Wine of Honour

by Barbara Beauchamp

  “Yes.” If only it were as simple as that, but of course it isn’t.

  “I don’t like it—that’s obvious and we needn’t go into the reasons again. I don’t think Gyp would like it if he knew the truth. He doesn’t, so we can’t argue that point. But you’re not even going to like it yourself, Helen, so why do it?”

  “There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve told you what to do. Get away from here before it’s too late. I don’t mean with me, but alone, somewhere where you won’t see me or Gyp. Write and tell him what’s happened. Tell him the whole thing and see what he wants to do about it. It’s the only fair thing for all of us. Can’t you see that?”

  But I can’t. It’s all very well for Brian to say go away before it’s too late. Can’t he see that it is already too late? I should have written to Gyp two years ago, when there seemed no end to the war, when he was thousands of miles and thousands of years away from me. I can’t do it now when time and miles are dwindling to nothing before our meeting again. Besides I want to see him. I tell this to Brian and he doesn’t understand. If you haven’t been married yourself—happily married—I suppose you can’t understand.

  Brian is walking about again. I want him to be near enough for me to force him to listen. If I could hold him, I could explain better. But he will keep moving.

  “At least,” he says, “we can thrash it out now, while we’ve still got time.”

  “It won’t make any difference, Brian. I thought we’d agreed on that?”

  “We’d agreed?” he laughs. “You mean you wrote me that idiotic letter telling me what you intended doing, and expected me to say, yes and God bless you, and then do a nice vanishing act until somebody had come to their senses. You couldn’t really have thought it feasible after all that’s happened.”

  “But nothing’s happened so far as Gyp’s concerned, that’s the point.”

  “Oh, all right, all right. I won’t bring it up if you don’t want me to. I’m not going to harp on the fact that we fell in love, that we’ve lived together for two years and that we both go crazy when we can’t fake up an excuse to meet each other on every possible occasion.”

  “That’s just what you are doing. That’s why I knew it was silly of us to meet here in Kirton. We always said we wouldn’t and we never have before.”

  “Listen, Helen. Listen, darling”—he is very close to me now—“no, I’m not going to make love to you. Don’t get scared. I don’t feel that way at the moment. But I’d like to tell you something. Can I?”

  He is holding my hand, in a detached, impersonal way. I can feel my face flushing because he is just that much more impersonal than I can ever be. Who suggested that women were cool and men impatient? I say:

  “Yes, tell me. What?”

  “It’s a story. A true story, so far as I’m concerned. I think you ought to hear it, from my point of view. D’you mind?”

  “Go on.”

  Up and down the room he paces. I can count the number of steps he will take before he turns each time. Oh, Brian, why can’t you be still?

  “I met a girl once. She was very lovely. Sub-consciously I suppose I realized it the first time I saw her.” He has stopped walking and, for a moment, I have stopped breathing. Physical jealousy does that to me. I hate it and despise it and it catches me unawares, like missing a step in one’s dreams.

  “This was all a long time ago.” Brian flings the butt of his cigarette out of the window and lights another. “A very long time ago. Another existence. Before the war. And she was lovely. Everyone agreed on that but, as I said, I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time. I played tennis with her; I went on the same picnics as she did; I even danced with her on several occasions. But it wasn’t until I’d seen her quite twenty times that I suddenly realized what was wrong with her.”

  “What was it?” I prink my face into an expression of interest. I don’t care what was wrong with this girl of Brian’s, whoever she may have been. I hate her. Why have I got to listen to this story now? I could kill Brian for hurting me at this moment.

  “She was married.” He sounds quite cheerful about it. “Not that there was anything wrong in that. It was just the way marriage had affected her. I suppose she was about twenty-five when I first met her and she’d been married a couple of years. Her husband was all right too. They were very fond of each other. I don’t believe they really noticed anything outside themselves. That’s what was wrong. You can’t at twenty-five ignore the world, but that’s what she was doing. My God, she might have been married for twenty years, not two. Settled, in a rut, devoid of curiosity at the age of twenty-five. D’you know what I mean?”

  Of course I know what he means now. But I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t like that in the very least.

  “Go on,” I say, while the numbness falls from my mind and limbs.

  “It seemed to me that this girl had never really experienced anything deeply. She was happy, but it was a superficial happiness. Not because she was a superficial person, but simply because nothing had stirred her emotions or intellect sufficiently to bring her real happiness—or real sorrow, for that matter.”

  How wrong you are, Brian, how very wrong. I was tremendously happy with Gyp. That is what I want to say, but I don’t.

  Brian has only been right about one thing so far: Gyp and I used not to notice much outside ourselves. Why should we? We were self-sufficient, we were complete. Everything we did and saw was exciting because we were together. We weren’t in a rut; we travelled on air. Then the war happened.

  As though I had spoken aloud, Brian says:

  “And then came the war. I was sent to the other end of England and her husband went into the R.A.M.C. I didn’t hear of her again until someone told me she was joining one of the women’s services. A pity, I thought, because I dislike women in uniform. Someone said he’d gone overseas. The usual snatches of news one gets from home. I thought no more about either of them.”

