The Great Lover (25 page)

We take a candle and carry it trembling down the stairs, not wanting to risk the sound of the light switch, which, nine times out of ten, fails to work anyway.

Kittie finds the Bournville powder and rations us a careful spoonful each so that Mrs Stevenson won’t notice. I help her by washing the spoon and setting it back on the dresser. A mouse flickers past in front of us, making us shriek and cover
our mouths. Luckily the fire is not yet out and with a little raking and a small cup of coal, can be made to crackle into life, so that we can set the pan of milk and water atop it.

We then sit at the kitchen table, smiling at each other, the candle flame between us, ducking its head every few minutes, dancing to some unseen draught. Kittie’s eyes are bright, and though I yawn and slump in my chair, she is so wide awake that I begin to wonder.

‘Why did you come back from London, Kittie? What happened there?’ I ask her this when my back is to her, hearing the milk and water rise to the bubble and taking it off the heat to pour into the waiting cups.

Her face in the firelight is only two big eyes, like a cat’s at night. I can’t read her expression but see from the glitter in them that she is blinking back tears. ‘You heard, I suppose? Mother was so ashamed. She told me not to tell a soul but Grantchester is such a place…I knew we couldn’t keep it quiet.’

Now, it would be honest of me to say that I haven’t heard, that I don’t know what she is talking about, but my curiosity is so piqued that I keep mum, thinking this the best way to find out. I put the cup of cocoa in front of her with a soft thud.

‘It was horrible, Nell. Worse than you could ever imagine. Several times constables and plainclothes men passed their arms round me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public a manner as possible and men in the crowd did it too! My poor chest was black and blue with bruises by the time I got to my cell. And they tried to lift my skirt and called me names you couldn’t dream of hearing…

Poor Kittie is sobbing now, ever so muffled, so no one might hear. I feel the wretched way I always do when someone cries; I slide the cup of cocoa across the table towards her and am glad when she pauses to sip.

‘So many people…I was–terrified. I thought I would never
get out! And although I got word to Mother she never would visit me there…’

Now I understand about Kittie’s absence and sudden arrival back. How sorely we resented it, Lottie and I, the curt way Mrs Stevenson reintroduced her: ‘You know our Kittie, girls, and you know how to make room for her.’ And after that it was all chop-chop and change about and Betty and Lottie packing up their things: Lottie and Betty to take Rupert’s old room while the new tenant is in London and Kittie temporarily reinstalled with me. Mrs Stevenson must have known everything.

‘The worst of it was, Nell, there were other women I knew in there, oh, yes, some of our lot, but they didn’t talk to me! They were in separate cells with copies of the
Home Beautiful
in them–can you believe that? I’m not lying, Nell, I saw them carrying those very magazines! It’s because Lady Constance complained, and nearly died after
her
prison sentence, but it made no difference to
our
treatment. And those ladies could call on the Governor whenever they wanted and visit the library or the chaplain…Oh, I thought, it’s fine for them, for when they get out they have homes to go to and husbands to forgive them, but what about me? I thought I’d never get a position again, or the prison guards might just think I was a common girl of the streets and never let me out!’

‘But then why must you go on another march next week? Weren’t you talking only this morning about the procession from the Embankment and the white horse that must be found and…Why, surely it’s a terrible risk, Kittie, you might get arrested again!’

Whatever her reply might be, I am none the wiser as a sudden noise outside makes us jump out of our skins and snuff the candle. We sit frozen at opposite sides of the table, the smell of hot wax sharp between us, listening. All at once I feel the hard wooden chair under my backside, through the cotton of my nightdress, and taste the cocoa on my tongue, and notice my
fingers smoothing the grain of the table, my feet shuffling beneath it, dusty and dry.

Is it a fox? Someone is outside in the garden.

I’m the bravest, and tiptoe to the french windows to look. Of course I see nothing but glassy black, and when I press my face to the pane, only moonlit lawn and grey rosebushes, poised and still.

‘It’s over there, by the two-holer!’ Kittie whispers, her hand on the key, opening the door to get a better look. She’s right: I can make out a figure in the moonlight. A barn owl, silver as a ghost, flies suddenly past it and the figure ducks and lets out a shout.

‘I know who that is,’ I whisper.

Then I hear his voice, and a pebble rattles the glass: ‘Nell! Nellie Golightly–is that you?’

