‘What’s the extent of my own point of view?’
‘You’ve been carrying an arm about with you that’s been in need of intensive treatment. We’ll do what we can.’
They had done all of that. He was lucky. And in France the Americans had joined the Allies. That had to mean the end for Germany. He hoped it would be soon. He had had enough himself. Austria, he was sure, had had more than enough.
Austria.
He stopped his thoughts as Margaret arrived. He got down and handed her up into the trap, then climbed up beside her.
‘Just a ramble, shall we?’ he said.
‘Let Poppy lead, we’ll follow,’ she said. Poppy was the pony. ‘It’s that kind of evening, isn’t it?’ She was still in her uniform but had freshened herself up and wore her blue cape. She looked crisp and colourful.
‘It’s perfect,’ said James and headed for the winding lanes of the dales. He halted the pony before they had gone very far and they sat in the trap and looked at what the evening vista had to offer them. The colours glowed under the flushed blue sky, the sun in descent, little white cotton-wool clouds hanging in its path. In the west the horizon was like a rim of spreading gold, tipping the distant Pennines where they rose in uneven configuration. The Romans had crossed the Pennines, marching north to claim all they could of Britain in its lushest and wildest age. The Picts halted them and harassed them and made them think again about conquering the most northerly regions, and in the end Hadrian built his Wall to mark and hold the furthermost boundary of the Roman occupation. They had left their marks on and around the Pennines. James thought that if one sat long enough and remained quiet enough the echoes of their legions could be drawn out of two thousand years of time. That is, if one’s concentration was not broken by memories as strong and compulsive as his were. Memories that went back only a few years. He could not remember any reasonable period of time when his mind had been free of her. She would not go away, she was a vivid, obsessive recurrence.
Half a mile away the roofs and chimneys of a small village were shot with soft light. Smoke from one of the chimneys hung like fine transparent blue-black fabric in the still air.
‘It’s almost heartbreaking,’ said Margaret.
‘So much peace set against so much war?’
‘Yes, and it doesn’t make me forget the war, as it could, it makes me more conscious of it.’
‘It won’t go away for nurses, will it?’
‘It won’t go away for you,’ she said, and looked ruefully sad. ‘Dr Posford wanted to see you. I said I’d give you the message. You’re going home tomorrow. You’ll have to continue with therapy for a few more weeks, you’ll be given a letter to take to your local hospital in respect of that.’
‘I can’t say I’m overjoyed,’ said James, ‘I’m rather settled in here. You need the bed?’
‘Yes, and you don’t, do you? Not now.’
‘No, I don’t, not now.’ He sat there by her side, pensive. He had been expecting this but was not altogether ready for it. He had a decision to make and would have liked a few more days to think about it. In almost four years Margaret Kernan was the first woman since Sophie whom he had looked at with interest. Not that there had been many women, even on leave. And on leave they could only be remembered as pairs of eyes hinting at a desire to please. There was no coquettish flutter about Margaret Kernan. On duty she was calm, assured and unruffled. Off duty she was a pleasure to be with, a charmer. Physically she was as attractive as any woman, if one could forget Sophie’s electric quality. Margaret, unlike so many restless wartime women, did not demand to be entertained, spoiled, flattered or made love to. In her company he felt pleasantly relaxed. And what was Sophie now but an impossible dream? Given the chance, how could he go back to her and ask for the years of bitter war to be discounted? She would hardly be sitting in Vienna waiting for him. Nor could he believe that other men, Austrians, would let her do that. One of them would have seen all he had seen himself in her, her irresistible sense of humour, her rich vitality, her love of life, her aptitude for engaging in all its diversions and her own striking loveliness. Such a man would have persevered, would have married her by now.
That conclusion, as always, made him inwardly wince. He could not forever live on thoughts of what might have been, punctuated by moments of painful resignation. That way led to a monastic future. To shut out all women because one had been lost to him was to deny life’s purpose. Margaret, if she were willing to consider it, might give him the chance of a post-war future.
