by Louisa Young
They did not talk about the larger present, so circumscribed, so uncontrollable.Their little present was two bodies and a bed, and that was the entirety of time and place: them, there, in the little room, awkward, laughing, happy, warm, tentative, surrendering, overwhelmed, alarmed, astounded, shivering, subsiding, asleep, awake, getting the hang of it, learning, loving, redeemed. Happy.
Chapter Fourteen
London, May 1917
Peter said, in his letters, that he hoped everybody was fine.
Mrs Orris said, in her letters, that Julia was foolish to want to travel during the winter weather; selfish to want to use up the petrol, foolhardy to think of coming by train alone, ridiculous to imagine anyone was available to accompany her, thoughtless in trying to disrupt the routines of the household at Froxfield, ungrateful for the sacrifice her mother had made in taking Tom on, inconsiderate in harping on about visiting all the time, only likely to upset the child by turning up now when she hadn’t bothered to come and see him for such a long time … The new nurse was splendid, and Mrs Orris very happy to pay for her; of course, there was no room now for Julia to come and stay but that hardly mattered as Tom was perfectly well and didn’t miss his mother at all.
Julia wrote: ‘I shall come and stay at the Crown.’
Mrs Orris forbade it. What would people think of her?
Julia, always an obedient child, keen to be everything required of her, had never found anyone she could talk to about her mother. Hardly herself, even. Peter had been the only who had laughed at Mrs Orris, and given Julia the little warm amused glances of support that mean so much to the bullied.
One afternoon Julia went up to London alone. First, she took a cab to the small hotel in Mayfair, and dropped her bag. Then she walked out into the day, bright with the loveliness of London in spring: sun on ornate white stucco, pale green leaves deepening and expanding almost before her eyes, creamy horse-chestnut blossoms standing high. Her heels clicked on the pavement and she felt the brisk purposefulness of being in the city. She turned along Bond Street and looked in shop windows, admiring things. She had money. War was good for business. He could have stayed and worked in the firm and nobody would have thought worse of him. Lots of men did. Look at them – they’re all around, prosperous on timber and ball-bearings and biscuits and maps. He could have. Or they could have gone to America. They could have.
So many people. There were couples everywhere. Younger girls than her, pretty and light in the sunshine. She wondered about them. Would they find husbands? Would it finish soon, and would they take their slim young bodies to the Riviera and marry slim young men who had been at school all through the war? Or fat men now in offices, moving iron and cotton from here to there? Or will it not be over till they are my age? And if it is, over which way? Will their children grow up German? Will we all be raped and murdered in our beds? The questions didn’t seem real. How could you really imagine that such things could happen? You can’t think about it. You’re not allowed to talk about it. Shortage of taxis, yes. Bombed and killed? Not really. Lose the war? Of course not. She clenched her teeth. Stop it, Julia. That’s what he’s fighting for. That’s why we didn’t go away and that’s why I must look after things. He is protecting us. All this. He is protecting Trafalgar Square and the Burlington Arcade and the cabbies and the babies and the pigeons and me. It is all so worth protecting. The white terraces and the tall grey elegance and the green squares and the old ladies and the pavement and the King.
How could these things fail? The Royal Academy, Fortnum & Mason? It was all too prosperous and nice. She let the prosperity soothe her, moving in and out of shops as if pulled along lines of quiet desire: glance, see, draw closer. How pretty the things were. Pretty and safe. She walked and walked. She was nervous. She had told nobody.
It would be all right.
She walked towards Berkeley Square. Her feet hurt. There was a smart little pub on Brook Street, hung with baskets of flowers. It looked awfully attractive.
She had a newspaper in her bag.
Julia laughed to herself, and went into the pub. She had never been in one before. It was warm, cosy, with a manly, tobaccoey smell. She would treat it like a café, she thought, looking round, choosing a table, near the door, sunlit through the window. She caught the eye of a waiter.
