Kitty is intrigued by this notion that Nell goes her own way.
‘But what does she do?’ she keeps saying.
Larry does his best to explain, but in the telling even he has to admit that Nell’s life sounds as if it’s going nowhere in particular.
‘I don’t see why she has to go anywhere in particular,’ says Ed.
‘Because otherwise what’s the point?’ says Kitty. ‘We all want to feel our life has some sort of point.’
‘I don’t understand this,’ says Ed. ‘A point for who? A point when? Right now we’re celebrating Larry and his paintings. We’re eating good food, surrounded by good friends. Doesn’t that give our lives a point?’
‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me,’ says Kitty.
Larry, watching and listening, sees that Kitty is unhappy. He wonders a little at the edge in Ed’s voice.
‘Well, I think Larry’s friend is rather wonderful,’ says Louisa. ‘And she is very young. I’m sure she’ll find her way soon enough.’
‘And I say Larry’s a great artist,’ says Ed. ‘I say he’s had the guts to stick to doing what he loves, and now it’s paying off. Here’s to you, Larry. You’re a great man. I salute you.’
‘Thank you, Ed,’ says Larry. ‘All I have to do now is sell more than one painting.’
19
‘Look what I found,’ Nell says to Larry.
Her bicycle basket holds six small empty clear-glass bottles, of the kind used for medicines.
‘You know what you do with bottles?’ she says. ‘You put messages in them.’
‘Of course you do,’ says Larry.
‘Come along, then,’ she says.
Larry heaves his own bike out onto the street, and together they cycle up the Walworth Road, round the Elephant and Castle, past Waterloo station, to the wide expanse of the new Waterloo Bridge. Here Nell comes to a stop, more or less in the middle of the bridge, and leans her bike against the parapet. Larry does the same. It’s a fine sunny day, and for a few moments he stands admiring the view. To the east, the dome of St Paul’s stands clear of the bomb-damaged buildings of the City; to the south, round the bend in the river, the Houses of Parliament.
Nell has one of the bottles out, together with a pad of paper and a pencil.
‘So what’s our first message to be?’ she says.
‘We really are sending messages in bottles?’
‘Of course. I’ll do the first one.’
She writes on the pad, tears off the sheet of paper, shows it to Larry. She has written: If you find this message you will have good luck for the rest of your life.
‘You don’t think that’s going to end in disappointment?’ he says.
‘Not at all. If you believe in your luck, it comes.’
She screws the cap on the little bottle and drops it from the parapet of the bridge into the river below. They see it hit the water and sink and then come bobbing up again, to swirl away downstream.
They cycle across to the north bank of the river, and along the Victoria Embankment to Westminster Bridge. Once again, Nell parks her bike in the middle of the bridge.
‘We’re on a bridge crawl,’ says Larry.
‘I want this to be a day you’ll never forget,’ says Nell.
She takes out the pad and pencil.
‘Earth has not anything to show more fair,’ says Larry.
‘What?’
‘Wordsworth’s poem. On Westminster Bridge.’
‘Next message. Here. It’s your turn.’
She hands him the pad. Larry is remembering the poem.
‘The beauty of the morning, silent, bare,
Ships, towers, something something lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.’
‘No fields now,’ says Nell.
‘No smokeless air, either.’ He looks at the Houses of Parliament on the riverbank. ‘You think all this has been here for ever, but Wordsworth never saw this. This isn’t even a hundred years old. There were other buildings here, that have just vanished.’
‘Send the next message.’
Larry thinks for a moment and then writes: If you find this message, look around you and enjoy what you see, because one day it will all be gone.
‘That’s a bit glum, isn’t it?’ says Nell.
‘It’ll make them appreciate what they’ve got.’
He rolls up the paper and pushes it into the bottle. He gives the bottle to Nell but she says, ‘Your message, your throw.’ So he drops it from the bridge into the river below, and watches it bob away out of sight.
They mount their bikes once more and ride round Big Ben and down Millbank to Lambeth Bridge. The obelisks on either side have pineapples on top, according to Nell. Larry claims they’re pinecones.
‘Why would anyone carve a giant stone pinecone?’ says Nell.
‘Why pineapples?’
‘Pineapples are thrilling. All hard and scratchy on the outside, and sweet and juicy on the inside.’
She’s pushing her bike up onto the pavement, sunlight gleaming on her hair. Larry gazes at her in admiration.
‘How did you ever get to be you, Nell?’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re so open, so uncorrupted, so … I don’t know. You just go on surprising me.’
‘Is that good?’
‘It’s very good.’
She writes her message and shows him.
If you find this message, go out and do the one thing you’ve been wanting to do all your life, but have been afraid to do.
‘What if he wants to rob a bank?’
‘Who says it’ll be a he? It might be a girl. She might want to kiss the boy she’s secretly in love with.’
She kisses Larry, there on Lambeth Bridge.
‘Now it’s not a secret any more,’ says Larry.
He feels light-hearted, happy in a way he’s not been happy for a long time. Nell’s game makes everything good seem possible, and everything bad seem far away.
She drops her bottle into the water.
