‘So,’ he murmured, ‘they’re still making these, are they? My old favourites – how did you know?’
She was able to laugh, then. ‘I must have remembered.’
Not consciously, she was aware of that, but once said, it did come back, like so many other things. Seeing him there, lying on the grass, long legs looking longer still in the narrow blue trousers, shirt-sleeves pushed back over brown forearms, she was reminded again of that last evening before the storm broke, when he had talked, so innocently, about leaving. She had thought him beautiful then, a lovely boy with all the world at his feet...
And now he was a man.
It made her shiver, as did the thought of all that had gone between. He had changed, she could see that, but despite weariness and bitterness bred by the war, he was still, miraculously, the same person. A little wiser perhaps, and with less polished ideals, but a gentle man for all that, not brutalized, as some were, by the hard school of experience. Sensitivity was still there, and that he still cared for her, very deeply, was evident by all that had passed between them today.
But perhaps, she reflected, that was less good than it seemed. For a moment she experienced a faint twinge of unease; and then he smiled at her, and it was gone.
Twenty-four
Liam had good days and bad, bursts of energy which led him to believe he was quite well, often followed by several days in which he shivered with weakness and misery. His nights, too, were mixed, sometimes tense and wakeful, listening to rain pattering on the windows and trains chugging up the incline, as often full of nightmare and horror as they were of relaxed, health-giving sleep. The ward-sister who had been in charge when he first arrived, moved back to her regular night slot, which Liam had cause to be glad about. Often when he woke in fear, unable to sleep again, she would make him a hot drink and let him talk for a while until the anxiety passed. She did that with all of them. She was very kind.
He imagined Georgina doing the same, and he would think of her, years hence, wondering whether she would always be devoted to the suffering of others, living for them, never having a life of her own. Nursing was a demanding if noble vocation; no doubt it had its rewards, although as a mere patient suffused with gratitude, he could not imagine them.
Each of these women, he reflected, could marry and leave the profession, but that choice was not open to Georgina. Although she could leave, and no doubt live on the income from her mother’s inheritance, he could not imagine her doing so. No, she would carry on, probably for the rest of her life, never knowing a man’s love, which seemed a tragedy to him, a sin against the natural order of things. She was a woman who deserved to be loved and cherished, yet he could not deny the surge of relief when she declared that love and marriage were not for her. The reasons were tragic, although in a strange way they eased his conscience; he felt less wrong in loving her, less guilty in looking for her affection. With the surety that he was detracting from nothing and no one, it seemed to Liam that he might freely enjoy her company and give whatever degree of love she might accept.
Despite the insurmountable barriers, he felt there was no real reason why they should not share a tender friendship and the comfort of knowing that each cared about the other. It was not a love which could be consummated, but then he had never expected it to be, so experienced no particular sense of loss. With no demands, there was even a strange comfort in it, a sense of knowing, without being told, exactly where he stood. It was one of the few things in his life with any foundation.
What caused him some unease, was the image she had presented of Robert Duncannon as a loving father and tormented young husband. It sat awkwardly against his fixed impression of a middle-aged philanderer who cared everything for his own passions and little for his offspring. What age had he been then? Mid-to late twenties, probably, not much older than himself: no doubt hot-headed, and inexperienced in the ways of the world...
No, it would not do. If he stopped hating Robert Duncannon, everything else would fall apart. If he stopped hating the man who had brought all this about, then who was there left to blame? And it must be somebody’s fault, this crazy situation; it had to be somebody’s fault.
He stopped thinking about it altogether, wrote his mother and Edward a few bland missives, said he hoped they were well, and he would see them as soon as he was fit to travel. There was no point, he argued, in their coming to London; he would travel free on a rail pass as soon as he could obtain leave, which was bound to be quite soon.