‘No, I don’t need the bed, not now,’ he said again.
‘They’ll want you back, the Flying Corps,’ said Margaret.
‘It’s the Air Force now.’
‘Oh, yes. I keep forgetting.’ She felt sorrow, and the peace and beauty of the evening didn’t help. It imbued the sorrow with a touch of melancholy. She knew she would miss him. One did miss some patients for a while. She would miss him a little more than that. He would say goodbye, he would perhaps kiss her, as some of them did, and he would go and not be heard of again. Unless he was mentioned by a member of the staff who might spot his name in a casualty list. That sort of thing happened. Someone would say, ‘We patched up Lieutenant So-and-so to no purpose, he’s just been killed on the Somme.’
James flicked the reins and the pony ambled on. He was silent. But then, she thought, he often was, for all the talk they enjoyed in between. And he never mentioned what was on his mind. He did not use her, as other patients did, as a recipient for confidences. He had to have problems. They all did, those who had been to the front and had to return there. But whatever his problems were he kept them to himself. He never spoke of women, not in a personal way, but she did not think him a man who had passed all women by.
A farm cart approached, the shire horse plodding and pulling, the driver nodding under his shapeless hat. He woke up at the sound of the trap and drew over to let them by, touching his hat and smiling sleepily out of his ruddy, grey-whiskered face. The smile was for Margaret in her white cap and blue cape. She smiled back. They rounded a bend in the lane and stopped again. It was that kind of evening. They had no need to go anywhere. The world was before them, the sky limitless, the sun edging the Pennines with those streams of golden light, the world itself whispering with the sounds of verdant summer life. The wheatfields were high massed carpets of yellow and green, and the dales glided, curved and dipped, the colours a profusion of browns, greys and emeralds.
She had seen the view before, many times. But it was always different, always new, because the moment and the light were never the same, shadows never consistent. The greens were so changeable, sometimes deep, sometimes brilliant, sometimes sombre, and they embraced the stone outcrops in a variety of moods. She thought of the abundant generosity of nature and the inexplicable acquisitiveness of man. For all that nature gave him, man always wanted so much more. To get it he sometimes turned nature upside down.
She glanced at James. He sat in relaxed immobility, drooping a little, elbows on his knees, reins inert in his hands, his eyes quite far away. Because they were good friends and because he was to leave tomorrow she thought she might, at last, be a little intrusive.
‘Is it a girl, James?’
‘It’s summer,’ he said.
‘This summer?’ she asked.
‘Well, there was a special one once. I thought it would never end at the time, but when I look back I wonder if any other could have been as brief. It should have lingered. It didn’t.’
He did not say why it had been so special, so she said, ‘All the summers were like that when I was a girl.’ James set the pony meandering again. The lazy wheels drew up a little indolent dust. The falling sun touched her face with warmth and gilded the brass of the trap. ‘That’s how they seem in retrospect, anyway. I can never remember rainy days, only the warm ones and my father taking us on daily walking tours during the holidays. We could never afford hotels by the sea or even boarding houses. We lived in Here
ford and with my parents there were seven of us. As schoolchildren we did see the sea once, on the Cardigan coast. We had a day trip by train. We thought the sand and the waves were wonders of wonders. My father said many places were like that until people invaded them. He said that once you could go to a place like Aberystwyth and walk along the shore for miles without meeting more than half a dozen other visitors. I remember saying that one shouldn’t keep any wonders to oneself, it wasn’t fair, they should be for everybody. My father laughed and said what sort of wonder would it be if everybody visited Stonehenge at the same time on August Bank Holiday?’
‘Your father sounds like mine,’ said James. ‘Mine could also propound the unanswerable when replying to a question.’
‘Fathers exist to profoundly propound,’ said Margaret, looking at the rim of deepening gold, ‘mothers are more practical. When I was walking out with my first young man—’
‘Your first?’ James gave her a smile. She responded with her pleasantly warm one. He thought her the kind of woman who would be handsome at an age when others looked old. ‘Your first, Margaret?’