  I thought, how easily he can dismiss those snatches of home news but how enormously eventful they were for me. Gyp’s embarkation leave, with both of us trying to hide from the other the depths of our unhappiness; the long-drawn-out pain of those swiftly passing days and nights. I can’t recapture it now, but the memory is still inside me, twisted and miserable. And then the sheer discomfort of being a recruit in the A.T.S., memorable chiefly for aching feet and a surfeit of starch at every meal.

  “No, I can’t say I really ever thought of her again.” Brian lights two more cigarettes and passes me one, casually. I take it and remember that he had many things to think about then. Dunkirk amongst others.

  “Until she suddenly walked into the mess,” he continues. “That must have been nearly three years later. I couldn’t think where I’d seen her before. Then I remembered. But she’d changed, and it wasn’t just the uniform and the three pips on her shoulder. She seemed more vital. She was interested in the outside world, and people and everything that went on around her. I was delighted to see her again. You know how it is when you meet someone from the same place as yourself. At least it was like that in the army—particularly in that damn awful hole in Scotland where the mist lifted once a year, and that was when you were away on leave. Oh, it was good to have a link with the south and the past and those strange years when one knew there must be war and was busy getting the most out of life before the balloon went up. I think she got a kick out of it too. We were Livingstone and Stanley in an uncouth land of rain, shrouded hills and unintelligible voices. Of course we got together. It was obvious, wasn’t it?”

  I am silent. It was true. I’d thanked God for Brian during those months in Scotland. And we did, as he said, get together. We were gay and forgot the rain and the snow and the desolation of winter. We forgot loneliness too.

  We neither of us speak for a while and the room is filled with memories in the autumn sunset.

  “We fell in love,” he goes on, slowly, “and I don’t mean that it
was another case of propinquity and all the rest. It wasn’t. I’d left the unit by then. I’d gone travelling, not only south but over the water and back again—missions as the Yanks called them—to Norway and other spots. An exciting life, so long as it lasted. Luckily it did for me and we next met on leave in London. That’s when we realized we were in love.”

  I remember it, of course. The gladness of spring and the unendingness of war. War-time London with the Yanks pouring into the city, overflowing the taxis, and a new generation of gum-chewing floosies in the streets. We isolated ourselves, foreigners almost in our own capital. Yes, I was in love, and there was madness in London in the spring of ’43. An inconsequential madness because time had ceased to count and weariness had not yet reached its climax. I was happy—happier than I’d been since 1940 when Gyp went away.

  “I know,” Brian said, “that she was happy. Oh, we’d both been in love before, naturally. But this time it was different. I know it was. I know it as definitely as I know I’m still alive.”

  For the first time he is vehement and, to my mind, uncertain of his story. I ought to say, ‘You are right, but not quite right.’ I don’t because I am weak. Every day now I realize how weak I am. If I were to tell Brian that although I fell in love with him it hadn’t been comparable with the emotion I’d felt for Gyp, he would crumple and I would feel despicable. More than that I would probably start acting like a fool and undo the small barrier I have built up as a defence for Gyp’s return. I’m not strong enough to hurt deliberately, however necessary the hurt may be.

  Brian is waiting for me to say something. I can feel him looking at me.

  “Why was it different?” I ask, foolishly.

  “Because we loved with complete abandon and there were no ties to our love. We were subject, of course, to the etiquette of khaki. She more than I, because it was like that with the A.T.S. Those temporary soldiers were more conscious of their military careers than any regular soldiers I’ve ever met. But with the majority, thank God, it was superficial. She was a good officer—I saw that from my time in Scotland—but she was essentially a woman. The only masculine trait she possessed was that of being able to keep her private life severed from her official one. And her private life, at that time, had no shackles. She was free to go her own way whenever she wanted to. Just as I was. That’s why our love was great. We loved because we wanted to and not because we had involved ourselves in some conventional formula of faithfulness.”

  “So you think marriage is unnecessary?”

  “Until you want to have children—yes.”

  “Brian, you’ve got it all wrong.” I feel constricted and the room is suddenly sultry.

  “No I haven’t. She would have married me and I would have married her. Then the war ended.”

  “It was bound to, some time.”

  “Damn it all, having got to the stage we had, what difference could that make?”

  “Her husband.” I must answer back now.

  “That doesn’t matter. She and I had built up something sure and, I think, lasting. Sounds silly, but we’d got something we’d never known before and could never get again. She’d come to life, she’d become a real person. Before that she was just pretty and conventional. Now she’d got character and personality. Like coming up from your first dive into the deep end of the pool and knowing you can swim.”

  “I hate swimming; maybe she did too.”

  “No. She was a good swimmer. Oh, Helen, don’t you see the madness of your ideas? You’re changed. For God’s sake be honest and own up to it. Life’s ahead of you. Take it as it takes you. Don’t go building little sand castles which false emotions must wash away. Face up to the impossibility of what you’re planning. You’re good and honest and you don’t want to let Gyp down. Don’t you see that staying here to receive him home will be a let down for him in the long run?”

  “Brian, I’m not doing it for him, but for myself. Can’t you understand that?”

