The Diamond Waterfall (48 page)

Gib, squib, fib, drib, crib. Rib, tib,
zib.
His face so mock-solemn. Games, tickling, great bear hugs. I am small, swung high in the air. “Little podge— you're a podge, aren't you? When I'm hungry shall I cut a slice off?”

Alice watched always, never took part. It wasn't the kind of thing Alice did. “My little Cora Goffin,” Gib would call me, after the child actress who danced and sang (and unlike my uncompromisingly straight hair, had lovely corkscrew ringlets). Gib and I, that last year before the war, we sang together whatever was the latest in novelty numbers, revue songs.

War. At the beginning I was still a child. All that summer he had been Gilbert the Filbert.
The Passing Show of 1914.
Basil Hallam. (Dead now too. Killed.) The ladies who left their wooden huts, for Gilbert the Filbert, the Col'nel of the Knuts. Singing, dancing, right up to the day war was declared.

We must have danced on the day itself. I remember Alice coming in. Saying, “Gib, Gib, this isn't a time for fooling around.” And Gib replying,

“Half-past fooling time, Alice dear—time to fool again.” She was annoyed. I didn't laugh. I never laughed at that sort of thing. Nor did I take sides.

Gib enlisting at once. Something between him and Alice. The Towers becoming a hospital, Alice a nurse, Hal running away. But as well as worries and anxieties, excitements. The Belgian refugees in the village, bringing with them a feeling of the Continent, which Fräulein had never done. (How I'd hated the German tongue, and how glad I was now that I could be done with it.) Berthe, and her mother who became our sewing woman. French lessons. (Mother explaining, “They speak a little differently, certain words and expressions—we can sort that out later.” We have not—although I no longer say
nonante
for
quartre-vingt-dix,
my accent is forever Belgian.) Embroidery, for which I lacked all talent. Even my knitting for the troops was a disgrace.

Gib in the Dardanelles, Gib back, the worry of his illness. Gib in Flaxthorpe, convalescing at the Vicarage.

Such a sick man. I did not realize how sick, although I was used, from The Towers, to every kind of wound and illness. I was very busy with the patients in those days. Nothing official, it was just taken for granted that I was always there, each day, to read out loud, to write letters for the handicapped. And at other times—I was so much part of the entertainments. I loved the singing, the dancing. I made friends, friends. I was every officer's little sister. I was a flapper—and a child. Amy Hawksworth joined me most days. Berthe, who was very shy, almost never. Sylvia in the schoolroom, a leggy twelve-year-old.

Finally, he became well enough to go back to camp in England. Before that, he bought a motorcycle, complete with flapper bracket, and would ride off by himself around the countryside. He said he was starved for that kind of beauty. He took me out a few times, and Sylvia once (she cried with fear, and had to be brought ignominiously home. Amy was bolder). In a still cold May I shivered and clung tight to the stiff fabric of his British warm. I thought how thin he was, and that he must feel the cold more. He was my brother, my big brother.

So what happened? How,
why
did I fall in love? For that was what happened, even though I didn't recognize it. And so precious to me was it, that for the space of seven whole months I hugged it to myself. How could, how
should,
anything come of it? Wasn't he Gib, Alice's betrothed?

We were friends, nothing more, when Alice's canceled leave for the Somme battle threw aside his cherished plans and hopes—
and those of Alice.
(I must not forget that.) He came to Flaxthorpe and spent the leave due to him that was to have been a honeymoon. He'd asked me already where I thought it best for them to go: “I so want it to be somewhere that is
all
peace—after the sights and sounds of France—that she experiences now.” (As if
he
had known nothing of horrors.) Wiltshire, he thought, where he had relations. He would
write about renting a cottage there. She was due for at least a fortnight's freedom.

When the news came of her canceled leave, he went instead for long walks by himself on the moors. I felt frustrated by my inability to help, and very, very sorry for him. He explained that if she'd only decided to leave nursing on marriage, she could probably have come home at once, but that she was convinced she should continue as a VAD—he showed me a passage from a letter in which she told him “I know what would be the
easy
way, but I could not imagine myself content to be just a wife back in England, doing various good works. You see, I think I should have to live at The Towers, and that would be impossible, in the circumstances.” So she would not apply to break her contract. She'd asked instead to be considered as soon as possible for long leave—to get married. (How was officialdom to know that she had already waited for over five years? To them she was just another wartime marriage.)

