Motherland

by William Nicholson

‘You’re supposed to greet us in a friendly manner,’ says Geraldine, ‘and make us feel at home, and offer us a drink.’

  She utters this advice with a charming smile. Armitage is unnerved by the direct assault.

  ‘Am I?’ he says, looking about him as if seeking a way out. ‘A drink, you say?’

  Abruptly he withdraws to some other part of the house. Ed and Kitty both applaud Geraldine with softly clapping hands.

  ‘Bravo, Geraldine!’

  ‘Well, really!’ says Geraldine, going pink.

  Armitage reappears with a bottle of pastis, a bottle of water, and three glasses.

  ‘Couldn’t find any more glasses,’ he says. ‘Not clean ones.’

  ‘You can even pour it if you want,’ says Geraldine. ‘But not for me, thanks.’

  ‘Nor me,’ says Kitty.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ says Ed.

  He mixes the pastis half-and-half with water and drinks it down. Armitage leans out of the window.

  ‘Nell, you great cow! Get back here!’

  The guests act as if they haven’t heard him.

  Nell returns, with Larry in tow.

  ‘You behave yourself,’ she says to Armitage, ‘or no jiggerypokery for a week.’

  ‘What have I done?’ says Armitage in an aggrieved voice. ‘Hello, Larry. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. What is wrong with me?’

  ‘You look all shiny. Have you been varnished?’

  ‘I told you,’ says Nell. ‘He got rich.’

  It turns out there is lunch of a kind waiting for them. Nell has planned a picnic on the beach. She’s filled a big basket with bread, tomatoes, and pork rillettes. To drink, there’s a flagon of the local cider.

  ‘The whole idea of living here is that we have the beach on our doorstep. Tony spends hours staring at the sea. I can’t see what there is to look at, myself. It’s just a lot of nothing.’

  ‘You’re an empty-headed fool,’ says Armitage.

  ‘I think he stares at the sea to clear his mind,’ says Nell as if he hasn’t spoken. ‘Like preparing a canvas.’

  ‘That is perfectly true,’ says Armitage.

  He goes to her and kisses her in front of them all.

  *

  They sit in a ring on the sand in the shade of a large beach umbrella, and make themselves sandwiches by tearing the baguettes apart. Pammy loves it.

  ‘We’re sitting on the ground and eating things with our fingers,’ she says.

  Armitage stares at Kitty as he eats.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Nell says. ‘It just means he wants to paint you.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ says Armitage. ‘You have an interesting face.’

  ‘So where do you paint?’ says Larry.

  ‘Over there,’ says Armitage.

  ‘He’s got a studio in the house,’ says Nell. ‘No more crouching in bed-sitting rooms. But it was fun in those days, wasn’t it?’ She turns to Geraldine, wanting to include her. ‘Larry and Tony and me used to walk along the river in the small hours of the morning and drink hot sweet tea from the cabbies’ café by Albert Bridge.’

  ‘More cider?’ says Ed, pouring from the flagon.

  An extended family goes trudging by, grandparents, parents, children, dog, carrying baskets, rugs, umbrellas. A steamer crosses the horizon, moving without seeming to move. From time to time Nell strokes Armitage’s arm, as if to reassure him she’s still there.

  Then they have a sudden violent row. It’s about letting their visitors see his studio.

  ‘I’m not a zoo animal,’ he says.

  ‘You exhibit, don’t you?’ demands Nell. ‘You’re an exhibitionist, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t care if no one ever sees my work.’

  ‘That is such shit! You hypocrite!’

  ‘Cow!’

  ‘You’re afraid, aren’t you? Bloody hell!’ she appeals to the others. ‘He sells everything he does. He’s got famous people begging him to paint them. He gets compared to Titian. And all along he’s wetting himself with fear.’

  ‘Bitch!’

  ‘Oh, yes! Very effective! That’ll shut me up, won’t it? That’s a really conclusive argument!’

  Armitage gets up and stalks away down the beach.