‘James, I’ve not always been a vocational wallflower.’
‘You haven’t even arrived.’
‘Please raise my morale, do.’ She laughed. ‘But when I was walking out with my first young man I brought him home to Sunday tea. That was almost compulsory. No, it was direly compulsory. After he’d gone my mother, thinking in practical terms, said he was the most upright young man a girl could set her mind on. My father said a man as upright as that while he was still as young as that would turn a home into a church and every day would be like a Welsh Sunday. An adaptable Welsh girl might put up with that, he said, but as I was only part Welsh and my adaptability still unproven his advice was for me to keep a critical eye on the fellow. Although I was fairly enamoured—’
‘Enamoured?’ said James as they jogged down a gentle descent.
‘Be careful.’
‘No danger, not with Poppy,’ said James reassuringly.
‘I meant be careful, sir, how you mock me,’ said Margaret. ‘Well, although I was rather head over heels, shall we say, I was still very much my father’s daughter, so I did keep an eye on my young man. I didn’t find that too much of a strain as he was handsomely clean-cut, but I gradually realized it was my ears, not my eyes, which were hurting. I was being treated to long sermons, even if I only asked him the time. He spoke of time in terms of whether heaven or the devil was to prevail, and I felt he needed a pulpit more than me. So I gave him up. I knew I’d never be holy enough for him.’
‘And the others,’ said James, addicted to any woman with a sense of humour, ‘you gave them up too?’
‘Oh, they gave me up, I think.’ Margaret laughed again. ‘One by one. I was already interested in nursing and couldn’t devote nearly enough time to any young man. I was given up by seven in one year, while I was studying and training to pass my exams. I qualified when I was nineteen and only nursing seemed important to me then.’
‘It still does?’
‘I think it has to be like that,’ she said, ‘I think at my age—’
‘No age,’ said James.
‘At my age there isn’t anything else. When the war does end there’s going to be a depressing shortage of men and a depressing surplus of women, the women all needing to substitute something else for marriage. I’m fortunate. My substitute already exists and has been constant for several years.’
‘It’s not enough,’ said James, pulling his peaked cap farther down to shade his eyes from the huge ball of golden fire.
‘It has to be enough for me,’ said Margaret.
‘Work is satisfying, especially your kind of work,’ said James, ‘but it’s still not enough, or shouldn’t be. It can be creative, but not of life. Only people can create life. People are the result of life that went before and the propagators of life to come.’
‘Are you trying to be profound now? What do you suggest, James, that some men take two wives? With two I suppose a man can double his propagation rate.’
‘No, I mean that allowing for exceptions, as one always must,’ said James, ‘people aren’t meant to live alone. There’s no living creature designed by nature to be solitary.’
‘James, I can’t simply go out, find a man and tell him I’d like us to be creative together. To start with, he might belong to someone else. To become a non-solitary person I need help. Nearly all women do. Unlike men, we can’t ask for what we want. Society demands modesty from us.’
He halted the pony again. The sun-fired Pennines advanced northwards and grey-backed sheep bunched on the rising slope of a wandering valley. The flushed western sky was slashed with red streaks.
She asked her question again.
‘Is it a girl you think about so often, James?’
‘It’s Vienna,’ he said.
‘Vienna?’
‘I’ve an obsession with the past,’ he said, ‘I need help too.’
She turned to him. She wished there had been more time, she wished the hours had not been so full of professional commitment, that she could have had something more than nursing.
‘I only seem to get kissed at Christmas,’ she said, ‘when they hang the mistletoe.’
‘Well, except at Christmas matrons and sisters are a little sacrosanct,’ said James.
‘You mean forbidden or forbidding?’
‘Untouchable,’ he said, ‘but not to all of us.’
He kissed her. She lifted her mouth willingly, gave it warmly. The pony nibbled at the grassy verge and the evening was as silent as if the world had stopped.
