The Heroes' Welcome (3 page)

‘Only just,’ said Riley.

Sir Robert stared at him. ‘Oh, good God,’ he said. ‘What on earth? What am I meant to – have you any money?’ he said. ‘To marry on?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Prospects?’

‘Far from it, sir, as you know.’

‘Dependants?’

‘I hope to have, in due course.’

‘And, er, this?’ Robert gestured to Riley’s face. ‘What about this? I mean – oh, good God.’ The ramifications were filtering through. Wounded, disfigured, penniless, war hero,
fait accompli
, cheeky sod, bright though, common as muck, his family – good people though, decent working people – and that face, that voice. Oh, good God. What a bloody cocktail.

‘She doesn’t mind it, sir. So I can hardly complain.’

‘Passchendaele, wasn’t it?’ Robert said.

‘Yes, sir.’

Silence.

‘Hmm.’

What a bloody cocktail.

‘So what are you doing with yourself? What are you going to do?’

‘Thinking of Parliament, sir.’

‘What!’

‘The Labour Party, sir.’

‘Are you a Communist, Purefoy?’

An echo of someone else asking him that years ago passed through his mind …
Peter. That dugout on the Salient, a conversation about music, the first human look you’d had in months – 1916?

‘No sir,’ Riley said. ‘But I’ve become attached to notions of peace and justice. I believe they’re worth working for.’

‘Good Lord – you didn’t stand, did you?’

‘The election came a bit quick.’

‘Good God.’

Riley stared at him, waiting. Calm, strong.

Sir Robert stared back, ran a hand over his face, and then said: ‘Let’s join the ladies, shall we?’

They could all see by Jacqueline’s still, polite expression, that she was too surprised to know what to think.

‘Riley,’ Sir Robert said. ‘Nadine. You leave us no choice. We are not the kind of people who turn their daughter away – as you should bloody well know – sorry, darling.’

Relief?

He continued: ‘Though you could’ve given us the chance to, well, discuss it, and demonstrate our … spontaneously, if you see what I mean … so we could give our blessing in a more organised fashion …’

‘We didn’t choose,’ Nadine said gently. ‘We had no choice. It was a fact …’

‘I dare say,’ her father said. ‘Of course. And so …’

Jacqueline was staring. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she interrupted. ‘Robert? This is outrageous.’

‘Well …’ he was saying, and Riley could almost see the cold drifting down through Nadine’s limbs.

‘Outrageous,’ said Jacqueline. ‘Unforgivable.’

Riley dipped his head, and took Nadine’s arm into his.

Robert glanced from him to Jacqueline and back. ‘Oh,’ he said. Nadine was frozen.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Robert.

‘
They
should be sorry,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Well – they will be, won’t they? A silly girl and a boy who doesn’t know his place. How ridiculous.’

Riley saw his new mother-in-law’s short breath, and the high triangles of pink on her cheeks. Somewhere, he felt pity and it warmed him through the horrible little silence that sat on the room. Silence can mean so many things. His arm was firm under Nadine’s hand as she let go of it.

‘Well, never mind. Goodbye, Daddy,’ she said, and leant in to give him a kiss. ‘Goodbye, Mother’ – from a safe distance. ‘Don’t worry. As the war’s over, we’ll probably all survive long enough for you to indulge your little fit of pique.’

‘Darling girl,’ Robert said.

‘We’ll see you soon,’ she said, and blew him a kiss on the end of her finger.

Riley watched her:
My lovely, beautiful fighting girl
.

As soon as they were out of the house she took Riley’s arm again, and held on to it.

‘You up for the next round?’ he asked, and she nodded tightly as they walked.

*

Walking up the street towards Paddington, his family, his childhood, a cloudy shame rose in Riley. Yes, he had every excuse under the sun, but he had neglected them. One afternoon in 1917 his mother had burst into the ward and not recognised him and shrieked and collapsed at the sight of his fellow patients; just before Christmas last year he had arrived out of the blue and stayed for fifteen minutes. Other than that, he had not seen any of them.
You could have handled it better
,
said one little voice;
you did your
best,
said another. Anyway. Now was the time for putting things right.

Up towards the canal, they turned into the little terrace of little houses.

As they came up to the door he could see his mother from the street, scrubbing the inside of the front windows with newspaper. She would have dipped it in vinegar. He remembered the smell. She did it every week; so near the station, things got dirty quickly. A figure moved behind her: Dad.

Riley squeezed Nadine’s hand, and knocked.

