrifice her mother had made in taking Tom on, inconsiderate in harping on about visiting all the time, only likely to upset the child by turning up now when she hadn’t bothered to come and see him for such a long time . . . The new nurse was splendid, and Mrs Orris very happy to pay for her; of course, there was no room now for Julia to come and stay but that hardly mattered as Tom was perfectly well and didn’t miss his mother at all.

Julia wrote: ‘I shall come and stay at the Crown.’

Mrs Orris forbade it. What would people think of her?

Julia, always an obedient child, keen to be everything required of her, had never found anyone she could talk to about her mother. Hardly herself, even. Peter had been the only who had laughed at Mrs Orris, and given Julia the little warm amused glances of support that mean so much to the bullied.

One afternoon Julia went up to London alone. First, she took a cab to the small hotel in Mayfair, and dropped her bag. Then she walked out into the day, bright with the loveliness of London in spring: sun on ornate white stucco, pale green leaves deepening and expanding almost before her eyes, creamy horse-chestnut blossoms standing high. Her heels clicked on the pavement and she felt the brisk purposefulness of being in the city. She turned along Bond Street and looked in shop windows, admiring things. She had money. War was good for business. He could have stayed and worked in the firm and nobody would have thought worse of him. Lots of men did. Look at them – they’re all around, prosperous on timber and ball-bearings and biscuits and maps. He could have. Or they could have gone to America. They could have.

So many people. There were couples everywhere. Younger girls than her, pretty and light in the sunshine. She wondered about them. Would they find husbands? Would it finish soon, and would they take their slim young bodies to the Riviera and marry slim young men who had been at school all through the war? Or fat men now in offices, moving iron and cotton from here to there? Or will it not be over till they are my age? And if it is, over which way? Will their children grow up German? Will we all be raped and murdered in our beds? The questions didn’t seem real. How could you really imagine that such things could happen? You can’t think about it. You’re not allowed to talk about it. Shortage of taxis, yes. Bombed and killed? Not really. Lose the war? Of course not. She clenched her teeth.
Stop it, Julia. That’s what he’s fighting for. That’s why we didn’t go away and that’s why I must look after things. He is protecting us. All this. He is protecting Trafalgar Square and the Burlington Arcade and the cabbies and the babies and the pigeons and me. It is all so worth protecting. The white terraces and the tall grey elegance and the green squares and the old ladies and the pavement and the King.

How could these things fail? The Royal Academy, Fortnum & Mason? It was all too prosperous and nice. She let the prosperity soothe her, moving in and out of shops as if pulled along lines of quiet desire: glance, see, draw closer. How pretty the things were. Pretty and safe. She walked and walked. She was nervous. She had told nobody.

It would be all right.

She walked towards Berkeley Square. Her feet hurt. There was a smart little pub on Brook Street, hung with baskets of flowers. It looked awfully attractive.

She had a newspaper in her bag.

Julia laughed to herself, and went into the pub. She had never been in one before. It was warm, cosy, with a manly, tobaccoey smell. She would treat it like a café, she thought, looking round, choosing a table, near the door, sunlit through the window. She caught the eye of a waiter.

‘A small sherry, please,’ she said. She felt slightly wild.
If my mother could see me!

She took out her paper. There had been a riot in Paris, after the new Ballets Russes production, and the composer, Satie – Peter loved Satie – had called a critic something so rude the paper couldn’t print it, and the critic had sued, and Satie was to go to prison, and the writer, Monsieur Cocteau, had shouted the rude word in court and had had to be carried out. The costumes had been made of cardboard.

Other people’s lives!

She didn’t in the least want to be sent to prison for her art, or to dance in a cardboard costume, but, oh, she wanted something . . .

Yes, and she was getting something. She was.

She wondered what the rude word had been.

But it was good to be sitting down. She looked at the stained-glass in the window, the colours the sunlight gave it, greens and reds like church, and the sense of the street outside.

When the man spoke, she didn’t think he was addressing her.

‘I say,’ he said again.