As the September days shortened with fog and rain, he spent much time in the library, a place of endless fascination. The hospital had been a school, an orphanage the history of which he read one dark afternoon when the ward was crowded with visitors and Georgina unable to come. It had been built on a wave of patriotism after the Crimea, for the orphaned daughters of veterans of that campaign. Public subscription had raised more than a million pounds for its erection, and it was grand indeed, the great hall decorated with banners and arms of the great cities of Britain and the Empire. Like the whole building, it had something medieval about it, an air of masculine romanticism, upon which several hundred little girls had failed to leave an impression.
The present wards had been dormitories and schoolrooms, built around quadrangles which reminded him of cloisters. Often, hanging about the rear entrance on wet afternoons, smoking, he would look back across the brick-paved cloister and watch the passage of nurses up and down, up and down. He noted the men too, the men, hundreds of them, from whom the women were professionally separated.
There was an air of other-worldliness about it, romantic, medieval, monastic, which fitted the place exactly. With its high, gothic walls, quaint arched windows and communal living quarters, it seemed part of Chaucer and Malory and the romantic poets of old. That sense of celibacy, enforced and upheld, seemed natural rather than irksome. He was not, he was sure, the only one to feel that; it seemed to affect other men, too, even the ones on his ward, who were mostly less ill than the rest. Each new nurse had her followers, men who fell romantically in love at the first kind smile; but there was less coarseness than might have been expected. Worship, adoration and respect were the order of the day, and in that atmosphere Liam’s relationship with Georgina seemed not at all strange.
He was teased, of course. Georgina was referred to as his private nurse, and he was asked several times when he was going to do the decent thing by her and name the day. All the men were convinced she was in love with him and just waiting for Liam to pop the question. If it was flattering, it was also highly embarrassing.
He had become practised at fending them off, but two of the men had asked the same question. ‘Is she your sister, or what?’ To which he had said they were cousins, a point which had been agreed, early on, between himself and Georgina. But each response had been similar, words to the effect that his answer explained a certain resemblance. ‘Mind, she’s a bloody sight prettier than you!’
Liam took the teasing in good part, while finding much irony in those comments. Except in colouring, and possibly something about the eyes, they were not alike. He was heavy-boned, while she was as slender as a willow; and if he had inherited his fairness from the Elliott family, she had hers from her mother. Robert Duncannon had passed on nothing of his dark Irish looks to either of them. Robin was the one who had inherited the colouring and bone structure; and Tisha, who was not tall, bore her resemblance in hair and eyes. It was odd too, that when his sister did arrive on a brief visit, no one recognized her as such.
Liam was more pleased to see her than he had expected to be; but they had so little to say to each other that the visit was something of an embarrassment. The only matters they had in common were York, home and the past, and as each had private reasons for not wanting to discuss these things in depth, it left little to talk about.
Tisha did, however, manage to shock him. She revealed the fact of Edward’s illness in such a casual way that at first he thought he had misheard. When pressed for details, she said airily
that he was quite well again, there was nothing to worry about, and their mother had everything well in hand.
More upset than he could say, Liam was aware of his own heart pounding painfully, that erratic, uneven beat which had become more pronounced since those last bombardments at Pozières; he was sweating too, although it was not a warm day.
‘Have you seen him?’ he demanded. ‘Did you go home?’
‘Well, no. I’ve been very busy since I got married. Edwin went off training and then he came back on embarkation leave, and I knew Mother couldn’t do with visiting when Dad was ill, so I thought it better to leave it for a while.’
‘But he might have died!’
She clicked her tongue. ‘Oh, Liam, you always did exaggerate! They were only mild attacks, and Mother particularly impressed upon me that I was not to worry.’
‘So you didn’t?’ he asked sardonically. ‘But do you think you might? Go home, I mean?’
‘Not just yet,’ Tisha replied, smoothing the seam of her stockings. ‘Mother’s got enough to do, without looking after guests.’
‘You’re hardly a guest – you’re her daughter, for heaven’s sake! Or doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
His sister looked up, fixing him with a cold stare. ‘Since you ask – not a great deal, no.’
