It was uncomfortable that night, being together in the cottage. Both of them were polite and trying desperately to connect with each other. Lucasta asked about the war, but he didn’t want to talk about it, or rather he didn’t know how to. He’d start a sentence intending to describe some incident and run out of words halfway through it. His head would fill with an image of what he’d been going to tell her but the words wouldn’t come, and so he was left stranded, feeling far away, failing entirely to communicate the fear and horror he’d experienced. What he craved was a drink, some alcohol, but she had none and the nearest pub was too far away to walk to just for a drink. He felt tense and unsettled and wanted to leave, but by then it was late and he had nowhere to go.
She took him up to a bedroom, saying it had been their mother’s, she hoped he didn’t mind, but the bed was longer and wider and more comfortable. He was so tired and dispirited that he didn’t object, though he didn’t like the idea at all. Should he kiss her goodnight? No. It didn’t seem right, she kept her distance. Lying in bed, he found himself wondering if Lucasta had ever kissed anyone. She was attractive, but there was the same off-putting coolness about her that there had been as a child, and no boy would have been daring enough to risk it. But his sister’s personal life was none of his business. Though he might fancy he was now in loco parentis, he couldn’t expect her to accept that in the circumstances. He had to prove himself, but he didn’t know how.
Sleep didn’t come as quickly as he wanted it to. The bed was fine, but he couldn’t bear the thought of his mother’s having slept here. He lay there studying the room in the moonlight which shone through the open, uncurtained window. The room was small, with a sloping roof, and flowered wallpaper that in the dim light seemed unsettling, alive. There was a tiny iron fireplace and above the mantelpiece he could see a painting, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was of – perhaps it was one of his mother’s. He hadn’t thought to tell Lucasta that he would like a memento of some sort, though he didn’t know what. A painting would do. A small one, that he could hang easily and take with him wherever he went. Maybe this little painting. He would ask Lucasta.
*
Lucasta stayed up after Sam had at last gone to bed. She had nothing she needed to do, but she didn’t want to lie awake thinking about him. If she waited, and walked about a bit, and read, then maybe when she did go up she would sleep at once. He looked so old: that had been the first shock. She remembered him when he had last lived at home, so handsome and energetic, with a thick head of black hair, always tanned, always lively and bright. Their mother had been forever shouting at him to sit down, keep still, but he was always on the go, eating meals standing up and dashing off to meet friends, take a girl out. He’d been a whirlwind in the house. But all that seemed to have gone – this man who had turned up was heavier, stronger but also calmer. He’d sat for over an hour, she’d noticed, without once moving, and when he did it was in a cautious, deliberate way. His hair was still black but it was cut brutally short, making his face look squarer and drawing attention to his large ears which she never recalled noticing before. But it was the colour of his skin and the lines on it which made the greatest change. His complexion wasn’t tanned, it was a dull beige colour, which made him look ill, and the frown marks on his forehead were deep. Looking at him, she’d felt sad and sorry for him. This colossal change was, she realised, to do with the war and what he had been through; but then she thought of the soldier in Trafalgar Square, and how none of this weariness had been in his face.
But perhaps that man had had a very different war from Sam. She tried to appreciate what it must have been like for him, but though she could imagine the awful, stifling heat, or thought she could, she could not exactly visualise the place where he had been imprisoned. He didn’t seem able to describe it, and she saw that struggling to do so upset him. It troubled her that Sam’s memories, trapped in his mind, might plague him for the rest of his life. What he needed was someone who could help him deal with them, and she knew she was not that person. She had the desire to be, and she longed to love, and be loved by, her brother in an open, easy, affectionate manner, but she was as frozen as he was when it came to communicating concern. It was as though they were stranded on either side of a river, and that river was the war.
*
The morning was better. Sam woke up refreshed after almost ten hours’ sleep. The sun flooded the bedroom and warmed his face where he lay. He closed his eyes and revelled in the warmth and comfort, listening to a song thrush perched somewhere very near his window. If he strained, he thought he could hear the sea in the distance, and something else, the faintest hum, perhaps of a tractor. Peaceful sounds, all of them. He could hear Lucasta moving about downstairs, the gentle clink of a cup, the tap of a spoon, the quiet opening of a cupboard. He should get up, get washed, shave, dress, go down, but it was heaven lying there, he couldn’t move. The painting above the mantelpiece, when he did open his eyes, was not as interesting as he’d hoped. He wondered why the artist had bothered to paint the rather dreary corner of a room. There was nothing happening, no drama or bright colours. He didn’t think he wanted it, after all.
They had breakfast outside, sitting at a rickety wooden table underneath a pear tree. Lucasta worried that there wasn’t much to eat, but to him the brown bread and butter, and a boiled egg, were a feast. It was a Sunday. ‘Do you go to church?’ he asked her, teasing, guessing she wouldn’t. But she said that she did sometimes, though she didn’t know why, it was just ‘somewhere to go if it was raining’. The pathos of this touched him, though he took care to hide his reaction. When she’d cleared the breakfast things away, she suggested a walk on the cliff path and he agreed eagerly. Walking was good. They would be doing something and the awkwardness between them would seem less heavy. If he remembered correctly, a lot of the cliff walk had to be done in single file and conversation would be impossible.