As Gib said to me bitterly, “It's not as if there were anything
sudden
about it.” It was then he told me how he'd urged her to marry him when war was first declared. “If only … Don't you see, all would be well now, wouldn't it?” (And I saw. I saw.)

That dreadful month of July, with the casualty lists growing to unbelievable lengths. We had a small chapel in The Towers then, made for the officers. Before, it had been a room for (unimportant) visitors to wait. A simple altar, some chairs and red kneelers. A few religious books and a Bible on a stand. It smelled I remember of fruit, and furniture polish. About that time I took to going in there each day, if only for a few moments. Often it would be empty. Sometimes an officer sitting there, head bowed, still.

I'd never prayed much, because I couldn't stand the weekly visit to church. But now I prayed quietly and with great concentration. I prayed that Hal would be kept safe and never sent to France. I prayed that Gib would stay a long time in England. Above all I prayed that the war would end
soon,
so that he and Alice might live happily ever after.

Then Gib's embarkation leave was put forward. Their wedding hastily arranged. He was in Flaxthorpe, waiting for her. Excited, quiet, and talkative by turns, he came to the entertainments twice. We sang together from the show
Bric à Brac.
Teddie Gerard's telephone song.
“Are you there, little Teddy Bear? Naughty, naughty, one Gerard.
” I felt I was part of a fairy tale. I tried to forget that he was going out soon. Saw only the romance, the excitement of the happy ending.

And then, the telegram. He showed it to me: draft proceeds to FRANCE TOMORROW 25TH INST REPORT HERE BY 7 PM ON THAT DATE ACKNOWLEDGE PROMPTLY.

Alice's arrival, exhausted, late in the afternoon of the twenty-fourth. The wedding, that was to have been on the Saturday. Such persistent bad luck. It
might have been almost funny if it had not been so sad.
Who could think it funny, who had seen his face?

And it was his face I saw that day when I went into the little chapel, not to pray, but just to try and understand it all. (Not to escape Alice—for she had already shut herself in her room. She had gone straight up there on her return from the station.)

The sight of Alice, who
was
to have been so happy, now impossible to speak to. She cut me short when I sympathized. I would like to have thrown my arms about her, consoled her.

Her anger, her despair. She mocked me. Said of my work with the officers, “I suppose you fancy yourself indispensable. Almost a
nurse.
All that fussing around …”

Then soon she was persuading Father to intervene, to write to Devonshire House in his special capacity. Influence, that is what is meant by
influence.
And she
was
sent back to France. Within the month. I think she had the idea that she would be able somehow to meet up with Gib.

Hal on leave, but as solitary as ever—all his time spent up at Lane Top farm. It was about then Father had the idea of donating the Diamond Waterfall to the war effort. Nothing else was spoken of for days.

Leaves died on the trees, bracken turned red, then gold. The weather grew colder. I'd always loved autumn (unlike now). Berthe's English improved a little, my French a lot. She taught me not only what I should know, but also how the little boys, and the big boys, spoke under her window, or in the village square.

Gib wrote to me that autumn and winter of 1916. Often he would say “I have just finished a letter to Alice, and thought that I would like to talk to you too.” Then perhaps “Teddy Bear, what wouldn't a chap give to be out of this and on a picnic with a real Teddy Bear? I don't think you realize what a Chum you were in those dark days.”

Life was worry, a sort of resignation—and prayer. I prayed still. But now I prayed that Gib would be wounded. Not too much, just enough to be sent home. A Blighty one. I never used any other wording. Dear God (Ask and Ye shall receive … It all seemed so easy), please give Gib a Blighty one.

And my prayers were answered. Within three months. (What had Alice been praying? I never imagined anyone else might be interceding with the Almighty. Not even Gib himself.)