She’d always thought ‘I say’ a singularly idiotic phrase.
Of course ‘you say’. I can hear you saying.

‘I don’t suppose I could get you another of those?’ He was gesturing to her drink, which was untouched. Smooth, strong hands. Youngish face. Moustache. Lieutenant’s uniform, well filled. Hopeful, slightly desperate brown eyes. Slight smile.

She blinked.

‘It’s just you look a little . . .’ He smiled encouragingly.

‘A little what?’ she said. She didn’t want to be discourteous.

‘Well, I was rather hoping you looked a little lonely,’ he said, grabbing a chair, pulling it over, swinging his leg over it. Her accent had surprised him, she could see it.

‘My husband is in France,’ she said, alarmed. It came out wrong. She meant it to mean, ‘Go away, he’s a soldier, have some respect.’ It came out (if someone wanted to hear it that way) as, ‘Yes, I’m alone, I’m unprotected, I
am
lonely.’

‘Good for him,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Good-oh. All the more reason, really. Dare say he wouldn’t mind a fellow officer buying his wife a drink. In solidarity. Let’s drink to his health.’

This was awful. Awful. Her heart started going too fast. She could not possibly drink with a strange man in a pub. But she could not refuse to drink to Peter’s health.

The waiter was right there. The officer said gaily: ‘Same two again, old sport.’ She was sitting like a fool, stuck, stupid.

The drinks arrived. The waiter smirked. The officer, who had been leaning back in his chair and staring at her, raised his glass and said: ‘To his health, and to the health of his . . . awfully pretty . . . wife . . .’

The way he was looking at her!

He was handsome. She felt a rush of heat. Something was suddenly available and apparent to her that she had never known about before. You could just go to a public place and a man, a total stranger, might come up to you with that look . . .

He leant forward. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You must think me awfully rude. Just approaching you like that. But you are so very pretty, and you do look, if you don’t mind me saying so, so very lonely. My name’s Raymond Dell.’

He held out his hand, and the implacable force of a lifetime of good manners made her hold hers out too. He took it. His hand was warm and dry. His teeth were white and clean. He didn’t hold her hand for too long as men so often did. She was confused. Was he respectable or not? She used to be able to tell. Then she hadn’t had to – Peter had been there. Since he’d been away she hadn’t gone anywhere where there were men she didn’t know. She could feel that she was blushing, staring at him like a cow over a gate, transfixed.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What’s troubling you? I’m just back from Flanders myself, and I would love to hear someone else’s troubles. Please. Indulge me.’ He smiled.

A kind smile. A warm hand. A compliment. A plea for sympathy. Broad shoulders under the khaki. A fully desiring look.

He wants to do with me what Peter and I used to do. He does.

For a tiny flashing moment, she knew it was possible. She could smile and drink and talk and let him take her hand and lead her out into the street under the waiter’s smirk and have a little lunch somewhere nice and drink a little wine and they could go together – in the afternoon, why not? – to the little hotel in Mayfair, or to another little hotel, under fake names – one fake name – into an anonymous room and they could do those things, she and this handsome young man.

It was possible.

It was something that people did.

Had she met him at a dance in 1912 she would have danced with him, and asked her mother to let him call, and they would have played tennis.

She was beautiful. She was desired. She was flattered. She was glad. Was she tempted?

It’s Peter’s fault, he shouldn’t neglect me so – even when he’s here he neglects me, he neglects me
more
when he’s here because his presence makes the absence of his desire so clear, so cruel . . .

She
was
tempted. She wanted him to kiss her. She felt the dangerous heat rising, a wildness, a flurry of devil-may-care.

She stood up. ‘You have mistaken me,’ she said carefully. ‘Good day.’

She shook her head in the sunshine. She hadn’t drunk any of the sherry but she felt intoxicated. The air was cool, clarificatory, on her scalp.

Good Lord! A total stranger. How appalling.

She very much wanted to ring someone up and tell them what had happened. Not that for a split second she had entertained the idea. But that this was something that – that was conceivable.

