My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (29 page)

Walking up behind Regent Street he stopped a moment to look in the window of a small gallery, showing photographs: stark, extreme images of moonlight and flowers, racks of trees, drops of rain, yet as far from the usual look of these things as the war was from a pink sugar mouse: an extremity of richness in the metallic black and luminous white that reminded him, shockingly, of nights on the fire-step, and which yet were profoundly peaceful. He noted the photographer’s name, Steichen, and stared at them for a long time. Inside, there were portraits: Matisse, concentrating on a serpentine figurine he was modelling; Bernard Shaw laughing behind his hand. The pictures glowed, and their dark radiance burnt the Botticelli out of his mind.

He had wanted to visit Sir Alfred, for Christmas, for the symbolism of it. He wanted to give everyone the present of the news: that though his face had been massacred his soul had not. He was not going to indulge a fatuous
faux
-modesty: he knew that it would make everyone happy to see him survive this. They’d be happy to see anyone survive it. It wasn’t personal. Except where it was, and then so much the better.

But he was tired. He would write to Sir Alfred, give him notice of the situation, visit him later. As he made the decision, he felt a pang for the warm handshake, the manly embrace, the cry of matronly concern from Mrs Briggs, the weight of Messalina’s dear heavy head on his knee, that he would not, after all, be having that evening.

His own words to his mother came back to him.
Bit by bit, eh?

And:
Things to do.
It was likely to be a long night. He had prepared a few notes to hand out as required. He would not be trying out his tender new speech on strangers in public places.

Sitting on the tube, he raised his hat and stroked his scalp with his fingertips, ruffling the hair, feeling the granulated scar of the bald strip like a road sliced roughly through a jungle.
I’m glad I’m not dead.
He got off at Piccadilly Circus, and rose again to the surface, to the world. He stopped a moment at the entrance to the station and breathed carefully. World. People. Streets. City. Light. Dark. Drunks. Buses. Women. Music. Festivities. Traffic. Christmas. Laughter. Chat. Shouting. Men.

He breathed.

I have killed. I have saved. Normality does not care. Now I must walk city streets, push through a door, push through a crowd.

He went first to the Trocadero. Approached the ticket booth. Wanted to smile. Attempted to put some kind of courteous smile in the angle of his shoulders as he approached out of the dark wet night in a greatcoat with a scarf wrapped round his face. He felt like a bank robber in a silent movie as he handed over his note.

I am sorry, I cannot speak to you directly as I am injured. Do you know if a jazz saxophonist called Sidney Bechet is playing tonight? And if so, where? And if not, do you know of anyone who might know? Thank you.

The girl, young, pretty, knowing, glanced at the note and said, with a tut of sympathy and a nasal curl, ‘Aaoow,’ as if to a kitten with a hurt paw. Then she called behind her, ‘Billy!’ and a man appeared.

‘Sidney Bechet?’ he said, pronouncing it ‘Betchit’, rather than the French way Locke used. ‘Coloured feller? I’d try the Forty-Four, Eduardo’s, the Turquoisine, if you know it . . .’

It was early for the clubs, so Riley first quartered the area. He dodged away from the more crowded streets, leant in doorways when necessary, pacing himself in the face of so much humanity. A square mile of pubs lay before him, any one of which Locke might or might not be in. The John Snow, the King’s Arms, the Nellie Dean, the Admiral Duncan, the Pillars of Hercules, the Sun and 13 Cantons, the Intrepid Fox, the Blue Posts, the Carlisle, the Coach and Horses, the Dog and Duck, the Element, the Red Lion, the other Red Lion, the Angel and the White Horse . . . It was a long time since he’d been in a pub; a long, long time since his mum used to send him on this round looking for his dad.

He had to prepare for the mere fact of a room full of people. Pausing before the first door – how would it be? Full or empty? Loose women or nancy boys? Army or students? Quiet and staring, or raucous and celebratory? Happy sad angry upforapunchup fucking suicidal or all of the above?

Breathe. Push. Flinch – regroup.

