Heroes' Welcome

by Young, Louisa

  No! she thought. Get rid of all that. Clean, new. Better. Do something better, be something better. Future! Toughen up!

  *

  Across the road, a tall blond American officer was watching her. The town was still full of soldiers waiting to be shipped home, exhausted, hysterical, victorious, in a party mood in this busy town. Teddy Roosevelt had just been, General Pershing turned up; the King was expected. The mayor was a charming chap – Monsieur Petit – with a beard and black eyes, honest, energetic, full of plans for his town. It was terribly clean. The ghosts of pre-war glamour infused the mayor’s rebuilding programmes, and all the French were in love with both the English and the Yanks.

  The American had been amusing himself with days at the Hippodrome de la Barre and outings to San Sebastien for the bullfight, cocktails back at the Rotonde, and nights at the Pavillon Royal or le Caveau, where Latin-Americans danced with Russian exiles, and undoubtedly there were Secret Service men in disguise. He was a New Yorker, accustomed to fun, and he found Europe droll. His service had been comparatively light, but he had seen enough. He was getting a little bored now.

  He knew that she was Mrs Lucke, a war widow, respectable but mysterious, at Biarritz for her health. He had noticed her at the Grande Plage, sea bathing with her personal baigneur, her wide hat in place under a veil. The contrast of the revealed limbs and the hidden face had caught his eye. Then he had seen her in the foyer at the hot fountains and mud baths at Dax, and again at the Thermes Salins, where, according to the advertisements, the nervous, the insomniac, the weak, the irritable, the neuralgic or those in need of general healing after injury could take medicinal brine baths, with heliothantic physiotherapy, and massage. He wondered which of those she was – if any. Anyone can benefit from attention – even paid-for attention – when they have had none for too long. A widow. He had wondered why she never took that hat off. He had wondered what her face looked like. So when she took it off, for that moment on the front, he raised his chin and leaned forward, keen suddenly, excited – but the angle was wrong, and she was too far away. All he got was a glimpse of white-blonde hair, and a gleam of pallor.

  When she turned and began to walk again, up towards Maxwell’s English Tearoom, he followed her. When she stopped to admire some embroidered slippers on a stall, he paused. The pair she bought were very small, he noticed, and blue: for a child. She passed by Fortunio’s English and American bookshop with a glance in the window. He had seen her in there once, having a polite exchange with another English lady about Agatha Christie: Marvellous? Or not? He had caught the other woman’s voice but not hers. He wanted to hear it.

  And then at Dodin in the rue Gambetta she paused and went in. Her movements were elegant as she slid between tables towards the back of the room, where she took a seat, ordered a soufflé au Grand Marnier and a tisane, and took out a book. He took the table next to her, ordered coffee and soft macaroons, looked up, and smiled at her. He saw beauty like a pearl, glamour, and the biggest blue eyes, with sorrow, gayness and determination in them. She saw a man as healthy and handsome as a field of wheat, with good teeth and straight shoulders, frank with admiration.

  He said, light and friendly, with a smile, ‘You’re Mrs Lucke, aren’t you – what luck. Oh, Lord, I can’t believe I said that …’ whereupon she smiled, and her dignity and pre-war pudeur were on the back foot.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am,’ he said, and she liked that he said ma’am. Then as a courtesy, a patent calling card, he mentioned an acquaintance they shared – but she can’t have looked very accepting (Well, of course I don’t, she thought, my face hardly moves, how could he read my feelings?), because then he said ‘Is this OK? Me speaking to you like this in public? You’re British, right? So maybe the Empire will explode? And your ancestors start rotating?’

  And she was quite disarmed.

  ‘Oh, don’t you start that,’ she said. ‘That “America is so modern and Europe is so ancient” business. As if you are all made of plate glass and steel, and we are still wattle and daub. I know for a fact that far more Europeans than Americans are atheists, and what could be more modern than that?’