  ‘Go on!’ Nell shouts after him. ‘Run away! Coward!’ Then in a suddenly normal voice to the others, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take you to see his studio.’

  ‘But if he doesn’t want it,’ says Geraldine.

  ‘Why should he be the one who gets what he wants? What about what I want?’

  They gather up the picnic and brush the sand off their bottoms and troop back to the house. Armitage is nowhere to be seen. Nell leads them up the stairs to the back room on the first floor. Here what was once a large light bedroom has been transformed into an artist’s studio. Canvases lean against the walls and stack up on a long paint-spattered table. Two easels, both bearing works in progress, stand by the window. An armchair draped with a multicoloured shawl occupies the middle of the room. The portraits taking shape on the easels are of an old man and a stout middle-aged woman.

  Larry and the others look round the studio in silence, examining the paintings.

  ‘I hate to say it,’ Larry says, ‘but the bastard’s got even better.’

  ‘Why are they all so sad?’ says Kitty.

  ‘Tony would say he just paints what he sees,’ Nell says. ‘The way he sees it, most people are disappointed by their lives.’

  ‘Do you think he’s right?’

  ‘Probably,’ says Nell.

  ‘I think that’s ungrateful,’ says Geraldine.

  ‘Ungrateful to who?’ says Nell.

  ‘To God, actually.’

  Nell gives her an incredulous look.

  ‘We’re supposed to be grateful to God?’ she says. ‘What for?’

  ‘For being our Creator,’ says Geraldine. ‘I know it means nothing if you don’t have faith.’

  ‘Take it from me,’ says Nell, ‘I know about creators. It’s all vanity. It’s all look at me, aren’t I wonderful? As far as I’m concerned God is just another immature egotistical artist whining on about how no one appreciates him.’

  *

  Driving back to Bellencombre, Kitty says, ‘You’ve got to admit they’re not dull.’

  Geraldine says, ‘I thought they were pitiful.’

  In their bedroom that night she says to Larry, ‘I don’t understand how you could ever have loved her. I just don’t understand.’

  ‘I was young,’ says Larry.

  ‘It’s only five years ago. You weren’t a child. She’s just so … so crude. So loud. So coarse.’

  ‘She’s fun as well. You must see that.’

  ‘Fun! Is that your idea of fun? All that childish swearing?’

  Larry feels the stirrings of anger.

  ‘It’s late,’ he says. ‘That was a long drive.’

  ‘No, Larry. I want to know. Did you really love her?’

  ‘I thought I did. For a time.’

  ‘Was it just because of … you know?’

  This is the closest she can come to talk of sex.

  ‘Maybe it was,’ says Larry.

  ‘I could understand that,’ says Geraldine. ‘I know that makes perfectly sensible men do really stupid things.’

  ‘Not really stupid,’ says Larry. ‘Don’t say it was really stupid to love Nell. Don’t say that.’

  ‘Well, what am I supposed to say? Why else would you give a creature like that more than a glance?’

  ‘A creature like that.’ He feels his heart pounding. ‘What do you know?’ His voice is rising. ‘Who are you to criticise her? Who are you to tell me why I do what I do? You think you do everything so bloody perfectly. Well take it from me, you don’t!’

  Geraldine lies perfectly still beneath the bedclothes.

  ‘Please don’t swear at me,’ she whispers.

  ‘I’ll bloody well swear at you if I want!’ shouts Larry.

  ‘Hush!
’ she says. ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘No! I won’t! And don’t shush me! I’m not a child.’

  ‘Then I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Then don’t say anything at all. If all you can do is insult my friends I’d rather you said nothing. Why should everyone be like you? What makes you so right about everything?’

  Geraldine says nothing.

  ‘And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not in Arundel any more. We’re in France. They do things the French way in France. And why the hell shouldn’t they?’

  He feels her shudder, but still she says nothing.

  ‘Well?’ he demands.

  ‘I was told not to speak,’ she whispers.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Geraldine!’

  Robbed of opposition, his anger trickles out of him. They lie side by side in a wretched silence, both feeling sorry for themselves. After some time, wanting to go to sleep, Larry attempts a half-hearted resolution.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbles.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘I just didn’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t know what?’