It was, above all, crowded: a wave, a huge almost physical barrier of noise and warmth and breath, laughter, social cacophony, bodies, clattering, smoke, light. The sheer force of human emotion in a confined space, of crazy glee, of triumphalism, of drunkenness, mad relief, desperate loss, bereavement, wild happiness, this night of all nights, Christmas 1918. He should have thought it through. He was in no condition to trail through the pubs in the heart of London on this night of all nights. This was a stupid night to do it. And Peter could be anywhere.

He forced himself to slide in. He gazed round, and he had to leave. He developed a technique: in through one door, manoeuvre through, looking, looking, out of the other, lean on the wall, breathe.

He’d said he’d do it, so he did it, for Peter and for Rose.
You’ve killed, you can save.
In the quieter pubs he handed over another note: ‘I don’t suppose you know Peter Locke? Tall, blond, a major, thirty or so?

Several knew him. He’d been in the Star and Garter earlier.

So Riley had to continue.

At closing time, he went straight to the Turquoisine. He couldn’t afford the Forty-Four and he couldn’t stand in the street outside – he’d fall over, he was so cold and tired. Billy at the Trocadero had told him the address. He climbed the unlikely stairs, almost staggered in, sat at the bar. The room was crowded, the music low. He looked at no one, just wrote a new note. ‘Brandy. Please.’

The barmaid – black-skinned, fine-eyed – laughed at him. ‘Honey, I surely cain’t read this in this dim light.’

Riley turned his eyes to her. She was beautiful. He had never seen a black woman before. (Men, yes, in France – and Williams the Nigerian, at Sidcup.) He had never met an American woman. He would have loved to talk to her.

He made a vague gesture around his face, his mouth, a floating movement followed by a cut-throat slice, a shrug, and the half-smile, the eye smile, which was all he could offer.

‘Cain’t talk?’ she said. ‘Well, hell, honey, why didn’t ya say so?’ Then came the gasping laugh of appalled embarrassment at what she had said, her realisation that he had forgiven her even before she said it, his realisation that his forgiveness (as opposed to the punch in the mouth the barman in Wigan had had) was based not only on her beauty but on the fact of a smile. With the pointing at the brandy bottle, and the working out of what he wanted, a friendly atmosphere arose between them. Riley pulled out his metal straw, and slid it between the folds of his scarf.

The girl eyed him. ‘That baid, huh?’ she said. He gave her a palms-up gesture of futility. He wanted to tell her that he would chat with her if he could . . .
vicious circle.
She eyed him a moment more, then leant over and looked at him closely, taking in the scarf, the heavy-laden cuffs, the cheekbones, the grey diamond eyes. She lowered her long lashes, and raised them again, very close to him. He could smell soap and warmth and something sweet. Quite seriously, she said to him: ‘You still cute.’

His straw was still in his mouth, and he sipped his brandy, and he felt the coldness circling his heart, which might at any time descend on him again to protect him from all this stuff, this human stuff, which hurt you and . . .
What’s the opposite of ‘hurts you’? Not ‘comforts you’
. . .
‘Pleasures you’ sounds like it gives you a hand-job . . . Why isn’t there a word for ‘makes you happy’? ‘Brings you joy’?
He sighed, lingering on the fact that this moment had
the opposite of
hurt him.

In the doorway a lean Chinese man in a white suit was standing, smiling. A voice came from behind him: ‘For Christ’s sake, Mr Chang, move on in, would you, so we can get some bloody service?’

The man moved aside, and Riley looked up, and there was Peter.

The very sight of him softened Riley.
Look, there he is. Alive, here, now. Like a ghost.
The ghosts of the others danced across his mind, but he watched Peter, as he carefully approached the bar, calling out, mildly, elegantly: ‘My usual, Mabel darling, my darling Mabel.’ He brushed past Riley as he moved to the bar, next to him. He was very drunk.

Mabel glanced up at Riley, her eyes kind, apologetic – for Peter’s condition, perhaps, or for the end of their little moment – as she poured a glass of whisky.

