Nuns and Soldiers (16 page)

‘No.’

‘Why not, you can ask her. You’ve got no
pluck.
God, she’s a stuffy bastard, she sucks in all the oxygen so you can’t breathe.’

‘You only met her once.’

‘Once was enough, dear boy. That
grande dame
! She was the get of two little Scottish dominies. I’m upper classer than her.’

‘I can’t ask Gertrude.’

‘I don’t see why not. And that orchestra of china monkeys. God,
they’re
an orchestra of china monkeys! What about his excellency the Count?’

It amused Tim to let Daisy think the Count was a real count. This fed her scorn and made her happy.

‘The Count’s not rich.’

‘They don’t have to be rich. What about Manfred, he really
is
rich.’

‘No, he’s too -’

‘You’re frightened of him.’

‘Yes.’

‘I think you’re frightened of them all. You must ask someone or we won’t eat. Maybe there’s a good time coming but it’s crisis now. What about Balintoy?’

‘No.’

‘You always look funny when I mention Balintoy. What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re a terrible liar, Tim. Some people are just liars like being red-haired.’

‘He hasn’t any money.’

‘You said the noble lord was in Colorado. How do people with no money get to Colorado when we can’t even get as far as Epping Forest? Mrs Mount?’

‘No, she’s poor.’

‘She’s a snake.’

‘Well, she’s a poor snake.’

‘You’re always around with your posh friends but you never seem to get anything out of them except a couple of tomatoes and a bit of stale cheese.’

‘It wasn’t stale.’

‘Mine was. An orchestra of china monkeys! That’s them exactly. Oh shit, what’s the answer. I suppose there isn’t one.’

‘Daisy, we’ve got to manage
on our own.
’

‘We keep saying that, but things get worse. What happens when one’s destitute? Do you think I like taking your pennies when there’s so little-Ido notice!
Rien à faire
, one of us will have to marry for money.’

‘Make a rich marriage and join the bourgeoisie?’

‘Yes, well, at least we’re free, we’ve stayed outside in freedom, in reality. We don’t live artificial faked-up lives like your rich pals. You can’t imagine
them
here, can you? Or living on frozen fish fingers like us. Pity our upbringing won’t let us steal from supermarkets. Are you sure Guy won’t leave you any money?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘I bet he cheated you out of that trust money. You never saw any of the papers, did you? I bet there was a lot more cash than they pretended. You ought to have asked to see the documents.’

It was true that Tim had never seen any papers, it had not occurred to him to ask. The Openshaws could have cheated him, but he just knew that they had not. Sometimes Daisy’s malice depressed him, her determined belittling of people he respected. Of course in a sense it wasn’t serious, it was just a way of complaining about the world in general. Sometimes he found himself drawn into a tacit complicity of malice, it was easier than arguing.

‘There are ladies present!’ shouted Daisy, banging her glass on the table.

She shouted this every night at the Prince of Denmark. People sometimes walked along the road from the Fitzroy to hear her.

 

 

‘I wish you had seen Guy earlier,’ said Gertrude. ‘He was so beautiful. ’

She and Anne were sitting together in the drawing-room. It was late afternoon. Anne was sewing buttons onto one of Gertrude’s mackintoshes. Gertrude was trying, following Anne’s new enthusiasm, to read a novel, but the words of
Mansfield Park
kept jumbling themselves up into nonsense before her eyes.

‘He’s beautiful now,’ said Anne. To please Gertrude she had bought another dress, a plain dark blue tweed dress with a leather belt. She smoothed back her straight silver-blonde fur and looked at Gertrude with a loving intentness which sometimes comforted and sometimes exasperated her friend. Gertrude had become, in the last days, somehow wilder and more desperate and she sensed Anne’s sense of the change. Gertrude felt as if she were suddenly ageing. I am growing older and Anne is growing younger, she thought.

Gertrude had been amazed by the frightful jealousy which she had felt when Anne had talked so long and so ardently with Guy on the previous evening. She had even heard them laugh. She did not eavesdrop of course. Guy had had a sort of collapse afterwards and she had thought: he will die, and Anne, arriving out of the blue, will be the last person to have talked to him. Anne had emerged looking strained and exalted with tears in her eyes. Guy had rallied but he remained, with Gertrude, aloof, vaguely bitter, almost spiteful. Sometimes his eyes had that mad fishy look which made him seem another person, a breathing simulacrum of the loved one weirdly kept alive. He is not himself, she thought; but how terrible to die not oneself. She thought this, but could not yet really think ‘die’. Guy had that morning decided not to be shaved any more. Already his face had changed with the dark outline of the stubble. He looked like a rabbi. She would never again see the face that she had known.

