My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

by Louisa Young

  ‘When we were relaxed, darling, we were always elegant.’

  Whereas I’m letting standards slip, and should go to a hairdresser …

  Gradually what actually concerned Jacqueline emerged from the clouds of her amorphous, slightly insulting goodwill. She paused, regrouped, and advanced again.

  ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I have been reading, and thinking.’

  Nadine almost spat. How lovely for you, Mother.

  ‘Darling, let me tell you. Don’t be angry. I think you have become fixated on Riley – no, listen. Because it is impossible to find a young man, it being wartime, you have fixated on the impossibility itself and chosen Riley, because he is the most impossible young man of all.’

  Nadine stared. Fixated! My dear, fixated!

  ‘Because you love your father so much, you are scared of the possibility of any young man dethroning your father in your eyes. Therefore you have fixated on an inferior young man, who never could.’

  Really.

  ‘So, in order to grow up, you must to cast off your fixation with the inferior, impossible young man, and find a possible, superior young man …’

  Nadine’s lips had pursed themselves. Mother, Mother, why are you always telling yourself that things are good or bad when every human experience tells us that everything is both?

  ‘And do you have a superior young man in mind, Mama?’ she said eventually.

  ‘Oh, darling …’ For months Jacqueline had trailed superior young men through the drawing room on Sunday afternoons: polite, bewildered boys who had been Over There, self-satisfied little charmers with cushy posts at the ministry, bearing that peculiar news which was no news, those stock phrases. Nadine would run into the house and straight upstairs to see her father, and hide with him, talking of their own dear familiar nothings. Sometimes she sent nice VADs from the hospital (she didn’t dare send Jean) in her place, and indeed a couple of romances emerged, while she lured her father out to the pictures.

  This had been her first visit home for weeks.

  Nadine would love to flirt with them, dance with them, go to the new Harold Lloyd with them. She knew they needed it. But she could only give them morphine and lay damp cloths on their foreheads when they started plucking the sheets and talking to people who were not there. She had told her mother before that she had nothing else to give. She told her again.

  ‘You get time off, darling.’

  ‘I spend my hours off asleep.’

  Jacqueline said: ‘Of course we all know the value of beauty sleep, but there is a limit to how much a girl needs.’

  Nadine, who had been working double shifts for several weeks due to a nasty digestive bug that had been doing the rounds of both patients and nursing staff, and was sleeping on average five hours a night and only three for the past three nights, gave up the struggle. In tones as weary as her body, she said, ‘Sorry, Mother, but do you know I think I’d rather have a little nap now, instead of this conversation?’ and stood up, shaking a little, to leave.

  ‘Nadine,’ her mother snapped. ‘My husband – my husband – may be called up and sent to the front at any time. You might have a little respect for the fact that I am being positive and not just moping.’

  Nadine turned back, and the shaking increased and ‘I am NOT moping!’ she screamed. ‘I am WORKING every hour God sends with men who DIE – so STOP TELLING ME TO HAVE FUN.’

  Jacqueline was blinking. She looked as if she had been assaulted. ‘A little respect, Nadine,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Yes, Mother. That would be lovely.’

  The words plopped like pebbles into mud.

  The moment sat between them when they both realised they should and no doubt would apologise – but the urge to make it worse was strong in Nadine, itching at her fingers, her articulacy, her frustration. Unissued retorts lined up restlessly along her tongue.

  Respect? For what? Your idiocy?

  I could have slept this afternoon, instead of coming here for this. I wish I had.

  No one is going to send Papa to the front, Mother. Oh, and by the way, he is my father as well as your husband, or hadn’t you noticed? Is he only your husband now?

  And one of the retorts barged to the front and burst out: ‘The inferior young man, Mother, is fighting in France – your parents’ country. I’m sorry, Mother,’ she snapped. It was not the meant sorry: it was the nasty little sorry followed always by ‘but’ – but I really can’t be expected to …; but this has gone on long enough; but I’m going to have to … She couldn’t be bothered to find a but. She didn’t want to hurt her mother. She wanted to fall on her and weep.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said, and pecked Jacqueline on her still-shocked cheek, and left, the words of the flare-up circling her, like rooks above a nesting site.