Riley watched him a little longer. He found he was smiling. He leant on the bar, scribbled a note, and passed it to Mabel.

Say to him, Peter, look, here’s Riley Purefoy come to take you home.

She took it into the light to read, then looked up and said, in the unsurprised, unsurprisable tone of the bar-keeper in the face of other people’s drama: ‘He won’t want ta go home.’

Riley heard a touch of resignation in it too. Well. That was not his business.

He wrote:

he hasn’t been home since coming back from France wife and child Christmas future perhaps even. please

The girl rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and stared at it for a while, as if trying to keep something in. She stared, and after a while she swallowed. Then: ‘Hey, Peter,’ she said. ‘Sweetheart? Look, here’s Riley Purefoy. Look.’

Peter turned.

‘He’s goin’ ta take you home now, honey. You’re goin’ ta go home and have a good rest, and I’ll see you later.’

Peter stared at her. ‘But I want to hear you sing,’ he said. ‘And I rather hope Mr Chang, Mr Brilliant Chang, has a little something for me . . .’ He swayed slightly as he looked around.

‘I ain’t singing tonight,’ Mabel said gently. ‘And Mr Chang has left. You go on with Riley. Go on now.’

‘Riley?’ said Peter. He turned, and his drunk eyes saw. ‘Jesus Christ, Riley. Riley. Jesus Christ, Riley, how are you? Oh, God, I heard. I’m awfully sorry, Riley – not – I— Oh, God. Mabel, this is Riley. We were . . .’ He paused on ‘were’, giving it full weight. We were. We were. ‘Over there,’ he said finally.

‘He cain’t talk to you,’ Mabel said. ‘His face is hurt. But he’s goin’ ta take you home. Go on now. Don’t worry – go on home.’

‘Oh,’ said Peter, mildly, and Riley touched the woman’s hand for a moment, before taking Peter’s arm.

She passed over his hat. ‘Bye, honey,’ she said, as they moved away, in a voice that made Riley glance back. Then they were out of the club and down the stairs and in the street. At the doorway Riley looked round for a cab, and Peter suddenly, like a broken scarecrow lurching in a high wind, flapping perilously down the darkness, made a bid for escape.

Riley caught him up easily, and clutched at his coat. Peter was flailing, long skinny limbs everywhere. Riley feared hurting him, as one would a daddy-long-legs. It seemed Peter’s legs might just snap off.

In Riley’s moment of concern, Peter swerved, and made to hurtle off again. Quickly, Riley came round in front and, with a ‘sorry about this’ under his breath, punched him. As Peter spiralled down, Riley caught him, held him, then hitched him over his shoulder, awkward and heavy.
Where’s the stretcher-bearers when you need them?

Four cabs didn’t stop for him before one did. ‘He’s injured, not ’runk,’ Riley said to the driver – but the man clearly thought Riley was drunk too. Riley registered that this was going to be another fucking issue, but he was not interested in resenting it now. He dumped Peter in the back, dug into his pocket and found a soft, expensive, sign-of-real-officer-class wallet containing money and – aha – visiting cards. Riley handed one to the driver, who sniffed and held it out to catch the light of the lamp.

‘Sidcup!’ he yelped. ‘I ain’t driving to blimming Sidcup . . .’

Riley proffered a five-pound note.

‘Well,’ said the cabbie.

Peter, despite the rattling and shaking, slept. Riley stared across at him.
Look at us. Jesus Christ, just look at us. And we’re the lucky ones.