  ‘That you don’t love me at all.’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s not the first time.’

  ‘Geraldine, you’re taking this far too seriously. It’s just a row. People have rows. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you. I know it’s my fault. I try so hard, but somehow I’m never good enough.’

  ‘No, darling, no.’ He feels only a heavy weariness now. ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘I’ve always known I’m not good enough, deep down.’ She goes on whispering to herself, hearing nothing he says. ‘I’ve never felt anyone’s really loved me. Not Mummy or Daddy. Not even God.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’

  ‘There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know what it is. I try so hard. It’s nothing physical. Not physical. I say to myself, I must just try harder. I must do better. And I will. I promise you. I’ll be a good wife.’

  ‘Of course you will. You are.’

  But as he lies beside her in the night Larry is overwhelmed with desolation.

  ‘This life is such a hard journey,’ she whispers. ‘All I ask is that from time to time you hold my hand. So I know you’re still there.’

  He reaches out under the bedclothes and holds her hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, her voice almost inaudible.

  *

  Next day Geraldine appears as charming and elegant as ever. She’s especially attentive to Kitty, teasingly aligning herself with her against the boorishness of the men.

  ‘What are we to do with them, Kitty? Sometimes I think men have no manners at all. You see how Larry leans on the table, and reaches for whatever he wants, as if he’s the only person at breakfast?’

  ‘You should pity me,’ says Larry, smiling. ‘I had no mother to teach me manners.’

  ‘Ed has a mother,’ says Kitty, ‘but he might as well have been raised in the jungle.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ says Ed, deep in the morning edition of Le Figaro. ‘You may like to know that Princess Elizabeth has had a baby girl. The princess is naturally radiant, and naturally she repeated the words she uttered on her marriage, and on the birth of her son. “Nous sommes tellement chanceux, Philip et moi.” Odd that she said it in French.’

  ‘You see what a beast he is,’ Kitty says to Geraldine. ‘He makes fun of all good news.’

  ‘I’m so impressed he understands French,’ says Geraldine.

  ‘Oh, he practically lives in France these days.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ says Larry. ‘Why don’t we beasts clear off for the day?’

  ‘Clear off where?’

  ‘I thought Dieppe.’

  Ed looks up from his newspaper.

  ‘Why on earth do you want to go there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Lay the odd ghost.’

  ‘I think you should, Ed,’ says Kitty.

  ‘All right,’ says Ed abruptly. ‘We’ll go.’

  *

  They park in front of one of the hotels, and walk down the concrete pathway between strips of grass where boys are playing soccer, to the broader strip of concrete that is the promenade. They stand here gazing over pebbles to the sea. It’s a sunny August afternoon, and the long flat beach is dotted with families stretched out on towels, and children flying kites.

  ‘Do you dream about it?’ says Larry.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Once I woke from a dream of it, and I’d wet myself.’

  Ed shakes his head.

  ‘What a fuck-up that was,’ he says. ‘What an utter God-awful fuck-up.’

  They reach the shiny strip of pebbles, washed by the waves as they roll in and roll out. Here they turn round. Now they’re looking up the beach to the promenade and the town, just as they looked when they came off the landing craft eight years ago.

  ‘Am I supposed to be feeling something?’ says Ed. ‘Because I’m not.’

  ‘Remembering,’ says Larry.

  ‘I’d rather forget.’

  ‘This is where you won your VC, Ed. Right here.’

  Ed scans the beach, with its scampering children and its barefoot bathers picking their way over the pebbles.

  ‘I should have died here,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe you did,’ says Larry. ‘Maybe I did.’

  He walks up the beach a little way, fancying that he follows the path he took eight years ago.

  ‘There was a wrecked tank round about here,’ he says. ‘I sat down against it and prayed it would protect me.’

  ‘You prayed?’

  ‘No, you’re right. I don’t remember praying. I just remember the dead feeling of terror. You never felt that, Ed. I saw you. You weren’t afraid.’