  “I think you’re falling in with the popular fantasy of the returning hero.” He sounds bitter.

  “There are plenty of heroes in this country, thank you.”

  “Thank you!”

  The bitterness has gone from his voice but I must go on now, or not at all. “Brian, will you listen while I say something that I really mean and that you won’t like?”

  “Go on, say your piece if you must.” He has sat down at last, sprawled on the sofa with his hands deep in his pockets and his head flung back on a cushion. It’s a mean, defenceless attitude and I won’t look at him. Instead I fix my glance on the room I know so well with the silly things Gyp and I bought for it before the war. “Well, go on,” Brian urges.

  “All right, I will. Brian, I don’t know whether I love Gyp or you, and that’s the truth.”

  He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move, and I can’t look at him.

  “Brian, it’s true. I wish it wasn’t. I wish it were as you have depicted it. Only it isn’t. I can’t do anything about it.”

  Still he won’t speak.

  “Brian, please say something.”

  He gets up then and his tallness has crumpled into a slouch.

  “For God’s sake let’s go and have a drink at the Cock and Pheasant.” His voice is as tired as I feel.

  PART II

  It was going to be a hard winter—or so the villagers foretold. October had blazed, but since then grey clouds and gusty winds held the skies. Too soon red berries were traditionally profuse. In all probability it was going to be a long winter, with the coal situation no better than it had been during the war.

  “We might just as well make up our minds to shut up the drawing-room and the library again after Xmas,” Lady Gurney remarked to her family at lunch time.

  “Oh, must we? With all of us at home we’ll be falling over one another in the morning room.” Daphne Zarek stopped attending to her son, Ian, whose high chair was pushed up to the mahogany dining-table next to her own place.

  “Well, your father always uses his study during the day.” Lady Gurney decided that her daughter was becoming just a trifle difficult and then dismissed the thought as uncharitable. Poor Daphne, she’d been home more than two years now and, since Ian’s birth she’d been mother, nursemaid and general factotum to the child. And she had not really got over Kurt’s death. Or had she? Watching the placid, almost sullen, expression of her daughter’s face, she thought, for the hundredth time, how little she really knew about her children’s thoughts and emotions.

  “That still leaves the evenings to fight for the only comfortable chairs!” Daphne laughed, but there was no gaiety in the sound.

  Sir James Gurney looked across at his daughter. Their faces were strangely similar: straight, dark brows above the grey eyes, full mouths and tapering chins. He said:

  “You have your room upstairs, Daphne, and Ian’s nurseries. At the rate the government re-housing scheme is progressing, you’re about five years ahead of schedule in space per body. It’s a deplorable state of affairs.” It was reproof administered in the gentlest voice, and even his wife could not decide whether Daphne or the Government were to blame most.

  At this point Ian created a diversion by flinging a spoonful of rice pudding into Peter’s lap. Peter said:

  “Oh God, what a filthy feeder he is,” and began to mop up the results with his dinner napkin.

  “A few more spots won’t be noticed on your suit,” Daphne replied sharply to her brother.

  Lady Gurney thought, I wish they wouldn’t bicker. Her mind, receptive to confused impressions, registered the fact that Daphne had been quite right about Peter’s suit. It was dirty. All his suits were dirty and most of them had cigarette burns too. He ought to have a new suit, but men’s clothes were so expensive. James wouldn’t agree to spend more on Peter and the boy had no money of his own. If only he’d settle down to a job again.

  All the time she was seeing a picture of Peter as a small boy, in long grey flannels and a white open shirt. He’d j
ust hit Daphne who was ten years his junior. Not hard, but enough to make her open her mouth wide and screw up her eyes in the way she did when she was going to yell. There would be a time lag of several seconds between the grimace and the yell. She saw Peter rush across to his sister and clumsily clap one hand over her mouth whilst the other hugged her tightly as he made soothing noises to prevent the yell. Daphne did not cry, but, when she had regained her breath, she slapped him back with all the strength of her tiny fist.

  They had always fought: Peter, the adored eldest son, and Daphne, the daughter she had so longed for, the pretty child who could be dressed up in frilly frocks and depended upon to smile at visitors.

  Lady Gurney suddenly wished that Brian were still at home. She had never really got on with her second son, but unconsciously she recognized a strength in him which she could not discern in her other children. It was easier when he was at home. But he had not stayed for long. It seemed that he was only just back from the army when he went away again.

  It was all very different from what she had planned. During the war, those interminable years when she and Sir James had somehow carried on at the Manor with evacuees and billeted officers and then evacuees again during the Flying Bomb months, Lady Gurney had always pictured the children returning from the war. It was a lovely picture which bore no relationship to reality, but it had helped her through those years as nothing else could have done.

  All the time she was making do and mending, digging for victory, and fighting on the kitchen front with marrow jam and carrot marmalade, Lady Gurney was planning the children’s homecoming. It never occurred to her that Peter in the navy or Brian, first a commando and then in the airborne forces, would not come home. Any more than it occurred to her that Daphne would marry a Pole, be widowed and give birth to a son all within a few months. She was as shocked by the latter as she would have been if the War Office or the Admiralty had announced the death of her sons.