An hour later, they came back to the cottage much more relaxed with each other and Lucasta asked, ‘Sam, can I draw you?’
‘What, now, here?’
‘Yes. Here, outside. If you just sit where you are, I’ll try. It might take a long time.’
‘Well, I’m not going anywhere, not yet.’
It took ages to get everything set up, with Lucasta endlessly changing his position until he began to become a little irritable and impatient and had to control the temptation to tell her he’d changed his mind. But finally she was satisfied. He went and stood beside her, looking at what she’d produced. It was not in the least like him, but that pleased him and meant he could speak freely.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t recognise myself, that chap doesn’t have much to do with me, but it’s striking, that’s one thing. Wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night.’
She said nothing, just began quietly putting things away. He didn’t know how, but he knew he had upset her. To change the subject, he said, ‘Have you heard from Tom recently?’ She shook her head. ‘I wonder if he’ll ever come back?’ Sam said, lamely. ‘He seems to like it there.’
‘He does,’ Lucasta agreed. ‘He mentioned a woman in his last letter, someone he’s getting fond of, an Australian. There’s nothing for him to come back for.’
‘There’s you.’
‘Me? Don’t be silly. Why should he come back for me?’
‘He’s your brother, he worries about you, I’m sure.’
‘Rubbish. He knows I can look after myself. I’m not his responsibility. Or yours.’
‘But he cares about you, as I do.’ She frowned. He cleared his throat, and repeated, ‘I do care about you, that’s why I’ve come.’ She was taking everything in the wrong way. It was infuriating. His concern, so difficult to express, seemed to annoy her and he couldn’t understand why. He didn’t want to be childish, but it was tempting to take offence and slam out of the cottage. But then she said, ‘Sorry,’ abruptly, and he saw there were tears in her eyes. The moment she realised he had noticed this, she
rushed into the kitchen and began washing dishes noisily, and he didn’t dare go after her. Instead, he put a record on the old gramophone in the corner, some sort of jazz. She came back with some sandwiches she’d made, and they sat together, eating and listening to the music. He almost fell asleep but jerked himself upright when the record ended.
‘I’ll have to go to bed,’ he said. ‘I get so tired all the time.’ He hesitated – it was so exhausting trying to think what to say, how to bridge the gap between them – and then said, ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow, going to London. Have to get myself sorted.’
‘I went to London last year, on VE Day. It terrified me. I don’t know how I’ll manage when I start at Chelsea.’
‘The college will fix you up. You’ll be all right. Send me your address when you get one. I’ll send you mine as soon as I’m settled. I’ll write to you here till you go to London.’
‘You’ll write?’ She looked incredulous.
‘Yeah, why not?’
‘You never did, before the war. Mum used to …’
‘Don’t.’
‘Sorry. OK, write. I’ll write back. If you write.’
‘I will. I’m not just saying it. I want to.’ He hesitated, longing to say more, to tell her that he wanted to get to know her, to feel that the blood link between them meant something, but as ever the words wouldn’t come, they were lurking in his mind but they were too sentimental and mawkish. Instead, he said, ‘I’d like something of Mum’s to take with me.’
‘I’m afraid there isn’t much. I did write and ask you if …’
‘I know. But I couldn’t think … what about one of her drawings or paintings? Are they stashed away somewhere? That one in my room, where I slept, I thought maybe – though it doesn’t really make me think of her … or …’
‘No wonder.’
‘What?’
‘That the painting in your bedroom doesn’t make you think of her, because Mum didn’t paint it.’
‘Who did?’
‘Don’t know. A better artist, I think. It was a present, don’t you remember? Just before I was born, for her fortieth.’
‘God, no, I was only, what, three, four?’
‘Anyway, it wasn’t hers. I wouldn’t have let you have it, even if it had been. It’s too precious.’
‘You’re welcome to it.’ He didn’t like the way she’d said that. ‘How about a cat drawing? There were loads of those.’
He left the next morning with a small black-and-white charcoal drawing of Turpin, the cat they’d had when he was about seven. It fitted easily into the inside pocket of his jacket, it was so small. He liked feeling it there, next to his heart, and kept patting it as he and Lucasta walked to the station. Just as the train was about to come in – they could hear it approaching – Lucasta said, ‘I’m glad you came. Thanks.’ He was so ridiculously pleased, and managed at last to kiss her and hug her as he’d been wanting to ever since he’d seen her. Her body in his arms felt both fragile and soft. It touched him, made him almost tearful, and he had difficulty keeping his composure. She did not resist his embrace but she did not respond either, except for placing her arms tentatively round his back and allowing herself to be held. It was he who stepped back, releasing her. He wanted to say something but, yet again, the right words would not come. He squeezed her hands as he let her go, then picked up his bag and got on the train. ‘Keep in touch,’ he said, through the open window of the carriage door, his voice sounding strangely hoarse. ‘I’ll send an address as soon as I have one, I’ll write, I will!’ He made a point of continuing to wave until she was no longer even a speck in the distance.