‘A small sherry, please,’ she said. She felt slightly wild. If my mother could see me!
She took out her paper. There had been a riot in Paris, after the new Ballets Russes production, and the composer, Satie – Peter loved Satie – had called a critic something so rude the paper couldn’t print it, and the critic had sued, and Satie was to go to prison, and the writer, Monsieur Cocteau, had shouted the rude word in court and had had to be carried out. The costumes had been made of cardboard.
Other people’s lives!
She didn’t in the least want to be sent to prison for her art, or to dance in a cardboard costume, but, oh, she wanted something …
Yes, and she was getting something. She was.
She wondered what the rude word had been.
But it was good to be sitting down. She looked at the stained-glass in the window, the colours the sunlight gave it, greens and reds like church, and the sense of the street outside.
When the man spoke, she didn’t think he was addressing her.
‘I say,’ he said again.
She’d always thought ‘I say’ a singularly idiotic phrase. Of course ‘you say’. I can hear you saying.
‘I don’t suppose I could get you another of those?’ He was gesturing to her drink, which was untouched. Smooth, strong hands. Youngish face. Moustache. Lieutenant’s uniform, well filled. Hopeful, slightly desperate brown eyes. Slight smile.
She blinked.
‘It’s just you look a little …’ He smiled encouragingly.
‘A little what?’ she said. She didn’t want to be discourteous.
‘Well, I was rather hoping you looked a little lonely,’ he said, grabbing a chair, pulling it over, swinging his leg over it. Her accent had surprised him, she could see it.
‘My husband is in France,’ she said, alarmed. It came out wrong. She meant it to mean, ‘Go away, he’s a soldier, have some respect.’ It came out (if someone wanted to hear it that way) as, ‘Yes, I’m alone, I’m unprotected, I am lonely.’
‘Good for him,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Good-oh. All the more reason, really. Dare say he wouldn’t mind a fellow officer buying his wife a drink. In solidarity. Let’s drink to his health.’
This was awful. Awful. Her heart started going too fast. She could not possibly drink with a strange man in a pub. But she could not refuse to drink to Peter’s health.
The waiter was right there. The officer said gaily: ‘Same two again, old sport.’ She was sitting like a fool, stuck, stupid.
The drinks arrived. The waiter smirked. The officer, who had been leaning back in his chair and staring at her, raised his glass and said: ‘To his health, and to the health of his … awfully pretty … wife …’
The way he was looking at her!
He was handsome. She felt a rush of heat. Something was suddenly available and apparent to her that she had never known about before. You could just go to a public place and a man, a total stranger, might come up to you with that look …
He leant forward. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You must think me awfully rude. Just approaching you like that. But you are so very pretty, and you do look, if you don’t mind me saying so, so very lonely. My name’s Raymond Dell.’
He held out his hand, and the implacable force of a lifetime of good manners made her hold hers out too. He took it. His hand was warm and dry. His teeth were white and clean. He didn’t hold her hand for too long as men so often did. She was confused. Was he respectable or not? She used to be able to tell. Then she hadn’t had to – Peter had been there. Since he’d been away she hadn’t gone anywhere where there were men she didn’t know. She could feel that she was blushing, staring at him li
ke a cow over a gate, transfixed.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What’s troubling you? I’m just back from Flanders myself, and I would love to hear someone else’s troubles. Please. Indulge me.’ He smiled.
A kind smile. A warm hand. A compliment. A plea for sympathy. Broad shoulders under the khaki. A fully desiring look.
He wants to do with me what Peter and I used to do. He does.
For a tiny flashing moment, she knew it was possible. She could smile and drink and talk and let him take her hand and lead her out into the street under the waiter’s smirk and have a little lunch somewhere nice and drink a little wine and they could go together – in the afternoon, why not? – to the little hotel in Mayfair, or to another little hotel, under fake names – one fake name – into an anonymous room and they could do those things, she and this handsome young man.
It was possible.
It was something that people did.