‘Thank you, James,’ said Margaret, and he knew she would consider being asked, would consider whether their needs coincided.
‘Margaret—’
‘James, we all have an obsession with the past, we all look back. It’s a sadness sometimes, knowing we can’t actually go back. We can’t even hold a second of time in our hands.’
It came out of that golden summer then, it came so clear and fresh, so well memorized, and the moment with it, the moment that was Sophie.
I stood on the bridge and watched the river
Which passed by
As life does
For life is never still. Is it?
It is only a transient moment
That turns tomorrow into yesterday
Each second comes and is gone
As soon as it arrives
Even a year is a time that has gone
And tomorrow is another year
Full of many things unknown
That a day later are forgotten.
No, never forgotten, he thought. And he knew that when it was all over at last, he had to try again. Despite all the bitter years, he had to.
‘James?’ Margaret’s clear grey eyes held his. ‘There’s not enough, is there, for us? You have to go back, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said James, ‘in the end I must go back. To Vienna.’
Later that evening he watched the sun go down in a blaze of fiery purple. He wondered about them. About Sophie. About Anne and Ludwig. About Carl.
Chapter Three
The pass lay under the snow. When the summer came, if it ever did again, the melted snow would leave a rich green. But every winter was so long it seemed interminable. Locked in by the snow and the mountains, the pass was also barricaded by the iced sandbag bastions of war. On the north side were the Austrians, on the south side stood the Italians. Great barrier webs of barbed wire guarded the sandbag blockhouses and climbed the slopes on either side of the pass. The wire was draped in snow, which hung frozen from every strand.
For over three years they had fought for that pass, the Austrians in an endeavour to open up one more route into Italy, the Italians to get a footing on the soil of the Trentino region of the Tyrol. In France the opposing armies fought each other from trenches. In the Alpine territory the Austrians and Italians engaged in bitter and protracted mountain warfare. The men of
both armies performed prodigious feats, whether at high or low altitudes, and amid conditions of intense cold, icy storms and enemy fire. They fought for and from ledges scarifyingly precipitous, they fought as they were commanded to, clinging to positions that were death-defying. Guns were dragged up to heights of three thousand feet, and from there they blasted cannonades that made massive mountains tremble.
Here, around the pass and for the pass, the Austrians and Italians had long set the pattern of attritional warfare. They had climbed the slopes and cut the wire, they had climbed higher and crawled along ledges and ridges to bypass the defenders, and when bright light came they had been literally shot off the mountainside by those who waited on their own ledges. They had attacked massively in attempts to smother the barbed wire and overrun the iron-hard sandbag walls, and they had died. When they used gunfire to smother the wire in rock, snow and ice they only left it quivering. Sometimes, because it was so difficult to move the guns once they were in position, opposing batteries ventured into the more devastating realms of war by trying to blow each other to pieces. Frequently the echoing, vibrating thunder of the guns brought in its wake the slow, rolling, snowballing thunder of avalanches, the gigantic walls of falling white liable to bury friend and foe in awesome impartiality.
The winter of 1918 had come early. It was bitter and biting even during the first days of October. The snow-covered strands of barbed wire began to create their patterns of strange beauty. The men looked lean, gaunt, and were burned black by the Alpine sun and winds. Sometimes only the fact that the Austrians stood north of the pass and the Italians south distinguished one from the other.
What counted was attrition, what counted more was to endure and survive attrition. They knew that. So they hated each other. They also, at times, loved each other. In this region, where fighting for every foothold was a hazardous exploit in itself, they were brothers as well as enemies. They all knew it was easier and safer to sit on the side of a mountain and wait for the other man to come than to go to him. The generals did not quite see it like that. They did not have the same attitudes as the men. They were not afflicted by boredom and a conviction that today was forever, that the war for the pass and the pass itself were symbolic of hideous permanency. The mountains would not change shape, nor the valleys, and therefore the pass was as it always had been and always would be. It could not be reduced and the war could not end.
The Longest Winter Page 25