  ‘Go away,’ she said to them.

  She could go back to the Chelsea, and just lie on her little hard narrow bed in her little dark shared room and try to sleep … or she could lie in the park, to feel the grassy earth beneath her back and the air on her face … though then soldiers on leave would come and talk to her, with their desperate hunger. Sometimes she wished she was a trollop, so she could give those boys a moment of some kind of joy.

  She’d just have to go to the cinema. There might be a Charlie Chaplin on at the Coronet. And at least they had stopped showing those horrible topicals, cheering Tommies setting off, grinning like loons and waving, fun fun fun at the recruiting station, and the Roll of Honour flicks, where floating head after floating head appeared, like decapitated ghosts, each labelled with – at the beginning – the name of his regiment and where he was serving, but now more likely what he had had shot off him and how he had died. And that bloody patriotic music … They had been fun at the start: waiting to see if someone you knew came on, and cheering when they did. But it seemed no one could stomach them any more. Either they knew about Over There, and were appalled, or they were doing that thing, that thing, behaving as if there was nothing special going on, two hundred miles south and across some water, no further than Birmingham, or Manchester, pretending it wasn’t real, unable to bear having the truth of it displayed in front of them. The fury flared up in her again. If you really are so interested in the human psychological theories, Mama, instead of picking me apart, why don’t you study the lengths to which people are prepared to go not to see what is before their eyes? ‘My husband may have to go to the front.’ Really, Mama, we all know they’re desperate for men but I really don’t think they’ll be taking a fifty-five-year-old conductor who’s up for a knighthood for his patriotic fund-raising, and sending him out to the Salient.

  And, Mother, though we never mention it and you pretend it isn’t true, my true love is there, he is there, he is there …

  An idea sparked. Perhaps the reason her mother pretended Riley wasn’t Nadine’s true love was because she couldn’t bear her daughter to have a true love at the front, and Riley’s being at the front was something she couldn’t change, so instead she changed him being Nadine’s true love … Really she was just trying to protect Nadine. No. That was too convoluted to be true.

  She crossed over into the park and turned west, glanced over to the Round Pond, and to where the pale green branches of the trees overhung the road behind Kensington Palace. ‘One little boot in front of the other, girl,’ she murmured to herself.

  It was hard, sometimes, to imagine that so much time had passed. Exactly three years hanging on little more than one touch, one meeting, one kiss, letters. Three years in the clothes that make you who you are. Nursing VAD Waveney. Occasionally she would imagine what she would wear if she were not serving. Artistic gowns? Cycling suits, as a New Woman? Something practical in jersey? Huge short black petticoats and lace-up boots and the perky cap and Riley’s coat? Jasmine oil, and her hair down? What might she have known by now of love, if there had been no war? Her body ached for Riley. But how could she ache for something she had never had?

  She came out again at
Black Lion Gate. There across the road was Orme Square.

  She crossed, and she walked into the special quiet of the lovely white stucco square, past the creamy kid-leather blooms on the magnolia in the little central garden, her feet taking the familiar route of childhood across the York-stone pavement, and she rang Sir Alfred’s bell.

  Sir Alfred was in, said Mrs Briggs, who was quite pleased to see her. Messalina lolloped up cautiously, and put her forehead against Nadine’s waist. Nadine stroked her hard, silky brow, and gently pulled her long ears.

  Sir Alfred was working. Nadine skipped up up up the flights of stairs. It had been a long time since she’d been here. A few more casualties of her war: visiting, painting.

  Late-afternoon light and the oily lush smell of paint filled the studio. Sir Alfred was at his easel, his back to her. She couldn’t see what he was painting. Something small. More medieval romantic stroke-perfect heroes? She rather hoped not. Watching the movements of his arm, waiting for him to turn and notice her, she picked up a brush and stroked it against her face, as she had used to when she was little, loving the silky softness of sable, the tiny shiny chestnut tips, the delicacy, and the roughness of hog-bristle … Their different behaviour on canvas and paper, the combinations of combinations of materials and techniques, the inspirations, the opportunities for subtlety and beauty and experiment. Sir Alfred teaching her, calling Riley over to demonstrate a stroke – ‘He does it better than me, the little varmint!’ How she had liked both Riley’s skill and the clarity with which he put it to use. No fuss. One of the first things she’d liked about him. One of the many first things. The remembrance of what she had lost hit her suddenly in the belly.