He was stunned. Almost stammering, he said: ‘But Tisha, you should go home.’
‘And so should you,’ she retorted. ‘And perhaps when you’ve been and settled your differences, then I’ll go. Perhaps. Until then, dear brother, don’t try to tell me what to do. I’m a married woman, now, and I can please myself.’
With that, she swept out, as elegantly as she had come in, on a wave of French perfume and a swirl of silk.
Guilt washed over him, and a helpless feeling of frustration. Three years! What had happened to her in that time? She had been a child when he left, and now she was every inch a woman, smart, hard and sophisticated. On the surface at least. What was she beneath, though? A childish, vindictive little monster. Married woman, indeed! Liam pitied her husband.
When he had eventually calmed himself, he wrote to Edward, a letter less carefully phrased than usual, expressing his deep concern and need for assurance. He would come home, he said, just as soon as he was able to do so.
It was several days before he saw Georgina, and by that time his anger had abated; nevertheless, at the first opportunity he took her to task on the matter, demanding to know why, since she was aware of Edward’s illness, she had neglected to tell him.
‘You were in France,’ Georgina said stiffly, ‘facing rather more immediate dangers. Louisa knew – and I agreed with her – that a matter of a mild heart attack did not mean that Edward was at death’s door, although you and Robin might have jumped to that conclusion. And if you had, what good would it have done? Could you have obtained leave at that time? I doubt it. And when you arrived here, and the opportunity to tell you arose, it was my considered opinion that you were too ill to be faced with it.’
‘I don’t agree with you!’
‘Liam, I know how ill you were.’ She touched his arm gently. ‘And the worry of knowing would have held back your recovery. Please believe me.’
‘So when did you plan to tell me?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said honestly, ‘I was leaving it to your mother to do that. But I think it’s time you understood how much she and Edward care for you. It was a joint decision not to tell you, even when they knew you were here in London. They didn’t want any undue pressure put upon you – they were, and are, longing to see you, on your terms, and in your time. You see, in spite of everything, they love you very much.’
It was too much to bear; he turned away, aware of a hard lump in his throat. Because he did not want to accept that, he said brusquely: ‘But there they go again – you too – keeping things from me, as though I were still a child! When will you all start being honest? All this secrecy and deceit makes me so angry!’
She said nothing, and he knew she was waiting for him to calm down. Making a supreme effort, he stood up and walked away, leaving Georgina sitting in the shelter of the chapel wall. When he had half-smoked a cigarette, he came back and apologized.
‘I suppose Tisha should have kept her mouth shut.’
She smiled, wryly. ‘I think perhaps she should. But that’s Tisha.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ He sat down, feeling cold and shivery; it was a poor day. ‘Do you want to go inside?’
‘Not unless you do. It’s quieter out here.’
After a while, thinking about York, thinking about his sister, he said: ‘What’s happened to her, Georgina? We never had much in common, but I don’t remember her being quite like that.’
‘I don’t know, she was never easy to understand.’
But a sudden sigh made Liam look into her face.
‘Tell me,’ he said heavily, ‘whatever it is. I don’t like to think of you keeping things from me.’ It was hurtful, when he wanted so much to be part of her, when he wanted to understand the things that grieved her as well as those that made her happy. ‘Tell me.’
But there was little to tell. Small incidents, small cruelties that Georgina had witnessed during her less frequent visits to the cottage after his departure, a moment of revelation for Liam when she admitted feelings of guilt at that time, and the bleak atmosphere which had prevailed at the cottage with both boys gone.
Wanting to question her about the guilt, he let it pass, needing to know, initially, about Tisha. But Georgina’s assessment of what ailed the girl was not easy to listen to; most of it only served to increase his own sense of unease, to promote a growing suspicion that perhaps his own actions had much to answer for.