A moment or two passed before Bethan opened it. He knew she had been hiding the newspaper wads and taking off her apron.

‘Hello Mum,’ he said, apologetically, and she squeaked, and put her hand to her mouth, and called, ‘John! John!’ And his father came, and dragged him in, and he said: ‘Dad – Mum—’ and though his plan had been just to blurt it out, quick and straight, he found he couldn’t speak at all, so he sat at the kitchen table, and Bethan put the kettle on the hob, and John came through, and looked at him, and patted his shoulders, and said, ‘My boy.’

‘There’s a woman outside in the street, just standing,’ announced a girl, popping round the kitchen door – and, seeing the man at the table: ‘Oh my word, what’s this?’

Riley looked up. Looked down again. Looked up, and laughed. Wispy, pert, blonde, mouthy.

‘Elen?’ he said.

Her face went very wobbly.

‘You look exactly the same,’ he said.

‘Well you don’t,’ she said. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

‘Kaiser Bill stole my jawbone,’ he said, and stood, and smiled, but she pushed past him saying: ‘Excuse me. Four-and-a-half years, Riley. Four-and-a-half years and … three postcards … and a promise of a teddy bear. The war ended last November, or didn’t you notice?’

‘Elen,’ said John. ‘Mind your lip.’

‘I’m right though, ain’t I?’ she said. ‘It’s not fair on Mum. Well I suppose I’m glad you’re back. You
are
back? Merry! Merry?’

Merry was in the doorway, staring. The little room was already crowded now.
How am I going to fit Nadine in here?
Merry was darker, heavier built, more guarded. She stared at him.

‘Here’s Riley!’ said Bethan, encouragingly. They were all in a sudden parabola of cross-currents. So many emotions. Riley felt unsteady. He should have written. It wasn’t fair on them. Sunday afternoon.

‘How do you do,’ said Merry, and Riley flinched. She’d been eight when he left. Both girls were looking at his scars.

‘Yeah, Mum said your jaw was blown off,’ said Elen brutally. ‘That a new one, then?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Fancy,’ said Elen.

‘Make the tea, Elen,’ said John. ‘You all right with tea, son?’

Riley took his brass straw from his pocket, and twirled it sadly at his father. Merry stared at it.

Elen poured the boiling water, and plonked the pot on the table. ‘Well, thanks for turning up, Riley. I’m back off now, Mum. See you next Sunday, same as usual.’

‘Elen,’ said Riley and Bethan.

Elen’s mouth was white as she swept past. Merry hopped out of her way.

‘Elen,’ Riley said again, and turned to follow her. Bethan put her hand on his arm. They both heard Elen say, at the front door, ‘You might as well go in. I don’t know why he’s bothering to be tactful.’

Merry was still staring when Nadine appeared in the kitchen doorway, and said, ‘Hello,’ quietly.

‘Miss Nadine!’ cried Bethan, and John shot Riley a look, and Riley took a big breath before stepping to her side, past the chair and the coal scuttle and Merry.
Quick to the kill, quick to the kill.

‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Dad. Nadine and I are married.’

It was Merry’s face his eyes landed on. Big tears were on her young cheeks.

‘Oh, Merry,’ he said. ‘Oh, Merry.’

Silence drifted, pulled and swung between them all. Then Bethan said: ‘We would have liked to have been informed.’

John held his hand out to Nadine. ‘Married,’ he said. ‘You married our boy? Well. Well. Good for you, Miss.’

‘I know it’s all odd,’ Nadine said. ‘Please call me Nadine. I think that will make it less odd. Please.’

Bethan gave a kind of roll back on her heels, a surveying look with a chin lift, which said, ‘so that’s how it’s going to be’.

‘It’s all right, Ma,’ Riley said. ‘We were afraid of a fuss. That’s all. We didn’t even want a wedding. We just wanted to be married.’

‘All your worldly goods, eh, Miss?’ said Bethan. ‘There’s nice.’

‘I don’t have much,’ said Nadine, and got a withering look.

‘Who’s going to wear the trousers, if you’re to be a kept man, Riley?’

‘Mum!’

‘Wounded hero only lasts so long. What about when you’re just a sick, ugly man with no money? Where are you going to find a job to keep her? No offence, Miss Nadine, and I’ve always liked you well enough.’

‘None taken, Mrs Purefoy,’ said Nadine, mortified. ‘I like you well enough too. Riley, should we give them a little time to get used to it, perhaps?’