  As if he had heard the blow, Sir Alfred turned around, and broke into smiles at the sight of her. His embrace, beardy and dangerous of stains, was very welcome. She had a rush of her father – the older man looking up from his work, pleased to see you – and a swift lurch that she should not have been so harsh to her mother.

  ‘Dear girl,’ Sir Alfred said. ‘Dear girl. How very kind.’ He wiped his hands, rang for tea, asked for news.

  She told him she was at the Chelsea, a nursing VAD now, yes, paid – only half what a trained nurse gets, but there’s more respect, and the work is more, um, direct, actually with the boys; her father and mother were well, Noel was training recruits in Suffolk, he was well, doing his bit. Yes, conscripted last year, but asthmatic, so …

  ‘And do you hear from our friend?’ the old man asked.

  ‘He is very grateful,’ she began.

  ‘And so are we,’ he said. For a moment she sensed the presence of something, a conversation that might be going to be had … but it passed. Just as she wanted to reach out for it, it had slipped away and she couldn’t get it back – he took it away. Nobody wanted to talk to her about him.

  They talked instead of the difficulties in laying your hands on paint and canvas these days – hence the small panel he was painting, which was not a perfect Pre-Raphaelite hero, but – oh, might as well be – the Angel of Mons, gleaming and perfect in medieval armour, as if it were 1912. He seemed to recognise her reaction, and said, ‘It does all leave one feeling rather useless.’

  ‘Does art feel useless?’ she said.

  ‘At the moment, yes,’ he said. ‘They need the canvas for tents and the chemicals for weapons and the factories and the labour … I’m wondering how we can ever come back from war, after so much has been turned over to it … That’s not something I can paint, though. I don’t know what people want. I’ve always painted what they want, lovely things … and I am old, and the young are suffering, and I can do nothing for them.’

  So she kissed him on the cheek, and said, ‘For what it’s worth, you’ve cheered me up.’

  ‘Have I? How?’

  ‘By noticing that we need it,’ she said.

  Later, when she was leaving, somewhere between ‘oh dear, it’s getting late’ in the studio and ‘please come again, please do’ in the hall, Sir Alfred stopped on the stairs and said suddenly: ‘Before the war, I was going to go on a grand tour of Europe. There were all sorts of pictures I wanted to look at again … in the Netherlands and Paris and Florence and Rome. I was going to take Riley with me. I read somewhere that one shouldn’t take servants to Egypt because they lacked the education which would enable them to appreciate the recompenses for the inconveniences … And I thought, Riley is the most appreciative boy I ever knew. Such a passion … the way he would swallow books whole … He constantly revived me. I cannot tell you how much I miss him, Nadine. Such a clever, passionate boy, and that solid, silent pride he had, and that quicksilver way. Very like you, in some ways. Such a pair, you two, when you were little: like a pair of little curly-haired creatures, always huddled up together, with your secrets and your plans …’

  ‘Were we?’ she said, blinking. She knew they were. But to have it declared so openly, by an adult, made it real because it had been witnessed. She felt as if a great shaft of sunlight had burst through heavy cloud, picking her out, illuminating her, blessing her.

  ‘A pair of strange lovely little creatures …’ he said. ‘So – yes, I’ve decided. I will extend my tour and go to Egypt. I will do it. Whatever happens. And I hope he will want to come with me.’ His eyes were bright with intent. He made her smile.

  I’m coming too, she thought, and then quickly ran through in her head again the words he had used, storing them, saving them for later sustenance. Clever. Passionate. Appreciative. Quicksilver. Silent, solid pride. Such a pair, you two, always huddled together. Lovely.