They ride on past the Tate, past Vauxhall Bridge – ‘Too ugly’ – along the embankment to Chelsea Bridge. Here on the guardian lamp-posts in place of pineapples or pinecones there are golden galleons. Across the river looms the immense block of Battersea Power Station. Two of its four chimneys are streaming black smoke into the summer sky.
Nell gives Larry the pad.
‘Your turn.’
If you find this message, writes Larry, believe that happiness exists, because I am happy now.
‘That’s beautiful, Larry,’ says Nell. ‘I want you so much to be happy.’
He drops the bottle into the river on the downstream side and watches it swirl away under the railway bridge.
Nell has taken the pad back and is writing on it.
‘Where next?’ says Larry. ‘Albert Bridge?’
‘No more bridges.’
She puts her message into its bottle without showing it to Larry, pushing it deep inside.
‘I have to go now, darling,’ she says.
‘Go? Where?’
‘Just go.’
She gives him the little bottle.
‘The last one’s for you.’
She gives him a kiss, climbs onto her bike, and pedals away up Chelsea Bridge Road.
Larry unscrews the bottle cap and tries to get the roll of paper out, but the neck is too narrow. Baffled, mildly irritated, he gazes at the bottle, wondering what to do. The paper inside has partially unrolled itself, so even if he were able to grip it through the neck it would tear as he pulled it out. The only solution is to break the bottle.
He holds it by its neck and taps it against the kerb. Then he taps it more briskly. Finally he hits it a sharp blow, and it shatters. He picks the paper out from among the glittering fragments of glass, and unrolls it, and reads.
If you find this message please believe that I expect nothing f
rom you and only want you to go on being happy. I am going to have a baby. I love you.
Larry stands up, blood draining from his face. His first instinct is to ride after Nell at once. But he realises he has no idea where she’s gone, and will never find her. So instead he wheels his bike slowly off the bridge, fighting a confusion of emotions.
Most of all, he feels frightened. It’s not a specific fear, it’s a kind of panic. Events are exploding beyond his control, unknown forces are bearing down upon him. Then through the panic, like a mist burned off by the sun, he feels a hot shining pride.
I’m going to be a father.
The thought is so immense it overwhelms him. It exhilarates him and fills him with dread at the same time. The responsibility is too great. It changes everything.
I’m to have a wife and child.
A wife! It’s almost impossible to see Nell in this role. And yet of course they must marry.
So is this it? Is this my life already laid out before me?
He knows even as he forms the thought that this is not the life he meant to lead. But if not this, then what? What is this dream of a future that even now he sees being lost to him for ever?
Dazed, he mounts his bike and sets off pedalling up Chelsea Bridge Road, in the direction Nell took. He realises then that she must have planned it all to happen this way. She must have dreamed up her game with the messages in bottles as a way to give him time alone to form his response. He feels a sudden flood of love. What an extraordinary girl she is! Old beyond her years, she understands all he is now going through. She knows he’ll have doubts about committing himself to a future with her. So she bicycles away. This touches him deeply. Adrift in the great world, she cares enough for him not to lay on him a greater burden than he can carry.
In this moment, pedalling behind a bus as it lumbers up Sloane Street, he feels only love for her, and gratitude. But as he swings left onto Knightsbridge and rides along the south side of the park, other concerns begin to present themselves. How is he to support a wife and child? Where are they to live? What will happen to his painting?
At this point he realises where he’s going. This is the way home. Guided by instincts deeper than conscious thought, in this time of crisis he is returning to the house where he grew up. There’s no purpose to this, he can’t expect his father to resolve his dilemma for him. He is going home as to a refuge.
So he turns into Kensington Church Street and climbs the rise to Campden Grove. His father will be in his office now, of course, on the other side of town; but Larry has a key. He lets himself in, heaving the old bike after him, and stands it in the front hall. Miss Cookham, the housekeeper, comes up from the basement to see who it can be.
‘Hello, Cookie,’ says Larry. ‘I thought I’d look in.’
‘Mr Lawrence!’ She actually goes pink with delight. ‘There’s a sight for sore eyes! Look at you! I hear you’re a famous artist now.’
‘Not so famous,’ says Larry.
He’s shocked at how much it pleases him to be welcomed in this way; and at how comforted he is by the gloomy house.
‘Shall I get you a pot of tea, and maybe a slice of cake?’
‘That would be wonderful. How are you, Cookie?’
‘Quiet, as you might say. Your father won’t be long now.’
Larry settles himself down in the third-floor back room that was once the nursery, and then became his study room. Here, home from school in the holidays, he would retreat to read or sketch or just gaze into the fire. Here he hid himself on the day his father told him his mother had gone to heaven. He was five years old.
Cookie knocks on the door, and comes in with a tray.
‘It’s only seed cake,’ she says, ‘and plainer than I’d like it, but you know how it is. You’d never guess we won the war.’
‘Thank you, Cookie. You’re an angel.’
She stands there, looking at him in his old armchair by the bookcase.
‘It’s a pleasure to have you home again, Mr Lawrence.’