Then he lay back and thought:
I did it. I did something. I did it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Locke Hill, Christmas Eve, 1918

All afternoon rain had streaked heavily against the dark glass of the french windows, hurtling off the flagstones on the terrace, furrowing into the lawn, battering the huge withered burnt-orange rosehips that bobbed wildly in the sharp wind. The world had turned, and the seasons, and now it was Christmas Eve, and the child was to be born, again, who was given by his father for the redemption of sin, if you care for all that, which of course some people still did, though Rose didn’t. It seemed to Rose that religious faith, which had previously been shared out equally, now desperately swamped half the world while the rest wondered, sadly, bitterly, or with bereft bewilderment, how the notion of God could ever have offered them any comfort. Riley had given Rose an answer to the religion question that made sense. Clearing around his bed, right at the beginning, she had picked up his notebook; it had fallen open, and her eye had been caught:

Ainsworth and Burgess that night talking about God: Christian nations slaughtering each other across the world, Love Thy Neighbour, how can he allow all this to go on, etc etc. Ainsworth insisting on hope as the only hope; Burgess cynical. Answer is simple. Man made in God’s image, men stupid violent murderous destructive, ergo God stupid violent murderous destructive

When she’d read that, Rose had stopped short and had had to sit down for a moment.
If that’s how he was thinking, my God
(she noted that she still needed him to swear by),
were they all?

Rose just knew that there had been enough giving of sons. The idea of rebirth and a new season, on top of everything, was exhausting. Of course she was
happy
: the war was over. She’d half thought she wanted to stay at the hospital, to be with everybody, but in fact she was glad to have a little leave, and to be at Locke Hill tonight. If nothing else, she’d get a quiet evening and a rest. And if Riley did find Peter . . . Well, there were plenty of ifs. She wasn’t expecting anything.

In town everybody seemed mad with joy. All the singing and dancing and the vicar in tears, Mrs Bax going on about cracking open her champagne from 1908, the young people quite hysterical, and the expectation, the absolute palpitations, because the boys would be
coming back
! And some of them
were
back. One or two looked very well.

But the war was over. And Tom was home, though things were not . . . well . . .
instinct will carry them through, won’t it? Given time? Everything must get better now.
Actually, Rose had been quietly impressed by the news, via Mrs Joyce, that Julia had not even invited her mother to stay the night: had just given her a cup of tea, and sent her back to the station.

She’d drawn the curtains across against the weather, and built up the fire. Peter’s cello, propped up by the window, glowed softly. The narcissi blossomed in their Chinese bowl, white and heavenly like tiny angels’ wings. The good firewood burned slowly in the grate: seasoned apple from the orchard, which Julia had saved for when Peter was here, or expected, which meant a certain amount had been wasted, but not even Julia would suggest that was inconsiderate of him.

So everything was nice.

Rose had made soup for supper.
He never wants a big dinner when he’s been in town
.
Lord, even I am talking as if I know what he’s feeling . . . and as if he’s coming.

Good that there’s a chicken for tomorrow – quite a coup—

The telephone rang, and Rose started.

It wasn’t Peter, or Riley.

‘Rose?’

The sound of a human voice shook her.

‘Hello . . .’ she said.

‘It’s Nadine.’

Rose’s lassitude fell off her.

‘Oh, Rose, I’m in Dover. I’m . . . I just got off the boat. Look – can I come? There’s a train in ten minutes. I’m meant to be going home but I can’t face it.’

The cold damp metallic air of travel and outside and railway soot blew clear as a draught down the line through the rainy night into the golden lamplit drawing room.

‘Of course,’ said Rose. She remembered her first night back in Blighty, after her stint, years ago.

‘I’ll walk from the station,’ said Nadine. ‘Don’t bother Harker, even if you have fuel.
Thank you
.’ The line went dead and the cold disappeared again. Rose replaced the earpiece, and noticed that she didn’t mind being taken for granted by Nadine. Because Nadine took nothing else for granted, it was a compliment.

Rose went to find Harker, to send him down to meet the Dover train. It was a filthy night.

It was only then that she thought,
If Riley does go looking for Peter, if he finds him, if he brings him here . . .

Oh.

*

Nadine blew in two hours later, cold, still in uniform, a kitbag that hardly counted slung over her narrow shoulder. Her face, always sallow, was waxen. She still looked like a tomboy Lillian Gish. She placed her bag in the hall, and hugged Rose carefully, dripping. Her body was strung tight as a wire.

‘Gosh, your hair!’ said Rose.