  She was late back, and Matron said Jean and Esther were both down with gastric flu now, ‘so get to it, girl,’ but she didn’t mind because inside she was bathed in light, singing appreciative quicksilver, lovely, clever, strange, you two, such a pair …

  *

  The telegram said Tuesday midday. She sat at Victoria station from eleven, propped up, kind of perched on the barrier, the heels of her boots tucked behind the rail, with her skirt sticking out and her cap disrespectfully back. Many of the uniformed men passing up the platforms said things like: ‘Darlin’! You made it!’ or ‘Tell me you’re waiting for me – please!’ and one said cautiously, ‘Edith?’ and she had to shake her head quickly, apologetically.

  He came straight to her, following an arrow line through the crowd. She saw him coming and the lurch inside nearly cast her off her rail. His case fell to the floor as he snaked his arm round her waist and there was a tiny perfect pause before he kissed and kissed and kissed her.

  People around stopped and noticed them. Little smiles of patriotic indulgence, disapproving tuts, piercings of envy, eye-narrowings of vicarious lust, stirrings in trousers.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he said, smiling, travel-stained, crop-haired, young, beautiful.

  She couldn’t speak.

  ‘Cup of tea,’ he said. ‘I could do with a cup of tea.’

  So once again they sat in front of cups of tea, and the clattering world around them fell away. The terror and repression and wrongness lifted like mist, and disappeared. They were completely happy. They couldn’t stop smiling at each other, beaming like fools till their cheeks ached and he started laughing. They were laughing when they left the café and got on a bus, and then on a train, and then they walked out of town, and climbed a fence, and climbed a hill, and lay on his coat on a hillside among cowslips and cow parsley and tiny blue cats’ eyes.

  She didn’t say, ‘Not here.’ Here in the sun in the shelter of the hill and the warmth of the tiny world inside his collar, inside his lining, seemed perfect. ‘I won’t – don’t worry – I won’t,’ he was muttering. He only blanched a little when she produced Jean’s little packet.

  ‘Where the …?’ he asked.

  ‘Jean,’ she whispered, unsure if it was all right. ‘Is it all right?’

  ‘If you’re sure …’

  She was sure. She revelled in the battling desires on his face, the intoxication of how much he
wanted her and the beauty of his concern for her virtue. She was innocent enough to be horribly afraid the concern might win.

  She did say, a little later, entranced and appalled, as he lay shipwrecked on her thighs, ‘Is that it?’

  To which he replied, gasping, ‘No, not at all. That’s just the beginning. Sorry. There’s much more. Much, much more …’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t,’ she murmured, in his arms.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, how could I not?’ he replied. ‘It wouldn’t be human,’ and she laughed, and they did it again, better.

  Evening crept up on them, and the chill of the dark earth through the wool. A room in town, they thought, though it seemed worse, somehow, than what they had just done. She couldn’t believe she had done it. I’ve done it! We have done it! She felt like a different woman. Something was singing under her skin, and her limbs seemed to fit on her differently. Better. Right.

  She turned her ring round on her third finger so it looked like a wedding ring, but the lady at the little hotel looked askance at their youth and the one army-issue bag.

  ‘There’s no rooms,’ she said, not meeting their eyes, and Riley leant in and said to her kindly, ‘Never mind. We’ll be all right,’ and nothing could blight them. They took the milk train back to London, and walked through the dawn, ending up in a dingy room on Victoria Street near the station where they paid in advance, and once they had each other’s clothes off, breeches and petticoat, braces and camisole in piles on the floor, they didn’t come out for three days.

  Nadine woke with his body curled round her, his face in the back of her neck, his breath on her skin, his arm flung across her, and the momentousness of what they were doing filled her with a great unspeakable joy. Now I know, she thought. Now I know and I am part of it all and part of myself and of him.

  They talked, of love, and food, and their shared memories, their lost world, as if it were a real thing. Occasionally they broached their future – Sir Alfred’s grand tour, the adventures to come, the motorcycle and the dog – as if it were perfectly likely. Nadine found herself saying, ‘When we …’ and for a moment stopped herself, knowing that the correct word had to be ‘If …’ and unable to bear saying it. ‘If ’ was a cruel word, ‘when’ a deluded one. She wanted to say ‘When …’ anyway. She fell silent. He kissed her, and got up, and went out, and came back with pork pies and a bottle of champagne and a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley from the stall in the station, wet from the rain.