Had she met him at a dance in 1912 she would have danced with him, and asked her mother to let him call, and they would have played tennis.
She was beautiful. She was desired. She was flattered. She was glad. Was she tempted?
It’s Peter’s fault, he shouldn’t neglect me so – even when he’s here he neglects me, he neglects me more when he’s here because his presence makes the absence of his desire so clear, so cruel …
She was tempted. She wanted him to kiss her. She felt the dangerous heat rising, a wildness, a flurry of devil-may-care.
She stood up. ‘You have mistaken me,’ she said carefully. ‘Good day.’
She shook her head in the sunshine. She hadn’t drunk any of the sherry but she felt intoxicated. The air was cool, clarificatory, on her scalp.
Good Lord! A total stranger. How appalling.
She very much wanted to ring someone up and tell them what had happened. Not that for a split second she had entertained the idea. But that this was something that – that was conceivable.
And who would she talk to? Mrs Bax? Her mother? Rose? All the women she knew thought she was pathetic. She knew that other women were better equipped than her. But, dammit, she was doing what she could.
She shook her head again, briskly, shaking out the foolishness.
My marriage is good, she thought. I love my husband and my marriage is good. There is nothing I would not do for him. I have turned down temptation for him.
She marvelled at the wickedness, and gloried in her trouncing of it.
*
Julia had come to London to see Dr Lamer. The plan was, he would drug her and lay her out, then make a series of tiny slices into the smooth white skin beneath her jaw, which, when stitched up, would tighten and remove the slight sag of flesh under her chin that she feared had increased since childbirth and the beginning of the war, thus preventing the dual threats of (1) disappointing Peter by appearing old and ugly and (2) ending up looking like her mother. Her beauty was her strength – everybody had been telling her this for years. It was the only thing anyone had ever valued in her. It was her one weapon. So she must look after it.
But when she went to the clinic the morning after her encounter with Raymond Dell, between the drugging and the laying out, Julia began to flap her hands inexplicably by her sides, and cry out ‘No, no, don’t do it.’ She began to weep, and shout, and stared at Dr Lamer through blue eyes huge with tears. Dr Lamer was compelled to sedate her, out of consideration for the other clients, and if he was annoyed he did not show it.
Later in the afternoon, sitting up in her pleasant bed, still steeped in sedative, Julia was confused. She thought she had had the operation; she was delighted that it did not hurt, and she expected Peter any moment to pick her up and take her home. Before he arrived, would Dr Lamer please give her some advice on her nose.
‘There’s nothing wrong with your nose, my dear,’ he said. ‘Your nose is quite perfect.’
‘I need to be perfect, you see,’ she said. ‘My husband deserves a perfect wife.’
‘Of course, my dear,’ said the gentleman. ‘All husbands want a perfect wife.’
‘Mine deserves it,’ Julia explained. ‘He’s in France, you see, and he’s just not the kind of man who should be there. He’s really a very peace-loving man, you know. He loves his dog, and reading his history books and music, and it’s so terribly important that everything should be perfect for him when he comes back, just the same as it always was …’
‘I’m sure he likes you just the way you are, Mrs Locke. You’re a very beautiful woman.’
‘I don’t know if he does like me … But, oh, God, you’re right. I mustn’t change my nose. Of course not! I must be just as I was. Oh, I don’t know. Should I be just the same as always, or should I be perfect? He always teased me about my nose … the little dip … You could do it with paraffin wax, couldn’t you? Like Gladys Deacon?’
Dr Lamer took her hand, poor creature. ‘It is always more difficult to add to the human form than it is to remove from it,’ he said. ‘And Miss Deacon’s experience is not one to emulate, Mrs Locke. It wasn’t done in the best way, and there were side effects.’
‘Oh, I know,’ she said, though she didn’t. ‘Is it really bad?’
‘It was not advisable,’ said Dr Lamer. ‘Let us discuss these things when you are feeling more yourself.’