  ‘I’ve always been afraid,’ says Ed. ‘I’ve been running away all my life. I’m still running.’

  ‘But why? Why are we so afraid? What is it we’re afraid of?’

  No need to tell Ed he’s not talking about sniper bullets and mortar shells.

  ‘God knows,’ says Ed. Then he laughs. ‘Afraid of God, I expect. The God we’ve constructed so that we’re bound to fail in the end.’

  ‘Who says it has to be in the end?’ says Larry. ‘Some of us are failing right now.’

  Ed turns on him, almost angry.

  ‘Don’t you talk like that! You’re the one who’s got it right. I need to know at least someone’s come through.’

  ‘You’ve got eyes, Ed.’

  ‘Geraldine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They walk on up to the promenade and sit down on the concrete wall. Below them bewildered farm boys from Alberta and Ontario died in their hundreds, on that day that happened somewhere else, long ago and far away.

  ‘Geraldine isn’t great on the physical side of things,’ says Larry.

  ‘Maybe she just needs time.’

  ‘Ed, it’s nearly three years.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘There is no physical side of things.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Ed softly.

  ‘She tries, but she can’t.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Ed again.

  ‘It’s not going to change. I know that now.’

  ‘So what do you do?’ says Ed.

  ‘What do you think? I don’t have a whole lot of choice.’

  ‘Are we talking tarts or wanking?’

  ‘Good old Ed. The latter.’

  Ed gazes out over the sea to the horizon.

  ‘Remember the smoke?’ he says. ‘Bloody smoke over everything, so you didn’t know you were coming off the boats into the end of the world.’

  ‘I remember the smoke,’ says Larry.

  ‘You’re going to have to get out of this, my friend. Time to beat a retreat. Back to the boats and sail away.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not? Oh yes, your dum
b religion.’

  ‘And yours.’

  ‘It’s a fairy story, chum. Don’t let them bully you.’

  ‘It still means something to me,’ says Larry. ‘It’s just too deep in me.’

  ‘Do you still go to confession?’

  ‘From time to time. I like it.’

  ‘Do you tell the priest about the wanking?’

  Larry laughs.

  ‘No, not any more. It got too boring. And I knew I wasn’t going to stop.’

  ‘There’s faith for you. You know it’s nonsense but you let it ruin your life. Sometimes I swear to you I think the human race has a built-in need to suffer. When there aren’t enough plagues or earthquakes we have wars. When we run out of wars we turn our daily lives into misery.’

  ‘So what do you advise me to do?’ says Larry.

  ‘How would I know?’ says Ed. ‘I drink. But I don’t recommend it.’

  Larry sighs.

  ‘Remember sitting in the library at school, with our feet up on the table, and you reading out the dirty bits from your illicit copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover?’

  ‘Sex in the gamekeeper’s hut. As far as I can remember she had no underclothes, and slept through the whole thing.’

  ‘It was still exciting.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with sex. It’s never as good as when you’re sixteen years old and haven’t had it yet.’

  ‘So what do we do, Ed?’

  ‘We stumble on, chum. Stumble on in the smoke until that one merciful bullet finds us at last.’

  37

  Louisa is back home and a lot better, but one look at her and Kitty knows she’s not yet her old self. Little Billy hangs about her, clinging to her skirts, but she makes no objection when his nurse comes and carries him off for his tea.

  ‘I’m all right really,’ she tells Kitty, ‘but everything’s so tiring. I want to have Billy all the time, but I can’t manage it. Aren’t I hopeless?’

  She gives Kitty one of her old mischievous smiles, but ends with a grimace.

  ‘Oh, Kitty. Were your babies such hard work?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Kitty loyally. ‘Having babies is hell.’

  ‘It’s like being disembowelled, isn’t it? But I should be over it by now.’

  ‘What do your doctors say?’

  ‘They can’t find anything wrong with me, which should be cheering but somehow isn’t. If only I could cough blood or something. At least then I’d know it wasn’t my own fault.’