  ‘So can I take it that you are modern, Mrs Lucke?’ he asked, but in a droll way, not a vulgar one, and Julia found herself wishing, really wishing, that her face had expression, because she wanted to give him a look, the kind of look which her features would have formed automatically in the old days, when her emotions and the cells of her muscles and skin were in a direct contact which had nothing to do with her will or her brain … but now she had to think about it. How do I make the expression I require appear on my face? She feared any expression she made might be ugly. She didn’t know how to deal with that possibility.

  She thought of the modern woman she planned to be.

  He was watching her, and he said: ‘It seems as if everything you do, you think about …’ and at that she laughed out loud, so immediately and so bitterly that her self-consciousness had no time to play its part.

  ‘Far from it,’ she said. ‘Oh, far from it.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ he said, and she laughed again, a prettier laugh, and said ‘absolutely not!’ in a most intriguing manner. He pressed a little more, to imprint the matter of his interest, but noted that she did not want to tell her secrets, but to be amused. And so he took it on himself to amuse her. Later, he equipped himself better, with a car for outings, hampers and wine for quiet picnics, and the address of a stables for riding. Today, all he had was a copy of a newspaper his sister sent him regularly for news of home: the Evening Sun. He pulled it out, and said to her, ‘How about this? This guy, the writer, he’s called Don Marquis, and he writes about this cockroach, who was a free-verse poet in his previous life, and he comes out at night and writes poems on this guy’s typewriter. He jumps up on the keys, one by one. That’s why there’s no capital letters, you see? He can’t bounce on two keys at the same time …’ And he read the column to her, in his New York accent, about archy the cockroach and his friend the cat mehitabel, who had been Cleopatra in her former life, and whose constant chorus on all that life threw their way was: ‘toujours gai, archy, toujours gai …’

  Julia thought it the funniest thing in the world, and indeed it was. ‘Toujours gai …’ she murmured, with delight.

  His name was Harlan Barker. When he told her he was a lieutenant, she liked the way he said it, lootenant. He was civil and clever and attentive, with a straight nose and hair of a colour that on a woman would have inspired poetry involving sunlight, cornfields and quite possibly angels’ wings, but on him was cut short and manly. Before too long Harlan Barker was calling her archy, and in his company she usually found it possible to be toujours gai.

  *

  On one of the quiet beach and hamper days, in the shade by a rock, on a blanket, sitting a little apart, as they did, for they had not thrown over the habits of respectable society entirely, the shadow of sorrow came over her and he asked her, ‘What is it?’

  She smiled at him, and said, after a moment’s thought, ‘You’re so very sensible, I don’t think you’d understand.’

  ‘Try me,’ he said, and turned to her, receptive.

  She glanced about a bit, nervous, and then thought, Go on! New habits! He’s not Peter – talk!

  ‘Goblins,’ she said.

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘A horrid one that sits on your shoulder pouring poison into your ear, telling you you’re no good,’ she said quickly. She had never mentioned them to anybody in her life. He’ll think I’m mad, she thought.

  He jumped up.

  ‘You got one of them?’ he cried.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him, puzzled.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Now? It’s asleep. You’ve put it to sleep.’ She gave a kind of smile at the idea, at the fact she’d said it.

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ he said. ‘Wake it up.’

  ‘What?’ She was slightly alarmed suddenly. She had offered a tiny ope
ning to her inner world, a first step in something she expected to be tender and delicate, and he was racing in like a cowboy on horseback.

  ‘Wake it up!’ he cried. ‘Where does it talk to you from? Is it inside you? Inside your head?’

  ‘It sits on my shoulder,’ she said.

  ‘Stand up,’ he said. He took her hand to pull her. ‘Stand there. OK.’ There was a wooden post set into the beach; a fisherman’s mooring post, its base drifted with fine sand. He positioned her by it, the sea behind her, and looked her hard in the face. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. He hadn’t ever, but she knew he wanted to. There was something serious in him which prevented it.

  ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘You get that voice, like a teacher or some bully from school—’

  ‘I never went to school,’ she said.