Nadine smiled. She didn’t seem able to talk. The rooms were huge and extraordinary to her.

‘We have hot water,’ Rose said. ‘Running water,’ and they both smiled hugely.

‘Running water!’ said Nadine.

‘Julia had it done.’

Nadine made a ‘My
dear
!’ face, and took off her heavy overcoat.

‘Well, yes,’ Rose continued, conspiratorial, apologetic. ‘She has a way . . . Life goes on, you know . . .’

Nadine flinched, a tiny flinch, like the movement of a leaf on a still day.

Rose gave a little breath through her nose. ‘Still no Millie, though,’ she went on. ‘She’s staying on at Elliman’s. They’re converting to motor-cars.’
Why am I saying that? Am I trying to demonstrate the household’s suffering to Nadine? Offering credentials?

Rose would bring the bag. Nadine would go on up. ‘You’re in the blue room,’ Rose said. ‘Help yourself to the bath salts.’

The room was the same. The deep turquoise walls, the gleaming pink-hearted seashell from the Bosphorus on the mantel, the pale quilted bedspread. Nadine gazed at its clean softness. She had not been in England for a year. She had not been in this room since the autumn of 1917. Since . . .

‘Since’ was not a good word. Don’t let ‘since’ in.

Her bag had precious little in it, but Rose had laid out a nightdress, a dressing-gown and slippers, God bless her. Slippers!

Folded on the quilt was a great soft bath sheet. Nadine stared at it, took its soft pile between her fingers. She had very often thought about this. At the start of many short nights in damp mal-framed canvas beds, still wearing eight-days-on-the-trot underwear, with the cold gnawing the small of her back and the fleas dancing gung-ho, or when faced again with a jug of cold water and a whistle calling her to duty, she had rehearsed the joy-to-come of a hot bath. The discarding of dirty stinking clothes. The sound: rushing water, lots of it, the clanking of plumbing, the roar of the pipes hurtling to her comfort, the hiss of steam and creak of great big taps. The luxurious smell, the choice: lily-of-the-valley? Lemon? Rose geranium? Now, she found herself staring at them, bemused. The cold tiles of the bathroom floor; the rubber underfoot of the mat. The hard echo of a tiled room with a high ceiling. The slow descent of the body into the water. The flood of blood to the skin, and the tingling, flickering, shivering release from the flesh of the deepest cold, the tightest tension, rising off the skin like bubbles, bubbling, gone . . . The promise of a big towel, warm from the rail, of a big fire.

She unpeeled herself, dropped her war and travel-stained carapace, and stepped into the large enamelled tub. She was amazed. How extraordinarily strong a physical pleasure could be.

She slid below the surface. Her hair lifted and floated.
I’ll just stay here
, she thought, opening her long eyes under water, a naked Ophelia, shivering.
This is perfect.

Her lungs wouldn’t take the water. Unlike the bodies of many of the men, her body was still sane.

She washed her white legs, her cropped wild black hair, her thin arms and every other part. Between her toes, behind her ears, pushing back her cuticles with her thumbpads, rubbing her feet with the pumice-stone. How absolutely extraordinary to look at her own body so, to have so much time to pay it so much attention. There it was. Flesh. Undamaged. How absolutely extraordinary to clean and tend an undamaged body. A female body.

She flexed her feet, rolled her shoulders, bent her knees, lifted her arms. No wrong bends, no patent holes, no leaking. Nothing missing. Nothing shattered. Nothing rotten.

Wrapped in the big towel, she called gently from the doorway: ‘Is Major Locke here?’

‘No!’ called Rose. ‘You can come down in your dressing-gown!’

Nadine brought the towel, and rubbed her hair in front of the fire. Rose had poured two small glasses of golden sherry, and lit the little candles on the Christmas tree. What luxury! They reflected in the gilt mirrors at the back of the room, twinkling. For a mad instant, Nadine expected a tiny crack and a boom, the sound of tiny shells to accompany their tiny light, and felt a tiny twinge of adrenalin, an aftershock of the bitter metallic sweaty layer that had shivered her limbs, destroyed her nights, coated her mouth, lined her existence for the past year.