‘But you must have a better method now, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘Haven’t they thought something up? I heard paraffin could be mixed with other things and that it was all right now … or … There was an article in Beauty Chat about featural surgery …’
Dr Lamer had considered featural surgery, nose rebuilding. He knew of less principled surgeons who offered hope and little else to saddle-nosed syphilitics. Himself, he did not care for it. It didn’t work well. Easier, simpler, and just as profitable to tuck a little loose skin, tattoo an eyebrow, to shave a Jewish nose to match a new gentile name, even to give a little phenol face peel like a lay skinner, a common or garden beautifier. But not adding. Adding was too risky and too difficult.
‘… only he did call it my one imperfection. But he seemed to like it. Perhaps he wouldn’t want me to be perfectly perfect, like Mary Pickford …’
‘Let’s talk about it when you’re up and about,’ said the doctor, as he left her. ‘When your mind is clear.’
The nurse, a slightly damp-looking, broad-faced wench called June, said, ‘Can I bring you another magazine?’
When she came back with Vogue and the Ladies’ Domestic Journal, June whispered, rather theatrically: ‘I read it’s slipped. She sits by the fire so the wax warms, and she remoulds it, under the skin. Trying to push it back into place. But I don’t believe what I read. But she has got sores! Right there!’ The girl pointed to the bridge of her own nose. ‘A friend of mine saw her going into the Ritz. And then brown stains …’ She gestured in two lines, down the sides past her nostrils. She pinched her jaw. ‘And it’s sort of gathered, here. She’s looking very heavy-jawed. It’s only going to get worse.’
She said it with a low glee, which reminded Julia how very much some people hate beautiful women. Desperate to be beautiful themselves, yet hating women who are. So, trying to make themselves, by their own standards, hateable.
Horrible.
‘Would you like a little something to eat now?’ asked June. ‘Or are you banting?’
When she woke up again, clear-headed, and was told what had happened, Julia was puzzled as to why her drugged self had become hysterical and refused the operation her conscious self had decided on. She wondered if her subconscious self had been reassured by Raymond Dell’s desire for her, or if it was just plain old fear. Coward. You can’t even do that for your husband.
The idea of it being fear annoyed her. She stoked her annoyance into anger, turned that into fuel, and hailed a taxi to Paddington station.
The visit was not a success. Tom stared at her, narrow-eyed, from the arms of the new nurse, who Julia had never even met. When Julia tried to take him, Mrs Orris said ‘D
on’t upset yourself, Julia. You’ll make your eyes red and puff up your face.’ Julia could find no way to refute this. As a result, she cried all the way back on the train, and all the way she heard her mother’s voice telling her off for it.
Chapter Fifteen
West of Zonnebeke, August 1917
Purefoy was walking to the casualty clearing station. Captain Fry saw him up where the duckboards made a crossroads, staring and hustling along past the flooded battlefield graveyard. Three wooden crosses rose solitary, like a trio of Excaliburs, from strangely smooth water. One was crowned with a jaunty skull. The rest of everything was, and had been for weeks, mud and death.
‘Can you walk?’ Fry called. Fry was a dental surgeon in reality. ‘Good man. Keep your head forward!’
Purefoy didn’t hear him but it didn’t matter. He knew to keep his head forward.
The mud clung to his boots, freighting every step, but his legs were strong and the way was obvious. Follow the duckboards west to the giant charred black tooth-stump which was all that remained of Ypres.
He swung his arms. Inside, his head was very hot, and he was thirsty.
The chaos around him was no worse than the chaos of yesterday or the day before; it was the same chaos. Flat, slimy going. Mud of blood, blood of mud. Oh, yes, we’re all poets here. He closed his eyes for a moment but inside his head was noisier even than outside, red and black, shooting.
No one spoke to him.
He spoke to no one.
He didn’t know which noises were real.
Trudge on. He wanted to undo his tunic but there was something on it, wet.