  ‘Waste,’ he said. ‘Clever woman like you,’ and she was pleased, because nobody had ever thought her clever, and he noticed that she was pleased and smiled at her, and then continued, ‘OK, the voice – the goblin – is it like your parents when they’re angry, or you think they’re angry, and it goes over and over all the things that are wrong about your moral character and your behaviour and everything?’

  ‘That’s just what it’s like,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what it is,’ he said. ‘It’s not what you really are. Or what you really think. It’s some habit you got into when you were little, and you get used to it and it just goes on and on. My sister had an owl in her belly. Did just the same thing. Made her feel nauseous too. So. Is it awake yet?’

  She looked at him.

  Clever? said the goblin. Clever? You’d fall for that cheap and clearly inaccurate compliment? He’s out for what he can get. Probably just thinks you’re rich. He’d hardly be after you for your looks, would he? Unless he’s desperate …

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s right here.’

  ‘On your shoulder? Which one?’

  ‘Right,’ she said, and her mouth tightened, and she thought she might cry, and what was she even doing here? He doesn’t like you. How could he like you?

  ‘Put your hands on the post, in front of you,’ he said. ‘Just rest them on the top.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Don’t move,’ he said.

  The next thing was a ferocious loud report, and a hard clean note past her right ear, swift and sudden and gone again with a brush of air and an idea of heat, harder and hotter than she had ever experienced.

  She cried out, lurching a little to the left, her foot turning on the soft sand, but she didn’t fall. Her eyes were wide as she glanced behind, out to the wide clear sea, and then looked back at him.

  He was standing in front of her, a pistol held in both hands, pointing downwards.

  ‘Got it,’ he said, and he grinned. ‘Point blank, pretty much.’

  Back on the rug, she sat shaking. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Lunatic? Hero? What?

  But you presented it to him as real, and he dealt with it as real.

  He nearly shot you! His bullet went past inches from your head! If you had moved, you’d be dead – but he told you not to move. And you didn’t move – he …

  She’d refused his arm to get back to the rug, to sit. He was squatting now, a little to the side, watching her and holding out his hip flask.

  ‘Whisky,’ he said. ‘Sorry to scare you. Had to be like that.’

  She stared up at him, dark against the bright sky behind him. A flurry of seabirds had been set off by the sound of the shot – gradually they were returning to the rocks and the strand, resettling. She did not feel at all settled. But the voice in her head was not the goblin.

  ‘You OK?’ he said. He gestured again with the flask. She shook her head.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am OK.’ She sounded a bit puzzled by the fact. But she was OK. He’d shot the goblin.

  *

  Later she asked him what had happened to his sister’s owl.

  ‘I got rid of it for her,’ he said. ‘I squeezed it up out of her tummy, moving it higher and higher till it popped out of her mouth, and then I strangled it and put it in the stove.’

  ‘Could you see it?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Nope! I had to hold on real tight so it didn’t get away and go bothering some other little girl. I just grabbed it right out of her mouth and stuffed it in the stove and slammed down the lid.’

  She smiled.

  Over the next days and weeks she found herself smiling in her sleep, and waking up smiling.

  Chapter Nine

  Rome and London, June–July 1919

  Before leaving London, Riley and Nadine had made one other visit: to their old art teacher, Riley’s mentor, Sir Alfred, in his white and beautiful house in Orme Square, behind the magnolias. When they had told him they were married, he had said, ‘Good,’ and ‘Where are you living? Want to come and live here?’ His warmth had been joyous. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘You must go on your great trip.’ This had been a dream plan from the years before the war – that they should visit Amsterdam, Paris, Florence, Borgo San Sepolcro, Mantua, Rome, Istanbul, Cairo, to see Rembrandts, Michelangelo, Piero della Francesca, Masaccio, Delphi, the chapel of Chora, the mosque of Ibn Tulun. Sir Alfred had sent Nadine up to his studio to choose a present of one of his travelling painting cases, and Riley had gone up with her. They had looked out of the tall windows at the spring sunshine; the memory of five years before, when he had first touched her, in this room, had hovered like a ghost, making Riley’s hand ache. The old man’s main wedding present was a truncated section of the Grand Tour – an extension to their honeymoon – a trip to Italy.