Left alone, Larry drinks his tea and eats his cake and finds he can’t persuade himself to address his situation. Each time he sets out to discover what he should do, his thoughts veer away to one side, and he finds himself remembering his schooldays. Ed Avenell, whose family lived in the north, would always stay with him here at the beginning and end of the holidays, as he travelled back and forth to school. He can see him now, hunched up on the floor in front of the fire, poking things into the coals, watching them burn. Ed was a great one for burning things, pencils, toy soldiers, matchboxes. He burned himself too, in an experimental sort of way, passing his hand through the flames until it was coated with soot.
He hears the shudder of the front door closing, and hears his father’s voice in the hall. He hears Cookie’s excited twitter. His father will be tired. He’ll want to wash and change after his day in the office; and then to enjoy a whisky in the library while he glances over the evening paper.
Larry comes downstairs to greet him. He hasn’t seen his father since his return from Jamaica.
‘Larry! This is a happy surprise!’
His eyes show his real pleasure. As always on coming home, Larry is struck by how much he’s still part of this world, which in his own mind he has left behind.
‘Will you stay and eat with me?’
‘I’d like a drink,’ says Larry. ‘And a chat. But then I’d better be back on my bike.’
‘Ah, the artist’s life!’ says his father, smiling. ‘Give me ten minutes.’
Larry goes into the library and picks up the evening paper his father has brought in. He reads a little about the Paris peace conference, then puts the paper down. This room is so filled with his father’s presence that he feels like a child again. Here, every evening in the long school holidays, he sat in what was always his special chair, a low tub chair upholstered in deep red velvet, and his father read to him. They read King Solomon’s Mines, and The Lost World, and Treasure Island, which his father was fond of saying was the best tale ever spun.
And am I to be a father too?
William Cornford joins him and pours them both a shot of Scotch. They talk for a little about Jamaica, and the difficulties caused by the requisition of the fleet during the war.
‘We’ve got the Ariguani and the Bayano back, but for now only the Ariguani is operating a regular schedule. We’re badly short of capacity. I’m in negotiations to buy four ships from the Ministry. This government is doing all it can to increase nondollar food imports. It’s just going to take time. The great thing is we’ve managed to hold onto almost all our staff.’
‘As far as I can see,’ says Larry, ‘no one ever leaves.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ says his father. ‘People grow into jobs. They start off as little slips and they turn into oak trees.’
Larry knows he too should have been a little slip, should now be an oak tree in the family firm. His father, realising his words may be construed as a criticism, turns the conversation.
‘So tell me,’ he says, ‘how is your art exhibition going?’
‘Only two more days to go,’ says Larry. ‘Then I can have the dubious pleasure of reclaiming my works.’
‘And what then?’
‘That’s something of a question.’
‘Oh?’ The single syllable spoken quietly, neutrally.
‘There’s been a new development. I’m not quite sure what to do.’
Until this moment Larry hasn’t realised he wants his father’s advice. He believes he knows what his father will say: his strong religious convictions give him very little choice. So why raise the matter?
Because whatever I do, Dad must approve.
This too is a surprise. Apparently, in order to feel that he has done the right thing he must obtain his father’s blessing. This weary man sitting drinking Scotch, with his lined tanned face gazing so thoughtfully back at him, represents all that is just and right and good. This is what it is to be a father.
&nb
sp; How can I ever live up to that?
‘I’ve had a girlfriend for quite some time now,’ he says. ‘Her name’s Nell. She works for an art dealer. She’s a very unconventional sort of girl, very free-thinking, very independent.’
He pauses, and wonders whether his father can tell where this is going. As he speaks, he loses confidence. It seems to him that what he is about to say shows him to have been ridiculously irresponsible.
Why did I take no precautions to prevent this happening? Because Nell told me she had dealt with it. But I never asked more. I have no idea what method she used. I was too embarrassed, and too selfish, to pursue the question. Look at it rationally, as my father must look at it: my behaviour has been a kind of insanity.
‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘I’ve run into a spot of difficulty with her. I expect you can guess.’
He finds he can’t speak the actual words. He’s too ashamed. And yet here he is, by his own choice, telling his father enough for him to draw his own conclusions.
‘I see,’ says his father.
‘I know what I’ve done is wrong,’ Larry says. ‘I mean, I know you’ll tell me the Church will say I’ve sinned. And I have.’
‘Do you love her?’ his father says.
This is not what Larry has been braced for. He takes a moment before he answers.
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Do you want to marry her?’
‘I think so,’ says Larry. ‘It’s all so new. I’m confused about it all.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty. Nearly twenty-one.’
‘What have you told her?’
‘Nothing. She gave me the news and then ran off. I think she wants me to have time to think about it before I make any decision. She’s not the kind of girl who’d want me to marry her just for the sake of appearances.’
‘She’d want to know you loved her?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re not sure.’
He throws his father a quick glance. Is it so obvious?
‘I don’t know. I might be. I’m not sure I’m not sure, if you see what I mean.’
William Cornford nods. Yes, he sees what Larry means. He’s watching his son closely.
‘You’re right about the Church,’ he says. ‘The Church’s position is perfectly clear. What you’ve done is wrong. But it’s done. And your duty now, as far as the Church is concerned, is also perfectly clear.’
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