While Guy was talking to Anne the Count had arrived with Veronica Mount, and they had both spoken appreciatively of Gertrude’s ‘nun’. Victor was absent dealing with an epidemic of Asian ’flu. Manfred came, as he always did, and Stanley who brought Janet with him. She had just been given a lecture. She brought more flowers and was sweet to Gertrude. Mrs Mount talked about a splendid exotic Jewish wedding she had attended in her deceased husband’s family, with Oriental music and dancing rabbis. She went on to criticize the arrangements at Jeremy Schultz’s bar mitzvah. Stanley talked about ‘the House’. Moses Greenberg, the family solicitor, a middle-aged widower who had married an Openshaw, arrived late. He talked about his niece who was to marry Akiba Lebowitz, the controversial psychiatrist. He also mentioned that Sylvia Wicks had come to consult him on a point of law on behalf of a friend. Sylvia had not reappeared since the night when she asked to see Guy. Gertrude felt she had been rude to Sylvia. Guy had not wanted to see the Count, and had been curt with Gertrude later in the evening. Gertrude had not asked Anne what she and Guy had talked about and Anne had not said.

Today it was foggy and neither of the women had been out. London was huddled under a damp freezing-cold pall of brownish air. The street lights had been on all day, and Gertrude had pulled the curtains at three o’clock. A fire was burning in the grate. Janet Openshaw’s chrysanthemums were still quite fresh with the beech leaves and eucalyptus on the marquetry table. Gertrude had arranged Janet’s new flowers, a mass of mauve and white anemones in a big oatmeal coloured Staffordshire mug, and put them on the mantelpiece, beside one of the Bohemian vases. (Flowers were never put in the Bohemian vases in case the water made a mark on the glass.) She felt a physical agony of restlessness, and a desire to cry out loudly. She dropped her book on the floor, aware of Anne’s quiet gaze.

The nurse put her head round the door. ‘Oh Mrs Openshaw, Mr Openshaw wants to see you.’

Gertrude leapt up. This was unusual. The days had fallen into such a steady pattern. This was still the time of Guy’s rest. Then the nurse was with him. Then after that was Gertrude’s time. Gertrude thought, this is it. But the nurse was smiling her dry professional smile as she held the door open.

Guy’s door was ajar. Gertrude entered, breathless with fear. The single lamp was lighted by the bed. Guy was sitting propped up. His bearded face shocked her. Other things were different too. He held out a hand towards her.

Spellbound, Gertrude took the frail hand, sat in the bedside chair, was convulsed with a desire to sob. Guy was suddenly present to her, all present, with his whole tenderness, his whole love, his real being.

He said. ‘Steady, my darling, my dear heart, my love, my own dear one, my dear -’

Gertrude cried quietly, leaning over, her tears dropping onto his hand, onto the sheet, onto the floor.

He said, ‘You know how it is. We aren’t parted. In a way we’ll never be parted. Forgive me if I’ve seemed so sort of far away.’

‘I know-I vknow -’ said Gertrude. ‘Oh Guy, how can I bear it -’

‘Bear it you can, and if you can you must. I’m so full of beastly drugs, that’s partly the trouble. And-I don’t want to weep my way to the tomb. It’s better to be calm and dull. I don’t want to see you distraught, I don’t want you to be distraught. We know about our love and our life, how good it has been. We don’t have to repeat it all now with weeping and wailing. You understand, dearest heart?’

‘Yes, yes -’

‘Well, weep less, there’s something I want to say to you.’ He shifted sighing, pulling at his hair for a moment with his other hand. ‘I enjoyed talking to Anne.’

‘I’m so glad.’

‘It was a foretaste of heaven.’

‘A - ?’

‘You recall some witty Frenchman said that his idea of heaven was
discuter les idées générales avec les femmes supérieures.
But don’t worry, I haven’t been converted. “Heaven’s morning breaks and earth’s vain shadows flee!” Do you remember Uncle Rudi singing that?’

‘He knew all the Anglican hymns.’

‘One thing one does learn at an English Public School. A perfectly suitable song for a cantor. I’m glad Anne’s with you.’

‘So am I.’

‘I wanted to -’

‘To tell something?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you all right, in pain -’

‘I’m fine -’

‘You suddenly seem so much better - oh God if only -’

‘Gertrude, don’t. Now listen my darling, my dear one - kiss me first.’

Gertrude kissed his strange bearded lips. She felt desire for him, which had been absent. She groaned and sat back, holding his hand and caressing it with a sudden passion.