And who would she talk to? Mrs Bax? Her mother? Rose? All the women she knew thought she was pathetic. She knew that other women were better equipped than her. But, dammit, she was doing what she could.

She shook her head again, briskly, shaking out the foolishness.

My marriage is good
, she thought.
I love my husband and my marriage is good. There is nothing I would not do for him. I have turned down temptation for him.

She marvelled at the wickedness, and gloried in her trouncing of it.

*

Julia had come to London to see Dr Lamer. The plan was, he would drug her and lay her out, then make a series of tiny slices into the smooth white skin beneath her jaw, which, when stitched up, would tighten and remove the slight sag of flesh under her chin that she feared had increased since childbirth and the beginning of the war, thus preventing the dual threats of (1) disappointing Peter by appearing old and ugly and (2) ending up looking like her mother. Her beauty was her strength – everybody had been telling her this for years. It was the only thing anyone had ever valued in her. It was her one weapon. So she must look after it.

But when she went to the clinic the morning after her encounter with Raymond Dell, between the drugging and the laying out, Julia began to flap her hands inexplicably by her sides, and cry out ‘No, no, don’t do it.’ She began to weep, and shout, and stared at Dr Lamer through blue eyes huge with tears. Dr Lamer was compelled to sedate her, out of consideration for the other clients, and if he was annoyed he did not show it.

Later in the afternoon, sitting up in her pleasant bed, still steeped in sedative, Julia was confused. She thought she had had the operation; she was delighted that it did not hurt, and she expected Peter any moment to pick her up and take her home. Before he arrived, would Dr Lamer please give her some advice on her nose.

‘There’s nothing wrong with your nose, my dear,’ he said. ‘Your nose is quite perfect.’

‘I need to be perfect, you see,’ she said. ‘My husband deserves a perfect wife.’

‘Of course, my dear,’ said the gentleman. ‘All husbands want a perfect wife.’

‘Mine
deserves
it,’ Julia explained. ‘He’s in France, you see, and he’s just not the kind of man who should be there. He’s really a very peace-loving man, you know. He loves his dog, and reading his history books and music, and it’s so terribly important that everything should be perfect for him when he comes back, just the same as it always was . . .’

‘I’m sure he likes you just the way you are, Mrs Locke. You’re a very beautiful woman.’

‘I don’t know if he does like me . . . But, oh, God, you’re right. I mustn’t change my nose. Of course not! I must be just as I was. Oh, I don’t know. Should I be just the same as always, or should I be perfect? He always teased me about my nose . . . the little dip . . . You could do it with paraffin wax, couldn’t you? Like Gladys Deacon?’

Dr Lamer took her hand, poor creature. ‘It is always more difficult to add to the human form than it is to remove from it,’ he said. ‘And Miss Deacon’s experience is not one to emulate, Mrs Locke. It wasn’t done in the best way, and there were side effects.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she said, though she didn’t. ‘Is it really bad?’

‘It was not advisable,’ said Dr Lamer. ‘Let us discuss these things when you are feeling more yourself.’

‘But you must have a better method now, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘Haven’t they thought something up? I heard paraffin could be mixed with other things and that it was all right now . . . or . . . There was an article in
Beauty Chat
about featural surgery . . .’

Dr Lamer had considered featural surgery, nose rebuilding. He knew of less principled surgeons who offered hope and little else to saddle-nosed syphilitics. Himself, he did not care for it. It didn’t work well. Easier, simpler, and just as profitable to tuck a little loose skin, tattoo an eyebrow, to shave a Jewish nose to match a new gentile name, even to give a little phenol face peel like a lay skinner, a common or garden beautifier. But not
adding.
Adding was too risky and too difficult.

‘. . . only he did call it my one imperfection. But he seemed to like it. Perhaps he wouldn’t want me to be perfectly perfect, like Mary Pickford . . .’

‘Let’s talk about it when you’re up and about,’ said the doctor, as he left her. ‘When your mind is clear.’