The note that came was addressed to
me.
I don't know what he'd managed to scribble to Alice. But at The Towers who else should he concern himself with if not me? I was his Chum. A scruffy piece of paper, a blunt pencil. “Wounded shoulder and leg but
all right.
Returning to England.”

It arrived by the evening mail. I took it into the small chapel. It was lateish on a December afternoon. Already dark. I held the paper clutched in
my hand. Symbol of his safety. Perhaps only for a while—or perhaps till the end (which
could not
be long away).

I remembered how once, joking, he had said, “Teddy is my Best Friend!” I began to cry now: relief, happiness, I don't know. I kept saying to myself, whispering aloud, “I'll be the greatest friend anyone ever had. Now you are safe.”

I wasn't looking at the note. I was only holding it. And that was when it happened. I
felt
him, his presence. He was beside me,
with
me. I felt my heart filling up. I thought it would burst. I wanted to sing and shout, run out of the chapel calling, “There's no one,
no one
like Gib Nicolson in the whole world. And he's
safe!”

Never once in all that time did I think of Alice. Just sat, hugging to myself these feelings: so new, so beautiful, so
right.

It was two days before I recognized I was in love. Too late then to go back, to
not
love him. The grown-up cannot be a child again. And I didn't want to. It felt, still, too wonderful. I was his best friend: all through his life it would be the same. He would be able to count on me for anything, anything. (And still I never thought of Alice. I swear to God—whom I think of so little now—that somehow I never, in those early days, thought of her at all.)

Christmas came. The third of the war, and the saddest yet. But above all that sadness was my true happiness while I waited for the good news from Gib that would surely come. I must have seemed different, at least a little, though none of my family, or Amy or Berthe, noticed anything.

I was seeing less of Amy anyway. She had become sweet on a baby-faced lieutenant, very badly wounded, who before the war had been a cricketer—a left arm over the wicket bowler. He longed to be back with the game. She would beg to run errands for her Basil.

Then one of the officers said to me, while I was preparing a letter:

“There's something changed about you, girlie. Any of the chaps been whispering sweet nothings?” He had a daughter of thirteen at home called Peggy, and often said that I looked like her. I blushed now, and he went on, vigorously, “If one of them fools around—plays with your heart, girlie, he'll have me to reckon with.”

I'd written to Gib at once, but knew that my letter might have to travel around. I felt certain he would read through my handwriting, my words even, that I
loved
him.

When he wrote back it was to tell me the precious news that he was being sent to The Towers
as a patient.
I could not wait for him to come. I felt certain that as soon as he saw me …

So what went wrong then, at that first meeting? (Forerunner, warning, of times ahead?)

He must have been tired by the journey: his face when I first saw it was tight, his manner tense. True, he didn't look yellowish and gray as last year.

Now he had honorable signs: a sling and then a stick for his leg. The very acme of the Wounded Hero.

Those were the words he used to me: “Aren't you going to kiss the Wounded Hero?”

I flung my arms about him. He smelled of hospitals—but so did everyone here—didn't feel to the touch as I'd remembered,
imagined.
We made awkward conversation. A bleak January afternoon. Alice wasn't mentioned at all. I remembered that afterward.

In the bed next to him in a room of four was a lieutenant in the Engineers, obsessed with racing cars. He drank in the evenings. I knew he wasn't meant to. So did the nurses. But friends and relatives smuggled it in. Often even without alcohol he would imagine himself on the racing track.

“Broom, vroom, vroom—corner her—
there's
a girl, round we go. Into the straight—vroom, watch out, bally fools, blasted blithering idiots—here, here, vroom …”

Gib had to spend a lot of time in bed. He wanted to read. He said in that pinched, lost way which wrung my heart (I couldn't seem to talk to him, he was awkward with me still):

“I need—just—it's
peace
I need. And Catullus and Horace.” I couldn't help him with that. But then nor could Alice.

One day when I'd offered to read Rafael Sabatini to them, as I did often, in the hope that it would stop Dougie Durnford from either drinking or driving his motor car, Gib said politely that he would rather I didn't. “Just leave me to my own devices. There's a good girl.”