‘Something happened to Tisha about the time you left. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know – honestly, I don’t. I can only assume that what she heard, what she discovered, was as great a shock to her as it was to you. Except she didn’t have your avenue of escape. And I think Edward and Louisa were so shattered by what you did, so absolutely devastated, they ignored her. They didn’t realize how much she needed them.
‘And Tisha,’ Georgina sighed, ‘was always the one who wanted to be important, who wanted an audience for every trick. Particularly a male audience. Edward doted on her – but suddenly, he wasn’t paying much attention any more. Louisa absorbed most of his time and affection. And she did need it, Liam – she was like…’ Breaking off, Georgina shook her head. ‘She’d lost you, her eldest son. She didn’t know where you were. You might have been dead. The not knowing almost killed her.’
He bowed his head against that. But he had asked, had demanded to know, could not now beg her to stop, unsay the words that spoke the truth.
‘Once Robin had heard from you – once you’d written to Edward – all that changed, of course. Louisa was much better, more able to take notice of what was going on around her. But it was too late. At least where Tisha was concerned. In a way, I think they were both quite relieved when she left to come to London. And since then, she’s been more or less as you describe her. I don’t think she cares for anyone very much. Edwin, perhaps, but he’s gone away too. I don’t think she expected that.’
Liam shook his head at the folly of it all, scarcely able to believe the extent of destruction caused by one man’s hasty words. He supposed he should have been feeling pity for his sister, but all he could think of was that afternoon when he returned from work, that moment when the truth assaulted him.
‘If you only knew...’ Fumbling for his cigarettes, lighting one, he was aware that his hands were trembling, but the pain, curiously enough, was less than it had ever been. In the face of his mother’s suffering it seemed somehow pathetic, even selfish to have nursed it so long. Three years! For God’s sake, in war that was a lifetime!
‘I never meant...’ he began again, then stopped, feeling guilty and inadequate. Georgina’s hand on his arm made him turn to look at her. She seemed so stricken by his anguish that he wanted t
o draw her close, enfold her in his arms and tell her nothing mattered. But it did matter, and he could not hold her, and there was very little comfort elsewhere.
‘What is it? Can’t you tell me?’
Her voice was gentle, persuasive, but in spite of his need to respond, the words were still locked behind a barrier of remembered pain. Pathetic though it was, he knew it would hurt even more to break that seal, to let the torrent of bitterness go. Amongst it lay the jewel of his love for her.
‘I can’t,’ he said miserably, ‘not now.’
‘That’s all right,’ she whispered, ‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
Pressing her hand, he rose to his feet; with the ringing of the bell they went inside.
Throughout most of September he had spent mornings in bed, rising for the main meal of the day, staying up until six or seven in the evening, when he was glad to return. By the end of the month, feeling stronger, he was often up and about from breakfast till supper, filling his days in library or grounds, and occasionally performing small tasks in the ward kitchen. When six of the men left for one of the convalescent homes, Liam found himself helping on a fairly regular basis. He rather liked it, enjoying the informality of the kitchen, the young nurses’ company and the way they good-naturedly teased and bullied him. The work gave him something to do and stopped him brooding.
Nevertheless, Tisha’s visit and that conversation with Georgina had brought to mind an awareness that kept returning. During all the time he had been away from home, beyond the contentment of Australia and the blind intensity of the war, beyond the of seclusion hospital life, time had not stood still. Although in his mind it had been frozen at the point where he left, he was faced now with reports of change, truths it was difficult to avoid. Like having an uncorrected map of no-man’s-land, he thought, and with an order to go over the top, suddenly being told of fresh saps and gun-pits and an acre of barbed-wire.
Although he had wanted to hurt them, intended it and obviously succeeded, from this distance it seemed a childish, petty thing. Since that promise to Robin he had imagined going home, his mother begging his forgiveness and he, reluctantly, granting it, like some medieval pontiff; but it seemed to him now that he should be the supplicant, his mother the one dispensing grace.
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