Bethan was grinning. Riley saw her waiting for him to agree to Nadine’s suggestion.
She has cast it now that any time I agree with my wife, I am less than a man. And any time I disagree with my wife, she can say, ‘I told you so.’

‘Mum,’ he said. ‘Don’t be foolish over this. Had to happen one day, eh? Dad?’

‘Come round for Sunday lunch next week,’ John said. ‘They’ll calm down. Congratulations, son.’

Riley thanked him. It was all so quick.

Merry was still crying. Riley said to her: ‘I’m sorry for being such a bad brother. I’ll be a better one.’

Merry said: ‘Are you my brother?’

*

They crossed into Kensington Gardens, holding hands, walking into the green. Up the Broad Walk, beyond the Orangery, the pleated new leaves of the arcaded hornbeams gleamed in the sunlight like Venetian glass. Through the observation windows in the hedge they caught sight of the Sunken Garden, terracing down geometrically, with its long pond and lead planters.

‘Our mothers are afraid for us,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’ He could understand the fear without feeling any obligation either to adopt it himself, or to try to make the situation more acceptable to them.

Nadine said: ‘If they haven’t the sense and courage to look at us and give us every bit of loving support in the world, then they can go to the devil.’ She glanced up, as if to check. ‘I shall feel nothing but relief,’ she said, ‘that I don’t have to deal with them.’ She was wearing that green wool dress of Julia’s, too hot for the day, but she had been living in uniform for so long she had no clothes of her own, and during the long, quiet hibernation at Locke Hill, she had made none nor bought any. With Julia still hardly leaving her bedroom it made sense for Nadine to borrow her clothes. She was still wearing the high lace-up boots, and the cap. Riley had a surging feeling of freedom at the idea that she might now acquire some clothes. He wanted to kiss her.
Will my desire for her fade?
he wondered.
How long am I to live with this?

They stayed in the gardens late, wandering, sitting on benches, talking mildly.

The irony was that what Jacqueline and Bethan were scared of was true
.
The surface of society had been blown around by the war, but had the architecture changed? Were things going to be different now? Where would a Riley, married to a Nadine, fit in? If Nadine were straightforwardly posh, and he straightforwardly a working man, might it be simpler – if only simply more impossible?
But she is half-foreign and artistic
,
he thought,
and I am a semi-educated semi-adopted cuckoo in the nest. And my face reminds everyone every moment of what I have given for them, and of what they want to forget about now. And don’t we all …

They had arranged for two rooms in Chelsea, and they would work. They had considered education: they both half felt they wanted more of it, and concluded that at twenty-three they were too old, and then doubted their conclusion. Certainly, no one was ‘going back’ to anything. They weren’t mourning some pre-war Utopia, the golden years before the
Titanic
sank and Captain Scott died on the ice and the Empire and Ireland started to bite back. For Riley and for Nadine, looking back would involve unbearable regret about what might have been. Unbearable. So there was nothing to go back to.

And the war was still over.

Nadine said, as they wandered over to the Round Pond: ‘We’ll have to take ourselves outside all that and create our own new world. Chelsea will be the start …’

She said, as well, ‘You seem to feel you need to justify your existence, but you don’t.’ And he replied: ‘Yes, I do. I don’t know why, but I do.’

And she said: ‘Take your time. We have time now …’

‘I don’t want to take time. I want – I want—!’ He’d been stuck for too long, resting, recovering, receiving, disengaged. ‘We’re not going to be living off your parents, at twenty-four. I’ll be doing something.’

‘It does seem ridiculous that just because your wound is in your head, you get no pension for it …’ she said. ‘When if it had been a toe, even—’ She stopped. They’d said this before. It annoyed him. And it was his territory.

‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘They only needed our bodies to follow orders. They didn’t value our heads then; why should they value them now?’

She laughed.

By the time the keeper called for closing, the damp, growing, evening smell of the park was rising around them: moss, tubers, lilac, hyacinths. At Locke Hill, during the half-paralysed, shattered, Rip-Van-Winkled winter, Nadine had marked the days of emergence from hibernation by drawing each flower as it appeared from black earth and mossy branches, marking the way to spring: snowdrops, aconites, crocuses, scylla, stars of Bethlehem, grape hyacinths, daffodils; camellias, almond blossom, cherry blossom, pear and apple blossom. Harker, the silent, ancient gardener, would quietly nudge her towards each new arrival. It seemed like progress, of a sort.