It’s over, it’s over.

‘I can always scarper upstairs if anyone comes,’ she said. ‘But where is Julia?’

‘She hasn’t been very well,’ Rose said.

‘Poor dear!’ said Nadine. ‘Not this flu?’ she said, with sudden concern. ‘Rose?’

‘She’s gone to bed,’ Rose said. ‘You’ll see her tomorrow.’

‘Well, she’s in good hands with you,’ Nadine said.

Rose smiled.

*

Julia’s burnt-orange curtains hung heavy and overlong to the floor, a second layer over the windows with their closed box shutters. The room was stuffy and miasmic. One lamp burnt low on the table by the fireplace, and the corners of the room were dim and lost to her. She slithered a little on her sheet, her legs moving as if under water. It was not clean enough – seamy, somehow. Slippery. She felt her negligée moving against it, and didn’t like the feeling. Her mind was a mist to her. Like swimming through icing sugar.

She heard Rose and Nadine downstairs. She couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t been able to get rid of the little edge of tension she had built up in making sure she remembered to do Tom’s stocking – sweet little sleeping Tom –
Peter, come and see how dear he is. We can start again, the three of us. I could have another, a little sister for him . . .
Her mind gagged on the words. Not by a man who didn’t love her, who didn’t find her attractive, who kept away from her, shaming her by his absence, in front of Rose and the servants and the neighbourhood, didn’t even write to her, didn’t even come to see his child . . .

She dragged herself up and looked at her watch on the bedside table.
Well, he won’t be coming tonight.
As the familiar phrase passed through her mind she slipped automatically, yet again, into the familiar spirals of resentment and fear:
broken limbs, other women, motor accidents, shell-shock . . .
those loyal ghouls lining up again at the end of her bed, conscientious, hideous, pulling strings in her belly, polluting. A new one had joined the rank: at least when he had been in the trenches it had been something outside keeping them apart – but now he was doing it all by himself.

Damn him –
no! Don’t damn him. He has suffered and must be allowed for, whatever it takes, whatever it takes. Don’t give up now. Peace has come! Now is the time to be strong.

Round and round.

Hold on, be strong, he has suffered, don’t blame him. (Blame yourself
, came the echo
).

Lines from a poem were haunting her – ‘We have years and years in which we will still be young,’ or something. What were they talking about? Nonsense. Young was for – the others. Those creatures who had been at school all this time, those buds bursting into flower only now, fresh, happy, innocent little things untouched by the war. Peter should go off with one of them – forget all his harsh grief, all their resentments. A young girl could dilute his sorrow with her innocence. Maybe that’s what was happening right now . . .

NO! Everything will be all right now. He’ll be back soon and everything will go back to normal. We can make it right.

She was cold.

A dark anger lurched inside her. Surely things had been going to be different when the war was over. She threw back the covers, crossed the room to poke and prod the fire, feeling the heat on her cheeks. Cold back, hot face. She could almost feel the capillaries bursting. More damage . . .

As long as she was beautiful she would be loved. As long as she did her bit. Took on her responsibility. There had been nothing she could do for so long except wait, and be pretty. It was so unfair that the last treatment hadn’t worked.
SO
unfair.
Bloody Madame Louise and her bloody useless treatments. ‘Bring back the bloom’ – oh, the liar.

And now the waiting was nearly over –
Oh, you look dreadful, old and tired and dreadful –
and she had waited so long that she was . . .
Miss Havisham . . .

And where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Weeks since his letter, years since . . .

Not for the first time she thought of Penelope, weaving and unweaving her tapestry for Odysseus. Europe must be full of Penelopes, failing, one way or another, to cope.
Oh, Rose, of course I wanted to be more like you!
Meanwhile, the open-ended, eternal absence continued. And what would he be when he finally came? And what would he find?

She straightened up. The dressing-table mirror flashed the fire back at her, and the three glass bottles she had stolen from Madame Louise twinkled.