I twirl round to Kittie, and her look in the semi-dark tells me what mine must be: alarmed, excited, surprised. ‘It’s–Mr Brooke, Kittie. He must need something. I can deal with this. Quick, wash the cups and leave them on the dresser–and go back to bed!’

Then she gives me a different look entirely. I can just make out the set of her fat bottom lip and the saucy narrowing of her eyes, the direction her thoughts are taking, but before she can speak I say, quickly and fiercely, the wickedest thing I’ve ever said: ‘Kittie. I will keep your secret. I promise to keep it–to tell no one about your time in prison. I can keep a secret sometimes, if I really try. And if I feel sure that
you would do the same for me
.’

She is holding the snuffed candle. Her eyes widen, and I know at once she has grasped my meaning. She turns on her heel without another word and her nightdress swishes the stairs as she heads towards our bedroom.

My hand is trembling, too, as I struggle to open the french window. I’m thinking how well I know his shape, how I can
recognise him from the shoulders, which are straight, like coat-hangers, and the loose way his arms hang, the set of his head, the wave of hair sticking up at the crown. I am thinking that despite all I tell myself of his persuasion there is a part of me that beats still, that is not in the least quieted. Just seeing him makes me know my efforts have been hopeless.

I expect him to be smiling, to giggle and grab my hands, but instead his eyes are glassy and he looks round me, as if there is a ghost behind me. ‘What is it? What is it?’ I say, and his mood affects mine: I feel my fists clench, expecting danger.

‘I–I—Come swim with me, Nell.’

‘What–now? It’s past midnight. You’ll lose me my position!’

Looking out into the garden I see that, for once, no dog has followed Rupert from the Old Vicarage, and the lawn is still and black and empty. I peer out at him. He hangs back a little from the house, nervously surveying the windows above him. In the moonlight he is pale as the barn owl in his flapping shirt and white flannel trousers. I realise as I’m doing it that I’m studying Rupert to try and understand what it is about him that is so unfamiliar. He steps forward suddenly, reaching out a hand and dragging me towards him.

‘Come on, Nell, you won’t lose your position. If you do, I’ll find you another, I promise. Mother always needs a maid. Hang it, who doesn’t? I want–I need a swim, and I—You know I hate to swim alone.’

His words are beseeching and his look is angry rather than playful. I’m not afraid of him–I believe a girl knows instinctively which men she should be afraid of–but naturally I hesitate, the request being such a strange one.

‘Do come, Nell. I’m all alone…Virginia’s gone…I can’t work–I need to talk!’

So I fetch a coat–Mr Stevenson’s coat–from a hook on the door to the scullery and once again throw it over my nightdress, and step out on to the springy grass in my bare feet. My heart
launches itself at my ribcage like a cat in a basket, with the vivid memory of last time, the hot sense of a person standing beside me, knee-deep in a brown river, naked as God made him, the sun melting his back to honey, and trying to catch a fish.

The roses are grey and closed for the night. The night air smells of Rupert to me, and nothing else, and I slip into step behind him, and follow him across the lawn and down the lane. Walking two steps behind him, trying to follow the pale figure of him as a light and a guide, I almost have to run to keep up with him: over the bridge in front of Grantchester Mill and across the meadow until we reach the dam, with the sound of water tipping into the black below.

Here we stop, breathing heavily, and staring into the deep, blank water, and I acknowledge to myself the one hard fact that, despite my nature, it has taken me so long to face. There is no request Rupert could make of me that I would refuse. Whatever the pledge between me and God, this is the truth. I almost gasp aloud. What foolishness has stopped me knowing this until now? And why, thinking it, do I once again have a small dread sad picture of Father, keeling over in the meadow all snowy white in his veil and suddenly old and finished?

What would Father say if he was here now and I could ask him about Rupert? Nothing, is the likely answer. I can only imagine his look of surprise and confusion if I raised such a thing. Father’s world was…ordered, where even bees who have chosen to swarm in a cluster in a high tree can be coaxed down into the skep by his soft voice and a little smoke, without even the need of a gentle shake of the branch. But Father’s skill was only with bees. He had nothing to teach me about men, nothing to pass on beyond his limited, silent life, sitting on our front step, smoking his pipe and cleaning his uncapping knife.

Who on this earth might I ask the strangest question a girl ever formed in her head? When a man favours other men, can
he ever have the needle of his compass changed, ever find it pointing towards a girl?