  Now, night after night across Europe, following Sir Alfred’s itinerary, Nadine and Riley slept under high ceilings in single beds on opposite sides of tile-floored bedrooms, separated by little marble-topped bedside cupboards, glass-shaded lamps, guidebooks, dressing gowns, and deep, terrible misunderstanding. This profound wrongness streaked Nadine’s heart. Everything around them was so right, so promising, so surging with possibility and fruitfulness … except for what was wrong, and she knew – she knew – did not have to be wrong. It wasn’t his face. She was getting used to his face. It had become just – the truth. She thought. Or am I still in shock about it? Is he? But we can live with it. Look at us, living with it! We’ve only another fifty years or so … Yes, so far, we’re just wandering around, settling nowhere – this is not a real life …

  Nor was it his speech. She understood him, with only a small amount of extra effort. Other people, unused to him, found it a little harder. When he heard of the Italian mode of speech known as the bocca aperta, the open mouth, he noticed how much easier it was to understand, and took to practising it himself – when he wanted to communicate, which she knew was not always. Communication was work for him, physically, emotionally, socially. He did not want attention.

  No, the same thing was wrong. The sex thing.

  By pure force of will she pushed it away. Distraction! And in this she had a sudden though entirely predictable burst of assistance: Nadine, like so many before and after her, fell deeply, madly, in a most devout, transparent and mysterious way, in love with Italy. She blinded herself with the glory of the Italian summer. Every time she looked out onto Umbrian hills or Tuscan streets, on to Venice! – every time she breathed pine or fennel or frankincense, or looked into some shaded church in the heat of the day, the fear which had desiccated her in 1918 wilted and shrank. Everything was beautiful, and the beauty began to overpower all her sorrows and regrets. She smelt basil, for the first time in her life, and was intoxicated. The fat and glossy tomatoes made her sigh. This Italian sun was making a nymph of her, mossy-footed, cool-thighed, water-pouring. She loved the world – it’s true! I do! I had forgotten! – and she began to wonder what she was going to do about it. She wanted to tell it. To thank it. Is that what art is for? To tell the world you love it?

  This educational voyage, arranged by a most knowledgeable guide
, was peeling mud and sorrow off her soul. She remembered suddenly, one morning, wounded soldiers arriving from the battlefields after days of travel caked in mud, in a dried-out carapace that had to be chipped off them … a clay shell like a gypsy’s roasted hedgehog, and God knows what wounds and damage you’d find inside. Every day the cities and the paintings exposed to her long, deep unities of humanity, strong living channels that emerged from the depths of the past like crystal streams bursting from a cavern. She found herself connected not only to the painters, but to their subjects too. All these humans, all these lives, all that time. Look …

  In Milan she saw a Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio. Jesus sat at the table, looking ill, she felt, with a light sweat on his face, and concern occupied every angle of the three people around him. Just a man, suffering. Such love and fear surrounding him – well, of course I identify with that. Looking at him, some phrases came back to her from the book of Edward Thomas which Peter had given her: ‘a strong citizen of infinity and eternity … I knew that I could not do without the Infinite, nor the Infinite without me’. Thomas, she remembered, had died at Arras, at Easter, 1917. She wondered if he had been a religious man. And oh – Peter—

  *

  One day at Mantua, she saw another painting, not especially good, in the shadows of a church they had only gone into to get out of the heat. It was typical, showing the Virgin and Child on their throne, with some saints, her in blue, him in a coral necklace. But at the bottom, excluded from the rest of the painting by a marble step and the Virgin’s tapestry carpet, scowled at by the Lion of St Jerome (who was offering the Virgin a model of a church), almost trodden on by a baby St John the Baptist, were the heads of four shamefaced people. Two were women, scarved, modest in dark clothing, sad. The others were men: one grey-bearded, aged and wrinkled, the other, younger, guilty-eyed, stubborn, despairing. The women looked down and sideways. The men stared out. Each wore a circle of yellow cord stitched to his coat. At the top of the painting two angels held up a plaque on which was written: Debellata hebraeorum temeritate.