‘Good dear girl. Gertrude, I want you to be happy when I’m gone.’

‘I can’t be happy,’ she said. ‘I shall never be happy again, I can’t be. I won’t kill myself, it won’t be necessary, I’ll walk and talk but I’ll be dead. I don’t mean I’ll go mad, but I won’t be happy, it isn’t possible. I can’t be happy without you, it’s a fact of nature. I wasn’t happy till I met you.’

‘An illusion,’ said Guy, ‘and anyway a quite different point. You will recover.’

‘What does it mean to -’

‘We’ve had a wonderful time.’

‘Yes -’

‘Listen, I must talk rationally while I can. I most intensely want you to be happy when I’m gone. They say “He would have wished” this or that has no sense, but it has. I am giving it sense now, for you, do you understand? Don’t waste time being miserable. I want you to find happiness, to be ingenious and resolute to live, to survive. You are intelligent and strong. You are young. You can have a whole other lifetime after I am dead.’

‘Guy, I can’t. I shall be dead too - walking and talking and dead - Please don’t try to -’

‘You love me, but you won’t grieve forever. I want you to seek joy and to seek it intelligently. I beg and pray you not to grieve. I know you can’t imagine it now, but you will pass out of these shadows. I see a light beyond.’

‘Not without you -’

‘Now, Gertrude, stop. You must try, for my sake, to have the will
now
to please me in the future. In that future when I won’t exist any more. There won’t be any me any more and long grief will be stupid. People mourn because they think it does some good, it’s a kind of tribute. But there’s no recipient. “Many a one for him makes moan, but none shall know where he is gone!” Can you remember any more of it?’

‘It’s a Scottish ballad, but I can’t remember -’

‘ “His lady’s ta’en another mate” -’

‘Oh - Guy -’

‘Don’t just be emotional,
think
and think
with me.
Be
with me
now, even if it’s hard. Why shouldn’t you marry again! You could have a whole new happiness with another person. I don’t want you to be alone.’

‘No. I am you.’

‘So you feel. It will be different later. Life, nature, time will work upon you. I’ve thought about it and I want you to marry. You could marry Peter for instance. He is a good man and he loves you. He is pure in heart. You know that he loves you?’

Gertrude hesitated. She sort of knew. She had never worried about it. ‘The Count, yes. It did sometimes seem - but I -’

‘I’m just saying this to concentrate your mind. Heaven knows what will happen to you next year. It may be something entirely unexpected. But I so much ... want you to be ... safe ... and happy ... when I’m not around ...’

He sank back among the pillows. ‘I want to die well ... but how is it done?’

 

 

Just outside the partly open door the Count, who had arrived early and come quietly up the stairs, stood frozen upon the landing. The drawing-room door was shut, so was Anne’s door. The nurse was in the kitchen. In silence and alone he overheard Guy’s words concerning himself. He turned about and tiptoed away, out of the flat and down the stairs.

CHAPTER TWO

TIME HAD PASSED and Guy Openshaw was dead. He lived longer than had been expected, but obliged the doctor’s prediction by dying on Christmas Eve. His ashes had been scattered in an anonymous garden. It was now early April in the following year, and Gertrude Openshaw,
née
McCluskie, was looking out of a window at a cool cloudy sunlit scene. To her right, fairly close, was a small rocky headland where furry emerald grass was brushed down like a hat over a bulge of grey cliff, cluttered with tiny facets, which descended into the sea, it being now high tide. At low tide the rocks descended to a beach of stones below which was a little line of pale yellow sand. The stones were grey, oblong flattish, of a uniform size and shape, so that from a distance they looked like the scales of a fish. They had been clashed and beaten by the millennial sea into a terrible density and an absolute smoothness. Here and there only was one chipped or pitted or covered with little runic scratches. The faceted headland was quite easy to climb, and had been climbed by Anne Cavidge the day before. Ahead of Gertrude was the open sea, a cold dark blue sea with burly white clouds moving above it. The waves were breaking upon the semi-circle of stones which formed the little cove, with the house at its centre. Between the house and the stones there was a wind-swept garden, a sheep-cropped lawn, and two low crumbling downward-reaching stone walls lined by tormented hawthorn trees, through which the frequent rain crept and dripped. At the foot of these trees, in densely crowded profusion, primroses were in flower. On Gertrude’s left, where the land continued to slope gently to the sea, there was a pattern of little fields, surrounded by more stone walls, in rather better repair, which cast hard shadows when the intermittent sun shone upon them. Gertrude was staying alone with Anne in Stanley Openshaw’s country cottage in Cumbria. Manfred had driven them north three weeks ago in his big car.