Could it ever point towards me?

I’m shamed now by my wicked behaviour with Kittie–pressing her like that, nearly blackmailing her with her secret. At the same time, I pray bitterly that she keeps her word and says nothing, or I’m sunk.

Rupert leans over, peering into the water, and says, ‘A man I knew once wanted to know what it felt like to shoot the rapids, and he did it here, and that wooden thing under the water is all full of little nails or something so that when he came out again he was all covered with longitudinal scratches. It was rather pretty, like some sort of pattern, and it didn’t hurt him very much!’

He doesn’t seem quite himself and this remark only confirms me in my worries. Surely such a dive would wound or sting powerfully? I steal a glance sideways at him and a funny thought pops into my head. His ghostly profile in darkness is like the head on a coin–a noble head. The minute this thought is formed, I snuff it. It is the thought of a romantic girl who has lost her best skill–to look at things squarely! And because I cannot trust myself just at this minute to do that, I stare instead at the river’s surface, homely as the back of a grater: black and full of little dimples.

Rupert bends to take off his boots. Again, a part of me is admiring his toes in the moonlight, those long, elegant toes I saw the first time I met him–what is wrong with me? Why do I keep veering from my purpose like this? I’m here to help him, surely, unburden himself, or whatever it is he longs for, not to admire his fine toes!

He makes a show of squinting in the silvery light, searching for fallen chestnuts among the leaves at the water’s edge. I don’t believe in this playful mood one jot. There is something glittery and brittle about him that isn’t cheerful in the least. I’m not so
far gone that I flatter myself he wants especially to talk to me: I know already that Rupert has a fear of being left alone. My true feeling is that he has times when to talk to the cows in the field would be better than nothing.

Suddenly he is turning his face towards me; squinting at me in the same searching way. It’s hard to hold his gaze, but I do.

‘We played a game, Nell. Do you see that paper boat there–that little flash of white on the bank? There’s a prize being offered for the best poem, and some friends of mine were trying to guess who might win it. We made a paper boat for each person we knew had gone in. Drinkwater, Masefield, Abercrombie–they all went off so merrily. That’s me–there–on the bank. Stranded helplessly, stuck like a sorry fool in those branches.’

He says this with such bitterness, with such a catch in his voice, that I know at once I have tapped the source of his misery.

‘Oh, I’m sure your poetry will–will swim off as merrily as you might hope…’ I say, hoping to be reassuring.

He greets this with a harsh laugh. ‘You think so? I wish I was so sure. Can you imagine, Nell—’ He turns to me so suddenly to say this that I slip a little in the soft mud and he has to shoot out a hand to help me. The coat over my shoulders slips a little and I feel his hand on my bare shoulder, and notice it there, and wish I hadn’t. ‘People have no idea at all. You people have no idea,’ he says.

‘No idea of what?’

‘How painful it is! How embarrassing! How ridiculous. One imagines the glow of pride when an author sees his own name in print. It doesn’t occur to anyone–why should it?–that the author might feel something else entirely. Something inexplicably ridiculous. A fraud. An idiot–to see one’s own ambition and limitations writ large.’

He links his arm in mine, rearranging the draped coat so that it covers me more thoroughly. Then, hiding his tenderness with
a gruff push, he steers us away from the sluice gates and towards a part of the river where we swam last time. The light is enough to see by, but the ground beneath our bare feet is full of peril–the spikes of the horse-chestnut shells, acorns, twigs, and every few seconds one or the other of us stops to squeal in pain or brush a barb from our soles.

‘I
can
imagine that!’ I say boldly. ‘To have the world read your innermost thoughts, committed to paper…I–well, I do understand it would make a body feel…shy.’

‘Shy. Yes. You’ve met Mother? No, of course, she’s never been to the Orchard, nor the Old Vicarage. Well, then, dear Nellie, imagine a woman–a rather beautiful woman, actually–tall and grand and of the same severe disposition as, say, Mrs Stevenson, with none of Mrs Stevenson’s apple-roundness. There you have my mother: the Ranee. And now picture the same woman reading the poetry of her beloved son, one Mr Rupert Brooke! Her eyes flickering over a word like “Lust” and her fierce mouth hardening at lines like “her remembered smell”–the worst kind of disgust would fill her mind!’ He puts his head in his hands and groans. A white cow at the other side of the river skitters in fright at the sound.