*
The relief Lucasta felt when once more she was alone in the cottage was a physical thing, like a headache lifting, a pain disappearing. It scared her even though she was glad of the sensation. What was to become of her if she could not bear the company of others? And Sam was not ‘others’. He was her brother, who cared about her and, in his own way, loved her.
She picked up her portrait of him and scrutinised it carefully. Had she caught something of him? Perhaps she had, after all. It had felt exciting, somehow, at last, to have tried. It was always a strange feeling, the charcoal in her hand having a life of its own as it had swept over the paper guided, it seemed, not by that hand, or her eyes but some other force. It wasn’t something she could tell anyone. Too fanciful, too pretentious. But it was true. She hadn’t lost the power.
*
Sam wrote short, stilted letters, but he wrote often. The letters didn’t arrive regularly every second week or even every month, but their very irregularity could be depended upon. Sometimes the gap would be long, as long as six weeks, and then there would be two letters within days. They came from all over the world, mostly blue airmails. Lucasta could tell that the airmail sheet suited Sam and understood why – one whole side and then the turnover flap, and he was done. It was a space he could manage, it wasn’t intimidating. He filled these blue airmails with information. That, to her brother, was obviously the point of a letter – to give the receiver information. He didn’t write about thoughts and feelings, fears and hopes, but about where he had been, where he was going, what he had seen and done. They were travelogues and didn’t develop their relationship in any way, but Lucasta loved the airmails and was touched that Sam sent them. She saved them all.
Her own letters were not like Sam’s. She found them difficult to write, and worried that they might overwhelm Sam in their detail. She tried to follow the pattern of her brother’s letters, writing back immediately, and once she was in London, she had plenty to tell him: about art college, and what her timetable was like and what she was learning, and about the other students. Because of the war, most of them were quite a lot older than she was but she liked this: she got on better with older people. They were more serious, less like the average giddy students she had feared. And there was a lot to tell him about London and how she had come to love it, to her own great surprise. What she liked was the very thing she had thought she would hate – its vastness, its complexity. She found it liberating not to be known, to be anonymous in the crowds, where no one looked at her, no one noticed her. Remembering her terror on VE Day, she was embarrassed.
But then, once her education was finished, the letters became easier to write. At first, she rented a bedsitter in the Vale of Health, in Hampstead, which gave her something to tell Sam, and at the same time she got a job in an art gallery.
The owner was a woman, of about sixty (Lucasta thought), called Charlotte Falconer, who had lived in Hampstead all her life. Her gallery was a corridor of a room, at the top of Heath Street, almost at Whitestone Pond. Someone told Lucasta that Miss Falconer was wealthy and belonged to a well-connected family who had owned a large house, somewhere off East Heath Road, now turned into flats. She herself didn’t live there but in a tiny flat above her gallery, a very modest space consisting of two rooms and a bathroom. She had apparently inherited her father’s art collection, sold some of it, and founded her gallery on the proceeds. She was reputed also to have a private income and had become a patron of young artists. Her speciality was portraits, which was how Lucasta had come to enter the gallery, having seen, through the glass door, portraits hanging on the walls.
Charlotte – she wouldn’t hear of being addressed as Miss Falconer – seemed to fill her little gallery, not because she was tall and broad-shouldered, which she was, but through the size of her personality. She had an energy about her, even when sitting still, which made Lucasta feel weak. At first, when Lucasta started working for her, Charlotte’s inquisitive nature proved a strain. ‘I’m prying,’ Charlotte said, as her direct questions about Lucasta’s past went unanswered. ‘I shouldn’t, I’m sorry. Don’t take any notice – I can’t help wanting to know everything about people.’ She said this so frankly and cheerfully that one really could not take offence, and as Lucasta confessed in a letter to Sam she felt ashamed of her reluctance to satisfy Charlotte’s harmless curiosity
. She was not, she realised, devoid of curiosity herself when it came to wondering about her employer. Sometimes, she was surprised and impressed by Charlotte’s knowledge. Charlotte didn’t lecture Lucasta exactly but there was something of the teacher about her – had she trained, perhaps? – and her lessons were more informative and enjoyable than those Lucasta had been given at college.
It was Charlotte’s idea, when Lucasta had worked there for a year, that she should rent the top flat in her old home. The rent she quoted was, Lucasta knew, far below the market value but Charlotte said it was more important to her to have tenants she liked and trusted than to make a lot of money. She took Lucasta to see the flat. ‘These had been the maids’ rooms, and the attics, when it was our family house,’ she said. ‘I always liked them. I have a thing for attics, something about the simplicity of them, the way they pare life down.’ But there was not much of an attic feeling left about this converted top floor, now that the ceiling levels had been altered and some walls knocked through. Lucasta accepted Charlotte’s offer, of course, writing to tell Sam how lucky she felt to have found such a flat. She mentioned in this letter how the normally ebullient Charlotte had seemed unlike herself when she was showing her the flat – quiet, pensive, even a little sad.
Keeping the World Away Page 26
